He’d never learned what made them leave, as no rescue party had ever arrived. Lying there, listening to his heart gratefully slow, Olech watched himself reach into the pocket of the dead boy where he knew he’d found a folding knife that took forever to slice through the harness that held him. Knowing that he’d crawled through the small crack into an alien land of cold air and darkness and miles of ground shattered by the war, that he’d wandered that dead place until the sun had risen, proving that he wasn’t a blood-soaked ghost.
He’d linked up with a Force unit a day later, but it would be weeks before he learned that everyone on that ship had died. Fumbling for the knife, pondering Mirror’s absence, still the teenaged Olech yet aware that this was not reality, he was only mildly surprised when the scene shifted as if he had never been anywhere else.
Pinned yet again under a body whose blood ran over him, but this time facedown on the floor of the great hall that had belonged to the Interplanetary Senate. Confusion mixed with fear, as Olech knew he’d visited this experience with Mirror already. The gunfire roared yet again, the different security details blasting away at each other in the maelstrom that had erupted when President Larkin had made his fateful announcement. Olech knew that Larkin was already dead, one of the first to fall, riddled with bullets near the rostrum only ten yards away. He’d been trying to reach the man, hollering over the bedlam for Larkin to get out of the chamber, when the first shots had been fired.
The chief of his security team, a giant named Faldonado, had plunged through the mob and thrown him to the carpet, diving on top of him. The action had saved his life, as Faldonado had absorbed several slugs and died right there. He was collapsed on top of Olech now, trapping him along with the other bodies, half of the Senate had been wiped out in the insane gunplay, and he remembered now that through the shock and the terror he’d thought back to that moment twenty-five years before when he’d hidden from the Sims under a corpse.
The confusion departed just then, as did the roaring reports and the screams and the yells and the whimpers. This was unfamiliar, and Olech half expected Mirror to appear to offer an explanation. He was mistaken in that belief, because something completely different happened instead. In every one of the experiences he’d re-lived, Olech had taken the form of the boy or the student or the politician that he’d been at the time of the event. At this moment, however, he found himself sharing the experience of someone else.
He knew that was the case right away, because he was witnessing the slaughter from the back of the room and couldn’t identify with any of the sensory input at all. It wasn’t the violence or the carnage; sadly, he’d seen and done worse in the war. No, it was the personality or the psyche or simply the viewpoint of the man whose memory of the event he was now experiencing fully.
Olech’s mind balked at the mismatch, the gears grinding as he fought to connect with something he recognized. An awesome level of concentration gripped the witness, but a cold detachment filled the rest of him. Receiving the sensations of the short rifle as it fired, the thrum of the reports vibrating through heavy body armor into his chest, shooting specific targets according to a prearranged kill list while the others, the man’s helpers, were fighting the security troops who were trying to intervene.
The rifle jumped slightly, but the witness was an excellent shot and was able to place the rounds so that his victims appeared to have been hit at random. Near the doors, a gray-haired senator jumped up and tried to flee, only to be recognized by the gunman and cut down. Then, a pile of bodies had shifted enough to show the round torso of yet another designated victim and he killed that one too.
Olech, disembodied but somehow riding inside the assassin’s head, fought to escape the inexplicable absence of emotion. It was like pushing against a glacier that wasn’t there, a bone-rattling cold that nonetheless had its origin in a space that was completely empty. The shooter continued his work, methodical, focused, but experiencing no internal reaction to the murders other than a weak pulse of disgust at how pitifully his victims were dying.
The mechanism inside the assassin’s brain shifted, giving Olech the impression of a switch having been thrown, and he realized that the first phase of a planned operation had just been completed. There was more to do, and little time. He felt a foreign hand reach up and press a throat mike against the flesh that housed his vocal cords.
“This is Asterlit. Sterilization team, sweep through the room. Remember, body shots from different angles.”
