Rebellion at Ailon

by T J Mott

  “Adelia,” he said, his voice barely leaving his lips.

  “What happened to you?” she asked sadly, her voice calm and her inflections slightly colored by her native French accent. She spoke in a near-whisper, yet paradoxically her words were louder and clearer than the deafening murmur of the crowd. “You used to be such a nice guy. But now you’re a monster.”

  He licked his dry lips, closed his eyes, and then nodded silently. Her words stung deeply…but they were true. He couldn’t deny them.

  “I don’t know you anymore. I’m afraid of you, of what you’ve become and the things you’re willing to do.” The pain in his arm worsened with each word, and he winced. “You deserve this. Thad, you deserve worse. Back home, Earth puts pirates to death!” He grunted as a fresh wave of pain rolled over him, and had he been supporting himself, he’d have staggered and fallen. “Especially the more destructive ones. Like you!”

  He suddenly heard another voice call his name out from the crowd. This voice was far louder than Adelia’s, more forceful…anxious. He forced his eyes open and looked around, trying to see the blurred room around him, but it was like trying to peer through a thick, formless haze. But then another woman appeared, approaching him from among the foggy crowd of people. She was shorter and more petite than Adelia, with fierce green eyes and wavy red hair and a pale, freckled complexion. She walked quickly, and Thad suddenly noticed she was stepping over bodies as she approached. Some of them were emaciated, wearing thin cyan-colored jumpsuits discolored by laser burns. The rest had no common uniform and lay near a motley collection of infantry weapons, looking like guerrilla fighters. But they seemed very familiar. He couldn’t quite recall the details, but somehow he knew the context involved a freighter and a pirate raid.

  Looking very troubled, the redheaded woman walked into arm’s reach of Thad and shot a sideways glance at Adelia. “Hey,” she said, turning to face him again, looking incredibly worried. “Wake up! It’s just a dream!” She put a hand on his chest and rubbed his sternum. “Chad! It’s just a dream!”

  He gasped and snapped his eyes open. Everything around him faded away in a heartbeat. Most of the pain in his left arm left, dropping to the baseline levels he’d grown used to. He grimaced, realizing that the sheet beneath him was soaked in sweat.

  “Shh.” He felt the hand continue to rub across his sternum. Another hand gently stroked his cheek.

  The rest of the dream faded and he remembered where he was. He was in the hostel his platoon of Rebels had claimed as their base, lying on a cot, tired and worn out from the last battle. His platoon had performed a number of minor hit-and-fade skirmishes against nearby enemy patrols over the past week and a half. As a result, the patrols were becoming larger, incorporating more soldiers to make them harder targets, but they were also more spread out around the city now. For the moment, that was to the Rebels’ advantage. It made avoiding patrols easier.

  The rest of his squad, as well as his platoon staff, slept on the other cots scattered around him, except for Ria who was kneeling at his right side. She leaned in close, letting her lips brush against the side of his face, and whispered directly into his ear. “It’s okay. Just a nightmare. It wasn’t real.” He sighed, and then smiled lightly as she kissed his cheek in the dark and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Scoot over,” she whispered.

  “Huh?”

  She repeated herself. He slid to his left as best as he could on the tiny cot. And a moment later, she laid beside him, nestled between his side and his arm, her head resting on his shoulder as she whispered reassuring things into his ear.

  And it must have worked. He wasn’t sure when he’d fallen asleep or how much time passed, only that he’d just woken up again. The room was mostly quiet except for a couple Rebel fighters who snored, and Ria’s soft, regular breathing as she slept with her head resting on his shoulder.

  But something had aroused him. He tried to reach back into the last few seconds of his memory, but whatever it was, it was gone from his mind already. He carefully extracted his arm from underneath Ria, trying not to wake her as he climbed out of the cot, and left the room.

  He stood alone in the dark in the hostel’s living room and main entrance, remaining silent, feeling disturbed but unable to pinpoint why. Then he heard voices outside. Frowning, he approached the front window and pulled away one edge of the curtain.

  And promptly muttered a quiet curse at the sight outside.

