St. Martin's Moon

Prologue

The Moon is not a dead world.

Lacking water, lacking air, lacking all the essential parts that make up the infrastructure of life, it never knew life. So Death, and the infrastructure of death, are not things that have ever come naturally to it, either. Life eventually did come to the Moon, an import, because it could. That's what Life does. When it did, it had to claw and scrabble, dig and delve, make a place for itself. So would Death. Eventually.

In the meantime, the waiting dead…waited. Impatient, with nowhere to go. Curious, with nothing to see.

Not that that stopped them from looking.



-1-

The game was afoot. The hunters hunted, the prey prayed.

Joseph Marquand ran. It was his turn. His partners waited patiently at the covert, waiting for that which they hunted to arrive, under his gentle guidance. It would not do to disappoint them.

There! The church sign, some feast day for a saint he'd never heard of, which made it perfect to remember his directions. Turn right, he thought with grim humor, and go straight. Provided their prey obliged him by going the same way, of course. Here comes the hard part.

The Runner on the team carried no weapon, nothing to slow him. Strategy ruled this night, rather than physical prowess. In this case, little glass spheres, filled with something pheromonal and potent, would keep the prey off guard and focused. One thing the Runner needed, he had to have balls. He used them now, hurling them there–and there. His prey ran faster. So did he.

At last, the home stretch. A straight alley, no windows, no ladders, nothing but the special red carpet laid out for him, and his men just beyond, in the…tangled wreckage?

Something very large and very nasty rose from the ruins of the covert. He couldn't see it clearly, didn't need to, didn't want to. His memory could fill in the details the light of the full moon mercifully hid.

Oh, Christ, two of them!

One of him in between, with no weapon.

The one ahead leapt straight up and out, landing heavily right in Marquand's path, jaws open to catch the prey running straight into them. The creature behind howled its anger, its prey being usurped by another. The one in front looked up at the greater threat.

They weren't social creatures. Nice to know, but it sucked to be the one to find out. Marquand's knees buckled.

He dove forward, right between the legs of the creature before him, onto the mat laid out for his return. Wet and slick, he slid right down into the ruined covert, even as the front beast bent double looking for its prey.

Marquand grabbed one of the fallen weapons and shot, hitting it right in the butt. Even as the beast fell, writhing, the other one leapt over it and–

Tripped. It slid forward, unprepared and unable to keep its balance on the wet mat. Marquand watched it come towards him, jaws open, as he frantically chambered a second shell and tried to get the barrel pointing in the right direction. The beast helped, catching the barrel in its mouth and swallowing it, right up to the crossbar that prevented it from getting any further. Marquand and his men couldn't chance getting bitten.

He fired.

The beast slid backward under the force of the shot, until it ran into the body of its former rival, now inert. Neither one got up.

Marquand didn't wait. If they were going to get up they would have by now. His men had to be seen to. Now. If any had survived, survival being loosely defined–well, he hated most parts of the job, the Sad Duty most of all. Its only saving grace was that if it had to be done at all, it had to be done quickly.

No. No survivors. Thank God.

What a world, what a life, what a thing to be thankful for. He despised himself in that moment. What he'd become. So much lost. "I need a vacation." Department policy agreed with him, but he didn't really, and he knew it.

He knew what he needed, what he would never have again. He'd just have to fake it. Like he always did.



Joseph Marquand loved to fly. The sensations of motion, the bumping up and down, the occasional clouds, and especially the patchwork view of the landscape far below. It meant he had a planet under him, a planet with enough air to support the plane he had around him. Even if it crashed, explosive decompression wouldn't get him, nor radiation baking, sun poisoning, or the like. Those sorts of things had gotten too many of the people he'd known while he'd stood duty at the various outer bases, but he could accept them. With all the comets and meteoroids and whatnot zipping around everywhere, it was a wonder they didn't have more accidents. The last death, the lunar death–that had soured him on space, made him aware in his bones no place was safe outside of the gravity well of home.

It also meant he was on his mandated vacation. No more debriefings, no more therapy, no more people making him depressed by trying to cheer him up. Far from his boss, Captain Bigelow, the wrong man in the wrong place and well aware of it. Farther from his so-called brother officers, not a man among them with a hope in Hell of ever getting where he'd once been, so unable to imagine leaving for any but the worst of reasons. Farthest from the guys on his squad, a good bunch, but too few, gone too quickly. If he could still miss anyone it would be them. They'd get the job done until his return, even the newbies.

