Heir Apparent - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 4 Read online

  “The others didn’t know? What had happened to you?”

  “They knew.”

  I nodded. “But they forgot.”

  He laughed. “We should be so lucky.”

  He looked past me and grinned. I looked over my shoulder. One of the big Floaters was headed our way.

  “Let it touch you, William,” he said. “It won’t hurt you. I promise.”

  “What will it do to me?”

  “Talk to you.”

  I tensed as the creature stretched its tendrils toward me, but I was eager, too—like I was waiting for a lover’s caress. When it touched me, I felt…what the Floater felt. I hovered in the cavern, surrounded by my children. My thoughts were filled with brilliant light and swirling patterns of color. Then the darkness came.

  I didn’t realize I was falling until my helmet banged off the ice. Pain lanced through my skull. My ears rang, and I gasped for breath. This wasn’t the Floater—it was the blackout. My dreams waited.

  “No…Not now,” I whispered.

  The black poured in from all sides, tearing at the light, consuming all the myriad colors, everything except for a tiny flicker remaining stubbornly at the r of my vision. The darkness couldn’t take that from me. I wouldn’t allow it.

  I pushed myself off the ground, making it to my knees. In my mind, I felt the Floater’s concern. I don’t know how I understood it, but the Floater asked if I was injured. I told it no, and felt its relief. From the flicker, the colors grew again, gradually.

  I don’t know how long the Floater talked to me, telling me about its life with flashing hues in my mind. It told me of the joys of its children—and the frustrations. It spoke of the peace in the silence as it floated through the air. It spoke of loss, of its parent, gone years past. It wondered in awe at the worlds of color it found in my mind, all the planets I’d visited. It seemed fascinated by the inane details of my life. And I shared everything, even what was hard: the violence, the death, the rage. It drew back a little as I told it of these things, but it stayed with me, despite its fear and confusion.

  I jolted when Willis spoke. “I’m sorry, William. I wish we could stay longer, but the freighter leaves in two hours.”

  I tasted salt, and my eyes stung as I checked the time. I’d been talking to the Floater for hours. My knees burned as I stood.

  Willis sighed. “I didn’t want all of this, William. I didn’t think it would be this hard. But they wired it into us, didn’t they?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t die. Don’t give in. Fight to your last breath.”

  I mimicked my old drill sergeant. “There ain’t no quitters in the Corps, just dead heroes.”

  Willis laughed, then handed me my gun, butt first, then his own weapon. He shook his head. “I’m not looking forward to going back into a hole. But a cell won’t be the same, will it? Not like before.”

  “They’ll interrogate you,” I said. “The Fleet head-shrinkers will want to know why you did what you did. So they can say it wasn’t Fleet’s fault.”

  He blanched. “Fleet can’t know about the Floaters. You know what they’d do.”

  I nodded. Fleet didn’t play well with others. “Why’d you kill Agabe?”

  “I loved him, but he wouldn’t let it go. He wanted to bring people in for tours, turn the Floaters into pets.”

  I nodded again, then looked down at my gun.

  Willis’s eyes widened. He took a deep breath. “Can’t be helped, I suppose,” he said. “Don’t do it here—not in front of them.”

  We moved a short way into the tunnel, and Willis knelt on the ice. I had to do this—had to. The bosses might put me in a hole if I didn’t.

  “It’s ok,” he said. “Just make it quick.”

  My hands shook as I held the gun to his head. The lights from the Floaters danced behind me. Sweat trickled down Willis’s face, and he squeezed his eyes shut. I tried to mop my brow, but couldn’t in the helmet.

  “Will they miss you?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer right away, then said, “The Floaters ask about Van every day.”

  I walked back to the cavern and watched the creatures for another minute. I waved to them. I swear they waved back. I left Willis kneeling in the tunnel.

  Double-timing it back to the base, I didn’t feel nearly as tired as I should have.

  Taka, Kate, and a dozen others waited for me in the bay as I cycled through the airlock. Everyone but Kate held a burner.

  The Constable said, “You can’t take us all, Marshal.” His voice was slurred, an icepack taped to his swollen face.

