by C. G. Hatton
A chill dread was twisting in my stomach. Even in the darkness, I knew what it was before it appeared, a massive hulking shape, filling the street, three stories high, even bigger than a DZ. It was trundling on huge tracks, making the ground shake. They must have hacked its AI. It was surrounded by KRM fighters who were leading it like it was a lumbering prisoner of war.
Benjie pulled me close and slapped his hand against my back. “We’re going to take down the garrison and you gave us the way in, squirt. We’re going to break down their damn walls with their own damn robot.”
He pushed me ahead of him into the narrow alley. The KRM didn’t have any heavy weapons, no tanks or artillery, but I’d given them the perfect means to breach the walls. I glanced back. It was bristling with crushing rams and mining lasers and could blast its way through a mountain. It wasn’t built for combat, and as long as the garrison’s automated defences held, it shouldn’t be able to get near but if the resistance could take out the weapons platforms, it would make short work of the walls. I felt sick. Benjie laughed and nudged me forward.
He led me through the alley and into the old market square. People were huddled around braziers, flickering lights dancing in the dark interiors of at least half the empty shops. They saw us but they didn’t approach. Benjie walked with purpose, casual but confident, and I was just a brazen kid trooping along after him. He headed down another alleyway and my heart rate increased a notch, if that was possible.
Benjie stopped, glanced back at me and stepped aside. “After you,” he breathed and gestured towards a doorway, door half ajar, a faint glow of light coming from inside.
Every instinct was screaming at me to run but I wasn’t about to ditch out then, not after everything that had happened. I nodded and went past, took a deep breath and stepped inside. Benjie was right behind me. I almost hesitated. There was a tug at my hood as it was pulled down and a nudge in my back that sent me stumbling forwards.
I caught my balance, a curse on the tip of my tongue, but I looked up and saw Dayton sitting there, facing the door, looking right at me, gun in hand, Maisie sitting bolt upright in a chair next to him, a rag tied around her mouth, wrists taped together, and my entire world spun on its heels.
So much for my amazing intuition.
Chapter 20
Dayton was perched on a desk, looking more like an underworld criminal boss than a resistance leader. Maybe that’s what he had been the whole time.
Benjie pushed me forwards again.
I shrugged him off with a glare. He closed the door behind him and stood to one side.
I stood there, frozen like a total idiot, looking from him to Dayton.
Dayton stood, raising the gun and shaking his head with some kind of twisted wry smile like he was amazed I could be so stupid.
I was amazed I could have been so stupid.
“He’s got it,” Benjie said, even sounding different. “He doesn’t know what’s on it. I told you I could get him for you.” He grinned at me. “Hey, nothing personal, squirt, it’s just business.”
I took a step back, not sure I’d heard right. Benjie was looking to Dayton for approval, nothing left of the kid I’d looked up to, admired, freaking wanted to be most of my life. It suddenly dawned on me with a sickening clarity that Maisie had been right all along. Benjie had used me, he’d always used me, as he’d got older and more cautious he’d sent me into places that were too risky for him… “giving you the benefit of my experience,” and, “helping you get better,” he’d said. Ironically, that’s exactly what had happened, but I realised then, it wasn’t out of any sense of brotherhood or caring for my benefit but always to further his own ends. I felt sick when I thought how it was him who’d sent us out to the processing plant, how I’d disabled the security system, just so they could get in there?
Benjie spoke again, rubbing his hands together. “Okay, Dayton, I’ve kept my end of the bargain, now where’s my payment?”
Dayton nodded, slow and deliberate. “Well done, Benjamin,” he said. “You’ve earned exactly what’s coming to you.” And he switched aim so fast I almost missed the look on Benjie’s face as he realised what was happening. The silenced bullet was in the air before he could open his mouth to object.
It hit.
He dropped without a sound.
I didn’t understand at first why Dayton didn’t shoot me too and I was half a heartbeat from turning and running except Maisie was still staring at me, something almost like an apology in her eyes.
