Zero Site 1607

by Andrew Calhoun

  “I’m warning you. Stop talking about her.”

  “Stop telling the truth, you mean? Or what, Dallas? Are you going to teach me a lesson?”

  “I’ll teach you what pain is.”

  Saeliko lifted herself closer to Dallas, her hands straining against the restraints. She studied Dallas’ eyes first and then the other features of his face – the dirty blond eyebrows, the two-day stubble blanketing his jaw line and surrounding his mouth, an old scar barely visible across the skin on his left cheekbone, the slight rhythmic pulsing of the veins on his temples. She came full circle back to his eyes and reiterated her advice, still speaking softly. “Go ahead. Punch me. There’s nothing I can do to stop you. Don’t you know, Dallas? Violence is therapeutic. Violence cleanses the guilt.”

  “I . . .”

  “Do it. Show me how righteous you are. Show me how evil I am.”

  “Don’t,” Soup interrupted. “She’s playing you, man. Just leave her alone.”

  “Hit me,” she said again.

  He brought his right arm back, lifted it and cocked it, fist ready to pummel her. Saeliko maintained eye contact and dared him to do it. Her curiosity was peaked.

  “Sit down,” Eliska said firmly.

  Saeliko turned to see the doctor standing at the top of the boarding ramp. Behind her, Commander Saris was nowhere to be seen, nor was the harbormaster. Apparently, Saris had fixed the problem. But the stress had taken its toll on Eliska’s nerves. Beneath the strict expression, Saeliko could see weariness, and beads of sweat dotted woman’s brow. She had bluffed her way this far through whatever scheme she had going.

  “You heard her,” one of the guards told Dallas. “Sit your ass down.”

  The Saffisheen returned her gaze to Dallas’ face and discovered with interest that he was still torn, still undecided, still contemplating whether or not to drive his fist into her face. He wasn’t paying any heed to Soup, Eliska or the soldier. “Time’s running out,” Saeliko told him. “Are we doing this or what?”

  “No.” He shook his head and eased up. His fist unclenched and his back straightened. Saeliko eased back down into her chair and flexed her wrists in the restraints.

  Eliska walked forward and physically pushed Dallas backward to his chair by planting her hand on his chest. “Sit down and shut up.” Surprisingly, he did shuffle backward and eventually plant himself back in the seat beside Soup. His eyes still glared at Saeliko, a deep chord of unconcealed animosity rippling off his visage. Saeliko held his gaze, unblinking and unfazed.

  “I don’t care,” Eliska said. “Whatever’s going on between you two, I absolutely don’t care. Stow it. Bury it. Act like adults.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Saeliko said and smiled. Dallas said nothing and stewed.

  “You guys,” Eliska lolled her head to the soldiers. “You’re not coming.”

  “Pardon me?” the soldier next to Saeliko said.

  “Aside from the pilot and co-pilot, this is an all-civilian flight.”

  “Not if it’s a prisoner transfer. Protocol requires a military detail to accompany her to the receiving facility and make the hand-off.”

  “She’s not a prisoner.”

  The soldier pointed to the restraints around Saeliko’s wrists. “She’s a prisoner.”

  “She’s a research subject.”

  “Both then.”

  “Not according to the transfer files Commander Saris just authorized. This woman is no longer the concern of Zodo’s military apparatus. She’s my concern now.”

  “She represents a direct threat to the safety of everyone onboard this flight.”

  “She’s tied up. What is she going to do? Spit on us?”

  The soldier looked around at his companions for support but found none. One of them shrugged. “You sure about this?”

  “Sure as death and taxes.”

  He gave her one last hard look before he capitulated. “Fine. Boys, we’re out of here.” He patted his nearest battle buddy on the shoulder and stood up to leave. One by one, the rest of the security detail followed him off the Kye-shiv, leaving Dr. Tannishoy alone with Saeliko and the two Earthlings.

