“And my brother?” I heard the anxiety in my own voice. “My brother—Cesar—he’s sick. Real sick. And the floor doc wants extra cash to move him up the queue. I don’t think he’s going to make it if I can’t get it, and that’s why—”
I broke off, realizing I’d been babbling, and she glanced up at her companion. He looked back down with a shrug, clearly making it her decision, and she turned back to me.
“Any other family?”
“No.” I shook my head. “We’re all that’s left since they took Mom and Dad.”
Her mouth tightened, and those magnificent topaz eyes turned bleak and hard.
“Then of course we’ll get Cesar out, too. And I’m pretty sure we can get him the medical help he needs. But where and how we do that’s going to depend on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’ve got potential, child. You…” She paused and shook her head. “I can’t just go on calling you ‘child’ or ‘girl.’ What’s your name?”
“Ninon,” I said. “My name’s Ninon.”
“Ninon, then. You’re quick, you don’t freeze, and from the sound of things, you don’t have any reason to love Legislaturalists.”
She watched my expression, then snorted.
“No, you don’t. Well, neither do I. Or Kev here. Or our friends. So, we can just hide you away somewhere, or we can recruit you instead.”
“Recruit me?” I stared at her in disbelief.
“You’ve got the talent.” She shrugged. “The only real question is whether or not you’ve got the motivation. This was a little more…spectacular and hands-on than usual, but this is what we do, Ninon.”
“I still think you should’ve let me just use a bomb,” Kev grumbled. “Been a lot quicker and simpler, and we can’t afford to lose you doing shit like this, Ellie.”
“Bombs aren’t very precise weapons,” she pointed out. “And I might add that if I’d let you play with your toys this time, our friend Ninon would probably be among the statistics about now.”
“Point,” he conceded.
“You’re CRU?” I asked, looking back and forth between them. If even a quarter—hell, a tenth—of the news reports about it were accurate, the Citizens’ Rights Union was about as bloody as “thugs” and “hooligans” came. Like Kev’s bomb, the CRU wasn’t a precision weapon.
“Kinda, sorta, in a way,” Kev replied. “Me, I was part of the CRU from the beginning. Hardcore, too. But my friend here, she’s more idealistic than me. And I’ll be damned if she didn’t convince me to see it her way. Who would’ve thought it?” He shrugged. “Anyway, we’re technically CRU. But what we really are? We’re Aprilists.”
I inhaled sharply. Aprilists? They were Aprilists?
“’S right,” he said with a lopsided grin. “Reason she wouldn’t let me use a bomb. I tend to revert to CRU default settings sometimes.”
I nodded slowly, almost mechanically. From everything I’d ever heard, the Aprilists scared the Legislaturalists worse than the CRU ever had. Everyone knew there weren’t many of them, compared to the CRU, but they were smart, their operations were carried out with meticulous precision, and in their own way, they were even more merciless than the CRU. But their target selection was very different. Even PubIn, which wasn’t about to give any batch of “thugs and hooligans” good coverage, had to admit the Aprilists took out only those they held directly responsible for the regime’s actions, and they were scrupulous about avoiding collateral damage…like dead schoolkids in their parents’ air car.
“The decision’s yours,” the woman said. “Don’t hurry to make it, though. We’ve got to get moving anyway. So think about it on the way to the safe house.”
“Think about it?” I threw back my head and laughed. There was a little hysteria in the sound, but no hesitation. “What’s to think about? These bastards took my parents and they’re killing my baby brother centimeter by centimeter. Of course I want in!”
“Crap!” Kev said with a deeper, rolling laugh of his own. “Little girl reminds me of someone else!”
He looked down at the woman, and she shrugged.
“The bastards are still our best recruiters, damn them,” she said. Then she looked back at me. “All right. You want in, you’re in.”
“Just like that? You get to make the decision for everybody else?”
“Hell, yes, she does!” Kev snorted. “This here’s Brigade Commander Delta, honey.”
