Everyone told her to leave it alone, which of course only made her more determined not to.
Even her daddy, weary and grieving and with the stuffing knocked out of him, sighed when she told him what she was planning and rubbed his eyes.
“Cher, honey, just let things lie.”
It took four commissioning editors saying no before one said, “Yes, well, maybe, let’s just see what you turn up. I can’t give you a commission, but I can promise to look at what you get. You know you’re poking a hornet’s nest here, right?”
She wasn’t at all surprised to find a handwritten note under her windshield wiper two days before she left Earth, written in solid block capitals.
SMART MONEY
SAYS DROP IT
It was like nobody really knew Cher Hunt at all.
One person who would like to know her better was the guy with the beer belly and triple chin who’d been casting lascivious glances at her as they climbed into the cryosleep pods, just after leaving Earth’s atmosphere. Not for the first time did she wish she had enough money to fly business class instead of coach. At least then she’d get a private cryo chamber and not have to feel self-conscious in the stupid grey vest and pants they made you wear on the communal sleep deck. It was only three weeks out to the Weyland Isles anyway. She’d have been happy to sit that out awake.
But RyanSpace ran its vessels on a shoestring and didn’t have the crew or on-board infrastructure to deal with non-sleeping passengers. So here she was, waking up with her usual cryo hangover and the first person she sees is Mr. Beer Belly, staring at her from the tube opposite hers, rearranging himself in his shorts. She knew “cryo-wood” was a thing for guys, which is why they always usually stalled a bit getting out of their tubes until the women had cleared out. She swore to God that if the guy didn’t stop rummaging around in his shorts and staring at her, she was going to go over and kick his ass.
While she stood in line for the showers, Cher scrolled through the news feeds, more hungry for updates than her stomach was for food. They said a week was a long time in politics; three weeks was a lifetime in journalism. Another reason she hated cryosleep. Yes, her body was only minutes older than when she’d set off from Earth, but the political situation back home and across the colonies hadn’t been frozen in the same way.
There was a joint-agency effort underway to reclaim the outer suburbs of Canberra and rid them of radiation poisoning, three years after the end of the Australia Wars. A Globe Corporation whistleblower who claimed that her former employer was locked in a “silent war” with rivals Weyland-Yutani had been found dead in a New York alleyway.
Nothing about her sister Shy.
Nothing about Hasanova. Not that there was any reason there should be. It had been six months since the hearing at The Hague concluded that Captain Kylie Duncan of the Colonial Marines had nothing to answer for in the wake of the widespread deaths on the Iranian colony, including those of Shy Hunt and the rest of her colleagues at McAllen Integrations, who were only on Hasanova to set up environmental systems for the massive data storage facility there.
Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? The whole thing had been a total whitewash, and while nobody was talking about the actual events on Hasanova, the ripples were still spreading out through the colonies. The Independent Core Systems Colonies had declared war on the United Americas over the desultory inquiry, and while it had been more of a war of words than all-out Armageddon, as some had feared, the political crisis was rumbling on, and showing no signs of reaching any kind of resolution.
On Earth, at least. There was news filtering in from the outer colonies that things were a lot less diplomatic there. Raiding missions, ships being shot down, and the endless third-, fourth- and fifth-hand tales of bioweaponry being deployed, the black goo raining down on remote colony worlds. Nobody knew what it was or who was supposed to be throwing this shit around, or even what it did. There were no direct reports of what was happening.
Just rumors.
Often being a journalist was like holding up a set of weighing scales and trying to achieve some kind of balance between the conspiracy nuts on one side, who believed and talked about anything, and on the other side the stuff that was actually happening but which was being suppressed.
But black goo wasn’t Cher Hunt’s responsibility, or even of any interest to her, at least not right now. What was her responsibility was finding out exactly why her sister had died on Hasanova. The official line was “collateral damage during a covert Colonial Marines operation.” That might do for the final report, to be filed away and never looked at again, but for Cher it raised more questions than it answered.
What happened on Hasanova wasn’t just the latest salvo in an age-old spat between America and Iran. It was something else. And, after the final day of the hearing in the Hague, she had vowed to find out what.
* * *
They were six hours out of LV-593, which filled the monitor screen in the passenger liner’s cramped arrival deck. Remarkably Earth-like in appearance, though a tenth of the size of home. It had been a dream of a find for the Three World Empire, located square in the habitable zone of a yellow sun. She could see why the British loved it. As if on cue, the image of the approaching planet fizzed out on the big screen and was replaced by a promotional video for their destination.
