A Threat Among the Stars

by Mark Henwick

  As to their reputation, it had certainly gone berserk, but having a plasma rifle fired at you can do that.

  There had been signs of others as we walked through the sierra, and it was beyond belief that they hadn’t known we were there in the pine forests.

  What am I missing? Ox and Fox know something, but they’re not talking.

  It’s Kat who speaks: “I have an idea about that,” she says.

  She puts down her jacket that she’s been re-stitching.

  “The Hartzak were aggressive,” she starts slowly. “We have lots of reports, and even video from the early days to prove that.”

  “Hmm,” I say. I’ve seen those videos. Truly terrifying.

  “But not when humans first landed. Not while the Founders built the center of Berriaren. Only later.” She clears her throat, suddenly aware we’re all paying close attention, Rangers included.

  “What if...” She pauses and looks less confident. “Look, what I’m saying is, what if the Hartzak were domesticated by the Atsekabe. What if the Atsekabe deliberately trained the Hartzak to defend them.” She rushes on. “If they were smart enough to make paintings and use tools and domesticate the Hartzak, the Atsekabe could have seen humans as a threat.”

  “You’re saying the Hartzak were trained by the Atsekabe to attack humans?” Talan looks skeptical.

  “Yes,” Kat says. “Then when the Atsekabe were gone, after a generation or two, the Hartzak just went back to being Hartzak. By that time we’d left Berriaren. Now?” She shrugs. “Humans aren’t really on their list of things to eat.”

  It matches our experience, but I don’t know. I suspect the Rangers do, but they aren’t talking about it. In any event, my estimation of Kat goes up a notch or two. To be thinking about things like that while being hunted through the high sierras by Syndacians is... very Aguirre.

  I want to believe it. Not that it lessens the shame of destroying a whole intelligent species, but it puts it in a less awful light.

  “Change of plan,” Fox says, avoiding the subject. He’s looking at something that’s appeared on his pad. “We’ll need to fill you in on some background of Cabezón now. We’ll take a break at another Ranger station this evening and then walk you to the city before dawn.”

  “You can’t take us nearer to the station?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Just got a message. Been ordered back. Something’s stirred up the Syndacians.”

  Talan and I look at each other. My gut says they’ve found our abandoned escape pod and someone’s started to join the dots.

  They’ll be hunting us all now, and they’ll know exactly where we have to be heading. It’s going to get more difficult every day, every step closer to Iruña.

  Chapter 35

  Zara

  It’s Fox who gives the briefing.

  “Doc vouches for you. Ox and me, we don’t know who you are and we don’t want to know. But at least one of you isn’t from Newyan, and we’re thinking you may have been... out of touch. So, we’re going to give you the full package, as if you didn’t know anything recent,” he says, his eyes carefully not looking at any of us. “That suit you?”

  “It does,” Talan says without expression.

  “Okay. Here goes. Bit of background.” Fox settles himself down self-consciously. “Newyan’s always been a good planet. Meant we used to attract people from other worlds, and the population grew, till, oh, ’bout three or four years ago. Now, I’m no economist, but it’s always been clear as summer sky to us, living up in the sierras, that the necessities to support that lowland population were always just a step ahead of the numbers. One good reason we like it up here.”

  He pauses, takes a sip from a canteen.

  “Don’t know the truth about all the corruption scandals and the government confiscating estates, but sure as shi... sure as hell, the people who got hold of the estates don’t know squat about running them. Not for producing food, anyway. Disaster just waiting to happen, all that.”

  His eyes flick across to me and Kat. I gave the doctor my name. I don’t believe he told the Rangers, yet I’m sure Fox suspects that Kat and I grew up on estates. The little things that are so hard to disguise give you away: accent, turn of phrase and so on.

