Freedom's Last Gasp

by M. A. Rothman

  Only five people? For all that space?

  Terry pulled into a driveway and turned off the car. He turned to Priya. “Home sweet home. It’s cozy, but it’s enough room for the wife and me—and our furry friend.”

  Ranger barked.

  Terry opened both passenger doors, and Priya and Ranger got out. “This place is huge,” Priya said. It was about the size of four or five apartments back home. And the land the house sat on was even bigger; it could host an entire apartment complex.

  Terry smiled. “I keep forgetting you’re from Earth. Let me ask you, do you know how many square feet your apartment is?”

  Priya walked with him to the front door. “Around four hundred square feet. It’s two bedrooms and two baths. Pretty big for just the two of us… or at least that’s what I thought.”

  Terry put his hand on the doorknob, and the door beeped. Terry opened it and motioned for Priya to enter ahead of him. “This place is twenty-two hundred square feet, three bedrooms and two baths. It’s nice as colony homes go, certainly not the biggest, but not the smallest either. We have a different sensibility when it comes to living space here in the colony. We like things more spread out.”

  Priya looked around in amazement. The entryway alone was almost as big as her entire apartment, and the ceiling went up a whole extra floor—a decadent waste of living space.

  A blonde woman walked in from another room. “Hey, honey.” She gave Terry a kiss, then turned to Priya with an extended hand. “You must be Priya. I’m Stephanie, Terry’s wife. I’m really glad to meet you.”

  Priya shook the woman’s proffered hand. “Thank you for having me.”

  Terry cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go take a shower before dinner.” He smiled boyishly. “You girls okay on your own?”

  Stef waved him away. “We’re fine, you goof. Go.” She turned back to Priya. “Want to help me with dinner?”

  “Can I?”

  “Of course. I figure you probably haven’t had much chance of cooking anything from raw ingredients, so this might be fun for you.”

  “What are we cooking?”

  “Have you ever had a hamburger?”

  Priya flashed back to the beef slider at the Bizarre Bazaar, and she let out a moan.

  Stef laughed. “That’s the same sound Terry makes when he eats them.”

  She led Priya into a huge kitchen with stone countertops and steel appliances. Everything looked new and beautiful.

  “You have a beautiful home,” Priya said.

  “Thank you.” As Stef took a package of meat out of the refrigerator, she pointed at the far end of the counter. “Now, if you can get me some of those onions, I’ll show you how to make a proper hamburger.”

  Priya found the onions right where Stef pointed, nestled in a basket between various jars and containers. But what she wasn’t expecting was the handwritten note lying right on top of them.

  * * *

  Priya—

  Three steps. Step one, relax, and let’s all enjoy our dinner. Step two, we’ll go somewhere where we can talk about our secrets. And step three, let’s take care of your little problem.

  Chapter Eleven

  Priya sat back against her chair, her stomach full, and smiled. “Thank you. Dinner was amazing.”

  Stef smiled back. “Thank you for helping. It was fun having some company in the kitchen.”

  As Stef gathered up the plates, Terry pulled out his pocket PC, typed something, then slid it toward Priya. She read the message.

  I have a room in the back of the house where it’s safe to talk. Until we’re in there, just go along with whatever I say. I’ll explain when we’re in the room.

  Priya looked up at Terry and nodded.

  When Stef had cleared the table and returned, Terry stood. Ranger yawned loudly and got up from his spot under Terry’s chair, apparently recognizing no more treats were going to be snuck to him, and settled down on a doggie bed in the corner.

  “Priya,” said Terry, “have you ever had a microwave chocolate cake before?”

  Priya stood as well. “I don’t think so. Is it different from a regular cake?”

  “Oh, it’s so much better.” Terry motioned for Priya and Steph to follow, then continued talking as they walked out of the dining room and down a hall. “Stef, you need to show her your recipe and how easy it is. It might be something she could use when she goes home.” Terry stopped in front of a closed door and grabbed the doorknob. A green LED flashed, and he pushed the door open and entered.

  “Here,” said Stef, gesturing for Priya to enter ahead of her. “I have a few cups already set up. Go ahead and put the first one in, set it for ninety seconds, and hit start.”

  Priya stepped through the door. It looked like an ordinary office—a desk, two additional chairs—with no windows.

  As soon as Stef followed and closed the door behind her, Terry smiled at Priya apologetically. “I’m sorry about the weird act. We can now talk candidly.” He motioned for her to take a seat.

  Priya sat. “What was with the chocolate cake thing?”

  “That was my idea,” Stef responded. She was rummaging through a duffel bag in the corner. It was filled with gauze, alcohol wipes, and other medical supplies. “Microwaving a cake is a bit complicated for my meat-headed husband—”

  “Hey!” Terry exclaimed with obviously feigned outrage.

  She blew him a kiss.

  “Let me guess,” said Priya. “This office is shielded so no signals can come in or leave?”

  Stef nodded. “That’s exactly right. A special wire mesh is built into the walls and door, encapsulating this space. No signals can leak out. In effect, we’re sitting in a Faraday cage.”

  “Why would your house have a room set up as a Faraday cage?”