“Welcome to New Albion!” a voice declared in a plummy, upper-class English accent. The seat-belt sign above her flashed on and Cher fastened up for the descent. “You are imminently about to arrive on the jewel of the Weyland Isles colony world network, a temperate paradise that’s just like home!”
The camera swooped through a very polished but very obvious artificial representation of the New Albion colony. There was a wide river flowing right through the middle of a green, lush park, surrounded by ordered avenues lined with trees, and streets full of widely spaced townhouses. There was even a recreation of Big Ben set against the blue sky, and in the hazy distance a ring of high-rise apartment blocks surrounded the city center. Cher was reminded of New Delhi back on Earth, where the British raj had tried to recreate an idealized vision of London in the stifling heat of a land that was not theirs to claim.
“Throughout its long and illustrious history, Britain has had a reputation of expanding throughout all possible territories, bringing peace, technology and our great sense of fair play to people and lands at first on Earth, and now across the galaxy. The British pioneering spirit has been forged into a relentless drive to colonize space and disseminate our values far beyond the limits of the home planet over which we once held sway with a benign and magnanimous rule.”
Jeez, Cher thought. She knew that New Albion had been basically colonized by a clutch of the richest Old Money families from Britain, but not that they were buying so much into the old British Empire bullshit. Cher knew her history. Far from being a “benign and magnanimous rule,” the British Empire of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had been essentially a mass invasion of pretty much every country on Earth outside of Europe, wherever they could get boots on the ground.
The footage changed to a procession of faces smiling at the camera and trotting out platitudes about how wonderful it was to live and work on New Albion. A lot more diverse than the old British Empire, Cher guessed. There, the black and brown faces would have been either crushed underfoot in their homelands or put to work, actually or practically slaves, to feed the money-sucking beast of London.
“I work in data analysis,” an Indian woman said.
“I work in transport,” a black man said.
“I work in the coal mines,” a young white man said with a cheeky grin.
“We work for New Albion,” the three said in unison, and the camera pulled back to reveal a huge crowd of them, waving and cheering. “We all work for New Albion!” the whole group of them chorused, and the picture cut to an animation of the breeze rippling through the trees in an idyllic park.
“They work for New Albion… Why not join them, and make New Albion work for you?” the plummy voice said. “Immigration applications are now open. And the best of British to you!”
The monitor switched back to the planetary image, now filling the screen. Cher would have to endure that promo film at least another half dozen times before they made planetfall. Flying coach with RyanSpace meant she was crushed up against passengers on either side of her, both of whom had resolutely laid claim to the armrests with their elbows. Across the aisle she saw Mr. Beer Belly hollering in a southern English accent to one of the hosts, demanding that they bring him a gin and tonic.
Cher dug into her pocket and pulled out a sleep mask.
This was going to be a long six hours.
* * *
Cher didn’t know exactly what she was going to find on New Albion, but she did know she had to be there. Four weeks earlier, a postcard had arrived at her home in New York—an actual paper postcard, sent by actual post across the galaxy. Three questions had occurred to Cher when she received it and looked on the front image of the raging whirlpool known as Charybdis.
How long had this taken to get from Hasanova?
Why the hell did Hasanova even have postcards, which suggested an actual goddam gift shop, in a data storage facility?
And, of course, who the hell had sent it?
On the back, in the space to the left opposite Cher’s address, it simply said “NEW ALBION” in blocky handwritten capital letters.
From that point it had taken her a week to get the commission—and arrange funding that would allow her to book passage to LV-593—and now here she was, waking from an uneasy doze as the trademark tooting horn recording of RyanSpace announced that they had landed at the terminus.
“This is your captain speaking, thank you for flying RyanSpace to New Albion, where the local time is 10:23 AM and the weather is rain with an outside temperature of 16 degrees Celsius. We hope you enjoyed your flight and wish you well on your onward journey.”
Cher filed off the ship with the rest of the passengers, putting space and bodies between her and Mr. Beer Belly, who—with six hours’ worth of gin and tonic inside him—was weaving unsteadily and bouncing off the walls. Through the windows of the tube that led from the ship to the terminus, she tried to get a glimpse of her destination, but saw only rain sluicing the windows and the indistinct, grey shapes of squat buildings on the perimeter of the transport hub.
As the passengers were conveyed by escalator down toward immigration, wall-mounted screens sparked to life, each one with an attractive young person in the red, white, and blue livery of the Union flag welcoming them to the colony, each message finishing off with a resounding, “Best of British!”
“Jesus fucking Christ, save me from this,” Cher muttered, getting ready to approach the biometric station that would read all her documentation from her thumbprint and retinal scan.
“You’re American!” a voice boomed right in her ear, making her at first jump, and then her heart sink. Mr. Beer Belly.
