by Graham Brown
“Damn,” he muttered.
He grasped the chain and then quickly let go. It was scalding hot to the touch.
He looked up. The sun was riding high, burning his hands and the exposed parts of his face. He’d have to take cover soon.
Feeling the pangs of despair settle over him, James shook his head angrily trying to chase them away.
“Not for nothing,” he grunted. “Not for nothing.” He moved on and continued the search, determined to find the kid even if it was too late.
Finally, after running himself in circles he spotted a shock of blond hair. He ran over and found the boy chained to the axel of an overturned transport. The kid had curled himself into the little bit of shade that the frame of the vehicle offered, but the mercenaries were no fools. They’d chained him in a way that left almost no shelter.
James quickly covered the child with the tarp and checked for and found a pulse.
“Thank God.”
Without the tarp to protect him, James could feel the sun more painfully than ever. It stung his neck and scalp; it seemed to be burning through his clothes.
Grabbing a metal pole from the rubbish all around him, James tried to break one of the links. As he began to work, the boy stirred.
“Who are you?” the kid croaked. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to take you home,” James said.
“To Earth?”
James paused for a second and then went back to work, banging on what looked like a weak link in the chain. “No,” he said. “Not that far.”
The kid didn’t reply. He looked pretty bad. His eyes were barely open and his skin was burned as red as the sand. James worked faster. After hammering at the damaged link uselessly, he stood up and looked around. He needed something stronger. He found a shovel beside one of the half buried machines and brought it back. He swung it with all his might. Slamming the edge into the link that connected the kid to the axel.
Still it held.
“Come on!” he shouted at the chain, his muscles straining and his arms burning in the sun. “Break damn you!”
With a few more blows, the link bent. And with one last savage impact the chain broke. It slithered off and rattled to the ground and coiling up like a snake. A dead snake, James thought. He dropped the shovel and scooped up the child.
“Stay with me,” he said, carrying the boy to the front end of a tracked vehicle.
He placed the boy down in the shade, then went back for the shovel and began digging furiously. Soon he’d excavated a small den beneath the overhang of the rig, down between the two caterpillar tracks.
Gently he picked the child up and eased him down into the pit. With the kid settled, James dropped in beside him and then covered the entrance with the metallic tarp.
CHAPTER 27
In the shade of the big machine, a few feet down the soil was actually quite cool. It helped draw the sting of the burns they’d both suffered.
As the pain subsided James tried to get comfortable.
“We’ll be safe in here,” he said to the kid.
Safe from the solar radiation at least, he thought. No telling what might happen if the thugs came back, but from the look of the other victims James doubted they made a habit of it.
Across from him, the boy moved a little, but he didn’t respond.
“You alright?” James asked.
The boy nodded. “I’m thirsty,” he replied.
James had to smile. He pulled a bottle of water from his pocket, took a swig and then handed it to the boy.
“Don’t take too much,” James said. “You’ll get sick.”
The kid drank a few swigs and then handed the bottle back to James.
“You got a name?” James asked.
“Tor,” the kid said.
“Tor,” James said. “I like it…Good name.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Ares,” James said.
The kid scrunched his face up as if he was considering the worth of James’s false name. “I guess that’s okay,” he said.
“Good,” James said, laughing a little. “I’m glad you approve.”
The kid smiled a little. “Now what do we do?”
James leaned back. “We wait for it to get dark and then head back to the work site.”
Silence followed. The kid seemed to be thinking. James was thinking too. A small part of him was calculating the odds, wondering what he’d do if the mercenaries found him, or if they’d notice the burns on his arms and face or if they came here to check and found that the kid was missing. None of the scenarios had a happy ending, but somehow that didn’t change his mood. As he rested James felt a sensation he could barely remember. A feeling of…
Righteousness.
That was as close as he could come to putting a name on it. For the first time in as long as he could remember, there was no grey area in his mind. No conflict between what he was doing and what he thought was right. He considered the possibility that it might be the last thing he ever did, and that somehow it might also be the best thing he’d ever done, the purest thing, the only thing he could recall doing without anything to gain from it himself.
If they died out there, at least the kid wouldn’t die alone. And if he was beaten and killed when he returned to the camp, then at least he’d died making a stand.
“Can I have some more water?” Tor asked.
James thought of how this had all started. The kid and his quest for a drink. He handed Tor the whole bottle. “You earned it.”
As the boy took the water, James squirmed around until he could lean against the inside edge of the caterpillar track. As he got himself comfortable he noticed the metal strip they’d inserted in his arm. The identification strip. The tracking strip. He wondered if they might know where he was right now.
He guessed it was a short-range device. At such a small size it couldn’t carry that much power. Still, as he stared at the dark strip he began to despise it and everything it stood for.
With deliberate thought, he pulled out the scalpel and began to cut into his own flesh. He didn’t have to dig deep; the strip was just under the surface of his skin. His arm and fingers were soon covered in blood, but he continued the crude surgery, determined to remove the mark they’d put inside him.
