by Jake Elwood
Tom nodded. Any student of military history knew that homegrown militias were rarely a match for professional soldiers. But decades of resistance to the United Worlds seemed to have given the local rebels some impressive skills. He shivered. Things had never quite come to open warfare between the United Worlds and its colonies in the Green Zone. He'd always figured that, if it came down to it, the UW would have little trouble suppressing an armed revolt.
Thank God it never happened. We'll have to make damn sure things change when the war is over. There's no way the Green Zone worlds will go back to being colonies of the UW. Not after they've killed and died for their liberation.
For the thousandth time he felt the tug of divided loyalties. For his entire life, until the last few months, he’d thought of himself as a loyal citizen of the United Worlds. He'd trained in the UW Navy, served on a UW ship. But now he fought alongside the colonists.
What will happen when the war ends? Will I go back to Earth? If I stay in the colonies, will I ever really belong?
He looked at Alice. One thing’s certain. She'll never leave the Green Zone.
I guess that means I'm staying.
For a moment both aircraft hovered almost directly above Tom's position. He pressed his face into the inside of his elbow as dust rose around him. The smaller craft moved away, rising a couple of meters to clear the tree line before descending into the yard. The larger craft moved aside just far enough to avoid the cluster of spacers and prisoners, then sank down until its landing struts touched the ground. The rotors slowed but continued to spin as a hatch on the nose of the ship dropped open to form a ramp.
Four men descended. They looked like typical Green Zone irregulars, without uniforms and with mismatched weapons. One man wore burgundy body armor splashed with green paint. They spread out, taking positions several meters from the bottom of the ramp, faces expressionless and eyes alert. They held laser rifles or blast rifles, not quite pointed at Tom and his spacers.
Bridger, standing beside Alice, said, “Who's that?” Tom looked at him, then followed the direction of his gaze.
A woman was walking down the ramp. Like the men who had preceded her she wore no uniform, but he found himself fighting an impulse to stand at attention. She had the indefinable air of command that most officers only acquired after many years of experience, if ever. She might have been forty years old, with chiseled features and the eyes of an eagle. She had the lean, rangy build a long distance runner and the bearing of an empress. Her hands were empty, but she wore a pistol on each hip. She walked past her four guards, and they advanced with her, their eyes on the prisoners and the spacers who watched them.
“You.” The woman's voice crackled like frost breaking on a tree branch in winter. “You look like one of them.” Her eyes drilled into Tom, and her right hand dropped to the butt of a pistol. The man to her left tilted up the barrel of his blast rifle until the muzzle pointed at Tom's stomach.
Tom blinked. “I'm not Mongolian,” he said. “I'm Cree. Or do you shoot people for having straight hair and brown eyes?”
He figured it was his accent that persuaded her, not his words, but she took her hand off the butt of the pistol. The man beside her lowered his aim so that a misfire would only blow Tom's knee apart instead of killing him outright.
“Thanks for the intervention,” Tom said. “I'm Captain Tom Thrush of the Free Neorome Navy.”
Cool blue eyes appraised him. By the look on her face, nothing she saw impressed her much. “I'm Karen Sharpe. I lead the Prairie Dog Militia.” She glanced at the sky. “Are there more of you? Is it an invasion?”
“Not so far,” he said. “Soon, maybe. We brought down Sunrise Station, so with any luck the United Worlds will come in and finish what we started.”
“Bluebottles,” she said. “Great.”
A dozen more militia came out of the aircraft, cold-eyed men and women who moved like professional soldiers, never bunching up, never losing their vigilance.
“Is the station destroyed,” Sharpe said, “or just damaged?”
Tom told her about the captured battleship and the attack on the station. He was describing his last view of the crippled station when a blast rifle fired behind him and a spacer said, “What the hell!”
Tom turned to see the Prairie Dog Militia open fire on the kneeling prisoners. He swore, his voice drowned out by gunfire. The massacre was over in moments, leaving him standing there with his fists clenched and his mouth open. He turned back to Sharpe.
