The Mission

by M. J. McGriff

  I pulled aside the closest soldier to us and ordered her to get them both. Meanwhile, Dad was still looking me over, paying close attention to a couple of scratches on my face. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  I removed his hands from my face. “I told you I’m fine. Just make sure he’s okay.” I pointed over to Oliver as officers put him into a van.

  “If it were up to me I’d let him bleed to death out here,” Dad replied.

  That wasn’t the answer. They were way too many bleeding bodies out there to begin with. Some of them wore the same uniforms I did most of my adult life. The rest belonged to Oliver’s commune. I walked through the scene of carnage, looking for anyone I recognized. They were dead, nameless faces.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

  How did things get this tragic, this messy all so fast? Would it have even gone down like this if I hadn’t been here? Maybe my father was right. I could’ve been safer at home. But I wouldn’t be as enlightened. Regardless of what our beliefs were, we all bled the same.

  Was this how it started on the Old Planet? Were we so quick to pull out our guns and kill for what we thought was right? I didn’t trust them because they were different. They were breaking the law.

  The law.

  It was supposed to protect us from harm. We didn’t even know they existed until recently. They had plenty of opportunities to attack us but chose to farm and create hover cars.

  They kidnapped me and the other explorers.

  I would’ve done the same thing if the tables were turned. So who was right? Who was wrong? Being around so much death, the fight to figure it out wasn’t worth this.

  My dad put his arm around my shoulders. “C’mon, baby girl. Let’s get you home.”

  Chapter 9

  The moons didn’t seem so bright. The grass under my feet was dull and ordinary back in Sector A. I was relieved when the memorial service for the officers was finally over. All I could think about were those other colonists rotting in that forest. There would be no service for them. They had family and friends who cared about them like those officers did.

  It didn’t seem right.

  I was supposed to go straight back to my quarters. My father had his men guarding my door twenty-four hours a day. Being cooped in that small room wasn’t appealing to me at all. I needed the fresh air in my lungs. So I went to the Quad lawn, which thankfully was empty. I climbed up to the tallest point of the rock structure, giving me a clear view of the forests beyond the perimeter walls. I closed my eyes, trying to remember the beautiful journey I went on before meeting Oliver and his New City people.

  The bright pink trees.

  The purple fields.

  The gorgeous yet dangerous river rushing over the colored rocks.

  The fire pit Thomas made.

  Oh, Thomas.

  He’d been in worse shape than I thought, dying during the ride back home. As for Phoenix, she finally found her way back a day after we got back. No one saw her much after she found out about Thomas. I didn’t know him long, but his death was the toughest to deal with.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  I looked down and it was Flo. I hadn’t seen her much either since we’d got back. I motioned her to come on up, and she climbed up with ease. I scooted over so she could sit next to me.

  She put her head on my shoulder. “India, I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you since we got back. I’m a horrible friend.”

  I couldn’t be upset with her. It was a tough time for everyone. I leaned my head on hers. “You’re not a horrible friend.”

  “I don’t know what it is, but since I’ve been back everything is just so—”

  “Different.”

  “Yeah. I can’t explain it.”

  I could, though I wasn’t quite ready to voice it. Oliver and his commune were remarkable. They created another way of life. Yet all anyone knew here was that the New Earth Charter was the only way we could function as a society. He accomplished things in months that the president hadn’t been able to do in years. His people died defending that new way of life. It was hard to continue living here knowing that our leader wanted to lock them all up. Was what they were doing that criminal? There was plenty of planetary space for us to coexist.

  “I’m not trying to make enemies here. All I want is for us to be able to coexist with one another and maybe one day trust each other.”

  When Oliver told me that I wasn’t sure I trusted him. Then instead of taking the easy way and hauling ass out of there, he took an energy blast for me.

  “What’s going to happen to Oliver?” Flo asked.

  “They’re going to try him and most likely execute him.” Whenever I asked my father about him he gave me that same answer. He also added that I stay away from him.

  “You don’t want that to happen to him, do you?”

  “Would I be wrong if I didn’t?”

  Flo lifted her head and looked at me. “Nope. There’s no right answer for any of this.”

  “He saved my life, Flo. He kidnapped us, then showed us his plans, and then took a shot for me. I can’t even reconcile all that. I mean, why would he do that?”

  Flo shrugged. “I dunno. The only person who would know that is him.”

  I looked out at the rest of Sector A. The extra security at the perimeter walls. People clearing out of the common areas. If I was going to do the crazy thing that I was thinking, I wouldn’t have much time.

  “Flo, I need a huge favor.”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  “Go back to your quarters. If anyone asks, I’ve been there all night.”

  She raised her eyebrow. “What are you going to do?”

  “Get some answers.” I started climbing down, my best friend right behind me. When we reached the ground she spun me around.