Next week. This week, well, it would be Halloween soon, and he had to get his vacation in before all the crazies–especially the werewolf wannabes and those damned psychic charlatans–came out. This week he had his reservations already made at a bed-and-breakfast in the small town of (throw that dart, boys!) Hopewell, Oregon. If there wasn't a rocking chair with his name on it on that broad wraparound porch, by God there soon would be!

**Message incoming.**

The clenching of his jaw almost activated Marquand's implant by itself. He briefly considered not answering it–his mandated vacation, after all. He sighed, knowing he would. Anyone who knew his code would have to have a good reason to call him now. At least the noises of the plane would cover the conversation, muffled as it was. **Marquand.**

**Bigelow.**

The name brought a groan to his throat, fortunately too indistinct to go out over the connection. His boss didn't need to know, probably wouldn't care, and might even take a perverse pride in the distinction. Perhaps if he shunted the conversation off into a harmless direction… **Johnson lose my case files again?**

Bigelow wasn't to be distracted, hard enough to do in person and impossible over a link. **Got a case for ya.** Marquand could practically hear the cigar being mashed...masticated.

Best just cut to the chase. **Why me?**

If Bigelow had even heard him it didn't show. **Two males, one white, one black, cause of death appears to be multiple lacerations, coupled with numerous puncture wounds in a semicircular–**

He recognized the description, of course; he'd written enough of them himself, and read many more. He wasn't the only lupe hunter on the force, after all. Just the most senior. **I repeat, 'why me?'**

**They found them on Coventry Base.**

**WHAT?** The people in first class probably heard him.

**Yeah, that's what I said. Triple-S is sending a shuttle for you. Meet you in Seattle.**

So much for privacy, secrecy, and getting away from it all. **Who says I'm going to Seattle? Who says I'm going at all?**

Bigelow's derisive snort was loud enough for transmission. **Come on Joe, you know what they say about Triple-S–**

**Well, no, I don't. What do 'they' say about us?**

Somehow the link rendered Bigelow's hard, icy tones perfectly. **Don't give me that 'us' boop, Marquand. They may want you, but if you think that means they want you back, you're even crazier than when you left in the first place. However, to respond to the spirit of your inquiry rather than its actual letter, the They-Who-Are-Them say 'whatever Triple-S wants, Triple-S gets.' I'll call ahead to the Cottage in the Clouds and cancel for you.**

**Message terminated.**

Marquand sat perfectly still, ignoring the looks of his fellow passengers for his unseemly outburst, if he even noticed them. Probably he didn't, his mind occupied with what seemed an impossible problem. At least he could console himself with the thought of Bigelow calling the wrong cottage.

A werewolf attack? A lupe?

On the Moon?



'Coventry Base'.

Marquand frowned at the screen of the databooth. It showed him very little information about the system's most reclusive lunar base he didn't already know. Obviously not everything known, couldn't be in this day and age, but he didn't have the pull to access–Hmm. Special System Services, a/k/a Triple-S to just about everyone, wanted him, for whatever reasons. Could they have–? Without thinking more about it, he quickly entered his old override code.

Well, well, well. The information presented was pathetic, barely more than had been there originally. The information gleaned was, if not immense, certainly gratifying. Just barely enough that he wasn't quite surprised to hear, "Major Marquand."

He should have gotten it, he really should. The flat statement, not a question, almost a command. The rough, hard voice, which didn't say, "Major Marquand, sir."

Joseph turned and stared, shocked into speechlessness that the man who had come to collect him, a courier, a mere rocket-jockey, was a full colonel. Years of Triple-S training rescued him from a major institutional gaffe. His hand lifted on its own as his back stiffened, nearly flopping him over on his back when his heels crashed together on their own. "Colonel Pierce, sir," he gasped out, his frantically scanning eyes not needing to see the name tag.

Pierce's hand rose as well, much more casually, in a negating gesture. His shirt was unbuttoned. He even smiled. Sort of. "At ease, Major, you're not back in Triple-S yet."

That's what Bigelow had said. Marquand had yet another reason to thank the rituals of the Service that his (surprising! crushing!) disappointment didn't make it to his face. Yet they still called him 'Major'. His code worked. Curious. "Sorry, sir," he replied, relaxing his posture, "Old habits die hard. You know what they say, 'you can take a man out of the Service–'" Actually, no one had ever said that, as far as he knew, but it was a logical extension of the old proverb.

"No, you can't, Major," said Pierce quietly, cutting right through his forced cheerfulness.

