Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  “Thanks.”

  “Nice and quiet, Eddy.” Dare shook a finger at him. “No more business.”

  Vijay bowed, hands folded, the picture of dignified submission. “No more, Seño Dare, unless you clear it.”

  Dare beamed. “Reasonable. Civilized. This is what I like about you saints. No fuss. No bragging and wasting time or pardon-pardon. Just get it done.”

  Dare and Meek strode away through the twists and turns of the transit depot, unhesitating and unafraid. Behind them, Vijay let out a long, long breath and slumped back against the wall.

  I removed my glasses. Vijay was in the thick of it already. Good for him. Now it was just a question of how quickly he could move up the ladder. I looked at my watch. I’d been viewing a little over two hours, undisturbed.

  Amerand still hadn’t shown up. I looked toward the door. I looked at my glasses. I bit my lip and slid them back into place and opened the connection again.

  The room darkened, then brightened and I was home. I was in David’s study with the tarnished November sunlight streaming in through the window, lighting up his angled desk and his shelves full of antique books and ledgers, and David himself.

  A sweet pain flooded me and my hand lifted to reach for him before I could stop it.

  “Hello, Terese,” he said softly.

  “Hello,” I whispered to the recording, which could not hear me.

  “I wasn’t going to do this. Not until…until I knew for certain what to say. But now I don’t think I ever am…going to know for certain that is…” He stopped and looked away toward the window. Snow clung to the rocks by the shoreline and the grey water shifted sluggishly.

  I could barely breathe. You’re going to leave me. You’re going to leave me and I can’t blame you because I’ve already left.

  “I haven’t made any grand decisions, if that’s what you’re worrying about right now,” David went on. “I keep trying, and nothing comes. One day I think I’ll just cut it off, do a Turnover, and let you get on with…with whatever it is you need to do out there. The next I think I’m going to come charging out after you.”

  He chuckled softly but didn’t smile. “Stupid, isn’t it? Going through all this to get you a message just to say I don’t yet know what I want.” He faced the camera again. “But I do miss you, Terese.”

  He touched the edge of his desk and faded away.

  I miss you too, David. I do. My cheeks were wet. I wiped them.

  Because I gave no other command, my view brightened, signaling the start of the second message.

  David sitting in his study again. It was night, and he had only one light on. Behind him the windows were solid, glimmering sheets of black.

  “Got your message today, Terese,” he told me. Hope flared painfully in me. “God and all the Prophets, I really, really wish you’d said something different. Because, you know, we don’t have a really good track record with you and promises.”

  I winced and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t shut out his voice.

  “I’m taking leave and going out to Berlin. Spend some time with the kids. You might look for me there first when you do get back.” There came a pause that stretched out so long I almost thought the message was over. I almost opened my eyes.

  “Was it even real to you, Terese?” David whispered. “Was any of our life together real to you?”

  There was a click, and silence. If I opened my eyes, I’d be alone in the dark.

  I tore my glasses off. What the hell were you thinking, sending that? I demanded, not sure if I wanted an answer from myself, or from David wherever he was. I knew I wanted to be angry at him for sending these asinine, spineless messages—for making me cry, for making me afraid, in the middle of a mission. I never thought about home when I was active. I never thought about anything but the job.

  I’d never had anything but the job before. I’d never really wanted anything else. But I’d had Dylan then, and Bianca, and the knowledge I was good at what I did.

  Now…now I had an empty room and a heartful of dust, and Bianca was a traitor and I didn’t know whom to trust, and David didn’t even know if he was leaving me or not.

  All at once, I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t think about this, I couldn’t be this other person. I had to be the Field Commander. I had to get out of here, to find Amerand Jireu and work out who he was, what he was doing. I had to find Emiliya Varus. I had to find my way from what had happened here to what was happening on Fortress and why it was all happening.

  I crammed my glasses back into their pocket, kicked my makeshift bed back against the wall so hard it bounced, and headed downstairs to the lobby.

  Locals and aid workers performed triage in the middle of the babble of voices and the smell of humans who didn’t have access to adequate water and sanitation. Feeling petty, I moved over to the man stationed at the door as a sort of receptionist and asked if Captain Jireu had been by and left me a message.

  He blinked up at me, as if trying to understand, but before he could say anything, we were interrupted.

  “Pardon-pardon, Seña?” An old man with leathery skin and hollow cheeks stepped up to me. He was bald and pale, but the muscles that showed in his forearms beneath his neatly mended blue coat were still wiry. “You are looking for Captain Jireu? I think I am looking for you.”

  I bowed. “Pardon-pardon, Seño,” I answered. “I do not think I know you.”

  “I am Finn Amerand Jireu. Captain Jireu is my son.”

  I confess I stared at the wizened man. The years had been hard on him, but I could see the family resemblance in the shape of his face and the intensity deep behind his eyes.

  I dug around in my memory for class-appropriate formality and found it. “I am grateful to meet the father of my friend.”

  He bowed. “I am sent to find you.”

  “Do you have a message?” Why would Amerand be sending his father to run such an errand? Well, it was pretty clear trust was not something they had a lot of in the Erasmus Security.

