“Cud! How much longer must this be? How much patience must a man endure? Cud!”
Damon dismissed Willem and said he would handle the rest of the briefing. Damon sidled up to Hadeed, who fumed.
“Honor, when this is done, we will finally have an army worthy of the Hiebim people. A legitimate challenger to the peacekeepers. Is that not what we have always wanted?”
“Damon … year after year and I think …”
“That the time is finally here. I know, Honor. The seasons pass, we grow older, and we wonder whether our visions of freedom are as fantastic as the illusion forced upon us by the Chancellors. But consider this … nine years ago, you came back from a stroll along the wash and told me how you intended to cleanse Hiebimini within twenty years. Honor, even if our war does not begin for another twenty months, you will still be far ahead of your timetable. And the best part is, we will actually have a fighting chance. Who would have believed that after they assassinated Miriam?”
Hadeed separated his hands and felt a burden fall away. He wrapped an arm around Damon’s shoulder and smiled.
“You’re right. Naturally. As always, Damon. I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“Or Miriam’s secret accounts.”
“Yes, that too. No, perhaps this is just as well. Our resident peacekeeper will be coming around to our side eventually. Can’t think of a better source of intelligence. But more important than that, I made a promise to Abraham. He’ll be old enough by then, and I will always keep my promises to my sons.”
The only recourse left to the revolutionist whose crusade is founded upon the need to restore true natural will to his people is the most dire and uncompromising of choices. He must engage in a campaign to eradicate the institutions that support suppression and encourage hierarchy. In addition, he must cleanse his soil of all those whose ideas are in opposition to the natural will of human beings. Just as the Chancellors wiped the Heretics of God from history, so must we cleanse ourselves of the Chancellors and all those who inherit their blood.
TWENTY
FOR HONOR AND SERVICE
Salvadora
SY 5309
SQUADRON CAPT. ILYA HOLLANDER did as his father advised and wrapped his ego around the non-stop adulation he received during his rapid rise through the ranks of the UG. In this way, Ephraim had told him, you will focus on your commitment made to the Collectorate, serve with highest distinction, and suppress your personal conflict about the future.
“Live for glory and honor,” his father said when they bade farewell on Vasily Station. “Immerse yourself in the life of the warrior. Challenge your mind and body each day to stand above all others because, in truth, you do. Yes?”
“But what of the end?” Ilya asked. “What if I can’t stop thinking about it? If it were to cloud my judgment during conflict …”
“The end is far away,” his father would say. “Decades perhaps. By then, you will have lived a commanding life. A Chancellor nonpareil. That is what the Hollander name represents. We cannot concern ourselves with how history might one day portray us. For now, we are superior men who lead superior lives. Embrace this, Ilya.”
The first six months aboard the Ark Carrier Thomas Glory in orbit over Indonesia Prime kept him focused. Non-stop combat simulations, physique enhancement training, and Battle Scram maintenance kept his mind tuned, and he never thought of putting on the glasses. He found friends – some of whom glued to him because of his influential name – and they shared camaraderie, especially those who had been among the few to experience classified Dacha training in Mongolia Province a year before official duty.
Newbs could see Dacha in their fellow peacekeepers’ eyes. They could always tell who had experienced the utter exhilaration of a successful hunt. This bond sealed Ilya’s close friendship with Horatio Manchester, who would eventually become Ilya’s first lieutenant.
“That one,” Horatio would point as they watched Indo civilians arrive on Thomas Glory’s flight deck. “Thin. Wiry. Good legs. He’d be a sporting challenge.”
“True,” Ilya would respond. “But you might spend so much time tracking him, you’d lose sight of filling your target quota.”
“Perhaps. But the fat ones … they were always too easy.”
Ilya loved sharing stories about Dacha, for it represented some of the final months when he was free to be a Chancellor unburdened by the future. He and Horatio talked of the exhilaration of running naked through the Mongolian outlands late at night under a starry sky, carrying one weapon of choice – most preferred a long blade – and pursuing an ethnic with the identical weapon but no real hope of winning hand-to-hand combat. “Slag-dragging” some of them called it, while others preferred “carve ’em and serve ’em.” Officially, this practice did not take place, never had. It was reserved for boys who showed the greatest promise of becoming battalion commanders and whose parents had the proper contacts to be aware of this opportunity.
