A Courier’s Confession

Mark D. Wagner, 2002

New Mimas, 2470

If historians and economists are to be trusted, then by the dawn of the twenty fifth century, the Twin Planets, Pluto and Charon, though depressingly far from the sources of life in the solar system, were teaming with it and were finally poised to be a rising economic power. The cleverly engineered bridge between the two moon-like worlds, especially the miraculous and newly operational micro-g facility at Bridge Center Point, the system’s Lagrange point, had already become an important way station for many seasonal routes connecting the far flung settlement s in the Oort cloud to the planets and worldlets of the solar system proper. The Triton-Nereid government of Neptune’s moons and the Tri-Solar Alliance of Mercury, it’s orbital towers, and the Dysoners in solar orbit already felt the economic siphon at work against them.

But, with only a decade of unrivaled prosperity behind them, the peoples of the Twin Planets, peoples who had worked so hard, so well, and with such brotherhood in order to survive two centuries of life in dangerously inhospitable homes found themselves lost in a cruel civil war fueled by the greed of both politicians and the fiercely territorial families of the new local underworlds. By 2413 there was no turning back. Bridge Center Point was destroyed and the entire bridge infrastructure came raining down on the hapless twins. By the end of 2414, they were twins no more. Charon had been destroyed, eaten alive from the inside by a devilish device that left the Charonese people only moments to know their fate and make their peace with the universe before their world crumbled around them to become nothing more than a relentless rain of meteors pelting the icy surface of Pluto, a deterrent to all but the most desperate travelers, and a daily reminder to the guilt ridden Plutonian survivors, a reminder of a golden age they had lost to powers beyond their control and beyond their knowledge.

* * *

Charon, 2414

In the spartan receiving room, the Cerberus program appeared before me as an intimidating mechanical humanoid, devoid of features or emotion. Behind it stood the smaller, but similarly styled Sybil, which had thus far observed our encounter in silence. Cerberus responded to me.

“Mr. Spanner, I will not hesitate to refuse your visa if you are unable to comply. Any further attempts to evade answering our questions may be met with immediate deactivation.”

Aside from the loss of my fee, this didn’t bother me. As soon as my employers verified my death, they would reactivate me from the pattern compressed before transmitting me to Charon. My sentience license would transfer to the new copy back on Mimas, and the only experience I would lose would be these few moments in the receiving room. In the interest of the money, however, (not to mention my reputation) I continued to plead my case.

“You have my credentials. Tristero holds the permits to do business and operate agents within Twin Planets space..”

“This world is no longer subject to that government. We are a sovereign..”

“The Tristero Group is a well respected interplanetary corporation with strong ties to the Universal Institute of Man. Furthermore, I am equipped with more than enough Chyps to pay for my processor time and any necessary local fees.” I paused to allow Cerberus (or its master) to take the bait, and then reiterated the point. “The delivery of the message I carry is of crucial importance to my client. Cost is not an issue.”

“And once again, who is your client? What message are you carrying? An answer to these questions will help your application greatly.”

“I’m sorry, I am not privy to the identity of my client. The promise of anonymity, when it is desired, is a service that Tristero is proud to offer, and we are proud of the impeccable record that recommends us to our customers. I suspect your new government hasn’t outlawed privacy, and in this case the message, too, is a confidential communication meant only for the recipient. Even I do not know its contents.”

“And the recipient is the Plutonian Ambassador Aita?”

“That is correct, a woman – even according to your own government - residing legally on this planet.”

“Under house arrest..”

“..at a secret location, for her own protection, as I understand it.”

“Why send a messenger?” Cerberus tried a new tack. “Your client must know that the Charonese Assembly would be happy to relay the message to the ambassador. She receives, and sends, many off-world communications every day.”

Why send a messenger? I couldn’t very well tell him the real reasons. An ordinary message would be intercepted, read, and possibly not relayed, at least not reliably. An encrypted message would suffer the same fate. In the current climate of paranoia on Charon, a personal visit from my client might result in his being shot down or imprisoned. Frankly, even another messenger – or anyone - in a physical body or transport would be at the same risk… which is not to mention the tremendous amounts of time and money saved by simply transmitting a courier like myself.

So instead, I gave him my usual line, straight out of the Tristero FAQs.

“Can a message explain and clarify when questioned? Can a message converse with the recipient before returning to the sender? Can a message choose how to deliver news in a manner that best fits the circumstances when it is received?” Can a message talk its way through local customs, for that matter? “Shall I go on?” I could have mentioned the savings after all.

The Sybil program, slimmer, more graceful, and decidedly more effeminate than Cerberus stepped forward from behind the larger figure. I still sat in the simple chair, modeled after an acceleration couch but ironically sans restraints, where I had come to consciousness before the two guardians moments earlier. Prior to that, not a moment had passed for me since I had been decompiled and compressed on Mimas. Sybil spoke.

“Even presuming that your intentions and services here are legitimate and honorable, Mr. Spanner, I am concerned with the integrity of the transmission that brought you here.”