  I put my hand on my gun. “That’s ok, I enjoy a challenge.”

  Kate, face pale in the bleak light, asked, “Is Jeff alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do we know if he’s telling the truth?” asked another.

  I asked Taka, “Why did you contact the Marshals in the first place?”

  “Jeff did that himself,” he replied. “Said it wasn’t right what he did to Van.”

  “I have to know,” I said to Kate. “Who’s the corpse with the new face?”

  “Kev Gurov. He died in an accident in the environmental plant.”

  “And he was a real popular guy? Just a little clumsy?”

  Kate looked pissed. “It was an accident.”

  I took my hand off my gun. “Pack him up. The rest of you stay the fuck out of my way.”

  The group escorted me back to the dock, weapons ready. I’d dinged up a lot of locals. I half-expected someone to trip and slag me.

  The ship was due to leave in forty minutes. As the dock jocks loaded the bodies, Kate handed me her data pad with the med reports I needed to approve. Her face was a whorl of purple and green where I’d hit her. I held onto her pad for an extra moment when I handed it back to her.

  “Come with me,” I said. “No strings.”

  She put her hand to her face. “You’re insane.”

  Probably.

  Kate was still in the dock, staring at me, when I boarded the freighter. I told the Captain we were going to wait an extra thirty minutes before the ship took off. I figured he had to have at least that much wiggle room. I had my hand on my gun when I told him.

  He grinned. “Sure thing, buddy! Anything for a gambling man.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “And if we miss our window, I’ll blow you out the airlock.” That was the most he ever said to me.

  I sat on the freighter and closed my eyes, pushing back the sleep. When I felt the engines start to move us away, I opened my eyes again and looked around. Alone. I sighed and let the dream take me.

  The darkness was waiting, eager. I floated in the chamber, suspended in the warm water, tubes jammed into my flesh. The darkness whispered to me, called my name. When I saw the colors flickering at the center of the black, I smiled. The lights grew and brightened, like dawn breaking.

  Persistence of Memory

  By Brandon Nolta

  Lieutenant 15-Thorne waited nervously, enwombed in the drop capsule and thinking of war. Despite the gelatinous g-couch surrounding him and the heavy battle armor he wore, the sounds of the troop carrier rumbling through the ionosphere came through, the bass vibrations explicating the events outside. Klaxons alternated with the dull thud of capsules shooting through tubes, whooshing into space like spores. A seeding of fire. 15-Thorne shivered at the image.

  “Squad leaders, report,” the mechanized voice of Captain 7-Smith echoed in his helmet. Beneath him, the rumbling changed pitch, whining higher as the treads pulled his capsule into deploy position. He knew that ten other capsules were syncing into their respective tubes in time with his. Sweat beaded above his eyes and dripped into his eyebrows, making them itch.

  “Blue Squad is go,” he heard himself say, his training speaking through him. His eyes moved to a screen of his own imagining, aligning with the heads-up printed directly on his retinal filaments. Every name showed green—ten men and women under his command, ready to fall at terminal velocity.
“All units in the pipe.”

  “Roger, Blue Squad is go,” the toneless voice replied. “Stand by for insertion.”

  The oxygen readout in his right eye blipped and he consciously slowed his breathing. Deep breath, in and hold, now out. Every drop seemed to take about ten minutes between insertion warning and the first clutch of gravity. He’d said as much once to the staff sergeant after climbing out of a capsule during a readiness drill. The noncom had barked, as close to a laugh as Sergeant 8-Paul ever got.

  “I counted once on my telltale,” the sergeant said before walking off to the mess. “It’s seven seconds exactly. Count for yourself next time you drop.”

  His eyes flicked downward as the digital timer hit 00:07. A sharp shake and his stomach seemed to climb up into his nose. The first few seconds were smooth and silent as the capsule pierced space’s edge, dropping down into the gravity well. He could feel a whistle rising through the mimetic alloy skin of the capsule, climbing the scale in time with the slow deformation of the outer skin, designed to act as a brake. 15-Thorne visualized the upper end of the capsule bulging out under wind and heat pressure, gradually flowing up and changing shape into a mushroom. It wouldn’t quite slow him down to parachute speed, but with a g-couch, that didn’t really matter. A brief wobble accelerated his heart rate and smoothed itself out within a few seconds. Every capsule did that. At least the last eleven he’d dropped in had.

