Ten Directions

by Samuel Winburn

  Some Terran rotations later he was again swinging down round the dark side, descending into Luna City. In his neuroview as the Senji Maru he cradled the hitched spaceships and crew, drawing them into his path, carrying them in palm of his hand. It would be so easy to crush them in his fist, a technical glitch that would finish all his risk, but would also leave him not much to live for.

  From his seat in aisle twenty-nine, Calvin30 spotted the signal. The first of the offloading month-on-month-off miners being delivered could be picked out from their reflective livery. One dude four rows up winked his retinas at Calvin30, who checked his bona fides through a neuroview data match. After that, a sizeable proportion of his fellow passengers appeared to pulse red. Now he could perceive the sleeper Rev force that had infiltrated the incoming miner shift. There were nearly thirty. The download also included a signal he should ping when he had managed to tag August’s coordinates.

  In return, he warmed up his sax ad libitum into a soft little ostinato that trafficked back to the infiltrators the ComSec codes they needed. Queen Bhatterjee’s black knights had almost reached the white side’s undefended back rank.

  His illicit melodic linkup attracted a lingering look from an old fan. Down the aisle from his seat Calvin30 gave a wily smile to this VIP on the passenger list, one Francesca Salvador. She frowned in response, perhaps sensing that her passport up was for her comeuppance. Calvin30 had never forgiven Francesca for her part in interrupting his front row angle on August’s falling Angels. For pilfering that perfect moment of his, and worse, the witch had selfishly ditched August. She had swept out her tracks too, the wicked bitch, with just one little slip, a last unclipped snippet that let Calvin30 guess. Speaking to herself who would she have solicited forgiveness from, if not August? Today she should pay for her unseemly duplicity. After studying her romantic history, he had readied this up and coming reunion. It wasn’t a fair bargain - his bottomless pain for a simple broken heart. She’d gotten off lightly. Possibly he was going soft.

  He tripped up for a tete é tete.

  “I can place your face. From Deep Space?”

  “Uh, yeah. The guy with the music stuff. Thanks for those. I enjoyed them.” He could see he caused her to be nervous. And so should she be.

  “Music can take you places you’d never otherwise see.”

  Francesca considered this cautiously and acquiesced. “That is totally true. Thank you.”

  At least the harlot had gratitude, a virtue in others largely lacking. “When I listen closely, I can linger on the misery of the human soul and, in that, find salvation.”

  “Yeah. I suppose.”

  “When you listen skilfully, you can even hear your own heart breaking.”

  “Is that so?” Francesca blew her hair, exposing the effort of her composure.

  Calvin30 quickly licked his lips. Ladies in love. Like the Titanic powering towards the ice pack. She would sink so deliciously swiftly. It was a shame he would be too busy to sit in on the show.

  “I have to go now,” she suggested.

  “Where?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Down,” She said as she turned towards the lock where the disc landers were kept. She glanced at her ComSec insignia. “They want me down there right away for some reason.”

  “Mucha mierda!"

  Francesca’s face screwed up at his wishing her much shit, theatrical lingo for luck en ole espagnol. Then she signed off and left.

  Soon after Francesca left, they were shepherded into the landing discs where she had headed. Calvin30 noted one disc had already flown as he climbed into one chauffeured by pilots.

  While his disc driver drove, Calvin30 chose to forgo the view to take in a quick tutorial on how to fly. Something he would need to know this afternoon. Disembarking through the back pad at Luna City he split from his soldier provocateur shift workers under instructions from Mirtopik head office and strolled along the path that his neuroview highlighted before him.

  Calvin30 greeted Gudanko, who was sitting unimposingly in the ingress lounge of the forward landing. He noted the reduced gravity suited the slim man’s posture, somewhat releasing the tightness in his spinal coiled spring. Out through the view portals sat the Senji Maru. Gudanko’s eye twitched.

  “Your ship is fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.” Gudanko smiled mildly. “We decided to delay going in without your participation. You are still interested?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Because there was no place in any world that would miss him.

