Department 9

by Tim C. Taylor

  He stood beside his vehicle and regarded Darant and his wares with a vacant, but vaguely pleasant, expression.

  “This here’s your finest basten milk,” Darant told him. “Squeezed it out of the little lovelies myself not far from here.”

  The trader’s expression remained fixed.

  Darant felt his pistol pushing against him from the concealed inner pocket of his jacket. He didn’t like the way this was going down.

  A breath of dusty wind blew up the hedge-lined road, causing the trader’s lower face to tremble and Darant to understand. Beneath the man’s plain, mesh cap, he wore a face flap. It was essentially a specialized viewscreen, shaped and colored to match the lower half of the man’s face which was set into a neutral and inoffensive expression.

  People wanted these high-tech veils to hide behind, because in this crazy-as-shit world, you kept your thoughts and feelings as secret as you could.

  A camera and microphone were attached to the lapel of the man’s faux wool jacket.

  It was what everybody hid from.

  Darant felt convinced this reticent guy must have seen the outline of his weapons. Technically, light firearms weren’t illegal, but the Farmhouse had told him to keep them hidden in case he spooked any traders.

  Well, sod the Farmhouse, because the man didn’t seem bothered by them. Darant reckoned it was his lack of a recording device that was making the guy frown. The whole planet was insane.

  The man seemed to realize his thoughts were leaking, and he pulled the peak of his cap down to cover his frown. For a moment, his face flap’s illusion of his lower face failed. Then the pixels swiped away, and his mask was perfectly realigned. Neat that.

  The trader folded up a side panel on his truck to reveal tiered banks of goods for sale or barter.

  Food, entertainment, booze, medical and cleaning supplies. Power.

  Darant was careful to ignore the battery banks that were his principle trading objective, instead inspecting leafy purple balls that he decided were a local form of cabbage.

  He tapped metal cannisters like those he was offering for trade. “Basten?”

  “Yes,” the trader replied after a tiny hesitation just long enough for Darant to know what the man really wanted to say was, “Of course, it’s sodding basten milk, you moronic skragg. What else could it be? Cow’s milk?”

  “Dumb question,” Darant admitted in response to the pause, which was a giveaway he wasn’t fluent at this. Humans and the other Orion Spur exiles had been foot soldiers and worker slave races in a pre-jump tech alien empire. To be of practical use to their masters, their guts had been reengineered to eat food from pretty much anywhere, including the Perseus Arm. Zhoogenes, on the other hand, were Perseid natives. They couldn’t digest much unless it originally came from their home world, like the cute six-legged basten goats.

  With a shrug, Darant moved from the milk to the stack of battery banks which were in desperately short supply in the hideout he shared with his fellow deserters.

  Without lingering on the power banks, he quickly toured the available goods before making his offer.

  He pointed at the large bags of universal rice. “Twelve of these.”

  Then at the battery banks. “Ten.”

  Finally, he asked for one pack of water purification tabs, a couple of cheap viewscreen rolls pre-loaded with books, and sanitary gel for Lily. For laughs, he added moustache wax for the bearded monster.

  The man said nothing.

  He inspected Darant’s milk and took a metal cup from the cab of his truck to test a sample. For privacy, he turned his back on Darant before removing his face flap.

  Stupid planet.

  The trader indicated his wares on the side of the truck. “Your choices in exchange for all your milk. Agreed. Except…” He pointed to the power banks. “Only five of these.”

  “Ten!” Darant insisted. He guessed ten was a high number, but he’d never liked bartering. He considered drawing his knife and adding a sharp blade to the throat to the trading balance. It was more his style.

  He turned his back on the man, suddenly shy about the lust for violence that must be written on his face.

  Farmhouse Central had sent Darant here as a test. If he couldn’t do this, they weren’t any use to the rebellion in these parts. Darant couldn’t give two turds for the rebels, but Vetch and Lily seemed to think they were their best route off this world.

  Siding with rebels didn’t sit well with him, but he’d do almost anything to be shot of Eiylah-Bremah.

