Into the Light by Jane Wallace

Sevin went out once, to buy a disposable digi and take a bowl of meat noodles at a neighbouring eatery. The rest of the night dragged, mainly because night didn’t really happen on Delta Nine. Orbiting Borredan every eleven standard hours, there was light for most of that period except when the motherworld came between Delta Nine and the suns, causing a forty-minute eclipse.

The blinds in room 1005 had the substance of tissue paper and were as effective. Sevin slept fitfully in the persistent daylight, studying maps and running through his plans in the waking moments.

When his timepiece, which was set to GST, told him morning had arrived, he dressed and washed as best he could in the room’s minicule and sallied on to the streets. It was early, before the rush-hour crowds started to move and Base was beginning to wake. Shopkeepers opened their shutters, stacking their goods on the pavement outside. Some of the kava bars stayed shut but others were sweeping away the debris of the night before and setting up for the morning shift. The owner of the cha shop on H and Ninth was putting out his chairs as Sevin walked by, the steam belching from the urns inside on their first boil of the day.

With the suns shining, Sevin felt optimistic as he strolled along Avenue H and took a turn down Fifth, Base’s main drag with the Central Transit Elevator at its heart. So far no-one was following him and, unless he picked up a tail between here and the station, he should get to Apex unhindered.

He reached the CTE station, slapped his value tag against the barriers and went through to the platform, edging his way through the smattering of office drones waiting patiently around the eight separate landing doors for the next car to arrive. When it pulled in, the doors jerked apart and Sevin boarded the semi-circular conveyance, initially lost in its spaciousness which, at peak times, he estimated would be capable of shifting three hundred people. He took the tourist spot by the windows and, holding the handrail tightly as advised to do by the recorded safety message, watched Base and the biodome fall away below.

Most of the drones got off at Centre, leaving Sevin with a handful of fellow passengers. They were Zudanese in the main, and mostly young women. From their clothes they looked like maids or workmen. Sevin assumed they were commuting to jobs in the mansions of Apex and was proved right when they got off at the last station with him, fanning out along the half-dozen spruce roads which led away from the CTE.

Sevin took King Street, looking out for the third turning on the right, Prince’s Close, where the Villa Carmelia, Brodie’s confinement, was situated. Large houses with extensive gardens bordered the pavement and Sevin was struck by their greenness. He bent down to pick a blade of grass and was surprised to find it was real. The temperature seemed to be a few degrees hotter up here than on Base and the foliage reflected it: palm trees and bamboo. Behind a break of casuarina trees, he could hear splashing and laughing, as if the residents were fooling around in a swimming pool.

As Apex was such a confined area, Sevin arrived at the manicured driveway to Villa Carmelia within ten minutes. Fifty metres down were a pair of fanciful wrought-iron gates with a sentry box on the right-hand side, a guard seated inside. In his pocket, Sevin got hold of the squashy package of the stun gun which he had not returned to Xin after the Isvarld incident and had sneaked through customs. He walked forward purposefully, smiling at the indistinct figure, expecting him to come out of the box and ask Sevin his business. He did not, and it wasn’t until Sevin was within a few metres of the gates that he saw the guard was asleep. Moving nimbly to the door of the box, Sevin opened it, giving the guard a blast of the stun-gun to put him out for a little longer. Then he flipped the switch to open the gates and went in.

Sevin avoided the driveway, keeping between the hedges which edged the grounds. Coming across a spade, he picked it up, bundling his flashy jacket into a bush and continuing towards the house in the guise of a gardener. Strangely there seemed to be no other staff or guards around. He went through a plot of trees, behind which lawns ran up on an imposing two-storied hacienda. It was painted peach with a porticoed façade and had tall double wooden doors for an entrance, slightly ajar. A pair of mature orange trees in blossom stood a little way off the side of the house. In their shade was a table covered with white linen and silver cutlery. At the table, enjoying the morning meal and the day’s news download, was Fleet Commander Brodie.

He looked up from his portaview as Sevin approached. ‘Zendin’s down in the sheds, I saw him earlier.’

Sevin stopped a metre from the table and drove the spade into the ground. ‘I’m not looking for Zendin. I’m looking for you, sir.’

Brodie put down the portaview. ‘Sevin? Major Tem Sevin?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened to you? Ethnicity reassignment?’

‘Just temporary.’

’A disguise? Not a good one, you’re too smart for a pool boy.’ Brodie leaned back in his chair. ‘You’re taking a risk coming here. There’s a lot of people would like to catch up with you.’

