Innocence Lost

by O. J. Lowe

  Peter Jacobs was coping as well, surprisingly Theo thought. The stories about Unisco went something along the lines that they only liked new callers who they could mould and shape into something better, along their own terms and lines. Raw material rather than the finished product. They didn’t like those who’d already been calling for a period of longer than three years or so, they were set in their ways, they were used to the luxuries and the rewards of their chosen profession and they didn’t do well with the change when they were forced to adapt.

  He knew this because they’d been told it their first lecture, how they weren’t expected to make it through, but they were open to being proved wrong as a collective. He’d been surprised by Jacobs immensely. He thought he looked like some idiot who’d drop out after a few days, realising that this had been a massive mistake, but the stubbornness was there. He almost looked as determined as Theo himself to ensure that he didn’t crash out in disgrace.

  Even if he thought he was a bit of an idiot, he could respect blind stubbornness. Not admitting when you were beaten was an admirable skill to Theo. Some gave up at the first sign of a hurdle. They were worthy of wholehearted contempt, they deserved everything they received, which in a perfect world would be very little.

  He’d long come to realise that wasn’t the way of the kingdoms though. The world wasn’t perfect. Those who deserved nothing sometimes thrived and those to whom everything should come often were the recipients of nothing. To describe life as cruel was an understatement but often he’d felt the urge just to get on with it. Bemoaning his lot wouldn’t change anything, no matter how much someone hoped it might.

  Pete Jacobs and Daniel Roberts had struck up a friendship of sorts. They’d been forced to room close together, sharing the cramped bunk beds in a communal dorm with every other new male cadet that stank of sweat from the previous occupants, sweat and stuff that Pete didn’t want to think about. Walking in, he’d seen his bunkmate stood leaning against the beds, an eyebrow raised.

  “Hey, it’s you,” he’d said. “Peter Jacobs. Hoped it’d be you.”

  “Really?!” Pete had sounded surprised. “Me?”

  “Well, yeah?” Roberts had given him a grin. “Don’t worry, I’m not crazy. Just... Well I thought it’d be a good thing.”

  “A good thing?” Already the first day had been long with the orientation they’d made them all sit through, two hours of talking concluded by an instructor with a paintball rifle bursting in and firing into the crowd, just so they could see who’d react fastest in the face of an unexpected crisis. Pete was proud to notice that he’d avoided getting any paint on his jacket. The only stains were from the grass where he’d landed roughly following his arrival on location. He still couldn’t believe they’d thrown him out of an aeroship. More than once he’d wondered what might have happened if he hadn’t worked out the airloop quickly enough. That had been a bit of a cheap trick in his book.

  “Yeah we got something in common. We were both at the Quin-C. Remember me? I got knocked out by Weronika Saarth…”

  “Erm…” Not even in the slightest, Pete wanted to say. He remembered Saarth far more if he was honest, a striking redhead who’d royally kicked off after she’d been beaten by his good buddy Scott Taylor in… he thought it was the quarter finals. Funny story for all involved, unless you were her. “Vaguely. I’m not going to wake up and find you staring at me in the dark, am I?”

  “Pfft!” Roberts actually snorted at that. “I don’t think they’ll let us sleep long enough for creepy night time activities. Besides…” He lowered his voice an octave or two. “There’s people here I’d rather spy on at night, am I right?” He held up his hand and Pete waited a moment before smacking it with his own. There had been some women at the orientation, but nothing was further from his mind. Not right now. He’d made a choice to do this, he was going to do it damn right. As much as he might like the idea of casual sex, he wasn’t going to start chasing it while he was here.

  Besides, every story of Unisco agents said that they got plenty as part of the job, seductive enemy agents and alluring allies all were fair game. Use every tool at your disposal, someone had said, and he wondered if he was to take them literally on that.

