The Caduca Read online

  THE CADUCA

  ELAINE GRAHAM-LEIGH

  Published in the United States by

  Hybrid Global Publishing

  301 E 57th Street

  4th Floor

  New York, NY 10022

  Copyright © 2021 by Elaine Graham-Leigh

  United States rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  Graham-Leigh, Elaine

  The Caduca

  ISBN: 978-1-951943-81-3

  eBook: 978-1-951943-82-0

  Cover design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk.

  Interior design by: Suba Murugan

  Author photo by: Venture Photography

  Copyediting by: Dea Gunning

  Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2021

  ISBN 978-1-913567-48-4

  Copyright © Elaine Graham-Leigh, 2021

  Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk.

  www.redpuffin.net

  For Dominic

  ‘I set neither boundaries nor time to their fortune; to them I give empire without end.’

  VIRGIL, 29-19BC

  ‘We are just civilians.

  We are like citizens of any European city.’

  MIROSLAV BETIC, TELEPHONE INTERVIEW TO BBC

  RADIO 5, 4AM, 24TH MARCH 1999, BELGRADE

  Contents

  Cast of Characters

  Part 1

  Mara

  Part 2

  Quila

  Part 3

  Terise

  Part 4

  Quila

  Part 5

  Terise

  Part 6

  Quila

  Part 7

  Terise

  Part 8

  Quila

  Part 9

  Terise

  Part 10

  Quila

  Part 11

  Terise

  Part 12

  Du’Fairosay

  Part 13

  Terise

  Part 14

  Quila

  Part 15

  The Summit

  Part 16

  Quila and Terise

  Part 17

  The Invasion

  Part 18

  Quila and Terise

  Part 19

  The Invasion

  Part 20

  Quila and Terise

  Part 21

  The Invasion

  Part 22

  Quila and Terise

  Part 23

  The Invasion

  Part 24

  Quila and Terise

  Part 25

  Desailly

  Part 26

  Quila and Terise

  Postscript

  On Zargras

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Cast of Characters

  Chi!me

  Ar’Quila, Special Envoy to Benan Ty

  Ai’Amadi, Quila’s boss

  Du’Fairosay, Quila’s aide

  Fe’Ceronodis, Quila’s best friend

  Na’Stelfia, Quila’s mother’s best friend

  Dir’Kennan, Leader of the Chi!me Council

  Pen’Eriten, Chi!me Ambassador to Benan

  Par’Lennan, Chi!me Ambassador to Benan Ty

  ***

  Benan Ty

  ViaVera

  Mara Karne, founder of ViaVera, daughter of President Sept

  Karne

  Issa, ViaVera’s current leader

  The inner circle

  Terise

  Ladyani

  Marius

  Roberto

  Sario

  Wolf

  Others at base camp

  Jaiyro

  Acacio, one of Ladyani’s squad

  Darsin, one of Marius’ squad

  Itani, another of Marius’ squad

  Elenore, in charge of kitchens

  Carmelita and Maria, kitchen girls

  In Chaireddan

  Michel

  In Airdrossa

  Marsana

  Stevan

  Anjeta

  Maria

  Government and Army

  Petrus Desailly, head of the CAS intelligence service

  Julia Desailly, his wife

  Juan Gutierrez, President of Benan Ty

  Sept Karne, murdered former President, Mara’s father

  Harana Karne, his wife, Mara’s mother

  Mario Agana, Desailly’s assistant

  Adéla, Agana’s secretary

  Captain Rosares, CAS officer

  Cico Donato, CAS functionary

  Jaime Delterro, one of Desailly’s guards

  Mikey, another of Desailly’s guards

  Juan Desales, a regular soldier

  Raffi, Iro, Mario and Paulo, his fellow soldiers

  Media

  Maria Morales, TyCorp political correspondent

  Flavian Singolo, TyCorp news anchor

  Civilians

  Alana, Juan Desales’ girlfriend

  Nadia Delterro, Jaime Delterro’s mother

  Old Mrs Delterro, Jaime’s grandmother and Nadia’s mother-in-law

  Mario, a bar owner in Airdrossa

  Pedro and Beni, two of his regulars

  Jeba

  Ihanakan

  ***

  Benan

  Robbio Gonsales, President of Benan

  Claudius Dixon, Benan Ambassador to Benan Ty

  ***

  Gargarin

  Terrenkomo, Gargarin Ambassador to Iristade

  Part 1

  Mara

  In Chaireddan, in the hot weather, the day begins long before the light.

  In the market square the stalls glimmered with yellow-flaring lamps, enclosed in mesh against the insects. The women pushed through the folds, batting them down like swimmers. On their heads they carried wicker baskets, so that the leaves of their next dinner hung round their ears like ladies in Airdrossa wore jewels. The stalls were sparsely set so close to harvest, but still the crowds were thicker than usual, fingers flicking urgently among the vegetables. There had been no hint, no clue or proclamation; no one had said that day out of all others would be the day. But early that morning the women of Chaireddan piled their baskets high, then turned their black-coated backs and hurried away.

