by SD Tanner
Turning to Tank, he said, “The life of a coward is a life wasted.”
Tank stared back at him with steady eyes. “You are one of the three most powerful men in the known universe. Do you understand what you might lose?”
“Power is only useful if you know how to use it well.”
“And do you?”
He could still feel the ricochet of the bullet as it ripped through the bird’s head, tearing away the last moments of its wasted life. It might have been a different species, but it had faced its death with courage.
Staring down at his hand, committing the sensation of the bullet to his soul, he replied, “It’s better to die than live life as a coward.”
Tank nodded as if he’d just said something obvious. “So, what’s next?”
It was a good question. He knew something had to change, but he didn’t know what or how to make it happen. The Guild couldn’t be allowed to do what it was doing, of that he was absolutely sure. “I don’t know,” he replied.
The squads were carrying bundles of bones barely held together by leathery skin into the water. Any good mood they’d had was long gone. No one was saying anything, only trudging into the water to leave another corpse before returning for the next.
“What do you want to have happen?”
“I don’t know.” Realizing that wasn’t true, he turned to face Tank, waving his armored hand at his squad. “I know we shouldn’t have to do this.”
Tank’s expression didn’t change, but he nodded. “Good enough.”
“Is it?”
“You know the Guild are doing things that you don’t want them to, so how are you going to stop them?”
His gaze grew long as he contemplated Tank’s question. The movement of the squad carrying one corpse after another blurred while he pondered his options. Did he want to destroy the Guild or have more control over what they did in his name? Did the Guild even deserve to be destroyed?
“The Guild isn’t evil…” He hesitated, unsure whether he was right. “I mean, they have kept earth safe.”
Tank snorted softly. “From what? Up until our last tour, we hadn’t seen the enemy for nearly two hundred years.”
Using the threat of an alien attack, the Guild had maintained a siege mentality to cow the population. Although he couldn’t understand the extreme paranoia that had created the Guild, he guessed that after the war a state of high alert hadn’t been such a bad idea. Now the enemy aliens were back and should he disrupt the Guild at a time when it was needed the most?
“But now we have a war to fight.”
When Tank looked across the water, he could almost feel his disappointment in him. He was letting him down in some way, but he didn’t understand how.
“What am I doing wrong?”
“What makes you think you’re doing anything wrong?”
“You’re unhappy with me.”
Turning to look at him, Tank’s face was a grimly fixed mask. “You must make your own choices, but answer me this, why should human’s rule? What is it about them that makes them superior to any other species?”
As he watched the last of the corpses being carried into the water, it worried him that he didn’t have an immediate answer to Tank’s question. The Guild assumed it was their right to rule space, but after witnessing how destructive they were, who was defending the universe from them? His tutors had taught him that war had rules. Genocide wasn’t allowed. Any attack had to be met with a proportional response. Captured soldiers were to be treated humanely. War wasn’t a free for all where people did as they pleased, but the Guild wasn’t abiding by any rules, suppressing and destroying anything it didn’t approve of.
Reminded of a phrase taught to him by one of his tutors, he said, “Ultimate power leads to ultimate corruption.” Turning to face Tank, he asked, “Is the Guild corrupt?”
At that moment, Mex dropped one of the corpses, causing it to clatter onto the shore. “Shit.” He began gathering up the long bones in his arms, dropping some as he tried to pull the body into something he could carry.
Seeing him struggle, Cardiff began picking up the torn pieces of skin and fleshless bones. “Klutz.”
“It’s not my fault they’re falling apart.”
Hearing Mex’s plaintive complaint, he knew he was wrong. It was their fault that there was a body to bury at all. Once Dunk Two was gone, he and Dunk Three would lead the Guild, but could he wait that long to fix what was broken?
Turning away from his clumsy Navigators, he and Tank began walking towards the attack ship. “I need to go back to earth.”
“Why?”
“I need to talk to my brother.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Dead man running (Granger)
“On your feet, prisoner.”
Looking up from the bed in his cell, the large armored body of a Navigator was filling the doorway. Death had stalked him for so long, he considered it a close friend, but he didn’t want to leave his children alone in a world devoted to killing them. Losing Vela had been a blow that they still hadn’t recovered from, so he knew how frightened they would be without either of their parents. Since meeting Ark Three, he’d allowed a small spark of hope to grow inside of him that maybe somebody would help them.
Rising to his feet, he gave the helmeted Navigator an unhappy glare. This one wore the same red and white armor of the one who had saved them at the dam. Their colors defined what type of Navigator they were, but they all looked the same with their helmets on.
With an impatient wave of his heavily armored hands, the Navigator guided him towards the door. “C’mon, we’ve gotta go.”
Shuffling towards him, he stepped past the bulky soldier and into the corridor. He wasn’t the only one being taken from the prison and he shared a concerned look with a woman emerging from her cell. She was tall, curvy and quite pretty in an obvious way. He preferred a woman like his late wife, Vela. With her dark hair and matching brown eyes, her skin had been like velvet, smooth and soft to the touch. The woman by his side was a brassy blonde with large assets to match.
