by Richard Fox
CHAPTER 9
The forests of the Lindau Peninsula were a close match to the pine and redwood trees of the Pacific Northwest back on Earth. The pseudo-pine trees shed seed nodules shaped like bunches of grapes instead of the pinecones an Earther would expect from the trees. The ocean currents from the Mimir Sea kept the air cold, wet, and foggy most of the year.
A pair of skrats skittered up a tree, one chasing the other. The four-legged creatures were the size of squirrels, and thin brown feathers served as a coat for the lizard-like animals. Biologists classified them as reptiles, albeit warm-blooded ones. These same biologists opined that had the dinosaurs on Earth not been wiped out millions of years ago, they would have evolved into something similar to the skrats and larger animal species native to Sidonia.
The whine of an air car pierced the evening calm, sending flocks of seagulls, one of many Earth species that thrived on the planet, retreating from the meadow, where they scavenged for worms in the wet grass.
The car hovered ten yards in the air above the meadow. A window cracked open and four small disks flew from it. The disks zipped through the air, scanning an ever-widening perimeter around the car. The disks returned to the open window and the car set down, hovering a foot above the ground.
Remi got out, his gun drawn, eyes scanning the tree line around the dead and broken reeds that found purchase in the soft earth. His drones assured him the area was safe of intruders, though he was never one to put all his trust in something mechanical.
Satisfied that there wasn’t another human around, he opened the passenger side door.
Cosima gingerly stuck her head out of the car, then retreated like a startled turtle.
“No,” she said.
“My lady, this is our stop.” Remi holstered his pulser. He grabbed a pack from the backseat and slung it over his shoulder.
“No! There’s nothing out there. Did that cyberman hit you on the head or something?”
Remi pointed to the tree line. “There is a well-equipped shelter ready for us.”
Cosima shook her head quickly. “Nope. No. Never. I have spoken. Take me someplace that has walls.”
Remi frowned and took a deep breath. “My lady, by section thirty-five delta of the Guard’s operation manual, I hereby initiate physical contact in the interest of your safety.”
“What? That’s not a thing—unhand me!” Cosima squealed as Remi grabbed her beneath her armpits and hoisted her from the air car. The doors closed of their own accord, and Remi set her on the ground.
The car floated aside, turning from them and slowly gaining speed as it moved away.
“I am not staying here!” Cosima tried to catch up with the air car, her footing unsure over the uneven ground.
The air car floated over a shallow pond, its repulsors sending concentric circles rippling across the surface. Cosima’s feet sank ever so slightly into the soft ground as she fought to catch up.
“My lady, the car is on autopilot, please come back,” Remi said.
Cosima tried to jump to a spot of raised ground, and her foot sank into mud up to her ankle. She froze as if she’d stepped into a wolf trap instead. She tugged her foot against the mud and brought her other foot next to it, which sank too.
“Remi, what’s happening to me?” she asked.
The air car stopped moving, the engines revving louder. The water beneath the engines churned, kicking up water spray and tiny drops of mud.
Cosima covered her face as the air car took to the air, the blast from the engines pelting her in a brief storm of water and a hail of mud. The car vanished into the low clouds, and its whine died away seconds later.
The princess stood stock still, the front of her clothes and her hair wet and muddy.
“Remi, what is this…stuff?” she asked, a reed of fear in her voice.
“The mud, my lady?” Remi replied. He fought the urge to laugh, but an involuntary smile fought through his self-control.
“This is mud? It’s horrible!” She tried to wipe the mud from her arms and only managed to smear it across more of her skin.
“You’ve never seen mud before?” Remi grabbed her around the waist and lifted her from the pond’s edge. Cosima grabbed his arm and wiped his sleeve against her face, then wiped her hands off against his jacket.
“You think we have mud on a space station? No, it’s temperature controlled and clean. Very, very clean.” She started shivering, her breath fogging with each exhale.
