“It’s not a secret,” I replied. “There are two doors out here. They’re just not used anymore because…” I motioned back toward the Plains of Sorrow.
“Because there’s shit out there that eats people so no one comes out this way.”
“Yeah.”
“The closest one’s back here,” I said. I pointed toward where I knew the door was, and Smith started walking toward it. “This is really where our target is?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Some damn colonists took the SOGA’s daughter and are holding her for ransom.”
It didn’t make any sense. The colonists here were generally very peaceful. It was a religious colony, and I doubted anything had changed along those lines in the last five years. We reached the door and, with a quick glance at me, he went through the portal with his weapons at the ready. He passed through the blast door, and then it slammed shut and the automatic lock engaged before I could stop it. The door was monitored from a central control facility and was built to repel worm attacks for anyone who made it through; short of using a quantity of explosive that would have brought down the cliff face, my weapons weren’t going to get through it. I waited for several minutes, but the lieutenant didn’t come back out. If it was locked out by the control room, he wasn’t getting back out, and I was wasting time.
With a resigned sigh, I turned and headed for the other door. I knew I could get in there; the colony had run out of money before they could install a blast door on it, and by then they had learned the secret—don’t go out onto the plain and you won’t attract the worms. I turned back and looked up at the camera mounted above the door. “I’m coming for you.”
I had no idea who in the community would have kidnapped the girl; the entire mission didn’t make sense. Although my parents ran the religious community, everyone was fairly equal. I didn’t remember anyone who had a major axe to grind with the government. They had come to Paradise to escape Earth’s government; I had no idea why someone would want to do something to intentionally bring it here. It didn’t make sense.
I walked down the cliff face to the other door, hoping the worms had been fed well enough they wouldn’t come searching for more. I reached the door and considered destroying it with my MAC in case it was booby-trapped. It’s what I would have done on a “real” mission that wasn’t conducted at my own home.
Finally, I shrugged and reached for the handle with my manipulator hand. The door was unlocked. I opened the door, hoping there was nothing behind it that would blow me to paradise…in Paradise. I chuckled at my pun, knowing no one else would find it very funny.
Behind the door, the entryway and the passage beyond were vacant, and the lights were turned on. The tunnel had been drilled into the rock by an industrial digger, and the passage was 10 feet wide and high; my suit was almost tall enough to scrape the roof.
I walked down the passageway, my senses on overload, yet with a certain sense of disbelief it was even happening. I’d already pinched myself several times but had, as yet, to wake up from the dream.
The tunnels all seemed deserted, and they were never deserted. Usually, there were at least kids in them, running around, playing some sort of game. Not today.
My feet naturally found their way to the common area. I guess, subconsciously, I thought if there was anyone around, that’s the place they would be. I didn’t have much of a plan—at this stage I was almost to the point of stopping someone and asking, “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have seen a girl that was kidnapped and brought here, would you?” As strange as that sounded, everyone knew everyone else, pretty much; if there was a new girl around, someone would have seen her. There was only one problem—there wasn’t anyone to ask.
I entered the common room and realized I had to be dreaming; the sight was that bizarre. There were four people in the enormous room, and two of them were on their knees. My father had an old-fashioned slug-throwing pistol pointed at the SOGA’s daughter, while my mother held a laser rifle on the lieutenant who was out of his suit. If someone had run into me, I would have fallen over without being able to stop it. I was as shocked as if someone had hit me with a 70,000 volt stun stick, and I staggered to a stop, my weapons not even pointing at anyone. What the hell was happening?
My father nodded at me, breaking the silence. “Hi John,” he said. My first name was John. “It’s ‘bout time you got here.”
“Uh, dad, can you please tell me what the he—, just what’s going on here?”
“Sure,” he replied. “It’s all very simple. We’re settin’ you free from that jail you got yerself put into.”
“I’m not in jail dad. I’m here to recover the girl you’re pointing a pistol at.”
“I know that,” he said. “I did this for you. I told them I would free her if they freed you.”
“You…you kidnapped her?” my mind was having a hard time processing the fact that my father was not only holding a pistol, but was actively pointing it at someone.
“We took her,” he said, nodding at my mother. What? Mom was involved, too?
“Are…are you going to let her go?”
“I am, but only after you kill this soldier.”
I looked at Smith. “You knew it was my father who had the girl?”
“Yeah. Why else do you think I put up with you? The plan all along was to recapture the girl if we could, and trade you for her if we couldn’t.”
Inside my suit, my jaw dropped open again. I couldn’t keep up with the mental whiplash of the events going on around me. My parents had broken the law. I thought they had brought me because I was a hot-shit mech operator; instead, I was nothing more than a bargaining chip.
My father waved his gun at the lieutenant. “I told you, John, go ahead and kill him.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because he knows too much. I’m not going to kill him, though; my soul is pure. You, however; you’re already a killer so you’ll have to do it.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve lost the ability to kill. I don’t know. Maybe it’s all the sermonizing and moralizing you put me through. I just can’t kill anymore.”
