by Piers Platt
Rath's Trial
By Piers Platt
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1
“Here they come,” Paisen whispered over her tactical radio.
Through the thick jungle vegetation, she saw a convoy of four off-road vehicles appear on the twisting road below her. She scanned the high branches around her, but could see no sign of the rest of her team, even when she switched to thermal vision on her eye implants. Good, she thought. They’re learning.
Like her, the other contractors were heavily camouflaged, each harnessed into a tree perch nearly a hundred feet up in the canopy. Paisen turned her attention back to the approaching vehicles. A jeep, a cargo truck, and another jeep. That truck worries me. If it’s carrying a squad of foot soldiers, we’re outnumbered.
But it’s too late now.
She sent a signal through her internal computer, and a countdown appeared in her heads-up display, synchronized with the other contractors’ displays. When it reached zero, she squeezed the detonator in her hand. A smaller tree several yards away toppled over, blocking the road in front of the lead jeep. Simultaneously, she saw camouflaged forms detach from the trees around her, descending rapidly toward the forest floor. The only noise she heard was the sound of their climbing ropes sliding smoothly through karabiners. Paisen kicked backwards off her perch, swinging out into free air and bringing her auto-rifle up to her shoulder as she followed her team down.
Below, she saw the driver of the lead jeep open his door and climb out to inspect the fallen tree, cursing. Paisen shot him while still descending, and saw him topple over, stun round buried in his shoulder. She hit the ground moments later, legs wide, rifle scanning for targets. There were two other passengers in the jeep, but Vence, who had landed on the far side of the jeep, had already tagged both of them with stun rounds from her own weapon, and Paisen saw them slump over in their seats.
“Lead vehicle clear,” Vence reported, her voice cool and collected.
“Rear vehicle clear,” another voice responded.
Paisen heard a burst of gunfire, and saw a gun barrel sticking out the back of the cargo truck, firing wildly.
Shit.
A camouflaged contractor flew across the road, riding his rappelling rope like a rope swing. The arc of his swing took him directly past the open rear of the truck, and Paisen saw him lob a stun grenade inside, before swinging into the bushes on the far side of the road.
Fucking Tepper, that cowboy.
She shook her head in annoyance. But the grenade detonated a second later, and two other contractors ducked around the back of the truck hot on its heels, firing stun rounds continuously.
“Truck’s clear,” one reported. “And Tepper’s stuck in a thorn bush.”
“Serves him right,” Paisen grunted.
It took them less than five minutes to drag the unconscious soldiers from the vehicles, bind them, and lay them out of sight of the road. The contractors each stripped off their camouflage gear and climbing harness, picked a soldier’s face to mimic, and then boarded the vehicles. Vence finished cutting through the fallen log moments later, and Paisen helped the shorter woman haul the pieces aside. Less than ten minutes after the convoy had first appeared, it was back on the move, with the contractors at the wheel.
They wound their way through the jungle for several miles, the trucks making slow progress on the crumbling dirt track. Paisen heard the radio crackle to life.
“So there I was,” Tepper said, broadcasting to the entire team.
“Christ, here we go again,” Vence said to Paisen, smiling and shaking her head in mock annoyance.
“… sophomore year of high school, flunking all my classes,” Tepper continued. “When they announce a contest, for the entire school. Whoever writes the best essay gets an all-expense-paid trip to Earth. Earth! The mother planet, can you imagine?”
The trucks continued on through the jungle, passing through patches of sunlight and shade.
“Now I’d always been a little obsessed with Earth, so I figured out a way to rig the contest. I hacked into the contest submission website, read all of the other kids’ papers, and picked a really good one, and then changed the name on it so I would get credit for it. Then I went through and fucked with all of the other papers, you know – typos and grammar errors, that kind of thing. I changed one kid’s paper so that it just started swearing randomly in the middle of sentences, like he had Tourette’s or something.”
“You’re an asshole, Tepper,” Vence radioed back, laughing.
“Oh, for sure. It was a total dick move, I know. But I wanted to go to Earth so bad.”
“Did you win?” another contractor asked.
“Yeah! I fucking won! Greatest day of my life. This was gonna be the thing that turned little Tepper’s life around, you know? I would go to Earth, and see our heritage, and become famous and make lots of money somehow – this was my golden ticket.”
“What was Earth like?” someone else asked.
“Well … here’s the thing,” Tepper said. “It turns out if you sleep through your shuttle flight, and all of the other shuttles are fully booked, you miss your spaceliner and you don’t get to go to Earth. Still haven’t been, actually. But someday … someday.”
Vence laughed out loud. “Jackass.”
“We’re closing in on the objective,” Paisen radioed. “Clear the net.”
They crested a small rise and the prison camp appeared, a cluster of rough wooden bungalows sitting on bare, red clay, surrounded by rows of razor-wire fencing. Guard towers stood at each of the camp’s four corners, looking out over several hundred yards of cleared forest land, tree stumps still showing in the low grass. The sight reminded Paisen of her last experience at a prison colony, back on New Liberia – of hauling scrap through the irradiated city, and her encounter with the Warrior gang. She shook her head as if to clear away the memories.
Focus on the mission.
