Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  The blood drained from my face. Messages, from David? What kind? Why? I squeezed my eyes shut, and Orry put a hand on my arm. I’m sure he thought I was overwhelmed by emotion, which I was. He just didn’t know which one.

  Orry’s grip on my arm tightened and I opened my eyes. One of the Clerks was gliding up to us: a pale woman with short, straight brown hair and hard, bright eyes. So hard, in fact, I wondered for a moment if they were badly made cameras.

  “Field Commander Drajeske,” she said, completely ignoring Orry. “I have recorded that you made an unauthorized transmission from the peeled core at 11:20:34:12:09, local time and date.”

  Ah. I was wondering when you’d show up.

  “Yes. That was to our people stationed in Habitat 2. I wanted to see if there was any way they could reach us more quickly than the ship from Flight Control.”

  The Clerk didn’t even blink. “And why was that?”

  “Because we were going to run short on air,” I answered. “I was hoping to save lives.”

  “It was unnecessary,” said the Clerk.

  “I didn’t know that at the time, did I?” I answered, working to keep my voice even. That I had also told our people to get busy and find the pirate ship if at all possible was nothing this person needed to know.

  The Clerk just stood there staring at me. She blinked once. “That is an acceptable explanation at this time.”

  I bowed. “Thank you. If I can be of further assistance, you know where I’m stationed.”

  The Clerk did not even nod. She just turned away and rejoined her fellows. I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly and tried to shift my mind back to the situation at hand.

  “Are they all like that?” I murmured to Orry.

  He shook his head slowly. “Rumor has it they’ve been tightening the reins lately. Too much water smuggling, or maybe they think the OBs are going to try another breakout. Or maybe it’s just for your benefit.” He tried to say that last like a joke.

  Or maybe Fortress got wind of Bianca’s plans. My jaw worked itself back and forth. And maybe after they killed her for it, they decided they’d be wise to keep a better eye on the rest of us. I scanned the crowded port. Emiliya Varus was still nowhere in sight. Captain Jireu—Amerand (six hours in a peeled core tends to put you on a first-name basis)—on the other hand, was easy to spot. He stood to one side of the upper entrance with Commander Barclay. I couldn’t hear what they said to each other, but whatever it was, Barclay eventually let Amerand walk away.

  I touched Orry’s shoulder. “Give me a second, will you?”

  Orry followed my gaze, and when he realized who I was looking at, he raised his eyebrows significantly. “Pardon-pardon,” he said in the local dialect. “I’ll be with the transports.”

  Irritation at Orry and his constantly inaccurate assumptions flashed through me, but I didn’t have time to explain. I moved to intercept Amerand. There was something missing from the scene, but my fogged brain couldn’t think what it was.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked. Even though Amerand was standing still, he seemed to vibrate, as if he’d found the energy that had been drained from the rest of us.

  “The first thing I’m going to do is check on whether Kapa’s been found by the Security.” He sighed, and something of that energy faded. Reminders of reality will do that, I guess. “Or whether whoever sent them got there first.”

  “Any ideas who did send them?”

  “Could be any of a hundred.” Amerand shrugged and gestured broadly. “You could be seen as valuable in any number of ways.”

  I managed a sour smile. “Always nice to be wanted.” I chose my next words carefully. I had not forgotten for a minute what he’d said in our lifeboat. “Will you help?”

  He nodded. “As I can, yes. But you need to know…I permitted my ship to get seized by smugglers. I may not have a commission after my next meeting with my commander.”

  Favor Barclay, whom Siri had pegged as a coward. “I understand. If I can help…”

  “Thank you,” he cut me off. “But probably not.”

  It was my turn to nod. “Either way, will you come down and find us?”

  His smile was sharp, more determined than glad. “Either way, I will.”

  “Thank you.”

  He looked at me mutely, that new energy visible again. By then I thought I could put a name to it.

  Hope.

  Amerand Jireu saw me as someone who brought him hope. It had been a very long time since I had been on the receiving end of such a look. The reality and the responsibility of it twisted together tightly inside me.

