Once Broken, Chapter 12 (Patreon)

Just a few days, Jacoby thought as he reconnected the calibrated capacitor, and Alex would realize this had been a waste of time. They’d go home and things would go back to normal.

He took out the controller board and connected it to the analyzer. He looked around the hover while it did its work. Tech was at work building that ridiculous wall. How could Alex think doing that would help anything?

Desperation, fear, pain. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen someone do something desperate because they couldn’t think of anything else to do. Of course, in those cases it resulted in a suicide attack, or a badly planned incursion, or any of a different number of ways that ended up killing soldiers.

At least this would only end up with Alex screaming, complaining—possibly looking for more extreme ways to cure Tech. But they’d be on their way home by then. Cornelius would look Tech over, she’d figure out what was wrong with him, and she’d fix him right up.

“So just keep busy, Jacoby,” he told himself. “Just stay busy until it’s time to leave.”

Alex stood and walked to the other end of the hover as Jacoby read the results from the analyzer. He shook his head. The controller program was nearly fifty years out of date; it was a wonder this hover worked at all. He instructed the analyzer to update it, and received a request for a network connection.

“Right.” Tech had pulled that communication array in his deluded wisdom, to keep them safe. “I hope I remember your specs,” he told the controller board. “Unlike those two, I lived through the last fifty years mostly day by day. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

He reached for the tool bag, but his hand closed around his Terminator even before the sound fully registered. There were some sounds that became ingrained so deep in a soldier’s life they couldn’t be forgotten, no matter how hard he tried.

Blaster fire was one of those sounds. He ran around the hover and toward the them.

It wasn’t military—it lacked the strident tone of an overtaxed capacitor—but it sounded more powerful than the typical handgun civilians got for their safety. Not that he expected anyone here would have a gun. They were too primitive. He was surprised they had some form of power generation, and farming equipment.

He reached the top of the hill and took in the view. Three people were using a hover for cover as Alex ran and fired at them. A handful of dead animals, and Samalians urging the alive ones away, having almost reached a barn.

He ran down the hill. Termy couldn’t do any good at this distance. Alex zigged and zagged as the other men returned fire, but they couldn’t aim any more than Alex could, so it was a light show that didn’t hurt anyone.

A waste of power.

And Alex stopped firing. The idiot had drained the gun’s powerpack. One of the men stood and aimed his rifle at Alex, then fell back from something Alex threw. A knife.

Jacoby stopped. The distance wasn’t great, but he’d ran out of time. How many knives did Alex have on him? His harness was in the hover. Two? Three? Without a need for constant cover, the two left would take the time to aim. It was a myth you could dodge gunfire.

Jacoby took his own aim. He fired twice at the closest man, didn’t score a solid hit, but he set them crouching behind the hover. The other, a woman, stood and shot in his direction. He didn’t move; she wasn’t bothering aiming, so he had time before she managed to get close to him. Unlike them, he knew what being under heavy fire felt like, and he’d been trained to keep his flight reflex in check.

Two quick shots and she went down. Both hit center mass, and she didn’t look to be wearing armor. The other man peeked over the hover in time to see Alex round it.

When Jacoby reached the hover, there was no doubt all three were dead. The number of stabs ensured that, as did the cut throats.

“Good shooting,” Alex said, wiping his blades.

“Thanks.” He looked at the bodies. Looked at the pants and shirt. No armor. Tourists, out for some sport. He picked up one of the rifles: an Arlian hunting rifle. A tourist’s weapon.

He could imagine what had gone through their heads. They’d had enough of the rest and relaxation, of visiting native sites, of enjoying native hospitality. They’d decided to go off the tourist’s path and entertain themselves. They’d brought the rifles as protection, and when they’d seen the animals in the clearing, well, they’d figured it would be fun to try a bit of hunting. There had been no need to kill them. A few burns and this would have been enough of a scare to ensure they never did this again.

