by Rick Partlow
Need to see you ASAP , I messaged.
Then I sat and sipped my espresso and waited. Time dragged by and I began to get paranoid. Was I being watched? I was sure they could track me with my ‘link…hell, with the resources Mom had, they probably could listen in on my conversations with it. So why would they even bother to follow me? There were certainly security sensors in the Zocalo. Konrad was probably monitoring them, or having company AIs or netdivers do it for him.
Stop it , I adjured myself, letting out an exasperated breath. I was being silly. Maybe this whole thing was stupid. Yeah, what Mom had said was pretty ugly, but maybe she was just bullshitting me, trying to get me psyched out by claiming that the Corporate Council had that much control over the government’s policies.
No. Mom never bullshitted, and she never bluffed. But if she was telling the truth, then all those people that were dying, hundreds of thousands of colonists…it could have been prevented. We could have pushed on at the end of the First War with the Tahni and forced them into surrender instead of agreeing to the Truce.
Gramps had told me about the First War. It had started just after the Commonwealth was founded, when they’d discovered the Predecessor base buried on Mars, with its map to the wormhole in the Belt. The jumpgate there had taken us to Proxima Centauri, and to Hermes, its sole habitable planet. In the Edge Mountains on Hermes, the first survey mission had found the gigantic metal carving, the map to all the jumpgates throughout the Cluster. We’d never found any other remnants of the Predecessors and had no idea what they’d been like, where they’d come from or where they’d gone, but they left us the key to the stars.
But we hadn’t been alone. The Tahni had been out there, too, and they’d already found the jumpgates. To their eyes, all those habitable worlds we’d been colonizing were just Tahni property they hadn’t gotten around to developing yet. There was something religious about it that no one really understood, but for whatever reason, they’d decided to shoot first and ask questions later.
It had been an ugly war, from what Gramps had told me and what I’d audited in History classes. Losses had been heavy on both sides, but we’d finally got an edge and pushed them out of our colonies. Then we’d stopped. The history books said it was because we couldn’t afford to push any further, that we were exhausted economically, but Gramps said that the vets he talked to felt betrayed, like victory had been stolen from them.
Either way, things had settled in to a long, tense stalemate, with the jumpgates leading to Tahni space heavily fortified with automated defenses. Then a couple Commonwealth Space Fleet researchers named Teller and Fox had invented the gravimetic field generator and everything had changed. It allowed any ship big enough to carry a small fusion reactor to rip a hole into Transition Space, the dimension the jumpgates used, and travel along the gravito-inertial lines of force between stars, what became known as the Transition Lines.
All of a sudden, jumpgates were meaningless, except for use as communications relays, and the fortifications and automated defenses were useless. The government had tried to keep a lid on the Teller-Fox drive, but it had leaked---some said Corporate Council spies had leaked it---and pretty soon there were groups of private individuals, especially Belters and Martians, who were setting up their own colonies wherever they could find an unoccupied habitable. Including in the Neutral Zone between the Commonwealth and the Tahni Imperium.
At first, there’d been nothing the Tahni could do about it; but then, a few years ago, they’d got hold of the Teller-Fox warp unit and duplicated it. Since then, war had been just about inevitable. There’d been attempts made to crack down on the illegal colonies, but that had been unpopular politically and finally, the government had given up. The Tahni hadn’t. though. They’d fusion bombed the colonies to cinders and killed five hundred thousand people.
President Jameson had been under a lot of pressure to retaliate, but when he did, it had been half-hearted half-measures. The Tahni, as we’d just found out in the Battle for Mars, didn’t do half-measures.
When the notification alert went off on the clean ‘link, it scared the shit out of me and I moved too quickly and too furtively to silence it. I looked around, paranoid again, before I looked at the screen. There was a location, somewhere out in the desert about fifty kilometers away, and a map to it, with a brief message beneath.
Three hours. Ditch your ‘link .
