Yvette shrugged. “Once every couple of months. Usually it’s a false alarm. This probably is, too. But it keeps us on our toes.”
Stepping over to seat herself, Kalico stared at the map of Port Authority. To her surprise, it had been hand drawn. The X marks, checks, and areas highlighted in yellow and light blue made no sense.
Shig, apparently reading her mind, stated: “This is what we call the quetzal map. X marks the places we’ve killed quetzals before. The light blue indicates areas particularly well-suited for them to hide in. Yellow are the slug zones.”
“Slugs?”
“Creatures that come out when it’s muddy. They grasp onto a person’s foot, climb up the shoe or boot until they find cloth or skin. Once they pierce through they burrow into flesh and start eating. Cheng concocted a poison, however, and it seems to be working within the town boundaries. Only two cases this year.”
“Abibi was right.” Kalico shook her head slowly. “This is hell. There is no exit.”
I could still call. Order her to wait.
Across the room, Yvette raised an eyebrow. “We’d argue differently. Sure, Donovan’s dangerous and constantly trying to kill you. But you want to talk Sartre? Hell’s back in Solar System with its algorithms, rules and laws, and Corporate control. It’s all sterile. Everything dictated, running like a perfect machine. And once you’ve been turned into a part in the mechanism, that’s where you’ll spend the rest of your life. Like a little gear in the works. Without hope or opportunity.”
Were they idiots? Didn’t they get it? “It’s safe. Secure. Ordered. The Corporation takes care of every need. No one starves.” No one gets eaten!
“You’ve made humans into ants. Or maybe bees.” Shig’s enigmatic smile returned for the first time that night. “Supervisor, it is an old argument. Freedom or security.”
“Our people are free. They have no worries about . . .”
“Section two, deploying,” the call came in on the radio. Shig and Yvette immediately bent to the map, all debate forgotten.
“Shig? Tal here. We’re starting perimeter check. Everyone’s on station. Gates secure. Compound is closed up tight. We’ve got the drones in the air.”
“Roger that. Keep your eyes open, people,” Shig replied.
“Now we wait,” Yvette said, stepping back as a woman in worn coveralls entered with a steaming kitchen pot.
“Made you a couple of gallons,” the cherubic newcomer said, her round face flushed with effort. She flipped a damp strand of hair from her forehead and unhooked a cord strung through the handles of a dozen or so coffee cups. “Didn’t know how many cups you’d need. If you want more, just holler.”
Shig beamed at the woman. “We appreciate it, Millie. Now, get back to the kitchen and batten down. I’ll bring the pot and cups back as soon as we have an all clear.”
“Just get the beastie, will you?”
“If it’s here,” Yvette agreed.
After she’d left, Shig said, “Good woman, Millie.” He stepped out into the hall, only to return seconds later with his and Yvette’s personal cups. After handing Yvette’s cup to her—to Kalico’s horror—he dipped his own into the steaming coffee without a thought to sanitation. Unconcerned, he returned his stare to the map.
Yvette followed suit, then to Kalico’s amazement, dipped one of the cups Millie had supplied and set it before Kalico. “You get a rare opportunity for a Boardmember. Tonight you get to be one of us. No marines, no privilege, just another scared human being wondering if the monster prowling the streets will come through that door and tear you, me, and Shig apart.”
“Oh, come on. This is the admin dome. Surely you’ve got security. Armed men at the door.” Did she dare drink the coffee? Were she to lift that cup, sip, it would be to cross a line she was unwilling to recognize.
“No guards,” Shig told her.
“So, that thing? There’s nothing to keep it from walking in the front door? Into this building? Right now?”
Yvette shot her an inquisitive green-eyed glance, eyebrow lifting. “How’s it feel to be as vulnerable as the next person?”
Kalico couldn’t help but fix on the door as a quiver ran through her. Yvette smirked.
