by Nick Cole
The girl in the side mirror was maybe twenty-eight. But she’d seen the whole history of humanity in space. Commanded a division in the Sindo.
“In that time there were no Monarchs,” she continued over our private comm. “We were all human then at the beginning. But just like now, some of us considered ourselves better qualified to direct the course of humanity on behalf of everyone else. To lead toward a brighter future for us all after a series of pandemics, wars, and disasters we’d secretly orchestrated to show the need for what we were proposing. A better society, built from the ground up. More government to fix the mistakes of government. Whether they liked it or not, we’d decided there could only be two groups within humanity. Us, the transhumanists, and ancestors… humanity. Humanity one point oh, as we used to say, would be the backup copy in case we got anything wrong as we began to extend our grasp across several local star systems in the surrounding neighborhood of Earth. The homeworld. And in the meantime, our exploration guinea pigs would be the cheap and expendable breeders, humanity one point oh. We’d send them out into the dangerous parts of the universe by convincing them they could be free and outside our grasp. We conned them into doing the dirty work by thinking they were actually resisting us.
“But before that. Back on Earth as it all began, long story short, they didn’t want to be led. They had a disease that made them near unmanageable. Yes, they, basic one point oh humanity, talked a great game about wanting human stellar expansion, tech dev, utopia now, but our society in those days was so diverse, and so at odds with each other, and there was that one particular disease a lot of them had, we called it a disease then in our secret planning committees, that prevented us, all of us, transhumanity and humanity, from reaching our goals. Per aspera et astra. Through hardships to the stars. That’s what it means in a dead language called Latin. The goal of reaching the stars and getting off-world.”
I flicked a cigarette I’d lit off against a narrow canyon wall of red and yellow rock we were cutting down through slowly. This was a bad ambush spot. Hauser was watching everything from the fifty. If it went down here, I’d just tell the Kid to hit it and we’d try to boost through. But I didn’t rate our chances of survivability too high. Some of us were gonna die.
Which is to say I had no time for dead languages I didn’t understand. I was too busy imagining all the ways we were gonna die right here and right now.
“This disease,” she said later, once we were out of the red rocks of sudden death and following sand dunes down slopes so steep the Mule began to slip and skid. Ahead of us was nothing but a dense chalky layer of dust like some storm obscuring our vision. We’d lost the old smugglers’ trail and were dead reckoning now. We sank deeper and deeper into the lowest points of this mad wasteland.
Later we stopped near the bony remains of some prehistoric monster that looked like a sea serpent, its ridges and vertebrae half-buried in the sand and tailing off into the chalky miasma. Its hollow eyes huge blank spaces of darkness judging us as we stopped to stretch, piss, and gape in wonder at what it had once been.
And what it was now. A bleaching skeleton on a dying world.
“The disease was called Freedom,” she began again in the desert silence as we stared at the prehistoric monster in wonder. “It had a different meaning than the one you understand it to be now, Orion. As in, you are free because the Monarchs have guaranteed your freedom. That’s the exact phrasing you’ll find in every law; in fact it is the basis of all law. Interstellar and local. These Rights come from the Monarchs. It’s always there. And it’s pretty good. Very benevolent of us when you don’t think about it too hard. Most people don’t question what it really means. They just think, neat, I’m free. The Monarchs are quite benevolent. The part people don’t think about too hard is that it really means they are free to explore for us, consume for us, produce for us, create for us… free to submit to us. Everything… is for us. You know that, Orion. Everyone knows it at some point whether they want to admit it or not. You just don’t think too hard about it. If I’m wrong, let me know.”
I didn’t because she wasn’t. I knew it. There had been times, years even, when I’d thought about it too much. So much that it hurt and made you feel a kind of hopeless helplessness that told you it was better not to think about it at all and just be happy accepting it the way it is.
