Traitor

by C R MacFarlane

  Copyright © 2018 by C R MacFarlane

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN 978-1-7753564-3-1

  www.blueponypress.com

  For Avery, who always believes.

  GALIANT IDIM BALANCED HIS FEET at the top of a hill made of old, worn space debris on the planet Junk. Behind him by a few hundred metres, five Augments scoured the planet for repair parts. Thousands of kilometres above, his ship, the UECAS Ishash’tor, hovered in a slowly decaying orbit. Not that the old ship could do much more than float helplessly, waiting for gravity to suck it to its inevitable death. It orbited Junk the same way the past orbited Gal.

  Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply. The sweet, fresh air sparked in his lungs, seeming to jolt him back to life at the same time as the nearby solar body warmed his skin and transported him to a different time.

  With his eyes closed, he imagined rolling, green hills, and sustainable communities with children playing under the sun. In the distance, instead of piles of scrap, were piles of food — real food grown and harvested here instead of reproduced in a laboratory. This version of Junk wouldn’t have been so different from Indaer, his home, in ten to fifteen years once trees started to take root. In his mind, modular houses dotted the landscape, and as the trees grew, homes were replaced by hand-made, wooden farmsteads. A father chased his giggling boy down a hill.

  The way Indaer had been.

  A spot of grey caught his eye, ruining the illusion he had created. A figure, half the size of a human, with drooping grey skin and hair rotting from it’s misshapen head, stood on the grassy hilltop. A demon. The settlers in his vision transformed, even the father and boy, until the community was ruined with grey.

  His eyes opened, and he frowned at the rusted metals under his worn grey boots. UEC grey, meant to crush Hope.

  The wasteland planet in front of him once held so much potential. Three years ago, Gal led the Exploration team that charted this entire region of space. Planet A24-alpha — now called Junk — was ideal for habitation: standard gravity, nearby solar source, rich mineral soil, rotation of 22 hours. With accelerated terra-forming techniques, it should have been ripe for human life. Now, it was no more than a dumping ground. That’s what the Speakers designated it, and that’s what it became.

  There had always been good and bad planets, you learned that when they first sent you on Exploration. There were proper parameters that made a lump of rock habitable, and characteristics that made a planet completely unsuitable. But it was never so easy; it was difficult to tell which ones would become a new cradle for humanity, which would become Hap’s private vacation residences, and which would hold the Gods’ most dangerous secrets.

  Secrets like the clandestine research facility that housed three-dozen Augments and the researchers who continued to experiment on them, long after the war was over.

  Gal snorted. The war wasn’t over, it never would be, it had just settled down from a rolling boil to a gentle simmer, enough for the folk to trust in the protection of the Gods again.

  On the far side of the planet, the research facility — or what was left of it — still smoked and burned. Three-dozen Augments — child soldiers who were dangerous enough the Central Army had led everyone, including Gal, to believe that they were dead — took refuge on the Ishash’tor. Thousands of kilometres above, the engineers tried desperately to repair the ship so they could at least leave this Gods-forsaken planet. And countless galaxies away, the UECAS Warship Comrade would be receiving her orders to hunt Gal into a bloody pulp, words that would come from the Speakers of the Gods themselves.

  Protection of the Gods, indeed.

  His mind blurred reality and dreaming — as it so often did now — painting the green hills over the scrap piles as he stared into the dismal horizon. The demons were everywhere, multiplying, filling the hills and obscuring them, a growing, exponential mass.

  A hand fell on his shoulder. His old friend Aaron stood beside him.

  “I thought you’d gone,” Gal said gruffly.

  Aaron smiled. Only it was not Aaron, Aaron had died years ago, probably on a planet not much different from this one. “You must need me.”

  Gal frowned. There was no point in fighting the apparition; it could only make it worse. The doctors thought his addiction-induced hallucinations had dissipated, but Gal had only learned to live with the demons. He shrugged and sat amongst the debris.

  Aaron sat down beside him. “What are you thinking about?”

