THE IRON SWAMP
J. V. Wordsworth
Copyright
The Iron Swamp
J. V. Wordsworth
The Iron Swamp
Copyright 2015 J.V. Wordsworth
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
Dedication
For mum, who always put her children first even when life was difficult.
Thanks
I would like to thank all my friends and family for their support in the construction of this novel, particularly David Moss, Lance Karr, and Glyn Nelson who read the book at its various stages of completion, and offered many incredible insights. Very special thanks to Sadia Ahmed and my father Robert Wordsworth who went above and beyond the call of duty by not only reading it but sending me printed copies with their suggested edits. No doubt both individuals would make fantastic editors should they ever decide to take up the calling. Lastly, to Amy Bowman who helped me with Photoshop and read the book before anyone else.
Prolegomenon
I have not created an anthology of pointless people. Every individual described within these manuscripts played an important role in the sequence of events that brought Cos to calamity, often thought to begin with the barmaid Arianne Lickneis on 13/06/2259 FC.
Even amongst these individuals, there are few who polarized the histories as did Simon Nidess. In the words of the historian, Vander Mylis, "He made The Kaerosh bleed". But even I am not fit to judge his role in its recovery. There are those who say his mind was blacker than the despots who preceded him, but I have never ascribed to such a simplistic view. I leave it to the reader to make their own decision as to the character of the man who was both scourge and savior to a nation that had long since lost all hope of redress. I ask only that you consider what you might have done in his place, and not judge too harshly the man who is already the subject of such reckless hate, his effigy will burn as long as Cos remembers fire.
Perhaps our histories judge him harshly; perhaps they do not. I am no historian to tell you what to think. In my death, your opinion means as little to me as my own. I give you truth from the minds of those who were there, and you can make of it what you will.
Prologue
14/6/2237 FC
"You don't have to do this." Shia cupped the side of my face in her palm, forcing me to look into her dark eyes. She was a beautiful woman, elegantly tall with red hair that made the squalor of our living room fade into the background. It was hard to believe those same genes were in our son.
"No one has to do anything," I said, trying to look away.
Her grip tightened, anger inflecting her voice. "Now isn't the time for one of your lectures, Sammy. I know my duty as well as you, but we've already given so much."
"Not enough. There is a pounding in my head that won't cease until Granian resigns the Presidency and we re-join the Sodalis."
Long ago when the Sodalis was emerging as an independent nation, The Kaerosh had been their test site for communism. Men, women, and children of all races had rebelled, and the Federation, Cos' dominant power at the time, had forced the newly formed Sodalis to allow the Kaeroshi people their independence. The people celebrated for weeks on end with parades and fireworks as if they had been saved, but there had never been a more hollow victory. If they had truly known for what they fought, they would have burned every swamp, house, and living creature to a cinder before firing a shot for independence.
Shia smiled sadly. "It's a dream, Sammy. He'll kill every citizen of The Kaerosh before he gives up his power."
She'd heard it all before, but that didn't make it any less true. "Some dreams are worth fighting for."
"And our son?"
Simon.
"If I'm killed, you'll look after him."
My little son. The only person for whom I might have reconsidered my devotions. But I did this as much for him as anyone. I wanted him to grow up in a Cos where he didn't have to fear waking in the middle of the night by hooded killers; where people had a right to protest, and the government existed not to look after itself, but its people.
Simon deserved that. We all deserved that.
"He won't understand you know," Shia said, "if you die, I mean. Simon is smart, but he doesn't think like you and me."
I nodded. "Our son is weak." I knew that. He was one of the many people who simply accepted things for what they were.
Her mouth flickered as she bore the insult to our child. "Not weak, Sammy, just young. You can't expect a boy of ten cycles to understand why we leave him alone so often, and that we may never come back. Children need to be loved. They need to come first, and we've never put him first."
"Who do you think I'm doing this for if not our son?"
She shook her head, smiling sadly. "You can fool yourself, but you can't fool me. You were a trouble maker before Simon was even born."
I braced against the deep green irises of Shia Nidess, but I couldn't hold her gaze. "Reasons change. People change. I've changed."
She caressed my arm with fingers of silk, pulling me back to her. "Someone needs to fight for the people husband and that is no shame. You have a moral fortitude greater than any Guardian of the Sodalis. But do not pretend that our son will be better off when you're buried in the great swamps."
Shia always had a way of stripping through my armor and planting the blade firmly in my heart. "I love our son. I would do anything for him."
A single, fat tear made its way down her cheek. "Anything except watch him grow up."
I pressed her head against my chest. "I have no intention of dying tonight. I will come back, and together we will watch Simon grow up, you have my word."
Shia's tears wetted my shirt, and I held her as tightly as I could without hurting her. Growing up had been a poor use of words. Our son had ten cycles, and he still didn't reach a met high. The doctors claimed he would never reach 1.2.
