Darren J Hale

  Exiles

  © 2020, Darren J. Hale. All rights reserved.

  The right of Darren J. Hale to be identified as the author of this work is asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Except as provided by the Copyright Act 1988 no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any

  resemblance to actual persons living or dead

  is purely coincidental.

  Cover: © 2020 bookcoversart.com

  Thanks to Sally – my first proof-reader, and all those

  whose contributions and insights have been gratefully

  received.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  Epilogue

  Also by this Author:

  Prologue

  Twenty-six years ago:

  Tabitha Lane’s presence filled the room. The air resonated with her distress, leaving a vacuum that defied any sounds to follow. ‘Is that it? Is that all you have to say?’ she enquired once she’d recovered.

  Justin was unmoved. He showed no sign that he’d been affected by her sudden outburst. ‘Yes,’ he replied patiently, ‘that is all I have to say – for now. I have an important matter to attend to, and once I’m finished, I will return here so that we can discuss this matter further.’

  ‘Another important matter?’ The air started to smoulder. ‘More important than this – your family!’

  ‘Until half an hour ago, I didn’t know I had a family. Then you…’ He wielded his irritation as if it was a weapon, challenging her with unspoken threats of his own. ‘Barge in here and confront me with the news that I have a son, expecting that this somehow gives you a right to demand that I… what…? Somehow contrive to make you a citizen of New Chicago? So that you can live, here, with me? Do you have any comprehension of what it is you are asking? Relationships between citizens and blanks are absolutely forbidden.’ In his anger, he’d employed the derogatory term, “blanks”, that was used to describe non-genecoded outsiders. ‘And to compound your poor judgement, not only did you fail to seek a termination at the earliest possible opportunity, but you continued to conceal your pregnancy from me before seeking the services of a slicer in the undercity. Do you have any idea what this could do to me?’

  She’d been six months pregnant when she’d left him. He hadn’t noticed, though to be honest, only her closest friends had any inkling. She’d kept her figure well.

  ‘You would have demanded a termination!’

  ‘Of course I would! You cannot possibly conceive the damage that this fantasy of yours could do to me.’

  He looked at the baby in her arms. Until now he’d done his best not to acknowledge its existence.

  ‘I am an alpha. A shareholder. Which means that he too…’ He pointed. ‘…Is an alpha. If the council finds out, the consequences will be unforgiveable. I would lose my position… My status… Everything…’

  ‘Then make sure no one finds out! If he’s an alpha, GAIA can’t see him. Isn’t that how it works?’ said Tabitha, referencing the city’s all-seeing artificial intelligence.

  ‘No – that isn’t how it works!’ He didn’t have the patience to elaborate. Simon London would be arriving soon. They had business to discuss, and he had no excuse sufficient to put him off. Nothing more compelling than the truth. And he planned to keep that to himself… ‘Now – you will be quite comfortable here until I return.’

  He took a step toward the door.

  Tabitha stepped in front of him. ‘You must hear me out. My term is almost finished. I cannot leave. A single mother is of no use to the WMC. They would have me shipped back to The Deeps. I would have nothing. No job… No home... A person in my situation would be forced to scrape a living on the streets as a prostitute – or worse.’ Her eyes became wet with tears, but they did nothing to diminish her rage. ‘You cannot make me leave!’ And then more desperately she added. ‘But if they were to learn of this indiscretion…’

  Justin pushed her aside.

  Wrongfooted, Tabitha stumbled and fell. She twisted as she went down, turning her body beneath her in an effort to shield the baby.

  Her head hit the edge of the coffee table.

  The sound of it made him feel sick.

  He hadn’t meant to hurt her!

  Her neck lay at an awkward angle, quite obviously broken. She wasn’t moving. The baby lay wrapped within her arms, looking out towards the city’s fang-like towers and glimmering lights. The beast with a thousand eyes…

  1

  The gyrojet skimmed over another huddle of buildings.

  ‘Looks like a right shit-hole doesn’t it?’ one of the troopers observed conversationally. The patch above his left breast identified him as one Private Hyron Perscetty. He was sitting on the bench opposite to Tammy. His words were slurred, as if under the influence of a narcotic – painkillers for the bullet-hole in his right leg. A trickle of blood stained his armoured greaves – considerably less than Tammy might have expected given the nature of the wound.

  A picture paints a thousand words, and she was pretty sure that her face had already painted him an answer. Nevertheless, she embellished it with words. ‘I don’t think I’ve quite seen anything like it,’ she admitted.

  Another gaggle of buildings lay off to their left-hand side. They were simple affairs, their design uniform in a way that favoured functionality over aesthetics. The majority had been painted a dark cream colour, except for the roofs which were slate grey – a colour scheme would not ordinarily have made them particularly conspicuous in this bleak wilderness, if not for the exposed mud and unhealthy-looking crimson pools that surrounded them.

