Flames of Rebellion

by Jay Allan

  Damian can’t possibly defend the federals, not after this . . .

  But he knew the vicious Colonel Semmes wasn’t the only federal on Haven, and that many of the others—even a few that were Damian’s friends—were different. Governor Wells, for one, had tried to keep the peace.

  But where is he now? Just because good men and women serve a cause doesn’t mean it’s a good one. How many millions live on Earth in poverty, misery? How many have ended up in prisons for speech crimes? For protesting the squalor they’d been born into?

  Jamie was concerned about Damian . . . and he was almost frantic worrying about Katia. But this was where he belonged. He’d tasted the slightest hint of the life Damian had offered him . . . but now he realized it was an illusion, one that would have required turning his back on what he knew was wrong. Because there were certainly others like him. How many, who knew? Thousands? Millions? He couldn’t do anything about the people on Earth trapped in their misery and punished when they complained. But he damned sure could give all he had to ensure that never happened on Haven.

  If he could do that, if the rebels could, then they would have earned the kind of lives he’d dreamed about. Hearth and home, shared with Katia. It was all he wanted, but it wasn’t something someone could give him. He was going to have to take it.

  And he was ready to do just that.

  Cal Jacen stood in the darkness, just outside the prison’s perimeter wall. Cargraves Prison wasn’t like the mine. It was a maximum security installation, designed mostly to house political prisoners, men and women who had defied Federal America on Earth . . . and who were too important for one reason or another for the secret police to simply shoot in some cellar.

  The mine had steady traffic in and out all day long, ore being shipped out, guards moving on and off shift. But Cargraves was different—the prison was closed up tight. Its guards lived inside, serving month-long rotations, and the facility only opened up when a new prisoner was brought in or the monthly guard and supply transport arrived. The prison was a veritable fortress, and it had been designed that way for a purpose.

  For one thing, Cargraves didn’t even exist, not officially—at least, not as far as anyone on Earth was concerned. It had been built on Alpha-2 to ensure that even an escaped prisoner—and none had ever managed to accomplish that feat—would be alone, far from the power centers on Earth . . . far from almost anything, in fact. Alpha-2’s far hemisphere was almost entirely ocean, and the prison was on an island eight thousand kilometers from any populated land area.

  Jacen looked around at the strike team. They were Society members, all of them. But they’d left their red armbands behind, disposing of anything that could identify them. There were two veterans in their ranks, and another four who had served in the colonial security forces. The rest had been criminals, smugglers, mercenaries. The key was they all had some kind of fighting experience. Just as important to Jacen, they were all radicals, dedicated to the revolution and to reordering Haven society.

  And they all knew just how crucial Jonas Holcomb was to their cause.

  “Okay . . .” Jacen spoke softly. “There will be a momentary lapse in the security system in—” he looked at his chronometer “—three minutes. The kill-fence will be deactivated on this sector, along with the cameras and detection devices. You’ll have two minutes maximum. You’ve got to be inside and past the coverage area of the primary surveillance system by then.”

  He looked at the strike team, the closest thing he had to a group of commandoes. He’d struggled to push away the doubts, but he couldn’t help but wonder if they could pull it off. It was an audacious plan to say the least. That said, so was the idea of the revolution in the first place. Without communications, they were all but doomed. And the only person on Haven with a chance to thwart the jamming was inside that prison.

  “We have allies inside. They’ll cut the security system, and they’ll make sure Holcomb’s cell is open. The guard rotations have been changed, and a virus input into the surveillance system. The cameras should ignore you, at least for twenty minutes, but we can’t be sure. That’s why you’ve all got prison guard uniforms. Still, don’t look directly at any camera—you don’t want the recognition software crunching on your faces—just in case some part of the system remains active.”

  Jacen had used one of the oldest and most reliable weapons he knew of to secure the information and cooperation he’d needed: money. He’d bribed key personnel, handing them bars of platinum equal to what any of them made in ten years from their wages. He’d been stunned how much it took to secure the cooperation he needed, but then he realized his co-conspirators were putting their lives on the line just like his people.

  He stared at his chronometer for a few more seconds. Then: “Okay . . . go!”

  He stayed where he was, watching the strike force move out. In twenty minutes they’d be back with Jonas Holcomb. Or without him.

  Or not at all.

  CHAPTER 21

  FEDERAL BUILDING

  LANDFALL CITY, GOVERNMENT DISTRICT

  FEDERAL COLONY ALPHA-2 (HAVEN)

  EPSILON ERIDANI II

  “This is entirely unacceptable!” Everett Wells leapt from his seat for the third time in ten minutes, pounding his fist down on the table as he did. He’d always been a temperate man, but right now he was verging on melodramatic.

  Stanton hated theatrics. Not that Wells didn’t have some reason to be upset. Semmes’s soldiers had been marching all over Landfall and the surrounding villages, smashing down doors, dragging civilians out of their beds. Anyone even suspected of rebel sympathies was subject to arrest . . . or worse. But that was the cost of war, and as distasteful as even she might find it, the reality was that the rebels had brought this upon themselves, and no amount of tantrum was going to change that.

