by Ann Aguirre
3
Bad Omens
Dred had told him the truth, as far as it went.
Reading him had been instructive . . . and unique. She’d never encountered anyone with so much pale energy, limned in darkness. Otherwise, there was little color to him at all, as if emotion had rarely touched him. In fact, he only offered curls of cobalt blue, like a dark sea one could drown in, the color of sorrow. So he had been sad . . . and he’d frozen thereafter. His past became a mystery wrapped in that context, but it would remain unquestioned. She didn’t need to know his secrets.
As she’d said, everyone had them inside Perdition, crimes for which they’d never been charged or convicted, sins that had driven them to darker deeds. There was some solace in the bottom of the abyss; this was where people rolled to a stop after an interminable fall.
After the fight, they didn’t speak again. She led the way quickly through the other borders, and she didn’t stop until they reached the dubious safety of Queensland. The sentries snapped to attention as she crossed with the three men behind her.
“Anything to report?” she asked.
“Nil.”
Sometimes it was a colossal pain in the ass to guard so much ground. On bad days, it felt futile, like conflict they invented to keep themselves from going mad from the realization that their lives were pointless. Such nihilism would destroy her if she let it.
Dred nodded at the guards and led the way past into the heart of Queensland. She tried to imagine what it looked like to the fish—tawdry, she supposed, and full of delusions of grandeur, relics of Artan’s rule. This had been a fitness room at some point, where the workers could train on the machines or run laps if they preferred. It was a good-sized space, and she’d divided it up in sections for various functions. Everyone had a job to do, as work kept her men from killing one another. Well, most days. If the tensions ran too high, she ran death matches to settle grievances. The betting distracted the convicts. Most of them were simple souls with rotten teeth and low aspirations.
“Get something to eat,” she told Einar and Tam.
It was a dismissal; they left without a second look.
“You’ve carved out quite a kingdom here,” the man beside her said.
“Not me. I only stole it.”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Isn’t that what they say?”
“It is, but that doesn’t mean I built this.” After listening to Tam’s advice, she’d made some improvements, though. Artan’s idea of organization had been somewhat lacking.
He shrugged. “In here, keeping it seems like a fair achievement.”
“Don’t pretend to be kind. Don’t flatter me. I brought you here because I recruit the best of the dregs, which is why my territory doesn’t lose a single centimeter.”
“Oh, I like you,” he purred. “What’s your name?”
“Dred.”
“That must be a prison handle. No mother would name her daughter Dread.”
“It’s a nickname. D-R-E-D.”
“Must be short for something.” He cocked an inquiring brow at her.
Dresdemona Devos, she thought. But she didn’t confide such things in her fish.
“Must be,” she agreed aloud. “What should I call you?”
“I’m Jael,” he answered.
“JL? What does that stand for?” The moment she asked, she recognized the tactical error, as she’d done the thing she just chided him over.
“Whenever you feel like exchanging stories, queenie, we can brew a nice cuppa, share our deepest feelings, and give each other matching tattoos.”
She offered her sweetest smile. “The hydroponics lab does keep us in sweetleaf tea. It’s not the finest blend, but the plants are hardy. Even gross mismanagement can’t kill them.”
“Splendid,” he muttered. “And it’s J-A-E-L since you were kind enough to share a spelling lesson with me.”
“Excellent. Now I know how to write your name when it comes time to draw lots for the worst missions.”
He suppressed a smile, as if her acerbic nature delighted him. Dred didn’t want him to approve of her; she only needed him strong and willing to fight. Yet she sensed this man did as he pleased and only pretended to obey. She couldn’t claim he hadn’t warned her.
Back in Shantytown he’d said, I have issues with authority. In Perdition, however, that was like saying, I kill people. Other convicts would just shrug because it was a given. They didn’t send people to a whitefish lockdown like this one for stealing baubles.
“Does this place have a still?”
“In fact, it does. But you’ll have to earn your ration cards. I can’t have all my men drunk at once. Bad for business.”
