by Lucas Bale
The first set of doors led to the Caisson Tunnel. He had heard techs call it an MRT, but he’d never really known what the letters were intended to refer to. The tunnel was slightly taller than he was, but otherwise not much larger than a coffin. Shepherd stepped inside and the glass doors in front and behind hissed as they closed. Caisson Tunnels were fully automated; he knew that if the scanning system picked up anything, the doors would lock and then the serious problems would begin. Damn things always made him uneasy.
For as long as Shepherd could remember, no one coming through the tunnels had been able to enter any port without first being scanned for ‘the sickness’. Superluminal travel was physiologically debilitating; it usually brought on severe headaches that started in the eyes, or excruciating pain in the joints. Sensations like insects crawling over the skin were not uncommon.
Shepherd was bathed in darkness until four blue lights illuminated the chamber. Two ones either side of him progressed slowly upwards from the floor to his shoulders. A third, above his head, moved gradually around the circumference of the chamber while the fourth scanned his eyes. For a full three minutes they scrutinised him until, to his relief, the chamber illuminated white and the door in front of him opened.
The heaters inside the hangar whined and clacked, belching out more fumes than they did heat. A group of haggard off-worlders with bulging bags and skittish hands gathered by the door, awaiting clearance to head out to one of the freighters. A handful of the rare few, Shepherd thought: those with interstellar permits, or maybe extortionate forgeries from Jieshou or Samarkand. One of them, a woman late in years, caught Shepherd’s eye and watched him for a moment, then glanced quickly away. Shepherd stood a little longer, watching her, then made for Customs. There had been something about her manner that had caught him—something in her restive eyes that made him uneasy. When he reached the Customs chamber, set back behind a barrier of thick plastiglass, he risked another glance back. He couldn’t say why exactly, and he immediately felt foolish. Nothing to see, Shepherd. Just some people looking to get out of here. And who can blame them?
He turned and slid two flash cards towards the clerk—one with nav data, the other with his licences. The jowled man lifted his head sharply and stared at Shepherd with grey eyes before reaching for the drives. He plugged them into his terminal and scanned the screen. His eyes grew narrow, almost receding into his fleshy cheeks, and he turned to look at Shepherd, scrutinising him for a while before he spoke. ‘What are you importing?’ he said finally.
‘Oil.’
The clerk blinked quickly and turned back to his screen. His fat hands rested on the desk, but Shepherd could see they trembled slightly. When he found what he was looking for, he spoke again, but more quietly. ‘Your licence is out of date.’
‘It can’t be,’ Shepherd replied slowly. ‘I renewed it in the Core before I came.’
‘No,’ the man said softly, shaking his head. ‘It’s quite clear to me. Your freighter licence is adequate. But to carry hazardous material, you need a separate licence. You must know that. This one is out of date.’
Shepherd stared at him. He knew his licences were fine. He’d made sure of it as soon as he received the contract for the medicine. There was no sense in asking for trouble, and before moving illicit cargo, he wanted a solid sham out front. He let out a breath and set his face to hide his irritation. The border systems bred officious men who had access to more power than their meagre consciences deserved—and short tempers. This was hardly the first time a Customs clerk had ‘discovered’ a problem with one of his licences. Shepherd convinced himself that this was just another cost of doing business.
Five more Customs officials stood by the doorway to the chamber, deep in conversation. They were taller than the clerk, lean and athletic. The muscles in their necks were like tightly coiled rope. Pistols sat in holsters alongside cattle prods and cuffs, and their black suits were pristine and sculpted to their sinewy frames. The clerk’s clumsy shakedown was forgotten as Shepherd studied the men. It was an unusually strong presence for a port like Herse, he thought. A couple of officials, three perhaps, would be understandable; but five on duty seemed excessive to him. But so far they’d ignored his exchange with the clerk, and that suited Shepherd just fine. He looked back at the fat man and noted something shift in his eyes. Was it fear?
‘Anything I can do about the licence?’ Shepherd offered.
‘I can update it here on the system. But that would incur an administration fee.’
‘There a set figure for that fee?’
