by Lucas Bale
Shepherd didn’t reply as the woman reached them. There was a faint red tint to her eyes, and for a moment, Shepherd wasn’t at all sure it came from the light of the fire. He’d seen something like that on navigators before. She stared at him, and Shepherd noticed her muscles tense as he looked at her, so he turned away and indicated towards Soteria. ‘I guess we’re leaving now,’ he said. ‘Although I couldn’t tell you where it is we’re going.’
‘Yes,’ the tall man said after a moment. ‘That does seem to be the way of things.’
Soteria flew for only a few minutes before Shepherd, on instructions, set her down in a clearing, engines still running, but throttled down to low. Through the camera systems rigged to the bridge, he watched maybe sixty people push through the billowing wind created by the downdraft of fusion thrust, then settle into the hold alongside the villagers the preacher had brought from Herse.
On most, he picked out Kolyma fleet tattoos. Some carried hold-alls and packs, others carried rifles. All moved quickly, glancing around furtively as they entered. Shepherd caught some gazing up at the sky as though they expected to see something there. He wondered what that might be, what it was they were looking for.
He had thought it was impossible, but his feeling of unease actually increased.
When the preacher returned to the bridge and ordered him to level out above the canopy of trees, he did as he was told and flew to the co-ordinates he was given. Dawn broke across the forest and a harsh and wearying sepia glare spilled from the sky. The system’s two suns were hidden behind a thick pall of ash-coloured cloud, and colours everywhere seemed muted and washed out. The forest’s green seemed more like grey, and the vast steppes that stretched into the distance were a wan yellow. Soteria shattered the silence of the wilderness as she flew, kicking the fringe of the forest canopy. Between hills and through wide, open valleys she blazed, agile and for a while delighting in her freedom, until at last the preacher ordered Shepherd to throttle her down.
Spread across the steppes, in the lee of a half-ring of rocky hills and beside a wide, flowing river, lay a single, large settlement. As Soteria drew closer, Shepherd saw that the majority of the structures within it were tents, more substantial than those of the preacher’s camp back on Herse. These were semi-permanent, and some spilled smoke into the dawn sky through stubby tin chimneys. The rest of the settlement comprised old terraforming bunkers. Towers punctuated a wire fence surrounding the place, giving it the look of a Kolyma mining compound. Docked on makeshift platforms all around it, wherever there was space between the hills and the river, were other space freighters and interstellar craft.
People moved freely between the tents and bunkers as Soteria approached, and some turned to glance up at the freighter sweeping towards them. The preacher pointed to a clearing nearby and Shepherd set her down, the tall grass beneath the hull swirling in the storm of rolling heat as she lowered into her landing stance. A gentle thud as she touched down, followed by the familiar creaks and whines as the hull adjusted and the engines throttled down.
‘What is this place, preacher?’ Shepherd asked him. No Praetor or Peacekeepers, no customs to demand his licence, no Magistratus presence at all—a quiet, private little backwater with altogether too much going on that he didn’t want to know about.
‘Come with me,’ the preacher replied. ‘There are people I want you to meet. People who want to speak to you.’
Shepherd let him turn away without a reply. He watched silently as the preacher ducked through the airlock blast door and left the bridge. Answers, he thought as he powered down the ship. Do I really want answers, or would I rather continue in blissful ignorance? Sometimes, I just don’t know.
He rose, locked the ignition systems, and hung the crux around his neck. The landing bay ramp was already lowered as he dropped through the hatch and down into the hold. The passengers on his ship were filtering out, along with the boy and his horse. Shepherd leaned against a wall and watched as they shambled slowly down the ramp and out into the chill of the morning. He hardly noticed the tall man, still carrying the heavy rifle, standing beside him.
‘A doorway to yet more questions?’ the man said absently.
‘Probably,’ Shepherd replied. ‘That’s been my experience of the last few days.’ He turned to the man. ‘You’ve been aboard my ship, but I don’t know your name.’
