Blood Binds the Pack

by Alex Wells

  “Send up the flare once the sky’s clear, Maheegan,” she said, louder, so the helmet mic would pick it up.

  “Thought you were going to leave me up here until I was well done,” Maheegan said, his tone amused. “I’m barely at medium rare.”

  “It’s your lucky day.”

  Twenty minutes later, Maheegan fired off the signal flare, one that put out a bright puff of green smoke. Hob glanced up at it as she finished packing the last of her gear. “This actually gonna work, Geri?” she asked.

  He shrugged as he checked the strap on one of his saddle bags. “The math ain’t the problem. We’ll find where we’re goin. Your problem’s figurin’ how to get us there.”

  11 Days

  Hob’s group got in last, since they’d been the furthest out. Freki and Coyote waited for them in the garage, which didn’t seem such an odd thing right off. But the expression on their faces wasn’t what Hob had been expecting from either of them. And while Freki reached out to squeeze his brother’s shoulder, they didn’t immediately run off to go start having an incomprehensible talk about curvature and velocity.

  Hob leaned slowly back against her bike, not sure if she wanted to stand after being on her ass so long, or sit because her legs weren’t up to stretching out… after being on her ass so long. “What you got for me?”

  “Message from our darling Mag,” Coyote said. He held out a crumpled flimsy to Hob, and she took it without even glancing down. “All but two of the towns, and you can guess which two, are on strike. As of thirteen days ago.”

  “Fuck,” Hob said. She stuffed the flimsy in her pocket. “Thirteen fucking days. How’d it take thirteen fucking days for us to hear about this?”

  “You know the answer to that already,” Coyote said.

  And of course she did. Messages had to be carried, and left at drop points, then picked up. That slowed things down a hell of a lot. And they’d been away from base for most of those days, scouting out the camps and then the osprey flights.

  “Fuck,” she said again. If it was a strike, things were going to get ugly, and fast. Might have already gotten ugly, and the thought made her stomach turn. And here she was, not there again when Mag needed her. “Scramble the whole base. Everyone, thirty minutes. We’re goin’ to Ludlow.”

  Geri eyed her for a moment, and he didn’t seem to like what he saw. Or maybe he liked it too much. He didn’t smirk, didn’t bitch, didn’t do anything that he normally did. He might as well have been his brother in that moment, how he acted. “Yessir.” He turned and headed out, Freki at his heels.

  Coyote didn’t move a muscle, and he wasn’t smiling. “I suppose it’s my turn to be the responsible adult rather than the crazy uncle,” he said dryly. “We already have a job. Recall the pale fellow with the payroll boxes? He hired all of us for a specific purpose, and this isn’t going to forward that particular contract.”

  “He can wait.”

  Coyote continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “Mag didn’t ask to hire us. Her message was purely informational.”

  Hob curled her lips back in a snarl. “You know they need us. They can’t fight worth shit, and the hammer’s coming.”

  “The hammer might already have fallen. You need to step back, Hob Ravani, and look at the larger picture. I understand that you have a thing about Mag. And–”

  Her fist cracking into his jaw shut that line of reasoning up and sent him reeling back two steps. Hob shook her hand out. His head was harder than it looked. “Thing ain’t the word for it. She’s my blood. Closest I got to blood. And I ain’t leavin’ her to twist. So you shut your goddamn mouth.”

  Coyote straightened and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, leaving a thin smear of red. There was an odd gleam to his eyes, a level of calculation she’d never really seen there before, and it made cold wash some of the anger away. He was looking at her like he wondered how her blood would taste. “And,” he continued, in the same horrible, reasonable tone, “I thought we’d concluded that if TransRift found the ‘Well’ you’ve been driving me and everyone else into the ground to find, we’d all be in far greater trouble than we can imagine.”

  She hated him, she decided. She hated his fancy words and his snooty accent and his refusal to shut up. Most of all, she hated the fact that he wasn’t wrong. But he wasn’t right, either. He couldn’t be. “We ain’t gonna stay. Just gonna get Mag.”