  He said as much to Roberts who’d nodded in agreement. “Oh, hells yeah. I can’t… I was at the final. I…” For the first time, his composure broke, and it was Pete’s turn to nod. He remembered it too. He’d made it out unscathed. Plenty hadn’t. How many lives had been torn apart because of what Coppinger had done? When Nick Roper had mentioned to him that there was always more that could be done, he’d made a plunge into a decision that had led him here. The man could have been his brother-in-law but for Harvey Rocastle and Wim Carson.

  Had revenge motivated him to come take this path? He didn’t want to think so. Looking at himself in that light wasn’t something that he really wanted to do. Pete hadn’t ever thought he had a vengeful bone in his body and he didn’t want to start now. No, it wasn’t the thought of avenging Sharon, though he soon might have the power to do that when he completed all this. There’d been a considerable age gap between them, they’d never been as close as say the Arnholt siblings whom he’d become quite good friends with on the island. They’d not shared a father by blood, though if she failed to love his father because of it, she’d never shown it. John Jacobs had done a lot for her, been there for her when her own father hadn’t, and she’d respected him massively for it.

  No, he wanted to honour her. He’d found things out after her death he hadn’t known about her before, through a combination of her fiancé and her former teacher. Ruud Baxter in particular had been very eager to talk about her. He’d spoken highly of her, told him stuff about her past that had been going on while he’d been just a little kid, too snot-nosed to know better. He’d told Pete of her time training to be a Vedo and he’d been more than a little awed by it. Pete had seen them in action at the Quin-C final and how they’d sprang into action when the Coppingers had attacked. Each one of them had been hailed as heroes.

  Baxter had also told him of how her past as a Vedo had ultimately led to her demise. How Carson and Rocastle had come to her with intentions of forcing her hand. She’d fought them, and she’d died for her efforts. Badly. He’d seen her before the funeral and it wasn’t a sight he was ever likely to forget. No matter how good a job the undertaker had tried to do, he hadn’t quite been able to fake away the trauma to the back of her head where she’d been blasted with a kinetic disperser. They’d hid the bruises where she’d smacked the wall, covered up the great tear in her chest with her clothing but he knew it was there.

  The funeral had been a complete farce in the end, but Roper had ultimately explained away why he’d done what he’d done in the aftermath of the carnage of the Quin-C final. He’d explained the need for the greater good, that he’d done it to try and honour her by catching a dangerous person. He could appreciate it, even if he couldn’t entirely forgive him for it.

  “We’ve all got reasons we need to be here,” Pete said softly as he looked at Roberts. “You want top bunk or bottom one?”

  “Top,” Roberts said immediately. “They come in here shooting again, they’ll probably hit you first.” He grinned as he said it and despite everything on his mind, Pete grinned too.

  “Yeah but you know what?”

  “What?”

  “They do that, I’m closer to the door. Be up and gone like a shot. I’d practice your flying dismount from that thing.” He inclined his head towards the top bunk. “Lest you land like an idiot.”

  Silence hung between them for a moment, lost in contemplating the ridiculousness of the conversation they were having. He’d missed this. He hadn’t seen Scott for weeks now and this sort of talk was something they’d done from time to time when they’d travelled together. Happy days, even if they felt so long ago now.

  “You know what?” Roberts said. “We’re not going to get shot at in here, are we?”

  “Well I’d
bloody hope not,” Pete replied with a grin. “But I never expected to get shot at in the first session of orientation either.”

  “Oh, I know, right? And what the hells was the idea in tossing us out an aeroship to get us here in the first place?”

  To that, Pete had no answer he could give.

  The two of them had joined Theo in the mess hall one day, surrounded him before he could get up and leave. Something he almost certainly would have done given the chance. He ate alone here, had chosen it as his own section and everything. Today had been different, he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He’d heard the whispers about him today and he’d done everything to ignore them. Who the hells were they to talk about him? Like their own pasts were so clean.

  “Oh, come on, stay!” Roberts said jovially. At least it was a pleasant preference to the mutters behind his back. He’d nearly gone for at least two people so far over it. “This whole lone wolf thing is getting old, man. You’re not fooling anyone.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re letting the side down, Theo,” Pete said, glancing around the mess hall. The food wasn’t much to write home about, but it was passable. It was better than he might have managed out on the open road, but he’d definitely had better. A lot better. It was meat, he knew that much but what sort of meat was rather difficult to say. It had a lot of texture to it, he’d spent minutes chewing at it and the damn thing still wasn’t showing any signs of defeat.