“Tristero uses only transmission procedures registered with the Institute as secure for military or corporate grade communication. Unless you don’t trust your own equipment or local processes, there is no reason to distrust the integrity of my pattern codes. My persona has not been altered or tampered with.”

“I am sorry. We are at war here. Given the unknown nature of your visit, and especially given whom you will be visiting, I cannot allow you access to any of our planetary networks. This secure processor is the only place your patterns will be run on this planet. We will be happy to retransmit you to Mimas, of course, for the required fee.”

“Of course. But I hope to stay on Charon until I have delivered my message. As I have said, cost is not an issue to my client, and I have specifications for a biological body that should pass your requirements as sufficiently unthreatening and civilian. I am authorized to travel physically to my destination if need be.”

“You will be allowed no access to any global network interface while on Charon.”

“Understood.”

“And you will be provided, at your expense, with a guide who will serve as your chaperone for the duration of the visit.”

“Naturally. Thank you.”

Clearly, my client was going to receive a bill for what was shaping up to be a hefty local fee. Sybil, satisfied that the planetary nets would be in little danger, retreated lithely and allowed Cerberus to continue.

“Very well. We will inspect your specifications and make any necessary modifications before customizing a bank body ourselves. The Charonese government does not wish to unnecessarily inconvenience the Plutonian Ambassador, your Client, or the Tristero Courier Group.”

“Thank You.”

“With your permission,” Sybil added, “we will suspended your thought processes until your body is ready.”

My usual custom was to access the local net for interplanetary and local updates as soon as receiving my visa, but that not being an option, I acquiesced to the suspension.

“Of course. Thank You. I look forward to my visit, and the Tristero Group looks forward to a future of formal ties with the Charonese government. You’ve done the civil thing here today.”

* * *

The client. The message. My pay chyps. These are the things that were important to me then. Not visits. Not civility. Not humanity, least of all mine; at eighteen I had readily given up my body when they wanted my sentience license, a commodity that you truly couldn’t buy from the seemingly incorruptible Institute.

On most worlds in the solar system, the education and resources of potential parents and guardians were the primary factors in who was awarded a license to create a child, no matter the parents’ form or nature - and no matter the form or nature the child would take. But, I had my sentience by birthright, by virtue of being born in the one place where education and resources were most scarce, where reproduction was not regulated, on the old world, on planet Earth. It was no wonder they could harvest us from the tribal wastelands beyond the arks. We were not only young, but also primitive in comparison to the experienced and highly advanced spacers of Tristero.

Unfortunately, even fifteen years (and a new name) later, when I found myself advancing through the ranks of the Group as an interplanetary courier, well trained but no better educated, I had not escaped the deprivation of my childhood, and many important things were no more clear to me then than they had been when, ignorant of this digital and magical existence, I had fought along side (or sometimes against) my fellow tribesmen in a daily struggle for survival in the analogue world, on the Nularbor Plains, the desolate southern fringe of Australia in the twenty-three nineties.

I had never once in those fifteen years as a courier stopped to consider the nature and weaknesses of my own being, my new existence. Tristero’s recruiters had delivered on their promise of unknown powers, immortality, and the chance to travel the Solar System and beyond.

Like so many others of the last generation confined to the system of our native star, at once the most hapless and most blessed in human history, I received my enlightenment all at once from a flash of light in the night sky where Charon should have been.

* * *

A decade and a half, an altered and borrowed physiology, and an alien world where I weighed only seven pounds could not diminish the effects of human sensation intruding back upon my consciousness. As my guide led me swinging through the creeper crowded caverns of Charon, the smells in particular, the rot of the muddy walls – a product of surface ice forever seeping into the caverns carved and cultivated by man, reminded me of the alluvial mangroves of Australia’s coast, a very different place, where the sun and air could cause naked skin to burn and peel within seconds of exposure. The ubiquitous soft blue light put off by the luminescent mosses on the cavern walls of Charon was just about the furthest thing from Earth-side sunlight that I had ever experienced in the flesh. My digital life was of course another matter all together.

“The car you’ve chartered is in the capillary ahead, Mr. Spanner,” said my guide, a young lady native to the planet, as she released one vine and shifted her grip to the next while looking over a shoulder at me. Dew stained straps dangled from her layers of clothing, accentuating her motion through the air, and her close-cropped black hair formed a sort of shadow-halo about her turning head. She wasn’t stunningly attractive, and I did find myself staring forward at the dirty soles of her prehensile feet, but what is the point of traveling the solar system, or of having a physical and biological body for that matter, if it isn’t to be friendly with the native women.

“You can call me Hark,” I offered.

She turned forward again and flew toward a new handhold.

“That would make me uncomfortable, Mr. Spanner. I am an agent of the Assembly Guard, and a sworn D.o.C.”

It was clear she would remain Agent Moros to me. She was a fanatic, a Defender of Charon, and had clearly earned this appointment due to her effectiveness as an efficient chaperone rather than as a friendly guide. I suppose that should have been a red flag of sorts, but I already had these people pegged as paranoid players in a petty civil dispute, safely beneath me.

