by David Ryker
“Uh-huh,” I said. In my own head, I was already doing the math. Admin complex meant, most likely, a launch depot. A launch depot meant escape. Escape meant...it meant a lot of things. I didn’t really have a plan between ‘escape’ and ‘get my kids back.’
“You’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking,” Anderson said without smiling.
I shook my head and smiled. “I doubt it.”
“You want to get out of here,” she said.
“We all do,” I said. “Where you and I differ are our priorities when we do get off this planet.”
“Do they differ so much that we can’t work together to leave?” Anderson narrowed her eyes and leaned back a little.
“We’ll see,” I said. “You mind if I take a peek up there?” I pointed up the path.
Anderson’s brows shot up her wrinkled forehead. “Go ahead!” she said. “If you can manage it after all the bushwhacking you did today.”
“I think I have a few more miles in me before I get worn out,” I said. “Besides, I could use some time to clear my head.”
Anderson was right about the admin complex being visible from the top of the steep, rocky hill. I could see the setting sun reflecting off the dizzying spire of blue-green glass windows that made up the Judiciary Hub. The tower was just that - a hub of a huge, wheel-shaped city that housed the free citizens of Bathys 2.
There, underneath the watchful eye of Coalition troops, guards’ families and administrative people and other assorted personnel could live their lives away from the noise and the violence and the toxic reek of the planet’s recycling operation. They had shopping malls, and they had rec centers, and they had holodromes for all kinds of entertainment, and they had sports arenas for the kids to play football on the sunny weekends.
I’d been there a couple of times, for routine hearings to deny me parole on account of my involvement with the Belters. It was nice. It was somewhere Linata would have liked to live.
Thing was, they blindfolded and tranquilized convicts before they shipped us anywhere on the planet. I had no recollection of how long it took by quad to get to the Admin Center, or what kind of terrain lay between here and there.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Leka’s voice was unmistakeable, harsh and thinned by her failing breath.
“You should have rested,” I said without turning around.
“I did rest,” Leka said. She walked over to the rocks where I was sitting and took a seat beside me. “I’m military, remember? Flexicort makes you heal a little faster.”
For a little while, we were both silent, watching the light change on the hub and catch on the wings of the quad copters patrolling the city. There was something too comfortable, too smug about Leka’s silence. It made me wonder how much she really knew about me, and how she had come by that knowledge. It made me wonder how my knowledge of her past stacked up against her knowledge of my past.
But if she wasn’t going to say anything, I wasn’t going to say anything. We couldn’t see much of the buildings down below from where we were, but the gleaming points of a couple of rooftops stuck out from the vegetation.
“It’s still intact,” Leka said.
“It’s defended,” I said.
“Defended against us as well as defended against them.” Leka shook her head. “But where else do we go?”
“We could see what’s left of the ceramics dump,” I said. “We’ve got to be running pretty low on, uh, pasta and egg powder.”
“Yeah,” Leka said. “I was gonna bring that up, too. We should go back to that commissary, now that we’ve got some numbers behind us.”
“And more weapons,” I said. “Did you salvage those hoverspeeders?”
“They were totaled,” Leka said. “No sense wasting the energy, I guess.”
“Mm.” I nodded.
Leka looked at me, then looked back ahead of her, then sighed and rubbed the back of her head. “Can I ask you a question?” she said.
“About what?” I said.
“About...about your codeword,” she said. “What’s it do? Does it, you know, does it turn off or something now that Salter’s dead?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know,” I said, and I was only lying a little bit.
“Bullshit,” Leka said. “Nobody would put that much money into nanotech and then not tell you how to use it.”
“And what if they did?” I said. “You’re asking an awful lot of questions for someone who met me yesterday.”
“Call me the curious type,” Leka said.
I nodded and looked away from her. There was nothing more to say on that subject, and nothing she could do to break my silence. The way the sun was angled, I could see seven or eight quads circling the city like flies. From a point near the tower, I saw a craft launch up at atmo-breaking speeds. The light caught it as it climbed, climbed, and disappeared into the deepening blue of the stratospheres.
Leka let out a low whistle. “Gets me every time I see it,” she said.
I nodded. For a second, I wasn’t gonna say anything. “Do you think that’s what’s wrong with us?” I said.
“What?” Leka said.
“That we can, you know”—I gestured to the city—“appreciate something pretty at a time like this.”
Leka shrugged and stretched her arms. There was a smile on her face that indicated there was something very much wrong with her. “I dunno, Chief,” she said. “But I do think that’s why we’re still alive so far.”
Dinner, if you had a pretty loose definition of ‘dinner,’ was in progress by the time we returned to the encampment. Again, we’d wisely chosen to forgo a fire. Again, we were stuck with the limited supplies we’d managed to steal from the ceramics dump in the big damn hurry we were in to get out of there.
“You seriously couldn’t grab a plastipak of fruit or anything, huh?” Anderson sat next to me once she’d collected her ration of pasta and cold rehydrated eggs.
