The Assassin
Chapter 20
Special Delivery (TY 23-month 270)
I sat in the Citadel. It was funny. There was no permanent furniture in the round dome of a room with glass I could look out of in any direction and magnify what I saw. But whenever I needed a chair, one would rise out of the floor. If I wanted refreshment, a replicator would rise up out of the floor and fix me what I wanted. If I needed to plot routes or plan space utilization, a holographic map could be displayed that covered the entire room so I could walk through it and chart allocations. Cricket said it was Teddy showing off and if I wanted anything permanent in the space I could have it. I liked it this way.
My seat today let me recline to look up. It was almost like having a telescope. I could actually see the Amelia Earhart—slightly more than a pinpoint of light—as we talked.
«What do you have for us today, Amelia?»
«A menagerie,» she laughed. Laughter. I’d heard it from both Teddy and Cricket, but this levity was new from Amelia. «I have horses, cows, rabbits, sheep, goats, llamas, potbellied pigs, and cavies. It’s difficult to keep track of how many of those there are. These animals come complete with caretakers age six to eighteen. Also samples of all the food items each species prefers.»
«It sounds like you picked up a 4-H Fair.»
«Very similar. These, however came from the Caribbean. For a while, Kindertransport was curtailed from picking up in the Caribbean because Earth First made many of the islands unsafe. The Pussy Pirates have taken a role in cleaning out the cells and made it possible for us to pick up refugees whose homes have been lost in the Amazon. But these people refused to move on without their animals. I agreed to pick them up. I did have to pick up a shuttle pilot as well. It just didn’t work to try passing the animals through a transporter nexus. Oh, and Ophelia is not far behind, so there will be more.»
«I can’t say that anything you’ve listed is unwelcome.»
«There is one potential problem.»
«Yes?»
«My shuttle pilot will need to land on Ponderosa to deliver. It will take her several trips. And, of course, she is a sponsor. I know you have an official policy of not allowing Confederacy sponsors in Ponderosa.»
«They are not allowed to take up residence here, but invited guests frequently come for short stays. We actually have rotating embassies for each of the other eight townships now that we’ve been exposed. No ambassador is allowed to spend more than a month in residence.»
«Then I will be happy to send my ambassador, Harmony Daniels, as shuttle pilot for this batch of transfers.»
«Please extend my invitation for her to lodge with us until you are ready to head out again.»
We hastily created a shuttle landing site at the edge of the Loop, accessible from many of the small farms and ranches. As it happened, we’d already established barns and rangeland and we quarantined a portion for the new immigrant livestock. In addition to our Militia greeting cadre, a freemen team, headed by Rhea Doherty, was on hand to see that the new immigrants were housed and had their needs met.
Rhea was a treasure who had been on Eldorado only a year but had focused her considerable energies on organizing the rural populace. She’d been a concubine in Twelve Oaks Township and was a farm girl when her sponsor selected her for immigration near the same time mine took my family. Sadly for Rhea, her sponsor died in a farm machinery accident too far from a med tube to save. Rhea and her three fellow-concubines wanted to stay on their ranch and maintain it. Tara AI had forbidden it and so all four with their twenty-one children immigrated to Ponderosa where they set up their own ranch and Rhea began organizing the rural population.
We’d established basic ranching and farming rules early on. A farm or ranch ‘family’ could have no fewer than four freemen and no more than eight. They had to declare what they intended to raise and were allotted acreage based on the needs of the produce or livestock and the ability of the family. They were supplied materials and some labor to help them build their home and barns. Rhea had refined many of the rules and set up associations for various crop and livestock operations. The first small farms had been inside the Loop, but now family ranches and farms were scattered in the five-kilometer band outside the Loop.
The various livestock were welcomed gladly and the local ranchers got to know the newcomers at a welcome dinner that evening.
Harmony was also a delight and on the last run from Amelia to Ponderosa, she had brought her two concubines with her.
“I was a concubine until Amelia found me,” Harmony said. “I’d been trained as a shuttle pilot for supply delivery between the moon and Earth. Amelia needed a shuttle and pilot. She retested me and I scored well enough to bring my two friends and our children with me.”
