Tilted Axis Read online

  He swung his leg over the seat and kicked down the stand, watching as the post next to the parking space lit up with a green lightning bolt, letting him know that the electromagnetic induction charging had kicked in. Under the lightning bolt, the number sixteen popped up. He’d be in there longer than that, but it was good to know his bike would be charged by the time he got back.

  He made a twisting motion with his hand, like you would with a key, over the pad between the handlebars and a picture of a lock appeared on it telling him the ignition was secured against anyone who might think about trying to lift it. The Human Quarter wasn’t as law-abiding as the rest of the city. Martian sentinels didn’t like coming here much if they could help it, and it wasn’t like the Security Bureau was in a hurry to hire Humans onto the force, which kind of left the residents to their own devices. Things had improved since a half-blooded Human had gotten into office, but it was still no Greenwich Village.

  Brannigan’s was a run-down place set in a red bricked building. Tarnished gold lettering hung over the latticed windows stained dark between the glass. Ward pushed through the door and swept the interior out of habit. Booths down the left, long bar running opposite, Tak, the bartender, standing stoically behind it in a sleeveless denim jacket polishing a glass. Yup. Hadn’t changed a lick.

  Ward headed down toward the far end and mounted one of the red-topped stools, laying his arms on the sticky wooden bar.

  Tak approached, long black hair scraped back off his ears and swaying as he sidled over. “Ward. Been a while. What’ll it be?” he said with about as much friendliness as he greeted anyone. Tak was hard to read, but he was trustworthy. The Axis Intelligence Agency had used him for years.

  Ward didn’t say anything, and instead pulled out a thin panel of flexible glass from inside his jacket, laying it down on the bar.

  He touched the communicator’s screen and it came alive. Ward spread his fingers and gestured just above the display, cycling through windows until he opened the email he’d gotten.

  The streamers burst across the little screen again and the promise of a free meal started bouncing around the glass.

  Ward looked up and Tak nodded slowly. “I’ll tell the chef. The usual?”

  Ward nodded.

  Tak put down the glass and looked around the bar. It was empty except for one lonely regular drinking at the booth by the door. To anyone else he would have looked like a career drunk, but Ward knew that curled up safe and warm under his coat on the bench next to him was a modified lightweight SRM 12 gauge. It was a specially designed compact version that could be lifted with one hand. But it would still put a hole in whoever the hell it was aimed at. And then some.

  “You working again?” Tak’s voice was barely a whisper.

  “You tell me.” Ward shrugged indifferently.

  “It’s been three years. Figured you went home, or…”

  “Got killed?” Ward arched an eyebrow.

  Tak held his hands up and smiled, walking backward toward the kitchen door, his white teeth gleaming in the neons on the opposite wall. “Hey, I’m just talking.”

  “I can see that. You want to fix me a drink before you go?”

  “Sure.” Tak came back and pulled a glass from under the bar. He took the pump off the rack and filled it with a clear carbonated liquid. He put it down on the top in front of Ward and turned back toward the kitchen.

  “What the hell’s this?” Ward asked, bowing his head and studying it.

  “Seltzer.”

  “Seltzer? I asked for a drink.”

  “You know the protocols. If you’re working…” He trailed off and disappeared through the door at the corner of the bar.

  Ward grumbled and sipped his seltzer, thinking about the Smith & Wesson M2.0 Custom tucked in the small of his back. He was picturing the door over his shoulder, how he’d twist off the stool, crouch, and fire three rounds into the doorway before the guy with the shotgun in the booth would even be able to lift it.

  Not that there wasn’t going to be anyone coming through the door — not anyone that would be there to kill him, at least. He just liked to have a plan if it did happen. Ward was like that. The guard in the booth next to the entrance couldn’t be trusted to react fast enough, even if it was just apple juice in his tumbler.

  Tak came back out. “How’s the drink?”

  “Screw yourself.”

  “Wings’ll be up in ten. Side order will be a little bit after that.”

  Ward nodded and sucked on his seltzer water. “Got any lime?” he asked.