  “You know she isn’t going to come with you.”

  And he was right about that, too. She’d never gotten Mag to back off and take refuge before. The girl was more stubborn than her uncle. She couldn’t swallow back the pleading note in her voice when she said, “I got to try, Coyote. I know your own brother’s a goddamn shitbag, but you still gotta understand.”

  Coyote sighed, then huffed a laugh. “Oh, I understand. I’m here, aren’t I? Blood is thicker than water.” He rubbed one hand over his face. “Give me Maheegan. He’s got the best eyes. I’ll get the plan for the next step from Freki and Geri, and we’ll take care of that while you’re off breaking heads.”

  Hob sucked at her teeth. She didn’t want to spare anyone, not knowing what they were headed into. But she could also feel Old Nick’s bony hand on her shoulder, hear him hissing in her ear: Contract’s all that matters, girl. That’s the only coin we got. You lie to the world, but you never lie with a handshake. If they did that, it would be bending the promise she’d made over the money she’d taken, but it wouldn’t break it. “In and out. You got my promise on that. My real promise.”

  He flipped a hand at her. “You don’t need to tell me that. I’m just following orders.” There was no humor in that statement, though. He rubbed his jaw again and turned away.

  She wondered if she should apologize for hitting him, but the words stuck in her throat. And then he walked away, to get Maheegan and his resupply, and she wondered if she’d end up regretting this as much as the last time she let him go off on his own mission. She swallowed the apology down like knives. If he wanted it, he’d just have to come back alive.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  11 Days

  Ms Meetchim sat straight-backed behind the clean expanse of her desk, framed by the windows of her office. This time, the privacy blackout curtains had been drawn back. Today, the building lights flickered in a particularly bad atmospheric perturbation thanks to the absence of Mr Yellow. But Ms Meetchim’s demeanor was considerably less cold, if not something Shige would ever be so foolish as to consider warm. She listened to Shige’s verbal report in utter stillness except for one finger slowly tapping the glass surface of her desk.

  “A shame,” she said after he’d finished. “I know they’re all pig-ignorant, but I would have thought they’d have a little more sense than this.”

  Shige shrugged helplessly. “Familiarity breeds contempt. An old saying, but still true.”

  Meetchim waved a hand. “I suppose we’ll see how many Mariposa corrals for us. This will be their test. I need more workers on site, and now.”

  “Needing them alive unfortunately does limit the options.”

  “Annoyingly so. We’ll see the numbers after tonight.” She held up a finger. “Have the message sent out that any worker surrendering themselves to the company will be placed on probation, but after one year will be fully pardoned for their breach of contract.”

  Oh, he could imagine the choice words the miners in Ludlow and the other towns would have to say about that sort of offer. “Very generous, sir. And if they continue this self-destructive course?”

  “Starve them out. All they care about is keeping themselves fed. And in the meantime, we can pull the farmers into the dig site.”

  “That may well spike the accident rate,” Shige said. “They are wholly inexperienced.”

  “The fault of the miners for not wanting to do their jobs. But we’ll backfill them into the above-ground jobs first. The tasks should be simple enough.”

  He bowed his head. “I’ll draft a memo to that effect, to go
out to the site with the next cargo run.”

  Meetchim held up a finger again. “You’ll be going with it.”

  “Sir?”

  “We’re moving Mr Yellow from the halfway point to the site itself. The foreman says they’re having too many problems with the portable equipment. Unusual levels of interference. Security Chief Lien has assured me that the pilots will be able to manage the intervening air space that opens up as long as we monitor carefully, and Dr Kiyoder has confirmed that Mr Yellow shows unusually apt control over the atmosphere. She has included a rift resonance generator in the next shipment, and is confident that with its use he’ll be able to extend his control as far as necessary.”

  “I see…?” He made it a question, since there’d been nothing in her words yet to indicate why he needed to be there himself. This situation with the mining towns was fraught enough that he should be monitoring it closely. He had to be ready to act when the inspector arrived.

