Her Last Run

by Michael Penmore

  After three more minutes, the elevator slowed down to a stop. 30 clicks into the planet’s crust, she stepped out into a brightly lit lobby. It was one of many geological surveys created before the war to monitor Rockwall’s unique cold-magma core. Rockwall was lush and fertile on the surface, the perfect farming colony; deep underground it was unstable and needed constant surveillance.

  The resistance moved in and were hiding like rats inside the system. Somehow, they still had enough energy to keep the lights on. The legendary self-sufficiency of the shelter may not have been a hyperbole. Or perhaps the Colonials plowed all they had left into it so they could see how they got snuffed out?

  Some teenager with a face full of red spots was playing soldier by the nearby door. The shoulder pads of his grey uniform professed some sort of low rank. Isabel wasn’t good at that kind of thing but she suspected Colonial Army Private First Class, or some such nonsense. His red hair stood out with a hundred times more colour in them than the fabrics on his back. The uniform had faded through use, definitely longer than the boy had been wearing it. He got it second, maybe third-hand then. The overzealous attention he sprang to at her sight was all fresh.

  “Welcome, General Rocarion!”

  Isabel sniggered. “What did you just call me, kid?”

  “By order of the Colonial High Command, you have been promoted to the rank of general with a permanent seat in the Congress, ma’am!”

  “At ease, spriglet,” she patted the boy on the shoulder. He slumped reluctantly, but his face remained a picture of tense confusion as he listened closely to her reply. “An officer and a politician in one go. Wow! I always knew I’d get far in life, but this? I would call it funny if it wasn’t such a desperate hickle-poo. This wagon really lost all four wheels. Kid, do yourself a favour. Jump out of these rags, hitch a ride to the surface and lay down with some crofter. With luck, the Earthers won’t even notice you when they do a surface sweep.”

  “No, ma’am. I am a loyal soldier to the High Command,” he insisted, but in a squeaky voice.

  “It’s your life you’re throwing away, kid. Try to enjoy the last few minutes of freedom.”

  Isabel stepped past the boy soldier to a white double door painted with a black sign. Primitive scales in balance, the sign of the resistance, supposed to be a reminder that… they were on the side of justice? Something to that tune.

  She was about to step through when the boy shifted from leg to leg and his gaze bore a hole in the back of her skull. Isabel glanced back. She knew that needy look all too well.

  “What is it, kid?”

  “Will they… Will they…”

  “Honour the amnesty commitment? I dunno, child. I wouldn’t bank on it.”

  The young Private’s lips trembled. He took a fistful of his uniform’s tunic and squeezed. Whether it was a comforting gesture or a prelude to ripping it off, who could say?

  “But you’re here.”

  “For a jiff. I’m not staying for seconds.” He looked like a hamster caught in the spokes of his wheel as the box crashed in all around him. Isabel touched the rim of her glasses. Emotions. She hated them. She was starting to feel sorry for the kid. “Listen closely, kid. Once I duck in through this door, bolt out of here. Board the lift, go up, find new clothes if you can, ditch just the jacket if you can’t. No one’s guarding the exits, so run out. Don’t look back. Are you local? Do you know anyone here?” He nodded quickly. “Are they volunteers like you?”

  “No,” he said. “I… ran away.”

  It was Isabel’s turn to nod. She knew the story well. Boy got tired of boring old life, so he joined up with the nearest circus to see the world. “Go back home, kid. Forget the resistance. Grow cucumbers, marry a girl, have kids.” She paused, then added just for kicks, “That’s an order.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” he sprang up and saluted her. She kind of saluted him back with a shadowy smile. She’d just saved a soul. Who would have thought?

  With that thought lingering, the gunrunner stepped into the next room. If the High Command intended to impress her then they failed miserably. She saw rows of seats. Empty. Smothered by darkness. Did dust waft to her nose, or did she just imagine it? The spacious assembly room was so quiet and black, it might have gone into decay already.