“I'm not fighting them again,” she said. “There's too many of them, and not enough of us.” She jerked a thumb at the aircraft behind her. “We're getting out of here. I strongly recommend you come with us.”
The ship fled west, into the setting sun. Tom stood in the cargo hold, swaying as the ship rocked and tilted. There was nothing comfortable about the interior of the aircraft. As he'd suspected, it was originally designed for spreading fertilizer. A few white pellets were still embedded in cracks and crevices.
Seats lined the sides of the cargo box, but they'd been folded up to make space. There was enough room for everyone to stand, but not if they all wanted to inhale at the same time.
Tom had one of the better spots. He was up against the wall of the box, and he even had a view. Someone had used a cutting torch to hack a narrow loophole in the metal. If he pressed his face to the opening he could get some fresh air, along with almost two hundred degrees of view.
They were passing over lake country, or perhaps one giant lake with an awful lot of islands in it. The terrain below was about fifty percent water. It should be enough to discourage ground pursuit.
Directly ahead of the ship, the sky turned opaque. It was a storm, vast and dark enough that Tom was just as glad he didn't have a clear view. He’d read about the famous storm belts of Novograd. During late summer one storm after another would scour the prairies and low hills of the northern continent. He thought of the lines of trees they’d navigated, planted as windbreaks to protect the road and the farmyard. The local farmers must have hated storm season, but it certainly made for excellent cover.
The world grew darker, and fat raindrops smacked the side of the cargo box. Tom pulled his head back, then flinched as lightning arced down, uncomfortably close. “Hey, shut the window,” someone behind him joked.
The ride, never stable to begin with, became worse as the ship moved deeper into the storm. The floor dropped away beneath Tom's feet, rose, then dropped again. A sudden tilt bounced his head against the side of the box, and he swore. Then the ship tilted the other way and he fell helplessly against the people behind him. Hands shoved him back upright, and he grabbed the rim of the loophole to hold himself in place.
By the time the aircraft touched down it was dark as night outside, the rain coming down in lashing torrents more intense than any thunderstorm Tom had ever seen. The ramp dropped and the passengers poured out, running for the beckoning shelter of a nearby building.
Tom hung back, waiting for the stretcher parties with the wounded. The ship didn't have a cockpit as such. Instead there was a raised platform where an operator could use the controls. Designed as a space with plenty of elbow room, where the operator could walk back and forth to look out in different directions, the platform was packed as tight as the cargo box. Sharpe and most of her militia came down the ladder into the cargo box as it emptied out.
“We'll take care of your people,” Sharpe said, gesturing at the wounded as the stretcher bearers lifted them. “This is one of the best medical clinics on the planet.”
Twenty meters of open space separated the ship from the entrance to the building. Most of the spacers had crossed that ground at a dead run, pelted by rain every step of the way. The stretcher bearers took it slower, and Tom walked behind them, keeping pace. Sharpe surprised him by walking beside him, ignoring the rain that plastered her blonde hair to her skull and poured in rivulets down the hard angles of her face.
“It's not safe to keep you al
l in one place.” Her voice was almost a shout, to be heard over the storm. “We've sent word out across the lake country. We'll distribute your people among farms and fishing camps and small communities.”
A flash of lightning lit up the area for an instant. Tom caught a glimpse of other buildings, just blocky shapes on either side. The building straight ahead, the one Sharpe had described as a medical clinic, was a two-story structure made of concrete with a wooden roof. It was typical colony architecture, simple and unpretentious, made with low-tech materials. Like everything in the colonies it was pragmatic.
At last he made it inside, wiping water from his eyes as the door swung shut behind him. Medical staff in red smocks bustled forward with wheeled gurneys and took charge of the wounded. Tom watched them go, a knot deep inside him loosening.
“The satellites can't track us through this mess,” Sharpe said, pointing at the ceiling to indicate the storm outside. “We need to get your people moving while the cloud is still thick.”