  ***

  It was Na’Stelfia, Ar’Quila’s mother’s friend, who gave her the first picture of Mara; a threshold gift for when she first went away to school on Chi!me Two. Mara hadn’t been fashionable then, but Aunt Stelfia was IntPro, as Ar’Quila had always sworn she would be when she grew up, and they were always one step ahead of a trend. When Stelfia wasn’t at home at the IntPro central office on Zargras, the once uninhabited planet where the United Planets was based, she was travelling the galaxy on missions as daring as they were secret. The Office of Interplanetary Protocols was the enforcer for the United Planets galactic government; staffed largely with Chi!me; there was always something thrilling to do.

  Once, when Quila was very small, Aunt Stelfia had come home from a posting with a small, round, burnt hole in the brim of her hat. She had shown it to her, tipping back her seat and tossing it to her with an idle gesture, as if she didn’t much care.

  ‘Was it a hydrogen blaster?’ Quila had asked, wide-eyed. ‘Did someone shoot you?’

  It had seemed unbelievably exciting to her, so amazing, so lucky.

  ‘Did someone shoot you?’

  Aunt Stelfia had crossed her boot heels on the hearth circle and laughed.

  A picture from Aunt Stelfia was worth casting with respect. Quila had dutifully given it pride of place on the wall opposite her bed and, after a while and some appreciative comments from her age-mates, had even been moved to look its subject up on her terminal. She had barely heard of Mara Karne then, though the exports of Benan Ty figured in her galactic geography lessons all through her years at school. The sparse information available taught her only a little more. A guerrilla leader, she read, the daughter of Benan Ty’s deposed president. A hero or a villain, freedom fighter or murderer, champion of peasants or destroyer of cities, depending on your point of view. A thin, white-faced girl with an ancient gun, a skein of blowing hair; eyes that looked right out of the image at her.

  She collected other images where she could, from fan outlets on esoteric places or in-depth reports on our primitive cousins in the old Terran space. A shot from a security surveillance recording, Mara with her hair bundled under her hat, marching down a corridor deep in conversation with an older man, her famous old Terran gun slung casually over one shoulder as if she had forgotten it was there. An old image from an article, Mara at her father’s graveside, still and straight with a black lace veil pushed back over her hair. A police photo for a wanted poster, her mouth quirking at the thought of how she would shortly fight her way out.

  And the last, dubious snippet, from a Terran who claimed to have been allowed into a ViaVera base, of a camp fire in an evening field, a blur of faces singing and Mara in the center in a long flounced skirt, dancing with a young man as if she was just an ordinary girl and not a killer at all.

  ***

  It was the birds that made her late. As she always did in a provincial base, Terise had gone down to the market early that morn
ing. The sky was just starting to pale and she was heading back when she saw them. She knew the animal stalls well; usually in the narrowest entrance to the market, on bad days the stench from the frilleh cages would follow her all the way round the other booths. At least the frilleh sold, they were good for catching the rats the first human colonists had inadvertently introduced.

  The frilleh always found a buyer in the end; what she had really learned to hate were the two moth-eaten jeebas that were brought out again and again, and taken away each time without one. Ladies in Airdrossa, she had heard, would wear brightly colored jeebas on their shoulders as pets, but it was not a fashion people had any truck with in Chaireddan. The jeeba would reach out with clutching paws as she passed them, as if they could feel her pity. When it was possible she always took another way.

  She would have done so today, but the song called her. Just the littlest thread of a tune, a little high piping her grandmother had once said would be the music of the gods, if only it weren’t for free. She hurried over, pushing through the clouds of mesh with the flats of her hands. There on the biggest stall, taking up almost all the room, was a cage of tarnished metal and inside, perched all in a line on a single loop of dead branch and singing their hearts out as they had always done, were six pietera.

  The dawn light caught their dark plumage into purple and gold like the definition of beauty. At home they had nested in the trees all around the village; the girls had collected their discarded feathers to wear in their hair. Such small, round birds they were, with their purple feathers and bright eyes and no good eating on them at all. No one would ever harm a pietera.

  Looking at them now she thought she could buy one for Ladyani. He was from her village, the only other in the inner circle who was even from the east coast. They could listen to it sing together, remember all the things from their shared childhood they could not speak of to anyone else, and when they had heard enough, they could open the cage up and let it go. He would like that, she thought, it would be a poetic gesture and a fit one for a revolutionary. More importantly, it would be theirs alone. She tried to find things to have with Ladyani.

  She prodded one finger at the bars of the cage and one of the birds bounced along the branch towards it, cheeping hopefully. They were so friendly, so lacking in predators that they were always sure of their welcome. She saw Ladyani thinking of their village, his thrust-out lip and hard, red-rimmed eyes as clear as if he was standing before her. The bird fluttered up to her finger and cheeped again.

  ‘Would Madam take a bird this morning? A nice little bird, very cheap, for pet or food? Come all the way beyond Camino, these do, I do you very good price?’

