CHAPTER 1
With all the skills she obtained in her infamous military career, Cherry Aisha could have found employment in any number of lucrative fields, even on such a backwater planet as Bethune, but instead she sprawled on a tall seat at the entrance to Manny’s Playhouse, watching the eager reprobates stream by. She lacked the mass or height to be a truly ideal bouncer, who would primarily dissuade misbehaving party creatures by mere intimidation, but she supervised the string of bouncers beneath her to perfection, keeping the mayhem down to the optimal level Manny preferred . . . for gritty ambience or something. The crowd swirled by, spacers proudly sporting their distinctive orange vests, while frontier workers bore that over-spruced look, undermined by their sturdy attire, but city dwellers formed the majority of the mob, resplendent in their glow-rags and body paint.
Situated on the west side of Bethune’s prime city, Torino, beneath the eastern fringe of the Gear, Manny’s Playhouse didn’t lack gritty ambience, and that grittiness provided unlikely qualities Cherry valued.
Manny’s represented a job, a modest paycheck, and just enough challenge to keep Cherry’s inner focus from intractably fixing upon the yawning abyss that had consumed nearly every other member of the Blue Light Brigade in the years following the war.
As her mind wandered around the brink of that same alluring abyss and its constant siren song, Cherry’s gaze scanned over the marble-eyed patrons hurrying past her into the entrance, suddenly locking upon one man revealing the signs of intoxication . . . and more. Her augmented vision scan detected the telltale lump under the arm of that singular customer, and Cherry uncrossed her arms, motioning with two fingers. A pair of her massive underlings moved, snatching the long-haired merchant spacer out of line and giving him a gentle toss, sending him stumbling back into the flow of foot traffic moving along the thoroughfare where he fell. Cherry watched the operation dispassionately, her hired muscle stepping back to their posts, and she saw the long-haired spacer’s thoughts drunkenly rattle through choices, his brow lowering as he suddenly settled upon the wrong option.
Without conscious consideration she exploded off her seat and crossed the distance in a burst of blinding speed, part of Cherry’s mind dryly wondering why she even bothered. Her short knife was at the spacer’s throat before his fumbling hand managed to draw the pistol from its concealed holster under his vest, but Cherry dimly realized that she felt no emotion, no fear, no excitement. She could nudge the razor edge of her blade through this man’s pulsing artery, or she could spare his life . . . and neither option mattered in the slightest to her at that moment. Her growing zone of internal deadness now encompassed even this, it seemed.
The milling crowd parted around them, some looking on curiously, though Bethune remained a wild enough frontier planet that such scenes of modest violence weren’t shocking.
“I’m sorry,” Cherry said in a low, colorless tone as the man froze, her mouth near his ear. “You see, weapons aren’t allowed in the establishment, old stick.” Her knife just caressed the spacer’s skin, blood seeping from the merest slice. “You hear me, love?”
The spacer’s shaggy head nodded cautiously. “Y-yeah.”
“Good,” Cherry said, reaching her left hand around to eject the power cartridge from the half-drawn pistol. “I’ll hold onto this, then. A little souvenir, like. Instead of your head, eh? You can even keep your adorable little weapon, see?”
Cherry straightened, her knife disappearing, and she slipped back to her perch beside the door, the confiscated power cartridge idly flipping in her hand. The shaggy spacer staggered up, pushing off through the crowd, but Cherry didn’t look after his departure, already dismissing him from her thoughts. Instead, the abyss slowly filled her mind again, drawing, calling, waiting, as she went through the motions of a regular work night, acting like a regular person, wondering why even the modest approval of Manny should matter at all to her.
Originally, Cherry chose Bethune over other frontier worlds despite its burgeoning approach to urbane tameness because of its single claim to distinction within the Confederated Worlds. When scouts first mapped Bethune centuries earlier, they noted a number of unique terrain features including two tall hills shaped like nearly perfect pyramids, both situated a short distance from each other, a narrow valley between. Humanity being predictably drawn to interesting geometry, early colonists settled near the twin pyramids, attaching great significance to their appearance.
It was some years into Bethune’s history before the superstitious fixation on the pyramids resulted in eccentric theorists mounting an expedition to tunnel through a hundred centuries of accumulated volcanic detritus and rock, seeking the mystical core of the pyramids and the deep meaning sure to be revealed. To the surprise of nearly every expert in human space, the lunatic theorists’ tunnel blundered into an immense metal structure hidden within. The news exploded across human space, and speculation launched into the highest flights of fancy ever imagined.
