by Hugo Huesca
Clarke gave the man a savage grin. “Crystal clear. See? We’re on the same page now. Nice talking to you—”
The door to Pascari’s quarters closed an inch away from Clarke’s nose.
23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Delagarza
The outdoor heaters rose like pillars marking the domain of Derbies’ Taco Empire. Farther out, the occasional patrol of security officers strolled past the otherwise deserted avenue, throwing shady looks at the few businesses that dared remain open in the middle of the light cycle.
“Assholes are having a field day,” Cooke pointed out, giving a patrol an acidic look once the officers had their backs turned. “They’re playing make-believe of being agents or some shit.”
Delagarza shrugged and ate a mouthful of taco. The synthetic spicy salsa burned in his mouth like he had eaten a molten rock. It warmed him better than the reg-suit and the heaters combined.
“Let them play,” said Derbies, who sat next to Cooke and Delagarza. “At least they’re not bothering anyone right now.”
“That’s because the blizzard sent all of Alwinter into hiding,” Cooke said. He tried to take a bite out of his burrito, but his hand shook so badly it spewed meat everywhere.
Since he had found out about Delagarza’s involvement with the enforcers, Cooke’s nerves had been on edge. Delagarza would’ve told the man to get off the planet, but that option left the table with Vortex cutting out all traffic in-and-out of the planet.
“The machines are fixed now,” Derbies pointed out. “It’s not the blizzard people are hiding from, it’s them. Damn disaster for business, but what can we do?”
“Something,” Cooke said, frustration seeping through his voice. “There has to be something. It’s bullshit, man, there’s no way this siege is legal. Dione is a port city, we’ll starve if shit keeps going.”
“Damn straight we’ll starve. Another taco?”
“Sure.”
Delagarza noted how Cooke talked about “we” now. A couple months ago, Cooke thought of himself as a stranded tourist, and Delagarza was sure that Derbies would’ve agreed. Today, the two men were buddies.
Shared hardship has a way of uniting people. Delagarza finished his taco and started another. His mouth burnt so badly he could barely taste the meat, but that was by design, since it was probably a 3d printed krill-based foam construct with a drop of meat-flavoring.
In the distance, a new security patrol strolled past Taco Empire’s extended terrace and stopped. One of the officers, a woman with shoulders as wide as Delagarza’s torso, gave them the stink-eye and went to them.
“Here we fucking go,” whispered Cooke. Delagarza kicked the man’s shin to shut him up.
He offered the security officer one of his best smiles. “How’s it going, officer?”
“IDs,” the woman demanded.
“Is there any problem?” Cooke asked.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Dunno. Is there?”
“Dunno,” said Cooke.
Reiner’s fucking sake, he’s still too green for his own good, Delagarza thought. He kicked Cooke’s shin again, which earned him an irate glance.
“Here, officer,” Delagarza said, connecting his wristband to hers and sending her his registration number. “Of course there isn’t any problem. My friend here is in a foul mood because he’s a wimp when it comes to jalapeño. Cooke, show the officer your ID, don’t act like a child.”
Cooke gave him a pissed off look, but Delagarza’s warning glance made him comply. The officer checked both IDs with a poker expression, then looked up to examine them.
“A newcomer, huh? Have you gotten yourself into trouble, Cooke, Nick?”
“No,” said Cooke. “I’m just a regular guy.”
The officer and him glared at each other. Cooke broke first.
“Right. Keep it that way, citizens,” the woman said, and went back to her patrol.
“What the hell was that?” Cooke asked, fuming.
“She’s just bored, is all,” Delagarza explained. “The enforcers are having all the fun hunting down the rebels and their families.”
“How can you—of all people—be so easygoing about this?” Cooke snapped.
Delagarza finished his third taco. “Why shouldn’t I? I have nothing to hide. You ought to take it a bit easier, Cooke. Taco Empire is not the hill you want to make your last stand on. Save that righteous fury for when you need it. No offense, Derbies.”
“None taken,” said Derbies. The man laughed, treating Delagarza and Cooke to a row of yellow teeth.
