Uprising

by David Ryker

  “That was my call,” she said. “I told him that you’d eventually agree to it, and that we didn’t have time to screw around. So we went in and got you out.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Bishop. He was seated to Quinn’s left and looking out the window. “That’s not southern California down there. I thought we were headed for Zero’s place in San Jose?”

  “You thought wrong. We’re transferring to one of those souped-up Rafts you took to Oberon One, then we’re heading east. We’ll do the mission briefing on the trip.”

  Part of Quinn’s mind was on the plan—it made sense to use one of the Rafts, simply because of the technological superiority they had over any other aircraft available—but another part was stuck on what the woman had said a few minutes earlier.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “You just said you knew Maggott would try to defend me if you attacked. How did you know that? Even Zero wouldn’t know that much about us. Was it Drake? I thought you people didn’t interact with him.”

  “I was wonderin’ that meself,” said Maggott. “Ye’ve only ever faced us once, lass. Ye must have serious instincts to have bet everythin’ on how I’d react to what ye did.”

  Maggott’s words tickled in the back of Quinn’s brain. Serious instincts, he thought. Or previous knowledge of the Jarheads.

  The woman turned to the black suit sitting next to her, and Quinn could hear a low buzz as they and the man on the other side of here conversed via their helmet radios. His mind raced as the idea began to form, and he suddenly knew what they were talking about. A moment later, the three nodded and turned to face Quinn and the others.

  He knew what he was about to see even as the woman undid the magnetic clamps that held her helmet in place on the collar ring of her smart suit—the only surprise was how long the raven-black hair had become in the two years since he’d last seen her. Granted, she was still a Marine at that point, so it was quite short to begin with.

  “Holy hell,” Bishop breathed as Maggott gasped audibly between them.

  “What am I missin’?” asked Ulysses.

  The other two men removed their helmets as well, revealing two more faces that Quinn had expected. The one to her left was chiseled and sporting an auburn beard. The one to her right had almost Nordic features, with almost white-blond hair and blue eyes. He knew the man piloting the ship would have olive skin and thick eyebrows. Quinn had spent the better part of five years in the trenches getting to know those faces: Sergeants Elliot, Shane and Gomez respectively, currently of Precision Security, formerly of the elite Marine special ops unit he used to command, colloquially referred to as Bravo Company.

  The two men glanced furtively around the airship, obviously wishing they were anywhere but where they were. Meanwhile, the woman’s dark eyes wouldn’t meet Quinn’s, and instead she looked down at the floor between them.

  “Hello, Lt. Han,” he said evenly, feeling dark anger welling in his chest again. “It’s been awhile.”

  7

  Chelsea Bloom awoke with a strange sensation. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it—unfamiliar was the only word she could think of to describe it. But that didn’t make any sense, given that she was in the bedroom where she’d spent the majority of her nights since she was a tween. The same three-meter-square bed, the same living room suite, the same windows climbing from the floor to the ceiling four meters above it. The same view outside of the San Francisco harbor, so much prettier now that the pollution had been taken care of.

  So what was the problem? She vaguely recalled reading something once, during her medic training days, about how symptoms of unreality could accompany general anxiety attacks. But she wasn’t anxious; she was safe in her room. That led her to another, more frightening realization: the same symptoms were often used to describe seizures in people who suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.

  Wait, what medic training? The thought brought a stab of adrenaline along with it. And images that had no place in her mind: stars, explosions, the endless blackness of outer space.

  Just leftover dreams, she told herself as she drew in deep breaths, trying to restore her equilibrium. She’d been having a lot of nightmares lately. I just need a few minutes to really wake up, that’s all.

  A soft knock at the door drew her out of her reverie. “Come in,” she said, leaning forward in her bed and rubbing her eyes.

  A petite middle-aged woman with shoulder-length black hair and olive skin entered and smiled. It was Zelda, who’d been Chelsea’s personal servant since she was a child. She was also one of her mother’s favorite drinking companions, as evidenced by the gin blossoms that dotted her nose and cheeks.

  “You slept in, Miss Chelsea,” Zelda said sweetly. “Your guests will be here any minute.”

  “Guests?” Chelsea’s heart gave a little kick in her chest. “What guests?”

  Zelda shrugged as she tapped a panel on the wall that started the rainfall shower running in the adjoining dressing room.

  “Mr. Bloom just called them ‘the committee,’” she said, then wrinkled her nose. “I assume it’s those political people.”

  The committee? Chelsea vaguely recalled a few faces of people around the same age as her father, who were talking to her about—what was it? The word senate suddenly appeared in her mind. None of this was helping her deal with the sense of unreality that wasn’t going away.

  “The committee,” she muttered. “Yeah. Okay, then.”

  “Go shower, Miss,” said Zelda. “I’ll hold them off if they arrive before you’re ready.”

  Chelsea rose from her bed and shuffled across the marble floor toward the dressing room, running a hand through her tangled hair.

  “Thanks, Zelda,” she yawned. “You were the best.”

  She stopped at the entrance to the shower and watched as the maid walked out of the room. Why had she said were the best? Zelda is the best.

  Zelda is dead.

