Allies and Enemies: Exiles, Book 3

by Amy J. Murphy

  Dai leaned back in her chair slightly, an uncertain smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth.

  “Ghost,” she scoffed, dismissive. “Fine. Keep your secret.”

  Jon forced a grin, regretting his admission. No one would have believed him. He wouldn’t have believed him. But then, he would have never envisioned himself among the ranks of the Ironvale, sharing a meal with the granddaughter of its Imperator.

  They slurped noodles in awkward silence for a moment. Then, without preamble, Dai said, “It’s a land grab. A power move. Putting Ironvale on Hadelia.”

  “You don’t believe we’re going to ‘provide aid and authority’ while Poisoncry deals with the vigilante uprising?” He quoted from the brief missive he’d read when Yasu told him of the appointment. At the time he did little to question it. It was, after all, a ship headed in the right direction and he had passage there.

  “I doubt Poisoncry cannot deal with its own populace.” Dai leaned forward with an air of conspiracy. “If you think of it as an organism, they’re wounded. And this is an opportunistic infection.”

  It made sense, even the images of pus and corruption that Dai implied. Something had happened to turn the grime-covered populace Jon recalled into an angry, grime-covered mass willing to overthrow their local governments. Although Jon had only passing interactions with the Poisoncry agents that controlled Obscrum or Brojos during his time there, his impression was that they allowed, or even encouraged, the order imposed by organized crime lords like Koenii and his hired brutes. That left Poisoncry’s guildsmen to focus on refining tech and bio-engineering rather than keeping the peace.

  “What do you think happened to cause this uprising in the first place?”

  Dai shrugged, sipped her tea. Her voice was bored. “It started in one of the smaller towns on the coast. A place called Brogen? Broda?”

  “Brojos,” Jon said.

  “That’s the one,” Dai replied. Her tone rode the edge between teasing and guarded. “A gang of Volunteer stock rebelled against the local government there. But then, you probably already know all this, Special Information Officer Veradin. Perhaps even how it started.”

  Jon turned his attention back to his meal, feeling the weight of Dai’s curiosity. The skin on his neck tightened. He could not shake the idea that what happened in Brojos had something to do with Sela.

  “Wish I could tell you, Sergeant.”

  Sixty-Six

  The boy was no more than four or five years. He was covered head to toe in muck, with a curly mop of dark hair. He watched her with rapt attention as he sucked his thumb. Tyron could recall no special understanding of children but felt certain that a child of that age should at least be able to speak—especially one that was purportedly of Volunteer stock. Bix had said they were all fifth-gens, born to the generations of abandoned Volunteers and Fleet techs that called Hadelia home.

  Hoping to move out of his line of sight, Tyron slid along the bench. Her actions only seemed to captivate him more, and he shifted to follow her. However, he seemed reluctant to approach and stayed on the opposite side of the hatchway. She stretched out one leg and with the toe of her boot shut the door completely.

  Having a stranger in their midst was understandably new and therefore interesting, but staring at a stranger for longer than fifteen minutes had to reduce its charms eventually.

  Tyron returned to her meal and promptly sighed. During her brief distraction, twin girls had planted themselves across the table from her. Lena and Cal. That was what Bix called them. Incredibly, for creatures that seemed to manufacture nothing but noise and chaos with such passion, these children were capable of moving like stealth commandos.

  “Is it true you really got a hole in your head?” the girl on the left asked, poking a chubby finger against her own temple.

  “Don’t be stupid,” her sister hissed, elbowing her sharply. “If she had a hole in her head, her brains would leak out.” She followed it up with a demonstrative splashing sound, splaying the fingers of both hands out in an explosive gesture.

  Wordlessly, Tyron rose from the table, taking her bowl of food with her.

  Perhaps my brains did leak out. It would explain why I’m still here.

  She stalked through the corridor of what Bix called home. It was the capsized wreck of an ancient assault class runner. Looking up, she could still make out the remains of the crew seats and the skeletal framework for sleep racks. Like much of Hadelia, there were clues that spoke about past catastrophes, but no story to go with it.

  Much like me.

