Lord Banshee- Fairy Dust

by Russell O Redman

  He also opined that the kitchens produced food that was toxic and dull, but much easier to get when you were hungry. On a liner, if you asked for a meal outside the normal hours, they had to call the kitchen staff away from their other duties, which made snacking expensive and slow. His father had apparently complained about the mess bill he had rung up going to and from his Martian post, so large that he had to pay for it using family money. On the battleship, with three full shifts and many drills and exercises, there was always somebody hungry outside regular mess hours, so the kitchen always had somebody on duty.

  Between bites, I asked him when he had been on Mars. He replied that he had served in the Governor's office for two years at the start of his service with Extraterrestrial Affairs. He had volunteered to go, but would never repeat the mistake. I asked him why, and his answer was interesting in a depressing way.

  “I have never met a stupider, more treacherous, lying pack of back-stabbing, whoring, disagreeable, low-life, scumsuckers anywhere, not even in the worst slums of the Earth. If we sterilized the entire, wretched planet and started again from scratch, we could never do worse. That had been the original plan for the Counterstrike, and they should have stuck with it. Martian food is crap, their women are ugly, their politicians all corrupt, their corporations profitless. If one of them is robbed, they call the neighbourhood thugs in preference to the police. Every time I left the Governor's compound, someone in my party would be attacked by a mob or poisoned with drugs. Once, my convoy was shot at. They never found the criminal who was responsible, but the rebel sympathizers paid for it anyways. The Governor cordoned off the entire neighbourhood and sprayed it with anthrax. Everyone died for their glorious cause, and no one will live there for another hundred years.

  “The only thing I found interesting in the whole two years was the complexity and viciousness of the factions. An old Norse myth told that the head god Odin learned wisdom by gazing into the boiling cauldron of evil until he understood every stratagem. Working on Mars was like that.”

  I thought about that for a while. My own experience of Mars was totally different, but Chou and I had so little in common it was hard to know where to start. Finally, I said, “Wow. I quite liked most of the people I met on Mars, even if their politics and management style sucked. I suppose, one of the differences is that when I was there almost no one knew that I worked for the Governor. Nobody liked the jerk, but it was safe to call him rude names, and that threw everyone off my track.”

  “I thought you worked for Legal Intelligence, not the Governor?”

  “I did, but on Mars all governmental offices at the time were located within the Governor's compound, and the Governor himself set the policies for almost everything that happened. I did not report to him, but during the war, his office issued most of the orders I followed.”

  “Who was the Governor then?” one of the doctors asked.

  “Ochen Ngomo”, Chou replied, “probably the worst choice for a sensitive position that has ever been made. The Martian people may have been easier to get along with when Brian was there. Ngomo was a military man from an extremely wealthy business family. He was used to being obeyed and was convinced his every idea was pure platinum. He had advanced through the system with high recommendations. When people investigated his career after the Incursion, they found that, at every stage, his colleagues had given glowing recommendations in the hope that he would leave and create trouble for someone else. He was finally thrown out of the service and currently lives in splendour and opulence on an island in the Red Sea, surrounded by servants and concubines. There is no justice when wealth has anything to say.”

  “As I learned, too late to be of any use,” I commented. “If I had known his character earlier, I might have made some very different choices and got myself off-planet at the very start. If they had won their bloody war, they would have had to live with the consequences of their own foolishness instead of ours. It might have taught them some sense and moderation.”

  We finished off breakfast and organized ourselves into a circle. I started with a few announcements.

  “I have been invited to meet with Captain Wang this morning, but I would like to provide an explanation of this morning's events first and I expect there are medical issues we need to deal with fairly urgently, before the Ministers call our doctors away again.

  “I hope you all enjoyed my impromptu bedtime serenade, which I am thinking of titling, 'Night on Bald Mountain, reprised'.”

  Tough audience. Leilani snickered and a few others smirked, but most just looked puzzled and maybe annoyed by my attempt at levity. I suspected that breakfast had stabilized my mood more than intended, but in any case, I plowed on.

  “Doctor Marin claims I say 'I am sorry' too much, but really, I am. Last night I had the most ferocious nightmare I have suffered in a decade. I am hoping to work with Doctor Toyami to ensure that my dreams never get that severe again.

  “In the process, we discovered a bug in the software for the comm unit, which apparently cannot distinguish a powerful nightmare from a waking crisis, and opened all the comm channels for broadcast. That is clearly something that needs to be fixed urgently, especially if we are expected to operate as field agents under stressful circumstances. It is bad enough explaining away a nightmare to your immediate companions, without having to explain to enemy security officers why you generated an easily tracked signal in the middle of the night.

  “I expect there are some adjustments we can make for ourselves in the sensitivity settings on the comm unit, but the request for a proper software patch will have to be passed up to MI. It is anyone's guess when that patch might be made available.”

  Sergei looked like a gossip columnist following a rumour. “You told everyone you would explain who Asok and Angela were.”

  That deflated my mood immediately.

