“Just kidding,” the man had an easy smile. He ruffled Vante's hair, and laughed. “Actually I'm from Terrus. I was a police officer there, a long time ago. I had the option to take an easy retirement, and I took it. So now I'm just running around doing anything and everything. Thought I'd hang out on Venus for a few days, and take in some of the culture.”
“You're at the right place,” Vante said. “Want to meet the Quetzals?”
“What are Quetzals?”
“Oh boy,” Vante grinned. “I do not want to spoil this for you.” Introducing strangers to the Quetzals was his favourite part of the job. “By the way, what's your name?”
The stranger smiled. “Aaron Wake.”
The tall man performed some stretches, unlimbering himself in preparation for flight.
Vante tried to get a better read on him.
He was definitely believable as a member of the Solar Arm Constabulary. The deportment. The way he carried himself. The way he constantly seemed just a hairs breadth from sudden, explosive action.
He looked angry. Filled with a nameless sort of rage that he had no expression for. His movements were stiff and tense. When Vante asked him to repeat his name for an insurance form, he looked irritated.
He didn't seem like the tourist sort. What enticed him to come to the solar arm's most expensive party destination was a mystery to Vante.
Vante was beginning to think he was lying about his back story. Venus was a popular stopover destination for small time criminals and people on the run from the law. Wake fit this profile as well as he did any other.
Vante ignored his unease. A paying a customer was a paying customer.
The stranger signed an insurance form, nodded and uh-huh'd his way through Vante's usual safety lecture, then he jumped off the edge of the platform. Vante watched his figure plummet towards Venus's murky green-brown atmosphere until it was just a tiny human shape.
And then the man snapped out of the dive, executing an expert aileron roll as he climbed a few dozen meters in seconds.
Vante jumped off after him, monitoring his position in case he needed to make a rapid rescue with the skyhook.
Soon he relaxed. The guy was good. He moved and flew as though he'd been born with Vyres stuck to his back. He easily read the changing air pressure, adjusting his flaps and angles accordingly. He performed tight loops and twirls that would have challenged Vante, even though the boy half his size.
They played a game, with Vante hurling balls from the platform and the man catching them. He soon gave up when he realised he simply could not get one past the man.
Finally, Wake flew close enough that he could feel the man's beating wings.
“Have any of your customers ever died, doing this?”
Vante demurred. “That's not something they like me talking about it.”
“Then let's speak academically,” the man said. “Imagine a Vyre rental similar but not necessarily identical to this one. Imagine you collected all the incident reports from its past few years of business. There would have been...incidents, correct?”
“Speaking in general terms, yeah,” Vante said. “There were incidents.”
Wake looked down at the endless expanse of toxicity. Ten straight kilometers to Venus's surface, through sulphurous clouds thick enough to eat your bones. “I bet there's disappearances nobody can even explain, because they were never reported. Just someone slipping off the platform and falling.”
“Might be,” Vante wondered where this strange conversation was going.
“I bet it'd be a good way to hide a body,” Wake said. “On Terrus, the best way is to find an ocean, and dump the body overside. Burying corpses isn't a smart idea. Not unless you have the tools to go really deep. You can smell a corpse through several feet of light dirt. And wild animals will dig it up in a search for food.”
“Yeah, that's true,” Vante said, now profoundly uncomfortable.
An even worse way is to poison a guy and then just leave him sitting in a chair, at a mansion where various people have seen you come and go. But we're just talking in the hypothetical, aren't we, Wake?
They swooped in tandem underneath the platform of Zephyr city. Shadows covered them like a blanket.
“Yep,” Wake said. “Ocean burials, that's the way to handle things. Drop anchor until you find a nice deep trough, not somehwere where the tide will bring it back in. Tie weights around the body, and drop it overside. Also, slit the belly, so that the gases can escape instead of floating it back up to the surface.”
“Woah,” Vante said. “You've got quite an active imagination.”