“We changed the meaning a long time ago,” she continued in the humming silence of our comm. “After a pandemic we engineered. We changed it when all of swollen, dirty, warlike, addicted, lazy humanity begged us for a cure and traded their souls for chains just so we’d give it to them and save them from what we’d wrought. A few yards at a time during each crisis until one day we reached the goalposts. A pandemic we’d created. A virus we’d engineered. We were good with word games back then. Good with bioweapons then. Armed conflict is for amateurs. Why do that when you can just wipe out a population with an invisible case of the sniffles that gets worse and worse? Or a cough that makes your eyeballs bleed? We blamed them on bats, mice, monkeys, and of course the Third World. You don’t understand that term. The Third World. But to put it in modern galactic perspective… the Third World is the entire galaxy, every world, every starship, every ring, not Monarch. Monarch worlds are the top. Everything else is the Third World. We changed the meanings of words to make people afraid of using them. And in doing so we taught them how to think without them ever realizing we had been reeducating them for a very long time.
“But back then, back on old Earth, the disease that stopped us from reaching our potential… was Freedom. Too many other ideas that weren’t our own made things messy. Hard to get organized and off a world with limited resources. And we were the best and the brightest. In those days, Orion, space travel was very hard. It took a huge amount of effort just to get upwell. Into orbit. Another planet? Near impossible. Meaningfully speaking. Star travel was for gibbering idiots. So the Monarchs decided—”
“You,” I interrupted her as I stood there staring at the bones of the huge dead sea serpent vanishing off into the nether of dust. We couldn’t see much here. We were relying on old data and a compass to get where we needed to be. Hopefully the air would clear lower and deeper in, once we got through this inversion layer. And what she was saying made me mad for no reason I could articulate. So I just lashed out at her like an angry child that didn’t like the rules of the game. And even as I did I wondered how much of that was programming. Reeducation. How much software had been overwritten to make me accept what my hardwiring was angry about. Somewhere in there lay the reason for my sudden temper tantrum. I was shaking. I needed a smoke.
“What?” asked the Monarch, stopping at my sudden burst of hostility. I didn’t know what I was angry at. Her. Or the drive. Or the truth.
Probably everything.
I was probably mad at everything.
“You. You’re a Monarch, lady, or Seeker or whatever the hell we’re supposed to play the game of. Don’t forget that. Don’t forget you’re part of them. Because I won’t. The captain may say you’re one of us for now. Cool. I can play that game on paper, lady. I’ll even lie to myself to get it done. But that doesn’t mean I have to actually believe it. You’re a Monarch. So… you decided. You decided the rest of humanity was gonna give up freedom so we could all get out here and kill each other right and left on behalf of you to get the worlds good and settled. Organized and developed. Producing for the bank ship to show up and suck everything dry. For you. You and your friends, the other Monarchs. This is your game.”
She took a deep breath and sighed. Then lowered her head. It was just the two of us out near the dead sea snake. A game of cards had started back at the Mule with Stinkeye losing, already promising murder against pretty much everyone in on the hand. Croaking they were all against him.
“C’mon, we gotta mount up…” I said, suddenly switching gears back to NCO. I’d had my emotional outburst. Now there was work to be do
ne. Time to get back on mission. “Not much light left.”
Not that I could tell from the sun. But the quality of light had turned from milky yellow to deep creamsicle orange down here in the depths of the desert wasteland. And in this light the ancient sea serpent that had once swam the lost seas of this world seemed to smile. Like it was promising us that someday we’d be just like it. Bones in the sands of the universe. And that others would come to stare and wonder at what was left of us, on their way to die somewhere else thinking they would live forever, so that the cycle might just repeat. Again and again. So may it ever be.
But she wouldn’t let me go that easy.
She put a hand on my shoulder as I made to turn away and back to the Mule. Get everyone on their feet. Corral Stinkeye and get us pointed toward the rally. Hoping we got lucky and didn’t have to do killing work along the way. No time for that. Too little ammo for what was probably gonna be needed for an actual dropship hijack on a hot LZ to get back to the ship and out of this system. Off this dog of a world.
Why did I think that was overly optimistic?
Because I didn’t think we had much fight left in us. I was worried about that. Real worried. Once a unit starts running, after being handed a bad defeat like the one we got back at the capital and the starport, it was hard to stop. Hard to stop the running once it got started.