  The thought was enough to send Chelsea staggering. She propped a hand against the wall to keep herself from falling over. Zelda wasn’t dead, she’d just left the room! Where the hell had that thought come from?

  She’s been dead for years, since before I left for college.

  Chelsea took a deep breath and tried to clamp down on the strange messages that kept invading her mind. Zelda obviously wasn’t dead, and Chelsea herself had set up the meeting with the committee. It was important to get working on the campaign as soon as possible. If this was some kind of seizure—please, God, let that be what this is—then it would eventually pass and she could get treatment for it from their family’s team of physicians later in the day. Just ride it out.

  The hot water and sonic vibrations of the shower helped soothe her a bit, gently massaging the muscles of her neck and shoulders as it cleaned. Ellie would love this, she thought as her fingertips worked a color-changing shampoo into her hair. Today would be a dark ash blond, something serious for serious business.

  Her heart thumped again. Ellie? Who the hell is Ellie?

  She finished her shower and stepped through the drying chamber, which instantly evaporated the remaining moisture from her skin and hair. A wave over the panel on the wall of the dressing room prompted a number of doors to slide open, revealing a wardrobe that would rival the stock of a mid-sized fashion store in any of the world’s larger Tower malls. She chose a serious-looking smoke-gray suit with a knee-length skirt. It was the kind of attire people would expect from a senator.

  Chelsea gave herself the once-over in the floor-to-ceiling mirror between two closet doors. Her unease didn’t show in her reflection, which was all she cared about. And, of course, the outfit was light years better than her SkyLode staff jumpsuit, especially for an occasion such as this.

  She caught herself once again and rubbed her hands against her face, hard. She’d never worked for SkyLode—the company operated on the fringes of the solar system, for God’s sake!

  “Pull it together, woman,” she whisper
ed. “You need to get some coffee in you, stat.”

  Stat? Where did that come from? That was something medical people said, not politicians.

  Chelsea drew a deep breath and steeled herself as she stepped out of her personal apartment and headed toward the east drawing room of the floor her family occupied in the Bloom Tower. It took a full minute to walk to the room where her guests would be gathered—the home itself was some 30,000 square feet—which gave her the opportunity to get a grip on herself. When she finally arrived, she was back in control.

  Two dozen people milled about the drawing room, chatting amiably and drinking cocktails, despite the early hour. Chelsea had grown up in such a culture, where her mother began drinking mimosas with breakfast, followed by wine on the Tower’s country club level and finally martinis from happy hour until she passed out in the evening. No matter where or when, the ultra-wealthy always seemed to have drinks in their hands.

  She caught her father’s eye as she strode in. He separated himself from a group of fellow middle-aged men, all nearly as handsome as him, to join her.

  “Morning, darling,” he said with a winning smile. “Today’s the big day.”

  “It sure is.” Chelsea hoped her own grin didn’t look as fake as it felt.

  “Why don’t you circulate for a few minutes, say hello, and then I’ll make the announcement.” Typical of her father to want control over everything, but right now she was grateful. She still couldn’t remember what the significance of this particular meeting was.

  “Sounds good,” she said as people began to amble toward her with their own smiles and hands outstretched in greeting. Chelsea recognized some faces but not others, and none of their names were coming to mind. But that didn’t really matter—in a situation like this, her own family’s name was the only important one.

  One woman in particular stood out to her, a stunning brunette with violet eyes and skin the color of café au lait. She didn’t offer to introduce herself, instead staying in the background and simply watching the proceedings intently.

  After a couple of minutes, Oscar Bloom stepped into the center of the room and cleared his throat. Specially designed acoustics had been engineered into the ceiling above that spot specifically to amplify a speaker’s voice to fill the expansive space of the drawing room. The chatter died down instantly, and all eyes were suddenly on her father.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he said. “I’m sure some of you already suspect the reason for this meeting.”

  A murmur ran through the crowd, but it died quickly when Oscar held up a hand.

  “For those of you still in the dark, I’ve asked you here because the moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived: Morley Drake has decided to step down as tribune for the United Free Territories.”

  Chelsea blinked in confusion as the rest of the room erupted in light applause. Drake’s name summoned a flood of images in her mind’s eye: soldiers in black rushing toward her, people—friends—being led away in restraints while she was roughly shoved into the back of an ambulance airship, the rising panic as she realized her friends were being taken to prison…all of it seemed as real to her as the room she was standing in. More real, in fact.

  With that realization came a sudden clarity that she’d been desperately searching for since Zelda had woken her. Zelda, who had passed away from cancer almost a dozen years earlier, before Chelsea had graduated from school and left home to be trained as an Army medic. Years before she had served in the Trilateral War, and then taken a position as SkyLode’s chief medic on Oberon One.

  Oberon One. The Jarheads. Napoleon Quinn.

  Quinn. Her heart kicked hard at the thought of his square jaw, his steely eyes, his easy smile. Quinn and the others—Drake took them away. He arrested them! And her father had been there, with the ambulance…

  “Shut it down.”

  The words startled Chelsea, and suddenly the room began to shift under her feet. The brunette who had been watching her earlier stalked through the crowd, her purple eyes watching Chelsea intently.

