The Black Garden: Chapter 8

Jump Base Tiamat was as lively as Seoul, but without the neon, the pollution, the hustle, the haves and the have-nots. People on their work details staffed distribution centers, worked on the gardens, ran cafes and bakeries and hole-in-the-wall restaurants specializing in one or two dishes cooked by hand. Robots puttered around, cleaning, repairing, and maintaining the station, given a wide berth by a long line of freshly-buzzed recruits panting along after their drill instructor. A group of women and a man playing a guitar were engrossed in a heated flamenco competition to lusty cheers from the human audience and astonishment from the Palae'ans who had never seen the dance before.

There were over forty thousand residents on the station, around three quarters of them human. Around half of us worked for CEIDR in some capacity or another: logistics, ground support, manufacturing and fabrication, repairs, general staffing. The other half were Relay Station Operations workers on their reciprocal labor rotations. They included many of the doctors and nurses in the hospital, as well as the people who ran the civilian aspects of the station - either directly, in the form of orbital working groups, or indirectly, like the artists and dancers who brought color and life to the base.

I didn't catch a shuttle straight away, enjoying the chance to stretch my legs. There was a small crowd gathered in the Medical Square Forum, watching a group of humans in RSO sanitation uniforms argue about something to do with the station’s water processing. A Khem-bonded Palae'an Peacebringer mediated the discussion. The Khemmemu was a big one, ten feet of coiled muscle and deep indigo hide. The soothing voice of its Palae'an Rider - floating inside of its deep, translucent chest - piped out from spiracles that ran down the sides of the Khem’s neck like some strange musical instrument. I listened for a couple minutes, but didn’t know enough about vacuum plumbing to form an opinion. Instead, I headed for one of my favorite coffee nooks, Genet's, which occupied a pop-up booth across from the Medical Square Forum.

"Doctor Seung! I wasn’t expecting to see you back in Medical yet. Why do you look so thin?" The woman inside trilled as I brushed aside the bead curtain leading into the small, incense-scented lounge. The instruments of her craft were arranged around her on low tables: charcoal burners with vents to draw the smoke away, baskets of green coffee beans, pans and pots and the distinctive Ethiopian clay coffee pots known as jebena. She was toasting beans over one of the burners, and beamed as I came over and took a seat.

"I wasn’t expecting to see me back in Medical, either,” I said. “My last mission went to shit. The demon didn’t act the way we expected it to, so… lesson learned.”

“Why would a demon ever act like someone expects? They are demons,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Only God knows what passes for their hearts. Come, sit down. Are you back at the hospital now? Or are you still on kali’menka?”

‘Kali’menka’ was the Palae’an term for the reciprocal work rotations we all committed to as Confluencers. “Yeah, still on rotation… I was in the hospital as a patient. Actually just passing through on my way to my next job.” I switched to Amharic, her mother tongue. I still wasn't great at it, but meeting Genet and her family had gotten me interested in the language months ago and I'd done my best to learn.

"That’s the life of a soldier, or a doctor, eh?" Genet clicked her tongue as she picked up a fan, which she used to wave the aroma of the coffee toward me. "Here, smell this. We had the new beans sent up from Mareka since you were here last. The trees are going well."

I breathed in deeply taking my time, and rolled the slim vape Blackie had smuggled to me between my fingers. “Oh wow. Those smell amazing. Even better than the last batch.”

“Even with the aliens helping, it has taken time to get the trees to the right size. The soil and everything must be correct, but we are finding our way. Every harvest gets better.” Genet beamed with pleasure, only for her smile to wilt at the edges as someone out in the forum briefly raised their voice. "What is all that noise outside?

"Two of the working groups from ESO are chewing each other out. Something about the maintenance priorities for the station’s plumbing,” I replied. “At least it’s not Axuma spawning in the Central Station Park pond again.”

"Tsch." Genet made a face, turning to pour the beans into her mortar. “They were spacers, of course. And drunk.”

"Getting aggressively drunk in public and spawning in inappropriate bodies of water is a proud Axuma tradition."

