Soldier's Duty

by Patty Jansen

  That was typically Hedron. Impersonal, distant. Work was more important than family. It wasn't customary for children to even live with their complete family most of the time.

  And one thing was very clear to her: for her little nephew, life with these men had to be better than the prison of the Respite Illness Centre.

  Chapter 6

  "Blue, Forty-four."

  The guard came to Izramith after end of shift when she had just handed over her position to the Green guard. Izramith acknowledged her colleague with a short bow. Blue Eight, a senior leader, and one of the guards of whom Izramith knew the identity. It was hard to hide the vengeful personality that was Nayani. She could never wipe the sneer entirely from her face, or make the tone of her voice neutral. Some people couldn't be anonymous, no matter how much they tried.

  "Commander wants to see you in the office."

  "Acknowledged."

  Blue Eight/Nayani turned on her heel and made back for the brightly-lit entrance to the settlement.

  Izramith cringed inside. This was going to be about missing that woman's bag the previous day, or not checking the man who had been nervous. Or about snapping at a colleague at the start of the shift she just finished.

  And Commander Blue would have things to say about fitting into the command structure and listening to superiors, and about not being in a war zone anymore.

  Damn it.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it.

  Izramith said the words in time with her steps while she made her way across the stony ground of the airport. Down the ramp, into the arrival hall, into the guard post and the large control room where veiled women sat at workstations collating data collected by their colleagues on the surface. One screen showed a map of the surface in intricate colour and detail. It would have been sent by one of the many satellites.

  In the office off the main control room, Commander Blue sat at her desk in full uniform, purple jacket, hood and veil that showed only gold-flecked eyes and the surrounding skin, with distinct wrinkling. A purple-gloved hand gestured at the seat on the other side of the desk. "Sit down."

  Izramith sat, her back straight. It was not particularly warm in the room, but sweat collected on her upper lip. It tickled, but it would not look good when facing a superior to rub her veil over her face or worse, put her hand underneath.

  Outside the room, behind the closed door, a number of guards walked past. Their feet scuffled over the floor. Voices grew softer, the door to the control room hissed and then were gone.

  Commander Blue touched her glove to the desktop which displayed a schedule of some sort.

  "Blue Forty-four, I remember saying a few days ago that I didn't want to see this sort of complaint again."

  "Again, Ma'am?"

  "We discussed the new visitor policies, did we not?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "I gave you some time to acquaint yourself with them. Can you cite rule 64-2?"

  "Uhm—" She had been given the information, but because of the situation with Thimayu, she hadn't looked at it.

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  Commander Blue said, "Rule 64-2, if I have to jog your memory, is that the guard will accept a decision by the central Exchange in Damarq as final and will not contest its validity."

  "I understand that, ma'am."

  "You do?"

  "I do."

  "Then what business did you have interrogating a foreign Trader who was clearly in possession of the right documentation?"

  Shit, this was about the Mirani cool fish. He'd gone to the Hedron Trading office to complain?

  "I thought the matter was worthy of investigation."

  "You thought. You are not employed to think. Rule 64-2 says that we accept a decision by the Exchange, so you are to fucking accept a decision by the fucking Exchange."

  "It was only some kind of invitation."

  "I don't care. If the Exchange decides that there is reason for the document to be confidential, you don't ask the carrier to open it. You don't open it yourself. You sign it off. You approve it and allow the carrier into the settlement, especially if he is a registered member of the fucking Traders Guild. You understand?"

  "I do."

  "Again, I don't think so. Because I don't want any more fucking angry complaints from Ydana on my desk."

  Ydana? The head of the Hedron chapter of the Trader Guild? What did he have to do with a Mirani Trader?

  "In case you still don't understand, the document was addressed to Amandra Bisumar. I thought you would have had the presence of mind to know that she and Ydana live in the same apartment."

  Oh shit.

  Suddenly it became too hot in the room.

  Ydana sat on the Board and had connections all through the important places where important decisions were made at Hedron. He'd be in regular contact with Edyamor, the Mines' ultimate boss.

  "So, what have you got to say for yourself?"

  Izramith looked up and met the gold-flecked eyes. There was not a skerrick of friendliness in them. She could find nothing to say.

  "Your behaviour recently has been very strange. You apply to be released early from your Indrahui contract for a family matter. We accept it, because you've never used that provision before. Ever since you've been back, you've been neglectful. Most importantly, you still seem to think that we operate under the old ways. Just to spell it out for you: we are not to scare the shit out of our visitors anymore. We are to become a more open, more successful enterprise. Hedron has grown up. We are no longer children sitting on our toys and hitting anyone who looks at them. All that has been communicated to all personnel, even those serving off-world, but you obviously chose to ignore this."

  Izramith stared at the edge of Commander Blue's desk.

  Commander Blue sighed. "I respect you highly, but this has been happening too often for my liking. I don't know what kind of problem you have in your head, but clearly there is something and it needs sorting out. It's affecting your work and judgement."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "And don't just sit there nodding, I want you to do something about this, and behave. I can't have people on my shifts who are unreliable. It's not just the incident with the Trader. We've caught you letting a bag go unchecked, failing to act on a colleague's warning. I'll let this go just once, because you've never caused me any trouble before."