“Nope,” I said. “Which brings me to my next point.”
“And what is your next point?” Anderson said.
“We didn’t grab supplies for this whole happy family,” I said. “The crap we have was supposed to be for the four of us.”
“And it wouldn’t even last four people very long, if you want to ask me,” Anderson said. “You gonna complain, or do you have a plan to help me feed my people?” She had a way of cocking her whole body back as she spoke, half-smiling like she was in on a joke that I didn’t get.
“I say we go back to the ceramics dump,” I said. “It’s at least close by here, and there isn’t anything particularly noxious to burn or blow up there.”
“You have a point.” Anderson popped a noodle into her mouth and crunched it. “But what about the rest of the prisoners?” she said. “I’m told that there’s a good reason you left the breaker line.”
“There were a lot of convicts down there,” I said. “It was an assignment of choice for rough people.”
“And you’re a rough person, huh?” Anderson said.
“Some people have told me so,” I said.
“You know why I was working in Textiles?” Anderson said. “Why they gave me an assignment that…”
“No,” I said. “I don’t.” I really found it easier to work with some of these people when I didn’t know what they’d done. Some people landed on toxic assignments like Textiles because of bad luck with the system. Others were there because they’d been a disciplinary problem.
But there were crimes that didn’t carry the death penalty, where the powers that be would still make sure you didn’t survive your prison sentence.
“Hmph.” Anderson crunched another noodles. “The boys tell me you’re a blooded Belter.”
I shrugged, nonchalant as if anyone but a truly hardened criminal would even think they knew what a blooded Belter was. “Life has a funny way, sometimes,” I said.
“I don’t like Belters,” Anderson said.
“That’s fine,” I said. “Neith
er do I.”
“Did you do it, then?” Anderson said.
“Do what?”
“Kill your minder.” She sat back against the stalks of a palm. “That’s what I would have done.”
“Then you know the Belters less than you like them,” I said. “It’s a long story, but there was no way for me to kill Salter. Leka took him out with a hand grenade.”
“I like Leka,” Anderson said.
“Everyone likes Leka,” I said. “She has medical training and she’s good with a solid-slug rifle.”
“Interesting, isn’t it,” Anderson said, “about those solid slugs. Why they work, when the Coalition shit ain’t no use.”
“I guess it is, isn’t it?” I popped some noodles into my mouth and crunched them while I thought of how to phrase this. “It makes me wonder if they’re working with someone.”
“Working with someone?” Anderson said. “Like the Belters?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “Although I’ve only seen one other force in the world use the guns they were using to attack the breaker facility.”
“But what would the Belters want in a dump like this?” Anderson said.
I shrugged. “They’ve been known to offer things that don’t belong to them as payment,” I said. “Maybe that’s going on here, you know? Someone did them a favor, and they’re...helping weaken the defenses of a low-value world.”
“Low-value world,” Anderson said, shaking her head. “Isn’t that where I always thought I was gonna wind up?”
“Well, the ultimate plan isn’t to stay here very long,” I said.
“Is it not?” Anderson smirked at me. “Do you really think you’re going to successfully steal a spacecraft and get out of here to...to do whatever it is that’s been haunting you.”
I must have reacted to that, because Anderson laughed.
“You can see it in your eyes, Collins,” she said. “You’re after something that’s way beyond anything I care about. And you’re insane if you think I’m going to do anything to help you until you’ve proven you can at least give me more to eat than dry pasta and cold rehydrated eggs.”
15
Now that we’d had some time to think, it was obvious that the way we’d taken out of the ceramics dump was not the best way back in. The best way back in actually led in a meandering spiral through a couple of deep valleys. We would, of course, be staying relatively high up to avoid the smoke that clung to the valley floors in the chill of the early morning.
“I think we’re ready for it,” Curtis said. “I’d mow down a whole squad of Coalition goons for some decent chow.”
“I just hope we don’t become chow ourselves,” Anderson said.
“We don’t know that they’re eating people,” Leka said. She got along with Anderson about as well as I did, although their enmity seemed to have a friendlier edge to it.
“Hell, we don’t even know what they are,” Anderson said. She hefted her plasma rifle in her meaty hands. She insisted that she preferred one over a solid-slug weapon, even if it was proven to be a less effective weapon.
Her call, I figured. The five of us set off into the jungle, carrying all the weaponry we’d managed to salvage so far. There was me, Anderson, Leka, Curtis, and Tomlins. Garcia had stayed behind to command the rest of the survivors’ camp. Simms hadn’t been looking so good even after his night’s rest, and he insisted on staying behind to see if he couldn’t (literally) scare up some food for our new friends.
As we left camp behind, however, I started to think that maybe we should have brought more people. Five seemed like an awfully small squad for this long of a journey during a xeno invasion, no matter who those five people were.
“You look well-rested,” Leka said.
“Do I?” I laughed. “I feel like I haven’t slept in weeks.”
“Does that even count?” Leka’s laugh was substantially more bitter than mine was. “I bet three weeks to you is the same as a day or two to us.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you keep talking about,” I said.
