A Private Little War

by Jason Sheehan

  “Bolts,” Ted corrected.

  “Bolts,” said Eddie, tapping his notes with the tip of his pointer. “Right. Says that right here. Aluminum shaft, steel tip.”

  There was sniggering in the ranks—first sign of life in some time. Fenn, suddenly awake, leaned over to Carter and whispered, “Geez, Kev. Why didn’t you tell me? Being shot at by crossbows? Sounds so dangerous. Why, all you had to defend yourself with was an airplane, a couple of machine guns, and a whole wing of bombers overhead. You’re so brave.”

  “Must’ve slipped my mind,” Carter grunted. He crossed his arms over his chest.

  Eddie plowed on. “Right. So anyway, this is serious. Corporate has been suspicious for some time that someone had finally gotten through to the Lassateirra with off-world supplies, but until this morning we didn’t know who or what or how much.”

  “Gotten through to the who?” asked Jack.

  “The Lassateirra faction,” Eddie repeated.

  “That the bad guys?”

  The pilots laughed. Carter laughed. Porter didn’t laugh. Eddie’s mouth turned into a hard straight line, and he tried to stare down Jack Hawker but failed.

  At the front of the room, Ted was balling his hands into fists, then releasing them, balling them up again. “Get to the point, Eddie,” he said.

  “In good time, Commander,” Eddie replied. “There are important details here. Recently, the company has been in communication with sources on the ground here on Iaxo—”

  “I thought we were under blackout,” Billy said.

  “We are,” said Ted. “Eddie?”

  “We are,” said Eddie. “Corporate is not. These were back-channel conversations, mostly, so don’t go getting any ideas.”

  “Well, what sources then?”

  “Other mercenary organizations,” Eddie continued. “Some well-placed friends of ours in various foreign aid groups and noncolonial charities. That’s in addition to their contacts in several of the large shipping conglomerates and guild spacers. And for some time, the company has been very concerned about other groups moving supplies through the blockades. With this recent turn of events—”

  “Eddie…,” said Ted, warningly.

  “Not to mention their substantial investment in material resources here and the usual risk of legal sanction involved in such an operation, there has been some discussion—”

  “Eddie!” snapped Ted.

  Behind his podium, Eddie Lucas turned on his thousand-watt smile, passed it over the assembled pilots like a searchlight. He could tell them everything. That was in his power. He could crash this entire mission with a word or two. But that wasn’t the surprise he had. He looked at Ted and saw him leaning forward, waiting, maybe, to tackle him. To hit him. Eddie loved this. He really, really did.

  “It’s bad news,” Eddie said.

  “Fucking out with it already!” someone shouted, and Carter was surprised to discover that it’d been him.

  “Stow that shit, Captain,” Ted barked.

  “I spoke with a couple friends of mine in the legal department back home just a couple of hours ago, and they informed me that…” He paused briefly and then Eddie came back, quoting from his notes. “A motion to provide humanitarian aid for Carpenter 7 Epsilon, also known as Iaxo, was presented four days ago before the Colonial Council, currently in session at Tranquility. The request was vague. No specific cause was presented before the officials, and there was no specific or implied mention of ours or anyone else’s presence here. But it’s there now. It’s in the hands of the council, which means that Iaxo is now a real place. It’s on the map, so to speak. And while the company feels it likely that the motion will be dismissed without a formal hearing, the operations department feels that it is only a matter of time now before someone comes and pokes their noses into our business here.”

  Carter was drifting. Repeated shocks, his hangover, the nausea of relived death—it was all numbing him. He’d had some very specific reasons for taking this job when he did. One of them had been that he would never again have to sit in a little room, in an uncomfortable chair, and listen to someone lie to him about how concerned his bosses were for his health and well-being. Another was that he would never have to talk (or hear, or even think) about politics, corporate or otherwise. He’d had enough of that in his other life—the one that’d come before this. Before Flyboy. So sitting there, he decided that Ted and Eddie could talk at him all they liked. It didn’t mean he had to listen. He closed his eyes and put his chin on his chest. He was going to sleep. No one could make him care against his will.

