by Scott Sigler
He dropped to his knees, his eyes floating and beginning to glaze over as all the color left his face. He was as good as Fred thought. Carney’s quick thinking and quicker acting were the only reasons he was still alive.
It wouldn’t save him, however. It would only slow the process a few moments.
“I thought you’d flinch away,” Carney said quietly. “I was... I was sure of it.”
Fred crouched down low to speak in Carney’s ear. He planned to make the most of the short time his opponent had left.
“Carney, tell me about the girl. Tell me about Jeanine. There’s no reason not to.”
Carney didn’t answer. He slumped to his side, blood covering his hand and already pooling on the rusty deck.
Fred knelt with him, held the man’s face. “Carney! The girl! Tell me about the girl!”
Carney’s eyes already had that distant cast to them, like they were looking into the next world. He focused on Fred for a moment, managed to smile.
“I was gonna get her... was gonna get her for myself, make a little extra. She’s... alive... Carney managed before he lost consciousness.
He died a few seconds later.
Fred let go of him. He cleaned the blood from his blade on Carney’s shabby mine worker’s clothes and sheathed it.
He cast his gaze around the shantytown. No one rushed out. There hadn’t been any noise. If anyone had seen the altercation from a distance, it would have looked like a fistfight that lasted less than three seconds.
Fred walked over to where Carney had dropped his rucksack. He felt a stinging in his eyes but refused to acknowledge the tears there. Kneeling, he began to rummage through the bag.
On top, he found a pair of IDs: Elder Rodrigo Goldblatt, Lady Mariella Goldblatt, both confirmed. Rodrigo’s face? That was Carney, or whoever he had been. His name might have actually been Rodrigo, for all Fred knew. Lady Mariella’s face, her prints, her DNA code — all blank. Below the IDs, blue robes of the confirmed, one male, one female. Below that, a few personal effects: a tattered old sweater, a holocube, other things that had been the mementos of Carney’s life.
And below all of that, at the bottom of the rucksack, a uniform.
It was the uniform of a Mining Colony VI detention center guard.
Chapter 22: Jeanine
The prisoner barracks were little more than a dungeon with barely functional plumbing. They didn’t keep long-term prisoners on Micovi. Virtually everyone arrested in the colony was sent to the mines as an “honor worker,” which was another word for “slave.” Anyone too dangerous to put to work was shipped off-world to the maximum-security facility on Mining Colony I. The rest were just drunks and bar brawlers thrown in cells to cool down or sleep it off before they returned to their grind.
“Didn’t think we were shipping this one out ‘til morning,” the morbidly obese block boss said to Fred as he escorted him past several cells.
Fred, wearing Carney’s stolen uniform and carrying a decades-out-of-date messageboard with the Mining Colony VI seal on the back, shrugged noncommittally.
“Yeah, well, there’s a few open spots on the transport tonight, and I got tickets to check out the Raiders spring training camp tomorrow.”
The fat man snorted derisively. “Raiders. They ain’t been shit since they lost Barnes.”
Fred felt an insane rush of laughter at the irony of the guard’s comment but squashed the impulse and stayed in character.
“I’ve heard that,” was all he said.
The block boss, who was already out of breath, pointed five cells down. “It’s that’n. Lemme give you the key.”
As Fred waited for him to dig it out, he asked, “Why aren’t they sending her back to the mines? Never heard of us having a labor surplus around here.”
The guard shook what must have been three chins. “She keeps causing problems. Rabble rousing, trying to organize the other workers. Finally graduated to sabotage this last go-round. Between you and me, the bosses sold her into a batch of girls headed to Solomon next week. Probably be in some Holy Man whorehouse by month’s end.”
“Ain’t she a little old for that? The Holy Men like ‘em young.”
The many-chinned guard nodded. “Yeah, but when you see her, you’ll understand why. Wish I could keep her for myself, but she’d sooner break my jaw than give it up. The Holy Men want her? They can have her.”