Sevin took the seat opposite Brodie without being invited. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’

’You’d better make it quick, I’m under constant observation. The guards will come at any second.’

’Once they’ve woken up. Hot sun makes them sleepy, it seems.’

Brodie looked annoyed. ‘Or you’ve nodded them off. So come on then, what d’you want?’

Sevin frowned at him, disconcerted that Brodie seemed so unenthusiastic to see him. But he had not travelled eighty-seven million linials not to put his case. ‘I want to join with the resistance forces on Delta Nine. I’ve got a decent ship and a dedicated team, we would be an asset to any faction. Can you put us in touch with anyone?’

‘Me? What makes you think I know anything?’

‘You’re a war hero, you’d make a great figurehead for the dissidents. I can’t believe you haven’t been contacted.’

Brodie covered his eyes with his hand. ‘Sevin, Sevin, listen to me. The war is over. I’ll say it again – the war is over, it’s finished. You were a good soldier and you did some marvellous things for the Coalition out there, but now it’s got to stop. Don’t turn into some crazy old vet, living in the bush still fighting the battles. Get yourself in therapy or a post-trauma programme and get on with your life.’

‘You’re not listening to me. There must be a movement.’

‘There is not. There is no resistance, not here on Delta Nine, not anywhere in the Known Worlds and I’ll tell you why. We surrendered, remember? The decision was universally agreed, everyone wanted to finish the war. Gharst supremacy is the small price we paid for the end of bloodshed. It’s a satisfactory conclusion.’

‘Satisfactory? You know how they live?’

‘They will not impose their lifestyle on us.’

‘But they’ve already closed the sweat boxes here. They’ll be instituting a caste system next.’

‘That’s paranoia. There may be a few sops to the conservatives at home but they’ll rule at arm’s length, they’ll have to. They don’t have the manpower to police all the Coalition planets.’

‘They don’t need it if they have collaborators.’

Brodie sighed. ‘Patriotism is one thing, pragmatism is another. We couldn’t afford to continue with the war, it was beggaring us all. If we’d continued any longer, what little trade there was would have seized up completely. The economy would have collapsed, we’d all be brought down to subsistence farming. The corporations couldn’t function!’

‘You mean they couldn’t make huge profits.’

‘You can’t eat freedom, Sevin. They would have starved us out in the end. At least this way we all got to stay alive.’

Sevin looked down at his hands, their unnatural colour thrown into relief by the white tablecloth, wondering how he could convince Brodie to help. It would take some doing, by the look of him. His grey hair had been trimmed recently and his garb of traditional tunic over loose trousers was made of high-quality burgundy cotton, which would have been expensive. He even appeared to have put on a little weight since the Gridon campaign. House arrest obviously suited him.

‘If there is no official group, I was planning on starting one myself,’ Sevin said, hoping Brodie would bite at a more active role.

‘Gods in heaven, you’re already there, you are that crazy vet.’

‘We would need a leader. Someone with charisma, someone with a track record. Someone who can deliver the call to arms.’

‘You’re not thinking of me, I hope.’

‘I was.’

Brodie laughed out loud. ‘That’s very flattering, but I’m way too old. My field days are well and truly over, and, more importantly, I am under house arrest.’

‘We could spring you.’

‘No, no. I’m past it now, really and truly, too long in the tooth. War is for youngsters.’ He looked pointedly at the shiny timepiece that bound his wrist as if to reinforce the notion that the moment was passed. Sevin noted the gesture, and the make. It was a designer brand, Vittachi, the latest model. Sevin had seen the advertisements on the CTE. Frustrated by Brodie’s reticence, Sevin’s temper flared up.

‘This doesn’t sound like the Fleet Commander I knew. He was all for fighting the gribs, taking them out and destroying their ships and their cities. The FC I knew was staging a campaign against Gharst-occupied territories not even two months ago. So what the hell happened?’

‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean there, Major, but nothing “happened”. Things changed, people moved on. In the circumstances, this was the best deal I could get.’

‘Deal? That’s about the sum of it.’ Sevin looked at Brodie in disgust, he was beginning to get the picture. Brodie didn’t look like a prisoner, he looked like a favoured race horse put out to pasture. The smart clothes, the timepiece, the prime real estate: it all added up to a shabby conclusion. ‘The war only finished a few weeks ago, how come they installed you here so quickly?’

Brodie shrugged. ‘They are Gharst, they are efficient.’

‘I don’t think so. This has been set up for a long while, way before the end of the war.’ Sevin waved a hand around the landscaped garden. ‘This is no house arrest. Where’s the security? One guard asleep on the front gate. You’re not much of a risk because you don’t want to escape!’

