Guided by Starlight

by Matt Levin

  Her worst fears of traveling to Obrigan came back with a vengeance. Was Tricia here to take Isadora into custody? Threaten her? Kill her? Ransom h—

  “Welcome to the capital,” Tricia said with a grin that seemed transparently forced. “I’m here to ask you whether you have any idea what a big fucking splash you just made with your whole Calimor thing.”

  If Tricia had sounded serious or solemn, Isadora’s sense of alarm might have lingered. No, this was just the prime minister being herself. Isadora gave the two security personnel, who had instinctively taken up positions on either side of her, soft hand signals telling them everything was okay.

  “It’s good to see you in person again, Madam Pri—Tricia,” Isadora corrected herself, stepping out of the shuttle. Obrigan’s gravity felt slightly lighter than Earth’s, but her thoughts barely lingered over the issue with the far more pressing issue of what the hell is Tricia Favan doing here? hanging over her head.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Tricia said.

  Isadora nodded and turned to face her staff. Five skeptical faces met her. “This is okay. Why don’t you all get our stuff to our embassy? I’ll join you there soon.”

  Even if they weren’t sure about Tricia, they dutifully followed Isadora’s orders. After they took the first round of equipment and personal belongings from their shuttle’s storage compartment, Isadora followed Tricia down a glass-lined staircase to the embassy courtyard.

  There was a pleasant communal park at the ground level, with gently rolling hills, a stream that wound through the entire park system, oak trees, and arching wooden bridges that crossed the stream at various points. The presence of imported Earth vegetation calmed her more than she had expected. Isadora was already looking forward to doing at least some of her work out here.

  The two women emerged from the staircase onto a path of crushed gravel that lined the perimeter of the park. “I understand why you directed your people to go to Calimor,” Tricia began. “After all, with the damn settlement charter referenda, you had no choice.”

  Isadora enjoyed the gentle crunch of the ground underneath her shoes, mixed with the trickle of the nearby stream. The park gave her a sense of inner peace, which, she figured, was entirely appropriate for an area devoted to diplomacy.

  “But you also need to understand that our system has a history that you simply aren’t privy to,” Tricia continued. “Sure, we’ve crammed a whole lot of progress and development into a century. But that still leaves plenty of room for bitter warfare and old hatreds. Your people’s arrival is going to change all that. For better or worse.”

  Isadora understood that, of course, and wasn’t entirely sure why Tricia felt the need to lecture her on the topic. She had read the primers Tricia sent them. “I understand we may be treading on perilous ground,” she said. “I would appreciate your advice and counsel.”

  When Isadora had run for her city council seat, she had resolved never to lie to her constituents. That idealistic promise had lasted all of a few weeks. Politics was symbols and implied meanings more than it was literal truth, she had come to understand, and sometimes you couldn’t give a constituent a fully worded answer to a complicated question.

  She figured diplomacy would be the same. She wouldn’t misrepresent herself or her people, but she wasn’t above telling Tricia what she wanted to hear. The prime minister sniffed lightly, however, leaving Isadora wondering whether her attempt at graciousness was as transparent as it felt.

  If Tricia perceived Isadora’s disingenuity, the prime minister didn’t see fit to comment on it. “You haven’t done anything wrong. Just inconvenient.”

  Isadora was glad that Tricia could write off their arrival in the Natonus System and their desperate struggle to make a living as an inconvenience.

  The two walked around a bend in the path, sending them onto the longer side of the perimeter trail with a view of two grand skyscrapers off to their left. Tricia walked slowly, as though she was measuring her words.

  “That flag up there?” she said, pointing to a piece of green cloth flapping in the wind atop one of the skyscrapers. “That belongs to the Enther Junta. And that,” she pointed to the orange flag a building down, “belongs to the Ikkren Horde. If they even bother staffing it.

  “Both of them have been fighting over Calimor for years,” Tricia continued. “And it was pretty even. You’d probably bet on the Horde for any individual skirmish, but you’d probably bet on the Junta for the larger conflict. All my generals and admirals have been telling me I need to prepare for a future where the Junta controls the Calimor spice trade.”