“Thirst for blood, hunger to command,” said the colonel who oversaw Ilya’s small Dacha unit. “These things stir the heart and mind of a leader. No compromise, no compassion. Our responsibility is to maintain the eternal partition between the rights of our people and the colonial ethnics. We have never faltered and never will so long as we follow these principles.”
Ilya did just that when he led his squad into their first ground operation, a fast-strike mission to eliminate an illegal flesh-trading consortium in Bahaina City. The instant they stepped from the Battle Scram and engaged the consortium’s personal guard, the tropical heat and sea-level gravity threw them back, but for an instant. The facility’s personal guard had no chance against peacekeeper body armor, apparently unaware that flash pegs and old-fashioned bullets deflected at impact.
Ilya loved it. The feeling of tiny projectiles lapping against his body while he returned fire and dropped man after man told Ilya that this was why any boy would want to become a peacekeeper. Fifteen minutes after the kill order, more than sixty bodies lay strewn about the facility. Neighbors who had complained vigorously about the consortium on moral grounds emerged from their nearby homes and applauded the soldiers.
In truth, the consortium was fully licensed, but the owners had made the gross mistake of withholding profit shares from the Regional Oversight Presidium, which in retaliation filed a complaint with the Bahaina Regional Sanctum to revoke the license and cleanse the city of its owners. Ilya did not hear about the political machinations until much later, but he didn’t care. This was, quite simply, fun. From time to time, he even allowed himself to fantasize that perhaps being the destroyer of civilization would not be such a painful destiny after all.
It all began to make sense, even through another promotion and transfer to the Ark Carrier Faustus orbiting Salvadora, a world settled by the Mezo-Mayan tribes of the Americas and where an international economic collapse was in progress. As was his right, Ilya packaged Horatio Manchester with the transfer.
Salvadora had always been the least profitable colony; it had few mineral deposits of any consequence, terraforming had been ineffective, and its natural resources offered little draw to tourists. The UG spent centuries propping up the economy with vast food and habitation subsidies, but massive droughts in the farm belts brought on food riots in some of the major cities. Capt. Hollander’s squad was ordered to New Bogota, where refugees were flooding in from the barren outlands.
As the troop transport entered the atmosphere on final approach to the city, Capt. Hollander faced his squadron of seventy peacekeepers, each standing with blast rifles across their chests, ready to disembark.
“Listen square,” he shouted. “We are to take control of the Riveras Bridge and Transport Egress. Upon debarkation, you are to triangulate your designated zones without hesitation and segregate all civilians on foot. The bridge and egress are to be cleansed within ten minutes of debarkation. Is that clear?”
After a unanimous nod of his soldiers, Ilya continued. “We are to process all
civilians for relocation to camps in the outer provinces. Therefore, proper ID is mandatory. All civilians without verifiable gene stamps will be classified as non-compliant agitators and will be processed for deportation. Arrange civilians by family surname; this is especially important. Command does not want to separate families. Tell them they will have ample food and shelter within six hours.” He paused. “Peacekeepers, we are about to be inundated with desperate indigos. Monitor your RS constantly. You have orders to shoot anyone with unauthorized weapons. Control and efficiency, Peacekeepers. Do your jobs.”
Ilya and Horatio shared an emotionless stare of recognition then only the hint of a glow as they and their troops disembarked into the sweltering heat of New Bogota province.
The refugees came from provinces south of New Bogota and united along the Medellin River by the bridge that was the only viable entrance to the city. More than twenty thousand were processed by five squadrons of peacekeepers and efficiently directed toward cargo transports nearby. Many did not speak Engleshe, but the translator amps built into peacekeeper helmets eliminated the need for multi-lingual fluency. As the day wore on, the crowds thinned but became more impatient, especially when the first cargo transports departed without them.
