CHAPTER 23
Hell’s Cross, Outpost Fisher Four
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 0. 00:00
Dealing with the fallout from the Bramimondes’ sudden entrance takes hours away from the job I want to do—getting ready for the real Dr?u attack. Instead, we take care of her late husband/servant. We lay him in a makeshift grave and cover his body with a heavy tarp.
Ebi and Jean-Paul join us Regulators and a few miners to pay respects, but the Dame is too traumatized by the ordeal and demands a hot bath and a lie down. The lie down she gets. The bath—hot or otherwise—is a luxury nobody’s going to worry about getting her.
And then the hard part. Finding out what the deuce the Dame is doing here, a thousand kilometers from home. So I call a meeting of all parties concerned. We gather in a room next to the infirmary on the arcade.
“We seem to have a new batch of visitors,” I say as we gathered around the table. “Mind telling us why you’re here? Since they’ll be staying with us for a while.”
“Staying here? I certainly shall not,” the Dame sniffs.
“It’s not like you’d got much choice now,” áine says. “Like it or not, you’re stuck here.”
“Do not insult my intelligence,” the Dame says. “Do you really expect me to take the word of a group of emaciated dirt worms? Now, where is my son? I’ve come to—”
“Dirt worms?” áine launches halfway across the table. “You bring the Dr?u to our doorstep, and you insult us? I ort to spit in your face.”
“Ort?” the Dame says, mimicking her. “Is that a word? I don’t recall it being part of the bishop’s Academy of Language. Although, I must say, your kind never had the benefit of hearing very much civilized speech.”
áine curses under her breath. The Dame smiles, then looks to Maeve with a mocking eyebrow raised. The old lady only smiles in return.
It’s not, I think, the reaction the Dame is wanting. But I’m getting tired of the game. We have to finish the redoubt before the Dr?u attack again, our defensive tactics need tweaking, and I need to debrief my crew—the Dr?u are much more than your common cannibalistic marauders.
“How is it,” I ask, keeping my voice calm and commanding, “that you came to be here, Dame Bramimonde?”
“Do you not listen? I told you that I have come to retrieve my son. Where is he? And that old man who led him here?”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“How dare you ask anything of me, dalit. I can barely tolerate sharing the same air with you.”
I ignore the insult. “You, your daughter, and your husband came to Fisher Four alone? For a son you don’t care about. I find that hard to believe.” She cuts me a look, so I force the issue. “Wealthy folk like you not hiring bodyguards? That’s unusual.”
“We did hire protection,” the Dame says. “The cowards fled as soon as the Dr?u appeared.”
“Where are they now?” I ask.
“The Dr?u pursued them.”
A pall falls over the room. We know what happens to people that the Dr?u chase. “Where exactly did the Dr?u appear?”
The Dame waves away my question. “As if I know anything about this wretched place.”
“Outside the station,” Ebi interjects. “It was an ambush. We were expected.”
“We, as in any humans?” I ask Ebi. “Or we, as in the Bramimondes?”
“We as in Bramimondes, I believe.”
“What difference does it make?” the Dame sneers. “Those animals only wanted to kill us. It is nothing short of a miracle that we found our way to safety.”
I doubt it’s a miracle. More likely dumb luck. “It makes a very big difference, Dame. Was this a random attack, or did they target you specifically?”
The Dame flicks imaginary dust from her cuticles. “How would I know?”
“They knew it was us.” Ebi says, coming to the table, where she plants her hands firmly on the rough hewn stone. She stares fiercely at me. “The leader called us by name. He even introduced himself. I killed three of them in the firefight before our bodyguards deserted us.”
“The leader?” Fuse says. “The one that the chief shot?”
Ebi nods. “Yes, that was the leader. His name is Kuhru.”
“And he was specifically targeting you?” I say, the hackles on my neck rising. I don’t like the idea that the Dr?u were waiting for them. “Why?”
“He said that their queen wanted us,” Ebi says.
“Mimi, is she telling the truth?”
“Affirmative,” Mimi says. “Her heart rate and respiration indicate that she is telling the truth, as she knows it.”
“Thanks for the disclaimer.”
“Lie detecting is not an exact science, cowboy,” she says. “The standard disclaimer always applies.”
“So,” I ask Ebi, “why would the Dr?u queen want you?”
“Easy,” Jenkins butts in before Ebi can answer, “she’s hungry. Can we go now?”
I order him to pipe down, then ask Ebi, “Why does the queen want you and how did she know you were coming to Fisher Four?”
“Kuhru didn’t say, but before the shooting started, he told the other Dr?u to search us for the treasure.”
“Treasure?” Jenkins’s ears perk up.
“Which was ridiculous,” the Dame says. “We carried nothing of value with us. Our departure was rushed, so we took only the bare essentials.”
“Along with a group of bodyguards,” Fuse adds.
I feel the situation slipping out of my hands—too many people are interrupting me—so I clear my throat. “Back to my original question: How did the queen know you were coming to Fisher Four?”
“I don’t know,” Ebi says.
