The First One's Free

by TS Hottle

  THE FIRST ONE’S FREE

  A Novella

  By TS Hottle

  PSST! HEY, YOU! YEAH, THE ONE READING THIS.

  LIKE FREE STUFF? HOW ABOUT A COMPACT UNIVERSE STORY ABSOLUTELY FREE?

  “HEADSPACE” IS THE TALE OF RAFE, WHO VIOLATES HUMANITY’S LONG-STANDING TABOO AGAINST “SMART” ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. TERRORISTS COULD USE THIS TO BRING DOWN THE COMPACT. THE GOVERNMENT CAN USE THIS AS A WEAPON. RAFE USES IT TO IMPRESS A GIRL.

  “HEADSPACE” CAN BE YOURS FOR FREE. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS SUBSCRIBE TO THE COMPACT UNIVERSE NEWSLETTER. SIGN UP HERE AT http://eepurl.com/bn4Gm9

  SIGN UP TODAY AND FIND OUT THE LATEST NEWS OF THE COMPACT UNIVERSE!

  For TJ and Shoes, Mitch and Jim, Fig and Ripley, for all the imaginary crew that used to inhabit our heads, this book can be dedicated to one person and one person only…

  To my former Bay Area partner in crime, now tearing it up in the Windy City…

  To Kitty. This is what we should have been writing all along.

  ©2015 Thomas Hottle

  ©2016 Smashwords

  All rights reserved.

  Episode 1: The Tuber

  1

  It’s hard to riot in the rain, but life on Essenar afforded no other choice. It always rained on Essenar. Someone somewhere thought it would make the perfect penal colony. And it might have, if floods had not destroyed the two largest food processing centers on the planet.

  For Lattus Kai, the riots proved a nightmare. When they reached the capital, he found himself suiting up in his flabby-looking armor and grabbing the sword he took out only for friendly matches and ceremonial functions. Not that there had been much ceremony on this forsaken rock.

  “You can’t go out there,” said Tishla, Kai’s indentured companion. Her white hair cascaded across her shoulders and seemed to shimmer, even in the armory’s dim lighting. “They’ll kill you.”

  Kai touched small polymer strips on various parts of his armor, causing it to shrink to his body and harden. It now resembled a man-shaped shell. “In the event of my death, my dear, your contract of indenture passes to you, along with the funding to manage it. You’ll be your own master, then a wealthy Free Woman.”

  Unable to punch Kai through the armor, she gave him a hard shove instead. “I’m not worried about me, you idiot. I’m worried about you.”

  Around him, his personal guards all reached for their swords but stopped at drawing them. One went for his shock pistol instead. Kai could only smile back at her before triggering his helmet to expand over his head. “One should never worry about whether one’s master is going to die, especially a woman like you. You deserve your freedom, Tish.”

  “I deserve you.” She patted the side of his helmet, a move which did not provoke the guards this time. “Be safe.” She kissed him before the visor descended over his face.

  *****

  Kai and his personal guards plunged into the melee outside the palace gates. With all the mud and water damage, their boots had trouble gaining traction over the broken pavement. A company of Realm troops held the attacking crowd at bay while several soldiers moved tracked vehicles into place, large dish-like objects mounted high atop their roofs. The dishes looked relatively harmless, like the old-fashioned space antennae once used to listen to faint, distant signals. Kai, however, knew differently.

  Palak, the captain of the Governor’s Guard, rushed over to Kai and saluted. A dark orange bruise marred the otherwise gray skin around his left eye. “No need for you to come out, Sire. Someone gave them projectile weapons.” He gave a sly glance at the nearest tracker and its dish. “You know the old saying.”

  Kai remembered it from his time in the Realm’s service. “Woe to the man who brings a gun to a knife fight.”

  Both men laughed.

  It did not surprise Kai that Palak already sported a bruise from the melee. The old warrior was never one to run from a fight. To this day, he still shaved his head to sport the scars around his smooth gray scalp as badges of honor.

