John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“I don’t know. Maybe hit. He was at the point with you.”

“No. Just before the ambush, he went to the rear.”

Torrence knew by Steinfeld’s silence that he understood.

Torrence said, “How bad is it, do you know?”

“Not so bad. You stopped us right before we walked into the worst of it. The bastards are on the beach, too, of course, but I’ve shifted to the alternate beachhead. Radioed the boats to pick us up there—head for the alternate and try to make sure everyone else does too. And listen: No wounded stay behind. If they look like they’re not going to make it, then it’s a matter for triage. Because of extractors.”

Which meant: Kill anyone who wasn’t likely to make it alive.

Thank God Claire was out to sea, on the ship’s comm station.

Torrence said, “Yeah.” And moved out, dizzy, but feeling more together now.

After a while, with a crude bandage on his throbbing hand, he was trudging down a beach road with three other NR; the sea hissing to one side, a rocky field to their left; the SA ambush was well behind them. The road was blue-black against gray, stony sand.

Someone was lying by the side of the road up ahead. Face-down. Torrence knelt beside him, found a penlight in his belt. It was Ali Mubarak, one of the Egyptian immigrants to France they’d rescued from the camps. A quiet little man, always eager to please everyone; someone who would’ve liked to have had more friends. Torrence had always meant to get to know him better.

Now he had to shoot him.

Ali was murmuring, and sometimes he’d try to weep a little, but that hurt, so he’d stop weeping and gasp. Torrence turned him enough to see that he was gut-shot; the movement made Ali cry out in Arabic. Torrence could see that the guy’s belly was ripped open, sternum to groin; it was a boiling mass of blood and ragged entrails. Torrence pictured Ali stumbling to this spot, holding his gut closed with his hands, trying to make it to the alternate rendezvous. Collapsing here. He wouldn’t survive the trip back. And Torrence couldn’t wait with him till he died—he’d be killed or captured. But if the enemy found Ali, they might put him in an oxygenator, keep his brain marginally alive. A dead man’s brain could be subjected to an extractor if you kept it oxygenated. The SA had been waiting for them here; they might have an extractor waiting too. Torrence had the .45 pistol in his hand. He pressed the pistol to the back of Ali’s head.

“Don’t,” Ali said in English.

Torrence looked up at the stars. He tried to pretend that someone else was pulling the trigger.

Russ Parker sat in a clean white room on the bench that folded down from the wall, staring at the clear, unbreakable plastic panel that blocked the doorway.

He sat there, rocking slightly, wondering if Rimpler would kill them quickly—the walls would sunder, the Colony would be sucked into the void and death—or if he might simply shut down the systems bit by bit, destroy the water supply, turn off the heat, and let the cold of interplanetary space make thousands of crystalline corpses floating in the dead shell of the Colony.

Remembering the insanity-twisted face on the monitors, Russ was certain that Rimpler would eventually kill them all. He was only waiting for the provocation.

The provocation that Praeger was going to give him.

And Russ had to sit there and let it happen. The detention cell was a mockery; the walls were solidified laughter. He boiled inside with the need to do something, and what he could do here was pace, piss, and pout. That was just exactly all of it.

He blinked. Something interrupted the line of his unseeing stare. There was someone standing in the doorway. An SA bull in a mirror helmet.

The doorway hissed into the wall, and the bull gestured.

Russ thought, Maybe I’m going to an air lock. To join the crew of RM17.

He stood up and walked like an automaton to the door. The guard stepped aside and gestured again; Russ put his hands behind his back; the guard put the plastiflex cuffs on him. Then Russ preceded him down the hall. They passed other cells, these with at least four people apiece in them. Kitty’s husband Lester watched them go, shaking his head slowly. In the next cell down was a woman alone, an Oriental.

They passed through two electronic checkpoints, a door opening for them at each one, before they got to the admitting office. The young, helmetless SA sitting at the desk said, “Let me see that transfer pass again.” He had a reedy voice that didn’t go with his affectation of great authority.

The bull took a pass from a velcro’d pocket and handed it over.

Russ looked at the guard who’d escorted him from his cell. He was smaller than most of them. And his uniform didn’t fit very well.

The desk guard asked, “You don’t want another escort?”

“No.” The bull’s voice came filtered through the helmet PA.

“Okay.” The kid shrugged. “Take him to Praeger directly.”

But they didn’t go to Praeger’s office, They went to Russ’s. The guard unlocked the door with a card-key and said, “Inside.”

Russ went in, expecting to find Praeger there. But the office was empty. Except for an empty SA armored uniform draped over his chair—and a helmet sitting on the chair’s seat. Russ turned in confusion to the guard—and froze.

The guard had come in and closed the door behind him; had taken off his helmet. It was Faid. Grinning. “I’m sorry. You wanted the passes to get that other man out, right, mate, but I couldn’t leave you there. And anyway, this is what we decided to do.”

“Who’s we?”

“You sent a message to Kitty Torrence, what? She is contacting the NR. All the NR but one have been arrested, two hours ago. They are take our leader, Chu, bloody damn, because there is a message from some ruddy bastard on Earth. Everyone NR arrested but me.”

“You!”

“You would not have give me the cards if you knew I was in the Resistance, what?”

“I’m glad you didn’t tell me. So you went to the SA dorms, got a couple of spare suits… this one for me?”

“Yes, mate. There are two hundred technicki rebels waiting for you to tell them to move—they are not NR, but they are allies. This is through Kitty Torrence. She is talking to everyone about the RM17, don’t you know. Everyone, they are angry. And yes, suit is for you. A good idea or not one?”

“A good one.”

Praeger, Judith Van Kips, and Dr. Tate were staring into a console screen, looking at diagrams. Probably of the LSS Computer housing. Praeger looked up in irritation as the two guards came into his office.

“Well, what do you want?” Praeger demanded. “Why didn’t you announce yourself on the…” He broke off as the taller of the two guards pointed a gun at him. A .357 autopistol.

“If you call anyone in here,” the taller guard said, “I’ll shoot you. I guarantee it.” He removed his helmet with his free hand. “Have you begun on Rimpler already, Praeger?” Russ asked. He tossed the helmet onto the table.

Praeger said, “This is very stupid, Russ.”

“Answer the question.”

“No. We have not.”

“Mighty pleased to hear it. Faid, take Praeger into that room there. Don’t let him say a word. If I give you the signal, or if it sounds like there’s trouble in here, you shoot him in the head. You understand?”

Faid nodded. He drew his gun and gestured with it.

Praeger’s face was flushed; his lips trembled with fury. But he walked stiffly into the next room. Faid followed and closed the door behind them.

Russ smiled easily at Judith Van Kips. She looked at him like an angry Barbie doll. Russ said, “You’re the new Security Chief, Van Kips. That’s what I hear.”