  His jaw worked and the monitor screen inhabited his eye again. Everyone was nominal for a hot drop: stress levels moderate, high levels of adrenaline and serotonin. Nobody hyperventilating this trip. For the hundredth time since his promotion to lieutenant in this generation, he wished he could see where he was falling from his perspective instead of having to tap into the survey line. Looking at a picture taken from fifteen miles above by a pilotless bird was not nearly the same as watching from a window. He brought up the feed anyway.

  A swarm of gnats sprang to life in his heads-up. Thousands of capsules fell toward the planet Vestibule, ten at a time, covering the planet view below in dots of blue-gray smart metal. The sight was beautiful and horrifying. Falling en masse toward the enemy had never struck him as a fun idea. Maybe the original Elias Thorne had gotten a choice in the matter, but none of his successors did. Or would.

  Watching the telltales of his crew, he wondered if their progenitors were still in the service or even still alive. He would never know, of course; that was forbidden to the point of being a cardinal sin. The price for their service. They got to live as eternal servants of the military machine while the originals, who had volunteered in the first place, either died or were eventually retired and displaced into civilian life. What irony.

  “Lieutenant 15-Thorne, your squad is approaching touchdown. Prepare for E & E.”

  “Affirmative, Base. Preparing for egress.” The telltales were starting to blip up now, the squad ramping for combat. Each capsule’s g-couch was flowing into a new position around its occupant to provide maximum cushioning while allowing the soldier to emerge from the capsule’s wreckage ready to fight. The capsule’s nose, designed to collapse and absorb the initial shock, was also deploying its own version of the g-couch. Pretty busy in here, 15-Thorne thought as he automatically ran through his status checks.

  “All checks green, Base. Blue Squad ready.”

  “Affirmative, Lieutenant. Touchdown in 5…4…3…2…1.” A loud, jarring thump was followed by the abrupt grasp of gravity and the sound of liquid foam sacs rupturing under pressure. He felt the push downward, but suffered no discomfort; the capsule had done its wonders again. With a small explosive pop, the sides of the capsule fell away and Lieutenant 15-Thorne leapt from the remains of his ride to the surface of Vestibule.

  “Blue Squad, sound off,” he barked as he ran for the predetermined meeting place, a copse of native trees about thirty meters east of his landing site. Other capsules were still falling, winking brightly in the afternoon sun, but none close to his position. They’d drawn outer flank position this go-round; maybe next time they’d get center fire position.

  “12-Johnson, go.” The names of his squad members rang in his ears, all affirmative for landing hot and ready. A GPS topo popped into view, gold waves superimposed on the icy dots of his people, pointing towards the battle’s heat. Other squads hove into view on the display, a dissonance of chromatic forces arrayed to the northeast. Their orders were clear in their terms and implications: run flanking action, mop up whoever got missed by the first units, and pound the ground and anyone not under it.

  Using hand gestures older than the colony worlds that most of them came from, 15-Thorne ordered his team out. They formed up into a triple column and marched north. The lieutenant kept one eye scanning the countryside—whipblade trees green and slender under the chilly aquamarine sky, bright against the muddy Yangtze grass—and one eye monitoring the multiple telltales in his view. Thus, he knew who was approaching his crew from the west before the soldier came into view. Combat training, drilled in until it reached his core, kept him from reacting.

  “Report, Private, and make it quick,” he ordered. The private snapped off a quick salute and fell into step with the lieutenant, rearranging his gear as he talked. On his shoulder hung a sleek black pulse gun, fat with metal shards and electromagnetic force.

  “Private 11-Gomez, sir, with Tac Squad Green-3. My capsule didn’t mushroom right and I ended up nearly a klick south of where I should be. My CO said to hook up with the nearest group and follow them in until I can meet up with my squad. Sir.”

  “All right, Private. Fall into formation at the rear; you can cover us with that streetsweeper you’re packing.”

