The Blood Service

by Allen Ivers

  There was the smallest moment of hanging in the open air, where the car hung in the open that he could see the severed drill bit lying on the ground a dozen feet below. He wanted to prop the damn thing up like a flag.

  And then the floor of the cruiser slammed up. His backache notwithstanding, they were through the Wall -- and no defenses between them and Vanguard proper.

  The cruisers formed up, kicking up dueling dust trails on their way to the glinting city towers on the horizon.

  “Do you have any idea...” Jensen began, pausing for dramatic emphasis, “How absolutely badass that looked?”

  “Oh yeah? Really?” Eden asked, her adrenaline building to pique and then her cup spilled over, “Then you do it! Do you have any idea how dead we should be?!”

  Aaron didn’t hear it, but he could see and point at the irony of her statement, “‘Bout that much dead?”

  Everyone craned their necks to see the demon vulture of a Howler on rapid approach.

  Of course, they would scramble air support, wouldn’t they?

  “Somebody got a grenade launcher I don’t know about?” Keira asked, more eager expectation than an actual question. She just wanted to notch her bedpost with a beast like that. It was like a big game hunter seeing a predator with blood in its eyes, and despite the tilted odds, they were still excited at the confrontation.

  Trust Bray to keep them grounded, “We can’t, we gotta lose it. We split up. There’s only one o’ him.”

  Eden scanned the pancake flat terrain of the Colonial Ranges. Plainlands far as the eye could see. “Lose it where?!”

  “Bray, we split up and we’re just rolling dice on which car it chooses to kill!” Jensen’s objections weren’t unfounded.

  Without a way to cook the Howler, it would drop both cruisers with ease. If the cruisers limped under ballistic fire, they would fold like paper against the Howler’s arsenal. They were suborbital vehicles with proper EM shielding; nobody had any heavy ordinance, and; there wasn’t enough ammo to waste peppering at the damn thing.

  “We stay together, it kills us both and the mission dies with us. If you got a better plan, I’m all ears!”

  Aaron sat up, “He’s right. Heads down and pedal to the floor. Huah?”

  He said more in that articulated grunt than he had meant to. It was all at once, a fond goodbye and a gracious thank you and a solemn apology and a gritty war cry.

  People were going to die in the next few minutes.

  Jensen pointed at him from the other cruiser, “I’ll see you in Vanguard.”

  And with that, Eden and Bray banked the Cruisers apart. Both were battle damaged, with cosmetic holes and scrapes, but Bray’s limped along with a chugging Maglev that had been excoriated by the claymore field. It trailed wisps of smoke from a leaking battery cell.

  Nora pulled her last magazine from her vest, swiping bullets out of a half-spent magazine with her other hand. She was taking the moment to consolidate her last few rounds, “I don’t know about you, Aaron, but I think we can take it down.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said with almost confidence, “We both aim for the left engine, we might not kill it, but we can ground it.”

  That wasn’t a half bad plan, but it was half baked. The idea that their rifles could damage the Howlers was more than far fetched. If they had something with a bit more punch, they might be able to wrench it out of the sky, but that was a tactical dropship meant for a theater of war -- it was built to take fire. Attacking that ship would be an honorable and hilarious way to provoke a door-mounted plasma launcher to cook them alive.

  Still better than being chased down like a rabbit in a field trying to outmaneuver the bird of prey lowering its talons into the grass.

  As silent as an owl swooping past, the Howler turned to hunt its prey -- it chose Bray and his crippled cruiser.

  “We’re just going to watch?” Eden demanded, furious and frightened all at once.

  Nora gripped her friend’s shoulder, “I wasn’t planning on watching, really.”

  Eden nodded with that, accepting the cruel reality of it. It was always a long shot, the seven of them against an army. They knew people were going to die, but it must be hard for the doctor to stand idle while it happened. It went against her blood. So she looked at the path ahead, the great circle they cut across the grass toward Vanguard.

