On the edge of the frontier, on a rough planet, a patrol officer has had enough of the rough life there, and the even rougher behavior of his fellow officers. His faith helps, but his own acts may be his downfall.
“I think you killed him,” said Evander, doing his best to keep rage out of his voice as he walked to his partner who stood over the man lying in the street.
Heri, shockstick still in hand, didn’t reply.
The inert man lay in a tumbled, awkward position in the middle of the dirt street, face-up. He was about a meter tall, like nearly everyone else here, including Heri. Evander stood nearly two meters, towering over his partner. Blood trickled from his nose. Evander kneeled and checked for a pulse at his neck, noting a silver pendant, six concentric circles, lying in the dust from a small chain about his throat. “He’s dead,” sighed Evander.
Heri spat. “He should have listened and backed the fuck off.”
The two uniformed patrolmen stood over the body, scanning all compass points, tense. Evander had been drafted to the force due to his physical advantage. He hadn’t wanted the job, and six months since his awakening, wished he still slept aboard the Delias.
The street was deserted, heat rising and rippling the scrap wood and rusted metal structures that stood in haphazard rows. The orange, K-type sun shone high, casting short, hard shadows. Heri had slammed the brakes on the cruiser when he saw the street brawl and he leapt out, shockstick swinging. One guy wasn’t fast enough in the scatter. Not designed to be lethal, the shockstick was intended to be strongly motivational. Sometimes, a person couldn’t endure the charge. Now a man lay dead on the street, eyes open to the clear sky, and the living had retreated to the fringes, surely watching the officers unseen. Evander said, “We should call this in.”
“Nah. We should just go. Shit’s going to get bad right now.” Heri removed his cap and wiped sweat with the crook of his elbow. “Really bad. And there’s only us two.”
“So, that’s an order?” Evander’s eyes darted back and forth, waiting for the hidden crowd to make a move. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck.
“Yah, get in the car.” Heri kept his shockstick out, flicked it so tiny bolts of electricity danced between the connection spikes at the end. They reached the vehicle and Evander got in. Heri collapsed his shockstick, cast his eyes full circle one more time, sat on the pilot side. As his door clicked shut, a rock struck the windscreen. Heri keyed the car to life. People filed back into the street from several directions. “Shit. I told ya.” Heri hit the accelerator and spun the car around 180 degrees and hard, striking someone with the rear bumper and throwing their body across the road.
“Fuck, Heri!”
“I didn’t see them!”
“Stop the godammned car!”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You just ran over someone! We need to get them to a hospital.”
Heri looked skyward, exasperated, eyes rolling. “No one gives a fuck. They’ll rip your head off out there.”
“I give a fuck!”
Heri braked hard. “Fine. If you get yourself killed—”
Evander leapt from the car and ran the short distance to the fallen man who scrambled to rise. One of his legs was bent in an impossible way and blood soaked through his loose green pants.
Evander grasped his arm, stopping him. “We can get you to a hospital.”
“Get the hell away from me!” he shouted, spittle flying.
“You need—”
“I need you to let me go!” The man broke Evander’s grip with a twist and limped away.
A rock struck Evander on the hip, dropping him to one knee. The pain shot through his entire left side. Shouting and jeering grew louder. People drew closer. A brick skittered past him. Evander couldn’t blame them. He shakily stood as Heri pulled the car close and popped from the vehicle, swinging that shockstick.
Goddamn him. People clustered around in greater numbers, shouting, anger written in hard, angled lines on their faces. More streamed from behind the decrepit homes and food stalls. More rocks struck the cruiser: clunks on metal. Heri drew his firearm and shot into the air. “Get in the car!” he yelled over his shoulder at Evander. He turned back and leveled his pistol at the approaching mob.
Everything came crashing down on Evander through the throbbing haze of pain: the heat, the furious invectives and curses, all the recent instances of cruel violence. And his wife who didn’t survive the extended time in hibernation.
Heri shot into the crowd, the pops of the gun distant to Evander, who mentally spiraled into a vortex. He felt dizzy. Sweat blurred his vision.
Pop! Pop!
Screams and people scattering. Blood spilling to the dust.
More people were dying. Because of Heri. Because of everything around here.
