by David Ryker
“Aeolus? What’s on Aeolus?” she asked, stepping closer.
“Fairbright Industries are the defense contractor that made the U-LOP,” he said, realizing that he was just prolonging the inevitable. Except he couldn’t stop himself from telling her. “The rifle too — we think. It’s all connected through a corporation called Zenith Reinhardt.”
She nodded. “Okay, so we need to get to Aeolus. Question someone at Fairbright. What’re we waiting for?”
Ward narrowed his eyes a touch, taken aback by her sudden urgency. “What, you don’t want to call this in?”
She met his eyes and there was a moment of stillness between them. “Do you want me to?” she asked quietly.
His jaw tensed. “No, I just thought — this is a solid lead, and…” He trailed off and looked over her head into the plains, his mind a stormy sea trying to tear down an immovable stone.
The hazy yellow air shimmered above the grass, the endless sea of green peaceful and silent. There were worse places to die, Ward thought all of a sudden. And he knew, he’d nearly died in a lot of them.
“Like you said,” she said, grinning like a wax figurine, “we’re already up to our eyes in this. Best thing we can do is solve the whole thing and then at least we’ve got that much as leverage.” Her smile didn’t waver. It made Ward uncomfortable.
“You’re really in this to the end, huh?” he said, making idle conversation as he worked his way up to executing her. It was like self-flagellation.
“The academy never prepared me for something like this, that’s for sure. You know,” she said, almost wistfully, “they made it sound like it was all going to be red tape, reports, inspections of things after the fact. And that sort of stuff always felt so removed, so clinical, so…”
“Useless?”
“Yeah.” She laughed naturally and Ward watched the muscles in her neck contract and release under her milky skin.
Before he could stop himself, he realized he was laughing too. “I get that,” he said, not in control of himself now, his brain frantically searching for an alternative. His mind and his mouth were disconnected from one another, the former trying to simulate scenarios for the next few minutes that didn’t end up with her lying in a pool of her own brains, and the latter wasting time until she was. “I always hated being told what to do — having to do things someone else's way. When you’re off the leash, like this,” he said, gesturing around, “you get shit done. It may not be by the book or even lawful some of the time, but if we’d have followed the SB code of conduct to the letter, there’d be two shooters still out there, with two rifles, and an HQ full of notes on how to kill the prime minister. Because of us, there’s only one of them left, and he’s got nowhere to hide. If the SB hasn’t caught him already, they will soon, and that’s down to us. Down to you — and whether Moozana likes it or not, you’ll always have that.”
“Humph. Hopefully, that memory will suffice to pay my rent then, because I’ll probably be out scrubbing in the salt flats by the month’s end. Don’t see Moozana letting me keep my job after all this.” She shook her head and suddenly felt more real to Ward than she had before.
He looked at her carefully, his mind still searching, fingers still quivering near his belt. “There’s always the AIA,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“Defect, you mean?” She arched an eyebrow, her glassy blue eyes alight in the afternoon sun.
“Think of it as a lateral career move.” He didn’t need to shoot her if she was AIA, right?
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” He didn’t know what he was doing. Some sort of misdirection, maybe? He had his orders, but maybe… No, he had to do it. Had to commit to this. He traced the route his hand would take to his holster, over and over in his head, building up to it.
“I’ll think about it.” She laughed again, more relaxed this time.
“And in the meanwhile?” he said, hoping she’d tell him she was going to Moozana. He thought if she said that definitively enough his self-preservation instinct would kick in and he could just pop her.
“We keep going. The SB have their hands full in the city like you said. So let’s get these bastards. What were your words — nail them to the wall?”
“I think there was a goddamn in there somewhere.” He smiled at her, his features warm for the first time despite being on the verge of murder. “That’s a nice idea, but it’s a long way to Aeolus and I don’t know how long it’ll take to get ourselves a ride. And even then — getting off-world is going to be tough,” he sighed. “It’s not just outside procedure, then. You do this, and there’s probably no coming back. Definitely not to the SB, at least.” He didn’t know why he was trying to convince her of anything.
“You know, a few days ago, that would have terrified me.”
“What’s changed?” His shaking hand curled into a fist. It would be like shooting a puppy.
She shrugged, mimicking Ward, and he couldn’t help but smirk at her.
“Shall I take this as an official job application, then?” Ward asked, hopeful that a commitment might buy her life.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” She grinned, letting out a few last notes of dulcet laughter. The last he ever thought he’d hear.
He gazed off into the distance again, his brain working overtime.
His breath caught in his throat and he looked at her, an idea seizing him, drowning out Cootes’ voice, Klaymo’s too. “Arza,” he said, his voice small and very far away, like it was someone else’s. “I’m going to be straight with you.” A pause crowbarred itself into his train of thought, choking him for a second. “You can’t come with me.”
Her brow broke and wrinkled. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve done you too much damage already, and it’s time for you to go back. Before it’s too late. It’s been a ride, but things are about to get tough, and—”
“Go back? Go back to where?” she interjected, her face flushing with anger.
