How Dark the World Becomes

by Frank Chadwick

  We got everyone settled in a storage area they had thrown some bedding into, and got our three injured folks to their infirmary. Then it was time to go meet the head guys. I wasn’t crazy about leaving Barraki and Tweezaa, but I also didn’t want to draw attention to them, so we left them with Corporal Tuvaani, along with the clear understanding that if he let anything happen to either of them, cohorts of heavily armed Sammie mercenary strikers intent on hunting him down and killing him would be the least of his troubles.

  The mouthpiece and another guy led Marfoglia, TheHon, Borro and me down concrete-walled corridors damp with condensation. While we followed them, I reset the transmit gain on the dedicated link to Marfoglia to its lowest setting, and I subvocalized instead of speaking out loud.

  “Testing One Two Three. Don’t respond verbally. Just nod if you hear this.”

  She looked at me and then nodded.

  “Crank your power on this channel all the way down. Unless their receiver is in the same room as us, odds are it will get us some privacy.”

  * * *

  The commander was a slender Varoki with a long, narrow face, darkly iridescent skin, and intelligent eyes. He wore hunting camies like the others, but his looked older, more worn, and they bore no rank insignia. His office was large but simply furnished. He rose from behind his desk to greet us, and there were two officers already standing beside him. They both wore sidearms—unlike the commander—but there were no sentries anywhere. No sidearm, no sentries—here was a guy who trusted his people.

  A fourth Varoki sat in the shadows, deeper in the commander’s office, and he looked like he was in a business suit rather than camies. Same guy I’d noticed earlier.

  Bingo, I said to myself.

  We got introductions all around, although the three Varoki insurgents went by their titles, not their names—the commander, the security chief, the political officer. Then the guy in back stood up and emerged from the shadows, and the commander introduced him as Mr. Katchaan, their technical advisor.

  “Katchaan is aGavoosh for ‘nobody,’” Marfoglia transmitted to me. Her subvocalizing was getting a lot better.

  “So probably not his real name, huh?” I suggested.

  “Ha ha,” she answered without a trace of mirth.

  He was the youngest of the four, and was short for a Varoki—maybe a whisker over two meters—and very slender, which just made him look younger than he was, and he was probably pretty young. He had a look of earnest commitment about him which I wouldn’t normally associate with a covert operative, but then again, maybe we Humans were just getting too jaded and cynical about this kind of stuff. There was probably a time when almost all spies had been young idealists. I just wondered what their survival rate had been.

  The commander spoke English, and his security chief translated it to aZmataan for the political officer. I thought the choice of language was interesting.

  “Let me make it clear that I am here unofficially and against my expressed wishes,” TheHon began.

  “I understand, Excellency,” the commander replied. “You and your companions will be treated with consideration. Notice that we have allowed you to retain your weapons. Since we do not consider ourselves in a state of hostilities against the Cottohazz itself, you will be treated as neutral noncombatants until your status is . . . clarified. I hope that will be acceptable.”

  TheHon actually bowed his head a little as a sign of assent. So far this was going about as well as I could hope. Then the commander turned to Marfoglia and me.

  “I apologize for the delay at the perimeter. My soldiers are alert to tricks by the colonial puppet forces, but they should have known to act with more dispatch. We have been monitoring the colonial military communications, as much as we could, to follow your progress. Once the fighters at the rendezvous point made it clear that two Human civilians were present, we ordered them to bring your party here at once. We have been hoping you would seek sanctuary with us.”

  He looked sincere, but lots of people can look sincere when it suits their purpose. But what was so important about two Human civilians? Unless . . .

  “You knew our identities before we contacted you?”

  “Naradnyo and Marfoglia, yes. Other than Marines, you were the only Humans with the group on the train. It was a simple deduction.”

  “Yeah . . . but how did you know to begin with?”