Brodie stared back at him. ‘They would have won eventually, the Coalition was played out. It was just a matter of time.’

Images of comrades who had died for the Coalition cause began to flash in a red rain through Sevin’s mind. Again he heard their cries of agony, saw the fear in their eyes, the smell of charred flesh and the terrible decision to abandon them to perish so the living might be saved.

‘All those men and women, they died for nothing. You sold us out, you, Reverre, even Qiron – you gave up the freedom of millions to preserve your own. We never had a hope. Not a single hope.’

He paused to take in Brodie’s newly plumped features, struggling to place the man he had respected in the same camp as the figurehead for the enemy he detested, Evan Reverre. Were they cut from the same traitorous cloth, Brodie and Reverre? Reverre was a perfidious, self-serving predator, he would have been easy to convert. In fact, he had probably offered his services to the highest bidder. But Brodie? Who had turned him? Reverre was the obvious candidate. What weasel words had Reverre whispered to him, what sweet poison had he poured into Brodie’s ears? The thought made Sevin sick, especially when it occurred to him they may have been working together.

‘You and Reverre, you had it all worked out, didn’t you? You knew what to do when the surrender was announced. I wondered how Reverre got out of the briefing room so fast, you let him out.’

‘Yes I did.’ Brodie did not flinch from the charge or Sevin’s pointing finger, his answer delivered with some of the brio of the old days. ‘I’m sorry for that. After all you did for me, I probably owe you my life after the Gridon experience. But that’s the nature of the beast. I changed sides Sevin, that’s what happened.’ His tone hardened: ‘I can’t help you any further.’

Sevin stood up and leant over the table. ‘Our land, our worlds, I fought for them, I fought to protect them from those who wanted to take them for their own. I fought for what I knew to be right, for what I believed in: for liberty, for honour, for a cause which was noble and true. What did you do?’

Brodie did not reply, looking at him blankly.

’I don’t know how you can live with yourself,’ said Sevin, turning away to walk in full view along the sweep of the impressive drive towards the front gates, each crunch of the tiny stones underfoot tolling the end of his relationship with Brodie and his last link to the Coalition. He looked back once. Brodie hadn’t moved. He sat in his chair, his head bowed, alone with his thoughts and his fine china. Sevin felt no pity. Brodie had chosen that path, he would have to walk it, just as Sevin had chosen to pursue his own lonely route where everyone, as he knew now, was a potential enemy.

ε

Barely conscious of the streets around him, Sevin retreated to the Good Night, immersed in his thoughts. He walked blindly past run-down public housing tenements and grocery stores, elbowing past lunch-time saunterers and homeless loiterers, his mind rerunning a hundred scenarios, imagining alternatives but coming up with the same answer. This was a real set-back.

He hadn’t realised how much store he had set on Brodie supporting them. He had been so sure that he would, even figuring himself as the hero of the piece: Sevin liberating the leader of the future revolution to rally the people and set the flames of rebellion alight. Except the leader of the revolution wanted to stay in captivity. Sevin laughed bitterly, the situation was too ridiculous.

He mused in his room until the daylight flooding through the window had all but faded into one of the twice daily eclipses and reminded him of his meeting with Lauden and Zendra at 14:22.

Locking the room, he ventured out of the hotel, heading down Night House Lane towards the junction with Eighth Street. The bustle of the street continued unabated under the aegis of the solar simulators on the street and in the stores. Shoppers haggled for the best price, groups of friends gossiped on the corner, customers shouted their orders in the cha shops. Life carried on as normal for the Deltans, who seemed as blissfully unaware of the darkness as they did of the intentions of the new regime, although there was clear evidence of what they might entail. Behind a little street market, Sevin saw a boarded-up sweat box with a notice plastered across the doors. It read: ‘Closed until further notice by order of the Reinn government.’

The Galaxy was on Fourth Street, on the edges of the Old Town between Avenues F and G. It was a mid-range sports bar catering to those tourists still drawn to Delta Nine, although with the satellite’s excesses curtailed by the Gharst, those numbers had fallen off severely. The visitors who braved it still needed to be refreshed and entertained, and it was among them Sevin considered that the ground team would not look out of place.

Turning right out of Night House Lane, Sevin took a casual survey over his shoulder at the figures crowding around the market stalls. One stood out, a tall man in a Borredan tunic, wearing a wide-brimmed hat tilted low on his brow. Sevin recalled a similar image outside the hotel and he wondered if he had been followed from there. He stopped outside a souvenir store on Eighth and pretended to examine the cheap models of Delta Nine. As he did so, the tall man stopped at a stall selling fresh fruit. When Sevin set off again, taking the left-hand turn on to Avenue G, the tall man matched his route exactly – Sevin was being tailed.

