The Seeds of War- Omnibus Edition

by T S Hottle

  Kray hoped the wine came from off-world. He might have preferred his ale to be local, but no one pined for Amargosan wine for a reason. “So where’s this person you want me to meet?”

  A short brown man, one of the Hindustani-descended common on Amargosa, emerged from the bathroom reeking of cologne. “Thanks for letting me wash up, Marcus. I swear Facilities thinks everything is an energy crisis. You’d think we were shoveling coal into the air conditioners.” He spotted Kray. “Hello, I’m Rajeesh Charkresh. I’m the City Executive for Riverside.”

  Well, thought Kray. Hizzoner himself. “Lucius Kray, constable for Dagar Township.”

  “Oh, I know all about you, Colonel. Marcus has told me a lot.” He shook hands with Kray. “Why don’t we talk in private?”

  Chakresh led Kray out onto the balcony. The suite overlooked Riverside’s main square where the city’s original tuna can lander sat beneath a dome. Judging from the brick underneath, Kray surmised that the lander had been moved a few times since it first touched down and served as the center of a new settlement. For all he knew, its original landing spot lay somewhere under one of the high rises crowded around the square.

  Beyond those high rises, mountains rose well above the skyline on three sides. On the fourth, toward the east, a narrow harbor opened up to Amargosa’s eastern ocean. Between buildings, Kray could make out the bobbing spheres of the tidal power farm. The sound of the waves blended with the breeze coming down from the mountains.

  “Amazing view,” said Chakresh. “Isn’t it?”

  “Juno takes care of its employees well,” said Kray, leaning against the railing.

  “Oh, Juno isn’t paying for this. My office is.”

  Kray turned to him. “Why? You have no need of a genetic modification company. You don’t even have vertical farms.”

  “No, but Marcus has information we need. Tell me, Colonel, you used to be a Marine. Do you think Riverside would make a viable target for attack?”

  “From space? Only by bombardment.”

  “Why?”

  “Most cities in mountainous areas establish placements of various sorts on the surrounding peaks, even if they’re normally inaccessible. Any attacker from land or water becomes a target, and anything airborne can be easily shot down.”

  Chakresh smiled. “Exactly. Lansdorp, Arcanum, Deming, all are built on plains or rolling hills. There’s no high ground. We’re hard to get to, even from space. Especially from space.”

  Kray took a seat at the table near the double glass doors. “Let’s put our cards on the table. What do you need from me?”

  Chakresh chuckled. “Like you, I’ve been preparing. Marcus has convinced me that Amargosa is in imminent danger. The people who want this world won’t destroy it. They want the land, and for the same reason Mars funded our original settlements.”

  “Food.”

  “Food. Ever since humanity went interstellar, every new world we’ve developed started as a bread basket. Well, we’re not unique among primate species or even the few reptilians we deal with. We all breed faster than the worlds we inhabit can handle.”

  Kray thought about that. The Polygamy Wars had been less about religious zealots kidnapping women – and that was a huge grievance – than Deseret being starved by its colonies. Amargosa had begun as a means to feed Mars and its older colonies because the thin-aired desert planet couldn’t build dome farms fast enough to handle its booming population. It now fed Earth, Tian, and a host of other so-called developed worlds as well. In another century, Kray knew, Amargosa would be sponging off Gilead and two or three other colonies not yet founded.

  “And you think Riverside will be safe from these marauders looking for farm land.”

  “We’ve been drilling,” said Chakresh. “Marcus has a source for weapons. I’d be happy to share. If I had an ally in the Plains…”

  The door to the suite slid open, and Leitman stepped outside. Two wine glasses dangled from one hand while he held one in the other. “So, Executive, getting to know our Colonel well?”

  Kray thought back to Parker’s comment about trusting Leitman. The wine was excellent.

  ***

  JT limped into the yard late into the afternoon. The drop from the tree had hurt like mad, but he survived it. It helped that a mountain man coming out of the foothills happened to pass by just as he found the main road. He was on his way to do some business in Harlan Township’s settlement and gave JT a lift. The boy was grateful.

