by Jamie Sawyer
“All right,” I said, backing away from the robot. It was freaking me out.
“Have a better one,” the machine said. It circled around erratically. “Thanks for the memory, Colonel.”
Eventually I found a terminal point and called up a map to the visitors’ centre.
It was on one of the upper decks, a few sectors from Civilian Docking and the District. I found a monorail station – the lines ran across the base – but there was a ten-deep crowd of passengers waiting on the platform.
“What’s going on?” I said to a woman in uniform standing beside me.
She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “Who knows? It’s been like this for a week or so.”
“Really?”
“Sci-Div needs to sort this out. I’m working Systems Admin – over in Sector Sixteen – and we’ve had a sensor grid blackout for the last two days. No one seems to be doing anything about it.”
I grimaced in sympathy. The woman disengaged from the conversation, cursing as the overhead screen updated to MONORAIL OUT OF ORDER – SYSTEM FAULT.
“Figures,” I whispered.
The rest of the station was doing just as badly. Wall-screens around me flashed with error messages, if the terminals worked at all. Military and scientific staff were arguing, each accusing the other of not doing their jobs properly.
Ahead of me, under a security arch set with amber lights – the word INACTIVE on a monitor above it – was the Point’s visitors’ centre.
There had been a visitors’ centre at the Van Drake Penitentiary. It was a cold, severe building. Somewhere you went to be reminded that you were in the correctional, that you were held at the government’s leisure. Lots of the inmates lived for their visits. Not me. I only went there twice, during the first few weeks of my internment. My mother came the first time, my grandmama the second. I cried through both visits, pleaded with them to get me out of there. They looked on through the glass windows with dead expressions; told me that there was nothing they could do, that this was all my fault anyway. They were right, of course, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to hear it. I was only fifteen years old.
I recalled that memory as I walked into the Liberty Point visitors’ centre. It was a very different place: a big hall, with one wall claimed by military clerks sitting at desks. Screens above them showed available meeting times. Various museum-class exhibitions sat around the hall demonstrating facts about the Point: that it was the biggest military base in Alliance space; that it was the bulwark of defence against an incursion from the Quarantine Zone; that it had docking facilities for hundreds of starships.
I approached one of the desks. A middle-aged female clerk sat there, wearing a freshly starched grey uniform and an equally starched stack of hair.
“Yes?” she asked without looking up from her terminal.
“I have a visit arranged.”
“When for?”
“For today.”
She looked up and eyed me. I could feel her gaze lingering on the prison tat on my cheek, boring into me like a laser.
“Do you know whether the military employee that you wish to see is still stationed here?” the clerk said. “More often than not, they aren’t. There are six other stations in this quadrant, you know.”
“She’s definitely here.”
“She got a name, then?”
“Renée Coetzer. Citizen of Zeta Ret Arcology.”
The clerk sighed. “I’m supposed to confirm biometrics before I give out details, but as you can probably guess, the system is down. It’s a disgrace. What’s Ms Coetzer’s military agency?”
“I…I don’t know. Army, I think.”
“Let’s see…” the clerk muttered to herself. She typed angrily at her console then breathed out through her teeth. Shook her head. “Looks like this is going to be a wasted trip, honey.”
“What do you mean?”
A flurry of possibilities occurred to me in that split-second, each worse than the last.
She might’ve left the station.
She could be injured.
She might be dead.
The clerk ended my agony. “The visit has been cancelled.”
“What? By whom?” I said, probably a bit more aggressively than I should have done.
“Don’t take it out on me, honey. This must be about the only computer system working on the Point, because I can clearly see here that the visit was cancelled by the other party. Your Renée Coetzer cancelled it.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago. I guess that you were still in the freezers? According to this, she sent you an FTL message.”
“I didn’t receive any message.”
“Doesn’t mean that it wasn’t sent.”
Nate had said that local comms were down though, and if a message had been sent there was no guarantee that I’d have received it… The hurt burnt in the back of my throat and my eyes welled with tears.
“Maybe,” I said, swallowing, “the machine made a mistake?”
The clerk pointed at the terminal, at letters glowing on the screen. As I read the message, a sick feeling began to grow inside me.
DO NOT COME HERE.
I DO NOT WANT TO SEE YOU HERE.
“Can’t get much clearer than that, honey,” the clerk said, turning the screen back. “Sorry.”
I nodded. Stepped away from the desk; what more could I say or do? I’d sacrificed so much to get out here. And all for nothing because she didn’t want to see me anyway. If I hadn’t felt so shocked by the whole situation, I’m sure that I would’ve burst into tears.
The clerk pulled her most sympathetic face, which wasn’t very sympathetic at all. “For what it’s worth, this Renée Coetzer – whoever she is to you – is in the Alliance Army. She’s a sergeant. You maybe want me to send her a message? I can’t guarantee that she’ll get it – what with the systems being down, and all – but it might be worth a try.”
“Okay – yes, please.”
“Should I tell her where you’re staying?”
“The District. I’ll be in the District.”
