Sean Williams & Shane Dix - Evergence 1 - The Prodigal Sun

by The Prodigal Sun (lit)

  Haid took her arm to encourage her on. "We'll eat soon," he said, smiling. "I promise."

  "As long as it is soon," she said. Haid led her down a flight of curving, narrow stairs. The deeper they went, the damper the walls became, as though they were approaching some sort of water table. Yet, when she stopped to test the moisture with a fingertip, she realised that the source of the water was industrial rather than natural. It had a bitter, pungent smell.

  "There's a leaky sewage outlet not far from here," explained Haid. Roche grimaced and wiped the hand on her clothes.

  "And you live down here?" It wasn't disgust that stained her words, but rather amazement.

  "I like to be near the others," he said. "Helps remind me that I'm one of them."

  "More leaders should follow your example," Roche commented, thinking of Proctor Klose and his private suite on the executive floor of the Midnight. As far as she was concerned, being in command meant more than simply giving orders. And it meant more than just wearing a fancy uniform and having access to luxuries, too. When it came down to it, that extra star on Klose's uniform hadn't helped him when his ship had exploded. Part of her couldn't help wondering if the extra privilege may even have caused it, albeit indirectly. Had he been a better leader, more in tune with his crew and his ship, the Midnight might now be more than several thousand cubic kilometres of glowing, radioactive dust.

  "This way." Haid took her arm and guided her to the next exit from the stairwell. On the other side was a floor much like the one they had left, although more extensively populated than the other.

  They moved along the dank, slightly odourous passages for a while longer, until Haid arrived at a locked door. He keyed the lock by some unseen mechanism, and the panel slid aside. Entering first, he switched on lights and gestured at a chair.

  Roche followed him cautiously, eyes scanning the room out of habit before actually stepping inside. It was furnished comfortably, but not ostentatiously so. One wall was dominated by an enormous desk, on which rested a complicated array of out-of-date computers. Two small, cushioned armchairs occupied the centre of the room. A cloth hammock hung across one corner, near a narrow cupboard. Hanging from the wall opposite the desk was a multicoloured mural. At least three metres wide and two high, it looked like a window to another world — and a familiar one at that.

  Ignoring the chair, Roche approached the mural to take a better look. Grey sky rippled above a bleak and barren landscape, with jagged fingers of black rock clawing hopelessly for purchase on the clouds so far above. The scene was totally desolate, yet somehow managed to impart a sense of life — almost as though the rocks themselves were sentient.

  "It's Montaban, isn't it?"

  "That's right." Roche thought she detected admiration in the rebel leader's voice. "You've been there?"

  "Read about it." COE Armada training covered several hundred of the more notable nearby worlds, including this one. "What made you paint it?"

  "I was born there."

  Roche turned to face him. "Born there?"

  "All the others — Emmerik, Sabra, Neva — they're all natives of Sciacca, but not me." He moved to the cupboard and opened it, unhampered by his single arm. "Drink?"

  "Thanks." She stepped over to the chair he had indicated and sat down. When he handed her a tall, thin glass filled with a clear liquid, she said: "So what's your story, Haid?"

  He smiled, his monocular sight gleaming in the faint light of the room, and raised his glass in a wordless toast, which Roche imitated. She took a mouthful of the liquid and was momentarily puzzled by the lack of taste. Then she realised: the glass contained nothing but water. A moment later, a second realisation: a full glass of clean drinking water on Sciacca's World would have been regarded as something of a treat to the rebels. Understanding this, Roche decided that sipping the drink would probably be the best means of acknowledging Haid's generosity.

  "I was a mercenary before coming here," Haid began. "Tried and convicted after forty-seven successful juntas. Not that I'm boasting or anything. It's just a fact, the way my life panned out." He shrugged. "My parents were killed when I was fifteen, and they left me enough money to pay for anything I wanted. But theirs was a political killing, an underground thing, and I wasn't safe. So I skipped town, bought myself as many implants as I could afford, and set out to find my own niche.

