Sol in Flames (Battleborn c23 Book 1), page 11
She swallowed. "Yes, sir."
"Good, then that's settled. To give you a free hand, you will be relieved of all other duties until further notice. Officially, I'm going to present this as a disciplinary action because you're responsible for the loss of the two mutants to USI."
"Sir, for the record..."
"Whether you could have prevented it is not at issue here, and it is immaterial. We're using the incident to buy you time for your investigation." He turned to Vandemool. "Eric, you are setting up a special account for Captain Toran that cannot be traced! I don't care what budget you divert the money from."
"Yes, sir."
"Good." He paused briefly before continuing quietly. "I know that the whole thing is not without risk. If anything comes out, I may have to officially disassociate myself from you, Kareena. But I have a hunch that Chang and Lamargue and the other sycophants know more than they want to admit. And Naratova as well. It's possible they're all in on it."
"A conspiracy, sir?"
Haggard reflected. "Call me paranoid, but yes, I guess you could call it that. I need to know where I stand, Kareena, and you're going to take care of that for me. If we succeed, I'm sure it won't be to your detriment." He slumped a little. "I know I should have retired long ago. The reason I haven't resigned yet is that I don't see a suitable successor. And I'm not the type of person who doesn’t care what he leaves behind. I've been watching you for quite a while, Kareena, and I think you would qualify. What you need is a little dirt under your fingernails. You need to learn to bend the rules of the game to your ideas and jump into the muck when all other avenues are blocked. Those are the things I learned in the Iridium Wars, and I've done well since. I sincerely wish you were spared a war. But with what I'm asking of you now, you may be getting closer to it than you'd like."
Kareena felt the blood drain from her brain during her superior's speech. She glanced at Vandemool. He hadn't even flinched when Haggard brought her into the picture as a successor.
"Don't look at me as if you took the plate from me," the Pure placated. "I recommended you."
Now she was completely perplexed. "But I thought you..."
"You thought I didn't like you? Let's put it this way: I have found that you don't let a little headwind rattle you."
"That was a test?"
Vandemool smirked. "A little."
Sal Haggard interrupted the conversation. "Now that that's cleared up, Kareena, are you in?"
"Do I have time to think about it?"
"No."
She took a deep breath. "Yes, I'm in."
"Good." The security chief stood up, and his aide did the same. "Then let's get to work!"
Kareena rose as well. "Thank you for your confidence, sir."
"What do you mean confidence? If you succeed, I can finally retire, and if not, I'll keep a clean slate because you acted on your own authority. I'll keep my old butt nice and out of harm's way. Eric will take over communications. You and I won't see each other for a while. Good luck, Captain."
He saluted. Kareena returned the salute. Then the colonel turned and went into his office. She stayed behind with Vandemool.
"Well, I think we'll go over the details now," he announced.
She paused. "Before we do, I have one more question, maybe two."
He made a welcoming gesture.
"All right," she launched into it. "How long have you been testing me?"
"Not that long. Two or three months."
"And before that? I mean, we've had arguments before, haven't we?"
"That must have been genuine antipathy, then."
Kareena was shocked at how matter-of-factly he expressed this. "And why did you pick me as a possible successor to Haggard if you didn't like me?"
"To be clear, Captain, I still don't like you very much, and I don't think we'll ever be friends. But that doesn't change the fact that you're qualified for the job."
"I always thought you wanted to succeed Sal."
He looked neither horrified nor amused. "That was never seriously on the table. I'm a Pure. I possess a high-performance genome that cost my parents a moderate fortune. I suffer from no genetic diseases whatsoever, and that will not change until the end of my life. And this end will likely be far beyond my hundred and fiftieth birthday. I am physically almost equal to you, although unlike you I hardly exercise. I already have an IQ of about 160 without implants. I am superior to you and every other Norm in almost every way, and I know you hate me for it, as do all the other Norms in Cynarian's security forces. All these people will never accept me as one of their own the way they do Sal Haggard. And that is exactly why I am not suited for this job. I serve as an advisor to the chief of security, and I hope that his successor - or successors - will also value my advice."
"Are you saying you have no further ambitions for your career?"
"Don't be naive, Captain! Of course I have ambitions. They're just a little beyond what you might aspire to. In any case, they are beyond the Internal Security of Elysium City. I, too, am being tested, just as I have tested you. For me, at least in terms of career, the stakes are no less than they are for you."
Kareena propped her hands on the back of the chair in front of her. "May I ask what goals you are striving for?"
"As long as you don't expect an answer."
"I see."
"Good, now back to the more obvious tasks. But we'd better finish this in my office. Please follow me!"
As she trotted after him, Kareena wondered if what Haggard and Vandemool were putting on here was indeed true or merely an act to persuade her to undertake this daring enterprise. That the Pure was a shrewd strategist was beyond question. And even if she had known Sal Haggard so far as a straightforward stubborn man who preferred to tackle his opponents head-on rather than to spin intrigues behind their backs, she did not question that he could do otherwise if needed. If this were not true, he would not have been able to hold his own in the snake pit of senior management for so long. But regardless of whether she was really being groomed to succeed the security chief or just being burned in a suicidal maneuver, she had little choice. Either way, she would have to be careful as hell not to get shortchanged in this game. The snake pit was waiting. And she was about to jump right into it.
