Empire of Dust

by Jacey Bedford

  “Ronan says you’re ready.”

  “He told you that?”

  “He said I’d have to be patient, and I’ve tried, but I can’t just sit around waiting any longer. I need to know I can trust you.” He pushed her away to stand on her own feet, turned, and started to walk toward a rocky outcrop. “There’s shade over here.”

  She followed.

  “Here, these rocks will keep the worst of the sun off.”

  They also cut them off from the flitter where Youen and Mohan were waiting.

  “Sit.”

  She sat in the shade and Ben flopped down next to her. Above them, the clear deep blue sky began to waver and the aurora crackled into life, cascades of lace rippling as if disturbed by celestial winds.

  “Talk.”

  “About?”

  “Anything. Stuff that’s not blocked. Start with your childhood if you like—he’s hardly blocked that.”

  “My parents split up when I was—oh, let’s see—seven, I think. Mom’s a marine biologist with a receiving implant and Dad was a hydro engineer, a Psi-Mech. I spent some time with him and some with her, racking up cryo because it was the cheap way to travel. Then Mom got another new boyfriend that she was pretty serious about, but we didn’t get on, so I was shipped off to the Erin colony where Dad was on the engineering team for a new dam project. I was supposed to stay with him permanently.”

  It hurt to think about it, even now. “I was so self-absorbed that I completely failed to pick up his spiraling depression until his line manager flagged it up. He was advised to check into a rehab program if he wanted to retain any chance of keeping his Psi-4 status. He seemed better after that, but I think he was mostly putting on an act for my sake. He died in an accident, if it was an accident. The report was inconclusive because of previously assessed suicidal tendencies. Besides, there wasn’t much left of him after he fell from the dam wall into a swarm of digger bots.”

  Her voice cracked. “I couldn’t go back to Mom, so I spent almost a year with Grandpa Carlinni on Earth—in Cornwall. He was old. I guess we’d all spent so much time in cryo that the years had slipped past for him. He was clever, though. He’d been a professor at Oxford University. He got me a scholarship to Aurax, the Alphacorp boarding school for psi-gifted kids in the Saharan city of New Tamanrasset. I got my implant at the age of fifteen and graduated to Academy One on the outskirts of Paris three years later.

  “I left the Academy as a Psi-1 with enough points on my degree to walk into any job I wanted, so I opted for extra training and then Special Ops. By the time I was twenty-four, biologically that is, I’d worked my way up to Number Three. I went to Earth to take the next set of exams, and that’s when I got headhunted by the Spearhead Teams. They were offering instant promotion and almost twice the pay with a fast track up the ladder for Psi-1s. I did a couple of years with them as a Number Two, and then . . .”

  She swallowed, clenched her teeth, and bit down hard to keep the nausea at bay. Ronan says I’m ready.

  “And then I got assigned to Alphacorp’s Special Ops headquarters in York. That’s when I got mixed up with Ari. When Ari and I first got together, he was sweet. I know that doesn’t seem possible, but he was. Sweet and funny and . . . passionate. He had this saying, you know, about how his operatives shouldn’t ever expect drums and trumpets and that a job well done was its own reward.”

  “Crowder used to say the same thing,” Ben said. “I used to tell him he was bullshitting us, but he was right. Psi-techs will never get a parade. We do what we do, but it’s always best not to draw attention to our differences. Deadheads will never truly figure us out and mostly they prefer not to.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the rock . . .

  • • •

  She’s in Ari’s garden house on the edge of the city. York is beautiful in the spring. The window is open, and she can smell the night-scented stocks outside. She’s never lived in a house with a garden. Ari must be loaded.

  She sighs and then shields her thoughts from him, even though she knows he’s not psi-tech. Loaded in more ways than one. She rolls over on the bed. The silk sheet moves with her. She stretches and smiles. Ari rests his elbow lightly on her belly and traces delicate patterns on her breast with his fingertip.

  They’re in that limbo place between lovemaking and the real world.