Continuing as if nothing was wrong, Sevin kept up a medium pace, looking around for a way to lose his shadow. It would not be easy. Avenue G was one of Base’s main arteries, cutting through the heart of the Old Town, a roughly rectangular area surrounding the CTE and running east as far as the old space port. Here the pioneers had built their first settlement with wide streets and low-rise buildings quarried from the asteroid. One hundred years on, four lanes of buggies clogged the grand boulevards, while the low-rise had been ripped down to make way for the domebusters and their endless configurations of retail and restaurant. These monster malls were linked above the traffic by walkways which ferried consumers from one shopping experience to the next without the bother of having to cross the road. Ahead, a rotunda of bridges and escalators had been imposed like a cake stand over the crossroads with Sixth Street. Sevin’s hopes lifted. In this labyrinth, he could surely lose his tail.

He quickened his pace and approached the up escalator in the nearest leg of the four which raised the rotunda over the street. A group of mothers was preparing to board a flock of children, bags and strollers, causing an obstruction. Sevin managed to shimmy in front of them, clearing a ten-second advantage on the tall man who, when Sevin looked back to check, had got stuck behind the toddlers.

At the top of the rotunda there was a modest plaza enclosed by a selection of trinket shops and a bakery. Alongside the bakery was a thin corridor, blocked halfway down by waste bins outside the side entrance to the kitchen. Sevin headed straight for it, concealing himself behind one of the shoulder-height receptacles from where he could watch the action in the plaza.

The tall man came into view. He seemed lost, looking hurriedly in all directions but not finding his way. Cursing to himself, he wrenched the hat from his head and banged it against his hip, revealing white hair and deathly pale skin. Sevin sucked in a breath, it was the young Gharst who had followed him on the Chengy Express yesterday. Sevin watched as he roamed the circus of shops, unable to locate Sevin and concluding he must have moved on. He jammed the hat back on his head and made off towards the far pair of escalators.

Sevin waited until the Gharst had gone before surfacing from his niche. He doubled back on himself, riding the escalator down to Avenue G and retracing his steps as far as Eighth Street, checking for stalkers every minute; with the eclipse over and proper daylight reinstated, he couldn’t take any chances. He chose to take the scenic route to the Galaxy Bar and hoped the others would wait for him.

ζ

The midday rush was over by the time Sevin reached the Galaxy, fifteen minutes late. A handful of clientele lingered at the distressed benches, stretching the last drops into the afternoon. Lauden and Zendra were sitting in the back corner furthest from the bar. They were an odd couple, an addled don and a Valkyrie in floral print, but they seemed to fit in among the disparate dregs of the Galaxy’s other patrons. Sevin needn’t have worried about the delay. Lauden was glued to the flickball match showing on the widescreen over the bar while Zendra made patterns in the condensation on her beaker. She looked up as Sevin entered and gave a small wave.

Sevin crossed the barn-like interior to the right where two waitmorphs worked the counter. He ordered a hi-juice and joined Zendra and Lauden where they lolled against the wall, eyes drawn to the widescreen opposite.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Sevin, brushing away the previous incumbent’s crumbs before sitting down across from them. ‘I had to lose a tail.’

‘A tail?’ Zendra looked surprised. ‘Who was it? Gharst?’

‘Yes.’

‘So they know we’re here?’

‘Evidently.’ Sevin laid his hand on the wood-effect tabletop, and, finding it sticky, crossed his arms instead. A tang of urine assailed his nostrils from the nearby men’s room as a customer exited. ‘Classy joint,’ he said.

Zendra was frowning. ‘The tail, did they follow you here?’

‘No, I lost him in the Old Town.’

‘Just the one?’ asked Lauden, his attention diverted from the game.

‘Yes.’

‘We’ll have to take extra care,’ said Zendra.

‘We’ll have to,’ said Sevin, thinking her use of the first person plural was particularly poignant as there was a person, or persons, either in the ground team or still onboard Infinity, who was not as committed to that ‘we’ as he wanted. Lauden looked tired, Zendra seemed on edge, but Sevin could see no evidence of deceit in either of them. What had they really been doing while he had visited Brodie: liaising with their Gharst masters? He rubbed his eyes, weary of the distrust and the need to pretend.

‘How d’you get on?’ he asked. ‘My mission was a complete failure, I hope you did better.’