  “Mr. Katchaan has been tracking your movements, to the extent we have been able. Since the train accident, he has been particularly anxious concerning your safety,” the commander finished, glancing sideways at the technical advisor, and all of a sudden I believed him. There was just enough concealed irritation in his voice to tell me Mr. Katchaan—Mr. Nobody—had been a pain in the commander’s ass, and for more than just a couple hours.

  Katchaan blushed but nodded.

  “It is true,” he said in very good English, and the security dude murmured a translation for the political boss. “We do not normally have the honor of guests of this stature and importance, so naturally we have been anxious. I wished the commander to contact you directly, but he . . . persuaded me that such an attempt would endanger you more than it would help.”

  Stature? Importance? I looked at Marfoglia, and she returned my look of mostly concealed surprise. He might be spreading it on thick to flatter us, but I could tell she didn’t think so, and I sure as hell didn’t. I also didn’t think he was talking about a few Marines and some refugees. I felt Marfoglia’s hand on my forearm, a warning gesture.

  “Who is he talking about?” I asked Marfoglia over our net.

  No answer. She was as puzzled as I was. Okay, time for Plan B.

  “Forgive me for asking, but why is the uBakai government interested in two Human travelers?” I asked.

  He and the officers exchanged a glance of surprise.

  “No, there is a misunderstanding. I am not uBakai,” he said.

  “Oh. My apologies. Okay . . . who are you with?”

  That was not a polite question, I know. The deal in a situation like this is that if someone wants you to know who they’re with, they’ll tell you. Normally I’d have been more circumspect about that question, but when you think you know what’s what, and then you get the rug pulled out from under you, you act instinctively and without subtlety.

  “Why, AZ Crescent Technical Systems,” he answered, as if it were obvious.

  “Okay, consigliere, this is why you’re here. Who is this guy and what is this all about?” I demanded of Marfoglia over our net.

  “AZ Crescent is a majority-owned subsidiary of the e-Traak holding group,” she answered. “Maybe they’re the ones behind the revolution.”

  “Not uBakaa?”

  “Apparently not.”

  e-Traak holding, huh? Suddenly I had a pretty good idea why they were interested in us, but I wanted to hear him say it.

  “Okay. Why is AZ Crescent interested in us?”

  “Because you guard the children of Sarro e-Traak, of course! The twin diamonds, the heirs of our future.”

  Twin diamonds? Heirs of our future?

  “Uh . . . yeah, guess we do,” I answered cautiously.

  Interesting as this was getting, there was more pressing business.

  “Commander, I need to cut a deal with you. There are a bunch of trucks wandering north out there in the jungle, full of Marines and Varoki civilians, trying to get away from the uZmataanki security forces.”

  “Yes, the others from the maglev. We are aware of that.”

  “Well, they can run north for a while, but pretty soon they’re going to run into the rear security detachments of the uZmataanki front-line combat troops engaged against the uBakai. Then they’re in real trouble. I can communicate with the cruiser in orbit, and the cruiser can direct those trucks here, or to whatever safe enclaves you have closer to them.”

  He shifted uncomfortably and frowned, ears folding and unfolding.

  “Yes, but then those enclaves will become somewh
at less safe. You understand this?”

  “Yup. But it’s worth the risk to you.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “I think you know the answer to that. Helping us is a card—and a damned good one—to play at the peace negotiations. You had the Cottohazz and the colonial government against you before. Now, with this war, the uZmataanki are on the Cottohazz’s shit list, and that moves you into the neutral-but-dangerous column. That’s an improvement, but you need something else to move you over into the neutral-but-useful-and-possibly-friendly column, and those trucks out there are it.”

  “Helping you, and the Special Envoy, will not be sufficient?”

  “No. We came to you, Commander. We made the overt act. Now it’s time for you to step up and make an overt act of your own.”

  He looked at his two officers briefly, and I could pretty much tell how they stood on the subject. The security guy was against it, because it was terrible security. The political guy was for it, because it was great politics. I couldn’t tell where Katchaan stood, and the commander didn’t seem to care about his opinion on this one. After a moment, the commander nodded.