Save for his occasional forays with Cooke to keep an eye on the outside world, Delagarza watched the days trickle by holed up in his apartment.
Hirsen had been silent since the Vortex made its appearance. For what little Delagarza knew about his mental landlord, the agent waited for something to change. That something being, the EIF’s arrival.
If they even come at all, thought Delagarza. Vortex couldn’t have arrived when it did by coincidence. Maybe Hirsen’s rebellion had ended before it began.
The smoke of his cigarette spiraled into the living room’s air recycling unit. Outside, people were dying. It was a discreet death, the kind that you barely notice except if you know where to look. Enforcer death squads breaking into people’s homes in the middle of the night, taking them out with sonic batons, and then disappearing them into black vans. No one saw them again after that.
The rebels last stand wasn’t even televised. Delagarza wondered if Kayoko was still alive. It was amazing how all her money and connections meant little to a giant spaceship. Man’s might meant little to the gods above.
The door buzzed and announced a visitor. “Charleton, Jamilia,” said the digital voice, and showed a holo of Charleton’s face standing right outside. She looked worried.
“Let her in,” said Delagarza. He tossed his cigarette into the ashtray and had the living room spray itself with a minty aroma to mask the nicotine stink. The door unlocked itself.
Charleton entered and immediately frowned. “You know air freshener only makes cigarette smoke worse, right?”
“What brings you around, Jamilia? It’s almost past curfew.”
She plopped down into Delagarza’s single sofa. “We need to talk.”
“Nothing good ever came of that.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but there was a hint of a smile on her lips. “It’s serious, Sam.”
Delagarza straightened. “Alright, shoot.”
She opened a holo screen from her wristband and connected it to Delagarza’s home network. He cloned the screen and took a good look at it.
“It’s from those travel logs inside the Shota-M,” he said.
“I’ve studied them for a while now,” she explained. “There’s something about them that didn’t make sense, remember? I think I found out what it is.”
Delagarza eyed the logs and waited for her to go on.
“Know how Alcubierre travel takes several months between star systems?” Charleton asked. “What’s the longest recorded trip duration—without stopping to refuel?”
Delagarza had no fucking idea.
Nine months, two weeks, three days, Daneel Hirsen whispered at the back of his mind.
“Nine months, two weeks, three days,” Delagarza said.
It was a direct path from Jagal to Pothos Star System, practically Edge’s frontier-to-frontier travel. It was made by a private courier carrying the news of the Monsoon’s destruction to a Pothos-based financial conglomerate that could lose trillions if the news reached its adversaries first…
Delagarza performed the mental equivalent of shushing someone.
“That’s right,” she said. “Almost a year. And that was way back then. Modern ships can, theoretically, make the trip in six months.”
She gestured at the travel log, inviting him to reach the same conclusion she had. Delagarza humored her, knowing it was pointless to try. “I can’t read this, Jamilia. I’
m not an astrophysicist.”
What about you? Delagarza thought inwardly. Hirsen did the subconscious equivalent of shrugging and looking the other way.
“I’m not, either,” she said, rolling her eyes again, “I just picked up some tricks of the trade from Outlander’s travelers.”
The log grew in size in Delagarza’s hands as she walked next to him and handled the holo with expert motions.
“We can follow Newgen’s route since it started,” she said, pointing out a bunch of coordinates and times at the start of the holo. “Here. The ship’s registry says it’s a luxury passenger liner, by the way, not related to Newgen at all. If you hadn’t told me about it, I would’ve had no idea. You can see how, at first, it follows a scenic route. Leaves from Demarus Star System, reaches Sadidus Star System and spends a month there. Leaves for Parmenides after that.”
If Newgen had wanted to hide their ship as a luxury liner, going to Parmenides had been a nice touch. It was a deep space station founded by a casino conglomerate. It exploited a legal vacuum during the beginning of the Edge’s colonization to answer to no official government. Technically, there was no constitution in deep space, as it was no-man's-land. Realistically, Parmenides’ survived by virtue of its immense cash flow and its fame as the favored retreat for people way too rich for Las Vegas.
