Transcendent (9781311909442) (13 page)

Palla gasped. Lily stared at him and started
to nod until something he said stuck in her head. “Hardware
installed?”

He tilted his head and smiled. “Yes.
Biomechs are exactly that, a merging of mechanics and organics.
Living muscle tissue provides a means for them to move with the
speed and strength necessary to support them. Did you notice the
stains and fluids spilled on the display? Much of that was the
blood of the biomechs. Not quite the same blood as you or I might
have, but an oxygenated and nutrient-rich solution that keeps the
muscles healthy and able to repair themselves.”

“I didn’t know,” Lily whispered.

“That’s only a part of it,” he went on. “In
order for a pilot to merge with the biomech, he or she must have a
synaptic adapter installed. You literally plug yourself into the
biomech so it can read your thoughts and know how to move. You and
the biomech become one.”

Lily’s eyes widened.

“Rethinking things?” he wondered.

“No, sir.” Lily was quick to answer. “It
sounds fascinating. Exciting. Cool. Why not a helmet or a wireless
connection?”

He smiled. “Those can be jammed. Hard
connections are the fastest and safest.”

She nodded.

“Young misses, let me congratulate you both
again. I trust I don’t need to remind you that I’ll be watching and
pulling for you. As will everyone else.”

Lily swallowed and shared a glance with the
star-struck Palla. She managed, barely, to avoid rolling her eyes
at her mentor’s behavior. She turned back to the president and
forced herself to think of Krys so she could bring up a smile that
she wasn’t in the mood to give. “I won’t let you down, sir.”

Krys looked up from his hands as the door
opened. He twisted and saw a woman in a blue and white uniform walk
around him and move to sit behind the desk in front of him. She
looked him up and down and frowned. “Name?”

Krys stared back. Her voice sounded
familiar. It took him back to a time when the world was falling
apart around him. Was it possible? Could she be the same soldier
who had saved his life in the forest? He couldn’t tell; she’d been
wearing armor and a helmet then. The soldier’s voice had been
distorted by the helmet speakers too, but something about it seemed
familiar.

“Look, kid, you don’t want a part of this.
Tell me your name, already.”

Krys jerked. The words and the voice. “You!”
he whispered.

“That’s not your name,” she said.

“Krys, sorry,” he mumbled. “Krys Evans. You
were in the forest. You—”

She glared at him and stopped him
mid-sentence with her intense eyes. Once he’d clamped his lips
together, she turned to the infopad on her desk and started tapping
on it. She grunted and turned back to him. “Let’s try again.
Name?”

“What? That is my name.”

“Krys Evans is already accounted for,” she
said. “So who are you?”

“That’s not possible!” Krys’s voice rose a
few octaves as he protested. “I’m Krys Evans!”

She frowned. “Why would we already have you
accounted for then?”

Krys shook his head. “There’s got to be a
mistake. I’ve been hiding in the woods since you guys came.”

She sighed. “By yourself? Aren’t you a
little young to survive on your own like that?”

“I’m almost fifteen,” Krys said. “I grew up
here. I know how to get by.”

“You’ve been stealing from us?”

Krys shrugged.

“Your pad had a broken screen but they tell
me they found a control program in the memory for a highpicker. The
same picker that we were tracking.”

Krys frowned. He’d been right; they had been
tracking the picker. “How? I took the locator out.”

The soldier smirked. “Young man, there’s
hardly any technology on this ball of mud. Tracking energy
expenditures is a simple thing.”

Krys gasped. Why hadn’t he thought of that?
It was obvious! Except his group didn’t have the equipment
necessary to do something like that. They would have needed access
to satellites, or at least the sensors at the village. Maybe a
couple of villages.

“I thought it might be the heartbeat
signal,” he admitted. “But then I realized that wouldn’t be running
since I put the picker in manual mode.”

She cleared her throat and stared him in the
eye before asking, “So tell me, who are you, really, and who are
your friends?”

“What? What friends?”

She raised a questioning eyebrow. “You
assaulted one of our workers and, to hear him tell it, you weren’t
the one who attacked him.”

