Entry Eleven

Entry Eleven:

            “What’s she doing here?” Kylie immediately asked when Jackie came onboard. The President had sent an Arms transport carrier that was mainly used for shipping troops. It was long and short with a circular hoverjets mounted at four corners These were still humming as the carrier idled and waited for it’s passengers to board. Inside, there were rows of seats along the walls, with a long corridor down the centre where their gear was strapped to pallets. What little space there was at the rear of the row was take up by Jackie’s hoverbike. She had wanted to load her father’s as well, but there simply wasn’t enough room. Upon discovering her bike parked in the driveway, she had looked it over cautiously but could find nothing wrong and eventually complimented Gavin on his flying.

The carrier looked as if it could carry about fifty people. The entrance was through the rear cargo hatch where two soldiers stood and bowed as Jackie walked by. The carrier was parked outside the main door where it stretched across the wide driveway. The whole vessel was painted a hazy purple to match the dusk sky while the inside was dull grey and poorly lit. There were no windows along the sides. The only view to the outside world was in the cockpit, where a dome stretched outwards from floor to ceiling. The ceiling itself was little over five-feet tall. Lance, who was over seven-foot, was particularly miserable and had to occupy two seats next to Goldie and Lara.

            Gavin unslung his pack and stashed it in the overhead, noting that Kylie was sitting next to Deborah by themselves, while the rest of his crew sat opposite and down a ways from them. Jackie came up behind him and glared at Kylie, as if daring her to complain. She was carrying her own gear and had donned her black Arms uniform, complete with yellow stripes across the breasts. She was the most heavily armed person in the group with two sidearms, a bandolier with ammunition and three grenades and a rifle. She had all of this in her room, Gavin discovered to his discomfort. The grenades had been in her sock drawer. She had drawn her hair back as tight as it would go into a bun and hadn’t put on any makeup.

            “Jackie wanted to come along,” Gavin said to Kylie at last as he took a seat next to her and buckled himself in.

            “This is our mission. You can’t bring your girlfriend along,” Kylie argued without looking at Kylie. Jackie was carrying a large duffel bag which she had refused Gavin’s help with, along with the help of her own servants who were seeing her off. Moriss wasn’t present, as she was visiting at the hospital. She deposited it in the overhead with some effort and sat next to Gavin. Once she was seated, the two soldiers accompanying them came in and closed the bay doors.

            “Jackie has the most combat experience and actual military training,” Gavin said in her defence.

            “It didn’t do her any good last night,” Kylie retorted.

            Jackie leaned far forward in her seat to look at Kylie. “Do you want to say that again?” Jackie challenged her.

            “How are your injuries?” Deborah quickly cut it to break off what she assumed would be a fight.

            “They’re not as bad as hers are going to be,” Jackie said as she sat back in her chair.

            “Ladies, please, there’s no need to fight,” Fredriks tried be to tactful. He was leaning forward with his arm resting on his knee. He was the only one of them who was growing stubble. Upon reflection, Gavin realized he looked older than any of them, while being the same age. Even Kylie, at 47, was younger looking. It wasn’t particularly anything other than the shallowness to his jawline and his more protruding brow that made his entire head seem like a triangle. Even the way his hair was styled and slicked back gave this impression.

            “We need to focus on the mission,” Gavin told the two.

            “Our mission was to secure A-6,” Deborah said mostly to herself in a mutter. “Now look at us.”

            The carrier gave a jolt as the pilot got consent for clearance. They’d been informed the journey would take several hours. Without windows, they wouldn’t be able to track their progress except by using their wrist units, which Goldie and Video were immersed in. Goldie assured them that at their speed they would reach their destination before Conner, who had stalled somewhere along an island region. Gavin was relieved by this news, as it proved that Conner might not know where the Aurora was being kept. They had contacted the President directly with Conner’s location, and he had sent in a team to investigate. The islands themselves were considered uninhabited, but were still a part of their country. Their deal was still in place even if Conner was captured or killed prematurely.

            “How far along is your training?” Kylie asked as she idly read news reports on her unit.

            “How do you mean?” Gavin asked as he leaned back and tried to get comfortable on the hard seats.

            “Could you fly the Aurora if you had to?” Kylie asked him without looking up.

            “I could probably do alright inside the atmosphere,” he claimed. “Outside, though? I’m still clueless. I can’t get my head around the warp system, either. If I had to dock it, I’d end up with a pile of scrap.”

            “That could be good enough, for now,” Kylie mused. “You’re further along than I thought.

            “Goldie has the others loaded up,” Deborah mentioned. “They’re not noobs anymore.”

