The Ferrymen (The Culling Book 3)

by Ramona Finn

  Behind Haven, Sullia Enceladus stiffened and stepped forward to protect him. Like a pit bull at the end of a leash, Haven thought to himself and barely managed to keep his lip from curling with disdain for her. It wouldn’t do to treat her with disgust. She was, after all, the only one who hadn’t abandoned him.

  He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder, lightly cuffing her backwards. “It’s alright. I was expecting this. Although,” he added, raising his voice for the benefit of the soldiers, “I hardly think those are necessary!”

  Haven was outraged when the man in uniform who’d spoken to him, rather than acknowledging the point, came forward and grabbed his wrists, slapping handcuffs onto him in the next moment.

  “Orders,” the man said tersely, turning on his heel. The other soldiers fell into place around Haven. His only solace was that Sullia was there, right beside him. Of course, he’d known that the Authority was unhappy with him, and he could only guess that they’d found out about the mishap on Enceladus by now. But this! As if he were a common thief being dragged off to county.

  He held his head high as the uniforms led him through the streets of Jericho, which were strangely both hushed and crowded. It seemed that all of the citizens had come out to watch Jan Ernst Haven being dragged off to face the rest of the Authority. He found that he could quite easily stare straight ahead and blur out all the people around him, though. They were nothing to him. All this for them, and still they were ungrateful. They’d demanded a paradise and Haven had been the one to deliver it. And now, here they were, sneering at him while he had handcuffs on.

  He was surprised when, instead of to the main Authority building, where they all normally met together, the uniforms led him straight to the home of Kalis Rome. His least favorite member of the Authority.

  She met them at the door, holding it open as if they were company there to pay her a visit. There was a worn, checked apron on over her sweater and jeans, and her hair was soft against her shoulders. Haven had never seen her look so casual, and to him she looked positively indecent.

  “You can stay outside,” she told the soldiers. “And you, as well, I think, my dear,” she directed Sullia.

  Haven could all but feel the Datapoint’s vibrating anxiety at being separated from him, but in a perverse way, he was pleased with the thought of getting away from her. He stepped through the doorway, and Kalis Rome closed the door behind him before gesturing that he should follow her out to the back garden. He’d been there once before, many years ago. It had grown in quite a bit since then.

  She perched herself, in the sun, on a lawn chair. Haven chose to stand. From a distance, they might have seemed like two neighbors catching up on a warm day. Until you saw the glint of sun off his handcuffs.

  “Have you lost your mind?” she asked in that low voice of hers.

  “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

  “Honestly, I’m hoping that you have.” She stared at him blandly. “That way, I won’t have to make peace with the fact that you are positively evil. That maybe you always have been.”

  “Isn’t that just the way it’s always been, Kalis Rome?” he asked her as anger, viscous and bright, started pumping from the core of him. “That the ones who are willing to make the hard choices, take the real risks, they’re vilified? Isn’t that right? The small-minded ones need enemies.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she blinked in the sun. “Are you telling me that wiping every Enceladian from existence was just one hard choice that you had to make?” Her eyes widened suddenly as a thought seemed to shock her. “Are you honestly telling me that that was your intention?”

  Haven resisted the urge to shift his weight, to shield his eyes from the bright sun, to swipe, with his handcuffed hands, at the bead of sweat on his brow. He refused to answer her question. It had been an accident, what had happened on Enceladus, but she was making it out to be a blunder. Something that Haven categorically refused to accept.

  Instead, he simply responded, “What happened on Enceladus was the result of a Datapoint who malfunctioned.”

  “Glade Io?” Kalis Rome asked as she’d been well aware of Haven’s plans for that particular Datapoint. Apparently, she read the answer in Haven’s eyes. “No? Well then, perhaps that sad little purple-haired thing waiting out in front of my house?” Kalis Rome rose up. “That girl looks as if she’s been tortured to within an inch of her life. Did you do that before or after she obliterated an entire colony?”

