Tilted Axis

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Tilted Axis Page 25

by David Ryker


  Ward took them toward the Aeolus gate, bypassing the station in the center. They’d called ahead, pulled rank, and expedited their travel permits. Moozana’s weight had helped that along. There wasn’t much a phone call from the head of the UMR Security Bureau couldn’t do.

  For everyone else, they’d have to dock and present their tickets, get checked for weapons or contraband, submit to a ship search, or if they didn’t have one to be searched, wait to board a public shuttle.

  Ward and Arza didn’t have that problem. They were on official business now, even if that only lasted until the moment they came back through the Gate. Ward knew that there’d be a fleet of Peacekeeper patrol ships waiting for them. But for now, he didn’t want to think about that. He could see Arza was relaxed — she thought all was well.

  As he swept down toward the Gate, feeling the growing pulse of energy in his teeth, he didn’t have the heart to tell her that it couldn’t be further from the truth.

  Part V

  The Noose

  Historical Archive Information

  Extract Retrieved From:

  Xavier Wallace’s “The Myth of Safety: Peacekeepers and the Never-Ending War”

  Published, October 2344

  ‘Peacekeepers’ is a loaded term. Their job is pretty much impossible. The average Peacekeeper cruiser, running on the UMR’s patented miniature-fusion engine, which is about three times as efficient as conventional engines running on liquid fuel, is still woefully under equipped when considering the vastness of space.

  To effectively police the thousands of settlements across the OCA, the job is, for the most part, outsourced. Factions of Peacekeepers run by commanders in space stations dotted around the OCA act pretty much autonomously from the OCA. In that, whatever they do in the course of their duties, is likely never found out about by the OC, due simply to the isolation of most settlements. That means that our entire peace-keeping system is based on honor. And if my PhD in Earth history is worth a damn, I can comfortably say that humans don’t have much of it. At least not most of us. Which leaves the whole notion of the Peacekeepers prime for exploitation in a myriad of exciting and frightening ways.

  So, while we’d like to sit back, in our domiciles, on whatever planet or station, in whatever system we’re in, believing that the OCA are keeping us safe and protected, they’re actually not. The Peacekeepers are more of a symbol than anything else, just scarecrows stood in the fields of space, warding off crows… Until, of course, the crows realize that they're just filled with straw and that the fields are ripe for the taking.

  21

  Going through the Gate was like nearly falling off the back of your chair. There was a moment of comfort and peace and then the sudden lurch of disbalance, where your whole body jerks and you lose half a second of conscious thought.

  A blink was all it was. Romantic as the idea is of flying through a tunnel of swirling lights, it was more like pushing through a curtain.

  The Siljan — Arza’s father’s ship — exited the gate into an empty patch of space a few thousand clicks outside of Aeolus’s atmosphere and sailed smoothly forward, barely fazed by the traversal of systems, and came up on the planet fast.

  The craggy and jagged surface was mottled with clouds, the first tinges of green starting to take hold. It wasn’t fully terraformed yet, and the settlements were contained inside huge clear oxygenated bubbles.

  “Looks… nice,” Arza said after a few seconds.

  “Yeah, a regular Garden of Eden.” Ward sighed and leaned back, reaching for the screen in front of him. He flipped it over to the browser mode and accessed the Aeolus network, synching the ship to the planet’s rhythm. He found Fairbright Industries’ listing and grumbled. “Looks like we’re going to be here for a while.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They’re closed. It’s nearly midnight where they are on the planet. Their office opens at eight. Doubt we’re going to get anywhere if we swing down there now.” He started leafing through options for geo-synched ports and found one a little way from the Fairbright’s Research and Development facility, and started checking availability. “Don’t suppose you’ve got your dad’s credit account details with you? This place isn’t cheap,” he said jokingly, afterward realizing it was closer to snide than anything else. He cleared his throat. “What I mean is that this is a private dock that offers personalized drop-ship rental. And I doubt this hunk of steel is capable of planetary launch.”