Hulking forms in fatigues and heavy body armor moved forward in a crooked line, roughly shoving through the piles. Lifeless arms and legs sliding and rolling away, smoke smell choking the room, and Olech now saw that Asterlit and the rest of Horace Corlipso’s security force were wearing tactical goggles and gas masks. Watching the killers as they searched out the targets that had only been wounded or, amazingly, left unharmed. Feeling Asterlit’s clinical response as the different senators were dispatched.
Revolted to find that the strongest emotion the assassin experienced was a swell of satisfaction that he had so ably managed the task assigned to him by his benefactor, Horace Corlipso. Repelled by the cavity that should have been filled with rage or hatred or shame, Olech pushed as hard as he could and abruptly found himself in the empty gallery outside the Senate chamber. He was himself again, down on his knees, shivering when Mirror walked up and knelt in front of him.
“Why did you do that?” he shouted, grabbing his twin by the arms and shaking him. “Why did you put me in that diseased mind?”
“His mind isn’t diseased.” Mirror seemed not to notice the shaking. “He has no empathy for the members of your race, or any living thing, but he was born that way.”
“Are you trying to excuse him? He murdered half the Senate!”
“Explaining and excusing are two completely different things. Regardless of what he lacks emotionally, Asterlit isn’t blind or deaf. He is completely aware of the suffering he causes, and he has known the fear that comes from being physically dominated or nearly killed. He knows what he is doing is wrong, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t relate to the other members of your species as anything but tools or victims.”
“You’ve studied him closely.”
“So many Step voyages, so many different experiences, his is not the only personality that matches that profile. Fortunately, his type is not common among humans.”
“There’s more of them than you think.”
“You’re wrong, Olech. Most of your fellow humans have natural empathy in varying degrees. Unfortunately, every one of them seems capable of ignoring that when it gets in the way. It is a major source of your race’s troubles.” Mirror stood. “You yourself know all about that.”
Mirror walked away, leaving him intact but alone. The former Chairman of the Emergency Senate slid to the carpet, where he rolled into a ball and wept until he vanished.
Chapter 8
Jander Mortas blinked as he emerged from the command bunker into the bright sun of midday. His helmet and goggles hung from the canteens attached to his torso armor, but he made no effort to don them. The familiar Scorpion rifle swung easily at the end of his right arm as he walked, enjoying the strength that had finally returned to his left leg and taking in the sights of Camp Resolve.
The site was the only refugee camp inside the Orphan Brigade’s sector, and its management had been taken over by an HDF mechanized infantry battalion three weeks before. That had been shortly after Colonel Watt had proclaimed his refugee abuse law to be in effect wherever Orphans went, and someone had seen the wisdom of removing Asterlit’s thugs before the brigade did it for them. The place had been a hellhole without even a name, but the mechanized commander had done a lot to clean the place up.
Looking around, Jander recognized that it was still a hellhole, but at least its tenants weren’t being mistreated anymore. He’d just brought up the latest supply convoy, and watched with satisfaction as Sergeant Leoni supervised the unloading of badly
needed rations. Leoni jokingly scolded Trimmer, a lanky driver standing up in the back of one of the trucks, and the youngster responded with a mischievous smirk. Like so many of the FITCO troops, male and female, Trimmer was always spoiling for a fight. In ambushes, he was usually the first to bail out and charge at the rebels still stupid enough to try and stop them.
“Hey.” Captain Pappas came out of the bunker behind Mortas. “I’m going to walk around a bit. Don’t leave without me.”
“Getting desperate, sir?” Jander grinned. Orphan combat units had racked up an impressive number of kills over the past weeks, mostly from the Flock and even a few of the Orange, but Pappas’s efforts to gain intelligence on their opponents had all fallen flat. “Gonna poll the noncombatants to see what they know?”
“You’d be surprised by what they know.” Pappas removed his helmet and hung it from a canteen, but kept the goggles. Producing a brimmed cloth hat from a cargo pocket, he put it on. “The Rogers come and go here at will.”
