I know I need to do something about it, but I’m not ready yet. I brush off Nia with a half-truth about PTSD, to explain my sudden breakdown, and pull myself together. I shove all those feelings back into a collapsing vault to deal with another time, realizing I’ve been doing this for decades and I can’t justify it anymore.
We discover that the explosion was caused by a small grenade trap set at the ground-level entrance, and a secondary door has already sealed it off due to a pressure breach. Nothing is dangerously damaged, although the air still carries a lot of smoke.
“Someone with military connections set this for my dad,” Nia says when she finds the mangled remains of a trigger mechanism. “It must have malfunctioned and blew early, lucky for him. We probably shouldn’t stick around long.”
“I’d bet it was left by the same someone who took off in one of my dad’s cruisers.” I pause and think a moment. “Do you know anything about Daniel Zaveri? He was my dad’s commander for the first decade of his military career.”
“Yeah, the war hero running for reelection to the senate, everyone’s aware of him.”
“We stole his cruiser; he was at the prison.”
“I know.” Nia takes a deep breath and holds it a moment before letting it out slowly. “I wasn’t sure how much I should tell you, but you’re in it now, so...”
“In what?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“They’ve already thrown me in prison with the intention of executing me! I don’t think I have a choice. At least I have a better chance if I know as much as possible.”
“Ok hon. Let’s get some food and have a talk.”
Nia prepares some instant bread and I make the soup, and we sit down for a long-awaited hot meal and a serious discussion.
“As far as I can tell,” Nia begins, “everything got fucked as soon as Dad met with Zaveri. I don’t get into politics much, but I know there’s been an unsteady coalition built between various factions who oppose the ruling class. In addition to being an independent senator, Zaveri is the head of a huge-ass military program to expand human settlements beyond our solar system, and there’s a shitload of industries behind it. Everyone at the top is super invested in the companies working on antimatter technology, faster and more efficient engines, stronger shielding, biospheres, terraforming, all the stuff you need to get humans to another star system and colonize a planet.”
“So how do Zaveri and your dad connect?”
“We have common enemies. Zaveri may be dangerous, but we all hate the wealthy plutocrats who drive up the cost of technology way beyond the actual cost of production. Lots of fees and pointless regulations and other legal bullshit make it impossible for a small-scale inventor to break into the market. That’s probably what stopped your dad from producing his engine design. And for an ideologue like Zaveri, efficiency is a huge deal. Every gram and every second counts a hell of a lot when you’re skipping across the galaxy at a terrifying fraction of the speed of light. The more he can shave off the bureaucratic bloat, the faster he can dominate space.”
I nod. “I think I get it. Your dad was trying to form a bridge between the separatists and Zaveri’s movement?”
“Basically. But we’re resistance, not separatists.” She points upward with a forceful jab of her index finger. “Those trillionaires in their orbiting palaces are the real separatists. We’re trying to bring back community. And Zaveri is trying to strengthen and spread human communities farther than we’ve ever hoped to reach. Some interests overlap, but apparently this time the enemy of my enemy is yet another of my enemies.”
“Do you know what exactly happened? All I’ve gathered is that an extreme faction of anarchists successfully carried out a plot to assassinate the frontrunner, and the government is placing blame on everyone connected to them.”
“Yeah, they were immediately picked up by Zaveri’s troops along with the rest of us. The whole thing was manipulated from the beginning; I’m sure someone with influence in our circles is a traitor who’s working for him. Just watch, he’ll announce in the morning that he’s converting his campaign for senate into one for president. Now that Rockwell is out of the way, it’s the perfect moment for a celebrated military strategist to step in and give people the illusion of stability.”
“You think that’s his ultimate plan?”
“No, like I said, he’s an ideologue. I’ve heard him speak in private, he’s always the same person, always serious. He believes deeply in his cause, which is the ultimate domination of all the space and matter we can reach. Everything else is just a step on the way. The presidency is a control knob of a machine, and it’s currently managed by the plutocrats and their usual puppets. But Zaveri is independent, nobody can control him.”
We sit for a minute in near silence while Nia finishes her soup. Being dragged into this whole mess without my consent is something I’d never expected. I thought I would always be a relatively privileged but insignificant citizen living quietly on a quiet planet. I thought I would always feel like I had no role in society. I never imagined that I would find the freedom to start defining myself after being locked up and losing all stability.
“We should pack and skedaddle,” Nia says as she tosses our metal bowls and spoons into the automated dishwasher. “The traitor is definitely one of the people involved in our jailbreak plans, so it’s best we be less predictable and more autonomous. Dad will make contact when he’s able.”
“Do you have a plan?”
She tilts her head to one side and shrugs. “I’ve got a whole mess of plans churning away in here all the time. It’s more a matter of picking the one that gets me into the future I want.”
“My plan is to check on my mom.”
“Of course. Let’s do a low and cloaked fly-by just before dawn and scan your place to see if she’s still there.”
