Dark Space (Sentients of Orion)

by Marianne de Pierres

  The men had called Faja Fedor a ‘ginko lover’—what, then, did they make of their Capitano?

  ‘... I’ll meet the duty crew there. Come with them,’ Christian was saying.

  Trin forced himself to listen to the Capitano’s instructions. ‘But—’

  ‘That is not an invitation, Pellegrini!’

  Christian ended the shortcast, leaving Trin to stare at the blank film.

  Trin’s insides trembled with a mixture of fear and excitement: he had not been close to a fire before. Because of the high oxygen quotient in Araldis’s air, and as a future Principe, it had always been forbidden for him to take such a risk. A sudden frisson of liberation took him; perhaps there was some small compensation to be found in the indignity of his denouncement.

  Following the Emergency Directive, he switched the shortcast to the Emergency Vehicle Frequency and let himself out through the coldlock into the compound.

  The duty crew were already dressed and loading their vehicles.

  ‘Capitano says I should come,’ he said to a man he thought to be Seb Malocchi.

  Malocchi inclined his flash hood towards the workshop office. ‘Find a firesuit in there. We’ll be gone in a few minutes. We won’t wait,’ he shouted.

  Trin struggled into the suit with no assistance—and no hindrance. Where were the Cavaliere? Why were they not here?

  ‘Last chance to catch a ride, Pellegrini,’ a voice crackled through the flash hood’s transceiver.

  Trin squashed all the seals tight and went back out into the workshop.

  ‘The Cavaliere have been recalled to Pell,’ added Seb Malocchi, as if reading his mind. ‘They have a situation up there as well.’ He was piling kitbags on top of each other.

  Trin climbed into the back of the remaining TerV as Malocchi secured them under webbing. ‘What situation?’ he asked.

  Malocchi didn’t answer. The vehicle swung out onto the bare redcrete viuzza and took several fast sharp turns to orient itself north. Trin banged his head against the window slits as he tried to peer out.

  The TerV sped past the dust-white villettes of the Nobiles and into the non-familia section of Loisa where row upon row of cramped mud-and-cellulose cabins huddled together creating shade for each other.

  ‘You know how to use these?’ Malocchi again.

  Trin turned awkwardly, half swinging from the holding straps.

  Malocchi slid a crate across the floor, then himself after it, wedging in alongside Trin. He popped the crate’s lid and pulled out several items. ‘First Responder Kit—you take one of these when we stop and help anyone you come across that’s hurt. See: burn-gel, cold compress, trauma pads, valve shield, infection swipes, skin-restore, blood-stopper roll.’ He tucked each item back inside as he listed it.

  Trin heard the words without comprehension. He did not deal with people like this: not with their blood and their wounds and their panic.

  ‘You got it, Pellegrini?’

  Trin nodded automatically.

  ‘The grain silos are flaming,’ another voice joined Seb Malocchi’s in his hood. ‘The truck is already there. So are we—almost. Can barely see the sky for merda...’

  The TerV jerked to a stop. Trin waited inside, handing the kits out to the line of fire-suited men emerging from the other vehicles. When he had passed out the last one he hesitated, suddenly not wanting to leave the safety of the truck.

  Outside, the sky had blackened as if overtaken by an eclipse, and despite the flash-hood’s extractor poisonous fumes crawled into Trin’s airways. A babble of voices competed over the transceiver but Christian cut across them all. ‘Anyone not on a pump, there’s someone injured over by the processor. Take your FR kit and get to it.’

  ‘No one is free, Capitano,’ replied another.

  ‘Pellegrini!’ Seb Malocchi motioned to him.

  The rush of excitement Trin had felt back at the compound evaporated as he forced himself out of the TerV.

  Fierce gouts of waxen smoke unfurled into the air from three silos. Groups of Carabinere battled with their tiny, ineffectual cold-foam tanks and nozzles to keep three more from doing the same. Flakes of hot polymer rained on the mask of Trin’s flash hood, melting dints in the heat-resistant goggles. The ambient heat sent his suit temperature soaring dangerously.

  ‘Follow me,’ shouted Malocchi.

