Sisterhood of Suns: Daughters of Eve

by Martin Schiller

  Rabartya Vaasco proved to be a well-groomed figure in her early thirties, dressed in a conservative business suit. She was also a face that Maya vividly recalled from a news clip. Back then, Vaasco had been just another part of a ‘man on the street’ segment that the Republican News Network had created to gauge the reaction of the general public to the existence of the Sisterhood. When the reporter had asked her for her thoughts, Vaasco had simply replied, “The Sisterhood? Of course. It’s only the next logical step in our evolution. I think we’ll see it happening here, very, very soon.”

  Then, before the journalist could ask her to elaborate, she had walked away. Her statement had been so surprising, and unique, that the memory of it had remained with Maya ever since.

  “Do you have something for me?” Vaasco asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Maya answered, fishing the receipt out of her bag.

  Vaasco took it and read the numbers. “One moment,” she said, rising and walking over to a picture hanging on the wall. Like everything else in the office, it was a rather bland composition; a non-descript street scene somewhere in Nuvo Bolivar, and she was unsurprised when Vaasco swung it aside to reveal a wall safe.

  She reached in and produced an impressive stack of Paysolis, which she counted out on her desk and separated into three stacks before returning the remainder to the safe. One stack, Maya noted, was quite large.

  Each one went into heavy document envelopes labeled with the ‘Rapaddia Serversa Carrio’ logo. Vaasco sealed them, and then wrote the addresses on the outside before handing them over to her.

  “Here you go,” she said, adding a cheerful, “Bian dea”--a common Sisterhood expression. Maya returned her conspiratorial smile, and put the packages into her bag.

  Outside, Saantoz had driven up onto the curb and was waiting right in front of the doors. The moment that Maya got in, they departed.

  Their first destination was a private mailbox service and Maya followed Saantoz’s instructions and delivered the correct envelope to the clerk. In return, she was given a receipt and another mailing envelope, addressed to an “A. Algwalar”.

  When she returned to the van, Saantoz took it from her and carefully read the addressee’s name. “Good,” she said. “This is important. It will need to go to Sarah as soon as you get back.”

  Maya promptly tucked it inside her courier bag and then put on her seatbelt. As Saantoz started the engine however, she decided that she had had enough. Her stomach was growling in protest and she wasn’t going to go any further until this problem was remedied.

  “I need to eat,” she announced. “Do we have some time for that before the next part of our super-secret mission?”

  Saantoz flashed her a wry smile, and then took them to a restaurant that was roughly the same size and quality as their first stop. She even allowed her enough time to eat her entire meal before they were off again.

  Their next stop was a high-rise apartment building, in a well-heeled part of town. This time, a young woman roughly her own age answered the door, and Maya couldn’t help but notice that she was wearing a dress that only gave a passing nod to concealing her body.

  Or that behind her, there were several other women lounging around on the couches, in similar states of near or total undress.

  Putayas, Maya thought, unconsciously using the ETR slang word for prostitutes. Lacking a modern equivalent, the term had been quickly adopted by the Sisterhood and had found its way into Standard. The fact that she was delivering money to some of them meant that they were part of whatever little caper the RSE was currently working on. Sarah had once mentioned the idea of using sex as a weapon against the Republic, and if she had learned anything about the woman in their time together, it was that she didn’t make jokes.

  Someone would be, or already had been, ‘turned’ for the Agency by these putayas. Shaking her head in disbelief at the very notion of a woman selling her body to men, she headed back down to the van.

  The character of the streets changed as they drove into the heart of the city, transitioning from sterile rows of modern multistory buildings with wide, tree lined avenues, to narrower passages with older, ruder structures. Even the sunlight, which had been plentiful in the downtown area, seemed to become dimmer, as if it were giving less of itself to the poorer part of the capitol.

  The people had changed too; they were less well dressed now and the signs above the shops they were walking by had transformed. They had gone from Espangla over to another language that had no relationship with anything that Maya recognized.

