"Sit," Major Harris said, pointing to the chair opposite the general.
I sat, and the major sat beside me.
A general, a colonel, a major, three captains, and Consultant Singhe, the living lie detector. Whatever they’d brought me here for, it wasn’t gonna be good.
"Ethan Jones, I am General Lee," the general began in a deep voice. "I understand you have met Captain Smithson previously. Having just been discharged from hospital, he has submitted an after-battle report of the night the Skel attacked the submarine. A report, I might add, that conflicts greatly with the one submitted by the late Lieutenant King."
I gulped – where was he going with this? Would I be arrested for using a gun while technically a civilian?
"On the night the submarine was attacked," the general continued, "Lieutenant King reported he lead the Custodian attack to save the sub and that he repulsed the initial Skel ambush by shooting over nearly a dozen of them. He went on to report that he single handedly saved the sub by killing the Skel attempting to cut into the sub and also threw their explosives into the river. Captain Smithson's report, however, paints quite a different picture. He claims it was you, Ethan Jones, and your wife – the translator from Hamamachi – who did these things, not Lieutenant King. Which report is correct?"
I glanced at Captain Smithson's handsome face and saw he was watching me intently with one eyebrow raised. He gave me a barely perceptible nod of encouragement.
"Tell the truth, Ethan. General Lee knows what happened, he is just testing you," Consultant Singhe whispered hurriedly.
"Captain Smithson's report is correct in all but one detail," I said, struggling to keep my voice from shaking.
"And that is?" the general prompted impatiently.
"King – sorry – Lieutenant King threw the explosives off the sub. Captain Smithson may not have known this, though."
The general glanced at Consultant Singhe, and she nodded, confirming I spoke the truth.
"Captain Smithson has also informed us that you went to Hamamachi during the time you were absent from Newhome in 2120, and that you served in their elite Ranger force. He says you have had extensive experience against the Skel. Is this true?" the general asked, eyeing me keenly.
"I am afraid, sir, that due to amnesia, I have virtually no memories of the time I spent in Hamamachi. However, from what my wife has told me, that is correct." Virtually no memories, but the ones I did have chilled me to the core – a teenage girl staining a road red with her blood, and glimpses of my Ranger team, all dead.
A nod from the consultant confirmed I was telling the truth.
“I see. Just one more question, then, before I continue. Considering you’re married to a Japanese girl and have served in the Rangers, where do your loyalties lie?" the general asked.
"Sir, both my wife and I are loyal citizens of Newhome. Surely the fact that we volunteered to lead Captain Smithson and his men to save the sub is ample proof of that?"
Consultant Singhe confirmed I spoke the truth, and the general nodded. "Fair enough. Now that we’ve got that question out of the way, we can address the reason you were brought here today. The Custodians are going to launch an offensive to break the Skel siege and kill the sniper tomorrow."
"How are you planning to launch your attack?" I asked.
"That is confidential," the general snapped, offended that I had the gall to even ask the question.
"Because if you're planning a frontal assault, it's gonna fail. The Skel will expect that and they’ll be ready with booby traps and ambushes," I continued, refusing to be intimidated.
"The attack will not fail! We will be sending in four companies of Custodians!" the colonel interrupted
I was treading on thin ice, but I wasn't going to sit here without at least trying to get some sense into their heads. "So you are planning a frontal assault. General, please listen to me – you cannot beat Skel that way. You need to..."
"Who do you think you are, Mr. Jones? Do you question our ability?" one of the captains said, his face turning red with rage.
"But..."
"That's enough, Mr. Jones," Colonel Kim said, cutting me off. "Our Custodians are a highly trained force who will be facing nothing more than poorly armed, disorganised savages."
My gut reaction was to let these overconfident, inexperienced Custodians get their butts handed to them by the Skel, but they were the only thing that kept Newhome safe from external threats. There was also the fact that we were also (theoretically) kinsfolk. So I turned to the general, and pleaded one more time. "Please, General Lee, hear me out. I know the Custodians are confident in their abilities, but they have had little experience with the Skel..."
