Renegades, page 3
“Copy,” Len said into the radio, then turned to Todd. “That, son, was a professional. That was a work of art. No guidance, no automated navigation, no switching systems, just a man and his machine. That was beautiful.” The Commander had an enormous smile on his face. He clapped his hands together hard. “Beautiful!” With that, the rig detached from the landed transport and moved sideways out of Door 10. Before it had even escaped the threshold, the light above Door 9 began blinking red.
“Chuck, it’s: door, bleeder valve, pressure valves, repress, locks. Right? That’s the right order?” Bellinger asked.
“Affirmative, Commander,” Chuck said over the radio. “Except the very last step is to let us out of the rig. We’ll be at Door 9.”
“Copy, Door 9.”
7
“Excellent job, Jerrick. Thank you.” Chuck extended a freshly ungloved hand out to his rigging operator, who shook it hard and smiled.
“It’s always just a little bit nerve-wracking, isn’t it?”
“It sure is, man. But thank you again. That was a hell of a job,” Chuck said. Jerrick nodded, still smiling from the nerves.
A loud hiss sounded before Door 9 opened, and the two men stepped down onto the dock. Commander Bellinger stood just outside the door and promptly greeted them, shaking both of their hands. Todd stood behind him, watching.
“Perfect, guys, thank you. Perfect!” Bellinger said.
“Todd, fetch the med team and the nuke team from the briefing room. Quickly,” Chuck said. His subordinate ran off.
The three men remaining walked to the newly acquired transport and, despite his age, Len Bellinger climbed the cockpit ladder with haste. Jerrick and Chuck looked at each other and smiled. Once he reached the top, he had only looked through the cockpit window for a few seconds before he began slowly descending again. When he was back on the dock floor, the blood had gone out of his face, leaving only a chalky, pale expression of bewilderment. Chuck found the image alarming.
“Sir, are you alright?” he asked.
“It’s him,” the Commander said, then sat on the floor. To Chuck and Jerrick’s amazement, the commander then laid flat on his back.
“Who’s ‘him?’” Jerrick asked. Chuck shrugged.
“Sir? Who is it?” Chuck asked.
The commander was on his back, his eyes closed and his hands pressed against his temples. “Where did you live when you were fifteen, Chuck?”
“Rhodes-1, sir. Until I was twenty.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s him, Chuck. It’s Garrett Rhodes.”
Chapter 2
Liberation
1
Ander Wex heard his wife step into the doorway of his office behind him, but she did not immediately speak. He did not turn to greet her.
“I’m leaving,” Lia said.
“Then go,” was all he replied, and continued working at his private terminal.
The couple had been married for four years, though the relationship had soured by the end of the second. The two years leading up to that moment in his office were cold, distant, and uncomfortable for them both. In their kitchen, an hour before she announced she was leaving, Lia had informed Ander that she would pursue a divorce and move in with her mother. He did not resist. He simply nodded and walked into his office.
She remained in the doorway for ten seconds after his dismissal. No tears formed in her eyes, but a mixture of sadness and exhaustion covered her face. She finally sighed, turned, and left the apartment for the last time.
When Ander heard the apartment door click shut, he allowed his face to fall into his open hands. He struggled to identify the different emotions he was feeling. He left his face in his palms for another minute as he puzzled over them, a concoction he had never experienced simultaneously before. As he lifted his head, he concluded, based on his desire to scream both “no,” and “yes” at the same time, that the two prevailing emotions were rage and relief. Rage at the ungrateful bitch that had just left him, and relief at knowing that he was no longer trapped. He was liberated.
He stood and walked to the starlight room. Although there were drawbacks to living in an apartment built into the Command cylinder at the front of Orris, each executive suite had one of these. A long and dimly lit room with large windows that looked out into space. There were few actual windows on Orris; most external viewing was done on monitors, so true-to-life observation of the blackness of space and the sparkle of the stars was a luxury.
The apartment in the Command cylinder was supposed to be a perk that came with his position as a high-ranking member of Orris Command, but Ander had become bitter. He had escalated to the position of Ambassador of Nations one year ago at the age of thirty-seven, the highest-ranking officer in all of international management. When he accepted the office, he expected greatly reduced day-to-day responsibility, greatly increased pay, and a new respect reserved only for the highest-ranking officials. What he received was a mild increase in pay, a new apartment on the Command cylinder, and more work than he’d ever had to do in his life. Instead of being highly respected, he often joked that he was the “whipping boy of thirty trillion souls.”
All the cylinders on Orris rotated constantly to mimic Osan gravity, and the view outside Ander’s starlight room at that moment was of the bottom edge of an enormous field tank to the left and the gridwork of pillars supporting one of the flex drive blades in the center and to the right. He had seen both a thousand times before, and now they were just blocking the scenery. He would need to wait 45 minutes before they were clear, and then he could actually enjoy the view.
He walked back into the kitchen that was now his alone and pulled the bottle of Finnic whiskey off the shelf above the table.