For a second, Marquand's mouth continued working, but it had no words in it, so he just looked funny. "Sir?" he inquired, shrilly, cleared his throat and tried again. "Can't what, sir?"

"Take a man out of the service," Pierce replied, as quietly as before. He gestured to the left. "We're not in Triple-S yet, Joseph, and that means we can talk like men instead of officers. Would you like to get a drink?"

Marquand's head spun already. Pierce acting like a human being, how strange. "Drinking is against regulations, isn't it, sir? Still?"

"I am the head of Personnel Fitness, Joseph–" Marquand relaxed; the Earth was still in its proper orbit "–alcohol is still prohibited, not that anyone we would want would want to anyway, and you'll notice I didn't say what we'd drink. There's an overpriced coffee shop in that wing." Pierce–Colonel! Pierce!–took Major Marquand's bag and left, forcing its owner to accompany him.

"How do you know it's overpriced, sir?" So far as anyone knew, Pierce never left the station except to go to Washington or someplace important like that.

"It's a spaceport, isn't it?"



Marquand drank tea by preference, a taste for coffee being one of the acquired tastes he had never bothered to acquire. Pierce, with his access to the Major's files, knew this, and ordered appropriately for both of them. Or so he thought.

"Jesus Christ!" Pierce made an annoyed face at his cup, "Too goddamn sweet!"

Marquand signaled the waiter for another cup. "This is Earth, sir. You're used to slag, although I gather it's improved since I drank it last."

Pierce didn't bother replying until he finished entering a new order on the waiter's keypad, annoyed at having to guess at a correct combination. He'd gotten soft in the diplomatic circles he moved in, having his coffee made for him by ever-so-efficient assistants. "Guess those damned gestaltists will get there someday, eh?"

Marquand shrugged. "I doubt it. Probably be cheaper to just take the planet along with us, than try to recreate it when we get there." A flick of the fingers dismissed the notion, but stopped short of letting it go entirely. "They could get pretty close, though, perhaps enough not to matter." He sipped at his tea. "Why are you here, sir?"

Pierce waited until he had received a new cup and found it, if not worthy, at least not unworthy. Marquand deduced correctly, as usual; the slag had gotten better. When Pierce finally answered he looked at the Major directly. "How many recruits are accepted into the Service every year, Joseph?"

Marquand snorted. "Not enough." Never enough.

"Not enough to let them go just because they think they're through," Pierce emphasized, with a sip for punctuation. "You can't take the man out of the Service, because you can't take the service out of the man. I'd sooner expect you to give up on breathing."

Now Marquand delayed, his tea getting low. "Even though I resigned."

"No one ever claimed space duty was easy, Joseph," said Pierce, with gentle understanding. "You see things no one should ever see, or feel, or do. We can accept that sometimes it's too much. Sometimes you need to…break away from it."

"A break? Resignation isn't a break, resignation is the end." Marquand's hands flailed aimlessly, the volume he kept out of his voice expressing itself in other ways. "You people encouraged me to resign, for God's sake!"

"Of course," agreed the head of Personnel Fitness. "We've got a lot of experience, you know. We don't just 'make it up as we go along'." His fingers clawed at the air in sarcastic emphasis. "I didn't say 'a break', I said 'break away'. When people just 'take breaks' they don't heal. How would you have felt about a 'small vacation', or a 'leave of absence'?"

Like this one. Marquand shook his head mutely. The thought of such a suggestion, today, such a…trivialization of what had–he couldn't speak through the anger. Impossible to imagine what his reaction would have been then. They wouldn't be trying to get him back now, for sure.

The colonel's face was stone, intent stone, but stone. "You would have spent the whole time laying about, nothing to do, dreading the day you had to come back, obsessing about the very thing you were supposed to be getting over, through, and past," he declared flatly. "You resign, the future is open-ended. You need a new job, something to pay the bills, like but unlike the job you're best suited for."

"Watching a friend turn into ice crystals." Marquand could barely be heard by anyone but the cooling tea in his hands.

"That's not the job," said Pierce quickly, his voice full of the bitterness lacking in the other man's.

"Oh, it's a perk?" Ah, there's the passion.

"It's a hazard!" Pierce managed, just barely, to keep from shouting. "Bing-Bang knew it and accepted it. So did you, once. Do you think she'd want to see you like this?"

"Better than me seeing her like that," Marquand countered. His voice sank into a mutter. "We were going to ask to be partnered next rotation."

