He spun to his left when he heard a gasp. He rushed over to a tree that had fallen without the assistance of any massive robots and ducked under the thick trunk. He almost called out when he saw Devon and Lily, but stopped himself in time to keep the soldiers from noticing him.
Seconds passed like hours as two of the soldiers raised their guns. Krys didn’t hear a thing but both of his friends collapsed and hit the ground, writhing. They stopped jerking after a moment and lay still. Perfectly, deathly still.
Krys whimpered and fell back. Had they been killed? Was Lily gone? He’d kissed her—well, she’d kissed him, really—and that was it? She was dead. He started to pick himself up but stopped. He needed to see them. Or did he? Did he even want to? Would it be better to just go home?
Home? That’s where they were headed: his home! If he waited, they wouldn’t have any warning. His parents and his friends’ parents would be wiped out. Just like Lily and Devon had been. Where was Pita? Had she escaped or did they shoot her first?
Krys shook his head and started to crawl away. He had to get going! He planted one foot and looked up just as a soldier leapt over the log and landed in front of him. The soldier stared at him from behind a darkened faceplate. His—or her, Krys had no way of knowing—armor had a dull gray chest plate and brown and green patterns on the rest of it. He or she held a big gun that was pointed at him. The only other thing of interest was the small pink bunny head and ears painted on the side of the helmet. If the bunny wasn’t strange enough on its own, its eyes were X’s and it looked like it was sticking its tongue out.
“Another kid? What is this place, run by children?” a filtered voice muttered. Krys thought it sounded female, even if it was rough and robotic.
He raised his hands slowly. “Please don’t hurt me!” he begged.
The soldier looked around and then turned and pointed their gun at the tree. One of the soldier’s hands slid forward and twisted something, and then Krys jumped as the ground exploded where he’d been hiding a few moments ago.
The soldier grabbed him, startling him out of his stupor. He was thrust under the tree and into the crater the explosion had created. He stared out, looking up at the soldier, and then cowered with his arms in front of his face as the soldier kicked the tree and knocked it off the stump and down towards him.
He realized a few seconds later that he was still alive. The tree hadn’t crushed him! He shifted and looked out, only to see the soldier’s armored foot. “Stay hidden. You don’t want a part of this, kid.”
Krys watched as the foot disappeared. He shivered and turned, wondering what was going to happen next as he heard another crash that sounded nearby. The ground went from trembling in rhythmic thumps to a steadier vibration. He caught a glimpse of a vehicle that drove by on tracks; some kind of massive tank passed by. Soldiers climbed over the log he was on and one of the robots pounded the ground with a foot less than five meters from him.
Krys curled up in a ball in his tiny hollow and let the tears fall. He had no idea why, but something terrible was happening. His friends were dead and for all he knew, his mom and dad were next. And he was trapped beneath a fallen tree in the woods. As much as his dad loved to tell him that crying wouldn’t do him any good, it was the only thing he could manage.
Chapter 4
Krys lay under the log, shivering long after the sound of the advancing army faded. Distant booms rumbled in the sky, reminding him of movies he’d seen with thunderstorms on Earth. Venus didn’t have many storms. They learned in school that the solar shield regulated the temperature of the surface and atmosphere, preventing major weather patterns from forming. That and the slow rotation kept the winds and buildup of charged ions at a minimum.
It still rained often enough but the storms moved slowly and the rain that fell was mild. That meant the colonies had to irrigate their farms and for the rest of the planet, the rivers had mostly been man-made to maximize the distribution of water from the hills and peaks of the massive dormant volcanoes that dotted the planet’s surface.
The thought of rain reminded Krys of his tears. He’d stopped crying awhile ago. Now he huddled under the fallen tree and shivered. It wasn’t cold out. It never got cold out when the sun was up. But he was lying in a hole in the ground and his stomach was pinched from not eating for hours. If ever there was a time to cry, this was it.
