Perfect Flaw

by Robin Blankenship

“No...” Jim tries again. But it is too late. Sleep is reaching up for him; a long dreamless sleep that will only end sometime in the future, in another room with another Revivologist.

  GUARDIAN

  BY H. DAVID BLALOCK

  He couldn’t see anything through the hood, but the uneven flight of the aircar told him they had left the main settlement and were headed into the surrounding countryside. He again tested the cords holding his hands together behind his back, but they refused to budge. A cramp threatened to form in his right arm. He ignored it. He was more concerned about what they intended to do, and who they might be.

  “Settle down, Krandall,” the muffled voice of one of his captors barked. “You’ll just hurt yourself.”

  “No loss,” another said from slightly farther off, probably in the front of the vehicle. “Just another Guardian gone. Why are we letting him live, anyway?”

  A thrill went through him at that. He tried not to show his nervousness. He didn’t mind dying. He just wanted to go down fighting, not trussed up like a sacrificial animal.

  “Shut up!” the first voice snapped. “You know as well as I do we don’t question orders.”

  Krandall relaxed as best he could. Better not to draw any more attention to himself, cause any more tension. Even the best soldiers could forget themselves if they were put under too much stress. He knew that from personal experience.

  During the war, he’d been assigned to a front-line unit. One of their first objectives was to take the colony here on Beta Epsilon IV. It wasn’t much of a settlement, but its position afforded strategic advantage and He wanted it taken, He being Emperor Helion II, Scion of the Royal Line of Mavon, Protector of the Faith, Luminary of the Three Suns, etc., etc., etc.

  The Empire had formed order out of the chaos of the Dispersal, no mean feat in itself. Humanity had just begun to use FTL technology when the killer asteroid appeared inside Jupiter’s orbit. Those that could, left Earth before it hit, a giant rock 350 miles across plummeting into the Asian continent, rendering the entire world uninhabitable in minutes. The greatest achievements of humanity destroyed and mankind itself forced into ships, orphaned, doomed to wander the spaces between systems until dying in the cold void or becoming lucky enough to find a place to eke out an existence. Human beings might have become completely extinct if not for the genius and determination of Mavon. Born on the colony of Sigma Eta III, he was the first of the second generation to believe humanity could once more rise from the ashes.

  It became an honor to be part of that effort, and Krandall was humbled by the privilege of becoming a Guardian of the Empire on his graduation from the Imperial University on ΣΗ III. He had served faithfully for almost nine years on ΣΗ III and then here, on BE IV after its liberation from the enemy, for another three. There had not been any evidence of enemy presence since then, at least, not until now.

  The vehicle slowed. Krandall heard the man nearest him shift his position.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Roadblock.”

  The man cursed. “Have they seen us yet?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Spin. We’ll have to find a way around.”

  Krandall felt the vehicle lift and turn as it headed in a different direction.

  “Pursuit?”

  There was a moment’s pause. Krandall didn’t let himself hope the men at the roadblock had noticed the vehicle’s behavior and decided to investigate. He knew how even his own unit had come to believe BE IV was secure.

  “None.”

  “Good.” Krandall heard the man settle back beside him. “Your friends don’t know it, Krandall, but they almost rescued you there.”

  Krandall bit back a sharp reply. Best not antagonize the man while his hands were tied.

  “That’s one thing in our favor nowadays,” the man went on. “The Guardians don’t believe we’re still here.” Krandall grunted as the man poked him in the ribs. “But you do, don’t you?”

  He made no reply and the man eventually stopped goading him. The rest of the trip went quietly, Krandall going over the events of the last few hours, trying to figure out what was going on. It was hard to think, nearly as hard to breathe, in the blackness of the hood. He remembered being thrown into the back of the aircar and before that...

  * * *

  Guardian Krandall signed out his weapons at the duty officer’s station and checked it for proper charge before tucking it away. He didn’t really expect to need it. The colonists were becoming used to their presence, although Krandall suspected it would take some time before they would forget the bloodshed and realize the Empire only meant to help them, to bring them the best available from the far reaches of the systems. The Imperials put them to work building schools, roads, and hospitals. BE IV went from a backward settlement to an important military outpost. Couldn’t they see how much better they had it now?

  True, once in a while the odd criminal had to be handled. Attempted vandalism of the military installation was still a nuisance, but after the last incident the public execution of five of the conspirators seemed to have made an impact. Order had been restored and the colony had been quiet for nearly a year. The population was increasing, the schools provided the necessary education in the Imperial curricula, and the local constabulary had actually begun to adhere to the uniform standards.

  He made his way out of the Command Center and walked down the main road, turning toward the rear of the compound past the troop barracks. BE IV’s sun was setting as he walked by the mess hall. The smell of the night meal was just starting to waft out of its chimneys, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Well, he’d check on the guards at the ammo dump and then run back for a bite.

  There are very few things more boring than guard duty on a munitions depot. Krandall found the main entrance guard nodding against the wall of the building.

  “Crowley!”

