Angel Eyes: Angel Eyes

By B. D. Ranald

On the icy hell-hole planet Edda, food rations are the only currency, barbarians rule the wastelands, and the feminist police state of Midir holds the civilized world in an iron grip.

 

There are no guard towers at the Ursa Isle gulag. No fences, either. Just a bay full of eternally hungry sharks, and a Commandant who forces the inmates to fight for the right to eat every week. The most recent inmate, Juno, quickly discovers she is the only Midian on the island, and everyone else wants a piece of her. And her only chance for survival is to team up with a man she has sworn to kill.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B. D. Ranald
• Release date: Jun 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227732118

Book preview

1

My plane had to land on the further runway because they were executing a man on the main one.

This was around oh-six hundred hours at Outpost Gorni in the Midian Occupied Zone of Agir—the Midian territory along the west coast of Jotarna. My plane had touched down just before the blizzard came and wrapped its icy arms around the whole of the valley. They had to send a snowblazer to pick me up and drive me to the building, and I had to walk past the execution to reach the front door.

It was the ass-end of a drumhead trial. The victim was a dark-haired male army conscript with a face like a snow ape. I had missed the verdict, but not the sentence, as he was being stripped naked right there on the snowy runway by two of his fellow conscripts. Thermosuit, underwear, all of it came right off except the customary shock collar all men wear in Midian territory.

All the male thralls on the airfield stopped their duties and swallowed hard as they watched the man freeze before their eyes. In that part of Jotarna it wouldn’t take more than a couple minutes.

Several female base officers had gathered to watch. They tittered like high school girls and admired the physique of the doomed man. One was the base Valkyrie Guard Marshal, a mean-looking forty-something blonde in the white longcoat, blue beret, and gold cords of her station. I knew her name was Drea, because many years in the past we had butted heads during the court-martial she’d tried to ruin me with. She still looked mean as hell, but now had crow’s feet around her eyes and gray streaks in her hair.

All the men on base answered to this little shit, who laughed and said, Waste of good meat.

The man just sat there as he gazed dumbly out at the rising sun, a pathetic speck of light between Edda’s twin moons. The spittle was already freezing to his beard. He shuddered from the cold. Tried to fight it, as if to avoid showing weakness in front of the officers. Showing weakness would only make things worse. They’d flog him while he froze to death, just to set an example. So he sucked it up and waited for death while watching Edda’s tiny, pitiful sun crawl over the distant mountains.

I glanced out past the airfield, to the icy mountain range that encircled the base. The snow was starting to fall in sheets. Lately when I look out at the frigid landscape of Edda I can’t help wondering what it must’ve been like for our ancestors on Earth hundreds of years ago: to experience seasonal changes of more than five degrees, or drink in the sight of beautiful green forests, or step outside without a skin-tight thermosuit and not drop dead from hypothermia. I was thinking of that at the time of this execution, too.

I was about to hurry the hell away from the whole scene when another officer, a small redhead with a boyish face, came out of the doors I was heading toward and nearly knocked me on my ass as she made a bee-line for the doomed man. Marshal Drea spotted her and intercepted her right away.

Hold fast, Rem, said the blonde. I could barely hear her over the wind.

Rem didn’t look at her. She kept looking at the doomed man, who now glanced back at her as the color seeped out of his face. His breathing was raspier now. His lips were turning blue.

Rem’s eyes were bloodshot from crying. She sobbed.

I’ll take charge of him, Marshal, said Rem. I’ll punish him myself. She looked at the unflinching Drea and added, Please, in a mousey voice.

Outta my hands, said Drea without sympathy. She smirked.

Please, said Rem. I could barely hear what she said as the wind howled like a chorus of snow dingoes, but reading her trembling lips I saw her say the phrase, my mother’s breeder, with the emphasis of a child on the verge of bawling. And now I saw the resemblance between the young woman and the man freezing to death on the runway.

The Midian word for a man is arbet, which also means work horse and storehouse depending on the inflection. We have no word for fathers like you do. The closest we have is my mother’s breeder. Otherwise they’re just called arbet and the context clarifies their role in your life.

A Midian mother never keeps the breeder once she’s pregnant. She sends him off to the next would-be mother in line, or back to whatever valhalla he was stationed at. My own mother had birthed many girls with many different men, and we never knew any of the breeders. Keeping the breeder in the house is considered taboo, since he might harm or corrupt the children according to the scripture of the Eternal Female.

