The Acolyte Read Online Free Page A

from my glass sharply—too sharply—and saw Hollis considering me over the rim of his own glass.
    He set it down and knitted his fingers on the desktop. His hands were huge, scarred, knuckles grown together like crushed roots. A staunch Irish Catholic before conversion, Hollis had been tabbed as one of the first Acolytes. His reputation rested on a legendary story that took place at the start of his service career.
    He’d been patrolling when dispatch had radioed a 533: Failure to Conform . In the early days, heathens shacked up in their domiciles to practise outlawed faiths or scientific disciplines. In this case, a family of Mormons were bivouacked in a farmhouse off RR #7.
    Hollis’s knock was met with gunfire. He flanked the house and kicked in the back door. Father, mother, eight children: Hollis killed them all. For his actions he received the Star of Gilead, awarded for “Conspicuous Gallantry at the Risk of Life, Above and Beyond the Call of Duty, in Upholding the Ideals of the Republic.”
    There had been some conflict regarding Hollis’s official account. Two of his fellow Acolytes claimed to have found no weapons in the farmhouse save a single-shot rifle and a pitchfork; this conflicted with Hollis’s report of being met with “a fusillade of gunfire.” Friction marks on the victims’ wrists indicated they had been bound, perhaps upon their surrender, before being shot. The youngest heathen, a girl, was found draped over the barbed wire fence at the property’s edge. Her throat had been slit.
    But anyone who disputed Hollis’s account was by now either dead or rendered low on charges of Moral Turpitude—charges levied by Hollis himself. The official incident report had since disappeared: Hollis had burned it, or it had been purged by an emissary of the state.
    All that remained was the Star of Gilead resting in its frame above Hollis’s desk. That medal shaped the collective memory of an event nobody properly remembered anymore. That medal said Hollis was a hero of the Republic.
    “Everything went alright last night?” Hollis watched my face for a betraying tic. “By the book?”
    “You’ve got my incident report.”
    He tapped the carbons I’d left on his desk. “Tight as a vise, as always. But reports don’t tell the whole tale.”
    Reports never did. Fire Teams erased all physical evidence, leaving the reporting Acolyte free to massage facts: no report should admit wrongdoing on the part of the Acolytes and, by inference, the Republic.
    Hollis’s face took on a paternal aspect. “I worry about my unit, you understand. Especially Doe. Call me old fashioned.”
    I tried not to grimace. Hollis worried about us the way a farmer worried about his prize Guernseys—only so much as it affected his own ambitions.
    “They’ll all be rotting in Reconditioning Centres,” he said of the rounded-up criminals. “Except Timothy McSweeney—the leader of the poofter brigade.”
    McSweeney. The name was familiar. “Son of Alex McSween-ey . . . ?”
    “Minister of Cultural Codes McSweeney,” Hollis confirmed. “His son’ll toddle off to bugger again, but at least we’ve got ourselves a favour owed.”
    He smiled. The points on the Star of Gilead above his head twinkled.
    “I need you to cover a spot of off-hours security tonight,” he said. “The Prophet’s eldest daughter, Eve—”
    “Babysitting duty, you mean.”
    Hollis fixed me with a look. “It’s a touch more serious than that, lad. The Prophet has enemies—deluded wrecks whose only worth is sacrificial. If they can’t strike The Prophet directly, they’ll strike at those close to him.”
    “Where at?”
    “One of the downtown establishments. The Manger.”
    “Fun,” I said.
    “The Prophet appreciates your sacrifice,” Hollis said dryly.

The Manger
    Babysitting duty.
    The car: special issue, picked up at Central Dispatch. A stretch Buick: bomb-proof floor plates, reinforced chassis, self-sealing tires, bulletproof