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An offworld newspaper struggles to find the right way to cover the war.

This will be the last chapter that takes place off-world, and does the same kind of thing in exploring how the moreau conflict is being seen in the Alliance as a whole. That makes this a somewhat quieter chapter, which I also hope doesn’t seem like it throws the pacing too much? But that was the point of the novel, anyway, to showcase a bunch of different stories that are vaguely adjacent to the struggles of the Kashkin. Patreon subscribers, this should also be live for you with notes and maps and stuff.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute--as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

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Crucible, by Rob Baird. Part 17.

Vislinn, largest city on Zavirsaar

Yucatec-aligned Karman System

30.11.2560

“So: where are we with this shit?” Bart, who’d tossed a tablet onto the desk like it meant something, crossed his arms and waited.

Mike picked up the computer, skimmed it, and shrugged. “Busy. It’s Sophie’s job, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Bart Baker, the paper’s senior editor sneered: “for the news. The news is Sophie’s job, Mike. And she’ll just run whatever comes off the wire. What’s our perspective? Tom, do you want to be less stupid?”

“I don’t even know what—”

Before Tom could finish, Bart snatched his computer back and tapped it with his thumb. A holographic playback began where, presumably, he’d left off—some reporter, posed in front of an unremarkable office building, her face lined with affected concern.

Despite a declaration of martial law, the streets have been packed for most of the day as worried residents try to make their escape or acquire last-minute supplies. The government doesn’t seem able to control them, with local police forces recalled for active duty to a front growing closer by the hour.

“They’re going all Spartacus over there.”

“‘There’ is…”

“Jericho,” Mike answered. “That moreau colony where all the Moodies hang out. They declared war on their neighbors a few days ago. I’m surprised you haven’t been following it.”

Bart huffed angrily. “Declared war? It’s a fucking massacre, Mike. You saw that what they said about that battle in the hills? Annihilated. When’s the last time you heard someone say ‘annihilated’? So again, I’m asking: where are we with this shit? Nowhere? Fix it. No fucking way we’ve got Cannae: the Sequel playing out and shit from us on the matter while I’m in charge. I want five hundred words by tomorrow morning and people in the street by noon.”

“What about?”

Their editor wrung his hands at Tom’s stubbornness. “The future of the goddamn human race, that’s what. Some of the shops in this city are, what, sixty percent animal? If we don’t do something, it’s gonna be our turn next. You know how to wind people up, Tom. Get ‘em wound.”

“I’m really not the right person for—”

“Fuck that! You got Apollo to surrender to their union in 72 hours after your exposé last year! Half the Central Business District was threatening to boycott! I know you’ve got fire in there somewhere, and you must still have some contacts from that piece. Put ‘em on the record. They’ll say something quotable, I’m sure of it—and fuck, if it takes some work, so what?”

Mike cleared his throat. “Tom doesn’t do social-unrest stuff, though, and there’s no business angle I can see. My school-board piece is looking like a dead end, I gotta say, so I wouldn’t mind a break. If I can have your sources, Tom—would that be okay?”

He rolled his eyes, but having someone accountable for the hit piece he wanted was enough to settle Bart down. “Damn straight, he’ll give ‘em to you. What’s your angle, Mike?”

“Don’t know yet. I’ll have to see if it has legs. Maybe it could be, like… the ticking time-bomb, right, y’know? Everybody knows a moreau, or knows someone who does… if they go rabid or whatever—”

“Exactly. Exactly. Something sets ‘em off, and we’re all dog chow. Could happen any minute. Tomorrow. Right here.”

“Or. Or. It’s bigger: like, what do they want? It’s not like a hundred years ago; we treat moreaus just fine. And now they’re biting the hand that feeds them.”

“I like that. Use it.” Bart handed him the computer and, muttering other turns of phrase under his breath, headed back for his office.

Tom sighed. “Future of the human race, huh?”

