Eden's Trial

by Barry Kirwan

  Blake thought back to Josefsson’s visit the previous afternoon. He’d looked haggard, old. He’d offered no reason why he’d come, but had spent a whole hour trying to justify the hanging of Carlson, the other measures. Blake had listened to it all, asked Josefsson if he knew who Pontius Pilate was, and had reminded him of the political maxim that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Josefsson had stormed out.

  “He’s in too deep, Antonia.” Blake brought himself back to the present. “Shakirvasta plays chess, I gather. He thinks of me as the opposing king. If he takes me out, then it’s endgame.”

  “He keeps playing on you killing his mistress. No evidence of course, just a lot of hot air. But he’s good at sowing doubt in people’s minds, doubt about you.”

  “It’s a shame about Jen, I admit, but I –”

  Antonia shot to her feet. “What did you just call her?” Her words had a cutting edge, reminding him that although she looked demure, she was no pushover. She approached him, hunting his eyes. “Only Dimitri ever called her that, and maybe Shakirvasta himself...” Her eyes widened. She mouthed a single word silently: alive?

  He returned her stare, neither denying nor affirming. She went back to the chair, stood behind it and leant on its back. “You don’t play chess by the rules, do you, Commander?”

  He spoke to the window. “Do you know how to defeat a chess computer, Antonia?”

  “I confess I don’t.”

  He turned back to her, his eyes animated. “You defend your queen at all costs. You sacrifice everything for the queen. The computer focuses on the queen because you value it so much. You leave a back door open and let the computer take your queen, and then you strike with your last surviving rook.” He watched it sink in.

  A frown scraped across her brow. “How do you know all this, Commander, have you actually done it? Did you ever beat a chess computer?”

  “No, but I married someone who did.”

  Footsteps approached from the courtyard.

  “And if your plan fails? What then? What if Kat never returns? Micah neither?”

  “Survive, at all costs.”

  “You can’t possibly mean –”

  “At all costs, Antonia. You said it yourself. Five years. You need to be around to pick up the pieces.”

  She glared. “Why nice to Sonja and hard on me?”

  The guard entered.

  “Good stock, Antonia.” He smiled. “You can handle it. He’s right about that part, at least. Goodbye, it’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

  She pursed her lips, then relaxed them. She walked up to him and gave him a peck on the cheek.

  “Hold me, Antonia. Dying wish, and all that.”

  She tensed, but complied. He whispered something into her ear. After a moment, she let go. “Au revoir, Commander.”

  * * *

  Rashid had spent twelve days tracking Vasquez and his men. He’d ridden the skimmer into the ground, covering two thousand kilometres of terrain, staying in the saddle for twelve hours at a stretch, till his limbs and buttocks were numb from the vibrations; till he couldn’t steer anymore. At first, following their trail had been easy, the tell-tale signs of abandoned encampments and buried detritus, indicating a disciplined squadron of men on the move, conscious of the environment. Later, however, nearer Ourshiwann’s equator, their traces dried up, lost in an endless plain of dusty scrub, scoured clean by a recent sandstorm. He’d lost three days using a wave-search pattern until finally his dolphin had detected a single piece of metal foil lodged in a bush. After that, he’d managed to catch up with them in an extinct volcanic mountain range. It extended upwards like a botched and heavily-scarred incision on the planet’s skin, shrinking towards the Southern horizon. At first the trail disappeared again, but on a hunch he headed for a collapsed volcano which might contain water in its caldera. He ditched the skimmer and spent the chill dawn hours on foot to arrive at its crest undetected. Then he waited.

  Rashid pressed his fingers to his temples, and through an effort of will scanned the encampment via his dolphin, using it to zoom in wherever he ‘looked’. The grainy black and grey ‘image’ was accurate, but the lack of colour had been depressing him lately. Occasionally he took it off, as if it was better to see nothing than to have this ‘limbo-vision’.

  The scanning was giving him a headache, but he did not want to arrive unannounced. “Where are you, Vasquez?” he muttered to himself, searching for the tell-tale one-armed profile that had eluded him for the past hour. Soldiers came and went out of the tents, tending fires, cleaning kit and doing laundry in the water inside the deep basin whose upper lip he lay upon. He was relieved to see several men maintaining the sling-jet – he’d been praying for a quicker mode of travel for the return trip. Blake might be in difficulties.

