by Tom Kratman
“What are we going to do, man? Where the hell do we go after all this, supposing Carlos lets us live? The American sector, maybe? That’s what I’m thinking.” Tom wondered aloud.
David met his gaze, and pondered that for a moment, his face torn in indecision. “Go? If we can’t get back to Earth, this place is as good as any. Better than most, I think. I’m staying.”
“You crazy? Is it the woman? You always were stupid around them,” Tom replied, acid in his voice. The jealousy came and went, and he felt bad almost immediately. “I’m sorry, that was wrong.”
David nodded his agreement. “Yeah, it was. But look, Tom . . . when have we ever meant anything to anybody? Here I’m somebody, you know? An engineer. A hacker. Somebody’s trusted minion. I don’t know. But somebody. It’s different. I’m done being some shy geek.”
Tom smiled. It was true, David had changed. Where once there was only pudge, now there was wiry muscle. His fair constitution had darkened with the relentless alien sunlight. There was an edge to him now. David of old wouldn’t have hurt a fly. David of Terra Nova had a predatory expression not unlike one of Carlos’s goons. This David could kill, would kill, Tom knew, if the situation called for it. Or to get revenge for his girl’s young sister. Or to make the dead girl’s older sister his own.
“It’s not only Elena,” David said. “To be honest, man, I don’t know if she likes me at all, or if I’m just the amusing gringo from the skies, a fad to be forgotten in a week. But since when have I ever really interested anybody?” He finished the last of his chicken and stood up. Enrique had been training both of them in basic martial arts. Nothing fancy, but enough to get them by if the circumstances called for it. Tom wondered if he looked as different now as David did.
Tom finished his own plate of food and washed it down with some of the local rotgut, this time without even so much as a grimace. He smiled in anticipation.
“Time to shitpost the world, dude. Then build a flying bomb.”
Sweat dripped from Tom’s brow. It wasn’t like he had ever done anything quite like this before. David’s computer was connected to the drone’s receiving unit as he reprogrammed the access tokens, leaving Tom with the duty of attempting to jury rig the detonator. He’d built many homebrew drones before, but this was different, and he didn’t even have most of the tools he needed, only what scraps Carlos and his contacts had managed to scrounge up.
He didn’t even have a soldering iron or even any way to power one, but at least there was a generous supply of electrical tape and wire nuts, and a Pringles can one of Carlos’s goons had pilfered from a UN commissary to beef up the antenna on the stolen controller rig. Pringles canning was an ancient range-extension trick that dated back to the earliest days of wireless networking, and the stale-tasting chips were a staple of UN commissaries around the planet due to ease of transport. Carlos had been oddly confused when they requested one, but had obtained one anyway.
It would be the sorriest drone build he’d ever done, but it would work.
Probably work, anyway.
A mid-size, four-rotor drone with a heavy-duty rechargeable battery sat on his makeshift workbench. It would take weeks with their tiny solar chargers to fully trickle-charge the thing. Nobody had a real generator around here except the smurfs. The rotors had been badly bent, but Tom had hammered them straight, hopefully straight enough to fly. The balance was tricky. He thumbed the controller and the drone powered up, beginning to hover. It wobbled but didn’t lose stability entirely.
“How did you guys manage to get an intact drone from the smurfs?” Tom faced Enrique as the drone settled back on the table and shut down.
“Birds. The weird ones,” he said.
“Ah, Archaeopteryx?” Tom replied.
“Si. Those. We trained some to attack the drones that were always spying on us. This drone got caught in the trees and wasn’t badly broken.” Enrique answered. “I was there. It was funny.”
“Funny? Why?” David looked up from his work.
“We didn’t know this drone had metal . . . what is the word . . .” He twirled his index finger around in a circle, emulating a helicopter.
“Rotors?” Tom supplied helpfully.
“Si. Metal rotors. The bird died. It was funny.” Enrique grinned, showing a row of fearsome looking teeth. “It attacked the drone as we trained it to do, then squawked, and blood flew all over the place. We ate well that night.” He shrugged.
