The Owners

by Tara Basi

  “They are encased in strange land vehicles, laden with fire crackers. And surrounded by even more. Too many to remotely disarm with any certainty. One or two of their crude weapons are quite substantial. Some might combust if we attempt to take them.”

  Eva yelled an ancient obscenity. Truculent couldn’t suppress a long sigh. “What are you going to do?”

  “Wait. They are converging on the factory from three sides.”

  “Are these natives mad?”

  “It appears so. We can only wait.”

  Eva stormed away swinging her ball manically around her head. At that moment Truculent was, for once, in tune with Eva. He really felt like smashing something. It wouldn’t help. Harder was right, they could only wait. Harder disconnected and Truculent reverted to monitoring the idiot machine’s conversation with Tippese. Who knows, he might learn something useful. He didn’t. On it droned. After a time, it began moving in a strange way. It was making delicate shapes with its arms and legs. Was it some form of primitive art? Truculent couldn’t take much more of this inanity.

  Harder was communicating, Eva was back.

  “The terrorist attackers have passed under the factory. It is a well-known design flaw in these old factories’ defences.”

  “Gods Harder, how could they possibly know that? What are they doing?”

  “Heading for the refuse pit and they’re still surrounded by volatile explosives.”

  “Why Harder. Why?”

  “Unknown. They are aliens.”

  “They can’t possibly be in communication with anyone? Not from under the factory.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Reference tell Tippese he doesn’t need to continue with the pretence.” Even if the manager wanted to keep communicating with the deranged servitor, Truculent had had enough. The machine had started warbling like a wounded animal.

  “For my next number I’d like to do, Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat, from that fabulous musical, Guys and Dolls.”

  “Shut up, you stupid can of bolts. We know you’re sending us crap and talking crap. Reference, disconnect.”

  “How did you know? Was it my performance of Swan Lake?”

  Tippese looked drawn and tired as he got up and moved away from the screen. Truculent didn’t have any sympathy for the creature, he was far too worried about his own fate. He waited for a while then prompted Harder for news.

  “It’s proving difficult to keep them safe and catch them. Unfortunately, their more powerful bombs have triggered automatic factory defences. I am not hopeful they will survive.”

  Eva became completely irrational and started hacking at a janitor with an axe while smashing its domed head with her heavy metal ball. Her kinetic blows were having little effect on the machine. This only drove Eva into an even more frenzied attack. The machine absorbed the impacts and floated here and there, chased by a screaming Eva.

  Truculent ignored her. “You have to do something, Harder.”

  “I cannot reset or stop the factory’s defensive actions until the threat is neutralised. In any event, it is unlawful to deliberately aid a terrorist in an attack on Vigilance property. You must hope they are as resilient and inventive as they appear to have been in the past.”

  Damn the Inquisitor Commander. He was right, there was only so much Truculent could reasonably do to save the terrorists from themselves. Otherwise he risked being branded with that same label and given a punishment only a little less horrible than Rung One. The deranged natives were on their own. Only the gods could save them, and the Three.

  Chapter 12 – Negotiations

  Mina’s watch said she had only been sitting on the hugely uncomfortable bomb for a few hours but her muscles said otherwise. Their torches had been extinguished much earlier, to save power. That left her watch face as the only source of illumination. The pale silver light barely illuminated her wrist, but it was a welcome glow in the dark even if it drew her eyes more often than she wanted to the agonisingly slow passage of time. Conversation had gradually dried up and been replaced with long silences and the occasional grunt.

  Mina took turns with Tress and Battery Boy to lean back against the angled missile platform hanging from the edge of the pit. It was the most comfortable position available and offered the chance to nod off for a while. Where she was now, astride the angled missile tube with her legs dangling either side and just behind Tress, left her in constant fear of rolling off and falling into the abyss. Negotiating the periodic changeover was challenging and had to be carefully choreographed. With no other diversions it became an exciting event to look forward to, a chance to engage cramping muscles, enjoy some movement and, if it was your turn, get some rest.