  “It’s coming in handy now, isn’t it?” said Terry with a grin. “And we’ve done this before.”

  Priya’s heart raced as she thought of the other spies who had been sent to the colony—never to be heard from again.

  Stef pointed at Priya’s arm. “This isn’t the first time we’ve had someone arrive here with a tracking device. Well, more than a tracking device—a spying device. It’ll have a geolocator, I’m sure, but if it’s like the others, it’s also recording what it observes and chirping it back to a local receiver that relays the signal back to Earth.”

  “What it observes? You mean audio picked up from beneath the skin?”

  “Surprisingly, not only audio. We’ve intercepted a few chirps and have found that the data packets contain some bits of encrypted and compressed video as well. It’s still a mystery how a subcutaneous implant is getting video.”

  Priya thought back to that afternoon with Agent Ted. Could that memory injection have included some way for their tracking device to interact with her brain signals? Maybe…

  “Before we get started,” Terry said, “do you have any idea how that got in you?”

  Priya quickly manufactured a lie. “It must have been when we got inoculations. I was absent the day the rest of the interns got theirs, so the school had me go to an offsite clinic where they gave me a bunch of shots in my right arm. That’s the only time I can think of where they’d have been able to insert that thing.” She mentally patted herself on the back for her quick thinking.

  Terry nodded, looking satisfied with the response. “Well, you almost certainly got set up by the UNIB.”

  “UNIB?” Priya asked, feigning ignorance.

  “The UN Intelligence Bureau. They’ve been spying on the colony for decades. There’s a lot of mistrust between the colony and Earth.”

  Stef had pulled out a device that looked similar to the wand-and-loop the nun had used. “Well,” she said, “regardless of how it got there, let’s see what we can do about it.”

  She moved the loop down Priya’s forearm, and just like the nun’s device, it showed a 3D representation of what was under her skin in full-color simulation.

  Terry rose f
rom his seat to watch. “There’s that ugly little bugger.”

  And there it was—the spider. Its long tendrils connected to various striations under her skin, and it pulsed with her heartbeat, making it look like it was alive.

  Stef frowned. “It’s tapped into your median and ulnar nerves. It looks more advanced than the others.”

  “Does that mean you can’t take it out?” Priya asked, worried.

  “Oh, I had no intention of taking it out. I’m going to destroy it. Hon, can you…?”

  “Of course.” Terry rolled his chair beside Priya’s and took hold of the wand.

  Stef dug through her duffel and pulled out a tool that looked sort of like a hammer. “This is an ultrasound wand—it’s used in something we call extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy. It emits high-frequency sounds that destroy hardened objects—like stones in the kidney or bladder. But it also works for creepy implants, if used properly.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  Stef shook her head. “No. At most you’ll feel some heating, which you’ll have to tell me about if it happens. What I’ll do is tune the device to a frequency that resonates with the implant. Roughly speaking, it amounts to sending in shock waves that weaken the device and break it apart. But if it has a thermal reaction—if you start feeling hot—we’ll pause and begin again when it cools down.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Shouldn’t be more than half an hour.”

  “And once it’s broken apart… then what? Does it just gets reabsorbed by my body?”

  Stef shook her head. “No. Unfortunately, although it’ll be broken, it’ll still be there—and it’ll probably still possess all the data that it’s recorded. The previous implants we studied had a block storage device with heavily encrypted data. Our guess is that it’s a backup system—some of the chirps the device sends out might get garbled or missed by the receiver, so the block storage keeps everything. And then when you go back to Earth, those intelligence bureau guys will find an excuse to interview you and download everything off the implant. And that’s where the chocolate cake comes in.”

  Priya frowned, confused. She understood everything up until the chocolate cake part.

  Stef laughed at Priya’s expression. “When I’m done with the procedure, it’ll look like the implant got fried. And since the last possible thing you’ll have recorded, and perhaps already transmitted, was about using the microwave, it creates a plausible explanation for the damage—that the microwave itself somehow caused the damage.” She gave Priya a wry grin. “Those UN types think we’re all morons here at the colony. They probably think we can’t safely modify thermal tuners or microwaves without them emitting all sorts of EM signals.”

  “But the important question,” Terry said, grinning boyishly, “is: do we actually have any chocolate cake?”

  Priya laughed, and Stef rolled her eyes.

  “I’ll see what I can whip up when I’m done here.” Stef turned back to Priya. “Are you ready to begin?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Okay. No sudden movements, please. Here we go…”

  Priya pressed lightly on her forearm. Though it looked absolutely fine after the procedure, it felt terribly bruised, like it had been hit with a sledgehammer.

  As Stef left the room to whip up some chocolate cake—apparently she was serious about that—Ranger appeared in the open doorway, wagging his tail.

  “Is he allowed in here?” Priya asked.

  “Sure. Come on, boy.” Terry snapped his fingers.

  Ranger’s wagging tail accelerated to a furry blur, and he turned around and walked backwards into the room.

  Priya laughed. “Goofy boy! Why’d you walk backward?” She bent down, and he rushed over to her to get his cheeks and head rubbed.

  “You never noticed him doing that before?” Terry asked.