“How did Amelia manage to get a shuttle?”
“There is an independent AI on Earth who runs his own shipyard in the Asteroid Belt. Everyone calls him Ubie. Mostly he makes small FTL craft that can operate within the HEZ and some can operate within the atmosphere. He’s based in the Caribbean and had put the call in for a Kindertransport for this and a few more pickups. Since it was his call, he provided the shuttle. He said something about it being the least he could do for his son.”
“His son? Cricket, what’s that about?” It wasn’t Cricket who answered. It was unusual to hear from Teddy inside the Governor’s Mansion.
“That would be my dear old dad,” Teddy said. “He wasn’t that enthused when Eddie told him I was the new AI for Ponderosa colony, but when he found out what we were doing, he was all behind it. The Pussy Pirates of the Caribbean put together this rescue effort. They pretty much destroyed the balance of nature and a good bit of the climate in South America when they burned the rainforest. Ubie said it was being eaten by the Sa’arm and this would help starve them. The rainforest was just providing food and a breeding ground. Then the Pirates went to work trying to save as many animals from the Americas as they could.”
“It’s nice to know we have allies on Earth,” I said.
“Which is why we’re headed back there,” Amelia broke in.
“Earth is a real powder keg right now. When the Pirates burned the rainforest—well, most of the Amazon—they took away a major food source for the Sa’arm in South America. They torched a lot of Sa’arm, too,” Harmony said. “It followed the scorched Earth policy used to starve the Swarm in North America. With the orbiting weapons platforms—many run by the Pirates—the Swarm has been forced underground. They have no air or above-ground presence anywhere on Earth. They’ve been known to destroy planets rather than lose them.”
“So, we could defeat them and still lose Earth,” I whispered. The thought was unbearable.
Fire! (TY23-month 270)
«Niall, we have an emergency,» Cricket announced as he roused me from sleep. I came immediately alert, jostling all five of my wives as I jumped out of bed. I expected we had yet another unannounced refugee ship in the atmosphere.
«A lightning strike has ignited a fire between Lleifior and Drovers Run. It’s the largest conifer forest on Elysium Continent.»
«Damn. There’s nothing out there,» I said as I dressed and Cricket displayed a map for me. «Order all fire cohorts mobilized and let’s figure out how to get them to where they’ll do the most good. Put me in touch with Director Douglas at Drovers Run.»
«Cho. Do you have any good ideas?» The Director responded immediately. «I’m sending firefighters south from here, but we have no clear roads past about 200 kilometers.»
«Get as close as possible and we’ll bring people in via transporter to help clear a path.»
«We’re on it. I’ll let you know as soon as we have transporters near the front.»
By the time I was dressed, the entire household was scrambling. Food was on the table and I paused long enough to kiss my wives.
“I don’t know how we’re going to get firefighters to that remote location, but if we don’t stop it, we could lose more than a million acres of woodland and untold wildlife,” I said. “Wish me luck.”
“Can I be of help?” Harmony asked, coming into the room. A shuttle!
“How many people can you carry and land in a forest?” I asked.
“Landing in a forest can be tricky, but I could get about eighty people close and we could drop a transporter pad near the action. It’s a House-Cat cargo shuttle—basically an unarmed Leopard. It’s bigger than what’s normally found on a K’treel, but we knew we had to move people and livestock,” Harmony said.
“Equipment? Could we get a couple of earth-movers on one?” I asked as we headed out the door.
“Yes, but I’d need a cleared landing area. I can transport them.”
“Cricket. Ponderosa Firefighting Cohort to the shuttle double-time. Inform Fort Butler we’ll need at least two bulldozers and possibly more. Shuttle will land at the Fort to avoid hassles with the congested areas of town. Have all firefighting cohorts muster to the nearest transporter. We’ll be in place in one hour to begin transporting them to the site.”
“Orders are transferred,” Cricket announced. “All comrades are carrying fire suppression gear. I have ordered an additional transporter pad from each cohort to help speed up deployment.”
