by David Coy
“I guess he wasn’t counting on this,” Donna said to Joe, waving the business end of John’s heavy pistol at him.
“Sit down on the floor,” John told him.
“I can’t bend my leg . . . ” Devonshire whined.
John pushed him roughly to the floor.
Devonshire was gripping his thigh just above the ragged patch of flesh that was his knee with a look of childlike misery on his face. A constant stream of blood ran out his pants leg and onto the floor.
“You gotta get me to a doctor . . . ” he whined.
“I am the doctor, you maggot,” Donna said.
“Then you gotta help me. I’m bleedin’ to death . . . ”
“You don’t get any help until you answer a few questions, Mister Nephew.”
“I’m not telling you squat. You can all go to Hell.”
“You know something—Joey, I’ve just spent almost a whole Earth-week in the green, fighting for my life because of what your goddamn Uncle Ed did to me. And I’m just dying to get my revenge on somebody about now, and you’re the best candidate in this room—now that this fucker’s dead.” She kicked roughly at Kelly’s leg. It sounded like she’d kicked a side of beef. She brought the gun close to Devonshire’s other knee.
“Donna . . . ” Rachel said.
Donna looked straight at her with a steady stare. Her blue-brown eye, which had fascinated Rachel, now blazed in her head like some frightening and venomous jewel. The look chilled her. Donna turned back to Devonshire and Rachel was sure he was reading the same look of infinite will and resolve. “Donna . . . ” Rachel said again. “Don’t do this . . . ”
“You either tell me what I want to know, or I’ll turn this knee into mush.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he said.
The blast tore a whole in the room’s air and Rachel’s ears rang again. She looked over at Devonshire to see his mouth open in a silent scream. The shot had missed the knee, but the blast tore a smoking hole in the material of his pants.
“Did you think I was kidding you?” Donna asked him.
“No . . . ”
“Put a tourniquet on this one,” she said to John. “I don’t want him to die too fast.”
Devonshire had turned ashen and his eyes were glassy. His lower lip trembled. Donna reached out and put her hand on his head. “You’re cool, Joey. I think you’re dying,” she said calmly.
“If you’d like, I can run over to the clinic and get you a little something for the shock. Hummm? Would that be nice.”
“John, make her stop . . . ” Rachel said.
“Donna’s right, Rachel. This worm knows it all.”
“All the more reason to keep him alive!” Rachel shot back.
“Maybe,” Donna said. “Now, are you ready to tell me what I want to know?”
“I . . . ”
“You know—Joey, I’m a grade five nurse, I can keep you alive a lot longer than you’d ever, ever want to. Are you listening to me?”
Devonshire’s head barely nodded.
“Was that a ‘yes’?” Donna demanded.
“Yes . . . ” he said weakly.
“Fine. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Rachel wanted to faint. “I don’t want any part of this,” she said.
“You are a part of it!” Donna snapped.
Rachel folded her arms and slumped against the wall. It was slump or fall down. “This isn’t right . . . ” she said.
“They’re gonna kill us if we don’t—get them first!” Donna flashed.
Donna sighed and turned her attention back to Devonshire. He was still holding his right thigh with both hands and looked like he might expire at any moment.
“Joe. Make it easy on yourself. I can still fix your leg, maybe as good as new. Just tell me who works for Uncky Ed.”
“He can barely talk . . . ” Rachel offered.
Donna spun on her and her eye flashed in her head like a wicked light. The very force of it drove Rachel tight against the wall. Donna was like a lioness with her prey and she didn’t have to say a word to get her point across. Her point was quite clear. Stay back. She spun on Devonshire.
“Talk!”
Devonshire’s mouth began to move. “I . . . ”
“That’s right, Joey. Talk . . . who works for Uncle.”
“Everybody here . . . ”
“You know what I mean, Joe. Who’s doing his dirty work for him? Who’s on the take?”
“You gotta promise to help me first.”
“I promise . . . ” Donna sighed, “ . . . to kill you if you don’t talk.”
“Kelly . . . ” he said finally.
“Who’s Kelly?”
Devonshire nodded weakly at Kelly’s body.
“Him? He’s dead, Joe. Who else?”
“Afshin . . . Berger and Hiller.”
“That figures. Who on the ground? Who in Security, Joe?”
“All three guards.”
“We guessed that, right?” John offered to Rachel. She glared back at him in silence.
“What’s the scam, Joe?”
It seemed to take a moment to sink in, then Devonshire smiled an unpleasant little smile. “Scam?” he said.
“That’s right. Scam. What’s Uncle Ed up to?”
“There’s no scam. Smith owns the planet. It’s simple,” he said.
“What’s simple? Smith’s the franchisee. I don’t get it.” Devonshire nodded weakly and his head sunk down onto his chest. Donna lifted it up with a finger under his chin and looked at him as if she knew he was faking it.
“Smith’s just the franchisee, Joe. He doesn’t own the planet. He’s working on behalf of Richthaus-Alvarez.”
“Not in this case.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s the simple part,” he said.
“You’re not being very clear and I’m getting very angry.” Devonshire smiled his twisted smile. “Are you sure you want to hear all this?” he asked.
