‘Of course we cannot fight them,’ Esperance said in a tone and with volume that was almost a shout, ‘that has been tried, I never said to fight them.’ She let that soak in their heads before going on. ‘What we need to do is move before they find us, when we choose to move. Make it our decision – start acting, stop just reacting. We need to move further than we ever have before, further into the desert, then move again even further. When we have moved somewhere safe we need to train, to prepare, so we can be prepared for defence when they come.’
‘And what would that achieve, young lady?’ This elder had a voice like a child asking for Toad candies after being refused once already.
Grandfather stood suddenly. ‘It would achieve, I believe,’ he said, his tone as frustrated as his granddaughter’s, ‘the chance to choose our ground rather than it being chosen as the place we have fallen down after being chased. It might achieve, if we are in the deeper desert, if we are deep enough into the desert, having a place to live for a while, for the children to live for a while, in relative safety. If we train some fighters they might last long enough in defence to give others, like you, a chance to run.’
‘Maybe,’ Esperance added, ‘if we go far enough they might not find us at all.’
Esperance had hoped to sway them on her own, hoped she had earned that much respect, hoped they could have listened to her logic, the wisdom of her thoughts. On the other hand, she was glad for Grandfather’s help – maybe they could convince the council between them. At least Grandfather believed in her wisdom; she thought it unlikely that he would agree with her just because they were family.
‘Even that is not enough,’ she said, pacing again, ‘we need to send out patrols, scouts, we need communications so we know when they are coming.’
‘They aren’t coming,’ said one of the elders, a laugh in his face, ‘why would they bother looking for us?’
‘They are always coming,’ she said as she turned her back on the group. There was no use trying to convince the elders. Her grandfather’s face had said, do it anyway.
Her face showed nothing but submission as she walked away from the meeting. Grandfather made an excuse and followed her, catching her before she left the circle of shacks that marked the unofficial edge of the camp.
‘Esperance,’ he said in a quiet but firm voice, ‘don’t run too far, you have our defences to organise.’
‘Grandfather,’ she snapped, ‘nobody wants me to organise the defences. Either they genuinely believe we don’t need to be defended or they want defences but don’t want me to do it.’
‘Who cares what the elders want?’ He laughed. ‘I am one of them and I don’t really care. Their lack of desire for planning the defence of the camp shows they are out of touch, you are not the only one of your generation, or even your parents’ generation, to believe that more defensive planning is needed.’ He laughed again, ‘Though I think I must be the only one of my generation.’
‘I know they would run from any trouble, like we have always run.’ Esperance sounded frustrated as she spoke. ‘What would they do if an enemy came before they knew they were coming, what if there was no time to run, what then?’
‘They will die,’ he replied, ‘just like you, I, everybody will die. We will all die.’ They stopped. Esperance was staring at nothing, Grandfather was watching the children playing.
‘You would know what to do if you just relaxed and thought about it,’ Grandfather said. ‘Your generation, your parents’ generation, they know the danger, or will if you explain it to them. They trust you, though they might not be ready to actively disobey the council. Nor should they, but if you work with them to plan how to protect the camp if sudden attack comes it would not be a bad thing.
‘It is important to respect the council, respect the elders, but as you and your generation will be the ones who would die defending them, you should make the decision about defence. There is nothing wrong with the fighters deciding when and how to fight. That was the mistake we all made too many times before the Toads came – always old men decided when and how to fight, and young men died fighting. We never let the young men decide how and when to fight and die, old men decided for them.’
He smiled at her. ‘One of the council believes in you. I do.’ He stared at nothing, his thoughts elsewhere, his mind in the past, or in another world. ‘Have I ever told you what your name means? It was an old word even before the Toads came, a word that nobody used even then. Your father, he learnt much from books in the early days out here, before he and your mother went scouting and never came back. I found their bodies some time later, plasma burned.’
Tears ran down his face leaving runnels in the dust. ‘Your father named you, he told me what it meant. I didn’t understand then but I do now. You were named after a town, a human town that doesn’t exist anymore, but the name means more than that. In an ancient language of Earth, one I had never learnt to speak.
‘Your name means “hope”.’
Devil arrived at his office, and looked out the window, as always, at the streetscape outside. The road was empty at that time of the morning; there were not yet any Natives arriving at the office with forms, requests or petitions for him to deny. Something was wrong; it took a while to register, as his eyes saw yet his mind refused to. Across the street scrawled on the walls in fluorescent paint were the words ‘JACKY LIVES’.
He buzzed his secretary, irritated that nobody had taken care of it yet. They should have called the Troopers straight away, they should have had someone from the city council clean it before anyone saw it, before he saw it. He wanted to scream; instead he steeled his face, became a statue, making sure his secretary would see the quality of his self-control.
All around the colony, Natives were dying. Always afraid – that would never change – they had, regardless of the fear, lost some of their habitual inertia. If Jacky, barely a man, could run free, stay at large for so long, why not they?