            “Maybe I should unlock the specs for the weapons we’re packing,” Kylie suggested as she went into a menu on her unit. “These are what we have with us, and this is what we have on the Aurora.”

            “Those… are illegal,” Deborah said as she looked at the file that opened up on her unit. “Like city-destroying illegal.”

            “These have no practical application,” Lance complained as he looked over the specs. “Something like this one could wipe out everything in a three-mile radius. Even then, we don’t know the conditions of Conner’s shift suit, along with its make and model. He could still emerge unscathed.”

            “I never said we had to use them, I’m just showing you what we’ve got, and what could be used against us if things go wrong,” Kylie explained, casting a glance down at the two soldiers at the end of the aisle. There was a din in the carrier from the humming jets, and she practically had to shout.

            “This was wildly unethical for you to bring along,” Deborah shunned her. “Trafficking in this kind of weaponry could land you a lifetime on a prison planet.”

            “Tell someone who doesn’t know and might care,” Kylie said snippety. “I’ve been carrying these hauls my whole life, which is considerably longer than yours, First. This is just a sample of what I could have brought. A ‘demo,’ if you will. If we’re trapped here, we can always try to sell them off to the President and retire nicely.”

            “I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Deborah argued.

            “Suit yourself,” Kylie shrugged. “There’s more profit in it for me.”

            “They’ve already been confiscated,” Fredriks pointed out. “I doubt we could sell them at this point, if that’s even an option.”

            “It is,” Kylie assured him. “Not even someone like Kevin would know how to use these babies. All you have are the specs with none of the hands-on know-how. Lance is a Soldier, and he’s probably clueless. Besides, each one of these is specially locked. I’m the only one who knows how to unlock them.”

            “Alpha-Delta-Omega-Zeta-Epsilon-Alpha, Texas,” Gavin recited.

            “Okay, so I’m the only one with the genetic code to unlock them,” Kylie said after a moment of shock. Gavin slowly held up his hand then pointed at himself. “What?” Kylie asked him, but then it slowly dawned on her. “Okay, so Gavin and I are the only ones who can unlock the weapons. My point is that these munitions are game-changers, but at the end of the day they’re just toys for boys. They’re more for show than for blow. Half of them would kill you the second you pull the trigger. That’s why we can’t just hand them over. We’d end up with a crater as wide as the ocean the moment our gracious hosts decide to take them for themselves.”

            “Can you try and explain how you came into possession of these arms?” Deborah said as she went through the list a third time. Over three-quarters aren’t even from out home dimension. Possessing even one of them qualifies as war-crime.”

            “You want me to sit here and tell you my life story, is that what you want? Because we’re not at that point in our friendship yet,” Kylie told her.

            “Friendship?” Deborah scoffed.

            “Yes, friendship. Or did you want to be enemies?” Kylie asked her pointedly.

            “I want to be enemies,” Jackie clarified.

            “No one cares what you want,” Kylie said flippantly.

            “My point is that you are obviously a smuggler,” Deborah said as she lingered on an image of a bomb. “And not one that particularly cares about her toils beyond the payday.”

            “That’s a fairly accurate statement,” Kylie admitted. “Yes, I’m as criminal as balls. Does that satisfy you, little Ms.Perfect?”

            “Once you’re in front of a war crime tribunal, yes,” Deborah said. “Do you know what this is used for?” Deborah displayed the image of a bomb.

            “That’s a classic,” Kylie complimented it.

            “It could kill millions,” Deborah stated flatly.

            “It could, but it won’t. Debbie, do you know how many nuclear missiles America and Russia had during the Cold War in our universe? How many of those did they fire? Those kinds of bombs are for show.”

            “Why don’t you ask Universe 7241-C, or Universe 1282-T?” Deborah asked her. “You don’t know what people are capable of.”

            “I know precisely what they’re capable of,” Kylie told her. “What they’re capable of doing and what they do are two different things. There are ten guns for every human alive and you’re still here.”

            “I didn’t think I’d ever meet anyone as despicable as you,” Deborah protested.

            “Then you didn’t think hard enough,” Kylie said. “I’m not even the worst. I could afford to be choosy about who I sold to. The gangs, rebels and armies who bought from me already had a fair-sized arsenal. One more bullet wasn’t going to add anything to the bloodshed. Most were just collectors, or resellers. Most of what I sold would never see any use beyond firing ranges and demonstrations.”

            “And the ones that did?” Deborah prompted.

