Boots of Oppression

by M. J. Konkel

  These three were stupid. If there was one thing they should have noticed, it was that the grenade launcher was on my rifle, not Harold’s. It was not exactly a brilliant move on my part either. But it turned out to be the one that had probably saved me. They also should have realized that shots through the chest shouldn’t have fried the electronics in my suit. That would have required a head shot.

  The scraping of footsteps. There might be one last GAT to deal with. Unless he got me first.

  I stood and spun around.

  A cluster of rifles pointed at me. I dropped my rifle and threw my hands into the air.

  “Don’t shoot!” Marla yelled.

  I reached down with one hand and turned the knob on the right side of my helmet. My face shield slid upward. “It’s me.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Marla replied.

  “How?”

  “You’re not wearing gloves.”

  “What took you so damn long?” I sighed.

  “Looks like you were doing alright all by yourself. Next time ask for help though.” Marla peered at my shoulder. “Helm, Enceladus, help him out. He’s wounded,” Marla commanded. “The rest of you, gather up the weapons and suits. And hurry. We need to scram out of here before the damn Spits send reinforcements.”

  Enceladus. What a beautiful name. I wondered what it meant, if anything. It wasn’t just her name that was beautiful. Her blue eyes and the dimples on her cheeks. The long reddish-blond hair that flowed over her shoulders was perhaps redder in the dying rays of the setting local star.

  I stopped noticing her wonderful features when she lifted my arm, and I screamed in pain.

  She and Helm helped me climb the bank and shuffle over to the back of one of the trucks. My shoulder throbbed as they helped me climb aboard. For a few seconds, I thought I was going to pass out.

  A minute later Marla hopped into the back with us. She carried a first aid box. “Help him take the top of his suit off,” she commanded.

  “No, don’t,” I insisted. “I’m rather fond of this suit. Besides, it stops the external bleeding.”

  “Alright,” she agreed. “But at least take these.” She held out two pills.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “They’re for the pain.”

  “Will they knock me out?” I asked. Not that it really mattered.

  “They might make you a little drowsy, but you can still stay awake if you need to.”

  I grabbed the pills and stuck them in my mouth and then washed them down with an offered canteen.

  “That was pretty impressive back there.” Marla nodded toward the streambed.

  “I was frickin’ lucky,” I mumbled.

  Marla cocked an eyebrow.

  “I was lucky they were all so damn stupid,” I explained. “If any one of them even had the intelligence of a turtle, I wouldn’t still be here. I’d be lying in that dried up riverbed instead of them.”

  “That’s like a tort… Never mind. The important thing is you’re here, and there are now eight dead Spits out there. And that’s because of you.”

  I shrugged. The truck pulled away, and I winced from a sudden stab of pain in my shoulder. I stared out the back. Something seemed strange.

  “How’s it we’re leaving no tracks?” I asked.

  “Sweepers behind the wheels erase our trail,” Marla replied.

  We went over a bump, and I wondered when the medication would kick in.

  “Is there more to your name than Marla,” I asked.

  “Marlachenko de Navrio,” she replied.

  “Marla it is,” I chuckled. “When they invaded my world, we didn’t have any military and didn’t know how to fight back. How is it that your people do?”

  “For a people who supposedly don’t know how to fight, you did pretty well out there.”

  “Like I said,” I muttered, “I was lucky.”

  “Hmm.” She stared at me, probably assessing me. “Our world is only habitable in the far north and the far south. Everything from the equator out to about fifty degrees north or south is desert. But the hemispheres are like different worlds. The south is at lower elevation than the north, so the air is a bit thicker, it is a bit warmer, and a big sea surrounds the southern ice cap. The north pole, on the other hand, is the center of a huge ice sheet. So the topography is very different. While southerners are a sea dwelling people, us northerners live by the glacier-fed rivers that go south until they disappear into the hot desert. As a people, we grew apart. Didn’t trust each other. A large desert between us probably didn’t help that. A while back there was a civil war that split us into two nations. After the end of the fighting, both sides hung onto their weapons.”