  Kai touched the side of his own helmet to retract it back into the armor. “Fire two bolts over their heads first. Just to get their attention. I want to talk to them.”

  “And if they won’t listen, Sire?”

  “Then we incinerate the ones in the back and cut down anyone left who won’t surrender. Do it.”

  The captain crossed his hands over his chest and bowed to Kai. Turning back to the line of where the trackers, he shouted orders for two of the crews to fire.

  A pair of the mounted dishes began glowing blue, then red. Both shot bright red beams over the heads of the rioters, one striking a storage shack on a rocky hill overlooking the outer grounds of the Governor’s Palace and turning into an incinerated pile of rubble. The crowd quieted and looked up at the weapons.

  “Bring me a thunder phone,” said Kai as he strode toward another tracker. He climbed atop it with the weapon operator. Someone handed up a small box. It resembled an ancient handheld computer, but half of it was taken up by an odd-looking grid Kai knew to be the microphone. His father once told him they originally called these devices the Voice of God, back when such imagery was common.

  As Kai looked out over the mob of hungry people he would likely have to kill in a few moments, he didn’t see evidence of any god. He thumbed the thunder phone and held it up to his mouth.

  “People, I am Lattus Kai, your Governor. I personally appeal to you to lay down your arms. You will not be harmed if you do. You cannot, and will not, be held responsible for the starvation that has brought this upon us all.”

  “What do you mean all?” a woman shouted back, her coppery orange hair streaked with white. “We know you import real food from the Throneworld and the other colonies.”

  That sent a ripple of shouting throughout the crowd.

  Kai put up his hand. “People, please. It is true the Realm supplies its governors well. It is also true the Realm does not fully understand the plight of its people on the newer colonies.”

  “I’ll say,” said a man from a different part of the crowd. “We can’t eat anything native without it being processed.”

  “Bring us food,” another person shouted, followed by more demands for food. Eventually, this crescendoed into a chant of “Food! Food! Food!”

  “I understand your anger,” said Kai. “But if I were to release my stores, only a dozen or so of you will be fed. For a day. I promise you, we are working very hard to get the food plants back online as soon as possible. In the meantime, I will…”

  The bullet clanged off the dish behind him, a piece of shrapnel from it slicing his cheek. As Kai clambered down from his perch, he caught Palak’s eye and nodded. All three dishes aimed downward and fired three beams into the back of the crowd. Several dozen people screamed, flared brightly, and collapsed into heaps of ash. The rain quickly dissolved the remains into greasy runoff.

  “For the last time,” the captain said over his own thunder phone, “stand down or we will shoot to kill. Those of you closest to the gate will meet our swords.”

  “Come on, Sire,” said Palak. “Let’s get your helmet back on. You’ve already lost them.”

  Kai barely had time to comply before the crowd charged the gates. The dish weapons began firing indiscriminately, but they did nothing to stop the bullets from firing in return. Kai and his guards plunged into the fray, swords drawn. They went for the gun hands of those carrying small hand weapons. Most of the rioters wore no armor at all, only a few attired in some primitive protection in an attempt to foil Realm and Palace Guard swords. The result was many arms severed almost to the elbow.

  And still, Kai noted as he gutted an attacker, they kept coming. They had no choice. Death by violence would be quicker and
less painful than death by slow starvation. With no food, they had to fight.

  A fight that held no honor for Kai. He and his people sported nanite-laced polymer armor that covered them from head to toe. The most the bullets could do was make loud cracks as they impacted. The rioters never stood a chance, not between the titanium blades of the guards and the mounted energy weapons. They soon began to surrender.

  “Put them in Valkay Prison,” said Kai to the guard captain. “Let them at least have penal rations.”

  “Sire,” said his personal chief. “One prisoner is insistent that he talk to you. He says he’ll surrender only to the Governor himself.”

  “Everyone here would like to talk to the Governor. Do you think I really have the time?”

