As she piloted her aircar past the edge of the bush and over Port Authority’s manicured farmland, Talina finally understood what it meant to be haunted. That look on Kylee’s face: pain, disbelief, horror. Rocket’s broken body. She couldn’t shake the images that had been burned into her brain.
As they passed above, the farmers tending their crops waved. Talina shot them a salute back, but her heart wasn’t in it.
Not with Kylee’s scream still echoing inside her skull, or the mindless grief that had fixed in the little girl’s expression.
But the worst had happened at the funeral. They’d dug a hole at the end of the line of graves just north of the tower. Not much, just a square pit more than a meter deep. Kylee had watched with vacuous blue eyes as Talina, Talbot, and Dya carefully lowered Rocket’s limp corpse into the hole. As they did, waves of color rolled across his cold hide.
A knot had pulled tight in Talina’s throat. She’d managed to hold back the tears, memories of the little quetzal and its obvious love for Kylee tearing at her the entire time.
Given her history with quetzals, how had she come to grow so fond of the little beast?
Talbot had climbed out, extending a hand to pull first Dya, and then Talina up and out of the grave.
“Rocket was family,” Rebecca had stated tonelessly. “I remember our fear when he came among us. How he fearlessly came walking down the causeway at Kylee’s side, chirping all the way.
“Stunned, we ran out, weapons in hand, and Kylee called, ‘This is my new friend, Rocket. He’s come to live with us.’”
Talina had glanced over. Kylee’s face remained stricken, her lips quivering. Eyes unfocused. Was she even hearing?
“He brought wonder to our lives,” Dya added. “He and Kylee were inseparable. We will . . .” She swallowed hard, tears trickling down her face. “We will miss . . .” Her eyes closed, throat working, unable to finish.
Kylee caught them by surprise, dropping to her knees, crawling into the grave. Before anyone could react, she was down, curling herself around Rocket’s body. And there she froze, whispering, “It’s okay, Rocket. I’ll die with you.”
Su turned away, biting her knuckles, as she fled. The rest of the children watched in wide-eyed horror.
Dya kept whispering “Oh, my God” over and over.
Talbot, on the verge of breaking down, climbed back into the grave. As he laid hold of Kylee, the little girl burst out in shrieks and eerie, wavering screams.
Talbot had to tear her loose. Handed Kylee, kicking and screaming, up to Talina. It was all Tal could do to pull the girl up and out of the way. The miracle was that the child didn’t rebreak a bone in the struggle.
Once clear of the grave, Kylee went limp. Soundless, barely breathing.
As Talina held her, she could sense the difference. Maybe it was the quetzal in her, but she knew the instant Kylee turned herself off. Like a switch had been thrown.
The girl didn’t even look as dirt was shoveled into the grave. Made no move as she was carried back to the tower. Only her shallow breathing and periodic blink of the eyes hinted that she was even alive.
Kylee had gone catatonic. Even her skin had taken on an ashen color. Nor did she respond when Dya made every heroic attempt to break through the girl’s dissociative fixation on nothingness. To look into Kylee’s eyes was to stare into desolation.
Eerie. Frightening.
Talina chewed her lip as she piloted her aircar toward the Port Authority landing field. She glanced at Rebecca. The woman sat stoically in the aircar’s passenger seat. Getting Rebecca to return to Port Authority had been a major victory. Or perhaps, as the matriarch at Mundo, she’d just needed to escape the calamitous turn of events that had shattered her family.
Talina slowed her approach, hovered over the aircar field, and settled onto her usual spot beside the perimeter fence.
Shutting down the system, she still had a twenty percent charge left in the power pack. Off to the left, four vehicles down, she could see Mundo’s old Beta aircar. The one that had carried Talbot, Dya, Kylee, and Rocket to Port Authority in the first place. Someone had moved it from the street to the aircar field.
“We’re here,” Rebecca stated woodenly as she inspected the high fence. Then she turned her gaze to the buildings beyond the chain link. “I once swore I’d never be back. That I’d die before I set foot on this ground again.”
“Times change, Rebecca. People change. Back then the only future was The Corporation. Now, for all we know, we may never see another of their ships for the rest of our lives. Who and what we are is who and what we decide to be. Just us. Maybe a couple of thousand people on the entire planet if you count some of us twice.”
Rebecca collected her pack as Talina unloaded her own belongings. After plugging the aircar in to recharge, she found Rebecca staring anxiously at the gate where one of the guards stood, a bolt-action rifle conspicuous in his hands.
“Hey, Tal,” the guard greeted. “Where you been? People been asking.”
“Went south for the winter, Sam. Palm trees, coconuts, jerk chicken on the beach.”
“Yeah, right.”
