Terran Tomorrow

CHAPTER 7

Jason had never thought he would leave Earth for space. The era of space travel, like so much else, had died with the Collapse. And yet—here he was, on the bridge of the Return, watching on a wall screen as the ground fell away below. A thousand pictures over a lifetime, a hundred rotating holograms—none of it did justice to the reality. His world, blue and white, looking as pure and unsullied as if humans had never built and destroyed and polluted and warred over its forests, oceans, soaring mountains. Jason blinked hard.

“Sir?” Branch Carter said. “I don’t know how to do any evasive maneuvers.”

Jason turned from the screen to the pilot’s console, which didn’t look like any cockpit Jason had ever seen. Carter sat on a wooden bench that had once been a wooden table, facing screens, mostly blank, above an array of oddly shaped protrusions and recesses, most of which he never touched. Jason said, “We’re well above the altitude of any known enemy surface-to-air weapons. Lieutenant Li at the signal station will give you landing instructions. Be prepared to lift again immediately on my word, if we spot any ground activity. What is your fuel situation?”

“I don’t know,” Branch Carter said.

“And you are sure that this ship carries no air-to-ground weapons?” He had already asked this, along with everything else he needed to know, but the lab tech turned starship captain seemed to Jason so skittish that perhaps repeated questioning would elicit a different answer.

It didn’t. Carter said, “Not that I’ve found. It was a colony ship. And Kindred don’t believe in weapons.”

The river came into view, a shining ribbon. Open meadows, woods, then individual trees. No people. The Return set down, gently as a soap bubble, beside the river. It took the FiVees longer to arrive, and every minute was agony—what was happening at the Settlement? Hillson, at the base, had no more information. When the FiVees roared into sight, Jason and the two members of J Squad he’d had with him at the signal station ran from the ship’s airlock. Lindy leaped from the back of the truck crowded with her medical crew. Dr. Holbrook, so much older, climbed down more slowly.

Lindy said, “How bad is it?”

“Don’t know. Radio contact broke off and someone was laying down fire. The Settlement dome may or may not have been breached. Stay here until I call you.”

Goldman had taken charge of the FiVees filled with soldiers; Kowalski was overseeing the loading of ordnance into the Return airlock. Lindy stared at the carry-bot trundling crates marked DANGER—EXPLOSIVES. “Jesus. Aren’t we going to use the spaceship to move casualties to the base?”

“Only if we have to. Depends on the numbers.” Lindy nodded; she’d always been quick. Colin’s people lived in, walked through, breathed RSA. Their presence in the ship would contaminate it. But you could not intubate, suture, or operate through an esuit.

When the bombs were aboard, Jason returned to the airlock but didn’t open the inner door or close the outer one. He twisted the weird, curly protuberance that let him talk to the bridge. “Captain Carter, go.” Then he held his breath.

Jason hadn’t known if the ship would lift with the airlock open. It did. Everyone in the open airlock lashed restraining ropes around their waists and put on portable O2 masks.

Carter lifted the Return to an altitude higher than shoulder-mounted missile launchers could target. On the wall screen—and thank God the unknown aliens who’d designed this thing had put wall screens everywhere—the main body of the enemy came into view. Maybe two hundred soldiers, lounging by the river, probably laughing at how easy it was for such a small number of their fighters to slaughter unarmed farmers. Hatred rose in Jason’s throat, bitter as bile. He’d seen other raids. New America would kill the men, rape the women, take the youngest and prettiest with them. Portable R&R. Sometimes they murdered the children, sometimes left them to die.

“Carter, hover. Ordnance, first strike.”

He hoped the fuckers below had looked up, astonished to see a starship gliding above their heads. The ordnance specialist armed and dropped the bomb.

It exploded in a fireball that consumed the troops below. Swiftly Jason directed the ship to drop lower and fire out the airlock door at those fleeing. Most of the enemy dropped.

