The Colonists (The Movement Trilogy) (3 page)

The boy had been raised to become an assassin like his father.
 

Mirs is nearly ninety now, and the Onyx laws run in his blood. He commands the largest contingent of operatives in Citadel history. There are fifteen hundred of them, each slipping silently into the black, disguising themselves as rebels, and puncturing uprisings from within. Under his command, the operatives have put down nearly one thousand micro-rebellions, most before they have even gestated.
 

They have killed thousands.

Ansel has no hesitation about this. He has killed dozens of people himself.

He just doesn't trust Korski to come to his aid when he needs it.

And the footsteps that pass his door in the night make him think this time he's going to need it.

•
 
•
 
•

Have you confirmed her death with ship's records? Korski asks.

I have an airlock release log from that year,
Ansel thinks.
But this is a rudimentary station. There are no visual recordings. There are no personnel logs. She is not even on record as having been here.
 

Six seconds.

But you believe she was, and that she was killed. Why?

I have a confession from the station's captain, sir. It's not direct evidence, but I believe the man.
 

Six seconds.

You will stake your honor on this? Evelyn Jans is dead?
 

I genuinely believe she is.
 

Six seconds.

If she is dead, steps will be taken. But if you are wrong, and she is alive, people will die without justification.

Sir, out here, everybody is a rebel. If they are not guilty of one crime, they are on the verge of far greater ones.
 

Six seconds.

Six seconds.
 

Twenty seconds.

Korski's image jerks and freezes, and his final message appears:
 

Bring honor to the Council.

For the hundredth time, Ansel calls up his mission summary on the old screenview.

A large photograph, the most recent image of Evelyn, appears on the tablet. Beside it is a projection of her appearance now.
 

She's pale, with red hair cut short. Ansel would not describe her as traditionally beautiful. Her features are slightly masculine, her stare hard and confident. He idly traces his finger on the screen, rotating her image. Evelyn has narrow, strong shoulders. A long neck, not graceful, but severe.

When she left Meili, Evelyn Jans was nineteen years old. She would be twenty-nine now, nearly thirty. The projection can be skewed to reflect the effects of a gentle existence or a punishing one. Ansel switches between the two, watching Evelyn's face morph from almost genteel to rigid, her expression shift from a half-smile to a thin grimace.
 

He knew her, though only by association. At the annual operative's ball, when the Council would greet and celebrate the dark arts of Ansel and his fellow assassins, he had seen Evelyn dancing. She was out of place in her red gown, he had thought, with her hair up in curls beneath a veil. She seemed like anything but a Council heir. He'd watched her bypass the champagne and sneak a pull of whiskey with the servers, and he'd liked her immensely for that.
 

When she disappeared, he volunteered, as did a hundred other operatives.
 

Korski had selected him from the group.
 

For your particular dedication to violence as a means to an end, Korski had said. Miss Jans is of great importance to her father. Finding her would bring you great recognition and reward, and would give me increased leverage to expand our ranks. You'll have the resources you need. You will not have a home, however, if you fail.

Neither Korski nor Ansel himself had expected the search to take this long.

•
 
•
 
•

It had taken Ansel a year just to find Evelyn's trail.
 

In 2580, he tracked her to Skyresh, the great city on Phobos, Mars's largest moon.
 

Ansel had only visited Skyresh once before, many years earlier, when it was only a surface colony, just a scattered nest of domed huts and generators twisting life support cables. He had been impressed to see how much the outpost had grown, and how rapidly. It had consumed the moon, rooting deep into its core, carving out great bowls of surface rock. The city was a glowing hub by then, with spires and towers, an air rail system, a tiny spaceport, and a satellite defense system.
 

It was the latter feature that had led to the Citadel claiming the moon outright as a strategic asset during the System War. The war had lasted only three weeks, but even now, over twenty-five years later, Phobos is a Citadel outpost.

Ansel had been greeted by a Citadel representative named Oren Lukasic, a man with the oblong, hunched body of a pillbug.
 

Lukasic had been happy to see him. We don't get operatives here often, he had said.

That you know of, Ansel replied.
 

Lukasic laughed. A fine point. And a reassuring one.
 

Ansel followed Lukasic deep into the Citadel Embassy, a fine white structure that glowed like ivory in the dim sunlight.
 

You've never gotten the tour, Lukasic noted.
 

I was here once, back in the outpost days, Ansel had said. But there's no time for a tour now, Representative.

Fair to say, Lukasic said. I have not been informed of your mission, but Mr. Korski asked me to provide you whatever you need. We take personal requests from the Citadel Operative Director quite seriously. Whatever you need, you'll have.
 

Appreciated, Ansel had said.
 

They had taken an old-fashioned elevator then, and Ansel had looked up to see the polished white structure recede, replaced by sanded rock.
 

We're going into the moon.

We are, Lukasic said. The embassy's surface structure is a distraction. In fact, all of our strategic facilities are based in the interior.
 

Wise, Ansel said. But Phobos isn't a big moon. Wouldn't a strike large enough to destroy the surface structure still -- well -- crack this moon wide open?

This moon is far more solid than you might think. We've burrowed into it so completely that little of the original rock is left. Most of what you see on the surface is what remains. The interior is reinforced with a strut architecture. You'll see it in a moment, actually.

And he had. The elevator had emerged from the rock tunnel into a narrow cavern, visible only for a moment, that was a warren of great pillars. Worker pods flitted about, and as Ansel's eyes had adjusted, he had seen men in engineer suits crawling all over the pillars, tool platforms floating beside them.
 

