Rebellion (Rebel Wars Book 1) Page 5

  Her father had a funny way with dealing with them. He would catch them and though he couldn’t bear the thought of killing them, he would sell them off to a criminal organization. The Slingers they were called, and boy did they definitely sling. Mud, shit, drugs, guns, whatever they could. They paid well for a good number of scunts to use in their extortion business. Nothing like providing the pest on the colony that only you could get rid of. Her mother probably preferred her dad to just kill them, but he did find a sort of amusement in being paid to make someone else take his problem. Her father was like that, always finding irony in situations that didn’t normally call for it.

  “..So truthfully all I’d have to do is install something that can communicate with your brain like the other parts do and you wouldn’t really have to deal with that damaged body anymore.” Andreya had said.

  Alice refocused and nodded.

  “Yeah, whatever you need. Listen, I gotta run. Just get it done.” Alice said.

  She was confused on two things: One she had no idea what the hell Andreya was talking about, and two why her father kept creeping into her mind. She was over 30 now and her father had died when she was twelve, there was no reason to dig up something that long buried. He was still with her, she liked to think. She always hoped that extra surge of insight or adrenaline was her father bringing her back from the brink. She knew he wouldn’t have appreciated her strapping on this suit of armor and killing others, but these guys weren’t harmless Scunts. He had died before the Corporation had established itself in Earth’s space. She was glad for that. He would never have approved of her ruthlessly gunning down her enemies, he would never have approved of his Earth government giving themselves away to a group of insane zealots. The only one he might have actually approved was Scott, her late husband, yet he was gone now too. She felt tears hit her face though she didn’t much notice if she felt sad. Her heart seemed steady and content, the sense of emotion dulled in her since Cal’s death. Maybe she was finally at that point where a person winds up after too much death, too much loss.

  The civilians fit in well with her crew and the trip was peaceful for the most part. A few fights broke out over territory and who was where first, but they were solved without incident. Hero had stepped up, he had been terrified when they’d engaged the transports in the bay and was rewarded by his work being done for him at that moment. Now his reward had faded and he had no choice but to step up or get stepped on. Running security was harder than he thought it would be as people simply do not like authority. He had checked his rifle in with Milly for safekeeping (who had decided she should start an inventory area to keep items that shouldn’t be walking around away from those who shouldn’t have them.) Hero visited Milly frequently to check on his rifle, though she was beginning to notice how his gazes dropped below her neckline often and he had noticed how she never broke eye contact with him. Frequently his awkward courtship of Milly would be interrupted by the boss asking where he was. This journey wasn’t going to be too much longer, but even if it was he’d never be satisfied with a few minutes a day talking to the youngest Tillman sister.

  On the eve of the day before they would arrive at the Tower, Alice called together a meeting of entire crew. They were sitting at almost 100 total rebels and she liked the look that they gave her as they gathered. She would never have imagined having a crew of 100 ad couldn’t picture it getting any bigger but their world was about to flourish and grow even further than before. Her eyes darted around the room and drank in every single face before her. There were many she’d barely talked to and couldn’t to learn about. There was Billy and Ryan Stewman, engineers who worked closely with Lisa, Frank and Jessica who trained hard with Hero in some old form of martial arts from Earth, and even Dalia, a librarian who had entire collections of books and recordings on her devices. She was certain beyond a reasonable doubt that every single one of them had an important role to play and she was simply the gardener growing their stories like seeds.

  They’d been able to scrape together some food from the rations and raw produce they had brought in order to forge the closest thing to a feast any of them had eaten in a long time. They’d found a working food cloning machine on the transport ship and opted to take it apart. Cloned food was cheap, renewable, and tasted like the real thing. However the process stripped something out of it for humans, something that seemed important but nobody was able to fully identify what it was. Corporation physiology allowed them to consume cloned food with side-effects but humans were not that fortunate. After a few meals of cloned food they would get sick and sometimes even fatally so. Andreya said she could find other uses for the rare tech that would be much more beneficial to them, and Alice agreed that the last she wanted was a ship full of sick people.

  Alice stood on a makeshift podium at the front of the mess-hall, wondering what it would be like to address the entire crew of a capital ship instead of a small transport. She smiled and raised her glass of water to the crowd who stood in silence awaiting her speech. She didn’t have a speech, but what she did have needed to be heard.

  “For those of you who accompanied me from the colony to those of you who survived the encounter in space, I welcome you as though you are my family. As many of you know, my own past is muddled thick with trespasses from the Corporation and its various methods of subduing us. Most of us are not from Earth, but remember stories of the 25th century and how we first established colonies. Our forefathers would have hated the idea that we would all be plunged into servitude of some other race and some other government, as many of us currently do.

