by Ben Weaver
“They did, and within the first hour of the attack. The soldiers they captured were hauled off, probably brainwiped and measured for enemy uniforms. Since then, the Marines have been raiding our towns and searching for soldiers who are hiding among us. And since then, we’ve been collecting weapons, organizing ourselves, and in the last week we managed to secure the artillery on this side of the crater.”
“They’re letting you have it, you know that,” I said. “Otherwise, they would’ve taken you out from orbit.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“I am. They’re setting you up for a massive offensive, letting as many of you as possible gather in a central location, probably near these guns, so they can make one fell swoop.”
Halitov, who had been listening quietly—an amazing feat for him, though he was exhausted—finally looked up. “Yeah, so they’ve set up a trap. And our new buddies are driving us right into it. Uh, this is where I get off, if you don’t mind.” He rose.
“Sit down,” I ordered him, then regarded Poe. “Look, if you need our help, we’ll give it, but right now my only goal in life is sending that message.” Even as the words left my mouth, I realized the lie. I wanted to contact the colonel and Ms. Brooks, yes, but I wanted just as badly to recover Jing. If we could tap into satnet, break an alliance code or two, we could find her prisoner transfer orders.
“Right now, Major, your goal in life is survival,” Poe said. “Which is why we’re going to take back the capitol building from the garrison holding it. And you and your friends are going to lead us to victory.”
Had his words not been uttered so seriously, so sincerely, I would have laughed in his face. And then he looked at me with those eyes, eyes tinted permanently green as part of some ancient Racinian ritual, according to my cerebroed data.
Halitov turned up the charge on his skin, then lowered his head and called me over the private channel: “Look, these miners don’t have a prayer. We’re not going to help them. We’re going to use them to stay alive, get that message to Ms. Brooks, and figure out a way to get back to Vanguard One. Do me a favor? Lie to them. Tell them anything they want to hear, so long as we know what we have to do.”
I weighed that, then turned to Poe. “As I said, we’ll help, but my duty is to get out a message to my superiors. That has to come first.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. I waited for his nod, but none came. “The universe did not place the three of you here by accident.”
“No, us getting shot down was very deliberate,” Halitov said with a snort.
“Before we do anything else,” Poe began softly. “Let me show you my world.”
Halitov tossed a silly look my way, but I ignored him.
“All right,” I told Poe.
The bumpy ride suddenly softened as the SS Morrow broke onto smooth pavement. Although we couldn’t see outside, I assumed we had passed into one of thousands of mining access tunnels leading to the subterranean colony.
We traveled for about another thirty minutes, with me repeatedly asking how long the ride would take and where we were going. Poe remained irritatingly cryptic. Twice Halitov threatened the man, and I had to intervene.
Finally, after nearly a full hour, the transport came to a gradual halt, brakes squeaking a bit then dying off into the engine’s idling hum. Poe instructed us to remain seated while the driver spoke over the comm.
In the meantime, Val d’Or was coming around, and Halitov grabbed the hairy cadet by the shoulders. “Hey, asshole. Wake up so I can beat you back into another nightmare.”
“Fuck you, Halitov,” Val d’Or moaned, then rubbed the back of his head, and glanced around. “Whoa. This is an Alliance track.”
“That’s right. We’re prisoners,” Halitov lied.
“Shut up,” I said, crossing to the man. “These miners picked us up. They’re organizing a rebellion.” My tone darkened. “Lucky for us, huh?”
“I don’t believe it,” said Val d’Or, his gaze locked solid on Hardeson Poe. “It’s you. The guide. The guide.”
Poe came over and helped Val d’Or to his feet. “Are you from Colyad?”
“Yeah, I was born here. The calling took me way out to Exeter, but now I’ve finally come home. I can’t believe it’s you, standing here. I’ve only seen you on holos and from a distance during the trovakas. I just…I can’t believe it.”
The hatch opened automatically, revealing diffuse blue light and an icy tunnel bearing the groove marks of the original drillers. Halitov shoved his way past us. “Sorry to break up your fanatic family reunion, but I’d like to see where the hell we are.”