“Comes from being an ex cop,” Wake said. “I just can't shut off that side of my brain. Whenever I see something, whether it's a rope or a pound of salt or a bucket, I'm always thinking about how it could be used by a psychopath. For example, did you realise that Vyres can be pulled out with a bare hand? Why, at any moment I could swoop behind you, rip your goddamn wings out, and you'd die. They'd never find your body.”
Then Wake flew closer, angling in on to Vante's back. The boy felt the man's hand grip on to the Vyre, and gently pull. He screamed, thrashing wildly.
“Relax!” Wake said. “Just kidding. Having a little fun, it's what I'm here to do.”
Vante's heart was thundering in his chest. He'd never felt so afraid.
He arrowed straight up to the platform, a hundred meters above their head. He landed on the surface, panting, sweating so much in fright that he was in danger of shedding his UV protection.
In a few seconds, there was a loud thud as Wake landed beside him. The man was all smiles, all friendliness. The momentary darkness that had flashed inside the man above Venus's atmosphere was completely gone, like an exorcised ghost.
Wake tried to ruffle Vante's hair again. The boy cowed away.
Fuck the money.
He didn't want anything to do with this terrifying stranger.
“Damn, I really frightened you, didn't I?”
Vante tried not to show his fear, and probably revealed it by inaction more than by action.
“I'm sorry,” Wake said, an expression of amusement on his face. “I have a bad side of me. One that likes playing games on people. I keep him under wraps, but he pops out from time to time. It was wrong of me to do that. Are we okay now?”
Vante tried to nod, but somehow couldn't. He felt rooted to the spot, paralysed by fear. He felt that any sudden movement would be a prey signal, causing the predator to pounce.
“Say,” Wake said. “You never showed me those...Quetzie-thingies? Whatever they're called. Is that something we have time to do today?”
Vante was still hyperventilating, still a raw and shaking nerve cluster of fear.
“I'm sorry,” Wake said. “I must have stirred you up. Really, I apologise. You said I could roll some of my hours into another visit tomorrow. I think I’ll use that option.”
He extended his hand. Vante stared at the palm of his hand, like a cut rate palmist. He was suddenly thinking dark and inexplicable thoughts, like whether that hand had ever wielded a knife, or an axe.
But in the end, he shook it.
Managed a smile.
Now Wake was all business. “I confess I have a reason to be here beyond taking the breeze. I need to purchase a set of Vyres. Are you able to sell them to me?”
Vante had to shake his head. “No, I'm sorry. They're not for sale.”
“Why not?”
He tried to fumble out the standard explanation – that biokinetic implants were highly regulated, and not for use by unlicensed civilians – but Wake cut him off. “Very well. I understand. I just thought you might have some stock sitting back there, collecting dust. Think nothing of it. See you tomorrow, boy. I had a lot of fun.”
Aaron Wake swaggered back towards the gate. Vante stared at his retreating back, still recovering from the fright.
As the numbness of shock rolled away, it left a single truth behind. Like receding water, leaving behind a
stone of fact. Hard. Painful. True.
I think that man is a murderer.
Los Neo Angeles – June 21, 2143 – 1200 hours
The war was over, and the occupation had begun.
Over the past few days there had been a ghostly rain of metallic fragments, lighting up the sky from hemisphere to hemisphere. Thousands of ships had been destroyed, all of them belonging to the Solar Arm. The remaining command had immediately surrendered, before the Reformation Confederacy’s spacebound scythe claimed them as well.
None of the civilians on the ground understood what was happening when they watched luminous streaks of fire descent from the clouds. How had this happened? Hadn’t a peace been brokered, just days ago?
When Raya Yithdras returned to Terrus as a conquerer, descending like a falling angel through the solar debris field of twenty thousand Solar Arm ships, she revealed the truth.
Sybar Rodensis was a traitor. While making overtures of peace so that the Reformation Confederacy would let their guard down, he'd cowardly attacked Mars.