10-21-2210, Rheinberg Refugee Camp, Federation Border Zone, Earth
The pouring rain had given way to a light drizzle. For a few seconds even, the sun had come out between the clouds, moving quickly across the sky only to disappear again shortly afterwards. In Greenland, it had sometimes cleared up for several days and the prospectors had been able to work in the glow of the sun. Here on the North Sea coast, even a brief break in the cloud cover was a rare event.
It was already late afternoon. The last rays of the setting sun were reflected in the facades of the high-rise buildings and arcologies on the other side of the Rhine, just behind the floating container terminals of Walsum Harbor. The tallest of the structures stretched nearly half a mile toward the sky and were not infrequently shrouded in clouds. At the moment, however, the mountains of steel, glass and concrete could be marveled at in all their glory. That's where Skip wanted to go. Only a river separated him from civilization. Well, and an armada of floating and flying surveillance drones that immediately sounded the alarm if anyone trespassed.
He sighed.
Instead of marveling at the wonders of one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth over there, he sat on the pitiful remains of the walls from a building that had long since been destroyed. With every storm tide, the water here rose several yards. Only the low tide and the exceptional halfway dry weather allowed him to stay here. He was not alone. A good dozen residents of Rheinberg were strolling through the silt, looking for anything that the last tide had washed up, mostly debris from houses that had already been swallowed up for good by the sea. A fate that sooner or later also threatened the huts and barracks that made up Rheinberg. In stark contrast to the sky-scraping corporate palaces on the opposite bank of the Rhine, hardly a building here had more than two stories. Like the sparse grasses and shrubs that lined the banks, the houses ducked under the permanent wind. The inferior building materials required that only a minimal area be exposed to the storms. As a result, the roofs of the refugee camp formed an almost flat plateau. Even the roads and paths between the houses were covered with slabs of concrete or Plexiglas to protect them from the perpetual rain. One could walk on the roofs, almost without ever having to climb a step. At least in good weather like now. Skip looked around and saw many people doing just that, though not for physical exercise or relaxation, but to inspect the aftermath of recent storms and repair damage to their homes. Most of them were Slags. Rheinberg had neither radiation protection nor decontamination teams. All the toxic muck from the flooded areas collected here on the shoreline, contaminating the camp and all its inhabitants, some for several generations. Genetic purification of the genome sequencing was virtually unheard of here - or to be more accurate, unaffordable. They were as miserable of creatures as the Slags out in the solar system, most of whom lost their health and genetic integrity due to poorly shielded cosmic radiation. Different causes, same effect.
Skip squinted his eyes as the sun peeked out from behind a cloud once again. He enjoyed the sight of the glowing hydrogen ball. It was the same star he'd seen from the freighter's observation deck. Almost every free shift he had spent at least a few minutes marveling at the splendor of the universe. And the brightest spot of light in the blackness of the universe, even far out at Saturn and its moons, was still the sun, albeit far smaller and less dazzling than as seen from Earth. An essential difference was, however, that in all spaceships and stations a layer of armored glass had always separated it’s inhabitants from the sun. Here it was merely the volatile gas of the Earth's atmosphere - at least a few dozen miles thick, but still far less solid than the dome of an observation canopy. Besides, there was no wind blowing across his face in space. He tightened his hood once more. He had no interest in being recognized as a mutant and beaten up again. Most of the inhabitants of Rheinberg had better things to do than beat up mutants, but on the other hand, the willingness to use physical violence was generally quite high here. No wonder, because there was no central administration and the security forces of the Federation, contemptuously called 'Feds', only showed up on special occasions. For example, when they felt like 'Slagslapping' again, as the spontaneous aimless raids were called.
Skip had only been here three days, but he had quickly learned the basic rules by which the refugee camp operated.
Rule number one: The strongest was always right.
Rule number two: Stay away from the Feds!
Rule number three: Mind your own business and leave the others alone!
