I had been matching the rest of the team until yesterday. Now, I was not sure. “Mostly the early shift, but I think we get to invent our own.”
A voice from down the hall called, “Is there someone else here? Why did you not wake me?”
Mindy called back, “Sorry, Rags, but I guess we just did. Did you leave the door open again? Anyways, I know this guy. He owes me one, big time. I tried to murder him and all his friends. He has been trying to make it up to me ever since.”
An older man stepped out of a room across the hall and one door along from Mindy and me. He was dressed in an elegant style appropriate for upper-class Lunar gentlefolk when I first joined Legal Intelligence just before the Incursion; a grey pseudosilk blouse, slitted to allow air to circulate, belted with a silver rope at the waist above black shorts beaded along the seams with emerald and ruby sequins that looked real. Emeralds and rubies only formed on the Earth, so far as I knew, and had to be imported at a cost that only the wealthiest Lunatics could afford.
He stepped down the short hall and peered into her room. “You what? Oh, you had me for a moment.”
“No, it is true,” Mindy replied. “Across the hall, I would like to introduce Oldman. Strangest man I ever met and I have met some complete rockslides. He has been so kind and gentle with me, I could fall in love with him. Alas, he is already in love with a lady who would scare the shit out of me if I had any. Just as well, since I would be a terrible choice for marriage.”
She flipped a few controls on the edge of her frame, which rose to make a motorized wheelchair, with tiny wheels suitable only for polished flat floors. She rolled across the hall and pushed Rags into my room so she could occupy the doorway.
Rags objected, “Girl, you are making even less sense than usual. Hello, Oldman. You don’t deserve that name in my presence. I will admit, you seem pretty beat up and may feel much older. In fact, you look as badly off as she is.”
I nodded. “Yes, that is more or less how I got the name. Mindy, have they been taking proper care of you? You sound better.”
She smiled a little sadly, a pretty expression on a face that had formerly shown me mostly despair and contempt. “Yes, Beloved and Liberty came by several times. The doctors have been regular visitors. Especially Mercy, who has been quite concerned. Even the staff here, who are otherwise very professional, seem to like me and care for my health and happiness. I have to chase people away to get a little privacy.
“It feels weird and unnatural. I never met anyone I liked on the earth stations, not even amongst my own service, much less amongst the Earthers. The previous times I visited the Moon, I was repulsed by the false friendliness. It still seems slimy, like bathing in syrup that will leave me sticky and smelly until I can wash it off.
“But since I met you, I have not found anyone I did not want to like. Even angry people are angry for real reasons. The doctors are not even faking it. They have worked very hard to keep me alive and rebuild my strength. Now they are trying to make me happy, even the ones who obviously believe I am an enemy. If they were sane, they would have let me die. They are all so unbelievably nice, I cannot trust anyone, not even my own judgement anymore. I have not had friends since... since...”
She shook her head slowly. I finished the thought in my own mind – since I had murdered her family and friends in Syrtis London so many years ago.
Her eyes, however, came to rest on my armour, which still displayed its Banshee colours. She barely breathed out, “That logo... Where did you get... Those songs... They must be about you! And if she is the Flower, you are... And the Angel of Hope must be...”
“Shush,” said Sa’id. “The songs are cartoons of the real events, glamorized for artistic purposes. And no one needs to know.”
“I should not be surprised,” Mindy replied, forlornly. “I knew you were hiding something bigger. It is no more surreal than everything else that has happened. Only the Banshees could save the Deng or befriend a hateful, back-stabbing failure like me.”
Rags looked back and forth at each of us, concluding, “None of you make any sense. I fear this place is turning into a real Lunatic asylum. Are you going to do your exercise so we can eat?”
I was hungry, so Mindy and Rags left to give me room to move. While I pushed, pulled and twisted my pathetic muscles, Sa’id explained the layout of my new residence. The ward comprised six private rooms on a short hallway with a communal dining room at the end of the hall. It held people in a kind of protective custody, people who had not been charged with a crime but were too sensitive to release. It was located inside the TDF base chiefly for convenience since they already had secure facilities to hold criminals who had been brought to the Moon after violent incidents off-planet. Most of the doctors and therapists had cross-appointments with the TDF and Lunar Law Enforcement. Banshees fit easily into that model.
