by M. D. Cooper
“Not yet, Kroska. I want to hear the voices of my Andersonian sword.”
“Of course, Chancellor.”
They spent another five minutes listening to the soldiers cheering. A silent command must have gone out to the leaders, because every time the voices began to wane, a new wave of shouts and cheers went through each formation, until the chaotic cheers resolved into the Andersonian anthem, which seemed easier on their throats.
When the view finally shifted back, Cara glanced at Osla to find the chancellor crying openly, tears of joy streaming down his face. Or it might have been due to the alcohol—she wasn’t sure. The actors seemed embarrassed by his emotion, and averted their eyes.
“Places,” Kroska called again. “Give me a count. Cameras in position. Action!”
HONOR THY FATHER
STELLAR DATE: 3.22.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Tranquility Sector, Triple Q Manufacturing Campus (Abandoned)
REGION: Luna, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Throughout the episode, Cara wanted to punch the wall. She felt like every joke and smartass remark she’d borne because of this vid had been distilled into an hour of concentrated mockery of her life.
She realized ten minutes into the production, with Llana lounging across the captain’s seat, that it wasn’t the false version of her that needled. It was the rest of the crew.
Sam was one of the kindest people Cara had met, and the script played her as heartless. Dar was made out to be a dumb giant, and the running gag about Chab was that he was high on briki and could barely pilot the ship.
Nothing could be further from the truth about her friends.
Yes, they were pirates. They had robbed and destroyed and taken advantages wherever they could…but they had never been heartless about it. Force, violence, and terror were tools with their place, and the space between Neptune and Nibiru was deep and dark, where if they hadn’t demonstrated a certain level of violence, they would surely have suffered it themselves.
That was the Scattered Disk. If the Jovian Combine was humanity’s barely-settled frontier, then the Scattered Worlds were the wild reaches, where a word like ‘piracy’ had as little meaning as ‘kindness’. There was only the application of power among chaotic alliances that could fail with any shift in the balance.
Cara was alive because of the people these actors were ridiculing. It was cold comfort that the show gave some kind of hope to the oppressed Andersonians. It was a lie.
But isn’t everything a lie?
The question was how could she turn the situation to her advantage.
Cara’s thoughts came back around as her anger cooled. She even laughed a few times as she gradually separated the actors from her memories. She went over what she knew:
Everyone in the room was present because of her.
Osla had an army. He was more than just a petty dictator of a displaced people. The chancellor had built a force that could threaten the Lunar government.
Harrin wanted to start the war, Felix had said.
She needed to say something. She needed to insert herself into the show, speak to the Andersonians.
She would have to do it in a way that Osla, Harrin or Kroska wouldn’t understand.
Kroska had explained that the episodes were transmitted in near real-time, since the audience expected them quickly. As long as she made a relatively non-inflammatory statement, it would go out to all of Sol.
What to say?
Before she had a chance to decide, Llana and the rest of the crew were standing together in the middle of the command deck. Llana was expressing some moral lesson from the episode.
When the lesson was finished, Llana said, “And now we have a special moment for everyone. Joining us on the show today is our own, our special, Jee-Quera herself. Cara Sykes.”
Llana made a dramatic motion of turning her head to face Cara. The two camera drones rotated.
Involuntarily, Cara stepped away from the wall. While the room hadn’t changed, she felt the weight of the two drones staring at her with millions on the other side.
Her mind went blank for a moment, but she managed to piece together a statement.
“I would like to…recognize the people of the Anderson Collective for their resilience and strength, and for having the courage to do what’s right, to stand up for the oppressed everywhere, and to be a…symbol against oppression.”
Beside her, Osla cleared his throat.
Cara stared directly into the closest drone, confidence filling her voice as she knew what she had to say.
“When the characters on this show say ‘Captain Sykes’, I don’t think of me. I think of my father, Captain Andy Sykes, who died protecting his family, human and SAI. Many of you in the Collective don’t know the role that my sister Lyssa, the Weapon Born, played in your exodus from Insi Ring. Without her, there would have been no escape. Thank her as much as you thank me. And for stars’ sakes, thank my dad Andy Sykes. Remember his name.”
A tear hung briefly in the corner of her eye before running down the side of her face. She saw its glimmer in the drone’s round eye.
The room had gone silent.
Cara looked from the drone to Llana, whose eyes were wide with fear. The woman looked from Cara to Osla, who shifted behind her, breaking the spell.
Kroska, who had let the moment play out, quickly walked out to the actors, clapping his hands.
“What a powerful show,” he said. “What memorable performances. That may certainly be our highest rated show of the year.”
The director didn’t look at Cara as he moved quickly to notes for the actors and then pushed them out of the room.
Llana was the last to leave. The woman’s expression had shifted from terror to disgust, and she chewed her lip as she stared at Cara. Kroska didn’t give her a chance to speak.
Finally, the director got everyone out of the room.
When he moved to follow, Osla commanded, “Wait.”
Cara turned to look at the chancellor. His face was hard.
Beside him, Harrin leaned his head against the wall and issued a short laugh. “What an emotional waste,” he said.
Osla raised a hand. “She said what was in her heart. I respect that.”