  ‘The tailings from the taconite refining are dumped just about anywhere they can find the room,’ Perscetty explained. ‘It leaches out harmful chemicals like mercury, that stain the water red and poison every living thing within miles…’

  ‘Still – it makes our job easier,’ the trooper next to him observed. ‘With no trees and shit, there’s nowhere for any of those bloody raiders to hide. And there ain’t none of that local fauna to worry about neither.’

  ‘Damn straight.’ Perscetty chuckled.

  Still – it is a shithole.’

  The gyrojet flew on.

  ‘Aren’t we stopping?’ Tammy enquired anxiously. She was sure she could feel the tiny poison-laden nano-spheres ready to burst inside her. She wasn’t sure she had much longer.

  ‘Nah,’ Perscetty replied. ‘That’s Camp Echo. We’ve still got a little way to go. Red Lakes is a co-operative. There’s seven…’

  ‘Six…’ Another trooper corrected him.

  ‘There are six satellite camps scattered all over the Red Lakes district. They work together as a co-operative rather than a company. Of course, the largest of them is Red Lakes itself, but it lies along the Blood River to the east of here. That’s where they send the taconite for collection and shipment.’

  ‘And that’s where the Seven-Oh is based,’ said the second trooper.

  There was a chorus of hu-rrah from the other four walking wounded sharing the ride. It was not hard to figure that her travel mates were the Seven-Oh.

  ‘You’re based at Red Lakes?’

  ‘We’re based everywhere honey. The WMC has a Protectionist garrison at every major subsidiary. Without us to protect them, they wouldn’t last very long. The fewking investors would probably tear the place up fighting for control,’ said the second trooper cynically.

  ‘Investors?’ Tammy asked.

  ‘The corporations. The city states… Given half a chance, any one of them would try and wrest control of the entire enterprise,’ Perscetty explained. ‘The WMC tries to moderate their influences. But they’re sneaky bastards. Always trying to influence the politics, bribing their way into favour with one or other satellite company.’

  ‘Like Echo?’

  ‘Yeh. Like Echo. Like right now…’

  ‘Keep it down up there!’ ordered one of the two able-bodied troopers sternly. The single-striped patch on his shoulder identified him as their squad leader, Sergeant Vincenzo.

  They went quiet. But Tammy was grateful for that little bit of information they’d started to share. And for the narcotic painkillers, without which they’d probably have said nothing at all.

  The gyrojet flared its wings, its turbofans killing its forward momentum as it dropped the last few feet to the ground, to land with a pair of thumps as its back wheels connected first, followed moments later by the front.

  The tailgate swung opened and two men entered, hauling a stretcher between them. Another pair of med-techs waited outside, along with a detachment of guards wearing ballistic vests and carrying e-mag carbines with the kind of nonchalance that suggested they knew exactly how to use them. The vests were indisputably WMC, and the carbines were rugged and worn, suggesting a legacy of long and faithful service.

  The stretcher-bearers solemnly scooped the body from the floor and carried it off. The trooper with the broken chest was dead. The medic had already abandoned his attempts to resuscitate the man, resigning himself to the fact that there was nothing more to be done.

  ‘Alright gentlemen – this is our stop. Everybody off.’ Sergeant Vincenzo was on his feet as he ushered the remaining passengers towards the exit.

  Perscetty tried to stand unaided, but stumbled… The narcotics had apparently dulled his wits such that he’d forgotten there was anything wrong with his leg.

  Tammy stepped in to help. The man’s companion had already tried to assist him but had failed on account of the fact that he was also injured. He’d taken a bullet just above his left hip. By all accounts it was nothing more than a flesh wound, though it had endowed him with a severe limp, and the efforts he made to support his comrade were almost comical.

  Tammy Placed an arm around Private Perscetty’s waist and escorted him as far as the tailgate, where the paramedics were waiting to receive him.

  The guards moved in around her. ‘Ma’am – if you’d be so good as to follow us.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘We’ve been ordered to escort you to the medical bay. Surgeon Commander Colson will examine you there.’

  ‘He’ll be able to deal with the nano-spheres?’

  ‘Begging your pardon?’

  Sergeant Vincenzo stepped up. ‘I believe Surgeon Commander Colson has been briefed.’ He handed the vial of antidote to one of the guards. ‘He’ll be needing this.’ It was hardly the answer Tammy had been looking for, but it did offer some assurance that Surgeon Commander Colson, whoever he was, might know some small measure of her story.

