Sly Mongoose

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “A truce with you.”

  Pepper walked forward again, and they all moved back to the walls. “A truce? Am I that dangerous?”

  “Currently.”

  “Yes.”

  “Too dangerous.”

  “To attack.”

  “Could miss.”

  “New objective.”

  “What is your objective?” Grenada asked.

  All heads turned to regard her. The words moved from voices right to left this time. “Expand.”

  “Seek.”

  “Seek what?” Pepper asked.

  “Cannot.”

  “Tell.”

  Four of the infected ran into the airlock and shut it before Grenada and Pepper could move.

  “What are they doing?” Pepper moved to the airlock, sword still in hand.

  “Leaving,” the Swarm said as a whole. Another set of four ran for the airlock, but Pepper and Grenada moved to get in the way.

  “Leaving, how?”

  Grenada dodged another grouping of four. “Look, there.”

  She pointed at a large cocoon where one of the infected crew wearing a spacesuit lay strapped down. Two hung over the contraption; they’d been moving it toward the airlock.

  “How many already left this way?” Pepper asked.

  The Swarm didn’t answer. Pairs of empty eyes regarded them.

  “They can’t survive more than a couple hours in a spacesuit,” Grenada said. “Let them die out there.”

  “That’s a handmade heat shield,” Pepper said. “That beanbag-looking thing. It’s a blunt cone.” They had taken a fireproof polyurethane foam from the ship’s damage-control kits and made ablative heat shields. It was almost suicidal, but it worked. In theory.

  “A heat shield?”

  “How many infected have already left the ship?” Pepper asked as the Swarm just stared at him. “We’re moving too quickly for them to just jump off the ship and hope to get picked up, so if they’re going to aero-brake and parachute down to Chilo, they must be trying to spread there.”

  “But why wouldn’t the League try for New Anegada, why Chilo?”

  “Why Chilo is a good question.” Pepper wanted to know that as well.

  The Swarm spoke again. “Have you.”

  “Ever.”

  “Had a compulsion?”

  “Like breathing?”

  “Built in.”

  “Deep.”

  “Is ours.”

  “Spread.”

  “Reduce, use the sentients.”

  “And now our newest compulsion.”

  The entire Swarm rushed them. Pepper slapped his helmet back on to avoid bites. But instead of attacking him, or Grenada, they pushed past him.

  He stabbed several, got one’s head lopped clean off, but they rushed their last infected into the airlock, strapped to the personal heat shield. They were all just trying to move around him.

  Even the Swarm not in spacesuits clustered into the airlock now. They waited for it to cycle out, dying in the vacuum. But even as that happened, they pushed the zombie the heat shield out of the lock.

  Pepper sheathed his sword and looked around the empty bay. “Canden’s idea that she’s killing this off isn’t a hundred percent. I’m going to go out after them. This, infection, the group mind, it’s very hostile to us on general principle. And now they’re getting off your ship.”

  Grenada shoved over to the airlock and opened one of the lockers. She grabbed a pair of large hand rockets and tossed them at Pepper. “You need them for maneuvering.”

  Sword at his side, Pepper got into the airlock. Dead infected bumped around, eyes frozen open, mouths wide.

  Several minutes later the large doors swung open, revealing the vacuum. As the air blew out, so did Pepper, falling away from the immense hull of the ship.

  “Good luck,” Canden’s voice whispered.

  “You’ve been listening in all along, but not talking to me?” Pepper used the rocket guns to push himself away from the long, tubular form of the Shiek.

  “I did what I could. I done my duty.”

  Pepper watched as the ship grew smaller, and twisted himself around. Chilo dominated his field of vision. A lot of people would be surprised as the Sheikh blew right past its stop, leaving Chilo’s orbit to head down the sun’s gravity well.

  “Pepper. Just make sure you do what you promise Grenada. Let them know how it ended.” Pepper listened, still and unmoving, as the sound of a round being chambered echoed inside his helmet. “Don’t have much time left, seen?”

  “I will let them know. Do me a favor?”

