Vin's Rules (Outer Settlement Agency) (3 page)

“We’re representatives of the Outer Settlement Agency,” Allie said, bowing and extending her hand.

Not a single one of them took it. A few of their jaws dropped to the ground. Two of them narrowed their eyes. He didn’t care for the curl on their lips.

Vin stepped a little closer to Allie.

Fuck this. Fuck him. He’d totally misjudged the situation. He should have hauled her back to the shuttle for backup the second they hit an empty quadrant.

The man he assumed to be in charge stared at Allie for several seconds before snapping his eyes back to Vin. “Thought OSA forgot about us.”

“Not at all. As she said, that’s why we’re here.”

“We don’t need OSA.” The man holstered his weapon and eased closer. “The woman’s one too?”

“I can speak for myself and for the record...”

For once, Vin was happy to hear her rattle off about regulation numbers zero through a million. It gave him time to survey the craphole they’d crashed into.

Respect of OSA kept the galaxy in check. You always had thugs and pirates and organized crime, but as long as they ran from the good guys, the ‘verse was still in balance.

Not only were these assholes living outside the system, they flaunted it.

Guns happened.

Warlords happened.

But this was too organized. Too... governmental.

The man dismissed Allie with a sneer and a wave of indifference.

She huffed and advanced, but Vin held her in place with a hand on her shoulder.

The armed men grinned at this and elbowed one another. Also, very not good.

Had Allie picked up on it? No, she was still rattling off regulations and laws. From where he stood, however, these men only positively engaged when
he
somehow verbally or physically restrained
her
.

The more she talked, the more they lasered in on her with open looks of derision. Still, she kept listing their faults, wholly oblivious to the bullshit deepening around them.

The leader held up a finger and tapped his earpiece. “Message from Graham. He welcomes you into our community. This way.”

“Actually—”

But the man cut Allie off. Rather than respond to her, he addressed Vin. “It’s for your own good. It’s close to nightfall. You’d rather be with us, than with them.”

“Them? What’s a
them
?”

Allie’s question again went unanswered. “I suggest you quickstep. Graham doesn’t like to be kept waiting. You can stop looking down at your weapons. They’re ours now.”

They didn’t have much choice in the matter. One of the grunts snatched his firearms away then turned to Allie. The glint in his eye didn’t sit well with him. Before any of them touched her, Vin kicked her weapon towards them. The whole time, he kept his eyes on the leering guard with a look that very much said,
don’t.

The men formed a tight circle around them. Vin walked so close to Allie that their legs brushed together and leaned over to her ear. “For the love of all that’s holy, please follow my lead.”

“Why should I? You led us here,” she hissed back.

“Fair point, but you weren’t supposed to follow. Let’s fight about who’s more right later. This place—it’s like they’ve all—”

“Regressed?”

He for doggone sure couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it. He was also fresh out of words to explain what waited on the other side of the wall.

A damned paradise.

The steel and gray of the town gave way to colorful trees that kissed against buildings and well tended mini-gardens. Buildings made of actual wood lined the streets and swinging wooden signs swayed above each door.

A barber.

A school.

A woodshop.

It was something out of an Earth History lesson, complete with women covered neck to knee in blue sheaths working in the gardens. Though none of them looked up despite the commotion caused by his and Allie’s arrival.

Allie whipped out her omnitablet and started taking photos. She maybe got two or three before one of their guides ripped it from her hands. “Not allowed.”

“What?”

“Hush, Allie.”

More freakish nods of approval from the men were thrown in his direction. Creepy as hell. Their murmurings stopped as they entered a two-storied building that looked like an old-fashioned and multi-level farmhouse.

People milled around them, but only those dressed in tan met his gaze head on. Ladies in blue scrubbed floors cleaner than any plate he’d eaten off of. Two of the tan wearing soldiers walked with a woman dressed in green between them. She smiled. Sort of. It didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Tan. Soldiers.

Blue. Workers.

Mental note: none of the people wearing tan were female.

He was sure he’d spotted at least two males wearing blue.

