Flames of Rebellion

by Jay Allan

  “Form up in two lines.” It was Leslie’s voice, broadcast over the speakers, though the words were meant for his soldiers. Johnson moved into positon, looking to the side to see that his four troopers had complied. His people were on the extreme left of the federal line.

  He stood in place, waiting to see what would happen next. The crowd was still there. Indeed, the agitators up front had worked them into a near-frenzy.

  “All units, present arms.”

  Johnson pulled his rifle up, holding it out in front of him. When he’d been in the mine, he hadn’t hesitated to lash out against the prisoners. But now that he might have his opportunity—the one he’d been waiting for so long—he was surprised how twisted his stomach was.

  Jesus, people—just back the fuck down. Let us arrest you.

  “Ready . . .” Leslie’s voice was hard, cold.

  He’s going to give the order, Johnson thought, feeling not at all like he thought he would.

  The mob was growing angrier, those on the front edge moving slowly toward the soldiers.

  “Aim . . .” Leslie’s voice was partially drowned out by the sound of a gunshot. Johnson leaned forward, looking down the line. One of the soldiers near the center was on the ground. Johnson couldn’t see how badly wounded his comrade was, but any doubts he had were replaced by a resurgence of his anger.

  Bastards.

  “Fire,” Leslie screamed, his own rage clear in his ragged tone.

  Johnson hesitated, just for an instant, and then he pulled the trigger. The heavy gun had a lot more kick that his old weapon, and he let his finger slip off for a second, giving him an instant to reposition himself, to dig his feet in before he opened fire again.

  He saw a nightmare unfold in front of him as dozens of citizens went down under the withering fire of two hundred heavy assault rifles. His rage drove him on, filling him with a grim satisfaction. Yet there was more there, something floating around in his mind, seemingly at odds with the need for vengeance.

  Shame?

  Pity?

  He saw a woman go down under the relentless fire, and as she did, something fell from her arms. It took a second for it to sink in, but then Johnson realized it was a child. He felt the urge to call for his comrades to cease fire, to run across the field and see if the child was still alive. But he didn’t. He just continued shooting, stopping only to reload when he had burned through his clip.

  The mob was fleeing now. There were at least a hundred down on the square, and the rest were panicked, trampling their fellow protestors as they struggled to escape.

  Order us to stop firing . . .

  Johnson could feel the sweat pouring down his neck, his back. He wanted to stop shooting, to let the terrified civilians run. His thirst for revenge had been quenched, and now he angled his weapon upward, deliberately shooting over the heads of the terrified, fleeing protestors.

  Please . . . please stop this.

  “Maintain your fire.” Leslie’s voice was like ice, not a shred of pity for those dropping under the relentless fire.

  Johnson almost dropped his weapon, desperate to turn and walk back to the barracks. But he didn’t dare. He had his orders, a command he had craved since the day his unit had stormed the prison mine.

  Now all he wanted was for it to stop.

  But it didn’t. The fire became a bit more ragged—he realized he wasn’t the only trooper in the line disgusted by what he was doing—but it continued.

  The square was covered in bodies, and the blood was literally flowing in rivulets, filling the cracks in the road surface. And still, the fire continued.

  Finally, Leslie gave the command to cease fire, and the guns fell silent. Johnson stood where he was, his legs struggling to hold himself up. The mob was gone, the survivors out of range now, fleeing in every direction . . . and an eerie silence hung over the square, pierced only by the cries of the wounded . . . and the screaming in his own mind.

  Nerov pressed herself against the wall, turning her head, looking in every direction. She was exhausted, her legs aching. But she knew she couldn’t stop.

  She could hear the sound off in the distance. It was far away, a faint rumble, hard to identify. But she’d been enough places, in enough bad situations, to know what it was. Massed gunfire. She had no idea what was happening, but she knew it had to be bad.

  Has the rebellion begun?

  She slipped down a tiny side street, trying to stay hidden. She’d made her way as far as she could in the sewers, but that route ended at the edge of the Spacer’s District. She’d climbed out, making her way through the streets from there, trying to avoid as much contact as she could. Her clothes were nondescript, and she hoped she was far enough from the spaceport to elude any immediate pursuit, but she had no illusions about how she smelled. Blending in just wasn’t an option, not until she got a shower and a change of clothes.

  She was tempted to move toward the gunfire, to try to find out what was happening. Once again she found herself more concerned about the Havenites than her persona as a hard-edged mercenary could support. She wondered what disaster was taking place a couple kilometers from where she stood. A wave of sadness came over her, as she realized civilians were most likely dying. But she had no way to stop whatever was happening, and she wouldn’t save anyone by getting herself captured or killed. Her first loyalty was to her own people. She had to get to Griff and warn him and the rest of her crew.

  She turned away from the sound and moved through the outskirts of the city. There were fewer buildings there, and they were spaced farther apart. She’d come this way because the district was one filled mostly with warehouses, with very little foot traffic. She was tired, her legs heavy. But she kept moving, and the buildings began to thin out until she found herself in open countryside. Haven was a young colony, just sixty-one years old, and its cities tended to end abruptly, with no belts of suburban development between the urban area and the farmlands and countryside beyond.