  “Mr Yellow has been asking for you,” Ms Meetchim said.

  “Ah.” He marshaled a new argument to his lips, about the amount of work Ms Meetchim now faced on her own, but no, he was needed by Mr Yellow. Who was he to argue with that? “When will I be leaving?” He pivoted his thoughts neatly to view the change in plans in a positive light; he’d be able to monitor the situation at this potentially invaluable new mine personally – and position it for the Federal Union to sweep up with little resistance.

  “The next cargo flight departs at 0900. Be there an hour early to report to the flight commander.”

  He nodded again. “Yes, sir. May I go pack?”

  “Please do,” Ms Meetchim said. “I am keeping close watch on this for your next personnel assessment. Good work, Mr Rolland.”

  Shige leaned one hip against the spotless meal counter in his kitchen, inhaling the darkly aromatic steam rising off his tea as it steeped. Nearby, a small hourglass stood, pure white sand trickling down its neck one grain at a time.

  It wasn’t necessary to be quite this traditional about brewing, but it was a ritual he’d come to appreciate during his various assignments, a chance to simply breathe and be, and let the tensions of always wearing someone else’s skin drain away. His modest assistant-salary level apartment, with the west side of the TransRift tower filling up his floor-to-ceiling windows and rendering them functionally useless, had proven to be an excellent refuge, and he did not expect to be back to it for some time. His travel bag sat fully packed by the door, the spare contents of his refrigeration unit ready to be dumped into the compost bin on the way out to the landing field.

  Would he be greeted on the landing field with news of a massacre at Ludlow and the other towns? He sighed and drew in another breath of that soothing tea-scent. This was all necessary, but that didn’t mean he had to feel good about it. Feeling good wasn’t his job; getting results to turn over to the BCRE was. His reward would be a job well done, a duty discharged to the Federal Union. And who was he to want more than that?

  Kazu had wanted more than that, and walked away without a backward glance toward the unwanted little brother he was abandoning.

  This had been the entire trajectory of Shige’s life from the moment Ayana had him created. He was her instrument. But that brief moment, when he had seen those other lives during rift transit, still haunted him. What would it be like, to ride under the moon at Kazu’s – no, Coyote’s – side? He found himself unable to imagine, and instead turned back to his duty.

  The new site Mr Yellow had found would be a boon for the Federal Union… if they could take it over. Some odd, heavy feeling in his mind, the same that had wondered so keenly what the dead spy’s blood would taste like, pointed out that Mr Yellow would no doubt do glorious things… He did his best to quash the burst of exhilaration that did not feel wholly his with mindfulness of duty. Duty did not care about glory.

  His internal speculation over what Mr Yellow could or could not do given a potential new source of power drew his thoughts to the code-locked files. He’d nearly forgotten about them, so caught up in his other efforts. But they ought to have been decrypted a long time past, now. A little light reading before bed, then.

  Shige took his tea and retrieved his reader. This time, those ancient, code-locked files yielded without a problem. He took a careful, aromatic sip as he spooled them back to the early history of the Weatherman program.

  No computers could safely navigate the theoretical rift drive, the file informed him, and they did not know how the original inventors of the drive had operated it; all of those settlers had died within months of returning to Earth, their corpses curiously desiccated. Careful dissection of the remains had yielded no useful data. An organic, then human component was hypothesized to be necessary. Volunteers were sought, under the guise of an advanced training program. Neural aptitudes with an emphasis on mathematical and spatial reasoning were given priority. Ultimately, three subjects were chosen for the initial program.

  Between the spare lines, he wondered how much those people, recruited at the cusp of the interstellar era almost two hundred and fifty years ago, had known about what was going to happen to them. Unfortunately, this sort of human experimentation, while highly illegal, was far outside its statute of limitations.

