Chương 32: Perspectives

As Hector finished his tale, he grunted and slumped to the side a little, and Brittany's scowl deepened. She leaned forward and pushed his backpack strap aside, revealing the puncture wound left behind by the fiend's tail. Her eyes widened as she wiped her bloody fingers on Hector's knee. Clicking her tongue, she rummaged through her pack, muttering, "Dammit, you're bleeding all over my car."

"Sorry."

"Just don't die on me. Not yet." With that, she twisted the top on a red plastic auto-injector, exposing the needle, then she slammed it into his thigh. It burned at first, as it discharged its contents, but then his leg got warm and tingly. Hector smiled crookedly as the sensation spread up into the rest of his body. Brittany nodded, twisting the cap back onto the spent injector.

"Trauma bugs—good ones."

"Thanks." Hector's tongue was sluggish, and he blinked, staring out the window as the world got brighter, and the hard edges of everything grew fuzzy. After a moment of quiet, during which he might have missed a sentence or two, Brittany's voice drifted into his ears.

"It's not as bad as you might think—you being in his body. You're different. I know the eyes are part of it, but the way you carry yourself, the way you walk, even the way you pronounce words—I don't feel like you're him, if that was worrying you." He nodded. He hadn't really been worried about that, but he had been worried she'd be blinded by rage or disgust at the idea that her brother's mind had been formatted with his memories and thoughts.

"I knew they killed him. Technically he was missing, but I'd been in touch with him on an encrypted account. He knew they were closing in—even tried to make a deal, but it was too late. Tacitianus—that's the magistrate—wouldn't let him live, and Paul wasn't going to give up what he had—not if they were going to kill him, anyway. Anyway, we're just small people—my brother and me. You know what I mean? It was the easiest thing for them to just snuff him out.

It'll be easy to finish the job; we don't matter to people like that." Hector tilted his head, looking into her angry eyes, trying to see the world from her perspective. He'd been doing a lot of that lately, but mostly with regard to Lemon. As he pondered a response, the car pulled off the pavement onto a red-dirt road, barely discernible from the rough terrain around them. He nodded out the window.

"No drones tracking us?"

"Not likely. Redwick's not like Helio or the other big cities. We have PKs, of course, but they mostly keep an eye on the downtown area. There's just too much ground to cover out here."

"PKs will investigate the fight, though." Brittany nodded.

"Yeah. Someone will call it in, and they'll report things to the municipal office, and that damned magistrate will find out what happened to his employees."

"He'll put a warrant out for you."

"Maybe." She shook her head.

"He's already stuck his neck out looking for Paul, and I don't think he'll want the PKs to interfere with his mercs." Hector was feeling sharper, the initial pain-deadening rush of the injection having faded. Her words rang true, and he grunted in agreement before saying, "If the PKs aren't dirty." She shook her head.

"They aren't." When he stared, she added, "There are five who work in Redwick, and I know them. I, um, dated one for a little while. When Paul disappeared, they tried hard to find some evidence. I mean, I'm pretty sure they're the only reason I'm still alive or not being tortured in some cellar somewhere. Logan was watching my place for weeks—still is half the time." Hector didn't argue, but he knew how complicated people could be.

She might think the peacekeepers in Redwick were all good people, but there was a solid chance that at least one of them was compromised. It didn't matter. Either way, the magistrate wouldn't want to file any official warrants or indicate that he knew what the dead mercs had been involved in. Even so…

"I don't think you should call him." Brittany glared at him.

"I'm not an idiot. He can't operate off the books. PKs have watchdogs." She tapped her head, and Hector felt stupid; of course the peacekeepers would have AIs that monitored their actions. Their movements were constantly reported and logged by the Imperial Department of Justice. Everything they did, the local magistrate—Tacitianus—would be able to access.

"Right." He closed his eyes, trying to fall into the warmth of the trauma injection again. The car turned to the right, its little electric motor whirring loudly as it struggled to climb a steep, gravel drive, then it leveled out. Hector peered through slitted eyes to see an old plasteel gate slide into view, attached to a chain-link fence. Behind it stood an enormous plasteel awning with three enclosed sides. It sheltered piles of various grades of stone—from tiny pebbles to huge boulders.

"The rock yard," he noted.

"Yeah. Friend of my family owns it, but they've been trying to sell the land for nearly a decade." Hector looked at her, eyebrow arched.

"Family?" She shook her head.

"All dead now." If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Sorry." Her frown deepened, but before she could say anything, the car chimed and proclaimed, in a high-pitched, singsong voice, "We're here, Miss Britt."

"Park behind the rock pile." The car chimed again, then crept forward. They were a few meters away when the gate rolled open.

"Power out here?" Hector asked.

"Just some solar. Enough, though." Hector eyed the property as they rolled through the gate—weed-choked gravel, scattered floodlights, the massive awning, and the stone piles.

"Quiet."

"Yep. Nothing for klicks." Her use of the term intrigued him.

"Ex-Guard?"

"Nope, mercenary work for a while. Worked a few peacekeeping tours up and down the trench." He figured she meant the Valles Marineris—four thousand klicks of shielded valleys where the first Martian settlements had taken root.

"Still lots of farms?"

"Farms and cities and spaceports. What do you mean, still?" Hector shrugged, reaching for the door latch as the little car pulled into a well-worn spot behind a gravel pile.

