Pennsylvania Omnibus (14 page)

Jed opened his eyes as he felt the airbus slow to a stop. 
The bus hovered in place for a full minute, and Jed felt his heart race again.
Adrenaline flushed through his body, and he felt his stomach give way within
him as if his heart had plunged into his gut.  The silence was deafening.

Jed moved around the bus, looking toward the ground in
every direction, and then his gaze darted along the horizon, trying to gauge
where he might be so that he’d know once the bus was commanded to land.  He
couldn’t see any groups—gangs or salvagers—out there.  The bus hovered,
shrouded in the miserable silence which permeated everything like a dense,
malevolent fog.

Just as Jed moved back toward the rear of the bus in order
to try to look eastward towards the City, a loud klaxon sounded, and the bus
swerved and dropped radically, as if it was taking evasive maneuvers.  For a
fraction of a second, Jed saw a floating TRACER drone, but then it was gone.

A terrifying, deafening explosion rocked the airbus, and
Jed felt his stomach rise again as the bus plummeted toward the ground.

A second explosion blew the windows out of the bus, and
Jed was propelled backward, and only saved himself from falling out of the
broken windows by catching a handrail with his flailing hand.

The bus hyper-rotated, as if to try anything to regain
control and level flight, and for a moment the vehicle was able to arrest its
own fall only ten feet or so from smashing into the earth.  The airbus even
managed to gain altitude briefly before another explosion violently pummeled
the vehicle.  This time, Jed saw what was happening.  The drone that he’d seen
was firing phosphorescent projectiles at the bus, and this last shot had found
its mark.  The bus cratered near the midsection, and fell the last twenty feet
to the earth in a smoking, fiery heap.

Jed blinked his eyes, trying to clear his vision.  He’d
been unconscious, but only for a few seconds.  The impact of the crash had
thrown him to the very back of the airbus.  Fire was now racing through the
crumpled seating area, and there was a solid wall of flames that blocked any
attempt at exit through the front.

The smoke was beginning to choke him as he struggled to
pull himself upright, and just as he felt as if he might be blacking out, a
strong hand jerked him through the place where the windows had once been.

Jed found himself being dragged backward through heavy and
unkempt underbrush, while struggling unsuccessfully to regain his feet.

“Wait… wait… wait…” he said.

“Not waiting for anything,” the man who was dragging Jed
replied.

Jed was finally able to turn his head, and he saw a
brutish man with a heavy beard and a scowl on his face, dressed in animal skins
and carrying an ancient-looking long rifle.

“Drone,” Jed said.  His voice sounded like the bark of a
small dog.

“Drone being dead,” the voice said.

“Who are you?” Jed asked.

The rugged man didn’t reply.  He just grunted and kept
dragging Jed further into the overgrown thicket.  Thorns and branches tore at
Jed’s clothes and scraped the bare skin on his arms and hands.

“Just… just… take me to the Amish Zone.  I have money,”
Jed said.

“Ha!” the man said.  “You having money!  Right!”

The man spoke a very difficult-to-understand and guttural
dialect of broken English.  He’d obviously lived a long time separated from the
comforts of city life and the society of men.  He grunted again and pushed Jed
to the ground.  Jed jumped to his feet and tried to run, but the rough man was
faster, and snagged Jed by the arm and tossed him back to the ground.

“I do have money.  I have gold.  I’ll pay you to take me
to the Amish Zone,” Jed said.

“Don’t wanting your gold, Amish boy.  Gonna be paid many
more much moneys than you
ever
paying me.”

“Who?” Jed asked.  “Who will pay you money for me?”

“Ha!” the man laughed again.  “I will being a rich one,
because knowing that your brother will paying all the gold of Oklahoma getting
you back from me!”

“My… brother?” Jed said.

“Yeah.  Being your brother. Amos.”

The old man paced the command deck,
hands behind him, eyes fixed on the floor before him as he walked out his
frustrations. Despite his age and the weight of responsibility he carried on
his back, he stood tall, exuding an air of noble authority.

His body reminded him that
authority, like age, comes with sufferings that youth and ambition never
consider. Tension in his neck caused his head to throb with dull, radiating
pain. To say his headache was
splitting
would be accurate on multiple
levels: his parents would have said he was of two minds; his brother would have
told him that he was conflicted; the elders would have declared that his
natural man was at war with his spirit man. But however his problems were
characterized, they were inarguably rooted in conflict—both the internal and
external kind.

Double-mindedness is frowned upon in
Amish society. Still, he was torn. There had been a time when his brother would
have told him to just grow up and do as he was told. A much simpler time. But
that path was no longer available to him—not now, not here, in this world. He’d
already grown old, and there was no one to tell him what he should do. Even the
bishop would’ve said only for him to do nothing until he’d prayed and received
an answer from God. He yearned for the early years when simple prayer would
have been enough. But for a very long time now he’d been operating without even
the pretense of being guided by Amish culture and community. A plain person
wouldn’t fight a physical war for freedom or survival. Perhaps in his heart he
was still Amish, but to the Amish he was on his own. Not one of them at
all.