  She came to a large hill. Her exhausted legs burned like fire as she walked over the crest, and as she came down the other side, the city was gone, her view of it completely blocked by the looming hillside.

  She tried to remember where the farm was. She’d been there once before, to collect Daniels and bring him back to the ship. Her first officer seemed uptight on first impression, like a ramrod-stiff naval officer. But there was a true pirate’s persona beneath that staid exterior, and Daniels came close to the old cliché of having a woman in every port. This one was different, though, special to him. He spent almost every minute with her each time they were on Haven.

  There’s a dirt road up here somewhere . . .

  She squinted and looked out across the countryside, trying to decide if anything seemed familiar. She was so tired she felt as though she might fall over, but she couldn’t afford to stop. Or could she . . .

  Maybe whatever is happening in Landfall will buy some time.

  She felt an immediate wave of guilt for drawing relief from what was almost certainly a tragedy. But she just as quickly dismissed it. Her crew came first. They were her friends, her family . . . and the only people in the galaxy she even came close to trusting. And they were out there, completely unaware they were in grave danger.

  She stopped and looked around again, turning three hundred and sixty degrees, feeling the frustration grow as she didn’t see anything familiar. She wanted to give up, to go find someplace she could hide, look for a brook or pond where she could get some water. But there was no time. Every minute increased the chances of her people ending up in prison. Or on the scaffold.

  She gazed up at the sky, figuring it was halfway between midday and sunset. She had to find Daniels before dark. If she didn’t, she knew it was almost certain he and the rest of her people would be captured. She’d seen enough of anti-insurgency troopers to know they favored smashing down doors in the dead of night.

  She reached the road—more of a dirt track—and stopped. There was something there .
. . yes, this was the road she’d taken the last time she’d been there. She turned and continued out from the city, ducking into the brush along the edge of the road the two times she heard a vehicle approach.

  Finally, she saw it. The small farmhouse. The moment she walked around a bend and set eyes on it she knew she was there. She hurried her pace, ignoring the fatigue. It was only when she was about halfway to the house that she suddenly froze. What if the feds beat me to Griff? They could be waiting for her. She hesitated, looking around. There were no signs of any kind of struggle—and she was fairly certain Daniels would have put up a fight. Moreover, there were no fresh tracks or signs of heavy transports on the ground.

  She pushed the fears aside. There was no covered approach to the house, and she hadn’t come all this way to turn back now and abandon Daniels and her crew. She walked straight up to the house, and she banged on the door. No answer. She pounded her fist again. And again. Louder. Still nothing.

  Am I too late?

  This time the fear almost took her. If the feds had been there, if they had taken Daniels away, they might have left someone here in case she turned up.

  She looked all around, her hand slipping under her jacket and pulling out the pistol. Then she heard something—someone—walking around the side of the house. She crept up toward the corner, slowly, quietly. And then she spun around, weapon at the ready.

  There were two figures there, a man and a woman. The man reacted quickly, shoving the woman to the side, putting himself between her and the threat. Then he focused on Nerov.

  “Captain?” he said, confusion in his voice.

  “Griff,” she replied, her tone heavy with relief as she lowered her gun. “I’m glad I found you.”

  Daniels moved forward toward her, recognizing immediately that something was terribly wrong. The woman just stood still, quietly looking on.

  “What are you doing here, Captain?”

  “You have to leave, Griff. Now. And we need to get to the crew. They’ve all got to go into hiding.” She paused, not wanting to even say the words.

  “The feds have Vagabond, Griff. They know we’re smugglers.”

  “Hurry, we’ve got to get out of here. Run down to the secure room, and download the core files. Then wipe the system.” It had been less than ten minutes since Suze Lingon had sent the signal from the office, and Danforth was just lucky to have been home at the time. He knew his loyal aide had taken a terrible chance warning him. But he’d made the arrangements with her months before, a fail-safe if the government ever found out about his activities and made a move on him. He’d half thought it had been paranoia that led him to set up the whole thing.

  Now he knew it wasn’t.

  “On my way, John.” Tyler Danforth was John’s cousin, and his ally as an agitator and proponent of Haven independence. He turned and left the room, not exactly at a run, but something faster than a walk.

  It was unclear if Tyler was on the proscription list along with John, but if he wasn’t, there was little doubt he would be soon. The younger Danforth had a less public profile than his cousin, but he was every bit as involved in the growing rebel movement.

  John Danforth was in his library, looking out over the carefully tended groves of apple trees that had been his grandfather’s pride and joy, the first successful Haven cultivation of the old man’s favorite Earth fruit. He remembered his grandfather declaring, perhaps with more pride than objectivity, that the Haven variety was tarter and juicier, superior to its Earthly cousins.

  He paused as he stared out over the beautiful grounds of the family farm, the idyllic setting where he’d grown up. The hills, the trees, the small, winding streams.

  And said goodbye to all of it.

  Time to run, John. If you’re not too late already.

  He turned back to his desk, digging through the drawers, pawing through the data chips and tablets. He tossed most aside, occasionally stuffing one into a small duffel bag.

