Contact Front (Drop Trooper Book 1)

by Rick Partlow

  I jumped and snagged the edge of the walkway with my fingertips, the worn buildfoam way too smooth and slick from decades of use. The toes of my work boots scraped against the surface of the wall as I pulled up straight, trying to use the big muscles of my back. My forearms burned and I kicked my legs like I was running in mid-air, putting every last bit of desperate energy I had into getting my center of gravity over that wall.

  There was a roaring in my ears, and as much as I wanted to think it was my adrenalin rush hitting again, I knew it was the train coming. A bullet smacked into the wall beside me and I rolled over the top of the walkway and fell flat. The tall man had climbed over the railing on the other side and jumped down after me, and he was vaulting over the monorail assembly, still shooting one-handed as he came, the rounds hitting the wall behind me.

  He was a meter from clearing the track when the train hit him.

  Blood sprayed across the wall a few centimeters over my head and I closed my eyes out of instinct, even though it was too late. The train rumbled past, slowing to a gradual halt with a screech of brakes as the first cars reached the other end of the station, a hundred meters away. I was drained, empty, lacking the energy to even roll over, but I had to move. I pushed myself up onto my knees and struggled to my feet, sucking in a long breath.

  The door. Had to get to the door. What was the code?

  Damn it, I couldn’t remember.

  I pulled my datalink off my belt and pulled up the note I’d made myself, my fingers clumsy and fumbling. There it was. I tapped it into the keyboard on the door’s security plate and was rewarded with a solid green light across top of the plate and a welcoming click of an electromagnetic lock releasing.

  I laughed and pulled the door open.

  A Transit Authority Police trooper waited on the other side in grey body armor and a dark-visored helmet, the bell-shaped muzzle of his sonic stunner pointed right at my head. I didn’t even have time to curse before he shot me.

  2

  “Cameron Alvarez?”

  I looked up from the scansheet at the speaker set in the cell door.

  “You know it’s me,” I grunted, not bothering to get up from where I squatted on the floor of the little three-meter by three-meter chamber.

  The scansheet gave me the choice of streaming the latest news from the war or celebrity gossip, and I couldn’t figure out which was more irrelevant to my life. Since most of my last three weeks had involved staring at the walls of this damned Transit Authority holding cell, it was all pretty much irrelevant. I’d woken up here with a headache, a brand-new yellow jumpsuit, a flimsy scansheet, and not a damned thing else.

  “I need positive acknowledgement of your identity,” the voice went on, patiently, “for your scheduled meeting with your court-appointed advocate.”

  My eyes rolled so hard I thought they might stick in that position. No use arguing. This was an automated system.

  “Yeah, I am Cameron Alvarez,” I said. I pushed my back against the smooth, white wall and slid up to my feet, tossing the scansheet on the bunk.

  “Turn and face the wall with your hands behind your back,” the faceless voice instructed. “If you attempt to resist, you will be stunned.”

  “I’ve heard it all before,” I muttered, turning away from the door like a good little peon and obeying the machine.

  It rolled in on plastic casters and slipped plastic restraint straps around my wrists, tightening them just to the point of being uncomfortable before it backed away.

  “Turn around and follow the security bot. If you attempt to run, you will be stunned.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  The halls were narrow and grey, and unoccupied. That was probably by design. I imagined they timed things like this so there wouldn’t be multiple prisoners in the hallways at once. Probably a lot of gang beefs that could erupt into something violent otherwise. If the 1087s knew who I was, I could be on the receiving end of one of those beefs.

  The bot led me to an unmarked doorway. None of the doorways had any markings, again probably by design. Hard to make an escape when you didn’t have any idea where you were. The door opened automatically onto a tiny booth with a single chair, the walls a shining silver concave. Holographic projection screens.

  “Fucking virtual meeting,” I sighed, stepping inside anyway. I should have known.

