by TS Hottle
"How do we deal with this?"
Kurz shrugged. "The locals don't seem to mind walking around naked in public. Not all of them, and not all the time. But you might want to consider it in the summer months."
"This isn't summer?"
"It's winter in this hemisphere. Remember, the sun is only ninety-nine million kilometers from here." He stood up from leaning on his desk. "Have you picked out a living space yet?"
Suicide wiped her face with a towel. It already felt damp from frequent use. "No. I thought I'd stay on the ship they assigned me."
"No can do," said Kurz. "Dasarius sometimes will take your ship for an operation without you being assigned." He fingered his wrist chip, then tossed a map of Sanctuary on the wall. "Not many locals have moved in yet. You're free to pick any available space."
Suicide studied the town map. Kurz had only highlighted dormitories. No apartment buildings. None, apparently, existed yet. "Is there someplace more private?"
Kurz let out a long sigh. "Not in the city proper, but…" He waved his hands in midair, the map moving as he did so. It now showed a ridge to the south of town highlighted. "They built these huts for the early survey crews. They're abandoned now, but still usable. If no squatters have moved in, look into those."
Her eyes moved over the area surrounding the huts. She could walk down the hill or requisition a small flitter to take her to the spaceport. "When do you need me back?"
"Tomorrow morning, 0900? Why?"
"I need to move into my new home."
The hut consisted of a single piece of 3-D printed polymer extruded over rods driven into the ground. Inside had only one room with a converted toilet shed serving as the bathroom. Actually, a shower pod stood next to it. The hut had two windows on the east and west sides with glass that could polarize on demand, a counter with basic cooking gear, and a field cooler for food. It had no furniture.
Suicide did not need furniture, just a field locker and her sleeping bag. She found the unit number outside on the doorframe. This she called into the administration building to claim it as her domicile. The quartermaster offered to send down a war surplus bed, couch, and chair.
"Just a table and four chairs. And a field locker for my clothes," she responded. "And my first month's rations, at least until we get supply stores up and running."
"No bed?"
"Beds are for the weak." She cut the connection.
Outside, she walked the ridge, a blanket under her arm. She found an outcropping that gave her a spectacular view of the sunset as the perpetual cloud cover thinned enough for Helios to show through. As the star fell to the horizon, it looked so much bigger and redder than she'd ever seen growing up on Tian. Reaper had once told her that same sun looked small and white on Demeter, where everything lay under a layer of ice.
She spread out the blanket, took off her clothes, and sat in the lotus position. Through polarized glasses, she watched the sun sink to the horizon. As it sank halfway down, a bright red star appeared. This was Hephaestus, Helios's innermost planet. The red came from the intense heat from the sun. The molten blob whipped around Helios every twenty-nine days at a distance of only twenty-five million kilometers.
From Tian, growing up, Hephaestus appeared as a faint red dot in the morning and evening skies just before dawn or just after dusk. Here, it showed brighter than Aphrodite's big moon, even through the haze in the upper atmosphere.
This Suicide—Yun—decided was what she needed. After losing Akrad, fighting a war that never should have happened, and walking away from a career she loved, she needed a minimalist life some place where she could spend dawn and dusk meditating on the sky. After all, she lived in the sky most of her adult life. She hoped one day it would swallow her. That was a good fate for a woman defined by flight. To become part of the sky.
"I see you found my favorite spot."
Suicide's eyes snapped open at the sound of a male voice. The man, his skin rough from years under the blazing sun, stood at a respectful distance. She moved to put on her clothes before she realized the man wore only a minimal pair of shorts, more to give him pockets than for any modesty.
"Don't bother," he said. "By then end of this week, you'll see more human flesh than at a Thulian orgy." He paused. "Do Thulians really have orgies?"
"Never been, so I wouldn't know." She relaxed. "I'm sorry. Am I interrupting your routine?"
