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“We are going to beat Grimes there by several days, right?” Manny asked the question as if the answer might have changed.
“At least four days before him,” Fischer replied.
Exit Wound was not a large vessel, and its lone conference room barely contained the tense knot of people wedged inside. Three of the four fixers from Dockside, Captain Fischer, Christopher Pike, and Catrina Caulfield filled the chairs around a small table. The representative from Earth’s Department of Espionage and Clandestine Operations, a sallow man named James Klebold, sat in an additional chair wedged between Pike and Caulfield. Stoop-shouldered and balding, the DECO man could not hide his discomfort. He shifted in his chair and a thin layer of sweat lent a waxy sheen to the expanse of his forehead. Roland, as necessitated by his bulk, remained standing. However, his choice to loom over the anxious analyst wore the distinct air of sadistic pique.
Manny continued, “Our first chance to grab him will be as soon as he steps out of customs.” His lip twitched while he considered this. “But I don’t think that is the right time.”
Lucia nodded her agreement. “That is going to be a big public place. Too many curious eyes and twitchy security forces. If we get caught up by the authorities, the memory core could end up in an evidence locker.”
Mindy shook her head. “That is a worst-case scenario, boss. If the Elders even suspect that there is human code or whatever in that thing, they will destroy it without any kind of process. They’ll see it as an abomination, and us as the worst kind of sinners for wanting it.”
“Are they smart enough to realize what it is if they get it?” asked Roland. “I mean, it probably just looks like a standard memory core to them.”
“They’re religious, but not stupid. It’s obviously a cybernetic memory core. Once they see who’s really fighting over it, they’re gonna look real hard at the damn thing. When they get to poking around all that weird code, they’ll get confused.” She shook her head for emphasis. “‘Confusing’ is a real bad thing to be on Gethsemane, Ironsides. The standard practice for Elders of the Faith is to destroy anything they don’t understand.”
“Great,” Roland grumbled. “I guess we have to let him get off the ship. But then what?”
“Where can he go, Mindy?” asked Lucia. “Who might help him?”
“He can’t go to the Temples or the Knights, either. His body mods limit him to Sodom and Gomorrah, and of course the Underworld.”
Pike could not stifle a snort. “And I thought Dockside had stupid names for things.”
Lucia shared Pike’s bemusement. “Knights? Really?”
Pike guffawed, loud and rude at the same time. “Oh, Gethsemane is goddamn lousy with warrior monks. Dozens of different orders. Most of them are really just shitty fraternities for rich pricks.” Pike made a rude gesture with both hands. “It’s the Templars, Fratres Millitae, Stefanites, and the Teutons who are the real problems. Those four gangs of self-important assholes run kinda light on the brains and heavy on the violence.”
Mindy pressed her palms together under her chin and cast her eyes upward. “In God’s name, of course. Can’t forget that part. So it’s the good kind of violence. Saintly, even.”
“They any good?” Roland did not think he was going to like the answer, but the question had to be asked.
Pike sucked air through his teeth. “Not gonna lie, Breach. For all their bullshit, the dipshits don’t suck at what they do. The Church can afford the best weapons and armor on the market. High-ranking Knights will probably have gear we’ve never seen before. And they live to fight, too. They start as kids and do the whole page, squire, yeoman, knight, thing and all that.”
“Old school, huh?”
“Super old,” Pike agreed.
Lucia rubbed her face with the palm of one hand. “Okay, so we need to avoid the... dear God, I can’t believe I’m saying this... we need to avoid the Knights.”
“It’d be best,” said Mindy. “But there’s also the Inquisition.”
“I wasn’t expecting that,” said Roland.
“No one ever does,” said Mindy.
Lucia took it upon herself to ask the next pressing question. “And what, pray tell, does the Inquisition do?”
“Well, boss, they make inquiries.”
Lucia fixed Mindy with a withering glare. “Mindy, if you don’t get more helpful, I’m going to tell Pike he can have you back.”
Mindy gasped. “You wouldn’t!”
“We don’t want her,” Pike said, a touch too quickly.
“Right now, I’d sell your contract for a cup of coffee. Tell us about the Inquisition or get used to wearing green fatigues.”
