by C. Gockel
A pinprick of light falling in the sky caught his eye.
“Another meteorite?” Noa whispered, so close he almost started. “That’s strange,” she continued in a hushed voice. “If there was going to be a meteor shower during my visit, Kenji would have told me. He would have wanted to go to the countryside away from all the light pollution to watch.”
James shook his head. He had no idea if a meteor shower was expected. But they’d seen dozens of falling stars over the past few nights when they’d dared to peek out of the freight car, even some during the day.
Noa sighed, and then said, “Ready?” James turned to her. Like him, she was on hands and knees, and like him, she wore a pack on her back with the remains of their scant supplies. The white of her teeth flashed briefly in the gloom, and then the smile was gone. She was less than a meter from him, and that felt far away. He’d become accustomed to physical contact, or the promise of it, at all times. Not that there had been anything untoward … which was strange. His former self, the person he’d been before he woke up in the snow, had been confident. Overly confident, maybe. He had a faded memory of being called “a presumptuous ass.”
“No, I’m not ready,” he said, predicting the straightforward observation would make her laugh. He was rewarded with another grin, but it disappeared too quickly. She took a long breath. Was it his imagination, or did her arms tremble slightly?
“Let’s go,” she said, turning her focus to the back of the train. “Let the revolution begin.”
James sighed; but his sigh did not provoke even a chuckle from Noa. His only hope at this point was that this first part of the mission would fail, that she’d reconsider, and that they could hop off this train while they still had time and head for the Northwest Province.
Traveling on hands and knees, they reached the third to last car. In the caboose, there were four train operators who had fed the cows and occasionally checked the cars for stowaways. The cows were still alive, but they hadn’t done a very good job with the latter, obviously.
Noa and James’s goal was to subdue the operators, steal their uniforms and their identification, and then hop off the moving train and make their way to the city proper by hover—hired or stolen—before the freight cars arrived at their destination. In the city, they’d find a programmer who could hack their retinal scans into the Luddeccean time gate mechanic crew’s database. Noa was sure they could find a retired Fleet officer to do it.
Reaching the end of the car, Noa slipped down. James followed. The animals in the car beyond began to low. Noa went to the door between the cars. It had a simple latch mechanism, a vertical handle that only had to be lifted. Noa gripped it and gritted her teeth, and then gasped and dropped her hand. “What? Today they lock it?” she snapped.
James blinked, remembering how easily they’d slipped into the car of cows, hay bales, and wooden crates a day ago. “Perhaps because we’ve been stopping more frequently?” he suggested, taking the handle and gently lifting. It was definitely locked … maybe she’d back down?
“We’ll have to confront them in the caboose,” Noa said with a frustrated-sounding huff. “Not as ideal as our original plan.”
Much more dangerous than their original plan is what she meant. James jiggled the handle. “I think it has a little give,” he said, not sure if he was lying or hoping.
Noa held up her hands. “Don’t—”
James yanked it up sharply. There was a loud crack, and the whole mechanism disengaged from the door.
“—break it,” Noa finished.
“Maybe it was rusty?” James said, turning it over in his hands. He didn’t see any rust; yet, he had broken it as easily as a toy. He felt a stab of inner panic and tossed the lock aside. It made him think of his tattoos, night vision, and ability to stay underwater without breathing.
“Actually, this might work … ” Noa said, snapping James from his thoughts. She reached into the hole in the door and winked. “Yep.” There was a click. She swung the door open and disappeared within. James looked longingly at the ground rushing past. He could jump and survive with only a few scratches. His skin prickled with annoyance. But he wouldn’t do that, no matter how much he wanted to. He followed Noa into the car.
He immediately hit a wall of the worst smell he’d ever encountered. Putting his arm over his face, he gasped, “Methane.”
“You can’t smell methane, James,” Noa said, her voice barely audible over the sudden lowing of beasts.
James dropped his arm. He was sure he smelled methane, along with animal smells, hay, the faint odor of rot, dampness, and a hint of Root, a popular native stimulant that was very addictive and illegal on both Luddeccea and Earth.
“Although, there’s probably plenty of methane in here,” Noa said, looking around. “What you smell is cow. And what posh cows they are. These bovines are destined for the dinner plates of the high chancellors. Look at them, each with its own stall and feed bin, not packed like—”
James put a finger to his lips. Noa raised an eyebrow in his direction and fell silent. James tilted his head to the far door. Over the lowing of the cows and the rattle of the car on the tracks he heard someone say, “Something is getting them excited.”
Noa loped to the door with surprising stealth. The cows still lowed and stamped their hooves in her wake. They stamped more vigorously when James passed down the center aisle between them. His passage was not as quiet as Noa’s. He took his place beside her at the hinge side of the door.
He heard the click of the lock. The door swung open and two men stepped in, both brandishing stunners.
James shut the door—gently. Outside a remaining agent said, “Hey, Bart—what ‘cha doin’—you know I forgot my keys.” Noa stepped forward, wrapped one arm around the first man’s neck, and in one smooth motion she lifted the man’s own stunner and stunned his companion with it before either could call out. As soon as the stunned man went down, James dragged him into an empty stall. The man Noa was trying to choke struggled, and Noa stunned him as well. Lowering him to the ground, Noa nodded for James to pull him away. As James did so, she went swiftly to the door, opened it, and took shelter behind it.
