Rebel Sword

by Peter Bostrom

  I let out the long breath I’d been holding. Kovac peeked his head out from behind the relay station and gave me a thumbs up. I raised my right hand to return the sign, but I suddenly stopped. My heart dropped as I looked at the comm unit that was still in my hand and I quickly pulled it back.

  Dammit! I’d forgotten to give him my comm to make his call. I needed to get back to the relay station—otherwise, we were screwed. I was about to make a run for it when I heard the loud, steady sound of boots hitting the street in unison. I looked cautiously around the corner of the building and saw a steady stream of soldiers round the corner by the relay station and come marching down the road toward me.

  I slowly drew my head back and then scrambled underneath the empty mining transport. Or, I tried to scramble underneath—my cape caught on the jagged corner of the transport’s wheel well. I fumbled to get my cape loose as the troopers came closer.

  After an agonizing few seconds, I finally freed my cape and slid under the transport. The stories my parents shared with me as a child only ever talked about how great capes were or how cool robes looked. None of the stories I knew ever talked about how capes could also get you killed.

  I stayed as still as I could underneath the transport. My heart was racing, and I would have soaked through my fatigues if it weren’t for the modern miracle of smart fabric. I waited—and waited—and waited. It must have taken five whole minutes for the procession of troopers to pass me by.

  Luckily, boots marched steadily onward, so I was pretty sure that Kovac was still safe. He was just stranded.

  When the last of the troopers finally passed, I slowly dragged myself out from under the transport and peeked around the corner. Kovac was on the ground with his back against the relay tower and was holding a small red stone up to the light. It must have been the stone he’d knocked loose from the guard’s sword at the entrance to the Senate room.

  I tried waving to get his attention, but he was now busy fiddling with the handle of his vibro-hammer. He paused for a moment and tilted his head to the side. Then he turned back to the handle and tinkered with it some more. What the hell was he doing?

  Another four-man patrol crossed the street in front of Kovac, and I pulled almost all the way back so that only one of my eyes was exposed. I didn’t know if another large group of troopers was going to come marching down the street again, but if I didn’t want to stay trapped between a transport and a building for the rest of my life, I was going to have to make a run for it.

  As soon as the last pair of troopers disappeared between the buildings ahead of me, I spun around the corner and sprinted toward Kovac and the relay station. My rod-sword pounded against my back with each stride, but I was too focused on reaching Kovac to care.

  I heard the faint sound of boots approaching, so I took another two strides and then leapt for the relay station. I slammed into Kovac’s exposed legs and knocked him over.

  “What the hell?” Kovac grumbled.

  We both scurried to a sitting position and drew our knees tightly to our chests behind the tower as the next patrol passed by. I breathed a sigh of relief when they had passed and then looked at Kovac, who was back to playing with the handle of his hammer.

  “Really?” I said. “You’re worried about your hammer when we’re about to face hundreds of soldiers?”

  “Careful now, Walker. This is a delicate operation and its incorrect execution could create a rather sizable detonation.”

  It was Rand’s voice. But how?

  Kovac reached to his right and held up a small, circular comm unit. “Our comms work,” Kovac said.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” I half-whispered, half-yelled. “I just risked my life to get over here so you could have a comm unit. And you had one all along?”

  Kovac wrinkled his brow. “You saw it. At Nix Base. Before the invasion.”

  Then I remembered Rand working on the comm units with his funny-looking glasses at the table in the common area. Yes, he had slid one of the comms to Kovac before I’d left.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” I said.

  “You didn’t ask,” Kovac said.

  I shook my head. Rand’s voice came back over the comm. “Have you re-sealed the handle by turning it counter-clockwise?”

  Kovac twisted something on the end of the hammer. “Yes, it’s sealed.”

  “Well, congratulations, soldier,” Rand’s voice said from the comm. “You’re now the proud owner of a stone-powered weapon, just like Walker.”

  Kovac’s ears reddened and he looked away from me for a moment. “I had to,” he said.

  He turned the hammer right-side up, took a deep breath, and clicked the activator switch.

  Nothing happened.

  He shook the hammer, then tried the switch again. Still nothing. He let out a deep growl and then brought the comm unit close to his face.

  “It isn’t working,” Kovac said, through gritted teeth.

  “That was what I was afraid of,” Rand’s voice answered. “It appears as though Walker—and the Dominion troopers, of course—are the only ones who can get those blasted stones to do anything.”

  I raised my eyebrows and shrugged at Kovac. “What can I say? My mother always said I was special.”

  My mother. God, I wished I could talk to her one last time before heading into an impossible fight against an unimaginable enemy.

  I heard the sound of another patrol coming, which pulled me back to the less-than-ideal situation I was in. We immediately froze, and after a few seconds, there was silence again.

  “Well,” I said to Kovac. “At least you still have a plasma rifle.”

  Kovac grumbled. “Not much left. Half a clip.”

  Could things get any worse? At least now we’d gotten back communication with the others. And Lopez was a pro at leading us through trooper-infested buildings, so maybe we did have a shot at taking out Craniax and the Dominion, after all.

