Chimera Company - Deep Cover 5 Read online

  SEASON-2: DEEP COVER

  ISSUE-5

  Copyright © Tim C. Taylor 2019

  Artwork by Vincent Sammy

  Published by Human Legion Publications

  All Rights Reserved

  For a free Tim C. Taylor starter library, join the Legion at HumanLegion.com

  Welcome to Chimera Company

  Welcome to Issue #5 of Chimera Company Season 2 in which Chimera Company finds itself stranded on Eiylah-Bremah, an Orwellian nightmare of a planet where unguarded words could be capital speech crimes and even the wrong thoughts can land you in a re-education camp. The rogues and soldiers of Chimera Company are not the politest people at the best of times, and on Eiylah-Bremah the laws of inappropriateness are complex and ever changing. Someone has to remind the citizens of Eiylah-Bremah how to free their thoughts, but escaping the authorities in a police state will not be easy.

  It's time to remember your oath to the Federation and do the right thing. Here's Issue #5.

  — Tim C. Taylor, October 2019

  ISSUE 5

  CARNOLIN INDOH

  “It was waiting for the auto shuttle that led to my downfall. To this… My slow-motion execution.”

  I choke, almost weeping like a human, before continuing in a quivering, little-girl voice. I sound tiny in the dank finality of my cell.

  “I was a big supporter of In’Nalla’s campaign for the auto shuttles to be introduced.” I laugh bitterly. “Despite everything, I still love In’Nalla.” I speak carefully, guarding my words even here where it is surely too late for me. “And I still support the auto shuttles, even though they destroyed me.”

  I grow angry with my jailer’s silence. Were they even still there?

  I glare at the cell door with its one-way mirrored upper half. From the corridor outside, jailers and paying visitors can view my shame. Even the darkness doesn’t shroud me: the mirror has lowlight enhancements, so they are unhindered in their enjoyment of my… licensed humiliation.

  I stride across the stone floor, advancing to within a few inches. With my bare feet, I toe the mirror’s sight lines painted on the floor. Shamelessly, I cross my arms in front of me and demand of the silent jailer, “Shall I go on?”

  “Tell me about the shuttles,” they respond in a voice that seems stripped of emotion.

  Usually, the speaker grill above the door carries leering voices that try to flail me with their gleeful torments. I have, after all, been placed here for the world’s education and amusement. After a carefully orchestrated media campaign, I have been so thoroughly de-personed that to enjoy my shame is not only a licensed pleasure but a social duty.

  This jailer is different somehow.

  Although I sense no enjoyment of my plight, there’s no sympathy for me, either.

  Perhaps I’m imagining this, but I think this jailor is the one being in this world who still regards me as a person.

  It’s not much comfort. But I take it.

  I shuffle back to the pile of clean straw that is the nest I have made in the center of my prison – as I was instructed to do when I was first put here. I sit and immediately feel the chill of the cold stone flags shoot up my buttocks.

  For a moment I consider asking the guard for more straw, but how can I? They are listening to me. Actually listening.

  I can’t shake the suspicion that this is all an elaborate joke at my expense, but I try to convince myself that they are genuinely interested in my own words. My real words – not the words I am made to say for the public recordings.

  I am a person. Maybe for one final time.

  And that’s far more precious to me than warding off the chill of the stones.

  So I explain about the shuttles.

  “We called them buses. When In’Nalla proposed them, EB-Link was deathly quiet for the first day, everyone watching each other, hoping someone else would test the air so we would all learn how we were allowed to react.

  “But it seemed this was a genuine example of the jury of public debate. In’Nalla argued that the Metro areas required efficient, universal coverage, and above all safe mass transit, but the existing transport system had failed her citizens.

  The patchwork of competing transport companies have failed, of course. But even here, I’m reluctant to voice that idea. To propose a state-run transit system is to declare support for Jacobin socialism, one of the most hideous of both speech and thought crimes. Detractors of the proposal hinted at this but did not dare to openly accuse In’Nalla of speech crime. The last person to do that did so thirteen years ago, and the poor wretch is still alive, paraded across EB-Link every few days for another bout of inventive degradation.”

  I shudder at the thought. Nearly clam up. But I can’t lose this chance to speak my truth one last time, and so I press on, steering away from any criticism of our Revered Leader.

  “It wasn’t the buses that destroyed me,” I point out, “but my speech crime. I could have transgressed anywhere.”

  I smile, pleased with myself for sidestepping a possibly incriminating statement, and then shake my head at the bitter irony. My trial had been conducted months ago. My guilt a matter of public entertainment. And I’m still worried about committing speech crimes?

  I glance nervously at the sight lines painted on the floor. If I move outside them, passers-by can’t get a good look at me through the one-way mirror. Can’t enjoy the sight of my uncovered hair, bare feet, and form-hugging one-piece garment.

  If I move beyond the line on the floor, I will be denied even that clothing.

  No matter how bad things get, I think there’s always somewhere lower to sink.