  “Yes.” Canden sounded tired.

  “Where are the bulk of these things headed? If their trajectories hold true and planet weather doesn’t do strange things?”

  A long silence passed. Then, “They’re like Swarm spores, yes. They’re all grouping, if they make it, for the far side of the planet from Chilo’s Great Storm. They’ll scatter some, they can’t make it alive for the most part, but they’ll be trying for it. I really doubt any of them, or you, can make it.”

  “Thank you,” Pepper said. He set about using the spacesuit’s rudimentary navigation systems to compute an orbit that put him on the opposite side of the planet from the Swarm. That would give him time to recover and figure out what they were up to if he made it. He didn’t trust Canden enough to ask her for help. She might give him a trajectory that burned him up in the atmosphere.

  “One last thing, Pepper. Tell me once more, promise me, you don’t have no bite, no infection on you. I just need to know. I need to hear you say it.”

  “I swear to you,” Pepper’s voice was calm and emphatic. “I am not infected.” Already the Sheikh was little more than a tiny needle glinting in the sunlight. The glow of its main engines suddenly lit up the darkness with actinic light for a full minute.

  Pepper shielded his eyes until it faded.

  “Thank you.” Canden’s voice sounded fuzzy with static as they fell farther apart. “Final vector laid in. We clearing Chilo now, with an extra boost. That thing, that infection, will burn up with us when we eventually spiral into the sun, and with them when they hit Chilo’s atmosphere. If they make it to Chilo, well, I did everything I could. . . .”

  Pepper flinched at the sound of the gunshot.

  She died before turning into one of the infected. She’d secured the cockpit. The Sheikh was hopefully headed out of harm’s way.

  Now he had to catch up to that last member of the Swarm and take its heat shield away. Then follow the spacesuit’s solutions to deorbit.

  After he killed the escaping Swarm member and sliced it free of the heat shield, Pepper found, much to his consternation, that the Swarm had not provided its spore with a parachute.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The phone on the wall rang, startling everyone in the room, including Timas. Ohtli leaned in to answer it. He turned back to the room. “Aeolian soldiers are on the outside shell.”

  Angry words filled the room. “Who the hell do they think they are?” Tenoch spat.

  When Timas turned to Katerina she shrugged. “Yes, they’re coming for him.”

  Despite his stories about fighting in space, Timas couldn’t think of the one-legged, one-armed man in the bed as particularly dangerous.

  “And how long did you know?” Timas asked Katerina.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw her shift uncomfortably. “Halfway through his story the vote started. Citizens demanded that we retrieve him. No further negotiating. They want better debriefing facilities.”

  Necalli shook his head. “You were going to torture him to see if he kept to his story?”

  Katerina looked disgusted. “Torture, no. But detailed scans of his brain and physiology, testing to determine he is who he says he is, yes.”

  “And you couldn’t just, you know, ask us formally to hand him over.” Timas’s dad also looked disgusted. “You’re all arrogant, you know. To just assume
that you can walk into our homes and take what you want.”

  “One,” Katerina said. “The citizenry voted that you were likely not to turn him over based on past interaction. True, it’s a small margin, but it was enough to trigger an action request that then passed by a large margin. Two, he’s a criminal; why do you care?”

  “And what did you vote?” Timas looked into her other eye, not the silvered one.

  “Oh, that’s none of your business!” Katerina stepped forward into the center of the room. The one light in the ceiling acted as a spotlight on her. “And quite rude of you to ask.”

  “Well, it’s not your courtyard soldiers are dropping in on, little girl, is it?” Ollin folded his arms and glared.

  “Little girl?” For a moment Katerina looked ready to rip Ollin in two. Timas wagered she might have enough outrage to try.

  The phone rang again. Ohtli lifted the handset. “The guards outside ask if they’re to fight back when the Aeolians come.”

  Camaxtli shook his head. His raspy voice cracked. “What can we do against them? It would be a waste of lives. They’re coming in. We will pick our fights, and this is not a good one.”