  "Thank you, ma'am." Suddenly, tears were very close to the surface. She wanted to scream You try to do your job while worrying about your family. But guards didn't, ever, talk about personal matters. In fact, they never talked at all about anything, except for brief exchanges about work at shift handover. Most of their communication went via the helmet comm.

  "You can go now, but I'll be keeping an eye on you. I expect better work of you in the future. I want you to contemplate how you might solve this. I am going to advise the upper command that you take a posting somewhere else. Your work and ethics might benefit from some time away from the border patrol."

  "Ma'am? To the northern shafts?" That was the only other airport. A lot of freight craft came there. Less risk of confrontations with off-world visitors. A demotion.

  "This is up to you. There are various positions you can apply for. Northern shafts, the main mines, off-world contracts, they are all possibilities. I cannot work with frontier people who are unreliable and make unforgiveable mistakes."

  Izramith found it hard to breathe. Please, no. She couldn't leave her family. She needed to sort out something for the boy. Maybe her father—

  "You're dismissed. You get five duty cycles to pick a spot to transfer."

  Izramith stumbled from her seat. She wasn't sure how she left the room.

  In the main control room, the Green shift was well underway and the atmosphere hummed with activity. A workstation in the aisle close to the door was not in use.

  Izramith sat down and entered her guard number. She called up Amandra Bisumar on the residents menu. The screen displayed a picture of her w
earing the lilac and purple uniform of the Hedron Traders. Her licence number, 1123, was distinctly Mirani, so she had definitely changed colours. She was a woman past middle age, her white Mirani hair cut to shoulder length in very un-Mirani fashion. Her pale eyes looked intelligent. In the picture, she sat on the arm rest of a chair. Head of the Hedron Traders Ydana sat in the chair, with his hand on her knee and an indulgent smile on his face. They each wore one earring with an amber stone—the Ezmi colour—and one silver hoop with a little trinket dangling off it. Contracted partners. Damn.

  On either side of them were two children, one dark-skinned Indrahui boy with typical bronze hair in tight ringlets and lively green eyes. The other was a Kedrasi girl, old enough to wear an apprentice Trader uniform.

  A happy family.

  Coldi didn't breed with other races and neither did Mirani Endri, but it seemed that even those who couldn't have families made their own family.

  So what did that make her own fucking dysfunctional family?

  Izramith wiped the happy picture off the screen with an angry gesture. She checked the available off-site postings, but her eyes were too unfocused to register anything beyond the regular places. The northern shafts, the Outworld Mine—how was that for a dreadful posting. There wasn't even a nice underground settlement in that place.

  Each of those postings was a demotion and a disgrace. It was where you went to gain points for a better posting or for punishment. Her colleagues would look down on her. She wanted out, but she had nowhere to go. If you walked away from the guards, that went on your record. She might as well join the zhadya-born in the abandoned corridor because there would be no support from the Mines Board.

  In the change rooms, she took her clothes out of her locker and went into a change cubicle. She shed the many layers of her uniform, with the cold air making her shiver. She hugged herself, running her fingers over the initiation scars on her upper arms. Being in the guards was her life.

  Feeling utterly empty, she left the guard station and walked down the ramp into the settlement. People around her laughed and talked, but she felt nothing. Nothing but hatred and anger. Her family was flawed. Not just her little nephew, but she was flawed herself. The fight that had happened in the second level corridor yesterday proved it. In fact, all the time she'd been a guard, she'd been enjoying this game of lording it over people. If they weren't intimidated and scared, she grew angry until they were. Seeing fear in their eyes gave her satisfaction. She had always tried to justify it as another part of the job but that didn't hold. There was something wrong with her. She was just a nasty person, a mass killer who didn't fit in the new Hedron.

  At home, she found Mother and Thimayu in the kitchen talking in relaxed fashion as if nothing had happened. The crib in the spare bedroom was already gone.

  She didn't speak about the boy, because they didn't care. As far as they were concerned, the problem had been taken care of. Whatever happened to him now was none of their concern.

  Izramith went to her room and threw herself on the bed.

  She hated what Hedron had become. She hated her family for being stupid. Her mother, Thimayu and her father were all the same: they didn't care. She hated herself for failing to keep her nephew safe. For being the guard at Indrahui that everyone knew about. Killing people, for what? Enemies were people. They had families and loved ones. When she'd seen the picture of Ydana and Amandra and their protégées, she felt nothing except anger.

  Happy-fucking-families.

  Everyone had a happy family, except she was stuck with a bunch of idiots who didn't care.

  What would happen if she grabbed her gun, went outside and shot everyone?

  And herself?

  Gradually, her anger dulled and her mind turned to more manageable problems. The order to find another placing would not go away, and if she didn't do anything about it, Commander Blue would allocate a position and she would be stuck in a posting even more dull than border patrol. Dull-ness brought out her bad side. Lack of patience, being contrary and argumentative, picking fights with people who had done nothing wrong were all things that had gone on her record at times. She needed a busy posting.