“Yes, Orion. It was me. I was there. Not one of the architects, but definitely one of the true believers. Then. One of the implementers. If only for what I thought were all the right reasons at the time. Maybe they were. But they aren’t anymore. Here’s the thing, Sergeant. The thing I need you to believe in. I had no right, Orion. None of us did. We had no right to decide. I was wrong. We were wrong.”
I stepped close. Fast. She flinched at my sudden move.
“And now?” I snapped at her. Low and like I would do the murder she was hearing in my tone. “You think you got the right now? Now that there’s nothing left and you’re all on the same team, as you say? We’re all on the same team. The Monarch team. You think you got the right, whether you like it or not, to flip the gaming table? Tell us we’re not playing what we’ve been playing all along. It’s what you said, everyone’s on the same side, right? Everyone that matters, that is. Monarchs. Everyone else just acts their part, do I have that right? Well maybe this is just another game I’m getting tired of playing. Freedom. I know it. If you asked me why I became a mercenary it was because of freedom. Freedom to go wherever you want and not join, or believe, in anything. The freedom to sell yourself for money to the highest bidder. Yeah, just so you know, we all figured that out a long time ago. I don’t know how many of us regulars, norms, I don’t know what slang term you have for those who aren’t Monarchs but I’m sure there’s one, but we figured that out a long, long time ago. Hell, I remember when my dad first explained it to me. You know what he said to ten-year-old me, lady? He said freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, kid. He probably had no idea how he was coding me, but that’s, when I really think about it, probably why I became a hired soldier. I’m down to losing the last thing I value. My life. No home. No ship. No wife. No kids I know of. No job on a world where I gotta make sure I’m doing everything everyone else says I gotta do. You make people think those things are important and then you got ’em right where you want ’em. Convince them those are the things to want and then you can play games like letting them imagine they have freedom when they really don’t. You know what they got. The freedom not to lose those things. The freedom to obey. Me, us, Strange Company—we just got our lives. That’s what I’m down to. Those idiots up there cheating each other at cards on a world being annihilated by the galaxy’s apex predators. Your dogs the Ultras. We’re practically dead. We can’t play anymore, and I bet on some level, even if doesn’t bother you, it bothers some of the other Monarchs. I bet they hate when you figure that out. I’ve seen enough worlds get ruined over that when the locals choose to trade their lives for a chance at fending you guys off. Thinking the corporations are allies when really… if I’m following everything you’re saying, even them, the counteroffer they say corporations are, they’re really just you too. Even if they don’t know it. That’s right, isn’t it?”
I must’ve started shouting because they were all already staring at me raving like a lunatic out near the giant sea snake in the desert. Surrounded by late afternoon orange creamsicle air. Shouting at a stunner. An uber model not meant to hunt with dogs like us. The wind came up and caught her hair and I wanted her, and hated myself for it.
I’d charged her. Not like I was gonna attack her. But walking fast like when an NCO spots a soldier that needs immediate correction, and you need to jump all over them to straighten out their major malfunctions. I was in her face and barking now. Barking like a mad dog.
“I don’t know what game you’re out here selling, but if you’re all on the same side, then that’s all it is, a game. Go sell freedom for something else to the rubes. I’m down to Strange Company. The only thing I believe in is getting them off-world with a chance to run the blockade and get to deep space for another twenty-five-year haul. I die getting that done… I’m cool with that, Your Highness.”
I threw my arms wide. I had my chest rig unbuckled, and it flapped in the wind. I must’ve looked like a desert madman out there. Ragged and insane. Preaching nonsense.
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
We made the rally twenty-four hours later as one of the big desert storms came up and swamped this portion of the Wastes. Howling winds, scouring sand, eerie moaning that seemed choral as it raced and swirled all around. If you’d been stuck out in it, like some desert shadar nomad, it would have driven you mad.
