Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  “You could refuse,” said David. I didn’t even have to respond to that. David’s mouth twisted up. Distaste, or just frustration? I couldn’t tell, and that bothered me.

  “I’m sorry, David.” Sorry for being what I was. Sorry for not having worked harder to crush that last little stone in my heart that still had the word DUTY carved on it. It hurt, that stone, and I wanted it gone.

  I faced David, putting my back to the darkness outside the house and inside my own thoughts. I had to tilt my head far back to look into his eyes and my chest constricted.

  “Maybe it was always borrowed time anyway,” I murmured. “Maybe we should just be grateful for what we’ve had.”

  “Don’t say that,” he whispered fiercely. “We did not borrow our life together. We earned it. We fought for it.”

  He wrapped me in his arms and I leaned against him so my ear pressed against his heart. It beat in a soft, steady counterpoint to the rhythm of the waves outside.

  “Come back to bed,” he breathed in my ear.

  “If I haven’t slept by now, I’m not going to.”

  “So we won’t sleep. Come back to bed.”

  I let him steer me back to our room, past the sounds of our sleeping offspring. I let him thumb the privacy screen into place, turning the threshold opaque and soundproof, and come to me. I let him peel my robe slowly off my shoulders and send it whispering down to the floor so we could be skin to skin with the sound of the wind and the waves all around us. I let him stroke me and touch me until I didn’t care what was waiting on the other side of night’s darkness, as long as I had this moment and David’s warmth beneath my hands.

  And in the end, I did sleep.

  TWO

  AMERAND

  It was Emiliya Varus who warned me Terese would become important in my life.

  I was in bad shape when I arrived on Hospital, one of the Erasmus System’s inhabited moons, named, like the others, after its purpose. Most of my fuel and ballast were gone, burned up during a run after water smugglers. Somewhere in the excitement, a safety belt broke, sending our third, Marko Keich, careening across the cockpit. He now had a gash in his head, another on his hand, and a vague look in his eyes that made me suspect major concussion.

  We had to drift into port on inertia and minuscule readjustments. Emiliya was there waiting for us at the bottom of the elevator.

  “Hello, Brother Amerand,” she said as she shoved the gurney forward so Ceshame and I could lay Marko out on it.

  “Hello, Sister Emiliya.” Emiliya was no relation to me that either of us knows, but this was the polite greeting between Oblivion’s children.

  She bent over Marko, probing the scabbing wounds with her long, pale fingers. She had inherited pale skin, light hair, and blue eyes from her long-absent father, but her delicate frame was a consequence of our environment. Strength and fitness training were mandatory for medical personnel, as they were for the Security, but no matter how hard she worked, her build remained slender, almost attenuated.

  Marko screamed as Emiliya’s long, sharp fingers hit a particularly sore spot. My second, Ceshame, rolled his eyes to Leda, who’d come out of the elevator behind us with the ship’s official record in her hand. I took it from her, noted that the seal was intact, and passed it to one of the Clerks waiting behind Emiliya.

  The First Bloods, the family who ran and owned the Erasmus System, did not like electronic networks. They were too easy to turn against those in power, so they developed something more in keeping with the Erasmus System in general, a network of dedicated bureaucratic spies with a truly banal name.

  The Clerks came out of the military academy, just like the secops did. They were, in fact, what the majority of the cadets there turned into. Almost nobody actually wanted to be a Clerk. Almost nobody liked them. But then, how do you like the person whose job it is to hold you hostage?

  “You will report for debriefing in four hours, Captain Jireu,” the Clerk said. Her voice was thin and high, and poked uncomfortably at my ears. I bowed. She signaled to her colleague, who pushed past us and disappeared into the elevator. “You two can come with me now.” She crooked her finger at Ceshame and Leda. My crew kept their faces strictly neutral as they followed after her around the corridor into the main hospital complex. Standard Operating Procedure; do not give us any more time to coordinate stories. Who knew? We might have somehow been in league with the smugglers whose ship we’d just hulled.