"Oh, no," he said. "I'm just out for my evening walk. You look like the type that wants to sit and think. Or not think. Both are good for the mind. I do my meditating on the move." He took a few steps closer but made no move to invade her space. "My name's Fred. What's yours?"
Kurz only knew her as Suicide, even though he had her name and vitals on file. This man, however, did not have Kurz's mercenary vibe. "Yun."
"Yun," he repeated. "Tianese?"
"Mandarin. My parents are pure Han. Well, my mother's half-Tibetan."
Fred chuckled. "Funny how we don't blend like we thought we would out here among the stars. 'Yun' means 'cloud,' doesn't it?"
"It does. You speak Mandarin? Or Tianese?"
"A little. Not much. I'm just a euro from Belsham, and an engineer. Multilingualism and social skills are not something we're good at."
"What do you do, Fred?"
"I used to be an engineer. Now…?"
Yun realized whatever he was about to say would change her in ways she could not predict. And she didn't mind.
"I'm a pilot." She looked back up at Hephaestus, now sinking toward the horizon. Hermes, the world closest to Aphrodite, now appeared, a bright star not much different from the moons she knew well. "You might say I'm one with the sky."
Fred laughed. "Yun, that's the whole purpose of my life, to become one with the universe. And what you said is truer than you know."
She studied Fred for a moment. He had a pendant around his neck, a multi-colored cube. "What is that you're wearing?"
He held it up. "This? A Puzzle cube."
"What does it mean?"
Fred smiled. It looked like a wise old priest from a story her mother might have told. "The universe is a puzzle trying to find its own solution. Solve for entropy."
18
"Come out of there. I need to talk to you."
Suicide stood over the legs of JT Austin, her copilot buried from the waist up under an engine cowling. He pulled himself out from under, looking up at her with a scowl. A line of grease crossed his face. "Do you know how hard it is to line up the plasma injectors on an EM drive? Now I have to start over and work twenty minutes to get back where I was."
She had interrupted him on such projects before. Only the installation of a water recycler at his cabin left her with any regret. This time, she might have spared him the wrath of Boolay, who didn't trust the hairless monkeys to mess with "his" ship. "You'll live. Walk with me."
He followed her in silence through the Goldeneye's engine compartment to the lower bay and down the ramp into the Bova's hangar bay. Outside, she said, "You need to go to Officer Training School. Soon as we return to Amargosa."
He stopped. "Does Metis even have that yet? We haven't had time to integrate with each other, let alone consolidate a navy for…"
"Compact training school. I need you to go back to the Compact, make your field rank permanent, and start scoping out what's going on over there."
He looked angry. She knew why. She had felt that anger the day Priya died. She didn't know, however, if he was angry over Lizzy or Tishla. Or both. "JT, Juno started the war with the Gelt. They're moving throughout the Compact military. We need eyes and ears if we're going to fight them. And…" She looked around. "You know your father and Admiral Burke are more than just the resistance in the Navy. "
"Haven't I done enough already?"
He had. By the age of seventeen, and in a very short amount of time, he had sacrificed far more than people twice his age or more. No seventeen-year-old should have been a widower. He was now nineteen and should have been sewing
the last of those wild oats that sent him accidentally to Amargosa in the first place. Instead, he was being asked to continue a war most people he had known over the last three years had left behind.
"There's more," he said. "Isn't there?"
She closed her eyes. This next part scared her, both because of what it entailed and because it would cut her off from him for a time. "I'm moving to the Colony, at least for six months."
"To do what? Take over security?"
"I'm undergoing the change. I will become Thulian."
JT cocked his head. "You were against that. What changed?"
"You don't meet Suri Mongano, a woman who watched the first Mars landing as a child, and not be moved. I'm going to become amortal."
"You can't. You're already immortal."
"I'm not." She stroked his cheek, a gesture she could not remember ever doing. "But you are. At least for a limited time." She took his hand. "They want you, too. But unlike Davra, you can wait. Unless you took more rads than you let on when Riverside was destroyed."
"Why me?"
