Some Fine Day (5 page)

“You look lovely, my darling,” he says. “As beautiful as you are brilliant.”

“Oh my, Anker.” Mom grins. “How many mimosas
have
you had today? It’s not yet eleven.”

“I am intoxicated only by your beauty,” he says solemnly, then offers me a hand. “Come on, pumpkin, let’s walk.”

So I peel myself off the lounge chair and we set off down the beach, gulls wheeling and squawking over our heads. The dark green mounds of other islands dot the horizon. A soft breeze ruffles my hair, carrying a mosaic of scents too complex to unravel. All I know is it smells great.

“Do you like it here?” he asks.

“Yes,” I answer simply.

“This may be the last real time we spend together as a family for a while. I wanted it to be special.”

I put my arm around his waist and give a squeeze. We pass the science camp, and Miles waves at us. We wave back. He’s doing something to the LIDAR, while Rebekah looks over his shoulder. No holiday for them.

We walk for a while more, slowly so we don’t get to the trench too soon. I get the feeling my father has an agenda. And sure enough, he stops as soon as we’re on a deserted stretch and takes off his sunglasses. Here it comes.

“Honey, you know I can’t talk much about my work, but six days ago, our intelligence uncovered a troop buildup in the caverns near Greenbrier’s northern border. Probably related to the trade embargo. Nothing to worry about yet, but. . . Well, we have to anticipate that the situation could deteriorate in coming months.”

Military-speak for impending war, I think.

“Nu London is a staunch ally. But how the other prefectures will react is unclear. We’re working all the back channels now. There’s always a chance for a diplomatic solution.”

The heart of our dispute with Greenbrier is fresh water. It’s the most precious resource underground. We get air through vent tubes that go to the surface, and abundant energy from the Earth’s core. The mines produce a wealth of various metals and ores. Water’s a different story. There’s a finite amount. And we need a lot of it, for climate control and agriculture and industry and sanitation.

About a year ago, Greenbrier depleted its own water supply and starting tapping into our aquifer. It wasn’t the first dispute we’ve had with them. Tensions have flared over mineral rights and who controls the bullet train system and a million other things. That’s why we have the Academy, and they have something called Subterranean Operations Command. The irony is that we both started out as part of a centrally administered network of prefectures. That was the original plan. Kind of like the pre-Transition states. Well, it fell apart pretty quick.

Our water conflict with Greenbrier has been getting uglier in recent weeks, though we’re still short of all-out hostilities. War on the surface was bad enough. War underground. . . The idea makes my blood run cold.

“We’re putting together a special team,” my father says. “Intel, sabotage. Missions of that nature. I want you on it. I want Jake on it. We need the best.”

Jake knew about this, I think. Just like he knew we were going to the surface. What else isn’t he telling me?

“I thought you’d be happy,” my father says. “You and Jake seem good together.”

I almost laugh, though not out of amusement. Could his timing be any worse?

“Good together how?” I ask warily. “As a team or as a couple?”

“Well, both, I guess. So what do you say?”

“I don’t know. I need to think about it.” And if I take long enough, maybe I won’t have to make a decision at all.

My father squints at me, the way he does when he’s displeased and trying not to show it. “I don’t know what you have to think about, honey. This would really get your career started on the right footing. Some key people are going to be watching this team very closely. Plus to keep Jake in the picture. . . I thought you’d be over the moon.”

“Yeah, well, as to that,” I say, deciding I should just tell the truth. “I’m not so sure about Jake. I don’t think we have that much in common anymore. Like we’ve drifted apart.”

My father stares at me, stunned, as if
he’s
the one being broken up with.

“Wow,” he says. “I didn’t see that at all. I thought you two were doing so well. He’s a fine young man. He loves you. He told me so. We talked about it last month, he called me, and we decided that if you guys could just spend some quality time. . .” And then he sees my face and realizes that he made a serious strategic error by admitting that the two of them had been plotting out my future behind my back and tries to change tacks but I’m already gone, walking back down the beach toward my tent, which I wish had a door so I could slam it hard.

I pass Jake, who might be an ass but isn’t dumb and steers well clear of me.

War. We’re going to war. Maybe. Probably.

What a bloody mess.

I decide to get a massage while I still can.

Within a few short years, the billions left to their fate became as a dream, erased from the collective memory. Pre-Transition population estimates in most textbooks were radically revised downward.

The raid comes in the middle of the night.

This time, I was the sulky one at dinner, picking at my food and answering in monosyllables until everyone stopped trying to talk to me. I hate it when I get like this, but I’m so mad at Jake and especially my father that I can’t help it. My dad has the decency to look mildly embarrassed. We never fight, I hardly even see him, so it’s feels weird to be giving him the silent treatment. I’m usually agreeable and cheery, a total daddy’s girl. But I’m sick and tired of everyone else making decisions for me. I’m sixteen, not six, and it’s time he noticed that.

I deliberately looked my worst, selecting a ratty tank top and hideous paisley skirt from years before that I’d packed in case of an emergency like, I don’t know, cleaning fish or something. No makeup. Just a permanent frown.

Anyway, the raid. Speaking of bloody messes.

Four am on the dot. The hour when a person’s defenses are at their lowest ebb. The military knows this, and so did the raiders.

They come from the jungle side, and they come fast and sneaky. They’ve done this before. By the time the sensors go off, it’s too late. I wake to small arms fire popping in the darkness, followed by the deep boom of the artillery guns in the trenches and the rapid staccato of automatic weapons set to the fully open position.

I roll out of bed, pulse racing, just as a spray of bullets rips through my tent, shattering the standing mirror and sending glass shards flying in a deadly rain that rakes across my shoulders. Wood splinters explode in the air. My bed has been decapitated, and the falling canopy nearly crushes me as I crawl across the floor and try to find an exit.

