Children No More-ARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  "One time," Benny said, "one time I'll explain myself, and after that, either you follow orders or you leave and fend for yourself. Understand?"

  "No! Who put you in charge?"

  "You did, just like the rest of them did, when you signed up to learn to fight. Every one of us with enough body mass and strength to be able to do any good against the government soldiers has agreed to learn."

  I glanced at the others. This small group contained all our best people. The rest had problems that made them liabilities in a fight. Everyone else nodded slightly in agreement with Benny.

  "You asked what I knew about this training," he continued. "It's obvious I haven't been through it myself; just look at me." He waited until I did, as if I needed a reminder of what he was or how he had to live. "Remember when I said the soldiers come and take away those with abilities?"

  I nodded.

  "Well," Benny said, "that happens only when they know about those abilities. Not everyone tells them. I haven't."

  Bob stared at him as if he was doing something wrong, but Benny kept talking.

  "A few months ago, I realized I could read people."

  "Read them?" I said.

  "Their thoughts," he said. "No, that's not really right. Their memories. They appear in my mind like long stretches of video, but with feelings attached."

  "Video?"

  Benny shook his head. "I keep forgetting where you grew up. Pinecone is a backwater, a place they keep farmers. What you can find on some of the other islands would amaze you."

  I considered what he'd said. "That ability would be valuable, like the way Jennie can heal people." I continued to be surprised at the connections I could make. I wondered if I'd ever get used to it. "Why don't you tell the soldiers what you can do? They'd take you off Dump. You don't need us."

  "So I can be their pet freak?" he said. His throat strained with the effort of controlling his anger. "So they can use me when they need me and the rest of the time put me back in some cage? No! I won't do that. I deserve to live my own life, the way I want to live, not as some special weapon under their control."

  The others behind me murmured in agreement. His passion was infectious; we all felt it.

  "I can read most people," he said, "as long as I'm within a few meters of them. The last few times a ship has come here, I've done my best to be nearby, like I was today when they dropped you. At this point, I've read a dozen different soldiers who've come here. I'm not good enough to pick up everything from any of them, and I can't remember everything I've read, but I've held onto their training memories. They went through a process something like what we're doing. If you want to beat them, you have to train, too."

  I stared at him and for several seconds couldn't decide what to do. That information sounded useful, but when I ignored his flippers, his cart, and the fact that he was above us, yelling orders, and instead focused only on his face, all I saw was another boy, like me, maybe even younger.

  "What gives you the right to give us orders?" I said. "It's not like you're a parent or even a grown-up. How old are you anyway?"

  He stared right back at me. "Fifteen," he said, "but in most biological respects much younger. Like you. The things that are wrong with us have slowed many aspects of our development. Your body grew large; my mind basically did the same." He shook his head and rolled to the edge of the overhang. "None of that matters, though. We're on Dump. Our one way off this island is through a group of trained soldiers. I'm the only one with any idea at all about how to prepare you guys to fight them. So just one thing matters: Are you with us or not?"

  He was right. As much as I hated even the little bit of training we'd done so far, I knew he was right. Something nagged at me. "If you can read people's memories, why did you ask me so many questions?"

  "I told you," he said, "I can't read everyone. I thought I could, but I can't read you, so there are probably also others I can't read." He waved his arm, the odd flipper still distracting me as it moved. "Look, do you want to train to fight these men, or not? If you do, we need to get to work. If you don't, leave."

  I didn't have to look at the others to know I was their best hope for success. I had the only large and complete body here. I also knew that unless they were all lying to me, my only way out of here was to help them beat the soldiers.

  Another connection appeared in my head. I didn't even have to think hard; it just happened. Jennie was really good.

  "And if we beat the soldiers—"

  "When we beat them," he said. "We must believe we will do it."

  "When we beat them," I said, "you can fly their ship because—"

  He interrupted me. "Because I've read those memories, too. Yes. I'll need someone else, someone with good hands, to do the actual flying, but I can tell them how." He paused and stared at each of us in turn. "So we can escape from Dump. When we win, we'll be free."

  I studied his face. He didn't look away. If he was lying, he was doing it well. I definitely wanted to get off Dump; I sure couldn't save Jennie as long as I was stuck here. His plan might not work, but I didn't have a better option. "Okay," I said, "I'm with you."

  "Then fall in."

  I joined the others and stood up straight, eyes focused forward.

  "On my mark, sprint as fast as you can to the tree at the beach's curve and back to this line."

  "Sir, yes, sir!" we all yelled.

  "I can't hear you!" he said.

  "Sir, yes, sir!" we yelled again, and this time the sound was loud enough that I didn't like it.

  "Better," he said. "Now, run!"

  We ran.

  When we were all panting and walking more than running, Benny let us stop and rest. He didn't give us long, though. About as soon as I could breathe normally, he had us lie flat on our backs on the ground and lift our trembling legs until they were a hands-width off the sand, and then hold them there. First, we kept our feet together, and then we separated them, held them up, and after a bit returned to the first position. Finally, he let us rest them on the ground—but only for a few seconds. Then, we started all over again.

