Homebound Sector, Haven System, Ariea, Kansa
Ron and Anabelle Parker had sloshed through the torrential rains of the previous night to make it back home. Their old farmhouse was for the most part watertight, though creaky. The white paint of the front porch was chipping off and the curtains were faded and musty, but it was home.
The sunlight came though the cloudy windows of the house’s second floor. The morning was clear, a sign of another warm autumn day. Ron was grateful for that as he sat on the edge of Anabelle’s bed.
His daughter turned fitfully in her sleep. He checked her forehead again, finding it hot underneath his fingers. Her fever gotten worse. The illness had found her the previous evening, in the midst of the cold fall rain.
Dammit. He should have known. He should have realized that she would get sick and not worried about the Amelia Kleinfelter and her son.
Anabelle took after her mother. She got sick easily, and struggled to recover. There had come a point when her mother had not recovered. A regular illness, the yearly flu, had killed her. In Kansa, such things were not always treatable.
Ron could only hope that Anabelle would recover on her own. He poured another dose of medicine for her, knowing it would only treat the symptoms, not the sickness itself. Still, when she woke, he didn’t want Anabelle to be miserable. He left the medicine with a note, and headed out to work the fields.
Ron could not afford to overreact to this illness. It would take time, but Anabelle would probably recover. She always did, though the memories of how he had lost his wife were difficult to suppress as he left the farmhouse and headed for the barn.
Bessie waited in there, and he walked over to her, boots crunching in the dirt. Contrary to the neighbors’ assumptions, Bessie was not the family cow. She was a military grade Rhino transport that Anabelle had elected to rename.
Formerly known as Rhino Five-Eight-Three of the Flagship Olympia, Ron had flown her off the flagship and turned himself into a renegade soldier several months ago. Bessie had stayed in the barn ever since, shielded from prying eyes and the elements. The barn’s old wooden structure had managed to ward off the monsoon-like rains of the night before.
Still, Ron only paid Bessie enough heed to acknowledge that the ship was still there and grabbed a cannister of gas, pouring it into the tank of the tractor that sat beside the transport ship. The pungent smell of fuel filled the air, but when the can was empty, Ron tossed it into the pile of similarly emptied cans in the corner, ignoring the noisy clatter. He secured his wide-brimmed work hat and climbed onto the old, rusty seat of the farming equipment.
Farming was their survival out here, and it was important to ensure that the crops were well taken care of. If the fields failed to yield, then they would go hungry. Life here was rougher than it was in more economically developed countries like Valkar.
The Parkers kept no livestock and traded fresh ears of corn for local milkman’s day-old leftovers. Ron hunted regularly in the shipyards for deer. The dense vegetation was an ideal habitat for them, and that was the only meat they could afford. Yesterday, his hunt had been a bust, but the guns he’d looted would sell for a handsome sum. It would be enough to get them through the coming winter.
The tractor lurched out of the dimly lit barn, its wheels uneven, and Ron fell into the melodic work of tending the crops. It was easy to let his mind wander a bit as he plowed alongside the shipyards’ artificial jungle. On the other side of that forsaken infrastructure lay the cabin where he’d left the Kleinfelters.
Ron had grown up in this region of Kansa, he knew that cabin belonged to the Gives family. Why was someone who was not related to them staying there? And why was the military after her? If she had fled there to hide from the allied fleet, Amelia could not have chosen a worse place, considering who owned that cabin and the surrounding land.
He spent a mundane day tending the crops, and then, before preparing dinner, went to go check on Anabelle again. He opened the door to her room carefully, expecting her to be asleep.
Instead, was seated by the window, looking out into the sunset with her favorite book in her lap. “Belle, you ought to be resting.”
She looked out to the fields, her blond hair catching the waning sunlight. “Are they coming after us?”
Ron could hear the fear in her voice. It was present as no more than a tremble. After months of running and hiding from men in uniforms, they frightened her. Yesterday’s encounter had only solidified her fear. Like her, he was worried that the Olympia’s men would come searching for them, but he doubted he had been recognized with his hat shading his face yesterday. It had been some time since VanHubert had last spoken with him. “We’re going to be just fine, Anabelle.”