"It's a good thing, then, that you'll be going in with them to offer advice," the general said without batting an eyelash.
"Excuse me?" I balked at his words.
"That is why you were brought here today, to inform you that you will be accompanying the Custodian attack tomorrow morning as an advisor to provide tactical advice during the battle."
"I have requested that you accompany my unit," Captain Smithson added.
I shook my head, dumbfounded. I'd promised Nanako I wouldn't place myself at risk of getting shot again. There was no way I was going to join the Custodians ill-fated attack. "I'm sorry, sirs, but I'm afraid I'll have to decline."
"This is not a request, Mr. Jones," General Lee snapped impatiently.
"With all due respect, General, I'm a forager, not a Custodian, and you can't force me to become one." My attempt to sound assertive was undermined by the fact that my voice was shaking.
"Your contract with the Recycling-Works was cancelled this morning. You have also been conscripted into the Custodian Force as a consultant, effective today," Colonel Kim said as he pushed a sheet of paper towards me.
I ignored it. "You can't do this without my consent."
"Draft evasion is a criminal offence and is punishable with a mandatory three year prison sentence and a five-thousand-dollar fine," the colonel said without emotion.
Time crawled to a standstill as the implications of what the colonel said struck home. My face grew hot and my stomach tied in knots as I thought of spending three years in prison. I wouldn't be able to see Nanako for three years, plus, we'd lose our flat and she'd have to move in with my parents.
All the same, I would not be bullied into submission. "Then go ahead and imprison me, sir, because I will not become a Custodian."
"We do not have time for this!" General Lee growled angrily. "Major Harris, instruct your men to proceed immediately to Mr. Jones residence and arrest his wife on suspicion of being a Hamamachi spy."
Chapter Nineteen
"Be careful, Ethan," Consultant Singhe whispered, "They are not bluffing. Whether she is innocent or not, they will imprison her for life at the very least."
Major Harris stood, saluted the general, and strode purposefully for the door.
"Fine – I'll do it!" I said hastily, hoping I hadn't gone too far in my attempt to refuse their ridiculous commission.
Seeing I was going to play ball, the major paused at the door, clearly disappointed. The scumbag had been genuinely excited by the prospect of arresting Nanako.
"That’s more like it, Custodian Consultant Jones," the general said. “You will now go with Captain Smithson to be fitted out and briefed for tomorrow’s assault.”
The captain stood and headed for the door, indicating with an inclination of his head that I should join him.
"Ethan, you may be interested to know that since you returned from Hamamachi, the chancellor and councillors have held several closed doors meetings," Singhe whispered as I stood and grabbed the back of my chair to steady myself, since my legs were feeling somewhat unstable.
"Do you know what these meetings are about?"
"Only that it is to do with Hamamachi and a 'final solution.'"
"They’ve got another nuke, haven’t they?" I asked. The sound of a ‘final solution’ s
cared the daylights out of me.
"I do not know, but if I learn more, I will find a way to inform you." She maintained her deadpan expression.
"Thanks."
I nodded in ‘respect’ to the general, and then hurried from the room and joined the captain while fighting back a powerful urge to throw up. Me, a Custodian? I could barely comprehend that I had become the very thing in Newhome that disgusted me to the core of my being.
* * *
Captain Smithson took me downstairs to the cramped Custodian supply room, and the supply clerk picked out camo-fatigues from racks of fatigues behind him. Then he provided me with a helmet and a black bulletproof jacket.
I didn't speak, I just went through the motions. Inside, I was a quivering mess. I was enraged I'd been manoeuvred, no – blackmailed – into joining the Custodians in what surely would amount to a suicide attack. I was mortified I'd been forced to become the very thing I despised. And lastly, I was afraid of how Nanako would react to this news. She wouldn't be happy, and that was an understatement. I also didn't feel like speaking because the captain wasn't on my list of favourite persons. True, he stopped King executing Nanako and me in cold blood, but he'd been willing to oversee that same execution only moments before he stayed it.
