But there was life. A mass of algae coated every surface, even the fumaroles belching poisonous clouds, and where the snow was the thinnest, hardy, sharp-edged plants sprang from rock broken down into soil. I’d have been willing to bet that the atmosphere topside would eventually be lethal, but not quickly enough to keep people from digging beneath the surface. Which had to be where the base was, because there were only a handful of small buildfoam domes dotting the surface near the paved square of the landing field. Buildfoam was a white-gray by nature, but these had been stained yellow and orange from exposure to the gasses billowing from the fumaroles.
“This place is just a vacation paradise, isn’t it?” Deke observed. “I can understand why you’d want to keep it a secret. Tell too many people, the tourists would crowd in and the whole ambience would be ruined.”
The shuttle touched down with a feathery grace I hadn’t expected, though I credited that to the lighter gravity on this moon, refusing to give the pilot’s skill any consideration. The rear viewscreen flickered off along with the interior lights, plunging the interior of the passenger compartment into darkness… for me. I knew the cyborgs wouldn’t care, and I’d figured out that Deke wasn’t bothered by it either. Since he wasn’t wearing enhanced vision glasses, my bet was that he either had a lifelike cybernetic eye or some kind of lens implant. They’d been around quite a while, but the surgery was expensive and complicated, not something the Marines were likely to pay for. Not something I was ready to pay for either, though I suppose it would have been less invasive and dangerous than having a computer installed inside my skull.
Standing beside my seat, I waited in the gloom, just happy to be on the ground, until Vagabond cranked open the airlock and the inky blackness of the shuttle lit up to the pale gray of just past dusk, enough light to make my way down the stairs. The cold struck me first, less of a surprise given the ice sheets all around us. The ambient temperature even out here among the thermal springs was above freezing, but only just, and the blasts of wind coming out of the north was the icy breath of an Arctic winter.
What hit me second was the smell. Sulphur. Rotten eggs, among other things. Strong enough I almost gagged, and I couldn’t restrain the coughing fit that racked my chest before I thought to cover my mouth and nose. Deke didn’t laugh at me, but neither did he show any sign of the stench bothering him. His chest didn’t move. The man wasn’t breathing.
“Stay behind me,” Vagabond told us, “or you will be shot.”
“Yeah, I get ya, brother,” Deke told him. “Nice, peaceful people here, no hate for anyone.” And he said every word without inhaling, showing no sign of stress despite holding his breath.
“We do not wish anyone harm,” Vagabond corrected him, not turning around. “That does not mean no one wishes us harm.”
The cyborg led us to a secure airlock built into the side of one of the domes and the question struck me of how a cyborg could operate a biometric lock, but apparently it was keyed to an implant communications link, because the outer door swung open on its own. Utter darkness loomed inside, and I bit back a curse. The entire no-lights thing pissed me off, and I wondered how the Tahni handled it since they weren’t allowed bionic replacement or cybernetic augments. I found out when Pol-Kai strode comfortably after us, his deep-set, piggish eyes concealed beneath a set of goggles that would never have fit on a human head.
It was just me who’d come unprepared, though I doubted if they would have let me bring enhanced vision goggles along on the trip even if I’d thought of them.
“Just put your hand on my arm, Alvarez,” Deke said dryly. “I won’t let you fall.”
If there was any way I could have gotten by without it, I would have told him to go to hell, but it was too dark for that, and I grabbed his shoulder and let him guide me forward. And downward. The first step of the staircase caught me by surprise, the second one even more so because of how deep it was, and I nearly fell forward against Deke. Not that it would have made any difference to him, because his shoulder might as well have been a brick wall. There was no way any human being could have lifted enough weights to get that solid, and he wasn’t bulky enough to have cloned muscle tissue implants like the Predecessor Cultists. I don’t know what the hell these Glory Boys were, but they must have dumped everything including the kitchen sink into them.
The stairs seemed to stretch down for over a hundred meters, and by the time we reached the bottom, I thought I was going to have to offer to buy Deke dinner. But a door at the bottom opened and light flooded in, bright enough that I had to squeeze my eyes shut against the glare.
“You are the gentlemen who wished to meet me?”
Splashes of color slowly faded until a slender figure coalesced in front of me, standing at the center of a wooded glen like a faerie of old. Except the forest was a holographic projection on the walls, the grass on the glen grew out of hydroponic chambers beneath the floor under overhead sunlamps… and the faerie princess was a cyborg.
Not like the others though. This woman’s bionics were black and slender, built for performance in contrast to the showy, bulky silver of the Evolutionists. The face was the same black metal that ended in a sort of terminator line just before the nose; half dark metal, half pale, olive-tinged flesh. A deep red glow flared inside a cybernetic eye opposite the natural eye with its emerald-green iris set above half a pair of soft, tan-colored lips. The human side was framed with black hair cut straight level with the jawline. The scalp above the machine side was shaved to a stubble.
“You’re Marakit,” I presumed.