  After they alighted and disappeared out of sight, Eliska walked to the front of the Kye-shiv and spoke directly to the pilot. “Are we cleared for departure?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Get us out of here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The loading ramp hydraulics engaged, and the engines powered up. Saeliko could hear the pilot rambling off a series of commands to the ship, which was followed crisply by another disembodied voice (not Roy’s) speaking back to the pilot. More magic to figure out.

  The pilot’s mysterious conversation wrapped up within half a minute, and he finished off whatever final preparations he was carrying out before yelling back, “Everyone strapped in?”

  “Close enough,” Eliska answered.

  “Ma’am, regulations require me to . . .”

  “Just get us in the air!” Eliska snapped.

  “Ahh, yes, ma’am.”

  Saeliko felt the craft lift vertically just like the Epoch used to do when it crested a wave. Then it slid forward through the hangar, out the open bay doors and into the open sky, reminding her that the Kye-shiv was, in fact, nothing like the Epoch.

  The ship climbed toward the clouds while the pilot and co-pilot tapped away at their control interfaces, occasionally reading off flight data to one another and verifying systems operations, none of which Saeliko understood.

  “ETA five hours and twenty-six minutes,” the pilot called back after a few minutes of this.

  Eliska, who still hadn’t bothered to strap herself into her seat, turned to look at Soup, and then at Dallas. She spent a little extra time on Dallas, apparently judging his current state of mind. “You ready for this?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Just like we planned?”

  He slowly nodded and activated the release latch on his safety harness.

  “You?” she asked Soup.

  “Oh yeah.”

  Saeliko looked at the doctor. “Ready for what?” Everyone ignored her.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Eliska said. She reached to an overhead storage compartment that had a digital pad on its front face. Her hand swiped across the pad and it beeped back at her before triggering an opening mechanism. Inside the compartment, Saeliko saw a half-dozen assault rifles.

  Eliska reached forward with both arms, each hand grasping a rifle and yanking it out from its moorings. She tossed one to Dallas, the other to Soup.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” the pilot yelled back. Saeliko spun her head and noted that the co-pilot was reaching beneath his seat for something.

  Soup and Dallas were on the move, both pointing their rifles at the men in the cockpit. “Don’t even think about it!” Soup hollered. The co-pilot withdrew his hand and put it back on the panel in front of him.

  “What is this?” the pilot yelled again.

  “Change of plans,” Eliska told him.

  “Are you . . . Are you hijacking us?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I just did.”

  “Why?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Ahh, okay. But you can’t possibly get away with this.” He looked at Eliska with condescending eyes. “We have a transponder on board. ARCOB tracks our flight path. The alarms are going to go off as soon as we deviate.”

  “No they won’t.”

  “Huh?” He looked puzzled.

  “And don’t bother trying to use your radio. You’ll find it’s been disabled.”

  “What?”

  She handed a device to the pilot. “Take us there.”

  The pilot took the device, careful not to make any sudden moves. He looked at it and mumbled, “Coordinates.”

  “Where?” the co-pilot asked.

  “Nowhere good,” came the reply.

  “
Take us there,” Eliska ordered. “When we get there, you can drop us off and fly straight back to ARCOB. No one gets hurt.”

  Back in her seat, Saeliko watched the hijacking unfold with a sense of deep satisfaction. Earlier in the day, she had sat in a cell contemplating her next move. Now she was flying through the clouds, witness to a hijacking being carried out by a woman who Saeliko wouldn’t have guessed had it in her. Life was full of pleasant surprises.

  2.2 KETTLE

  “They’ve spotted our tracks,” Jovis reported. The pilot was looking at a display unit strapped to his forearm that he was using to monitor the images being captured by the small drone he had deployed twenty minutes earlier.

  Colonel Caurfo looked unperturbed. “Where and how many?”

  “Just leaving the crash site now, sir. Looks like a few dozen soldiers from the nearby town. I can see a couple trucks, but a bunch of these guys are on quads and dirt bikes.”

  “Well, the trucks won’t be able to follow us up here.”

