Stellarnet Rebel

by J. L. Hilton

  Duin was shaken by her reaction. “What is Adiri?”

  “It’s a military facility on one of the moons of Saturn…” Blaze began, but J’ni cut him off.

  “It’s a hole where they put people to forget about them,” she said, and the thought stung Duin to the core. “I could be there for years.”

  “Why?” Angry little zaps crackled over Duin’s palms. “Who would put her there? What is this department?”

  “The Security Department.” The rank insignia flickered on the left arm of the colonel’s suit, and he banged on the armored plating. The insignia stopped flickering. “Used to be Homeland Security but that got changed when we started off-world colonizing. It’s part of the United States government. Her government. My government.”

  “Any government which assumes its constituents guilty is evil,” Duin declared.

  “She’s not assumed guilty,” Blaze insisted.

  “Then why would they relocate and imprison her?”

  “You need to understand something,” said Blaze. “There’s a whole mess of bureaucrats on Earth who think she set off that bomb.”

  “Why? Why in the world would I do that?” she asked.

  “For your goddamn blog. Because you’re some kind of crazy activist.”

  “But it’s not true!” Duin roared at the colonel.

  “I know that!” Blaze yelled back at him.

  “How do they know I didn’t do it?” Duin asked. “Why don’t they take me to Adiri?”

  “That cat was cooked but no one would eat it,” said Blaze. “Aside from several Gardener politicians who still claim—despite all the evidence—that you’re nothing but a simulation, there’s the fact that Glin don’t have explosives. Your world’s waterlogged and y’all are brick-shittin’ afraid of fire.”

  “I could have researched incendiary technology on the Stellarnet,” Duin suggested.

  “No, you couldn’t,” said Blaze. “That kind of information has been banned since 2025.”

  “So, that’s why I couldn’t find anything.”

  “I’m fucked,” said J’ni.

  “I’ve been told to take you into custody immediately and—”

  “Awah na glem!” Duin stood up so fast his chair toppled over.

  “Sit down,” Blaze commanded.

  “I will not.”

  The two guards moved toward J’ni, but Duin intercepted them. Rachael jabbed at him with her electroshock pole, which he knocked aside causing her to stumble and hit the wall. Her shocker sparked and the windows went haywire behind her.

  “Damn it, cease and desist,” ordered Blaze. “Duin, sit down.”

  Mirek stabbed at Duin as well, and J’ni tried to grab the sentry’s arm. The pole connected with Duin and a crackling sound filled the room.

  “Duin!” J’ni screamed, but he didn’t so much as twitch. Duin grabbed the end of the shock pole and yanked it out of Mirek’s hands, then sent it clattering across the room. His own hands flared with bio-electricity as three more Airmen rushed in from the hallway.

  Blaze leaped over the desk, tackling Duin and slamming him to the ground. He held Duin by the arms, grinding a knee into the middle of the Glin’s back. Duin’s hands flashed, but the zap was deflected by the colonel’s body armor.

  “Put her in the H-16 holding cell,” Blaze ordered, and the Airmen dragged J’ni, flailing and screaming and calling Duin’s name, out the door.

  “J’ni!” Duin’s eyes were so thick he couldn’t see them taking her away. He would kill Colonel Blaze Villanueva. The human was strong, but Duin needed only to touch his exposed head or neck and zap until the man stopped moving. Then he would get J’ni and take her away in the Tikati ship. Duin had already lost his family and his river. He wasn’t going to lose her, too. Not like this. Not at the hands of those whose highest laws promised against unreasonable seizure, imprisonment without trial and cruel punishment. Humanity was his hope for Glin’s freedom. Had this hope been misplaced?

  Blaze crouched down and said, “Trust me,” so only Duin could hear.

  Duin stopped struggling.

  Blaze let go of his arms and got up. “Get him out of here,” he told Rachael and Mirek, who had recovered their electroshock poles. Blaze straightened up his desk and sat down.

