by PP Corcoran
The scatter gun came down from Jacob’s shoulder as he let out a silent curse. The Gaters would keep running until they were sure that they were safe, and for all Jacob knew, that could be on the far side of the property. Resigning himself to defeat, Jacob attempted to cheer himself up with the thought that it was not a completely wasted day. The sun was still a good few hours short of noon, and if he could make good time back to the farmhouse, he would have time to surprise Laura and Jacob Junior with a nice lunch. With the scatter gun hanging lazily from one hand, he pulled an already sweat soaked handkerchief from his pocket and dragged it across his brow. That was when the first distant rumble reached him. It took Jacob a moment to figure out the source of the boom, then his eyes locked on the expanding palls of smoke as they rose high above the tallest of Gemini City’s buildings. Jacob raised his free hand up to block out the sunlight and screwed his eyes up in a vain attempt to bring the distant towers into better focus. Through the billowing smoke, he picked out brief, intense flashes of light. Seconds later, his ears made out the distant rumble of the explosions. With growing dread, he raised the worn scatter gun once more to his shoulder and pressed his eye hard against the equally ancient optical sight mounted atop the tri-barrel.
Jacob’s farm was situated right at the base of the Scraggy Mountains, and followed the gently sloping terrain as it went from dense woodland to thinner, sparser coverage, until the trees gave way to rolling, maintained agricultural crops and grasses. What trees remained were few and far between, scattered across the neat squared-off fields like small islands in some giant ocean that lapped on the concrete and brick shoreline of Gemini City some ten kilometers from where Jacob stood.
The optics weren’t good enough to give Jacob a perfect image of what was happening, but what he saw was enough to bring a bead of sweat to his brow that wasn’t due to the heat of the sun. A nervous tremor in his forearms caused the view through the scope to wobble slightly from side to side, forcing Jacob to drop the scatter gun from his shoulder. Get a grip, Jacob, he admonished himself. Wiping the growing sweat from his hands on his pants legs, he brought the rifle up, squashing his eye into the sight. Bright flashes of yellow and orange were rapidly obscured by black, oily smoke that rose high into the air. Flickering shapes with flattened, elongated wings buzzed above and around the palls of smoke. Sporadically one of the buzzing insects expanded in a spectacular explosion, its fiery remains falling on the city below, and where they struck more flames spread. As Jacob continued to watch, mesmerized by the spectacle, what had been sporadic ground fire faded to nothing and through the low clouds larger craft came into view. Ten, twenty, forty, more and more descended on the burning city, disappearing behind buildings and lingering smoke.
The weapon at his shoulder seemed to lower of its own accord, unnoticed by Jacob, who continued to stare as if in a dream, no, a nightmare toward the distant, smoke-shrouded city. For what felt like hours, but was only seconds, Jacob stood motionless as the grass swayed back and forth in the breeze and the steady rumble of far-off explosions assailed his ears. With a thump, the scatter gun fell to the ground. Jacob’s fingers scrambled to activate his wrist comm.
“Calling Laura,” said the artificially pleasant voice. Come on, Laura, pick up, pick up!
“I’m sorry, Jacob, it has not been possible to connect you with Laura at this time. There appear to be network connectivity issues. I suggest you try again later.”
Connectivity issues, my ass, thought Jacob. Being away from more built-up areas, where network coverage was always patchy at best, was part and parcel for Jacob, who had invested in wrist comms for Laura, Junior and himself that tied directly into Agate’s orbiting communications satellites.
The investment had proved its worth two winters past when Jacob, in one of his more stubborn moments, had decided with a burgeoning snowstorm on the horizon, to head up to the higher pastures to check on the livestock. Ignoring the increasingly heavy snow, Jacob had made it to the pastures, moving the livestock into the shelters before heading back to the farmhouse. By then, the snow was falling so heavily Jacob had had to rely on the flitter’s nose radar to guide him down the treacherous mountain path. Everything would have been fine if it had not been for the 100 kilometer an hour winds the storm had brought with it. One particularly strong gust had caught the flitter, and with the engines straining to comply with the onboard computer’s instructions, the machine was not so gently reminded that nothing built by man was a match for Mother Nature, no matter what planet you were on. The flitter was lifted off its repulsors and dashed against the unforgiving mountainside. Jacob’s head had smashed off the flitter’s clear plex canopy hard enough that he lost consciousness.