Impressive, he had said.
 

The elevator dropped back into a rock chute, then slowed to a stop.
 

Lukasic stepped out first. This way, he said.

•
 
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•

You know why I'm here, then, Ansel said.
 

Lukasic had gestured at a seat. I know a little, yes.
 

Evelyn Jans. She's missing.
 

Lukasic's expression changed. I knew you were searching for someone. I did not know it was a Council heir.
 

First heir to seat four. You know that Councilman Jans is the oldest ranking member. His term will expire in a decade. It's very important that Evelyn is safely returned to the Citadel so she can continue to study for her eventual role.

Of course, Lukasic had said. And you're sure she was here?

I don't know if she is here, or if she's moved on. Why do you say
was
?

I just assumed --

I won't remind you about operative guidelines, Representative. I'm sure you know them well.

Lukasic nodded. Yes.
 

Please, Ansel said, relaxing in his chair. Tell me what you know. Let's start with why you've already lied to me.

•
 
•
 
•

From Skyresh, Evelyn's trail had meandered, almost as if she was trying to lose a tail. In a sense, Ansel thought, maybe she had been. He had wrung a confession out of Representative Lukasic -- Evelyn had not only landed first on Skyresh, but had left with a woman. A lover, Lukasic had theorized, but he hadn't known her name.
 

Ansel had discovered the woman's identity, but not until Io. By then, he had tracked Evelyn from Skyresh to Olympus, the Citadel's capital city on Mars. Evelyn had lingered there for six months, then disappeared again. It took Ansel nearly two years to pick up her trail again.
 

She'd turned up on
Ceres-11
, a mining station tethered to the asteroid belt's dwarf planet of the same name. He couldn't figure it out at first.
Ceres-11
was a roughneck station, with several thousand miners aboard. There were no amenities. Miners worked seven-year shifts, then broke for three years, then returned. In those seven years, they made enough money to support their distant families for a decade. Three years usually wasn't enough time for them to return home, then make it back to
Ceres-11
in time for the next shift, so there was extremely high turnover. Most miners didn't return.
 

The ones that did needed something to do to kill the time. They were making incredible amounts of money, with nothing to spend it on. The hard work, twelve hours every day, created conditions ripe for dissension.
Ceres-11
was believed to be the origin point of a revolutionary movement that had led to the System War in 2570.

Ansel started to put it together. Evelyn wasn't pleasure-cruising. Her trek through the system was loopy, but she was gradually moving outward, farther from the Citadel and its greatest ring of influence.
 

Evelyn was looking for a rebellion.

•
 
•
 
•

It was only a theory, but he had confirmed it when he tracked her to
Promantha
, a fringe colony that orbited the Galilean moon Io. Ansel traveled there, but he didn't have to.
Promantha
was the birthplace of the Ivory movement. The Citadel monitored the colony closely, but quietly. There were rumors that there were at least seven operatives on
Promantha
.

Ansel wouldn't know them when he saw them. Deep-cover operatives identity-shifted before they went to work. Their fingerprints, their voice frequencies, their facial structure, even the color of their eyes were altered.
 

But he knew that they would know him.
 

•
 
•
 
•

Promantha
was the second colony in Io's orbit. The remnants of the first,
Epimetheus
, still circled the moon, a debris-field reminder of man's lack of foresight. Io's volcanoes are tempestuous and powerful, with plumes that dramatically arced into orbit.
Epimetheus
had been a victim of such a plume, and had been ripped to pieces. Two thousand people died.
 

There are still desiccated bodies in the debris field, forty years after the tragedy.

Ansel had hitched a ride on a medical freighter that was bound for Jupiter, where it would live forever, serving the orbital colonies that revolved around the planet and its moons. The freighter dispatched smaller ships to each of the colonies to establish contact and determine the state of its inhabitants. Ansel rode along with the crew traveling to
Promantha
.

The colony was a marvel of homegrown engineering, a collection of salvaged hulls and smaller stations that had been fused into one great, lumbering organism. It wasn't lovely to look upon, but it was intelligently stitched together.

Once aboard, Ansel settled into a comfortable routine. Temporary residents were required to work for their board, and Ansel joined the arboretum crew. He trimmed and mulched and planted, and in the evenings, he ate quietly and alone in the cafeteria. Four weeks passed as he integrated himself into the crew, establishing his face, his name, his reserved manner.
 

He attended meetings that were strangely anonymous and vague. Nobody said the word
revolution
. Nobody said
rebellion.
Nobody talked about the Council or the Citadel at all.
 

He made no friends.

•
 
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•

He was eating dinner when the operative found him.

She sat across from him. Ansel didn't look up, but he knew who she was.
 

Hello, she had said.

Ansel had just nodded.

I'm from Titan, she said.

There were a dozen pass phrases that an operative learned, one for almost any sort of environment or social encounter.
I'm from Titan
was one of them. No names, no details. Just the pass phrase.
 

Took your time, he said.

I had to, she answered. You can't rush these things. I'm probably more at risk here than you are.
 

Fair enough, he said.

What are you here for? Are you deep?

Not deep, he said. This is my true face.
 

We have plenty of people aboard already. Are you an addition, or --

I'm here for something else, he had said. I'm looking for someone.

Who?
 

Evelyn Jans.

Jans.

Councilman Jans's first heir.
 

She tilted her head. And you think she's here?

I've got reason to believe she is, or was. She came with someone. A woman.

Who?

I don't have a name. I have a face, though. Ansel handed his screenview to the woman. He tapped the glass. You know her?