Earth Unknown (Forgotten Earth Book 1), page 3
He pulled his hat off so it wouldn’t knock into the other passengers, crumpling it in his free hand and shoving it into his other pocket. He turned to look out the window, back to the platform. His heart skipped when he saw four more peace officers at the gate, rifles in hand.
They were here for him, and the doors to the pod were still open.
Chapter 5
“Come on, close,” Nathan whispered, as if that would convince the doors to close. He watched the peace officers open the gate. They would be in the pod in seconds, and they had the power to stop it from going anywhere if they chose.
He took a step deeper into the vehicle, pushing past a woman to do it.
“Excuse me,” he said softly.
“Watch yourself, clone,” the woman replied.
He clenched his teeth, bristling at the term. Clone suggested he was a copy, which wasn’t accurate. At all. Replicas were derivations of the original, using the best parts of the root DNA and blending it with a lab-modified genome. He was stronger, faster, and more resilient than any real human. Newer replicas were often smarter, too, though the powers that be made sure not to let them get too smart.
He didn’t react outwardly. To make a scene would give the PO a reason to hold up the pod. He took the insult in stride, continuing to look back at the platform. The officers had entered, but they didn’t move straight to where he was. They were heading north, in the direction of another guy with a similar build. Another Stacker? Maybe his luck wasn’t all bad.
The doors to the pod slid closed on a hiss of air. A tone sounded to alert the riders they were about to accelerate. Nathan grabbed a handle on top of the pod, using it to keep his balance as they got underway. He bent over slightly to see through the windows as the pod raced along the north side of the platform. He saw the Officers had surrounded a replica like him. He was right; it was another Stacker. They could have passed for brothers, and technically they were.
Was he the one who had killed Niobe?
He stared at the Stacker, eyes burning with anger while the pod cleared the station, gaining speed when it entered the tunnel. There was nothing to see through the windows now. No light. No scenery. They were fifty meters underground, traveling through the rock that composed most of Proxima.
Nathan stayed on alert as the pod made its stops in Dome Seven and Dome Eight, the passengers around him coming and going, a sea of normalcy that he wished he was still sailing in. There were no Officers on the platforms. Not yet. The loop was quick enough to make a fast reaction challenging.
The pod pulled out of Dome Eight Station, gaining speed. Nathan could feel his anxiety growing with his anger. Once he caught up with his contact, there was going to be some sort of hell to pay. It didn’t matter if it brought the weight of the Trust pressing down even harder. They had killed his wife. What else could they do to him?
He was busy with his thoughts. Busy enough that he didn’t notice the first peace officer from Dome Six was in the pod with him. He didn’t notice the officer coming toward him either, making his way through the passengers to get a closer look and a positive ID. Not until the PO was right on top of him, stunner in hand and making a hard face like he wanted Nathan to challenge him.
“Nathan Stacker,” the officer said. “You’re under arrest for the homicide of Niobe Rivera Stacker.”
Nathan didn’t react. He stared at the PO, holding his gaze long enough the other man started to get intimidated. Most peace officers were replicas. Like him, but not like him. Stackers had a reputation, and sometimes silence was the best weapon.
“Don’t move,” the PO said.
“I haven’t moved since I got on this thing,” Nathan replied softly. He had one hand on the support, the other in his pocket, still on his pistol.
The officer reached to his hip, retrieving a restraining device.
“I didn’t kill Niobe,” Nathan said. “The Trust—”
“Is a myth,” the PO replied, cutting him off. “A story made up by second-rate assholes and replicas to use as an excuse for becoming criminals. I’ve heard this story a hundred times before.”
He reached out and up for Nathan’s neck. His hand was shaking while he did.
Nathan knew from the officer’s answer he was either an idiot or on the take. In this case, probably both. He eyed the puck coming for his neck. Then he eyed the officer’s Oracle. The time was visible on it, backward from Nathan’s perspective.
“The Trust owes me answers, officer,” Nathan said, at the same time his free hand dropped from the handle and wrapped around the PO’s wrist. He held it easily, despite the man’s effort to pull it away. “If you talk to them, tell them they fucked with the wrong replica. One way or another, I’ll make them pay for what they did.”
The officer stabbed the stunner into Nathan’s stomach, activating the shock. Nathan felt it like a tickle along his flesh. He had been designed to stand up to much worse threats than this. He released the plasma pistol and took his other hand from his coat, using it to grab the officer’s other wrist and pull the stunner away.
The pod started to decelerate, having nearly reached Dome Nine Station.
The officer looked up at him, white with fear. “You’re a murderer.”
“Not this time,” Nathan said. “But I’m getting closer to doing it again.”
He held the man’s wrists, leaning back and kicking him in the chest, letting go as he did. The peace officer stumbled backward, crashing into a few of the passengers before falling to the floor.
The pod came to a stop, the doors sliding open. Nathan hesitated for a second while the officer reached for his sidearm. Then he shoved two passengers out of the way and moved out onto the station’s platform. A quick glance to the gate showed him a squad of soldiers coming toward it. Not peacekeepers. Fucking military police.
