Okay, so I lied. :D
Planet Bob
sequel to Starbleached
Bullets
punctured the bulkhead to Bob’s right, and almost immediately the holes began
to suck.
Nah, he thought, chambering the next set
of rounds. This whole thing began to suck
ages ago. Gun loaded, he watched the holes slowly extrude carapace and heal
over. On a human ship, those holes would have been fatal. Overseer ships were
damned good at keeping their occupants alive. It’s why their mind-wiped slaves
were allowed to run around with full-caliber projectile weapons. Which were
currently pointed at Bob Harris and his team.
Damn it, he thought, as another salvo
cut through his cover. Everything on these damn boats was dark. The hallway
behind him was dim as hell’s outhouse; the hallway in front of him pulsed with
just enough orange and blue light for the pale heads of slaves to stand out
like beacons. And they could most definitely see him. He braced himself, ducked
around the cover and fired. His bullet sent one slave spinning into the dark,
finally dead.
Poor saps, he thought, chambering
another round. The slaves did their best to turn his cover into lace. You poor, damned bastards. Being in an
Overseer pen usually meant you were dead. That was the better outcome. If you
were particularly unlucky, you got drained of everything. Memory, the color of
your hair and skin, even the color of your eyes. Fifteen blank slates sat
crouched behind Overseer boxes and crates, each one of them will-less, each under
the total control of their terrifying masters. They moaned, footsteps
shuffling, mouths drooling…and their aim was impeccable.
Count on the cannibal aliens to create
zombies with guns. He took seven shots, dropping six slaves. That cut the
remaining opposition to twelve.
Three
of them had been members of Bob’s team. He thought. It was kind of hard to
tell.
There
was a sudden rustle among the slaves. Four taller, paler creatures stepped into
the light. Seven feet of pure muscle and ugly hate, four eyes, shark teeth
bared in a nasty snarl. Their armor was square-ish, like the costume of a
berserk hockey player in solid black. The guns they held wrapped around their
hands, some bits even digging into flesh so that dark alien blood dripped onto
the floor. Bob looked down the sight of his gun, lined up one baleful eye, and
pulled the trigger. Dark liquid splattered the bulkhead and the monster was
down.
Bullets
riddled his cover as the slaves reacted. Their weaponry wasn’t hooked directly
into their nervous system, but it still looked like the extruded remains of
someone else’s nightmare. Bob was more concerned that they hadn’t stopped
shooting. Damn. He hadn’t gotten the leader. They didn’t know much about
Overseer society, but Holton Fleet knew there was a division between the shock
troops and the real bad boys. Nail the shock troops, the slaves would keep
shooting. Kill the leader, and the poor saps would stop dead in their tracks.
I guess your boss is happy to let you soak
up the bullets, he thought, and turned another Overseer into so much
mangled meat.
“Where’s
our backup?” he muttered.
He’d
started this push with twelve men, and had managed to secure a quarter of the
Overseer’s Hellcat. Now he was so overextended he couldn’t go any further. He
was even depending on people who shouldn’t have been anywhere near the front
line. Glancing left, he frowned at the girl with the radio. Case in blasting
point, right there. Adrienne Parker had insisted on going into the field as
soon as her probationary period ended. He’d have been glad to have her on any
other mission. She was the best battlefield doctor he knew. But she’d already
proven less than solid around Overseers, a massive liability.
Still,
when things had gone sideways, Adrienne had risked her neck and grabbed the
radio.
Corporal
Lewiston had taken four Overseer bullets to the torso during the first strike.
Bob had deployed cover while she patched him up…only she hadn’t. Instead, he’d
watched her shoot Lewiston up with a dose of the enzyme that would keep him
from becoming dinner. Then she put a popper full of concentrated morphine into
his mouth. In ancient times the drug had been used as a pain killer; with
better, modern options, these days it was used to make dying easier.
“I’ll
give you as long as I can,” he whispered. Blood spurted between his lips and
down his chest. The wheeze of a punctured lung was almost inaudible under the
gunfire. Almost.
We can’t get him out, Bob realized. Adrienne
had assessed Private Lewiston’s condition with a cold, brown gaze, and her
assessment had been far worse than his own. Lewiston handed her the radio. “Make
it count,” He had whispered, and he clenched Adrienne’s hands tightly in the
dark.
