“But, why the asteroids? Why are they going there?” John asked.
With an expression of disapproval on her face, Maryanne shook her head at Stephen’s revealing statements, discreetly mouthing the word No in his direction. Shrugging off her concerns, he gave into John’s inquisitiveness, grasping in his mind the importance of having a hardened Sweeper on their side.
“Central believes that Golden Planet may exist on one of them. Before the failed uprising on Raw, intelligence was gathered about several military operations taking place in the belt. They think Golden’s hidden in there somewhere, tucked away in the crevices of one of those giant rocks.”
As the glowing tails of the rising pillars disappeared into the bluish-green of the heavens, John could not help but think back to the day when he and Sofia had entered into the transporter on Labor, completely unaware of the future events that their actions would bring upon them. But the thoughts did not bring back feelings of peacefulness and innocence. Instead, just as he was conditioned to, the images of his mind brought frustration and murderous anger.
“Is there a base over those hills?” he asked, trying to ignore the mental pictures of his past.
“No. Central programmed several stolen airships from Raw, engineering them to land there. Each one is a one-way ticket once it takes off.”
“So there’s no way to bring them back?”
“It’s not that,” Stephen paused. “We’re anticipating that Golden’s forces will prevent most of us from coming home.”
“So, you’re going there to die?” John asked with amazement at the foolishness of the plan.
“We’re going there to reconnoiter. We need specific data concerning Golden’s leaders and their primary governing order. It’s the only way to defeat them. Every one of us volunteered for these missions, John. We’re well aware of the dangers.”
Finding it hard to believe that Sofia could get caught up in such a venture, as she was so passive and mindful of the living, he asked her, “Were you going with them?”
It was John’s first words to her. Speaking with him for the first time since their last meaningful discourse on that dreadful street in Basket Town, she found it was difficult to express her thoughts verbally. After so many years apart it felt like a dream. It seemed as if at any moment Maryanne’s voice would pull her from the world of sleep, back into the violently convulsing reality from which she had known for too long.
“No, John. They were helping me escape. They’ve arranged a special transporter for me… for us, now. Can you believe it? It’s going to take us back home.”
Home. John could hardly remember what the word meant on a conceptual level, let alone on an existential one.
“Back to Labor?” he asked.
“Yes. That’s where I was headed. I was going to go to our old home in the woods, knowing that, when you were able to, you would go there to find me.”
Long lost feelings of sadness and love, emotions of which John had not known for years, attempted to touch him anew. But the cold, unforgiving transformation that had held him captive for so long would not allow it. Ignoring her involvement of him in her plans to return to Labor, he instead delineated the conversation into the obscure.
“I have so many questions, Sofia. I don’t even know where to begin,” he said.
“I have just as many questions for you, too,” she said. “But, for now, I just want you to pay attention to me, okay? Just keep driving, but listen.”
Nodding in the affirmative, John was about to add a condition to his agreement, but Sofia cut him off mid-sentence.
“Please, promise me you won’t say a word until I’m finished.”
Agreeing to her plea with another nod of his head, John felt the gnawing pain of seeing her so aged, not having been by her side during the passing of so long a time. Her youthful beauty was still there… but then again, it was not. He wanted to reach his arm out to her, to hold… the burning anger of converted weakness was filling his mind. Like a well-programmed machine, he returned to his driving.
Knotting off the last bit of thread and cutting it short with her teeth, Maryanne listened to the driver’s side conversation from over her shoulder. She wiped the blood from Stephen’s body with a damp cloth. Feeling the attention to his wounds waning, Stephen lifted his head as John was nodding to Sofia. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, but he was doing nothing to alleviate them.
“I never gave up the hope that you were alive.” Sofia whispered to him. “The days were so hot, and the nights were so cold and lonely, but you were always by my side. We may have been apart for many years, but the Savior allowed me to have you near… near in the person of our son.”
Opening his mouth, John was about to ask her if he understood her statement correctly. But Sofia quickly touched a trembling finger to his lips, shaking her head in disapproval. As promised, he returned his eyes to the rolling hills of flowing red sand, keeping the vehicle in its straight path, and remained silent.
Sitting back in her seat, Sofia continued, “It’s true. We had a son, John. His eyes were blue, like mine, but his lips and chin were yours. While I carried him within me, you were there. Every time I would look at him after he was born, I was, in some way, looking at you. I even named him after you.”
Maryanne realized that Stephen was watching her. He had caught her eavesdropping, and her watery eyes were revealing the anguish of her heart as she listened to her friend explaining the all-to-familiar tragedy of losing a child. Pulling Maryanne close to him, she laid her head down upon his chest. Together they listened to Sofia as she spoke so intimately from her heart.
“He was so beautiful, dear.”
A faint smile formed at the corner of her mouth.
“I wish you could have seen him. He had such a radiant smile. He almost never cried.”
A blade of the Savior’s light slipped through the window, splashing across the dashboard and spilling onto the steering wheel, crossing John’s fingers. Sofia watched it changing the shapes of the shadows that surrounded it, casting a sharply defined edge across its path.