  “Get lost?” asked Sarah Parker, stepping out onto the porch, Lizzy in tow.

  “Yes,” said JT. “And then I had a run-in with the local wildlife.” He described the gosalope, how it screamed, and how it wouldn’t let him pass.

  Lizzy could not stop laughing. “The big, bold Earth man got himself treed by a gosalope.”

  He debated telling them about the men with the KR-27s, but decided to wait until Mr. Parker got home. Besides, the less he said about Constable Kray, the better. Anyway, he liked the sound of Lizzy’s laughter, even if it did come at his expense.

  “Well, go change your clothes and get cleaned up,” said Sarah. “You look like a drifter.”

  So he did, his pants ripped in places, mud and red smear from the leaves and grass splotching his shirt. He noticed he had a few cuts in places and, for the first time, wondered if he needed shots.

  As if reading his thoughts, Sarah said, “Come down to the kitchen when you’re done. We need to vaccinate you before those cuts get infected.”

  JT limped up the stairs, trying hard to ignore a playful swat on the rump from Lizzy as he passed.

  “Elizabeth Anne Parker,” her mother snapped, “you leave that boy alone.”

  Actually, JT didn’t want her to leave him alone. He wanted get into another shoving match, to chase her again, to catch her inside another hedgerow. And this time, he would do anything she wanted him to.

  And then you would be just as bad as everyone thinks you are, a voice in his head whispered. An under-aged, over-privileged brat who uses anyone and everyone around him for whatever purpose suits him.

  He would not move on Lizzy while he was here. They might both be sixteen by the time the Valles Marineris picked him up, but he would let her make the first move. If she really wanted to be with JT, even for just one stolen afternoon, it would be entirely her decision.

  And he would regret that it would only happen once. He knew what waited for him after he left Amargosa. He would be a cadet at a military school, then off to either one of the service academies or to university. The former would see him deployed for years afterward. The latter would simply feed him to the corporate machine, where it would chew on him indefinitely until rejuve treatments became no longer feasible.

  As he finished dressing, he looked out the window. A dark-haired boy about JT’s age, maybe a year or two older, pulled into the drive in a framed vehicle with two seats and not much else. The boy pressed on the steering control, and the field buggy let out a bizarre warble that almost hurt JT’s ears. A door slammed, and Lizzy, clad in shorts and a thin white top, bounded out into the yard and jumped into the open seat in the buggy. The wheels spun and kicked up gravel as the buggy sped off to parts unknown.

  “JT? Are you ready?”

  He continued staring at the dissipating dust cloud left by the buggy. Thoughts of the buggy flipping over or going off a cliff danced in his head. At least those visions only showed the driver. Lizzy was nowhere in sight in his dark thoughts.

  “JT?”

  Sarah’s voice broke his trance, and he stiffly headed back downstairs where she waited with an old-style needle.

  “Sorry we don’t have any transdermal sprays,” she said as she prepared a vile of some clear liquid. “For whatever reason, they never license the template to make them for the colonies. So I have to poke you in the arm. Have you ever been injected?”

  JT nodded, but it had been years. And he was a little kid when it happened. He could only remember screaming his head off
when his mother’s personal physician jabbed him with the needle.

  “Here’s a little trick I learned when I was younger than Lizzy.” She took JT’s left hand as he sat down at the kitchen table. “Relax your other arm. When you feel the needle poke you, grab the table as hard as you can with your left. Tense up your legs and your butt if you have to, anything but the arm getting the needle. I guarantee it won’t feel that bad.”

  JT did as he was told. Sarah examined the syringe and its contents, then gently pushed the sharp end into his arm. With his left hand, JT grabbed the table and tensed everywhere but where the needle went into his bicep. Surprisingly, he felt only a slight pinch. She then took a wet cloth and brushed it over the injection site.

  “It might bruise a bit,” she said, “and you might have a slight fever when you go to bed, but otherwise, you did fine. Better than Lizzy when she had her first vaccine.”

