Timberwolf

by Tom Julian

  “We don’t care about this place. There’s a rescue two days behind us. We need the St. Francis.”

  Tirani nodded. “Thought so, but I’ve got one duty. We’ve got Glox scavenging in the wreckage. They have to buzz off. They’ll start picking at The Outpost and they won’t bother being careful around survivors.”

  “Les, if they don’t disappear at our sight, I want you to destroy them. I won’t spend five minutes swatting at flies.”

  “Well, you’re not going to like this. Cardinal Jacob isn’t playing well.”

  Cardinal Jacob had refused to crawl through the airlock. Even after being stuck on the St. Francis for three days waiting for rescue, he wouldn’t go to his knees so he could get through the emergency breaching tube. He insisted that the Archangel extend its boarding tube and cut through the superstructure behind St. Francis’s destroyed bridge. It was an extremely dangerous operation, considering most of the front of the ship had been torn off when the docking rings had flown free of The Outpost.

  Cardinal Jacob walked aboard and met Dr. Tier, dropping down and kissing the deck in front of her before rising and taking her hand. He smiled warmly, his large, suntanned hand covering her small, space-pale fingers. “I am forever your servant,” he said to her.

  She nodded respectfully. “It’s our duty, Cardinal. We do it cheerfully,” she responded. Conrad raised an eyebrow at the display. Just an hour before, she had been ranting about Cardinal Jacob’s boarding demands and was considering handing them over to the Glox for scavenge. Fortunately, they had taken off into sub-light as soon as Archangel appeared. She led Cardinal Jacob to her office as Conrad escorted the rest of the crew of St. Francis to where they could refresh themselves.

  Cardinal Jacob’s attendants tried to follow him, but he shunted them away. “You’ve been more than attentive. Go rest, please,” he told them.

  In her office, Dr. Tier made Cardinal Jacob a cup of tea and sat at her desk. He sat opposite her, seeming to delight in sitting in a common straight-back chair. “I haven’t had a face-to-face meeting without attendants in years.” He sipped the tea, relishing the flavor in his mouth, and released a long sigh of gratitude. “Thank you!” He beamed.

  “I am happy to oblige, Cardinal.” She sized up her next move. “So tell me, what brought you to The Outpost at such an inopportune time?”

  He smiled. “Dear Thea, God’s Word takes me to all places where Believers dwell.”

  “Cardinal, if you think I can buy that, then I’d be the one with closed eyes.”

  “Yes, yes. I suppose that is true.” He smiled broadly.

  “I am here to help you, Cardinal. But I’ve got to have the truth. You came here to meet Gray, didn’t you?”

  “My, you are very perceptive!”

  “I am,” Dr. Tier responded. “There are a lot of things spinning right now. We both know what they are.”

  “Yes, but I can’t bring everything to light, not just yet.” Cardinal Jacob rubbed the ends of his fingertips. Dr. Tier deduced that this was his tell. Now was the time to move to the heart of the matter.

  Dr. Tier took a sip of her tea and dabbed her mouth. “There’s no need. You met with Gray to try to stop him from continuing to Highland. If he takes Highland, the prime cardinalship will be out of your grasp forever.” Cardinal Jacob’s cheek barely twitched and his smiling face continued to glow. “But I don’t know why you met with him. You and I both know there was no chance of talking him out of this. Nothing he could be offered or bribed with. So why?”

  He looked to the ceiling and sighed, suddenly appearing to be drowsy and put upon. “There is politics by other means, which you call conquest. Then there is religion and money. We’re mixing all of those things together, the true four horsemen.” Dr. Tier nodded, her eyes wide with practiced empathy. “I have the ability to make things very difficult for Gray,” he continued.

  “Someone on the crew?” she asked.

  Cardinal Jacob nodded.

  “You weren’t meeting with Gray, were you? Someone else?”

  “You’d find out if you accessed the network on The Outpost. I’ll just tell you and save you the trouble. Jude Izabeck is my man on the Nemesis.”

  “What can Izabeck do to hurt Gray?”

  “The question is: what can he do to help us?”

  Help us, he had said. He really wants into my camp. Dr. Tier knew he wasn’t going to say any more about Izabeck now. He would hold this back, thinking he was coy. She changed the flow. “What are you after, Cardinal?”

