Tilted Axis

by David Ryker

  Ward could see the focus in her now that he’d seen when they first met, that go-getter attitude. She already knew the answer to the question she was asking. When he’d fed her the line about the AIA safehouse, she’d known then that it was horseshit, but she hadn’t said anything. Let it ride, see what comes out in the wash. It was a simple tactic — and Ward’s lie probably couldn’t be proven or disproven if she went to Moozana with it — but this slip-up? She couldn’t ignore it. And Ward didn’t blame her for not doing so. He wouldn’t have let it go, either. She’d just risked everything for him — thrown away her entire career, her life even — on the supposition that Ward knew what the hell he was doing.

  She’d gotten into bed with him, and he couldn’t fault her for wanting to know who she was screwing.

  Ward killed the bike and listened as the cicadas began to chirp, the afternoon wearing into evening. “I haven’t been completely truthful with you, Arza.”

  “No shit. You’re still AIA?”

  “You never stop being AIA.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, putting her hand on her head and walking in circles. “So what, you’re informing on the SB? Is that it? A spy?”

  Ward’s jaw tightened. “More like a sleeper agent. I’m not informing on the SB — there’s no need to. But, when something like this happens, hell, it pays for the AIA to have a man on the inside.”

  “So what are you doing? Working this case for the AIA?”

  “I’m working it for Sadler. For the SB. For the AIA. For me. Hell — for the goddamn OCA. I don’t want to see Chang with a bullet in his skull, do you?”

  She bared her teeth at him. “You’re so full of shit.”

  “Welcome to the wonderful world of espionage,” Ward announced emphatically and held his arms out. “Congratulations, you figured out people lie to each other.”

  “Screw you.”

  Ward took a breath and looked at her. “I lied to you — but that’s not the important thing here. The SB’s investigations have come up to nothing. They haven’t made anything of that code, they showed up at Ootooka’s to kill us. The body and rifle at the port — you can bet they’re going to bury that. Hell, you think anyone else is even working this?”

  “Moozana wouldn’t just betray—”

  “No, he wouldn’t. But if his investigators are corrupt, or even a few of them — they don’t even need to drop the investigation, just stall it out until Chang arrives. With our second shooter dead, you can bet they’re going to say that the threat is gone. No reason for Chang not to arrive. And then —”

  “You think they’re going to try and assassinate him?”

  “They’ve come this far.” Ward shook his head and watched the cattle. They’d stopped to see what the commotion was all about. He figured there wasn’t much that was interesting going on out here. Hell, they’d probably never seen people before.

  “You think there’s a third shooter?”

  Ward shrugged. “If the guy at the docks was all they had left, I don’t think Chang’s in much trouble. His surgery looked a lot fresher than Sadler’s — Ootooka’s dead, but I’d bet they found another cyber to do it. Only he wasn’t half as good. No, I’d say that the person who shot Sadler and the person who was at the port were two different people.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I can’t, but if it was the same person, I think we’d be dead.”

  Arza stared at him for a while. “So what’s your plan? We chase down the shooter, the people he works for, and then what? Hand him over to the AIA?”

  “The SB, the AIA — it’s all part of the OCA? We’re on the same side, right?” He had no intention of handing this over to the SB without confirming they were able to be trusted. But he wasn’t about to tell Arza that.

  “Supposedly. But allies don’t keep secrets.”

  Ward laughed. “Jesus, you think the Security Bureau doesn’t have spies? The UMR Defense Committee? Hell, there are people working all over. The SB will have spies in the DC, the DC in the AIA, the AIA in the DC, the AIA in—”

  “The SB?” She arched an eyebrow at him but didn’t argue. Her own mother was a spy — or at least that was Ward’s guess. He didn’t think she disagreed with his statement.

