Last Song (Heinlein's Finches Book 3)

by Robin Banks

  “What kind of evidence would you need to produce?”

  “Anything suggesting that the Patrol are planning something against us. If they started moving personnel or massing ships, that would do it. But we’ve got nothing. They’re bumbling along as if they’d forgotten us.”

  “Could you have missed something?”

  “It’s possible, but not likely. We pay a great deal of attention to the Patrol. We track their communications, their movements, and anything else we can think of. If they have any data about themselves, so do we.”

  “But how? Isn’t all of that stuff classified?”

  Gwen smirks. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. Seriously. Not your need-to-know, I’m afraid.”

  “And your data analysis?”

  “We look at changes in patterns and trends.”

  “Manually?”

  “What? No! We aren’t that behind the times! That’s part of what our Aiden does: he collects the information, organizes it, and analyzes it. He’s got programs designed specifically for that purpose. If anything was out of kilter, we’d get an alert.”

  “Would you let us look at it? We don’t have to know anything about how you got it, just what you got.”

  “Yes, sure. It’s relevant to the mission. I’m not sure why you would want to, though. It doesn’t make for fun reading.”

  “I don’t want to. I want Luke to.” She turns to me. “Do you have any other plans for today?”

  Everyone’s staring at me now. Great. “Nope.”

  “You good to give it a go?”

  “Yup.”

  Gwen clears her throat. “What is he giving a go to, exactly?”

  “Luke is a bit of a wiz at data analysis, if you can call it that. We throw data at him and he comes up with the answers we need. Sometimes he comes up with the questions, too. We have no idea how it works, and it doesn’t always work, but when it does it’s damn helpful.”

  “Luke is welcome to read boring reports till his eyes get sore, if that’s his pleasure. I’m telling you though, there’s nothing going on. The Patrol hasn’t made any significant changes to their activities.”

  I pipe up. “What about insignificant changes?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “There may be something that you haven’t picked up on because it’s too small, doesn’t fit into anything, or it looks silly. Maybe I’ll see it and maybe I won’t, but isn’t it worth trying? I’ve got nothing better to do while you lot are squabbling, anyway.”

  Gwen scowls with a smile. “Debating!”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Ok. Come along, then, and I’ll show you where the magic happens.”

  We walk out of the house and around the back. All around the main building are a bunch of makeshift lean-tos taking up most of the space between the windows. I’m not sure what’s leaning on what, actually. It all looks a tad optimistic.

  Gwen leads me to one of the larger lean-tos. When she opens the door, instead of the chickens or cobwebs or ‘fresher I was expecting, I see a fucking lab. It’s not unlikely Lara’s lab, though a fraction of the size. There’s a metric fuckton of tech at various stages of disemboweled, and a screen big enough to cover an entire wall. Mind you, the wall is tiny, but I’m still impressed.

  She turns to me and grins. “I told you we weren’t behind the times! This is Aiden’s den. He runs the coms, the data analysis, the tech development, and anything that requires a brain.”

  Aiden is the twin’s dad. No idea who the mother is. He doesn’t say much, from what I’ve seen. If he’s the only one working from here, this could work out.

  Gwen unlocks the screen for me.

  “This is it. I can’t tell you what it’s connected to, and I must ask you not to try and find out, but it should have what you need, if it exists. I think you’re wasting your time, though. We keep a really close eye on the Patrol. If they’re planning to move against us, we want to be prepared.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “History. The conflict between the Fed and Pollux fizzled out, but never ended. You can’t even call it a truce because an agreement was never reached.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t really know anything about it.”

  “But you studied it in school, right?”

  “I left school at twelve, and it was a Fed-run school, anyway. I’m not sure that they would have told us the unvarnished truth.”

  “I’m not sure this truth would bear much varnishing. It was an ugly affair from start to finish.”

  “What happened?”

  She sighs. “It all started innocuously enough, with a miners’ revolt. That kind of thing goes on surprisingly often. It just never tends to amount to anything major, so the Fed bury it and the only people to hear about it are those affected. This time, though, it went too far too quickly. Next thing you know, it all escalated into open warfare. It got bad enough in the end that they pulled the Patrol out, but the underlying issue between the Pollux survivors and the Fed was never resolved.”

  “What do you mean, the Pollux survivors?”

  “We don’t have any precise numbers because we’re not sure how many people died and how many scattered, but by the end of the conflict the total population was roughly a third of…”

  “A third? A fucking third?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “They had three established civilian bubbles. Two were hit by ships. One survived. Many who didn’t die migrated somewhere safer, and with less memories.” She squints at me. “This is a conversation I would ask you not to have with or around Asher. He’d be more than willing to have it with you, but it wouldn’t do him any good.”

  “What? Why?”

  “He was there. Sasha, too. She’s Aiden’s partner. To tell you the truth, there are very few locals with whom I’d broach the subject. Everyone got hurt and everyone is biased. You may or may not learn something in the process and you’d definitely be spreading a lot of pain around.”

  “Oh. Ok. Sorry.”