  Ollin unfolded his arms and looked down at the ground. Timas sighed. He knew that posture of regret, weariness, and anger held in check.

  “I’m very sorry about this,” Katerina mumbled to Timas. “You have to understand, I’m the will of my people, I didn’t choose it this way, I promise.”

  Footsteps got louder outside.

  “So you believe him?” Timas asked.

  “Enough of us are intrigued. Yes. And going back over tracking logs shows that several other organic objects the rough size of a human body deorbited during the same period. We have to check this out.”

  The doors burst open.

  The three Aeolians wore large flanged helmets. The cross-shaped blank space in the front glittered. Reflected back on the Aeolians’ eyes was shifting text and other information: objectives, maps, tactical details. Their protective gear had reshaped itself into cloaks that could absorb any shots or thrusts.

  “We carry no weapons in our hands,” the one on the left said.

  Yeah, but no doubt dangerous guns and explosives in various forms lay under those flowing cloaks. The last time Timas saw them during the Octavia tourist incident they’d thronged through the city in pairs hunting the murderer, unwilling to wait for the city to bring the perpetrator of that crime to justice.

  “Just hand him over,” Katerina said. “Then you won’t have to deal with us anymore.”

  Timas bit his lip and turned around. This would be over soon. And then he could talk to the elders about the more pressing thing on his chest: what he’d seen on the surface. Surely the criminal from space was the least important of the two.

  Pepper lay on the bed, sweat beading his forehead.

  He didn’t look worried, just very serious as he sat up using one arm. “I can’t walk. Someone will have to help me here.”

  The soldier on the left stepped forward, his cloak swirling to become a second skin that flowed over his insanely muscular body. He almost dwarfed Pepper. “Don’t try anything stupid.”

  “I’m not a fan of stupid.” Pepper grabbed hold of the man’s shoulder. He hopped up, and Timas realized that Pepper stood almost as tall as the regal and faceless Aeolian he leaned against. His dreadlocks cascaded down around his shoulders as he struggled forward.

  “We’ll have someone bring a cart up,” the Aeolian said. Then he spoke to some unseen voice. “Yes. We have custody.”

  Katerina turned to walk out the room.

  As she did, drawing attention with her movement, Pepper cracked the Aeolian’s helmet in the crook of his arm and twisted the man’s neck.

  Even before the Aeolian’s body hit the ground Pepper leaped, not for the other soldier, who had already whipped a wicked-looking gun free, but for Katerina.

  She screamed as he hit her and spun so that his back hit the ground. He held her like a human shield with his one good arm.

  “I’ll snap her neck.” Pepper still looked calm and unworried. He’d moved so damn fast Timas hadn’t even taken a breath.

  “I still have a shot.” The remaining soldier’s cloak had become a second skin of mobile armor.

  “Yeah, but she’ll be dead. And while you’ll accept the loss of a professional soldier, this innocent civilian avatar is a child that your citizenry would howl to see die.”

  The Aeolian lowered his gun. “What now?”

  Pepper used his one leg to push himself up to the wall. He sat back against it. “I won’t harm her.”

  “This is unacceptable.”

  “The moment you chose not to try and take the shot you had you were no longer in control of the situation, so shut up.” Pepper frowned as Katerina tensed. Maybe trying to pull away from him. She stopped trying after a second, and then Pepper took a deep breath and continued. Take off the armored cape and helmet. Drop the weapon as well. I like the look of it.”

  Timas thought the Aeolian wanted to protest, but then cocked his head as someone gave him orders. “Okay.”

  Underneath the helmet was a green-eyed man with scarred cheeks and tight, curly hair cut close to the scalp with a lightning bolt pattern on the left side.

  He dropped the cape and helmet, eyes narrowed with the frustration of a soldier unable to act.

  Pepper smiled and looked over at Camaxtli. “Don’t worry, if the Aeolians refuse to pay you whatever they offered, I’ll match.”

