Future Winds (16 page)

“Yes, I had a systems update with current known geographical layouts before our departure.”

Holy shit
, Kaito thought as he closed his eyes.

It was bad enough he felt queasy at every jerk of the vehicle and now they were just going to stroll off the ledge of a canyon, completely ignoring the fact that they were carrying an insane amount of highly explosive crates.

***

“Could there be other survivors?” Tyler asked.

“There may be. Scorpio is too far under the surface of the planet to establish reliable communication, but we did ping back and forth successfully a couple of times confirming his well-being. He overloaded his power cores getting the messages out.”

“So, the bugs did not die?”

“I am sure a large amount of them were killed with the bomb, but my guess is that their network and population may very well exceed that which we previously assumed by a very large margin.”

The thought terrified Tyler though it made sense. Even today earth harbored a population of ants and insects that exceeded a number well beyond comprehension by human beings. But these were no ants. They were bugs the size of men who were proven to be brutal, savage killers.

"As soon as you free me from this prison the alarms will sound and we will be hunted like game for slaughter."

"I can disable the alarms while you escape."

"And I am just supposed to walk out of this carrier while no one pays me any mind? Pay no attention folks, just murderous scum walking freely about," he mocked.

The cell door clicked, swung open candidly, and Tyler's heart sunk into his stomach. He couldn't just stay. She was right in that they would kill him, but walking out the door and navigating this unfamiliar carrier in hopes of finding an exit was suicide. As if that were not bad enough, even if he were to make his way out, slipping past workforce sites guarded by armed militants would prove even more difficult.

Aries began to drift towards the door. "The vice admiral and her personal have just departed back to the command bridge. No one will recognize you, and given your uniform colors reflect your outranking of most military personnel along the way, I would say things should work out for the better."

Tyler exited the cell and raised his wrist in the air which were bound with electric pulsing cuffs. “What about these? They require an electronic encryption key that-”

Before he could finish his sentence, Aries did something naked to Tyler's inferior human eyes and the cuffs simply turned off and fell to the floor with a thud.

"I wish I could see into the dimension of electronics," he muttered.

Taking him seriously as per usual, she answered logically. "The human mind in its delicate state would be overwhelmed and begin seizing if exposed to a sense of alternative complex dimensions. It is theoretically possible, but it would require the mind to receive proper conditioning over time.”

"Shut the hell up and let’s go," he said, walking past her and out of the room.

The hallway was empty and so the two quietly strolled down it towards a set of elevators. While waiting for one to arrive, Tyler began to feel sick with anxiety.
What if this door opens and there are soldiers inside? I will have made it a whole twenty to thirty feet from that prison cell before being gunned down
, he worried.

The elevator was loudly approaching and Tyler looked up to see cameras beaming straight down at the two of them.

“We are screwed,” he said

“We are fine,” she comforted.

“What about those?” he questioned, pointing above.

“The cameras?” she asked looking up to them as if surprised by his concern. “They said that no one is watching currently.” she eased.

Of course she can communicate with a camera like an old high school pal,
Tyler thought, still feeling uneasy about his chances of escape.

The lift finally reached them and they entered the simple metal crate.

“Ground floor, I assume?”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

He pressed the button and they began descending from their current status on the eighth floor. They could see into every floor they passed by, given the basic construction of the elevator was nothing more than a thin and fragile cage.

On the fifth floor, a man in uniform stood waiting to enter. The elevator stopped to allow him entrance and Tyler again felt afraid that he would be noticed.

“Going to third pal,” the man said.

As if grasping an alarm in an emergency, Tyler awkwardly threw himself at the button labeled
three
. He was sweating and knew the way in which he handled pushing a button was suspiciously odd.

“You okay, man?” The soldier asked.

“Yea, just feel a little warm.”

“It’s heaven in here compared to outside,” the man laughed.

“Tyler, you need a weapon. Take his,” Aries said, throwing Tyler completely on the spot.

“Um, what?” The soldier said, looking confused.

Tyler looked at the man and then back to Aries. She was so to the point that he had no option other than to oblige. “You heard her, son. I need that weapon.”

Son? Really? This kid is eighteen or nineteen at best and I am in my late twenties. I don’t think that qualifies me to call him son. Just go with it Tyler, you outrank him, instill dominance and the fear of repercussion
. he frantically thought.