“So many people believed that he was actually the One that would change the world. It’s so odd to think that anybody would… Strange events took place around him, even while he was in my womb, in the days when we had no idea that he was there.”
Sofia paused, contemplating upon the moments with her child. But after a moment she realized that she had not finished her story, and so she continued.
“He’s gone now,” she said. “But, he never died.”
Listening with a subtle hint of disbelief touching him at the back of his mind, John was feeling a growing sense of morbid sadness at their loss. He thought he felt that love that he once had, but again, the wall of fire, the mental restructuring that his mind had been forced through, took control, allowing it to last for only a brief moment before burning up into oblivion.
Sofia sat in silence. Her mind was caught in the moment of the time long past of which she was speaking of.
“What happened to him, Sofia?” John asked, for some reason of which he himself did not understand.
Maybe it was to make more sense out of the violence, or the search for something deeper regarding the strange events that surrounded the child. Either way, it was another life ruined by the strands of time of which he had threaded.
“He just disappeared one day,” she replied.
Looking out through her reflection on the passenger side window, Sofia stared at the passing hills and open desert.
“It was such a wild morning. Maryanne and I went into hiding after his birth. Something terribly bizarre happened in the room that day. It was just so odd and frightening.”
She was speaking too vaguely for John to fully appreciate the situation of which she was recalling, to comprehend the depth of her story. But even if she had the ability to detail the events more clearly, John’s heart was far too concealed under its cloak of blackness to be reached on any emotive level.
“There was so much blood,” she continued. “The men that… I’m not really certain what happened that morning. But, it had been several years after his birth when the people began to riot. The battles with Raw’s Security forces were taking place on a daily basis. They were making their raids in the housing district when we were found in the hidden place that Stephen had built for Maryanne.”
Speaking in stuttering, seemingly disorganized statements, Sofia found it virtually impossible to explain with words the events that had transpired on that fateful day. She tried her best, but only Maryanne and Stephen, as witnesses to the events, could appreciate what she was describing.
“They came into the room for him. He was nearly a young man at the time. There was so much shouting and screaming everywhere. I tried to grab his hand. I tried to pull him away, but… it was so… odd. The brightest light I’ve ever seen filled the room, but we were safe to look into it. It blinded the Security agents, John, but it didn’t harm Mary or me. It was… odd, so odd. When the light disappeared, all the agents fell down dead… and he was gone. Just like that… gone.”
Her lips were trembling like the finger that she had placed upon his mouth just moments earlier.
“He was so golden, John. So beautiful.”
Trying to reconcile in his mind the hatred that had built up inside of him with that desire to make everything right regarding his past mistakes, John could not help but feel the aches of hopelessness. There was nothing he could do to change what had already been done. He had a son that he would never meet… but the wall of indignation built up in his heart would not allow him beyond that objective fact.
As the light of the Savior bent through the window, it reflected off the glass in such a way that it caught John at the edge of his eye. Piercing through his pupil, it touched the nerves at the back of the orb. He was golden, John thought. Golden.
Jamming his foot into the brake, the transporter slid sideways, skidding through the sand. Throwing her hands on the metal bar mounted to the dash in front of her, Sofia braced herself against the sudden change in the vehicle’s motion. She could feel the dull thud of Maryanne’s body ramming into the rear of her seat. Grinding to an abrupt stop far from their destination, the vehicle became engulfed within its trailing red tail of dust.
“What’s going on?” Stephen shouted from the bench.
Looking over the seat, John’s expression was difficult to interpret as he unbuckled himself and began to rise. Maryanne crawled away from him, huddling close to Stephen, believing that the Sweeper was about to show his true deadly nature.
“Golden,” John said, climbing into the back of the transporter. “I know where you can find it. Those ships are heading to the wrong place. Is there any way to notify Central?”
“Well, yes,” Stephen stuttered, sensing the dread that was consuming his companion. “I have a com-system in my rucksack. What’s going on, John.”
“Those men and women are being sent to their deaths. They’re not going to find anything of worth on those asteroids. There’s nothing but soldier farms there.”
“Soldier farms?” Stephen questioned. “What are you…?”
“Yes, soldier farms. It’s called the Wasp Nest. They breed people out there strictly for the sake of dying in the battles here on Red.”
“No, John. That’s what they were doing on Raw. They…”
“Stephen, listen to me. Think about it. The war’s perpetual. It never ends. Do you really think that they can produce that many soldiers in Basket Town?”
Contemplating John’s words, Stephen sat for a moment in silence.
“But you say that you know where Golden is?” he asked.
“I do… but not exactly. There’s a handheld computer that Sofia and I brought with us to Raw many years ago. Wherever they took our belongings on that day, you’ll probably find that computer. It had the destination to Raw in it. That’s how we got there.”
“But what about Golden?” Stephen questioned further.
“The cargo bay was full of crates labeled for that planet as well as this one. That ship was supposed to go there, and then, after dropping off Golden’s cargo, it was destined for here…”
“But it never had a chance to make it that far,” Stephen continued. “I need to get the radio.”