  Trin sucked on the fluid tube and peered through the hot plastic rain for the processor. There. A tall frame at the end of the row of silos housing smaller bins and an elaborate loop system for grain separation.

  Trin shouldered his kit, following Malocchi slowly. The might of the flames mesmerised him, as did the AiV that flew tight circles around them, spurting coldfoam from its belly tank.

  What foolishness...

  Without warning the flames plumed outwards, engulfing the AiV. It disintegrated, sparking a series of miniature explosions. Trin ran for the cover of the processor and flung himself full length under a bin housing.

  Malocchi was already underneath the same bin, bent over a collapsed figure. He beckoned Trin over, pointing at his kit.

  Trin rolled to his knees, suppressing his urge to flee back to the TerV. There was no safe place in the vicinity of the silos, he told himself. Safety was in the Palazzo back on Mount Pell. He thrust the kit at Seb Malocchi.

  The man threw open the lid, rifling through the contents until he found the burn-gel. Trin stared down at the injured ‘esque. Pieces of blackened clothing had been seared into his body tissue where skin should have been. Trin turned away from the charred head.

  Dios! No hair, no lips.

  Sickness rose in his throat and disgorged itself. His flash hood suctioned away the worst of the vomit so he could still breathe, but it could not neutralise the stink of his own weakness and fear.

  The ‘esque spasmed once, twice, and them became still.

  Mercy.

  Malocchi took a valve mask from the kit and laid it across the ‘esque’s blood-black face. He fitted the valve onto his own air supply and began a pointless attempt at resuscitation.

  Then a fourth silo exploded as if birthing a universe.

  Panicked, Trin scrambled from underneath the bin housing. He would not die here.

  Malocchi saw his intention and abandoned his task. He ran after Trin but became tangled in the resuscitation hose still attached to his air supply. It tripped him and he fell heavily, twisting his leg underneath his body.

  Every instinct shrieked at Trin not to wait, not to turn back for him: from the corner of his eye he could see the flames leaping to the fifth silo. If it reached the final one it would engulf them both.

  ‘Wind shift... fall back.’ Christian’s order was a distant crackle. ‘Evacuate...’

  Trin could see the TerVs already pulling out. ‘Montforte!’ he screamed into his pickup.

  ‘Pellegrini... where... you?’

  Another thunderous crack and the bottom fell out of the flaming silo, sending an avalanche of smoke rolling down the tarmac. It swallowed Trin and obscured his line of sight to the remaining vehicles. ‘Near the processor,’ he gasped.

  ‘For Cruxsakes... back here. I... lose... Principe’s son... useless cazzone.’

  Useless cazzone. Christian’s words stopped Trin like a blow to the head, right there, in the billowing thick whirl of the smoke stream.

  How many times had he thought the exact same of others? Countless.

  If he died here, he would be as inconsequential as them: as pathetic and ignoble. The idea was more overpowering than the fire roaring behind him. He wanted to spill his rage into the fire. I am important! I am...

  For no reason of valour—only the knowledge that the balance should be tipped—Trin returned to the fallen Carabinere and took the shears from the FR kit strapped to the man’s back. With precise strokes he cut through the hoses, releasing Melocchi’s twisted foot.

  Malocchi gripped Trin’s shoulders and leaned gratefully against him.

  Trin helped him to his
feet. ‘Montforte!’ he shouted again. ‘Montforte!’

  But there was no reply. And he could see nothing through his melted goggles now, or feel much, save a sense of rectitude.

  Their intertwined walk turned quickly to a stagger—Trin had never borne the true weight of another man before—and his muscles betrayed him. Collapse would take them soon, anyway, when their breathers faltered. He began to cough uncontrollably—they both did, bent over with the heaving and gasping of it. So much so that neither of them saw the TerV looming ahead through the smoke.

  * * *

  Trin rode in the Capitano’s vehicle past the line of evacuated mud casas and white villettes, back to the compound. With trembling gloved fingers he detached his hood and gulped in the cooler cabin air.

  ‘The wind will push the fire north onto the sand. It will burn itself out. We have evacuated the edge of town to be sure. But I think we are fortunate it will not spread there,’ said Christian.