“Excellent deduction, Dr. Watson,” Cher said, sighing.
“Barry,” Mr. Beer Belly said, holding out a sweating hand. Cher ignored it, turning her face away from his alcoholic breath. “You here for a holiday? Business? Moving here? I reckon we could do with a few more beauties like you to liven the place up.”
“Give me fucking strength,” Cher breathed. It was her turn at the immigration station, and she held her head still while she was scanned, then placed her thumb on the keypad.
“You need a guide, give me a shout,” he pressed. “Here, let me ping you my comms details.”
“No thanks,” Cher said curtly as the gateway turned green and the barrier swung back to let her through.
“Frigid cow,” Mr. Beer Belly said behind her as she followed the signs for the baggage reclamation. “You might change your mind once you’ve seen New Albion, mind. It’s nothing like they show on the videos.”
* * *
For all his many faults, Mr. Beer Belly wasn’t a liar, at least not about New Albion. It was nothing like the promo video suggested.
Cher stood on the apron of the terminus with her suitcase, peering out from under the verandah at the rain-soaked panorama of the colony’s capital city. No Big Ben, no parks, not even a river, though there was a wide ditch in the process of being dug right through the colony center. No townhouses bathed in golden sunlight, just a series of low concrete buildings flanking a network of wide roads, all made indistinct by the precipitation pouring from leaden clouds.
“Not what you were expecting?” a voice said, and Cher blinked and looked around to see a man standing by a flyer. It had a round, black chassis and an illuminated yellow sign over the cockpit that said TAXI.
“Not what I’d been led to believe it was, no,” Cher said, allowing the driver to take her case and put it in the trunk of the cab.
“New Albion’s what you might call a work in progress,” the cabbie said, opening the door so Cher could scoot into the back and avoid the rain. He let himself into the front. “It’s the big vision, innit? Ambitious plans. We’re good at that, us Brits. Ambitious plans. Bold ideas.” The flyer whined into life and jerked forward and up. “It’s putting them into practice that gets us a bit tangled up sometime. Where can I take you?”
“I’m staying at the Ritz,” Cher said.
The driver guffawed. “You ever seen the Ritz in London?”
Cher nodded. “Never stayed there, though. Out of my price range. Was surprised it was so cheap here.”
“That’s because it’s sod all to do with the Ritz back home,” the driver laughed. “Lawsuit waiting to happen.” He wheeled the cab over the heavy plant digging out the ditch in the middle of the colony. “That’s going to be the Thames when they ever get it finished.” He pointed into the rain-soaked distance. “That’ll be where Big Ben is. Except did you know it’s not called Big Ben really? That’s actually the name of the bell. Just called it the Clock Tower, didn’t they?”
From the window Cher could see utilitarian housing blocks and, in the distance, the blocky shapes of what she presumed were factories and processing plants.
“We got coal mines, tin mines, oil mines, the works,” the cabbie said, as if reading her mind. “Most of it in the north. Some nice farmland up in the Midlands. Good trade deals going on top of that.”
“But no rivers or parks or Big Ben or townhouses,” Cher said. “What exactly do you do for fun on New Albion?”
The cabbie grinned over his shoulder at her. “We might not have all the bells and whistles they show on those promotional films yet, but we got our priorities right. Pubs and chip shops. Them we got in spades.”
* * *
The cabbie had been right. The Ritz was, in the local parlance that Cher was picking up very quickly, a right shit-hole. Little more than a concrete box filled with other concrete boxes.
“Bit of a joke, love,” the stout woman said from behind the reception desk. “The Ritz, innit? Enjoy your stay.” As Cher headed for the elevator the woman called after her. “Oh, something came for you.” She handed over a letter-sized envelope with a hand-addressed label.
CHER HUNT
℅ THE RITZ HOTEL
NEW ALBION
She recognized the handwriting, the same blocky capitals as on her Hasanova postcard.
Cher stuck the envelope between her teeth and got into the elevator to the seventh floor, then negotiated the gloomy corridor to the equally gloomy and claustrophobic room. She found a bed that might not have been made out of concrete, but was just as hard. A sink and toilet, the tiniest possible shower cubicle, and no window. There was barely room to slide her case between the bed and the wall. Once she had, she sat on the bed and ripped open the envelope.
A small handprinted note fell out first.
THIS IS WHY
YOUR SISTER DIED.
Cher felt her breath catch in her chest, and reached into the envelope, feeling the glossy surface of a printed photograph. She slid it out and stared at it for a long time, not quite sure what she was looking at.
“Sweet holy fuck.”