Expatria: The Box Set (24 page)
Read Expatria: The Box Set Online
Authors: Keith Brooke
IV
There had been more trouble during the night. A templar plug from her sub-director had woken RoKatya Tatin in the early hours. She had crept off the mat and stood over Patrische for a drawn-out moment, trying to work out what they had once had which was now absent. She had fought off the feeling, unwilling to accept that anything was wrong between them—they were just undergoing a testing period, that was all; they would pull through and be all the stronger because of it.
She had been at her workbase, across from TheAndreos and RoLuke, until now, with the fresh dawn-shift taking over. The three of them had monitored the reports from the rundown streets of Panier and the Mesquinery, they had co-ordinated the response of the city police and, eventually, they had requested that the MedSpread's MetaPlex should send in a troop of corporate evangelicals with menial support.
Now, in the corridor, Katya could distance herself from the blur of analysis-response that had filled the last four hours. She could try to understand the scale of it all. The poor from the Panier had been celebrating some primitive festival in the streets. There had been Farceurs and Consumerists and old christians and a number of other factions too. And then a gang of migrant labourers—English, Spanish, Portuguese—had come over from the commercial district, 'looking for the clowns' according to reports. There had been over two hundred of them, armed with metal bars and knives and power tools. Trouble such as this still broke out sporadically along the Eastern axis of Eurecon, where the corporate influence was at its weakest, but Katya was unaware of anything on this scale this far west since the truce, fifteen years before her birth.
She had been glad of the relief shift at dawn, but now they were talking of more trouble, here in Aix.
She needed some rest and—from the look of them—so did Andreos and Luke. She was exhausted. She almost slumped against the wall for a brief burst of plusRem, but the others were moving and she had to follow them, had to find out what was happening.
The corridor opened out onto a wide balcony with views over the barriers and the lakes. There was no visible indication of trouble but then Katya heard the voices and the hum of police aircraft.
Following Andreos and Luke she began to run. They swung past a scared-looking domestic menial and round a corner and suddenly they could see beyond the complex's barriers to the riot. Hundreds of people, smaller numbers of police, three aircraft hanging above them with dozens of drones. At a quick reconnaissance Katya counted six bodies plastered over the barrier fencing, two of them police who should have known better. As she watched, another rioter—a Farceur, she saw in horror—threw herself at the fence and was smeared in a puff of dark smoke.
As gunfire broke out in the streets the three ducked down behind a wall and the police aircraft climbed higher to protect themselves.
They crawled back into the complex and Katya forced her body to regain control of itself. Fear was useless in a situation like this. She left Andreos and Luke in the corridor and headed for the Control Room.
Patrische was there, yelling at the guards. 'It's being
orchestrated
, can't you see? Pick out their
leaders!
' No one questioned his authority even though he was only one active amongst many.
Katya slid into a workbase and held her wrist over a sensor, letting her carpal implant prompt the system through a series of viewpoints and updates.
'What can you see?'
She had known Patrische would gravitate towards her. He had faith in her abilities, he had often told her so.
She stared at the array of viewpoints on her four screens, flicked rapidly through them. 'They're certainly being orchestrated,' she said. 'There's a shape to it. The focus of the riot's formation is here.'
'Can you isolate their leaders for us? You've been undercover.' She hadn't told him, but she knew of Patrische's ability to keep tabs on everything in his district; she should have known that he would have seen her report from the previous day. She wondered how much he knew of her motivations.
She scanned the pictures, the slo-frames of faces, ones the MetaPlex had matched up with criminal records. But there were so many—the system was unable to narrow it down sufficiently. Katya knew the importance of seizing their leaders. Looking at the faces she knew that her intuition might fill the gaps in the MetaPlex's analysis.
And then she saw her brother. Earlier, she had searched the reports on the Panier riot but he had not been one of the numerous Farceurs listed as casualties. She should have expected him to be here.
And not only was he here, he had a communicator stuck to the back of his hand—he was one of the leaders of this riot. Was this what he had called 'making things interesting', this attack on the Holy Corporation?
Katya felt furious at him, for no obvious reason. She should not be feeling responsible.
'Is this one?' Patrische was back, leaning over her, gesturing at the slo-frame of Vladi.
Then he leaned closer and turned to Katya. 'This is the one, isn't it? This is the one you saw yesterday.' She could tell from his voice that he was implying far more, that he knew that this was Vladi, her brother although she had no brother.
'Are you going to signal him or...?'
She flashed her carpal over the sensor, saw a cursor momentarily flicker over Vladi's face on the screen, saw the flash of triumph on her lover's features. And then she watched as an armed drone dropped out of the hovering swarm, she saw the look of surprise and then fear on Vladi's face as the drone swooped and loosed its bolt of energy and then the muscles of his face went rigid and his body jerked and slid to the ground. She watched, still, as the drone returned and aimed a monitor dart at his chest, a life-preserving measure Katya was suddenly glad had been adopted by the MedSpread police after their most recent coup d'etat.