"We need a plan." Brittany put her hand over the latch, stopping him from grasping it.

"This is the most comfortable place to talk out here. Just sit tight while I think this through." Hector frowned, but he didn't argue. He could feel the nanites working, and he was more or less comfortable. He hated sitting still, though, especially when he knew there was a target on his back. As far as they knew, they'd been tracked by a drone, from the apartment building all the way out to where they now sat.

Sure, the PKs might have their hands full, but there were plenty of other people who could operate a drone. Tacitianus might—"More I think about it," Brittany said, "the more I think we're probably not exactly safe here."

"Huh."

"That's all you can say?"

"Figure you've got more to add."

"Tacitianus probably had eyes watching my apartment building. A cam at least. They'll see my car leaving, and then he can access drone footage—even without telling the PKs exactly what he's looking for. They might not have eyes all the way out here, but he and his bootlickers will figure it out eventually."

"Makes sense."

"So what do we do?" Hector smiled, but it wasn't a cheerful expression.

"We make them wish they didn't figure it out." He nodded to her shotgun.

"You got ammo?"

"Yeah. Got more than that out here, too." Hector arched an eyebrow.

"Probably why I beelined for this place. Got a rifle stashed—use it for range work."

"So how many will they send after us? You've been looking into this magistrate, right?" Brittany didn't waste time denying.

"Well, you took care of two of his guys, but he has seven more on his payroll. I don't know if he'd send them all. I don't know if he'd call into the city for replacements." She shrugged.

"The fiend complicates things for them," Hector observed. Brittany looked at him for a minute, waiting for him to elaborate, but when he didn't, she took a stab at his meaning: "They won't know exactly what the hell happened back at my apartment. Might make them underestimate us." Hector nodded.

"They will."

"They think you're still Paul!" Her face fell as she said the name, but she didn't get hung up on emotion, soldiering through to add, "Didn't they confirm he was dead?" Hector shrugged.

"Maybe not—Tacitianus certainly got interested when your brother's ID was scanned in Helio."

"The morgue in this town is shady as hell," Brittany said, tapping her chin.

"I mean, I was never notified that they had Paul. Maybe Tacitianus thinks he got double-crossed into believing he was killed."

"Where's his place?" Brittany pointed over her shoulder, indicating something or a direction that meant nothing to Hector.

"He lives at The Rim." Hector shook his head.

"The what?" She sighed, shaking her head.

"Up at RMC's resort. The mining company—they have a resort up on top of the mountain they made out of tailings. It's called The Rim. There's a hotel, but also private villas. I guess it's really nice—trees, grass, and a view of a crater that makes you appreciate just how damn small you are." She let her eyes find his, and they stared at each other for a few seconds. Then she yanked the door latch and pushed the door open.

"This is fuckin' strange," she grumbled, climbing out. Hector noted she'd left her shotgun with him. That's gotta mean something, right? With a grunt, he stepped out of the little car and stood, wincing at the way his movements tightened the slowly knitting flesh of his stab wound. When Brittany didn't look up, but rather stooped to pick up a rock and chuck it against the plasteel side of the awning, he waited for the reverberating clang to fade, then asked, "So you gonna tell me what it was?"

She looked at him sharply. Some of her hair had come loose, and it stirred on the breeze, a dark halo around her face.

"What?"

"What your brother stole." What got him killed. What's got that magistrate all worked up.

"What makes you think I know?"

"Same reason you think you'd be getting tortured right now if not for those PKs looking out for you."

"Yeah, until you came here and tipped the scales." She threw another rock— clang!

"Now we're fucked." Hector snorted, leaning against the car.

"Come on." She whirled on him, scowling, but she didn't argue. She kicked a rock into the pile beside her, then sighed with resignation.

"You're right. My days were numbered. When they gave up trying to find Paul, the magistrate would have sent the PKs on some busy work and then I would have disappeared." Hector nodded.

"So?" She folded her arms, her dark, stormy eyes focusing on his.

"So, I know where to look, but I don't know what it is. I'm not gonna say it, and I'm sure as hell not going to go looking until I'm sure that asshole and his goons are dealt with. No way I'll let them erase Paul and still wind up with whatever it was he tried to keep away from them." Hector nodded. As frustrating as her obstinance was, he had to respect it. Of course, if he were a bad guy… //But you're not. // He smiled crookedly. Evie was definitely different.

"Okay," he said, shrugging a shoulder." Okay?" Brittany unfolded her arms.

"Yeah. We'll deal with that corrupt magistrate, then we'll figure out what Paul had. If it's something useful to me, we can split it."

"Hey! I never said anything about that."

"What's more important to you? Keeping everything or killing the dirty bastard who killed your brother?" She continued to scowl but didn't protest. Hector looked at his AUI, saw it was nearly three in the afternoon and asked, "What time does it get dark around here?" Brittany tilted her head, considering.

"Around seven?" //1849 is sunset today. // Hector nodded to Brittany.

"Sounds about right. Got any food?" He wanted to spend some potentia, but his body was already running on fumes from the nanites.

"What? Got any food? What are we going to do?" Hector inhaled deeply, trying hard to shift his perspective, trying to see things from her eyes. After he let the breath out, sending with it his frustration, he calmly said, "I am going to spend some potentia, you're going to get your rifle, and we're going to set a trap for the mercs who will more than likely show up here after dark."