  “Highland is a place of conquest, a pawn in the game of politics and I bring the religion. I guess the only thing left underneath is money.”

  “I see.” Dr. Tier nodded, she had learned more than she imagined she would from Cardinal Jacob and it left her unimpressed. Jacob was after money so he could buy power.

  “You see, I can buy more influence in The Clergy than I can ever force. I no longer have access to The Clergy’s finances. You get what’s above in the armory and I get what’s below in the fabled Coffers.” He sipped his tea again and Dr. Tier did the same, so she wouldn’t seem compelled to respond. She hoped he would continue talking just a bit longer. “I hate to be soiled in all of this dirty money. But I’m afraid we have to traffic in some sort of coin. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

  “Of course,” she said. “But you understand there is no trade here for me? How much is in The Coffers?”

  Cardinal Jacob nodded. “It’s said that The Clergy has an abundance of two things, incense and information.” He laughed at his own joke. “There is roughly a trillion dollars under Highland. Buried treasure.” Dr. Tier couldn’t help it and her mouth fell open. “We’ve been watching Highland for years. They pay for nothing. Money goes in, through various channels, but it never comes out. Not a dime.”

  Dr. Tier’s headache pounded. She thumbed the unmarked bottle of Terecine in her pocket. “So, please Your Excellency, tell me how I can simply let you walk in and take possession of a trillion dollars?”

  “I can tell you about my visions, God’s plan for Highland.”

  “Please don’t,” she responded.

  “I can turn Timberwolf Velez’s communications back on.” He folded his fingers together and smiled.

  “I meant to ask about that.”

  “Occasionally, the signs from God can be hard to follow. I had given Gray tools to help him on his mission before the man betrayed me. One was the ability to shut down Timberwolf’s smart-device so he wouldn’t be able to contact you. We also attempted to blow his cover with a video dossier.” He smiled, almost getting giddy. “All of this spy craft is really delicious, is it not?”

  Dr. Tier nodded and balled her fists under the table. “If I give you The Coffers, that’s a trillion dollars for a sub-light message. An expensive call. How can you be sure I wouldn’t go back on the deal?”

  “We are both connoisseurs of information. You have made hundreds of enemies in just a short time, but no one knows who you are. Your own identity is your greatest secret. Imagine if everyone you had ever burned suddenly knew your name? Or your daughter Camille’s name? She goes to Oxford University now, in her third year studying history.”

  “Stop. Dear Cardinal, stop. You’re not in a spy novel; this is real. Regardless of who you are, speaking like that will get you killed very quickly.” Dr. Tier’s eyes watered slightly as she leveled her gaze on Cardinal Jacob. “I will kill you myself without hesitation if you even get close to threatening my family again.”

  “Do we have a deal?” he pressed.

  Oh Jesus, let him try it again and I’ll break his neck. One move to kill this man.

  “Yes, I’ll give you that deal. You must be exhausted.” She smiled as she showed him the door. “My deepest apologies for my outburst.”

  “It’s just the plain spoken nature of your profession.” He let her kiss his ring as he left. In the hall, his two attendants, draped in capes of cerulean blue, swept behind him.

 
Dr. Tier took the bottle of Terecine from her pocket. Her head pounded, but she didn’t open it. She needed to stay sharp, regardless of how much the stress was eating her. I’ll gladly be the death of His Eminence, she thought.

  RELAUND

  Timberwolf awoke in a chair. Wherever he was, it smelled like a hospital. As he came to, he heard the beeping of a medical monitor and the mechanical labor of a breathing machine. His wrists were zip-tied behind him and connected to a bar on the wall. He lurched upward and felt the blood rush to his head. His face felt raw and numb from the plasma blast, like he had frostbite and sunburn at the same time.

  “Timberwolf,” he heard Salla say softly. He realized she was sitting with him, in a chair a few feet away. She had a sadness in her voice and a tenderness about her he had never seen before.

  “What?” he asked her, still unsure of his surroundings. But before she could answer, he knew where they were. Saint Agatha’s, a convalescent home for banged-up tower hounds. It didn’t look anything like it did in the brochure; pale green walls, small slits for windows. Plastic flowers sat in the corner. Timberwolf shuddered, leaning against the wall, losing all his strength for a moment.

