Page 11 of Alliance
“No, but I’ll take water and a painkiller.”
“Of course. Excuse me.”
The doll left, sliding past a milky white curtain. Fásach swallowed hard, staring at his krol’s comm details. He’d needed help from the guild more times than he could count since Quiopha had died, and no matter how many years he’d been a member, he still felt like he’d never be able to repay his debts. Clearing his throat, he tapped Novak’s severe advenan features, and waited for their linguitors to connect.
“Commlink inaccessible,”his holotab intoned in his ear.
Fásach’s brow creased. He tried Vindilus. Also unable to pick up. He checked the guild’s secure socials. Mijka’s icon was on do not disturb as well. All three of them had been on the same job involving Imani James and the Conrad.
Maybe their job went sour. If the guild was losing ground on Huajile…
It would explain why Turj was confident enough to attack him on neutral ground. Novak had been gone too much, yielding his guild responsibilities to his obsession with the human dollhouse and its players. Mijka had been running things for months, so maybe the guild’s competition had started to take notice.
“Your medicine, sir.”
Fásach blinked at the hjarna doll, holding out two plas cups, one filled with water, and one with a gel shot of pain reliever. He took the gel first, squeezed it into his mouth, then chased it down with one cool gulp of water.
“Upon leaving the triage, your cache will be charged, so please take your time. And on behalf of the Huajile Xenobiology Institute family, thank you for putting your trust in our services.”
Fásach didn’t spare the doll an empty farewell but pushed out into the triage’s central hall. It was a prefab like every other neighborhood triage on Huajile. Marginally cooler than the exterior and insulated with photonic silver lame to keep the heat at bay, just like the lining of his jacket. Most triages were filled with elders fighting heatstroke and were as quiet as a library, punctuated only by the soft beep of vital decks and cool steam misters.
Which made the clatter of a barrier in front of the exit all the louder as Fásach ran into it, expecting the doors to slide open. He stumbled back, ears upright and at alert.
“Apologies, sir,” another doll, this one lavender and female, said as she approached. “It appears you do not have a cache suitable for the payment required. Would you like to open a line of credit? We make automatic payments streamlined and simple.”
“What? I should have at least enough to split the—” Fásach punched open his accounts, and despite how hot the air was on the other side of those doors, his blood ran cold.
Turj had hacked his holotab and drained him of every cred in his name.
Fásach swallowed hard. If the yog ransacked his accounts, he would have seen his address. Turj might not make a house call today, but someday after Fásach had his feet under him again, he’d come knocking.
Which meant he couldn’t keep Safia and Misila there anymore.
“Yes, I’ll open a line of credit,” he said with a hollow voice. The hostess took his biometric signature, and the doors openedinto the scorching air of the Pipes, the weapons bazaar where waves of volcanic tubes born from ancient eruptions formed a protective wall between the market streets and the lava seas of the Volcage. He stepped out into the ashy, dark afternoon as heat lightning snapped across the infernal cloud cover and made a direct left turn towards home.
The minuscule progress he’d made towards getting those girls a place in their clan was gone now. Probably forever. And the guild could only do so much. The complex dorms were full and only housed the barracks anyway. Best he could hope for was to hop between empty safe houses. Maybe a shelter where they wouldn’t need to register for a bed…
Whatever the solution, Fásach just needed it fast.
04
Without direct access to my atomic clock, I wasn’t sure how long I’d been walking, but I could guess at least twenty beats, and already my parumauxi were struggling in the heat. They flocked to the soles of my feet, bare and blistered, responding to the alarm repeating on my vitals deck.
[Warning: surface integrity compromised.]
I stopped at a fork in the road as the shoulder seams of my t-shirt fell apart under the crust of nano-foam. Its remnants fell to the ground, leaving my skin to bake in the oven air. Though the foam was meant to eat me alive, it acted as a buffer against the volcanic heat, continuing to fizzle beneath its thick, dry crust.
A gasp, murmurs, hastened footsteps. The air was so full of halos and echoes that I could hardly focus on the bodies around me, but I intuited the open stares of people hidden within fire blankets and thermophobic scarves. I recognized others like Master and the overseer, but some species were unknown to me. Beings with thick tusks and four eyes, a flat-headed creature with patterns carved into its head and heavy, full lips. The latter leaned against a wall as if the temperature were comfortable, chewing on a skewer of blackened meat thoughtfully.
I glanced in either direction, down rows of similar metal buildings layered with quilted insulation. The human halo I’d been following had faded into the strata of vehicles overhead as if it had merged with the traffic above, somewhere I couldn’tfollow. But if I looked to the left, I recognized the same signature.
How much further?The human woman’s voice, thinner and less authoritative, flittered up from the road.
Worried, sweetheart?
Both of those voices echoed along my synapses. They had been here, had walked down this street, but sols ago. Their impression wasn’t nearly as fresh as what had disappeared into the sky above.
But it was all I had. And the more I heard them, the more shape they took in my mind. I remembered them, just like I remembered snow. A human woman with a tall, muscular figure and dark skin that looked like black waters dappled with white moonlight. And the man… a devilish red venandi covered in scars, with thick hands and short spires.