  “There is no time to waste in arguments over this,” he said, as much to his security guy as to us. “Several of your trucks have already been disabled and their occupants captured and executed. My security deputy will give you the land grid rendezvous coordinates for the surviving parties. A number of them will be routed here. We already have an uplink communication antenna focused on your cruiser, but we have not yet activated the link. It is time.”

  * * *

  So I managed to broker a deal between Gasiri and the commander for the other trucks to come in under their protection. After that we were escorted back to the area they’d set up for us. They lined up a hot meal, showers, and some clean clothes, and then let us get some rest.

  I hadn’t realized how depleted my reserves were until I’d almost collapsed during the walk back from the commander’s office. I really hadn’t been eating or sleeping since we hit the jungle, and without the adrenaline pumping to keep me upright, I almost didn’t make it back. I skipped the shower for now, made myself eat a couple mouthfuls of something from a ration pack, and then crashed. I used my black carryall as a pillow, and I was out as soon as my head hit it. If I had any dreams, I don’t remember them.

  The next day I showered, ate, and felt a little better. I used a razor to scrape away the beard that was coming in pretty thick, and while I did I got a good long look at myself in the mirror. I was a little shocked at how much weight I’d lost, how gaunt my face looked. I looked old, especially around the eyes. I wasn’t used to that.

  By now we were all in clean jungle camouflage fatigues provided by the commander. They were pretty long in the waist for us, and Marfoglia’s were absurdly large, but with the sleeves rolled up almost to the shoulders, the waist belted tight, and the enormous baggy trousers tucked into the tops of tall boots and bloused out, she managed to pull it off as a look—sort of Rebel Gaucho Chic.

  Humans might not be able to win a revolution, but by God we could dress for one.

  So later that day, Marfoglia and I were asked to meet with Mr. Katchaan, and things started getting weird.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Katchaan was young and lonely, and he had a need to talk to someone. Marfoglia and I were excellent listeners—once we’d each gotten some rest. We were also both very sympathetic, and in her case, the sentiment was genuine. I, on the other hand, am a heartless bastard, but I can fake a lot of things if the situation requires it, and in this instance it clearly did. I could be Nobody’s best pal if it served my purpose—and believe me, the irony of that linguistic double entendre did not escape me.

  Since Marfolglia and I were Saviors of the Heirs, and the two little squirts confirmed it by calling us Boti, Mr. Nobody was probably more forthcoming with us than he would normally have been with Humans—or even Varoki. Maybe especially Varoki.

  One of the things Katchaan spilled to us—in private—over the course of the next two days was that he was a member of a Shadow Brotherhood, called Tahk Pashaada-ak, which Marfoglia later told me was old aGavoosh for End of Empty Dreams. Over the next couple days I’d find out that this Shadow Brotherhood stuff was a lot more important to the Varoki than most people ever realized. Katchaan was partly here on orders from AZ Crescent, and partly on orders from his brotherhood, and he wasn’t really sure to what extent the one was influenced by the other, but they were entangled, no doubt.

  What he was sure of was that AZ Crescent wanted the Unionists to succeed, so uBakaa would come out on top. Tahk Pashaada-ak wanted the forced eco-forming ended immediately. Why? That was about the only thing he was reluctant to tell us. I started thinking maybe he didn’t know.

  Turns out, the “Twin Diamonds, Heirs of our Future” business had been a bad slip on his part, and he was a little nervous about it. Those phrases were Tahk Pashaada-ak lingo, not the company line, and it let anyone else in the commander’s room that day know which brotherhood he was with—provided they were high enough up to know something about another brotherhood. The good news was that Tahk Pashaada-ak wanted the kids alive—practically seemed to worship them, for reasons I never figured out. The bad news was Katchaan had no clue who was trying to kill them or why, no idea what other brotherhoods were active in the insurgency headquarters, or what their motives might be.

