***
Walking towards the end of the cellblock, the door didn’t budge as Georgianna pressed her thumb and middle finger to opposite sides of her tsentyl. Holding it tightly until the cube shuddered, the feeling of a wave travelled up her arm. She didn’t know how it worked, or what the odd sensation proved, but she knew that it sent a signal to the Adveni on the other side of the door, telling them that she was ready to be let out. Sure enough, only moments passed before the thick red door began sliding open. Throwing a look over her shoulder, Georgianna caught the gaze of a beautiful blonde woman sitting on one of the upper levels, her legs dangling over the side. With her arms on one of the railing bars, her chin resting on her hands, she gave Georgianna a brief nod and smile. She’d been watching the entire thing from entrance to end. Any time she glanced out of Jace’s cell, she had spotted the blonde in her position, her bright blue eyes watching from above, like a guard in the tunnels waiting for something.
She pursed her lips, blinked, and turned back to the waiting guard.
“You do your thing?” Edtroka asked.
Georgianna frowned and stepped out of the block.
“No,” she answered as the door slid closed behind her and Edtroka came to her side. “He’s dead.”
2 Ships and Supplies
It was almost sun-high by the time Georgianna left the compound, once again searched by the guard to make sure she was not taking anything out of the blocks. No matter how many times she visited, the guards still didn’t trust her not to break their rules. It didn’t surprise her. They barely trusted any Veniche, and she wasn’t really any different.
Walking back towards the tunnel entrance, she shrugged off her outer shirt, splattered with blood, and stuffed it unceremoniously into her bag. She knew the dangers of going bare-skinned under the sun, but as she was only going a short distance, she didn’t see the danger in being a little more comfortable. There was next to no breeze, even outside the city, leaving the heat to lie dormant, baking from above and radiating out of the hard ground in visible waves.
It was a welcome relief when she stepped over the threshold and began descending into the tunnel, leaving the direct rays behind her and disappearing into the shadowed underground. The tunnel was deserted this far east, and as pity for those held fast in the compound began creeping up on her, Georgianna shook it off and began humming a tune her mother used to sing while doing chores. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to feel pity for the poor souls buryd, but pity would do them little good, and it would only make continuing on after the death of a patient that much harder.
By the time she reached the main line, she was singing softly under her breath, letting her arms swing back and forth as she walked. After a moment’s pause, instead of turning right to travel north towards Belsa territory, she took the left turn onto the main line, joining the flow of people heading down underneath the Oprust district.
Up ahead, two Adveni in full military gear walked side by side, large copaq guns at their backs. While the men were walking slowly, far more slowly than the pace most in the tunnels would choose, nobody moved to slip past them and hurry onward. Even Georgianna found herself slowing her steps to keep a safe distance behind. It may not have been a crime to overtake and walk in the large space they had created before them, but nobody wanted to risk angering Agrah Adveni when it could be avoided by hanging back.
As the Veniche had learned in the first wave of attacks, the Adveni were a highly militaristic race. Trained from childhood to fight and work for a common goal, they joined one of the branches of their military once they had proven themselves by receiving their nsiloq mark, a painful design drawn into the skin over their ribs.
There were the Agrah, who fought best on land at close quarters with their enemy. The Nyrahby fought from the air in small ships fitted with powerful weapons. Those who commanded the bigger ships that travelled between worlds were classed as Tzelik, and then there were the Tsevstakre, the most dangerous of all. The Tsevstakre were the Adveni elite, their best trained and most skilled, ruthless killers. Georgianna considered herself lucky that she met any of them but rarely.
She slowed her steps further, letting people overtake her and slipping seamlessly back into the crowd. She couldn’t risk taking an exit into hidden tunnels anywhere near an Adveni, let alone two attack-ready Agrah. She didn’t plan on going back to the compound just yet. Giving such a wide berth to the Adveni, it took twice as long to reach the entrance to the Junkyard, home of the Carae. She took one last glance around before she began moving to the other side of the tunnel, finally walking along the wall before a single step sideways had her disappear through a hidden opening into a dimly lit tunnel.
The tunnel into the Junkyard was slim, just wide enough for a single person to walk comfortably. There were only two entrances to the Junkyard, one in the south-east and one in the west, both ending in these bottlenecked tunnels, preventing a swarm of attackers from any direction. It was a long walk through the small tunnel. The ground, uneven and off kilter, was difficult to navigate unless you walked it every day and knew the places to step. It wouldn’t have been the first time that Georgianna had returned from the Junkyard with skinned knees and bruised elbows when she had relaxed and tripped on a hidden rock.
