by Allen Ivers
Riley chuckled as the cruiser pulled away.
Holmst sat beside him, his brow twisted in confusion, “Sir, I don’t think I can conjure a way that could have blown up worse.”
“You,” Riley began, “are just not having enough fun in your life, Lieutenant.” Holmst settled into his seat, quashing his frustrations. Riley smirked, “Out with it.”
“That was murder, sir.”
“Is that the title of your autobiography?” Riley inquired.
Holmst ground his teeth, the only indicator of the boiling waters that roiled underneath, “You are an augmented Field Colonel with Orbital Strike Command. He was an overweight bureaucrat with his hands bound. There are a dozen different non-lethal takedowns you could have used from that position.”
“And yet,” Riley said simply, halting that line of inquiry in its tracks.
Holmst sounded like someone had let his soul leak out of the window like a wisp of smoke, “What are we going to do about the civilians?”
“Formally declare martial law. Riot control protocols, extend the curfew to business hours. Detain any dissenters. We’ll need to requisition some space for all the time outs we’ll be giving. There’s a marketplace just off the Hospital.” Riley perked up, a hollow imitation of inspiration, “In fact, requisition the Hospital space. They have bedding aplenty that could be put to better use.”
“You’ve put some thought into this, sir.” Holmst wasn’t asking. That was an accusation.
Riley licked his teeth, tried to control his smile. “And tell Thor’s Hammer they have clearance to fire just as soon as they acquire our AWOL Capitals.”
“I’ll let them know, but they won’t,” Holmst responded a bit too fast.
Riley cocked his head at that, picking up on all of the compact information those words conveyed. There was only one good reason to have Thor’s Hammer hold their fire, and that scenario was statistically impossible.
Riley straightened his back, taking a steeling breath. He could feel his own frustration cup starting to runneth over. “They broke through into… How many Regulars are stationed on any one Wall prefecture?”
“Twenty, with a Capital support squad of fifty each.” Holmst ran down the rest of the details, like he was running through a casualty report. “Two Repeater towers, a Claymore field, and the ‘Iron Curtain’ electric fence. Even scrambled a Howler for intercept.” Holmst raised an eyebrow. “Thor’s Hammer has a pretty good view of the wreckage. If they fire now, they’ll risk civilian casualties in the hundreds, at minimum. Military assets would be among them. And that’s if we could acquire them in the crowds.”
“Screw the curfew,” Riley said, “Full lockdown. Find them.”
“Yes, sir.” Holmst avoided Riley's gaze, sapping all of the joy from Riley's body.
The dead man was right. The Ministry would hang him; the locals would burn him. There would be no justice; there would be no awards.
He had done the right thing at every step – and they would now punish him for it.
Service to the people? Screw the people.
22
Aaron
They could see the fires brewing in the city just after sunset, the lights dancing off the glass spires like ethereal candlelight.
"What have we done?" Eden asked, her voice so small, so distant.
Keira nudged the little woman with her elbow. "What makes you think it was you?"
Bray wiped the sweat from his furrowed brow, as he squinted at the glittering lights ahead of them, "Jergad swept around us, got to the city first."
Fatalist.
"No," Solomon whispered, his gravelly tone catching everyone's attention, "Would be nothing to see and a lot to hear."
"Jergad don't light fires," Aaron concluded.
This was something else.
The fires only grew in intensity as they marched in. Perhaps it was just the deepening night that made their glow more terrifying, as they cast dancing shadows up into the night sky. But that sinking feeling in his gut told him that whatever violence was going on was only getting worse.
They made the suburban edges of the city just as Nora blew out the heel on her boot. Rows of identical steel condos stood like prostrate worshipers before the obelisk of the city's towers, now positively glittering orange and red. All the lights were off in each home. Just silent gravestones.
The team traipsed from house to house, following the natural yard lines in toward the city center.
Bray raised a fist, and everyone paused. "Hide."
Everyone darted out of view, jumping in different directions. Aaron slid to a stop by the corner of a house, Eden flopping down next to him and clutching at his side.
