by C. G. Hatton
He nodded. “In the morning. I’ve got some experiments running but they should be done by then. You want to see?”
Peanut’s experiments were always cool.
“I’m trying to crack whatever it is jamming comms,” he said. “I thought I had it. I reckon a couple more hours. You get anything juicy from the garrison?”
I stuck my hands in my pockets. I’d forgotten about the stuff I’d grabbed. I held them out to him. He declined the gum but his eyes lit up at the key and the credit stick.
“Nice,” he said. “Come on. Screw Calum. We’ll be gone in the morning. We’ll set up a new gang, you and me. We’ll take the little ones. Freddie’ll come with us. The rest can decide if they want to stay and play games with the big boys.”
Like it could ever have been that easy.
Chapter 12
I followed Peanut down into a dingy room he’d set up as a workshop. He must have brought a load of kit from the space port. He waved his hand towards a tatty sofa.
“Make yourself at home,” he said, settling himself at a table strewn with tools and gizmos. He tossed my latest haul onto the pile and picked up a screwdriver.
I sprawled on the sofa. It was musty as hell but I was about done, ribs aching and a headache pulling at the base of my skull. I pressed the cloth against my eye and stretched out.
“You shouldn’t antagonise them,” Peanut said as he worked.
“I don’t try to.” I shifted my weight but couldn’t get comfortable. “I don’t know why they hate me.” That wasn’t totally true.
Peanut laughed. “Because you’re too good at what you do. And because Maisie likes you. That’s why Calum hates you.”
My stomach flipped just at the way he said that. It should have been funny but I was too sore to think about it. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself be hijacked by brainless thugs like Bram and his cronies.
I flung my arm over my eyes.
“How is she?” Peanut said, more seriously.
“Maisie? She’s fine. She won’t let them give her any stick. She said they’re going to hit the outposts, take back the mines.”
He snorted. “It’ll be a lot of noise, a lot of alpaca shit and not much else.”
I wasn’t so sure. “Do you think UM will stay?”
“You mean will they throw in with Dayton and take over the colony? No way. There’s nothing here for them. I told you, it’s not going to be like it was.”
There was a noise at the door.
“Like what was?” Calum said, striding in like he owned the place.
I sat up.
Peanut didn’t look up.
I couldn’t resist. “Like kindergarten was when we used to fight over who got to play in the sand pit.”
Calum didn’t look impressed. He swept up a couple of gizmos off the table and kicked my legs as he walked past. “What are you two numbskulls talking about? Like what was?”
“Like it was eight years ago,” Peanut said, blunt.
Calum swore and tossed the gizmos back onto the table. “Christ, don’t you two ever let up on that?” He pulled a handgun out of the back of his waistband and banged it down in front of Peanut. “This is shit,” he said. “It keeps jamming. Quit screwing around with whatever you’re messing with and fix it.” He shoved it forward and turned on me. “And you…” He pointed at me. I’d never noticed before but he had a tick over his eye. He glowered at me. “Stay away from my brother. You lay another finger on him and I’ll break your legs. You hear?”
There are times when you need to jump up and fight your corner and there are times when you just have to shrug off the crap and save it for another day.
My head was aching. I saved it.
He didn’t like that I didn’t bite and he took a step forward but one of his cronies stuck his head around the door and said, “Calum, Dayton wants to see you.”
Calum smirked. “Dayton wants to see me,” he said, like that set me in my place. He walked away, tossing in a throwaway, “Get your ass into the middlings’ room, Luka,” as he walked out.
The door slammed shut behind him.
Peanut swore again and shoved the gun out of his way. “Keeps jamming? All handguns on Kheris jam. What does he expect in this dust?”
I didn’t care. I didn’t like the guns and I didn’t like the dingy basement. My stomach felt cold and it had nothing to do with the pounding I’d taken. “I can’t stay here,” I said.
“None of us should stay here,” Peanut said. “Give me a couple of hours. This won’t take long.”
I was almost dozing off when Peanut cursed, low and intense like he always did when he had something cool. I opened one eye.
“I knew it,” he muttered, hunched low over some kind of panel, turning dials and working a board. “It’s not electronic.”
“What isn’t?”
“Whatever it is that’s blocking out all our comms. It’s not electronic. It’s coming from that ship out there. It’s some kind of energy but it’s pulsing like nothing I’ve ever seen…” He tweaked a control. Sparks flew and the machine screamed. Peanut flinched away, darting his hand in to flick it off. “Jesus.”
I pinched the top of my nose, headache spiking. “Does Aries have stuff like that?”
“Never heard of anything like it.”
He started muttering to himself, peering at the board and plugging more gadgets into the panel. I wish now I’d taken more notice of what he’d been doing that night. It’s not often I ever regret anything. Live for the moment. That’s what that night eight years before all that had shown me. Etched into my soul. Live for now. There might not be a tomorrow. But what Peanut had been so close to that night… it could have changed everything. It could have changed the outcome of the war. But as it happened, we never had the chance. People suck and nothing sucks worse than someone thinking the worst of you for no reason other than jealousy or insecurity or whatever the hell it was, and that night, I found out how much it sucked.
