by David Ryker
I swallowed, and when I was sure she was finished, I spoke. “She did that all on her own?”
“Like I said, this is one special bitch.” She scoffed. “Fucking Tenshi.”
“Tenshi?” I asked, feeling that it was the next story I was going to hear. Volchec had a knack for this kind of thing, trailing from one narrative into the next, but Everett’s patience wasn’t quite as hardwearing.
“Tenshi,” Everett said, cutting in, “are a hybridized race of humans.”
“Hybridized?”
“It means mixed.”
“I know what it means,” I sighed. “I just meant hybridized with what?”
“The Tenshi are a result of years and years of experimentation. When humans went interstellar after the Federation made first contact with humans, in a bid to save them from a half-destroyed Earth—”
“The expansion,” I said, nodding. “Yeah, I know the histories.”
“Well, then you know about the Tenshi,” she said sharply, folding her arms.
“I— no. I don’t. Sorry.” I was just on edge. Now it was going to be bad when they found out I’d let a war-criminal who’d killed thousands of Federation soldiers go free… Twice. “Go on, please.”
Volchec was studying the photograph, seemingly okay with Everett explaining. But she looked pissed off — she really did bleed blue and white. This was a hundred years ago, but I could tell how angry she was with Fox. Everett’s jaw flexed as she tried to see what was going on in my head before she continued. “The expansion — right — well, the Federation offered up a long list of colony planets that we could head off to, all across the universe. Some went here, some went there — some mixed with other species, others, not so much. Some nations and powers maintained, and still do, their autonomy, preserving their races and bloodlines, beliefs, values — that sort of thing. Hell, you ever eaten Chinese food? It’s the best—”
“Everett, get back on point,” Volchec said out of the corner of her mouth. She’d resigned herself to looking through the file more thoroughly.
“Right,” Everett said. “Yeah — so by the time the Federation rocked up and tossed us a lifeline, there was one nation called Japan, who were actually pretty close to getting the issue solved—”
“And fixing the Earth?” This was the first I’d heard of that. As far as I was aware, the Federation had been watching us for millennia, waiting for us to evolve out of our own system, and then they’d scoop us up — only we decided we wanted to fuck the planet before we managed to do it, so they moved their timetable up, and good thing too. We’d have been a dead race otherwise.
“Fixing us,” Everett said. “The Earth was too hot, volatile — the oxygen levels too low, the carbon levels too high — residual radiation and pollution levels through the roof…”
“So what was their plan?”
“To modify humans to be able to withstand it. To improve us — let us breathe off less air, survive off less food, be stronger, faster, smarter, more longevity. To drive evolution on a timescale that nature just didn’t have.”
“So they managed it, with these... Tenshi, I’m guessing?”
“Not quite, but once we got off-planet, they retained that goal. They wanted to chase perfection, and with the onset of the Federation’s technology, as well as the availability of just about a thousand compatible humanoid races, it became a real possibility for them. Fox is one such descendant of the resulting experiments.” She took a breath and let it sink in. “They wanted to retain our humanity, so it was a little of this, and a little of that, and some natural breeding here and a little bit of genetic fiddling there, getting everything perfect. The Federation caught wind of it a while into their ‘Breeding Program,’ and considering it wasn’t consensual on the part of all those involved, they tried to shut it down.”
Mac piped up, making a finger gun. “Cue the underground genetics rings.”
“Right.” Everett nodded. “Even after the Federation shut it down — because hell, they probably just didn’t want a genetically superior race challenging their authority—”
“Watch it,” Volchec growled, the Federation logo on her arm bright in the glow of the hologram.
“Sorry.” Everett held her hand up. “Anyway, there were rumors it was ongoing, and that it was just happening more in secret. Of course, hating the Federation, they then sought allies elsewhere—”
“The Free,” I muttered, folding my arms.
“Got it in one. The Free, who are all a bit more ‘do what you like so long as you’re not hurting anyone,’ approved of it — anything to get a leg up on the Federation.” She paused and glanced at Volchec to see if there was any reaction coming. She either ignored it or had nothing to say. Everett went on. “So they opened up the process, invited along as many races and minds as they could, got it all working well, and then—” She clapped. “That was it. Perfection.”
“Fox?”
Everett shrugged. “Guess so — the Tenshi. Means ‘angel’ in ancient Japanese. They look like humans, but they live for centuries, are faster and stronger than us, smarter, heal better. They’re immune to disease and everything else. If you ever came across one, you’d know.” She laughed. “But the Federation didn’t back then — they thought they’d crushed the experiments, put it all to rest — they weren’t able to scan for something they weren’t looking for, and with the Free’s support, they re-jigged the way their biometric profiles read, showing them as human to the standard Federation scanners at the time. That was the Free’s offer, I guess — carry on your experiments, but when you get it right, we use them to fuck with the Federation — and, boy, didn’t they just. Fox got in — undercover, of course, for the Free — worked her way up, gained our trust, and then…” She made a stabbing motion toward Volchec’s back.