  After the explosion, the colonel had led them on a fast run through the forest. They had picked up a single-track trail and followed it up a ridgeline that Caurfo claimed was generally leading them in the right direction, which Kettle assumed to mean the colonel was still intent on reaching ZS 1607.

  Kettle and Haley had both pestered Caurfo with questions about the bomb. It seemed obvious someone was trying to kill them, or at the very least sabotage the mission. Why, Kettle didn’t have a clue, but he wondered if Dallas and Soup were in danger, too. If the mastermind behind the attack had been targeting the two Earthlings riding in the Kye-shiv, it stood to reason that the two remaining Earthlings in ARCOB might also be targets. On the other hand, maybe this was an Ender attack. His mind flashed back to Seventy-two, the one-armed, faith-driven assassin, doing his best to choke the life out of Kettle despite having a cutlass embedded in his stomach. The memory sent an involuntary shudder down his spine. On the bright side, if the Enders were behind the attack, Dallas and Soup were safe.

  Caurfo, in true military fashion, had told them to stow their questions and focus on their priorities, the first of which was to not get killed. They could worry about the implications of the bomb plot later.

  Jovis nodded, his face still glued to the miniscreen. “Yes, sir. The trucks are parked. Those dirt bikes won’t have any trouble hunting us down, though. I see seven . . . no, eight of them. The quads are following, too, plus about a dozen and half men on foot.”

  Caurfo grunted in acknowledgment and unslung the rifle from his back. He powered up the interface on the side of the handguard and checked the displayed data. Satisfied, he turned to Kettle and Haley and said, “This is where we part ways.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You two will proceed to the Zero site with Jovis. We’ll engage the Yensh and draw them away from you.”

  “No way,” Kettle blurted. “We can fight. We’ve been in battles before.”

  “Negative.” His voice was like his face, emotionless and uncompromising. “The Yensh are pretty ass-backwards, but it won’t be long before they get helicopters and other military assets out here. You two will need a distraction if you’re going to reach the site undetected, and we’re it.”

  “If the three of us bugger off, that only leaves twelve of you.”

  “Eleven,” the colonel corrected. “Sergeant Vasper is going with you, too.”

  “Why?” Kettle and Jovis asked at the same time.

  “Because Jovis couldn’t find his own ass with an anatomy textbook and GPS. With him on point, I’d give you about ten percent odds of making it to the Zero site and ninety percent odds of walking in circles in the woods for the next month.”

  “Then keep him here with you.”

  “Hell no. He can’t shoot worth shit either.”

  Kettle looked over at Jovis, who returned the gaze, shrugged and said, “Hey, I just get paid to fly Kye-shivs.” The pilot then returned his attention to the screen on his forearm.

  “Look,” Caurfo said before Kettle could offer any further protestations, “we don’t have a lot of time to talk about this.” As if on que, the distant sound of a two-stroke engine reminded everyone of the incoming threat. “Kettle, Haley, Jovis, you three are under Vasper’s command starting this goddamn second.” He pointed to a tall, lean soldier with dark brown eyes, a tawny complexion and a shock of jet black hair that came down over his ears. “Vasper, get them to 1607.”

  “Sir, will do, sir.”

  “We’ll come find you if we can lose these assholes first.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jovis unstrapped the display from his arm and gave it to the nearest soldier. “You’ll need this more than we will.” The recipient nodded thanks and gave Jovis a strong pat on the shoulder.

  “Here,” Caurfo said. He unstrapped a holstered handgun from his waist and offered it to Kettle, who took two steps forward and grabbed it. The colonel then motioned for another soldier to give a second sidearm to Haley. “Here’s hoping you won’t have to use them.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” Kettle said back after securing it around his own hips and making sure it was tight.

  “Don’t get caught.”

  “I’m not planning on it.”

  “I’m serious,” Caurfo told him, his expression bordering on grim. “These Yenshians can be real nasty bastards. If they catch you alive, you’re in for some real barbaric shit. You catch my meaning?”

  Kettle nodded after a moment. “Loud and clear.”

