by M. D. Cooper
His arrival had been delayed due to a diablo, a dust storm that plagued the region during its dry season. But the winds had died down now, and in the waning sunlight—still far too damned hot, even at this time of day—he could just make out the prisoners milling about, curious eyes alighting on the newest arrival.
Wonder if anyone will recognize me, he thought with a fleeting gallows humor, fingering the slight alterations that had been done to change his appearance.
His mother’s influence, no doubt. He’d expected a firing squad, not a quick trip to an autodoc, followed by a one-way shuttle to Gehenna.
Bet dear old mom managed to convince them I might be of use to them someday. He shook his head. Wonder how long I’d last if this disguise fails to conceal my true identity?
He harbored no illusions on that count; Safety and Information had consigned hundreds to the camps for their breach of Barat’s Social Laws. People deemed ‘Untrustworthies’ based on their aggression, irresponsible behavior, or association with others who exhibited such traits.
Minutes, he decided. My life would be counted in minutes once they knew who I really was.
Movement caught his eye, a lithe figure slipping from the nearest hut, graceful movement marred by a slightly irregular gait. He cocked his head, interest piqued.
She was dark-haired, with the build of a warrior. If he ignored the limp, something about her movements reminded him vaguely of every Republican aviator who’d ever piloted a vessel he’d been on.
The Centauri captain, he guessed, and altered the direction of his steps so that they would meet up with hers.
RECONNAISANCE
STELLAR DATE: 03.14.3272 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Commercial lanes between Barat and Godel
REGION: Little River Inner System
Jason hadn’t been lying when he told Simone that he could handle the accel of the container ship. But he never said he enjoyed it. If he could, he’d be gritting his teeth against the immense pressure 50gs afforded. As it was, he could barely hold onto consciousness.
His body slewed in the pilot’s cradle as the ship abruptly changed course and speed.
Instead of responding, the Weapon Born sent him a stream from the container’s external sensors. Two Republican ships were approaching, encroaching upon the lanes and forcing the merchant ships to change vector.
* * * * *
Their exit from the container ship occurred without incident, the blackout windows included in the intel packet providing Jason with an unchallenged atmospheric entry. Jason and Tobias set the shuttle down on the backside of an old maglev sorting yard, between a row of beat-up cars and a large repair warehouse. There, they met with one of Godel’s agents, whose eyes widened in surprise when he caught sight of the spare battleframe Tobias had stored in the back of the shuttle.
He waited for the hatch to close behind him before he shook his head at them. “That’s some real shit, man. Dumb as fuck, too. I assume that battleframe means one of you is an AI? Anyone tell you? There are no AIs on Barat—period.”
Jason just stood, arms folded, glaring at the man, who shook his head and then shrugged. “Your loss. Should have sent all humans, though. You’ve just cut your team’s effectiveness in half if they find out.”
The agent propped his shoulder against the frame of the shuttle’s hatch and eyed them warily. “We’re short of manpower, too. Got no one to spare to assist you.”
Tobias stirred, causing the man to jump. The Weapon Born wore an organic frame Jonesy had assured them would pass as human under standard scrutiny.
“No worries, lad.” Tobias’s brogue was virtually nonexistent; a sure indication that the man’s attitude had irritated the AI as well. “We can handle it.”
“As long as you have the intel we were promised,” Jason qualified, his words sharper than he’d intended.
The agent’s gaze swung back to him. An eyebrow rose in insolent query, but the man remained silent otherwise.
“Our contact on Godel told us you’ve had eyes on Gehenna for the past four days,” Jason prodded. “Correct?”
After a beat, the man nodded, then flipped a silver disc toward him with a fast wrist snap. Jason’s hand blurred as he caught it, and he noted the slight dilation in the man’s eyes—the only outward indication of his surprise.
“Modded,” he muttered with a shake of his head. “They scan for that here, too, you know.”
Jason smirked. “Not going to be a problem, dude.”
He dropped nano on the token, and the cypher Simone had provided unlocked it. With a thought, he shifted it to a small holo installed above the weapons locker of the newly reconstructed Eidolon.
An image resolved of a prison camp, matching the aerial view they’d been shown by Celia Mastai back on Godel. From there, the image morphed into a series of closeups from within the camp.
Jason shot him an assessing look. “You have a man on the inside?”
It was the man’s turn to smirk. “A woman, yes.”
“A Barat national? She can be trusted?” Tobias said sharply, and the man frowned at the criticism in his tone.