“Death is your business.”
Her smile widened. “And business is good.”
“I knew you were going to say that.” Dred saw how he choked his response, buried the flare in his blue eyes that looked like a tiny spark, flickering within the purest heart of flame.
“So you’re Psi as well,” she said, deadpan. “Precog, I suppose? Tell me, how does my story end?”
“Not with a bang but with a whimper.”
“That’s how everyone goes out, I reckon. Unless they’re gurgling.”
“I never whimper. Or gurgle.”
“What’s your specialty?” she asked, sobering.
It wouldn’t do to like him, or to encourage teasing. She’d learned not to get attached. People died all the time in border battles, invasions . . . sometimes by their own hands. Over time, she’d discovered it was easier to go numb. The convicts who chose to live in Queensland weren’t her people. They were pawns to be used or sacrificed according to her convenience. She’d do well to remember that.
“Unarmed combat.”
“That’s convenient, as we’re fresh out of guns.”
Before Dred formulated her next move, walleyed Wills broke from the curious onlookers; it was hard to talk to him because she never knew where to look. His head offered a plethora of unfortunate features from the carbuncle on his neck to the nose that sat nearly sideways on his face from so many untreated breaks. And there were his eyes . . .
Of course, he held his bag of bones. And he wouldn’t go away until she let him read what they presaged about this new arrival.
“Is this a good time, ma’am?”
Not really. It never was, but Wills got downright irrational if she refused to let him exercise his gift. As psychoses went, this one was relatively harmless . . . and preferable to his setting things on fire. Wills made up for the annoyance by being able to fix damn near anything.
“Never better,” she said, humoring him.
Jael fell into the spirit of the thing, leaning forward as Wills dumped the fine bones into his palms. They came from rodents that infested the ship. They’d come in with some shipment of supplies, turns ago, and multiplied like mad. She ate them when she could catch them, but the things had mutated over the turns, likely due to exposure to radiation from the aging ship. The only blessing was they could no longer fit in the ducts and panels to chew the wiring.
Muttering, Wills sliced his fingertips and handled the bones, then he spat in the bloody mess and juggled the bones and bodily fluids in his scarred palms. He whispered words in a language Dred didn’t know and cast the augury. A primitive pursuit, but she didn’t object.
Wills drew in a sharp breath. “Bad omens. Bad.”
“What do you see?” Dred always asked. It never mattered.
The man’s head came up, clarity in his muddy, miscast eyes for an instant. “Kill him now. Chaos comes. The dead will walk. And he’ll cost you everything.”
“Thanks for your counsel,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard such fire-and-doom tidings before. “I’ll consider what you’ve said.”
Wills bowed once, twice, thrice—he did everything in threes—and hurried away to cleanse his bones. The man beside her pushed out a breath, as if he hadn’t realized he was holding it. Tension lingered i
n his shoulders, and she wanted to reassure him that Wills was full of shit. But she didn’t comfort convicts.
“He’s quite a character. Is it always this exciting?”
“Indeed. And sometimes we have jugglers. Want something to eat?”
“Don’t be kind,” he said, casting her words back like shards of ice.
“I’m not. You need nutrition to stay strong. You’re no use to me if you can’t fight, and I’d prefer not to cast your corpse down the chute just yet.”
He laughed at that. Here was a man who laughed at death. And he meant it; this wasn’t bravado, designed to impress her. His amusement echoed with layers, sincerity and . . . longing. Did he want to die, then? How . . . intriguing.
“I’d like a meal. There was nothing on the transport.”
She nodded. “The system managers don’t care if you starve or kill one another en route. If you do, then it’s less burden on the existing resources.”
“It’s a business like any other with profit and loss statements. I bet they don’t send much.”
“No,” she acknowledged. “We make do.”