And most Midian women don’t even care who their father is, so seeing this one so sentimental about it made my stomach turn. At the time, I didn’t understand why I felt that way.

The man scrambled toward Rem suddenly, as if to tackle her, but the conscripts dutifully kicked him to the snow. They dragged him back to his place, and sat him on his knees, facing the mountains. He didn’t try it again.

Then Rem tried to run to him, but Marshal Drea caught her by the collar with one hand and pulled her close, and just under the roar of the wind I heard Drea say, "Don’t you like this post, Corporal?"

Rem nodded with a sniffle.

Marshal Drea pointed to her badge. "See this uniform? It means I’m Valkyrie Guard. All men are property of the Valkyrie Guard. At Outpost Gorni that means they’re my property. Frigg with my property and I’ll ship you to the ass-crack of Edda!"

She wasn’t wrong. Everything we do requires manpower, and the Vee Gees own all the men, so wherever there’s a Midian pie, the Vee Gees have their dirty hands in it. Worse, they feel entitled to it as Matron’s chosen ones—her special police brigade, her holy avatars. Piss off a whitecoat like Marshal Drea, and you better have a hell of a lot of clout to keep your head intact.

Drea turned Rem sharply around and all but kicked her back inside, barking after her, Dismissed!

She turned back to her flock chuckling. I was within arm’s reach of her.

That’s when we made eye contact. She read the disgust in my face. Her smile dropped. She came so close I could smell the tobacco on her breath.

"What the hell are you looking at? she said. You want a fist in the mouth?"

But now that she was within punching range, her expression changed. When she had dropped that court-martial in my lap years before, my hair had been short and close-cropped and boyish. By this point I had just started growing it shoulder-length like I do now, so she hadn’t recognized me at first. Now she knew me for the woman she had once tried to ruin, and she instantly went pale as the snow.

"Don’t you like this post, Marshal?" I said.

Marshal Drea gave me a shaky salute. She went and hid behind her flock and never looked my way again.

As I walked into the base, I heard her telling the others that they’d just met the commander of the Ghost Lions. Yes, we really existed. No, we weren’t just propaganda meant to scare Midir’s serf nations into obedience. And yes, I could have her shipped to the nearest gulag with a phone call.

2

It was one of those typical rabbit hole jobs. Starts as a simple errand you do as a favor, always in someone else’s backyard miles away from home.

Then someone says, As long as you’re here, Ma’am… and next thing you know, you’re being passed along like a library book to every bureaucrat in the state, helping fix problems they probably created in the first place, and each problem involves more guns than the last one.

The Ghost Lions were technically supposed to be out of the game. Midian commando units run a required number of missions to justify the generous ration shares the Folkmeadow biodome pays them. If you survive long enough to meet that quota, you’re on easy street until retirement.

We’d already met our quota twice over, with flying colors and silver laurels. We weren’t supposed to be working in the field anymore.

We’d originally been asked to run an errand to the Occupied Zone of Agir as a favor. Since the Ghost Lions weren’t officially on assignment, I’d left them back in town while I helped settle a mundane dispute on behalf of the local prefect, who then said, As long as you’re here, Ma’am, we could use your help with a sting operation to bag an insurgent. Your expertise would be greatly appreciated. Major Skuld will fill you in. Glory to Matron, and all that.

I hadn’t seen Major Thea Skuld in a few years, and apart from looking a bit heavier, she was the same as always. Built like a professional roller derby blocker. Impish face with thick black eyeliner. Curly, pink-tipped, platinum blonde mohawk. Icy eyes that had gazed into the face of death and weren’t impressed. She was wearing an expensive black thermosuit with flames embroidered up the sleeves from wrist to shoulder: outside of the office her jacket would cover it up so she wouldn’t get fined for blatantly violating army dress regulations.

Apart from the snakeskin jackets Ruthless Ruth sends me on my birthday, I don’t like the gaudy punk rock look that’s so common to Midian women. I like plain, straight brown hair, and no obvious tattoos, and retaining some semblance of feminine curves.