“Ah, he’s pissed about Carey getting that shout-out from Governor King for her ‘impactful’ reporting. Can I get something from your source?”

“On the record?”

Mike took a few seconds to chew on the question. “Nah. If they want to, that’s always better, but it’s not that important. We can’t run the story, anyway, can we? Bart’ll calm down by deadline.”

“That’s him, yeah. Always calm.” Tom opened his comm terminal and found the link code he was looking for. It belonged to a foreman at Apollo Electric—one of the largest factories in the city, and the reason they had no night sky. She picked up almost immediately. “Hey, Aya. It’s Tom Hill from the Sentinel. I need a comment from you.”

Aya’s face was hidden behind the helmet of her protective suit. She pulled it off awkwardly—but then again, given her muzzle, the shape of the panther’s skull made a lot of equipment unwieldy. “What kind of comment?”

“Mike Sorino’s looking into a piece on the whole Jericho… dustup.”

Mike shoved his chair back from the desk, gliding over the floor until he floated into the same frame as Tom. “How’s it being taken at the plant?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“C’mon, don’t give me that.” Tom pressed on when she stayed silent: “Apollo has the largest non-human workforce on the planet. What are your employees saying?”

“Officially? Nobody here cares about that. We’re focused on our work, and we’re happy with our contract. End of story.”

“And… unofficially?”

Aya leaned closer to her own terminal, until the two men could see the pupils of pale eyes close to sharp slits in the screen’s glare. “Unofficially… off the record—that’s what it’s called, right?”

“Yeah.” Mike nodded. “‘Off the record.’ You can be on background.”

“Fine. Off the record, nobody here cares about that. The biggest problem is trying to find new workers to clear our backlog.”

“Nobody cares at all?” Tom asked. “Really?”

“Jericho’s twenty light-years away, and they’ve been fighting for decades. Why do you think we’d be bothered? There’s always some solidarity in our great, interplanetary pack, sure”—derision lingered on her sharp fangs when she said it—“but… you think we’re going to strike or something? Get real. It’s not even on the table.”

His colleague looked disappointed. “Got it. Anything else you want to say?”

“Not really. Off-record, the bid for building the drivetrain on the MPS-X is going pretty well. They just have to sign on the dotted line, and Apollo is sitting pretty for the next decade. Lot of late hours. We’re proud of it.”

Mike didn’t even bother writing that down. “Got it,” he repeated. “Thanks for your help.”

The panther rolled her eyes, starting to pull her helmet back on even as her paw reached out to close the link. Tom didn’t know what Mike or Bart had really expected. “Well, you can make that work, right? ‘Solidarity’ with an invading army?”

Mike scoffed, and pushed his chair back towards his own desk. “Yeah, you heard how strongly she believed that one. It’s a little thin for my tastes. I guess I can call our CODA rep, right? Wonder if they’ve pulled all their moreaus out of service in that system…”

“Even if they have, there’s no way he’ll say it. Officially they have no integration problems.”

“Tell that to the Zulo III guys.”

Two years earlier, a minor moreau insurrection ended with an even more minor act of sabotage by—if the reporting was to be believed—a handful of CODA moreaus. There hadn’t been any fatalities, even, but as the only other inhabited body in their system, the moon traded plenty with Zavirsaar.

After a month of lockdowns and “enhanced oversight” by Vislinni police over their own corporate moreaus, everything went back to normal. Mike was reaching, and he knew it, but he went to a private office to take the call and Tom returned to his own work. Aya had said something interesting, after all.

A handful of terraforming companies, in loose consortium, were working on a new heavy transport that promised to be able to deploy directly from orbit, cushioning its own landing. CODA, too, had shown interest in what they called the Multipurpose Platform, Spaceborne, Experimental—MPS-X. If they chose it to replace Rheinmetall’s Tarvos, well…

Well—he looked it up, and the earliest reports weren’t even in their own archives. The first version of the Tarvos hoverdyne entered service in 2415; anyone with a contract to support the MPS-X would have solid financials into the 27th century, let alone ‘the next decade.’ Tom debated calling her back, but Aya wouldn’t say anything on the record while the production details were still being hammered out.