“Wait,” Maryanne interrupted. “Are you sure about this, Stephen?”
Her look of distrust was apparent. John was a man of blood. But Stephen knew that if he were not a willing defector, their whole squad would have been dead long ago. Placing Maryanne’s suspicions aside once again, to her dismay Stephen said to her, “I trust him.”
Bowing her head in disapproval, Maryanne slipped her hand off the top of his palm and looked away. Sitting up and hobbling to the rear of the vehicle, Stephen unhooked his backpack from the rack, throwing it to the floor. Unzipping its main compartment, he removed the communications device and set it down. Picking up the transceiver, he turned some dials on its face and began an attempt to make contact with his superiors.
“Central, this is Commander Stephen James of Gamma Formation, Red side, under operation Crimson Flow. How copy?”
There was a moment of radio silence during which Stephen glanced at John. He was sitting at the edge of the driver’s seat beside Sofia, waiting impatiently for a response.
After a few seconds, a repeat of his words into the mic resulted in the same outcome, and he began to wonder if they were still operational. With a sigh of frustration, Stephen was about to make one last attempt when a static-riddled voice came through the speaker.
“Commander James, this is Central. Over.”
With a deep sigh of relief, the commander put the microphone to his mouth.
“Central, we have a defecting Sweep agent on board ground transportation heading to air rendezvous. How copy?” After a moment of silence the voice returned, “This is Central. Say again. Over.”
“Central, repeating: we have a defecting Sweep agent on board ground transportation heading to air rendezvous. How copy?”
There was another momentary pause.
“Copy that, Commander. Can you confirm the identity of the prisoner?”
“Affirmative. Confirmation of agent is in process. Standby. Please note: Sweeper is not a prisoner. It is a defecting product, and is in the process of supporting ground recon. Over.”
“Copy that, Commander. Awaiting agent data. Over.”
Unfolding the knife that he removed from his shirt pocket, Stephen held his hand out to John and said, “Come over here.”
John left Sofia’s side, approaching Stephen with cautious suspicion. Maryanne watched him as he knelt down beside the radio.
“Give me your hand,” Stephen said, taking hold of John’s wrist and placing his palm upward, facing it into the tip of his blade.
Looking him in the eyes, Stephen said, “Don’t move. I just need to retrieve something from you.”
With a nod of his head, John felt the blade dig deep into his palm. He could feel the warmth of his blood dripping from his hand onto the floor.
“Hold still. I can feel it, it’s just a little deeper.”
The knife’s metal tip vibrated off of a metallic object hidden beneath the hardened layers of his skin. John understood that he was attempting to recover the security chip placed there during his Sweeper training. As Stephen pried the rice shaped article out, John felt a strange release fall from him, as if a layer of low-level energy had been peeled away from his body.
Wiping it clean, Stephen placed the Identifier into a slot at the side of the com-system and plugged in several codes into the keyboard mounted on the machine’s lower half. Picking up the transceiver, Stephen said, “Central this is Commander James. How copy?”
“Commander, this is Central. Go ahead.”
“Central, data on Sweeper incoming. Over.”
“Copy that.”
Although Maryanne was steaming over his trustfulness of the Sweeper, Stephen understood her p
osition. If John was speaking the truth, they might be able to end the war without much bloodshed. But, if he was deceiving them, as she believed he was, which was very much a possibility considering his apparent indifference to Sofia’s story of the loss of their child, then his trust in John could have a tremendously negative repercussion in their attempts to gain universal control. Times were desperate. He had to make an executive battlefield decision and act accordingly.
Wrapping a dressing around his hand, John returned to his seat up front. Maryanne gave a gestured look at Stephen as if to ask him, “Well, what are we going to do, now?”
After considering his options he drew the mic to his mouth.
“Central I need access to General Montgomery ASAP regarding actual operation target location according to Sweep informant. This is a high priority affair. Over”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The armored transporter rounded the base of the sandy hill just outside the launch area. Three towering machines stood at the ready, surrounded by the scattering of abandoned vehicles left behind by the recon teams in their haste to take to the skies. The numerous scorched, black circles of melted sand, the effects of the blasts of the recently departed airships, were an immense contrast to the red rolling hills and desert that surrounded them. As John made the final approach, a distant, lone individual standing at the foot of the ramp leading up to one of the air transporters waved him down.
Kneeling between the two front seats, Stephen directed John to their awaiting guide.
“That’s our man,” he said. “We need to get our gear ready. Sofia help Maryanne get the packs by the door.”
Expecting a word of resistance from John, as she assumed that they were leaving for Labor and had no further need of their military accoutrements, Sofia stood up, but waited a moment before vacating her seat. But nothing appeared to be forthcoming from him, as he did not seem to take notice of her. The scab-covered wounds on John’s ear and face, filthy, open to the air and in terrible need of attention, were quite unnoticeable up to now. As they were most befitting of his distancing demeanor, Sofia turned away from him, dropping her chin in disappointment. Stephen stepped aside in order to make room for her to pass by before taking the seat up front. Sofia continued to walk off without saying a word. John’s injuries would have to wait.
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