To this day, he still had vague memories of the powerful search lights of the search and rescue helocraft illumining his half snow-buried vehicle. The snatches of shouted instruction, telling him to cover his eyes as the rescue team used plasma cutters to remove the buckled canopy. The gentle hands lifting him clear of the mangled wreckage. When he wakened in a warm hospital bed, head pounding from concussion, he had found the wrist comm, which detected his bio readings and automatically transmitted an emergency broadcast with his GPS coordinates, sitting on the bedside table. The little wrist comm had transmitted until the search and rescue team canceled the beacon by physically touching one of their wrist comms to the one on Jacob’s wrist. It was a sobering thought that if Jacob hadn’t spent the extra cash to upgrade the wrist comm, then he would have frozen to death on that high mountain road. The day he was released from hospital, his first action was to purchase Laura and Junior matching wrist comms. Jacob new the reliable device had not suffered a network fault. Whomever was responsible for the happenings in the city was interfering with satellite communications.
Picking up the scatter gun, Jacob broke into a steady run, his long stride eating up the distance between himself and his farm. He might be sixty-four, but the demands of working on a farm, even one with all the smart machinery that modern day technology could supply, was still a physically demanding job, and Jacob prided himself on the fact that on his infrequent visits to the city he was still mistaken for a man many years his junior. Of course, a far younger wife and a teenage boy added to the illusion that he himself was not his true age; nevertheless, at this moment he was grateful for his stamina. It was just over two kilometers through the fields and over fences and ditches back to the farm house and he covered the distance in a little under half an hour.
Not slowing his headlong run, he burst through the unlocked front door of the house, his mud-covered boots leaving a trail of dirt across the gleaming wooden floors. For some incomprehensible reason, he made a mental note to clean the floors before Laura came home, or there would be hell to pay. Reaching the main living space, he skidded to a halt as his gaze fell upon the viewing screen that was mounted above the fireplace. On it was a picture of Governor Vandenberg sitting behind a large imposing desk, his face looking somber. His lips were moving as he spoke, but Jacob could only hear the blood pounding in his ears; it took Jacob a second to realize that he couldn’t hear what the governor was saying because there was no sound. Jacob searched for the controls, throwing cushions from the couch in his frantic search. Where had Junior hidden them this time? Below a discarded info tablet, Jacob found the controls and turned up the volume.
“…Advise you to stay in your homes at this time. We will advise you further when the current situation resolves itself...”
The screen suddenly filled with static as the signal was cut off. Jacob flung the controls down on the couch as he thought about what the governor had said. What situation? From what Jacob had seen, somebody was blowing the crap out of Gemini City and that was more than a ‘situation’! As for staying at home, well, that plan was out the window, Laura and Junior were in the city somewhere and Jacob was damned if he was going to let anybody tell him he couldn’t go looking for them. Scatter gun in hand, Jacob turned and headed back to his abandoned flitter, th
e muddy footprints forgotten and the front door left ajar.
#
Jacob was pushing his own flitter as fast as the ancient vehicle’s repulsors would go when the bright flash of an explosion off to his right caught his attention. For a few seconds Jacob considered ignoring the explosion, but from his reckoning the flash had come from near the home of his nearest neighbors, the Xians. The rising smoke from the explosion partially obscured the retreating bat-winged shape flying low to the ground. Jacob followed it with his eyes as the dark shape skimmed the ground before carrying out a radical vertical turn, pointing its nose skyward and disappearing as it accelerated up through the clouds. The tug of his conscience caused Jacob to reluctantly pull back on the throttles, slowing his headlong dash to Gemini City to locate Laura and Junior; instead, he turned the flitter off the main highway and up the track toward the Xian farm. The sight that greeted him as he pulled into the front yard was one of cold, clinical murder.
