by Tammy Salyer
Desto hunkers down beside me, his eyes cutting back and forth between the trees and the guy on the ground, ready for more people to jump out of the bushes.
“I’m a prisoner, just a prisoner. Don’t shoot me, man!”
“Why did you jump me?”
“Look, there’s about thirty Corps soldiers in the plant. If you go in there, they’ll cut you down.” The man’s breathing starts to slow, and a look comes over his face that reminds me of a rat that has just escaped a trap. “You got guns, right? How many you got? I saw your ship go down. Can you get me outta here?” Then, in a peevish voice, he asks, “Can you get offa me? I’m not gonna do nothin’.”
“David,” I whisper, “don’t.” But he doesn’t need my advice.
“Shut up and listen. You’re really goddamn lucky that I didn’t kill you for that. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to ask you a few questions, and I better like your answers or a busted lip is going to be the least of your worries. You get me?”
The man on the ground nods miserably.
“What are you up to out here, and where are the rest of the prisoners?”
He sucks at his lip, reluctant to give up any information. So David gives him incentive by deliberately pointing his pistol straight into the man’s eyes, letting him get a good look down the barrel.
He decides to talk. “They’re locked up in the plant. The Corps came in early this morning and rounded everyone up, just like they do right before they bring in a new group.” He adds ominously, “Or before they take some away.”
“Why didn’t they round you up?”
“Not all of us live in the barracks. Some of us have been here awhile. Since before…before the big die off. So they don’t know we’re out there.”
“How many?”
He starts to squirm. “Man, I told you what you want to know. Can’t you just get off me?”
David grasps him by the chin and forces him to keep still. “How many?”
“Ten, man, there’s ten of us.”
“Okay, good. One more question. Were some new prisoners brought in a couple of weeks ago? About a hundred of them?”
“You mean those miners from Spectra 6. Yeah, they’re here.”
I glance over and catch the excitement on Desto’s face. The settlers are here, probably still alive. Only thirty soldiers—and the entire Admin and Corps—between them and us.
“All right look,” David says, “I’ll let you up, but I want you to take us to your group and show us the weak spots in the plant, help us figure out how to get in there and neutralize the soldiers. Then, if we work together, we can help you and your friends get off this rock.”
“You want to take on those soldiers? There’s only three of you!”
David stands, keeping his pistol at the ready. “There are others, and we’ve got the advantage of surprise. With your group, we’ll have more than enough.”
I glare at David, not liking his plan at all, but I keep my mouth shut. Giving guns to a bunch of murderers and thieves is like giving them to a pack of rabid monkeys, but maybe there’s enough incentive for them to help, and not turn on us, if they think we can get them out of here.
The prisoner brushes himself off exaggeratedly, though the filth ingrained in his clothing isn’t coming clean without the aid of a fire hose, or possibly a fire, and then moves into the jungle without another word. We follow closely, struggling to match his pace. He’s used to walking through the grasping, clinging undergrowth and adopts a dipping and diving method that is almost completely silent. We try to move with equal stealth but can’t help making a little noise just trying to keep him within sight. Finally, David demands that he slow down so we don’t expose ourselves. He complies, obviously disgusted, but it gives me the time I need to dig a food bar out of my pack. I don’t remember the last time I ate anything and some extra energy is sorely needed. My mouth is too dry to do much more than break the material into small enough chunks to swallow, but it helps keep me going.
“Duchamp, what are you doing bringing strays out here?”
The voice comes from somewhere close by but I can’t see anyone. The man called Duchamp freezes and says, “Found them trying to get into the plant. They’re the ones from the ship we saw, not Corps.”
Like an apparition materializing from inside the tree, a man steps into our midst. He’s dirty like Duchamp, bald, and missing most of his left ear, creased shrapnel scars covering that side of his face and neck. He carries a thick, straight branch that’s been sharpened to a wicked point. “Why are you people here?”