We pulled the vehicles in close to the crawler once we arrived at the rally and covered everything in tarps that could be trusted to hold against the hot dry thunder winds. The other platoons and elements had made it there before us. Ten minutes later I was at the briefing with the rest of the command staff as the wind rocked and beat at the multi-ton supply crawler we met inside. Which was something when you really thought about it. But I was tired and there was hot coffee. And I was grateful for most of the faces I saw. Some I thought dead were alive. One I wanted dead, was still alive. And of course, we exchanged the grim totals of who had fallen. Their stories blossoming inside my skull as I kept their secrets.
Sergeant Biggs laughed grimly from a corner of the briefing center inside the big multi-sectioned tracked crawler. He cut salami with a combat knife as the huge vehicle shook at a sudden tempest that had come from out of the deepest parts of the desert to buffet the thick outer armor.
“Ain’t like no desert I ever been in afore,” he muttered like some great sabertoothed bear in the deeps of winter.
The First Sergeant strode in and got the meeting started once he’d made his presence generally known. The Old Man and the Ghost platoon sergeant were missing. As was the Monarch.
So that was curious to me.
“Here’s the situation, men,” began the First Sergeant. “Captain and Sergeant Slick are out with Ghost picking up some supplies our employer saw fit to stash out here before all this got started. I have a frago from the captain that will get us started on what we gotta do for the next phase of the op to get off-planet. No gripin’. No changin’. Everyone’s got assignments. So to break it down, here’s how it’s gonna go, boys.”
He flicked on the projector and showed us a map of the area surrounding the Crash. A lot of details were curiously absent. But of course, I’d seen redacted maps before. This was the best you were gonna get with a site this sensitive.
“We have two objectives we have to hit in the next twelve hours to make the LZ. Which, I might add, is gonna be a hostile takeover no matter what drone recon is saying right now about the situation on the ground. I expect things to get out of hand, but that ain’
t no problem for Strange Company.”
I checked the drone recon update of the airfield we needed to take. So far… no enemy units. No Ultras. Light to almost no drop traffic coming in or out. That was unusual for a world everyone was trying to get off of now that a full-scale invasion was underway.
“Smells like an ambush,” remarked my personal devil, Sergeant Hannibal, from nearby. His voice that of a bitter farmhand hoss who wasn’t gonna buy the latest snake oil to make town. He was studying the drone recon data too. And he was right. I was thinking the same thing. That site had ambush written all over it. Except this time, we couldn’t just vaporize it with one of the Monarch’s trick grenades. We needed a ship on that field for our ticket outta this mess. We had to take that LZ with gunfire and bad intentions. Fast, quick, and brutal.
I was already looking at places to set up kill zones with the two Pigs I had left in Reaper. Traversing gunfire in a wide space like that was going to be our best friend.
We did need more ammo though. We weren’t critical, but we’d get there fast in that kind of situation.
“Yeah, Amarcus,” said the First Sergeant a bit testily, “I bet it is. But that’s the way out. Monarch says she’s got a flight coming in that thinks it’s picking up hard mem from the local depository. Armored transport. Hard part is they don’t know they’re about to act as a taxi service to get us all upwell to the Spider. To make that happen we need to hit this site back here away from the airfield…”
He brought up a new saved feed from the drone footage.
“That’s where you and your boys are gonna do what needs to get done, Sergeant Hannibal. Dog will hit the bank one hour prior to the arrival of our taxi. I ain’t gonna lie to you. This ain’t a surprise hit. You’re gonna have to fight your way through several streets to reach the bank. Now, obviously local forces’ll be thinking you’re going for the airfield to hijack a ship and get off-world. Which you and your Dog boys won’t be doin’. You’ll hit this bank, breach, and clear. We’re looking at a small defending force on that location, highly motivated, we suspect high-paid mercs. But that’s your specialty, ain’t it, Amarcus. So do the guards and blow the vault. Take as much hard mem as you can get your hands on once you’re inside. That’s company money to pay out our contract whether the generals like it or not. We’re gettin’ paid on this one. One way or another. But you also have to go to Box 88 inside the prime security vault two floors below the sub-basement, blow that, and retrieve a mem drive. Expect auto-gun sentries to that approach, Amarcus. What’s inside the box is the Monarch’s. She gets that, we get off-world.