by T Q Chant
“Yeah yeah yeah, the bright place.” There was so little ambient noise down here, Sam could swear that she could hear footsteps, coming closer. “Listen kid, I don’t know exactly what it is they’ve put in you but we might be able to get it out of you. Get you clean.”
“Please, Okafor.” Adisa crouched in front of her brother, taking his hands. “We can help you. I am sure of it.”
The smell of burning reached Sam’s nostrils. “Think they’ve found your cache. We should probably get above ground until it finishes burning.”
Adisa nodded, her expression tight. She hadn’t had much, and now she had less, all because she had come to Sam’s rescue.
Another point in her favour.
Okafor reluctantly pulled himself to his feet. “Where do we go?”
“Let’s head for the medical station. Could do with restocking my medkit anyway.”
CHAPTER SEVEN – CAT AND MOUSE, COLONIAL STYLE
“I’m sorry.” Sam said quietly, crouching down next to Okafor and laying a hand on his shoulder. Adisa sat cross-legged next to him, holding one of his hands in hers.
Okafor was sweating, his normally dark skin pallid.
“However they attached it to you, I can’t get it gone. Even if I did, don’t think it would help.”
The phial of liquid, whatever it was, had mostly dissipated. It had taken them a little while to move, slowly and cautiously, through the abandoned colony to the medical office, and even longer for Sam to loot it of what was left. In that time Okafor’s condition had worsened. In short, he was already going into withdrawal. It had been a struggle – one Sam had almost given up on – to get him to leave the office and the three of them had slipped into one of the hab blocks, taking care to avoid the security pixers that kept an unseeing watch over the empty streets.
“How often did they replace it?” Sam asked.
“Every day,” the kid said, his voice miserable. “As part of the morning ritual.”
It was dark outside now, the same hot dry almost-night that Sam had experienced since landing. Sweat prickled her skin – she was still in her armoured vest, and pretty sure she wouldn’t take it off until she was off this damned rock.
“Do you see now?” Adisa whispered, her voice pleading.
Before Sam could answer, the comms earpiece in her helmet clicked. She stared at it, momentarily confused as to who would be calling her, then slipped it on.
“Cane, receiving.”
“This is Marshal Cho.”
Sam let the silence hang, unsure of what she could say. She’d been working through the problem in her head, how to work out who to trust, but now that she was actually talking to the other side of the argument she had no idea what to say.
Cho broke the silence first. “Sam, I think we’ve got off on the wrong foot, and I blame myself for that.”
“Could be something to do with getting one of your ‘deputies’ to beat the shit out of me.” Sam walked away a little bit, aware of Adisa’s eyes boring into her back.
“I regret that Fassetti went too far. I hope you understand that we’ve all been under a lot of pressure here and we reacted...badly...to finding out you had been able to access the colony admin systems.”
“They weren’t hard to crack,” Sam shot back, unable to keep the truculence out of her voice. “What do you want, Marshal?”
“I want you, Okafor and Adisa to come in. Yes I know she’s with you. Her father has been very concerned about her since she went missing in the evacuation.”
“I'm going to need a few guarantees. Concerning Fassetti for one thing.”
“I think he’s learned his lesson. He was very proud of his nose.”
Cho cracking a joke? Sam had only known the chief a few hours but that just seemed...utterly out of character.
“Okafor’s med dispenser must be about out, he’s going to need a refill.”
“Funny thing about that – he says you’ve got him hooked on some drug to keep him under control.”
“Delusions are an effect of the disease. Hawkin’s syndrome, unique to this planet. Okafor was the first one to survive any length of time, and only because of the cure we’ve synthesised. He really needs his refill tomorrow.”
“The fuck was he doing operational if he’s that ill?”
“Desperate times, Deputy. Just like what happened with you and Fassetti. We’re right out on the edge here and no one is coming to help us.”
Sam bit back on the urge to contradict that. “Tell you what. Let’s meet in the square tomorrow. I want you and Fassetti both there, unarmed. We’ll get Okafor medded up and work out where we go from there.”
“You coming unarmed as well, Sam?”
“I might do. Just remember that I’m not the aggressor here, and if you really care about Okafor you won’t mind if I come strapped.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“Sunrise at the main plaza. I don’t see you both there, I walk.”
“You seem pretty good at this for a green security officer, Sam.”
“I was a crook before I was a cop, Marshal.” Sam cut the transmission, not wanting to be bothered with explanations. “Help not coming my ass. Surprised they didn’t work out I’d already got word away.”
“That’s because Cho knows we rigged the comms system to make it look like a sat was still up there,” Okafor said, his voice reedy and miserable.
“The fuck? You know what – shut the hell up, the pair of you. Need to think this through.”
She paced away from them, trying to get her head round this whole messed up situation. She could buy Okafor being delusional, but Adisa seemed to share the delusion. Unconditional love of a sister? Not something she’d ever had for her many siblings, by blood or by habitation, so she couldn’t really relate. She could just have gone mad, trapped here with only the dead for company until Sam’s setdown.
Or they could be telling the truth.