  I’d known Varoki all my life, grew up next to them, worked with them, stole from them, palled around with a few of them, and not one of them ever even hinted at the existence of the brotherhoods. And now I know that almost all of them belonged to one, or were aligned with one, or were under the protection of one, the whole time. And here’s the really creepy part—they all know about them, but they never talk about them—at least the working-class folks don’t.

  Marfoglia had mixed more with the rich and powerful and had heard rumors of the Shadow Brotherhoods. Very rich people feel more secure—nothing really bad has ever happened to them, and they believe that nothing really bad ever can—so they are less careful about things like that. It was still a secret, of course, but what is a secret?

  Something you tell to only one person at a time.

  You see two-and-a-quarter-meter-tall Varoki, long torsos, smooth, hairless, iridescent skin, great big ears, and you think, “Oooo! Look! Aliens!”

  Then you get to know them, watch them wear silk robes with embroidered Chinese characters, see them hang Rembrandt and Chagall prints in their dens, and listen to classic rock with the audio cranked up high . . . see their government structure so much like ours, their economy, their approach to science and technology, and you figure, “Hey, these guys are just Humans in lizard suits.”

  But then you find out about the Shadow Brotherhoods, and you start to wonder again.

  That guy Henry lined up for the e-snap data mine back on Peezgtaan—what had he said? That he was in the wrong “club” and so wasn’t getting promoted? I was willing to bet now he wasn’t in it for the payoff or the payback; he was acting under orders from his brotherhood to mess up AZK, for whatever reason. And I’d thought revenge was a bad motive!

  Peeling back this layer of the onion was like looking at a small town someplace, studying it for years, thinking you knew all about it and the people in it, and then one day discovering that everyone in the town was actually a giant cockroach disguised as a Human.

  Another thing I picked up on was why Katchaan trusted us more than he trusted any Varoki—more than he could trust any Varoki.

  To Katchaan, Marfoglia and I were like Henry’s great-great-grandfather back in that Nazi POW camp. The Americans back then had a word for those Black flyers, maybe the ugliest word in the English language by the time they got done with it—nigger. Say it to yourself. Go ahead. Let the word roll around in your mouth. What does it taste like? It’s not enough to say it tastes like hate; hate is where it ends up, but it starts with contempt, and then drifts into fear—the fear taste is really stro
ng. Only after those two—contempt and fear—cook together for a while do you get genuine hate.

  Katchaan had no idea which of the other Varoki in the insurgency belonged to a rival brotherhood, but he damned well knew we didn’t, because to the Varoki, we were niggers. We had jazz and blues and disco and gangsta’ rap—cubism and impressionism, existentialism and nihilism, auturism and post-modernism and the little black dress, and they ate that shit up with a spoon—but come closing time, as far as they were concerned we were still just niggers, and all the money in the galaxy wouldn’t have made us anything more than rich niggers.

  He actually believed we would be flattered by this gift of his special trust.

  * * *

  About a third of the trucks had been lost—that was actually fewer than I’d expected. They straggled in over the next couple of days, and Wataski’s truck was the second one in.

  Her truck was shot up, the composite flexi-cover in back all shredded and with a couple flechette holes in the cab. Wataski swung down from the shotgun door on the left, her face swollen, discolored, and showing stitches, but it didn’t keep her from talking.

  “Well, you look like shit!” she said. I guess I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.

  “I call that big talk from some broad with twenty stitches in her face.”

  She made a sound, like gravel rattling around in a metal bucket, it took me a second or two to identify as laughter.

  “This little party your doing?” she asked, the sweep of her arm taking in the Varoki insurgents hustling to unload her truck and get IR damper shrouds over it.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  She nodded slowly, looking around.

  “Come on, help me unload.”

  “The Sammies can handle it,” I answered, but she shook her head.

  “Not this. Aguillar took a flechette in the shoulder, so he can’t help.” She walked around the back of the truck and I followed, not sure what I’d find.

  A body bag.