by Tammy Salyer
Shrugging, she pulls a keycard from the pocket of her pants and waves it across the lock in the door of the building behind her. When she turns around to start collecting the extra uniforms to put inside, I let the AK strap drop from my shoulder and cradle the carbine in a fashion that assures anyone watching that taking aim and pulling the trigger will come as easily as drawing a breath. If they give me a reason.
“Second thought,” I say casually, “my friend and I could change in there.” I glance to the doorway, taking in as much of the gray interior beyond as I can.
“No, that’s—”
“I think, yes,” I cut in. Her quick protest tells me it’ll be safer inside there than in the alley. I’m not doing much to avoid antagonizing the locals, however.
This time she does sneer. “Fuckin’ Corps deserters. You scum may leave the Admin, but you’re still double-dealing cockroaches.”
“Hey, lady, we’re just modest girls who want to use your indoors to change clothes. No need to hurt our feelings.” I keep my tone dismissive, hiding the surprise and curiosity her statement evoked. Corps deserters? There have been others?
The vendor pulls the clothes free and flings them messily inside, her move a tacit consent. “I’ll stay out here and keep watch,” I tell Soltznin in a low voice. “You go first.”
She enters carefully with the clothes she’d picked draped over her shoulder, then returns in less than two minutes. “It’s clear. Just a squat, but she has a lot of uniforms in there.”
Nodding, I repeat the action and step back into the street feeling, for the first time in ten years, like anything but a soldier. Part of me wants to question the woman about where she’d gotten all those uniforms and what she knows about the apparently high volume of deserters coming through the outpost, but I can see she has had more than her fill of us. It’s time to move on.
At this time of year on this moon, there should only be a few hours of semidarkness to stand in for nightfall, but in the hour since we’d left David at the craft, the planet has shifted enough to make the light from our three suns resemble dusk, which I fully welcome. It takes the edge off the heat and cuts the glare from the overbright sky. It’ll be easier to see if someone is coming at us with less-than-friendly intentions if we’re not fighting the glare.
Checking in with David as we put distance between us and the vendor, I let him know we’re good so far. A couple hundred meters down, the street opens up into a wide circle. In the center is what appears to be a public water pump and well. Two boys, teenagers who look somewhere between thirteen and sixteen, stand at it, filling a tank cinched to the back of a four-wheeled sand quad.
Soltznin and I approach, and the teenagers barely glance at us, engaged in watching a porn on holovid being projected from a device sitting on the quad’s front fender.
“Hey,” I greet them, and they glance at us disinterestedly. “Can you point us toward the nearest trade station that deals with…transport craft?”
This gets their attention, and the oldest asks, “Why? You want something? I can hook you up with sandbikes, hover runners, whatever lights your fire.”
He’s in the strange no-man’s-land between adulthood and still filling out, with awkward, gangly arms, legs that seem too long, and a skinny, sunken torso, but with broad shoulders and good height that hint at the powerfully built man he’ll soon be. His voice is already rough and deep, as if he either smokes or doesn’t have a good enough air filter to keep his lungs free of whatever this moon’s atmosphere likes to rain on its inhabitants.
Soltznin and I had donned nasal filters from the craft, just in case. Most of the Spectras and their moons had seen abundant Admin-controlled mining operations, and the Admin set up at least rudimentary terraforming and atmosphere conversion stations while the mines produced resources and turned profits. But planets with mines that aren’t operating at full capacity anymore don’t see many maintenance crews to keep the things running. A few of their stations have even been pulled apart by enterprising but shortsighted (and now likely dead or diseased) scavengers. As deserters, this is the kind of environment we’re likely to spend the rest of our lives in, short or long. Better get used to it.
“Sandbikes may come in handy later, but right now we’re looking to trade something bigger. Know a place?”
The tinny sound of the porn holo still projecting from the quad punctuates my question with amusing grunts and moans. The boys seem oblivious of the interference, but the oldest stares at me as if he might be imagining me as the star of his own private skin flick.