  Marla chuckled. “I guess it took an invasion by the Spits to show us we were more alike than different. It now seems the fighting amongst us was more of a squabble among siblings than anything else.”

  Chapter 9

  As we left the site where we had been ambushed, the sky suddenly got dark and a gazillion stars came out. At least it seemed like that many to me. I was surprised by how fast darkness descended. Enceladus explained it was that way at the longitude where Dosei sat right on the horizon and eclipsed Ursa Phinia at every starset. The entire moon had gone into the shadow of the gas giant, and there were no rays scattering over the horizon to give a twilight. After showing a huge razor thin crescent at starset, even Dosei disappeared into the blackness of the night appearing like a cloud blotting out the stars. Only a part of its bright rings remained pointing up into the sky like a long thin silver sword.

  We zigged and zagged through the desert for a long time. I dozed after a while and woke some hours later.

  Everyone wondered what had clued the Spits in to our position, but no one implicated me. I guess the eight Spits I shot had bought me some trust. You know there’s an old saying some say goes way back to Old Earth. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I guess I was their sudden newfound friend.

  I suggested maybe it was the sergeant’s suit that led the Spits to us. Since he was a real Spit and not a coot, perhaps a homing beacon had been embedded in his suit in case of his being captured. Unfortunately, his suit was inside one of the trucks that had been blown up, so there was no real way to test my hypothesis. Or, if my idea was right, maybe that was actually fortunate since the beacon would have been destroyed before giving away the resistance fighters’ position. Nevertheless, all the captured suits and equipment were checked for possible radio beacons, but none were found.

  The outside actually got a tad lighter as the bottom of Dosei became visible. Just a thin band of light on the edge of the horizon. I guess I must have slept a lot longer than I had first realized. Dosei was well past the waxing crescent phase which meant it was well past twelve hours since Ursa Phinia had set.

  We passed through a gap in what looked like a long low hill. Hard to tell in the dark though. I flipped down my faceplate and turned the settings to night vision and suddenly realized we were entering an impact crater that was some klicks across. Hard to tell its size in the dark. From inside the crater, another gap appeared to the right of us, and a small stream ran through it to fill a lake in the middle of the crater. The lake covered three-quarters of the interior of the crater, but there was no outlet for the lake to drain. At least, not above ground.

  I flipped my faceplate back up as we turned toward the right. Then I noticed lights lined the sides of the crater. There were too many to count between the gap we passed and the second gap, and still more were on the other side of the second gap.

  “Welcome to Split Wall Crater,” announced Enceladus as we slowed and stopped next to a cluster of the lights. She was now seated next to me, although I had no idea when she had moved to the truck I was on and when Marla had left. And how? Did we stop, or was it done on the fly? I guess I really was asleep for quite a while.

  Now that we were close to the lights, I saw they were from windows into dwellings carved directly out of the wall of the crater.

>   “How many people live here?” I asked as we pulled to a stop. I was enthralled with what I saw. Perhaps the meds still coursed through me because the place felt a little dreamlike.

  “Just a small town. About three thousand,” Enceladus replied. “A very friendly place.”

  “So why’re we here?” I asked.

  “Supplies,” Enceladus replied. “Some rest. And to get you and few others patched up.”

  “A doctor?” I lowered my gaze to her.

  “Speaking of doctor,” Marla said, appearing behind the truck. “I would like you to meet Dr. Rushwind. Dr. Rushwind, this is the young man from Riva Lontana that I spoke to you about over the com.”

  A tall thin elderly man’s head appeared at the back of the truck next to Marla. His thinned white hair and wrinkled skin bared his age, but there was warmth and comfort in his eyes and in his quick smile.

  “Hello Mr. Triton. I’d shake your hand, but with your injury, maybe I’ll just say hello instead.”