  “But they don’t have an official claim to the planet,” Isadora said. “No one does. If anyone had, I wouldn’t have directed my team to focus their settlement efforts there.”

  “You’re right. Technically. But Union power only extends so far past the asteroid belt. I’m not going to overextend our fleets to police a region of space that has little bearing on my people’s day-to-day lives. The Union isn’t an empire.

  “There was a way this was going to go. The Junta was going to take Calimor. Contain the Horde’s expansionism. But now you’ve changed all the math. And your team sided with the same faction that attacked the Union directly.”

  Isadora furrowed her brow. “It was my understanding that the Horde has been under new leadership ever since the war.”

  “You’re correct,” Tricia said, turning to face Isadora. The older woman’s eyes danced across Isadora’s face, studying her. “But tell me: you’re a leader of millions now, too. Would you trust that?”

  Isadora let her silence answer for her. They kept walking.

  “My expedition leader reported that the Junta shot at our ground team,” Isadora said. “Our first two casualties in this system came from Junta fire. Whether it was just an honest mistake or not, that is the information I’m operating off of.”

  “That’s what I would say if I were in your position,” Tricia said. “But you’re showing up without the prior knowledge of this system that informs the rest of us. And you’d better realize that the Horde is aware of that. They’ll leverage the fact that they have, effectively, a blank slate with you. That you never had raiders threatening your frontier settlements. Or Horde warships in missile striking distance of your cities. Or sent thousands to die to push them back.”

  They passed by one of the stream bridges, and Isadora abruptly turned to walk into the park. She stepped up to the apex of the bridge’s arch and rested her palm on the railing, giving her as much height as she could muster.

  Satisfied that she could finally stare Tricia eye-to-eye, Isadora turned around with a rigid expression plastered on her face. “I understand your concerns. And I have, in fact, read the material that you sent us three months ago. But ultimately, I have to do what is necessary to secure the welfare of my people.”

  Tricia continued to study her—Isadora wondered how long she would have to be in an executive position before her eyes could pierce anyone as effectively as the prime minister—until she finally turned on her heel and headed back for the Government-General.

  “Just be careful,” the prime minister called out over her shoulder. Leaving Isadora to decipher whether that was advice or a threat.

  CHAPTER 17

  * * *

  It was hot and it stank.

  Russ figured he ought to have more profound thoughts since this was his first time setting foot on a planet in over a century, although he had spent 120 of those years on ice. But he figured Nadia or Isadora could take care of that. From his point of view, the city of Nen Fatha in Zoledo’s southern hemisphere was really hot, and it really reeked. He couldn’t think about much else.

  Sure, the primers had informed him that daytime temperatures on the desert world were scorching, but actually feeling the sun burn his skin was something no datapad could adequately describe.

  At least it was dry. He had grown up in a trailer park a couple dozen miles outside of New Orleans, and the swelteri
ng summers back on Earth might’ve been the only thing worse than Zoledo. Here, at least your sweat had the good graces to evaporate before it had the chance to pool.

  He checked to see how Riley was faring with the heat, and by the looks of it, the answer was not well. No sooner had they left the spaceport when she leaned against the outer wall of the port area, resting her head in her palm. Russ remembered from her file that she was originally from northern Europe, which hardly seemed conducive to bearing the Zoledo heat. Plus, with most of the EDF forces quartered on Earth’s moon in temperature-controlled bases, Russ figured Riley might have gone her whole life without experiencing truly intense heat.

  “I’m okay,” she said, sensing his concern.

  Russ wondered how big of a lie that was. Riley was still struggling with the death of her entire squad on the front lines—including her husband—even if she hadn’t confided in him since blurting out her backstory on their first day aboard the spaceliner. He could see it in her eyes and the way she moved like a ship on autopilot.

