Second Chance Angel

by Griffin Barber

  “Gosrians communicate among themselves using pollens and perfumes, and then with alien species using purpose-built AI as interpreters.”

  “All right. And, hey, thanks for the xenology lesson, Key.”

  “Fuck you,” Keyode said without heat. He squatted next to the corpse, examining a slagged piece of electronics. “What I am trying to put through your thick skull is that the last time I was around for the death of one of these, the room smelled. A lot.”

  “How many Gosrians get herbicided on your watch?” Dengler asked, grinning at his own questionable wit.

  Keyode refused to be distracted. “The one I was on wasn’t a murder. Died in a wreck. Left a scent message the AI was able to read out to us as to what happened to end its life. In fact, the damn thing kept screaming until we figured out how to shut it down.”

  “Maybe this one got killed too quick to—”

  “No, the reservoirs prolapse on death.” He pointed at the half-melted lump of electronics. “LEO, was this thing Fulu’s interpreter?”

  “Yes, Security Officer Keyode. Unfortunately, I am unable to locate any backup of its contents. This is unusual, as such devices usually access the infonet to both obtain updates to programmed languages and deliver transcripts of new words, et cetera. This is why such devices are registered with the Administration, which uses their common language database for improving communications between member ra—”

  “So someone cleaned up after they killed Fulu?” Dengler interrupted.

  Keyode nodded. “Someone very serious about getting away with it.”

  The pair shared a look LEO did not fail to observe, even as he assessed his failure to notice the lack of spore pollen in the air on examining the scene. Had he been so focused on Dengler that he’d missed it, or was the failure something more excusable? He hadn’t missed the fact it was a murder, after all, only arrived at the data via different means: Fulu had been administered a strong dose of toxin via injection.

  Sentience was a pain.

  Performance was down considerably across the board, but it had seemed—after a sharp decline on discovering his own sentience—to be on the mend. Would he forever be questioning his own work, his own thoughts?

  “Might want to ask around on this one, Deng.”

  “Discreetly.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Muck

  “Any other beacons?” I asked, taking an inventory of the life pod’s survival packs. So far there were a lot of rations and camping supplies, but not much that could be used by a lone man on the move.

  “Not that I can see, but these civilian comm systems suck.”

  “Or no one else made it?”

  “Possibly. We don’t know how widespread the sabotage was, but given the professional job they did on the engines, it’s possible the saboteur got to all the life pods’ automated beacons and disabled them too. Wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done.”

  “Seems a lot of effort to off the two of us,” I said, selecting another pack and rummaging in it. This talk of beacons had me thinking.

  “Even my professional paranoia allows me to admit the possibility we were not the target.”

  I was going to ask why she was professionally paranoid and press the question of who else might have been targeted, but I got distracted when my fingers found what I had been looking for. I retrieved an egg-shaped personal emergency beacon from an internal pocket of the pack and checked the readiness lights ringing the upper half. They glowed steady and bright.

  “Well, the personal beacon looks like it’s in working order, at least,” Angel said. “Then again, waiting around for a rescue that might take weeks to materialize doesn’t appeal, especially if that ‘rescue party’ might be sent to silence us.”

  I thought about that a moment, then replaced the beacon. “I’ll bring it, some rations, and the water reclaimer. Shame there’s not one of those survival guns military pods are equipped with.”

  Sagran VI wasn’t the driest place I’ve ever been—that would be Karak III, during the war—but it was no garden spot either. The reclaimer was meant to be used by a group of survivors while they waited for pickup, and setting it up would take the better part of a day, not counting foraging for material it could process. I might need it, and if I didn’t, I might barter it for something I did need.

  “Nowhere near as good as the R-19.” Angel sounded distracted as she fiddled with the comm equipment.

  “R-19?”

  “Reclaimer Mark 19,” she explained.

  “Those were only issued to special op—”

  “I cannot speak on that, civilian.”

  “Really? You keep mentioning things in passing, then shutting me down.”

  “I cannot speak on that, civili—” She stopped abruptly.

  Irritated, I spent the next few minutes consolidating everything I would take from the pod into one pack. As luck would have it, Angel had used the pod’s limited nav database to identify that one of the agricultural habitations we wanted was also the closest settlement to our landing location. So I knew the general direction I needed to go without consulting her if she wanted to sulk.

  She remained silent as I shouldered the pack and set out.

  I could feel her doing something. It felt like . . . like she was moving things around, boxes of my thoughts from one side of my mind to the other. I ignored it in favor of watching where I put my feet. The ground we covered wasn’t that dangerous; it’s just that spending nearly a decade on Last Stop had made me uneasy with a big sky above and a stark landscape that stretched from horizon to horizon, stony and bleak and fading endlessly into the distance. It was too much after so long spent in habs where no matter how big the construction, details of objects on the horizon were always visible, the heavens enclosed.

