Children No More-ARC Page 4

  I still didn't understand most of what he was saying, but I knew what freaks were, and I knew about special abilities.

  "There's nothing wrong with being different," I said. "Jennie told me so. And she was one of the people who could do special things. She could heal people."

  "Jennie?" Bob said.

  "My sister. She fixed me."

  "You look fine to me," Benny said, "certainly better than any of us. What did she fix?"

  I tapped my right temple. "My head. I stopped getting smarter when I was really little. She fixed it so my head could now be smart."

  Benny stared at me for several seconds. So did some of the others. Finally, he said, "Are you sure?"

  "Jennie told me so," I said, "and I trust her, so it has to be true."

  He looked like he was about to argue with me, but he stopped, remained quiet a bit longer, and finally said, "Where is she?"

  "They took her away, so she could heal rich and important people. She didn't like going, didn't want to, but she had to."

  Benny rolled closer to me. "Do you know where she went?"

  I shook my head. I didn't like admitting it, but I had no idea where she was. I looked away from him as I felt tears in the sides of my eyes at the thought that maybe I wouldn't ever see her again. No, I reminded myself, that wasn't right. I'd vowed I would one day find her and save her, and I would. I would.

  "Would you like to go after her?"

  I stared at him. It was like he'd read my mind. "More than anything."

  "Then join us. We're training the fittest of us to be soldiers. One day, we're going to fight them and win and leave this place." He lifted his right arm and waved his flipper slowly to take in all the people behind us. "I told you we are all soldiers and we are all in that war. Are you willing to learn to fight, really fight, so we can escape from here and you can find your sister?"

  Jennie had always told me not to fight, that my size meant I might hurt somebody. She'd mostly been talking about the other people on Pinecone, where I was by far the biggest person. The soldiers who brought me here were bigger, though, much closer to my size, so maybe fighting them was safe. Maybe I wouldn't hurt them too much, and they wouldn't hurt me, either.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that was a silly dream. The last man I'd seen had kicked me out of the ship and been willing to let its take-off injure or even kill me rather than walk me to safety. No, if I fought, I had to be willing to hurt them or to give up on Jennie. She was gone, and I sure couldn't go after her as long as I was stuck here.

  I wouldn't give up on her. I would never do that.

  "Yes," I said, "I am. What do we do now?"

  Chapter 11

  Just outside the jump gate station, planet Macken

  "Alissa's alone," Lobo said.

  His voice yanked me out of my reverie. "How can you be sure?" I said. No way were we docking with the station until I was comfortable. Right now, thanks to the jump gate, we were safe. The moment we docked, the gate would not interfere in any violence that took place inside what I guess it considered to be a single entity. I know: I've had more than a few fights on these stations.

  "Because I looked," Lobo said. "I'm now into all the station computers, so I have complete access to all of its surveillance systems." Two displays popped open in front of me. The one on the left showed a view of the docking port twenty meters in front of where we hung in space. Lim stood alone in front of the doorway, facing outward, her body language stiff and annoyed. She wasn't happy that I'd made her wait.

  The right display provided an IR view of that same area and the surrounding halls. If anything living was within twenty meters of her, it was doing a great job of shielding itself. Such camouflage would make no sense, however, because no one who might want to get me would expect me to have access to the station network.

  We were as safe as I could hope to be.

  "Dock," I said. "Take off as soon as she's aboard."

  "Of course," Lobo said. "It's not like this is my first dance, and it's not as if you've cornered the market on paranoia."

  "I understand," I said, "but I know you like her."

  "To the degree that I like other humans, that's true," he said, "but so do you."

  "I'm simply being careful," I said, not wanting to argue with him any longer. "In that spirit, scan her before you let her on board."

  I knew from a third display Lobo opened that we had docked, but cocooned inside him I felt nothing; he was good. He was also showing off, making sure I knew he had thought of everything and was, as usual, executing flawlessly. I can't imagine ever taking the details for granted, because minding the small stuff is often what keeps you alive, but with Lobo I probably should learn to trust him more and speak less.

  "She's clean and about to come aboard," Lobo said. "You'll want to get into position."

  My resolve to treat him better dissolved rapidly in the acid flow of his sarcasm—but he was right. I stepped over to the side hatch Lobo was about to open. As soon as I reached it, but before I could be exposed in front of it, Lobo opened it.

  Lim stepped inside, stopped, and raised her arms.

  The hatch snicked shut. Over the machine frequency, so Lim couldn't hear us, Lobo said, "Disengaging from the station."

  The ability to directly communicate with machines on their frequencies is one of the many improvements Jennie made in me, though it had taken me a while to learn about that one. Life on Dump had not included such niceties as appliances.

  Lim turned her head to stare at me. "Can we get this over with so we can talk?"

  "Sorry," I said. I smiled in embarrassment. "You can relax. We've already checked you."

  She lowered her arms. "Hi, Lobo," she said. Her smile seemed genuine; why were women always happier to talk to him than to me?

