For a worst-case scenario, it really wasn’t that bad... for Emile anyway.
PART THREE: Minoan
“IN ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY, Rhadamanthus, Minos and Aeacus were kings of island states and the judges of the dead. It therefore appropriate that the subsurface seas found within Europa’s ice sheet be named after them.”
-Europa Geological Assessment, Vol. I (2128)
THIRTY-FOUR
COMPARED TO EVERY OTHER one she had taken in recent memory; this latest trip was a local jaunt. But to Gallego, the passage from Ganymede to Europa felt interminably long. Stuffed into another cramped passenger liner, seated in two rather uncomfortable seats, and nothing to do but listen to the other passengers talk, snore and breathe. How could it not feel horribly long? In addition to that, cryosleep wasn’t an option on a local transport.
Calling up an overlay, Gallego checked her chrono to see how long it had really been. Less than ten hours, which meant they had another four to go. She had spent more time recovering from cryosleep while on route to Ganymede, and about as much time lounging aboard the passenger liner while traveling from Ishtar to Venera.
But of course, on neither occasion was Gallego’s mind burdened by a crushing sense of guilt. No matter how many times she tried to push past it, the thought of Najafi being eviscerated wouldn’t leave her. Like a recording on a loop, it kept playing over and over in her mind. If she closed her eyes, she could see the exact moment when it happened. Try as she might, she wouldn’t allow herself to stop reliving the moment of his death.
Najafi was lying on his back, tucked into the corner of the lounge. Gallego was on the other side of the room, able to see only part of him behind the incline that led to the door. Five attackers were between them, their weapons spewing concentrated beams of energy. The space between them felt like an insurmountable gulf. All she wanted to do was rush across to him, to intercept the man that was suddenly standing above him.
Every time she went over it, she felt the same feeling of helpless. So preoccupied was she with getting out of the way of enemy fire that she put herself at too great a distance. Cheboi was in a similar situation. Shielded behind her defensive barrier, she was unable to get to Najafi’s side in time, either, and that wasn’t even the worst part of it.
When the blade finally descended into Najafi’s chest, Gallego had allowed herself to freeze up. She took several hits in the chest at that point and spent the next few moments, though it felt like an eternity, looking up at the ceiling. Cheboi had been hit too; but in her case, it was while trying to get to Najafi’s side. She’d also had the presence of mind to never leave Gallego’s side and got her to safety.
Remembering Cheboi’s role in the whole affair sparked a brief flare of bitterness. For the briefest of moments, she wondered why her bodyguard hadn’t been able to save Najafi’s life. It had been she who had told them to take cover, hadn’t it? She was the one who’d Gallego to move laterally and get out of the line of fire, thus putting her too far away to save the man.
Gallego immediately silenced those thoughts and scoffed at herself. How predictable!
She knew exactly why she would allow her mind to go there. She was desperate to find some kind of logic to what happened. As was often the case with situations where the outcome had been horrible, that meant assigning blame. She kept most of it for herself, of course, and she certainly wanted to feel nothing but burning rage for the people who had attacked them. The same people who had taken Najafi’s life before her very eyes. The same people that had killed those four constables.
But they were actors she had no control over. Not now, and not then. No, at the moment, she could only obsess over her own actions, and what she should have done differently. It didn’t matter if she could have or not. The moral obligation to have done something more was immutable. She even considered directing some of that at Najafi himself. He had made a terrible mistake, putting his trust in them. He was also the one who had chosen their meeting spot, which had proven to be a perfect site for an ambush.
None of it worked, of course. In the end, past the guilt and recrimination, there was only the reality of what happened and her inability to accept it. Thinking about it wasn’t helping one bit. With this realization, she sighed heavily and let the thoughts retreat to the back of her mind.
This must have gotten Cheboi’s attention, because Gallego noticed her watching out of the corner of her eye. She was certainly not looking past her at the person seated next to them, or at the bare wall that had no window and no view.
“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
“All right,” said Cheboi. “We’re not going to have a problem, though, are we?”
Gallego sighed again, this time heatedly. “Why would we?”
“I can tell you’re having regrets. That could be a problem if we find ourselves in another combat situation.”
It wasn’t Cheboi’s words, but the way she delivered them. So taciturn and plain. Gallego directed two very angry eyes at her as she replied.
“Is that all you’re thinking about? The next one? You’ve got no thoughts on the fact that we watched a man die, or that people are about to be executed and we couldn’t stop it? You’re able to do that, just put all that out of your mind and focus on the next one?” She paused momentarily. Anger was giving way to sorrow now, and judgment to envy. She was barely able to keep it together as the next words streamed from her mouth. “How do you do that? Please tell me, because I’d really like to be able to do that right now.”
Cheboi looked back at her, her expression still steely, but also betraying some hints of empathy and sadness. Her words were similarly comprised, steely enough to hear, but not nearly as cold as Gallego thought.
“Yeah, I have thoughts about that. Plenty of them, and they are not too pleasant. But they’re still out there and we still have a job to do. What choice do we have?”