“Now this, my captain, is what I call excitement,” Horatio smirked as he sauntered alongside Ilya while the rest of the squadron supervised the queues.
“We’re being benevolent, Horatio. Keep that in mind.”
“Ah, yes. Benevolence. Huh. They’re a pitiful lot, for sure. Look at them. Some wrapped in not much more than rags. And the shoes? Some don’t even have … excuse me, Captain, but what year is this? How many centuries have they had to build a civilized way of life?”
Ilya agreed. He could not fathom the sheer poverty and, in some cases, malnutrition he saw among the refugees.
Horatio continued. “We gave them a planet of their own so this sort of thing wouldn’t happen anymore. Plenty of room, ample land, sufficient tech. Cudfrucking slags. Amazing, sir.”
“Indeed, Horatio. Amazing.”
Ilya truly did not understand. The entire mission had produced a puzzle, for Ilya had learned none of this in his ethnic studies. Nor had he seen such dire circumstances on Indo Prime, where even the least fortunate ethnics seemed to be well cared for by Sanctum edicts.
“I’ll just keep reminding myself,” Horatio said with an ironic laugh, “that we are all in this together. Yes, Captain?”
Ilya did not have a chance to respond. The incident happened without warning.
The first shot from deep within the queues was followed by wails. The crowd surged forward, and automatic rounds from a blast rifle dropped many refugees. Ilya barked commands, and his soldiers brought the commotion under control inside a minute, ordering all refugees on the ground, hands over heads.
The carnage could have been worse: Six were dead, mostly outland vagabonds who were usually spat upon by tribesmen of similar heritage. They were known leeches, so a soldier’s claim that one of them grabbed for a blast rifle was quickly accepted and the matter closed. When Capt. Hollander sent a beam to Carrier Command with his incident report, new orders arrived at once: Wrap up the operation. All refugees outside the southernmost perimeter would be held back overnight. The rest would be segregated by family surname and placed aboard the next arriving transport.
Capt. Hollander made a public announcement and ordered his men to display their rifles. That’s when he saw her among the queues, and Ilya’s cold resolve snapped, if only for a second.
The girl had red hair like her mother and older brother. She was seven, according to her gene stamp. Her face was covered in the dust of a long journey on foot. As her family passed and received their orders, she let go of her mother’s hand and stepped toward Capt. Hollander. Her mother, speaking strong broken Engleshe, told her to come along, that the peacekeeper was too busy helping everyone. But the girl insisted. Her Engleshe was perfect.
“Excuse, Peacekeeper. My feet hurt and my shoe is broken.” She held up her left sandal. “See? The strap is broken. Would you fix my shoe, sir?”
At first, he saw only a pitiful young indigo destined for a life of misery on yet another colony that could not survive without the morsels thrown to it by the Chancellors. All his education told him to look past her, that he owed nothing more than his duty as a peacekeeper. Given what he knew about the future, what purpose did this little girl’s problem matter anyway?
“I’m sure you’ll find assistance on the transport,” he told her. “We have to move the queue. Keeping walking, please.”
He watched the girl bow her head in disappointment but did not think of her again for another three hours, after these final refugees and his squadron were aboard the Titus United commercial transport. They crammed six hundred refugees into the primary cargo bay then Ilya and his soldiers treated themselves to a meal in the galley. His squadron was surprised to be returning to the Faustus in this fashion.
“Emergency requisition,” Ilya explained. “Command underestimated the civilian tally.”
“Where we taking the slags?” Horatio asked. “Share bunks with us on the Faustus?”
That drew a laugh from the soldiers sitting close by. Ilya joined in. “Destination is above my credit grade. You’ll know when I know.”
Five hours later, long after Titus United could have rendezvoused with anything in orbit, Capt. Hollander, Lt. Manchester, and a select few peacekeepers calmly patrolled the cargo bay. Most refugees were quiet and resigned, and some were asleep. Only a few questioned why the journey was taking so long. The little red-haired girl not only was awake but had a present for Ilya when he strode by her. She held out her sandal without saying a word.
“I can’t …” he started.