  “Mrs. Parker? Who was that boy Lizzy left with?”

  Sarah’s expression clouded. “Never mind him. You won’t be seeing much of him after Mr. Parker gets home from Riverside. Now, I need you to go slop the moosalo. Lizzy’s run off, so I need you to do the chores.”

  In a way, JT was disappointed. On the other hand, working around the giant snorting hairballs might distract him from thoughts of Lizzy and the boy’s fiery death.

  ***

  “The shipments will start coming more consistently now that Chakresh knows you’re a friend,” said Leitman as they sat in the lounge near the maglev platform. “He’ll arrange it so that the Lansdorp run stops every couple of days at the Dagar-Harlan station. We might even be able to sneak it into crop pickups so people don’t get suspicious about schedule changes.”

  “Good. But now I have to find a way to hide the equipment,” said Kray, savoring a local ale sold at a kiosk in the lounge. “My deputy told me someone wandered into our makeshift practice range where my core volunteers were shooting. He got away, but I don’t know what that’s going to mean for the militia.”

  Leitman’s little smile appeared once more. “I would be more worried about someone questioning those crops. The sooner they are ready, the sooner we can get a full flatland harvest, the better my employers can show this to the colonial government on Marilyn.”

  “Marilyn?” It took Kray a moment to remember that one of the new Jefivan colonies had been named for a cult’s goddess. “Do you want a follow-up for the dry season?”

  “I told you there isn’t going to be a dry season, only a war.”

  “Are you sure? You keep saying this, but I haven’t heard any rumblings from the governor or Mars.”

  “What makes you think they know? Besides, Mars doesn’t even care as long as it gets its shipments on time.” He took a napkin and an ink stylus and started drawing on it. “This is Dagar Township. Harlan is to the south.” He drew an archaic style of line to indicate the maglev. “Here’s the train. That’s your biggest problem.” Near the top of the napkin, he drew a bunch of unfinished triangles, bigger ones closer to the top. He circled an area near the bottom of the field of triangles. “You’ve got foothills and unincorporated land to the north. Somewhere in here, you probably know better than me, lies the Founders Mine.”

  “That mine built this entire colony,” said Kray. “It’s been closed for years.”

  “Decades,” said Leitman, “and it was abandoned once the newer mines opened. A smart person might look at it as a possible shelter.”

  “What about these aliens? What if they’re underground dwellers?”

  “What if they find you out in the open? Like Chakresh said, they’re likely going to go after flat, open targets.” Leitman rose and waved his wrist over the reader. “Bill to JunoCorp.” As the reader acknowledged him, he offered his hand to Kray, who had risen. “Be careful. If you get into trouble, call Chakresh for help. I’ll be back in a few weeks for the harvest.”

  Kray shook hands with him, wondering if the harvest was Leitman’s real purpose in coming to Amargosa.

  ***

  The next evening, John Parker pulled JT aside after dinner and took him out to the picnic table behind the house. The sun hung fat and orange in the east in a sky streaked with pink clouds. To JT’s surprise, Parker handed him an ale.

  “Don’t lie to me, son,” he said. “I know you’ve had stronger stuff than this.”

  JT pulled the cork on the bottle and took a swig. The ale was sweet compared to the lagers and porters he had drunk on Earth. “Interesting.”

  “I tried putting in a field of hops one year. It doesn’t grow well in Amargosan soil. Anyway, I never liked the bitter taste of Earth beer.” He took a pull on his own ale. “JT, I talked to some people while I was in Riverside. You turn 16 in a few weeks, at which point, you sort of enter limbo. You’re charged with juvenile offenses, but you will legally be an adult on Mars.”

  “So I can leave?”

  The sun began sinking into the horizon.

  “Don’t be naive,” said Parker. “One Compact member has to honor the laws of another. On Earth, you’d only be an adult provisionally. So now Mars, which hands us down our laws, has to decide what to do with you. Do they turn over a Citizen to a fellow constituent authority that considers said Citizen a minor?”

