by Mark Henwick
Their faces stare out from history books. The Names. Newyan’s Names Among the Stars. Azenar and Bey, Haritz and Gartzea, Ibarra and Heng, Zuira and Cuibirey. And Aguirre, foremost. Aguirre. Always at the front.
Their voices echo through the plaza and the sound stirs the dust.
Xabat Abarran Aguirre himself kneels in front of her.
“This is no place for the living, Kattalin Espe Aguirre,” he says. “This is a place for ghosts, a place for death and shame. For those who lived once, but now are memories. You must leave. Go.”
Go. The wind picks the word up and sings it mournfully, drawing it out. Go. Gooo. Gooooo.
She wakes with a start.
Evening.
She’s still huddled against the wall. She’s dripping sweat and shivering at the same time. The sun has swung around and now hangs as if a gigantic brass ball were suspended between two buildings, across the plaza from her. The light stabs at her eyes. Her legs have gone numb and her headache has gotten even worse. Her mouth is very dry. Everything is too dark or too bright. Nothing moves in the plaza but the evening wind, which sweeps trails of dust as it wanders to and fro, like ghostly coats dragging in the dirt.
The wind is whispering, but the song that woke her is the neo-monkeys’. Not around the plaza. Back the way she came into the city.
Close!
The Syndacians are here already.
She staggers to her feet, feeling sick and dizzy. She stumbles across the plaza, falling twice before her blood starts to circulate in her numbed legs again.
She has no idea where she is in the city, but she takes the western street, because that low sun will make her invisible to anyone looking that way.
She’s just at the entrance to the street when she trips again.
A chunk of stone explodes just where her head was, half masking the unmistakable sound of the plasma rifle firing.
And up ahead of her, an equally unmistakable noise, a shattering roar. Once heard, never forgotten: the heart-crushing sound of an enraged Hartzak.
Chapter 23
Hwa
The gentle hush of air-conditioning seeps back into Hwa’s consciousness.
She feels as if she’s been dreaming—laws and customs, traditions and conventions, Zara and the Aguirre, the Hartzak and the Atsekabe, the Dowr and... something, all blended together in a way she can’t fathom.
Best not to tell Alice Jalair she’s been dreaming.
Systems Administration Manager Alice Jalair, of the Xian Delegation, has an almost proprietary interest in Hwa. So much so she came in person to collect Hwa from her landing outside Iruña and spent the journey back questioning her.
Understandable, given that the initiation of actualization remains more an art than a science, and any manager whose systems self-actualize becomes a legend in the Xian computer community.
Alice would want to talk about what the concept of dreams might mean for a Self-Actualized Entity. Alice would want to learn how to make her systems dream too, and Hwa doesn’t have the time to indulge Jalair’s curiosity.
She’s on a futon in the main systems room. It makes an untidy rectangle in the middle of all the smooth symmetry. She rolls the futon and puts it out of the way.
The processors here are powerful, but they aren’t actuated, nor, unfortunately for Alice, do they appear to have the right basis for becoming aware. Still, it has been very restful for Hwa to expand her mental processing to encompass the extra capacity available in the delegation’s computer systems. She has also taken the opportunity to completely refresh and review the letter and the implementation of both Terran law and the Accords, which will govern what happens on Newyan over the next weeks.
It confirms what Taha said at Lady Howriel’s party.
The Terran Commission of Enquiry has latitude in what they allow to be entered as evidence pertinent to their proceedings. It’s not a great deal of latitude, and the Commissioners have to be able to justify refusing evidence, but she and Zara cannot allow even the smallest of possibilities for the Hajnal to escape.
Once the Commission of Enquiry has been set up, major legal cases involving the government have to be authorized by the Commission. Hwa is afraid they will use their powers to simply refuse to allow her case.
However, the rules make a distinction for evidence that is part of an existing, pertinent case: that the Commissioners cannot refuse.
So Hwa has to set up a Newyan court case on behalf of Xian to investigate the incident where the customs cutter Duhalde fired on the Shohwa, before the Commission is started. Then, once the Commission has been started, she has to notify them that she will be presenting evidence in an existing court case that is relevant to the Enquiry.
Then she has to delay until Zara gets to Iruña and they can present their combined evidence as part of a single ‘line of investigation’ showing that the government of Newyan has been behaving in an illegal and corrupt way, and that they are part of a multi-system movement called the Hajnal which led to the Duhalde attempting to destroy the Shohwa.
It shouldn’t require this trickery, but Hwa shares Zara’s suspicions—about Taha, about Ivakin, about the whole process of Commissions.
There is something rotten in the Terran Council, but others must investigate that. Hwa can’t, not from here on Newyan. She has to do her task and trust others to do theirs. She must concentrate on her first step: to register a Newyan court proceeding in the High Court of Iruña, on behalf of Xian and the Fortunate Stars Hong.
She had hoped to hold the threat of withdrawal of Xian trading over the Newyan administration’s head to ensure they allowed the case, but Captain Desud has already carried out that threat, and she’s left with persuading the Bureau of Justice that the only way to get Xian trading back is to comply.
The delegation here has arranged an appointment for her tomorrow.
