by Kelly Jensen
Todd gestured at the galley. “Sure you don’t want some coffee? This might take a while.”
Did they have a while? The Guardians were agitated. Zed hadn’t shared a lot of detail regarding his brief communication with them, but having the peacekeepers of the galaxy upset meant something was going to happen. Had to happen. What was the question.
Andy shifted uncomfortably, then got up to help himself to more coffee. Felix tracked his movement but didn’t pay him much mind. Todd had started talking.
“When you both first showed up, I figured you were something like me. Men who’d served, or done their time as I like to say, and were worn out. I figured maybe you’d heard of Paradise. There’s word out, if you know where to listen.”
Served? Todd was AEF?
As if he’d heard the question, Todd answered, “Sergeant Hendrick Todd, not reporting for duty.”
Felix felt his mouth drop open. “You’re a deserter.”
“In simplest terms, yeah.”
“How would you describe yourself in more complex terms?” Zed’s voice had an edge to it and his posture had changed.
“Tired, defeated, too old for this body but too young to die, suffering from an unknown number of undiagnosed psychoses, and sick to fucking death of looking at the world through a weapon sight. Sick of seeing people die, my friends, my family, the men and women I served with. Sick of feeling like a piece of trash, or worse—flotsam. A byproduct of my environment that’s destined to be tossed against the shore over and over again. Never properly recycled.”
Felix glanced over at Andy, who stood by the open kitchen cubby, hip braced against the counter, fresh cup of coffee in hand. “What about you?”
“Lost my home to the Human-Stin War.” Hence his attachment to Paradise. “I suppose I coulda tried another station, another colony, but the stin were tearing shit down as fast as we could build it. When the AEF weren’t preemptively leveling stuff to make a new battlefield.”
“That only happened once,” Zed growled. “And we evacuated all the colonists we could before...” He shook his head. “We don’t have time to debate the ins and outs of the war, or the AEF.”
“Not enough time in the world for that,” Felix said. A small part of him wanted to spit over his shoulder toward the floor. Show his disdain for something. But the greater part was a whorl of confusion. He held little love for the AEF, but like most former soldiers, had even less empathy for deserters. It could have been his back Todd left unguarded.
Then again, he’d been happy enough to accept his medical discharge, hadn’t he? Regardless of the terms. And if he hadn’t been discharged, he’d probably have found a way to get mustered out. He’d been broken too thoroughly to get back in the fight. So...he did understand.
Todd took a sip from his cup and set it back on the table, right into the faint ring permanently staining the surface. “I came out here alone. Fully expected to die alone too. I brought enough stuff to make sure that happened later rather than sooner, though. This prefab, enough dehydrated crap and substance to last me a hundred years, water...” He waved vaguely. “Bought one of those standard colony-in-a-box kits, right?”
Felix had seen them listed. The idea of buying ten pallets of everything someone thought he might need to see out twenty years or more in a remote location appealed from time to time.
“I was here for six months before my first neighbor showed up. Not AEF, just someone else running from the war. I wasn’t too worried. This place is far enough off the map it’d take determination to get here, plus some serious capital. I figured anyone who made the journey and survived the atmospheric entry was welcome. It’s a big planet.
“Our third colonial was the one who wanted to see this place populated and chartered. She arrived with a horde of kids, all with heads stuffed with some whacked-out religion. Thankfully, the heat sent her packing before she could try to convert us. We weren’t so lucky with the next group, but they arrived with a shit ton of their own equipment. Prefabs and the like. Eventually we got to seeing eye to eye.” Todd aimed a smile at Andy. “Some good folks mixed in with them.”
Before Andy could pick up the story, Zed interrupted. “That’s what Preston has on you, isn’t it? A court martial for desertion.”
“Yup. She showed up about a year ago with a squadron of soldiers and enough heavy equipment to tunnel through the core of the planet if she wanted to. She already had surveys, though. Musta had her eye on this place for years.”
“So much for hidden corners of the galaxy,” Felix muttered.
He eyed Zed, wondering if he’d be able to discourage him from meting out his own form of justice. Zed’s posture remained rigid—no, coiled, as if he were a trap waiting to be sprung—but his expression was thoughtful. Maybe even sympathetic.
“She left shortly after that,” Todd continued. “Was gone for a couple of months, came back, left again. Always brought more of her recruits.”
“Did you know what she was up to?” Felix asked.
Andy opened his mouth and Todd shook his head. “We figured it out soon enough when she invited us to join in.”
Zed looked up at Andy. “You weren’t tempted?”
Andy’s back straightened. “Soldiering ain’t for everyone.”
“Plus she’s mad as a loper after it’s chewed through a battery pack.” Todd put both hands on the table, palms down, one to either side of his coffee cup. “So, you know Preston pretty well, huh? I’m hoping that conversation you all had in the mess the other night means you don’t like what she’s doing any more than I do.”
“You didn’t once think of packing up and leaving?” Felix asked.
“Packing up what? Craft that brought me out here is next to yours at the bottom of that sea.”
“You crashed?”