Only four of the rooms were occupied by detainees. Sa’id lived in a fifth room beside the entrance. He was free to come and go as his duties required. For my own safety, I was not. Otherwise, there were few limitations on our communications with the outside world. We mostly chose those limitations for ourselves, since we were hiding from people who intended to harm us.
After my exercise, we broke to eat (breakfast? dinner? no matter). It was relatively nice TDF fare, nutritious and filling, but nothing like what we could have found twenty minutes down the road. The staff saw that we got on well together and graciously withdrew, although I was sure they were monitoring what we said.
Mindy sucked on a bulb of nutritious, med-laden tea. She explained that it would still be the better part of a year before she would be able to eat normal food again. The grenade had torn her stomach to shreds along with most of her intestines. It had not helped when the autodoc that protected Doctor Mercy reflected the grenade fragments back into her belly until they had ripped enough flesh to stop. After several surgeries, the surviving fragments of tissue that could be identified had been disaggregated and spread along fabric balloons that were small models of her internal organs, fed by a rudimentary mesh of blood vessels. The tissue was slowly being stretched to the size of the real organs. For now, the replacement organs were hardly more than a few tens of cells thick. Only when her stomach achieved its full size and strength would they re-introduce food and the bacterial biome needed to digest it. She was allowed liquids in small quantities to encourage the digestive lining to start regenerating but for several more months would be fed and hydrated intravenously.
Her aorta had been replaced initially with an artificial blood vessel. As a top priority, they had grown a new one from the surviving pieces of her original aorta. It had been grafted in the previous week. The graft had taken quite well and was no longer considered critical. Her heart and lungs were mending nicely, although they were still delicate and would trigger alarms if stressed.
As the rest of us chewed, she talked about her growing envy of those who could eat. She daydreamed about her favourite dishes while she exercised, skimmed restaurant guides between news and cultural shows, and researched recipes that she could remember from her youth but never learned how to prepare. She was ashamed of her obsession, having maintained a clear, professional focus on her work until the grenade had forced her into a life of idleness. Now, she dreamt about food at night, about chewing and drinking and rolling a seasoned, textured curd around on her tongue.
2357-03-29 10:00
Address to the Lunar People
Finally, for distraction, she asked if I had seen the Viceroy’s Address to the Lunar People, which was broadcast shortly after I had arrived. The Viceroy must have delivered it while I had been eating and feeling sorry for myself, so I asked her to bring me up to date.
She proceeded to explain everything that happened the day before, from the viewpoint of someone trapped in the middle of a TDF detention centre. The initial attack of the hidden army was well reported and caused widespread consternation. Units had moved in disguise, unnoticed until they were in posit
ion through the whole city. Casting off their disguises, they had launched simultaneous assaults on key facilities before moving on to their primary targets. As the fighting escalated, the comm failed and the airtight doors shut. She had been forced to reconstruct the sequence of events overnight as the comm slowly recovered and reporters gave accounts from locations scattered over the whole city. Mercy had been quite stern about her need for sleep but she had ignored the advice. She had been too overwrought to doze off and too busy compiling an ever-growing set of news reports into a coherent narrative.
By now the rebellion was contained. The remaining rebel soldiers were being arrested as the airtight doors were opened one at a time by city officials, accompanied by a concentrated force of TDF soldiers.
There were, however, no reports that discussed how the Viceroy had been spirited away from the reception in the city centre. No one was talking who knew about the desperate attempt by the Viceroy and Directors to escape along the contested road, nor about the attack that had destroyed her convoy and nearly taken her life. Nor was I about to enlighten them.
