Science Fiction - Daily Short Stories
Dead World - Jack Douglas
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- Duration:
- 32m
- Broadcast on:
- 25 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
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Dead World, by Jack Douglas. Although the most recent start to die, RNAC 89778 in the Distant Mental House Galaxy, common name Mental House 12, had eight inhabited planets, only some 1,000 people of the fifth planet escaped and survived, as a result of a computer error which miscalculated the exact time by two years. Due to basic psychofilomal adjustments, the refugees of Mental House 12.5 are classified as antisocial types B6, and must be considered unstable. All antisocial types B6 are barred from responsible positions in United Galaxies by order of the Intergalactic Council, short history of the United Galaxies. Yuan Salterio started it. He was serving in my company, and he was one of them. A Mental House 12.5, unstable. And don't ever call that damn little planet by its number if you meet one of them. They call it Nova Marania, but you won't meet one of them. Or maybe you will. Maybe they did make it. I like to think they did. There are a lot of them in the companies in 3078. Restless men. The companies were the logical place for them. We're still classified antisocial B6, too. Every year it's harder to get recruits, but we still have to be careful who we take in. We took Yuan Salterio. There was something about him from the very start. Why do you want to join a free company? He was a short humanoid type with deep black eyes and a thin, lipless mouth that never smiled. I'm an antisocial. I like to fight. I want to fight. A misfit joining the misfits? A grudge against the council? It's not good enough, mister. We live on the council. Try again. Salterio's black eyes stared without a flicker. Your red stone, commander of the red company. You hate the council, and I hate the council. You're the... Salterio stopped. I said, "The traitor of the glorious war of survival." You can say it, Salterio. The lipless mouth was rigid. I don't think of it that way. "I think of a man with personal integrity," Salterio said. "I suppose I should have seen it then. The rock he carried deep inside him. It might have saved thirty thousand good men. But I was thinking of myself. Commander Redstone of the red company, Earthmen. Only we're not all Earthmen now. Every year there are fewer recruits, and it won't be long before we die out and the council will have the last laugh. Old Redstone, the traitor of the war of survival. The little finger of my left hand still missing and telling the universe I was a very old soldier of the outlawed free companies hanging on to life on a rocky planet of the distant Solomon galaxy. Back at the old stand because united galaxies still need us. In a way it's a big joke. Two years after Raje Ben and I had a belly full of the glorious war of survival and they chased us all the way out here, they turned right around and made the peace. A joke on me, but sometimes I like to think that our run-out was a thing that made them think and make peace. When you've been a soldier for thirty-five years you like to win battles, but you like to feel you helped bring peace, too." I said, "Personal integrity. That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? So you like personal integrity? Alright, Salterio, are you sure you know what you're getting into? We're sixty million light-years from Galaxy Center, ten million from the nearest United Galaxy city. We've got no comforts, no future, nothing to do but fight. A woman in her right mind won't look at us. If they see you in uniform they'll spit on you, if they catch you out of uniform they'll kill you." Salterio shrugged, "I like to eat. I've got nowhere to go. All I've got is myself and a big piece of ice I call home." I nodded. "Okay, we fight small wars for good profits. It's not earth out here, but we've got four nice sons, plenty of Lucanian whiskey, Raje Ben taught the locals to make, and we're our own masters. The United Galaxy's leaves us pretty much alone unless they need us. You do your job and your job is what I tell you to do, period. You got that straight?" Salterio very nearly smiled. "It sounds good to me, sir." "I hope it'll sound good in a year, Salterio, because once you're in you don't get out except feet first. Is that clear? I have life and death rights over you. You owe allegiance to the Red Company and me and to no one else. Got that?" "Today your best friends are the men of Raje Ben's Lucanian fourth free patrol, and your worst enemies are the men of Mandasivas Syrian O Company. Tomorrow, Raje Ben's boys may be your worst enemies and Mandasivas troops your best friends. It all depends on the contract. A company on the same contract is a friend. A company against the contract is an enemy. You'll drink with a man today and kill him tomorrow. Got it? If you kill a free companion