Moros stopped suddenly, a maneuver she executed with her feet, where the foliage of the tunnel was interrupted by a very different construct; a metal lined tube approximately 10 meters in diameter intersected our route at a nearly perpendicular angle. While I was similarly equipped with opposable toes, their use was not second nature to me, and I coasted across the gap before stopping myself near the creepers dangling in the breeze on the other side. As I turned again toward my guide, she was already propelling herself down the brightly lit tube via small metal handles. Fifty meters ahead of her, the way was nearly impassable. I could tell by the obvious windows and central door on the face of the obstruction that this must be the car. It was not entirely round and as we approached I could see that while the top and bottom were flush with the arc of the tube, the sides were vertical, leaving – contrary to what I had supposed - plenty of room for passers-by to continue on their way, though I couldn’t imagine that anyone would dare if the car was traveling at any significant speed. We approached, and the door folded open for us. The far end of the car, less than five meters away, was apparently identical, and the cabin was only about as wide as it was long. A row of four seats, limbless acceleration couches, faced either door. Apparently, this was considered personal transportation on Charon.

As soon as the door folded shut behind us, the car started coasting gently down the tube in the direction form which we had come, making the panel we had entered through (what I had thought of as the back of the car) into the front. I followed Moros’ lead in anchoring myself with my feet using the grated plating on the floor. Despite the super-human articulation of my lower limbs, a sense of being handicapped came over me as I realized Moros was clearly on-line with her environment and directing the vehicle silently as she invited me to sit.

“Be sure to strap in securely. We will be experiencing much greater accelerations during this trip. Ambassador Aita’s home in Duat is some distance from the secure facility where your body was completed here in Naraka, but both cities are in Acheron Province; we should be there within the hour.”

I mimicked her motions as she fastened the restraints and soon the walls of the tube were streaming by at a rate which rendered focusing on anything beyond the windows uncomfortable. I took a deep breath and tried not to think too much about being trapped with no network access, and no conversation, for nearly an hour.

As it turned out, not only was boredom the least of my worries, but I was barely in danger of suffering from it before the tranquility of the ride was interrupted. We had just emerged into an arterial tube where the car shot out of the capillary at a slight angle and snuggled gently up against the larger wall. The far side of the tube was now nearly a hundred meters to our left. Our speed increased again.

Moros mumbled to herself. I picked up a sense of alarm in her tone, and intruded on her thoughts.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Spanner. We are being diverted to another route.” Her calm now did more to betray the seriousness behind the original muttering than it did to reassure me.

“Why’s that?”

The car turned less than ten degrees and a smaller capillary tube once again engulfed us.

“How well did you research Charon before your visit, Mr. Spanner?” She turned to face me, but was clearly paying attention to something else. “Did you come across any mention of the Abaasy Boys?”

“Yes, of course,” thankfully, the local government had accepted my cybernetic brain design so I was more than capable of accessing my full range of internal search functions and I had committed considerable research to my individual persona and memories. “They are a notorious tunnel gang, operational mostly here in Acheron, and with suspected ties to Plutonian mafia families.”

“Not suspected. Known, and strong, ties,” she corrected me, “to the Charonese branch of the Plutonian mafia, yes. The existence of their kind is one of the reasons independence from the corruption of the Twin Planets government has been necessary, one of the reasons the loss of the Bridge was not nearly as tragic as much of the solar system seems to think.”

I didn’t respond. I wasn’t there to argue ideology, and certainly not fanaticism.

“Any reason they might be interested in you, Mr. Spanner?”

“The Abaasy Boys? None that I am aware of.”

We reached an intersection where we were launched across a wide-open space and shunted into another tube that immediately angled sharply upward. Behind us I could see several other vehicles dart through the same space into a variety of other tubes. This glimpse of their traffic system lasted only a moment as our speed continued to increase.

“You are planning to meet with the Plutonian ambassador,” Moros started again. “Is this only a coincidence? The Abaasy are moving in a very determined fashion, and in relatively large numbers to block our route... any possible route.”

“Cerberus, Sibyl, yourself, and your superiors are the only ones aside from me.. and my client.. who know who I am intending to visit. No one else at Tristero is even privy to that...”

“Brace yourself,” she cut me off and produced a handgun of some kind from beneath a layer of her clothing. Emergency collision avoidance measures must have kicked in because the car came to a screeching halt. Thus far we had been propelled magnetically, and I was sure that the surface of the car had never touched the walls of the tube, even when we had stepped in. Now, however, I was certain that in addition to reversing the magnetic flow, physical restraints had been used as emergency brakes. The metal frame of the car groaned, but held its integrity.

Ahead of us another car appeared from out of an intersecting tunnel to effectively block our path. Had it not been for the emergency stop, the collision would surely have been fatal to both parties. A brief moment later two other vehicles, diminutive compared to our car, were approaching from behind. Each carried only one rider secured to a harness set atop a magnetic sled, which sped toward us only centimeters off of the tube sides. The car in front of us opened up and two men pushed off toward us, carrying short staves of some kind. The sleds stopped only ten meters away and the riders quickly released themselves and coasted toward us as well, also carrying similar staves that they had somehow mysteriously removed from their sleds. Clearly emblazoned upon their tunics was the symbol of the Abaasy family.