  “Sure.” Tak grinned, slinging a tired-looking slice into it. It frothed lazily. “Better?”

  Ward slurped down another boring gulp. “Much.”

  Ten minutes later, he was tearing chunks of hot sauce-slathered meat off chicken bones. Seven minutes after that, Cootes arrived through the back. Too many twitchy fingers on hair triggers to come in through the front when they were on the clock. Tak was only ever two steps from the Super 90 strapped under the bar, and you definitely didn’t want to surprise someone who had one of those to hand.

  Cootes slid onto the stool next to Ward looking appropriately sour, as usual. His round face, devoid of any hair — due to shaving at the bottom and balding on top — glowed pink in the shine of the lights over the bar, his sunken eyes swimming behind his glasses.

  “Halston,” Ward said, twisting to face him but not putting down the wing he was eating. “You look well.”

  “Cut the shit, Miller,” Cootes said flatly. “I’m no happier to see you than you are me.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Ward said quietly, dropping the last clean bone onto his plate. He thought about wiping his hands on Cootes’ blazer, but then thought better of it. Cootes was always an asshole, but the suit looked expensive, and some things were just in bad taste. “I thought you went back to Earth.”

  Halston Cootes scoffed and shook his head, motioning to Tak for a drink. “I wish. You think they’d send me back and leave your ass here without supervision?”

  Tak poured out a healthy measure of bourbon and slid a tumbler across the bar to him. Cootes barely acknowledged it before lifting the glass to his lips and draining it. Ward watched him do it, a pang of thirst springing up in his throat. He thought about slamming the glass into his mouth with the heel of his hand, and it put a little smile on his face.

  “It’s been three years since you‘ve dragged me out to this shit hole,” Ward said instead. “You could say, I don’t feel very supervised. No offense,” he added, looking at Tak.

  The bartender held his hand up and went back to polishing. “None taken.” He knew not to get between Ward and Cootes.

  “Well, since Valvet Moozana took over at the SB, things have been different. He runs a tight ship. Doesn’t much like Humans. He cleaned house when he moved in, ousted some suspected moles, tightened up on security. We lost our foothold at the Bureau. All of our active ops in Eudaimonia have either been killed or suspended by the brass.” He shrugged and motioned for Tak to give him a refill.

  “So why haven’t they pulled you out?”

  “A diplomatic negotiator with twenty-two years experience, fluent in English, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, French, and Martian? A senior position at the Central Human Consulate, a UMR provided penthouse on 16th Street and six weeks paid vacation a year? Hell, if I walked away from that post they’d be more than a little suspicious. No, pulling me out would be more of a risk to my cover than leaving me in.” He spat the words with disdain. His cover story was perfect. He’d been doing this for twenty-two years, like he said. Twelve of those had been with Ward. It was true that he could speak all those languages. Being an AIA handler you needed to. There were a lot of shitty situations in alien places that an AIA agent could get themselves into, and having someone on your side who could speak the languages with a flair for negotiating was imperative. So where Ward went, so did Cootes. There were embassies and consulates all over the OCA and it made for a perfect
cover. Translators and negotiators moved around all the time, but Cootes was right, this did seem like a great position and Moozana was no slouch. Pulling Cootes out would raise some Martian eyebrows and cast a spotlight on him that he really didn’t need. But what pissed Cootes off most of all was that he was better at his cover job than he was at his real one.

  He was an okay handler, but it was Ward’s success that had got him noticed and moved up. This was a big deal — one of the senior AIA operatives in Eudaimonia? Hell, anyone would kill for that gig. Except, there wasn’t much intelligence work to do, which meant that his time was filled with actual diplomatic negotiating. And he must have been good at it, too.

  The thought of him being miserable day in day out made Ward smile, and he made no effort to restrain it. “Suppose that’s why they haven’t pulled me out, too? Too high a risk of the whole thing cracking open?”