  After a while, Benny told Bob to stop exercising and instead check us. Bob walked among us, making sure we were doing it right, sometimes lifting our feet with one of his, other times stepping on our stomachs as Benny reminded us to tighten those muscles.

  "To win," he yelled, "we must surprise them, and you must be both fast and strong. Strength comes from the middle. Do another one!"

  We no longer had to respond to his orders; we had only to follow them.

  As if we were one large person, all at the same time we lifted our legs and held them above the sand. My thighs shook and my stomach hurt and I had to squint my eyes against the bright sunlight that was heating the day. I wasn't sure I could keep it up.

  "Legs apart!" Benny said.

  Bob came and stood on my stomach. He smiled at me, as if he were having fun.

  I wanted to jump up and punch him in the face so hard it would cave in. I wanted to break him, to tear him in half.

  He shook his head slightly as he stepped off me and walked over to Alex. He was playing with me.

  In that moment, I hated him and I hated Benny and I hated the soldiers and I would do anything before I'd let any of them beat me.

  I gritted my teeth and continued to hold my legs above the ground. The pain filled my legs and ran up into my torso, but I didn't care. I would not let them beat me, not any of them.

  They would not beat me.

  Chapter 16

  Beach house, outside Glen's Garden, planet Macken

  Lim swore it was coincidence that she'd chosen as her planning center the same house I'd rented over three years ago. I've never liked coincidences, but I let it go; at least I knew the area. I drifted to the front activeglass window and told it to stop filtering and instead to let in all the light, so I could enjoy the natural beauty of the ocean crashing onto the beach only a few dozen meters in front of us. When I'd last been here, the ho
use had stood alone on this stretch of sand near the edge of the rainforest; now it had neighbors on both sides and behind it. In all the beautiful places we humans touch, we move rapidly from appreciation to commercialization and then to devastation, ruining the best parts of nature as relentlessly as any plague. I wasn't sure I'd want to see this place in another three years.

  At the large table behind me, Lim, Gustafson, and Schmidt studied the layout of the complex, adding new data to the model and preparing for our review. I'd arrived earlier than they'd expected, so after greeting them I was passing time while they finished their preparations.

  If Gustafson had changed since our last meeting, I couldn't spot it. Dark hair cropped short, taller than Lim but a little shorter than I am, his body thick with corded muscle and almost no body fat—he looked every bit the professional soldier he was. Even the fine scar lines on his neck and hands were still there. I'd once asked him why he left them when any half-decent surgery could remove them. He'd smiled and said he liked having the reminders of his own stupidity.

  Schmidt was leaner than when I'd last seen her, with very little fat and much shorter hair. Like Lim, she'd cut fat in preparation for the physical strains of combat, but her darker skin, the color of a rich deep chocolate, highlighted her muscles more than Lim's and made her look even more ripped. I was silently grateful for the nanomachines that let me eat anything I wanted and still walk around with under five percent body fat.

  "All clear outside," Lobo said privately over the comm. I trusted Lim, but I didn't have much use for the local FC presence, so I'd dressed for trouble: armored pants and long-sleeved shirt, visible gun in a holster, another one in the small of my back, a third on my right ankle, a comm link, and contacts with overlays showing near and far exterior views. Lobo hovered overhead in case I had to exit quickly.

  I tuned into the local appliance network. Some combination of the changes Jennie had made to me and the nanomachine infusion the Aggro scientists had performed gave me the ability to talk with machines on their standard frequencies. Though almost always dull, appliances have so much surplus computing power that they can do their jobs with only a fraction of their intelligence. With the rest, they talk—and talk and talk and talk. They especially love to yak about their work, and sometimes you can learn a great deal from them. I'd garnered little from the washers, which are usually great sources of gossip, other than the facts that the house had sat empty for a month this winter before Lim had rented it and that she had yet to wash any of her clothing. I was concerned about being monitored, so I focused on the household security cluster.

  "Will these people ever do anything interesting?" said what I had to assume was the main control system.

  "I'm ready if they do," a camera said, "with perfect focus on the fronts of the three at the table."

  "That's all fine and good," another camera said, "if they keep facing you, but I'm the one with the best chance at being necessary, because I'm following the male by the window. He has one gun visible and probably two more his colleagues can't see, assuming my contour-analysis software is correct—as it usually is."

  "You say the word, and I'll gas them!" the house defense system said. "If they even think about breaking a window like those last renters, I will put them to sleep. I swear I will!"

  "No," the main house comm said, "you know you're not allowed to do that. The owner's instructions were very clear: I'm to call the police."

  "I bet you're relaying everything to archival storage, aren't you?" I said over their frequency. "Just in case you need it one day. Smart."

  "Excuse me!" I couldn't tell which machine was talking.

  "How can you talk to us?" the defense system said.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I should have remembered what planet I was on. Machines on more developed worlds—newer models, probably—are so much more cosmopolitan about communication. I should not have assumed—"

  "Newer?" said the main control system. "Sure, some of these support units are a little out of date, but I'm the most recent model of my type that Xychek makes, and I assure you my updates are current. We're simply not accustomed to visitors with your particular skills."

