Second Chance Angel

by Griffin Barber

  “I wondered what brings the Templars so far from home?”

  Speaker Naomi smiled briefly at me and leaned back in her chair.

  “Lonnie,” she said to the young man still hovering by the doorway. “Would you please see if you can find some tea for us? I believe the cook fires are probably set up by now.”

  “Of course, Speaker,” the boy said. His voice held the reverence the young reserved for the very old and the very respected. I swallowed hard against my memories of similar exchanges in the distant past, and instead focused on looking around the tent.

  It, too, looked like something out of my childhood. It was spartan, but comfortable in the cheery lamplight. A low bed, a traveling trunk, and the table comprised the only furnishings, but the muted colors gave the place a restful, homey feel.

  “Work and justice are in short supply for us in the core systems,” the Speaker said as the tent flap fell closed behind Lonnie. “The congregation decided to make a new life on the frontier. We have found much to test ourselves against . . ..”

  She looked at my battered suit and cocked a brow. “Speaking of tests, what do you want of us?”

  “A way off-planet would be most appreciated,” I said. We would need one eventually, and I didn’t think it would serve either us or the Templars to give them the details on our mission.

  “We set off tomorrow to meet the regular Dugra shuttle. You may travel with us to the landing site.”

  “I can only repay your kindness with kindness,” I warned.

  “Your kindness and some information, freely given, and I shall count us well compensated,” she said, smile returning.

  “Speaking of which: What happened here? Why are the Brethren out of work?”

  The young man returned with tea for both of us. The Speaker fell silent while he served, then let himself out.

  “DPAPL terminated all migrant labor contracts three days ago,” she said, picking up her cup.

  “How many?” I asked, sipping at the bitter tea Templars preferred.

  “About fifteen hundred of the Brethren,” she said, drinking as well. “Nearly that many again among other migrant groups spread across the habs.”

  “What changed?”

  “They claim they’re going to automated systems and mods to run them.”

  “You don’t believe them?” I asked over the rim of my cup.

  “No. The Jhregda plants give off a microscopic alkaline pollen that wreaks havoc on electronic systems and even internal mods.”

  “They can’t just use AIs and sealed systems?”

  “They can, but at what cost? Shipping harvesters this far out doesn’t make sense when they have cheap, skilled labor on-site. And that’s not even accounting for the fact that no such systems have been seen.”

  “That seems—”

  “Monumentally stupid?” she said, tipping her cup again.

  I smiled, nodded.

  “Yes, something is going on. Unfortunately, we were here on a thin margin, and while we’ve lodged a complaint, it will likely take years before it’s heard. We don’t have that much time. DPAPL took exception to our labor dispute, and there was a confrontation. Some of our company died. We are wary, and we are leaving. The Dugra brought us here, and will take us out again.”

  “Wise move. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” she said, sorrow in her tone. “They died protecting the ones they love, so there is that.”

  “Yes,” I said, unsure how else to go on. “The Administration is rather thin on the ground out here.”

  “That it is.” She sighed, setting down her cup.

  “Of course, you may count yourself fortunate to be rid of this particular contract, Speaker.”

  “And how would you know that?” she asked.

  “It’s why I’m here. We tracked the contacts of a murdered pharma dealer here from our home station. There is some evidence Sagran VI is a source for an organization involved in the sale and distribution of illegal pharma on my station. I came here looking for proof.”

  “Did you? How odd, I wasn’t aware that Station Security contracted out murder or drug-ring investigations to nightclub bouncers. At least, no station I know does . . . and I’ve been traveling a long time. I’m pretty sure I know them all.”

  I fought to remain still. Even Angel jolted in surprise. Naomi must have had one of her people do a facial or fingerprint scan while I was eating earlier. I brought my teacup to my lips and drank, stalling for time. She acknowledged my ploy with a tight smile.

  “Now, if you’ve drunk and eaten your fill, I have a few questions regarding goings-on in the wider universe.”

  “Well, bouncing ain’t exactly the best way to learn about galactic politics, but I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Pretend to be willfully ignorant.”

  I started to roll out my standard reply, but was again brought up short by old habits. “Speaker, I’ve been keeping my head down, trying to avoid notice for so long now it comes naturally. And, really, I mostly hear rumors from club-goers and spacers . . . nothing I would want you to base decisions about the Brethren on.”

  She smiled. “Why don’t you tell me a few things and I’ll make up my own mind about its intelligence value?”

  “All right.” I thought a moment, dredging up all the gossip I’d heard in the club over the last few weeks and considering where the Dugra fleet would be making stops. “Well, I heard the Kalgossian Arm was approved for Terran colonization ahead of schedule. Threw a lot of people off, as folks planning to settle there were expecting another five years before the Administration got around to giving approval. A couple of big concerns are reported to be setting up a joint program to beat the others to settle several of the twenty-odd planets Survey Service deems suitable habitat for modified humans.”

  “Any of them suited to us?”