  Tyron told herself she was grateful for the assistance, no matter how much having to accept the charity of children dug at her pride. Unlike Sweet Amos, the loquacious Bix was more than happy to serve her up the details of this place, as well as a skewed perception of Tyron’s past.

  Bix had explained that the “boys” Koenii eschewed were the “Heavy Gravity Boys”—a band of overly developed fourth gen infantry that once done his bidding. Inexplicably, the Heavy Grav had broken with Koenii and asserted themselves as a new form of authority. They’d started with the crime lords, then moved on to the “government types,” people Tyron assumed were corrupt and guilty by association from their ties to Poisoncry. Brojos was essentially rudderless chaos. And now this chaos had spread as a revolution of sorts against the Poisoncry Guild to the larger settlements, including Obscrum. A location that was meant to impress Tyron, judging from Bix’s expression. But it meant nothing.

  Every war, as an inevitability, created orphans. Bix had taken to collecting them and had established this place as their base camp. She’d formed a tense collaboration with a few of the so-called Heavy Gravs for supplies and protection. Her achievements were impressive for one so young, but Tyron suspected it was a tribute to skills honed by a hard living forced on Bix from childhood. So far, she’d collected nearly twenty children here: the youngest an infant male discovered in the remains of a collapsed building, Bix the oldest.

  Tyron claimed what appeared to be a quiet nook and settled to the floor, sitting cross-legged with the bowl on her lap. The protein mush was lukewarm now, but it beat going hungry. She fell to, forcing down the stringy bits of meat, not willing to consider their origin.

  “You’re a curiosity to ’em. Ain’t never seen your likes before. A true prime meater and all. A real Volunteer from Origin.” Bix edged into the ring of warmth from a small chemstove. She was cradling a bundle of fabric in her arms, swaying from foot to foot. “I’ll tell ’em to hold off.”

  Tyron set the empty bowl aside and drew her knees up as she settled back against the upturned remains of a navigator’s console. She eyed the girl and her odd dance for a time.

  “You wanna hold him?” It wasn’t meant as a question. Bix deposited the bundle in Tyron’s arms and promptly turned away. “He’s hungry.”

  She grabbed it out of reflex and looked down to see the squirming body of an infant, its pink face screwed up, ready to release a lusty wail. “What do you expect me to do with this?”

  “It ain’t a shatter grenade. It’s just a kit.”

  “I can see that.” Tyron gaped at her. To her terror, the girl was moving away. “Where are you going?”

  “Fetch his food,” she called, disappearing behind a bulkhead.

  Tyron froze, staring into the bundle. At least she understood how a shatter grenade worked. This was truly foreign soil.

  The small face ceased its churning expression. The eyes, a murky blue, gazed up at her. His squirming stopped. One delicate fist wrapped around her thumb and sought to draw it into his drooling, toothless mouth. Doubting how sanitary such action would be for either of them, she reclaimed her hand. This small being was impossibly fragile. It seemed incredible that any Eugenes, especially something the size of a Volunteer soldier, started out so tiny.

  An unexpected tightness squeezed her throat. A powerful, sullen longing swelled to crash against the barrier of her memories of Before. The emotion was important in and of
itself. It meant something. But like most of the other attempts to jar loose more details, nothing came.

  “You cryin’?” Bix gaped down at her, bottle in hand.

  “What?” Tyron released the child to her then hastily swiped the back of her hand against her eyes. Incredibly, they were watering. She stood, ignoring Bix’s incredulous gaze. “My eyes are irritated. It’s likely contaminants from the atmo are getting in. You’ll want to shore up the doors.”

  “Right.” The girl returned her attention to the infant. She settled onto a crate to give him his food.

  Tyron made a point of not looking at the bundle in Bix’s arms. “What is its designation?”

  “It’s designation? You mean his name,” Bix mocked her accent. She shrugged. “Ain’t got one. Found ’im a few weeks back. Poisoncry had taken down a shanty row. No ’rents. All alone in the worlds. Like the rest of us, right?”

  Tyron swallowed. The tightness in her throat lessened but was still there. It felt wrong that the child did not have a name. Names implied there was a future meant for him. “You should name him.”