I didn’t mean to sleep but I must have because I woke to shouting. It was Peanut I could hear protesting, swearing, and as I moved to sit up, rubbing a hand across my face, someone pulled off the blanket Peanut must have thrown over me and grabbed my arm.
One of Calum’s buddies.
I shrugged him off and scrambled backwards, hitting my head against the low wall.
There was more shouting. Eventually someone yelled for quiet and everyone seemed to look at me.
I stared back, not sure who was on my side any more.
“Calum wants to see you,” someone said sullenly.
It was like being summoned to see Dayton.
I wanted to tell them to go screw themselves and almost grabbed the blanket to pull it back over my head but the way some of the little ones were looking at me, never mind Peanut, made me take a slow intake of breath and say, “Fine, he just needed to ask.”
They made way for me. I followed one of them through dark rooms, lanterns flickering in corners, stashes of crates and boxes I’d never seen before. Some were labelled rations, some with numbers that looked like it could have denoted ammunition, most of them anonymous, sealed. They could have been anything. Dayton had never given us that much before. Anything I’d been paid had been scraps, just enough to keep us going back for more. It didn’t feel right. As if some deal had been done and it wasn’t just that I’d had no part in it that made me feel queasy.
The kid leading the way was wearing a gun in a holster on his hip. He touched it now and then as if he wanted to reassure himself it was still there. It was ridiculous. We’d never carried weapons. They wouldn’t have a clue how to fire straight if they tried. I should have seen then what was going on. And I should have run a mile.
Eventually we came to a door that was being guarded by Calum’s best buddy, standing there with a rifle in his arms. I almost laughed. I think I might have done because someone slapped me on the back of the head and they pushed me through the doorway.
Calum was sitti
ng at the far end of a table like he was lording over it in his own private war room.
“Luka,” he said.
“You the big boss now, Calum?” I said. “This is all shit. You do know that, don’t you?”
He regarded me as if he was pondering some immense decision.
“Your soldier buddy is looking for you,” he said, finally. Derisive. “He’s leaving messages everywhere. He wants to see you.”
“Why?”
“Why the hell should I know? You’d best get out there and see what they want.”
I stared back at him.
“West outpost,” he said. “Get your ass out there. See what the Earth boys want. Now scram.”
He said it the same way Dayton’s guys said it and he laughed.
I walked out, my skin crawling.
I’m sure you know this, but as much as being smart is cool, it makes dumb people scared of you and petty people paranoid. My problem was, I couldn’t hide it. I couldn’t help speaking out or doing stuff. From as early as I could remember, Latia always warned me against showing off and I swear, it was never that. I couldn’t help it. I loved doing things when I didn’t know if I could or not. It was always a higher wall, a tougher climb, a more insane jump, a trickier lock. The other kids didn’t get it. They got scared and ran from what made them afraid. I ran to it. Headlong. Because that’s the only way I had to keep the nightmares at bay. If that’s what made Calum hate me, fine, I wasn’t going to change. I just needed to get away.
Calum and his crowd shouted stuff to my back but I didn’t stop. I kept walking and worked my way out. I went and found Peanut, sidled up close and slipped the knotted bracelet off my wrist. “If I’m not back in three hours,” I said quietly, “take this to Latia and tell her I’m sorry.” She’d know I’d never take it off unless something was wrong. I just had a bad feeling about all this.
He looked at me horrified, like he wanted to argue, but he was also looking slightly behind me, over my shoulder, and I could tell Calum or one of his buddies was there.
“It’s fine,” I muttered and I left.
I could hear the rumblings of thunder in the clouds, rolling in from the foothills, and there were spots of rain in the air. It wasn’t quite dark. That crappy time between daytime and night when the light was weird and shift change meant the guards were all hyper-alert waiting for curfew to kick in. There weren’t many people about, even in the main streets as I worked my way over to the west side. A few scurried past, trying to get indoors before the storm broke.
The outpost over in the west quadrant was right next to an area that had got the crap bombed out of it. No one had ever bothered to rebuild or clear out the ruined buildings.
There was no sign of Charlie. I clambered up onto one of the rooftops, lying down on my stomach under an overhang of mangled corrugated sheeting, getting the position right so I could see everyone coming and going. Then I waited.
It started to get dark after a while. The searchlights on the roof of the outpost arced into life, white beams cutting through the inky blue black of the night. There were no other lights in that quarter of the city. From my vantage point, I could see right out into the desert to where the hulking shape of the crashed ship lay surrounded by a cordon of UM forces that were still pounding it.
Different vehicles drove up to the outpost a couple of times but still no Charlie.
The wind was picking up, swirling vortices dancing out on the plain and gusts starting to send heavier and heavier flurries of rain into my little shelter, turning into an insistent pounding on the sheeting over my head. And it was getting cold. I wasn’t wearing much and as I got colder and it got darker, storm clouds gathering, it was tempting to jump down and go find out what was going on. Except none of the other soldiers would take as light a view as Charlie did to a kid being out after curfew.
I was starting to think something must have happened. I shifted my weight and hugged my arms around myself to keep warm. Time to bug out. I wasn’t stupid.
