White Seed

by Kenneth Marshall

  Kali gripped Hades’ uninjured left arm and shook it gently. He lay motionless, and she worried he was dead—the black of his suit made it look like he was in a self-sealing body bag already.

  “Where’s Chon?” she demanded.

  Hades opened his eyes—in the light of the Athenian sun, they were intense points of blue glass. He focused on the sky out the top window without seeing her, as if looking for the darkness on the other side of the air.

  “You said you know where Chon is? Tell me now.”

  Hades sighed.

  “The black seed…,” he whispered.

  “I don’t care about that.” What the hell was a black seed anyway? Kali shook his arm again. “Tell me where Chon is. We need to find him!”

  Hades didn’t react to her voice. There was a thin trail of blood from his ear. Damn! Whatever had trashed his suit had taken out his hearing as well; that’s why he’d been hard to communicate with on the radio. She needed to find a piece of paper to write messages he could read.

  “The…black…seed…,” he said.

  Or maybe not—maybe he was too far gone, and they needed to get him to the field hospital before he made his final jump.

  “You juiced him too much!” Kali shouted to Maki.

  “I didn’t. His suit did.”

  “Get control of it and stabilize him. Dry him out if you can—I need him talking. I don’t care if it hurts. Then fix his arm.”

  Maki slapped a pain patch onto his own ankle and started winding pressure tape on with one hand. “Soon as I get off my ass,” he said.

  Kali turned to the rear window. The diamond-composite had shattered in several places, cracks radiating out like ejecta from a crater, and fine threads of exposed carbon-tube fabric substrate rippling in the wind. Fragments of lead were still embedded around the edge of each hit. On the other side of the window, snow blew against the back of the Vertel. She could see Bruno burning in the distance. Chon had threatened scorched-earth tactics and he’d made good on his threat. The whole city was burning, from the ring of slums to the capitol and the Spiral in the center. The collateral damage was tremendous, but it was all on Chon. Kali wanted to throw him into his own fire. She reached for the radio panel beside the door.

  “ICE, we have the subject, but we’re down by the wind farm. Sorry about the bird—it’s a range turkey now. I need an evac or a med pod.”

  “All the pods are out, Kali. I’ve got nothing spare. You have a medic,” Setona replied.

  “My medic needs a medic. He busted a hand and a foot.”

  “Then he’s got a hand and a foot more than two of his comrades. He’s still on the job.”

  Maki threw Kali a shocked look from where he lay on the floor.

  “Kali, if I have to pick you up myself, I will. But we’re coming up on the big push now; you’ll have to wait until we recharge.”

  Setona’s Vertel hauled an extra load of batteries in place of munitions; it would be hours before she needed to return to base. That wasn’t soon enough.

  “The subject says he knows where Chon is.”

  “Then get it out of him.”

  Kali stared at the burning city out of the window. The Athenian forces had encircled the city; now they were about to enter it. The war would be over soon. But Chon might still escape—he’d done it before. He’d escaped Hades, hadn’t he?

  “Understood.”

  She cut the connection. They were on their own for now.

  Out the window, in the direction of the wind farm, a hint of motion caught Kali’s eye. She knelt painfully on one knee on the floor of the cabin to get a better look, then reached for the weapon case strapped behind the pilot’s seat. There were at least two of Chon’s men coming down from the buildings of the farm in a well-spaced route march. The Provies didn’t work in twos—they liked company. Where there were two, there would be more soon. Kali had no doubt the men intended to kill everyone they found alive in the Vertel.

  She unfastened the weapon case and pulled out a long black-and-silver object. Maki stared at her from the other side of the cabin. Kali held the rifle for a moment, and then let her palm wrap around the pistol grip and her finger touch the trigger softly. It felt good—it felt familiar. She’d carried it for years in the backwoods of Darwin. The barrel, receiver, and bolt were metal, not diacom, and the rifle had felt very heavy when she was young; even now, it felt substantial, unlike the standard assault rifles. The weight was useful: it made it stable. The assault rifles were junk—cheap noisemakers, too light to hold steady for a long shot. The ancients had designed weapons like Kali’s rifle for hunting animals in the wild and sniping during war. Out here on the open spaces of snow, the rifle was ideal. It was a real killing tool, and she needed to kill the Provies before they got anywhere near the Vertel’s bombs and batteries.

