by Adam Carter
“What do you mean what? Who is she? What’s she doing here? Why’s she calling you Dex?”
“Aura Torrance, staying the night, and because I asked her to. Now what’s all this nonsense about an upright dinosaur?”
“I don’t know what it was, but it slashed my leg and might have killed me if Hudson hadn’t turned up.”
“You really should have brought it back, you know.”
“It got away.”
Valentine blinked. “But you told Aura it was dead.”
“So it’s Aura is it?”
“Why do you hate someone you’ve only just met, Aubrey?”
“I don’t hate her. I ...” She seemed angry about something, and Valentine sometimes wished he knew how her mind worked. She was a good woman and a loyal friend, but sometimes she did his head in. “Do they have a shuttle?” Whitsmith asked.
“I don’t know. Probably, somewhere.”
“So we could take it and get away from here.”
“Depends how many soldiers they have waiting there. I’m more concerned with this creature you saw. What was it?”
Whitsmith’s shoulders sagged and he could see her adrenalin rush fading. What with her confrontation, her almost being killed and now finding out the military were swarming all over the place, she had had a busy day. “It looked like a troodon,” she said.
“But what was it?”
“I don’t know. A swamp god for all I know.” She ran a hand through her grimy hair and looked more anxious than Valentine had ever seen her. “I need a shower and a long sleep. I don’t know, maybe I’ll think of something in the morning. I take it you haven’t given away my bed as well?”
Valentine shrugged. “So far these soldiers don’t know what happened here. We need to find out what they want, whether it has anything to do with us.”
“What if it does?”
“Then,” Hudson said simply, “we kill them.”
Valentine had forgotten Hudson was even there, and while he felt revulsion at what she was suggesting, it was the only way to keep themselves alive. Valentine did not like the thought of having to murder an unknown number of people, especially since it would mean a great number of deaths on his own side, but there was likely no other option. Unless of course the soldiers were not here for the prisoners at all. In that case they might finish their work and just leave.
“Let me work on Aura,” Valentine said. “I might be able to get something out of her.”
Whitsmith looked at him sourly. “Don’t let me twist your arm or anything.”
Hudson gave a slight cough and they both looked to her to see Private Torrance returning to the hall. Valentine put Whitsmith and her attitude problem behind him and greeted Torrance with a warm smile.
“Hunter’s fine as she is,” Torrance reported. “I’m going out to check the area. If there’s something weird out there it might pose a threat.”
“It’s dead,” Whitsmith said acidly. “I told you.”
“And I believe you. But I can’t think of any species that ever had just the one member. Do you have motion sensors set up in the swamp?”
“Are you a complete idiot?” Whitsmith retorted. “It’s a swamp. There are thousands of creatures out there.”
Torrance’s smile was tight. “If you could just show me where the tracks were, I can make my checks and get back here before nightfall.”
“Actually,” Valentine cut in, “Aubrey’s tired and a little smelly. How about going out in the morning?”
“How about you show me instead, Dex? You must know your way around out there.”
“I’m fine, actually,” Whitsmith said, glowering at Valentine and Torrance alike. “I was going back out there anyway, just to make some checks of my own. You can tag along if you like, Torrance. Just don’t slow me down.”
“Wouldn’t dream of interfering.”
Whatever Valentine could have said to any of this, he knew it would be wrong. Wisely he chose to remain silent.
As Torrance and Whitsmith headed back out, Hudson checked her guns and looked upon Valentine with a mixture of amusement and pity. “What?” Valentine asked.
“Nothing,” Hudson said. “You really are a simpleton Valentine. Don’t worry, I’ll bring her back safely.”
He watched them all go and shook his head. Whitsmith had the finest mind in this place, but sometimes he just wished he understood what went on inside it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
He had been unable to locate Private Hunter, and eventually Valentine surrendered to the fact that he had lost her. He had several people keeping a lookout for her, but he was not confident anyone would find her. He had a feeling that whatever Private Hunter had been told to do, it was not something Valentine was meant to know about. Instead he had gone to spy on his own chambers to see whether the sergeant really was asleep. He was not fool enough to listen in at the door, but nor was he fool enough to have no means of escape from his room. Long ago had he built what amounted to a back door, and presently was he within the connecting passage. The secret door held a two-way peephole, in case he needed to use it either way, and he was using it now. From the peephole he could not get the best of views of the bed, but the curtains were open so there was a lot of light in the room. It was not concrete evidence that the sergeant was awake, but as he listened harder he could detect no sounds of snoring or even the subtle breathing a sleeper makes.
Deciding he had nothing to lose but his life, Valentine unset the lock and gently slid the door open a crack. Peering in, he realised he should not have put his wardrobe in such a position so as to block his view of the bed, but in truth he had never really expected a grumpy soldier to be napping between his sheets.
Sliding the door open a little further, Valentine craned his neck until at last he could see the bed. Which was, oddly enough, empty.
