Christopher Nuttall - Picking Up the Pieces

“Way ahead of you,” Suki growled, spinning the jeep around and taken off like a bat out of hell. Behind us, the mob reached the gates and spread out around them, howling slogans into the air. Their words all seemed to merge into an eerie cry of CHILDREN, CHILDREN, sending shivers down my spine and chilling my very soul. There was little individuality left in the mob now, just howling animals. “Oh, hell.”

I saw them at the same moment she did; other rioters, running up to join the riot, or to try to suppress it. The entire situation seemed to have billowed way out of control — indeed, it had never been under my control. I keyed my earpiece, contacting the spaceport, and wasn’t entirely surprised to hear that the Svergie Government had asked for help. The riot seemed to have been carefully prepared; I remembered Frida’s comment about others in the Progressive Party trying to move against her, and I worried about it being intended as an attempt to unseat her. If that was the case…

“We’ll just have to deal with it when it comes,” I muttered, as Suki took us down the street fast enough to force oncoming rioters to jump out of the way. I’d thought I’d seen bad driving before, but Suki was treating the jeep as if it were a tank, complete with armoured covering. A handful of glass bottles smashed off our bullet-proof windows and shattered — it would take more than that to damage them — followed by more junk and debris. Behind us, someone had started a fire. I wondered about Molotov Cocktails for a second, and then pushed it out of my mind. I had to concentrate on staying alive.

“Boss, this is Robert,” my earpiece buzzed. The tone was sharp and very insistent. That didn’t mean good news. “Find somewhere safe to hide until we get the reinforcements into the city. There are riots breaking out all over. This is looking very bad…”

The jeep spun around a corner and right into a barricade someone had constructed across a side-street, barely wide enough to allow the jeep and a handful of other vehicles to pass. Suki snapped something in a language I didn’t recognise as men wearing dark clothes materialised around us and slashed at the tires, before pulling at the door and trying to open it. I drew my pistol and kicked it open, firing a single shot into the first man’s head. I saw him tumbling backwards and hoped that the others would see sense and run, but instead…

Suki grabbed my right arm and yanked it back, just as I fired a second shot, which ricocheted harmlessly into the distance. A moment later, one of the men knocked the pistol out of my hand and pulled me out of the car. I dimly realised that Suki had driven us right into a trap — on purpose — as I allowed him to pull me forward and kept coming, lifting my knee and kicking him right in the groin. He yelled and staggered, then collapsed as I slammed a fist into his throat. It had been too long since I’d fought for my life, but I’d drilled every day with Peter and the others on the spaceport. Part of me was almost enjoying it, somehow.

Muna had grabbed Suki’s neck and was making a valiant attempt to strangle her. I couldn’t remember how good Muna was as I lashed out at another man, who came at me with a club… which suggested that they wanted us alive. Not good. Anyone who wanted us alive probably had unpleasant plans for us. I snapped a punch right into his throat and sent him choking to the ground. I turned to face the next man, only to see that he was holding a stunner. I barely had a moment to catch my breath before he pulled the trigger and blue-white light sent me crashing to the ground.

I hate being stunned.

The UN, which invented the stunner in the first place, claimed that it put the target completely out for at least two hours — longer, depending on the target’s body mass, clothing and a handful of other factors — allowing the captor to transport the captive to safety. Like so much else, the UN’s claims are nonsense; I couldn’t move, or see, but I could still hear. I couldn’t feel, which was something of a relief — I’d hit the ground hard enough to hurt without the stunner’s effects — but I could definitely still hear. My mind shimmered in and out of awareness as they transported their two prisoners away from the ambush site. I could hear them talking.

“Good work,” someone said. There was a hint of a cough. “The mercenary and his whore in our hands.”

“She’s not a whore,” Suki said. I guessed that she meant Muna. She had betrayed us. The thought raced through my mind and refused to fade. She had betrayed us! “She’s one of his chief assistants; she handles logistics and other background work for him.”

“And a black-ass at that,” a second unfamiliar voice said. “Do we take her as well?”

“We’ve no choice,” the first voice said. He came closer and I heard his hands touching my uniform. I could hear the clink of handcuffs as he cuffed my hands behind my back. “Help me get them into the truck and search them for anything that might be dangerous. You, bitch; check the girl for anything that could be used to follow us.”

“Of course,” Suki said. I heard the annoyance in her tone and wondered if she had really realised what she was working for. They didn’t sound like honest and decent farmers to me. “I’ll do it at once, shall I?”

Sensation shimmered in and out as they dumped me in a vehicle and started the engine. The loud roar of the vehicle made it harder to listen for their voices, but I struggled enough to learn that the truck was designed to block all transmissions, preventing my radio or any other form of communications system from calling for help. I couldn’t blame them for the precaution, but I did wonder how they intended to get out of the city… and then remembered the riot. By the time the Quick Response Force arrived, they could be halfway across the city, or even heading out into the countryside. If they’d managed as much as they had, it wasn’t hard to believe that they had papers allowing them to leave the city without being inspected; hell, a careful drive would keep them away from all checkpoints. We hadn’t been so concerned with vehicles leaving the city.

An oversight I will rectify as soon as I get back to the spaceport , I promised myself angrily, trying to keep my mind off the betrayal. Suki had led us right into a trap, at considerable personal risk, which meant that she had worked for the farmers all along. That suggested a remarkable degree of forward planning — or, perhaps, collaboration. I had suspected that she belonged to the Progressives, not to the farmers, or anyone else. My suspicions hadn’t been focused enough.

Or had someone from the Progressives set us up ? I asked myself, as the vehicle drove onwards. I could feel the cold metal floor of the truck, and the tight cuffs around my wrists, but I still couldn’t see. It made sense, though; there were plenty of Progressives who were opposed to Frida’s program, the program I’d convinced her to create. They might have regarded me as the power behind the throne and sought to remove me and Frida in one blow. Without me, would Frida carry on the programs or would she seek to undo what we’d created? Without me, Ed would become Captain-General… and he barely knew Frida, or what we’d created. He’d have to get up to speed very quickly while fighting both sets of enemies; internal and external.