It became quickly clear, Bethune’s pyramids were of alien origin, possibly of ancient religious significance, and the nutters felt certain these pyramids must somehow be tied to the legendary pyramids of ancient Earth through strands of mystical consequence. Despite excited fervor from every university in human space and tremendous interest from the scientific and superstitious corners of the Confederated Worlds, it took decades to fully unearth even one of Bethune’s pyramids . . . only to discover it wasn’t really a pyramid at all.
While the exposed edifice possessed the appropriate number of sides to match human ideas of a pyramidal structure, the massive metal mechanism lay untouched by corrosion, the intricacies of its operation becoming clear, the implications unexpectedly alarming. The entirety of the unearthed alien artifact stood many times larger than the ancient earthly pyramids, but it was not a tomb or a temple. The first pyramid of Bethune was nothing more than the severed landing gear of some incredibly vast alien ship. Perhaps most troubling of all the facts emerging from the archaeological survey remained the fact that something had violently sheared these massive pyramid-shaped landing claws from whatever impossibly huge vessel once employed them. The only sensible answer suggested that they beheld the signs of some alien war from thousands of years in the past. The scale and power involved beggared human imagination, and perhaps this effect explained why widespread archaeology or salvage operations on Bethune never really took hold. Perhaps the mortal psyche recoiled from powers that so dwarfed and diminished every human effort in history.
Interest faded and the second pyramid had remained only half excavated now for more than a century, while the first pyramid became little more than an interesting appendage to Bethune’s capital city of Torino, human structures now built in, under, and through the ancient landing claw . . . structures like Manny’s Playhouse. The Gear served settlers of Bethune much like a boulder in the garden served so many squirming bugs.
Cherry Aisha viewed it in that light, the vile vermin squirming around her every night, her own existence representing just another particularly venomous bug among them all.
Cherry had thought that Bethune’s tangible proof of an unimaginable alien conflict might provide relief from her own internal struggles. Seeing the solid, metallic evidence of a war that shrank all human strife to that of trivial scuffles by comparison, she thought, would help provide a healing perspective. Now, as she sat posted beside the entrance to Manny’s Playhouse, glancing up at the smooth metallic ceiling high above her, the knowledge that she sheltered within a massive, ancient mechanism of war only solidified her feeling that nothing possessed any meaning. All human discord felt increasingly meaningless, her own trauma just as ridiculous as . . . as her life itself.
That line of reasoning did not provide any relief for Cherry, the abyss drawing nearer by the day, her excuses more transparent by the hour. She sat beside all the flooding human traffic who mindlessly chased their prurient appetites, and allowed the certainty to settle into her reinforced bones: Why shouldn’t Bethune be her final destination . . . her final resting place?
These dark thoughts faded to the background as her autonomic scanning of the crowd locked upon a singular form. The man she beheld amidst the shuffling multitude possessed no individual quality that arrested attention, his clothing reflecting modest refinement, his demeanor elevated by expressive eyes and a smile that was both amused and mocking. But this man stood out to Cherry Aisha as if he were painted blue and wore a tail. Their eyes met through the intervening stir and Cherry saw his head nod slightly, that smile quirk. She knew what he saw, her straight black hair not that uncommon, nor her dark eyes and olive complexion. His look was one of recognition.
He plunged ahead through the crush, not moving toward the door to Manny’s Playhouse, but steering straight for Cherry. She sat still, watching, the enticing void in her mind growing quieter as she studied the man.
One of her hulking subordinates stepped up to block the man’s progress, but Cherry waved him back, and the stranger stepped near . . . very near. Cherry’s hands rested on her knees as she calmly regarded him, waiting.
He only delayed until they had a small bubble of privacy before speaking. “Might you be Lieutenant Aisha?” the man inquired, his voice confident, maybe overconfident, the smile quirking.
Cherry might have expected the stranger to say any number of things, but not this, unleashing flashes of sensation that roiled through her mind with that old, dead title. “Not anymore,” she said, wondering how this man knew her true identity. No one on Bethune knew her true name . . . except him, and knowing her name, he clearly took a risk, standing so near to her as he revealed her secret.
He regarded her for a moment, his expression holding a question, as if he detected the tumult within her. “I’m Warren Springer Stowe.” He said the words like he expected her to recognize the name, but he only paused a moment before continuing. “Got somewhere to talk? I’d like to offer you a job.”
He continued to smile down at Cherry as she steadily measured him. After a moment she said, “Who do you want me to kill?”
He held up his hands, the dismayed look on his face appearing genuine. “Whoa! No, no. Hah! Nothing like that.” He laughed. “I’m all sunshine and bunnies, lady.”
Cherry stared. She already had the job with Manny, and whatever this Stowe character wanted had to be dangerous, despite his words, or he wouldn’t have sought her out. But . . . curiosity, like a tender green shoot, seemed to emerge from the blackened soil of Cherry Aisha’s heart. She turned her head, looking over at her oxlike underling.