without a contract, you go to court Marshall. If you kill a citizen of the United Galaxies except in a battle under contract, I throw you to the wolves and that means you're finished. That's the way it is." "Yes, sir." Salterio never moved a muscle. He was rigid. "Right," I said. "Get your gear, see the adjutant and sign the agreement. I think you'll do." Salterio left. I sat back in my chair and thought about how many non-earthmen I was taking into the company. Maybe I should have been thinking about this one single non-earth man into something he was carrying inside him, but I didn't, and it cost the company's 30,000 men we couldn't afford to lose. We can't afford to lose one man. There are only a hundred companies now, 20,000 men each. Give or take a few thousand depending on how the last contract went. Life is good in the United Galaxies now that they've disarmed and outlawed all war again, and our breed is dying out faster than it did in the 500 years of peace before the War of Survival. Too many of the old companions like me went west in the War of Survival. The Galactic Council know they need us, know that you can't change all living creatures into good galactic citizens overnight, so they let us go on fighting for anyone in the universe who wants to take something from someone else or who thinks someone else wants to take something from him. And even the mighty United Galaxies needs guards for expeditions to the unexplored galaxies, but they don't like us and they don't want us. They don't cut off our little fingers anymore, but we have to wear our special black uniforms when we go into United Territory under penalty of a quick death. Humane, of course, they just put us to sleep gently and for keeps, and they've got a stockpile of ionic bombs ready at all times in case we get out of hand. We don't have ionic weapons, that's part of the agreement, and they watch us. They came close to using them down there in the frozen waste of menalouse 12, but 30,000 of us died without ionics. We killed each other. They liked that, even if they didn't like what happened. Do you know what it means to be lost? Really lost? I'm lost if that means I know I'll never go back to live on Earth. But I know that Earth is still there to go back to, and I can dream of going home. Yuan Saltario and the other refugees have no home to go back to. They can't even dream. They sat in that one ship that escaped and watched their planet turn into a lifeless ball of ice that would circle dead and frozen forever around its burned-out star, a giant tomb that carried under its thick ice their homes and their fields and their loves, and they could not even hope and dream. Or I did not think they could. Saltario had been with us a year when we got the contract to escort the survey mission to Nova Marania, a private Earth commercial mining firm looking for minerals under the frozen waste of the dead planet. Raje Ben was in on the contract. We took two battalions, one from my red company, and one from Raje Ben's Lucanian Patrol. My sub-commander was Pete Colenzo, old Mike Colenzo's boy. It all went fine for a week or so, routine guard and patrol. The survey team wouldn't associate with us, of course, but we were used to that. We kept our eyes open and our mouths shut. That's our job, and we give value for money received, so we were alert and ready. But it wasn't the attack that nearly got us this time. It was the cold of the dead planet lost in absolute zero and absolute darkness. Nova Marania was nearly 40% uranium, and who could resist that? A centurion trading unit did not resist the lure. The attack was quick and hard, a typical Lucanian Patrol attack. My company was pinned down at the first volley from those damn smoky blasters of the Lucanians. All I could see was the same shimmering lights I had learned to know so well in the war of survival against Lucania. Someday, maybe I'll find out how to see a Lucan. Raje Ben has worked with me a long time to help, but when the attack came this time, all I could do was eat ice and beam a help call to Raje Ben. That centurion trading unit was a cheap outfit. They had hired only one battalion of RJ Ben's ninth Lucanian free patrol, and Raje Ben flanked them right off that planet. I got my boys on their feet, and we chased RJ's men halfway back to Salomon with Raje Ben laughing like a hyena the whole way. Dit me and mud, red boy. I'd give a prime contract for one gander at old RJ Ben's face. He's blowing a gasket. I said, "Nice flank job." Raje Ben laughed so hard I could see his pattern of colored light shaking like a dancing rainbow. I took two sub commanders, where till I hit that bullet head for ransom. Then we stopped laughing. We had won the battle, but RJ Ben was a crafty old soldier and his sabotage squad had wrecked our engines and our heating units. We were stuck on a frozen planet without heat. Young Colenzo turned white. "What do we do?" I said, "Beam for help and pray we don't freeze