The Mutineer's Daughter

by Chris Kennedy

  Her toes went over the ledge, then her legs. It was almost like being in the tunnels and hanging over the abyss again. She paused to take a breath when she got to her waist. “Got me?” she asked.

  Dan took up some of the tension, so she could feel the pull. “I’ve got you,” he said. “Go fast, but be careful.”

  “Got it.” Mio grabbed the rope in her left hand and slid backward into a seated position in the rope chair, holding on with one hand while she guided herself down with the other. It was easier this time. After being upside down in the dark, being right-side up was a lot more comfortable.

  Dan lowered her to the vent, but she realized she had a problem; there was no way for her to turn around and go through feet first; she would have to go head first, which would entail dangling upside-down again.

  That position was not one she favored, but at least she didn’t have the heavy vent in her hands; she would be able to turn and grab the rope when needed. Steeling herself, she reached out, grabbed the lip of the hole, and pulled herself over to it. She stuck her head through but couldn’t see anything below in the dark. She started to pull herself through, but her shoulders wouldn’t fit. She pulled harder, but only succeeded in getting herself stuck.

  After a second or two of panic, she was finally able to free herself by pushing back out. She looked at the vent for a second as she dangled; it was almost exactly the same width as her shoulders. Dan had been right—none of the men would have been able to do this, and probably none of the women either. She was the smallest person in the resistance; if she couldn’t do it, it couldn’t be done.

  What if she went through like she was diving into the lake over at the Cartwright’s farm, she wondered. Would that make her shoulders smaller? She held up her arms and watched as her shoulders rotated in. Maybe. Without pausing to think about it, she pulled herself back to the gap and reached inside the opening with both hands. It was awkward struggling through, but eventually she got enough of her arms through to pull back down with her elbows. Her shoulders were through!

  Placing her palms on the wall, she pushed off, getting her torso through to her waist. Hanging upside down, she reached back to grab the rope while her other hand pushed off the wall. Her hips were tight and her pistol holster caught at first, but she snaked her way back and forth, finally freeing them. Her legs slid into the building, and Mio pulled herself upright.

  She smiled. If this weren’t so dangerous, it might almost be fun!

  The rope started twitching again, and she knew she needed to go. Grabbing the rope with both hands, she gave two tugs, careful not to use her legs and upset Dan’s balance.

  She immediately started down. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom as she descended, and she could see individual boxes and pallets of crates stacked throughout the structure in rows wide enough to get a small forklift through.

  She also heard a small noise that grew as she neared the floor. A rumbling that would pause momentarily and start back up again. Snoring. There was someone in the building!

  Mio made it to the floor and stepped out of the rope. She gave three tugs and the rope retracted back through the vent hole.

  She began sneaking toward the front door, using the snoring as a guide. She had been wrong when she first looked in; there was enough light to see by—barely—and she was able to navigate the rows of boxes. She crept toward the front, staying next to one of the rows so she could stay ‘in cover’ like the raiders did. She reached the end of the row and could see the dim outline of the man 15 feet away; he had pulled a large crate over to the door and was sleeping on it. No one could enter without waking him!

  In the dim light, she couldn’t tell if the man was just a guard or a Terran.

  She approached the man, carefully lifting and placing each step as she advanced. At five feet, she stopped, as she was able to see the man’s clothes more clearly. The man was facing her and had a uniform on; he was a Terran soldier!

  Mio was going to have to do something about him.

  Darn it.

  At least knowing he was a Terran soldier made the ‘what to do’ with him question much easier. He was part of the unit that had killed her foster family and many of her friends; he would die. She popped the snap on her pistol holster without thinking.

  It didn’t make much noise, but it was enough to disturb the soldier. The snoring stopped, and he mumbled something. Mio froze, five feet away, with nothing to hide behind, praying he’d go back to sleep. He rolled over away from her. Mio breathed through her mouth, trying hard not to make a single sound, but her heart was beating so hard, she wasn’t sure how he couldn’t hear it.

  After the longest 30 seconds of her life, he began snoring again.

