Soldier's Duty

by Patty Jansen

  He met Izramith's eyes with another intense look.

  She nodded, although she felt more uneasy with every word he spoke. She functioned well as a hired gun. Dancing around delicate politics was not her thing. "Any indication what we might find in this guesthouse? Is there a real threat to the family or is that a front, too?"

  "Oh no, there is definitely a threat. The Andrahar family is well-off and have been regular subjects of harassment from Mirani sources. They will inform you about those when you meet them later."

  What? More fucking meetings? He did realise that he'd let a killing machine into his dainty town, didn't he? To be honest the stupid yellow frilly shirt was probably a sign that he didn't.

  She'd thought there was a catch to the job, and this was obviously it. Her contract didn't involve anything serious; it was to support Daya's politics and play a game of one-upmanship with some political adversary on the council.

  Oh fuck, she hated this.

  She met Daya's eyes and held his gaze. His serious expression told her that he knew what he was doing to her. This was the point at which she could still back out.

  Of course, she was in too far already, and going back home was not an option, or at least not one that wouldn’t result in her being sent to the most boring and remote mining post. Being familiar with Hedron and the guards, Daya would know that, too.

  So that's how you play games with people, huh? Bring it on, buster.

  Chapter 11

  Daya went on to describe the route and how the parade would progress. First the drummers, then the flower bearers, then the couple and the family, then the dancing party, and musicians.

  While he spoke, Izramith struggled to concentrate. She had little sleep last night and while that alone shouldn't disturb her, being sick didn't help matters at all. The strength of Loxa's smell had faded, but a whiff of it clung to her like a foul odour remained in a room no matter how often it was cleaned.

  The Indrahui man Wairin had said very little during this meeting. He kept looking at her, too, and because she couldn't look at Loxa, she kept meeting his eyes more often than she wanted. She kept wanting to pull down her sleeves, but they already covered her scars adequately. There was no point; they already knew that she was a guard and there was no way he could tell that she was the one whose action had resulted in the death of many of his fellows. Moreover, was his tribe supportive of the rebels or government? He looked like rebel to her.

  Crap.

  She didn't know his history, but could almost hear him say, "I had three brothers, but they died in that camp crash in Pataniti."

  Crap, crap, crap.

  Daya was finished with his explanation. He rose, and as he was saying that there were refreshments in the foyer, and he'd leave the group to discuss their work plans. Izramith was thinking how she could ask him about her uncle and noticed Loxa getting up from the couch.

  She turned. Their eyes met. The heat returned in full force. His smell was everywhere, filling her lungs with every breath, making the blood roar in her ears.

  Izramith sensed someone coming into the doorway with a tray, but the next moment Loxa charged for her. She ducked out of the way. He missed her by a hairwidth and went careening into the staff member. The woman screamed. The tray went flying. Glasses bounced over the tiles. Tea went everywhere.

  Loxa rolled, sprang to his feet—

  People shouted for him to stop. Someone even tried to restrain him, but he just batted the man out of the way.

  "Leave them," Daya ordered, in a curt voice.

  People retreated to the edges of the room. Someone shifted the fallen cups out of the way.

  Izramith crouched in a defensive pose.

  Loxa's eyes were fixed on her, unfocused like a madman's.

  He came at her like an angry beast, and while she ducked out of his way, she grabbed his arm and pushed him back while sticking out her leg. He tripped and fell, pulling her with him. She tumbled over him, not letting go of his arm. He pulled her back by that arm and tried to pin her to the ground by rolling on top of her.

  He was strong, but had poor technique. She twisted by swinging her legs, gained purchase on one knee, rose, while he was hanging onto her back. She grabbed his collar and swung him over her hip. He fell flat on the ground with a thud, and she dropped on top of him, pinning both his wrists against the ground.

  "I win." You did not argue with a Hedron guard.

  He looked up at her, panting. Really looked at her, without the clouded expression of anger in his eyes.

  There was a lot of noise in the room. People talking in raised voices, having run in to see what the racket was about. Izramith didn't even hear what language they spoke. The roaring in her ears slowly subsided. Neither she nor Loxa moved. They just looked each other in the eyes.

  Loxa's muscles relaxed. Sweat pearled on his forehead.

  Slowly, Izramith let go of his arms.

  "You win, right?" He grinned. With one finger he lifted up the sleeve of her tunic. From where he lay on the ground, he would be able to see the cross-hatched initiation scars she had there. "Yup, it's true. I fought a Hedron Guard and lost badly."

  The breeze coming in through the open balcony door carried a whiff of cool and blew away the last of his confusing scent.

  Izramith sat back on her knees, looking at all the horrified wide-eyed faces of the people in the room. The mist in her head had cleared.

  Damn, what had she done? What was wrong with her? It was only her first day here. She'd wanted a clean record, and now she'd start a complaints file less than a day after her arrival. And for what purpose?

  Dashu's cheerful voice behind her said, "Good that you sorted that out. And for the better, too, Loxa. Imagine what a mess we'd be in if you won. Now, get up and let's do some real work. All you've done so far is talk."

  Loxa rose. Eris held out a hand to help him up, but Dashu motioned him away. What was she? His girlfriend?