  The private nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “One more thing, Private.”

  11-Gomez turned back. “What’s that, sir?”

  15-Thorne nodded toward the point of the formation. “One of your clone-brothers is up there. 13th generation. Be careful while you’re with us.”

  The private nodded once. His Adam’s apple bulged tight against his throat, then subsided. “Yes, sir.” He turned and jogged to the back of the column.

  Damn it, 15-Thorne thought as they moved north. Mixing generations in a unit wasn’t illegal, but it was a poor idea. Clones of the same person didn’t get along, especially in a combat group. Disagreements turned into fights, and fights turned into infirmary trips. More squads had been killed by clone-sibling distractions than by direct enemy attack during the first fifty years of clone soldier deployments. Everybody had their own theories as to why clone-siblings couldn’t serve together, but 15-Thorne had long since reached a conclusion of his own: they always saw what they disliked most about themselves in each other. It made as much sense as anything official. Who can hate you more than you?

  No matter how many times 15-Thorne dropped, first contact with enemy fire always happened sooner than he anticipated. Blue Squad was still three klicks from the main body when a sniper’s EM round streaked through the trees, tearing through the late afternoon at a sizable fraction of c. Despite its speed, it made almost no sound apart from a thin sizzling that could be mistaken for wind. 15-Thorne had barely noticed its light before the projectile struck Private 9-Olafsen high on the left side, brutally tearing his arm from his body and hurling him backward several yards, spinning as he fell.

  “Sniper!” Blue Squad was down in the long grass before the cry finished its echo, lying low and trying to track the source of the fire. The sniper fired again, severing a sproutling tree neatly in two. Idiot, 15-Thorne thought, hearing the whine of long-range rifles powering up in the breeze.

  “Private 4-Thomas here, sir. I have a track,” a husky female voice said in his ear. The lieutenant nodded; she was one of his best shooters. Telltale clicks on the subvocal channels came in, indicating two others had tracks as well. The coordinates came in just then, adjusted by GPS to compensate for everyone’s position.

  “Fire at will,” 15-Thorne said.

  The world caught
flame. Several crossing beams of light arrowed from the tall grass into the trees, EM projectiles tearing up the sky as they left tracks of fire and force. The susurration of so many rounds sounded like a chorus of cicadas whispering, broken only by the cracking of branches and the wet slap of something up high dying quickly. 15-Thorne nodded; the pieces of what remained were small and fell before they could be ID’d.

  “Give me a look-see, 4T,” he said.

  A stand of green-yellow weedlike growths shook briskly for a moment. That was her acknowledgement, 15-Thorne knew, because he couldn’t see anything else moving. 00:24 was the count when her voice came back on. “Definitely a Vestibule militiaman, sir. There’s just about enough left to pick out the colors.”

  “Acknowledged. Get back and give Johnson a hand with Ole. We’ll prep for meat wagon evac before we move on.”

  “Yes, sir,” he heard. I don’t like it either, he wanted to say. Ole had been a good soldier and friend to many in his battalion. He would be again, but not to the soldiers of Blue Squad, 103rd Battalion. Some other battalion, a few months from now, would welcome Private 10-Olafson into their ranks, his memory as complete as the meat wagons could make it. That was fair; on their next duty cycle out, they too would welcome someone else’s returning dead into the fold.

  In his ear, 4T’s voice clicked on. “Sir, Ole is tagged and bagged, casualty beacon active.”

  “Good. We’re moving on.” He chinned the all-squad channel. “Move out, troops.”

  The column moved on. 15-Thorne spared only one brief glance at 9-Olafson as he passed, the bloody evidence of his death disguised in a dark polymer shroud marked clearly with the Pan-Humana Conference medical insignia. Everyone in the squad was an old hand at corpse prep duties by now; he didn’t bother checking whether 4T had picked up Ole’s tags. She’d hand them over at camp.

  “Lieutenant, we’ve got movement up ahead,” 13-Gomez reported from point. 15-Thorne’s eyes flicked back to the new Gomez, then forward again. Thank God telltales don’t pick up facial heat, he thought.