I’ll make it count, alright, Bob thought,
teeth clenched. The enemy kept coming, but they also kept going down.
Adrienne
worked the radio dials, listened for a few moments, then shook her head. Chin length
brown hair bounced slightly as gravity blipped. The Indy, he thought, must be giving the aliens hell. “Indiana says they can’t get close enough
to punch the hull a second time. The Hellcat’s deployed Fangs and Spiders.
They—” a shudder rippled through the gigantic ship, slinging all the humans
hard against bulkhead walls. The Overseers didn’t even shudder. One of them almost
took out Sergeant Jean Haskill, Bob’s second-in-command. Adrienne cursed and
pulled herself upright, then unsnapped her gun.
Adry
Parker carried a fifty-cal, the smallest caliber that could still carry
explosive rounds. She braced against her cover, aimed, and with surgical
precision placed bullets neatly in the monster’s torsos. With standard ammo
those shots would not have been fatal. That’s why the Space Force issued
explosive rounds. The Overseer’s hearts went splot “They can’t get through the
mess out there,” Adry continued, as if all she’d done was swat a fly. “Alpha
Team still has control of this hallway. We can make it back to the shuttle if
we try. It’s getting undocked that’s the problem. If we go now--” Gunfire cut
her off.
Bob fired,
dropping the slaves that had almost nailed Adrienne. Then his gut winged. Two
of the slaves had begun to…eat…portions of the third. Zombies with Guns.
“Sir,
we need to go back to the shuttle.” Jean Haskill said.
Bob shook his head. “We came here to blow the
ship and we’re gonna blow her. We got to get closer to the ship’s main drives.”
He braced himself on the ship and aimed down his rifle once more.
A
Polycarbonate Rifle Type 3 wasn’t as flamboyant as a PCR 9. A three made
smaller holes, it couldn’t empty a hundred round clip in two seconds, and the
explosive charge it could fire wouldn’t penetrate a spaceship’s inner hull. No
good for vacuum or ground war, but the threes were perfect for ship-to-ship warfare.
Overseer
guns were different. The firing mechanisms were organic, heavy on the methane
and sulfur. A firefight could become overwhelming just based on smell alone.
The bullets themselves were lozenge shaped, with awful aerodynamic barbs at the
ends like some kind of seed. If they weren’t removed from the human body
quickly, they would decay into a flesh-eating soup of acids and bacteria. Gangrene
could follow in a matter of hours.
So the
sooner he got rid of the guys with the big toys, the better. He aimed his shots
for the alien’s heads and fired. Direct hits. The noise was deafening. The
sight, even with the dim shipboard lighting, was the stuff nightmares are made
of. A piece of black-glazed skull spun slowly on the ground between the two
forces. Even the slaves stared at the mess.
“I’m
sure that was completely necessary,” Adry muttered, her skin gone faintly
green.
“Yep,”
Bob said, and chambered another round.
Bob
and Adrienne had come to Golden Dragon on a tip. A lone Overseer had been seen
in the district capital’s main market. Not too unusual. Golden Dragon had a
history of cooperation with Overseers, treating outlaying villages as buffets
and turning Space Force personnel over if they needed a bargaining chip or
three. But the hyper-militant race of aliens did not travel alone. It was
strange. Bob had to check it out.
Golden
Dragon had given them a warm welcome and offers of assistance. With the Landry
Enzyme, Bryan Landry’s last creation before his subsumation, Golden Dragon
finally had a defense against the alien horde on their doorstep. Of course the Space Force could come
investigate their planet. Holton fleet had full access and co-operation….right
up until Golden Dragon turned their transport and half their mission team over
to a cloaked Hellcat, the Overseer version of a battleship. Landry Enzyme or
not, Golden Dragon was still straddling the fence.
The
worst part, Bob thought, as he sighted down the barrel of his gun, was that they’d
come to Golden Dragon looking for Bryan Landry himself. Holton Fleet had
certainly never given known collaborators the enzyme. Landry had to have given
it to Golden Dragon, and that meant he had to still be there. Perhaps even on
this ship. Much as humans in the Rim worlds wanted the enzyme, the Overseers
wanted it more. Humans were, after all, Overseers food. The enzyme could
increase their supply exponentially.
