Soldier's Duty

Chapter 3-2

Thimayu would never walk like that with her son. Cold and dark and uninviting as it was, the boy would never experience the surface unless he escaped his captors. He would never travel, and would be a prisoner of the Respite Illness Centre for the rest of his life.

And people called that the best way of dealing with him.

While watching the pair make slow progress towards her, Izramith tried to repress the feelings, but couldn’t stop them. Her eyes clouded over. She had expected a bunch of rowdy engineers, or just regular passengers. Except passengers had children. She had never noticed the children that much, but now they seemed everywhere.

Now that she knew she could never have any.

Behind the pair came another couple of civilian travellers. Text scrolled over the side of her visor. Blue Seventeen and Fifty-two stood at attention on both sides of the ramp, sending through anything they observed. A man in a black jacket looked nervous. A woman with a large bag—needs checking.

Izramith acknowledged this. People smuggled the most ridiculous things.

The man and his little daughter had arrived at the checkpoint. The light revealed them to be locals, dressed in Hedron’s lilacs and purples. The man was probably some kind of administrator. The scanner registered their entry via the chip in the man’s earring, and they went on their way down the ramp, the child pointing and babbling.

Izramith couldn’t stop looking at them until a mass of other people blocked her view of the pair.

Oh, damn, she’d missed the man who was nervous, and the woman with the bag. They were already on the ramp into the settlement. All locals, since any locals on board came off first and could walk straight past.

There were indeed visiting engineers on board, a whole group of them, and they stood in the check-in queue at her scanner booth, talking and laughing in Asto accents. She knew the types of men. When they were out with mates, they tried to be smart and funny. Trying to show off. Since none of them wore earrings with ID chips, they had to be scanned manually.

She asked for the first man’s ID. He passed. He was talking to a colleague while she scanned the colleague’s ID. He passed, too, but he could produce only the one piece of luggage out of the two marked on his ticket.

“My mate has the other one,” he said, and she had trouble understanding his accent.

The mate in question was at the back of the queue and had to be brought forward. Yes, he had the bag, but despite being told to keep each bag’s contents the same at check-in and arrival, there was a weight discrepancy. Apparently, he had brought something for another associate, a piece of surveying equipment, which he located, she examined and passed.

As the line shuffled forward, people grumbled about why this mattered anyway. Several complained that they were cold.

When getting their tickets, they had been given information that the waiting area was outside. They knew Hedron had no sunlight. Why did these dumb people ignore all communication they had been sent through the Pilot’s Guild with their bookings?

Similarly, the engineers had all given different reasons for coming here, while they were here for the same purpose and had applied for entry as a group. They would have been told to streamline their entries, and they had ignored those instructions. On purpose or not, it was always the same.

Damn, she hated dumb people who didn’t stick to instructions.

All their luggage had to be checked and could not be processed until it was reunited with the owners. The men in the queue waited and complained.

It seemed like the meeting was some kind of trade fair. Many of them had brought lots of items of tech equipment. Unpacking took ages. What the hell was up with all these rolls of wire? The men’s irritation was palpable. And no, Izramith could not just let them pass as some suggested. Some of the bags contained illegal technology, which she took inside, unpacked and placed on the table inside the guard station room.

“You will have to leave these here,” she said to the merchant who had claimed ownership of the offending items.

“But I need those for my demonstration.”

“The rules to entry state clearly that you cannot take long-range transmitters. That would have been a condition to buying your ticket. Our mining equipment uses long-range frequencies. Our ventilation units, our transport units, our reactors use them. You do not want to be on a train that gets stuck between here and the northern shafts because your equipment disrupts its communication back to base and disables the ventilation to the tunnel. And do I mention you’ll be sitting on top of our largest reactor?”

The man gave her an angry eye.

“You’re in luck. I’m kinder than most of my colleagues. They wouldn’t explain, but just take the equipment off you.” In the past, she would have done that, too, but Indrahui had changed her. At Indrahui, what civilians carried were the only things they owned. At Indrahui, a simple roll of wire or a half-broken piece of equipment, no matter how illegal, could make the difference between having money to feed your family or not. But her temper was quickly heating up. The insufferable idiots. Did they even look at what they signed?

The man grumpily agreed to have his machine disabled until he left the settlement. And then the group could finally leave. Izramith watched them go with anger building in her. If this behaviour was anything to go by, she wouldn’t be surprised if the guards would be called a few times during the conference to break up fights of these men with security or deal with loutish behaviour. Asto thought they owned the universe.

Well, guess what?

The hold-up with the conference delegates had caused a log jam in the processing area. At least twenty more non-local passengers stood waiting in the dark. They must have come on smaller shuttles that she hadn’t even noticed landing.

There were a couple of private people, mostly merchants. Two from Asto, but they were regulars. They had all their permits in order and she waved them through without much fuss. Next was a Trader.

He stood in the queue waiting calmly, reading something on a pad that lit his face with a soft blue glow.

Not just any Trader, a Mirani Trader, and those were usually trouble. Acted like they owned the world. Like the father and son team she had inspected a few days ago—on the day her sister’s baby was born in fact—who had tried to conceal and smuggle a whole case of undeclared electronics out of the settlement. She had no idea where they even got the material, because certainly no local resident would give this sort of stuff illegally to Mirani Traders.