  “So I’m screwed.”

  “Somewhat.”

  They watched as glow flies began to appear in the deepening twilight. They looked like the fireflies of Earth, only fatter. Lizzy had told JT that they also bit, but he had no idea if that was true. She had told him a lot of things that had proven false, and only laughed when he called her on it.

  “I have a solution,” said Parker after finishing off his ale. “If you’ll hear me out.”

  “Okay,” said JT, his eyes fixed on the last sliver of sun.

  “How about you remain in our custody? Farm work appears to agree with you. It seems to have given you a purpose you didn’t have before.”

  The sun disappeared below the horizon, turning the sky above it a brilliant red.

  “For how long?” asked JT.

  “Until you’re ready for university.” Parker threw the bottle toward a nearby bin marked “Glass Only.” The bottle bounced around inside but did not shatter. “Polymerized. That bottle will be around when this planet’s next ice age begins. Anyway, we’ll get you enrolled in distance learning. There’s a really good school in Lansdorp. They’ll even let you start your college work early. When you turn eighteen, assuming your parents drop the charges, you’ll be an adult throughout most of the Compact. Earth will accept this as service-in-lieu-of-time.”

  “In essence,” said JT, “I’m indentured like some stowaway or an identity thief.” He threw the bottle at the bin and missed, the bottle bouncing in the grass. Ahead, the red in the sky faded as the blue above began to deepen to indigo. “What do I have to do?”

  “Send a message to your parents telling them you accept the deal. If they agree, you’ll live with us for the next two years. You’ll have to work the farm as a condition of your sentence, but in six months, I’ll let you look for work on your own.”

  That made JT laugh. “Mr. Parker, in the short time I’ve been here, I can see there is no work to be had on the Central Plains, not unless its cyber-based work. And Amargosa’s internet is spotty at best.”

  “Then I suggest you study hard and apply to schools early.”

  JT got up to retrieve the bottle he’d tossed away. “I won’t let you down, sir.”

  “It’s not me you have to worry about. Your parents are the ones letting you live in the boonies.”

  ***

  Kray’s bat wagon rolled into the staging grounds of the Founders Mine just as the sun was starting to rise. The aging hulks of ore transports, a primitive locomotive with hopper cars still attached, and more random equipment, some of it dating back almost a century, sat scattered about a flattened gouge in the side of a large foothill. A massive metal door covered the opening to the mine itself, a giant pair of steel plates that had to b
e at least a meter thick from the look of them. Kray nodded with approval.

  Saja, leaning against a field buggy, waited for him as he pulled alongside. “The doors operate mechanically. I broke into an old office and found my way behind them. As long as the gear works aren’t rusted out, we should be able to open them.”

  Kray jumped out of his bat wagon and looked around. The carved out section of hill made a natural alcove. “We can wall this off and keep our people inside. Do we have more recruits?”

  “Some people from the other townships are interested,” said Saja, “but we’re pleading ignorance while waiting for weapons.”

  That made Kray laugh. “We have a friend in Riverside now. Weapons will not be a problem.” He looked back the way he had come. “There’s a side road that goes up and over this foothill. Where does it go?”

  “The first mountain beyond this hill. Rumor has it some Navy pilot took refuge up in the lake there.”

  He knew of this pilot. She might prove useful.

  She could just as well be a problem. He would need to find out. “Let’s start bringing recruits up here to practice and guard the area. And block the mountain road off. No one gets in or out of the lake without us knowing about it.” He caught a look in Saja’s eye. “What?”

  She turned and pulled the tarp off the back of her field buggy, revealing a metal box Kray recognized from his military days. She opened it to reveal two dozen KR-27s. Lying across the top were two AZ-50 high-energy laser cannons, something definitely not legal for civilian use. “It’s sitting on top of twenty-thousand rounds of KR-27 ammunition.”

  EPISODE 5

  Three weeks after his encounter with the gosalope, JT found himself working with Quan in one of the south fields. The tractbots had become unresponsive, and Quan tasked JT with getting them to behave themselves.