by Lucas Bale
She shook her head nervously. The corners of her mouth twitched.
‘In the back?’ He gestured towards the rear of the store, where he knew, in the storeroom, a door led to another neatly hidden room, one where locals would swill away the harshness of Herse.
‘Don’t know what you mean.’
‘I’m a regular,’ Shepherd said. ‘There’s no problem here.’
‘I think you should leave.’
‘You’re not listening to me—’
‘No, you’re not listening.’ Another voice came from behind him. A male voice, deep and unyielding and swollen with resentment. ‘She asked you to leave.’
Shepherd turned his head a little and caught the outline of an older man in the corner of his eye. The man clutched a rusted iron pitchfork, and Shepherd could see the tips shaking. He didn’t like the idea of giving a skittish man the chance to prove he knew how to use it, or risk a lucky jab.
‘I just want to meet and do my business, then I’ll leave,’ he said. ‘I’m not looking for trouble.’
‘We’re closed. Ain’t no one been here all day.’
Shepherd pivoted a quarter-turn and backed off slowly so he could see them both. ‘What’s going on?’
The man licked his lips. The tips of the pitchfork continued to shake. ‘Just do us both a kindness and be on your way.’
‘Why are the Watch so jittery?’
‘Can’t say as I know what you mean,’ the man said. His eyes darted to the door and then back to the girl.
Shepherd reached slowly into his jacket.
The man shifted backwards, eyes wide.
Shepherd pulled out a coin and tossed it to the girl. ‘We’re just talking here.’
‘Might have heard something about one of the villages being sequestered,’ the man said quickly. ‘That’s all you’ll get from me. Now you should leave before I get the girl to go for the Watch.’
‘You hear why it was sequestered?’
The man shook his head.
‘They say a Consul is coming,’ the girl blurted.
‘Hush, girl,’ the man hissed. ‘Are you crazy? Talking like that!’
‘’S’what I heard,’ she said, sullenly. She looked at Shepherd. ‘You from off planet?’
Shepherd nodded.
‘Don’t much fancy your chances of getting off now.’
‘Why?’ Shepherd asked.
‘No more!’ the man screamed. ‘Get out! We don’t want you here. Get out!’ The pitchfork dropped forward and levelled at him.
Shepherd backed over to the girl. ‘Give me one of those loaves.’ He rested his hand on his pistol.
The girl’s eyes dropped to the pistol and then back to his face. She nodded and retrieved a loaf from the window, then placed it on the counter.
Outside, thunder rumbled in the distance.
Shepherd nodded his thanks, picked up the loaf and eased away, his eyes sliding from the girl to the man and then back again. He reached down, never taking his gaze from the two strangers, opened the door, and stepped out.
If a Consul was coming to Herse, Shepherd thought, it was time to leave. Of the four Consuls, Shepherd had only ever seen one—during a short but eventful visit to the Core. He had been an older, but fiercely impressive man. Tall and imperious; a man accustomed to war and violence, and to whom a single human life meant nothing.
The Consuls were the physical presence of the upper echelons of the Magistratus. Apart from the Consulate itself, no human being wielded more power than the Consuls—they held the imperium. Justice was theirs to deliver. In their presence, only death existed.
The wind had begun to swirl harder and the snow bit into his face. A handful of people braved the streets, scurrying. Almost every window was shuttered. The storm was near.
In the distance, Shepherd heard a soft hum with a high-pitched whine behind it.
He walked back to the girl he’d seen earlier, sitting in the doorway. She was still there of course, huddled under the blanket. He tossed her the bread without a word, then turned away.
He’d received the wire two weeks earlier. One of his brokers, a guy from the Bazaar on Jieshou, had taken the contract and wired it to Soteria. It had been simple enough, and Shepherd had memorised it before running a subroutine to wipe any trace of the wire. He’d picked up the cargo from Jieshou and arrived in Herse on time. So where was Conran? Way he saw it, he had two options, and neither filled him with much joy: ditch the cargo—and risk his reputation and the prospect of further work—or find a way to deliver.