  She scowled at him. “I don’t have his credit account number, no.” She sighed and swore. “But I do have mine. And it has an unlimited credit limit.”

  Ward felt bad for a second and then laughed it off. “You believe in marriage, Arza? Always wanted a rich wife.”

  “Piss off, Ward.”

  “I’ll take us in,” he muttered.

  Arza stared out of the window as he took them down, twisting over and then swooping toward the planet from the other side. He pulled up the purchase screen for their space and then coughed inconspicuously until Arza looked around. She silently tapped in her credit account number and hit send, confirming it with a thumbprint. After that, she went back to staring out of the window.

  They pulled up to the dock — a space station with arms sticking out from the central trunk like a Christmas tree without any needles, and Ward connected them with a dull thunk against the hull. He’d never flown a yacht before, and the bumpy landing earned him a scowl from Arza. Ward didn’t think of her as spoiled and rich, but she’d obviously tangled with that pigeon-holing before. At least enough that she already assumed that’s what Ward thought, and was pretty pissed off about it. He was circling the conversation, looking for the right words before he said anything.

  Instead, he chickened out and unfastened his belt, floating out of the chair. “Hey, you mind if I shower, maybe get something to eat?” he asked, conscious of the softness in his voice.

  “Sure, whatever,” she replied disinterestedly, still staring out of the window at the blinking lights lining the station.

  Ward knew there was something on her mind, but he didn’t ask. He just left, pulling himself through the doorway and down the stairs. He never was very good at the whole talking thing.

  The bathroom on the yacht was nicer than Ward’s at home.

  It was all hardwood and porcelain. Ward thought it was walnut, but he didn’t know much about wood. The shower was like a lot of other zero-g showers he’d been in; a sealed cubical with a powerful jet, vacuums in the wall to suck out the floating droplets, and soft hooks on the floors to stick your feet in to hold you reasonably upright.

  He waited for the water to clear, hit the release for the door, and pulled himself out. He toweled off, holding onto a handrail, and exited into the Arzas’ master bedroom. It was gorgeous, like something out of a stateroom, right in the guts of the ship.

  Ward helped himself to some fresh clothes — he figured that Ferlish wouldn’t mind a missing pair of socks and boxers. The drawers were filled with them, all neatly folded and pristine white, tucked behind semi-clear sheets with little flapped holes to make sure nothing flew away when they were opened. He must have been in his sixties, but by the way his boxers were hugging Ward’s hips, he hadn’t let himself go in the slightest.

  He pulled his jeans back on and hunted for a shirt. He was fishing around in the wardrobe when he heard Arza clear her throat behind him.

  He jumped and poked his head out from around the door.

  “Help yourself,” she said, holding onto the frame and shaking her head.

  “It’s been a long day.”

  “Sure.” She tsked. “Not like he’s not going to kill me anyway. What’s one more missing shirt?”

  Ward shrugged. “Not when you break the biggest conspiracy in the OCA.”

  “Biggest?” She raised an eyebrow. “I doubt that.”

  “Come on, Arza. This is the fun part. We’ve got them dead to rights.” Ward was holding on to the door of the wardrobe, legs float
ing behind him.

  She just continued to shake her head. “What are we doing, Ward? Out here I mean. What am I doing?”

  He wasn’t following. “Uh… working a case? This is what we do, Arza. You chase leads. Sometimes they’re easy, other times…”

  “You manipulate someone into stealing their father’s yacht?”

  Ward closed the wardrobe and pulled on a white undershirt, floating gently backward from the force, and pushed the sleeves up to his elbows. “Manipulate?” He stuck his bottom lip out, steadying himself against the low ceiling. High ceilings in space just made no sense and there was nothing worse than getting stranded out of arm’s reach of anything. “I’m not following.”

  She grinned an odd grin, her eyes shining in the lights of the bedroom. “Don’t play dumb. It doesn’t suit you, Ward.” Her voice was shaking.