  “You’re going to see him, aren’t you?” she whispered, and I nodded. “I don’t know about this. If your father catches you he’s going to handcuff you to his hip until you’re forty.”

  “He’s not going to know.”

  He’d been in meeting after meeting with the president. I barely saw him. I doubted that night would be any different. All I needed was my security card and prayed that it still worked.

  ***

  The brig was an underground cavern a few yards away from the main building. The entrance was a small guardhouse with two men at the door and two more inside. Getting past the ones outside was easy. It wasn’t unusual for me to get digital reports from the guard on duty. Once inside it was Nunez. Thank goodness! He didn’t know his ass from his elbow. All it took was a lie about checking the cameras downstairs and a swipe of my card to get me in.

  Except for the scattered fluorescent lights, the cavern was a dark, damp place. The entire cavern was hollowed out to fashion two rows of cells along the entire length of it. A foot of security glass separated me from the prisoners. In the first two cells were the men I shot in the Ration House, banging on the glass as they cursed at me. I finally found Oliver, lying down on the floor mattress. He was bare-chested save for the white bandages wrapped around him. When he saw it was me, he jumped up, clutching his side as he walked over to the glass. He had a swollen black eye and dried blood on his lip where it split.

  “What did they do to you?” I asked.

  He smiled, wincing in pain. “Just roughed me up a bit, that’s all.”

  That wasn’t right at all. “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “Please. Don’t be.”

  “Are they treating you all right in here besides...you know...”

  “I expected nothing less.”

  He took a seat on the floor, the pain too much to keep standing. I sat down on the cold hard floor in front of him.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said.

  Trust me, I didn’t expect to be here either. “I just...wanted to say thank you for saving me out there. You took an energy blast for me, and I’m grateful for that.”

/>   “You don’t have to thank me.”

  We sat there for a moment, looking at each other like it was suddenly so hard to speak. It wasn’t like we’d just met.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Did you do that? Save me, I mean. You could’ve gotten away.”

  He looked down at the floor for a moment and then back at me. “I couldn’t let Verona hurt you. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you’d gotten hurt.”

  I pushed my braids away from my face. “A lot of people got hurt that day.”

  “For that, I will take whatever punishment they give me.”

  They were going to kill him. There was no jury in the world that was going to let him walk away from this.

  “I don’t get you.”

  He laughed so hard it hurt.

  “You break the law, create a perfect world, have a trigger-happy sidekick, save your hostage from an energy blast—I don’t understand.”

  “People are like life. They aren’t so cut and dry. I don’t consider myself a bad person, but your president says I am because I defied the charter. I wanted to create another alternative to living, a place where everyone is truly equal and well cared for. Because I did that I am against everything our forefathers stood for. That’s far from the truth, but I knew that’s how others would perceive it. So I had to go outside of the lines to exercise my beliefs.”

  “And Verona? What is she beside the psycho who was ready to shoot me?”

  Oliver crossed his arms. “Verona’s parents died in a cell like this one for stealing food one winter from a Ration Station in Sector B. They hadn’t eaten in days and they did what they had to so they could survive. She’s angry and vengeful. Much to my disappointment, she never got over that.”

  I sat back on my hands. I would be the same way if my father died in here trying to take care of me. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. There’s so much more to people, to life, to this world than what’s on a piece of paper. Just like there’s more to you, I’m sure. In the end, we’re all people, the descendants of Old Earth looking for a better way to live.”

  “What’s going to happen to your people now that you’re locked up in here?”

  Oliver sighed. “They’re going to vote on what they do next. I hope they come in the same vein of peace as I tried to do. Somehow, though, I doubt it, especially since your father’s men shot first.”

  I leaned forward. “I saw.”

  He hung his head. “I blame myself for all this.”

  We were all to blame for what had happened that day, the president included. Had he shown up he could’ve avoided it all. By sending my father and his men he was preparing for a firefight or to arrest everyone without question.

  “You shouldn’t shoulder all the blame.”

  He raised his head. “And neither should you.”

  I’d spent the last couple of nights trying to figure out how I could’ve stopped what had happened. “It’s kinda late for that.”

  There were so many things, but my father always told me not to dwell on the past. What mattered was what I could do now.

  “Yeah. Me too,” Oliver said.

  “I don’t know what I could’ve done different, but I know that right now I’m going to figure out a way to make this right, for everyone involved.”

  “How?”

  Good question. I rose to my feet, brushing the dirt off my pants. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Oliver struggled to his feet, his eyes narrow. “Why would you help me?”

  “Because I don’t want to see any more people die over misunderstandings.”

  He smiled. “You’d make an amazing leader one day.”

  Maybe. Only time would tell.

  Chapter 10

  Despite only getting a few hours of sleep I was up early the next day. I showered, dressed and stepped out into the morning sun. “Good morning, Officer Wilson,” the first guard said to me as I closed the door behind me.

  “Morning!” I smiled. “No need to follow me. I’m going to see my father.”