“Or maybe you’d just prefer I didn’t talk about it,” Leka said. “Either way, no pressure. Just, you know, wanting to know what kind of fucked-up shit I’m stuck out here in the jungle with.”
“How come I’m the only convict you keep coming to with questions?” I said. “Plenty of fucked-up shit to go around here. You’ll notice I don’t ask much about yours.”
Leka frowned and fell back behind me a couple strides. That was fine. I was in no mood to deal with her questions this morning, and whatever I could say to make her ask fewer of them was a win in my book. Besides, there was plenty going on today to distract me from Leka’s persistence about who I was and what I could do with my blood.
For starters, it was no easy task getting through the vines that covered the jungle floor. They seemed to get thicker as we went downhill, and the leaves started to get bigger.
“Are these premnoids?” I said, pointing to the leaves with the muzzle of my solid-slug rifle.
“I think so,” Leka said. “They have the same leaf shape. Same growth habit.”
“Huh,” I said. “I guess I might ask you how you came to know so much about botany.”
“I guess I might tell you to fuck off just like you do with all my questions,” she said.
At that, I had to laugh. “Fair enough.” I shook my head. “We should stay quiet anyway.”
With all the exertion involved with getting through the jungle floor, staying quiet wasn’t hard. Navigating by the sun and by my Belters’ blood, I was leading us on a meandering path toward the ceramics dump. It was always one thing to see your route from the top of a rocky hill. Actually hacking that route out through the vegetation was another thing.
We were about three miles into our trudging when Anderson stopped dead in her path.
I turned around to see her holding her hand up, body suddenly slightly taller and poised as stiff as a reception tower.
“Hold on,” she said. “I think I hear something.”
I paused and cocked my head around. I could hear it too. I motioned for the party to get down, and I crouched while my weapon seemed to come to my shoulder of its own accord.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Anderson said, standing up. “Would you look at that?”
I almost laughed as I saw what was making the noise. A bird, half as tall as I was with a wingspan much wider than my height, lighted on a branch about twenty meters in front of us. It ruffled its feathers and turned its massive head to examine us with one eye.
“You know what I call that?” Tomlins said.
“Wha—”
Curtis didn’t even have time to get an answer out before Tomlins raised her plasma rifle to her shoulder and took the bird’s head off with a single blast.
“Dinner,” Tomlins said with a sly smile at the rest of us. “Dinner for more than two, if that thing’s size is any indication of the meat on it.”
“Yeah, meat that we have to keep cold,” Leka said.
“I can bring it back to camp,” Curtis said. “I mean, if it’s…”
Tomlins was already bounding through the undergrowth to retrieve her trophy, her weapon slung across her back and a grin on her face. When she reached it, she knelt briefly and held it up by its feet.
“This thing has to weigh twenty pounds,” she said. “We should bring the whole thing back to camp, if we can. Just take the organs out and put them in a separate bag.”
“I mean, if you guys can spare me,” Curtis said.
“Look, no offense to you,” I said, “but you know that old Terran saying about how a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?”
“Not really,” Curtis said.
“Well, it was a fuckin’ saying,” I said. “And this bird Tomlins just shot is probably worth more than whatever the hell it is we wind up finding out there in those bushes.”
Four of us weren’t much faster than five of us in the jungle. It didn’t help that we h
ad walked into a swampy area, where one false step could plunge your foot through a tangle of roots into chilly water. At least it didn’t seem to be burning through anybody’s shoes, socks, or skin. Given the events of today, that was a pretty substantial bonus.
I was kind of hoping that we would encounter more conveniently-large birds on our way to the ceramics dump. We could certainly afford to send another one of us back, as long as they were carrying that much food.
But the day was still young, and our little squad was still going strong. Unless something horrible happened to us, we would accomplish our objective before nightfall. We’d already had one unexpected windfall, and who knew? The farther away from Textiles we got, the more downright hospitable the jungle became.
Or maybe it wasn’t hospitable after all. My senses started to pick up the noise when we were only a couple of miles out from the ceramics dump.
“Listen,” Anderson said, as if any of us didn’t recognize that familiar bass tattoo in the sky above our heads. She was pointing up at a craft in a hurry. “That’s a Coalition quad.”
It was actually three Coalition quads, flying in tight V-shaped formation and in a hurry to get somewhere. I stopped in my tracks, trying to figure out exactly what they were trying to do - or what it was they were running from.
I didn’t have to try for very long. I was mid-breath when that full-body wave of nausea hit me. It could only mean one thing when every cell in my being seemed to shudder at once. Even as I hit my knees, I forced myself to look up at the white-green haze in the sky above us.
“It’s them,” I said, as if anybody was asking any questions at this point. The Coalition quads had spread out their formation to form a kind of net. “It’s…”
“Holy shit,” Leka said as the xeno ship above us uncloaked. This one was different. It had the same red and black coloration as the pyramid ships I’d seen, but it was quadrangular and arched over the top.