The Alliance

by Jason Letts

  Rion exchanged tense glances with Lena and Bailor.

  “Like what?”

  His question got no response. They spent another five minutes sitting in silence. Rion’s legs were beginning to cramp up, and his posterior began to feel sore from the tabletop.

  “What were you doing on Mars?” he asked.

  Reznik tilted his head down but didn’t answer.

  Lena pursed her lips. She had the dagger in her hands, unsheathed, and was running her finger along its twisting flat edge.

  “Well, I like it in here,” she said. “It’s got everything a person needs and nothing more. Do you stay in here all the time or do you have a home somewhere?”

  Rion thought it was a valiant attempt, but her small talk didn’t produce a response from him. A few small windows and the space above Reznik’s head allowed Rion to peer out, but he couldn’t see anything indicating where they were or what direction they were going in. Earth seemed like an impossible destination for them, and anywhere else would take days to get to at least.

  Time passed and they fell asleep on the table against the wall. Rion woke up with a crick in his neck and a severe startle. Reznik, still covered in tape, stood over them. It seemed odd that he kept himself covered at all times, even in his own ship.

  “Now we can talk about where to take you. You have to get off as soon as possible. Where do I have to go to get you home?”

  It was suddenly their turn to give an uncomfortable silence. No small amount of relief come from the inference that Reznik wasn’t about to slit their throats and eject them into space, but they knew what they had to say wasn’t going to be the answer he wanted.

  “Do you know about the personnel trick question on the Martian manifest form? We don’t have any place to go,” Bailor said.

  Rion wondered if that were true. What if he told Reznik to take him home to Venus? Having someone whisk him back to his front door was what he wanted for years. After what his father had said—it’s for the best—would they be happy to see him? He knew at the bottom of his heart that the home he had wasn’t his anymore, and if his parents wanted to get rid of him he’d do what he could to make them suffer any guilt they had by continuing his absence. They had moved a couple of times in his life. It was possible they wouldn’t be there anyway.

  It seemed Bailor had also given up hope of seeing his family. And of course Lena didn’t want to go back to hers.

  Reznik’s shoulders stiffened and he turned his head away.

  “I know about the manifest forms on Mars, and about the shorted power supplies on Mercury, the purposeful taxation errors on Venus, the data thefts on Earth, the graft and corruption around Jupiter, the tourist scams on Saturn, the worker deaths in the shipyards on Uranus, the human testing on Neptune, and the true purpose of the Pluto project. But that’s just the beginning. There are enough schemes and plots in this little solar system to stuff the galaxy,” he said.

  Reznik gave the impression he would return to the cockpit, but he jerked back to face them.

  “And what was yours? What scheme brought you three to the upper floors of the Mars Regent’s Center?”

  Even with black cloth draped over his entire face, his gaze was withering.

  “We wanted to pay Kline back for what he did to us, what he allowed us to go through. When we arrived as part of a work crew, we decided to rob him.”

  “What did you take? Anything? Show me,” Reznik said.

  They showed off their booty, a book, a dagger, and two hands from a broken watch, which garnered the most interest from Reznik. Rion wondered if the strange man understood what the theft meant to him.

  “It’s too bad the regent will never know these items are missing.”

  “Why’s that?” Bailor asked.

  “Because I injected him with a substance that killed him shortly after we departed.”

  Though he’d felt groggy before, Rion was wide awake now. He couldn’t believe that they’d happened to stumble onto him during one of his incredible assassinations. Lena gasped and Bailor giggled inappropriately.

  “Why did you do that?” Rion asked.

  Reznik hesitated and put his hand above his head on one of the walls.

  “I can’t tell you that. It’s like making a wish. If I say it, it won’t come true. I’ll figure out what to do with you.”

  Lena had her mouth open like she was about to say something, but Reznik was already returning to the cockpit. She leaned back and sighed.

  Hours, then an entire day passed. Conversation had been kept at an absolute minimum, even among the three friends, and boredom had taken over. Rion sat on the floor, stretching and rolling. The energy in his body had to get out one way or another.