  She pats my hand. “It’s ok. You need to know. This is all information relevant to this mission and to what you’re trying to do now. But it’s sensitive information, too. You don’t seem the sort who shoots off at the mouth, but I’d ask you to be extra careful around this topic.”

  “Alright. Sure.”

  She attempts a smile. It doesn’t get very far.

  “It all started with a dispute on mining quotas. You’re from Celeano, right? So you probably know everything about how that works.”

  “Not really. I know nobody agrees with the quotas the Fed set, and everyone thinks the colony reps are sell-outs, but that’s about it. I left home at 16. I was worried about other stuff back then.”

  “Sure. Well, the problem here was that the quality of the ore had been grossly overestimated. We don’t know whether that was accidental, or a ploy to convince more colonists to settle. I personally reckon it was an accident. It’s never hard to find third-classers desperate enough to want a place on a colony, regardless of how terrible the conditions are. Either way, the colony couldn’t meet the quotas. They presented plenty of evidence as to what the problem was, but the Fed reps weren’t interested. Instead of renegotiating the agreement, they threatened to cut off supplies. So the miners dug deep, figuratively and literally. Production went up, but so did accident rates. So the Fed upped the quotas.”

  “They what?”

  “They saw the increased production as proof that the miners were just holding back. The miners kept up with the new quotas for less than two weeks before disaster struck. They hadn’t been keeping up with safety measures. They knew it, too, they just couldn’t do anything about it. They were doing their best, but their best wasn’t good enough. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t physically possible. There was a collapse. Sixty-four people died. Some of them were under age.”

  “Kids? What the hell were they doing in there?”

  “Working
. Covering for workers who were off injured or sick. Helping their community meet the godsdamned quotas. What were they supposed to do, stay home and wait to see what was going to happen first, their parents dying in an industrial accident or their air getting cut off?”

  “No, but, I mean…”

  Gwen’s voice gets sharper. “You’ve seen Osh on Asher’s ship. He is eleven years old. He isn’t playing up there: he’s learning to do grown-up work, because he’ll have to do it well before he’s grown up. He’s a damn good student and a damn good pilot, but no part of this is ok. I don’t think so, anyway. But we do what we have to do, and so did the people in ’68. It’s no good blaming them. Or us.”

  “I wasn’t! It’s just…” I don’t have words for it. She’s nice enough to let me off. That, or my face says enough.

  “I know. Sorry. The whole thing angers me. The fact that my husband is training children to fly armed ships angers me. I get angry a lot.”

  “I don’t know what kind of person you’d need to be not to get angry at stuff like this, but I don’t think I’d like to know you.”

  She pats my hand again. “Thank you. Anyway, after the collapse, the Fed didn’t do much to help with the rescue operation. I don’t know how much they could have really achieved – I don’t know enough about mining to even hazard a guess – but they didn’t even try to pretend they gave a fuck. And they didn’t lower the quotas. When their rep came out with that, things took a turn for the worse.”

  “It gets worse?”

  “A lot worse. Public opinion was running a bit hot. He was hung in the public square.”

  “They hanged him?”

  “Hung him. He was dead by the time they put him up there, and not all his parts were attached. Unsurprisingly, when the Fed found that out they got the Patrol involved. Also unsurprisingly, the colonists refused to cooperate. They wouldn’t hand over the culprits. The Patrol got heavy-handed and a bunch of people died. Some colonists, all the Patrolmen. So the Fed sent some more Patrolmen – heavily armed, this time. It should have been the easiest operation in the world, against unarmed grubbers. Unfortunately, the Patrol had underestimated the ease with which a half-decent tech can turn mining equipment into something very much like a weapon. They were massacred.”

  “That’s how you got the Fed to leave you alone?”

  “No. It didn’t end there. They sent more Patrolmen. This time they knew what they were getting into. Instead of trying to subdue the civilians, they crashed ships into the bubbles.”

  “What?”

  “The Fed doesn’t have much in the way of rules, but blowing up civilian bubbles is a no-no. If a ship crashes into one during a battle, though, that can be passed as an unfortunate accident. Three bubbles, three ships. Only one bubble was left intact. That’s the one Asher didn’t hit.”

  “Asher?”

  “Yeah.” Her jaw tightens. “His ship should have hit this bubble. He didn’t know that at the time. He had no idea, or he wouldn’t have been there. I doubt if many of them would have been. Patrolmen may take a vow to serve the Fed and uphold their laws, but they’re peace officers. More than that, they’re people. Plenty of people join the Patrol for the wrong reasons, and I was one of them, but none of us gave up our morals when we put on our uniforms. I can’t say that there aren’t Patrolmen who would have gone along with the Pollux campaign knowing what it entailed, but they’re a small minority. Most would have defected rather than get involved in something like that. But they didn’t know why they were there, and they didn’t know what the Patrol were planning to have them do, or to do with them.”