She stalked through into the bathroom of the apartment they were squatting in. Everything was still hooked up but they hadn’t switched the lights on, even though they were well away from the security office. There was enough in the way of light from the secondary sun for her to see as she ran cold water into the basin and dunked her head, coming back up gasping and scrubbing at her hair. She felt filthy.
“You cannot trust them,” Adisa said quietly, standing in the doorway of the bathroom. Sam didn’t jump. Her nerves were finally getting inured to this fucked up situation. Either that, or they were so badly shot she didn’t care anymore.
“I don’t. But Cho claimed your brother will die without his meds. Said he has Hawkins’ disease. If that’s some contagious shit, I want to know more.”
Adisa shifted her shoulders uncomfortably. “The disease is real, but my brother does not have it. Something about the interaction between the tweaked plants we brought with us and the soil made a few people ill. Ben Hawkins was the first to fall ill, first to die, about two years ago. My mother fixed it.”
That sounded like truth. “Not sure I can take the risk. Gotta get to the bottom of this. You’ll let Okafor go? They say he’ll die if he doesn't.”
“They are lying. But he needs whatever it is they gave to him, with that I cannot argue.”
“Smart woman. I wouldn’t have asked you to come with me, anyway.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone, but you did get me out of a sticky situation and that counts for something. Not the reason you’re not coming with me, though.” She turned, grinned at Adisa. Sam could almost see herself a few years ago, first time she’d met Saskia. “You ever crack a safe, Adisa?”
*********
Hard sunlight on dry, cracked earth. Dawn had been an abrupt, brutal business. Sam was wearing her helmet, visor flipped down and tinted. Beside her, Okafor sweated and shivered at the same time. Disease or drug, either way he didn’t look well.
Cho and Fas
setti were at the podium, had been since before dawn, all casual confidence and body armour but no guns. Sam’s helmet optics and image interpretation software had confirmed that.
Grit crunched under her boots as she and Okafor walked out to meet them. “Feels like this should really be done at high noon,” Okafor muttered with a weak attempt at a smile.
“What’s tha’, kid?”
“Nothing.”
“Deputy,” Cho greeted her.
“Seriously, can we cut that shit? There isn’t a town here for you to be the Marshal of.” She noticed, out of the corner of her eye, Fassetti flinch at her obscenity. He might have flinched, anyway. His face was mostly covered with healpads.
“As you like. You are late.”
“Okafor took some getting up this morning. You know what teenagers are like.”
“This is no laughing matter. Oka, come to me.”
Sam really didn’t like the older woman’s smile as she held up a phial. It glowed far more brightly than the almost-spent charge in Okafor’s device, bright enough to be seen even in the glare of the rising sun.
Okafor staggered forward despite Sam’s restraining hand. She couldn’t bring herself to stop the boy, his desperation obvious as he fell to his knees in front of Cho. The Marshal said something so quiet Sam could not make it out, but it looked disturbingly like a benediction when she swapped the little containers. Okafor’s smile was certainly enraptured as the fresh drug flowed into him.
Sam took a very small step back, eyes darting around. Her stomach felt light, empty of anything but fear.
“Do you see how much better he is already?” Cho said to her. “He belongs with us, with his family, so that we may look after him.”
“Lucky for him,” Sam muttered sullenly.
“You can belong to, Sam. You do not have to be here alone. You and Adisa can come back with us.”
“Where is she, anyway?” Fassetti rasped, making no attempt at the mollifying tone Cho had adopted.
“She wanted nothing to do with you. She’s gone back into the tunnels.” (#3 – Lies are always more believable with a little truth mixed in).
“Please, talk to her. Get her to come home. We are alone here. We should be as one. Only through unity can there be salv...survival.”
Sam took another step back, almost involuntarily. That was sensible, but also sounded like scripture. She didn’t like the look on any of their faces now. Okafor had quietly fallen into line with them, his expression calm once more.
Movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. For a second she thought it was those fucking birds again, but her visor picked out something human-shaped moving, briefly seen through the window of the warehouse.
The fuck is Adisa doing there?
But of course Cho and Fassetti would have called in back up.
“Sam, don’t walk away from this. Don’t walk away from being saved.”
“You know, reckon I’ll do just fine until the rescue ships I called in arrive.”
“You think help is coming? The satellite was destroyed by the raiders. I have already told you this. Did the lugger not see that?”
“Told you, didn’t even look for it, just registered a lack of handshake. Funny thing, though, I managed to access jSpace comms and send a pod.”
She could see the thought process behind Cho’s normally impassive eyes. Tell the truth, continue the charade?
“A clever piece of programming, that is all.”
And there it was. Help wasn’t coming. She was alone.
At least she knew who to trust now.
Cho saw her reach that conclusion. “Oka, Fass. Take her.”
Sam smiled at them, though the expression was painful through the bruising. Fassetti paused, nonplussed by her expression, not seeing her flick her comms bud on and off with her thumb.
For a second, she thought all the effort, all the careful coaching and the preparations that had kept her and Adisa up most of the short night, had come to nothing. Okafor and Fassetti jerked into action. Then the hab unit behind her exploded.
