Serial - Part 5 (OC)

Serial (Part 5 – Dogma)

“We’re like the fucking Indian’s man. Back on Earth, ya know? See these aliens, these fucking aliens, they got us all penned up on our own little reservation like the fucking Indians. Let a few of our kids go to their schools and get us to elect a little puppet ambassador and they think we will sit all hunky-dory and not notice the motherfucking collars on our motherfucking necks.” Kyle Creed was in fervor tonight, spittle stuck to his blond beard as he jabbed the air with his lit cigarette; a liquor soaked knight with a burning lance. “It’s all bullshit. They didn’t want us here but they can’t send us away. They know that if they sit us on an empty world with hatchets we will be coming down their fucking throat with warships in a hundred years. It’s the human goddamn spirit they are afraid of so they get us all nice and comfortable and let us get complacent until we are dependent. Yes Mr. Alien, no Mr. Alien, can I suck your cock pretty pretty please?” He spat, a thick ball of yellow phlegm which landed with a wet smack on the concrete floor of Agri-Warehouse 7.

The gathering that surrounded Kyle, lounging atop storage bins and farm equipment, was modest. Twelve regulars with a new girl who had made it a point to stick to the shadows between seed banks the moment Kyle began his usual sermon. Jess didn’t have to ask her to know she wouldn’t be coming back for a second meeting. She had been a bright girl when she entered, red haired and bubbly but she had gone timid the moment the rhetoric started flying. Plenty of young ones liked to claim they were Earth’s Children. They thought it made them edgy but they didn’t really care about the cause. Earth was just a story to them. To people like Kyle or Jess it was a seeping wound. She turned her attention back to the center of the room where Kyle was just beginning to work up a real sweat, his broad forehead glowing red like a rash.

When the man’s slid up behind her and whispered she jumped, “Does he do anything but talk?”

She glanced over her shoulder towards the unfamiliar face. The man was tall, thin and bald with a stretched, horsey face. His eyes were blue, his lips chapped and red. She cast an appraising eye down the length of him. He was dressed like a farmer and wore a thick thermal coat much like the rest of Earth’s Children. “Don’t know you. You got an invitation?” she asked. One could only attend these meetings if invited or if accompanied by an invitee.

The man shook his head, “Nah. This isn’t really my bag, ya know? Talking and complaining and talking. My bag is far more interesting. Does he ever get to the point?” The man gestured to the front of the room where Kyle had broken into the second verse of his usual song.

“Liberation,” Kyle continued, “Won’t be coming on no paper or no land grant. We do what those fucking Indians did. Aggression from the inside. We claim what’s ours. We came to this planet so we fucking conquer it and mount alien scalps up high enough to ski down.”

“That is the point,” Jess whispered back to the man, try to sound confident. “Rally the people, get them pissed off. Every movement starts small.”

“Most stay small,” the man finished, “and putter out... He does know the Indians died right?”

She eyed him sidelong, crossing her arms over her chest against the chill of Keleshia’s twilight. “We won’t,” she said, trying to sound confident. “Kyle has a good point. We don’t belong on this planet. The Consortium treats us like savage refugees. You ever try to fly off world? Fascists have a travel block on all of us. They will tell you it’s only until our refugee status has been evaluated and lifted but it’s been two years already. You would think that would be enough time to sign a few papers, don’t you?”

She expected the man to nod along, maybe commiserate a little but instead he smiled. It was an awkward grin, too wide and showing too many teeth. Jess found herself imagining this man standing in front of a mirror practicing that same grin until he was sure it was just right.

“Something funny?” she asked.

The man shook his head, grin intact, “No. I don’t have much of a sense of humor. You know this is going to implode right?”

Now it was Jess’s turn to grin although she couldn’t have said why. “Oh yeah?” she asked, “You sound pretty confident.”

“Just educated,” the man said. He leaned on a shipping crate beside her, eyes fixed forward on Kyle. “It’s one of humanities great weaknesses. We love to talk, especially the most cowardly among us,” he flicked an incriminating finger towards the front of the room. “That man is going to talk and talk and talk until that heart murmur in his chest becomes a block and he dies chocking on his own fat. And in the off chance he ever tries to do something more than talk he’ll get caught and this little social club won’t even be a footnote. Not that he knows it. He thinks he’s king shit of a lost empire, doesn’t he?”