“Crying won’t get me out of this hole,” he mumbled to himself. He shifted so his back was against the ground and pushed up against the tree. It wouldn’t budge.
Krys turned and used his hands to dig away at the small opening between the tree limb and the ground. It was slow going and before long, his fingers hurt, but he was making progress. The dirt was soft at the top but was harder packed when he cleared out the first few decimeters.
He took breaks and studied his dirty fingers. His nails were caked with dirt and had already started cracking. Blood ran from his thumb when he’d tried using it to drill into the dirt and yank it out. He thought about using some of the stronger words the adults used but decided against it. Like his dad always told him, cursing a hard job didn’t get it done any faster or easier.
He sniffed and used a clean spot on his forearm to wipe the sweat off his forehead before he started digging again.
By the time Krys switched to using his feet to try to kick the dirt out, he figured at least another hour had passed, maybe more. He had a watch on but he was afraid to check it. As long as he didn’t know, he could still hope that he had time left. Time to run back home and find everyone still waiting for the soldiers to come.
Krys paused. The soldiers and the robots. Those things had been huge! Like knights out of one of the netshows he watched every Elthday. The ten days before Elthday were spent working and going to school. Then again, today was the seventh Elthday of the Venerian summer. Not that the two hundred forty-two days of winter were much worse. Summer or winter, it got cold midway through the fifty-nine-day cycles when the sun was warming the other side of the planet.
His dad told him stories of what life was like back on Earth. Living in domed cities and working in giant caves with rows of lights strung overhead to help make plants grow. His dad said it was pointless; the only way to get things to grow was on the ag stations orbiting Earth. That or moving to Venus. The terraforming had made the volcanic crust of Venus full of nitrogen and nutrients.
So Krys’s dad had come to Venus to start fresh. He gave up farming when they found out he could keep their equipment running better than anyone else. That left him in charge of keeping all the machinery running for the colony. That was fifteen Earth years ago. Krys had been born on Venus and didn’t know anything else.
His foot broke through! Krys yanked it back and panicked when he couldn’t pull his boot back through the opening. He struggled until he managed to get it back in and stared at the enlarged hole. It was his window to getting home. Now he just needed to turn it into a door.
He punched at the dirt with his knuckles until they were scratched and split. He moved on to his palms then before finally going back to digging with his heels and kicking the dirt out. Krys worked hard, gasping and trying to keep the sweat out of his eyes the entire time. When he finally paused to admire the job, he wondered if he could really get out.
He tried to twist around in the tiny dugout and found he couldn’t get his head towards the hole. He was too big. He sat there, breathing hard and fighting the urge to cry again. “This isn’t fair!” he whined and punched the tree limb above him.
It wasn’t fair. But maybe fair would have been him being shot like Devon and Lily had been. Maybe fair was in his favor, because of a random act of kindness from a stranger. Not just a stranger, but a soldier. He’d read stories where soldiers were supposed to be nice like that, but he thought it was more for the officers. The knights. Like those giant robots had been. They looked like the knights. He shuddered at the memory of his friends falling.
Krys blinked back more tears and stared at t
he light teasing him through the opening. If he couldn’t get his head to the hole, maybe he didn’t need to. He twisted back and shimmied around in the hole until his feet poked at it again. Krys took in a breath and started pushing himself out feet first.
He got stuck halfway out and pushed harder. It worked for a few centimeters, and then he realized he was really stuck. Krys started to panic but couldn’t find a way to pull himself back in. He collapsed, exhausted, and pressed his cheek against the cool dirt of the hole. His hips shifted, allowing his knees to take up some of the pressure.
Krys jerked his head up. He’d just moved! He inhaled and tried again but found the dirt scraping and pressing against him. “What the heck?” he gasped. As soon as he breathed out, he felt the pressure release. He tried pushing himself and slid out another inch. He started laughing, tightening himself fast against the tree trunk and the ground.