She led the way, wondering what it felt like for Rebecca to pass through the gate. If Port Authority didn’t come across as more of a prison than a town after Mundo Base. The entire time she’d been at Mundo, Talina hadn’t seen a single fence.
But then, they’d had Rocket. Had brokered some sort of deal with Donovan that allowed cohabitation.
Made her wonder if perhaps, somehow, people had gotten it all wrong when Second Ship had founded Port Authority with its fences and security.
The quetzal inside her sent a hot flash of displeasure through her muscles. Damn, she hated it when the creature did that.
There was so much that they still didn’t understand. Like how Kylee could walk that soon after surgery. Or what had happened to the little girl inside her skull when her best friend and symbiote was murdered.
“Lot’s changed,” Rebecca noted, almost cringing back from the people who called greetings as Talina led the way through the warehouse district. “Look at the new buildings.”
Rounding the corner onto the main avenue, Rebecca asked suspiciously, “The Jewel?”
“Not everything here is an improvement. It’s a gambling den started by a Skull that Turalon puked into our presence. The guy’s named Dan Wirth. A real lowlife. Think rigged games, organized prostitution, racketeering, and just about anything unsavory.”
“Why don’t you shut him down?”
“Me, I’d do more than that. Shig and Yvette, however, are hung up about the role of government in a free society. They consider keeping a leash on my more tyrannical impulses as their role in life.” Talina gave the woman a sidelong glance. “And, as you know from experience, that’s not always such a bad idea.”
“We’re not part of Aguila’s empire because of you. Even with what it cost us. It’s got to be better than Corporate administration.”
“Yeah, well, let’s get those papers registered. Then it’s for sure a done deal. One that Aguila can’t lawyer her way around.”
“Hey, Tal!” came a cry.
Talina arched an eyebrow as the auburn-haired woman came striding from Inga’s front bench. “Trish.”
How was this going to go?
“Who’s your friend?” Trish asked, matching step, her expression guarded.
“Rebecca Smart, this is my second-in-command. Trish Monagan, meet Rebecca. She’s here to represent the family that owns Mundo Base. Came a long way to see what we’ve done with Port Authority. Even survived a brush with Aguila’s people to get here.”
“You mean Spiro?” Trish asked, feigning nonchalance.
“You know anything about what happened down there?”
“She’s quit the Supervisor.” She hesitated. “Shot old Boris Kashashvili in Inga’s last night after an argument. Legal shooting. Spiro and Chavez have taken up lodging in an abandoned dome down by the mine gate. Spiro’s been making quite a show of herself.” Again Trish hesitated, obviously not telling Tal everything. “She’s been bragging about shooting that quetzal that was at the hospital.”
Rebecca almost missed a step; her expression turned wooden.
“Yeah.” Talina shot Trish a hard look. “I was there. I call it cold-blooded murder.”
“Tal, for God’s sake . . .” Trish bit off whatever she was going to say, the corners of her mouth going tight. After an awkward pause, Trish said, “Yeah, well, you’ve got business. I’ll be off on my rounds.”
“See you.”
Talina watched Trish cut off to the right, as if escaping into the narrow gap between the foundry and the tannery walls.
“That sounded cold,” Rebecca noted.
“We had a disagreement over Rocket. Some of our fine citizenry wanted to violently remove the little guy. Trish kind of cut me off at the knees the night I left.”
Rebecca took a deep breath. “Idiots.”
Talina led the way into the admin dome, finding it mostly empty as was usual at midday.
“Hey, Yvette,” Talina called, leaning in the woman’s door. “Got business for you.”
The blonde woman looked up from her desk. Then past Tal’s shoulder. “Good God! Rebecca? That you?”
“Been a long time,” Rebecca acknowledged. “How’s Hansen?”
“Skewer got him about five, no six years back.”
“Sorry to hear that. He was a good man.” Rebecca tried to smile. Couldn’t.
Yvette stood and pushed her chair back. “Last we heard you’d abandoned Mundo Base. Vanished into the bush. Imagine our surprise when Talina radioed that you all were still kicking down there.”
Talina said, “Yvette, we’re here to register the deed for Mundo Base. That and a series of titles for the equipment down there.” She lowered her voice. “Which, if you will recall, we did the day that Dya left.”
Yvette’s green eyes cooled. “The day that Dya left?”
“Could we step into the conference room?” Talina suggested, glancing up and down the hallway.
Yvette, mouth gone prim with unease, led the way.
Talina closed the door behind them, saying, “You’ve got to trust me on this. We need to backdate Mundo’s deed. Blood’s already been spilled. I’ve given my word.”
Yvette, never one to shy from the blunt truth, asked, “This about you? About Pak and Paolo? Or is this about what’s right and correct for this office?”