Jess found herself staring at the man, her mouth slightly open. If Kyle even heard half of what this stranger was preaching he would be feeding baldie his teeth. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t right. Jess had often thought the same things, standing in the shadows of her fifteenth or sixteenth Earth’s Children meeting or suffering Kyle’s bed for the ten thousandth time. Still it was one thing to say those things and another to speak them, “You should watch it,” she warned. “Plenty of people in this room would say talk like that is treason.”

Now the man laughed, a choked mirthless sound that seemed to originate from somewhere in his chest. “Treason?” he barked, loud enough to draw a few glances from those closest to the back of the room. “Treason assumes we are united. But I count five hundred odd humans on the planet and a dozen in this room? Where are the rest? They running late?”

She shook her head. Jokes were one thing but this guy was starting to irk her and soon, she thought as she glanced up towards Kyle, his presence was likely to cause a fight and if she could Jess would rather avoid spending another hour stitching up Kyle’s knuckles. “Why you here?” she asked, “You come just to heckle us?”

The man’s smile vanished slowly. He looked at her, eyes sweeping up and down her body in a way that made her feel suddenly exposed. “No,” he whispered. He began to lean towards her, as if for a kiss but instead moved along to her ear. “I came here for you, Caroline.”

Her body went cold, her eyes widening as she recoiled from him, barely managing to not trip over her own legs. His smile had returned, his teeth shining white in the gloom. “How do you… who are you?” she demanded.

The man spread his hands, palms out, before himself, “I’m your friend, Caroline. Don’t you remember me?”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, louder than she had intended. Caroline was her name, or rather, it had been. Back in the darkness aboard the Hermes. “That’s not who I am anymore,” she said, already trying to push back the memories that name carried. The hunger, the cold and the screams of men driven mad by the void.

The man’s shoulders slacked, “Oh no?” he sighed heavily, sticking his hands into his pockets like a dejected kid. “That’s a shame. Because she is the one I want right now. She is the one I need. Tell me Caroline, do you ever get sick of all the talk, talk, talk,” he leaned in closer, his breath cool on the nape of her neck, “I know you must be sick of him,” he whispered, cool eyes flicking towards Kyle again. “I know all about him, from back on the ship. I know how he used to climb into your sleeping pod with a hunk of bread in his hand. I know how he would smash it into your mouth if you just didn’t fight. I don’t blame you, the men he visited did the same thing, and the girls, even the small ones. I know why you married him too. So lost and alone on an alien world and there he was, the man with the bread. I know, I understand Caroline. Desperate times and you were just a girl yourself. But those times are past now. I know you as well, Caroline. I heard your prayers at night. I saw the cuts on your wrists and I heard the cries of the Davis boy.”

She recoiled from him, surprised to find her cheeks had grown wet with tears. “The boy, I had to, I didn’t have a… Who are you?” she hissed, now glancing desperately towards the front of the room, begging the others to keep their backs turned.

“I’m a bastard,” the man said, “But I am not your enemy. You and I, pretty lady, we are… alike. We’re both victims, ground up in the wheel in the name of human survival but we are not dead. No, no we are not. So I’ll tell you a secret. Last night I did something evil. Actually I did two very evil things to two good people. But in exchange I discovered something about myself, something wonderful, and I think I want to share it with you because you are special, Caroline, even if you don’t know it yet. So I’ll make you a deal. You can stay in here,” he gestured towards Kyle who was now shouting and raining brimstone with each word, “and be Jessica Miles, the baker’s broken whore. Or you can come outside. I have a shuttle waiting. Let me show you what I know and be Caroline, the one who survived the abyss by any means necessary. I know to me, Caroline seems a whole lot more fun doesn’t she?”

