“Brace for landing! You’ve gotta hit that jungle floor running!”
“Aye, sir!”
“Touchdown,” said the pilot, “In three…two…one…”
#
“How goes it, boys?”
Huston looked at the two transparent blue heads that hovered above his holo-projector. Zeke’s hair was still in a mullet, but had at least finally been washed and combed. Joe’s ball cap had been turned around with the visor facing behind him. Both wore serious expressions and noises could be heard in the background.
“Kai’s speech seems t’ve done th’job, boss,” Said Zeke. “We’re getting more resistance from the doorlocks than from any guards, soldiers or gendarmes.”
“Good to hear. Joe?”
“We landed the prisoner transport on the roof of the police station, and the gendarmes were pretty surprised when our troops piled out instead of the first batch of political prisoners. Only one of’em drew on us, but thankfully a sniper popped him in the leg, and the kid’s gonna live to see another day.”
“Theo?” said Houston. That name had been popping up more and more lately, as their victories increased. In fact, just about every victory they had lately sported the names of either Theo behind the gun or his buddy Bill on the ground.
“The one and only, sir. I’d like to recommend him for a medal once this is over.”
“We’ll do that, but it’s been so long since we’ve had a fight of any kind we may have to design a new batch for folks fighting a guerilla war like ours. THink you might be up to go back to some artsy work for a change, Austin?” Houston yelled over to his brother, who was sitting at his monitor.
Austin appeared not to have heard anything. His eyes were wide, his mouth was slightly open and his breathing was coming in short gulps.
Houston looked at his brother for a second and swallowed. “Uh- okay, Zeke, Joe? Keep pushing. Unless bullets are flying around your heads, I want texted status reports every ten minutes from the both of you. Goal is to have the police station and its weapons cache in a half-hour, and my home take back within the hour.”
“Rodeo, boss,” Zeke and Joe said at the same time, just before their heads blinked out.
“Austin?” Houston said quietly. “Austin!”
“Wha? Oh, yeah. What?”
“We’re fighting a little war here? I need focused here, mister leader-of-the-armed-forces! What’s got your attention so captivated that you’re not hearing what I’m saying ten feet away from you?”
“Come here, leader of the colony, and look at this. You need to see it and start making some decisions.”
“Austin,” Huston sighed with an exasperated air, standing up and striding over to his brother’s monitor, “Bad enough you insist on tech that’s been outdated since they were using phone cords, but now you’re making me use the same…”
Stolen story; please report.
Houston suddenly went quiet when he saw the monitor. Austin tied back all his locks of hair into a hastily arranged ponytail, looked up at Houston, and then back at his monitor when he saw Houston’s face now looked as serious as his own.
“Here,” Austin said, pointing his finger on the screen “and here.”
“Two?” Houston said. “How long have you known about this?”
“Less than five minutes. I first intercepted a bit of chatter with your ‘bot less than a half-hour ago, right after Kai made his speech. I did a bit of digging, called in a favor through subspace mail, and found them.”
“How long do we have?”
“A week at most. More likely three to four days.”
“Dear God in Heaven,” Houston said, looking more closely at the monitor.
#
“FAI!” Moreded screamed at his wrist, “Fai! Where are you!”
“I’m here, Prime Auth-”
“What do I do, Fai? What do I do?”
“I’m not designed to respond to that query, Prime Authority. Can you be more specific?”
Moreded was pacing his floor in the darkness as the sounds of booted feet sounded outside and on floors above and below. “Fai, the lights are out, there’s a mob in the street, I think my home has been breeched, I can’t get my guards to answer me, and - gods know what else! What do I do, Fai?I”
“I am not privileged to have a strategic subroutine installed in my code, Prime Authority, However, generally a leader who is out of options usually sees surrender as a viable-”
“How far away are my relatives, Fai?”
“If you are referring to the five illegitimate half-siblings and cousins that I was able to locate for you, they are all at various stages of their journey here. The closest is two weeks away by jump-ship, while…”
“Blast!” Moreded said, cutting her off and fruitlessly hitting the keys on his inert keyboard in front of his darkened monitor, then running ot his desk and frantically digging through the drawer. “How could this get any worse?”
“Prime Authority, was that a genuine, or a rhetorical question?”
Moreded paused in his ravings for a second, and then raised himself to a standing position.
The pistol he’d found in the drawer was in his right hand.
“What was that, Fai?” he whispered over the shouting that had started in his hallway that had begun to get louder.
“Did you seek an answer to your question, Prime Authority, or do you already know how things could get worse?”
“Tell me, Fai.”
Fai’s voice continued to speak in a calm and measured tone as Moreded looked at the starchart that appeared on the tiny screen wrapped around his wrist. Several other small, vector-drawn graphics appeared, with lines, names and logos above them that chilled Moreded and made him want to vomit in fear.
“That, Prime Authority Moreded, is how things could be worse.”
“When will this happen, Fai?”
“They will arrive within the week, Prime Authority-”
“VISCOUNT MOREDED,” yelled a voice outside his door. Its accent was thick with the ‘twang’ of the farmer class outside of the city. “This is the gendarmes, Viscount! The real ones, not the scared kids y’all put in uniforms three floors up! Surrender now, or we blow the door and you along with it!”
“I…” Moreded said, his voice suddenly small and weak. “I…”
“Count ‘o three, Moreded,” said the voice at the door, One…”
“I- I can’t…”
“Two…”
“What do I-”
“THREE!”
Moreded raised his pistol as the door blew open, and fired.
#
TO BE CONTINUED...