Besides boundaries and limited space, aggression that sometimes had nowhere else to go, townships battled for limited resources. If she lost ground, it might cost her the hydroponics lab they’d built. Not all the settlements had them. Mungo’s people relied on the capricious Kitchen-mates, which had to be fed a steady influx of organic matter to create food. Dred tossed corpses into the chutes for processing, which fertilized their plants, but Mungo took a different route, and his dead became something else, something hot and delicious for the table.
She quelled a shiver. It would be impossible for her to eat a steaming roast, knowing it had been a person. Even understanding how the Kitchen-mates worked didn’t help. The meat might go in as human, but it would be broken down and processed and regenerated until the cellular structure matched the recipe that had been input. So unless a freakish cannibal did the programming, it wouldn’t be human flesh that emerged. And yet . . .
“Something wrong?” Jael asked.
“No more than usual. Let’s find you some food.”
There was always a pot of vegetable stew bubbling away, and since it was close to the third meal of the day, she found bread cooling on the table. At her nod, Cook cut a generous slab. That was both the man’s name and his job. He didn’t speak or fight much, but he had a way with produce, and he knew his way around the kitchen. She’d recruited him because he was big, but as it turned out, he’d rather use his knives for chopping. Dred had often wondered how Cook ended up here, but he wasn’t helpless. If you pissed him off, he’d slit your throat and go back to dicing veggies for the pot.
Once he got the food, Jael ate quickly, arms curled around the bowl to keep anyone from taking it. He used the bread to clean the dish, then handed it back. All told, it took less than five minutes.
“Been a while?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I can’t remember when last I ate.”
Dred didn’t pursue the subject; it was too personal. She just needed to brief him and walk away. Let him find his own path.
“This is Queensland.” Briefly, she outlined the size of her holding. “Once you have a chance to rest, I’ll put you on the roster. You’ll have shifts at various borders . . . and sometimes there will be people to kill.”
“That’s it?”
“More or less.”
“What do you do for laughs?”
She took that to mean the men, not herself personally. Dred couldn’t remember when she’d enjoyed . . . anything. Except his conversation. Which made him absolutely forbidden fruit.
Walk away. Don’t go down this road. It ends in a sheer cliff with blood all over the rocky ground.
But she couldn’t resist one last exchange. “Drink. Gamble. Copulate.”
He flashed a white, wicked smile. “Occasional murder leavened with debauchery and vice? This sounds divine.”
4
Territorial Incursion
On the second day, Jael prowled the boundaries, learning where the lines were drawn. She had guards posted on various levels to keep watch. Her top two lieutenants, Tameron and Einar, were rightfully suspicious of him; they kept an eye on him as he learned her holdings. Though it was too soon for him to factor the advantages of betrayal, he would sell her secrets in a heartbeat if it meant a more advantageous position elsewhere. But he believed her when she said it was worse elsewhere.
He breathed in deep, processing the variety of smells that carried such diverse information. Five of her men had a terminal illness; the smell of decay lingered on them, dead men walking. At least half the others wore lust like a jacket made of skins, and they watched her with covetous eyes as she strode past. Jael didn’t need to read their minds to know what they wanted—and it intrigued him that she was fierce enough to keep such vile intentions in check. For despite the desire to do her harm, fear surged even stronger in her henchmen, and they wouldn’t move against her.
It took him the better part of the day to patrol her territory fully. The boundaries contained some fascinating assets, but also definite defensive liabilities. If he had control of the zone, he would reorganize the deployment. Mentally, Jael reassigned the watches and distributed the personnel though it was possible she knew things about the inclinations and capabilities of her men that he didn’t. There must be some reason she had managed to hold the line despite apparent missteps.
Dinner was more of the same, but he was happy enough to have hot food and human companionship that he felt fairly glad to be here. Jael suspected he was the only inmate of that mind, but they had never been incarcerated on Ithiss-Tor. Compared to the Bug prison, this place was positively luxurious. And he’d find a way out, eventually. He’d been confined more times than he could count, and they’d never managed to lock him down yet.
