by D. J. Molles
A
GROWER’S WAR
BOOK 1
THE
PURGE
OF
DISTRICT 89
BY
D.J. MOLLES
Chapter 1
Quiet moments were the worst.
How very un-Chinese of him to think it.
Captain Kuai Luo sat in the back of the guntruck, and the world passed him by to the whisper of the miles that moved beneath his feet, beneath two inches of armor plating, and under the knobby tires of his guntruck. And under that crust of asphalt was soil that three generations of his family had fought and died on.
Kuai had lived almost his entire adult life here. His grandfather came back speaking fluent English with a southern-American twang, just like he’d learned it. And now Kuai was deployed to the very same region that his grandfather and father had fought on, trying to stabilize these people, these restless, rebellious people.
Kuai could talk like them so easily that it made him feel an alien amongst his own people. If you couldn’t see his genetically-modified stature and the heavy armor plates he wore, the chest-plate emblazoned with the flag of the People’s Republic of China, you would think you were talking to a person born and raised in North Carolina.
He looked out the thick ballistic window at the countryside flying by. He felt that familiar dichotomy in his chest, and he didn’t know whether he hated this place, or loved it.
This place that would probably, one day, kill him
Here in Agrarian District 89 (abbreviated as AD-89 and often written shorthand as simply 8089—even the locals called it “Eighty-Eighty-Nine”), he was surrounded by great swaths of open land. Here, the fields were the lush green of winter wheat, just beginning to send up its heads of grain as spring warmth drew it out of the soil. The green was so thick that he could barely see the tractor rails and hydroponics lines that he knew striped through that field. In another two months, these would be the famous “amber waves,” but now they were still young.
On other tracts, the land was bare, but pregnant with possibility.
The bare fields had been pumped with the chemicals that dissolved the stalks of the previous crop, and then pumped with the chemicals that would condition the soil for the new crop. As the weather warmed, those chemicals would run off and create the algae blooms that would turn the Rocky River as orange as a pumpkin for a good part of the late summer.
But right now, in April, the Rocky River was still running clear, and the planting tractors were out. Great, beastly machines that sat astride the tractor rails like a giant, splay-legged spiders, ready to begin planting the spring crop.
Corn, Kuai guessed, since it was April.
Love or hate?
Difficult to say.
Kuai’s Personal Device chirped.
He shifted around inside his armor, straightening slightly, and moving his battlerifle to the right a bit. He fished the PD out of a pouch on his chest. It was a thin, black rectangle, smaller than his palm. The Americans had theirs biometrically attached to the inside of their wrists at fifteen years old. The Chinese didn’t prefer this, as they believed it created dependence and weak minds.
But, if you were going to talk with Americans, you had to have a PD.
The Americans had theirs issued by their government—and China’s tenuous ally—the Fed.
His was purchased black market.
Kuai swiped his finger across the little black rectangle. The screen jumped into the air, then adjusted to his viewpoint with a little shakiness. Older model. But it still served its purpose.
He read the new message. Closed the projected screen with another swipe of his hand. Put the PD back into its pouch.
“They’re waiting for us,” he said in Mandarin.
He glanced to his left. His lieutenant nodded along. A Uyghur. More American-looking than Chinese, really. Lieutenant Qasim adjusted his grip on his own battlerifle. He did not like these meetings. He said there was no honor among thieves. He did not trust the Americans. Not the Fed troops, and certainly not the people they were about to meet.
Kuai couldn’t blame him.
Qasim was a first generation soldier, and this was only the third month of his first deployment to America. All he knew of the Americans so far was that they wanted to kill him. And those that weren’t trying to kill him looked like they certainly wouldn’t mind if he died. And even the ones that were supposed to be friendly—the Fed troops and the loyalists—even they seemed resentful most of the time.
Kuai didn’t blame any of them.
No one wanted to live under the thumb of another. But that is the nature of these things. That is the nature of history. One people represses another people, only to be repressed themselves. It is the never ending cycle, and there was nothing that could be done to stop it. It had begun the day human beings wanted what someone else had, and it would never go away.
Kuai was just another little cog in this giant machine.
So was Qasim.
So were the people they were going to meet.
What they did in these strange, tumultuous years would be remembered for a short time, but it was really all quite worthless in the end. All that truly mattered was connections. Connections with others. With wives. With family. With friends. Everything else was just…intermission.
Yes, these quiet moments were the worst.
Quiet was time to think. Time to reflect. Time to receive clarity on your place in the world and the miniscule nature of your efforts. How your life could be given for something as silly and inconsequential as the bartering of medicines to garner local favor in a country an entire world away from anything you actually cared about.
And that wasn’t good.
These were not the things he should be thinking about.
Not if he ever actually wanted to make it home.
Only five more years, he told himself. Just twice what you’ve already done. And then you can go home, permanently.
All the time and money they spent to turn a mere mortal man into a New Breed soldier—that investment had to be recouped, you know.
He smirked ruefully to himself.