“No deal,” Pike blurted. No one noticed.
Mindy stuck her tongue out at both of them. “You are really mean before you get caffeinated, Boss. The Inquisition is like the secret police or something. They look for criminals and traitors to the faith and stuff like that. They have no rules, no restrictions, and because they are on a mandate from God, they get total absolution for any sins they commit in the line of duty.”
“Are these dirty cops, or something worse?”
“Boss, you need to understand something. On Gethsemane, publicly disagreeing with the Church is a felony. Being in possession of a book or holo that is not on the approved list is a felony. Any drink stronger than sacramental wine is illegal. Dancing too close to your partner is illegal. Thinking about cheese between vespers and compline is a felony.” When no one seemed to understand her point, Mindy threw up her hands. “There is no goddamn way in this world or the next that the Elders can actually enforce all that stupid crap. Gethsemane has a hundred and ninety million people running around. Trust me. There is a ton of illegal shit going on because everything worth doing is illegal. They’d need a Knight on every corner just to keep up with minor citations. The Inquisition is how they keep it all under control.”
“Fear,” Lucia stated it plainly.
“Exactly, boss. The thought of one Inquisitor you can’t see does the work of ten Knights you can. Your friend at work? Might be an Inquisitor. That guy in the restaurant? He might be one too.” Mindy slowed, and something angry and vicious snuck out with her next words. “The system works really great too. People are encouraged to turn each other in to the Inquisition before they are caught. Not reporting a crime carries the same punishment as the crime itself, you see. Everybody has lots of motivation, right? Kids turn in their parents, brothers turn in their sisters...” Mindy’s voice trailed off.
“Friends turn in their friends,” Lucia finished.
“They sure do, boss.”
Manny finally spoke up. “This place sounds so great. How does it attract so many people?”
Pike answered this one. “Gethsemane is one of the few planets we’ve found with native edible plant life. It also shares a star with Eden’s Burrow. The Burrow is less hospitable, but it’s got lots of rare minerals and can also grow people food. The whole damn system is an agricultural paradise, kid.”
“King Fruit is from Eden’s Burrow,” Roland added. “They go for three hundred credits per kilo right now. It’s how The Dwarf got into smuggling.”
Mindy nodded her agreement. “Yeah, and since power on Gethsemane is all caught up in the religion, Church Elders live like kings of the profits from all the exotic food they export. The happy faithful live lives of relative ease because the Elders make sure the money trickles down to those who toe the line. People come from all over to take the Penitent’s Path, just so one day they’ll get to live in the Garden.”
“Do I even want to know what that is?”
“The Penitent’s Path?” Mindy almost smiled. “Why, it’s just the righteous penance a sinner takes to enjoy the earthly rewards of the Church’s faithful.”
“I don’t suppose,” Lucia said with a heavy sigh, “that this process is highly exploitative and or deeply unpleasant?”
Mindy’s eyelashes fluttered. “How’s a sinner supposed to know how good God is unless they tithe most of their income to the Church for a few dozen years?”
Manny scowled as if he could not believe what he was hearing. “People actually go to live on Gethsemane, work their asses off, give most of their income to the Church, and in exchange they eventually get to enjoy a life of relative ease?”
“It’s the ‘eventually’ that really hurts,” Mindy replied. “Most folks never make enough to pay the whole bill, what with indulgences and fees, that is.”
Manny’s eyes went wide. “Indulgences? Oh, come on!”
“Of course. You can’t join the faithful with sins on your soul, so you gotta buy indulgences to wipe away your transgressions. These add money to your total penance depending on how bad you are. Then you also have to pay your rent, utility fees, education fees for your kids. There are a lot of fees on Gethsemane. What’s left after all that goes toward your tithe to the Path.”
Lucia’s retort oozed with sarcasm. “This of course has no relationship at all to all those silly rules you mentioned earlier, I suppose. Just coincidence that making everything a crime generates excess revenue and keeps people out of this Garden, right?”
“And everybody turns everybody else in for every little petty thing too.” Roland growled. “What a fucking racket.”
Lucia could not help but point out, “It’s brilliant, really.”
