Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  And don’t you love that, Torres? This wasn’t like the last time: back then he’d chosen to tell her about the drug operation a rival distributor had set up in an abandoned warehouse on Fifth and Trevelyan, in Lead Row district. He’d discovered the operation by accident while couriering a package for Torres.

  Gau could have kept the info to himself and still been paid more than enough to afford his fix and some food. Instead, he’d shared it, and a few days later D2 Civil Sec had busted the operation, following an anonymous tip.

  The door behind Torres slid open, disgorging the second Baskar, now holding a portable holofoil sheet as well as the data sliver. Torres stood and exchanged some rapid-fire Bask with the guard, then turned to Gau.

  “Cecil says the footage seems to be legit.” Torres plopped back into her chair and gestured with an upturned palm for the Baskar to proceed. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

  The recording projected from the holofoil was visual only, no audio. Within a vid frame hanging in the air was a grimy, mildewed basement. It could have been the lowest level of a hundred buildings in Tarbreak or Los Gatos. Gau had wedged the tiny pinhole into a crevice in the wall at shoulder height.

  Faces were only visible for three of the five Osk in the room; the others’ backs were to the camera as they huddled in discussion, likely planning for one of the scavenging raids that helped the lost faction scrape by.

  Each of the three identifiable Osk had once been a high-value target. Lorsk Edrasshii was in the center of the frame, his red and black mane worn combat-long. His comms officer, Jarn Urevezzin, was on his left, the scars that marred his snout pallid gray under the basement’s fluorescent lights.

  Rounding out the trio at Lorsk’s right was Herask Illimersk, the gaunt chief medical officer who at various times had acted as Lorsk’s right blade. The timestamp in one corner indicated the footage had been taken a few days previously.

  After a minute or so, the footage began to loop, and Torres switched it off. “Okay. I’m interested. You got more footage like this?”

  Gau let out his breath in an inaudible sigh. “There’s more. There are about thirty survivors, not counting the principals in that video.” Though any one of those three alone would net a bounty hunter as much as the price on Gau’s head—at least, the pre-nanovirus-hijacking price. “Consider this vid a down payment,” he added.

  Torres tapped hard-sounding fingernails on the desk. “One problem. The Djandjer-Pralsh haven’t been relevant in a long time. Even if we bag them, who’s gonna care about a bunch of washed-up terrorists enough to pay out?”

  Gau let the terrorist label go. It was a common Terran misperception of the Djandjer-Pralsh faction’s aims and tactics, as crude in its way as the English translation of the faction’s name.

  He fixed a smile on his face. “Simple. We make them relevant.”

  She raised one eyebrow.

  “The Djandjer-Pralsh have always wanted to take down the White Arrows for what they did to the enclave,” Gau went on. “I suggest we give them that chance.” He let the moment hang for as long as he dared. “For this to work, I’ll need the Civil Sec files on the Djandjer-Pralsh. Specifically, the forensic profiles of the tactics they used in their attacks on the Church.”

  Torres’s second eyebrow joined the first. “That info’s not easy to come by. Civil Sec sealed their files on the civil crisis two decades ago.”

  “I didn’t ask if it was easy. I asked if you can get them.”

  A few moments of calculation flickered across her dark eyes. “It’ll take time, but I can get them.”

  “Good.”

  “Then what, oh master strategist?” Torres’s tone and smile were teasing, but only a little. He’d hooked her interest, oh yes.

  “The White Arrows lose a few bases. They’ll know they’re under attack, but they won’t know from whom, because we’ll cover our forensic tracks. Then, when the Arrows are roaring for blood”—Gau upturned his palm on the table, as though offering her something—“an anonymous source comes forward with surveillance footage that points to the Djandjer-Pralsh, and takes on the dormant contract. For a fee.”

  She studied the desk for a few moments, then called softly for Lottie and spoke a few words in the Baskar’s ear wedge. It disappeared through the back door.

  Minutes passed during which another rush of paranoia made Gau imagine the Baskar making a call on Torres’s behalf, perhaps to some other shadow market broker and through them to Expansion Intelligence: Yes, we got him alive; no, he doesn’t suspect a thing—

  Lottie emerged with a slip of paper clutched in one tendril. Torres took it and slid it over the desk. An address in Rush Harbor was written on the paper, with an alphanumeric string below that.

