by Jason Letts
Rion, Lena, and Bailor looked at each other, gauging who would begin.
“We were all orphaned on Mars,” said Lena, who wasn’t orphaned. “After bumping into Reznik we parted ways. I was originally from Neptune, and I went back there for a while. It did an incredible job of renewing my distaste for humanity. My dream is to end up somewhere like where you are now. Somewhere beautiful with plenty of peace and quiet.”
“I don’t have any kids,” Heath said. “As far as I’m concerned you can have this place after I die…of natural causes. Otherwise, it’ll be left to the robo crows.”
“First and foremost I consider myself a student of history,” Bailor said. “I’ve read as much as I can about the Alliance, even from the late Regent Kline’s personal journal, and it’s so striking to me how different your portrayal is from everything I’ve read. I know all about the corruption, the greed, and the mismanagement, but I had no idea they were trying to encourage so many rivals.”
“You’ve gotten most of the party line then. The Alliance is carrying civilization into the future, protecting us from the past, and all that. It’s not wholly bunk, but there’s a lot more to it than that,” Heath said. “What about this strapping lad?”
Rion was offput by the personal appraisal. He nearly blushed.
“I’ve spent as much time as I could studying the inner workings of ships, but there’s a difference between reading about them and toying with them. Part of what we came here for was for you to help us dig through the Assailing Face and determine if everything was in working order. Since it’s been sitting around for so long, there is a chance we’d pull a trigger and have the wrong ship blow up.”
“Drink up and let’s get out there and do it then,” Heath said, rising on the spot. His helpful attitude made it impossible for Rion not to do as he was asked. There had to be more sugar in the glass than water.
When they exited the farmhouse, the rock they were on had rotated so that Saturn was directly overhead. The huge ball dominated the sky above them, making it seem like they were about to fall into it. Heath paid it no mind. He sent Lena and Bailor out into the fields to pick corn and draw recycled water from a sill.
The man put his hand out and lightly stroked the end of their ship. Rion began to understand that what they saw at first was a tough exterior hardened by loss and time alone. Allowing him to reminisce had cracked that quickly. At heart Heath was a helpful and kind soul.
He started by cracking a hatch on the underside of the auxiliary engine that Rion would’ve never found. It led to a crawlspace running along the bottom of the ship that gave access to many of the major attributes. There was even enough room for them to squirm through side by side. Rion watched Heath tamper with the fuel cells, the missile ducts, and the air filters. It would’ve normally been fascinating to watch him work, but Rion had a question on his mind that consumed his attention.
Right before they got to the live ammunition, Rion reached into his pocket and pulled out the disc he’d gotten from his father so long ago. He was reluctant to get Heath’s attention but didn’t want to waste this moment of seclusion.
“What is it?” Heath asked, sounding a little annoyed.
“Can you take a look at this and tell me if you know what it means? I showed it to Reznik and she said it would’ve saved her a lot of trouble. That was seconds before her death.”
Heath rolled onto his side, adjusted his lamp, and held his head back so he could get a proper view of the object. He furrowed his brows and glanced back to Rion.
“How did you get this?” he asked, sounding in awe.
“My father gave it to me before he left me on Mars. Or I should say he put it in my pocket without my knowledge. I only found it later, but I’d never seen anything like that symbol before. Do you know what it means?”
Heath sighed and copied the symbol with his hand, bending his ring finger.
“I’ve never seen it on an object like this, and the only time I’d ever heard of it was when I was a kid no older than you starting to get into things that were none of my business. I was assistant to a man whose job it was to keep close track of the Alliance on behalf of the major companies. Every once in a while he’d leave his tablet out and I’d read through his notes. It flashed by my eyes in a second over fifty years ago, but on seeing this, it rings true,” Heath said, beginning to wheeze.
Rion stared intently at the man’s dark lips, dying to get at something he’d been searching for seemingly his entire life.
“What does it mean?” Rion said, getting impatient with the pause.
“It was used back during the expansion from Earth. It was a passcode, a symbol of trust between the upper echelons of the Planetary Alliance, which was still in its infancy as the various space programs from the different countries on Earth merged together to create habitable environments across the solar system. And your dad gave you this? Why? What did he expect you to do with it?”
Rion shrugged.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. A passcode though. I had no idea.”
“What did your dad do?” Heath asked.
Rion squinted, trying to hide from an uncomfortable question he couldn’t easily answer.
“I thought he was some kind of ship dealer or reseller, since we always had different ships around, Voidjets, Gravilinx, and even Alliance ships. I didn’t know he had any real connection to the Alliance though, or I didn’t until I found out who he’d been talking to the day he left me.”
“And who was that?” Heath asked.
“I had no idea at the time, but I saw him again when he came to announce the takeover at Gravilinx. It was someone named Commander Hobart, or at least that’s what one of the Alliance men told me afterward. Have you ever heard of him?”
Heath put his head down to ponder.
“I’m sure I’ve heard the name if he’s a commander, but there are so many of them that they all run together. I’ve been more focused on Chancellor Yetrue, who directs both the Alliance and the planets’ regent structure, but it seems obvious your father had more of a connection to the Alliance than he was letting on.”