But in the end, I pushed the writhing morass of angry and fearful thoughts aside and while the clerk handed me a pair of boots to try on, I addressed the captain. "Captain Smithson, were you badly injured? You know, the night the Skel attacked the sub?"
"Took a blow to the head which caused swelling on the brain. They've given me a clean bill of health now, though," he replied as he stood back and watched me lacing up the boots.
"Clean enough to go into combat tomorrow? Surely two weeks isn't long enough to recover from an injury like that?"
"You're not exactly one to talk, are you?" he said.
"No, I guess not." My boots laced, I stood and paced up and down the aisle of shoe racks, and concluded the boots were a good fit. Not that it mattered. I wouldn't be wearing them tomorrow. I'd replace them with my runners at the first opportunity.
The captain suddenly turned to the clerk. "Leave us."
The clerk quickly vacated the room.
The captain crossed his arms and appraised me, and I could tell he was distressed about something. "Ever since the night of the battle for the sub, Jones, I can't sleep without vivid nightmares tormenting me. And even when I'm awake, I'm tense, sweat profusely, and experience heart palpitations. And I'm always irritable and overreact to even the smallest provocations."
"That's a pretty typical reaction after encountering the Skel, sir. They still haunt my dreams," I said.
"It's not the Skel who haunt my nightmares, Jones," the captain said, his blue eyes fixed on the floor beside me.
"No?"
"Oh, they're in the nightmares, but there's someone – or something – else. I dream of the Skel attacking my men and cutting them to pieces, but then this horrific, terrifying black-robed angel of death runs through the midst of the Skel, cutting them down with inhuman proficiency with great sweeps of his scythe. And at the end of this recurring nightmare, just before I wake screaming, I see the angel of death's face." The captain lifted his eyes to meet mine. "And it’s your face I see, Jones."
"I don't understand, sir," I said as tendrils of fear began to swirl in the depths of my stomach.
He took a step forward. "After I got released from hospital I checked the after battle reports and then went to the morgue to confirm the reports in person. Ten Skel had been killed by single pistol shots to the neck or throat. And all ten bullets came from the same pistol – the one I gave you to use."
"I'm a good shot, sir." The fear began to turn into dread as I realised where I had erred. In my eagerness to save the Custodians from the Skel that night, I may have gone and given myself away. How long before someone connected the dots and worked out what I was?
"I've seen Custodians who are good shots, Jones, you're practically inhuman."
"My wife said I was the Ranger colonel's protégé and that he was teaching me practically everything he knew."
"Did he teach you how to see in the dark? It was so dark that night that I could only just make out my own hand. And yet you took down ten Skel with precision shots."
"What are trying to say, sir?"
The colonel had that look in his eyes, the same one Lieutenant King had when he realised I was the biologically-engineered freak he had been searching for. But suddenly, inexplicably, the captain's shoulders slumped. "I'm not trying to say anything, Jones. I'm just telling it like it is. Now, come with me and we'll go through the specifics for tomorrow morning's attack."
"May I ask a question, sir?"
"Go ahead."
"In light of everything you just shared with me, why did you request that I be attached to your company tomorrow?"
"Because I don't want to die out there tomorrow."
* * *
It was late afternoon when I got home. I rang Nanako earlier to tell her I was okay, and that I'd fill her in on what happened when I got home.
"You’re back!" she exclaimed with a mixture of relief and delight when I walked through the door. She’d been preparing dinner but put down the knife and rushed over to take my hands in hers. "I've been so worried. What did the Custodians want with you?"
On the way over I'd run through a dozen different ways of breaking it to her gently, but seriously, what gentle way could there be to tell her I was a Custodian now?
