by David Coy
The older one stared straight ahead. The younger, some shred of arrogance still left, met Donna’s gaze. “We’ll see,” he said.
“Watch your tongue or you’ll get on my bad side,” Donna replied.
“I take it you’re looking for us,” John said.
“That’s right,” the younger said.
“Looks like you found us,” Donna said. “Too bad for you.”
The soldier smirked.
“How many are out there?” Donna asked.
“Twelve,” he said calmly. “Six teams.”
“What happens when you don’t check in?"
“Fuck off.”
Donna took a step closer and put her rifle’s muzzle a few centimeters from the soldier’s nose.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve been lied too and screwed over since I first heard of this goddamned planet. I’ve been dropped into the green from a goddamned shuttle by two fucks who thought it was funny. Then I marched through that fucking jungle for five days with nothing but the clothes on my back and muddy roots to eat. I’ve put up with bugs and rain and fucking monsters and parasites and bullshit ever since I got here. And on top of that I’ve killed four or five people.”
“You won’t shoot.”
“Why not?”
“Guns make noise.”
Donna laughed. “John, hand me that hammer from the tool bag. It won’t make much noise.”
John plucked the hammer from the canvas tool bag on the counter and exchanged it for Donna’s rifle. She squatted next to the young soldier, hammer in hand.
“You’d kill me if you had the chance, wouldn’t you?” she asked. “You wouldn’t even bat an eye. You’d do it because you’re tough. You’re tough inside. Well, I’ve got news for you. I’m twice as tough as you, and I’ll kill you twice as fast. What happens if you don’t check in?”
The young soldier looked into Donna’s blue-brown eye. It was the strangest eye he’d ever seen. But he’d been scared enough for one day. And it just wasn’t part of his nature to be scared. Plus, he’d already given in once today and felt like a weakling because of it. She could kill him if she wanted.
“Lyle Fabino, BCF88497,” he said with a smirk. “That’s all you’ll get from me.”
Donna raised the hammer high and held it there for a second. Lyle Fabino looked up at it and figured that he had better than an even chance she wouldn’t bring it down on his head.
He was right.
Donna brought the hammer down on the soldier’s elbow with a crunch that made his mouth spring open in a silent scream. He grabbed the elbow with his hand, doubled over and started to rock, his eyes clamped shut.
“Answer me,” Donna said.
“We have to . . . to call in . . . after we leave each shelter” he croaked. “They check it . . . off the . . . list. That way they know . . . which ones have been covered . . . and which haven’t. It’s . . . no big . . . deal.”
“It is now. Call in and tell them this one is clear,” she said, flipping the microphone up to his mouth. “Do it.”
Fabino switched the unit on.
“This is Fabino,” he said into it.
“Go,” the voice at the other end said.
He turned to his partner. “Uh, which one is this?” he asked innocently.
“Uh . . . B9, I think,” the older one said.
“B9’s clean,” Fabino said.
“Roger,” the voice said. “Proceed to B12. No, wait. Go to B13. B12’s done.”
“Roger.”
“Turn it off and keep it off,” Donna said to him.
He shut the unit off.
“Good boy,” Donna said. She put the hammer on the table and took her rifle from John. She aimed it carelessly at the two men. “Now we have some time to think without interruptions,” she said with a self-satisfied smile.
“Are we ready to make the call?” she asked Joan.
“I’m ready.”
“Then let’s do it.” She removed Joan’s pad from its kitchen mount and handed it to her. “You’ve got his number, right?”
“Yeah, it’s there,” Eddie said. “I got it last night.”
Joan turned the device on and brought up the speech they had prepared the night before. It wasn’t very long. She propped up the pad where she could read it.
“Here goes,” she said, reaching for the phone.
“You people are nuts,” Fabino said.
“One more word, and I’ll castrate you with that hammer,” Donna said to him.
“Yeah,” John added. “Shut up.”
Joan plugged the phone into the pad for a visual link. She wanted Council member Theodore Ryder to see her face when she read the ultimatum.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” Donna said. She looked over at Rachel who was leaning against the wall in the hallway, arms folded. “Rachel?
Are you ready?”
“Oh, sure. I’m ready," she answered though everyone knew she wasn't ready at all.
Joan called up Ryder’s name and dialed.
The call was answered a moment later by a lovely and sleepy-eyed young woman. She was dressed in a house robe and her close-cropped hair was still wet from a shower.
“You’re who?” she asked.
“Joan Thomas,” Joan said firmly. “Get Ryder on the phone right now.”
“You’re nobody. I can’t do that,” she said sweetly. “And how did you get this number?”
“What’s your name?” Joan asked.
“Elizabeth,” the girl sighed.
“Well, Elizabeth, I may be nobody to you, but I guarantee you Council Member Ryder will want to hear what I have to say.
“Oh, go away,” the girl said and broke the connection.
“Did you see that!” Joan said. “That little bitch . . . ”
A moment later the phone in Council Member Ryder’s suite rang again. This time Elizabeth was greeted with a large red and white danger sign and the words NUCLEAR WEAPON. Just as the big ugly words were sinking in, that Joan person’s face came in from the side.