It’d end the slave supply, though, and take
subsumation off the table. He aimed and took out two of the faceless
slaves. Some of them, the brightest and most durable, might have regained the
ability to speak. Maybe. Most of them were known for abandoning their weapons
and coming at you with their teeth. If
that damn drug only poisoned the sons of bitches, we’d be three for three. Another
shot, another dead subhuman.
But if
Landry could create the enzyme in the first place, he could also negate its
benefits to humanity. And that would be very bad. Nothing said the good doctor
was still on humanity’s side.
Adrienne
made a whimpering sound. “Don’t shoot them if you don’t have to.”
Zombie
slaves kept coming, even when their guts were riddled with holes. Dead white,
faces like melted candles, eyes like boiled eggs, each slave was consumed with
hate for anything human, driven by undying loyalty to their alien masters. Bob
had to shoot them. He had a powerful need nothing else could satisfy.
And if Landry shows his ugly face around
here, I’ll develop a need to shoot him, too.
He
tightened his grip on the rifle.
Bryan
Landry had been Bob’s best friend.
That
was the problem with Overseers, he thought, as he finished another slave off. You
never knew if the thing you were killing was truly alien. The slaves were
obviously human, just drained into an animal state by the ravenous monsters
they served. But some of the aliens themselves had once been human. Somehow the
aliens could remake you that completely. The brains of Holton Fleet called the
process subsumation, and the only protection against both it and their
goddamned feeding process was the Landry Enzyme. Bryan had made it. Adry had
refined it after Bryan was subsumed. Every report said the former humans
remembered nothing of their old lives, but that must have been bullshit. Bryan
had made a B-line for Adry and the enzyme, snatching both off a transport Bob
had been flying.
He and
Bob had been face to faceplate in the back of the ship. Bob hadn’t recognized
him. And Bryan, apparently, hadn’t recognized Bob either. Except possibly as
dinner. Bob could still remember the prickle of alien teeth on his neck. Bryan,
as a tall, handsome human, had told him they were like overgrown jellyfish
stingers. And once you came that kissing-close to death, you didn’t forget it
fast.
According
to Adrienne, he’d protected her and an entire village, had half starved himself
to avoid feeding on the humans. She had survived nearly a month in Overseer
custody. It was bound to make her a little loopy.
Adrienne
had known Bryan’s work inside and out. He might not have remembered enough to
recreate it on his own, but Bryan must have worked out just enough to maneuver
Adrienne into betraying the human race. Bob didn’t think that would be all that
difficult. She was a doctor. A healer by nature. He could probably turn her
coat with a ten-year-old kid and a pop gun.
He
looked sideways. Adrienne had her gun braced against the crate top. Black
carapace did not regrow when it was used as casing, apparently. Fluffy white
insides and bits of circuitry were spilling out of the cracks. She should have
traded her perch for better cover, but her eyes showed no hint of fear. Or of
anything, really. Another alien had arrived to ride herd on the handful of
surviving slaves. She took it out with a single shot to the cranium. Pieces
flew everywhere, and the zombie-like once-humans descended on the corpse en
masse.
Alright.
A six year old kid and a pop gun.
Besides,
she’d been Bryan Landry’s fiancée. Of course she’d get unbalanced around alien
him. Bob reloaded his gun.
The
Overseers had the USS Phoebe Balboa.
Feeble, they’d nicknamed her. She wasn’t very big, but she was a primary
contact ship. Now that Holton Station was gone, the fleet that it had supported
was on its own. Without repair bays, manufacturing facilities and a full
company of bored researchers happy to help refit warships like King, Garrison and Tejas, they’d elected to limit inter-system contact to the smaller
Admiral-class battleships. Addys were tough birds, most of the time, but if
they had to lose one, he was pretty glad it was Feeble.