  “Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face,” Cootes grunted, draining his glass. “And no — they just don’t really give a damn about you. It was less paperwork to leave you where you were and let the Martians get sick of you in their own time. We’ll just clean up the mess when they bounce your ass back to Earth. Deal with it then.”

  “Stevenson loves me,” Ward smirked. “I’m here because that’s where he wants me.”

  “Stevenson died last year. Heart attack — poor sonuvabitch. Chiswick is the new SAC, and she’s already cracking skulls and slashing overheads.”

  Ward hid his shock. He’d always liked Stevenson. He hadn’t even known. “Chiswick. Sounds like a hard-ass.”

  “She is, and with all that’s going on back on Earth, she’s got her hands full. We’re at the bottom of her priorities list.”

  “So what the hell am I doing here? Moozana’s got a watch on me these days. Doesn’t trust me worth a dam. I haven’t worked in months. I don’t know anything new. Nothing to report.”

  “I know that, dipshit. When I call you,” he said, jabbing Ward in the chest with his finger, “it’s because I’ve got something for you, not the other way around. Or did you forget how all this works, huh? Going soft in your retirement?” He went to poke Ward in the forehead but decided against it seeing the look on Ward’s face and let his hand drop to his lap instead.

  Ward growled and slugged his seltzer. “If I felt like getting the shit kicked out of me I would have just called my mother. So, unless you tell me what the hell’s going on, I’m walking out of here right now.” He pushed himself up on the bar emphatically.

  “Sit down, Ward. Believe it or not, I didn’t come here for the scintillating conversation either.”

  He was half out of the seat and stayed there. “So what the hell’s going on?”

  Cootes sighed and pushed his glasses up his face, massaging his tired eyes with his pink hand. “It’s Sadler.”

  Ward narrowed his eyes. “Anna Sadler?”

  “You remember her, then.”

  “Of course I do. We worked point on the op on Ganymede — you know the Dharwan one where I—”

  “Yeah, I remember. I organized the damn thing.”

  “Are we doing another op? Is she in town or something?” Ward flexed his right hand, looking at it. It never quite felt like his own.

  “You could say that.”

  “I’m not in the mood for riddles. Spit it out, Cootes.”

  He sighed and met Ward’s eyes before ordering another drink. “I don’t know how to say this, Ward: Sadler’s dead. And, on top of that, seven shades of shit are about to hit the Martian fan. I just hope you brought your raincoat.”

  2

  Cootes was right, they were on him like scrubbers on a restaurant dumpster.

  Ward walked out of Brannigan’s and slid onto the saddle of his solar cycle, sighing.

  He pulled off quickly, heading toward downtown and the shining towers, the tops of them now catching the last of the fading sun.

  The closer he could get to the Bureau the better. It would be less walking back to his cycle when they tossed him out.

  He turned right and zipped down a side street toward the main drag, a wide carriageway that ran into the center of Eudaimonia.

  He’d gotten about two-thirds of the way there by the time the sentinels caught up with him.

  Cars flashed by on conductive runners at the far end of the street, like electric insects whirring through the city.

  Ward eased off the accelerator and halted next to the sidewalk at the far end of the Human Quarter — the better end. It was a residential area, and not a bad one. Less chance of his bike getting lifted here.

  The sirens barked behind him, shrill and fast, the sound of footsteps, cautious, side-on, strafing toward him, cutting the silence between them.

  He locked the bike and held his hands up. The sentinels coming up were just following protocol, he knew that — approach with care, half-on, one hand on your stun-pistols, the other outstretched, ready to fend off any physical attacks — but he still didn’t like what came next.

  They came up, one on each side, their breath rattling behind the visors, and took his hands out of the air at the same time, twisting them down behind his back and locking them into a set of magnetic cuffs. He could break out of them whenever he wanted, but he didn’t like to make that information known unless it was absolutely necessary

  He felt a hand on his spine between his shoulders and then the handlebars against his collarbone as they pushed him down, unseen fingers lifting his jacket and disarming him.

  “I got a permit for that,” Ward said. “You guys know who I am? Was I speeding or something?”