  “I am removing your restraints,” the automated voice informed me. “Do not attempt to run or…”

  “Or I’ll be stunned,” I finished for the thing. I cocked an eyebrow at it. “Right?”

  “That is correct.”

  Thing wasn’t sophisticated enough to have a sense of humor.

  The plastic straps fell off my wrists at the machine’s metal manipulation, and before I could turn around, it was gone and the door closed.

  “Please sit down so the meeting with your court-appointed advocate can begin,” the voice advised me. Damned thing got around.

  The moment my butt hit the plastic, I was somewhere else.

  The room was full of leather upholstered furniture and real, hardback books in real wooden shelves and all bright with real sunlight and just screamed at me that yes, this was all a simulation. Across the mahogany desk from me was a handsome, blond-haired man with skin too smooth and teeth too bright to be real, dressed in what looked like a vat-grown business suit that would have cost more than I could make in my whole life.

  “Good morning, Mr. Alvarez,” he said with the false cheer of a salesman or a lawyer. “I’m Neville Bickerton, your court-appointed advocate.”

  “You’re a fucking AI subroutine,” I corrected him. “Let’s skip the play-acting and just tell me how bad it is.”

  “As you wish.” The smile didn’t waver, but the simulated lawyer sorted through a stack of simulated papers from a simulated file folder until he found the one he wanted. “Mr. Alvarez, you’re being charged with felony battery, possession of illegal narcotics, reckless endangerment and felony homicide.”

  “Felony homicide?” I repeated, disbelieving. “Of who?”

  “Whom,” he corrected me. “Of one Mr. Ivan Jaropillo.” He held up a still photo of the raven-haired gunman, except this one was a file photo taken from the man’s police record.

  “He jumped in front of a Goddamned train!” I protested, throwing my hands up. “While trying to kill me! How the hell is that my fault?”

  “Technically,” my AI lawyer explained with the patience of a computer simulation, “if you are in the act of committing a felony and anyone in any way connected to that felony is killed, by accident or even by the police, you’re culpable for felony murder.” He smiled again. “In all likelihood, this charge would be dropped in a plea bargain were we to threaten to take the case to trial.”

  “Well, let’s fucking threaten then!” I said. “I didn’t kill anyone!”

  “That’s one option, but there are others, if you’d care to hear them.”

  “Fire away, Neville.” I sank down in my chair, head in my hands. Murder. They wanted to charge me with murder.

  “The main problem, Mr. Alvarez, is that you’re nineteen years old and a legal adult now. Your previous offenses were as a juvenile, your sentences of professional counseling were completed, and your records sealed. This is different. If you’re convicted of felony murder, you’ll be looking at a century of punitive hibernation, minimum.”

  “That’s as good as a death sentence,” I said. “Even if the Tahni don’t kill us all, some asshole judge or politician could decide it would be popular with the voters to leave the murderers in hibernation forever.”

  “Possibly. Even if, as I’ve theorized, the prosecution dropped this charge, the cumulative sentence for the rest of them, which are undeniable and inarguable, would most likely come to either fifty years hibernation or twenty years of restitutive labor with compulsory vocational training in one of the colonies.”

  Working for room and board for twenty years on some shithole colony world, learning ho
w to be a fabricator repair tech or an algae farmer. If there was a fate worse than death, that might be it.

  “And what else?” I pressed him. “You said there were other options, so what are they?”

  “There are two.” Bickerton steepled his fingers, elbows resting on the desk. “If you were willing to give up your partner, Priscilla Young, and tell us where she took the synthetic endorphins to sell them, your sentence would be reduced to five years restitutive labor on a colony of your choice from an approved list.”

  “No.” My voice was flat, the firmness of the instantaneous decision surprising me.

  “The police know she was involved,” Bickerton assured me. “She was observed on security cameras accompanying you into the bathroom area and her social media accounts show a relationship with you lasting for the previous ninety-four days.” His eyebrow went up. “Although two weeks ago, she attempted to wipe you from her streams and is now in a relationship with a man named Nazir.”

