Rebellion

by Edward M. Grant

  Another voice joined the song. Volkov yelled the words from the front of the compartment, almost as though he felt that overpowering Joffer’s voice was a matter of honour.

  Then more men joined in, as though hearing the familiar words had distracted them from the fear of imminent death.

  Or, perhaps, so that if they crashed and burned in the next few seconds, at least someone would have a good story to tell of the platoon who fell out of the sky to their deaths singing the Legion’s song.

  Desoto began to sing, and nudged Logan’s side. Logan took a deep breath and joined in too, feeling his body relax as he yelled out the familiar words and the world around him seemed to fade away.

  As the other Legionnaires joined them, the cacophony grew louder and louder until it even drowned out Poulin’s screams.

  Then the shuttle’s nose pulled up.

  The thrusters roared outside, much louder than a normal landing as the noise came in through the hole in the hull. But still not loud enough to drown out the sound of nearly sixty Legionnaires singing.

  Flames flickered into the air beyond the hole as a concrete landing pad rose into view, and reflected the thruster exhaust back toward them. The shuttle's landing legs clunked as it touched down. Logan’s heart still raced as the shuttle settled on the legs with a loud creak, and the whine of the motors slowed. The flames outside flickered and vanished.

  The singing faded away as the men looked toward the ramp at the rear of the shuttle. It whirred, and sunlight glowed around the top and sides of the frame as it began to open.

  “Evacuate,” Lieutenant Merle yelled, as he pulled the release on his seat straps, and they fell away from his shoulders.

  Sergeant Volkov released his straps, and stood, swinging his arms toward the ramp.

  “Don’t just sit there, ladies. Allez! Allez!”

  Straps clicked around the hold as the survivors unlocked them, and extricated themselves from their seats. Logan pulled his straps away, trying not to stare at Johnson’s body as the blood spray faded to a trickle of red dripping down his chest.

  He’d seen dead bodies before. Some up close.

  But none quite like that.

  Medics raced up the ramp into the shuttle, pushing past the men trying to get out. The platoon medics clambered past the other Legionnaires, to head for the wounded. They took one look at Johnson’s headless corpse, then crouched over Adamski’s motionless body.

  Heinrichs grabbed Adamski’s wrist, while another medic unclipped the straps that still held him in his seat where it had become jammed between the crates.

  The Legionnaires strode toward the ramp. But, somehow, Logan’s legs just wouldn’t move as fast as they should. He gasped down as many rapid, deep breaths as he could, and his legs moved a little faster with the extra air he sucked in.

  Lieutenant Merle had warned them before boarding the shuttle that the air on the planet contained less oxygen than they were used to, but Logan hadn’t expected to struggle quite so much. The oxygen level on the Marine LePen had slowly been reduced during the trip to try to get them acclimatized, but not far enough to be a risk if the ship was attacked and they had to fight. Now he was facing the full force of the planet’s weak atmosphere.

  The bright blue sun that was shining high above the wide concrete expanse of the spaceport’s landing pads blinded Logan for a second as he followed the other gasping men down the ramp. The world seemed to spin around him as the adrenaline began to fade, and he slowly raised his hand to block out the sun’s glare.

  The shock of seeing men die like that had prevented him from thinking about what could have happened to him, and the others. That could have been him in there, torn apart by the shrapnel, or falling to his death, still strapped to his seat. Killed by insurgents on his first day in a combat zone, without even getting a chance to shoot back at whoever had hit them.

  The hot air around the shuttle’s still-glowing heat-shield was roasting his skin. He strode away across the grey, dusty landing pad as fast as his legs could go, following Bairamov and the rest of 1st Section.

  More medics ran toward the shuttle from the buildings nearby, and men wearing body armour raced toward defensive positions around the spaceport, as though they thought they could shoot down a SAM with an autorifle. The regiment had brought some point defence guns to defend against missiles from the ground, but they were still packed into the shuttles the insurgents had fired at.

  Logan glanced back at their shuttle. The side of the hull was black around the three-metre-wide hole where the SAM had hit it. They’d been lucky. If it had knocked out the motors at that height, the shuttle would probably have crashed. The whole platoon would be dead, not just three or four of them.

  Dust blew into the air as the last of the flight of six shuttles from the Marine LePen landed on another pad nearby, blasting the concrete with the flaming exhaust from the landing thrusters. The other two personnel shuttles were disgorging the remainder of 1st Company, who stared at the damage on 3rd Platoon’s shuttle as they carried their bags down the ramps.

  Men in powered suits hauled crates and combat suits out of the cargo shuttles. One of those shuttles spewed a thick pillar of black smoke from its motors. Had that been hit, too?

  The flight crew clambered out of 3rd Platoon’s shuttle’s cockpit, then strolled through the passenger compartment and down the ramp, nodding and pointing at the hole in the side as they surveyed the damage. Ground crew rolled up in a six-wheeled truck, and jumped down onto the pad. They tutted as they stared at the hole.

  “Now that’s a job and a half,” one of them muttered.

