by Sean Danker
They nodded.
“We can’t contact the consulate now?” Salmagard asked.
“No. And the enforcers know you’re not going to like that, but they’re ordering it anyway. I don’t know what they have in mind, but you can file a complaint if you feel the wait was unreasonable or harmful. You’ll get your pound of flesh eventually. So you’re in this room for another hour or two; then you’re with them, and you’ll probably go to the hub. Things should open up for you there. You can tell your side of things, and if you’re telling the truth, it won’t be the end of your world. Okay?” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “You tracking?”
There was nothing to argue. No play to make. Station security had them dead to rights, and they were being held in the security headquarters.
They weren’t going anywhere.
The officer got up and left.
Salmagard rested her head on her arms as the hatch closed. This was it. The Admiral really was gone. Even if they could somehow clear all this up—and that didn’t seem likely with the mess they’d made—it would take too long.
Abducted people disappeared all the time. Even in Evagardian space, the law could never have all the answers. It couldn’t find everyone.
Out here, the odds weren’t in the Empire’s favor. The universe was just too big, and people buying undocumented humans would be careful to cover their tracks. Once the trail was cold, it was as good as gone.
Salmagard wasn’t going to get the Admiral back. She shut her eyes and blotted them miserably on the sleeves of her ruined dress.
A woman of her station was expected to protect her husbands. No, she hadn’t been married to the Admiral, and no, she wasn’t sure that was possible—even if she wanted to—and that was a question that was by no means settled. Or even raised, really.
But the principle was the same. Salmagard wasn’t just any imperial girl; she was the first daughter of a bloodline that predated the Unification. For her to allow a gentleman in her company to be taken and sold into slavery—it was shame on a scale that she’d never even entertained thoughts of.
And apart from the shame, there was the matter of the Admiral himself. She didn’t even have the faintest idea what would become of him. Would he be sold to people who would mistreat him? Kill him? Would he be killed by the poison in his body?
Or would the GRs catch up to him and free him, along with Sei? If so, would he vanish? Or would they discover his identity and arrest him? What would Evagard do with him?
On top of that, there were criminal charges. There was the stigma of going unsupervised—or attempting to, at any rate—to Red Yonder with a man who could only be seen as . . . disreputable.
And this was Free Trade space. If she were convicted here, would she be sent to New Brittia? No. That was impossible; New Brittia was a prison for men. There was probably a female equivalent, though. It didn’t matter.
She would be extradited, but that was small comfort. It would almost be better to die alone and forgotten in a galactic prison.
Her military career was over. Any chance she might’ve had of taking control of the bloodline was gone as well.
Even if people could get past her association with the Admiral—and they would not be able to—she was finished. Her intentions were noble in creating this mess. Getting him back was what would be expected of her, whoever he might be—but she had failed. It was that simple.
Good intentions were lovely, but they didn’t win wars. Evagardian women with value got results. There was no credit given for effort.
Everyone knew that. It didn’t matter how hard you tried, or why. In the end, it was all down to what you had to show when the dust settled. That was how you could tell the winners from the losers, and Evagard’s gentry had no place for women who did not win.
Salmagard had spoiled herself. She was largely rational. She’d always been good at the things she tried to do, but she’d been ready for the alternative. She could handle setbacks; she could bear them with grace and dignity, the way she was supposed to.
But she’d never expected to fail this profoundly, on this level. She wanted to disappear.
Diana got up and started to pace again.
“This sucks,” she said.
Salmagard didn’t argue. She just pressed her face harder into her sleeve.
Diana paused at the far wall, looking up at a tiny black nub on the wall. “Is that an environment scanner?”
Salmagard looked up, puzzled. “Of course.”
“Right. So it can see chemicals and biohazards,” Diana said slowly, and her eyes lit up alarmingly. “I’m a genius.”
Salmagard tilted her head, feeling pain start to throb in her temples. “I don’t quite follow.” It was taking all of her self-control to be civil. She didn’t believe any of this was Diana’s fault, but . . . Salmagard really needed to be alone. Since that wasn’t going to happen, she needed quiet.
“I’m a genius,” Diana repeated, grinning as she stepped back. “I know how we can get out of here. I know how we can get out of here and find out where the boys are. I know how we can catch up to them.” Her knuckles and joints had started to pop, and the look in her eyes had grown even more disturbing.
She had Salmagard’s attention.
“Did they take your hairpins? And your combs? They did, didn’t they—? Damn it, I don’t care.” Diana put her thumb in her mouth and bit, drawing blood. Salmagard’s eyes widened.
The red-eyed girl grabbed a chair, climbed on, and rubbed the blood on the scanner.
“There,” she said, climbing down and smirking. “Too easy.”
Salmagard just stared at her.
A moment later, Klaxons began to wail.