“We might know a place,” he answers slowly. “Want a ride?”
The unintended double entendre makes me chuckle, and the kid’s eyebrows crease in anger. So he’s a tough, maybe even a scout for slavers. This is a dead end.
“Come on.” I nod at Soltznin.
We begin walking toward a left-hand branch of the roundabout that looks more trafficked and busier, when the crunch of footsteps on the gravel behind me sends my senses on alert.
“Look, lady.” A hand drops on my shoulder. “We—”
Before he can tell me what “we” want, I drive the stock of my carbine into his gut, then spin around and drop him in the dirt with a leg sweep. The eye of my barrel comes to rest between his.
“Don’t hurt me!”
Surprised, I realize it’s the younger boy. Jerking my eyes toward the older one, who remains beside the quad, I realize he’s too shocked to move. This one is clearly still a kid, nothing hard or adult in his smooth, hairless baby face. In fact he looks exactly like a scared child with a psycho bitch pointing a gun at his head should.
Taken aback a little by my own instant ferocity, I move a step away and swing the carbine up to my shoulder. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”
Soltznin has drawn her Bowker and holds it with the barrel toward the ground, her finger locked on the trigger. The look in her eyes isn’t one of surprise or concern for our well-being. It’s pure disgust, but directed at whom?
The older boy’s paralysis breaks, and he rushes up to the younger one’s side. “Pete, you okay? Jesus, lady, he’s just a kid,” he admonishes me, his voice stripped of the tough-guy attitude.
Getting back on his feet, the younger boy dusts himself off. Slightly chagrined but looking determined, he continues, “I just wanted to say we know someone who can maybe help you with your transport.”
“And who’s that?” My voice is a flat threat, letting them know that any patience for tricks I had got dropped in the dirt along with the kid.
“Our dad. He’s not a regular trader, mind you.”
The word slaver flits through my mind again.
Soltznin says, “Ignore them, Erikson. Nothing but scavengers. We need to find someone authentic.”
“No, no, c’mon! Too many ships been coming through lately, if you visit the regular traders, they’ll give you next to nothing. My dad can give you top dollar.”
“No thanks,” Soltznin says and starts walking again.
I stare at the boy’s face, full of disappointment and possibly desperation, for another second. Why is he so keen on having our business? Do we look vulnerable, easily taken advantage of? Or is he desperate for another reason? And could that work to our advantage?
“Hold up, Soltznin. Take us to your dad, kid. But if you and your brother”—I lay a frank glare, full of the promise of reprisal, on the older boy—“do anything I don’t like, I guarantee I’ll get even in ways that make watching porn the closest you’ll ever get to hooking up with a girl. You read me?”
The youngest one swallows with obvious fear, but the older one rearranges his features to look hard-bitten again. Without a word, he steps over to the quad and shuts off the holovid. Pete joins him and gets up on the passenger seat, turning his eyes to us and waiting.
Soltznin steps over and grips my arm. “We don’t need to take chances like this. There must be dozens of other options.”
I match her low tone. “Yeah,
but we don’t need to advertise ourselves. The more people who see us walking around, the more of a target we become. We can keep a lower profile this way, and maybe the kid’s being honest; maybe they can offer a better deal. Nothing to lose, if not. We’ll just cut them loose and look for a better buyer on our own.”
Her frustration isn’t hidden, but she says nothing more.
“How far?” I ask, approaching the quad.
“Just at the end of that lane,” the oldest answers and points to the side street opposite the one Soltznin and I had intended. “You can both sit on the top of our water tank. I’ll go easy.”
If you’re setting us up, kid, I won’t.
5
DEATH'S DOOR
I’d informed David of the plan on our way down the street, and now we sit inside a modest four-room dwelling, made from the same hard rock as most of the other buildings, across from a middle-aged man with yellow-white hair and eyes with sclera to match. The air has a sour smell, not of unwashed bodies, but as if someone is, or recently was, dying. A brief look at the kids’ father, Mick Temple, is all it took to know who. He could be as young as his late thirties, but whatever’s wrong with him has withered him to old age.