  He continued reading, to find that two of the subjects had died, the implication being very unpleasantly. The third, retroactively dubbed Weatherman 001, successfully piloted the modified first rift ship. A small in-system jump, then between systems, then from the homeworld to Tanegawa’s World, providing that vital link that had truly started this new age of humanity. A few more trips recorded to different destinations, and there were some notes he lacked the technical expertise to decipher about neural activity. More subjects were sought, partially successful augmentations made that allowed a limping sort of progress toward interstellar travel. Difficulties with neural and immune responses abounded. He read a few first musings made on the possibility of cloning their success story, since none of those who came after him proved to be as good even if they did at least manage to survive. This made him wonder if Mr Green and Mr Yellow were descendants of this first Weatherman, somehow. They didn’t all look the same; they weren’t just clones. But he’d gleaned enough from the other records to know they were always trying new genetic mixes in search of better stability and ability to bond with the neural networks.

  Fascinated, he continued to read. Whatever those long-dead scientists had seen prompted them to try their prototype on the surface of Tanegawa’s World – Weatherman 001 had been asking for it as well, it seemed. And who didn’t want to go to the surface of a world, rather than just orbit? Even if the thought of a Weatherman wanting anything like a normal human seemed odd, now. Maybe the first Weatherman had been more man and less weather. He certainly hadn’t been raised in the sterile confines of a lab.

  Thus, Weatherman 001 was set down on the world. He was allowed the freedom of the small spaceport settlement with his handlers and a contingent of guards, excited notes made about his ability to calm the atmospheric perturbations and allow technology to be used. Perhaps chafing at the strictures of the tiny city, or fueled by some burn of exploration, Weatherman 001 began to ask persistently to go out into the desert. Speculation from the scientists, that perhaps more control over the world could be achieved, and they were willing to try it – after all, his initial request to be placed on land had worked out splendidly for them. And the desert, or rather its mines, was the place from which Weatherman 001’s powers had come. It seemed terribly incautious to Shige, but those had also been different times, a sort of expansive, frenetic energy to push the frontier.

  And then – some nameless disaster, in emotionless black and white. Bodies in the desert, the picture accompanying the dry facts far more reminiscent of what he’d seen on that train car than he liked. But no body for Weatherman 001. He had simply vanished into the sand without a trace. The handlers were puzzled, as he’d showed no signs of mental instability. Weeks of search logs showed
no results. And then the researchers realized that they were trapped on Tanegawa’s World until the home office managed to manufacture a Weatherman 002, their reports long years away from even being received. He could almost feel sorry for them, considering what sort of despair the heartlessly dry reports must have held.

  Curious, Shige flicked along until he found the attached medical file on Weatherman 001. He lacked the expertise to make sense of most of it, until he found the section that was the man’s original personnel file: Gabriel Chua, British and Malaysian descent – how odd the old country names sounded to him. Aged thirty at the time of his transfer to the program, previously an eight-year career in the now-defunct Earth Allied Militia, followed by four years in the up-and-coming private security firm Martindale, which later was renamed in a merger to Mariposa. His field records were best summed up as decorated and brutal. Shige wondered idly why someone with these sorts of standardized test scores had ended up as a skullbreaker, but perhaps it was an issue of temperament.

  Then he flicked over to the next part of the file. His tea mug, still half-full, fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers. He didn’t feel the absence, overwhelmed by the pit of horror that opened in his stomach.

  Staring out from the reader with cool hostility was a face he recognized. The hair was different, of course: military trim rather than long, black rather than white-blond, and eyes dark hazel instead of blue. But the bones of the face were an exact match. He’d seen this man twice: once, outside Primero during a brief confrontation with Mr Green; the second time at the Weatherman’s death. That was the face of Hob’s associate, the pale man who carried a staff topped with a wildcat’s skull.

  Impossible. No, he knew better than to dismiss anything as impossible, not on this planet. But that would make Chua – Weatherman 001, whatever he was called now – 276 years old, and he didn’t seem to have aged a day. And it would mean he’d just handed over the coordinates of the wildcat site to those he now knew to be associates of Weatherman 001. The Weatherman who had gone mad and slaughtered his handlers before vanishing into the desert.