“Follow my lead,” said Moros.

I had no intention of doing so. I had no idea what this was about, but I was determined to use it to my advantage and to secure my freedom on this world through whatever incident would follow.

Moros unfastened her restraints and pulled herself to the floor. I followed suit.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve already alerted my superiors. There should be a squad here in a few minutes. I should be able to hold them off until then.”

Just as she began to rise up to peer out of the windows again, both doors folded open. The panic on her face was clear. The Abaasy Boys clearly had some high level support on their side.

The first gangster entered from behind us and dove toward me.

From a deeply veiled level of my programming, I invoked a number of processes defined for my defense. Several of my seemingly innocuous biological systems came to life in a combination the authorities could not have foreseen. The gangster seemed to slow down mid lunge and I pushed off for a handhold, safely out of the reach of his staff. As he passed I studied him and was surprised by his seeming, and probably true, youth. He looked several years younger than I had been when Tristero took me from Earth. His staff smashed into one of the seats, which buckled, nearly tearing free from its restraints. I wondered if those who had taken away his childhood had offered him super human powers as well. If so, it seemed they had delivered.

My perception of time sped up only slightly once I was free of the immediate danger. Moros whirled around and fired two shots into my attacker, who then crashed awkwardly into a second seat, which absorbed the impact. Two patches of clothing on his back were torn and smoldering. Underneath his skin peeled back from the gaping wounds left by the x-ray blasts.

A second boy had entered from the opposite side of the car and was able to strike Moros before she could turn to fire. My combat programs told me she should have abandoned the handgun in favor of a melee defense. As soon as the staff struck her shoulder I heard the crunch of bones, and she stiffened and jerked, incapacitated from a neural charge delivered on impact.

Again time slowed down as she floated to the floor and I darted across the compartment with a powerful thrust of my legs. Before the Abaasy boy could bring his staff down on my head or back, I had already slammed into him and pinned him against the wall of the car. He dropped his weapon and with a glance over my shoulder, I reached out and snatched it out of the air.

In my peripheral vision, I could see another gangster in the far door. This one was a young girl and she seemed to be aiming her staff at me. Automatically assuming this was a threat, I reached out with one of my prehensile feet, anchoring myself with the other and still applying enough pressure to immobilize the first boy I was pining, I wretched Moros’ gun out of her rigid hands. I beat the girl on the draw, but only barely, and as her chest opened up with a flicker of flame and smoke, a blast of light flashed from her weapon. The boy I was restraining jerked and spasmed against me before going limp, the accidental target of his partner’s attack. I pulled the trigger again as the girl floated back out the door, and another hole opened up on her torso.

I scanned quickly for the other assailant and discovered him in time to dodge a blast aimed at me. By the time I hit the floor flashes of light flooded the cabin of the car. Glass, metal, plastic, and the fabric of the seats filled the air. Soon, so did the blood and flesh of those unlucky enough to be left in the open. I peered beneath the seats and out the door during a moment of reprieve. The last gangster was coasting towards the car and eyeing it warily. I cracked off a quick shot, and the attack was over. Blood filled the air in the tunnel around the boy’s head.

Soon the D.o.C. would arrive with reinforcements for Moros. I checked her, saw that she was dead, and then launched myself out of the car toward one of the Abaasy sleds. I had indeed done my research, and maps of Acheron province were reassembled in my head as I sped off down the capillary, dodging the wreckage of our car, and turning down the capillary that had delivered the car that cut us off. I knew that speed was my only certain ally, but I hoped that a visit to the Firedrakes might earn me another.

Agent Moros’ question was ringing in the back of my mind. “Any reason they might be interested in you, Mr. Spanner?” For in truth I had no idea.

* * *

Yes, Tristero had prepared me well for such contingencies, and I had seen my share of them over the years. Granted, if I had been traveling to Triton, Mercury, or any of the other more civilized worlds in the solar system, I would never have been able to smuggle in the information and biological systems that had escaped the scrutiny of Cerberus, Sybil, and whoever had thrown together my body that day. I would have been considerably more vulnerable traveling physically on those planets, even Mars or Luna, but there I would have received a proper welcome and would be granted free access of the local worldnet. There would be no need for a body and no chance of getting killed in the analogue world. Now, the dangers of the digital worlds were another matter, but these were not nearly so… final, at least as long as my back up procedures on Mimas were not in danger of violation.

I was not the sort to feel any remorse for what I’d done to the Abaasy aggressors, as final as their death probably was, and I felt very little for the fanatic Moros. But later, when it came to Charonese civilians, I couldn’t help but feel differently, and what weighed heavily on me that day, soon became a weight unbearable.