After he finished laughing at how silly the situation was, Krys managed a few deep breaths to calm himself and then breathed out. He pushed and slid, and then repeated the process. After five more breaths, he pulled his head and shoulders out and rolled over on the ground. Krys stretched his arms and legs out and gasped for the cooler air outside of the hole. He was free again! All the hard work had chased his chills away but now he basked in the sunlight that the filtered solar shield let through.
Sunlight? Krys sat up and looked around, blinking in confusion. The forest was still there, but mostly it was on the ground. A wide avenue had been cut through it as the army marched through with their robots and tanks.
He looked around, stunned, and slowly climbed to his feet. At fourteen years old, he should not have been the tallest thing standing in a three-hundred-meter radius.
Chapter 5
Lily glanced around the room. She had no idea where she was but that didn’t even feel important to her. What did matter was that she hurt everywhere! Her entire body, even her throat and chest when she tried to breathe, felt like it was on fire. She tried to groan but that simple effort made her feel like she’d tried to swallow wooden splinters.
She gasped at the memory of trees exploding around her. The gasp made her wince and gag, which left her shuddering in agony until tears ran down her face. She couldn’t move, other than twisting and rolling a little. It wasn’t just because it hurt; something kept her hands behind her back and her feet wouldn’t respond.
“You made it.”
Lily gasped and then coughed at the fire in her throat. It gave way to a new burning wetness that made her gag all over again. In the midst of it all, something tickled her throat and made her feel like she couldn’t breathe.
A shadow fell over her. Lily twisted, her panic pushing the pain into the background. Someone towered over her and grabbed her. She was forced up and bent over. A second later, something slammed into her back, making her cough. She hacked several times, her chest and stomach stabbing her with tiny knives a thousand times . When she stopped and was able to draw a ragged and shallow breath, she saw her legs and the dull gray floor under her were speckled with dark dots.
Spots colored everything, though, not just the floor. She tried to look up but the room she was in tilted. Shapes swam in and out of focus. Her feet melted into the floor and then turned back into feet. She gagged again at the tickle in her throat and leaned forward, vomiting onto the floor.
“Get it together, kid!” the person who had helped her hissed.
Lily sagged forward, her stomach touching her thighs, and wondered if she was dying. The smell of what she’d thrown up made her moan. If she was dying, she hoped she would hurry up and get it over with.
“They hit you with an adult dose—wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”
Lily tried to look up again and managed to squint against the bright light that made a bright aura around the man talking to her.
“Not sure if that’s a good thing for you or not,” he said while he did something that released her hands and relieved the tension on her shoulders. “You’re a daughter of the revolution now.”
“W—what?” she managed to wheeze.
He stuck a cup with a pale and yellow liquid in it under her face. “Drink this, kid, it’ll help.”
Lily took it in trembling hands and lifted it to her lips. Every movement hurt, even the touch of the cup against her lips. Swallowing the thick drink was almost as painful as she imagined tearing her throat out with her fingers would be.
“Good job,” he told her. “You’re an orphan of the revolution. It sounds terrible, I know, but at least the new government wants to do their best to start you guys off right. Proper education, training, and placement when the time comes. So it’s off-world for you, to a reeducation station.”
The drink had a sweet taste and left her throat feeling like it was coated with something slimy. She tried to clear her throat and stopped when she realized her throat wasn’t burning as bad. She looked up at the man, focusing better. “Reeducation? I don’t—My parents! I’m not—”
He shook his head. “Look, kid, I don’t make the rules. Your farm was hit hard. I don’t think there were any survivors. I—oh crap. No, don’t cry, damn it! I hate it when they cry. Every rock-humping time!”
Lily stared at him and shook her head. She blinked at the tears in her eyes but couldn’t stop them. Her parents couldn’t be dead—she’d just seen them earlier! Pita, Devon, Krys, Anner, all her friends. They couldn’t be gone. Their parents too? She turned to stare out the open end of the small room she was in. She saw her colony, but it was different. Changed. Ruined.