‘Weaver,’ the man replied without looking at him. ‘Yours?’
‘Shepherd.’
‘Time to leave, I think,’ Weaver said.
‘You know what this place is?’
Weaver shook his head. ‘No. But I doubt we’ll have to wait long to find out. And I get the feeling we’re not going to like it much.’
As the wind swept inside and tugged at his coat, Shepherd looked round the empty hold and was abruptly overcome by an urge to head back up to the bridge and lift off of this planet. His throat closed up, and all he wanted to do was leave the preacher and all of these people far behind and head back to the outer rim systems. Find the Bazaar and get some work. Settle back into his old life. Alone, without the boy and his baggage, without the preacher and whatever game he was playing. Just him and his freighter—a tramp without much of a family, but without complications either.
Instead—and almost inevitably, he thought sadly—he sighed and walked down the ramp behind these people he didn’t know, into a settlement full of yet more strangers and unknown threats.
At the bottom of the ramp, his boots sank into shallow dunes of grey dust and sand, which the wind then kicked up into his face. He stopped and looked around him. The fenced settlement bore a twin-towered gate, wide enough to take the heavy trucks that he’d seen going in and out as they’d approached. In the high nest of each tower stood men with heavy rifles and oculars; at the bottom, by the gate itself, there were more armed guards. They nodded to the preacher as he approached, clearly recognising him, and, judging by their reaction, seeing in him a figure of some authority. Quiet orders were given, and two of the guards led the preacher’s villagers away. They took the boy, Jordi, too, as well as the new intake painted with their Kolyma affiliations. Those who remained, standing beside Shepherd, were the man who had called himself Weaver, the woman, whose name Shepherd did not know—and who had yet to even speak—and the preacher. Who the hell are we, that we’re so important? he wondered.
Another guard escorted them through the camp. Planks of wood had been laid out to make a walkway between the many hundreds of tents. Within that city of canvas, they walked past stacks of yellow barrels marked as oil or fuel, and tables on which sat half-assembled shreds of technology Shepherd didn’t recognise: seemingly random hunks of metal from which the dull light seeped, rather than glinted.
Heavy crates sat outside each tent, stacked one on top of the other, next to shelving with covered food, or racks with skinned meat. Lamps were rigged on tall poles, power lines running between them and off to some generator somewhere, maybe even hooked up to the fusion reactor of one of the freighters docked outside the camp. Between the poles and the tents, on hastily tied lines, clothes had been hung out to dry. A sports court had been built from more fencing, with steel grilles to make goals. Dogs ran between the tents, barking at each other and play-fighting.
As they passed, the faces that stared at them, through narrow and suspicious eyes, reflected the same tired, almost haunted facade. All of them wore civilian clothes, rather than military fatigues or armour, but most carried weapons, or had them laid to the ground beside them as they worked.
The preacher stopped by a tent, as soiled and anonymous as all the rest, and squatted down next to a man huddled in a blanket. They spoke quietly, then the preacher rested a hand on the man's shoulder and turned back to them.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Don’t speak, just listen.’ He turned away and disappeared through the flaps of the tent.
Weaver glanced at Shepherd, his face unreadable, then ducked down and went inside after him. The woman did
the same.
‘Don’t wait out here,’ the man huddled in the blanket said. ‘Don’t draw attention to yourself or this place. You’ve done enough of that already. In you go.’
Shepherd glanced around, at the people now watching him, then went inside.
The interior of the tent was laid out like a set of living quarters. A brazier in the middle, with new logs as yet unburned, and a kettle on a trivet; around it were several cots with blankets neatly folded on top. On one of the cots sat a man wrapped in a thick coat, a rifle slung in a harness across his chest, one hand on the trigger grip. He studied the preacher for a long while, then turned his stare on each of the others before nodding and standing. Still watching them, he eased the cot back with his free hand, reached down, and rolled back the rug on which the cot had been standing, revealing a wooden trapdoor in the dirt.