  We both turned away from each other a little too quickly, like we couldn’t stand to look a moment longer. I climbed into a rattling little electric cart with Siri and Orry, and we started down through the thoroughly repurposed casino city to the home base of Common Cause Relief.

  Somewhere on the way, I realized what had been wrong with the scene up in the port yard. Amerand had been there. His commander had been there.

  His Clerk had not.

  There had been Clerks, and there should have been one with him, following him. I’d run through hours of recordings on the flight from the Solar System. I needed to know what normal looked like in the place I was coming to. A captain of the Security should have his own Clerk standing right behind him while he was on the home station.

  So where was he, or she? Who could have authorized him to go unwatched? And why?

  The disquiet I’d felt before returned and redoubled. I needed to talk to Siri, but I couldn’t say anything at the moment. I hung on to the bar beside my seat as Orry eased our way over the creaking bridges and poorly propped-up balconies until we were finally down on solid stone.

  The Common Cause base was a dramatically curving building whose central dome helped hold up the erratically lit “sky.” Greasy green flocks of parakeets shrilled and shrieked, and rose in indignant clouds at our approach. Orry had to navigate around a curving queue of people who carried jugs, buckets, and bottles. They’d hung empty containers in great clusters from their belts or from yokes balanced on their shoulders. A lucky few had pushcarts piled high with empty vessels. All of them waited for their turn at the single shiny spigot sprouting out of a shallow basin that had probably once been part of an ornamental fountain.

  They had probably waited in line most of the morning, and would wait the rest of the day. One look at them was enough to make my particular set of problems seem very, very small.

  Poverty does not change no matter where human beings have gone. It is hollow eyes and stained teeth and hands that will break if you take them roughly. It is scarred, and its sores are open and won’t heal. It stinks of shit and sour breath. It is wary, afraid to hope, terrified to trust, but too weak to do anything else. When you arrive with your boxes of nutrient powders, your vitamin-infused rice, and your pills, it will kill you if you’re not careful. Not for its own sake, but for the sake of the children, the brothers and sisters, the fathers and mothers, who are dying because they do not have what you do.

  In low-gravity environments, it is also incredibly fragile. The three hundred years Erasmus had been inhabited were not enough for the human physiology to adapt. Bone and muscle loss were real problems. I could tell by looking that most of the people here were doing their best to force their bodies to be stronger by weighting their clothes. Their tattered hems were bulky with stones. Metal plates had been attached to robes and leggings. Rough mail shirts and kilts of twisted wire draped all but the youngest children, but they were all still too thin, and too small.

  Even in the middle of all this, the too-small, too-thin kids were being kids. At least a dozen had hoisted themselves up the pillars and the buildings, chasing one another in a three-dimensional game of tag. They shrieked and made spectacular leaps from one handhold to another. One child of indeterminate sex jumped carefully down from a second-story perch and ran up to their parent. I saw the white flash of eggs slung in the fol
d of a ragged cloak.

  I thought about Fortress, sitting in the middle of an entire world of wealth and water, and my weary and sickened stomach turned over hard. In that dizzy moment I wondered if I’d judged Bianca and Bern too harshly.

  “Welcome to my world,” said Orry as he parked us near the grandly arched front door.

  “Yeah.” I climbed out. “Yeah.”

  Siri still had a constant headache, but the med techs had assured me six or seven times that she was in basically good shape. Even so, I ordered her into the clinic for the night, and she went without too much grumbling.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?” asked Orry as we left the clinic for the crowded lobby.

  I grimaced. “Not yet. I need to stop moving for a while. I need…” I need more than I can explain to you. “Is there someplace I can crash?”

  “This way,” he said kindly. I knew he was burning with curiosity, but he also saw the state I was in. He led me up the stairs to one of the dim rooms on the first floor and lifted aside the piece of flexible sheeting that served as a door. The chamber beyond had been stripped down to the foundations a long time ago. The floor and walls were nothing but dusty stone. Curtains made of more grimy sheeting covered the window. The outside light leaked in a little around the edges. The only furnishing was a bed in the corner made up of a thin mattress on top of tightly tied bales of what might have been more sheeting.

