“Thank you,” she began.
“Not yet, Rai. You’re trying to take a suit off base. I say ‘trying’ because you must have discovered pretty quick that this year’s improved transponder tech won’t let you take base property without raising a hell of an alarm. And somehow you’re sure I’ll look the other way while you do this.”
“Sergeant Singh, you’ve been in the CPF for a while. It’s natural that your loyalties are a little skewed.”
“Rude!” I said with a humorless laugh.
Rai dipped her head and was silent for a moment. I recognized the preparation to appeal to my common sense, or better nature, or old loyalties, or something of the sort. “CPF or no CPF ,” she said, “do you really think humans will have a chance in a galaxy where Accordance and Conglomeration keep the best toys for themselves?”
I remembered something Devlin said—when Earth breaks free of the Accordance, we’ll have extra knowledge and tech from when the Arvani forced us to build their ships and fight their battles. My vision was a little darker—should the Accordance turn tail and run, leaving Earth and the solar system to be overrun by the Conglomerate, would we have learned and gained enough to defend ourselves?
“Give me a minute,” I said grudgingly.
I stepped away, brought up my helmet again, and engaged the private channel. “Devlin, Ken, I’ve found her. What now?”
Devlin’s voice crackled with stress. “What do you mean, ‘what now’? Do you need help bringing her in?”
“Um . . . complicated reasons suggest this might not be best for all concerned. Think of our long-term goals. She’s with an anti-Accordance group. Not sure which one yet, but we don’t want to piss off potential allies.”
He took time for a suffering sigh. “Right. Can you restrain her until midnight? There’s still too much happening here, damn Anais and his mind games.”
“Ken? How much longer before Anais arrives?”
Ken’s voice was calmer but still tense. “Anais is expected at oh eight hundred hours. Trains are running to schedule.”
“Of course they are. Okay, I can keep her here till midnight, but that still doesn’t answer the question of what we do after that.”
“Amira’s right, Devlin,” Ken said. “If this thing is to be covered up, it’s going to take more than us three to do it.”
“I won’t send a recruit to be executed by the Accordance,” I stated. “Don’t care if they mean us good or ill. If they’ve got to be taken out, I’d rather do that myself. Judge, jury, and executioner if needs be.”
I heard Devlin exhale slowly. “Amira, I need time. Expect us after midnight. I’ll send you a message.”
“But—”
“Amira, please.”
I nodded, resigned. “All right, Captain. I’ll wait for your message and meet you after midnight.”
I let my helmet slide back and frowned at my prisoner as I rechecked the overrides that kept her suit under my command. “Comfortable?’ I asked her calmly.
Rai gave an anxious laugh. “That depends on what you’re going to do.” Her final word emerged at a strangled pitch as I shuffled her suit back a couple more feet into the brush.
“I’m going to wait,” I said, settling down where I could see anyone coming from any direction. “And so are you.”
5
* * *
I’m not ashamed to say that I took a nap. Rai wasn’t going anywhere with her suit locked and tethered to me, and my suit kept watch better than a human soldier. Besides, Makani was right; when it came to maintaining my tech, there was no substitute for sleep, especially after such a large data intake.
I woke up at the ping of Devlin’s message—he was on his way with Ken. “Rai! Time to stretch your legs.”
Rai swore at me, but when I moved her suit, she groaned in relief as her joints flexed and unstiffened. I made the suit bend, twist, and high-step, testing my control and the suit’s remote capabilities. I was still at it when Devlin and Ken arrived, fully suited with helmets down. Ken was very surprised when he saw me making Rai dance.
“You can do that?” he said anxiously.
I nodded. “Don’t worry. It’s a temporary instructor override present in training mode. Hacking into battle-ready suits is not a thing that can happen.”
Devlin wasn’t interested in chatting. “Come, the rest are waiting for us.”
