Earth Unknown (Forgotten Earth Book 1), page 4
Stun rounds burst from the turrets mounted on their shoulders, flashing off the scooter right in front of him. He closed his eyes to keep the light from blinding him, staying down in the face of the assault. Dozens of rounds detonated all around him, and when they stopped he could immediately hear the two Defenders stomping his way.
He let go of the scooter and stood, opening his eyes. He didn’t hesitate, turning to his left and charging toward the lip of the bridge. The Defenders tried to rotate to follow the motion, but he managed to stay a step ahead, leaping up and over the railing.
He straightened out, or at least tried to, his stunned leg not responding as well as he would have liked as he dove toward the river. It was illegal to swim in the Centauri, not to mention cold as fuck, but what else did he have to lose?
He hit the water, plunging underneath, squirming his body to get out of his coat to keep it from slowing him down. He kicked his feet and moved his arms, taking long, powerful strokes beneath the water, fortunate to be moving with the current.
He went deep, swimming underwater for nearly three hundred meters. His lungs were on fire by the time he came up.
A Peacekeeper was already hovering over his head, its red scanning laser pissing down on him. He could hear the peace officer sirens getting closer. The MPs wouldn’t be far behind.
He made it to the bank, pulling himself onto the grass. The people around him stared. A few of them cursed at him for being another dirty criminal clone. He ignored them, sprinting across the greenway to the street. Oleksy's shop was right on the other side.
He looked to his right. An army of peace officer cars were closing, along with the MPs and the Defenders. He had given them a good chase, but it was about to end.
He pushed harder, gaining an extra burst of speed and using it to make it to Oleksy's storefront ahead of his pursuers. The asshole was sitting behind the counter, and he stood, bringing a shotgun with him. He managed to fire it before Nathan got to him, the buckshot spreading across Nathan’s stomach and digging in deep. Nathan ignored it, grabbing the muzzle of the shotgun and ripping it from Oleksy's hand at the same time he jumped the counter and slammed into the man, pushing him back against the wall.
He threw the shotgun aside, shoving his forearm against Oleksy's neck. The man looked back at him with too little fear in his eyes.
“Why?” Nathan asked, barely containing his fury. “Just tell me why.”
“She had too many questions,” Oleksy replied. “And she found too many answers.”
“What? What does that mean? You didn’t kill her to punish me?”
Nathan heard the peace officers move into the store behind him.
“Let him go,” one of them said. “Turn around with your hands up. It’s over, Stacker.”
Oleksy started laughing. “You have a perfect record, Nathan. Why would we want to punish you? No. Your wife was curious. Too curious. Tell me, what do you know about Earth?”
Nathan pressed his forearm harder into Oleksy's throat. Niobe had never said anything to him about asking questions or finding answers. And she had damn well never brought up Earth.
Nathan was sure he didn’t know any more about Earth than anyone else. The generation ships had left it behind because there was some kind of political trouble or some other bullshit, and they had decided to settle here. Earth cut off relations, and that was that, at least until recently. He had heard Command was re-establishing communication with their homeworld, and they had brought in the first new settlers in nearly two hundred years, though they were being kept segregated from the rest of the population while they acclimated to their new homes.
What had Niobe done behind his back? What had she learned that had gotten her killed?
“What about Earth?” he hissed, sticking his face close to the other man’s.
Oleksy only laughed harder, refusing to offer any new clues.
“I said, turn around,” the peace officer repeated.
Nathan held Oleksy under his forearm. The man’s face was beginning to turn red; his breath choked off. His laughter faded to a choking whine, but the smile didn’t vanish with it.
The officers didn’t warn him again. They opened fire, half a dozen stunners hitting him in the back. Nathan winced against the pain, the strength draining from his body. He brought his other hand up, trying to get more leverage against Oleksy's neck.
Three more stunners hit him in the back. It was too much for him to take. He fell to his knees, losing his grip on Oleksy, leaving the man to stumble away, clutching at his neck and coughing.
“How is he still alive?” Nathan heard one of the officers behind him say. “Never mind still upright.”
Four more stunners hit him in the back.
Finally, he toppled forward, landing on his face.
“We’re sorry it had to be this way,” he heard Oleksy say, the man’s voice raspy from being choked. “It isn’t personal.”
The world started fading away. An image of Niobe crawled into his mind. She had been perfect. Everything he had ever wanted or needed, and they had taken her away from him.
Not personal?
Fuck that.
It was now.
Chapter 7
Nathan woke up in the hospital.
A robot was at his side, four wiry, mechanical arms reaching in and downward toward his gut, doing something with it he couldn’t see. It hurt like hell. It probably hurt more than hell would have. He could feel every movement the machine was making as it reached into his flesh to remove the shrapnel from the shotgun.
Hadn’t the nurses bothered to give him anything? Had they stuck him on the table and left him to wake up?
“Nurse!” he shouted, trying to get someone’s attention.
He shifted his head slightly to see off the side. Medical robots weren’t supposed to operate unsupervised, and there was no reason why an anesthesiologist wouldn’t be in the room to monitor him.
