Dystance 3

by Mark Tufo

“To the death,” Graylon added.

  “Wait, wait!” Cedar shouted as she moved forward.

  “Cedar, what are you doing?”

  “You dare to bring them here?” Brigend shouted. “Prepare to fire!” he ordered his fleet.

  “Wait, wait!” Cedar shouted again. “Earth is our home, too; we are defending it as well!”

  “Pah!” Brigend said. “You tainted ones think you own everything. That stops now!”

  “We’re not tainted!” I moved to be next to my sister. “We are from the planet’s surface!”

  “Lies, all of it lies. You will do anything to save yourselves. It is the Genogerians that I am most disappointed in; we are aware that you know what my distant kin are becoming, but still you side with them. Makes no difference to me; we will kill the enemy and the sympathizers.”

  “Sympathizers? You insolent scum. The Others deserve to die and so do you!” Graylon was itching to get the conflict underway. I was not.

  “Brigend, General,” I urged. “It’s true; Graylon has broken pact with the high-council. We are attempting to start a revolution that will overthrow the Others.”

  “The people on this planet are like newborn babes; they know not what happens in the heavens above them, and they certainly do not have pilots among the Genogerians,” Brigend said.

  “Not so long ago that was the truth,” Cedar replied. “We found an old shuttle hidden away. I learned how to fly it, and before we knew it, the Others had come for us.”

  “You set off their sensors. Very foolhardy of you…if any of this is true.”

  “We were prisoners aboard the Iron Sides, saved by…” Cedar paused, not sure how she should broach how exactly we were freed, “Lodilin. And for that, he was blown from the sky. We barely escaped with our lives.”

  “Hell of a tale, huh boys?” Brigend said, his men laughing.

  “Are you daft?” Cedar asked. I sucked in my breath at the provocation. “When have the Others ever tried to explain themselves or lie so extravagantly?”

  “Whenever they attempt to save their skins.” There was a loud cheer from his men.

  “There are Rhodeeshians with us,” I said. Brigend said nothing. “Graylon, who is speaking, is a direct descendant of Drababan. I am Winter, and I am here with my sister, Cedar. We are direct descendants of Michael Talbot. Ever heard of him?” Again, nothing.

  “Stand down. All ships: stand down,” Brigend ordered.

  “Graylon?” I asked. I could hear his heavy sigh through my headset.

  “Perhaps we should only destroy one of their vessels,” he said.

  “He’s a kidder, that one.” Cedar laughed.

  “We require proof,” Brigend said calmly.

  “The proof is that we haven’t wiped the skies clean of your filth!” Graylon started.

  “This is ridiculous! Will you both put your very large swords down? Winter and I will come to your ship; my understanding is a simple blood test can prove what we say.”

  I switched to a private channel. “I realize by some of the stories we heard that Michael may have been insane; have you decided you would like to retrace his footsteps?”

  “Relax, pirates are all swashbuckley.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “I wonder if Brigend has a parrot? Come on, Winter! Let’s go give blood in support of the war effort.”

  “Are you sure you’re my sister?”

  She laughed. “Commander Kabon, we’ll be right back,” she said, switching back to the broad band.

  No one ordered her back, which I found unnerving.

  “Follow the lights,” Brigend said just as one of the ships turned to its side, affording us a view of its hangar. “You deviate in the slightest and we will not hesitate to fire.”

  We landed the fighters, waited for the airlock to do its job, and then stepped out just as a bevy of armed men jogged toward us. They were not uniformed, like Breeson’s; in fact, they appeared disheveled and had grabbed whatever suited them at the time.

  “Weapons?” the one closest to us asked.

  “Are you looking at this flight suit? Where would I hide one?” Cedar asked as she turned completely around, a little more slowly than I thought necessary.

  “What about you?” He motioned with his gun.

  “Same, and no, I’m not turning around like my sister just did. I saw the way you looked at her.”

  “Buzzer, check her,” Brigend said.