  Ward studied her. He didn’t like the back and forth and his mind was quickly putting together the story she was weaving. “I didn’t manipulate you, Arza. And I didn’t know your father owned this thing.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Then why didn’t you leave me out there in the desert? Huh? Why didn’t you put a bullet in me, like Cootes said?”

  Ward froze at the name. He’d never said it to her. He’d made sure not to.

  “Or at Klaymo’s, like he’d said?”

  Ward locked his jaw and stared at her, trying to figure out where she’d gotten all this from. He didn’t bother trying to deny it. She was too accurate to be guessing. “Because this is our case.”

  “You really are full of shit, Ward.”

  “How’d you know? About Cootes? Klaymo?”

  She tapped her temple, gesturing to her eye and the contact there. “Works both ways, asshole. You can tap into mine, and I can tap into yours.”

  “You were spying, then.” He nodded slowly.

  “Oh what, and now you’re taking the high road? Unbelievable.”

  “No, I’m not.” He held his hands up. “I’d have done the same. I’m a little impressed… Well, actually I’m disappointed in myself for not seeing it coming. Guess I didn’t anticipate that it was something you’d do.” He smiled at her, but it wasn’t returned.

  “So why didn’t you pop me in the head and leave me in the plains? Or strand me at Klaymo’s?” She wanted an answer.

  “I told you: this is our case.” He shrugged again, playing down the gravity of what she was saying. “And I like having you watching my back. I haven’t had a partner in a long time. Feels good to have someone to count on.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Nothing to do with keeping me close?” There was scorn in her words. “Making sure I didn’t have a chance to touch base with the Bureau? Turn you in for being an AIA mole? The whole smashing my communicator at the cyber doc’s — that wasn’t you trying to sever my contact with Moozana, drive a wedge?”

  Ward ran his tongue over his teeth. “No.” He wasn’t lying about that — at least not completely. It had been a knee-jerk thing with the communicators, but with the rest, she was dead on.

  “There wasn’t ever a part of you that worried I was going to go back to the SB?” She had both hands on the frame, her feet planted on the ground, looking at him with sort of expression that told Ward she didn’t believe a word coming out of his mouth.

  He pushed himself down to the bed and twisted around so he was sitting on the edge. He put his feet over the sensors in the carpet and two loops pushed themselves out. He slid his toes into them and grabbed the magnetized box he’d put his boots into, dragging it across the floor to him. He pulled them on. “Look, Arza — I’m not going to lie to you.”

  “Ha, that’s a new one.”

  He let the hit land and counted to three. He needed to stay cool. “I’m an AIA sleeper agent at the SB. They put a green little go-getter on me — someone who’s guaranteed to be loyal. Hell, you’re practically Moozana’s surrogate daughter by the sounds of that phone call. I pegged you from a mile off. So yeah, when I thought it was all taking a turn, I made a judgment call.” He made sure not to break eye contact.

  “You played me.”

  “I play everyone, Arza. It’s what we do.”

  She was seething. Ward thought she might burst. After almost a full minute, she turned and stormed off into the ship — or at least floated away angrily.

  Ward let out a long sigh and lay back onto the bed, the quilt soft under his head, the tension in his knees keeping him there. He let his eyes close, and though he didn’t intend to sleep there, it took him before he could think about it. They’d been up before dawn and it was now going on for twenty-two hours without sleep. And though he was no stranger to watching the sun come up, he was comfortable and clean, and it’d been an exhausting couple of days.

  The next thing he knew, Arza was kicking him in the ribs with the toe of her boot.

  He opened his eyes, realizing he was upright in the air, his feet still under the hooks. Arza was floating above, hands on the ceiling lined with exposed wooden strips for purchase.

  “Get up. It’s time to go.” She had a don’t-screw-with-me look on her face.

  Ward didn’t say anything, but he didn’t argue either. There’d be plenty of time to talk on the way.

  He unhooked his toes and floated out of the ship after her.

  They exited the ship and pulled themselves down a well-lit tunnel toward the main body of the port.