‘Good to see you again, preacher,’ the man said quietly. ‘They’re waiting for you.’ Turning to the rest of them he said, ‘You can leave your weapons with me.’
The preacher murmured something Shepherd didn’t hear, then lifted the trapdoor by gripping a ring set into the wood. Beneath it, steps led down.
‘Underground again,’ Weaver muttered. He took the heavy rifle off his shoulder and laid it on the cot. The man patted him down and then nodded. The preacher began to descend the steps, and without much hesitation, Weaver did the same.
Shepherd caught a faint twitch of what might have been a smile cross the woman’s face—the first time he had seen anything there other than a scowl. It almost improved her. She pulled a long knife from somewhere beneath her coat and set it down next to Weaver’s rifle.
The guard, if that’s what he was, gave the woman a look.
‘Don’t get the idea you’re going to touch me,’ the woman said, and stepped away.
The guard’s eyes narrowed and he looked her up and down before he said, ‘Open the coat and turn around.’
The woman did as he asked, and as she turned, she caught Shepherd staring. He flushed a little and glanced away.
‘Satisfied?’ she asked when she had completed a full turn.
‘Down you go,’ the man replied.
She disappeared down the steps after the others.
Shepherd took the pistol from its holster and laid it on the bed. The man watched him silently as he did so, then ran his hands up and down Shepherd’s body and inside his coat before motioning for him, too, to descend.
C H A P T E R 25
ELIAS RETURNED to his outbuilding on the canton’s estate only after a complex series of evasions had persuaded him he was not being followed. He was even more assiduous than usual, he recognised, because inside him his anxiety welled. He quietly swept the walls of the small building, and the scrub around it, for any trace of tetrabit interference—anything that might indicate the presence of some intrusive surveillance. When he found none, he was silently relieved. He slipped inside and again performed the same laborious task.
Then he took two nano-drives from his pocket. The first contained more data stolen from his master’s systems; the second was the one given to him by Sarin. He slid the first into his module and waited for the unit to consolidate the contents.
His mind drifted back to Sarin, and he felt the sadness of the meeting more keenly. She had been afraid, unusually for her, and more wary than he had expected. Sarin Romanov was no fool, and whatever had kindled that fear—something more than the impending political battle between his own House and Barents—she was not intending to tell him freely. The simple fact of a clandestine war between Houses was enough to cause him considerable discomfort, but whatever else lay behind it, whatever drove it, was something he had to find out.
The module completed its consolidation of the nano-drive’s contents and displayed them. Elias leaned forward and examined what lay before him.
There was more from the military deployment on Herse, from the specialist unit his master had placed there deliberately, secretly. Another report from the reconnaissance unit commanded by the man called Neilssen. There was also more information passing through some covert contact Elias had as yet been unable to find, but it was a stream of incomprehensible information Elias did not understand—tactical data from some kind of phased scanning system. Again Herse, he thought. So much of this appears to lead back to Herse.
He ejected the drive and slid in the second—Sarin’s drive. It took longer to consolidate; there was a vast amount of material. When finally it was ready, he began to work through it.
It seemed so anodyne—nothing that explained much of anything. Terraforming contracts, mostly. Could that be all there was? Barents had recently been awarded a host of new terraforming contracts, but that was public knowledge. There was no need for Idris to be involved in that; no need for the conscientia. ‘So what then?’ he said aloud.
He scrolled through the documents, searching for some meaning to the enigma that confronted him—the riddle of his friend’s lonely death on a polished stone walkway and the puppeteer’s interest in his canton. But all he found were more documents relating to the terraforming contracts and other trappings of colonising a new world. Machinery and tools, transport ships, survey teams, even the requisition orders for Kolyma lotteries. Negotiations for the supply of hydroponics and bio-regenerative systems for the mission teams. Freight contracts between Barents and Samarkand. None of it was sensitive in the least. Of course, the Quorum would control who might have access to such documents, but those in Barents would have good reason to have them.