  Picking up a shard of scrap, Gal scratched absently into a lustreless sheet of metal. “It would have been beautiful.”

  “The planet?”

  “A lot of things.” He drew a low-slung farmhouse, fields of maize in the background. And in front a stick-man and his wife waved happily.

  “Is that what’s-her-name? Your girl?”

  Gal scratched the drawing out quickly. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  Aaron shrugged. “Everything matters.”

  Gal scribbled over and over the place where the picture had been, obscuring it completely.

  “Why didn’t they inhabit this place, keep terraforming until it was ready?” Aaron asked.

  On the hills, the demons shifted, the hoard creeping closer.

  “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago,” said Gal. But there were dozens of such planets that should have been colonized, but for reasons unknown, never were.

  “Maybe it still matters.”

  Gal pressed his lips together. The reasons were becoming far too clear in the last few days. “Hap wanted it for himself.” For his secret Augment research facility.

  It seemed like too much, even for Hap Lansford, the First Speaker and direct descendant of the God Strength. But then, with what his father did, Gal couldn’t pretend to know the limits of the man he once thought about calling friend.

  Aaron shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. They need more space. Etar is too crowded.”

  When the Earth was lost at the end of the Augment War nearly four years ago, humanity moved to its closest habitable base: Indaer. Indaer had absorbed the thousands of refugees, all of its landmass swallowed until the planet Gal had grown up on was covered in slate. Even the name had been changed to Etar. The folk lived over and under each other, in conditions that made a starship look spacious and terribly sanitary.

  There were plenty of other options available, like body A24-alpha before it became Junk, but the Speakers said none of them were the Will of the Gods, and the colonies they did start all failed. “I thought you would have figured it out by now, Aaron. Hap Lansford can do what he likes, no one will stop him.”

  The wave of demons that had slowly been encroaching across the green hills reached them. They weren’t real, of course. They were the demons of lost potential, demons of things that could have been, if only Gal had tried harder, if he had done more. They turned sinister, beady yellow eyes tracing Gal hungrily. Instead of being worried, he felt a placating calm. They should be mad, they should be angry.

  “Why aren’t you stopping him?” said Aaron.

  “It’s impossible. Dangerous. We’re better off here.”

  Demons closed in, teeth gnashing, preparing to rip him limb from limb. He would rather face that than the Central Army’s beloved Speakers. Aaron knew better than most, it wasn’t nice what they did to traitors.

  “Captain,” a solid voice disturbed him and Aaron disappeared. Gal turned, looking into the cold face and vibrant blue eyes of an Augment soldier. “It’s time to go back.”

  Gal sighed, climbing to his feet. He followed the Augment, cl
imbing aboard the shuttle with the others. Demons packed in around them, three-deep, squeezing right up to the ceiling. No one else seemed to mind, but Gal gasped, squished in place. His chest collapsed under the insurmountable, crushing pressure. The demons tittered gleefully as the shuttle lifted off and flew back to the ruined freightship.

  ONE

  KIERAN WOOD BANGED HIS FIST on the engine. The gravity drive housing shuddered, reverberating with the sound of cold steel. There was a clunk, and another clunk, followed by a tinkling-grinding noise, and silence. The worst sound of all.

  He raised only an eyebrow, too tired and frankly not surprised enough to yell. That was the way things had been going: half the ship had been torn apart, a large part of the port-side exposed to space. The shielding array was melted, most of the surge-protectors completely fused. Maneuvering thrusters were operational enough to nudge them around in space, but nothing more. There was only one working airlock on the ship and that was the shuttle hangar. The ship’s hull plating was destroyed too, so there was no chance of landing on a planet with any kind of atmosphere, which was too bad because they’d vented half the ship’s oxygen, and the air constantly felt a bit too thin.

  Out of the frying pan into the fire. Only they were about twelve layers deep right now, the fire a distant ember of hope far above where they were sitting.

  Feet shuffled in the doorway to the long, narrow room that housed the long FTL engine. His rested his head on the engine, not trusting himself to turn around and be able to stay pleasant. “I told you I needed ten minutes to look at this engine.”