Pierce's voice instantly went from irritated to sympathetic. "I know." Actually he hadn't, not until now, but that had been his bet in the office pool, way back when. Inwardly, he groaned, well aware his colleague had gotten a little better, but not healed; also well aware they needed him back now, anyway. "And I'm sorry. We didn't want to call you so soon, but this moonbase thing isn't proceeding as we expected."

Marquand snorted; he knew officialese when he heard it. "In other words you haven't got a clue," he said, venting his anger, although the change of subject suited him.

"In other words we haven't even gotten into the base to get a clue."

Marquand stopped in mid-sip, eyes widening. "That's a nice trick," he admitted, grudgingly. "How'd they do that?"

Pierce made a great show of checking his chrono, rather than answer, and stood. "The answers to that question, and all questions pertinent to this case, await us in orbit, Major."

Interesting. A case they were so insecure about that they got all security conscious about it. The Major stood and shrugged on his jacket out of habit, turned, and headed out the door, this time carrying his own bag. Once in the walkway he paused, expecting the colonel to be close behind, but his superior disappointed his expectations. He stood, instead, by a table occupied by an attractive red-haired woman. Marquand watched his gestures and her responses, quite sure of the gist of their conversation. 'My name is–', as if she didn't know his name. 'I'd like to invite you to–', as if she wouldn't have paid for the privilege, if that sort of thing might have worked. 'Here's my card, think it over–', as if she wouldn't start making her arrangements the second they were out of sight.

Pierce joined him outside the shop, as the lady secured the card. The invitation alone glittered, in the right circles, that card the proof. Marquand knew Pierce wouldn't give a card to anyone who travelled in those circles. "Recruiting again?"

"Always," replied Pierce briskly, slipping his card wallet back into his pocket. "Like you said, it's never enough, and I don't come downside much."

Marquand hastened along, trying to look backwards at the woman at the same time, until the edge of the window saved him. She didn't look all that special, just another commuter, talking to air. "How do you know?"

"I watched her, of course," said Pierce, "Every time you watched your tea."

Major Marquand fell silent, trying to remember how many times he had stared at his tea and found he couldn't remember any. The discovery disturbed him, as much as if he'd forgotten to wear pants, or found his gun uncharged in the middle of a firefight.

That would have to stop. Bing-Bang wouldn't like it.



"The problem, Major, as I'm sure you've realized–"

"–Is that Coventry base is the only functional, fully privately owned and operated base in the system," finished Marquand. He was as capable of seeing the obvious as his opposite number, even if he had been 'inactive' for a number of years. He'd merely needed a Triple-S shuttle, secured and extremely complete datasources, and several hours in which to think about it. The man's accent didn't help; he sounded like he had a mouthful of glue and was being snide on purpose.

"Correct," said Major Bliss. It wasn't his real name; he had been born John Payne and changed it on promotion. At least the spoken part.

"Not that they're very functional over there," Marquand continued, sipping his excessively bitter coffee-substitute. He didn't like slag even more than he didn't like coffee, but the gestaltists found it much harder to replicate the more delicate tea. "But they have applied for a large number of patents, nearly all of which have been advances in various areas of recycling technology and soy plasticity–"

"They are nonetheless functional," said Major Payne, um, Bliss, "And they accept immigrants–"

"Very few," amended Pierce, "According to no clear rule, and against many of the ones we know." He waved a hand vaguely towards one of the disks in the pile, that probably had relevant figures in it.

"Enough to keep them nominally within the Accords, and thus beyond our direct jurisdiction." The only base in the system that had managed to do so.

"Yet they must want us to put a hand in somewhere. Otherwise we would never have heard of it," pointed out Marquand, leaning forward.

"Oh, we heard of it," said Colonel Pierce. "The victims weren't found by Coventry, but by a group responding to a distress beacon at the edge on Coventry holdings. 'On the edge' being quite enough to keep the case out of our hands."

"Without a request," added Marquand unnecessarily. "I'm assuming they requested?"

Payne actually seemed glad. The sooner this disaster of a meeting ended, the better. Back to his files, leaving space-work to the spacers. Their frequent and usually totally unjustified leaps of intuition over solid reasoning or evidence left him confused and uncomfortable. "They did," he agreed, "Under certain conditions, which we have as yet been unable to satisfy." And didn't that little fact rankle.

"They've refused all the investigators we've offered them so far," Pierce translated. "You're the first of the Inactives we've brought in."

"Because of my experience with werewolf attacks, assuming that's what this is," stated Marquand conclusively. He settled back again, his head supported by the fingers of his left hand, a pose those who knew him would have immediately recognized, complete silence resulting.

