One
15 August 2260
Perie, Caldin – Borderworlds
“Identification.”
I flipped my card at the customs officer, struggling not to wince at the stab of pain through my ribcage the motion created. I shifted my bag uncomfortably, waiting with measured impatience.
Just want to crash. I rubbed my forehead, watching the man as he fumbled to run my ID. I sighed a little. Worse than Carmiline, but this time it’s because he’s young. “Turn it around. Sometimes that helps.”
He looked at me nervously—couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen years old—and smiled slightly, obediently flipping the card around and scanning it again. The beep and smile that followed earned a nod from me—and from his supervisor, who I could see standing behind another young officer a few slots over. He’d gotten it working. He handed the card back. “Everything seems to be in order, Mr. Terrel. Enjoy your stay on Caldin.”
I nodded, tucking the card back into my jacket and starting to limp onward, into the spaceport proper.
“Mr. Terrel? Would you like me to call someone to give you a hand?”
I turned to look at the customs officer as a hand touched my arm. I tensed momentarily, then relaxed and shook my head a little, not bothering to check to see who had me by the arm. The grip told me all I needed to know. “Looks like my help’s already here. Thank you, though.”
The young man nodded slightly and I turned toward the woman at my elbow. Haley Brink shook her head at me, smile lopsided. “You look like hell. Let Harm take your bag.”
I leaned on her and let John Kathe take my bag, managing to smile at him and his partner. “I feel like hell. You have a car?”
She nodded, tucking herself under my arm and starting to lead me through the milling throng of people making their way through customs. “It’s not far. We decided to have mercy on you.”
“Thanks.” My smile faded before we ever made it to the car, a utilitarian, all-terrain model, probably a fuel-cell model popular this far from the centers of civilization of the Epsilon Alliance and the Drillin Imperium, Epsilon and Earth respectively.
John shook his head. “We didn’t think you were going to be here for at least another week.”
I shrugged with one shoulder as he opened the door of our ride for me. “If I waited any longer to come, I was going to go crazy. I came as soon as I was cleared to travel.” Barely cleared to work, but it matches the cover story, at least. I tried not to groan as I settled into the seat, but I did finally begin to relax for the first time since leaving Varice for the Borderworlds. Pain pulsed through my spine and ribs and my knee throbbed, but for the first time in two months, I stopped feeling sick to my stomach. Maybe Colonel Traverse had been right. Maybe a change of scenery would help. I leaned my head back as John and Haley climbed into the front seat of the car. It eased slowly up off the ground as John started the engine. I closed my eyes.
“Melissa’s made arrangements for an apartment for you.”
“I’ll have to thank her after I sleep for a week,” I mumbled in Haley’s direction. After I swallow enough pills to sleep for a week.
“You won’t have enough time to sleep for a week. If you wanted to keep sleeping, you should’ve stayed on base.” Haley was twisted in her seat, looking at me with one arm hooked around the backrest. “You’re going to hit the ground limping, Aaron. As fast as you can.”
I lifted my head, squinting at her. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“You’re not surprised.” She smiled wryly at me. “You knew what you were stepping into.”
I managed to return the smile. “Yeah. Helping the resistance. Can’t do that until I’ve got wings, though.”
“Matt’s doing some groundwork. Tonight, you’re coming with John and I to have some dinner at the local hub of resistance activity. You’re going to be seen. Hope you’re comfortable with your cover story.”
Comfortable enough to make it work, anyway. I nodded a little. “I’ll be fine. Am I likely to run into anyone I’ve met before?”
They looked at each other in the front seat. Haley shrugged. “Don’t think so. I haven’t seen anyone that matches anyone we’ve been able to match to your reports. We’ve been prepping this for a while. Colonel Traverse was pretty certain you were going to take the assignment.”
He’s watched people lose enough to know two things happen. Either you break and walk away, or you break and keep going. He knew what I was going to do. I don’t have anything else. Just the job. “He wasn’t wrong,” I murmured, looking out the window. The sun was climbing higher in the pale sky. “Where’s the Alliance post?”