  “It’s us.” Hoepe stepped into the room, followed by Grant. They picked their way over torn conduits and open floor panels. Grant craned his neck around, taking in the chaos that was their best chance at leaving Junk before the warship returned. His lips pulled into an O and let out a low whistle.

  “Report?” Hoepe said.

  Kieran turned, wiping his hands on his grey coveralls as he leaned back on the engine. “Well, what you see just about sums it up.”

  Hoepe frowned, his brows hooding over his already hawk-like glare. “It’s been a week.”

  “I know. We’ve stabilized life support, reconstructed the water-sanitizers, run new electrical wires through most of the ship for grav-plating and lighting. We’re still working on restoring the power generators and the ion thrusters. And then this baby” — he smacked the engine casing again — “I’m still trying to figure out what to do with her.”

  “Her?” The corner of Grant’s mouth lifted up.

  “What about the sensors?” asked Hoepe.

  “Workin’ on ‘em. Should be ready later today, if everything goes according to plan. That’s a big if, with the way things have been goin’ lately.”

  “I want those sensors,” said Hoepe. “I want to be able to see what’s coming for us before it gets here.”

  Kieran wiped a heavy hand across his brow, taking a deep breath. “I know. We’re workin’ as fast as we can. But the ship took a lotta damage, and —.”

  A new figure appeared at the door, moving quickly. A blue-eyed Augment strode quickly towards them. He was slighter shorter than Kieran, but twice as thick and ribbed with muscle. Kieran forced a smile across his face. “Hey, Rami.”

  Working with the Augments in engineering had gone surprisingly better than expected. Certainly, there had been tensions, little outbursts. Kieran was, after all, a Lieutenant on a United Earth Central Army ship, and they had been UEC prisoners and testing subjects most of their lives. Grant had been his biggest supporter, and with Hoepe’s help, had convinced most of the other Augments to at least give him a chance.

  Most.

  Cold, angry Augment eyes glared at him before pushing a tablet into his hand. “Conduit repair notes.”

  Kieran took the tablet, not daring to mention that he had asked not to be disturbed while he looked at the FTL, or that he was obviously meeting with Hoepe and Grant. He’d been trained in hundreds of psychological techniques in order to gain trust and earn information from the subjects he studied while he was on his sojourn in Earth-time. He was good at making friends, but Rami had been a tough nut to crack.

  The screen of the handheld device showed a number of careful diagrams, and Kieran obligingly focused his eyes to scan the numbers.

  Beside him, Grant reached for Rami’s shoulder, the two embracing roughly. “Good to see you.”

  “Your wounds appear to be healing well,” Hoepe noted, in his clinical tone.

  Rami grumbled, muttering, “I’m fine.” He turned, angling his face to hide the fading red ion burns he’d suffered when he forgot to open the pressure valve before discharging an ion overload in one of the thruster engines. The result was catastrophic ion burns to his face and chest. Unfortunately, Rami’s ego hadn’t healed as quickly as his skin, the mention of the accident more painful than the injury itself.

  Kieran shoved the tablet back into Rami’s hands, before the Augment could mention how the safety protocols had been deactivated, or how the ion load should never have been allowed to build up to such a level to cause his accident. “Looks alright,” he said. “But I was hoping you could help with the sensor array repairs.”

  Rami scowled. “Sensors? We need the FTL.”

  Kieran tilted his head towards the tall hawkish Augment beside him. “Hoepe’s asked us to make the sensors a priority. And I need some time to come up with a plan here.” He waved his head vaguely at the mess all around them.

  “You need to repair the conduits to repair the FTL,” Rami said sharply, as though he was reading from a textbook.

  Kieran shrugged. “It won’t help to repair the conduits if we end up not needing ‘em.” The Kepheus Drive — which had plagued them since they first left Etar was borderline melted already and had a fifty percent chance of making it through one space-folding gravity jump, let alone two or three. “I have half a mind to bypass the whole thing if I can just figure out where the power’s gonna come from.

