No Man's Land Read online

  To: AHWD IPA At: 2498, 11.04.06:32

  From: IPA Solar Sprinter, Mirage in orbit of Kradon.

  Malfunction detected in psionic fence transmitter D14, Karna continent. Source of malfunction is local. We are landing for repairs and recon.

  He hit the send button and fastened his landing straps.

  The engineer, Charney Jonis, came in already dressed in Kradonian garb and deposited his muscle-bound mass in his flight seat and strapped in. “You may get more action than you bargained for, mate. Just keep cool and you’ll be all right.”

  “Just shut up and let me fly this thing.”

  “Sorry. Truth be told, I’m a bit nervous.”

  Donard grunted. He had to concentrate on the controls. He heard Ella strapping in for landing behind him. Ella knew better than to talk during a manual low-fly. Donard brought the ship down behind a hillock, within a kilometer of the Delta perimeter, near the main junction box. With a gentle shudder as the thrusters disengaged, the sprinter settled onto the sandy surface.

  “Smooth. Good job,” said Ella as she released her straps. “Get suited up on the double.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Donard went to his bunk and pulled cotton drawstring pants from his footlocker. The rough weave scratched his skin. He grabbed a sensiderm undershirt from one of his drawers. He had just pulled it over his head when Charney came in like a bulldog following a scent. His broad shoulders and heavy jowls rounded out the effect.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

  “Getting dressed. What does it look like?”

  “You know the regs. Lose the sensiderm. Don’t want the Krads to get suspicious.”

  “Yeah, yeah. So instead of the synthetic undershirt, they’ll see a guy dancin’ around ’cause he’s itching to death.” Donard jerked off the undershirt.

  Before they left, Charney strapped a slender tool belt around his waist under the loose tunic and taped the thumb-sized Memory Eraser to his leg just under his knee. Ella looked Charney over, making sure no bulges showed.

  “Rad levels within specs,” Donard said. “We’re good to go.”

  As they passed through the hatch, Charney hit the palm reader to close the door. When it sighed back into place, the holoflage engaged and the ship began to shimmer like air over oily tar on a hot day and vanished from sight.

  They headed for the main junction box of the psionic fence network. Donard felt a growing unease as they neared the perimeter. Knowing the fence artificially induced their anxiety did nothing to lessen the effect. Donard battled the psionics and his guilt for being involved in the project.

  Charney squatted near a fake boulder, turned it over, and started running diagnostics while Donard and Ella stood back, scanning the area for Krads wandering the countryside.

  “It’s not reading D14. Probably a localized short. Might have been gnawed through by a rodent.”

  “Let’s hope,” said Ella.

  “Always,” said Charney. “I have to turn off the whole network to fix the short.”

  “This project is 205 years old. Let’s see to it that it makes 206. If we’re spotted, stick to the script. They’re sickly, but they outnumber us, and if they find out the truth…”

  They knew how they’d feel if their distant cousins, people they trusted, their allies, had kept them isolated and sick instead of rescuing them. The Directorate had sedated the Kradonians who survived the Praktorians’ orbital nuclear attack, rounded them up into six settlements built over kappa radiation generators that the Directorate had inserted, and held them there with psionics while the rest of their planet healed itself.

  Immunity Project teams had been sent to Kradon twice a year to deliver custom-made phages into the water and air of the settlements to breed a race of humans resistant to kappa radiation. Ostensibly, for human expansion across the galaxy to prevent humanity from being wiped out because of our concentration in one area. Most AHW citizens who were privy to the existence of the project suspected a different agenda: the conquest of the Praktorian worlds simply because the Praktors weren’t “human” enough.

  “Okay, the fences are off. Stay sharp,” said Charney.

  “D14 is three klicks south/southwest,” said Donard.

  Ella and Charney took the lead.

  After half a klick, they stopped and Charney pointed at something to their left. A little girl lay prone in the dirt by an outcropping of rocks. She wasn’t moving.

  “We’ll get samples for medical on our way back. We need to get the fence repaired,” said Ella.

  “She could still be alive!” To the mission, that made no difference. They were mandated to let them die so long as enough survived to test the gene modifications and improve the kappa immunity. But to see a poor helpless girl lying in the dirt….