But Feeble’s computers had passwords and a full catalogue of Holton Fleet’s subspace
drives. If the Overseers’ main body got hold of that intel, they could blow
Holton Fleet out of the sky. We’d have to
retrofit every subspace drive and change their frequencies. And we don’t have
the manpower or the supplies to pull that off. Holton station had been
their primary support. If they could have pulled the ships back to Old Earth,
they would have, but friction between humanity’s oldest star systems had
resulted in a blockade. Communications couldn’t be stopped, but only one supply
ship in ten made it out to the Rim these days. Holton Fleet was on its own. Losing
even one ship was a disaster. Feeble’s commander
had ordered them to sit tight and wait for General Shawn Miller to decide what
to do.
Bob
had been halfway to the Hellcat when the order went out. That close to the
ship, well, you might as well finish things. And dropping Adrienne off at
Golden Dragon would have been too much trouble.
The
Overseers could not be allowed to keep Feeble.
Bob’s strike team had thirty pounds of Explosive Compound Influx 9, which
was enough to turn a ship the size of Feeble
into loosely connected molecules of compound steel. It’d blow a very generous
hole in the Hellcat’s hull, but then Bob was in a very generous mood right now.
He’d magnanimously taken out the Hellcat’s com system. All that was left was
finding Feeble and turning her, and
large sections of the Hellcat, into very, very tiny pieces.
Of
course, that was the plan before they
ran into three quarters of the Overseer crew and most of their slaves en route.
With the
first plan knocked out, things moved on to something more dangerous. One could
almost call it suicidal. Overseer ships blew up when they took too much battle
damage to operate…even when there were no aliens aboard. It seemed an automatic
function of their atomic reactors. Bob figured, strap enough ECI to the main
reactor coils, they could make more than the Feeble evaporate. There was just one major problem with that plan.
The
reactors were right down this hall, behind two carapace doors and this
apparently endless flood of slaves.
Every time, Bob thought, as he fired his
gun, I think I’ve seen—blam—how bad these sons of bitches can get—blam,
blam, blam—I find myself realizing it can
get worse. Oh, God, it can get worse. Bang, bang, bang, and he was out of
ammo again. What’d they do? Raid a
village?
He
sighted down the PCR 3 and fired, dropping the next to last slave to the
ground. He’d lined up the final shot when the doors slowly sectioned open. Five
more aliens stepped through, and another ten slaves. White hair, wide, double
thumbed hands, a four-eyed face mostly hidden by the extruded mask. Black blast
armor.
Here we go again.
“Damn,”
Adrienne’s clear voice echoed in the suddenly quiet hall. “I’m out.”
The
lead Overseer gestured, and the gunplay began again. The slaves advanced
quickly; Adry wasn’t the only one out of ammo. Bob’s reserves were running dry.
Soon, he’d have to sound the retreat, and—
Kzzzzit!
A blue
halo of electrical discharge engulfed two Overseers. The radiant voltage zipped
into their limbs, locking muscles in place as their nervous systems were
overloaded. A second blast took out the other two with a hiss of ozone took. Shock
round discharge. Something that could only be fired by a PCR 9.
Goddamn it! Bob thought. Hellcat layouts
were one of the few ships maps Holton Fleet had. Bob had it memorized. Whoever
was firing off the rounds had no cover at all. He grabbed the radio from
Adrienne, ignoring the hail of slave-fired bullets winging past. “Hold your
fire! Whoever is on the left flank, hold your fucking fire, you’re too goddamned exposed.”
After
a few moments of confused babble, the radio crackled to life. “It’s not us,
sir. All personnel accounted for.”
Another
shock round blasted from the unseen rifle. Overseers were hard, almost
impossible to kill. They healed rapidly. Short of disconnecting the head from
the body or julienning the heart all in one go, your options were very limited.
Bryan Landry had developed shock rounds as well, long before the enzyme was
even a possibility. But the manufacturing process had been lost with Bryan and
Holton Station. They were too valuable to throw away on a mission like this. No
one else should have them.
This, Bob thought, is not good.
A
young, blond man emerged from behind the hallway pillars. Blond, blue eyed, chiseled
features, was a solid looking kid. Not one of theirs, though. He didn’t have
the heft to hold a PCR 9, either. Then the boy’s vest swung open and Bob got a
good look at a young, manly chest with a well-healed feeding mark just to the
left of center. Right over the heart.
This is either bad, Bob thought, or incredibly fucking bad.
