‘No, no. I’m sorry.’ He shook his head, embarrassed. ‘Be good to see Trine again. Old times, hm?’
Kris’s slate pinged to say they had access to the elevator. She wondered who’d just been bumped, and hoped it was either a Betrayed activist or some pompous cult hierograve.
They ended up sharing the elevator car with a real slice of the planet’s current turbulent life. Biologists, Hegemony cultists, Hugh military, Colonial agriculturalists and Nativists. No guns were permitted in the elevator, but this was a wild, frontier-type planet. Kris knew there would be plenty in the luggage compartment.
‘Pills, people,’ Kris reminded the others as they descended, and popped her own. Most colony planets had their own version – a vaccination and antidote combination. Otherwise, a world could start killing you the moment you stepped onto the surface.
‘Why’s that guy looking at you?’ Solace asked Idris, making him jump.
‘What guy?’
‘Don’t look.’
‘Then how can I—？’
Kris scanned the room from the corner of her eye, catching who Solace meant on the second pass. Half a head taller than the rest and of decidedly healthier physique than the average Colonial. His lips moved as he stared at Idris, talking into a communicator in his lapel. He wore a shapeless poncho that failed to hide the broadness of his frame, but Kris caught a glimpse of bottle-green fabric at his neck. Where have I seen that colour? Ah, right.
‘I don’t want to alarm anyone, but he’s Voyenni. Like the clowns who snatched Idris back on Roshu?’ she murmured.
‘Can’t be,’ Solace said. ‘What are the odds?’
‘Their chief was spouting a lot of that “good of humanity” business when he was leaning on me,’ Idris pointed out. ‘Right out of the Nativist playbook.’
It made a depressing kind of sense, Kris thought. The Magda Boyarin were the acceptable face of Nativism – and Jericho was prime recruiting territory for the movement right now.
‘We can only hope they have bigger fish to fry,’ Kris decided, nodding at the Hegemony’s cult members. She just hoped the Betrayed and the cultists could keep their knives to themselves, at least until they escaped the elevator.
17.
Solace
Jericho’s Anchortown was laid out in concentric rings, each showing the limit of a generation’s ambition before the next influx of refugees arrived. Beyond the walls and the surrounding fields, the native plant life stretched away in clashing shades of yellow and indigo-blue. Those ‘trees’ moved, Solace knew. The fences kept up a modulated electromagnetic babble that repelled the local life, but the forest still made the odd slow rush for the barricades, overwhelming the fences until the farmers retaliated with chainsaws and flamethrowers. Even the trees were at war with people on Jericho.
Then they were dropping the last ten metres, the elevator car folding open so the bitter-scented alien air washed over them. Cargo crews were already descending on the elevator’s freight compartments, using loading frames and a-grav to haul out the supplies, scientific equipment and luxuries that had come down the wire.
People were staring at Solace’s armour but she wasn’t going to be down here without it. She made a big show of going to the luggage compartment and bringing out Mr Punch. She’d had the name printed onto the accelerator’s barrel, a little personal nod to Rollo’s memory.
The inhabitants of Anchortown looked a hardy lot, whose fashion ran to long sleeves, heavy boots to the knee and high closed collars. Sensible, given the wildlife, and a world away from shipboard clothes.
‘Get some new clothes,’ Solace advised Kris and Idris. ‘Lots of things here to bite and sting and get under your skin.’
That meant a visit to the printers while Solace soaked up the atmosphere outside, scowling at anyone who looked at her twice. There were Hugh military on the streets, and she saw them arrest one local at gunpoint. Nobody liked it; nobody stepped in. This close to the anchor point, Hugh still had its colony in hand. Likely towards the outskirts it was a different story. And of course those Hugh personnel looked at her just as hard as the locals did, and didn’t look away as quickly. She was happy to see Kris and Idris emerge. Idris had purchased the drabbest, saddest long coat and boots she’d ever seen but Kris had made an effort, sporting explorer chic and a new blue and yellow scarf to match the alien foliage.
‘I can’t make contact with Trine,’ she told them. She’d been fitfully trying her comms since they got here, without any joy.