Stepping sheepishly into his own room, he stood at the foot of his bed and scratched his head. He did not like where this was going. First he had Private Hunter vanishing on him, and now Sergeant Cartello was following suit. That they had met up somewhere was obvious, but what were they trying to do? That all depended on why they had been sent to the prison, and the only way of finding out that was getting the information from the soldiers themselves. He just doubted any of them would be willing to give him anything he could use.
Then he noticed a heap of armour dumped in the corner of the room. Wherever Cartello had gone, it seemed she had gone in just her ordinary clothes. Then he saw a pile of ordinary clothes dumped beside the bed and he decided he really didn’t have a clue what was going on.
“What the hell?”
Valentine spun about and shrieked, leaping back a pace. Sergeant Cartello had emerged from his en suite bathroom, his toothbrush sticking out of her mouth, her face wearing an expression heated enough to fry an egg. That was almost all she was wearing, actually, for she was standing before him in only her underwear. Her body was as thick and bulky as he had expected, her muscles those of a human tank. Valentine immediately shut his eyes and averted his face, as though by doing both these things he would somehow wipe the image from his memory.
He heard the distinctive sound of a gun being loaded and bolted for the door.
“Just checking everything was all right. Good night, Sergeant.” He collided with a wall and decided to open his eyes, struggling with the door handle he had turned a thousand times before. He heard Cartello’s cursing all the way down the corridor, although she did not pursue. At last he decided he had run far enough and collapsed against a wall, his breathing haggard, his mind reeling, his every iota of reason telling him he was an idiot.
He stayed there for some minutes, trying to catch his breath. With any luck the sergeant would be too embarrassed to mention the incident when she got up in the morning, or whenever it was she intended getting up. Valentine estimated there were still a few hours of light remaining, so there was every chance the sergeant would wake up sometime in the early hours and come looking for
him.
“Have to respect you for that.”
Valentine started, his eyes snapping open. Private Hunter stood before him, amusement playing upon her face.
“You already know?” he asked.
“Sergeant called me, told me to find you and skin you alive. If you’re going to spy on someone you might not want to do it by standing in the middle of their bedroom.”
“My bedroom,” Valentine snapped. If he was going to be shot she might at least get the facts straight.
“Well, technically it’s the bedroom of whoever ran the prison before you guys got here.”
“He’s not using it any more,” Valentine grumped.
“Evidently. Do you have a bar in this place?”
The question threw him. In the past five years they had attempted to build a small community for themselves, which involved various forms of entertainment. “Yes, of course we have a bar.”
“Where’d you get your alcohol?”
“We make it.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Well, we brew the beer and ... crush the grapes? I have no idea actually. I just know we have people who can make alcohol from whatever can be found in the swamp. I tend not to ask too many questions about things like that. Same with the food. Sometimes it’s best not to know.”
Hunter laughed, and he could see he had indeed made an impression on her. “Then you can buy me a drink.”
“We don’t have any money here.”
“Even better,” she said, slipping her arm into his. “Let’s go get sloshed.”
There were two bars in the prison and Valentine decided to take her to the least rowdy. It had been adapted from a bar area the former guards had used, although a few walls had been knocked down in order to accommodate a greater number of patrons. The actual bar was no larger than it had been, and those in charge of fermenting the alcohol had set bottles to the wall as though they were working in a proper pub. They had beer and water on tap and everything else came from bottles. The bar was one of the most efficiently run places of the entire prison, which was hardly surprising since it would be the one place everyone would want to get absolutely right.
Valentine found them a table and went to the bar for their drinks. He came back with two pints of what passed for the local beer. It was a little thicker than he had been used to and the colour was a little darker, but it tended to go down all right so he did not question. Hunter regarded the drink curiously, sniffing the thick liquid.
“It’s not dangerous,” Valentine said. “But that’s about all I know of it.”
“What fun’s a beer that’s not dangerous?” Hunter asked, taking a sip. Immediately she scowled, although at her second sip she seemed to be contemplating it more deeply. Valentine found himself watching her in fascination. Aura Torrance had been a strange girl to him – one moment authoritative, the next incredibly flirtatious – but Hunter never seemed to let down her guard. Even while she was tasting her beer he could see her eyes were alert, taking in every aspect of the bar about her as though preparing for an attack from any angle. Valentine had yet to see anything of her he could term even remotely accommodating and wondered why she had asked him here to begin with.
“Well,” she said, “it’s certainly not watered down.”
“If it is, they do it with swamp water.”
She smiled at this, although Valentine could tell it was merely to humour him.
“If you don’t have money here,” she asked, “why do the people behind the bar stand there serving drinks?”
“We have a ... rota.”
“Uh huh. This has something to do with those pit fights doesn’t it?”
“How do you know about the pit fights?”
“Torrance mentioned them. And no, I didn’t tell the sergeant. Truth be told, I don’t think Cartello would care, but it’s best not to take chances.”
