Simoom Rising

Chapter Twenty-one

DORIC

I needed a little time to think without Ann in my head, and I needed to talk to Mac alone. I tried the blocking technique Mancy told me about. I imagined Ann in a closet and closed the door, trapping her inside. But considering how she'd bull-dozed through my mental defences before, I had no idea how long it would work—or if it would work at all. Ann had asked to be taken to the toilet and magnanimously Mac had said yes. As soon as the guards escorted her from the room, I cut the sound and told WAVE-Sec to stop recording.

Turning to Mac, I crossed my arms. "Given their relative orbits at the time, it would have only taken four months for freighters to arrive on Simoom from New Earth."

He leaned back in his chair. "So?"

"So, after the sixth month of the blockade, did any of you ask Caraq where the hell the freighters were?"

Mac shrugged. "We just assumed there was some sort of delay."

"A delay?" I snorted. "Did it occur to anyone to ask whether WAVE Corp. had even sent for those freighters in the first place?"

"Listen Girlie, we were following our orders, that's all."

"That's all?" My voice rose. I tried to remain calm, but I couldn't. "That's crap. I can't believe no one called the Board of Directors on its bullshit."

Mac threw his hands up. "Why didn't you? Where the hell were you then?"

"Me? I didn't see any of that shit that went down at the barricade. I was here on the station guarding the—"

"The detainees?" Mac said, knocking aside my righteous anger.

"Hey, I was just following orders."

"You don't say."

Unfair, unfair, I wanted to yell back at him. "I wasn't deliberately starving anyone. I didn't deliberately withhold food or drink from anyone."

"Oh, and you treated them all like VIPs, right? Never roughed them up when they got out of hand? Never told them to shut up when you heard them moaning and complaining, snivelling in their cells at night?"

I shut my mouth. I had no reply because, of course, Mac was right. I had done all of those things and I had thought nothing of it. But I didn't want to admit it, because once I did I figured Ann would know. Ann would know I had been oblivious to the plight of her son in the detention cell. So instead I insisted: "I wasn't at the barricades. I didn't know how bad it was."

Mac laughed in my face. "Who's dishing the bullshit now, Vestra? Everyone saw what was happening to the Rats. It was on the newsfeed 26/7. Hell, we spent half our time at the barricades shooting down the media's drones. Not that it did any good."

Our conversation stopped as Ann was brought back into the interrogation room and re-cuffed to the table. Had she overheard our conversation—somehow gotten out of that imaginary closet? I had no idea. She didn't let on, as she continued her story.

Pit District, Simoom
Five months ago

HARMONY

One morning, as I was leaving a meeting with Caraq, one of those drones followed me. I usually stuck to the back alleys to avoid the funerals heading to the sink holes. There were more and more of them every morning—people who had died in the night. I rounded a corner in this alley between two rows of shacks. I was upset. In the meetings, Caraq seemed so nice, so empathetic. He dangled the possible release of our people, he promised to lift the blockade, but only if I told him everything about the dust effects. I wanted so badly to believe him, but the people in my head kept telling me he was lying.