“That’s gotta be weird,” Tom began. “I mean, eating a dinosaur bird that was supposed to be extinct millions of years ago. What did it taste like?”
Enrique rubbed his chin, thinking back on it. “Pollo,” he decided.
“Speaking of which,” David smiled as Elena entered into the room with their lunch. There was some breaded chicken, positively luxurious, and a bottle of the ubiquitous and atrocious local rum. She returned the smile, setting the bottle down on David’s makeshift work bench. David had been spending a little off time with her, and Carlos had so far said nothing untoward to either of them.
“My father says this batch of rum tastes much better than the others. I don’t know. It is still bad.” She said in fluent, if accented, English.
She continued, her voice soft and sweet but her expression terrible and full of simmering hatred. It was a curious contrast. “You are helping us fight the pitufos?”
Tom nodded. She burned hot with righteous Latin fury. She was more disconcerting, in her own way, than even Carlos. Her almost demure demeanor changed to one nearly as murderous as one of guerrillas frequently seen around the plantation. Tom found himself wondering again just what had happened.
“Good. They will pay for my sister.”
Tom dropped the screwdriver he’d been holding in his other hand, his task forgotten for the moment.
“What happened?” David asked cautiously. “I mean, your father said as much, sort of, but . . . ”
“The captain came for tribute from my father,” she began. “She wanted him to grow the huánuco for them. He told them he didn’t do that anymore.”
“Wait, they forced him to make it?” David asked stupidly.
Elena hesitated for a moment and looked at Enrique. But he didn’t seem to care. The cat probably had to come out of the bag sooner or later. An unwilling drug lord, Tom thought wryly, now I really have heard it all.
“He was. Drugs were the family business on Earth, and it went badly for us. My father tried to get us out of the business. We could either flee here or die. He vowed he was done with it all, after that. He would grow tobacco. Make rum too, maybe. We would start over as a family. But the pitufo captain, she knew who he was, and wanted him to grow huánuco. It is kind of like your cocaine, and rich Earthers pay well to have it. When my father refused, Cranston took my sister hostage, to make him do it.”
“Why did she want your father do it? Why didn’t she just pay someone else to grow it?” Tom asked, intensely curious despite the risk involved in knowing too much.
“She couldn’t manage it herself. Nobody else had the respect of the village. Her sailors only come down for a short time. Enough to pick up the huánuco, but not to run the whole operation. Only her man Cranston stays for very long. I don’t think it is legal for them, even if many of them do smuggle things.”
“When my father refused, and the captain put pressure on her men to get it done, Cranston took my sister at gunpoint to make us do it. He used her, did things to her. When we could see her, she showed us the bruises. But there was nothing we could do. We didn’t have the guns back then, or enough men. So we made the huánuco for them. And when our first crop was not enough to satisfy Cranston, he killed my sister. Said she tried to escape, but we know he lied. He enjoys killing, especially when he takes the huánuco. He told us the same might happen to me if he didn’t get enough next time. And the captain lets him do it, so long as she gets her money. When we made enough money selling some extra crops on the side, we bought guns from other pitufo smugglers.
”
Elena’s eyes were red, but it was hard to tell if it was from sadness or hatred, or more likely, some undefined mixture of both.
David was slow to register; “They raped her and killed her?” Shock crossed his features, followed by that look Tom knew all too well. David wanted to do something heroic and stupid for no good reason whatsoever, except that a beautiful woman had told him she’d been horribly wronged. He’d have to deal with that impetuous naivety soon enough, Tom knew.
No choice at all, he thought.
Elena nodded, her gaze lingering on David for a moment, a quizzical, almost judgmental look crossing her features. Apparently, she decided she was satisfied, and so she smiled sweetly at him again. She was quite expressive, and her mood, though hot-tempered, had faded quickly into something else. Tom got the distinct sense that she was fully aware of David’s interest, and intended to use it for her own purposes. Not that David would’ve been put off by that anyway.