  I grunted. That didn’t take long.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I insisted, staring at the grain of the simulated mahogany. I felt as if I could see patterns in it if I looked close enough. “I’m not a rat. Put me in fucking deep sleep if that’s what they want. Not like I have anyone that would care.”

  “There is one other possibility,” Bickerton reminded me. I met his eyes, far too blue to be natural. “You’ll receive a full pardon for all crimes committed up to this point if you agree to enlist in the Commonwealth Fleet Marine Corps.”

  I blinked, stared at him for a long second, then blinked again, wondering if I’d heard him right.

  “What?”

  “If you agree to enlist in the Marines,” he reiterated, “and make it successfully through training, you’ll receive a full pardon and have your record expunged. When your enlistment is up, you’ll be eligible to emigrate to a colony of your choice at the government’s expense.”

  “Shit.” I breathed the word out like a prayer. “Are things really going that bad?”

  “Badly.”

  “Are you a lawyer or a grammarbot?” I snapped, getting irritated with the AI.

  “The official reports,” the Bickerton-bot told me, ignoring my comment, “are that the war is going well, that Commonwealth Fleet forces are striking deep into the heart of the enemy.” The corner of the simulacrum’s mouth turned up. “As I am your advocate, I am obligated to tell you everything my sources have heard, and the rumors are that we’re getting our asses kicked.”

  I snorted, not at the bad news but the turn of phrase from the strait-laced AI.

  “The military settled into a defensive stance after the Truce and was totally unprepared for a shooting war. The Marines, in particular, had nowhere near the personnel they need for any sort of ground war and they’re desperate for warm bodies.” Bickerton hesitated just like a real person might have. He was, if nothing else, well written. “I have to warn you, rumors are that casualties have been high. They wouldn’t be making this offer if the odds weren’t against most of their recruits surviving.”

  I said nothing, closing my eyes, shutting out the illusion and trying to think.

  It didn’t work.

  “Yeah, okay. Sign me up. Get me the hell out of here.”

  “Tell me something, Mr. Alvarez,” Bickerton said, and I thought I detected a very human-like curiosity in his tone, “why would you risk this to protect Ms. Young? Every indication is she merely used you and discarded you.”

  “That’s who she is,” I admitted, maybe to him, or maybe to myself. “But it’s not who I am.”

  Twelve Years Old:

  The foster care facility was like all the others, like every group home I’d been in since I’d come to Trans-Angeles: crowded, tense, tiered like a wolf pack. Curtis was the Alpha. Taller than anyone else by a head, fourteen years old, past any hope of adoption. No one wanted a violent teenager, not even when the government would pay extra for him.

  I wasn’t sure why the people who ran the place put up with him, but maybe they needed that extra cash…and maybe he was a good actor when he was around them. Most sociopaths are. I’d looked up shit like that on the scansheets, just to figure out what particular kind of crazy Curtis was. Well, maybe it was just to get some cool-sounding names to call him when he was being a dick.

  Like now.

  “Get out of my fucking way, Alvarez,” he said, trying to make it a growl. His voice broke just a bit at the end, spoiling the effect. “I won’t tell you again.”

  I snuck a look over my shoulder at the girl. Her name was Natalia and she had about a year on me, but looked older than that, with curly red hair down to her back, which was what had attracted Curtis to her when she’d arrived a few days ago. I’d been a bit googly-eyed at her myself, until Mr. Matvienko had introduced her, telling us in his own, incredibly awkward and cringy way that she was “developmentally challenged,” which I’m sure made her feel great about herself.

  She looked even more helpless and scared now than she had slinking in behind Matvienko. Her shirt was pulled open and there were red marks on her arm from where Curtis had grabbed her. If it had been one of the other girls in the home, I might not have worried about it. They were tough, nearly as tough as Curtis, and there were lines even he wouldn’t cross with them.

  “Leave her alone,” I said. It was a lot of words. I didn’t say much, especially not to Curtis.