  Emiliya was sponging the blood off Marko’s face. He lay still on the gurney, eyes shut and face relaxed. I guessed she had given him a sedative. She lifted her eyes to meet mine.

  “This is minor, Amerand,” she told me. “Painful and inconvenient, but minor. We’ll put the patches on and install him in observation, just to make sure everything takes. All right?”

  “You’ll do it?” Emiliya Varus and I grew up together. When I got put into the Security, she got put into the Medical. She not only survived the competition in that academy, she made it all the way through the university, not at the highest level, but she did reach the rank of General Physician. This qualified her to work on temporary and sudden conditions, things that didn’t involve tinkering on the cellular level. Breaks and burns, cuts and tears, were specialties of hers, as were a whole host of things she called “inorganic alterations,” which, as near as I could understand it, primarily involved people trying to smuggle contraband under their own skins.

  As a result, she saw a lot of the Security, and we saw a lot of her. I didn’t owe Marko much, but he was one of my people, and I wanted him in the hands of someone I trusted.

  “I can. It won’t take long.” Emiliya considered. “How about I meet you up in Lounge 12?”

  “All right,” I agreed as she got behind the gurney and started pushing. “See you in a few.” I made a half bow as she steered Marko around the corner, taking the left-hand branch. I took the right, moving into the pastel-and-silver complex that was Hospital.

  With exceptions in a few dormitory areas reserved for paying patients, Hospital was not made to imitate a surface city. The shafts, train chutes, and pedestrian corridors all had an enclosed feel to them. There were few places you were permitted to go, and no arrangements made for relaxation or entertainment once you got there, unless you went up to the public port yards.

  The floors Hospital and its committees reserved for the Security were not top tier, but they were comfortable. We got private rooms for sleeping, sitting rooms wired for entertainment, and small, well-catered dining areas to ourselves. The light was full-spectrum and steady, fading and brightening to give us a full day and a solid night that were comforting in ways I only understood in the wordless bottom of my mind.

  Lounge 12 was plain but serviceable, and at the moment empty, except for a fragile-looking man whom I thought I might recognize from other times. A fair number of Oblivion’s children ended up permanently on Hospital. There were no gangs there, and plenty of food and water, which made it a good berth, even if you were only waiting on the medical personnel.

  I took a corner booth. Because of our light gravity, we went in for fixed and solid furniture. The booths and tables, lounges and couches, were metal-framed with spring seats and thick cushions—all bolted to the floor. The man I half recognized hurried over with a teapot and a stoneware mug. He didn’t meet my eyes as he set them down, and he hurried away quickly after fulfilling my request for a second mug. I let him go. He didn’t want me to know him and I didn’t have any reason to go against his wishes.

  Except for that shy man and the softly humming service drones cleaning the carpets and walls, I had the place to myself. I poured myself a mug of tarry black tea powerful enough to strip paint. I had drunk about half when Emiliya finally walked through the door.

  “Hello again, Sister Emiliya,” I said. She slid into the booth beside me. I filled the other mug and pushed it toward her.

  “Hello again, Brother Amerand. You’re looking well.” I suppose this was mostly true. I
have enough hard work in my life that my bones are strong and my body in proportion with itself.

  “And you,” I answered politely. Actually, what struck me was that Emiliya looked halfway to wrecked. She wore the traditional white coat and trousers of her profession. Her gloves were spotless, but the rest of her uniform was rumpled. I’d have said it looked like she’d slept in it, but I was certain she hadn’t been anywhere near her bed for at least twenty-four hours.

  “So, what’ve they got you doing?” I asked casually.

  “What haven’t they got me doing?” she grumbled. Her sharp-boned face was drawn tight. Lines had etched themselves deep in her high forehead and between her brows. “There’s a whole lot of screech and clash about this new bunch of saints coming out of the Pax Solaris.”

  “What, more charity workers?” Why would there be any screech about Solaran charity workers? But I didn’t let that question make it past my eyes.