  She had the choice of positions at industrial settlements, all of which were boring… or she could sign up for another off-world posting. Much as she didn't want to become involved in another war, there might not be a better option. What the hell, she might as well become a gun-wielding fucking mercenary and make her transition to evil complete.

  She heaved herself from her bed, dragged her comm reader off the shelf and sat down in the easy chair in the corner.

  The internal opportunities section in the guard directory gave her a list of off-world contracts. She flicked through the jobs.

  Communications Specialist, based at Pataniti

  Back to Indrahui. To the war lords and their irrational screaming. To the endless plains of Pataniti that were soaked with the blood of thousands to die in this pointless conflict. No way—she shuddered.

  Next.

  Communication Officer, Relay Station

  The relay station was interesting, an Exchange relay in the middle of non-settled space between Hedron and the nearest settled world, but why would she want to go on a collaborative space-based posting with Asto personnel? That could only end in disaster.

  Next.

  Security Specialist, special event, Barresh.

  Hmmm, what was that about?

  The tapped the screen. Barresh wanted someone trained in combat communication to oversee security operations during a special event which involved a street festival. The contract was for two solars local time, however long that was.

  Security officer. How hard could that be?

  Reference for the job: Daya Ezmi.

  That was a Hedron name and one she recognised. The founder of the Hedron Mines, Xiya, had two children. One of them, Edyamor, now headed the company. The other, Seveyu, had created a huge stir by going into a partnership contract with a headstrong young man on Asto—whom she had met at a gamra gathering while representing the fledging member entity of Hedron. The young man was part of the Asto delegation and had gone on to become Chief Coordinator of Asto.

  In anger, Xiya had dis-inherited his daughter and that should have been the end of it. But the couple had a son, Daya, and as per Asto's tradition, he inherited his mother's clan name. His parents stayed together for much longer than was customary, and their son got himself into trouble with his father.

  By this time, Xiya had passed on, and Edyamor reached out to the boy, who left Asto for exactly the same reasons that the original settlers came to Hedron: he could not live with the rigid class system on Asto.

  Edyamor re-instated his sister's part of the company to his nephew. Daya sat on the Hedron Mines Board for a while, but something had happened and he had left again. Rumours about him were a bit strange, as if a vital piece of information was being left out.

  Izramith looked up Daya Ezmi in the local register. The system showed a picture of him at the table of a Mines Board meeting, dressed in lilac and wearing the company logo. He looked quite young. He had soft curly hair and deep black eyes, and a finely-featured, pale-skinned face.

  In one instant, everything dubious she had heard about him made sense: he was zhadya-born.

  She laughed out loud.

  Asto's Chief Coordinator had a zhadya-born son. Imagine how much of a stir that would have created in the precious Inner Circle of Asto. Would the Chief Coordinator have tried to deny that his own son was one of those freaks that were only born to people in the fringes of the megacities? People of whom it was said that they brought on the condition by failing to educate their children, by eating the wrong food, or by being of inferior stock, or all of those factors?

  Because that's what people usually said when others were cursed with zhadya-born children?

  Like Thimayu?

  Like Asto's Chief Coordinator?

  The job in Barresh was starting to sound like a
good idea already.

  She looked up Barresh.

  It was a city-state on the edge of the Mirani continent, a former Mirani protectorate, independent since the Two-Day War when the Mirani army was ousted. Well, if their only war in the past three hundred years had lasted only two days, then it would be a heck of a lot better than Indrahui, where the only time of peace in the last three hundred years hadn't even lasted two days. And you could make that Ceren years, not gamra years.

  The population of Barresh consisted of two local races, keihu and Pengali, and a good number of guest workers and semi-permanent visitors, including Mirani, Kedrasi, Coldi, Damarcians and others.

  The city-state was governed by a council which consisted of pre-determined seats, based on family or elected representatives. Hmm, she disliked elections. Candidates always seemed to be voted in on such silly criteria, like popularity, which meant that they did silly things to maintain that popularity. Damarq had a fully elected council, and what good did it do except trying to stifle the commercial success of the Master Builders Guild?

  But that was another discussion.

  The Chief Councillor of Barresh was Daya Ezmi. Fancy that. Who said zhadya-born were always incoherent and mad in adulthood?

  The main problems of the tiny entity were the continued troubled relationship with the behemoth of Miran and street crime. None of which involved Hedron, or, for that matter, a street festival and parade.

  She stared at the information for a while, and couldn't see any bad things about this job.

  But there would be some for sure. Other entities didn't ask for security help if they had no problems to begin with.

  One thing was clear to her: of course this was where her father's brother had gone. An entity under the leadership of one of their own. The first ever zhadya-born to lead a government?

  This was a place that could offer safety to her nephew.

  Chapter 7

  Izramith went into the guard station early so she could send her expression of interest before starting the next shift. The approval came before she had even made it out of the change room, a personal note, written by Daya Ezmi, welcoming her to Barresh and instructing her to travel as soon as possible and not to bring anything.