And in the distance, she could hear the rebel army making their approach.
The REEDs froze, looking at themselves. Behind their gas masks, Lily hoped there was terror on their faces.
They’d been caught with their rubberized hazmat pants down, and they knew it.
She heard disciplined volleys of blaster fire from the area of the main gate.
Lily couldn’t see the battle, but she knew what the result was going to be.
So did the REEDs. Some hurried to join the battle for A-10, but most abandoned the hopeless fight and ran deeper into the camp.
“Run as much as you like,” Lily told them. “But you can’t hide. Today is Payback Day.”
And tomorrow, said her inner voice, you get to rest, Lil’. But there’s gonna be at least one more big battle before this planet’ll let you get away. And you know you’re going to be right in the thick of it…
NEXT ISSUE: Department Nine!
ISSUE 9
BLAYDE ASHER
Asher pushed open the door to Shelter 66. Immediately, she froze.
It was, of course, the worst thing she could possibly do in a place like this. Like all speak-free coffee houses, it was rumored to be crawling with police spies.
She frowned and rubbed at her chest, trying to pass off her hesitation as a momentary pang of heartburn, and then panicked when she feared she might drop the precious object concealed in her right hand.
She supposed her trouble really was a pain in her heart. Cornflower had taken her here a few times in those heady early days of reckless love before she forbade it.
Well, now I’m back, darling. And I’m here for you.
Her sense of purpose restored, she walked over to the east wall, surreptitiously spying out her contact among the late-morning drinkers lined up against the shelf carved out of the stone.
Above her head, tens of meters of solid rock and a lead-lined roof made these former emergency shelters popular locations for speak-frees. They had been built in the early years of the Eiylah-Bremah colony and abandoned a thousand years later. In the modern world, people had more subtle dangers to be shielded from than radiation storms, terraforming disasters, and alien invasion fleets.
They were called speak-frees, but it was difficult to tell how accurate that description was. Even for her.
Although the breakout from the A-10 camp had shaken their totalitarian reputation, the authorities still promoted the narrative that Eiylah-Bremah’s citizens were protected by an all-encompassing police state. Widespread hidden recording equipment and informers were impossible to evade.
Asher knew the reality was very different. Police recruitment numbers were far below target, and even if they weren’t, they would fall far short of the numbers required for the police state people imagined. But that was the sick genius of the system. If you didn’t report a crime you observed, then you would be awarded the same punishment as the perpetrator if you were found out.
There was an all-seeing police state, but its eyes and ears and recording devices were those of the general public, coerced into oppressing themselves.
And it had been that way for generations. In’Nalla had just refined it for her own ends.
But very soon it was going to end for good if Blayde Asher had anything to do with it.
She walked almost the whole length of the wall before she saw a man wearing clothes that matched the description she wanted. He wore a loose hood over smartly pressed coveralls. Dark blue with gold stitching and lining. Except for where the left sleeve joined the rest of the garment. That stitching was silver.
She took a stool next to the man.
After apparently trying the service request console in front of her, and finding it didn’t work, she leaned across the man – who was nursing a tall cream-colored drink – and used his.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“No problem,” he replied in an accent that sounded vaguely Zone 40-ish, but with a hint of somewhere far more exotic.
Asher swiped through the beverage options. Normally, she would have chosen a foam coffee, but having used one as a murder weapon, she’d lost the taste for them.
That’s an unintended consequence of becoming a serial killer they don’t tell you about, Cornflower.
Selecting a plain synth-caff instead, she drew two sachets of sugar from the dispenser and dropped the identical sachet she’d been concealing in her hand since she came in.
The man shifted his arm over the shelf. It was the barest motion, but the sachet in which she’d concealed the recording of incriminating evidence disappeared.
Asher took heart. Whoever the hell this was claiming to represent the Trucker, he was good.
“We can speak freely,” he said. “So long as you face the wall to defeat any lip readers. There are no active recording devices nearby. And if spies in Shelter 66 take an undue interest in us, I have my own friends here who will warn me.”
He glanced casually at his wrist slate, as if checking whether he had time for another drink before his lunchtime appointments.
She glanced over, and his slate was indeed showing appointments. At least, from the angle she was observing. She guessed he was viewing something quite different: the recording of In’Nalla she’d passed on.
“I’ve not been on your world long,” he told her. “And most of that was as a prisoner of RevRec, but even I can guess who you are, Blayde Asher. When we release this, it will incriminate you too. Why do this?”
“My world is hopelessly screwed up. The Trucker is the only one who can change that. And he needs this.”
Her contact sucked his drink through a straw, ice cubes clanging against the glass. He gave a satisfied sigh. “I don’t believe you. What’s the real reason?”
“Revenge.”
She spoke quietly, but with such intensity that he didn’t question her motives again. Instead, he asked the question that terrified her the most.
“Will this be enough, though? I’m guessing this is not the first time someone has shared a recording that compromises In’Nalla.”