first." They had missed our small communications reactor unit. We sent out our call and we all huddled around the small reactor. There might be enough heat out of it to let us live five hours, if we were lucky. It was the third hour when Yuan Sultario began to talk. Maybe it was the nearness of death. I was twenty-two. Portario was the leader in our planet. He found the error when we had one ship ready. We had three days. No time to get the other ships ready. He said we were lucky the other planets didn't have even one ship ready. Not even time for United Galaxies to help. Portario chose a thousand of us to go. I was one. At first I felt very good, you know. I was really happy, until I found out that my wife couldn't go. Not fit enough. United Galaxies had been the standards to us. Funny how you don't think about other people until something hurts you. I'd been married a year. I told them it was both of us or neither of us. I told Portario to tell United Galaxies they couldn't break up a family into hell with their standards. They laughed at me. Not Portario, the council. What did they care? They would just take another man. My wife begged me to go. She cried so much I had to agree to go. I loved her too much to be able to stay and see the look on her face as we both died when she knew I could have gone. On the ship before we took off I stood at a port and looked down at her. A small girl trying to smile at me. She waved once before they let her away from the rocket. All hell was shaking the planet already, had been for months, but all I saw was a small girl waving once. Just once. She's still there, somewhere down there under the ice. The cold was slowly creeping into us. It was hard to move my mouth, but I said, "She loved you. She wanted you to live." Without her, without my home, I'm as dead as the planet. I feel frozen. She's like that dead son out there and I'll circle around her until someone gets me and ends it. Soterios seemed to be seeing something. I'm beginning to forget what she looked like. I don't want to forget. I can't forget her on this planet. The way it was. It was a beautiful place, perfect. I don't want to forget her." Colenzo said, "You won't have long to remember." But Colenzo was wrong. My third battalion showed up when we had just less than an hour to live. They took us off. The earth mining outfit haggled over the contract because the job had not been finished, and I had to settle for two-third contract price. Rajade Ben did better than when he ran some RJ Ben's two subcommanders. It wasn't a bad deal, and I would have been satisfied except that something had happened to you on Soterio. Maybe it made him realize that he did not want to die after all. Or maybe it turned him space happy and he began to dream. A dream of his own born up there in the cold of his dead planet. A dream that nearly cost me my company. I did not know what that dream was until Soterio came into my office a year later. He had a job for the company. "How many men?" I asked. "Our company in Rajade Ben's patrol," Soterio said. "Full strength?" "Yes, sir." "Price?" "Standard, sir," Soterio said. "The party will pay." "Just a trip to your old planet?" "That's all," Soterio said, a guard contract. The hiring party just don't want any interference with their project. Two full companies, forty thousand men, they must expect to need a lot of protecting. "United Galaxy supposes the project, or they will if they get wind of it." I said, "United opposes a lot of things. What's special about this scheme?" Soterio hesitated and looked at me with those flat black eyes. "Ionic's." It's not a word you say or hear without a chill somewhere deep inside. Not even me, and I know a man can survive ionic weapons. I know because I did once. Weapons so powerful I'm one of the last men alive who saw them in action. Mathematically the big ones could wipe out a galaxy. I saw a small one destroy a star in ten seconds. I watched Soterio for a long time. It seemed a long time anyway. It was probably twenty seconds. I was wondering if he'd gone space crazy for keeps. And I was thinking of how I could find out what it was all about and time to stop it. I said, "A hundred companies won't be enough, Soterio. Have you ever seen or heard when an ionic bomb can?" Soterio said, "Not weapons. Peaceful power." "Even that's out and you know it," I said. "United galaxies won't even touch peaceful ionics. Too dangerous to even use. You can take a look first. A good look," I said. I alerted Raje Ben and we took two squads in a small ship and Soterio directed us to a tall mountain that jutted a hundred feet above the ice of Nova Marania. I was not surprised and the way I think I knew from the moment Soterio walked into my office. Whatever it was, Soterio was a part of it. And I had a pretty good idea what it was. The only question was how. But I didn't have time to think it out any farther and the companies you learned to feel danger. The first fire caught four