Dark Space (Sentients of Orion) Page 19

  If that drug-fuddled lout has cheated me...

  Weary and more than a little bad-tempered Tekton returned to The Sternberg to find Miranda quaffing champagne and eating oysters out of parts of Doris that not even he had visited.

  ‘Tekton, good fellow,’ trilled Miranda in operatic tones. ‘Come and join us.’

  Tekton’s rush of akula was akin to a lava eruption on Mount Frenzy. He plunged after the oysters with a true connoisseur’s enthusiasm and worked off his frustrations.

  Later, in the serenity of post-coitus, enduring Doris’s snores, a thought occurred to him. Where on Scolar had Miranda got to? The woman had been there for his performance—he was sure.

  Throwing on a cloak, Tekton hastened back to the Institute. ‘A woman with many chins,’ he told the autolibrarian.

  It droned back at him with an infuriating privacy

  disclaimer, which made Tekton feel like sticking his well-moisturised finger up its authentication mortise. Instead, he caught the elevator to Floor 202 and lurked around the vreal cubicles listening for a clue as to tricky Miranda’s whereabouts.

  Vanity was her downfall—Die Walküre, to be precise. He heard her warbling her way through the third act.

  ‘Aha,’ accused Tekton, sweeping back the curtain. ‘I thought so.’

  Caught in the act of reviewing his search route, Miranda didn’t bother to deny it. ‘It’s that cousin of yours,’ she declared. ‘He promised me things to spy on you. Did you know that he can see microwaves? Do you know what surgery I could perform with that ability? Bloodless, that’s what. Magical.’ A single tear collected in a corner of her eye and she lifted her skirt to display the full undulation of her thighs. ‘Don’t be cross, Tekton. I have not the faintest idea what you were searching for in such an uninspiring slice of the galaxy—nothing there but rock and gas. And I should know. My grandmama three times removed—the famous actress Shelba Lanzano—ran away to Latino Crux to marry a prince. Terribly romantic, and so on. Last I heard she and the prince had upped stakes and bought a dirty little mining planet out that way. Hot as Hades and not half as exciting.’ She pointed to Tekton’s holo-tour. ‘Took the whole damn clan with him. Faux royalty you know—all inbred.’

  Dirty little mining world. Tekton became very still. Carefully, Tekton, both minds warned him. ‘Mining world? Out there? No. How fascinating? But I found no such thing on the records,’ he said casually.

  ‘Hah!’ Miranda’s laugh was more of a snort. ‘Of course not. OLOSS are renowned for tampering with their records: a judge on the law circuit spots a little world he fancies as a holiday home, bribes the Registrar of Planets to delete it from the database and buys it for a song. You must know the sort of thing...’

  Tekton felt his skin grow warm with embarrassment. Obviously he did not.

  ‘If you want to know the truth on anything you have to use the Vreal Studium. Those extropists are nothing if not meticulous with detail,’ she added.

  The Vreal Studium.

  ‘And I must congratulate you. Your prolonged erection this evening was quite remarkable. You must tell Jise how you do that.’

  Suddenly Tekton felt a different type of heat. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And now, my dear Tekton, you won’t squeal to Ra that you caught me, will you?’

  Tekton pulled the curtain closed behind him. ‘No, dear Miranda—not if you lift that skirt of yours a little higher.’

  MIRA

  Mira watched Cass nursing Vito. Despite the heat and the lack of food there was no hint of hopelessness, no surrender in her face. Her resolve reminded Mira of Faja and the similarity was like a wound. She couldn’t think of her sorella without her breath catching in her throat.

  Cass’s older ragazzo played nearby in the dirt with the korm. The korm’s bleeding had stopped, leaving ugly grey lesions on its blue flesh.

  In a few days they’d travelled most of the distance to Ipo: unbearable, hungry days and hot-wind nights. They’d taken the rougher mining tracks towards the place. Cass had pronounced the proper roads too dangerous and crowded.

  In some ways Mira was relieved by her decision, for every person on foot they’d have passed would’ve been another person they should have stopped for, every ragazza another one at risk of being run over.

