Meet Luka (again)
The piano sold a few weeks after he last saw her.
Luka Tapahonso spent less time in his shop these days, but when he was there the vacancy drew his eyes as his mind ran through numbers. Not the store’s finances—he barely had time for those anymore. These numbers were ones he didn’t dare keep on any palm drive or console. These numbers were scrawled in grease pencil on metal surfaces and wiped away when the meeting was over. They existed in his mind and in one small notebook, written in a cypher that only he and five other people in the galaxy could read.
There were advantages to selling ancient artifacts. A leather-bound book drew little attention in his store, tucked away amidst the colorful spines on the shelf above his console.
He rested his weight on his palms, his shoulders burning with the hours he had spent hunching. He rubbed at his forehead with a hand, then continued the motion back through his loose hair, catching at tangles with his fingers.
He was a mess.
A message came through on his palm drive, and he sent it to the console to read. It was addressed to the nickname the Fox had used for him since their days in IRC.
Tap, I’ve got a free minute this morning if you want to meet. Might have some leads for you on that painting your client was looking for. Meet me in the Forum in 10? Fox.
Exhaustion already left his limbs heavy, and another round of anticipatory fatigue washed over him at the message. He let himself sink into that fatigue for just a moment, gave himself permission to be angry and tired and miserable all at once. For a time, there had been something like peace in his life, and he had let himself hope that the peace could continue. But now, Argos was tense with a war that raged just beneath the surface. Most citizens went about their daily lives with no sense of the disruption, but it was there. It sizzled like a stripped wire with the potential to shock, to burn, but most everyone ignored it.
Sometimes he wished for the intentional oblivion of most of Argos’s population. To just live, without the burden of everything he couldn’t help but see.
But he couldn’t begin to imagine that kind of ignorance, and so he resigned himself to this fact: he could not rest until he could do no more. Until the galaxy found some measure of peace, he wouldn’t be able to either.
So he pulled his hair back tightly, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to hide the worst of the wrinkles, closed up the shop, and headed for the Forum.
It was still early, but the Forum buzzed with activity. While the tourists visiting the capital city-station of the United Human Nations were still asleep in the hotels lining the second level of the Forum, Argos’s locals were out in full force. The Forum advertised itself as a place for everyone—home to visitors and citizens alike, with a range of food and drink and entertainment not found anywhere else in the galaxy. And it certainly had a diversity of people passing through at any given point—buying their drink of choice for the morning commute or lingering over a meal after a busy morning of sightseeing—but it wasn’t the full range of Argos’s population. There was more happening in the far-flung alleys and back rooms of the station than in this central hub where the security forces could keep a close eye: an entire economy of unregulated goods and services to keep the denizens of Argos happy.
Luka and the Fox spent more time together these days than they had in a while, and though they both would have much preferred to have these conversations in the privacy of the back room of the Fox’s shop, there was a third party’s involvement to consider—one that required much more subtlety.
Luka was the first to arrive at the coffee shop. It was one of the cafés frequented more by tourists than locals, so at this early hour it was nearly empty. The hiss of the steam wand punctuated the low chatter of the baristas, and the only other customers were an older man whose round face was buried in his data pad at a corner table and a slim woman speaking to someone on her implanted earpiece. She looked up and saw Luka, retracting her hand from where she was patting the dark bun at the nape of her neck to wave him ahead of her, then turned away, returning to her call. Luka stepped up to place his order at the counter.
The woman finished her call as the barista handed over a steaming cup to Luka. He paid, found a seat in a cluster of empty tables across the room from the man, and watched the door.
By the time the Fox had arrived, the woman had taken her tea to a table near Luka’s and was reading something on her data pad. The Fox ordered a drip coffee and joined Luka, letting out a loud sigh as he sat.
Cyrus “the Fox” Davies was twenty years Luka’s senior. His expressions had only hardened more with age as deep wrinkles began to disturb the pockmarks and fine scars. He had been the senior enlisted on their team, Onyema’s trusted advisor, and his gruff voice and pointed face had changed little in the years since their time in IRC.
“Nasty stuff,” he said as he drank the coffee. “But I’m too old to make it a full day without a stimulant.”
“You know there’s pills for that,” Luka said mildly.
“Yeah but I’d never leave my place if I didn’t have reason, so this suits me fine. How are you doing? You look like shit.”
“Been better,” Luka said. “Business is running me ragged. Speaking of, you mentioned you might have a lead for me.”
At the next table, the woman began talking into her palm drive again.
“I have an update,” she said. Her voice was low, but it carried to their table. “Mother thinks it’s worth acting on.”
Mother. Their code for Onyema, which she would have hated if they ever let her know about it.
