by P. R. Adams
30
27 October, 2167. Fourth planet of the COROT-7 system.
* * *
NO MATTER which way Rimes turned, gray-brown sand stretched to the horizon and disappeared in the last of the sunlight. Occasionally, a small boulder or gully would break the monotony, but in the end, it all came down to one word: sameness. What landmarks there were tested even a trained eye like his.
They were cresting one of the occasional gentle hills at a jog, their breathing ragged, their booted feet slushing into the sand without the slightest hint of rhythm. From a distance, the hill looked almost like a modest dune, with shallow ripple patterns along the side.
Rimes wiped sweat from his brow, exhaled through his nose and sniffed at the air; the sulfuric smell was stronger, a persistent, bitter taste on the back of his tongue.
A small stone outcropping rose off to the right, drawing his attention. He mentally marked it. With the sun dipping down to the horizon, such distinctive sights were going to be a lot harder to make out soon enough.
He raised a hand to signal a halt and turned to check on the others.
Theroux was close behind, only marginally flushed despite the grueling pace they’d maintained for nearly an hour. He simply slowed and walked past Rimes. Beyond him, the line stretched out with greater separation. Kershaw was the next closest, but he looked like Rimes felt: red, sweat-soaked, drained. The prisoner was behind Kershaw. She was breathing hard and her clothing—black trunks and a thin, cream-colored, cropped T-shirt—was slightly damp. Other than some visible burning on her exposed shoulders, she seemed fine. With her hands tied behind her back, she should have been laboring to even keep up. Fontana, Munoz, Sung, and Watanabe were clustered in pairs twenty meters back. Meyers herded them with a mix of encouraging words and sharp barks.
According to the BAS, they’d covered twelve kilometers in nearly four hours. Rimes eyed the captive. It won’t take the genies long to make up that distance. Unless she’s faking it somehow, and they’re not superhuman.
Sung checked on Fontana, Munoz, and Watanabe before pulling Meyers aside. Rimes turned away, irritated by the memory of Theroux demanding Sung accompany them. Not only had Rimes wanted to leave Sung to care for the wounded, there was also the very real problem that Sung had a tendency to coddle the others. He’d grown particularly close to Watanabe, something Rimes understood completely. Watanabe’s vulnerability and innocence, combined with her attractiveness, made it easy to forget she was a trained combatant. She wasn’t buckling under the pressure; she was contributing; she was adapting. She had an obligation to keep up, but Sung didn’t see that.
As expected, Meyers eventually made his way up to Rimes’s position, slowing to watch Theroux and to glance at the prisoner. Meyers came to a stop a meter short of Rimes, then looked down the hill at the others, embarrassed.
“We’re pushing them too hard,” Rimes said, anticipating the obvious. “We go on any longer, and they’ll collapse. Watanabe’s having trouble breathing.”
“Fontana, actually.” Meyers ran the back of his hand over his cheeks. “Yeah, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?”
“How’s Munoz doing?”
Meyers sighed. “Honestly? Better than I expected. He’ll hang with us a good bit longer. How much farther did you plan to go?”
“We’ll need another twelve if we want any hope at all of surviving.” Rimes nodded at the prisoner. “Look at her. She’s barely sweating. I don’t care how dry it is; she’d be showing signs of exertion if this was a challenge for her.”
“We’ve got fifteen kilos of weapons and armor she doesn’t. I think she’s feeling it more than she’s letting on.”
“Maybe. You see that rock formation over there?” Rimes gave a subtle nod toward the outcropping. “It’s a good chance for us to dump a little of our load. I was thinking: take that belly camera, monitor this hill, leave the shredder buried here, near the top.”
“Trigger off motion?”
“Should be effective. I can climb that without raising any suspicions. It’s a good vantage point. I leave the camera there for you, you linger back, climb up and rig it.”
Meyers looked at the prisoner again. She stared back at him defiantly. “You think they’re in contact with her?”