When she called the next traveller forward, he lifted his head. She met his eyes, which were so light blue as to be almost colourless. His hair, almost white, was tied at the back of his neck with a blue ribbon. It was, most un-Mirani-like, decorated with coloured ribbons and plaits. One of them dangled free when he moved his head. A couple of trinkets tied to the end made a soft tinkling noise.

A pretty boy.

He wore a thick Mirani fur cloak—and as such was the only traveller who had come prepared for the wait. When he stepped into the light of her booth she noticed that underneath his cloak he wore a uniform that she had never seen before.

The shirt and trousers were light blue and the ornamental jacket was turquoise and made of the thinnest sheer material that had to have cost a fortune. It was fastened on his chest with golden clips.

The Trader Guild registration on his medallion was 1101. The scanner told her that was the number of a major Mirani Trading family, except the uniform he wore was not Mirani—and to her surprise the helmet comm visual showed his ID in the place where only Hedron residents would display an entry.

So, what? He was going to be a mysterious enigma, right?

He bowed when he came to her booth. Not in a subservient way, but very patient and politely.

For some reason, that annoyed her even more than the Asto engineers’ ignorance and petulance.

She asked him for his ID and he patiently gave her the black card. She shoved it in the scanner and it told her that he was from Barresh. Did they even have Traders there? Why did his details come up in the scanner? He wore simple hoop earrings without tag, as far as she could see, but he had to have a tag somewhere, and one that was synchronised to the Hedron system to boot. Where was the damn tag? Who had authorised it?

“Your business at Hedron?” she said in the curtest voice she could manage.

“I have a personal item to be delivered to a resident. It’s confidential, urgent and time sensitive.”

He held up an envelope which was bare on the outside except for an Exchange tag. Since when did Traders do delivery jobs?

“Leave it here with instructions and it will be delivered.”

“I would prefer to deliver this in person. The recipient is a good friend of mine.”

“Have you got a personal invitation?”

“I understand that the confidential tag should let me in.”

Not that she had heard. Izramith took the envelope from him and passed it over the scanner. It was addressed to Trader Amandra Bisumar.

“Is this the person you want to visit?” What the f**k was someone with such a Mirani name doing at Hedron anyway?

“Correct.”

Izramith turned the envelope over once more. Then turned to her scanner.

Amandra Bisumar turned out to be a Mirani Trader who had changed her allegiance from Miran to Hedron. Changed colours, Traders called this. According to the system, she had lived in the settlement for a number of cycles.

And now another Mirani Trader who had also changed colours wanted to speak to her personally. Never mind that Miran and Ceren, the Mirani homeworld, was often referred to as the next Indrahui, presuming the war at Indrahui was ever going to end. Her suspicion grew. The Traders they had caught trying to smuggle equipment were Mirani. There might be a connection.

She might have missed the man who was nervous and the woman with the bag, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let this guy pass without checking.

“What’s in this document?”

“It’s private, approved by the Exchange.” He pointed at the label. Yes, she hadn’t missed that, but what were those Exchange guarantees worth anyway? The Hedron Exchange hadn’t approved this, and other places couldn’t care less what happened at Hedron.

The rule at Hedron was: no entry into the settlement unless by personal invitation.

“Open it up.” She tried to make her voice as threatening as possible.

“I don’t think that’s necessary. This matter is of a personal nature—” Still, he showed no sign of being intimidated or of an intention to back down.

“Those are our rules. If you want to enter the settlement, I need to see the contents of that letter.” Especially if it was from one Mirani Trader to another. Commander Blue would have her head, especially after that episode with the smuggling a few days ago. Mirani didn’t allow foreigners into their cities either. And when foreign people did get in, they were likely to be murdered on the streets.

“Do you have authorisation to demand this?”

“Open the f**k up.” She shifted to position three, which involved sliding the gun out of its bracket and holding it pointed at the ground in front of the target’s feet.

Meeting her eyes, and then looking at the gun, he shrugged. He slid his fingers under the closing flap and ripped the paper. Then he opened the envelope and gave the contents to her. His face still showed no sign of emotion.

The document was a single-page letter, written in the strange blocky Mirani script. Izramith engaged the translator of her helmet comm and read.

The letter was an invitation to some kind of party.

What the actual f**k? “This is private? You make a fuss over a f*****g party?” She let the letter drop to the table.

“I make a fuss over principles. I asked and got a promise of confidentiality. These people—” He gestured at the sheet. “—are refugees who have had their lives threatened multiple times. I was assured by the Mines Board that I would be allowed in the settlement with a document bearing the seal of the Barresh Exchange.” He pointed at the seal. He was oh so restrained in his anger.

“They did not tell me anything about that.”

“Have you entered the number?”

“Don’t f*****g tell me how to do my job.” But she manually entered the number anyway.

A line in her helmet visor said, High level: approved.

Oh, f**k. Was it even possible for her to do anything right today?

She slid his ID in the scanner and hit approved.

With a trembling hand, she took his ID card from the scanner and gave it back to him. “Get the f**k out of here.”

He nodded politely, collected his letter and his small travel bag, and left. He didn’t smile, or sneer or shout that he would complain. That behaviour would have given her satisfaction. This utter calm did not.

Private and confidential? What the f**k? Which i***t approved of two Mirani Traders meeting each other privately in the Hedron settlement? What had gotten into the Mines Board while she was at Indrahui?

Times have changed, Commander Blue had said on her first day back. We need to become more accountable to visitors. No more threats. No more roughing up.

Indeed.