  The two airmen pulled Duin to his knees. But when they reached the door, they stopped and stood there. It took Duin a moment to realize that they weren’t going anywhere. He blinked several times, as his eyes readjusted and the cloudy membrane thinned. Turning, he saw Blaze typing on the tabletop.

  “Come here.”

  Confused, Duin didn’t move.

  “Damn it, you screwy alien, we don’t have much time. You want my help or not?”

  Duin picked up the chair he’d knocked over and sat down in front of Blaze.

  “Yes.”

  “The people who monitor my office feed are watching me fill out paperwork like the paperwork I filled out at 1635 on January 10. But that’s only going to last for about four more minutes—any longer than that and they might run it through a dopple-checker and discover the ruse. So, let’s come to the point. Can you take Genny off this rock?”

  “Short answer, yes. But the long answer is, she won’t be safe. My ship is stolen, Colonel.”

  “Well, no shit.”

  “And if the Tikati find it… or they find her with me on Glin… she would be safer on Titan.” He didn’t like the thought, but it was the truth.

  “So, that’s it? You’re just going to let her go?” Blaze’s voice was dripping with disappointment. “Hellfire, I thought you had more gumption than that.”

  “Whatever gumption is, I assure you, I will have oceans of it if it will help me save J’ni.”

  “There’s our tenacious outlaw. Any ideas?”

  Yes, but he didn’t know how Blaze would react to the knowledge that there was a third alien race in the area. “I have some friends who might be able to help. But I’ll need to contact them from my ship.”

  “What, you got a whole fleet of plundered ships? Never mind, don’t tell me. My people will take you to the edge of the military zone,” Blaze nodded to Rachael and Mirek. “Then you’re on your own. But as soon as you hear something, return to your compartment and wait. Don’t contact me. I’ll contact you.”

  “You have my utmost gratitude, Colonel.”

  “Don’t thank me, yet. My help comes at a price.”

  ***

  She was taken to a military block filled with small compartments and thrust into one of them. She resisted the entire way, though she had no idea where to run even if she did break free. They couldn’t find her by her locator, because her bracers were still with Hax, but they could see her on the colony netcams. The ones that worked, anyway. Goddamn useless netcams. If she knew where they all were—and which ones were broken—she might stand a chance of hiding.

  The door closed, sealing her inside an eight-foot-square metal cell with nothing but a toilet, a sink and a shelf for a bed. The only light in the room emanated from a glowing Air & Space Force logo on the wall. Though she didn’t expect it to work, she tried touching the wall. No, there was no Asternet access.

  She sat down on the shelf, curling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Squeezing her eyes shut, she thought of Duin and felt the burning tears as she relived her last memory of him being tackled by Blaze and screaming her name. The anguish in his voice was what haunted her, and she couldn’t make it stop echoing in her head.

  What will they do with him? Where is he? What a rat bastard Blaze is, and the whole goddamn U.S. government. What the hell is wrong with these assholes? Not having her bracers, not being able to ticker updates or vent her indignation and anger in a blog post, not being able to email J.T. at INC or her parents—for all the good it might do—and not even knowing how much time was passing, it all made her sick with frustration.

  Would her followers have any idea what had happened? The colony netcams would show her leaving R-51
with Duin, but netcams in the military zone were restricted. When would someone figure out she was missing? Maybe they would assume she’d been given a new compartment for her own protection. How long would J.T. wait before he wondered why she wasn’t posting an update? What would he do—what could he do—for her from Earth?

  She could not remember ever being so alone and disconnected.

  But Duin was inside her, in every way. There was some comfort in understanding that this sense of frustration was what he lived with all the time. Shut off from everyone and everything he knew, truly powerless to act against a power that was the enemy of truth. She remembered Duin telling her the reason why he did not give in to despair.

  Love.

  Resting her head in her hands, she inhaled and smelled the faint scent of his skin on hers, a heavy, dusty scent that reminded her of the damp moss around her fish pond.

  Too much had happened, with too little sleep, in the past twenty-four hours. She lay down on the hard bunk, pillowing her head on her arms, and gave in to exhaustion.