The
slaves responded slowly, wheeling as if in a dream. The kid, on the other hand,
had a souped up AK-103. Russian, Bob
thought, as the kid drilled the slaves full of holes. This is not going to be my day. Another Overseer ran up, weapon
still drilling itself into its skin, and the blue corona of the shock round
dropped it cold before it even got close to firing. The kid followed this up with a volley of
gunfire that sent both Adry and Bob back behind their cover. Nobody’s taught this idiot about quality of
fire over quantity. Gimme two seconds and a decent full-auto, and I’ll educate
the moron.
The
kid had to reload eventually, and Bob took this pause to duck back around the
box. He came up to a rifle staring right at his head. The kid shouted something
in Russian.
And an
Overseer voice answered.
Incredibly fucking bad it is. Well, shit. “Hey, kid,” Bob shouted.
“Da?” the boy shouted. He was blond and a
little on the cute side. Bob Harris, name aside, was three-quarters Latino. He’d
never quite gotten that whole blond-and-blue thing, especially not when the
gringo got out in the sun too long and began to peel. Don’t feed them after midnight, he’d always thought. “Why don’t you
and your buddy come out and—”
Adrienne’s
shout was all the warning he got. Something grabbed the back of his neck.
Something with the familiar prickle of nematocyst teeth.
Oh, hell no. he thought, how’d it get around. His combat knife
was out and moving before that oh-so-delicate prickle had time to register. It
hit flesh, glancing off bone, and the Overseer behind him grunted in
displeasure. Adry screamed, a combative howl that ended with the thunk of
sharps hitting flesh. Bob twisted, using the knife as a pivot point, and got
his gun under the thing’s chin. He pulled the trigger. In the heartbeat it took
for the gun to fire, the monster had pulled back, and the shot only cut through
cheek and faceplate. Blue black blood coursed down white skin and pattered on
the deck below.
Adrienne
clubbed it hard with the butt end of a dropped PCR 3. Dark liquid splattered up
one cheek. She looked like unspeakably fierce. The thing dropped for a second,
and two bullets went through its knees. Adrienne was a damn good shot, as
surgical with a gun as she was with a knife. It was a damn shame the goddamn
monster was going to heal. She stepped around, keeping her gun level with the
creature’s temple. “Take off the face plate.” The creature hesitated. “Take it off.” She barked. The monster brought a
double-thumbed hand up to its faceplate. Her hands began to shake. Bob’s gut
fell like a stone and then rose with relief when the face revealed was inhuman
as starlight. Adrienne’s sigh was even louder than his own.
But
this one was different. The brutish features were more refined. Four slitted
nostrils flexed with a trickle of blackish blood. The pale eyes glittered with
fine intelligence. It was shaved bald, save for a neat braid, and it didn’t
smell like rancid blood or an open sewer. It studied all humans, breathing
heavily.
“Submit.”
Mobile lips exposed a double row of shark teeth, a glowing blue tongue. Four
white eyes observed this potential victim. “You will live unharmed. We could
use your…talents for our own.”
Okay, Bob thought. This is new.
The
Russian stopped beside Adry, pointing his gun in its ugly face. “Where is
little ship?” the boy said. His accent was heavy. Far heavier than most of the
survivors from Dorofey. “Where is captured cruiser?”
The
alien eyes flickered to the Russian. “Tell us where the renegade is, and you
will survive.”
“You
get nothing, four eyes,” Bob said, tilting his gun down further. The alien
studied the barrel for a moment, and then surged back to its feet. With a heavy
backhand it threw Adrienne into the wall, then stood between her and the other
humans, blocking her from escape or rescue. A massive hand snapped Bob’s gun
into two pieces. It grabbed the Russian by his neck. The boy began to scream.
Bob caught a glimpse of white nematocyst teeth penetrating flesh like small,
questing worms, emanating from an organ in the monster’s palm. It was going to
feed. Bob caught his combat knife off the ground and wheeled to face the alien.
He was USMC and human. He’d save the universe or else die trying. That was his
job. It was what he was made for.
“Hey,
bastard, why not—”
And
then the monster’s head exploded.
