One person aboard the Puller had been waiting for such a moment, however.
Benno, eyes wide as he realized his failure to keep everyone on task, reached over against the acceleration to swat Chief Dufresne’s spacesuited arm. It was a reflex, a wordless chastisement to them both to back him up and get the crew back on task.
That automatic action interrupted the killing blow.
As he shifted his body to the left to reach out to her, a chunk of jagged hull metal pierced his suit above his right collarbone and stabbed into his flesh. Had he been centered in his seat, it would have driven right through his throat. As it was, the white-hot pain was unimaginable. Perhaps even more incredible, this blackened and twisted shard of metal was not shrapnel and had not been driven into him by the force of the explosion. Benno looked over, aghast at the metal protruding from his collarbone, then up at the hand wielding it.
Raoul stared back at him, halfway out of his seat, hate glaring from his eyes.
This was why he wanted to be on the bridge as OOD. There was no truce, no settling of disputes. This was, and had always been, a power play, a ploy to take out his opposition and put him back in ideological charge of the Puller. Had he bided his time until the battle was over, or was he just waiting for the first believable excuse to employ his weapon? If the bridge had sustained damage before the Annapolis died, would Ortiz still have tried to kill him?
The questions and confusion jumbled in his mind, straining his ability to react to Ortiz’s treachery. Benno’s gaze swept the bridge, looking for help, any witness to this assault. All eyes were on the displays, however, doing their jobs, whether he provided direction to them or not. No one saw what transpired—not even Dufresne, to his immediate left. The edge of her helmet visor blocked her peripheral vision as she focused all her attention on poor, dead Technician Avera. Unless she looked over, away from her duties and the battle, Benno might well bleed out and die, killed by “shrapnel” with none but his own murderer the wiser.
The low oxygen and low-pressure alarms sounded in his helmet and flashed in his visor display. The suit was designed to re-seal itself automatically against penetrations, but not when whatever object it was moved and torqued inside the gash—and Ortiz began to do just that. Seeing he had missed his mark, he leaned over further and sawed the shard of hull steel back and forth.
Pain overwhelmed Benno. He could not breathe, could not act except to bat weakly at Raoul’s grip with his left hand. The jagged wound rent wider, spilling blood onto the airless bridge, spraying out in strangely arcing gouts as the ship’s acceleration continued to shift. Dufresne finally looked over, and her eyes bugged out as she saw what was happening. She could do nothing, firmly strapped in, too far from Ortiz to intervene.
Benno breathed vacuum, and he could feel himself passing out, withdrawing—but whether from the lack of air or the unrelenting agony, he did not know. A picture of Mio flashed through his mind—Ortiz was not just attacking him, not only committing a second-order mutiny atop Benno’s own—he was killing Mio, killing any chance they might have of rescuing her and the others under Terran subjugation.
Raoul leaned in further, trying to ratchet the shard of steel into something, anything vital within Benno’s chest or throat. He held himself against the shifting acceleration with one hand and two of the straps of his five-point harness.
Not enough.
Benno did the only thing he could. Flipping a pair of switches on his left armrest, he shifted to Command Override and Battleshort. Instantly, control of all maneuvering transferred to the small joystick beneath his right palm and all engineered safeties on ship’s systems were disabled—including those of the reaction thrusters.
Benno jammed the joystick hard to the right. The Puller suddenly yawed about its center of mass, crossing through 90 degrees of travel in less than a second and ceasing all forward thrust. Inertia pulled everything forward of the spin axis to the left and everything behind it to the right. Everyone was wrenched to the side, the sudden ten-gravity jerk no doubt injuring many and ruining all firing control solutions CIC was preparing in their defense. It ripped at the shard in his collar with merciless violence.
It also ripped Ortiz out of his acceleration couch and threw him into the portside bulkhead.
Benno flipped the joystick to the other side, and the motion reversed itself. The arms and legs of every person on the bridge flopped to the right like the limbs of rag dolls. But it also rocketed Raoul Ortiz from port to starboard. He struck the opposite bulkhead with a thunk Benno could feel through his own seat. Had there been air in the bridge, Benno wondered if he would have heard the treacherous bastard’s scream or his choking gurgles after Ortiz’s neck broke and his ribs were crushed.
But it was enough to see Raoul rebound off the bulkhead and float, limbs akimbo, head lolling to one side as if nothing but loose flesh connected it to his body.
Almost enough. Benno jerked the small joystick right and left once more. It felt tremendously satisfying to see Raoul rendered into a boneless, man-shaped bag of stew, bouncing between bulkheads.
At peace and losing any semblance of consciousness, Benno flipped the switches off Command Override and Battleshort, then promptly passed out.
* * * * *
Chapter Fourteen: Mio
“Mio…Mio,” a voice from the depths of her consciousness called. Someone was gently shaking her. “Wake up, honey.”
The voice sounded like her mother’s, and for a moment Mio had the fleeting notion her mother was still alive, and the last three years of her life were a dream. A bad dream, to be sure, but one that could be easily forgotten with her mother’s love.