Benjie’s rifle was on the floor. I reckoned I could reach it. I shifted my weight slightly. I didn’t want my knee to give out.
Dayton laughed. “Don’t do it, kid. Come on, look at what we have here. That key you have? You’re going to do a job for me. You’ve caused me quite a problem stealing that so I’d like you to take it back. Right now. Or I will kill your little girlfriend here and then I will kill your grandmother, slowly.”
I must have scowled because he smiled and added, “I’ll bet an old girl like that won’t last too long though, hey? Do we have an understanding here?”
Another booming clamour reverberated in from the darkness where UM were tearing apart the crashed ship that had started all this. I used to think too much, about what had caused this, what had caused that, what if I had done something, what if I hadn’t. In the end, you just get numb and stop caring.
I held up the tiny device.
Maisie was still staring at me.
“What is it?” I said.
My mind was running riot. Trojan or worm virus, I reckoned, something to screw up the base so they could attack it. But I’d stolen it from an Earth guy. He’d had IDC insignia on his uniform but he could have been anyone. He could have been a UM plant or some guy Dayton had brought in. I couldn’t believe I’d been so naïve and so stupid as to pick his pocket when I had no idea who he was. If Charlie hadn’t spotted me as I was running away from the garrison, I wouldn’t even have been in there to run into him.
Dayton leaned back casually against the desk, the gun resting against his thigh, that smug smirk still on his face. “You don’t need to know what it is.”
“The guy I stole this from, was he UM?”
He laughed again. “You’re not as smart as you think, kid. Now, you want what’s left of your little family to survive this, then you are going to take that key back to the garrison and find a way to get it into a secure terminal. Do you understand?”
I shook my head. “That’s impossible.”
Dayton was looking at me as if he was reading my soul. “You’re telling me you can’t do it?”
He might as well have called me out on a dare and waved a red rag. He glanced at Maisie as if to remind me what was at stake. I had no choice anyway. He was threatening the two people who mattered the most to me in my entire world. The only people I cared about that I had left.
I stared back at him. “I can’t hack a secure terminal without the AI triggering an alarm.”
“Kid, I’m not telling you to hack it,” he said, looking at me as if I was really slow. “Find a way in then just get that access key to a secure terminal inside the garrison.”
“Then what?”
He tossed across another key.
“Use this. Just get it in there. It’ll do what it has to once it’s connected.”
“I’ll need help,” I said without thinking. “There are two security protocols you have to bust to get in. You need to nullify two nodes to get access. I can’t get them both at the same time. They’re in different areas of the garrison. Give me Maisie and we’ll get in there and fix it. And then you let us go and you let Latia go.”
“You’re not in any position to negotiate, kid,” he said. He must have picked up on the desperation in my voice and he called my bluff. “Find a way in. You have six hours.” He walked forward and retrieved Benjie’s rifle without turning his back on me. I don’t know what he thought I might do. “And trust me,” he added, “you talk to anyone, tamper with
it, or try anything, I will know, and I can make life really unpleasant for little Maisie here and grandma. You understand?” He looked at me with disdain. “You know the telecoms tower out by the ore plant? You want to see them alive again, then do what I’ve said and meet me there with those keys. In six hours. Now go. Scram. Don’t let these lovely ladies down now.”
I looked at Maisie.
She must have felt that I was about to do something stupid because she shook her head ever so slightly, eyes wide.
“Can I at least say goodbye?” I asked, belligerently.
Dayton waved the gun at me casually. “Sure, kid, it’s your time that’s wasting.”
I walked over to Maisie, gently pulled the rag away from her mouth and leaned in. She didn’t speak, just looked at me with fear and pleading in her eyes and shook her head again.
I whispered quietly, “Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to get us out of here. All of us.” I kissed her then and before Dayton could react, I snapped Charlie’s band off my wrist and on to Maisie’s.