A missile left the ground; Jason had wrongly assumed that those would be with the main body of the enemy. “Lift!” Jason cried, and faster than he would have thought possible, the Return lurched and soared. If Corporal Olivera had not been lashed to the bulkhead, she would have been shaken out the door. The missile missed the ship, but not by much. Carter had told him that the ship could be damaged by an explosion—had been damaged that way on World—but not what would happen if it took that explosion while in the air. Nobody knew.

Swiftly he directed the rest of the attack. They flew over the dome, taking out all the enemy they saw. But some fled into the dome, which meant the farmers had not secured their airlock before the first of the New America troops were inside. Jason cursed and contacted Goldman. “Bring in the FiVees and prepare to take the dome. Medical personnel to begin aiding casualties in the field.” He could see bodies scattered among the field crops, along the river, at the kelp farm on the coast.

“Roger, sir.” The FiVees, which Jason could just see on the horizon, moved forward.

“Take two or three prisoners if you can, preferably officers.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lindy, who was not supposed to be on this frequency, said sharply over the rumble of the FiVee, “And the rest of the enemy wounded?”

“Shoot them.”

“Roger that, sir.”

“Jason—”

“Shut up, Dr. Ross. This is a military frequency. If you don’t leave it immediately, I’ll have you arrested.”

“Try,” she said, just before he heard the click of her changing frequencies. For the hundredth time, he wished more Army medical doctors had survived RSA. But all he had were the elderly Holbrook, formerly a cardiologist and now without cardiology equipment, and two civilian physicians, Lindy and Claire Patel.

But Lindy was a damn good doctor. He watched her jump from the back of the truck and run toward a woman twitching on the ground. Then the Return was on the ground and Jason forgot those already wounded as he directed the attack that might save the rest.

He was counting on two things: that the enemy had not brought more missile launchers to the dome because they were useless against its shield, which would mean he had destroyed any real threat to the ship. Also, that while the remaining New America soldiers were inside the dome, they could not fire out.

It was not easy to take a dome. So far, only nuclear bombs had ever destroyed them, including the dome over the White House. The alien energy, whatever it was, formed itself into an upside-down bowl and then went rigid and unmovable. However, the visible bowl was not the only thing it formed. Long ago, when Jason was a child, his grandmother had told him about the underground submarine bay in the Embassy when it floated in New York harbor. Like Monterey Base, the Settlement dome had a subterranean extension. With any luck Colin had gotten his people underground when New America attacked. The door at the top of the stairwell inside the dome would not hold against military breaching—if this particular cell of New America knew which door it was. They might or might not. Enemy cells were loosely organized and sometimes too rivalrous to share intel.

The underground annex came with an airlock, and Jason had insisted that Colin allow a tunnel to be bored away from it, with a hatch hidden in a peach orchard a quarter mile from the dome. The Lab Dome tunnel at the Monterey Base was how Jason had gotten James Anderson into the base stockade without anyone except J Squad even aware that the Gaiist had been captured. Colin used the tunnel only as an additional, cool storage area for fruit, vegetables, and grain. It was, he’d said with the misplaced gratitude that drove Jason crazy, perfect because the metal reinforcing helped keep out mice and vermin.

Jason left soldiers guarding Holbrook’s medical corps, their weapons trained on each of the dome’s above-ground airlocks in case of a rush. Jason led the rest of J Squad to the tunnel exit. When the brush had all been removed, two soldiers lifted the metal hatch, which wasn’t locked; for once Jason was grateful for the Settlers’ casual carelessness about security. Someone below screamed. J Squad raised their weapons. Jason looked down and said, “Christ!”

Three men crouched on the top step, holding shovels and hoes. Below them were jammed more men, women, and children. Did these idiots think they could hold off New America with the weapons of thirteenth-century serfs, and from a position below their attackers?

“US Army!” he shouted. “Come out of there!”

Some did, some ran back down the stairwell, some just cowered. J Squad yanked them all above ground. Jason said to the first adult out, a big man dressed in homespun shorts and nothing else, “How many enemy inside?”

“I don’t know. Maybe two dozen?”