  Trin stared at him aghast. ‘I risked... you risked your men for mere grain?’

  ‘For our main food source. Si,’ he said flatly.

  ‘But there are stockpiles at Dockside.’

  ‘Our grain is allocated on a priority system that must be approved by the Principe—it is the same for all our imported commodities. It is unlikely that he would risk depletion of the familia central stores.’

  ‘Are you saying that my father would let you starve?’

  Christian gave a grim but unreadable smile. ‘You stink, Pellegrini.’

  Trin became aware of the foul stickiness of vomit on his face and neck. Somehow it did not seem as important as it should.

  * * *

  Christian called Trin to his office when the new duty crew signed on. The Capitano reeked of scorched polymer and the blisters on his face seeped little rivulets of fluid onto his silk innersuit. His expression was morose and dull with fatigue as he slumped in his chair.

  Trin knew his own skin had not fared much better and the throbbing of his burns gave him an odd sense of fellowship with the Carabinere.

  ‘Nathaniel Montforte will relieve you on shortcast for this shift. You saved one of us today. Sleep and recover,’ said Christian. ‘And salve those burns.’

  The Capitano’s consideration took him by surprise. ‘Grazi.’

  Yet when Christian left Trin found it impossible to relax. Energy coursed through him still like an unsteady pulse. He washed in the cramped basin and donned fresh clothes.

  Young Nathaniel Montforte hung behind him as he applied burn-gel from the office medikit. It was awkward—doing these things for himself.

  ‘What was the fire like, Don Trinder? Did it scare the seed from your balls? I heard you saved Seb Malocchi,’ prattled Nathaniel.

  But Trin had no interest in feeding the younger man’s imagination. ‘I will take transport to the market for food,’ he said.

  Out in the compound Trin discovered that his AiV had been repaired and shifted to a corner. He made his way over to it, half expecting to be stopped, but unlike the Cavaliere the duty crew paid him no attention—save for the hissing-motor and muffled-laughter noises that they made.

  * * *

  Trin settled his AiV in the vehicle bay adjacent to the Bear and Pearl gate façade of Villa Fedor.

  Istelle answered the gate-call and let him in. She waited in the coldlock for him. ‘Do you have news of Mira?’ she asked.

  He stiffened. ‘That is Carabinere business.’

  Despite his rebuff Istelle’s smile stayed warm. ‘I am very fond of the younger Baronessa. I don’t want to see her hurt.’

  Trin was taken aback. The ‘esque woman seemed to have no grasp of a servant’s manners.

  When he did not reply her smile faded a little, and she escorted him down the ancestor-crowded corridor to the cucina.

  Faja Fedor was bent over a vat of stew. She glanced up, surprised. ‘An early visit from the Carabinere, Don Trinder? Hoping to find my sorella hiding in the pantry? Behind a jar of pimento, perhaps.’

  ‘I come from the fire,’ Trin said simply.

  She frowned, mollified. ‘What news of it?’

  ‘Loisa has lost its grain stores but only a few lives.’

  Faja sighed as if the news made her tired. ‘That is good news and bad. There will be food shortages now.’

  ‘How is the ginko?’ he asked.

  She stabbed the stew with her ladle. ‘We do not use that word here.’

  ‘What is she, then?’

  ‘Her mama is a miolaqua and her father a Lostol. So in fact she is part ‘esque. Only she has many of her mama’s features.’ Faja eyed Trin closely. ‘Tell me why you would care, Don Trinder, when it was your men who did this to her?’

  He shrugged to hide his embarrassment. Vespa Malocchi had bragged of menacing the ragazza. He had handled her a little, he said, because of his curiosity about her strange skin. But she had run from him. ‘What would you have me do? Shoot a Carabinere? Today they risked their lives to save your grain supplies.’

  ‘Their courage in the face of a fire does not give them rights over a ‘bino.’

  ‘Hardly a ‘bino, Baronessa,’ Trin argued. She could not be and stir such things in me. ‘Your words stray towards sedition. Little wonder that your sorella has acted improperly. What values have you taught her?’