"Well, I hate it. They were saying there might still be eggs."

"Great. The good news is that the water is totally the wrong temperature for them to be viable, so we won’t have carnivorous tadpoles flopping around everywhere, biting people’s ankles." Some of the tension eased from my shoulders as I drew a grateful cloud of smoke, held it, then let the vapor trickle out through my teeth. "To be honest, I’m not in a position to judge ‘em. I’ve broken so many regulations in that park."

“I doubt you were laying eggs.”

I winced. “There might be some things about me you’re better off not knowing.”

Genet laughed, pausing to greet the next of her regulars to come to the counter. She continued to chat about life on the station while she ground the freshly roasted beans, pausing only to wave the smell toward us with a small fan. With slim dark hands, she flipped a tray of cups and set out small dishes of dabo kolo, pea-sized pieces of spiced, fried barley dough. I leaned into some small talk with the others while she brewed the coffee, spooning sugar or salt into the rows of cups while we waited. Once the jebena began to foam at the top, Genet took it and filled the cups on the tray, setting one down in front of me with a small flourish.

"Thanks. Amsgenishalehu buna." I smiled at her, and took a moment to breathe in the aroma before taking the first sip.

Real coffee was still a rare commodity in any human-occupied Confluence center: Genet and her husband and teenage sons were all agricultural scientists by training, some of the few people here who really knew how to grow it, roast it, grind it and serve it. I made a point of stopping by whenever I shipped out, especially to worlds that weren’t some version of Earth. Not only was it literally the best coffee I’d ever had, people like Genet reminded me why I kept signing up to wade around in moldy subways, getting my face burned off by Violators.

I spent about an hour there, waiting for my brief to be delivered while Genet served the elegant Ethiopian coffee ceremony to groups of people who trickled in and out. There was no money to exchange, only my repeated regrets that I was being immediately shipped out again and wouldn’t be back ‘for a while’. Possibly never. There was always that risk. Once I was sure Genet wasn’t going to take it personally, I left for the shuttlebay. The ESO guys were still going at it, though it looked like they were finally starting to get somewhere.

 Aboard JBT, my team shared a six-berth cabin, with private beds that always reminded me of the pods in a love hotel or the slab doors in a morgue. They surrounded a small common area with two shower stalls, our armory, tables and a lounge. By Earth standards, it was like a luxurious but compact hotel apartment. By Confluence standards, it was rudimentary.

“I am in the mind to drag the Commander out to a forum and let him have it.” Lilia fumed, standing in front of a wall of projected screens. She was looking over the data for the mission when I scanned myself in, hands on her hips. “You haven’t even taken a full 72-hour rest, you’re still under fighting weight, and he wants to send you to this slum.”

“I’m fine, chief. I’ll mainline a bunch of candy and do active metabolization. I can put on ten pounds between here and Ideni that way.” I came up to join her, but even after coffee, the wall of text was a blur. "I should also have plenty of time to sleep now and on the flight, though I'll take as much as rack time as I can get."

"What he means is he wants to get it on with the brief," Blackie grunted from across the room. "Like the rest of us."

Lilia visibly resisted the urge to roll her eyes to the ceiling. But a few seconds later, the doors to two of the bedrooms opened and Ratty and Gaius emerged from their lairs to join us.

"Alright. First up, a refresh on Ideni. This is a Prime planet, no temporal or reality distortions, no Breaches in its history. ReMa activity is dampened as a result, so bear that in mind, Zealot and Blackie. Environmental conditions are near-optimal for humans." Lilia rattled that all off quickly: nearly every Confluence human knew of Ideni, even if they hadn't been to it. As she did, various small facts about the planet uploaded into our ATLAS databases for easy retrieval. "There are two hundred Confluence communities on Ideni, most of them on the continent of Kudonia and its surrounding oceans. These communities account for sixty-two percent of all humans in the Confluence at present. There are also freeholds that have declined to join the network and wish to be completely independent. New Warder is the largest such community."

We listened attentively, standing at ease in a line along the nearest table.