The hum became a low growl, louder now. And as the volume intensified, the whine began to pulse; pressure built in his ears. It almost hurt.
The shuttle was still parked where he’d left it, on the edge of town. He hammered on the door until it opened, hissing and wheezing. The old man was sitting in the driver’s seat. He stared straight ahead as he spoke.
‘Figured it’d be worth my while to wait.’
Shepherd climbed in and glanced towards the rear of the shuttle. It was empty. He turned back to the old man. ‘I need to get to a place called Panis. You know it?’
The driver continued to stare out of the window, and grumbled softly. He chawed on something and rolled it around his mouth. He didn’t look at Shepherd. ‘Not now you don’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Praetor sequestered the village two days ago.’
‘You know why?’
The old man turned to Shepherd, glared at him. ‘No, I don’t. No one asks questions when it comes to the Praetor.’ He leaned away from Shepherd and spat something black and viscous onto the floor by his feet. ‘Why you looking to go there?’
Shepherd guessed that even the old man might be considering making some coin with the Praetor, so he danced around the truth. ‘Someone there owes me money.’
‘Reckon you ought to write that off then.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You want my advice? You don’t need to stay, you’d best be leaving now.’
Shepherd said nothing. As the old man spoke, the growl from outside grew heavier and flooded in through the doors of the rig. The whine grated on his teeth.
‘Or maybe you don’t need any advice, a man like you?’ the old guy said, and looked upwards. ‘Makes no mind to me.’
‘You know what’s happening here?’
‘Last time I seen the Praetor this wound up, lot o’ people died.’
‘I heard a Consul is coming.’
‘I heard that too. Bad business, any time the Magistratus shows up.’
‘Talk like that could get you in trouble.’
‘Too old to get into much trouble now. So, port or no?’
‘Sure. Maybe you’re right.’
‘Guess I am at that.’
By now the growl had become a roar, and Shepherd found he was shouting. The whine was so intense that his eyes were drawn tight and he was hunched beneath the weight of it. He could feel the noise driving lances into his jaw and temples. The old man gazed down toward the steering gear—like he was wondering whether to get moving or not.
Shepherd jumped out of the truck. The wind swirled hard like a tornado, driving snow and tiny chunks of frozen dirt into his face and eyes. He lifted his arms and looked upwards. Above him, maybe fifty yards away, a black ship hovered. It was half as long as Soteria, and he could see weapons positioned all around it. It moved gracefully and pivoted in place as it scoured the township. An incandescent beam of light burst from a pod on its nose and flooded the streets. It passed over Shepherd, then eased back to him and stopped, engulfing him. He felt the light crawling across his skin, and he could feel them watching him, his face a million pixels on a screen somewhere. His implant was being checked, the system cycling through whatever records they held for him. Deciding what to do with him.
Shepherd covered his eyes and dropped his gaze to the ground around him. The hoarfrost sparkled in the gleam cast by the white light. The gunship hovered above him for what seemed like t
oo long, then at last the light drifted away and the looming beast moved off.
Shepherd climbed back into the rig and looked at the old man. If he’d been affected by the arrival of the gunship, he didn’t show it. Old guy like him, he’d probably seen them a dozen times before. Maybe he’d seen it all.
‘I need a mechanic,’ Shepherd said.
The old man gawked at him for a moment, then leaned his head back and barked a jaundiced, gap-toothed snort that made it sound like he was choking. Shepherd realised the man was laughing, and it made him want to knock a few more of those teeth out.
‘Then you got problems,’ the old man said, through coughs. ‘Hashim was the only mechanic in Herse, and he died of the Fever in the summer along with the rest of them.’
Shepherd closed his eyes and swore silently. Then he said, ‘Seeing that a lot, lately.’
‘We all gotta die sometime.’
Before Shepherd could sit, the shuttle was moving.
The hangar was quiet. The desk clerk was alone. The muscle, maybe sick of waiting around, were nowhere to be seen, and the door to their office was closed.