Evander picked up the grapefruit-sized rock that had struck him and strode up behind Heri. The shouts and screams faded, as if had dove underwater. With both hands, he lifted the stone high, eclipsing the sun, the shade briefly cooling. Did the screams go silent, or did his hearing completely shut down? With his whole body engaged in the strike, the stone descended to the back of Heri’s skull, dropping him to the road, blood from the grievous wound spilling to the dust.
Evander let the rock fall from his hands, thumping to the ground, clearly audible. The crowd had indeed fallen to silence.
Breathing heavily, Evander climbed into the pilot’s seat, adjusted it for his height, closed the doors. He engaged the emergency twin rocket engines and the G forces bore down as he ascended over the makeshift homes, market stalls, and smoking cook fires. The engines rotated for horizontal flight. He levered down the window and emptied his firearm into the clear sky.
Evander got on the radio. “Riot in progress. Heri lost in the crowd. Medics requested, multiple injured and dead. Airborne and out. Location, Purple sector, west of the water tower.”
The reply came after a few seconds of pause. “Sending observation drones. Coming back in?”
“I’m not going to make the wall.” Heri had burned all the gas circling like a vulture for trouble. “Looks like I’ll be landing about half a click short of the Charter Gate.”
The walls of Ophirium lay ahead, tall, gray, and formidable.
A red-lit warning flickered to life on the panel. Evander shook his head. “And…down we go,” he whispered to himself. The engines quieted, only a reserve remained for landing.
Evander flicked on the audio warnings and set volume to max. “CLEAR AREA. LANDING. CLEAR AREA…”
The rockets fired again, this time in a short, hard burst to break the descent. The engines sputtered out and the car dropped on the cobblestoned street, wheels already spinning and propelling him forward toward the gate.
#
Awakening from hibernation was always a trial and a shock. Six months ago, as Evander regained consciousness aboard the Delias, the shocks were compounded one upon the other as he recovered under medical care. His body in stasis had arrived as planned in orbit above Prospero, but his reanimation had been delayed by seven centuries. The colonists first deployed to ground battled a drought on a planet far drier than expected. Extreme dry periods cycled roughly every century. The observation of Prospero from Earth for over twenty years did not divine this. Strife had plunged the colony to disarray. Eventually, it had collapsed not long after the Delias shuttles had been destroyed in an act of terror, locking the colonists away from the bulk of the sleeping population and necessary technology. There followed a slow descent to an iron age. As they ascended the technological ladder through the centuries, the Delias was eventually revisited with chemical rockets.
Evolution had taken a turn in the interest of the survival of the invasive species: island dwarfism. With the exception of the rare mutation, the population averaged a meter in height. Evander was not revived for the sake of humanity or history or culture. The Talls were pressed into security service to keep the peace. He was a wood craftsman by trade. An artist, not a soldier or a policeman.
Training had been provided.
Just a few months on patrol with a brutal partner had broken him. Evander returned to the station, not knowing what would fall out of his mouth when debriefed by his commander, who sat at her desk, eyeing the staticky feeds from the drones orbiting the area he had just left. One of the screens, large cathode ray boxes, jittered and went blank. “Filthy squatters,” she groused. “There went another one.” She eyed the others, one at a time, her wide, brown eyes alert, her sable hair in a ponytail. Without looking at him, she gestured to the chair fashioned for Talls before her semi-circle desk.
Evander sat. His mind traveled many paths on the way here. But no guilt for killing Heri. He despised him, the city of Ophirium, and its wall separating the citizens from the “squatters” beyond. He despised the whole damned planet. He despised himself, and had considered suicide once in the thick of a depression. But he was a coward. Hell, suicide in this culture was viewed as a selfless sacrifice: more food and water for your family and people. More so when the drought approached. Death, a beautiful blessing for the living. Murder, though, was not sanctioned. Not for the average citizens. But against the squatters, the judicial system only reluctantly and unevenly enforced the law.
Anguela sighed as another screen blinked to black. She activated the soundbox on her desk. “Bring them all back in. The only trouble out there now is the squatters and their damned slingshots.”
“Will do,” came the disembodied reply.
Anguela faced Evander at last. “What happened? You abandon Heri out there?”
“No.” That was true. Not while he still breathed. “He ordered me back to the car once I was injured.”
“You’re injured?”
“I guess I forgot.” Evander’s eyes dropped to his bloodied pants. “I think the bleeding stopped.”
“Good. Go on.”