She’s eager to begin, but the Courts have been closed today, and her meeting with officials is the earliest it can be.
The door swishes open and Alice’s right-hand man, Raul, comes in and bows to her.
“Hello, Hwa. I trust you are refreshed?”
Hwa bows in return. “I am,” she says. “Thank you, Raul.”
“It’s early evening,” he says. “Alice asks if you would care to attend dinner with us in an hour, or would you prefer to eat alone?”
He’s eager to talk with her, like all of the team here. She wonders if this is what it feels like to be a bug under the microscope.
But... there’s nothing else she can do at the moment. And his company is not entirely unwelcome. Quite the opposite.
“Dinner with the delegation will be my pleasure,” she says.
He beams, genuinely pleased. “I’ll show you to your rooms.”
She follows him out through the corridors. Like the corridors of all delegations on the planets Xian does business with, they are decorated in Xian traditional style with hanging panels of gold and red.
She doesn’t spare the decoration much attention.
Raul is very handsome. The dark silk work clothes he wears show that he’s slim and strong, and moves smoothly. His hair is stylishly cut and beautifully thick. It makes her fingers tingle, thinking of running them through it.
He appears competent and confident, if a little awed by talking to a Self-Actualized Entity. The thought of that contrast makes her smile; that he’s both charmingly eager to talk to her and nervous about it.
Perhaps there will be some entertainment for her at dinner, or afterwards.
She smiles at him, and it’s returned, before he touches his hand to his ear.
His smile falters a little.
“The TSS Annan has emerged from Chang space at the planar zenith,” he says.
Hwa nods, and makes her own connection to the delegation’s comms monitoring system.
The Annan has been in the Newyan system for the time it has taken for verification of the ship’s identity and radio transmissions to arrive on the planet. Te
n minutes or so.
It will take them a couple of days to reach orbit over the planet, and more days for the Terrans to come down to Iruña and meet with the government.
The Newyan destroyer Biháriz will be close to the planar zenith and will have communicated to the Annan the reason that it’s retrieving its missiles from a shipping lane.
What will the Annan make of the attack on the Xing Gerchu?
Was it something they expected, after they sent a message warning about the courier’s arrival? Something they planned? Or have they simply been mistaken so far and will they finally accept that there is something very wrong happening on Newyan?
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Hwa is in her room fifteen minutes later, when there’s a broadcast from the TSS Annan.
This is Captain Rahman Taha, commanding the TSS Annan.
Allegations have been made in the strongest terms to the Terran Council regarding the orderly administration of a list of Margin systems, all of which are signatory to the Accords. The Terran Council takes such allegations with the utmost seriousness. It has, therefore, under the terms of those Accords, appointed Commissioners to visit all such systems and, where necessary, establish a Commission of Enquiry to discover the truth of the matters reported. Newyan is included in this list of systems and I have the privilege to lead the Commissioners appointed to the task here.
In light of the extraordinary events which have just occurred in this system, and the resultant unilateral cessation of trading announced by Xian, I have decided there is no need for any further preliminaries, assessments or communications with the authorities.
Under the rules of the Accords, to which Newyan is signatory, I hereby declare a Commission of Enquiry has been initiated in this system as a matter of emergency, and all powers invested in such Commissions are active from this point.
He’s declared the Enquiry started before she’s opened her court case. He’s going to refuse to allow it.
Chapter 24
Zara
A flooded plain outside the city has pushed us further around until we’re coming into Berriaren from the west.
The sun is setting directly behind us, throwing our shadows fifty metres or more, down dusty streets and across open plazas. The west-facing walls of buildings glow with reflected light, but it just serves to make the empty windows and doorways look darker. The wind quests down the empty streets and it carries the eerie, mournful howls of the neo-monkeys who live here.
It truly feels like a city of ghosts.
It’s not the way I came in the last time, so I’m just heading in what I believe is approximately the right direction. It shouldn’t be difficult. At the center of the town, we’ll find the Plaza Nagusia and facing each other across it, the black stone of the Jauregia, the palace of the Aguirre, and the frowning, columned facade of the Auzitegi, the Court of Disputes. And at the heart of the Auzitegi, a courtyard with a deep, old well.
If Talan is unnerved by Berriaren, she doesn’t show it. The small plasma rifle she’s carrying has actually been in her hands or at her side since we entered the pine forests. It wasn’t ghosts she’s been worried about, it was Hartzak.
Or perhaps not.
“I don’t know,” she’s saying. “After walking for hours through that forest expecting at every step that a huge, angry bear was going to leap out, I’m starting to wonder if you’re not teasing me about Hartzak.”
“You mean like the mutant pigs someone told me lurk on the coast path back in Welarvor?”
She laughs. “There are mutant boar, and they do lurk there.”
“Yeah, and you hunt them from horses using those old lances.”
“Yup.”
“You’ll be telling me next that there are intelligent aliens hiding in your ocean.”
“Hmm. They’re not the aliens though. We are.”
“Tell me, how did Morgen become—”
“Down!” Talan hisses and grabs my arm to pull me to the ground.
I spit out a mouthful of dirt. “What?”