  Given that his question hadn’t had an answer, he didn’t find himself rushing to ask another. Instead he chewed thoughtfully, not letting his thoughts be voiced. He continued to work the meat, chewing thoughtfully as he tried to passively ignore the two of them staring at him. The meat couldn’t win forever, he finally swallowed it down and looked at them both pointedly. “I wasn’t aware there were any sides,” he eventually said. He hadn’t been either. An interesting choice of phrasing. “I’m on my side.”

  “Told you,” Roberts said. “Not a team player.” He sounded more than a little triumphant as he said it, managing to effectively annoy Theo without even trying. “Seriously, dude, can’t go in like a one-man army at this. You might have this whole thing going on, but it’ll get you killed out there.”

  “And what do you care about that?” Theo said through gritted teeth. The flavour of his food turned to ash in his mouth, burnt and tasteless charcoal at the back of his throat. Of the days he’d had here, today was turning out to be one of the worst ones so far.

  “Well someone has to, right?” Pete said.

  His thoughts drifted back to the class earlier, memories swimming back through his mind. He’d been sat towards the back, a data pad in front of him, maybe the whole of the group being trained locked in a room that was only slightly big enough for purpose. The lecturer had been someone he’d not seen around the facility before, a crimson haired woman with a pointed nose and a slight build. When she walked, it was with an uneven gait, like a disabled heron. He’d noticed one of her legs was a little longer than the other. Strange. It was hard to tell how old she was, her skin was free of wrinkles but in her eyes, she looked as if life was finally getting to her. Her voice was hoarse and croaky, or perhaps she’d just spent a lot of years on the tabac leaves. She’d only been introduced as Professor Melane.

  Since he’d started training for Unisco, he’d started to notice stuff like this. They insisted on it. Perfect awareness not just of the people he’d meet but of his surroundings. There’d been lessons in it early on, they’d expected the students to hone it as often and as rapidly as possible. One of their favoured tests had been to pull someone out the mess hall after they’d eaten and get them to recite the floor plan, tell them exactly where everyone had been sat. Another was to give certain cadets contraband beforehand and to make the student being tested work out who was carrying it based on the way they moved and acted.

  Those who got it right were allowed to eat again that day. Those who got it wrong were given some slight menial task, just enough to remind them that they were being reprimanded. A reminder to work at it harder in the future or there might well not be another chance to get it right. He’d had one reminder and then he’d really taken to it. As things went, it wasn’t quite as hard as he’d expected. It wasn’t all about constant staring, just trying to remember every detail. That was impossible.

  He’d heard about those with photographic memories, he didn’t have that. What he’d found was that it was easiest when you relaxed, didn’t try to remember everything. Just take in a few key bits and remember those. With those out of the way, the rest soon fell into place. It worked for him, that was all that mattered, and he couldn’t complain about it. It was a journey, not a destination. A dozen steps to mastery and you could only take one at a time.

  Her subject had been criminology and she’d been pulling out some examples of how the great criminals of the five kingdoms of the past had operated. She’d spoken at length as to how the Montella family had crippled half of Serran and some of Premesoir at one point, how they had their fingers in most of the key enterprises. If they didn’t want something getting built, it wouldn’t. If they wanted to skim a few thousand spirits off the beginner supply a month, they would do. He’d heard stories in the past about how new callers had gone to pick up a starting spirit and been informed that there were none left despite a mass delivery taking place a day or so earlier.

