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The Limpopo docked with a large deep-space station, midway between the orbits of two of the planets in a nominally Republic system. Johnson crossed the threshold onto the station with Issawi and a couple of others from his team. All wore civilian clothes, a mixture of colourful, loose-fitting garments, and carried fake IDs. They joined the crowd of people trying to pass through customs.
People from a diverse range of cultures waited patiently around them. Conversations in scores of different dialects merged together, the occasional familiar phrase jumping out of the background noise. Most of those queuing were civilians; some in ostentatious clothes like their own robes, others in drab, utilitarian outfits. Here and there she spotted someone in navy or army uniform, presumably on leave.
As she filed along, Johnson felt her EIS detect a broad beam identification query. She double-checked that it was set not to respond. A nonchalant glance at the line of blue-clad customs officers satisfied her they weren’t paying any special attention to her.
“Sayyid Abdullah, captain of the Limpopo Twelve, and three crew members,” said Issawi in a thick accent, reaching the head of the queue and sliding their passports through a slot. Johnson managed not to look relieved when she felt a device query the chips in the passports and no alarms went off.
“Purpose of your visit to Ariadne Station?” asked the officer without glancing up.
The armoured guard behind him continued to scan the crowd, his rifle cradled across his chest. A baby started crying somewhere behind her.
“Trade,” replied Issawi.
“Your import license?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have one,” said Issawi.
The officer looked up and cast his eyes over Issawi’s rich robes. Johnson was impressed at how well she was hiding the butterflies in her stomach. If they got made, the pistols they carried wouldn’t make much of a dent in the guards’ armour; but anything larger would have been confiscated by now.
Issawi smiled warmly and leaned a little closer to the window. “I’m sure we can come to some arrangement?”
The officer peered over his shoulder to the guard and then back to Issawi. He cocked his head to one side.
“Oh, silly me,” said Issawi, rummaging around inside his robe and pulling out a small document wallet. “Here it is.”
The officer took the wallet, palmed the currency chip folded inside, and pretended to study the licence.
“Ah, right,” said the officer, and started tapping away at his terminal. “Looks like someone forgot to register this when they issued it. Common error. I’ll just square things for you now...”
He finished typing and closed the wallet up, pushing all the documents back through the slot to Issawi.
Johnson and the others followed in Issawi’s wake as he swept down the main concourse. He stopped from time to time to examine a stall-holder’s wares, sniffing fruit or rubbing cloth between his fingers. At one stall he shared a thick, dark drink with the owner. Johnson hovered behind him, marvelling at how easily he appeared to adopt this new persona.
Issawi continued his wandering path until he reached a lift. Once inside, he keyed in a floor twenty levels below. Johnson opened her mouth to ask where they were going, but he gave a tiny shake of the head while scratching his chin through his beard. She followed him out of the lift into a dimly-lit corridor. Without pausing, he led them on, down flights of stairs and along twisting corridors. The further they went, the more signs of neglect she noticed; here a broken light panel, there an overflowing rubbish chute. Up top, the people they passed had appeared confident and friendly, down here no-one made eye contact.
Eventually, he stopped at a drab green-grey door. Johnson couldn’t see any difference between it and the scores of others they’d passed. Issawi looked both ways along the corridor then pressed the call button on the panel beside the door.
“Who’s there?” came a distorted voice from the panel.
Issawi leant against the wall beside the door, his face next to the microphone.
“I have a delivery of ravens for the spring,” he said.
A clank, and the door opened into darkness. Issawi took one more glance up and down the corridor and ushered Johnson and his men inside.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw six people with weapons pointed in her direction. Her hand went to her pistol, and would have drawn it had Issawi’s hand not clamped around her wrist.
“Careful,” he hissed. “They are friends, but they wouldn’t hesitate to kill you.”
She glared at him. Taking in his relaxed manner she eased her hand away from her weapon. ^A little warning would have been nice.^
The door closed behind them and the bolts slammed home. A grey-haired woman entered from another room and the ceiling lights came back on. She walked between two of the armed men, whose pulse carbines still pointed at Johnson and the others. The woman squinted at Issawi, then her face lit up.
“Aali,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “I thought you would never return.”
Johnson flinched on hearing Issawi’s real name spoken out loud.
^Relax,^ Issawi sent. ^This room is heavily shielded. It’s even been scrubbed from the station plans.^
He returned the woman’s hug. “I did not expect to pass this way again,” he said. “But times have changed. I find I have a favour to ask after all.”
The woman turned to her men. “Oh, stop being silly. Put those guns away.”
“These two I remember,” she said, waving in the direction of Issawi’s men. “But who is this?”