  “That fence comes first. The whole project could tank if we don’t get it fixed right away.” Something in Donard snapped, and he took off across the field.

  “Donard, stop! Stop!” Ella hissed at him, not raising her voice lest the other wanderers were close enough to hear.

  Donard didn’t slow down, and she and Charney gave chase.

  Donard knelt beside the girl and gently rolled her over. She looked about eight years old. Blood pooled next to her leg and trailed from the edge of a sharp rock. It was fresh.

  “You idiot!” Ella had that look. That ‘I’d-like-to-kill-you-with-my-bare-hands’ look.

  “It’s not the radiation or a bad bug.”

  “That makes no difference, and you know it.”

  The girl didn’t seem to be breathing. Donard listened to her chest and checked her pulse. Her breaths were shallow and her pulse, weak.

  “We have to get this bleeding stopped,” he said. “I need cloth for bandages.” He tried to rip the bottom of his pant leg, but since it only looked like homespun, it wouldn’t tear. Donard pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around the girl’s leg as tight as he dared. She stirred but didn’t open her eyes or speak.

  “Terrific!” Ella spat.

  “What? She’s not dead,” said Donard.

  Ella gestured for him to come away for ‘a word’. He got up and followed her ten paces from the girl. Charney came too but kept one eye on the horizon, looking for the other Krads.

  “You’re putting the whole Project in jeopardy,” said Ella. “What now? Are you going to nurse her and tell her who we are and what we’re doing here?”

  “We can’t just leave her to die. What about the ME?” Donard asked.

  “It isn’t very reliable. Her memories could resurface or it could leave her as blank as a newborn.”

  “I can’t leave her. I won’t.” Donard stared Ella down.

  “If you screw this up for us,” she jabbed her finger at him for emphasis, “I’ll do more than just report you. I’ll kill you,” said Ella. “Get her back to the ship and patch her up. We’ll dump her close enough to the settlement to be found. Hurry, before we find someone else or vise versa.”

  Halfway back to the ship, Charney offered to carry the girl the rest of the way. Donard accepted and hoped it was a gesture of support. Just as Charney hoisted her up to his shoulder, she came around.

  She whimpered, rubbed her eyes, and opened them, probably expecting to see her dad holding her. Then she yelped and pushed away from Charney, who had her in a fireman hold.

  “Who are you?” she cried, still struggling to get free.

  “Hi, sweetie. I’m Charney. We’re going to make you better. Your leg’s hurt.”

  “I’ve never seen you before,” she said while looking around at Donard and Ella and her surroundings, her blue eyes wide with fright.

  “What’s your name?” said Ella in a syrupy voice, “I’m Ella and that’s Donard.”

  “Coree. My tiva’s that way. Where are you taking me?” Now she sounded more defiant than scared. Even a small child could see through Ella’s act.

  “We know,” said Ella. “We’re going to take you to our camp where we
have herbs and bandages to make you better. Our camp is closer than your tiva. We’ll fix you up and then take you home. How’s that?”

  Coree nodded. She must have picked up on Ella’s tone and figured it was a rhetorical question. She laid her head against Charney’s chest and fainted again.

  When they neared the vessel, Charney nodded to Donard, who went ahead to the ship. Donard looked back to be sure the girl was still turned away, reached for the door and felt around for the palm reader. The door slid back into its recess in the bulkhead as the ship shimmered back to visibility. He entered and let the door close behind him, re-initiating the holoflage.

  Donard grabbed a field med kit off of a shelf, extracted a tranq patch and ran to the door. He took a deep breath. He hoped Coree was still out.

  Charney stood outside the door with her. Blood dripped from the makeshift bandage into the dirt. Donard placed the patch on her neck.

  “I’m going to turn the breaker back on while you two deal with her.” Ella spun on her heel and left.

  Charney brought Coree inside and placed her on Ella’s bunk. They’d need room to work and the other two bunks were stacked.

  “Why didn’t she have you go?” Donard asked. “Think she’s concerned you might bring home a stray as well?”