  Buzzer walked around me. “She’s clean, boss.”

  The leader nodded to a camera on the wall. A few moments later, Brigend strode in. He was tall, had on a leather jacket that swept past his knees, and a tricorne hat perched atop long, black hair that flowed past his shoulders.

  “Oh, he has a patch!” Cedar restrained from clapping, but I could tell she really wanted to. A black patch obscured his left eye, but his right burned a brilliant blue as it settled on us.

  He looked at us; there was almost reverence in his eye. “Blinder, put the guns away.”

  “General…” Blinder started.

  Brigend put his hand up.

  “Sir, they could be a suicide squad. The taints have been trying to kill you for years.”

  “Blinder, I know history was not your strong point and that’s not why you’re my second in command. But I want you to think back to the early days of Earth’s resistance.”

  “What about it?”

  “Buzzer, pull up a display on that fancy watch you lifted,” Brigend said.

  A swirl of light in the form of a cone shone brightly from a small device upon the man’s wrist.

  “Now search out a picture of Tracy Talbot.”

  There were whispers among the crowd, sounded suspiciously like worship. The light swirled quicker, blends of color began to mix in, and then in a flash, the cone became a floating head of light and shadow. It was Tracy; the woman we had just seen, maybe a few years previous to that, but her all the same.

  “What am I look…” Blinder stopped as he looked from the picture to us. “Well, shiver me tambourine.”

  Cedar giggled. “That’s not quite how the saying goes,” she told her.

  “It’s her. It’s her twice.” Blinder’s eyes had grown wide as she looked from the now shaking wrist of the man holding the display then to us; back and forth she did this, multiple times. “It can’t be. This is some sorcery on the part of the tainted.”

  “I am afraid that what Blinder says cannot be completely discounted. While the tainted don’t actively seek us out, they still do all in their power to destroy us when they find us.” Brigend motioned to a man holding a small box, roughly the size of a loaf of bread. It almost contained as many lights and buttons as the dash of my fighter. He walked closer to Cedar, the box outstretched in his hand. He started at the top of her head and stooped to get down to her boots. He then did the same to me.

  He spent a minute looking at a small display screen before turning to Brigend.

  “Clean, both of them.”

  If I hadn’t thought the whole thing strange before, it got weirder; many got down on one knee with their heads bowed. Cedar began walking around and touching each on the crown of their skull.

  “Arise,” she would tell them regally. We were born in the same place, from the same parents, but most of the things she did confounded me to no end.

  The men were hesitant as they glanced over to Brigend, who looked bemused.

  “You scurvy lot! Tracy Talbot wasn’t a queen, and neither are these two. Get up.”

  “I’ll allow it,” Cedar said.

  “Come to my bridge. We have much to discuss.” Brigend turned and we followed. As we walked, I began to notice things. In the hallways and some of the areas I could see into, men and women were dressed in the blue uniforms I had seen, seemingly a lifetime ago, when I had tested the Pickets. There was more here than Brigend was letting on. The men in the hangar, the variety of clothes and weapons, they wanted to give the appearance of Earth p
irates, but from the little I could tell, I was having my doubts about it. If we had engaged those fighters, would we have been surprised at how they flew?

  “You seeing what I am?” I leaned into Cedar.

  “Oh yeah.” Her gaze fixed on the back of Brigend’s jacket as it moved when he walked.

  “Cedar!” I said, louder than I should.

  “You mean the structure on a seemingly disorderly ship? Or are you referring to the people in uniforms? Last thing I read, pirates were pretty much anti-uniform. I bet the patch he so casually wears isn’t even to protect his eye.”

  “You are right,” Brigend had turned and flipped up the swath of fabric, his left eye just as brilliant as the right and full of mirth.

  “And just so you know, it’s brigand, not Brigend,” Cedar said.

  As we got to the bridge, he took off his hat and jacket and placed a cap on, much like Breeson’s, though this was emblazoned with an Eagle in flight, holding lightning in its claws.