  “You will go in first to assess the risk. We are unsure what a man in August’s condition will do as he has been alone so long. Men in solitary confinement become strange. While unjustly in prison I saw several them. When they came out they either crumbled or they fought. It would be sad to see a man like August crumble.”

  And how handy to have on hand one disposable clone?

  “It would be a tragedy,” Calvin30 agreed.

  With ComSec standing by at an accommodating distance, Calvin30 tapped on the Icarus’ airlock door and it opened. Then he made his entré.

  The outer opening closed and an inner one opened to admit Calvin30 into a dimly lit space. Before him stood his man, August standing grander by far than his anticipated state of delivery. Clean and with his scrambled hair dampened straight. The sight of him brightened Calvin30’s mind. Behind August, grinning like the idiot he couldn’t be, was the entity of the monk, disturber of uncountable sleeps. And grasping the monk’s hand, wary in her eyes as if congenial Calvin30 were the veritable Devil, was a woman?

  “Anymore of you in here or is this it?” Calvin30 quipped. With the situation sliding from the sublime through the ridiculous it was a question worth asking.

  August, enjoying his minion’s double flip, came forward.

  “No, my friend. This is it.” And then August contributed significantly to Calvin30’s shock by hugging him. Paralysed by the surprising gesture, his arms locked to his side, Calvin30 stumbled through. “Good to see you too.”

  From his embrace August whispered, “what else don’t you know?”

  “Allow me to introduce you. Calvin30, my assistant. This is Venerable Kalsang Jampa, formerly of the Triton Array and, of course, the indomitable Ms. Aurora Davidson of Mars.”

  Calvin30 awkwardly waved. The woman from the AGM, why not? Perhaps a piece of the wormhole had twisted off and gotten stuck in August’s ship, promiscuously pinching people out of his past.

  “I am so glad to see you Calvin30. I am assuming that we have touched down at one of the mining terminals for transhipment to Earth. How did you manage to slip us by my old friend Gudanko?”

  “Actually Boss, he is expecting you outside.”

  “What?”

  “In our previous discourse, I believe this was discussed.”

  August fumed but soon ran out of room to manoeuvre on the matter. Calvin30 halted him with a redirect before he started to panic.

  “It may be better if I stay with the others in this place while you go out and face-to-face. Then we will muster out after you so that your oppugner will become confused and flustered by your surprise passengers.”

  The practicality of this counsel - sharing his confusion to achieve his purpose - helped Calvin30 recover. As August turned to go, he stared at the mystery woman and she returned an uncertain smile. What was the essence of that exchange? A quick scan of her visage through his neuroview verified Aurora against her spitting image. Apparently, her position should be in a stasis canister midway to Earth on a medical evac. Somehow, she had happened to hitch her wagon to August’s star bringing with her fresh resources. They both looked better than worse for their wear. Knowing August, would he have taken advantage of all that the woman had to offer? The droop in his strung-out look suggested he hadn’t.

  After August exited, Kalsang calmly called to Calvin30, “we are happy you are helping us.”

  As accustomed as he had become to that voice, from evaluating every mneme ever cata
logued on Venerable Kalsang Jampa, listening to the monk live made Calvin30 leap in his skin.

  “That’s what I do.” In answering he had the odd sensation that any insincerity in himself was instantly sensed. “I help people follow their hopes.” Wherever that may lead.

  “Isn’t it?”

  Unsure how to respond, Calvin30 turned his attention through the portal to August and observed the confrontation. Gudanko, standing cautiously close at the front of a formidable phalanx of ComSec goons. August striding out with his regal mane swaying, regarding his mundane opponent with disdain. The two leaders squared off and August, although the captive, still had the number of his fastidious nemesis. Gudanko addressed his opposite, who became agitated. No doubt the Ukrainian had offered terms of surrender, a proposition August was tossing down with much dust.