The Carae, like the Belsa, stationed guards in the tunnels that led out towards the main lines. However, unlike the Belsa, a Carae was more likely to shoot you on sight before giving you a chance to identify yourself, so when Georgianna felt she might be getting close, she raised her arms above her head and crossed her wrists, walking forward in slow and cautious steps.
Her effort to appear submissive and of no danger proved useless as a low buzzing sound culminating in five beeps rang out from her pocket. Before she knew it, a gun was placed at the back of her head, its muzzle pressing firmly against her skull. Georgianna jumped; she had no idea how she’d managed to walk past someone, and she’d not heard anyone following behind her.
Standing squarely and keeping her gaze ahead, she kept her wrists crossed above her.
“Get it out!”
She hesitated before she brought her right hand down, digging into her pocket and pulling out the tsentyl. Pressing her thumb to the panel on the cube, she let the low pulse hum out and swiped it open.
“What’s it say?”
Glancing down, she realised she couldn’t look down that far without moving her head, so instead brought the tsentyl up before her, the blue writing glaring out brightly through the darkness.
“Oh, look: Marshall Casey is top of the Adveni kill list,” she answered. “What a surprise.”
For a moment, there was silence, and figuring that the daily alert of the “Veniche at Large” list was nothing a Carae guard would be too surprised about, Georgianna slid the tsentyl back to cube form and carefully slipped it back into her pocket before her hand resumed its position above her head.
“Should know better, Georgianna!” the voice came from behind her again. “I could’ve shot your pretty head off without you ever realising.”
She wanted to turn to see who was talking to her, but while the voice seemed to be amused at her predicament, she couldn’t fully believe they wouldn’t shoot her if she made a wrong move, not until she knew who it was anyway.
“Well, I do like giving you boys some target practice. Would you prefer it if I ran?”
The man chuckled, his amusement bouncing off the close walls of the tunnel. Despite herself, she smirked.
“Nah, you’re alright. Guys might kill me if I shot the only pretty medic we got left to make them really feel better.”
Georgianna coughed a short burst of laughter and shook her head a little.
“Aww, Taye, that’s sweet.”
The muzzle of the gun left the back of her head as the man began laughing. Sure enough, in amongst the laughter, there was the sound of the gun being slipped into a holster. She turned around, coming face to face, or more chest, with a tall, slim, dirty
-blonde-haired man.
“How’d you know it was me?” Taye asked, pouting mockingly at her.
“How many other Carae would suggest I start giving sexual favours for medicine?”
Taye rocked his head from side to side and the gaze of his hazel eyes travelled a very obvious trail down her body.
“I’d go with, I dunno, all of them?” he suggested. “Though, admittedly, most of them would probably just think it, not say it out loud.”
“Well, how kind of them to keep their filthy thoughts to themselves, unlike someone I know.”
Georgianna tried to give him a disappointed glare, but failed when a smirk curved her lips. Reaching out, she slid a hand over Taye’s shoulder and pulled herself up to give him a tight hug.
“How’ve you been doing?” she asked against his shoulder, holding the embrace a moment longer before she let him go and Taye’s arms slid away from her waist.
Taye shrugged his lithe shoulders and stuffed his hands into his pockets.
“You been this week?” he asked.
She knew she couldn’t lie to him, not when he was always so kind to her, but Taye’s hope, she knew, would slowly destroy him. Finally, she nodded.
“Just come from there.”
Taye’s eyes lit up through the darkness, and he reached out, grabbing Georgianna’s shoulders and bending his head down to get a good look at her.
“How is she? Did you see her?”
“She’s…” Georgianna paused, taking a deep breath as she looked back at Taye’s hopeful face. “She’s there. I didn’t speak to her, but she looked the same as before.”
Taye let out a relieved sigh and brought his hands up, cupping her face, fingers lost in the waves of her hair.
“You are my ship, Gianna!” he told her gently. “I swear, I don’t think I’d be able to stay back if you couldn’t tell me how she’s doing.”
Georgianna brought her hand up, resting her fingers over Taye’s hand, curled around her jaw.
“Taye…” she murmured. “Nyah was buryd. You can’t keep obsessing.”
He shook his head violently and pulled his hands back from her face.
“No, she wasn’t. She made a mistake! She’ll be let out, and then things will be the way they were meant to. We’ll be joined, I promised her!”