She balled up his tunic in her fist, pulling it tight across his chest. Everyone found their comforts in every moment they could. Her cool fingers worked over the cloth, almost icy when they brushed his skin.
A long moment passed.
"What is it?" Jensen asked, calling across the street.
Bray snapped back hard, "Shut up!"
They waited some more. Sure enough, a cruiser rolled up the street – full of Regulars, hollering to each other. "Hey, skels! Not so smart mouth now, are ya?!"
They pushed something out of the cruiser as they sped along. It bounced and skidded along the ground, skipping whenever it found enough friction to hitch. The cruiser was out of sight when the package finally stopped – it was a man.
Eden rushed out. "Don't!" Aaron hissed, but it was far too late.
She dropped to her knees next to the man, staying low but checking his vitals. Combat medic. She had her training, her instincts.
The slump of her shoulders told everyone what they needed to know.
"What the hell are they doing?" Jensen asked.
Nora scoffed at him, "What? You never seen a gang before?"
"What did he do?" Keira almost laughed.
Eden shouldered her rifle and marched past the giant back en route to the city, "Nothing excuses that."
Everyone watched her for a second, before falling in line behind her. Whatever had happened here, law & order had long since been surrendered. Safety only came from joining in the chorus; dissent was abused from of the whole; distortions were excised. Learn to sing or be made to bleed.
Yeah. That sounds about right. That's the home he remembered.
They finally hit the city proper. The orange glow had overtaken, like flickering spotlights that aimed to turn the sky back to blue. They shot out of alleys like beams of red, lighting the districts one shouldn’t tread into. Aaron could see one of the fires, peering past the breaks in buildings.
Soldiers were fueling giant pyres, throwing whatever they could get their hands on into the flames. And they were forcing tearful citizens to watch.
Punishment.
"I don't think there's a whole lot of government going on," Jensen whispered to Aaron over his shoulder, "Do you?"
“Fra ti meeso,” Nora cursed just loud enough to echo. Everyone winced but her.
"Your little government stooge is going to be a little hard to find in all of this," Solomon muttered.
"She wouldn't sit quiet while all this was going down," Aaron said, "Bray? What would you do with a mouthy young rebel?"
“If I can’t silence them?”
“Yeah,” Aaron nodded, "You can cow the people into submission, you can kill those who resist. But what about the people too important to kill?"
"You throw in prison," Eden finished his thought.
“We’re not important enough to care about, so we go to jail,” Nora heckled, “She’s too important, so she goes to jail.”
“Cut the chatter,” Bray snapped, “Where would Riley put political dissidents?”
For some reason, Keira started to strip out of her uniform.
"Really, Keira?" Bray began his tirade, but she cut him off.
"We stick out," Keira said as she reached into a nearby dumpster, "If you're not part of the racket, you're gonna be part
of the take." She fished out a pile of clothes, dumping them to the floor. "Get dressed."
Aaron looked down at the uniform he wore: spackled with the dirt of the Pits, alien blood, his blood. He hadn't spent a day out of that jumpsuit in years. Attempts to wash it only set the bodily fluids into the cloth. His medals were scars kept and made. This tattered cloth was the only thing that 'belonged' to him anymore.
He left it in the bin with all the rest.
Riley’s improvised prison was the city hospital. While Bray knew how to get them there, Aaron knew his way around that building from the hours of physical therapy he had done during his recovery and press tour.
The broad corridors had been gated off at regular intervals, requiring key card access to pass through – they'd been reinforced with guard posts at choke points and steel bars over windows, but the reindeer games outside had lured most away from their posts.
The sterile floors had been scuffed and sullied with the inherent depravity of a prison environment. It was moments like these that Aaron regretted his sense of smell.
Former bank robber Keira had some experience breaking out of prisons. Breaking into one was largely the same principle. Unless there were specific protocols, barriers kept things out just as well as in. And Keira knew how to breach barriers.