  Then another siren whined, and was joined by a dozen more around the spaceport, until the noise grew so loud that Logan’s eardrums ached, and he covered his ears with his hands. The maintenance crew spun around, and hurried back across the landing pad toward their vehicle.

  “What’s that noise?” Logan yelled at them.

  “Radiation alarm,” the man yelled back. “Get inside, and wait it out.”

  There were a dozen semi-circular mounds of dirt on the far side of the landing pads. Each mound must be at least ten metres tall, and some had metal doors that rose almost to roof level. More, smaller, dirt-covered buildings were spread out across the plain beyond. Men and women around him were already running toward the dark rectangles of the open doors in the walls of the nearest buildings.

  Logan picked the closest, and followed them. For the first few steps, his legs kept up, then he was gasping. He slowed as he sucked in the weak air, and his legs began to ache. So did the other men around him.

  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. He stumbled on, and the door grew larger as he moved toward it, until he was able to fling himself inside.

  Two dozen men and women now filled the corridor through the centre of the building. Leaning against the walls, crouching in the corners, or sitting on the floor.

  Logan slumped down in the first gap he found, gasping, and stretching his ribs with every breath until his lungs were as full as they could go. Even then, there didn't seem to be enough air to stop his heart pounding.

  The hiss of dozens of men and women sucking in the thin air all around him filled the bunker, over the muffled noise of the sirens outside.

  The last man in pulled the door closed. Red lights glowed around the frame.

  “How long does this last?” Logan said, between gasps.

  The man shrugged, then slumped down in the corner by the door. “Might be five minutes, might be five hours. Can’t really tell until it stops.”

  “Does this happen often?”

  “Once or twice a week lately. The sun’s been pretty active the last few months. Welcome to New Strasbourg.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Hastings, England, 2119 A.D.

  Logan was fifteen the day the toffs came for his sister. It was a warm, sunny Saturday in September as the summer approached its end, and the cool green seawater of the English Channel lapped against the
wooden hull of Jason's father’s small dinghy as the two boys floated in it a couple of kilometres offshore.

  The wood creaked beneath them, and the sail fluttered above them in the wind, tapping against the mast. Seawater from a wave slapping against the side of the hull splashed over Logan’s face where he sat at the rear of the boat, and he wiped it away. The sharp taste of sea salt filled his mouth, and he spat it over the side.

  “Look at that,” Jason yelled from the bow, then stood and pointed to starboard, away from the narrow green line of the English coast.

  A grey, boxy blob, long and low, was sailing slowly from horizon to horizon, further out to sea.

  One of the Royal Navy ships that patrolled the English Channel, keeping watch for anyone trying to approach the coast of England from France, just fifty kilometres across the water. Not that anyone had in years, at least not so far as he’d heard about it.

  Many of the world’s nations had treaties, agreements that they would never fight each other again on Earth, because past wars had been so destructive that no-one could risk another. And, besides, the resources in the off-world colonies were much more valuable to fight over. Earth was the place humans came from. Space was where they were going.

  The Navy starships patrolled the wormholes and colonies in space, but their sea-going ships on Earth were there just in case nations couldn’t stick to the treaties. Should the French or the Reich decide to break the treaty and launch a sneak attack on England, the Navy would be their first line of defence.

  Logan shaded his eyes from the sun with his hand as he stared out across the water. That blob must be a hundred metres long. Maybe a little more.

  A destroyer, most likely.

  He grabbed the long rod of the dinghy’s tiller beside him. The rough wood scraped against his palm as he pulled it gently toward him, turning the rudder in the water behind the boat. The dinghy slowly turned out to sea, twisting against the waves, and bobbing up and down as it slid over them.

  Jason’s father was the only person Logan knew who had a boat, and the man sometimes let them borrow it to sail along the coast. Jason's father was an engineer at the ammunition factory, one of the last remaining employers in Hastings.

  Jason said his dad was on-call there night and day to keep the robots running, churning out bullets, missiles and shells for the Royal Marines and Royal Navy, and spent many nights at work, fixing their problems.

  That put him far enough up the town’s hierarchy to afford a few perks. Like a terraced house instead of an apartment.

  And the boat.

  Of course, the toffs who ran the town got yachts and powerboats, and enough of them to fill most of the town’s new plasteel marina, down on the seafront by the old wooden pier that had been there since long before their parents were born. But those toffs would barely give Logan’s family a second glance if they somehow ended up in the same room together.

  His family lived on UBI, the Universal Basic Income, and that barely paid for a small apartment to live in. His parents had tried to find jobs now and again to supplement their income, but with so much work now automated, there were hundreds of people fighting over every remaining opening.

  They’d applied to move off-world, to one of England’s few colonies, but the competition there was even worse. They wanted people with experience in farming, mining, robotics and medicine, not those who’d barely found any kind of work since leaving school.

  The only times he or his family would meet the toffs were when they were being punished for doing something wrong, or at the town party at the end of the summer, where the town toffs would turn up to show their faces, smile enough to make people think they cared, then disappear as soon as they could.

  But the parties had music, dancing, games and contests, and better food than Logan ate the rest of the year. Real food, like the toffs could afford to eat every day, not cheap ration packs from the food vats that his parents brought home for Logan and his brother and sisters.