The sound of the storm grew louder as the doors behind Tom swung open. Cold air blew across his wet back, making him shiver. He turned as two people bustled in. They wore modern rain gear, water beading on the surface. It was a man and a woman, something in their bearing announcing that they were an old married couple. The woman spotted Sharpe and said, “We've got room for four.”
“Four!” called one of the guerrillas. He made a herding gesture and four bedraggled spacers pushed their way through the crowd in the entry hall. The militia must have briefed them already, because they followed the married couple back out into the storm. Each of them nodded at Tom in passing, and he watched them go with a strange hollow feeling in his stomach. Will they be all right? Will I see them again?
Over the next hour his command disintegrated before his eyes. The crew of the Icicle trickled out, singly and in small groups, to board boats and aircraft and ground vehicles. Locals came from a hundred kilometers in every direction to take and hide a handful of refugees.
When it became too much to watch, Tom wandered deeper into the clinic. Someone handed him a towel, and he dried his hair, then wrapped the towel around his shoulders. He shivered as he walked. He had no goal or destination. He just couldn't keep still.
“Tom? There you are.”
Tom turned, and his heart beat a little faster when he saw Alice walking toward him. Bridger was on her left, a local woman on her right. The stranger didn't look like a militia member. Her face was too open, too kind, and she was unarmed.
“This is him,” Alice said. “Commodore Thrush, our fearless leader.” She smirked as she said it. “He's the man most responsible for us being here.”
“A fact for which I may have to apologize,” Tom said.
“Nonsense!” The woman stepped forward, seizing his right hand in both of hers. She squeezed like she was trying to crack open a coconut. “I'm supposed to pick up some of your crew and take them back to my island. I didn't want to go without saying thank you, though.”
Tom squirmed. “We were just doing our job, Ma'am.”
“You're risking your life to free my entire world,” she said, giving his hand a final squeeze before letting go. “My name's Emily Webster. I wanted to make sure you met some of the people you're liberating. I wanted to make sure somebody said a proper thank you.”
“Um, you're welcome.”
Emily beamed as if he'd said something brilliant and touching. Then she frowned as a voice came through the wall beside them.
“You can't treat us like bloody prisoners. We've had enough of that sort of thing.”
It was Gabrielle's voice, and he moved toward it.
“Karen's orders,” said an unsympathetic voice. “You're with the uglies. We're not just letting you go.”
Tom found a corridor that led to a door with a sentry in front. The man stepped in front of Tom and raised his chin. Tom, who’d learned from the best CTs in the United Worlds Navy, didn’t speak. He just gave the man his most withering glare. The sentry wilted, and Tom stepped around him.
Gabrielle and the rest of the tanker crew stood in the middle of a small meeting room with three militia members between them and the door. A square-jawed man seemed to be in charge. He turned, annoyed, to face Tom.
Gabrielle turned as well. The expression on her face was pure relief, and it chilled Tom worse than the storm outside. Gabrielle, fierce and fearless, was scared.
“These are members of my crew,” Tom said. “Why do you have them segregated?” He looked at the three militia. “Why are you holding weapons? Put those away. These people are on your side.”
The leader had a blast rifle in his hands. The other two held pistols. No one holstered or lowered a weapon. “We have our orders,” Lantern Jaw said.
“Did your orders involve sneaking these people away from the rest of us? What are you planning to do with them?”
“For the moment we're planning to detain them.”
But the militia, Tom knew all too well, didn't take prisoners. He remembered the short, terrible massacre near the farmyard. A wave of fury washed over him, and he clenched his fists. It took all his willpower, but he didn't speak, didn't move, for the time it took to breathe in and out three times. The worst of his anger subsided.
“These people volunteered for what looked like a suicide mission,” he said. “They helped us get close enough to Sunrise Station to destroy it, and they risked their lives doing it. They are your allies, and they are members of my crew. They are coming with me.”
Lantern Jaw's eyes narrowed. “I have my orders,” he repeated. His eyes flicked to his two companions. “Joe. Go get Karen.”