  “That was a pretty stupid move. Ella’s right. She’ll tell her folks about us. They’ll be more than a little curious. And that Memory Eraser…” Charney shuddered.

  “I couldn’t just leave her there. Watching from the ship is one thing. Close up is different.” He removed the bloody shirt.

  “Here.” Charney handed him a metal basin and some disinfectant wash.

  “Thanks.” He placed the basin under the girl’s leg and handed Charney the shirt. “Doesn’t this whole project ever bother you? The Kradonians? We should have just rescued them.”

  “A little late to start questioning it now, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve just been thinking…” Donard said as he irrigated the wound.

  “Doesn’t matter what we think. We have a job to do and we do it. Nobody consults us when they make these decisions and it’s best not to dwell on it,” Charney said, handing Donard antibiotic gel and a liquid-suture syringe.

  “But we treat them like specimens, damn it. Have you ever met any of them before now?” Donard asked.

  “No. Don’t forget that if it weren’t for us, they’d all be dead long ago. And serve them right, too, for letting the Praktorians use their nuclear weapons against them.”

  “Yeah. But that was their ancestors. Not them. Think she needs plasma?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt,” said Charney, “but it’ll take too long. We could have been back in orbit by now.”

  “Let’s give her a pint. I’ll be fast.”

  “You can’t make the IV drip any faster. Better not. I don’t think she lost too much and it’s stopped now. Let’s just get this over with.”

  Donard said no more as he applied the suture. He heaved a sigh as he rose and picked up the mess.

  Charney grabbed fresh bandages of the “homespun” variety. “We better cover the wound with these. They haven’t got liquid-suture any more.”

  “Yeah. They don’t have squat anymore.” Donard got up and washed his hands in the micro sink.

  “I may not agree with the Directorate’s policies all the time, but I play it their way so long as the company transmits the credits to my account.”

  “All done?” asked Ella as she entered the bunkroom.

  “She’ll be fine. What now?” Charney got up to face her.

  Ella didn’t answer him. She stared at nothing in particular, her jaws set and a muscle in her cheek twitching.

  What’s she plotting? Donard wondered.

  “We’ll take her with us,” said Ella, “and leave her just inside the perimeter once the fence is repaired. Make sure she stays out for a couple of hours, Donard. We still have three more Krads out here somewhere.”

  “What about her memory of us?” said Donard.

  “When she tells Mummy and Daddy about us, we’ll be initiating pre-launch. We’ll leave them with a mystery. They’ll hand down the story of the angels that helped a little girl. The sooner we get the system fixed and get out of here, the better.

  “We’ll bring more tranq patches and the ME. They’ll be plan B. We can tranq and wipe an entire search party if it comes to that. Don’t worry. She’ll be fine.”

  “What’s plan C?” Donard regretted the question as soon as the words left his mouth. He knew plan C. They’d kill the entire search party, get samples for Medical, and dispose of the bodies. And he would be responsible for the swift decline in viable test subjects. He hated himself for even considering how any of this would affect him. He wasn’t the one being deceived, tampered with, and destroyed.

  Ella flashed her ‘don’t-ask-stupid-questions’ look.

  Donard gave Coree a sedative shot and peeled off the tranq patch. Donard picked her up and carried her cradled in his arms. They left the ship in silence. At the junction box, Charney turned off the breaker again and they headed for the transmitter. Donard had just spotted the yellowing evergreen tree that housed the transmitter when he heard voices calling Coree’s name from his left.

  Two adults and an older child were searching the area. They couldn’t reach cover in time.

  One of the adults, a man, spotted them and called out. “You there. Is that Coree? Is she okay?”

  “Yes. She’s cut her leg,” Donard called. They walked in the direction of the search party.

  “Coree!” the other adult, presumably the girl’s mother, cried out as she ran the rest of the way toward them, her long, blonde hair trailing behind her. She wore a gauzy white shift. Donard stared. She had all the right curves in all the right places.

  “Oh, baby, are you okay?” The woman’s pale face creased with worry as she reached for her daughter. Then she saw she wasn’t moving and scanned the faces of her rescuers.

  “Who are you? What have you done to her?” she shouted.

  “Mommy!” Her mother’s voice had wakened Coree.

