by Natalie Grey
The mercenary, meanwhile, unleashed an entire magazine at Barnabas. He fired until the barrel started to melt, and he was still firing when Barnabas walked through the stream of bullets to pluck the rifle out of his hands.
Barnabas’s fingers came around the mercenary’s throat like a vise.
“What. Are. You?” the soldier choked out.
“Does it matter?” Barnabas asked him. I am killing this one, right? This isn’t another his-heart-is-in-his-hip scenario, is it?
If you mean, are you successfully strangling him, the answer is yes. If you mean, are you killing him in the coolest possible way, the answer would be no because—
Missile strikes. I know.
I was going to say that thing about pulling someone’s spine out and strangling them with it.
Oh. I suppose I could do that.
You’re not going to, though, are you?
No. Barnabas tightened his fingers abruptly and dropped the suddenly-limp body. Too messy. Don’t want to clean my armor.
Too late!
Barnabas was still laughing as he raised his gun and fired seven perfect shots, felling the remaining mercenaries.
Up on the hill, Lan nearly screamed when a hand grabbed his arm.
“Come on,” Jutkelon said tersely.
“Where did you come from?”
“I landed while that massacre was going on. Let’s go. I’m getting you out of here.” He dragged Lan towards one of the hoppers.
“You came to save me?”
“Call it insurance,” Jutkelon replied grimly. “You just cost me nearly a hundred mercenaries. You’re going to pay for that, and you’re going to help me find out what that thing is so this doesn’t happen again.”
“He’s a human,” Lan explained numbly as he strapped himself in. “I can’t believe it. He really was a human.”
“A human? Like the Empress?” Jutkelon slammed his hands down on the controls. “And you didn’t think to warn me about that?”
“Drive! For the love of everything, get out of here!” Lan sank his head into his hands. “I thought it was a joke. I thought they weren’t real. His eyes weren’t glowing when I met him.”
“Look on the bright side,” Jutkelon said grimly as the hopper soared into the air.
“What’s the bright side?” Lan picked his head up to look.
“Where there are humans, there’s Coke.”
“What’s Coke?”
“You’ll see.”
Barnabas approached the main square at a leisurely walk. He was aware of guards and workers falling out of his way, white-faced and silent with fear.
Shinigami, any way to do a reverse Fear?
Afraid not. You’re covered in blood and they’re not going to un-see what you just did. But, sure, go ahead. Try if you want to.
Barnabas sighed.
The guards scattered from the center of the square, leaving a single Nekubi gaping at him.
“Who is this one?” Barnabas asked. He looked around.
“Chogaru, kalanon.” The guard captain spoke respectfully.
“I see. Thank you. Chogaru, why are these people staring at you like this?”
Chogaru said nothing. He could not speak for fear. This human had just slaughtered all of Lan’s soldiers, and there was no running from him. They had all seen that leap. The human should be a bloody smear on the ground, and instead, he was covered in other people’s blood.
He was going to have to talk his way out of this.
“I am an information broker, sir.” He smiled. “I do what I must to survive. Surely you understand.”
“I have survived more,” Barnabas said softly, “than you will ever know. To become what I am, I endured horrors and temptations you could not imagine. Let me guess. You sold these people out for some scraps Lan was going to throw you.”
Lan is getting away, by the way. Just in a hopper so far. If he gets in a shuttle—
Yes, you can use missiles.
Whoop!
All right, that’s definitely Tabitha’s influence.
“For scraps? No! To save myself. He knew about the rebellion.” Chogaru shook his head regretfully. “Surely you know how he kept us—”
“I know that neither the guards nor the rebellion are speaking up for you. Leiguba?” Barnabas looked around.
Leiguba chittered at him from the window of the jail.
“Hello. Leiguba, is what this Nekubi says true?” He already knew it wasn’t, of course. He had read Chogaru’s mind as he came up to him.
Leiguba shook his head.
“Ah.” Barnabas pulled out his gun. Shinigami, where do I shoot this one?
In the head.
Thank you.
There was the trademark blast of a Jean Dukes Special and Chogaru slumped dead on the dirt.
Barnabas looked at Heddoran. “The first thing you will do is turn off the mind-speech blocker. Then you and your guards will build new huts for these workers and allow them to take control of the food supplies until I return. You stood down when I asked, but you also participated in these atrocities. Do you deny it?”
“No, kalanon.”
Barnabas nodded, satisfied with the answer since he had read the truth in the Brakalon’s mind. “I will deal with that when I return. Leiguba, appoint someone to be in charge here and come with me. We’re going to Tethra to find Lan and end this.”
Chapter Nineteen
Anything happening?
I told you I would let you know when there was something to report, Shinigami snarked.
Barnabas sighed and rubbed his forehead. I apologize. I’m...impatient.
You don’t say! And I can’t believe I’m the one having to tell you to be patient about a missile strike.
Yes, it’s funny how times have changed, isn’t it?
Go stretch your legs, Shinigami suggested. Maybe you’ll feel better.
Barnabas took her advice with another long sigh.