The convoy stopped at the camp’s entrance, where two guards waved to Paisen in the passenger seat of the lead truck. She saluted them lazily, and they lowered an electrified net out of their path, swinging the gates open. The trucks drove down the main thoroughfare of the camp, inmates shuffling hurriedly out of their way. Paisen checked her mirror, and saw Tepper and Jacque jump casually off the back of the truck as they passed a row of barracks huts. The two men sauntered over to the nearest hut, and ducked inside.
“There’s the motor pool,” Paisen said, pointing out the windshield.
“I got it,” Vence confirmed, her voice gruff and masculine, in keeping with the male driver she had mimicked.
The vehicles made a slow loop of the parking area, and Paisen ensured they were parked facing back toward the camp’s entrance. She swung her door open and stood, stretching slowly as if weary from a long journey.
“Found him,” Tepper announced over the radio net. “Ready for extract.”
Paisen ducked back into the jeep. “DNA match?”
“Confirmed, boss, it’s him,” Tepper said. “We’re getting him into his guard uniform now.”
“On our way,” Paisen said. She whistled loudly, and the rest of the contractors turned to look at her. “Mount up,” she said. “Change of orders.”
There were a few convincing grumbles, but the team moved quickly, and the convoy pulled off again, retracing its steps. Paisen saw a man exit one of the administrative buildings up ahead of them. He flagged them down with a frown
, and Paisen recognized him from the intelligence brief as the camp’s commandant.
“Pull up a little farther, and then stop,” Paisen muttered to Vence. She drew her sidearm and held it low in her lap, aiming it through the door. In her heads-up display, a red reticle appeared over the commandant’s frowning eyebrows, wavering slightly as the jeep rocked to a stop.
“Where the hell are you going?” he asked. “You’re supposed to replace Bravo Company for the next month.”
She shrugged, and pointed at the jeep’s radio. “Just got orders to report back to base,” she told him. “Call it in if you want.”
“Damn right I will,” he seethed. “Don’t go anywhere.” He turned on his heel. Paisen caught movement in her rear-view mirror, and saw Tepper and Jacque escort their target out the barracks door. The commandant must have seen it too: he slowed and glanced toward the truck, where Jacque had stopped and cradled his hands, helping the target up into the bed of the truck. The man, looking gaunt and tired in his new guard uniform, looked up briefly, and then disappeared into the truck.
A flicker of recognition crossed the commandant’s face.
Tepper leaned around the edge of the truck and shot him quickly and without ceremony, a single stun round in the middle of the chest. The suppressed weapon’s noise registered as a loud cough, barely audible. The commandant tumbled forward onto the floor of the building’s porch.
“Goddamn it!” Paisen swore.
“We’re in,” Tepper called, a second later.
“Nice and easy, head for the gate,” Paisen ordered. “So far no one’s noticed.”
Vence started up again, glancing nervously up at the guard towers looming over them.
“Slow it down,” Paisen told her. “We’re not in a rush, remember?”
“Sure,” Vence replied, easing off the accelerator.
“Be ready to go loud,” Paisen told her team over the net. “Truck team, you suppress the towers. We’ll handle the guards up here.”
“Someone else just walked out of the commandant’s office,” Tepper reported.
Paisen rolled down her window as the jeep came to a stop at the gate. She grinned sheepishly at the two guards.
“Leaving already?” the nearest asked.
“Afraid so,” she told him. She watched as his hand reached for the switch to open the gate. And then the alarm klaxon blasted out across the yard.
Paisen and Vence fired at nearly the same instant, their rounds punching through the jeep’s armored sides. Paisen was out the door before the guards’ bodies had hit the ground – she took three steps, slammed her hand down on the gate control lever, and the electric net swung down to the ground. Behind her, she heard Tepper’s crew in the truck open up, auto-rifles peppering the guard towers with rounds.
“Go!” Paisen yelled, yanking the jeep door closed.
Vence floored it, and the vehicles raced across the open meadow, back toward the safety of the jungle. Paisen risked a glance back toward the camp, but Tepper had done his job well – neither guard tower was returning fire.
Which in no way makes up for the rest of the shit you’ve pulled on this mission, Tepp.
They had covered five of the six miles to the landing zone, bouncing haphazardly along the rough forest road, when the missile streaked in and hit the truck’s cab, the explosion knocking the truck over onto its side. The sudden blast made Vence jerk the jeep’s wheel, and the vehicle slammed hood-first into a tree trunk just off the side of the road.
“Jesus Christ!” Vence said.
“Get out!” Paisen yelled. “That came from a drone, there’ll be more inbound.” She released her seatbelt, wincing at the bruises it had left across her torso, and tumbled out her own door.
She pushed her way through a bush, then started toward the truck. Gotta get to the target, get him out of here.
She had taken no more than three steps when another missile hurtled in, and impacted the jeep directly behind her. The blast engulfed her, and her vision went dark.
2
His heads-up display flashed a proximity warning, and Rath pulled his air car over, parking at the side of the road. He pushed open the door and then stood, stretching and surveying the rolling cemetery grounds in front of him.
Last one, he thought. Number 49.