“He ordered me to stay. Heri was retreating swinging his stick, got hit by a rock, knocked down, and he disappeared as the crowd…just swallowed him. I emptied my gun at them, but no good. They kept coming. I got out of there. I had to.”
“Did you kill some?”
“A few went down.”
“Good. I saw blood on the street, but no bodies. They carry them off pretty quick. But now, the squatters have a gun and a shockstick.” She shook her head. She made a brushing gesture with her hand. “Put all the details in the report, we’ll discuss all this later.”
Evander stood, uncertain, confused. That was it? An officer disappeared on his watch, presumed dead, and just “details in the report?”
He didn’t make the report. Evander went home.
#
Evander had trouble meditating. Meditation was a pillar of the Structurist religion. He needed it right now, to be a blank, in the void, nothing but breath. But the scene of ramming that rock to Hari’s skull replayed again and again. It took time, but he managed to push the bloody vision, the feel of that rock meeting bone, and the shock of it in his elbows and wrists, into the distance.
When he emerged, his mind had become still and night had killed yet another dreadful day, the memory of blood and murder now at an arm’s length. Still painful, but muted.
He hadn’t even checked his wound.
In the bright of the bathroom, he peeled off his pants that stuck to him with the dried, flaking adhesive of his blood. An angry purple had spread across his side. The cut seeped, the bandage of his clothes now removed.
After cleaning and dressing it, he gingerly sat on the floor beneath a skylight, where one of the moons in quarter phase gazed down with cold disapproval.
In a blink, the moon was replaced by stars of constellations unrecognized. He must have dozed off, the stress fatiguing him down into a dreamless hole for an uncertain time. He rose, changed clothes, considered eating, didn’t. He laced his boots and left his apartment. He made it to a guarded gate of Ophirium and flashed his credentials to leave. Evander was not in uniform except for his boots. The cop on duty raised his eyebrows, but didn’t argue. Evander left the city on foot toward the shanties.
Dawn broke as he reached the square where he had murdered his partner. He sat in the dust by the bicycle shop of someone he’d talked to several times on patrol, one of the few that didn’t keep their distance or spit at him.
People walking and biking and taking pedicabs cast him looks and stares, both suspicious and merely curious.
“Need your bike fixed, hey?”
Tok had come up from behind as Evander sat lost in thought. Tok’s black hair ran in rows from forehead to nape, his eyes a cold blue. He held a bicycle gear in one hand, fragrant street food wrapped in flatbread in the other.
“Where’s your uniform? You’re not trying to be undercover, I hope. Your lot is stupid, so maybe I’m wrong.”
Evander laughed a couple notes. The first since yesterday. “I’m off duty.”
“I doubt that.”
Evander cast him a questioning look.
“You’re here to bribe me into spying. Or someone else.”
“No. Just a bad day yesterday, I guess.”
“Not so bad, hey,” replied Tok, taking another bite and squinting up at the sun. “Because of yesterday, no one killed you walking in here alone.”
“Word gets around fast.”
“Yes. Now, I have to open the shop, get to work.” Tok jangled the lock on the door.
“Can I talk to you?”
“I’m not spying on my friends.”
“It’s not that.”
“I can’t be seen with you long, officer. Someone will slit my throat.”
“I get it.”
Tok swung the squeaky metal door open. “Do you?” Tok’s eyes examined him hard. “Maybe you do. Are you on the run? They going to put you down for what you did, hey?”
“They don’t know, and my commander didn’t seem that concerned. I know there’s an investigation about to happen.”
“No one here will talk. Not that they will ask. You never killed any of us. But you killed one of them.”
“That guy Heri killed. He wore a symbol. Concentric circles.”
“Hey?” Tok’s eyebrows rose.
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. Some ancient thing that the young people think is fashionable.”
“But—”
Tok entered his shop. “I’m done talking to you, officer.” He closed the door, metal clanking on metal.
#
In the locker room at the station the following day, Evander pressed ice to his wound he had earned walking from the shanties. Someone had clocked him in the side of the face with a rock. He had waited for a crowd to gather and beat him to death, but nothing else happened.
“Evander?”
He looked up, then kept looking up, as she was a fellow Tall. Close-cropped black wiry hair, dusky skin, umber eyes.
“I’m you’re new partner. Rachael.”