  "It's great to see you again, Alissa," he said. "You look good, ready to fight."

  She nodded. "I am, and I hope you two will join us."

  I headed up front. "Let's sit," I said, "and talk."

  I stretched out in the pilot's couch and offered her the other one.

  She ignored it and stood. "You've seen the holos," she said, "or you wouldn't have come here. What else do you want to know?"

  "What do you want from me?"

  "From us?" Lobo added.

  "To help us stop the Tumani rebels from continuing to use those children as soldiers, of course," she said.

  "So why not just do it?" I said. "Why call me—" I corrected myself before Lobo could "—us?"

  "I have soldiers of my own, of course," she said, "but what I really need is Lobo, to provide reconnaissance, to act as an on-the-scene command-and-control center, and, if it comes to that, to provide some serious firepower."

  "With no offense to my ship," I said, "between your company and the Saw, you have access to many vessels at least as powerful as Lobo."

  "That's a debatable point," he said to me privately, "when you consider that the intelligence of any entity represents a significant fraction of its power."

  On that point he was certainly correct. Though Lim didn't know it, in fact no living human other than I was aware of it, Lobo was composed of organic/metal-computing hybrid nanomachines that functioned both as dynamically reconfigurable armor and as one of the most powerful tightly coupled computing networks in existence. Only six months ago, we'd tried to capture the man who'd created Lobo's computing substrate from the results of experiments with nanomachines and cells he'd harvested from children—a process that had killed those kids. The nanomachines were something else Lobo and I shared, though I'd never told him about mine.

  "Obtaining a PCAV like Lobo is not a simple task," Lim said.

  "See?" Lobo said.

  I ignored him and responded to her. "Sorry, but though that's true, it's not so tough a job that you couldn't handle it. Why not use your crew's resources and, if necessary, hire the Saw? It's not like you don't have contacts there." When I'd last seen her two and a half years
ago, she'd become friends again with a past lover, Colonel Tristan Earl of the Saw.

  "I could," she said, "if I were able to involve either coalition, but I can't. This can't be an official operation—not for my company, and certainly not for the Saw. The FC is my biggest client, and both it and the EC represent major revenue for the Saw."

  "Tumani isn't a part of either coalition," I said, "so why would they care?"

  "That's the tricky part," she said. "Even though the planet is a hellhole that neither coalition has wanted, its population is growing, and someday it's going to join one of them. When it does, that coalition will gain another aperture into the other's space. So, neither one wants the other to have it. To ensure that they play fair, they jointly operate the gate station, and they stop anyone from supplying major weapons to either party in the civil war. I've talked to some of my FC contacts about it. They don't care as much about which side wins the conflict as they do that the EC doesn't determine the outcome and end up with a better relationship with the victor. I assume the EC feels the same way about them."

  Her comment about the weapons bothered me. "Not to belabor the obvious," I said, "but Lobo is obviously a Predator-Class Assault Vehicle. Why would they let me bring him into that system?"

  Lim held up her hand and ticked off the points on her fingers. "One: You declare him and operate him as private transport for your courier business. Two: In all official registers, he's listed as having a non-working central weapons control complex. You and I both know that's not true, and I expect some FC and EC officials do, but that's how he appears in the records the Tumani gate agents would check."

  I nodded; she was right on both points. Eighteen months ago, in a conflict on a station around a distant gate, Lobo had shown his weapons to an EC official, but both she and I had good reasons to keep our entire relationship confidential.

  "Three," she continued, "I've seen Lobo's camo abilities in action, and he can make the on-planet observers believe he really is no more than the courier transport vehicle you pretend he is. Not drawing their attention is a good thing."

  "Fair enough," I said. "I can see the value of involving us, but I have to believe there's an easier way: Take the recordings to the EC and the FC. Using children as soldiers is something every coalition has condemned."

  She shook her head. "Still assuming I'm incompetent, eh? Of course I've shown the recordings to them. They've responded by pointing out that anyone can fake anything digital."

  "So rather than save these children, or even pay a military outfit to do it, both the FC and the EC are willing to let the rebels use them?"

  She shrugged. "It's not either coalition's fight, and getting involved would be expensive and risky for them. They'd have to do it jointly, and with no economic incentive, why would they bother?"

  I couldn't argue with her. I'd never seen a large company or any of the three coalitions take any action that didn't directly benefit it. "What if you showed the recordings to the media?"

  She spoke to me as if I were a child. "Do you think I didn't pursue that option? My friends and I first pushed both coalitions to accept the recordings as true. We hinted that we'd take the holos to both local Tumani media groups and off-planet conglomerates who'd believe us if they didn't. They responded politely and formally in classic governmental fashion: They commissioned joint task forces that periodically carry out inspection tours—very inexpensive and superficial tours, of course—of both rebel and government forces. Fearing coalition involvement, both sides on Tumani naturally agreed to these inspections and to maintaining cease-fires during them."