Everyone knew about Wolong’s claim that Viceroy Fenghuang had been killed, destroyed by what he called patriotic forces operating on the Moon. He had also ordered his entire remaining fleet to return to the Moon to invade and occupy the cities. The TDF had replied with a threat to destroy any ship that responded to this command, and issued the bizarre statement that “There is no ash on the Moon.” Mindy concluded, quite reasonably, that it had to have been a code phrase calling the TDF fleet into battle readiness, especially after it was followed by “The iridescent wings take flight again.” The first of Wolong’s ships to break orbit around the Earth had their engines destroyed by TDF laser fire so quickly and effectively that the rest were discouraged from moving. Wolong had apparently been apoplectic, raging against treason everywhere. He threatened to mutilate and eviscerate every officer on the ships that had refused to obey his commands. Mindy commented that if he did, he would have no fleet at all.
With that as background, she brought up the video of the Address on the largest wall monitor.
Fenghuang sat silently and alone on a simple metal bench in front of the Imperial logo, with her knees tucked demurely together and her hands in her lap. Her hair had been completely redone, replacing the elaborate Tang loops with the rolled bun of a kitchen worker, complete with a white hairnet to keep strands of hair from contaminating food that her aristocratic hands would never prepare. Over her shoulders, she wore a transparent golden shawl that barely covered a green tunic with red dragons coiling up each breast. The tunic split down the middle to reveal light body armour coloured in a mottled purple and dark grey. Below the tunic, her legs were covered in shiny, white tights. Over them, she still wore the transport worker’s shorts and shoulder belt, along with two pairs of socks and the heavy work boots on her feet. It was a grotesque choice of clothing and I could imagine her wardrobe advisors frothing in fits at the sight.
A rich contralto voice announced an address by the Imperial Viceroy Fenghuang.
She began, “Beloved friends and loyal subjects of the Emperor, I am the most fortunate woman who ever lived, to have come to such a perfect oasis of virtue in a universe beset with trouble. The Viceroy Wolong claimed a great victory earlier today in the delusion that he had destroyed my government. As you can see I am still alive, as are all my loyal Directors and the whole Lunar Council. I am not merely alive but filled with determination to defend the rights and freedoms of the Lunar people with every gram of my being. I cannot thank individually everyone who served me so well through this perilous day but every Lunar citizen shares their honour.
“Beautiful people of the Moon, I am dressed not in the garments of pride or wealth or power but in memory of those whom I have come to love so well. I have been revived and restored by the unified strength of our common humanity.”
She stood, removed the shawl, twirled it expertly into a ball and tossed it aside.
“My hair is styled like that of the man who prepared the best meal I have ever eaten, in the best company I could hope to meet. The armour is in honour of the quick thinking of my wisest defender. The tunic is borrowed from my athletic advisor to represent the strength and endurance we will need to face what is still coming. The white of the leggings represents the courage of the guards who shielded my body with their own. And the shorts and boots I have borrowed from the wonderful working people who transported me to safety at great personal peril, motivated by nothing more, and nothing less, than the tremendous generosity of the Lunar spirit.
“I pledge the resources of the Imperium to defend the Moon, to build it anew, safe and prosperous. Together we will be a beacon for all Human Space.
“WE LUNATICS WILL DEFINE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE TRULY HUMAN!
“I do not stand alone in this pledge. In this dark hour, I call on everyone, everywhere on the Moon to join me in the Challenge of Hope!”
She danced backwards up onto the bench, as gracefully as her oversized boots allowed. She clapped her right hand over her heart as a swarm of officers, staff and workers, gathered hastily from throughout the TDF buildings in whatever clothes they had been wearing, moved in from both sides to kneel before her, not kowtowing but facing the camera. They joined hands and sang the Challenge, quietly at first but with growing power until it thundered out of the monitor, which then faded to black.
We sat silently for a moment, trying to absorb what had happened. Rags summed it up for me. “Wow. I should watch the news more often. That was bizarre.”
Mindy had tears streaming down her face but turned to glare at his insolence. She would have hit him, except he was too far away and she pulled a muscle in her side trying. If I had not locked myself as the Ghost before it started, the strain of not telling what had actually happened might have torn a few muscles in my own body.