“This is new. Two Talls?”
“Right. Let’s go.”
They cruised out to the southernmost edge of the shanties, Verde, although nothing much was green here, and close enough to an open sewer to make Evander queasy. Rachael didn’t appear bothered. On the way, she told him how she was reanimated a year and a half ago, among the first. They commiserated about the terrible tech and backward medical care, the cultural shift to revere death. When he’d met her in the locker room, he’d expected her to spew platitudes on law and order, on how the squatters deserved their lot, breeding beyond the family laws and not “sacrificing” their elders and infirm at the sanctioned intervals.
They parked by a series of ramshackle businesses. Some closed and locked their doors as they pulled up. They exited and leaned on the car hood.
“Why’d they put you with me?” Evander asked.
“Anguela’s shifting strategy. Maybe pairing Talls with Talls makes life a little easier. They don’t want us committing suicide. They spent a lot of time and effort on this program.”
“Right. Big people to bully the dwarves.”
“Moderns. Don’t let anyone else catch you calling them anything else. Even if they’re squatters.”
“Should we call the squatters something else?”
“Not a good idea if you want to fit in.”
Evander paused. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.”
Racheal’s eyes broke sympathetic. She clapped him on the back. “Fake it. Fake it every day until it feels comfortable enough you don’t feel dead inside.”
The honesty hit like a club to the stomach. “Yeah. I…don’t know if I got that in me.”
“Find it in you. They won’t let us do anything else.”
Evander looked to the sky. The orange sun still caught him a little off-guard every time. A change one would figure as trivial, but the sky one grew up beneath had genetic roots reaching back millions of years. “Does the sun seem weird to you, still?”
“Sometimes.” She squinted above with him for a moment. “We sailed from a society that looked out for each other to this caveman shit.”
“I wouldn’t mind running off to a cave.”
“The wilderness here would kill you. That’s one of the ways to sacrifice yourself.”
Evander sighed. “Well, an option to keep in the pocket, then.”
#
Unlike riding with Heri, Rachael avoided violence, was never casually cruel to the squatters, and they got along fine. Anguela had been right, he needed someone that could relate to his experience. But he knew better than to mention what had really happened to Heri. No matter their budding friendship, if Evander decided to die, it would not be at the hands of these cruel jackasses that would take delight in his killing and declare it a marvelous act to boot.
A couple weeks passed, and one day with a small, lonely cloud in the sky, they ended up parked across the dusty street from Tok’s shop. Evander considered saying hello, but he remembered that the man had felt hassled in their last encounter. The partners leaned on the hood of their car, watching the foot traffic under the afternoon gaze of the sun.
Evander looked to a food vendor, cart at the side of the road, serving a small line of customers. “I know we’re not supposed to eat the street food, but damn, it sure smells good.”
Rachael dropped her voice low. “I have come here a couple of times by myself. Each time, I took a single bite, waited to see if I’d get sick, and after half an hour, devoured the rest.”
Evander blinked at her. “Everyone says that’s risky as hell.”
“I think I discovered it’s not so risky to the Talls. They can see we’re not kill-crazy assholes.”
Evander’s mouth watered. “I’ll get us something.”
“I’m going on record as advising against it. But go ahead.”
The woman behind the cart, elderly and wrinkled as a raisin, glared initially. Then a spark lit behind her eyes and she smiled. “What can I get for you, officer?”
Evander was glad Rachael stayed back at the cruiser. This would have looked suspicious. He ordered, and after she finished wrapping the meat in flatbread, the meals in paper, she said, “No charge. And sorry, no water. We’re out.”
Evander protested quietly, but she shooed him away, and, if his eyes weren’t so intent on this kindly, thankful old woman, he would have missed her flashing the hand symbol of Structurism. His hands were full, and he would not have dared return it anyway. He walked back to Rachael.
“She actually smiled at you,” said Rachael, accepting the wrap.
“I think that means it’s definitely poison.”
“You might be right.” Racheal took a bite. Her eyes closed in a food ecstasy. “Not a bad way to die.”
Evander, mouth full, replied, “Right?”
“How much I owe you?”
Evander didn’t even have a chance to ask the vendor. “Nothing. You buy next time.”
“I didn’t even see you pay.”
“Not very observant for a patrol officer.”
She shook her head at the jab. “Fine.”