“How long ago?” David wondered.
“A few years ago.”
“How did you avoid them?”
“Some of the pitufos like the younger girls better.” Elena said disgustedly. “That doesn’t matter though. It could have been me, instead. It should have been me. I was older. I was stronger.”
“Older?” David echoed. “How old was your sister?”
“Twelve.” At the memory, Elena shuddered and poured herself a small cup of the local rum and took a sip. She gulped the rest, then smiled at David and looked at the drone. “I hope whatever you are building, it kills many pitufos.”
David grinned wickedly. “It will, miss. It sure will.”
Tom felt a small pang of jealousy as Elena, hips swaying, walked out, for she looked very pleased with David’s reply. And as Tom noted, the last of David’s beer gut had vanished utterly. Tom could see the change in him. Even the shyness was fading away. Elena saw a very different man than he did. She saw an engineer building weapons for her father, a man who was honored with a high place in his councils, not some geek gringo slumming it in Tijuana for cheap beer, who couldn’t even find the courage to talk to a woman when he was stone drunk.
Then again, Tom noted as his attention shifted back to the makeshift detonator, he’d changed too. He had a certain detached coldness and sense of purpose that hadn’t been there before. The purpose was satisfying in a way his wanderlust back on Earth hadn’t been. He had something important to do for once. Not just writing crappy code for software for some out-of-touch bureaucrat a thousand miles away who would probably waste it and throw it all away just to start over again in six months. No more droning mission statements and diversity meetings. This was something.
Enrique patted Tom on the back, nearly dislodging the cigar from his mouth, and smiled. The other goons were coming around, too. Tom suspected that was at least partly because of the movies the two would pull up on their machines when taking breaks. Carlos’s men would crowd around and watch whatever movies the two had cribbed from the local UN social media networks. The sight was almost comical, seeing a bunch of thugs and guerrillas crowding around a paltry fourteen inch screen to watch ancient films. But it was top notch entertainment on this planet, and a luxury almost nobody else on this ball of dirt possessed.
The odds on their survival were improving. Most thought they’d last at least a month. One optimistic fellow thought they might last the whole summer, at least if the smurfs didn’t kill everybody before then. Enrique still suggested they were going to be meg bait, but it could possibly have been a joke.
Possibly.
Lieutenant Slade Cranston zipped up his pants and unceremoniously kicked the prostitute out of his villa. It had been a fun few days, but she no longer amused him. Martina evidently preferred the Domme role, and there were some who rotated down from the Angela Merkel and took advantage of her services. Cranston had other tastes, and the whore limped out of the villa covered in bruises, her tattered dress torn and stained. Little pleased him more than breaking a Domme to her proper role as a submissive.
Still, the whore had stepped out first when he’d stopped by the brothel for an extended outcall, paid with huánuco, naturally. Most of the rest had been too frightened of him. He grinned. She must really need the money, he thought. All of it had been worth putting off his trip up to the Angela Merkel for a few days. He sat in the rocking chair on the front porch of the villa and finished off his beer. Not one of the local rotgut varieties, but a genuine cold one shipped all the way from Earth. He didn’t even want to know what it cost to get it out this far. He gulped down the cold brew and lobbed the empty can in the general direction of the whore, still shuffling toward the gate.
Some hated duty down on Terra Nova, but for Cranston, the opportunities to sate his appetites more than made up for the disgusting primitiveness of the place. On Earth, he’d have had few such opportunities. He wasn’t rich enough or connected enough to get away with it. But here, things were different. It was his ant farm to run. He ran his finger through a bowl of huánuco paste and finished it off. The high was pleasant and familiar, especially coming after such an entertaining afternoon.
“Ten percent,” he chuckled to himself. He’d gotten close to twenty percent more out of Carlos. The captain, of course, didn’t need to know that. On Earth, his huánuco habit would have cost him more than he could make in a lifetime. Here, it was practically free.