It was stupid to argue with Taye, Georgianna knew that. She’d tried telling him that he should move on, that the likelihood was that Nyah would be sold before she was released, a beautiful girl like she was, but Taye wouldn’t hear of it. Any time the compound was brought up, he would get angry and start suggesting they find a way to get her out. Georgianna didn’t want Taye to end his life on an impossible task. Sometimes she feared that he would commit some horrible crime just so that he could be buryd with her.
“Alright, Taye, okay! I believe you,” Georgianna placated. “Let’s, uh… You got time to take me down?”
Taye was still distracted, but he nodded just the same and waved her onward.
They walked in silence until they reached the Junkyard, passing by the tents and other motley shelters the Carae used for their homes within the tunnels. Taye called to one of the tents and a bleary-faced woman tugged the opening back, a blanket clutched to her chest.
“Got a sale. Will you take over guard until I get back?”
She didn’t look happy about it, but she nodded and disappeared back into the tent to get dressed.
“What do you need?” Taye asked once they stood outside the fenced Junkyard entrance.
“Dressings, bandages, stitching thread, and a couple of needles, whatever you’ve got really.”
“Wait here, I’ll be right back,” he murmured, unlocking the chains holding the fence closed and disappearing in amongst the stacks of supplies.
Georgianna knew from experience, when Taye had taken her into the stacks once before, that there was no rhyme nor reason as to how the supplies were stacked. Things were grouped together, so hopefully all the medical supplies would be in one place, but there was no method on how to find a particular stack. Georgianna suggested that perhaps that was in order to make it harder to rob from the Junkyard, but Taye had said that most likely it was because the guys who set stuff up in there were smoking something at the time.
Taking a seat against the fencing, Georgianna reorganised her bag to get ready for the new supplies. While Taye had said he’d be right back, it wasn’t odd for him to take at least twenty minutes. Not only did Taye have to find his way through the maze of stacks, but also select the right supplies. Thankfully, these days, Taye knew exactly what she needed, so it didn’t take nearly as long as it did the first few times she had come down to stock up.
When Taye returned, Georgianna had reorganised her bag twice and begun scrubbing the blood from her shirt with a bar of wrapped soap. She looked up from her position on the floor, hands covered in a thin lather of pink-stained foam, and grinned at Taye’s laden arms.
“I grabbed you a bag of those Adveni drugs you liked last time,” he told her quietly, lowering himself onto the ground next to her as Georgianna unscrewed the lid of her cantina and poured some water over her hands and the shirt to wash off the suds.
“Where do you get those?” Georgianna asked.
Taye smirked devilishly, taking Georgianna’s bag and beginning to slot the supplies into it.
“I have my sources.”
Georgianna laughed lightly and shook her head. Trust a Carae to keep his secrets. Don’t reveal your sources, or something along those lines. It was like the Carae wrote the rule book on dirty dealings.
“I got a deal for you.” he announced finally, holding up the last paper packet and waving it teasingly.
Turning away from the shirt, her fingers tangled in it as she wrung the water out onto the floor beside her legs, Georgianna raised an eyebrow. From the name scrawled across the packet, Georgianna knew it was the one holding the Adveni drugs.
“I can pay for them, Taye.”
“You will,” he answered. “Just not in coin.”
Georgianna didn’t like the sound of that. She dealt in coin with the Carae because their deals were often things you really didn’t want to get involved in. She’d known Taye a long time. He was Kahle, and they’d travelled together since they were kids, but he’d joined up with the Carae and she knew there were things they asked you to do that most people wouldn’t agree with.
“I dunno, Taye…”
“Oh, come on, Gianna. For me, please? It’s… It’s not your kind of illegal!”
The desperation in his voice and the use of the nickname her family used for her almost immediately thawed her. Since Taye had joined the Carae, he had kept his distance most of the time, having explained once that he didn’t want everyone in the Carae knowing that they were close. Apparently, being close to someone meant you held things over them, things that could be used for Carae purposes, and Taye didn’t want that for Georgianna.
Everyone had an opinion on the Carae, even people who’d never dealt with them. Her own father had commented on them from time to time, grumbling about them being a band of criminals. He said that if they had been in a tribe, they would have been outcast for their actions. Coming from every tribe and background, often when they had no other way to make money, the Carae had formed their own tribe, like the Belsa. Only, unlike the Belsa, the Carae seemed more interested in money than freedom, and were therefore looked on slightly less favourably by Veniche, and more favourably by Adveni.