  She slid the cabin door open. The air was cold but refreshing.

  “Where are you going?” Maki asked.

  “Hunting.” She slid the door closed to a slit behind her. “Hold it down,” she whispered through the opening. “And get him talking!”

  The twin mountains rose ahead and behind into the deep blue Athenian sky. The snow was a blinding surface, broken only by drifts casting distinctly blue shadows. There was no sign of habitation in the direction of the southern mountain. To the north, Kali could see the wind farm buildings and the saddle road on the other side kilometers away. The ramshackle supply sheds, maintenance hangar, mobile crane, and multi-color shipping containers—used as living spaces—were surrounded by discarded wastes. It always shocked Kali how dirty settlements in Haffay and Senta were. You don’t need to be rich to be tidy, so why live in a pile of trash?

  She circled the Vertel, stepping over the risers of the half-deployed emergency chute and moving carefully to avoid a painful slip. Her back and her chest were throbbing and cramping, and that limited her speed and ability to bend down. The southern corner of the Vertel was high enough to stand behind and lay the rifle on top. The back of the Vertel was peppered with hits through the skin and into the power cells. No doubt the holes were leaking some poisonous effluent salted with depleted uranium from the munitions Chon had stolen from the ruins of the Second Autocracy. But at least they hadn’t caught fire yet. Kali tried not to touch anything, but stood close to the right-rear fan—it was good cover from anyone downhill. Maybe she would get shot in the back from the southern mountain, but that was unlikely and there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

  Without power, the Vertel’s active-camo had defaulted to low contrast gray. Kali leaned on the roof and pulled the butt of the rifle into her shoulder; through the scope she could see the hangar and crane at the wind farm. Too much zoom—she wound it out to get a broader view. The lead Provie was a tall man in a light brown coat and he was striding forward at a determined pace, a Type-K held in front of him at the ready.

  Kali raised her eye from the scope. The small point of Athena’s sun—a third of the way up the sky—cast a sharp blue shadow of the rifle’s barrel on the top of the Vertel. The wind blew lightly on her face and the cold needled her skin. The graceful rotors of windmills in the distance spun with a faint hiss and a throbbing whop-whop. It felt good to lean on the roof and stretch her back, easing the pain in her spine and chest and all the way down to her feet.

  She pulled the bolt of the rifle back and then shot it forward.

  This wouldn’t be hard.

  Killing

  The wind dot in the telescopic sight of Kali’s rifle bounced gently over the man from Haffay as he walked cautiously toward the wrecked Vertel. He held his Type-K in front, the weapon’s receiver and curved magazine clearly visible against his tan coat, but wasn’t pointing it directly at Kali or the Vertel. The shorter figure a few meters behind struggled to keep up in the knee high snow. The sight automatically adjusted to focus on the leader, and the follower became a blur. Kali didn’t need the hint—she knew who she had to take care of first.

  She pulled herself
farther down behind the Vertel. The man didn’t see her and that was an advantage she wanted to hold on to. She wrapped the shoulder sling of the rifle around her left hand, pulled the stock tightly into her shoulder, and slipped her finger from the trigger guard to the trigger itself. Her back and her ribs hurt, but that wasn’t going to stop her.

  She remembered hunting one day with her father in the cold woods of Darwin, under the snow-capped peaks of the northern-most range of mountains in North Athena. She’d seen deer drinking at the water of a stream tumbling over rocks in a steep valley, and her father had urged her on, telling her to move to the edge of the bluff to get as close as she could.

  Here on Haffay, she couldn’t move—she’d have to wait for the Provies to get closer. She breathed gently and watched the man: He was tall and gaunt, with close cut hair graying at the temples. The hood of his coat was pushed back and he wore matching tan trousers. He looked straight ahead without turning his head.

