Redwood: Servant of the State (14 page)

Chapter Fourteen

“I need your palm print. You can give it to me willingly. Or, I can bite you.”

The Old Man’s eyes grew wide. I’d guessed correctly he wouldn’t try and call my bluff. He placed his palm on the scanner, and I gave myself sysop prime access to Redwood City’s entire computer system. Then I programmed in Dee Dee and Jason, too.

Several vid screens covered the walls of The Old Man’s inner office. We keyed in on the ones showing the loading bay and the spaceport, where the gun battle still raged.

We shut down the load bots, and halted the system’s invasion protocol. A cheer came over the com link as Ranger Jones called in.

“Thanks, Professor! We were starting to get a little worried out here!”

“Any casualties Bradley?”

“No, sir. We mainly kept our heads down and let the bots do most of the shooting. We hoped they’d run out of ammo eventually. They had a lot of ammo, though.”

“Good work, all of you. We’re opening the loading bay door. But you need to be aware of three armed Agents that we’re seeing on surveillance cams. They’re planning a welcome party for y’all. Be careful, Bradley.”

Without the element of surprise, the Agents had no chance. Mr. and Mrs. Jones along with Mrs. Cruz and half a dozen others started firing on the Agents’ position as soon as the door began lifting up. A few seconds later, the three Agents lay sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood.

“Bradley, we’re not seeing any other threats on surveillance. I think the city only had six Agents, and we killed the other three. But you need to be extra careful when you see somebody. Don’t presume they’re friendly.”

I keyed up my com link. “Ranger Jones, if you’ll put your hand on the scanner there on the wall, I’ll program you into the system. We’re going to lock all the doors in the city so that everybody stays put. When your team needs to go through a doorway, you’ll just need to swipe the palm scanner.”

The Professor turned to Jenkins.

“Colt, escort Thomas here back to his quarters. I believe they’re through the doorway over there. We’ll lock him in there for now.”

Jenkins nodded, motioned to The Old Man with his gun.

“Diane, see if you can patch me through to President Montoya. He’ll want to know about our status.”

Several minutes later, and after several long distance arguments with people at New Texas A&M, Dee Dee looked up.

“I finally got somebody who says he’ll put the President on, Daddy. It’s going to be voice only.”

“That’s fine. Whenever he’s ready, send it through.”

A few moments later, a voice filled the room through the wall speakers.

“Hello? Who am I talking to?”

“Hello, Tony. It’s Curt Cruz. Long time, no see.”

A long pause.

“Curt, your voice print matches. You have to understand the situation we’re in over here, though. I have to verify it’s really you before we can talk.”

“No problem. Verify away.”

Another long pause. I guessed President Montoya was discussing the matter off mic with someone.

“Curt, tell me about that game with Polytech we played in. You know, the one we won when I tossed you the ball and you scored the winning touchdown.”

The Professor smiled.

“You know Polytech beat us that year, Tony. We were robbed by the refs on that play.”

We heard the President laugh, along with several other people in the room.

“Just checking, Curt. We had to be sure. How’s it going over there? I see you’re calling me from Redwood City. Does it mean what I hope it does?”

“We took it, Tony. Just like you asked us to.”

The President sounded relieved. “That’s the best news I’ve had all day. Any casualties?”

“We lost three. The Ngs and Milton Kalinowski. Couple others were shot up, but they’ll live. The other side lost six Agents and a bunch of load bots.”

“That’s great news about taking the city. I’m sorry for the losses. I knew Milt. I only know Scientist Ng by reputation. Look, Curt, keep the area secure. We’ll send a team your way when things settle down and relieve you.”

“That’d be good. I’m sure we’d all like to get back to our research as soon as possible.”

Dee Dee sorted through the surveillance cam feeds while the Professor spoke. She stopped and stared at one, motioned me over. She pointed to one of the screens, which showed somebody hanging from the ceiling by their neck.

“That’s the bedroom here in the Governor’s Quarters.”

Jenkins and I ran over to where he’d locked up The Old Man. I palmed the door. It slid open and we burst into the room.

The Old Man had tied the sheets on his bed into a rope and hanged himself.

-+-

We secured all the guns used by the load bots and Agents. After a while, and after things were cleaned up, the Professor had Dee Dee unlock all the doors in the city and he called the populace together. I suggested he direct everybody to assemble at Park 7 on Level 25. I’d spent many hours working in that park, and knew it’d be a good meeting place, at the center of the city.

The Professor stood on a platform and addressed the crowd. Out of an entire cubic kilometer of a city, only a few hundreds inhabited it, all men. The official count on the system’s computers stood at 1,121 inhabitants. Minus the six Agents that had kept tabs on the entire group. And The Old Man who’d chosen a cowardly suicide.

A handful of people knew the Rangers well, and were regarded as old friends by our team. They’d helped smuggle things off planet back to New Texas. Customs worried about what came into Redwood City, not so much what went out, so smuggling items out tended to be easier. Jenkins explained this was how they were able to ship out Kalinowski’s cigars, among other things.

Somebody shouldered their way to the front of the crowd, and stared dagger eyes at me. Adams, the Head Servant. I ignored him as the Professor began his speech.

“We’re going to ask you to maintain your daily schedule. People still have to eat, machinery needs to be maintained. The government is changing back on New Texas and on other planets as well. This city is under University charter, now. This probably means little to you at the moment. Eventually, it will come to mean a lot more. For now, maintain your routines until we get everything sorted out.”

He spoke softly, reassuringly, matter-of-factly. But behind the podium the Rangers and their wives stood quietly holding guns, ready to shoot down anybody considering an attack.