I gasped. The gray net knew that name, that title, but no one knew a thing beyond that. No one knew whether “Brigade Commander Delta” was old or young, male or female. But at last I had a face to put with it, and it was nothing like the towering giant I’d always imagined. I’d expected someone more like Kev, I supposed, but he was clearly following her lead.
“It’s just a title,” she said, shaking her head. “And I started from pretty much where you are right this minute.” She touched the silver unicorn, still visible at the neck of her gown. “We all start from pretty much where you are right this minute. And I can’t promise you we’re going to win in the end, or even survive. But I can promise you that if we don’t, it’ll be because we died trying. That good enough for you, Ninon?”
“That’s more than good enough for me,” I replied, holding out my hand. She looked at it for a moment, then gripped it firmly.
“Then welcome to the Revolution, Ninon,” she said. “Buckle up tight.”
✧ ✧ ✧
“Why do I think Admiral Harrington and President Pritchart are well suited to negotiating an actual peace agreement between us and the Star Empire? I’ll tell you why. It’s because for all the differences between them, I cannot imagine two women who are more alike under the skin!”
Senator Ninon Bourchier,
Senate Foreign Affairs Committee,
Republic of Haven,
Speaking to reporters, 01/05/1922 PD
Spoils of War
Kacey Ezell
On a muggy afternoon in August, steam rose from the broken asphalt arteries of the nation’s capital city. My heels tapped wetly on the pavement as I walked. Breathing felt like trying to suck air through a wet sponge, but I moved at a brisk pace. What remained of Washington DC was a cesspool of a town, but at least in this part, moving with a purpose meant I was less likely to be disturbed.
The lettering on the door said “Ra”…“tel.” The faded, peeling letters looked as if they’d been painted on, rather than programmed into the glass of the door like a modern sign. The center part of the name had been completely obliterated. I pushed the door open, expecting to hear an automated assistant. Instead, I walked in out of the muggy air to the sound of tinkling bells.
The office inside was small, square, and dingy. I blinked in the sudden dimness. A window hung with crooked, ancient-looking blinds threw bars of shadow over the floor, the single, sagging chair, and a rickety end table.
“Can I help you?”
He was tall, with a chiseled jaw just imperfect enough to be natural and dark hair that fell forward into his eyes. He wore his shirt open at the neck, with no tie, and his cuffed trousers looked well made, if creased from sitting.
I conjured up a tired smile.
“Well,” I said, “you obviously didn’t let peacetime turn you soft.”
“Never saw the sense in it,” he answered. His voice was dark and handsome as he was. He’d stood up when I entered the office. Now he stepped around the antique metal desk and held out a hand as big as my face. “Ray Martel. And you are?”
“Dying for a drink,” I said, tilting my head to the side. I watched his eyes search my face. I could almost hear his thoughts assessing me, wondering about me. Who was I? Why was I here? What kind of trouble was I in, and would I bring it to his door?
“Have a seat,” he said, instead of any of those questions, and gestured to the chair by the window. I gave him another version of my tired smile and put just a hint of sway in my walk as I moved to take the seat. Ray Martel
watched me for a second longer than necessary, then turned to the cabinet behind his desk. He pulled out a bottle and two highball glasses.
“Interesting aesthetic you have going on,” I said as he poured me a drink, then one for himself. “Very mid-twentieth century.”
“Developer before the war was doing a whole noir gentrification thing,” he said as he carried two glasses over and handed me one. “Liked the idea of having a PI who fit the décor. When I came back, all I had was my license, the lease on this place, and the clothes in the closet. Don’t know what happened to the developer, but I’m still here. People do like their nostalgia.”
“Poetic,” I said, “considering that film noir was largely a response to the world wars of the early 1900s.”
“If you say so,” he said, lifting his glass to his lips. “It pays the bills.”
“Mmmhmm,” I replied, taking a drink of my own. I savored the whiskey burn before meeting his waiting eyes.
“Mr. Martel,” I said, the whiskey giving my voice a bit of a rasp, “My name is Nina LaFleur. I believe you knew my brother, Edward, during the war.”