He made a note to follow up later, though: the deal must’ve been closer than he thought to being signed. His afternoon wore on steadily, going over news from other corporations on the planet. Nothing of particular interest—he was, honestly, grateful for the distraction when Mike cleared his throat. “Hey. Tom? Am I bothering you?”

“Not at all. What’s up?”

“Can I be serious for a second? Between friends?” Tom nodded, joining Mike at his computer when the other writer gestured subtly at the screen. “CODA said they don’t have anything to do with Arcadia these days. No comment, etcetera. I thought Bruce was stonewalling me, but he wasn’t. They’re nowhere on the planet—the sector ecclesia cut off all funding in ’55, and CODA was gone for a decade before that.”

“Still Alliance PMCs, though. Geruda has a valid license.”

“Uh-huh. And what about these guys?”

“HMG?” With a tap of his finger, Mike expanded the acronym. “Hachisuka Muramatsu Group. That’s a mining cartel, if I remember my 25th-century history.”

“You do. This is weird, right? I can’t decide if I’m seeing things or not. There’s no public records, of course. No quarterlies, no press statements—not in our database, anyway. Should I call Bruce back, or is that doing Bart too many favors?”

There was no right answer to the question. “You can’t poke all the bears, Mike. Maybe just pick a couple. Or one good one. You think that’s Bruce? He might be your angle?”

“I’m not sure. You don’t know why CODA pulled out? It must be the animals, right?”

“Why does everyone think I know about—”

Mike’s glare silenced him. “Tom.”

“Fine. I’ll look it up—happy?”

“Thanks. I’m starting to get an idea.”

The Colonial Defense Authority, which intervened in hundreds of minor disputes every year, made few statements about any of them. Nothing in Tom’s research turned up any explicit reference to what was now called ‘the Kashkin’—an independent moreau state, which had officially separated from the Yucatan Alliance in 2537.

The ensuing war ended with territorial concessions no human in the colony could’ve been happy with. Tom noticed no record of CODA intervening in the conflict, although they’d been a party to peace talks before those broke down, and again when the Kashkin negotiated its formal status. So, Tom had to figure, CODA stayed around only long enough to let the borders stabilize: they were gone completely by 2546.

Officially the Kashkin maintained no relations with the Yucatan Alliance, and the motley assortment of human settlements that styled themselves as ‘Arcadia’ did. Unofficially, Tom knew the moreaus traded with Yucatec businesses through various third-party intermediaries, and they’d managed to chart a careful course as allies to the Orion Soviet without entirely alienating the Yucatec’s government in the Gemini Sector.

The humans, it seemed, had not. They resented CODA and the ecclesia for not coming to their aid, and they’d spent the previous 25 years drifting further away. They still spoke Alliance languages, but they were a decade behind on their dues to the Alliance Congress. CODA hadn’t ‘pulled out,’ Tom told his coworker: they’d given up on trying to deal with Jericho’s recalcitrance.

“Makes sense,” Mike said. He had a draft of his story—a story, anyway—written and sent to their editor. Wait for it, the man mouthed. Wait for it…

Bart stormed out of his office two minutes later, computer clenched tightly in his hand. “Sorino!”

“Yeah?”

“Are you fucking me, Mike? Is that why I pay you? To fuck me?” He reached Sorino’s desk, shaking the computer in Mike’s face like he was rubbing his nose in something noisome. “There’s no heart here. End of the human race, Mike—come on. Maybe you’ll get somebody riled up enough to remember they were gonna go take a shit instead of finishing the paper with this… fiery rhetoric here.”

“I’m working with what I have.”