“Doesn’t sound like Isabella’s mother suffered one ounce from the Monsoon tragedy,” Delagarza pointed out.
“According to the records, she died during the trip,” Charleton said.
“I’ll take that back.”
“See, the liner never made it to Parmenides,” said Charleton. “A drive malfunction, the logs claim. They stopped at a random coordinate in the middle of nowhere until the engineers could fix it.”
“Fix an Alcubierre drive in deep space? Good luck with that,” said Delagarza. “It wouldn’t surprise me if it took them a year, if they managed it at all.”
“Thirty four years,” said Charleton.
Delagarza asked her to repeat that, since he must’ve misheard. The number was the same the second time she said it, and the third.
“Bullshit,” said Delagarza. “The log’s are doctored. There’s no way, no way, a ship can survive that long without resupplying. The air recyclers aren’t magic, they can’t keep going forever.”
“Doctored logs from fifty years ago?” said Charleton. “I don’t know, Sam. It looks as weird to me as it does to you. But that’s what happened. Maybe they had a mining ship hidden there, even an entire space station. If Newgen was as powerful as people say, perhaps they could’ve done it.”
Delagarza glared at the set of coordinates that Charleton pointed at, wondering if he could derive meaning from them by sheer force of will.
You don’t seem surprised, he thought inwardly.
I had no idea, Hirsen answered, but it makes sense…in a way that answers none of my questions. But at least we know that something happened at those coordinates. That’s better than nothing.
You’re being vague on purpose? Delagarza didn’t bother to hide the annoyance in his voice.
Yes, Samuel, I am. Remember the entire point of having you around? So you don’t know all I know. Yeah, scowl at me all you like. This lady you like so much? She may as well still be alive because of the answers you gave to Strauze during the loyalty test. Think about that for a while.
“Sam?” Charleton asked. “I lost you there. What are you thinking?”
Delagarza shook his head. “Trying to make sense of it is all. So, whatever the liner did for thirty four years, they arrived at Dione next.”
“Yes,” said Charleton, “a straight trip to Elus Star System. The log ends after that. If your sources are true, Reiner has been on Dione since.”
The hum of the apartment’s life-support made it hard to think. Delagarza had never felt that way about his air machines before. He had the powerful feeling that something was missing from the painting that Hirsen and Charleton had painted for him.
But was that feeling his own, or Hirsen’s?
“So, it’s a dead end,” Delagarza said. “Something prompted the liner to hide thirty four years—that’s a lifetime—until it reached Dione. We’ll have to ask Isabella, I guess. If the enforcers haven’t found her yet.”
“What do you mean, ‘something’?” Charleton asked. “It’s quite clear, right? They were hiding from Tal-Kader’s persecution.”
“That can’t be the whole story,” said Delagarza. “Why leave, then? They hid for so long, they could’ve kept going. Maybe it was like you said—Newgen had a self-sustaining deep space station. Why get Isabella to hide on Dione? She was safer back there.”
Hirsen had no idea, either…unless he was lying. How could Delagarza know?
I can’t, Delagarza realized. I’ll have to do the thinking myself.
He couldn’t ask Isabella. She was in hiding, and it was better that way, with the enforcers roaming the streets at night.
He couldn’t ask Newgen, which didn’t exist anymore. He couldn’t ask the crew of the liner since he had no idea who they were and had no access to that information.
Wait a minute.
“Jamilia,” he said, “what happened to the ship? The luxury liner.”
“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said. “I already looked. It was sold as scrap to a private salvage company a couple years ago. I doubt there’s anything left.”
“What’s the name of the company?” Delagarza asked.
Charleton told him. Alwinter Salvage. The name didn’t tell him anything, it was so generic, it had to be deliberate.
It belongs to Kayoko, said Hirsen.
Are you sure? It’s one hell of a coincidence, don’t you think? Delagarza asked. Hirsen was sure. Part of his job as an agent involved knowing that kind of thing about his allies and enemies.
