She could not tell how much of his calm manner came from bravado, but her trained eye could see the underlying tension in him. He felt fear, but not as much as he should have.
She took a moment to decide how to deal with him, and chose the direct approach, “All I really want to know is what’s going on here. Why is it that these people are being kept at the brink of starvation, why is it that the grain is being kept from them, why is there a garrison here large enough to keep a population a dozen times this size under martial law, and why are you secretly trying to help the civilians?”
The last question had been added as an afterthought, but it turned out to be an outstanding idea. His face had grown more confused with each question, but that last one had given him a start. The surprise lasted one satisfying moment, with the bonus effect that it wiped the insufferable smugness away. He relaxed, the tension fell off the stark lines of his body and his wings moved to a relaxed droop upon the ground. This response seemed strange enough, but then the man started to chuckle.
The smugness returned. Terrance shook his head, still chuckling, and slowly lowered himself to lie on his side, propped up on one elbow. He smiled when he spoke, sounding relieved rather than smug, “You are Column intelligence, then. No doubt about it. Thank the Captain and The Rescue.”
She clamped down on her emotions, hard, as she received a start of her own. A small flicker came across his eyes, but she could not tell if that came from a reaction of hers or a lack of reaction. He gave her only the briefest moment before he continued, “Don’t be surprised I figured it out, it’s fairly obvious by your line of questioning. At first I thought you were an agent sent from one of the Families plotting a raid on this place, in which case I would have been dead as soon as you got the information you wanted.
“When you started asking for details on the situation here I feared that someone had seen my helping the pleb…er…people here and that you were sent by the Legion to pose as a Column agent as a loyalty test. An agent giving a loyalty test would not have gone after the information the way you did, though, nor made your last question sound almost like an accusation. They would have told me how great it was, helping the down-trodden, how there were others who didn’t like the way the world worked, blah-blah-blah.
“You, though, are simply going after what I know instead of trying to recruit me. You also don’t know the things that one of the Family Corps would know if they were trying to hit this place, so you aren’t one of them. That leaves one question, though. What were you planning on doing with me after I answered your questions? Kill me, or take me captive?”
She held up a small syringe in response, wondering if he would recognize it. Another chuckle indicated that he did. He offered a crooked smile then spoke again, “Ahh, naptillius, I presume? A little sloppy, that. I might have a great trip and be unable to remember anything that happened, but I’d certainly realize that someone else had drugged me. Even if no one else believed me, I’d probably go looking for them.”
She responded with a crooked smile of her own before replying, “Do you think that making that light blink a little is the only modification I made to that flashlight? When we’re done you are going to pick the light up, sit down and have a nice little trip. There are a handful of people down there who use Naptillius, it’s one of the few things your boss allows them; or hasn’t taken from them, at least.
“I don’t think anyone would have a problem believing someone down there did it to strike out. It will bring the wrath of the Garrison down on them, yes, but I really doubt anyone will be killed over it, and that is about the only thing that you bunch of ingrates haven’t done to these people yet.”
Terrance’s smile suddenly became quite genuine, and a strange look –hope?- came into his eyes, “There is no need to make me pick that thing up, drugging me might even be counter-productive for you. I will be happy to answer any and all questions to the best of my ability, and even provide whatever support you need. I only ask one thing in return: take me with you when you leave. I have been trying to figure out a way to get in touch with you people for weeks.
“Don’t look so surprised, little lady. I may be from one of the Families, but that doesn’t mean I agree with the things they’re doing. It didn’t used to bother me, really. Not until I came here. I never felt as comfortable as my peers did with the idea of ‘plebes’ being only a step above cattle, but everything fit together too neatly. The servants bowed and scraped almost as if they liked it, hell even the martyrs being trained at the Academy went forth to their slaughter as if it was their own idea.
“It was all easy enough to go along with, until I got here. Don’t think that I’m some fast conversion because I saw a human face to all the suffering, though. That isn’t it at all. Well, not all of it anyway. Mostly it has been the actions of my so-called peers. These people are behaving like animals.
“No, not like animals. Animals do what they do either out of a need for survival or in order to maintain their social structure. What these men have been doing to these people is being done out of nothing more than pique. I was brought up to believe that there was no such thing as evil, and that right and wrong were outmoded concepts used to keep the huddling masses in line. Family children are taught that the utmost rule is to not get caught, and to protect the interests of yourself and your peers. Outside of that, you can do what you will.
“I did not believe in evil, or at least had convinced myself that I didn’t. Not until I saw a man stare a starving child in the face and laugh –laugh hard and loudly- when the child asked him for food. That started it, watching the rapes and everything else going on here have finished it.
“I don’t know exactly what you people stand for, nor what kind of world you want to build, but I do know it has got to be better than the one we’re in now.
“I want out, I want over, I want to defect. You just tell me what you want you need me to do to get me out of this place.