  I pulled out my own comm unit and squeezed it. “Okay, Lopez—talk to me. I’m guessing Craniax is near the top of the building. What’s our plan for getting up there?” I thought about saying, “A cave troll?” But for once, I managed to stop myself from sounding like an idiot.

  There was a long pause. Finally, Lopez answered. “So, I was meaning to talk to you about that. Of course I was able to hack into the mining facility’s cams—that was easy.”

  “But . . .” I said, bracing myself.

  “But then there was this really bright flash across all of the cams and they all went offline, like something had broken them all at once.”

  I rubbed my hand across my face and exhaled loudly. “So, what do we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Lopez answered. “I can get you back to the facility’s gate and tell you if anyone’s coming up behind you. But after that, you’re on your own.”

  “That’ll have to do,” I said.

  I looked at Kovac. “You ready?”

  He looked down at his hammer and tried activating it one last time. No good. So he slipped it back into its makeshift holster and picked up his rifle. He nodded.

  I flexed my Power Glove and the stones glowed and twinkled at me cheerily.

  “Then let’s do this,” I said.

  Lopez told us about the trooper’s recent street patrol patterns and how to avoid them. Then she explained the layout of the facility and all the floors we’d need to get through before reaching the building’s top floors. It was a lot to remember, but I was hoping that between Kovac and me, we could put her plan back together once we had somehow gotten through the front doors.

  Rand wished us both luck, and Lopez reminded us she wasn’t going to go crawling through tight spaces or garbage chutes if we didn’t make it back. We signed off, put away our comm units, and made our way back to the gate.

  Soon we were back where we’d started, hiding between an empty transport and a building wall. We waited while another couple of patrols and groups of troopers passed by, darted across the s
treet, and then hid between two closely-parked mining transports. We were now just a sidewalk away from the metal fence that ran all the way to the facility’s gate.

  The concrete base of the fence was about a meter and a half tall, so we could just barely see over that, through the fence’s metal slats, and into the entryway of the mining facility.

  We counted three four-man patrols enter and leave and waited for one more large group of troopers to enter through the gate. According to Lopez, this was our best chance of getting in.

  Kovac and I stood up, nodded at each other, and were about to sprint to the gate, when the wide entryway to the mining facility slid open. We froze and I swallowed hard as out stepped not just one, but three very large, very colorful mechanical cats.

  34

  PART OF ME was honestly scared at seeing three of those robot cats from hell—one had been bad enough at the capitol building, and I’d just barely defeated it. And another part of me was curious about what I could do if I went in by myself and really let loose with the philosopher’s stones. I wanted to run through the gate screaming, toss around Dominion troopers like broken toys, slice through giant mechanical cats with a laser sword, and blow up the entire building. Maybe then I could finally live with myself for getting Colonel Hiller killed.

  But something else was also eating at me—I still wanted the sort of recognition Hiller had when he was alive, and I knew that the easiest way for me to get that recognition would be to go in with stones blazing and absolutely destroy everything. But what had Hiller done at the end of his life, when it really mattered? He didn’t just start opening fire and causing destruction. Just the opposite—he’d only opened fire when it was absolutely necessary. He valued his crew—even if he didn’t really like us all that much—and ultimately sacrificed himself so that we could live and give the solar system a fighting chance against the Dominion.

  I looked next to me and saw Kovac, a half-loaded plasma rifle in one hand and his other hand resting on his broken hammer. He looked more resigned than scared, as if he wasn’t expecting to make it out of this place alive. Unless we were able to do the impossible, he’d never get to write another poem or indulge in his musical guilty pleasures.

  Then I thought of Rand, trapped in a room with his injured hip and only a single duffel bag and a short-range comm unit to show for his entire life’s work. And Lopez, who only had one of her stupid magazines to read and was stuck in the same room with Rand. Okay, so I didn’t get too sentimental about Lopez specifically, but I did tear up a bit when I thought of my crew—the closest thing I had to friends out here—laying dead on the ground.

  Maybe crashing the gates in a blaze of glory and hoping my recklessness could single-handedly defeat the Dominion so my name could be known across the solar system wasn’t the right thing to do.

  I tapped Kovac on the shoulder and whispered, “Hey there, big guy.”

  He looked back at me and squared his shoulders, but without any real force behind them.

  “What if we didn’t storm the gates and try to blast our way up through the facility?”

  He wrinkled his brow. “There’s another way?” Kovac said as he drew a deep breath through his nose.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. Let’s think like maintenance workers for a second instead of warriors. If you were on the maintenance crew for this building and had to bring a replacement part to the top floor, where would you start?”

  More boots sounded on the ground as another group of troopers marched in through the mining facility’s gates. We slouched a little lower, just to be on the safe side. When they passed, Kovac answered.

  “Waste storage entrance,” he said.

  I smiled. “Then let’s go.”

  We headed away from the main entrance, where the majority of the Dominion trooper traffic was. It wasn’t too difficult to move between abandoned transports along the street if we skirted the sidewalk that ran along the facility’s fence—the troopers only seemed to use the main streets for their patrols.