Rion went quiet as he puzzled over the secrets his father had left behind. Talking to an Alliance officer right before leaving him with a hint at an old passcode? What did it all mean? And how did that affect his mission aboard the Assailing Face?
It didn’t take long to come up with a hypothesis. If his father’s dealings with the Alliance were of a shady nature, he may have needed to separate from Rion in order to give him a chance to legitimately enter the Alliance’s service. The disc with the symbol on it could’ve been a key to advancement more effective than any test scores or payments.
A surge of anger and resentment hit Rion deep in the chest. If his father wanted him to be another Alliance stooge, he was going to be sorely disappointed. Just like Rion was when he was left alone to beg and steal in the dirty Mars spaceport.
The Alliance as he knew it would cease to exist, and Rion had an idea about how to make that possible.
Heath continued working through the ship with Rion in tow. It seemed like everything was pretty much fine until Heath revealed his sense of disappointment when they got to the munitions containers. It was uncomfortable working so closely to explosives, especially ones like this that had collected grit and had old-looking input panels.
“No, this won’t do at all,” Heath said.
Rion blinked, immediately trying to calculate what they’d need to do and how much time it would take to move on with his burgeoning plan.
“We need new missiles?”
“That’s the tip of the iceberg. The truth is almost nothing here is passable,” Heath said, beginning to shimmy back the way they had come. Rion watched him go, his mouth agape.
“What do you mean nothing?”
“By nothing I mean nothing. Some parts need rewiring, some need replacements, some need wholesale redesign and reinstallation. And that doesn’t even get to wha
t isn’t here that should be,” Heath said, clearly getting worked up.
Rion felt aghast. How could everything be unsatisfactory?
“But we were just in the ship and it flew fine.”
Heath stopped and looked up at Rion. The grim expression on his face was chilling.
“When I built this ship, I had something more impressive in mind than simply the ability to fly. This is supposed to be the most daunting killing machine in the galaxy, and not only that but one with enough deception and sleight of hand to get out of any mess. After all this time it’s gotten old and obsolete.
“The transparency effect isn’t going to fool anyone anymore. The engines are sluggish compared to modern models. The missiles won’t do much unless you’re going against a set of rusty tin cans. The long and the short of it is that once you get up there and into a real fight you’re going to be outgunned, and the final note of Reznik and the Assailing Face is that they were jokes that didn’t deserve their ignominy. I can’t have that.”
Heath wouldn’t say another word until he hopped out of the ship. Rion chased after him, getting the attention of Lena and Bailor, who ran over. Together they went after the man stalking heedless of them toward the barn.
“What’s going on?” Bailor asked.
“He’s not happy with the ship. Says it’s gotten old and wouldn’t hold up in a fight,” Rion said.
Heath turned on them in response to Rion’s comments.
“I feel bad enough as it is that my machine didn’t perform well enough to save Rez’s life. I’m not going to send you or anyone else up there when it could happen again. Now, come on.”
“Come on where?” Lena asked.
It was a good question, since all they could see in the barn were some standard farm tools and lots of produce sorted into big crates. But Heath ducked behind the door where there was another control panel. When he hit a few buttons, a patch in the center of the floor began to descend. Heath hustled onto it and motioned for the others to join him.
Together, they sunk deeper into the rock mass until they came to an underground room, a bunker filled with enough weapons to blow up a space station. A nearly imperceptible high-pitched buzz gave them a sense that everything was active and ready for action. After stepping off the platform, they saw more than just missiles and plasma cells. Chip boards, wires, and other parts occupied the far section of the room. Nothing anywhere had even a speck of dust on it.
Rion couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
“Where did you get all of this?”
Heath snorted.
“You think you’re the only ones to ever stop by for a visit? I’ve got plenty of friends who know I’ll do a little work in exchange for parts or shells. Heck, more than once I’ve thought about building a new ship and just sending it off somewhere to blow something up. But I’ve added a special touch to almost all of it. Look here. These missiles aren’t just the latest Alliance seekers. They also have special sensors that can detect obstacles other than the target and dodge them.
“These bombs are no bigger than baseballs, but they can blow a crater the size of a baseball field. I’ve added some magnetization that’ll make them stick to anything passing by. Don’t be stupid and fly through the same space twice.”
Bailor gravitated toward some of the chip boards and pulled out something with a thumb size antenna attached.
“What’s this?” he asked, getting a broad smile from Heath.
“You’ve got a good eye. That piece was ripped right out of the communications array of an Alliance carrier. The access codes to their databases are hardwired into it. Once we get that installed you won’t just have the muscle to beat your enemies. You’ll have the brains too.”
Rion found himself brimming over with excitement. They were going to have machinery that exceeded the latest cutting-edge technology out there. All they needed to do was haul it back to the surface.
“The Assailing Face is going to strike fear in the hearts of its enemies once again,” Rion said, ready to jump for joy.