After introductions, the conversation hasn’t gone the way I’d wanted, which fails to surprise me. “Look, Temple, your boys told us you could give us what we want for our ship. Now you’re telling us you know someone else who can, but not you. You’re wasting our time.” The ’80 hasn’t left my knees since sitting down, and I run my finger over the trigger guard as I talk, just to emphasize my irritation.
“What my boys told you is true. I can get you what you want for your ship. I know a smuggler, but he won’t deal with people he doesn’t know.” His skeletal fingers steeple in front of his chest in a “let’s be reasonable, shall we?” attitude, and he continues, “Especially not Corps. You need me to introduce you.”
My lips twitch. He can tell we’re military? I guess I have to get used to the fact. Maybe we can change clothes and modify our lexicon, but there’s apparently nothing we can do to shed the stain years of enlistment have left on our hides. The Corps-issued guns don’t help either.
“You mean you’ll introduce us for a percentage,” Soltznin says from her position near the doorway.
Temple nods, not needing to say anything else.
Curiosity gets the better of me. If he wants to play the Corps card, then I’ll make him sweat for it. “How is it you aren’t worried that we’re just setting you up and plan to arrest you for dealing in contraband?”
“Lots of deserters coming through here lately. This rebellion we’re hearing about—it’s making the Admin nervous. My guess is the Corps doesn’t have time to play cat-and-mouse games with lowly non-cits like us right now. Too busy trying to put a plug in the dam that’s keeping the whole Corps from coming apart.”
“What do you mean? What have you been hearing?”
He eyes me closely, his sickness not dampening his intelligence. “The newscasts aren’t saying much, but then, the Admin runs those. Loose lips sink ships, but they also sink governments. Same way a viral epidemic will.”
I’m completely lost at this point and glance at Soltznin to see if she knows what he’s talking about. Her eyes have grown hard, her viperous stare an unveiled threat. He seems unconcerned, but it makes me nervous. Why her hostility?
She says, “Forget about him. We can find a real buyer on our own. Let’s go.”
“Not likely, but I won’t try and stop you,” he says, his attention on her for the first time.
“Don’t underestimate us, old man.”
It should be obvious to him she’s not talking about underestimating our ability to fend for ourselves. The threat in her eyes has moved into her hands, and her fingers are laced tightly around the Bowker, ready to draw at any provocation, real or perceived.
“Dad?” Pete, who’s been sitting off to one side listening, says, doing a good job of reading the tense situation as if he’s been dealing with this kind of thing his whole life.
“Keep in mind,” Temple goes on, “if the Corps gets this under control, it’s going to get bad for deserters like yourselves. The best thing you can do is stack up as many odds in your favor as you can, now.” He stops talking for a second, his eyes losing focus as he considers something privately. “Between you and me, I don’t think they’re going to fix it. The Corps, I mean. This is just the trickle coming through a crack, but cracks have a way of busting wide open before the right people take them seriously. I think we’re going to see a lot more like you before this gets locked down. If it does.”
He takes a deep inhalation that seems to get caught up in some kind of blockage in his lungs and chokes it out in a rattling cough that lasts for a while. Long enough for me to wonder if he’s going to choke to death. His older son steps up and begins patting him gently on the back, helplessly trying to ease the fit. A few more seconds go by before the hacking diminishes, leaving him wheezing and red faced. Eventually, he takes a sip from a cup the boy holds out, then resumes, his voice even deeper and rougher than before. “Enough of your type end up out here in the Spectras, we might catch the Admin’s attention. But for now, we gotta take advantage of the situation.”
Soltznin has a hand on the door, ready to go, but I stand fast. I want to know what he meant by epidemics sinking governments. “Why are you sick?”
He snorts a brief laugh. “You breathe our air long enough, you’ll know why.”