  Another question he refused to answer. “What happened on Enceladus was a tragedy,” he said flatly. “A horrible mishap that could never have been predicted—”

  “It should never have been on the table in the first place,” she cut him off. “You’ve been pulling strings behind the curtains for years. Masterminding stronger and stronger culling tech, picking from Datapoints and grooming them for things you’ve never divulged, all with some grand plan that none of us have ever been privy to. And I never stopped you. I never stripped you of that power or that responsibility. And now Enceladus has been wiped from existence and I have to deal with that. The guilt of never having stopped you! Well, no more. I’m stopping you now. Today, Haven. This is over.”

  She turned her back to him and Haven allowed the quiet directness of his voice to still her steps. It worked, just like he’d known it would. “You can honestly stand there and pretend that you don’t know why I’ve done all this? The advanced culling system, the Datapoint creation and breeding, the secrecy. You think you don’t know the why of it?”

  She turned slowly. “Tell me, then. Explain to me the logic of a madman.”

  “I did this for the exact same reason that you stepped into office. You and I both know how close we as a race came to extinction all those hundreds of years ago. We both know that humans barely hung on in the colonies. How delicate that entire system is! I’m doing this to prolong our species! To strengthen us!”

  “How, pray tell, is genocide going to strengthen us?” She was facing him again, her arms crossed over her apron and her eyes flashing steel.

  “Don’t play dumb, Kalis Rome – it doesn’t become you. You and I both know that the Culling is evolution at high speed. We both know that we are strengthening our human race by trimming the fat. We both know that, with all the citizens in the colonies, we could never all return to Earth. The Earth is not yet ready for hundreds of thousands of occupants. We both know that we need to trim the numbers. And we need a population that’s going to be able to live here peacefully.”

  And subordinately, he added in his mind, though he didn’t speak it aloud. He knew that he was already fighting an uphill battle right now.

  “You admit, then, that your intention for the new system of Culling was to cull more citizens? Not just the same amount more efficiently?” She looked utterly horrified as if she could literally see the blood on his hands.

  “I will only admit that the future of the human race is important to me, Kalis Rome.”

  She took a step back from him. And then another. “Guards!” she called over one shoulder. She called out again when a moment passed and there was no response.

  A strange look tightened the older woman’s face, and it was almost as if she knew what had happened before she’d gotten any proof of it. Haven watched as she deftly hurried back into her house. He heard her shriek of fear and horror. He knew, without having to see with his own eyes, what she’d found.

  But he decided to go see the scene anyway. He shouldered his way through her back door and into her living room. There, sitting calmly on Kalis Rome’s front couch, was Sullia Enceladus, her purple hair gleaming dully in a shaft of late afternoon sunlight. The Datapoint’s cheek twitched and Haven recognized the sag in her shoulders as complete and utter fatigue.

  Figured, considering there were half a dozen dead soldiers spread about Kalis Rome’s front yard, and apparently Sullia had culled them without linking herself to a power source. The poor girl had to be exhausted.


  He hadn’t asked her to do it, but he wasn’t altogether surprised that Sullia hadn’t liked being left behind with all those strangers in uniform. And he wasn’t altogether unhappy about it, either.

  “I think I’d like these to be removed now,” he said to Kalis Rome, holding out his handcuffed wrists.

  The older woman turned from her front window, shock freezing her features. He could tell that she was barely understanding what had just happened. But he also saw, as she skittered away from Sullia, pressing her back against the wall when she could go no further, that Kalis Rome was finally, finally understanding what kind of power Haven truly had.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kupier’s hands shook as he stood in the doorway of the war room. He’d always hated that they’d called it that. Actually, he was pretty sure that his brother Luce had dubbed it by the moniker, but it wasn’t a war room, not really. It was a room for strategy, for planning, for careful, laid-out steps. It was a room where Kupier attempted, every time, to avoid war.

  Looking into it now, though, and at its dim lighting, dirt walls, and the motley Ferrymen sitting in various poses, crouching or leaning against the walls, Kupier had the thought that it very much looked like they were going to war. This group of men and women looked to be at their wits’ end. They looked fed up and antsy and ready for some serious decisions to be made. Kupier only hoped that he could give them the answer they all wanted. And what he wanted.