“My shoe. Nobody has fixed my shoe, sir.” She studied his waist belt. “There. Isn’t that a utility laser? Please, sir. Fix my shoe.”
He took the shoe without answering the girl. He effectively soldered the strap in place within sixty seconds. She slipped on the sandal, shuffled her foot around inside the strap to test its strength, and smiled. Her bleary-eyed mother awoke from a nap and nodded her thanks. Ilya moved on, doing his best to put them out of his mind.
He finally understood what all this was about when he returned to the control room above the cargo bay and felt a sudden queasiness in his stomach just as the ship jolted forward. The odd feeling passed quickly, but he recognized it. Titus United had passed through the Nexus into the Fulcrum. His orders arrived simultaneously on a classified stream.
“Captain, you are a go for order: Cleanse,” his Battalion Commander said. “Remove all personnel and commence. Empty the package, Captain.”
He knew this sort of thing went on – they all did – but receiving the order was another matter entirely. He turned to Lt. Manchester, who quickly removed the squadron from the cargo bay. Ilya and Horatio were the only ones in the control room overlooking the bay when Ilya programmed the decompression override sequence. Flashers and sirens went off in the bay, and the refugees began to stand and look around in wonder.
“Best two out of three?” Horatio joked. Ilya needed a moment to understand his best friend was talking about arm wrestling. Their last showdown dragged out almost two hours. “Been working on my technique, Captain.”
Ilya laid his hand next to the gene scanner that would confirm then execute his orders.
“Sure, Horatio. Best of three.”
Ilya didn’t move. He looked through the glass and saw the rising panic among the refugees. He didn’t understand why, but his eyes scanned for her. He needed to see her, to explain how he was following his orders, how population control was sometimes an expedient solution to crisis control. She wouldn’t understand. None of them would.
“What’s the holdup, Captain?” Horatio asked. “Ilya? What’s wrong with you?” They shared a knowing glance, and Horatio turned to the refugees. “What? Them? Six hundred slags out of what? Three billion?”
; Ilya’s throat went dry when he saw the girl, but he laid his hand over the gene scanner anyway and watched the cargo bay doors retract. Instantly the refugees were overcome by a torrent. They grabbed for anything and anyone, but they could not fight the inevitable. They were vacuumed into space with an efficiency that lasted but ten seconds. Ilya watched the red-haired girl as long as he could, but she disappeared before crossing the threshold.
“There you go,” Horatio said. “A day’s work. Very tidy. ”
“Day’s work,” Ilya nodded but never spoke of it again.
Three nights later, the girl came to him in a dream. Her shoe needed to be repaired.
Always the shoe.
TWENTY ONE
THE BLACK HEART
Ularu Jungle, Indonesia Prime
SY 5310
THE RAIN FELL WITHOUT END onto the mountainous equatorial jungles, where the imported banyan trees grew like temples to long-forgotten gods and all but blotted out the purple sky. The mighty trees gathered the rain, absorbed what they needed and, like sieves, allowed the remainder to fall to the jungle floor in a continuous patter. There, the water gave life to a bounty of mosses, to twisted Leucanthian vines with heart-shaped leaves as big as tents, to brown y’matta snakes that preyed entirely upon beetles, and to the scourge of humanity who found refuge among the ruins of the colony’s ancient, forgotten cities. Here, in the once-fortified stone acropolis known as Ennoi, seventeen-year-old Ilya Hollander came to waste his life away, to escape the nightmares, and to make sure he had nothing to do with the future of the Collectorate.
He escaped into this jungle because he knew he would not be followed. The peacekeepers and regional police had long given up on Ularu, allowing the opia caravans to traffic their illegal wares beneath the fierce canopy. In this cutthroat world of dealers, killers, thieves, and outcasts seeking a refuge, people reduced the value of human life to less than nothing. Their blood often mingled with the cascading streams of rain flowing down each level of the mountainside cities, none of which were visible from the air. The Sanctums agreed to ignore what happened in the jungle so long as the lawless behavior never affected proper cities or the tourist destinations, especially the great Ularu Falls.
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