The Venus Assault: A Space Opera Thriller (Sol System Renegades Book 1) by Felix R. Savage

Author:Felix R. Savage [Savage, Felix R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction thriller
Publisher: Knights Hill Publishing
Published: 2019-05-23T16:00:00+00:00

xvi.

Jun Yonezawa tossed his cassock into a corner of Father Hirayanagi’s living-room and went home. The bishop was there, drinking tea with Jun’s father. Hiroki Yonezawa was nobody, just a night watchman. But on 11073 Galapagos, you didn’t have to be somebody to be important.

“What are you going to do now?” the bishop said to Jun.

Out of his vestments, Bishop Okada was no less imposing. His belly spread like a sack of rice across his knees. He lifted his teacup with the delicacy of a girl picking a flower. The house was dark, as per curfew regulations, lit only by an electric candle burning behind the screen in the corner. The Yonezawas had the honor of keeping the Eucharist in their house, since Jun was a monk and two of his sisters were nuns.

“Call Kirin, I guess.” He went to the door and looked out. The street, a green tunnel smelling hotly of tomatoes, was still quiet. Coming along, he’d been awed by the silence. It reminded him of the great nanorot epidemic, when quarantine had been enforced over half the asteroid. Patrolling the deathly-silent streets with orders to shoot anyone he found outside, Jun had turned a corner and come face-to-face with an old schoolmate, two years his senior, busily raping a woman. Or a girl. Maybe even someone Jun knew. Couldn’t tell. Senpai had tied her own blouse over her head like a bag.

Jun had stared at senpai. Senpai had stared back at Jun. Then Jun had backed off and patrolled around the block. When he came back, senpai and the girl were both gone. Jun might have imagined the whole thing, down to the pimples on senpai’s wobbling rump. He had never said anything about it to anyone. The incident had entered into no record. But it remained in Jun’s memory. That was the day he’d first become aware of evil.

He was not going to repeat that mistake. Not going to look the other way this time.

He turned from the street door, brushing against his mother. The bishop, sitting in seiza at the low table, said, “Where is Shimada Yumiko?”

“I left her with Father Hirayanagi. I don’t think she’ll hurt him. She seems grateful to have been received into the Church.”

“Praised be the Lord,” the bishop said.

“Yup. In the end, she rolled right over,” Jun agreed. He wasn’t going to try explaining to anyone else that the phavatar had multiple operators, possibly including at least one demon. A powerful demon, Jun speculated. They were close enough to Mars in this orbit, and what did distance mean to the princes of hell, anyway? But that might be going a bit far for the bishop, who for all his commitment to dogma, was not a very spiritual man.

“If she’s truly repentant,” the bishop said hopefully, “maybe she’ll put in a word for us with her employers.”

Then Jun knew what Bishop Okada was doing here at this hour, why he was acting as if nothing had ever gone wrong between him and the Yonezawas.

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