“Talk.”
“There’s a group in the CG that has plans for this planet,” he said smugly.
“What kind of plans?”
“Big ones.”
She waved the huge pistol in his face. “If you don’t clarify yourself, I’m gonna take your head off with this.” She tapped his head rudely with the pistol’s heavy muzzle.
Devonshire winced then swallowed. “There’s growing panic back home—panic at every level. They say another collapse is on the way. It’s coming from the Commonwealth Government.”
“So?”
“So the atmosphere back home has been fertile ground for the Sacred Bond.”
“Bondsmen? What the hell do they have to do with anything?”
“Everything. They’ve had members in and out of here since it opened scouting it, making plans.”
“What kind of plans?” she wanted to know.
“Wait a minute,” John said. “The Sacred Bond of the Fervent Alliance is a religious sect. Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Right,” Donna said.
“They want this planet” Joe went on. “They want to move their families here, settle here—for good.”
“They can’t do that,” Rachel said.
“Yes they can,” Joe said.
“No they can’t,” Rachel went on. “There are laws that prohibit that kind of thing.”
“Not any more.”
“What do you mean?” Donna asked.
“Laws change that’s all. Money works wonders.”
“They’ve changed the laws?” Donna scoffed.
“Some. Enough. Oh, they are coming,” Joe said.
“How many?” John asked.
Devonshire grinned.
“Ten thousand a month. For years . . . ” he grinned.
“What?” Rachel said. “Are there that many?”
“More,” he said proudly. “I said the conditions on Earth were . . . fruitful.”
“Are you a member of the Sacred Bond, Jo
e? You are aren’t you?”
Joe chuckled in a thin voice as tight as a violin string. “You’re pretty smart, Nursey. Me, Uncky. We’re everywhere nowadays.”
“Smith, too?” Rachel asked.
“Especially Uncle Ed. He found religion about three Earth-loops ago. He takes it very seriously. The Sacred Bond loves him—he’s a perfect front man, he’s making it all happen. But he’s had to do a lot of what he does best.”
“What’s that?”
“Scam . . . ” he said and chuckled. “He’s a natural. He’s so good at it, he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. He’s scammed an entire planet. He’s had to keep the plan out of sight of the CG atheists so he could set the stage and transport the right housing and resources. It hasn’t been easy. The Department of Health has been the biggest problem—as you know so well.”
“So that’s why you were hired, you little bastard?” Rachel said. “To keep an eye on me and . . . ” she trailed off as it sank in.
“ . . . and pave the way around those stubborn little laws surrounding bio-hazards and such,” he said and smiled.
“Then all this is just bullshit,” Donna said. “The surveys, the medical reports, all the compliance with CGDH requirements—all of it—all crap?”
“All crap,” he purred. “All a smoke screen. The idea was to do just enough to keep from getting shut down. You know, ‘Confuse, Hide and Divert’—The 2nd Law of Holy Power.”
“The what?” Rachel asked, squinting.
“One of their little axioms or some such shit,” Donna volunteered.
“Homilies,” Devonshire corrected. “They’re called homilies.”
“You’re trying to steal the planet,” Donna said.
“Something like that,” he said with a sneer.
In her mind’s eye she saw the carriers by the hundreds adrift above Earth’s ports. She saw the shuttles running back and forth to them in thin lines and the crowds of wealthy and rabid religious pilgrims clamoring for passage on one of the new and shiny carriers.
This project had nothing at all to do with mining; at least not now. Mining would come later—after the slaves arrived.
No. It was about the migration of Homo sapiens to a new and pristine place; to a planet rich and fertile and beautiful—with plenty of resources for the holy. Unlike tacky Fuji, an out-world project made of three parts machinery and one part human flotsam, this would be the grand and fertile field where the seeds of Homo sapiens most shining examples would be planted. This would be the new place, the fresh place, where humankind would procreate and grow and flourish and devour once more. Here the most gluttonous of the species would bring to bear its formidable technology and with its virulent will to survive and breed, aim that fearsome weapon at the planet’s heart.
She’d seen them, even spoken with a few over the years and listened politely to their psycho-babble. The Sacred Bond of the Fervent Alliance, with their horrible iron-willed devotions and rules of proper conduct. Their hideous rituals of blood and adoration promised to wash away all sin, then filled the void left behind with a concrete mix of dogma, rules and scripture; the foundation for a mind stripped of its former framework. They were the blamers, the pointer-of-fingers, humanity’s accusers, and the embracers of a love, self-serving and false. They were vain seekers of a messiah who would certify them and their rabid convictions with a stamp holier than thine own. They were the procreators, the ones gone forth to multiply—the makers of lives in great number, dull and eternal.
These devoted ones would leave a vanquished Earth behind and with the zeal only the religious righteous can muster, would carry forward humankind’s flag. Stitched with fifteen thousand years of war, plague, greed and religion-spawned avarice, they would carry it to Verde’s Revenge and plant that tattered standard deep in its heart.
This rich green planet would become the new center of the human universe with the superstitious and deceptive as its stewards. Here the gatherers of excessive wealth and the gleaners of souls would feed. The cycle would repeat as it had in the past.