I swallowed and remembered when she’d popped the hatch of her mech on Draven and taken off like a racehorse. How she’d ripped the gun out of my hand so fast I hadn’t even seen her do it. How she’d charmed me into not killing her — twice. I wedged the thoughts down and cleared my throat. “So what happened to them? Why haven’t they overthrown the Federation?”
Volchec looked up, expression grave. “Because after Fox fucked us, we sent half the armada after her. We never recovered the plant, but we found out what the Free were doing, where they had their little breeding colony, got the information we needed to scan for them, and then we wiped them out.”
I swallowed. “Wiped them out?”
“The whole fucking planet and every Tenshi on it.”
“As well as every traitorous double-agent we had in our ranks,” Volchec growled. “Showed them that no one fucks with the Federation like that and gets away with it. Public executions. All of them, and their conspirators.”
There was silence in the room until Everett broke it. “But of course, we didn’t get all of them, so some survive, and they cause a lot of fucking problems — guess they took the genocide personally.” She shrugged, trying to play down what she was saying, but it was still hard to hear. Especially when you thought you were the good guys in the war. “This one especially,” she said, tapping on the photo of Fox. “The Federation was hunting her for ninety years, and they thought they’d killed her. Leveled an entire city to do so, but just like a fucking cockroach, here she is. Again.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I remember that op — marched five hundred mech into that city to take it apart looking for her. Mac was there, right?”
Mac nodded. “Yeah, the Falmouth was the ship on deployment. We had her picture on our screens for a week as we marched through the city, clearing it building by building, hundreds of Tilt-wings and dropships circling in case she bolted. We cornered her in a high-rise, demolished the whole fucking thing, until all that was left was rubble. Killed everyone,” he said, grappling with the words. “Killed her.” He nodded at the photo.
Volchec slammed down her fist on the table and the hologram jumped. “Well, obviously fucking not.” She sighed and
lifted her hand, closing the file so Fox disappeared. “And now here she is again, fucking with my shit, again.”
Everett took a breath and looked at me. “Volchec was running one of the insurgency parties,” she said, turning to her. “If I’m remembering correctly?”
Volchec looked at her but said nothing.
“You were a major then, too — right?” Everett added.
Volchec nodded. “Yeah, but I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.”
I narrowed my eyes, trying to read her expression.
“You calling this in?” Everett asked.
“I have to,” Volchec said through gritted teeth. “And I know what they’re going to say — what they’re going to do. They’re going to put Telmareen on planet-wide lockdown, and then they’re going to land every fucking warship we have here, and then shit is going to hit the fan. If Fox is here, and she’s got the Guard working for her — or with her — then it means that Telmareen, in part, or in its entirety has been turned. Their allegiance has shifted, and that means that some bad shit is about to go down. You realize,” she said, looking at the faces around the table, “that one transmission — this transmission,” she muttered, tapping on the file, “is going to start a goddamn war the likes of which Telmareen has never seen. If the Free think they’ve got their hooks in here — into the biggest Iskcara operation for a thousand lightyears, then you can be damn well sure that they’ve got troops all over, lying low, waiting for it to blow up. And when it does, things are going to go south really fucking quickly. That guy at the spaceport — no doubt there to scoop up whatever came out of that locker — one last attempt to stop us from putting Fox in the middle of all this—”
“But how did they know to be there?” I interjected.
Volchec shrugged. “Who knows — I doubt they missed that combination carved under the desk. They probably just didn’t know exactly what it was for. They likely had people stationed all over, hedging their bets.”
Everett folded her arms. “You think Barva told them what it was?”
“I think Barva held out as long as he could,” she sighed, “and then died before they got what they needed out of him. Or maybe he told them to go fuck themselves when they were pulling his fingernails, bit through his own tongue and choked himself on the blood.” Volchec’s features were iron, her voice remorseless. “And after that, they probably went back through the garage, found the number and realized it was all they had to go on — a number. Could have been coordinates, or a combination, a password — anything. They’d not have had the pull to access the records they needed to narrow the search like we did. Not without raising some flags, at least. It was imperative for their operation to go on like it was without the Federation knowing what was up.
“If they knew that the Guard weren’t under their control, then everything would have fallen apart. So, whether the Free had control of the Guard or not — in part, or wholly — Telmareen is still a Federation planet, and everyone living here, working here, running businesses — they don’t want war. So shit had to stay quiet.” She curled her knuckles and rested on them on the table. “If they’d have marched Barva into the spaceport — if they knew what the numbers were — and he’d screamed or made a break for it, a shootout or death there like that would attract attention.
“News reports, videos, pictures, all uploaded to the network. All that shit gets filtered through millions of AI cores, scanning for stuff like wanted suspects, operatives, anything that could be bad for the Federation and the status quo — hell, if you yell the words ‘Kat Fox’ in a public place on a Federation planet you’ll have fifty Federation officers on you in minutes. They couldn’t risk any of that.
“So we have to assume, by process of elimination, that he died before he gave up the info, and that the dumb shit that tried to get the drop on you was just there, staking out one of the possibilities, and that he saw you come in, start checking lockers, and figured he had a lead. Hell, maybe he even wanted to impress the Free with his initiative. What Fox didn’t bank on was that the guy they put on it was a fuck-wit, and that you three weren’t. Guess not everyone at the Guard is turned — limited options probably.