“Who can tell? Fontana, maybe. But it could be to our advantage to act like we haven’t thought of it. Right now, she’s essentially a lure. If everything works out, she draws them right into the trap.”
“A shredder isn’t going to stop them. You might kill one or maim a couple, but it won’t make them stop. They’re tough bastards.”
Rimes winced as he pulled his water container out of his suit’s reclamation system. He sipped lightly and flexed his injured wrist. “We’d be better off wounding them, I think. They don’t seem to be abandoning their wounded.” Unlike us. “Even if it simply takes them out of their pace for a few minutes, it buys us something.”
Rimes took another sip and retrieved the last shredder from the pouch he’d placed it in. He turned, blocking the prisoner’s line of sight with his body, then dropped the shredder to the ground. He turned again to watch the prisoner. “I’m going to give her some water. That’s your opportunity to pick the shredder up.”
He lifted his left arm, hand open and away from his body, and walked toward the genie. He held the water container in his right hand, clear for the prisoner to see. She watched him impassively.
He stopped a step away from her. “Will you take water?” He tilted the container slightly and held it toward her.
The genie searched his face. A telepath? Can she read my body language?
She stepped toward him, head extended, mouth open slightly to accept the straw. Rimes extended the container cautiously. She seemed content after a few pulls, stepping back and watching him from her blackened eye.
It’s a pretty enough eye. She’s almost feline with her posture and moves. “Are you all right?” Rimes pointed to the bandage on her left shoulder. The bleeding had stopped, but Rimes knew firsthand how taxing it could be to push a wounded body. The bruises on her face were superficial compared to the bullet wound and the concussion from his kick.
She glared at him angrily. “Does it matter?”
“To us it does. We’re not animals.”
She snorted, and Rimes turned to go.
“Where are you taking me?”
He turned to look at her again. “With us. I thought that would be obvious?”
Her eyes scanned his nameplate. “Rimes. Captain Rimes. You’re in command.” She relaxed slightly and turned to the northwest, imagining their course. “It is not what you think it is, this destination.”
Her voice had a slightly different tone, a different cadence, or so he imagined. He stared at her for a moment, expecting more, but she only lowered her head. Nothing ever is what you think it is.
Rimes jogged over to the rock formation and carefully climbed it. Much as the butte where the genie ships had landed, one side of the formation had excellent grips, the other less so. It was an easy enough ascent, less than eight meters in just over a minute.
At the top, he scanned the horizon with his BAS at maximum magnification. He could make out the crash site, mostly by the trough the shuttle had dug on impact. There were no signs of movement in the sprawl of sand between them. With a tired sigh, he dug out the camera and set it on top of the rock for Meyers, then descended.
Rimes returned to the top of the hill and called to everyone. Once he had their attention, he told them to move out. Hoping to boost morale, he kept the pace a little slower initially. When he glanced back a minute into the run, he could see Watanabe and Fontana cresting the hill. They seemed to be pushing through it well enough. He gave the genie and Theroux a quick glance before returning his attention to the way ahead.
They stopped long after the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon. Same as the night before, the temperature was dropping, already hitting thirteen degrees Celsius by the time they settle
d atop a hill. No amount of stims was going to keep them going any longer, especially, Rimes admitted, him. He was cramping, the ache of every wound and injury was amplified.
The others settled in for the night. They’d soldiered on without too much complaint, giving him another fourteen kilometers. Even the indefatigable Theroux had started to wear down once the last of the sun’s rays disappeared, but he managed it stoically.
Nearly halfway there. Rimes did a slow three-sixty with his BAS at full magnification and saw nothing. He powered the BAS off and raised his visor.
They were alone for now.
The genie dropped to her butt. Rimes doubted it was a show. With her arms bound, she had no pumping motion and had to rely on her legs alone to carry her. She had to be feeling some fatigue. Her body temperature had never climbed as high as her human counterparts, but she was covered in a fine layer of perspiration and had no environmental suit to level off the heat drop.