I blinked but hid my curiosity. We followed him to a clearing near the edge of the base—not quite a safe spot, but still fairly well sheltered with screening foliage. What I saw there made me more than blink. I calmly sat Rai and her suit down, locked her in position with helmet open, and spoke privately to Devlin.
“Devlin, what the hell?”
He stubbornly repeated Ken’s words. “It’s going to take more than three of us to cover this up.”
“Yes, but the whole platoon?”
They sat quietly in rows, dressed in PT gear, their expressions variously bemused, irritated, curious, resigned, and worried. Many of the names escaped me. When Devlin accused me of not giving a damn because I couldn’t recall who Rai was or what she looked like, he wasn’t wrong. I realized I was becoming like Shriek, caring less and less about names that would soon die and be forgotten.
I looked for other officers, but there was only Mal, also in PT gear and unusually grim-faced. That actually made sense. Older, more established officers might be less inclined to mutiny, but Mal could be persuaded, or even pressured.
“Our long-term goals, remember?” Devlin replied. “I can’t do CPF propaganda forever, Amira. I’ve got to plant a seed here, send a message via this group. I can’t do it with Anais and his shadows watching me. I’m taking my chance now.”
I glanced at Ken, who gave a small, rueful nod to show that they’d argued it out earlier and reached some kind of agreement. I had plenty more to say, but I wasn’t going to debate it in the open. “Okay, Captain Hart. The floor is yours.” I went and stood by Rai, facing the audience of recruits.
“Listen up, Second Platoon Charlie-C. You have a decision to make.”
He’d synced his suit’s mike to a handful of transmitters in the audience, a neat trick that meant he didn’t have to raise his voice.
“Mawusi Rai stole power armor and went AWOL. Desertion is enough grounds for execution, and theft of defense tech . . . well, that just seals it.”
He paused and looked around at them, watching their faces as his words sank in. I was watching them too, checking if there was any recruit who glanced—or refused to glance—at Rai in a significant manner.
“Me and Sergeants Singh and Awojobi—we’re the only ones who know the power armor’s missing. If it’s returned intact, nothing needs to be said. Rai’s disappearance lasted less than twenty-four hours, so if a few of you could come up with a reasonable story, there’s no need for an official report. What else happens to her . . . is up to you.”
The recruits began to speak softly among themselves. They didn’t look reassured. “Why should we lie for her?” I made an effort and recognized the speaker as Trey Maslin, an older recruit, older than me. “Doesn’t that get more of us in trouble?”
Ken spoke up. “We’re already in trouble, Maz, all of us. You’ve heard about the missing bio-bombs and the CPF soldiers who died because of it. Do you want us to send Rai to be executed?”
I added my bit. “We have to be our own justice. The Accordance doesn’t care about human lives.”
Maslin laughed humorlessly. “Does it matter if Rai is killed here and now instead of in space months after? We know about the executions, but we’ve also seen the casualty lists. Is there a difference? Weren’t you sending us to be executed anyway?”
His quiet, intense words carried easily throughout the group, inspiring murmurs of agreement. Devlin began to say something but stammered and stopped. I felt sorry for him. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that the recruits might not want to protect their own.
“You should listen to Captain Hart,”
I said, an edge to my voice. “He made sure no one got left behind on Titan, and that wasn’t easy. He’s asking you to try to do the same for each other, that’s all.”
Maslin locked eyes with me, and I didn’t like what I saw there. He wasn’t impressionable and naïve, and he was letting me know it. “I understand Captain Hart’s importance, and yours too.” He waved at both me and Ken. “You’re not just CPF propaganda. You’re a message to humans from the Accordance, and we get it. We really do. Doesn’t matter if you want peaceful protest, rebellion, or collaboration,” he said, pointing to Devlin, me, and Ken in turn. “Doesn’t matter. You end up serving the Accordance regardless.”
My blood chilled with fury. I couldn’t trust myself to move even as much as a turn of the head, but I could see Devlin’s stricken face and hear Ken’s sharp exhale, something between pain and laughter. The worst was Rai. She looked at us with pity and nothing more, not even a hint of contempt or anger or fear.