  Mio knew she had to hurry; at any moment, Dan might knock on the door and wake him up. She had to kill him now. She eased the laser pistol from the holster, holding the flap with her left hand to keep it from slapping. The man continued snoring, and she aimed it at his back.

  Like the first time she had aimed a weapon at a man, though, she couldn’t pull the trigger; this time, however, it wasn’t the safety’s fault. As she sighted down her pistol at the snoring man’s back, she realized she just couldn’t do it. Last time had been in combat, and she had shot the soldier to save Dan and Harry; this time, she was shooting a sleeping man in the back. It was murder, plain and simple, and she just couldn’t do it.

  But she needed to do something about him, quietly and immediately.

  She looked around but couldn’t see anything except crates and boxes. While she might have found a box light enough to lift, she didn’t know what she could do with it to improve her situation, other than hit him in the head with it and try to knock him out. Of course, if she was going to do that, she might as well just hit the soldier in the temple with her pistol and try to knock him out that way. It would probably be easier, and she could be surer of hitting him where she wanted. That would work. She would knock him out, then pull the crate away from the door. If one of the men wanted to kill the soldier, they could, and it wouldn’t be her fault.

  She took two silent steps closer and realized she couldn’t hit the man with the pistol. Not only was the angle wrong, but she wasn’t sure precisely where she needed to hit him, or how hard she needed to do it, to knock him out. Odds were, she would probably just make him mad and be within reach of him.

  Darn it, that wouldn’t work either.

  She was out of options. It was either shoot him or try to knock him out; anything else was going to end poorly, with the man grabbing her and preventing her from opening the door for her friends. She didn’t know what to do—she couldn’t shoot him, she really couldn’t, and she knew the odds of knocking him out were extremely low.

  Maybe she could just quickly pull on the crate, slide it from the door, then unlock it for her friends. That would work if the man was a heavy sleeper…but he had already shown he wasn’t. That probably wouldn’t work either, then.

  She was out of ideas, and she needed to let her friends in. They were just a few feet away, yet she had no way of contacting them. In horror, she watched as the doorknob turned slightly as someone tested it.

  That was it! She could just unlock the door, then step back. The resistance fighters could enter while she held the pistol on the sleeping soldier. If he woke up, she could shoot him; otherwise, Dan could deal with him. She wouldn’t even have to climb on the crate; she could reach it from the end.

  Slowly, she crept to the end of the crate, pistol in her right hand, while the man continued to snore. She could see his face now. His eyes were shut, and he looked as peaceful as a man sleeping on a crate could be. She could also see his rifle and helmet, which were on the far side from her. Should she try to take his rifle?

  No, it was too dangerous. She decided to continue with her plan. The door looked easy enough to open, but there were two locks, not one. She stretched out her left hand toward the door handle, her hand shaking with the tension. All she needed was a simple twist
of the mechanism on the doorknob and another of the bolt above it. Her fingertip touched the lock on the doorknob. Darn it—it was further than she’d thought; she’d misjudged the distance in the gloom. She stretched, then leaned in, her arm not more than six inches from the man’s face, and was able to get a good enough grip to turn the lock. It moved silently; the door was unlocked. Now for the bolt.

  She was reaching for the bolt lever when the handle turned, and someone outside tried to open the door. It rattled in its frame, and the soldier was instantly awake. Like a snake striking, his hand shot up and grabbed her arm. She tried to reach the bolt, but his grip was like iron; she couldn’t move.

  “Heh, heh, what have we got here?” he asked, rolling onto his back and leaning back so he could see her. “Ooh, something pretty has come to visit me.”

  Mio tried to pull away, but there was no way she could break his grasp. He started pulling her down, bringing her face closer to his. She could smell his breath. Putrid. He had been drinking something, which is probably why he had the crate by the door, so no one would sneak up on him.

  “How about a little kiss?” he asked.

  “No!” Mio screamed, slamming the butt of her pistol down on his forehead as hard as she could. The soldier tried to get away, but only succeeded in changing the impact point from his temple to his mouth. Mio drove the butt into his lower lip and chin and heard the sounds of shattering teeth.