“You said something about an epidemic, is that what’s wrong with you?”
“No. The newscasts are calling it the Crower’s Croup. It’s killing people faster than any Corps unit could dream of doing.”
The name rings a bell. “We’ve heard it was a small outbreak, localized to just a few of the Obal moons.” I can see Soltznin from the corner of my eye, trying to get my attention with her insistent stare. I ignore her.
“You’ve heard…you don’t hear much, huh?” Another mocking laugh. “Why do you think that is, soldier?”
I say nothing.
“Because they cooked it up. The Croup isn’t anything but a lab virus the Admin’s been testing on people like us, the Spectres. But something happened, and it’s outta the labs and into the system, being passed around by soldiers and citizens. Hasn’t got out here to Dramma Sdutti yet, but with the way you Corps are starting to peel off, eventually it will. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the reason the military is starting to rebel.”
It’s my turn to laugh, but there isn’t much humor in it. “You’re sick as well as paranoid. I don’t know where you get your ‘news,’ but—”
“We’re going now, Tech One.” Soltznin puts an emphasis on my rank, as if military chain of command matters anymore. But she’s right. Temple’s road leads to nowhere.
I stand up, attentive to the way Temple’s eyes follow me, but neither he nor the kids move. Following Soltznin out the door without a look back, I work on shaking the unease his doom-and-gloom words bred in me.
Before we’ve gone more than a few steps, we hear a plaintive “Please.” Turning, I face the youngest. “Please,” he repeats, “we need—”
“Look, kid—Pete, right?”
He nods.
“Pete, we can’t help you.” I look into his face for another second, his helplessness holding my gaze like a magnet. I start to follow Soltznin, then have an idea. Digging in my pocket, I pull out two of the nasal filter sets that make air like what’s on this rock breathable and hold my hand out. “You can have these.”
The kid knows what they are, but he doesn’t reach for them, waiting for the conditions.
Which are: “In exchange for that quad we rode here.”
“Done.” The older brother has stepped out to find out what’s going on and overhears me. He swipes for the filters, but I pull them back too quickly.
“What kind of power does it use?”
“Batteries.”
“Is there a spare?”
He hesitates, not liking how quickly the potential deal is stacking in my favor. I offer, “These will last six to eight months. That’s with continuous use. They won’t do anything for him”—I glance pointedly toward the dwelling’s interior—“but they will do you two a world of good.”
“He’s dying,” Pete says. As I look into his face, the sadness I expect to see there isn’t. Instead, his expression is pinched and hard, a good facsimile of anger to cover up the fear that skulks just beneath.
“I’m sorry.” It’s a useless nicety, but it’s all I have.
The older one still stares at me, his own anger not hiding anything but more of the same.
“What’s your name, kid?” Stoic, sullen silence. “What’s your brother’s name, Pete?”
“Drew.”
Drew shoots his younger brother a sneer that promises retribution, but I cut in before he can let his boiling angst out on the wrong victim. “Drew, you know your dad’s days are numbered. Where’s your mother?”
“She took off. Left us behind.”
His words trigger in me an unexpected bubble of compassion, and I’m suddenly seeing these kids as more than just a means to an end. Because I know what it’s like to be left behind. The only gift my and David’s mother ever gave me before she split was an older brother who actually gave a damn about me.
I continue, still talking directly to Drew, “What I’m offering you isn’t just a way to keep yourself from getting sick like your father. It’s a chance for your future. And not just yours, but Pete’s too. Because who do you think is going to watch out for him when your dad’s gone?”
For the first time, the rough exterior he’s consistently shown—except when he’d given his old man a drink of water to staunch his coughing fit—cracks. His eyes widen, showing a tiny bit more sparkle than was there a moment ago. The struggle going on inside him isn’t as hidden as I know he hopes it is, but I don’t show that I can see it. He’s learning to be a grown-up in a hard way, but he’s already learned that out here he doesn’t have an alternative.