“Follow me, the way station isn’t far.” He led her toward the forest, his steps easy and practiced through the reeds and ferns. Cosima moved like a toddler getting used to her first pair of shoes.
“If you tell anyone about this—ever!—I will have you thrown in the dungeon,” she said.
“The palace doesn’t have a dungeon, my lady.”
“Then I will have one built just for you! A dark, wet one…full of spiders! Where are we? I know the planet is sparsely populated, but this is ridiculous.”
“The Pathfinder school keeps several shelters throughout the training area. The way stations are there in case of bad weather and for LOM drops,” Remi said. “Loss of motivation, excuse the acronym. If a Pathfinder candidate wants to quit during their solitary navigation phase, they signal a LOM and the location of the nearest way station will appear on their gauntlet. Promise of a hot shower and food gets better and better after a few days on your own with nothing but the wet clothes on your back and whatever food you can scavenge in your stomach.”
“Is it literally a hole in the ground? I don’t—” She stumbled, losing a shoe to the muck as she fell forward. Remi scooped her up before she could take a header into a puddle.
“I’m not wearing the right shoes for this,” she said, pouting. She looked back to where she lost her shoe, but it was nowhere to be seen.
“There are clean clothes in the way station,” Remi said. “Here, get on my back.” He swung her around and hooked his hands beneath her knees. He carried her through the rest of the meadow and into the tree line.
The sun, lost behind the overcast sky, set somewhere against the horizon, darkening the forest as they entered it. Cosima tightened her grip over Remi’s shoulders when she heard a rustling in the bushes.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“A skrat or a squirrel, shouldn’t be any dragon wolves here during this time of the year anyway.”
“What’s a dragon wolf?”
Remi continued on for several more steps before answering with, “Nothing.”
Something small and dark darted across their path. Cosima’s grip squeezed into a vice around Remi’s neck.
“What was that!” she squealed over and over again.
Remi stopped and shook his head against her hold, struggling to breathe. Cosima saw his face reddening and loosened her grip.
“It was a rabbit,” he said after a deep breath.
“I hate this place. Give me space, with its vacuum, absolute zero, solar rays that’ll fry your eyeballs. At least there I know everything that can kill me.”
The passed through the forest and came up to a lake that wound around a small isthmus.
“Here we are.” Remi set Cosima down and held up an arm for her to balance against. He tapped at his gauntlet and waved his hand slowly in front of him.
A red light blinked on the ground, and a plinth rose up to waist height, shedding dirt and grass.
“Have to hide them, can’t have a Pathfinder candidate claim he stumbled into a way station,” Remi said. He pressed a palm to the plinth, and a holo screen, the joined hexagons briefly visible, fell away from a square building embedded in the tree line. A wooden dock appeared, extending a few yards into the water.
The way station smelled of mothballs and old sweat. Scuff marks marred the bare concrete floor, testimony to the first desperate steps of a Pathfinder candidate that found a place of respite from failure.
Cosima’s lip twitched at the thought of staying there for lon
g, with only a few small rooms with double bunks, semiprivate shower areas, storage areas, and a wooden picnic bench for a dining room.
Remi poked at the control panel next to the door. The holo screen reappeared, semi opaque through the way station’s windows. They could see out, but anyone around the building or on the shoreline would see the building as another copse of trees and brush.
“Clothes,” Cosima said dryly. She held her arms away from her body and flicked dried mud from her arms. “I can’t wait to get in the sonic.”
“We have wet showers here,” Remi said. He set his pack against the door and opened a wall locker in one of the rooms. He picked out a set of fatigues, underclothes, and boots and brought them to a stunned-looking Cosima.
“Just clean myself with water, not hygienic sound waves like a civilized person. Sure, par for today’s course. Mud. Vicious rabbits. Killer cyborgs. What’s next? No Internet?”
“There’s no Internet.”
“Damn it!” She limped into the bathroom on her shoeless foot and slammed the door.
Pipes knocked as the antique plumbing got to work. Remi opened the backpack and took several wide but shallow cylinders from it.