  “No, pardon-pardon. But news.” Finn Jireu straightened up. “My son is being questioned. His Clerk is dead.”

  TWENTY

  AMERAND

  The first thing I did when we stepped from the peeled core to the port yard was breathe deeply.

  The second thing I did was look to see who had come to meet us.

  I almost had to jump back from the crowd of saints who swarmed up to surround Terese and Coordinator Baijahn. At first glance, it looked like Liang had brought half his staff with him—and all the doctors. I heard Captain Baijahn first protest, then swear as they sat her down on the nearest crate for a good going-over.

  Terese rolled her eyes at me, then turned her back. I didn’t even allow myself to nod. I had to face Commander Barclay, and with him, a half dozen Clerks, none of whom was Hamahd. Fear settled into my empty stomach.

  Without a pause even to look at me, four of the Clerks hurried toward the peeled core. Commander Barclay folded his hands behind his back, and I had the distinct feeling those hands were clenched. His jaw most definitely was.

  I was bone weary. Behind me I heard the saints swearing and laughing and asking endless variations on a single question: “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I could have choked on my envy. As it was, I didn’t even dare glance toward them.

  “I need your report,” Commander Barclay told me. “Take a moment to get yourself together and come straight to my office.”

  I bowed. “Yes, Commander.”

  I turned from him and found myself facing Terese Drajeske. Commander Barclay bowed to her and she to him, and the commander left to consult with the Clerks, but I suspect he did not go too far. Terese’s gaze kept flickering over my shoulder.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  I sighed. Even having to stop to think about it brought a wave of weariness over me, but we were on the ground, and there were Clerks surrounding us, and Barclay was behind me. That precious moment i
n the black sky was gone for good.

  “The first thing I’m going to do is check on whether Kapa’s been found by the Security.” I grimaced. “Or whether whoever sent them got there first.” We might be able to bring Kapa back alive. I remember thinking, They don’t get to finish him. That’s my job. He could do what he liked to the Blood Family, but he’d turned on me—on Emiliya—and that betrayal burned a stark, ashen line through my thoughts.

  “Any ideas who did send them?”

  I shrugged. “Could be any of a hundred.” I saw the city stretched out beyond the viewing platform; the broken, decaying city that had looked like an endless palace to me when I first blinked in its fading lights. “You could be seen as valuable in any number of ways.”

  Her smile was mirthless. “Always nice to be wanted.” She hesitated. She was trying to decide how to proceed, trying to keep track of all the ears and all the potential harm she could do by speaking. It was odd to watch someone struggle with something I did as easily as breathing.

  In the end, all she said was, “Will you help?”

  I nodded. “As I can, yes. But you need to know…” I licked my lips. Here was what I had not allowed myself to think about. “I permitted my ship to get seized by smugglers. I may not have a commission after my next meeting with my commander.” I may be dropped into peonage, and never let go. I’ll have to find a way to tell her, or to tell Emiliya…

  Where is Emiliya?

  “I understand,” Terese was saying. “If I can help…”

  “Thank you.” I cut her off, craning my neck through the crowd of saints, guards, and Clerks, looking for the flash of white. But I couldn’t see anything. Emiliya had vanished. “But probably not.”

  “Either way, will you come down and find us?”

  I nodded. “Either way, I will.”

  “Thank you.”

  Terese turned away from me, and I turned away from her, both of us switching the other off from our awareness. My whole business was now to cross the dusty expanse of the port yard with the darkness yawning overhead, letting the reflected light from Fortress and the shining worlds pound down on the back of my neck.

  Letting two Clerks fall into step behind me without letting myself be seen to care.

  I still didn’t see Emiliya anywhere. It was as if she had vanished, or been spirited away. No. She was working for the Blood Family, for the Grand Sentinel. They wouldn’t have just taken her.

  She was working for the Grand Sentinel and she had heard every word I had said to Terese Drajeske.

  No, I thought again. Emiliya would not betray me. Not like that. It was impossible. It was not how we treated one another. I had done my best by her, and she had done her best by me, and if that hadn’t been quite enough on either side, it still wasn’t reason enough for her to turn me over.

  She was not like Kapa.

  There were toilet rooms on the far side of the yard. I passed a battered piece of scrip to the ancient man who stood sentinel there and went inside, with the Clerks following close behind.

  I relieved myself into the filter toilet. I rubbed hands, neck, and face over with cleaner and scraped it off and felt no better. The Clerks watched me in silence. They were both men. One was slim and delicate, the kind who’d grown up malnourished as a child and never recovered from it. The second was solid muscle from boots to bald, pale head. Their eyes were alert, engaged, darting back and forth as if they could see—or hear—more than I could. I thought about the rumors about their network again. Were they getting reports through the bones of their ears? It was certainly possible. The idea made me itch. I tossed the scraper and towel into the bin for the old man to clean.

  “Where’s Hamahd?” I asked.

  The thin, delicate one actually jumped. I watched him struggle to focus down on me.

  “He has temporary duty elsewhere.” His voice was light, breathy. “He is expected to return to assignment here.”