  She remembered the last time she sat here during a congressional session. The room had been full of representatives of several worlds, sparkling in white light and throbbing with the energy of crowds listening to endless debating. Everyone wanted to know exactly what the High Command had to say. From time to time, a resistance member stood up on those benches to offer a question, or a plea, or a demand. Each time, the room showed their reaction before the Command delivered their official position. Applause or booing, depending on the day’s mood and the speaker’s popularity. It was a grand spectacle and a waste of valuable time.

  Isabel knew the Congress couldn’t last the first time she laid her eyes on it. A loose alliance of thinly spread planets couldn’t thrive on democracy, especially when their enemy had moved towards the more organised structures of technocratic oligarchy. Earth Council. Science Consortium. Expeditionary Forces. Even Interpol! Every single one of these Earth entities was more efficient than this rabble who dared to stand up against their home world without much more than words to back their position.

  Today, the only functioning lights were those hanging above the central floor. Rocarion strode confidently down an aisle and to the edge of a large table. It had ten chairs, as many as the Colonies, but the number was nothing more than a noble ideal. Some of those Colonies never joined up: Procyon ruled it out from the start, Gliese’s support had been significant until a ‘peaceful takeover’ saw the resistance members ousted and a new, pro-Earth government installed; Brogan’s Tears remained neutral, as had been their way from the start; Flora Junction got overrun in the first month of fighting - botanists and zoologists don’t make for great soldiers. Even at the start, the Colonies were not truly united.

  Six chairs stood empty. The occupants of the other four sat in telling silence. They had been waiting for her.

  “Ave. Where is Caesar? I come to salutant the morituri.”

  A deep sigh penetrated the inner circle of resistance leaders. One of them, clad in a much better version of the boy soldier’s uniform, sighed at Rocarion’s disheartening grasp of old Latin. He didn’t take his reply any further than that, leaving it to the oldest member.

  “Welcome to the assembly, General Rocarion. Please, take your seat,” Admiral Takanaga stood up and pointed to one of the empty chairs. The old man from Japan remained straight as a string, hands pressed to his sides, dressed in pristine whites without any ornaments. He was like a wise grandfather to the resistance, and commander of its navy to boot. Now when his son was missing, and he had no ships or crew left to command, the ageing leader remained a rock of awe-inspiring absolute serenity. He claimed that his fine-chiselled speech was Oxford English. Isabel couldn’t tell; she’d never met anyone from Oxford to compare notes.

  Isabel crossed her arms in front of her and made no move to take the indicated seat. “Pin your meaningless titles on someone else’s chest. I’m not a soldier in your war. I came for the pay you promised.”

  “You have the gall to ask for money in the hour of our greatest need? You should be killed, not promoted,” said the man as black as night itself. Quartermaster Lucius Dodenya was the name. He had a nose for organising things, but didn’t know squat about how to speak to people. The minute African shot up from his chair, a move which actually made him smaller. He compensated for his small stature with the power of his voice, high-pitched as it was. He leaned forward and banged on the table with both fists, nearly frothing from the mouth. His neck was covered in bandages. A wound? No, far more likely that it was an extreme flare-up from one of his numerous allergies. Isabel felt no sympathy for his troubles. When she looked at him, all she saw was a mad hyena.

  “Calm down, Lucius. I know you’re sufferin
g, but you need to focus. The General’s only asking that we honour our word,” the woman in an orange dress addressed him. Though not yet thirty, Doctor Sandy was highly regarded among the Colonies. She was the only member of the Congress and High Command born outside of the Solar System, on Procyon of all places. It was a world which many freedom fighters despised for what it was: the hive of rich and privileged former Earthers looking for the greatest medicinal remedies its hot springs and its physicians could give.

  Dr. Sandy abandoned her wealthy parents, high society friends and a future as a renowned medic in a high-tech clinic for the few. She traded the cushy life for hardships among the oppressed majority. For that, others like her, the spaceborn, used to state she had the best claim to be the resistance leader. From time to time someone was heard saying she should be made a queen, or president, or some other fancy title disguising a dictatorship. Isabel had never noticed any political ambition in the good doctor. Sandy was as selfless as a saint, driven by heart and compassion, and well-liked for it.