  He knew that they knew, firstly, that of course, he had a permit. They knew exactly who he was, after all. As soon as he’d left Brannigan’s he’d been flashed by the magic eye over the door. This wasn’t a chance encounter in the slightest. Cootes had warned him as much, that they’d be coming for him. But he couldn’t let on that he knew. It was one thing to act surprised, but in Ward’s line of work, it was a whole lot worse to be surprised.

  The sentinel, with his gloved hand on the back of Ward’s neck, kevlar-nylon coating cool against his skin, handed off Ward’s M2.0 Custom to the second sentinel and dragged him off the handlebars and to his feet.

  “Michael Miller,” the sentinel said, his English a twanged second language to Martian, “you’re being brought in for questioning.”

  “Questioning about what?” Ward said, balancing indignation with a splash of nervousness. Just enough so they wouldn’t think he knew what was going on.

  But he did. Cootes had warned him. “The second you step out of here, they’re gonna scoop you up and drill you over this. They know your entire work history — one of the terms of our contract with them — so the second they identified her as Anna Sadler, and figured out that you two did ops together, they’re going to connect you two. And believe you me, Ward, you don’t want that happening. You haven’t heard from her, have you?” he asked. He knew Ward wouldn’t be stupid enough to speak to anyone from the AIA without running it by him first, at at least telling him if it’d happened outside of his choosing. Usually, Cootes didn’t miss anything going down in the city. Not knowing Sadler was here was a big misstep for him. But hell, she had been missing for four and a half years, apparently. Though it was the first Ward had heard of it. She’d failed to check in with her handler eighteen months after their op together on Ganymede. She was deep cover with a terrorist cell operating out of an old NASA space station, from back when NASA was a thing, at the far end of the system. She’d been declared officially MIA, presumed blown and dead. So for her to show up here, dead in Eudaimonia… It had him rattled. He’d heard the news from one of the few contacts he had left, but he would say where the information had come from. He never gave up sources or contacts and Ward never asked.

  Her biometric scan matched what the SB had on file from the Thessaly Treaty’s big data exchange. Getting a call to tell him she was dead was the first he’d known about it. He was sideswiped by the whole
thing, so it was a case of covering asses now. There wasn’t anything else he could do.

  “No, I didn’t hear from her,” Ward had replied flatly.

  Cootes nodded and downed his fourth whiskey. “Good. But you’re probably going to have to tell the SB that about fifty times, and they still probably won’t buy it.”

  “Sounds about right. You know anything else?”

  Cootes shook his head gravely. “No, the SB have the scene locked down tighter than a gnat’s ass. I just wanted to give you a heads-up before you got thrown into this headlong. You know what the SB is like, they’ll try and trip you up, and hell if you say the wrong thing without meaning to…”

  “Yeah, it’s all our necks. Save the speech, Cootes, I’ve heard it before. After all this time, I thought you’d have a little more faith in me.”

  Cootes laughed. “The only thing I can trust you to do is be a belligerent sonuvabitch and piss off the wrong people. Beyond that, you’re flying by the seat of your pants. So don’t act like you’ve got a plan, because I’ve worked with you long enough to know that’s horseshit.” He sipped drink number five and eyed Ward. He’d had a hard day by the looks of it, and judging by the bags under his eyes it’d been a hard week. That was only going to be compounded by the new asshole he was about to get torn by Chiswick when she got word of this. A missing agent turning up dead in the middle of the Martian capital without the AIA knowing about it? It wasn’t going to do international relations any good.

  Ward chewed his tongue, thinking about Sadler. She’d been a good agent. One of the best he’d worked with. Focused, smart, careful. There wasn’t enough to start extrapolating from, and he wasn’t sure how much the SB was going to let on either.

  “When they pick you up,” Cootes said, “try and learn what you can. I’m blind on this one. My informants don’t know shit. Moozana’s got this marked Epsilon Protocol. Inner circle only. They obviously think it’s AIA pulling some shit so they’re keeping their cards close to their chest.”