  He, too, wanted to leave Charon. He, too, wanted to stop fearing Haven and his bomb and his Datapoints. He, too, wanted to fight for his people and his freedom and for the fate of humanity.

  But also, deep in his heart, what he feared was just as strong as his other desires was his desire to keep his people safe. He needed to make sure that he wasn’t leading all of these people in this room into an untimely, one-sided war where the Authority had tens of thousands of soldiers paired up with a hundred viciously trained Datapoints.

  He had the answer for what came next, though. Now he just needed the girl.

  “You called them all here?” Glade’s voice came from behind Kupier. She looked over his shoulder into the war room, eyeing the dozens of Ferrymen who were scattered around the room waiting for them. In the far corner, Cast and Wells leaned in, speaking in low voices. They were cast-offs from the main group, but at the end of the day, they were inside the room while Kupier and Glade stood outside of it. “Why? I thought you had something to tell me in private.”

  Kupier took a deep breath and scraped his shaking palms against his pants pockets. He was suddenly holding his blue marble, working it over his knuckles in a move that he knew was a dead giveaway. “Glade, I’m about to do something that you’re really, really not going to like.”

  “What? Kupier, what’s going on? What did Dahn say?”

  He didn’t answer her question. “Just promise me that you won’t let it erase the way you feel about me, okay?”

  “What?” she asked again, and this time he could hear the tinny, tight threads of irritation. She was done with him talking in riddles. She wanted answers.

  “Because I know how I feel about you.” He took a step toward her, shielding her from the sight of the war room with his broad back. “And I’m pretty sure I know how you feel about me. But when we leave this room, I think you’re gonna feel differently. I just want you to promise that you won’t feel all the way different. Because this, what we feel, is special, you know. I know you know it.” He caught up her hands and pressed them to his chest for just one second before she wrenched them away.

  “Tell me what you’re about to do. Tell me right now.” Her eyes were as black as her hair as she glared up at him.

  “I know you’re not used to all this love stuff, Glade, being a Datapoint and all. But I’m here to tell you that I’ve pretty much lived and breathed love of all kinds since the day I was born. And what I feel for you? Well, I’ve never really felt this before. It’s special.” He repeated the last part one more time, making sure she’d really heard him.

  “If you don’t tell me what the hell is going on, I’m going to karate chop your windpipe so hard we’ll be halfway around the sun before your next breath.”

  He sighed, a defeatedly affectionate smile making his mouth curve upward. Served him right for falling in love with a girl like Glade Io. She was never going to be making romantic declarations in this hallway. Nope. She was going to glare at him until he told her what was going on. That was just who she was.

  And he loved her for that.

  “Alright.” He grabbed her hand and hauled her into the room behind him. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Kupier strode to the middle of the room. The other Ferrymen straightened up the second he started turning in a circle, making sure he had all of their attention. Some of them crossed their arms over their chests, their faces closed and maybe angry. Others looked expectant, juiced up, excited. He didn’t focus too hard on any of it.

  “I called you all here to make a decision.” In his usual style, he jumped right in. Glade, standing just a few feet away from him, instantly narrowed her eyes at him. He gave her a small half-smile and kept turning, taking in all of his beloved Ferrymen, not focusing on any one face in particular. “We’ve been working for years, all of us, to get to where we are today. Our parents and grandparents survived the bombing of our colony. Our people continued to innovate and invent and think freely. We pushed hard. The Ferrymen were born. All of us in this room have lost people we loved at the hands of the Authority.” He held Glade’s eyes for just a moment. She was forever feeling like an outsider, he knew, and it was important to him that she knew just how similar she was to everyone in that room. “All of us have made the decision, over and over again, that living a free life, even if it is short and dangerous, is infinitely better than living a life under the heel of an unjust and overbearing government.”