* * *

I had succeeded in avoiding several D.o.C. patrols, but had begun to question whether I would be able to contact the Firedrakes. Many of Charon’s own citizens considered them a fantasy, an urban legend of sorts, but our couriers had interacted with them on several occasions, usually amiably and profitably. Unfortunately, hours had passed as I wandered the deep and lifeless tunnels where the Tristero files suggested I might find the creatures. At one point, I came upon a chamber where they may have once grown their crops, but it was lifeless when I found it, with scars in the ceilings and walls where sunlamps had been torn out by the roots. Skeptics might have pointed out that such evidence could have been left behind any gypsy caravan hiding from the D.o.C. Even UniServe relief workers had been known to live such an existence on that tiny world. Still, I trusted our intelligence and pursued my best hope of aid in reaching the ambassador. Despite my confidence, I was never prepared for what befell me in those tunnels.

I clawed my way out of a narrow passage where the walls generated very little of their ambient blue light. Up ahead I could see the path widening, though the light was no better, as it approached an intersection. From the maps in my mind, I knew that if I continued on past the crossroads, I would soon find another series of chambers where the mysterious man-bat creatures might likely be found… if they wanted to.

With rhythmic strokes I touched off the cavern walls, propelling myself forward, but as I approached the intersection I braked a bit with each touch until I could peer around the corners and proceed at a cautious pace. With no net access I needed to rely on my senses, my training, and my instinct to avoid the D.o.C. patrols and any other dangers that the tunnels might have held for me. Satisfied that I could cross safely and unseen, I pushed off and followed a gentle arc to the other side.

My passage was interrupted by the sound of a scream. Primitive responses I hadn’t experienced in years were triggered by the terrible sound. My defensive programs were not activated, but I twisted around in mid air with a flight or fight reflex that brought me into an exaggerated crouching position as soon as I could grip the floor. Two figures had appeared behind me as if from nowhere and now stood simply at the center of the crossroads. One of them closed it’s gaping mouth and the horrible scream died away, though it seemed to echo through the surrounding caves for many moments afterwards, like a living presence that had escaped that maw and now fought frantically for escape from the deep caverns.

These were no ordinary Firedrakes, but rather a pair of beings that even Tristero had assumed were mere legend, Cyhyraeth and Gwrach-y-Rhibyn.

The two hags stood calmly before us. Each had a long mane of knotted red hair that fell in tangles from around their angular and bony features to wrap like tentacles around their emaciated limbs. Even in the dampness of the tunnels, their skin appeared dry and cracked, barely stretching over the fingers and toes that ended in viciously crooked claws like nails. Rising high off of their backs were the fleshy folds of bat-like wings, the hallmark of the firedrakes. A small trickle of a stream flowed around the gnarled claws that were their feet as they scrapped unnervingly against the rock. While these creatures were capable of true flight, they somehow seemed more soundly grounded than any other I’d seen on any world with such low gravity.

I call them creatures, but like all of the alien peoples of the solar system at that time, they were as human as I, perhaps more so. The building blocks of terrestrial DNA, and the physical parameters of the newest processors were the only limits to how far human imagination could transform us. I was a cleverly crafted mixture of the biological and digital, at least in my current incarnation, but the how and the why these creatures had come to be was a mystery I had no hope of solving.

Luckily I had stored the many tales of the two weird women along with my other Charonese research. I quickly identified the one on the right as Cyhyraeth by her quiet, but ceaseless wailing. Gwrach-y-Rhibyn spoke to me.

“Hark Spanner,” she hissed. “Why have you come to this world take away their children?”

There was a momentarily increased wailing from Cyhyraeth.

Bewildered, I could not answer the question, but after a pause I instead announced my intentions. “I have not come for anyone’s children, but simply to deliver a message. I have sought your people to seek your help.”

“Heed our warning. The firedrakes will not help you to destroy their children.”

Again came more weeping.

“I don’t understand. I can pay for your help. I am a courier for Tristero. Your people…”

“The Firedrakes are not our people. We are outcastes from the kingdom of Camazotz. We bring you a warning. If you seek their help, the Firedrakes will…”

Here Gwrach-y-Rhibyn became incomprehensible, and Cyhyraeth even more agitated. I feared they would once again break into the screaming that had stopped me cold.

“Will what?” I asked. “What will they do? What do you know?”

Finally it had occurred to me that whatever was driving these women to say these things was going to be crucial to the completion of my mission.

“If you seek the Firedrakes, you will…” Gwrach-y-Rhibyn began, but then resorted to squealing in my face. She had lifted off the ground with a beating of her fleshy wings and was gesturing wildly with her claw-hands. Behind her Cyhyraeth lifted off as well, and flew about uncontrollably before darting down the cavern to my right. Gwrach-y-Rhibyn screeched one more time at me and then with a flourish of beating wings, also shot down the tunnel. I was left standing, gripping the rock tightly with my feet, stunned and confused.

Initially I resolved that until I received any better information, I would do best to continue in my quest for the Firedrakes. However, not long afterward, as I reviewed my files on the hags, I sorted out the meaning in their screaming. Judging form the ancient mythologies that lent the creatures their names, this was a warning to me of my impending death. It wasn’t difficult to deduce that whatever the Abaasy knew, so did the Firedrakes, and that both groups, usually enemies, wanted to stop me from delivering my message.