Dayton jumped up and shouted, pointing the gun at me but I knew he wouldn’t shoot.
I spun and stared him down. He needed me and we both knew it. What he didn’t need was Maisie and as soon as I walked out of the door chances were that he’d put a bullet in her head.
“What the hell is that?” he said.
“Life signs monitor,” I said, cocky as hell. “Live feed tracking system. It’s one I stole and we’ve hacked it so we can monitor it.”
The look on Dayton’s face darkened as the implications of what I’d just done started to dawn on him but I figured I’d spell it out for him anyway. “I have someone tracking this. If it gets taken off, I’ll know. If she dies, I’ll know. Either way, you get nothing.”
Dayton wasn’t stupid but he wasn’t a poker player either. Bluff and counter bluff. Like I said, Charlie taught me a lot that night in the storm.
“Fine,” Dayton growled. “Looks like we have ourselves a standoff, kid. Maybe I misjudged you after all, but understand this, I’m on a clock here which means this is a time limited offer. If I don’t have those keys back in my hand in six hours, she dies regardless. You understand?”
“Six hours and counting.” I turned and walked out.
I didn’t look round and Dayton didn’t shoot me in the back. I kept to the shadows. The sound of gunfire was increasing in all directions. Someone had set fire to a jeep on the main road north. There were other fires burning all over the southern part of the city, buildings alight, cars overturned, barricades in flames. It didn’t feel real, like I was walking through some kind of hellish nightmare. Like I might wake up at any minute in Latia’s house, with no pain, just her ragging on me for not going to school and calling me down for pancakes.
I had a horrible feeling she wasn’t alright. That Dayton had lied and she was dead already, but that was something I had no control over so I just had to hope she was okay, trying to figure out instead what had happened with Benjie while trying to watch out for trouble, working a route through.
I headed north, flinching back every time I heard voices too close. It seemed like the whole city was burning. My knee had stiffened up again and I was riding the pain with each step, even with the crutches. I took it easy, slinking my way through the shadows, past Dayton’s guys and past the fighting. They were pushing up close to the garrison at my favourite spot. I could hear kids’ voices in amongst the fevered shouting, higher pitched yells screaming over the gunfire, as if it was a game.
I watched for a while from the shadows of an alleyway, despair setting in as I realised there was no way in.
I wanted to get into the garrison and I wanted it so badly that it became my whole world, each step, each breath, each heartbeat, each pulse of adrenaline. The fight flowed around me as if it was orchestrated in slow motion. Earth, the resistance, UM. None of them mattered. All I wanted was to get in there and click that key into place to see what was on it, see what was so important that it was getting the people I cared about killed.
But there was no way in. The Earth troops were pulling back, tanks and APCs withdrawing into the garrison, every soldier they had manning heavy weapon placements and sniper positions around the wall, bolstering the automated AI defence grid. They were preparing for a siege. There was no way I could get across there without getting shot.
I didn’t know what to do.
There was no way I could even get to the wall, never mind over it and into the complex. UM were crawling over our desert and the KRM had the mines, the refinery, half the city and soon, they’d have the garrison and the space port.
I was paralysed by indecision. First time in my life. And it terrified me. I’d always been so damn cocky, so sure of myself. I always had an answer. I could always see the patterns, the way in, the way out, the solution to the problem. But in that chaos, there was no pattern. Panic started to set in, fear of failure, fear of losing Latia and Maisie. If anyone ever tells you I’m never scared of anything, it’s not true, I just don’t let it get to me. I thought I’d burned all the scared out of me as a five year old when I was trapped in the rubble that had been my home.
But that night, it flooded back and, with it, I flashed back to a memory of another time, something Charlie had once said to me… “You freeze, you die. Make a decision. Act. Deal with the consequences later, and believe me, there will always be consequences, but in the moment you have to do something. Right or wrong. Good or bad. But do something.” So I did something, something I’d never done before because I hated the idea of doing it. Something I was maybe even afraid of and the thought of needing to do it made me feel dreadful. I decided to ask someone for help.
