Though the jungle had its own dangers. Twice Jan stopped at a tingle on the back of his neck or before his face, a subliminal twinge of wrongness. Waited in stillness, scanning the jungle until he saw it—the woody barbs of a spine tree twitching in his direction, or a cluster of venomvines ready to deploy their explosive seedpods where he was about to step. Each time he had to wait, willing himself to be a tree until the predatory flora of the jungle ceased to notice him and he could carefully slip past.
He lost valuable time to this game, and would lose even more by stopping for the night. But there was no choice. Night travel through the jungle was suicide.
The Urd outpost was more of a bivouac: a rough collection of long tents clustered in the center of an irregular circle of cleared earth. Rows of gunner platforms and metal supply crates lined the perimeter nearby. Two squat outbuildings of ceramic brick crouched on opposite sides of the circle. The back wall of the one nearest him was featureless except for a rectangular aperture set into it at his head height.
Jan waited with the other shadows for true nightfall before foraying from his hiding spot. The building across the circle was clearly a storeroom; watching from the jungle fringe, he saw Urd enter it several times, dragging sacks, barrels, and less identifiable parcels back to the tent barracks. None entered the building nearest him; he guessed it might be an armory or machine shop. Secure enough for the night at least. Ten seconds of agonized creeping across red earth, and his back was to its ceramic wall. Jan turned, gripped the grainy window ledge, and hoisted himself inside.
He dropped to the packed earth floor amid a polyphony of soft whuffing noises and shuffling dark shapes. Alarmed, Jan slapped the flashlight on his helmet to life. His beam reflected off scaly green and blue skin. Almond-shaped red eyes darted away from the light. He’d dimmed it immediately so it wouldn’t seep under the metal door at the room’s far end and betray his position.
It was then the smell hit him. A stultifying fog of blood and shit rammed itself up his nostrils, making him fumble for the neck of his shirt, holding it over his mouth and nose to keep from puking. Both Urd and Arashal relied on a yellow hemolymph for blood; it used a different combination of metals to carry oxygen and lacked the distinctive coppery scent of human blood, but he’d smelled it enough times to recognize it now. More carefully, Jan passed his helmet light a second time over the hulking shadows sharing the room with him.
Four Arashal sprawled or crouched on a floor of sand soaked with excrement and yellow gore. All of them flinched from the light again, but weakly—and this time Jan caught the stilted wrongness in their movements. Hovering his beam over each huge body, he saw with a wrench that went down to his guts that they were incomplete.
All four of the reptilian aliens bore gaping sockets where their limbs had been wrenched or torn away. None of them had tails anymore, but otherwise the wounds were all in different places: a couple crouched on a single leg, paddle-like hands splayed into the sand for balance; another curled in on the ragged hole that had been its right shoulder; one, horribly, had no arms. The glaze of pain reflected in their eyes as the light swept over them.
His hand twitched on his thigh. The Father’s proffered drink sat forgotten in his other hand.
“It was a larder,” said Jan. “The Urd were keeping—” He glanced across the decking to where Isaac and Abraham lounged in apparent content, munching on some cabbage their Father had procured for them. Neither of them looked across at the two humans. “The Urd were keeping their meat fresh as long as possible,” he went on quietly. “I read up on it later. They secrete something—”
“A venom,” the Father interjected quietly.
He nodded. “Acts as a coagulant and a paralytic in Arashal. So the Urd could—harvest them more easily.” A surge of remembered nausea made him clench fingernails into his palm.
He’d choked down his horror. Approached the mutilated creatures with palms up, cooing softly in what he hoped would be a calming tone. The Arashal had watched, first dully, then with growing interest, as Jan drew the carbon fiber blade of his knife from its sheath. In his clumsy Urdeki, he explained the cut he could make that would end things for them. A quick bleed from the large artery in the neck, bringing death within minutes.
None of them said no.