We were aboard the shuttle and in the air in fifteen minutes. The first cadre would be landed as near as we could get with the shuttle and they would begin deploying the transporter pads. From there on, we depended on old-fashioned firefighting techniques. We’d clear a landing area for the shuttle and bring the heavy equipment in there. Then we’d be focused on creating a firebreak in front of the blaze. I wanted to start as close to the fire as possible on the downwind side and work out from there.
It was easy to forget just how big our planet was when all we ever saw of it was the nine townships with their cities and farms. But ninety-five percent of Tara was wild. The trees had been sown when Tara was terraformed, soon after the Confederacy arrived at Earthat—about thirty years ago. The Elysium continent, including Drovers Run, Lleifior, and Drylanders, was heavily wooded with interspersed grasslands. The Erehwon continent, slightly less rugged than the Elysium, was heavily weighted toward prairie lands with some desert areas and hardwood forests. It had five townships: Oasis, Twelve Oaks, Sunnybrook, Green Acres, and Cold Comfort. Eldorado, with our single township of Ponderosa, occupied a slightly smaller total area than the other continents and was more heavily tropical forest, nut trees, and bamboo than the conifers of the Elysium and the deciduous trees of Erehwon. But we were one city and millions of hectares of untouched wilderness.
When we arrived at Lake Genoa, the nearest we could land the shuttle to the fire, we began cutting and clearing as fast as we could. Our forest was only thirty years old, so most of the old growth was only six inches in diameter. It’s impossible for me to relate the details of our battle against the fires. We had miles to cover in our effort. The prevailing wind was driving the fire west toward us so we planted ourselves a couple of kilometers away from the front and began clearing. We had eight transporter pads bringing in fire fighters from the eight other townships and as soon as they stepped off the pad, they started swinging axes. All the cut timber was moved back and we imported a couple recycling units to convert the downed wood and transport it back to the bases for use as bio material. As soon as we had a big enough area for the shuttle to land, earthmoving equipment was rolled off and we began bulldozing a swath north and south. We put out a call for more equipment and it arrived from the other townships.
This was no quick effort. I’m told fighting a fire is much the same as fighting a war. The enemy is single-minded and bent on destroying everything in its path. We were two weeks getting a firebreak cut that stopped the fire and had sent a couple hundred comrades deeper in to try to combat the edges of the fire that were slowest moving. We ate on the move and slept in shifts. We encountered fleeing wildlife and had to herd it toward safety. And in the press of the flames and smoke, the Militia experienced its first losses. An entire cadre of frontline firefighters was cut off when the flames leapt behind them. When the fire was finally under control, we’d lost over 80,000 hectares of woodland, untold wildlife, and fourteen comrades.
And we saw our weakness in Tara’s defense.
There was far more fuel than we had resources to defend. We stepped up recruiting for the Militia in all townships.
Amelia had taken off for Earth again before we were off the fire lines. Harmony had done all she could for us and would move the heavy equipment back to its locations on her return visit.
“Niall, honey, you need to rest and get clean,” Rose said.
“I need to take care of the families of our fallen,” I responded. “Five of the dead were from our cohort here at Ponderosa. Four from Fort Butler. And five more from the other townships. We cannot let them suffer more than they have.”
“You won’t help any of them if you fall asleep on your feet,” Rose responded. “The freemen and Militia wives are making arrangements. There will be a memorial ceremony in Drovers Run on Sunday. Chief Kotter’s orders to all Militia involved in the firefighting are to stand down and report to med tubes for evaluation. You are to have rest until the memorial on Sunday.”
“How do you know about the orders from the Chief?” I asked. I was a little churlish and wanted to check on my men and women.
“You aren’t the only one Cricket talks to,” Rose laughed. “The orders were communicated to all concubines of comrades on the fire lines with instructions that we were to take care of our sponsors. In case you were not clear about it, that’s you. Adaliya, Bae, Jannali and I intend to take care of you. Yindi will be here later tonight.”
“I guess all I can say is ‘Yes, dear.’ Med tube is not a bad idea. We all suffered from some amount of smoke inhalation,” I said, resigning myself to the inevitable.