  They’d be long gone when the Howler turned back.

  Eden and Nora might have been able to, but Aaron couldn’t tear his eyes away. The Howler descended on Bray’s cruiser and with a short burst of light, a fiery plume went up. The Howler paused over the cloud, a lion looming over its kill.

  All Aaron could see was Quinn’s face, a scared little boy being pulled into the abyss. It had been his purpose.

  They were all picked for their ability to die in place of others, variables in a cruel calculus that accommodated for losses, and commanders that exchanged one kind of person for. Numbers on a board. Capitals could die; they were Capital criminals, after all.

  They could die without anyone’s guilt.

  The Howler dropped its ropes, lowering men to the ground.

  And Aaron’s eyes lit up. “Turn around.”

  “Say what now?” Nora blurted, more surprise than anything else. She had just finished pulling Eden out of this depressing boat, now she had to collect him too?

  “I know how to do it. Turn us around.”

  Eden didn’t need to hear another word. She spun the cruiser around, drifting along the dirt before flooring it directly at the silent dragon.

  If he was wrong, they were all about to die. Trying to save his friends seemed like a good way to do it.

  They bore down on the unsuspecting Imperial Howler -- why would it prepare for an attack. The last known target was actively fleeing, and hardly a threat anyway. They would hunt it in due time. They had no reason to fear the vermin. But they had made a crucial mistake.

  “Talk to me,” Nora demanded, with just a touch of eagerness.

  She thought this possible, just because he did. And why not? They had thumbed their noses at fate all morning. What’s one more time?

  Aaron smirked, matching her spirit, “You said it yourself. We don’t need to kill it. We just need to ground it.”

  Nora’s eyes lit up. She immediately dug for their cruiser’s minesweeping rake and set about turning it face up.

  “This is gonna wreck the cruiser, y’know!” Eden cautioned, but she didn’t ease off.

  “I’m not worried about resale. Are you?” She shook her head, adrenaline trumping the abject terror in her eyes.

  All the Howler had to do was notice their approach, spin about and glass their little petulant charge into glowing slag. This entire affair depended on their arrogance.

  Nora locked the rake into place, tapping Aaron’s shoulder, “Are we holding on or jumping off?”

  Aaron looked at the blurry ground whipping past, “I really don’t know which would be better, honestly.”

  “Ride it out? Let’s ride it out.” There was no convincing her otherwise.

  Aaron and Eden exchanged looks, a silent suicide pact. This was going to suck.

  It was a haunting few seconds of roaring maglev before the Howler team noticed them, far too late.

  They tried to pivot the door gunner to face the new threat. They tried to retract their cables.

  They didn’t have the time.

  The cruiser zipped under the Howler at a hundred kilometers an hour and the minesweeper snagged two of the cables. The sudden force nearly wrenched the back half of the cruiser clean off, shredding the metal like it was a cotton ball.

  It felt for the briefest of moments as though they were stretching the world’s largest rubber band.

  The two cables they snagged were on the same side of the craft, and the Howler tilted with the added force. Onboard computers tried to balance the craft, firing one engine in overload to compensate, but it was too late and too low.

&
nbsp; The engine clipped the ground, and the silent beast suddenly shrieked. Chunks of monster were tossed across the plain and the beast itself sat hard into the dirt.

  Their own cruiser collapsed into the dirt, sliding into home as the maglev engine was rent asunder by the effort.

  Aaron inspected the critical damage and the belly-flopped Howler behind them. Intermittent coughs and groans implied that the crew at least survived the crash, but they weren’t going to be putting up a fight anytime soon.

  Familiar and bloody faces emerged from the pile of rubble that had once been Bray’s cruiser -- Jensen, Keira, Solomon and the eponymous sergeant himself.

  Jensen stared at the crashed Howler with a mixture of disbelief and awe. Keira eyed the same wreck, but more amorous than shocked, as though the raw destruction and twisted metal were the eyes of an erstwhile lover. Solomon inspected the damage around him, as though this had all been a misunderstanding.