Shig took another drink of his coffee, eyes on the map, as if willing it to produce the quetzal’s location. “Supervisor, she’s teasing you, trying to get under your skin. If the quetzal’s actually inside the fence, odds are that it won’t come here.” He shrugged. “And the longer we go without hearing of an attack, the more likely our marauding quetzal’s not even inside.”
“Then what? It just gets away?”
“We track it. Hunt it down. As long as it’s moving, the drones can find it.” Yvette narrowed a hostile eye. “It killed four people. Right under our noses. You think we want one as smart as this one to come back?”
“Don’t you ever wonder if it’s worth it? The fight, I mean. The constant fear and worry.” As she spoke her hands had knotted, betrayed by the queasy trembling in her heart. Turalon was still an option.
Shig—to her dismay—noticed. The man smiled, his voice oddly kind. “Supervisor, just how do you think the universe was created to function? You know it deep in your heart. You are a walking contradiction of the very things you claim to believe and promote. Safety? Order? Security? Harmony? Yet, here you are, brought to this point by your insatiable need to compete and prove yourself better than the rest.”
“As if you had any idea about what brought me here. Save your psychoanalysis for one of the local lunatics.”
Shig spread his hands, expression mild. “Why do you fail to recognize in yourself what you condemn in others? You wanted a chance at winning it all. A shot at becoming Chairman of the Board and being the most powerful woman in Solar System. You could no more have turned your back on that, acquiesced to remain a minor functionary in the Corporate system, than one of us could walk away from a chance to kill this quetzal.”
“The Corporation keeps the people from destroying themselves,” she told him as the Corporate mantra sprang reflexively from her lips.
“Ah, the people. Poor benighted fools. No sense in giving them the same opportunity that you and the tiny percentage of the wealthy and powerful possess.”
“If it’s so bad, why have we eliminated poverty? Unemployment? Ensured that no one goes hungry? You ask me, we’ve made a hell of an improvement in everyone’s lives. Peace. Prosperity. The quality of human life has never been better.”
Shig seemed to beam understanding. “Tell me, would you trade places with a single one of ‘the people’? And if so, tell me which one. Name a name, state an occupation. A place of residence. Which one of the worker bees would you become?”
She stared at him, refusing to rise to the bait.
Yvette took a swig of her coffee, and said, “Of course you wouldn’t. You’re a fart-sucking hypocrite.”
“You don’t understand.” Kalico realized as she said it that it was an admission of defeat.
“It’s all right, Supervisor,” Shig told her. “You see, the only real difference between yourself and most of us is that in Solar System, you’re the tiny minority. Here, on Donovan, you’re just one of a majority.”
He paused. “When you think about it that way, it would seem that you’ve come home. Come to a place where you’re suddenly surrounded by your own kind.”
She grimaced, fuming at the notion that these barbarians in their hide clothes had anything in common with her.
There wasn’t a single chance in hell that she’d touch that cup of coffee before her. No matter how wonderful it smelled, or how long the night turned out to be.
Home? In a pig’s eye.
69
Patches of cloud left dark spots across the starry sky in the west. Out over the Gulf the clouds had taken on a faint rime of silver where Donovan’s moon was about to rise.
If Trish had ever been thankful for tech, this was the night. She followed Katsuro Miso as the marine scanned the dark shadows between two residential domes with his superior gear. He was getting a complete heads-up sensor analysis of combined motion detectors, infrared, thermal, and ultraviolet. Trish and her people only had night-vision drones, the thermal scopes on their rifles, and an occasional IR headset. The rest had to rely on flashlights.
Over the years they’d worked out the methodology for the search. The sweep for each block had been practiced until it was second nature—as was the best way to approach each potential hiding place. Trial and error had taught them where to leave an observer so that a hunted quetzal couldn’t double back into a secured area. That knowledge and expertise had been paid for with blood.
Now Trish’s team worked through the remaining residential blocks bounded by the curve of the fence. This was mostly filled with transportees, and they kept spilling out into the street as young Benj Martin trotted from door to door to do his head count. Trish continually had to order the Skulls back inside when the curious fools wanted to tag along and watch the hunt.
