CIA00.8

===Jadi Morok and the Dark SapphireChapter Eight : "Fun In The Sun"by Becky Dowgiert===
Garret Morok twitched, his face twisting in fear.  Jadi could see him tensing, about to do some damn fool stunt like jump up and run.
Jadi reached over and grabbed a fistful of his brother's jacket.  "Dammit, Garret, stay down!" he snapped.
Garret twisted round to glare at him.  "Let go," he snarled in return.  "I'm not stupid!  And since it hasn't exploded yet, shouldn't we be getting the frag out of here?!"
Jadi ground his teeth in annoyance.  Amateurs.  
"First of all," he explained, "it could go off at any moment.  Second, there might be more where that one came from.  Thirdly, it could be a 'smart missile'."
"What?!"
"Look, if we move, it might follow us!  Just take my word on something for once, will you?!"
Despite his anger, Garret stayed where he was.  Jadi raised his head up to peer around.
Nobody on the boardwalk they'd just descended from.
Nobody on the beach.
He glanced up, just to be sure.  Nope -- nobody in the air.
"Okay," he said, grudgingly.  "It's probably safe to get up, now.  But be careful."
With a resentful look Jadi's way, Garret got to his knees, irritatedly brushing the damp sand off his jacket, as Jadi quickly scrambled to his feet.
"Hurry up!" Jadi snapped, glancing in the direction the barely-seen projectile had gone.
Garret got the rest of the way to his feet.  "Listen, 'little brother'," he hissed, his tone making the title an epithet,  "you've never done anything in your entire mis-begotten life that gives you the right to talk to me that way."
He saw Jadi twitch, and knew with satisfaction that the barb had hit home.  Good, the little bas--  well, he could call him that, but that would be insulting their mother, gods rest her, who had died because of the flid in front of him.
Jadi turned to face his oldest brother, and the look on his face was deadly.  Garret involuntarily took a step backwards.
Jadi's gaze suddenly flicked over his brother's shoulder to the beach beyond, and his eyes widened.  The one direction he had forgotten to check--!
"Garret, behind you!  Move!" he bellowed.
His brother, the idiot lump, just stood there, staring warily at him.
Behind him, a furrow of sand sped along the beach, as something burrowed directly towards them.
*****
Vedaspel and Cithos met for lunch at a fashionable cafe'.
"How goes it?"" he inquired cheerfully as they took their seats and began to scan their menus.
She smiled.  "Very well, thank you.  And you?"
"It's all proceeding quite nicely.  Everyone's been quite...receptive."
"How convenient.  And how astute of them."
"Yes, I thought so."
"They obviously know a good deal when they hear it."
"Yes."
They scanned their menus in smug silence for several long moments.
"Any word on where that Morok bitch and her women are hiding?" Cithos asked suddenly, her ebullient mood suddenly dimmed.
"Not yet.  But don't worry -- we'll find them soon."
"We'd better," she stated, her eyes hard.  "They're too clever, by half.  I won't have them interfering with our plans."
*****
A head-scarfed woman dressed in a shabby cleaner's jumpsuit stood before the reception desk outside the office of the Grand-Master of the Guild of Poetic Justice, facing the replacement that the Guild of Executive Secretaries had sent over.
He barely flicked a disdainful glance her way as she humbly waited for him to acknowledge her existence.
A mere woman, without Guild protection, who had to work scum-jobs for a living.
Having impressed upon her the reality of her low status, he finally deigned to look up.
"Yes?" he asked sharply.  "What do you want?"
"I -- I'm assigned to clean here today; it's been scheduled, sir," she explained softly.
He glared at her as if she were a distasteful interruption in an otherwise pristine day.  "I see.  Don't dawdle.  And," he reminded her, as she turned away, "I'll be checking to see how well you did your job."  Leaning over, he pressed the button that unlocked Kirena Morok's office door.
And promptly forgot about her.
The cleaner-woman turned away without a word.  What could she say?  Resignedly returning to her cleaning cart,  she pushed it through the open office door and into the room beyond.
The instant the door was closed, the slump left her shoulders, and she strode quickly to the desk.  Swinging the computer terminal around with practiced ease, she leaned over and began to type.
Jadi was here.  Narronov was dead.  Vedaspel and Cithos were hot on her trail, and the other Grand-Masters were behaving more strangely than usual.
