by V. S. Holmes
“Oh, no one is sorrier than I am. I regret our wild schedules kept us from seeing one another much. You think it was easy to hear my cousin weeping for her boy when I knew exactly who killed him and why? The fear of a brown boy dying is real enough without bringing our ancient quarrels into it.”
Nel looked down. “He was doing what he loved. He was protecting our site, I think. I’d like to tell you it was quick—”
“I’m not a stupid woman, Bently, and I’ve been of Alkhalaaq long enough to know how fiercely we protect our history.”
“How long have you been one? Is it like IDH, where you draft in folks?”
“You’re born one or you’re an ally. No in between.”
“What about people like Emilio?” Nel asked, making designs with the rings of condensation from her glass.
Max waved a dismissive hand. “Sepulveda never knows what he wants. He’s just like his brother, though he’d never admit it.”
“His brother died, right?”
“I’ll let him tell that story. It might be Founders business, but it’s not mine. He’s a melancholy man, too tied up in his values to see what’s right in front of him. And I love him for it.”
“Love him,” Nel glanced at the young man pruning the bushes.
“Oh, come now, I’m too old for that level of emotional attachment. I enjoy my lovers but that’s where it ends. Sepulveda is a brother to me.”
“So you’ve told me how I can help you—though I still don’t really get why me.” Nel paused.
Max’s mouth curled. “Why do I think you’re about to explain what you want in return. Altruism isn’t reward enough?”
“Saving the world is nice and all,” Nel agreed, “but this whole mess has gotten a bit personal.”
“It’s personal for a lot of us. Living on a planet does that.”
“Right.” Nel eyed her drink. “I’m looking for someone. Someone IDH is too busy to find.”
“What makes you think I can find them?”
“For the same reason IDH is bothering to team up after centuries of rivalry. You know this planet and its people better than anyone.”
“The name?”
“Mindi Bently, formerly Bolaurude.”
“Mindi Bently,” Max repeated.
“My mom,” Nel whispered. “Saving the world is fine, but I’d burn it down to find her.”
Max drew a long breath, staring at the woodgrain of the table, one elegant hand smoothing it thoughtfully. “I might know some people who are good at finding. Usually information, but that can lead to people. I’ll need a bit more from you—where she was last heard from—”
Nel held up her wrist, displaying her communicator. “It’s all on here. Along with a few hundred video messages she sent since I left.”
“Few hundred?” Max’s brows rose in surprise.
“She sent one every day while I was gone. Talking about the weather, meeting with friends, missing me.” As beautiful as the gardens were, something in them was making her throat tight.
“I’m sorry.” Max slid a slip of paper across the table. “Send it to this address. And the information. If she’s out there, we’ll find her.”
“I’m sorry too,” Nel offered after her voice was under control again. “About Mikey.”
TEN
As much as she detested the weight of a murderous glove in her hand, Nel might actually hate lagging back more. Even with the muffle of noise-canceling headphones, the ping of the scanner in Teera’s hand sent twitches of annoyance through her jaw.
“Hey,” Nel whispered to the man next to her.
His eyes flicked up, but otherwise he didn’t acknowledge her beyond his eyes flicking in her direction.
“I’m Nel.”
“Kestral. And I’m at work.”
Shame burned her face. “Sorry. Just making sure I know which names to shout when this whole mission implodes.”
His face tightened. “Not funny—I was in Emissary School with Kapten Orso.”
For a moment her brain blanked, then the last name swam to view in her mind’s eye, attached to a sandblasted space suit and a face atrophied into pain. She winced. “I’m sorry—hell of a loss. I was part of that project.”
“I know who you are,” he bit out, before stalking across the alley and leaning against the other granite wall.
Nel stared after him, anger crashing through her skull. Well you weren’t fucking there, you don’t know! She bit back all the other, less polite things she honestly wanted to say but felt her nostrils flare. She settled for glaring at the shell of the building in sullen silence.