  The woman took her from Donard, never taking her wary eyes off his.

  The girl locked her little arms around her mother’s neck. “They fixed my leg. I hurt it on a lava rock. See?” She held out her leg.

  The other Kradonians approached. “Who are you?” asked the old man. “Where have you come from?”

  “My name is Ella Brolen and this is Charney Jonis and Donard Terrellen. We’ve traveled over the mountains. We heard stories of another settlement this way. Our camp is a couple of klicks back.”

  The man scratched his red beard and looked at them as though sizing them up.

  “How many people live where you come from?” asked the boy.

  “Not many. There are only twelve left now that we’re gone. And some of those may be dead by now,” Ella said. “What’s your name?”

  “Joshen,” he said, looking at his feet.

  The woman stopped kissing and hugging her daughter and looked up at Ella. “My name is Cheela. And this is my father-in-law, Bave. Thank you for seeing to my girl’s wound. Have you eaten? You must come with us.”

  Bave continued to glare at them. “Over the mountains, you say? Your accents surprise me. Your existence surprises me. We haven’t had a visitor in…in…well, longer than I can remember. Way before my father was born, I can tell ya.”

  “Our speech has been influenced by the migration of the Colna mountain people,” said Ella without hesitation.

  “Must be pretty cold in the mountains. Where’s your winter cloaks?”

  “Back at our camp,” Charney said.

  Bave nodded. He still didn’t seem convinced. “You’ll be wantin’ to get your things first, I warrant,” he said.

  “Oh, no. We can grab our bits and pieces later. We’re rather hungry, as a matter of fact,” said Charney.

  “Of course you are,” said Cheela, and to Bave. “We’ve been gone too long. Peo
ple will worry. Carry your granddaughter, would you? She’s too heavy for me.” Cheela gave Coree a kiss on her cheek before Bave took her.

  Donard was relieved to find out that the grizzly, red-headed fellow was not Cheela’s husband. But what was he thinking? What did it matter? “That’s a beautiful girl you have there,” he said to Cheela. “How old is she?”

  “Thank you…?” Cheela looked at him quizzically.

  “Donard. Donie, you can call me Donie,” he said. He felt a silly grin creep into his face.

  “She’ll have seen eight years in a matter of days. Do you have children?”

  “No. My wife and child died years ago.” He looked over at Ella. She pierced him with her ‘stick to the mission’ warning face.

  People working in fields, orchards, and vegetable gardens stopped their work and followed them to the settlement. About a third of them had obvious deformities. Some had three arms. Others had one. The faces. Donard gulped and tried not to stare. Three eyes here, no eyes there, half a face, bulging purple tumors.

  A young woman with a swollen belly walked right up to Cheela. Donard couldn’t tell if she was pregnant or malnourished. “Cheela, who are these people?” she asked. “Where have they come from?”

  Others echoed her questions. A few of the children approached the strangers and stared up at them. A small boy, with a growth on his shoulder too hideous to look at, reached for Ella’s hand. She shrank back before forcing a smile and taking it. The boy beamed at her as though she were his long-lost mother. Ella’s face flushed and she looked away. Donard wondered if that was a miniature, conjoined twin on his shoulder.

  “Give ’em room you li’l uns. They’re from across the mountains and we’re gonna feed ’em. Go about yer business, all o’ yez.” Donie could see that Bave decided it wouldn’t be a bad thing to be the keeper of the strangers. Might gain him some bragging rights.

  They passed a cemetery. So many graves for such a small enclave. Many of them were packed so close together he wondered if they cremated their dead. Or maybe they were the remaines of infants and small children.

  A couple dozen tivas were carved into a low hill. Cheela’s was in the middle of the row, a bit smaller than most. They ducked through the doorway, the thatch on the roof scraping their heads as they passed into the one-room abode. The floor was hard-packed dirt, possibly with baked clay to keep it firm. A single oil lamp, suspended from the low ceiling provided the only light. No windows. Their homes were built with insulation in mind, not aesthetics. The rear of the tiva recessed into the rock; a cave. It smelled of rotting vegetation, wood smoke, and peat. Two beds, a small pallet, and a table with three chairs made it look even smaller.