  That’s when he got a special perspective on the ceiling and noticed two heat dampeners molded in at the top, but there was one on each side and they were facing toward each other, not in the same direction, as one would expect with a single heat source on one side. A funny thought snuck into his brain, which gelled with the short hourglass shape of the ship.

  It had two rear ends and no real front.

  That led to further speculation that the reason the cabin was so insulated was because the ship contained two complete engines pointing toward each other with the cabin in the middle. What other goodies did this ship contain between the petite cabin and the exterior hull? It felt like he was inside a puzzle box and had only unearthed the first clue.

  If he wanted more answers, he was going to have to get them from Reznik.

  Lena and Bailor had taken to arm-wrestling. Even though Lena won easily, Bailor wanted to try over and over as if his arm would get stronger and not weaker from the previous exertion. Their competition gave Rion a chance to approach Reznik. He squeezed a foot into the cockpit, clearing his throat to make sure his presence wasn’t a surprise.

  “Dueling engines, huh? I’ve never seen a ship designed like this. Do you use an index meter to coordinate the power output from the two sides? Those are generally just used to quantify the heat radiated,” he said.

  “Actually, I do. Are you familiar with engine thermodynamics?” Reznik asked. When he swiveled his seat around to face Rion, it felt like being in an uncomfortable spotlight. Rion chuckled weakly and shook his head.

  “Not really. I don’t know how they work, but I know the names of lots of parts.”

  Reznik nodded slightly. Also off-putting was how the mask robbed him of any sense of how Reznik regarded what he was saying.

  “These engines make it like we’re riding around within the twin hemispheres of a brain. That’s what we’re all doing anyway, isn’t it?”

  Rion produced a half smile in response to what he perceived was a rhetorical question. A pause ensued, and he couldn’t resist the chance to find out about the things he really hungered to know.

  “What’s the most powerful weapon on board? I mean, how does the Assailing Face obliterate its enemies?”

  Only after he’d said it did he realize what an audacious question it had been. Like Reznik would confide in him the innermost secrets of the most terror-inducing vessel in the solar system. He half expected the man to spin right around and ignore him.

  “The most powerful weapons are ideas. Things may seem relatively stable in the solar system, and by that I mean all of humanity exists under the control of the Planetary Alliance or the Marshall Force without massive daily bloodshed, but there’s actually a silent war of ideas going on. The casualties are misguided human minds, and right now the fallen are ubiquitous,” Reznik said.

  The dodge to his question may have been more intriguing than the answers about the ship he was hoping for.

  “You’re fighting a war of ideas…‌by killing Alliance officials, going on raids, and wiping out ships in transit? That sounds like a regular war,” Rion said.

  Reznik leaned forward and set his elbows on his knees.

  “You’re a smart boy. But there are more layers to this than simple contradiction. Advancing
an idea, attaining a goal, requires myriad methods. It’s about a truth worth fighting for and a vision of where we all need to go that must be sought by any means necessary.”

  “You hate the Planetary Alliance and want to destroy it?” Rion supposed, recalling all those instances of corruption he’d heard about.

  Reznik shook his head.

  “Wiping out the Planetary Alliance would lead to chaos and destruction on a massive scale as other forces rushed to fill the void. The Marshall Force and the big corporations would tear everything apart. No, it’s not the institutions but the people who wield them who need to change. And even though there are a number of families entrenched in power, an idea spread at the greatest scale can still produce the desired effect.”

  “Then what is it you want to accomplish?” Rion asked as his counterpart leaned back and glanced over his shoulder at the windshield.

  “If I told you, it would rob the idea of all of its power. I need to inspire you and everyone else to have this idea independently and hold it so dear that it wipes away the old lies,” Reznik said. The pace of his speaking grew faster, making it harder to understand.

  “What are the old lies?”