I sucked in a breath, trying to keep from shaking. I walked over to the recycler by the coffee bar and surreptitiously dropped my regular ‘link into it, then headed out the nearest exit. I’d have to leave the car behind, too, which was going to raise alarms. I was going to be in big trouble.
Are you an adult or a kid ? I demanded, hesitating at the exit out onto the sidewalk.
Behind me, a short, bearded guy with bushy hair scowled at me, gesturing to the door I was blocking.
“You goin’ or what, dude?” He demanded.
“Yeah,” I decided, talking mostly to myself as I stepped through the door. “I’m going.”
Chapter Three
I felt the world spinning around me and had to stop shuffling forward and put a hand against a tree to steady myself. Nausea washed over me in waves and I scrambled to unlatch my helmet, barely getting it off in time before the bile hit the back of my throat. My head throbbed and pulsed as I emptied my guts, falling to my knees because I couldn’t keep my balance standing up.
When I’d finally rid myself of everything in my stomach, I washed my mouth out with a swallow from my canteen and spat it onto the side of the tree. I grabbed my helmet and staggered to my feet, moving another few meters before I sank to the ground again. I’d known I wouldn’t be able to walk far with my head spinning like this, but I didn’t want to sit next to the smell of my own vomit.
This was bad. This was a serious concussion, and I shivered at the thought that I had a major brain bleed. I could just fall asleep out here in the woods and never wake up. That wasn’t how I wanted to go. That was quiet, and I didn’t sign up to die quiet.
You signed up because you didn’t have any other choice , the thought came unbidden.
I leaned back against a tree, slipped my helmet on again and sealed it. There wasn’t much left to throw up, and I figured the risk was worth the protection and the night vision capabilities.
Yeah, I hadn’t had any choice. That night had left me no other choice…
***
The moon had risen by the time I reached the coordinates Gramps had sent me. It was the remains of an abandoned gas station that had once served the traffic on the lonely desert road back when the roads had traffic and that traffic ran on gasoline. I looked over my shoulder as I walked down the crumbled and overgrown asphalt, wondering if I could still see the lights of the rental hopper that had dropped me off. I’d had to pay the guy the last of my trade-notes for the ride, and he’d looked at me like I was crazy when I’d told him where I wanted to go.
I hoped to hell Gramps showed up, or I’d be totally screwed. I couldn’t even see the lights of Trans-Angeles from here, and you could see the city for dozens of kilometers at night. Did anyone live out here anymore? I hadn’t seen a single house or vehicle the whole flight out. I fastened the front of my jacket, shivering a little at the night-time chill.
I found myself checking every shadow for potential threats as I walked into what had once been the parking lot of the station. It was mostly sand now, with scabs of fragmented asphalt and patches of grass here and there. Of the building itself, there was mostly just a foundation left, with a meter or so of jagged, broken cement wall blocks still standing in spots. I saw something moving a few dozen meters down the road and started at the fleeting shadow, but it was too small for a human. Maybe a coyote or a javelina? We’d seen those when we’d gone camping out this way.
I walked twice around the ruins, wondering that anything at all had survived this long, and when I was sure there was no one around, I squatted down gingerly on a flat section of bro
ken concrete and settled in to wait.
“Tyler.”
I’d barely felt the cold surface of the rock through the seat of my pants when I jumped back up at the voice from behind me. It hadn’t been a shout or a whisper, just a low voice from somewhere close by. I looked around and finally saw the dark silhouette coming out from behind the rusted hulk of some old piece of machinery overgrown with brush and grass behind the station.
“Gramps?” I asked hesitantly, backing up a step.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, approaching out of the shadows and revealing his craggy, weathered face to the moonlight. “What happened?”
I knew what he meant: why had I used the emergency contact.
“Mom found out about my application to the Academy,” I told him, feeling my face redden with embarrassment. This wasn’t an emergency and I was wasting his time. “She used her connections to stop me from even being considered.” Anger replaced the embarrassment for a moment. “She pretty much said she considers the military to be a job for the chawners, not taxpayers, and said they were pawns the Corporate Council used. She said the Council was responsible for the Truce, that they kept the Tahni around as a threat to justify their existence.”