  The stallholder was almost as mangy as his jeebas, another one in this poverty-stricken province hanging on beyond the point when there was nothing left to hold on to. Every time she came to the market she was reminded of how much the people needed them, even if they didn’t know it. She wriggled her finger out of the cage, dislodging the bird.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not today.’

  ***

  The carriers edged along the narrow streets of Chaireddan lower town, their engines straining at the slow speed. Ahead of them the crowd of dark, carapaced figures pulsed and shifted, full of scurrying motion. In the first carrier, the police chief sniffed at the faint bitter smell, the suggestion of fuel cell catastrophe building somewhere beneath him. It was as much as he could do not to accelerate and sweep them all out of the way; in moments like this, even the inevitable criticism seemed almost worth it. Almost, but not quite. He had always been good at controlling himself, it was what had got him where he was today. Self-control and hard work, against those who knew the meaning of neither.

  Once they were out of the warren around the market, the road was clearer, climbing between dust-hued walls up the hill to the old town. Fewer people lived up here; the rambling buildings on the summit were mostly a motley collection of religious missions, student hostels and sinking, threadbare charities. All sorts of organizations had a forsaken outpost in this forsaken outpost of a town. The police chief squinted into the rising sun. The tower of the building called the Adicalan Charitable Mission rose ahead against the skyline. He felt himself beginning to smile. There was only one woman with them now, a short, black figure climbing up the street ahead. For a moment he stiffened, but it was all right; everything this morning, he knew suddenly, was going to be all right.

  He stood up in his seat, noting with surprise how his legs seemed to tremble beneath him, and gave the signal. The carriers behind him stopped. The men leaped over the sides and fanned out around the sides of the building. From his own carrier, his crew got out the heavy equipment. It had been years coming, this moment, years when he had planned and schemed and ignored everyone who had said it couldn’t be done, years when he had been laughed at and worse and had only endured it because he had known one day it would be different.

  There was nothing worse than to be powerless, despised. He had learned that, and today was the day he was done with it. There were all sorts of organizations up here, any number of which might be other than they seemed. Yet for them the law was nothing, ruling by violence they were themselves inviolable. There were many like that, many fronts for the teeming multitudes of his enemies, but after today, one less. One less. Petrus Desailly, the youngest chief the Chaireddan police had ever had, tasted the phrase on his tongue and waited for his battle.

  ***

  It was fully light and she was halfway up the hill when Terise heard them behind her. She knew, sickeningly, that there was only one place they could be going. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t. Couldn’t run, couldn’t shout, couldn’t do anything, not even reach into her robes for her communicator to say goodbye. If she had been closer, close enough for a sprint to take her to the gates…They would not even know who she was; in her traditional black dress and head scarf, she could have been anyone, just another townswoman dragging her shopping home.

  The carriers were drawing level now; she could feel them at her shoulder; breathe their fumes. She kept her eyes on the ground, bending her head as the local women did when they didn’t want to be seen. She reached the top of the hill as they passed her and took the left fork around the front of the mission building. She was still walking but quicker now, the bones in her calves aching with the effort of inconspicuousness. Just a woman hurrying home with her shopping, just a woman with the sweat springing under her black coat and her breath hoarse against the edge of her headscarf.

  A little way along there was a passage on the left-hand side, a set of steps leading steeply upwards to a cluster of houses perched on the escarpment above the mission. She turned into it, sprinting. Halfway up the steps, a path led off to the right into a garden. Gracious once, it was overgrown and neglected now, a riot of shrubs and tall, dry ferns lining the wall above the road. She flung herself down and wriggled along through the undergrowth until she was overlooking the road. She couldn’t see anyone. She ducked back down into the bushes and pulled the communicator out of the waistband of her skirt.

  ‘Mara? Can you hear me? Mara?’ No reply but the hiss of static.

  ‘Mara?’ Come on, she breathed to herself, please answer.

  The communicator crackled, too loud. She slapped her hand over the speaker to muffle it and, at last, heard the voice she was waiting for.

  ‘Hi, Terise,’ said Mara Karne. ‘Trouble?’

  Even then, it made her smile. ‘Trouble. You’ve seen them?’ ‘Two carriers out the front, nothing else. How many more?’ Terise parted the leaves in front of her face.

  ‘There’s five…no, wait, six men coming round the west side now.’

  ‘Weapons?’

  ‘Only that Espada crap, I think, I can’t see any Chi!me blasters.’

  Espada was the Ty weapons company, the official supplier of the government, whose blasters were so liable to jam or explode in your face that Mara said you might as well throw them at the enemy and duck. ViaVera favored Gargarin hydrogen rifles, which were cheap and easy to source when they couldn’t get Chi!me, but even Terran guns were better than Espadas.

  ‘There were more of them, but I couldn’t stay to watch. I expect they’re working round the other side. They’re not making a perimeter, my guess is they’ll wait till they’ve got enough grouped, then storm front and back.’

  ‘Hmm.’ There was a pause as Mara digested this. ‘Who are they? Army or CAS?’