  “I think I would remember if I did.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you would.” Terry chuckled. “When I got this big boy, he was a stray with a smashed in nose. Apparently he ran full-tilt into a glass door that he must not have seen. A friend of the vet told me about him, and I couldn’t let him get put down, so I paid to have him all fixed up, and I adopted him. But he doesn’t trust doorways very much anymore.”

  “Oh, you poor baby!” Priya rubbed Ranger some more. “That’s the most precious thing I’ve ever heard.”

  She looked up to see Terry smiling from ear to ear. “What?”

  “You aren’t as mean-spirited or standoffish as you want people to think you are.”

  “Oh, be quiet.” Priya felt her cheeks getting warm. In a way, she was glad Terry was happily married—that should help her stop thinking about how good-looking he was. Her feelings could safely remain buried.

  “Well,” said Terry, leaning back in his chair, “now that we’re not being spied on anymore, it’s time to talk. I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. In fact, I’m probably going to go totally off the reservation as a member of colony security. This is just me and you, two friends, off the record. Okay?”

  Priya nodded. “Of course. I owe you big-time for what you guys did.” She rubbed at the hidden bruise on her forearm. “I can’t even begin to tell you how pissed and shocked I was when I learned about that implant.”

  Terry nodded. “I know, Tom told me all about it.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “There are some folks who might be mad at me for bringing this up, but… You probably know that the colony doesn’t take immigrants unless they already have a relative who’s a citizen of the colony.”

  Priya shook her head. “I didn’t know you took immigrants at all.”

  “Well, it’s rare. Anyway, there are folks within the government, people I can’t name, who would be willing to waive that requirement if you were interested in staying here.”

  “This is about me being a Radcliffe, isn’t it?”

  Terry shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. I just know that the offer is there. And as I’ve never heard of such an exception ever being made before, I’d suggest you take it seriously. No pressure—and you don’t need to make a decision now. You have another four months or so with your internship anyway. But I just wanted to let you know. And if you want to talk more about this, I’m here.”

  Priya frowned. It was a generous offer. Generous to a fault, since they didn’t really know much about her, and what they did know was a lie. But she couldn’t take that offer. She remembered the general’s words about what would happen if her mission didn’t succeed: We’ll have very few options other than wiping out the entire colony. Millions of lives were at stake. These were good people, they didn’t deserve to be killed because of some terrorist plot from just a few.

  She smiled at Terry. “I’ll think about it.”

  But the truth was, her mind was already made up. She had to see this mission through. And she had no clue what her mission really even was. All she knew was that she was supposed to get to someplace in the mine—and that hidden disc in her dorm room was the key to doing it.

  “We’ve got intel coming in from the top commanding general of the UNIB as well as several high-ranking officials at UNSOC. No attack is imminent. But Operation Freedom is ready to be deployed on the first sign of trouble.”

  It was the weekly meeting of the colony’s security council, and as always, Governor Welch had started off with status reports. As she listened to Terry, she felt a wave of relief.

  “Speaking of Operation Freedom,” said Carl, “is anyone ever going to clue us in on the big picture? I have the working directions with regard to the mining operations, but it would help if I knew what this was actually all about.”

  Terry opened his mouth to answer, but the governor held up her hand. “Let me respond to that.”

  She met the eye of every person at the conference table. Like Carl, they’d all been read in on their particular domain’s responsibilities in support of Operation Freedom, but none of them knew what the full extent of the operation re
ally was. It was better that way. And despite Carl’s grumblings, she wasn’t about to show her hand now. Not yet.

  “We still have unidentified spies in our midst, and the UN is constantly sending more. In fact, just a week or so ago, Terry’s team managed to uncover someone who’s been communicating with members of the Earth-based Rebels.”

  The chief of staff raised his hand. “I thought the Rebels were ostensibly on our side. Aren’t they an alliance of anti-UN types?”

  “An alliance?” the governor said. “You might even say, the Rebel Alliance?” She smiled, though she knew nobody in the room would understand the reference. “Yes, Andy, you’re right. But I trust nobody.”

  She turned to Terry. “Terry, tell the group about the message we intercepted from these Rebels and received by the man we have now have in custody.”

  Terry swiped on his handheld PC, then read aloud. “‘I’m sending an image of a new intern. She’s a Radcliffe. She’ll be leaving here in a few days. You know what to do.’”

  The chief of staff grimaced. “That sounds ominous.”

  “Exactly,” said Welch. “And the man in custody was apprehended just outside the location where Miss Radcliffe was supposed to be. To make matters worse, he’s a citizen of the colony going back to its founding. Like I said, it’s hard to know who to trust.”

  She looked around the room once more. “Which is why I hope you’ll all understand why I must keep some information close to the vest. Including the big-picture details of Operation Freedom. But I promise you this: when we activate it, it’ll be like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

  Priya, in heavy coveralls, walked with the other interns as a new instructor led them deeper into the mines. This instructor was huge with a capital H. Not tall—he was about five and a half feet tall, roughly her height—but with a chest easily twice the width of anyone else’s, and his arms and legs were like tree trunks, everything about him reminded her of a concrete block. The man could probably lift a building off its foundation if he tried.