"No, Jantine. No terms. Not now. We’re beaten, can’t you see that?"
JonB took a tentative step toward Katra, then another. Carlton left him standing on unsteady legs, then bent and scooped up the unresisting Gamma. Katra’s head rolled against the left side of his head, and their faceplates met with a clink. JonB took a third step toward the old human.
"Mira!"
"Listen to him, Jantine." Mira’s words had the same tone of resignation as JonB’s. "This is not the way."
Jantine had neither words nor training to answer this betrayal. Of all people, JonB was supposed to support her decisions. Question them, yes, but open defiance was not in his character. It wasn’t why he was here.
Once Carlton had Katra in his arms, JonB gestured toward the old man. Carlton adjusted her arm so that her weapon rested on her stomach, then moved toward the platform that presumably led down to the Harrison institute.
Jantine found her voice, but the words that came out of her mouth were little more than a tight whisper.
"I will break you for this, JON-B34726-S."
"Why? What possible purpose would it serve? And to whom would you report me? Serene?"
"What does that mean?"
The urge to answer Serene’s question was almost overpowering, but Jantine kept her eyes on JonB.
Mira started whispering to the Alpha, but to a Beta’s ears she might as well have been shouting in the nearly silent courtyard. "It’s a rhetorical question. He’s trying to make a point to her, one she doesn’t want to hear."
"But why?"
Jantine took a step forward, hand tightening on the handle of her pulser. JonB just shook his head, and Jantine’s anger finally boiled over. All her frustration at his constant questioning, his knowing smiles, and the basic unfairness of his survival when Malik was dead raised her arm for a blow. The pulser flashed in the sun as she swung, nearly reaching his head before his remaining hand caught her wrist.
"Go ahead. I can’t stop you, not for long. Kill me if you want to, I’m half dead already. But Katra is dying faster then I am, and I won’t let you kill her, too."
Jantine’s eyes flared, and her face twisted into a snarl. She wrenched her wrist from JonB’s grasp and smacked him across the face with the back of her hand. The civvie went down in a heap, fresh blood running down his face and onto his encounter suit.
Something broke in her hand when it impacted JonB’s nose, but despite the pain Jantine kept a firm grip on her weapon and set her aim right between his eyes. Her finger touched the first firing stud, and her thumb brushed the edge of the second.
~Jantine, STOP!~
At Mira’s mental command, Jantine’s anger drained out of her in a rush, and her body went rigid. A warm cloud enveloped her senses, and everything around her seemed very far away. She could still see JonB on the ground in front of her—still saw the old Earther with his inscrutable face staring at her. But she couldn’t move, and after a few seconds, she was thinking clearly again.
With clarity came shame.
JonB. What have I done?
Mira was at her side, gently pulling the pulser from her clenched fingers. JonB wisely moved out of the line of fire, and Artemus helped him to his feet with one pair of hands while reaching out the other to collect her weapon and place it into his pack. Jantine felt Mira’s gauntleted hands grab her arms, and when the Earth woman spoke, her breath was mere centimeters from the back of Jantine’s neck.
"Just . . . Just . . . Hell, I don’t know anymore. Just don’t."
JonB put his hand up to his face, and jerked. Jantine’s senses and body came back under her control as his nose cracked audibly. JonB coughed, bowed his head for a moment, then turned his battered face back to Jantine.
"Son, let me look at that," Harrison said. "Broken noses can be tricky, believe me. And . . . oh, for the love of Reason—put those weapons down, you fools. Now!"
Four Earthers wearing hardsuits of armor like Mira’s entered the clearing. Artemus raised all four of his weapons, aiming each one at a mirrored faceplate.
Mira’s hands came away from Jantine’s arms, and the Earther took an unsteady step around Jantine toward Artemus. It was a noble gesture, but all four of his arms were over Mira’s head, and she did nothing to impede his line of fire. Whatever mental hold she had on Jantine disappeared though, and she was free to speak.