Smoke was still rising from the hole in the ground that had once been the Xian family’s flitter. Jacob cracked the canopy of his own vehicle, his nostrils filling with the smell of scorched metal and burnt earth. Jacob went to move closer to the still burning vehicle, flames licking around the chassis, but the heat was too intense, the skin on his face prickling from the flames. Jacob slowly circled the crater nevertheless, in the vain hope that he might be able to reach the occupants. As he made his way around to what he thought had been the passenger side, searching for any signs of life, he stumbled and nearly fell as his foot caught on a piece of debris. Looking down as he let out a loud curse at the offending charred tree root that had been the cause of his stumble, Jacob went to kick out at it as it became the object of his frustration at not being able to do anything to save the Xians.
Light glinting on metal, half-obscured within the root, caused Jacob to halt his vengeful strike, as instead he knelt so he could more closely examine the fragment. Pushing his fingers through the root to reach it, Jacob’s brain registered that the root had an odd texture. The outside was charred and brittle, breaking away at his touch, exposing a softer, fibrous inner structure. Jacob’s searching fingers grasped the bright metal and pulled it clear of the root with a quiet sucking sound, as part of the outer root came away with it, exposing the root’s thin white interior.
Jacob held the small piece of metal in the palm of his hand. Discolored by the intense heat, the thin, circular band didn’t resemble any piece of a flitter that Jacob recognized, and he had stripped his own flitter to pieces on more than one occasion as he endeavored to keep it running. Laura had reproached him every time the secondhand vehicle failed to start or threw up some other minor issue that Jacob insisted that he could fix himself; besides, he said, he enjoyed tinkering with machinery and the dealership in the city would charge him an arm and a leg for a ten-minute job that would inevitably end up taking him all day. Laura would just laugh at him as she called him an old miser, leaving him to his self-imposed labor.
Maybe it was thinking about Laura that made Jacob’s mind recognize the metal in his hand for what it was. A wedding ring. Jacob’s wide eyes went from the dirt-covered ring to the charred root he had retrieved it from. His mouth fell open as he saw again the exposed inner white root. Jacob backpedaled away as fast as his flailing arms and legs would carry him as the true nature of the root became clear to him. The root was part of the remains of his friends. The bile rose in his throat and filled his mouth as Jacob rolled on to all fours and emptied the contents of his stomach on the dirt.
When his heaving chest eventually stilled, Jacob sat back on his heels, using the sleeve of his jacket to wipe his mouth and tear-streaked cheeks. The ring was still tightly gripped in his balled fist, all that was left of a family of two adults and their young children. Jacob carefully placed the ring into a pocket of his jacket, checking twice to ensure that he had secured it inside. Standing up, Jacob took one more look at the smoking remains that had once been four people. The hatred he felt for those who had taken Laura and Junior from him was fueled by this new atrocity.
Jacob rose to his feet once more, turning his back on the still burning wreckage, crackling and popping as it burned the remaining combustibles. Jacob had only taken a couple of steps back toward his own flitter when his ears caught the sound of soft cat-like mewing. Turning in place, Jacob strained to locate the source of the sound, but the sharp crackling from the burning crater masked its location. Jacob couldn’t remember the Xians having a cat; besides he and his scatter gun were headed for the city. A few more steps, and Jacob had reached the flitter when the noise came again. This time the mewing was cut off by an urgent shushing. That was no cat. Jacob lifted the scatter gun from its rack. Perhaps he need not have to wait until he reached the city before the opportunity for revenge presented itself. Holding the hefty tri-barrel in both hands, Jacob viewed his surroundings with a new purpose. The farmhouse with its raised front deck was off to his left. Mono ties secured the shutters and the front door, denying access to anyone without a pair of molecular cutters--not something you tended to carry in your back pocket. To the right of the farmhouse, about 100 meters away, stood a three-story barn–cum-workshop–cum-store. Jacob ruled that out as hiding place for whoever had made the noise; it was too far away. His gaze fell on the track that led up to the farm and the drainage ditch running alongside it. A line of low shrubs hid it from view, but Jacob and Junior had spent a back-breaking few days at the end of last season helping Xian excavate the ditch that ran the full length of the track back to where it joined the main road over a kilometer away. In return, Xian had manufactured hard to find parts for Jacob’s auto harvesters. Jacob had thought it a good deal, although Junior hadn’t been so sure. The pain in his lower back by the time they eventually finished made him think Junior had been correct and Xian had got the better part of the deal.