Shepherd strolled through the gate towards the main exit doors to the landing platforms. He wouldn’t be able to leave without a Customs Licence and the tunnel breach co-ordinates, so the clerk didn’t even look at him. The off-worlders were also gone, and when Shepherd blew through the doors and into the landing area, there was only one freighter left besides Soteria.
Shepherd walked over to her, punched in the key code and went inside to check the cargo. Nothing had changed. No one had been on board or messed with her while he was away.
This place is making me paranoid.
He pulled out his toolboxes and headed outside into the weather.
He positioned himself under one of Soteria’s rear stabilising wings, trying to get at the wiring of the aerodynamic pod for the wing. Within a few minutes, the cold was already irritating his eyes, and sweat poured off his brow, freezing in place and making his face feel like ice. He allowed himself the admission that he was on a bit of a prayer, and hoped Soteria would forgive him, but he figured that he’d get the job done well enough to get out of Herse.
‘You goin’ ’bout that all wrong.’
When he heard the voice behind him, his hand snapped to his pistol.
It was a young voice, mid-pitch and soft, and barely carried above the wind.
Calm down, for crying out loud.
He turned slowly.
‘Yeah?’ he said to a tall, slender boy about halfway through his teens. ‘What would you know about it?’
The boy was dressed in a grubby jumper, pants stained with dark patches of what could have been anything, and worn leather boots with peeling soles. His hair fell around his eyes, and his face was greyish blue from the cold. In his trembling hands was a toolbox, which he set down on the ground.
The weather was getting worse. The wind had picked up and it was starting to snow hard. The boy must have been freezing.
‘Plenty. More’n you, it seems to me.’
‘You’re just a kid,’ Shepherd said, taking in the toolbox.
‘And you’re an old guy with a tech problem. What’s me being a kid got to do with it?’
Not much, Shepherd thought, if you can fix it.
‘Where’d you learn about mechanics? They teach that in school now?’ Shepherd asked.
‘Never been much for school. Let me look at it and then you pay me if it works.’
Shepherd waited for a moment, staring at the boy, then waved for him to take a shot.
‘What do I call you, kid?’
‘Ishmael.’
CHAPTER SIX
Hunted
THE WIND howled as it slipped between the gnarled trees surrounding him. Above, a hawk shrieked as it hunted. Jordi crept around the warped trunk of a fallen pine that was soaked in snow. The forest hadn’t been completely overcome by the touch of winter, and he took care to avoid fresh snow and to step only in places where he felt sure he would leave no tracks. Every so often he would glance over his shoulder, as much to check if the forest harboured a pursuer as to ensure he left no trace of his passing. He wondered whether the forest had been there before the first men arrived, or if it had grown since they terraformed the planet. To him, it seemed ancient and immortal.
His mother’s sewn burlap sack hung off one shoulder and across his back, and his slingshot was tucked into his belt. He wore layers of thick wool sweaters as well as a few blankets he’d torn apart and fashioned into a jacket of sorts. His hands were bare, and when he didn’t need them to climb over fallen trees or carefully brush aside branches laden with snow, he slid them under the makeshift jacket and next to his skin. One of the women at camp had promised to sew him some mitts from a child’s sweater he’d managed to grab from the village during one of his raids. It was too small to be worn by anyone at camp.
Despite the layers, he still felt the cold.
As he hiked, the images of his dead neighbours flickered in his mind. He needed to be away from the camp—he found it confining, like he imagined a prison might be. Some mornings he woke, entangled in his blankets, and unable to breathe; his heart pounded so hard he could almost see it escaping his chest. But each time he forayed into the woodland, the memories of what he’d witnessed at the village overwhelmed him. He couldn’t prevent them. Strewn about like branches after a storm, the remains of people he had known well enough to care about had become cold and grey like ash. Their eyes had been open, staring at him. Accusing him. Resentful that he was alive instead of them. Their skin was tight and drawn across their bones. That their skin was visible at all was because they were all naked, even the youngest girls. All their clothing had been removed and burned. Almost everything had been taken from the village or destroyed. The preacher said the Peacekeepers would have wanted to take everything they could find, so as to leave them as few supplies as possible. Starve them out of hiding. Force them to freeze as winter bit hard.