A Dravidian full of enemy troops had landed in Valashabad. The actual attack was clumsy, and had been easily thwarted. Nearly every single one of the soldiers was registered as a combatant in the Solar Arm's database. With the evidence undeniable that they were being betrayed, Raya Yithdras had no choice but to attack General Sybar Rodensis’s peace envoy. Immediately, and with full force.
In light of Rodensis's falseness, it was very likely that he'd murdered Sarkoth Amnon. The old Prime Minister's body had never been found, and it was now reasonable to believe he'd been the target of a political assassination.
Sybar had been furiously stabbing knives in every turned back he could, and he was a poison that couldn’t be allowed to fester. And he hadn’t.
He had died.
The Reformation Confederacy occupied Terrus, immediately installing themselves as a new government. The solar system was united again, every possible threat purged.
So why the paranoia?
Why the constant sense that things weren't right?
A week after the war ended, a woman called Rosemary Rohilian went to the veterens' affairs center in Los Neo Angeles.
She’d been a soldier, once. Now, she wasn’t sure of what she was.
She waited in a long line of shifty-eyed strangers, some in visible stages of PTSD and trauma shock, before she was buzzed through.
"Hello," she told the woman at the desk. Most machines had been decomission from government work, and replaced with humans. Humans who had loyalties to the Reformation Confederacy. "I've come to enquire about my veteran pension.”
“Details, please,” the woman said.
"Every week, I receive two thousand ducats from the government," she said. "Since the occupation, it hasn't come."
The woman regarded her severely, the lines of her jaw as sharp and accurate as the head of an axe. "Oh? And why are you claiming a veteran’s pension?”
Rose sighed. Was this person stupid? "Because I'm a veteran. I held the rank of private during the Caitanya-9 expedition. And I commanded a patrol during the civil war.”
"If you are a soldier with a Reformation Confederacy number and badge, you should be on active duty," the woman said. "There is peacekeeping work to attend to. Any pensions the new government sees fit to disburse will be remitted to you after you are honorably discharged.”
"A Reformation Confederacy…? What are you talking about?" Rose was suddenly angry. It had been a long wait, and her life was falling apart. "I'm a Solar Arm soldier. I fight for the Solar Arm. And I earn a pension from the Solar Arm."
Immediately, she felt like she'd wandered too far out over the ice. Everyone in the building was looking at her. Craning at her. Scrutinizing her. She felt like a microphone, picking up vibrational frequencies from every axis and every direction.
The woman raised a finger. "I want you to listen to me, because I'll only say this once. You made a mistake by coming here."
Rose lowered her eyes.
"The Solar Arm no longer exists. All of its armed divisions are disbanded. You do not have a rank. You do not have a number. In fact, you should pretend you were never a soldier. Anyone who holds a rank is of immediate interest to the intelligence division of the Reformation Conspiracy. Got it?"
"Got it," Rose said. She felt stupid. Conned. She'd wandered into a nest of enemies.
"So, what was your final rank, soldier?"
"I made the level of..." she began, and abruptly corrected herself as the woman's scowl deepened. "I was a private. Fresh out of boot camp. Never got the chance to fight. Happy?"
"Exactly. Just repeat that to yourself, and you'll stay out of harm's way. Now, can I help you find the door?"
“Please,” she said. “I have a baby.”
“I cannot help you.”
“I can’t care for her on my own. I need help.”
“Please leave.”
She didn't leave with any of her pension money.
She didn't leave with handcuffs on her wrist, either, so she called that one a draw.
"You are so fucking stupid!" Yves Gullveig screamed at her in the half-furnished apartment. "What were you thinking, going out there? Do you even realise what's happening, all around us? Every day?"
"We need the money, alright? Moving you up here from Sydney blew a hole in our finances." Rose said. "What else am I supposed to do? When I enlisted, they signed a form saying they'd pay for shit."
"Then is not now, Rose! The ‘they’ you’re talking about got blown into pieces small enough to fit through a cheese grater!"
