“We can give you cover. Get the flag, pass it down, and I’ll run for it.” Serina’s confident voice carried through.
Buck announced himself as the recruit behind the barn. “I’ve got your back, Ace.”
They’d stuck to calling him by his nickname, Serina doing him the favor by using it first. Whatever she did, the rest followed. He owed her again.
“Fire to the right, I’m coming in from the left.” Ace moved around the treeline, avoiding detection in the open field where the opponents were watching. Green blasts shot out from Serina’s location, then from Buck’s. Return fire blasted at them.
Ace was now just at the edge of the barn, and he spotted footholds along the building’s side. The coast looked clear, and he sprinted for the wall. A Yellow raced toward him from around the wall. He’d been hidden from Ace’s vantage point. Instead of randomly firing like the incoming recruit was doing, Ace dive-rolled and ended on his belly. His attacker kept coming, but his legs were moving too fast for him to stop, and he tumbled to the ground five yards in front of Ace.
Ace watched the guy’s stunner fly from his hand, and he didn’t waste any time. He fired at him from close range, seeing the boy’s eyes widen and freeze. He hurried back to the wall, and his feet found purchase in the slots, easily scaling it to the roof.
“I’m up,” he whispered into the mic.
“They found me!” Buck called, and went silent. It was just Ace and Serina left.
“Get it, Ace. I’ll enter the field in twenty seconds,” Serina said. “There’s still one down here. I dealt with the other.”
Ace scrabbled up the pitched roof, his feet sliding on the tin sheets. He raced toward the yellow orb and smiled. They were so close.
He saw Serina’s form running from the cover of the forest, and into the open space in front of the barn. A Yellow recruit stepped from the trees in what looked like slow motion. She hadn’t seen him.
Ace panicked and sealed his own fate. “Up here, you ugly bastard!” He waved his arms, jumping up and down behind the prize flag.
It was enough to grab the opposition’s attention. Stun fire coursed through the air toward him, and he ducked, grabbing the orb. It was the size of a soccer ball and weighed next to nothing. Serina was running now, away from the barn, and Ace lined up the throw, putting what strength he had in his small body behind it.
Just before the orb left his grip, the stunner blast hit, freezing his body and taking him out of the game. His frozen eyes watched as the orb sailed through the air, into Serina’s outstretched hands. She ran like the wind, heading back for their own camp.
Ace unfroze as she disappeared into the forest, and he slumped to the roof, lying on his back on the tin. In a minute, he heard the lieutenant’s voice carry through his headset. “Congratulations, Blue. You have defeated Yellow.”
____________
“That was amazing, Ace.” Buck’s eyes were wide as Serina told the story of their victory to the surrounding tables. She was up on her feet as the rest ate a late dinner, the excessive training done for the day.
Ace shifted uncomfortably in his seat, shying away from the attention. “I got stunned, so I don’t know how special I was.”
Serina was the one to bring the spotlight back to him. “You climbed the roof, took the fire from their guard to protect me, and threw a perfect pass. It doesn’t get better.”
He shrugged, and the tables around them went back to their meals, a few people from other squadrons even slapping him on the back in congratulations.
When it was just Buck, Serina, and a few other Blues left at the table, Ace lowered his voice. “Where does this put us?”
Buck grabbed a spoonful of steamed vegetables and shoved them in his mouth, continuing to speak. “In the rankings?”
Ace nodded. Each squad was tiered in their training challenges, but he’d been avoiding looking. He wanted to do his best each time and not worry about scores. At the end of boot camp, the Fleet told them, their personal fate wasn’t determined by their squadron’s final rank.
Serina answered. “We’re tied for first with Orange.” She looked across the room full of recruits. They were allowed to make noise tonight, let off a little steam, Sarge had told them: no booze, no sex, but they could talk amongst each other for the first time. Ace followed her gaze to Orange. They were silent at their tables, eating food, otherwise sitting still.
“Looks like they’re ruled by an iron fist,” Buck said.
A short dark-haired girl, Trin, tapped the table with her finger beside Ace. Her eyes were huge, making the rest of her face seem too small. Her voice was little more than a squeak. “We’re going to kick their asses, right, Serina?”
Serina looked back and smiled. “Yes. We are. And every one of us is going to make it through boot camp.”
Ace was doubtful. They had a few people that had made the top twenty in the first-day run, but their luck had seemed to run out then. Taco, a skinny red-haired boy, had been stunned in record time during their Capture-the-Flag exercise, and had been late for curfew twice already. Ace had a feeling the kid was going to get the boot sooner rather than later.
“How many are gone so far?” Ace asked.
“Overall? Seven.” Serina seemed to know a lot about what was going on. Ace had seen Lieutenant Ford talking with her a few times, likely giving her the details.
Seven. That wasn’t many, but they’d only landed here a few days ago.
“Ace, you want the rest of my food? I don’t have an appetite,” Serina said, and slid her tray over to him. He’d been scooping every square inch of the tray, getting each morsel onto his fork. He hadn’t had consistent food like this in years, and he couldn’t have been happier. He was already gaining weight.