“The city. Home. The SB. I don’t care. Whatever you want. But you can’t come with me. If the Bureau gets hold of me, I’ll never see the light of day again. But you? You can tell them I held you under duress, at gunpoint, or hell, that you thought I was working AIA and you wanted to find my contacts — stuck with me to see what you could find out—”
“I won’t tell them—”
“Well, maybe you should.” They stared at each other dead-eyed. “It’s probably the best card you have to play right now.”
“I wouldn’t.” She wasn’t letting it go.
“Why the sudden change of heart?”
“It’s not sudden.”
“Here’s how it’s going to happen,” Ward said, ignoring her last comment, miming the actions for her. “I’m going to draw on you, you’re going to disarm me and hit me really hard, right here,” he said, pointing to his cheek. “Hard enough to crack a knuckle — that much is really important.”
“Shut up, Ward.” She was shaking her head incredulously.
“Then you’re going to have to draw your pistol, and shoot me.”
“What?”
“Here.” He pointed to the edge of his thigh. “Don’t worry — no arteries, no bone, no deep muscle. Straight through the soft flesh. The important thing is to get my blood on you — a convincing amount. Then, I’m going to get on my bike and ride away. You call this in, and spin them a story about me working with Sadler, and—”
“No!” She almost yelled it. “Jesus, shut up, Ward.” She shook off the idea and planted her hands on her hips. “You’re being goddamn ridiculous.”
“Am I? Because I don’t see any other options here.” He was nearly shouting now.
“We go to Aeolus, and finish what we started.”
Ward laughed this time, loudly, emphatically. “If we show up to my ride, and you’re with me — well, let’s just say that it won’t go well for either of us. In fact, they’ll probably just shoot us both, then and there.”
“And why would they do that? Don’t suppose the AIA told you to put a bullet in me before you arrived, or anything, did they?”
He set his jaw but said nothing.
“And I assume you haven’t,” she went on, yelling back at him now, “because you don’t want to — because you know I’m more use alive than dead, and more importantly, because you know you can trust me.”
He stared at her hard enough that she almost burst into flames.
“So screw them.” Her arms flailed. “Screw them all. The SB, the AIA.” She swung them around the plains like she was sweeping pieces off a chessboard. “They want to bend us over a barrel — well, screw them.”
Ward turned down the corners of his mouth, shaking his head. “That’s just great. Yeah, sure, screw them. And what, I suppose we’re going to ride a giant screw-you rocket to the Gate, are we? Because if not, then I don’t see how the hell else we’re going to get off this goddamn planet!”
“Don’t be stupid. I’ve got a ship.”
“You’ve got a ship? Of course you’ve got a ship!”
“I do. And I can get us to the Gate, and through it to Aeolus. Today.”
His cynical laughter died in the warm air as he saw the look of soberness on her face. “Wait, you’re being serious? You’ve got a ship?”
She nodded slowly, affirmatively. “So what do you want to do? Put a bullet in me like a good little lap dog? Strand me out here in the desert and make a run for it? Or do you want to live up to all this goddamn rhetoric you’ve been spewing about getting your man, no matter the cost? Huh? What does the great Ward Miller want to do now that it’s all on the table?”
He looked at her for any sign of weakness or doubt, and found none. Their eyes stayed locked for a long time, the grass around them waving gently in the growing afternoon breeze. And In the distance, beyond the ridge, the cattle began to low again.
18
It was a three-hour ride.
During that time, Ward’s communicator buzzed incessantly.
Cootes had been calling him non-stop, but he didn’t answer, he just kept riding.
A hundred and twenty kilometers northwest of Eudaimonia, they came into the Tharsis region. Ahead of them, three huge lumps rose out of the plains, darkened against the afternoon sky like malignant growths. They rose from smallest to largest, left to right — Pavonis, Arsia, Ascraeus. Three huge shield volcanoes, all more than ten kilometers tall. Ascraeus was almost twenty.
They seemed to hang in the distance for an age, their width blocking out almost the entire horizon. Behind them, in the palest yellow, Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system, bulged out of the earth. Three times the height of Earth’s Everest.
Their snow-capped peaks licked at the atmosphere, thick swathes of white cloud circling them.
The road here was smooth — paved with the same photovoltaic cells as the roads of Eudaimonia. All because this was a road that the wealthy traveled. Everything else this far outside the city was just dirt — trampled Martian grass churned down to the bare ground. But not here.
They passed a sign on their right that read ‘Helios Solar Club — Members Only. 10km’ and Ward pulled hard on the throttle.
They came up on it quickly, an estate that covered a thousand hectares, its gorgeous white frontage spanning a full kilometer across, its Grecian pillars, geometrics and golden domes shining in the fading sun, the naked sky, blue overhead and yellowed at the fringes a stark contrast to the faultless white exterior of the Solar Club. This was where the rich and the famous came to get away from it all, and, of course, where they moored their ships. Sort of.
Ward pulled into the entrance road, a low stone wall surrounding the building funnelling them in. It didn’t look like it would keep intruders out, but he knew that the bronze lions sat at the corners and on the dividing pillars were hinged at the neck, and if anyone decided to climb in without going through the gate, motion sensitive cannons would leap out and shred them before they got halfway. Though, there was an alarming lack of signs to say that was what would happen. But, if you did want to give it a try, and somehow survived the torrent of lead, you’d still have to get through the patrolling security.