And now, on top of all of his other
responsibilities, he had his brother to deal with. A specter from his own past.
A reminder of who he’d once been… of his Amish beginnings. So his mind was
bifurcated, split in twain like that of many men who hold the reins of
power.

For most of his adult life he’d been
a part of the rebellion, a part of TRACE, and for all of that time TRACE had
been at war… a war the resistance
must
win if freedom was ever again to
raise its graying head in the universe. And now his brother had become the key
pawn in the game.

He smoothed his hair.
This isn’t
a game. This is about liberty, life, death… blood… peace.

One part of his mind wanted him to
put his worries behind him, to concentrate on the war and the immediate
concerns on his plate—problems over which he had some real tactical control.
That part of his mind did not recognize ancient clan loyalties, familial bonds,
and brotherly love. In fact, his carnal side didn’t bow to any higher power at
all. It was coldly rational and without natural affection. His carnal man was
all about fighting and destroying Transport until the government decided it
would allow men and women to live freely.

The other part of him—his spirit
man—rebelled against his sterile, more mathematical inclinations. This second
portion of his mind wanted to do whatever he must—damn the revolution—to save
Jed at all costs. His older brother was out there, just a boy, young and
afraid, with no understanding of the intricacies of this otherworldly conflict.
Jed was pure. Maybe the only pure thing left in the universe.

The Tulsa—his flagship, and the
largest ship in TRACE’s fleet—hung still in space, five hundred miles southwest
of the City and twenty-five miles above the battle-ravaged ground of New
Pennsylvania. His mind reeled at the technology on display in the Tulsa. Its
stillness alone was remarkable. The ship was virtually invisible to all
existing technology: radar, laser, thermal, radiological tracking and scanning.
If he ordered it, the Tulsa could sit directly over the City, and Transport
wouldn’t even know she was there. Her okcillium-powered weapons systems were
unmatched—and some were even untested. The ship was that new.

If he didn’t think about it, when
his mind drifted, he could forget he was on a ship at all. The new okcillium
drives didn’t even hum, much less vibrate. And the Tulsa was twenty times
larger than any other ship ever operated by anyone other than Transport. In
fact, dozens of TRACE ships could fit inside the hold of the Tulsa. They not
only
could
, they
did
. The Tulsa was going to put an end to the
long war at last, and Transport didn’t even know she existed. The tide had
turned, and the end was very near. And it was all because he—the
SOMA—controlled the mines where okcillium was extracted.

He glanced across the command deck.
The Tulsa was a secret, even to most of the resistance military leaders who
were currently in the field. He’d hand-picked the workers on this ship himself.
Now he watched as the men and women of the Tulsa worked. TRACE officers and
soldiers went about their shipboard duties unaware—so far—that their long-time
commander was vacillating. Hindered from performing his own responsibilities
while he waited to hear word about his brother. His hesitation, at this
critical moment, was something completely out of character for him. His
decisiveness was universally credited as the main reason that TRACE still
existed, still fought, and still breathed in the air of liberty.

An assistant approached him and
handed him a sheet of clear plastic. When his hands touched it, his BICE
activated the sheet and it became, to his eyes only, a document that could be
read.

It was a report on the latest
movements of Transport forces. This information had already been made available
to his mind through his BICE—as it had been to every officer with the
appropriate clearance. It was included here just for context and clarity.
Nothing had changed in the last half hour.

There was a notation from the
armorer that the weapons had been checked and readied. TRACE was poised to
attack, but its leader waited.

It still amazed him to see so much
firepower under his command. Things had surely changed in the past six decades.
When he’d first arrived in Oklahoma, the rebels fought against Transport with
sticks and rocks and ancient firearms that were as untrustworthy as they were
rare. He remembered spending his eighteenth birthday making arrows from elm and
hickory harvested from old, abandoned farms in the green country of
northeastern Oklahoma. Now, in this one ship, he commanded enough power to take
the City once and for all. Taking the City wouldn’t end the war, not by a long
shot, but it would signal the beginning of the end. His spies informed him that
Transport—anticipating that a full-scale attack from TRACE could commence at
any time—had already removed most executive functions and a good part of their
military to the frontier cities behind the Great Shelf.

The old man sighed. They say the
crown weighs heavy on the head of a king. He was
the SOMA
—the title
given to him forty years ago when he became the supreme commander and
administrator of the Southern Oklahoma Militia. He was the king of the rebels,
the absolute monarch of the revolutionary powers at war with Transport on New
Pennsylvania. His authority was unquestioned, even by the members of the
Council. He had the power to dissolve the Council with a wave of his hand—and
every Councilor would happily obey him and be glad to be rid of the
responsibility. He was the one who’d insisted on a governing council to begin
with. There were no challengers to his power, no loyal opposition. He enjoyed
complete support, which was something unheard of except in times of war. He
wasn’t foolish enough to believe that his universal approval would ever last
past the war. But for now, the authority—and the responsibility—were fully his.
That knowledge would have been crippling to a lesser man.