  “You may for this one, Sire. He’s an alien.”

  2

  His hair was almost black, not the usual yellow, white, or light brown. His only facial hair was a thin black mustache, no beard. He had the palest skin Kai had ever seen on a primate, almost white, though with a hint of brown, tinges of pink suggesting red blood beneath. Some of Kai’s people were albino. This one’s skin was nearly as pale as those. And those eyes. Most primates had white corneas, but the pale blue irises of this alien were somewhat frightening. Even more unsettling was his nose, a tiny little bulb between his eyes and his upper lip. Kai looked at it and absently ran a finger across his own flat nose.

  “He’s Tianese,” said Tishla. She and Kai watched the alien from a small room off the Palace’s holding facility. On a small screen, the alien sat passively with his hands folded, occasionally studying his surroundings. For someone who had just survived a slaughter, he seemed unusually calm. “Primate like us, five fingers, standard anatomical layout. Though where they keep their genitals bothers me.”

  That made Kai laugh. “Well, among primate species, we are the odd ones.”

  “It’s still gross.”

  “How did he get here? And why would an alien, any alien, want to visit a world populated by transported criminals and their families? The Realm has plenty of established worlds. Even the Throneworld is open to foreigners.”

  “Oh, I think he chose us for a reason.” Tishla reached into the folds of her gown and produced an ugly object, long, brown, and lumpy. It had a rough surface with little plant-like buds growing out of it. “You know the story of Jod and the Giant?”

  Every child knew the tale. Jod traded the family sloret, the only source of meat and milk they had, for a root a mysterious man promised would feed them for a year. Enraged, Jod’s father skinned the root and fed everyone but Jod with it. The skins, tossed into the ground outside, had grown over night into a lush garden filled with every imaginable fruit and vegetable, enough to feed the entire village.

  The part of the story that the older children loved best was when a giant came looking for his stolen root and threatened to (or actually did in some tellings) eat the villagers one by one until he got it back. By the time children reached their teens, the part where Jod slew the giant with a slingshot was always their favorite. Almost all tellings ended with Jod becoming lord of the village.

  “Are you saying this is a magic root?” asked Kai.

  “Well, it is a root,” said Tishla, “but what do you know about the Tianese?”

  “They’re kind of like Orags, only taller, less hairy, and with tiny little noses.” Kai absently touched his nose again. “How do they breathe?”

  She held up the root. “If he’s selling you the magic root, then the Tianese would be your giant. We could be bringing the Compact down on us.”

  “The Compact?”

  “I’m not surprised you aren’t familiar with the term. Since we don’t interact with the Tianese much, most people have never heard of it. The Tianese get their name from one of their most populous worlds, but it’s not likely their homeworld. The Compact is a loose confederacy of worlds populated by their species.”

  Kai frowned. “Why should we care about a ‘loose confederacy’? It’s not like the Realm, tightly controlled, heavily armed.” He looked to the ceiling as though gazing into space. “Except here, of course.”

  “They’re spread out and fairly independent of each other, but don’t underestimate the Compact. The Laputans did, and it turned out to be their giant, too.”

  The Laputans, another primate species, had started wars with just about every species known to the Realm. Even the Realm itself had gone to war against them. It seemed to be the Laputans’ preferred method of first contact.

  “Did they lose?” asked Kai.

  “The Compact sure didn’t. Funny species, these Tianese, or whatever they really are. They’ve been a space-faring civilization for a few centuries now, yet they still use projectile weapons and keep their artificial intelligence primitive. And yet, they still they managed to throw the Laputans out of their space.”

  Kai turned and gestured for two guards to come into the little alcove. “You two, accompany her.” He handed Tishla the ugly root. “You question him. You know more about this… Compact than the rest of us.”

  *****

  “It is the answer to your problems,” said the alien, who gave his name as “Marq.” The name sounded archaic in the Realm’s Mother Tongue, but Kai had heard it before. He sat watching the feed as Tishla questioned him.