  “A couple of months ago,” he continues, “right in the middle of winter, there were some incidents: a bad fire at the food warehouses down in Sainte Engrâce, a goods train came off the rails on the Lourdios line, severe winter snow storms.” He waves a hand. “Some other minor things went wrong. Just things that happen sometimes. But the effect was like someone had set off a bomb. Sainte Engrâce had no food. The neighboring estates that used to feed it had produced nothing the year before, and they had no reserves. All the people who used to work on those estates and been turned out, had to come down to the city. Some were managing to live hand to mouth with odd jobs, but most of the old estate workers were living rough. With the accident, there was no way to supply the city by rail. The place is out on a limb with one major road and one railway, which was blocked by the accident.”

  Kat nods, her face grim. She’ll know all this. She’d told us that Commander Benat had made sure the whole of Training Company Bravo heard news from outside, unfiltered through the government media channel.

  “It rippled out from that,” Fox says. “A relief convoy of trucks turned up in Lourdios and people stopped food being loaded, because there wasn’t enough for both cities. Suddenly everyone was looking around at the food stocks, at the number of people in each city, at the numbers living rough. Everyone was doing the sums and working out that there wasn’t enough food to go around, certainly down here in the southern hemisphere. And the northern hemisphere has never produced enough food.”

  “Everywhere, everyone, short of food, except in Iruña,” Kat interrupts, her voice bitter.

  Fox nods. “The government started seizing food and stockpiling in Iruña. The Bureau of Food and Agriculture was put in charge of distribution. Of course, people started hoarding, straight away. New laws were passed against that. You can’t store a week of food in your own home! Can you believe that?”

  Ox speaks from the driving seat. “The media keeps saying everything’s under control, there are just minor problems and it’s temporary emergency laws.” He snorts. “That Ministro for Food was on last month. Idiot.”

  He shakes his head and falls silent.

  Fox takes it up again: “The Ministro explained early on that the ‘acquisition’ of food was all part of a wide-reaching program to ensure the basic necessities for everyone. What was it he said? To everyone according to his need, without favor. A way to stop people making unreasonable profit from necessities. Fair for everyone. And that this was all just teething problems and minor local issues.”

  “That’s a short time to go to hell,” Talan says. “This all happened in two months?”

  Fox nods. “About that. It was the way it was set up. Like I said, a balance—”

  “The system used to have resilience,” I interrupted. “The estates used to store surplus, especially in winter, specifically for these types of local problems.”

  Fox is watching me like his namesake, but I’m not revealing any more than he already suspects.

  “When you take the estates out of it,” I say, “you create perfect conditions for a major disaster. The estates aren’t producing food, which means centralized, off-world purchases and storage problems, and a road and rail network overloaded with levels of traffic it wasn’t designed for. Then when there’s a problem at any point in the network, and no local safety net, that problem propagates back through the system.”

  “You’re saying every city in Newyan is on the brink?” Talan asks.

  Fox nods. “The media don’t say that, but they can’t keep a lid on it now. First the news said there was just uninformed panic, then the Bureau of Food and Agriculture said it was teething problems with a new system, then the Bureau of Defense blamed some ‘rebel sabotage’.”

 
He leaves that hanging. Kat is pale, but quiet. From what she said to us, Commander Benat’s operations were entirely against the Syndacian mercenaries. I’m certain she wouldn’t have been party to any attacks that would have harmed people from Newyan.

  “Got Rangers out near Sainte Engrâce, and they say no rebels there,” Fox says. “But here’s a strange thing up here in the high sierras. Someone posted a bulletin a couple of weeks back on the InfoHub. Said there was a battle in the hills above Cabezón. Got taken down quickly, but not before people saw it and copied it. Still doing the rounds.”

  Kat’s barely breathing, looking down at the floor of the cabin.

  “Now, the Syndacians are all over those hills. We can’t get near to see what went on, if anything did.”

  He stops to reach for a snack of air-dried meat to chew on.

  “Lot of carrion scavengers in those hills,” he says thoughtfully. “You can see ’em from miles away. Normally, they’d strip a carcass in a day. The fact that they’re still around now, means there’s too many carcasses for them. Never seen that before.”