He’d thought his wife would enjoy the body mods. The increased stature. The thick neck. The slabs of lean muscle that appeared almost overnight. And…other things.
She’d covered it well, but he’d been able to tell that she was slightly frightened of him.
Ah, well.
She knew what she was getting into when she agreed to marry him. He’d been slated for soldiering the minute he came out of the womb. It was only the change that frightened her. She would eventually forget about his pre-modded form—his gangly teenaged state—and accept what he had become.
Kuai leaned forward in his seat, pointing out the windshield at the fork in the road coming up. “This is the turn,” he said to the driver, Sergeant Jen. “Stay to the right.”
Ahead of them, the convoy stayed left—a supply truck, a personnel carrier, and two more guntrucks. Captain Kuai Luo’s guntruck was at the rear, and then it simply veered off onto the other road that cut through this Agrarian District, heading now for the Town Center.
To his left, Lieutenant Qasim clipped his battleshroud into place. It covered everything from the bridge of his nose down to his clavicle. Only his blue eyes looked out, suspicious of this foreign countryside.
Kuai watched him for a moment more, feeling his own stomach turn a bit. He left his battleshroud undone. He had to project confidence. Not only with his troops, but with the people they were about to meet. It would not do to appear frightened. Cautious was okay—everyone appreciated caution. But
no one wanted dealings with a coward.
Still, Qasim’s feelings were not wrong.
If something were to happen, it would be now, when they were split from the protection of the convoy.
“We’re alone now,” Kuai said to the other three occupants of the guntruck. Qasim, Jen, and a new private by the name of Zhang. It was obvious, but it bore repeating: “Keep a sharp eye out. We’re easy prey for opportunists.”
Kuai turned his attention out his own window again.
They passed another planting tractor. This one close. Facing them. From the bubble of the cab, high in the air, he could see the two faces looking down at them. He looked back, knowing they couldn’t see him through the tinted ballistic glass of the guntruck.
He wondered if they would hop on their PDs to tell some friends that a lonely guntruck was heading up the highway.
Another few minutes brought them to the edge of the Town Center.
It was still early morning. What cars there were on the road got out of their way. They knew the drill. The guntrucks didn’t stop, didn’t wait for anything. If you got in the way of a guntruck, you’d be not-so-gently tapped in the rear bumper until you moved.
They skirted around the eastern edge of the Town Center, not actually going into it where the stores and the bars and the entertainment hubs were. They kept to the outside, which was mostly a grid of hangars to store tractors and planters. Pumping stations for the hydroponics. Large, cement yards where the workers parked and where farming implements sat, waiting for their season of use.
Kuai directed Sergeant Jen, and they took a right on a service road that led away from the Town Center. No cars on this road. It was abandoned. Here were the harvesters. Locked up behind chains and razor wire fences. There would be nothing to harvest for another two months, and so until then, this place was a ghost town.
A good place for a meeting.
Or an ambush.
“This one, here,” Kuai said, pointing to a gate that was unlocked and open. Beyond the gate stood a two-story hangar and several acres of pavement. Parking spots for workers cars that stood empty. A few rows of grain-harvester attachments.
Jen slowed the guntruck and turned in.
“Drive around to the back of the hangar.”
Lieutenant Qasim checked the bolt on his battlerifle. Brass glinted. He snicked it back into place. His breastplate rose and fell with a deep breath.
In the front, Private Zhang buckled up his battleshroud. Shifted around, nervously.
Without the sound of the road moving under their tires, Kuai could hear the little movements of the anti-sniper cannon, scanning. Small, electric noises. Servo motors whirring back and forth over his head.
“Qasim and Zhang,” Kuai said, keeping his voice calm and level. “You’re with me. Keep an eye out. Don’t watch them. It won’t be them that does anything. Watch everywhere else. Jen, you just stay ready to drive us out.”
“Yes, sir,” the private said.
The lieutenant and the sergeant just nodded.
They drove around to the back of the hangar.
Two black, compact GUVs waited for them. No markings on them, but he could see the strobes in the grill.
On the roof of the guntruck, the anti-sniper cannon kept scanning.
“Stop here,” Kuai said.
The guntruck stopped, just behind the hangar and out of view of the road. They faced the two black GUVs.
Kuai, Qasim, and Zhang stepped out quickly.
Kuai kept his hands near his battlerifle, but not on it. He didn’t want to look too aggressive. These were delicate times. He stepped to the front while Qasim and Zhang flanked him, looking out everywhere but at the two trucks, as Kuai had instructed.
The three New Breed soldiers stopped a few meters in front of their guntruck.
The doors to the GUVs opened.
Two men in green uniforms stepped out of the drivers’ sides. They wore softarmor—not the heavy plating that Kuai and his men carried. They were not soldiers. They were not body-modded. Twenty kilograms of armor plating would be too much for their normal frames to carry all day, every day. They wore no helmets or battleshrouds. One of them had a subgun strapped to his chest and a pistol on his leg. The other only carried a pistol.