  “Look, Arza — a plot to assassinate the prime minister of the UMR isn’t something three people cooked up in a garage somewhere. This is coming down from on high, and if it comes off…” He stared back at the tops of the shimmering towers. “Then all hell will break loose across the Axis. The Humans are going to say Martians, the Martians will say Humans… The treaty is going to implode, and every colony from here to Hephaestus and back is going to destabilize. There’s someone out there pulling strings with an end goal in mind. And… and if we find out who that is, who's behind this, we might — might — have a chance at keeping this whole thing on track. But I don’t think anyone’s going to help us. As far as it goes, it’s just you and me. The two of us. We’re the only ones outside it all — out of reach. The fact that we’re being shot at every way we turn — that’s good news.”

  She scoffed. “You and I have very different ideas of good news.”

  “It means we’re on the right track. We just need to keep picking at these threads. Keep pulling on them, and eventually…”

  “The whole thing just unravels?” She shook her head. “Is that the best metaphor you’ve got?”

  Ward shrugged. “I’m an investigator, not a poet.”

  “You’re an AIA sleeper agent and a piece of shit is what you are.” She paused and narrowed her eyes for a second. “And where do I fit into all this? What happens afterward? I play dumb about the whole thing, and life just goes on? I commit treason? Is that what you’re proposing?”

  Ward shook his head. “I can disappear. My cover’s blown. You plead ignorance, or tell Moozana. That’s up to you. But, once we nail whoever’s behind this, I’m off this damn planet. For good.”

  “What, you don’t like it here?”

  “I don’t like it anywhere.”

  She sighed and put her hands on her hips. “That’s one hell of a speech, Ward, you know that?”

  “So what do you say?”

  She held her hands out. “Well, I’m already freaking here, aren’t I?”

  Ward grinned with relief and let the tension drain out of his body. “Come on, we need to find somewhere to lie low for the night.”

  “And I suppose you just happen to know of another old AIA safehouse that just might still be there?”

  Ward laughed and cranked the ignition, feeling Arza get on behind him. “You know what? As a matter of fact, I do.”

  14

  It wasn’t so much of a safe house as it was a shack.

  The AIA maintained a couple of places — off the books, and the grid — that served as safe havens for agents who needed to crawl under a rock prior to being exfiltrated off the planet. But with that second part becoming so damn difficult of late, the shelter wasn’t often used. Never, was more accurate.

  The sun was down by the time they pulled up at the maintenance station.

  Wind turbines chugged overhead.

  A thousand of them were set up in a huge crescent about twenty kilometers outside the city. It ran around a natural rise and took the prevailing wind in force. It swept in off the plain and funneled itself up the slope, into the mouth of the rocky horseshoe.

  Ward and Arza dismounted, wobbling in the gale. It was difficult to stand straight. They were both shivering, their heads coiled into their necks reflexively as the massive arms of the windmills flew down like the beating of great wings before sweeping back into the air, slicing the wind in two with each immense revolution.

  The building was a squat breeze block thing with a lean-to at the back — just one room with a cot and wash basin and a little boiler closet. It was meant for maintenance workers coming out to service the turbines to take shelter in during sandstorms. Of course, they didn’t happen very much anymore, not since the g
rasses had taken hold of the deserts. So now, it was even more rarely used — especially with Eudaimonia just a quick jaunt away.

  Ward staggered forward through the wind and let himself in, the suddenness of the breeze swirling dust off the concrete floor into a little tornado.

  Arza coughed and sputtered at his shoulder and Ward covered his face with his arm.

  “Is this it?” Arza was disappointed. Ward didn’t blame her.

  The room was spartan — four bare walls, a carpetless floor, a sink in the corner, and a sheetless single bed against the wall. He cracked a smile. “This is it.” He held his hand up in a loose fist. “Rock paper scissors for the bed?”

  She was gobsmacked, her mouth agape. “You’re joking.” She obviously wasn’t used to sleeping in places like this. Originally he’d thought she might have lived in a modest studio. But now, knowing who her father was, he was envisaging a swanky apartment somewhere in midtown.

  “Afraid not,” Ward laughed, enjoying the look of disgust on her face.