  No one says anything. There’s the quiet whine of the engines, the crunch of the tires over the ground, the gentle sway of the cabin as the servos compensate for the rough ground.

  “So, anyway, however bad it is in other cities, it’s worse in Cabezón. Mercenaries in the hills. Police on every street corner checking papers. More checks on anyone coming in or going out. Everyone hungry, and lots of desperate people.” He looks out through the windows at the forest. “Now that spring is here, we’re expecting people to start coming up into the hills to look for food. The old comfort that we’re well out of it up in the sierras, that won’t last much longer.”

  I shudder.

  The vision created by the piskatellers looms in my mind. Shooting hungry people because we don’t have enough to share with them.

  “Goddess of Mercy, guide our steps and hold us in your hands,” Kat whispers.

  Fox goes on. “Anyway. If you need to go there, you need to go. But if you know Cabezón from before, you won’t recognize it now. People get desperate enough, they’ll steal anything, do anything. Expect everyone to be a thief or worse. Trust no one. Avoid the police. Keep out of public buildings.”

  He points at Talan. “Don’t talk unless you have to,” he says.

  Ox reaches back from the driving seat and hands Fox a pair of scissors with a grunt.

  Fox holds them up for Talan. “We’d advise... I mean your hair’s beautiful, but...”

  Talan’s lips twist in what might be called a smile. “What you’re trying to say is it might help if I looked and acted like a guy.”

  Fox nods, looks down at the floor. “You two both. Might make you a little safer.”

  My hair is already cut short. I take the scissors and raise a brow at Talan.

  She nods and shifts across to sit in front of me. Hair will grow back, if we’re still alive.

  I unbraid her hair, let it fall like a river of autumn down her back. Fox steals a look. It is magnificent.

  With a sigh, I gather it in my fingers and start cutting. The only problem with this is that her hairstyle won’t match the fake documentation that Xing made for us on the courier ship, and we’ve no way of changing that. And we don’t have any documentation for Kat.

  Fox pulls a couple of odd garments from a box. They’re outer vests with many pockets.

  “Wear these under your shirts and jackets, out of sight,” he says. “We’ll stock up the pockets with dried meat and fruit, enough for a couple of days. We’ll put more in your backpacks, but you may lose that if the police stop you. They’ll call it hoarding. You’ll get your canteens filled with water tonight, and public pumps are still working.

  “Leave the plasma rifle. Take pistols and keep them hidden.

  “Last thing. We’ll give you some alcohol and drugs. They have better purchasing power than money at the moment.”

  This looks worse all the time, but I have to get into Cabezón. I’ve been out of touch with Hwa too long. I need to get a message to her as soon as possible, and using the sort of redirection and disguise that’s only available on communication servers in cities. The reason the Syndacians followed Kat with so much determination may very well be because she posted about the battle from an insecure point, probably some village’s InfoHub router she could connect to wirelessly. As soon as they traced it back, they’d have known where she was to within a few kilometers.

  We can’t afford that sort of mistake now.

  Chapter 36

  Zara

  As much as Fox tried to prepare us, the walk into Cabezón as the dawn breaks is sickening.

  Easy enough at the start, slipping through trees in the chill, early-morning mist, Fox and Ox making their farewells when the trees began to thin.

  In less than a minute there was no sign of them as we made our way down.

  We join the road within about half a kilometer of the outskirts of the town. The Hajnal keeps the Syndacians away from cities, according to the Rangers, so we’re past that problem for the moment. There will still be the police to worry about, in the city itself. Fox has given me some descriptions of the police that aren’t encouraging.

  We’re going slowly and Kat is walking between us. She should still be resting, and her face is pale, but she makes no complaint.