There’s a rustling around us almost like a breeze, and suddenly there are several more of them. Standing in trees, under tall plants, in front and behind, all of them carrying some variation of club or spear. Desto and I close ranks and point our weapons at the nearest figures.
David thumbs his pistol to auto-fire but keeps his tone conversational. “We came to try and rescue the settlers who were brought here from Spectra 6.”
“Does your ship still fly?”
“No, but with your help, we can overrun the Corps team and get out of here on one of their ships. We’ve been to the platform, we know their security, and we have enough weapons to do the job.” David’s taking a huge risk, but then, they don’t know what’s really going on.
The man turns his back to us and walks a few paces away, thinking. Then he spins back and says, “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”
David glances toward us and I ask, keeping my voice low, “Don’t you think we should try and get word to Vitruzzi and Brady?”
“We can’t afford to get separated.”
I tap my VDU, more out of frustration than hope, but it’s still black. Nodding reluctantly, I fall in behind Desto, and the group begins walking deeper into the jungle. There’s a noise by my ear, a whzzzngg sound that resembles a mosquito’s buzz or hummingbird’s wings, and the man leading the group suddenly begins clutching at his back frantically, like he’s been stung. Then something metallic clicks loudly behind us. Everyone begins to run.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Rubble lies on all sides of me: broken rocks, shards of glass, bits of steel and lathe. It creates a cradle of debris that I sit amid like an invalid on a sick bed. When the occasional Corps craft does a low pass overhead, the broken roof of the building I’m in vibrates, shaking loose more dust and debris, which rains down on me. The humid air saturates the fine particles quickly, leaving me in a sticky sheet of dirt. It’s easy to imagine the foliage creeping in and swallowing me completely in a short time, the jungle life around me as potent and teeming as I am drained and wretched.
I don’t know where the others are, or even how many are left. The Corps assault had hit too fast and hard for me to keep track of everyone, all of us scattering to keep from getting mowed down. At first, they’d only been shooting tranquilizers, trying to round us up, but switched to live rounds as soon as they realized we were firing back. I’ve been lying in this ruin for the last two hours trying to decide what to do next while the prisoner I’d followed through the jungle bleeds to death beside me. The last thing he’d told me was his name, Slobadan Zand, apparently arrested twenty years ago for nothing but stealing supplies from Admin warehouses. Delirious at the end, he’d pleaded with me to find his family on Eruo Pium if I make it out of here and tell them what had happened to him. Despite the three bullets he had taken in the back, he managed to lead me to this decrepit ruin after the attack, part of the original complex built sixty years ago and long abandoned. There was nothing I could do but give him something to dull the pain as his life drained out on the ground around us. Another good person dead. I’m almost surprised I still have the energy to care.
My ears start to hum and the wall I lean on begins a slow vibration. I press into it in a primitive impulse to try and make myself smaller and less conspicuous as another ship flies over. Their passes are getting closer together as they close their search grid. An explosion echoed through the jungle so
me time ago, reverberating like thunder. They must have decided to blow the Sphynx to make sure no one could get out of here. I’m going to have to do something soon or they’ll find me, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort. In reality, I’m too tired, too spent, too far beyond caring anymore to move. It’s over. We failed. The Admin is too strong and we’re too weak. It’s a simple matter of evolution. If this is what our species has become, I’ll go ahead and die now.
* * *
“Aly Erickson. Do you copy? Come in.”
I scramble upright, realizing simultaneously that I’d fallen asleep and my carbine is missing. Running my hand along the ground beside me, my fingers encounter the familiar cold metal, and I take a relieved breath as I pick it up.
“Erikson. Come in. Are you there?”
It’s clear that I’m starting to lose my grip. The voice can’t possibly be who it sounds like, but my VDU is working again, at least the receiver. The screen is destroyed, so I can’t see who’s calling me, but the transmitter button is still intact.