“Where are my manners?” said Issawi, his face flushing. “Jane, this is Prefect Olivia Johnson. Olivia, this is Pastor Jane.”
“Prefect? Prefect.” Jane said, as if testing the sound of the word. “Yes, I like it ... what does it mean?”
“Just that I am the highest ranked in our organisation,” replied Johnson, returning the Pastor’s level gaze. “Not that I asked for the position.”
“Quite right, quite right,” said Jane, looking Johnson up and down quizzically. “As it should be.”
They were shown through to the next room. Paper plans of the station covered one wall. A young, smartly-dressed man typed away at a console in one corner.
“What could this favour be that you come to ask?” said Jane. “When you left, you refused any offer of payment.”
Issawi bent over the table and traced his finger along something Johnson couldn’t see.
“I want people,” he said. “Fighters, technicians, support workers. And any contacts you have with other groups.”
The men within earshot stirred and whispered to each other. The pastor kept a remarkably straight face.
“You ask a lot,” she said. “But no more than we owe you. May I ask what you need them for?”
“Something important; something big,” he replied. “Something that might just make a difference.”
“Like you made a difference here?” she asked, taking his head in her hands, eyes searching his.
“Of course it is,” she answered herself before he could say anything. “You wouldn’t ask if it weren’t.”
What the hell did he do here?
“I’ll put the word out for volunteers,” Jane said, snapping her fingers in the direction of one of her men. “How long do you have before you need to leave?”
“A couple of days,” said Issawi.
“Excellent,” said Jane. She whispered something in the man’s ear before turning back to Issawi. “You’ll all stay for tea, of course.”
She inclined her head towards another door and Issawi, Johnson and the others followed her. When her own men made to follow, she shooed them away. Issawi walked with the Pastor a few paces ahead of the others. Johnson couldn’t make out what they were saying, but both looked relaxed, and she caught the occasional laugh at a shared joke. The Pastor showed them to an unoccupied dormitory, and bade them make themselves at home, before excusing herself.
Johnson rounded on Issawi the moment the door closed behind the pastor.
“How exactly do you know her?” she asked, doing her best to keep her tone neutral.
“I told you when we planned this,” he replied. “I ran an op here last year. My team was tasked with taking an agitator in for ‘questioning’, and in the process I made contacts amongst the dissenters.”
She looked at him sternly. “That doesn’t explain why she would greet you so cordially.”
“OK, OK. The agitator was Jane’s son.”
Issawi sat on the end of a bed and waited for Johnson to sit on the one opposite before he continued.
“When we started tracking him down, it turned out he wasn’t a traitor or a terrorist. He was calling on station authorities to do something about the conditions in the lower decks. I mean, if you thought what you’ve seen today is bad...”
“Why would they send a Gamma team after such small fry? Couldn’t station security deal with it?” asked Johnson, allowing a hint of scepticism to creep into her voice.
“He had convinced people to dodge the draft until their families here were taken care of. We were supposed to interrogate him, find out if he had links to other groups.”
“And he didn’t,” Johnson guessed.
“He didn’t. Nothing of the sort. What he did have was a young family. I couldn’t...” Issawi glanced at his men relaxing on the far side of the room. “We couldn’t turn him in. We smuggled him and his family off the station; relocated them to an independent colony. Told Command he’d fled when he sensed us closing in on him.”
Johnson searched his face. She believed him. Any doubts she’d had about him before now evaporated.
One less thing to worry about.
“So I take it the pastor’s armed movement started later?” she asked.
“Funny thing that,” said Issawi in feigned puzzlement. “A bunch of special forces goons try snatching a popular activist and for some reason a lot of people get all antsy about it.”
He laced his fingers behind his head and stretched his back. “Strangest bit was that shipment of confiscated weapons going missing around the same time.”
“How do you do it?” Johnson asked after they’d all showered and Issawi’s teammates had gone in search of a pack of cards.
“Do what?” said Issawi, lacing up his boots.
“Pretend to be someone else so easily,” she said. “You were Sayyid Abdullah.”
Issawi finished his boots and fastened a small holster around his calf. He waited for Johnson’s head to emerge from the rainbow robe she was donning, before replying.
“It’s no different to your unflappable commander persona,” he said.
She stopped, one arm part-way through a sleeve, denial on the tip of her tongue.
“Oh, come on,” he laughed. “I know you well enough to see through the act. You’re not really that callous.”
She finished putting on the robe, turning her back on him to pick the belt off the bed and fasten it around her waist. Her mind raced. She’d been found out, exposed as a fraud. She contemplated trying to brazen it out.
No, that would be an even greater sign of weakness.
Still with her back to him, she said in a quiet voice “It’s the only way I can cope.”