  “Hello, Dr. Rushwind,” I replied.

  “How is the pain level?” the doctor asked.

  “It’s really nothing,” I replied.

  “Oh? Either you’re a damn good liar, or you’re one tough son of a bitch,” the doctor said with a smile.

  I didn’t think I was really either, but I smiled back and took his remark as a compliment. “They gave me some pain meds,” I said.

  “Fluoradal,” Marla explained.

  The doctor frowned. “Ahh! Those’re barely better than aspirin.” He pointed at my shoulder. “I'd like to take a look at that as soon as possible. Marla, can you quickly get him over to my residence?”

  “Yes, Doctor,” she replied.

  I was helped down by Enceladus and several others. They handled me with a lot more gentleness than back when my arms were bound. I was led to the doctor’s residence a short distance away and guided quickly into a side room that was really just a converted large den.

  My upper armor was removed with a good deal of help. A scab which had been forming partially ripped off in the process, and a drop of blood slowly ran down my shoulder.

  The doctor told me he had been retired since before the invasion started, but he still had (from his working days) some equipment. Apparently, a great deal of it. He examined my shoulder with a portable ultrasonic scanner and said I was lucky the flechette had just missed my subscapu-something tendon. A little higher, and I would have been a whole lot worse off.

  After numbing the area with some type of substance, he stitched me up on the front and then the back side of my shoulder where the flechette exited so the wounds wouldn’t open up as easily. He apologized for not having any dermi-patches to apply to it instead of the stitches. He then injected something near the wounds which he said would considerably speed up the heeling process. He handed me a clean shirt and a bottle of pain meds. He promised they would work a lot better than the fluoradal and still not cause drowsiness.

  Afterward, he placed a hand gently on my other shoulder, told me to try to take it easy, and wished me well. Then the doctor brought another of the fighters, Estia, into his so-called office.

  I let Enceladus lead me outside and down toward the lake. Right about then, I was ready for her to lead me anywhere.

  The far side of the lake was in the shadow of the crater wall. The side we were on, however, was illuminated by Dosei, hanging right on the rim of the crater. It was still only partially lit. According to Enceladus, the giant would become fuller and brighter all through the dark period and brightest just before dawn. But it was already bright enough to erase some of the stars from the sky. At least those near it. A bright band shimmered off the lake’s surface while Dosei’s thin white rings parted the night sky above it. In the warm night air, it seemed as if I could almost reach out and touch those rings.

  Tall palm trees lined the side of the lake where I stood. Those trees grew on Riva Lontana as well, so I knew them. However, there were stands of other trees which I did not recognize as we passed on the way down to the beach. Enceladus pointed out one as an olive tree. I didn’t ask about the others.

  Ahead of us along a sandy beach, rows of blankets were spread, and someone from the village invited us to sit. All of the other resistance fighters from the trucks were also at the beach, as well as a crowd of unfamiliar faces. Some sat while others milled about.

  Plates of foods circulated, carried by some of the villagers. Much of the cuisine seemed quite exotic to me. Flatbread and fish I recognized, although I didn’t know the type. Tilapia, I was told. Olives, dates, and scores of other foods I had not seen before. The liquid I recognized – wine.

  I stared up at the stars. There weren’t nearly as many as right after Ursa Phinia had set.

  “I wonder how many of those have people on their planets,” I mused. “How many are in frickin’ danger from the Spits.”

  Enceladus turned her chin upward. “Probably none. Those are all giant stars to be visible in the direction you’re looking.”

  I had been staring toward Dosei. “Oh! I didn’t know anyone was listening to me talk to myself, but I meant out there in general.”

  “What do you know of the Great Expansion?” she asked.

  “A little,” I replied. “Our ancestors came from a mythical planet called Old Earth over a millennium ago.”