“Where are we going?” She whispered as they were hustled along the corridor.
Expecting to be shouted at for talking, he was surprised when several Navigators only prodded them towards the door at the end of the corridor. “I don’t know.”
“What are you in for?”
“Renegade.”
Her cornflower blue eyes widened in surprise, giving her a comical appearance. “You’re an alien?” Without waiting to hear his reply, she said unhappily, “I…I screwed the wrong guy.”
“That’s a crime?”
“It is when you’re the mistress of a senior engineer and his wife finds out.”
As they were pushed into a room containing a long table with backpacks on it, he studied her profile. Hidden inside of the corners of her eyes and around her mouth were the lines of an older woman. He suspected her imprisonment was less about the wife and more about reaching her use-by date. Prostitution wasn’t a job sanctioned by the Guild, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any, but he gathered it was an expensive and well-hidden service. Groups of men from the cities were known to visit the outlands looking for renegade women, and he’d cleaned up the mess they’d left more than once, digging his fair share of the graves.
“Pair up!” A voice shouted from behind one of the helmets.
“What do you think they’re doing?” She whispered worriedly.
The room had five Navigators and a technician who was injecting something into each prisoner’s neck. He’d never seen it before, but he could guess what was about to happen. “Hunting rabbits.”
Frantically looking round the room, she grabbed his arm, pulling him towards her. “Stay with me. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Before he could answer, the technician had reached him in the line. Not bothering to resist, he stretched his neck, ready for the chip that would embed deeply into the muscle. The cold steel touched his skin and he waited for the
sharp pain as the chip fired into him, but it didn’t come.
Moving onto the woman, the technician asked, “Is she with you?”
Nodding so enthusiastically that her blonde hair flew across her face, she replied, “Yes, yes, we’re together.”
As the technician continued to microchip every prisoner, he rubbed his neck. He couldn’t feel the chip and it didn’t hurt, making him wonder whether he’d been chipped at all. The other prisoners were now standing in pairs, all sharing worried looks. This wasn’t a good situation. They wouldn’t microchip them unless they were planning to make them run.
“Each of you take one pack. That bag contains your supplies.”
“Does that include a gun?” A loud voice shouted from the line of prisoners.
To his surprise, the Navigator standing in front of them laughed. “Of course it does. One per pair.”
That was even worse news. It meant they planned to drop them well outside of the cities, possibly further than the outlands and into the wastelands. The wastelands were the radiated areas left after the war with the aliens. During the battle, they’d bombed some of their own cities, leaving them utterly destroyed and uninhabitable. Nobody went into the wastelands, not even the renegades.
The Navigator’s voice boomed across the room. “For those of you who don’t know the run rabbit run game, I’ll give you an overview. We’ll drop you in pairs far away from one another. You will have a one-hour start and then the hunt begins. If you’re still alive in twenty-four hours, then you’ll have earned your freedom.”
“What about the chips?” A prisoner asked.
“They’ll be disabled and you will no longer be considered a target.”
The prisoner snorted. “But you can make us a target again anytime you want.”
“Life sucks, don’t it?”
Taking one of the packs from the table, he pulled it open. Inside were six ready-made meals, a flashlight, folded blanket, water bottle and the holster for a gun, but no weapon. “Where’s the gun?”
“You’ll get it when you’re dropped.”
Once they were prodded outside of the prison, they headed towards the landing pad where a transport airship was waiting. He was still wearing the hard-soled boots he’d arrived in, but they’d taken away his clothes, forcing him to dress in the loose tunic of a prisoner. It meant he didn’t have his armored coat or assault gloves and without his hands, he could do nothing. Although they’d been hardened with years of rough living, they could mean the difference between life and death, so he couldn’t afford to damage them. Once they sat inside of the loading bay on the airship, he used his teeth to tear several strips from the hem of his tunic, tightly wrapping one around each hand.
“What are you doing?” His newly acquired partner asked.
“Protecting my hands. You should do the same.”
Without hesitation, she copied him by tearing strips from the hem of her tunic. While he helped her tie them around her hands, he asked, “What’s your name?”
“Honey.” Glancing up at her as he tied off the knot, she shrugged at his skeptical expression. “My real name’s Joan.”
“Okay, Joan, I take it you have no experience outside of the cities.” When she shook her head, he continued, “I have plenty of experience so you’ll need to do exactly what I tell you.”
Fiddling with the fabric he’d tied across her hands, she gave him a sidelong look. “You won’t shoot me, will you?” That thought hadn’t crossed his mind and he shook his head, surprised by her question. Appearing relieved, she added, “Some people would.”
Some of the prisoners were investigating the contents of their packs, while others were leaning against the brown colored wall of the loading bay, appearing resigned to their fate. He supposed some would kill one another, others would kill themselves, and the rest would run. There was no chance their weapon would be capable of harming a Navigator. Maybe that was why they were being given a gun, just to see what they would do with it. It didn’t really matter what they were playing at, he knew how to survive off the land. They might not know it, but they were giving him a chance to live, and he was going to grasp it with both hands.