There wasn’t much else to do, after all. By the time Leiguba had set everything in order in the mining town, and Barnabas was sure the guards were going to act in good faith and all medical needs had been taken care of, Jutkelon’s hopper had set down at his estate on the outskirts of Tethra.
According to Shinigami’s report, however, “estate” wasn’t exactly the right word. It was more like a fortress. The walls were a high-grade composite that was resistant to explosives, much of the living space was in underground bunkers, and there were stockpiles of both fuel and food.
There was also the small matter of the three hundred mercenaries who presently lived at the complex.
After scanning the compound, Shinigami concluded that bombing it wouldn’t do much good.
If you’re saying that, it must be true.
Trust me, I’m as disappointed with the situation as you are.
Barnabas was left to stew while Shinigami ran a structural analysis from any and all blueprints and technical readouts she could find, as well as decrypting and analyzing outbound communications. There just wasn’t much for him to do.
He didn’t like that. Back before AIs, he would have been solely responsible for the research and analysis for a project. He liked to say that people who did their own research were better prepared, but his research could never surpass Shinigami’s. He wasn’t the best person for this job, and he shouldn’t be upset because the outcome would undoubtedly be better.
He chose to be grumpy anyway—for that reason, and for others he was not particularly keen to think about just yet.
Meanwhile, there was a great deal of work to be done in the town. Barnabas headed down the hill from Lan’s hut and found Heddoran explaining the gate mechanisms to a small group of workers.
Barnabas was pleased to see that Heddoran was upholding his part of the bargain about putting the workers in charge and making the mining town a nicer place to live, and the guards took Heddoran’s orders without complaint. He paused now to listen to the guard captain’s instructions.
>
“Gar can give you more information about how to control this from the overseer’s hut,” Heddoran was saying. “From inside the camp, you have to go to the guard barracks and any one of the towers to disable the automatic locking mechanism. Even when the system loses power those overrides will keep running because they have batteries, but they need the correct signals to do so. Now, if you’re trying to do that without signals—”
Barnabas headed onward with a brief nod to the guard captain.
He was still trying to figure out what to do with all the guards and Gar. All had been enormously helpful over the past few hours, but Barnabas was well aware that how they behaved with him watching—and still covered in mercenary blood—was not a good indicator of the long-term.
More than that, there remained the very real problem that while their present and future actions could mitigate the past, they could neither change nor excuse it. Barnabas could kill them, of course. He would hardly break a sweat doing it, either.
But as he had said to Shinigami, he knew what it was to have committed atrocities. He knew what it was to have regrets and to still have value to give the world, even considering his past. It was not arrogance when he said to others that he was one of the best at stopping injustice, ending it quickly.
It was a statement of fact.
However, just as with Bethany Anne and the governance of her new territories, he was finding that stopping injustice and booting out old leaders was infinitely less complicated than setting up better systems and dealing with the lesser crimes committed during darker days.
He would ask the workers, he decided. Perhaps they would be vengeful, but perhaps they could suggest something he would not have thought of. He continued to stroll, trying to take in as much as he could of the activity around him without disturbing it.
Nearby, Carter turned his head to watch Barnabas pass.
“Carter Eastbourne, focus!” Aebura gave him a stern look. They were sorting the food from the commissary, all of which had been hauled outside so they could take advantage of the early morning sunlight.
Perhaps everyone should have gone to sleep after Barnabas had ended things late last night, but no one had been able to relax enough for that. As soon as it became clear that Barnabas would not be returning to Tethra at once, Leiguba had summoned Aebura to the town and she had brought many Ubuara with her, as well as Carter.
The human had gone to work with good grace, but he’d been distracted since Barnabas had first come out of the overseer’s hut.
“You don’t need to say my whole name, you know,” he told Aebura.
“I don’t want to be rude.”
“It’s not rude to call me ‘Carter,’” he assured her. “And I’m sorry, I’ll get back to work. I just...I’ve never been this close to any of them.”
“’Them?’” She labeled a package of some sort of grain, concentrating in order to hold a pen that was made for much larger hands than hers. The Ubuara were unusually small compared to the majority of sentient species in known space.
“The whole team,” Carter explained. He hefted the big bag of grain easily and set it with its fellows. “Here, right? There we go. Here’s the next one, then.” When he’d set that bag near Aebura, he returned to his appointed task of sorting cans by type. “You know, Bethany Anne, the Rangers, the Bitches…”
“‘Bitches?’ I’m confused. That word seems to have negative connotations in your language.”
“It’s...a bit more complicated than that. It’s a joke.” When Aebura frowned, Carter hastened to explain. “The Bitches aren’t a joke, it’s a joke that they’re called… Never mind, this is probably too complicated to explain if English isn’t your first language. It’s normally an insult, but not for them.”
“Carter?”
“Yes?”
“Do humans do anything normally?”
Carter started laughing and couldn’t stop. He leaned on the table of canned goods and cackled until his eyes were streaming. When he straightened, he had to rub his side because the muscles were cramping.
“Ah,” he exclaimed happily. “This is what you don’t get on the Meredith Reynolds. These kinds of questions.”
“Bethany Anne gets those kinds of questions,” Barnabas observed from directly behind him.