  It wasn’t spinning, and it had a horizontal place I could lie down. Heaven.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Is there…is there a secure station you can route those messages from David through?”

  “Give me your glasses.” Orry held out his hand. “I’ll cross-load them myself.”

  I pulled my glasses out of my belt pocket and handed them over.

  “Anything else?” he asked as he pocketed them. I shook my head.

  “Get some rest.” He laid a hand on my shoulder and shook me gently, a gesture that chided me to remember I was not in this alone.

  Then, to my relief, he left.

  I walked over to the bed and sat down. I wrapped my arms around myself, stared at the sheeting hung in the threshold, and waited.

  Slowly, set free by stillness and safety and the realization that I was not only alive but was likely to stay that way, the aftermath began. Goose pimples trembled on my arms. My skin crawled. The tremors worked their way deeper, until my muscles cramped and spasmed. Uncontrolled—and uncontrollable—shudders shook my whole body. Tears poured in rivers down my cheeks. I clamped my jaw shut with every ounce of strength I had.

  Unwatched and alone, I fell apart.

  I’d watched a man and a woman die. I didn’t know them. I didn’t know if they were good or bad, if they had family or were alone. I just knew they had been alive, and now they were not.

  But worse, so much worse: Bianca was a traitor. Bianca Fayette was a traitor, and it had maybe got her killed, and I’d been kidnapped by a pirate who wanted to sell me and Siri off to…who knew what. Maybe because of Bianca.

  She’d saved my life and maybe she’d just almost gotten me and Siri killed. We’d made it, though, by the skin of our teeth. But it almost didn’t matter, because no amount of living could change what Bianca had done. It couldn’t erase the attack and how we’d fought for our lives. Nothing could change anything I had done or seen, and all I could do was sit and shake until my body had purged its fear and decided to let me rest.

  Eventually, the trembling did ease. Slowly, I was able to breathe without sobbing between clenched teeth, and the tears dried on my face. Slowly, I was able to stretch myself out on the shifting, lumpy bed and sleep.

  EIGHTEEN

  SIRI

  It did not feel good to be back on Dazzle.

  Dr. Gwin’s ministrations cleared up the worst of Siri’s headache and faded the purple-and-black bruise down to green and yellow, but Gwin wouldn’t do anything about the slight queasiness from the too-light gravity and too-fast spinning of the little moon.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Dr. Gwin announced. “You did before.”

  “So much for the healer’s oath.”

  “First, do no harm,” recited Dr. Gwin placidly. “Not allowing your body to make its own adjustments would leave you dependent on chemicals. Very harmful.”

  In the back of her mind, Siri knew Shawn was smiling at her. It did nothing for her temper.

  The doctor was certainly a stubborn one, that much was certain. Nothing Siri could say to Gwin—or any of the three assistants who came and went during the clinic’s night shift—could get her released. Shawn spent the time alternating between sneering at her protests of “I feel fine!” and suggesting she just make the best of it and get some rest.

  I don’t feel like resting, she’d told him, aware she was beginning to sound petulant. I want to get to work.

  “It’s just another couple of hours, Siri,” Shawn replied. “It will wait.”

  It’s already been too damn many hours. She didn’t say that what she really wanted to do was get out of here and find Vijay. Shawn already knew. But she needed to see Vijay, needed to make sure nothing had happened to him, and to make sure he knew nothing had happened to her, not really.

  Even Shawn could not argue with that.

  Somewhere into the second hour of trying to get some sleep on the narrow, sterile monitor bed the clinic staff had threatened to strap her into, Vijay walked in.

  He was clutching his arm and swearing, and it took Siri a good three minutes to realize the thug with blood dripping down his wrist was Vijay. She sat up straight, mouth open. He perched on the edge of the one empty bed and didn’t even look at her while he held his arm out for the clinician, who swabbed and sealed and asked what he’d done to himself.