Then:
Being
a kid on Foster kind of sucked. Especially if you were the youngest in your
class. It helped that Bob wasn’t a wimp. He looked puny enough, but the first
kid to try to take his lunch money had gone to the nurse with a bloody nose and
a beatific black eye. Bob was never a major target, but he’d never been a major
helper, either.
The
Landry boys, now, they were targets. The girls flirted with Bryan, which didn’t
help matters, and the older boys made it a habit to pummel the ever-loving shit
out of tiny little Michel. The problem with standing up for targets was that it
made you one, and Bob had never had much truck with the Landrys anyway. He
wasn’t happy about breaking that record. But it was either help Bryan, or fail
school this year. There’d been a little dirty card on the school bulletin board.
No name, but there didn’t need to be. It was handwritten, and everything Bryan
Landry did was neat and precise. As if he thought making all his letters and numbers
mathematically perfect could somehow mitigate what was happening at home.
The
kids all knew. It was one of the things that made Bryan such a target.
Bob
had wondered about this. He’d seen Bryan fight at the compulsory bouts at Space
Force sponsored rec, and he’d decided long, long ago he didn’t want to tangle
with the kid. Bob was pretty sure he’d win, but he wasn’t sure it’d be a
bloodless victory. But Bryan never fought back outside of the ring. And he’d
certainly never fought back against his father.
Well…you
love your parents, Bob thought, and even when you don’t if you’re a good kid
you protect them. An arrest would be bad. If people found out what Hatch was
doing and he wound up in jail, he could get hurt. Maybe even dead.
But why
would Landry post a notice on the physical board? Especially with such a sweet
honey pot. Five hundred credits and permanent help with homework. Raise a full
grade av, promise! Bob was failing writing comp, lit and math, and it was five
hundred credits! Whatever Landry wanted, Bob was pretty sure he could pull it
off.
The
meeting point was in the old grain silo, a leftover from the colony days before
Old Earth sold Foster the new storage/shipping containers. It was tall and
echoy. The old plas-alloy sides hadn’t rusted in two hundred years. Plenty of
birds nested up in the roofing. They were Aaron’s Swallow, or just Aarons. They
built nests of hardened spit. It made a pretty good soup if you boiled it, but
you really had to boil it. Almost a
full day of hot, stinky steam. The nutritional value was super, though, and if
you were poor, or broke, or your da spent most of the child allotment on his
own booze, Aarons-nest soup and watergreen root would at least put food in your
stomach.
Bryan
Landry hung from the rafters, his legs clenched tight around one of the upper girders.
In his right hand was an Aaron, blue-blush feathers with a round, cute face.
They were closer to Earth mammals than birds, bearing live young and nursing
them in the safe hollows of their oval-shaped nests. They had beaks, though,
and talons, and they’d make ribbons of your hands if you weren’t careful. Bryan
worked a thin knife through the nest with his left, and like any good harvester
he left just enough nest to put the avian back into. Only an asshole took the
whole nest. Otherwise the bird would leave and not come back, and you’d be out
a nest next week.
“Landry.”
Bob said. His voice echoed through the old silo.
He got
a quick wave of the knife in response. That, Bob decided, was one thing he
hated about Landry. He had an o-tech knife. It was not illegal to own Overseer
tech, though most people would choose not to. Why keep nightmarish stuff around
if you couldn’t even use it? But Overseer knives were really killer. Sharp as
blazes, almost parting molecules and they never needed sharpening. Between when
you put it up and when you used it again, the blade resharpened itself.
Bursting wicked.
Landry
took two more nests, dropped his harvest bucket, then managed a quick
somersault down to the ground. He was, Bob thought, the second best gymnast in
school.
Bob
was the first.
“How
ya doin’, Harris?” Bryan asked. Black haired, blue eyed, dusky colored skin. He
was sixteen, all legs and shoulders and elbows, and because he was so good at
harvesting edibles from the wild he and his brother weren’t stunted at all.
Some of the other kids in class had parents just as bad as Hatch, but they
looked it. Bryan and Mich weren’t like that. Sure, their clothes were the synth
fiber that came with Child Allotment, but even Bob had worn that for a little
while, when he was growing out of everything and good clothes weren’t that
cheap. Bryan wore the featureless black shirt and pants with pizzazz.