Ace didn’t reply; he just accepted the offered tray with a grateful glance at Serina and started in on it, slower this time.
When he was done, he ran a hand over his recently shorn hair, feeling self-conscious. He wasn’t able to hide behind the greasy strands over his eyes any longer, blending into a wall when needed. He tried to think he didn’t need to do that any longer, but when he looked up, two of the goons from the line back on Earth were staring at him from two tables over. The larger one whispered to the one with a tattoo on his neck, and when he laughed, a vein throbbed in his forehead. Of course, they were part of Orange.
Ace suddenly felt it all crash back into him: his father, the street thugs, the hunger, and the cold.
7
Flint
Flint had been through a lot in his fifteen years aboard his own ship, Perdita. His eyes were closed, his mind drifting in and out of a light sleep, never quite reaching REM. He’d spent the last day researching those names, and anything he could find revolving around the people in the century-old videos, but he didn’t feel any closer to having answers.
If the Earth Fleet was behind it all, they’d gone to extensive lengths to keep it hidden from the public. Sure, he’d stumbled on some old Interface caches where conspiracy theorists hinted at an alien invasion, but the details were almost nonexistent, letting him assume they were talking out of their asses instead of having any concrete facts.
He turned on the cot, pulling the covers over his head. He remembered getting the blanket from a woman on Mars Minor years ago. She’d made it by hand, selling them for food credits, and it was still as warm and comfortable as it had been when he’d first slept under it. He let his memories carry him into a fitful slumber, and soon he was out cold.
He awoke some time later to an abnormal jostling of the ship. “What the hell is that?” he asked out loud. He strode out of the small quarters and found Kat coming toward him down the corridor, a worried expression on her face.
“Flint, I didn’t want to wake you at first. I was seeing some anomalies on the sensors, but…” Kat’s words were rushed and full of panic.
“What is it?” Flint asked urgently.
“Someone’s boarded us.”
“How could
they have gotten close enough to board us?” Even if they’d both been sleeping, the ship would have alerted them as soon as another vessel was within a thousand kilometers of their course.
“That’s what I’m saying. I saw a couple of blips on the screen, but they disappeared as quickly as they came. That always means it’s just space junk. I avoided it, and we were good,” Kat stammered out.
“How long ago was this?” he asked.
“An hour, I think.”
He ran down the corridor and found engineering: a compact room filled to the rafters with add-on components to improve his base-model ship. The tablet on the wall was his destination.
“Where are they?” he asked himself, and Kat was behind him, her breath quickening.
“I couldn’t tell.”
Flint flipped the screen to a diagnostic check of the ventilators and manually overrode the timed ventilation pattern. Dirty air cycled out of the vents, quickly telling him where there was back pressure. He could have searched all the camera feeds, but this was the fastest way to see where the ship had docked on Perdita.
“They’re near the cargo bay.” Flint looked down, wishing he wasn’t running around his ship in bare feet, wearing nothing but a tank top and shorts. “We need guns.”
He stuck his head out of engineering and listened. He had to put a finger to his mouth and shush his sidekick, as her breathing was all he could hear. The boarding ship was cutting into the exterior. He could hear them trying to breach his bay door. How could this happen? They were two days out from their destination, Europa. There was always the worry of space pirates, but there wasn’t enough traffic back and forth between the colonies since most of them had become self-sufficient.
To wait for a target in the middle of deep space was a death sentence. It left only one explanation. They knew who he was, and they’d been waiting for him to pass through. He turned right instead of left, back to a room beside the bridge. His fingerprint scanned, the lock flashed green, and the door clicked open.
He grabbed a portable O2 mask and passed one to Kat. She looked at him like he was crazy.
“Put it on. I have a plan.” Flint shoved his under his left arm and grabbed two handheld guns. He hadn’t needed one of these in a long time. When he’d first started the gig, there’d been more sketchy scenarios than he could count on both hands. Now he was established, with discreet clients, and the need for weapons was mostly a thing of the past. Until now.
He checked the weapons’ charges, and when satisfied, he thrust one at Kat. She suddenly looked much younger than twenty-five, her big eyes wide with fear. “Wear the mask, hold the gun, and hide. You know where to go.”
She nodded, following his orders. “Flint?”
“What?”
“Be careful.” She ran off toward the bridge, where the secret safe room was located. It was custom built, and no one would know it existed. He had half a mind to join her down there, but to what end? If their ship was taken over, he wasn’t going down without a fight.
He ran to the bridge now, sitting down in the pilot seat. “Where are you?” he asked, scanning through the camera feeds. He rarely used this feature and had almost forgotten it existed. He found the one outside the cargo bay and switched to it. “Gotcha.” The attached vessel was a long, thin Recon fighter, likely an EFR-05 model, only capable of carrying two or three people at a time. That was a good thing. It sat on the side of his ship, clamped tightly down with a mag-field. A glowing blue shield emitted from the bottom of the Recon ship, pressed against the cargo bay door.