  He got distracted by several men in an inflatable dinghy just inside the lake in the pit of the caldera. They’d become agitated and were pointing wildly. He hunted around and then saw a large snake-like head rear up out of the water. As it rose, water gushed off its scaly hide. It threatened the boat then dove down, nearly capsizing it, causing the men to crouch and grab the sides to stabilise it. A wide fan-tail flicked up out of the water, then lashed down against it making a thwack which Rashid heard even at his distance, and then was gone. He reckoned the creature must be twenty metres long.

  “Snake-whale. Or Whale-snake. We haven’t decided yet.”

  Rashid recognised Vasquez’ taut command voice immediately, but nevertheless managed to spring up to his feet in one flowing, turning movement, so that he was facing the one-armed colonel. “How did you detect me? I left the skimmer several klicks back.”

  Vasquez was a head taller, and Rashid remembered his shock of white hair, though now all his dolphin detected was spiky fuzz on top of the man’s head. But he found he could imagine it as white. Just.

  “Oh you’re good, Rashid, nearly as good as Ramires, but we still have stealth tech.” He held up a small box. That was all Rashid’s sonar could perceive.

  “Anyway, let’s call it a snake-whale. Hasn’t actually eaten anyone yet, but I don’t doubt it could acquire the taste if pressed.” He walked to the edge. “Mighty good fishing here. Don’t know where they come from, but –”

  “Underground ocean. I have seen it.”

  “That so? Well, best catch is some fish like jack, don’t taste so bad. We’ve been hauling them in, salt-drying them, and preparing to take them back to Esperantia.”

  “Did you find anything else useful on your travels?”

  Vasquez shook his head. “Afraid not. This planet isn’t inhospitable, but it’s damned barren. If only we’d had the presence of mind to bring more fauna and flora from Earth, the bacteria that make things grow. But your ocean sounds mighty interesting. But you’re not here as a tourist, are you, Rashid?”

  Rashid thought of the spider nest, the ocean, the ship, Jen and Dimitri, and Blake. “We need to talk.” He squatted down. Vasquez followed suit, and listened.

  “Hot damn! It’s only been three months! And Shakirvasta, well, I marked him as a control-freak, but this … megalomania… We have to get back there, and soon.”

  “Is the sling-jet still functional?” Rashid asked.

  “Enough fuel for a one-way trip. Was saving it for an emergency. This qualifies. Could take you, me and a dozen of my men – more than a match for Shakirvasta’s militia, given the hardware we’re packing.”

  Rashid had sketched an outline of the ship he’d named Arjuna in the sand with his finger. “There’s another problem. Shakirvasta does not leave loose ends. Frankly, I feared I would not find you alive. He must have a spy, or spies, maybe assassins amongst your group.”

  “My thoughts, too. Thirty of the men, well, I’ve known them for years, a few of them their fathers and elder brothers before them. The other twenty were volunteers or conscripts. There are a handful we’ve been keeping a close eye on, but nothing substantial yet. So, we have to flush them out.”

 
Rashid nodded. “We need bait, and you seem to have become a talented fisherman.”

  “I take it you have a plan?”

  “First, Colonel, if you don’t mind, tell me please: what colour is the water inside the caldera?”

  “Now listen, Rashid, a piece of advice from someone who’s seen a lot of soldiers let dolphins be their downfall: forget all about col–”

  “Please, Colonel.”

  Vasquez let out a long breath. He glanced over the lip to the lake below. “It’s the colour of malachite, Rashid. Right now, it’s breathtakingly beautiful, the setting sun reflecting crimson on the wave-tops, the surrounding rocks the colour of rust, and you’ll never see colour again, and I’ll never know what sonar feels like, so get over it! Now, your plan.”

  Rashid lay in the undergrowth, still as a sleeping insect, listening to the gentle lapping of water on the rocky shore. Earlier, he’d heard from a distance as Vasquez told his assembled troops how he’d met with a messenger from Esperantia reporting crimes and social disarray there; how Vasquez planned to return with an elite platoon by sling-jet, while the rest would gather the salt-dried protein harvest and make the long return trek. All this would happen in the morning. Rashid knew that Shakirvasta’s man, or men, must strike during the night or lose their opportunity. Vasquez was the bait.