  Riley forced a chuckle that was robotic enough to raise the hairs on the back of Russ’ neck. “The more I think about how damn hot it is, the less I have to think about how damn awful everything smells.”

  “I hear you,” Russ said.

  When he had joined up with the EDF in his late teens, he had a romantic view of military life in space: shuttling from planet to planet, training on all the latest badass gear, all the kind of stuff that roped stupid kids in. Getting assigned toilet cleaning duty during his second week quickly dissipated such notions.

  But even by the standards of cleaning a barracks’ full of toilet messes, Nen Fatha smelled bad. Impressively bad, since the stench went far beyond the whiffs of shit he got. It was like someone ate a bunch of rotten eggs, vomited it all back up, ate the vomit, and then went through a second round of regurgitation. Street food was big in Nen Fatha, and even the food reeked. Somehow.

  Judging from the fact that no one else seemed bothered by the smell beyond Russ or Riley, he figured at least some of that might be because they had spent dozens of years in the controlled environments of an EDF base, followed by the controlled environment of the Preserver, followed by the controlled environment of the spaceliner. The primers had mentioned that Zoledo’s atmosphere, although breathable, had high levels of hydrogen sulfide that you got used to after a few days. I’ll believe it when I see it. Or smell it, rather, he thought.

  Looking around the marketplace outside the spaceport, he realized it was easier to spot a Syndicate enforcer patrolling the streets than a sewer grating. The crime organization didn’t have formal uniforms, but they were easy enough to identify by the way they carried themselves.

  They were also armed. Plenty of passersby had weapons—many concealed poorly, a few concealed well, and some flaunted openly—but the most common form of armament was the same kind of handgun both Riley and Russ kept. A sizable portion of Syndicate enforcers carried assault rifles.

  Russ continued to scan the bustling marketplace while Riley caught her breath. He naturally stayed on the edge of any potential battlefield, scanning it from the sidelines. And considering the level of weapon ownership in Nen Fatha, it made sense to treat every square, alley, and building as a potential combat zone.

  At first he thought the Syndicate’s brash display of superior firepower was meant to be intimidating. But then he realized it was also just plain marketing. The Syndicate had all the good stuff, the kind you couldn’t get from a licensed arms dealer. You want to look fierce, intimidating, or badass like those enforcers? Then come buy our shit. The holo-advertisement practically wrote itself.

  Riley finally seemed to have recovered after going through the remaining contents of her water bottle. “I think I can keep moving,” she said.

  Warily, Russ checked both ways and headed out into the open. Nen Fatha was ultra-dense, with stacked tenement houses shadowing over streetside food stalls and markets. He hadn’t seen any kind of public transportation, or private, for that matter. Anyone who wanted to go somewhere went on foot, leading to overcrowded streets that made Russ nervous.

  He wanted to place his hand on the weapon concealed under his shirt, to make sure no one slipped it out of his waistband while he was distracted by the crowds. But he knew that would be a mistake. If you had a concealed weapon, the worst thing was to call attention to it.

  The two of them finally found refuge in an alley nestled between two stalls. One carried a variety of fruits, advertised as Enther imports. The other had an array of candied nuts that Russ assumed were local. Most of the other stalls he had seen carried textured protein cubes slathered in a spicy sauce that almost made Russ’ eyes wince. The food was tempting, but he and Riley were already running dangerously low on natons after three weeks on the spaceliner. Street snacks weren’t a priority.

  Riley took out her empty water bottle and looked at it longingly. “Any intel on whether they have public drinking fountains?” she asked.

  Russ laughed. “Maybe I should’ve looked that up. But they have to have something...especially with all these pedestrians out in the open.”

  “Or the locals are used to the heat,” Riley said with a grimace.

  “Let’s keep looking,” Russ grunted, heading back out into the crowds. The same two vendors they had passed on the way into the alleyway shouted at them to buy their stuff. Russ ignored them. Couldn’t take a hint the first time we walked by, huh?