  Tammy was thirty-three years old, and not once in those thirty-three years, had she ever seen another city. She’d seen the vid reports prepared by the WMC: distilled images that, like pre-chewed food, lacked the tastes and textures that would have made them real. She’d seen the smelteries in Hephaestus, tipping liquid metals with the complexion of burning gold into vats and moulds, though, without the blistering heat and the choking fumes, there could be no imagining what it was like to work in such a place. She’d lived her life isolated from the realities of a world beyond the disc – and she knew it. Nevertheless, despite those sensations of sight and sound, Red Lakes remained uninspiring. The residential buildings were of a boxy design, vibrantly coloured, and capped with tall, peaked roofs, huddled along the opposite bank, as if sheltering from the bitter winds.

  But the WMC compound was even more remarkable, in that it had somehow managed to surpass even this city’s most dreary features, consisting as it did of a number of squat ferrocrete buildings, shaped like truncated pyramids: man-made tumours chaperoned within a three-metre-high fence of chain-linked wire.

  Tammy’s guards escorted her along a short slope that descended into one of the larger buildings. Like an iceberg, its majority seemed to lie beneath the ground.

  Surgeon Commander Carson was in the infirmary, assigning nurses and med-techs to the stream of walking wounded. Hyron Perscetty had already made it as far as a gurney, where he protested the attention of the two nurses who were trying to remove the armour from his upper body. They’d already taken his helmet, gauntlets, sleeves, and vest, and were now trying to separate the clamshell halves covering his torso.

  The surgeon commander appraised Tammy with a glance and dismissed her. ‘Take her to the waiting area and keep an eye on her. I’ll come see you once I’ve finished here.’

  ‘Hold on – wait!’ Tammy protested. ‘You can’t do that!’

  The guards reached for her arms, ready to pull her away.

  She shook them off.

  ‘I’ve been injected with a time-release poison. If I don’t get medical attention immediately – I’ll die.’

  The nurses had won their victory over the drugged Perscetty. They’d removed the armour from his torso, revealing the homeostatic black skinsuit that lay underneath. This final flimsy lining was fashioned from a smart material that kept moisture away from the wearer’s skin, regulating his body temperature so that he would neither feel too hot nor too cold, no matter what he was doing.

  The surgeon commander gave Tammy an enquiring look.

  ‘I was instructed to give this to you.’ One of the guards offered up the vial of bluish liquid. The surgeon commander appraised it with a glance and then handed it to a nurse. ‘See that it’s analysed straight away. And I want a blood sample...’ He nodded towards Tammy. ‘And then escort her to the waiting area.’

  The nurses had now begun removing the armour from Perscetty’s injured leg. The armour had been designed to apply pressure and astringents to the wound, controlling the bleeding until medical attention could be sought.

  The surgeon commander had nothing more to say. He grabbed a wad of dressings from one of the nurses and pressed them into Perscetty’s wound. ‘Quick – get him to the O.R. now!’

  2

  ‘Do not approach or you will be fired upon. This building is designated as the sovereign territory of the World Media Corporation, as defined by the accords, and has been placed “off limits”. Any approach will be considered a hostile act.’

  The floodlight beams that had been stabbing their way in through the windows suddenly died. The blackness was almost absolute.

  There was a wumph.

  A shudder went through the building.

 

  Pitor flung himself away from the window. He was no coward. His instinct for self-preservation had simply overwhelmed his curiosity. The gun battle played out around him; an overture of twangs, thumps, and crashes; a tympanum of holes punched in desks; and a woodwind of whistling debris made airborne. Moving on hands and knees, he tried to negotiate his way deeper into the room, placing as many obstacles between himself and the incoming gunfire as was possible, as things smashed and spattered around him, sending shards of whatever showering down his back and onto the floor.

  Something exploded through the foot of a desk, scouring his face with pieces of the synthwood construct.

  A Protectionist fell to the floor. Pitor heard the sigh and unmistakable thump of the body-armoured figure crashing to the ground.

  The orchestra quietened for a moment.

  Pitor could hear sobbing sounds and murmured voices coming from the back of the room. At a guess, there were another dozen men and women skulking in the darkness.

  A trembling light bobbed up the stairs.

  ‘Anyone there?’

  It took Pitor a moment to recognise the voice. It belonged to Willem, a mid-termer from the Gemini Domes. The man was six-feet-and-two-inches of nothing. He looked as if someone had pegged out his bones and then forgotten to hang any flesh on them.

  There were a few mumbled answers from the darkness.

  ‘The ERT have backed off for now. I don’t think they expected any resistance. The Protectionists gave them a bit of a shock. Anyway… The cap’n says we should get into the back rooms, and away from the fighting while we got the chance.’

  There were grunts of agreement, followed by sounds of people dragging themselves along the floor.

  A voice quivered nearby. ‘We have injured.’

  The light danced across the floor and fell on the face of the man who’d just spoken. He was supporting the body of a woman. Her blouse was matted with blood and there were further pools of the stuff on the floor – black in the torchlight. The man was kneeling with her head in his lap.

 

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