“Down that street we just passed, about a quarter mile,” John answered, concentrating on keeping clear of a few scooters along one side of the roadway. “You probably won’t be going there much. Matt and Melissa are the known Alliance contacts. A few of the local higher-ups with the resistance know about Haley and I. Objective for us is to make sure that you’re even lesser known.” He tossed me a grin. “Don’t make it hard on us, Taylor.”
“I’ll try not to, John.” I closed my eyes and tilted my head back again. “Customs here always so…young?”
“The kid that checked you through? He’s scared shitless. Second week on the job—and he’s resistance. Ship you came off of was rumored to have a lot of refugees from Carmiline on it. That means there could have been any number of Imperium plants aboard. In his mind, anyway. As worlds go, Caldin’s pretty safe right now.” Haley shook her head a little. “Caleb means well enough. He’s just a kid.”
“I noticed,” I mumbled, shaking my head. “Resistance has a lot of kids in it.”
“Wouldn’t you have joined, if you grew up out here instead of on Epsilon?”
Of course I would have. That’s why I drew this assignment. I winced. Low blow. You knew the answer to that. I’m here because I can relate to the people here and that’ll help me build a rapport and help them.
“Stop picking on him, John.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t picking. It’s a fact. It’s what they’ve got. He knows it, too.”
Carmiline. I exhaled. “Cell in Tavren was fifteen people. Nine weren’t older than twenty.”
Haley sighed a little, shaking her head. “It’s what the Borderworlds have to offer. All they’ve got are the ones who stay behind because they love their homes or their families and can’t stand to leave to find someplace safer. Or can’t afford it.” She rested her chin on the back of her seat.
Or can’t win appointments to the Academy, or can’t get into school off-world. Or any number of reasons. God knows it’s only going to be so long before the Imperium starts press-ganging them into service. “I know,” I said quietly. The sick feeling was coming back and I straightened in my seat, wincing. “Giving them a chance at a different life is about half the reason I took this assignment in the first place.” Have to make some kind of difference. Resistance has to be able to do something where the Alliance won’t—or can’t. Bloody mess out here, but they won’t violate treaty unless they can deny they’ve done it, and that’s why we’re out here. Plausible deniability. “It’s time I made some kind of difference for them.” Like she did on Carmiline. I owe the people out here at least that much, for all the shit they’ve pulled. This was personal for me. When you’ve got the two generations before you in service to the enemy, you end up with more than a little to prove—to yourself and everyone else, too.
Haley watched my face and nodded slightly, slowly. “Just don’t get in over your head. Might find it easier to do than you think, all things considered.”
She knows me too damn well. They all did, though, every one of our graduating class of SpecOps. Something about the small size of every group and the intensity of our training, the sheer amount of exposure to each other, meant that inevitably one of two things happened: either you got damned clo
se, or you started to hate each other. With the class of ’57, it had been the former with occasional bouts of the latter, bouts that most of us got over quickly when we got a little distance and a little perspective.
I shrugged as John pulled the car up in front of a tall, gray building, as non-descript as any I’d ever seen. I need to forget. Can’t get over my head, but I need to forget, at least for a while. “I’ll be fine.”
She shook her head at me. “You always say that, even when you’re not going to be fine.”
“It’s a great defense mechanism.” John opened the door on my side and I gripped the roof of the car to help lever myself out. My ribs screamed and I grunted, squinting a little and trying not to let the hurt show.
John shook his head at me and just watched. “They should have kept you the extra week.” He took me by the arm as I was about halfway out of the car and pulled me out and upright. I choked on a gasp as my knee slipped in a direction it shouldn’t have before I could wrestle it back into proper positioning.
John let go of me like I was a live power cable, just staring at me as I leaned against the frame of the car, glad for its solid, unmoving weight. I swallowed twice, glaring at him as pain painted my vision with a reddish tinge.
“Next time, don’t help,” I told him, eyes tearing. Better not have done any damage to it. Damn. I’ll look when I unwrap it. I