  Izramith also jumped to her feet. Loxa faced her, not meeting her eyes, and made the Coldi subservient greeting, with his arms limp by his side, looking down.

  Oh crap. So that's what it was about? She'd won the fight, and now he considered her his superior, huh?

  She grinned, uneasily. "We don't do nimiya greetings at Hedron. To us, all people are equal."

  "You're kidding. You're going to be difficult about this?" Dashu spread her hands, rolling her eyes. "What have you been taught about associations? That they're evil and the root of everything that's wrong with Asto?"

  "Associations are unnecessary. We don't have controlling leaders. We don't need that kind of structure."

  "If you believe that we're all so primitive because we fight for positions in our associations, why did you take part in the fight?"

  "He attacked me."

  "And what did you do to provoke that?"

  "Nothing."

  "So you had no flush of irrational anger when you saw him first? It was purely self-defence?"

  Izramith glared at her.

  Dashu snorted. "You may know a lot about security, but you have a lot to learn about how to relate to your own kind."

  She made to leave, but Izramith grabbed her shirt and pulled her close until their noses almost touched. "Don't you fucking start that kind of talk to me."

  "Yes, I will. That's what I'm for: to annoy the crap out of you so you can get unwrapped from all the insulation you carry and start acting like a normal person."

  "And a normal person is someone who acts exactly like you?"

  Dashu spread her hands and rolled her eyes. "Damn, you make it hard! All I'm trying to do is make a connection, making you fit in our team, but I might as well be talking to myself for all the two words you say."

  "Did I ask you to talk? Are you afraid of silence?"

  "Can't you think of any questions to ask when you're just arrived in a place? Is that how you relate to your colleagues? Giving them the wall of silence?"

  "Fuck off."

  "Th
ank you. I'll do just that." She marched off.

  Oh crap. And yes, that was entirely hoe colleagues at Hedron related to each other. Ignore it and it will go away.

  Next moment, a strong and warm arm looped around Izramith's shoulders.

  "Dashu can be pretty rude," Loxa said. "She did that to me, too. But she is a really good sort. You'll learn. You're not used to any of this, right?"

  Izramith eyed his hand on her shoulder. He had to know that Hedron Coldi didn't touch a lot and she wondered if he'd get the hint.

  He didn't. "It's all right. We're our own little association now. Only three of us, but we'll show them what we're worth, right?"

  Dashu turned at the door. "There's no need to coddle her. She'll work it out. Eventually. They're ice-cool at Hedron, but they're not stupid." Then she was gone.

  "Yes, she's rude," Loxa said. "But that's all right. She hasn't yet done anything to harm me and I've been following her around for years."

  Crap. They weren't lovers. She was part of his association. Except Dashu had been subservient to her, and Izramith had beaten Loxa. But Loxa had followed Dashu around. What did that make him to her? Subservient? And what position did Izramith now occupy? The one at the top? Damn it, no. She didn't understand this association business. That system was rigid and unworkable and primitive.

  Fighting for positions of dominance was stupid and now she had herself roped into this situation that would never work.

  She wanted to explain that this was all a horrible mistake, but Dashu was already at the door, taking liberties with the contents of the new food tray, brought in by the staff member with tea dripping down the front of her uniform. She grabbed a couple of cakes and stuffed them in her mouth as she went into the corridor. She was still talking, but her words didn't make it around the cake in an intelligible state.

  "Let's go," Loxa said, and went in the same direction. He also grabbed a few cakes from the tray, and two mugs, one of which he passed to Izramith. She wasn't hungry. In fact, she felt like she might be sick again.

  In a small room off the hall stood a couple of tables pushed together and barely visible under a mountain of electronic equipment. Lights blinked, data scrolled over screens and cables went everywhere over the floor and into the corners. Dashu sat on a chair in the middle of this chaos, munching her cake.

  "Whoa. You've been busy," Loxa said.

  "Better busy than sitting in meetings." She brushed crumbs off her lap. "Sit down. We got a lot of work to do." She flapped her hand at a chair that contained a tottering mountain of electronics. "Just put the stuff on the table."

  Izramith picked up a bevy of electronics and dumped them on the table. There was Hedron-made equipment, but also stuff from Asto, and Damarq, and some of which she had no idea where it came from. She had never seen so much different technology in the same place. In the control room at the guard station they only had Hedron-made equipment, because it was all neatly integrated with each other.

  Eris remained standing by the door, clutching his cup.

  Dashu said, "Sit down, all, because I have quite a lot to show you."

  Wairin came in, carrying three chairs for Eris, Loxa and himself, and placed these around the tables with the equipment. Wairin sat directly opposite Izramith, Eris behind her.

  He tapped Izramith on the shoulder. "Hey, do you know that there is a rip in your shirt?"

  "Where?" She reached with her hand to the shoulder closest to him. Her fingertips met skin where there should be fabric. Damn.

  Stupid frilly shirt.

  Dashu was ready to start. Had she even noticed the rip in Izramith's shirt? "All right. I'll give a brief overview of what we've done so far. Since we're not allowed to send a party into the guesthouse, there are other ways of finding out what goes on there. First of all, I've asked the Exchange for any communication they have originating from coordinates that are within the grounds of the guesthouse. As you can see…" She hit a control and a projection of a building sprang up.