It was a small building, narrow, and built with durability in mind. Except, of course, for the hole blown in the side. Rubble piled in the street, huge stone blocks scattered like a forgotten Jenga game. Nel peered at the pitted, blackened scars across those farthest from what remained of the wall.
“Burns?” The blast marks on the wall where they had fitted everyone for gloves told her, whatever this technology was, it wasn’t typical of IDH. “So, what happened here?”
“If we had that answer we wouldn’t be here,” Kestral sneered.
She opened her mouth to bitch back but caught herself. She didn’t need to be liked. She didn’t need to like them either. Ignoring the man, she moved closer to the hole. Already, the explosives experts were marking each stone scarred with a data point, virtually piecing the wall back together on their tablets. Inside, the unlit room was a maw.
Narrow grated stairs led up one wall and down to where the blast must have originated. If there had been any tech, it was either destroyed in the blast or looted later. The map glowing above her wrist displayed two rooms. A glance at the cavernous space showed her they were lucky the original four exterior walls still stood. Let’s hope nothing too structural is damaged.
No sooner did the thought leave her mind than a tech tossed a black cube into the air. A few dozen cables exploded out, fusing gently to the corners and centers of each wall. The tech tapped a few keys on her wrist and the cables solidified into rebar.
“Whoa,” Nel whispered. At least everyone’s headphones hid her naivete.
“Alright, Queenie’s team is gonna take the immediate blast radius here,” Teera called over. The box suspended in the center blinked, projecting a holographic rendering of the layout along with faintly color-coded zones. “Moe, you guys have the residence. Photos, then data points, then excavation and removal. Anything look like it’s still on, you press your panic button. And anyone turns anything on, you’ll have to deal with me.”
Nel found a smile on her face. Safety briefings were often your first hint at your crew chief’s sense of humor, or whether they had one at all.
Peach marked the residence on the map, though now it was mostly buried under the dividing wall. Half a dozen bunks once lined the far wall, according to the glowing diagram. Nel patted her side to confirm she had her kit, then followed Moe’s tall figure down the metal grated stairs with another tech and—much to Nel’s annoyance—Kestral.
“Alright,” Moe smiled, teeth gleaming in the projected light. “Thanks for being here. Olivia, you think you can tackle the rec area here, by the door? Kestral, you’d be helpful by the armory rack. Curious if anything was discharged. Dr. Bently, why don’t you take this segment by the beds.”
“So she can nap on the job?”
Nel’s teeth ground hard enough she expected them to crack.
“Not helpful, Kestral, thank you, though,” Moe chimed, before resting a hand by Nel’s elbow and ushering her to the dark side of the room. “Figured with your trained eye in the human experience on Earth you might have extra insights into anything we’d find here.”
“Ah, thanks,” Nel ground out, wondering what in her curriculum vitae indicated she knew anything about the excavation of modern paramilitary barracks.
“Just take a careful look around, record everything you can. See anything of interes
t, just holler.”
She dialed up the noise-canceling frequency until the hiss of white noise filled her ears. It was better than commentary. Better than the thud of shifting stone and humming tech. She paced the room, noting the twisted remains of the metal bed frames. Mattresses were reduced to melted foam filling and warped springs.
She had explored hundreds of cellar holes in her day, restored some, even. None triggered the pointed awareness that washed over her when she stepped into the darkness. Whatever had happened here, she felt it. Call it residual energy, if you want, she excused. But this place has eyes.
Underfoot, debris crunched. Each careful step followed a handful of photographs and a gentle poke with her trowel if something caught the light.
Would she find a photograph of someone stationed here? Someone who died in the blast? There had been casualties—five, judging by the gray outlines of bodies on the colorful overlay. The faded red marks of wounds and what caused them pinched at her heart. She couldn’t look at injury maps, even the skeletal blanks her department used for mapping remains. Not since she saw Mikey laid out, empty, cold, bloodless. She shuddered the image away, though it lingered behind her eyes, ready for when she closed them.