  Bix tilted her head thoughtfully. The amber glow of the chemstove made her look too young, like a mythical creature sent to steal the baby. “How do they name Volunteers where you come from?”

  “Familiar names are randomized. Patronymics are variations selected to honor deceased heroes.” The answer fell out of her like a rote memory before she even realized it. She snorted. “Incredible. I know how I was named, but not what I was named. For that, I had to rely on strangers.”

  “Well. That sounds like a boring way to name a person. Don’t it?” Bix’s voiced lilted as she addressed the infant.

  Tyron doubted he possessed the cognitive function to weigh in on the matter.

  Feeding apparently complete, Bix rested the boy against her shoulder. “Let’s call you…Falnir. I once had a pet scythe cat named that.”

  He made a wet gagging sound. Tyron curled her lip. Perhaps he could express an opinion.

  “Valen.” The name came out, unbidden. It appeared from the oblivion of her past with no explanation attached.

  “I like that better.” Bix grinned at her, then at the boy. “That’s you now…Valen!”

  The infant cooed a string of nonsense vowels and shoved a tiny fist into his mouth to demonstrate his apparent agreement.

  Tyron scrubbed a hand across her face, rubbed at her scalp. An ache started in her head on the left side, under the scar at her temple. It was a familiar pain now, persistent when she tried too hard to remember. “Why do you think I’m here, Bix?”

  “To help, right?”

  “I don’t even know where here is. Or how I got here. If what you’ve told me is true—”

  “Ain’t lyin’.”

  Tyron held up a hand. Bix resumed rocking the child…Valen.

  “Then I need to find this Captain Veradin. Get us back to our unit. I don’t belong here.”

  “Then tell me, Commander Brainbox. How it was you lost him in the first place? Why you even on Hadelia? That don’t scan with stories I heard ’bout Origin and the crester-mucks there. No one comes to the Reaches unless they want to or they have no other choice.”

  Tyron studied her. There was no doubt Bix ardently believed what she was saying, but it didn’t fit in the spots in her memory that others had filled in. She was a Volunteer, could recall grueling drills, training. Barracks, rows of faces, some more familiar than most. There were proper names, ship designations: Monican Republica, Storm King. None of the words had explanations attached.

  Am I really a deserter? With a Kindred officer, of all things?

  “I’m an Officer of the Regime. My duty is to my superior, to the Council of First.”

  The girls’ expression fell. “That ain’t the Tyron I know. Not the one that told the Heavy Grav Boys to stand up to Koenii, to take back their place in the worlds.”

  “You’re talking about me like you know me. I don’t even know me.” Tyron rubbed a hand over the top of her head, feeling the stubby growth of hair there. It felt unfamiliar as if it should be longer. Another of the broken puzzle pieces that seemed to bubble up at random times. “There must—”

  “Quiet!” Bix stood abruptly. Her forehead wrinkled with distress.

  Tyron noticed the background babble of the children’s voices had stopped. An unnatural silence had fallen over them. They too were frozen into place, eyes wide.

  There was a noise, more felt than heard. Tyron flattened a hand against the packed earth floor. A rumble communicated up her arm. It was the thrumming stroke of engines landing nearby.

  She looked up at Bix. “What is that?”

  “They found us.” Her voice rattled with fear.

  “Who?” Tyron asked, climbing to her feet. She ducked to avoid hitting her head on a cargo shelf.

  “Poisoncry.”

  Sixty-Seven

  “Go!” Bix called out. “Just like practice!”

  The children scurried like a nest of overturned pike-mice. They disappeared into dark corners and through holes dug into the earth too small for an adult to follow. It was orchestrated with a wordless precision that was almost eerie. Some snatched up packs from hiding places as the older children guided the youngest.

  Bix pressed the infant into Tyron’s arms. “Here.”

  She grabbed a heavy-looking backpack and threaded her arms through it. The infant released an ear-piercing wail. “Keep him quiet.”

  “How?” Tyron eyed the heavy plasma rifle nestled in the crook of the girl’s arm and contemplated asking to trade. They were the last ones there.