  “My real name is Brigend Hamilton; you are looking at the proud remnants of the United Earth Marine Corps.”

  “What?” was all I could manage to say.

  “First, let your ship know all is well, then sit. This might take a minute to explain.”

  “Graylon, Kabon, this is Cedar and Winter. We’re fine, and it looks like we have the potential for some decent allies. So don’t screw this up and shoot anything you’re not supposed to. Cedar out.”

  “Does your sister speak her mind like that all the time?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Once it became apparent that Earth was about to have a civil war, your greatest of great grandfathers, Michael Talbot, began to do some completely radical things. He wanted to bring the war off planet as quickly as possible. The earth had seen so much destruction and he knew they couldn’t win.”

  “What?” Cedar and I both interrupted him.

  “Some of the brightest minds ever known to man belonged to the tainted.”

  “The Others,” Cedar said.

  “The Others,” Brigend said, thinking on the moniker she gave them. “As good an explanation as any. The Others, as you call them, had not only been preparing ways to completely eradicate their enemies but also people. There was a growing segment of their population that felt they were the next step in the evolutionary process and that regular Man would only try to keep them from achieving their perceived greatness. They might have succeeded, if not for the one called Mad Jack.”

  “The one that started it all,” Cedar said angrily.

  “He is an easy enough scapegoat, but if not for him, humanity would have been wiped from the annals of history long ago. Much like J. Robert Oppenheimer.”

  For once there was a look of confusion on my sister’s face; she did not recognize the name, nor did I.

  “He was the father of the most destructive weapon mankind had known at the time: the atomic bomb. The technology was used to end the worst conflict that had ever been waged upon the planet, but in doing so, he unleashed this terrible technology, which would hold the planet hostage to the threat of its use for decades. It was created with the goal of doing good, but was eventually warped into great evil.”

  “What about Earth? What about the people left behind?” I asked. “You left us to rot in the Pickets.”

  “You might not want to hear this, Winter, but you, the rest of you, were better off there, undisturbed. The lives we inhabit are full of hardship, strife, war and death.”

  “That sounds just like home,” Cedar said. “Maybe not on the same scale as what is going on here, but lives lost are all the same in the end.”

  Brigend nodded solemnly. “I cannot argue that point.”

  “I saw some of your men on the surface; you knew we were there, yet you did nothing.”

  “It is only recently we have returned. We have spies that tell us the Others are once again interested in Earth, though we do not know why. We began watching them and watching out for those still there. It was impossible, at first, to figure out the reasons for their interest. They placed sensors and tracking systems all along the surface. Even took some people.”

  “You let them?” Cedar shook with rage.

  “I don’t know what you think we can do about it. In terms of populations, we are nearly equal, except that they have more ships, more weapons, more technology and more resources. Everything we have has to be acquired or built in absolute secrecy.”

  “They just think you’re pirates,” I said, the thought coming to me. “Do they know you’re human?”

  “That they do, but they think us small, not unified, not worthy of the might they could bring down on us. Not yet, anyway. If we showed our hand, that the United Earth Marine Corps still exists, we would be in an open, active war we would have no chance of winning.”

  “So you skulk about on the peripheries, not really doing anything?” Her words shot forth like daggers. I wasn’t sure she meant the caustic things she said, but it did not appear she could control herself; so many wrongs had happened and they had stood idly by, I could not blame her for the anger.

  “This might come as a shock, but we’ve been fighting, killing and dying for a good long while. I don’t need a whelp to question what we may or may not have done or are doing for a small population surviving on their own.”

  “We could have helped, those of us left behind,” I said, wanting to diffuse a situation that was becoming volatile.

  “How, Winter? Your people are using bows and arrows. How effective do you think that will be up here?”

  “No thanks to you.” Cedar kept looking for buttons to push on the man. I wasn’t sure what would happen when she found the one that set him off.

  I put my hand up to my sister, hoping she would take the hint and ease up on her brewing tirade. Like placing my hand in front of a wild dog, hoping it wouldn’t bite.