of my men. Then I was down on the ice. They were easy to see, black uniforms with white wedges. Petohara's white wedge company, Earthmen. I don't like fighting other Earthmen, but a job to job and you don't ask questions in the companies. It looked like a full battalion against our two squads. On the smooth ice surface there was no cover except the jutting mountain top off to the right. And no light in the absolute darkness of a dead star. But we could see through our viewers and so could they. They outnumbered us ten to one. Raje Ben's voice came through the closed circuit. "That show, Red, they got our pants down." "You call it," I answered. "Break silence." Surrender. When a company breaks silence in a battle it means surrender. There was no other way. And I had a pretty good idea that the council itself was behind O'Hara on this job. If it was Ionic's involved, they wouldn't ransom us. The council had waited a long time to catch Redstone in an execution offense. They wouldn't miss. But forty of our men were down already. "Ok," I beamed over the circuit. "Break silence. We've had it, Raje." "Council offense, Red." "Yeah." "Well, I'd had a lot of good years. Maybe I'd been a soldier too long." I was thinking just like that when the sudden flank attacks started. From the right. Heavy fire from the cover of the solitary mountain top. O'Hara's men were dropping. I stared through my viewer. On that mountain I counted the uniforms of twenty-two different companies. That was very wrong. Whoever Sultario was fronting for could not have the power or the goal to hire twenty-four companies including mine and Raje Bens. And the fire was heavy, but not that heavy. But whoever they were, they were very welcome. We had a chance now. And I was making my plans when the tall old man stood up on the small, jutting top of that mountain. A tall old man stood up in a translating machine boomed out. "All of you, O'Hara's men, look at this." I saw it. In a beam of light on the top of that mountain it looked like a small neutron source machine. But it wasn't. It was an ionic beam projector. The old man said, "Go home." They went. They went fast and silent. And I knew where they were going, not to solemn on. O'Hara would have taken one look at that machine and be half-weight at United Galaxy Center before he had stopped saying it. I felt like taking that trip myself, but I had agreed to look and I would look. If we were lucky, we would have 48 hours to look and run. I fell in what was left in my company behind the men that had saved us. More company uniforms than I had ever seen in one place. They said nothing, just walked into a hole in that mountain, into a cave. And in the cave at the far end a door opened, an elevator. We followed the tall old man into the elevator and began to descend. The elevator car went down for a long time. At last I could see a faint glow far below. The glow grew brighter and the car stopped. Far below the glow was still brighter. We all stepped out into a long corridor cut from solid rock. I estimated that we were at least 200 miles down and the glow was hundreds of miles deeper. We went through three sealed doors and emerged into a vast room. A room bright with light and filled with more men and company uniforms, civilians, even women, at least a thousand. And I saw it. The thousand refugees, all of them, gathered from all the companies from wherever they had been in the galaxies. Gathered here in a room 200 miles into the heart of their dead planet. A room filled with giant machines. Ionic machines. Highly advanced ionic power reactors. The old man stood in front of his people and spoke. I am Jason Portario. I thank you for coming. I broke in. Ionic power is an execution offense. You know that. How the hell did you get all this? I know the offense commander, Portario said. And I know you. You're a fair man. You're a brave man. It doesn't matter where we got the power. Many men are dead to get it. But we have it and we will keep it. We have a job to do. I said, after that stun out there you've about as much chance as a snowball in hell. O'Hara is halfway to Galaxy Center. Look, with a little luck, we get you out to Solomon. If you leave all this equipment I might be able to hide you until it blows over. The old man shrugged. I would have preferred not to show our hand, but we had to save you. I was aware that the council would find us out sooner or later. They missed the ionic material a month ago. But that is unimportant. The important matter is will you take our job. All we need is another two days, perhaps three. Can you hold off an attack for that long? Why? I asked. Portario smiled. "All right, commander. You should know all we plan. Sit down and let me finish before you speak." I sat. Raje Ben sat. The agitation of his colored lights showed that he was as disturbed as I was. The thousand Nova Morani and stood there in the room and watched us. He once Altario stood with his friends. I could feel his