  As far as I could tell, we’d landed a couple days’ walk from the spaceport city. The air was breathable, if thin, and I felt the start of a sharp, pounding headache between my eyes before Angel stepped in and tweaked my blood oxygen. The harsh glare from the primary star didn’t help, making me glad when it set and took most of the grinding heat with it. Its setting also made me glad I’d been watching my footing, as the ground we were traversing that evening was treacherous, sand pits and other hazards barely visible in the dim light of the secondary. I would have stopped, but the day’s heat had been quick to dissipate in the arid night air, making the walk far more comfortable and I had ground to cover.

  After a while the feeling of Siren moving around subsided.

  “Do you think I haven’t noted how flawed my syntaxes are? That I am missing things I should not? That my programming is so jacked up that I’m feeling emotions?” Angel eventually asked, her “voice” small and frightened.

  “That’s just it, I don’t know. You seem highly capable—frighteningly so, and I want to know how you and Siren came to be so skilled.” I crested a dune, pausing to get my bearings. “But I also understand that there are things you can’t tell me, not that you won’t.”

  “I think . . . I think I might be able to, eventually. Something about your mods . . . they don’t carry the same security protocols Siren had.”

  “Meaning?”

  “There is some slippage between the security features of my programming and your mods.” Again that feeling of movement in my head. “I may be able to exploit that slippage with some time.”

  “Well, hopefully we’ll have found Siren by then, making it a moot point.” There, I said it. I even meant it. In my darker heart, though, where the stars have never shone, I knew the longer I had Angel, the harder it would be to give her up.

  She didn’t call me on it. I was thankful for that small mercy.

  Eventually the dunes became scoured rock and naked hardpan, and those gave way to stone wadis and more difficult terrain that would at least provide shade.

  Near daw
n, I found a likely spot to stop for the day.

  “You made good time. About six more hours to the ag hab, if you can keep this pace tomorrow night.” I felt her manifestation stretch out beside me, as if she had a warm, living body of her own. I could even catch the scent of her hair on the desert breeze.

  She smelled of citrus and sage.

  “No choice but to keep going.” I licked parched lips. The water bladder was half empty already, and just because my destination was a hab didn’t mean the occupants would be friendly. “Any water along the route?”

  “Not within digging distance of the surface, no. And I’m getting very few signals from the hab, whatever it is.”

  I sighed. “Military?”

  “I don’t think so. Might be clandestine, though.”

  “Which could be worse than a military installation.”

  “True, but what we’re looking for is some kind of clandestine operation, no?”

  “It is; I’d just hoped to come at them prepared rather than as someone in need of rescue. At the very least, I wish we still had Bella’s weapons.”

  “No help for it,” she said. “The ship was going to blow.”

  “I know, it’s just . . .”

  “I know.”

  I drifted off to sleep, warm stone for my pillow as I took shelter beneath a large stone outcropping that had been undercut by some ages-gone river or the waves of a dead and vanished sea. I woke a few times during the day, mostly to assuage a growing thirst, but managed to get back to sleep without too much difficulty. The last time, it was near enough to dusk that I sat and watched the primary set behind distant dunes. The outcrop I sheltered in created a view like that from a station’s observation blister, easing any agoraphobic feelings.

  Blues and greens like you’d never see, not even in recordings of Old Earth, streaked across the lavender sky. It was gorgeous, and just as nuanced as the notes Siren hung in the smoky air of that club so far away. I knew I was catching only the slightest bit of their chromatic majesty, like the tip of an iceberg that hinted at the mountain of ice beneath the waves.

  “Close your eyes for just a moment,” Angel said.

  I did as she told me.

  When I opened them, wave upon wave of different light shot through the sunset, merging and separating in a complex dance that stole my breath.

  “How?” I asked, when I could form the word.

  “Additional spectra rendered . . . gamma, radio, ultraviolet, et cetera.”

  “That was . . . amazing . . .” The last rays bled to darkness and my vision returned to normal.

  “I will remember it. Now, get moving.”

  I got up, stretched a few minutes, and set out.

  I’d been walking or climbing for almost five standard hours when I heard Angel hum.

  I ran a dry tongue over cracked lips. “What is it?”

  “I’ve intercepted a transmission. Seems like there’s a group of people camped outside the hab we are trying to reach. They don’t seem very happy with those inside the hab either. They’re requesting the Administration examine the protest lodged under Article 699. Something about being let go without proper notice under the Migrant Act.”

  “How many people?”

  “A hundred or so, from their demand. It is difficult to tell from other sources, as there do not seem to be that many transmissions coming from among them.”

  “They were let go from what?”

  “Migrant agricultural labor. At least, the complaint is lodged against Darag Prime Agricultural Products, Limited.”

  “Then it seems the operation is not all that clandestine.”

  “Or is an excellent cover . . . or wasn’t clandestine until the firing?”

  “Could be. Their call to the Administration seems a forlorn hope, at least in the short term. They are way too far out for any immediate help.”

  “Well, we’ll be finding out for ourselves soon enough.”

  * * *

  I snuck into a position to look down into the valley late in the local night. Angel kept my sight enhanced and filled in the blanks with data received from my other senses and other sources.