  She elbowed him in the gut and headed for the bed, sitting down with a squeak, scowling at him.

  “So you want the bed?”

  She nodded. “You think?”

  He shrugged and nodded. “All right, you can have it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ward pulled the door closed behind him and flicked on a strip light overhead. It groaned to life, the only source of luminance in the windowless room. He headed over to the basin and tried the taps. “Huh, no hot water.”

  “I’m shocked.”

  He shrugged again and opened the steel door next to the basin, looking over his shoulder at Arza. “Boiler. I’ll check if it’s working.”

  He went in and let the door close behind him. There was a grinding noise and a clang and then silence. After a second Arza stood up. “Ward?”

  There was no reply.

  “Ward?” She started forward. “Can you hear me? Ward?”

  Nothing.

  She reached the door. “If this is some sort of—” She cut herself off, opening it to an empty room.

  It was no more than a meter deep by two across, cutting left behind the door. It was dank and covered in algae, and an ancient boiler stood, a mess of pipes and a fat little tank, against the back wall. But there was no Ward — and no windows either. “What the hell?” she muttered to herself. “Ward?” She called his name like he was hiding behind the pipes. After a minute, she went back into the main room, the sprung door closing after her. She sat back on the bed, squinting at the dirty floor, wondering what the hell had just happened.

  Two minutes after that, Ward stuck his head out of the boiler room, a shit-eating grin smeared on his face. “You check the water?”

  She was there in a second, pulling the door open from under his fingers. “What the hell’s going on in there?”

  He let it open and Arza shoved past him into the boiler room. The mess of pipes and fat little tank nearly touching the ceiling. It was lifted up on a set of hydraulic runners, and under it was a hole big enough to climb through. A ladder ran into the darkness below. A dim light burned somewhere under the ground.

  “What’s this?”

  “That’s where I’m sleeping,” Ward said casually. “You got the bed, remember?”

  She elbowed him again, harder this time, and took the ladder before he could say anything.

  Her boots hit the floor below and she followed the light down a narrow dirt tunnel that, judging by the direction, ran deeper into the windmill field. After ten meters or so she came to a wooden door with a frosted window in it. Inside, a light was on. She didn’t know what she expected when she opened it, but it wasn’t what she found.

  It was about five times the size of the room above, and as plush as a hotel suite. At the far left, a kitchen was laid out across one wall — a counter with a coffee machine, a sink, utensils, a stove and oven, even a blender. There were cupboards with plates and bowls, and a bunch of pots and pans — even a refrigerator.

  On the right, a set of sliding doors were pushed apart to reveal a bedroom beyond with a beautiful bed and expensive looking artwork hanging on the wall.

  In the main living area, a huge wrap-around sofa dominated the room, facing a television mounted on the wall — a thin panel of curved glass the size of the entire room upstairs.

  At the back of the room, a doorway led to a bathroom with a jacuzzi bathtub and walk-in shower.

  All in all, the bunker was a palace.

  Ward appeared behind her. “Bet you wish you’d rock-paper-scissored me now, right?”

  Her elbow came back for the third time, but Ward caught it, his fingers like iron around her arm. “You’ve got to stop doing that.”

  “When you stop being an asshole.”

  He held onto her for a second, letting a smile spread over his lips. “Well, there’s not much chance of that, is there?”

  “Probably not.” She pulled her arm out of his hands and walked into the room. “You get the couch.”

  For fugitives from the law, they lived like royalty.

  The room was comfortable and cool. A heating and air filtration system ran straight off the power produced from the wind turbines above and kept the room well ventilated and at a comfortable temperature. They had full access to satellite television, and even encrypted access to the UMR network.

  It was nearly ten and Ward and Arza were both three beers in. The refrigerator had been well-stocked. Whoever was ready to hole up down there wasn’t looking to live in anything but luxury.

  Ward told her that it was done to accommodate even the highest ranking AIA agents who might need out — ones who’d been living in luxury and didn’t want to sacrifice their standard of living, no matter the situation. Though, when Arza enquired as to who they were, Ward just met her with a smile. “Like they’d tell me.”

