Bombardier - The Complete Trilogy

by SD Tanner

  Standing, he said, “We made this mess so we have to clean it up. Fan out. Shoot any you find that are still alive.” Giving the corpse a final look, he added, “I think it wanted to be buried in the lake.”

  Sounding uncertain, Cardiff asked, “Are you alright?”

  Unless he changed what he was doing then he was never going to be right again. As a Navigator, he’d been taught to kill, but never to murder. He’d always assumed he would fight an equal opponent, not slaughter the innocent. Something was breaking inside of his head, but he couldn’t say what it was. Years of indoctrination were slipping away, leaving only the bitter truth of the world he’d been born to lead. Through his ignorance and willingness to follow orders, he’d murdered an entire species. Granger had accused him of being docile and off-center and he had been. Through a prettily packaged crop of lies, the Guild had convinced him to be the weapon of a tyrannical empire.

  With his head spinning on the truth of who and what he really was, he said, “Follow your orders.”

  With their advanced vision, they could see the corpses scattered around the huts and shores of the lake. Over a hundred of them had lived near the water, and he suspected there were more spread across the planet. His squad moved around the bodies, but most of the creatures were already dead and only three shots were fired. He could have killed them, but actions had consequences, and he wanted his squad to know how he felt.

  While they collected the bodies, leaving them in rows by the edge of the lake, he gently moved the one he’d shot to join theirs. Once done, he returned to the small hut and climbed through the entrance. Inside of the tent was a gathering of dry grass on what appeared to be a bed on the floor. Next to that were small roughly made bowls and baskets of what he assumed was food. Judging by their contents the birds were omnivorous, eating both meat and plant life. His tutors had taught him that mankind had started as hunter gatherers, making him wonder if the birds would have evolved into another species like theirs.

  Tank stuck his large head inside of the hut. “They’re done collecting the bodies. How do you want this done?”

  “They ate meat and plants.”

  “That’s not surprising. Protein is essential for brain development.”

  “I think we just wiped out an intelligent species.”

  “Do you think the Guild cares about that?”

  Pushing Tank from the entrance to the hut, he stepped outside again. “No, I think the Guild cares about power, not people.”

  “What do you care about?”

  Standing and staring at the rows of bodies that were no more than desiccated flesh and bones, he knew he didn’t want what he was seeing. Dunk Three had described the birds as an enemy in the making, but he wondered what he would say if he’d watched them die. Would he cheer the defeat of a potential enemy or would he be ashamed of killing the innocent? Being born only weeks apart, he’d lived with Dunk Three for seventeen years before joining the Navigators. If he’d asked himself that question when they were younger then he would have said his brother would have been appalled, but they were both changing and he wasn’t sure he knew him anymore.

  The only person he could know was himself and he wasn’t sure what he stood for either. A life lived without honor wasn’t worth having, so he cared about what he did. Power that didn’t protect its people wasn’t something he believed in, so he cared about people. Living in fear was a bad way to live, which meant he wanted everyone to feel safe. Above all, he wanted to live a life he could look back on with pride, so he cared about everything he did and whatever was done in his name.

  Turning to Tank, he said, “The life of a coward is a life wasted.”

  Tank stared back at him with steady eyes. “You are one of the three most powerful men in the known universe. Do you understand what you might lose?”

  “Power is only useful if you know how to use it well.”

  “And do you?”

  He could still feel the ricochet of the bullet as it ripped through the bird’s head, tearing away the last moments of its wasted life. It might have been a different species, but it had faced its death with courage.

  Staring down at his hand, committing the sensation of the bullet to his soul, he replied, “It’s better to die than live life as a coward.”

  Tank nodded as if he’d just said something obvious. “So, what’s next?”

  It was a good question. He knew something had to change, but he didn’t know what or how to make it happen. The Guild couldn’t be allowed to do what it was doing, of that he was absolutely sure. “I don’t know,” he replied.

  The squads were carrying bundles of bones barely held together by leathery skin into the water. Any good mood they’d had was long gone. No one was saying anything, only trudging into the water to leave another corpse before returning for the next.

  “What do you want to have happen?”

  “I don’t know.” Realizing that wasn’t true, he turned to face Tank, waving his armored hand at his squad. “I know we shouldn’t have to do this.”

  Tank’s expression didn’t change, but he nodded. “Good enough.”

  “Is it?”

  “You know the Guild are doing things that you don’t want them to, so how are you going to stop them?”

  His gaze grew long as he contemplated Tank’s question. The movement of the squad carrying one corpse after another blurred while he pondered his options. Did he want to destroy the Guild or have more control over what they did in his name? Did the Guild even deserve to be destroyed?

  “The Guild isn’t evil…” He hesitated, unsure whether he was right. “I mean, they have kept Earth safe.”

  Tank snorted softly. “From what? Up until our last tour, we hadn’t seen the enemy for nearly two hundred years.”

  Using the threat of an alien attack, the Guild had maintained a siege mentality to cow the population. Although he couldn’t understand the extreme paranoia that had created the Guild, he guessed that after the war a state of high alert hadn’t been such a bad idea. Now the enemy aliens were back and should he disrupt the Guild at a time when it was needed the most?