There, under the vivisected bed frame at the corner of the room, gleamed something green. She snapped a picture, then another, closer. She placed the point-collector button on the hard, exposed edge, tapped the screen. A ridicule appeared, denoting its placement on the grid. Folding away all the technology, she sat back, trowel dangling between her knees in her loose hand. A curious nudge with the tool told her it wasn’t small—at least as large as a clipboard, perhaps, and as flat.
Producing a brush, she swept away the dark ash and sand. A row of dots, delicate copper lines, dark and green crisscrossing the surface in digital topography. Circuits?
“I might have something,” she called. “Not sure what.”
Moe knelt beside her. “Hard to say what any of this stuff is until we clean the bullshit off.” He snapped a photograph then peered closer. “Looks like a circuit board—high tech one, too.”
“IDH?”
“Could be. Founders and us share a lot of tech, though none of us would like to admit it.”
Nel chuckled, the first real mirth all day, it seemed. “Yeah, feels like rival sports teams, except everything about the game can kill you.” She rubbed the base of her ear. “Even the cheers. Gimme a ‘D,’ gimme an ‘I,’ gimme an ‘E.’”
Moe snorted, eyes still fixed on the artifact before them. “There’s a fair bit of this left. Could actually run some scans once we get back.”
Nel eyed the circuitry. “What’s this bit here? Looks melted.” Her nitrile-covered finger hovered over a particularly dense cluster of gleaming metal and soot-stained ceramic dots.
“Good eye—that’s why I wanted to bring it back.” Moe frowned. “It’s augmentation. Whatever this was being used for, someone wanted big upgrades fast.”
“Why go through the trouble? Why not just plug into a thumb drive?”
Moe snorted. “Not a computer person?”
Nel glanced up, defensive. “Look, we got dial-up when I was in high school. You lot grew up with hyperdrives or whatever. Cut me some slack.”
“I will if you brush this bit off,” Moe challenged.
Nel bent over the task, watching the rest of the circuits emerge.
“There.” His finger jabbed at the air just above another snowflake of added circuitry. Sweat flicked from his brow at the movement. “That’s where whatever this was came in. Wish some of the connections were still there. People don’t often use these—a lot of it struggles under the sheer amount of data most of our systems use. Like here,” his finger ghosted over the PCI slots. “Running with PCI this small? It was almost obsolete a decade ago. Talk about a bottleneck—”
“Okay, why did they use it?”
Moe shrugged. “Like I said. Time probably. Or avoiding the safeguards on higher tech. Now we print ours, of course, but if they knew older tech? A good circuitry master can lay a new board in a matter of hours, if they have a plan. Whatever this was for was powerful, and they needed it yesterday.”
“Don’t love the sound of that.”
“I wouldn’t get too nervous—hot place like this, they could have been rewiring their PCs for better AC for all we know. Fuck knows I would.”
A call went up from down below for Moe. “You got this?”
“Sure,” Nel promised, pulling out the rest of her kit. “I’ll bag up whatever is attached too, if there’s anything.”
Nel watched him wind back to the lower level before turning back to the corner of bright green jutting from the ashy sediment with a determined glare.
Another tangle of wires led into the dust, pinned under a small block of rubble. Nel brushed off the dust and worked her fingers under the edge. It rolled away with a soft thump. Nel frowned. They were still plugged in. She scanned the wires, moving from plug to wall and back. Dead. Forcing herself, she yanked it free of the wall and slipped it quickly into the evidence bag. Fuck.
She hadn’t photographed it plugged in. Wincing, she snapped a photo of its relief in the dust before noting how it was found. Whatever it was, tucked under a bed and rewired, Nel didn’t believe for a second it was desperation during a heat wave.
ELEVEN
Muffled calls shoved through her headphones and she glanced up, half expecting another scolding. Instead, people pressed for the stairs, Harris bolting through them, face stern. Dropping her bag into the evidence cart, Nel jogged after them. There was room enough on the bare roof, and Nel found a spot overlooking the next district. It was noon, the sky bleached and shadows gone.