“Must have been another group.”

She pressed her lips into a straight line as
she stared at him. “Young man, are you aware of what’s going on?
What’s happened here? Everywhere?”

Krys shook his head. “The trees get lousy
reception.”

Her lips twitched before she leaned forward.
“Look, you’re playing a very dangerous game. This world—all the
worlds—are not like they used to be. There’s a new government, run
by a man by the name of President Ondalla. Things are going to be
different, or at least that’s his pledge that was strong enough to
win the support of a lot of people in the right places.”

Krys listened carefully, excited to get the
news and even more interested in trying to understand why the
soldier didn’t sound like she was a supporter.

“All of humanity, from the solar collectors
near Mercury to Mars and beyond, is going to live differently.
People work for one another, not for themselves. Resources like
food and water will be handled differently. They will be
distributed where the need is, not where the wealth is. In fact,
wealth is a concept that everyone will need to redefine.”

“Redefine?” Krys asked.

“Yes. People will earn what they deserve,
not whatever they can extort out of the system,” she said.

Krys grunted. “Seems fair enough.”

“That’s what it’s based on, fairness.”

“So part of being fair required all the
people who lived here being killed?” he asked. Krys tried to match
the earlier intensity of her gaze as he stared at her. “And why
haven’t you killed me yet? Since I don’t know anything about
anybody else, what’s stopping you?”

“We follow orders. We all have our place,”
she snapped. “As for you, you’re young. Fourteen? That’s the prime
age for reeducation.”

“What’s that?” Krys asked, feigning
ignorance. It didn’t take much acting.

“We’re loading up freight to send for
transport off-world. We get you sorted out and you’ll end up on
that ship, bound for a reeducation center. They’ll get you put into
the system and teach you how things should be.”

Krys nodded. “Is that what you did with my
friends?”

“If your friends were children, yes.”

Krys nodded. “They were.”

“But first we have to know who you are.”

“I told you that.”

She frowned. “And I told you I already have
someone with that name. The alternative is that you end up shot.
With no name to track you by, I just have to account for the
expenditure of ammunition.”

Krys’s eyes widened. “My father was the
maintenance manager for this colony,” he said. “He kept everything
here running. That’s how I knew how to do what I did with the
picker. I used to work with him.”

“His name?” she asked.

“Dunmer Evans.”

She tapped her pad and nodded. “Son Krys,
wife Anna.”

“My mom,” Krys breathed.

She stared at him a long moment. “I don’t
understand why anyone would pretend to be you. I do understand why
you would pretend you’re somebody else, though.”

“I can’t pretend to be someone else,” Krys
said. “I mean, I could, but I wouldn’t know who. I only know what I
know!”

She nodded. “I should probably shoot you and
be done with you. You’re already too much of a headache.”

Krys stiffened and then glanced around.
“Should have done that in the forest then.”

Her eyes narrowed and she nibbled on her lip
briefly before nodding. “Fine. Here’s your one chance. Let’s go
find something to fix, something only Krys Evans would know how to
do. Then we’ll take it from there.”

Krys swallowed against the dryness in his
throat. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“Whoever you are, you’re brave. I’ll give
you that.”

Krys tried to smile. “You’ve taken
everything I have. There’s nothing left for me to lose.”

She smirked. “There’s always something left
to take. Be careful what you wish for.”

She rose and motioned for him to follow.
Krys climbed to his feet and felt the stab of pain in his swollen
ankle. He grimaced and did his best to limp through the door and
then follow her to whatever test she had planned for him.

Krys felt the eyes of everyone they passed
on him as they walked through the village. He tried to ignore them
and focused on the layout of the colony instead. He felt a nagging
sense of familiarity mixed with confusion. The colors and, in many
places, even the buildings were wrong. Yet they were all in the
right place. Tomlin’s house was where it should be, but it wasn’t
his house. Where the faded yellow structure had stood now a smaller
building stood. Instead of being painted, it bore the dull gray
color of the carbon fiber material used for nearly everything on
the planet.