  Mira found herself moving automatically through the days but at night, when the TerV’s depleted solar cells forced them to stop, her mind swirled in an agony of confusion and denial. This could not be happening. Her world, as much as she had felt a misfit in it, was being torn from her and crushed. She grieved for her displacement and for the ugliness that desperation caused. What would be the end of it? What would be her fate?

  Each of them had been allocated a watch period. Innis declared that he would share his with Mira but, to her relief, Cass overruled him. Instead she took her watch with Kristo.

  On the second night they had stopped in a shallow gully at the side of the track to shelter from the worst of the winds. They’d seen no one all afternoon but, to the east and west of the track, lights dotted the night. Miners guarding their leases, Cass had said, and refugees.

  Like us.

  Kristo tapped his fingers along the barrel of the rifle in a release of tension and Mira worried that in the quickening dark he might shoot her accidentally. ‘Stop that.’ She couldn’t keep the imperious edge from her tone.

  ‘Innis is right,’ Kristo said. ‘You’re a nervous type. Guess that’s ‘cause you’re an aristo.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She found she had little patience left for their ignorant bigotry.

  ‘Youse aristo wimmen up on Mount Pell are protected from real life.’

  Mira stared out into the dark. His criticism bothered her. Was she like the familia women? She didn’t—had never—felt like them. ‘I am not just aristo -1 am a pilot.’

  ‘All I know is you ain’t like Cass,’ Kristo said simply. ‘Though I guess she’s learnin’ it hard since her man died.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He was killed just a week back when the Juanita mine caved in. They set a blast at one of the open cuts close by. Shouldna done it. Area was too unstable. Brought the tunnel down,’ Kristo said.

  ‘How long have you been on Araldis?’

  ‘I was born in Loisa. Ma and Pap came from Inkla’s

  World along with Cass’s folk. We grew up here together. First-generation mining stock.’ He thumped his chest proudly. ‘I’ve been here as long as you.’

  Mira stared out at the plains. Semantic and Tiesha would soon be up together, bathing the iron ridges with their scarlet light. ‘I know the area. I have been there once.’

  Kristo looked at her, surprised.

  ‘It was a study trip from the Studium,’ she said, embarrassed.

  ‘Didn’t think you aristos set foot off Pell.’

  ‘I was made t— I lived in Loisa with mia sorella at the Villa Fedor,’

  ‘I heard of that place. The aristo woman there’s been taking in ginkos. You lose her—your sister?’

  Mira nodded.

  Kristo screwed up his face in sympathy. ‘Lost my place too. Lost my ma. Pap’s out on the mines somewhere. He doesn’t even know.’ He stifled a sound of sorrow and turned his head away.

  ‘I will watch the other side.’ Mira left him to struggle with his grief. She had enough of her own.

  * * *

  Mira and Cass shared water at daybreak while Marrat reattached the rifle to the roof. Mira felt a slight searching pressure on her back that was gone a heartbeat later, then Innis leaned in so close that, his breath fanned her velum. She stepped away in alarm.

  ‘I got news.’ He seemed jumpy. ‘Talked to some folk over at the next camp. They’re holed up on their lease. They reckon those ginko things are everywhere. Swarmin’ like ligs on a thorn bush. Rumour says a merc brought ‘em in. The merc set the bombs off in Loisa. They’re using ginkos to do the rest.’

  ‘The aliens are called Saqr. I learned a little about them at
the Studium,’ Mira said.

  ‘The Studium, huh? Well, this ain’t the learnin’ room now, Baronessa. They’ve gone and overrun Dockside as well. Ipo’s still holding, though. When we get there we’ll stand against the spit-sucking ginks.’

  Mira turned away from his swaggering to face her own realisation. Jancz. Jancz was the mercenary. Her limbs became heavy and her mind thick with the guilt of her knowledge. Gould she have stopped this? Could she... ‘What would they want with us?’ she whispered.

  Marrat came to stand next to her. ‘Where are all your aristos now? Where are your Carabinere?’ he jeered at Mira. ‘Dead, most like! Useless pricks.’

  ‘The miners reckon the ginks have come to take us because their own world is dead.’ said Innis.

  Kristo joined them as well. ‘They’re getting closer,’ he warned. ‘You can hear the gunfire.’

  Cass hauled herself up and passed Vito to Mira. He squirmed in Mira’s arms, uncertain now where his main source of comfort lay.