"JonB, I—"
"Don’t say anything you don’t mean, Jantine. Because you’re right. In the Colonies I’d be stripped down and scanned for this, then conveniently shuffled away to run a mine somewhere."
"I’m . . ."
Jantine felt a wave of something warm and pleasant from Mira, but it cut off almost immediately as the Earther gave out a groaning sob, then fell limp. The unfamiliar words of an apology died on her lips as Serene charged past her just ahead of Jason’s thundering footsteps.
"Mira? Mira? Please don’t be dead." Serene’s voice tugged at Jantine’s heart as Jason took Mira in his arms.
Artemus’s face plate rested in Jantine’s direction for several long seconds before the Delta threw down his weapons and sat on a piece of collapsed wall.
Mordecai Harrison stepped up to Jason, and for a moment Jantine thought the Omega would stomp him into the ground for daring to touch the woman in his arms. But instead the Omega knelt down and laid Mira on the ground, and Harrison knelt beside her under the watchful eyes of his guards.
It took Jantine half a heartbeat to locate JonB again, and when she did she saw he’d almost reached the platform. Carlton was standing on it with his back against the orange-striped railing, supporting Katra. The Gamma’s pulser was on the ground, and JonB stepped over it as if it wasn’t even there. Once he was on the platform as well, he grabbed for one of the rails and sagged against it.
"We’re not in the Colonies, Jantine," he said. "Not anymore. Our mission is a failure, and it’s time to start thinking for ourselves for a change. Come find me, when you’re ready to talk. I really wish you would. But I’m going down there, and I don’t care what you think about that."
The Beta hadn’t bothered to wipe away any of his blood after adjusting his nose, and his face was already bruising where she’d struck him. But his gaze was fixed on Jantine, boring straight through her encounter suit and into her soul.
"Are you all right, Janbi?" Mordecai Harrison was standing now, and his voice was much stronger than his small frame seemed capable of generating.
"No, Doctor Harrison. I’m far from all right. But in time, I think I will be. And it’s . . ."
JonB’s battered face fell into his puzzle-solving expression for a moment, and when his smile returned, the intensity of his gaze dimmed. He was still looking at Jantine, but he seemed different somehow. And instead of the imperious correction Jantine expected to hear in his words, his voice was soft and thoughtful, containing more genuine emotion than she’d ever heard him express out loud.
"Actually, I take it back. Yes, why not? I am called Janbi. My name is Janbi, Mordecai, and I surrender myself into your care."
Jantine had no idea what she was supposed to do next. As the platform moved downward and out of sight, her failure was complete. Her choices had split the team apart, she’d lost the respect of her closest friends, and the worst part of it all was that JonB was right.
Again.
All she could do was wait, and hope that things resolved in her favor. Taking a cue from Artemus, Jantine sat down and let the world move according to its own schedule. Only Mordecai Harrison was looking at her, and his previous expression of practiced neutrality was replaced with one of concern.
Jantine looked to the sky. The Home Star’s yellow-white radiance painted everything around her with the colors of morning, but it did nothing to help the pain in her heart.
Don’t look to me for answers, Earther. I’m not their leader anymore. Mira is, and she’s welcome to them. Assuming, that is, that I haven’t killed her, too.
Janbi
JANBI
LOOKED UP FROM HIS BORROWED DESK WHEN Jantine entered the room, but he almost didn’t recognize her without her encounter suit or coveralls. Dressed in soft white garments bearing the logo of the Institute, she carried none of her habitual swagger, nor the air of command he’d come to associate with her every move.
The mod standing in front of him just looked tired, almost as tired as he felt himself. He knew what he was feeling was the combined after-effects of the stims and whatever Mordecai had given him to sleep, a state the old doctor had predicted would be "one monster of a hangover." But Jantine’s face had changed since he last saw her, and despite the pain in her eyes Janbi had to admit he liked it.