There’s definitely something stuck in my back. Right between the shoulder blades. It hurts bad, but I can still move my arms so I guess my spine isn’t damaged. I want to stop, to get it out, but I can’t. First I need to find out what’s
happening
out there.

Could it be toads? What else? There’s nothing else.

The firing stops for a minute, and I creep under the edge of the tent, lifting it high so it doesn’t catch on the thing in my back. My pajamas are spotted with blood, black in the moonlight. Figures move in the distance, but I can’t tell if they’re human or what. It’s so hard to see. And then I realize that I have blood in my eyes too, and I swipe it away with a hand that is trembling uncontrollably.

OK.

Basic training. Find cover. Assess the enemy position. Launch a counterattack.

I have no weapon. But the contractors do. And the trench sounds like a really good place to be right now. So I start crawling on my stomach down the beach, stopping periodically to shake the blood from my eyes. Scalp lacerations are always gushers.

Someone screams off to my right, and there’s a fresh burst of gunfire. More shouting. The man who punched my dad, the man who was just yesterday pecking his girlfriend on the cheek, suddenly runs out of the darkness, his shirt and hair on fire. He runs straight past me into the surf and flounders there. A big wave comes and the next second he’s gone.

I crawl another twenty yards, into the shadow of the medical pavilion, and that’s when I get my first good look at what’s attacked us.

Not toads. People.

They’re ragged and none too clean, but they’re human. Men and women both. Some have guns, others are carrying crude wooden clubs. The sand is littered with bodies, ours and theirs, but it’s a matter of numbers at this point. And there are more of them than there are of us. A lot more.

I see with something close to all-out panic that they’ve already overrun the trenches.

A group of three raiders suddenly materializes out of the shadows not five yards away. I freeze, pressing my body against the side of the tent. They’re silent as rats and pass close enough that I could have reached out and touched the bare ankle of the one closest. A moment later they’re gone, and I’m struggling to make sense of it, but I can’t, because the whole situation is impossible. Who
are
these people?
And, even more mystifying,
how did they get up here?
After endless fumbling in the darkness, I locate the tent flap and crawl inside, but there’s not much that is useful as a weapon, just basic first aid supplies to treat bug bites and sunburns and things like that.

I don’t think I can go any further without dealing with the thing stuck in my back so I reach around, biting down against the pain, and my fingertips brush something smooth and sharp. A glass shard, probably from the mirror. I work it loose, and steady myself on a gurney until the bout of nausea passes. I need a pressure bandage to stop the bleeding but I can’t do it myself, not between the shoulder blades. Instead, I grab a jacket hanging from a hook and button it up as tightly as I can. If nothing else, I feel a little better knowing I won’t be going out there in just my PJs.

When I creep through the flap, two things happen simultaneously. I spot Jake. And I hear the low rumble of a mole’s engines fire up somewhere nearby. 

They’ve formed a circle around him, three of them, including one who makes Jake look like a skinny ten year-old kid. Oh God, the guy is big. Jake’s holding them off with a tent pole, but barely. I give him another minute or so before he’s down.

“Evac! Evac!” someone shouts behind me. It’s the security chief, and he’s still trying to work his radio, but nobody appears to be alive to listen.

“Jansin!” He grabs my arm, points off to the right. “Go, get your ass into that mole. Your mother’s there, your father too. He’s says he won’t leave without you, but Lord almighty. . .” He eyes my bloodstained hands and face. “There’s a medikit on board, just get out of here. I think there’s more coming through the jungle.”

The urge to run, to turn my back on the carnage and not look back until I’m through the hatch, is overpowering.

“One minute,” I say. “Jake’s pinned down. Do you have a backup sidearm–”

But the security chief’s radio is crackling, he’s got contact, and he turns away, ignoring me, as a frantic voice starts begging for reinforcements that don’t exist.

I stand there for a moment, frozen by indecision. If I go to help Jake, I could end up getting killed too. It’s a strong possibility. I realize that I not only don’t love him, I barely even like him anymore. Meanwhile, I can see the mole now, twenty yards away. Any anger I felt at my father has burned off in the cauldron of extreme fear. I know if I can just get to him, everything will be OK. I’ll be safe.

I hear a cackle of hysterical laughter down the beach followed by screaming and I’m not sure if it’s them or us.

In the end, there’s no real choice. Not for someone who’s spent the last decade training for situations like this. Rule one is you don’t turn tail and run away. Under any circumstances.

It takes ten seconds to cross the rocks. I’m terrified, but I try to push the fear away, lock it up in a place where it won’t cloud my judgment. I’ve been scared plenty of times in training, but not like this. This is real world.

On the way, I pull a club from the hand of one of the dead raiders, a blonde boy barely older than me whose body is still smoking from laser fire, and use it to crack the big one in the back of the head as hard as I can. He staggers, falls to his knees, tries to get up. The guy is an ox. Before he gets far, I deliver a flurry of kicks to his face that leave me feeling faint. He hits the ground like a load of iron slag. But I crack him on the head again anyway, just to be sure.

Jake turns to the woman to his right, while I face the third, a smaller guy who takes one look at me, one look at the colossus sprawled face-down on the sand, and hightails it into the jungle. If we weren’t in such deep trouble, it would be almost comical.

The woman is made of sterner stuff. She’s tall and lean, with shrewd black eyes and an intricate braid that nearly brushes her butt. A long white scar bisects her tan face from eyebrow to jaw.

“Better get back to your mole,” she says, in a crisp accent that rings of Nu London.

The cluster of figures milling around the trenches is starting to head in our direction.