He probably owed it in large part to the last rule that he hadn't been beaten up since he left Nijmegen. In any case, he didn't feel so alone here. There were quite a few mutants in Rheinberg. Almost all of them had escaped from their former masters, mostly corporations from the adjacent metroplex. They had had their ID chips surgically removed or, in extreme cases, had cut them out of their arms themselves and hoped to hide from their captors here. Said captors were mostly independent bounty hunters and only in the rarest cases corporate troops, as in the colonies. The Federation attached great importance to the fact that the strong arm of the corporations was limited to the company premises and their immediate surroundings. This was also true of the 'Federation Border Zones,' slums and other illegal settlements that had sprung up around Federation territory to house all the unfortunates who were denied entry into the Promised Land. They came in by the millions from the vast deserts of Central Asia, the radioactively contaminated lands of Eastern Europe, the eternally violence- and plague-ridden badlands of Africa, and the flooded regions along the coasts of the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and North Seas. As did Skip. As an officially free man, however, he had nothing to fear from the bounty hunters. That was at least one advantage on his side. The bounty hunters weren't the only ones currently on the lookout for mutants, though. Even though the majority of Rheinberg's inhabitants followed rule number three, there were enough fanatics who never missed an opportunity to introduce any mutant they found to clubs, knives, and their other friends. The various religions gave many of those stranded here support in their deprived existence, whether they were Neo-Christians, Gaians, or Purgatorians. However, their faith also gave them reason to eradicate from creation those who, in their opinion, did not conform to their God's ideals. Some did not even need a supernatural advocate to act out their aggressions. Whatever the reason for the hatred, even Skip's perfectly legal ID could not protect him from persecution by the mutant hunters. Therefore, he tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible. As a Beta-class mutant, he had a much better chance than the Alphas, who made up the majority of genetically modified humans on Earth. An average height of seven feet and the weight of a medium-sized ox were difficult to conceal. On the other hand, the giants were not so easy to deal with. True, all the Alphas that Skip had dealt with so far were quite gentle and had even-tempered personalities. But cornered, a four-hundred-pound mountain of muscle was capable of quite a bit of damage. At that point, rule number one usually kicked in, allowing the Alpha-class mutants to move about reasonably openly.
Besides, he had found out, many mutants were under the protection of Cerberus, the man Skip had come here to see. The search for him, however, turned out to be a bit more difficult than it had sounded during the conversation with Dragonfly. Everyone here knew the name, but no one could - or would - tell Skip where to find the mystery man. The manager of the capsule hotel where Skip had taken shelter had referred him, in response to his inquiry, to a sleazy dealer who had made him pay rather dearly for a few clues that could be described as vague at best. The contents of Skip's last CashCard were slowly coming to an end. He needed to get to his accounts soon, but there was no bank in the refugee camp.
As the last ray of sunlight disappeared behind the horizon, Skip rose. The fresh breeze from the sea was already blowing in new dark clouds. Soon it would start raining and storming again.
After sundown, the dealer had claimed, Cerberus could be found at 'Armageddon,' a notorious drinking and gambling den that closed whenever the Feds raided and reopened two nights later. Skip had already been there last evening but had encountered little willingness to help him with his request. Since he hadn't turned up a more promising lead all day, he just went there again. Better than hanging idly around.
At night, most of Rheinberg's neighborhoods belonged to the gangs. Not that they disappeared from the scene during the day. They collected their protection money at any time of day, but as long as the sun was shining, they were mostly peaceful. Under cover of darkness, they settled unpaid balances, both with unwilling 'customers' and rival groups. Anyone who came into the line of fire in these fights could expect no sympathy. Therefore, most of the camp's inhabitants hurried to their lodgings and barricaded all doors. On the rapidly emptying street, Skip was also met by the first squad. Four Norms in bright red uniforms, every square inch of exposed skin covered with colorful tattoos and cheap for-show implants. Skip obsequiously made way. The gang members ignored him.
Lucky.
Skip's target was one of the oldest buildings in the camp. It was made of crumbling brick instead of concrete. It had probably been built even before the flooding and resulting influx of refugees. In the meantime, it had been completely integrated into the enclosed development. One could still make out that it had once had a tower, the stump of which still protruded one or two stories above the surrounding buildings.
The two bouncers, a man and a woman, looked at him with stern expressions, but let him in after he paid the admission fee. The interior consisted of a wild hodgepodge of furniture and objects of all kinds. No two chairs or tables seemed identical. Nor did the pictures and objects covering the walls suggest any specific underlying theme. Whereas 'flotsam and jetsam' might have been a possible theme upon closer inspection, it also described the human content of the establishment quite well.
The club was only half full at this early hour. Skip had no trouble finding an empty seat at the long bar and ordered a beer. The bartender served him in silence, but gave him a look that was a little too intense for a casual scrutiny. That he was a mutant could not really be the reason. Among the guests, he already saw several Alphas standing around a table, engrossed in some strange game with sticks and balls. Most likely he was just 'the new guy'. Skip hoped not to become a regular at all. Even if the synthetic beer made from algae or even more deviant base materials wasn't that bad, he didn't want to spend a day longer in Rheinberg than absolutely necessary.
"Hey, you!"
Skip was startled. He hadn't even noticed how the woman had approached him. In his opinion, her heavy boots were only a limited match for her shorts and skimpy top. Most striking was her largely bald skull, adorned only by a few thin braids into which her sparse hair was braided. A Beta.
"Hi," Skip replied cautiously.
"Shut up!" the woman snapped at him. "You're the one who asked about Cerberus yesterday, no?"
At the mention of the name, she immediately had Skip's full attention. "Do you know where I can find him?"
"What do you want with him?"
"I was told he could help me.
"What for?"
"I want to get into the Federation, but they've changed the entry requirements and won't let mutants in without a corporate affiliation."
She laughed. "They generally don't let escaped mutants in."
Skip shook his head. "I didn't escape. I bought my way out."
She stiffened. "Never met a ransomed person before. Thought that wasn't even possible."
He shrugged. "I did it."
"So, what are you doing in Fedland?"
Assuming she meant the Federation, Skip replied, "To the nearest spaceport and out of here as fast as I can."