  His shove was hard, harder than I remembered from the last time. He might have gained some weight, probably from eating other kids’ share of the food. I went back a step but set my feet and squared off again. I wasn’t sure why. What did I care about this weird girl I’d only met a few days ago? But I couldn’t stop thinking about Mom, and what she’d say.

  “You don’t learn, do you, you little shit?” He liked to swear a lot. He thought it made him sound more like an adult. “I run this place, not Old Man Matvienko. Me.”

  “Sure.” I shrugged. I didn’t care. “Just leave her alone.” My jaw clenched. “It’s not right.”

  His fist came out of nowhere and I didn’t have time to block, just jerked back instinctively. His knuckles grazed my cheek, a dull pain spreading out through my sinuses in contrast to the sharp spike of fear in my chest. I wanted very badly to run, but the girl wouldn’t move, just sat huddled against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest, eyes hidden behind an arm. And I couldn’t leave her there, not with Curtis worked up like this. I raised my fists up to guard my face and bounced on the balls of my feet the way I’d seen the fighters do it on the net. Mr. Matvienko said those fights were virtual reality, but they were based on how people really used to box.

  Curtis snorted a laugh and swung at me again, a hard punch, putting all his weight behind it. I wanted to duck away again, but that wasn’t what the guys in the videos had done, so I went forward, past his fist, inside the swing. The bone of his forearm stung when it connected with the back of my head, but not as much as the punch would have. I planted a fist into his gut, almost surprised when it connected. His breath was stale in my face as it whooshed out of him, distracting me, but I had the thought I should hit him again while I had the chance.

  It wasn’t a great punch, clumsy and lacking the force I’d hoped for, and it probably cut my knuckles worse than it hurt his teeth. But when he stumbled back, I saw blood on his lip and felt a momentary elation…until he spat the blood on the floor and snarled.

  The blows rained down so close together I couldn’t hope to block them all, and I just covered my face as best I could. My ear was ringing, my ribs aching, and blood was dripping from my nose when someone finally pulled Curtis off me.

  I squinted up from a fetal position on the ground and saw Mr. Matvienko scowling down at me through bushy, black eyebrows.

  “What in the hell is going on here?” he roared. “Why are you boys fighting?”

  Were we fighting? It had felt more like a beatdown to me, but okay.

  “Alvarez started it,” Curtis said, pointing a
n accusing finger at me. “See this cut on my lip?” He pulled his lower lip down to show the old man the blood there. There was a shitload more of it flowing down my shirt from my busted nose, but I guessed that didn’t matter. “He sucker-punched me and I got mad and hit him a few times.”

  “Is that true, Cameron?” Matvienko demanded, hands on his hips

  I looked back at Natalia, hoping she’d say something. If I said it, the old man wouldn’t believe me, and none of the others would back me up. They were too afraid of Curtis. But if Natalia told the truth, told the old man what Curtis had done, maybe they’d have to get him out of here, put him in a psych evaluation center or something…

  She shook her head, said nothing.

  “Yeah,” I muttered, wiping blood out of my face. I could taste it coppery and sickly-sweet in the back of my throat and I fought to keep from throwing up.

  “Let’s see if spending the next two days locked in your room will adjust your attitude then, young man.”

  “No!” I said quickly. If I was locked in my room, Curtis could find a time to get the girl alone. “Please, something else, Mr. Matvienko…”

  The old man’s face twisted in thought the way it always did.

  “All right,” he said. “If you apologize to Curtis, then I suppose we could give you another chance.”

  Oh, that was just fucking great. Apologize to the giant sore on the ass of humanity because I was the only one with the balls to stand up to him. I thought of the fear on Natalia’s face and swallowed blood along with pride.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, putting all the hatred I could summon behind my eyes.

  “That’s okay, Alvarez,” Curtis said, his sneer marred slightly by the cut on his lip. “I know you’ll make it up to me.”