“Learned all my weaknesses yet?” Dred sat down opposite him, eyes watchful.
Just what do you expect from me, princess in chains?
“Not yours, though your demesne could use some work.”
“Bold words for a stranger.”
He flashed the smile that women seemed to find charming. “You’ve no idea.”
“About your ideas or how strange you are?”
“Either one, queenie.”
“I suspect I do,” she said, surprising him. “You’ve killed a lot of people, and yet you don’t bear a single scar. Are you that good, Jael, or is there more to you than meets the eye?”
People didn’t usually work that out so swiftly, so that meant she was smart. He could bluff and pretend his skills were such that nobody had ever set a blade to his skin, but in the end, she’d figure it out. The first time fighting broke out, and he took a serious wound, she’d see. And he was tired of pretending, tired of lying. Her eyes would change, of course, after she learned the truth. But perhaps it was better to get it done quickly, like yanking a knife from your gut.
No. He’d be better off not sharing the truth. It always made things worse.
So he chose bullshit. “I’m that good.”
She stilled, her gaze roaming over him in a way that made his skin prickle. It wasn’t a look he had ever seen before, as the nature of scrutiny didn’t feel judgmental, only curious. “You’re lying to me. I don’t like it, but I understand. You don’t trust me. And you shouldn’t.”
“You haven’t shared your life story with me either, queenie.” He made his tone mocking. “What did your parents do for a living? Did you have pets?”
“My father was a scientist who fled from the Corp and took his research with him.”
“So you were fugitives. But if you tell me he was attached to the Ideal Genome Project, then I have to kill you.”
She actually laughed. “I don’t know what he did, to be honest. He was a broken man by the time I came along, battered by desperation and constant danger.”
“Do you confide in everyone like this?” If so, it might be how she maintained
control over a group of vicious thugs. Make each man feel special, as if he alone enjoyed her confidence. She could be manipulating you.
Before she could reply, an alarm went off. “Incoming. Hope you’re ready to fight, pretty lad.”
“Always.”
He followed her as she ran toward the incursion site. The guards she’d stationed should be sufficient—unlike a few security lapses he’d noted—but Jael never turned away from a battle. It was the one place where he needn’t hide or apologize for his physical abilities. Ten men pushed against her border; he had no idea if that was a sizable party. She had four people stationed here—three male, one female—and they were holding the attackers at bay, but only just. Without blasters or disruptors, there was a limit to how effective her personnel could be. In most prisons, contraband could be smuggled in, but in Perdition, they were limited to what someone was canny enough to build from scrap parts.
In this case, some clever Queenslander had devised a rudimentary shrapnel gun, and a hard-faced woman was barraging the defenders in razor-sharp metal shards. She caught an enemy inmate in the throat; he was an idiot and pulled it out in sheer reflex. Blood sprayed from the wound.
Imbecile. I’m the only one who can survive care like that. One down. That leaves nine.
The attackers found it hard to press the charge in the face of so much jagged metal, but the barrage couldn’t last forever. Apparently Dred shared his assessment.
“She’ll run out of ammo soon,” she said beside him. “Care to join me?”
Without waiting for his answer, she signaled for her side to cease firing, and before the enemy could react, she vaulted over the barricades and wound up with her chains. This woman was incandescent in her fearlessness—and her absolute lack of regard for her own safety spoke to him. Before Jael realized he’d made a decision, he was beside her. The invaders laughed.
It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that before a killing spree. So many people judged by appearances—the last mistake they ever made. He landed an efficient kidney punch on his first target that carried enough force to leave the man pissing blood, but then Jael broke his neck cleanly. Eight. Beside him, Dred whipped her chain at a man’s head; the resulting impact knocked him down. Dazed, the convict scrambled away, but she surged forward, relentless as the tide. The others surrounded her, but she didn’t seem concerned. Instead, she whipped her chain in widening circles, injuring them all equally. The amount of pain she brought to bear was . . . impressive, even to him.