A red-haired man holstered his blast pistol and edged between Tom and Alice. For a moment Tom considered stopping him. But Lantern Jaw might find it easier to back down with one fewer witness, and if he wouldn't see reason, Karen Sharpe might. Tom let the man pass.
“We're all on the same side,” Tom said. He turned to the freighter crew. “Come on. Let's go.”
The rifle in Lantern Jaw's hands turned until the muzzle pointed directly at Tom's chest.
“Oh, for God's sake,” said Emily Webster. She jabbed an accusing finger at Lantern Jaw. “You're as bad as those DA goons.” She pointed at the tanker crew. “You can't shoot people for helping us!”
“This is militia business,” Lantern Jaw said. “Keep out of it.”
“Let me take them. My place is isolated. They won't get a chance to cause any trouble.”
The blast rifle shifted until it pointed at Emily. “I told you to keep out of it.”
There was a moment of tense silence. Tom shifted his weight, thinking about grabbing for the gun barrel. The gun swung back to point at him.
“This is your fault,” said Bridger.
Tom looked at him, startled. Bridger, fists clenched, was glaring at Alice. “You had to come back to Novograd,” he said. “But everyone on your stupid planet is as crazy as you are!”
“Shut your mouth, you witless jerk!” She planted a hand on his shoulder and shoved, knocking him back half a step.
“Bitch!” He brought up both hands and shoved her. She stumbled back, rebounded from the wall behind her, and stared at him, eyes wide with shock. Then her face turned red and contracted into a snarl. She lunged at him, leaning forward and driving her head and one shoulder into his stomach. Bridger let out a grunt and fell backward, colliding with Lantern Jaw.
Alice leaped on Bridger. They grappled on the floor for a moment, and then he shoved her aside. He sprang to his feet and grabbed her by her hair and the scruff of her neck as she rose. He jerked her toward him, then flung her away. The other militia man scrambled out of the way as she crashed head-first into the back wall. She landed on her hands and knees.
Bridger came toward her, and she kicked a chair into his path. He stumbled, giving her time to rise to her feet. She raised her fists like a boxer, and he did the same.
For a moment they stood there, bouncing on the balls of th
eir feet, wearing matching expressions of fury. Tom watched, completely flabbergasted.
Alice glanced around the room. “What are we doing?” She lowered her hands, and Bridger did the same. “I'm sorry. I got carried away.”
Bridger waved a hand. “Don't worry about it. I'm sorry I called you a bitch.”
“Friends?” she said, and stuck out a hand.
“Friends,” said Bridger, and shook it.”
“What the hell is going on?”
Tom turned. Sharpe stood in the doorway, flanked by a couple more militia.
“They wanted us to release the prisoners,” Lantern Jaw said.
“What prisoners?”
Lantern Jaw looked around. “Where the hell are the prisoners?”
Gabrielle and her people were gone. So was Emily Webster.
Chapter 12
“This war is all about psychology,” Karen Sharpe said, shifting her backpack into a more comfortable position. “We blow stuff up, and we kill some of them, but the main thing we do is manage their mental state.”
Tom nodded, not because he understood what she meant, but because he didn't have the breath to speak. The days of Basic Officer Training when he'd been in peak physical condition were far behind him. He wore a leather backpack with the same weight of explosives that Sharpe carried, and it felt like he was carrying a bus.
There were nine of them, four militia and five spacers. O'Reilly, Alice, Bridger, and Ham rounded out the contingent from Free Neorome. All five of them were red-faced and out of breath.
“Colonists outnumber Dawn Alliance soldiers on this planet by a factor of more than two hundred to one,” Sharpe said, scrambling onto a glittering crystal as tall as she was. She jumped from one chunk of crystal to another, then paused to let Tom catch up. The rest of the team followed in a ragged line. The crystal was smooth as glass and treacherous to walk on. He gave his full attention to his footing until he stood once again beside Sharpe.
“But there aren't many active resistance fighters. We lost a lot of people in the first days of the occupation. We tried to hold territory. We tried to fight them head-on.” She glanced at Tom, her eyes bleak. “It was a fatal mistake.”