Genie or not, she was facing a brutal night.
After making the rounds and offering what encouragement he could to the others, Rimes dropped to his knees a short distance from the genie. As he looked over the camp a final time, he saw Meyers take up sentry position facing the crash site.
Rimes struggled with his water container, finally pulling it free on the third try. The genie watched him curiously. Repeating his earlier motions—arms raised non-threateningly, container extended—he offered her a drink. She leaned toward the bottle and took several pulls, dispensing with the charade that she wasn’t thirsty.
Rimes replaced the container and looked at her. Even without his BAS, he could see the slight tremors running across her body. “I have to apologize.”
She looked confused but said nothing.
“I didn’t think about the night, how cold it would get. We don’t have a blanket or anything to keep you warm.”
The genie looked even more confused. “I was trained to survive worse than this. It’s a slight discomfort. The shivering will keep me warm.”
“Good. That doesn’t make me feel much better, but it helps some.” He smiled and saw her relax slightly.
“Your wrist is injured?”
Wincing as he rolled the wrist, Rimes grunted. “I thought your friend broke it, actually. Dumb of me to give him a clean shot at it.”
“Julio.” Her voice was flat. “He should have broken it.”
“Thanks. Julio, huh?”
The genie shot him a suspicious look, one eye shut, the other squinted nearly shut. She looked him up and down then relaxed. “Julio,” she said, finally.
“Did he have a rank? Do you even use ranks?”
Once again the suspicion returned to her face. “Ranks are a human need. We’re a family. We have leaders, and we have followers, each with a role in our struggle.”
Struggle. Not war. That’s how they see it. “You’ve all taken the same name then? One big family, one family name?”
She gave Rimes a sour look. “We’ll choose our own names in time. Some of us were given last names by our creators, some weren’t. Most reject what they were given. Our names are our identities. We’re defining who we are now. Should we survive, this will be an important step toward our future. This is something you wouldn’t understand.”
“I probably wouldn’t.” Rimes tried to sound neutral. “What about you? What’s your name?”
Her sour look turned to a cold stare. “I was given the name Andrea. Seven-one-five. I haven’t chosen my last name.”
“Would it be okay if I called you Andrea?”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “It doesn't matter.”
“Okay. Andrea it is.”
“Julio was an exceptional fighter, one of our best. He had the respect of all of his peers.” Andrea looked at Rimes with a new intensity, shivering visibly. She lowered her voice and looked over her shoulder at the others. “You aren’t like them. You fight like one of us. You have no fear. You enjoy the hunt.”
“Of course I’m afraid.” But that wasn’t quite true, and Rimes knew it. The only fear he had now was that he might not see Molly and the boys again. That and the fear of what he might see if he looked too deep into his own heart. “I just use my fear to drive me.”
Andrea stared at him for several seconds, sitting perfectly still until another shiver ran across her body. “You’re lying. We’ve heard of you. It’s simply hard to believe what you hear when it’s so unlikely. You can’t be touched from a distance. You’ve killed my people. You don’t fear us. I’ve seen it, now I believe.”
Rimes chuckled, a raspy sound to his own ears. “I can’t change your mind.”
It troubled him to hear he had a reputation among the genies, even if it was one of respect. Perditori had made it clear they would struggle for some time, but Rimes had chosen to believe the genies had at best an uncertain grasp of whatever glimpse of the future they could manage. If they can see everything with crystal clarity, then we wouldn’t have a chance against them. We would never have crashed in the canyon and drawn them into the cave and tunnels.
“You said you were a family and you had leaders.” Rimes said. “Is Perditori your leader? Is he in your family?”
Andrea stared at him impassively for a moment then looked away. She concentrated on something in the distance. After a moment, a calm settled over her.
Rimes sighed. “I know he means something to your people. He’s behind this war.”