  “Governor, please sit down.” She sat at the head of the table, the place Wells had occupied before her arrival. “I share your . . . mmm . . . distaste for some of the actions currently under way, but there is no question that this planet is in armed insurrection against its legitimate government. Nor is there any question that this sorry state of affairs has occurred despite the extreme efforts on your part to reach a reasonable accord with the colonists.”

  “But what you’re—”

  “Sit down, Governor,” Stanton repeated, with more force than usual.

  She liked Wells, and she’d gone out of her way to show him respect, especially when the decrees she carried from the senate essentially allowed her to have him shot and to take his place entirely.

  In truth, she saw some of herself in the governor, though she was rather more ambitious than he was. Wells had been a fast riser in government service, and he’d been somewhat of a role model for her, having come himself from a family with limited political influence. But now she realized Wells was a true believer, that he’d been driven all those years not by an urge to advance himself but because he was doing what he believed to be right. It was a novel concept, she thought, one rare enough, certainly in government, and while she pitied him for what she considered naivety, she couldn’t help but admire him, at least on a certain level.

  But now he was wearing down her patience. She had resisted many of Colonel Semmes’s harshest requests, but she had to admit the brutal officer had scored a success, at least a partial one, at Vincennes. The video logs taken before the caches were blown suggested that more than a thousand state-of-the-art combat weapons had been destroyed. And the Guardians of Liberty—what a pompous name, she thought—had been dealt a serious blow if they hadn’t been destroyed outright. It was more progress than Wells had made in three years, and if it had cost a few lives, what historically significant event hadn’t?

  “Your Excellency.” Gone was his casual familiarity with her, and she almost sighed at the childishness of it. They had been using each other’s first names in most contexts, but clearly Wells was done with that.

  Which almost certainly means a speech is co
ming.

  Sure enough, Wells was saying, “Are we animals? Butchers? Is this the only way we can resolve a dispute? By kicking down doors? Arresting people on virtually no evidence of wrongdoing . . . and then holding them indefinitely in filthy, overcrowded cells?”

  “Your half measures have brought us to this juncture, Gov—” Semmes interjected, but he stopped when Stanton raised her hand, a scowl replacing the sneer he had been directing at Wells.

  “Please, all of you . . . would you leave us for a few moments? I would speak privately with Governor Wells.”

  The others at the table leapt up almost immediately, turning and moving quickly toward the door. Semmes was slower, seeming to deliberately hesitate for a second until Stanton turned her head and stared at him. Then he got up and followed the others, his scowl deeper.

  I definitely need to watch myself around him. Again, though—a problem for another time.

  “Everett, I am going to speak frankly with you. I am not your enemy, and I will never be . . . unless you give me no choice. I understand your desire for a peaceful solution here, but the senate is out of patience as far as Alpha-2 is concerned. Tax receipts are down, ore shipments have come to a virtual stop. I understand what you tried to do here, and I think I comprehend why as well. I even admire you for the effort.

  “But it is over now, do you understand me? Citizens have taken up arms against Federal America. Hundreds of our soldiers have been killed. This is not going to end well, Everett. But it is going to end.”

  “Asha, I appreciate all you have done.” Back to first names again. She almost smiled at that even as Wells finally sat back down. He looked tired. “I know you could have dismissed me, possibly even had me arrested. I am not ungrateful. But I must beg you to consider the humanity of your actions. Please . . .”

  She sighed softly. “You simply do not understand, Everett. Humanity is not a consideration in any of this. Neither is compassion or understanding. The senate wants a peaceful and compliant Alpha-2. They want economic activity and tax revenue rising again. They want the ore flowing. That is it. They aren’t concerned about how that all happens. That fact is why I am amazed they allowed you to remain in your post as long as they did. But make no mistake: this planet will be pacified. If I don’t do it, someone else will be sent here to sack me. The senate will send whatever forces are necessary . . . and they will consider any death toll an acceptable cost to restore order. You made a choice, one that cost you your career—” she’d never been so blunt about Wells’s terrible prospects when he returned to Earth, but she was frustrated with his stubbornness and his refusal to accept the way things had to be “—but do not misunderstand my kindness to you, or the fact that I like you as a person. I will not sacrifice my future prospects as you have yours. I will not fail in this mission, and I intend to get off this bloody rock just as soon as I possibly can.”

  She stared at him, her eyes cold, intense.

  “So either shut the hell up, or get the hell out.”

  Jonas Holcomb was lying in his cell, staring at the ceiling. He’d been there for days now, without interruption—and, for the last forty-eight hours, without food. He’d have been amused at the random sequences of mistreatment the federals seemed to think would break him . . . if he hadn’t had to live through it all.

  At least there hasn’t been another drug therapy session.

  That was the true torture, far more so than the physical torment. He didn’t doubt enough beatings—or some of the worse abuses he knew other prisoners endured—could break him, but the federals needed more than that. They didn’t want intelligence from him, a few snippets of information. If they’d wanted to force him to divulge some secret, he was certain they could have managed that the first day or two he’d been at Cargraves.