17
“THIS way,” I said, pointing. “There’s something over there.” We could see something pointy standing out over the hills in that direction, and that was the way the road seemed to be going.
“Not going to lie,” Sei said, catching up. “I’m not completely comfortable going for this kind of stroll without trousers.”
“I know how you feel,” I replied, looking back at the graveyard we’d left behind.
“I like this, though,” he said, looking down at the soft grass.
The grass did feel nice, but it only reminded me how heavy my limbs felt, and how quickly I was losing sensation.
“It’s just like Old Earth,” Sei said.
“You’ve been there?”
“Only in simulation. Wherever this place is, it’s been seriously terraformed to mimic it exactly.”
He was right. I knelt and touched the grass, feeling at the soil beneath. I didn’t really know how to gauge it. New Earth was, in terms of environment, supposed to be quite similar to Old Earth. I’d never set foot on Old Earth, so I didn’t know how true that was, but I had been to New Earth—and this was definitely similar.
“We could be in the Frontier system,” I said, getting back up. “They hang on to a lot of Old Earth traditions there. Holidays, religion. Maybe even putting bodies in the ground. You saw those markers, didn’t you? With the perpendicular lines in the symbol?”
“The crosses? Sure.”
“That’s a spiritual thing.”
“I know what it is—I’m catholic.”
“Oh. Well, yeah. That stuff’s really prevalent on Frontier worlds.”
“It would make sense,” Sei said, putting his hands on his hips and looking up at the sky. “Pretty direct route from the Bazaar into Commonwealth space. Lots of ways to make that trip fast.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “Whoever bought us must have a serious ship and a lot of jump priority, because we went from the Bazaar to planetside awfully fast. I know we weren’t in those sleepers for more than a few hours.” Any more than that, and I’d probably be dead.
“If you’ve got the money to buy people,
you can buy speed.”
Yes, but that raised another question. For a journey so short, why put us in sleepers at all?
“I know. But it doesn’t make sense,” I said, scratching my head. “They bought us cheap, remember?”
“Look around you. Someone owns all this land. It’s got to be worth a fortune, and it’s got to be private. I mean, we’re contraband. This can’t be a public space. Say what you want about the Commonwealth, but all three of those systems are civilized enough to have laws against kidnapping and slavery.”
“I know,” I said, shaking my head. “This is obviously someone with a lot of money to throw around. So why’d he buy us instead of someone better?”
Sei frowned. “We’re both here, so they must’ve gone for the package deal, huh?”
“Exactly. The rich, landowning bargain hunter? I don’t think so.”
“I see your point. I don’t like it much, though.”
“Right?” I nodded toward the shape beyond the hill. “Let’s go.”
“We’re at a big disadvantage out here,” Sei pointed out, hurrying after me. “These people aren’t going to let us just walk home to the Empress. Are you okay?”
“I’m not feeling well. And don’t get ahead of yourself,” I cautioned. “I think we’re better off trying to talk our way out of this. These people may not know exactly what they have on their hands. In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, I’m wanted by Imperial Security and Evagardian Intelligence.”
“I picked up that you’re shady as hell,” Sei said, though there wasn’t any judgment in his voice. He was just glad to have another imperial around. “What are you? New Unity? Actually, I don’t want to know. Do they know you’re here? Are they coming for you?”
“Probably not, but these people don’t need to know that. Didn’t your friend say you were a war hero?”
He shrugged. “She is too.”
“Well, these folks might not want that kind of trouble. We might be able to get them to cut us loose just by telling them who we are. Might not be so bad; they didn’t spend much on us. The Free Trade credit’s pretty weak against the Imperial Julian right now, isn’t it?”
“It usually is. I guess it’s worth a shot. And if that doesn’t work, then we take the direct approach.”
“If you’re up to it,” I said, looking down at my hands. They weren’t shaking, but I didn’t know how much good they would do me. “Because I’m not.”
“I am more than up to it. We’re supposed to be at Red Yonder right now. I had plans, man.”
“So did I,” I said, sighing.
We crested the hill. A house lay below. I was still adjusting. I’d prepared myself for this. It wasn’t an alien sight; it just wasn’t something I was prepared to see with my own eyes. It was the sort of thing you’d see in a projection or a hologram.
We both knelt to make ourselves less visible; we were horribly exposed on the top of the hill. It was broad daylight, and there was very little cover. “What do you think?” Sei asked, looking down at the place. There was a fence and a small garden.
“Twentieth century,” I said. “Give or take. No animals, no vehicle.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Nobody home?”
“If a guy lives there, he’ll have clothes.”
“I’d wear a dress at this point.”