  "My parents' money," he went on, "certainly made up for any lack of talent in those early years. If I found it hard to keep up, I just bought a new implant. Easy. I started off as a vigilante for hire until I got a taste for killing."

  Roche was somewhat surprised by the man's frankness. He seemed completely at ease with his admissions, speaking with a total absence of guilt. It must have shown on her face, too, because he carried on with a few words of explanation.

  "You must understand, Commander, that it paid extremely well. And you'd be amazed how easy it can become after the first couple of times."

  "How many?" said Roche. "How many people have you killed?"

  "Hard to say." He shook his head. "What with assassinations, fighting in the M'taio System's Caste wars, the i-Hurn Uprising — hell, even with the implants I lost count."

  "So what happened?"

  He sighed. "I had a rival, a young blood by the name of Decima Frey. She sold me to COE Enforcers in exchange for clemency when they caught her. I was hauled in and tried — so far gone, I didn't really know what was going on. My implants were on a feedback kick, you see, with so many subroutines it was hard to tell where they stopped and I began." He wiggled his fingers by his right ear. "Anyway, I was initially sentenced to be executed, but appealed and had it reduced to this." He indicated his surroundings with a wave of his hand. "At a cost. I had to undergo rehabilitation first. And that didn't seem such a big deal at the time — I mean, I figured rehab would be easy to fake and was confident I'd be able to escape soon enough. I was a killing machine, after all. No backwater penal colony was going to be able to hold me for very long." The grin that touched his lips was wry and without humor. "At least that was what I thought, until I realised what the judge had meant by 'rehabilitation'."

  Roche had learned about the process during her early years of training in Military College. "They stripped you of your implants," she said.

  The whirr of his monocle focusing upon her seemed loud in the sudden quiet.

  "They dewired me from the inside out," he said. "Everything went. There wasn't a bone or a nerve untouched. My body weight must have dropped by about seventy-five percent. My neuronal mass went down by half. I tell you, I was jelly by the end of it — physically and mentally."

  "But how could they have taken care of you in that condition?" said Roche. "I mean, Sciacca's World doesn't have the facilities — "

  Haid's laugh startled her. "Take care of me?" He laughed again. "Boras — Delcasalle's predecessor — she washed her hands of me very quickly. I was sent into the streets to fend for myself." Light caught Haid's monocle as he leaned forward. "And I was a cripple at that stage. It wasn't until later that I salvaged this" — he tapped his arm on one leg — "and the eye from someone who was no longer ... in need of it."

  Roche's face creased in puzzlement. "You couldn't have managed to do that by yourself, surely?"

  "One of my old shipmates rescued me from the gutter. Got to me before the rats could finish the job the authorities had started." He smiled self-deprecatingly. "I'm a far cry from the man I once was, but at least I'm alive, right?"

  Roche nodded slowly. "For many here, that might not be something to be grateful for."

  "That's why I'm with these people," he said. "They've had it rough, but they're not afraid to keep trying. They're determined to get what they want in the end. The only thing they needed was a good leader — someone with experience at fighting in a modern way." He tipped his head in an exaggerated manner. "And here I am. Gun for hire turned revolutionary."

  Roche smiled back. "And doing well, it would seem. This installation is well
organised."

  "If a little underequipped and leaky at times. Yes. I try my best. It may be nothing compared to my old exploits, but it keeps me going. And I enjoy it, too. I guess having a personal stake in the outcome really makes the difference." His glass eye winked at her. "Which brings us to you, Commander." His expression became hard, grim. "You're a serious threat to everything I've built — in more ways than one. So let's hear your own story. Tell me about this mess you've brought to Sciacca."