  “Mmpf!” the man exclaimed, both his hands going to his face.

  Mio wasn’t ready for the sudden release and fell backward to the floor. The man rolled off the crate, blood pouring from his mouth, and turned toward Mio.

  “I was just going to have a little fun with you,” the soldier said. He spat out part of a tooth. “But now I’m going to kill you.”

  Mio skittered back on her hands and feet until she ran into a crate. She was trapped. To her right, the wall. The crates ran from behind her to her left. She couldn’t escape.

  She raised the pistol in her shaking hand. “Stay back,” she warned. “I don’t want to kill you, but I will.”

  “You? Kill me? I don’t think you have it in you.”

  “I’ve already killed three Turds just like you,” Mio replied. She brought up her left hand to help hold the pistol, and the shaking became less pronounced. With many hours on the range, she didn’t have to look; she flipped the safety off with a finger. “Don’t make me kill you.”

  The man took a step toward her, and then another. “See now,” he said, “maybe I got you wrong. You’ve got fire in you. I like fire.” He took another step. “We could probably be friends.” Another step.

  The man was only a couple of steps from grabbing her. “If you come any closer, I’ll shoot!” Mio warned.

  With a roar, the man dove for her. Mio had been aiming at his chest; when he dove, his head came down, and the beam intercepted the top, drilling into it. The man crashed into Mio, slamming her head against the crates. Everything went black.

  * * *

  A rattling noise woke her, and she struggled to remember where she was and why she was being squashed. She opened one eye—the other seemed to be glued shut—and she remembered. Warehouse. Dead man lying on her. She pushed the corpse off and crab-walked to the right. The wall and an object on the floor stopped her.

  She picked up the object; it was her pistol, but she didn’t remember dropping it.

  The rattling sounded again. Someone was trying to get in. Not someone, her friends. She looked at the pistol and flipped the safety on before putting it in her holster, then she struggled to her feet and walked drunkenly to the door. Weird. Someone had put a crate in front of it. She paused to look at the crate in confusion, and the rattling sounded again. “Mio!” a voice called. “Let us in!”

  Oh. They wanted in. She pulled the crate out of the way, but no one came in. “Come in,” she called.

  “It’s locked,” the same voice said. She recognized the voice. Dan.

  She turned the lock on the door and tried the handle. It didn’t work. Silly Dan, the door hadn’t been locked. She turned the lock back off and tried the handle. Now the door was unlocked, but it was bolted. She turned the bolt lever and was almost knocked over as a group of men rushed into the warehouse.

  “Mio!” Dan exclaimed. “You’re alive! We thought something had happened to you.” He held her in front of him, both hands on her shoulders. A glimmer of light from outside reflected from her chest, and Dan recognized the sticky feel under one of his hands. “You’re bleeding!” he exclaimed. “Where are you hit?”

  “I don’t think I’m hit,” Mio replied. Some of the cobwebs in her head seemed to be clearing. “At least I don’t remember being shot.”

  “I’ve got a dead Turd over here,” one of the men called.

  “Yeah, shot him,” Mio mumbled. “Then he ran my head into the crates.”

  Dan felt the back of her head. “Yeah, there’s a big knot there. You’ve probably got a concussion.” He sat her down by the door. “Stay there,” he said. “Everyone else, let’s get what we came for as quickly as possible.” He looked at his watch. “There are going to be random patrols soon; we need to get out of here.”

  Mio watched as the men took boxes and crates to the truck, seemingly at twice their normal speed, including one man she recognized. “Hi Diego,” she called.

  “Shhhhh,” he replied. “Keep your voice down!”

  “Right,” she said. “We don’t want anyone to know I like you.”

  He looked confused but continued out the door with the box he was carrying.

  The men continued taking things outside and Mio smiled at them as they passed her. They looked like ants, scurrying about.

  “Okay,” Dan said, magically appeared in front of her. “Time to go.”

  “Time to go where?” Mio asked.