Johnson felt him move closer. He was standing just behind her. She stiffened, worried he was going to touch her, try to comfort her. She didn’t deserve that. She’d made the mistake of letting someone in before, and would never repeat it.
“We all do what we can to dehumanise what we see,” Issawi said, his deep voice raising the hairs on the back of her neck. “Anyone who does the job we do has to, unless they’re a sociopath.”
Johnson listened to his breath, slow and calming. Still he didn’t move.
Nor did she...
The handle on the door turned, and the spell broke. He turned to pick up his sidearm; she busied herself sorting through her bag.
#
Johnson and Issawi followed Pastor Jane to a storage bay which looked long abandoned, like much of that level. The men and women within rose as the trio entered. Johnson cast an appraising eye over them; the loose groups in which they stood were far from military, but they had the presence of people who had seen action.
“You can sit down again,” said Pastor Jane, stopping in the middle of the room. Johnson and Issawi took up positions either side of her, arms folded.
The crowd relaxed, perching on dented and scraped packing crates or leaning against walls.
“I know that few of you will recognise this man,” said Pastor Jane, indicating Issawi with an outstretched arm. “But I am certain that you will know of his reputation. He is Almudafie ean Aleadala, the defender of justice.”
A buzz went around the room as people perked up and whispered to their neighbours.
“He helped us once. Without him, our families would have been torn apart.” Jane swept her gaze around the room as she spoke. “Now he comes here asking for our help.”
“Who’s she?” shouted out an oriental man sat cross-legged on the second tier of crates, pointing with a flick of his chin.
“This woman...” Jane started.
Johnson stepped forward. “I am Prefect Olivia Johnson. I am here to ask for volunteers to help prevent the murder of billions of innocent civilians.”
“Why should we believe you?” called out a woman stood near the door.
“Yes, this could be a trap to round us up and get us off the station,” shouted a man toting a pulse carbine. Others called out, but their words were lost in the hubbub.
Jane raised a calming hand and waited for silence. “She risks arrest by coming here. They would shoot her as a spy without a second thought. Almudafie ean Aleadala vouches for her. I trust her.”
The man with the carbine shook his head and looked ready to speak again. Jane glared at him until he spat to the side and retreated, head bowed. She gestured for Johnson to continue.
“My crew were abandoned on a deadly planet because we stumbled across something. We didn’t know it until later, but we had intercepted a message between members of the Congressional Fleet Command that discussed a plan to bombard civilian targets from space.”
The oriental man on the crate interrupted again. “That’s all terrible. But if you hadn’t noticed, we have no love for the Republic. If Congress attacks one of their worlds, perhaps it will take some of the pressure off us.”
Jane stepped forward, eyes fixed on the man, but Johnson spoke first. “That is a very good point, Mr?”
The man straightened up. “Yang, Yang Xiuying.”
“The thing is, Mr Yang, their plan is to attack one of their own worlds, and frame the Republic for it. With the renewed appetite for revenge in the people, the tide will turn against the Republic. When that happens, do you think they’ll tolerate any disquiet in their midst?” She looked around the room, gauging the mood. “Of course they won’t. Until now you’ve been a local annoyance. The public opinion fallout that would result in taking you out wasn’t worth it. If this attack goes ahead, they won’t care about what the public will think. You, and all the other groups like you, will be crushed.”
“What do you plan to do about it?” asked a teenage girl with plasma scars on her left arm.
“We plan to find where the attack fleet is based and destroy it. We have warships and we have weapons. All we need are soldiers.”
The room dissolved into shouting, arm waving, and head shaking. In the midst of the chaos, a slow, deliberate movement caught Johnson’s eye. Yang calmly lowered himself off the stack of crates and walked towards her. The crowd quietened as one by one the people turned their attention to him.
He stopped in front of Johnson. Up close he looked about twenty. “I lost my father when a Congressional missile destroyed his tank. I lost my mother when a Republican riot policeman shot her. I cannot stand by and allow more pointless death.”
“Thank you,” said Johnson, clasping his arm.
A bald man with a prosthetic hand stepped forward. “I joined the Marines to defend the innocent. Ten years later, all I’d done was land on other peoples’ planets and kill. When I was demobbed, I drifted for a couple of years. Then I found a home here, and rebuilt some of my self-respect helping to protect everyone, but it was never enough.” He reached out his hand. “Give me a chance to make restitution.”
In twos and threes, the others crossed the floor to stand with Johnson, Issawi and Jane. In the end, only the angry man with the pulse carbine remained.
“Mr Hansard,” said Pastor Jane. “This is your last chance to be part of this adventure.”
He looked around, shifting his weight back and forth. After a glance at the door, he bowed his head and stepped forward.