“I made it back to base the next morning,” said Jan. “My superiors weren’t happy I had to scrap the tankboy, but the intel on the Urd camp made up for it. I told them in all likelihood it was a supply base for the gunship that ambushed us.”
The Father stroked his trimmed beard pensively. “Do you think it was?”
Shrugging, Jan wiped his eyes. They seemed unaccountably bleary all of a sudden. “Probably. I didn’t think too hard about it.”
The corners of the older man’s mouth quirked. “And what did your unit do with this intelligence?”
Jan tried to laugh, but what came out of his mouth didn’t sound much like laughter. “What do you think we did? We went back and bombed the shit out of it.”
“And the settlement?”
“What?”
“The missing settlement,” the Father repeated. “Did you ever find out what happened to it?”
“Oh.” The original point of the mission had slipped his mind as he’d related the story. “Busted transponder. That was all it was.” Jan smiled thinly. “I know you’re thinking it, so yes.”
The green eyes widened slightly. Measured surprise.
“I do dream about that night sometimes. Even thirty years later. But in the dreams, it’s not my horror or their pain I remember. It’s the clarity I felt as I was bleeding them. Like I finally knew why we were fighting.”
“Then you believe Rreluush-Tren was a just war?”
“I believe we left a legacy there that was more good than bad.” As he spoke, Jan realized he meant it. Even though humans had colonized it out of ignorance, by the end they knew why they were fighting: not only to protect their own beleaguered colonists, but to free an entire species from a slavery that went right down to the flesh of their bodies. The provisions of the hard-won peace treaty between humans and Urd had shut down the larder system and the meat factories forever. No Arashal would ever be used as meat again.
Satisfied at the thought, Jan lifted his drink, but the sweetness of the coconut water suddenly curdled his stomach. He put the glass away from him. “Father, I—” Have a confession to make, his brain filled in idiotically. He winced at the irony of the statement had he spoken it aloud. “I have a war legacy of my own I’ve been grappling with.”
“Oh?” The Father sat up.
Jan breathed deep and plunged in. He explained the work he’d done reviewing the files on the bombing in Neo-Chicago. Unraveling the tangled threads that had led to his mother’s murder, reading their warp and weft for clues. Explained the pattern he’d found. He hadn’t seen one like it in fifteen years, but there were some things a person didn’t forget.
“He used a shaped charge, detonated it from some place nearby. My guess is somewhere with a clear line of sight, so he could confirm the kill.” Jan swallowed. “It fits his MO, Father. Both from Nheris’ records and the attacks he’s speculated to have committed in D2. I think Gau Shesharrim was behind this assassination.”
He’d had the Father’s full attention for the last several minutes. Now the man leaned back against his polished leather chair, steepling his fingers under his chin. “It is my educated guess that there is a reason why you haven’t approached Neo-Chicago Civil Security with your suspicions.”
It took all of Jan’s considerable will not to actually squirm in his chair. Part of him knew this was the last thing he should be discussing with the Father, that the last thing he should do was trust him. His bland face revealed nothing—just as it had on his visit fifteen years ago, when they’d chatted and sipped wine as his special envoy tortured an Osk prisoner of war a thousand
kilometers away. Jan had never been sure whether the Father had given Tor Berkyavik his orders. The seph herself had become an open case file after the envoy’s death; Jan’s inquiries into the matter trailed into a white silence.
He should hold that silence now . . . but truth was, he was exhausted. He’d lain awake night after night, staring at the choice before him. Sick to death of being alone in it. Yet the only person he could really trust, the only one who would have understood what he faced, was dead.
Jan’s throat felt like paper as he cleared it. “Before she left the military for politics, my mum . . . headed up a project.”
He told the Father everything—as much as he knew, anyway, which Jan was aware might be far from everything. His mother had rarely spoken of Project ShadowStalker even when she was its director, and less after handing off the reins to her second-in-command a few years back. A healthy reluctance to involve him even tangentially in an operation that occupied a legal gray area was part of it, Jan knew; but he’d also heard her ambivalence toward the Project growing as the years passed.