He reached out ran an affectionate thumb up the side of her neck. Then he turned and walked away. She watched him go until his shadow passed out the rear door. Her knees felt weak and her hands trembled as she touched her neck. At the front of the room Kyle glanced at her and tossed her a wink. Unbidden she thought of the way the Davis boy’s face had gone purple by the time she was done choking him and the way her cheeks had been stick with blood by the time she was done eating. She hadn’t cooked him, afraid someone would smell the meat. At night, she would sooth herself with the memory of all that fat in her belly. She didn’t remember consciously making the choice to go but before she knew it her feet had begun to move, drawn by the stranger’s gravity or the memory or both. Like a woman possessed she drifted into the shadows, taking two stumbling steps before she began to run after him. The night swallowed her whole.

---

“And do you, Jackson Lawrence, swear to uphold the tenants of Consortium law and to safeguard the lives of each of its members?” High Inquisitor Tekal continued dryly. Jackson was almost tempted to say the aged Inquisitor sounded tired but he imagined at the age of six hundred anyone would be a bit nappy.

Jackson stood in the Heart Chamber at the center of the Citadel, home base for every Inquisitor in Consortium territory. The massive chamber was an octagon with a high steeped roof that rose to a sharp point somewhere high above Jackson’s head. “I do,” he said in Keleshi, fighting to keep the exhaustion out of his voice. After leaving the victims home he had managed to catch only a few hours of fitful sleep before being summoned here to be officially processed and inducted. It had taken all day, during which he had filled out enough release forms and disclosure agreements to leave a lingering ache in his hand. He had also been fitted for the neuro-implant that would snapshot his brain when he died. Finally, his father’s black woolen coat had been replaced with a long red one, its fabric heavy with armor weave and its hems clean of fraying. Now, he almost looked the role.

“Then,” Inquisitor Tekal continued, inclining his silver beak in Jackson’s direction, “Say the words in whatever tongue you please and be sworn.”

Jackson took a deep breath and when he spoke the words he had spent the day memorizing poured out in guttural Humana, “From this day forward I will hold no great office and I will know no wealth. I will be the martyr upon whose grave the galaxy rests. I am the hunter and the hound. I am the eyes that see and the mind that knows. I am the savior of the righteous and the scourge of the wicked until my hunt does end only to resume again, my mind afield eternal with my brothers and sisters. This I swear.” The words spilled out so fast Jackson was sure he had missed a few but the approving nods of Tekal and the other assembled Inquisitor’s told him he had done just fine.

Tekal rose, his aged limbs popping loudly with the effort, “Then rise eternal, Inquisitor Lawrence.” Jackson let out a long breath and began to turn to go when Tekal called out, “and, on a more personal note, you are the first human to be inducted into our order and you come on the wings of glowing recommendations,” he nodded to where Vigari stood in the rear of the chamber, “We expect great things from you.”

They were pretty words. Jackson wasn’t sure how much he believed them but he tilted his head respectfully and faked a pleased smile, “I’ll try, sir.” Then he turned and began to cross the massive chamber, black boots clacking on blood red stone.

Vigari greeted him when he got to the exit, “How does it feel kid?”

Jackson wasn’t sure how to respond. The day had been long and the night longer. He had signed more unread forms than he could count and, moments ago, swore himself into eternal servitude. He was sure that, given time, he would have plenty to say on the topic but for now all he wanted was to work. “Did you assemble the Live Mind analysis of the two crime scenes?”

Vigari nodded, “I did, but hey, before we start on that, I got something for you.” Vigari reached inside his coat and removed a black metal Hound. Its handle had been fitted for a human hand and a silver sighting line had been added to the top of the barrel. Jackson picked it up, the weight of it feeling warm and sure in his grip. Even though Jackson had logged hundreds of hours on the simulation range, he had never held a real Hound before. He hadn’t even held a normal gun. Aboard the Hermes they had been banned for fear of a hull breach but he had seen them in his father’s favorite old movies. The ones in which a good guy with his peace keeper brought down a holy fire on the unjust. Jackson grinned.

“It’s coded to your biometrics. Will only fire for you. Feels good huh?” Vigari asked.

“Damn good,” Jackson said.

“What do you want to do now?”

Jackson tucked the gun into his coat’s holster and spoke in a growly Humana.

“Hunt.”

---

Link to Part 4 - The Lesson

Link to Part 6 - Exodus