  Several AFPF patrol cars were parked on the narrow street, as well as one light Army truck. And all the lights were on in the shoddy-looking three-story apartment building across the street from his platoon’s small hostels. A collection of AFPF and Army men stood in the narrow front lawn, perhaps a dozen men in total, wielding laser carbines and standing guard over a cluster of free Ailonian families still wearing nightclothes.

  He heard soft footsteps behind him. “Chad, are you okay?” asked Ria.

  “Shh. Go back there and wake everyone up. Quietly.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Avennia is searching the building across the street,” he said softly, still peering out the window as an Army officer questioned a man while his sleepy children stood beside him. He wished he could hear what they were saying, but he didn’t want to open the door or window and risk drawing attention.

  As he watched, several Army grunts pulled some kind of handheld equipment from their vehicle and entered the building. “Dammit,” he muttered again.

  “What is it?” This time it was Chet. Thad was so focused outside he hadn’t even heard him enter the room.

  “They have scanners.”

  “Orders?” asked Chet, his voice surprisingly calm. They’d only been through a few small skirmishes together, but the Ailonian surgeon was quickly proving himself, always remaining cool and collected even under pressure. In hindsight, Thad wondered how much of Clinic 12’s efficiency had been due to Chet, rather than Ria.

  Thad continued to peer out the window. He saw four police cars, a personnel carrier, and a box truck. If they were all fully-loaded, it would be an even fight between them and his platoon. And that was only if he could alert his other squads in the nearby buildings. “We got someone monitoring the radio?”

  “Of course.”

  “Wake up the other squads, check in with leadership. Find out if this is local or if they’re searching across the city.” Thad continued to watch out the window. Behind him, he heard the sound of the room’s bookshelf being slid away from the wall, exposing the entrance to their secret basement where they kept their cache of weapons and equipment. The noise was impossibly loud in the night, but nobody outside seemed to notice, and Chet slipped into the basement.

  Outside and across the street, the Army officer was becoming irritated, Thad guessed from his wild gesticulations. He could now hear the officer’s voice, though it was muffled and indistinct through the window pane. The man he was questioning seemed just as irritated although not nearly as animated, shrugging often and keeping a hand on the shoulder of his young son who stood at his side. A woman about the same age—his wife, Thad assumed—stood one step behind him.

  The soldiers with the scanners soon left the building and made some negative hand gestures to the officer, who only became angrier and raised his voice further at the man. He clearly wasn’t learning much from their search or interrogations, nor should he have. As far as Thad knew, that building was occupied by free Ailonians not affiliated with the Rebels, although they certainly could have seen Thad’s troops as they moved out for their missions. They were likely involved with the Ailon Relief Foundation or some of the second-class local businesses, but definitely not the Rebels.

  And then the officer abruptly unholstered his laser pistol. A light flashed from its barrel and the man crumpled to the ground as his young son and his wife screamed beside him.

  Thad growled. “Change of plans!” he said suddenly, not even trying to be quiet anymore. He turned to see Ria and Kole standing i
n the middle of the room. “Wake everyone, arm up, pack up everything we can, and get ready to fight. We’re taking them out and relocating to a backup position.”

  Ria’s face looked worried. “Are you sure, Chad? They haven’t found us yet.”

  Feeling angry at what had just happened outside, he nodded. “They have scanners. If we play dumb and they search our buildings, they’ll find our weapons and realize what’s going on here. We gotta start the fight on our own terms and regroup elsewhere.”

  Chet emerged from the basement entrance, looking grim. “They’re searching buildings across the city. Leadership doesn’t know much yet, they think it just started.”

  The war just changed, Thad realized. Avennia is putting us on the defense.

  He heard the muted crack of a laser pistol discharging, and a flash of light from outside illuminated the room for the briefest moment even through the curtain. Thad peeked back outside and felt his blood run cold. Next to the man’s corpse was a fresh body, that of his wife, and the young boy was hovering over their fallen forms and shrieking at the top of his lungs.