“Nearly everyone crashes on Paradise, son.”
“But surely some of the ships are salvageable.”
Todd smiled and it wasn’t a happy expression. “There were a couple you could call salvageable. Preston collected those and processed them for scrap. The one working ship we had? It’s in the crater. Preston requisitioned it soon after she arrived.”
“And no comms equipment?” Zed asked.
Todd shrugged. “Wasn’t never a concern. We came out here not to be found.”
“And got trapped by the same thing,” Felix said.
“Pretty much.” Todd leaned back in his chair. “So, the question is, what do you all plan to do about this setup?”
“Before we answer that, I’ve got one more question for you,” Felix said. “Why were you out there to intercept Preston’s soldiers?” Their rescue had been nothing short of miraculous and Felix didn’t believe in the divine.
“Once we heard you’d escaped, we figured the signal towers would be your first stop. What with you being a mechanic and all. We’ve been up there regular-like, keeping an eye out for you.” Todd glanced at Andy.
“So you knew the towers were up there.”
“Sure. But you caught the part about us not wanting to be found, right?”
“We have to shut it all down,” Zed said.
“If Felix can disable the field again—”
“No, the whole program. Preston’s facilities, her soldiers, everything.”
Felix looked up from his half-empty cup of coffee. All of it? “How the fuck are we going to do that? We’ve got one stunner, two rifles—” he nodded toward Todd and Andy’s weapons stacked against the door “—and...that’s it. You’re good, Zed, but you’re not that good. Preston has a small army. A company of you. And she controls the two biggest assets on this rock—the comm towers and the only craft capable of leaving orbit.”
Even as he spoke, Felix started evaluating the problem, though. Rearranging the odds, stacking up the pros and cons, figuring t
heir assets and counting them. Jiggering shit in his mind as any engineer might. If he could get his hands on enough power cells, ordnance wouldn’t necessarily be a problem. But the scope of the operation was beyond him—them—even if they could recruit from Todd’s colonists.
“I’m all for kicking her ass off my planet,” Todd said, “but your friend here is right. We got next to nothing against a super-powered mercenary outfit.”
Zed glanced over at Felix. “We’re going to have to think quick and smart then, because if we don’t take care of this situation, the Guardians will.”
Chapter Seventeen
Elias chewed on his thumbnail. “Any change?”
Nessa reached up and pulled his hand away from his mouth—an action she’d taken at least a half-dozen times over the past four hours—as Qek clicked. “No. We remain dead in the water.” The happy wrinkles that had appeared at her usage of a human idiom smoothed out. “Should I have said ‘dead in space,’ since clearly there is no water around us?”
“No, you had it right,” Nessa assured her with a small smile.
Elias couldn’t help but catalog the worry etched into the tight lines of Nessa’s expression. Her eyes did not sparkle. Her riotous red hair even seemed uncharacteristically tamed. They’d been helpless before but this was a new level of helplessness.
They had no idea what Fixer and Zed were up against, and the aliens Elias had thought were on their side...might not be.
“I never thought we’d get a warning from the Guardians,” he admitted softly.
Qek clicked, the soft tones indicating agreement. “Perhaps it was a good reminder for us.”
“That they could squish us like a bug?”
“Precisely.”
“So you’re saying we shouldn’t try to surreptitiously get power back and drop those satellites.”
“That would be a regrettable choice, I believe.”
“Do you think Zed’s been in contact with them?” Nessa asked.
“If anyone can get through that interference, it would be the Guardians, so maybe?” Elias ran a hand over his short-cropped hair. “God, I just hope they’re okay.”
“We could ask the Guardians if they know.” Nessa’s suggestion was soft, her voice uncertain.
Before he could talk himself out of it, Elias reached over to Qek’s console and triggered the comms. “Guardians, this is human vessel Chaos.”
“Oh shit, Eli,” Nessa whispered, sinking into her chair.
Elias kept breathing steadily through sheer force of will as he waited for the Guardians’ response. Please let it be verbal and not—
“Yes, Chaos?” The Guardians’ computerized voice offered no inflection, merely a flat tone that made it impossible to interpret mood.
“Have you been in contact with Zed? Uh, Zander Anatolius?”
“We have.”
Thank God. “Is he all right? Is Fixer, uh, I mean, Felix Ingesson—is he okay too?”
“They are functional.”
Elias cast a glance at Nessa. Functional was not the same as okay, as far as he was concerned. “Guardians, we have satellites we were going to place in orbit to facilitate communication. May we proceed?”
“No. This planet is under quarantine.”
“Can I ask why the Blythe was destroyed?”
Qek clicked once, a short, sharp sound that echoed over Nessa’s appalled silence.
“You have asked.”
Elias swallowed. Did he dare point out they hadn’t answered? He opened his mouth—
“The experiment being conducted on this planet is not permitted.”
“Oh, we can agree there.”
“You wish to assist Zanderanatolius?”
Elias clenched his fist. “Of course!”
“Acknowledged.”