  He’d thought about it, of course, what it would be like if open rebellion became a reality, but now it was different. Nothing, he now realized, could truly prepare one for this moment. The speeches were over, the machinations behind the scenes no longer necessary. The planning, the plotting. There were soldiers, no doubt on the way right now, and they planned to arrest him, to drag him back to face charges of treason and sedition. Accusations that could very well lead to the scaffold.

  So this is courage, he thought. This is what it feels like when convictions and rhetoric become reality.

  It was one thing to call for rebellion, to support it. Quite another, he now realized, to stare it in the face, while deciding what few possessions to take before running off to hide.

  No doubt soldiers were already on their way, coming to search his house. Prepared to ransack it, looking for incriminating information . . . or anything that might lead them to him. He could see them in his mind, breaking down the door, running through the house, smashing things, bringing destruction to the place that had been his family’s home for almost sixty years.

  He leaned forward, pressing his thumb against the sensor pad on the locked bottom drawer. It popped open, and he reached inside. He grabbed a box of data units and a large sack full of small platinum bars. He also took a stack of plastic cards, each accessing a bank account under a different false name, and a handful of ID chips. He was one of the richest men on Haven, but if the feds hadn’t frozen his accounts yet, they would within minutes. These few precautions, this small stash he’d kept in his drawer, it was all he had now.

  “John, we’ve got to go . . . now!” It was Tyler, calling from out in the hall. “I can see a convoy on the road, no more than three kilometers out.” One advantage to Danforth Hall was that it was set on a high hill, commanding the ground all around. Still, he didn’t have much of a head start. The feds would cover the distance to the house in minutes.

  John slammed the drawer shut, and slung the bag over his shoulder. “Okay, let’s go.” Then: “I wonder why Geoff didn’t signal us.” Geoff Nettles was one of his most trusted aides . . . and he was down the road, watching the main approach.

  “I think there’s something wrong with communications, John.” Tyler followed as his cousin stepped through the door and out into the manicured yards between the house and the orchards. “I can’t raise anybody on my comm unit.”

  “We’ll worry about that later. For now we have to get to the woods. I’ve got a transport stashed down there.” He moved quickly, his cousin on his heels, through an opening in the large brick wall enclosing the garden and out into the large grove of apple trees.

  “What could be wrong with communications?” His response was a bit delayed. “Suze got cut off, too. One second she had been transmitting, and the next all I had was static.” Danforth had figured his loyal aide had cut the line suddenly to avoid getting caught warning him. But now he wondered.

  He pulled out his own portable comm. He’d had it off out of fear the feds would use it to track him, but now he flipped it on as he continued down the hill behind the orchard. Nothing but static.

  “You’re right, Ty. Even my comm is dead. What do you think that means?” He asked the question, but then he answered it himself before his cousin could. “They’re jamming communications. They must be doing it from the orbital platform. God—that means they’ve taken control of the whole satellite network.”

  “But that would shut down everything. Network broadcasts, even the ability of the governor to address the planet.”

  “No—I’m sure they’ve still got dedicated frequencies for the government. It was built in when my grandfather was starting the business. There’s no way they would prevent themselves from commanding their own forces.”

  The two moved through the woods as they spoke, climbing down the hillside toward a small road.

  “And that means it’s truly begun, Ty. The military is moving in. It’s the only possibility. They wouldn’t be expending so much energy just to mess with n
ormal planetwide communications.” He ran up to the transport, pressing his hand against a panel on the side. The doors slid open, and he climbed in, waving for Tyler to get around to the other side. Then he flipped on the vehicle’s AI. “Hamlen’s Farm, maximum possible speed,” he barked.

  “Hamlen’s Farm,” the unit responded. An instant later the doors slammed shut and the vehicle lurched forward hard and bounced around wildly as it raced down the narrow dirt road.

  “We’ve got to get the word out, Ty,” he continued. “We can’t know what the feds know, or what they’re up to . . . but if we don’t assemble the Guardians, we risk losing the rebellion before it even begins.”

  “If we rally the Guardians openly, it’s a declaration of war against the federals.” Tyler turned toward his cousin.

  “Yes, Ty. That is exactly what it is. But the feds have clearly already declared war on us—that’s what the communication breakdown means. Besides, our only other choice is captivity . . . and possibly death. And that is no choice.”

  John Danforth paused, taking a deep breath before continuing. “We have spoken of this for several years now, given rousing speeches in secret basement meetings. Well, now those words, the slogans of rebellion and the cries for freedom . . . they have come home to roost. We called for rebellion, for war. And that is exactly what we are getting.”

  CHAPTER 15

  HAMLEN’S FARM

  FEDERAL COLONY ALPHA-2 (HAVEN)

  EPSILON ERIDANI II

  “BLACK WEDNESDAY”

  “John, I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you escaped.” Cal Jacen walked out of the darkness and into the small farmhouse, scanning the room as he did. There were half a dozen men and two women there, all leading revolutionaries. They were the lucky ones, those who had managed to escape the federal purge the day before. At least half of their compatriots hadn’t been so fortunate. They were in federal custody now . . . or dead if they had refused to surrender.