“It’s obscene,” said Roland. “Okay, Mindy, how do we navigate this place? If some asshole in a cassock tries to bill me for using swear words, I’m likely to react... poorly.”
Now Mindy’s smile was genuine. “Oh, there are lots of places on Gethsemane that don’t give a rat’s ass about the Penitent’s Path, Ironsides. Dockside isn’t the only place where rich assholes go when they want to play rough or cut loose.”
Roland nodded. “Ah. I see now. Grimes is not going to hide in any of the places we might have to worry about, is he?”
Mindy shook her head. “He would not get fifty feet into anywhere the Church has lots of control over. He’s too modified. He’ll head right for either Sodom or Gomorrah, though.”
Lucia laughed out loud. “Hah! Based on those names I suspect the Knights and the Inquisition won’t be much of a factor there.”
“They’ll be there, boss. Just not in great numbers and they’ll be doing more spying than actively enforcing anything.”
“Just like Dockside,” Roland said.
“You’re gonna feel right at home,” Mindy replied.
Lucia remained unconvinced. “But how do we conduct operations without the Church butting in? Roland is not easy to hide, and OmniCorp will be running as much interference as possible.” Her eyelids fluttered, a sudden stiffness taking over her features. “Shit. OmniCorp is going to fuck us over as soon as we disembark, if they have any brains.”
Mindy frowned. “Didn’t think of that. But yeah. We are getting there way ahead of Grimes. They can have the Knights up our ass from the jump if they want too. Just takes a donation to the Church to buy all the prejudice you want.”
“What will that look like?” Roland asked.
“They are going to straight up try to lock you up, Ironsides. You are the worst kind of abomination in their eyes. Even worse than me.”
“That will not go well for them.”
“Sure, but you stomping a mudhole in a bunch of Knights doesn’t help us find Grimes, Ironsides.”
Lucia frowned. “Can they really lock Roland up just for being a cyborg? That sounds like it might make interacting with the greater galaxy difficult.”
Mindy cocked her head. “I mean, for the most part they’ll leave folks like me and Manny alone so long as we keep away from the religious sites and mind our business. Roland they will want gone.”
“The armature?” Roland said with a snort.
“Yeah. You stick out too much. They won’t arrest you for existing, that’s too much bad press. But you can expect a whole bunch of harassment wherever you go. Inquisitors will watch you like paranoid hawks, and the Knights will come down on you if you so much as twitch wrong.”
“Even in the Sodom and Gomorrah place?” Manny asked.
“He’ll be watched, yeah. The Church just can’t afford to let people think Roland’s existence is okay. They’ve spent too much time and energy making folks think augmentation is a sin.”
“God forbid we let the population get strong enough to resist the government.” Pike said it without a hint of irony.
“Something like that. Outside of the big cities, the Knights will try to harass Roland into a fight, just so they can bring him in publicly.”
“Let them try.”
“Not the point, Roland,” said Lucia. “We are trying to run an op, not topple a government.”
Manny chose this moment to speak up. “Our track record is pretty bad on that particular metric, boss.”
Lucia threw up her hands. “One time! That happened one time, okay? And that was mostly your fault, I might add!”
“What about killing the Pirate King?” Mindy asked. “Then there was the time we sort of supervised the end of the Combine. Oh yeah, also, we decapitated OmniCorp when we killed that Inskip thing. Can’t forget the time we murdered the reigning Jarl of Galapagos too.” Mindy wagged a finger. “Manny’s right, boss. We are not good for local governments.”
“We definitely just fucked up Prospectus,” Roland added. “Kid has a point.”
Pike’s chuckling earned him a penetrating scowl from Lucia that only served to increase his amusement. “Glad I’m not the only one riding herd on a bunch of goddamn bulls in goddamn china shops.”
Lucia gave up. “Okay, what about this Underworld place? Can Roland operate there?”
“In the Underworld, no one is going to care much about him. Grimes might even try to make it there, but my guess is Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Manny thought about that for a moment. “What’s the Underworld... or do I not want to know?”