  The scope indicated five hundred meters.

  Kali remembered her father whispering to her as they knelt together a few meters from the edge over the river, the hair of his beard brushing against her ear. “Get closer,” he’d said, pointing her farther down the way, “then get steadier. Don’t try to impress me with the distance—just make the shot.”

  She lifted her eye from the scope. The snow glared at her from the other side of the Vertel, and in the distance, the two small figures were like sticks pushed into the ice, almost lost in the brightness.

  Four hundred and fifty meters.

  Through the scope, the second figure looked short and lumpy, as if wearing a coat too large. Kali couldn’t see a face—the hood, with a white fringe of fur, was pulled all the way forward. This Provie walked with hands buried in pockets. Was there a handgun or a grenade hidden in there? Or did this one just have cold hands?

  Four hundred meters.

  “Breathe out,” her father had taught her. “Squeeze so gently you don’t know when it will fire.” But she could feel her hands starting to shake with the pumping of her heart. Nerves ruin fine motor skills—it’s a given in combat. She could make this shot easily on a target in a shooting range, but a real kill in a firefight would be harder. She needed to let the man get closer.

  Three hundred and fifty meters.

  The man stopped. Kali let the wind dot settle on his upper chest, just above the receiver of his rifle. He had a narrow chin and empty cheeks, and a line of bone white buttons extending from his neck down his chest. Kali wondered, for a moment, if the coat was real animal skin—on Haffay, a man with a gun and a good aim could make a living from the sheep and goats wandering the hills. In North Athena, a coat made of animal hide would be worth a fortune, but on Haffay, a few rounds and a spool of thread. No matter what it was worth, it wouldn’t stop bullets, and she doubted he wore armor underneath. It would be easy to miss his head; she would shoot him in the heart.

  The man glanced around, as if assessing the right angle to approach and looking for cover. His eyes narrowed as he squinted in the intense Athenian sunlight bouncing off the snow. But there was nothing on the hillside for him to hide behind.

  The left side of the man’s face twitched slightly as he studied the scene ahead. Then he turned his head and shouted over his shoulder. The other figure seemed to be arguing, pointing him in a different direction. The sound of the conversation didn’t carry and Kali couldn’t tell what it was about.

  They still didn’t see her, Kali realized.

  The lead Provie looked straight ahead and raised his gun higher across his chest. The Type-K had simple iron post and notch sights, and a mechanical safety—the weapons were handmade from scrap metal in caves under the mountains of Fith. He tilted the gun enough to thumb the safety catch near the pistol grip. Kali stopped breathing. The man crouched and took a slow step forward. He studied the Vertel, his eyes narrowed to slits. She saw him turn one shoulder toward her and raise the gunstock to the other.

  She shot him. The bullet went under the raised Type-K into the center of his chest. The leather of his jacket flapped once with the hit of the bullet, and then he tumbled forward out of the view of the scope. Kali saw a spatter of blood and tissue laid out on the snow where the man had stood a second ago. For a moment, that was all she could see.

  She realized she was still holding the trigger back and let go, forcing her hand to work the bolt and load another round. She dropped her aim to see the man lying on the ground, and let the wind dot settle on the top of his head. The Type-K had fallen out of view and his hands were empty. Her finger rested on the trigger ready to fire again. As she watched, the man’s hands and fingers stretched briefly forward as if to drag himself through the snow. Then he was still, face down, with the bloody patch on the back of his coat showing no sign of growing.

  Kali remembered lying on the rocks above the ravine on Athena, the rifle barrel shaking as a deer lay dead by the water, its companions run away. She remembered her father putting a hand on her shoulder and saying, “It’s done. You can put it down now.”

  She breathed again. One of her ribs made a cracking sound, and she felt pain radiate down her legs as material from a damaged spinal disc pressed on her nerves. Zooming the scope out incrementally, she could see whole scene—the lead Provie in the center, the red smear on the snow behind, the black line of the rifle a meter beyond the dead man’s reach, and the other figure standing to the right. She loosened her hand on the pistol grip to let it un-cramp.