The man ran a finger across his lips and down his chin. Sweat beaded on his forehead. ‘Five hundred.’ He glanced over at the gorillas, then back at Shepherd, and blinked quickly.
Shepherd said nothing. He reached into a pocket and withdrew a small pouch. He counted out five coins and placed the baksheesh onto the desk. The man eyed the coins and glanced again at his colleagues, but they’d seen nothing. He reached out and swept the coins into a waiting hand and then into a pocket. He turned to the screen and began dabbing his thick fingers against it; after a moment, he seemed satisfied and pulled the drives from his terminal. Palpable relief settling in his eyes, he set them on the counter.
‘Thank you for your time,’ he said quietly.
Shepherd collected the drives without a word and strode away. From the corner of his eyes he glanced again at the five officials, who regarded him with casual disinterest before slipping back into their conversation. Beyond them, in an anteroom within the chamber, Shepherd glimpsed a handful more men seated at a table. And more weapons laid out—rifles and pistols. As he reached the main door, he looked back at the off-worlders huddled by the exit to the landing platforms. They hadn’t moved.
Shepherd pushed through the main hangar door and battled against the wind towards the shuttle. In reality, the ‘shuttle’ was actually a converted lumber truck, originally designed to carry woodhicks into the forest and drag cut lumber back to town. Beneath the bulky carapace of weathered steel and faded signage—fallout from unrelenting exposure to Herse’s hostile climate—a long chassis sat on six immense wheels, each reaching to Shepherd’s chin and with tread as thick and deep as his hand. Solidly built, to traverse the wilderness beyond Herse. Or at least, that had been the manufacturer’s intention, but like everything in these border townships, its working life had been almost indefinitely extended. If anything, the shuttle looked worse than Shepherd remembered, but the old man who drove it looked just the same. Snow-white whiskers smeared the pitted leather of his face, and wiry white hair spilled from beneath a thick, woollen hat with two flaps that sagged over his ears. A pair of shabby goggles perched above the folded hem of the hat. Shepherd doubted the man would be able to see much through them.
As Shepherd stepped aboard, he noticed a shotgun resting against the door by the steering gear. The old man had been doing this for as long as Shepherd could remember, and Shepherd guessed the shuttle didn’t always service the cream. He eyed the weapon for a moment, then turned his attention to the cabin. A couple of other characters were already huddled in the back; they glanced at him then looked quickly away. Both looked like freighter-tramps. Maybe crew from one of the freighters in the landing area. And both were carrying.
The old man didn’t bother to meet Shepherd’s gaze as Shepherd dropped a coin onto the small tray and took his seat. The old man sparked the rig into life and the drive choked and coughed before a sonorous rumble began to churn through his boots.
The shuttle door screeched as it closed. The wind seemed to howl louder as it did so, indignant at the affront of being shut out. Just as the door hissed and sealed, another figure appeared at it: a tall man, wrapped tightly in a thick longcoat that billowed around his legs, with a woollen scarf obscuring the lower part of his face. The newcomer reached up and pounded the door hard with a fist, holding his other hand to the window and peering in. Snow swirled around him.
The old man stared towards the door. His eyes
were hooded and his nose curled into a sneer. Shepherd couldn’t see the newcomer’s reaction from where he was sitting, but he appeared unmoved. Maybe he hadn’t seen the old man’s glower—or chose not to rise to it. Seconds ticked past, maybe even a minute, but the old man made no move to open the door. The wind punched the ancient truck, and it rocked and creaked.
The freighter crew whispered to one another, but ignored the gathering tension at the front of the rig. Finally, with a low growl, the old man slammed the switch to open the door. The newcomer climbed the steps, nodded, and passed over a coin from inside his huge coat. Whatever his thoughts on the delay, he kept them to himself.
The old man spat something thick and dark onto the floor and left the coin where it was. The newcomer didn’t move. Shepherd watched the old man’s shoulders, wondering if he might reach for the shotgun. Shepherd’s hand shifted gently to his pistol, and he slowed his breathing.
Outside, the wind howled; snow blew into the shuttle through the open door.