On creaking floors, they walked to a large door at the end of the hallway, where they were soon abandoned.

“Come in.”

Allie sucked in her bottom lip. Vin tapped his own and shook his head. “Toughen up, Ert’zod. You got this.”

“I know.”

And he almost didn’t hear the shake in her voice.

“Let me do the talking.”

“We’ll see.”

With one last warning look, Vin stepped to the door, but it didn’t open.

He waved his hand over the round handle.

Nothing happened.

“The hell?” He wiggled fingers above his head, standing on the tips of his toes, but no sensors pinged.

A grinning Allie elbowed him and twisted the knob. “I’d remind you that we’re in an archaic house with archaic machinery, but as per your equally archaic rules, I’m not allowed to speak. After you.”

She had spirit. Good. She’d need it for whatever came next. That she found a moment of levity in this gave him hope. They’d make it through this just fine.

Not too much would happen.

Probably.

You’d have to be an idiot to harm OSA personnel on purpose. Yet the both of them would need all engines on full blast to maneuver through this strange place.

He’d half expected a man with a crown atop his head, surrounded by a bevy of naked women on the other side of the door. Instead, he saw the epitome of normal.

A man in simple trousers and a white shift greeted them from behind the desk. He slightly bowed and hooked his thumbs around old-fashioned suspenders. “Guests. I must say, you caused quite a stir. Welcome to Appleton. I’m Graham, a mayor of sorts. Please have a seat.”

Vin swallowed down his shock at seeing the man hold out Allie’s chair for her.

“Bet you weren’t expecting that, were you, ma’am?”

Vin silently willed her to shut up and stick to the plan.

“Can’t say that I was.”

Damn.

And of course, she kept on talking. She was so busy running her mouth that she probably missed what Vin found impossible not to see—the tense twitching above Graham’s left eye each time her mouth vomited the words “OSA” and “regulation.” They were fucked, and the way she was going, Graham was going in dry. 

Graham slicked back a few of the gray strands at his temples. His fingers scratched the afternoon beard of a face that bore the lines of wisdom and long hours in the sun.

Wisdom not shared by Vin’s rambling co-prisoner, who was too clueless to know that she was, in fact, a co-prisoner.

Allie sat on the edge of her chair and tapped Graham’s desk. The man’s eyes followed her thudding finger, and his face reddened. “One of your men took my omnitablet. If you’ll just give it back, I can show you precisely what the regulations say.”

“My parents were Outer Settlement Agency folks. Good people, for a time. It’s fair to say I know plenty about OSA.”

Oh, yeah, they were screwed.

Not that she seemed to notice. While Vin eyed various pieces of furniture for possible weapons usage, Allie tried to share war stories of growing up as an agency kid.

Maybe it was good she had her rules to fall back on. She sure as shit couldn’t rely on any innate sense of perception.

Graham’s interlaced fingers turned white at the knuckles. Whatever restraint the man had, he was losing it. And for what? A woman daring to speak? What kind of sick ass were they dealing with?

“Tell me, Graham, did all the girls run their mouths as much as this one?”

And just like that, the pink returned to Graham’s hands, and his eyes crinkled at the corners.

Vin bumped Allie’s knee with his own and shot her his best
for-the-love-of-God-and-to-save-our-asses-shut-up
look he could manage.

“My father’s first wife was the same. My mother, that is. Things improved with the second one. He moved around until he found likeminded people. It’s tough to build a sense of privacy these days. So many people getting in everyone’s business, you understand.”

“Quite.” 

“Yes. Why are you here, again?”

Vin didn’t risk lying. For as backwards as this place was... or chose to be... they still had modern weapons. It wasn’t too far of a stretch to imagine they had outside communication. His identity wasn’t a secret. A quick scan of his face would pull him up over all the infonets.

“Vin Dhoma. I control security back at base.” He pointed a thumb to the openly pissed-off Allie. “This one is my guardian, I guess. You know how it is. All sorts of checks and rechecks. When I saw the assignment to observe this place, I took it from one of my subordinates.”

“Hoping to shake her?” the thin lipped man asked.

