by Tom Kratman
Wherever we’re going, we better get there soon, I was already dehydrated. And the road is doing my stomach no favors, either.
It was bad enough that even the thought of the local tap water wasn’t as unappealing as it should have been. Decaying and half-abandoned towns dotted the sides of the cracked pavement of the freeway. In America, islands of relative prosperity still existed in some rural areas despite the crushing taxes. In Mexico, the countryside looked like a war zone. Parts of it probably were. UN levies stripped whole towns bare.
After two hours of stifling misery, the bus slowed and turned off the dusty, pothole-strewn highway. Tom forced himself to look out the window, the sunlight making his head pound. A large shuttle, silvery gray, sparkled under the sun, a self-propelled loading crane looming large beside it. UN markings covered the rocket, save for a small Mexican flag painted crudely in one corner. The booster rockets alone were bigger than tankers. The main body, cargo module, and personnel modules were larger, still.
It was only then that Tom realized what had been so amusing to the federales. They weren’t getting deported from Mexico, they were being deported from Earth.
Tom turned to face the guards as David stared, mouth agape with a mixture of wonder and horror. “There must be a mistake. Send us back to America, not . . . this!” Bile curdled up in his throat, and he fought the urge to hurl, wishing the whole thing was some terrible liquor-infused nightmare.
One of the guards laughed. “No mistake, gringo.” He leaned forward, a predatory expression on his face. “You may not know this, but we don’t really like you Americans. You come here, you fuck our women, drink our beer, always party-party with you. And now the party is over. Time to pay your tab, señor.”
David turned around, pleading. “If it’s money you want, we can get more. Yes, we are good developers. Experienced. The best. We can get much more. We’ll pay you as much as you want!”
The guard shook his head. “If you had the money, you wouldn’t be here. Since you don’t . . .” He shrugged and muttered something to the driver. The conversation was over.
Heat rose like a mirage from the scorching tarmac. Tom’s headache worsened appreciably as he tried to shield his eyes from the sun’s ruthless glare. His stomach chose this particular moment to give up its see-saw battle against projectile vomiting, and he hurled all over the tarmac. Federales around him pointed and laughed. UN technicians hurried about them as a Mexican UN official stood still throughout the seeming chaos, staring at the small crowd of unfortunates. Most of those around him were thoroughly Mexican, but there were a few other foreigners in the bunch, too.
“Sir, there has to be some mistake,” Tom pleaded. “We’re Americans we’re supposed to be . . . well deported I guess, but not in that!”
The official laughed. “You are here illegally,” he pronounced, “Mexico takes a dim view of this, gringo. We could have sent you to prison, but this is better I think. Enjoy your trip.” That he apparently viewed Terra Nova as worse than a Mexican prison bode ill for their future. His cruel grin stretched from ear to ear as they were lined up with the rest of the malcontents and pushed toward the spacecraft.
As the hatch shut behind them, Tom realized he would never set foot on Earth again. UN livery covered his field of view. Everything in the spacecraft was covered in cheap blue United Nations fashion, and he felt hatred surge up within him. For Mexico, for the UN, for cheap Tijuana liquor, for the cultural and economic decay that drove them out of America in the first place.
David was fighting the shock, a stoic expression on his face, mumbling something that sounded vaguely like an appeal to God. Tom merely stowed his bag in the provided compartment, and sat quietly in his assigned seat, fastening the restraints under the watchful eyes of the guards. It was all surreal to him, like a nightmare he kept expecting to wake up from. Groans echoed around him from the other passengers. Concentrated human misery filled the ship. Few, if any, of the passengers appeared to be volunteers.
The spacecraft itself was spartan in the extreme. Whichever UN agency had built it had thought little about luxuries. It appeared to have been constructed to get as many people into orbit as quickly and cheaply as possible. Where, Tom knew from the Internet videos, a starship would be waiting to take them through the crossing to Terra Nova.
Nobody ever came back from Terra Nova, Tom thought.
Soon, the massive engines pushed him into his seat. He found himself blacking out, the combination of shock, g-forces, and lingering hangover too much for his stressed mind to handle any longer.