"Mission relevant facts are as follows: New Warder was one of the first human settlements established on Ideni. When Contact teams began rescuing humans from dying Earths, they were not wholly aware of just how short-lived we were as a species and how much ideological and cultural difference there was, say, between 1930s Europe and 2010s Europe," Lilia said. "These people were pulled from a 1940s-era Earth that was still cohesive, but was on the precipice of collapse due to Nazis intentionally creating Abyssal breaches in the course of their occult experiments."

I made a soft sound under my breath. One of CEIDR's first victories in the defense of Earth had been to prevent that scenario from happening in other timelines.

"Earth was and still not is ready for general contact, especially in any period before the second millennium," Lilia continued. "So you must imagine the shock and terror these people must have felt. Many considered themselves to have been 'abducted', not understanding why or how they had been rescued from impending destruction. Early on, assistance was given and attempts were made to integrate New Warder with other colonies, but they refused.”

Lilia pulled up an image of the city. For an Earth-like city, it was nice enough. Some of the tech common to Confluence settlements was obvious, like the spaceport and the towering vertical farms concentrated near the eastern perimeter. But compared to the floating lotus-shaped arcologies of Punawahu, it really did look like a slum.

"Doesn't look like they refused a Confluence-built power grid, or a spaceport, or farms," Gaius drawled.

"Or assemblers," I added. “Or the materials for the assemblers.”

"Yes, and it is a sentiment shared by the other communities. New Warder is a pariah state," Lilia replied. "The city is governed by a self-declared corporation, Vornn Industries. The current CEO, Rion Vornn, is a second-generation Ideni native and the defacto ruler of the settlement. New Warder is a small but reliable source of rhodium and palladium, so other communities have agreed to exchange rare metals for supplies and services New Warder cannot produce itself. But even so, the city is dying. Many young New Warderens are migrating to other settlements and becoming Confluence citizens. Vornn is attempting to entice them back with various initiatives, but thus far without success."

"Bugger," Blackie said. "Guess old Vornn'll just need to pull himself up by his bootstraps."

Ratcatcher stared thoughtfully ahead. Her irises absorbed light, rather than reflecting it: they looked like holes punched out in her face. "He can hang himself with them."

"Any reality warping detected in New Warder?" I asked. "If Ideni was going to manifest a breach anywhere, it'd be there."

"That is the consensus of the Fleet, but no, nothing can be detected from orbit," Lilia replied. "Environmental Services have, for a long time, acted as a the defacto diplomatic contact between New Warder and the Confluence. IES bring doctors, surgeons and other specialists and advanced equipment they need, and New Warder dutifully complies with the Confluence's conservation and environmental regulations. Unfortunately, the area they chose to settle happens to be an ecologically sensitive one. There is a native pollinator there, a species called 'hoi'pak', which collectively migrate to deep rainforest canyons once per year to breed. New Warder is built right next to one of those migratory destinations."

"And they mine fucking ruthenium." Gaius's face twisted into a craggy frown.

"Correct. As I understand it, the IES has very stringent compliance requirements." Lilia dipped her head in acknowledgement. "Their officers also spy on New Warder and report to the Confluence, which is something of an open secret in the colony. New Warder resents it, but tolerates the scrutiny provided the officers are human. You all have your Xelphion documentation, so I won't repeat that aloud, but we all know the complication in the current circumstances."

"’The complication’," Ratcatcher echoed sourly.

“They’re among us.” Gaius had the smug look of someone cracking a private joke.

"What we don't know is why the Taga inserted an agent of their own, disguised as a human," Lilia continued, smoothly switching to BCI. Her crisp, warmly feminine voice rang between our ears. "The effort suggests that Taga Avaya command suspects Abyssal activity. It is not our job to learn why, but I doubt CEIDR-Nex will be upset if we happen to stumble on this information. Current objective is to have Zealot impersonate an IES medical specialist as part of IES's regular rotation. Z, you will insert into the culture of New Warder and gain access to Vornn Industries and law enforcement insiders with the help of our C.I, so that you may begin assessing anyone who is dabbling in the demon-sauce. The rest of us will be arriving to replace Sh'chani as an IES audit team. We will be using the Confluence residence as our base of operations to deflect attention from the Taga Avaya hunters who will be arriving. We are to share any information we collect with them."

