Lavim had been at a dig in the Teranganu valley, down in the humid and claustrophobic jungles of Kua. The Kua system was widely considered the central link in the separate chains of connected star systems that made up the Third Horizon, forming the fulcrum of the figure-eight symbol composed of the Dabaran Circles and the Miran Chain, but also linking together the linear structures of the Algol and Sadaal routes. Despite its importance for communications and transport, however, it was not an easy system to settle, and the Firstcome chose to make their home initially in the much more welcoming system of Miran. The Kua system, with the mysterious and inhospitable inner planet Lubua, toxic Jina, and jungle-infested Kua, remained largely a cultural backwater despite its position at the crossroads of interstellar trade. A few Firstcome settlements were built on Kua and some mining colonies on Lubua and Jina, but there was little development within the system until the generation ship Zenith arrived five centuries later to find the entire chain of the Third Horizon already colonized. Seeing the economic and cultural potential of a space station at the crossroads of all the Third Horizon’s trade routes, the enormous vessel’s leaders converted their generation ship into the space station Coriolis, and transformed the neglected system into one of the most important points in the Third Horizon.

  An eon after Kua’s eponymous planet had been settled, the ravages of the Portal Wars and the subsequent Horizon-wide collapse and recovery known as the Long Night left much of the Firstcome society in ruins, and by the time the Zenith arrived to revitalize the Kua system many Firstcome settlements were lost to the jungle, along with the tale of their origins and much of their history. Some of Kua’s secrets, however, were much, much older than Firstcome society. Kua’s jungles also hid the scattered ruins of the vastly older and immeasurably more technologically advanced Portal Builder society, which had disappeared from the Third Horizon untold millenia before humans discovered it, leaving behind only the Portals and occasional scattered clues to the origins and fantastic technology of their engimatic society. Archaeological expeditions amongst Kua’s ruins could be lucrative enterprises, uncovering not only the lost history of Firstcome society from before the Long Night, but also relics and artifacts that could be both useful and very, very valuable.

  Those expeditions could also be deadly, and Lavim Tamm had had the misfortune to be involved in an excavation that uncovered something terrible.

  “I was just a labourer,” he told them from behind his hands, slumped forward with his elbows on his knees while Dr. Delecta smoothed his greasy hair gently, whispering calming nothings. “I didn’t know what the place was or what we were digging for. I just brushed at stones and carried dirt.”

  Then something had happened, and they had been attacked by creatures from the Dark Between the Stars, somehow released in the shadows of the caverns where they dug. He could not explain the beasts he saw in any other way except to describe how they tore his comrades apart with contemptuous ease. Lavim hid and somehow escaped the battle, carrying a single artifact from the dig, the strange black statuette he had been dusting off when the attack started. Separated from his dig team, he had crawled into an automated resupply vessel at a nearby logging camp and hid until it returned to Coriolis on its pre-programmed schedule. Now he was back on the station and wanted to forget the whole experience, but he was convinced someone was watching him, and that people were after the statuette. Trapped on Coriolis with only the tiny amount of birr he had in his work clothes when the beasts attacked, he had tried selling the statuette in Archaeology Alley, but the stall-holders there had taken one look at his blood-soaked coveralls and refused to deal with him.

  “It’s not my blood,” he sobbed. “None of it’s mine …”

  “Lavim,” Delecta began gently, when the shaking of his shoulders subsided. “Somebody needs to learn what happened to your crew. Maybe a team needs to go down there to recover them and secure the site. Can you tell us where it is?” She looked over his shoulders to Siladan, who was nodding greedily, and shot him a frown.

  “Also, the person who hired us wants to buy your statuette,” Al Hamra added, his voice harsher than Delecta’s soothing bedside manner. “Once you sell it to him nobody will be chasing you, and you’ll have enough money to get out of this system for good. Maybe a lot of money,” he added when Lavim looked up at him.

  “All your worries gone!” Saqr assured him from the door.

  “I’d like that,” Lavim told them, sitting back up and wiping tears away. “I just want to get rid of it and get as far away from here as possible.”

  “Do you have it here?” Siladan asked, already taking a step further into the room and looking around eagerly, as if it were going to suddenly appear in the barren space, but Lavim shook his head.

  “I … I was scared. Of the people who want it. So I hid it. We have to go and get it.”

  “No problem,” Dr. Delecta crooned. “We’ll escort you to the place where you hid it, and then we can go together back to our ship. We’ll get you some clean clothes and a decent meal, and we’ll put in a call to our employer. He’ll come to us with the money and we can do the trade together, okay?”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  He nodded, and they all waited patiently for him to shamble to his feet and change into his bloodied work clothes, their backs turned for his modesty. In his work coveralls he transformed into a butcher, splotches of brown smeared across the belly and shoulders of the uniform and a significant patch of thick crust on the back of one arm, that looked like he had crawled through mud. Adam let out a low whistle between his teeth at the sight of all the blood, and was about to speak when a sharp glance from Dr. Delecta cut him off. “Okay Lavim,” she said gently. “Tell us where to go.” Lavim Tamm agreed, telling them he had hidden the statue in a bridge over the promenade, along with a tag that contained the coordinates of the dig location. They set off, Dr. Delecta assuring him he did not need to fuss about checking out of the hostel or paying anything, keeping him reassured and comfortable and free of distractions while they led him away from the building.