“But still, if you’d have been on your own, by the sounds of things, you’d have a few holes in you,” she said, staring at me, “and we’d be one duffle bag full of evidence lighter.” Volchec drew breath and stared at the hologram in front of her. “They knew Barva was getting ready to run, and they knew what he had. They scooped him up while he was on the way out is my guess, but didn’t bank on his failsafe, and couldn’t risk stepping out of the shadows to make a fuss of retrieving it. We can only count ourselves lucky it came off like it did.”
I looked at Fish and nodded at him, smiling. He’d saved my ass. He returned it, his gills fluttering. Mac stayed silent, probably kicking himself that he’d not been there. He put on a tough show, but when it’d come down to it, what happened with the transport had hit him hard. We were all soldiers, sure, but we were all human, too — figuratively, of course, considering Fish was, well, a fish.
It was all conjecture, what Volchec was saying, but it sounded right on the money. I stared at her through the hazy image in front of me and had to smile. She was sharp — as a razor. But I guess that was what the Federation looked for when they promoted people and let them run things.
She must have been barely into her mid-forties, and she’d already risen to the rank of commander on a Federation carrier. She must have been good to get there, and I guess I’d just never thought about it until now. She had no proof of any of this, just a few pieces of a puzzle still unfinished, and yet she’d drawn the rest in herself, and no one had any thoughts that it was anything other than dead right. Or at least if they did they didn’t make it known.
“So what’s next?” I asked her.
“I’ll make the call.”
“And what about Alice? We can’t just leave her.”
“I know.” Volchec sighed. “Best case scenario?”
I nodded.
“I make the call, the Federation scramble the armada and put them en route ready to mount a full-scale insurgency with the aim to install martial law as quickly as they can.”
“That’s best case?” I croaked, not seeing much light in the tunnel.
“Yeah — best case is that it takes them a day to do it.”
“And how is that any better?”
“Because it means we’ve got a day to rescue her.”
20
“You don’t honestly think these guys are going to be stupid enough to go back to the same bar, do you?” Mac asked incredulously, staring up at me as I climbed down out of Greg.
My boots hit the frozen dirt and I wiped a droplet out of my running nose with the back of my hand. “Actually, I do, because I think they think we’d not be stupid enough to.”
“So what’s the plan — just bust in there and confront them, say we know you’re not working with the Free! And then pull our guns?” He put his hands on his hips and measured me.
I shrugged. “Pretty much — though we don’t pull our guns unless they do.”
“I like to already have mine out when someone reaches for theirs,” he grunted, shaking his head. “What makes you so sure these guys aren’t attached, and that we’re not in someone’s crosshairs right now?” he asked, looking around emphatically.
“Because, one, if we were — we’d already be dead. And two, if they were involved with the Free, then why the hell would they hire three mercs to steal Iskcara that they already had access to?” I shook my head. “No, these guys tapped into the same info that I did, went to the same bar, thinking what we were thinking, looking for someone to hit up for a way into the operation. They’re mercs — they go where the credits are, and when Iskcara’s on the table, so are credits.
“They just got bored of waiting, saw an opportunity to grab some for themselves, using us to do it, playing it up like they had the inside track. No, these guys aren
’t working with the Free. They just know someone who is — that’s their inside line. How they knew about the shipment route. How they got here before us — knew about the Iskcara being skimmed. They’re connected, just not as well as they made out.” I smirked, staring up at the bar with the huge door for the second time. “And that’s why we’re here. If they do know someone on the inside, then we need that lead, and what they know. We need every scrap of intel we can get if we’re going to get into a Free slash Telmareen Guard headquarters and bust out a goddamn prisoner.”
Mac pressed his tongue into his lip and narrowed his eyes. “That’s a lot of guesswork, and a lot of ifs.”
I drew a breath. “You got a better idea?”
“And what about the warehouse, huh? The one with the radiation proofing. How do you explain that?”
I shrugged. “Hell, they probably are using it to store the Iskcara, but going back there is only going to expose us before we strike.”
“And the arrest-deadzone between here and there?”
I ground my teeth. That one was my fuck-up. I hadn’t done my due diligence. “That strip of industrial zone is sanctioned for development. It is all either demolished, derelict, or under construction — but it’s all blocked off either way. Concrete blockades around the entire stretch. There weren’t any arrests because there wasn’t anyone going down there. And I’d bet those damn mercs made that same fuck-up,” I said, pointing at him, “which is why they chose this bar to hunt for whoever was moving the Iskcara, when in fact it had nothing to do with anything. We just made the same mistakes they did.”
He scoffed. “We?”
“Okay, I made the same mistakes they did.” I tapped on my chest and the lumpy stem-gel caked on it, over my still throbbing wound. “But I already paid for that, alright? You try getting shot in the fucking chest,” I grunted. “It’s no fucking picnic.”
Mac smirked at me. “Alright then, Red,” he said, narrowing his eyes and proffering the door. “Your lead.”