_ Hiiro

  Two weeks had passed since the outfit's beach day and now I was sipping an overly-rich blend of local coffee across from a backstreet machine shop in one of Crucibab's more well-to-do coastal industrial districts. Stakeout was the name of the game these days. It wasn't a bad job, even if the coffee was too bitter and the grinds hadn't been filtered out, plus it gave me some time to think. Maybe a little too much time…

  Leeroy wanted operators he could trust on the job which surprisingly enough, included me over a few hundred of Celio's Vigia. Trying to be proactive instead of reactive, seizing the initiative and whatnot. I wasn't privy to the specifics of the conversation, though I knew Celio was none too happy about our little fact finding incursions. From what I'd gathered, he seemed to think shrugging his shoulders and saying 'everyone is my enemy' was good enough. Unsurprisingly, Leeroy wanted a more concise picture than that. I was still convinced this whole botshit detail had cooked up just to get me out from underfoot, but I wasn't complaining— there were certainly worse jobs out there.

  Truth be told, I was just glad Celio had finally given up on his damned motorcades. Moving through the city on foot was a whole other beast compared to driving through it. Crucibab had a living churn to it that my homeworld never did. There was an ebb and flood to everything, like everyone was always about to miss a deadline before they could relax for an hour or two. I knew could spend a decade trying to blend in with the locals and by the end of all that time I'd still just be a dos Estrelas— a spaceman from somewhere else. Not one of us. An outsider.

  It was almost ironic. Compared to the homogeneous roots of my home world, this entire planet was little more than an imbalanced mixture of foreigners. The only faction who could trace their earthly lineage more than a few generations back were the people of the land— indentured servants to all the conquering spacemen that had came after them. Just like we were helping Celio do now.

  I sipped at my bitter coffee and shook my head. Mercenaries weren't supposed to get hung up on little things like ethics or morality, but then again I wasn't really a merc. More of an unwilling volunteer, a recruit by circumstance or if I was feeling dramatic, a hostage. Why the hell was I still working with them?

  It was a thought I kept bumping into during these long boring days, one I'd gone over too many times to count. I skipped to the bottom of my list with the same little tug on my heart that I always felt when I thought of her. Bim.

  She was still working with them, as trapped by circumstance as I was. The sight of her body, her smile, her next to me when I had woken up still haunted me. I hadn't seen Bim since I'd got this undercover assignment and our separation had made it abundantly clear that I had more than just feelings for her. In a lot of ways, it was almost like she had a hook lodged in my soul and every so often I would feel her pulling on the line. I didn't know if that was what love felt like but I knew that, consequences be damned, the next time I saw her I was going to man the hell up and tell her just how crazy I was for her.

  The idea had my stomach doing flips, yet the heat inside of me was resonant with it. Something about my inner flame had changed since that night I couldn't remember. It didn't feel like an inferno constantly looking for the next forest to consume. I couldn't really explain it (as much as I damn well tried) but it was kind of like a soothing bed of embers. The word I kept reaching for even though it wasn't quite right was glowing. It was nice and warm and steady and sure and good and right and glowing.

  I took another sip of my bitter coffee and started puffing on a cigarette, knowing that if I ever tried to explain it to someone they'd probably think I was crazier than usual. But the weird thing was, on some base instinctive level, I felt better than I had in a long time— like some part of me knew everything was going to work itself out and I'd be alright in the end. It may have been crazy or maybe that's just how love was. All I knew was that if I could wake up next to her every morning then I'd be doing pretty damned well.

  All we had to do was survive this job together and after that everything would be fine.

  A dingy truck that must have been running hard for the past half-century came bumbling down the street. I had a morbid curiosity every time I saw Celio's shadow war from the outside in. Young men—the poor luckless bastards that had been born into this life without a spitting chance for anything more—were little better than bullets. Just another expendable munition shot off without a care for the consequences. I probably would have been one of them if I'd been born on this planet instead of Intatenrup.

  The dingy truck trundled to a stop, some jackass with a bullhorn climbed out and gave a speech about honor and riches and glory— a better life if only you had the courage to reach out and seize it. He mentioned the Savior enough that despite my difficulties with the lingo I knew this guy was on our side, recruiting the righteous and the just where those opposing Celio would only hire the criminal and the corrupt. No one but me seemed to notice how these recruitment trucks would both target the same neighborhoods and draw the same crowds— the same poor luckless bastards just trying to scrape by.

  After the jackass finished his speech some twenty or so kids all piled onto the back or sat on the hood or stood on the side bars holding on for dear life. I knew that in a few hours maybe half that number would come back, a gun in one hand and pocket change in the other. Some of the cannier ones would sell the gun for a few more days pay. They knew they'd be given a new one the next time they went off to shoot up another block or stomp out a rival family or abduct some street level boss. If it wasn't for the fact that those kids made good informants, I probably would have looked the other way same as everyone else on this street. After all, this was a safe neighborhood, there wasn't any fighting here so who cared? Not a damned soul, that's who.

