Burning Eagle

by Navin Weeraratne

  The first gate going out was just chain link. Two bored marines in fatigues, their HUDs raised, saluted me. A red laser lanced out from a shoulder pod and scanned me. Good to know who went out, especially if they didn’t come back.

  The second gate was part of the wall proper: meter-thick blast doors of solid paranoia. There were ten men at the guard post and six, desert-pattern, powered armors stood guard outside. Nuke-proof visors assessed me, tank-killer rail cannons held as casually as cigarettes.

  I had to sign out, I didn’t bother asking anyone to do it for me. Gray drones orbited above, barely more than gun pods on tilt rotors. I hated them. I had seen what they could do.

  The third gate was just a repeat of the first – the second seal on the airlock that kept out a planet.

  “You sure you want to go out on foot Sir?” a marine, taking back the data slate I signed. “I can get you a staff car if you’ll give us a minute.”

  “No, I’m good Private. A little walk should do me some good.”

  He nodded, not believing me. “Curfew today is at seven, Sir.”

  “Seven? What happened to Nine pm?”

  “Increased insurgent activity. Expert systems are predicting a spike for the next couple of days.”

  “Good that they’re getting out for the weekend.”

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind.”

  The gate shut behind me and I stepped out onto Paradiso.

  The Calamari-built roads just outside the Green Zone were huge. They were for the road trains that had come daily to the space elevator from surrounding mines. Dividers and LED street lighting had gone up, but they still looked like they were made for whales.

  I jaywalked like everyone else, ignoring the crossing just a few meters away. As far as the Villablancans were concerned the entire city was a pedestrian zone. Problem was that they thought the opposite as soon as they got behind a wheel. The local drivers in the carpool were the worst ever.

  Blending in is not an option when you’re seven feet tall. It helped that I couldn’t stand the UEF wardrobe: I wore what the desert nomads did instead. Keffiyah, goggles, tob, dust mask. Mostly it was because it was perfect for the climate. Mostly it was because I didn’t want to look like the UEFers. I forget which.

  A group of street kids came up to me, begging for sweets. I shook my head and shooed them away, they glared and made rude gestures. I passed an old wrinkled man sitting by a cart of yellow melons and stolen UEF water bottles. He took the crisp, new note I offered him and added it to a small roll tucked in his belt. I liked the new currency: it just had natural landmarks on it. No one can accuse you of triumphalism when you put gorges and hills on the new banknotes you’re forcing them to use.

  For a miserable people living under alien domination for generations, they sure knew how to use color. Even the meanest mud house was painted in bright pastels with borders and trims. The crowds were walking rainbows of shalwars, robes, and head scarves. Polished river stones made heavy necklaces that were worn in thick layers, silver bangles showed you who was Old Money.

  Half an hour later, I left the huge street and entered a tiny side alley. A camera pod slung under a street light tracked me, watching me leave like a sad dog. These winding alleyways were the real roads that knit the city together. Laundry lines of flapping robes and scarves ran across. Doors opened to humble, dim-lit homes. Naked children stopped playing and instead turned to stare.

  The UEF would never come down these streets. Not without an armored fighting vehicle or two, and a fully armed squad. Good luck asking for intel through combat visors, assholes. To be fair, the alleyways were a good place to get shot up by insurgents. I’d been attacked four times so far, three of those times I was alone.

  Getting shot was always messy. Ballistic keratin helps, it was woven around my vitals and key arteries. My bones were basically indestructible as well: they were latticed with the same fibers they use to make aircraft armor. My blood was teeming with trauma-tuned nano-machines, it clotted in seconds and repaired everything around it.

  That said, I tried to avoid getting shot. It’s always messy.

  I came up outside a two storey building gripped in desert ivy and white flowers. Red silk streamers hung from terracotta balconies. Dim lighting spilled out of large windows into the dusk. Two men stood outside, backyard-made assault rifles slung over their shoulders. They smiled at me with bad teeth and waved.

  “Mister Diamond!” said one, “So good to see you again!”

  “And good to see you, Carl,” I tipped him with four gorges and a hill. “How is tonight?”

  “You are the first client of the evening. This is a good omen. Also, all the girls are still here.”

  “That is a good omen. How are things?”

  “Some fighters came asking for money yesterday. They wanted more than the usual.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “Miss Claire is not to be crossed. She paid them less than the usual, and chased them out. The local man in charge came by later and apologized to her.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Diamond, you know I can’t do that for you.”

  “Can’t blame me for trying.”

  “People are more nervous. There are more guns in the street. I bought some grenades, three for eight dollars.”

  “Three for eight?” that wasn’t even one gorge.

  “You staying the night?”

  “Yes. Curfews are meant to be broken.”

  “Good. I don’t think you should be out while it’s dark. Go on in, come find me later and we’ll have some tea and a smoke.”