Neither waited to see if their stomachs groaned in protest after the first bite. As they finished, Evander noticed Tok emerging from his shop with a bike and a customer. He cast his gaze elsewhere so Tok wouldn’t feel watched. But after the exchange, Tok took notice and walked up to the pair leaning on the cruiser.
“Hello,” greeted Evander, careful to not call him by name.
“One well went dry, hey. Others always follow. Two recyclers are fritzed. No word on water trucks yet. Or maintenance.”
“Not really our department—” started Rachael.
“No one else around. Ever. I just ask you pass along word, hey? Things get thirsty, then they get violent, and it’s you people cracking skulls when we all we want is water.” Tok’s eyes shifted from me to Rachael and back again.
“All right,” said Rachael. “When we get back, I’ll get in touch with the appropriate department.”
Tok nodded and turned heel.
“That’s unusual,” said Rachael, watching him go.
“The drought is coming.” Said Evander. “Or already here.”
“Not that. The way he just walked up and complained. Bold.”
“People notice when you’re not an asshole to them, said you.”
“Maybe. I also noticed when we rolled up he placed two chairs on either side of his door.”
Evander pulled a questioning face. “So?”
“I won’t trouble the man, but this time of year, Structurists put small symbols around their doors and gates.”
“Huh.” Evander’s mouth went dry. “Is it a holiday or something?”
“Perihelion. A time for reflection, for forgiveness, for confessing regretted actions. And dancing at the moment the earth is closest to the sun.”
“Well, Prospero now.”
“Right.”
“Sounds like you know something about it.”
“I was one on earth. Still am, I guess.”
Evander looked in her eyes, but said nothing.
“Yes, it’s against the law. But the laws are a little different on the other side of the wall. No one cares back there if you celebrate a forbidden holiday. Out here, it’s an excuse to come down hard on people for nothing. That terrorism bit was centuries ago and had nothing to do with Structurism or its teachings.”
Evander nodded, saying nothing. He didn’t feel safe telling Rachael he was a Structurist, too. Not yet.
#
Rachael invited Evander to a local tavern. The walls and ceiling were timbered with dark gnomewood, the floor tiled with green and white marble mined from the Silent Mountains. The décor was a sad approximation of the Structurist holiday of Perihelion: strung “growlights” of amber blinked happily and black ribbons were twisted in loops dangling from the beams. A band struck lively dance tunes. A lot of the patrons wore headbands with red concentric circles. Evander almost walked back out, but Rachael caught his eye with a smile and a wave from one of two tables crafted for Talls.
He meandered through drinking and smoking patrons and sat at the small table across from her. “Happy Perihelion!” she greeted.
“Peace, harmony, and love to you,” he said glumly.
She tilted her head. “Oh. You’re serious.”
The mockery of sacred rites had angered him, but not beyond all wits. “This isn’t how it’s done. This,” he waved his hand about, “is bullshit. You should know. I had plenty of Structurist family. They would leave immediately. What are you doing here?”
“The locals celebrate like this now. It’s been hundreds of years. And not illegal, like entering a Hive for meditations, ritual, and all that.”
He eyed her. Should he continue to try and fit in? Rachael had seemed all right, out there in the shanties observing, talking to the citizens, and not once breaking out her shockstick or gun. Also, Evander had never known a Structurist to put an S at the end of meditation. “This place really isn’t for me. Not tonight.”
“We’ll go someplace else. You’re right about the commercialization and trivialization. I’m just not so hardcore.” She stood and drained her lime green drink.
He allowed her to lead him down the lighted sidewalk. Seeing that mockery in that tavern had him rattled and disgusted. The headbands in ceremony were black and symbolized the infinity of the mind. Back there, they were gaily colored, some with scrolling lights that pulsed to music. Should he drink? Or should he meditate? Before yesterday, he didn’t know Perihelion was approaching. He should find a Structurist calendar for Prospero. Celestial based, the earth version didn’t apply here. He figured such a thing had been banned, but all banned things could be found.
At the threshold of a simple bar named Mern’s, Rachael holding open the door for him, he hesitated. “I’m sorry. I’m just not in the mood tonight. I’m heading home.
“It’s all right. Maybe some other time.”