"You're one of the Children of Amargosa."
He rolled his eyes. "I really hate that…"
"I get it. But that's what you are, for good or bad." She pulled him in and put her arm across his shoulder. "Davra took rads from that blast. So did Eric Yuwono. They had to go. But you, Ellie Nardino, Connor Duffy? You all have talents they want. Even Mitsuko. She's one of you, perhaps the one who lost the most."
JT looked down at the deck. "I'll think about it. What I really want is just to go back to my cabin and get away from people."
"And have Tishla hide out there with you so you two can pretend you're just friends."
He glared at her when his eyes came up to meet hers. "I don't…"
"You do," said Suicide. "So does she. And what makes it so hard is you both know she's ultimately responsible for your wife's death. She doesn't just want to atone for it. She wants you to make her pay for it at your hands." He started to protest, and she put her fingers to his lips. "She knows you love her, both as a silly crush and for what you really see in her. But if you really care for her, you'll go to the Colony and follow in my footsteps."
"Why?"
"Because, JT Austin, her people are dying. And if she follows you to the Colony, she might just crack the secret to saving them."
He stood staring at her for a moment, his face neutral. Finally, he said, "You missed your calling as a mother."
Suicide cocked her head. Then she drew him into an embrace. "I don't think so. Look how you turned out."
Hanar from orbit always left Suicide unsettled. Most planets had green or yellow vegetation, while Amargosa had red. The blue of Hanar's forests and fields blended with its oceans when viewed from space. One could easily make out the land masses, but the flora put Hanar deep into an uncanny valley.
She stood alone in the observation bay, two other vessels nearby, both Compact ships. One, the Queen Maria Sophia, had come from Bonaparte to retrieve Mitsuko and her team. The other Suicide knew well. The Hancock had returned two years after Amargosa's liberation.
She found herself alone in the Bova's observation deck. Everyone but Boolay had left, and only Boolay would return to Amargosa with her. Somewhere below, JT entertained Tishla, the pair still pretending not to be anything more than friends. In some ways, Suicide envied the Gelt woman's ability to slip out of her leadership role and become someone ordinary. She suspected Tishla would eventually give up the role she had created for herself. Suicide had never seen her happier than when she happened on her at JT's remote cabin, cleaning, gardening, cooking. For a powerful woman with the weight of more than one world on her shoulders, Lattus Tishla was a home body.
And like a mother unwilling to let her only child go, Suicide wondered if Tishla's mutual obsession with JT was healthy for either him or her.
"Completely blue under those clouds," said a woman's voice.
Suicide broke her concentration to see Admiral Eileen Burke approach. Instinctively, she assumed parade stance. "Admiral."
"At ease, Cui," said Burke. "You'll break something."
"Did you bring the Hancock here just to talk to me?"
Burke chuckled. "Reaper brought the Hancock. He wanted his fighter wings to practice against real Gelt. Since Amargosa is, shall we say, off-limits to the Compact now, Hanar is the only place we can find friendly Gelt with any piloting skills worth mentioning." She frowned. "Unless we can convince the Sovereign that it's human custom to scrimmage against one's enemies in war between battles."
"I don't think the current Sovereign would appreciate that." Suicide had met the Sovereign once on an earlier trip to Hanar. Fifteen, at the time, which translated into about twenty-one for humans, the boy wearing the mantle of a god over all the Realm seemed bitter and angry. Why would He not? Humans had killed His Father, then the woman who preceded Him, whom, she understood, had been a second mother to Him. The thought made her keenly aware of the ashes from a man and a woman she had loved now hung over her heart.
"I understand you kicked Mr. Austin's butt into OTS finally," said Burke. "I am assuming the Thulians had something to do with that."
Suicide resumed staring at the planet below, fixing her gaze on Gilead City, the capital. "They might have."
"Also heard you were going to move to their colony on Amargosa." Burke's tone seemed to carry a note of accusation.