  “There are many pretenses we live under that inform our relationship to life and our culture. Some of them are false and have been planted in us over the course of generations to mold our behavior. There’s one in particular that is as ingrained in us as the need to breathe air, but it’s fiction, pure fantasy. Do you know what it is?”

  Rion paused, trying to come up with a smart answer that would impress Reznik. But sorting out an underlying principle of society that had been subtly engineered was a tall order considering he’d been locked in a spaceport for so long at a young age.

  “That we’re alone in the galaxy?”

  “No, but not a bad thought. As far as the Planetary Alliance knows, we are the only instance of intelligent life in existence. I’m talking about something even more basic. The concept is that society in its current form is the inevitable, ultimate expression of humanity possible. Most people can’t imagine how things could be better because they don’t believe change can occur. Reznik Igorovich and the Assailing Face are about creating an agent of change broadly and instilling my idea more particularly.”

  Time on the ship continued to pass. Bailor had managed to read his stolen journal twice. They hadn’t stopped for anything or gone near anything recognizable, but they noticed the dwindling ration packs and knew that they would need to stop somewhere soon.

  That somewhere turned out to be Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede.

  When they saw the colossal gas giant consuming their field of vision and began to approach a large gray rock, Bailor was gobsmacked. He’d said he had nowhere to go, but he was being taken home nonetheless.

  “It’s risky revealing myself anywhere where there’s an artificial atmosphere, but this place is the least risky,” Reznik said.

  They spotted other ships in the vicinity, but none of them seemed to notice the Assailing Face. Rion had his theories about the ship’s transparency effect, which would’ve been accomplished with pixel mapping not too different than what was on the walls around the Regent’s Center on Mars. Regardless of how inconspicuous they were, Reznik was visibly on edge.

  Now that they made their approach to the moon’s surface, Rion suddenly felt like he didn’t want to leave. What he’d learned and seen from Reznik opened his eyes and his mind. He dreaded the feeling of being a transient he always had at the spaceport.

  “He’s going to kick us out,” Lena said.

  “I wonder if my parents would even recognize me,” Bailor said. “They were too poor to afford a child in the first place. I can’t ruin them when I can take care of myself.”

  Rion had another thought.

  “Will he really just let us go after all we’ve seen? Maybe he’ll try to give us Brain Candy and make us forget everything.”

  Losing what they’d been through seemed a worse fate than anything else that could happen. They didn’t have much of a say in the matter considering the position they were in.

  All they could do was sit and wait, which became more difficult when an abrupt change in course sent them sliding off the table and onto the floor. Rion pulled himself up in time to see the moon drift out of what was visible through the windshield. The drastic motion suggested that something was wrong.

  “What happened?” Lena asked as she clamored up.

  Rion could hear the engines working harder. The ship had accelerated. More beeping echoed from the cockpit. When he staggered into the doorway, he caught a glimpse of a red dot on the scanner.

  “Damn it. I knew this was a bad idea. Terrible luck,” Reznik said, sounding angry at himself.

  “What is it? An Alliance ship spotted you?” Rion asked as calmly as he could. If it was something that could make Reznik lose his cool, it had to be bad.

  Reznik sighed and tapped a number of buttons on the dashboard.

  “No, they wouldn’t know me if they saw me. But this is an old friend who’s spent a lot of time identifying my heat signature.”

  “The way you say it makes me think you aren’t close,” Rion said.

  “I was being facetious about the friend bit. He’s another unaligned pilot in a homemade ship, a copycat who has spent years pirating around while trying to find me. There are a handful of them out there, and most of what they do gets attributed to me, wrecking my messages. The big chairs in the Alliance refer to us collectively as the black flags, or the scummy dirtbags, depending on their mood,” Reznik explained.

  Jupiter floated into view. It looked like they were heading closer to the planet.

  “He’s trying to copy you?”

  “There are a lot of people who’ve become enamored with the mystique I’ve created, but most can’t do anything about it. This guy’s name is Marino Lusque, and he was a ship engineer, so he could. He was also a family man, but I guess the wife and kids didn’t hold his interest so he left them to become a vigilante.”