“Some would call you the fanatics,” said Poe. “And Captain, we’ve passed through the airlock, so you can de-skin.” Poe turned, reached out, and touched Val d’Or’s wild hair. “You’ve some stories to tell. Come on.”
I followed them out of the SS Morrow, de-skinning as I leapt from the hold. When my boots hit the ice, they gave, and I suddenly dropped flat onto my ass. I suspected even then that me and icy surfaces would never get along.
“You sure he’s the guy you want leading your people?” Halitov asked Poe, then smiled tightly.
Poe broke away from Val d’Or and offered his hand. “It’s his experience as a tactician that I’m interested in, not his ability to walk on ice…or water.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking his hand, rising, then brushing off my rump. I spotted a pathway a few meters to the left, one that Poe’s people had chosen.
We entered a nondescript hub in the railway station, and miners were posted at the four major corners, all wielding rifles confiscated from the Alliances. Clearly, Poe and his people had already organized the citizenry, and that became entirely evident as we entered the station proper. I gazed out across a broad, bustling platform where literally thousands of people boarded or exited from fifteen to twenty trains. Our railway system on Gatewood-Callista seemed rudimentary by comparison. Armed miners stood at every gangway, and big particle cannons jutted from circular, perimeter bunkers whose armor resembled metallic scales. A half dozen airjeeps manned by still more miners zoomed overhead through the vast chamber carved into the ice, their pilots carefully monitoring the hustle and bustle below.
“You’ve done a fine job securing this position,” I told Poe, though I still felt the heat on my neck from those cruisers in orbit.
“A few guardsmen helped train these people. Every man and woman here will die for our freedom. But you need to see more. We’re taking a train to Noe Providence. First, we need to get you out of those uniforms.”
Poe led us up, onto a catwalk running parallel to a row of offices. As we walked, Val d’Or rushed up beside me. “Scott, now that we’re here—”
“To be honest, Mr. Val d’Or, I don’t want to hear anything from you at this moment.” I glared. “You got your wish. Your home. Aren’t you going to run off and find your family?”
“I already have.”
“These people?”
“I’m a neovic, and so are my parents. I’ll meet up with them, but first this is my calling.”
“Incredible,” said Halitov, who’d been walking behind us. “One minute he’s a backstabbing opportunist, the next he’s a religious nut. At least he never commanded troops.”
“No, but I will now,” Val d’Or retorted.
“Eugene,” I began, tempering myself a bit because I realized I wanted something from him. “You were in the same conditioning accident with us. Same one as my brother, too, only he and some others were kidnapped by the Wardens while you escaped. Since then, Rooslin and I have been aging abnormally.”
“Obviously.”
“Hey, I still get laid more than you,” barked Halitov, whom I silenced with a look.
“What do you want to know?” asked Val d’Or. “Why I’m not aging as fast?”
“If the exact same thing happened to you, then you should be suffering from the same effects as us.”
“Remember the caves?” Halitov asked
. “Remember how Paul’s aging was temporarily halted and reverted?”
I grabbed Val d’Or’s arm. “Do you spend time inside Minsalo?”
“I kept my people out of there. Look, I wish I could tell you why. But I can’t. Sorry.” He pulled away.
“You’re not sorry,” spat Halitov. “You’re laughing your ass off right now. But karma’s going to come back and bite you like a shraxi, trust me.”
“Here we are,” called Poe, pausing before an office door he had just opened.
Inside, the former insurance firm’s offices had become a makeshift warehouse for stolen military supplies. Rows of everything from old-fashioned sandbags to uniforms to crates of weapons rose over our heads and stretched off into the shadows. Poe led us down one dark aisle to a rack of Exxo-Tally mining uniforms. There, he told us to find our sizes and change.
“Clean skivvies,” said Halitov, reaching into a box and holding up a pair. His gaze went skyward. “Thank you, Linda.”
“Who?” asked Val d’Or.
“The woman who controls his fate,” I answered, as though it were obvious.