  Then again, his own origins had never quite been the same as those of anyone else. He’d never been to Serran at the time when the Montella family really were their own bosses, last he’d heard all the big names had gone to trial for many counts of criminal activity. There’d been the Regan’s in Canterage, typically understated but no less viciously enterprising when it came to the chance of a profit. Their speciality had been fixing spirit bouts and gambling, but they’d proven themselves to be the top dogs in the Canterage underworld when it turned to violence, fighting off every challenger who tried to muscle in on their business interests. They’d recognised the nature of how many credits could be made out of spirit calling early on and they’d gone to take their own chunk of it. Rumours had it they’d been moving into drugs as well before Sammy Regan had been killed earlier in the year and they’d yet to recover ground from it. He’d been the big brain behind it all, had made sure he stayed that way and after his death, they had nobody else of his calibre.

  All of them had been interesting to hear about, in their own way. Seeing the way that they’d done things, even now looking at the way that their actions had had repercussions, he could see for the first time, the size of the job at hand. All of them seemed to pale in comparison to what Claudia Coppinger was doing now, wherever she may be, but there was still one other name to come up in the lecture that he’d been praying wouldn’t be mentioned, but alas it looked as if he were to be disappointed. Especially as the picture of the sharp featured man flashed up on the wall. He still had hair in the photo, still looked like a friendly uncle when the reality was quite different. Even in the picture, the sheer imposing nature of his presence wasn’t lost.

  “John Cyris,” she’d said, staring out at the class through her pink rimmed glasses. “I’d have hoped all of you have at least heard his name, I’d think that at least some of you might know a little more about him…” He’d wondered if that was a dig at him. It wasn’t a warm day, but he’d felt the sweat soaking his forehead. It wasn’t what he wanted to discuss right now. “But that’s not important. As criminals went, John Cyris went down a route that many of them have tried, but remarkably, he got away with it longer than most of them do. He tried to appear a respectable figure in the community, some of the enormous profits that he made from blackmail, intimidation, trafficking and theft amongst others went straight back into good causes. He considered it a perfect way to launder so many illegal credits.”

  Thinking back, Theo could certainly remember a lot of what Cyris had said about charity in the past and not a lot of it was complimentary. For fools and the unfortunat
e, he’d always remarked over dinner. Helping out those who couldn’t help themselves. He didn’t have time for those. He saw people in two different brackets. Those he could use and those that he couldn’t. That was the sort of man that his father had been, and he probably still was. People didn’t change in his experience. Barring that solitary meeting many months ago, he’d cut Cyris out of his life completely. No regrets about it either. He’d never been that sort of guy to hold regrets. And he’d never been especially close to the man either. He would have cut him away a long time ago if he’d been able to.

  “And he was right. For a long time, Cyris was based in Delhoig, he had a big compound there and ruled his own little kingdom from it. He had a wife and a son…” Theo felt a little stab in the back of his spine at that. He was sure she was narrowing her eyes at him as she said it. Maybe he was being paranoid “He had three acolytes, Jenghis, Silas and Mara who carried out his will…”

  Actually, he could remember those three quite well. Jenghis had been his first crush, a tall statuesque woman with huge black-purple hair and the sort of breasts that he’d have loved to have buried his face in. He’d never been that interested in sex and yet he’d always had that urge. Mara had been a polar opposite, smaller and non-descript, olive skinned and more than a hint of danger about them. If Jenghis was the honey, Mara was the trap. And Silas… Theo had always gotten the hint that his father would have preferred Silas to be his son. The two of them had always had a bond that had initially made Theo jealous. Eventually he’d given up trying. Fuck the pair of them had been his sentiments at the time.

  “All of which meant that very little could be traced back to him. They operated through layers and layers of operational security, they were very successful at it as well. Cyris made several viewing screen appearances, he came across as a bit of an evangelist, he often voiced his thoughts on the divines and about making the kingdoms a better place. Not entirely…” Melane said, bringing to voice the thoughts that had been bubbling in Theo’s mind. “Not entirely unlike Claudia Coppinger is now. He sought out those with little going for them, the uneducated, those teetering on the brink between jail and death and he made their lives better. Not massively better but just enough that they would continue to work and work for him, giving him everything they had in the promise that things could only continue to improve. Often it would cost them their lives. He became like a Divine to them.”