  “We went to the theater,” I say quickly, trying to regain my sense of temporary good fortune. “My best friend and I. Brighid’s her name, and I liked to tease her that it made her sound like a Jotun. She was, however, a human, just starting out like me in the accountancy division of Allied Insurance Corporation. The theater is not exactly cheap, but Brighid and I bonded the moment we realized we shared a passion for live performances. We’d been saving for that night’s performance of Rimward Inward for months.”

  I think back to that night before it all went wrong for me. Rimward Inward was an exhilarating fusion of different cultures. Mostly from the local Federation subsector, but some cultural strands led all the way back to the aliens who’d come from the Orion Spur. Best of these was the Littorane choir, whose singing seemed to part a veil and reveal glimpses of the true warp and weft of the universe.

  “It was one of those moments in life that seemed so good that Brighid and I didn’t want the evening to end. So after the performance, we headed over to the Row #37 bar, on Goudini and 42nd, where they specialize in Zhoogene cocktails. The company was effortless. The surroundings exotic. Brighid even persuaded me to dance. It was perfect.”

  I run my tongue along the top of my mouth, remembering the fiery sweetness of the drinks we downed that night. “Then the mood snapped when Brighid told me she loved me. I don’t think she really did. It was the drink, and being soaked in an atmosphere rich in Zhoogene pheromones for hours – you know how humans get sometimes – so I told her it was time to go home.

  “The moment we left the bar, the chill night air slapped away our fuzzy-edged jauntiness, and revealed us to be exhausted, half-drunk, and needing to be at work in five hours’ time.

  “The District Five-Gamma auto shuttle shelter was only five minutes’ walk away. Inside, it was warm and well lit. Although the next service would be a twenty-minute wait, the half-squad of Militia troopers patrolling outside made me feel safe. Maybe too safe.”

  I pause on the threshold of stating dangerous truths, carefully picking through my memories bef
ore putting them into words.

  I remember the sudden shock of realizing we weren’t alone. There were eight of them – young human males in that dangerous state of drunken boisterousness where they dare each other into ever more outrageous behavior. I can still picture the leering faces.

  They didn’t touch us, but they did everything short of. Brighid and I were their prey. We were just pretty dolly birds to them. One Zhoogene girl and one human. As far as they were concerned, our entire existence to that point had been engineered to provide them with maximum amusement.

  ‘Was I in season?’ one had asked.

  Had we made sex recordings together?

  Would we kiss each other? Just one kiss. And they promised – laughing insincerely – that they wouldn’t record our performance.

  I had frozen, too scared to react, but Brighid stood up to them, screaming at them to go to hell, threatening to record them and let the citizenry on EB-Link decide whether their abuse was acceptable, because she was damned sure it would sicken them as much as it did us.

  One of the boys advanced to within millimeters of touching her, licking his lips obscenely. His swaggering confidence stilled Brighid’s protests.

  He told her she wouldn’t dare criticize them. Who did she think she was? They were Millionaires, certified descendants of the million Earth children enslaved by the White Knights.

  If true, it meant they were legally entrenched. Criticizing them would be perilous indeed.

  Brighid paled and sat down beside me on the row of hard seats, our gazes on the floor, not daring to look up at the jeering young humans who surrounded us, baring our way. They said that if we tried to flee, we would have to push through them physically. If we dared to do that, they would accuse us of physical assault and upload a recording of our crime to EB-Link.

  The obscene suggestions grew worse, their baiting more inventive. They drunk the heady liquor of their power over us, but they stopped just short of committing a crime.

  They could have been lying, of course. They might not have been Millionaires.

  In which case, they wouldn’t have the legal advantages of being an entrenched group.

  But we were too frightened to risk it.

  We had no choice but to let the abuse wash over us, to pretend it was happening to someone else, so the barbs of their spite would not pierce our spirits where the wounds might fester.

  And we were right to do so. I later found out that they really were Millionaires.

  All citizens are created equal, goes the saying. But some are more entrenched than others.

  “What happened?” prompts the guard, and I realize I’ve been reliving that night silently, in the secrecy of my head. I’m not sure where I left off.

  “We encountered an unruly group,” I say.

  It makes me sick in the stomach. All the horror of their attack, and I feel obliged to wrap it up in euphemism and call them ‘unruly’.

  “They were Millionaires. Entrenched. I… didn’t like what they said. It was nasty. Frightening.”

  I hesitate.

  To assign blame to the Millionaires might be construed as a new speech crime.

  The jailer doesn’t seem to care, though, and I press on.

  “Eventually, the shuttle came, and the Millionaires got on. I was terrified they would make us get on with them, but they told us our presence offended them and if we boarded, they would report as for intimidation. We watched them pull away in silence, none of us able to speak for a long while. Then all the fear and anger that I’d pushed under welled up in a single uncontrollable burst.”

  Fucking colonists!

  That’s what I yelled at them that awful night.

  I gag.

  How can I have been so stupid?

  The moment I uttered those words, time had slowed down as I watched Brighid open her mouth in an ‘o’ of horror.

  I had pleaded with her not to do what we both knew she must.

  Not one hour before, she’d told me she loved me. Had she forgotten that so soon?

  But of course, she hadn’t.

  It took me weeks of solitude and tormented humiliation in this cell before I could tell myself that I had forgiven Brighid.