“You two are weird.”
“Listen to this,” cried Halitov, dropping his drawers. “Mr. Neovic over here. You ever tell anybody at the academy that you were one of them?”
“You make it sound like we’re fundamentalist freaks. What we are is dedicated to the sheer beauty and power of the human mind.”
“You ever tell anybody about your dedication?” Halitov said, probing on.
Val d’Or shrugged. “They would’ve called me a hypocrite.”
Halitov chuckled under his breath. “And they would’ve been right. You got conditioned to tap into the bond. But isn’t your entire religion based upon the idea of doing that naturally, without the mnemosyne?”
“I followed my calling. I did what was right. If it meant getting conditioned, then that’s what I had to do. My people understand. They just want what we have, and they know one way to obtain it is through prayer and meditation and total focus. Once you connect to the bond through sheer force of will, you’ll have a more intimate relationship with the universe. The mnemosyne act as a filter, dulling some of our awareness.”
“You know that for a fact?” Halitov asked dubiously.
“I’ve never experienced it myself, but I’ve witnessed others who have.”
Halitov caught my gaze and made an exaggerated frown. I gave a little shrug and kept dressing.
“Let me have your uniforms,” said Poe, returning with an empty shipping container. “We’re going to burn them.”
“Excuse me, but that’s the property of the Colonial Wardens,” said Halitov.
“And if the garrisons find out we’re here,” I reminded him, “there will be a serious manhunt.” I nodded to Poe. “Burn them.”
Halitov unpinned his captain’s gon from his uniform, then resignedly handed the uniform to Poe. “I earned this,” he said, holding up the gon. “And no one’s burning it.”
“I wouldn’t carry that,” said Poe. “If you’re caught with it—”
“If we get caught, they’ll run DNA,” I told Poe. “They’ll find out soon enough who we are.”
His phosphorescent eyes widened. “Then let’s not get caught.” He left with the uniforms.
I tucked my own major’s angle, a gold triangle impaled by a small ruby, into my palm, squeezed it, then squeezed it again. I should be doing what I’ve been trained to do: lead troops. God damn you, Paul Beauregard. Damn you to hell…
Once we were zipped into our blue mining jumpsuits and had donned our black boots, Halitov threw out his arms and said, “Can you appreciate the irony of this or what?”
“Irony?” I asked.
“We shipped out to Exeter, got trained, got conditioned, got attacked, got taken prisoner, got shot at, beat up, fucked over—all so we wouldn’t have to stay home and become miners like the rest of the poor blue collar slobs on Gatewood. And after all that shit, here we are, light years from home, putting on the blue.”
“What’s with him and the drama?” asked Val d’Or.
I rolled my eyes at Halitov. “Get over it.”
“Oh, I’m over it. And the sad part is, I look pretty good in this thing. Still a man in uniform, and the women are still going to swoon. Lead me to the miners’ daughters.”
“Ask my ghost,” I told him. “Because I’m going to kill myself now.”
“Scott, my boy, cheer up.” He slapped an arm over my shoulders. “So what if we lose the war? So what if we die before our time?” He looked at me, puckered his lips. “At least we have each other.”
“Yeah, the curse continues…”
Poe, Val d’Or, Halitov, and myself, along with four of Poe’s recruits, took a train to Noe Providence, one of Colyad’s most productive mining towns and its seediest, with robbery, gambling, prostitution, and smuggling running rampant. Hard-working miners engaged in rowdy and visceral activities, and most colos came to expect that, as did law enforcement officials, who policed with a forgiving hand. On the train, Poe explained that production had slowed, since miners knew that their efforts now helped the Alliance war effort, and tension crackled like electricity between workers and Marines.
Unarmed, we reached Noe Station, and Poe got us by security scanners with a few nods to his contacts. We headed out on foot through a tunnel that emptied into a broad coliseum of ice under which stood a shanty town of Quonset huts and other prefab structures serving as homes to several hundred miners. As we shifted stealthily between the buildings, our boots crunching over sand or some other substance that been spread over the ice, I noted that some of the miners were in their teens, and, in fact, a few of them could be no more than ten or twelve.