Several hours passed as Elias continued to scroll through the contents of the nano-drive. He was almost ready to give up, to give his weary eyes a rest from searching those many thousands of pages and hundreds of thousands of words, when just one caught his attention. A single word that, on its own, standing starkly on just one page, chilled him utterly.
Aden.
His own canton.
Aden held no interest in terraforming or colonisation. Its own operations were far removed from the machinery of world-building. Their assigned directive was in structural and design matters relating to the permanent tavara in the Core alone. Aden would have no reason to be involved in contracts for terraforming. It would be many years before Aden might be called upon to provide input into a new colony—decades, even—and even then it would need to bid like any other canton. Yet here it was, receiving information from Idris, and passing more back to him. involving itself in the requisition of everything required to terraform and to build a new colony.
Elias conducted a quick search for every document containing reference to his own canton; he found several more, similar to the first. Why? he thought. Why would Aden be involved in any of this? He took in a breath and shut down the module. For a moment, he rested his hands on it, staring at the blank wall ahead of him, trying to piece together the puzzle that now plagued his mind. Eventually, reaching the frustrating conclusion that there was little chance of resolving it without something more, he hid the module away, then replaced everything so the outbuilding looked disused as it always did.
When he arrived back at the residence, one of the house boys approached him.
‘A note came for you, sir,’ he said, averting his gaze.
‘Do you know who delivered it?’
‘No. It was left for you. I don’t know by who.’
‘You may go,’ Elias said. The boy sprinted away as Elias opened the note. He read the words silently to himself, then folded it again. For a long time, he stood there, doing nothing more than breathing; calming himself. Then he nodded, an acquiescence he forced upon himself, and burned the small slip of paper.
‘And so, Elias,’ his puppeteer said quietly. ‘Have you anything to tell me?’
The note had been clear and unequivocal in its demands. A summons to the passage where the puppeteer had first lured him in. More instructions had been received there—to continue on, at a specified time, to another, more secluded place. A quiet room in a low, anonymous building
. A temporary meeting place that could be connected neither to the puppeteer nor to Elias. This Elias had done, watching for signs of surveillance as he’d made his way. Of course he had found none.
He knows the game as well as I do, Elias thought, studying the man sitting across from him. I wonder, will I be able to discover who you are, or is your identity too well hidden, even from me?
‘You knew Idris was going to die,’ Elias replied, ‘or that he was already dead. You also knew that his death, and its implications for my own life, coupled with your intervention, would result in my conducting the investigations you wanted me to.’
The man smiled. He was comfortable in his seat, unfazed by anything Elias was saying. His face was calm, showing neither the perspiration nor flush of stress. Instead of interrupting, as a man under pressure might have done, he said nothing and allowed Elias to continue. Yet he must have been under pressure, Elias reckoned. He had gained nothing from his puppet so far, and someone, somewhere, would soon ask why.
‘What I don’t understand is why you think I will betray my master. A good man who has employed me, and looked after me, for over twenty years. A Consul no less. What is it that would compel me to tell you anything?’
‘You know, Elias,’ the man said, the empty smile still playing on his thin lips. ‘When I discovered who you were, I was pleased. Do you know why? Let me tell you. I knew I wouldn’t need to threaten you. You’re nobody’s fool. You already understand that I wouldn’t have approached you at all had I not had something in my pocket to persuade you.’
There it is, Elias thought. Why you are so comfortable. Why you’re so sure you’ll get from me what you want. So let’s see it. Let’s see what it is you have. ‘I’m afraid I must disappoint you.’
‘This opens a door you cannot close, Elias,’ the puppeteer said icily, canting his head to emphasise his disappointment. ‘Once you see the gravity of what is happening—the weight of your place in it and how seriously we take it—there is no going back. Are you sure this is what you want? It would be much easier on you to simply tell me what I want to know.’