  Bray just stared at Aaron, a wry smile cracking across his leathery face.

  Aaron jumped as Nora let out a gravelly cheer.

  Suppose they were going to walk the rest of the way.

  21

  Riley

  It had been a small thing to edit the paper records. No matter how complex the watermarks, or fine the threading of the page, modern technology made a mockery of those defenses.

  They simply altered the colonial finance records from the past two years, fattening the government’s balance sheet -- and then skimming that same fresh dairy off into Governor Dedria’s personal accounts. These files were then replaced, and then ‘discovered’ by a very moral bureaucrat.

  What choice did Riley have? Not only had the Governor been implicated in a massive conspiracy to defraud both public and Empire, he had been doing so during a deadly crisis.

  Details of extravagant meals and luxury items he lavished on his daughter spread through the colony’s whisper network like electricity through water. Talania’s revolutionary hobby was true progressive tourism, that of a dilettante descending into the mud to claim a kind of lease on systemic pain, before retreating to the comforts of three-course meals and off-world liquors.

  While the people nibbled their monthly rations, the Governor’s manor ate fresh meats from private stores purchased with taxes pilfered from their pockets.

  Public opinion warped almost overnight.

  The people were primed and ready to hate; all they needed to know was who deserved their ire. Talania had been pointing at Riley. Riley just pointed back.

  They led the Governor from the Aurora Tower in shackles. A bit theatrical, even for Riley, but the mob needed a good display of leadership and moral authority. They needed to feel it was their hands dispensing the justice, that they were the ones in control.

  Two Regulars marched on either side of the deposed Governor, one hand each latched onto their charge’s spongy arms. He was lax, putty in their fingers, all fight beaten out of him by circumstance and sleepless nights. He dragged his feet down the few steps onto the paved streets, scuffing the expensive leather loafers all the way -- not the best choice, given the charges.

  The crowd had been slowly gathering all evening. What started as a few dozen curious onlookers had soon grown to almost a hundred angry faces.

  The textbooks said that the volatility of a man was in direct proportion to the number of his compatriots; they took on the worst characteristics of their worst member, allowing a normally civic-minded professor of ethics to shamelessly commit a hate crime in record time. Shamelessly.

  Riley waited with Holmst and a cadre of troops, probably a few more than was realistically required. The cruiser would carry the Governor to detention, where they would schedule him a hearing.

  Riley would ensure such a hearing would never come.

  The soldiers marched the Governor up to Riley, presenting him like a package awaiting signature. Riley looked the man up and down.

  The stubble on his cheeks followed suit with the rest of his failed hygiene. He hung his head low, as if to present Riley with the top of his balding skull for abuse. His knees quaked, more from exhaustion than fear, ready to give in but for the Regulars holding him upright.

  All animus had exited this man.

  The Regulars called up the file on their tablets, sliding the image from their machines to Riley’s wrist display. Riley made a show of reading the file he himself wrote, the glowing amber color playing across his face.

  “Christopher Alexan dei Dedria,” Riley began, “You are charged with conspiracy, embezzlement, and sedition, which carries with it a combined twenty-year sentence. Do you understand this charge?”

  The Governor lifted his head, swinging slightly as if blowing in a nonexistent breeze or being hoisted up by an invisible thread. He pushed the single word out of his mouth, “Yes.”

  “Evidence of your guilt or innocence will be presented at your hearing,” Riley continued the Rites, enjoying that blend of confusion and frustration on Dedria’s face. Too exhausted to express himself and too weak to resist.

  The Governor had started to murmur along with the Rites, words every citizen had beaten into them from all the way back in grade school. Fear was a powerful motivational tool, and a strict enough punishment kept the world an ethical place.

  “The Detention Clerk will present you with a Duty so that you may continue service to the Empire. Performance of this Duty is a condition of your Citizenship. If you are found virtuous, you will be compensated for your time. If you are--”

  “Why did you do it?” Christopher interrupted, quiet and soft.