  Necalli moved closer to Pepper, his head cocked, thinking. Camaxtli cleared his throat. “You promise a lot, but even if what you say is possible for one man, what happens after you leave and we still have to face the Aeolians?”

  “I’m not asking you to directly help me, I’m just reminding you that I’m also your friend.”

  Ohtli shook his head. “And if we take your offer, what about the next criminal who flies in here who happens to be rich? Do we shelter them as well? That’s not who we are.”

  Necalli folded his arms. “So again, we lean back and let the Aeolians tell us how to run our own city, do what they want. Why not just ask for a silvered eye of your own, Ohtli?”

  Ohtli looked startled at the vehemence, and Timas wondered where that had come from. Necalli harbored a lot more rage at the bossy Aeolians than anyone else in the room, it seemed.

  Ollin, Timas saw, scanned the elders, taking in who wanted to show the Aeolians up, and who wanted to keep their course. His dad, the gears in his head always twirling.

  “This’s all beside the point,” Pepper said. “I have the girl hostage, so for right now, the Aeolians are doing what I ask them. Who else will you ever entertain that can face them down?”

  He had a point.

  “Besides, we need to get Raga involved now.”

  A few seconds passed, and then Katerina raised her hand. Pepper still held her in a close grip. “I’m sorry, but we feel that would be a violation of Chilo’s charter between New Anegada and the cities of Chilo.” She raised an eyebrow. “In fact, we feel that overwhelmingly.”

  “The charter can be revoked in case of war,” Pepper said. “And if you’d been paying attention to what I told you happened aboard the Sheikh Professional you know the entire DMZ is going up for grabs. The League unleashed this Swarm on us. That’s war.”

  “These are just stories by you so far.” Eztli spoke up from a long period of silence. “We have heard of no attack by mind-dead people, nor has the avatar there seen or heard of any such attack.”

  “So far, correct, no reports,” Katerina said.

  “None the less. We’re all going to move to a nice location. A house out in the open. The avatar comes with us, my hostage. The rest of you as well.” Pepper looked at the Aeolian soldier. “How many outside?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Pepper shook his head, the long locks slapping his wide shoulders. “Don’t play games.”

  “Fifteen.”

  �
��Good. They’ll come with us.” Timas found that a surprising twist from Pepper. “We’ll need protection within a few days here. You sending more our way?”

  Katerina nodded.

  “Good. And now, the final demand: I want a nice house, in a nice large civilian area, somewhere the Aeolians will not want to drop a large bomb on or use unnecessary force.”

  Ollin stepped forward. “My house, I’ll offer my house.”

  The elders were taken aback. “Ollin, you put your family in danger.” Camaxtli grabbed Timas’s father by the shoulder.

  “No more danger than we face any day with our only son on the surface.” Ollin returned the gesture.

  Of course Ollin would do this, Timas realized, looking at Camaxtli. How many more years would Camaxtli remain an elder? Five at best.

  And then there would be Ollin to take his place.

  Even if it meant risking his family by bringing all these people into their courtyard.

  Pepper insisted they bring one last item. A long bundle, wrapped in crinkly tarp.

  “What’s in there?” Timas asked as they all prepared to leave.

  “His limbs,” said Ohtli. “He insisted.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Timas finally got Ollin alone. “I need to tell you something. Something the elders will need to know about.” The intimidating Aeolian soldiers, servants, and even a few neighbors who had wandered to the lip of the courtyard gates remained just out of earshot.

  “Speak.” Ollin folded his arms and looked out over his piece of the world, their home, with a faint smile.

  “Not here.” Timas shook his head.

  “Then where? This is as good a place as any.” Ollin walked over to the table at the center and poured himself a cup of pulque.

  “On the surface.” Timas lowered his voice. “Cen and I saw something . . . important.”

  Ollin sighed and leaned close. The bitter smell of his breath filled the air between them. “Heutzin told me you came up babbling about aliens.” Ollin lowered his voice as well. “You shut up about those things.”

  “But we both saw things on the surface. We saw something, in a suit like ours but smaller, running into the murk.”