  The second guard nodded. “We’ll call the front desk and let them know you’re coming.”

  I thanked him and made my way to the main building. Unlike the many times I’d walked the sector, I paid special attention to the people around me. The wash maid working at the Launder House. A pair of mechanics walking by in their work overalls. A group of school kids walking with tablets in hand. They didn’t look sad or miserable, but they weren’t happy either. It was as if they were going through the motions. Oliver’s people always seemed so cheery and happy. I didn’t even hear anyone humming a tune.

  I walked through the main doors, checking my watch as I went down the main corridor of the Security wing. It was half past seven hundred hours.

  Perfect.

  Dad was still in his morning briefing meeting. I turned down the side hallway to his office door. I punched in the key code and let myself in, softly closing the door behind me. My father’s office was a reflection of his work style. Super clean desk with the chair pushed under it. The books on the shelves in the corner were arranged in alphabetical order, the spines all facing the same direction. A globe of Old Earth sat in the corner, not a speck of dust on it.

  I went over to the desk, the main drawer locked with another key code. After two guesses I unlocked it and what I was looking for was where I knew it would be. His primary tablet was where he kept everything—orders, memos, digital messages, and the like. I needed another code to open it and I lucked out—my father used to the same three passcodes for everything. “Not much of a security chief, are you, Dad?” I said to myself as sat down in his chair to go through his files. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for. I needed some type of clue about what the president was planning to do. If I knew that, then I could find some way to stop it. Wasn’t sure how I was going to do that either.

  Then I found a video file labeled Drone A1, buried in the millions of subdirectories. The quality was grainy, there wasn’t any audio, and the video wasn’t in color. But it showed enough for me to know exactly what I was seeing. The half-moon clearing in the trees. The old stone pit. The mouth of the cavern. It was an aerial view of where we’d stayed the night before that fatal meeting. I counted three hover vehicles and a handful of people clustered around the entrance to the cavern. The video zoomed in on the people there, with clothes covered in blood and dirt. Only a couple of them were on their feet, including a slender woman with long, platinum blond hair giving orders.

  “Verona,” I muttered under my breath.

  She turned around and I jumped, her eyes looking dead into the drone camera. She pulled out a gun and shot it, the video feed going dark.

  She’s in charge. This can’t be good. Oliver wasn’t there to talk her down. She was going to come back at us with everything she had and all that would do was lead to more people dying. I was so lost in thought I didn’t even hear the beeping of the door keypad. The door swung open and my father walked in, startled to see me there.

  “Hey, baby girl. I didn’t realize you would be stopping by—”

  His eyes went down to his tablet, which was still in my hand. His smile faded. “What are you doing with my tablet?”

  I put it down on the table. “What are you going to do to those people, Dad?”

  “Those people?”

  “Those people in Oliver’s community.”

  “Since when were you on a first name basis with Mr. Adams?”

  I leaned forward on his desk. “I need to know what’s going to happen to them.”

  “The same thing that happens to everyone else who breaks the law.” He took his tablet off the desk and motioned me to get up out of his chair.

  I got up and sat on the desk next to him.

  “Dad, it’s not that simple.”

  “Oh, it seems pretty simple to me.” He unlocked his desk drawer and put his tablet back. “The only person who ha
s the power to create a new sector is the president. Any other form of habitation without his expressed consent is illegal.”‘

  “Says who?”

  He slammed the drawer shut. “The legal document created and signed by our forefathers on Old Earth that guides everything we do.”

  “Have you ever thought that maybe it needs a second look? I mean, it was written way before you were even born by people who’ve never set foot on this planet.”

  “India, as much as I would love to have a civics debate with you, now is really not the time.” He pulled out his mini tablet from the inside of his uniform jacket.

  “Dad, those people you’re talking about were suffering here.”

  He put on his reading glasses that were sitting on his desk. “Is that what Oliver told you?”

  I huffed, my hands gripping the edge of the desk hard in frustration. “I know what I saw. Those people aren’t the hardcore criminals you lock away in the brig or sentence to years of hard labor. They are happy. They are productive. They found a way of life that works for them.”

  He turned in his chair to look at me. “If I didn’t know any better I would think you were defending the people who kidnapped you, held you captive, and then held a gun to your head.”

  I brushed my braids away from my face. “And if it was the other way around? If someone you didn’t know was a friend or foe showed up outside of Sector A they would be taken into custody. Then if their people came looking for that person you would do whatever it took to protect yourself.”

  He snatched his glasses off his face. “Are you justifying what these people did to you?”

  “All I’m saying is before everyone starts jumping to killing the enemy or locking them away, make some sort of attempt to empathize. See their side of things.”

  My father sat back in his chair, swiveling it from side to side.

  “They could’ve done a million horrible things to me and the others while we were there. Instead, they gave us a decent place to stay, the best food, and a tour of their camp.”