  Seeing his reaction and looking worried, Ria approached the window and peered out past Thaddeus. The soldiers were now shackling up some of the other Ailonians and dragging them to the back of the box truck. “They’re taking slaves!” she said.

  Then, the Army officer pointed at Thad’s hostel and shouted something at his men. Thad couldn’t make out his words through the window, but he knew exactly what the officer meant. “That building next.”

  “Hurry up!” Thad called out in a loud whisper as his troops prepared. “Ambush position! Just like we practiced!”

  His squad swiftly armed up, loaded a few necessary things—especially the radios and codebooks—into their packs, and created makeshift positions of cover with the building’s furniture. They’d known this day could come and they’d practiced extensively for it. But now it was happening. Thad knelt behind a couch and listened to his heartbeat thud in his ears. Someone flipped the main breaker in the basement, shutting down power to the entire building.

  The front door creaked open. The building couldn’t be locked. It was zoned for Ailonians and Ailonians were not allowed that level of security or privacy on the Avennia-controlled world. Two men entered, wielding flashlight-equipped carbines. One stepped to the left and tried the lightswitch to no effect. The other moved to the right. Clearly not expecting anything, they swept their lights over the room far too quickly, and one announced “Room’s clear!” A couple seconds later, five enemies were in the middle of the living space—completely unaware that they were surrounded.

  Thad took a deep breath and mentally braced himself for battle. He climbed a little higher in his crouch, held out his carbine in a one-handed grip and rested it on the back of the couch, and squeezed the trigger.

  The Avennians shouted in surprise. Just a few fractions of a second later, the rest of Thad’s group opened fire within the confines of the small living room, and it was over almost as quickly as it had started.

  Thad jumped to his feet and approached the door. Chet and Jason followed suit. Outside, he saw a group of startled troops standing in the street just meters away from the door. Thad held his laser out and opened fire again, spraying an array of violet-colored laser beams into the street, leaving small craters in the pavement as he blasted away chunks of concrete near the soldiers. One of his shots connected and a single soldier collapsed with a deep laser wound in his chest.

  “Go, go, go!” he ordered, and the Rebel occupants of his hostel ducked under his fire and left the building, taking up crouching positions outside and adding their own fire to the mix.

  Laser beams flashed between the Rebels in the lawn and the Avennians in the street. The last of the Rebels left the hostel, which was now empty except for Thad. Firing a few more blind shots towards the street, he stepped out to join the others. As he cleared the door, he stopped and snapped off a shot at a surprised soldier who was sprinting towards the Army truck. The laser beam connected with the back of the man’s neck, and he fell to the street and rolled a few times, his corpse coming to a rest in the middle of the road.

  A few wisps of smoke drifted across Thad’s vision and he vaguely smelled the hot scent of ozone. But it was now quiet outside, except for the sound of a young boy crying somewhere. Within his chest, his heart burned with intense anger.

  Their hostel was the middle building of three small Rebel-occupied units on the street. He glanced to both sides of the building and saw his other squads in front of their buildings. The firefight was already over. The Avennian bodies were motionless in the street, with dull orange embers outlining the laser burns in their uniforms. Thin wisps of smoke, barely visible in the nighttime, rose from the bodies and dissipated into the dark.

  He glanced across the street to the three-story apartment building. Though the building was dark again, Thad could see the faint outlines of several people who were watching them through the slightly-ajar front door and open windows. And in the building’s narrow front lawn, the young boy continued to sob over the corpses of his parents, executed for the crime of simply being Ailonian. He felt a cold pit form in his stomach, accompanied by a sense of guilt as he remembered that Ailon’s condition was his fault.

  He motioned to a few nearby Rebels. “They may have prisoners in that box truck,” he explained as they approached it. Coming into view of the cargo box, they found five free Ailonians lying on the deck, bound at their ankles and wrists. Dropping his carbine against its sling to free his hand, Thad climbed in. The prisoners were deathly silent, frozen with fear, as Thad examined their shackles. Fortunately, they were cheap disposable binders, made of a strong plastic. Eyeing his carbine, Thad found the power level controls and dropped it to the weakest setting. Placing his barrel directly against a wrist shackle, he tapped the trigger, then tugged at it. One more short burst, and then the plastic was soft enough to easily deform, and he pulled the man’s wrists free.