“You’re kidding.” Jander looked around at the stout wire fence, the menacing watchtowers, and the anti-hog moat recently dug by the engineers. “How?”
“This place is too big for a single battalion to secure. They’ve done a good job adjusting the perimeter, but there was only so much they could do with what they inherited. The green suits only pulled enough guard to prevent a general breakout, so apparently there are hundreds of little tunnels and blind spots.
“The rebels are smart. They smuggled food in while these people were starving, and slowly siphoned off recruits in return. See all those faces?” Pappas pointed at the interior fencing that separated the HDF command area from the long, low refugee barracks. A dozen figures, all ages, stood watching them. “The tenants observe everything that goes on, and they pass that to the Rogers when they visit.”
“We’re feeding them, and they’re helping the guys we’re fighting. This place gets crazier by the day.”
“You been here a month, so you must be certifiable by now.”
“You been here a lot longer than I have, and with a lot more frustration. Me, I spend my time handing out goodies and occasionally shooting my way out of an ambush, but your job’s the one that sucks. The Rogers sure picked up on your spies fast.”
“And staked the bodies out where we could find them. That was not a good day.”
“So what’s the plan now? You hoping to get intel the same way the rebels do?”
“Exactly. My mistake was sending people down into the mines. I should have realized there’s plenty of information to be gained right here, from people who never leave this place.”
“If they watch our every move, how are you going to make contact?”
“Sick call starts in fifteen minutes. Lots of opportunities to talk one-on-one.”
“Good luck.” Mortas looked over at the line of movers. “My guess is we won’t be done unloading for at least two more hours.”
“Thanks. Don’t leave without me.”
“I heard you the first time.” They exchanged smiles, and Pappas walked off across the orange soil.
Jander watched the unloading for another minute, finally deciding that Leoni’s FITCO troops didn’t need his help or supervision. It was a familiar feeling, and one he didn’t mind; Strickland had been running the battalion’s supplies for so long that he usually had very little to do. Intrigued by the faces at the wire, Mortas slowly walked toward them as if merely killing time.
“Hey, Lieutenant.” A middle-aged woman greeted him from the other side when he got close enough. She wore a clean set of mechanic’s overalls, the standard replacement for the rags they’d been wearing when Asterlit’s green suiters had departed. “Thank you for all you’re doing.”
Remembering Pappas’s words, he approached with caution. “You’re very welcome. How long you been here?”
“Oh, I was in two camps before this one. They were all the same, until you soldiers took this one over.”
“What did you do in the peace?”
“I was a factory worker. Not as rough as slavery, but still pretty bad. I came to this planet for work, but didn’t know the whole thing was rigged so I’d never be able to pay off my passage.” It was a common story, and Mortas was beginning to wonder if he’d misjudged her when she blew her act. “Your people are from the Orphan Brigade, right?”
“A little bit of this, and a little bit of that.” He replied honestly, and started walking away. She didn’t shadow him, which was another giveaway. Someone had taught her not to be a pest when probing for information. They must have developed some kind of signal, because the other watchers drifted away from the fence before he reached them. With an unobstructed view, he looked into their part of the camp.
The doors and windows in the barracks were open, and tenants of every age and description were out and about. A long stone sink was being used to hand-wash the garments they weren’t wearing, and he spotted a diagonal series of scratches in its side. At first they looked like Xs etched into the sink by idle hands, but then he recognized that they were crude representations of birds in flight, rising higher. The symbol of the Flock.
The Flock had been behind every ambush he’d encountered on the roads, and Jander had seen plenty of their face tattoos. Some were quite artistic, ranging from single large birds that covered half a head to the more common image of a flock lifting off into the sky. It was insane, the way the former slaves marked themselves that way, but that was the Flock in a nutshell. They had no intention of being taken alive.