Smoke rose from burning and broken buildings. The ground was pitted with craters and burn marks. Soldiers milled about, taking care of things or sitting on tanks and talking to one another. In the distance, one of the massive robots loomed over the town, ready to destroy anything it didn’t like.
“It’ll be best for you,” the man said, jarring her out of her trance. “Give you a fresh start and help you come to terms with how things are going to be from now on.”
“Devon!” Lily gasped. “Where’s Devon?”
“Who? Look, kid, I told you—”
“No!” Lily shouted. She winced at the pain in her throat but pushed on. Pain didn’t matter, not if people were really dead, like he’d said. “He was with me when we saw the soldiers. Me and Devon and Pita and—and—”
The man snapped his fingers as Lily trailed off. “Oh, I’m not sure, to be honest. I had to treat a couple of kids. I don’t ask any names; it’s easier that way. You’re the last, though; the others have all been taken to the transports. You’ll probably see him there. I don’t know after that.”
Lily blinked back fresh tears and nodded. Devon might be alive: that was something, at least. Wait, he’d said a couple of kids. Maybe Krys too? “How?”
He turned away from the compartment in the wall he’d opened and took the empty cup from her. “How what? How’d we get here? We came in a fleet of transports. How’d we take over? Easy—we’ve been liberating humanity for over a year now. Any more than that isn’t for me to—”
“No,” Lily said, stopping him. “How’d everyone die? Was it, um, was it quick? Like Pita?”
“Pita who? No, never mind. Quick? Yeah, I imagine. I wasn’t in the first wave. I’m support. But when those tanks and biomechs roll in, not much can stand up to them.”
“Biomechs?”
“Yeah, the big guys. Good grief, they really keep you guys in the dark out here, don’t they? Explains why you had no defenses and no idea we were coming. Keeping the farmers dumb and isolated.” He snorted and looked as though he had a bad taste in his mouth he wanted to spit out. “Anyhow, that’s why things are changing. The human race has been kept in the dark too long. Letting the greedy people run the world and not taking care of the everyday folks like you and your family.”
“What?”
The soldier opened his mouth and then chuckled. “Forget it. I’m just a combat medic, not the kind of guy who changes things. Tho
se people are running the show. Good people, with good ideas. You listen when you get to your reeducation camp. Should take about six weeks. You seem like a smart girl. No telling what they’ll assign you to if you do good and keep your head on straight.”
“I don’t understand?” Lily asked. What was wrong with her education? Why’d she need it changed?
“That’s all right. Just remember that it’s for the best for everyone. I’m sorry about your family and friends, but you can’t stand in the way of progress.”
“Progress?” Lily asked. He nodded and held out something that looked like a one-handed gun. A pistol. She’d seen them in the shows Krys liked to watch. “Good luck, kid.”
She opened her mouth to ask him what he was talking about when he pressed the gun against the side of her head and pushed a button on it. Wait? A button? Guns had triggers, not—Lily’s thoughts blanked out as a wave of vertigo passed through her and sent her tumbling into darkness.
Chapter 6
Krys saw the smoke ahead of him and wondered what had happened. They’d had bonfires at the village from time to time, usually during the days of sunset when the sun dropped out of the eastern sky. Those were the only two real seasons on Venus: summer and winter. Technically they had four, but fall and spring each only lasted two veeks, Venerian weeks that lasted eleven days.
He stopped in his tracks when the smell of the smoke hit him. It wasn’t like a bonfire. They’d burned more than wood. Some of the vison, maybe? Or had they burned more? Houses and harvesters too? His dad would be mad if they burned up his machines!
His dad? Krys’s lips parted and his mouth went dry. Lily and Devon had been shot. Pita was missing. That soldier had blown up a tree and tossed him under it like it was a pile of sticks. What would they do to his parents?
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