  Riley didn’t even slow down, tapping a few confirmations into his display, savoring each haptic response the hologram pushed back into his fingertips. He was driving nails into a coffin with each keystroke.

  “If you are found guilty, you will serve out your Duty to the extent the Court dictates. They may levy additional punishments as befits the crime.”

  “How do you think this ends for you, Marcus?”

  Oh?

  Riley’s eyes slid off his display. The Governor’s hunched form had curled into a ball. What had once been slackened was tightening up, such as it could. His arms bowed out, as if giving ground to the Regulars. Even they could feel the temperature rising, sliding closer to their charge.

  The Governor presented his chins, thrusting out the soft mass in a prideful display. It was as if he couldn’t decide which to declare as the real one.

  “They'll give you medals? Will they? Clap on the back? For this?!” He gestured with his shackles.

  “This is justice,” Riley quipped back, with just a twist of irony, “You’re a criminal.”

  The Governor shook his head, “Justice is for the people, not for you. Service to the people, Marcus. For they are the kings."

  Riley stiffened, “You’re going to quote scripture now?”

  "I am the Governor of Vanguard," He spat back, "and you need those words. You’ve forgotten—”

  Riley returned to his display. “Your hearing will be scheduled for the earliest convenience.”

  “So never?” Dedria fumed at the obvious result.

  “No. At the earliest convenience.” Riley pushed the display back into his wrist and forced a warm smile.

  “Service to the People… Governor.” Riley slid his eyes to the military cruiser behind him, reaching for the door handle to courteously allow the Governor to take a seat on the ride to in-house exile.

  The Governor was never going to take that offer, and with Riley’s back exposed, he lept like the obese tiger he dreamed that he was. Even with his arms bound behind him and his legs restricted, the man launched his whole body forward.

  Poor fool.

  Riley spun back around, catching the Governor in the throat with his elbow. The soft croak of the blubber soaking the broken trachea was all anyone heard.

  It would have been a crippling injury if Riley had struck a bit softer. Instead, Riley drove the blow home, hard and through.

  The
Governor was still alive when he collapsed into his guards’ arms, gasping and writhing. Without his windpipe, the man would find the singular horrors of strangulation without the comfort of a human face looming over him. No, this man was now gasping for breath staring up at the night sky, alone and afraid.

  He thrashed for a painful few seconds before he lost consciousness. Prompt medical attention might’ve saved him.

  Nobody called for it.

  The crowd fell quiet, watching with horror as their Governor fell still.

  Holmst glared at Riley, who offered a shrug in defense, “He lunged at me. What can you do?”

  He felt it coming in -- a ballistic object, slow and with decent mass, a brick or stone of some kind. His cybernetics kicked in, picking up the threat from the cries of the crowd, the flicker of an object passing a light source, and the sound of stone slipping off the pads of a glove. He could almost hear the irregular mass spin in the air, tumbling end over end. It was a solid throw, perhaps a bit lucky, as it sailed in towards the back of Riley’s head.

  It was the calling card of any anarchist in any century. And the second time in as many days. Imitators.

  Riley looked up at Holmst, confident smile.

  The lieutenant whirled around Riley, snatching the incoming brick from the air. Riley didn’t even need to blink.

  It was a bit like someone had dropped a match into a pool of rocket fuel. The crowd swelled up in a tide of pent up frustrations and lashed out on the barricade. They cursed and foamed.

  Perhaps without justice to be spent on the Governor, they now needed a new blood bag; or they objected to the manner in which justice was dealt out. But the audience at this execution had turned as easily as turning out a light.

  The Regulars ushered Riley into the cruiser, eager to get him away from the threat. Riley found that rioting mob to be almost adorable. They were so wrapped up in their hatred, they didn’t care who would absorb it, just so long as they could express it.

  These were not people with ideas and conflicting dreams; they were simply cups overflowing.