My instinct was to offer a hand, but I drew it back, knowing the Evolutionists didn’t care for contact with us Normals. Her natural eyebrow turned up in an amused gesture that might have been a smile if she’d had a natural mouth to go with it, and she took my hand in her cool, nimble fingers. I didn’t gulp, but it was a near thing. All she had to do was tighten her grip and she’d shatter every bone in my hand. But instead, she shook it and let go.
“Marakit Almario,” she said. “Sergeant, Fleet Search and Rescue… medically retired.” She gestured with a cybernetic hand and I frowned.
“I took quite a bit of damage myself in the war,” I told her. “So did my wife. Marine Drop Troopers. Had to go in the tank a few times. Grew back a significant portion of my body.”
The question went unasked, but she answered it anyway.
“Genetic disorder.” Cybernetic shoulders imitated a very human shrug. “Not all of us were lucky enough to be born with parents who could afford to have us engineered before birth.”
I laughed sharply.
“My parents were chicken farmers in Tijuana. I suppose I just got lucky.”
“Sergeant,” Deke interrupted, “I’m Deke Conner, this is Cameron Alvarez. We’re representatives of the Provisional Commonwealth Government. We came here to negotiate on their behalf.”
For someone who hadn’t been down with this whole plan, Deke had fallen into it quickly, but I wasn’t sure I trusted his version of charm to work on Marakit, and I was sure it wasn’t working on either Vagabond or Pol-Kai, who stood by in this virtual garden, watching us.
“Negotiate what, exactly?” She hadn’t offered us a seat, and I wondered if it was because she was trying to sweat us or simply because she’d been a cyborg so long, she didn’t even think about sitting anymore. I jumped in, not willing to trust Deke’s instincts for negotiation.
“You’ve built up a…” I spread my hands as I searched for a word, “… following, I suppose, since I wouldn’t quite call it an organization, in the Trans-Tahni colonies. And you obviously have your own supply chain, which means you probably have mining operations in this system’s asteroid belt and the atmosphere of the gas giant. We have mining operations too, but what we don’t have is a way of delivering resources to the colonies out this way.”
And we’d made all this up during the flight to Hausos, thank God, which is why I’d had time to memorize it.
“And you want to contribute to their maintenance out of the goodness of your heart, I suppose?” For someone speaking out of a bionic jaw with a voice coming out of a synthesizer, she managed to put a lot of sarcasm into that question. Deke laughed sharply.
“Naw, not exactly. Look, it’s been a long fucking flight and we’ve been stuck in a compartment about the size of a utility closet. Can we maybe go sit down somewhere—even though you don’t have to—and have a drink.” He shrugged. “Even though you probably don’t have to do that either. And talk about this at length?”
“Oh, I still appreciate a good drink,” she told him, then tapped the side of her jaw. “This is mechanical, but the taste buds are still in there. And the stomach definitely is.” She looked at Vagabond and Pol-Kai, but her gaze fixed on one of the former Cultists, a tall woman with long, braided blonde hair. “Janella, go get a table set up in the hall and bring us a bottle of that vodka your people made.” She grinned at Deke, a baring of sharpened metal teeth. “I can’t wait to hear what these gentlemen have to say.”
Vodka burned its way down my throat, through my chest and into my stomach, spreading a pleasant warmth as it went. I sighed and sat back, admiring what the Confluencers called simply the Hall. It had taken another kilometer of walking, both downward and forward, to reach it, and along the way we’d passed a hell of a lot more people than I’d expected. Not just the Tahni, Evolutionists, and Cultists I’d expected, but others, Normals like me. I hadn’t asked where they’d come from, but I could guess. Grace and Harold had told me that some of the colonists from the Trans-Tahni worlds had joined the Confluence.
We’d only passed through a small section of this place, but even from that tiny portion it was clear there were tens of thousands of people on this world. Maybe hundreds, depending on how far the installation reached. Something else I hadn’t asked, because it wasn’t pertinent and we couldn’t afford to be nosy.
“Nostrovia,” Marakit said, raising her glass in salute. I was down by half, but I returned the toast and so did Deke.
I was by no means an expert on Evolutionists or other cyborgs, but this was the first time I’d ever seen one drink or eat anything the old-fashioned way, and I have to admit it was a little freaky. No one else had joined us, not even the Cultists at the table, and definitely not Pol-Kai or Vagabond.
“Okay, we’ve sat down,” Marakit went on, “and had our drink. Suppose you tell me what you believe you have to offer the Confluence?”
“We want to help,” Deke said smoothly, grabbing the bottle and pouring himself another drink. “Like we were saying, we have the raw materials and refined resources to supply a lot more of the surviving colonies, but we don’t have enough cargo vessels to get the stuff out to the people who need it. You’re supplying a lot of people—maybe we can help you help more. And if you need protection, maybe we could help with that too. I mean, we don’t have a bunch of cruisers anymore, but we could supply your freighters with a couple armed cutters for escort…”
Marakit laughed and, to my surprise, so did Vagabond.