  The bordello was filled with red and purple silks hangings, forming small, private, spaces. Brass hookahs sat surrounded by cushions. There was the heavy sweet of perfumed tobacco and incense to the love Goddess.

  And hookers.

  Some looked delightful. Some looked average. Some – well they were nice people. All were abandoned young mothers. It was a common story in the past, now returned by the Paradiso time machine. Starved of technology their culture regressed to better match its squalor. Perhaps this was why the UEFers hated this planet so much. It shows us things about us that we wish couldn’t be.

  They were nice, all smiles and charm. There was another bordello I found some months ago where the girls were all sullen and sleep deprived. We shut it down the next day: it’s never a good a sign if the hookers seem miserable.

  “Jack, ‘the-big-black-one’ Diamond.”

  A blonde wearing black silk stood in a doorway, her hair just starting to grey. She ashed her UEF cigarette on the floor.

  “Hello Clare. How are you?”

  “You owe me money.”

  “How do you reckon that?”

  “You haven’t been here in a couple of weeks. You should make up for it today.”

  “I think I will. I heard insurgents came by hitting you up for money.”

  Her face darkened. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. Drink?”

  “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

  “Something cheap and awful from a nearby still. The girls like it with Cava melon. I like it neat.”

  She got behind a counter and pulled out two small clay cups. She poured us each a shot. It tasted like a bee sting and warmed its way down my throat.

  “One or two?” she asked.

  “Shots?”

  “Girls.”

  “Definitely two.”

  “Been a bad day?”

  “Been a bad six months. I have nothing to show, Clare. My mission here is a failure.”

  “I’d be lying if I said that didn’t please me.”

  “Understandable. I’d feel the same if our positions were reversed.”

  “That said, while no one asked you people to come back, there are drains and street lights now, and old people’s teeth are growing back.”

  “Thanks. It takes courage to say that out loud.”

  “I’m an old whore, Jack. There’s nothing anyone can
say or do to me that’s been worse than what’s been said and done to me. You’re also a customer in my house. It’s my job to make you happy. On that note, you remember Elise?”

  “Elise? The tall, athletic blonde? Oh I remember her.”

  “She really likes you. You should have a go with her.”

  “She’s a bit stupid though.”

  “I know, but put her in an iron collar and chain her to the bed and you won’t care.”

  “True, put me down for her for the whole night. How is her kid doing?”

  “Will has just started going to school. He told his teacher he wants to grow up to be a giant robot.”

  “Outstanding. I wanted to be a dolphin, and look how that worked out.”

  “What about your second girl?”

  “Surprise me.”

  “Vidya.”

  “Vidya hates me. You can see it in her eyes.”

  “You said to surprise you. I think there’s a strong attraction there too, it’ll make the bedroom so much more interesting.”

  “You know she tried to cut my balls off? I mean she really tried to cut them off.”

  “Yes, but you still have them. If she really wanted them off, she’d have snipped them, fried them up, and served them to you.”

  “She is pretty hot. Alright, Vidya it is.”

  “Room four. Go on, I’ll send them up.”

  Whack.

  Elise opened her eyes. “What are you doing?”

  Whack.

  “Hey!”

  I raised my hand again, but Vidya caught it.

  “Stop it. Stop it now.”

  The sand colored bug was huge – they grew so large out here. Its mouth parts were barbed. Its front claws were built for digging. It turned to stare at me with a knobbly green nerve cluster that was its eye.

  “I almost had it!” I shook my hand free.

  It scampered off suddenly, and disappeared into the long shadows of the morning.

  “Leave it alone,” said Vidya.

  “You know those things are poisonous, right?”

  Elise knelt and put her head down, her hands clasped together. She started muttering, her eyes shut.

  “What is she doing?” I asked.

  “She’s praying. That was a Servant of the Eye you just tried to kill. It’s sacred to us.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “No,” she shook her head and lit a cigarette. “You didn’t.”

  “Why is it sacred?”

  “The Servant burrows. Even in the deepest caves, miners have found Servants. They dig ever downwards, going towards the Eye.”

  “The eye? What’s that?”

  “Who is the Eye. He’s a god. He lives in the center of the world, our guardian. He loves and protects us.”

  “I’ve never heard of this god. What is his Hindu name?”

  “He has no Hindu name. The Nautiloids taught us of him. They built his first temples.”

  “An alien god? Who worships him?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Yes, Jack.”

  “The whole world?”

  “Why is this so hard for you to understand?”

  “It’s only been eighty years, Vidya. Religions just don’t grow that quickly.”

  “Maybe false ones don’t. The Eye proves himself to us. He talks to us in our dreams. He gives us hope. He guides us. And all the time, he watches. He sees everything Jack.”

  “You’re a genius.”

  I kissed her. “You too,” I kissed Elise.

  “Will you leave the Servants alone now?” asked the blonde.

  “Not a chance.”

  Jahandar III

  The nice thing about dying in a war is that they usually give you two weeks off.