  ‘We’ll find out more in Ipo,’ said Cass. ‘We need to get there quick now. How much in the cells?’

  Innis shrugged. ‘A few hours. They’re old. Not holding too well.’

  ‘What about the spares?’

  ‘Smashed.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ Cass said in exasperation.

  Innis’s face fell into its usual sullen arrangement.

  Cass sighed heavily. ‘Let’s go.’

  They climbed into the barge, Innis driving with Marrat alongside, Kristo atop with the rifle. This time Mira rode in the back with Cass and the bambini. Through the window she saw their pursuers strung out across the horizon like dark beads.

  Cass watched from the other window. ‘They’re on the road. If they beat us to Ipo we’ll be cut off.’ She took a knife from inside her clothing and passed it to Mira. ‘Keep this and use it.’

  Mira tried to push it away. ‘I could not. We do not arm ourselves.’

  ‘What about your Vito? If these Saqr catch us he will die.’

  Mira was spared the need to reply as the barge began to weave, tossing them across the floor. She heard a loud thump on the roof where Kristo clung to his rifle mount. He will be thrown. Like the ‘bino. She couldn’t bear that. Not ever.

  Crawling over to where the korm lay, she wedged Vito under the alien’s forearm and took a cable from a side-hook. Then she scrambled to the inside ladder and climbed to the roof hatch.

  It snapped open with the force of the wind and bounced up, wrenching her arm with it. Mira moaned from the pain as it dragged loose from her fingers. Kristo slid across the roof, his boots scrabbling for purchase. Not time for pain.

  She threw the rope out to him. It snaked, slapping against his side and away. She reeled it in and tried again and again until, finally, she felt the tug as Kristo caught it and reeled in the slack.

  To one side of the barge the dark beads had grown into TerVs: a line of huge barges. They were coming. Mira half fell back inside, leaving the hatch open, and wedged herself next to the korm and Vito. Cass’s knife pressed against her side. Can I use it if I have to? No.

  JO-JO RASTEROVICH

  To say that Jo-Jo Rasterovich was the kind to bear a grudge was an understatement and, as such, a marked contrast to his own appetite for exaggeration.

  So when the Hera Guild of Lawmon and Bondsmen released him from the contract that he’d signed on Belle-Monde he vac’d the shell. He then spent several hours concocting and uttering a wealth of profanities that would best describe his feelings for Tekton.

  As that wore thin, and his throat got dry, he got down to the serious business of planning his revenge.

  He returned to the vicinity of Belle-Monde and hired a surveillance module (disguised as a catering multiworld) in which to lurk about while he stalked Tekton’s movements and traced his research (something he was able to do with relative ease, knowing the infrastructure and inbuilt protocols of the ex-bordello pseudo-world in remarkable detail), building a picture of the smart’s hopes, dreams, and his allies.

  It was during that time when he became aware of another shadow in Tekton’s life. A stalker of detail, rather like himself. He weighed the probability of it being friend or foe and fell heavily on the side of the latter.

  It seemed that Tekton had not just one enemy—he had two.

  But he’s mine!

  When Tekton boarded an OLOSS transport with Dieter Thighs, Jo-Jo hightailed it back to Salacious II (with some excellent new heat, shake and gobble recipes) and tracked him there.

  The OLOSS transport puttered off to the re-shift point near Mintaka and Jo-Jo eased Salacious II out after it with the skill of a plain-clothes detective on his preferred beat. He could have got closer but knowing that Dieter Thighs was Tekton’s travelling companion Jo-Jo decided that surveillance was the smarter part of valour.

  As they approached the J. Rast shift point (yes, named after him!) Jo-Jo snuggled up close to it in the busy queue and deployed a rather snazzy poaching programme, which informed him that Tekton was off to the philosophers’ planet Scolar.

  Jo-Jo res-shifted through a different route and still beat Tekton there. He then hung out in Scolar space until he was forced to enrol in an external philosophy course to keep the Scolar marshals off his back.

  So while Tekton and Dieter Thighs went about their business, Jo-Jo inhaled Aesthetics and learned whole new meanings for the words ‘sublime’ and ‘disgust’.