Fortunately, the entrance and the exit were separated by a tall, unbreakable glass barrier, intended to keep people from trying to sneak in through the out without being scanned. Nathan walked briskly toward the gate, meeting eyes with the MPs as he drew near.
“Stacker,” one of them said, raising his rifle toward the gate. It was a stunner, more powerful than the officer’s version but just as nonlethal.
That didn't mean Nathan wanted to get hit with it.
He burst forward, ducking slightly as he charged into a passenger in front of him, grabbing the woman by the waist and holding her in front of him. She screamed and tried to pull away, but she couldn't fight his strength. The MPs held their fire, afraid to hit her as Nathan brought her to the exit gate.
“Sorry,” he said, letting her go to pass through the gate.
“Asshole,” she said in reply.
He cleared the gate. The MPs were already on the move, headed back up toward the surface, intending to grab him there.
The race was on.
Chapter 6
It was easier for Nathan to ascend on the proper side of the mover than it was for the MPs to go up the wrong way. He was rising with the flow of traffic, while they had to turn and push against the incoming civilians, yelling for them to move aside and let them through while trying to get a shot off on him.
Nathan shoved the people ahead of him aside, always to the right to block the MP’s fire, ducking behind them and staying in motion. One moron tried to be a hero and stop him, sticking out his foot as Nathan passed him. He was rewarded with a sharp kick on the ankle, hard enough to break the bone and leave him howling in pain.
Nathan didn’t care. Not now. The peace officers had moved faster than he expected. The MPs? He hadn’t been expecting them to send MPs. But they knew what they were dealing with, and who they were dealing with. They weren’t taking any chances.
The soldiers on the descending mover started shooting, getting more desperate as he put distance between them. He was rising fast enough to clear the station before they reached the surface. The rounds were high-powered stunners, and they flashed when they ricocheted off the railing beside him or hit the civilians around him by mistake. Non-lethal meant they could knock a few people down without too much repercussion.
Drones were swooping in toward the station as Nathan crested the top. He used his shoulder to shove another man aside, grabbing his plasma pistol from his pocket and taking quick aim. Three bolts sizzled through the air, slamming into the first drone and sending it hurtling to the ground.
He could hear sirens approaching, the echoing wip-wop gaining in volume as he raced across the street, sparing only a moment to look up at the semi-transparent dome keeping the breathable atmosphere contained. A fake sunset was projected across it, and he could see the Dove through the orange and pink hues. Today it served as the seat of the Government, as well as a sports stadium and barracks. Two hundred years ago, it was one of the seventeen colony ships that carried the settlers from Earth to Proxima.
The massive starship rose high above the Dome, a sentinel against the backdrop of space and the unknown threat that was out there.
Somewhere.
They didn’t tell the Centurion Spacers all that much about who or what it was they were being trained to fight. The government kept a lot of things need-to-know, and that was one of them.
He sprinted toward an alley, the clapping of gunfire loud at his back. The MPs were shooting in desperation, their rounds skipping off the ground or whipping past him. One of them hit him in the shoulder, and he fell to the ground as the stun charge went off, blasting him with close to one hundred thousand volts.
He groaned in pain, spending a few seconds on the ground before rolling back to his feet. He turned, aiming back at the soldiers and squeezing off a few bolts from his pistol. He wasn’t trying to hit them, only slow them, and he succeeded in that.
He made it into the alley, between two of the common ten-story apartments. The space between was too narrow for something as large as a Peacekeeper to follow, but it didn’t keep smaller tracker drones from buzzing overhead.
He spun and fired, three more bolts pouring from his pistol and hitting a tracker. Smoke poured from it as it sank and crashed into the wall of the cube before falling to the ground. The commotion brought the residents of the cube to their windows, looking down into the alley at him. He ignored them, emerging from the alley and into the next street, immediately looking to his right.
The capital city of Praeton was contained within twenty-four separate domes, and was home to nearly ten-million of the one-hundred million people living on the planet. Each dome was very much a self-sufficient unit, containing everything from farms and apartments to factories and recycling. The zoning of the domes moved from the outside in, starting with A-District. Those were the apartments and shops of the wealthy and had the best views of the landscape beyond the city. That fed into B-District, which was the business center of each dome, as well as a neutral gathering place for people from all walks of life.
The poorest residents were on the inner side in C-District. Their views were of the Centurion Space Force complex and shipyard, and the edges of the other domes that surrounded it.
Oleksy was a low-class merchant with a storefront in C-District. When he wasn’t middle-managing jobs for the Trust, he was a med-peddling asshole who only sold the lowest quality garbage. He was Nathan’s only real connection to the Trust, which meant he was the only option Nathan had for getting any answers.
Nathan passed through the next alley before making another turn and running along a more lightly populated street. He sprinted along the sidewalk, maneuvering around the few civilians in his path. The sirens were closing in again, having changed direction to give chase, and he could see a Peacekeeper drone approaching on his left.
He pulled to a stop when a pair of MPs cleared the alley in front of him, turning his direction and bringing up their rifles. A civilian on a scooter was about to zip past, and Nathan didn’t hesitate to leap out into the street, wrapping his hand around the man’s arm and holding him tight. Momentum pulled the scooter out from under the man, yanking him back and off the vehicle. Nathan strained against the force, planting his feet to stay upright and dropping the rider to the ground before heading for the scooter.