  Emiliya shrugged her bony shoulders, irritated. “I suppose. But in addition to my regular shifts, I’ve been in half a dozen different conferences about the new precautions and procedures we’re going to have for them. Orders from Fortress,” she added softly.

  What does Fortress care about the Solaris saints? Better question: What have the saints done to make Fortress care? But all I did was lift my eyebrows and take another sip of tea.

  The only people of the Pax Solaris I knew directly were those who were permitted in to assist with humanitarian relief. We of Erasmus once were very rich, or rather, the free among us were relatively rich and the Blood Family was astoundingly rich. Since the invention of the internal drive for faster-than-light travel, however, there was much less wealth to go around and the Blood Family had become willing to let other people feed and care for those they could not make money from.

  Emiliya took another drink and pulled a face. “They’re shunting them all over to your lot on Dazzle…”

  “Oh, joy.”

  “And I’m in charge of ‘data acquisition.’” She softly smiled at me. “At least we’ll be able to see something of each other.”

  “Data acquisition?” I said.

  Emiliya nodded slowly. “Just bioscans and sample gathering, but it’s all fairly high priority.” Behind us, the cleaner drones hummed, gliding back and forth across the carpet, and back and forth across the walls. “It’s a great opportunity,” Emiliya added. “I’m really glad to have a chance to make the new program a success.”

  We sat silent for a moment. As a Security captain, my clearances were higher than hers. Theoretically, there was nothing she could tell me that I couldn’t hear, but we both knew enough not to trust to that too much. The cleaner navigated the curve around our booth and drifted away, sliding under one of the empty tables, searching for crumbs.

  Here’s the thing about constant surveillance—the question you must ask yourself is not “Am I being overheard?” but “Is anybody paying attention to me?” Emiliya was involved in a change of routine. She had very good reason to suspect that the Clerks were paying attention. She had to be very careful, and I had to respect that.

  “How’s my mother?” Emiliya asked suddenly.

  “She’s well, and Parisch sends his love.” I kept Emiliya’s family on my patrol schedule, whether I needed to or not.

  “Can you take a letter for me?”

  “Anytime. I’m here for at least another six hours. You can leave it at Port 9 for me to pick up.” Screen calls home were expensive. The access fees would be added to what she owed Fortress, which—on top of the costs of her education, her housing, her board, her breathing—was quite a lot. Emiliya was grimly determined to pay her debt off. I wondered if this new duty might come with a bonus and if that was why she’d taken it on.

  Emiliya nodded, gulped her tea, and looked toward the closed door for a long moment. The wall cleaner clicked across a seam and back again. The floor cleaner’s hum dropped a little as it bumped over the floor vent.

  We talked of this and that, old friends catching up, nothing more. Every now and then we tossed in something positive about our missions and assignments for form’s sake, until finally Emiliya finished the last of her tea. “I’ll see you out there,” she said.

  “We go where we’re needed,” I acknowledged.

  I cleared the mugs and the teapot, handing them off to the kitchen man. Emiliya touched my arm in parting and gave me her softest smile. I covered her hand, a friendly gesture, nothing more.

  Sometimes I wanted more from her, and sometimes, I thought, she wanted more from me. But those times had never seemed to synch up properly.

  At least that was what I believed then. It was certainly easier.

  We parted ways. She went to her duties, I went to my debriefing, which was no more unpleasant than those things ever were. The high-voiced Clerk played the record over for me, stopping at key points to ask questions, which I answered as briefly as I could.

  In the end, she could find no reason to hold me and I was released with permission to leave for Dazzle in nine hours.

  Which left me with rather a lot of time to kill. I left a message for Emiliya and headed up to Port 9.

  Port 9 was the biggest of the public ports on Hospital. It had an air lock at its entrance and orderlies who checked you through and scanned you thoroughly to make sure you were not walking off with any unauthorized cargo or walking in with unexpected microbial passengers.