He handed Fred the key and clapped him on the shoulder. “Drop that by on your way out. I need to sit a spell.”
He waddled away.
Fred walked up the block to the cell the guard had indicated. He peered through the bars. There was a slender woman curled up on a ratty bunk. Her head was a mess of dark hair. Fred couldn’t see her face.
He opened the cell door and stepped inside.
“Carbonaro, Jeanine,” he called out in an authoritative, detached way. “Let’s go!”
The girl didn’t move.
A rush of panic shattered his disaffected, Raiders-loving prison guard persona.
Had they gotten to her first?
Did Gredok have another man in the mines?
Was she sick, and if so, how bad was it?
Fred walked to the bunk and reached down, grasping her shoulder gently.
Jeanine moved with surprising speed. Her hand was cupped around a piece of stone chipped from the walls that she’d obviously sharpened against the ground. Its rough edge slid across his right cheekbone, slicing the skin there wide open.
“Dammit!” Fred yelled, more out of frustration than pain.
He kept his cool and disarmed her with a knife-hand to her wrist. He twisted her arm behind her as gently as he could but held her still.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “You can throw me back into the mine or you can kill me, but that’s the last thing you’ll take from me!”
She would have yelled more, but Fred clamped a hand over her mouth to silence her. Even then she continued to struggle, filled with fire and righteous indignation. Fred had no doubt she was sincere in what she’d said, and he couldn’t help respecting that.
He turned her so they were face-to-face, keeping that dangerous arm of hers behind her back.
Her eyes widened with fear. Fred felt like an idiot — face-to-face, hidden away in a dingy cell where no one would hear, where no one would come to help, a man overpowering a woman... later, if they made it out of this together, he somehow knew she would laugh at her reaction when she found out the truth.
But for now, one piece of information could make this go smoother.
“Your brother sent me.”
She stopped fighting. She was still for the first time. Fear still filled her eyes, as did disbelief, but there was an ember of curiosity. She would kill him if she could, but that could wait until she heard his story.
Fred liked this woman already.
He was finally able to take a good look at her face. There was no doubt: this was the flesh and blood of Quentin Barnes. They had the same eyes, the same mouth, although Jeanine’s were bigger. On Quentin those features looked impossibly handsome. On Jeanine, they took on an almost artistic quality. The guard had been right — no matter what her age, this was the kind of woman that many men wanted to own.
Her full lips moved. “My brothers are dead.”
Fred smiled. “Oh, cheri,” he said, “the stories I have to tell you...
•••
Once they’d left the jail, it had been child’s play to blend into the Micovi crowds. Jeanine was a native. She knew how to walk, how to talk. Add in a veil for her, blue robes for them both and a pair of fake IDs — all courtesy of the rucksack that had contained Carney’s well-prepared plan — and they’d headed straight for the shuttle port. They hit orbit ninety minutes after Jeanine had cut his face open with a rough piece of concrete.
In a first-class compartment on a Ki passenger liner, Elder Rodrigo Goldblatt stared dumbfounded at his wife.
“What do you mean, you don’t want to meet hi
m?”
Jeanine crossed her arms. “I didn’t stutter. It means what it means — I don’t want to meet my brother.”
Fred rubbed his eyes, tried to put the pieces together. After all he’d been through to find this woman, and now she didn’t want to meet Quentin?
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “The big, strong man comes to rescue me and now I’m supposed to do what he says, right?”
“Right,” Fred said. “I mean, well... Quentin hired me to find you. And I found you. Now I take you to him. You meet your brother. Everyone wins.”
“I have to be playing the game to win,” she said. “I don’t know Quentin. I haven’t seen him since he was a baby. Maybe I need to learn a little about him before I... before I open myself up to something.”
Fred saw the look on her face, and he knew what she really meant. She’d been hurt before. Many times, and maybe by family.
“He’s a great guy,” Fred said. “Take my word for it.”
She smiled a humorless smile. “Take the word of a man who lies for a living, who pretends to be other people for a living? The answer is no, Frederico.”