  The graffiti was the same way. It was scrawled in strange characters that were utterly foreign to her eyes, and it was much more plentiful. She also noticed that there were fewer ‘lectris on the street, and what there were, were older models that had been modified in flamboyant ways, or were in need of some form of repair, or bodywork.

  An unseen border had been crossed without giving any warning of its presence, and Maya finally realized where Saantoz was taking them. She was heading straight into the Dho Haak, the ‘Neighborhoods’.

  Maya had heard of the place, and its people. The Dho Haak was the home of the Dann, and bad news for anyone who was an outsider. Like her.

  A moment later, she spotted a group of Dann men standing together on a corner holding cans of alcoholic beverages. They were dressed casually, mostly in their undershirts and loose-fitting pants.

  It was their hair that really stood out though, and marked them as different. To a man, it was blue-black in color, and their forelocks and a corresponding portion of the hair on the back of their heads had been tied together. This had been accomplished by using either a distinctive grey-blue wire, or some form of colorful cording, and it made the tufts stand up and out from their heads. In any other circumstances, this might have seemed comical, had it not been for their grey-blue eyes, or the hostile looks that they were giving her with them.

  The Dann were the ETR’s dirty little secret, and also an enigma. Although they had been living within its borders for three centuries, they were not natives of the Republic. Instead, they had been ‘found’ by ETR explorers, living in poverty on a lonely little world located well beyond the limits of the old Gaian Star Federation.

  The Dann claimed that their true origins had not been on Old Gaia, but on a world that they called ‘Injii’, which was situated far from any known Human space. Despite the remoteness of the planet they were discovered on, most citizens of the ETR refused to believe their fantastic claim.

  One thing that the ETR had never been able to ignore however was the fact that the Dann were very different than themselves. Aside from their strange eye coloring, and dark hair, they also stubbornly maintained their own language, which had no correlate to any of the Old Gaian tongues.

  Their customs were equally as unique. One of the most significant was that in the Dho Haak, things went along matriarchal lines. Among the Dann, it was the women, and not the men, who ran the homes, the businesses, and most importantly, the street gangs.

  This, and the fact that they occupied the lowest levels of the Republic’s economic ladder, had made them the perfect allies of the Sisterhood from the very outset of contact.

  Saantoz and many of her sisters in La Ermanyaa were Dann. They had come from the very streets that Maya was now riding through, and although she was taller than the norm, Saantoz’s eyes were as grey as everyone else that they passed, and there was no mistaking the flash of blue in her black hair when the late afternoon light caught it just right.

  For her part, Maya was glad that she had ventured into this ghetto in the woman’s company; her straw colored hair and green eyes marked her as a stranger, a Ranji, right away. The tingle between her shoulders also told her that the Dho Haak wasn’t a place that anyone wanted to stand out in. She had become quite familiar with this sensation on Delgen; it warned her that she was in a dangerous part of town, and to act with care.

  Saantoz however, drove with the easy familiarity of the local she was
, and presently they pulled in under a covered truck dock next to a small manufacturing concern. At a nod from her, Maya followed the woman inside, past rows of containers and busy workers, to an office cubicle. Waiting inside, were two women dressed in jumpsuits exactly like their own.

  The similarity didn’t end there; even their basic physical traits were the same and Maya immediately guessed that the one playing her, had donned a blond wig for the part. Nothing was said between the two groups, and their doubles left the office with their hats pulled low.

  “We have to change,” Saantoz informed her, indicating two stacks of clothes sitting on matching folding chairs. Maya’s pile contained a non-descript pink tank top, a matching cap, a black wig, as well as a pair of tight black pants. Saantoz’s attire was similar to this, but much flashier. A motto, in Dann, and written in cheap sequins adorned her top, and her pants had matching accents around the pockets and seams.