She’s finally accepted it. We failed in our mission, and as such no longer have purpose. And it terrifies her, almost as much as it does me.
Janbi set his handheld aside and dimmed the panel, letting the search routines he’d worked out do their job. He leaned back in his chair and smiled, hoping his new face wasn’t too hideous to look at.
"JonB . . . Janbi, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have struck you. You were right."
He hadn’t expected a full apology, it would take the Beta much more than a few hours to come to terms with the mistakes she’d made. But although he expected her to have more to say than that, he decided not to punish her for being who and what she was.
It’s not her fault they made us this way.
"Yes, I usually am," he said. "But I didn’t ask you to come to me to make you feel bad. I just wanted to talk to you. Really talk, for once, without any expectations or demands on either of us. Do you think that’s possible?"
Jantine was silent for fourteen and a half seconds then nodded. Janbi got up from the desk and moved over to a pair of overstuffed chairs, easing himself down into one as best he could with only one hand.
When Jantine realized what he was doing, she started to help him but then stopped when her eyes registered his bandage-wrapped stump. As if in sympathy, she raised her own injured hand to her chest and then quickly moved it behind her body as if the sight of it might offend him.
When she sat down in the chair opposite him, Janbi saw a hint of her former self. Jantine was careful not to touch the sides of the chair, and she selected the exact center of the cushion to perch on instead of sinking into its comfort as he’d done. Her left hand brushed away invisible specks of dirt, and she kept her back perfectly straight.
Janbi smiled again, a bit wider this time. It was enough to make his nose sting, but Mordecai assured him it would heal straight and he’d have no problems breathing. Janbi hadn’t mentioned to him how little time the process would take, and he wondered how the human doctor was reacting to Katra’s much faster recuperative properties.
Janbi and Jantine sat silently for a while, each content to watch the other for signs as to what to do. In the end, it was Jantine who spoke first.
"I don’t know what I’m supposed to say," she said.
"You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to. There aren’t any rules now, not for us."
"But I’m supposed to know. Or if I don’t, you’re supposed to help me find the answers. None of this was covered in our education!"
It seemed to Janbi that Jantine was about to lose control. Given that the last time she’d acted impulsively she’d broken both his nose and her hand, he decided that perhaps they still needed some rules after all.
"Jantine, you know as well as I do that our mission was expected to fail. Just making it down to the surface put us far ahead of the projections, despite what it cost us."
Jantine rolled her lips inward, her jaw was trembling, and her left hand had a white-knuckled grip on her knee.
"But that’s the problem with the Colonies," he said. "The Alphas, the Builders, even the older Betas think too big. The details are left for us to work out, and if I’ve learned anything from our time on Earth it’s that the little things add up over time."
Without thinking about it, Janbi was using his hands to emphasize his words. Or more accurately, one hand and one stump, and despite her best efforts Jantine couldn’t stop looking at his left arm.
"This? This is exactly what I’m talking about. On Earth, they can make me a new one. I talked about it with Mordecai, and for something like a hand the calibration time is just over a month. But back home, they’d push me aside for the next in line. And given how poorly you and I got along when we first met, JRD-B34721-S probably wouldn’t last very long either."
Jantine’s voice was almost a whisper, and her face was pale and drawn.
"I would never . . . I never asked for this. Any of this. I never wanted you to be hurt, I just . . ."
Janbi leaned forward, moving his right arm in front of the stump.
"That’s right. No one ever asked us. In fact, I’ll bet that until we decanted Serene, you’d never even met an Alpha in the flesh. But I have. There were four assigned to watch my crèche. And despite my early reservations, I’d rather be with her than any of them.
"Do you know what it was like, Jantine? Do you have any idea how they trained us?"
Jantine shook her head.
"Your picture was the first thing I saw every day when we woke from the rest cycle. I heard your voice during every meal. I knew everything about you before we even met, and when they told me why I’d been born, I was so proud.