She insisted on using his full first name, refused to call him Fred.
“This is crazy,” he said. “When we land on Ionath, I’ll tell your brother about you, then you can go wherever the hell you want to go.”
She shook her head. “No, you won’t tell him about me. You don’t have my permission to do that.”
“Your permission? Lady, I get hired to do things, this time I got hired to find you. I found you, case closed.”
She tapped her chest with her forefinger. “I’m a sentient being, Frederico. You don’t get to just throw me around like a piece of meat. I’ve had enough of that for one life.”
Her voice broke a little on the last word. She was playing all hard, keeping her expression as blank as she could, but she wasn’t as good as Quentin at that game. Fred had just rescued her from a prison, a prison where they hadn’t treated her well to say the least.
Fred was born in the Nation. So was Jeanine. He knew all too well how difficult life could be there. For a woman, it was even worse. Women had no right to vote, no right to own property, and most of the time they were property. Maybe he could understand why she didn’t want to be passed around like a trophy — she’d had enough of that life.
“So what, then?” he said. “You want to go back home?”
She let out a huff of disgust. “Not in this lifetime. I never want to see Micovi again. I think I’ll hang out with you for awhile.”
“What? Lady, don’t flatter yourself, you’re—”
“Not your type?” She smiled, a friendlier smile this time. “I know I’m not. I’m guessing no girl is.”
Fred felt a stab of fear in his stomach. They were away from the Purist Nation, but being found out — in any capacity — still generated an instinctive burst of panic.
“How did you know?”
Jeanine pointed to her breasts. “Because you haven’t been finding excuses to look at these.”
He looked at them now, wanting to kick himself. Aside from the cuts and bruises on her face, she was gorgeous, even with the thin lines brought on by a hard life. Any straight man would have drooled over her, and Fred had completely forgotten to play the part.
He looked at her eyes. “Maybe I’m not into boobs.”
She laughed. “Yeah, right. Listen, Frederico... I don’t really have anyplace else to go. I’m not saying I won’t meet Quentin, just not yet. And he hired you to find me, so if you send me on my way and something happens to me, you didn’t do your job. Can I just crash with you for a bit?”
He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t force her to meet Quentin. He could tell Quentin about her and be done with it, but he wasn’t going to hold her against her will while he came to see her, and he could tell that she’d try and bolt. She had that skittish look to her, the look of someone who survived by running at the earliest sign of danger. If he cut her loose, Gredok was out there, looking for her. Gredok, and who knew who else.
She tilted her head and grinned. “Come on,” she said. “How bad could it be?”
“Bad,” he said. “Sometimes... sometimes I have nightmares.”
Her smile faded. “Yeah. I think I know what kind. So do I.”
The stared at each other for a moment, and he knew that she understood. He hadn’t even told her what the nightmares were about — he hadn’t told anyone what they were about, not that he had anyone to tell — but she got it. She knew loss. She knew pain.
He sighed. “How long?”
Jeanine shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t you get to keep billing my brother for this?”
Fred couldn’t stop a small laugh. “Actually, yeah. I do.”
Her smile returned, more mischievous than ever. “Well, then, Frederico, I think you can buy a girl a nice dinner or two.”
VI: IONATH
Chapter 23: Garrison
“I thought Donald Pine was the answer to our problems, but now, I know better,” said the Quyth Worker grav-cab driver. “From the first time I saw Elder Barnes throw a pass, I knew I was watching a future Hall-of-Fame quarterback.”
“Uh-huh,” Fred said. He said it to be polite. Why he was polite to chatty cab drivers he had no idea, but it was an automatic reaction. He should have known it was coming — Fred had taken note of the Krakens pendant flying proudly from the cab’s flashing multilingual “On-Duty” sign when it picked him and Jeanine up at the shuttle port. He also spied a holo of Quentin Barnes dodging a Ki nose tackle and running in his own touchdown on the cab’s dash when he climbed inside.