Mio opened her eyes and found a white woman with red hair and blue eyes looking anxiously into her eyes. She sighed; it wasn’t her mother, who’d been Asian and had dark hair and dark eyes. Unfortunately, her mother was the dream, and the hell of her last three years was the reality.
“I’m awake,” Mio said, her voice sad.
“I’m glad you are,” the woman said, much more upbeat; “you gave us quite a scare.”
“What happened?” Mio asked. “I remember going into the warehouse…and then fighting a Terran soldier…and then everything gets kind of cloudy.”
“Apparently, he shoved your head into a crate or something,” the woman said, “and gave you quite the concussion. You don’t appear to have any long-term damage, though, so I think you’ll be fine.”
“That’s good, I guess,” Mio said, “but I don’t remember coming here.” She looked around. She was lying on a cot in a tent, but it was a bigger tent than they had at the resistance camp. She had never seen the place before. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“My name is Cindy, and I’m a medic of sorts. You’re in the clinic at a different resistance camp than the one you’re normally a part of. Dan brought you here after the raid because it was closer. He was worried about you.”
“He was worried? Why?”
“Well, when you came in, you had a lot of blood all over you, as well as a huge bump on the back of your head. Happily, the blood wasn’t yours, except for a little bit where your scalp split around the bump.”
There was a commotion behind the woman, who turned and looked. She turned back to Mio and smiled. “Here he is now, as a matter of fact. He’s been by your cot most of the time since he brought you in. I have some other things to do, so I’ll let you talk a bit. Don’t wear yourself out too much, okay?”
“Okay.”
The medic got up, and Dan sat down.
“Hi, Mio,” Dan said. “How are you feeling?”
“Not too bad,” Mio replied. “My head hurts a little, but aside from that, I’m fine. Thanks for bringing me here.”
“You’re welcome. Thanks for everything you did at the warehouse. You certainly have a knack for getting into trouble.”
“Trouble? I wasn’t even going to wake the trooper up, but someone jiggled the handle while I was unlocking the bolt, and he grabbed m
e.”
“Oops,” Dan said, “I’m sorry, that was probably me. We were really worried about you, so I kept trying the handle, and then when we finally got in, I was even more worried about you after I saw you. It turns out you could handle yourself though, like you keep trying to tell everyone.”
“Yes, but I couldn’t,” Mio said, tears dripping from the corners of her eyes. “I couldn’t do it. I came up to the soldier, and he was sleeping, and I just couldn’t shoot him in the back. It just didn’t seem right!” She rolled over, putting her face into the pillow, and sobbed.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Dan said. “You have to do what you feel is right, and there are many people who wouldn’t have shot an unarmed man in his sleep. I wouldn’t have.”
“Rea—” hiccup! “Really?” Mio asked, one eye peeking out.
“That’s the truth,” Dan said. “How much do you remember after we got into the room?”
“Not much. I think I was kind of out of it.”
“You were, but it’s totally understandable; you had a concussion.”
Mio thought back and had a terrifying thought. “Did I really tell Diego I liked him?”
“Yes, you did,” Dan replied, “but—”
“Oh my God!” Mio exclaimed. “I’ll never be able to show my face around him again.”
“Well, that’s something I have to talk to you about…” Dan’s voice trailed off and he looked away. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Diego didn’t make it back.”
“Didn’t make it back?” Mio repeated. “You mean the Terrans caught him?”
“No, I’m sorry, he was killed. He tried to slow down a squad of Terran troopers, so we could escape.”
“He’s…he’s…dead?”
“I’m afraid so,” Dan said. “I know he was your friend, and I’m really sorry.”
Mio cried for a long time. At some point, Dan got up and left her to her sorrow.
* * *
“Welcome back,” Harry said three days later when she returned to her original camp. “It’s good to see you again.”
“It’s good to be back, I guess,” Mio replied.
“You guess?”
“Yeah.” Mio sighed, looking at the ground. “I don’t expect the place will be the same without Diego.”
“I’m sorry. I know he was your friend.”
“Of all the people, though, why did he have to be the one to not come back?”
“I’m sorry, Mio, but haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Diego wasn’t the only one killed on your raid. Everyone except Dan and you died. We did get the truck carrying the food, but we lost four people doing it.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Mio said, a tear forming in the corner of an eye. She hadn’t really known the other men very well, but she had seen them, and they were part of her group. It wasn’t fair that four men had to die just so they could eat. It wasn’t fair!
Mio shook her head. “I don’t get it,” she finally said when she was calm enough to talk again.
“You don’t get what?”
“I don’t understand why the Terrans had to come here in the first place. What did we ever do to them? All we do here is farm! It’s not like we’re producing rifles or spaceships or anything important. Why did they have to come here and kill everyone I care about?”
“Well, they haven’t killed me yet,” Harry said, “and I’d like to think I’m your friend.”
Mio gave him a wry grin. “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” Harry said, “and I think the real answer to your question is a lot more complicated than what I can explain. The bottom line, though, is that some people want power, and they can’t bear to have any slip away from them.”
“You mean like the aristos in First Landing?”
