Children No More-ARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  He blinked a few times and said, "Are you crazy? No, I'm not sleeping. I'm reviewing everything I learned so I don't crash us into the side of the mountain." He shook his head. "Pick me up and take me up to the front of the shuttle."

  Benny was heavier than I expected, and my muscles were sore, but I lifted him and slung him over my left shoulder.

  "No," he said. "Turn me around. Carry me facing forward. I need to see everything clearly."

  I put my right arm between his legs and pulled him across my body to the position he wanted. My arms shook with the effort of holding him, and I had to fight to maintain my balance with all of his weight in front of me. I took small steps to avoid falling as I made my way toward the front. After three paces, the walls opened into what looked like people-size cages, three to a side, each one a barred area barely big enough for a person my size to sit. They'd changed the shuttles since they'd brought me here, I'd ridden in a plain room, not a cage.

  Benny started shaking. "Oh, no!" he said. "Move faster!"

  I picked up the pace. "What?" We reached the front in a few seconds.

  "Put me in that chair," Benny said, his left flipper pointing to a very large, padded seat on our left. "Help me sit up."

  I did.

  "What's wrong?" I said.

  He studied the controls on a panel in front of us, his eyes frantically scanning back and forth. "Where was the person the guard was bringing here?" he said.

  I shook my arms to loosen the muscles as I recalled my initial sighting of the first guard. He'd been alone. The only people I'd seen emerge from this shuttle were that man and the other one who'd followed him, the one whose head I'd pounded into the floor.

  "I didn't see anyone," I said. "Maybe that person is somewhere else on board."

  "No," Benny said. "No, no, no." He hit his thighs in frustration. "They weren't coming to drop off anyone, Jon."

  "What do you mean? That's the only thing they come here for."

  "They were coming to collect," he said. "Maybe they were monitoring us and wanted to stop what we were doing. Maybe they wanted one or more of us for some other purpose. I don't know. But they were coming to kidnap some of us."

  "So?" I said. "We stopped them. We have the shuttle. Nothing changes."

  "Maybe," Benny said, "but I read that hunter teams are usually more careful than the transport teams."

  "So let's get the others before they can send anyone else. We can cram them into here—there's enough room—and then leave. Once we're somewhere safe, we can figure out what to do with everyone."

  "No," Benny said, his voice calmer now, his words slow and distinct. "We can't take that chance. We have to leave. I'll tell you what to do. You'll be my hands—just like we planned." He pointed at a button in front of him. "Push this."

  I did.

  A display snapped to life along the opaque window in front of us. It showed a lot of words and numbers. None of it made sense to me.

  "Do you hear the engines?" Benny said.

  "No. What's wrong?"

  "They should have started," he said.

  "Maybe all that stuff—" I pointed at the display "—is telling you what to do next."

  He shook his head. "No. Everything there says the engines are working, but they're not. We have to get out of here. Pick me up!" His face turned red. "Now!"

  I'd never seen Benny scared before. I threw him over my shoulder and ran for the front.

  As we approached the door, Benny said, "Hit the same button."

  His voice sounded far away. I felt like I was maintaining my pace, but when I looked at my feet, they seemed to be a great distance below me and made of rock.

  I pushed the button.

  Nothing happened.

  "No," Benny said. "No." Tears ran down his face. "I'm sorry. I couldn't even save you. I'm sorry."

  My legs wouldn't hold me. I sank to my knees.

  I was still too high. I managed to lower Benny onto the floor. It looked so nice that I joined him there, on my side. Everything spun in tight circles.

  Darkness inked along the walls and the ceiling and covered the lights.

  The world fell away into a perfect black pit.

  "Up!"

  I heard the word at the same time that I registered the pain in my belly. Light blinded me as I opened my eyes. I blinked to clear my vision.

  A man in a dark blue jumpsuit stood over me. He kicked me again in the stomach, stepped back, and pointed his rifle at me. "You're obviously awake. I know you heard me. They pay us the same even if you're a little banged up. Save us both a lot of trouble, and get up."

  I didn't want him to hurt me again, so I rolled onto my stomach and got to my hands and knees. My arms and thighs shook, the floor spun, and I vomited. I fell onto my side on the cold, white floor and barely missed hitting the mess I'd made.

  "It's the gas," he said. "Does it to all the new subjects. One of the reasons we have the hoses and the drains." He stepped backward. "Second try will go better. Up."

  I repeated the process of getting to my hands and knees. He was right; I was steadier.

  Benny.

  I glanced around the room.

  He was on the floor to my right and behind me, unmoving.

  I turned to him. "Benny?"

  "Stop!" the man said. "He's not your problem. Stand."

  "Is he—"

  "No," the man said. "He's not dead. He's just not conscious yet. You came around faster."

  "Jon," Benny said. His voice wavered. His eyelids fluttered but he couldn't keep them open. "I thought I could save you all."

  The man laughed. "A freak like you saving anyone? Yeah, right."

  "Let me help him," I said.

  The man kicked Benny in the head.

  Benny's head snapped backward. His mouth dripped blood.