  The settled Block had sealed the pit and left them with no way out but to plummet straight down to a certain death. It wouldn’t be long before dehydration or an exhausted misstep finished them. Early on Mina had agreed with the others that if the Block did not move after two days the missile and its warheads would be detonated. Maybe the blast would do some damage; it would at least put them out of their cramped misery.

  How terrible it would be after everything she had been through to just slip away with nothing to show for all the sacrifice. Realistically, what had she achieved after waking up from deep sleep on the Small Business? The first heart pounding space walk to the Maxinquaye, Doug’s insane death and Anton’s help bought the rest of her crew some time, resulting in their crazy crash landing on top of Block Seven. For Grain and Sara to suffer horribly and hear the truth from Tracy. For Mina to find and temporarily save the children from Black and the Yard, only to lead them to Worry, and then for Tippese to cheat them all. Every victory was fleeting and left them in a darker place. Tress’s sacrifice to taint the blood and the Small Business crew’s suicidal attacks were all seemingly pointless. They had survived only to be betrayed and now, finally, extinguished. There was nothing to show for any of it, except, maybe, for Jugger, Pinkie and their soon to be born baby. She may have already given birth, it was due any day. That would be a wonderful small victory. The first free-born since the Blocks had arrived. And Stuff and Anton would survive. Together they would be the only free people. The very few left outside the Blocks. Not many and not much to show for their rebellion.

  Catching herself looking at her watch, Mina mentally smacked herself for succumbing again to the disappointingly slow passage of time. After two days of this physical agony and her tortuous guilt she would be glad to go bang.

  It was her turn to try to get some sleep on the ramp when the Block suddenly moved. Mina was fully alert in an instant. The others had already switched on their torches. The Block was rising, just as slowly and methodically as it had set down. No one needed any further prompting to tease cramped muscles into life and climb painfully up the ramp where they flopped like boned fish on the lovely, hard, flat ground. At that moment no one could speak. They were all too occupied with just enjoying the feeling of being horizontal and safe from falling. The Block continued to rise till it appeared to reach its original height and there it stayed, with no openings and no sign of activity.

  “Let’s get out of here, back to the nearest transport, while we still have the strength and that stays up there,” Mina said, gesturing up at the Block. “Who knows, maybe Tippese has decided to surrender,” she added trying to make a Trinity style joke of their situation, clinging to the faint possibility that somehow they had won.

  Mina didn’t think there was anything to be gained by setting off the bombs, not while the opening remained closed. Another Crusher could be sent back to initiate detonation at any time. All Mina wanted was to get back to Central Park and find out what had been happening.

  A bright light announced another presence before anything else. It was not the anticipated green drainage aperture opening up. Instead, glowing Crusher-sized teardrops descended from the solid Block underside just a few hundred metres away. Mina and her companions stiffly clambered to their feet. Their muscles were t
oo sore and cramped to run. They watched the teardrops settle on the ground. Each contained a fuzzy figure half-seen through whatever semi-transparent material the drops were made of. The bubbles popped as they touched the ground revealing human looking figures. Mina and her companions stepped back in alarm, taking them closer to the edge of the abyss. The new arrivals immediately formed a large semicircle trapping them against the lip of the pit. Mina motioned to Battery Boy who immediately understood what she was thinking. She watched as he slipped over the edge of the pit back down the ramp, where he placed his foot on the exposed missile trigger and pressed down. If he lifted his foot the bomb would explode. Someone else would have to climb down the ramp and disable the trigger, he could not do it on his own. Battery Boy tilted his head back, looked up and signalled to Mina that he was ready. With Battery Boy in place, Tress and Mina turned to face their mysterious visitors.

  The pool of soft light flowing from the Block overhead illuminated a wide area around Mina. It revealed twenty burly male figures, each coated in a material that reflected light like a mirror but which flexed like latex. Each stood motionless, tensed, knees slightly bent, and holding what had to be a weapon diagonally across the chest. A lone bareheaded figure stood inside the arc. He had an olive-skinned face with a fleshy hooked nose, an angry mouth and close-cropped dark hair. His body suit was different, not mirrored or uniform in colour but in a constant flux of blue-grey shades, as though the semi-transparent material was filled with man-shaped cigarette smoke. No one moved. The olive-skinned man stared at the two women for a while and then turned to signal to someone Mina could not see.