  I checked out clean and was allowed to enter. When the air-lock door wheezed open, a fog of odor and noise rolled out. In front of me spread a hive of motion and color packed into a cavern that was too big to take in with a single glance, but still felt too small to hold the crowd. The scent of hot oil wrapped the rapid clatter of conversation. Shouts of greeting or of winning gamblers rode waves of citrus and carbon grease. The black sky opened above the transparent ceiling. The gaudy spheres of the gas giants, and the gleaming white disk of Fortress, all ice and vigilance, looked down on us all.

  I steeled myself against the black vacuum with its white eye and strode into the crowds.

  Hospital was the one Erasmus moon that had never ceased to operate on a twenty-four-hour schedule, so the yard was crammed whenever you arrived. Its chaotic passthroughs were hemmed in by food and drink stalls or larger insulated structures where you could rent a bed for whatever you might need a bed for. There were entertainment stalls and cubicles, and screens for receiving news or sending messages, which, of course, recorded and stored everything that passed through them. There were even some legal gambling venues, always very popular. And as in any port, there was a sort of floating hiring fair going on for those ships lucky enough to have trading licenses.

  Despite the constant traffic, the port arcade’s carpets were immaculate. The polished walls gleamed from constant cleaning, but you couldn’t hear the drones’ hums and clicks over the rumble and rush of human activity. Which was part of the point. What with the food, games, and cheap drink, you were supposed to forget about them. I suppose it worked sometimes, because the Clerks kept the system rigidly in place.

  I stopped at an information booth and my uniform got me instant access to a screen so I could check on the status of my ship and the whereabouts of my remaining crew. Leda and Ceshame had lost no time availing themselves of port privileges. As long as they turned up vertical and sober in six hours, I wasn’t going to complain.

  I rambled through the port, browsing the goods, eyeing my fellow visitors. My uniform was looked at with a nod by some and a suspicious squint by others. At that point I was not paying much attention to either. I was puzzling out what Emiliya had said about her new assignment and trying to fit it in with what I knew about the Blood Family’s priorities, which were first, to survive, and second, to maintain their wealth.

  I quickly tired of aimless rambling and turned my path toward a little stall near the center of the arcade. It had no sign, but everybody knew it as “Nana’s.” It was run in those days by a young woman who had grown up in the arc
ade and learned the secrets of cooking for its people from her mother, Nana, and her grandmother, Nana. The fish tacos and rice stew were the best you could get in the whole of Erasmus.

  The spicy scents went straight to my stomach as I walked up to the stall, which was made from lashed-together decking and salvaged furniture struts. The current Nana flashed me a gap-toothed smile and loaded up a ceramic plate with tacos and doughnuts hot enough to burn my fingers. Grabbing the plate quickly, I moved aside, my first bite already on the way to my mouth.

  The flash of medical whites caught my eye as I chewed, and as I looked up, the crowds shifted again, and I caught a glimpse of Emiliya. My spirits lifted…and then I saw who she was talking to.

  I dropped my plate on Nana’s counter and shoved my way through the crowd. Emiliya and the man both looked up, startled as I bore down.

  We all stared at each other, and the man smiled, flashing an amethyst tooth in place of one of his canines.

  “Hey, Brother Amerand.”

  “Kapa Lu,” I whispered.

  Emiliya yanked her arm out of his grip.

  Kapa looked from me to Emiliya. “Well. This is timing.”

  Kapa, Emiliya, and I had run the tunnels together as children and tried to lay claim to the streets of Dazzle after the Breakout. Together, he and I made it through five years of the Security academy.

  Then Kapa disappeared.

  “At least now I know where you’re getting your talk from,” Kapa said to Emiliya.

  “Think what you want,” she muttered.

  I finally found my voice. “How the hell did you get in here?”

  Kapa rolled his eyes. “Like I was trying to tell Dr. Varus here”—he sneered her name and title—“I’m paid up. Clean and legal. Check my records if you don’t believe me.” He nodded toward the info stall across the aisle.

  “How’d that happen?”

  “I have seen the light, Brother. Crime doesn’t pay and a heavy conscience is too high a lease for my life.” Kapa grinned, flashing that lavender tooth again.