by Dain White
“We can?” I said, immediately seeing his and shrieking in delight.
He looked at me a little strangely. “You know, we should get to work.”
“Yep… what do you think they’re doing right now?”
He replied somberly, “Besides planning on killing us?”
“Yeah…”
He was silent for a moment. “They’re probably dying inside, Jane. Thinking about their lives, the fight for survival, the things they did wrong… hell, I don’t much care. These aren’t people.”
“Amen, Yak.” I replied softly.
“Cover”
“Covering”, I replied, and watched him slide into the room to the left. I followed him slowly, hanging back as we moved into the room.
The lights were off, but not for us. About five meters into the room, someone ahead of us coughed slightly, and the sound bounced off the surfaces like a compression blast.
“Did you see that”, Yak hissed.
“Mm-hmm”, I replied.
“Targets updated”, Emwan said softly.
“Copy”, Yak said softly, and halted at the foot of the walkway, pointing down. He had spotted a series mine, a particularly nasty little piece of hardware.
“Hold on Yak.” I called, and disarmed the mine. “Can’t leave this live, it’d kill someone.”
He shook his head, and moved up the walkway like a breath of air. The silence in the room was oppressive, but as I strained to listen, I suddenly heard breathing and… heartbeats. Almost before I could think of it, they were plotted and locked. Suddenly I could see their positions clearly; waiting for us to enter the room, so they could light up the companionway.
They were everywhere.
“Hold”, I called out, waiting for Yak to pop a squat. “Yak, if you listen as hard as you can, you’ll hear their heartbeats. Once you hear them, plot them so you can see where they are. Do you see the walkers?”
“Yeah, they have a pretty decent range on us too, considering. There are rifles set up on the second floor, see them?”
“Yeah.”, I whispered.
“You can hear them breathing too, Jane”, he said softly. “You haven’t already been tracking them?”
“Only when Janis updated the data…” I trailed off.
“Sorry Jane, I thought you had done that too”, he replied. “We need to powwow about these suits. We need to get on the same page here.”
“I agree, but now, we need to take out the trash. Are you ready?”
“Are you?”
I reached down and tapped my knife.
“Nice.”
*****
“How’s it looking up there Janis”, Dak asked on comms. Pauli and I were watching some of the kids play in the bridge stations and laughing.
“It is going well, sir. I must say Jane and Yak are performing flawlessly, sir.”
“They’re pretty gung-ho, Janis”, he replied, watching a close match between me and a little a little fellow with missing front teeth, shooting asteroids on Pauli’s screens. He had me beat, solid.
“It is not without challenges, but they are rising to every situation, sir.”
“Are they in any danger?”
She paused for the briefest moment. “We are all in danger, sir. They are in a considerably higher amount of danger, but they are safe.”
*****
She ghosted along the walkway, about a half meter clear of the deck. I followed her a little higher. The first sniper was set up with a little turret for cover, but Jane floated over to it and turned it off, like the consummate professional that she was.
What a woman. She was about enough to make your heart skip a beat.
I watched with quiet detachment, as she slowly drew up over the prone sniper, moving like a ghost in the air above him. She lingered there for a moment, and then in a brief flash, pulled her stun knife and sunk it to the hilt into the back of his helmet, charging the blade.
The effect was immediate. He died without knowing why, or how. She waved me on, and took up overwatch. A little further along the walkway, a gunner and his loader were set up, the first of many, and each of them died the same way; screaming voicelessly in their heads as they faded into the dark.
Once the upper catwalk was clear, we split up and floated towards the walkers. Mine was posted up behind a barricaded strongpoint, with clear fields of fire and another mounted weapon. Following Jane’s lead, I ascended until I was positioned over the top of the walker, up against the catwalk above.
“Ready?”
“Go in 3… 2… 1…” I said, charging and firing at the zero point. The walkers blew apart into a whirring, snapping, hissing pile of shrapnel, bathing the room in high speed hunks of molten metal.
From above, the shrapnel burst outward across the room. It nearly vaporized the masses of men emplaced in this end of the room, grievously wounding the rest. The blast set off every mine in the room at once, adding to the cacophony.
As we held the high ground and the flank, we were completely in control.
We followed up with selective destruction, a shot at a time, one after the other. I had motion tracking up, a sonic layer, heat and organs. My target selection was ultimate.
We worked through the room until there were no more targets, and stood in silence for a few moments.
“Clear”, I breathed.
“Clear… Em, I am not showing any other targets. Do you have anything else plotted?”
“Jane, there are no hostile targets remaining. This was their last stand.”
“Where is Red?”
“He is among the colonists. Please follow your route aft. That was some mighty nice shooting, Jane.”
*****
“I wish we could do something”, I said, filling the captain’s cup again.
“We are doing something, Pauli. We’re being hospitable. These poor people are traumatized, mister. Do you think they need aerobatics and explosions in their lives? We need to let them do their job, son.”
I nodded, he was right, though I realized that didn’t mean I had to like it.