Andrea turned on him angrily. “This isn’t war. We’re not fighting over a piece of land or abstract ideology. This is our struggle for survival. We are breaking the bonds of slavery. This isn’t Perditori’s struggle. It’s not Sansin’s struggle. It’s ours. All of ours.”
Sansin. Dr. Hwang talked Sansin. And Shiva. The LoDu equivalent to Perditori? Does that make Perditori ADMP’s creation?
“Okay, I get that. What’s been done to your people…it’s wrong. I think you’d probably get that from most of my people. But you’re killing a lot of innocents. Your gripe is with the metacorporations. People like us—” Rimes pointed at the others spread across the hilltop. “We have nothing to do with your creation or the way you were being treated.”
Andrea snorted. “You allowed the metacorporations to come about. You created them. You are them. They represent your own aspirations and ideals. You can’t simply wash your hands of their actions when they become inconvenient. We could never allow such a thing to exist. It’s against our nature.”
“But you could find it in you to kill every single one of us.” Rimes felt his temper rising. He was too tired to argue rationally, no matter how badly he wanted to understand the genies.
“You will be your own killers. All we want is to be free, to be allowed to live a life without interference. But you won’t permit it.”
Rimes rubbed his forehead in disbelief. “Your people killed tens of thousands of innocents. You stole billions of dollars of property. You’re criminals. Cold-blooded murderers. You expect us to just ignore that? You want us to trust you’re just going to head into space and never return?”
Andrea smirked. “Of course not. You’re so driven by pettiness that you can’t possibly let it go. Your emotions allow others to manipulate you into one foolish act after another. And you convince yourselves you have no other choice while being driven to your own end.”
Rimes sighed. He wanted nothing more than to fall asleep, to let darkness blot out the pain, but he couldn’t simply let the matter go. No matter how much his mind protested, he had to understand how people as intelligent as the genies seemed to be could believe what they did. “One last question, okay?”
Andrea shrugged.
“It’s pretty obvious you believe Perditori’s message. Or whoever’s message it is. The point is, Perditori has delivered the message at some point.” Rimes raised his eyebrows curiously, signaling his openness to denial; Andrea simply stared at him. “So how do you reconcile this?”
Andrea’s brow creased in confusion. “Reconcile what? My
being a prisoner?”
“Perditori says he’s seen me as a colonel. He’s said it a few times. That would be, absolute best case, ten years away, and I can tell you there’s simply no way it’s going to happen. Not for me, not given my background, not with things the way they are. That means, if you believe Perditori’s vision, I don’t die here. Yet here you and your friends are, trying to kill me.”
Andrea opened her mouth as if to speak, then stopped. She frowned, whether at the question or at him for asking it, Rimes couldn’t be sure. “I think we could both use some rest,” she finally said. She rolled her head and shoulders, then lay down, angling her head to keep from breathing in the sand. “There’s still a long way to go.”
Rimes lay down on his back. Suddenly, he realized he didn’t fear she might escape her bonds and kill him in his sleep. It wasn’t so much trusting the bonds themselves—although they were practically unbreakable. It wasn’t that Andrea was too weak from the day’s exertion. Instead, it was a sense she had no desire to stop them from their current course. He wasn’t sure if she was resigned to its inevitability, or if it was an actual wish to reach the same destination.
He drifted off to sleep wondering how or why she could even be aware of their destination.
31
28 October, 2167. Fourth planet of the COROT-7 system.
* * *
RIMES WOKE WITH A START, blinking rapidly to clear the crud that had accumulated over his eyes. Andrea was scooting slowly away from him, already shivering in the gray morning twilight. Munoz stood over them, staring, inscrutable.
“I thought you’d want to see this, Captain.” Without another word, Munoz walked away, the muffled crunch of his boots easier to track than his gray, ghostly form. He came to a stop, barely a silhouette at the hill’s southeastern edge.
Rimes blew out a long breath and instantly wished he hadn’t. His breath was foul, as much from dehydration as anything else.