So they rebelled, taking his initiative, learning from his lesson. All made mistakes: they fought when they should have run, ran when they should have hidden. These mistakes, these deaths, the recaptures leading to torture, the men, women and children in jail – they did not seem to dampen the drive to rebellion.
Every violent death that had before bred fear, now made the humans who witnessed it more angry.
It was as if the humans, enslaved for so long, had been looking for a role model, for someone who would fight and not give up. Devil and his department could not understand why this time they could not restore order, why this rebellion was not easily crushed. There was nothing special about Jacky. Others had escaped, others had been at large longer, yet his freedom had become a rallying cry.
Devil blamed the media. They would not shut up about Jacky Jerramungup, as he was becoming known. How the hell had they learnt that name anyway? Someone must have talked, must have been one of his victims. The damned media got everywhere – he would not be surprised to discover some of them were even talking to Johnny Star.
Opinions were divided, some seeing Jacky as a scourge, seeking endorsement to exterminate the entire Native race, using him as an excuse. ‘Jacky Jerramungup is the Proof that the Native cannot be Pacified’ said one headline on the news net. ‘Bring Me the Head of Jacky Jerramungup’ cried another. Jacky was the proof, the excuse, the incentive – ‘the Native must be Destroyed’.
The other opinion was what worried the department most, some commentators calling for emancipation of all the Natives. If Jacky Jerramungup showed such initiative, such a desire to be free maybe they were people after all. It was bringing too much attention to the Natives, to the department, to Devil himself. The headlines espousing that opinion were less flowery, less attention grabbing, yet far more dangerous for all their subtlety.
However, in the end it mattered not which opinion was leading, which opinion was going to win. What mattered was the mis
take they had made in teaching the Natives to read. So long as the debate continued in all the media, online, printed and otherwise, the Natives would know that Jacky Jerramungup was free.
It was too late to suppress the information now – the news, the debate had gained its own momentum, and Devil knew nothing could shut up either side. All he could do was expedite the fugitive’s capture without seeming either to spend too much or too little resources on the problem. It was a balancing act the department was familiar with: both sides of the debate must be appeased.
Moneys and staff were diverted from other projects, in subtle and complicated webs of paperwork. A special contact circuit for information on the fugitives was set up, the extra staff minimal, while staff were diverted to actually spying.
The hardest job was getting information out of the Natives. The subtlest form of rebellion they could perform was silence, refusing to supply the needed answers. It was a rebellion they relished, one that was unlikely to lead to punishment. It would not do to remind them of Jacky by asking them if they knew where he was. Sadly, most of the spies for the department were not subtle enough for that task. More disastrously, the department sometimes did not know that.
So Natives continued to rebel, and continued to die. Natives continued to rebel and continued to be imprisoned, to be tortured, to be executed. Natives continued to rebel.
It was an old road, an ancient road, a human road – a river of cracked and potholed tarmac, dead straight, stretching, before them and behind them, to the western and eastern horizon. The air above the black tar shimmered and crackled with heat. The scattered desert trees, stunted and twisted growing out of the reddish earth, were the only things not drooping from the dry. Johnny Star, Jacky, and their small band stood in the middle of the road, the silence broken only by the morning cries of small birds.
Eagles circled lazily over the road, riding the thermals that the black ground produced, searching for the tiny animals that would fill their bellies and keep them flying. Even first thing in the morning the heat was noticeable, and when the sun made it overhead it would become unbearable, driving everybody but the eagles into the dappled shade under the trees.
‘I don’t understand why he didn’t come with us. He must have been lonely there, in Jerramungup all alone.’ Jacky wouldn’t let it go.
Johnny Star decided it was time for the truth, they were far enough from the town. ‘He couldn’t come,’ he said.
Jacky stopped dead, the others walked only a few steps on before stopping too. ‘What do you mean he couldn’t come? He was old but we could have given him the chance. He might have kept up, we can’t just leave him there alone.’
Johnny turned to stare Jacky in the face, watched Tucker step behind the young man, silently applauded his caution. ‘When the Settlers destroyed Jerramungup they captured everyone they could – better to take slaves than kill them all I guess. He tried to run, that man; a few of them got out of their chains and tried to run; he was the one who got them loose. He was the only one they caught, the others got away.’
Johnny broke out in mucus all over his skin, displaying how nervous, and emotional he was. ‘They cut his hamstrings, in front of the slaves who had not escaped, who had not even tried to escape. Made sure they would know what could happen to them if they tried to escape. They made sure he could never walk again, then left him to die.
‘A couple of the people he had helped escape came back days later, they found him there. They looked after him for years, fed him and gave him water when they could have left him to die.’
‘Where are they now?’ Jacky hissed, looking like he wanted to vomit.
‘The food ran out,’ Tucker drawled behind Jacky, ‘they had to leave and find more. They left him enough to eat and drink, enough firewood for a few days, then left him to look for food. That was two weeks ago.’
‘We have to do something,’ Jacky was frantic, ‘he is going to die.’ Tucker caught him as he made to run.