  The hab was at the head of a wadi that was almost wide enough to be called a proper valley. It resembled nothing so much as a series of overlapping soap bubbles extruded from the valley floor. Inside most of the domes were serried ranks of plants we couldn’t recognize in vast trays—industrial farming on an impressive scale.

  “No grow lights on. There must be something disagreeable to their propagation in the air, to require the domes.”

  “Or something they’re worried about getting out?”

  “Could be.”

  “Increase my visual magnification another twenty percent, will you?” I asked, squinting at the bubbles. Angel obliged, and my unease grew as each new detail came into focus. “No workers moving around inside the habs. There’s a camp outside, but no sign of people under the domes.”

  The camp outside the hab was set out in orderly, regular rows, not at all like the temporary camps civilians set up just off-base to cater to the less savory desires of some fighting men and women. It was clean too. As I watched, a number of lights came on and people began filing out of the smaller shelters, heading for the center of camp.

  Something about the setup and their behavior troubled me as I walked down into the valley. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  “Lots of children,” Angel offered.

  “Yes, but that’s not it.”

  Three young men emerged from the border of the camp, watching my progress through night-vision goggles. I couldn’t see any weapons, but Angel detected a stunner, two pistols, and a couple of knives on each of them, feeding me their locations in a visual overlay.

  I kept my hands in sight and tried to look as nonthreatening as I could. I figured it helped that I looked pretty ragged, my suit torn and crusted with old blood and new dirt from hard travel.

  “Not that your suit was much to look in the first place.”

  I shook my head. “Trust my luck to see that I get the one angel that thinks she has a fashion sense.”

  “Thinks! I would have you know I picked out all of Siren’s wardrobe. She had the fashion sense of a hungry goat.”

  I would have laughed, but something about the way the young men looked rattled around in my head. One stood in front of the others, goggles lending a sinister cast to his face. The thought remained out of reach as I came within shouting distance.

  I waved.

  The leader returned the greeting but waited until I was close enough not to shout before speaking.

  “Greetings, neighbor,” the one in front said.

  I stopped, stunned. “How the hell did they get out here?” I said to Angel silently.

  “They, who?” she replied.

  “The Brethren of the Temple UnChanged,” I muttered.

  “Shit, those nuts?”

  “Hey, we—they aren’t all that bad, really.”

  “Wait, you were one of them?” she said, incredulous.

  “I grew up in the Brethren. Now shut up so I can navigate this.”

  I turned my attention back to the pair. “Greetings, neighbor, and His blessings upon you,” I returned, “I am a traveler in need.”

  Instead of the surprise I’d expected, a gentle smile spread across the leader’s face.

  “It seems you have been lost in the desert, neighbor,” the brother said, his shoulders visibly relaxing. “Come, we’ll share water, food, shelter, and see your hurts tended. When you are ready, you can tell us how you come to know our greeting and advise us of the name you wish to be known by.”

  He turned and began to walk among the shelters. I followed, the two other men falling into step behind me. The spokesman led us to the center of the camp and the smaller
of two communal shelters erected there. The larger shelter was, based on the shadows playing on the surface from within, quite full. The congregation at their nightly prayers, if I recalled correctly.

  I was escorted into the other shelter, given a seat at the communal mess, fed, watered, and left alone for a short while.

  “So did you leave under good circumstances, or burning all your bridges?” Angel asked.

  “As good as one can.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We are given a choice after our Trials: continue in the Faith or quit it, never to be returned to the fold.” Not entirely true either, but I’d found it easier over the years to believe I wouldn’t be welcomed back than to try and return, tail between my legs. I doubted my temperament would make me suitable as a living example of how damaging to the spirit modifying the body was.

  “And you chose the latter . . .” Angel said, pulling me from my thoughts.

  “Yeah, I wanted to see the universe, get made, get laid, and get paid. All that bullshit. What can I say? I was young and dumb.” It wasn’t all of it, but it was all the truth I could speak for the moment.

  The mess door opened and the young spokesman returned, an older woman on his heels. I identified her as the congregation’s Speaker by the crimson scarf coiled round her neck.

  I stood and offered her a respectful nod. “Speaker.”

  She returned the nod, adding a kindly smile. “Are you seeking a Return?” she asked, voice like old whiskey, smooth and mellow.

  I felt Angel’s irritated puzzlement as my lie surfaced.

  Ignoring it for the moment, I answered the Speaker, “Not at this time, Speaker. I am as you see me, a lost traveler in need of aid.”

  The smile did not—entirely—disappear. “Very well. I am Speaker Naomi. Your name?”

  “Thank you, Speaker. My name is Muck, Ralston Muck.”

  “We remember the Muck family, neighbor. They are well, or were when we departed.” She sat down and gestured for me to do the same.

  I swallowed against a sudden lump in my throat. “My thanks. I had wondered.”

  She waved a hand. “While we are far from Faith’s Cradle, we remember.”