  I shook my head. “None that I heard about. Big money being dumped into the project, though. Shipbuilding contracts, mostly.”

  She nodded.

  “Probably not much use to them,” Angel said.

  I agreed with her, but the Speaker surprised us both: “Could be opportunities for us in growing the starter crops and livestock propagation.”

  “Could be,” I said, wracking my brain for other possibilities that might be useful to her.

  “More of the usual piracy reported out past Last Stop,” I continued, “but Sector Fleet Command continues to draw down. For that matter, lots of bases are being closed along the old front.

  “This smacks of wishful thinking, but some spacers I know say the Gosrian merchant houses and a few human concerns are arming their merchant fleets to deal with the problem themselves, since Fleet won’t.”

  “Interesting . . .” the Speaker said, drawing the word out as if tasting it. “If true, the Administration won’t like that one bit.”

  “Too right . . .”

  “Where would they base themselves?”

  “I have no idea.” I lapsed into silence again as I tried to find something else that might be of interest.

  “Hear anything about legal changes to our status?” she asked when it was clear I wasn’t going to continue on my own. The Brethren refusal to accept mods was founded in religious conviction, and they’d paid a steep price for their beliefs. Without angels, they lacked the ability to interact seamlessly and quickly with infonets everywhere, and since they couldn’t be registered and tracked, they often weren’t allowed in places like Last Stop. Without infonet access, there weren’t many vocations open to them either. They were, like me, effectively second-class citizens, unable to partake of the benefits of civilization, relegated to menial labor. I had come full circle before Angel came to me.

  It was pa
rt of the reason I’d left. I hadn’t wanted to miss out.

  “Nothing since the last appeal was struck down a few months back, but you likely already knew about that.”

  “I did.” She sighed, seeming to shrink slightly. An instant later she squared her shoulders, appearing to grow in stature as I watched.

  “What about the war?”

  “What about it?” I asked, proud of how well I masked sudden unease.

  “Any fresh theories into what the enemy was after?”

  I shook my head.

  “How about—”

  The beige canvas of the Speaker’s tent walls flashed momentarily a blinding white. She broke off and looked up, eyes sharp. The sound of a rippling blast followed a moment later, making the walls of the tent snap and shiver as a deep thrumming boomed up through the ground to reverberate in my chest.

  “Explosion,” I said, already on my feet and moving to the entrance.

  “My people!” the Speaker said as she stood. I held out an arm to help steady her toward the door just in time for young Lonnie to enter at a dead sprint, almost colliding with us.

  “Speaker!” he said. “You’ve got to see this! They’re demoing the hab!”

  We pushed outside and hurried past the gathering crowds between the tents and cook fires. Sure enough, a column of thick, white dust billowed into the Sagran sky. I followed it down to see a neat, precise quadrant of the ag hab had been reduced to nothing but slag and organic ash. It was a professional job.

  “I thought you said they were switching to automated harvesters,” I said softly.

  “That’s what they told us they were doing,” she replied, voice tight. “They didn’t say anything about demoing the entire facility. Should have known, though, when the last of the company men left yesterday.” She shook her head. “They didn’t even bother to warn us. Someone could have gone on site to trade or something and been killed.”

  Another rippling detonation flashed blinding white, causing Angel to curse as she dialed back my light sensitivity. We felt the concussion a moment later, and soon enough a second column of smoke and dust joined the first.

  “There is more going on here than it seems, Traveler Muck,” the Speaker said as she turned away from the scene to confront me. I saw a flash of hard anger in her beautiful eyes.

  “DPAPL had to have a reason to demo the whole thing and slag that much equipment and invested capital. Was there anything else in that hab? Hidden crops, underground hydroponics labs, anything like that?”

  “Unfortunately, I know no more than you. I did not know of anything, but if there was something, it is completely gone now. Yet another reason to take my people and get out.” She glanced once more at the rising smoke. “You are welcome to travel with us. My people will have prepared a place for you to rest. I suggest you go there now. We depart early.”

  * * *

  “What the fuck was that all about?” Angel asked as the tent flap closed behind us. I looked around the small shelter. It wasn’t quite tall enough for me to stand straight, but it held a low pallet of cushions and blankets, and a small table with a tray of steaming food that smelled delicious. And most luxuriously of all, its four walls at least allowed the illusion of privacy.

  “Which? The damn-near-professional interrogation that Speaker Naomi conducted, or the surprise destruction of an apparently lucrative pharma crop?”

  “Both, really.”

  “She’s the leader of her community, and obviously she protects them well. It’s her business to be able to ask questions,” I said. “I wasn’t offended, and neither should you be.”

  “Hmmph,” Angel grumbled before letting that subject drop. “And the demolition?”

  I shrugged. “Can’t say. I would have liked to get inside the hab and see what they were growing, but I guess there’s no chance now.”

  “Why would anyone blow up the crop, and why now?”

  “It’s gotta be DPAPL. No one else should have access, right? And those were a series of controlled detonations, not an accident or bombing.”