  One more to go: she couldn’t miss and there wasn’t anywhere to hide. Kali shifted her aim to the right.

  The second Provie stood a few meters away from the dead man, hood pushed back and hands out. As the scope focused, Kali saw a round face with young, unmarked brown skin and long, black hair swept straight back. Female, Kali realized. She’d made a mistake—the second figure wasn’t a Provie but a woman, or perhaps a girl. Kali should have known: the two were locals, not part of Chon’s army. Chon’s men didn’t bring a lot of women; they didn’t trust women out of the home. Most of the men were from the southern end of Senta and wore hot-weather sunshalls, but these two from the wind farm wore hand-made cold weather gear. Who were they? Husband and wife or father and daughter? She hoped the latter—the girl was too young for the man—but worse things happened on the islands and in Senta.

  The girl dropped to her knees beside the man—her father, if that’s who he was—her legs folding under her. She reached a hand forward to touch the wound in his back with a white fur glove. Kali couldn’t fire—not now. She watched the girl touch the man’s head; it flopped limply to the side, the lifeless face tilting out of the snow. The girl wasn’t holding a weapon; Kali could see that now. There was only the Type-K lying the snow.

  The girl raised her fist and struck the man’s arm once, and again, and suddenly was pummeling his arm and shoulders in an uncontrolled fit of anger. After a time, her emotion was spent and she rocked back on her legs, her face to the sun, as if to blind herself in it rather than look at what was lying in front of her.

  The girl dropped forward until her face was buried in her dead father’s coat, her arms wrapped around him. Kali leaned away from the telescopic sight—she didn’t want to watch. It would be better if the girl ran away to the farm. Kali didn’t want to deal with a sobbing minor in the process of getting back the Type-K, and she didn’t want to justify herself to a daughter she’d just made fatherless. Kali had come to Haffay intending to make things better for the people on the islands, but there was no sign of that happening today. It was chilling and depressing, and she couldn’t blame it all on Chon. She'd made a mistake, taking the girl and her father for Provies.

  Something was burning near the dead man. Kali put her eye back on the scope in time to see a burst of red under the body before it was covered up by a rush of smoke. The girl suddenly disappeared into the cloud, hopping away through the snow somewhere in the direction of the wind farm. Kali watched the smoke gush and billow out in what was
less of an explosion than a rapid burn. It had to be some kind of improvised black powder bomb, but it had cooked off like a smoke grenade; someone’s case-making skills weren’t good enough to contain the burning powder long enough to get a decent blast out of it.

  The smoke completely obscured the man and the Type-K for a few seconds, and the daughter was nowhere to be seen. The wind slowly blew the smoke up the valley in the direction of the windmills where the blades chopped it to a haze. The father’s jacket was still burning, a nice slow fire that might get whatever body fat he had sizzling by sunset.

  In the view through the scope, nothing moved but a few small flames. Good news: the girl appeared to have run away. Kali relaxed her grip on the rifle, and her heart started to slow down. The Type-K was still lying on the ground not far from the man’s hands—also something to be thankful for. She needed to get it back before it developed legs and turned up somewhere even less convenient.

  Kali stepped back from the Vertel and shuffled around its tail and over the trailing parachute risers. She scanned quickly up toward the farm, raising her eye from the sight only for a glance. Aiming the rifle at the prone figure, she walked slowly through the snow until she stood over the man, studying the ragged red hole in his back surrounded by charred and smoldering leather.

  She turned to pick up the Type-K and then stopped. Something wasn’t right. There were two distinct lines of tracks in the snow from the wind-farm stopping at the dead man’s feet. There was one set of tracks leading away, not in the direction of the wind-farm, but toward the northern of the twin mountains. Those tracks ended suddenly in a patch of dirty snow and went no farther.

  Holding her rifle ready, Kali walked the length of the tracks until she approached the end. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until the tracks suddenly stopped—clearly the girl had been running quickly, but then she’d disappeared. Where’d she gone?