  “But after the events of the past two days,” Eddie continued, “it has become obvious that this filing was only part of a larger strategy. Off-world supply has been coming in to the Lassateirra for some time now.” He paused again to look at his notes and shuffle through the pages. “No one seems sure exactly how long. But there is equipment in theater, and potentially quite a bit of it. Most deliveries have been coming in far up-country…” He looked at his papers, running a finger down a page. “Arkhis Mountains,” he muttered. “And the coast.”

  Carter told himself to sleep. He ordered himself to sleep. He thought he knew what was coming—could imagine the worst thing, suddenly, as a real thing. And just like Ted talking Morris’s plane onward toward death and Carter’s wish that he could’ve just stopped, just changed the path of the past with a word, so, too, did he want to not be here when Eddie said what he thought he was going to say. He wanted to not hear it, to go forth in ignorance, unworried. Part of him cheered Eddie on, begging for the worst. Another part dove for the deep, dumb blackness of sleep. If he didn’t hear it, things wouldn’t have to change, get worse. To hear the words, that would make it real.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Eddie plowed on.

  At the front of the room, Ted took a step toward Eddie. Next to Carter, Fenn leaned forward in his chair, thinking that this was like the greatest show ever. And if not, then at least it was something new. Carter squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and shouted Sleep! inside his own head. Sleep, goddammit. Sleep!

  “The motion for aid was filed through the Office of Cultural Affairs by Native Rights Intersystem.”

  The room and everyone in it exploded.

  They yelled. They cursed. Ted did both at the same time because, apparently, this was the first he’d heard of it, too, and Eddie had been keeping it from him. Billy shouted pointless questions toward the front of the room, and Porter turned his face skyward and howled. Eddie stood behind the podium, looking terribly proud of himself. This was what he did. This was what he was good at. No one could take command of a meeting the way Eddie Lucas could. No one could control the environment like him.

  Fenn was smiling a lost, beatific smile. Jack was laughing so hard that tears ran down his cheeks. Charlie Voss was on his feet, stabbing a finger toward Eddie and his podium. And Carter, as though feeling some supporting structure inside himself let go the instant Eddie said the words, had sagged into his seat, thrown his head back, and now was just shouting nonsense up into the air, his mouth wide, eyes still pinched shut, just because it felt good to make noise.

  At the front of the room, Eddie turned to Ted. His smile shone like a burning strip of magnesium. “Commander? Anything to add?”

  Ted stepped forward. “Dismissed!” he shouted.

  The officers stepped out into the sunlight and cold as if walking away from a mine cave-in—blinking, gape-mouthed, unsteady on their feet. It was quiet in the camp. The air was still. A perfect day.

  Jack Hawker took Carter by the arm. “We’re all going to die here,” he said, speaking with exaggerated slowness, his eyes wide with shock.

  “No,” Carter told him. “We’re not.”

  “Can I have your bunk when you go then? It’s more comfortable than mine.” He doggedly held to Carter’s arm, his eye.

  “Sure thing, Lieutenant,” he said gently, trying to brush Jack’s hand off his arm. “Anything for a friend.�
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  Jack smiled, stuck a cigarette in his face with his free hand. Fenn appeared beside them, grinning, his cheeks ruddy with excitement. He put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Gentlemen,” he said, “are we dancing?”

  “We’re all going to die here,” Jack repeated.

  “We’re not,” Carter said. “They’ll pull us out before NRI comes. Before the marines. They have to. No one is going to die here, Jack.”

  “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  Jack looked Carter in the eyes searchingly for a few more long seconds. His hand was like a vise. Desperate strength. Fenn tried to guide Jack away, to move him, but Jack wasn’t budging. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, put it in Carter’s, pressed his face close.

  “I don’t believe you,” he whispered.

  “Ah, Jack…,” said Fenn. “No kissing among the commissioned ranks. You know the rules.” He moved to pull Jack away now, and clamped a hand over his wrist. But Jack chose that moment to release Carter, turn, and walk away—toward the mess where, no doubt, things were about to become very ugly all over again.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Fenn said.