  “All right, Vasper’s going to set a hard pace. You two are Zero Stock; I hope that means you have the endurance to match him. If Jovis falls behind, leave him. He can track you.”

  Kettle wasn’t sure how to respond, so he just said, “Okay,” and left it at that. He checked Haley. The Korean had finished strapping the pistol around her waist and appeared ready to go.

  “Good luck, gents,” Jovis said to the group. “And happy hunting.” The soldiers reciprocated with various subdued hoo-rahs and hand gestures.

  Vasper tightened the chest straps on his lightweight army pack and began heading up the trail with a last glance behind him to make sure Kettle and Haley were in tow. Jovis stepped in behind Haley to bring up the rear. Kettle heard Caurfo calmly rattle off a stream of commands to the remaining soldiers to prepare them for the incoming pursuers, commands that included the words ambush, suppressing fire and remote detonators. Distraction indeed. Kettle had only known Caurfo for a short time, but he was unmistakably certain that the colonel didn’t play around when it came to military engagements. That man was going to blow some things up.

  Not ten seconds up the trail, Vasper shifted gears from fast walk to brisk jog, a concept that Kettle and Haley both would have found highly distasteful back on Diego Garcia not so long ago, but now, for Kettle at least, fell somewhere between comfortable and outright invigorating.

  This was the Zero Stock effect. It surged through him, comforted him, heightened his senses, buttressed his muscles, sharpened his data-processing skills, stripped away his doubts. The more he came into contact with these genetic stirrings that had lain dormant inside him until the ill-fated flight out of DG, the more he relished the experience. With his Zero heritage switched off, he was muddling through each day with about as much savvy as any other middle class American schmoe, but when it was turned on, he was sucking the very marrow out of life. It was not something that Kettle could easily put into words. He felt more alive than alive. More engaged in the world around him. He was fully in control.

  Vasper was a strong runner. Kettle could tell by the man’s effortless gait that this wasn’t his first time romping along a single-track path through the forest with a rifle lashed to his backpack. His body movements were efficient; he wasted no more energy than was necessary, and he continually made micro-adjustments to account for the weight of the rifle as he went around corners or hopped over fallen branches and other debris.

  Nor did he slow down. Minutes
drifted by, and even from behind, Kettle recognized the comfort in Vasper’s countenance. His straight black hair bobbed up and down with each stride like the rhythmic beating of a drum, and Kettle imagined that Vasper would be a good ultrarunner back on Earth.

  The thought made Kettle crack a smile while his own legs pumped to keep up. The old him would have snubbed his nose at the very concept of ultrarunning. A bunch of tree-hugging, tofu-eating, holier-than-thou-art fitness freaks testing the limits of their own stubbornness. The new Kettle entertained the idea. It intrigued him. He felt the ease with which his own body matched Vasper’s swift passage through the forest, and he began to ponder where the outer thresholds of his endurance might lie. He wondered how many miles he could cover before exhaustion claimed him. Did his recent physical alterations make him elite? Could he beat Vasper?

  Could Haley beat them both? Kettle heard the Korean’s footfalls a few yards back striking a cadence that was fractionally quicker than his own to compensate for her shorter frame. He considered commenting on their newly developed aptitude for distance running but held back for fear of rekindling their earlier argument on the Kye-shiv. His instincts told him that the best way forward would be to apologize to Haley for making a big deal out of nothing and making her uncomfortable. That was the manly thing to do. But it wasn’t what he wanted to do. It wasn’t nothing. He couldn’t put a finger on why, but Haley’s horizontal encounter with Soup was an act of infidelity, a betrayal of sorts, a violation of the bond the four of them shared. He resented her for it. He wanted her to apologize and to make things right again.

  Or maybe Haley was right; maybe he was jealous. Maybe he was being irrational. Kettle recalled Dr. Tannishoy’s comments on Zero attributes and acknowledged the possibility that his feelings on Haley and Soup were being influenced by forces not completely under his control, a possibility that had disturbing implications. It also suggested Haley might not have mastery over her own feelings on the matter. Maybe they were both confused about what they really wanted.