  “And you think he could actually do anything to the Assailing Face?” Rion asked.

  “It’s hard to tell. This isn’t nearly the first time he’s spotted me. The thing to do is pretend to take it seriously, go through the motions, and eventually he scampers off before it gets out of hand. That’s when I tell him to go back to his family, but he never listens. Terrible waste of supplies. He’s a good pilot and an excellent engineer, but he lacks imagination.”

  “What about—”

  “Shut up for a second,” Reznik interjected. “The first step is to try to outrun him. It won’t work, and then we’ll dance.”

  The ship raced closer to the planet, sailing between giant asteroids as fast as Rion could see them out front. The radar picked up everything, and Reznik used it to chart a winding course full of sharp turns. Lusque’s ship followed, gaining steadily.

  “Hold on to something,” Rion said to Bailor and Lena, neither of whom appeared to be enjoying the bumpier ride.

  The ship made a tight turn around an asteroid. Rion had to keep remembering that even though Jupiter seemed close, they were still very far away from it. He got lost in his mind thinking about the size of the planet and how that affected his perceptions of its distance, but two new red dots were discharged from the one behind them.

  “Look out!” Rion said, suddenly feeling foolish. As if Reznik Igorovich wouldn’t notice he was being fired at.

  “I see them. A pair of seekers. I’ve got just the thing, a decoy that’ll eat them up.”

  A green dot appeared on the screen, drifting behind. Rion held his breath as it got closer to the red dots. The decoy detonated one of the missiles, but the other kept racing toward them. Reznik grabbed hold of the controls and made the ship dive. Veering hard to the right threw Rion off balance, but he managed to see the missile cruise past them and strike an asteroid. Still, the red dot trailed them.

  “He’s not going to call it quits until we turn up the
heat on him. Let’s go with the satellites.”

  Rion got the impression Reznik always talked to himself about what he was doing in a fight this way. He appreciated knowing what was going on, but it would’ve been much more fun if Reznik had simply told him they were playing a game and there was no real danger.

  On the screen, two green dots appeared, and Reznik shifted to another section on the controls. The green dots had some life in them, settling in as Reznik slowed down and swung the vehicle around to confront their pursuer. Rion smiled. They were setting a trap among the asteroids.

  He got a good look at their enemy for the first time. The ship looked like a heavy duty transport that had been crossed with one of those ancient jumbo jets. Big, round missile turrets were positioned like ears on top. It rattled off tiny yellow flecks of plasma fire at them from guns under the nose. The shots striking the ship didn’t seem to bother Reznik too much.

  “Put away the pee shooters,” Reznik said. “This’ll make you feel like you’re in the big leagues.”

  He tapped a few more buttons and pulled a trigger, firing a few missiles of his own. Lusque’s ship immediately attempted to direct the plasma fire to the missiles, but upon impact they broke apart into smaller projectiles that exploded around the front of the ship.

  “So predictable. OK, you’ve had your fun. Now run along and put a band-aid on your scraped knees,” Reznik said with a wave of his hand.

  The ship didn’t budge, making Rion uneasy.

  A sudden blast erupted from behind the Assailing Face, pushing it toward the jumbo jet. The explosion was enough to get Bailor and Lena to cry out. Rion thought he could see smoke wafting through vents in the cockpit. Reznik was definitely fuming, but he didn’t have time to sit and stew. Lusque launched a volley of missiles ten strong.

  “This field was booby trapped in advance. I’ve gotten predictable—he knew I’d run for cover. But something’s different this time. He wants to go all the way. You should’ve stayed home with the kids.”

  Reznik pulled out a tray with more buttons from below the main control panel, flipped off a plastic cap, and punched one with his thumb. The ship shifted slightly to the left as all of the lights inside went out. Reznik had activated an electromagnetic pulse, and the group of seekers sailed off harmlessly to the right. He quickly went about restoring the power, his hands moving faster than Rion could track.