  The façade of the building looked like so many other buildings: two storeys, an arched entrance and arched, glass-less windows at the top floor. The entire complex spanned half the block and twelve two-storey wings and four courtyards.

  "As you can see, the place is huge. At any one time, up to a thousand people could be staying there. We expect it to be full for the celebrations. Whenever there is a party, people flock to the city. That should give us a fair bit of communication data. Secondly, we've installed cameras to monitor who goes in and out of the place. We run those recordings through a face recognition program and match it up with known names, mostly from guard records relating to small offenses. We already have a list of more than four hundred names. Third, but not last, we have Wairin staying in the guesthouse. Of course he can't pry around too much or behave in a way not expected from a guest worker, but he has installed a few bugs in strategic places and he hear and sees things that bugs can't."

  She touched another button and a block of text was superimposed over the projection of the building.

  "So, what have we found so far? As expected, the communication logs from the Exchange have been pretty ordinary. They cover the usual things, people sending messages home. The only remarkable thing I can say about them is that there are not as many communications as you would expect from a place of this size. With the number of people in that place, and the number of convicted criminals, you'd expect there to be a lot more communication. It could be because the people who stay in the guesthouse are from the poorer parts of the population and they don't have much money to spend on communication."

  Dashu turned to a different device. "So the communication didn't give us much to work with and between ourselves, we're not happy with that. It almost seems as if someone knows we're listening and they're communicating in a different way. I've been to the Exchange myself and obtained frequency scans of the area, and there just isn't that much radio communication into the place. It's strange and puzzling. The bugs, however, are a lot more interesting."

  Another projection sprang up, a fuzzy and grainy image that Izramith recognised as an infrared recording. It showed a group of people going up the stairs carrying bags and boxes. Then it cut to the view from another camera, showing the same group sitting at a balcony talking.

  Dashu halted the projection and pointed. "This man is the manager of the guesthouse."

  The quality of the recording didn't show much more than that he wore a loose robe—the infrared projection didn't show true colours of course—and his curly hair in a ponytail.

  The projection had frozen at a point where another man was handing a bag over the table.

  "The contents of the bag that he's receiving is probably cash for bribes. The other men aren't guests." The projection only showed their backs.

  This was some kind of evidence? "Why would he receive bribes?"

  "It's for keeping secret illegal people." Wairin hadn't said much in the course of the morning and everyone turned to him at the sound of his deep, heavily accented voice. "I hear people talk. Manis sort it out. Manis keep you safe from guards because guards don't come in guesthouse."

  "And this Manis would be the manager?" Izramith asked.

  "Yes. Is not a good man. Wants money."

  "So. What is this supposed to mean?" Izramith spread her hands.

  Everyone looked at her.

  "I'm still unsure of our mandate and parameters of the job. My contract says that I'm here to provide security for a wedding, but now it turns out I'm not. I'm here to secretly clean out this guesthouse for a political purpose with no official mandate, and, if things go wrong, no support. Forgive me for being cynical, but I'd like to see the task sheet for this job."

  Eris looked at her as if he wanted to say what's a task sheet?

  Loxa said, "This isn't that kind of job."

  "In my language, everything that pays me is that kind of job, even if to cover my own arse. Where do we fit, who do we report to, who are our feed-ins, who
are our moles and what is the fall-back plan? For that matter: what is our primary plan? Who are our first-level and second-level priority sources and what are triggers to disregard either? What is our level of autonomy?" She had to stop to draw breath.

  No one said anything, and the fuck, it seemed like none of them had a clue what she was talking about.

  Seriously! This wedding was in how much time? Was she expected to set up this whole structure from scratch?

  Dashu said in a small voice. "All those things are what we have associations for."

  "And what about Wairin and Eris? They're not in an association."

  "They are."

  Izramith stared at both men. Neither of them confirmed this. They didn't deny it either. They weren't even Coldi. How could they understand the concept if even she didn't understand it? "So… how does this work, then? Loxa is your superior, and—"

  "Loxa is my zhayma." Her equal. "You're our superior. Eris and Wairin are zhaymas."

  "And who is their superior?" That was how it worked, wasn't it?

  "Braedon Andrahar, the groom's brother. You haven't met him yet."

  So, a Mirani, a keihu and an Indrahui pretending to understand an Asto Coldi custom. Stranger things might have happened, but she hadn't heard of any. Hang on— "Then you're saying that this Mirani guy is—"

  "Your zhayma, yes."

  This got weirder all the time. "And who is our superior?"

  "Daya."

  Seriously? They had to be kidding. Were they so blind to the fact that other people didn't understand sheya at a very basic level?

  And there were so many things wrong with this arrangement from a security point of view, she didn't even know where to begin.

  One, you did not include your employer in the job.

  Two, you did not rely on informal information for a job description.

  Three, you did not include your financial sponsor in a job.

  She could go on and on.

  Well, if they weren't going to give her one, she would make a task sheet and they would come to appreciate the clarity about who did what and where the information went and who had access to it.