The chancellor stood, straightening his clothes. He took a moment to recap the ornate bottle on the side table next to his chair. Then he picked it up, shifted it between his hands, and walked out onto the set.
“An excellent episode, Kroska,” Osla said. “All the great moments. Pathos, adventure, humor, humanity. All the tenets of an excellent story our people will certainly enjoy.”
Kroska bowed. “Thank you, Chancellor.”
Before the director could straighten, Osla flipped the bottle in his hand and swung it like a hammer on the back of Kroska’s head.
The director fell to the floor. Cara still wasn’t used to the slowed reactions in the lower gravity.
“You thought you were invincible, Kroska,” Osla said. “You thought you could use this moment, this gift I gave you, to spit on me. How do you feel now? Do you feel invincible?”
Kroska shivered with pain, got his hands under him to try and rise to his knees, and the chancellor brought the bottle down again. This time, the back of the director’s head caved in, and he slumped to the floor, ass in the air. Osla kicked him over.
Holding the bottle up, Osla inspected the remaining liquid, then calmly walked to the table to place it back where it had been.
The chancellor was within arm’s reach of Cara. He hadn’t looked at her yet. His face glistened with sweat-sheen.
Harrin was standing, breathing hard. He looked from Cara to Osla. Despite his fury during Humanity First speeches, he obviously wasn’t used to the sight of violence.
“You killed him,” he said blankly.
“He was a traitor,” Osla said. He finally looked at Cara. His eyes were bloodshot.
Cara didn’t move, but judged the distance between her hand and her pistol. He
was too close.
“That was a good speech,” he said. “You honor your father.”
“What did Kroska do?” Harrin asked.
Osla turned away from Cara to answer. “He allowed this to happen. He created this…problem that I now must solve.”
Harrin pointed at Cara. “She’s the one that just said your people should turn into AI-lovers.”
The chancellor glanced at Cara. He smiled. “She did. But she couched it in respect for her father. They won’t remember anything about SAIs, or how she called a non-organic her family. Obviously, your time in prison lessened your mental faculties, Captain Sykes. We can only shake our heads in sadness that your time in the Scattered Disk warped your thoughts, and you were robbed of the opportunity to serve the Collective as you were destined to.”
Cara took a step away from Osla. She put her hand on her pistol.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Chancellor.”
Osla faced her. “You just had your opportunity, and you threw it away.”
The door the actors had left through slid open, and three soldiers walked in, dressed in the same combat armor as those in the demonstration. They immediately shouldered their rifles and drew down on Cara.
Cara punched the chancellor in the face and caught his shirt, twisting with him so his back was to the soldiers. Stepping backward past Harrin, she concentrated fire on the closest enemy.
Finding himself in the crossfire, Harrin dropped to his knees and covered his head.
Osla struggled to get his arms around Cara, then reached for her firing arm. She headbutted him, fired again, and moved around the table. The chancellor howled and shook globules of blood off his face.
He was strong, but Cara was able to successfully maneuver him in the low gravity. Every time he tried to grab her, she hit him again.
There was only one exit out of the room, and she needed to get through it before more soldiers arrived.
The group of three finally got over their surprise and split apart, circling around the edge of the room. Harrin jabbered by the table, but they ignored him. They hadn’t tried firing again, which gave Cara room to shoot at the single soldier approaching her.
Before the other two could flank her, she shot the lone soldier in the knee. He went down howling and dropped his rifle.
Cara spun again, keeping the chancellor between her and the other two. In another four steps, she was out the door.
“You’re dead,” Osla said as she pushed him away. “I will hunt you wherever you run.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Cara said. Dropping the muzzle of her pistol, she shot Chancellor Osla in the groin.
His eyes widened in disbelief, and he doubled over just as the two remaining soldiers reached him.
Cara turned and ran. She found herself in a series of tight corridors, moving backward through the tour they had received earlier, passing dressing rooms and sets.
As she entered a long, rectangular room that looked like a cafeteria, the overhead lights turned to strobes, and emergency klaxons screamed from the ceiling. In a light-dark flash, four soldiers appeared at the end of the space with a crew-served machine gun.
They looked as surprised as her to be where they were.
Cara charged, firing as she ran. She aimed for necks and groins. Most of the soldiers scattered, grabbing cover behind the few tables available. The gunner, however, dropped to a knee and activated the weapon with its butt against the floor.
The gun spun up, filling the air with projectiles. Cara dove to the left, sliding under a table as furniture exploded around her.
The weapon whined, reaching full discharge as the soldier struggled to rotate the muzzle toward Cara.
Hugging the deck behind the table as bits of metal flew everywhere, Cara squeezed off several shots at soldiers trying to flank her. She couldn’t get at the gunner. Every time she moved, the weapon wound up and tore through the surrounding tables.
What I wouldn’t do for a grenade, Cara mused.
Firing on another flanking soldier with a rifle, she readied herself as the gun spun to life again. This time, however, the muzzle whine increased and then seemed to pulse. Rounds began to ricochet off the ceiling and walls, and the soldiers on either side of her hit the deck, scrambling for cover.