We took one last look around, then hurried down the hillside, quickly crossing the ground to the structure. For a place like this on land like this—on Old Earth—you would need incredible wealth. On a Frontier world, it might not be quite as flamboyant, but there was nothing more valuable than land, and by the look of things, there was plenty of it around with nothing on it. On a terraformed body, no matter how you looked at it, that signaled wealth.
We made our way around the side of the house.
The door in the back was locked.
“It’s mechanical,” I said, rattling the handle. “It’s just metal.”
Sei took a flat gardening tool from the wooden box on the porch and slipped it into the narrow gap between the door and the frame, levering it sharply upward. There was a cracking noise, and he pulled the door open.
It was immediately clear that the illusion here was deep. The house’s occupants had gone to great lengths to get the details correct. There were still a few modern amenities mixed in with the old props. The ancient cooler in the kitchen was just a shell, but inside was a proper one.
In addition to some strange foodstuffs that I didn’t recognize, there were protein gel and some modern beverages. I was sure that if I looked around a bit, I’d probably find a combiner, or at least an injection system camouflaged in one of these strange old contraptions.
We didn’t linger in the kitchen. I tried to think about dramas, about what I knew about these architectural sensibilities.
Sei pointed at the ceiling, and I nodded in agreement. We’d find clothes on the next floor up, where bedrooms would be.
It was nearly impossible to be stealthy in this place; the wooden floors creaked ruthlessly. It seemed unlikely that the house was as old as it looked, which meant it had been built with a deliberate look of age. There was a lot of real wood. That was just more evidence of wealth.
We climbed the stairs and found a bedroom belonging to a man.
Sei and I raided his closet as quietly as possible. The clothes seemed to be authentic to the era, though I was having trouble determining exactly when this was supposed to be. I’d never been good with history.
All through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, men had worn dark slacks, light shirts, jackets to match the slacks, and a neck ornament to complete the look. None of it was that different from what we wore today, just more primitive. The core aesthetic principles from this period were still alive and well in the Empire, and across the galaxy.
The man who lived here was a little smaller than me and a little bigger than Sei. His clothes actually fit us rather well. They weren’t so small on me that it was an issue, and Sei just had to roll up the cuffs of his trousers a bit. Shoes would’ve been too convenient, though.
I didn’t want to wear antique shoes anyway. The last time I’d dressed up like this, I’d been back on Cohengard, waltzing around with a tray balanced on my hand, serving drinks.
It felt like centuries had passed since then. And fond memories wouldn’t get me out of this.
With minimal fumbling, we belted on old-fashioned trousers, fastened our shirts, and, feeling much more prepared to face our captors, went back downstairs.
“Did you look outside?” I asked Sei.
He nodded. “I didn’t see anything, but there’re all these trees. There can’t be any major cities nearby, or we’d see them. There might be something that way, but I’m not sure.” He pointed through the kitchen window.
“That’s where the road goes,” I said, securing my cuffs and straightening my collar.
“We should stay off the road, but we can’t do much until we know where we are.”
“We could try to get a vehicle and take off.” I pulled the curtains aside and peered out at the yard. “But without knowing where we’re going, we might not be making things better.”
We left the house and jogged toward the trees. The sky was clouding over, but that wasn’t right. There wasn’t any wind. Or not much of it.
“Hey,” I said, pausing. It wasn’t just the sudden change in the weather, but I didn’t have the strength to do a lot of hurrying. “Didn’t that come on a little fast?” I gazed up. The sky, previously bright, gorgeous blue, was turning gray.
“You see a sun?”
“It was over there,” I said, pointing. “Just the one, looked a bit like Solari.”
“So it could be New Earth. And judging from the house, whatever it rains here isn’t toxic,” Sei said. “We should be all right.”
“We haven’t had any vacci
nes for this biome,” I pointed out.
“They probably gave them to us while we were asleep. Come on, we can’t stay in the open.”
We pushed on. I was worried about our bare feet, but the grass and soil were both soft and welcoming. There was nothing objectionable to step on. Not a single sharp rock.
More low hills waited past the trees, and I could see something ahead.
What was more, I knew what it was. A steeple. As we climbed toward it, I recalled the towering spires on Nidaros and how they had called to mind this very thing, just on a much grander scale.
“It’s a temple.”
“Church,” Sei corrected.
We’d found some people. There were about twenty vehicles arranged outside the structure.
“There,” I said, pointing. There were more houses less than a kilometer away, all of them just as old-fashioned as the one Sei and I had invaded a few minutes earlier. There was an entire village of them. I tried to count. There might be four or more individuals to a house, and thirty to forty houses at least. It wasn’t a large colony, if that was what this was.
But what was a colony without a colony ship? What was more, where was the spaceport? The landing site? Was this a seeded colony where the inhabitants were simply dropped off with the materials they would use to start their new lives? What if it wasn’t a colony? Was this really just a settlement on New Earth?