Fox kept his eyes on Luka, but his words were intended for the woman—Gemma Tanaka, another former member of Onyema’s team. “Where is mother dearest sending our brother this time?”
“I’ll leave the coordinates,” Gemma said. She affected speaking into her palm drive still, holding one hand near her implanted earpiece and shielding her mouth with her teacup using the other. “She can tell you more when you arrive.”
“How fresh is it?” Luka asked.
“Brand new.” Gemma smirked into her tea. Luka remembered that smirk well, the way it sparked her cherrywood eyes. For a long time, he had believed he would never see that smirk again. He certainly had never imagined he would find himself conducting covert meetings, receiving instructions from her for new trips—new missions.
When his IRC contract ended fourteen years ago, he had expected never to hear that word again, along with quite a few others. His life as a free man began that day, all of twenty-two years old, and in his naivety he had believed that freedom had no expiration date. Of the seven of them who had survived the mission that damaged Luka’s faith in the Union beyond repair, only Gemma had remained in the Navy any longer than she’d had to. Even Onyema had retired as soon as she could, but Gemma had stayed, rising through the ranks and returning to Argos for a desk job in intelligence. She had earned the trust of the higher-ups, and that trust had kept her safe when Emory purged the Navy of disloyal officers. It also meant she was their only set of eyes inside the Navy.
Gemma had always been the most optimistic member of their team. The one who believed that just by existing in the broken system, she could fix it. Her brilliance and diligence won her promotion after promotion, and now her hope was paying off, as she had access they desperately needed to gain a foothold against Emory.
When Onyema had returned, asking for their help, he fought against it. He had built a new life for himself. He had work that brought him joy and enough money to support his parents. He had enough peace to think he might fall in love again someday and a man in his life who made him believe he could be loved again in return. But Luka understood that his life had ceased being his own the day he’d enlisted, and any expectation of freedom when his contract ended had been a beautiful and false hope. For more than a decade, that hope had thrived. He traveled, each planet and moon he visited fresh and new and gorgeous. He sold things, simple and uncomplicated, and he went home at night without the tight grasp of fear on his heart. He’d thought those days of fear were over, for a brief, beautiful while.
“Anything else I should know?” Luka asked Gemma, his eyes on his drink.
“Just be your charming self,” she said. “And remember your training.”
So it was a personnel mission. They had found someone they wanted him to turn, who they thought was susceptible to their message. A marine, likely, if they were sending him and not Santi. Santi could bond with the officers, share stories of his academy days—Luka had always just been a grunt. He had always also been good with people, unlike the Fox.
There were so few of them. He found himself drawing on skills he had never been trained in. Things he had picked up over the years—creative ways to get the job done. More and more often, he was the only option.
As Luka nodded his understanding, Gemma downed the last of her tea and stood, throwing her empty cup in the coffee shop’s recycling chute. A small stack of paper napkins remained at her table where she had left them.
“Aw, fuck,” the Fox said, fumbling with his coffee. A great gout of it splashed out, spreading across their table. Luka handed the Fox his napkins and then reached for the ones left on Gemma’s table. He pocketed the one on top, handing the rest to the Fox to dab at the mess he had made.
They finished their drinks and talked about a painting one of Luka’s regular customers had asked him to look for. A reproduction, but still surprisingly difficult to find. The Fox suggested a few places he had come across in his travels—Luka had already tried most of them, but he jotted down the new ones in his palm drive. They parted at the door, the Fox headed for his warehouse and Luka home. His apartment was on a side street near his shop, a small one-bedroom that he rarely saw these days except to pack and unpack. He stopped in the shop to retrieve the little leather-bound book from its place above his console.
His cover wouldn’t last forever. There were only so many weeks an antiques dealer could spend away from his shop on fictional acquisition trips. Eventually he would have to let go of this last vestige of the life he had once hoped might be permanent.
When he was alone in the privacy of his apartment, he took out the paper napkin. On it, written in their cypher, were the coordinates of a small moon—a Union settlement. He copied the cypher into his book and burned the napkin, letting it curl and disintegrate in the sink until none of the ink remained visible before flushing the pile of ashes down the toilet.
Luka threw his bag together again, tucking the journal and a well-worn book of poetry in first. Most of the tools and weapons remained in the bag where he had left them to wait for his inevitable return. The clothing he had removed and washed, and he replaced it now in little neatly folded bundles. The simplicity of the routine hushed his racing thoughts. It left him washed out, the way he had felt as a child playing in the turbulent waves on the coastline near his home. The way he had felt after a day of fighting the violent, salty thrashing of water that pushed itself against his limbs and found its way into his ears, his nose, his mouth, the salt drying him to his core.
He heaved a sigh, then hoisted his bag over his shoulder and made his way to the port.