The light faded while I slept, the blackness so dense it’s an almost physical presence. How long have I been here? It’s strange to be on solid ground and have a real night; I’d grown so used to the short darkness of Spectra 6. In space, it’s always night, but it’s different. It’s an artificial, disjointed night, not in touch with natural Circadian rhythms. But here, the darkness seems prolonged; it feels like days since I’ve seen the sun. My bone-tired weariness blocks every other consideration out and ignoring the voice coming through my com seems like a rational choice. When have I ever been this tired?
“Do you read me? Come in, Erikson. Aly Erikson. This is Karl Strahan. Do you copy?”
I jerk fully awake again. What the fuck is going on? Karl is dead. And in a short time, I will be too. Is this some kind of joke? Does the Admin have our names? Of course they do; Rob had given them everything.
Strangely, I’m annoyed. What’s the point of this game? Am I really a threat to the Admin anymore? What do they care? My crew is wiped out, probably dead, and the settlers don’t have anyone else to come for them, so they’ll be dead soon, too. Can’t they just leave us alone, leave me alone, instead of playing this sick charade?
“Aly, are you out there?”
But that voice. It sounds like Karl, and there’s an edge of desperation in it. Not an easy tone to fake. I think for a few minutes. If I’m going to die anyway, does it hurt to satisfy this last touch of curiosity?
It’s hard to stand; my legs have gone to sleep and I’m dehydrated. Jamming my hands into chinks in the wall’s crumbling surface, I use it to pull myself up, like scaling a rock face. The silhouette of the doorway is a lighter shade of black than the room, and I begin to stumble toward it, tripping over chunks of concrete and roots that have broken through the floor. I switch on my carbine’s light, and my legs begin to tingle as the blood starts moving through them, making my steps even more faltering. Finally, I reach the doorway and lean outside, taking a deep breath of the thick, moist air. It’s less stagnant at night, a cool wisp of breeze stirring it around. Almost pleasant.
The breeze picks up, whipping through the dark forest like a swath. No, not a breeze, someone is coming, several someones, moving toward me in the dark. My light is a target, and I turn it off automatically, knowing it’s probably too late to do anything.
“Aly?”
The movement has stopped. I don’t respond, can’t respond. There’s no way I can mistake that voice.
“Aly, it’s Karl.”
It’s as if my throat has closed to the width of a pinhead, but I force a whisper, “Karl?”
A form materializes less than two meters in front of me as the dull green glow of a nightstick slowly powers up. A man stands there. It could be him, but I don’t move. Finally, he pulls the night vision goggles off and I see him. Karl. Alive. I’m forced to grip the doorjamb as my legs threaten to collapse. Then he’s standing beside me, holding me up, his breath blowing through my dirt- and blood-matted hair.
“Are you hurt?”
I shake my head, unable to believe what I’m seeing. “Karl, what…?”
“Come on. Let’s get you out of here. I’ll explain when we’re airborne.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
A doctor comes in and takes the vitals for Vitruzzi and Venus, ignoring me. He’s used to me by now. His Corps uniform still makes me feel edgy and slightly unreal, like some part of me that lives in the future is looking back at the past but is unable to warn me. I want to run like hell whenever I see him or an orderly, but where could I go anyway? The ship is fleet, as Corps as his uniform, and even though I know the personnel aren’t Corps, not anymore, I still can’t shake the feeling that they’re going to arrest me.
Vitruzzi and Venus are both awake listening to Karl explain what had happened between the moments we watched his shuttle go down and several hours later when he’d used our embedded trackers to locate everyone. He’s already gone through the series of events twice, but even now, most of me is still in too much shock to really believe it.
The patroller that had picked up the Sphynx and shot Karl out of the sky had been on advance recon for T’Kai, just waiting for us to show up. After it had blown out his flight controls, Karl was able to coax just enough auxiliary power out of the shuttle to pull the nose out of its dive and cut the engines just before hitting the water, alleviating the impact enough to keep from killing him. Bruised but whole, he’d swum out and been carried more than a kilometer from the impact site by the current. Over an hour passed before a Corps drop-ship had flown over. Figuring his ticket was already punched and preferring to die dry, he’d flicked on a strobe and they’d spotted him. When they fished him out, he’d prepared a story about being aboard a cargo hauler with a malfunctioning nav-system that went down on Keum Libre, just to see how much time he could buy. Turned out, he never had to launch into the story at all. The drop-ship’s captain had taken him to a long-range fleet cruiser where he met the commander, General Medina, and her associate—a wire-rat named Quantum.