eyes on me. Hot eyes. As if something inside that lost man was burning again. Portario lighted a pipe. I had not seen a pipe since I was a child. The habit was classified as ancient usage in the United Galaxies. Portario saw me staring. He held his pipe and looked at it. "In a way, commander," the old man said, "this pipe is my story. On Nova Morani, we liked a pipe. We liked a lot of the old habits. Maybe we should have died with all the others. You know, I was the one who found the error. Sometimes I am not at all sure my friends here thank me for it. Our planet is dead, commander, and so are we. We are dead inside. But we have a dream. We want to live again, and to live again our planet must live again." The old man paused as if trying to be sure or telling it right. We mean no harm to anyone. All we want is our life back. We don't want to live forever like lumps of ice circling around a dead heart. What we plan may kill us all, but we feel it is worth the risk. We have thousands of ionic power reactors. We have blasted out Venturi tubes. We found life still deep in the center of this planet. It is already now. With all the power we have, we will break the whole of our dead sun and send this planet off into space. We, I said, "You're insane, it can't, but it can, commander. It's a great risk, yes, but it can be done. My calculations are perfect. We want to leave this dead system, go off into a space and find a new star that will bring life back to our planet, a green, live, warm, nova maraniya once again." Raje Ben was laughing. "That's the craziest damn dream I ever sat still for. You know what your chances of being picked up by another star are? Picked up just right? Why?" Raje said, "We have calculated the exact initial thrust, the exact tangential velocity, the precise orbital path we need. If all goes exactly, I emphasize exactly to the last details we have planned it, we can do it." Our chances of being caught by the correct star in the absolutely correct position are one in a thousand trillion, but we can do it. It was so impossible I began to think he was right. If you weren't caught just right, Portario's black eyes watched me. We could burn up or stay frozen and lifeless. We could drift in space forever as cold and dead as we are now and our ionic power won't last forever. The forces we will use could blow the planet apart, but we are going to try. We would rather die than live as walking dead men in this perfect united galaxies we do not want. The silence in the room was like a Solomon fog. Big silence broken only by the steady home of the machines deep beneath us in the dead planet. A wild and possible dream of one thousand lost souls, a dream that would destroy them and they did not care. There was something about it all that I liked. I said, "Why not get council approval?" Portario smiled. Council has little liking for wild dreams, Commander. It would not be considered as advancing the future of united galaxies' destiny. Then there are the ionics, and Portario hesitated. And there is the danger of imbalance, galactic imbalance. I have calculated carefully the danger is remote, but council is not going to take even a remote chance. Yuan Sotario broke in. All they care about is their damn sterile destiny. They don't care about people. Well we do. We care about something to live for. The hell with the destiny of the galaxies. They don't know and will be gone before they do know. They know plenty now, Ahara's being the men. "So we must hurry," Portario said. "Three days, Commander, will you protect us for three days?" A council offence punishable by instant destruction with united galaxies reserved ionic weapons in the hands of the super-secret police and disaster teams. And three days is a long time. I would be risking my whole company, and I heard Raje Ben laugh. "Blast me read it so damn crazy I am for it. Let's give it a shot." I did not know then how much it would really cost us. If I had, I might not have agreed. Or maybe I would have. It was good to know people could still have such dreams in our computer age. "Okay," I said. Beamed the full companies and try to get one more. Monda Siva's Syrian boys would be good. "We'll split the fee three ways," Yuan Sotario said. "Thanks, Red," I said. "Thank me later if we're still around." We beamed the companies, and in twenty minutes they are on their way. Straight into the biggest trouble we had had since the war of survival. I expected trouble, but I didn't know how much. Pete Colenzo tipped me off. Pete spoke across the light years on our beam. "Monda Siva says okay if we guarantee the payment. I've deposited the bond with him and we're on our way. But Red, something's funny." "What?" "This place is empty. The whole damn galaxy out here is like a desert. Big company has moved out somewhere." "Okay, I'd be able to get rolling fast. There is only one client who could hire all the companies at one time. United galaxies itself. We were in for it. I'd