  The agony and ecstasy of it all went on for several weeks until at short notice, Tekton hired a re-shift cruiser. Jo-Jo dumped Vatsyayan, Confucius and Mi as the cruiser’s stolen coordinates tumbled into Salacious II’s nav system and brought up a distant system on his holowad.

  Jo-Jo’s high-heeled-legs pointer danced about before settling on one of the system’s three inhabited planets.

  A set of pouting scarlet lips formed to rattle off a short briefing.

  Araldis World has been settled for two hundred and three years. Its major export is mineral. Haulers operating on the mag-beam network cart ore to the Dowl res-shift station for sale and distribution through the wings of Orion.

  Owned and settled by Cipriano Clan (aristocratic families from Latino Minor with ideologically Machiavellian roots) originally from Latino Crux.

  Racial breakdown: Latino humanesque 72%, other humanesque 26%, alien 2%.

  The pointer legs and lips vanished while the system diagram continued its elegant rotation in front of him.

  Jo-Jo propped his elbows on his knees, sank his chin into his hands and gave a gargantuan sigh. ‘The only things I hate more than tax collectors and Hera contracts,’ he said aloud, ‘are frigging aristos.’

  MIRA

  ‘You’re the last in,’ a voice shouted.

  Mira and Cass peered out through the dirt-smeared windows. Ipo was only a few mesurs ahead of them. A small TerV pulled up alongside where they had stopped between huge hydroponic tents and an ‘esque with crimson skin and gold miner’s tattoos across the bridge of his nose leaned out of the open door. He wore no protective suit, only a thin insulating robe with an open hood.

  ‘We’re sealing off the town—bunkering in. Then we saw youse coming. We only got a few minutes.’ He gestured back over his shoulder. ‘Anyone outside the fence’s on their own. What you got in the back?’

  ‘Nothin’ ‘cept a couple of women,’ said Innis.

  Marrat opened the doorbridge for him to inspect the vehicle’s interior and Cass and Mira climbed out of the barge to stand next to Marrat.,

  ‘What fence are you talking about?’ asked Innis.

  The ‘esque pointed to the array of tripods posted at intervals to their left and right. ‘We’ve rigged a laser around the town, using the mining levels.’

  ‘But half of Loisa is behind us on foot. What about them?’ Mira protested.

  He gave her a hard look and then shrugged. ‘Count yourselves too lucky.’

  Too lucky? Too lucky—to see a child crushed under the
tracks of a TerV? Too lucky—to lose mia sorella? ‘The Saqr will kill them.’ Mira looked for Cass to add force to her protest but the woman avoided her gaze, fussing with the seals of her ‘bino’s oversuit.

  ‘You cannot deny them entry,’ persisted Mira.

  ‘Shut ‘em out or die, Rast says. Pretty straightforward. Now youse best go further in to town now. Gonna be some bazoom out here,’ said the ‘esque.

  Behind them a dull glow sprang to life across the road—a tinted distortion of the dawn like a not-quite fire. It spread in a wide circle around the town and high into the air.

  ‘All the way around.’ He laughed. ‘They won’t even know it’s there until they’re on it.’

  As they watched the fence flicker, the wind gusted, blasting them with dust and grit. Another TerV pulled alongside and its driver leaned out. This one wore a full but hard-worn protective suit.

  ‘These are the last ones, Catchut,’ said their escort.

  ‘Get ‘em into town.’

  Mira glimpsed Catchut’s face behind the film. It was pale and space-soft. An un-native who hasn’t bothered with melanin therapy. Not a miner. Not a farmer. A soldier, perhaps? But there were no soldiers on Araldis, only cowardly Carabinere.

  ‘Yessir.’ The miner slapped his fingers to his leathery forehead in mock salute.

  ‘‘Now, Rast says. Everyone away from the fence,’ said Catchut. He drove off.

  Mira and Cass climbed back into the barge and Mira checked on the korm. Vito was asleep, tucked against the large alien’s forearm. The scar bubbles left by the Saqr wound seemed smaller today, and the korm seemed content to lie and let its body self-heal. It needed food, though, like they all did.

  As the barge drove past the rows of hydroponic tents the guide wires sang in the wind. Mira pressed against the window. How much food is in them? Enough to feed the town? For how long?