2
Reggie Clairbaugh walked across the utility room of his apartment with the two sheets of paper he had received by certified courier in hand. When he reached the wall with the incinerator hatch, he pulled it open and flung the two sheets into it. Instead of allowing the hatch to swing shut, he spit after the papers, then slammed the door closed.
He had submitted his design for the antimatter reclamation circulator eight months before receiving the two sheets of paper, which derailed the entire effort. His face was beet red, and spittle clung to his chin as he walked into the larger apartment. He stopped in his substantial kitchen and leaned on the polished stone countertop. He did not know what to do. He wanted to smash everything he could see with his closed fists. A small voice in the back of his mind reminded him that it would be dumb to break his own stuff, when a loud, hard knock sounded from his apartment door.
“What?! Go away!” He shouted with such ferocity that the words he said were unintelligible.
“Open the door, Reggie,” a deep and loud voice said. As soon as he heard it, Reggie knew it was Ander, and he wasted no time running to open the door for the third highest ranking officer on Orris.
“Sorry, Ander,” Reggie said after opening the door. He wiped his face with both of his hands and then ran them both through his short, dark hair. “I just got some bad news. Some ridiculous news. I think I’m in shock.”
“I don’t really care, Reggie, but why don’t you fill me in, so I know where your head is?” Ander’s official uniform included boots that added two inches to his six-foot height and tight-fitting gloves, which he peeled off his hands.
“It’s the reclamation design I submitted to engineering. They rejected it.” He sat hard on a stool that was pushed into the corner.
“Ha!” Ander said and then looked up at the man. “They rejected your design? The man who designed the helio-rectifier? Arguably the most knowledgeable person on Orris when it comes to antimatter? That’s funny. That’s just a joke. How did they justify it?” Ander’s original bitter attitude retreated, as he found the topic interesting.
“They said it was too complicated and too expensive. They’re going with a design from Gale Henders, the idiot. They’ll be lucky if his design doesn’t tear Orris in half.”
Finishing with the removal of his left-handed glove, Ander tossed the pair onto Reggie’s stone countertop. “Well, that might not be the bad news you think it is. Lia left me last night. I’m ready to talk seriously about ‘Blue Sky.’”
“Are… Are you serious?”
“I just said I was serious,” Ander said.
Reggie stood up and paced around his kitchen. “This is incredible. I thought it would only ever be a dream, but if you’re on board, then it’s actually possible. When? How? What do I do?” Reggie started rubbing his face again, finishing with his hair as usual.
“First things first. How many do you have? I don’t mean casual dreamers; I mean how many established, long-time renegades do you have?” Ander’s face had grown deadly serious.
“Maybe sixty? Probably fifty, though. For sure, fifty.”
“Are they close or all over Orris?”
“All over.”
“Okay, get a note out, only to the serious ones. Two weeks. That should give them enough time to get up here. Reserve a conference room in block C, and make sure it is C. Get the room for two hours in the evening. Tell them not to bring their handhelds or any other devices. That’s important. We’ll start there. Play it off as something uninteresting. After your initial contact with them, we will not use any digital means of communication again. Do you understand? Never again. If we get caught, we’ll all be executed. I doubt there would even be a trial.”
The color went out of Reggie’s face. He walked back to his stool and sat again.
“What’s wrong? You didn’t realize that stealing all the equipment and resources we’ll need would be a crime? Wake up, Reggie. This is dangerous. If they catch us, you and I will be the first to lose our heads. They would probably kill me in public. This isn’t a joke. Make sure you do everything exactly as I instruct you to. If you are unsure about something, ask me first. It could be a life-or-death decision.”
“Okay, Ander. I will.” Although Reggie was one of the most highly esteemed scientists on the entirety of Orris, he was only thirty-one years old and barely a hundred pounds. Sitting on his stool, he looked like a child.
“Two weeks, conference block ‘C,’ no devices, make up something boring for the topic. Do all of that right, and we’ll be on our way.”
3
Since they were five years old, Anna, Thomas, and Becca had been inseparable. Growing up on the Lance was not dissimilar to growing up on a planet, with the exception that the weather was scheduled. Most days were pleasant, but “rain” was necessary and occurred on Sundays and every other Wednesday. On the days without rain, the three could be seen all over the living center, often in the park and sometimes in the agricultural zone. During the three days every two weeks that the interior of the Lance was showered with water, the three would often camp at one of their two apartments and play games. Thomas and Anna, who were fraternal twins, had many old board games passed down to them by their father, and the three would often play them on their living room floor.
They followed this routine all throughout their childhood and basic schooling until they had reached the age of sixteen, when they left the general school and went on to their chosen fields of advanced education. Thomas chose fluid mechanics, his sister chose horticulture, and Becca chose nuclear power. She wanted to choose a field specifically in antimatter, but no such curriculum existed on Lance 5. When reading through the different fields of study, Becca was pleased to find that the nuclear power option included a three-month course in antimatter. That fact alone decided it for her, and she signed up for it the next day.