Turns out I was.
I climbed down into an alleyway and dropped down, a scuffing sound of feet on the rubble behind me, and a ringing of metal on metal.
I turned, saw them and knew exactly what had happened.
Calum walked forward. He was holding a length of metal pipe in his hand. “What happened, Luka? Your buddy not looking out for you any more?” He had to shout. The rain was getting harder, pelting down, the rumble of thunder getting closer. He had two cronies with him, rifles slung on their backs. We were all getting soaked.
I shivered, blinking water out of my eyes, and squared up to him, shouting back, “What the hell are you doing?”
“We know what you’ve been up to,” he yelled. “Dayton knows. He’s told us everything.”
“Told you what?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Admit it. Admit what you’ve been doing. It’s time to choose sides, Luka.” Calum was striding around, barking mad, acting like he was on a stage, commanding a performance with a ragged pipe as a prop. He banged it against a drainpipe, pointed it at me then waved it theatrically towards the outpost. “Are you with us? Or are you with them?”
Chapter 13
Water was streaming down the back of my neck. Calum’s cronies moved to either side, bringing their rifles up to point at me. They weren’t even standing right. Even at that range, they’d never hit me holding them like that.
I couldn’t help the smile that snuck out.
Calum glowered and stepped forward. “What are you laughing at? You little shit. You’re done betraying us. We don’t need you any more. Don’t you get it?”
He stepped in, swinging the pipe two-handed, aiming for my head. I sidestepped and shoved him. He shouldered me aside and someone grabbed me from behind, almost hauling me off my feet.
The alleyway lit up with a flash of lightning that forked across the sky.
Calum came at me again and they were holding me so all I could do was curl up as the pipe hit, taking the brunt of it on my shoulder. It stung like hell. I kicked out, clawed at the hands holding me and bit the nearest arm I could reach.
A blow landed against the back of my head, almost sending me to my knees.
Calum grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me upright, nose to nose, rain streaming down our faces.
“You’re not one of us,” he screamed. “You never have been. You’re Earth scum and we know what you’ve been doing.” He was spitting rain at me.
I didn’t flinch and yelled back, “What the hell am I supposed to have done?”
He gestured again, wildly, towards the outpost. “Sold us out to them.”
“How?” I almost laughed again.
That didn’t go down well.
He flung me around, sending me staggering backwards, as a clap of thunder crashed overhead.
He yelled something I missed as I went sprawling. I rolled splashing through puddled dirt and raised my head, shaking water off my nose, as a figure stepped out from the shadows between us, topknot unmistakable.
She had her back to me, facing up to Calum, protecting me from them, protesting, shouting, “He hasn’t done anything.”
The two with the rifles closed in.
“Get out of here, Freddie,” Calum screamed.
I scrambled to my feet and pushed past her, grabbing her hand.
“What are you going to do?” I yelled. “Shoot us?”
Another flash lit up the city. There was a massive rumble that was too close to be thunder. I could feel the ground tremble under my feet. Gunfire started to echo through the streets. Dayton was starting his assault.
“Calum,” I shouted again, trying to get Freddie behind me, “what the hell do you think I’ve done?”
He almost lurched at us. “You betrayed us.” He looked at the kids on either side of him and yelled, “Do it.”
They fired.
I ducked sideways, grabbed Freddie and ran. They missed. The shots ricocheted off the wall by my he
ad as I barged into a doorway and shouldered open the door. I bundled her through and into darkness.
They were shouting after us. I ran, dragging her alongside me, running blind through rubble and debris, shoving our way through door after door. We burst out into another alleyway, back into the rain, and ran, hand in hand. I could hear them behind us and I could see a fire escape ladder half hanging off the side of a building up ahead. If they meant to kill us, they had a clear shot. We had no other way out but to run for it.
A shot pinged off the metal frame as we reached it. Freddie squealed. I grabbed her and hoisted her up, following as soon as I was sure it would hold us both. We scrambled onto the rooftop and ran. There was no easy way off it. I grabbed Freddie’s hand as we approached the edge, running full tilt, and yelled, “Jump.” We landed and rolled, skidding on the wet surface of the roof below. I lost hold of her and had to scramble back, dragging her back up into a run. She was struggling, limping and whimpering, but she kept going. We made it across two rooftops before she was done. I pulled her into the cover of an overhang and pushed a finger to her lips, mouthing, “Stay here.”
I crawled out and listened, not picking up anything but the howling of the storm and the echo of gunfire in amongst the driving rain.
They could have been right on top of us and we wouldn’t have known until it was too late. We couldn’t stay there. We were both soaked through and shivering. Freddie was holding her ankle.
“What do they think you’ve done?” she said as I crawled back in.
“Calum’s an idiot. I haven’t done anything. Can you walk?”
“Yeah.” She looked up at me. “Luka, why would they think you’ve betrayed us?”
I could tell from the look on her face, rain streaming down her cheeks with the tears, that she was thinking that I must have done something. That something must have happened.
I must have stiffened, pulled a face or something, because her face fell back into that dismayed look. She reached and touched my knee. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “You’re one of us. I don’t care what they say. I know you haven’t done anything.”