John Karr - Detonation Event

Devans gunned the hover, sending it up and off-lane while trying to raise Cal on the mind link and then vocally.

“Come on, Cal! Answer your damned vocal link, just this once.”

“Hello, Ry Devans.”

The voice was too calm given all the chaos of the region. Perhaps the tone had always been there and he’d chosen to ignore it, but it sure sounded smug.

“Cal! Hey, it’s you! You know what’s going on, right?”

A pause then. For effect?

“I do.”

“Then you know the whole damned world is in a crapstorm of cosmic proportion.”

“Yes!”

Devans was taken aback at the zeal. “Are you zoning or something? This is not a good thing, son.”

“This is the transition. Father. ”

“Whatever you call it, we’ve got to go! Well, listen, I’m almost at your place. There’s still a planetary shuttle or two around that we can use to get off Earth!”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Your EFF friends are hunting people down and you need to ditch ’em. Time to get out!”

“Time for the Earth to use its warrior protectors, Father .”

“You can’t be serious… Tyrants do this crap! Come on, grab Mala, and the three of us will shuttle to one of the orbiters while this plays out on Earth.”

“Haven’t you noticed that orbiters are a huge part of the problem? All those resources in space when we need them here. The fact that you want to run to space just when we at the EFF have gained power enough to actually stop some of mankind’s Earth-killing ways is troubling.”

Silence between them.

“So you’re full EFF now?” Ry Devans asked finally. “Perfectly happy if humans were wiped off the Earth, including your own brainwashed selves?”

“We are a blight on the Earth.”

“Damn it! Even Nazis wanted some humans to survive! Well, after you’re done picking and choosing who to murder and who to enslave, and you wipe out the space programs, some day an asteroid or dozen will make sure almost all life is eradicated here on dear ol’ Mother Earth. The orbiters can take the rocks out, but since you won’t have them, life will be extinguished shortly after impact.”

“And the cycle of life will eventually start again.”

“Maybe not.”

“Of course it will,” Cal Devans said.

“Enough of an impact from a celestial body and Earth goes the way of Mars. Cores seize up with cold, magnetosphere shrinks to nothing, radiation kills anything left alive and keeps it that way.”

“Nice theory, but I’ve had enough. Are you willing to denounce space and embrace Earth, Father?”

“Guess you’ve been freebasing the crap the EFF is pushing too long now, son. It’s not too late. Grab you wife and I’ll bust us out, and we’ll see how it goes from space.”

“Then I’m sorry you’re on the other side. But there was a link once, so I would encourage you to avoid the traffic bots and roving cells. Or not.”

“This isn’t some stranger talking to you, Cal! I’m your father, damn it! Cal!” The vocal link dropped.

“CAL, WAIT…!”

But his son was gone. Devans tried his number again but it didn’t connect. Cal had blocked him. Devans swore, struck the steering wheel a few times, then bent forward with pain in his chest. He wished briefly for a heart attack.

The radar chimed. Two blips were coming at him, fast.

Good, he thought. Wreck or be wrecked.

Two dark machines flanked him. The traffic bots were half the size of his hover. Their flashers were going and spotlights flooded his hover’s interior. Devans didn’t wait. He wrenched the wheel right and left. He took out the first with a metal clash and shatter of glass, but missed the second when it performed evasive maneuvers. He chased it, cutting over travel lanes and old roadways, to areas of trees and fields and homes. Devans abruptly turned and started back for Dulles, swaying back and forth for the next phase to come.

He did not have long to wait.

Plasma bullets tore through the roof and out through the floorboards. He pulled back hard on the wheel and got a satisfying crunch, though in return he went into a spiral, the smoke sensors blaring. He tried keeping the vehicle level, but the best he could do was a rapid descent at an angle, toward the rusted uprights of a high school football field.

The hover took out the uprights with a clang, and Devans braced for harsher impact.

The crash and roll jarred him despite the airbags. White mist filled the cabin. Glass shattered. He fumbled at the safety belt, feeling like a tiny point of consciousness inside a massive and cumbersome body.

Through a ringing head reminiscent of his experience on Mars, Devans heard banging. Unlike the event on the red planet, there were now voices to accompany the banging.

Arms reached and pulled him roughly outside.

“Get them nylon cuffs on ’im.”

Vision was hazy. He made out the sun’s rays across a field. He wanted to rub his eyes but couldn’t get his arms free. He was walking, getting shoved in the shoulders and prodded by something hard like a gun barrel in the middle of his back.

Voices wormed their way into his struggling senses.

“Move, old man!”

“Dude is Mars expansion proponent all the way, earthman. This is the guy who took our man down on the moon!”

“What man?”

“Nuro, man. The unit who plasma’d that town hall crap SCONA put on.”

“Oh, yeah! That crap.”

“And this is the unit that charged our boy Nuro on that platform. Don’t you recognize the spaceman they almost blew up on Mars? Then he tangled Nuro on the moon, earthman.”

“Maybe that changed his mind.”

“Nah, he’s gonna say anything to save his ass like all them others.”

“How ’bout it, spaceman? Why you here and not up there?”

Devans blinked to try to clear his vision. Three youths were standing around him. Two males, one female. They had plasma guns and knives, and were smoking dope and passing it from one to another. They had bound him by the wrists, in front of his body. His fingertips touched the universal tool in his pocket. He inched it up to the top of his pocket. “Came to see my son.”

“Sweet. He here, too?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what’s his name, we’ll check the logs.”

“Cal Devans.”

The trio paused.

“RL Devans is your son?”

“RL?”

“Region Leader. Cal Devans runs the entire DC show, spaceman!”

They laughed.

“Cal Devans is my son. Don’t know about any ‘leader.’”

“Hold on.”

Devans blinked against the sweat and blood and wiped as best he could against his sleeves and squinted. Then he did it again with a groan of dismay, hoping that what he’d seen wasn’t real.

The field that had once been the site of recreational life was now Death’s playground. The weeds that had grown inside the track were trampled and stained red. Dozens of bodies lay strewn about in haphazard stacks.

Devans spat blood. “You three punks killed all these people?”

A knife blade pressed against his cheek. The fingernails in the back of his neck told him it was most likely the female. “Called weapons, spaceman. We got ’em, y’all don’t. Want a personal demonstration?”

“Yeah, why not?” Devans said. “A little bitch like you wouldn’t stand a chance on a real battlefield, so you play death cult instead.”

She hit him with the base of the knife to the back of his head. It hurt, but he could have remained standing. Instead he pitched forward. He went down hard, but now his side was toward them and he could work at getting the universal tool from his front pocket. He’d just have to two-hand it.

“How’d that feel, space prick?” the female said.