Shaking off the dark thought, Mortas noticed that the refugees were tending several small gardens in different spots. He stopped to study that, noting with disappointment that the crops were small and sickly. The soil in this part of Celestia had never been good for farming, as he was discovering in the small plot he’d planted up on the Mound. At first it had been a way to combat the boredom between convoys, but after a while his small garden had become a memorial to his predecessor, Captain Follett, and his obsession with discovering new food sources. It also reminded him of the peace-loving colonists he’d gotten to know on Roanum, and for a moment he was back there, with them. With Erica.
“Lieutenant Mortas?”
A child’s voice interrupted his daydream, and he looked down in startled bewilderment. Many of the refugees had the orange tinge, and so he wasn’t surprised to see the pigmentation and the matching hair. His consternation came from recognizing the face of the child soldier who’d walked next to Hugh Leeger in the video Asterlit had shown him weeks before.
“I know you.”
“I’ve never seen you before.” Yellowed teeth cracked into a wide smile, suggesting the bare-chested boy was playing with him. Mortas decided he didn’t like that.
“So what are you? His gun bearer?”
“I was his sponsor. I found him not far from here. If I hadn’t spoken up for him, he probably would have been killed.”
Jander looked around, aware that the refugee lookouts had left the two of them alone. He lowered his voice. “How is he?”
“He’s free. Maybe for the first time in his life.”
“Believe it or not, I’m happy for him. He was more of a father to me than anyone I’ve ever known.”
“I do believe you. He’s the same thing to me.”
A stab of jealousy, followed by a deeper cut that said the fence wasn’t the only thing separating them. “So he sent you to see me. Is there a message?”
“Yes. Your brigade has picked off so many members of the Flock that they’re getting desperate.”
“And yet we almost never see the Orange.”
“That’s his plan.”
“So what’s the message?”
“You Orphans are in danger, and you don’t even know it.”
“Stop talking tough, you jaundiced little jerk. You see that bunch offloading supplies? They’re mine. Criminals and brawlers, every one of them. I give the order, they’ll run straight through this fence, drag you out b
y your balls, and laugh the whole way.”
“I’ll be long gone before they even hear you. Done it before.”
“So give me the message and fuck off.”
“He wants you to know that your brigade’s made some powerful enemies. Asterlit’s one of them. Here on Celestia, it’s all about money. You Orphans have disrupted that.”
“We’re only one brigade, in a big army.”
“No, you’re not. Other units are adopting your Colonel Watt’s Law, shutting down the brothels and the black market.”
“I call that the power of good example. I would have thought your people would support something like that.”
“We do. They don’t.” The child began to back away, without haste. “So that’s his message, for you especially. Asterlit’s going to find a way to hurt you.”
That night, the stars were out in such abundance that Jander was able to tend his garden without his goggles. The darkness was transformed into a blue-gray bowl overturned on top of the Mound, and he duckwalked among the rows of tiny plants without fear of crushing them. A cooling breeze caressed the top of the hill, unimpeded by the infamous Red House that had been torn down weeks before. The spot had been deemed unfit for a launch pad due to its small size and its exposure to enemy observation, so the old walled garden was all that was left.
Finishing his inspection, Mortas stood and stretched. The base had been transformed, and he looked down on it with satisfaction. Gone were the blazing lights, replaced by blackout entrances and mandatory goggle use at night. Many of the tents and temporary structures were also gone, having been dug into the hill and the surrounding terrain. The base itself had been expanded dramatically, in order to decrease the size of individual vehicle parks and to create several shuttle pads. The disjointed perimeter was now a proper defensive belt, with camouflaged bunkers, interlocking fields of fire, anti-personnel wire, and a wide anti-hog moat.
He was pondering the increasing problem of the expanding pig population when a shadow emerged on the trail. Helmet, rifle, goggles, and body armor made it almost impossible to tell who it was, but something about the wraith’s gait suggested he knew the visitor.
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