  “I keep an electronic safety deposit box at this address,” she said. “Lottie’s just generated a one-time code for you. Each time you access it, you’ll get another one-time code. Don’t lose it.”

  Gau didn’t dignify that with a response.

  “I’ll put the forensic data you need in there once I get it. For your part, I’ll expect to see more surveillance footage like what you showed me today.”

  “You’ll get it.” They shook in the Terran custom for sealing transactions. Torres’s hand was dry and warm. She made to rise, but hesitated when Gau remained seated. “Something else?” Her voice lost its friendliness as she said, “You want a down payment on the job, is that it?”

  Gau drew a negating line through the air. “I don’t expect you to pay me part of a bounty you don’t have yet.” In fact, he’d considered telling Torres she could keep the full amount of the fee for exterminating the Djandjer-Pralsh, but no—when it was over, he might need money. He had to be practical.

  “But there is something more. A way for you—us—to make even more from this, if we play it right.” He’d started off projecting hesitancy in his voice, as though feeling her out, before realizing he wasn’t feigning it.

  She picked up on his reluctance, faked or otherwise. “Spit it out, Shesharrim.”

  “Once you’re ready to start shopping for . . . specialized contractors . . . we slip information about me into the package on the Djandjer-Pralsh. Just enough to suggest I may be associated with them again. Nothing too concrete—just enough to up the bid for their contract, considerably.” He repeated the word she’d used with an edged smile.

  Torres’s eyes lit in a flash of what could only be naked greed, quickly masked by a neutral gaze over his head. Let her think he was motivated by the same speculative urge, that he didn’t know exactly which “specialized contractor” a lead about Gau Shesharrim would bring down to Aival, again.

  Mose Attarrish had been a fatal disruption to Gau’s plans for Fate’s Shears, back when the seph-killer had been an unknown; but now Gau had his place on the board all mapped out. He would lure Mose out of the shadows on the trail of Gau’s scent, an extra weapon in Gau’s arsenal in case the bounty hunters Torres hired failed to be thorough in their extermination. Mose had already carved through the ranks of Gau’s followers to get at him in Neo-Chicago. He imagined—guessed, hoped—the Djandjer-Pralsh’s remnants would present no more of an obstacle to Mose’s moral calculus. And if Mose managed to chew through them all and actually reach him? Well, he’d worry about that then.

  At last, Torres grunted, “Deal.” They shook again.

  Gau had turned to take his leave when Torres coughed delicately. “Something I don’t quite get, Shesharrim.” She waited until he turned back, then said, “You said the Djandjer-Pralsh have always wanted payback on the White Arrows. But what about you? Chii Ril was your home, too.”

  He made a fist by his side. “This is my payback.” For the White Arrows and the Djandjer-Pralsh both. Neither was innocent of the crimes he would avenge.

  The door had slid open to admit Gau into the dingy lobby when Torres said, “It’s not good for you, you know. Being wound so tight all the time.”

  “What?”

&nb
sp; A lopsided smile crossed her face. “Drink offer’s still open, if you stop by again. We’re business partners now.” Her smile twisted, turning cruel. “Or maybe you’d like something stronger.” She squeezed her fingers together beside her neck, miming injecting something into the artery.

  The sliding door whooshed shut after him. For a moment he stood staring at its surface, seething at Torres’s parting jibe.

  Gau’s composure lasted until he was halfway across the lobby, when the scale model of Diego Two entered his peripheral vision. With a sharp shout, Gau kicked a hole in the side of the model’s base.

  Chapter Five

  Sunlight dripped through the thick basement window, its rays made pallid and ineffectual by the fresco of gray-green mold coating the pane. Gau watched the world beyond the filthy glass, his back to the mold-scented basement room he’d chosen as a meeting hall. Figures of all shapes and sizes shuffled past on the sidewalk fronting the decaying tenement. Panhandlers, prostitutes, shadow market couriers, and other assorted scum milling in the heat of the day, their myriad forms reduced to silhouettes in the glare outside.