  He faced the trader. “All right, mate. You drive a hard bargain. I’ll settle for eight of those power banks.”

  The trader remained impassive behind his false face.

  “I’m not shifting lower,” Darant told him. “Take it or sod off.”

  “Six. Final offer.”

  The trader’s words were as dry as an airless planetoid.

  Six batteries. They would last for weeks. It would have to do.

  “Six,” Darant agreed, but quickly tapped four transparent plastic bottles bearing the handwritten label ‘whiskey-scotch.’ “And these too. And you’ll bring my milk cans back clean next week, yeah?”

  “Deal.”

  Without thinking, Darant advanced on the man, hand outstretched to seal the transaction with a shake.

  Naturally, given how messed up this senseless planet was, the man refused his hand, backing away.

  “Sorry, friend,” said Darant. “Here, let me help you load up.”

  Before taking the goods he’d bartered for, he helped the trader stack his cannisters of milk on the back of the truck.

  The gesture seemed to impress the man, and when they were done, the trader hesitated.

  What’s your problem now, mate?

  The trader stared pointedly at the bulging outlines of Darant’s weapons. “Saw police up the road. Coming this way. Here soon. Maybe in an hour.”

  “Police? What’s their business? Is it a raid? Is this a shakedown? A corrupt cop looking for a payoff? What’s the deal?”

  The man panicked under the barrage of questions and fled back to his driver’s cab. Without folding up the side of his truck, he sped away, spilling cabbages out of the open side, onto the road.

  “Strange fellow,” Darant muttered as he picked up the fallen cabbages.

  He stowed them under a thorny bush a short distance from the barter bay, along with the rest of his haul.

  Then he ran to Farmhouse Control.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 7: Lily Hjon

  When Lily finally found him, Darant was observing the farmhouse from behind the low stone wall of a pig enclosure. Police trucks were parked on the driveway, and heavily armed officers in body armor and helmets had secured the area.

  “Yat. Yat. Yat! I hope you know what you’re doing,” she muttered to herself. But he usually did, so she crept over to his position, keeping behind cover all the way.

  She got within twenty feet of him before a badly placed boot squelched in the sucking mud that lined their side of the wall, making him whip around and aim his pistol at her.

  “Easy, old man,” she whispered.

  “Damn it, Lil’. I could’ve shot you.”

  She closed the gap between them before replying, “You could have shot at me. You left your shooting spectacles back at the hideout.”

  “Vetch and Enthree with you?”

  “No. They’re holding down the fort, looking after the goats. Don’t worry, they’ll take good care of them. Especially your favorite.”

  “I don’t have a favorite sodding goat.”

  She opened her mouth as if in shock. “I’ll have to tell Hubert, you know. I’m not sure he’ll understand.”

  “Hubert’s a fucking goat. He can take it.” He shrugged and placed his attention on the farmhouse entrance where Carnolin’s distant cousin—Farmhouse Control as she called herself—emerged in conversation with the police commander, who was also a Zhoogene woman.

  “
Hubert’s cute, though,” Darant admitted. “And I find I like a little basten milk in my coffee. A man can have his pleasures, can’t he? Now, relax for five minutes, Lil’, and let’s see whether this is a friendly visit from the local guardians of the peace or whether we’re gonna have to shoot our way out.”

  Lily grinned at the eagerness written all over Darant’s face. There was no doubting which outcome he would prefer.

  That was why Lily had been dispatched to locate the ever-grumbling, book-reading trooper and bring him in. Of all of them, he was the most stir crazy, the one most likely to crack violently and spectacularly. Lily was the one best able to talk him out of doing anything dumb, and she had no desire to go out in a blaze of weapons fire that achieved nothing.

  Without much to occupy her mind, she was still struggling to absorb the pain of losing Sward. She wasn’t ready to lose another comrade.