As much as Gallego hated it, Cheboi’s reasoning gave her some comfort. She had tried, and failed, to put the death of Najafi out of her mind on her own. While the talk had been less than pleasant, allowing her thoughts to form words and sharing them with Cheboi, had been rather helpful. Yet another predictable outcome. Despite her years of touring around the Solar System at Elenko’s behest, seeing things that few Extropians ever got to witness, Gallego was feeling like quite the amateur right now.
She sighed and called up an overlay again. A total of five minutes had passed since she last checked, and that small stretch of time also felt interminably long. Now they only had to wait three hours and fifty-five minutes until they arrived. When they arrived, they would be faced with another monumental task, and lives would depend on its successful conclusion. They could also look forward to another possible encounter with people who were trying to kill them.
At least some progress was being made.
Laying her head back, Gallego closed her eyes. With her emotional burden slightly lessened, extreme fatigue was beginning to take her. As her mind and body were just beginning to realize, the day had been very long and incredibly stressful. Perhaps she could look forward to some merciful sleep: the one thing that would cut the subjective duration of their journey shorter and give her a break from her waking thoughts.
Maybe Clio would leave her alone this time. Or maybe she would start giving her some straight answers for a change!
JUST THREE MORE HOURS.
According to the liner’s current velocity and telemetry, that was how long they had before it finally docked. At least, that was the opinion of their ship’s computer, which began monitoring the liner as soon as it left Selket and began its slow journey towards Europa. It was a painful experience for Adler and his crew, watching from the bridge of their ship. If they wanted, they could overtake the liner in an instant. If they wanted, they could simply fire on the liner and terminate those two troublesome Cytherean women.
But a job was a job. And their job entailed tailing those two women until they finally got to where
they were going. Once there, they would need to wait while the special counsel and her bodyguard found the people they were seeking. The amount of waiting this job called for was rapidly become a source of stress all by itself. They also had the other team to worry about. Thanks to the actions of the bodyguard, they still had three of them to deal with rather than zero. To add insult to injury, Adler’s team had also lost one of their own in the process.
Kovacs had been a good fighter, and an obedient crewmember. His services would be missed when they ran afoul of that enemy team again. As much as Adler wanted to rid himself and his crew of the Cythereans, patience was needed. On top of that, they also needed a plan that would address all salient objectives. Not the least of these was how to deal with the enemy team now that they were in hiding, and Adler and his team were the ones pursuing the Cythereans.
Pulling up an overlay, Adler requested all the information within the ship’s archives and his own mission files about Europa. The basics were something he was familiar with, but there were details about the colony and its people that might be useful. Now that they were pursuing, but also being pursued, it would help if they knew where to hide in plain sight.
After a few seconds of perusing, Adler noticed something in the archival data that caught his attention. Among Europa’s many citizens, there was a certain transient element that had become increasingly visible in recent years. In addition to being rather nomadic in nature, these people were noted for their rather freewheeling and spiritual nature.
It wasn’t entirely unexpected. The Jovian system, like the other systems that comprised the Outer Worlds, was known for producing its share of strange and bizarre sects. Given its eclectic and heterogeneous makeup of cultures, and the fact that many people still followed the ancient practices ascribed to Krist, Buddah, Mahomet, Bhrama, Abraham and others, it wasn’t at all surprising that new and weird spiritual sects would periodically emerge.
Still, the archive’s description left Adler a little surprised and amused, as did the name.
Almauta Adorates was what they called themselves, a name derived from the local pidgin. While crude, the translation was where things got especially interesting.
Death Revelers? Adler thought. Perfect!
THIRTY-FIVE
“TAAYAR LÁI DÀO TYRE espacial intaraplanetaree. Welcome to Tyre Interplanetary Spaceport.”
The voice overhead cycled through the same simple greeting, beginning in pidgin, followed by Anglish, and cycling through the other old tongues that residents and visitors to Europa were known to use. By the time it had completed a single cycle, Gallego had been able to make a complete sweep of the terminal with her eyes.
The structure itself was typical of Jovian spaceports. Simple and spartan by Extropian standards, but colorful and charming nevertheless. The structural posts that reached from floor to ceiling were fashioned from simple steel but were coated with a sheen that gave them an emerald hue. The walls between them were cobalt, providing the entire place a certain organic and oceanic look. This was the style of the Europans, who took their status as an “Ocean World” very seriously.
Gallego had half-expected that the spaceport would be filled with the same types of people who had accompanied them aboard the liner: the usual mix of miners, workers, spacers, haulers, crews, religious types and families - in short, typical Jovians. But when they disembarked, she was immediately struck by the presence of a rather sizable group of people.
To a person, they all had long, unkempt hair and their garments were simple, even by Retro standards. These consisted of a single piece of cream-colored cloth that was tied around their bodies and clasped at the shoulder. They wore sandals that appeared to be nothing more than a few pieces of fabric of synthetic leather. Some of them had ornaments too, rings or necklaces featuring a deity of some kind. They also appeared to have undergarments on that covered their nether-regions, but otherwise left their flesh exposed.