  “Most of us, especially in the Pickets…we are without hope. In a short time, Cedar has learned how to become a pilot, and I bet one of the best there is.” I was glad when Brigend didn’t roll his eyes or say something derogatory. He was smart enough to be diplomatic, if nothing else. “She taught me, and if I can learn, what could others do? We know how to fight, Brigend, we’ve been doing it all our lives. Replace the arrows with something that will work in space; a weapon is a weapon. Give us hope for a better future—or let us die trying.”

  Brigend regarded me, both of us, really, and was on the verge of speaking when the ship warned of an imminent arrival.

  “More friends of yours?” he asked.

  “We know who it is, but they are unlikely to be friends,” Cedar said. “We have to go.” She stood.

  “Who might this mystery guest be?” he asked.

  “I would imagine Commander Breeson and the Iron Sides; don’t worry. Winter and I will debark quickly so you can take your caravan here and go hide in some dark and dusty corner of the universe. Let those who know how to fight take care of this battle.”

  Brigend shook his head. There was a small smile hidden under a stern set to his jaw.

  “Wow, sister,” I said as we moved quickly through the ship to get to the hangar. “Why didn’t you just shoot him? That would have hurt less.”

  “How can one be an arrogant coward?” she asked just as she was climbing into her fighter. I could only shake my head.

  “We can’t possibly know what they’ve been through.”

  “True enough. All I care about is what happens going forward.” And with that, she shut her canopy. In less than a minute, we were racing back toward our ship.

  “You live,” Graylon said flatly through the radio.

  “You had doubts?” Cedar asked.

  “Pirates are not widely regarded as being courteous to their guests,” he said.

  “You let us go into a place you did not believe we would have survived?” Cedar asked.

  “We would have avenged your deaths with honor,” he replied.

  “Is he kidding?�
� my sister asked me.

  “Doubtful,” I told her.

  “Now I don’t know who infuriates me more: Brigend or Graylon.”

  Brigend’s ships had not yet moved, though we were told that their buckle systems were online and ready to go. They were going to wait to see what showed up and then make a run for it. We, on the other hand, were staying. The fighters were ordered to stay on patrol. I loved being in the fighter…and I didn’t. To be in control of one’s own fate was all I’d ever asked for; going to war willingly and being forced to fight for unknown and unknowable reasons had nearly driven me mad. But being alone, isolated in space like this…I don’t even know if I have the words. The loneliness was as vast as space itself. Soon we were going to fight a war that could very much determine the fate of the world I had grown up on. I could very well die up here and my friends wouldn’t know, or even worse, my friends on the planet would die without having any idea of why.

  “How you doing, Cedar?” I asked, wanting—no, needing—to hear a friendly voice.

  “Not so good.” I could hear a hitch in her voice.

  “Are you crying?”

  “No! You’re crying,” she shot back.

  “It’ll be all right, sis,” I said. “We’ll make it through this.”

  “Huh? I know that, silly. It’s Frederick; he got into a duel with the scoundrel Domingo to preserve the honor of Josefine. He was shot through the stomach; he’s in a hospital, but very rarely do people recover from that. Josefine is proclaiming her everlasting love for the man and he told her he would wait. How romantic is that, Winter? Frederick is going to walk the world a ghost as he waits for Josefine to pass so that they cross the bridge together!”

  “A book, Cedar? You’re reading a book right now?”

  “What should I be doing?”

  “I don’t know? Thinking about what could happen, maybe?”

  “Why would I want to do that? What’s worrying going to accomplish? I can think of a thousand different scenarios that don’t end up good and I can think of a thousand different scenarios that do end well. But that’s the thing, Winter; none of that thinking changes anything. Only doing can accomplish anything. So instead of listening to my insides roil, which is much the same sound as a milkmaid churning butter, I prefer to get lost in a story. To fully immerse myself in the written word, to retreat into my mind, instead of laying it bare.”