  Roche put the drink on the floor by her chair and began to talk. Midway through Haid's confession she'd realised that she had little to fear from the man, at least as far as secrecy was concerned. Her mission was of little relevance on the planet — except to her and the Dato Bloc — and any information she divulged would be unlikely to spread. Even in the improbable event that Haid decided to tell Warden Delcasalle, his word was sure to be doubted. Besides, she needed his help — there was no escaping this simple fact. And if the only way to gain that help was to tell the truth, then so be it.

  He listened closely as she described how she had 'collected' the Box from the AI factories on Trinity, and how she really had very little idea of either its potential or its purpose. He accepted her role as uninformed military courier as easily as she did: she wasn't required to know; therefore she didn't. When she described the ambush in the Soul and the means by which she and the others had slipped past the Dato ships and to the planet in the lander, he nodded appreciatively and commented that their tactics had been sound.

  Cane's unexplained appearance on the scene, however, bothered him.

  "You say that Cane was instructed by someone to come to your room prior to the Midnight's destruction. Presumably the same someone who let him out of his cell." He frowned. "Any idea who that might have been?"

  "No. The security records went up with the ship, and I've been too busy trying to stay alive since then to worry about anything else."

  "Understandable." Haid sucked the tips of his plastic fingers. "Go on."

  There was little more to add: the crash of the lander; their rescue by Emmerik and the battle in Houghton's Cross; their arrival in Port Parvati.

  When she had finished, she refreshed her throat with a sip of water and leaned back into the chair. "What do you think?" she asked. "It's not as good a story as yours — "

  "Don't be too quick to dismiss it," Haid said, frowning.

  "Do you think you can you trust me?"

  "Perhaps," he said. "Half of what you've told me doesn't make sense, and what does bothers me."

  Now Roche frowned. "So you don't believe me?".

  He waved his hand dismissively. "That's not what I'm saying at all. I do believe you — totally. But you're not giving me the full picture, albeit unintentionally."

  "I don't understand."

  "Well, take your mission for instance. Granted, the Midnight was a form of cover — but why here? If the Box is so important, for whatever reason, why send it to such a high-risk region when thousands of other routes were available? The Hutton-Luu System is so close to the Dato border that it's almost begging to be annexed. All it would've taken was a small skirmish to put your mission in jeopardy. No. It doesn't make sense at all." Haid shook his head. "And then there's Cane."

  Roche sighed. "I know. I've been trying to figure him out ever since I met him."

  "That's not what I mean," said Haid. "Ignore what he is for a moment, and focus on how he came to be here. You said his life support capsule was plucked out of deep space near an interim anchor point. I can understand his lack of memory, perhaps — but not his escape from the cell. Who helped him? Why did they send him to you? And the timing of his release is suspicious, too. Did his ally know about the ambush? And if they did, how could they possibly have known that you, of all the people onboard the Midnight, were going to escape?"

  Roche considered for a long moment. "They couldn't have. No one knew the ship was going to blow until it happened. Except maybe Klose — "

  "But you said he did his best to keep you away from Cane."

  "I know." Roche shook her head. As unlikely as coincidence was, it seemed the less ridiculous option. "You really think there's a conspiracy?"

  "I don't know. But I'm not dismissing the possibility." Haid's monocle didn't waver, so tightly was his attention focused on her. "Everything Emmerik's told me warns me to be careful where Cane is concerned."

  "Fair enough." She couldn't blame him for being wary. Someone with Cane's natural combat abilities deserved that, at the very least.

  "And then there's Veden," Haid continued. "He's supposed to be on my side, but I have to tell you that the way you turn up together makes me a little ... uneasy."

  "Well, you can rule out the possibility of the two of us working in tandem against you. He's been wanting to cut loose from me ever since we met."

  "So I understand." Haid smiled to himself and studied the last mouthful of water in his glass. "Maybe he knows something I don't."

  "All he'd know would come through Maii. If she's told you nothing, then that leaves me in the clear. Right?"

  "My thoughts exactly," he said. "Except that you and she have been fairly close since your arrival. Maybe the two of you have taken sides against Veden and me, for whatever reason. It's a possibility I have to consider." He downed the last of his water in a single gulp. "Yet you maintain that you don't know why she's here."