"Feels a bit one-sided, doesn’t it?" Blackie sniffed. "What do we get out of this?"

"The satisfaction of saving humanity, you fucking psycho." I grinned at him.

“Silence, twink.” He hawked in his throat and smirked.

Gaius grunted. "Seems pretty straightforward. Though last time CEIDR did what the Taga wanted, we got burned real bad."

"Karkinos was a Fleet-wide strategic failure to account for human limitations and needs," Lilia said aloud, her voice a little firmer. "And some of that failure was on us, on our inexperience regarding full-scale Abyssal assaults. You, Z, and I were all there. You know it is the truth. We also know that the Taga Avaya, for all its flaws, is the most experienced anti-demon force in the known universe. They are offering to mend old wounds involving us in this operation, and if they are innovating ways to join us in the fight on the Earth front, I am not displeased by this."

I grimaced as it occurred to me that there was a small, but significant chance that I knew one of the Hunters the Taga might dispatch to a place like New Warder. I really hoped I was wrong.

Lilia came to a stop in front of us. "There are many more details to share, but I will follow up with each of you before dispatch. Zealot, you are dead on your feet. I do not want to see you out of your rack for a minimum of eight hours unless it is to piss."

"Yes ma'am." I straightened and raised my fist in salute. "I'll get my candy and go to bed like a good boy.”

"Dismissed, for now. I will be in the co-working library if you need me in person." Lilia looked pretty tired herself, but attempting to tell her she also needed to rest would earn me a steely glare and possibly some choice Arabic. Her husband could sort that out. "Gaius, Ratty... neither of you are to bother Zealot."

Gaius and Ratcatcher both side-eyed me. "Yes ma'am."

Everyone saluted and fell out, and that was that. I gave my squadmates a mournful little wave as I drifted over to the foodweaver and used it to print myself a stack of energy gel packs and fruit chews. I took them to my bunk, spent a while alternating eating and meditating to actively metabolize the sugar, then passed out under a holographically-projected open sky.

I was unsurprised - and grateful - when I awoke to a soft throbbing sensation against my temple: my ATLAS, telling me I had a message from Ratcatcher. I took a moment to locate the captain. She was in the fabrication center now, probably working with her husband on one of his sculptures.

Rubbing my eyes, I crawled over to the door, racking it open. The room outside was darkened, the dim lights glancing off Ratcatcher's slim, well-muscled body. She wore her P.T gear, a padded crop-top and sweats. I glanced out into the room and waved her in, shuffling over so she could slip inside.

"Thanks," I whispered. "And good timing: Cappy is-"

The woman stopped my mouth with her hand, pushing me by the jaw until my head met the pillow. She was already hard under her clothing as she crawled over me, her braided hair falling over my chest, soft lips pressing against the side of my neck. I arched under her with a gasp, surprised but pleased by the urgency in her hands and hips as she ground herself between my legs.

Ratty wasn't a gentle top - or an especially attentive one - but there was something about the rough, animal way she fucked that did it for me. We were mirror opposites in the arrangement of our bodies, in our personalities and the nature of our magic. I could feel the endless hunger of her entropic field gnawing at my cells as I hooked my ankles over her thighs and wrapped my arms across her shoulders, letting the odd, thrilling mixture of pleasure and magical radiation scrub the last of the Violator's energy from my body.

When we were done, we opened the door to find Gaius already waiting, leaning against the wall between the pods with a book reader propped up in one giant hand. He glanced up as Ratcatcher, rumpled but once again fully-dressed, gave him a courteous nod before she sauntered off to her own bunk.

“Ready to be bothered?” Gaius leaned around and flashed me an inquiring look.

“Yessir.” Me - a greedy, hot flustered mess – swept my hair back along my skull with one hand and gave him a thumbs-up with the other. He grinned from ear to tattooed ear, and climbed in for round two.