  “He’s just scared,” Carter said, watching Jack stalk purposefully across the field, rushing to catch up with the rest of the officers. “He’ll get over it.”

  “No, I mean you.” Fenn reached up, straightened the mussed collar and pleats of Carter’s uniform, brushed at its shoulders. “We had a deal. I get your bunk when you die. It really is more comfortable, you know.” Fenn touched a hand to the side of Carter’s face and patted it gently, then turned smartly on his heel and followed along after Jack.

  Carter went in the opposite direction, toward the tents. All along the way he saw faces peeking out at him—from windows, behind tent flaps, everywhere. They were pilots’ faces, mechanics’ faces, technicians’ faces, even indigs’ faces, though those were rare. Everyone knew something bad had happened, was about to happen, was coming their way very fast. Carter had to fight to keep from laughing. He had to cover his mouth with his hand as sick giggles bubbled up from his chest.

  He went to bed. He couldn’t sleep. He felt light as a feather. Unburdened. He felt like he was flying.

  “Now,” he whispered over and over again. “Now, now, now…”

  Back in the field house, Ted waited until the last of his officers’ backs had gone out the door, then whirled, meaning to punch Eddie Lucas right in the face. Meaning to really hang one on him and beat him bloody for springing this ambush, this bushwhack on him and the men with no warning.

  But when he turned, Eddie wasn’t there. He was on the other side of the room because Eddie, though not a fighter, was not an idiot. He knew a dangerous, cornered animal when he saw one.

  “Over here, Commander,” he said.

  “You knew?”

  “Of course I knew. I told you: You’re not the only one with friends at the company.”

  “You knew about this when we walked in here.” Ted moved toward Eddie, hands hanging loose at his sides.

  Eddie started circling away, backing off at equal speed, moving around the outside edge of the tent until he came to the door. “I found out this morning.”

  “And you didn’t tell me.”

  “I told you I had a surprise.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  Eddie favored Ted with one of his blinding smiles. He said, “Ta-da,” then slipped out the door and into the sun.

  Ted stood alone in the middle of the room, surrounded by chairs, humming equipment, and Jimmy McCudden, who sat at his post with his eyes closed, his head down, and his hands folded over the back of his neck. Last man standing, but once again Ted Prinzi had a feeling that he’d lost a fight without really understanding how.

  NATIVE RIGHTS INTERSYSTEM, more commonly called just NRI or Natives R Us, was a political association, foreign aid organization, and lobbying group dedicated to the protection and preservation of indigenous cultures and native peoples the galaxy over. It said so right on the covers of all their brochures.

  NRI had a snappy logo that looked nice on posters. It translated well to television and the Net. They had a very slick and practiced public relations department that made commercials and organized rallies and crafted public service announcements full of pathos and inspiring music. Their proficiency at fund-raising was almost unparalleled, gathering their treasure ten dollars at a time from softhearted university students and grade-schoolers and a million at a go from corporations aching for a whiff of social activism on their prospectus. The group also had a certain air of fanatical missionary zeal, which was attractive to those who really felt the need to care deeply about something but had neither the motivation to actually do anything nor the desire to examine their convictions too closely. NRI was full-service. Opinions, heroes, villains, smart catchphrases, and T-shirts were provided to the faithful, all in gross amounts.

  As a political action group, NRI lobbied, lied, and campaigned for the interests of all the fine, indigenous populations who occupied all those planets that the evil human race wanted to exploit. They labored mightily to keep away the strip miners, the real estate speculators, carpetbaggers, and squatters, the adventure capitalists and the developers, the smugglers, thieves, and snake-oil salesmen. With the outward appearance of unimpeachable virtue, they struggled to keep both the legitimate military and not-so-legitimate mercenary companies out of all the endless squabbles going on in every miserable backwater of the galaxy. It was their deeply and passionately held belief that every culture and nascent civilization should be granted the opportunity to grow and develop freely, without meddling humans constantly trying to trade them Zippo lighters and whiskey for whole continents or getting them hooked on Coca-Cola, cheeseburgers, and color TV before they’d even discovered, say, the wheel. This, too, was in their brochures—though worded somewhat more eloquently.