  Between the stationary jetty and the rotating cylindrical body was a circular section that didn’t move. It was a motionless ring that joined the turning body to the stationary docking arms. The motion of the cylindrical main body created a field of microgravity and Ward could see people moving around above them, stuck to the floor by the simulated force, despite their stationary ring just below it letting them float freely.

  The gap that led to the station ring was joined by bridges that spanned the gap. They both pushed up toward the moving bridges overhead with outstretched hands and pulled themselves onto one via a ladder and handrails, climbing into the gravity field and onto the the perpendicular plane of the cylindrical main body, the floor of which covered the whole of the interior. There was no ceiling or walls, just an upward-sloping floor that meant if you looked up you were looking down on the people opposite.

  They milled around, weaving over the bridges that spanned the railed off missing sections in the floor that led to the stationary rings below and the other jetties and moored ships. Various desks for things like ship rental, lost luggage, hotels on the surface, and other tourist enterprises made homes at odd angles around the port like someone had rolled the arrivals terminal of an airport up into a big tube. It was nauseating to look up.

  Arza had the information for their booking on her communicator, and walked in silence, reviewing it intensely so that she didn’t have to talk.

  Ward just kept walking, making a mental blueprint of the port as he did.

  They scanned their booking reference at a gate and climbed down a ladder into another stationary, gravityless ring, pushing off toward the jetty that led to the rentals.

  It was a long, stark steel tunnel with hatches on each side that led into the dropships. They trundled along to number thirteen and stopped.

  “This is it,” Arza said flatly.

  “Lucky thirteen,” Ward laughed. “Let’s hope it doesn’t blow up.”

  She didn’t even look at him. She just jabbed at the door release and climbed inside.

  The dropship was a two-seated craft shaped like a corn chip. Its nose was split down the middle so that a pair of fins protruded from the windshield, rather than it being a single point. At the back, the rear wings were turned down, and two more rose out of the body at a vertical angle and then cut sideways at about forty-five degrees. It was micro-fusion powered, and would be light enough to break through the atmosphere without any trouble on their return.

  Inside, the trim was bare titanium, with every scrap of weight s
hed for more efficient travel. The seats were thin and bucketed, squeezing Ward from all sides.

  He wiggled down into it and buckled in, his elbow touching Arza’s, and fired her a quick smile. “Snug.”

  “Let’s just go,” she said, still looking straight ahead. Aeolus was showing through the windscreen ahead of them, lit in a deep copper by the distant sun.

  Ward nodded and flicked on the ignition switches. “You know, I think the takeaway here should be that I didn’t shoot you in the head and leave you in the plains.”

  “Oh, is that the takeaway? Not that you’ve been lying to me for the last three days? Making sure that I felt valued so that I didn’t try to jump ship and go back to the Bureau? Come on, even you have to admit that’s a little cruel. And it’s the only reason you didn’t leave me at Klaymo’s.”

  “Oh yeah, and it’s the reason I didn’t shoot you, too.” He shook his head. He didn’t mind being caught out when he was actually being an asshole. But he didn’t like being accused of being one when he wasn’t.

  “You just didn’t want the extra heat.”

  Ward sighed. “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

  “Nope. And the second we get back I’m going straight to Moozana.”

  “Then maybe I should shoot you.” He grinned coyly.

  She gave him an icy look. “Try it.”

  He measured her gaze, getting a strange feeling that during the night she’d come very close to doing something to him. Probably that she’d very nearly cuffed him while he slept, turned the ship around and flown straight back to Mars. But he couldn’t be sure. Then again, his hunches had a horrible habit of being right. The only reason she didn’t was because they were already there, and turning around would leave Fairbright alone long enough to cover their tracks.

  He disengaged from the dock and pressed the thrusters with his feet, working the yoke between his knees. His left worked the flaps, his right the throttle. When he was sure he had the movements down he tapped ‘Fairbright Industries’ into the terminal in the dashboard and locked in the destination. A thin dotted line showed them the optimum trajectory in, a little green dot over the horizon showing their destination. Ward decided to find his own way there.

 

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