  “We are the rebellion, we are dedicated to serving humanity in our collective goal of breaking free of their rule. They fear a calamity, but they should focus on what we are going to do and not on some far off apocalypse. As a society, we believe religion is something to be cherished and respected, but we do not make decisions for us or anyone else based on our beliefs. Their fear of this coming calamity is much like the fear our people had of judgement day, a day that never came. When we finally woke up and realized our ideologies were setting us apart, we stopped forcing them on others and claiming lives for our gods, and we made true peace. We blossomed from our humble, but dying Earth and settled the stars. When the Corporations came, our government fell in two years. They gave the keys to the universe to the overwhelming power of the Corporations and allowed them free reign of our people, of our resources, and our lives. The cowards in power today that still serve them will one day pay, but we must first strike and take them down.

  “Everyone in this room is welcome to join us, if you do not wish to you may gather your belongings and you will be transported to the planet or colony of your choosing. We hold no grudge, but know this: We stopped your transport. You were being sent to a colony they believe will be among the first destroyed in the calamity, they had given you a death sentence. We have given you a new life, may your life be blessed as your own and may you make the choice that you truly feel.”

  Brief applause followed by whispers and low-spoken words. Alice sat down and looked at the plate of food that she’d been given. Traditional meat and vegetables had never gone out of style, many chefs from Earth feared that new, exotic foods would replace them. She cut her slender steak with a knife and checked the cook: medium rare, just as she loved it. The meat was tender and the seasoning perfect, a mixture of salt and herbs spiced with a rare flower that grew on one of the few planets Earth had claimed in its galactic expansion. She savored every bite before moving to the brownish “colony” potatoes that they’d grown before they left. The soil turned the starch darker than usual but the flavor had remained earthy and hearty. Nobody spoke to her as they participated in the feast it had been and would be a long while before they could eat like that again.

  Hero sat at a table at the end of the room, his long rifle perched against the steel of the collapsible surface. He admired the weapon’s shine and routinely cleaned it. He had never really thought of himself as a soldier,
surprised at his progress in all of the various combat sims he’d gone through. He remembered how Cal used to laugh before a fight and continued to laugh until the last blow had landed. Cal was a beast with his sword, yet Hero could never bring himself to pick one of the edged weapons up. He remembered when he cut himself by accident with a butcher’s knife, the sound of serrated flesh a distinct trigger in his mind. He never wanted to do that to someone else, though he’d never been shot and the idea of throwing a slug through someone’s chest didn’t carry the same moral dilemma with him. He felt a gunshot was far less personal, and he wanted to be as far from that guilt as possible. War was war, and if he could squeeze a trigger and stop another good man like Cal from going down to a remorseless Corporation thug, then he would happily pull it.

  Hero’s mind was far from the present as he was staring down at the reflective surface of his heavily modified weapon, chewing over the meat and potatoes he’d forked into his mouth. He didn’t notice the lithe figure of Milly approach and place her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t jump, his simulations having taught him to feel and show surprise are two different things, but the hairs on his neck did try to free themselves from their perch. His eyes darted up quickly, her cheerful smile and bald head looking down at him with a plate held carefully in her other hand.

  “Hey. Can I sit with you?” Milly said.

  “Absolutely. You take care of my weapon, so we’re friends right?” He said, giving a shy little smile behind the burning of his cheeks. They always burned when she was around and he couldn’t ever quite place what about her just made his day whenever she was around. He nudged the weapon to the side and pulled a chair over and offered it to her. His buddies often asked if her baldness bothered him, and he couldn’t answer why it didn’t. It just was what it was. His mother had been the same way with her choice of mates. His father had been missing a leg since before they met, and she never let it bother her. Maybe it was just in his blood to love blindly, if this was love.

  “This is delicious. I can’t believe she let us all have steak!” Milly beamed.

  “Yeah, the meat reserves are running low, she’s confident we’ll resupply at the Tower though. You ever been to the Tower?” He asked.

  “Yes, lots of times.” Milly said.

  “Really?” He replied.

  “Duh….I was born there. My sisters were too. The Tower was the seat of the original Earth government before they moved it off the Despar. Despar is a nice planet, but I like the view the tower offers over the moons. There are 12 moons around the Tower you know.” She said.

  “Yeah, I’d heard that. I dunno, I was born and raised on the colony so this whole space thing is new to me. I mean, I’ve been into the black a few times, but nothing like this.”

  “It’s a lot of fun. The tower has a lot of technological advances that we don’t have on the colony and I think you’ll like it. Maybe when we’re there I can introduce you to our folks and show you the Birthplace of Stars!” Milly said, smiling all the while.

  Hero had heard of the Birthplace of Stars, a massive forge built into a series of conjoined asteroids. It was called that because the founders believed they could forge stars there if they applied themselves. They’d come closer than they could have realized at the time. Advanced technology and artificial intelligence dotted every nook and cranny of the BoS and had it operating in peak condition. Human designers worked with AI to break every rule they’d every learned and enhance their understanding of the universe through technology. It was no wonder the Tillman sisters were so wonderfully intelligent, they had studied there since birth. It was even rumored that they were not really people at all, but artificial intelligence given human form. It made sense to anyone who saw them work, but Hero couldn’t see anything but raw human intellect and beauty in the woman before him.