  “No generalling me, please. But yeah, that’s exactly what I’m doing.” Isabel got tired of standing. She approached one of the tall seats - purposely not the one Takanaga had offered earlier - dragged it noisily away, and dropped her posterior on the chair. A rich thudding noise reverberated across the entire chamber when she planted her boots on the table. “I am asking politely. Give me what’s mine and I’ll leave you to more important things. You’ve got,” she checked her glasses internal display, “exactly 47 minutes and 15 seconds to decide how best to surrender.”

  “Take your filthy mud shoes off the table!” Lucius howled in a wild spasm.

  “Be quiet, Quartermaster. Although I must admit that this kind of behaviour is childish and unrefined even for you, General Rocarion,” the fourth member of the Colonial High Command spoke slowly and quietly like rustling silk. He had a hawkish face with short black hair neatly arranged above it. The grey uniform was clean, pristine and almost bare. This was the man who sighed at her mangling of the Latin sentence. Arbiter Pace, judge, jury and executioner of the Colonial Army.

  Grim times called for a grim man. Pace wasn’t just grim. He was deadly melancholic and terrifyingly morose. He emanated a field of negativity around him. If the High Command’s aim was to scare all the accused persons to within a half inch of dying from fright, they had chosen the perfect man for the job. Pace was capable of extracting a confession with a glance. It was said in hushed whispers that one minute of his stare drove people to confessing crimes they never even thought of committing. But trials and interrogations weren’t the Arbiter’s main task. The council trusted him with gathering and sharing the knowledge glimpsed through his highly effective intelligence-gathering operation. His past was shrouded in secrecy, but most believed him a high-ranking EEF officer who defected in the early years of war. That would explain his string of successes in extracting knowledge about the movements of enemy troops. His intel was worth far more to the resistance than any of the other three members.

  Isabel wasn’t the trusting type, and her distrust for Pace stretched almost down to hatred. It warmed her heart that in spite of all his collective wisdom, Pace had failed to predict the exact moment of the resistance’s fall. She had always thought he’d jump ship at the very last minute, yet he was still here and, like his colleagues at the table, slated for an undignified end. She almost wished she could do something for Takanaga and Sandy. She could even pity Dodenya. But Pace? She wouldn’t shed any tears for him, the man she was secretly afraid of.

  “My feet are aching,” she told him. “You were all very generous to invite me to your table. I think I should give it some general use.”

  The Arbiter remained impassive, but the Quartermaster blew his lid off. “I told you it was a big fat mistake! She is not like any of us!”

  “No one is saying she is. That is exactly why we need her now,” Admiral Takanaga gave the first tentative sign of what this circus was all about. The High Command had some sort of task lined up for Isabel Rocarion.

  She should have seen it coming. The high doorknobs of the resistance throwing some desperate last-ditch mission in her lap. Isabel was determined to stay out of it. She knocked on wood to draw their attention. “Hold your horses, your worships. I did not sign up for any of this, whatever it is. I worked for cash and now it’s time you pay up like the nice people most of you are. A contract’s a contract. I held my end of the deal, so cough up the money and I will bow out and leave you to your brilliant schemes, all right?”

  “You will receive your payment in full, General Rocarion. You have my word,” Admiral Takanaga said. His zen remained undisturbed. It flew in the face of Isabel’s karma.

  “Stop calling me that. You are fools and zealots. Lucius says how it is. I’m not one of you. Never was, never will be.”

  “What about Earth’s lapdogs?” Pace asked.

  Isabel stared back at him, trying to glean his intent, but he remained, as always, unreadable. “What about them?”

  “Do they know for sure where your loyalties lie, Isabel Rocarion?” He threw a datapad across the table. It landed on top of Rocarion’s stretched-out boots. She looked at the display, trying to look uninterested.

  “I hope that’s the confirmation for my two hundred thousand cosmos.”