If the southern part of the city was in chaos, the north was in meltdown. Sirens were wailing, smoke spiralling from buildings hit by rockets the KRM had launched at targets further north. Another hit as I headed across Tenth, some way off but close enough to make the ground tremble. I had my hood up, head down, taking one step after another, every muscle complaining. The streets up there were usually deserted under curfew. That night, as the city sparked and burned, they swarmed. It was like someone had hit the panic button and they couldn’t get away fast enough.
I joined the throng of people edging between the cars and trucks that were trying to get to the space port, expecting someone to tug at my collar any minute and expose me, yell at me that I wasn’t their kind, that I wasn’t welcome or worthy to share in their moment of terror as the troubles from the south impinged on their privileged lives. I was jostled, swept along, but no one called me out.
There were no troops on the streets and as we got closer to the perimeter of the landing field, I could see why. They’d reinforced the patrols and set up an outer ring of defences, tanks and APCs set up back to back with gun turrets pointed outwards towards the growing crowds of colonists trying frantically to evacuate. There was no way I was going to make it over the fence like I usually did. I worked my way round and pushed through until I could see the gate. The soldiers were checking passes, documents, scanning those nice folk with implants, searching every car. Those with the right permits, right clearance, the right birth certificates were being waved through, those without were being firmly turned away.
I sucked in a deep breath. I knew Peanut had to be in there, I just needed to get to him. I watched the soldiers shout brusquely, push anyone who wasn’t cooperating fast enough, armed guards on high alert hefting rifles.
The darkness and despair started to creep back.
There was no way in.
Chapter 21
You remember what I said about luck? Sometimes you can have the best hand and you know you’re on a winner, sometimes you just need the right card to drop for you. And sometimes you just need to be in the right place at the right time. Fate is funny that way, she can bite you on the ass or throw you a bone.
I started to turn away. I almost didn’t hear the high-pitched squeal, someone yelling my name and
louder shouts to get back. I looked up. Spacey was running full tilt at me, adults running after her, shouting, one of them the schoolteacher from the outpost, her face fraught and drawn. Spacey bowled into me and hugged tight, her arms wrapped around my leg. I forgot I still had the stupid war paint on my face and looked up as the adults approached.
They slowed, looking horrified. They reached out an arm towards Spacey as if they needed to coax her away from me. She nuzzled deeper, sobbing, crying that she wanted to stay with me, that she wanted me to go with them, crying for Maisie and screaming louder when they inched forward and tried to take her arm.
I couldn’t get her off me. Short of flinging her away, I couldn’t get her to let go. A gunship roared overhead. She screamed louder. One of the adults, a guy who looked like he was probably a teacher too, that or some kind of social worker, put up his hands like he was going to try to negotiate with me or something. Like I was some kind of dangerous resistance fighter threatening their escape. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a gun. That would have freaked them out even more.
The schoolteacher squinted at me and swore. “No, wait,” she said, putting her hands up as if she was trying to calm it all down. I don’t know what they thought I was going to do. She stepped forward, glancing back at the guy and saying, “I know this kid.” She looked at me again. “Luka? It’s Luka, isn’t it? Is that right?”
I don’t even know what I did. Probably scowled at her.
She turned back to the guy. “We have to take him. He’s one of the street kids that we registered for the school. He’s coming with us. Come on, both of you. We have to get back in line.”
I went with them, Spacey clinging to me. They led us through the crowd to a school bus that was inching forward in a line of other vehicles. The schoolteacher urged us to climb on board and steered us to a seat at the front. It was packed with other kids who all stared at me. I felt like I was from another planet. I held onto Spacey and stared out of the window. The soldiers at the gate were getting more and more agitated as the crowd pressed. They stopped the bus, yelled and hammered on the door to get it opened. The kids were whispering and whimpering to each other. I wanted to be anywhere but on that bus.