  ***

  Duin left the military zone and went to his ship in Sector W, Level One, the hangar for non-military vessels. He sent a message, and he waited for a reply. But he didn’t have to wait long.

  Yes, if Duin could get her out of the station, they would rendezvous with him and take her to Wandalin. Of course.

  Then, per the colonel’s instructions, Duin returned to his block to wait.

  His compartment echoed with memories of her. The remains of dinner. Her new Mysteria shirt. Her shawl, black with his own dried blood. The chair where they merged. The bed where their anatomy lessons continued. Her cup from dinner, half full of water, which he placed on a shelf.

  He sat down, logged into her blog and typed.

  To Humanity I’ve made my arguments and my pleas, borrowing the words of your own great thinkers, in the hope that the familiarity of those speeches, and the similarities of our conditions, would move you. With Genny’s help, I have told you my story. But, today, this will be the most difficult thing I have ever said to you, because I will say it on my own, in every way.

  I love Genevieve O’Riordan. And, while that love remains within me, its object has been removed, and my anguish is beyond my ability to use your language. The Air & Space Force is holding her in the military zone of Asteria Colony, on the presumption that she is guilty of destroying her own block. They call her a terrorist, this compassionate, equitable individual whose only crime is that she believed in me and in the hope of a free Glin.

  She is to be relocated to Adiri. I don’t know when.

  Yesterday, she told me of her faith in humanity. I marveled at how this faith endures, in spite of humans attacking her, in spite of them destroying her block and injuring her. I wonder, today, how she feels about humanity. I wonder how I feel. I haven’t had time to give it much thought. Until now, all of my hopes had been pinned on you. This bright, brave race, which has risen, a thousand times over, to prevail against oppression, illness, environmental disaster, even death itself. You grow plants in the air, dream massive dreams together and sail the sky ocean between worlds.

  Can you not find some way to end injustice? I might understand if you cannot bring yourselves to aid an alien. But Genevieve O’Riordan is one of you. She loves you. And I am grateful that she loves me, as well. I will do what I can to free her.

  Will you?

  ***

  She was awakened by the sound of the door opening. When she saw who it was, she thought she was dreaming.

  “Seth? Why are you here? Are they detaining you, too?”

  “No, I’m escorting you to the transport ship.”

  “The ship to Titan? I don’t fucking think so.” She scrambled into the corner of the bunk. “You just try to drag me out of here.”

  “I will if I have to.” Seth grasped her by the shoulders, which wasn’t easy to do while she kicked him. “You don’t want to do this the hard way, Genny. They’ll drug you and carry you out on a stretcher.”

  “Leave me alone. Get off me!”

  “Stop it and look at me! Look.”

  And then she saw it. Words tickering across his forearm, blocked from the cell cameras by Seth’s back.

  Go with Seth. At Sector M, take the first stairwell up. Head to Sector W. Duin is getting you out of here.

  She looked into Seth’s face, inches from her own. Not long ago, when they were like this in a bed, it had meant something so different.

  “All right,” she said.

  Duin is getting you out of here.

  Seth took her by the arm and led her out of the block.

  “I emailed your parents. Left out the part about you and the alien. But I guess the whole universe knows about that, now.”

  “Why?” The hallways and thoroughfares were quiet, and she saw only a few other Airmen.

  “Your frog blogged it.”

  Duin was able to post. It brought her a sense of relief. He was free to access the Stellarnet. J.T. and her followers would know what was going on. Maybe Duin would be taking her to Earth. INC’s main offices were in the European Union. She might seek asylum there, beyond the reach of her own government.

  “That thing said you loved each other. Is that true?”

  They were approaching the edge of Sector M. From there, according to the mysterious words on Seth’s bracer, she would need to go up one of the stairwells, then cross the Colony Square toward Sector W. Her heart was racing.

  “Yes, it’s true,” she replied.

  Seth looked ill. She tried to pull away from him, but he tightened his grip on her arm.

  “This is the square,” she whispered. “Shouldn’t I go?”

  “You think Imma let you go, now?”