I can’t see anything threatening us.
“Plasma rifle.”
I hadn’t heard the plasma rifle, but I certainly hear the next noise. You never forget it. It presses on your ears, it vibrates in your chest, it turns your stomach to water: the roar of a Hartzak, just up ahead of us.
Followed by a human scream.
Chapter 25
Zara
We run forward along the side of the street, crouched over.
I have a plasma pistol, the only other useful, portable weapon I’d been able to find on the Xing Gerchu. It has three shots before it needs the magazine to be swapped, and I only have two magazines. That’s unlikely to make the difference with a Hartzak, but I can’t ignore that scream.
Then I see it.
Oh, Lady of Mercy! The sheer size!
My legs wobble.
There are men with rifles in the plaza beyond it. They aren’t shooting, because the Hartzak has caught one of them in its mouth. It’s shaking him from side to side like a rag.
These men aren’t from Newyan. They don’t understand; their colleague is already dead, despite his screams. The poisoned bite will kill him in another few minutes. Better to keep shooting.
The Hartzak tosses the man to the side and suddenly, the creature is running at the others, flowing unstoppably over the rippled dunes of the plaza like something from their deepest nightmares.
They fire their plasma rifles. The Hartzak is hit and lurches to one side, but it doesn’t stop.
One paw lashes out. It’s as big as the man’s chest and the blow sends him spinning away like a broken doll to crash lifelessly onto the ground.
The remaining two run, even before the body lands.
Stumbling and snarling, the Hartzak pursues them. It’s badly wounded, but it won’t stop now.
We’re kneeling at the entrance to the plaza.
Talan fires after the lumbering creature. She hits, but the bolt barely skims the animal’s back and it runs onward. In another second they’re all out of sight.
The sudden violence has shocked the city into silence. No shrieks from the neo-monkeys. The flying animals have all hidden themselves. Even the wind seems to have stilled.
“Soldiers?” Talan says quietly. “Newyan soldiers?”
She’s right, the men were soldiers—all in gray and black military camouflage. Matching like a regular unit.
“No uniform I recognize,” I say. “Maybe these are the mercenaries Hwa told us about?”
“But what are they doing here?”
“Looking for me?”
Talan shakes her head. “Too soon to be all the way up here without coming by skimmer, and we’d have heard that. And there were only four of them.”
In the distance there’s the sound of a plasma rifle firing again, then all sounds of the pursuit fade away.
“I guess we can’t assume anything,” Talan says, getting to her feet and giving me a hand up. “The mercenaries might come back.”
I shiver. “Or the Hartzak might.”
“Yes. We’ll need to set a constant watch.”
It’ll make retrieving the evidence doubly difficult, but there’s no alternative.
I stand on the top of one of the dunes in the street, trying to get a feel for where the center of the city is.
We now have conflicting requirements—quick and exposed, or safe and slow.
We could move along the smaller, winding streets, which would give us better cover. Slower and safer.
Or we take the boulevards. They tend to aim directly for the central spot, the Plaza Nagusia, so they’d be quicker, but more exposed.
I come to the decision that the sooner we’re out of the city and back in the pines, the better. Quick it is.
While I’m standing there, in full view, there’s a scuffling sound from the building behind and both of us spin around with our weapons raised.
My blood freezes.
The dirt has
blocked the building’s doorway onto the street but for a gap at the top, just enough for a person to squeeze though, especially when there’s a Hartzak outside.
Back through that gap comes a bloodied hand, scratching at the dirt. Then a shoulder. A head with a rag tied around it. A face, smeared with dirt and livid with sunburn.
It’s an apparition. It looks so much like the ragged ghosts I saw filling the courtyards of the Jauregia in the Dowr’s vision that for a moment I’m struck dumb with fear.
Talan’s finger is tightening on the trigger of her plasma rifle when the wraith speaks.
“Zarate,” it says. The voice is rusty, barely audible. A woman. A young woman. “Lady of Mercy, it’s you.”
She pulls her body through the gap, but the exertion seems to have taken her to the end of her strength. She slumps and her body slides down the dune and out into the street.
I rush to her side and kneel down.
Someone hiding in Berriaren who knows me by sight?
“Kattalin? Kat? Is that you?”
The face is nearly unrecognizable. Aside from a glimpse in the Dowr’s vision, I last saw Kat as a plump, healthy teen. This woman...
Oh, Goddess! Hwa said she was involved in fighting near Cabezón. Cabezón! She’s come all that way, half of it in the Sierra Arija. On her own. With mercenaries hunting her.
“Not hallucinating. Knew you’d come,” she mutters, patting me to make sure I’m there. “Bring the Terrans. Save us. Ohana didn’t believe. Thought we’d died for nothing.”
Her eyes are fever-bright, her lips dry and cracked. She takes a death-grip on my shirt.
“Hush, now,” I say.
Talan holds a canteen for her to drink.
Two sips and she coughs, spraying water over me.
“They’re all dead,” she whispers. “It was just us. Training Company Bravo. Commander Benat called us, and we died. Except for me.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” I say. “We’ve got to get out of here, Kat. Can you walk?”