“That crippling fear was always one of its strongest weapons. I can’t tell you how many times Reznik would fly up to ships with that face on and they wouldn’t even try to defend themselves, but that’s something you have to earn. Speaking of the face though, that reminds me.”
“What?” Lena asked. She was already playing with a lift to move the ammunition crates.
“It may never be the perfect death ray I imagined it would be, but we can tie it into a communications dampener. That way when you’re focused on a ship they’ll be completely cut off from contact with anyone else,” Heath said.
“Sounds good to me. How long is it going to take you to do all this?” Rion asked.
Heath stopped and dropped a wrench he was holding.
“I think you mean how long is it going to take you to do all this? I’m old and could use a break. So the answer is however much time it takes you to do everything I tell you to do,” Heath said.
He wasn’t quite as harsh as his word, but by the end of the next day all three of them were still plenty exhausted pulling the guts out of the ship and spreading them over the area. The farmhouse had bunks that were more comfortable than both the Mars spaceport and the Gravilinx factory station, making the painfully sweet lemonade the only real drawback.
Rion loved wading knee deep in ship parts and didn’t want to stop when Heath called it quits at the end of the day. Lena was a workhorse who seemed indefatigable, even if she couldn’t tell a power coupling from a socket wrench. Bailor was plenty helpful too, but his real passion remained with the Alliance network and a bookshelf of esoteric volumes that Heath referred to as his library.
It quickly became apparent that outfitting the Assailing Face would take a month, and that was a conservative estimate.
Every day that passed felt like a burning loss to Rion, who was hungry to get out there and start taking on the Alliance, but he immediately appreciated the kind of lifestyle he’d fallen into. Getting up early, working himself to the bone, and passing out at the end of the day suited him fine when the work came with a sense of reward. When Heath needed them to spend part of their mornings tending the farm to keep everyone’s stomachs full, they didn’t mind that either.
“Have you figured out a plan yet?” Bailor asked Rion as they were sifting through a pile of spare parts in search of an elbow modulator.
Rion had thought a lot about what he wanted to do, but the details weren’t easy to come by.
“It seems to me that the Alliance isn’t going to lighten up or change direction until they face some legitimate pressure. You heard Heath talk about the fighting going on outside of Uranus. They treat is as a joke and are sleepwalking through it. But if the Marshall Force started to gain ground, to win battles, that could be the incentive they needed. And besides, if the Marshall Force won, maybe that would be better. We might even be in a position to have some influence if we were a factor,” he said.
Bailor nodded thoughtfully.
“So what do you want to do to help them?”
Rion sunk his hands into the pile and happened to grab hold of the modulator.
“I bet the tenor of the fight would change pretty quickly if we appeared out of nowhere and put holes in a few ships. Coming in unannounced would be enough to shock both sides, giving us maximum leverage.”
Heath stuck his head out of the ship. They’d been doing this long enough that Rion expected him to be listening in at any time.
“Just flying in and expecting to shake things up is never a good plan and won’t allow you to maximize the advantages this ship will afford you. The satellites, the mines, planted pulse grenades, listening devices, there’s no end to what you can do to tilt the board in your favor. That’s what’s going to keep you alive, having the upper hand when the other guy doesn’t even know it,” Heath said.
“Is that Rion Istlegaard suggesting we jump straight into the fire with guns blazing?” Lena asked, giving hi
m a sly look. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
They succeeded in making him feel a little embarrassed. After all, he was the one who always insisted on methodical planning. He sort of figured that’s what they were doing now.
“OK then, what would you suggest?” he asked. Lena put a finger to her lips as she thought.
“Heath also said that the Marshall Force was fighting with hand-me-down weapons and second-rate equipment. What if they weren’t?”
Rion smiled, seeing immediately what she was getting at.
“Maybe they’re due for some upgrades. We could help them out,” Rion said, seeing another opportunity for leverage.
“Heath, what do you know about the weapons supply chain?” Bailor asked. Rion could see his legs already twitching to go in and research the topic from top to bottom.
“I know that most of the good stuff is made around Venus. They’ve got an ammunition facility that stays in a fixed location slightly in the shade of the planet to keep the temperature constant. Of course, the weaponry and the raw materials come from all over.”
“There’s a lot of empty space between Venus and Uranus. Unless anyone else has been bold enough to take on an Alliance carrier escorting weapons cargo, there may be plenty of opportunity for shock value and little help anywhere around. I’ll look into the supply routes,” Bailor said.
It was hard for Rion not to appreciate having smart team members to work with. He thought he should’ve shared his ideas earlier, even half-baked, to see how they could fill in the gaps. As it was, it took mere minutes for them to seize on a better plan of attack than what he’d originally had in mind.
Now all they had to do was keep looking into it, besides reconstructing the incredibly complicated vessel that would support them through it.
A week and a half passed, and that time allowed more realizations to creep into Rion’s mind. Heath grew more comfortable giving orders and attending to other things around the rock, and they let Bailor leave off early to conduct his research, leaving Rion and Lena time alone. He’d always been impressed by her, and she was entrancingly attractive beyond even her eyes or hair, but before now he’d never allowed himself to feel attached to her.