  We followed the fence around to the back side of the building where there were rows of cube-shaped, pale green containers about three meters tall. All of them were filled with waste of different types, some more pleasant-smelling than others. We carefully wove our way between these until we had a clear view of the waste storage entrance.

  Two troopers stood just outside the large waste container-sized door. Both had crossbows, but they held their weapons casually at their sides. They were looking at each other and making wide movements with their hands, not bothering to scan the waste containers for potential enemies.

  Kovac raised his rifle, but I put a hand on top of his forearm and lowered it. I raised a finger to my lips, reached out a gloved hand, and stretched my fingers wide. The amber stone on my Power Glove quickly flared to life, and the moment I made a fist, the two troopers slammed into each other and crumpled to the ground.

  Kovac raised his eyebrows a bit and nodded, clearly impressed. And he should have been—it was a simple but effective move. There was no sound of plasma slugs being fired, no explosions, and no screams of pain. Just two sets of clunking noises, then silence.

  We crept up to the doorway and I placed my gloved hand on the access panel. The door slid up and locked into place with a loud clunk. I snapped my head around to see if reinforcements were on their way, but after looking around frantically for several seconds, nothing happened.

  The doorway opened up into a large area where there were more rows of waste containers. This time, only about half of them were full. Just behind these containers were two steep tracks that disappeared into the darkness above us. On one track, mostly-full waste containers were lowered to the ground, where an automated anti-grav lift moved them into rows. Similar lifts moved the empty containers to the bottom of the second track, which took them to the upper levels to be filled.

  An anti-grav lift zoomed over to an empty container near us and began wheeling it over to the upward-moving track. Kovac and I looked at each other, then ran toward the moving container. There was a rusty drainage door along its bottom, which Kovac was able to slide open just before the container locked into the tracks. I hopped in first and he followed quickly after me.

  The inside of the container wasn’t clean, but at least it wasn’t used for human waste. I kicked aside several pieces of slag and sat down with my back against the container’s metal wall, which was tipped at an angle as we traveled up the track.

  I grabbed a handful of Venetian nuts from my pocket and threw them into my mouth—I needed to store up all the energy I could if I hoped to use my stones against Craniax. I looked over at Kovac, frowning next to me and fidgeting with his vibro-hammer.

  Chewing loudly, I pointed at the hammer. “Are you sure it’s broken?”

  “It won’t activate. Not like before,” Kovac said.

  I shook my head and swallowed. “Power stones don’t work like batteries. You can’t just use them—you have to, I don’t know, cooperate with them.”

  Kovac raised an eyebrow. I tried again.

  “I’m not exactly sure, but I think the stones only respond to imagination. Really, really vivid imagination,” I said.

  Kovac looked confused.

  I couldn’t believe I was about to tell him this.

  “I . . . pretend. A lot,” I said.

  He nodded slowly. “Yes—your parents.”

  I reached for another handful of nuts to buy me some time. After chewing them—longer than I really needed to—I said, “No. My parents didn’t force me to read or watch or imagine fantasy when I was a kid. I loved it back then.”

  I looked down at the bright amber and violet stones attached to the back of my Power Glove. “And I think, deep down, I still do.”

  As the container climbed on its track, the air grew hotter. I reached for more nuts, but stopped myself.

  “Sometimes, when nobody’s watching, I pretend I’m in one of those stories—usually someone with a sword.”
>
  I looked down at the dirty floor of the container. “That’s the real reason why I’ve been able to do all those moves with my testing rod.”

  God, this was embarrassing. Nobody admitted to liking fantasy nowadays. Fantasy was useless and archaic. It was for overweight guys who never got out of the house and still lived with their parents. At least the old genre of “science fiction” was rooted in something sensible—like science—and might have some practical value.

  But there was something about those stories of magic and witches and dragons that made me feel larger on the inside. And it made me see things about how people and the world worked—things that nobody else saw. Was that why the stones had worked for me and not for anyone else out here?

  I had tried killing that part of me so I’d stop getting bullied every single day. But maybe now it was time to raise the dead.

  I looked up at Kovac. “It’s kind of like your poetry,” I said.

  He immediately went back to fidgeting with his hammer.

  “Or . . . like those love ballads you listen to that you don’t want anyone to know about.”

  Kovac looked up at me with squinted eyes. “You know nothing of the muse. And you know even less of music.”

  I put my hands up. “I never said I did. I’m just saying—you have something you really love. Something that gives you a sense of purpose, right? But you keep it to yourself.”

  He didn’t say anything—just kept looking at me. Our container kept rising and the air was now so warm, it was uncomfortable.

  “What I’m trying to say, is—maybe if you can find that feeling . . . and focus on it . . . you might be able to get the stone to work with you.”

  Kovac turned his vibro-hammer over a few times and started moving his mouth as if he was debating something with himself. Then he closed his eyes.

  In my mind, I thought I could hear a faint tune. It wasn’t like any of the music I was used to when I used my stones. The melody was stronger. And . . . was that a saxophone I was hearing?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the vibro-hammer begin to spark, then it glowed a deep blue. Kovac still had his eyes closed, but now he was smiling. I don’t know if I’d ever seen him smile like that before.