“It’s about Donovan, and what’s good for our future here,” Talina insisted. “It’s about libertarian versus Corporate. About creating an independent third entity on the planet. Port Authority? Corporate Mine? We both need Mundo Base and what it has to offer. You heard about Dya Simonov’s medical miracles?”
“Yep. Something.”
“That’s the tip of the iceberg.” Talina hooked a thumb at Rebecca. “But it’s theirs. They did the hard lifting. Paid the price in lives, sweat, and blood to keep that place and to make it pay. Yesterday Aguila tried to whisk it out from under them by claiming Mundo is Corporate property. So you tell me, madam libertarian, is protecting their claim worth a couple of days? And what does that mean in the fourteen-billion-year history of the universe?”
Yvette coolly appraised Rebecca. Then she asked, “You’ve been there the entire time?”
“Since the beginning.”
Yvette closed her eyes, looking pained. “Tal, if we do this . . . Damn it. If we compromise here, where do we compromise next? Yes, I agree, it’s theirs. But what difference does it make if we file the papers today? The documents are still binding and—”
“I told Spiro it was already a done deal. You can bet it was recorded. Kalico will have reviewed those tapes.”
“Fuck.” Yvette shook her head. “Talina, why do you put me in the middle of these messes?”
“Because it was the right thing to do,” Rebecca said. “Sometimes justice—or true justice as the case may be—requires a bit of latitude in the application of the rules. Corporate philosophy is absolutely rigid in its approach to governance. Where does your libertarian philosophy stand in comparison?”
“Embrace a lie just because it serves the common good?” Yvette crossed her arms.
Rebecca shrugged. “I lied yesterday in a desperate bluff to avoid a firefight and save my family and home. But for Spiro’s need to strike out, it almost worked without anyone getting killed. What’s a peaceful resolution and our freedom worth? How do you value that against your own sense of morality and ethics?”
Yvette closed her eyes, muttered, “Shit!” under her breath. For a long moment she considered, lips pursed.
Tal finally added, “At risk of unleashing all that dharma and Taoist crap, should we ask Shig what his opinion would be?”
“God no.” Yvette opened her eyes. “He’d wax on about the quest for sattva until we were all foaming at the mouth.”
Rebecca lifted an inquiring eyebrow as she studied Dushane.
Yvette crossed her arms. “You know there’s a filing fee. SDRs or trade?”
Rebecca reached in her pack, producing a small box, about ten by ten centimeters.
“And what’s that?” Yvette asked, taking the box.
“Blueberries and blackberries. Had the kids pick them before we left.”
The tall woman opened the box. Stared in green-eyed disbelief. She took one of the large blackberries. Popped it into her mouth.
Like the breaching of a dam, Yvette caved. “Yeah, well, let’s take a stroll to the records room. Seems to me we filed those papers what . . . ? Couldn’t have been more than a couple of days ago.”
Talina smiled wearily. “Yeah, that’s my recollection, too.”
To Rebecca, she said, “Let’s get this done and I’ll buy you a beer. You had a beer recently?”
“Not for years.”
An hour later, Talina was seated in her chair at Inga’s, elbows braced behind her as she instinctively scanned the tavern’s clientele for potential trouble.
Beside her, fingers laced around a ceramic mug full of Inga’s pale ale, Rebecca asked, “Okay, so now that the gloves are off, what does this really mean? What do you and Port Authority expect to get out of my family?”
“Trade.” Talina reached back for her stout.
“You’ve got it.” Rebecca winced. “We owe you. But you’ll have to help protect us from Aguila. We can’t stop her if she comes to take Mundo.” She made a face. “It hurts me to say, but we’ll need your armed troops to defend—”
“You don’t understand. It’s not about Port Authority against Corporate Mine. We need Aguila and her people to succeed, and she needs us. Good old Kalico is still learning to think in Donovanian terms, but she’s coming around. She knows she’s losing down there. I think you are the key to keeping that mine and smelter running.” She paused. “It’s all about those pine trees.”
Rebecca glanced sidelong at her. “But give me a single damn reason why, after what that woman has done, we should give her anything?”
“One word: Survival. Mundo’s falling apart. I know it. You know it. More importantly, Mundo’s condition is prophetic for Port Authority and Corporate Mine. We’re flush for the moment. Lots of new equipment and supplies that we’re going to use up faster than anyone can anticipate. But ultimately, we’re abandoned.”
“And just because of that, we should forgive her for Rocket? For trying to take our home?”
“Spiro shot Rocket. Not Kalico.” Talina smiled as she sipped her stout, then added softly, “And you’ve forgiven me for acts even more odious.”
Rebecca shook her head. “It’ll be up to the family. But don’t count on it. Not after Rocket. They’re going to want a payback, and as the old saw says, payback’s a bitch.”