  “I would love. Isn’t that where Alice had her apparatus made?” He asked.

  She nodded while working down a mouthful of food, never dropping her charming smile. She couldn’t help but wonder what Hero was thinking every time he talked to her. His face always turned this adorable reddish color and she’d never seen a guy’s face do that by a simple conversation. She hoped that he wasn’t developing some sort of attraction to her! She had never had a crush on anyone or felt romantically attracted to another human, but she had to admit she did feel a bit different when he was around. She felt frustrated because he made her feel like she’d made some new breakthrough every time he was around, and she hadn’t. He made her feel like gravity had turned off and she could float freely, and this was not something she expected. She was not a control freak like her sisters were and yet she still liked to have mastery over whatever situation she was in. She had brought herself over to sit with him because the sight of him sitting alone frustrated her even more than the feelings of being around him did.

  The potential couple sat together eating in silence for a while, it wasn’t long before they said their goodnights and headed off to their individual stations. Hero’s was the control room with all the flashing lights and closed camera systems, and hers was the laboratory with all of the volatile machinations her and sisters were constantly tinkering with. Milly sat down at her desk and looked at the console in front of her, the plans on display were rotating in a fashion she found odd. Clicking through the various pages on the screen before her, she found why it was moving in such an odd fashion and moved to fix it. It was then and only then that she noticed the pang in her chest and that she had not stopped thinking about Hero since she’d left the dinner table.

  “Ah shit.” She said.

  Chapter 7

  Fluorescent lights were not things that brought joy to the heart of someone like Alice, though nothing seemed to do that as of recent days. She hated the way it was light lying about being real light, as it was more of an illusion than the natural sunlight she grew up in. Some people admired cats for being able to sleep all day or dogs for being able to run for hours and never get bored. Alice admired plants. They could eat from the sun and drink from the earth and they never had to do stupid things like fall in love or fight a war against some totalitarian space cult who just happened to reach space a few millennia before they did. The Corporation had gained a huge advantage by having shorter lives than humans. They didn’t believe in extended recreation, drinking alcohol, or getting dizzy off of smoking plants. They accomplished more in 40 years than humans did in 100. The entire concept was insane to her, but screw them. They were about to get shown what it was that humans did best, and that was war.

  Earth’s history was well kept and documented and everyone from Attila the Hun to Donald J. Trump were included in the books that described how to be effective (or ineffective in some cases) in the art of war. Entire religions and philosophies developed from the need of conflict and Alice was the result of that line of thinking having reached space and being given technology that would make her one of the greatest fighters in the history of the human race. And she wasn’t even that special.

  Fluorescent lights filled her vision as her entourage walked through the steel-laden halls. The metal had become easy to fabricate and the structural support it provided was still useful even after Earth had become history to most humans. She felt the apparatus start its daily routine of stimulating her nerves, muscles, and tendons. The soothing vibrations washed over her and her mind lightened up a bit, it was hard to be upset when her treatments felt this good. She was entering the Tower with her friends, headed towards the Councilor’s office. The Councilor was a man named Robert Tate, a good man if not one of the best. His tactical mind and political strategy had won him control of many colonies before the government had sold them out. He had voted against it and when the Corporation tried to have him assassinated, he had slipped away and established the Tower. It was hidden, but not hidden enough. The Corporation knew without a sense of doubt where he was the, yet he had outmaneuvered them with enough political support and powerful ships that they weren’t confident enough to eng
age him yet. They could outgun him over time, but an open assault on such a loved man (even if he was a dirty rebellious traitor) would only martyr him. The Corporation were used to having their people die and held less attachment to it than humans did. But a longer life meant deeper attachments.

  The steel hallway offered nothing visually stimulating to occupy her senses and instead allowed her mind a brief chance to wander. They approached a heavy set that sank into the earth to let them through. She’d brought with her Hero and his personal deterrent from attack, as well as Andreya and Milly. Lisa had protested to being left behind, but she was promised leave later. She kept saying something about Andreya’s project that Alice had requested and needing to use the Birthplace Forge for it, but Alice had no idea what she had been talking about. Behind the four of them came Hero’s squire, a young woman named Fiora. Fiora had always been a fan of Cal and the Paladins and had provided information about their fighting style and armor that Hero found useful. She was much too curvy to wear the armor herself as womanhood had it her strong from an early age and it made it quite difficult to get the armor to adjust to her sensual form. Every time she was with Hero alone, Milly felt discomfort that she assumed must be what jealousy felt like. It was impossible for most of the men aboard the Stormbreaker to look Fiora in the eyes or not turn their heads to watch her leave a room, so why was it such a far-fetched thought that Hero had the same viewpoint? He was much closer to her and spent much more time with her than she did.