  Dan lifted her to her feet. “Home,” he said.

  “I like home,” Mio agreed. She took a step toward Dan and collapsed.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirteen: Benno

  Once upon a time, the Earth nurtured all known life. Humanity, ingenious, ever expanding, ever hungry for the next frontier, pushed outward, bending materials and science to its will. The solar system became its new playground, and all was good…for a time. Eventually, the pressures and tensions of life made that expanded disk of potential habitats too small to bear, and humanity thrust out again, this time into interstellar space.

  The empire of man expanded outward in an oddly amorphous blob, reaching out to the closest stars in a roughly spherical shell, until it reached a G-type star system with habitable, terraformable planets. It would then establish a new node for another spherical expansion, as expansion around the first star became less economically viable. After two hundred years, the populated Terran Union comprised a volume 40 light-years across, containing 6 G-type nodes and dozens of K- and M-type systems with habitable, terraformable, Earth-like worlds. Hundreds of population centers sprang up with millions upon millions of humans—though none of Sol’s daughters ever reached the massive population density of Earth.

  This ungainly mass of humanity was virtually ungovernable, but that didn’t stop the Union from trying. Close to Earth and the first few populated nodes, planetary governments took direction from the Union with little complaint. Further out, however, the Union grew more and more domineering and oppressive. Eventually, two nodes in the southern hemisphere of the celestial globe—Delta Pavonis and Beta Hydri—along with the ten inhabited systems around them rebelled and formed the Alliance of Liberated Systems, successfully throwing off the shackles of Earth and the Terran Union. The arm of expansion south was cut off from the Terran Union, and the Alliance struck outward on its own.

  New nodes were formed, new colonies were built, and one day…Paradiso.

  As one of the Lost Six colonies, it was small and out of the way, a far reach from the nearest node of Zeta Tucanae. It was a lovely world—a shockingly Earth-like planet that had hardly
needed any terraforming, which orbited the cooler orange K-type dwarf star of Gliese 902, 37 light-years from Sol. Given enough time, it might well become the jewel of the Alliance, rivaling even Centralis in its abundance of life, resources, and inhabitants.

  Paradiso sat nearly alone in space, a blue, white, green, and tan marble, 0.8 astronomical units out from Gliese 902. The world was slightly larger than Earth, but not quite as dense, so it had roughly the same mass and gravity. On the surface, technology was only sustainable by local industry to the level of 1800s farm country. Its inhabitants lived bucolic lives of contented toil, not dissimilar to what Mennonites or the Amish still practiced on Terra. They were playing a long game toward development, trying to get right what so many others had gotten wrong by rushing and spoiling their natural worlds.

  They were quickly overrun by the assault company of modern Terran troops.

  There was no way-station in orbit to stand as a port or sentinel. Paradiso was too young and too small to justify the construction and manning of a space station for the little bit of transiting traffic the world received. Perhaps one day it would play host to any number of produce carriers and tourist jaunts, but for now, the world’s skies were gloriously empty.

  Except for one ominous, unwelcome presence—the Terran Union Navy destroyer Annapolis. This vessel resembled Alliance warships as form followed the function and tech-base. The destroyer was elongated and angular, roughly divided into thirds, with a faceted cylindrical battle hull forward—bristling with lasers, point-defense cannons, missile hatches, and railgun mounts. Then came long banks of dully-glowing radiator panels flush to the ship’s narrow waist amidships, and finally a reactor-drive section aft.

  Aboard the Annapolis, the crew split its attention in two directions. First, they kept their eyes on the planet, ever watchful of the independent-natured settlers, looking for any hint of counterattack or rebellion, ready to rain down orbital hellfire as necessary. Second, they looked outward, awaiting the eventual arrival of the Alliance Navy. That was why they were there, after all. The TUN had never imagined taking these worlds would be permanent or uncontested. The lines of communication and supply were simply too long. They snaked through too much enemy space to make these invasions anything more than the gambit they were always meant to be: an attempt to halt the ALS encroachment into Terran space.