  “Indeed, it is not,” Pace buried his eyes in Isabel’s face, focusing them like a surgeon performing a difficult operation. His pleasure was not in his eyes nor in his mouth nor anywhere visible. It was subtly underscored by the manner in which he revealed the extortion: slow, sad and scrupulous words which lingered on the listener. “You will see before you a record compiled by the Colonial Army of your distinguished military service, from the day you entered our ranks six years ago, coincidentally the exact date of your first contact with our agents, through the many and varied acts of subterfuge and sabotage you have committed to the detriment of the Earth Expeditionary Forces, up to this day when you have taken a solemn vow never to surrender to Earth scum and regaled us with a daring scheme by which you will ensure our escape, unscathed. You intend to pick up a large amount of explosive materials and take it to the meeting with your Earthen handlers aboard their command ship. You will discharge this explosive to disable and distract their command structures, giving us a chance to escape in the chaos, at the cost of your own life. All hail General Rocarion, the saviour of the High Command and the resistance.”

  Isabel put her hands together. The slow clap was muffled by the suede covering them. “I’ve never heard a stinkier load of crab in my life. What sort of acid trip are you on?” Isabel pretended she was not affected by the words. The idea Pace painted was ridiculous and unworkable. But what would happen to her if the EEFers caught a scent of this fantasy?

  Pace was unfazed. “Our man within the EEF is on standby to release this record into the hands of the same command you so valiantly undertook to destroy. He will pass it on in ten minutes unless I give him a signal that you agree to our terms.”

  Oh, how she hated this velvet-voiced windbag. He’d babbled for at least a minute now. She needed five just to get back to the surface. That left her with about 39 minutes and 56 seconds. Still plenty of time. Unless the lie got spread. Then she would never be allowed to squeeze past the grand fleet floating above this doomed world.

  “This is low even for you, Paceman. Did John sign off on it?”

  “Worse. I told him to do it,” another person said from an open door on the edge of the room. She never heard or saw the passage open. Now she stirred in her seat and looked up. John Amicon himself ambled down the steps in his trademark black suit. It no longer matched his silhouette altered through the difficult war times. He looked like Earth’s fallen leaves from two autumns ago, gaunt, sunken eyes, not a single touch of jet black left in his silvery hair. He had lost all sense of grooming. The hair fell down in motley strands past his shoulders and his beard looked like something from another world, the instrument of a cave hermit from Earth’
s olden days. Isabel had seen Amicon countless times, yet she would have trouble recognising him in a street. Maybe that was the idea? Was the godfather of the resistance planning a last-minute escape by disguising himself as an old frail man? If so, she couldn’t let that happen. She really had EEF handlers who wouldn’t take kindly to that.

  “You look well,” she teased him. In truth, she was a slight bit concerned. Amicon always seemed like the good guy throughout this sordid affair. A tragic life story, a grudge first thought inside the Earth’s legal system, then the years spent on the run, then the armed resistance he never wanted to exist but ended up leading. She had some trouble believing he would order Pace to blackmail her. It was so beneath him. “Your morals seem to have taken a tumble. What happened to the squeaky clean above board higher-grounder who sticks it to Earth’s oppression by showing them a good example? I liked that guy. Didn’t agree with him, but admired the power of his conviction.”

  “He woke up one morning, looked around the bedroom and realised the people he went to bed with didn’t share his ideals.” Amicon sat down heavily in the first empty chair he could find. It turned out to be the one Takanaga had offered her at first. And it was right next to Lucius. Amicon’s body was tired, but his mind was keen and the words were stinging barbs tearing into her. “I was very disappointed to see the evidence from the Arbiter. It was staggering.”

  “Isabel, how could you sell us to the EEF? After everything we have done for you.” Doctor Sandy’s face looked like she was ready to burst in tears. Such purity would stir a sense of guilt in a debt collector. It drove Isabel to silence and she looked away from her. It robbed her of the guts to say what she was thinking: that it was all just business to her. Gals like Dr. Sandy made an honest gunrunner’s life hard.