At first, he thought the buzzing was in his head. huánuco could do that sometimes. But it grew louder and closer.
It had taken the better part of a month to fully repair, reprogram, and outfit the drone with their sorry excuse for tools. “Stone knives and bearskins,” David had called it. But, stone age tools or not, the job had been done at last. Carlos had used that time to collect many seriously unsavory characters for some kind of ambush. They were hard men, human predators that looked at the two developers like a wolf might consider a wounded deer. But Carlos had pronounced them off limits, and that protection seemed to hold real weight with the goons.
While David had always been the better network engineer, Tom was the superior drone pilot. In the days before their exile, drone racing had been a hobby of his, tinkering with them for speed and piloting them through warehouses, abandoned factories, and alleyways. A familiar rush of exhilaration flowed through him as the drone took flight. In all probability, it would be the last time he would ever fly one. But despite the many months since his exile, it felt just as natural as if he had done it yesterday. All eyes were upon him.
Then he remembered the drone was loaded to maximum payload rating with stolen explosives, enough for one man in particular.
Carlos looked over Tom’s shoulder intently as the drone rapidly flew through the village. Tom used the streets and buildings as cover. The transponder had been disabled, but any higher than the building tops, and the drone would surely be detected. Tom tilted his tablet, the built-in gyroscope controlling the flight path, dodging a pair of unwary townspeople. The microphone picked up barely audible curses in Spanish as the two dropped whatever they had been carrying and scrambled out of the way.
He increased his altitude by a hair and buzzed by the corner of a small hut so close that pieces of straw flew up in the corner of his display. The makeshift gate was in view, and he pushed the throttle up to maximum speed for the final dash across the open field. The drone’s battery was rapidly draining, so it was fortunate that a return trip wasn’t necessary. He needed to get across the open terrain before anybody caught on to the fact this drone wasn’t supposed to be there and shot it down.
“Cranston is over the gate, just to the right of the main building,” Carlos reminded him, translating some of the responses from his radio. “Martina will have seen to it that he has not left yet.” Tom tried not to think about that. Martina had volunteered to ensure Cranston didn’t leave his post until the drone was ready. That took a positively heroic character, given what Cranston had done, both to Carlos’s daughter, and to the battered w
hores in and around Constancia. Then again, in some small sense, this was Martina’s revenge, too.
Carlos’s men had the small UN base under surveillance and Enrique had supplied the layout and the target’s position. The base was a small affair, mostly using local buildings, created mainly to serve as a transfer point for the drugs ferried over to the captain’s men and for temporary housing for the sailors enjoying shore leave and gravity acclimation rotation. It wouldn’t be long now.
The drone buzzed over the top of the gate at high speed, and Tom briefly noticed the confused expressions of the tower guards in the video display. Someone must have realized there was a problem, as the staccato sound of automatic weapons fire registered on the mic. The drone was nimble and fast, however, and Tom rapidly turned toward his target, evading the fire. That wouldn’t last long, he knew.
The drone flew toward the commanding officer’s villa. Cranston tried to reach the door, jumping in and grabbing the door at the last minute. Not, Tom thought, that a thin wooden door offered much protection.
Behind him, David hit the detonator. For a moment, the tablet stuck on the final frame, a confused face slamming the door shut, just starting to come around to what the drone really meant for him, before “connection interrupted” partially covered the screen.
“What the devil?” Cranston wondered, aloud.
He stood, but his huánuco-addled mind was having difficulty processing what was going on. A drone flew over the gate and gunfire suddenly broke out. Something was wrong. The drone, he realized in a sudden moment of clarity, was headed straight for him. He opened the door and practically threw himself in, reaching around to shut it behind him.
All Hell broke loose. All was black.
Carlos’s men cheered while Tom fought the urge to throw up. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but in effect, he had probably just killed a man. Enrique had assured him the explosives they used were powerful, despite being so light, stolen from the smurfs themselves.