  Everyone looked forward to the party through the summer, particularly the kids. It was the one day when they could stuff themselves with real meat, vegetables and cake until they could stuff in no more, then talk about how good it had been all through the cold, damp winter. A week had passed since that year’s party, but Logan could still feel the taste of real food in his mouth, instead of the sickly artificial goo of the ration packs.

  “Don’t get too close,” Jason said.

  Logan looked up. The destroyer had more than doubled in size as they approached, and it came closer with every second as the dinghy bounced at an angle over the waves toward it.

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  He knew better than to get close enough to a navy ship to be shot at. The fun was getting as close as you could before that happened. The navy crew would have spotted the dinghy long ago, scanned them, and figured out that they weren’t much of a threat. But, eventually, they’d react.

  How close could he get before then?

  “Come on,” Jason said. His voice quivered as though he was trying to sound less scared than he really was. “Turn back. Dad’ll be pissed off if you get his boat blown up. And I don’t want to have to swim home from here. It’ll take all day.”

  Logan kept going. His heart beat faster, and a smile spread across his face.

  Playing chicken with the navy ships was just about the most exciting time of his life. It sure beat sitting behind a desk at school, listening to the teacher drone on about things he couldn’t care less about, staring out the windows, and wishing he was somewhere else.

  Anywhere else.

  A drone hummed through the air about ten metres above them, the thin fuselage floating through the sky at barely more than walking speed, suspended beneath fat wings ten metres across, and pulled forwards by a lazily spinning propeller on the nose. The dark eyes of its cameras stared down at them.

  Logan smiled, and gave it a thumbs-up.

  The ship came closer still as the dinghy sailed on.

  From that distance the destroyer looked like a squat black pyramid, squashed down and stretched out from bow to stern. Nothing interrupted the smooth surface except the rectangular hatches for missile launchers, and half a dozen turrets maybe two metres across. The long, thin barrels of rapid-fire gauss-cannon protruded from them, ready to shred anything hostile that came within range.

  He’d read about these ships in the news once. One of the advertising features, recruiting boys for the Royal Navy. As he read the stories they printed of heroic battles, and long cruises around the Atlantic, he’d thought about joining up when he was old enough.

  Maybe he still would, if they’d take him. Sail the seas, see the rest of the world, protect England from its enemies. Maybe, if he did well enough, he'd progress to sailing through space on one of the Navy’s starships, and taking the fight for humanity's future out among the stars.

  But a job was at least a year away. He had to finish school, first. Get good grades that would make him stand out from the other boys. Learn some skills that would be useful in life.

  If he could stand it for that long without going crazy.

  Two of the destroyer’s small turrets slowly turned toward them. The ship’s siren whooped. They were close enough.

  Logan climbed to his feet beside Jason, swung his arms above his head, and yelled.

  “Hey, Navy!”

  The sirens whooped louder and longer. Logan laughed and swung his arms harder and faster as Jason grabbed the tiller, then turned the nose of the dinghy away from the destroyer. The dinghy bobbed up into the air as it hit the destroyer’s bow wake, then it slid down the far side of the wave, still turning away, back toward the green coast of England.

  Logan slumped down beside Jason, still laughing.

  Jason glanced over his shoulder, at the receding destroyer. “You’ll get us killed one day.”

  “Come on. It’s just a bit of fun.”

  Dark clouds were rolling in from the east, anyway. Grey spots appe
ared on the wood of the dinghy’s hull as the first of the raindrops fell. It was time to go home.

  They tied up the dinghy at the marina, to the three-metre-thick plasteel quay that protected the boats from the winter storms. Then strolled home in the drizzle through narrow streets between white-walled buildings in the Old Town, and past the tall, dark walls of the gated management communities near the shore. The armour-clad guards at the gates glared at the boys as they passed. Logan raised his hand to wave at them, but Jason grabbed it and pulled it down. Maybe he had taken enough risks for the day.

  A car was parked in their street, outside the door that led to the stairs to Logan’s parents’ apartment. The car was wide and black, with six wheels and six doors, maybe seven or eight metres long. He'd never seen a car in their street before. And now a huge one was parked right outside where he lived.

  “What is that thing?”

  “Dad would know,” Jason said. “I think it's a Bentley. One of those new ones, with fusion engines.” He smiled, as though imagining himself driving one. “It could probably drive right round the world and back... and keep on going.”

  “Then what’s it doing outside our door?”

  “You got some relative in the toffs I don’t know about?”

  “Closest thing I know to a toff is your dad. And you didn’t mention him getting promoted.”

  The black paint on the car’s flowing bodywork shone as the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. Reflected sunlight glittered from the raindrops that slowly rolled over its curves, before sliding down to the moss-strewn, cracked tarmac of the road below. The car’s windows were small, and the glass dark, but something was moving behind them.

  Logan leaned toward the side window as he approached the door to the apartment, and peered inside. An old face stared out. The hair was black, with faint touches of grey around the edges. The forehead was wrinkled, above small, dark eyes that stared at him for a second, before they turned away.

  Logan recognized that face. He’d seen it at the work’s party the weekend before.