“It doesn’t exist, officially,” he said. “Mose Attarish is just one more name in Nheris’ records of unaccounted-for combatants. But the reality is the Project has had him out there killing sephs for the past fifteen years.”
“Against his will,” the Father added. He waved a hand vaguely toward his chest, as though indicating the complex machineries that kept the seph’s lungs working.
Jan nodded, then found himself shaking his head in disgust. “Last time we talked about it, Mum said it was a damn dirty business. I think she’d have shut it down if she had her way, but CoG owns the Project. And its results have been too good for them to scrap it now.” No, indeed; not after Project ShadowStalker had already tracked down and eliminated—their word, eliminated—so many sephs with minimal collateral damage. And no break in the façade of peace that had cottoned the Expansion until recently.
“What do you think, Jan?” asked the Father. As he leaned forward, a small gold cross slipped on its chain from beneath the split collar of his kurta. He caught it between thumb and forefinger and studied it for a moment, smiling at some inward thought. “Do you think what the Project is doing is wrong?”
“I was prepared to.” He pushed himself up from the chair and walked to the diamond window. Leaning on the railing, he looked out at the terraces of the Canopies climbing in a torus toward the sky. “I believe in the rule of law, Father. Executions without trial tend to go against that law.”
“The Osk involved were enemy combatants, if I’m not mistaken,” the Father retorted mildly.
Jan snorted. “I used to be an enemy combatant. On Rreluush-Tren. If the Urd had caught me that night in their camp, they’d have killed me without batting an eye. Doesn’t make them right to do it.”
“No.” The Father joined him at the rail, leaning elbows on the polished wood. “It’s true, there are two sides to every definition in war. According to the Urd, we were just as much in the wrong to have come to Rreluush-Tren.” He glanced at Jan. “I sense you are searching for a clarity that transcends those definitions.”
A rough spot in the varnish scraped Jan’s palm as he curled his fist around the railing. “I’m searching . . . for a definition for what I’m considering that isn’t vengeance.” He turned and held the older man’s gaze. “You want to know why I haven’t gone to Aival Civil Sec with my evidence? Because they’ll take too long. Any civil investigation into the bombing could take years. Even if they do catch Shesharrim, the case will take more years to process—if it gets decided at all. God knows there are plenty of people ahead of me in line waiting to take a crack at him.”
He flexed his hands on the railing. “If Gau Shesharrim is behind this, I don’t want him sitting in a cell somewhere. I want him to die.” The lump of tears he’d been denying rose in his throat, but his eyes stayed mercifully dry.
“And you think this Project can accomplish that?”
Jan nodded. “The current director, Jun Watanabe, is an old military contact. We were on Rreluush-Tren together, though in different battalions. And he knew my mum.” He looked at his shoes through the railing. “A few weeks ago, he offered me the chance to helm the Project.”
On the surface, the position would be the same as his current one. A desk job, reading reports, assessing and filing them higher up in CoG’s administrative web. True, it would be a return to the military—to the part of it most soldiers pretended didn’t exist—and he’d be issuing orders as an officer, rather than policies and recommendations as a civilian. But from the outside, it would look just the same.
On the inside, he would be fighting a war. A secret war that could give him the tools to hunt Shesharrim down. The one, very effective tool.
Beside him, the Father leaned his back against the rail and watched the two Arashal playing on the sun-washed deck, tossing bits of cabbage back and forth to each other to catch in their sharp beaks. At last, he broke the silence with a sigh.
“Have you considered that this might be justice, not vengeance?”
Surprised, Jan met the Father’s eyes. The stillness of earlier had come into his face again: the impression that the man was holding great emotion at bay.