In ten pairs, they were dropped in locations, some of which he knew. Providing they didn’t dump them in the wastelands, he might manage to evade them. When it came to be their turn, the ship left them on what had once been an interstate. As the ship lifted back into the air, he slowly spun around trying to get his bearings. The asphalt was barely visible beneath the scrubby plants that had broken through the road. Low bushes and dry grass surrounded them, offering no place to hide. If there had ever been any houses in the area, they were long gone, reclaimed by the persistent force of nature. The air was dry and a warm breeze was lazily making its way across the plain.
“We need to find an old road sign.”
With her backpack slung over one shoulder, Joan looked out of place in the middle of nowhere. “Why?”
“I know where there are safe locations,” he replied, grabbing her by the arm. Turning her around, he lifted the pack from her shoulder, showing her how to wear it so that it hung from both and settled against the middle of her back. Spinning her around again, he closed the clip on the belt around her waist then checked the backpack was secured tightly to her body. “We need to run.”
“To where.”
“Anywhere, but here.”
Setting off at a fast pace, he jogged along the road, occasionally stopping whenever he saw any sort of sign. Heading west, he should run across another interstate going southward that would lead them to the outland forests.
Puffing by his side, Joan complained, “It’s hopeless. We can’t get far by foot. We should hide somewhere.”
“You can’t hide from a nav.”
“Then this is bullshit. We can’t win.”
That was true. Without transport, they couldn’t outrun a Navigator and with their visors, hiding wasn’t an option either. If this was supposed to train the Navigators then he couldn’t even begin to guess how. The game was rigged in their favor, and just as he’d predicted, the old-fashioned revolver they’d handed to them couldn’t do any damage to a Navigator.
“I wonder why they chipped us.”
Joan was breathing hard and strands of her blonde hair were clinging to her reddened face. “To track us.”
“Navs don’t need a chip to do that.”
She waved her hand at the sky. “You’re about to be famous.”
When he looked up at the skies, he couldn’t see anything. “How?”
“The chips are for the cam drones. It’s so they can film the hunt.”
“They do that?”
“Yeah, they show it on the Network. It’s to make sure people know just what’ll happen to them if they misbehave. Of course, that’s not what they tell them. They make it sound like the prisoners are being offered a chance to live, but mostly they don’t.”
He still hadn’t seen a sign to know exactly where they were, but when he heard a heavy pounding of footsteps, he knew it didn’t matter anymore. Behind them, hard on their heels, a Navigator was hunting them. Pushing Joan with his shoulder, they both veered from the road, dropping onto the grassy edge. There wasn’t much vegetation around them to offer any cover, so he began to run in a low crouch.
She didn’t bother to join him, but continued jogging at a steady pace. Realizing the she was right and the Navigator could see them, he straightened. Together they ran across the plain, dodging around small bushes and clumps of tall, dry grass. While he ran, he kept looking at the skies, waiting to see the drone she’d said would witness their murders. The relentless pounding behind them was growing louder, but he didn’t want to stop. The best he could do was make his death boring, so this Navigator would have to shoot him in the back. The steady thumping behind them was growing closer still and he reached out his hand to Joan. She didn’t look at him, but firmly grasped his hand.
The pounding footsteps following them must have b
een well within firing range, but still no shots came. Part of him wanted to turn around and see why, but their steady pace had numbed his mind. His breath was coming easily now as if he’d been born to run. The air was lifting Joan’s hair, making it fly gracefully behind her. With their lives about to end, he felt such a growing sense of freedom that his face broke into a wide grin. Joan turned her head to smile at him, and in that moment he saw the innocent girl she must have once been.
Still death didn’t come, but the heavy hand of a Navigator landed on his shoulder, finally bringing their flight to an end. He didn’t want his last sight on earth to be that of his helmeted killer so he didn’t turn around, but he stood waiting with his head held high. Joan had promised him a cam drone and he supposed one might be behind him.
“You’re running the wrong way.”
The Navigator’s words didn’t make any sense. Turning to face his killer, the man flicked up his helmet, and he instantly recognized his boyish face.
“Why?” He asked.
“It’s not personal.”
“Feels personal.”
“Some of us know we’re soldiers, not murderers.” Pointing east, he added, “Go that way for about a hundred miles and you’ll hit the outlands.”
“What about the chip?”
“Neither of you have one.”
“Did you do that?”
Raising his gloved hand to flick down his helmet, he replied, “A lot of us don’t agree with the Guild.” Nodding in the direction he’d told them to go, he added, “You should leave now. As far as the Guild knows you’re both dead.”
With that final comment, he pulled down his helmet, breaking into a fast run in the direction they’d come. He owed this man his life twice now, but he had no way to thank him. Taking Joan by the elbow, he said, “He’s right. We should go.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, but that’s the second time he’s saved my life.”