The hover wasn’t a touristic hover. It was a hunter’s model, with plenty of cargo space to store the kills. Jacoby readjusted his opinion of them. Shooting the animals hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment thing; they’d set out with the intent to bring back trophies. Still not deserving of being killed, but definitely against LeisureTek’s touristic policies.

Jacoby understood the thrill of hunting, even if hunting animals had never been his thing, much to his father’s disappointment. His father and his friends went hunting a few times a year, and Jacoby went with them once he was old enough to fire his own rifle. Eight, maybe? His father had explained about the thrill of the hunt, eating the meat you’d killed yourself. His younger self hadn’t understood; they had money, could buy all the meat they wanted.

It wasn’t until he joined the army that he understood why hunting animals hadn’t been his thing: there was no danger in it. It wasn’t like hunting down a man who was also armed and intent on killing you. That was a thrill. That made the hunt worthwhile.

He’d tried to explain it to his father, who’d been horrified. You didn’t kill other people, as far as he was concerned. Life was sacred. Jacoby hadn’t pointed out the hypocrisy. He’d been old enough by then not to need his father’s approval.

“Yes!” Alex exclaimed. The hover wobbled as Alex jumped in it. His eyes were then closed, head tilted slightly. He had the expression of someone seated at a table for a full meal for the first time after weeks of going hungry.

“Feeling better?” Jacoby asked.

Alex nodded. “LeisureTek’s stock dropped three points as a result of an act of sabotage that destroyed most of their construction equipment.”

“Someone here knows how to manipulate the news if LeisureTek wasn’t able to keep that from spreading. Who do they say caused it?”

“Local anti-corporate extremists. No names mentioned, no descriptions within any connected database. No one figured out we were involved.”

Jacoby wasn’t surprised. The three of them were experienced mercs, and they’d been careful, even if Tech had done things his own way.

“Anything in there about our would-be hunters?”

“No, this is a rental, picked up at Relax Point, full week, no names attached to it. They knew what they were doing was against the rules. I can hear their datapads. Grab them. I’ll be able to get more information.” He indicated the general direction of the bodies.

“You know you can’t keep it, right?” Jacoby went through the woman’s pockets and came out with eight powerpacks. What was she doing with so many? Was she that bad of a shot? Or had she planned on killing every animal she could find? “The rental company’s going to send someone to see what’s going on when it doesn’t come back. I don’t think you want anyone interrupting Tech’s…therapy.” He was careful not to put any of the derision he felt in calling what was happening here that.

“I know, I just want to get my fix in. This is the longest I’ve gone without hearing the network; the silence is driving me nuts. Okay, this is interesting: this was their destination.”

Jacoby stood, holding the woman’s datapad. “Here? This place can’t be on any touristic maps. Is that Relax Point city close by?”

“Two days away from here.”

Jacoby looked at the bodies. “How many stops before here?”

“None.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Look at them. They’re tourists who paid for a hover without giving their identities, flew around until they saw the herd and went ‘hey, let’s have some fun’. There’s bound to be herds of animals closer to where they came from.”

“The clothing says one thing,” Alex said, extending his hand, “but the flight path another. Hand me the datapad and look for the others. Did you find IDs?”

“No,” Jacoby said, only now realizing she hadn’t had any on her.

“Look for the other two datapads.” Alex took this one.

Jacoby patted the first man and pulled out more powerpacks. Six of them. He went to the third person, nine packs. “They’re carrying enough power to decimate every herd in this region.” Tourists didn’t over-pack power, they under-packed. Vids led everyone to believe that one pack would last however long you needed it to.

If not for how sloppy their shooting had been, Jacoby would think they were mercs, but even the greenest of mercs came with some basic training, and the first thing any instructor said was to not waste your shots.

“If this was their destination, is sending the hover away going to do any good?” Jacoby asked. “The satellites will show they got here. There might not be one overhead watching right now, but the stop will be recorded.”

Alex snorted. “The records will say what I tell them to, and it isn’t that they made it here.”