The riot was under control within an hour of its outbreak. The populations of the poor and the disaffected were relatively minor, here in Aix, and the imported provocateurs had been unable to sustain the assault. Katya joined the first party to emerge from the barriers; such efforts would look good in her records, but she had another motive. The rioters had removed most of their dead and injured but they had been informed enough to leave those marked with monitor darts—anyone interfering with one of these would be shot and captured themselves.
The smell of smoke was strong, drifting over from burning shops and houses a few streets away. Katya made straight for where she knew her brother to be and she found him slumped against a wall, his head at an improbable angle. She knew straight away that something was wrong and she rushed to him, searched in vain for a pulse in his neck, found none. She checked the monitor dart and instantly she saw what had happened: it had been shot from too close and its tip had penetrated her brother's chest cavity, enough to drain the life from his body as he had lain there, waiting for the fighting to end.
She stood and fought down the rush of emotions that threatened to swamp her. There was no rational reason for such a response. She called for a drone to come closer, said, 'This one's dead,'—
and damned
, she added to herself—and began to walk back to the compound. By the time she reached the gates she was, again, in complete control.
V
She sat with her feet in the pool, the motion of the spa water a pleasing distraction. Patrische would be here soon, they had things to discuss.
It was four weeks since the riots had erupted in Marseilles and Aix and along the coast in Montpellier and Ague. Four weeks since a brother she had once come close to forgetting had reappeared and then killed himself through his own recklessness. She knew that it was her command that had targeted the drone on Vladi but she could not accept responsibility. He had been an atheist, he had staged an attack on the Holy Corporation and by so doing, he had wilfully desecrated the Body of the Son of God. Would a thousand years ever be enough to convert humankind when there were so many damnable souls in existence?
She had seen a drone's view of some kind of commemorative service held by the Farceurs after the riots. Vladi had been one of many to be remembered. There had been singing and drug-taking and, ultimately, a small raft built from message-sticks had been set out into the Med. They had read the messages aloud as the raft broke up among the rubbish and the sludge a few tens of metres out. Vladi's had read, 'Kernel Konrad. In a world of fools he didn't make the grade.' Katya had flicked forward through the rest of the message-stick readings, marking faces from the crowd to be cross-compared and identified and filed under Subversive.
She had put the whole affair to one side by the following day, there were more important things to concern her.
This afternoon she had called up Sub-Director Armand and he had spoken with her, a Meta-cast hallucination held within her head by her templar implants. 'Is there any way I can expand my role—within the Order Office, of course?' she had wanted to know. For three weeks she had been feeling that her talents were being squandered in this routine supervision of the city police department; a new drive... a new
ambition
had been pulling at her brain. 'I have been here for two years and I feel that my progress has not been appropriate to my aspirations.'
Armand had stared at her, from within her head. A small smile had played around the corners of his mouth. 'RoKatya Tatin, you must know that your request is not unusual at present: a number of your coactives have put in similar statements, all hoping for a position on the
Third Testament
.' A twitch of the sub-director's head stopped Katya from interrupting. 'But I can tell that your concern is a genuine one and that you are not angling for inclusion on the voyage to Expatria. I will say, however, that your potential for such a posting is great, if you were to consider it.
'Your recent disaffection has been brought to my attention and I have run a series of profiles. A prolonged presence in the Order Office is not a favoured option. You have a number of alternatives, we feel, although one in particular stands out. The data are accessible from your workbase—you must take the afternoon off to consider your options.
And so she sat, feet in the pool, waiting for Patrische. She had studied the alternatives and now they were chasing each other relentlessly around her mind. Until this afternoon she had not even considered Expatria and for a time she had been drawn to the idea of a totally fresh beginning. But it would be too much of a wrench and she had not yet given up on her relationship with ThePatrische.
The sun was heavy above the horizon before he returned from his workplace. Katya had pulled a gown around herself and moved to a perfectly trained veranda.
'You wanted to talk,' he said, without any build-up. He had always been direct, a Thessalonian trait.
'My sub-director has recommended that I transfer to Prague,' she said. Armand had put the move before her only as a means of testing the stagnation of her career, she felt sure; her future could still be in the MedSpread if she chose. Katya was putting the proposal to Patrische in a similar vein: as a means of testing the stagnation of their relationship. It would draw some sense of commitment, she hoped.
But then she saw the look on his face. He wasn't surprised, he was even considering it! 'I heard,' he said. 'It would be a sensible move. You would be serving the Holy Corporation well.'
She couldn't believe what she was hearing. She had known that there were problems with their relationship but she had never expected
this
.