  “What…?” Chelsea breathed. The others in the room had all frozen in position and were beginning to fade, as if she was waking up from a dream. But how could that be? She had already woken up an hour ago.

  The next thing she knew, the woman was standing next to her, an annoyed expression on her perfect face. Those eyes seemed to fill Chelsea’s entire field of vision.

  The world tilted, and Chelsea went from standing to sitting without actually taking a chair. She was staring at the drawing room ceiling, which was impossible given the angle she was sitting at, and the sense of unreality became overpowering, causing her pulse to race. Finally, she closed her eyes in the desperate hope that it had all been a dream…

  When she opened them again, she was in a white room. Her eyes adjusted to the glare while she took stock of the situation. She knew this place. She’d awoken here before. The tubes attached to hypospray patches on her forearm confirmed that she was in a reclining chair in a room in the family’s private infirmary in Bloom Tower.

  And again, Dr. Indira Copeland was glaring at her from a chair a few feet away. A set of holographic controls winked out of existence as she leaned closer to Chelsea.

  “This would all be much easier for you if you’d stop doing that,” the doctor said.

  A muscular orderly removed the patch from Chelsea’s arm and replaced it with a soft restraint that locked her wrist to a panel on the side on the chair. Another orderly stood at ease in the corner by the door, making him look more like a soldier, despite his white coveralls.

  “Stop doing what?” Chelsea croaked. Her throat had gone dry again; she remembered from the previous episodes that it was a side effect of the drugs that had been administered to her. “Figuring out the difference between cortical reality and reality reality? Or do you mean getting my memories back?”

  “What triggered it this time?” asked Copeland, obviously annoyed.

  Chelsea grinned. Weak and disoriented as she was, she’d learned from Quinn never to pass up an opportunity to fight the power.

  “Your mama,” she said evenly.

  Copeland scowled and rose from her chair. She levelled a warning finger at Chelsea.

  “This is the fifth time,” she said. “I told your father from the outset that radical measures were necessary, but he insisted that you would come to the realization on your own. I think it more likely that he was worried about the possible side effects on your psyche.” She sighed and shook her head. “Now he’ll finally understand why anything less than putting my full system to work was just a waste of my time.”

  “You’re going to see my father?” Chelsea felt her heart rate beginning to slow, just as it had after the initial shock of emerging from CR the last few times. “Can you give him something for me?”

  Copeland stopped and glared at her, puzzled.

  “Give him what?” she snipped. “All your personal belongings have been taken away.”

  Chelsea reached down with her free right hand under the blanket that covered her legs. When it emerged again, its middle finger was pointed directly at the ceiling. She watched a furious blush fill the doctor’s cheeks as she turned and stormed out of the room. The soldier orderlies simply stood motionless next to the door as she passed.

  Chelsea let out a papery chuckle before collapsing back into her chair and allowing sleep to drag her back down into darkness.

  8

  “To be honest, I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out sooner,” said Han, her gaze still glued to the floor. “When we were taking you to see Zero—Frank King—that first time, I thought for sure our fighting style would give us away.”

  “Well, of course,” Bishop said in a shooting-the-breeze tone. “I mean, how dumb were we not to think, ‘Hey, you know who this guy kicks like? Thorson Shane! Remember him? He was one of the members of our close-knit Marine unit who betrayed us at our trial and got us sent to space prison.’”

 
“We didn’t betray anyone!” Shane protested. “We really did see the evidence we testified about. What else were we supposed to think? You four go off on that mission to Astana without us, then King disappears and suddenly there’s a bank account loaded with cash, with the name of the security company that we always talked about starting together, except we knew nothing about it.”

  Quinn heard Maggott’s giant knuckles crack like knots in a fire. “Ye sold us out, lad,” he growled. “Ye’re gonna pay for that.”

  “Stand down, big fella,” said Quinn. “For now, anyway. I get the sense there’s more to the story here. Like how you found out about that so-called evidence.”

  Han managed to get up the courage to look him in the eye as Gomez entered from the airship’s cockpit wearing a scowl. His scalp was shaved clean these days, but otherwise he looked the same as he always had: surly and spoiling for a fight.

  “What were we supposed to think, Quinn?” he asked as he sat in one of the Raft’s jump seats. “General Drake came to us right after they brought you all into the hospital in Shanghai and told us about the mission, and the bank account. He told us you’d volunteered for a covert op in the hopes of getting your commission back before you mustered out, and that instead you’d kidnapped or killed Frank King for money. Something went wrong at the end of the mission and you’d been caught.”

  “Drake’s a general,” Han said in a reedy voice. “We were trained to trust our superior officers. You of all people should know that, Quinn.”

  “Were y’all trained to take their money, too?” asked Ulysses, his expression stone. “Y’know, after yuh betrayed yer comrades-in-arms an’ all that?”

  “Drake said it was for service to our faction,” said Elliot. “They couldn’t trace where the money in that account came from, so he just gave it to us to start our own security company. It kind of felt like, y’know, justice.” He looked down at his fidgeting hands. “At the time, I mean.”