Sun-Side Regrets, Town of Cofan
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.1.25 Interstellar
Nikandros looked at Janus and his team as if they were a math formula he was reducing to its simplest form. After a moment, he nodded to himself and said, “We want your team to run in the Trials.”
“Ryler already asked. The answer’s no unless we get full disclosure this time, and we’ll quit mid-race if we get even a suspicion you lied to us.”
Nikandros sat back and smiled, as confident as the devil and as cold as the Void.
“You’ve got something, don’t you?” Janus said softly, looking down at his clasped hands. “A reason you knew you’d be getting what you wanted before setting foot in this bar.”
“I never walk into a meeting I don’t know the outcome of if I can help it,” the architect answered.
Lira looked like she might jump across the table. Mick looked icy calm, which was when he was at his most dangerous. Ryler looked guilty this time, so Janus knew it had to be bad. “What have you done?”
“It’s not what we’ve done, Emissary—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s what you are, Janus. You’re not a member of the Cult, but you advance our interests, even when you don’t mean to. You could even have taken a leadership role on Irkalla, and not just within Prime Dome, but you just had to be clever, didn’t you?”
Janus’s blood ran cold, but he kept his nerve. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Nikandros looked at him with pity. “Don’t do that, Janus. Don’t lie to me. It makes you look weak. Do you know what happens to me if I stand up and walk out of this bar?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” Janus said.
“Nothing. Nothing happens to me, Janus. I’ll wait another decade, maybe two, and another ‘you’ will float to the top. They always do. Our whole faction centers on that belief.”
Janus swallowed. “Fine. We can’t hurt you. We can still walk.”
Nikandros shrugged. “Suit yourself. Right now, a Verazlan noble is doing her best to get you imprisoned and murdered, or maybe just executed. She’s doing it because she thinks you’re coldsiders, and because you foiled her attempt to kill more coldsiders, but you have friends here.” The architect leaned forward, clasping his hands and speaking in a conspiratorial tone. “You know what? I think you’ll thrive in exile. You can go to the dark side with the Carverites, or maybe find a place in one of the midnight villages. One day, when you’ve spent years without seeing the sun, you’ll travel north or south until you pass beyond Verazlan territory, and you’ll start over.”
“I wouldn’t count us out yet,” Lira said, although she was pale and stiff.
Janus shook his head. “That’s not it. That’s not the leverage you think you’ve got over us.”
“It isn’t,” Nikandros said. “You remember the other faction I told you about, the Compartmentalists? They know, Janus. They know you made a copy of the Promethean archives. They know that you distributed them and that their precious seed vault has been compromised.”
Mick and Lira looked at Janus in shock, but Janus was already thinking of the consequences.
“They’re going to kill them, aren’t they?” Janus said, feeling the life drain out of him. “Everyone who’s seen those files or heard the story.”
“At this point, they might wipe the slate clean and start over,” Nikandros said. “They have the power to do it. They need to before it spreads to other planets. If they allow the lab rats into space, the whole experiment falls apart.”
Janus felt like the world had been yanked out from under his feet, and he was floating without a point of reference.
A year ago, Irkalla had been his whole universe. He’d thought the airless planet and its domed cities were the last remnants of humanity, and when he’d seen the chance to set them free of their prison, he’d taken it.
It had been a desperate moment. The Hunters who’d come with them, each one a veteran duster, had given their lives to get them to Prometheus Base, only to find it overrun with giant rock monsters and the ghosts of the Cult’s murderous past. Janus knew he was dead—if not from the wildlife or radiation, then assassinated by the Cult when he crossed the finish line.
He’d used the chaos to stage a teammate’s fake death and subsequent escape with their precious cargo of information, fully expecting to die. He’d thought of it as his legacy, stealing fire from the gods, the salvation of his people.
He’d been wrong.
He’d been ignorant.
What little knowledge he’d had hadn’t been enough.
He hadn’t known how far the Cult would go.
Nikandros’s leverage wasn’t that Janus and his team might be imprisoned, exiled, or killed on Krandermore. It was that they’d go to their undeserved punishment knowing their families on Irkalla were going to die.
He expected to look up and see hatred in Mick and Lira’s eyes, or at least hurt and betrayal, but they were smiling.
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“Syn got out,” Mick said, grinning.
“Yeah,” Janus said. “She did.”
Lira nodded. She took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “It’s going to be okay.”
“How can you say that?” Janus asked, still in shock.
Lira put her hand on his. “Because this void-hole wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have a way to save them at a price we can pay. And we will pay that price, Janus. We’ll get through this, save our families, and they’ll still know the truth about the bastards who killed our parents, and we’ll have won.”
Janus looked at her and Mick, and he felt like the moment had passed. He’d felt defeated for a moment, but that was why he had a team to back him. He owed them an explanation, and he needed to get more information from Nikandros or Ryler, whoever would give it to them, but Lira was right.
He turned to Nikandros, calm and rooted, and said, “All right. You have us. Now, tell us how we’re going to win.”
***
Three days later, Janus, Mick, Lira, and Ryler met in the small hab Janus had lived in for the past ten months. The house had simple bones—local wood and plaster, with a polymer sealant to keep out the worst of the bugs and allergens. Janus had upgraded it with top-of-the-line environmental control, water filtration, and security systems.
It had still been a work in progress. He’d just finished setting up three hydroponic kits for his favorite plants. Mick had promised to make him a small dining table for the three of them, or whoever else Janus decided to invite over. The locally woven rug he’d bought really tied the place together.