  Focusing his sights on Gudanko’s unperturbed features, Calvin30 blinked and set his tag. To the Rev agents currently tracking Gudanko’s neuroview broadcast, that guy was now August, the target for the taking.

  “Are we to leave now?” The monk had the timing right.

  “Ah, yes.”

  Their appearance poked past the impregnable reserve in Gudanko’s nerve. Calvin30 could see his metrical mind ticking over, computing the improbabilities as incomprehensible. August picked up the improvement and stopped posturing.

  “Oh, that’s the rest of my party. See, the wormhole works my friend. I told you.” August’s smile went wide enough for eagles to fly in it.

  The extent to which Gudanko was stunned by this stunt could not be surmised because, at that moment, an explosive blast of smoke dissolved the scene into chaos. Firefly smart darts flew between ComSec protectors and indeterminate Rev invaders.

  “Ditch your neurovisors or you’ll be hit,” Calvin30 broadcast to his associates, as he glad-handed August back into his group and behind the craft. Aurora and August were quick to flick their visors, but Kalsang clung to his as expected. The mneme of the alien scene must be in its memory.

  “Drop it or they’ll drop you,” Calvin30 shouted as a smart dart tracer whizzed its winding way into a ComSec defending their position.

  Kalsang frowned down at the ground.

  “It’ll be locked, no one can look in. We can locate it later using your cerebral signature.”

  To push the point, a smart dart found its mark in Kalsang’s space suit bracelet and began to burrow in.

  Calvin30 wrestled the visor away from Kalsang and hurled it. On cue August yanked the monk back from clamboring after it. The smart dart extracted and arced off after its target.

  “No!” The renunciate lost it, but more barefaced was Aurora chasing the displaced headset into the haze. Nail chewing commenced as August threw himself into the mess to rescue her. Aurora fought fiercely to free herself from his heroic intervention.

  “Let go of me, you gutless wonder!”

  “What are you doing? Are you mad?”

  “We need that! We need that you moron!”

  “You see the darts? Do you want to get caught? Anyway, we can find our way without them,” August waved toward the visor on Calvin30’s brow.

  “Why is he able to keep his?” Aurora snapped.

  Calvin’s lips formed a reply, but August slipped the response in first. “Because they both think he’s on their side.”

  The debate ended as the battle line crossed over the lost property, pushing them back. Then the mayhem in the room turned around the captured pin.

  “They’ve taken Gudanko. They’ve got the Boss.” Calvin30’s neuroview murmured, melding with the Rev rodomontade, “we’ve acquired the target. Proceeding to extraction point nine.”

  Calvin30 still holding Kalsang by the hand, hauled him to the wall and pulled off a pre-loosened vent grill. Pulling the gravity reduced man was as easy as walking a child.

  “That shaft will shift us straight to the back-landing pad.”

  “The rovers are out front,” August objected, “the back is only used for visitors’ landing discs.”

  “You oughtn’t doubt me Boss. The discs from my ship should be still in the stalls. The airlock was rigged by the Revs to blow so it will slow anyone following. What do you think?”

  “Brilliant.”

  Aurora interrupted the tender moment. “We are not going until we have our neurovisors back.” The lady was as red as her fellow Martians. Kalsang enforced her right flank. August was flummoxed by this filibuster and stalled.

  Then one of Mirtopik’s best called over to them, and there was no place to go but into the wall. Calvin30 shooed them down the flue before refusing to enter after them.

  “Hurry up. You need to be there when I arrive. I’ll handle these guys.”

  Before Calvin30 re-secured the screws, he glanced through the shaft after them and met the gaze of the monk who looked positively distraught. That sight gave him some strength.

  “You,” Calvin30 inhaled the word while resolving the rest.

  You will die.

  Chapter 34 - Francesca

  Why did people have to be such complete and utter pains in the ass? The guy whose nose she had just had to break could have avoided it completely by leaving any of the fifteen times she had told him to get lost. Of course, he couldn’t because people were paying him to keep asking and he had to eat. This was what Francesca told herself the first fourteen times before deciding the last time that if he asked again she would have to deal with it.