  He nuzzles her forehead and leans right over her, propped up on one elbow. Now he tastes the small faint scar on her shoulder and licks salt from her skin, his tongue traveling across the swell of her breast.

  After a lifetime she remembers to breathe.

  • • •

  Her body reacted to the memories of sex with Ari, and she yanked her mind to the present.

  “He . . .” She cleared her throat. “He asked me—no—he told me I was going to be his lover and then he persuaded me to work for him.”

  “You already worked for him.”

  “A job within a job. He said he needed to know how things worked at the kind of level he couldn’t get from reading official reports. It didn’t seem so bad; not like telling tales—I mean—he was in charge of the whole thing. I agreed and . . .”

  “To being his lover or to working for him.”

  “Both. He’s just not the kind of man you turn down. He’s—well—forceful, I suppose. I don’t mean he coerces people, it’s just that he’s got the kind of personality that’s hard to resist. What Ari wants, Ari gets.”

  “And what did you want?”

  “Then? Ari. No doubt about that.”

  “And you continued going on away missions?”

  “Yes. I wanted my career, too. We both decided that was the best thing, at least for the time being. I knew there’d be some problems. There was the aging differential for a start, with me doing missions with cryo travel, but Ari didn’t like to be tied down and I knew he took other lovers while I was away and . . .”

  “And did you?”

  “I could have, I suppose, but I didn’t. With cryo, my subjective time away was shorter than his. Besides, do you really need to know that?”

  “Just curious. Go on. You were going to tell me about being Ari’s spy.”

  “That makes me sound like I was selling him secrets. He was entitled to know, you know.”

  “Would he have been entitled to know about the platinum if you’d been assigned to a mission like this one?”

  “Did you tell Crowder?” She saw his face and knew that he had. “Anyway, that’s not a fair question to ask. The circumstances here aren’t the same. This isn’t Alphacorp. I’m not the same. If that’s all you’re bothered about, then this conversation ends here.” She made as if to get up, and he reached out for her arm.

  “I’m sorry. Go on. Yes, I told Crowder. The raw platinum data had already gone in the weekly packet before we spotted it. I needed someone to put a stop on it at the other end. Tell me about Ari.”

  She bit her lip. Nausea settled in the pit of her stomach, but she forced herself to ignore it. There were things about Ari she could tell. It wasn’t all classified information. Ari; it was a big subject. Where to start . . .

  “I loved him. It was as simple as that. We were marvelous together and I hated being away from him, but gradually . . . gradually I came to appreciate that our relationship was stronger for being episodic. The time away made the time we had together more intense. I can’t quite pin down the first signs of change. I didn’t want to think about it at first. He did age more than me, of course, but it wasn’t just that. He developed a cruel streak. Maybe he had it all along and just kept it well hidden at first. Sometimes it seemed to be nearer the surface and . . . oh, small things. Intimate things. Let’s just say he changed, and I didn’t like it, but by the time I knew I wanted out, I was stuck with it.”

  • • •

  She’s trying to tell Ari that she wants to quit, but he won’t listen.

  “I don’t accept resignations from my special people,” he says, and the tone
of his voice is final.

  “Ari, you don’t understand. I’m not cut out for spying, and I don’t like deceiving people.”

  “You’re excellent at it, I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You won’t lose me. I’ll still be with Alphacorp.”

  “Ah, no, that’s not possible. Do you know what happened to the last person who tried to resign from my team?”

  “No.”

  “No one else does, either, though I think Mr. Craike might have some idea. I left the severance up to him.”

  He emphasizes the word “severance.”

  There’s a long silence.

  • • •

  “Ari’s not the kind of man you just up and leave. Anyway, I was still in love with him, addicted to him, I suppose. Does that make sense, or am I rambling?”

  “I get the picture.”

  “It all came to a head when I was posted on a troubleshooting mission to Felcon.”

  Another wave of nausea hit her.

  “You’ve lost all your color. Here.”

  He handed her a pouch of cool water from the pocket of his suit. “Is it the block?”