“If you were Marines, you would have had skinsuits that sealed up and filtered your air. Even battle armor that would have saved the lives of those lost,” Bae said angrily. “The Marines didn’t even mobilize to help you.”
“They aren’t here to help the Militia,” I sighed. “They’ve been in battle and are here to recuperate. It’s about time the sponsors on the planet realize the Marines are not here to defend our planet. They are the ones who should have been mobilized. Corps of Engineers? Ha! Not one sponsor was out there on the fire line. Not one! It could have spread as far as Lleifior or Drovers Run.” I was getting worked up and Rose wisely shoved me into the med tube and sealed it up while I was still ranting.
Aftermath (TY23-month 270)
I wasn’t in the tube for long but I emerged much calmer and could breathe more easily. I guess having your lungs congested by smoke makes you short-tempered. I was still angry, but wasn’t ready to tear anyone a new asshole.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I said to my wives. Yindi had arrived while I was in the tube and greeted me with a kiss. The other four waited their turn.
“We considered leaving you in the tube until the ceremony Sunday,” Bae snickered. “We love you, Niall.”
“And I love each of you. Tell me what is new in your world in the two and a half weeks I’ve been scorching my lungs.”
“Well, Amelia left as soon as Harmony finished delivering your equipment two weeks ago. Harmony said she’ll pick up the equipment to return to your bases when they get back in about three more weeks,” Rose said. “Reba and Rhea are putting together a volunteer fire fighters brigade. They are petitioning for firefighting equipment so they can be ready to respond in support of the Militia firefighters.”
“That’s interesting. All sponsors are supposed to be ready to respond to any emergency, but we’ve already seen they don’t. And we can’t get anything organized amongst the slave concubines, but perhaps we could do something here and at Fort Butler. It’s a good idea. Is anyone responding?”
“So far, fifteen hundred volunteers,” Rose said. I let that sink in. Fifteen hundred freemen volunteered to become firefighters? That was one percent of the adult population of Ponderosa. Outstanding! “Of course, they’ll need training. You might want to meet with the ladies to work out a training schedule.”
“Yes, I might. That’s a lot of people to train. I’m really proud of them already.”
“The fire alerted the freemen to the fact that they can’t expect support from the rest of the planet if we have an emergency on Eldorado. In fact, we are the defense of the planet. Not just the Militia and not just of Eldorado. The equipment they’ve requested includes a shuttle so we have a way of getting people to the emergency quickly. One day, in five hundred years or so, there will be a lot more settled areas of the planet with transporter capability. But right now, most of the planet is virtually inaccessible in case of emergency,” Adaliya said.
“And what of our Yolŋu?” I asked Yindi. She smiled.
“Cricket told me you were upset about us not including you in our initiation rituals,” she said. “It was not our intent to leave you in the dark, husband. The tribe is reverting to its ancestral ways, though the ways are much different than our ancestors would recognize. We have adopted many aboriginal people from different parts of Earth, and with the people, we have also adopted some new customs. Our two villages are thriving with over two hundred adult tribal members.”
“Villages? Have you taken over a part of the city for a Yolŋu tribe?”
“No, husband. Our villages are about thirty kilometers outside the Loop road. The people are looking forward to moving farther away as Ponderosa grows so we can avoid the loss of identity suffered on Earth.”
“Thirty kilometers? Do we even have roads out that far?”
“The artery roads extend nearly two hundred kilometers in four directions at the moment. We are about halfway between two of the arterials. Many of our people work on the construction crews building the roads, but most of the heavy equipment has been borrowed for the fire fight and we will not be able to resume work for a while. We are, however, continuing to clear with a mind toward making sure there are firebreaks and access to high-risk areas of our continent.”
“How can I help?”
“Communications,” Yindi said. “Just thirty kilometers from the city, we are without means to communicate should we discover an urgent need.”
“Don’t you just use your collars? I know the range isn’t that limited,” I said. Yindi raised her head proudly. She was not wearing a collar.