  Rashid set his wristcom to tactile mode. Four pin-pricks in his flesh silently announced midnight. It was re-confirmed as a new guard arrived to replace the slumped figure on watch outside Vasquez’ tent, twenty metres away. The shift change was brief, both guards weary, one from having been awake, the other from having had his sleep broken in two. But once the off-going guard had disappeared back to his own tent, Rashid noticed how the new one became more alert, checking all around the camp for the next ten minutes. He kept bending down, checking the ground for something. Either he was very diligent, or he was making sure all were asleep. Once or twice he even approached Rashid’s hiding place. Rashid hoped the moon had sunk below the caldera’s steep walls, or else his dolphin might glint in its light.

  After ten minutes, presumably giving enough time for the previous guard to have fallen into a deep slumber, two figures emerged from one of the far tents. Their silent steps, and their smooth dancer-like gait, told Rashid all he needed to know – they moved like shadows drifting on a breeze. Both of them were side-armed, though he could not tell what kind of pistol it was. Worse news was that each wore some kind of head-mounted sighting system. Tech-assassins. He spat quietly on the ground next to him. His own Sarowan training had followed the more traditional mode, where a code of honour prevailed.

  He pushed back from the ground into a stable firing position, with one knee on the floor, one knee up, and aimed his pulse rifle at the lead assassin. They were still a way off from Vasquez’ tent. He squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He glanced at it uselessly, since his dolphin could not read the LCD display. But he’d asked Vasquez to check its charge earlier. Then it hit him. The guard hadn’t been checking the ground, he’d been placing something there, some kind of electrostatic suppression system. He remembered there had been a myth back on Earth that Shakirvasta, then President of the IVS mil-ware corporation, had survived a number of assassination attempts. Some had suspected a secret piece of never-patented IVS mil-tech was involved.

  Rashid was running out of time. Even alerting the other soldiers wasn’t going to help if their weapons would not fire. He wondered what the assassins were carrying, and had a feeling he would soon find out.

  He lay down his rifle and extracted his commando knife from its sheath. It was a long throw, and the only still target was the guard. Back in the War he’d hunted deer in the mountains with this knife; the sound of the knife spinning in the air captivated them for the half-second it took the knife to find its target. He judged the breeze and the distance, and drew his right arm back behind his shoulder, fingers wrapped around the blade. He took an in-breath, held it, then hurled the knife forward and upward in a killing arc.

  He leapt to the left side as two things happened – the guard turned to the sound just before the knife thudded into his chest, punching him off his feet; and the other two assassins aimed their weapons at the tech-triangulated position from which Rashid had launched the knife. A shimmer of deadly needles whistled past Rashid, looking to his sonar like a shower of rain hitting a pool of water. He hit the ground, rolled, and came up behind a boulder. A second volley clattered against the rock, the needles splintering into it, sounding like a hundred out-of-synch cicadas. Luckily Rashid did not have to lift his head above the boulder’s crest to see what was going on – his dolphin was smart enough to assemble the reflected sonar bounces and construe a reliable picture – he could see around corners.

  One assassin kept his weapon trained in Rashid’s direction, while the other faced Vasquez’ tent. No! thought Rashid, but he knew if he moved he would be dead in a split second. “Assassins!” he shouted, and then he thought of a better word, even though it was a lie. “Alicians! In the camp! Pulse weapons don’t work!”

  He heard the assassins murmur something, then heard the needles slice Vasquez’ tent into shreds, mincing everything inside. The outrage made him want to jump up and scream. It cannot end this way! He clamped his jaw shut, and continued to ‘watch’ as soldiers emerged, the first few easily cut down in a hailstorm of poison shards. Then the assassin who had murdered Vasquez toppled – a smooth cylinder, which must have been the hilt of a knife, sticking out of his forehead. The second sprinted in Rashid’s direction, his weapon levelled in front of him.