  She sipped and nodded.

  He held out his hand and she took it, feeling Ben’s strength and energy flowing in her direction.

  “Fight it. You’ll never have a better opportunity. You’re halfway there already.”

  She swallowed hard. He was right—Ronan says I’m ready—but it felt like she had an egg stuck in her throat. It’s my free choice. A headache sat just behind her eyes and she tried to will it away. I will not be ruled.

  Mr. van Blaiden wants to know that his secrets are safe.

  I will not be ruled!

  “I was leading a section and Robert Craike was in charge of the mission.”

  “Craike!”

  “You know him?”

  “By reputation. Go on.”

  “The platinum extraction company—a subsidiary of Alphacorp, but I didn’t know that at the time—and the local farmers were head-to-head over a land dispute. The miners were stripping minerals out of land that wasn’t theirs, and the farmers were justifiably outraged. Alphacorp promised that ore would be shipped off planet for processing, but then they began laying foundations for a hyper-processing plant, and you know what that does to land.”

  Ben nodded.

  “There wasn’t enough farmland on Felcon to share it with platinum mining and processing. Very much like Olyanda, the habitable regions were too small, the surface deposits just right for strip-mining. Anyhow, before we arrived, there had been a couple of inept sabotage attempts on mining operations and the situation was ready to erupt. Our brief was to find a peaceful solution, but they sent us equipped with heavy weapons and live ammo. I should have realized then, but . . .”

  She stopped talking to breathe deeply, aware that she was gripping Ben’s hand hard.

  “Craike’s no peacemaker.”

  “He didn’t even try. He deliberately provoked trouble. He backed the farmers into a corner. They retaliated. It was a bloodbath.

  “I took a stand against Craike and gave my team the option. Four bailed—too afraid of Craike, and I don’t blame them—but the rest stuck with me. We confronted him outright . . . did it by the book, Alphacorp regulation 1041: procedure for censuring a superior officer on active duty. I didn’t expect him to concede gracefully, but I didn’t expect a stand-up battle, either.

  “He killed Arak, my Number Two, just blasted him without warning, and shot the knees out from under Nathan and Lori Goss. Then he ordered the rest of us locked up pending trial for mutiny. Up until then it had been a legitimate protest, but one of our jailers told me Craike had reported Arak, Nat, and Lori as killed in action and had erased my official complaint. That’s when we knew we were in deep shit. He could just dispose of us, and none of us trusted him not to do it. The three of us managed to escape: me, Torrence, and Brina, who’d had some personal trouble with Craike earlier. We headed across the Araspika Desert on crestedinas to where we knew the farmers had an enclave that hadn’t been touched by mining, but we never got that far.

  “Torrence was injured in the escape. We didn’t realize how badly because his buddysuit looked after him, but when we stopped, I saw the burns.”

  • • •

  She’s holding Torrence in her arms in the glaring white noon. Felcon is a pig of a planet. Here, on the edge of the Araspika Desert, the heat is formidable. Each breath tastes like an oven.

  She tries to shelter his face from the sun with her body, but it’s a futile gesture. An energy blast from Craike’s bolt gun has cooked a thick line across his chest. He’s done well to get this far. Maybe she should have kept going and let him die on the move, but she wants to believe he still has a chance.

  Common sense tells her to leave, but she can’t, even though she has nothing to offer but companionship in Torrence’s last, lonely minutes. His buddysuit has administered painkillers, though its damaged circuits are failing now, and he is, as far as she can tell, free from pain and trapped in a narco-haze.

  She considers surrender—get him into a cryo capsule and home to a proper medical facility—but it’s already too late. Craike won’t show any mercy.

  Torrence’s breath rattles in his throat, and then he doesn’t breathe in again. There’s nothing more she can do. Leaving his body on the hillside she takes off across the desert, riding a crestedina.