  Around him, the Rebels who’d followed him into the truck each grabbed a prisoner and freed them likewise. Jumping out of the truck, the Ailonians silently thanked Thaddeus and his troops and disappeared into the night.

  Returning to the street, Thad glanced back towards his hostel and saw Ria and Jason kneeling over a fallen form. Frowning deeply, he jogged over to them. Ria turned and looked up at him, wearing that same worried expression he’d seen too often lately. “Kole’s hit,” she said as she pressed a chest seal into place on him. “Laser wound clear through his left lung. It’s cauterized. He’ll survive but he’s going to have trouble keeping up.” She finished with the seal and closed his shirt over it.

  Thad turned back to the street, his eyes darting back and forth as he searched the group of Rebels, eventually locating Chet. “Chet! Kole’s wounded. Pick two men to carry him.”

  “Carry me?” Kole protested as he lay on the ground. “I can damn well still walk.” Ria and Jason then helped Kole to his feet, and he immediately gasped in pain as he twisted his torso wrong.

  Ria shot him a disapproving look and then stepped away, letting Jason support Kole while she located her nearby medic backpack and withdrew some supplies. She opened up two small patches of something, rolled up Kole’s sleeve, and slapped them onto his bare skin. “Painkillers and adrenaline,” she explained. She stepped aside as the other two Rebels arrived to assist. She stepped closer to Thad and looked up into his face with pained eyes. “Zac is dead,” she said quietly, naming one of his Second Squad fighters and gesturing toward another fallen form several meters away.

  He pursed his lips and looked away from Ria. Then he glanced at the scene around him. It’s way too obvious what happened here. I want Avennia to waste time and resources investigating this and maybe come to some wrong conclusions. “We need to create some confusion here,” he said, his voice low and solemn. But we don’t have much time.

  “I’m listening,” said Chet.

  “First, search the bodies and veh
icles. Take any weapons, money, IDs, keycards—anything that looks useful, but remember we’re on foot.” He wished they could take the Avennian vehicles rather than march to their next location, but they’d be too easy to track. And he didn’t know where the Navy’s small warships were. If they were in low orbit, it would be dead simple for them to lase the Rebels from space. Thad silently cursed the mild Ailonian weather. For once, he found himself wishing for a good thunderstorm. The noise and cloud cover would go far towards hiding them both from ground forces and from space.

  “Those police cruisers should be light enough to push around,” Chet observed.

  Thad nodded. “Push them together on our side of the street. Make it look haphazard, like a big accident or pile-up. Flip one over. Put all the Avennian bodies inside them.” He paused. “Zac, too. Then light it all on fire and we’ll get moving.” It probably wouldn’t confuse the enemy that much, but the longer they spent investigating this battle, the longer it would take them to follow. Even a few extra minutes of confusion could mean the difference between life and death for the First Platoon survivors.

  “Should we burn down the hostels?” Chet asked.

  “No, leave them. Avennia will search and investigate, but it’ll be a waste of time because we already packed up everything important.” He looked at the nearby buildings, and at the apartment across the street where a young boy was still crying in the lawn. Thad lowered his voice solemnly. “And I don’t want a fire big enough to spread and cause more collateral damage. Not in this neighborhood.”

  Thad turned back to see that Chet was staring at the boy, too. Chet nodded slowly, peeled his eyes away from the boy, and then began issuing orders to the platoon. A number of Rebels swiftly moved across the street towards the enemy vehicles. They teamed up by the cruisers, and despite the parking brakes began sliding them across the street and up onto the curb in front of the hostels. Meanwhile, others dragged the Avennian bodies from the street and the hostel, setting them up within the cars almost as if they were passengers. The entire Third Squad, except for Kole, worked together to flip one of the cars up on end, momentarily balancing it on its front bumper, and then pushed it over. It came crashing down on top of another car.