“I ... But,” the soldier stuttered trying to form words with his twisted tongue.

Tyler put his hand on the barrel of the weapon, lifting and pressing it to his own chest while exerting a strange and devious smile.

“Trust me, you do
not
want the headache of being tried for treason and murder kid,” Tyler said as he firmly held the barrel in place.

“Woah man, chill out,” the novice teen said as he let go of the firearm and raised his hands in the air in an act of surrender.

The door opened as the elevator reached the third floor.

“Your grenades,” Tyler said now pointing the rifle at the rookie soldier.

“But if I-” the boy’s excuse was cut off mid-sentence by the clicking sound of Tyler disengaging the safety of the weapon. Quickly the soldier removed his belt of five grenades and handed it over.

“Now get out,” Tyler pressed, introducing a serious side of himself onto the boy as he held the door open with his foot to prevent it from closing. After the soldier exited, Tyler let the gate close and then the two continued their descent to the ground floor.

“Funny how terrified and uncomfortable people get when you act a little crazy,” Tyler laughed while fixing the belt of grenades to his waist. They were not the special grade antigravity ones he was used to, but a compact laser based explosive that he had never physically seen before. Apparently, when detonated, the devices would barrage a cluster of lasers and shrapnel in an effective radius of fifteen feet.

“I am afraid that maybe, perhaps, you were not acting, Tyler,” Aries said.

“Maybe,” he paused, “maybe not.”

He looked over his new rifle. It was nice and looked to have never been fired--a lightweight energy rifle that paled in comparison to his old one, but a solid piece of equipment nonetheless that would hopefully suffice the task at hand.

“Maybe that is why you asked me to escort you through a hive of insects,” he added as they reached the ground floor and the gate opened before them.

Ness stood in the shower staring at the tile floor beneath his feet as hot water flowed down from the spigot above. The water felt like an aggressive, but much needed, massage. His back, neck, and shoulders were sore. Despite sleeping his half day away into the wee hours of the night, he still felt exhausted. He knew the aches and pains of his body meant, in the long run, he was building muscle that would make him stronger in the days to come. If the glass were half full, that might be something of value to him, but the thought lingered for only a short time.

Another man entered the large shower equipped to accommodate ten at a time. Ness did not turn to look at him, feeling awkward to be naked and alone with another man in a shower. He forced himself to outweigh the unease with the simple joy and cleanse the hot water brought him by washing away his filth. He rubbed his face down with soap and gargled a mouth full of the wretched tasting recycled water before spitting it out and then going back for more to drink. He turned off the shower and, in doing so, noted the silence in the room. The man who entered never turned on his water. Ness turned around slowly to see a fully clothed man with greasy hair who harbored a sick, twisted smile as he looked over the boy’s naked body.

Ness quickly wrapped himself with his towel and shuffled past the sick pervert. No doubt he would be able to defend himself against such a frail old man, but conflict was not his strong suite. He returned to his bunk, periodically looking over his shoulder to be sure the man was not following him as he walked.

After clothing himself he laid back and looked over to the big, red clock in the center of the room. Four hours until he had to be awake for another day’s work and here he was now, wide awake. He perched over the ledge of his bed to see the two drunken guards passed out, slumped against the entrance wall twenty feet away.

He climbed down and made sure his brother was asleep. After confirming Lucas was indeed out, he walked over to the block’s entrance where the guards sat covered in the stench of vomit and piss. Ness couldn’t help but gag as he walked past them to poke his head out in the hallway. Mostly dark, the corridors were only lit in small pockets where emergency lighting illuminated at a low night setting.

Smelling smoke, he began to walk down the hallway towards the source where he quickly found a civilian man propped against a wall smoking a cigar with a guard. They were just outside a block of their own, identical to Ness’. He couldn’t make out the numbers above that would indicate what block it was. He leaned in to listen to their conversation.

“Listen Frank,” said the civilian, pausing to puff his cigar, “We were friends for a long time, well before you ever joined the military. I knew your father back before Project Salvation was ever even conceptualized. You
know
me and can trust me.”

“Roger, you know I have always valued our friendship, but what you are asking of me is suicide,” the guard said in an honest tone of fear.