It wasn’t a big explosion, really, just what she had been able to rig with guidance from the pad’s trove of illegal information. It didn’t even really consume the hab unit, just blew the front of it off. The shockwave still staggered her, although she’d bent her knees and opened her mouth. Okafor was knocked clean off his feet, Cho went down on her arse. Sam kicked her in the face as she sprinted by, ducking away from Fassetti’s outstretched arms.
Then she did the one thing none of them expected – she sprinted for the security office. Her ears were ringing from the detonation so she didn’t hear a gun being fired, but felt the hot wind of a hardround crack just in front of her face. She launched herself through the front door of the office, forgot too late not to take the impact on her damaged shoulder and screamed as she landed
“Sam!” Adisa shouted urgently from the stairs. She pushed the pain aside, took the stairs three at a time and grabbed the Enforcer as it was offered to her, grip first. She shoved Adisa to one side as she turned, brought the pistol up one-handed and fired a spread of stun caps at the front door, grinning fiercely as she caught Fassetti in the spread and sent him down twitching.
“We don’t have long!”
Adisa had done exactly what she had been told, followed Sam’s instructions to the letter. The Anythingbut sat open, useful contents already in a pack next to the sacks of supplies Adisa had been able to loot while Cho and Fassetti were waiting in ambush at the meeting point.
Sam grabbed a handful of straps as she piled straight through the Marshal’s office. Their escape route was already open – at the same time as the main distraction charge had gone off, Adisa had used a small improvised charge to blow a hole in the back wall of the building.
“Enjoy the breeze, bitch,” Sam muttered as she shimmied arse first through the gap – sometimes being slight had its advantages – and swung out on the line Adisa had dropped through.
“Where is Oka?” Adisa cried, sticking her head through the gap as Sam half fell, half climbed down the side of the building.
She looked up, gritting her teeth through the pain. “He’s with Cho. Whatever it is they’re putting into him, it’s messed him up.”
“You believe me now?”
“Yes I fucking believe you! Now get your fucking arse out here!”
Sam let herself drop the rest of the way as she heard boots coming round the side of the building. She folded as she hit, already had the Enforcer in hand and put out enough caps to scare off a colonist she didn’t recognise.
“Thank fuck I got more painmeds,” she grunted as she pulled herself up and sprinted for the nearest building, not really giving a shit at this point if Adisa was behind her or not, even though the girl was carrying one of the supply bags.
She was a good sidekick, though. The door of the hab block Sam was sprinting towards was open, just as she’d instructed. She paused in the doorway and had to spring to one side as Adisa almost piled into her. She put another burst of stuncaps in the general direction of the Marshal’s office, tucked the Enforcer away as it whirred empty and followed Adisa through into the dim hab unit.
She sprinted the length of the main corridor. Adisa was faster, nowhere to be seen. Sam was almost clear of the building when strong hands grabbed her, pinioning her and dragging her away from the light. She slammed her head back but caught only chin – whoever it was was much bigger than her. She tried to get purchase, gasping for breath as an arm went round her throat, went for the old favourite of dragging a heel down her attacker’s shin and into the bridge of his foot. He shouted in pain, loud and guttural in her ear. He stank of days without washing, made the mistake of putting a hand over her mouth and nose to speed her suffocation. She bit down hard, tasting blood again, but still the fucker wouldn’t let go.
Sam almost gave up then. It had been a good plan but a risky one, and it hadn’t panned out. T
hat was a grifter’s life – sometimes a scam just didn’t come off. She sagged in the brute’s arms, hoping he would recognise surrender and at least let her breathe.
The pressure only intensified, crushing her throat, cutting her breath. Her vision started blurring and all she could hear was a great roaring. Then the pressure was gone as suddenly as it had begun – she hadn’t heard Adisa smack her assailant in the head with a sackful of ration bars.
“Got to be good for something,” Sam croaked after doubling up and retching. “The ration bars, I mean,” she added, seeing Adisa's offended expression through her tears. The big bastard was down but still breathing, looked like he might regain consciousness. “We gotta go.”
CHAPTER EIGHT – FUTURE MUSEUM
Their impromptu demolitions and putting down two of Cho’s people gave them the breathing space they needed. No more pursuit had been mounted before they had managed to disappear into the warren of tunnels again. Neither of them had wanted to stay in that cloying darkness for long, though, and Adisa had unerringly led Sam out into one of the agritunnels.
Sam hadn’t bothered checking these when she’d swept the settlement; she was a city girl through and through, wouldn’t be able to tell a tomato plant from a carnivorous alien plant analogue if it was literally biting her arse. It was disconcerting – she’d started to get used to the hot hard heat of 187 or the cool darkness of the tunnels. Now she found herself sitting with her back to one of the long planters, soaking in a humid heat that truly reminded her of home. Adisa was tutting over…whatever they were in the planter, and the scent of artificially rich soul filled the air as she watered them from a condenser pipe.
Sam could almost let herself relax here; she knew that would be fatal.
“How many people will Cho have?” she asked as Adisa folded herself onto the rubberised mesh floor.
Adisa’s bout of gardening had obviously calmed her, but she was still on the verge of tears. Sam reached out, put a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder and squeezed until the girl looked at her. “How many people could come to help Cho?”