“You’re right, it’s not enough and it’s not the first time. Every few years someone throws her words back at her and tries to destroy her. Most people think she would be the perfect victim of such an attack. After all, the Churn is all about those who abuse their power and authority being ruthlessly cut down by an outraged baying public. But In’Nalla controls the information flows to the public and the way in which the public communicates with itself. The Churn belongs to her. Each time someone tries this, In’Nalla turns the matter over to a binding Court of Public Opinion. And because she controls the message and the medium, she always wins. In order for my recording to be enough, you must take away her control of EB-Link, the data sphere, and the media conglomerates.”
“And I suppose In’Nalla knows all this and guards her sources of power jealously.”
“Of course. I can’t help you defeat her defenses. That kind of thing’s not my specialty.”
With a slurp, the man finished his drink. “Luckily, it is mine. Thank you, Asher. We won’t waste what you have delivered to us.”
He pulled out a clay pipe from his coveralls and was about to light it when her synth-caff appeared in his dispensing receptacle.
He handed it over. “Yours, I believe.”
It was the last words he spoke to her. Soon he was wreathed in a cloud of smoke.
When she got up to leave a short while later, he showed no sign of acknowledging her.
I hope it’s enough, Cornflower, she said inside her head as she left Shelter 66, but she was petrified that it would not be.
Nonetheless, as she headed back along the underground street, making her way to the city above, she felt a lightness in her step she hadn’t felt since the day they took her lover away.
GENERAL GZEITER
The viewscreens arranged across the wooden kitchen table showed the same image. The capital city of Kaylingen was tense – barricades were even more numero
us and more heavily manned than after the surprise A-10 breakout – but there were no signs of violence. Not, at any rate, visible to the drones feeding the images.
“You should get rest, sir,” insisted his aide for the hundredth time.
“I can never sleep before battle,” Gzeiter replied tersely. Then more gently – because Captain Bryn meant well – he added, “I’ll just chill in front of the screens. I find it relaxing to see the battlefield. But you, Bryn, could sleep under the barking guns of a field artillery battery. I swear you’re gene-spliced with a kill droid. Go. Rest. Be back at 05:00.”
Bryn saluted and left Gzeiter alone in the farmhouse kitchen.
Although he couldn’t sleep, this was a restful place. Homely.
The Zhoogene farmer who had lived here was one of their field agents, and Gzeiter had expected his command section to be greeted with a welcome and the latest intelligence. But it seemed she’d left in a hurry weeks ago. His staff had given the place a quick wipe over to remove mold, dust, and rotten food, but he could still smell putrid meat from somewhere and a faint whiff of despair.
He hoped she was safe, but strongly doubted that was the case.
His eye was drawn to the shelf on which silver plates and sports trophies were displayed, and then down to the shelf below where cut glass tumblers interleaved with bottles of exotic liquor, most of which he didn’t recognize.
He shook away the temptation to drink and studied the lowlight-enhanced images from the drones. A few pedestrians were walking along peaceful nighttime streets, oblivious to his attention. In the morning, those streets would transform into assault vectors.
Appearances could be very deceptive, he reminded himself. The people were oppressed by a sickening totalitarian regime. As he saw the city and its people – if not with his own eyes, then at least in real-time – he began to wonder if this campaign was really such a disaster.
True, he’d abandoned the idea of waging the long-drawn-out war of attrition he’d been sent here to fight. But he hadn’t joined the Rebellion in order to conduct industrial scale slaughter. He’d been propelled by ideals, still was. Taking out In’Nalla, and the sickness that supported her, would be a victory worth celebrating.
Hers was a strange ideology. One of convenience, he suspected, freely mixing her own innovations into what had gone before, little caring about the philosophy so long as it won her power. She was in favor of small government, ironically enough, understanding that that wasn’t the same as weak government. She stood for the preeminence of unrestricted free markets, and the progressive march of social engineering. High economic productivity was almost a religion to her, as was the delivery of universal and free lifetime education. Anybody who was not in favor of those things, either kept very quiet, or disappeared into one of the jails and amelioration camps until they were ready for their show trial.
His informers told him that In’Nalla was on a passionate crusade to improve the world she lived in. He didn’t believe that for a moment, but it made no difference either way. Tomorrow, her era would be over. And so too, if his plan came to fruition, would be the end of the Trucker and RevRec’s miniature field army.
The Pan-Human Progressive Alliance would rule Eiylah-Bremah unchallenged.
His wrist slate chimed.
“Go for Gzeiter.”
“Signal ops, sir. North Strike Actual reports attacks in Zones 10 through 13 proceeding according to plan. Orbital Eyes confirm Militia troop transports and other air assets redeploying from Greater Kaylingen region, headed to reinforce defenses against the North Strike feint attacks.”
Gzeiter dismissed the signal operator and walked over to the row of liquor bottles. He halfheartedly inspected the exotic labels, most of which he’d never seen before. But he couldn’t concentrate. Everything was going to plan. Everything depended on what happened the next day.
Tempting as they were, he resisted the lure of the bottles.
There would be plenty of time to toast victory on the morrow.
IZZA ZAN FEY
She sighed.
It was no use. However hard she tried to distract herself, he was always in her mind, beaming at her with that ridiculous human grin.