  “What’s the story Francesca? Come on?”

  As if he didn’t already know that stupid story. About how she single-handedly defeated the terrorists trying to blow up August Bridges and had risked her own life to go after him and then had braved going through the wormhole thing to return. Everybody was telling that story, so why did they have to keep asking her? So she broke that guy’s nose, and now that would be the story, about what a machismo she was, how in some freakish way she was now some symbol of returning virility for those long-time limp dick Coms. See, even our women have balls. They even got into all her personal stuff, like who she’d hooked up with and why and where, which was all news to her because she had totally forgotten it. Now it was all over the neuros, repeating in people’s brains around the world like some sorry dream she couldn’t ever wake up from. She just hoped Raoul wasn’t watching any of that, although she knew, she hoped, that he would see right through it. He knew who she was, and he could give a crap what people said.

  Instead of all this, Francesca could have told the truth about the reality of what happened to August Bridges, that she had his blood on her hands and staining her soul. That she’d screwed him over and then hammered the nail in. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t the story everybody wanted to hear anyway.

  And hitting that guy was ridiculous because she had been dining out on that bullshit story he’d only wanted to hear her repeat. She was like this Queen of Shit now. Everyone was lining up to give her stuff for lying. Amazing hotel rooms, food she never thought would touch her lips, free money, hot guys giving her whole-body massages with happy endings, famous people who never knew she was alive before asking her opinion. She heard some chicks were even dressing up like her, which was funny and really sad at the same time.

  All of this in exchange for handing over her self-respect, which had been the only thing Francesca had ever really had to trade. It was like the Cheetah, Wonder Woman’s enemy, selling her soul to that Plant God in exchange for immortality, which before Francesca had always felt was a good deal - like getting everything for nothing.

  Today she felt like it was something.

  Francesca had been trying to avoid the paparazzi crazies by taking the laundry exit when that guy had popped out and hounded her down the street. Now that he was down all the other seagulls were flapping in out of the sky to see what was going down.

  Good luck that there was a volantor cab in the area, and just in time she got out of there. Off on her way to the Mirtopik Needle. Now Francesca could afford a flying cab, and wasn’t tha
t worth something? High above the dried-out town and all the little people who didn’t have a bullshit soul that was worth anything. The Queen of Shit. She couldn’t say some part of her wasn’t enjoying this. The part of her that felt like she’d done this before, like in some past life when she’d been Cleopatra, not like everyone else, but some interplanetary version with many heads and tentacles and shit. Maybe with those wild aliens who sent that neuro of the wormhole. Why not? Those feelings must have been from another life because people falling at her feet wasn’t something familiar to her this time around.

  The cab hovered down the Bat Cave entrance, into the ground under the needle, going almost as far down as the needle went up. Stony was waiting for her when she climbed out.

  “You look like shit, Salvador.”

  And she did. Hardly any sleep and too many Margaritas hanging off her hips. “You’re one to talk, asshole.”

  Stony grinned. “Always insubordinate. You haven’t changed.”

  But the sad truth was that she had. “Are they going to let us go?” The question almost got stuck in her throat before she could say it.

  “Yep, Salvador. We got in. They needed extra detail to watch some Rev chatter because Gudanko is headed up to Luna City to greet the Tsuchinshan crew in person when they come in.”

  Thanks to all the Saints who never gave a shit about her before. “Why is he doing that? Seems like a lot of trouble for a boss that big.”

  “You want to ask him? Or just thank your stars he is because that means we can get up there to see them in too.”

  “Just like that they let us go?”

  Stony picked his teeth, like he always did before telling people stuff they wouldn’t want to hear.

  “Not just like that. Some media guys want to see the reunion.”

  Francesca had to stop herself from helping Stony get the food in his teeth unstuck with her boot.

  “Settle down. It is getting us up. You want that, right?” Stony extracted his gross treasure and inspected it proudly.