It was either the first knells of their destruction, or perhaps the Guild's opportunity to pull the biggest caper that they'd ever conceived of...
*****
Bresling awoke.  Turning over and staring up at the white ceiling, he smiled.
He felt good -- another night of restful sleep.  He stretched luxuriously, and sat up in bed.
The door to his room opened, and a woman appeared, bearing a tray of breakfast.
He blinked.  She was very pretty, this one, but not his regular caretaker.
"Good morning," she told him, cheerfully, setting the tray down on his bedside tray-rest.  "Did you sleep well?"
"Yes.  Yes, I did."
She smiled again.  "Good.  When you're done with your breakfast, I have a couple of questions I want to ask you, all right?"
He frowned a little, puzzled.  It was usually the doctors who asked him questions, but he wouldn't really mind talking to her.  "All right."
*****
In a room in another ward, someone else was not doing quite as well.
Several orderlies stood next to a bed, watching as a haggard man, his eyes closed in apparent sleep, writhed and twisted, inadvertently winding himself up in the bed-sheets.
The Head Nurse shook his head sadly.  "Such a sad case, Mr. Trenoy.  Nothing the doctors do seems to help him.  He keeps having these dreadful nightmares..."
The two new orderlies gave each other meaningful glances.  On the bed, Trenoy began to whimper.  
"No, please!  I can't tell you anything -- I won't!  Aah--!"
"Is it true, that he was on Sutec?  Part of that expedition that went there?" one of the new girls asked the Head Nurse.
"Yes."  He frowned.  Odd, that they should ask that.  Well, perhaps not so strange.  But it reminded him that Bresling , now in the light security ward, had also been a member of that ill-fated expedition...
*****
"Tell me, Kluge," Delwyn Travis asked his henchman, "why it is that with all of the resources of the Guild of Absolute Enforcement at your disposal," here he spread his arms wide in an expansive gesture, "you can't find a few women."
Kluge opened his mouth to speak.
"Don't answer that," his boss commanded.  "I already know why."
Kluge's mouth shut again, and he stood at attention, mildly perturbed.
Travis leaned forward, frowning, and drummed his fingers on the desk top.  He then leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head and stared upwards, searching for the answer on the ceiling.  Finding nothing there, he glanced at the complacent henchman standing obediently in front of his desk.
And abruptly sat upright, leaning forward.
"Kluge, we've still got a watch set on their Guild headquarters,  yes?"
"Of course."
"And?"
"No sign of Morok or her people.  Her brother left early this afternoon.  Hasn't come back, yet."
Travis's eyes narrowed.  "I don't want to know who went in there that we recognized.  I want to know who went in there that we didn't recognize."
Kluge blinked.  "What?"
Travis sighed.  "Kluge, you must have something up there, rattling around in that brain-pan of yours.  Here; I'll make it simple for you:  go and fetch the record of everyone who has entered that office building during the past two days."
Kluge nodded assent and quickly left.
Delwyn Travis leaned back again.  "Clever Morok," he muttered, not without grudging admiration.  "Hiding in plain sight, are you?  Well, I'll still get you, and your little brother, too."
*****
Jadi lurched desperately forward, towards his brother.  Garret, certain he was about to get decked, stumbled instinctively backwards.
"Garret!  I'm not going to slug you, though crud knows you deserve it!" Jadi exclaimed.  "We've got to get out of here!"  He pointed at the furrow of sand arrowing towards them.
Garret finally turned to look.
"Holy frag!"
They both leapt for the wooden stairway.
They scrambled up it, onto the boardwalk, and began to run.
Looking back, over his shoulder, Jadi saw nothing following them.  Good.  He turned to look ahead--
--and almost plowed into his brother, who had stopped stock still.  Facing them was a lizard-man, bristling with exotic-looking weapons.  One of them, a gun of some sort, was pointed at them.
"Erm, Jadi," Garret ventured hesitantly, "tell me you somehow know this guy."
"Nope.  Sorry."
The lizard man smiled, revealing a set of pointed incisors, and swung his right arm up in an extravagant gesture.  Hearing a familiar *swoosh*, Jadi glanced quickly back towards the beach.
Something blurred its way upwards, out of the sand, arced up, and began to descend directly towards them.
"Shit," Jadi said.
To Be Continued...