Hands in pockets, Evander walked back to his apartment. He lit a single candle he had purchased yesterday at a place in the shanties (no charge, and he’d been given two) and turned off all the lights. He fashioned a headband from a black bootstring and tied it about his head. Positioned on the floor comfortably, he closed his eyes for a moment and remembered his wife, her smile before entering the hibernation procedure: their last moment. “I miss you, honey,” he whispered to his empty apartment.
Evander opened his eyes, focused on the candle, and began the chant,
“We build peace
“We assemble harmony
“We construct love.”
#
Evander was called into the station for an emergency—riot in the shanties. Tok had warned them.
Rachael met him in the locker room. “Don’t worry, we’ve been assigned to the rear of the trouble. Not at the front of the wall. We’re not on a kill squad. Okay?”
“Ma’am,” he replied as he suited up. He hadn’t heard of these kill squad assignments, but the name was explanatory: Open fire on the rioters. Death: good for the community with the drought looming.
All armored up, he arrived at the assigned cruiser. Rachael introduced the two Modern officers riding with them: Jerid and Calsa. Either they weren’t pleased to be riding with Talls, or they didn’t like the assignment of rear-guard duty. As explained to him, they were just to make sure the riots didn’t gain more rabble-rousers: road-block duty.
Seated in the cruiser, Commander Anguela’s voice chimed in clearance for each launch. When their turn arrived, Evander was pressed to the seat as the rocket engines engaged and they flew into the night, over the wall ringed with searchlights, over the rioting masses, descending a kilometer beyond and settling hard in a district lit with oil lamps. The electrics had been shut off.
They drove closer to the action by several blocks and parked. The four disembarked and set up their roadblock with cones and spiked strips. The noise of the riots echoed to them. Fires lit by the rioters ahead gave the night sky a warm glow. The scent of wood and oil smoke singed his nostrils. Evander shook his head. This was bad.
“Face shields down,” ordered Rachael.
People watched them from their thin, fragile homes and businesses. The area was quiet. All the clamor came from the distance, toward the wall.
Per protocol, all had their shocksticks out and made a line of four by the cruiser and kept a watch, face shields in position, black armor and pads absorbing what little light came. Evander and Rachael stood at the center, flanked by their Modern counterparts.
Without looking at him, Rachael said, “You gonna use that thing if we’re charged?”
“Ma’am.”
“Cut the shit, Evander. I’m serious. I need an ‘affirmative’ out of you.”
“Affirmative.”
Now she turned to him. “Your passivism has to include keeping the peace. Right?”
“Affirmative.”
She flipped up her face shield. “Look at me.”
“Ma’am,” he said tonelessly as he lifted his own shield.
“I know what you are, Evander. That’s not an issue. Get your head out of your ass.”
“I know what he is too,” piped Calsa from behind.
Evander froze. It didn’t hit him until now that this might be a set-up. Out here, alone, no witness that counted except the damned police that surrounded him. Did they plan to kill him? Tell everyone that the riot swallowed him, not to be recovered?
“Where’s Heri, Tall man?” asked Jerid, behind Rachael, slapping the shaft of his shockstick to his gloved hand.
He determined to defend himself against these uniformed boots intent on crushing a helpless people barely scraping by. What had happened to Rachael? How did she transform from a colonist longing for a better world to a militant with her boot on people’s throats? The cops had it good, comparatively, and they were determined to keep it that way. Too many thirsty tongues on a planet offering little water. But some got so little, while others gorged and wasted. If only the scientific observations from earth had been timely enough to see the lakes and rivers dry up. The Delias would have had a different destination. Here, humanity didn’t flourish, but turned on one another. Just like home in the histories predating the interstellar ships.
If they had it in for him, he didn’t have a chance. Three on one? He might be able to take one out with him. But would he? Should he? Structurism taught the sacredness of life, of peace, of harmony. When faced with your murderer, give love and forgiveness to your killer. That was a heavy order only saints could fill. He’d already lost his way when murdering Heri. A moment of insanity, a fury against a world filled with injustice.
And that act had solved nothing.
But the itch for survival still scraped from within.
“Hey!” shouted someone from the rear, footsteps fast approaching.
Evander squinted in the night, seeing a silhouette of a Modern approaching.
“We need help!”
That voice clicked as familiar, but Evander was too hyped to peg it. “We got attacked one block over!”
Closer to the lights of the car, Evander could see the policeman’s uniform clearly, his cap perched oddly on his head. Maybe knocked crooked from a fight?