She grabbed a guard and threatened to remove his particulars unless he relinquished his keycard. Bray and Aaron stopped her from taking his hand for any biometrics; just take him with us.
Annoyed, she schlepped the guard from checkpoint to checkpoint, walking them through each barrier. They passed violent criminals and the cravenly desperate alike.
Aaron paused in front of one room, peering through the small double-paned glass of the door. Talania had to be in one of these rooms.
Huddled in one corner, perhaps chasing warmth. Hair frazzled, clothes damp. They had hosed him off before dumping into the room.
He couldn’t be older than ten.
"Let him out."
The guard grunted a response, only finding his words when Keira cranked his wrist further up his back, “Can't!” the guard warned. “They’re killers and psychopaths.”
Jensen looked over Aaron to see what he'd found. "It's just a kid…”
"He attacked a peace officer!" The guard slurred, "Used a knife! He's dangerous."
Solomon seemed to teleport from some dark corner right up to the man’s ear, deep inside the man’s personal space, whispering a simple assurance: “Me too.”
Aaron shook his head, “How many more like this?”
The guard didn’t answer. Keira applied leverage. He cried out and Aaron leaned in, "How many?"
"We don't exactly keep count. I just feed 'em. Okay?"
Talk about throwing away the key. They don't even know who they have, or what they've done. They did something, someone threw them here. And that was the end of the conversation.
"You're going to think real hard," Aaron said, "And we'll give you all the time you need: Tall, brunette, young, been on TV a whole lot. Where is Talania Dedria?"
“Fra tow, Capital.” Now that wasn’t polite.
Something in his arm popped and he bit his cheek to keep from screaming.
Keira whispered in his ear: “Wrong answer. Now, for the House in Andalusia and the hundred-foot Parlor Boat, answer the man’s question.”
“Do what you gotta do, skel,” the guard spat, “Colonel will eat you for breakfast! He’s — already on his way with a detachment of Oskies.”
“If you’re gonna lie,” Solomon sneered, “Give it some conviction.”
“Freeze!”
Aaron rolled his eyes — Of course this would happen. He turned to see --
Anatoly and Kipling, sidearms drawn and staring down their holographic sights at the crowd. Their hands shook, fingers wrapping triggers.
Nobody moved for a moment. Then Kipling lowered his gun, “626?”
“Kipling.” Aaron nodded, “Anatoly.”
“You look… different.”
Of course. He wasn’t wearing his Capital gear anymore. He looked like a person.
“We’re looking for someone.” He said, “Talania, Governor’s Daughter.”
Anatoly’s muzzle lowered, but he kept his stance, “I heard what happened.”
“What happened?” Eden demanded.
There was a moment in Kipling’s eyes, something akin to pity. This was a Doctor too sad to deliver news to a critical patient.
He holstered his weapon, prompting Anatoly to do the same. “Let him go. He just handles the First Strikes.”
“This-“ Aaron pointed at the door, “is a First Strike?”
Kipling tongued his cheek, the shame positively leaking out of him, “She’s in the ID Ward,” Kipling said, “with the rest of the Seditionists.”
Aaron grabbed their captive soldier’s hand by the wrist and slammed it on the biometric scanner, the door locks on the boy’s cell opening with a baritone clack.
It seemed like Jensen was inside the cell before the door even opened. He knelt at the boy’s side, careful not to get too close, “It’s okay. It’s okay, we’re here to help. It’s over.”
Eden caught Aaron’s eye, watching as his vengeful eye drifted back to their captive, “You go right now. You tell Riley we’re here. He finds me, or I find him. Huah?”
The man nodded so fast it looked like a shiver. He knew what his other options were. Keira let him go, and he staggered away from them, his injured arm hanging like drapes pulled half of their rod.
Anatoly looked like he might melt, a great weight removed from his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” Anatoly stammered out, his whole body rocked by the release.
Bray clapped a hand against the soldier’s head, perhaps hoping to tap the insecurity out of his ears, “You’re slow, boy. But you did the right thing. That ain’t so easy, is it?”