“Before you do that, though, I suppose I should answer the rest of your questions, at least as best I can. I think I have answered your last one well enough. I can sum up the reason for what is going on here in one word: grain. I don’t know what is so special about that stuff, but I know that every major coalition of families has at least two people in that garrison-each from a different family.
“The purpose of these troops is not to watch over the people, and only secondarily to watch over the grain. The real reason for the garrison is to keep watch on the garrison. There is something very special about that stuff. I don’t know what it is, but I do know that half of the Families would kill to get their hands on it, and the other half would kill to have it destroyed. I don’t know if it is supposed to be some sort of new medicine, a source for a new recreational drug, a new source of fuel, or what.
“All I know is that it has the potential to seriously upset the balance of power out there. Every man in that garrison who is part of a major family has the same instructions: if any family comes to claim that grain, they are to shoot that family’s representatives in the garrison, radio for backup for all they are worth, and fight the best they can.
“So, basically, they are all hostages. I am one of the few who can get away with the sort of night flights I like to take, but that is because my family has fallen on hard times the last generation or so and would never be able to mount a meaningful offense. Still, if I stay out of the air much longer it may get noticed, so, if you don’t mind, let's hurry this up.”
He rose smoothly, but not so quickly as to cause her alarm. She felt a moment of panic as he –cautiously- moved for his gun. Her heart pounded in her chest from the excitement of what she may just have accomplished. To recruit a flyer into The Column, that would be a major feather for her cap. One could hope, at least.
She still had to decide if, though, and stepped forward to prevent her captive from retrieving his weapon. Crash and Mutiny! Damn the lack of intelligence given her about this place! She’d give a month’s pay
to have this man’s dossier. She spoke, buying time to think, “I thank you for the information, and it certainly fits with everything I have seen.
“You tell a rather pretty little story. A little too pretty, truth be told. It is far too easy to believe, almost too good to be true. The innocent little Family man who never liked the way things were, then had his eyes opened by this hellish place. For all I know you are a plant designed to lure someone like me. I think I am going to have to insist that you pick up that flashlight after all, Terrance. I’m sorry.”
She steeled herself, checking every muscle and response in her body. If this man turned out to be the triple agent she feared him to be... She had to sell him on a small lie about her exit strategy, always dicey when dealing with someone brought up in the casual lies of the Families, “I can’t directly take you with me to The Column, anyway. The only way I have off this island is to send a short-coded burst on a narrow frequency that The Column is monitoring. I then have to swim away from here and a very small aircraft will be by to pick me up.
“By small I mean that there is barely enough room for me and the pilot, taking another is out of the question.” Now for the lie, “Before you ask, no, there is no way I can ask them to send something different.” Ok, lie done. “It wouldn’t matter if I could, though. You have requested to defect, and your request will be handled by us.
“You can’t simply be extracted from this island, though. That would raise a lot of suspicion, even if it weren’t for the strange situation this place is in. Don’t worry too much, though, your request will be given careful consideration and you will be extracted as soon as a way can be found to do so.
“Having you grab that flashlight is actually a much better thing for you, in truth. Normally there is this long speech I have to give about how you won’t be contacted, and devising a way for you to contact us if you accidentally give yourself away, and all of that. You won’t remember any of this, though, so that saves us both the trouble and probably makes you safer to boot.”
She had watched his face fall as she spoke. If he was acting a part then this had been the most convincing. He obviously wanted off this place soon. His words were heavy with disappointment, but he made no move toward the flashlight nor the gun, “There has to be something I can do to keep you from tripping me out. I want to remember this, to have some hope for getting away from all the crap that is going on, and being able to fight on the right side of this thing for once.
“Wait a minute; I think I know what that is, too. Your superiors are going to want to know what is so special about that grain, and I know just the way for them to find out. I can get you a sample of it to take back. Not out of the silos, of course. The reason that the guards inside that place are required to move in threes is so that they can watch each other.
“The populace, though. Many of them have a little bit of it stashed away here or there. Getting some of it from one of them should be easy enough for me. Stop looking at me like that, little missy. You are obviously a top rate spy capable of keeping an eye on what’s going on in this town.
“You knew my name, and figured out that I’d be the best person to grill. I don’t know how you are keeping an eye on things down there, but I’m willing to bet that you’d be long gone before anything could be done about it if I betrayed you. The risk to you is fairly small, but what you stand to gain is great.
“Now, I wish you could take all night making the decision, but we have no such luxury. I’ve been on the ground for over half an hour now, and will be overdue to return to the barracks in about ten minutes. If I don’t take off in the next couple of minutes, the interrogation that follows could be enough to trip me up into revealing you.
“So, what’s it going to be? Are you going to take the little bit of risk in order to find out exactly what is going on here, or force me to take that flashlight and never find out.”
Yolanda’s stomach roiled with uncertainty. This guy could get her killed, or put in front of a CentGov interrogator-which would cause her to activate her failsafe and die. Ok, the worst came down the usual risk, then. The potential reward, on the other hand, 'major pay off' barely began to describe it. If this grain had the potential to upset the balance of power it would likely be destroyed. The Column would not spend the resources to hit a garrison like this on an unknown, but the brass would always wonder what sort of an opportunity they would have missed. As would she, for that matter.
