by Mark Iles
Shadow got up from his place besides her bed, where he’d taken to sleeping, and sat on the floor next to her. His empathic abilities allowed her to know when to let him out and when to let him back in again, so that he could hunt or whatever. He was the perfect companion, one she never had to feed or chase after. Picking up her hand-held she contacted Kes. “Meet me outside on the parade ground,” she said. “Bring Singh and Jessica with you, we’ll need a skimmer. Oh, and Shadow’s coming too. I’m going to see Aunt May, and I don’t want a repeat of the last time, when the Queen’s thugs ambushed me. This time I want to get there and back in one piece.”
“No worries, Ma’am,” Kes replied. “Is half an hour okay?”
“Yup, see you then,” she said, and signed off. Jenks answered her next call in moments. “You got anything for me?” she asked, noting his stubble had progressed into a badly trimmed goatee.
“Not much. We checked out that cabin you told us about, where your group were attacked. We used battle droids due to the risk of a trap and it turned out to be a wise choice. The whole damned place went up and flattened everything around it for at least a kilometre. As you can well imagine, we lost all three droids and still have no idea if there was anybody in the building at the time of the explosion. Not much left to pick through. What are your plans?”
“The Lenars have agreed to rebuilding the search teams, as soon as we can we’ll despatch some to each city. From what I can see our aerial defences look good, so once we’re in place the cities should be safe at least for the time being. Keep me updated on any developments.”
Jenk’s lanky hair was plastered to his forehead. He’d obviously been working out, judging by the sweat trickling down his face, his damp hair and the sweat-stained tee-shirt he was wearing. Some people might even consider him attractive, she thought. Some.
“Will do, Commander. Chat soon.”
Outside, Kes and the others were already aboard the skimmer, waiting. With Kes driving, they soared above the battlements and flew to Aunt May’s. Within fifteen minutes, the dark craft settled slowly to the ground, the engines winding down to a low idle. For a moment or two, nobody spoke. They could only stare in disbelief.
All that remained of the cottage where Selena had grown up was a blackened ruin. The once-white picket fence lay charred, broken and scattered about the garden. The lawn itself was long and torn in places, the flowerbeds trampled—by combat boots, Selena judged, looking at the footprints. Kes averted his eyes after a few moments, while Singh put a comforting hand on Selena’s shoulder.
A gentle wind brought the scent of burning and ash, a stark contrast to that of the honeysuckle, wildflowers and crops growing in the fields around them.
A tremulous voice broke the silence. “Selena, I’m sorry for your loss.”
Selena turned to see Agnes, May’s neighbour, standing at her own garden gate, sorrow etched on her ancient features. She wore the light-blue dress that she had on the last time Selena had seen her, and was leaning heavily on what looked like a handmade walking stick.
“Loss?” Selena gathered herself. “What happened?”
“The Queen found out that May had returned home. I didn’t tell her, I swear. Somehow they already knew and came in the night, on skimmers much like yours. They must have splashed accelerants all through the cottage, because it went up so quickly. I could hear May screaming and I ran over to try and get her out, but they held me back, laughing.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Selena said, turning away from witnesses to surreptitiously wipe away a tear. “You betrayed me the last time I was here, and I was captured by the Queen’s men! That, despite you saying you were my aunt’s friend.”
“I’m sorry, I had no choice but to tell them about you. The things they did… But I didn’t betray May, I swear.”
“If I find out you’re lying, I’ll come back and gut you myself. Do you understand me?” Selena’s eyes locked onto those of the old lady, and she watched as the woman she’d once considered a family friend withered.
With a shudder, the old lady drew her thin frame up as much as she could, and said defiantly, “I never forgave myself for giving you away and them capturing you, so I never told them May had returned. Ask your friendly Lenar there to check me out if you like. It’ll confirm I’m not lying. May was my best friend, and what I witnessed here will haunt me to the end of my days—along with my guilt about you.”