The guards walked languidly around the perimeter, taking shelter in little tiled-roof huts from the heat of the day, their white uniforms pristine for the arriving members to see.
Nothing could be out of place here — and yet Ward was. He’d only ever heard about it. Taking a trip out was pointless. They had a private army to cover the estate, and all the paperwork that said they could shoot whoever the hell they pleased just for trespassing. There was no need for the SB at the Helios Solar Club. They had it all well handled.
Ward eased off and let the bike slow to a crawl as they approached the entrance, an elaborate array of curved metal spikes that rose out of the roadway between two guardhouses disguised as lion-topped pillars. Ward looked for the seams on their necks but couldn’t see from the bike. Though he didn’t doubt they were there, or get off to check.
A human with the physique of a bull walked slowly out of one of the guard houses, his white uniform almost aglow in the sun. His trousers were perfectly pleated, his black belt and boots the only contrast. His jacket was form fitting and sealed down the middle — though not with a zipper, so it could be pulled open with one tug — and covered a concealed pistol on the guy’s hip. He was halfway between a smile and a scowl as he approached slowly. Most of the people who pulled up there were in chauffeur-driven town cars or in convertible sports craft, wearing sunglasses that cost more than Ward’s bike.
“Members only,” the guard said, stopping out of arm's reach.
Ward looked up at him and arched an eyebrow, ready to slowly reach for his shoulder, and the badge there. But, before he even needed to, Arza sat up from behind him and produced a card. It looked like solid gold, and on one side, there was a complex etching of Helios and his chariot. She held it out to the guard, who shrank upon seeing it glint in the sun. He took it without looking at her, and pulled from under his jacket at the back a small pad. He pressed the card to it and it bleeped happily. He smiled as apologetically as his huge features would allow, and then did a sort of awkward curtsy-bow, offering it back up. “My apologies, madam. Welcome to Helios.”
“Mm,” Arza said with a cool derision Ward didn’t know she was capable of producing.
The guy scuttled away and did something inside the hut. The long tendrils swung around and retracted into the ground and Arza squeezed Ward’s hip to tell him to ride on. He did so, diligently.
Arza leaned in, whispering in his ear. “Swing around to the far side of the lot. This bike’s going to stick out, and I don’t want it to attract any attention.”
Ward laughed. “Don’t want to be seen slumming it with me on this thing?”
“No. I just don’t want anyone to call my father and tell him I’m here — or it might screw up our plans to steal his ship.”
Ward slammed the breaks and the nose dove, skidding on the dark surface of the parking lot with a loud screech. “Did you just say steal your father’s ship?”
“Well, you didn’t think that I owned a solar yacht and maintained a membership at the Helios Club for myself?” She scoffed. “You know how much it costs a year?”
“I don’t even want to know.”
“My father — as part of his perks package for the Defense Committee, gets a free family membership, lucky for us.”
Ward snorted. “They give him the ship, too?”
“Nope, that’s all his. His pride and joy, too. ‘Priceless’ is the word he uses.”
“I’ll do my best not to get us shot out of the sky, then.”
“Don’t say things like that,” she said gravely. “His daughter or not, he’d still kill me. And if he found out I let you fly it…”
“Me?” Ward was surprised. “Why do I have to fly the priceless solar yacht?”
“What, you think he’s let me fly it
before? I don’t know how to pilot one.”
“And you think I do?”
“Don’t you?”
Ward grumbled and eased forward. “Yeah, I do. But I don’t like this, Arza.”
“Shut up, Ward. You knew what this was about. You can’t honestly have thought it was my ship.”
He shrugged, as was his way when he didn’t want to keep talking about something, and pulled the bike off the lot and onto a verge lined with stone chippings. He killed the motor and parked it next to a corner of the club behind an aloe plant the size of his living room at home. You couldn’t see it from the lot.
“Anyone asks,” Arza said, dismounting and straightening her jacket, “you’re my driver.”
“Seriously?”
“This place is weird, Ward. Now wait here.”
“Where are you going?” he called after her as she disappeared around the corner.
“To change.”
Ten minutes later, she reappeared, her tac outfit gone, in its place a gold sequinned dress slashed nearly up to the hip on one side, her well-muscled leg undulating to her high-heeled feet. Her hair was let down and ruffled carelessly — which made it more charming than if she’d quaffed it perfectly. Her narrow Martian torso was muscled and athletic, her fine bone structure more apparent now that she didn’t have a collared jacket around her neck. Her shoulders were delicately sloped, her slender neck seemingly long now that it was exposed. The dress had thin straps and a wide, V-shaped neckline.
Ward looked at her for probably longer than he should have before twisting his face into a smirk. “That SB standard issue?”
“Screw you, Ward.” She rolled her eyes and threw a black duffle bag at him. “It’s my mother’s. My dad has a member’s locker and they keep weekend clothes here for trips.”