Dieter Roneth, said Skuld, pointing at the dossier in my lap, was the most decorated soldier in Jotarna before we were born. He was one of our imported slaves for the better part of a decade. Our idiot leaders thought his military background made him good breeding stock. By the time we were in junior high, he’d escaped back to Jotarna, become their top intelligence officer, and led the push to dissolve Matron’s occupied zones across the globe. Every nation on Edda has wanted a piece of our ass ever since.

When Skuld paused, I said, They want a piece of us because Matron’s life goal is to hold all of Edda in one hand.

Skuld lit a cigar and gestured to the closed office door with it. "Careful the base commander don’t hear you say that, Juno. She’s already got one poor sucker on the gallows this morning."

I said, I saw him on the way in. Who was he?

Elder base thrall who got caught making eyes at the commander, or so the commander says. I’d bet a week’s ration shares that all he did was refuse her advances.

I said, Officer named Rem was there. Said he was her mother’s breeder.

Possible. Most of us never meet our mothers’ breeding partners, right? They coulda been posted here together for years and never found out they were related. Surprised she found out at all. What’s it to you?

Seems like a waste, that’s all, I said.

Skuld chuckled. Same ol’ Angel Eyes. Every time a dog gets kicked, it pulls at your heart string!

I dropped the dossier on the desk. It’s a waste of time and resources going after this guy. He’s got every nation on Edda so stirred up they’ll continue to invade our territories with or without his help. Capturing him will hardly demoralize anyone, and any intel he gives us will be useless by the time we get it.

Think of the brownie points you’ll get if you nab him, though.

I laughed. Goddess’s Garters… The Ghost Lions don’t need brownie points, Thea. We’re the face of the Midian armed forces. What’s Matron’s fascination with this guy? It’s a bit late for her biological clock to go off.

Skuld took her time re-lighting her cigar, which had burnt out while she was talking. She took a few deep drags, rolled the smoke around in her mouth, let it fly, then said, Tell me everything you know about atomic weapons.

Even in an artificially heated building and while wearing a thermosuit, I felt the room go very cold. My mouth was dry. Skuld held eye contact and waited for me to reply.

They were the cause of the Great Migration from Earth to Edda, and I said as much. The Aldarok Accords were written as a planet-wide agreement to never develop atomic weapons again. We don’t even have atomic starships anymore. Our ancestors willingly stranded us all on this ugly rock hundreds of years ago for the sake of world peace.

Are you telling me Roneth has an arsenal? I said.

Skuld practiced her calligraphy with her cigar, its cherry leaving flourishes of smoke in the air as she shrugged. "We don’t know. It might be bullshit meant to make us waste resources. Matron would rather just send you to find out."

The Ghost Lions were about to be sidelined with cushy jobs as consultants, where we’d never have to risk our asses for the state again. They’d promised us a year ago, when we’d surpassed our mission quota. We’d kept at it for another year because we liked the work and wanted to do our duty.

Now we’d done our duty and then some. I had girls who wanted to settle down and have children. I had boys who were about to get their first taste of freedom. The errand I was flown up there for in the first place was supposed to be the last one, done as a favor for an old professor of mine. I’d only agreed to this briefing to see my friend Skuld again. Now I was ready to take my family home and give them the lives they’d earned.

I told her this much, just like I’ve told it to you now. She puffed her cigar. She nodded.

As I was standing up to leave, she said, Prefect Urd rang me up from Folkmeadow before you landed. Used your name like a dirty word.

I sat down again. I suddenly felt exhausted.

It was obvious to Skuld, judging by her small, ominous laugh. You know the late Marshal Keeler was her niece, right? The same Marshal Keeler they had to clean up with a shovel after your little op in Rogal?

I remember. I was there.

She’s mad that you haven’t yet been shipped to the gulags for getting her favorite niece killed.

Her favorite niece turned a simple arrest into a bloodbath. That’s why I don’t like having Vee Gees on my operations. Fanatics with something to prove.

Skuld held up her hands. But Matron and the Folkmeadow prefect were sorority sisters, and they talk a lot. If you bag Roneth, a friend’s dead niece will cease to look so important to Matron.

I looked at the photos in the dossier again. Roneth’s chiseled face had a small smile on its lips, as if he were daring me to take the assignment.

Goddess’s Garters, said Skuld. You’d think I never tried to do you a favor before.

Is that what this is? A favor? I thought you just liked to watch me squirm.

That, too. It reminds me you’re human.