  Ferrymen started to nod and to shift. Kupier rarely made speeches like this, and they were all starting to really listen. “They murdered our leader, my brother,” he continued. “We survived that. Other Ferrymen factions popped up, dividing us. We survived that, too. We decided, over and over again, that we weren’t going to compromise who we were in order to fight this fight. Because we’re brave. And moral. And there is no sense in fighting for humanity if we’re willing to lose ours.

  “I’m standing in front of you now a different man than I was five years ago when I took this post from my fallen brother. I’m different than I was one year ago, in fact. Today, I stand in front of you as a man with all the necessary components of a plan of action. One year ago, all we had was a plan. And now, here we are. We have a Datapoint who has pledged her loyalty to us as much as we’ve pledged ours to her. We have insider information regarding the Authority Database and Haven himself. We have new technology that can protect us from being ruthlessly culled.” He held up the silver chain that held his own shielding chip. He watched as the Ferrymen all around him subconsciously reached for their own chips. “We have the means to travel across the solar system. And most importantly,” he said as he turned in one last circle, avoiding Glade’s death scowl, “we have the courage to do what we have to do. To do what is right. To cut the legs out from under the Authority. To prevent them from squeezing the life out of us like parasitic vines on an ancient tree. We finally have a way of tossing them off our backs.” He finally met Glade’s eyes. “Like a horse throwing her rider.”

  He watched her hand reflexively flex over her pocket, where he knew she kept her figurine of a horse. Her inspiration. Her reminder that freedom was possible and that she was capable of reaching for it.

  Kupier turned back to the group. “I’m telling you this in order to make my position clear. I want to get on the Ray, go to Earth, and shut down the Authority Database. That’s my vote. But I’ll never order you to do it without knowing what your positions are. Which is why I’ve called us here for a vote. And whatever we leave this room having decided is what we’ll d
o.”

  Now, he could feel the burn of Glade’s eyes. Frankly, he was surprised the skin on the side of his face hadn’t peeled right off. “Kupier!” she hissed between clenched teeth. He didn’t turn. She strode up to him and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Kupier, you promised me time. You told me that we wouldn’t go until I’d agreed that this wasn’t a suicide mission for you. You promised me that you wouldn’t force me to do this!”

  Something within him dimmed. Maybe it was the way every animal felt when he realized his back was good and truly against a wall. That the options were running out. He didn’t dwell on it. “We ran out of time, Glade. I made that promise to you before Dahn came here.”

  Her eyes were like asteroids bouncing across the night sky, trying to see all of his face at once. “He told you something,” she guessed. “What did he tell you? Kupier!” She shook his shoulders as he looked down at her. “Tell me what he told you.”

  Kupier took her by the shoulders right back. He willed himself to remain calm. “He told me that we’re out of time, Glade.”

  He didn’t say more. She didn’t have to know that what Dahn had really told him was that Glade was out of time. The way Kupier saw it, and the one point where he agreed with Dahn, was that every citizen in the solar system was in danger with Sullia behind the Culling. In Dahn’s eyes, that meant that Glade had to return to the Station and take over again. It was the only way to make sure that there wasn’t a mass genocide of the entire human race. What Dahn didn’t know, that Kupier did, was that there was another way to end this whole thing. By pulling the plug on the Authority Database.

  But Kupier also knew that Glade wasn’t going to say yes to any plan that ended up with him dead. He had the sneaking suspicion that she would rather return to the Station and try to figure out how to end things from there, rather than to stick to their plan of heading to Earth. But Kupier knew, with a preternatural kind of intuition, that if Glade went back to the Station, she was never coming back. He knew that Haven wasn’t going to let her slip through his fingers twice. If she went back to the Station, she was going there to die. Well, to his mind, she was a lot more valuable than he was. And he also knew that the battle wasn’t going to be over anytime soon; even if their mission was successful, there would still be cause for the Ferrymen to make sure that freedom reigned supreme in their solar system. And, lastly, he knew that he didn’t need to be there to lead them – because he knew that Glade would lead them.