Galaxy of Exiles book 2 - Bile and Blood

Chapter Five

Laying a trail to Munab had been a good call. The kill order on Progaeryon – his father – was something Ferrash had put in the system himself. When the enforcer who handled him and Bek had received the order, he'd assigned them to it straight away. Ferrash had accepted without hesitation – anything less was a bad move when ordered to kill blood relations. 'Family' wasn't a concept the Protectorate encouraged. Nor were second thoughts.

In any case, he had no plans to go to Munab. Ferrash was pretty sure his father was dead, not that it mattered, and no one would look into his results further than he could fabricate them. He'd send a ship and say he was on it, but he wouldn't be. He would be right here on Hesperex, where he could do the most damage.

Morning made itself known through the smell of paste and brew, and through the queues that formed at regular intervals along the streets by the pastehouses. Ferrash stood in one of those queues now, periodically shuffling from side to side to dislodge any snow. The fact that the queues had spilled out onto the street even here, in the capital district of Five-Fifty-Four, indicated how scarce supplies had become. The situation worsened every year. He squinted up into the sky. Somewhere up there, orbiting a star he couldn't see, were the last remnants of a ring station – the Protectorate's failed attempt at growing crops out in space with as little human input as possible. By the time bureaucracy killed the project, Hesperex was well on its way into its current ice age. There hadn't been clear skies over Five-Fifty-Four in centuries.

'...whole lot be o'tat, si'ter,' someone said nearby.

Ferrash blinked a couple of times to unfreeze his brain. The two vatborn in the queue ahead of him stood close to each other, and they murmured in low voices. Both were wrapped in thick coats, but one wore the deep red of the star shipbound, the other the orange of the landers. An unlikely pair for conversation, and talking in lowspeak to boot.

The lander inclined her head a fraction. 'Tey pack us onto yo ship, vatter. Many us.'

The person she had called vatter – one of many the Protectorate grew sexless to avoid urges (and by extension, overpopulation) – shivered in their coat. They probably worked in a ship's engine rooms. If they worked anywhere else onboard, they would be used to biting cold.

'We told go to t'splitter world,' they said.

'Not to glasshearts?' the woman asked.

They shook their head. 'We fight we. Vatter to vatter.'

'Splitter-vatter?'

They shrugged, though the glance they gave their companion was uncertain. 'Splitter is splitter.'

Neither had noticed Ferrash listening; if he hadn't set his implants to boost audio, he wouldn't have heard them.

As they shuffled forwards in the queue, the shipbound vatter asked, 'Si'ter?'

'Aye?'

'On t'ship, when you take to splitter world... Keepers be tere. Everywhere. Dinnet look edible.'

'I take care.'

Without looking at each other, they brushed shoulders, the movement almost imperceptible. Ferrash looked away. Thanks to a Kept attack on production facilities at Vike 1 and 2, the Protectorate's supplies of emotional inhibitors had stalled. Already trying to recover their stocks from overuse during the purge, they now had too little to cover demand. If what the vatter said was accurate and the fighting was about to get more intense on Munab, demand would only increase. The deficit was starting to show. Ferrash was lucky he had his own stockpile – and his own suppliers.

When the queue finally worked its way round to the counter, Ferrash accepted his serving and took it over to a bench in the corner next to some vat tenders. The thick, chemical smell coming off them gave away their occupation.