Bob
decided that small talk was out. “What’s this about five hundred cred, Landry?
What you want me to do, kill your da?”
There
was a brief flicker in Bryan’s eyes. Bob grinned. Bryan had thought about it.
He weren’t no slouch, then. If it were Bob’s dad…he shied away from the thought.
His dad was a good man. Captain-leader of his squad in the Space Force, one
year away from earning his Honorary Citizenship, something that would give him
and his family a straight shot back to Earth, if it ever came to that.
It won’t ever come to that, Bob thought.
Dad’s gonna stop the suckers before they
get within sixteen light-years of Foster. You’ll see.
Bryan
sheathed his knife. “Nah, I wouldn’t need help with that, you know? Hatch is a
waste of ammo. No. I want you to help me and Mich run away.”
Bob hesitated.
He could definitely get behind that cause…but it’d be a major felony if he got
caught. If you had a felony the Space Force wouldn’t take you, and that was
Bob’s great goal in life. But they also wouldn’t take you if your grades sucked.
Rocks and hard places. That was life in the Rim, for sure. “You said you’d help
me get my averages up.”
“Well,
we can’t go right away. I got to get a solid grade av this year, A neg or
better.” Now he got a bag open and began running a peeler over watergreen
roots. The soft bark gave way to shockingly green flesh. High source of proteins
and trace nutrients, those were. Also poor food.
Something
in Bryan’s tone gave part of the game away. “You cheated.”
“I did
not.” Bryan dropped the peeler.
“Yes,
you did. You hacked the recommends. You know who’s going to get the Jordan
College ‘ship…and it’s gonna be you.”
“Christ.
Keep your voice down, will you?”
Bob
modulated his tone. Not that it was a surprise. “Why’d you do that?”
“I’ve
been hacking the goddamned recs since we were both thirteen.” Bryan said.
“Why?”
“Because
I needed to make sure I didn’t get it. Otherwise I’d be leaving Mich home.
Alone.” A significant pause. “With Hatch.”
Birdsong
echoed. Sunlight gleamed off a pile of broken plas and glass in the doorway.
Bob’s shoulders slumped.
“I heard
what Marian Liester said he did,” He said, sitting beside Bryan and picked up a
watergreen root. His own pocket knife was standard Marine issue. The Space
Force were, like, the absolute greatest. Whatever you wanted to do, you could
do it when you were in. Why would anybody want to be out? He cut a big chunk off the root and stuck it
in one cheek. The flavor was sweet and a little hot, and chewy as all hell.
Better than gum, even. “I’d think you’d want to get out of there fast as you
can.”
“Yeah,
but when Dad’s lit he likes to hit things. Usually it’s just me. He thinks it’s
funny.” Pause. “If I leave Dad will probably kill Mich. And I’ve been up for
the Jordan since I was thirteen. But you have to be really good to get it, you
know? A negs or better. So if I saw that I was in line, I’d drop to B pluses
long enough to pull my name off the recommends.”
“So
what’s changed your mind?” Bob asked.
Bryan
smiled, like someone getting out of prison. “You can take family members with
you, now. I think they changed it because of Peredita.” Peredita Chan was the
girl who won the Jordan last year. She’d given birth while the recs were still
on and had turned it down so she could stay with her kid. She wound up going
anyway, when they changed the rules last year.
“I
could take Mich with me if he were my dependant. He’s young enough. And they
got that Space Force training facility right up against the College. Once he’s
sixteen I could get him in. We’d be set for life…and away from Dad.”
Bob
thought for a second. “Won’t the Peds catch you on your way to space port?”
Peds, or PDs, meant the police department. Old timers called them the cops,
too, though nobody really knew why. It had something to do with copper.
Bryan
nodded. “That’s why I need help. I got a plan.”
“You
need more than a plan, dude.” Bob said, thoughtfully. “You wanna run far
enough, you’re gonna need a spaceship.”
“Yeah.”
And a big grin, enough to see why the girls chattered about Bryan, even with
the rumors about him running through school. “I got one of those, too.”
Find out what happens next January 1st, 2013! And don't forget to get a copy of Starbleached, if you haven't already, so you can be up to speed.