‘Getting there,’ said Zendra. ‘I’m meeting the cousin of Singing Lark later on, he acts as his agent, apparently. I was told that if I impress the cousin, then he’ll set up a meeting with the man himself.’

‘Make sure you do then, it’s essential we meet this guy – there’s no point buying weapons if we’ve no troops to arm. What’s the venue?’

‘His house, he’s got a pod in Midway.’

‘So there’s money in revolution then. D’you need back-up?’

‘No. I mean, I think I’ll be fine.’

‘Remember we’ve got novo. You can call us if it goes wrong.’

She nodded.

‘Lauden?’

‘Yeah, I did okay. I met the middleman who said they’d likely do us a deal. He’s gonna get back to me with a time to meet with the Grand Master.’

‘The Grand Master?’

‘Yeah, it’s real hush-hush, no names or anything, it’s all Uncle Three or Brother Four. Anyhow, we got these for a taster.’ He clunked a black cotton bag on the table between them.

‘Gods alive, can you be more discreet?’ said Sevin, snatching the bag and burying it in his lap. ‘What the hell’s in here? I bet it’s not legal.’

‘Three Stirling 71s. They’re good, I checked them out.’

‘How many can they get?’ Sevin dug his hand through the drawstring neck and felt the familiar shapes inside. ‘And what about rifles, some long-range stuff? Lauden … What is it?’

Lauden was staring at the front door which had opened on three new visitors, two men and a woman. They wore tunics in shades of grey and prosthetic eyeshields, giving them a look of mutant insects. From their attitude, it was clear they had not come to the Galaxy to drink. They spread out in front of the doors, intent on the interior of the bar. A fourth man stepped forward from behind them, a Gharst of about forty, bald under a skull-cap in electric-blue silk and carrying a rackarmen. Without saying a word, the newcomers began a determined advance towards the table where the Infinity crew sat, scattering the remaining drinkers.

Sevin jumped to his feet, pulled a Stirling out of the bag and slung it at Zendra. He grabbed another, turning to pass it to Lauden, but the big man had disappeared. He looked around the tiled floor to see if Lauden had taken a hit. There was no trace of him. Then he saw the toilet door swinging: Lauden must have run off through there.

‘Stay where you are,’ said the Gharst who had reached the centre of the room. He turned to one of his entourage and spoke to them in Rakka. The goon took off through the front door, probably to go around to the back and find Lauden. He aimed the rackarmen at Sevin’s chest. ‘Put the gun down.’

All Sevin saw was an armed Gharst and he reacted accordingly. The bald man saw Sevin’s arm rise and ducked the shot, plunging to the floor. A charge flew past the table and Sevin retaliated with rapid volts into every corner, splintering the gang apart as they dived for cover behind tables, the woman hurdling the counter and knocking over a morph.

‘Through the toilets, out the back,’ Sevin shouted at Zendra. ‘Go, go!’

They scrambled across the two metres of floor to the men’s, a trail of crackling air in their wake as a pulse ripped over their heads, scorching the wall behind. The Gharst was now hiding behind a central pillar, sending a rally every time he jerked out from behind the column. Sevin paused to return fire, then flung himself after Zendra, sears whittling the door panels as he locked it from the inside.

‘This way!’ Zendra dragged him towards the fire exit between the urinal and the hand basins opposite. A simple alloy and polypro door, it swung sadly on twisted hinges, as if some great bulk had ruptured its fastenings. A siren greeted them as they burst into the bright daylight of the winding alley outside, Zendra taking the left, Sevin sprinting to the right. Pelting past overflowing bins and buggies parked on the pavement, he didn’t put up the Stirling until he collided with crowds of pedestrians where the alley disgorged into Avenue F. A Delta Nine Home Police transit passed, its emergency lights flashing, as he slowed his pace to a fast walk, tucked the gun into his belt and pressed on in no particular direction, looking over his shoulder every ten steps.

After ten minutes, he considered he was free. Either they had been too fast for the gang or the police arrival had deterred them from following. Who the hell were they? The Gharst had to be an undercover agent, maybe Spesial Polis with native assistance. They hadn’t tried to kill them, so Sevin figured they must be tasked with bringing him and the ground team in. But they hadn’t even met with Singing Lark yet, it didn’t make sense.

A more serious question was what had happened to Lauden. It was completely out of character for him to run off. Sevin remembered the encrypted messages he had discovered on Infinity, created and sent by Lauden. Was this what all that was about? Lauden had set them up then taken off because he couldn’t face the killing or the capture? Sevin hoped he was wrong, and there was only one way to know. He needed to find Lauden, and soon.