  Salla nodded to someone lying in a bed, connected to a breathing machine. The name on the foot of the bed was Relaund Velez, Timberwolf’s brother. The bed bent in the middle and lifted upward with agonizing slowness. “You really have to stop taking plasma blasts to the face. Can you do that, please?” Salla said to Timberwolf, her face dead serious. He blinked and she smiled a little.

  “Timber?” Relaund said, his voice much stronger than Timberwolf had expected. It had the bombast from years ago, back when he’d start fights with other barrel-chested tower hounds just for fun. “You goddamned, stupid mother-whoring sonofabitch.” Relaund’s eyes still glowed with their trademark intensity; blue marbles in his ruddy face.

  “I can’t come over there and punch you,” Timberwolf replied. He pulled against the bar to show he was restrained.

  “You’re lucky,” Relaund spat back. He turned his head and took a sip of water from a tube next to his cheek. Relaund’s face was warm and full of life, even if he couldn’t move his arms or legs. He cringed for a moment as something in his wracked body pestered him. In that instant, Timberwolf saw him as he had found him years ago in front of their house, beaten nearly to death and back twisted in an aberrant angle. “Why’d the hell you come back?” he asked, the bravado gone and his eyes warming up from the sight of his brother after so long.

  “A long story. I hadn’t intended to.” Timberwolf shook his head. “I’m sorry, Relaund. You know the deal.”

  “Oh, the hell with Heelo, I don’t care. I’m not doing myself any good lying here.” Relaund searched the ceiling. “I guess this is goodbye. Damn, you’re trouble little brother. I don’t see you for two decades and then it’s time to pay the piper.” He turned his attention to Salla, rolling his eyes roguishly. “Who’s the lady?”

  “Salla Birdwing,” she said as she waved.

  Relaund looked at her, mischief on his face. “Hey, I’d take you out on a date if you like. I’ve got ten minutes to live and the food here’s god-awful, but I’d show you a good time.”

  “Sure.” Salla’s lip quivered slightly. “We’ll paint the town.”

  Timberwolf’s mind was racing. “There’s no way I’m leaving without you, Relaund.”

  “What you did for me already…what you did for Dad and the rest of us. Damn, you’ve already done enough. I’ve been wanting to tell you to your face for years. Damn, you’ve done enough.” He turned his eyes to Salla. “You know what he did?”

  “He won’t say.”

  “Well, I was a wayward youth. Thought it would be a good idea to jump some dope dealers that worked for the Rackers. Take their dough and buy us off this rock. They did this to me. Our dad couldn’t stop drinking. Never could. But he’s shooting off his mouth in Leedy’s bar. Go there if you want a beer that tastes like an oil filter. Dad’s saying he’s going to go get a gun. Timber gets him home, but later that night when he comes to see me in the hospital, the Rackers shoot our dad in the street. Kill him. Timber finds him.”

  Salla shuddered and Relaund continued, “Dad had a big mouth, but he really did have a gun. Timberwolf, just turned seventeen, took that gun and went down to the Racker place. Creates a distraction at the front gate and sneaks in the back door. He takes out all of them. He shoots Penn Racker and gets out. Then he turns himself in, right to Heelo. Now Heelo, with the Rackers gone, sees the chance to pick up their business for himself. Heelo says if Timberwolf ever comes back, I get to die…well, here we are.”

  Salla’s mouth hung open a bit. Growing up on Nova Turin, she understood these kinds of things. Colonies were small places. People were packed together where it was livable and usually there was no easy way to leave. Sooner or later when someone’s parent or sibling gets killed, payback could be expected and it had to be harsh. You couldn’t leave anyone alive who might come back for you in a closed system. Timberwolf hung his head, looking at the floor. She could tell that what gave Relaund so much pride, Timberwolf was ashamed of.

  Timberwolf lurched towards the bed, the restraints holding him back. “I’m not letting Heelo do this! You’re not dying like this.”

  The door creaked open and Heelo entered with four of his men. He’d been listening. “That was our deal, Timberwolf. You can have the body bag.”

  “Go to hell,” Timberwolf said, not turning.

  “Hey Heelo, looks like you hit the sale on ugly and stupid,” Relaund snarled.

  Heelo ignored Relaund. “I am amazed at my luck, Timberwolf. I would never imagine I would have caught you, of all people.”