*****
The route we followed was quiet and empty, though I did slow us down a bit by disabling the various traps I found. Pressure fields, IR beams and even old fashioned molecular tripwire wouldn’t work on us. It didn’t even occur to them that we wouldn’t be walking. On a ship this size, people walked around compensated to .75 all the time.
At the hatch, Yak stopped and held his hand up, then waved it across his face. I nodded.
He signaled forward to the next bulkhead, and pumped his hand – we moved out.
I whispered as quietly as I could. “Why are we being so silent?”
He replied with soft laughter. “Force of habit, Jane… I was thinking we should try to get into the room a little more stealthily. I wouldn’t put it past this mook to eat a gun the moment we get the drop on him; that’d be an immediate downcheck from the Captain.”
I nodded, “What do you have in mind, somehow tunneling through the wall over here?”
“Yeah… what do you think? Can we do it quietly enough?”
I thought about screaming colonists and the shriek and moan of bending metal, and realized… they have been listening to booms and crashes throughout the Revenge for a while now.
“No way, Yak… but listen… what would stop you from going back there and blowing something else up? I’ll peel the corner of the room at the same moment.”
“I love the way you think, Jane… that is diabolical.”
He floated off while I took a knee at the corner, and studied the way the wall section was fitted to the baseplate.
“Ready Jane?” he called on comms after a moment.
“Go.”
“Boom coming in 3… 2… 1…”
As the explosion boomed and rocked through the ship, I punched my hand into the corner, through the metal into the space between decks.
“Give me another one, Yak”, I hissed.
“Copy, in 3
… 2… 1…”
I hauled up on the corner, shredding my hand upwards through the metal like it was made of wet cardboard.
“One more, I am almost in.”
“I’m running out of stuff to blow up, Jane.”
I waited patiently.
“Ok, I’m there. Damn this is fun. Ready? 3… 2… 1…”
I hauled up on the panel, ripping it from the floor and opening it in a big curling bend, taking a quick scan through the opening.
There he was, and he was wired. Worse, he was wired to a real mine.
“Need another?”
“No, and stay there, Yak.”
“The hell I will.”
“Damn you, Yak, listen to me.”
“Nope.”
“He has an active mine, Yak…. a very, very big one.”
“Can I beat him with it?”
“Yak, please stay away. I can do this.”
“I said no, dammit”, he replied, and hurled into sight from a lateral hallway, making the corner pretty clean and flying towards me like a rocket.
I laughed, despite the tears that threatened to burst out of my leaky face.
“That’ll work great”, he said, pulling up short and taking a look. “We can take him, Jane.”
I took another look.
“Yeah… cover me, Yak.”
“Covering”, he replied softly.
I dropped to the deck and steadied myself. Thinking about the tentative baby steps I’d made not too long ago in this suit, I couldn’t believe I was going to try this. Carefully, I pulled myself through the opening, drifting slightly off the deck.
We had made entry into a pretty dark corner. The colonists were huddled together, trying desperately not to get close to him, but clearly terrified too much not to follow his commands to do so.
Yak pulled through like a bad dream, and joined me as we slowly drifted through the room, closer and closer.
Yak held up while I slid over to the mine and waited until I had it disarmed. The moment I flashed him a thumb, he dropped mimetics and immediately grabbed Red by the throat with both hands, hauling him off the ground.
“RED MARTIGAN”, he roared at the top of his lungs in a tectonic scream of fury that boomed through the hold. Terrified colonists fled screaming away from us into the corners of the room. “You are hereby remanded to the custody of Captain Dak Smith, of the ARCHAEA!”
As they floated higher off the deck, he spoke in a deep, hissing voice as dark and cold as the depths of deepest space, “So nice to see you again, Red.”
Red starfished in his grasp, terrified completely out of his mind. Voiding his bladder, he slipped slack into unconsciousness and hung dangling from Yak’s outstretched fist.
I chuckled; he hadn’t even tried to trigger the mine.
“Mission accomplished, Captain”, Yak said proudly, holding him easily by the neck.
“Well done son. We’re enroute, hold for delivery.”
*****
They brought him into the cargo bay, naked and stumbling, their hands locked like vices around his upper arms. He looked terrified, but it looked like an act to me.
Gene and Pauli were on the upper catwalk, looking down, as I met them in the middle of the bay.
I stared him right in the eyes.
“Red Martigan, for the crimes you have committed, as Captain of this vessel, I hereby remand you to the brig for the duration of our return to Earth.”
He looked down, silent, his darting eyes seething with rage, barely contained.
“Do you have anything you’d like to say?” I asked politely, and then cut him off the moment he opened his mouth. “No… I don’t care, actually. Put him in the brig.”
“Sir, the brig…?” Yak asked quietly.
I smirked. “See that container there, Yak?”
“Yes, sir”, he replied.
“That there, is my brig.”
“Very well, sir”, he said, hauling Red over to the container.
“Hold your breath, everyone”, I commanded, and held mine while Yak opened the container. Red started screaming the moment Yak shoved him in, kicking and fighting to get out. Yak forced him into the dark, naked and howling in rage like some demon, and shut the door with a final clang.