'You think I should go?' It was such an effort to speak.
He shrugged. 'Only you can choose. I was, however, intending to raise a corresponding subject: I have been offered a consultancy role in the planning stages of the
Third Testament
project. It would mean an eighteen month transfer to Gaza City. I have little choice: all of humanity must be converted to the new gospel before the Final Calling—this is how I must make my contribution. Eighteen months max.' He smiled, spread his hands, moved towards her. 'Think of it as a kind of matrimonial vacation: you in Prague, me in Gaza. After eighteen months we will be free to renew our link. Consider it. Now—' he rubbed his hands together and pulled a numbed Katya from her seat '—now it is time, I feel, for some food.'
VI
She hid in an alleyway fifty metres from the newest Svatopluk Čech Bridge, waiting for her chance. Cassi and Theo had crossed the surging grey waters of the Vltava already—she had seen them halfway across; Ephesians were always quick to act, quick to take the right course. Again, she cursed her Roman banding: why had Liame and Sansebastien not followed the Ephesians' lead? Why had Katya felt a duty to stick with her indecisive Roman colleagues even as the lynch mob had descended?
She had been in Prague for eleven months, living undercover as a mere evangelical. On her arrival, the Vltava and the countless leaning church spires had triggered memories in Katya of her pre-crèche childhood, but the atmosphere had been something new: the shabby disrepair of the city's buildings, the ever-present violence on the streets, the air of intimidation. Prague had become a hot spot of Consumerist activism and the sabotage and open hostility had severely tested the corporate grip. Right Consumers recruited openly on the streets—promoting outmoded ideas of democratism and popular control of the supply-lines—despite their recent proscription.
At first, it had been relatively safe to travel the city and preach the New Gospel. Mere evangelicals had not been targeted. Katya had used this cover to study the numerous subversive under-currents, identifying the ringleaders, using her eidetic memory to mentally catalogue their activities, their contacts, ranking their threat to stability. She had been taken up in a new fervour, a new internal drive to do the Holy Corporation's work, to spread the culture of belief. That desire had taken a deep hold in her subconscious.
The unrest had spiralled upwards in recent weeks. Many of GenGen's Twelve supporting corporations had withdrawn altogether; the Holy Corporation's own facilities had become fortress islands within this unruly urban mess. Even preaching evangelicals had become targets for the mobs in the Staré Mĕsto and Josefov districts.
She stepped out from cover and sprinted across to the bridge.
Liame and Sansebastien would not be following her now, she had given them time enough. They must have fallen to the mob. As she reached the roadway and headed out across the Vltava she mumbled a brief prayer to the All and then concentrated on maximising her physical performance.
She reached the west bank and the relative security of the Letnà Entertainments Park and there was no sign of pursuit. She slowed to an easy five metres per second jog and began to work through events in her mind: the stories that a planned revolt would be instigated at some point during these outlawed Easterweek celebrations; the confrontation outside the old Agnes Convent, the gunfire, the pursuit—the possibility that this lynch mob could be the start of something far bigger, perhaps a new outbreak of the Consumption Wars.
She ordered her thoughts as she left Letnà, heading for the Roman mission house in the converted remains of St Vitus's Cathedral. Then, with a mental prompt, she sent the report in transit from her templars to the nearest corporate receiving post from where it would be relayed to Peter Rabat, Roman Director of the TransCarpathia region.
As she paused beneath the mosaic of the Last Judgement which surmounted the cathedral's Golden Gate the reply came through, a direct templar hallucination from Rabat himself. 'You warn of imminent collapse, large-scale insurrection. Can you place a value of probability on your judgement?'
She hesitated. 'All the evidence points to that conclusion, Director Rabat, but a lot of that evidence is rumour and hearsay. The chances are perhaps little more than fifty per cent, but I
feel
them to be far higher.' She saw the look of acceptance on Rabat's features—the directors placed a great deal of faith in the judgements of their leading actives.
After a second or two, he said, 'I have consulted with the TransCarpathian MetaPlex: a temporary withdrawal of corporate forces from Prague is to be implemented. You will receive instructions in the Vitus mission house.'
'Please,' Katya interrupted, seizing her opportunity. 'Could you tell me if my application has received consideration yet?'
Director Rabat was not put out by her forwardness. He smiled and nodded. 'RoKatya Tatin, you will find your instructions for withdrawal from Prague inside the Vitus mission house. You will be transferred with immediate effect to retraining camp in Malacca. Yes, RoKatya, you have been recommended for inclusion on the
Third Testament
, you have been put forward for the mission to Expatria.' She stared up at the kneeling figures of the Bohemian saints and kings, the bullet-riddled Christ-figure and His supporting angels, and then she passed into the mission house in search of her new instructions.