But even as he said that, Ron wasn’t so sure. Anabelle’s health worried him. She was shivering, even in the warm evening light. “Come on, Belle, we’re having soup for dinner.” She would need to eat something to keep her strength.
The Parkers fell into their routine of normalcy: slurping down some warm soup, they greeted the milkman at the road and made their trade for yesterday’s milk. Ron read to her and did a quick math lesson, determined not to let her fall behind, though she did not attend school.
Come bed time, Anabelle looked much better. Reassured about her health, Ron turned out the lights, and went to bed, falling into a deep restful slumber.
The roar of dropships flying overhead woke him just before dawn. He jumped out of bed in his boxers and nightshirt, grabbed his shotgun, and took a defensive position inside Anabelle’s room.
He drew the curtains on all the windows, and they hunkered down against the far wall of the room, waiting for the throaty scream of the dropships’ atmospheric engines to silence.
Ron held onto Anabelle’s little hand, failing altogether to notice that it was still clammy and her fingers were strangely cold.
It took only a few minutes for the noise of the dropships to pass, but they hunkered against the wall for hours. Anabelle fell asleep and Ron kept a watchful guard.
Yet, the dreaded sound of soldiers bashing down the door of the house never came. Since the ships’ original pass, all he had heard was the birds happily chirping outside the window.
He gave it another hour, then proceeded carefully downstairs, sweeping the rooms of the house with his shotgun at the ready.
The farmhouse was perfectly undisturbed. Ron parted the curtains on the main floor, finding the yard untouched as well. The dropships had flown right by.
Ron headed back up the creaky stairs, never more certain that something was happening at that secluded cabin. “Stay here, Anabelle. I’m going to go find out what’s going on.”
Anabelle only nodded, wide-eyed and scared.
Ron grabbed the big black duffel he kept under her bed and unzipped the side pocket, pulling out two small, battery-operated radios. He handed one to his daughter, “Keep it on Channel Seven and call me if you need help.”
She nodded again, understanding. This was not the first time she had been handed a radio.
Ron hugged and kissed her, too distracted to notice her runny nose and puffy eyes, then slipped out of the farmhouse. He headed in the direction the Rhinos had, due south. It quickly brought him to the shipyards once again.
Shouldering his duffel, which was filled with equipment left over from his years in the service, he quickly scaled the fence and dropped into a cautious crouch on the other side. There, he paused to remove a black pistol, his military-issued side arm, from the duffel.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
His military training begged him to put on darker colors than his flannel, so he took that off and shoved it into his bag, pulling a black tactical vest on in its place.
As he moved through the shipyards, he checked around every bush and every stump that a hostile could hide behind. It took him hours at his careful pace to reach one of the loadbearing cranes on the far side of the shipyards.
Looking upwards, the metal structure stretched high into the sky, seeming to scrape the wispy clouds. He holstered the pistol and clipped the radio to his belt before pulling the climbing equipment from his bag.
He set to work scaling the crane as the heavy duffel dug into his shoulders. It took more than an hour to get halfway up, as he had to readjust his safety line as he went. The invasive vines and moss forced him to frequently switch to a different face of the tripod.
When he finally reached the platform on top of the crane, he stood hundreds of feet above the ground, secured only by a single safety line. Another crane’s platform lay thirty feet away. There were many of them within sight, each a stepping stone in the sky. A cool breeze made the structure below sway.
Ron slammed his bag down onto the platform, and clipped it onto the safety line, ensuring it would not fall away from him.
Unzipping the bag, he began to pull out weapon parts. He put the brushed black steel barrel onto the rifle’s frame and twisted it securely on. He added the flash cover and lastly the scope to the sniper rifle before putting down the stand and sliding the clip cartridge into place.