  Behind him the semicircle opened up and two characters from the pages of a kid’s comic stepped forward. They looked like particularly outlandish superheroes or super-villains. The two caricatures, a man and a woman, moved slowly forward, and the semicircle closed behind them. The olive-skinned man followed a few paces behind and to the left. The odd couple stopped ten metres in front of Mina and Tress. The woman was a monstrous Amazonian, rippling with muscles, and wearing unsettling body armour that seemed to be made of lizard scales. It was adorned with nasty looking knives. Her outlandish costume flashed streaks of blood-red between the black scales as she strode purposely forward. Mina half expected the ground to shake when the giantess moved. Her companion appeared slight in comparison, as probably anyone would, next to the frightening woman. He was wearing a comically tall, brimless, cylindrical silver hat that almost reached to the top of his companion’s head. Long straggling wisps of dark blue hair escaped from under the hat and fell haphazardly around his chubby, smiling face. Mina was reminded of an old history teacher. Blue-Hair had cruel little eyes, crudely made putty lips and a big wobbly nose. His outlandish, slightly comical appearance was completed by a billowing black cloak reaching down to his feet, occasionally revealing the same mirrored armour which the arc of guards wore. The cloak was topped off by a bright yellow fur-lined collar that climbed halfway up the back of his head.

  Battery Boy called out, “What’s happening?”

  Mina realised Battery Boy couldn’t see the strange new arrivals from his position in the pit. He was obviously desperate for any information. Mina really had no idea what to say to Battery Boy. The mysterious new arrivals weren’t obviously anything to do with Tippese. And they looked old, older than herself. The oldest people she’d seen since she’d returned to Earth, outside of Anton and the rest of the Small Business crew. She wondered if they might be part of the Iowa Block’s controlling elite, this Block’s Tracy and Tippese? But Tippese had assured them everyone in the Iowa Block was dead and it had no Boss. Then again, Tippese had lied about most things. So far, the strange arrivals had said nothing and not explicitly threatened them, though their posture, obvious weapons and crazy outfits were frightening enough.

  Mina looked down at Battery Boy and shrugged her shoulders, “Be ready for anything.”

  The newcomers really were a surreal sight. Mina and Tress’s distorted images along with the backs of olive-skin, Blue-Hair and Ms Barbarian were reflected twenty times over in the mirrored bodies of the encircling guards. It brought to mind a childhood visit to a frightening hall of mirrors. This bizarre show was being fronted by a pair of outlandish freaks.

  “You must be Tress,” the fearsome woman said in the deepest growl Mina had ever heard. She was looking directly at Tress.

  Mina and Tress kept silent, instinctively deciding it would be better not to acknowledge or confirm the big woman’s statement.

  “Who’s up there?” Battery Boy shouted, obviously frustrated by not being able to see anything. Mina gestured to Battery Boy to stay quiet.

  Blue-Hair gave Ms Barbarian a disapproving look as though she had spoken out of turn. Mina thought that was a dangerous thing to do given their relative size and Ms Barbarian’s obvious desire to hurt something. She ignored Blue-Hair and continued staring at Tress, though she didn’t speak.

  Blue-Hair stepped forward and smiled. “I am High Priest Truculent; this is Inquisitor Harder,” he said pointing at olive skin. “And this is,” Truculent paused and studied the Amazonian woman carefully as though he was unsure exactly who she was, before continuing, “Eva, native relations.”

  “Who are you people?” Mina asked, left even more confused by the strange titles.

  “Shall I repeat the introductions?” Truculent asked, still smiling.

  “No. I mean where are you from? This Block?”

  Truculent glanced up at the Block and he looked aghast. “From that decrepit factory? By the gods, of course not. We are the Owners. You’ve been expecting us. No?”