“What are you doing?” the kid asked, looking at him as if he’d lost his mind.
‘I’m trying to get this ID strip out,” James replied.
“Why?”
He finally got his fingertips on the end of the metal strip, gripped it and began to pull. The strip slid one painful inch and then James yanked it free. The pain was excruciating and energizing all at the same time.
“Because, I’m done being what they want me to be.”
CHAPTER 28
The sun had traversed the cloudless sky and was an hour from setting when it began to drop behind the broad shoulders of Olympus Mons.
The change in light was the first sign to those in the slave camp. If they wanted to eat or do anything before the taskmasters arrived and herded them to the staging areas, they’d better do it now.
From a spot against the wall, Bethel watched as the camp came to life. The arguments of the morning had faded into unspoken tension. The woman whose son had been taken lay forlornly on a shelf of rock. She had only a small rolled up wad of clothing for a pillow. Her eyes were streaked with darkness, as were those of her husband who sat beside her.
She looked despondent; he had a different appearance. After enduring hours of threats from the self-important group who seemed to think they spoke for the camp, the husband and father seemed almost to be hoping his son didn’t return.
It would be easier that way. There would be guilt, but a different kind of guilt. Private guilt as opposed to facing the blame of the entire group for whatever repercussions followed. Such was the trial of those who lived in oppression and fear.
For his part, Bethel stayed beside the gap in the tarp, keeping his
eyes on the desert. But the day had worn on and James had now been gone for ten hours. Even with the tarp to protect him and the bottles of water he’d taken, it was a long time to be out in that arid land.
As he clung to the tarp, Kek and his friend approached. “What are you looking for out there old man?”
Bethel kept his eyes on the desert. “The same thing I’ve been waiting for my whole life,” he said. “A sign of hope.”
The collaborators laughed. It was a mean, nasty laugh. “If you think your friend is coming back, you’re crazy. He’s dead by now.”
Bethel might have believed him. Might have crumbled inside, but a sight had caught his eye. Out in the distance a trail of dust slowly drifting to one side. As he watched a figure came into view, the dust from his feet was blowing to one side. The man was wrapped in a shroud like a Bedouin in the deserts of old Earth. He moved solidly and relentlessly and he carried a child in his arms.
“Son of a bitch,” Kek muttered and stormed back into the depths of the camp.
Bethel ignored him, his eyes on the approaching figure. “The Prodigal Son returns,” he whispered to no one but himself.
As James grew closer, a murmur began to spread through the camp. Soon others were joining Bethel at the entrance. Pushing out into the shade from the big mountain, staring at the man approaching.
As he neared the entrance, they could see that he carried the child with him.
“He’s dead,” someone whispered. “The boy is dead.”
“No,” someone else said. “He wouldn’t carry a lifeless body this far.”
“Get him some water,” another bystander whispered. “Get them both some water.”
Soon there was a full crowd. They parted in silence as James arrived. He carried the child into the camp and laid him down at the foot of the bed where the mother was beginning to stir.
She looked dazed. At first she was afraid to speak.
“He needs water and food,” James said. “But he’s alive.”
Those around the woman sprang into action, soaking rags in the precious water and laying them on the child’s burned face.
“Thank you,” the woman began to cry. “Thank you for my son.”
James stepped back. Only now did Bethel see the burns on his friend’s face and the bloody mess that was his forearm. Before he could say a word, Kek and his friend arrived.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Kek shouted at James, stepping forward and slamming him into one of the corrugated metal walls. The sound reverberated through the covered space.
“When they find out he’s not there, they’ll come looking for him!” Kek shouted. “They’ll kill all of us for this!”
James looked exhausted and spent. He remained against the wall as if the corrugated tin was all that held him up. “They’ll kill you anyway,” he said. “Eventually.”
“That’s a lie!”
Kek looked around at the crowd. “You all know what the deal is. How it works. We do our time. We get our freedom.”
He stepped forward to grab James again, but this time James was ready. As Kek put a hand on him, James grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted it outward. Kek winced in surprise, letting out an anguished grunt at the pain this caused in his elbow and shoulder. Even as he tried to escape the grasp, James swung forward and slammed his knee into the man’s gut.
Kek buckled, but James held him up long enough to finish him off with a forearm smash to the face.
The burly man fell back, his nose shattered, his mind blurred by the concussive impact.
A woman in the crowd spoke up. “You shouldn’t do this. You’re causing trouble.
A man standing beside her added, “Maybe we should turn you in.”
“We can save ourselves,” the woman insisted.
“Save yourselves for what?” James replied.
The crowd hushed.
“To work until you drop?” he added.
“If we finish a year,” someone spoke up. “We get to be citizens.”