  What had looked like just trash dumped beside the road becomes clear as we get closer. Even this far out, there are people living beside the road, in whatever shelter they can find or make: old farm carts, broken-down cars, packing crates, rough-cut wood, bits of tin, plastic sheets, scraps of fabric stretched across holes.

  Cabezón, like all cities on Newyan, runs utilities along the sides of the roads. The people here have dug down and tapped into the water. Someone in Cabezón has left the taps open and in their desperation, the homeless cluster where they can at least get something to drink.

  The Rangers have told us that the homeless are ejected from the city every evening. They have to sleep outside, next to the road.

  I can’t think straight. I’m so angry, I can barely walk in a line. This is Newyan, and Cabezón is the provincial capital, not some desperate outpost at the limit of the Frontier. This is what the Hajnal has done already to my world.

  “Zara,” Talan hisses at me.

  I know what she wants. She wants me to clear my face, make it blank, so it’ll look as if I’m used to this, as if we belong.

  It’s impossible.

  I have a hood on my jacket and it’s still cold this early. I raise it and hide, trying to do two conflicting things—keep watch for any threat and yet not see the desolation around me.

  Our clothes still look too new. It’s spring and nights are freezing up here at the gateway to the sierras, so people have padded their clothing with paper and plastics. Everything looks frayed and worn. Materials that were once brightly colored have faded to gray.

  Some people have lit small fires to warm themselves.

  There’s dust and trash everywhere.

  Walking through the sierras, I thought I’d never again long for the smell of pine, but Cabezón has a stench of sweat and despair.

  They watch us back, these desperate people. People who, at my last visit, would have called out greetings, asked for news, invited me to share a breakfast, now just look hungrily at us.

  How did this happen so quickly?

  A hundred meters from the first police checkpoint, we move off the road. Talan makes a windbreak out of some bits of wood and Kat lies down. We can’t get them through the checkpoint. I have to go in alone. Once I’ve communicated with Hwa, maybe we’ll have to find a way to get them in, but at the moment, I’m favoring stealing an aircraft. It’s hugely risky and very easy to track, but the airfield is well away from the city, and might be less guarded.

  One step at a time.

  They keep most of what I don’t dare to carry through the checkpoint—the pistol and our precious supply of food for instanc
e, but I need the commspad to send a message to Hwa. It’s down my pants. A huge risk, but I can’t avoid it.

  I have a small bag with some bits of fruit. A tiny flask of home-made alcohol in my pocket. Basically, Fox told us to have something the checkpoints can steal.

  Talan is really unhappy about me going in, but there’s no other way. She sits down beside Kat and I walk off slowly toward the checkpoint, my heart in my mouth.

  It’s in the middle of the road. I feel exposed as I approach.

  Wire barriers have been put around the whole city and the police have patrols. This checkpoint is the only way in or out this side of the city, and dawn is a good time to go though, according to Fox. The guards change at dawn. Night-time guards are worse apparently, and the daytime guards shouldn’t have had enough time to get bored or edgy yet.

  That’s the theory.

  I’m about eight paces away, in the line of people shuffling forward to get into the city, trying to look around me without seeming alert, when I get the first warning sign.

  These ‘police’ aren’t police of course. They’re whoever the Hajnal have been able to conscript under their emergency measures. They wear odd bits and pieces of uniform, nothing more in common with each other than ‘POLICE’ stenciled in big white letters on their chests. They’re little more than gangs. Some of them probably are gangs, forced out of Iruña and given a choice between prison and working in Cabezón.

  The men standing in the middle of the road have big, bulky jackets. They have the white stencils on the front. They also have matching black headscarves and when one of them turns, I see a badge on his upper arm. It’s an outline of a rat, and beneath it is the word ‘Nightwatch’.

  The daytime guards haven’t arrived and it’s too late to back away.

  I push my hood back off my head and step forward.

  “What you here for?” The man asking me has tattoos crawling up his neck.

  “I’m looking for work,” I say. I’m mumbling, trying for the lazy way of speaking they have in the sierras.