  I tell myself that often, but I don’t fully believe it yet.

  She had no choice. Obviously.

  Yet what she did was still an act of betrayal.

  “What did they do?” asks the guard, and I realize that I have once again allowed my mind to race ahead of my spoken words.

  If only I had done the same that night.

  “I committed a speech crime,” I tell my confidante outside my cell door. “I called then colonists. Someone recorded me committing my crime and reported it through EB-Link. I didn’t even go home that night. I reported myself to the police and I was arrested five minutes later.”

  “Did they give you a fair… trial?”

  I hear the distaste in the guard’s words, and hope flutters in my spirit. It’s an unfamiliar feeling.

  The guard could have come from anywhere in the Federation, not just Eiylah-Bremah. Do they believe me?

  I snatch at the chance this might be an off-worlder. “Some worlds champion the concept of individual justice,” I tell the guard, “but here we champion the orderly functioning of the group. I used the word colonist to describe those Millionaires, and in doing so committed a speech crime against an entrenched group. If I was lucky, I could have been sentenced with a heavy fine and a citizenship downgrading. Instead, I became part of the Churn.”

  “I don’t understand this Churn. Explain.”

  “From time to time, those of privileged status who transgress must be shown to be torn down and humiliated for all of society to see. Those, like me, who fall are balanced by others who embody the virtues of society. These lucky ones are rewarded by riches and status. Never mind that I was a low-paid clerical worker, on EB-Link I was made to appear entitled, rich, and arrogant – after all, I had been to the theater, which isn’t cheap. Facts cease to matter with the Churn. I had a role to play. A spectacle to perform. I needed to be crushed. And since I did utter those words I was accused of, yes, my trial was fair. At least, it pleased the will of our Revered Leader In’Nalla.”

  “Don’t you resent her?”

  I manage a smile and shake my head the human way. “No. The re-educators tell me that in the end I must say publicly that I love In’Nalla, and that I must mean my words sincerely, because deceit would be a terrible crime that would be detected. But it’s never been a problem for me. I do love In’Nalla. Always have, despite my fall from grace. I could never say I hated her, any more than a sailor could say they hated the sea, even though they might be caught in a great storm and wrecked.”

  “And your trial?” I hear amazement in their voice. My words are getting a reaction! “Didn’t you hate that?”

  “It was…” I stop myself in time. Even if the guard is genuinely sympathetic, I have to assume my every word is recorded and analyzed by AIs honed to detect problematic thoughts. So long as I don’t criticize a legally defined group, I should be okay. “My trial was a performance of lies. In the jury of civic opinion on EB-Link, the news and opinion leaders emphasized the money and privilege I must surely have enjoyed to be a theater-goer. When I tried to explain that I had saved up for months, they condemned me even more viciously as a liar. Every word I wrote or spoke was twisted into new meanings and used to attack me. The encounter at the shuttle shelter was also warped so that now Brighid and I were drunken, entitled louts, hurling abuse at the poor and honest Millionaire boys. Never mind that Brighid’s ancestors came here on the exact same Exile ships as a Millionaires, she just doesn’t have the documentation to prove it. That was the most terrifying thing – the web of lies the world weaved around us were so farcical, so easy to disprove, but EB-Link would believe anything in order to justify my punishment. Within days, the opinion leaders were widely reporting as cast-iron fact that I had emotionally scarred the Millionaires by unc
overing my head and forcing Brighid to kiss me.”

  I stop and listen hard. I know I’ve gone too far.

  The guard outside is breathing heavily.

  I think they’re angry.

  I myself should be boiling with rage at my story, but I’m too weary of it.

  If the guard is raging on my behalf, though, then maybe it’s something…

  I hurry back to the door, up against the sight line. “Do you believe my story?”

  “I do.”

  My heart skips. I can hardly breathe.

  “Please. Please, I beg you. Will you help me?”

  The guard laughs. “Help? You’re a stupid Zhoogene slut who led on a group of human boys out for hijinks. You deserve all that’s coming to you. No, I will not help.”

  I can’t move.

  I’m rooted to the cold stone floor, so thoroughly unpersoned that I might as well be carved from stone myself.

  The guard walks off. I listen to the sound of their boots receding to silence. Then I am condemned once more to solitude.

  LILY HJON

  “This planet’s seriously fucked up!”

  Enthree lifted an antenna Lily’s way, but Vetch and Sward showed no sign of noticing.

  She stormed through the guardroom, dodging around the stack of barely drained battery packs that the warden had advised them not to notice, and planted herself where the other three were playing cards – Pryxian skat by the looks of it.

  For a moment, she considered tipping over the wooden crate they were using as a table. But even with her hands trembling with rage at the story the prisoner had told, she stopped herself short of committing what she had herself told her troopers was a cardinal sin.

  Instead of interrupting a game with money on the table, she yanked at Vetch’s beard and yelled into his ear, “Did you hear what I said?”

  Vetch flinched at the sonic assault, blinked a bit, and then laid his cards on the table. Face down.

  “Did you get our prisoner to talk?” he asked innocently.