I delved my hands deep into my pockets and wrapped the collar of the crew jacket high around my neck. I wanted to disappear. Today wasn’t going as I’d planned at all. I felt dejected and rejected. She wouldn’t even speak to me. Wouldn’t even give me the chance to explain. Was that how little she thought of me?
I commed Nate and he told me where to meet him and the rest of the crew. They had settled on a casino club called Blake’s Last Stand – probably named after some military prick like that Lazarus character. Pushing through the anonymous crowds, I found it easily. The bar fascia was painted in neon and holo-lights, with androids stationed outside.
I passed through halls of gambling tables – playing games with dice and cards, with cables running into the players’ data-ports. Some games looked like they were an unpleasant mixture of pleasure and pain: participants’ brows glossed with sweat, eyes wide with whatever perversion they were experiencing in the virtual realm. Nude Centaurian dancers prowled the tables and bars, surrounded by baying crowds of men and women. The place carried the dense smell of unwashed bodies and spilled liquor. If this is what the Alliance has been fighting for, then they can stick it. Blake’s wasn’t my sort of place at all.
That feeling that I could bump into her at any moment: it had returned in triplicate. Every uniform I saw made me turn my head. That was no small number, considering that Liberty Point housed millions of military personnel. I had been feeling nervous – dry-mouthed, clammy-handed – but the emotion was quickly turning dark. Today was supposed to be a happy day; a chance for us both to put the event behind us. Instead, now I felt embittered, lost and alone.
Right now I needed to be around people. I need Nate, I decided, and fuck whatever Lucina has to say about it. I wondered where he would be sleeping tonight, and didn’t care whether the rest of the team knew. Maybe it would do good to get all out, to play Lucina at her own game.
I was glad when I found the Edison’s crew in the corner of one of the drinking halls, away from the game tables. It was quieter here, although only a little.
The crew looked like they needed some respite from the action. Daryl and Lucina sat over fluorescent cocktails, arguing about something; Nate over a pitcher of beer, with a half-smoked cigar between his lips. For all his bravado and excitement, Sheldon sat with his head in his hands, withdrawn and destitute. As I approached, they all looked up.
“Tan, come join us!” Nate said. He beckoned me to an empty seat between him and Sheldon.
I slumped into the chair without answering.
“I lost everything,” Sheldon said. He shook his head. “Everything. Why did you let me do that, Nate?”
“You think that I could stop you?” Nate said. “I told you to pace yourself. I told you to take your time.”
“I just wouldn’t listen, Tan,” Sheldon said.
Nate blew out a lungful of smoke. “How did it go? You look like a ghost.”
“Maybe that’s what I am. And to answer your question: it didn’t go well.”
“But you saw her?” Nate asked, slowly.
“She cancelled. She cancelled on me, the bitch.”
Daryl slid a drink across the table. He gave me a comforting grin. His cheeks had gone crimson and he was obviously drunk. “Ah, Tan. Don’t worry about it. Ol’ Daryl has the solution.”
I stared at the bottle for a long while: just a relabelled bottle of beer, nothing more. None of them knew why I didn’t drink. It wasn’t something that I ever discussed. But after a day like today? Screw it. I grabbed the beer and swigged back a mouthful.
Daryl held up his own drink. “To Taniya Coetzer. To the best engineer that the Edison has ever had.”
“Hear, hear,” Nate said, scrabbling for his own drink.
“Until the next one, at least,” Lucina said.
“Don’t start on me today…” I said.
“She’s only joking,” Daryl said. He coughed on Nate’s cigar smoke. “Can’t you tell when my Lucy is joking?”
She glared sideways at Daryl.
Everyone drank long from their drinks. When I looked over the neck of the bottle, I noticed that Sheldon had perked up.
“Hey, Taniya,” he said, nodding across the bar, “you never told me that you had a sister.”
I looked to where Sheldon was staring.
And suddenly there she was.
The beer bottle slid from between my fingers and rolled across the table.
“She isn’t my sister,” I whispered.
It was an easy mistake to make. The years had been kind to Renée Coetzer, the woman who had birthed me back on the Arc. Dressed in a uniform – Army fatigues, I guessed – and a tight shirt that accentuated her muscled torso. I recognised, and could accept, that she looked an awful lot like me: from the bone structure of her face, to the shape of her eyes, to the spill of dark hair. But she was a better version of me, someone with a purpose in life. Just seeing her, I shrank back – felt my minuscule achievements diminish even more.
Everyone watched on in cowed silence. Even Lucina – so quick with her tongue, so fast to criticise – was quiet. It was as though they were suddenly aware of exactly why I’d travelled out here.
She’d had me young – when the Arcology had been looking to increase the birth rate, before the Alliance government imposed licensing restrictions on having children – but the similarity in our appearance couldn’t just be explained by the passage of time and genetics. The bald fact was that she had barely aged.
Sheldon couldn’t help himself. “Your mother is hot…”
“Shut up,” Nate said. He punched Sheldon in the arm.
Sheldon nodded with a sharp intake of breath.