And with that, Bray and the others sidled on past, opening cell doors as they went.
A veritable mob started to assemble behind them. Sure enough, Anatoly & Kipling fell in with the crowd of prisoners and malcontents like they had always been there, consumed and subsumed by the river of people. It wasn’t a move out of survival or confusion, but of exhaustion -- two people lost in their world and seeking some reason or direction. They followed because they were done wandering.
Aaron found the whole thing disconcerting.
Deep in the hospital’s infectious diseases ward -- where the quarantine procedures made for excellent cells--, they found the object of their search.
The room had been much like his old hospital space, but most of the furniture had been removed. Two fixed track lights in the ceiling were all that lit the space, likely because they couldn’t be removed. The absence of stuff made the room feel almost luxurious by prison standards. This amount of space for a single prisoner would have made them royalty in the Pits -- or a target.
Talania Dedria sat on the lone bunk, knees pulled tight to her chest atop the thin mattress. Her power blazer and trousers had been replaced with a rough, flimsy tunic and slacks — all too familiar to Aaron.
The thin curtains of her hair were tangled and crinkled, bunching around her ears and threads clinging to her forehead like errant spider silk. Her brown eyes stared into the floor, almost as though she refused to acknowledge the movement outside of her cell.
There was no sign of strain, but small lines were carved in the muck on her cheeks, where tears had blazed trails to the laminate floor.
He knew silent grief all too well.
Aaron stood at the door of her cell, “When?”
Talania didn’t move, her eyelids hanging heavy, fluttering.
Aaron had to shake all of his expectations of her. The Queen had used her form, bringing with it an alien distance and formality. But even Talania’s trademark brusque and bullish self had been purged from its shell. Eliciting expression would require some animus to be left in there.
Except Riley had been here, with his canteen and his li
es. Perhaps he had broken whatever horrible news personally, or he had let her deduce it herself so that the revelation would shatter her. However the method, she was a husk of her former strength.
The crowd hung at the door as Aaron approached, crouching low into her field of view.
Her eyes flickered, refocusing past him. She didn’t want to talk. Fine. He would do it all.
“You can’t let him get away with it,” Aaron said, urgent and plaintive.
She huffed, a small quiver as she scoffed at the notion. “He is the Empire,” she whispered back, “We are alive because he allows it.”
A tape recorder, playing back final parting words from a monster.
“No,” Aaron shook his head, “Your people need you. They’re just waiting for somebody to follow — Tal, people are dying.”
Now her eyes were tracking him, vague and frail roots to her anger taking shape again, “We were wondering when you were going to notice.”
Don’t back down. Meet fire with fire.
Aaron resettled himself in his squat, “You’re the Voice of Vanguard. If you sit silent, he wins.”
“It’s suicide,” she said, “He does what he wants, and the entire system defends him. I stood up for them and they… Those people out there? They sat it out. They let him do this. To me.”
Aaron pointed at the door, at the small assembly of prisoners and soldiers, “They look like they’re sitting this one out?”
“Listen up, Cap. You are nothing. I am nothing.” She pointed at the faces huddled at the door. “They are nothing. If he wants to kill us, he’s going to. And there’s nothing anybody can do about it. The only thing you’re doing right now is looking for a good reason to die.”
“I was a clerk.”
Talania’s hard expression softened, her eyes finally fixing on his face, as though she was trying to memorize this moment.
Aaron tongued his cheek. Maybe he gives her just a little bit more, but then it all just came out, “I wasn’t nothing. Didn’t used to be. I dropped out of school to help my mom pay for her medication.
“When she didn’t last, the school wouldn’t take me back. So I worked. I worked for the Washington Superior Court in Foggy Bottom as a Court Clerk. I took documents, dictation, recorded the proceedings, worked with the Bailiff and Court Reporter -- I was a bureaucrat. I was ‘professional at being competent.’ I worked schedules and covered phones. I made sure that room ran like clockwork.