  “How so?” asked Tishla. “Is this the magic root of our children’s tales?”

  Kai admired his concubine’s manner as he watched her on the screen. Her gown, her long white hair, and her regal posture gave her an authority no indentured servant should ever have, but Marq probably knew nothing of that. For all he could tell, she was the real authority here on Essenar. The true power behind the throne. Sometimes, Kai wondered that himself.

  Marq laughed his strange little laugh. “We have a similar tale about magic seeds. Does yours include a giant? Do giants actually exist among your species?”

  “They did, once,” said Tishla. “But we’ve weeded out that genetic anomaly. Where do you come from?”

  “Juno.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Juno isn’t so much a where, as a what. Juno is my employer.”

  Tread carefully, love, Kai silently thought. He’s a cagey one.

  “And did your employer teach you our Tongue? Your language is very fluent, but your accent does nothing to hide your alien origins.”

  Marq looked down at his hands, perhaps the least alien aspect of his appearance: Five fingers with the opposable thumbs most primates had evolved. Well, that the Realm knew about, anyway. “I’m sure you’ll agree mastering a native accent, particularly so far from your Throneworld, would do little to mask my origins. Besides, my tongue doesn’t perform all the same functions as those of your species. Curious how random evolution makes them so similar, yet so very different, isn’t it? But you don’t have me locked in a little room to talk about that, do you? You want to know who I am and what I want. How did I get here? What’s that ugly little root I brought? And why do I want to talk to your governor?”

  Tishla looked flustered, a reaction Kai had not seen since they were childhood playmates. “Well, yes.”

  “I came,” he said, “aboard a projection drive ship. That is why there is no hypergate record of my arrival.” He reached up his sleeve and produced a slip of paper. Kai could not remember the last time he had actually seen paper, and suspected Tishla could not either.

  “The ship is parked in your asteroid belt,” Marq continued. “It is a converted ore freighter, which allows me to run it by myself. By the way, I don’t recommend that, even with your technology. Anyway, it has a small launch that allowed me to come planetside. There is a record of that at your main spaceport. Or was, anyway. I was told to land in a quarantine section when your latest riots broke out. Tell me. Is your spaceport operational again?”

  That put a little steel in Tishla’s spine. “Assuming we do not simply kill you for spying, we will provide you passage to Ramcat in Laputan space. I assume your pe
ople do business with the Laputans these days?”

  Marq’s strange little smile widened to reveal little, white teeth. “Much to the Laptuans’ chagrin. So, you do want the ship?”

  “It’s not a matter of whether you give it to us or not, Mr. Marq…”

  “Just Marq.”

  “We’re taking it.”

  “Then I suppose you’ll need me to upload the security code.” He leaned back with his hands folded across his chest, looking very much like a gambler who held the winning hand and doesn’t care who knows it. “As for the root, it’s a gift, courtesy of Juno.”

  “Why would I want an ugly little root?”

  “Your people are carnivorous, more so than mine. Like us, you can create protein substitutes. But your people still require fiber and starch to sustain themselves in times of food shortage, which I’m sure you’ll agree includes now.” He picked up the tuber. “I could give you seeds, but had I successfully gone through your entry protocols, they simply would have been confiscated and destroyed as a potential contaminant. This, on the other hand, is a sample.” He pointed to a bud on the surface of the root. “These are what my people call ‘tubers,’ and on our ancestral world, they have eliminated famine time and again. Once we mastered genetic manipulation, we were even able to make them grow in the polar regions. My employer specializes in this kind of work. However, we are much newer to the industry than the older food engineering entities, some of which date back to before my people’s last global war.”

  Tishla took the tuber from Marq again and examined it. “And these buds?”

  “If you skin the tuber,” said Marq, “and simply toss them in a field somewhere, the buds will grow into perfect clones of the original plant. From there, you can take seeds and modify the genes as you see fit. You have flowering plants on this world? Small creatures that will help pollinate them?”