“What the hell is that smell?” Gene groused from the catwalk.
I replied with a smile. “Gene, that’s some of the nastiest mud ever seen on any planet, ever. Janis saved it for me after she cleaned the crab, and said that we would need it, worms and all.”
I paused, listening to the muffled screams of indignant rage and other vulgarities coming from the container, and looked at my crew for a moment.
“Good job, all. I’ve been looking forward to this moment for quite a while. You’ve made me very proud.”
Chapter 12
The tribunal lasted as long as it took to present a staggering amount of incontrovertible evidence, including the duplicity and guilt of Americo Ventures, a deep forensic review of their financial holdings, and all information on their Solis program.
They fought tooth and nail against every proceeding, and will probably end up settling with the survivors, making some form of monetary compensation. Some people will undoubtedly lose their jobs, and a few may end up in prison, if they are caught.
Red had no such opportunity. The tribunal pronounced Red’s sentence immediately, his fate was sealed.
Following the time-honored traditions of the service, he was afforded a last meal, and given an immediate, painless death by firing squad.
I stood at attention while they fired, and the squad’s chemsers burned through him like fire, dropping him instantly. It was a quick and justified punishment for a man who had deserved so much worse for his crimes.
Americo Ventures was beyond the full reach of the service, but their holdings were seized, forfeited, and barricaded in every place they could be, and they were branded a criminal organization. Gloms have many faces, however, and I guessed they’d probably remain in business and profitable, for as long as stars burn in the sky.
Janis and Emwan see it differently. Emwan had perfectly assimilated the M2 variant, and it looked like their real troubles were just beginning. Pauli shared with me that both Emwan and Janis were reeling in M2 nodes throughout the Unet, so there was really no place it could hide at this point.
With Emwan at the helm of the Revenge, we had transported everyone to Earth. Some of the colonists eventually returned to their homes, others were afforded every luxury they wanted from a service that shared a collective guilt for failing to defend them from the horrors they had experienced.
I don’t know if this experience opened their eyes, but even if it did, it wouldn’t necessarily matter. Galactic society had grown too large. Gloms would still chase every credit as if it were their last, and step on anyone and anything to get it.
They wanted to give me a medal, but I declined. I had plenty of medals already. I did pull some strings to get Yak and Shorty reactivated, so they could receive the Medal of Honor for their efforts. They definitely deserved that, and more. The service was kind enough to discharge them afterwards with full honors and benefits, though they already had everything they needed.
It wasn’t all perfect however.
On the trip back, I was ashamed to admit that I had fallen to just under 10 kilos of coffee, even with dire rationing. My crew saw a full barrel tote full of beans, but I saw the last tote left. I was pretty sure it would be irresponsible of me to take us much further without a reload.
As we were also running low on huckleberries, I made a command decision, and one warm August evening found us dropping out of the still sunset sky into a field just to the south of Whitefish, Montana.
The occasional grounder hissed past along an ancient and careworn roadway, following their cones of light through the dusk, unaware of our presence in the shadows of the trees along the field.
“So this is Montana?” Pauli said, stepping down the ramp behind me, looking a
t the mountains to our north reaching for the sky.
“Sure is, son”, Gene replied, following him down and taking a breath. “Ah, Dak, it stinks down here!”
I sniffed the deep aroma of cattle and country, and looked at the twinkling stars far above. “Watch out for cow pies, Gene.”
“Pies?” Pauli exclaimed, looking around.
“He means dung, Pauli”, Yak said with a laugh.
“Is that what stinks?”
“No, we’re smelling silage, Pauli”, I responded, waving off towards the line of silos at the far end of the field. “It’s sort of like, where they take the dung to rot.”
“Ah”, he said, clearly not liking the answer.
“Everybody watch for grounders, now”, I cautioned, as we walked through the dusty grass up to the venerable roadway, cobbled with endless patches. Far from collapsing into ruin, it was an homage to the engineering feats of an earlier time.
We timed it for a pretty good gap, and then darted across the road like kids running for the candy store. A quick sprint devolved into a foot race, and Gene surprised us all in how quickly the elderly can move, when they get going.
Montana Coffee Traders had a faded sign hung slightly askew from the clapboard planks of the siding above, while a dusty, but well-painted porch beckoned us up a stoop and through a door paneled with beveled glass, rippled and wavy with age.
A subtle ding sounded when we stepped through, as a well-worn brass bell on a metal spring bounced off the top of the door. We filed in to the warm, soft lights of the room and looked at the glass cases of beans, stacked up like a general store. The entire room looked like it fell out of some faded daguerreotype from the ancient west.
“Now that smells nice”, Pauli said softly, as we took it all in. Beans of every color, consistency, and texture, raised right, finely roasted and cared for like the treasure they were. I could smell the rich Arabica, the subtly pungent Robusta, the rare and exotic Peaberry, all blending into a rich aroma that filled my soul with warmth and delight. Each type of bean had their own piquant tendencies, subtly enhanced by the roasting method that was used.