  The man snapped awake and yanked himself to attention. “Guardian Krandall!” he yelped, saluting.

  “I assume you were patrolling and noticed something on the ground just now?”

  “Uh... yes, sir!”

  “Have you checked the perimeter in the last hour?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Check it again.”

  The other scurried off and soon disappeared, occasionally glancing nervously over his shoulder. Krandall forgot about him almost as soon as he dismissed the man. Crowley was a local colonist, part of a conscripted detail used for the more mundane duties. The Guardians, imperial elite soldiers, were the officers and commanders.

  He started his own patrol circuit around the depot. There were four other stations to check, all manned with the locals. One dozing might be overlooked, but if he found another one shirking duty there would be consequences.

  The structure was a simple design, rectangular with one story above ground and two below. The entrance was secure and armed by autoguns. Anyone approaching the front without the proper subcutaneous implants would be eliminated without warning. He walked around the building clockwise, checking the walls for an evidence of breach, not really expecting to find anything. The colonials kept well clear of everything on the military compound anyway, mainly because there was nothing civilian-friendly there.

  It was his lack of expectations that gave them the opening.

  Of a sudden, everything went dark as the hood dropped over his head, then totally black as something crashed into his head and consciousness fled.

  He woke in the back of the aircar.

  * * *

  They arrived.

  Two of his captors grabbed him and hauled him from the vehicle. Krandall did his best to keep up as they half-shoved, half-carried him along. He heard crowd sounds come and go as they moved. Probably down a long hallway in a big building. He was surprised no one challenged them, two men escorting a hooded t
hird. Just how large was this organization, anyway?

  They stopped briefly as a door opened and he was shoved through. Krandall stumbled, fell, skidded on the floor, tasted blood as he bit the inside of his cheek on the impact.

  “Shut the door and lock it behind you,” first voice said.

  “Want anything else?” The second voice was the driver, apparently more than a little annoyed.

  “Just do it.”

  The hood came off and Krandall flinched at the sudden light. It took a few moments to adjust, but the room wasn’t much to look at anyway. Barely more than a six by six cell with a single door, a military cot, and a metal sink moulded into the wall. His captor sat on the cot, looking at him with a dour expression. The man couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Krandall was startled to see he wore the uniform of a local conscript.

  “What do you want?” Krandall managed, struggling to sit up.

  The man scowled at him for a moment, watching him finally get into an upright position. Slowly, he rose, placed his foot on Krandall’s chest, and pushed him back down. Krandall grunted in pain as his head bounced on the hard floor. The other looked at him for another long moment, then returned to the cot. Krandall lay partially stunned.

  “Three years ago, the land where this building now stands was a farm,” the man said. “It wasn’t large. It didn’t produce tons of crops. It belonged to a single family who subsisted off what it gave them. Do you know what happened to them?”

  Krandall shook off the headache and struggled into a sitting position again. Once more, his captor knocked him down and returned to the cot.

  “You and your kind came, burned down the farm, murdered the parents, and then pressed the children into your work camps,” he went on.

  “I had nothing to do...” Krandall started to protest.

  “Quiet!” He waited until Krandall’s mouth closed, then spoke. “Since you lot came, life has been hell. We came here to live the simple life. We were happy.”

  “The colony was failing,” Krandall growled.

  “So you say!”

  “So said the colony organizers,” Krandall countered.

  “Imperial collaborators!”

  Krandall started to try to get up again, but abandoned the attempt when the other raised an eyebrow. “You’ve bought yourself more trouble than you can handle, you know. I’ll be missed soon.”

  “That’s up to you,” the man said. “We brought you here to see something.”

  “Nothing you can show me would make any difference. You’ve signed your own death warrants.”

  The man smiled grimly. “We’ll see.” He went to the door and knocked twice. As the door opened, he turned back. “I just want you to know, the only reason you’re still alive is because of one of those children. Think about that.”

  He left and two other men came in. So did the hood.

  Krandall stumbled and staggered blindly between the men, cursing under his breath at each lurch. They seemed to navigate an endless number of doors and rooms, bouncing left and right off door jambs and thresholds. His escort remained silent and unforgiving, pushing and shoving whenever he felt as if he might recover his balance.

  Fresh air. They were outside now, crossing a hard pavement. There was the sound of a large door opening. He was hustled inside an echoing building, heard the door shut behind him. The hood lifted to reveal he was standing in a storehouse filled with chemical containers. Above the containers, attached to the ceiling, was a structure Krandall didn’t recognize.

  “It’s a machine to disperse the chemical into the atmosphere,” his captor said from behind him. Apparently the man had followed them, because Krandall didn’t remember hearing the door open again. “Those containers are filled with the same nerve gas you lot used against the colony when you pushed our defense forces into their last stand. In a single battle, without even one casualty on your side because you were all huddled in your ships in orbit, you slaughtered more than 50,000 of our able-bodied men and women. People who, until you came, had been simply farmers and merchants, craftsmen and wrights.