  "Again, I apologize. I was only curious about how much of this information you were relaying to the owner's archives. I am, after all, here in a confidential capacity."

  "And you can rest assured that we respect your position!" the main system said. "Discretion is our watchword, so we hard-wipe everything as soon as the post-rental escrow period is over. Until then, the local copies live in a quantum-encrypted state accessible only to the primary renter."

  "Which means, of course, that my best work never gets the audience it deserves," the first camera said. "If only others could see the perfection of my recordings."

  "Perfection?" the second camera said. "You call those tedious hours perfect? The light where you're shooting is illumination of perfect constancy, and yet your work is pedestrian at best. I, on the other hand, have to adjust to the way this annoying twit—no offense intended, sir—keeps changing his position, all the while delivering a level of image quality you can only dream about."

  I tuned out. Once appliances start quarreling, they can keep it up for hours.

  The still, quiet interior of the house, with the only noise the soft murmurs behind me, contrasted sharply with the increasingly wild ocean and sky. A storm was advancing quickly toward us, the heavens darkening with clouds and the waves gaining strength and size as I watched.

  "We've merged all the data, Jon," Lim said. "Ready?"

  I nodded and walked over to the table.

  A holo of a wood-walled rectangular compound floated above it. A large perimeter of bare earth surrounded it. Inside the walls stood over two dozen buildings of the same dark wood. A camo curtain floated in the air over the whole thing, support rods rising here and there from the ground.

  "This place looks huge," I said.

  "It does indeed, Gunny," Schmidt said, using my old Saw rank—and her current one. She pointed at the dirt outer area. "The cleared zone is twenty meters wide at its narrowest points, much wider at others. The dozen or so almost identical rectangular buildings house the kids, not quite fifty of them to a barrack."

  I waved my hand through the cover. "Is that thing really good enough to stop satellite scans?"

  "Yes and no," Gustafson said. "It's activecamo material with IR interference, so the sats can get some shape data but not anything near a full read. It stays up only during the cease-fires; the rebels take it down and use it elsewhere as soon they redeploy the boys. All of this, of course, is per our sources on the ground."

  "You trust them?" I said.

  "Chu's people gather intel and relay it to us," Lim said. "They claim to be using only reliable agents and verifying all we see before we see it. Everything we've received from them so far has been good, but it's now also out of date. Chu said their sources dried up."

  "Died, more likely," Gustafson said.

  "I hope it wasn't a kid, Top," I said, "but from those holos, I have to assume it was. You saw them?"

  "Of course," he said.

  We all fell silent, each lost in our thoughts about those recordings.

  "We can expect about two dozen adults," Lim said, bringing us back to the point, "and, of course, about five hundred of the kids."

  "Why so few guards?" I said.

  "To the rebels, these boys are no longer prisoners," Schmidt said. "They're fellow soldiers. The adults are there just to help them get out quickly should the lazy-ass inspectors actually decide to do their jobs."

  "And the likelihood of that is?" I said.

  "Zero," Schmidt said.

  "Which is why we're here," Lim said. "Let's talk about approach options." She zoomed out the holo to give us an aerial view of the compound. It vanished under the camo covering, but a small green glow outlined it for us. It really did sit in the middle of nowhere, nothing but jungle for many klicks in all directions.

  "What options
?" Gustafson said. "We jump in, or we'll be on rebel turf during active combat. Sixty of us should be able to crush two dozen rebels, but if either coalition notices, or if, Heaven help us, the rebels spot us and tell the boys to fight us, we're in for a whole lot of pain."

  "There is another way," Lim said. "Jon could fly in fast with a small team and gas the whole place. We could follow at our leisure. The government doesn't have any ships capable of doing that; in fact, they don't have any significant aerial assault force." She shook her head. "Visiting Tumani is like going back in time. Way back."

  "I don't like it," I said.

  "Why?" Lim said.

  "Two reasons," I said. "First, my ship can carry maybe twelve people and their supplies. You said sixty of us to handle about five hundred boys, which is nearly a nine to one ratio of them to us; that's already pushing it. Taking in a small team is just too risky if that group has to hold the boys for any time at all."

  "Double that many in me if we cram," Lobo said over the comm.

  I ignored him and continued. "Second, we risk EC and FC anger and lose our only surprise advantage—my ship—if we use it as a weapon. If they spot that action on any sat recordings—and you can bet the rebels will complain to the coalitions and ask for a review—they'll find us guilty of importing and using a banned weapon. On the other hand, if we jump in, all we need are ships whose doors will open while they're aloft. Mine can pass as just one more tourist craft we repurposed."

  Gustafson nodded. "We could go for handheld gassing from your ship—"

  "—but coverage wouldn't be as good with what we can legitimately bring in," Schmidt finished his sentence.

  "And I really do hate giving up the one surprise available to us," I said. "Once we reveal my ship is a PCAV, we run the risk of being deported—or worse—for bringing it to Tumani. So, we need to hide that fact if we possibly can. We shouldn't ever need to use it for combat, but I'll feel a lot better knowing we have the option, should push come to hard shove."