“That’s what’s gonna explode,” Joan’s face said at an angle, “not five hundred meters from where you are—if you don’t get Ryder on the phone. Right now.”
Elizabeth felt like hanging up and switching off the phone unit completely. She wanted to go back to bed. That’s what she usually did after her shower, just until she woke up completely. She’d wanted to masturbate, too, and think about that boy she saw in the elevator yesterday. He’d had a nice butt and a nice smile from a full mouth. She’d seen him before, but never up close. Up close he made her tingle. But she couldn’t go back to bed and masturbate now because of this angry contractor woman. Elizabeth knew what a nuclear weapon was and didn’t care to know any of the details about this person’s. All she knew was that this was getting kind of scary and maybe she should go get Ted.
“Fine,” she huffed. “I’ll get him for you then. Geez!”
“You do that,” Joan said.
Joan squared herself in front of the camera and straightened her collar. She adjusted the screen and put the speech in one frame and the image of Ryder’s suite just below it. She could see enough of his living quarters to tell how wealthy he was. Nearly all of the sect’s members had given up their possessions during the move, but Ryder, and most of the other Council members had kept theirs. She watched as Ryder strode up to the phone and sat down. His demeanor was typical of the Council members—self-important and condescending. She could see it in his face before he spoke. He wasn’t physically ugly like Jacob, but Joan found him somehow as repulsive. He sat down in front of the camera and leaned in toward it, one eyebrow slightly up.
“What is all this about?” he asked.
“Is your recorder on, Council member?” she asked with stone in her voice.
“It’s always on,” he said. His tiny mouth barely moved when he spoke.
“Good. Let’s get something straight from the beginning. I’d like to tell you not t
o take any of this personally, but I can’t do that. I can’t tell you that because I take it very personally. So I want you to take it personally, too. I . . . ”
“What are you talking about?” he asked with a scowl.
“Don’t interrupt me again,” her voice was as smooth as polished stone. The coolness in it made Ryder sit still and listen.
“As I was saying,” she went on, “I take all this very personally. None of it is a matter of—of what do you call it?—abstraction or theory. It’s more . . . ”
“I don’t mean to interrupt you,” he said almost gently, “but could you get on with whatever it is you want to say.”
Joan paused and looked into the face on the screen. She couldn’t tell, to save herself, couldn’t put words to what it was she hated about him. She had felt the bottom of this man’s shoe on her back for as long as she could remember. It was there when she was born. It had been there on her father’s and mother’s back, her sister’s and brother’s, too. It had been there on her grandfather’s back and her grandmother’s. It had been there, pressing down on them for as long as anyone could remember. Was that it? Was it that simple?
She smiled and almost giggled. Maybe the reason for her hate was simply in the look of Ryder’s teeny mouth. He had the thinnest lips she’d ever seen, so much so that the impression was of no lips at all. Across the space that should have been a top lip was a paltry and ridiculous mustache. It was blond and the texture of short, thin grass.
It might as well have been that because it could have been anything, really. Her hate was so virulent and so persistent, it could have found root in any soil.
“I hate your guts,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “And I hate your goddamned mustache. And I don’t give a goddamn what you think about it.”
“You may at some point,” Ryder said.
“I don’t think so.” She held up the detonator. “Do you know what this is?”
Ryder studied it. “I can only imagine.”
“Then I hope you have a good imagination—one good enough to imagine the destruction of the entire settlement.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“I think so,” he smirked.
“It’s power. It is the power on this planet right now.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?"
“Yes, we will.”
“You have a list of demands, I suppose,” he said with a frown.
“Oh, yes.”
“What are they?”
Joan looked at the speech and skipped over the preamble they’d so carefully drafted the night before. It would be a waste of time to read it to him. She scrolled down to the list of demands. She might as well start at the bottom line. She cleared her throat, not out of nervousness but out of a desire to speak very, very clearly. She had no intention of repeating herself.
She squared her shoulders.
“One. The mercenaries leave the planet. That goes without saying. They leave immediately for Earth or one of the other projects. We shall not surrender our weapon until the mercenaries have departed and evidence of their arrival elsewhere provided to us.
“Two. A joint Council shall be formed once the mercenaries leave. One half will be contractors' representatives and one half from the rank and file of The Sacred Bond of the Fervent Alliance. We don’t care what influence the Council imposes on the Bondsmen’s representatives, but the existing Council shall have no direct representation on the new Council.
“Three. All issues regarding the health and welfare of the planet’s occupants shall be decided by majority vote after being properly introduced as items to vote upon.”
“Would that be parliamentary rules, then?” Ryder asked.
“What?”
Ryder sniffed long. “Parliamentary rules. You know.”
“No, I don’t, but it doesn’t matter, does it?” she replied and stared at him angrily until he turned away.
“Four. A joint police force shall be formed to keep the peace, enforce the will of the new Council and to insure the safety of the planet’s occupants. The details of how this is to be done is to be voted upon.
