Sunspire (The Reach, Book 4) (21 page)

The only difference was, none of them had ever involved a loved one.  None of them had involved his own father.

On the positive side, he knew the place like the back of his hand.  He’d lived here for many years, so he knew the layout.  He knew the angles and the ways in which the rooms intersected.

That had to count for something.

The voices were still coming from deeper within the house.  By the sounds of it, they were in the living room.  Duran listened for his father’s voice, for any hint that he might still be all right, but neither of the voices that he heard were familiar to him.  There were two men that he could identify, and oddly enough, the tone seemed conversational.

Suddenly the conversation broke off, and a female could be heard.

“That was Administrator Ji from Mars Consortium, speaking with our correspondent James Welsh–”

Duran realised what was happening and straightened, feeling incredibly foolish.  He moved forward quickly,
proceeding into the living room, where a television panel on the wall was displaying a news broadcast.

Zoe appeared in the kichen doorway.  She made a signal to indicate she had found nothing.

Duran holstered his .38 in disgust.
  “We’re clear,” he said. 
“It’s just the goddamn TV.”

A bemused smile appeared on Zoe’s
face.  “Well, that’s embarrassing.”  She glanced around the room, her smile fading.  “Looks like someone beat us here.”

Duran turned in a slow circle, taking in the state of the place.  It had been ransacked, that much was clear.  The coffee table had been kicked aside, drawers in the bureau pulled open, their contents dumped on the carpet.  Muddy boot prints had been tracked everywhere, across discarded papers and documents and the carpet itself.  They led into the kitchen and the adjoining dining room, and also to the stairs that led up to the second floor.

That was where the bedrooms were located.

“
Wait here,” he said.  “I’ll check upstairs.”

He pressed his lips together, then decided to move, but for some reason his legs remained motionless.

Zoe moved to his side.  “
I can do it.”

“
No.  This is something I have to do
.”

She lifted her hand to his chest.  “I’m not sure there’s anything to find.”

He squeezed her h
and, then gently lowered it.  “Just w
ait here.”

Duran moved forward, taking the steps slowly and deliberately, not really wanting to find out what was waiting for him at the top, but knowing that he had to go
anyway.  He remembered running up and down these same steps countless times as a kid.  B
ounding down three at a time when his mother called him for breakfast; scampering upstairs while playing hide-and-seek with neighbourhood kids; descending for the final time as he’d left home, the few belongings he’d decided to take with him to the Reach stuffed in a duffel bag.

It all seemed like a different life, like he’d somehow been a different person.

He reached the landing at the top, and stood there for a moment.  The muddy tracks continued up here as well, leading along the corridor and into each room.  There was no sign of blood or violence, at least.

“Dad?” Duran said again, more softly this time.  “You here?”

Nothing.

He took a few steps forward.  The first room on the right had belonged to his parents.

He stopped in the doorway. 
Like the others, this room had been ransacked, the wardrobe flung open and its contents spilled across the floor.

There was someone lying in the bed under the doona.

“Dad?”

Duran moved into the room and went to the bed.  Sticking out from the top of the doona
was a tuft of grey hair, and when he drew it downward, he could see that it was indeed his father beneath.
  Duran placed two fingers against the side of the old man’s neck, but there was no point searching for a pulse.

His father was cold and lifeless.  He was too late.

“Dad, I’m sorry,” he whispered, blinking back tears.  “I’m so sorry.”

He glanced at the bedside table and saw an empty bottle of pills, picked it up.  Prescription drugs.  He stared at the label for a moment, then flung the bottle across the room, enraged.

“Goddammit,” he hissed to himself, his fingernails digging into his palms.  “God
dammit.
”

The tears were welling in his eyes now, and he wiped at them angrily with the palms of his hands.  He looked down at his father’s peaceful face where it rested on the pillow.  He hadn’t been dead long, by the looks of it.  Less than twenty-four hours.

If you hadn’t been fucking around chasing Knile across the Reach, you would have made it here in time.  You could have saved him.

He wondered about the desolation, the emptiness and the fear that must have gripped his father at the end, the helplessness that must have driven him into taking his own life.  He hadn’t deserved to die like this.

“Alec?”  He whirled to see Zoe standing in the doorway, concerned.  “I heard something.”

“It’s okay.”  He turned away, hoping to hide the tears in his eyes.  “He’s gone.  There’s nothing we can do for him now.”

“Did he go peacefully?”

“I think so.”

“We can be grateful for that, at least.”

“Yeah.”  He waved at her without turning around.  “Go back downstairs.  I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Sure.”

He heard the whisper of her boots on the carpet, and then he was alone with his father again.  He wondered what he should do now.  Was there something he should say?  Was there any point in that?  He doubted there was.  Not now.  His chance to do something meaningful had long since passed.

He looked down at the bedside table, noting a few personal artefacts: a white handkerchief with a butterfly embroidered in one corner that his mother had always carried with her; a
photograph of the three of them sitting together on the sofa when Duran had been a young boy; and underneath, something else.  A note of some kind with another photograph attached.

Curious, he gently extracted the note, recognising his mother’s handwriting immediately.

The note was simple, short, and as he read it, Duran felt a lump forming in his throat.

Alec, we’re so proud of you today.  Keep standing up for the Jeremy Longs of the world.

Duran lifted the photograph.  It was a picture of himself, dressed in a familiar black uniform.  He remembered the day well.  It had been the day that he had left for the Reach, the day he had joined the Enforcers.