  One of the villagers turned toward us. “We all came from a planet they called Earth. Earth sent out hundreds, maybe thousands, of fusion ships to colonize other star systems during the Great Expansion. They didn’t have the interstellar drive tech that the cursed Spits somehow got. Instead those old ships took centuries to reach their destinations. Centuries! Those voyages were way too long for live passengers, so they carried frozen embryos which were then raised and taught by the AI’s of the ship once they reached their new worlds. The stories say each of those AI’s had the memory and persona of some real person from Earth. The ships also had frozen embryos of animals and seeds of plants for colonization. Many, maybe most, of the worlds had to be terraformed. Over time, those ships deteriorated to the point where they no long worked, and they crashed onto the worlds of the colonies where they rusted away.”

  The man had not told me anything I had not already heard.

  “Earth isn’t mythical though,” Enceladus added. “It was real.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But all the worlds’ legends are consistent on naming the stars closest to Earth. But there is no star where Sol is supposed to be. Earth’s star. The Spits have been to that area searching for it. They found nothing but empty space.”

  “Perhaps, Earth found the means to move their system,” the man suggested.

  “Maybe,” I conceded. “But I find it hard to believe even Old Earth could have figured out how to do that. And even if they did, why?”

  “Who knows what their reasons could have been or why they went silent?”

  “You want to know what I think?” I asked.

  The man squinted at me. “What do you believe, my young friend?”

  “I think it was all a lie. Those people from Old Earth, or whoever our ancestors were, planted false data or memories into the AI’s about their location.”

  “Why would they have lied?” Enceladus did not sound convinced.

  “I think they didn’t want us coming back to our ancestral home for some reason.”

  “I see that you have met the mayor of this community,” Marla said, having suddenly appeared. “I’m sure he’s told you some interesting tales.”

  “We were just discussing Earth,” the man said.

  “Ah.” Marla nodded. “That discussion could go on until Ursa Phinia rises. But it is time for my fighters to get some rest. They need to be fresh and ready to move out in eight hours.” She turned and strolled down the beach toward where Helm wore a huge silly hat and danced (actually more like stumbled) around a bonfire.

  I was having a really great time and didn’t want the party to end, despite my shoulder. But if Marla said it w
as time to rest, then I wasn’t going to argue. Others from our party had left the beach area already.

  Enceladus said she had a place for me to stay, and I wasn’t about to argue with her either. She led me from the beach back toward the where the doctor had stitched me up. Steps carved into the crater wall led up past the doctor’s residence and a lower row of dwellings, past a second level that had been terraced, and up to a third level with only a very narrow walkway for a front. She turned left onto the walkway while the stairs continued up to several levels even higher.

  Enceladus proceeded past two doors and then opened the third door from the stairs. She mentioned that the original owner of the place had died recently, so it was currently unoccupied. I wondered how she knew that until she revealed that Split Wall Crater was her home before she joined the resistance.

  I had consumed too much of the wine and was thinking she looked mighty attractive. That wasn’t just the alcohol talking though – I had thought she was mighty pretty before the wine. Girls like to play nurse for injured boys, right? I wasn’t hoping for sex or anything. I was just hoping she would stay and keep me company.

  So when she said she would be sleeping at a friend’s place, I must say I felt pretty disappointed. Then she leaned forward toward me, close. I was sure she was about to kiss me. I think I even started to lean a little. But she turned and walked away, out the door without saying another word.

  Somehow that didn’t seem fair. I wasn’t even given time to think about how to respond. I just stood there dumbfounded for a while, wondering what had just happened. Then I swore at myself for being such a dumb shit, not capable of finding even a few words. No wonder she had lost interest in me.

  I lay back on the couch on my side with my good shoulder and stared out the open window. What I could see of Dosei’s bands was mesmerizing. I realized all the dwellings on this half of the crater had a permanent view of the gas giant. My home moon had no such place. Being a distant large moon in a relatively new star system, it had not become tidally-locked yet. But it had a day that was a more natural 36 hours.