“I’m piss outta luck. So, what happened here? I need to file a report. I gotta say, Graham, it doesn’t look good in the town back there.”

The man leaned back in his brown chair and pressed his thumbs and index fingers together. “Trouble, my friend. Had my boys not rescued you in time, you’d have been but a memory.”

“Because?”

“Things live in the woods, and now the town. Rodents.”

“Mice?”

“That fly.”

“So, bats?”

Graham’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at him dead on. “I didn’t say mice, and perhaps rodent wasn’t the best word. Arachnids.”

“Spiders? That fly? Okay. Let me guess, and just for good measure, they’re poisonous.”

“Lethal in seconds and about the size of a child. Some sort of mutation, though when it started is anyone’s guess. People disappeared from the outlying areas and...”

Vin let him continue without interruption. No one noticed one or two missing townspeople — folks give up on roughing it in the harder quadrants all the time. It was initially believed that they simply left. No one panicked until the town itself was directly under threat.

“And you provided them safety here,” Vin added when Graham rang a large metal bell on his desk. At its toll, a woman draped in blue came in, head bowed.

Graham pulled out a ledger book, not looking at them or the woman as he spoke. “Vin, you appear comfortable enough, but Allie, that uniform looks positively furious. My assistant will get clothing for you. She’ll also bring us some restorative tea and be quick about it.”

Vin opened his mouth to acknowledge the woman, but she was already slinking out the door.

When Graham looked back, his saccharine smile was once again firmly in place. “See here. I keep accounts of attacks and everything we know so far about these creatures. We’ve never had any problems during the day. Barring another mutation—and really, that could take centuries—we don’t expect to.”

The first mutation hadn’t taken that long, but Vin kept his mouth shut and nodded. “I assume they kill under threat?”

“For food.”

“Those cloth things in the store corners?”

“Not cloth. Egg sacs or wrapped prey. We’ve had the misfortune of seeing them in action. There’s a plan in place, though. We had a healthy farming community here. Our people never much cared for calorietabs. We like food. Actual meat. Turns out, so do those creatures. “

Allie cleared her throat. He shot her a look, begging her to keep her mouth shut, but... well... it was fucking Allie, so no.

“What are their reproductive rates? Your survival, their survival, and the survival of any sort of prey animals don’t seem mutually sustainable.”

Graham flipped through the handwritten pages of the ragged ledger book. “You’ve got a good mind on your shoulders, I see. The thing is, we have old cloning technology. No point in letting it go to waste. Especially now. We release animals out every few weeks to keep the creatures at bay. Not much. We don’t want their numbers to grow. As far as we can tell, they only produce two to three offspring.”

Only?

“Taking around a month for full maturity. The egg sacs in town are destroyed as we encounter them during the day. The ones in the forest are more difficult to find.”

Allie slammed the edge of the desk triumphantly. “You should modify the cloned animals with pesticides or viruses to destroy the creatures within a few reproductive cycles.”

Graham’s eyes snapped over. “We are.”

“Oh.”

“I understand OSA has the greatest minds in the universe, but we are not idiots.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Mutations take time. Not all are transferred.”

“She didn’t mean anything by it, Graham. That’s just her way.”

A tentative knock interrupted the terse moment. The same blue-clad woman from earlier silently rolled in a serving tray. She placed two cups on the table and reached for a third but hesitated, and her hands fell to her sides.

Allie took a long breath but otherwise kept her cool while the woman poured tea for him and Graham. Keeping her quiet was one thing, but he wasn’t about to let her get weak from thirst. They were a team now, and he needed her full strength.

“Pour some for my female companion.”

The serving woman’s eyes locked on the man behind the massive desk. Not until Graham’s nod did she reach for another cup.

“Thank you, Graham. I need to take care of Allie. Despite her mouth, she’s still a good... well, my...companion.” He paused, letting the implication of his words lay heavy in the room.

Graham’s eyes drifted over to Allie. “Hardly seems within regulation.”

Vin prayed to everything in the heavens that Allie would play along. Instead, she lifted her chin defiantly.
Here we go again.