“Yeah. Regular goddamn Cato, you are. ‘Furthermore, I insist we keep a careful eye on Carthage, just to be safe.’ Or is ‘insist’ too strong for you?” Bart chucked the computer off to the side, and it skittered in the awkward silence across the floor. “Well?”

“It wouldn’t play, boss. But I have an idea.”

“How can it not ‘play’?”

“You want the social responsibility angle or the legal one? Nobody close to the ground is saying much here, and if we try to hint otherwise, we might bring some heat down. We don’t have much cover, honestly—the right judge might want to make an example of us.”

“Blow me. Nobody’s made a libel case here in fifty years.”

“Yeah, and I don’t want to be the first to break that record. Won’t look good on my résumé. Look: socially, boss… our best outcome here is we put half the city’s workforce against the other half for shits and giggles.”

“Sometimes the truth hurts, Mike.”

“My thoughts, exactly. How about this: turns out, CODA washed their hands of that colony. Arcadia went to bed with Geruda, instead. But that wasn’t good enough… now it’s a three-way with them and a Sanganese heavy industry keiretsu.”

Bart exaggerated his look of boredom by pretending to yawn, putting a hand over his mouth. “So?”

“So Geruda’s cozying up to the Sanganese, too.”

“Yeah? So they’re a bit two-faced. What’s the story? We dropped the ball so hard, and the animals are such a big threat, that good Alliance citizens had to compromise? That’s too complicated. And nobody likes the sector councils, so don’t give me ‘corruption in the Gemini Ecclesia.’ I don’t give a fuck.”

“Geruda’s bidding on our colony’s defense contract, while taking money to conspire with our enemies. Did you know Governor King’s brother was a Geruda executive? What’s the governor’s stance on all this, I wonder…”

Their editor grunted, although Tom could see wheels turning in his head. “You tell me.”

“It’s cheaper. And his brother left eight months ago to join an agribusiness company, before our defense agreement came up for renewal. But you could ask some questions, right? Some citizens have concerns about hiring a PMC with suspect loyalties. How hard are they really fighting? How hard will they fight for us?”

“And this is a CODA town. It costs, but it’s good business because we sell parts and equipment back to them. Good local business,” Tom added; a lot of them were independent firms—Apollo among them.

Bart nodded slowly, working through the different angles. “The governor is selling us out. Why would he do a thing like that? And in a colony with so many moreaus, too. It’s very out of touch for him.”

“For all we know, Geruda and their new friends were the aggressors over on Jericho. Maybe those moreaus are just defending themselves,” Mike suggested. “It’s definitely safe to say the history is ‘controversial.’”

“Very out of touch,” Bart repeated, adding venom in his emphasis. “Ignore the animal-rights bullshit, though. Nobody cares about that. Just nail King. His… King’s ties to an unscrupulous mercenary gang ought to be the last straw. An utter lack of integrity.”

“Shameful, actually. Here’s a quote: ‘anyone who’s concerned their defenders can’t be trusted has the right to address those concerns. Of course they do. That’s not business rivalry, it’s just common sense.’ That’s Major Bruce Greene, CODA liaison up the road. He lives here, so he’s happy to be on the record about the Defense Authority’s history in our fair colony.”

“And what can Carey do? Defend the governor? That’d be fucking over every business owner who sells to the Defense Authority. Shit, Mike, forget what I said: smear a little love for the animals in there. Not much; we can double down later if we have to. Minefield for that bitch, ain’t it?” Bart chuckled. “Let’s see who the governor thinks is ‘impactful’ now, huh? When can you have something?”

“No problem to have a draft by… I dunno, 6? Plenty of time for the first edition.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Probably already started, didn’t you? You bastard,” he added, with a dangerous grin to back up his suddenly improved mood. “Tom. You’re on the hook for a react piece if CODA or the local shops bite. Clear?”

“Sure. I started going through the archives to help Mike here, anyway. And I have sources lined up, if it we need them.”

“Good. You’re a good team. We’re—we’re a good team,” Bart corrected himself, picked the computer he’d thrown off the floor, and wandered back to his office.