But they were mostly a docile lot: Servants, Mechanics, and other laborers who had the misfortune of being assigned to a backwater frontier planet. They never bothered attacking.

Our only trouble came when planning for the funerals. The Professor decided Kalinowski’s beloved AES 3 would be an ideal place to bury him, and he figured the old spaceport near Ranger Station Alpha would suit the Ngs well, underneath one of the outer trees Scientist Ng had studied for so long.

Adams found out about the plans, and protested. Several times. I was there for the last one.

“Professor, I remind you this planet is still under ecological impact restrictions. Now, I don’t know what you and your team have been up to the last several years, but I do know interment of human remains is strictly disallowed on ecologically restricted planets! I don’t care if we are under University charter. Ecological restrictions transcend who’s in charge of the government at any given moment. The University probably had a hand in these restrictions in the first place. I am strongly opposed to this move, and I will lodge my protest to your superiors against this clear violation of protocol!”

The Professor pinched his nose. The ferocity with which Adams fought against the burials was surprising at first, then frustrating. The man would not let the issue go. As a former high ranking member of the city’s bureaucracy, his protests carried some weight, too.

“Where, exactly, do you bury your dead, Mr. Adams? I know you don’t fly the bodies back to New Texas.”

“On the roof. We have a cemetery near the gardens up there. The bodies stay contained within the cube.”

Once Adams left, I chimed in.

“I bet they were worried about vampire monkeys digging up the bodies or something.”

He nodded. “That would make sense. That probably accounts for his vehemence in the matter.”

“Just go ahead and bury them here for now, Professor. We can always reinter them later.”

He agreed, and that’s what we did. The bodies of the Ngs, Professor Kalinowski, and all six Agents, as well as The Old Man, were brought up to the roof. Graves were dug, we buried them and had a funeral. Tombstones were brought out of a storage facility, names and dates etched, and the stones placed at the graves.

Afterward, Dee Dee and I walked alone in the rooftop garden, holding hands. A feral cat scampered out of our way.

“Lunch!” I joked.

Eventually, we made our way to the glass wall. She looked out on the surface of Redwood from on top of the cube for the first time. The sun sank low on the horizon, painting the sky in brilliant colors.

“It’s beautiful.”

I agreed. “All my life I’ve been trying to get away from here, and over to where you all were. But yeah, I gotta admit. This is a breathtaking view.”

-+-

Three months later the triplets, Dee Dee and I were on a spaceship bound for New Texas. The fighting had died down, and New Texas A&M controlled the entire planet. Governor Prince’s secret compound was uncovered and attacked. He’d died in the fighting. The planet was now at peace, and under the University charter.

We’d received news that all four of us had been accepted into New Texas A&M, and in light of our contributions to the revolution we’d received full scholarships. “Veteran’s benefit,” they’d called it.

Connie received an acceptance letter and scholarship, too, but she decided to stay home at least a year. She also considered virtual enrollment, which would be possible now that we didn’t have to be careful with our communications between the Ranger station and New Texas.

I think she really wanted to avoid a month on a spaceship with all of us, especially Dee Dee and me.

Jason gulped down a can of naval beer, then let out a long and hearty belch.

“Lovely,” Dee Dee said.

“Tasteless beer demands tasteless burps, Dee Dee. You know what this stuff needs? Some of Rustin’s Redwood Red Eye.”

Arthur Rustin was a crop Scientist back on Redwood. On the side, his hobby involved distilling grain liquor. Some of the bottles of 3RE, as he called them, were approaching 15 years old. I’d tried a sip or two back at Ranger Station Alpha, but never cared much for it.

“If you say so.”

I’d shown the triplets my hacker board trick with the beer dispenser, a vulnerability which had still not been closed after all this time. Maybe nobody else had exploited it, and no other beers had been stolen. Out of bureaucratic sight, out of bureaucratic mind, I guess.

The triplets were impressed by the trick, and proceeded to empty the machine of all its beer over the course of our trip. Jason swigged the last beer the machine had to offer, crumpled the can and tossed it into the recycle bin.

“Entering New Texas airspace. Would you like the tourist channel?”

Jeremy winked at us. “No thanks, computer. I’ll handle it.”

The spaceship shuddered a bit as it bumped into the atmosphere.

“I’ve been reading up on New Texas. Okay, so you’ve got five continents. Each continent has a major city. New Austin, the capitol of course. Then there’s New Houston, New Dallas, New Fort Worth, and New San Antonio. That about rounds out the “new” cities, except for New Bryan which is on the same continent as New Austin and where New Texas A and M is.”

I’d been reading a little history, too.

“I thought the original Texas A and M was in a city called College Station.”

Jeremy nodded.

“True. But the original town Texas A and M was built near was called Bryan. College Station was just a train stop. Over time, a smaller town built up around the college, and they later incorporated as a city, naming it after the train stop. As even more time went by, College Station grew bigger than Bryan as Texas A and M grew bigger.

“But when setting up New Texas A and M, the founders decided to name the surrounding city New Bryan. In a nod to the old train stop, the spaceport is named after College Station.”

“Makes sense.”

We watched the planet below as we dipped down toward the clouds, then through the clouds. Water gave way to land. We dropped lower and saw the tell-tale signs of civilization: fields, towns, highways. Slower and slower, lower and lower, until the spaceport came into view.

“Uh, guys … looks like there’s a lot of people here.”

Jason was right. Crowds swarmed the perimeter of our landing pad.

The spaceship came to a smooth halt, bumping slightly as it sat down. The airlock popped open and the computer said, “Please enjoy your stay in New Texas!”

We peered out cautiously. A nearby sign read, “College Station Spaceport. Welcome to New Aggieland!”