Constancia, Cienfuegos, Terra Nova
Tom scanned the rock-hard bread in his hand like a miner inspecting a piece of rock for the slightest hint of gold. If there was any nutritional value in the morsel, he couldn’t detect it. The bread was almost as dirty as his leathery, sun-battered skin.
“I’m tired of this rock, I’m tired of Cienfuegos, I’m tired of the same goddamned stale bread, the heat, the water that makes a man shit his body weight if he neglects to boil it. Most of all, I’m tired of living on the UN’s people landfill in space.” Tom finished his complaint and flicked the morsel of stale bread into his mouth. Waste not, he thought sourly as he chewed the sorry excuse for food.
Looking to David, he shielded his eyes from the glare of sunlight creeping in through their mud hut’s open-air windows. David had once been a rather portly fellow, a man of many beers and pizzas. Pizza delivery, of course, did not exist on Terra Nova, and when beer could be found, it was usually rotgut. All of David’s excess fat had long since disappeared. His Irish constitution had once been fair and freckled, but now, in the places it wasn’t burned, it was almost as tan as Tom’s own Mediterranean tone. Still, there could be no doubt that David was poorly suited to Cienfuegos. Tom could at least sometimes pass for a local if he kept his mouth shut.
David looked up from his tablet computer and nodded his agreement. “Yeah. I miss it, too. The work sucks; my back is killing me. The beer is shit. But the women at least . . . they aren’t all batshit crazy.” If there was anything in life that motivated David more than food and booze, it was women. Not, Tom chuckled to himself, that David is any good with them. But knocking shops were the one thing Cienfuegos had in abundance, and every once in a while, even David could afford an hour or two.
The smile faded. They’d been lucky to keep their tablets and solar chargers. No one else appeared to have managed even that much. The stored movies, music, and books had kept both of them at least partially sane, despite the brutal farm work they’d scored. Life on Terra Nova was a curious mix of the modern and the medieval, with scraps of technology scavenged from the UN or smuggled in by the colonists themselves present here and there in a society otherwise sent back to the late Iron Age.
“The quota’s gone up this week, you know,” David mentioned as he finished the last of his bread. “Gotta keep the drug lord in his drugs.”
Tom frowned. “You shouldn’t call him that.”
“Why not?” David asked. “Everyone else does.”
“He grows tobacco. And Terra Novan tobacco is almost harmless. It’s not the same thing.”
“Eh, whatever. He still looks like a drug lord. And you know the rumors around the village. Some cocaine-like shit he’s growing for the Earthers on the side. Locals call it huánuco.”
“I don’t want to know about that, and neither do you.” Tom replied. Because if any of those rumors are true, we don’t want to end up dead. Nobody on Terra Nova could afford it; that would mean the only potential buyers would be blue helmets.
Soon their shift would start, and it didn’t do well to be late for work on Carlos’s fields. Drug lord or not, he did not have a reputation for excessive tolerance.
“Well, we need to eat. Or at least I do, anyway,” David quipped, standing up and sliding on his ratty excuse for a shirt, for what mediocre protection it might provide against the sun. “Even if it tastes like purified ass.”
Tom stepped outsi
de their meager hut into a view straight from a tourist’s dream. Sandy beach stretched out to clear blue water, so clean you could see the bottom. Luscious palms graced the sides of the beach, swaying gently in the morning breeze. It was the kind of view, Tom noted, that millionaires and UN high hats would have paid a pretty penny for back on Earth.
And I’d give all of it up in a second for some air conditioning and a cold beer, Thomas thought, though it felt hollow despite the truth of it. What he really wanted, he realized, was to stop being the universe’s butt monkey. He’d fled America because of high cost of living. No choice in the matter. He’d been exiled to Terra Nova because of the UN, and he’d had no choice in that either. Now he was farming tobacco in a tropical hellhole, and there wasn’t any more choice in that than there had been in the rest.
I’ve never thought of myself as a fatalist, but Terra Nova is gonna wind up converting me.
