The Heroes We Can Afford: In Every Eden (18)

“Morgan, who speaks for Green!”

Morgan felt as if there was red hot spike piercing his temple and each word was the blow of a hammer driving it deeper into his skull.  He instinctively turned over, away from the voice, and instantly regretted it as his stomach also turned over.

“Morgan, who speaks for Green!”  Morgan couldn't tell if the words were actually getting louder and more insistent or if they just felt like they were.

A hand shook him and his stomach turned over again.  He pressed his eyelids as tight as they would close and decided to ignore the hand and see if it would go away.

It did not.

“Morgan, who speaks for Green, your voice is required.”  The hand shook him harder this time.  He turned back over with a slow groan and pried sleep-glued eyes open.  His vision was filled with the blurry image of a face with a large red ring on it.

He immediately closed them again.

“Can you speak?”

Morgan muttered something under his breath that started out as “I don't know, can you fuck off?” and came out as a series of unintelligible grunts with only a passing resemblance to words.

“He cannot speak for Green if he cannot speak.”

“Green will speak, for Green must answer!”  A different voice, this one low and gravelly.  Morgan thought he might recognize it if he was capable of caring.

A fist gripped his collar.  Without thinking, he grabbed it and ground his thumb into his wrist.  It let go with a snarl.

Morgan pushed the hand away, leaped to his feet and immediately vomited on Ambassador Eber's shoes.

He stood back up and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.  Eber's lined face glowered down at him, quietly furious behind the Red Circle.

“Yo.  Wha'?”

“You speak for Green.”

“'pparently.”  Morgan's eyes itched now that they were open and he kept rubbing them.  His mouth tasted like a toilet, unsurprising, and he could only imagine how it smelled to Eber when he spoke.

“You must answer for the actions of your Circle!”

“Ah, Ma, can't no one else talk for Green today?  I don't feel so good.”

“No!  No one else can speak for Green because no other Green is present!  What is going on?  What is Green's plan?”

Morgan had his mouth open when he realized he had no more idea than Eber did.

His memories from after the meeting were pretty fuzzy, although he did have a vague recollection of wanting to get them to reveal their plan of 'Direct Action' out of them at the victory party afterwards.  But then somebody put a homemade clay mug full of a homemade booze in his hand and after that, he didn't remember a goddamn thing.

A part of him was sorry he didn't remember it.  It must have been one hell of a party.  He hadn't felt this sick the morning after since that going-away party he'd had before leaving the Home System, and hadn't gotten properly black-out drunk since that time on Astarte when he'd drunk that blue shit on a bet.

Thinking back to his time on Astarte he felt a deep and sudden sadness settle over him, mourning days that he'd expended and would not see again.

Meanwhile, Eber hadn't gone anywhere and was getting impatient.

“Well?  You speak for Green.  What have you to say for your Circle?”

“Uhm... ah, what's it to you, anyhow?”

Something Eber had just said drifted up to the surface.

“And what do you mean there's no Greens left here?”

“None of rank in the Green Circle is left in the enclave.  And now I, who speak for Red and Xbalanque, am woken by the Planetary.  Her officers have been called to the industrial docks.  And much of Green is missing.  I am an elder of a great Circle and no fool.  What am I meant to think of this?”

The industrial docks!  The thought pierced the fog that surrounded Morgan's brain.  Where he had been headed when all this began.  Where the terraforming supplies were kept.  It was happening now!

He lunged for the door, shoving Eber and the other Red out of the way.  His head spun one direction, his stomach the other.  He fell past them and into the doorway.  He gripped the doorframe to stop the room from spinning and lurched out through the hanging curtain into the hallway.

Eber was shouting and the other Red made a grab for him but Morgan shrugged the hand off without much effort and continued stumbling down the corridor.

His abused stomach heaved and he doubled over, carried forward onto his knees by his momentum.  His insides contracted in a series of powerful spasms.  His bruised ribs screamed out and he followed suit, his cry drowned by the bitter, almost medicinal bile that was all his stomach had left to give up.

Rough hands gripped his arms and pulled him to his feet.  He heard Eber's voice shouting at them down the hall, but didn't stop to listen what he was saying.

He flexed Earth-born muscles and shrugged easily out of their grasp and continued on.  A fever was rising in him, drying the sweat to his skin.  His head pounded, like the drums of far-off Mithra, in an irregular beat that matching the racing of his heart.  His eyes were no longer itching, they were burning.

This was like no hangover he'd ever had, even that time on Astarte.  What had been in that drink?

He forced himself forward, step by tiresome step, and the hallway started to tilt.  Or was that him?  Lights danced in front of his eyes and the intertwined patterns of color seemed to swim across the walls.  He had to trust that his feet knew the way.

Behind him shouts and orders echoed down the halls, muffled a little by the tapestries over the doors and muffled more by the thundering of his blood in his ears.

A wall of metal came out of nowhere and smashed into Morgan's face.  He staggered backwards, the lights in his eyes exploded into a single red and yellow sheet.  He groped in the light-blindness and found the metal beam that barred the door.  He raised it out of its cradle and over his head.  Red waves of pain ran in lines down his arm and he imprisoned a cry behind clenched teeth.  His arms gave way and the bar clattered to the floor behind him.  There were cries from the farmers who'd been following him as they jumped out of the way.

He hurled his weight against the door with all the strength left to him and it gave way without much of a fight.  His remaining momentum carried him past it, stumbling into the hallway beyond.

After the dim Red light of the Xbalanque enclave, the full illumination of Irkalla stabbed him the retinas with daggers of bright white light.

He threw the door to the enclave closed and steadied his back against the cool metal.

“Hey, you!  Gannis!  You!”  He didn't move.  Laying against the metal the fever began to drain away from him, leaving only shuddering chills that wracked him every few seconds.

“You!  Stand still!  Don't move!”

Morgan blinked a few times and the lights started to clear a little.  A pair of figures formed out of the swimming lights.  Dark skinned and khaki clad, militia officers.  The too-bright lights glinting off of the lenses of their lasers like a pair of white, hot stars, too bright for Morgan to look at directly.  He muttered something and waved them away.  He flinched and accidentally hit the back of his head against the door.

“I said don't move!  Don't!  You're under arrest!”

He staggered forward, trying to form his lips into a reasonable explanation but he was cut off as the Militia officers both fired at him.

Bursts of plasma from the underbarrels of the police-issue weapons shown so bright that the rest of the the hallway looked dark before being swallowed up in the blue glare of the after images.  The plasma hit him like a pair of fists, slamming him back into the door.

The pain of being stunned was worse than the pain of the morning after.  For a moment every nerve in his body burned as if it was on fire.  But at least it ended quickly and he returned to the welcoming black arms of oblivion.