"What does that make me, Jantine? Who am I supposed to be? Our genomes are perfectly compatible, but as people we couldn’t be more different. They picked everyone else for this mission based on their merits, but I was designed for it."
Jantine sank back in her chair, making no attempt to hide her tears. Janbi didn’t want to hurt her like this, but she needed to hear his story. Needed to hear all of it, no matter what it meant for their future.
"When you took a test, our crèche had half a cycle to study the same topic and get a higher score. Anyone who didn’t was taken away. Even when there were only a few of us left, we had to be smarter than any Beta who’d come before us.
"You all think I’m arrogant, but what choice did I have? My entire life only has meaning based on how useful I can be to you, on a mission the Alphas knew might well fail. And for it to succeed, I had to challenge you at every turn, knowing how it made you feel. What does that say about me, about us?"
Jantine’s sobs were like blows to his chest, and Janbi couldn’t stand another second of it. He rolled out of his chair and stood in front of her, holding out his right hand.
When she reached for it, all he could think of was how right it had felt when the two of them comforted one another that first night after landing. He leaned back, pulling gently until she rose to meet him. Jantine flowed into his arms, and he held her as tightly as he could with only one hand. But she had more than enough strength for both of them, and they stood like that until she stopped crying, and a good while longer.
"I’m not telling you this because I want to hurt you, Jantine. But I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last few days, and I’ve made my decision. I’m not taking any more orders, not from the Alphas. Whatever happens to me from now on, I’m the one responsible for my actions."
Jantine inhaled through her nose, a long, sniffling sound that preceded a small gasp as she opened her mouth to speak. Her voice was muffled against the fabric of his soft garment, but he knew the sound of her voice so well he could have made out the words from across the room.
"What are you saying? Why are you telling me these things?"
Janbi rested his forehead on her hair, careful not to jostle his nose any more than he had to. Her smell was his entire world, and part of him wondered why he’d ever considered Mira Harlan as an acceptable partner.
"Our old lives are over. We don’t have to follow their rules any more. No more plans, no more compatibility matrix. I want a real life, a human life. I want to be old, and weak, and read books that have nothing to do with science, or logic, or societal planning."
Jantine stiffened in his arms, and she pushed away
slightly. Janbi took a step back, but when he saw the pain on her face he almost rushed to hug her again.
"I don’t understand. Janbi, I don’t know what you’re saying to me, or what I’m supposed to do. That’s why I came here. I don’t know anything anymore, but I didn’t want you . . ."
Jantine’s eyes brimmed with a fresh round of tears, and before Janbi knew what he was doing his left hand came up to wipe them away. But instead of recoiling from his stump, Jantine took his arm in her hand and pressed it against her face. She closed her eyes, and let out another shuddering breath.
"I didn’t want you to hate me."
It was Janbi’s turn to fumble for words, but instead of letting his mouth run free, he stayed silent. He knew it was the wrong thing to do, but he was as trapped by his programming as she was.
Perhaps that’s why we’re so drawn to Mira. She never hides her reactions, even when we don’t like what she has to say.
"Jantine, I’m saying you don’t owe me anything. You are free to choose whatever partner you want. I don’t know what life will be like here on Earth, but I want to. I want to know all of it, and I hope someday, when you’re ready, you will too."
Jantine opened her eyes, and Janbi took her smile to mean that she would at least consider what he’d said.
Janbi pulled away when his handheld chimed an alert, stumbling toward the desk with unexpectedly weak knees. Jantine opened her mouth at his abrupt dismissal, but the flashing panel was something he couldn’t ignore.
When she did speak, it was with her old voice, and Janbi couldn’t help but feel sorry for yet another missed opportunity.
"What is it?"
Janbi didn’t answer at first, working his way around the desk until he could set the handheld down and tap out a few commands. Luckily, the desk’s holo display responded to his gesturing stump, and equations formed in letters of light above its polished surface.
"I think I might have found them. The Sleepers."
Homefront Page 27