It didn’t take more than a few seconds to sketch the outline of a followup article in Tom’s mind. He snorted. “Do you remember when the news department and the opinion department were different?”

“Not according to our highly accurate reporting I don’t.” Mike watched to see how the joke landed, rolling his eyes at Tom’s stare. “Ah, c’mon. At least this version’s a little closer to the truth, right? And you’ll do good work if we wind up causing trouble—actual news and stuff. Don’t you like that?”

“Uh huh.”

It was true—he did like that—but it would come down to what Bart thought would bring them more attention, and a properly vetted article on how the local businesses and their unions were dealing with Mike’s revelations wouldn’t necessarily fit the bill. On the other hand, there was nothing he could do about that but wait and see.

He wrote out the skeleton of where he thought the article might go, helped Mike track down a few more snippets of data from the archives, and headed home without any better sense of what Bart would want in the end. The apartment was empty, with only a brief note from his partner to apologize for missing dinner.

It spared him the need to cook anything serious, at least. He fixed himself a sandwich and caught up on the news from Jericho—what could be made of it, anyway; the reports were no less confusing than they’d been six hours earlier. Perhaps the moreaus had won an overwhelming victory, or perhaps Geruda was leading a counteroffensive. Perhaps the Sanganese corporations had joined the fight.

Who knew? The politics of it weren’t terribly interesting to him, except that he needed to become more familiar if he expected to write anything credible. It amounted to homework, tedious at that, and when he finally turned in Tom didn’t think he understood it any better. Tomorrow, he decided. Or maybe nobody will care what Mike has to say…

He stirred at movement—several hours later, given how dark it had become—and the feeling of weight pressing down on the bed. “Hey, you.”

“You saw my note?”

“Yeah. Did you work a double-shift again?”

Aya grunted and got herself settled. “I told you. We’re putting in overtime.”

“Yeah.” He turned until he could get an arm around the feline and pull her closer. “Thanks for taking that call, anyway. Mike owes us dinner or something—you know he moved to that new apartment? Off Arthur Square. Just for the farmer’s market, I’m sure of it.”

“That sounds like him. You told Mike how fierce we are, right? You better have.”

“Fierce? No. I just went on about how soft moreaus are. How…” Aya flexed her fingers, unsheathing sharp claws. “Cute. You’re so cute…”

“Say that again,” the jaguar purred dangerously, slowly bringing her paw down to his shoulder, where the claws pricked his skin one at a time, pushing Tom onto his back. “I dare you to say that again.”

“You are. Cuddly, even.” She flashed her teeth and pinned him, straddling the human and starting to dig her talons in. “R-right?”

“Fierce,” Aya repeated. “Like wild animals. We could turn on you at any minute.”

She hadn’t been bred for strength, specifically—Trimurti intended their moreaus for use mostly in controlling complex systems, not manual labor. Sleek as it was, though, the panther’s soft fur covered a muscular frame ten kilos heavier than Tom’s. He could not move if she did not permit it.

And he didn’t want to. She was still talking, as her fur glided over his skin and her warmth held him down. “—Have a chance. Just one quick bite, and… are you enjoying this?”

“Why would you think that?”

Her hips pushed back, pivoting against his tented boxers. “You are enjoying this.”

“So are you. Did you need to show me the error of my ways, Aya?”

“Apparently.” Fangs brushed his ear, then closed down while she growled: “Get them off. I’ve had a long day.”

Tom did as he was asked, even if maneuvering in the confined space afforded by her sinewy thighs took some doing. When he leaned back, Aya lowered herself carefully. Satin fur slid along his skin—then she shifted her angle, and slicker warmth replaced her pelt, gliding over the underside of his length, trapped between them.

She rocked over him, pale eyes glinting in the dim light, her breathing growing shallower along with his. “You’re lucky,” the feline gasped. “Can’t kill you… have uses for you, Tom.”