  “But your device said—”

  “The colonel can suck my dick. I’m not part of his plan anymore. Your father will make sure you have a good lawyer and the charges will be dropped. Then they’ll bring you to Earth, where you belong.”

  “I don’t want to go to Earth.” She twisted in Seth’s grasp as if she were an angry cat he held by the tail. She was strong—courtesy of the standard gen-mods—but he was stronger. Still, J’ni had one thing he didn’t. Intelligence mods were outlawed, but she came by her cunning naturally.

  She stopped struggling and wobbled on her feet.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  Her knees buckled. Seth eased her to the floor.

  “C’mon, Genny, don’t lose it.” Seth’s voice held true concern. “You’ll be fine, I promise you.”

  She moaned. “I think Dr. Geber was wrong about alien diseases. I feel sick.” Rolling onto her side, she began convulsing.

  “Oh, shit, no.” He recoiled.

  That’s when she sprang to her feet, kicked him in the face with her booted foot and ran like fucking hell.

  At the nearest stairwell, she went up. It was open and unguarded, and she emerged in the midst of the Colony Square. Running past colonists, over pipes and through the maze of vendor stalls, she headed for Sector R, four hundred yards away.

  “J’ni!”

  Duin was standing on a crate, head and shoulders above the crowd. J’ni ran toward him.

  “Genny!” someone yelled, and she heard voices repeating, “It’s Genny.” Several colonists used their devices to watch the live feed as she ran across the Colony Square, even as she passed right by them in person.

  Seth came up the stairwell. Blood dripping down his face, he shoved the residents of Asteria aside. “Move, you fucking relos. Get outta the way!”

  Taking great leaps of ten or twelve feet at a time, Duin bounded across the tops of the vendor tables and the large pipes criss-crossing the floor. He jumped past J’ni, landing on his feet between her and Seth. She hugged Duin’s back and whispered. “Seth’s not helping us.”

  “I’m shocked.” Duin did not take his large eyes off the Airman. “Are you shocked?” he asked Seth, raising his hand. Bio-electricity crackled over his
palm. “Would you like to be?”

  Seth wiped at the blood on his face and glared at Duin with seething hostility. “It should have been you. Not her. They should have arrested you.” He glanced at several Air & Space Force MPs who were trying to push their way through the crowd. “It’s not too late,” he sneered.

  “More running,” Duin suggested to J’ni. His webbed hand grasped hers and they sprinted for the Sector R stairwell.

  Descending to Level One, they could see several Air & Space Force troops a few blocks down the public thoroughfare. Duin pulled her into the next closest stairwell and clanged the door shut.

  “Stop!” yelled an MP, who lobbed a flashbang. The wall rang with the repercussions of the stun grenade. Duin winced.

  “Where are we going to go?” she asked.

  Duin slapped the control panel on the opposite wall. It sparked and the door to the private hallway opened. “I can go anywhere I choose. I am free to move about the colony.” He barked a defiant laugh.

  They cut through Sector R with the U.S. military in close pursuit until they reached the 90s, the last thoroughfare before the Sector W spaceport. When they opened the last stairwell door, they found themselves in a crowd. The sound of cheering reverberated from the metal walls.

  The crowd parted to let them pass and then closed behind them. J’ni could see live feeds of their progress on nearby devices. The walls of the thoroughfare were covered with large windows of the same, and of the MPs trying to make their way through.

  “Move out of the way,” ordered an Airman.

  “I don’t think so.” A line of civilian police met the military troops. The exchange could be heard over several bracers as J’ni and Duin pushed on.

  “Your jurisdiction ends at the edge of the military zone, flyboy,” said one of the spacecops.

  “You are interfering with the detention and relocation of a citizen of the United States,” replied the MP.

  “I work for the Extrasolar Space Colonization Consortium, not the United States,” said the spacecop. “Any act of aggression against colony residents will be construed as a violation of the Intergovernmental Space Colonization Agreement, and a violation of Article 11 of the Interstellar Declaration of Human Rights. You want to risk having the United States thrown out of Asteria, or you want to turn around and go back to the military zone?”