He’d had plans, and those plans were over. It sucked, but that was life. He’d thought he knew all there was to know about life around Cofan, that between him, Lira, and Mick, they’d had all the angles covered. They’d been wrong. I need to find a better way to stop this from happening again, Janus thought as he closed and locked the door.
“You ready, boss?” Mick asked.
“Yeah,” Janus said, shouldering his pack.
The others were waiting outside. Lira was wearing her best poncho, a black, tight-woven gift from the elders with red and gold accents. She carried a larger pack than the rest of them, filled with samples, spices, and other valuables to make friends, and a few well-concealed weapons to deal with everyone else. Her implant was loaded with more of the local dialects than Janus and Mick carried, making her their lead when dealing with the smaller settlements.
Mick’s gear couldn’t have been more different. It was worn out, repaired many times over. He used a standard ranger pack, carrying only the essentials so he could move fast. The ranger philosophy was to live off the land, not carry it with you. His poncho was brown and mottled green with shades of gray, his boots scuffed but clean, and his gear carefully cut, cinched, and tied down so it wouldn’t make a sound. Something about the way he stood made him hard to make out in the rain. Ammo pouches, grenades, enhanced optics, a high-caliber pistol, and a rifle with a telescopic sight were each in their proper place.
Ryler was dressed for travel in a grey, black, and silver poncho that proudly announced his affiliation with the Cult and drew stares from the other townspeople as they walked by. He looked calm and confident; for all his talk about feeling cooped up in the Cult, the year since he’d left home had matured him in ways Janus hadn’t noticed when he was pissed off and tired.
Ryler was carrying Janus’s repair kit, which he’d supplemented with tools appropriate for electrical work. He had a small, portable terminal on his left hip and some sort of baton on his right.
No firearms. The Cult librarian had told Janus he didn’t need them.
Janus didn’t need firearms, either. He had a tranq gun and several modular grenades. He’d loaded his pack with enough medicines and toxins to deal with most of the threats they couldn’t avoid and more besides that to supplement Lira’s trading. He had chemical coatings for Mick’s rounds, and he’d downloaded enough information about Ryler’s implants to keep the cultist alive if he was injured. He was wearing his usual field kit, including a cooling vest and helmet. “Lira?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Lira said.
The four of them headed toward the motor pool.
Dozens of people from Cofan, including many of Mick’s rangers, had gathered to see them off. The locals’ faces were grateful, supportive, and sometimes ashamed. There was a rigidity and fatalism to Krandermorans that Janus still hadn’t wrapped his head around, a habit of making the hard choices with regret but without protest.
Janus saw Dr. Mbari in the crowd and stopped to shake her hand.
“I’ll fight this,” she promised him. “You won’t be exiled forever.”
Janus smiled. “We won’t,” he agreed, although he didn’t say that was partly because they might not survive. “Take care of yourself, Doc. Things are both worse and better than they seem.”
He left the field researcher confused and uncertain, but that was all he could afford to tell her. She’d find out the rest soon enough.
The town elders were waiting for them in the motor pool, where the team’s vehicles were already prepped, loaded, and fueled, waiting to carry them east.
“Emissary,” the chief elder said, bowing slightly to Janus. “We wanted you to know how… ashamed we are of the treatment you and your clansmen have been subjected to. We will make restitution as best we are able.”
The other elders looked uncomfortable, maybe even outraged. Janus knew it was rare and potentially dangerous for an elder to admit fault, especially to people of no clan affiliation or family standing. The chief elder waited for Janus’s response, tense but standing up to their mistakes, and Janus admired that.
“We’ll need information,” Janus said matter-of-factly. “Maps, intelligence on the other teams, reconnaissance of the routes and waypoints.”
The chief elder looked relieved. “This is something we can provide. We’ll contact you.”
“Thank you, Elder,” Lira said, bowing and clasping his hand with both of hers.
The Verazlan woman watched the apology and farewell with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face. Two rangers from Clan Verazlan stood behind her like hired muscle. “This is why Clan Motragi will never be more than second in standing. You’re sloppy and weak.”
The Motragi chief elder turned and smiled at her, fists together in front of his chest in a brazen show of defiance. “Koni Verazlan, it warms my heart that the last words you speak to me bear such disrespect. May you one day cherish the foolishness of your ignorance as much as I do.”
The Verazlan woman—Koni—had just enough time to look surprised when one of the Verazlan rangers clubbed her in the back of the head with his rifle, knocking her to the ground.
She pushed herself up onto her elbows. “You son of a—”
The ranger kicked her in the side of the face, knocking her out cold.
The other Verazlan ranger approached Janus and handed him a tightly bound leather scroll. “This is the clan writ of indenture assigning Koni Verazlan to you for the length of the Trials. Any debts owed to you or to Clan Motragi for what happened here are hers to bear alone. The heads of all eight families sealed their genes to the writ.”
“Did you have to knock her out?” Janus asked. “We’ll have to carry her to the buggies.”
The Verazlan ranger who’d done the knocking grinned. “Our instructions were very specific, coldsider. Koni makes enemies wherever she goes. If she has any sense left, she’ll understand the clan’s displeasure.”
“Keep her alive,” the other ranger said more brusquely. “Or the next time you see us, we’ll use our weapons on you.”
Fantastic, Janus thought, looking at the unconscious woman. According to Lira and Ryler, they needed her, but he had the feeling from her own clansmen’s treatment of her that this was the most he would ever like her, but then he’d felt that way about Lira once.
Mick somehow managed to get the unconscious woman over his shoulders and trudged toward the buggies.
Janus hoped they wouldn’t have to “carry” the Verazlan woman for the whole race.