“I will be away for a half hour or so, old fellow. Call me if there’s any hullabaloo.”
“Okay, boss,” the muscle-head said.
Cherry looked up. “Well, Warren Springer Stowe, you’ve got thirty minutes to describe your sunshine and, er, bunnies to me, then. Shall we?”
“You peddle antiquities? Really?” Cherry Aisha said as she nibbled the kebab on her plate, her skepticism shining through. They sat in the darkened corner of restaurant a little farther down the Gear from Manny’s, Cherry’s back to the wall, Warren at her left hand. How Warren had unearthed her presence on Bethune remained a question that she allowed to rest.
Warren tilted his head and held up both hands like the arms of a balance scale. “In a manner of speaking, sure. Supply, demand, customers, vendors—business is business, mostly, right?”
Cherry chewed a morsel, steadily regarding him before saying, “I’m not, shall we say, well suited for dusting off old shit, ducky. What you want me for? Hmm?”
Warren rested his hands on the table, turning to watch a pair of party girls weaving through the dining establishment, their glowing skin-art flickering in the dim light, and Cherry scrutinized his profile. He wasn’t quite her type, but he had a loose-limbed, easy quality that she grudgingly admired, and a pleasant smile. He drummed his fingers, focusing on Cherry again. “Sometimes I must, shall we say, obtain the antiquities I need from barbarians who don’t properly value them. I think you might be perfect for helping me out on this one teensy little job.”
“Obtain? You mean steal, don’t you, love?” Cherry nodded now, understanding, wiping her greasy fingertips on a napkin. “I don’t fancy a prison sentence, old fellow. The concrete décor, the limited menu, the closed spaces, the exclusively female company—not my cup of tea, see? Find someone else to steal your knickknacks, Mister Stowe.”
Warren pursed his lips and produced a thin platinum card from his well-tailored jacket. “You know what this is?” He tilted it toward Cherry. “It is a million-guilder retainer card with Mundercast and Mordaunt, good for any court in the Confederated Worlds. If we, um, bungle something, get our tails in a wringer, these guys will spring us out of lockup, guaranteed . . . as long as we don’t, uh, kill anybody.” Warren smiled broadly.
Cherry stared at the platinum rectangle and its familiar icon. Mundercast and Mordaunt possessed a notable power that even someone like Cherry knew, their proficiency with the Law of the Confederated Worlds sufficient to tie regional courts in knots. Her eyes raised to stare at Warren. “A million-guilder retainer? What sort of bloody antiquities do you pinch then, mate? The crown bloody jewels?”
Warren chuckled, slipping the card back into his jacket and rubbing his hands together. “What do you know about the early expansion era from Earth? The, uh, Trillionaires?”
“Nothing. Are you going to give me a dreary old history lesson now? Can we skip ahead to the juicy bits, old fellow? I’m not a keen student.”
“I’ll be brief—”
“Praise be.” Cherry sipped her drink, staring at Warren with a long-suffering expression.
Warren sighed patiently. “Okay, the super-brief version, then: The first supra-terrestrial industrialists were so rich that we can barely imagine it. There were only a few of them and they kept trying to outdo each other. Before long, some old shit from a particular era of Earth history became the real sign of wealth, and do you have any idea what it cost back then to get even a donut from the earth’s surface up to their asteroid enclaves?”
“This is the super-brief version?” Cherry asked in a purr.
Warren waved a dismissing hand. “Anyway, these guys started buying up certain items and bringing them up . . . especially certain ground vehicles from a very, um, special slice of Earth history.”
Cherry perked up despite herself, puzzled. “Ground vehicles? Out to the Sol asteroid belt? Whatever for?”
“For prestige,” Warren said. “Because they could, because only a handful of these antique vehicles existed on Earth, and these arseholes wanted to prove how cool they were by looting them from Earth and rocketing these heavy steel vehicles up into space. They ended up with entire museums of ground vehicles in the enclaves, one rich bastard trying to one-up another rich bastard . . . before the Super Cleanse, of course.”
“Oh,” Cherry said, her interest waning again. “I see. Useless old vehicles, sitting about in museums. Thrilling.”
“That attitude right there”—Warren pointed his kebab at Cherry—“that’s why I do what I do.” Cherry stared at him with her eyebrows raised skeptically, and Warren shaped a rueful smile. “Well, I also do it because I love this old stuff . . . and I can make a lot of money from it.”