Some of the suspicion cleared from Martel’s eyes, and he walked back to sit in the creaking swivel chair behind his desk.
“Eddie. Sure, I knew him. Good kid. Talked about a sister some. That you?”
“Yes.”
Martel’s face creased with the ghost of a grin.
“Eddie LaFleur. Haven’t thought about him in forever. Best shot I ever saw with a laser rifle. Not a bad hacker, either. How’s he doing? I haven’t seen him since I took an IED blast and got sent home.”
I rolled the glass between my hands, then set it down on the end table. I reached into my purse for my vape case and snapped it open. My fingers trembled just a bit as I pulled out the thin cylinder and put it to my lips, my eyes flicking up to Martel’s for permission. He nodded, and I inhaled, focusing on the brief jolt of nicotine into my system. The sweet taste of caramel mingled with the whiskey remaining on my tongue.
“My brother said that you were one of the best men he’d ever known,” I said softly, watching him through the milky tendrils of my exhale as it drifted upward in the still, stale office air. “He said that if I were ever in trouble, I should find you.”
I took another hit, delaying the inevitable, as if not saying the words robbed them of some truth.
“My brother is dead, Mr. Martel.”
Martel closed his eyes briefly. I’d seen them do that before, the ones who came home from the war. They wouldn’t show any other sign of grief. Eddie once told me that with all he hated about the war, he came to love the men he fought beside. I didn’t speak. I’d had my time to mourn Eddie. Let this stranger have his.
He opened his eyes, and the suspicion was back.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. LaFleur, but why come to me? If Eddie was murdered, the police will find his killer.”
I just looked at him.
He shifted slightly in his chair, making it creak again. But he didn’t speak. Stubborn, like Eddie said.
I took another hit and exhaled, letting the cloud screen my face.
“Mr. Martel,” I said softly, “neither of us is a child. The police have ruled Eddie’s death a suicide.”
“And you think it wasn’t?”
“I know it wasn’t. You said it yourself. Eddie was a crack shot with a laser rifle. If he was going to kill himself, that’s how he would have done it. He wouldn’t have jumped from the Key Bridge with a weight tied to his ankles.”
Martel blinked.
“Eddie hated heights.” His voice was low and thoughtful.
I took another drink. Outside, a delivery drone rumbled by. The floor vibrated under my shoe.
“All right. Who would have wanted to kill your brother, Ms. LaFleur? Eddie wasn’t the type to make enemies, from what I could tell. He was always making everyone laugh.”
Sadness curved my lips in a smile that I knew looked like Eddie’s had done, once.
“He was still like that after the war. Some men came home without their laughter. Not Eddie. If anything, he laughed more, lived more. Everything was going so well for him. He had a great job working for Kolorotech. Do you know them, Mr. Martel?”
“Kolorotech? Sure. Cybernetic enhancements, right? Medical tech company, made their name doing upgrades on wounded soldiers back from the war. Eddie was working for them? I remember him as more of an artistic type. One of the only times I ever saw him really angry was when that story came out about how the enemy had looted the Louvre and destroyed some of the ancient European works of art.”
“Eddie worked in Kolorotech R&D to help develop their cybernetic eye suite,” I said, allowing my smile to deepen as grief threatened to choke me. “Specifically, he was working on the ability to allow human beings to see in spectra other than just visible light.”
“You mean like near-IR? We already do that.”
“Yes, but it takes additional machinery, which is still crude, even a century after its invention. Imagine if you could simply blink twice, Mr. Martel, and suddenly you had perfect color night vision. Or if you could watch a sunset in the UV spectrum. Imagine the art you could create then. Eddie certainly did.”
“So why kill him? Seems innocuous enough.”
I took another calming drag before speaking again.
“When were you injured, Mr. Martel?”
“April of ’75,” he said. “During the last attack on the enemy stronghold.”
I nodded. Eddie had told me this story many times.
