"You were straight with him?"
"Straight all the way. No reason I shouldn't have been."
"No. No reason."
"But I don't go in for the DMI types. I don't care for them. You're decent and all, Officer O'Roark."
"Thanks." Kiss ass, she thought.
"But the rest of them… So I figured I give you a heads-up because something about him stank."
"Yeah. Like Old Spice."
Soledad gave her thanks and good-byes. Started to.
Hayes cut her off with a query as to whether or not Soledad liked to shoot pool.
Soledad said she did, but that her leg was still barely in fair shape. Now wasn't a real good time to go stand around shooting a few games. But, and this she stressed, she really appreciated Hayes having her back.
Hayes said he understood. Maybe another time.
Maybe. Soledad hung up her phone.
Raddatz coming around behind her, asking questions.
No matter what she was putting out, Raddatz wasn't taking it at face value. Same as he'd said he was short on trust, she was going to have to be long on caution.
And right then among other stuff she was thinking, Soledad realized in her excuses to Hayes as to why she couldn't go out with him, the fact that she was getting married wasn't one of them.
The earth is a beautiful thing. Mother Earth, Gaia, depending on what land of Old Age hippie, New Age guruism you believed in. However you called her, she's a real decent home. Not just the green and the blue and the white of the trees and the sky and the clouds. A modest girl, her true beauties are hidden.
The earth moves.
Around the sun, through the universe. The earth was in a constant state of adjustment. Of resonance. The seismic plates, the fissures, the volcanic rings. Moving. Shifting. For billions of years. Creating, as it created topography, a song of folklore that spoke, almost cried in longing for a time before man and machine and clear-cutting and chemical dumping and toxin pumping. And the song was beautiful.
If you could hear it.
People couldn't hear it.
Normal people couldn't hear It.
Metanormals couldn't hear it.
Except for metanormals with the ability to terraform. The ability to touch the resonance, affect the resonance. Alter the land. Move rock and stone. Literally the ability to make a mountain out of a molehill. It was an art. Magic. Here's the trick: Terraformers didn't actually do anything. Like geologic Dr. Dolittles, they encouraged the earth to alter herself. There had been a few, a very few, heroes who terraformed-used their abilities to move earth to fight wrongs. But mostly, terraformers had been, were, pacifist. They felt, they felt the violence earth had known since her birth. The impact of massive meteors. The extinction of entire species. The attempted extermination of whole races. It was all in the song. If you heard the song, if you felt the song, you didn't much want to cause anyone, anything, the slightest tribulation.
But the thing about nonviolence: It's a good concept, but it doesn't much stand up to the need for self-preservation.
Tiesto Moore was just finding that out.
He found that out, really, about eight minutes prior when… when It came after him throwing off electricity, throwing bricks and metal and whatever It could get Its hands on and pick up and whip at speeds which turned the objects into deadly projectiles. Speeds that forced the projectiles through the earthen walls Tiesto yanked from the ground for his protection.
That was before he completely quit his pacifism.
That was before Tiesto started ripping rocks and then boulders from the earth. Moving them like buried marionettes. Making them rush for It. What else was there to call… If!
Maybe… Tiesto was getting delirious. He was starting to think maybe he ought just call it fear. Call it, maybe, Death.
Delirious. The running, the shifting of the earth he was doing. Was doing. Too tired now. Too tired to move earth anymore. Just run. Just stumble. Just keep ahead of It.
Just keep alive.
He'd miss the song. Tiesto thought about an empty eternity without the song. And the thought was pretty shitty. And It was rushing up somewhere behind him. It was coming to end things.
Really going to miss the song.
And Tiesto came stumbling around a corner.
And there it was waiting for him. Death. Four MTacs. Weapons ready. Fingers on triggers.
Eddi: "You are in violation of an Exe-"
Tiesto raised a hand for the MTacs. Maybe to attack. Maybe to defend himself. Maybe to use the flesh of Ms palm to shield himself, feebly, from the inevitable. In that sliver of a second his thoughts too capricious to discern.
The MTacs took it as an act of aggression.
The MTacs opened fire.
Tiesto was dead before he touched earth.
Raddatz did the talking. He was the one who asked the questions. He handled or at least took the lead of the debrief. Standard. It was Raddatz and Panama, Soledad third-wheeling it as they went through the call with Eddi Aoki. Her written report would follow. But it was SOP to have a face-to-face with the senior lead of an element soon as possible after a warrant was served. Originally, on-site debriefings'd been established to wring every piece of intel there was out of the responding officers while memories were fresh. Guns are good, but knowledge is power. And any piece of info could be the key piece when it came to going after a similar mutie on some future occasion.
But…
More and more the on-sites were done to get an official story out quick as possible to placate the freak fuckers and, worst case, contradict any altered version of the incident bleeding hearts might try to virus through the liberal media.
The call had been fairly standard as warrants go. Someone had 911 "d about a freak. Pacific MTac rolled. A terraformer, but Pacific got the drop. Chalked the kill.
Soledad was humiliated.
Standing there, Raddatz and Panama doing the talking, Soledad fell unpurposed. Added to that they were talking with Eddi. It was Eddi being witness to Soledad's lack of purpose that elevated her disconcert to humiliation. Every second that passed sank her with shame.
About three-quarters of the way through the debriefing Raddatz got a call from back at DMI- Donatell was Soledad's best guess-and stepped off to talk. Panama, not looking to kill downtime with Soledad, took a minute to go do something. Go pretend he was doing something.
Soledad and Eddi.
Soledad offered: "Nice job on the freak." "Wasn't much, but I'll take the easy ones." It didn't overly show, but Soledad rated Eddi's modesty as false.
Eddi asked: "How's things with you?" "Different. All different." "Like it?"
"it'll take getting used to."
"Good thing is you won't have to." Eddi did some cheerleading. "Your leg gets good, you'll be right back where you belong."
"We'll see." Then, one more time: "We'll see."
"I was actually glad to see you today."
"Actually? You make it sound-"
"A little backhanded, yeah, but I mean it. Worst thing about serving a warrant is you've got to deal with the DMI creeps afterward."
"Worst thing besides getting killed, you mean."
A little bit of a smile from Eddi. "Maybe not even.
Swear, there're days I'd rather let a freak go than have to sit across from DMI."
Soledad shared the feeling. Maybe it was just departmental fidelity for G Platoon, but since malting the transfer the feeling'd gotten stronger, not weaker. She was ready to agree with Eddi.
But Soledad had put work into looking loyal to the new boss no matter how sincere or fake they gauged that loyalty to be. There was no sense in queering things with loose lips, on having her true feelings come back to bite her in the ass.