Jacob bounded to a natural break in the brush line, twenty meters or so back toward the road. Careful to make little noise, he slipped through the break and cautiously poked his head far enough out the other side so that he had a clear view up and down the narrow, straight, shallow ditch. There! Virtually alongside his own flitter, a dark shape stood in contrast to the light gray sloping sides of the permacrete ditch. With a little hop Jacob cleared the ditch as, scatter gun raised, he approached his unsuspecting prey. Fifteen meters. Ten meters. At five meters, he couldn’t possibly miss. The anger that had filled him with the deaths of the Xians and most likely his own beloved Laura and Junior had become cold hatred, a thing to be fed by the death of his enemies. The dark, crouched figure before him was to be the first to feed his revenge’s insatiable appetite. Jacob pulled the gun tight into his shoulder, spreading his feet in preparation for the tri-barrel’s kick. At this distance, the blast was likely to cut his intended target to shreds.
A barely heard whimper emanated from under the dark coat, a sound that made Jacob’s finger come off the trigger and the scatter gun lower of its own volition. Two steps covered the short distance to the crouched figure. Grabbing the cloak’s collar, he pulled it with all his strength. Concealed beneath it were a pair of children, a boy not more than seven and a girl maybe a year older, both regarding the hulking figure of Jacob with terrified, tear-filled eyes.
Jacob looked down on the now orphaned children, all the time hearing the crackle of the fire that was consuming the remains of their parents, and the vengeance in his heart was slowly leached away to be replaced by a deeper, colder hatred for those responsible. The cowering children--Jacob searched his memory to remember their names but came up blank; he would just have to leave the introductions until later--huddled in the drainage ditch forced him to abandon any plans he might have had to head into the city. It wasn’t like he could just leave them here to fend for themselves while he charged off on some sort of vengeful crusade. The sound of another explosion rumbled across the fields full of growing crops and livestock toward him and Jacob turned, only to be confronted by another rising ball of smoke b
eyond a line of thick Yumma trees, separating a field full of content grazing cows from a sea of golden wheat. Jacob squinted as he tried to gauge the distance between himself and the rising smoke, the top section already beginning to be wisped away by the breeze. Maybe six or seven kilometers, judged Jacob. That would be the Larmiers’ place. Looked like it had just suffered the same fate as the Xians’ farm. No points for guessing whose spread could be next on the target list, thought Jacob, knowing full well it could be his. Taking a final long look at the tall glass needles that were the skyscrapers of downtown Gemini City, poking up through the growing black haze sprinkled with the bright flash of weapons fire and explosive detonations, Jacob said a silent prayer for Laura and Junior before bending at the waist and scooping the two children up, hugging them tight so they couldn’t see the burning vehicle holding the remains of the two people in the world who had been responsible for their safety. That duty now fell to Jacob as he strapped them into the rear of his still idling flitter. Attempting to arrange his facial features into a reassuring look, he kept his doubts and ire from his voice.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe now. Your mom and dad asked me to take care of you and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” The lie burned in his throat and his promise did nothing to lessen it. Sealing the flitter’s canopy, he turned up the air conditioning in the vain hope of removing the smell of residual smoke from his and the children’s clothes, before applying power and guiding the vehicle toward the main road where he turned right, the view of the distant Scraggy Mountains filling the whole front canopy. Jacob ignored the rear-view mirror and its ongoing scene of battle.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Crossing Paths