James cringed just hearing it. They repeated like a mantra, like an article of faith. A brilliant lie by the Cartel, just real enough to be possible.
“A year?” James said, almost laughing. “And how long have you been here?”
“Three months,” the man said.
“Think you’ll make it? Do you really think you have what it takes to last another nine months in this hell?”
The man didn’t reply right away. “Maybe,” he finally muttered.
“Maybe,” James repeated, in a tone that said he doubted it. He turned to the crowd. “What about the rest of you? Anyone getting close? Anyone been here for six months? Five?”
No response. Only silence as they looked around at each other.
James stepped up his attack. “Have any of you seen even one, single person leave this hell hole on their feet?”
The crowd remained utterly silent. The wall of denial was breaking down.
James began walking around, looking at them closer as if he was examining them. He stopped in front of the man and woman who wanted to turn him in. They didn’t look much better than the mummified bodies he’d found chained to the machines. “Look at you,” he said to them. “You’re half dead already.”
Neither of them replied, and after a moment of bearing James’s ruthless stare they averted their eyes.
“It’s a lie,” James said, turning back to the crowd. “No one leaves here, no one becomes part of the colony. The only land they’ll ever give you is the grave they bury you in.”
The woman pointed a bony finger at him. “I know what you want. You want to fight. You’re crazy for even thinking these things.”
James dismissed her with a wave and began to walk off, too disgusted to argue. Bethel stepped forward. He realized what James didn’t, that this wasn’t just an argument. It was a pivotal moment.
“He’s not crazy.”
Everyone turned toward him. A hundred pairs of eyes locked onto him, two hundred others listening.
“Some of you know me,” Bethel said. “I was in the tunnels with you on Earth. I brought you medicines. I helped you when you were sick. People told me I was crazy as well, but sometimes things need to be done, no matter how hard they seem to be. “
A murmur went through the crowd. A few of them nodded. Some of them recognized him.
“So what do we do?” someone asked in a quiet voice.
Everyone in the room turned. The man who’d spoken was the largest person in the room. He had ink black hair, Polynesian features and a body like a grain silo.
“We can fight,” James said.
“What do you know about fighting?”
“I used to be in the military,” James said.
The big man shook his head. “Military man ain’t no friend of mine.”
“Well, I’m a traitor now,” James added, grinning at the irony. “So hopefully that helps. But either way, I can tell you these bastards don’t have nearly enough men here to guard a camp of this size. There are at least two thousand of us, no more than a hundred of them.”
“But they have guns,” the big fellow said.
“Which we’ll have, after we take them.”
“What about the armored personnel carriers?” someone else said. “They have heavy weapons, machine guns, and cannons like the street sweepers. They’ll slaughter us.”
“And what about the thumpers,” the big man asked. “How are we supposed to deal with them?”
James thought about that. Thumper was slang for the MRVs, presumably because of the way their footsteps shook the ground as they stomped about.
Fact was while the APCs moved around, the MRVs just set up shop in the distance and sat down, like guards in a guard tower. No one knew better than James how absurdly expensive and complicated those were to operate. They went through parts like there was no tomorrow. And from what he understood, they wore out faster on Mars than in the toughest environments on Earth. It made little point having them
stomp around the work site, stirring up the dust and putting more wear and tear on the transmissions and joints. They were just as effective sitting still. But that also made them vulnerable.
“Look,” James said. “I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy, or that a lot of us won’t be killed in the effort, but you have a choice. You can die a slow lingering death, taking the abuse and waiting for them to drag your wasted shell of a corpse out of here on the day you can’t answer the work bell anymore, or you can fight. If you want to live, if you want a chance at life, you’re going to have to fight for it. And I’m telling you right now, if you people can take out the guards, I’ll deal with the MRVs personally.”
“And then what?” the big guy asked again. “If we take the camp they’ll just come out from Olympia and slaughter us. What good is that?”
James was encouraged by the question. It meant this man had already thought about fighting, he’d taken the thought to its logical conclusion. What would happen next?
At the same time he noticed that the crowd had begun to follow the argument like spectators at a tennis match. No one else was chiming in anymore; the big guy was talking for them. James liked that too, it meant he only had to convince one person instead of the crowd. He turned toward the muscle bound fixture in their midst.
He understood the skepticism, the need for more. Every soldier needed hope.
“There are people in Olympia who will support us,” he said, going out on a limb. “When I was taken away by the doctor, I was able to speak with them. They’re ready to fight. They’ll assist us if we can take the first steps.”
A murmur of whispers moved through the crowd like a swell on the ocean. All of them knew he’d been dragged off the other day. Most of them were surprised when he’d come back.
They looked around at each other. They wanted to believe they could do something. But they were so downtrodden their sense of hope was almost gone. It was like putting a match to wet firewood and trying to make it burn.
They needed someone else to take the first step. James turned to his opponent in the debate. “What do you say big guy? You got any fight left in you?”