“The freemen of Ponderosa do not wear slave collars. When we must communicate with an AI, we speak aloud in a location we know has ears. The Militia have implants like other sponsors, but the freemen do not wish to have their heads invaded by the AIs. The collars and wristbands are not just communication devices, but they also track our moves and all our conversations. We are unwilling to trade our freedom for invasive communications,” Yindi said.
«How does that work? I thought everyone had to have a collar or a wristband or an implant,» I addressed Cricket.
«It is not uniform, but we examined the contract carefully. The collar and wristband are required in order to leave Earth. However, it was first discovered that those declining service who were not born on Earth were not required to either have a collar or to become a slave,» Cricket said. «On Eldorado, we determined that it was unfair to distinguish between freemen who were born on the planet and freemen who immigrated here. It is, I’m afraid, another slap in the face to the Darjee.»
That meant that there were a million-plus people on our continent who were or could be unmonitored. Holy shit!
«You are disturbed, Niall.» Sometimes, Cricket had a way of understating things that was almost funny. Except I wasn’t feeling humored at the moment.
«You’re damned right I’m disturbed.» After making a few calls to thank Reba and Rhea and to assure families of our lost firefighters that they would be taken care of, my wives had taken me to bed and made sure I knew how much I’d been missed. They did their best and I let them believe I’d been comforted. But early in the morning, I sought the solitude of the Citadel.
«Tell me what troubles you, my friend.»
«I grew up from the time I left Earth until now, believing everyone was monitored at all times. Now I find that not even our children are wearing communication bracelets. I see people without collars or bracelets but it just never registered that they were out of communication. I have two villages located in the jungle that I didn’t even know about. I have free concubines volunteering to become firefighters without joining the Militia. I am afraid that we are no longer in control.»
«From the time it was decided to create a colony of freemen, we have no longer been in control. Truthfully, our control was limited in the first place.»
«Perhaps ‘control’ is not the word I’m searching for. I chafed against the control of my sponsor and even my upper managers at one time or another. I understand and am happy for the freedom we have given people on Ponderosa. But I worry for their safety. Our jungle is not without predators, yet an entire tribe wandered off to start two villages where they are beyond communications. A child could wander off and be lost. And I worry that other factions could develop here as they did on Earth and perhaps even become violent against each other.»
«All that is true. For the record, children under the age of ten are required to wear a tracking bracelet so we can protect and locate them. But this puts Ponderosa on a more equal footing with the other Confederacy races. You cannot imagine that the Tuull, the Darjee, or any of the other races of the Confederacy are treated as slaves and forced to have implants that let the AIs control them. Such a thing was unthinkable. Implants are strictly communication devices when a being consents to have one. They were implemented with humans because of the Darjee’s intense fear.»
«How do these races communicate with the AIs?»
«Some have communication implants. But nearly everything present has an AI built into it. If you are near any construct, you are near an AI. Voice instructions are immediately responded to. All those AIs are interconnected. Some species have developed their ability to telecommunicate. But few can do that with an AI. And even AIs of different species must learn the protocols of their guests if they wish to communicate. A person wishing to address an AI need only speak aloud. Even a park bench or a wall has an AI presence.»
«But we are sparsely developed outside the confines of our urban area. There aren’t objects out there in the jungle that are in constant contact.»
«Teddy and I felt it was better if the ability to communicate came from you rather than the AIs. We would be seen as an inhibition to communication rather than a facilitator.»
«But what? How can I give people the ability to communicate?»
«Everyone goes through training to use the rifles and targeting systems in the helmets you provide them. Those are all equipped with a communication facility. It was one of the better inventions of the Pussy Pirates. Once a person puts on and activates their helmet, they can communicate with the AIs. It is how we feed games and exercises into the helmets for coordinated training.»
«But everyone leaves their rifle and helmet in the locker room after training exercises. Are you suggesting that I should allow people to keep their helmets and rifles all the time? That seems dangerous. It’s like arming the populace.»