Not good. “Colin Jenner?”

“Inside. Too hurt to move. He told us to come here and—”

“Take charge of these people. Keep them here, don’t let them go back inside the dome until you get an all clear. Understand?”

“Yes.” And then, “If you give me a gun, I’ll defend everybody.”

So they’re not all idiots, Colin. Jason handed over his SCAR. Jason would be in the rear, anyway, and he had his sidearm. The man, in homespun cloth and wooden sandals, held the rifle expertly and checked the magazine in the chamber.

Well.

J Squad poured down the stairwell, sending people back up behind them. Jason followed. The only light came from the tunnel opening, except… what the hell was that? A weird green glow…

People standing in the defense alcoves, or what were supposed to be defense alcoves, holding wooden trenches of biofluorescent bacteria or mold or some damn thing. But the glow helped as J Squad pounded up the stairway to the dome. Rice grains crunched under Jason’s boots. A peach rolled past, leaving juicy smears on the steps. At the top, the metal doorway was barred with wooden slats. No e-locks here. The enemy could have breached this door at any time, which meant they hadn’t known it was there.

He was wrong. But J Squad was ready.

As soon as the point man flung open the door, the enemy fired. J Squad returned fire. Two of Jason’s soldiers went down, but there were only three New America fuckers there and the squad dispatched them and kept going. Experts at clearing rooms, they flowed in three-man stacks from area to area. Gunfire echoed off the metal partitions, thudded on the wooden ones. Jason bent over his fallen soldiers.

Private Sendis was dead. Specialist Lena Tarrant was hit in the chest. “I’ll get medics to you as soon as I can.”

She tried to nod.

Jason ran through the dome, following his troops, issuing orders into his mic. There weren’t two dozen of New America inside, only half that. J Squad, sustaining one more nonserious casualty, killed them all. No chance to take any prisoner.

Settlers cowered where they could. Some lay dead or wounded on the dome floor, smearing it with blood. Jason found Colin unconscious beside an indoor planting bed, a wound in his side and his leg bent at an impossible angle. Bone showed through. A teenage boy crouched beside him, desperately pressing a cloth against Colin’s side.

“Keep doing that,” Jason said. “I’ll send a medic as soon as I can.” He ran toward an airlock.

Outside, all looked quiet. He said over his mic, “Kubetschek, report!”

“No one emerged, sir. All visible enemy here are dead. It’s possible some escaped into the woods but none have fired. One prisoner.”

“Lieutenant Allen?”

“No action at the ship, sir.”

He switched frequencies. “Dr. Holbrook?”

“A lot of casualties. More dead. Inside?”

“Casualties. Send medics and Dr. Ross.”

Lindy ran to the dome and Jason met her at the airlock. “This way. Colin. Multiple wounds.”

He led her to Colin and went back outside, watching the medics work on the helpless farmers shot for the crops they had labored to raise, or shot to bring Jason’s military running so they too could be slaughtered, or shot just for the thrill of killing.

He strode toward the captured New America prisoner.

It was a boy, no more than fifteen, the beard on his face wispy and childish. He wore old boots and a new uniform, its cloth still stiff with the original sizing, possibly captured from the Sierra Depot. His eyes glared at Jason in defiance, hatred, and fear, but mostly fear.

A boy, a private in this undisciplined army. From his age, a new recruit. He would not have any valuable intel.

But Jason would have to find that out for sure.

There were too many wounded to take back to the base in the FiVees. Lindy said, “Some of them couldn’t stand the jolting anyway, over those nonroads.” She waited, looking at him, arms crossed on her chest, blood smearing her jeans and cotton shirt.

Jason gazed at the wounded scattered over the fields, the orchard, by the mill and estuary. The Settlers from the dome and its underground annex had all been brought outside, bending over the injured and the dead or huddling together. Some wept. A heavy-duty medbot transported Colin, still unconscious, on its stretcher. Tubes and wires sprouted from him like the weeds he unaccountably loved.

Lindy said, “Jason—”

“I know.” He would have to contaminate the Return with RSA.

