party? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Exactly. They wouldn’t.”
“Maybe the Callites were just going underground to avoid immigration officials.”
“Which is precisely why we were told to not look into it. It was considered out of our jurisdiction. Still, the viability of Lok depended on a rising population. Instead, it was dwindling, even with the land giveaways and tax incentives. The disappearances outpaced the inflow of colonists. Your father used to say Lok was doomed with or without the fusion trade.”
“Do you think the Bern could’ve been up to something? Could they have been trying to secure the other rift by running everyone off?”
“I don’t know. Seems convoluted and roundabout for them. Maybe—” Another pause. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
Parsona highlighted a target on SADAR. “Look,” she said.
Molly tracked the moving object. It was a passenger class shuttle rising up from the outskirts of Bekkie and heading straight for space. She pulled up the town overlay map and looked for the side street cafe where she and Walter had been sitting. She followed the departure trajectory and saw that it matched up with the general direction of the other shuttle they’d watched lift off.
Molly wanted to ask “Why?” but sat and stared in silence, instead. She looked up from the blinking blip on the screen to the carboglass and scanned the buildings beyond for a rising plume of jet exhaust. She saw nothing through the haze of dawn and was forced to watch via SADAR, forced to watch as the shuttle nearly reached the ionosphere before the altitude indicator stopped climbing. It paused at apogee, and then the altimeter began to count down with a sickening sense of looming finality.
“How can they do that? How is that
“They’re letting the Bern do their dirty work for them. Probably calculated what a shuttle costs versus having to move the same illegals back to their planet over and over.”
“But they’re sending them to their deaths. Doesn’t anyone care?”
“Very few. The Underground was full of supporters. They practically formed around their lack of xenophobia. Unfortunately, they had a larger war to wage.”
“You’re talking about people like Scottie and Pete.”
“And your father.”
Molly looked down at her lap. She stopped stroking the Wadi and rubbed the rough pads of her fingers. All but one pinky were beginning to heal somewhat from a day of not needing anything. She could feel that one digit throbbing and dreaded ever having to vote again. She wondered if Pete would make her vote for the supplies and dockage, or if he’d let her slide or maybe just pay extra in cash.
“Hey,” she said aloud, a hazy memory coming back to her.
“What?”
“Pete’s voting machine.”
“What about it?”
“Well, maybe nothing, but I could’ve sworn when I was in there the other day that the ‘F’ button was new and shiny.” Molly paused, her thoughts interrupted by the disturbing simplicity of the shuttle target disappearing from SADAR. She watched that empty spot of blackness on the screen as the green phosphor symbols faded away to nothing—all the vector numbers flicking to zero. There was no tally for what was just lost.
“Pete’s machine,” Molly muttered to herself. “I’m pretty sure the Liberty button was just about worn off.”
45
“You’re dead!” the skimmer pilot yelled. He kicked through the remains of his ruined craft and strode toward Cole, shucking off a tangle of wire and hydraulic cables as he went. Cole waded backward with short steps and a wide stance as the ground beneath him continued to tremble and occasionally lurch. He held the buckblade away from his body, comforted somewhat by the slight hum he could hear from the handle.
That comfort didn’t last long. The small man fully emerged from the wreckage and did the unthinkable: he yanked off his goggles and tossed them aside.
“I’ll have you in pieces!” the man roared. He stomped through the water with both hands out, his fingers curled as if to reach out and clutch Cole to death. Cole stopped shuffling and readied his blade. Whatever the man was made of, however much of him Arthur had replaced, he figured he had the upper hand to be armed. In a manner of speaking.
The wiry man stopped and looked at Cole’s hand, almost as if weighing the same odds. He snarled and reached into his coveralls, which were tattered and hanging in strips from the knife-like curls of wrecked steel. Out came a metal cylinder much like the one Cole wielded—and the playing field was once again uneven.
The furious man thumbed his blade on and lunged into range, swiping with an angle five. It was an unorthodox, but powerful move. Cole watched the man’s elbows and wrists line up in slow motion, performing a slashing attack Penny had told him to never use. And she had shown him why. Cole’s muscles responded automatically—out of fear and from a deep memory. He lined up his blade to deflect the blow, to send it back into the man’s neck, but when the magnetic fields of the two blades met each other, the raw power behind the strike overcame the attacker’s poor angle. The impact tossed Cole backward and likely would’ve thrown his blade through his collarbone, had not his new elbow been locked.
He landed with a splash, his heels kicking and scrambling for the ground beneath him. He swam backward, keeping his distance as the man swiped through the water, his teeth bared in rage.
“One piece at a time!” the figure roared.
Cole scrambled to his feet and threw out a feeble swipe to keep the man at bay. As Cole’s blade passed harmlessly in front of his foe, his attacker lashed out with his own sword. The strike wasn’t aimed at Cole, but rather, at the back of his blade. The magnetic repulsion made Cole’s weapon pick up speed, spinning him around like a top. He lost his balance again and fell backward into the mud-colored water. The man behind him laughed as Cole splashed his way upright. He turned and resumed his stance. He realized he was being toyed with—chewed on and released as by some wiry dog.
“Amazing how the universe works, isn’t it?” The man lifted both hands up to the sky. He opened his mouth and turned his head, gathering up some of the drifting rain before spitting it out. “Everything comes right back around, wouldn’t you say?”
Cole stepped forward, remembering what Penny said about buck-blade fights being no time for talk. He slashed an angle one at the man’s knee, keeping low to remain as defensive as possible. The man’s arm became a blur: one moment lifted up into the rain, the next moment down by his hips, repulsing Cole’s attack. Cole’s arm flew back, his body contorting with the sudden change in direction. He allowed his feet to come out from beneath him, preferring to spin down into the water than get wrapped up in his own rebound.
Once again, he struggled to his feet, blade out. The small man became a blur once more, and Cole felt a sting on his left shoulder. He flinched, but his reaction came long after the blow. He looked down to see a red stain spreading through his soaked shirt, a neat slice of the fabric folded open.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Cole looked up from his wound. The man across from him jutted out his chin; he brought up his free hand and placed his palm against the side of his own face, pulling his flesh sideways. “Perhaps if I were smeared across a taxi’s windshield, it would jar your pathetic, fleshy, memory.” He let go of his face and sneered at Cole, rain dripping from his nose.
Cole ignored him—ignored the man’s mad delusions. He shuffled forward and aimed a reverse angle two at the man’s off-weapon hip. He drove everything into the blow, unleashing the full fury of his mechanical elbow in a desperate attempt to drive through the man’s defenses, striking him down as he made the mistake of talking.
His hand whistled through the wet air. As did the other man’s. The invisible blades met with a sizzling, explosive crack, the force of the blow throwing Cole off his feet. He landed in the water one final time, his shoulder screaming out in pain from withstanding the force of impact. He rolled to his back, half expecting to be missing a