  "That's not quite true anymore." Roche shuddered slightly, remembering the dream the Surin had given her. "I do know a little more now than I did."

  "How much?"

  "I'm not sure." The slab of Maii's memories had been dumped unceremoniously into Roche's head in the form of a dream, raw and requiring processing. Now that she had the chance, she belatedly tried to assimilate what she had learned with what she knew about Sciacca's World.

  "Something about the DAOC hyperspace transmitter being off-planet?" she said.

  Haid nodded. "The MiCom installation in the landing field controls all transmissions, but the hardware itself is in a remote polar orbit, well outside the Soul. The small station is unstaffed apart from a skeleton crew to oversee the equipment and to perform minor repairs. The crew is rotated once every fifty days with fresh personnel from Kanaga Station."

  "So it's theoretically impossible for anyone on the ground to take over the transmitter."

  "That's right."

  "Unless you somehow infiltrate the crew of the station."

  "Possible, but unlikely. This is a high-security installation; the transmitter will have command codes known only to the CEO."

  "Warden Delcasalle," said Roche.

  "Exactly. Without the codes, the only way to 'interfere' with any broadcast is to damage the transmitter itself."

  Roche nodded to herself, the plan suddenly falling into place. First, Maii had to work her way into the warden's mind — not to take him over, for there were sure to be safeguards against that, but to steal the transmitter codes. Second, she had to reach out for the orbital station and select one of the crew. Someone who knew how to operate the transmitter, someone tired and easily influenced — perhaps at the end of a tour of duty, eager for recall to the main base. Someone who could be controlled by epsense to send a message from Sciacca's World — a message, more specifically, to the COE High Equity Court requesting a formal hearing on behalf of the rebels.

  And that was where Veden came in. Such a request, from an undercover delegate of the Commerce Artel, would hardly go unnoticed.

  Except that now Veden was in a coma.

  When she outlined this to the leader of the rebels, he smiled widely.

  "That's the gist of it," he said. "A long shot, but at least it doesn't involve the use of force. The Eckandar Trade Axis has been sympathetic ever since their outcast — Lazaro Houghton — betrayed the original settlers. The cost in bribes to get the message out to them nearly ruined us, but it'll be worth it." He shrugged. "At least we hope it will be. Veden's still under anaesthetic; we won't know how he
's doing until tomorrow morning. If he doesn't wake from the coma, then we'll have to rethink the situation."

  Roche nodded. "The only other option, as far as I can see, is to raid the landing field and use the codes there. But given your current position — underarmed, that is — I wouldn't recommend it."

  "Perhaps not. But maybe we should plan something anyway, just in case."

  "It couldn't hurt."

  Haid grinned suddenly. "You know, Commander, I think we're actually getting somewhere."

  "That depends on how you look at it. I've decided to trust you — but, then, I have little choice."

  "True. And I've decided not to turn you in to Enforcement for the bounty, although I won't deny we could use the cash. Apart from the fact that you might be able to help us, I've got little to lose if I support you. Should Veden's plan work, the High Equity Court can be told about you then. Or you can transmit a message to your superiors at the same time."

  "My thoughts exactly."

  "At least we agree on something." Haid leaned back into his chair. "We can discuss Plan B later, if you like. All I want is an assurance that if Veden's plan fails and yours works, you'll take him off the planet when you leave. I owe him that much, for coming here."

  Roche thought about it. "I'm not really in a position to guarantee anything — "

  "Nor I, Commander," Haid cut in.

  Roche studied the man's intent expression for a moment. "But I can try, I guess."

  "Good. That's as much as I can expect from anyone." Haid leaned back into his chair. "All that remains is for me to ask a small favour."

  "Which is?"

  Haid stood and crossed to the cupboard, rummaged around inside it for a time, then returned with a small box. Seating himself again, he keyed open the lid and showed her the contents.