How could she know about the ship…? Oh. Of course. You gave her the travel log yourself, didn’t you?
I gave her the data so she could have her people investigate, said Hirsen. She has access to resources I don’t.
She sure as hell found something, said Delagarza. Whatever it was, it made her purchase that liner and she didn’t bother mentioning it to you.
We had an agreement, Hirsen said annoyed. Her psychological profile suggested she’d stand by it. Her kind isn’t keen on going against their word unless they have a very good reason.
What kind of reason?
Same as anyone’s.
A boatload of money or to save their own hides.
Delagarza reclined in his chair and stared at the ceiling while the hum of the recyclers drilled in his head. He had the vague certainty that, had Hirsen been in control of his body, he would’ve done the exact same thing.
“Maybe it’s better if we never figure it out,” said Charleton. “It’s the kind of knowledge that gets enforcers knocking on your door late at night.”
“Yeah,” Delagarza said, “you’re right. Let’s forget about it, for now. Nothing we can do.”
At least, until the EIF arrived. If they arrived. If Isabella Reiner was still alive.
Charleton went to the kitchen to make herself a coffee. It was well past curfew now, so she would’ve to stay the night. She and Delagarza agreed to it by exchanging a glance. She raised her eyebrows at him, half a suggestion and half a request. He shrugged, smiled faintly, and gave her figure a lascivious look. She got the message.
While the two of them performed their little dance, there was part of Delagarza’s mind that cared little for sex, and nothing for romance. That part of his mind was thinking:
I figure it’s about time we pay a visit to our good friend Kayoko. Figure out what she’s hiding from us.
Delagarza ignored Hirsen’s ramblings. He went to meet Charleton’s waiting lips.
The man in the holo gave Strauze a run for his money on sheer size and raw strength. But where the enforcer’s eyes revealed the cold mind behind his blank expression, Joseph Clarke’s pale blue eyes were haunted and
grim.
It was the third time Delagarza heard the message which had arrived, like the Vortex before, during the rest cycle of Alwinter.
“Denizens of Dione, my name is Joseph A. Clarke, commander of Task Force Sierra of the EIF Independent fleet. My forces are currently on course to your planet. Do not be alarmed. You are not our enemy, and it doesn’t matter what SADF Vortex has been saying. Vortex lies. It’s led by corporate interests wearing the skin of whatever remains of the Defense Fleet. I’m speaking to you because you deserve to know the truth. Vortex is here to search for the daughter of Isaac Reiner, who survived the Monsoon assassination attempt from Tal-Kader. You heard right. Isabella Reiner is alive. She is hiding in Dione, and Vortex, along with the Defense Fleet Sentinel, has the mission of finding her and finishing the job Tal-Kader started. As a member of the Reiner family, we believe Isabella is a witness of Tal-Kader’s machinations, and that’s the reason they’re hunting her. We aim to rescue her and bring Reiner’s assassins to justice. We aim to end Tal-Kader’s unlawful reign over the Systems Alliance and restore the Defense Fleet to the protector of the people it was founded to be. People of Dione, we are your allies. Whatever Vortex and Tal-Kader’s goons say—whatever they do—I advise you to be brave. You’re stronger than you know. I urge you, and Isabella Reiner, if she’s hearing this, to hold on. We’re coming. Clarke out.”
Delagarza closed the holo. The enforcers and the Vortex had already declared it an illegal transmission from terrorist sources and announced that anyone found in the possession of it would be prosecuted as enablers of terrorism if not terrorists themselves.
The newscasters had run Tal-Kader propaganda since Clarke’s transmission reached the planet. They called Clarke an assassin, a liar, and a terrorist. His entire biography had been pulled from Alwinter’s databases and an official version declared him to be a former Defense Fleet officer who had left the service in ignominy after running away from combat during Broken Sky. They claimed that he avoided the firing squad thanks to Tal-Kader’s mercy, and that Clarke had answered that mercy by joining the EIF and becoming a pirate.