  The man turned back to me and stomped on my stomach so hard that I rolled onto my back. I gasped and choked and struggled to breathe. "You better worry about yourself," he said. "Now, get up. The doctors need new subjects, and they don't like to wait."

  I rolled as if I couldn't control the pain and managed to get closer to him. I curled into a ball on my knees and elbows. I pushed my toes against the ground and tensed my legs. Benny had trained me well. I had taken out the other guards. I could do it again and save Benny. "Where are we?" I said.

  Before the guard could answer, I launched myself at him, springing as hard as I could for his knees.

  I hit the opposite wall instead. I never even saw him move out of the way.

  I glanced back in time to see him turn his rifle so the butt was facing me.

  "The last place you'll ever be," he said. "Aggro."

  The rifle smashing into my face turned the room a fiery red, and I was gone.

  Chapter 55

  In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

  I woke up screaming soundlessly, my throat tight with the effort of choking off the sound. I'd learned long ago that no matter how bad the dream, I had to wake silently. All too often, any sound would make my real-world situation much worse.

  For the first few years after I escaped from Aggro, the memory of those initial minutes on that hellish space station visited me every night. They would come first, lights strobing in my unconscious mind. A rapid-fire succession of other awful moments on Aggro would then smash into me until I wrenched myself from sleep.

  Listening to the screams of other prisoners and knowing my turn was coming.

  Seeing a new face in a cell down the row and realizing I hadn't yet learned the name of the previous occupant.

  Watching them drag Benny to the lockdown and drop him on the floor, unwilling to do him even the small kindess of aiming for the cot.

  Waking in my cell after a session in the chair and seeing my skin shifting and my muscles cramping and wondering if this was the dose that would kill me, if whatever miracle of resistance had kept me alive so far had finally proven inadequate.

  Most of all, the hours I was strapped
in the chair, my entire body immobilized, my eyelids held open, as they talked about me as if I was a weed they were going to pull. They cut me and injected me and stuck electrodes in me and kept at it until I passed out.

  When Benny and I escaped, he'd sacrificed himself to destroy the station, so that there would be no trace of what had happened there and nothing to connect me to it, so I could lead a normal life.

  I shook my head at the naïveté of my younger self. I'd never known a normal life, and after Dump and Aggro, I certainly wasn't suited for one.

  I stood and stretched. I couldn't let that happen to these boys. Lim and Schmidt and Gustafson and Long and all the others had given them a chance, and now all that work might prove to have been for nothing. I wished I could fix it myself, not have to depend on anyone except Lobo, just get him moving and somehow make it all better, but I couldn't.

  I hated it. I hated the powerlessness, the lack of good options.

  I could fight, take on a planet's army, and put the boys at risk, or I could trust Jack to come through. He was the best con man I'd ever known. He could do the job, but when I'd needed him before, I'd always been there to help him, to make sure he got it right, to catch and correct any errors.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized I'd always depended on others. I'd always needed help, from Jennie and Benny on Pinkelponker, through Jack and the others on our crew, to Lim and the rest of my unit in the Saw, all the way to the present. I'd never done it entirely alone. No one does.

  My head spun with frustration that was morphing into anger. I needed to burn off some energy.

  "I'm going for a run," I said to Lobo.

  "I have new information," he said. "We need to talk."

  "Over the comm," I said as I stepped to the side hatch, "unless my leaving will somehow increase our risk."

  Lobo answered by opening the door.

  I sprang out as if the guards on Aggro were chasing me. I pushed the pace hard for the first ten minutes, wanting my lungs and legs to hurt so much that I could feel no other pain. I ignored the boys and counselors I passed, barely noted the morning cool or the fresh wet smell, and ran. I headed for the rear of the complex, the area with the fewest people. Whenever I could, I cut off the cleared paths and through openings among the trees. As my mind focused entirely on running despite the throbbing in my legs and the lack of oxygen, I slowed my pace and worked to bring my breathing under control.

  When I could finally speak clearly, I was alone and winding in and out of stands of trees at the far back of the complex. "What's up?" I said.

  "I have a secured a great deal more data," Lobo said, "which is good. I have also received a very brief transmission from Maggie. It said only, 'On it.'"

  "Why so short?" I said. "Can you tell when she sent it and what messages of mine she had received?"

  "I don't know," he said, "and no. My guess—and it is only a guess, though of course I'm rather good at such speculations—is that she and Jack received your second message but are very busy. Of course, they're probably in another system, which would mean they'd have to use one or more couriers to relay their response to us. Perhaps for reasons we cannot know she did not trust the encryption—a poor choice on her part, but a possible one—and so rather than risk someone decrypting what she said, she kept it vague. That way, anyone who might crack the message would learn nothing from it." He paused. "Or maybe they don't feel the need to report to you. One cannot be sure; that's the interesting part of guessing."

  "I'm glad you're having fun."

  "Both of us are doing all that we can usefully do," Lobo said. "Even as you and I talk, most of me is working on security systems all over this planet. Small bits of me are also monitoring everything in the complex and, to the degree that my sensors let me, the troops outside it. What is wrong with enjoying the work I'm doing?"

  I stopped jogging in a small clearing and walked back and forth across it. "Nothing. I'm sorry. Being here has stirred up a lot of memories. Few of them are good."