But Jordi knew things about the village that those men did not. Knew places where useful things might be found. Over the course of the previous ten days, he’d raided the village twice. Each time it had been quiet. The first time, when he reached the edge of the forest he almost turned back, too terrified to carry on. He’d sat for an hour watching from a hollow beneath the gnarled roots of an old tree. When he finally managed to convince himself there was nothing moving within the village, he ran to it as fast as he could. Heart beating and bile in his throat, he’d come away with blankets, tools and some boots. The second time, he’d managed even more.
This would be his third trip. His mood was lighter and the fear had dissipated slowly with the success of each raid. But he cautioned himself not to be complacent.
As he hiked, he watched constantly. To him, the forest felt different in winter. The blanket of snow and hoarfrost veiled everything in white and silver; it glistened even in the dim light beneath the brumal cloud. A place usually so familiar to him now seemed utterly alien. As if ghosts hid among the shadows cast by trees that now seemed haggard and wretched. And maybe they did—maybe the dead from the village now wandered the forest, in search of peace or seeking to snare the unwary. Perhaps they thought Jordi a traitor—that he should have died with them.
But what good would that have done anybody?
He had no tears left for them. He’d cried everything he had. For a moment, he allowed his mind to wander, and he clutched at the memories of the days he and his brother would spend together when not working the fields. They would hike through the forest, hunting and fishing or collecting wood for the fires before winter. When dusk descended and painted the landscape in scintillating shades of red and purple, they’d watch the freighters come into the Port from the tiny track on the mountainside above it.
I miss you, Ish. Are you alive? I wonder what you’re doing right now?
He closed his eyes for a moment and he could almost see his brother’s rakish smile, his flo
ppy hair falling down over one eye. He could hear his voice as clearly as if he were next to him.
Keep going, Jor. You’ve got people relying on you. You can’t let them down.
I won’t, Ish. I’ll never let them down. Or you. I promise.
He opened his eyes and pushed the pain away. He knew his mother and father missed Ishmael. Some nights, he watched them huddled together, comforting each other. He wanted to go to them, say something clever that would take away their pain, but he couldn’t find the words. Instead, he left the camp as often as he could.
When he reached the forest’s edge, he slid into the same hollow and peered through the roots towards the stone buildings that had once been his home. He could still see the ashen bodies strewn callously about the frozen mud. Dragged from their homes and shot, or throats slit open with hunting knives. Black crows cawed and tore at their frostbitten flesh.
No more tears.
He shivered.
He watched for a little while, not as long as previously, but he was convinced now that the village had been abandoned. There were only a few cottages still to search. He couldn’t be sure if he’d find anything, but he had to look.
He ducked from behind the cover of the roots, climbed out of the hollow and sprinted towards the village. Closing his eyes to the bodies, he ran towards the clutch of cottages he needed to search. The door to the first lay open, hanging broken from its twisted hinges. He slipped inside without touching it and listened. The only sound to break the silence was the hiss of the wind.
He scrambled up the ladder in one corner, which led into the tiny attic. Each rung uttered a tiny squeal as he did, but he told himself that no one was around to hear it. Following the preacher’s instructions, the villagers had managed to squirrel away bits and pieces in the tiny spaces among the rafters, and almost everything he’d managed to salvage so far had been in those hidden spaces. He was surprised no one had searched up here. Perhaps they hadn’t thought to. Or hadn’t had time.
Even in the damp chill there was dust on the wood, and it rose off the rafters as he moved around. It caught in his throat, and he couldn’t prevent a stifled cough from escaping. Immediately, he clamped his hand over his mouth and stared, terrified. He dared not move, and his lips trembled beneath his hand.