Luka Tapahonso spent less time in his shop these days, but when he was there the vacancy drew his eyes as his mind ran through numbers. Not the store’s finances—he barely had time for those anymore. These numbers were ones he didn’t dare keep on any palm drive or console. These numbers were scrawled in grease pencil on metal surfaces and wiped away when the meeting was over. They existed in his mind and in one small notebook, written in a cypher that only he and five other people in the galaxy could read.
There were advantages to selling ancient artifacts. A leather-bound book drew little attention in his store, tucked away amidst the colorful spines on the shelf above his console.
He rested his weight on his palms, his shoulders burning with the hours he had spent hunching. He rubbed at his forehead with a hand, then continued the motion back through his loose hair, catching at tangles with his fingers.
He was a mess.
A message came through on his palm drive, and he sent it to the console to read. It was addressed to the nickname the Fox had used for him since their days in IRC.
Tap, I’ve got a free minute this morning if you want to meet. Might have some leads for you on that painting your client was looking for. Meet me in the Forum in 10? Fox.
Exhaustion already left his limbs heavy, and another round of anticipatory fatigue washed over him at the message. He let himself sink into that fatigue for just a moment, gave himself permission to be angry and tired and miserable all at once. For a time, there had been something like peace in his life, and he had let himself hope that the peace could continue. But now, Argos was tense with a war that raged just beneath the surface. Most citizens went about their daily lives with no sense of the disruption, but it was there. It sizzled like a stripped wire with the potential to shock, to burn, but most everyone ignored it.
Sometimes he wished for the intentional oblivion of most of Argos’s population. To just live, without the burden of everything he couldn’t help but see.
But he couldn’t begin to imagine that kind of ignorance, and so he resigned himself to this fact: he could not rest until he could do no more. Until the galaxy found some measure of peace, he wouldn’t be able to either.
So he pulled his hair back tightly, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to hide the worst of the wrinkles, closed up the shop, and headed for the Forum.
It was still early, but the Forum buzzed with activity. While the tourists visiting the capital city-station of the United Human Nations were still asleep in the hotels lining the second level of the Forum, Argos’s locals were out in full force. The Forum advertised itself as a place for everyone—home to visitors and citizens alike, with a range of food and drink and entertainment not found anywhere else in the galaxy. And it certainly had a diversity of people passing through at any given point—buying their drink of choice for the morning commute or lingering over a meal after a busy morning of sightseeing—but it wasn’t the full range of Argos’s population. There was more happening in the far-flung alleys and back rooms of the station than in this central hub where the security forces could keep a close eye: an entire economy of unregulated goods and services to keep the denizens of Argos happy.
Luka and the Fox spent more time together these days than they had in a while, and though they both would have much preferred to have these conversations in the privacy of the back room of the Fox’s shop, there was a third party’s involvement to consider—one that required much more subtlety.
Luka was the first to arrive at the coffee shop. It was one of the cafés frequented more by tourists than locals, so at this early hour it was nearly empty. The hiss of the steam wand punctuated the low chatter of the baristas, and the only other customers were an older man whose round face was buried in his data pad at a corner table and a slim woman speaking to someone on her implanted earpiece. She looked up and saw Luka, retracting her hand from where she was patting the dark bun at the nape of her neck to wave him ahead of her, then turned away, returning to her call. Luka stepped up to place his order at the counter.
The woman finished her call as the barista handed over a steaming cup to Luka. He paid, found a seat in a cluster of empty tables across the room from the man, and watched the door.
By the time the Fox had arrived, the woman had taken her tea to a table near Luka’s and was reading something on her data pad. The Fox ordered a drip coffee and joined Luka, letting out a loud sigh as he sat.
Cyrus “the Fox” Davies was twenty years Luka’s senior. His expressions had only hardened more with age as deep wrinkles began to disturb the pockmarks and fine scars. He had been the senior enlisted on their team, Onyema’s trusted advisor, and his gruff voice and pointed face had changed little in the years since their time in IRC.
“Nasty stuff,” he said as he drank the coffee. “But I’m too old to make it a full day without a stimulant.”
“You know there’s pills for that,” Luka said mildly.
“Yeah but I’d never leave my place if I didn’t have reason, so this suits me fine. How are you doing? You look like shit.”
“Been better,” Luka said. “Business is running me ragged. Speaking of, you mentioned you might have a lead for me.”
At the next table, the woman began talking into her palm drive again.
“I have an update,” she said. Her voice was low, but it carried to their table. “Mother thinks it’s worth acting on.”
Mother. Their code for Onyema, which she would have hated if they ever let her know about it.