The Ghost Lions needed a good job to go out on, to justify the reward they had waiting back home. That was how I rationalized it, I guess. It didn’t distract from the knot my stomach was tying itself into.

We’ll break him, I said after a moment of silence.

Skuld smiled. It’s settled. I have a car outside ready to take you and your team to the airport where the grab will go down. Only a couple people on airport security will be in on it, so try not to act like terrorists until the end of the bust.

She took one more drag from her cigar before placing it in the ashtray on the desk. Then she said, Okay, Angel Eyes, business is over. At ease. Get your bitch ass over here and gimme a hug.

I did as she asked. Our reunions were usually a year or two apart, and never occurred outside of a military environment, but when you spend the night together in a trench with mortar shells dropping all around you, the blood and sweat becomes glue that binds your lives forever.

Don’t blame you for wanting to turn it down, she said. Ruthless Ruth wanted me to throw you a bone that’d get Urd off your back. I understand you two go way back.

Ruthless Ruth Bowie is the chief of intelligence of Midir. She trained me as a commando and was the reason I’d been given command of my own unit. She’s seen and done everything there is to see or do on Edda. In ten years she’ll be the next Matron. In another thousand she’ll probably be at the center of Edda’s new mythology, whatever it may be.

That’s what I thought at that moment. All I said out loud was, Ruth is my mentor. And my friend.

Skuld cocked her head and said, As good a friend as me?

I laughed. Nobody’s as good as you, Thea.

3

We chit-chatted as she walked me out to the six-wheeled snowblazer she had waiting for us on the airfield. I jumped into the passenger side and Skuld peeled out, nearly running over a couple of thralls handling luggage. We had to shout over the roar of the snowblazer’s engine to hear each other as she drove us to the front of the base where my taxi was waiting.

I said, I thought you’d be running a borough in the capitol by now! What’re you doing running odd jobs for the army?

"I came out to see you! Matron’s got me on a new desk job! But I run my own ship with no bureaucrats breathing down my neck! You should see my new pad! Between you and me, I got a dozen new enterprises there, bringing a lotta rations in! And all the hot, young slave boys you can eat!"

Sounds like your kinda place!

You should come in with me now that you’re bored with the commando gig! I’ll send you an invite and give you a tour!

I don’t like desk jobs!

You’d like it better than being Matron’s mascot! Getting your ass shot off so she can sell more war bonds! I saw your last film reel! You got a face for radio!

I’m still prettier than you, and that’s what counts!

You really don’t like me doing you favors, do ya?

I hate owing favors more than desk jobs! You already saved my career once!

That was a lie. She’d saved me a dozen times.

And every time we saw each other, she would inevitably bring up some new business venture she had in the works and invite me to join in. I lost count of how many she’d had. A deep-sea eel fishing platform that never got past the blueprints phase; a four-engine cargo plane she had bought from some mercenaries and planned to renovate into a luxury passenger plane, but lost when she used it on a last-minute military op; and once she even tried to open her own ration bank, but provincial politics brought that one to a screeching halt. I don’t know if I would’ve actually gone into business with her if any of them had gotten off the ground.

We’d pulled up beside the armored car by this point, the engine already humming and ready to roll out. Skuld helped me get my bags in the trunk, and then gave me another hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Office can put you in touch with me anytime, she said, in case you change your mind. You won’t regret it, Angel Eyes!

We’ll talk about it when I get back, I said.

I’m keepin’ tabs on you, then, said Skuld. "This time I will call you. This one’s hot, and it’s gonna get hotter, and I want you in on it."

When I get back, I said, laughing.

You always say that!

This time I mean it.

I never did get back, though. I haven’t been back since. When I stepped into that car, I’d started down the long, bloody road to the Fort Ursa Incident that left over a hundred people dead and plunged the Midian government into a PR shitstorm.

4

I’d left the Ghost Lions at a mead hall in Korra with strict orders to behave themselves. As always, they let me down.

Before I even got to the mead hall, I had to bail Gecks (Captain Raelyn Kron, for the record) out of jail for borrowing a jeep for a drag race. They released her on the condition that once Roneth was ours, she was to report right back to jail to finish her sentence. They’d assumed she was my daughter on account of she had the same Southeastern Midian dialect as me, and looked and acted like a precocious teenager.

I usually didn’t argue the point because she really was like the daughter I’d never had. I had trained her at Fort Dane, and she was my