One thing was sure, it made the head count easier. But the training they’d received—the no-nonsense instruction that when a quetzal was in the compound no one opened a door unless at a search team’s knock and call—sure hadn’t taken.
“Private,” Trish called to Katsuro as they rounded the dome, “You’re about to see a storage shed appear on your left. There’s an awning and storage area that will be shadowed. The shed’s too small for a quetzal, but we killed one that hunkered down back in the shadows under that awning.”
“Roger that,” Katsuro replied as his gear illuminated the shed. Together they stepped wide around the building, weapons up.
Katsuro called, “It’s clear.”
Trish instinctively swept the area with her scope, somehow unable to trust Katsuro’s sophisticated detectors. People who hunted quetzals wished they had eyes in the back of their heads. Lucky marines. They did.
“Here’s Tompzen and Hofer,” Katsuro told her with a slight gesture down the alley.
Sure enough, another marine appeared in the narrow confines. Behind him Hofer called, “We’re all clear here.”
“Next block,” Trish called. “Watch your back, Hofer.”
“Watch yours!”
Trish led the way back around the dome to where they’d left Smith kneeling in the intersection, his rifle up, eye to his thermal scope as he ensured no quetzal could double around behind them.
Iji’s team appeared—right on schedule—the next block down. “I’ve got visual on you, Trish.” Iji’s soft voice spoke in her earbud.
“Roger that. Got you, too.”
“See you at the next block. Watch your back.”
“Watch yours.”
They started down the street, warily approached an aircar resting atop a wagon. The inoperative vehicle had been hauled in from the landing field. They carefully cleared it.
“Makes it tougher with all this Freelander crap,” Trish groused.
“Most of it doesn’t work,” Katsuro told her. “Wouldn’t it be better to pile it in a ditch somewhere?”
“Oh ye of little faith, Private. You’re on Donovan now. We reuse everything.”
“Even condoms?”
“Okay, so we reuse almost everything.” She grinned as she stared through her scope at the shadowed angle where an addition had been built onto one of the domes. A produce wagon stacked with empty crates lurked there. No quetzal.
“So, Trish, you’re one of the officers, right? You pretty much know everything that goes on.”
“Yeah, probably.” Trish shifted her rifle, muscles sending the first signals of incipient fatigue.
“You heard about Talbot, Shintzu, and Garcia?”
“Who?”
“Marines. Three of them and their tactical kit. Did your bosses give them sanctuary?”
“Not that I’ve heard of. And if three marines with armor and kit had deserted, it would have been the talk of the town. Why? You missing three?”
“Yeah,” Katsuro sounded depressed as he stepped into a gap between buildings, scanned it, and saw Hofer’s team appear on the other side. “They were pretty pissed that Cap resigned. The rest of us, we were just wondering.”
“You’re not telling me everything.”
“Cap leaving? It was like a kick in the teeth. All that talk he used to spout about the Corps and tradition. Of duty and honor and pride in service. And then he vanishes into the bush, and when he comes back, he just walks away. I mean, most of us, we believed in him.”
“Maybe he found himself.”
“Some say it was Perez’s fault. That she took him out there specifically to brainwash him and turn him against us.”
Trish burst out laughing. “Not hardly. Taggart arrested Talina in her own home. She barely tolerated the guy. The only reason she took him that day was because it was supposed to be a quick trip. Wasn’t anyone as surprised as the rest of us when they came back holding hands.”
And the notion of the two of them still left Trish feeling sour. Things with Talina just hadn’t been the same.
Trish ran her thermal scope over the shadows behind the Hang Chow dome. A pile of toys lay where they’d been dropped by the kids when the siren went off.
“So . . . what happened out there?”
“Donovan happened. I guess Cap had more to him than any of us would have thought.”
“Spiro hates him.”
“Why?”