  “None of your fucking business,” snarled Vijay…Edison. His cover name was Edison.

  The clinician shrugged. “You’re going to want to take it easy for a few hours while that sets, or you’ll split yourself open again. The bed’s free if you want it.”

  In response, Vijay/Edison kicked his boots off and dropped backward until he lay stretched out on the cot. He grinned over at her.

  “Hey, lady, come here often?”

  Siri rolled her eyes. “What century are you from?”

  “You pick. I won’t disappoint.”

  They couldn’t say anything real. She hadn’t swept the room yet.

  “So, were you with that load of Guardians that got caught by the smugglers?” He folded his hands behind his head.

  “How’d you hear about that?”

  Vijay jerked his chin toward the door. “It’s been big news. Everybody’s got their parts in knots. There’ve been lockdowns, searches, bunch of arrests. The whole big security-theater spectacular.”

  “Yeah, well, it wasn’t all that much on our end.” Which wasn’t true, but that was not important now. “We’re all okay.” I’m okay. She thought toward him. I promise. And you’re taking a hell of a risk with your cover.

  “Did you expect any less?” murmured Shawn.

  Siri swallowed. I didn’t even think about it, but this is killing me. She wanted to reach out to him. No. She wanted to fall into his arms and hold on for a year.

  “Keep it together. Just think about what Terese will do if she hears about this.”

  Which effectively destroyed any urge to break cover.

  “If you’re okay, what’re you doing in here?” Vijay wrinkled his forehead. If he’d had any eyebrows left on his scarred face, he would have been raising them.

  “Failed to duck fast enough.” Siri shrugged, and wished she hadn’t. A wave of queasiness ran through her. “Nothing huge. But my commanding officer is paranoid and she wants me under observation.”

  It was clear from his expression Vijay didn’t believe her, at least not completely, but what could he say?

  “So, you hear any more about this Bianca Fayette thing over there?” he asked curiously. “Everybody’s saying that’s what your bunch i
s here for.”

  Just making conversation. Anybody would ask… She swallowed again around a fresh wave of nausea. Vijay knew. Aside from Terese and Misao, Vijay was the only one she’d told about her theory, that Bianca might still be alive. He was the only one who hadn’t dismissed her out of hand.

  How do I even begin to tell him? And what in the name of all that’s sacred do we do if she is alive?

  Memory assailed Siri, of Bianca on the deck of a shuttle. Bianca had gripped Siri’s arm hard enough to hurt. “They don’t count,” she’d hissed. “Not anymore. They gave it up when they laid hands on one of mine.”

  Siri closed her eyes. Terese didn’t want to believe Bianca could break the rules, but Siri believed it, and she knew Vijay would.

  But that time had been one person. This time…it was a whole world. Terese had only been doing her job. Bianca had been…Bianca had been…even now she could barely think it.

  “Do you want me to send a burst to Took?” Took was Vijay’s Companion. Across short distances, for extremely short time frames, one Companion could send a data burst to another.

  No. Too risky. Any wireless communication, no matter how brief, might be spotted.

  “Well, that can’t be good.” Vijay rolled over on his side and propped his head on his hand. “So what is it?”

  “You talk too much.” Siri rolled over on her back.

  “Got nothin’ else to do in here, and you’re a hell of a lot better-looking than that aide.”

  “You’re a freakin’ Neanderthal.”

  “And I bet you just love that in a guy.”

  Siri bit her lips in an effort to frown, remembering how she’d react if Vijay was what he seemed to be. “Shut it. I want to get some sleep.”

  “Oh, come on, we could be good. Guardian and gorilla.”

  Siri’s gaze slipped sideways, and she tried to read Vijay’s expression. Was he actually suggesting they put on a relationship act for the cameras? It was a risky move, but it would give them an excuse for meeting, instead of just making drops…

  “Terese will bust you back to private for the next hundred years.”