Suicide turned. "Why do you care? Metis has left the Compact, taken Amargosa and Farigha with it, and I'm no longer one of you."
Burke's mouth twisted into a smile that looked odd. "Might interest you to know that I am part of a resistance inside the Compact military, one afraid more than one group with ulterior motives against the Compact is gaining power."
"Such as…?"
"Juno. It's the main one, but not the only one."
"One might say Dasarius Interstellar is such an organization."
Burke shook her head. "Dasarius has outsized influence, but it's in the open. At some point, the Compact will shed them. For now, they're useful."
"And JT?"
The Admiral's laugh held no humor. "Yun, Dasarius is not as dependent on its hereditary leadership as most people believe. Losing JT Austin is far from catastrophic. His mother has already rejected one brother as a successor and knows the other won't take the job. If she wants an heir, it'll have to be the daughter. Have you met Tessa Dasarius?"
"Once."
"Then you know she would love for her own daughter to follow her two brothers in walking away from the family business. Maybe her ancestors, the ones still alive, might be upset, but Tessa already knows it's cost her one son."
That son is mine now, thought Suicide.
"My point is," Burke continued, "there are groups within the Compact trying to infiltrate in secret. The Thulians cut themselves off because of this."
"So, you know…"
Burke put up her hand. "I know no such thing, Commander. But I do know this." She stepped forward and leaned into Suicide as though some hidden device were listening to their conversation. "Metis may have gone its own way. That actually makes me happy. But your usefulness to the Compact is far from over."
Suicide sneaked a glance out the window before focusing back on the Admiral. "The Thulians told me the same thing."
"We know." Burke winked and strode away.
She found herself on that same hill where she'd lived for more years now than she cared to remember. Colonel Quan offered to drive her up from Harlan-Ragnar Station, but she opted to walk. The warm season was giving way to the dry season, with cooler air and little, if any, rain. Maybe it would snow soon. It hadn't snowed in the Amundsen foothills since she'd first arrived on Amargosa.
The air would do her good. If the trip went into the night, she knew enough people, Gelt or human, in the fringe settlements to find a bed for the night. In one, an innkeeper owed her so many favors that she never paid for a room if she found herself out for days.
As it was, she stayed one night with a Gelt woman whom she knew to be fond of JT. It disappointed her to learn that JT had never returned the woman's affections. Even after learning JT would soon ship out to Tian to make his Navy commission permanent, she still sang his praises, how he always made sure she had food, watched her little daughter when she had to go into the Townships to help with the harvests, and even found her a doctor who specialized in Gelt medicine.
Suicide could do nothing to help the woman realize her dreams. Perhaps soon, a local Gelt male would look kindly upon her, or she would claim a homestead of her own. Until then, it did not hurt to cultivate the woman's friendship as well. Suicide may have had a reputation as a hermit among the locals, but she had a wider network of friends than most suspected.
She left the house before dawn, the wild lycanths already headed for their lairs. By the time she reached the lake near the former site of her hut, the glow of the sun grew in the west. She located a familiar spot, barely visible in the early twilight, and laid out a blanket she kept in her backpack. Off came her clothes. On went a pair of polarized shades. She sat facing the west, wondering if Atlas would make an appearance.
Atlas did not disappoint. The hot Jupiter formed a black spot on the sun. It reminded her of the blood-red glow of Hephaestus in the skies over Aphrodite. She let the spectacle fill her mind and sweep away whatever had been chattering there for the past two weeks. In the full light of day, she rose, put her clothes back on, and made her way back to the site of her hut. Why she returned there, she did not know. Nothing stood there.
JT would allow her use of the cabin. He had done it before, saying anyone in the family was welcome there. "The family," in this case, meant her, Colonel Quan, Tishla, and the other so-called Children of Amargosa. She even had access to the property. Anything electronic there would welcome her without question.
Yet she needed to see her home, or what remained of it. She came around the lake and discovered nothing remained of it, not even the crater from whatever destroyed it.