What the hell was going on?
He clenched his teeth against the pain, the robot’s arms twitching slightly in an unnatural movement. He realized he knew exactly what was going on. Fucking Oleksy and the fucking Trust. Was this their kind of twisted justice? What had happened to it not being personal?
He balled his hands into fists, trying to raise them from the table. He wasn’t surprised to find them restrained, shackled to the gurney and keeping him down. His feet were the same, his whole body held against the table and unable to move.
The robot raised a shard of buckshot between a pair of narrow fingers, turning the hand and opening the fingers to drop it in a clear bag. Nathan eyed the bag, noticing the blood and the number of fragments there already. At least the robot had to be almost done.
“Nurse!” he shouted again. He didn’t expect anyone to come to help him, but there was no harm in trying.
He heard a nearby door open. He had to flip his head the other way to see who had entered. He groaned at the sight of a woman in a too-stylish business suit, with a fitted skirt tight near her calves and a long, fancy jacket going nearly as far, hanging open to reveal a white blouse with a round collar beneath. She had a full Oracle over her eyes, a pair of the screens sitting just in front of her and feeding her data. Two narrow black bangs hung over them, partially obscuring dark eyes.
“You aren’t a nurse,” he said, grunting slightly at a fresh wave of pain. Any born human would have been unconscious by now, unable to handle the intensity of the metal fingers digging around in the buckshot wounds.
“No,” she replied, glancing down at his chest and making a face. “That has to hurt.”
There was no compassion in the statement. Curiosity. Amusement. Those four words told him everything he needed to know.
“You’re my attorney, right?” he said. “The one the Trust sent to make sure there’s no way in hell I manage to get out of this?”
“You’re a parolee of a Centurion Space Force maximum security prison,” she said flatly. “You murdered a fellow officer. There was already no way in hell you were getting out of this no matter what. You’re also technically still property of the system, which means you don’t get an attorney. I’m just the unlucky bitch who has to deal with you for the next three days.”
“Three days?” Nathan said. “Don’t civilian cases normally take up to six months to process?”
“Wake up, Stacker. There is no case. No judge. No jury. Didn’t you hear me? Once a Centurion, always a Centurion. That’s how the system works.”
“That’s how the system works because the Trust wants it that way, you mean.”
“I’m a judicus. I work for Proxima Command, not some mythical crime syndicate.”
“Then why are you letting a medical robot operate on me while I’m still awake?” he hissed, trying to dislodge his binds. He wanted nothing more than to break free of the shackles and use them to wring her neck.
At least the anger was distracting him from the pain in his abdomen.
And from the pain of losing Niobe.
“Everything appears in order to me, Mister Stacker,” she said. She moved closer to him, leaning over his face. “You should have handled things gracefully. You might have wound up on one of the labor rigs working the asteroid belt. Not a great life, but you probably could have carved out a niche for yourself, made some friends, adjusted and survived.
“But you decided you were going to, what? Take on the entire planet on your own? The population, they barely tolerate replicas, and only because Command tells them to or because their sister or neighbor just picked up one of those new infant models they’ve been hawking all over the loop. You decided you were going to go on a rampage across Dome Nine, all to reach some lowlife med dealer in C-District and choke him out. Do you know what that looks like for Command? For the Civilian Council? They spend half their time trying to get you accepted, and all it takes is one wayward asshole like you to make everybody tense again.”
“Your boss should have thought about that before they had my wife killed,” Nathan said.
“Really, Stacker? Is that really the story you’re sticking with? We have surveillance video of you entering your apartment. Thirty-seven minutes later, the same you in the same exact clothes goes running out. Meanwhile, the coroner has already nailed the time of death. I bet you can guess when it was?”
Nathan stared at her. He couldn’t decide if she was working for the Trust or not. The way they were treating him suggested she was. Then again, Command had a reputation of its own. Law demanded that his wounds get attention. It likely didn’t specify that anesthetic or pain meds accompany it.
“Another Stacker and a data wipe could falsify that evidence in less than a minute,” he said. “Even a homicidal asshole like me can figure that out.”
“If that evidence were presented tabula rasa, maybe it would be worth digging into, but probably not. Combined with your record? Not a chance in hell. Out of control replicas will not be tolerated. Today or any day in the future.”
“We don’t have capital punishment here.”
“Why would we kill you, Stacker? If that were enough, we didn’t need to bring you here and patch you up.”
“You’re doing such a great job of that.”
“You think you understand how things work here. You think you know all the machinations that help define the daily lives of you and everyone around you. For all of that, you didn’t even stop for half a millisecond to consider the reasons or the consequences of your actions. You murdered your wife, and then you went after some lowlife in Dome Nine. Did he sell you bad pills? Do you blame him for the rage that made you stab your wife twenty-eight times?”
“I didn’t kill my wife!” he shouted, as loudly as he could. For some reason, knowing the number of wounds made it that much worse.
She smirked, lifting her left wrist and using her right hand to tap on the small computer there.
