"FF officers for sure," the cyclopean responded. "Colonel Dune Frost is the head honcho. Bolts has all the details. They've split up as well, Frost is still here on Westland with his aide. The other two flew north to Oroko."
"Keep track of them as well as you can, Mook," D'Llorros instructed. "And thank you."
"Will do, bossman," Mook responded.
Bolts cut the transmission and we sat in silence for another minute before I finally had to ask, "What are you going to do, Jacques?"
D'Llorros took another drag from the hookah and exhaled before responding. "The Federation officers are probably meeting with government officials as we speak, that is, if they haven't done so already. Our planetary council will undoubtedly inform them that the real power on Ramage lies in hands other than theirs.”
"Speak of the devil," Bolts interjected. "Burunu has just informed me that a certain Colonel Dune Frost of the Federation Forces is at the gate with an aide seeking an audience with you, master."
"Instruct Burunu to escort them to the library," D'Llorros said.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"I will welcome the Federation to our fair world, of course," D'Llorros answered, smiling wide. "And we will offer them our enthusiastic cooperation."
I shook my head. "Even while you help the Dane resist them?"
"As I said, war presents us with many opportunities for profit."
"Uris Khan is not likely to be so accommodating," I said, referring to his rival, the chief crime lord of Oroko City on Northland.
D'Llorros gave a slight shrug of his broad shoulders. "That too can be of profit to us."
The Kunthian giant then stood. "At any rate, it need not concern you, my friend. You have a more pressing issue, do you not?"
I stood. "Yes, I guess I do."
"Come, Gaelic of Arkum, Gaelic of Aurelius," D'Llorros said stepping out of the ring of couches. "Let us embrace one last time and part as true friends."
I went over to the Kunthian and he once again cupped my shoulders in his giant hands. He held me at arm's length for what seemed a long time, his visage drawn in a semblance of genuine affection. He kissed me on each cheek and then drew me into a bear hug. I patted his back. "Goodbye, Gaelic," he said and released me.
"Goodbye Jacques and thank you," I said, showing him the vial he had given me. "Thank you for everything."
Jacques D'Llorros smiled, turned and headed out the bronze doors. I looked to Bolts and Kimili.
"Your account has just been credited for your latest haul," Bolts said and then he gave me a farewell nod. "Goodbye Gaelic of Aurelius."
"Die well, Gaelic of Commune Arkum," Kimili added with a deep nod of her own before she and Bolts took off after their boss.
The drawing room suddenly seemed cavernous as I stood in it alone and lost for a few minutes. At last, I pocketed the vial and walked out. At the mansion's atrium I crossed paths with Colonel Frost and his aide as the pale, freckled and redheaded Kunthian giant Burunu led them down the corridor. Burunu and I exchanged goodbye waves of our hands even as the Federation soldiers and I regarded each other silently. Both officers were in their ribbon-studded gold, blue and red dress uniforms. Each had a black and gold feather pinned to the side of their wedge caps, the cockade of the FF’s Special Ops.
The aide was a tall and thin black man, bald of pate but the sides of his face covered with mutton chop sideburns. The colonel was no taller than I but slightly broader at the shoulders. He had a clean-shaven but deeply lined face. His complexion was sun-weathered and his short, gelled hair was snow-white. As I passed them and walked out the front door, I had to repeat to myself that I had nothing to gain by shooting them in the back.
5
My mood darkened with every step I took on my way out of the mansion. I tried to shake it, leave it behind me at the gate, but it followed me, clinging closer than the scent of hash I had dragged out with me. The winding road down Crown Hill took me past a dozen more sprawling houses nearly as lavish as D'Llorros'. Like his, they sat on the hill rather than being carved out of it, except that they sat on considerably less acreage than the Kunthian's manor. An armed guard or two could be seen posted at their front gates. They were the homes of some of the richest people on the planet, most of them capos in D’Llorros’ organization.