Ron slid down recoil-absorbent position dictated by military training like a cat readying to pounce. With the scope of his rifle, he could see for miles from this position and quickly located the trio of dropships that had flown overhead. They surrounded the cabin where he’d left Amelia.
As he studied their bulbous forms, another rumble sounded behind him, quickly growing into the familiar roar of a fourth Rhino ship. It flew alone, but came in from the same vector as the others, descending close enough that he read the ID painted onto the transport’s hull as its tailwinds tangles his hair.
The radar identification of the mothership was painted amidships. ‘UCSC-50,’ it read, denoting the Flagship Olympia. The Rhino transport’s own identification was painted closer to the nose: ‘RO-977.’ Ron recognized the number from his own troubled past. RO-977 was Admiral Reeter’s personal transport.
Pressing his eye back to the cylindrical scope of his rifle, Ron watched the gray dropship land on the patchy lawn beside the cabin. Admiral Reeter stepped off the transport while it was still venting gasses from its atmospheric entry.
Colonel VanHubert came to greet Reeter, his crooked nose ugly from even this great distance. They exchanged salutes, and Reeter shouted orders to the nearby Marines. On his command, a trio of men barged through the door of the cabin and dragged Amelia Kleinfelter out kicking and screaming. Her arms were pinned painfully behind her back, making it easy for Reeter to approach.
Amelia was screaming, cursing more likely, but Reeter took it calmly. Ron unclipped the radio from his belt and began clicking through the channels, hoping to catch some of what was playing out in front of the cabin.
The Marines and pilots were chattering on one channel, but then one channel over, someone was shouting desperately, “Help! Help! Someone help us!” The young voice was cracking, sobbing as he cried through the radio. “Please help! He’s got Mom!”
Ron abruptly recognized the voice. “Harrison!” He pushed the button to respond on that channel, “Harrison, this is Ron Parker. I need you to calm down and tell me exactly what is happening.” What the hell was Amelia tangled up in? What had Amelia done to attract Admiral Reeter’s attention?
“It’s Reeter!” Harrison sobbed. “He’s got Mom!”
“Harrison, this is important,” Ron told him, “I need to know why Reeter is after you.”
“I don’t know!” the young boy wailed, “He hasn’t left us alone since Dad died! It’s been even worse since Grandpa!” The sound of footsteps stomping and indistinct yelling came over the radio.
Ron looked back through his scope. Harrison was hauled out to stand beside his mother. One of the Marines, a boorish, ugly man, handed Harrison’s radio over to Reeter. It was an older device, but it remained very similar to the set Ron had. It would have been standard issue a decade or two ago and that little radio talkie would have been one of a set. But who had the other one?
Reeter threw the radio to the ground, and with several stomps, crushed it beneath his heel. He gave Harrison little more than a callous glance before returning his gaze to Amelia. Reeter grabbed her chin between his thick fingers.
Even from this distance, Ron could see the defiance in her eyes. Fully restrained, she could not push Reeter away, but her eyes were electric with hate and fear. Ron knew it would not last. Reeter took pride in the people he broke. He enjoyed the challenge.
Reeter held no shame in the way he touched Amelia, but when he went in to kiss her, she bashed her head into his, splitting his lip. The resulting punishment, which Reeter dealt with haste, left her nose bleeding. The next hour carried on in much the same way, and Ron was forced to look away, as his own hate for Reeter flared up.
His finger itched, ready to squeeze the trigger of his rifle with the crosshairs locked on Reeter’s prefect blond hair, but Ron couldn’t do it. At this distance, the risk of accidentally hitting someone else was too great. Not to mention that he and Anabelle could not afford to be on the top of the wanted list again. They were still barely managing to have a life here.
There was nothing he could do. Not for Amelia.
Reluctantly, Ron packed up his rifle. He repelled back down the crane, trying to forget everything he had just seen as he headed for home.
The sun was inching steadily across the sky as Ron crept cautiously back toward his property. When he reached the fence, he paused to take off his tactical vest and tie his flannel back around his waist. After months of running and hiding from it, the sight of the military equipment made Anabelle uncomfortable.