In need of a new immediate goal, I devised a search program that would comb the research I had brought with me for any appropriate contacts in the Acheron Province, anyone who might be able and willing to help me locate the ambassador. As quickly as possible, I made my way back toward public tunnels and transportation, hoping all the while that Cyhyraeth and Gwrach-y-Rhibyn were indeed ostracized to the point where they would not lead the firedrakes to me. Regardless, I still had Moros’ handgun and one of the Abaasy Boy staves tucked in my belt, and I was confident I could escape any confrontations with the natives.

* * *

It is little comfort to me now that I was following corporate policy flawlessly. Nor does it help to think that Tristero may have been truly ignorant of the message I carried. No, these things are overshadowed by the darkness that meant the Abaasy and the Firedrakes may have known, and that it still happened, and that their resistance was.. that the lives they sacrificed were.. such a pitiful gesture compared to the power of those that orchestrated those horrific events, events that changed us, and changed me, forever.

You must believe that things were different before the explosion. I didn’t think the way I do today. None of us did. This was more than thirty years before the messiah came to show us what it truly meant to be human, and to introduce us to the truly alien.

I killed again that day, but I cannot accept what I have privately feared for nearly sixty years. I cannot accept that I came to take away their children, the young Charonese, born and unborn… the Firedrake hatchlings. I never even saw one. As fearsome as they were, the adults were beautiful.

* * *

As a child I learned that the best place to hide from the hunters of Kargoolie Ark was within the walls of their own city, and that the last place a vengeful pirate would look for you was aboard the Lowther. The merfolk, too, had virtually no security beneath their city’s camouflage webbing.

The same was true on Charon. I had indeed located a viable contact, an aging but influential Martian wholesaler named Ares Greenburg, who had a contract to supply the Ambassador with a variety of off world luxuries, and who had indeed met with her at a secret compound on a number of occasions. I succeeded in using public transportation arteries to find Greenburg’s house. There I contacted, conversed with, and hired him unmolested by any of the forces pursuing me. Our train ride to the Ambassador’s district was uneventful, but I knew that the closer we got to the safe house, the more likely it was we would be discovered. However, I was assuming that none of the groups I knew would be looking for me would risk a public confrontation. The Abaasy and the D.o.C. had too much of an interest in keeping order, and in their own public image. The Firedrakes feared any exposure. However, order in the streets, PR, and a well-sheltered life mattered little in comparison to the magnitude of what they must have suspected of me. As soon as we stepped onto the platform at the Duat station, my stroke of luck came to an abrupt end.

The station was at one end of a colossal bio-cavern with thousands of sunlamps growing on the distant ceiling, and ‘outdoor’ shopping and residential districts lining the terraced floors. People and vehicles filled every surface of the cavern and much of the interior airspace.

“Father be with us,” Greenburg whispered as soon as we stepped off of the train. I was unsure if he was calling on the ancestral God of his religion, or the symbolic figurehead of the federal government on Mars. In either case, I was realizing that despite the warrior traditions he and his home planet were named for, the old wholesaler was in no way prepared for what was unfolding around us.

I heard gasps and curses from elsewhere on the platform. A woman screamed and her child cried out. Finally, I followed the gazes of a young girl and her parents. The silhouettes of Firedrake wings, dozens of them, were approaching from a distance. To my knowledge, the secretive people had never shown themselves in such a public way before. Apparently the hags of warning had been wrong about the Firedrakes. They wouldn’t try to kill me if I sought them out. They would try to kill me regardless.

The platform became a blur of motion as people darted about. Men and women grabbed their children and jumped for the exits. Mid air collisions were unavoidable. Not a shot had been fired, but the attack, if that’s what it was, had already caused several injuries.

At one exit there was a tide of people pushing onto the platform. Many wore civilian clothing, but there were a half-dozen or so in D.o.C. uniforms. All were armed. Unfortunately, I was right about them lying in wait for us, but wrong about their reluctance to cause a disturbance. I scanned about for any sign of the mafia, sure that they must be represented in this circus, but saw no one clearly displaying the Abaasy insignia.

Ares Greenburg’s Martian physiology did not include the prehensile feet of the Charonese, but he stood rooted to the platform in the manner of Cyhyraeth and Gwrach-y-Rhibyn, staring dumbly into the distance.

“Greenburg, come with me.” He didn’t budge. But, I needed him; he knew the Ambassador’s compound, and vicariously, he was my only link to the worldnet.

The D.o.C. soldiers had spotted me and pushed off towards us, violently brushing aside the civilians who’s flight brought them into the soldiers’ path.

“Ares, let’s go.”