Fox kept his eyes on Luka, but his words were intended for the woman—Gemma Tanaka, another former member of Onyema’s team. “Where is mother dearest sending our brother this time?”
“I’ll leave the coordinates,” Gemma said. She affected speaking into her palm drive still, holding one hand near her implanted earpiece and shielding her mouth with her teacup using the other. “She can tell you more when you arrive.”
“How fresh is it?” Luka asked.
“Brand new.” Gemma smirked into her tea. Luka remembered that smirk well, the way it sparked her cherrywood eyes. For a long time, he had believed he would never see that smirk again. He certainly had never imagined he would find himself conducting covert meetings, receiving instructions from her for new trips—new missions.
When his IRC contract ended fourteen years ago, he had expected never to hear that word again, along with quite a few others. His life as a free man began that day, all of twenty-two years old, and in his naivety he had believed that freedom had no expiration date. Of the seven of them who had survived the mission that damaged Luka’s faith in the Union beyond repair, only Gemma had remained in the Navy any longer than she’d had to. Even Onyema had retired as soon as she could, but Gemma had stayed, rising through the ranks and returning to Argos for a desk job in intelligence. She had earned the trust of the higher-ups, and that trust had kept her safe when Emory purged the Navy of disloyal officers. It also meant she was their only set of eyes inside the Navy.
Gemma had always been the most optimistic member of their team. The one who believed that just by existing in the broken system, she could fix it. Her brilliance and diligence won her promotion after promotion, and now her hope was paying off, as she had access they desperately needed to gain a foothold against Emory.
When Onyema had returned, asking for their help, he fought against it. He had built a new life for himself. He had work that brought him joy and enough money to support his parents. He had enough peace to think he might fall in love again someday and a man in his life who made him believe he could be loved again in return. But Luka understood that his life had ceased being his own the day he’d enlisted, and any expectation of freedom when his contract ended had been a beautiful and false hope. For more than a decade, that hope had thrived. He traveled, each planet and moon he visited fresh and new and gorgeous. He sold things, simple and uncomplicated, and he went home at night without the tight grasp of fear on his heart. He’d thought those days of fear were over, for a brief, beautiful while.
“Anything else I should know?” Luka asked Gemma, his eyes on his drink.
“Just be your charming self,” she said. “And remember your training.”
So it was a personnel mission. They had found someone they wanted him to turn, who they thought was susceptible to their message. A marine, likely, if they were sending him and not Santi. Santi could bond with the officers, share stories of his academy days—Luka had always just been a grunt. He had always also been good with people, unlike the Fox.
There were so few of them. He found himself drawing on skills he had never been trained in. Things he had picked up over the years—creative ways to get the job done. More and more often, he was the only option.
As Luka nodded his understanding, Gemma downed the last of her tea and stood, throwing her empty cup in the coffee shop’s recycling chute. A small stack of paper napkins remained at her table where she had left them.
“Aw, fuck,” the Fox said, fumbling with his coffee. A great gout of it splashed out, spreading across their table. Luka handed the Fox his napkins and then reached for the ones left on Gemma’s table. He pocketed the one on top, handing the rest to the Fox to dab at the mess he had made.
They finished their drinks and talked about a painting one of Luka’s regular customers had asked him to look for. A reproduction, but still surprisingly difficult to find. The Fox suggested a few places he had come across in his travels—Luka had already tried most of them, but he jotted down the new ones in his palm drive. They parted at the door, the Fox headed for his warehouse and Luka home. His apartment was on a side street near his shop, a small one-bedroom that he rarely saw these days except to pack and unpack. He stopped in the shop to retrieve the little leather-bound book from its place above his console.
His cover wouldn’t last forever. There were only so many weeks an antiques dealer could spend away from his shop on fictional acquisition trips. Eventually he would have to let go of this last vestige of the life he had once hoped might be permanent.
When he was alone in the privacy of his apartment, he took out the paper napkin. On it, written in their cypher, were the coordinates of a small moon—a Union settlement. He copied the cypher into his book and burned the napkin, letting it curl and disintegrate in the sink until none of the ink remained visible before flushing the pile of ashes down the toilet.
Luka threw his bag together again, tucking the journal and a well-worn book of poetry in first. Most of the tools and weapons remained in the bag where he had left them to wait for his inevitable return. The clothing he had removed and washed, and he replaced it now in little neatly folded bundles. The simplicity of the routine hushed his racing thoughts. It left him washed out, the way he had felt as a child playing in the turbulent waves on the coastline near his home. The way he had felt after a day of fighting the violent, salty thrashing of water that pushed itself against his limbs and found its way into his ears, his nose, his mouth, the salt drying him to his core.
He heaved a sigh, then hoisted his bag over his shoulder and made his way to the port.