“Five. No more executions without due process of the law. And no more torture. And Jacob is to be imprisoned—contained—in a shelter, locked, until we decide what should be done with him.”
She stopped talking and waited for his response. When it came, it wasn’t much. But she hadn’t expected much.
“Is that all?”
“For now. If we think of something else, we’ll let you know. You have twenty-four hours to get the mercenaries off the planet or I’ll blow up the project. And get those search squads out of our section right now.”
She broke the connection and Ryder’s face, with its pale blue eyes and tiny mouth, vanished.
Ryder looked at the blank screen and scowled. She would
do it, he was sure of that.
“Who was that rude woman?” Elizabeth asked.
“A problem. A very big problem,” Ryder replied.
“Should I call the captain?”
“No. Not yet.”
“What should we do?” she asked.
“Get my coffee.”
Ryder leaned back and thought about how he would convey the news. He thought about how he would phrase the words to Jacob and about the faces he would make.
He bowed his head and prayed. Then he dialed Jacob’s number.
* * *
When Joan put the detonator back in her pocket, she looked over at the two soldiers on the floor and wondered if either of them would have the guts to use it. They would, she decided, as long as it didn’t kill them when it went off. They’d want to do it from a safe distance, from a hilltop kilometers away or from space. She could see them, counting down through big nasty smiles, hunched over and pounding the air like referees do in boxing matches. Men like these could set the bomb off under a schoolyard.
“Now what?” Rachel asked.
“Let them chew on it awhile,” Donna said. “It’s their move.”
Exhausted, they fell into the chairs and bench seat like debris washed ashore.
They sat silently for some minutes. Joan picked up the phone to call Bill. She was sure he’d be pleased with their progress. She headed for the hall for some privacy.
“Hey,” Joan said to Fabino as she passed. “You’re going back to Earth. What do you think of that?”
“Better’n this place,” he said, with rank contempt.
“You think so?” she said. “I think it’s a lot worse. It’s gonna be Hell. You’ll be lucky to live out the year. And once you get back you’ll never be able to leave because there won’t be any way to leave. No transport out. One way trip. This place is no picnic, but compared to Earth it’s quite pleasant. I kind of like it here, except for you bastards.”
“I don’t like you either,” the soldier said.
Joan chuckled. “You’re gonna die.”
John stepped to within a few feet of Fabino. “Hey, kid,” John said to him, “call in again and tell them B13’s clean, too.”
“Good idea,” Donna said.
Fabino switched the transmitter on and called in.
The voice at the other end sounded perturbed. “Hasn’t your radio been on? They’ve called off the search,” it said. “The captain says get the hell out of the ghetto right now. They’re gonna e-beam B9.”
They all exchanged looks, even the soldiers.
“What’s that mean?” Donna asked Fabino.
“It means you gotta get us outta here . . . now!” he shouted.
“Why?”
“Just get us outta here!” Fabino sprang to his feet and made for the door.
John headed him off with a rifle butt to his midsection. Fabino slumped back down.
“They’re planning to use an e-beam weapon on us,” John said.
“What’s that?” Donna asked.
“It means t
hey’re gonna cook us in our skins!” Fabino said. He reached for his transmitter and turned it on again. “Jones! Jones!”
“What?” the voice said.
“Tell them me and Harvey are in B9! Tell them to stop! Tell them to stop!”
“I don’t think I can. What are you doing in B9 anyways. Get outta there!”
“We can’t!” Fabino started to turn in circles like a captured animal. “We gotta get outta here!”
“Maybe he’s right,” John said, stepping to the window and looking out. “Maybe we should get out now.”
“Not yet,” Joan said.
“What are you gonna do!” Fabino said. “There’s nothin’ you can do!”
“Yes, there is,” she dialed Ryder’s number. Ryder picked up almost immediately.
“The minute I feel even a little warm,” she said evenly. “I’m pressing this button.”
“I’m afraid it’s out of my hands,” Ryder said.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “Stop them, Ryder.”
“I wish I could. I really do.”
“You’re making a big mistake.”
“Sorry.”
“I’ll blow it up.”
“You do that.”
“I’ll blow it up.”
“So do it.”
She took the detonator out of her pocket and armed it. “Stop them,” she warned.
“I don’t think so,” Ryder said with a sick little grin.
Joan gritted her teeth and put her thumb over the button. Her eyes found the face of each one in the room in quick succession.
“Joan!” Rachel screamed. “Don’t!”
“Stop this . . . ” Fabino said.
“Stop, Ryder!” Joan screamed into the phone.
“So do it,” Ryder said without feeling.
Joan pressed the button.
“Joan!”
“God . . . ” Harvey said and fell to his knees. Fabino closed his eyes.
She pressed it so hard her arm shook. There was no white flash, no instant oblivion. There was just a room full of terrified people. Joan’s thumb worked the detonator’s button.
“Go off . . . ” she said. “Go off!”
She heard Ryder’s laughter coming into her ear. She held the phone away from her head like it was something horrid. Ryder’s tinny voice laughed out at her from the little speaker. Slowly, she brought it back to her head. In spite of herself, she grinned a wide, ironic grin.