Another voice broke the tension.
“We don’t hate you. You’re trying to stay alive, and right now you have a good chance at it. Go on. Do what you have to. But we’re going to do the same.”
More started to speak out, bolder in the masking night.
“The only chance we have for survival is our kids, and their kids.”
“Exactly. We’re not going to win against them. We’ve got too many disadvantages. Knowledge, technology. We have to train and prepare generations to come. Maybe they’ll make Earth free again.”
“I’d rather live, but if I die, at least my CPF pension will pay for my daughter’s health and schooling.”
“I don’t have kids yet, but I left my eggs in storage. My family knows what to do with them if I don’t come back.”
Ken finally exploded. “You’re all just going to give up? Put all your hopes into some vague dream that in the future, we might be more than lowest rung? What about right here, right now?”
We all turned and stared at him—son of collaborators, model CPF soldier, decorated officer—while he ranted as if possessed. When silence finally returned, there was an awkward pause, and then Mal said sadly, “It’s gonna be a long game, Sergeant. We thought you knew that.”
“Time’s ticking,” I murmured to Devlin. “Let’s wrap this up before emotions get out of hand.”
Devlin nodded and raised his voice. “Right! You want Rai to face consequences? Okay. We can make it a lesser charge. Failure to report for duty or something. She never left base grounds, so that’s no lie. The power armor, that’s our call, and we’ve decided we’re not reporting it.”
“No!”
Devlin opened his mouth to reprimand the recruit for the interruption, but a cascade of dissent drowned out his attempt to speak.
“This isn’t a battlefield. It won’t be that easy to cover up.” “You can’t maverick your way through this and hope for a medal if your dumb luck holds out!” “We are being watched. They’ll know. They always know.” “If you won’t follow the rules, they’ll just replace you with someone who will.”
Devlin and Ken moved quickly among the recruits, trying to bring back silence and order. Rai was laughing quietly beside me. “You see, this is how it starts. Give it a few more decades and we’ll be fully tamed, but for now, a little culling of cowardice may be in order.”
I know I meant to reply to her. I’m sure I had something biting and insightful in mind. I wish I could remember what I said.
+ + + +
It’s not like in the old movies, where the grenade falls in slow motion before unleashing blooming carnage. In real life the grenade falls as it falls, and you’re the one stuck in slow motion, scrambling to move through thickened air with lead-booted feet. Somehow, in spite of all that, you’re convinced you’ll find that burst of superhuman speed needed to swat it away or dive behind something solid. You remember to start screaming at least, so that the pressure doesn’t take your ears. You shield your eyes reflexively; they are doubly vulnerable to changes in pressure and impact of debris. If only you had been closer, faster . . . nothing would have worked, nothing could have been quick enough. But even if you had been, it’s not a grenade or any kind of explosive you’ve ever seen. It’s a small, flat disc, like a poker chip, easily hidden in the power armor’s gauntlet. Rai flicks the device away from you and into the thick of the audience of recruits.
There will be some lost time, some ragged memories around the event. There will always be a lost moment between the curving arc of the disc and the taste of blood in your mouth, the smell of blood in the air, and the slow, dragging sensation of your own body, full length on the ground, uncoordinated and unconnected to your dazed brain.
“Ken! Devlin! Ken!” I couldn’t hear myself at first. I struggled into a half crouch and stumbled to the nearest tree. Its solidity was comforting and it gave me a place to lean as I checked myself over. Stunned but not hurt. Armor intact. Cannon still in place over my shoulder. I straightened up and tried to look around. Dust and smoke clouded everything, but I could see an armor-suited figure lying a few feet away. It definitely wasn’t Rai. The stolen suit of power armor was sprawled nearby, open and empty.
The armored figure shifted and cursed in a voice that I could recognize even through the muffled ringing in my ears. Ken. My vision and my wits were returning. That distinctive heat signature moving about in the smoke, that was another power armor suit—Devlin, alive and cursing over the public channel. At least he’d managed to get his helmet up in time.