She was searching for something. I saw her push aside a serving robot, turn her spotlight gaze across the gambling hall. I wrestled with the childlike urge to run and hide. But before I could even consider that, she was pounding across the hall – those big military jackboots bouncing towards me.
I swallowed. There was no prospect that she hadn’t seen me. She marched right up to the table.
This is it: the culmination of years of planning. It has to be now.
“Mom—” I started. Even as the word left my lips I knew that it wasn’t appropriate.
“Taniya,” my mother said calmly, in apparent contrast to her body language. “I thought that we sorted this out.”
As she spoke, I noted that she’d lost her accent. Such a minor, irrelevant thing, but another distance between us. I stood from the table. All those angry, dark thoughts evaporated. That was the effect that my mother still had on me: reducing a twenty-one-year-old woman to a child.
“I was in hypersleep,” I said, my voice pitching to a higher register, even sounding like a kid. “I didn’t get the message.”
“I sent it for a reason.”
“I really wanted to see you. Local comms were down. I went to the visitors’ centre…”
“I know, I know. And I wanted to see you too, but now isn’t good.”
“All right. Then when? I can get a pass for a few more days.”
I saw Sheldon nodding out of the corner of my eye, and Nate punch him in the arm again.
My mother gave me a condescending look. “I can’t guarantee that later will be any good either.”
“Then I’ll wait. It’s taken me so long to get out here. I need to talk to you. It isn’t as easy as just taking a Q-jump to the next star system.”
My mother’s face screwed up. I’d seen that look too many times before. It was the same expression that I wore before I was about to blow.
“I sent you a message.”
There was a jagged finality to her voice: I am your mother and you do not argue with me.
“We had a visit arranged,” I started. “I came to—”
“I told you not to come here,” she shouted, voice raised to be heard above the music.
She looked so angry that it hurt. She was physically imposing, much bigger and taller than me. Her arms were almost as wide as my waist: coiled with colourful holo-tattoos which moved when she did. On her right hand, across her knuckles, the name ARTEMIS had been stencilled.
“I didn’t get your message! I came here as we arranged—”
“As you arranged. You shouldn’t have come here.” She sighed and shook her head, struggling to control her anger. She’d always had such a hot temper. “Just go. Seriously: just get off the Point. Do it right now. I don’t want you here.”
“I’m not a kid any more. I can go wherever I like.”
“If you won’t go, then I’ll have you removed.”
Why was she so angry? I had expected this to be difficult, knew – after what I’d done – that today would be painful for both of us. This was much worse than just simple rejection. I shook with disappointment. After all of these years, I hadn’t expected this level of hostility.
I squared up to her. The noise around me had suddenly dropped away.
“Four years in the Pen, Mom. And when I came out, everyone was gone. You were gone. You know how that felt?”
“I’m fed up repeating myself. And now I’m ordering you to leave.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
A big, tank-like man with dark, buzz-cut hair and Venusian eyes stirred behind my mother. He was so muscular and well built that he looked of a different species to me, and I had no doubt that he was one of my mother’s soldiers. He broadcast violence like a radio signal.
“Everything all right, Artemis?” he said.
“Fine,” my mother said.
“Artemis?” I said. “Is that what you call yourself now?”
The other soldier eyed me up. “We got a problem here?”
“Nothing that can’t be fixed by moving to another bar,” my mother said.
The tension broke like ice. She backed away.
“Get out of here. Make it today.”
&nbs
p; She turned and left.
CHAPTER FIVE
LOUD AND LETHAL
“What was that all about?” Daryl questioned.
I was rigid with fury, unable to follow my mother even if I had wanted to. As far as anger went, I was certainly my mother’s daughter.
“Nothing,” I said. “It was nothing.”
Sheldon snorted and gave me a hard look. “Didn’t look like nothing from where we were sitting.”
“So that woman was your mother?” Daryl said. “This was your, ah, appointment?”
“It was the meeting I told you about,” I said as neutrally as I could. “It didn’t work out quite as I’d planned.”
I bit my lip; grabbed one of the drinks from the table – didn’t care whose it was. I drank deeply from it. The beer tasted foul.
“I haven’t seen her since I was fifteen.” I paused, considered how best to put the next part of the story. “We don’t really see eye to eye. Not any more.”
“That got something to do with the prison tattoo on your cheek?” Sheldon said.
I thought about just walking away. Considered getting drunk and lost on my own somewhere on the Point. Only Nate’s dark eyes kept me there; the concerned expression that had settled on his face.
“Look, I got into some trouble when I was a kid,” I said. “Served a little time.”
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Lucina said, becoming my unlikely ally. “You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to.”
“It’s all right. I’d rather just get it out.”
The water lapped against the outside of the aerocar. The plastic window fractured, spraying liquid inside.
“Jesus and Gaia!” I yelled, my hands pressed against the roof.
“We both got into some trouble. My sister and I fell on the wrong side of the dome, so to speak. I did time. End of story.”
“And that’s why your mother is so angry?” Daryl inquired.
I shrugged. “I was fifteen objective years old. I did four years in real-time in the Van Drake Penitentiary. It’s worse than a shithole; I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. When I got out, my mother had gone.”