Trish could halfway wish she had Talina’s quetzal sense as she advanced slowly down the street. She could hear the kid in charge of the head count as he knocked on doors behind her.
“He was everything she aspired to as a commander. Kind of a hero worship, because he’d been in the shit so many times. You ask me, she was a bit in love with him. Hit her hard when he left.”
He paused, then added, “Cap kept a leash on her. Most of us don’t trust her. She plays favorites. And she carries a grudge that turns into pure poison.”
“Glad she’s your problem and not mine.”
“Trish, you sure Talbot, Shintzu, and Garcia didn’t desert?”
“Like I said, I’d have heard.” Trish sensed his unease. “Why?”
“Something fishy about it. I mean, those guys didn’t like Cap to start with. Marines bitch—but they were the ones who griped the most about Cap and his command style. You know, they always found fault, said they could have done it better. Then they vanish? And Spiro says the Supervisor wishes Cap was dead. So, when we get the order to space, we’re missing three guys, right? We tell Spiro we’re not going. She and her people pull weapons on us, and two guys we think are with us, side with her at the last instant. So we ride up to Turalon in cuffs, wishing to hell we’d run when we could. Then we’re pulled out of the can and shuttled back down here. So, the question is, what are we really here to do?”
Trish nerved herself. Three of the domes came together here. They’d killed a quetzal in the shadowy recesses beneath the sunshade that had been stretched between them.
“For the moment, hunt a quetzal. And thank God you’re here with your tech. You don’t know how much faster this is working.”
She stepped around the curve of a dome, rifle up, to scan the alley. A second later, Hofer’s team appeared at the other end.
“Speculation was that Spiro sent Shintzu, Garcia, and Talbot to kill Cap Taggart. I mean, that’s what made us refuse orders. Cap may have let us all down, but he didn’t deserve that kind of shit. Especially after that fight with the returnees. Cap broke it up while Spiro just stood there like a stone.”
A cold rush went down Trish’s back. “You serious?”
“Maybe. Did the Supervisor order it? She hates Cap. No secret there. Did Spiro order it
? Was it even an order? That’s part of the problem. Me and my mates, we don’t know what to think anymore. Since we set foot on Donovan, everything’s turned upside down. We don’t trust the Supervisor. We don’t trust Spiro.”
“So . . .” Trish hesitated. “You refused orders?”
“You think we want to space on that bucket? When we could stay here?”
“Then you better bless this quetzal after we kill it, because you’ve come to the right person. You and your mates get free of Spiro and her backers, we’ll get you out of sight until Turalon spaces.”
Katsuro didn’t answer as he scanned the shadows.
In her com, Trish said, “Last block, people. Be double sharp. If we’ve been driving it, it’s gone to ground here.”
She and Katsuro waited while Smith closed up. Behind her, Benj knocked on the last door. To her left, she could see Hofer’s team where the street met the perimeter fence. On her right, Step Allenovich’s team was closing their search grid, having reached the next intersection.
“All right, people,” Trish said, “let’s finish this.”
Heart in throat, she started forward, muscles somehow recharged. If the quetzal was here, they’d have it in the next couple of minutes.
But they didn’t.
After searching shadows, scanning rooftops, and looking into recesses, they cleared the last buildings, only to stare at the perimeter fence with its motion detectors beyond.
Talina’s voice came through the com, “All right, people. Good job. Looks like the hunt goes outside tomorrow morning. We’ll cut for tracks and run this shit-sucker down. Shig, sound the secondary.”
A short blast of the horn was followed a second later by another.
Everyone in Port Authority would be breathing easier, but still on alert. People knew full well that even as good as the teams were, they still might have missed something.
Benj Martin—a lad in his teens—trotted up with a tablet in his hands. “Hey, Trish. I got the head count. Knocked on every door. Got an answer on everyone but Talina’s. So I opened the door and checked. Both of her rifles were missing, so Cap must have gone off to join her.”