  “There is a very ancient proverb. Perhaps you’ve heard it. ‘What goes around, comes around.’ At an appointed time, bases like this one all over the colony will simultaneously release their charge. Everyone unprepared will die within a few minutes of exposure.”

  “You’re insane!” Krandall said, shocked. “You would kill your own people?”

  “Our people will be safe. Shelters are prepared and the plans spread to the faithful. Only the Imperials and their collaborators will die. Beta Epsilon will be free again.”

  Krandall stared at the man in disbelief. “Why are you showing me this?”

  “Because I want you to take the word back to the Empire once the deed is done that Beta Epsilon will not concede to Imperial tyranny,” the man replied, his face dark. “You will be held here until it is done, then released. We know you will scurry back to your masters and bleat everything you’ve seen here. It will make them think twice about coming back.”

  Krandall shook his head. “You really don’t understand, do you?”

  “Understand? What is there to understand? You are invaders, murderers, tyrants. You deserve no better than death.”

  “We may be that in your eyes, but we certainly are not fools.”

  An explosion knocked them all off their feet as the door flew inward. As the Imperial Guardians poured into the building, Krandall looked at the dazed face of his unnamed captor.

  “Guardians are implanted with subcutaneous transmitters,” he told the man. “The moment I was missed, they activated its locator. It was simply a matter of time.” He smiled at his captive. “Love Live the Emperor!” he shouted as the conspirators were gathered together.

  HOPE UNKNOWN

  BY JASON CAMPAGNA

  Sooner or later, the other girls were going to try and take the last thing Hope had from her mother. She was one of eight girls crammed into a ten by ten foot cell stacked high with two columns of bunk beds. At one point, she thought she heard one of the starship’s crew refer to the trip as the “orphan run.” The air inside the room smelled of recirculated despair and left a stale taste in Hope’s mouth.

  She thought about curling up into a tight ball, but the bunk on top of her own left no room to turn on her side. Hope stared at the smooth white underside surface inches from her face. Someone had scratched into it, “If you can read this, then you’re fucked.” At the age of twelve, Hope understood the phrase, “fucked,” quite well. She never knew her father, but her mother had done her best to raise Hope on the street level underside of old New York City. Hope tried not to think about the man who took her mother’s life. He left the young girl alone and starving in a city with an insatiable appetite for victims.

  While the police were still wrapping up paperwork involved in the murder, Hope scaled the back wall of the children’s shelter and lost herself in the labyrinth of streets. Her single possession was a two-inch Statue of Liberty figure that her mother had given her.

  Hope slept in alleyways and abandoned buildings for months. She learned to beg for handouts and stole food from anywhere she could manage. Her meals often involved a trash can. Eventually, the police caught up with her and brought her in. Before she knew it, she found herself bussed off to the starport.

  On the ship, she felt like a rat stuffed into a cage. Part of her wanted to lash out at the walls and bunk above her. To calm herself, she would look at the figure her mother gave her and memorize the details in the metal work. Hope wondered why she was wearing a crown.

  As for the other girls, no one talked, lest they draw the attention of Regulator. Regulator was a floating gray-ball shaped robot who administered a nasty shock to unruly little girls. It gave the orphans the rules when they had first arrived aboard the Wayfar. The sixteen girls had been lined up shoulder to shoulder in t
he terminal at the spaceport. All the girls wore identical gray jumpsuits with nametags over their left breast. The machine circled around the group like a shark testing its prey.

  “I am Regulator,” the floating ball said. “During the trip you will stay in your beds except when otherwise instructed. There will be no talking except when otherwise instructed. Failure to comply will result in electric shock or sedation. Are there any questions?”

  Beside Hope, a girl with long curly brown hair and the name Tiffany Spring on her jumper spoke up. “I don’t listen to machines.”

  “That was not a question,” Regulator replied. A small prong popped out of Regulator’s sphere and the robot shifted in front of Tiffany. A burst of electricity arced out at Tiffany’s right arm. The girl dropped to the floor crying while she held the appendage.

  Hope held her head forward pretending not to see. Growing up in the city had taught her that making eye contact could draw unwanted attention of others. She clutched onto the statue figure in the palm of her hand. Regulator turned the prong to face her.

  “Unusual,” Regulator said. “Hope Unknown, your heart rate remains normal.” The machine paused for several seconds. “You are carrying a metallic object in your left hand. Show it to me.”

  Hope brought up her arm and opened her fingers, “I won’t give her up,” Hope said, “and I won’t let you take her.”

  A blue light emitted from the sphere and it swept over the statue. “Do you know what the object stands for?” Regulator said.

  “No,” Hope said, “But it’s the only thing I have left of my mother.”

  The electric prong on Regulator slid back into the sphere of its body. “Your failure to comply will have consequences for you later. This incident has been noted in your case file,” Regulator said.

  ***

  The door to the quarters slid open and Regulator addressed the girls. “It is time for the evening meal. Disembark your bunks and line up single file on the red line in the corridor. Everyone will line up behind Hope Unknown.”