  “But now we have a war to fight.”

  When Tank looked across the water, he could almost feel his disappointment in him. He was letting him down in some way, but he didn’t understand how.

  “What am I doing wrong?”

  “What makes you think you’re doing anything wrong?”

  “You’re unhappy with me.”

  Turning to look at him, Tank’s face was a grimly fixed mask. “You must make your own choices, but answer me this, why should human’s rule? What is it about them that makes them superior to any other species?”

  As he watched the last of the corpses being carried into the water, it worried him that he didn’t have an immediate answer to Tank’s question. The Guild assumed it was their right to rule space, but after witnessing how destructive they were, who was defending the universe from them? His tutors had taught him that war had rules. Genocide wasn’t allowed. Any attack had to be met with a proportional response. Captured soldiers were to be treated humanely. War wasn’t a free for all where people did as they pleased, but the Guild wasn’t abiding by any rules, suppressing and destroying anything it didn’t approve of.

  Reminded of a phrase taught to him by one of his tutors, he said, “Ultimate power leads to ultimate corruption.” Turning to face Tank, he asked, “Is the Guild corrupt?”

  At that moment, Mex dropped one of the corpses, causing it to clatter onto the shore. “Shit.” He began gathering up the long bones in his arms, dropping some as he tried to pull the body into something he could carry.

  Seeing him struggle, Cardiff began picking up the torn pieces of skin and fleshless bones. “Klutz.”

  “It’s not my fault they’re falling apart.”

  Hearing Mex’s plaintive complaint, he knew he was wrong. It was their fault that there was a body to bury at all. Once Dunk Two was gone, he and Dunk Three would lead the G
uild, but could he wait that long to fix what was broken?

  Turning away from his clumsy Navigators, he and Tank began walking towards the attack ship. “I need to go back to Earth.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to talk to my brother.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:

  Dead Man Running

  (Granger)

  “On your feet, prisoner.”

  Looking up from the bed in his cell, the large armored body of a Navigator was filling the doorway. Death had stalked him for so long, he considered it a close friend, but he didn’t want to leave his children alone in a world devoted to killing them. Losing Vela had been a blow that they still hadn’t recovered from, so he knew how frightened they would be without either of their parents. Since meeting Ark Three, he’d allowed a small spark of hope to grow inside of him that maybe somebody would help them.

  Rising to his feet, he gave the helmeted Navigator an unhappy glare. This one wore the same red and white armor of the one who had saved them at the dam. Their colors defined what type of Navigator they were, but they all looked the same with their helmets on.

  With an impatient wave of his heavily armored hands, the Navigator guided him towards the door. “C’mon, we’ve gotta go.”

  Shuffling towards him, he stepped past the bulky soldier and into the corridor. He wasn’t the only one being taken from the prison and he shared a concerned look with a woman emerging from her cell. She was tall, curvy and quite pretty in an obvious way. He preferred a woman like his late wife, Vela. With her dark hair and matching brown eyes, her skin had been like velvet, smooth and soft to the touch. The woman by his side was a brassy blonde with large assets to match.

  “Where are we going?” She whispered as they were hustled along the corridor.

  Expecting to be shouted at for talking, he was surprised when several Navigators only prodded them towards the door at the end of the corridor. “I don’t know.”

  “What are you in for?”

  “Renegade.”

  Her cornflower blue eyes widened in surprise, giving her a comical appearance. “You’re an alien?” Without waiting to hear his reply, she said unhappily, “I…I screwed the wrong guy.”

  “That’s a crime?”

  “It is when you’re the mistress of a senior engineer and his wife finds out.”

  As they were pushed into a room containing a long table with backpacks on it, he studied her profile. Hidden inside of the corners of her eyes and around her mouth were the lines of an older woman. He suspected her imprisonment was less about the wife and more about reaching her use-by date. Prostitution wasn’t a job sanctioned by the Guild, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any, but he gathered it was an expensive and well-hidden service. Groups of men from the cities were known to visit the outlands looking for renegade women, and he’d cleaned up the mess they’d left more than once, digging his fair share of the graves.

  “Pair up!” A voice shouted from behind one of the helmets.

  “What do you think they’re doing?” She whispered worriedly.

  The room had five Navigators and a technician who was injecting something into each prisoner’s neck. He’d never seen it before, but he could guess what was about to happen. “Hunting rabbits.”

  Frantically looking round the room, she grabbed his arm, pulling him towards her. “Stay with me. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  Before he could answer, the technician had reached him in the line. Not bothering to resist, he stretched his neck, ready for the chip that would embed deeply into the muscle. The cold steel touched his skin and he waited for the sharp pain as the chip fired into him, but it didn’t come.

  Moving onto the woman, the technician asked, “Is she with you?”

  Nodding so enthusiastically that her blonde hair flew across her face, she replied, “Yes, yes, we’re together.”