Carefully, she lifted the sleeping woman’s arm off her and rolled over the man snoring on the other side of the bed.
The woman moaned, her hand tapping the sheet as it sought the warm body it had rested against.
Izza pulled out the man’s hand until it rested over the woman’s, grasping it slightly.
The woman gave a happy purr and settled back to sleep.
Izza admired her two human lovers for a few moments. They did look sweet together. But they would never be enough.
She padded along the cool deck plating of the main walkway, enjoying the comforting hum of the Phantom during ship’s night. It was almost as if the ship were gently snoring along with its humanoid crewmembers. Once on the flight deck, she locked the door and settled back into the pilot’s seat, depositing her heels on the console at the spot Fitz had worn a little smooth.
When Phantom and her crew were awake, the pilot station was hers. She owned it, and neither she nor anyone else questioned that for a moment.
But in the quiet, with the lights set to sim-night dimness, touched gently by the distant stars watching her from the other side of the cockpit window, she could feel him out there somewhere in the galaxy.
She could smell his scent. Feel his essence in the leather of the seat.
All her imagination, of course. He’d only just had the seats re-upholstered, and she’d ordered them thoroughly cleaned after he’d come back from that damned space station covered in grease and dirt.
Imaginary or not, she rubbed her naked skin against the leather, and felt a connection to him.
Within buried system menus, she activated a quantum-entangled comm link no one else on the ship knew about.
She looked out the cockpit and stared a long while at the stars. One of them held him. She could summon an overlay to highlight the location of Eiylah-Bremah, if that was still his location, but she preferred not to know.
“I miss you.” Her words were the lightest whisper. On the edge of the comm’s pickup threshold.
There was no reply, of course. She hadn’t expected one. Even if he had heard, contact was too dangerous. Just the thought that he might be listening was enough for her. No doubt he had already recruited new allies, charmed new followers, and wrung the best out of his Chimera Company.
Laughing, she captured a static image of herself, blowing him a kiss as she lounged provocatively in his seat. It was an ill-disciplined waste of the limited q-bit capacity link, but that was the point: he liked his extravagant statements.
She rolled her eyes. Human men!
Besides, it would be good to remind him what he was missing.
“I miss you,” she said once more. Louder.
She sat in silence waiting for a reply, as patient as the stars watching her through the cockpit.
When none came, she dozed off to sleep and dreamed of adventure.
VAYLEN-ZIS
He blamed the humans.
Brilliantly creative, brave, stubborn, ignorant: there was something different about the way that infuriating species saw the universe. Vaylen-Zis sometimes wondered over a pipe and a ch’alla-soaked biscuit whether the humans who’d arrived long ago had come from another universe altogether. Something about them just didn’t fit into the Perseus Arm.
He was proud to call himself an Ellondyte, but he admitted the best of the Federation was human.
As was its stinking nadir. Such as the WCD army waiting in ominous silence outside the city, just half a klick away from the barricade across Progress Avenue.
Kaylingen was a redoubt of decency in a seething swamp of WCDs.
Willfully Cancerous Dissenters.
The view through his blaster scope showed the rebel army to be comprised of grim-faced civilians, bearing sporting rifles and low-powered blasters, t
hough there were heavier weapons too, perhaps looted during the breakout from A-10 a few days’ earlier. Some of the rebel soldiers could even be A-10 criminals, but all of them looked proud and determined. In fact, other than their crude Zone 40s sense of fashion – and the Easterner burr to their accents that he couldn’t hear at this distance, but he had no doubt was there – they weren’t that different from the brave citizens of Kaylingen standing with him at the barricade.
This army of dissenters didn’t consider themselves cancerous at all.
And for that, Vaylen-Zis blamed the humans.
Most of these WCDs were human. He didn’t think it a coincidence.
Crazy humans.
“What are they waiting for?”
There was urgent panic in the man’s voice beside him on the upper firing step. Vaylen-Zis dropped his scope and turned just in time to slap down a barrel being raised to aim at the army.
“Don’t be a fool, Ignet!”
“I can’t take it anymore.” Ignet Jens was pleading, but what did the idiot think Vaylen-Zis could do about it?
“You’ll have to embrace the suck. That’s what the Militia likes to say, except the Militia are nowhere to be seen, which is why we have to stand firm in their place. We… includes you, Ignet. And that means no firing at the enemy until they close. There’s over two thousand out there. There’s sixty-six of us. If we’re to die, we make every shot count.”
“I’m not a soldier,” Ignet wailed. “I see someone threatening me, I don’t wait and discuss tactics. I shoot them dead. And to see that army of WCDs out there. Its…” Vaylen-Zis sighed with relief when Ignet allowed one of the women from the lower firing step to take his rifle away safely, but Ignet wasn’t finished. He shuddered with horror. “To see those WCDs… To merely look at them is a sight crime.”
“So what are you saying, Harvey?” Vaylen-Zis asked angrily. “If I could give you a button to press that would kill every single one of them and their families in agonizing deaths, would you press it?”
Chimera Company Season 2 - Deep Cover Page 37