  "And when the inspectors arrive," I said, "the government leaders claim the rebels are using children, the rebels deny the allegations and say they're not, no kids are in sight, and the FC and the EC joint task force files the appropriate reports." I closed my eyes for a moment. I'd seen such inspections before, and they rarely accomplished anything. "The inspectors go home, and the fighting resumes."

  "Yes, all as you'd expect," she said, the annoyance plain in her voice. "When the inspectors failed to turn up any proof of our allegations, the media interest vanished." She sighed. "We could have saved time if you'd trusted that I knew what I was talking about."

  "I didn't mean to question your competence. I was—and am—trying to understand exactly what the situation is and what I'm getting myself—us—into."

  She smiled slightly. Even the small improvement in her expression lit up the room. I found myself involuntarily smiling in return.

  "Apology accepted," she said. "What else would you like to know?"

  "Does either coalition side with the rebels?"

  "Officially, no. Both the FC and the EC claim to recognize the current government as being legitimate, though as I said neither is willing to supply it with weapons. Because the government won't join a coalition, both are staying away from this civil war—which is also one of the reasons neither one is willing to work very hard to expose the rebels' use of child soldiers."

  "And unofficially?"

  She shook her head. "None of us are sure, but at least some rumors show the EC as leaning slightly toward the rebels. In any case, I don't expect either coalition to get involved as long as we don't import any weapons that would violate their rules and we don't involve any company that already supplies them military services."

  "Like the Saw."

  She nodded.

  All of that was good news, because it meant we shouldn't have to fight any outsiders when we went to free the children. "I take it that the government isn't trying to save the child soldiers on its own because its troops are too busy fighting them."

  "Essentially," she said. "Those children are no different from any other rebel fighters: They're scattered in units all through the jungle. If the Tumani army could find those kids, they could find the units, and they'd attack." She paused. "To the best of my ability to tell, the government would very much like to end the rebels' use of child soldiers, and quite a few government officials have said they'd back our play if we structure it right, but until that time—"

  "—those kids are just more enemies on the other side of firefights." I closed my eyes for a few seconds and thought of jungle missions on Nana's Curse and half a dozen other worlds, some of them with Lim. I stared again at her. "The Tumani generals are telling their politicians that their troops can't pause to figure out the ages of the people shooting at them."

  She nodded again. "And they're right. As much as I hate it, I can't even begin to argue against them."

  "So how are we supposed to find the children, much less rescue them?"

  She smiled again, this time a full-on grin, and for a second I forgot the topic and was simply glad that I had made her happy. "Courtesy of the same informant who smuggled out those recordings, we know that for a couple of days virtually all the children, something on the order of five hundred of them, will be in a single complex."

  Her pause invited a question, but if I asked the obvious one, I'd be sure to annoy her. After considering my wording for a moment, I said, "There's obviously some factor preventing the government from sending in its troops during that time, or you wouldn't be considering doing it yourself. What's the reason?"

  "Ah, finally the assumption of competence," she said, continuing to smile. "Thank you. The government can't help us because the only time the kids are all in one place is during the cease-fire."

  "The inspectors can't spot any kids among the active rebel troops," I said, "so the government can't afford to be seen by the coalitions as breaking the cease-fire by sending in its troops."

  "Exactly."

  "On the other hand," I said, "a small, private force operating quietly and without the official support of either side would not be breaking any coalition rules—except, of course, for the cease-fire."

  "Which is why," she said, "such a force wouldn't begin its assault until the cease-fire was officially over. Even better, by launching just as the inspectors leave and the government a
nd rebel leaders are returning to their troops, this small force wouldn't encounter much resistance, because to avoid drawing attention to where they stash the kids, the rebels leave only a skeleton adult squad at the complex."

  "Which they can afford to do," I said, "because all or at least most of the kids are already trained soldiers who have no desire to run off. Which means this private force would also be facing five hundred small but nonetheless dangerous enemies."

  "That is one of the mission's challenges," she said with a shrug. "I never claimed this would be easy. Have you ever known one that really was?" She didn't wait for me to reply; we both knew the answer. "We have to strike quickly, disarm the kids, fortify the complex, and use it to contain them."

  "Will the government help us once we're in control?"

  "Yes and no," she said. "We're still negotiating about how to handle the reintegration, but at least initially that will be our problem. Once we occupy the facility, the government will send troops into the surrounding area, but their focus will be outward, not on us."

  "So we'd be bait."

  She shrugged. "Sort of, but not very useful bait, because the rebels can more easily recruit new kids than come back for the ones we capture. The government troops certainly won't let any kids go back to the rebels, so we'll also be jailers. Mostly, though, I think we'll be irrelevant to the troops in the region. The government wants to control this section of the jungle primarily so it can take a healthy bite out of the rebel territory."

  Lim was aware of what we'd be walking into, but she'd done everything she could to minimize the opposition. She'd clearly been building a team, and she wanted Lobo for air support and transport.