He held them up to his lips and said, “Perimeter. One- and two-hundred-yard detection lines. Categorize local wildlife as false positives. Immediate alert for any detection.” He opened the bunker’s door and tossed the disks outside. They bounced against the water-saturated ground, then spouted tiny filament legs and scampered into the darkness.
Remi shut the door and watched each sensor take up a position around the way station on his gauntlet. Detection lasers shot across his display, turning green as the sensors synchronized with each other.
He shut the door and locked it with heavy composite steel bolts along the upper and lower edges. Remi leaned against the door and let his head bounce ever so slightly against it. They were safe, off the grid and away from any threat, but a sick sense of worry wouldn’t leave his chest.
****
Jerrum checked his computer display again: still no word from Carter. He’d sent her the kill order hours ago, and he hadn’t heard from her. She should have checked in, success or failure, at the earliest opportunity.
“She’s dead,” Glint said through his voice box. “Failed. You shouldn’t have sent an inferior model against this target.”
“You telling me some spoiled little brat took out a cyberman that costs billions to create?” Jerrum huffed at his own impossible supposition.
“The Sidonian Guards have proved annoyingly competent,” Glint said. “As we aren’t in a jail cell or dead, there is a high probability that she managed to self-destruct to avoid interrogation of her or her memory banks.”
“Aren’t you just all sunshine and roses?” Jerrum asked. “You know I’m still paying the mortgage on her augmentations. Aquitaine will lobotomize me and turn me into a cat-house servitor if I get behind on the payments.”
“If I still had tear ducts, they would function for you,” Glint said.
The computer display beeped, another tranche of captured messages sent from their implant in the palace’s communications system. At least that still worked. Jerrum swiped through the message traffic, reading headlines and opening a few choice e-mails from key personnel like Stolzoff and Volenz.
“One fatality, some peon, definitely not Cosima. No other casualties. No word on her…or her bodyguard. He’s not showing on any traffic, and he’s off the Guard rosters…all of them.”
“They’re in hiding,” Glint said.
“Agreed, but if we don’t know where, then what do we do? Just sit on our thumbs?” Jerrum asked.
A quantum disk vibrated in the desk. Jerrum looked at the desk, nibbling on his lower lip.
“All yours, boss,” Glint said.
Jerrum pulled the disk out and pressed his thumb against it. The entangled atoms unraveled the data from their paired sets.
“Report,” their boss said.
Jerrum cleared his throat and summarized the unsuccessful assassination attempt.
“What is the name of her bodyguard? The one you think she’s with?”
“Remi, one of Stolzoff and Vincent’s favorites,” Jerrum said.
A low chuckle came through the connection. “I know him. I know him very well. Soldiers can be so predictable. Let me see if I can succeed where you have failed.”
Jerrum swallowed hard and wiped his sleeve across his forehead.
“Mr. Glint,” their boss said, “do you still have access to the implant?”
“I do,” Glint said.
A shrill sound came through the connection and Glint shuddered slightly.
“Mr. Glint, I have released your governor code set. Consider yourself a free agent once this job is complete,” the voice said.
“Wait!” Jerrum jumped to his feet and backed away from Glint. “Wait, we still have our access to the palace. Give me a few more days and I’ll complete the contract.”
“Thank you, Jerrum. But your services are no longer required.”
Glint vaulted over the desk and slammed his spiked fingers into Jerrum’s chest, piercing through his heart and out the back of his suit. Jerrum pawed at Glint’s face, then went slack. Glint lowered the arm impaling his former master and pointed it to the ground. Jerrum slid free and thumped to the floor.
“It seems we’ve lost our chance at subtlety, Mr. Glint. Get inside and wait for my signal. You know what to do.”
Glint shook blood from his arm. “Yes, my lord.”
****
Remi tapped the light switch in the dining room, and the glow strips overhead flickered and died. He slapped at the switch again. The light stayed dead.