  Up on the screen was the photograph that he’d taken of the rifle. He and Arza had been staring at it for the last fifteen minutes, but neither of them had any clue as to where it came from.

  Ward had seen his fair share of rifles — on Earth, on Mars, all across the OCA — but he’d never seen one quite like this.

  “We need to take this to Klaymo,” Ward said, to Arza’s surprise.

  “What? You were the one who was saying he was crazy — that he imagined—”

  “I said forgot — in a drunken stupor — but whether he’s drunk or not,” Ward said, kicking back on the couch and draining the last of his beer, “the man knows his guns.”

  “And what about the brownstones?”

  “I say we get an early start in — slip out to the brownstones before the construction crews arrive for the morning shift, then head out to the ranch, see what we can dig up. If we come up with something solid — and I mean really solid — like keeping my ass out of an SB black-site — then we go straight to Moozana. We tell him everything, let him find the shooters’ hideout and we wait for his response. If it’s enough, it’s enough, if not…”

  “You go?”

  “I go.” He sighed, pulling his thumb out of the mouth of his beer with a pop before pushing it back in again. Pop. Pop.

  “And until then?”

  Ward looked around. “We’re already here, aren’t we?”

  “And what if I decide to tell Moozana about this place?”

  Ward cocked his head at her. “Oh, if I thought you’d do that, I would have just let the SB shoot you at Ootooka’s.”

  She stared at him, her eyes narrowing fractionally as she decided whether or not he was joking.

  He wasn’t. “Come on,” he said, standing up. “We’d better get to bed — early start and all that.”

  She arched an eyebrow incredulously. “We?”

  Ward laughed and headed for the bathroom. “You wish.”

  Arza looked over and nodded, silhouetted by the lamp next to the bed, and pulled the bedroom doors closed.

  Ward returned the gesture from his spot on the couch and laid his head back.
He closed his eyes and let out a long breath. Arza’s outline at the bedroom doors burned in his mind. And then it began to fade as he waded into the darkness of sleep.

  It roiled like an ocean and then took to breaths, ebbing and flowing in and out. A sheet of black moving in and out. In and out. In and out with his breath. He sank backward, deeper and deeper into the couch. And then, from the endless black, Sadler emerged, moving ahead of him.

  Her shoulders were down and she was moving quickly, stepping light and fast. Her hands were around her pistol — an M2.0 like Ward’s — one of the AIA standard issue pistols — held down at her waist as she advanced toward the hab. It was a double high, set at the edge of the makeshift town on Ganymede.

  A loud grinding noise hung distantly in the air as the drill heads turned in the ground, burrowing into the bedrock outside the settlement, looking for minerals.

  Sadler and Ward crossed paths and moved toward the house, the low throb of electronic music pulsing through the walls.

  She crept up on the left of the door and Ward slithered up on the right. They leaned their shoulders against the wall. They locked eyes across the doorway, breathing in unison. The music was louder now, but no more sound was coming from inside. The faint smell of hash smoke hung in the air, mixed with the sickly-sweet aroma of Skruff — a potent opiate extracted out of a Martian cactus plant. It was nearly four in the morning and the inhabitants would be passed out by now. Or, so said the merc they’d picked up a few days before. They’d been sweating him for the particulars of their operation, and now they had it. The location of their hideout, the way they worked, terrorizing the settlement, flooding it with Skruff to get the workers to miss shifts — dropping the share prices in the mining op in order to scare off investors.

  The Dharwan Corporation was interested in buying out the entire colony from the OCA for peanuts and then privatizing the whole thing. Ganymede was a gateway to the outer colonies in the solar system and an important foothold in the Axis.

  It wasn’t an uncommon way of doing things back then. The Dharwan Corporation or someone like them would do this a lot — set their sights on an investment, and then send in some mercs to pull some shady shit like this. They’d pay off local forces to look the other way and let the whole place go to the dogs.