  “Yes, I am afraid I did. Recall that Senior Minister Singh mentioned yesterday that I was serving as an agent with Legal Intelligence on Mars at the time the Incursion started and for a few years afterward. Those were very stressful years that have left me with material for a lifetime of nightmares. Most of my service during that period is extremely highly classified and I can speak of it only in generalities. Please do not press for more details.

  “I would also remind you of the Fatwa issued on Mars that threatens death for the Ghost and all of his followers. That threat is not idle and there have been numerous assassinations on the Earth already. Because of my service in that period, I am easily identified as a follower of the Ghost, as are all of you for working with me. I do not suppose it will shock or surprise anyone here to learn that some of the things I did contributed directly to the legends of the Ghost, although at the time of the Incursion there were over a hundred of us working undercover on Mars and the full legend draws on the activities of many different people. I earnestly implore you to take to heart the severity of the threat that justifies the secrecy surrounding that period. Mention of that period, even casually, outside this group can compromise all of us.

  “I am, notwithstanding, available as a resource for events on Mars during that period. I have an eidetic memory and have studied all the reports I could get from every agent on Mars at that time, as well as the captured reports from our Martian opponents. So long as we avoid personal details that identify specific people and events, and do not contravene the security restrictions, I will be as helpful as I can.

  “Identifying Asok does not cause much problem, since he was my mentor and friend in the mines of Argyric Mumbai when I first arrived, well before the Incursion. He taught me most of what I know of mining, in both the commercial and military senses. Miners dig tunnels and use explosives to do it. That makes them useful in the construction industry in a city built underground for shelter from meteors and cosmic rays. Anyone who has been to the Moon will recognize the kind of construction used in Martian cities. It also means that when disagreements between mining companies become lethal, as they often did
during that period, it is miners who infiltrate the opposing company's tunnels, plant charges with the intent to kill, and trigger them when people walk by. These are the activities that the military means when they discuss mines, and they became a standard part of the ground war on Mars.

  “Asok taught me how to recognize mines, how to defuse them, and how to escape them if you got sufficient warning. I remember walking along a drift, following a trickle of water. They used water to cool the drill bits, same as on Earth, but on Mars water was too precious to allow it to run down the tunnel. Also, Martian mines are savagely cold, even though they heat the mines for the sake of the miners. The water was freezing into ice along the edges. We had to be close to the source or we would not have seen liquid water at all. The trickle of water told us that something was seriously wrong, because the drift seemed empty and quiet aside from the trickle of the water. We came up to a short train of ore carts, three of them fully loaded and ready to drive to the lift, where he stopped and pushed me down behind the carts. He then pointed silently to a light with a red cover attached to a support beam, with wires running further down the drift. The light was out, as were the other lights down the drift, but at the limits of our headlamps there seemed to be a dark patch on the floor.

  “Asok explained to me what I was not seeing, but should have. The loaded carts had been filled by miners, who would have stayed by the carts until they could be driven to the lift. The silence by the carts told him long before we got there that the miners were dead or disabled. The water spilled from a drill hose that had been slashed. Miners never slash their own hoses, so someone hostile had entered the mine, disposed of the miners, and cut the hose. Our company did not use lights with red covers, so the light was most likely an explosive device. The dark patch on the floor had to be a shaft that should not have been there, a breach from another company's mine. The dead lights farther down the drift were probably shattered when the breach was blown open. Our missing miners were likely knocked out by the blast. If they were still alive, our enemies would try to ransom them for concessions from our own claims.

  “Asok lead me back the way we had come, around a corner into a second drift, then flipped on a bright headlamp. That caught the attention of the enemy, who blew the explosive. The blast was followed by a clatter as shrapnel ricocheted along the tunnel. Asok then drew a gun – a gun that I had not till then known he was carrying – and ran down the drift as quietly as he could. I followed more slowly. He fired a couple of shots into the breach in the floor, then jumped in and called me to follow. His counterattack had driven off our assailants, but they had left our miners lying on the floor of their new tunnel. One was dead, one was alive but unconscious. We lifted both miners back into our drift and gently carried the living miner back to the lift. Asok reported the breach and called for a medical team and our own security staff, then we went and brought out the body of the dead miner. The dead miner was one of Asok’s nephews, the injured one was a woman he had hired three months before.

  “He tended to the injured woman's needs the whole time she was in hospital, as though she had been his own sister. Her son stayed at our house, ate at our table. I went around to her place every day after work to check that it was secure and to sweep the dust from the floor.

  “Asok was like that. Brave, smart, observant. Loyal to his whole family and all their employees. I was a nobody from the Earth, a new colonist ignorant of everything about mining, yet I lived with his family and felt as important to him as his own sons and daughters.

  “The fight with the rival miners escalated, so Asok also taught me how to handle explosives, guns and knives, different ways to trigger explosives remotely. He taught me to worry about who you might harm when you did. I already knew about guns and knives, but my cover was that I had been a peaceful spacer, so I feigned ignorance. Just as well, because guns and knives work differently on Mars, especially in a mine where everyone wears a tough, puncture-resistant pressure suit and carries their own oxygen and water. Stabbing someone in the gut usually does not work. It is better to cut their oxygen supply, if you can.