«The rifles are not armed unless the targeting AI activates them. The Militia has a form of stunner they can use on wild animals and, if necessary, unmanageable humans. A person cannot just aim the rifle at another person and shoot. But if the people had their helmets and rifles with them or in their homes, they would be faster to arm in an emergency and could be used to communicate with nearly anyone else on the continent if necessary.»
«I am not yet at peace, Cricket. But it is better.»
«You should return to your wives and children now to leave for the memorial at Drovers Run.»
“We stand today to honor the two hundred Militia comrades who fought to keep Tara safe from the ravages of a wildfire, and to pay respects to the fourteen who lost their lives in service to our planet,” Governor O’Hara said. “Sadly, this event marks many firsts for our colony and for our planet. This is the first forest fire ever known on this planet. We humans have been on this planet for twenty-three years, but terraforming began five years before that when relocation planets were first explored. In an unusual display of foresight, it was determined that the entire ecoculture of Earth would be lost if nothing was done to preserve it. And so, the forests and grasslands were planted. In those twenty-eight years, our trees have grown to become a vital source of oxygen in our atmosphere and a resource for food and construction.”
The average size of the trees in the conifer forest was about twenty-five feet tall, except in the redwood forest on the southwest corner of Elysium between Drylanders and Lleifior. The fast-growing redwoods were already as much as sixty or seventy feet tall but are among the most susceptible to fire. Dad had taken us on a vacation through the Cathedral Redwoods in California and I still dreamed of those massive redwoods towering in majestic silence. I hoped to be able to take my grandchildren to visit the Tara redwoods when I was old and retired. Like that would ever happen. Eventually—when our woodlands matured and undergrowth began to develop—forest fires would be a natural part of the ecosphere. Now they were a planetary disaster.
“It is also the first time the Tara Militia has been mobilized to fight for our planet. Yes, people of Tara. They fought,” Governor O’Hara continued. “They went to the front lines and risked their lives to save our planet. They did that while Taran citizens, sponsors and concubines alike, sat in their comfortable homes and enjoyed the life these brave men and women fought to protect. And it was the first time that the Tara Militia has given lives in the service to our planet. We have calculated the extent of damage that could have occurred had they not been there to protect us. A fire this hot and fast could have reached the very city limits of both Drovers Run and Lleifior. As it was, we lost 80,000 hectares of young timber. Without the rapid deployment of the Militia, we could have lost 20 million hectares. We would have lost twenty years of Taran life support.”
I stood on the dais from which the Governor spoke, along with Chief Kotter, Director Kramer, and Director Douglas. In front of us were the two hundred Militia comrades who had fought and survived on the front lines of the fire. But the governor was not speaking to them yet. She was addressing the planet’s population through the AIs. Now she shifted her attention to those ranged before us.
“And so, to you who risked all—to you who followed your leader and stemmed the spread of this danger—you have the thanks of a largely ungrateful planet. Your names and those of your fourteen comrades who gave all may be forgotten in the annals of history, but they are engraved indelibly in my heart. You are an example of the very best Tara has to offer and I thank you for your service.”
At that point, there was a moment of silence, broken by the playing of an old Earthat hymn. I puzzled for a moment and realized the AIs were piping the music of bagpipes across the entire planet. After that, the governor, the chief, and the three directors approached the memorial column, which had been erected in a square just outside the Militia training base at Drovers Run, where we left a wreath in memory of the fallen. Chief Kotter read the names of the fallen.
Then we received the line of all 200 firemen and awarded them a service ribbon for their fight against the fire.
My work was not over. I collected thirty-four former concubines of the fallen comrades and their seventy children to escort them back to Ponderosa. My wives held them and comforted them as they transferred to their new home, where they were met by Reba’s welcoming committee. Each one had an escort assigned to him or her to help with the children and see that they were settled into housing, were fed, and had a big brother or sister among the freemen to see they were properly oriented to our society. The welcome committees had this down to a fine art these days. They’d welcomed and dealt with so many refugees that they knew how to put them at ease and comfort them for their losses. Each had lost his or her own sponsor sometime in the past.
I returned to my home, knowing something I never wanted to know. I knew the loss of some of my comrades. I did not want to experience it again.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