“She was arrested when the Guard busted her smuggling ring wide open,” he informed them. “We’d heard in advance it was going to happen. Republican Guard went in, pulsers blazing, and shot her lover.”
At Jason’s skeptical expression, he shrugged and continued.
“Smuggler thought the citizen soldiers had killed her,” he explained, “and they would have if we hadn’t intervened right quick.”
He nodded as an image of a woman—tough, blonde, and with weathered features—appeared on the holo.
“Our smuggler already had plenty of reason to despise Barat’s finest. But when she heard her lover was alive, and that we’d patched her up, she was more than happy to turn on the assholes who’d shot her.”
“Pretty altruistic for a smuggler,” Jason muttered, eyeing the woman’s visage skeptically.
The man sent him an amused look. “Smuggler’s in for ten years. She does her time, she gets out. Then she can join her girlfriend, if she’s still interested. We snuck her off Barat and set her up at a fabrication plant on Bach,” he added, mentioning the moon-moon that orbited Escher, Godel’s single satellite.
Then his eyes narrowed. “But the only thing you should care about is the fact that she,” he pointed to the holo, “is in Gehenna. She’s already made contact with your woman. Now, do you want our help or not?”
Tobias raised a calming hand. “Easy, friend. We’re just a bit cautious is all. We appreciate any help you can give us.” The AI nodded toward the holo. “Walk us through what you know of the camp, if you would please.”
Half an hour later, they had the location of a small clearing twenty kilometers from the camp where they could leave the shuttle. The agent also promised to insert a small, stealthed airframe half a klick inside the rainforest that bordered the veldt surrounding Gehenna.
Now all they needed to do
was figure out how to traverse the two-kilometer swath of open grassland ringing the prison without the guards stationed at Gehenna’s bunker spotting them.
“If this shuttle is all the shit my superior says it is,” the agent paused as he prepared to leave, “then why not just fly up, blast your way in, and get her out that way?”
“Because, lad,” Tobias’s voice held a note of weary annoyance, “she’s as big as a bus, and even though they wouldn’t be able to see her, or register her on sensors, they sure as hell would see the displacement of the grasses once we bring her down.”
“And,” Jason added, “the goal is to get our captain out alive. They’d know instantly who we were there to retrieve. Not going to chance them killing her before we can intervene.”
The man’s eyes narrowed in thought, and then he nodded. “Suit yourself,” he said as the hatch began to open. “We’ll have your stuff in place before sunset.”
came an angry voice from the cockpit, and Jason exchanged an amused glance with Tobias as the AI unsealed the door that separated it from the main cabin, and Tobi stalked out, hackles along the ridge of her spine raised.
“Shoulda let you, girl,” Jason said affectionately, slapping her side and giving her a brisk rub.
* * * * *
The surveillance hut they’d been directed to was little more than a shack, nestled in a clearing deep within the rainforest. Jason and Tobias had only just managed to camouflage the Eidolon before the heavens unleashed a torrent of driving rain. It came down almost horizontally, sheeting against the mismatched prefab walls on its easternmost side, rivulets of water running through cracks and down walls, wearing runnels into the dirt floor.
The big cat lay on the single, soiled mattress that Jason was certain hadn’t originally been a mossy green in color, given its musty smell. Tobi’s eyes were slitted in disgust at the swirling eddy that bisected their shelter.
Jason chuckled as the big cat voiced what they all thought. It was ironic that the jungle’s forest floor, protected by its thick, interleaved canopy layer, was surely much drier than the shelter in which they currently crouched.
Thunder rolled in waves, coming from the east in the direction of the Gehenna penal colony. A lightning strike a few kilometers beyond, near the New Pejeta Equatorial elevator, illuminated the multilayered rainforest outside their door before plunging the hut into semi-darkness once more.
The moment the deluge let up, the cat would slip out to scout the perimeter of the prison camp and then report back to them. Tobias had left it up to Tobi to decide whether or not it was safe enough to make contact with Calista, after having pressed upon the cat the importance of not being caught.
Jason chanced another quick glance out the hut’s entrance toward the east, noting a lightening of the sky in that direction. “I think you’ll be on the move here shortly, Tobi,” he murmured, glancing back at her.
As if to emphasize his point, the rain suddenly lessened, transitioning from a downpour into a gentle rainfall, and then, shortly thereafter, a misty drizzle. The sun broke through the cloud cover, bringing with it a steamy and oppressive humidity.
An overlay appeared on Jason’s HUD, and he knew Tobi had received the same, as Tobias, who had chosen to remain with the shuttle, sent her directions to the prison camp.