A strange, wailing cry came from inside the tenement building.
No, then was not now, indeed.
The end of the war had singled her out for particularly bad luck.
Rose had been on patrol duty in the barren stretch of highway, near the limits of maglev roads. She’d been at the entrance of Arrakhia Mountain when news of Sybar Rodensis’s sudden obliteration in battle had hit her.
The abrupt conquest of the planet had thrown all strategic priorities out the window – she was now patrolling enemy territory. Arrakhia Mountain now belonged Reformation Confederacy. While trying to make up her mind on what to do – down arms, return to base, just throw caution to the wind and desert – a woman had come from inside the mountain.
And that woman had forced very young baby into her arms.
“Goddamn it,” Yves said. “On top of everything else, a fucking baby.”
“I had to take it. There was no other option. The woman was forcing her on me.”
“You should have refused. ‘Not my problem’. Isn’t that the number one most useful phrase they teach you in the army?”
“This wasn’t an army thing,” Rose said, “it was a personal thing. The woman was nuts. And she was on some sort of homicidal rampage against the baby’s father. Yalin’s better off with us, believe me.”
“I wish I could say we were better off with Yalin,” Yves sulked.
The building had been refurbished at a moment’s notice. After planet had been conquered, Rose had a sudden sense that travel from place to place might now become a lot more difficult. She’d arranged for her girlfriend Yves Gullveig to come to the American continent, before the borders snapped closed.
They would face tomorrow, together.
She hadn’t told Yves about the baby until they’d been reunited, a tactical error she now regretted. Yves hated children, almost to the point of repudiating her own childhood. The mood inside the place had been strained.
But still, they only had to poke their heads out of doors for a reminder of just how good they had it.
The streets were nearly deserted. You could look down any alleyway and your eyes would cross hundreds of meters of gray cracked glass before they alighted on a human face. The public still seemed to be obeying a curfew, one that apparently started at zero hours and then ran for at least twenty five hours beyond that. When Rose went outside, she got stink-eye from on-duty
military personnel. She couldn’t fathom what she was doing wrong.
The war had ended, and a new government was installed in Selene. So why was martial law still in place?
Why were so many of Rose’s old comrades disappearing?
She’d heard tales of internment camps, and gulags opening up in the asteroid belt. In the end, Raya Yithdras had been smarter than Sybar Rodensis. She knew that a victory with one’s enemies alive and free was no victory at all.
The word passed among the Solar Arm’s disbanded army was keep your head low, keep your mouth shut, and as soon as you see an opportunity, get offworld.
Yves was right. It had been risky to enquire about her pension.
They were deep in the shit, but that was no pretext to grab a shovel and make it that much deeper.
They went to sleep that night, in different rooms. Rose needed to be up frequently through the night to care for the baby. Yves wasn't sharing in that duty, and Rose didn't blame her. But it did mean there was now a divide between them.
They talk about lesbian bed death, Rose thought, changing Yalin. Sadly, I can't blame this particular death on natural causes.
She worked silently, doing the best job with this unexpected curveball as possible. She'd never thought she'd be a mother. And she still wasn't a mother. Once, she'd forgotten to change Yalin for several hours, and a searing rash had festered across the baby's bottom. She hadn't known how to reconstitute the milk formula - Yves had asked some discreet questions for her. She was barely functioning on four hours of sleep a day. Somehow, what was bearable when you were in the army now seemed utterly abnormal in a domestic environment.
But mostly, she couldn't get over how Yalin hardly seemed like a baby.
She seldom cried. Her vocalisations were short, clipped sounds, as though her vocal chords were too dignified for pained yowls.
The infant had attentive eyes that followed her around the room. Examining her, like a detective twelve inches long, gathering evidence of all her failures.
Am I under arrest? she kept on wanting to ask the baby. As the sleepless hours stretched on and on, sometimes she forgot to think this absurdity, and actually spoke it out loud.
Foreverlight (The Consilience War Book 4) Page 4