  There was also a man’s fedora, made of some kind of shiny, inexpensive plastic, which Saantoz put on her head at a jaunty angle. So attired, she looked every bit the Taangaan, the gangster, and seeing how natural the ensemble looked on her, Maya realized that it was not an act at all. The courier’s uniform had been the costume, not this.

  “Don’t worry,” Saantoz said. “Taangaan let Ranji like you ride with them every once in a while. You won’t stand out too bad as long as you’re with me.”

  She led the way back out of the office and outside. The delivery van was gone now, and a ‘lectri was waiting in its place. Its suspension had been lowered well past what was considered safe, and the windows were tinted to near opacity. A bright set of chromed rims offset this and it had a paint job that transitioned from a brilliant metallic green to an equally garish magenta, and back again.

  A woman was at the wheel, which she immediately surrendered to Saantoz, and there was a man in the back. They all looked like ‘hard cases’ to Maya’s experienced eye, and for a moment, as she got in next to Saantoz, she felt like she was reliving her days back on Delgen, when she had run with Nefaria, one of its many street gangs.

  The resemblance was only underscored when she spied the butt end of a Sisterhood Marine energy pistol sticking out between the two front seats and then what looked to her eye like compact military energy rifles tucked in underneath them. These were all within easy reach of the ‘lectri’s occupants, she noted. It was an important detail to remember if they encountered any enemies.

  “I thought we’d use a local ride,” Saantoz explained, seeing where Maya was looking. “The ESN sometimes uses satellites to watch us. They don’t dare come down here though. Even the howlaa, the kaapers, stay out of the Dho Haak; they know we run things here. So, now they can watch our doubles until they get bored and fall asleep.”

  Everyone laughed at this, and then the man behind Maya passed up a hand-rolled cigarette to Saantoz. She took a deep drag from it before passing it over. “Zogat”, she explained as she backed them out into the street. “A little fringe benefit. Take a hit. You’ll like it.”

  Maya didn’t hesitate, and inhaled deeply. Immediately, an intense feeling of euphoria and light-headedness overcame her. “Wow!” she exclaimed, to the accompaniment of more laughter from her companions.

  She didn’t care though. Whatever ‘Zogat’ was, she liked it. A lot.

  “Something from Danna,” Saantoz said. “The world that we Dann lived on when the Ranji found us. The Ranji come down to the Dho Haak all the time for this—when they can’t get themselves the glass.”

  Maya’s expression soured, and Saantoz smiled knowingly, switching over to Standard. “I know, the glass is bad stuff. Just the same, it makes money for us, and it makes the Ranji weak. That’s good for the Dann—and for the Sisterhood. You wrap your head around that, chica.”

  “I’m working on it,” Maya returned. This was more out of politeness than anything else. She would never ‘like’ glass, for any reason, but there was no point in starting an argument, especially since she was a guest.

  “Don’t worry about the Zogat by the way,” Saantoz added. “It’s not like the glass at all. It’s not poison--it’s just like taking a little vacation.”

  On this point at least, Maya could not disagree and she made sure to enjoy a little more of it before giving it back to Saantoz.

  “Oh, and don’t worry about Sarah either,” the other woman added. “I won’t tell her, if you won’t.”

  “No worries,” Maya grinned. It was nice to be with someone else who understood just how uptight Sarah was.

  A little Zogat would do her some good, she thought dryly. Sarah needed a mental ‘vacation’ worse than anyone she had ever met, and the image of the woman getting ‘stoned’ made Maya chuckle aloud. So did the notion of getting some of the drug from her new friends, and sprinkling a bit of it in Sarah’s food.

  Just for educational purposes, of course.

  Saantoz joined in her laughter, clearly entertaining the same imagery. Then her expression became serious. “We’re at our next stop,” she told her, inclining her head towards a bar at the corner, and a group of males standing near it.

  One of them, dressed in a dark red coat made of some kind of plastic, looked in their direction and stepped up to the curb as they made a U-turn across the street and parked, facing the wrong way. No one honked at them as they did this, or expressed displeasure of any kind.