In the end, the thought of the starving children which decided her. Without something to go she had no way to convince the Column brass that had to risk doing something about this place. If the grain proved valuable to them, however… She took her pistol off line and motioned for Terrance to retrieve his, then spoke, “Very well, you have a deal.
“The full-moon will be up before your normal sack time for the next five nights. Get a small sack of the grain, about the size of your fist, and drop it on this stretch of rock. Do not land. If you do land, I’ll shoot you dead if I’m here.
“As to your defection, it will probably have to wait until you are transferred off this island. We usually like to make it look like our recruits died in some sort of accident, or a firefight. Makes for a lot less in the way of awkward questions later. Do not make any attempt to contact The Column, and be aware that we will make absolutely no attempt to contact you. If anyone but me shows up claiming to be us, they are lying. Take whatever steps seem appropriate to you at the time.
“One last thing, you are right, I will be watching you. I am also the vindictive sort. If you betray me I’ll be off this island before you can even get in the air. I will then make it my life’s mission to see you dead. I may do it, or someone else may do it, but I don’t take kindly to false defectors.”
He took the information in silently, not batting an eye at her threats. When she finished, he got a grave look on his face and spoke in a hard tone, “I will drop the grain here in the next couple of days. Hopefully you’ll let me know when you are off the island, but I’ll understand if you don’t. Here’s to hope, then.”
With that he nodded, giving her another of those crooked smiles. He scooped up his gun and launched into the air in a single motion, and began to rapidly gain altitude. He flew straight away from her, nothing in his flight indicated that someone watched from the ground.
Part of her wanted to stand and watch the magnificence of human flight, but she could not risk standing in a place this exposed. She-carefully-retrieved the flashlight, and hurried back toward her hideout. An ache of fear held her gut, fear that she’d made the wrong choice and just handed herself over to CentGov interrogation. Only her monitors could tell her if Terrance remained true to his word.
***
Lura Tannin ducked under an arm meant to catch her head, caught the arm in the crook of her elbow, put her leg behind the male cadet’s knee, and levered him into the mat with a tiny bit force than strictly necessary. The cadet grunted as the impact knocked the wind out of him, and he lay there trying to recover his breath. Well, maybe she used a lot more force than necessary, but he deserved it.
It seemed every day her disdain increased for these silver-spoon wing trainees. They walked around looking at anyone who hadn’t been born into wealth as if they knew something she didn’t, and seemed to expect women to simply fall at their feet. She had once rather enjoyed putting them at hers instead, even more so when they grew as insistent as this one had, but even that had gotten old. There had been a certain hope that the freshmen would be smart enough to leave a senior alone, but no such luck.
Leather and sweat odors filled her nose, and the soft slaps of sparing blows, punctuated with the occasional thump of a body hitting the mats, echoed off the unadorned rock. The practice hall took up a fairly large, somewhat kidney-shaped room, with enough floor space to hold over a dozen 4x4 meter sparing mats. Green rubber mats covered most of the floor, leaving a thin white concrete border. From that rose walls of unadorned rock which met a low, slightly arched ceiling le
ss than three meters from the floor. Many among the silver spoons hated this room because of those walls, felt it beneath them to spend time in a room so barbaric as to have exposed rock.
Sometimes it seemed the idiocy of those jerks had no end. The sheer audacity of these silver-spoons, as cadets like herself called them, boggled her mind. This freshman thought she could be won over by him just because she came from one of the lower classes? True, far too many girls joined the Legion with the intent of ‘catching a bird’ during Academy days, but not her. She joined for real, to take the fight to The Column and the Mobs. Her father and brother had fallen in a crossfire between those two groups, and she intended to make them pay.
The point of her boot poked the boy's bruised rib in order to drive the point home, and to see if he had any fight in him. When he groaned slightly and moved weakly away from her prodding she turned away and put him out of her mind. A sweep of the other egg-brains (freshmen wing-candidates) standing around confirmed that he would probably be the last one. Several of them were staring at their downed classmate, a few moving in a fashion suggesting sympathetic pain.
One could always tell the egg-brains from the others, even aside from their smug, slightly vacant stares. They had a particular uniform they wore, which included the slits which would eventually admit their wings. For those who got wings, at least. Despite their bravado and confidence, they still had a lot physical and mental testing between them and the genetic procedures to provide those wings, and between half and a third of them would not make the cut. Hopefully the one on the mat would not. She had no doubt about how much more insufferable he'd become after being selected.
She began to walk away from the mat, putting the egg-heads out of her mind when Ventur, the Academy drill master, locked eyes with her and gave a look stern disapproval. She smiled sweetly at him, and shrugged in apology, gesturing toward the egg-brain with one hand. Ventur scowled and shook his head, his maimed wing swaying slightly with the movement. She gave him a wry grin then went walked to her boots and sat down.
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