I grabbed the old man, shoved him down into the train tube, which was only a half-pipe as it passed through the station, and pushed him ahead of me. I launched myself down the tube after him, heading for the opening in the cavern wall where the tube once again disappeared into the subterranean maze where I might have a chance to elude my pursuers. Above us screams could be heard as a firefight broke out between the D.o.C. troops and the Firedrakes. It was not only the Plutonians that most Charonese wanted off their world, but the peaceful though devilish-in-appearance bat men who inhabited the shadow side of their world as well. I was hoping I could count on the two warring factions to occupy each other as Greenburg and I made our escape. Unfortunately, somebody was still focusing on us, and as I gave the nearly inert man another shove toward the tunnels, the walls above us came to life with a hail of tiny explosions, X-ray lasers laying waste to infrastructure their owners probably depended on.

Before we reached the safety of the dark tunnel, two D.o.C. soldiers dove into the track with us, rebounded off the far side and opened fire on us. My defensive measures came into play, slowing down the action, and I maneuvered in front of Greenburg before firing. Luckily, the first volley from the D.o.C. was wild. Mine was not. One of the soldiers struck the side of track with his head and a shoulder, already dead. The other shoved off again, tracking us with his laser the whole way. I pushed off of Greenburg, sending us both safely in opposite directions. Invisible beams of destructive energy filled the air between us. Something burned my left arm, but I dispatched the second soldier.

I collected Greenburg again, and shoved him back toward the tunnel. This time he managed to orient himself and kick off of the ground in the proper direction. I followed, scanning over my shoulder as we went.

We were about fifty meters safely into the tunnel and not far ahead I could see the intersection of a smaller access tunnel. With any luck we would be able to escape via such tunnels and make our way toward the Ambassador’s compound. Greenburg’s wits must have been returning because he had obviously accessed a public video feed of the platform.

“Here they come,” he announced.

I looked back the way we had come and saw three Firedrake silhouettes fill the circle of light behind us, nearly eclipsing any light from the cavern. The blue light of the tunnels came back into play as my eyes rapidly adjusted.

I waited for the Firedrakes to make the first move, and as they beat there wings and bore down on us, I switched from the handgun to the staff. It was then that I noticed the extent of the damage to my left arm. It was nearly useless, so in the process of switching weapons I dropped the gun. I was aware of it floating to the ground, but the first Firedrake was upon me. I reoriented to duck an attack as its beak-like maw opened and snapped at the air where my head had been. Another of the creatures had made for Greenburg, and I was able to reach out and deflect its attack with a blow from the staff. The neural charge imparted to its skull left it incapacitated, at least, and it coasted toward the floor.

The third attacker hit me in the midsection, it’s beak wrapped nearly all the way around my body. The primitive fears of my youth returned as I beat down on it’s head with the butt end of the staff; I was afraid that the charged end might pass it’s effects on through its head into my body, a crippling situation that I could not risk.

My assailant reached up with a fully articulate arm and hand to grab my wrist, immobilizing my striking hand. It was surprisingly strong, but Tristero had designed my seemingly innocuous body with more than a few safety designs. My damaged left arm delivered a burst of strength to one of its bulbous eyes, a blow violent enough to dislodge his grip on my wrist and stomach. He charged at me again, and I could see peripherally, that the original drake now had Greenburg backed up against the tunnel wall, and a host of new shadows now blocked the tunnel entrance.

I had lowered my arms when released and now brought the charged end of the staff swiftly up into the jaw behind my attacker’s beak. He screeched out in pain and collapsed into me. The piercing cry was followed from another. Greenburg had fallen under a hail of blows from the drake that had pinned him. At that point I didn’t dare turn to help him. The shadows at the entrance were resolving into a squad of D.o.C. soldiers.

As the first of them began firing down the tunnel in our direction, there were sounds behind us. With a quick glance over my shoulder I could see another squad of darkly clad soldiers approaching us from the rear. We were surrounded. The drake attacking Greenburg was struck and seared. Smoke and blood filled the tunnel. Then the men behind us opened fire as well. I pushed off a wall and dove for the floor and the air above me was hot with destruction. Bodies fell around me, wall panels flared up in flame for brief moments and then whole sections of illumination would darken. Sounds of the walls flying apart, men and firedrakes screaming, soldiers yelling, moving, and finally engaging in hand to hand combat thundered in my new organic ears.

I risked a glance to one side and saw Greenburg’s bloody and mutilated body beside me. It struck me that I too was wounded and sprawled on the ground, but that there was a heated combat going on around and above us. The D.o.C. from the tunnel entrance were to longer concerned with us, and had in fact been attacked by whoever had come up from behind. I feared Abaasy, but presumably the mob wanted me dead as well. Whoever had joined the fray was now moving toward my position and driving off our attackers.

* * *

Not only had I killed again, I had ushered an innocent into danger and to his death. Greenburg did not survive those moments in the tunnel. Miraculously, and due to no skill or worthiness of my own, I was saved. The Plutonian ambassador had received intelligence of my mission, my quandary, and my pursuers. Fearing just such as scene as I experienced at Duat station, she had dispatched a team of well-armed agents to intercept me and deliver me to her so that she might hear whatever message it was that had caused the various Charonese peoples such alarm.