She shot him a look of utter disdain from gold-green eyes, as Tobias added,
Jason snorted a laugh as the cat walked away from them, stiff-legged in her affront. He watched until she disappeared into the rainforest, swallowed up by the dense canopy and undergrowth that separated them from the two-kilometer swath of savannah encircling Gehenna.
* * * * *
Calista had spent a wary, wakeful night, huddled against an outer wall within one of the structures, next to the stranger who had insisted on befriending her the evening before. He’d come in on a different shuttle, dropped exactly as she had been—albeit without the swirling clouds of dust that had heralded her own arrival.
The man had wandered in her general direction the moment he’d landed, stumbling in the heat and casting his eyes about as he cautiously assessed his whereabouts. She’d watched as the grizzled blonde woman approached him; the gestures she’d made toward her canteen told Calista the newcomer was being given the same spiel she’d received hours earlier.
The man had responded haltingly to the blonde’s query, then they had both turned as the woman pointed in her direction. He nodded, and the blonde left after giving him a long, assessing look. Calista suspected this one was a political prisoner, given how the man moved and the way blondie had dismissed him.
Some sort of prison hierarchy, she supposed, with her as the leader. I guess it could be worse; we could have been subjected to a shakedown, stripped of our kits and the clothes off our backs.
Although she knew such was not tolerated. Blondie had told her earlier that any conflicts that arose were treated with extreme prejudice when noticed by the guards. Conflicts were dealt with expediently, and both parties executed.
She turned and inspected the man slumped against the plascrete wall, head pillowed in crossed arms that rested against his knees. Tigan, the man had said his name was, although she could tell by the glint in his eyes that it wasn’t his real name.
She shrugged mentally. What did she care if he offered up a nom du guerre instead of his real moniker? As if either would mean anything to her, an outsider.
Calista rose on silent feet, hating to admit what that silence cost her as she bit off a groan in response to the pain she could no longer neutralize with mednano.
Stretching muscles stiff from a night spent on the hardened ground, she took her first few shuffling steps away from the inert form leaning against the wall next to her. Without the mods to blunt the discomfort or lubricate joints now stiff from disuse, she would have to work at staying limber.
She shambled toward the hut’s entrance and out into the prison yard. The darkness of night was giving way to a rosy glow at the edge of the horizon, where the silver strand of a space elevator could barely be seen. The man behind her never stirred.
Well, if that doesn’t prove that he’s not military, she thought with a fleeting black humor, I don’t know what does. Don’t think anyone in the service would have missed such a clumsy departure, even sound asleep.
She gained a bit more grace as she walked, her head tracking back and forth, compensating for her lost eye. Reaching up, she adjusted the eyepatch Blondie had given her just after sunset the night before. It looked like it had been cobbled together from some of the cording off an old prison uniform. With it came a fold of fabric to tuck into place over her eye—and a bit of advice.
“You’ll want to be keeping that covered, especially during dust storms, or you’ll be fighting infection as well as incarceration,” the woman had advised gruffly. Calista had taken it from her with a nod of thanks and affixed it over her head, pirate-style. It felt odd.
But not any more so than the rest of my body, at this point, she mused as she strolled toward the perimeter and began walking along its length. Savannah, as far as the eye can see, to the east, she concluded. Possibly forest a few clicks to the west.
Noting that others were making their way out of the huts, some beginning morning calisthenics, she dropped where she stood and did the same.
It is the duty of every
soldier to resist to the utmost of their ability. To remain in the best possible shape in order to take advantage of every opportunity.
* * * * *
Tobias accessed the big cat’s feed and sent it on to Jason, who drew in a sharp breath at the sight of the battered woman pacing the perimeter of the camp.
the AI’s tone was grim. <’Tis a good thing we’re planning to wait until nightfall. We’ll need every advantage we can get. In the meantime,> the Weapon Born focused his attention on Tobi, the AI’s mental tone stern and commanding,
PART SIX: EXECUTION
DELICATE PROCESS
STELLAR DATE: 03.14.3272 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Key warehouses and farms
REGION: Godel, Little River
The Godel warehouse that Phantom Blade had dubbed ‘Target Three’ was nestled inside a hollowed-out series of rolling hills, covered in soft green foliage and dotted with trees. A park with a small lake was located across from the entrance, a public magline station two dozen meters from its edge. Jonesy exited the maglev car, hopped down off the platform, and began to stroll along the border that delineated the warehouse perimeter and the park proper.