Pituitary dwarfism they called it, or proportionate dwarfism. Supposedly, it was once quite common back on old earth before medical advancements cured the vast majority. But there was some genetic anomaly in my son, a frailty that prevented him from receiving the same treatment.
He was such a tiny little thing, more like a doll than a person, and there was part of me that knew without my protection little Simon Nidess would never survive the fetid swamp of The Kaerosh. He was scared of everything; crowds, adults, even other children. He needed a strong father figure to show him what it was to be a man. But in this, I would fail him.
If I came back this time, then it would be the next, or the one after that. The mission would claim my life, just as it claimed everyone. The Kaerosh wasn't ready to expel Granian. Perhaps it never would be. Perhaps he would live a long life solidifying his power base, only to be replaced by someone just as bad, then the pattern would repeat for cycle upon time until the twin suns went out and Cos was finally sucked into Cythuria. It didn't matter. Some fights simply had to be fought, because what would Cos be if no one stood up for its people? What would existence entail if there was no one to stand against the designs of evil men?
Our sacrifice, our deaths, gave everyone else's life meaning; the right and reason to continue. We were the counterweight to Granian's evil, the knowledge that for every despot murdering and oppressing his way through life, there were ten people willing to do anything to stop him.
"I have to go," I said, releasing Shia from my embrace.
"Will you say goodbye to him?"
I looked at the door to his room. Like every
human, quilla, cou or Rathjarin, I had my flaws. Cowardice was not one of them. I did not fear pain nor death, poverty nor failure, but in this one thing I was a coward. I feared that if I went into that room, kissed my son and told him I would be back soon, I would not be able to leave.
"He's asleep," I said. "Best not wake him."
Shia nodded, though I could see the lie hurt her deeply. She hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. "Come back, Sammy. Watch our son grow up as you promised."
Chapter 1
17/08/2256 FC
How many principles can a good man betray before he loses the title?
Those were the words of wisdom Sam shared with me before he sent me to bed the last time I ever saw him. No hug or scruff of the hair, no words of love, just a code that I was expected to live by. The naivety of children, I drunk it down like the indisputable truth of the Gods, and destroyed myself in a gesture of futility rivaling his own.
When it came to my rebellion, they didn't drive me out of The Kaerosh like they did him. There was no glorious end for Simon Nidess like there was for Shia and Sam. My crime did not rate so high. The police department stuffed me away in Las Hek PD basement with the old, the sick, the useless, and the embarrassing. Where the air stuck to your throat as if you were breathing through a gym sock, and the ancient light tubes bathed everything in the sickly yellow hue of a Hubuan refugee shelter.
Except for the sergeant's tank at the back, no one merited an office. Just line after line of desks filled with people like Edgar Holson who didn't realize we could all see his lunchtime porn break reflecting in the glass cabinet behind him, and George Buston who began his day by stocking the mini fridge hidden in his desk drawer, and finished it once his last beer emptied – bored old men, not the worst things littering the floor.
Philip Rake picked up my mint condition Sally cio Rathjarin figure, bashing its head against the table. "Don't you think you're weird enough without bringing these to work?" He smiled as a friend joking about my eccentricities, his thick stubble giving his face a rugged, trustworthy look. Only the malevolence in his eyes betrayed his true character.
A few desks away, Kevin Lisbold stood, the scent of blood in his nostrils. In nature the two were like clones, but Lisbold could not have looked more different. His flat cheeks and wide nostrils looked as if someone had smacked him in the face with a spade. Where Rake had full dark hair that made him appear mysterious and intelligent, Lisbold possessed only thin wisps of blond that aged him prematurely.
Since my demotion, the daily pleasure of dealing with Rake and Lisbold was second only to using the toilet at the end of the men's bathroom with half the bowl missing. They were fascinated by me, like dogs harrying at a bone until they ripped it to shreds.
Lisbold grinned. "What you need these for? It's like you want us to come over and chat to you about them." Rake dropped the figure onto the desk before I could get my hand under it.
"As much as I enjoy your company, they're just here because I like them."
Lisbold put his arm over Rake's shoulder. "I think he's mocking us, Phil."
Rake nodded. "I don't like being mocked by a man with a cock the size of my thumb."
I didn't like being mocked by men with brains smaller than my fists, but expressing this sentiment wouldn't do me any good. "If you'd stop watching me in the shower you could live in happy ignorance of the size of my cock."
Rake picked up my carded Pida Whey special edition with coin and ripped the corner back, his jaw protruding in faux-horror. It would have hurt if I hadn't brought the figures in especially for these idiots to destroy. All I needed to do was get Lisbold to break one as well, and if they ever bothered me again, I would send them both a video of the act with an ultimatum to either pay up or never talk to me again. It was not my proudest moment, sacrificing two of my most valuable possessions to rid myself of a couple of turds, but when a man was too short to reach the flush he had to find other ways. Even the basement, where new lights started flickering the instant the janitor fixed the previous one, would feel like bliss if I didn't have to talk to Rake and Lisbold.
