‘We can pay. Do you have any medicines? Breath?’
‘No breath. Medicine’s there on the shelf.’
I don’t listen to the rest of her conversation with Silas – about water rustlers and Seeker scouts – and inspect the medicines instead. I should have known what I would find. The bottles and boxes bear their original labels, but the contents have been emptied long ago, replaced by god knows what. Snake bile, fermented urine… I unscrew the lid from a sticky bottle of expectorant and smell engine-cooling fluid. I put it back in disgust.
‘These are worse than useless,’ I mutter, turning back towards Silas, ‘we might as well—’ I stop. He’s gone.
‘At the pump,’ the woman says, her dry eyes on mine. ‘Said you should have a drink on him.’
A bottle of something brown and cloudy stands on the counter before her. I can’t see the pump through the scratched windows, and the General is still occupied with the wire, clacking away at its keys.
‘What is it?’ I ask, leaning on the counter.
‘Mezcal,’ the woman says, glugging some into an ancient plastic cup.
One sniff tells me that it’s not mezcal, just cactus juice left to ferment in the sun, with a drop of benzene mixed in. But the woman pushes the cup towards me, her withered lips twitching, and I know that to refuse it, when she has so little, would be unforgivable. Bracing myself, I knock it back in one. It goes down my throat like rat’s claws.
‘Much obliged,’ I wheeze.
‘You walked a long way.’ There is a strange expression on her face, as if she’s seeing straight through my head, to the desert beyond.
‘We didn’t walk. We flew here, in—’
A crash makes us both jump. The woman drops the cup, her hand flying to the gun. There’s another crash and the sound of something splintering, followed by a stifled cry. I run before the woman has the gun from the holster.
I find the General crouched beneath the wire booth. The device is smashed to pieces, the cords ripped out, the box hanging from the wall like a tooth from sinew. The floor is littered with carbon printouts.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ There’s no one else, no signs of a fight, only the General kneeling on the floor, her knuckles bleeding as she clutches the broken receiver.
I kneel beside her. In her other hand is a notice. I wrench it away, smoothing the creases from the flimsy paper.
LEADER OF THE NORTHERN AIR UNIT ASSASSINATED
General Doe Thackeray, Leader of the Northern Minority Unit of the Accorded Nations, was killed yesterday in a terror attack on the Spargo Waystation. Six individuals affiliated with a radical offshoot of the Free Limits, have been apprehended…
I scoop up another notice, then another.
CHIEF OF THE MINORITY PEACE FORCE AWOL
Captain Uma Roche, Chief of the Minority Peace Force has officially been declared missing. She was last seen a cycle ago on her way to reparation talks with representatives of Delos’s new administration. Roche’s private physician has been treating her recently for a nervous condition. She is urged to contact…
WING COMMANDER GIANG PHAN LOSES BATTLE WITH ILLNESS
We have been informed that Wing Commander Phan finally succumbed to the debilitating illness that has affected their health for many months. Phan passed peacefully, at a private hospice clinic in Bleu Shallal on Prosper…
Twelve notices, with dates spanning the past weeks and months, from different publications all across the known system.
‘C Class.’ The General finally looks up. ‘It’s the whole of C Class.’
I stare numbly at the papers. The deaths and disappearances are too many, too varied to be coincidence; this was calculated.
‘The Augur was right,’ the General chokes. ‘I am already dead. They’ve killed me.’
I toss the bulletins aside. ‘You don’t know that. Whatever they have done to you, there might be a way to undo it. If we can find an Accord hospital, one with a good laboratory—’
‘They’d kill me before I got through the door.’
‘There are other ways in. There are always people who will help, for a price.’
‘How do you know?’ The General’s eyes are red.
‘Because I’ve done it before.’
She stares at me. ‘If you were FL, why were you anywhere near an Accord hospital?’ Her eyes go to my temples, to the scars there, hiding what had once been inked into flesh. Slowly, her expression drops into realisation.
‘You were a spy? You were a goddam rat?’ I say nothing, and she swears. ‘I should have let you drown in that cesspit. How many of my comrades did you betray? How many died thanks to you? Do you even know?’
The tally waits, vast and bloodied. ‘Yes. I know.’
Her face twists in rage but before she can speak a ship’s engine roars outside, followed by another and another. Our eyes meet.
‘We have to get out of here,’ I mutter, looking about for an exit. Whoever is outside, if we go through the store, we’ll be seen immediately. But there’s a back door, half-obscured by empty crates. I shove them aside.
‘You think I’ll go with you?’ the General spits.
‘Do you have a choice?’ I kick the door open.
Too late. A figure stands in our path, a shadow against the blinding desert light. I reach for my knife.
‘Ten!’ It’s Silas, his face tense.
Trembling with relief, I let go of the weapon. ‘I heard ships. What’s going on?’
‘Dunno.’ He looks anxious. ‘Sure it’s nothing. Other travellers. Just need to pay up, and then we can go.’
He’s cut off by the sound of a gun being armed.
‘No one’s going nowhere.’
A man stands in the doorway behind the General. Short and stocky, his face has been whipped to leather by the winds, his eyes blue and too bright. He smiles and grasps the General’s shoulder.
She twists. ‘Who the hell—’
He pistol-whips her across the face. ‘That’s for my ship,’ he says.
Silas takes a half-step forwards as she curses, blood running from