  I hated myself because I was no better. Turning a blind eye to the consequences every time one of my informants up and disappeared. I hoped a few of them got wise and ran away. I knew that most of them didn't but I kept using them anyway, paying out a pittance while they gambled with their lives. Sometimes, in my low moments, it made me sick to think about it and I took small consolation in the fact that I was proud because it did. Maybe one day, once I'd banked enough self-loathing, I could get out of the job.

  A man (more of a half-starved boy really) sat opposite me with one of the dense little flatbread snacks that all the locals seemed to love. He carried himself meekly, eyes downcast and nervous. I knew him, he was on my payroll after all.

  "They want my older brother to work the scrapyard tonight." He whispered between bites. "He could forget to lock the drop off access gate at high moon when he finishes."

  I thought it over for all of a quarter-second. If I could do some proper snooping there was a good chance something would get me pointed in the right direction. Not to mention, this way I could shoulder some of the risk too. I had enough self-loathing banked for that, at least.

  I folded a pocket rag around a single cash token and slid it over to him. His eyes went wide for a second before he nodded gratefully. It amused me for a second, throwaway change to me was a few months income for his entire family. It reminded me of Celio's 'charity', heating up coins to throw for beggars. A wave of disgust quashed my amusement a split-second later.

  "It must be hard having such a forgetful brother." I said, sipping my coffee. "Maybe if you and your family moved to the countryside he'd be able to focus more…"

  I let the insinuation hang for a long moment so he could weigh it over. He smiled at the thought but there was no warmth behind his eyes.

  "My family work the land." He started. "This land. It's our home, regardless of the city that sprouted up around us. We can't just leave."

  "You could-" I started.

  "We won't." He stated, steel in his voice. "I'm grateful but no amount of money will buy our pride. This is who we are. Our roots are too deep to pack up and leave."

  I wanted to tell him he was a fool. To think of his safety, his family's future. I met his eyes with the words on my tongue and I already knew he wouldn't listen. Looking into his eyes was like looking at a whole other person; the meek, subservient boy was gone and the spirited man glaring back at me was all mettle. He was no warrior, but he had some fight in him.

  "For what it's worth, I appreciate the offer." He whispered, his pride flagging and the meek boy once more at the fore. "I appreciate everything you've done for my family. We all do."

  All I'd done for them was pay them to risk their lives. To snoop. To eavesdrop. To tell me things they probably shouldn't. He might not have seen the harm in that but I had. Justice on the backstreets of Crucibab was almost as swift and ruthless as it was in the wild. Thieves had their fingers broken as a warning or their hands chopped off as a message. Informants never got a warning, first offenders lost their tongues.

  And he was thanking me for that. For paying him and his family to run those risks because they could get places I couldn't and see things I didn't. Some small part of me always had a slight niggling reminder that if someone had to pay for my actions it was better them than me; that so long as I kept my fingers intact and my tongue attached, a little guilt was a small price to pay. Eric's harsh lecture came to mind. He and the other mercs might be fine with that guilt but I wanted to crawl in on myself and vanish right then. I felt like a parasite and he was thanking me for using him.

  That would change tonight. I'd stop making everyone else take the risks and do the job myself.

  Set on a course of action, I gulped down the last of my coffee, finished my cigarette and headed back to my safehouse for to kill a few hours. Safehouse may not have been the right word, but it had a better ring to it than 'the one-room sublet from one of Celio's Vigia's cousin's widowed mother'. Celio didn't just take care of his own, when blood was spilt for him he made sure entire extended families never knew hardship again. It was just another aspect of the Savior that made it impossible to hate the man. My safehouse (the townhouse Celio had bought for her to cement his Vigia's loyalty) was damned-near invisible, sandwiched on a street of a hundred duplicates.

  The house's widowed owner, Sophia, was slathering her easel with a pot of green paint, her smock was already smeared with blues and teals. A wavy lock of her thick chestnut hair had slipped from the hideous yellow and blue headband she always used to tie it back. Sophia was a lovely woman in a motherly sort of way, two decades my senior but aging gracefully and she always had a warm smile on her face. She was plump in the right places, maybe not quite voluptuous but damned close. In my two weeks of living with her, I'd never once felt like a stranger in her home, even when I should have. My latest cover identity was that of a visiting cousin and as far as Sophia was concerned, that's exactly what I was.

  "I was just about to start on supper, but first… what do you think?" She spun the easel around to reveal a mess of green and blue.

  There was the slightest impression of a coastline or maybe a skyline. The color mixing was amateurish, the paint too thick and there was no sense of scale to the portrait at all. Yet something about it seemed inviting, like the blurriest postcard ever made.

  "I can't wait to see it when it's done." I answered noncommittally.

  "It is done."

  "Oh…" I said.

  "Oh?" She asked, arms crossed and a single eyebrow creeping upwards.

  "I didn't say anything."

  "Didn't you ever do any impressionist paintings? You said you used to paint."

  I'd mentioned it once in passing and she'd never let it go. In a lot of ways, all of my works were impressionist pieces. There was a perverse intimacy that came with looking at someone's final moments captured on a wall or a floor. It all left an impression. Mostly of rage. Brutality. A life of possibility cut short with a single death-stroke of my painter's brush. My 'paintings' left the taste of ash and gunsmoke clawing their way up my throat. I banked a little more self-loathing and disgust of the man I used to be.