  She’s exposed against the baked earth with nowhere to hide. She can’t outrun the flitter, but the thought of that bastard, Craike, makes her try. She touches her heels to the crestie’s flanks. It grunts and stretches out into a lope. Keep it up. Each bound takes her closer to safety. She clings to the balance strap, pulling herself tightly into the saddle; one slip on this uneven terrain and she’s done for.

  The flitter sounds seem to be directly behind her now.

  She daren’t look round, but she can imagine the forward mounted lasers aiming at her. She feels as though she has a target painted between her shoulder blades. There’s an empty ache where she expects the blast to hit.

  It doesn’t.

  The machine roars low overhead, barely missing her. The crestie, oblivious to all but its rider, runs on. The machine circles and comes at her again.

  She’s lost. There’s no need to run the crestedina into the ground. The realization bumps in her belly and, despite the heat, a cold sweat beads her skin.

  She eases up and the beast slows and stops, its coffin-shaped head down and its breath coming in snorts through the soft flaps of its nose. Torrence’s riderless mount is way behind, but it keeps running until it catches up.

  She slides from the saddle with her knees trembling, though whether it’s fear or exhaustion she can’t say. Quickly she strips both saddles and bridles and smacks the crestedinas on the rump to set them off down the hill. They shamble away, but then lose momentum, stop and begin to whiffle for sand-spiders between the skeletal remains of the sparse spring grasses.

  The flitter glides in, drops its speed, and settles into its antigravs, landing lightly. The bubble top swings open. Three buddysuited figures spring out like mobile jack-in-a-boxes, with weapons primed. She leaves her sidearm in its holster; she doesn’t want to kill teammates, and she can’t kill Craike without going through them. Craike emerges at a more leisurely pace. He knows he’s won.

  “Five down, one to go,” he says, raising his energy-bolt gun. “Funny, I thought you’d be the most difficult to catch.”

  Cara looks past the muzzle, stares him straight in the eyes, and says nothing.

  She grapples with the adrenaline clutch in her belly and pushes the all-too-real fear out of the way before it chokes her. Craike’s finger begins to close on the trigger. He swings his arm sideways in an arc and the blast of energy from the bolt gun cuts the legs out from under her crestedina. It goes down with a single bellow. He continues firing and the blast sears through its belly. Blood and intestines splatter over the dried-up ground. The
stomach-turning stench of gore and baked shit rises in the heat. Torrence’s crestedina begins to bray very loudly, continuing until Craike blasts half its head away.

  He levels the gun at her. His smile is carved into his cheeks, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

  “Don’t think Ari van Blaiden can protect you now,” he says.

  “You’re talking instead of shooting, Craike. Maybe you don’t want to upset Ari after all.”

  Craike nods to one of the men. “Put her under,” he says.

  The man slaps a blast pack to the side of her neck. She feels something cold and sharp. Her knees give way. Then nothing.

  • • •

  Cara looked up at Ben, but his questions had stopped.

  “This next bit is going to be difficult, I think.”

  “Here.” He opened his legs and pulled her to sit between them so she was leaning with her back against him. Then he gripped her with his thighs, wrapped his arms around her, and leaned his forehead against the back of her skull. She felt cocooned and safe.

  “Open.”

  She let him into her head and brought all the memories she needed to the front and shared them. They attacked the block together . . .

  • • •

  She’s in a holding cell, cold and scared.

  Scene shift. Donida McLellan is smiling at her, and the smile is anything but pleasant.

  Scene shift. Ari is standing turned away, fixing a drink. The carpet is warm beneath her bare feet. She feels a rush of lo . . . don’t go there!

  Shift. Ari’s doubled up on the floor, crouched over his groin.

  Shift. She’s grabbing him from behind, reaching for his throat. Squeezing, pinching.

  Shift. He’s out cold, and she’s staggering under a wave of sickness, but reaching for his buddysuit and then seeing his handpad.

  Shift. She’s downloading information.

  Shift. She’s fighting to control her breathing, walking down the corridor trying to look as though she has every right to be there . . .

  Shift. She’s out into the light.

  Shift. She’s on her knees heaving up bile.

  • • •

  “Enough,” Ben said.