“Nah, that’s crap,” Lieutenant Smith said. “I know you could kill anyone in this room with the right motivation. Just remember, though, our mission is to bring home the girl. That’s what you signed up to do.”
“Don’t try to confuse him,” my father said. “He’s turned over a new leaf, and once you’re gone, he will be able to follow the path of purity.”
I looked around the room again, and my eyes met the girl’s. She looked scared, and it dawned on me why. “I don’t want to rehash this, but the girl has seen everything the lieutenant has. Can you promise me that you’re going to let her go?”
My father looked away and mumbled something. My mother said nothing, which spoke volumes. She never lied. “Get out of the suit,” my father finally said.
“I think I’m fine right here,” I said, assessing the situation. If bullets were going to be flying, I liked having a little bit of armor between me and them. The suit wouldn’t stop mom’s laser, much, but dad’s pistol wouldn’t hurt me.
“I said, get out of the suit,” my father said.
“He never did listen very well,” my mother added. She looked down the barrel of the rifle at the lieutenant. “Tell him to get out of the suit.”
“Tell him your own God-damned self,” the lieutenant replied.
That was a mistake, and I knew it—you don’t swear at my mom. She reversed the rifle and slammed the butt into his face. He fell to the floor before getting back up slowly to his knees. He spit out a tooth.
“Want another one?” my mother asked. She put the rifle back up to her shoulder, aimed, and put her finger on the trigger.
“Nope,” the lieutenant said.
So that was it, then. They—or someone—was going to have to kill the girl to satisfy my parents’ plan. That would probably fall to me, too. With both mom and dad holding weapons, though, I didn’t see
any way I could stop them both, without one or the other hostage dying.
The lieutenant could obviously see the same thing, for he looked me in the eyes, as if he could see through the metal of my suit, and nodded once. “Hey, Andrews?” he asked.
“Yeah?”
“Promise me one thing.”
I shook my head once, although no one could see it. “I’m not sure it’ll be possible.”
“I’ve got faith in you,” he replied. “Once you save the girl, like you’re supposed to, do me a favor. Avenge me.”
I looked at him, then at my mother and father, all of whom were looking back at me.
The lieutenant, my mother, and my father—almost everyone in the room but me—had faith, but while my parents had faith in their religion, the lieutenant had a different kind of faith, and it was something my parents never had—he had faith in me. And then it hit me like a MAC round in the chest—I didn’t need faith in my abilities or in my resolve—the only thing I needed was faith in my squad mates and to honor the faith they had in me.
I did the only thing I could. My tri-barrel cycled, firing five rounds into my mother, and she was blown backward, dead before she hit the floor. Dad’s jaw dropped as I spun on him, and he turned back to the girl, his finger starting to tighten on the trigger.
I was faster, and the rounds from my tri-barrel hit him in the wrist, separating his hand from his arm, and then walked up to his chest. As the lieutenant ran over to grab my father’s pistol, I realized I had done it. The lieutenant was right. I could kill if I needed to, without any feelings other than the satisfaction of doing what had to be done. I was ‘cured.’
* * *
The lieutenant and I stood waiting on the pad with the SOGA’s daughter, whose name I still didn’t know, watching as the SOGA’s Q-ship came down to land. “Question for you,” the lieutenant said as the skids touched down.
“Yeah?”
“Why did you shoot your mother first? I told you to save the girl.”
I shrugged. “Mom was always the one with resolve. She would have killed you. Dad was a believer; the last thing he wanted to do was kill anyone. I knew I had a split second to get back on him.”
As the boarding ramp came down, the lieutenant stuck his hand out to me as if to shake my hand. “Well, it’s been good knowing you,” he said, “but here’s where our paths part.”
My jaw dropped for about the tenth time since I’d come home. “Wha—what do you mean by ‘here’s where our paths part?’”
“Really?” Lieutenant Smith asked, holding up a slate for me to see. “You don’t know? You should have read your contract better. It specifically states right here—” he pointed at the screen, “that you could be released from service—should you so desire—at the end of the mission on the closest inhabited planet. Well, there are sentient beings here, now that we set loose the rest of the colonists your parents had locked up, so this planet is inhabited. I can either leave you here, or you can join the Warden’s Own. What do you think about becoming a permanent Dead Man Walking?”
“Will I still be considered a convict?”
“Nope, you’re a free man. You can do whatever you want. The only thing is, you can never talk about the Warden’s Own; the warden tends to look…unfavorably…on anyone who does.”
“What if I want to go back to Earth?”
“We may return there…some time…but you’ll have to sign on the dotted line for another mission if you want me to take you off this rock.”
Fuck that. I didn’t want anything to do with the Warden’s Own. If this was the kind of mission they got…no thanks. We’d had 90 percent casualties—their missions were certain death. About the only thing I could think of worse than certain death was…living in Paradise.
“Give me the damn slate.”
He handed it to me with a grin. I started to sign my name, but he held up a hand. “Don’t sign your old name,” he said. “That man was shot trying to escape and has been listed as dead. You completed your mission, so the SOGA’s given you a new life and a new identity.” He turned the slate so he could see it again. “Sign it, ‘Dan Walker.’”