  And in his bed, in his tent, on an airfield very far from home, Carter knew that, under other circumstances, NRI would’ve been heroes. Champions for the downtrodden, voices for the voiceless—this would have all been a good and decent thing for them to do had the local galactic neighborhood been densely packed with planets and short on life. But the fact of the matter was, the opposite was true. Because while yes, the galaxy was fairly fucking teeming with planets, nearly every goddamn one of them capable of supporting life, did.

  A century ago, when mankind first began exploring the stupid galaxy in earnest, this was taken to be a good thing. Such bounty! Such wild diversity and wondrous multiplicity of nature in all her guises! Life, it seemed, was tenacious and far more varied than anyone had ever guessed—capable of flourishing in the strangest places and under the most extreme conditions. For a while, everyone thought it cute how critters of all description thrived in lava chutes, beneath nitrogen permafrost, under waxy oceans made of liquid hydrocarbons, and in atmospheres made up entirely of sulfur and noble gasses. Cities were found beneath roofed seas where giant walrus monsters cavorted in blood-warm seas with salinity so high the things could almost walk on the water. Humanoid paleolinds on the icy second planet of 18 Scorpii got their own dedicated broadcast channel with high-def cameras recording every step, grunt, and shit they took. The planets surrounding Alpha Lyrae were the focus of much scientific inquiry because they contained no life at all, only its ruins.

  Still, after the hundredth or so populated planet was found, it just became annoying. Wonder quickly transmuted to irritation. Discovery fatigue set in. In rather short order, mankind gave up all pretense of being careful curators of life in all its wondrous diversity and just started whacking the little alien fuckers with bats whenever they got in the way. And five minutes after that, Native Rights Intersystem was founded and immediately called for a galaxy-wide ban on the production of Louisville Sluggers.

  Put simply, the local cosmic neighborhood was just flat-out packed with leaping, bouncing, slithering, gibbering monsters. And if it wasn’t a peaceful, advanc
ed society of intelligent and socially progressive giant walruses on one planet, it was a bunch of slack-jawed, nose-picking bipeds on another who’d yet even to come down out of the trees. Nearly everywhere man went, it seemed there was already something there waiting, watching, standing on some distant, foreign shore waving arms, tentacles, proboscis, or genitalia at them and saying, “Sorry. All full up here. Maybe try the next planet over, thanks.”

  And NRI was committed to defending the rights of every one of them to grub around in the dirt, live in miserable poverty, die of curable diseases, bash one another with rocks, and generally just lie around flinging their own crap at each other until such a day came that they got around to evolving, undisturbed by man, invented lawyers, and sued the shit out of humanity for willful neglect. Carter knew that tomorrow, a survey ship could discover a planet pimpled with solid gold mountains and inhabited entirely by semi-intelligent gophers. When it did, NRI would be right there, saying that everyone should keep their grubby hands off until such a time (undoubtedly a few billion years down the road) that the alien space gophers developed a sociocultural gestalt advanced enough to deal with mankind on an equal footing.

  Human instinct, of course, said poison the stupid gophers and take their solid gold mountains back home to Earth where their value could be properly appreciated. NRI said no. The gophers had an inalienable right to life and the fulfillment of their unique cultural destiny so, therefore, deserved protection from all such bastards who felt otherwise.

  If this protection could be provided by the courts, then good. NRI had a lot of powerful friends in the Colonial Council. And while a good portion of their membership was made up of young and impressionable kids with too much disposable income, they kept on retainer even more high-powered attorneys.

  When politics and the law failed them, NRI would use the media. In terms of public opinion, they swung a big weight because the defense of native species—like the defense of rain forests, the defense of displaced tribal peoples, or the defense of puppies, babies, and pie—gave them a moral high ground that was difficult to assail. It was hard to argue manifest destiny or resource scarcity in the face of sensitive, heartfelt documentaries about the tragic plight of the noble space gophers or pictures of them being starved out of their gopher-homes and clubbed to death by a bunch of swaggering, grimy deep-rock miners. Many tried. Few succeeded. In most cases, careers were ruined the minute they ran up against the NRI media machine.