Jacoby dropped the two other datapads in the hover. “No ID on any of them.”

Alex tapped the datapad he was holding. “This is encrypted, and not with an off-the-net encryption. It’s a good one.” He eyed Jacoby. “Now, why would tourists have this kind of encryptions on their pads?”

“They could just be security conscious. There are coercionists out there, after all.”

“No, there aren’t,” Alex said, typing on the pad’s surface.

“What do you mean?”

“Do a search on the public news feeds, take a look at the entertainment vids. You’re not going to find any mention of coercionists going criminal. I don’t know why, but SpaceGov is working hard at making sure the civvies don’t know I exist.”

“That… That doesn’t make any sense. How can people protect themselves against information invasion if they don’t know it’s happening?”

“I agree.”

Jacoby looked at the bodies again. The clothing they wore wasn’t practical to go hunting, it was vacation clothing. The rifles were new, just bought. He took the pack out, the capacitor, and examined them. No corrosion, none of the abrasion that came from cleaning them. brand new.

He took one of the datapads and turned it over. Tolera. Good brand, popular with anyone who could afford them, built tough, which made them a favorite of mercs and criminals.

Alex pocketed the datapad. “I’ll work on this later.” He focused on the hover’s command screen. “That datapad you’re holding, it’s this year’s model. Came out while we were in transit. How did it reach Samalia this fast? How did they get their hands on not one, but three of them?”

“They could be rich,” Jacoby said, but that didn’t add up. Rich folks didn’t buy Arlian rifles. That was a civvies’ company. If you had the money you bought a Kentric—possibly an Edeku, if you were concerned someone might object to you owning a military weapon.

“The route’s rewritten,” Alex said, exiting the hover and then taking the other two datapads. “Let’s throw them in and send them on their way.”

“I’m keeping the rifles.”

“I’m keeping the pads, so sure. Spoils of war and all that.”

“Where are they going to end up?” Jacoby asked as they were loading the passengers. “I’m guessing you’re going to have them crash.”

Alex nodded. “A day ago, about halfway between Relax Point and here.”

“Won’t they notice it’s still flying?”

He chuckled. “You really need to read up on what coercionists can do. They’ve already crashed. This hover is a different one, on a relaxed trip. Once it crashes, the system will reset the tags.”

Alex tapped the controls once they were done, and the hover lifted up.

Jacoby watched it fly up, an uneasy feeling growing. They’d missed something, he was sure of it. A detail that would make everything fall in place.

Instead of heading for their own hover, Alex headed for the gathered Samalians by the barn. Jacoby followed him, and once he was close enough to make out details, he did his best not to look. Vids never showed that aspect of primitive aliens. They always either wore pants, or were built differently enough not to have anything down there.

So many naked people made him uncomfortable.

Alex didn’t look bothered by it, but then he was the guy running and training naked. He also lived with a Samalian, so this was something he’d seen before. Tech had been known for preferring to be naked long before Alex showed up.

The priestess, at the forefront, at least wore pants. “Sorry about the mess,” Alex said.

She showed teeth, and that was creepier. “Thank you for protecting my people,” she replied. “May I ask why you intervened?”

Alex shrugged. “Reflex, I guess.”

Jacoby rolled his eyes. Alex had been looking for a reason to fight for a while now.

She nodded. “You still have my thanks. We did not lose as many orsh’ak this time, and no one was injured.”

“This happened before?”

“It is the third time this year.”

“How many animals do they take each time?” Alex asked. Jacoby turned and headed for his hover.

“None. They fire, kill them, burn the bodies, and leave. If any of us try to stop them, they fire at us.”

“Jacoby, did you see anything that could burn…”

Jacoby gave a wave without looking. Alex could get involved if he wanted, but as far as Jacoby was concerned, this wasn’t their problem. He wasn’t interested in plans for retribution. This job was about Tech, not these people.

He readjusted the rifles over his shoulder and tried to shake the uneasiness away.