"They seemed certain of that from the beginning, for some reason." Pierce waved his hand, granting the point. "So it's that, plus the fact you spent the longest time off the rolls," he added, "Assuming that that means a damn thing."

Bliss snorted dismissively. "Not that we've noticed, in all the data we've gathered," he claimed, in a tone implying statistics were God's own voice. He turned back to Marquand. "You had the best record of captures and kills, which is what convinced us." As opposed to the slackers in Personnel.

Marquand flicked his eyes over to meet Pierce's for a second, and found in them a moment of fellow feeling. Such casual talk of kills could only come from a man who'd never killed. After a second Marquand made a wry grimace back at the paper-pusher. "I would have thought my record would disqualify me, in fact," he claimed, sitting up and gesturing at the stack of chips.

Bliss looked curious, if skeptical.

"An attack by a lupe–a werewolf–on the Moon, by all logic, and my own highly valued experience, should be impossible, there being no full moon in the sky of the Moon itself. It's something of a novelty, you must admit," explained the lupe-hunter, his hands clasped under his chin, elbows on the table. A professorial pose. "It would seem to argue for an investigator less…hidebound, shall we say?"

Bliss inclined his head in an offhand sort of way. "The possibility was raised," he admitted, without any display of conviction. "But since it applies in every case, we decided to overlook it, in light of other considerations."

Pierce took a more direct line. "There are no others, Joseph," he explained, taking a sip from his cold slag. "Most of the Inactives go into the service sector, but police work is relatively rare and werewolf tracking rarer still."

"Why did you?" Bliss sounded almost human for once.

For a second Marquand froze, staring at nothing. "It…an accident," he said when the spell passed.

"What kind of 'accident' turns a man into a werewolf hunter?" badgered Bliss, without thinking. The light–or at least a light–dawned, and he had the grace to look abashed. "I'm sorry."

Marquand's head jerked. "What? Oh, no. No, no," he denied, realizing what they must be thinking. "Nothing like that. I happened to be there and my reflexes took over, that's all."

Pierce laughed out loud, startling both junior officers. "Blowing its head off with your own badge is hardly a reflex, Major."

"I was just trying to distract it, make it choke," Marquand protested, the embarrassment of the commendation he received for his mistake making him go all red again. All over. Damned zero g. He looked up. "Honestly, I didn't even know the damn thing was silver."

Pierce laughed again. Even Bliss smiled. The world's greatest and most accidental werewolf hunter! "That's funny," commented Pierce unnecessarily, shaking his head. As suddenly, he focused his attention, although his voice held the bemused tone, and he carefully did not look at Marquand. "Love to know how a man could change when he's on the Moon already."

"You and me both," replied Marquand instantly, only afterwards realizing what he'd actually said.

"Excellent," responded Pierce, suddenly lurching into motion. "There, you see, Major? Told you he'd do it." He added as an afterthought, "If they let him in." He gathered up the disks, untouched and unused, their only apparent purpose being to prop up the meeting. Except for one. Pierce put his finger on it. Flexing only a few muscles, he slid the disk and the whole mission down the table and into Joseph Marquand's lap. His sort of exercise, although he'd rather have gone to the gym for the real thing.

Bliss acknowledged the claim, with the sort of 'so you did, sir' blandness implying he'd lost a bet, although Marquand knew with utter certainty he wasn't a betting man. Watching him retrieve his precious disks from Pierce's clutches, arranging them gently in his carrycase in color-coded, date-stamped ranks, Marquand briefly envied the man the banality of his life. Not that he thought for an instant Bliss found his life banal, of course. God alone knew the dread that filled the operator's soul at the thought of the documenting and filing that meant more to the smooth functioning of Triple-S than his own surgeries. It only seemed banal when grafted onto Marquand's own chosen course. Envy of such a construct could only be short-lived.

It kept him occupied until the two men finally left him alone, with his mission and his responsibilities. They didn't bother to say goodbye, for which he offered silent thanks. He set the disk down on the table and stared at it a bit, before arranging himself more deliberately in front of the nearest data access. A new model, he paused briefly to familiarize himself with the controls. Only then did he reach up and tug the chain, with a ring strung on it, out from under his shirt. A modern version of the signet ring, the imbedded chip would automatically allow him to access anything within his classification range when touched to the scan. For this mission, the range would probably be wider than he remembered it.

"Told him I would, did you?" murmured Marquand to himself.

He touched the ring to the scan and then shoved it back under his shirt.