While this hardly seemed immodest to Gallego, it was surprising to see in a Jovian spaceport. If nothing else, she had to imagine that these people weren’t too warm or comfortable.
Even more surprising, one of them approached Gallego and Cheboi as soon as they stepped off the liner. It was a young woman who carried a small stack of pamphlets in her hand. She was also possessed of a certain ecstatic nature and seemed to glide and bounce as she moved across the floor. Instinctively, Gallego raised her satchel bag towards her chest defensively. While the person approaching her appeared harmless enough, there was no way of knowing if she was a hostile in disguise.
The young woman came to a stop a few meters in front of them and began spewing words of greeting in pidgin. When Gallego didn’t immediately respond, she switched to Anglish without missing a beat.
“Hello travelers! Do you have some time to speak about the Judges?”
Gallego was still a bit murky from the brief and unpleasant nap she had taken aboard the liner. Instructing her medimachines to start clearing up her mind, Gallego replied politely as she could. “I’m afraid not, sorry. We have places to go.”
Gallego lowered her satchel and tried to push past the young lady, but the woman adjusted her stance slightly to remain in their path. This brought Cheboi into the fray, who stepped in between Gallego and their guest. Undeterred, the young woman continued to share what sounded like a rehearsed speech.
“But don’t we all have places to go? The question is, where are we all going? And why are we so focused on the destination and not the journey?”
Gallego sighed and looked at Cheboi, who smiled in return. As the combat specialist between them, she clearly didn’t sense any threat from the young woman. Gallego, on the other hand, sensed a most potent threat. The young woman was threatening to waste their time with what was clearly some messianic cult nonsense.
“We’re really not interested. As I said, we need to be going.”
“Where will you be going?” the young woman asked.
That question caught Gallego off-guard. It wasn’t the impertinence of it, or the fact that she had no business asking this of travelers she didn’t know. It was the fact that Gallego had no answer. Selecting a destination was something she and Cheboi planned to do once they arrived on Europa and were able to make a preliminary assessment of things.
She couldn’t say that, though. Any indication that they were currently without a destination would only encourage the young girl to keep talking.
“Ah, I’d rather not say,” Gallego replied. To her surprise, the young woman smiled brightly at this and bounced in place again. Her left breast peeked above her cloth for just a second. She didn’t seem to care and kept talking.
“Our destination isn’t something we should be afraid to speak of. The name isn’t taboo. The transition itself isn’t to be feared. Sooner or later, we must all come before the Judges.”
Oh dear, Gallego thought. The woman’s words were forming a discernible pattern. Gallego was beginning to suspect she was part of a suicide cult, or death worshippers. Such people had been known to pop up at the fringes of civilization, and similar types were even known to exist in the Inner Worlds. For some people, death was something to be fascinated with, even revered. They never seemed to understand that it was a one-way trip.
Gallego summoned whatever patience she could find and decided to turn the tables on the woman. “Tell you what, why don’t you tell us where you’re going, and we’ll see if we feel like coming?”
Without hesitation, the young woman began reciting from what sounded like a carefully-prepared testament.
“Why, we’re taking part in the Pilgrimage, of course. We shall traverse the route laid out before us by the Judges and cross the Minoan, Rhadamanthean and Aeacean Seas. We shall bathe in their waters and drink from the wisdom of the Underworld. Upon our return, we will bring with us their wisdom and spread it to others. This will prepare us to meet our end and testify before the Judges on our final day.”
From those words, Gallego obtain
ed a single kernel of useful information. The mention of the Minoan caused a familiar name to pop into her mind. “You’re traveling to the Minoan?” she said. “Doesn’t this mean you will be stopping in Ebla?”
“Why yes!” the young lady said, laughing. “That is the first stop on The Pilgrimage Route. How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” Gallego replied. “You know what, I think we’ll be accompanying you after all.” She looked at Cheboi for some indication of resistance; Cheboi was conveying that in spades. All Gallego could manage was to give her a nod of reassurance. She turned back at the young girl, looking admiringly at her clothing for the first time.
“These nice outfits you’re all wearing. You got any more of those?”
COMPARED TO THE LINER, the ride aboard the train from Tyre was rather pleasant. The accommodations were far less confining, and the air smelled cleaner. Whoever had designed the train compartments had clearly favored the open concept rather than the sardine-can. There were even windows placed at intervals throughout each compartment that providing views of the passing tunnel. The nearest was in the row directly in front of where Gallego and Cheboi were seated. Every few seconds, the walls of the tunnel gave way to an extended patch of dark ice.
It was a lovely reminder that they were currently passing though Europa’s thick ice sheet.
The only downside was the noise coming from the Revelers. All over the train, the Almauta Adorates were singing, banging on portable drums, and shouting strange things. Gallego could sympathize easily enough. In their minds, they were taking part in a holy pilgrimage, going from one sacred place to another. When they got to each, they would be taking part in a ritual that would bring them closer to the divine, as they saw it.
The Jovian Manifesto (The Formist Series Book 2) Page 23