  The streets were mostly cobblestone, but the fierce winds that blew intermittently across the planet had brought in plenty of sand from outside the city’s walls. The cobblestone was hardly visible underneath layers of sand packed loosely enough to make walking treacherous. Russ was grateful for the traction his boots provided.

  They passed the last market stall in the central shopping concourse. The streetside shops gave way to cramped apartments stacked on top of each other unevenly, forming strange, blocky geometries. A handful of kids were throwing a ball back and forth in a central plaza.

  At the middle of it all was a public fountain. Water streamed up to the top of the fountain and down the sides of a stone statue, pooling in a large basin. After the two of them found a seat on a public bench, Riley exchanged a nervous glance with Russ. “I’m tempted. But do you think the Syndicate filtered this?”

  “I mean, they’ve done such a great job with the city’s sewer system. Why not trust them to run a hydraulics system on top of it?” he said, wrinkling his nose for good effect.

  Riley chuckled. “Couldn’t have picked a nicer destination, huh? Doesn’t the Union have a big settlement in the northern hemisphere?”

  There were other parts of the planet not controlled by the Syndicate, true, but those settlements were few and far between. The first Zoledo colonists had been disgruntled mercenaries and bounty hunters after the Union voided their contracts in the 2380s, according to the primers. They had built Nen Fatha and laid the groundwork for the thriving black market scene. The Union had made a colonization effort too late, funding a single settlement in the northern hemisphere. The government had to spend so much of their funds defending their colony from criminals that they didn’t have the cash to help it grow.

  But Russ and Riley’s goal was an audience with the Syndicate kingpin: a ruthless ex-mercenary named Lena Veridor. Although the Syndicate operated across the entire planet, Russ had a feeling that Nen Fatha would be the best bet for securing a meeting.

  The problem was that a lot of the actual data on Nen Fatha was outdated, since the kinds of decent folks who wrote the data entries probably weren’t the kinds of folks who visited Nen Fatha. The few city schematics he had looked over on the spaceliner were at least five years out of date.

  That meant he had to adapt his plan on the fly after getting a sense of the lay of the land. Which wasn’t his preference, but at this point there was little else he could do besides just going for it. He owed it to the Calimor colonists, who still lacked the means to properly defen
d themselves. And to Mason and Gage, who had died as heroes to help secure their people’s foothold on the planet.

  Although there were fewer enforcers in the neighborhood area, Russ flagged one of the rifle-carrying ones down while Riley refilled her water bottle at the fountain. The enforcer just stared at Russ with stony eyes. “I’m here on behalf of the refugee arrivals,” Russ muttered. “I’d like to talk to someone in your organization about setting up a mutually beneficial relationship.”

  “You and five others,” the enforcer snorted. “And that’s just in the last week.”

  “I’m sure any Union media story could confirm who I am,” Russ growled. Being mistaken for an imposter was inherently frustrating.

  “Do I look like someone whose time you want to waste?” the enforcer said, narrowing his eyes and fingering the trigger of his rifle.

  Russ’ mouth twitched, but at this point anything other than deference to the Syndicate wouldn’t be wise. “My mistake,” he said, and headed back to the bench.

  Riley, meanwhile, had walked up to the fountain, nearly colliding with a young boy as he chased after the ball he and his friends were playing with, and filled her empty bottle. Russ saw her slip in a purifier tab for good measure.

  Returning to Russ’ side, she grimaced. “I bet there’s at least a 40% chance I’m getting the runs from this,” she said. “Sir,” she added.

  He was just happy Riley was cracking jokes. Russ knew he couldn’t help her with any of her problems. All he could do was distract her, keep her focused on the mission. So he’d do his damn best at keeping her occupied.

  “I guess we’re gonna need a different approach,” he said.

  Riley nodded, her face quickly turning serenely professional. “Do we have a Plan B yet, sir?”

  Russ frowned and shook his head. “I keep thinking we should start a brawl. Or a shootout. We’d get the Syndicate to notice us for sure. But then they’d be as likely to shoot us on the spot as set up a meeting with the boss.”