As I passed each I wondered what side they would choose in the coming weeks. I had to admit that most would see no way out of cooperating with the Federation and follow their bossman’s lead. I imagined they would have as little choice if it were the Empire or any of the other galactic powers which invaded us. Some, like Oroko's Uris Khan might resist, but I could not see anything coming out of it other than their undoing. Chagrined as I was to admit it, Jacques D'Llorros was playing it smart, no doubt angling to rise up from just another local warlord to an empurpled Planetary Proconsul by war's end. I could see him pulling it off; he was certainly ruthless enough.
Ramage however would never be the same. And the rest of the Open Zone? Well, it was something of a miracle that the unaligned worlds of the OZ had enjoyed their independence for as long as they had, thick as the OZ was in the heart of civilized space. The freedom now enjoyed in the Open Zone would soon hereafter have to be sought out on the far-flung peripheries of the galaxy.
Resigning myself to the inevitability of the Open Zone's fate, my dark thoughts lost their angry edge and took a decided turn for despondency. And as the anger receded, I realized what it was that lay at the core of my foul mood. It wasn't the OZ's future that vexed me so pointedly. It was my past. Having myself suddenly and unexpectedly reminded of my life as Gaelic of Commune Arkum by D'Llorros had awakened memories my life as Fritz Landenson had put to rest, in particular the memory of Bannon Orman. The young man's ghost now rose to stand astride both lives.
Bannon Orman was a fellow prisoner on Gamma VI. He arrived on the prison planet four years into my sentence. He had been picked up by the Psion during one of their raids on convoys of pioneer families crossing the deeps of uncontested space to colonize a newly terraformed world. He was fourteen years old, no more than a frightened child, when he was dumped among us on Gamma VI.
I had recently organized my inner conspiracy. We were all former FF. Our training and experience allowed us to bear up better under the tedium and torturous toil of slavery than our fellow prisoners. This made us their unofficial leaders. We carefully cultivated this status of first among equals, settling disputes among the inmates, rationing the meager supplies we were allowed by our machine masters, holding the occasional conclave with our hand-appointed lieutenants and always encouraging all to carry on, to persevere until the time came to make our break for freedom. In a few years most prisoners were onboard with the escape attempt. The few holdouts were those who had completely lost their will to survive, craven cowards who feared death more than they loved freedom. Fortunately, there was never any danger of being betrayed by any of them because there was no incentive for turning us in. Their betrayal would not have earned them any points or concessions from our cyborg jailers.
To the others, and especially to an impressionable and frightened young man like Bannon Orman, we became cult leaders of a sort; we dangled the vision of freedom before them, a freedom that could only be won by the secret knowledge we, the inner circle, held: our ability to disarm the Psion freighter's self-destruct mechanism.
I looked out for Bannon as best that I could until that fateful day. The boy was one of the more excited by the prospect of escape. He was absolutely giddy with it and I took advantage of it, shamelessly encouraging his fantasy that I would accompany him back to his home world once we were free. When the day finally came, during the charge on the Psion freighter, Bannon noticed when the inner ring of conspirators broke from the main group and made a dash for the hangar that housed the smaller Federation vessel. He followed and caught up with us as we dragged out the two engineers who were sleeping aboard. He watched in horror as a couple of my co-conspirators stomped on t
heir skulls, killing them.
He begged to come with us, but we denied him. We had to. There just wasn't enough space for him. We would be pushing the ship’s life support system with six people as it was. The ship was designed to haul two people over short distances and we had plotted a long course which skirted both Psion and Federation space. Looking over his shoulder at our dying fellow prisoners outside the hangar, he realized that it was our plan all along to use him and them as distractions. At first Bannon became angry and tried to force his way aboard, lunging up the short boarding ramp.
I pushed him back. "Sorry kid, there's no more room."
He lunged again and I punched him, hard on the side of his helmet. He fell back. As the ramp rose into closed position I watched the anger in his eyes melt away into tears as the reality of my betrayal overwhelmed him.