“Lowest bidder,” he mumbled. He slid the door to the supply closet aside and looked over the stores: meal packs stacked nearly to the ceiling, first aid kits, glow sticks, water jugs with UV purification linings and filter tops. The bare necessities for an extended stay.
He pulled out a meal pack, glow sticks, and two empty jugs, which he filled from a tap in the men’s restroom. He stopped outside the women’s restroom and knocked at the door. He hadn’t heard a peep from Cosima for several minutes.
“Everything all right, my lady?”
The door flew open. Cosima, inexpertly dressed in fatigues, dried her hair with a towel, her motions fast and angry. Steam filled the room and fogged the mirrors behind her.
“You could have mentioned the showers had a hot setting before I got in there. Does the water come straight from a glacier?” She looked at him with disdain.
“Sorry, my lady. The toilets require—”
“I can figure out the frigging toilet!”
Remi backed away, and Cosima slammed the bathroom door.
He snapped the glow sticks and gave them a quick shake to activate them, then tossed a stick on either side of the picnic table, bathing the table in pale light. The meal pack had an assortment of prepackaged food preserved in tan plastic sleeves.
His fingers sorted through the packs, and he cursed whatever soldier had beaten him to the cherry brownies.
“Is this your idea of romance, Mr. Remi?” Cosima asked. She stood at the end of the table, her hands on her hips.
“I’m sorry?”
“A candlelit dinner for two overlooking a lake. Seriously, what are you trying to do?” She tapped at the light switch. The overhead light’s remained unresponsive. “Fine, the lights are out.” She sat across from him and looked at the meal pack with suspicion. “What is this?”
“Meal pack B. I suggest the beef stew with some Sriracha,” Remi said. He picked up the recommendation. She shrugged her shoulders. He set the pack in front of her along with a knife and fork wrapped in plastic.
Cosima looked down at the tan packet and poked at it with her finger.
“Bend the pack to heat it up,” he said.
She snapped the heat strip in the packaging and dropped it to the table when it burned her fingers. A moment later, the
pack opened of its own accord, and the smell of beef and cooked vegetables wafted from the pouch. She ate a spoonful and shrugged.
“Not too bad. How’s yours?” she asked.
“Tuna with noodles, bland as ever. But hunger is the best sauce.” He opened a tiny packet and squeezed a red paste over his food. “Sriracha a close second.”
Cosima watched as he ate far too intensely for her comfort. “Mr. Remi, are you always this dull?”
“Sorry?”
“You’re about as much fun as a stump. Prove to me you’re not a cyberman and say something interesting.” She tried another bite of the bland stew and looked at him expectantly.
Remi set his fork down and stared at the table. “I’m one of the best swordsmen on Sidonia. My parents are journeymen artists working in the stained glass studios in Bamberg. Not much money but we’re better off than indentured citizens. I never had the talent for anything regarding art, but I excelled in blade sports. I took provincial champion when I was seventeen, took second at the grand tournament a year after that. Sidonia doesn’t have much of a league, so I tried to figure out a way to get to the core systems where the sport has more visibility.
“Travel to the big systems is expensive, and none of the major leagues will take in a nobody unless they’ve got a sponsorship. So I joined the army, thought I could save enough money to get off world or get a trade mission assignment to a decent planet and stay there once my enlistment was up.”
Remi huffed and went back to his dinner.
“Why didn’t you? If you’re a warrant officer, then you must have decided to stay on after your enlistment term. Isn’t that how it works?”
“Indeed. I got picked for the King’s Guard out of basic training due to my skills. Prince Vincent took a liking to me after I beat him in a sparring match, and I found myself on his protection detail. After Jutland, I lost interest in fencing. Prince Vincent sponsored my warrant officer application, and I’ve been in the palace ever since.”
Cosima had a half-dozen different questions on the tip of her tongue about the battle on Jutland, none of which she could get up the courage to ask when his face darkened as he glossed over the events she’d seen on his recording of the battle with his recitation of his history.