My face must have been an open book, because she stepped back and frowned. "What’s wrong?"
I decided to just come out and say it. "I’ve been conscripted into the Custodians as a consultant."
"The Custodians? A consultant? Why, what do they want to consult you on?" she asked in alarm.
"They’re launching an attack tomorrow morning to try to break the Skel siege and catch the sniper, and they’ve ordered me to accompany them as a tactical advisor."
Nanako backed away, shaking her head in stunned disbelief. "No, no, no – absolutely out of the question. I asked you to quit foraging so you wouldn't fight the Skel anymore, and now you want to go up against that sniper? And join the Custodians in taking on the whole Skel army?
"I don’t want to do this..."
"You promised me, Ethan, you promised you’d stop foraging and fighting. You promised you wouldn't put me through that again," she said, her voice rising in pitch.
"I know I did, but they didn't give me a choice."
"Did you try saying no?"
"Well of course I did, but they wouldn't take no for an answer."
Nanako took another step back, pressing her hands to the sides of her head. "I can't believe this is happening again."
"What’s happening again?" I took a step towards her.
"You volunteered to join the Rangers without telling me, without asking what I thought. You just went ahead and did it, and regardless of what I said, you wouldn't pull out. And now you're doing it all over again!"
"Seriously, they didn't give me a choice," I said as I stepped closer and reached for her.
But she kept backing away, her mounting anxiety causing her to panic and become increasingly irrational.
"What, did they threaten to throw you in prison? You should have let them do it. At least they'd have left us alone after you got out! Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile!"
I tried to find an answer, but I faltered and my words fled away because I didn't want to tell her how they blackmailed me.
"So they did threaten you?" she said, reading me like a book. "Why didn't you say that in the first place instead of dancing around the truth?"
I looked down, unable to meet her fiery, frightened gaze.
"Come on, out with it. What did they threaten you with – a prison sentence?" she asked, no longer backing away.
"Initially, yes. A prison sentence plus a hefty fine – and I told them to go ahead because I wasn't going to be a Custodian.
But..."
"But what? What did they threaten you with?"
"You. They threatened me with you," I whispered
"What?"
"They said if I wouldn't co-operate, they'd arrest you as a spy and imprison you for life."
She squatted on the floor Asian style, wrapped her arms around her knees, and buried her head in her arms. "You still should have said no! Now you're gonna get shot again, maybe even killed."
I knelt in front of her and tried to take her hands in mine. She was beginning to shake, and her breathing was becoming rapid and shallow. "If that's the price I have to pay to keep you out of the Custodians hands, I’ll pay it."
"No!" she cried, lifting her head from her knees so I could see her eyes, which were wide with fear. "You can't risk yourself, not for anything. You’re the most amazing, wonderful guy, and I can’t bear the thought of you being hurt or killed. And I can't go through that again, seeing you brought back on a stretcher covered in blood and your life hanging by a thread. I can't go through you losing your memory and forgetting me again. Please, Ethan, promise me you won't go."
I wished I could comply with her demands, but I couldn't allow the Custodians to imprison or execute her. It simply wasn't an option. If she wasn’t so badly messed up – mentally and emotionally – from what happened when I was shot two years ago, she’d be able to see that. I wished there was some way I could help set her free from all of her emotional turmoil.
"You're gonna go, aren't you?" she asked as she grabbed my hand. "Regardless of what I say, you're gonna go."
"I don't have a choice; I won't let them do those things to you."
Nanako suddenly lurched to her feet and fled into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. I heard her collapse to the floor, where she began to wail the same two phrases over and over – "I can't believe this is happening again, I can't go through this again."
I wished I could console her like I did the last time she got herself into a state like this, after King ordered me to lead his trade convoy to Hamamachi, by promising her everything would be all right. But tomorrow was going to be a massacre, and I knew it.
Forager - the Complete Trilogy (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Trilogy) Page 35