Cara risked a look around the edge of her counter and spotted the gunner lying on his back, the face of his helmet blown away. The gun lay on its side next to him.
Seizing the moment, Cara popped up and fired on the remaining soldiers. As they ducked, she covered the distance to the gunner and the doorway.
Before running out, she grabbed a rifle and a bandolier of grenades.
Things are looking up, now, aren’t they?
Based on the earlier tour, she calculated that she was fifteen levels below the bay where the shuttle sat. She needed to find a lift and get up top.
She rounded a corner and found herself facing Llana. The actress held a pistol in two trembling hands.
“You aren’t getting away,” the woman said. Her demeanor had changed from haughty to terrified.
Cara fell back around the corner, popped out, fired, and pulled back. She had aimed so quickly, she wasn’t certain she’d caught Llana in the shoulder, as she’d intended. Then she heard the woman crying.
Llana was lying on her side in the corridor. Her pistol lay against the wall, out of reach.
“You and I really don’t have anything to fight about,” Cara said as she approached. “I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of the show. I only learned it existed when somebody teased me about it. But once I saw you acting, it didn’t bother me so much. You get to be this better version of me.”
“I am better than you,” Llana spat. “You’re a traitor. You were never the symbol May Walton made you to be.”
Cara stood over the collapsed woman. “That’s true. I guess I’m an actress just like you. Oh wait, I actually did all that pirate stuff.” Aiming the pistol at Llana’s forehead, Cara said, “Where I grew up, it’s not piracy, it’s survival. My dad used to call us rabbits, but I learned to be a lion.”
Llana raised her hands to the sides of her head, cowering with nowhere to go.
“I’ll tell you what,” Cara said. “Tell me where the closest lift is, and I won’t mess up your pretty face.”
“Go to hell,” Llana said.
Cara knelt and pressed her muzzle against Llana’s nose. “We could do some surgery right now.”
“Stop! It’s just down the corridor. You’re almost there. It doesn’t matter anyway. The show is over.”
“Is it? I’m not so sure about that. I think you’ll come back bigger than ever.”
“Did Osla kill Kroska?”
Cara realized that none of the actors had witnessed what happened to the director.
“Don’t lie to me,” Llana pressed. “After this disaster, there is only one response from Osla.”
Cara nodded. “He’s dead.”
Llana turned her head to the side and bit back tears. She made a keening sound as if she had loved the man.
“Stop that,” Cara commended. “You’re hurting my ears. Look, why don’t you become director?” Cara asked.
Still cowering, Llana opened her eyes, rotating her teary gaze up to Cara.
“What?”
“Run the show.” Cara shrugged. “You know how to make it happen, right? That’s how you become the Bloody Pirate Cara Sykes. Take over the ship. Everybody wants to be a lion, but nobody wants to do lion shit.” Cara stood, adjusting the rifle on her shoulder. “How about if you don’t do it, I’ll come back and slit your throat in your sleep?”
She grinned at the actress and broke into a leaping jog down the empty corridor.
“Wait!” Llana called.
“What?”
“I lied. Don’t go that way. Through that door there is my dressing room. There’s a private lift that will take you all the way to the shuttle bay.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me again
, would you?”
“No,” Llana said indignantly. “Go. Get out of here.”
Cara gave her a salute with her pistol and cut through the door Llana had pointed out. Inside, she found the actress’s dressing room, messy with recreations of Cara’s wardrobe from the last ten years. Shipsuits and leather shoulder holsters, vests, knee-high boots, and EV rigs had been tossed everywhere. In the back of the apartment, she found the private lift, just big enough for two people.
As the lift rose quickly through the low gravity, Cara adjusted the bandolier over her shoulder, then re-checked the rifle’s power supply and sights. It was a crude weapon, equipped with an overcharged battery that would outlast most TSF weapons of the same class, though she doubted its accuracy. Two hundred thousand Andersonian soldiers armed with these rifles could do plenty of damage.
The lift slowed and stopped. Cara floated up with the braking sequence, landed softly, and faced the door.
The lift opened on the far side of the shuttle. Cara stepped out to the sound of a heavy metallic foot striking the deck. She froze, waiting, then crouched to peer under the shuttle’s belly to the far side of the bay where they had first entered the studio. Pacing in front of the door was a bipedal drone with four body-mounted guns, a sensor array forming a blunt head on top of its body.
The mech paced to one side of the bay, spun, and stomped back the way it had come. Cara was blocked from the hatch on the far side of the shuttle.
Awesome.
If she used grenades, she risked damaging the shuttle or the lift mechanism that would get her back to the surface. As far as her other options went, the soldier’s rifle she was carrying wasn’t going to do much against an armored mech, and her pulse pistol would barely irritate the massive tank.
Cara crouched, observing the mech as it repeated its patrol loop, focused on the opposite door. Once she was certain the thing was repeating the same path, she turned her attention to the shuttle, looking for any other access point.
Dropping to her stomach, Cara crawled to the edge of the shuttle’s belly, studying the under-section for any maintenance panels, or even an emergency hatch. She found nothing in the midsection, so she slid toward the engines, keeping all her senses focused on the mech.