The Dame rolls her surgically sculpted eyes and taps a fingernail on the table. “As my daughter says, we do not know. We are not zoologists, after all, and I am weary from travel and from this inquisition. Lisette, accompany me to my quarters.”
“What quarters?” Spiner scoffs. “You’ve not been invited to stay amongst us. You’ll be damned lucky the miners don’t drop you down a chigoe hole.”
The Dame stands. “I will not be addressed in that manner.”
“You high-faluting hag!” Spiner launches off his stool. “Up in New Eden, they might put up with your crap. While you’re on miner ground, you’ll act like you’ve got some manners.”
The Dame huffs and scoots for the door. Spiner, furious at the slight, starts to follow her.
I let loose with an earsplitting whistle. “Nobody’s going anywhere until I get some answers. What’s this treasure the Dr?u are after?”
“Durango,” the Dame says, stretching out my name like a threat, “I have no idea. But I am exhausted, and I must see my son. Lisette, follow me.” She leaves the room. Ebi, though, doesn’t follow her right away.
“Chief,” Ebi asks me, “may I be dismissed?”
“Dismissed,” I say, and she follows her mother. I’ve had enough arguing. I need to talk to the one person who can answer my questions directly. “The rest of you go, too. All of you. Except Maeve.”
áine objects, “I’ll not be taking orders from the likes of—”
“áine, please,” Maeve says. “Go take care of the children.”
Reluctantly, she follows the others out of the room. But not before flashing an obscene hand gesture in my direction. She slams the door behind her.
“You’ve hurt the girl’s feelings,” Maeve says. “What happened between you?”
“Nothing,” I say, and even I don’t believe myself.
“Nothing can be something,” she says.
“Exactly my point,” I say, trying to change the subject. “You keep telling me the Dr?u don’t want anything, but they clearly want something: treasure. I agreed to take this job, but I need honest answers, and I need them now.”
Maeve stands up. “If it’s answers you want, then follow me.”
That was easy, I think.
“Yes, it was,” Mimi adds. “Too easy.”
“Is she lying?” I ask.
“The standard disclaimer always applies.”
I have no choice but to follow Maeve. With the hem of her robe leaving a thin trail in the dust, she leads me up to the arcade. At the corner she presses on a panel, which slides open, revealing a hallway I hadn’t discovered yet. The hall leads to a room, and inside is a single table made of wood, two matching chairs, and a glass lamp. The walls are covered with shelves and the shelves are filled with books. Books made of paper and bound together.
“A library,” I remark. “I’ve only seen one at battle school.”
Maeve takes a seat and motions for me to do the same. “It belonged to my family. Books were more precious to us than food. Each of us brought them with us when we immigrated.”
“Immigrated?”
“I was born on Earth,” she says. “My family left Boston after the plague caused the fall of the United Corporations of America. My father said that it was our chance at a new life, but I knew it was a life sentence. Argued with him the whole time he sold off most of our belongings and left us with nothing but the clothes on our backs. He kept saying that the Orthocracy would take care of us. But even at seventeen, I knew that wasn’t true.” She pauses. “Seventeen. That’s the age you and áine are now, if you count in Earth years. Tch. Children grow up so much faster on Mars. Live less long, too. Not such a bad thing, I think.”
“You were going to give me answers.”
She spreads her arms wide and sweeps past the shelves. “Treasure you sought. Treasure you’ve found.”
“A library?” Somehow I doubt that the Dr?u are interested in books. They don’t eat paper. “It’s precious to you, maybe, but it’s not treasure.”
“Define treasure.”
“Coin. Precious metals. Things so rare or in demand they have value.”
“Guanite.”
My brow wrinkles. Why is she cursing me? “I’m not following you.”
“Once upon a time,” Maeve says, “guanite was the most useful resource on Mars. Not valuable, but useful. The Phase Two engineers decided that polluting the planet was the fastest way to build up an atmosphere, so they built mining outposts all over the southern lands. The Fishers were the biggest, and Fisher Four was the grandest of all. An underground wonder, it was. You’ve seen the ruins. The Cross is all that’s left, now, but before, ah, I’ve seen the digigraphs. This was before the Orthocracy tried to lay Fisher Four to waste because the miners wouldn’t leave when the Manchesters and the ovens shut down. Now all we’ve got left is a few crumbling buildings and a million kilometers of empty tunnels to call home. We’re like the guanite. Once treasure, now useless.”
I rub my head. “So what you’re trying to tell me is that you have no treasure.”
“No,” she says, rising to her feet. “What I mean is that if the Dr?u think we have treasure, it doesn’t matter whether we do or not. All that matters is that they are willing to do anything to get it, and that makes your job that much harder.”
“A more cynical man would say impossible.”
“Then it’s a good thing you are not a cynic.” She gestures toward the door. “May I show you out?”
As we’re leaving, Maeve locking the door behind us, Mimi chimes in, “Did you believe her story?”
“Not a word of it,” I say.
“That’s good, cowboy. Because according to her heart rate and breathing patterns, she—”
“Was lying?”
“Through her rust-stained teeth.”