# # # # #
TINKERMAN by Jake Bible
Tee winced as the bolts auto-threaded into the bone grafts.
He could have installed a full bracket or even pain mitigating nanites. But he didn’t trust the permanence of the bracket tech he had available. His workshop had become a little bare, and he needed every spare part for what he had planned.
As for the pain? He’d suffered worse. Way worse. When the tips of the bolts met raw bone, he merely winced and checked the diagnostics on the prosthetic connected to the bottom half of his left arm. All was in good working order. The arm was ugly as sin, more metal alloy than synthetic flesh, and zero skin, but it did the job.
Looking into the vanity mirror that was stuck to the wall by bands of black electrical tape, Tee studied his lined and weathered face. Two decades earlier he’d had females of many galactic races seeking his company. Now he could barely get a cup of coffee without the waitress wincing at the scars that crisscrossed his cheeks and forehead. Deep scars. Scars that told a story no one wanted to hear.
Tee took a deep breath, put on his best smile, shoved aside the drape that partitioned off his bedroom, and walked into the workshop area of his cobbled together abode.
“Lucas?” Tee asked.
The eight-year-old boy sitting at one of Tee’s workbenches nodded, but didn’t smile back. The woman standing behind the boy gave Tee a grimace and a slight shrug.
“Thank you, Mr. Tinkerman, for seeing my boy so quickly,” the mother said, her voice subservient and scared. “I don’t know what Lucas would do if we had to make the trip to Portland. He doesn’t do well on that side of the range.”
“I understand,” Tee replied, focusing on the boy. “I’m not a fan of leaving this side, either.”
He waited for the boy to give him another nod before he sat down at the bench and took the child’s right arm in his. Where there should have been a hand there was only a nub of flesh stretched over bone. Tee hid his repulsion as he spotted the gangrene and what looked to have been an attempt to use maggots to eat away the rotted flesh.
The maggots failed, as most living creatures did in the harsh reality that was Eastern Oregon. High desert scrub brush for hundreds of miles in all directions. It was a land meant for buzzards, not humans. Yet, there the humans lived. Or tried to.
Tee sighed as he gently set the boy’s arm on the workbench then steeled himself to pull the roughly woven blanket away from the child’s lap and legs. The smell assaulting his nostrils would have sent a lesser man scurrying to throw up outside in the already one hundred plus degree heat.
But Tee had witnessed worse; worked on worse. The smell wasn’t the issue so much as the emotions the sight of the severed legs brought up in him.
The boy’s legs were missing from the upper thighs down. Other than the hack job of surgery, the injuries were perfectly symmetrical.
“Maglev train?” Tee asked.
“He and his brother were playing outside…” The mother trailed off.
Tee looked her straight in the face, his eyes narrowed but kind. “Accidents happen.”
“I was making lunch. They were supposed to stay in the yard.”
“Kids rarely do, but still ain’t your fault. That maglev moves so damn fast.”
“Portlanders.” The mother spat then looked horrified.
Tee spat as well and grinned. “Don’t worry, I ain’t eating off this floor anytime soon.”
The mother tried to smile and failed so miserably Tee almost laughed.
He shifted focus back to the boy.
“Lucas, you need to listen to me, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Lucas replied, his eyes about to pop from his head from fear.
“This will be uncomfortable. I can make sure the worst of the pain is held at bay by nanites, but I’m not a doctor, and this is not
a hospital. You will feel a lot of it. I want you to know it’s okay to cry. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay then.” Tee glanced over at the operating table in the middle of the workroom. Six bots of his own design stood waiting for the procedure, their lights blinking green as they communicated with each other. “No time like the present.”
“I cannot pay, Mr. Tinkerman,” the mother said quietly.
“I assumed as much,” Tee replied. “Were you told what I ask then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you agree to my terms? It may be a month from now. It may be never. But when I call, he’ll be expected to show up.”
“Will it be…Will it be dangerous…?”
“It’ll be what it is,” Tee replied, crossing his arms over his chest. His metal alloy fingers tapped his bicep over and over until the mother gave a small squeak of assent. “Good. I promise I’ll do the best work I can, and he’ll only be called if needed. The kids are only for the greeting, not the combat.”
“Okay…thank you, Mr. Tinkerman.”
“Thank me when the procedures are done,” Tee said. “Until then, I need you to hold his good hand and help me keep him calm. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Let’s get started.”
Tee snapped his metal fingers, and the bots became a blur of motion around the operating table.
* * *
“This coffee is horrible,” Taska said. “But better than anything I’ve had in a long, long while.” She emptied her cup and set it down on the cafe’s counter, giving it a couple taps with the rings on her right hand. “Y’all got any cake? I could go for some cake to help get the taste of this coffee outta my mouth.”
“No cake,” the exhausted-looking waitress replied as she set her slate down. The image of a half-naked man staring longingly out of the screen blinked to black on the slate. Her name tag said she was Bobbie. Bobbie gave Taska a tired, worn look. “Got cookies. But they ain’t any good. Butter soured. I told Van not to use it, but he don’t throw nothing away.”
For a Few Credits More: More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 7) Page 45