“You told me once you thought God’s purpose for us was to end suffering wherever we could,” said the Father. “Jan, this attack—this is suffering. Deliberate, calculated to sow terror and disorder. Fifty-three people lost their lives; that your mother was one of them doesn’t change the larger picture.” His mouth thinned into a hard line. “Assuming you’re right, one thing is clear: Shesharrim will strike again. If you know what can stop him, I think you have a duty to use it.”
Not what, he thought. Who.
17
Mose’s quarters enclosed him in a shell of darkness. The red night-lighting in the Project’s headquarters bled under the door, just enough light for him to see by. The oval bed on which he lay took up most of the room. The walls were blank except for a console and a recessed shelf with a folded holopaper reader. The console was stocked with vid files and had limited access to the local net. The reader held hundreds of Terran books and articles, with more just a tap away on the net. Once, Mose would have given a canine for such an abundance of information on the Expansion.
None of that mattered anymore. Now he was interested only in information on Gau.
Mose’s death had been so close that day; he remembered Gau standing over him about to extend his blade, his face cold. For the first weeks of his indenture to the Project, that memory had been all he could focus on. As the weeks turned to months, he began to recall Gau’s face less often. Instead he thought of all the faces he would never see again: his commanding official; friends among the sephs, scientists, and soldiers working to make the planet theirs; the orbital traffic controller with whom he’d shared his last meal as a free Osk. He didn’t even know her name, and never would. All of them dead because of Gau. All except Mose.
Mose didn’t deserve to be alive. He’d accepted that years ago. Even this half-life was more of a chance than Mose had been able to give Za. If only he had questioned Gau a little more closely that day . . .
He clenched a fist into the bedding. If he started thinking that way again, it would end as it always did—with him in the shower cubicle, water running till steam blinded the cameras that watched him, holding his own blade to his throat. Mose had almost pressed it home more than once. The only thing that stopped him each time was knowing Gau was still out there, his crime unpunished. Mose might have failed Za, but he still had the chance to avenge it. He could live long enough for Gau to die on his blade. But to do that, Mose had to give the Project results.
His joints twinged as he rolled off the bed. Soft carpet covered the floor. Everything in Mose’s room was soft and rounded, corners sanded off the bed table and bathroom counter. He walked past the shower cubicle and palmed the li
ght above the sink. The panel gave a harsh glow designed to mimic a yellow sun and be pleasing to Terran eyes. Mose didn’t bother to dim it.
The Osk in the mirror over the sink had been him once. He recognized the red mane. The face below it seemed carved from the gray coral he used to find washed up on the beach. The once-living rock had looked so hard, until he went to collect it and it fell apart in his fingers, reduced to dust by time and the crush of the tide.
Mose undid the fastenings of his robe, then stopped as he always did. Wondering why he relived this memory before every mission, when all it did was eat a little more away from him. Then he bit his lip and let the robe drop to his feet.
A map of scars traced his chest and abdomen, each one the result of a battle with another seph. He’d done his best to remember all their names—even the ones he’d taken by surprise, by ambush, in their sleep. The scars they’d left were no less real, just invisible.
One scar stood out from the rest in both depth and length, a brutal slash that scored from his right shoulder to his left flank. He skated a hand along the scar, barely touching it, though it no longer hurt. He’d gotten it almost thirteen years ago.
He’d spent the small hours of the morning watching the small public square in Skraal-Teklan. Mose had found an alley with a good vantage near one of the narrow streets that led off from the corners of the square. Crouching with his cloak wrapped around his armor, he blended in with the sacks of garbage piled at the back entrance of a restaurant. The cloak’s hood was drawn low and tight around his snout, hiding his red mane.
The message and its reply had been no more than a line of text on one of Skraal-Teklan’s datanets: I also was a seph in Za. If this is real I would meet with you. One of Mose’s bots, programmed to flag O’o Nezz words and phrases, had extracted it from thousands of similar messages proposing meetings and business deals. Personal details were visible only to the sender of the message, but the content was enough of a lead on its own.
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