“Something like that, yes,” Harry replied. “When the Alliance of Liberated Systems broke away from the Terran Union, the people in power could see they’d have less power without those systems, so they wanted them back. Not just some of them, but all of them. It doesn’t matter what we produce here; they want us back.”
“And they’re willing to kill everyone to make us return?”
Harry chuckled. “It doesn’t seem like a very good bargain to get the planet back if you have to kill all of the people on it, does it?”
“Not from where I’m standing, it doesn’t.”
“You see, that’s just it; the TU rulers aren’t standing where you are. They don’t see the death and destruction, aside from a few lines on a monitor somewhere. In their minds, if they kill everyone, they can always send new colonists to take over and continue on. It isn’t as efficient that way, so they’d rather we just accepted their rule, but they’ll do what it takes to keep us under their thumb.”
Mio frowned, working the thought through to its logical conclusion. “How do we get out from under their thumbs, then? It seems like the only way we could do it would be to kill all the rulers, but they’ll be hard to get at, since they’ll use all their people to defend them from us. We would almost have to kill all of them…which would make us just as bad as them.”
“Unfortunately, that’s true,” Harry said with a sad smile, “and that’s why I left the service of the Union. It was either kill or be killed, and I couldn’t take the killing anymore. I had no desire to go to other planets to kill their people just because they wanted to be able to control their lives.”
“War is stupid,” Mio said, kicking the dirt in frustration.
“Especially for those of us who have to fight it so other people can satisfy their childish needs and desires.”
“So, what do we do?”
“You either decide you can accept being ruled by someone and try to live your life the best you can under their direction, or you fight them, like we’ve been doing.”
Mio was quiet for a few moments, then asked, “So, why are you here? If you didn’t like fighting and killing, why are you part of the resistance, which is sure to make you do just that?”
“Like everything else in life,” Harry said, “it’s complicated, although I think the reason I joined the resistance is the same reason I left the Terran Union army; I got tired of having someone tell me what to do.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Mio, you ask lots of questions.”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Especially when I’m trying to figure things out.”
“What’s your question?”
“What do you think my father would do if he was here?”
Harry sighed. “That’s a tough one, since I didn’t know your father. Based on what I know about you and your upbringing, though, I would bet that he’d do everything possible to shield you from the Terran Union.”
“That isn’t what I meant. I was asking if you thought he would fight.”
“I know you were, Mio, and I was coming to that. I think I can answer this, because I was a father, too, once upon a time. I have a feeling if your father were here, he would do everything he could to shield you from the Terran Union. He wouldn’t want to join the resistance, because that would be dangerous to you, but I don’t think he could live under their yoke. At some point, he would see something that pushed him too far, or something that went so far beyond his beliefs he felt he had to rebel, and then he would have joined the resistance.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Mio replied. “He would have joined the resistance because it’s the right thing to do, and that’s why I’m staying.”
“Even though it’s dangerous and could get you killed?”
“Even so,” Mio said. “He always said anything good is worth fighting for.”
“I doubt he really meant fighting with rifles and grenades,” Harry objected.
“True, but I think this would apply, too. Freedom is worth fighting for.”
Harry didn’t reply, and Mio could see he was thinking about something. When the silence got too long for her, she asked, “Can I
ask one more question?”
“Sure,” Harry said with a benevolent smile. “As long as it’s just one.”
“Can we win?”
When Harry didn’t immediately answer, Mio added, “I’m not a child. I’ve killed four of the Turds, but they’re still here. I want, no, I deserve an honest answer. Can we win?”
“I don’t know, Mio. Right now, they have all the advantages. Even if we kill all the soldiers on the planet, they may still bomb us out of existence from space out of spite.”
“So, we need something to drive them away…something that will make them want to leave…”
“Is that another question?”
“No,” Mio said. “I’m just thinking out loud.”
* * *
Mio went for a walk outside the camp and spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about what Harry said, finally realizing he was right. Her father would probably have reacted the same way Mr. Rogers had when the Turds arrived; he would have wanted to get a weapon and fight off the invaders. It was a good thing he had been off-planet then, as he would probably have come to the same end as Mr. Rogers and the rest of his family.
Looking back at her time in the resistance, Mio also realized that, although she’d come a long way as a contributing member, she’d been awfully lucky in the process. She could have…no, she probably should have died on several occasions. If things continued the way they were, there was no way the resistance could be successful. They needed an edge over the Turds, who currently had all the advantages. They had better weapons and supplies…not to mention the spaceship that could kill everyone on the planet if its crew decided it wanted to.
No one knew about Adelaide’s plight, and anyone who stumbled in would be shot down by the missile system before they could help the colony. That system alone guaranteed she would never see her father again. Even if he returned as promised, the missile system would kill him before they could be reunited.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized the missile system was the key to the entire occupation. The spaceship above them could only stay there because it was protected by the missile system, and the Terran troops on the planet could only remain because they were backed by the ship in orbit. It was a house of cards; if someone removed the missile system, everything else might fall. Maybe they could even take Adelaide back and force the Turds to leave.
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