I crawled over to Ken and helped him sit up while I engaged my own helmet and opened a channel to base. “Biomech. Emergency. Multiple trauma . . . deaths. On my coordinates. Expedite.”
A familiar and unwelcome sound cleared my head instantly—the percussion of small-arms fire, the sizzle and crunch of smoke grenades, all of it coming closer. Ken put his helmet up immediately, and we leaned on each other as we scrambled to our feet.
“We’re under attack!” I yelled. “Take cover!”
I stretched my senses and sensors, and looked around frantically. The rapidly clearing smoke was becoming less of a factor, but no matter how carefully I scanned, what I saw was unbelievable. There was no advancing line, no armored cart arriving or hopper descending to account for the new combatants appearing from the northeast. They came out of the earth via access hatches. I snatched a moment to check my old and new schematics for the tunnels built by Ship 503 and the dikes constructed by the Arvani. The two webs did not match, but I made a wild guess. Arvani builders had scrapped and salvaged the tunnels of Ship 503 to become the service and maintenance conduits of their system of viewing dikes. It appeared that the survivors of the Ship had retained enough knowledge to turn that to their advantage.
Even IR vision couldn’t cut this smoke, but I still got a good glimpse of them. The freedom fighters had manufactured their own armor. It wasn’t powered and it didn’t have the bulk and solidity of CPF infantry build. This looked like a new and improved version of something the Ships created to defeat the Arvani on their own ground—an amphibious suit designed for stealth, speed, and agility. Its black, drag-reducing skin gleamed in the starlight in alternating, irregular stripes of matte and low glow, and the wide-eyed goggles made the helmet look insectoid. It was as if we’d been invaded by a clutch of aliens from old-time movies.
Ken groaned. “Look! The Arvani!”
The dikes in the middistance suddenly blazed with enhanced bioluminescence, turning our once-sheltered spot into an arena. Arvani were already on the ground in mobile water tanks and power armor, chasing after the humans who had emerged from their realm.
Devlin hailed us over the private channel. “Amira, Ken, protect the recruits. I’m going to head off the invaders.”
“Which ones, the Arvani or the humans?” Ken shouted.
I unslung my cannon, pointed it at some armored figures, and fired repeatedly. I was going to take them both out, eight legs and two, and let base security sort out the rest.
&nbs
p; I did not see Rai, and trust me, I looked for her.
+ + + +
Five of the recruits were killed instantly; two more died of their injuries minutes later in all the mayhem. There had been about six human guerrillas, no more, who made enough noise and cloud and diversion to extract Rai and leave. The Arvani created a bigger mess by rushing out and charging everything that looked human, which included us, the recruits that could still stand, and the contingent of base security that turned up for round two. Maslin was one of the few who escaped the explosion with only scratches, but he picked up a bad leg break when a couple of civilian Arvani in their water tanks bulldozed randomly through the melee. Finally, base communications got through to Arvani security, who corralled and removed their gung-ho civilian colleagues. The injured were evacuated, the dead were carried away, and by the first light of dawn, there was only scorched and blood-soaked earth.
+ + + +
Four power armor suits were returned to storage. Captain Devlin Hart reported that we had accompanied Second Lieutenant Jonse and Second Platoon Charlie-C on a midnight “morale run.” Unfortunately, we ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time when anti-Accordance agitators fled the dikes and tunnels they’d infiltrated, with Arvani civilians and security following in hot pursuit. Unarmed recruits were injured in the clash, with the majority of deaths caused by an explosive device of unknown origin. Recruit Mawusi Rai was missing, presumed captured by the anti-Accordance group. Briefings with base security, communications, and IT revealed that an unspecified tech failure in a section of the perimeter enabled the group to evade capture. Investigations were continuing. Cosigned by Sergeants Singh and Awojobi. The end.
+ + + +
Jupiter Rising Page 5