  “Asok was not a violent man. He mostly wanted to scare his opponents into surrender. Given the ferocity of the underground warfare, I respected his restraint, his principled refusal to commit unnecessary murders. There were other families, other factions, who wanted to exterminate their enemies, knowing that there was no justice to be feared from the Governor so long as bribes were paid to the right people.

  “Asok was a firm supporter of Martian independence, but even more firmly rejected revolution as the way to get it. He greatly respected the peace that the Terrestrial Council had brought to the Earth and wanted the same form of government for Mars.

  “The last time I saw Asok was the night of the great riot in Argyric Mumbai, when the Governor used incendiaries to disperse the crowd. Everyone who failed to leave when ordered was doused with flammable chemicals, then sprayed with the igniter. Two hundred people perished as their clothes, hair and skin burned off their bodies and the oxygen was sucked out of the air. I had not known Asok was even attending the meeting, but he ran past me in flames, collapsed a short way down the hall and died in my arms, believing I was his dear friend and companion.”

  A quiet voice said, “That's horrible...”

  “It was worse than horrible. I was the agent who had alerted to Governor to the protest meeting. and told them where it was to be held. It turned into a riot when the Governor's forces arrived with what appeared to be water cannons. I was the one who directed the fire crews to the best places for spraying the crowds. I had just been told that my family had been killed in the bombing that started the Incursion. I had lost my mother and father, my grandparents, my uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews, in a premeditated act of treachery that killed two hundred million helpless, unsuspecting victims. I burned for revenge, so I led the Governor's troops to slaughter my neighbours.

  “If I had known Asok was there, I might have refused. But I was not Asok's friend. I was his executioner.”

  The room was quiet, so I continued. “Angela was similar. Worse, if anything, because by then I was much more callous and knew what my job really entailed. Only the details changed from one assignment to the next. Forgive me, but I cannot tell you those details. I can tell you a bit about Angela.

  “I stayed with a family for a week at one of the target sites while I sought a group of rebels who were planning a new round of attacks. Angela was the daughter in the family, with mixed Scandinavian and Tamil descent. She was maybe fifteen in Earth years, with flawless skin the colour of ebony, hair a billow of fluffy, golden blond, eyes brown as chocolate. She was young, vibrant, laughing and confident, filled with the enthusiasm for Martian independence that only the young can muster. My cover said that I had been horribly scarred in the fire at Argyric Mumbai and was hiding from the Governor's troops. She had felt sorry for me, not realizing that my scars were cosmetic and easily removed. She treated me as a long-lost older brother. I flirted shamelessly, knowing I would soon be gone. I teased her about her hair, which she normally wore in a big puffy ball around her head, telling her that she would need wings to match her golden halo. What was the harm in it?

  “I located the target, a meeting hall close to her house, gave my report, and bugged out into the desert. The Governor fired a missile carrying a nuclear bunker buster that destroyed the whole neighbourhood. Her entire family was killed.

  “I do not tell you this as a tear jerker. I am not sure what you have been told about the hull breach yesterday, but it is directly relevant to our assigned mission. A terrorist had stowed away on the transport bringing our supplies from the Gandhi. The terrorist threw a grenade into the loading bay, followed by a poison gas canister. The grenade caused the hull breach, the poison gas caused the Mao to shut down the air flow briefly while they switched to a clean supply. The terrorist declared that she was seeking revenge against all followers of the Ghost, including the whole crew of the Mao. She w
anted to strike the first blow in the coming war and expected to die in the act.

  “I believe that terrorist is Angela, who somehow survived the death of her family. Regardless of the other legends, the Ghost she hates so intensely is me. She seems to have internalized the Fatwa, so she will want to kill you because you are my companions, even more than she wants to kill the rest of the crew. Unfortunately, she claims to know more than any of us about the attack that Mars may or may not be preparing, and we are not yet at war, so we cannot request her execution to eliminate the threat she presents.”

  The room remained silent for a few minutes until Sergei tried to lighten our spirits. “We all came here because of the Fairy Dust. What kind of dark fairy did you piss off that we have all been dusted with this kind of trouble?” Nobody laughed, so he continued, “We need to get off this ship.”

  I sighed, “Yes, I agree. I may be seeing ghosts myself, but I fear that the future may be very dark. Angela may be more of a banshee than a fairy, crying out warning of our impending deaths. We need to be prepared.”

  Everyone waited silently for a few more minutes, then started breaking into small groups for discussion. Leilani came over and murmured, “All the years we have been working together, you never told me any of that. How bad was your service on Mars?”

  I whispered back, “Your life expectancy was longer when you did not have a need to know.”

  Sergei drifted over, too. “Maybe I should have had a beer with you after all. I never got an honest explanation of anything out of the Martians. They all acted stupid when I was around. The protest meeting you reported, what was it about? In the days after the nuking of the Earth, I would have been hiding in the deepest hole I could find, not leading a protest in the town square.”