“Even if she isn’t, I have, um, a secret safe with a load of cash I’ve saved up.”
“You what? Why didn’t you mention this sooner?”
“I mean, it isn’t nearly enough to buy a small ship or anything but…several thousand at least.”
She grins. “I have a bag of cash in the ship too. But every bit could be critical for survival. Do you think we can get in and out even if someone’s watching? What’s the landscape like?”
“Pretty open, unfortunately.”
“Hmm. We can come in on cold thrusters. If we hug the ground with cloaking, we have a good chance of staying invisible.”
“And if you land right in front of the door, we can use the ship to block ourselves from visual detection.”
“Good idea.” Nia yawns loudly. “I need a few hours of sleep first. Let’s pack, fly the ship to a secure spot in the canyon, and take a nap before the big adventure starts.”
I agree, and she tells me to take whatever clothes I want from her dad’s closet. “He has emergency closets all over the solar system,” she says.
I find some high-quality shielded luggage deep in the closet and start selecting articles of clothing. The entire masculine side yields two shirts, a sweater, and a pair of jeans I’m mostly apathetic about. Then I grab an entire armload of the feminine things. So many of them stand out to me, styles I’ve always admired and occasionally tried on. I see potential for some great outfits.
I’m unsure what I’ll have time to grab from my own home, so I also pack some other things I find around the room: hygiene products, a blanket and pillow, some small toolkits that look useful although I’m not sure what they’re for, and makeup and perfume.
When I’m done I find Nia in the kitchen, filling a plastic crate with food pouches. She looks up as she snaps the lid on. “Hey, will you carry this up to the hangar airlock for me?”
“Sure.”
At the airlock, Nia has already stacked a few crates. I peek inside to find them full of weapons, anything from stun guns to sniper rifles to anti-spacecraft lasers. Fuck, I really am in it now.
I make a few trips up and down the stairs to get my luggage, and then Nia joins me with a pair of high-end pressure suits. Without much further discussion we squirm into the suits, pack our gear into the spaceship’s cargo compartment, and zip away into the remote stretches of Valles Marineris to hide from the government so we can take a nap.
Nia shakes me awake as the sun peeks over the horizon. In my childhood memories of camping back on earth, the moment when the sun first rises is warm and golden. Here, it’s like looking into the depths of the ocean at a cold blue lamp. My eyes feel sore and dry and I groan in response to the general aching tiredness in my body.
“Have a caffeine pill,” Nia says, pressing a small object into my hand. I swallow it with some water.
“What are your home coordinates?”
I look up the numbers in the ship’s map, and a few minutes later we are speeding over the plain with what feels like inches of ground clearance. Despite knowing how invisible this ship can be, I still feel very exposed.
As we approach, Nia switches on an infrared scanner. Nothing shows up in the surrounding area, but if anyone is watching they will certainly be cloaked like us. My house, on the other hand, lights up with the signature heat of a human. Actually, two of them.
“You’ve got two people in your house,” Nia says. “Is that unexpected?”
“Yeah it is.”
“Abort?”
“No. If my mom is there she might be held hostage. Proceed as planned.”
Nia produces a pistol from somewhere in her jacket and hands it to me. It’s the one she took from the guard in prison as we escaped. “You may need this,” she says.
“You kept it?”
“I always keep free weapons.” She jabs her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of our cargo. “How do you think I got all those? That one is yours now, if you think you can handle it. Don’t worry, I disabled all the biometric, security, and tracking features. It’s just a simple lead flinger now.”
I stare at the pistol, feeling like I’m definitely “in” a lot deeper than I would like. As a military kid I’ve had plenty of training and practice with weapons, but I always hated the idea of using them on anything other than a target. In fact, I have never shot a living thing and hope I never do.
“I can handle it,” I say.
“Good. I believe you.” She hands me an extra magazine full of armor-piercing rounds.
We share a brief moment of eye contact, and then Nia begins slowing the ship. She swings in a wide circle around my house and sets down in front of the door with sudden stop that makes my joints hurt.
Helmet on, cabin depressurized, pistol in hand, I kick open the door on my side of the ship and hop out, keeping low to stay concealed. Nia jumps down behind me as I punch the security code into the airlock door. I’m half expecting it to deny my own code, but nobody has messed with the system and it opens right up.
We rush into the main room, which is empty. Some noise can be heard from the corridor to my mom’s bedroom. I lead the way, and we find a huge man in a full pressure suit, backed into the corner behind the bed, crouching a bit with his arms spread as if trying to look less threatening. It doesn’t work; the guy is absolutely monstrous.
“Mace?” I shout.
He turns to face me and we both remove our helmets. I put away my pistol. He looks slightly embarrassed.
“Hi Jayce, I just popped over on a stolen scooter to check on you and your mom ‘cause I got worried.”
“How the fuck did you get in?”
“Your security is basic, man! I’m no wizard with nanobots in my hand or nothin’ but I know electronics pretty good.”
A screech emanates from the closet, and now I notice a long, thin blade protruding from the slightly open door.