  “Are you his replacements?”

  The block Clerk blinked rapidly. “That has yet to be determined. Are you finished, Captain Jireu?”

  “Yes.” I turned toward the door. Hamahd had been “temporarily assigned” elsewhere before. Clerks, like the rest of us, needed to be debriefed, retrained, and reminded of all the different kinds of strings that held them in place. After the first few times, I managed, mostly, not to let it bother me.

  But this time was different. This time I really had done something.

  Of course they hadn’t heard. They couldn’t have heard. There was no possible way Kapa would have disabled the flight safeties only to have the cameras on.

  No possible way they could have heard unless Emiliya told them.

  But even as my mind filled with thoughts of Emiliya, part of it was busy trying to calculate what the cost of maintaining two Clerks was going to do to my debt levels. This was what ten years in the Security had done to me.

  By the time I reached Upsky Station, perspiration was trickling down my back. I walked down the shabby corridors toward Commander Barclay’s office. We passed the Clerks’ hive with its busy silence. I glanced toward them as frequently as I dared, searching for Hamahd’s form and wondering how bad things had gotten that even he would be a comforting presence.

  When my new Clerks and I entered his office, we found Commander Barclay alone and standing by the window overlooking the Upsky park. The light outside flickered strongly at that moment. He waved me to a chair with a table and a full welcome jar beside it. I drank off two cups of the water far too fast for courtesy, but my throat burned and I wasn’t going to waste the chance.

  Barclay watched me without comment until I set the cup down.

  “What happened?” he asked simply.

  I felt the Clerks at my back. I swear I could sense their gazes as they swept back and forth. I set that aside and gave as bland and factual an account as I could of how we had spotted Kapa’s ship, how we had given chase and taken hold, and how everything had gone wrong.

  Barclay listened, frowning, his dark brows drawn low over his eyes.

  “He was known to you?”

  Here it came. I had known it would. It had to. “We grew up together on Oblivion, and we were in the Breakout together.”

  “And then the academy.”

  “Yes.” Keep it calm, I ordered myself. Keep it down. Let them ask the questions. Do not say anything you do not have to.

  “He resurfaced again just a few days ago.”

  Of course. Of course. I kept my face calm. “Yes.”

  “And you did not think this was worth bringing to anyone’s attention.” My commander glowered at me. I could feel he was trying to tell me something. It was beating against my mind, but I couldn’t understand it. He and I had never had any rapport. We had never wanted one.

  “He said that he was paid up and legal. I believed him. I was wrong.” I was so tired. I wanted to go home. Did Father even know anything was wrong? Where is Emiliya?

  Barclay just looked out the window for a long time, not caring now if I saw his clenched fist behind his back.

  “Your assistance will be required with the salvaged engine compartment,” he said. “The Clerks want to give the core a thorough going-over, to see what the pirates are up to in terms of beating the security protocols. If you’ve altered the commands at all, you are going to have to show them what you’ve done.”

  “With respect, Commander,” I said. “It’s going to be difficult to shuttle out to Habitat 1 and still be on duty for the saints.”

  “The core will remain docked with us for a while.”

  I met and matched Barclay’s bland gaze. A peeled core—a working internal drive—was an incredible prize. It would be classified as Highly Dangerous under the Flight Guidelines, but if one handled the circumstances carefully—if one knew the right people to ask, the right records to tweak and send—it could potentially be sold for more than the average year’s debt. Especially if one had access to the right people inside the Clerks.


  “Yes, Commander,” I said.

  I found myself wondering afresh exactly where Hamahd had gotten to. Barclay might press a favor out of him in order to let him keep his easy posting here.

  I bowed my head briefly in acknowledgment. If Barclay wanted to engage in an auction for the core, it didn’t matter to me. If Hamahd was in on it with him, it was none of my business. What I wanted to know was where the hell Kapa had gotten his hands on it in the first place.

  Barclay’s glower had returned, trying one more time to force me to understand the meaning of his silence. I just looked back. I’m tired. I’m hungry. Let me go home.

  “Dismissed. You have the night off, unless the Clerks need you.”

  “Thank you, Commander.” I made my formal bow, received my dismissive nod, and left, my new pair of Clerks behind me.

  I should have been suspicious when they didn’t demote me. I wasn’t. I assumed Commander Barclay had no one he liked better to replace me. All those years of not making trouble, of following orders and keeping the OBs from making more than the acceptable amount of trouble, were showing dividends.

  This is what hope does to you when you’re not used to it. It is very like being drunk. You don’t realize how badly you’re impaired until you see the results of your spree.

  I wanted to find Emiliya. It must have been brutal, having Kapa turn on her like that. I needed to make sure she was all right. But I had reached my limit. I had to rest, I had to eat. I had to let Father know what had happened.

  I had to find a way to let him know I had thrown my lot in with Terese and the saints. I tried to picture what he would say, and I couldn’t. I could not even begin to formulate the thought.

  And I had to find out what the secops on my station had been up to behind my back. They weren’t any more corrupt than usual, but there was more than one of them who would have the knives out if they thought a better place had opened up, and everybody’s back would be a target.