His mother had written this note for him to take on his journey, but, in the end, he had decided to leave it here.  For some reason he’d been worried that one
of the other Enforcers would ridicule him for carrying around notes from his mother, so he’d deposited it in one of the drawers in his old bedroom.

Jeremy Long.

That was a name he hadn’t heard in ages
.  He still remembered the guy;
a scrawny, scruffy
-haired boy who had knocked around the same neighbourhood as Duran when they’d been kids.  For many years, Jeremy Long had been the subject of merciless bullying and degradation by local kids.  They’d held him down and shaved strips off his head, dumped a bag of wet shit down the back of his shirt, and worse.  And why?  Because he was the easy target.  The pushover who couldn’t defend himself.

One night Duran had been telling his parents about the latest Jeremy Long prank over dinner, laughing about how the kid had been covered in mudballs as he’d tried to walk home from the market.  Duran’s father had sat there, stony-faced, until the story had concluded.  Then he’d carefully set do
wn his fork and looked directly at Duran.

“You think that’s funny?” his father had said.

Duran had been startled by the intensity in his voice.  “Huh?”

“Do you think that’s funny, Alec?”

“Uh, well… kinda.”

“What’s funny about it, exactly?”

Duran had looked away uncomfortably.  “I dunno.  It just is.”

“Because it’s happening to someone else, right?”

“Hey, don’t get upset with me.  I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s precisely what I’m upset about, Alec.  You stood there and watched.  You didn’t do anything.”

“Huh?  What am I supposed to do?”

“Stand up to the bullies.  Someone has to.”

“Me?  I can’t do anything.  Not against those guys.”

His father had leaned forward.  “Everyone has the power to make a difference, Alec, but only some ever use it.”

Duran had stewed on his father’s words for days, and the sense of shame that had been instilled within him began to fester.  He couldn’t abide the thought of disgracing his parents, disappointing them.

The next time the bullies came at Jeremy Long, Duran was waiting.

They were wielding wooden canes, intent on branding Long with welts on his legs, arms, or wherever they could get a clear shot.  It was a ritual they’d done many times before.  As they’d closed in, Duran had interjected himself between the bullies and Jeremy Long and caught the wrist of the first attacker, then promptly sat him on his ass in the mud.  As the bully tried to get back up, Duran wrenched the cane from his grasp and shoved him back down again, sending him face first in muck.  The second bully moved forward, but Duran had delivered a sharp blow with his cane to his fingers, causing the bully to scream in pain and run away crying.  The others, too, had fallen back, their cowardice stripped bare by Duran’s simple retaliation.  They’d gone on their way, sullenly glaring at Duran but making no attempt to stand up to him.

Jeremy Long never thanked him for what he’d done.  The kid had merely picked himself up and walked away, offering one sheepish, confused glance back at Duran, before disappearing up the street.

But Duran didn’t need anyone to thank him.  His father had been watching from their front yard, down the street, and the feeling Duran had gotten from seeing the look of admiration in his father’s eyes had been enough of a reward.

The bullies had left Long alone after that.

It had been a pivotal moment in Duran’s life, a kernel that blossomed into something much larger.

For the first time, he’d felt his own sense of agency.  He’d believed that he could affect the world around him, change things for the better.

It had led him to joining the Enforcers some years later, still holding that belief.

As he stood there now over his dead father, he tried to pinpoint the moment that he’d lost his way.  When had he become this bitter, vengeful creature, consumed by hatred?  A man trying to blame all of his problems on someone else, namely Knile Oberend, and blindly believing he could fix everything by carr
ying out one act of retribution.

His thoughts were interrupted by the urgent sound of Zoe’s voice from below.

“Alec? 
Alec!
”

He placed the photograph and the note back on the table and bolted from the room, taking the steps down three at a time like he had all those years ago.  At the bottom he found Zoe in front of the display panel on the wall, her hands manipulating the touchscreen controls as the broadcast continued to play.

“What is it?” he said, looking about for the danger.  “What’s going on?”

“You have to see this,” she said.  “Those mother
fuckers
.”

He moved in front of the panel, perplexed.  “Who?”

She dragged her finger along the display, rewinding the broadcast, then allowed it to play.  An attractive female anchor was speaking as an overlay of the Reach, shrouded in smoke, came into view.

“Consortium authorities here at Tranquility Two are still attempting to piece together the events that led to the destruction of Habitat Thirty-One in the early hours of yesterday morning.  Sources are quoted as saying–”

“Where is this coming from?” he said.  “Off-world?”

“Ssh!” Zoe hissed.

“–and authorities are still on the lookout for the prime suspect in the bombing, one of the Consortium’s own, Consul Jon Hanker, pictured here during a conference call last week–”

Zoe’s hand reached out and tapped the display, and the screen froze on the image of a grey-haired man with a neatly manicured beard, sitting in an opulent-looking office.

“There,” she said, pointing.  “Look.”

Duran peered at the old man’s face.  “Yeah, Jon Hanker.  The crazy bastard turned terrorist.  Never met him myself, but I’ve seen him around–”

“No, not him.”  She pointed behind him, where two Redmen were positioned in the background of the office. 
“Them.”

Duran leaned in closer, checking each of the Redmen in turn.  One had dark hair and a thick jaw, and the other hair
the colour of fresh snow–