“A sweet boy like you? Probably not. Gethsemane is a big planet with only about two hundred million people to fill it all up. There are a few places that the Church does not even bother to step on ‘cause it’s too much trouble. The most popular one is near the southern pole, and they call it the Underworld ‘cause it’s all underground. It’s all that’s left of the original colony before the Church took over everything. It’s independent and much more tolerant. Maybe too tolerant. They do a lot of contraband smuggling, which pisses the Church off, but other than that there ain’t much going on between them. They keep some Knights and Inquisitors down there to act like they’re in charge, but...” She shrugged. “You know how that works.”
“That sounds exactly like the kind of place Grimes will want to go,” Lucia pointed out. “No hassles, lots of hiding places.”
“No OmniCorp offices, no spaceport, no access to help,” Manny fired back. “It’s a great place to hide so long as you never try to leave Gethsemane.”
“Manny’s right, boss,” said Mindy. “He can hide there, but that’d be perfect for us. There is nowhere for him to go from there, and we can take our time hunting him down.”
Lucia’s mouth twitched. A tiny smile cracked a flash of white teeth. “You misunderstand me, team. I meant it’s the kind of place he’ll want to go once we prepare the ground for him.”
“You have a plan.” Roland made this a statement rather than a question.
“Since most of us are walking insults to their god, I don’t see the point of trying to work under the watchful eyes of these Knights or their Inquisition. Mindy, you say Grimes will go for Sodom and Gomorrah?”
“It’s what I’d do, boss.”
“Then we have four days to make Sodom and Gomorrah a bad idea.”
“Grimes will try to avoid the Underworld, boss. He’s not stupid enough to run himself into a trap.”
Lucia pointed a finger at the little blond killer. “That’s part two of the plan. We don’t just make Sodom and Gomorrah unattractive; we also make this Underworld more attractive.”
Manny’s face broke into a thoughtful frown. “We give him a bolt hole. A way out.”
Lucia nodded, emphatic. “First, we close all the doors in Sodom and Gomorrah. Then we leave one open in the Underworld.”
Mindy did not sound convinced at all. “That is not going to be easy, boss. Getting all those things in place is going to be real hard with only four days’ head start.”
Catrina finally spoke, and her voice sparkled with feral glee. “Suppose you had Gateways-level money to throw around. Would that make a difference?”
Mindy winced. “Yeah, that will make it easier, for sure. Church sure does love money.”
“Everybody loves money, Mindy,” said the younger woman. “And my project budget is enormous.”
“What about you, Jimmy?” The sharp point on Pike’s question could not be mistaken. “DECO got any assets up in this Church of theirs? Maybe a few spooks haunting this Underground whatsis?”
For once, Roland could find no trace of apprehension in the analyst’s reply. James looked Pike directly in the eye and simply said, “Dozens.”
Roland realized that the situation had at last settled into something the doughy desk-jockey understood. Having watched James get shoehorned into field operations a few times now, Roland found the analyst’s inability to navigate active conflict a perennial source of wry amusement. The transformation in James when the situation suited his skillset was nothing short of miraculous. The seedy machinations of corrupt governments and their shady administrators confused and bored Roland, but right now James Klebold was a man in his element. Despite his innocuous appearance, Roland conceded that the DECO man must have access to an enormous stable of highly talented operatives. If DECO wanted this squishy accountant on this job, there must be a reason. He made a note to sniff that reason out sooner rather than later.
James even managed a cocky tilt to the head while expanding on his answer. “DECO has a strong presence on Gethsemane, as you likely already knew, Commandant. Naturally I cannot divulge the exact quantity and nature of our operations, but I think you know our ground game is always excellent. If you want this Grimes fellow to go to the Underworld...” James actually smiled, and Roland saw what he might have mistaken for ferocity in that grin. “That is something I believe DECO can make attractive.”
Mindy broke the spell and returned James to his sweaty discomfiture with her breathy drawl. “Well now, look who’s coming over all strong and helpful. We’d be ever so grateful, Mr. Jimmy.”
Roland rolled his eyes as hard as he could when all James could muster was a stammered, “Of... of course.”
Pike laughed in his face. “Sounded like a real goddamn operator for a second there, Jimmy.”
The DECO man declined to reply, his face flushing crimson.