Shadow sidled up to Selena and she let her feelings slip through him, but the old woman was telling the truth. “Would you recognise those responsible if you saw them again?”
“No, I’m sorry. Like cowards, they hid their faces behind scarves, but all of them wore the uniform of the Royal Guard. The fact that they let me live tells me they wanted you to know who was responsible, not that it would be difficult to guess. Oh, and one more thing.”
“Yes?” Selena asked. “Go on.”
“They gave me a message for you.”
In the distance, doves imported from old Earth in the first colony ships cooed softly, but the sound only served to enhance the otherwise silence and bitter smell of burning. Selena could taste the ash as it danced on the breeze. “And that was?”
“They said to tell you, ‘Welcome home’.”
Chapter Three
On their return to Capulet City, Singh, Kes and Shadow followed Selena into her room. Singh flinched when she snatched up a bottle of imported scotch and threw it at the wall. The bottle shattered into a myriad pieces, casting glass and liqueur around the room.
“I was going to drink that…” Singh said.
“Fuck you, Singh! This isn’t a time to be funny.”
He looked hurt. “I wasn’t trying to be.”
Kes held his hands up and walked towards Selena, stopping to face her three paces away. “Look, they want you to react, that’s why they killed your aunt. Going off the rails is only playing into their hands and May wouldn’t want that, would she? I can only imagine how hard it is for you but, please, try to calm down. Remember the old saying, ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’. Focus on the present, the current threat—and think clearly. It’s what you’re trained for, and it’s also what we all need right now. Queen Miranda has overplayed her hand; she should have waited to bait you when all this is over, not now. She’s been a fool, and that’s not like her. I think you have her rattled.”
Selena gritted her teeth, and sat on the sofa. “I’m trying, trust me.”
Kes looked as if he was going to try step forward and hug her, but changed his mind. “I know it’s hard, but there’ll be time for a reckoning, and it’s not now,” he said, and paused before adding, “If you want something to distract you, go out into the city with Shadow. The walk will do you good, and God knows we need more teams out on patrol. You being out there will raise our visibility, and the peoples’ trust in us.”
As night fell, Selena found herself and Shadow striding through the semi-silent streets. She pulled the zipper of her matt-black outfit up to her neck and checked her trusted Sunburst weapon yet again. It fired small but shockingly powerful bullets, while underneath the shotgun magazine held a variety of rounds, all which could be quickly selected to deal with different types of situations.
Selena let her senses flow out through Shadow and into the alleyways, through which feral cats, rodents and night birds explored. The solar street lighting was often smashed or flickering, leaving many slim passages in a darkness that was broken only by the light from the moons and stars. As they walked, many people averted their eyes, others slunk into doorways and vanished from sight. Awe grew on some faces, fear on others; yet a few smiled and offered greetings, and even occasionally thanks for the regiment’s presence and protection. As she walked, Selena was greeted by the occasional person she knew from her childhood, though the pain of her loss persisted. This was her home and she’d grown up here. Despite everything, she was glad to be back.
As she turned into yet another street, music dri
fted faintly from a shabby-looking take-away on the other side of the road. For a moment, her thoughts filled with that of a chicken shwarma, laced with garlic mayo, cucumber and fries. She was hungry but couldn’t bring herself to eat at the moment. Her attention was suddenly drawn to the waves of despair and fear emanating from a young girl who looked in her mid-teens that came flooding through to her from Shadow. The girl was crammed into a small and disposable alloy box, in a shadow-filled doorway. She pulled a quilt, grubby from the dirt around her, closer around herself, seeking comfort in its softness as she tried to make herself look smaller. Frightened brown eyes looked up at them as they approached.
“Who might you be?” Selena asked softly. “And why are you out here all by yourself?”
“I’m Jas Ordain and I’m not doing anything, apart from trying to keep warm and sleep. Holy shit, what happened to your eyes?”
“It’s part of our norm,” Selena replied, squatting besides her, Sunburst across her knees and Shadow standing to her left. “I didn’t say you were doing anything wrong,” she said gently. “You seem sad. What’s up, and why are you here?” She noted how Jas held her fists, clenched and semi-concealed within the sleeves of her dark-blue all-in-one.