  The row boat slit through the dark water, still as a polished floor and wide as infinity. Yellow lanterns hung from wooden arcs rising out of the water. The boat followed their trail, passing rose pads and gem-eyed fish. Above us hanging in the sky was a blue gas giant. Its glowing moons were tethered to it by space-spanning lightning storms. In the distance, black whales broke out of the water and leapt into space. They crossed the sky like packs of hunting stars.

  Farida sat opposite me at the oars. She noticed my gaze and looked back with her dark eyes. In that moment, everything else fell away.

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s lovely. How long did you take to write it?”

  “I started after you left the last time. I thought about adding some islands but I think they break the paradigm.”

  “They would. I could watch the whales for hours.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’d rather watch you for hours though.”

  She smiled again.

  “Jahandar, I really want to say that I wish you hadn’t died, but if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “It’s nothing. Death isn’t a big deal: it’s the paperwork that I hate.”

  Her smile faltered, she reached out and held my cheek.

  “Death always messes you up.”

  I looked away.

  “Hey – I’m here. I always am, and I always will be.”

  “I know.”

  We said nothing to each other for a while.

  “You know you can talk about it.”

  “I know.”

  Another silence, but she let it drop.

  “Are you free tomorrow? Dad wants to meet you.”

  “Of course. I have no schedule, I just want to spend time with you.”

  She pretended to look at her nails. “So is there anything else going on that you want to talk about?”

  Every man’s fear is something obvious to a woman, that he can never see.

  “No. Is there something I should talk about?”

  “Well you know, what’s going on over there.”

  “What’s going on over there? I’m pretty sure I know.”

  “So – there’s nothing you want to talk about?”

  “Farida, darling, just tell me what it is. We could do this forever.”

  She scowled. “The camps.”

  “The camps?”

  “The refugee processing centers?”

  “You know what they are.”

  “Darling, the Liberation displaced a lot of people. A lot of people were already living in subhuman conditions. Real squalor, you’ve seen the pictures. We can’t just send them back to ruins and contaminated wells.”

  “But why not?” she crossed her arms. “It’s their choice. They’re not prisoners.”

  “That’s not what that’s about.”

  “What about the new camp they built at Asturias?”

  “I’ve seen that camp. Asturias was – still is - a major insurgent stronghold. They were firing rockets into nearby villages that wouldn’t support them. People who opposed them were hanged in public – along with their families. We had to go in there.”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have stopped them. I’m saying why did you put those people in camps?”

  “The insurgents think nothing of using heavy weapons in civilian areas. We needed to clear people out for their own safety. It was a major operation and they would have fled anyway. We gave them safety, medical care, and screened for insurgents. The safest those people have ever been, is in that camp.”

  “But Jahandar, you’re keeping them in that camp.”

  I sighed.

  “Yes. Yes we are. They are insurgent sympathizers. They go back in, and we’ll lose control of the city again. Death squads will kill anyone who worked with us, and then no one will ever dare question them again. We can’t let the insurgents take control of the city again.”

  “Don’t you see a problem with this? Jahandar, these people just don’t want us there.”

  I said nothing.

  “Can’t you see that?”

  “Of course I can see that. I see it every day. Every day for six months. They hate us. They want us to go.”

/>   “Then why is this happening? Everyone knows. It’s on all the talk shows and debates. Darling, if they don’t want us there, let them be I say. Who cares what they do with their lives. It’s their business, even if we don’t agree with them.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “But why is it – “

  I took her hand suddenly, and held it.

  “I’m not going to argue about the camps.”

  She paused and then nodded.

  “Darling, I just want you to understand that we did not go there to hurt these people. I’m not going back there to hurt them.”

  “I know.”

  “We didn’t expect them to reject us, to be fighting us. But they are, and this is the way it is now. If we lose, if all this is for nothing, It’ll be because the public have stopped supporting us.”

  “I don’t care Jahandar. I just want you to stay. Can’t you stay? Just say this isn’t what you signed up for.”

  “You know I can’t stay. Strategy is not my job, and if it was our lives would be even harder. Farida, I don’t need you to believe the war is just or unjust. I need to you realize that this has become an extremely complicated, and that we are unprepared. We made some mistakes as a result, and things are going to get worse before they get better.”

  “I don’t want you to be a camp guard. Don’t you dare become a camp guard.”

  I laughed.

  “Darling, they don’t use Special Forces operators to be camp guards. We’ll get through this, Farida. They’ll sort out this war. We’ll fix this.”

  “I don’t care. I just want you back.”

  “I won’t come back.”

  “What?”

  “You want me to talk about this? Fine. Let me tell you about the first time I died on Paradiso. Can you guess what killed me?”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  “A child, Farida. A child killed me. He was wired with explosives and remote detonated. The creatures who did that are the same ones we fought at Tennyson. We have to finish what started there, or they’ll hurt us again. They’ll hurt you again.”