  “You don’t think the Speaker’s lying to you? That some of her people would . . .?”

  “No.” I lowered my aching body to the pallet. “She was too angry about the surprise. The Brethren are only violent in self-defense, as a rule. Revenge isn’t their style.”

  “I’m getting really sick of surprises myself,” Angel said, a growl of frustration threading through her words. “First Siren disappears and I am attacked, we find out Shar and Dengler work for Ncaco and that little blue gangster wants to help find her, then our ship gets sabotaged, and now this?”

  “Can we be sure we’re the target of all these events?” I thought it unlikely, at least the demolition part. I’d seen enough demolitions work from watching my old team’s specialist place breaching charges to know that deconstructing the facility so thoroughly and safely would require time and care. More time than we’d spent on the planet.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Target of whom? That’s the problem, we’ve got zero answers. Everywhere we look, we just find more questions!”

  “Maybe we’ll find some answers in the city we’re headed to?” I asked, not feeling particularly hopeful.

  “DPAPL has another facility in the city,” Angel said.

  “Well, we’ll make the trip with the Brethren and check it out. Ncaco thought the pharma connection was important, and all of these incidents make me think he’s right. It’s like the Speaker said, there’s more going on here than we can see.”

  Angel’s discontented silence rolled through me.

  “We’ll find her, Angel. We just gotta be methodical and patient, and keep an eye out for a break.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt, but I don’t think she was fooled.

  “And not die,” she said with grim finality.

  “That too.”

  * * *

  The column of marching Brethren emerged from a massive wadi in a cloud of dust that dried throats and scratched unprotected eyes. The Speaker called a brief halt to drink and redistribute water among the marchers. I used the time to move toward the head of the column and examine our path. It beat enduring the looks from my fellow travelers. We’d been joined on the march by Brethren from other facilities, and the numbers made for slow stops and long starts.

  I had been treated well—better than I’d expected, to be honest—by the Templars over the last few days, but I was ready to be rid of the wary stares and murmured conversations my presence sparked. Not that I didn’t understand their disquiet: it wasn’t often the Brethren allowed someone in their midst who did not share their religion, let alone one who had left it and had no wish to Return. Regardless, I was eager to be away, and I still held out hope we might discover something that would help us in our search for answers.

  The road we’d been following disappeared over the edge of a cliff that, upon closer inspection, proved to be the rim of a massive crater several kilometers wide. I approached the edge and squinted against the wind-borne grit. A dark patch of vegetation grew wild in the center of the crater.

  “Feeding on groundwater . . . that’s still at least fifty meters under the surface,” Angel supplied. She had been quiet for the last few days, knowing I preferred not to field questions about mods and angels from the Brethren. And appearing distracted or in conversation with anyone not present was one way to ensure the Brethren would ask.

  Well away from the vegetation at the center of the crater lay the Dugra landing site, a massive stone plinth rising from the crater floor. A dense, ramshackle collection of hundreds of permanent habs sprawled around the plinth like the petals of a blighted flower.

  Anticipating my need, Angel improved my distance vision.

  On closer examination, I could see the marks of Dugra engineering on the plinth as well as a couple hundred people slowly clearing away what loo
ked to be tents and stalls for a . . . market or something?

  “Souk,” Angel supplied. “They typically spring up in the vicinity of Dugra landing zones. Usually creates a trading frenzy when the Fleet arrives after a season or more running their route. And added bonus for those inclined to trade: shipping costs are minimal for those using the Revenant Fleets.”

  “Interesting,” I said, studying the site and recalling what little I knew of the Dugra.

  There were four or five Revenant Fleets in operation, each plying a route that was already ancient when humanity was building the first pyramids on earth. That the Dugra’s enormous shuttles closely resembled those pyramids made students of ancient history and conspiracy theorists alike lose their minds when humanity, taking its place among the stars, discovered the not-dead. I wondered what the shuttle’s crew would be like in person, as I had never been closer to a Dugra vessel than a few hundred meters, and then only to effect the arrest of a soldier who thought he could outrun his duty.

  “Forbes?” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Nothing. Trying to remember the name of a fellow I tracked down during the war.”

  Again I had the sensation of things moving in my head.

  She must have felt my unease. “Sorry, just looking at something.”

  “What?”

  “You have some memory gaps,” she said, her tone curious.

  I grinned. “I am getting old.”

  “Not that kind of gap. This is something . . . intentional.”

  I winced, figuring I knew what she was talking about. “They pulled some sensitive data at my discharge.”

  “Not that either. Or at least, not entirely.”

  “What, then?”

  “What do you remember of the events that caused your discharge?”

  I started my privacy protocols. “I’d rather not get into that.”

  “Stop that,” she said, in the tone of a teacher to a misbehaving toddler. Again the feeling of things moving.

  My anger spiked. “I said I didn’t want to get—”

  “I’m just saying, there’s more to it than a dishonorable discharge. They put some stuff in here—”