“It doesn’t matter that much if you did or didn’t,” she said. Nathan could see the data streaming across her Oracle. He couldn’t make out what it was. She was probably submitting his statement of innocence for the record. “The Justice Department has already reviewed the evidence. We can’t afford to let you integrate back into society. You’re not only a risk to commit further violence, but you’re a public relations disaster. Do you understand?”
He winced as the medical robot hit a particularly sensitive area. “So that’s it? I get what? Locked up again?”
“Not exactly,” the judicus replied. “Command has other plans for you.”
Nathan hated the tone of her voice when she said it. He hated the idea of Command making specific plans for a specific soldier, especially when that soldier was him. “What kind of plans?”
“I’m not authorized to say. I’ve recorded our conversation and passed it to the Department. Your surgery should be completed shortly. You’ll have a brief recovery period, after which we'll transfer you to a Centurion Spacer facility on the dark side of the planet. Unfortunately, I’m required to stay with you until you’re delivered, so get well soon, Nathan.”
She stood up straight and turned to leave.
“Judicus, wait,” Nathan said.
“What is it?”
“The ring. My wife’s wedding band. Can I have it back?”
“If it was on you when you were brought in, it’ll be impounded as evidence.”
“Judicus, please. It’s all I have left of her.”
“Maybe you should have considered that before you killed her.”
Nathan clenched his jaw to keep himself from shouting again. It wasn’t going to help. New tears formed in his eyes. “Do you really think I’m a monster?”
“I’ve seen your file,” she replied. “Yes, I think you’re a monster. I also think if Command had been smarter, they wouldn’t have overlooked the loophole that let you walk free. Does it make you feel better to hear me say that?”
Nathan grunted at another sharp pain in his gut. He wasn’t sure why he had asked the question, or what he had expected her to say. It had been a long time since he had committed that crime. A long time during which he hadn’t harmed another soul. His squadmate would have been eighty years old, wrinkled and retired, while he still didn’t look a day over forty. It didn’t matter. Nobody had ever forgiven him for that mistake, including himself.
Nobody, except Niobe.
“She believed in me when no one else did,” he said. “Do you think I would ever hurt her?”
She stared at him for a long moment. Then she shrugged. “I told you. It doesn’t matter. Even if I tell you I believe you, it doesn’t change a thing.”
He smiled through the pain. “Maybe not for you. It does for me.”
The judicus turned around again, leaving the room without another word.
Chapter 8
Three days. To Nathan, they felt like three years. The medical robot had done a decent job of patching him up, but the recovery hurt almost as much as the surgery, and as before the Spacer infirmary refused to waste any of its precious chemicals on a murderous replica. He was forced to get better without medication, to bear the pain like a good little soldier, to lie there in agony while his body knitted back together.
In that sense, he was fortunate to be a Stacker. His enhanced DNA gave him a strong healing factor, and by the third day he was well on his way to recovery. The wounds still hurt a bit, and they would leave a nice bit of scarring, but he would live.
He hadn’t seen the judicus after her first visit. He had hardly seen anyone. After the medical robot finished, the gurney had been remotely controlled, guided from the operating room to a cell, the heavy steel doors clanging closed behind him. Only then had his restraints unlocked. Only then did he even have the option to sit up.
He had spent the time doing his best to think. The pain was a distraction, a constant reminder of the reality of his situation. He barely thought about that, though. He barely considered what the judicus had told him about being shipped to the dark side, despite the fact that he knew what was on the dark side. The Centurion Spacer base there was R&D, a research station segregated from the rest of the populace, just in case anything went wrong. The work being done there was hush-hush, highly classified and only truly known to two or three of the most powerful people in Proxima Command.
Instead, he thought first about Niobe. About the day they had met. She had smiled at him from across a row of network access terminals in the Dome Nine Central Datastore. He had been off the mining rigs for almost a year, and she was the first person who had made direct eye contact with him. He had gone over to talk to her, and they had hit it off. When he told her who he was and what he had done? She empathized with his guilt and pain, and he wound up in her arms, bawling like a baby. So what if he was a replica? So what if he had killed someone? He was sorry, and he had changed.
She had allowed him to change when nobody else did.
When he couldn’t handle those thoughts anymore, he moved on to what Olesky had said about questions, answers, and Earth. He still couldn’t remember Niobe ever mentioning Earth. He didn’t recall her speaking of being curious or concerned, or looking up anything about humankind’s homeworld. What could she have discovered? Why didn’t she say anything to him? Did she know she was going to attract the wrong kind of attention? Was she trying to protect him? Or had her overall kindness and compassion helped support her naivete?
The questions swirled in his head, repeating themselves over and over. He could never get answers directly from her. He would never get answers at all. Whatever happened to him, he was going to do it knowing there would be no resolution to her murder. No closure.
The idea of that nearly drove him mad.
Three days.
The judicus finally showed at the tail end of the third. She was wearing the identical suit from her first visit, a standard uniform for her department. She was carrying a Spacer pack.
“I took the liberty of grabbing some of your things from your apartment,” she said as she reached his cell. He was already standing by then, looking out at her through the bars.