  “You’re forgetting I shot myself in the face.”

  “Yes, why was that?”

  “There’s something in me you don’t want to know about. There would be a lot of dead bodies if it hadn’t been done.”

  “Her too.” He motioned to Salla.

  “Most likely, but I don’t see how that would have made a difference to your fat corpse.”

  Heelo looked at his watch. “Okay, enough. I gave you your goodbyes.” One of the men clamped a collar around Timberwolf’s neck that was attached to a long metal pole. Still zip-tied to the bar on the wall, Timberwolf pulled away, dragging the man across the room. Heelo laughed at the display. “Timber, you’re a force of nature. I am almost sorry for this. Such a nice boy.” Timberwolf kicked like a mule as they detached his zip tie and pulled him out to the hall. It took three of Heelo’s men to control him. A fourth man had his pistol on Salla.

  They dragged Timberwolf down the stairs to a storage area, right below Relaund’s room. “He wants you to listen,” one of Heelo’s men said. Salla noticed he had a key on his belt, probably for the collar around Timberwolf’s neck. Timberwolf kicked one of the men across the room and the man who held the gun on Salla jumped into the fray, cracking him in the back with the butt of his pistol. He fell to his knees.

  With no eyes on her, Salla backed into the corner. She thumbed the nerve agent canister and the personal protection grenade in her pocket. While she had been waiting on the street for Timberwolf, she had removed the cap from the nerve agent canister and inserted the pressure pin into the top of the grenade, making a crude dispersal bomb. She’d just been fiddling and didn’t think it would actually work, but now seemed like a good time to try.

  “You, you, you, and you are about to have a very bad day,” Timberwolf snapped at Heelo’s men, his voice a nasty growl. One of the men laughed, but the others smirked uneasily. Salla shook up her surprise.

  Heelo hovered over Relaund’s bed. “I don’t hate you, Relaund. This isn’t personal.”

  “Fuck you. That’s personal.”

  “I’ve always liked your family’s style.”

  “You think my brother is going to just walk away after you do this?”

  “No, I don’t. His old friend General Gray is in town. I’m going to make a l
ot of money selling him off.” Heelo shook his head. “Yes and I get to keep my own deal. I told your brother I wouldn’t kill him.” Heelo took out a pistol, charged it up to max. “Head or the heart?”

  “Shoot me in the heart. Why ruin a pretty face?”

  Heelo tapped the pistol, checking that it was charged up to full. He placed it on Relaund’s chest, closed his eyes and pulled the trigger…

  Salla made eye contact with Timberwolf as she twisted the seal on her makeshift bomb. She closed her eyes tightly and covered her face with her sleeve. Getting the message, Timberwolf covered his head and curled up in the fetal position. “Please don’t hit me again!” he begged. Heelo’s men pulled nightsticks from their belts and lifted them high to strike. When they did, Salla smashed the bomb down in their midst and dove behind a storage rack. It exploded with a crack near a circuit breaker and the lights flickered. Instantly, the sour smell of the dispersed nerve agent filled the room.

  She took a hit off her breather and gained her bearings. When she lifted her head up, Heelo’s men were struggling on the floor. She picked up a pistol and used it like brass knuckles on the one with the key. In a few seconds she had the collar off Timberwolf’s neck. Timberwolf took a hit off her breather to clear his head and rushed up the stairs. One of the men, the one who had laughed at his threat, managed to get to his feet. Timberwolf practically ran through him, driving him halfway up the stairs. On the landing, Timberwolf took a fire extinguisher from the wall and flattened his nose with it.

  Rushing up the stairs, he felt something driving him, picking every move his muscles made. Maybe it was Kizik. Maybe it was the adrenaline. He knew he had just seconds before Heelo killed Relaund. Time seemed to slow as he reached for the handle and he was conscious of his every heartbeat. Throwing open the door, he found that the room was empty. Not just that Relaund was missing from the bed, but the whole bed was gone and Heelo too.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Heelo had seen the six, gleaming-red eyes staring through him. Kizik, the Arnock, the giant spider with the red mark on its face, skittered out of the corner of Relaund’s room and up to the bed. He blocked Heelo’s finger from pulling the trigger with the tip of a claw. Heelo was frozen in terror but Kizik stroked his back and spoke to him calmly.