Ron jogged back across the crop fields, keeping low, but not terribly afraid. It was clear enough that the Olympia’s men had not come for them.
“I’m coming inside now, Anabelle,” he announced over the radio as he stepped onto the porch, not wanting to alarm her when the door creaked open.
She did not answer or make a sound when he entered the house. Ron climbed up the hardwood stairs, ready to explain that they were not in immediate danger, but when he opened the door at the end of the hallway, he found Anabelle slouched over in the corner, asleep.
The food wrappers beside her indicated that she had eaten, so he picked her up and carried her to the bed. The heat he felt coming off her skin spoke of illness. Her cheeks were flushed with fever.
Dammit. She hadn’t improved from the day before. Panicked about those dropships he hadn’t realized she was still sick.
Ron grabbed more water and any useful medicine he could find, then sat down in the chair next to her bed. When she woke, he gave her a dose of the fever medicine, but it did not seem to help. By the next morning, her fever was even worse. She would wake to eat, drink water and take medicine, but other than that slept. It was exactly how the doctors had described her mother’s final days.
He tended her for another few days, trying to keep calm, but it was clear that the medicines were not helping. He could almost feel her slipping away. She needed medical care, real treatment. The Kansa clinics could not help her. She needed more modern practices. She needed facilities like those of the allied fleet, whose medical practices there were decades beyond Kansa’s. They could help her. Ron was certain of that, but there was only one way to get Anabelle that treatment.
He had to surrender himself.
If he turned himself over for his crimes, then he could negotiate a plea deal for her treatment in custody. He had no other choice. He couldn’t stand by to watch his daughter die, no matter what cost he had to pay.
Ron Parker gathered his limp daughter in his arms and carried her to the barn. He opened the door to his stolen Rhino transport and buckled Anabelle into the passenger seat, reactivating the transport’s functions.
Bessie’s dusty engines flared to life, churning up the dust in the barn and sending the empty gas cans scattering everywhere. Ron grabbed the controls guided them carefully out of the open barn doors.
The engines had a whine to them, but Ron imagined that was typical for a ship that had gone months without maintenance. The engines ran, and that was all he needed for this short trip.
He flew by the cranes, watching the chains dance in the wind. The guards surrounding the cabin looked up in confusion when he sailed overhead. They had not been expecting another transport, and when he set the ship down by the cabin, they instantly raised their weapons.
Ignoring that, Ron Parker took his daughter into his arms, and hoped that this desperate action would be worth it. He opened the transport’s hatch and walked out, falling to his knees once he was a safe distance from the ship.
It was a sign of immediate surrender.
Colonel VanHubert sauntered over, a smirk on his rat-like face. “Well,” he smiled twistedly, “if it isn’t Sergeant Parker.”
Ron tensed as VanHubert towered over him. “Please,” he bowed his head in submission, “help Anabelle.” He knew the Olympia’s facilities could cure her. “Arrest me, do whatever you have to, but help her.”
VanHubert laughed coldly. “You came to us to beg for help? Did you forget that you stole from us? That you left us behind when you ran off on your crusade?” The amusement dropped instantly from the Colonel’s face, “Because I sure didn’t.”
VanHubert lashed out and kicked his former comrade’s head. He made contact with the left side of Ron’s face, then quickly spun landed another kick on the other side.
Ron took the punishment with a grunt. This was not the worst punishment he would receive. He knew that. Reeter would probably find a cattle prod an appropriate punishment for a farmer like him. But that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered to him was Anabelle.
“Please,” Ron begged, feeling blood drip down a new cut on his cheek. “She needs medical attention.”
“That’s unfortunate.” VanHubert said, signaling two Marines to come take position with their weapons aimed at Ron’s head.
It became all Ron Parker could do to hold his daughter in his arms and hope for a miracle as the clouds churned overhead.
He had no knowledge of the events transpiring off-world. It never occurred to him that today, for the first time in over a year, the Singularity was slated to return to the Homebound Sector.