  As the technician continued to microchip every prisoner, he rubbed his neck. He couldn’t feel the chip and it didn’t hurt, making him wonder whether he’d been chipped at all. The other prisoners were now standing in pairs, all sharing worried looks. This wasn’t a good situation. They wouldn’t microchip them unless they were planning to make them run.

  “Each of you take one pack. That bag contains your supplies.”

  “Does that include a gun?” A loud voice shouted from the line of prisoners.

  To his surprise, the Navigator standing in front of them laughed. “Of course it does. One per pair.”

  That was even worse news. It meant they planned to drop them well outside of the cities, possibly further than the outlands and into the wastelands. The wastelands were the radiated areas left after the war with the aliens. During the battle, they’d bombed some of their own cities, leaving them utterly destroyed and uninhabitable. Nobody went into the wastelands, not even the renegades.

  The Navigator’s voice boomed across the room. “For those of you who don’t know the run rabbit run game, I’ll give you an overview. We’ll drop you in pairs far away from one another. You will have a one-hour start and then the hunt begins. If you’re still alive in twenty-four hours, then you’ll have earned your freedom.”

  “What about the chips?” A prisoner asked.

  “They’ll be disabled and you will no longer be considered a target.”

  The prisoner snorted. “But you can make us a target again anytime you want.”

  “Life sucks, don’t it?”

  Taking one of the packs from the table, he pulled it open. Inside were six ready-made meals, a flashlight, folded blanket, water bottle and the holster for a gun, but no weapon. “Where’s the gun?”

  “You’ll get it when you’re dropped.”

  Once they were prodded outside of the prison, they headed towards the landing pad where a transport airship was waiting. He was still wearing the hard-soled boots he’d arrived in, but they’d taken away his clothes, forcing him to dress in the loose tunic of a prisoner. It meant he didn’t have his armored coat or assault gloves and without his hands, he could do nothing. Although they’d been hardened with years of rough living, they could mean the difference between life and death, so he couldn’t afford to damage them. Once they sat inside of the loading bay on the airship, he used his teeth to tear several strips from the hem of his tunic, tightly wrapping one around each hand.

  “What are you doing?” His newly acquired partner asked.

  “Protecting my hands. You should do the same.”

  Without hesitation, she copied him by tearing strips from the hem of her tunic. While he helped her tie them around her hands, he asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Honey.” Glancing up at her as he tied off the knot, she shrugged at his skeptical expression. “My real name’s Joan.”

  “Okay, Joan, I take it you have no experience outside of the cities.” When she shook her head, he continued, “I have plenty of experience so you’ll need to do exactly what I tell you.”

  Fiddling with the fabric he’d tied across her hands, she gave him a sidelong look. “You won’t shoot me, will you?” That thought hadn’t crossed his mind and he shook his head, surprised by her question. Appearing relieved, she added, “Some people would.”

  Some of the prisoners were investigating the contents of their packs, while others were leaning against the brown colored wall of the loading bay, appearing resigned to their fate. He supposed some would kill one another, others would kill themselves, and the rest would run. There was no chance their weapon would be capable of harming a Navigator. Maybe that was why they were being given a gun, just to see what they would do with it. It didn’t really matter what they were playing at, he knew how to survive off the land. They might not know it, but they were giving him a chance to live, and he was going to grasp it with both hands.

  In ten pairs, they were dropped in locations, some of which he knew. Providing they didn’t dump them in the wastelands, he might manage to evade them. When it came to be their turn, the ship left them on what had
once been an interstate. As the ship lifted back into the air, he slowly spun around trying to get his bearings. The asphalt was barely visible beneath the scrubby plants that had broken through the road. Low bushes and dry grass surrounded them, offering no place to hide. If there had ever been any houses in the area, they were long gone, reclaimed by the persistent force of nature. The air was dry and a warm breeze was lazily making its way across the plain.

  “We need to find an old road sign.”

  With her backpack slung over one shoulder, Joan looked out of place in the middle of nowhere. “Why?”

  “I know where there are safe locations,” he replied, grabbing her by the arm. Turning her around, he lifted the pack from her shoulder, showing her how to wear it so that it hung from both and settled against the middle of her back. Spinning her around again, he closed the clip on the belt around her waist then checked the backpack was secured tightly to her body. “We need to run.”

  “To where.”

  “Anywhere, but here.”

  Setting off at a fast pace, he jogged along the road, occasionally stopping whenever he saw any sort of sign. Heading west, he should run across another interstate going southward that would lead them to the outland forests.

  Puffing by his side, Joan complained, “It’s hopeless. We can’t get far by foot. We should hide somewhere.”

  “You can’t hide from a nav.”

  “Then this is bullshit. We can’t win.”

  That was true. Without transport, they couldn’t outrun a Navigator and with their visors, hiding wasn’t an option either. If this was supposed to train the Navigators then he couldn’t even begin to guess how. The game was rigged in their favor, and just as he’d predicted, the old-fashioned revolver they’d handed to them couldn’t do any damage to a Navigator.

  “I wonder why they chipped us.”

  Joan was breathing hard and strands of her blonde hair were clinging to her reddened face. “To track us.”

  “Navs don’t need a chip to do that.”