After crossing through several alleys, we reached a main avenue, where a pathetic little bazaar lined both sides of the street. Vendors worked from the backs of dilapidated hovers and sold barbecued beef and chicken, along with personal hygiene items and music or film holos, games, and a few of the newer virtual reality headsets. To the sudden halt of my heart, Alliance Marines shuffled everywhere, rifles shouldered but gazes keen and darting through smoke wafting from the grills.
“Holy shit,” Halitov whispered. “That beef smells good, but get me the hell out of here.”
I shifted up to Poe and couldn’t help speaking through my teeth. “You didn’t say we’d be getting so close. And I told you, I don’t have time for this. If you’re not going to help me get my message out, then I’ll do it myself.”
“Just give me another moment,” he said, withdrawing a small earpiece and translucent microphone from his hip pocket. “They’ll be making a demonstration soon.” He donned the communications gear, said, “Status? All right, then.”
Ignoring my frown, Poe led us on, through the marketplace, and toward a great octagonal hole in the far wall with lights flashing along its perimeter.
“That’s the main entrance to the network,” Halitov said, aghast. “We’d better not be going in there—unless we’re being double-crossed.”
I put a finger to my lips. “Just be ready.”
Poe darted between a pair of parked airjeeps, then hunkered down behind a third. We joined him there, then peered cautiously over the side panels at a long line of children in mining uniforms, some of them just eight or nine, marching out of the entrance, escorted by a half dozen screaming Marines.
“What’s this?” I asked Poe.
He looked at me, eyes glassy, lips tight. “Just watch.”
“They can’t force kids to work,” said Halitov. “It’s ridiculous.”
The parade of children came to a halt, all fifty or sixty of them. One gunnery sergeant eyeballed the group, then began his inspection, scrutinizing them as though they were green cadets in boot camp, but they were kids, for God’s sake, and one little girl near the end of the line, a petite angel with curly blonde hair, stood there, whimpering a moment before her face knotted and she cried hysterically.
“Do you hear that, ladies and gentlemen,” shouted the sergeant. “What’s that noise?” He ran up to the little girl. “What’s that noise coming out of your mouth?”
“Oh, I want him,” said Halitov. “First I’m going to break his arms and let him stare at the bones popping through his skin, then—”
“Shut up,” I told him, tensing as a hundred or more adult miners flooded in from the main entrance, the group held at bay by a full platoon of Marines jogging alongside.
“Whose child is going to die today?” The sergeant whirled to face the adults. “Whose child is going to pay the ultimate price because Mommy and Daddy have chosen to slow production?” The sergeant snatched up the crying girl into his arms and raised her before the crowd. “Will it be her?”
“This is insane,” I whispered.
“We’ve found the deepest level of Hell,” Halitov added.
Poe glanced hard at me. “That sergeant will kill her.”
“He’s bluffing,” I said.
Poe shook his head.
“I won’t sit here and watch this,” said Halitov, sizing up the distance between the airjeep and the sergeant.
“Yes, you will,” said Poe, grabbing Halitov’s wrist. “There’s an entire company inside.”
Halitov’s cheeks flushed. “That makes the casualty report higher.”
I balled my own hands into fists, staring intently at the sergeant, who pulled the girl tight into his chest, then jammed a QQ60 particle pistol into her head. “This little girl is going to sacrifice her young heart because you people have chosen to resist. Now, think about it. I’m going to stand here before all of you, and I’m going to kill her. And you can’t blame me for this. You can blame yourselves.”
“Rooslin,” I began, sharing a very familiar and knowing look with him, a look we repeatedly wore during combat, one that reminded us of the ultimate sacrifice we were prepared to make. “Ready?”
“I didn’t bring you here to save her,” Poe said quickly. “She’s already dead. I brought you here to show you what we’re fighting for. You can help us save thousands more. But if you blow our cover, nothing changes. Nothing.”