He had Carter lift the ship and set it down in a field of broccoli. Jason and Lindy walked beside Colin’s bot. “He’s lucky,” Lindy said. “The side bullet missed his vital organs. The leg injury is actually worse, a comminuted open fracture. When was his spleen removed?”

“He was just a kid,” Jason said. “I don’t really know much about it.” Another life, like everything before the Collapse. He turned to face her. “Thank you for saving him.”

“You don’t think I did it for you, do you?”

“Not for half a second. But thank you anyway.”

“Damn it, Jason, don’t turn humble on me! That was always your most deceptive move!” And then, a moment later, “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

Before Jason had to answer, Luke trotted up to him. Luke, another superhearer like Colin, another reminder of Before. Colin, Jason, Luke—the three kids who’d been inseparable, who’d had adventures together, who’d pinkie-sworn brotherhood forever. Luke, mentally challenged, had followed Colin to the Settlement, although Jason didn’t know how much Luke actually understood of Colin’s ridiculous Luddite philosophy.

“Colin?” Luke said, his face twisted with anxiety. “Colin?”

Lindy said, “He’ll be okay, Luke. But he has to go to the base. You all do. It’s not safe here.”

“I will go. But not Sarah. She won’t. Not some other people.”

“Christ,” Jason said. Holdouts.

Lindy half turned to look at him; he could see the curve of her cheek filmed with sweat, a strand of hair sticking to it. The sight brought back a hundred inappropriate memories of how she looked after sex. He knew, too, in the way that married, or once-married, people understood their partners’ thought processes, that she was waiting to hear how he would handle those who did not want to leave the dome. Let them stay here and die if more New America’s troops returned here, or manhandle them into the ship?

Of course, the refuseniks could hole up in the dome, sealing themselves in, living off the stored crops, while New America plundered their fields and burned the kelp farm. Maybe they could outlast the enemy, who was not known for patience. But unlike Monterey Base, which used converters to create freshwater from air, the anti-tech Settlement obtained all its water from the river above the falls. If the enemy dammed or poisoned the river, the holdouts would soon run out of water. Also, Jason doubted that they would actually seal themselves into the dome and stay there. The moment they couldn’t actually see an enemy soldier, they’d go outside because going outside was the entire point of their existence. “Live free on the Earth.” And then New America would shoot more of them and maybe take the dome again.

Jason said into his mic, “Goldman, Kowalski, Hillson—everyone goes onto the Return, by force if necessary. Hillson, radio Major Duncan to prepare for about two hundred temporary refugees.” He flicked off the mic and, prepared for battle, turned to Lindy.

She said, “You did the right thing,” and turned toward the next wounded Settler, leaving Jason staring after her.

Damn it, Lindy, you can still surprise me.

Luke suddenly cried out. He heard it first—the Superhearers always heard everything first—and dropped to the ground. Jason seized Lindy, threw her down, and hurled himself on top of her. A second later the explosion shattered the air.

But no flying debris, no smoke, and the ship—the first thing Jason raised his head to see—was intact. The explosion had been inside the dome, contained by it, its rounded top no longer clear but darkened with ash. Smoke drifted out the open airlock.

J Squad had sprinted to defensive position, but there was no one to defend against, no one to attack. New America had set off a delayed-action bomb—probably more than one—inside the dome, timed to allow them to murder and loot. Jason knew without checking that nothing would be left except the indestructible alien-energy walls that divided the dome into quadrants. Plants, seeds, tools, living quarters, hand looms, candles and homemade soap and carved wooden bowls and every other seventeenth-century contrivance—all destroyed. Anyone returning here to live would have to start completely over, from nothing. Still—Colin was capable of that.

He stood. Lindy scrambled to her feet beside him, putting a hand on Luke’s shoulder. Her green eyes were wide.

Jason said grimly, “At the base, the Settlers will all have to accept military rule.”

“Yes,” she said, and he was surprised to feel her fingers brush his hand before she ran toward the FiVee.