The singing of the Challenge woke the last member of our little community, which triggered an alarm that brought in a swarm of doctors and orderlies. When they were satisfied with her continued recovery, they returned to their other duties, leaving an orderly to watch over her. We were permitted to enter and greet her. She glowered at us, complaining about being woken by the noise, about the bad food, about the disrespectful service, and with some asperity about the bad company.
What remained of her clothes, folded beside her bed, suggested she had been an officer in the Vallis Patriotic Force, perhaps quite senior. They were riddled with holes and splotched with blood stains, but only the largest stains matched the holes in the cloth.
I expected she was in considerable pain, despite her meds. She might even consider herself to be a prisoner of war. It put her in good company in this ward, although I doubted any of us wanted anyone else to know the depth of our individual troubles.
2357-03-29 10:30
Waking Nightmares
Mindy was exhausted from her long day of combing the news feeds, so she went to bed and darkened her glass. Rags and I chatted about clothes for a few minutes. He tried to dig out the strange symbolism of the Viceroy’s dress but I refused to be baited into a fuller discussion.
Finally, Sa’id reminded me that I had to file a report on my activities over the previous day. I excused myself and put together a full report. I included all the conversations I had overheard and attached the video of our arrest of Sergeant Nguyen and the rebel soldiers, with suggestions for their further interrogation and therapy. I mentioned a few ideas concerning the VPF soldiers we had recruited in the corridor to Gagarin Road. I listed everyone I thought was worthy of awards, starting with the maintenance crew from WR35-23, Officer Jan and Corporal Mirza. I recommended medals of valour for the soldiers and guards who had died protecting the Viceroy in her desperate escape. They were anonymous to me but would be bitterly missed by their friends and families. Less happily, I recommended a reprimand and retraining for whoever had chosen such a dangerous route through the city. The entire Lunar security apparatus needed to upgrade their
skills in VIP management, counterinsurgency, and humane methods to disperse or subdue rebel forces, all of which they could and should have learned from the Earth.
I Banshee-encrypted the document and filed it with the Admiralty. I was no longer clear about my reporting chain with all the changes of government, so I sent a second copy to the rest of the team.
A few moments later, Sa’id sent me a copy of his report, with the comment, “Mine is more succinct and a lot drier.”
Drier, indeed. I skimmed what I had written in my report and recognized that I was still too emotionally involved to dare to contact the Banshees directly, nor even to inquire about the fate of the Rapunzel and the attempt to rescue the crew of the rogue ship. For the same reason, I could not ask about Hope University or the ministers who had been imperilled during the rebellion.
I darkened the glass as though I was sleeping but spent a restless couple of hours reviewing my dreams, compiling a catalog of what had almost worked, what had failed disastrously, and how long human life lasted in each scenario. My recent dreams were more realistic than the older ones but were still horrendous nightmares ending in extinction. They were more heartbreaking in their realism but not fundamentally different from what I had seen before.
I found two more cases where we survived, one in which I was tried on the Earth and one on Mars. My detailed confession was a critical element in both scenarios.
In the first case, Wolong lost his entire fleet but retained factional alliances in the Belt. He was forced to implement an Imperial Directorate of Law, using Officers of Truth to guarantee that my confession was factual. The Moon retained its independence and developed closer ties with the Imperial government on Mars. After my confession, the Moon helped Mars undertake extensive reforms. Hoping to destabilize the Imperial Government, Wolong’s allies exterminated Hope University in a surprise attack that killed all its faculty, staff and students. Although the Belt had rallied when I gave my confession, the destruction of Hope rekindled the anger and the factional war exploded again. With the help of the great factories at L1, L2 and the Moon, Mars rebuilt its war fleet and brought devastation to the rebellious factions, who in revenge savaged the Earth and Moon with decades of suicidal nuclear attacks. Early in the renewed fighting, the entire Imperial family died of assassination, disease and old age. A Succession War raged until the Imperial dream was forgotten and the three planets forged a grudging peace. A new civilization began to form, militant and unforgiving, even as its upper classes became more prosperous and domineering. The Belt was largely depopulated, the few survivors living as slaves to a corporate aristocracy that was utterly intolerant of dissent.
Lord Banshee Lunatic (Nightmare Wars Book 3) Page 35