  Unable to fully grasp what the crazy man was saying, Mina glanced across at Tress hoping she might have a better idea.

  Tress said what Mina was thinking. “You’re human. Even… her,” Tress added nodding towards Eva. “How can you be the Owners?”

  “We get that an awful lot. Give me a moment.” Truculent closed his eyes for a second. “Look, we share a lot of the same DNA. Common galactic ancestor, etc. However, compared to us you are… chickens.”

  “Chickens?” Tress repeated and then seemed lost for words.

  “Chickens?” Mina echoed, too stunned to think of anything else.

  “What chickens? What the hell’s going on up there?” Battery Boy bellowed.

  The sudden noise jolted Mina out of her shock. She looked over the pit edge and called out loudly to Battery Boy so everyone could hear, “Keep your foot on the trigger of that missile. I think we’re going to need it.”

  “A missile? As in a weapon?” Truculent asked, looking quite sad.

  “Damn right. Tipped with multiple nuclear warheads and it’s on a pressure trigger. Tell us exactly what’s going on, or we’ll blow you all to hell,” Mina shouted.

  Truculent’s sad look was abruptly replaced by a frown, “If there was any doubt about your species’ savagery and irrational inclination to violence without provocation you have eliminated it.”

  “What?” a confused Tress asked.

  Truculent continued, “We are here to sentence you for acts of terrorism, mass murder, wanton destruction of Vigilance property and contract violations.”

  “Are you crazy? You’re the mass murdering monsters!” Mina yelled, getting angrier by the second.

  Truculent ignored both women. “Specifically; murdering countless billions with your unprovoked attacks on three peaceful planets; destroying a distribution hub and two Travel-Ways. And, finally, guilty of breach of contract by illegally tampering with approved merchandise. Have you anything to say before I pass sentence?” Truculent announced, then paused and waited, seemingly for Mina to respond.

  Mina was stunned, he had said so much in just a few sentences. Could these people really be the ones who’d created the Blocks? Could Grain, Sara and the other suicide bombers actually have done as much damage as he claimed? Could this crazy twist in their fate be true, that mankind were the criminals, Mina and the others mass murderers, and j
ustice was coming for them? It was madness, utterly unbelievable, and insanely scary. And perhaps even worse, with these two outrageous judges, faintly funny. At the back of her mind she imagined some galactic hidden camera show. Maybe the joke would soon be revealed, and everything would be all right.

  “We were defending ourselves against these things,” Mina yelled, pointing up at the Block. “You enslaved us, billions have died here.”

  Truculent shook his head, exchanged pitying glances with Harder, then continued. “Your leaders freely entered into binding contracts to use our factories. No threats were made. We are a peaceful people. You are mass killers. If there’s no more I’d like to move to the sentencing.”

  “Regulation is justice,” Harder chanted in the background, immediately followed by an echoing response from the mirror men.

  “Peaceful? They don’t look very peaceful,” Mina screamed, pointing at Harder and the mirror men. Then Mina turned her anger on Eva, “She’s obviously a psychopathic killer.”

  Eva growled and took a step towards Mina, but Truculent raised a hand and she stopped. With obvious reluctance she took a step back.

  “Sadly, we have to take precautions when dealing with violent races such as yours.”

  “This is unjust; we were betrayed by a few criminals. They were never our leaders. Billions were wiped out in your stinking factories, you have no right,” Mina yelled, beginning to panic.

  “You really are a grotesque set of aliens, acting like crazy terrorists, lashing out at innocents, blaming everyone but yourselves for your fate. In exactly three days your star will be extinguished. In the time remaining contemplate your crimes and beg forgiveness from your victims’ souls,” Truculent pronounced with pointed menace.

  “And so the enemies of the Vigilance are Regulated,” Harder said with undisguised satisfaction.

  And then the guards intoned, “And so the enemies of the Vigilance are Regulated.”

  “What? You can’t. No!” Mina stuttered, unable to believe what she was hearing.