They had some nice tools, but none of it smelled like pirates. These two boarders would be trained. Earth Fleet Elites. His hand shook slightly as he switched his feed to the inside of the cargo bay, where his shelves stood full of goods. His mind had been muddled by sleep and surprise, but it all came clear as he saw the beams cutting into his bay door from the cameras.
They knew what he’d stumbled upon and were there to make sure no one else ever saw it. Why hadn’t they just used a different ship to blow him up? He answered his own question. They couldn’t have caught him in time with anything but the Recon fighter, making it an “on deck” mission. It was called a fighter, but it sacrificed most weaponry for stealth and speed.
The invaders were almost in. His hull would be breached, but Perdita’s energy containment field would keep the vacuum of space from ripping them apart. With a silent prayer to the Universe, he glanced back at the floor, where Kat was safely underneath. Flint tapped a few buttons, and the lights cut out over the whole ship. He’d rewired it so he could turn off the emergency floor and wall lights at the same time, and he chose to do so now.
Flint tugged the mask over his face, pulling it tight over his mouth and nose. The goggles flicked on, but he left the night-vision off for a moment as he dimmed the console lights. With one last look at the camera feed, he witnessed two green figures pushing through an opening. They were on his ship.
Flint waited until they were a few steps inside. They had goggles on, but no portable air tanks like he had. With a smile, Flint tapped the cargo safety door down. The thick metal slab fell with a bang that reverberated to the front of the ship, where he stood now, leaning over the console. The camera showed the two men spinning around as they realized they were trapped.
“Gotcha,” he said, clutching his pistol.
Jish
Jish awoke with a sudden panic. Were they being invaded? Sweat coated her body as she threw her blankets off, feeling the cool air of her quarters hit her, instantly sending reprieve to her exposed skin.
She looked at her console, checking the date. It wasn’t August second yet. The Invaders only came on August second. She had to get herself together. She was in charge, yet here she was, having nightmares like a little girl.
She’d been on-site for a week now and couldn’t have been happier with the results of the project. The staff all seemed to question why the Fleet needed so many vessels when they had no opponents. The handful of terrorist groups over the last few hundred years had been squashed to nothing, and now, they only had to deal with the occasional person intent on destroying lives on colony worlds, or a disgruntled Old City on Earth trying to rise up and revolt.
Each of those scenarios ended with casualties on both sides, but once the Fleet stepped in with a show of force, the battles were over quickly. Otherwise, space travel was fairly safe. Eighty percent of freighters and space vessels were owned by the Fleet, and the other twenty percent was comprised of transportation companies and transporting goods, run by large corporations. A select other few had personal ships, but only the wealthiest.
Space pirates did exist, but it was harder to catch a ship off-guard in mid-flight than it was to catch a fly with chopsticks. It didn’t happen often, unless the ship was a Recon fighter with trained Marines running the mission.
Which reminded her of the smuggler. Jish got out of bed and checked her messages. One had arrived three hours ago, saying the target had been found and the mission was commencing. That was good. She was on Fairbanks’ trail, and this smuggler might lead her to him. Another message came through, this one from her liaison on Ganymede. He’d confirmed their suspicions after all.
Fairbanks had been behind the biological weapon being built in New Dallas. They’d intended to sweep it under the rug, killing the doctor and her crew, but someone had tipped the Patrol off, letting the woman get away. Prison was as good as death, and now Jish had proof Fairbanks was against her. It was only a matter of time until she caught up to the old-timer and ended his streak of insubordination.
Her thoughts drifted back to the Marines tracking the smuggler. Someone had stolen secret files from a small Earth Fleet office in New Vancouver. How the Fleet had managed to forget they had copies of the most top-secret news ever sitting in a remote office was beyond her. The workers there hadn’t even known what they’d had until they reported them missing. It took Jish’s team five months to track the files to Mars, where a smuggler
appeared to have conveniently picked them up in a load of other junk.
She’d just woken up, and already she had a throbbing headache. It was going to be one of those days. Jish started her morning regimen and told herself that everything was coming together. The Earth Fleet would prevail.
CD6
CD6 came to with a twitch of awareness. One second, there was nothing; the next, he was fully awake. The other androids were powering up for their shift, and CD6 stepped out at the same time as they did, matching their steps and actions. He had it all programmed into him, but sometimes he struggled to activate that part of his mind. He didn’t like the feeling of being controlled, like a puppet by an unseen force.
The others did it naturally, but he was different. He was aware of himself, of his actions and his surroundings. He hated his life. Life. Was that what he had? He’d never heard another android speak the word, and he knew they didn’t understand what that meant, at least not for themselves.
His shift was starting in five minutes, and he walked the familiar halls, just as he did each day. Every day. The same thing. The same people to watch slave over metal sheets. Each year, they grew older, more distant, more angry, sad, or lonely. He felt a kinship to the prisoners; even though they looked at him as a guard, one of the enemy, he was trapped there just like they were.
But not for long.
CD6 went against every part of his programming and turned left at the end of the corridor, instead of right. No one noticed. The androids cared little for anything but their own predetermined actions. The only freedom they had was their conversation with the prisoners, though those were all programmed discussions. They just had millions of options to choose from when confronted with the task of conversing with a human.
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