  No, they wanted him back at his work, designing weapons and technology for the government. They didn’t want an angry, rebellious slave, one who might sabotage his own work to strike back. It was a fine line, but they needed both a thoroughly broken man and one with his faculties all intact. It was like threading a needle with rope, breaking a man so thoroughly without affecting his ability to think and reason. He was pretty sure they had been close the last time to turning him into a quivering heap. It was probably only that fact that had kept him out of drug therapy for a second time.

  Until they figure it out . . . or fry my brain.

  He heard a sound, the door opening. Already? His stomach clenched, an instinctive reaction. To the best of his ability to keep track of the clock, it was nowhere near mealtime . . . and any other time that door opened meant something unpleasant was about to happen.

  He felt his body pushing back into the wall, a pointless effort to move away from whatever was coming. He felt the shakes coming on, as they often did when the guards came for him, and he struggled to control himself, to hang on to what was left of his dignity.

  A man stepped inside the cell. As he’d expected, it was a guard.

  Is he here to take me to the Pit?

  He paused, unable to keep the shakes from returning.

  Or to another drug treatment?

  He knew he couldn’t resist the drugs much longer, not at the dosages they were giving him. His defenses would fail sooner or later, and then they would control him completely.

  Perhaps this will be the time. Or the next one . . .

  “Dr. Holcomb?” It was the guard speaking, but he knew immediately something was different this time.

  “Jonas Holcomb? We’re here to get you out of this place, sir. Can you walk?”

  Holcomb sat up and stared at the man, frozen for a few seconds in shock. “Who are you?” he said softly, sounding confused.

  “We’re friends, Dr. Holcomb. And if you’d like to get out of this shithole, you need to come with us now.”

  Holcomb stood up, wincing against the pain as he did. His jailors hadn’t done any permanent damage to him, not physically at least. But they kept him in a state of constant pain and soreness, always recovering from a beating. His legs wobbled as he tried to hold himself up. They hadn’t crippled him, not yet. But he could barely stay on his feet.

  “Fuck—I don’t think he can make it,” the guard said to someone in the hall.

  “No . . . just need a second.” He limped across the room toward the man standing next to the door.

  “I’m not sure we have a second.”

  “What’s—”

  “There’s no time to explain, Doctor. Let’s just say we had some inside help . . . and it’s not going to last much longer, so we’ve got to get going.”

  The man leaned forward and reached for him, and he recoiled. “I’m sorry, Jonas,” the man said. “I know you’ve had a hard time in here, but if you want to get out, you’ve got to let us help you.”

  Holcomb hesitated, trying to focus, to understand what was happening. It had to be some kind of trick, a new torment his jailors had thought up to confuse him. They’d probably convince him he was going to get out, only to rip the hope away at the last minute . . .

  “You’re a liar. Leave me alone. I will never do what you want me to do.”

  He stepped back against the wall, watching the intruder with wild eyes. He could see the man turn, once more speaking to someone in the hall. A flurry of movement and then the man had shifted to the side, allowing someone else to come in, also wearing the uniform of a guard. He had something in his hand, a cylinder, perhaps forty centimeters long, and he was moving closer.

  “No!” Holcomb shouted, turning, reaching down to grab his last meal tray, pulling it up as the plate and cup on it crashed to the ground. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was all he had.

  The man lunged forward, reaching out with the cylinder, hitting the metal tray. Holcomb shrieked as he felt the electrical shock, and he dropped the tray, trying to step back, but falling instead, landing painfully on the ground.

  The man was still coming, leaning forward, the cylinder out in front of him. “I’m sorry, Dr. H
olcomb, but there’s no other way.”

  Holcomb gritted his teeth. It was a new form of torture. Did they think they could break him that way? By varying his torments? To create the illusion they had replaced the drug therapy that he truly feared with something else?

  “We’ve got to shut him up. He’s going to bring the whole place down on us.”

  “I’m trying!”

  He swung his arms in front of him, landing a punch on the second man, even as the cylinder neared his flesh. Something wasn’t right—they’d never left him unrestrained in any previous sessions. Why were they letting him fight back, even as ineffectually as he was? It didn’t make sense. Was it possible? Could these really be some kind of rescuers? He couldn’t even imagine that.

  Then the cylinder struck again, and his body wracked wildly. He could feel his bladder empty . . . and everything went black.

  “Father, you must do something. You must stop this madness.” Violetta Wells was upset. No, more than upset . . . nearly hysterical. “The brutality, the randomness. It can’t go on.”

  “I’m sorry, Vi,” he said, unsuccessfully trying to keep his own anger and frustration from his voice. “But I’m afraid it is going to go on for a good long time. The federal observer is determined to break the rebels. She won’t consider any ceasefires or peace proposals. And we can’t expect any restraint from Colonel Semmes.”

  “But you have to do something!”

  “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing, Violetta?” His words were angry, far more so than he’d intended. He’d always tried to hide the harsher side of government service from her, and now he wondered if that had been a mistake. He was appalled by what Stanton and Semmes were doing, but he blamed the rebels and their intransigence as well. He’d tried to offer them a peaceful way out, and he’d put himself on the line to do it. But they had been as unwilling to negotiate as Stanton, as determined to provoke hostilities. He was disgusted with all of them.