  The bridge where Lavim Tamm had hidden the statuette was a level down from the flophouse and some distance away. Looking over the balustrade on the promenade they tried peering down the dizzying heights to the base of the promenade, but the view was obscured by layers of conduits, cables, wires and nets. They accompanied Lavim onto the bridge and stood patiently while he dug around in a loose panel of the bridge and pulled out a small sack and a tag. Adam took the tag, while Saqr and Siladan Hatshepset investigated the statuette. It was a squat, ugly little thing made of a kind of vaguely slippery black stone, still crusted with patches of dirt and here and there what looked like dried blood. The main features were on the head, which did indeed seem to resemble a monkey, but time and the elements had worn them down to almost nothing, so that it looked not so much like a monkey or an Icon as a crude stick figure.

  “Is that really worth the fuss?” Saqr asked Siladan as he inspected it. “It looks like a child’s first pottery experiment.”

  Siladan nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes, look at how old it must be! Certainly from before the Long Night, possibly from the very beginning of settlement!” He rolled it around in his hands, looking at it from every angle. “And what is this stone? I’ve never encountered such a substance!”

  “Put it away!” Al Hamra cut him off, his voice stern and short, but Siladan, rapt in his discovery, did not respond until he heard the sharp voice of Merez Alcan ringing across the bridge.

  “Ah! Sahibi! I knew you would not disappoint me!” They turned to face him as he greeted them, Siladan still cradling the statuette in his hands. Merez’s voice was noticeably stronger and more authoritative than it had been when he met them in the bar. He advanced slowly towards them along the bridge, flanked by three figures wearing mismatched outfits of silver-grey protective clothing, shoddily concealed beneath dark cloaks. Each of them carried a thermal pistol, which they pointed at the group as they approached, the snub muzzles protruding from their cloaks in brazen disregard for station law.

  “I really did not expect you to find him so soon, though!” Merez exclaimed, coming to a stop too far away for them to rush him, and well within the most lethal range of his thugs’ weapons. “I thought it would take you days to track down this little grub.” He inclined his head to Lavim, who had slid to the rear of the group. “No offence, little man. Such a good thing I had the surveillance software embedded in that tag I gave you,” he continued, turning back to Al Hamra, “Or you might have had the chance to get back to your ship. Now that would have complicated things, would it not?”

  “What is the meaning of this?” Al Hamra demanded. “We did what you asked, why are you confronting us like this?”

  “I’ve decided to change the terms of our arrangement,” Merez told him. “I felt it would be expedient to do it here, rather than in the safety of your vessel, and I brought these Rafiki of mine to help with the negotiations.” He waved a hand at the thugs behind him. “While I’m more than happy to pay you for your work, I don’t want to actually pay that little corpse-robber for something he stole.” He sneered in the direction of the cowering Tamm. “What is it they say in the Nomad Federation? ‘Property is theft’? Well, I’m stealing it from this thief.”

  “I’m not a thief!” Tamm yelled back at him. “That thing is cursed!”

  Adam, who was moving up to stand beside Al Hamra at the front of the group, laid one hand on Tamm’s arm and urged him to silence. “Let us deal with this, kid,” he told him.

  “So what’s the new deal?” Al Hamra asked as the old man drew a tag from somewhere in the folds of his djellaba.

  “You give me the statuette and I give you this tag, which has 2000 birr on it. You take the money and disappear, and we pretend this never happened. If you want to take pity on the boy there you can split your reward with him. It’s no concern of mine.”

  “And if we don’t agree?” Adam asked.

  “Well…” Merez shrugged and gestured to the guards behind him. “I’ll take it either way. I just prefer not to make a mess.”

  “This is the last time we walk on this station without weapons,” Siladan muttered from behind Adam, who nodded agreement. “Kahlet!” He almost spat the epithet at the old man.

  “Now then,” Merez said calmly, as if he were mollifying a child. “Let’s not be unreasonable about this. You, archaeologist. Bring the statuette forward and exchange it for this tag, or my rafiki here start shooting.” The men raised their weapons slightly by way of emphasis, and Al Hamra, with a heavy sigh, gestured to Siladan.

  “Do it Siladan, or we’re dead.”

  For a moment Siladan paused, as if he were going to refuse to give it up, and then with an even heavier sigh he pushed forward between Al Hamra and Adam and walked slowly to the centre of the bridge, the guards’ guns tracking him closely. Merez limped forward, a grin of triumph on his place, and held out his left hand with the tag in his palm. Sighing again, Siladan took the tag and placed the statuette on the man’s outstretched hand.

  “That wasn’t so difficult was it?” Merez asked rhetorically, stepping back and away from Siladan. “It may only be 2000 birr but I’d wager it’s the easiest money you’ve ever made.” As Siladan backed slowly away to rejoin his group the man turned and walked back to his guards.

  “Except,” he added, as he passed through the rank of his guards, “Not this time.” He looked briefly back at the guards. “Once I’m gone, kill them all and get back my money,” he ordered them, and walked off the bridge into the shadows of the promenade.