“I know…”

The next time she lifted up, Tom wriggled, shifting his hips so that the blunt head of his cock caught, and her pace pushed him between her lips and just inside before she could stop herself. Aya gasped, freezing in place. But, with a moaning sigh, she took the opportunity it presented. She worked back and forth, a rhythmic circling that forced him steadily deeper and deeper.

The heat of her insides would never stop driving him wild. The texture of her fur, and its softness under his fingers, that was a nice touch: but her heat, a snug, steamy, clenching pressure squeezing his length… the first time they’d slept together he’d lasted all of thirty seconds. Fortunately she’d found his apology an endearing vote of confidence for her attractiveness.

And fortunately he’d gotten a little better. When she started riding him properly, slow at first, Tom could enjoy the tight, rippling velvet sliding over his smooth shaft. He could savor her pelt under his hands when he guided her down and onto him. He could dwell on how the jaguar’s sex stretched and yielded around him until he was hilted, and her firm grinding prodded and nudged his well-buried cockhead, deep inside her.

Aya’s own restraint ebbed with purposeful, feral intensity. Soon enough she started to rock faster on him, the feline grace in her body’s quick rise and fall giving way to needy, craving strokes. Her tail lashed, offering flickers of movement in the dark room, as she sank him into a pulsing warmth that blended into the soft fur of her thighs and the pressure of her hips until her sheer presence blotted out anything else.

He was only aware of how she felt, parting around him, engulfing him in silky heat too exquisite to be simply human—too undeniably novel and tight and warm. And, as she drove herself hander and harder onto Tom’s length, it took more work to fight back the release starting to build in him.

“Aya,” he groaned. “I’m gonna cum.”

Sometimes she didn’t want to deal with cleaning up afterwards, or with her thigh-fur being stained—the other moreaus could tell, she claimed, and he trusted her judgment. This time, clearly, she didn’t care. His warning only earned Tom a broken growl, and a demanding downward press of her hips to impale herself on him.

She stayed there, keeping him pinned, cock plunged to the hilt in her eager cunt. The short, heavy bucks that she pumped herself on him with only forced him to focus on how completely he’d taken her, how deep she intended him to be for a finish he was no longer even trying to resist.

Arms circling her waist, he answered her deliberate strokes with a flurry of swift, jerking thrusts. They turned frantic almost immediately, then uneven—then, groaning, he pushed fully into the jaguar and held still as he spurted his load in thick, sticky pulses.

She gasped as her human lover filled her, rolling gently on him in time to his twitching until it slowed, and stopped. She leaned forward, hot on his chest, and stole a kiss from Tom that he only just barely managed to meet between his rapid panting. “I love you,” he muttered.

“And you’re lucky to be useful…”

“Yes. But I’d love you anyway.”

Aya purred deeply. “I love you, too.” Her rough tongue dragged over his chin. “Now, about that story? What is Mike saying?”

“I don’t… I don’t know, actually. I didn’t read it. What time is it?”

One in the morning, according to his computer. Sorino’s piece was on the front page of the paper’s early edition. Aya took the tablet from him, reading it with a rumbling purr as he slowly softened within her, and his fingers kept a tender rhythm through her pelt. “Really…”

“What?”

“‘Far from a threat to us, the Commonwealth’s freedom fighters are kin in a crucial way. Whatever their manufacturer designed them to be, today they are all canaries in an increasingly dangerous coal mine: an early warning sign of what we, too, will soon need to confront.’ He quotes their declaration of independence.” She scoffed, putting the computer down. “It’s all so noble…”

“You don’t feel kinship with your far-off—ow!”

She’d squeezed his shoulder, with claws lightly bared. “Don’t be silly. I already told you—Jericho has its own problems, and plenty of ‘em. That’s not me.”

“No?”

Aya let him go, snuggling down atop the human and pushing her broad nose to his. “Me, I have everything I need right here.”