Across the chest of their softarmor was the boldly printed English word: SHERIFF.
The two men in green uniforms met Kuai’s group in the middle.
“Captain Luo,” the man with the subgun said in English.
Kuai nodded to him. “Sheriff Honeycutt.”
Sheriff Honeycutt was tall for a normal man, though he was still a head shorter than Kuai and his men. Dark hair cropped short with the beginnings of gray at the temples. He had dusky, suntanned skin that crinkled like worn leather at the corners of brown eyes.
Sharp eyes. Canny eyes. They jumped between Kuai and his men, assessing them, gauging them. Not much fear for a man so outsized and outgunned.
But that was good. They weren’t here to fight. If the sheriff had had fear in his eyes, it would have been a bad sign.
“The medications?” Honeycutt asked.
Good. Right to business.
Kuai nodded. “In the back of the truck.”
“How much?”
“Two cases. One hundred and twenty doses apiece. Each case will treat five people.”
Honeycutt’s lips twitched. “Ten people total, huh?” He looked out at the fields far beyond the fenced-in parking lot. “Out of how many that are dying?”
Kuai nodded, almost sympathetic. “If all goes well, there will be more.”
Honeycutt smirked, coldly. “Of course.” He seemed to brush off his offense. “Well, let’s do the business then.” He extended his hand.
Kuai glanced at the hand. He was not in the habit of shaking hands with these people. He did not intend to start today. He shook his head once and looked up from the hand to Honeycutt’s face. “Nothing personal, sheriff…”
Honeycutt’s eyes.
The small drop of perspiration at the corner of his right temple where the hair was gray.
Kuai felt it. Felt the weirdness of the moment hanging there.
He started to pull back. “Sheriff—”
zzZZWHACK
The sound of lightning.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kuai perceived one of the black GUVs shudder and shimmer, like a mirage.
Not lightning.
Kuai knew the sound.
It was a directed EMP.
The cannon…
Kuai was already moving by the time his brain made the connections. He pivoted sharply, swinging his hips, rotating them, and sent a hard boot straight into Honeycutt’s chest, launching the smaller man off his feet.
In the same motion, Kuai grabbed his battlerifle…
A noise—actually two noises, very close together.
Bullets on flesh.
Even as the sheriff was still falling.
Even as Kuai was still bringing his rifle up.
Even as the directed EMP was still crackling, disabling the anti-sniper cannon.
He saw Qasim and Zhang, pitching backwards, almost synchronized, red ribbons spinning from the small gap between their battleshrouds and their helmets. Their eyes were no longer visible. No longer there. Exploded into pulp.
All in a single second.
Kuai didn’t even have time to register fear.
In a strange and disconnected way, his brain—modded to think faster in less time—was able to appreciate that this was a very well-executed ambush. It was expertly timed. Those two bullets had to have been fired nearly simultaneous with the activation of the EMP. Otherwise the anti-sniper cannon would have turned the snipers into bits of gristle.
What fine-tuning!
He righted himself and brought his rifle up, just as Honeycutt was hitting the ground, flat on his back. He was going to shoot Honeycutt first, and then the deputy, and then address the sniper problem. He already had that prioritized.
He aimed reflexively for the sheriff, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the deputy moving. He saw the deputy’s arm outstretched. And suddenly his brain decided that the deputy was the more immediate threat, and so Kuai pivoted in that direction, changing his decision in the span of a few hundredths of a second.
But for all his body and brain modifications, it was not fast enough.
Something struck his face.
Sharp pain arced through him.
He felt his body lock up against his will.
He pitched forward with a groan.
Hit the concrete.
Thinking, So fine-tuned.
And, I should have worn my battleshroud.
Chapter 2
It took a bit of finesse to guide a 150-foot span planter onto the tractor rails. For all of its multiple tons of weight, the controls were surprisingly sensitive. And of the 1,775 inches that Walter Baucom currently had it spanned for, his margin of error was about two inches per tread.
Not a lot.
He sat in the operator’s chair, his feet on the pedals, his hands on the leveraging and spanning controls, and his eyes flitting back and forth between the monitors. The windshield was a broad bubble of reinforced glass and the cockpit of the giant tractor was nearly thirty feet in the air. From that vantage point it seemed that he could see everything from there.
How to describe an Agrarian District to someone that had never sat in this seat? Never looked out across the endless rolling landscape? Seen the breathtaking expanse of those croplands and the clarity and the hugeness of the sky with nothing around to block your view? All those fields so evenly lined with gray hydroponics lines and tractor rails?
He guessed that any grower you asked would give you a different take on it.
To Walt, it was this, right here.
It was the smell of diesel fumes, and the grainy scent of the seeds in the hopper. The pungent odor of the soil conditioner that had been piped into the fields the previous week. It was the feeling of warm air from the span planter’s vents, and the cool brace of the April morning coming in through the open window of his cockpit. The air so clear that he could see seven hills away.