Even though Vitruzzi and I have heard the story, this is the first time Venus has been awake since coming out of surgery, and Karl continues to explain. “Quantum didn’t wait. He copied the information we got from Rajcik and the Fortress and sent it to a dozen other wire-rats and contacts he had in the Corps. They started lightwaving it just a few hours after you left Obal 6. Apparently, they’ve been planning another rebellion since the last one was squashed, and planning better. This ship’s commander, Medina, is one of the, I guess you’d say, leaders. They’ve got seven other carrier commanders, or at least their ships, and most of the troops on Obal 5, 7, and 8 behind them. This is bigger than it was last time. They’re planning a coup on the Directorate within the week.”
“Quantum is alive? T’Kai said they’d killed him before the transmission was sent,” Venus says. Her feet bob to-and-fro under the blanket as if she’s pedaling a tiny bicycle, causing the IV tubes tangling from almost every limb to dance and jitter around her. Her voice is barely a whisper.
“T’Kai either had bad intel or he was bluffing. Quantum wasn’t lying when he said they were ready for this. He’s here, been on this ship since the transmission was sent. He and General Medina have been working together since the beginning. Don’t ask me how a Corps fleet commander can hide the fact that she’s planning a mutiny, but that just goes to show you how widespread this is.”
La Mer asks, “Why did Quantum bring them to Keum Libre?”
It’s a good question. Quantum never hid the fact that he didn’t give a damn about us or the settlers. It was always about overthrowing the Admin.
Karl continues, “Two reasons: he knew Cross was working for the Admin, and he knew enough about what had happened between Rajcik and T’Kai to expect T’Kai to come for him. Where better for T’Kai to erase both us and Rajcik than KL? But after they picked up Rajcik on the ’Rize and interrogated the soldiers you’d left on the platform, Medina decided
to try and help, if it wasn’t too late. I think she’s a little more humane than Quantum.”
“What’s the other?” I ask.
“The other reason? It’s a good place to lay low. Keum Libre is outside the normal flight patterns for Corps assault and enforcement crafts. Medina can stay relatively obscure in this zone and launch battalion gunships from here to mop up Corps holdouts throughout the rest of the quadrant.”
Karl puts a warm, rough hand on my neck, rubbing the skin gently. I’m sitting on a chair at the foot of Venus’s bed with him beside me, and my body floods with a deluge of emotions, almost too many to manage. I feel like I might burst. Relief, fear, guilt, gratitude, shame, hope. And the deepest, most powerful, love. I sit still, letting them wash through me, not trusting myself to say anything, or even look at Karl. Not yet.
After Rajcik’s suicide move on T’Kai, only one of the ships that had chased the Sphynx from the platform had been hostile. The other two were part of Medina’s battalion, the one that had picked up Karl, and the third that had gone after the Red Horizon. Rajcik launched just after the Sphynx, knowing that he wouldn’t be a target for the Corps drop-ship since the ’Rize was supposed to be transporting T’Kai. To his extreme surprise, Medina also knew T’Kai was supposed to be aboard Rajcik’s hijacked ship and had curtailed the escape with a ship-net, incapacitating the engine, and allowing Medina’s carrier to bring the ’Rize in. They’d questioned him and Thompson, learning what had happened to T’Kai and about the Sphynx’s dire situation, prompting Medina to send three gunships to neutralize the Corps ship looking for us, destroying it, which must have been the two ships we’d seen flying over us as we’d been hiking Venus to the colony. Finally, when things were under control, Karl led a company of new rebel soldiers to land, overtaking the detachment guarding the plant, rescuing the settlers, and then taking a search-and-rescue squad to track down the rest of his crew.