“During that offensive, in the Alps, right? You were a squad leader, were you not?”
“Seems you know I was,” he leaned forward, his eyes sharper than they had been. “Eddie’s squad.”
“My brother spoke highly of your leadership,” I said, before taking another pull from the vape and inclining my head through the smoke. “He said you saved his life more than once.”
“Well, he saved mine, so we’re even.” Martel’s voice was tight as we got closer to the subject of his wounding.
“Yes,” I said softly, letting the word out on a curl of vapor. “When you were hit. Your squad surprised a platoon of enemies who weren’t where they should have been. The blast knocked you off your feet, embedded shrapnel in your shoulder. But you were also shot. You took rounds in the neck and upper thigh. Actual bullets, the ancient kind. The rest of your squad was killed. Eddie dragged you out and got you to the medic.”
“Look, lady,” Martel said, looking at me with hot, unfriendly eyes. “Your brother was a damn good man, and I’m sorry he’s dead. And if you want to hire me, I’ll do my damnedest to help you find who did it. But I don’t need to hear a play-by-play of the end of the war. Not from you. Not from anyone.”
I took another drag and exhaled, letting the cloud hang in the air.
✧ ✧ ✧
The rest of our conversation went about like you’d expect.
I suspected that Martel couldn’t decide if he loathed me or wanted me, but it didn’t much matter. At the end of the day, I had the credits and a case and he was, after all, a businessman.
I left the office just as the setting sun sent its light slanting through the sagging steel skeletons of ruined buildings lining G Street as they ran toward Garfield Park. Occasionally, through the noise of airborne and ground traffic, a few notes of the “Star Spangled Banner” came drifting up from the old Marine Barracks at 8th and I, a block or so to the south. United States Marines hadn’t been stationed there since DC’s first orbital bombardment during the war, but they still had the bugle calls and such on an automated timer. Some people thought things like that still mattered, I guess.
I turned my face to the setting sun and started to walk west down the steaming sidewalk, through the flat, greasy smell of garbage permeating the air. Just a few blocks toward the ruins of the old Capitol, and the mag rail that would take me back to Alexandria.
✧ ✧ ✧
Some seem to th
ink there’s a romance to living in a building that’s four hundred years old. If by romance you meant sagging stairs, uneven floors, and drafty windows, you’d have it nailed. The house had once been owned by some business partner of George Washington’s or something. Legend had it that revolutionaries had met here for tea before heading off to Gadsby’s Tavern down the street. Personally, I thought the legend was a load of bunk. Who drinks tea before heading out for ale and treason?
The current owner was a hard-eyed, fleshy matron in her fifties named Belinda Ellis. Mrs. Ellis claimed to have lost her husband in the war. She had a bad dye job and talked too much, but she minded her business and let me mind mine. We got on swimmingly.
I waved tiredly as I passed her sitting outside with a glass of wine, watching the cleaning bot sweep the front steps of her historic landmark. My feet ached in my pumps as I walked around to the back entrance that led to my rented lower floor. I needed a drink and a hot shower, not necessarily in that order.
Thirty minutes later, with my second drink in hand, I spoke a quick command and eased down into my sofa as the mournful notes of old jazz spilled into the air. I leaned my head back and let my wet hair spread out on the cushion behind me as I drew in a deep breath and refused to think about anything. Anything at all.
The edges of my mind had just started to soften when there was a pounding on my door. I startled up, nearly spilling my drink that I set hastily on the nearby end table. The streetlights switched on and cast sudden, sharp shadows through my windows as I yanked open the end table drawer to reveal the charged snub-nosed energy pistol I kept there.
“I’m coming,” I called out as I slipped the piece into the pocket of my satin bathrobe and fluffed my drying hair. One last tug to ensure that I was at least nominally decent, and I opened the door.
Martel stared at me with a face like a hanging judge’s.
“You wanna tell me why you’ve got two thugs tailing you home?”
“You wanna come in?” I asked, letting out a sigh as I pushed the door wider.
Noir Fatale Page 7