Grime painted Jas’s copper-toned face. Her clothes were soiled, torn and tatty in places. Those shoes had seen better days and above all she looked skinny. Those brown, haunted eyes watched Shadow warily.
“Well, Jas, you can put those knives away. The ones you’ve got concealed in your hands. I know all about them, how they can be concealed and what appears to be a punch is actually a knife attack. The punch is meant to miss, to hide the knife that will cut someone’s throat as the hand goes past. I’m not going to hurt you, so put them away.”
Eying Selena, Jas gave a nod and slid the weapons up her sleeves, into their sheaths, and showed her empty hands. “I’m sorry, we have to be careful out here. My parents were working in the city that got blown up. I’ve not heard from them since, so I guess they’re dead like everyone says. I did ask their boss and others if they had any news about them, but they just ushered me away and after a while we weren’t even let into the company buildings. You’d be sad too, if your parents had been killed.”
“They were. I take it your parents were in Ephesus?”
“Yeah. Your parents were killed?”
Selena nodded. “Yeah, my father was murdered and my mother committed suicide.”
Jas rubbed at her eyes in an attempt to hide the tears, but Selena saw them trickling down her grubby cheeks anyway, leaving clear tracks behind them.
“We were in company accommodation,” Jas said. “We were allocated it when we arrived. It was lovely, a two bedroomed, fully furnished flat—much better than what we had at Yaros. You’d think the company would look after us, but they didn’t. When the bills didn’t get paid they threw me out, along with many others whose parents had died. They said that the company wasn’t a charity.”
“Hasn’t anyone tried to take care of you?”
The youngster’s eyes challenged Selena’s. “Get a grip. Would I be here, if they had? A few of the lucky ones got taken on by local families, or other workers who had the space, but not many. The rest are out here, on the streets.”
“What about food, have you eaten lately?” Selena asked, tight-lipped as she hid a half smile. This girl had spit!
“Yeah, been here ever since. We look out for each other. Finding food and shelter isn’t easy and, like I said, it’s not safe. Several of us have been killed, others gone missing. It’s scary and we don’t know who to trust. Some say it’s the Manta or ForeRunners, others say it’s the Lenars.” Jas paused, before saying, “You’re Selena Dillon, aren’t you?”
Selena noticed the edge in Jas’s voice, and how she tried to shrink further into the alloy box. “How do you know that?”
“Everyone does, you’re famous. The girl who tried to kill the queen, got caught and punished. You saved humanity by destroying the Manta home-world.”
“Or so we thought,” Selena replied, “then the bugs pop right back up again. You don’t sound convinced about who’s being blamed for the murders. Who do you think’s responsible?”
“Not any of them, that’s for sure,” Jas said. “The killer’s human. I wasn’t far away when one of the girls was murdered, and I heard her screaming and someone give a really weird laugh. I ran and reported it to the police and took them to where I thought she was. When they found her, she was dead; she’d been cut open and there was blood everywhere. It was horrible.”
“I’m really sorry about your friend. What do you mean, weird?”
Jas grimaced. “It’s hard to describe. Just sounded … wrong.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?”
“Like who? The authorities aren’t interested in what happens to us, and we’ve nowhere safe to go. We’re just stuck here, waiting for the killer to strike again.”
“Look, I think you should come home with me,” Selena said, reaching down to help Jas up. Her skin was copper-toned and she was bone thin. At about five-foot-tall her afro hair was pulled behind her in a bun, by a red tatty-looking rag.
“What makes you think I trust you? For all I know you could be the killer.”
“Do I look like a killer?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m not … well, only of those who deserve it. Like you say, you know all about me.” She saw Jas still eying Shadow. “Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you.”
“Oh, I know that. He feels comforting somehow, warm and cosy. It’s strange but I know I can trust him, and also that he trusts you. If a Lenar can, then I guess I do too. Are we really going to your place? Where is it, in the citadel?”