The newcomer waited. He looked down at the coin, then back at the old man.
Shepherd quietly flicked the strap off his pistol.
Just drive, old man. Don’t make this into something it isn’t.
Seconds ticked past like hours.
The stench of drive fumes choked the air inside the rig, and the drive shook the walls.
Without acknowledging the newcomer, the old man turned and punched the switch to the door. As it began to close, he gunned the drive and the shuttle lurched forward, tilting and swaying as it tore up the earth.
The newcomer stumbled to the back of the rig and took a seat across from Shepherd, nodding to him as he did. His long hair was matted with crystals of frozen moisture. His olive skin, or what could be seen of it above the scarf, was scarred and coarse. His coat and gloves looked worn and had been repeatedly darned and patched. But his boots were good. Solid and well treated. A man who walked a lot.
Beneath the coat, Shepherd caught a flash of purple, and he understood. He’d watched them both, the old man and the newcomer, but hadn’t seen it until now. Some people were like that, especially older ones.
Not everyone liked preachers.
But, out here at least, they liked the Praetor and the Magistratus even less.
Herse Township dominated a natural harbor, one that had been carved over the course of centuries by a sinuous cascade of glacial runoff sweeping into the sea. The township relied almost entirely on fluctuating hydroelectric power from the turbulent river, and at the mouth of the delta stood the most venerable structure in Herse, the hydroelectric plant. Without much in the way of coin to fund a renovation project, over the course of a generation its frailties had been brutally exposed. Inexorably, several of the huge wheels on the frame that stretched across the river—and which powered the plant—had collapsed into the raging torrent below. Seven men had died over the years as the township repeatedly hauled them out and put them back again. Each time the plant had been powered down for weeks. After the most recent collapse, the township’s senior residents had demanded to discuss renovation with the Praetor, at his compound carved high into the mountainside. The Praetor had responded by halving, for the next two months, the number of docking licences allowed to the freighters that brought supplies to the township.
Some of the furious residents took to the streets to protest. The Praetor’s Peacekeepers arrested each and every one of them and tried them for crimes against the Magistratus. Half were sent to the Kolyma prison fleet; the other half were publicly flogged and left on display through the bitter winter. Only one survived.
No one protested again.
And when a particularly hard winter descended, and the river froze, power simply ceased. Locals resorted to burning wood for heat, largely because the planet’s principal commodity was lumber. The only other significant structure in Herse, apart from the power plant, was the sawmill, but that too shut down in winter, and, right now, it was silent, dark and empty.
Beyond the plant, the rest of Herse was dirt streets and low buildings in rough-hewn black and grey stone hauled from the mountains. With Herse so far from the Core, the Magistratus had always appeared content to allow the planet to wither on the vine. Shepherd had often wondered what the point of the place was—why the Magistratus wasted resources terraforming planets they seemed to have little interest in. Maybe the former residents of Kolyma—the lottery winners who’d been given the opportunity to assist in the hazardous terraforming process and then settle the planet—simply didn’t warrant much investment. Yet the Magistratus typically relied on Kolyma inmates to do the difficult, dangerous work of terraforming, dangling freedom in front of them as an incentive. It made sense: no citizen would choose to trade their secure, pampered bliss for the hazards inherent in terraforming a planet—a planet that might turn on them, with fatal consequences, at any moment. But men and women sentenced to spend the rest of their lives under the weight of the brutal regime in the Kolyma fleet would embrace a second chance, any second chance, even knowing the risks.
Some of these men and women, seeking a simpler life as far away from the Praetor’s gaze as possible, had formed satellite communities—small villages and hamlets—that occupied patches of cleared woodland away from the main township. A few of these were deliberately secluded, their reclusive villagers venturing into Herse Township only when necessary. These were quiet places where the locals kept themselves locked away, living simply.
From one of these small communities, a person using the name Conran would soon be looking to collect a cargo of illicit medicine. Shepherd had arranged a meet at the local supply store, which peddled under-the-counter home-brew in a quiet back room. He didn’t know who Conran really was, and he didn’t much care. Nor did he need to know what the medicine was for. He just needed paying.