However, as he claimed it wasn’t “her type of illegal”, she knew it was illegal by most standards, most importantly, Adveni. Georgianna did quite a lot of things that were, by Adveni standards, illegal, though she didn’t find them morally wrong.
“What is it?” she asked finally.
“Just a delivery.”
“Of?”
“It’s… It’s for Nyah,”
Georgianna let out a groan and shifted her body, looking away from him.
“Taye, they search
me!” she complained. “Even if I wanted to…”
“You can, Gianna! I know you can! You have before!”
Georgianna stared blankly at the ground. He was right, of course. She’d made deliveries into the compound before when people were desperate: messages and small objects that meant nothing to the Adveni. Reaching up, Georgianna rubbed her wet hand over her face and groaned.
“I can’t promise anything. But I’ll consider it.”
“‘Gian…”
Georgianna shook her head even as Taye clutched at her hand. She pulled it back from his grasp.
“No, no Gianna-ing me, Taye Rann!” she said. “I’ll think about it, but if it’s dangerous, you owe me another packet!”
“You agree and get it in to Nyah, I’ll give you five packets.”
“Yeah, yeah, deliver them to me in Lyndbury!” Georgianna complained as she got to her feet.
This was going to be a mistake, she just knew it.
3 Absent from the Guard
Already late for her promised appointment with the Belsa, Georgianna hurried along the tunnel towards the underground settlement. The guard in the black line, leading in from one of the wider tunnels, had stopped and searched her thoroughly as she’d passed. She’d called in Georgianna’s arrival via a tampered Adveni radio, and even after having received the all-clear, had been dubious about letting her past. It was only when she mentioned Lacie, the Belsa marshall’s adopted daughter, that the guard had apologised for the inconvenience and sent her on her way.
The Belsa had been around almost as long as the Adveni had been in power. Forced into servitude by the invading race, many Veniche had tried to fight to reclaim their freedom and their planet, Os-Veruh. As more people died in the continued fighting, it no longer became an option to stay within their tribes. Those who fought joined together, tribal rivalries pushed aside to rebel against their conquerors. Even a decade after the arrival of the Adveni, the Belsa received new rebels each season. Veniche men and women who arrived in the city of Adlai and wanted to fight, or who needed protection that their tribe could not offer.
The darkness was strangely comforting, and it wasn’t odd for Georgianna to feel safer in the dark tunnels than she did above ground. Up there, everyone could see her and could question her. Down on the lines, the people who needed to know her already did, and those that didn’t know her didn’t ask questions. No one asked unnecessary questions down here. It was safer if they didn’t know the answer.
By the time the lamps began filtering light across the worn tunnel floor, Georgianna was in her stride. Moving swiftly and purposefully through the settlements, she smiled and greeted those she knew and nodded curtly to those she didn’t. Though well-known, she would not dare insult those that she didn’t recognise by snubbing them. The Belsa demanded respect; she knew that, especially as she wasn’t officially one of them. She didn’t train or stand guard. She was never sent out to scout Adveni movements. She was, to most of them, just one of the medics who occasionally patched them up.
The old tunnel car stood at the end of one of the collapsed lines, its sliding door held open by a broken knife blade wedged into the bottom of the metal run. From inside, a light flickered, and as she came closer, she could hear the low murmur of voices.
She barely paused between banging her fist on the metal shell of the car and heaving herself up through the open doorway. Standing up straight, she glanced both ways down the car until her gaze settled on the two men inside. One of them was already looking at her. His cold eyes narrowed for a moment, refocusing before a smile parted his thin lips, bringing a softer look to his square jaw.
“Marshall Casey!” she greeted with a cheerful wave, stepping further into the car.
Glancing briefly at the other man, the marshall pushed himself to his feet.
“Beck!” he corrected in a low, gruff voice.
Georgianna laughed.
“But you are the marshall! Always will be.”
Beck rolled his eyes as he lifted a large hand and patted her cheek, plastering her wavy hair to her tanned skin.
“Whatever you say,” he agreed with a reluctant shake of his head. “Looking for Lacie?”
She nodded, turning to look at the rest of the car. One portion was cornered off, a thick burlap sheet hanging from where it had been nailed into the ceiling some time before. Behind it, she knew stood a bed lashed together from old car seats and a trunk of clothes that belonged to Beck’s adopted daughter, Lacie. Unlike the other times Georgianna had climbed into the car looking for her, the sixteen-year-old had yet to stick her face out from behind the makeshift wall.