  Sward’s sharp eyesight and acute hearing would have been invaluable right now. Lily observed the proceedings at the front of the farmhouse through a gap in the dry stone wall, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  The police commander and the farmer, who claimed to be a rebel controller in her spare time, were both Zhoogenes. If they had been human, Lily would have classfied what she was seeing as a cordial conversation between friends. But they weren’t. She’d served alongside Zhoogenes—had friends and lovers too—and she’d learned never to make assumptions about aliens she didn’t know personally.

  The conversation stretched on.

  “What the hell are they talking about?”

  When Darant didn’t reply, she added, “That was an actual question. Darant?”

  But Darant had gone, leaving a trail of boot prints in the feces-strewn mud that led to the driveway.

  She risked popping her head over the wall and swiveling it around to spot the mad frakker.

  No sign of him.

  Don’t you dare get me killed, Yat Darant.

  She slung silent curses at the trail he’d left in the mud. Then she pulled herself together and put her eye, once again, to the crack in the wall.

  * * *

  “They were just doing the rounds,” said the farm woman after the police left. “Checking I’m not billeting a rebel battalion in my pig sheds.”

  While Lily hid beneath a nearby trailer, Farmhouse Control spoke into the air as she topped off the pigs’ feed trays.

  “You appeared to be on very good terms with them,” Lily whispered.

  “I was speaking with Sub-Commander Rea Konestogga. She is a good person. Most of the police personnel are. It is when they arrive with Militia troopers that you know you are about to be plundered. Nonetheless, she defends a repressive dictatorship and must be destroyed.”

  This distant cousin of Carnolin Idoh said nothing more to her, preferring to speak comforting nonsense to her pigs instead. Lily couldn’t remember the woman’s real name. Carnolin had mentioned it once, before she was smuggled away to a safer place.

  “The sub-commander was worried about me.”

  “Oh, we’re talking again, are we?”

  “She said desperadoes were in the area. Militia deserters. She gave me a description of a bearded giant, a Muryani, and a tattooed human female.”

  “You see the circus I’m forced to travel around with?” asked Darant, choosing that moment to open the gate and walk bold as an emperor into the pig enclosure.

  “Where the hell have…?” Lily started but saw the two boxy items Darant was carrying under his arms and pivoted her question. “What are they?”

  “High power fuel cells.” He stopped beside Lily’s trailer, looking pleased with himself.

  “But you already got power banks. I found them under a bush.”

  “Can’t hurt to have more.” He squatted down to give Lily a quizzical look. “I took them out of the police trucks. Relax, they weren’t using them. Just spares.”

  Idiot!

  They were supposed to be laying low and learning to blend in.

  All through his performance, Darant had ignored the Zhoogene. Lily didn’t know what was between them, but they hadn’t gotten along from the start.

  Farmhouse Control took four steps toward the human with the stolen police equipment. For a moment, she looked impassively at him out of her green, alien face. Then she blinked her yellow eyes.

  That was all. But coming from someone on this messed up world of cagey paranoia, her reaction was like shrieking in rage and tearing out the shoots on her head.

  “It is time you moved on,” said the Zhoogene. “Shepherd will be making his rounds about now; he often comes in the wake of the police.”

  When she didn’t offer any elaboration, Lily crawled out from under the trailer and dusted herself down. “Shepherd?” she asked. “Who’s that?”

  The alien blinked. “You’ll see.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 8: Vetch Arunsen

  The man strode the paths at the edge of the fields, keeping to the most visible routes and taking care not to damage the crops, even when that meant backtracking and taking a detour when the path he was following was blocked by purple-stemmed rows of young bragdy beans. He wasn’t headed directly to the hideout, but his path passed less than a klick to the north, which didn’t feel like a coincidence.

  Vetch tracked his movement through the scope he’d detached from his PPR3 before abandoning his rifle to flee the city. Beneath a brown traveling cloak, the guy wore tough green camo gear, stout boots, and gaiters. The wide-brimmed, leather, relic-hunter hat topped off the man’s ensemble, making him look like a tourist.

  Reconnect with your soul on a 12-Planets walking vacation.