  Tyron got the impression that this was not the first time they’d been paid such a visit. “What would Poisoncry want with you?”

  Bix screwed up her face. Her tone was one reserved for the vastly stupid. “They want us for the Resource Center.”

  She had no idea what a Resource Center was but it did not sound like something she wanted to experience. Bix kicked away a stack of bedrolls. The hatch beneath led to a hand-dug tunnel. Tyron looked across the hatch at Bix. The familiarity of this moment clutched at her.

  It wasn’t until Bix called for her to move that Tyron realized she’d frozen up. Bix scrambled into the tunnel and motioned for the infant. Tyron handed it down to her, glad to be free of its squirming warm weight as she traded for the rifle. She followed Bix and pulled the hatched closed. From somewhere above voices called to each other, strangely mechanical. There was a thundering crash. Metal screeched.

  The sounds of chaos grew distant as they journeyed through the darkness for what felt like the length of the runner. Bix lit the small torch strapped to her wrist. The blue-green glow showed earthen walls shimmed up by the remains of the ship. Judging from the age of some of the pieces, and the corrosion, this tunnel had been here for quite some time.

  “What’s a Resource Center? What do they do there?”

  “Don’t know the whole of it. Don’t want to,” Bix whispered. “They pinched me a few weeks back. I lucked out and slipped free.” She paused, her face suddenly seeming older in the blue light. “Can’t say the same for the other three with me.”

  They plowed ahead in desperate silence before fresher air met them, cold and filled with the acrid odor of Brojos’ contaminated atmosphere. The tunnel ended in a dense copse of thorny bushes. Darkness had not yet settled fully on Brojos. The counter-spinward sky was still purple with twilight. Brilliant lights outlined the crest of the hill. They were on the opposite side of the wrecked runner and the Poisoncry’s incursion.

  Tyron noted that the hillside offered good cover as they waited the fall of night. The trees, though stunted and sparse, had wide, low-reaching branches. Tall grasses grew up along the trunks. There was no trail or other markings to suggest the local populace used this area. Once more, Bix’s resourcefulness was impressive.

  Small shapes disengaged from the glowing shadows. The other children had found separate paths to rejoin the group. This was their r
ally point.

  “Jem, give us a count,” Bix ordered.

  A young boy appeared one of the spear-carriers from Koenii’s den. His voice spiked with panic. “We’re missing four. Maru. Tibby. Cal. And Lena.”

  Tyron felt the dread coil in her stomach. “Could they have gotten lost?”

  There was a dissenting murmur, uncertain shifting. One of the children started whimpering. It was an unnerving sound, deep in the throat, half-swallowed. Not the normal noise a child would make.

  A high-pitched shriek—a child’s voice—flew out of the darkness to them. Then abrupt silence.

  “Stay here.” She looked pointedly at Bix. “All of you.”

  Tyron forged through the dark tangle of growth. Thorns pulled at her clothes, her skin. Full dark was on them now. She kept her sight on the crest of the hill and the lights that crowned it. It would be an easy approach, she reasoned. Good line of sight on the operation.

  An atmo ship crouched at the bottom of the rugged valley. Floodlights lit up the landscape like a false noon. She had expected to see men, soldiers. There were a half-dozen, dressed in padded shipsuits with icons stenciled into their backs. They wielded oddly shaped batons that ended in a row of barbs. Perhaps stunner weapons.

  Two culler-mechs moved among them on spidery legs, picking across the rocky soil of the dry riverbed like metal nightmares. Unlike much of the tech Tyron had glimpsed on Hadelia, these machines seemed new, fully functional and quite deadly. Cages hung from their middles with what looked like bundles of rags stuffed inside. Then Tyron glimpsed movement. A small hand reached out through the mesh. The cullers trundled into the hold of the ship, soon joined by their Poisoncry keepers. Tyron watched, helpless.

  An assault would be suicide. Getting captured would not serve the captives either. She settled back, crouching low to avoid the lights of the runner as the ship lifted into the night sky. Then Tyron made her way back down the hillside to the cave’s mouth. There was no need to hide her movements now. She took her time, careful of her footing in the unfamiliar terrain.