Their willingness to hide information from their direct superior told Valentine some important things: for one, that neither of them was blindly obedient to their sergeant. That was useful and Valentine filed it away. “Tell me about yourself,” Valentine pressed. “I take it you were conscripted like Torrance?”
“Hmm? Oh. Yes, something like that.”
That was not the reply he had been expecting, for he could see Hunter was several years older than Torrance. He placed Hunter somewhere in her early twenties, and if everyone in their region of Io was conscripted at eighteen that was some length they forced their citizens to take in the army.
“You haven’t answered my question about the staff though,” Hunter said.
It was a reasonable request, even if was an obvious evasion of the issue. “The staff here,” Valentine said, “as with the people performing all the other duties, change regularly. We have no physical monetary system, but we do have a replacement.”
“The pit fights? I don’t see how.”
“People bet on the fights. Those who lose have to work, like behind the bar for instance. Those who win gain privileges, such as extra alcohol rations or food or whatever.”
“So I’m drinking your rations?”
“I don’t mind. I rarely get such pleasant company.”
“Don’t think I’ve ever been called pleasant company before. What do the people doing the fighting get?”
“Notoriety. The best fighters never have to do a day’s work in their lives. Unless they want to. Hudson for instance is one of our best, but she likes to get out and about. She doesn’t ask to go, she just tells me she’s going, which is a courtesy for her.”
“How many people do you lose in the pits?”
“Not many. A defeat doesn’t necessarily mean death. It’s a shame when someone dies, but the system works so we have to keep it running.”
“Well it’s a good system.” Hunter drank more of her beer. “This is actually beginning to grow on me.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“You just did.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“This could go on all night.”
Valentine decided to just ask. “Why do you conscript? What happened to your country that’s made you so afraid?”
Hunter stared into her drink and Valentine could see old hurt in her averted eyes. It was a look he had seen within Torrance, although while the younger woman had concealed her pain with joyful abandon, Hunter was more withdrawn. “Our country was bombed during the Solar War. Bombed heavily. We lost a lot of people. We weren’t even involved in the fighting: it was nothing to do with us. But we were targeted, I’m told, because we were suspected of harbouring enemy soldiers who were using our country as a staging ground.”
Valentine had heard similar stories before. The war had been terrible and while it had ended a decade earlier its effects still had not dissipated. Each planet held its own system of worlds and thus far no system had ever gone to war with another. The people who had attacked Earth, however, were not from any such planetary system but had been wanderers looking for a home, or so Valentine had heard. There was always a lot of rumour floating around following wars: rumours and conspiracy theories. Valentine had little time for either. He had no idea what had become of the wanderers, people who called themselves the Lustrum, but he did know they were defeated. In fact, he didn’t know that much about the Lustrum at all: only the things every schoolchild of Earth knew. They were piratical villains with silly call-signs of always four letters.
The war had been between the Earth system and these wanderers, but politically there were so many other planetary systems involved it had seemed several times as though the entire solar system would erupt into chaos. Thankfully it had been brought to an end before that could come to pass.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “At least Earth won the war.”
She snapped her eyes to him then and Valentine felt his breath catch in his throat. Her eyes narrowed. “It was Earth that bombed us, Valentine.”
She had no proof of that. Otherwise there wou
ld have been massive repercussions: perhaps even a Jovian/Earthen war. No human throughout their species’ entire history, however, had ever needed proof to wholeheartedly believe in something. That Hunter was from the Jupiter system and Valentine from Earth hardly made it a very comfortable conversation for him.
“So,” he said to change the subject, “what do you think of this world then?”
“It’s unstable. It was put together wrong.”
“Happens when mankind tries to build a world. Have you been here long enough to experience the really bad quakes?”
Hunter’s eyes flashed with recognition of his digging techniques and said, “I’ve been here as long as my mission’s lasted. You didn’t get permission to come here, did you?”
“An Earth expedition to a Jovian world? No.”
“You do realise once we leave we could tell our government about you and you’d be finished. Arrested as spies perhaps.”
“There aren’t any artificial satellites around this world, Private. It’s a self-contained environment. We couldn’t spy on Jupiter from here even if we wanted to. Except, you know, by looking up at it whenever we’re outside.”
“You say that as though it’s a bad thing.”
Valentine had to remind himself that Jupiter was so large anyone living on almost any of Jupiter’s moons would have a decent view of the planet whenever they looked to the sky. For people like Tana Hunter it was the norm to see half the sky filled with the thing.
“You know,” Hunter said, shifting her weight while she thought, “it’s quite comforting to have Jupiter in the sky. Reminds me that we have almost seventy natural moons and that most of them have been colonised. Even the very, very small ones. I can’t imagine what it would be like on Earth, looking up and seeing only one moon. One moon to offer you protection. When I’m sitting at home, Valentine, I can’t just see Jupiter; I can see Ganymede, Europa, Callisto: sometimes even some of the smaller moons. They’re my brothers and sisters, Valentine. And, having survived the war, we’re all well aware that we have to be there for each other.”