  Gau turned away from the window toward the waiting assemblage. Minus a few stragglers who were trickling in at the back, the dingy basement room contained the surviving complement of the Djandjer-Pralsh faction.

  Most of the Osk in the room were at least a couple of decades older than Gau. Many bore scars or other conspicuous wounds. One grizzled old oskvan sported glossy black prosthetics where he’d lost his arm and both legs on his right side.

  Several others had matte black spheres set into their skulls, replacements for long-lost natural eyes. The artificial devices were clunky approximates, the best the faction could do without the proper medical treatment they would have received within Oskaran’s sphere of influence.

  After all, the Djandjer-Pralsh had rejected such treatment when they chose exile.

  Underneath their accretions of wear and time, Gau recognized nearly all of those faces. They numbered around thirty now. All had aged, and some were missing, whom he guessed had died since he’d left them for Olios 3, but those who remained impressed themselves on his memory more than ever.

  The curiosity and sharp excitement in their scents called forth a shade of anticipation in him. It was an eager smell Gau couldn’t help responding to; he’d smelled it so often during the time he’d been among them, when they’d begun to shape him into his present self.

  Back then, every one of the exiled soldiers had been surrounded by an aura of calm watchfulness that seemed to rest a hair-trigger away from the violence inherent in their profession.

  Even after the massacre that had eaten the heart out of the Chii Ril enclave, the faction had continued the fight in whatever small ways it could. But what Gau saw now on those faces, beyond the momentary interest in his unexpected meeting, was closer to weariness than calm. Since his return, he’d talked to enough of them to learn what a devastating blow the fall of Za had been to their will to fight. That, and the time afterward spent hiding in the dark, their last hope of rescue dead along with Za.

  Gau might have pitied them, if he didn’t already hate them.

  A laugh drew his attention to the back of the room. Jarn Urevezzin, the scarred communications officer, slipped through the door. He was followed by his adopted daughter, a small-boned oskven closer to Gau’s own age. Ariveth Illission.

  A civilian like him—like he had been, Gau corrected himself—when the enclave had fallen. She still wore her mane clipped short, in two blue-black spades that fell to her jawline and contrasted with her skin, which was the gray of a cloudy predawn sky. The laugh had been hers, he guessed in response to something Jarn had said. Gau watched, he hoped surreptitiously, as she exchanged a few quiet words with Jarn, hoping the comms officer would say something else that amused Ariveth. He liked hearing her laugh.

  He took another quick headcount of the room. Lorsk hadn’t shown up yet. Gau was just starting to wonder if he was going to have to send for him when the door opened again, and the faction leader entered.

  The chatter quieted with disciplined speed as those assembled noticed Lorsk’s entrance. He strode to the front of the ranks as the other Djandjer-Pralsh wordlessly parted a channel for him. Many looked at Lorsk in expectation, though it was Gau who had called the meeting.

  Gau closed his teeth on his irritation. The faction leader had earned the Djandjer-Pralsh’s loyalty long before they arrived on Aival, when they had been part of a Fleet garrison stationed on Teluk. He’d been a leader longer than Gau had been alive. It was that very loyalty Gau was planning to use.

  “Well, Gau, what have you called us down here for?” Lorsk asked. Gau wondered if any of the others heard the edged undertone to the question that said, This had better be good.

  Ariveth, probably, but he doubted any others did. Gau fingered the data sliver in his cloak pocket, the one that contained the forensic data on the civil crisis he’d obtained from Torres’s drop box a couple days ago. But he didn’t remove the sliver yet. Instead he began to pace, a short arc that nevertheless encompassed the assembled Djandjer-Pralsh.

  “Diego Two is run by a faction of butchers and thieves. Of course, they don’t call themselves that, as they broker their influence from their ivory tower. But the Djandjer-Pralsh know the truth.” He glanced at his audience, gauging their reaction.

  Some snouts were raised in interest, though Lorsk looked bored—this was rhetoric he hadn’t just heard before, but on many occasions had said himself. Fair enough; this was simply the warmup.