It hit him: This guy wasn’t in riot gear.
The approaching figure stopped just paces from Jerid as he pulled his firearm and shot him in the chest.
Everyone went for their pistols, even Evander, a training reflex. But the man with the gun drawn split the night with two more rounds. One hit Calsa, knocking her to the street sprawling and cursing.
Rachael shot the uniformed intruder, doubling him over before he crumpled to the road. Tok lay there, a hand over his bleeding abdomen, groaning, his pistol dropped, out of reach.
Evander turned and aimed his firearm at Rachael, both hands on the gun, arms straight. She had the same reaction. Time faltered and stretched. Both barrels pointed at one another’s chests. They stood so close their gun barrels were hardly a hand breadth apart. Face shields up, their eyes locked to one another.
“Stand down, Evander.”
“Maybe I’ll keep the peace by shooting you.”
“I doubt that. How about we call a truce and lay down our arms?”
“I can’t trust you.”
“Trust in your religion, then. Peace and shit, right?”
Evander wanted to shoot her in the face. The urge was undeniable, burning in his trigger finger. But so was the call of his past, the call for the peace and harmony she mocked. What would happen to his eternal mind if he pulled the trigger, only to die from his murderer’s bullet?
Rachael grunted and her bullet zipped by his ear as he returned fire.
Rachael lay belly-down on the street, a Modern squatter behind her with a shockstick.
Evander’s round had missed.
The squatter struck her again and she reflexively squeezed the trigger, this one striking the cruiser with a metallic thunk.
Others emerged from the shadows. One picked up the gun dropped by Tok and administered killing rounds to Calsa and Jerid. Evander flinched at each pop.
Rachael received another prod from the shockstick and quivered, but still clung to consciousness, eyes on Evander. She had more mass than the stick was designed for. Her limbs moved haltingly to obey her mental commands, fingers and arms jerking, shuddering. Someone picked up her firearm and aimed it at her head.
“Stop,” said Evander, lowering his own weapon.
The squatter, smaller than most, lines of time etched in their face, looked to him, the gun barrel just millimeters from Rachael’s head. “Why? She was about to kill you. And this one has murdered several out here.”
It had been all an act. An act to draw out his confession. To expose him as a cop killer. He had lost rationality for a moment in defense of innocent people. Or was it just revenge on behalf of an innocent people? That was indefensible in Structurism. But did he not save future lives from a monster determined to kill for sport?
Rachael blinked, still in the dust, eyes on him, wide with fear of a future lasting only bare seconds.
“We shouldn’t,” said Evander, weakly.
“Someone gonna help me, hey?” said Tok, voice weak and tortured.
Evander knew what would happen if he turned from Rachel to help Tok. What could he say to this aggrieved stranger with a gun to Rachael’s head? Others gathered. They didn’t cry in bloodlust. They watched and waited, silent as a riot raged by Orphirium’s wall.
Rachael kept her gaze to him. Too much pride to plead.
Evander, paused, but said nothing as he turned to attend Tok. Someone pressed their hands to pressure Tok’s wound. “Let’s load you in the cruiser. Someone direct me to a doctor!”
The gunshot that rang in Evander’s ears was Rachael’s final moment.
#
It wasn’t much of a hospital, but it was filled with the wounded from the riots, mostly gunshot wounds. Some shrapnel from grenades tossed into the crowds demanding water. Tok had received priority treatment. And lived.
Evander didn’t know what to expect, but sat by Tok as he lay on a thin cushion on the concrete floor as his eyes fluttered open after surgery.
“Thanks for saving my life,” said Evander. “I think I need a bicycle to get out of town before dawn.”
Tok grinned. “Hey, I don’t make them for Talls,” he said in a whisper.
“Well, I guess I’m fucked.”
“You are. But I can tell you where a Hive is. We’ll hide you as best we can, hey. You’re with friends.”
Evander gripped Tok’s hand. Tok didn’t have much strength in his grasp. A Hive was the gathering sanctuary for Structurists. Evander thought he might be accepted. Wrongs weighing heavy on his chest. He needed to confess.
Tok’s eyes closed again, his breathing slowing and deepening to sleep.
Still holding Tok’s hand, Evander whispered,
“We build peace
“We assemble harmony
“We construct love.”
# # # E N D # # #