Warren rifled in his nicely tailored jacket and brought out colorful images and words, evidently advertisements composed upon actual paper. “See these? These are the vehicles we’re talking about. They just called them ‘cars’ back then.” Cherry tilted her head to examine the two-dimensional pictures on the pages, seeing glossy ground vehicles crouched on black wheels, the passenger compartments enclosed within glass panels. “Practically handmade; internal combustion engines,” he explained.
“Internal combustion? Is that the engine there?” Cherry asked, indicating the image of complicated mechanisms jammed under the bonnet. In her military career she had operated a vast swath of vehicles, so some professional interest flickered. “Must have had some slick logic controllers in there somewhere regulating all that mess, eh?”
“No. None.”
“No logic controllers at all?” Cherry said, disbelievingly.
“Nope,” Warren said. “These things are strictly mechanical, like riding a pair of scissors.”
“Bloody death traps,” Cherry said, sitting back, but she felt a gentle tug of attraction to the concept . . . riding about on a mechanical, exploding anachronism held a sudden appeal, freed from the digital babysitting that invaded nearly every aspect of modern human existence.
“Elegant, expensive deathtraps from an age we will never see again,” Warren said. “They pieced these things together in ways we can barely understand now. You can still see the tool marks on some of the metal parts where some technician hand-fitted the parts so many centuries ago. It’s just so great!”
A bygone age, nearly deleted, and these advertisements such alluring clues to the lives of their forebears; her gaze roved over the other adverts, seeing one advertising someone called Mary Poppins, evidently a pretty woman in absurd clothes with an umbrella in hand. Cherry eyed a number of words and numbers on the vehicle advert, tilting her head to read. “What does 1968 signify?”
“The year of manufacture, it seems.”
She nodded, frowning as she continued to read. “And what’s this ‘HP’ listed here?”
Warren looked at the listed specifications and leaned nearer, true enthusiasm lighting his eyes. “This is an ancient measurement that stands for horse powers.”
“Horse powers?” she repeated, staring at him.
“Uh, yes. You know what horses are right? Yes? Well, the, uh, ancients admired the qualities of horses it seems. See . . . this description of a car called ‘Mustang’ there? A mustang is a sort of horse, and this sales babble goes on and on about the wild, untamed quality of the mustang and applies it to this particular vehicle. Observe this little horse icon on the car. See? The more power of horses a car has, the better. Neat, huh?”
Cherry finished her drink and shrugged. “I’ll grant you there’s a certain charm to animist superstition and all that. But what’s the angle . . . what’s your angle with all this?”
Warren popped the last morsel of kebab in his mouth and followed it with a sip from his glass. “In the centuries after the Super Cleanse when the Trillionaires were absorbed, their collections got scattered across a bunch of systems. The majority of these old things ended up in museums and other odd collections around the galaxy, where most of them are stuffed away in back rooms, utterly ignored.”
“Aw, the poor things,” Cherry said dryly. “And now you’re here to save the sad little dears from obscurity, are you?
“Hah-hah.” Warren smiled, his white teeth flashing in the dim light. “Yes, I suppose I am at that.”
“Hmm, so charitable of you. And I daresay our modern Filthy Rich suddenly developed a taste for these things again?”
“Exactly. Exactly.” Warren nodded, toying with his glass. “Our current wealthy bastards pay handsomely for an original car, and Bethune’s got a couple very, very nice originals just gathering dust.” He handed Cherry another picture of an ancient ground vehicle half covered by a rumpled cloth, literal dust sprinkled over it.
“This is on Bethune?” Cherry asked, surprised, trying to visualize where the image could possibly have been taken in Torino.
“Yep,” Warren said. “The Pioneer Museum over on the north side of town.”
“How very odd.” Cherry contemplated the image for a moment before looking up. “I don’t see how you could pinch such a monstrous huge knickknack, old fellow. Hardly fits in a pocket, does it?”
Warren smiled at her. “With a little help from the right person, we can get it out of the museum . . . and I can get it off the planet easy enough.”
Cherry looked at the image of the target vehicle again for a moment. “You ever operate one of these cars, Warren Springer Stowe, or you just collect them, hmm?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve probably driven more of these Old Earth cars than any person in the Confederated Worlds.” Warren paused, his face illuminated by a sudden joy. “It’s hard to describe the feeling, but . . . but there’s really nothing quite like it.”
Cherry Aisha looked up from the picture, intrigued by the genuine passion in Warren’s voice. Passion, vitality. Life. How long since she had felt true delight about anything?
It was at that moment she realized that she was actually going to do this thing, without any solid idea of what the job really entailed or what it paid.
“Tell me your cunning plan, Mr. Stowe. I’m breathless with anticipation.” Her tone could only be perceived as dismissive, but within her, the abyss lay quiescent for the first time in years, and it felt like a new spring season might be dawning for her at last.