            “Listen, I’m not a terrorist,” Kylie said irritably. “You’ve caught me and I’ll admit to being a smuggler and a very good one at that.” The crew exchanged uncomfortable looks at her admission. Jackie tried to gauge Gavin’s reaction, but it was resigned. “What is it that you think we do for a living? We’re traders. We exchange goods. To the public perception we deal in raw materials, but that’s a lie. We have all the resources we need at home. We’re mainly working with consumer goods, including weapons. In my private smuggling ventures, I could afford to be choosy about whom I sold to. As part of the Corporation, I never had that luxury. I’ve been ordered by Corporate to hand over their weapons caches to bloodthirsty warlords, who then used them to mow down the defenceless opposition, all in the name of cheap labour. As a smuggler, I could sell weapons to those hapless few looking to defend themselves.”

            “So you’ve played both sides of the fence and made a profit, and you think that makes you a Saint?” Deborah surmised.

            “I’m not Saint,” Kylie admitted. “I’m only saying I’ve done worse things while working for the Corps than I have behind their backs.”

            “You’re a traitor,” Jackie said plainly.

            “I’m an entrepreneur,” Kylie retorted. “I’ve done everything they’ve ever asked me to without resistance. That’s why I’m B-7. You think it’s easy, though? You want to know what kind of blood is on my hands? Why not ask your father about the things he’s had to do. You don’t get to A-6 without wetwork.”

            “My father’s not a killer,” Jackie strained against her seatbelt.

            “He’s killed,” Kylie shook her head at her stupidity. “I know he’s killed more than his share here on New Gaia for your pointless war. Don’t try and deny that. That’s probably a drop in the bucket from the operations he’s been on. Ever see him clean-sweep a planet?”

            “What?” Jackie was confused.

            Kylie merely laughed at her then broke out in a sob. She covered her face and wept. Gavin and Deborah looked at each other across Kylie’s hunched shoulders as she leaned forward against her shoulder restraints.

            Lance cleared his throat and said in a soft voice. “You and Victor both were on Plague Earth.”

            “It was over two years ago now,” Kylie said as she regained some composure and wiped a tear from her eye. “An alternate Earth was overrun by something called the M-Virus. It was an airborne disease that caused madness, then death in a matter of a few short weeks. The people infected with it became extremely violent before it ruptured the blood vessels in their brains. The entire planet was on course to being infected, with no hope of a cure. We originally stepped in to try and create a vaccine, but the size and scale of what was happening was too much to deal with and we didn’t have the time. The population had already gone from eight billion to two. The strange thing about it all was they were the ones who made First Contact with us. They had just reached the stage where their world was able to create holes in the fabric of reality. They had been able to send out a distress signal, and we picked it up by happenstance. We were there to help As Generates, we were the only ones immune to the virus.

            “With the situation hopeless, we’d been told to pack up and evacuate. The locals weren’t happy with that. There were riots. That’s when I first met Victor. Back then he was still B-12, same rank as me. He was still trying to hand out supplies as they were pelting him with rocks. I had to drag him out of there myself. We were boarding our ships when we were given the Final Order.

            “Now that they had reached the alternate reality stage in development, Corporate believed the threat of contamination slipping out of their universe was too great. We couldn’t just confiscate their tech and abandon them, because they still had the resources and knowledge to build more. Our influence had inadvertently advanced their science program generations and it wouldn’t be long before they could physically breach into our universe. We had to kill them.

            “We’d already been equipped with the weapons to do it. When we left Last Point, Corporate had told us it was for our protection. We thought they were for show, mostly, since the locals were in a blood frenzy. We thought all it would come to is firing one off in space to scare them into submission if it ever came to it. We never saw violence that bad on Plague Earth. Most of the militaries had already broken up. Those that were left were more interested in defending themselves from the hordes of plague victims than waging war. The disease was airborne, though, so even they couldn’t defend themselves. There were sealed bunkers full of dead.

            “The plan was for us to blockade the planet from orbit and just nuke it. The world had until the last ship was in space to live. That happened to be my ship, the Aurora. Everyone was horrified by the plan, of course. There were some that saw the merit in not letting them suffer, or alternately to protect our own Norm population. Victor and I weren’t a part of those groups. We saw how many of our own ships were already in position. Victor went so far as to suggest firing on our own men to stop them, but I talked him out of it. I think that when I first started to love him. I gave him a better plan. I told him we could smuggle out a small group of people onboard the Aurora and find another world for them to settle. Their world would be gone, but they’d still have their lives. We had already absorbed all of their history, culture and technology into our databanks. We could give them enough supplies and knowledge to create their own world. Problem was, time was running out. Victor went along with it, as well as Reginald from my own crew, Kevin from his, and believe-it-or-not, Donovan. We smuggled thirty-one people onboard. There was no time to be picky. There were different families, different races and different ages. Anyone we could grab. If we’d been smart we’d have picked them younger and stronger and more prone to survival in general, but they were clean and that’s all that mattered. Victor never thought to ask how I knew to hide them. I think Kevin guessed, but he never questioned. Reggie was the only one who was in on my second-job.