When the shuttle lurched to a standstill, and the old man hollered something unintelligible—which may or may not have been “everybody out”—Shepherd rose slowly and watched the rest of the passengers leave. The freighter-tramps filtered out into the wind and snow first, followed by the preacher, who had stared towards the front of the rig for the whole journey. Shepherd followed, and as he jumped out, the cold immediately seared his skin. Despite the longcoat, he shivered.
The town hadn’t changed much. It was laid out in blocks of low buildings, arranged back to back and side by side to protect against the surging wind from the sea. Each building had a narrow hardwood terrace in front, with steps leading down to the wide dirt streets, where the tracks of all-terrain vehicles had been carved into the earth and frozen by winter. As he walked through the town, the ridges dug into the soles of Shepherd’s boots.
Most places had shutters closed over the windows, and the wind tore at everything not hammered down. On the corner of each building, under the eaves of the slate roofs, hung surveillance cameras. They blinked red in the gloom, and from time to time they shifted in place, panning across ninety-degree arcs. Even above the wind Shepherd could hear the whirr of their servo motors as they moved. One of them paused and levelled on him, and he realised he’d stopped walking and was staring. The camera didn’t move, and after a moment Shepherd dropped his head and continued on his way. The Praetor was always watching, and Shepherd had no need of the extra attention.
In the shadows of a doorway a young girl was huddled, wrapped in a blanket. Her eyes were rimmed in puce and sucked deep into her emaciated face. Her arms clung to her tiny chest beneath the wool, gripping it so tightly the lines of the blanket looked like chains. Her lank hair was unkempt and, as Shepherd watched her, she began to cough. Heavy, racking convulsions that tore at her small body. She buried her chalk-white face in the wool of the blanket and shook. When she lifted her head again and looked at him, her face was spattered with crimson.
The Fever.
Before he could stop himself, he lifted a hand to his mouth. He forced himself to watch her, and pity knotted in his gut. Then he turned and walked away, his mouth
dry. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the girl again.
As he walked, six men of the Watch stalked into the street ahead of him. Each wore a pistol and carried a rifle. Hanging off their belts were blackjacks—heavy poles the length of a forearm. The Watch were recruited from the local people by the Praetor and were trained by Peacekeepers, but they were still locals, and usually reasonable. But Shepherd wasn’t looking to engage with anyone other than Conran. All he wanted was to get paid and get off Herse.
So he glanced away and moved quickly towards a stonemason’s, climbing the steps up to the terrace. He eased into a doorway, leaned against the shutter, and waited. The men marched through the centre of the street. Shepherd watched the townsfolk shrink away. Women pulled children into their arms, mouths tight and eyes filled with fear. Shepherd didn’t blink.
What in the fuck is going on? His hand drifted casually to the pistol at his thigh, still within the shadow of the doorway. One of the men glanced his way. For just a flicker of a moment the man met Shepherd’s eyes, then he continued marching. Shepherd’s gaze dropped downwards and he slid his hand from his pistol.
A truck marked in the livery of the Praetor pulled into the street, its huge wheels carving fresh furrows in the frozen earth. Armour plating had been welded in place and a grille covered the windscreen in front. It stopped and the Watchmen climbed inside. The town seemed to exhale in relief when it turned and headed out towards the Watch station.
Shepherd stared for a few moments longer, unease curdling in his gut. Years of living on the periphery of legitimacy had taught Shepherd to read people. He’d seen something unexpected in the Watchman’s eyes. Fear.
The man had been afraid.
CHAPTER FOUR
Premeditated
THEY SAT huddled around a tiny fire, the cold circling them like a pack of wolves. They silently prayed that the smoke curling upwards would be concealed by the mist and charcoal sky, and that the flickering coral flame would not be seen amidst the grey of the snow-covered forest. Jordi’s father, perched on a log and wrapped in a wool blanket, clutched a small device, which hummed in his hands. Jordi watched the survivors. Fifteen in all, including his mother. Each of them seemed to lean towards his father, as if the range of the device might be so finite that those scant additional inches might protect them from the Praetor’s scrutiny.