“You trap a dog in a corner, he gets scared. You can only beat the living shit out of him for so long before he bites and, when he bites, he has already made up his mind to sink them teeth in until he tastes him some blood. We all know an uprising is inevitable and the civilian workforce outnumbers the military ten to one. What side do you want to be on here, Frank? The one that beats and enslaves the dog or the dog that bites back?”

“I agree with you, man. A good amount of the military does. We are not all so bad. Hell, most of us were civilians before all of this went down just a few years ago. You are willing to kill the innocent members of the military along with the guilty? And what of the government? As soon as this goes down, they will either stop sending carriers and let us starve out here or they will send more carriers, the ones loaded with the heavy weapons, and they will vaporize us off the map. If you think they will just roll over and play dead, you are a fool. They will kill every last one of us to stay in control and you of all people should know just that!”

The man, Roger, puffed his cigar in thought. He was muscular with a thick, brawny build. He had short, messy brown hair, coupled with a short unkempt beard of the same color. His appearance was rugged: a handful of scars across his face to accent as such, and an eyepatch over his right eye.

Quite the character,
Ness thought.

“Frank, it is going to happen regardless of what I, you, or your friends here decide to do. Now you said it yourself, they will kill us all without picking or choosing who deserves life or death, so why should I exert anything less than the same standards of judgement?” He paused for a second to give the guard a minute to answer, but received no acknowledgement and continued, “You have heard that there was an assassination attempt on the vice admiral right?”

From the shadows emerged a man in white and orange armor, wielding an energy rifle. He was accompanied by a drone that drifted by his side. Roger looked to the floor and covered his face as he run his fingers through his hair, and the vocal guard, who engaged in the conspiratory conversation, harboring a look of terror simply watched as the man and his robot strided on by.

Ness panicked wanting to run as to not be seen, but he would never make it anywhere with the man swiftly approaching. He was in full stride down the dim hallway. Ness jammed his hands in his pockets and hunched over, propping himself against the wall as if he were there with purpose.

The man walked by, paying no more mind to the boy than a slight glance in his brisk walk to get somewhere. When he was out of eyesight, Ness let out a long sigh.

The guard conversing with the civilian heard him, raised his rifle down the hall, and clicked on the attached flashlight. Like a deer in headlights, Ness stood feeling foolishly trapped and terrified.

***

Kaito felt butterflies in his stomach as the lack of gravity's constant constraint on his organs dissipated. He quickly realized he was in freefall. Himself, Leon, and the armadillo they were in was making its leap of faith high over the desert canyon. He pinched his eyes shut and took big, deep breathes as they flew through the air.

“Punch thrusters,” Amy informed Leon.

Kaito forced opened his eyes to see multiple controls in the cockpit before Leon were flashing--some warnings and some indicators. Leon slapped his right palm against a blue button and then thrusted a throttle lever to its peak of acceleration.

The armadillo’s engines gave off a high pitched squeal as if debating whether or not to explode at any given moment. Gears sounded as though they were crunching and grinding together somewhere. Kaito had to wonder if Leon had screwed something up mid-air.

Finally, bracing himself to snag a peek outside, Kaito looked out into the gorge. They were still soaring, a little over halfway across so far. It was similar to the Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon in Tibet, back on earth, which is the largest to be found on the little blue planet. But this one was much wider and deeper. It was as if the distant relative of a ravine back on earth had a much older, and much darker, cousin. The details of what might lie below were shrouded in darkness. The shadows twisted and warped as Kaito’s angle of view shifted in passing. The shades played games with his mind: added atop of the already abundant amount of fear he felt of heights, he felt while flying through their jump.

Ahead, Kaito could see the edge they were shooting for. It looked like they were going to clear their jump with plenty of room to spare. Leon had over shot the distance to ensure they would and the armadillo hit the ground hard, bouncing up off the planet’s rocky surface with a foot of clearance while the vehicle’s shocks tried to absorb the blow.

Kaito’s heart was pounding through his face. He never was a fan of heights and, as his fear was subsided by the success of clearing the jump, his panic became a rush. A thrill he almost felt as though he wanted to experience again.

The desert landscape appeared vastly different under the moonlit sky as they sailed through the waterless ocean. Kaito could see clearly across the sea of sand and rock in the dead of night. Above was a clear shimmering display of stars and galaxies that churned about in their little corner of space. If ever you could find a spot back on planet earth with minimal light exposure, it would fail to come even remotely close to the view before him now.