Why either of them ended up in this cupboard for the dispossessed I didn't know. They were young men at the start of their careers, surrounded by people so old or so obviously incompetent that their productivity wouldn't decline greatly if they died. Neither Rake nor Lisbold seemed sufficiently stupid to have merited the basement, which meant their actions were criminal, and the bosses put them down here to hide them from the press. If the broken action figures didn't successfully segregate us, I would investigate further.
I gave no response to the damaged card, so Rake threw it at me. "Hope it wasn't worth much," he said, as the two of them walked away. I felt the prick of victory, but putting my ruined figure back on the desk was sufficiently sobering.
At the front of the room, the elevator dinged triggering a sea of gray hair and bald heads rising from the desks like wader birds evacuating a lake. As the doors slid open, a tall man I didn't recognize stepped out. He was older than me, though still young enough to drop the average basement age considerably. Mist goggles sat atop his forehead like horns sheared at the base. His boots rose almost to his knees, covered in mud fresh enough to entrench the sewage smell clinging to the air, wet prints slopping behind him. His black trousers were bath mat rubber, and his coat full of insulating zeolate that inflated his upper body like the head of a hammer. This man, whoever he was, had come straight from trudging through a swamp, and in The Kaerosh that never meant anything good.
He stopped at my desk. "I need to talk to you."
I eyed the empty desks either side of me. "Me or just anyone?"
"We can use that room at the back." He pointed to the sergeant's office, then walked off before I could object.
I followed him to the plywood door which fit into the metal tank like a varyball rammed through a bottle top. When turning the knob failed to open it, I suggested it might be locked, but he gave no indication of having heard. He lifted the door by the knob as he turned again, blasting me with the smell of microwaved noodles as he entered. Sitting in the sergeant's chair without removing his coat, he gestured to the other seat.
The sergeant was off on one of his snack breaks, so would probably be gone for some time. In fact, calling them breaks was a misnomer as he spent long enough leaning against the ground floor vending machine to leave a person print in the side. Even so, I sat uneasily, aware that he would not take kindly to our uninvited presence, and his nose-to-nose brand of shouting was worse than a face full of steam from a boiling ham.
The man glared for a few clicks, assessing me in the quiet. "Bishon Kenrey was murdered in his bedroom last night."
His words hung between us like a rotting noodle draped over the ceiling light. I lacked strong feelings towards the clergyman, only the faint recollection he was one of Clazran's high-ups, and therefore most likely a piece of dis. I had no idea why a man I had never met would come all the way to the basement, drag me in to my superior's office, and relay this information.
"Perhaps," he continued, "you are wondering what relevance this has to you?"
I looked through the window at the sea of incompetence from which I was especially selected. "Either I'm a suspect, in which case I should inform you I didn't know the man, or you want me to investigate the murder, in which case I would ask why?"
His pointed grin made his face look like a demonic triangle. "The why should be less important than the chance for you to redeem yourself."
I nodded. "But I would still like to know."
He leaned back in the sergeant's chair, scratching a set of long fingers across his chest. "I'll break it down for you so we don't waste hours arguing over it. We want you because we have leverage. You frak up, or don't do what we want, and you're back down here again."
I nodded. As self-confessed candor went, it was believable. "And what do you want?"
"We want you to solve the case obviously." He took a deep breath of noodle-f
illed air. "While partnered with Philip Rake."
"I see," I said. It didn't seem appropriate to tell him to frak himself immediately. "And what do I get in return?"
"If you solve it, you'll be reinstated upstairs, but I doubt you'll need it. Clazran will want you for his special police."
A lie. Given my background, the SP would sooner kill me than ask me to join them. "I'm not sure Rake will work with me."
My interviewer turned to regard the sergeant's poster on The Top Ten Tips to Stay Fit in an Office Job. "What do you want from me, Nidess?" He frowned, his eyes flickering from tip to tip. "Because you can cram it up your ass along with every other request you're thinking of making. This is the deal: You solve the case with Rake, and you can go upstairs again until your next frak up. And if anyone asks, you picked Rake for your partner. Clear?"
As crystal. The only question was whether I wanted to improve my life by playing their game or seize the infinitely more satisfying opportunity of telling the bosses to frak themselves. It wasn't me that decided I was better use to the police department picking my teeth amid their storage bin for the mentally infirm. I was a good detective once, until I crossed them.
I knew the consequences. Innocent or not, the SP wanted Sariah to go down so she was going down. All I achieved was to follow her onto the scrap heap. But that was five cycles ago, and the experience had changed me. I wasn't sure I wanted back out. Sam's voice rang loud in the back of my mind that there was danger in my reappearance. Apathy clouded my will, but I knew that whoever emerged from the basement would not be the same man who went in. I would not remain the disciple of my parents' religion. It was safer to stay, better to stay. I could give them that one last sacrifice.
The Iron Swamp Page 1