  “Our own faction tried to undo this shadow influence, as is just and right, and our honorable challenge was met with slaughter. With dead civilians, even dead hatchlings. ” Gau let fury enter his voice, making it rise tremulously. Whiffs of outraged acidic musk told him his recitation was having the desired effect, opening the old wounds he’d meant it to. “Clutches that should have furthered lineages were annihilated. Friends and kaneshi sundered from each other. And for what? So the Church could keep the Osk and other non-Terrans down on every world they’ve been forced to share with us.”

  Murmurs stirred among the crowd, and some shifted uneasily, perhaps wondering what Gau meant to accomplish by reminding them of the tragedy. Chief Medical Officer Herask Illimersk raised a slim hand and stepped forward from his place beside Lorsk in the front rank.

  “I hardly see what can come of reminding us,” he said in a calm but firm voice. “We know our history. It is as painful for us, Gau, as it surely is for you. But we must live in the present, and attend to our survival as best we can.”

  Hide quivering in the shadows, you mean. While the Terrans consumed Aival and Olios 3 and who knew how many more worlds. Gau took the sneer he felt tugging at his lips and trans-muted it into a conspiratorial grin. “I didn’t return to Diego Two just to survive.”

  “Why, then?” Lorsk said. Humoring him.

  “To get vengeance.” Gau held the data sliver out for them to see. It looked dull and innocuous in his grip. “Vengeance for all of us, living and dead, against the White Arrows.”

  A few uncertain murmurs rippled through the ranks of assembled Djandjer-Pralsh. Near the back a trooper barked a high, disbelieving laugh, cut off as Lorsk glared over his shoulder.

  Lorsk crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s on that?”

  “The cornerstone of our vengeance. This contains data from D2 Civil Admin’s investigation into the civil crisis.” Gau deliberately used the Terran name for the Djandjer-Pralsh’s twenty-years-gone campaign against the Church, knowing how distasteful many among the faction found it. Indeed, he noted lips curl and snouts turn aside at the term. “Specifically, the forensic profiles of the tactics the Djandjer-Pralsh used in that campaign. The means to strike at the White Arrows in their own bases, eradicate them, and disappear without a trace.”

  A faint but unmistakable whiff of excitement turned Lorsk’s scent. He spread his arms to quiet the chatter that had renewed itself at
Gau’s pronouncement. “I need a lightpad with a data port. Now.”

  Ariveth shimmied through the crowd, a lightpad several versions behind the latest model under one arm. She handed the pad to Jarn, who proffered it to Lorsk as though passing a baton. Lorsk took the sliver from Gau, plugged it in, and began navigating through the files Gau had bought with their lives.

  For a while, the room was silent. The Djandjer-Pralsh crowded around their leader, those lucky enough to be in the front two rows scanning the forensic files along with him as the screen lit their snouts blue. Lorsk didn’t shoo them away, but room was made to accommodate his seconds-in-command, Herask and Jarn. Ariveth peeked over Jarn’s shoulder, even though she was a civilian. The only person excluded from the tableau was Gau; after all, he already knew what was on the files. Ariveth was the first to turn her attention from the files to him. “This is why you were in Neo-Chicago, isn’t it? To get this data.”

  Gau nodded, trying his best to keep his expression suitably solemn. On the inside he was both pleased and impressed that she was the one who’d made the connection from the allusions he’d seeded for the past four months since his return. “It took years to establish the contacts to obtain these copies from the Terran Embassy.” He let his voice grow bitter. “And even then, that traitor Attarrish almost ruined everything. It’s taken me this long just to locate and reestablish contact with the member of my network who obtained the record.”

  Lorsk hissed in disgust. “Mose Attarrish.” He spat the name. “I would never have suspected a seph had a hand in Za’s fall . . .”

  “Nor I, but when he confronted me, it left little room for doubt that he’d known about Fate’s Shears—about everything. I was lucky to escape with my life. Many of my team were not.”

  Lorsk removed the data sliver and passed it to Jarn as though it were a sacred historical artifact. “Take this to the storeroom’s safe. I want it secured at all times when not in active use.” Jarn hurried off to fulfill the order, and Lorsk turned back to regard Gau with a hooded, distant gaze.