by T S Hottle
He reached up and laced his hands behind her neck. “I think I’d like that.”
“My parents wouldn’t. They like you. But they’re afraid for me around you.”
“If you knew my history…”
“You think I don’t know? And yet, you’ve spent the last few weeks around here tying yourself up in knots trying to keep your hands to yourself. I’m a teenager, JT, same as you. If you think your hormones are driving you insane, imagine what mine are doing to me. That day in the bushes? That was the most frustrating day of my life. And then when Daddy said I can’t be alone with you? I love my father, but I wanted to throttle him.” She stretched out and wrapped herself around him. “I’m sixteen, too, JT. Legal age for a Martian citizen. Unlike Earth, there is no provisional adulthood. We can vote and join the military if we’ve finished our primary education. We can sign contracts. We can live on our own. On Amargosa, we don’t even need a license for personal transportation. I’ll be able to live where I want.” She kissed him hard. “With whoever I want.”
JT kissed her back. “I’d like that if they’ll let me have my own place. Then you and I can be together whenever we want.”
She fiddled with the strap of her bra. “We have now, Earth man. And right now, I want you to love me again. This time, finish what you started.”
“But…”
“No ‘buts’. I stole a couple of my mom’s pills. We can’t make a little Earth man or farm girl for at least another month.”
He rolled them over so he was on top and Lizzy was on her back. “You’re sure?”
“Shut up and kiss me, Earth man.”
***
The back of the transport smelled bad, the stench of stale body odor and weed smoke embedded in what little upholstery it had. Kray awoke as the vehicle bounced along the roads into the mountains. He knew they were in the mountains because he could feel his bunk shifting with the slope of each hill they climbed. The last thing he remembered was a painful buzz enveloping his body.
They’d stunned him, probably with an Etruscan stun wand. The Marines used those weapons. Training for them was horrible. Everyone in a squad had to take their turn getting zapped by one. The stunee would often wake up with the mother of all hangovers.
Which Kray now had. A pair of boots rested on the floor across from him, the black-clad trousers of the Colonial Police rising from them. Kray’s eyes followed the pair of legs up to the face to see a helmeted man with dark brown skin watching him.
“You’re awake,” he said. “I’m supposed to show you something.” He placed a holo disk on the bench next to him.
The holo flickered to life. An image of Rajeesh Chakresh materialized. “Hello, Lucius. I’ll bet right now you’re feeling betrayed.”
“No kidding,” Kray mumbled, not really feeling talkative at the moment. He hoped Charkesh didn’t send this with a Q&A attachment.
“Croix is an idiot,” Chakresh continued. “The evidence of what Leitman told us is there if he’d only look. Gilead was no mishap. If it was, the Navy would have said something by now. But I had to play along. That’s why I told Croix what I told him.”
Kray sat up, trying not to lose his lunch.
“We have friends in the capital,” said Chakresh. “I hope they get out by tonight. Lansdorp will be destroyed in the next forty-eight hours. When I heard you were arrested, I flew in a friend to get you out. I’m sorry about the stun stick, but the only way to cover your disappearance was to make it seem you were violent and had to be subdued. By the time anyone realized what was happening, you would be out of the city.”
Rubbing his temples, Kray tried to absorb everything Chakresh was saying. The holo did not, in fact, have an Q&A attachment. That suited Kray. The stun had left him too drained to carry on a conversation with anyone, live or recorded.
“We’re locking down here in Riverside, my friend,” said Chakresh. “The word has gone out across the Plains where you have more followers than you might imagine. Get to safety, Colonel.” The holo disappeared.
The guard smiled at Kray. “A friend of yours is driving. If you feel well enough, you might want to say hello.”
Fortunately, standing up in the bouncing, moving transport did not make Kray anymore ill than he already was. He steadied himself and pushed his way into the cab.
“Hello, sir,” said Saja. “We’ll be back in Dagar Township in about three hours. Kasumbo is already getting our people into the compound.”
Kray had never loved this woman more than he did at this moment.
***
They spent the late afternoon and into the early evening fully clothed. Not only had the sun’s punishment of their skin driven them to it, but even teenagers have only so much stamina. Conversation turned to their lives before JT arrived, the differences between Greater Seattle and Amargosa, and, as the sun began sinking in the east, Earth itself.
“How can you stand it there?” she asked. “I know you’re mother’s rich, but you must have to stay indoors to avoid the bad air and crime and disease.”
JT’s laugh contained little humor. “I’ve been hearing that from the moment I was discovered aboard that freighter. Earth is a cesspool. Earth is crumbling. The life expectancy of an Earther is about fifty years if they don’t leave the planet.” He sat up. “How old are your parents?”
Lizzy had to think about that. “My dad is in his mid-forties. I think my mother is thirty-eight. That’s in standard years, so it’s hard to figure. We barely use Compact Time here unless we’re dealing with another world.”
“My dad is in his fifties, yet he looks much younger.”
“Well, you said he spends most of his time on Tian. Those people rejuve weekly.”
“Five years. And that’s the minimum you can have a rejuve treatment. They won’t do anyone under twenty-five, and most doctors will try to make people wait until they’re thirty. My mother looks younger than yours, and she’s eighty-four.”
Lizzy’s jaw dropped. “Eighty-four? That means she was… She had you when she was sixty-eight?”