A man stumbled in. “Oh, thanks, Bart—”
Noa hit him with the stunner an instant later.
“Well done,” James said, stifling a sigh … it looked as though her plan might succeed, and they would not be going to the Northwest Province.
Without acknowledging the compliment, Noa looked at the downed men and exhaled audibly. “Wasn’t hard, they’re just civilians.” She sat down on her heels and felt one man’s pulse. “They’ll all be fine. Nothing worse than a headache.” Noa closed her eyes briefly. “Thank you, random factors of the universe.”
James didn’t comment. That was one of her goals, that civilians not be hurt. They were, in her words, “just caught up in events beyond their control.” Which was their own situation as well. James hadn’t argued with her assessment, even if the logical part of him said they’d be less likely to be identified if the train personnel were dead.
Opening her eyes, she whispered, “There’s one more. I didn’t hear anyone while we were above. Did you?”
James shook his head. Noa went to the door, pushed it barely ajar, and cautiously peered out the crack.
And then James heard a piece of hay break behind him and a soft exhalation, and he knew without turning that there was a man behind him, approximately 1.8542 meters tall. He could smell Root on the man’s breath. He heard the soft brush of skin on hard plastic and knew the man had a stunner. Spinning counterclockwise, James kicked up and out with a leg and hit the man squarely in the chin. There was a sound he didn’t recognize, a sort of snap, as the man flew backward over the hay bales he must have been hiding behind. Spittle flew from the man’s mouth, and James caught a heady whiff of the drug.
Noa gasped, ran over, and dropped beside the man. She was silent for one minute and forty-five seconds.
“What’s w
rong?” James asked.
Noa looked up at him. For thirty-three seconds, she did not respond. And then she said in a hushed voice, “You broke his neck.”
Gazing down at the man, James noticed the impossible angle of his head for the first time. “I acted on instinct.”
“That was a mighty good instinctive roundhouse kick,” Noa said, and James could hear the tension in her jaw.
James didn’t answer. He had a hazy memory from his life on Earth; he’d been behind the controls of a hover, with a woman sitting next to him. She’d been a colleague and a lover, though he couldn’t remember feeling anything for her. She had said to him, “You drive very responsibly.” He had replied, “If I hit someone and they died or were injured, I’d never forgive myself.” He hadn’t been lying; but now, staring down at the man whose life he had ended, he felt nothing.
“James … ” Noa said.
James turned his gaze to her.
“Really good instincts, for a history teacher,” Noa said. “What are you hiding from me?”
James took a step back. For the first time, he felt something … terror, and the potential for failure of something he could not name. “Noa ... I don’t know.”
Noa’s shoulders fell. For another ten seconds, she was silent. And then she shook her head. “Let’s tie these guys up, take their uniforms and identification, and get out of here.”
James took a deep breath. The charge in his body dissipated; but, instead of relief, he felt grief. He stared down at the dead man. He remembered a time on Earth when he’d watched a stranger’s funeral procession from afar, and mourned in a vague existential way. James had that sensation now, but not for the dead man. He mourned for himself, the man he once had been.
From the back of the hover cab, Noa handed the driver the identification she’d stolen from the two train operators who looked the most like James and herself.
In the dim light of the cab, the driver looked down at the identification documents. They were primitive things, little booklets with a picture and relevant bio-data. The most high-tech thing about them was a two-dimensional holographic image of the Luddeccean emblem: a dove with a green branch in its mouth. She supposed that societies became paper bound when they had no ethernet.
The driver rifled through the booklets, taking his time. He glanced up at her and James, and back down again.
Her left thumb went to her rings—and found them gone. Her jaw tightened, and her eyes flitted to James. Like her, he was wearing the train uniform, complete with a brimmed cap pulled low to hide his blue eyes. Like her, his face was caked with dust from the gravel bed along the track. It made his pale skin darker, and her dark skin lighter. She’d added darker dirt to her jaw to give her the appearance of stubble. None of the train operators had been female.
She caught the driver’s eye in the rear view mirror. He looked suspicious—as well he should be. Two train hands would never pay for a cab from the suburbs to the capital proper—they would have taken a hover bus. The man met her gaze in the mirror. “Port of Call?” he said.
Forcing her voice down an octave, hoping it didn’t sound too contrived, Noa said, “Yes.”
He stared at her a moment. Turning his head, he spit out the window. Noa’s heart beat so fast that her ribs hurt. She was dimly aware of James slipping the damn protein bar into his pocket and his hand going to the latch of the door.
The driver grunted. “I want to be paid up front.”
Noa’s body relaxed, and then stiffened again when he said, “Seventy credits, no less.”
It was highway robbery. The driver spat again. Noa ground her teeth, but she slipped out the credits and handed them to the man.
Without a word he set the cab into gear. He didn’t look frightened, as presumably he would be if he recognized Noa or James from the “tee-vee” broadcasts. Her eyes narrowed. Or maybe he just knew the Luddeccean alien-devil spiel was lizzar excrement?