“Stop!” one of the MPs said, getting to the machine first, his rifle pointed at Nathan.
Nathan faked to the left before dancing to the right. The MP’s shot missed him by a hair. The soldier only had time to squeeze the trigger once before Nathan was on him, grabbing the weapon with a strong hand and hitting the soldier in the head with his plasma pistol. The MP tumbled to the ground, and Nathan pocketed the pistol and slung the rifle, grabbing the scooter and lifting it upright. Another stunner round hit him in the leg at the same time he mounted the vehicle, causing the whole thing to go numb.
Nathan didn’t slow as he mounted the scooter. He let his right foot drag while he accelerated away, just barely getting ahead of the Peacekeeper drone when it passed overhead and turned, fans whining to change its direction and put it back on Nathan’s course. He leaned over the controls, gaining speed.
Peace officers came screaming around the corner to his right, their cars making a thrumming noise as they slipped sideways to make the turn, three of the vehicles giving chase in a tight line. Nathan could hear more of them up ahead, getting in position to set up a roadblock and shut him down.
He pushed the throttle to the max, lowering his head to become more aerodynamic. As if that would make a difference. He wasn’t a small man.
He whipped through the intersection, turning his head to glance back as the peace officer vehicles came to a quick stop, their intended roadblock already slipped. He was nearing C-District, the buildings ahead losing more of their luster the closer he got. He would have been living in a C-District for the last ten years if not for Niobe, in a containment center with the other unemployable ex-cons and losers the Trust didn’t want.
Her love had saved his life.
His love had taken hers.
He clenched his teeth, fresh anger renewing his motivation.
The MPs were slow to catch up to him. So were the peace officers. They would get him sooner or later, he knew they would, but not before he got to Oleksy. Not before either the man talked or the man died. Taking out one member of the Trust was better than going down quietly, and letting Niobe die with zero consequences to her killers.
He skipped the scooter over a low curb and onto the sidewalk, cutting around the other personal transports that had yet to peel off the road in response to the chase. He was nearing another intersection where the traffic was flowing perpendicular to him. Pedestrians and scooters were in his path, but he didn’t dare slow down.
“Move!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice deep and loud and getting the attention of the civilians ahead. “Get out of the damned way!”
He angled the scooter and jumped the sidewalk, coming close enough to a woman’s back that her long hair whipped him in the face on the way past. He kept shouting, trying to get the people to evacuate. He didn’t want to hurt them, only Oleksy.
He reached the intersection, guiding the scooter through an opening in the pedestrians and into the street. A PO car had settled ahead of him, the passenger side door open and an officer leaning against the hood, rifle aimed in his direction.
Nathan didn’t hesitate. He squeezed the scooter tightly between his legs and lifted, the vehicle going airborne, the front end just barely clearing the hood of the car. The pusher coils that let it float a few millimeters off the ground slammed into the metal and dented it before lifting him up again. The peace officer took the shot, the stun round hitting the frame of the scooter. Nathan lashed out with his good leg, hitting the side of the officer’s helmet and sending him tumbling away.
The scooter crashed down on the other side, the coils planting into the street and bouncing hard. He almost wrecked, the scooter wobbling beneath him, but somehow he managed to keep it going without crashing into anyone on the other side.
He continued along the street, risking a glance behind him. The other cars giving chase had been forced to slow while they cleared traffic, letting him open up some distance between them and giving him a clean break to one of the bridges that connected B-District to C-District.
The Centauri river was the lifeblood of Praeton, and the reason the generation ships had landed here in the first place. While the atmosphere outside the domes was incredibly unfriendly to the needs of humankind, Proxima had an abundance of surface water in the form of long, deep rivers and pools. Not quite oceans, but more than suitable for civilization.
The domes for all twenty of the planet’s cities had been organized based on the flow of the rivers, and in Praeton’s Dome Nine, the Centauri had been contained to a dozen meters across and a dozen meters depth. Its reduced flow was used for hydroelectric power, among other things. It had greenery and parkland on either side, including trees and other vegetation that had been brought all the way from Earth.
Nathan looked to his left as he started up the bridge’s incline. There were always people walking along the banks on both sides, though there was a stark contrast between the upper and middle-class on the B-District bank and the lower-class opposite them. Not that Nathan cared that much about either one at the moment. He was looking for Oleksy’s storefront on the other side, in the first row of buildings close to the river.
He found it as he reached the top of the bridge, noting that the front door was open, meaning Oleksy was inside. He looked back at the road, cursing under his breath when he saw a pair of Centurion Defenders blocking his path.
He slammed on the brakes, letting the scooter drop and holding it close to his body. The Defenders were robots, machines designed to protect the Centurion Space Force base from any potential threats, whatever those might be. They were human-sized, though bulkier and blockier than humans, with thick arms and squat legs. He had heard them called gorillas before, but he didn’t know what a gorilla was. He couldn’t believe they had been requisitioned from the base to deal with him.