  "I did some…" I said, keeping my voice flat. "But my work was more monochrome with accent. Black, white, grey and contrasting reds."

  "Bold." Sophia noted approvingly.

  "It wasn't!" I snapped before regaining myself. "Sorry. It wasn't. It was cowardly. I was afraid to… I just… I used the same color so much that I forgot there were other ones out there."

  It was a half-assed half truth at best and she saw through it. I got the impression that even if she wasn't the sharpest woman on the planet, there wasn't a lot that she missed. I could only imagine what growing up under her tender scrutiny would have been like. She swapped out her painting for a blank canvas and pulled a stool up to her easel.

  "Sit your bum here mister. I'll start on supper and I want you to paint me something while I cook." She practically shoved her paints onto me, her damp smock following a second later. "You've got blue and green. Make it work."

  "Just two colors?" I asked, smiling at the absurdity.

  "Between those two you've got all the colors you could want. You just need to get a little creative with them."

  Sophia disappeared into the kitchen, tossing a clatter of charcoal sticks into the range. Seconds later, a chopping knife joined the dull instrumentals and she started humming a tune that not even a truck could carry as she cooked.

  I stared at that blank canvas and all I could picture was how I would paint it red. What would Sophia look like splattered across this canvas I wondered. Old instincts surfaced in my mind and they sickened me.

  I didn't want to think like that! Didn't want to remember how many times I'd killed in cold blood before I saw the gore as art. I couldn't stand looking at all that white empty space!

  I slapped a thick stroke of green up one end, mirrored it on the other, then blue down the middle. It was ugly. Amateurish. Three lines of thick paint was hardly a portrait. But it was better than an empty canvas. Sophia was still cooking, so I wet my brush and thinned my paints, drawing them out to cover up the worst of the negative space.

  Then I just stopped thinking and let my hands do what my eyes told them to. Two colors wasn't nearly enough variety no matter how much I thinned or layered. So I mixed and experimented and made mistakes and rolled with the chaos of creation. I had no idea what I was making. Every brush stroke brought me closer to it though, so I kept painting— chasing a high with every swipe of paint. Then I saw it.

  Like the famed angel in marble, my mind saw what my eyes had seen all along.

  "Hey Sofia, can I use a little bit of yellow?"

  "That depends…" She answered from the stove top. A moment later she was leaning in over my shoulder, the weight of her full breasts causing my mind to drift, and I heard her breath catch. "For her eyes?"

  I nodded and she handed over a small mason jar the color of honey and powdered gold. I finished my painting and I took a step back to look at the whole thing.

  I'd painted a lonely blue woman drifting in a sea of thin green. The colors were comprehensive yet muted by the lack of negative space. Her gossamer dress could have been the suggestion of water flowing over her naked flesh, the color a swirling shade somewhere between teal and jade complimenting the rich blues of her skin and pale green of the sea. Her eyes were twinned dabs of golden yellow, regal and cutting all at once. They were the eyes I woke up hoping to see every day for the rest of my life.

  "You must really love her." Sophia said.

  I was too embarrassed to say anything. My desperate fawning over Bim was so obvious from the portrait's intricate details. I knew the curve of Bim's body better than I knew myself. I dropped my head and turned to leave but Sophia took my face in her hands and made me meet her warm brown eyes.

  "You'll make a great husband and any woman you choose will be lucky to have you."

  I couldn't help wondering about my parents at that moment, the stranger's I'd never met who had abandoned me before I was born. Had I just been a mistake from a night of passion or were they still out there, loving life without me? Would I still be a murderer, the shadow of a man I was today, if I'd had a mother like Sophia? Sophia ruffled my stubble and went back to the kitchen.

  Those words soothed a doubt I hadn't realized I'd even had. I pictured Bim in her place. A simple life, a happy wife and maybe when we were ready some kids of our own. It was a nice picture. It was a happy dream. I'd never thought about having a family before either, but suddenly it seemed like an option. If Bim could have kids… If we survived long enough to try… If I was man enough to say three stupid words to her.

  "Supper's ready!" Sophia called out.

  We ate and talked about painting and life and nothing at all. She didn't mention my portrait and I was glad for her tact; I didn't know what I'd say if she did. It was so natural, as natural as breathing. So why did it feel completely alien to me? Because I'd never knew my family? Never ate a home-cooked meal across from someone who gave scat about me. Never realized that this was the thing I'd never had until it was right in front of me. Because I didn't know just how much I didn't know.

  Halfway through our meal, Sophia gave herself a playful smack on the forehead— inadvertently slapping another daub of still-wet green paint onto her hideous yellow/blue headband.

  "Your friend Xan called early, while you were still at work. He said it was urgent but he wouldn't leave a message with me."

  "Urgent? I should go check in then." I said, scarfing down the last of my vegan stir-fry. "Thanks for supper, it was delicious."

  She raised her paint-stained mug of tea in salute and I disappeared into my room. Maybe one day, if the stars aligned just right Bim and me… I shook the thought from my head. There was work to do. Now wasn't the time for stupid daydreams.