Flare was in the thick of a vast galaxy that humanity knew nothing about. The scouting drones and rovers had mapped out so little, that what was known could not even be put into terms of a numerical figure. In all technicalities, point zero zero two percent was the amount of information known about this galaxy. But such a comical numerical figure ignited the human race to venture deep into space, colonize, and expand its footprint into the history books of eternity. Kaito chuckled at the thought.

  All of these views of course were through the optics of the armadillo’s railgun system. Crammed in the backseat, buried in boxes marked explosives, he couldn’t help but feel claustrophobic as they sped through a tiny fraction of what the barren planet potentially had to offer.

In his view finder, Kaito could make out what looked to be a mountain on the move.

“That’s it,” Leon called out when laying eyes on it himself from the cockpit ahead.

Amy confirmed the stone goliath as their target and Kaito almost wished she hadn’t. The true nature of the creature's size blew Kaito away. Nothing in man’s deep banks of knowledge knew of anything to have existed even remotely similar in size. It looked as though it could pick up a whale with one hand and smash it against a brontosaurus with another without so much as batting an eye.

As they got closer, Kaito could see the two hellcats weave ahead of the beast at a safe distance. They looked like flies circling an elephant and it was then Kaito realized, there was just no way this was ever going to work.

***

“What are you doing out here, kid?” asked the guard who had caught Ness eavesdropping.

Ness covered his face with his hands, blinded by the flashlight and scared of the rifle: both sticking in his face.

“I swear I will tear your head from where it rests upon your neck boy,” the soldier growled. “Who are you?!”

“Turn off that light before the kid loses his eyesight permanently,” barked the unarmed civilian man, with the cigar and eyepatch, who snatched the weapon from the soldier’s hands and turned off the light.

Ness painfully blinked his sight back into functionality.

“Roger,” the soldier said coldly as he shot a glare so serious, it perhaps was a prerequisite to his intentions to do something harsh and rash, “
Give
me back my weapon.”

The man with the eyepatch removed the cigar he had been mouthing on for the past twenty minutes and looked it over as if it were a dear friend that had somehow greatly disappointed him. Then he abruptly flicked it at the soldier, the embers spread harmlessly and fell to the ground on contact. But the initial sprinkle of fire caused the soldier to flinch and, in the time it took him to do so, the man Roger raised the rifle and engaged the flashlight turning the tables, so to speak, on the soldier.

“What the hell are you doing, Roger!?” the soldier squealed.

“How does it feel, Frank?” he taunted. “How does it feel to be on the other end of the oppression and the tyranny of a man with a gun?” he hissed.

“Roger, let’s not do anything crazy here. You don’t want to do something you will regret. Something you will never be able to take-”

Cutting him off, the larger man slammed the butt of the rifle into the soldier’s face. As Frank fell to the floor, Roger shoved the rifle into Ness’s chest, forcing him to grasp hold and take the weapon. This freed up his hands to quickly wrap them around the soldier’s neck and beginning choking the life out of him. “How does it feel, Frank?!” he shouted, “To feel something such as fear!” His strength allowed him to hold on with ease while his victim flailed about helplessly until falling limp.

An awkward minute or two of silence passed before Ness decided to say something. “He is passed out.”

“I know,” Roger said, still squeezing the man's throat.

Then Ness realized that this man, Roger, had no intentions of apprehending the soldier. He was not going to simply let him go now that he was unconscious. Rather, he kept him in a firm grip until all the oxygen and life left the soldier’s body.

The cartilage in the soldier’s neck cracked as Roger suddenly snapped it like a carrot. “He was not going to give me what I wanted anyway.” He seemed to find satisfaction in hearing the loud crack pulse through his fingers as he claimed the life. After the body was limp, he dropped it to the floor. He then knelt down to the dead soldier and removed his security card: a small chip embedded passport for unlocking doors within New Horizon that civilians would otherwise not have access too.

“Take that,” he said pointing to the rifle that Ness still held before lifting his eyepatch and painfully stuffing the security keycard deep into his empty eye socket. “Sneak it back into your cell block and hide it. They will turn my block upside down looking for it but won’t think twice to check yours.”