“Mom, what are you doing?”
“I’m hiding from the enormous android, Melvin!”
“He’s not an android! He’s a friend of mine, you’re perfectly safe.” Ok, that last bit is a lie, but I don’t think I can explain the danger to her, not under this sort of pressure.
Mom’s face appears in the doorway and she squints at Mace. “I remain suspicious.”
“I don’t have time to explain. We need to leave right now.”
She emerges from the closet and leans on her unsheathed sword cane, stabbing it through her rug and into the rubbery flooring material below it. I find the rest of the cane in the corner and help her put it back together. I should really get her a cane that isn’t so lethal.
“Mom, don’t stab anyone. We’re all friends here. Mace, my mom has a suitcase in her closet, please help her pack it as fast as possible.”
He nods, and I go back to the main room with Nia close behind. My safe is under the floor in the sealed garage, which also houses my tools and several levitating scooters. We crouch on either side of the safe while I scan my fingerprint, then my eyeball, and then type in a long passcode.
“Those are some nice scooters,” Nia says.
“Thanks. My personal collection. I hate leaving them here.”
“Too bad my ship doesn’t have room.”
I open the safe and everything is just how I left it. A bag of cash, a few extra loose stacks, and a locked metal box about the size of my head. I hand Nia the bag, then grab the remaining contents and shut the door.
“What’s in the box?” she asks.
“I’ll show you later.” I find another bag with some scooter parts in it and dump them out, wincing as they bang against the floor. My mysterious metal box and the cash are much more valuable at the moment.
What I really want to grab are my old photo album and keepsakes. I don’t know if I will ever return, or that anything will be here if I do. It hurts to think about what I’m leaving behind.
Mace and my mom are there with her packed suitcase when Nia and I leave the garage. “Hate to bring bad news,” Mace says, “but I just intercepted a signal. They’re coming.”
“Oh no,” Mom says. “Who’s coming? I haven’t prepared for guests! Where are my nuts?”
“Let’s go faster than they come,” I say. I grab my mom’s pressure suit from the closet and impress upon her the urgency of getting in it. I think she at least understands that the situation is serious, and she does what I say despite looking very confused. To be fair, I would be just as confused if I’d seen all of this from her perspective.
We have just stepped out of the airlock when a military craft with a floodlight passes overhead and begins descending.
Nia jumps in and fires up her ship. I throw my bag into the cabin without looking and dive after it. Mace picks up my mom entirely and places her behind Nia’s seat, along with her suitcase, then curls his enormous body into the cramped space beside her.
I slam the door shut, and the next instant we’re going directly upward at incredible speed. My mom narrates the experience with a continual scream, which also accurately sums up how I feel. After a bit of struggle to get myself strapped in, I look back to check on her. Mace is using all four of his treelike limbs to anchor both himself and my mom in place. We change direction rapidly several times, sky and ground flashing in and out of view. My brain manages a few seconds of wondering how it’s possible to pilot a ship in this fashion, between several longer periods of unmitigated panic.
Before any of us understand what is happening, Nia settles the ship into a jumbled mass of giant boulders deep in the canyon and switches off nearly everything. Mom’s screaming gradually fades to silence as she realizes we are no longer moving. For a moment, we sit in a dim reddish lighting with only the sounds of four people breathing and the quiet buzz of a cooling spaceship engine.
“Sorry ma’am,” Mace grunts, and shifts his leg off my mom’s midsection. “I didn’t catch your name?”
In the tense quietness of the moment, his casual tone makes me laugh.
“My name is Chrissa,” mom replies, with an excitement in her voice I haven’t heard for years. Maybe the wild ride brought out a bit of her old adventurous streak.
“Hey Mason,” Nia says, keeping her eyes on the scanner and hands on the yoke. “How’d you get out of prison? Any news from the others?”
“They decided to move us this morning, and Tony’s crew was ready with a backup plan. We broke free and scattered.”
“Fuck, Dad probably made it to the hideout after we left. At least he’ll know we were there and won’t get blown up by that trap.”
“Tony says do whatever you can to get back to the mothership. If he’s not there already, leave without him and run to the outer system. Something about a wizard on Saturn’s biggest moon, he said. That’s Titan, right? The one with the weird lakes?”
“Oh fuck no, I ain’t leaving atmosphere without him.”
Nia stiffens as a blob shows up on the radar screen, the military ship passing slowly overhead. We all watch as it moves across the screen and disappears off the other side.
“I think I caught them by surprise with some of those moves,” Nia says. “They lost visual and couldn’t even trace our flight path.”
“All this running is really stressful,” I say. “I can’t wait to get the hell off this dreary ball of sand.”
“We never get to stop running. They never stop coming. Welcome to my life, Jayce.”
There’s a tense moment of silence. Then mom turns to Mace and asks seriously, “Sir, do you have nuts?”
Nia giggles, and in a moment she and Mace and I are all laughing. Mom looks confused but joins in anyway.
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