Acknowledged? What the hell did they mean by that? Elias turned to ask Nessa for her opinion when he felt it—the innards-displacing creep of a scan.
“Elias—” Qek’s clicks held fear, the first and only time he’d heard such uncertainty from his pilot.
And then...there was nothing.
* * *
Zed eyed the holographic representation of the colony that Todd had quickly put together on Flick’s bracelet. All the prefabs were highlighted, along with the tunnel system extending beneath the cliffs. It was...a lot. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“They must be destroyed.”
As always, layers of meaning accompanied the words. Obliterated. Wiped from the galaxy. Erased. The Guardians wanted nothing left that could resurrect this concept.
“They’re not all altered,” he told them.
“They have knowledge—”
Zed slammed his fist against the wall. “No, they don’t!”
Flick looked up from the holo. “You okay?”
“Give me a second.” Holding up a hand, Zed took a few steps back.
“What’s up with him?” Todd murmured as Zed walked away. He tuned them out, uninterested in Flick’s answer.
“Preston has shared very little with her recruits. Some are ex-soldiers, but the others are young. She took advantage of them. Manipulated them.”
“Nothing must remain of this initiative.”
“I can’t kill innocent people!”
“They are not innocent, Zanderanatolius.”
Zed pulled at his hair. “But they are. Some of them, anyway. Total destruction is not the answer!”
“It is the only way.”
“Let the unaltered recruits go. I can take the others into custody,” he pleaded, layering as much meaning into the thoughts and words as he could—they had Morrison, a safe base of operations and containment that could be a comfortable location for the altered soldiers’ last days. “We can—”
“Hold.”
Fuck. Did that mean they were thinking about what he’d said? Or were they done talking? Huffing out a breath, Zed considered the one point he did agree on—Preston had to be stopped. The best way to do that, with their limited resources, was the course of action they’d already started plotting. They had to be smart about it.
He rejoined Andy, Todd and Flick. “How many recruits are we talking about? I was training ten yesterday, but I didn’t recognize one of the guys you shot.”
“There’s...” Todd’s gaze grew unfocused as he tallied the count in his head. “Fifteen? I haven’t seen two for about a month, ever since the last shuttle run.”
Maybe that was the hacker who’d cracked the Chaos and a partner. Whichever, they weren’t Zed’s concern at the moment if they were off-world. “So, thirteen? I had five in my class yesterday who could Zone—”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, when they get a flat stare, kind of robotic, really fast,” Flick inserted.
“Right.” Todd looked a bit uncomfortable at the idea. “I’d say maybe we’ve got eight left on the planet like that. But between us, we killed three of them up at the towers.”
“That leaves five. And I think one of them was on the operating table beside me yesterday,” Flick said with a shudder. “Don’t know if she’ll be recovered enough to fight.”
Okay. So four, possibly five altered recruits to deal with. Plus Preston. Not bad odds, if he could convince the non-altered recruits to run. And the Guardians to let them.
“What have we got that could be used for makeshift ordnance?” Zed asked. “And where are the weak points?”
Flick pointed to a couple of spots on the map. “I didn’t see any data centers when we were in the tunnels, but I think Preston would keep anything sensitive close to the medical facility caves or here, behind her training center.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too,” Zed said.
“H
old on,” Todd growled. “I want Preston off Paradise, but these are damned good resources for the rest of us. Know what season it is right now? Spring. In the summer, we use those caves to get outta the heat. Preston’s excavated a lot more useful space since she got here and she’s got stores we could use in there. Blowin’ them up seems like a waste.”
“We need to consider the egress point.” Zed pointed at the tunnel exit that led to the landing pad and comm towers. “I think that needs to be our first target. Otherwise, they could just scurry out the tunnels to their craft and escape.”
Though they might not get far with the Guardians in orbit.
“Just wait.” Todd slapped his hands through the holo to bang against the table. “This is still my planet.”
Flick snorted. “Hell it is. You’ve got a Guardian ship in orbit. They own this rock now.”
Andy paled, then looked at Todd. “We can make do. We don’t really need none of the stuff Preston’s been hoardin’.”
“But—”
Andy laid a hand on Todd’s shoulder. “Hendrick. We ain’t needin’ it.”
Todd seemed to deflate. “At least let us grab what we can carry.”
“And alert Preston that something’s up?” Zed shook his head. “No. We get in, we lay the charges—or bombs or whatever we can come up with—and we get out.”
Flick was studying the map. “Getting out is going to be an issue if we close off access to the landing pad. Preston’s ships are the only way off this planet.”
“You already know the long way to the crater. Up the ravine and back past the signal towers. Takes a couple hours, dependin’ on the heat,” Andy said.
Flick nodded. “Okay, so we guard that exit, then.”
“I’ll do it,” Todd said. “Y’all don’t need my old bones slowing you down.”
Zed glanced at Flick, seeing his own concern reflected in his green eyes. How trustworthy was Todd? It was all well and good that they seemed to have the same general goal, but the earlier protests about saving the colony’s resources were making him uneasy. When push came to shove, would Todd really be on board with what they needed to do?