Jeanine sat quietly. If she had any thoughts on the cab driver’s devotion to her brother, she didn’t make any sign.
“Pine is a legend,” the Worker said. “I do not deny it. But Elder Barnes? There is magic in his arm, and I don’t even believe in the supernatural.”
Fred felt like he’d been traveling for months. From Micovi on the outskirts of the Purist Nation to New Whitok in the Whitok Kingdom, to Capizzi in the Planetary Union, then into the Quyth Concordia for a changeover at Free station, then to OS1 and finally to Ionath. He could scarcely remember which identity he’d used to cross which border.
He was exhausted. He was also still recovering from the beating. Correction, beatings, plural. He’d been choked and punched in the records room, banged around a sandrail while dodging artillery explosions, then slapped around a bit in Stedmar’s office. Fred had never been more aware he wasn’t an eighteen-year-old raw recruit anymore. The damage took more than its toll.
For that reason, and a few others, it was good to be heading home. He had several “homes,” each one belonging to a separate identity. This time, he was Garrison Wolworth, and Garrison’s place was one of Fred’s favorites.
He liked living on Ionath, far from the reach of the Purist Nation and just outside the crush of the Creterakian Empire’s megalomaniacal thumb. Fred had swallowed a bellyful of oppression and never wanted to feel it burning through him again. The Quyth valued interspecies commerce, and Fred respected their culture. Honor was a real thing to a Quyth Warrior, as integral to their existence as oxygen or sustenance. It wasn’t just a pretense to which they paid lip service, like religion so often became in the Purist Nation.
Of course, the Quyth claimed their own brands of corruption and hypocrisy, but perfection thus far had escaped all cultures.
Ionath City’s Human District: a six-block span teeming with Homo sapien life of every color and configuration. Literally piled atop each other, the Humans of Ionath had no choice but to get along. That didn’t mean you couldn’t find violence and racism around every corner, but a balance had to be maintained for everyone to live and work and play.
Garrison’s apartment was above a watering hole called Tio Bert’s. The proprietor, Roberto Parka, was the sole bartender and also the landlord. Bert’s epic beard reached below hi
s sternum. He loved history, beer, literature and the Ionath Krakens. Many was the night between cases that Fred/Garrison spent hunched over the bar top, talking books and famous military battles with the man, both of them tipping a little too much.
There wasn’t much room in Tio Bert’s, nor was there much in the way of decoration, and a daily cleaning wasn’t exactly at the top of Roberto’s to-do list — these were just some of the reasons Fred loved the place. If tourists knew about the place, they didn’t come. Strangers wandered in from time to time, but for the most part Fred knew the faces of the regulars who supported the place, regulars who knew how to keep to themselves.
There was an antique pool table. Roberto stocked top-shelf spirits and the best selection of cigars in the Quyth Concordia. He also kept a quad-barreled pulse rifle behind the bar and watched over his tenants’ quarters when they were away — Fred had always felt that live eyes connected to a suspicious, easily offended and well-armed friend was better than any high-tech security system.
The grav-cab followed the radius road’s curve, just another vehicle in the city’s endless circular traffic, before finally depositing Fred in front of his destination.
He and Jeanine stepped out. He tipped the driver, thanked him, agreed with the man that, yes, the Krakens would go all the way this season and disembarked.
Fred pointed up a set of metal stairs, then handed Jeanine a metal key. She took the key, looked at it like the artifact it was.
“No bio-lock?”
He shook his head. “Not unless you want Gredok’s goons to detect your DNA, thumbprint — or both — and come running.”
“No, thanks,” she said. “Metal keys work just fine. See you upstairs.”
She headed up the steps. She had no bag. She’d left with nothing and had nothing to carry. He would have to take her shopping soon, get her some clothes.
Fred decided to stop by the bar briefly before heading upstairs. He knew he’d probably find Bert using the bar’s big holotank to call up certified text to illustrate a point to one of his regulars.