Gramps appeared thoughtful, his dark eyes taking a faraway look.
“Do you believe her?” I asked him.
“I believe she believes it,” he said with a casual shrug. I was surprised it didn’t piss him off; he was military to the core. “These are the bedtime stories her father told her. Do I think that’s how it happened?” He shook his head. “Doubtful. The Council probably made suggestions, but President Cameron wasn’t a pawn for them the way Jameson has been.”
Denise Cameron had been one of the first presidents of the Commonwealth government; I’d always considered her a personal hero and I was glad to hear that Gramps didn’t think she’d been a traitor.
“Whether or not the Council can stop a war,” I said, “Mom sure as hell can keep me out of the Academy. She also had all your addresses blocked and told me I couldn’t talk to you anymore. She thinks you’re the one who put the idea of going to the Academy in my head.”
“I probably did,” he admitted with a chuckle, stepping over to the concrete slabs at the back of the old store and sitting down on one. “Well, the question is, what can we do about it?”
“Do you know anyone in the Academy that can get around whoever she’s got holding up my application?” I asked him, still standing, too keyed up to sit.
“Maybe,” he allowed, shrugging. “But he might not want to do it. Your mother has the power to ruin careers.”
“So, she’s won and that’s it,” I said bitterly, kicking at a loose piece of gravel and sending it skittering into the night. I almost kicked a larger rock at my feet, but reconsidered and knelt to pick it up, intent on tossing it at the rusted machinery in the weeds.
“Not necessarily,” Gramps said, raising a hand to calm me down. “There are other…”
“I told you once what I’d do if you’d gone too far, Mr. Callas.” The voice was familiar, slightly accented from somewhere in Europe and full of a smug confidence in his own ability.
David Konrad stepped out of the shadows, coming from God knew where, a thin smile on his harsh face and a compact pistol in his left hand that drew my eyes like an electromagnet. Gramps started to rise, but Konrad motioned with the gun and he sank back on the concrete slab, a neutral expression on his face but his dark eyes focused on the younger man.
“Master Gunnery Sergeant Cesar Torres,” Konrad said, mouth twisting into a sneer as he walked closer, between me and Gramps. “You, sir, have become a royal pain in the ass.”
“Don’t call me ‘sir,’ Junior,” Gramps growled at him, eyes hooded. “I work for a living.”
“It seems like what you do for a living is alienate Mr. Callas from his mother,” Konrad countered.
“She’s doing a great job of that all by herself,” I snapped, too irritated to be afraid of the gun. “How the hell did you find me, Konrad?”
“I never lost you, Mr. Callas,” he said. “The minute you bought that ‘clean’ ‘link, the software in your own ‘link took it over.”
I scowled. So much for my skills as a spy.
“What do you plan on doing with that gun, Mr. Konrad?” Gramps asked him. “If you’re trying to scare me, you’d best keep in mind you’re not the first man to point a gun at me, nor the best.”
“I’d never try to scare you,” Konrad told him. “I have too much respect for you.”
I felt the hair begin to stand up on the back of my neck. I had this feeling, like an unshakable premonition, that Konrad hadn’t come here so much to retrieve me as he had to dispose of Gramps.
“She’d really do this to her own grandfather?” I said, disbelief in my voice.
“Patrice,” Gramps repeated something he’d said to me the last time I’d seen him, “is a woman used to making the decisions.”
He looked resigned, like he had accepted his fate. I hadn’t. I still had that rock in my hand. When Konrad turned his eyes towards Gramps, I slung it at him as hard as I could. I’d played baseball since I was nine years old, and the rock went exactly where I’d aimed it, right between his eyes. I lunged in behind the rock, hearing the solid thud of it striking home but not waiting to see the result. I ducked my head down and felt my shoulder impact his chest; it was like hitting a brick wall, but he went backwards and I came down on top of him, grabbing desperately for his gun.