  "Talking about them might help. If you can't tell me, who can you tell?"

  I shook my head. "Maybe someday, but not now. I need to focus on the work."

  "Okay," Lobo said. "I'll be around—unless, of course, we go to war with the entire planet and lose. In that case, there won't be enough of either us left to worry about what the mysterious Jon Moore never chose to share."

  I laughed. A few seconds later, I stopped walking and said, "You did that intentionally. You were trying to cheer me up."

  "Of course," he said. "And I succeeded."

  "For an AI," I said, "you're amazingly sensitive."

  "Technically speaking, and with all the data available to me, I can say with a high degree of certainty that no qualification is necessary. I am amazing."

  I laughed again. "And now you manage to continue to cheer me while being completely honest and highly egotistical. Well done."

  "Is it egotistical if it's true?" Lobo said.

  "It can be," I said, "but you've distracted me enough. It's time to get back to business. You told me about Maggie's brief response. What other information do you have?"

  "Wylak has been recruiting support both among his colleagues and in the military. He plans to show up an hour after sunrise. He's told the supporting troop leaders to expect armed resistance and to fire at the first sign they might be in danger."

  "Damn. He wants everyone awake. He wants a conflict. He's preparing for a massacre."

  "That's the logical inference."

  There would be no halfway in any conflict with Wylak. If I decided we would fight, we would have to enter the battle completely, without reservation. It would be a massacre, but at least initially, his troops, not Lim's, would die.

  None of that was news, though, not really. If we were to take on a planet, holding back would not be a viable option. Surprise and, at least initially, superior firepower from Lobo would be the only advantages we'd have.

  "So we make sure we're ready," I said.

  "Yes," Lobo said. "All that's changed is that we know the hour of his arrival."

  "Is there any chance we could smuggle out the kids beforehand?"

  "As Wylak said he would, he's alerted the jump station staff to that possibility, and they're searching all departing ships. He's also monitoring all flights in and out of the complex. We might get some of the boys into town on the pretense of supply runs, but unusual traffic would cause him to shut us down. We might well end up accelerating his timetable."

  "Not worth it," I said. Any way I looked at it, either Jack and Maggie came through, or we would have to fight or surrender the boys.

  "Incoming armed adults!" Lobo said. "Four of Lim's team, approaching in a spread formation, weapons in hand. ETA two minutes. Should I come to you?"

  Lim must have tired of waiting for me to explain what I was doing. I was surprised that she was willing to use weapons, but I'd played right into that strategy by going so deep into the complex. The worst they would do initially, though, was try to hurt me; killing me wouldn't accomplish anything. If they shot me anywhere but the head, my nanomachines should be able to repair the damage. More than likely, they were here to make sure I went to Lim. She wouldn't want anyone else to hear the plan first.

  "Is Lim among them?"

  "No," he said.

  "Don't come yet," I said. "If they shoot me, trank them if you can, and pick me up before they can haul me to Lim."

  "I may have to clear a landing space," Lobo said, "which would make quite a mess."

  "If you have to, do it," I said, "but I don't think it will come to that. Monitor our progress. When we go into a building, scan all around it and tell me the locations of the nearest boys."

  "Why?" Lobo said. "It makes no sense for you to need them or use them for assistance when your goal is to stop them from fighting."

  "I'm not planning on asking them to help. I have a feeling some will be listening."

  "As you wish," he said. "ETA forty-fi
ve seconds."

  I sat with my back against a rough black tree, spread my arms, turned my palms face up, and waited for my interrogators to arrive.

  Chapter 56

  In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

  Long's laugh preceded him. He stopped three meters short of me and stood beside a tree. He held the pistol in his right hand and pointed it not at me but definitely in my direction. I had no doubt that he could shoot me before I could reach him. From the look on his face, neither did he.

  "She said you'd know we were coming."

  Long and I had become casual friends during our time here, but when a friend comes for you with a gun, you have to treat him like an enemy. I stayed silent.

  "Your choice," he said, still smiling. "You can walk there, or we can carry you."

  "Maybe," I said.

  "There are—"

  "Four of you," I said. "I know. But you can't afford to significantly damage me, and I don't care at all how much I hurt you."

  The smile vanished. "You're not that good," he said.

  "Maybe."

  He shook his head. "Not for four."

  "Maybe, but do you want to explain to her why I can't answer her questions when you've beaten me unconscious? Because that's what you'll have to do to win. And, do you want to risk blowing your only hope for these kids by hurting me so badly I can't execute my plan?"

  "We could subdue you."

  I shook my head and smiled. "You're not that good."

  "One male is five meters behind you," Lobo said over the comm, "and the other two, woman on your left and man on your right, are roughly six meters either side of him."

  "If the guy behind me comes any closer," I said, "I'm going to take him down first."

  "Everybody hold," Long said. "Why are you making this so hard?"

  "The other three are stationary," Lobo said.

  "Because you came with guns," I said. "The boys will notice, and it will undercut what you've been teaching them." I smiled. "And because Lim should know better."

  "Four are around me," Lobo said.

  I bent my head, coughed, and subvocalized, "Any onlookers?"