  “So the Patrol volunteered Asher and those other two guys for a suicide mission without telling them?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t think you can plan to that level of detail in the middle of a battle. They were probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time, convenient targets to send into the bubbles. The first two hit. Asher’s would have hit too if he’d ejected like any sensible person would, but he didn’t. He saw where he was heading and instead of bailing out he landed the damn ship. That’s the only reason there still is a Pollux as we know it. They would have been virtually wiped out, otherwise. Then the Fed could have just rounded up the survivors, fixed the bubbles back up, and started all over again with a community less prone to uncivil disobedience. Instead they ended up with Patrolmen swarming all over the place, some still fighting with the civilians, some trying to rescue the survivors from the two damaged bubbles. It was a giant clusterfuck. All because my husband lacks the common sense to bail out of a falling ship.”

  She crosses her arms over her chest. “You’ve got to get this into your head. Asher is my husband, my love, and the father of my kids. He’s also someone who, under fire, will stay in a burning ship in order to avoid potential harm to a bunch of hostile strangers. He burnt to a crisp in order to save the people he thought had set him on fire. He doesn’t even think about that kind of stuff: he just does it because it’s the right thing to do. He’s a hero. He hasn’t got the sense he was born with. And now you lot are talking about taking him off on a mission to save the world on a third-rate oracle’s say-so, and of course he’s going to go along. That’s what he does. He’s going to go along and he’s going to do his best, and he won’t think twice about it. But I do. And I’m telling you, if you don’t bring him back…”

  She’s looking fearsome and close to tears all at the same time. I don’t have a single good thing to say to her, but I try anyway.

  “Look, Gwen, I can’t promise you that. I wish I could, but I can’t. But I can promise you that I’ll do my best, too. If it comes to choosing between saving his skin and mine, I hope I’ll choose his. Quinn’s too. But I can’t promise that either. I don’t know how brave I’d be if it ever came to that.”

  “Why would you choose their skin over yours? They’re strangers.”

  “They’ve got you and the kids to come home to. That matters. Anyway, Dee saw them coming home.”

  She shudders. “Precognition gives me the creeps.”

  “I don’t understand any of that. I don’t think I want to, so I’m not trying very hard. But we may know more if we find out what the hell is going on.”

  “Which is why you’re here, and what I’m supposed to be helping you with. I swear, I only ever got into teaching because I have this compulsion to mouth off at people and needed a captive audience.” She blinks away her tears. “I’m sorry. You didn’t need a local history lesson and a semi-hysterical threat.”

  “I did, actually. Well, I needed the lesson, not the threat. I’ve got to know what happened to look for what may happen. Context and shit.”

  “Well, you got that, I guess. Alright.” She starts fiddling with the screen. “It’s all in here. The statistical analysis…”

  “Nah. Sorry. That’s no good to me. You’ve got the actual numbers?”

  “You want the raw data? Why? You don’t trust our calculations?”

  “I probably couldn’t understand them. Look, I’m not a mathematician. I can reliably count up to 20 if I take my shoes off. My brain is just wired weird. I look at data, and sometimes I spot shit that’s out. Sometimes I don’t see a damn thing and give myself a headache instead. But I need to look at the actual data, or it doesn’t work.”

  She shrugs. “Raw data it is, then. What do you want?”

  “All of it.” She’s looking at me like I’ve lost it, so I carry on. “Look, just humor me, ok? I’ll start this year and go backwards.”

  “Alright. It’s all in there. Be my guest. Anything you’re going to need while you play?”

  “Coffee?”

  She shakes her head and wonders off. I start to open files. I’m glad the screen is big – I can bring up a whole bunch of stuff at the same time. Back home I like to print things on paper and stick them to the wall, but I can’t ask Gwen to waste that kind of resource on my bullshit.

  I don’t know what I’m looking at. I don’t know what I’m looking fo
r. So I just look, and let the data make pictures in my head. Locations of Patrol outposts. Numbers of Patrolmen per location. Movements of troops between locations – are they called troops? I should ask Alya. Recruitment. Departures. Promotions. Engagements. Accidents. Deaths.

  As the pictures get bigger and start connecting, they take up more and more room in my brain, and I get smaller. Data comes in. I go out.

  After a while, someone gives me a cup of coffee. I think it’s Gwen. She asks something and my mouth answers, but I don’t even try to follow the conversation.

  I turn around and see Raj on the chair. He’s drinking coffee. There’s coffee on my desk. I drink it. It tastes funny.

  “Sorry. There’s protein powder in it. Alya made me do it.”

  I say something. Not sure what it is. He nods.

  I know I nodded off because I wake up. Alya is there. We do that thing where our mouths move. Some of the pictures fell out of my head while I was sleeping, so I pick them back up, then start adding more, in layers.

  My mouth feels stuck together. “Patrolmen die a lot.” I say it to the person sitting next to me on a low chair. When my eyes focus, it resolves into Asher.

  “Yeah. It’s a dangerous job. That’s why we get the piles of credit and the hot babes.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  Mattie is staring at me. Jojo’s sitting next to her, sucking his thumb.

  “You talk to yourself a lot, you know that?”

  “Dunno. I never listen.”

  I wake up, and it’s obvious. It was obvious all along. I just didn’t see it. I sift through the pictures in my head to find where it came from. Then I unravel the picture to find the data. It takes me a while, but I get there.