I hadn’t been thinking of the danger to myself when I hit him, just about protecting Gramps; but fighting him for that gun, I felt my breath chuffing in my chest, felt my heartbeat pounding in my head and felt the cold knife of fear in my gut. This was a gun, a real gun not a stunner; it was illegal as all hell in Trans-Angeles, but Konrad worked for Mom, and she was fond of reminding me that she was above the law. If I didn’t get control of it…
Konrad was one strong son of a bitch, but he was also stunned by the blow to the head and winded from my shoulder in his gut and my weight on his chest. I had both hands on the gun, trying to twist it from his grasp before he recovered, so I felt the sharp vibration when it went off, felt the burning on my bare hands from the muzzle flash, and heard the muffled report.
I knew it hadn’t hit me. I didn’t hurt; I was sure it would hurt if I’d been shot. I thought for a second it had gone off into the dirt between us, but then I felt Konrad go limp, felt the strength go out of his hands where he’d been trying to turn the gun towards me. I looked up into his eyes, saw them opening wide in shock, his mouth slack. I pulled the gun out of his unresisting fingers and pushed away from him, only then feeling the sticky wetness on the front of my jacket. Blood was pumping out of the hole in his chest, gushing out, and it was all over me.
I stared down at it, feeling myself start to shake, hearing the gasping of my own breath loud in my ears as I started to hyperventilate. My vision seemed to narrow to a dark tunnel with a dying man in the center of it. He jerked in spasms of firing nerves, fingers clutching at nothing as the life poured out of him.
I barely noticed when Gramps pulled the gun out of my hands, only looking at him when he gently turned me around with an arm on my shoulder. He was saying something, but I didn’t comprehend it until he’d repeated it.
“Take it easy, Ty, take it easy. Calm down, son.”
“I killed him.” I was saying it, but it felt like I was hearing someone else say it. “I killed him, Gramps.”
“He’s the one that brought the gun, Ty,” Gramps was telling me. He stripped my blood-soaked jacket off of me and I was too numb to object. “You saved my life.”
I looked back. Konrad wasn’t breathing and the blood had stopped flowing. He’d always looked so sure of himself; he didn’t seem sure of anything now. His face seemed confused in death, as if he hadn’t been expecting it. I guess most people didn’t.
“I killed him,” I said again, panic welling up in my guts. “What the hell am
I gonna’ do? They’ll know…he knew where I was, they can trace me and him here, and when he doesn’t come back…”
“Your mother won’t allow you to be convicted of murder, Ty,” Gramps reminded me softly. I glanced at him sharply, realizing with a sickening surge of hope that he was right. She’d cover it up…and hold it over my head for the rest of my life, to make sure I did exactly what she wanted me to do. I felt blood drain out of my face at the realization, relief changing to despair in a heartbeat.
“There’s another way out of this,” Gramps said, hand grasping my arm with a comforting strength.
“What is it?” I was a drowning man, grabbing at air.
“There’s a street surgeon in Vegas,” he told me. “He owes me a favor. He can change your appearance, and he can use a retrovirus to alter your DNA signature. He has the connections to get you a fake ID in the system that will pass enough for you to enlist in the Marines. That will get you off-planet, and away from your Mother.”
I was nodding. Enlisting wasn’t what I had in mind, but it wouldn’t be so bad…
“Ty.” There was a foreboding tone in his voice and I glanced over and saw his visage grim. “You can never go back. You’ll have to leave Anna and your family, and you won’t have me or your mother to fall back on. You’ll be on your own.”
Anna…I hadn’t thought about her. She’d go out of her mind worrying. I started to run a hand over my hair, but then realized there was blood dripping off my palm and I shuddered and felt nauseous.
“If you’re going to do this,” Gramps told me, “we have to go now. If you’re not, you need to call your mother.”
I spared one last look at Konrad’s body and had the devastating realization that I couldn’t undo what I’d done and things would never be the same. I had seconds to decide what I was going to do with the rest of my life. It was too much, too hard. It wasn’t fair …