“Yup. Then we need to figure out what to do about your friends.” Selena decided to leave the discussion about “warm, cosy, and trust” for later. Right now she wanted to get this girl somewhere safe, showered and with a hot meal inside her.
***
“Are you out of your mind?” Colonel Christina Delmar demanded, slamming an open hand onto her desk. “Provide accommodation for kids? We aren’t a Goddamn kindergarten!”
“Ma’am,” Selena replied, biting back a retort, while ruffling Shadow’s short, coarse hair. “Look, we have the facilities to help them, so why not? Besides, there’s a saying, ‘Where we lead others follow’. Perhaps if we do something good for these children then others will too. Someone has to look out for these kids, and there’s nothing to stop us employing someone to look after them. We don’t have to do it ourselves.”
“The powers that be won’t wear it, our budgets are tightly controlled. Anyone would think they were paying for it out of their own pockets,” the colonel interrupted.
There was something in Delmar’s manner that made Selena pursue the matter. She thought quickly, before hiding a smirk and adding, “We can always bill the Queen for it, if we play it right. I can’t see her arguing—it would look bad. It’s not safe out there on the streets and everyone knows it. What will the other workers and colonists think, if they see these children abandoned? They’re bound to be getting worried about their own families, if something should happen to them. You know as well as I do that once trust is lost, it’s hard to get back again. Besides, look on it as more positive publicity for us.”
Delmar eyed her curiously. “You have a point. But what do you mean it’s not safe out there?”
“I have a feeling. Just something that Jas said, that apart from the killings, some of these youngsters are going missing.”
The colonel ran a hand over her head, shaved bald apart from a thin and short black strip of hair running front to back. Much of her visible skin was covered in black tribal tattoos. She wore a thin black strip of cloth across a feeble excuse for breasts, her ribs and shoulder-bones protruding. She assessed Selena thoughtfully. “You’re right. Okay, we’ll do it. I’ll get security to organise things.”
“Okay, but I’d like to be kept in the loop.”
>
“Your liaison will be Corporal Baron.” Delmar’s paused and considered her. “Getting a bit soft in your old age, are you? Looking out for youngsters.”
“Not at all. I’m concerned about the ones that are going missing and what’s happening to them, that’s all. It could be related to the ForeRunners and, if so, we need to keep our fingers on the pulse.”
“Hmm, very well. I’ll tell him to keep you updated. In the meantime, reinforcements have arrived, so I’m giving you the troops you’ve requested. Four squads of twenty, plus you already have the search teams—those that are still alive. A few of them died in Ephesus.”
When Selena asked how many teams she’d have, the colonel shook her head. “What with the few Lenars who’ve re-joined us, we’ll be lucky to field twelve teams— excluding yourself and your friend there.” She eyed Shadow.
Selena ruffled Shadow’s fur again, eliciting something akin to a low rumble and a warm feeling. “Shadow says the Lenars don’t trust the Queen, that there’s a darkness in her heart. Many of his kin agree and have dispersed deep into the forests to seek safety, but he brought all that he could with him. They’re barely enough to help us for the time being, and runners have been despatched to try and recruit more.”
A door to one side of the room led into a compact cabin. Through a half-ajar door Selena could see a hologram of a naked, pirouetting and dancing well-oiled woman on a desk next to the bunk and recognised the woman as one of the regiments physical training instructors. Selena ignored it but the colonel had caught the look. A half-smile played over her lips.
“Okay, we’ll make do with what we have in the short time,” Delmar said. “But we need those other teams up and running, and I mean soon. Other worlds in the Alliance have heard about them and are now demanding teams of their own. After all, they’re facing the same threat as ourselves. As for now, you have a job to do, so go and get on with it.”
“There’s one more thing,” Selena said, ignoring the dismissal, and how the colonel’s eyes deliberately flickered over her figure. “Jas stays with me when I’m here, and with her friends when I’m not.”