Carter jumped and swore. When he looked around, it was to find a pleasantly smiling Barnabas covered in dried blood. The total effect was, well, unnerving.
“Of course,” Barnabas continued thoughtfully, “people tend to say it in very diplomatic language, so she’s not supposed to laugh. I’d say it was one of the main reasons she disliked those meetings so much.”
Carter found that he was opening and closing his mouth like a fish while failing to make any sort of sound at all.
“I’m Barnabas,” Barnabas added with a respectful nod.
Yeah, I fucking know. Luckily, Carter’s automatic politeness kicked in. “I’m Carter Eastbourne, sir. I’m pleased to meet you.”
Barnabas smiled, having heard the unspoken comment, then, “I’d shake your hand,” Barnabas said gravely, “but I don’t think all the blood is gone.”
Carter stared at him, trying to figure out what to say to that.
You’re making him uncomfortable, Shinigami told Barnabas.
I know. It’s funny.
Well, be nice.
“Be nice?” Do you have another side to you I haven’t seen before?
I have a sense of propriety, Shinigami said stiffly. As should you, at your age.
Keep talking like that and you won’t make it to this age.
Barnabas looked around the town. “Mr. Eastbourne, a word?”
Oh, God—the Pepsi. Carter gulped, said a silent prayer, and gave himself up to his fate. “Of course, sir.”
“Please, call me Barnabas. Aebura, I’ll have him back to you shortly.” Barnabas led the way down the main street. When he was a little ways away, he said, “As one of the first humans to immigrate to High Tortuga, I wondered if I might trouble you for some first impressions.”
“Yes, of course. Um, on what part specifically?” Carter resisted the urge to wipe his palms on his pants.
“Perhaps you might start by telling me a bit about yourself.”
Was this it? Was this the trap? Did he think Carter would be stupid enough to admit his Pepsi affiliation? Carter vowed to be canny. He wouldn’t be duped so easily. “Well, I have a wife, sir—Barnabas, sorry—and twins. Alanna and Samuel. I wanted to set up a business here first and then bring them. I’ve been, ah…” Just in time, he remembered that he shouldn’t rat out Aebura.
He was too late. “Working with Aebura,” Barnabas said smoothly. “Yes, I know. She mentioned you to me. I think it speaks volumes that when it came time to rebuild this place she asked you to come and help. From what Shinigami has dug up, Ubuara are very protective of the members of their community, so they’re cautious about who they allow into their circle.”
“Really?” Carter felt a flush of pride.
Barnabas stopped, looking very serious. “She told me that you offered to help her with the mine before you knew I was involved. I wanted to thank you.”
“Oh, it was no trouble.” Carter felt somehow like a little kid again, totally inadequate in the face of Barnabas’s calm presence. He wondered if it was true that Barnabas had been a monk once, or just a prank story spread by...Tabitha, maybe. If the rumors were true, Ranger Two had quite a sense of humor.
Then again, the aura of calm Barnabas had when he looked at Carter made it seem quite likely that he had been a monk. Somehow it fit.
“It would have been trouble,” Barnabas replied, somehow both grave and amused at once, “and you know it. The fact that you offered to help? Well, I know we brought many of Earth’s best with us when we came here, but it is always gratifying to see it in action.”
Carter flushed.
“They’ll need us,” Barnabas continued. “You know that. They don’t need our businesses or for
us to buy from them; that isn’t what I mean. Our citizens will be just like anyone else in that respect. What they need from us is to remind them that Bethany Anne looks out for her own, and that her laws are enforced. They need to know that even when I am not here, her laws will be strong because she and her people uphold them in word and deed.”
Carter stood a bit taller. “I understand, sir.” He caught the title as it came out of his mouth and smiled self-consciously. “I think that’s just going to be how I address you. Sorry.”
Barnabas smiled.
You like that, Shinigami accused. You’re so old-fashioned.
I like good manners, and I’m indisputably his elder.
Barnabas started walking again and waited for Carter to fall in beside him. “Where do you think the trouble will come?”
Carter considered this. “All the usual places, I’d guess. I don’t know much about that. But from what I’ve seen so far, I think there will be a bunch of smaller-grade problems. Friction. You see, the people who came here—they were all running from something. Maybe that’s a bad way to say it. They came here to make a life for themselves because they were stifled where they were.” He looked at Barnabas. “They’re all fiercely independent, and while they might not mind the idea of abolishing slavery, you can bet even some people who don’t like slavery will get upset about you taking the fight to Jutkelon.”
“Ah. You were eavesdropping.”
“I…ah…er…”
“No, no, I wasn’t being particularly secretive about it, it’s all right.” Barnabas looked up as Leiguba ran by and nodded to him. “Hello, Leiguba. Have you met Carter?”
Yes. Aebura introduced us. Leiguba nodded at Carter. She likes you. She says—
“Carter isn’t able to speak mind to mind,” Barnabas explained.
Leiguba chittered. “You can’t all do that?”
“No. I…have some upgrades.”
Carter sighed. He didn’t have any fun upgrades. He’d always wanted to try out some of the tech they were working on for the inner circle, even if Elisa had said he was being ridiculous.