As we lifted off the planet's surface, we were treated to a short view of the others we had betrayed. The battleborg was holding its ground in front of the Psion transport. The tarmac around it was littered with the bodies of the fallen, more than half of the nearly eight hundred prisoners that made the assault. Men clung to the Psion's legs, heaved against them trying to topple him. Others hung to each of the cyborg's four arms, trying desperately to throw off the aim of their deadly blaster fire. The battleborg flung the prisoners off its limbs almost as soon as they could get purchase on them only to have other inmates leap upon them. And through all the flailing of limbs, the red spray of their blaster fire continued unabated, methodically whittling away at the human horde. The fight was already lost. We knew it and the prisoners knew it. Yet they fought on, their ferocity fueled by a seething hatred for their machine masters and a desperation to escape their clutches, even if they had to find that freedom in death.
I hadn't visited the memory of my escape in years nor given any thought to the hundreds of men I lied to and sacrificed for my freedom. And I didn't want to. With a concerted effort I tried to banish Bannon and the rest of them from my thoughts but only succeeded in pushing them into the background of consciousness. The dead followed me at a distance as I made my way down the hill.
Beneath the crest of Crown Hill the homes became more tightly clustered. Gone now were the gates and their armed guards. Wide stone balconies fanned across the hill face, each one an open air and fountained atrium to cavernous interiors. These were the dwellings the original colonists had carved out of the limestone for their families. Some families still made homes for themselves among them but, mostly they were occupied by the younger, upwardly mobile soldiers of D’Llorros’ crime syndicate and by many a childless couple and the individuals that made up the bulk of Koppolo's artists and professional class.
Two-thirds down the hill I reached Founders Bluff. The promontory overlooked the sweeping bend of the river Ganga, New Koppolo, the slum and the jungle beyond them. The bluff was a popular park for locals but today it was teeming with tourists. I made for the far side of the promontory, to the row of taxis that lined Cliff Road. On the way, my ear picked out a familiar voice from out of the susurrus background.
The male voice was asking, "It's not expensive, is it?"
"No, no," another, even more familiar, voice assured. "Cheery good price. Not expensive."
I quickly found their sources. It was a man and a boy standing under the bronze statue of Popo Koppolo, the leader of Ramage's founding colony.
"And the food is good?" the man asked.
"Cheery good," the boy said. "Cheery best food."
The boy was Puma, a local kid from the slum who was trying to earn himself some coin by luring tourists into one of the restaurants that lined the hill-side edge of the park. Many businesses throughout the city used children from the local slum to tout customers their way.
The man's voice was so tantalizingly familiar that I found myself approaching the pair almost unconsciously. It was difficult to get a good look at them through the crossing streams of people between us but the glimpses quickly added up to an identity. I could not help but laugh at the recognition. The Cosmos seemed determined that I should continue to face my past.
"Hello Drake," I said when I finally reached the duo.
Man and boy turned towards me. Puma, recognizing me, grinned in greeting. Drake's jaw dropped and then closed. His brow furrowed as he looked me over head-to-toe and peered past the decades and my disease-diminished form. After a prolonged moment, the lines of his furrowed brow faded as he began to believe what his eyes were telling him. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Gaelic?"
I nodded.
"Oh. My. God," Drake's smile widened into a grin with each word. "Gael!"
In an instant, the thirty-plus years during which we had been lost to each other vanished. We leapt into each other's arms, laughing like the boys we once were, embracing like the brothers we would always be. We kissed each other's cheeks and stepped back, arms still clasped above the wrists, to regard each other once more across the decades.
"Gael, my brother, I thought you were dead."
I was so elated that I could only laugh at his inadvertent reminder of my terminal condition. "Not yet, Drake, my brother. Not yet."
Puma looked on amused and undoubtedly curious about our calling each other 'brother.' We looked nothing alike. In fact I bore a closer resemblance to pale and red-headed Puma than I did to Drake who was dark-haired and of a ruddy complexion. My eyes were green and round, Drake's were almond shaped and almost black.