  This told her a lot; the locals knew enough to respect the people in the ‘lectri, and leave them to their business. Thanks to her own experiences on Delgen, that meant only one thing. ‘Agent’ Saantoz and her friends ran with a very tough crew. A neighborhood like the Dho Haak only awarded such respect to apex predators.

  The man in the jacket confirmed this when he respectfully tugged at his forelock before leaning down to speak with Saantoz, and although he smiled, Maya could sense his nervousness without even bothering to read him. Despite the fact that he had a nasty scar running down one side of his face and was possibly one of the toughest looking men that she had ever laid eyes on, Saantoz and her friends clearly frightened him.

  The pair spoke briefly in Dann, and then Saantoz handed him the last envelope from Rabartya Vaasco. The man took it from her, being careful to pull at his forelock again before backing away from the vehicle.

  Saantoz accepted his deference as regally as any queen might have, and then pulled away from the curb, driving them only a few meters further before parking in a vacant lot behind the bar. As they got out together, she passed her a small, folded piece of plastipaper. “Hold on to this,” she instructed.

  Taking it, Maya had to ask her companion a question. “So? What’s your crew’s tag?”

  Saantoz inclined her jaw towards some graffiti on the building’s wall. In Dann, it was completely unreadable, but she translated it for her. “La Razzores, the Razors. What about your crew?”

  “I rolled with Nefaria,” Maya answered. “Back on Delgen. That was a while back though.”

  The Dann woman grinned. “I got the feeling that you were a Taangaa girl. I also think that you and I roll with an even bigger gang now, you know?”

  “Yeah, “Maya agreed. “I guess we do.” Unarguably, the Sisterhood and the RSE both qualified as ‘gangs’ and they were certainly ‘bigger’ than either La Razzores or Nefaria could ever aspire to become.

  As they entered the bar, the patrons inside gave them plenty of distance, and even though it was crowded, a table near the back suddenly became vacant as they approached it. The man with the red jacket, Maya noted, sat nearby, at his own table.

  Four beers quickly materialized, and they sipped at them, waiting quietly. After only a few minutes, Maya felt the energy in the bar change, and instinctively, she looked towards the entrance for the reason. Up to this point, she had been the only ‘outsider’, but the people around them were ignoring her, most likely because she was in the company of Saantoz and her fellow Razzores. Now though, she realized that everyone’s eyes were turned towards the man coming
through the front door.

  She recognized him right away. He was the assistant from the conference, who had been attached to the Commerce Secretary, and the glass addict. And if anything, he looked even worse than the last time she had seen him. His manner was nervous, and underlying this, she detected an unmistakable hunger that wasn’t for food. This, and the thin sheen of sweat covering his skin, told her that he was desperate for his next fix. A quick read only confirmed this.

  Now she understood why they had come to this bar, and what they were there to do. She managed to keep her seat only through sheer force of will, and watched as the addict looked around the bar.

  When he spotted the man in the jacket, he made straight for him, and sat down at his table without an invitation. Her augmented hearing, which had recently been completed by her little fleet of nanobots, brought his half-whispered words to her clearly. She hated what she heard, and she hated him even more for his weakness.

  “I need something,” he rasped.

  The glass dealer produced a small box, and placed it on the table. As the addict reached for it, Maya caught sight of his arm. Where the shirt sleeves revealed it, the skin was covered with small scars. They were from the glass cuts.

  His fingers never made contact with the box though. The dealer pulled it away from him at the last instant.

  ”Please—I brought the money, just like always.”

  The dealer shook his head. “Sorry, the price just went up.”

  “Listen, I’ll pay,” the addict pleaded, and to prove this, he fished out a crumpled wad of Paysolis from his pocket and put them on the beer-soaked table.

  “Not enough, güeyo” the man told him. “You can’t afford it anymore.”

  “Please—I’ve got to have it—I’ll do anything!”