* * *

Handcuffs made traveling in Charon’s gravity considerably more difficult, but I was cuffed and escorted to the compound of the Plutonian ambassador. We traveled via a small private tube car, through miles of tunnels black as blindness in the absence of the usual bioluminescence. We stopped in a place as void-like as any we had traveled to, and I was ushered out of the car. Without navigation lights, it quickly disappeared from view as it sped away. Only then did the outline of a door appear several feet from me. Hands in the dark forced me toward it, and toward the completion of my mission. What my fate would be in the wake of my success I could not guess.

Whether this place was truly the secure site of her Charonese imposed house arrest I began to doubt. Perhaps the ambassador was beyond control of the local government. That they had hidden her from the public for her own good may have been official stance meant to allay the fears of a justifiably paranoid people.

However, if that were the case, then were was Agent Moros assigned to escort me once Cerberus and Sybil awarded me a visa, and a body. At the very least, this was a secret and safe entrance to her home, which I highly doubted Moros or Greenburg would have been able to lead me to.

As we approached the outline of the door, one glowing side slowly expanded until there was a blinding monolith of light before us. A hulking form moved through the light and into the darkness where my escorts and I now waited. Words were exchanged in code. I presumed that during several pauses transmissions were made as well, though we may well have been on a live feed during the entire exchange, if not the length of our trip from Duat station. Finally we were escorted through the frame of light and into a very conservative corridor. A door was shut behind us and my eyes quickly adjusted to the normal interior illumination.

“This way, Sir,” the hulking form addressed me. In the new light I could see that while clearly a large augmented form, he maintained the physiology that the Charonese shared with their Plutonian cousins, mostly traditional human with minor modifications such as his prehensile feet. What his combat capabilities were, I had no desire to discover.

I followed him for some time with out argument, resistance, or any inclination of running. My earlier escort, the dark clad soldiers who had rescued me left the entrance in another direction.

The hulk and I soon turned a corner toward a large double wooden door, where stood another giant similar in appearance to the one I followed. I waited at a distance while they conferred. Then the one standing guard pushed open the heavy door and coasted inside. After several moments I finally heard a woman voice from inside.

“Alsvid, please show the courier in.”

I was ushered into the room. I had expected a grand chamber, but this was little more than a respectable office. Behind a heavy desk of wood that was probably imported all the way from Earth, sat the petite form of Ambassador Aita. Behind her stood a wiry young man in a dark suit. Once I was standing before her desk, the ambassador motioned for me to sit. The man behind her followed me with his eyes. The ambassador spoke again. Hers was a cool and soothing voice, but her tone somehow still inspired a dread deep within my new body.

“I understand you have something for me, Mr. Spanner.”

“I am an agent of the Tristero Group, and carry a confidential message for you. The sender has opted to remain anonymous to our service, though of course, the message may reveal his identity.”

“Then I will hear your message. Mr. Mani will remain to hear it with me, but Alsvid and Arvak, if you would please leave us.”

“Of course,” my escort bowed and moved back through the doors, which his counterpart closed behind them.

“You should be aware, mam,” I explained. “Once you have heard the message and your questions have been answered, I will not retain a personal memory of the conversation, from the moment you confirm that you wish to hear the message until the moment you confirm that you are finished discussing it with me.”
“Naturally. I will hear the message now.”

“Will you confirm that you wish your message delivered now?”

I was no longer sitting when I remember hearing a “Yes” in response. The ambassador and Mr. Mani were turning away from a wall display that had just gone blank. Immediately I knew Aita was responding not to the question I remembered, but rather to my request that she confirm that our conversation was over. My Client’s identity and the contents of his message were still secure from my knowledge, a fact that haunts me to this day.

“Alsvid and Arvak will escort you upstairs, Mr. Spanner. You will be recompressed and retransmitted to Mimas. We will recycle your body.”

“Thank you, Ambassador.” With that I was escorted out of the door opposite the entrance I had come through.

* * *

My life since 2414 has been defined by a moment not long after my debriefing on Mimas. In my sanctuary I was preparing a simulation to escape and relax in the wake of my ordeal. Few of my deliveries had been so full of the things I had tried to escape when I left the mud of the Nularbor in exchange for the worldnet on Mimas. My recreation, though, was cut short by the highest level event-alert I allowed. Immediately I accessed the relevant news feeds and learned the fate of Charon. While the images and stories from Pluto and Twin Planets space were the most graphic and dramatic, the images that impacted me the most were those shot from Cassini City in the Crater Sea there on Mimas. There, with the backdrop of my new home, and the awesome distance from Charon to Mimas a sobering reminder of my insignificance, especially in digital form, I watched as the wordlet I had been on in the flesh - had stood at the heart of only hours before - refused to be invisible any longer, flashed briefly in our sky and then ceased to be.

For years Tristero councilors told me that I must consider my fears to be nothing more than the paranoia associated with such a Traumatic event and such a near escape from it, but I will always wonder and always fear. Prior to that day I had always been thankful for the ignorance Tristero’s system afforded me when delivering God only knew what tidings for my clients. Now, each memory haunts me as viciously as this one.