“There are people still alive from the early interstellar era perfectly capable of conceiving and bearing children. And the oldest tend to live on Earth. They remember when the scars of the Third World War and the AI War and the Antarctica Uprising were all still fresh. Some of them had grandparents who could remember the Age of Terrorism, even saw the Twin Towers fall.”
“Why would they stay?”
When JT laughed this time, it sounded a bit more subdued. “Because we adapted to climate change, both when the temperatures rose and when they fell. Because almost none of our energy comes from dirty fuel. Yes, we had some rough periods even as we were reaching out to the stars. But the capital of the Compact is on Earth. The vistas are spectacular, the history rich. Sure, it’s not the center of the human universe anymore, but it’s our cradle. And it’s no worse than, say, Jefivah.”
Lizzy wrinkled her nose at the mention of humanity’s first extra-Solar home. “Talk about a dump.”
JT shrugged. “I’ve been there once. It’s not so bad, but imagine a whole world like Lansdorp.”
“What’s wrong with Lansdorp?”
“Bad example. Amargosa is growing. If you open up that other continent, I guarantee you this place will be a full member of the Compact inside of fifty years.”
Lizzy smiled broadly. “If they did, would you stay? Would you want to be a part of that?”
He drew a finger down her cheek. “Depends on who I’d build that life with. And if they ever get any rejuve clinics here. Wherever I live, I’d like to have at least a couple of good centuries before the universe turns me back into dust. Be nice if I could have that someone with me for that time.” He kissed her.
She returned the kiss, turning her body into his and leaning back. When their lips parted, she pointed to the sky. “The stars are coming out.”
“We’re going to be in trouble.”
“I’ll handle my father. For now, show me w
here you came from. Do you know the constellations here?”
He did. He had studied a handful of star charts and deduced the location of Sol in Amargosa’s night sky. He spotted it in the middle of a constellation the locals dubbed “the Lycanth” for its resemblance to the ferocious canine animals that lived in the woods. “There.”
He watched as she followed his finger to a bright yellow star that looked almost like it might be the next planet in Amargosa’s system.
“It looks so close,” she said.
“There are two black holes between Amargosa and Earth,” said JT. “The way I understand it, the gravity between the two acts like a lens that makes Sol look like it’s almost next door.” A shooting star streaked across the sky as he spoke. “Did you see that?”
“Yes,” she said. “We have a tradition here. When we see a shooting star…”
“I know it,” said JT. “Make your wish.”
“That’s easy. I wish you would stay here, with me.”
Another shooting star streaked across the sky.
“Your turn,” she said.
JT leaned in and kissed her hard, wrapping one arm around her and pulling her against him tightly. “Well?”
“You already have me,” she said.
A third shooting star appeared. This one moving more slowly.
“That’s funny,” she said. “We don’t usually get meteor showers this time of year.”
This one flew so low overheard they could hear it slice through the air. They could see the smoke in its fiery trail. The meteor went down behind a foothill on the opposite side of the reservoir. A muffled boom rolled across the lake.
“Um…” said Lizzy, stopping as soon as she started to speak.
“I don’t think that’s a meteor,” said JT, finishing her thought for her.
They stood and watched the distant outline of the foothill, barely visible in the dark.
The sky suddenly lit up with a blinding white light. They looked up and saw the fading remains of an explosion.
JT turned to Lizzy, unsure of what to do next.
“We gotta get home. Run.”
***
The light in the sky had just started to fade when Saja and Kray arrived at the Founders Mine. Kray stepped out and looked up to where the blast cloud was still visible.
“Has to be the hypergate,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”
“Invasion?” said Saja.
“It means we’re cut off from humanity.” Kray was actually grinning. “We’re on our own, Saja. Time to show what we can do.”
They watched in silence as the remains of the hypergate sparked and burned out of existence.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was edited by Stacy Robinson and was beta read by Athena Grayson and Jennette Marie Powell.
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No Marigolds in the Promised Land
Compact Universe #0
40 million light years from home? Cake walk. 40 light years from the nearest living human? Now we have a problem. One night while he's camping out in a rover, John Farno finds the world around him destroyed. Now he must depend on whatever he can scavenge to survive.
BOOKS BY TS HOTTLE
The Compact Universe
No Marigolds in the Promised Land
THE SEEDS OF WAR ARC
#1 The Magic Root
#2 The Marilynists
#3 Gimme Shelter
THE HOMEFRONT ARC
#1 Broken Skies
#2 Warped
#3 Tishla
THE AMARGOSA ARC
#1 The Children of Amargosa
#2 The Second Wave
#3 Storming Amargosa
Compact Universe Shorts
"Headspace"
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TS Hottle is a science fiction writer originally from Cleveland. By night, he writes, cooks, golfs, plays video games with his future stepson, and fights with a cat named Tearyon. By day, he is a software developer. Sometimes, he wins against the cat, but not often.
For fifteen years, he wrote crime fiction under the name Jim Winter. Now he has returned to his first love, science fiction He has created The Compact Universe, a series of loosely connected space opera tales centered around humans' disastrous first contact with a species known as the Gelt.
He lives in the Cincinnati suburb of Deer Park with his fiancee Candy and her son. When not writing or cooking, they both can be found fixing up their newly purchased Cape Cod. Which has a deck. Which makes TS very happy.