“That’s some news, Joe. You just risked a lot,” she said.
He knotted his brow as if he were really thinking about it.
“See, I don’t think you’ll kill me. You might run away and hide, but you won’t kill me. I’ll go back to Uncle Ed and make up some story to cover my butt, but you’ll be back in the green and probably dead in a week. I’m not worried. It doesn’t matter what I tell you. The important thing is that the planet doesn’t get closed down and all those delivery channels stay open. With you two out of the way, that’s guaranteed.”
“You got awfully lucid, there Joe, for a man who’s dying.”
“I’m fine,” he smiled “It’s just a scratch.”
“Is that right?” she said with a crooked grin of her own.
The concussion of the huge pistol tore through the little room like a bomb blast. The area behind what was left of Devonshire’s head was a red, star-shaped splatter. His arms and legs hung down and twitched spastic and weak.
“Donna, you killed him . . . ” Rachel said, her ears ringing. “That’s right. He’s dead. Now we have a chance—and there’s one less zealot in the world.”
“We’ve got to get rid of the bodies,” John said, scowling at them as if they were trash to be thrown out.
“Why?” Donna said. “If they don’t report to Smith, he’ll know they’re dead anyway. What’s the point? What we have to do is get the hell out of here.”
“Where?” Rachel asked. “Where are we supposed to go?”
“Anywhere, Rachel! Got any ideas! Maybe you’d like to wait for some more of Smith’s bad boys to come and get you and fuck you dead like this bastard here wanted to. Well, if that’s what you want, you stay—I’m getting the hell out of here as far as I can go. Fuck this, I’ve lived a week in the green, and I can live there at least a week longer—that’s a lot longer than I’ll last here in the compound.”
“She’s right, Rachel,” John said. “We have to go.”
“But where?’ Rachel almost cried.
“We’ll take a shuttle, stock it with food and fly it into the green. They’ll never find us.”
“Now, there’s an idea,” Donna said.
“We can live in the shuttle as long as the food holds out,” he went on.
“Then what?” Rachel wanted to know. “What happens when we run out of food?”
“We’ll buy some more or steal it!” Donna screamed, nearly knocking Rachel over with it.
“Stop yelling at me . . . ” Rachel said evenly.
John saw a look of dark anger cross Rachel’s face and wondered with dread what would happen if all those muscles suddenly exploded out of the corner, gun or no gun.
“Let’s not fight,” he said. “We’ve got enough to worry about. Why don’t you . . . uh . . . give me that gun.”
“Sorry,” Donna said handing it over. “I’m a little tense.” That brought wry grins all around and a snort of black laughter from Donna.
“We’d better get started,” John said. “The clock’s ticking.” They picked the shelter clean of everything edible and carried it out and put it in the truck. Clothes and net suits were next, and extra boots, gloves and tools. The next stop was the clinic where Donna gathered every last medical item she could find that might be of use, including two or three armfuls of emergency kits. Moving now under cover of darkness, they stopped at the bio-lab last where they collected all the food from shelves, cabinets and cooler. When they’d gotten it all, Rachel started carrying out awkward armloads of her treasured equipment.
“Do you think you’ll need that stuff?” John asked.
“You never can tell—get that scope for me.”
With everything they could get their hands on for free loaded up, John and Rachel surveyed the load, taking inventory. It wasn’t enough.
“Who’s got credit left?” John asked.
“We should have gotten credit today,” Rachel said. “You a
nd me, I mean. Donna may have had hers terminated already.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Donna said. “I’m even as it is. We’ll have to use your credit.”
“Administration might have cut ours off too by now for all we know,” Rachel said.
“There’s one way to find out,” he said, getting in the truck.
“We’ll go buy something.”
“I’ll wait in the truck, if you don’t mind,” Donna said. “Right . . . ” John replied.
John walked into the store and picked up two hand baskets. Rachel followed right behind him and did the same. They went right to the food racks and started to fill them up with complete meals at random until the baskets wouldn’t hold anymore. “Stocking up, huh?” the fat clerk said.
“Yeah,” John said stiffly.
“We like to be prepared,” Rachel said. “You know . . .
“Right.” The clerk tallied the items and activated the hand pad. “Who pays?” he asked.
“I’ll pay first, then her.”
“Okay with me,” the clerk said.
John put his thumb down on the reader. The device read his print that followed with an audible beep. The clerk brightened.
“Looks like you just got paid. You’re lucky. I don’t get mine till the end of the period. Shitty contract.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess we did,” John said. “You wouldn’t mind if we stocked up with some more, would you?”
The clerk looked puzzled. “I don’t care. Help yourself. It’s your debt.”
They dumped the contents of the basket into the truck’s bed. As they were going back in, Rachel saw two figures in net suits approaching from the direction of the dock. Her heart went into her throat.
“Don’t panic,” John said. “It’s a store. Stores have customers.
They walked back over to the food racks and started filling up.
“Hey, hi!” Mike Kominski said to Rachel. The sound made her jump.
“Hi!” she said. “How are you, Mike?”