Georgianna had once asked why Beck didn’t have his own section cornered off; it was his home after all. Lacie had explained in his stead that the Belsa marshall rarely slept long, and even when he did, he felt guilty keeping space to himself that he didn’t need. Instead, he would sleep on the chairs used as his work space, covered only in a tattered blanket if Lacie saw fit to throw one over him.
“She’s gone already, said she was heading over Medics’ Way,” Beck explained.
Georgianna knew that she should be surprised, but she couldn’t say she was. Lacie spent a lot of her time in Medics’ Way, especially recently. The arrival of a young man with injuries he had suffered from his Adveni owner had sparked interest in the sixteen-year-old.
Glancing past Beck, she looked at the other man in the car. His lips were split into a broad smirk, revealing a line of white yet uneven teeth.
“Alright, George?” he asked.
“Morning, Wrench.”
Wrench shifted the strap of his weapon against his chest and glanced at Beck. Wrench was a large man, easily a head and a half taller than Georgianna and half again as broad. Beneath a tattered shirt, his chest heaved and he let out a slow, resigned breath. He reached up and rubbed his hand over his hair, cut so short against his scalp, that against his dark skin, he almost looked bald in the low light.
“We about done, Marshall?”
Beck nodded.
“Guess I should go make sure Lacie doesn’t kill anyone,” Georgianna teased, stepping back towards the door.
“Go easy on her,” Beck chastised.
She nodded. It was the same advice Beck gave her every time she came to collect Lacie. Each time, she rolled her eyes and told Beck she wouldn’t promise, though he knew from experience that Georgianna was one of the more easy-going people to help Lacie in her hopes of becoming a medic.
She’d already jumped down from the train car, heading out towards Medics’ Way when she heard the crunch of his boots. Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled when she saw Wrench jogging down the line to catch her up.
“Everything alright, Wrench?”
“Oh it’s nothing,” he sighed as he fell into step with her. “Si was meant to take over the shift before sun up. Never showed.”
“Do you know why?”
“Marshall says he ain’t seen him, but thought I’d head over to Medics’ with you and ask Jaid.”
“Well, if anyone would know…” Georgianna left the suggestion hanging in the air. She knew Si’s wife Jaid much better than she knew Si himself. He did sometimes stop by Medics’ Way when he was off duty. He was always kind to her, Georgianna liked him.
“You coming from Zanetti’s?”
“Compound.”
Wrench wrinkled his bulbous nose into a grimace at the mention of the compound, but it was quickly replaced with a smirk.
“He was pretty sour when he got called in to take over the shift down Guard’s Sight,” he answered. “Figured you may have been keeping him up last night.”
“He been bragging?” she asked, shaking her head.
Wrench cocked his head to the side.
“Were you expecting him to keep your virtue intact?”
It was clear from his tone that he already knew that the answer was no. Keiran Zanetti may not have been the type to go shouting his business around the tunnels. However, that didn’t m
ean he hid things, especially when it came to women, and especially not from Wrench. She knew the two had grown up together within the Nerrin tribe and their friendship remained strong, even after Keiran had been promoted to sergeant above Wrench.
When she didn’t answer, they fell into a comfortable silence, their footsteps keeping them company on the walk to Medics’ Way. She felt bad for the guys on guard duty. It couldn’t be easy, sitting on your own in a tunnel for hours on end, with nothing for company except the darkness and the familiar rest of a weapon on your back. The guards were necessary, she knew that. They couldn’t leave the entrances from the main tunnels unguarded, not when sweeps of the main tunnels by the Adveni were so regular.
The entrances into the deeper tunnels were hard to find from the outer passageways, even when people knew where they were. Branching from the walls of the main lines, yet hidden by bricks built up to look like any other section of wall, the smaller tunnels had remained remarkably private. However, sometimes people stumbled in and needed to be turned back. It was, admittedly, only luck that the people finding their way in by accident had never been Adveni. The guards would also help if the unthinkable did happen. Georgianna knew how far an echo could carry within the tunnels; the sound of gunfire would alert those down the line to the problem.
Luckily, apart from Si’s mysterious absence, the day seemed calm in the Belsa tunnels. Beck probably would have said something if someone had been taken down to the Way for treatment. Though, she supposed she wouldn’t really know the state of Medics’ Way until she got there.
“It sure is odd,” Wrench mused. “Si not showing up like that. Not like him at all.”
Georgianna shook her head. She’d been working for the Belsa long enough to know that they rarely missed shifts, and Si was no exception.
“No, it’s not.”