            “We left Plague Earth behind while Corporate barked at us on the communicators for being late to the party. We took up our position and…” she made a trigger finger. “There were twenty-two ships in total. It would only take about five with the load we were carrying to wipe out the planet. I was the last to shoot. Victor didn’t want me to carry the burden alone, so he put my hand over his when we pressed down on the trigger. That’s when I knew I loved him. By that time, our shot was wasted, but Corporate couldn’t punish us for non-compliance. Plague Earth was already a fireball. Two billion people were dead in a flash, along with all life on the planet. We’d committed global genocide.

            “I managed to find an Earth from my records that was uninhabited by human life, and we slipped away on our return to base to drop them off. They weren’t particularly grateful. One of them tried to choke Victor to death when they found out what we’d done, and he just stood there and took it. I had to punch the guy to get him off. We abandoned them there with enough supplies to last them a year. I still remember the little girl watching us leave.

            “Back home, Victor was commended for his charitable work and promoted to A-6 and we began our years-long affair. There were suspicions about our unscheduled rendezvous before reaching Last Point, but I paid off the right people with the right bribes. I was even able to sneak back to the New Earth where we left the colony with fresh supplies about two months later. Victor had wanted to come with me, but it would have raised too many questions from Corporate. What I was doing was risky enough. Only Reginald came with me on that run.

            “We found them. They were all dead. One have them had the virus, and it spread to the others. They probably only made it through the first month. They were the last of their kind, and they were gone. Reginald and I gave them a proper burial and went home. I couldn’t bear to tell Victor. It would break him. I doctored some photos and showed them to him, and he ate it all up. I told him how they had built their own little village and…” Kylie choked. “He believed me. I faked two more trips, and he sent me off each time with a kiss. I just sat in the Aurora in the middle of nowhere and drank.

            “I’ve still never told him. I think he thinks they’re still out there. Reggie was the only one who knew and he’s dead. The worst part about anything is that the only thing we did during that operation that was in any way moral would get us sent to prison if it ever got out. So yeah, I’m a smuggler and a murderer. The smuggling part is the only thing Corporate considers criminal. With infinite lives on infinite worlds, the only thing they care about is infinite profit.”

            “Why would my father not tell me about this?” Jackie demanded as she swallowed hard.

            “I guess he edited that part out of his books, along with me, and dozens of other operations where he had to get his hands dirty,” Kylie shrugged. “It’s not something most people would admit to. No one who ever went to Plague Earth talked about it, except Donovan, and Kevin and I were the only ones who’d talk to him about it. I think Donovan wanted to end it after that. He kept talking about how he saw their faces. He was going to volunteer to be sent to a prison planet. Volunteer. We talked him out of it mainly because we were worried he’d talk and we’d all get sent. You know what happened after all of that. I could blame myself for what he did, but there’s no understanding his actions. Conner probably did him a favour.”

            “Is any of this even true?” Jackie asked. “I can’t believe my father would be a part of something like that.”

            “It’s true,” Gavin rubbed the back of his neck where his node was. The information floating around in his head confirmed it. Lance nodded as well. As a Soldier, his training had apparently covered key military actions acted out by the Corps.

            “I…” Jackie shook her head and hung it. “I never knew. I think he tried to tell me once. He used to tell me a story at bedtime about a secret village far, far away.”

            “Please don’t tell him you know,” Kylie insisted. “He’s not as strong as you think he is. As for why I told you, I needed to get it off my chest. I need to get a lot of things off of my chest. The weapons I have can be used in many ways. Nothing I have on this list could cause the same level of destruction, but we have to be careful about how they’re used, and who is using them. We can trust this world’s government to an extent. They have powerful weapons, but they’ve never used their full force against the Resistance. That’s not to say they won’t in the future. Conner, however, is a wild card. We know he could only use them to harm countless people. The same goes for the Aurora. If need be, we have to be willing to take them both off of the board. We’ll either leave this world behind, or let them self-destruct if need be.”

            “Those options are on the table,” Gavin agreed, “but that’s as a last resort.”

            There was a murmuring between Lara and Lance, but Goldie interrupted. “The team the President sent in to investigate the islands has come up blank. Conner’s signal is still in the area, but they can’t locate him.”

            “Is there no way to isolate the signal?” Gavin asked.

            “No. It has something to do with this world’s scrambling technology. It’s more advanced than our own. The closer we get to the disputed territories where it’s being used, the less clear the signal will become. We won’t know where he is until he’s right on top of us,” Goldie admitted.

            “Well, then we can only hope we can stay ahead of him,” Gavin said.