Technically, Senator Reid had been his final – and fiftieth – Guild-assigned kill. But Rath had visited Senator Reid’s grave the week before, in order to save Arthin Delacourt III for last. His photographic memory surfaced the images of Delacourt’s final moments: the Suspensys pod dropping from the spaceship’s cargo hold, the old man sleeping peacefully under the clear canopy. The streak of orange-white flame as the pod hit Scapa’s upper atmosphere, then broke up into flaming pieces. Rath shook his head.
It was quick, and he died in his sleep. I gave him that much, at least.
He set off across the manicured lawn, weaving his way between the granite headstones. The day was hot, consistent with Scapa’s desert climate. Rath wondered how much water they needed to keep the grass in the cemetery green. He followed the map in his heads-up display toward Delacourt’s grave, and noted that a middle-aged man was near the site already.
Someone else paying their respects, or visiting a loved one.
Rath zoomed in on his eye implants, frowning as he read the marker in front of the man.
That’s Delacourt’s grave.
He stopped at a random grave and knelt, keeping the man in his field of view, and pretending to clear a patch of overgrown grass from the base of the headstone in front him.
Bad timing. Guess I’ll have to wait my turn.
As he watched, the man broke into a fit of sobs and leaned over, his hand on the top of the gravestone. Rath winced.
Watch him, he chided himself. Look at what you caused.
The man straightened after a time, and gave the headstone a final caress. “I miss you, Dad,” he mumbled, but Rath’s enhanced ears caught every word.
“Dad …?” That must be Delacourt’s son. That’s odd … I always assumed his son was the one who hired me, in order to get his inheritance.
The man headed off through the cemetery, toward his own vehicle, and Rath waited until the car was out of sight to stand and walk over to Delacourt’s grave.
Lots of visitors today, old man. Rath knelt with a sigh. I can’t ask for your forgiveness … and you probably wouldn’t give it, even if you could. But I am sorry for taking your life. I made some bad decisions, and now … well, now I think perhaps I should have let them kill me instead. I don’t think my life is worth the lives of fifty others. So I’m sorry. All I can do is promise to make my life worthwhile now, to make your death – and Vonn’s death, and all the others – mean something.
Rath stood. “I don’t know how I’m going to do that. But I’ll try. I promise you that,” he told the silent grave.
He turned and walked back to the air car, sweating in the afternoon heat. A hydration warning from his newly-installed hemobots flashed in his heads-up display, nagging him to drink more water. Rath silenced the notification, thinking instead about Delacourt’s son. If his son ordered the hit in order to get his father’s fortune, why is he visiting his grave? What I saw didn’t look like remorse … it looked like genuine sadness.
Rath shut the car door, and then flipped the air car’s auto-pilot on. The engines hummed to life, and the car rose onto its hoverjets.
“University Hospital,” he ordered.
“We will arrive in eighteen minutes in current traffic conditions,” the car replied, spinning on its axis before gaining altitude.
Eighteen minutes. Then it’s time to find out if Jaymy really loved me.
3
Patriarch Thomis Rewynn reached the top of the pulpit, and surveyed the congregation below, the thousands packed into their pews throughout the cathedral. The elderly priest’s gnarled fingers gripped the marble on either side of the lectern, but he ignored the datascroll that held his notes. He knew w
hat needed to be said.
“We live in the darkest time in mankind’s history. The old ways are dying, forgotten amidst a torrent of mass media, instant gratification, and pop culture. Godlessness and corruption run rampant, to the highest levels of our government.”
Rewynn eyed a portly middle-aged man in the front row, who sat between two Senate Guards. “But there are those who still stand up for tradition, like a beacon in a storm. Determined men, like Scapa’s own senator, Gaspar Foss. Men who are willing to fight to restore the values we hold dear. Thank you, Senator, for all that you do. We’re honored, as always, to have you with us.”
The senator nodded gravely in reply.
“And what are those values? Three simple rules, you know them well. Repeat them with me.”
As one voice, the congregation recited the litany with him: “Man chooses woman, woman serves man, and both serve God and Church.”
“Yes,” the Patriarch said, nodding. “It is the ancient way of humanity. A simple system that created the nuclear family, a perfect, self-contained unit. Until society abandoned it, replacing it with foolish notions that ignored millions of years of human evolution and biology, and led people astray.”
He took a sip of water from a glass on the lectern, and then set the glass down.
“Many people think that our church’s symbol features water because it is meant to represent our intent to purify society, to wash it clean of sin. Or, they say, it is the unstoppable tide of our advance. Perhaps it represents the lifewater we drink, the elixir that imbues us with God’s powers. But those interpretations miss a key element of the symbol: there are three waves bisecting the circle. That is not a mistake. They symbolize those three values that you just recited. Man, wife, church … and God the circle that surrounds all. Simi Quorn passed these values down to us when he founded this great church nearly a hundred years ago. They’re the same values that he had to rediscover, when his own life fell apart – divorced, an addict, a criminal, a con-man, the lowest of the low. But when God spoke to him, he listened. And he rejected the wickedness of his former life, and started a new life, and a new church. He knew that God was not only the path to redemption, but also to a higher order of consciousness.