  Rashid had to time it perfectly. He put his back to the boulder. Just as the assassin reached it, readying to aim and fire downwards, Rashid kicked off from his squatting position upwards in a backward arch, catching the assassin’s gun-wielding forearm and forcing it upwards. Rashid’s head slammed into the assassin’s face, as the assassin’s momentum carried them both forward. The needle-gun left the assassin’s grip and scuttled across the rocks. As they toppled together, the assassin managed to bring his knees sharply into Rashid’s upper back. Rashid hit the deck hard, his cheek slamming against a rock. He tasted blood and felt the numbness that meant pain would be calling imminently. The assassin rolled and recovered quickly. His head darted around to locate the gun, then he leapt to a boulder at the edge of the lake and reached down to retrieve it between two rocks. Rashid ignored the shouting of the soldiers rushing in their direction. He sprang towards the assailant, arms spread wide. He connected with him just as the gun was lifting toward him, locking his grip around the gun-toting wrist, and shoved his shoulder into his opponent’s chest. The assassin grabbed Rashid’s other hand, and they plunged toward the lake below. Rashid took a single deep breath just before they hit the icy water.

  They sank beneath the surface, touching bottom near the shore, wrestling, each trying to gain an advantage, arms pulling and shoving, legs kicking but less useful underwater. Rashid’s kicks pushed them further out into the lake. The gun fired once, needles shooting off into the depths. He knew how this would end: they would both drown. So be it, I’ll die like the Sarowan warrior my parents wanted me to be. His lungs were already near bursting, small bubbles escaping as he fought, water stinging his nostrils and sinuses whenever the assassin gained the advantage. The temptation to breathe in was so strong, he almost succumbed, but in a flash he thought of Sonja and Blake, seeing her in tears and Blake at the end of a rope. He clamped his mouth shut.

  But each of them was losing strength, slowing down. Then Rashid’s dolphin picked up something rising missile-fast from the depths. He calculated its trajectory. It would be a gamble but this battle was lost otherwise. He waited another second, then brought up a knee close to his own chest, got his foot into his opponent’s stomach, and pushed hard, pressing himself away. He saw the assassin recover and aim the pistol at him, but he never got the chance to fire. The snake-whale rocketed up underneath him, its mouth engulfing the assassin. Rashid bolted upwards, claw
ing his way to air and life. The snake-whale broke surface first, its prey writhing and kicking in its jaws, before crashing downwards, heading back into the caldera’s depths.

  Rashid inhaled more air than he thought possible, his body shaking. Rough arms seized him and dragged him to shore. He knew they may well believe him to be an assassin too. He then heard a voice he hadn’t expected to hear.

  “Don’t hurt him, he’s one of us.” Vasquez squatted down next to him.

  Rashid coughed up water. “But I saw –”

  “Like I said earlier, Rashid, we still have a few stealth-ware tricks up our sleeves. My tent’s been empty all night, except for a one-armed holo, that is.”

  Rashid’s heart still pounded inside his chest. “We should leave.”

  “We have a few burials first, I’m afraid.”

  Rashid grabbed his arm. “No. I have a very bad feeling about how this night might end. Seconds can count in battle, Colonel, you know that. We’re South-East of Esperantia. We need to arrive before dawn.”

  Vasquez frowned, then stood up. “Okay men, get everything prepared, we ship out in thirty minutes.”

  One of his men came forward. “But Sir, we have five of our own dead here.”

  “They’re coming with us, to be buried in Esperantia where their families can pay their respects. Now, everyone get to work. Blake needs our help, and our speed!”

  * * *

  Blake became aware someone else was in the darkened room. He sat up. “Assassin?”

  Light flickered on, revealing Shakirvasta, relaxed in a chair, a pistol in his right hand resting on a crossed knee. The other hand held a cigarette, though there was no odour Blake could detect.

  “What do you want?” Blake said, scowling.

  “A trade, Commander.” He took a drag, and exhaled a ring of pale grey smoke. He stared though the ring. “This is an original cigarette, Commander, one of the old style. Unabashed nicotine, though odourless of course, since it is – was – highly illegal. Do you know, I actually have tobacco seeds stored with me? Might be nice to reintroduce it, don’t you think?”