A Dark And Hungry God Arises 3 - Milos [1]

[Cord Hurn]

Milos Taverner is feeling resentful about being forced by the United Mining Companies Police to take part with Angus Thermopyle in the destruction of Billingate. Milos feels he doesn't deserve to be put into this position, because unlike his dealings with Com-Mine Security, Milos played it straight with the UMCP. But Warden Dios and Hashi Lebwohl have forced Milos' neck into the noose, as Milos sees it. Milos feels that he's faithfully kept Angus silent for the UMCP while pretending to try to break Angus for Com-Mine Security, so he shouldn't have to be humiliated by being forced to accompany Angus to Thanatos Minor. Humiliation and control are things Milos has a lifetime of experience understanding.

Ever since his childhood in one of Earth's more degraded and pestilential cities, he'd been aware that the only effective way to evade the harm a guttergang might do to him was to make himself valuable by passing along information about the plans and doings of some other bunch of thugs; purchase safety with other people's secrets. Then he was thought of as an important resource by the first guttergang: he was protected.

But of course that couldn't last. Eventually the second guttergang would guess what he was doing and come after him. Then the situation would be too dangerous to survive. So the only effective way to keep his skin whole was to pass information both ways: to make himself essential to both guttergangs--or to three or four, or however many there were--and to control as much as possible what the gangs knew, in order to mask his own intricate loyalties.

Yet even that wasn't enough. Guttergangs protected their sources of information--in those days, kids like Milos were called "buggers"--but didn't respect them. Whenever the thugs felt like it, they brutalized and tormented their buggers. Like the UMCP, they forced their buggers into dangerous and shaming tests of loyalty.

Humiliation and control.

By the time he was ten, Milos Taverner had learned how to deal with those as well.

It was amazingly easy. A word or two in the right places--not too often, not too obviously--and individual pieces of slime who degraded or scared him were destructed. Guttergangs may not have respected their buggers, but they had too much to lose by letting some one else damage their sources of information.

All Milos needed, the one absolute requirement for keeping his neck out of the noose, was to make sure that no one knew that he was buggering for both sides.

Milos sees "the noose" that the UMCP has around his head as the danger he'll be left on Thanatos Minor when it blows up. Milos wants revenge on Warden, Hashi, and Min for putting him into this noose, and believes his control over Angus' command codes will allow him that revenge. He also believes he can use Angus' command codes to humiliate Angus, and he's eager to try--but not so close in space to UMCPHQ, where Trumpet can be so easily monitored by the police.

[Cord Hurn]

So, Milos tries to calmly ignore the taunts Angus sends at him, knowing patience is required, and also knowing Angus is distracted by learning to control Trumpet. Milos knows Angus has a lot of hate inside, but he finds it unsettling seeing that hate mixed with an intense joy at learning to master the gap scout ship. Milos wants to make that joy crumble within Angus, but settles for studying his control boards for scan, data, communications, and damage control.

Milos understands data and damage control, and communications as well, but scan functions are mainly a mystery to him. And Milos is dependent upon Angus to run all other ship functions. Angus asks Milos if he's ready to go into tach, and adds he doesn't want Milos to foul his suit. Milos sees from the helm screen that the ship will be in range to go at gap-entering speed in in ninety seconds, and then human space will be out of their reach for at least a while, possibly permanently. Then Milos feels that he will be free to give some command that humiliates Angus.

Eighty seconds later, Angus said, almost crowed, "Hang onto your balls. As soon as we cross, everything changes. You bastards have just corn-holed me for the last time."

Milos knew that wasn't true. In an apparent effort to reassure him, Hashi Lebwohl had allowed him to watch a number of Angus' tests on UMCPDA's monitors. And he'd been given many of the test results to read. They all demonstrated incontrovertibly that Angus had been well and thoroughly welded; that he would never be able to violate his programming. For all his enhanced capabilities, he was the most helpless human being in human space.

Nevertheless, without thinking about it, without even realizing he did it, Milos cupped his hand over his crotch as Trumpet disappeared into the gap.

Milos has been pretty good at covering himself, so far, and at this point in the story I have mixed feelings about him. He did what he had to do to survive among guttergangs by being a double-crosser who betrayed many. He eventually worked diligently to find a way to make a living that didn't involve serving any guttergangs. Yet Com-Mine Security trusted Milos, and he screwed them over, forcing them to lose their autonomy to the UMCP by creating circumstances that helped pass the Preempt Act. Milos doesn't seem nearly as vile as Angus, however, so I still feel some empathy for him at this moment, though I feel uneasy that my empathy might be misplaced.