A soft tune carried on in his ear buds, as he enjoyed one last song before a hard day slaving away in the fields. He could almost imagine, just for a moment, lying back on the beach in Tijuana, staring absently at some pretty girl, sipping on a margarita. Tom dropped his tablet and solar charger into his bag and strapped it to his belt. Time for reality.
The sand was hot and crept over the top of the Terra Novan sandals he wore. His new Nikes, and David’s own Adidas, had been among the first things to go after they were dumped onto this rock. Their enormous value had kept them in food and drink just long enough to land a job in Carlos’s fields and avoid complete starvation. So, the walk to the fields was long and uncomfortable. Somebody, somewhere in the village of Constancia, was an awful lot more comfortable than he was at the moment.
Tom frowned as he approached the gate to Carlos’s plantation. Burly enforcers were waiting for him, and one of them barred his way.
“Stop,” the man said simply, in accented English. The handgun of Earth manufacture on his hip suggested that disagreement was unwise.
David stopped, almost too late to avoid running into Tom.
“Hey pay attention to—what? What’s going on?”
“Carlos wants to talk to both of you. You will come with me.”
Tom nodded, cursing another situation in which he was no more than a passenger. David trudged along behind and whispered. “See, I told you he was a drug lord.” Tom elbowed David’s now nonexistent gut.
“Shuttup you moron. You’re gonna get us shot.”
Slipping back into her robe, Captain Pamela Andego dipped her finger in the huánuco bowl and pondered how she wound up in the ass-end of space, serving as the high admiral’s personal plaything. There were benefits, of course. Rumored youth extension treatments, an endless vacation, the sort of life she’d always felt was her due but had somehow remained just out of reach. Serve another tour over Terra Nova, do what had to be done, they said, and it could all be hers. An endless carrot dangling in front of her like she was a human donkey. Somehow, it never came true. But the high admiral came to ride her anyway.
High Admiral Hortzmann was already done with her, leaving without much fuss. Scents of wine, sweat, and sex started to fade as the cabin air circulators wafted it all away. Equipment and toys had vanished into their respective cubbies. She felt cleaner then, the whole thing distant; a mere memory. With the huánuco high hitting her, Pam could almost forget any of it had happened.
Far beyond, the distant flare of a main engine burn caught her attention. The scheduled colony ship making was her final orbital insertion. She sighed heavily.
New colonists, new problems, she thought. Maybe I can use a few of them as compensation for all my troubles. Better them than the high admiral, anyway.
More importantly, however, the cargo holds of the returning ships would serve nicely for her own purposes. She had to be frugal with the space, she knew. The margin of error for space travel was exceedingly small. But enough of the huánuco could be smuggled back to Earth to pad her accounts sufficiently.
A few more trips, and I’ll have enough to escape even the reach of the high admiral’s lechery, she thought, grinning with anticipation.
The comm receiver chirped and she tapped the controls, lightly touching the key for “encrypted.” A familiar, slimy, scarred face greeted her. Some men were ugly because of age. Others were endearing, despite otherwise gross physical features. Still others possessed a big, trollish, intimidating ugliness. Lieutenant Slade Cranston was just slimy, without even a trace of anything salvageable. She tried to ignore the bruised, half-naked local woman strung up in the background. Cranston didn’t even care to pan the camera away.
“What do you want, Lieutenant?” She asked, inspecting her nails absently for traces of the drug. She had assigned the lieutenant planet-side on Cienfuegos, ostensibly to ride herd on her sailors when they rotated down for shore leave and entertainment of the sort even sailors in space seemed addicted to. But his real assignment was to run her smuggling operation on the ground. That it also kept him far away from her was a definite bonus. Some took occupation duty out of ambition, others out of boredom, or to escape political disfavor back on Earth. Cranston had clearly volunteered for it out of sadistic glee, the chance to work his will in a place as devoid of law as any that had ever existed.
“We’ve received the huánuco. It’s ready for transport. Containers loaded into our shuttle and ready for transfer. Carlos did good this time, we’re ahead of the estimated quota by around ten percent.”