Muffled shouts increased. The hair on Nel’s arms rose in a shiver. It was the draw before a tsunami. A flash, all sound sucked into stillness. A crack rocketed through the city, emanating out, dust and ease left disrupted in its wake.
Harris turned, eyes narrowed, not on the flash or the disruption spilling from its radius, but behind them. Against the rising clamor, engines ground. His mouth moved, a curse, a promise.
Her gaze snapped to the plane exploding from a cluster of downed buildings. It was a strange hybrid between Earth tech and IDH, but unlike the Founders’ gear, which made the melding seem a stylistic choice, this was a junkyard hodgepodge. If there were any call-numbers on the craft’s fuselage, they were rusted and dinged beyond deciphering.
Screams rose a second later.
“Moshe! They’ve taken Moshe! God save us!”
Nel whirled, heart pounding. Taken? “Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“Reaper strike,” Moe ground out. “Been happening across the world. People just coming out of nowhere, bundling folks away. Don’t even know it’s happened half the time until things are blowing up to cover their tracks or they’re taking off.”
Nel peered at the buildings, stomach tight. Reapers. “Surely people see them land—”
“Probably assembled here, pieces shipped in from somewhere. These days the only air traffic we get is IDH drop-squads delivering vaccines and dampeners and Reapers ripping us out of our houses.”
“You don’t chase them down?”
“Too risky, until we have a better idea of who we’re dealing with.”
“Couldn’t it just be people taking advantage?” Nel hazarded. She didn’t need another adversary. Not with the Teachers’ judgment looming, and IDH’s…everything. “You kind of left a power vacuum.”
“IDH runs everything down here now,” Moe promised. “It was a rocky transition at first, but people needed us. Still do.”
“Right.” Nel intoned. They had skirted cities, and even now, on the edge of Qena, she could sense the tension. IDH might have control on paper, but if choppers were dropping out of clear skies and making off with people, she knew whatever control they had on paper was closer to a joke than actuality.
“Wrap it up, folks,
” Teera called, hands signing for those farther away. “This place will blow if they know we’re here when Reapers struck.”
They’ll wonder why you didn’t stop them. Nel turned from the wall, patting to check for her trowel.
“A word, Dr. Bently.” Harris leaned on the edge of the roof, eyes fixed on the black dot of the helicopter, expression neutral. His low voice barely seeped through her headphones. “I saw you attempt to make friends with Kestral.”
“Apparently it’s what I’m best at,” she snarled. He’s just teasing. Teasing was fine, fun even. If she were the one doing it. “So. Reapers. Bombing?”
“That was a diversion. Distract enough people, no one’s going to recall the exact numbers on their ships’ bellies.”
“Plus—internet down means no viral pics,” Nel supplied. “So, getaway like that means they tipped someone off—strike mission?”
His brows rose, and she let teeth turn her smile wolfish. “I planned more than a few diversions to sneak a date out of her house,” she explained. “Regardless, you and I both know what happened here is connected to Samsara.”
“You and I both know nothing. Space is large,” he reminded her, eyes level. “There’s room for more than one monster among the stars.”
Her jaw clenched and she leaned on the rooftop wall. Smoke spiraled from the nearby crater. Whatever they had blown up, it was small, and few, if any, were harmed. It didn’t seem like the actions of a monster. “We gonna investigate?”
“We’ve had teams on the case for a while. The elegance of the bomb can tell you a lot about who they are. And apparently, they’re never the same.”
Nel’s thoughts hitched and she glanced at him. Elegant. It wasn’t a term she would think of for the chaos and destruction catalyzed by any sort of explosion.
“Take some advice, Bently?”
She grimaced. “What’s that?”
“Don’t make friends.”
She stepped back, eyes narrowed. “With all due respect, sir, you kind of invited me here in the first place.”