expect to perhaps ten companies, not three against ninety-seven, give or take a few out of another jobs. It gave me a chill. Not the odds. But if council was that worried, maybe there was bad danger. But I'd given my word, and a companion keeps his word. We had one ace in the hole, a small one. If the other companies were not here in Menelaus yet, they must have rendezvoused at Galaxy Center. It was the kind of "follow the book" mistake United would make. It gave us a day and a half. We would need it." They came at dawn on the second day. We were deployed across five of the dead planets of Menelaus 12 in a ring around Novomorania. They came fast and hard, and Portario and his men had at least ten hours work left before they could fire their reactors in prey. Until then we did the praying. It didn't help. Mondiseva's command ship went at the third hour. A Luke and Blaster got it. By the fourth hour I had watched three of my sub-command ships go. A Syrian force beam got one, an earth fusion gun got another, and the third went out of action in Randall Hera's command ship that had been leading their attack against us. That third ship of mine was Pete Colenzos. Michael Mike would have been proud of his boy. I was sick. Pete had been a good boy. So had O'Hara. Not a boy, O'Hara, but the next to the last of old three companion from Earth. I am the last, and I said a silent goodbye to O'Hara. By the sixth hour Raje Ben had only ten ships left. I had twelve. Five thousand of my men were gone. Eight thousand of Raje Ben's leukins. The Syrians of Mondiseva's old company were getting the worst of it, and in the eighth hour Mondiseva's second-in-command surrendered. It would be over soon, too soon, and the dream would be over with the battle. I broke silence. Redstone calling. Do you read me? Commander Stone calling. Request conference. Repeat. Request conference. A face appeared on the inner company beamscreen. The cold, blank, hard-bitten face of the only free company commander senior to me now that O'Hara was gone. Jake Camposino of the Signe Black Company. Are you surrendering Stone? No. I want to speak to my fellow companions. Camposino's voice was like ice. Violation. You know the rules, Stone. Silence cannot be broken in battle. I will bring charges. You're through, Stone. I said, "Okay, crucify me later, but hear me now." Stone said. Close silence or surrender. It was no good. We'd had it. In across the distance of battle, Raje Ben's face appeared on the screen. The colored lights that were Olukin's face, and I knew enough to know that the shimmering lights were mad. The hell with them, Red, let's go all the damn way. And the new face appeared on the screen. A face I knew too well. First Councillor Rourke. Stone, you've done a lot on your day, but this is the end. You hear me? You're defending a man, man, and a council crime. Do you realize the risk? You in a versatile imbalance, the whole pattern of galaxies could be destroyed. We'll destroy you for the stone, an ionic project without council authorization? I said to Camposino, "Five minutes, Commander. That's all." There was a long blank on the screen, then Camposino's cold face appeared. "Okay, Red Talk. I don't like civilian threats. You've got your five minutes. Make it good." I made it good. I told them of a handful of people who had a dream, a handful of people who wanted their home back, a few lost souls who would rather die trying to live the way they want to live than go on living in a world they did not want. And I told them of the great United Galaxies that had been created to protect the dreams of everyone in it and had forgotten why it had been created. I told them that it did not matter who was right or wrong, because when a man can no longer dream, something has gone wrong in the universe. When I finished, Camposino's face was impassive. Camposino said, "You heard Commander Stone, man. Close off Stone. Give me a minute to get the vote." I waited. It was the longest minute of my life. "You win, Red," Camposino said. He was smiling at me. "Go home, counselor. Battles over." The counselor went. He said there would be hell to pay, and maybe there will be, but I don't think so. They still need us. We lost 30,000 good men in all the companies. But when the next dawn came, Nova Morania was gone. I don't know where they went, or what happened to them. Here in my stronghold I sometimes imagine them safe and rebuilding a green world where they can smoke pipes and live their own lives. And sometimes I imagine them all dead and drifting out there in the infinity of space. I don't think they would mind too much, either way. You've been listening to Dead World by Jack Douglas. Is your vehicle stopping like it should? Does it squeal or grind when you break? Don't miss out on summer break deals at O'Reilly Auto Parts. Save on O'Reilly Break Parts Cleaner. Get two cans of O'Reilly Break Parts Cleaner for just $8. Valid in store only at O'Reilly Auto Parts. (screams)