Pamela didn’t want to think about what Cranston had done to get that extra ten percent out of Carlos. It was probably better for her conscience not to know, what she did know of his methods utterly disgusted her. If he hadn’t been so useful, she would have been tempted to throw the slimy little man out of an airlock.
“Use auto pilot when you send the load up. I don’t need one of your idiot flyboys getting high and drawing attention to himself this time.” She cut the line before he could say anything else. That particular incident had been close. Too close to discovery for her comfort. Drug smuggling, she knew, was highly illegal in a technical sense, but it was common enough among the occupation forces, and was generally tolerated within reasonable limits if one was discreet about it. A huánuco-addled pilot nearly crashing into the main drive of the Angela Merkel certainly didn’t count as particularly discreet.
For a moment she took in the vastness of space, the creeping terminator of the planet below, and imagined that she was returning home laden with spoils and political appointments, far away from drug deals, brewing revolutions, unruly reactionaries, and imposing high admirals.
Her comlink chirped. “Captain to the bridge.”
She sighed.
Carlos’s plantation manor loomed ahead of them, a sad little structure by Earther standards, but a veritable mansion to Terra Novan eyes. Most of it was even made of stone and stucco instead of the usual dried mud and half-rotten wood.
Tom took in the foyer, marveling for a moment that it was so cool inside the structure. A water fountain bubbled in the center, sucking heat from the air and making the temperature almost bearable. How they managed that without electricity, he could not say. But it was luxurious after months of slaving away under the heat of an alien sun.
Carlos appeared from around the corner, his modern linen suit crisp and clean, despite a couple of well-hidden patches. In a world of rags, he was the stand-out exception. While he was rather short, and well-fed by Terra Nova standards, the drug lord was quite fit, possessing a pair of broad shoulders and arms that looked like they could crush a man’s neck with ease. If his hair was more gray than brown, he was still quite intimidating. But despite his deadly reputation in the village, it was not an unfriendly face which greeted them. A hard face, Tom realized, but not unfriendly.
He extended his hand in welcome. “Ah, como estas, señores. Come in, come in. Here, sit.” His English was clear, pleasant, and only slightly accented. Sitting down next to the cool fountain, he motioned for the pair to join him. A beautiful oli
ve-skinned young woman approached, setting down a tray with fresh fruits, a rough green bottle and some freshly rolled and clipped cigars. If she’s a servant, Tom thought, I’m an Oscar Mayer hot dog. She had the look of a hardened woman, and the long bowie knife strapped to her hip only accentuated that observation. Nonetheless she, like Carlos, was not unfriendly.
“My daughter, Elena,” Carlos explained. “Fruit? Cigars? Rum?” He offered generously.
David, naturally, was smitten by Elena almost immediately, despite the deadly seriousness of the situation. Carlos’s eyebrow rose slightly, but if it bothered him, he said nothing. Don’t be a fucking idiot, David, Tom thought.
Tom nodded quickly, wondering if they were going to be rewarded for something, or if they were about to be executed. Something wasn’t right. And there were plenty of stories in the village about Carlos that involved murder, and worse.
Just what in the hell does he want from us?
The chief enforcer held up a priceless butane lighter of Earth manufacture as Tom puffed lightly on the cigar, trying to keep his hands from trembling, and failing miserably. Apparently oblivious to the danger, David merely smiled and accepted his own graciously.
Carlos smiled comfortingly. “Señor, I do not know what they say of me in the village, but you have nothing to fear from me. You have done me no wrong.”
Tom tried to return the smile. “I thought well . . . maybe . . . we are not so good at farming and . . .” They needed the job. It wasn’t like they could dial a recruiter on Terra Nova. It was work the fields or starve to death. Or worse. Rumors of guerrilla bands outside the village were legion. They did not have a reputation for liking anybody, much less two fish-out-of-water gringos.
“No, no señor. We already knew that.” He waved his hands as if it were a mere trifle. “It is okay. You are getting better. You do not shirk your work, which is better than some.” The woman offered a glass of rum to both developers. “No ice. And the rum is not so good as on Earth. But it is something.”