Sitting back in her seat, her gaze met James’s. His hand was still on the handle of the door. He kept it there for the entirety of the trip.
Seventeen minutes later, they stepped out of the hover cab into the hot, humid air of Prime’s Port of Call district. As the hover lifted away, Noa surveyed the surroundings. Port of Call was between the train yards, the Tri-center’s spaceport, and the sea port. It looked almost exactly as she remembered it. Squat pastel-colored stucco buildings lined the narrow two-lane street. None of the buildings were taller than four stories; all had deep-sloped overhangs, to block the tropical sun and prying eyes from windows that were most often open to the breeze. Almost to a one, they had gleaming spiral windmills on the roof that by day drew energy from the wind and sun, and by night still derived power from the ocean breezes. A few had hover parking on their rooftops. Since they’d left the train, cloud cover had moved in. She felt a gentle drop of rain on her cheek and lifted her eyes. From where she stood, she could see the silhouette of the Ark, the vessel the first Luddecceans had arrived in, rising up in the direction of the Tri-Center. Built like the space shuttles of the twentieth century, but far more massive, the Ark looked like a mid-rise apartment building or warehouse, not a spaceship. A planet-wide monument and museum, it was lit from within and appeared reassuringly normal. However, there would usually have been a steady stream of ships leaving the spaceport behind the Ark, tonight the sky was dark. Feeling a rising sense of unease, Noa took a deep breath. Port of Call smelled like salty air and hover exhaust, but the normal smell of sun-baked garbage was absent. Dropping her eyes, Noa exclaimed under her breath, “Where are the rats? There should be rats.”
“No, there shouldn’t be,” James said, sounding professorial. “They’re an invasive species. They’ve destroyed huge swathes of the local ecosystems, spread disease, and … ”
“And they’re disgusting,” Noa said. She blanched and stuck out her tongue. “Creepy, naked tails. I know some people say they make great pets, but get your hand bitten once, or find them gnawing on human corpses … ” She sucked in a breath. Rat bodies writhed like so many snakes in her memories of the abandoned asteroid mines around Six … she shivered. “I convinced the captain of the last ship I was on, to keep a bunch of kittens because of the rat problem.” And because kittens were cute.
“I was going to say—”
Noa waved a hand. “That’s not the point. In this part of town they should be practically coming out here and saying hello.” Cheeky little beasts. Voice hushed James said, “Just about every totalitarian regime gains power by solving some problems.”
Noa shoved her hands into her pockets, although the night was warm. “I never thought not seeing rats would make me uneasy,” she muttered. She looked down the street. She didn’t see the usual prostitutes, and there were fewer land cars than usual. There were plenty of people … yet fewer than normal.
Beside her, James said, “The meteor shower continues.”
Noa raised her face to the cloudy sky and saw pinpricks of light shooting through the clouds, exploding before they collided with the earth—but still, far too low.
Movement not sixty meters away caught her eye. Wiping a few raindrops from her face, she saw men in Local Guard uniform inspecting the papers of some nervous-looking civilians. Ignoring the natural fireworks display, Noa grabbed James’s arm, guided him down a nearby alley, and then down another. She hadn’t let the hover pilot drop them off too close to their destination. In the event he reported them, she didn’t want their path to be too obvious.
She turned left and walked under some clothes clipped to a line being rapidly pulled in by an inhabitant in the flats above. Her head jerked up at the plain white men’s shirts and women’s slips. They looked like things she had sewn at the camp. It was startling to see them out of the context of Taser-wielding guards and the drone of sewing machines. It was also strange to see them line-dried. She shook her head. Even simple devices had become ethernet dependent over the last few hundred years. She shouldn’t be too surprised that newer la
undry machines no longer functioned.
Resuming her path, her eyebrows lifted as James ripped open another protein bar. “You’re unusually quiet,” he said, before practically inhaling the thing.
“I’m focusing,” Noa said, which was the truth … but not the complete truth. They had murdered a train worker. By the smell of the Root on his breath, he’d been in the cow car desperately sneaking a chew. He hadn’t deserved to die. There had been one civilian death in her revolution already. Her eyes slipped to James. She was certain he hadn’t meant to kill the man, but she thought of him ripping the lock from the cattle car’s metal door, and the way he’d peered down his perfect nose at it and suggested he’d been able to do it because it was rusted. He didn’t know his own capabilities … which made him dangerous, like a child with a loaded weapon. She closed her eyes. She’d have to deal with it later. They had perhaps an hour before the team in the train car would be discovered.
At last, she reached the place she had in mind. She guided James down a dark stairwell to a nondescript black door. She knocked a few times, keeping her chin down and her cap pulled low so the security camera didn’t get a clear view of her face.
For a too-long moment, nothing happened. “Does this place have a name?” James whispered.
“Hell’s Crater,” Noa muttered, keeping her chin dipped and her voice gruff.
“And I thought we were just going to hell in the figurative sense,” James muttered. Noa smirked, glanced up at him, and realized all of the dust had washed off his face in the rain—and probably off her face as well. Just as she realized that, the door swung open.