  Rami scowled. “You need the engine connect to the grav-drive if you’re going to jump.” The Augment’s anger was thinly veiled, one wrong word away from an all-out explosion.

  Kieran shifted uneasily on his feet.

  Grant reached out, patting Rami on this chest. “Sensors are the thing right now, Rami. Thanks.”

  Rami looked up into Grant’s eyes, but instead of arguing he bent his head and turned from the room.

  “Friend of yours?” Hoepe nodded at Rami’s retreating form. “He doesn’t seem to like Kieran too much.”

  “Yeah,” Grant nodded. “We had cells beside each other in Junk — before they took me up to solitary.”

  Kieran couldn’t help his curiosity, he’d been trying to understand the Augments for weeks. “How’d you become the head honcho?”

  “The what?” Grant stared before sharing a look with Hoepe.

  It caused Kieran to blush, he’d done it again: wrong phrase, wrong time. It had been happening more and more the less sleep he got. Luckily no one seemed to question it that much anymore. “They all listen to you. They won’t do what I ask them to, but if you tell them, they don’t hesitate to follow orders. Even Rami, and I’m pretty sure that guy hates my guts.”

  “He hates all parts of you equally,” muttered Hoepe.

  Before Kieran could explain it was just another stupidly-said turn of phrase, Grant sighed. “It’s because they see me as the strongest. Because the researchers saw me as the strongest.” He gestured vaguely to his back, where Kieran knew a grotesque protective-skin implant lay under the skin, barely hidden by never-ending scars. “And as for Rami, he’ll come around. You have to understand, he’s tough as nails, and he never gave up hope that we would get out of there. He kept trying to fight his way out, even after he made too much noise and they started taking him for experiments.”

  Kieran grimaced. In Evangecore, where the Augments had been held from the time they were children, they had been subjected to dozens of experiments — he
had yet to discover exactly what, but he had seen the forty-three procedural marks running down Sarrin’s back, and the surgical implants in her hands, and the toll it had taken.

  When she returned from Junk, after being hunted and captured, she would tell him only that the experiments had continued, that the entire experience had been part of the experiment, and that the torture was worse than ever. Grant was probably the same.

  “Rami probably kept the rest of us sane, at least focussed,” Grant continued. “He’d rally us up — sending whispers through the cell blocks, or more often shouting loudly — even when the guards took him and they brought him back, and he couldn’t even get off the floor he was in so much pain. I have no idea what possessed him to do that, but he did. He’d remind us to stay strong, that we would escape and find a ship and —.” He stopped short, looking at Kieran.

  “Take your revenge on all the UEC soldiers you can find?” Kieran finished for him. “It’s okay. You can say it. I get it.”

  Grant shoved his hands in the pockets of his coveralls. “We don’t mean you.”

  “I know.” But he couldn’t help but wonder how it felt for Grant to be dressed in UEC coveralls, which had been the only they had. Was it better or worse than the worn, white hospital clothes they’d been wearing when they escaped the research facility?

  He was trying to form the question when Hoepe interrupted his thoughts: “Is anyone giving you a hard time?”

  “Nah, nothing I can’t handle. Mostly, they question the repairs.” Few of his engineering patches were standard UEC issue — they simply didn’t have the resources, so he had to be creative. It bordered on breaking the first rule of being an Observer: don’t interfere.

  Hoepe put a hand on his shoulder. “Whatever you need to do to repair the ship, I want you to do it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Kieran,” Hoepe squeezed. “I mean it. All means necessary.”

  Kieran gulped. “All?” He held millennia of knowledge from the dozens of rises and falls of civilization he had witnessed aboard the Observer ship. Theories like Relativity that allowed him to age far more slowly on the near-light-speed ship than the people in Earth-time, a theory that had been entirely forgotten in this iteration of humanity. But to give even a little information if the folk weren’t ready for it could have dire consequences. Consequences that shaped events even thousands of years later.