"What brings you to Ramage?" I asked.
"Just passing through, my brother."
"You came with the Olympus?"
"Yeah, I did," Drake answered. "I'm taking the Olympus to Aeschylus and then hopping on another boat to Aurelius."
"Going back home, to the commune?"
"I'm going back to Aurelius," Drake said. "But I'm only visiting the commune long enough to re-introduce myself to my son."
"Your son?"
"Well, I've always believed he was mine."
"I don't understand," I said.
Drake and I were born into a commune, a pastoral collective tucked away in Arkum, a verdant valley in a quiet corner of the Federation planet, Aurelius. The commune eschewed the trappings of city life, rejecting many of the values and social institutions they considered impediments to their ideal of universal egalitarianism. The family was one such institution rejected by Commune Arkum. Drake and I were part of the collective's first litter; we were raised to regard the commune's every woman as mother and every man as father and thus, we, their children, regarded each other as brothers and sisters.
Drake could not know for certain if he had fathered a child in the commune because monogamy was another of the institutional values the collective rejected. Only the mothers knew which children were theirs. The identities of the fathers were secrets religiously guarded by the ruling matriarchy.
"Haven't you ever wondered who your father was, Gael?"
"Not since I was a kid and we made a game of guessing who our parents were," I said. I had, in fact, not given the question any thought in years. Growing up in the collective, any real inquiry into the matter was soberly discouraged by the Matriarchs until the subject became an outright taboo by adulthood.
"Truth be told I haven't thought about it myself until fairly recently," Drake said. "But since I have, I've wanted to know not only who my parents were but, more importantly, whether or not Brace - that's the boy's name - is indeed my son."
"Why?"
"Because it's not natural, the way the commune raises children," Drake said emphatically. “It’s not right, the way we were raised.”
I considered what Drake said. “I can't speak to the naturalness or the ‘rightness’ of our upbringing,” I said. “It wasn't the most traditional of means but neither is it terribly uncommon in the galaxy. There are certainly worse ways. If we were Hegemony royalty, we would’ve been pitted against each other in mortal combat for succession.”
“That’s true.”
“And the
n there are the Shaaranma clans on Ursidia,” I continued. “They castrate every tenth male child for…”
“There certainly are worse ways to be raised,” Drake agreed. “Point taken. And to be fair, I do remember our childhood being idyllic enough to content most of us most of the time.”
“We had us some good times,” I agreed.
“Yes, we sure did,” Drake grinned. “But that contentment waned with the years and especially with exposure to outside influences, which, scant as they might have been, were enough to lure a lot of us away, either to one of the cities on Aurelius or, as in our cases, off planet. You were the first to leave, in fact.”
“I wanted a chance to fly something other than the commune crop duster,” I said. “The FF gave me that opportunity.”
“That was only part of it, Gael. You were beginning to chafe against the commune lifestyle long before you signed up.”
“A little, I guess.”
“A lot of us were, because, as I said, it just wasn’t natural.”
I shrugged noncommittally. "So what are you going to do, go up to the boy and say, 'hello Brace, my name is Drake and I might be your father?'"
Drake nodded. "Something like that. I'll give him a copy of my genetic chart and encourage him to get his done. I'll let him know that if it turns out that I am his father, he is free to visit or even live with me."
"How old is the kid?"
"Brace should be about sixteen," Drake said. "But enough about me, brother. You've got to tell me where you've been these past… what is it... thirty years? What you've been doing…tell me everything!
“Have you eaten? This young man here was just directing me to a restaurant for lunch. You must join me. You look like you could use a meal or three. I’ve never seen you look so pale and so frail. Are you alright?"
“Sure, I’m fine,” I lied. “I’ve just got back from being in space for several months. Been living off concentrates and protein pills, so yeah, I can eat.”
“Okay then, let’s get you fattened up,” Drake said.
One Last Flight: Book One Of The Holy Terran Empire Page 4