As Krys looked around he saw that many of
the other buildings that had been replaced were identical. It was a
modular design and one he could understand. Small and easy to
build, he guessed there were only two or three rooms inside. A
kitchen, a living area, and a bedroom, by the size of it. He’d read
a word once that came to mind to describe the small homes.
Spartan.

“So this is progress?” Krys asked.

She glanced at him and saw him studying the
buildings. “Temporary housing.”

“You mean you’re going to knock them down
and build better houses?”

She chuckled. “No, I mean the people
stationed here aren’t here permanently, so it’s only their housing
temporarily.”

“Oh. How long are they here?”

She shrugged. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“On a lot of things. You sure are
curious.”

Krys fell silent and let her lead him
towards the parking area for the farming vehicles. He didn’t want
her thinking he was trying to learn as much as he could in case he
could escape. Even though that was exactly what he was doing. He
smirked and glanced over at her, worried she might have seen
him.

“What now?” she asked when she caught him
looking.

“Huh? Oh, um, nothing,” he stammered. “I
mean, I was just wondering who you are? Your name, I mean?”

“First Lieutenant Shelby Riggs,” she
said.

“You’re an officer,” Krys said before he
realized it.

“Does that surprise you?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. I thought—I mean,
I didn’t think officers were in the field. Oh wait, you weren’t
with the tanks hunting me.”

Shelby laughed as Krys fumbled his words. “I
was in charge of a platoon when we landed. Earned a promotion after
the colony was secured. Now I’m in charge here.”

“Oh.” Krys glanced at her a couple of times
while he tried to collect his thoughts. The parking lot, as they
called it, was fast approaching. “So you’re in charge of all of
Venus, or just this ag colony?”

She chuckled. “Just this colony. Commander
Breslin is in charge of the planet.”

He nodded.

“Disappointed?”

“No!” Krys blurted out. He studied the
ground in front of him, searching for something to say. “I, um, you
just seem kind of young, that’s all. That’s a good thing, though,
right?”

“It’s a new world, Krys. Ours for the
shaping.”

“Ours?”

“Yes. You, me, anyone young enough to dream
of how things can be better than they were. People are recognized
for their abilities and potential now, not for who they know or who
their parents are.”

Krys shrugged. His parents hadn’t been
anybody special. Special to him, maybe, but that was about it. He
followed Shelby onto the grounds of the parking lot and saw her
wave towards a man in a blue and white uniform.

“Lesk, how are you?” she greeted the man who
had taken to standing stiffly beside the harvester.

“Lieutenant,” he greeted her. His eyes
flicked down to Krys. “Who’s this?”

“I’m trying to find out. Says he knows how
to handle just about any of the machinery you’ve got here. Is there
anything giving you some trouble?”

He snorted. “Pick one.”

She frowned and spared Krys a glance.
“Really? That much trouble?”

“Half these rock-humping machines only work
when they want to and the other half are breaking down almost
faster than I can send ’em out!”

“Language, Mr. Vicker,” the lieutenant
warned. “Would you mind if my young friend took a look at one of
them?”

He gestured at the harvester beside him. “Be
my guest,” he grumbled. “It can’t seem to figure out what to do
with the crops. One minute it’s treating it like corn, the next
beans and the following wheat. Damn sensors are just out of
whack.”

“Lesk, that’s enough.”

He mumbled an apology and stepped aside as
Krys stepped up to the harvester and peered into the open access
hatch. Krys pushed a few cables out of the way before crying out.
He turned and looked back at Lesk. “There’s a wire that’s shorting.
It needs some covering and tape to secure it.”

“Why not replace it?” Shelby asked.

Krys and Lesk both looked her way. Krys
noticed and glanced at Lesk before he grinned. Lesk ignored him and
said, “The only thing we’ve got enough to spare is crap from those
animals and all the food that these da—um, machines can’t pick fast
enough to keep from spoiling in the fields.”

Krys nodded. “Some tape will do just fine.
Keep it from getting corrupt signals and secure it so it doesn’t
rub itself raw again.”