  It’s all about the journey…

  Yeah, Vetch remembered the dumb adverts that had been shut down when too many people had tried reconnecting with life by traipsing through combat zones and promptly wound up dead.

  Vetch laughed when the scope overlaid a targeting reticle on the man. Connecting with a blaster bolt would be just about right for a 12-Planets vacation walker.

  Could he be a genuine backpacker, though?

  Vetch flicked off the targeting overlay and took a closer look at the man’s face. He was in his fifties, perhaps, with a neat white beard that followed his lower jawline, partially concealing a red-and-white knotted neckerchief. Red and white were the colors of the Panhandlers, the Federation-wide rebels. His lips curled up ever so slightly.

  This was a man caught with a permanent half-sneer on his face. Someone who looked upon his fellow citizens of the galaxy and knew he was the one with the right answers. Vetch hated his guts already.

  Yeah, this could be a rebel recruiter all right. He looked more convincing than the Zhoogene farm girl, but maybe that was just Vetch relating more easily to another human.

  Vetch flicked the targeting overlay back on and wished he had the rest of his rifle with it. But what good would it do to take out one more rebel? The only future Vetch could offer his people was to hide out like frustrated rats until they were eventually captured and tested against the fabled torturers of Eiylah-Bremah. They needed to get off-world quickly to look for Green Fish and then team up with the rest of those Chimera Company assholes. Maybe this smug bastard in the brimmed hat could help them do it—unwillingly, of course.

  Still…siding with the rebels…

  He tugged at his beard.

  For years, he’d made allowances for the failures of the Militia and of the Federation as a whole. He rarely admitted that, even to himself, but he wasn’t a total fool. He knew what a hot mess Far Reach had become. Thank goodness the original Exiles were long since dead. He wouldn’t have wanted them to see how badly their descendants had failed them.

  This man in the fields…Despite what he probably thought, he wasn’t going to solve any of the galaxy’s problems. But he might lead them to someone who could.

  Vetch broke cover and jogged off to intercept him.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 9: Yat Daran
t

  “Eugh!”

  Hubert froze, the cute alien goat startled by Lily spitting out her whiskey-scotch.

  “What’s the matter, Lil’? Not used to a drink with bite?”

  Lily shot Darant a ten-megawatt glare that lit up the hideout they’d dug into the side of a wooded hill. “Whatever the hell kind of putrid rocket fuel you made us drink, it’s not sodding whiskey. What’s wrong with you?”

  Shepherd laughed that condescending fake laugh that made Darant want to ram the plastic whiskey bottle down the man’s throat and watch his eyes go wide as he suffocated. “It is rather an acquired taste, isn’t it? But quite agreeable if you stick with it.”

  Vetch growled into his beard.

  “No, really.” Shepherd poured another tot of the orange liquid Darant had bartered from the roadside trader—allegedly a form of whiskey—into his tiny metal cup. He held the dented thing in a pinch grip, wafted its aroma into his nose like an ancient Littorane high priest divining the hidden paths of the universe, and knocked it back.

  However, Shepherd was too cultured to do anything so coarse as to drink the stuff. Not immediately, at any rate. First came the noisy business of slurping whiskey through his teeth and lapping it up against the roof of his mouth. Only then did he gulp it down.

  “Like a ripe cheese,” he declared. “Yes, I’m definitely getting cheesy carboxylic from the breakdown of the high-protein rye.”

  Lily shook her head. “The only cheese I’m smelling is the stink from Darant. Dirty frakk-bucket hasn’t washed since we were sent to this planet.”

  “What the…” Darant dried up instead of snapping back that he was the most fastidiously clean of all three humans. Must be the whiskey muzzing his head. Only then did he realize Lily hadn’t just been acting weird since Vetch brought Shepherd in that afternoon. She was acting weird for a reason.

  “What the hell makes you think it’s a good use of my time to wash between my toes every day?” He shot a warning look at Enthree. “My feet don’t rot, and I’ve got better things to do with my valuable time.”