  Faja took a step closer to him, her head tilted to one side, her dark eyes fierce with intent. ‘Would you really take Mira’s Inborn Talent for your own? Would you steal from the genes of our ancestors?’

  Trin retreated. The woman had a presence; ways of making him feel uncertain. The same as Mira had that night on the beach, and his tia Marchella at dinner.

  ‘A woman cannot be Pilot First. You know that as well as I.’

  Faja swayed as if she had been slapped. ‘I do not think that you and I know the same things at all.’

  Trin gave her a sharp, dismissive look. Faja’s aggression alarmed him—even the voracious Silvio sorellas knew how to curb their stronger opinions.

  ‘I have other matters to attend,’ he said curtly. Conscious of the Baronessa’s glare at his back, he walked to the end of the corridor where Istelle waited.

  ‘Djeserit has recovered now,’ Istelle whispered as she opened the coldlock. ‘Thank you.’

  Though Trin did not reply, her words took some of the sting out of Faja Fedor’s boorish manner. He stepped outside the lock, wondering why he had come. What had he expected? Comfort? Respect? He stared at the waves of heat billowing from the redcrete. The viuzzas of Loisa were so barren and hostile compared to Dockside and Pell.

  ‘Don Pellegrini?’ The low, urgent voice came from the shadows of the portico.

  He turned. ‘Si?’

  A naked hand extended towards him. Trin recognised the mottled skin and took an involuntary step forward. What was the ragazza doing here? Waiting for him?

  Djeserit’s fingers closed on his glove and she drew him along the side of the villa and down the edge of the dry-garden. Not a word passed between them until she opened the door of the oval outhouse that contained two beds, a table stand, a tiny cucina and a washroom.

  ‘What is this?’ Trin asked, stepping inside.

  She shrugged—a curious full-body movement that brought her to the tips of her toes—and closed the door. ‘The Baronessas lived here when the villa was being built.’

  Impulsively, Trin reached out and touched the healing gash on her forehead. ‘Are you improved?’

  Djeserit smiled, her facial skin tightening until her eyes almost disappeared. Without warning she pushed the door shut and locked her arms around his waist.

  The pressure of her body sparked an instant wash of desire in Trin. He tried to push her away but she clung to him with surprising strength, hugging herself close to the swell in his groin.

  He stripped off his gloves and ran a hand across her dry, papery cheek.

  She turned her lips to it and tongued the skin between his fingers. Even her tongue felt parched and
abrasive.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The words strangled in his throat.

  ‘I am ready for quenching but here...’ she rolled her eyes up under her lids and gestured in the direction of the villa ‘... they do not understand such things. The Baronessa only knows of quenching in the ways of the Latino. When the man says. When the man wants. I am not Latino and I want... now.’

  Trin felt another rush of desire. Djeserit’s strangeness fuelled his passion, as if repulsion was his true attractor. She was bold and vulnerable at once. But more than that... she was alien and unrestrained.

  He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. She wore a simple working fellala without thermal layers. Underneath it he could feel the protected parts of her lotioned skin—so soft and malleable compared to her face. He lifted her robe and peeled back the lower layers of his fellalo so that he could lie on her. Explosiveness built inside him as he pressed himself into her. Their union was quick and difficult, her anatomy not a complete fit for his.

  Afterwards she clung to him, making disjointed carking noises. They did not startle him this time. He brimmed with elation—he had performed without bravura.

  ‘More.’ Her breath was light and quick against his neck.

  Methodically Trin refolded his robe and sealed it. ‘Tonight, late,’ he said. ‘Can you come here?’

  Djeserit nodded. ‘Under the cucina there is a wine cellar. I use it to get away from the ‘esques. They don’t like to come outside.’

  ‘They taunt you?’

  ‘Si. But I am not afraid of them. Not like your Carabinere.’ Her face tightened with fear and her eyes disappeared under their lids as if she had gone to sleep.

  Trin felt the pangs of a mistake he could not undo. He had soiled himself with a ginko. He was a ginko-lover.

  Djeserit hugged him again but this time he stood impassive in her embrace. When she had gone, he left along the side of the villa, thankful that he would not have to look Faja Fedor in the face.