Advanced education lasted three years on the Lance, and at age nineteen, the three friends had finally reached their graduation day. They sat together during the ceremony in the park with Anna bisecting the group, waiting for their names to be called. Each student would be asked to stand, and their instructor would spend a few minutes describing the journey they had taken in mastering the disciplines selected only a few years before. There were twenty-one students graduating that year, an appropriately sized class given the total population of Lance 5 was just under eighteen hundred. Although the primary language on Lance 5 was Osan and had been so officially for the forty-one years leading up to that day, the students were called on in order of the English alphabet. It was a tradition established by the original captain of the vessel, Jackie Herrera, who wanted to preserve a part of Earth, if only until they arrived at Orris.
With the last name Bennett, Anna was the first of the trio to be called upon to stand and receive her accolades. As her instructor finished, with warm praise for her achievement, she announced the next student to be recognized, Thomas. Anna sat and Thomas stood, but during the few moments it took for his sister’s instructor to walk back to her seat and his instructor to walk up to the podium, a loud, sharp buzzer rang through the whole of the Lance 5 cylinder, followed by a computer-generated voice.
“Please standby for Captain’s address, please standby for Captain’s address,” the artificial voice droned. Only two seconds later, the whole of the ship filled with the captain’s voice, and Thomas sat back down.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Donovan Walker, Captain of Lance 5. I apologize for the interruption. I know there are a few events taking place this afternoon, including the graduation of our advanced students. I will make this brief, but it is very important.” Captain Walker paused before revealing the news. “We have been contacted by Orris.” Cheers exploded throughout Lance 5. Anyone that had been sitting was on their feet, and friends and strangers alike were hugging, shaking hands, and slapping high fives.
“We have relinquished the operation of Lance 5 to Orris Command, and we expect to arrive in five days. Please be prepared to disembark at that time. Pack up anything you want to keep. It is my understanding that we will not have access to Lance 5 after our arrival, so it is important that you take care to secure all of your belongings prior to exiting,” the captain said. The cheering and celebrating did not diminish.
“It is a bittersweet day for me. Sweet because we have finally achieved the mission our grandparents and great-grandparents set us on; bitter, because I have so enjoyed being your captain for the last forty-one years. As I step off of Lance 5, I step into retirement. I want to thank all of you for making my tour as captain such a rewarding experience. I believe I speak for all of us when I say that I wish the ones we lost could be here today to experience this triumph with us. For me, and for those of you who had the pleasure of knowing her, I especially wish Jackie were here. Captain Herrera.” At the mention of former Captain Jackie Herrera’s name, the interior of the ship once again roared with applause and cheers.
“Like all of you, I was born on Lance 5. Jayna Gardner, the last surviving first-gen citizen, passed away last year at the age of ninety-three. But she and Jackie and all of our loved ones live on in our hearts and minds. We will take their memories with us to Orris, as they intended. I ask that as you assimilate into life on Orris, you keep a small part of your hearts here on this vessel. It has treated us well. It has been the only home we’ve ever known.
“For all of us, we step onto Orris representing Earth, although none of us have ever been there. Remember, though, everything that has led to us was birthed by Earth. So, even though you may feel you have no personal attachment to the place, everything we are, root and stem, comes from our home planet. Represent it well, represent Lance 5 well; Ladies and gentlemen, we are home.” The microphone clicked off as a fresh round of cheering and applause vibrated across the Lance.
4
Barely three seconds had passed between the time that Ander walked into the International Management offices and his receptionist, a slender middle-aged woman named Darcy, began peppering him with information. With all that had happened over the weekend, he found it particularly annoying.
“Good morning, sir,” she said. “There is a lot of news this morning. An Envoy arrived last night. You’ll never guess who it was!” Ander glanced at her with a look of disinterest, and she moved on to the next topic. “Oh, also, the virus on Gellar-16 is finally under control, and you have a call with President Kaelin at ten o’clock. Also, the election on Niles-3 is still deadlocked. Commander Bellinger would like you to visit them this afternoon. Also, Command received a beacon in the early hours of the morning, and they think there might be a Lance approaching. Also,”
“Stop! Darcy, please. Stop.” Ander did not feel bad about what he said but felt a little embarrassed about the volume he used to say it. Darcy looked startled. “I’m sorry, Darcy. Please, give me twenty minutes and then come into my office. We’ll run through everything you have.”
She smiled nervously at him and nodded. He continued on his course and walked into his office, closing the door behind him. It was a grand workspace, fit for a position of his rank. The desk was wide and heavy, made from wood sourced on a timber cylinder near the rear of Orris. Half of the space was filled with a long conference table surrounded by twelve leather bound chairs. He sat down, and just as he touched his terminal panel, the phone rang. Frustrated, he picked it up, but could not get a word out before Darcy was apologizing.