‘We did do something,’ snarled Crow Joe, ‘we did everything we could. We left him food – more than we could spare – we collected water, filled his bottle, we collected wood. We are going to hurt the next Settlers we see.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? We can help him, we can take him, we can’t leave him.’ Jacky was screaming.
‘You were unconscious when we found out,’ Tucker said slowly, as if talking to a madman. He released the painful grip he had on Jacky’s arm.
‘And we knew how you would react,’ growled Crow Joe.
Nobody spoke more, nobody moved; the gang stood waiting. Dip and Dap were so tense they were vibrating. A quiet so deep it was almost silence descended onto the desert.
A faint cough in the distance broke the stillness, resolving rapidly into a stuttering, throbbing whirr. Dazed by the early hour, lulled into complacency by the purely earthling scene, by the heat, by the painful discussion, nobody immediately reacted to the sound. Even that quiet, even so far away, it was already filled with menace, a menace they should have reacted to.
‘Flier,’ the word slipped out of Tucker’s mouth, in his characteristic slow drawl, almost swallowed by the surrounding emptiness. ‘Flier,’ he drawled again, turning to stare with dark eyes towards the sound.
Johnny did not respond, failed to react as if for a moment he had thrown away the paranoia that had kept him alive for years, forgotten who he was and where he was. Tucker reacted first, broke from the group heading into the meagre cover, the darkness of the scraggly trees on the side of the road. The other Natives, all but Jacky, followed, disappearing with practised efficiency.
The noise got closer and louder, its creator not yet visible, thunderous in the quiet, powerful, threatening. There could be no doubt left that a flier was headed their way, following the road, maybe using it as a navigation aid, maybe thinking refugees or outlaws would be unable to resist using it. Still the two men, one tanned bronze, the other mottled grey-green, stood seemingly oblivious.
Maybe they had not even heard the flier, had not heard Tucker. More likely they were both tied up in memories, in reverie, in deep thought, in the flights of the eagles, in the dark green of the desert oaks. So deep in thought they were oblivious to the hissing cries, the loud whispers of the men hiding in the trees. The flier was almost roaring in the emptiness before Johnny finally reacted, grabbing Jacky and diving with him into long grass under the scant cover of the grey-green canopy of a bloodwood.
When it passed overhead the flier was definitely searching for something or someone; it drifted slowly down the road, too slow to be simply travelling. If the Settlers in the flier were uncertain that what they were searching for was using the road, they gave no clue of that. Johnny Star thought rapidly as the flier passed; there was no way of knowing how many Settlers were in the vehicle, but he desperately needed supplies and ammunition.
As the flier whirred its way past, Johnny barely moved, the small movements he made invisible even at the low height they were flying. They were less than fifty metres past when Johnny stepped out of the trees, his slippery-looking Settler rifle in his arms. Taking careful aim he fired one shot, the superheated plasma hitting the underside of the flier. With a bang even louder than the flier’s roar one of the lift motors exploded – metal, ceramic and plastic spraying out from under the vehicle.
The pilot was good – he almost kept his flier in the air, the remaining motors roaring and shuddering. There was simply not enough power left for any pilot to use, no matter how skilled, and the vehicle landed on the road with a deafening crump. It had not taken Johnny’s men long to realise what was happening; they were running at his side almost immediately, carrying what weapons they had at the ready.
A Settler climbed half out of the wreck, he must have been more worried about potential danger within the flier than he was about the danger outside. He stopped suddenly when he saw the barrel of Johnny’s rifle pointing
at the centre of his face. Around the flier in a ragged half circle stood the little gang – Jacky the only one not armed with some sort of firearm.
‘My name, is Johnny Star. No doubt you are looking for me.’ He circled around them with an almost human swagger, keeping the barrel of his gun pointed at the terrified Settler. ‘They call me a thief,’ he said, ‘they call me a murderer.
‘I guess I am a thief, I have stolen quite a few things.’ He laughed, ‘I have stolen guns, ammo, food. I have stolen money, for that money helps me and my friends here,’ he waved in an arc, ‘survive.
‘I steal little things, and people get hurt when I do it but I don’t set out to hurt people. Our whole race are a bunch of thieves. You came here, I came here and helped, we came here and took their planet, took their children for slaves, took their future.’ There was a distinct snarl in his voice, his face expressionless in anger. ‘Stealing something to eat, that is a crime that would get me flung into jail. Stealing everything, that is just good government.
‘I have killed people, that is true, I have killed my own people. All those people have been trying to kill me. I killed people before that too, when I was one of you, a trooper. Most of those people you don’t even think are people. Those deaths will haunt me forever.’
There was no doubt the flier had communicated its position, informed home base it had been attacked and had crashed. Taking no chances Johnny’s gang ran off into the trees; they were short, twiggy and scarce but they were cover. They were better than nothing. It would take some time for another flier to be dispatched but it would be coming. Before it got there they would have to be well gone.
Their bags were heavy, filled with ammo and rations. It might have meant death for the troopers they had left behind, tied hand and foot, but they took all the water, bottles sloshed in their packs, a comforting sound for the still thirsty, always thirsty, Johnny.
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