Chapter 1--Escape from Cabot's Landing

Approximately 1380 words

Chapter 1

         
         

Men make quite a number of mistakes about things in general, but not so many about particulars.
                         --Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy

                   

Outside the Village of Lansbury
Cabot’s Landing
Sunday, 1630, 02.12.2462

         

The rocky soil in the ravine where Taggart sat jabbed him through the seat of his pants and he squirmed to find a more comfortable position.  A brisk, chill breeze rushed between the barren slopes and prickled his cheeks.  He scrunched closer to his companion, Kendi, whose nearness warmed his body and soul.  The sun had already set, but the ringed giant Kennebec glimmered overhead and filled nearly a quarter of the sky, casting a ghostly twilight over their hiding place.

         Kendi shuddered and hugged himself.  "How cold do you think it will get tonight?"

         "We should be okay in our sleeping bags. Want me to get them out?" Taggart reached for his backpack.

         "Later, maybe. Nice of your buddy Keith to lend them to us."

         Taggart nodded, “He's a good friend. We used to camp out togeteher when we were kids. Not this far out, though, just in a wheat field near the village.  When I was older, I'd sometimes come out here by myself, when I needed to be alone.  I guess I was hiding even then.”

         A gentle smile split Kendi's features, revealing teeth impossibly white behind his ebony flesh.  “I wish I’d known you then.”

         “Me, too."  But he frowned at the memory of his father's sermons on the Curse Of Ham, and added, "Except the Church Elders would have treated you even worse than they did me.  It's better we met when we did.”

         Kendi squeezed Taggart’s hand. “The important thing is that we found each other.”  His gaze roamed over the little ravine.  “It must have been lonely for you, back then, coming here.  This place is cold and lifeless, like a scene from Dante.  No plants.  Nothing but rocks and sand.  I know most of the planet is like this, but it’s so different from South Island where I grew up.”

         Taggart didn’t ask who or what Dante might refer to.  Sometimes talking to Kendi was like talking to someone from another planet, like Earth, or some other exotic and mythical place. Instead, he said, “It’s different from Lansbury, too.  There’s only the village and the wheat fields.  From here to the nearest fencerow is just a mile, but it may as well be light years.”  Whatever those were.  He knew they measured a long distance.

         Kendi said, “One of the botanists my  mother works with told me that the wheat will eventually take over all of Bountiful.”

         Taggart didn't ask what a botanist was, but he understood that kind of slow change and nodded.  “The village is growing bit-by-bit, but the rocks and sand seem to go on forever.”  The wind gusted and he shivered.  “The first time I took the monorail to the Industrial Port was a Revelation.  Nothing but miles and miles of desert, then a city, more marvelous than Babylon.”

         Kendi leaned back and glanced at Taggart.  “I can imagine. The port was amazing for me, too.  South Island is different from anywhere else on the planet.”

         “I loved South Island.  I’d never seen a tree before, let alone hundreds of them. It was like the Garden of Eden must have been.”  A distant sound made him look into the sky.  “What was that?  It sounded like a flitter.”

         Kendi looked up as well.  “I don’t see anything.  Is there a flight scheduled?”

         “The Sunday shuttle to the Industrial Port left hours ago.  This must be something else.”

         “I still don’t see anything.  Maybe it’s just the wind blowing through the rocks.”

         Panic jittered down Taggart’s back.  “You don’t think it's him, looking for us?”

         Kendi shrugged, “He's looking for us, all right.  That’s why we’re here, in this circle of Hell.  But he'd be looking in the village. No reason to look here, is there?”  He stood and squinted at the sky.  “It sounds louder.”

         Taggart stood as well and tried to keep his voice steady.  “There’s no telling what my father might do, to say nothing of that naval officer.  He’s an angel from Hell if ever there was one.”

         Kendi continued to gaze at the sky.  “Major Sattari's a bad guy for sure."

         "I wish we'd never learned about him and what he plans to do."

         "Yeah, but we did. Now we've got to figure out what to do about it." 

         "What can we do?  He's got the whole Grand Alliance Navy behind him."

         "Maybe.  Maybe not. They'd keep this kind of thing secret. I bet most of the Navy doesn't know, just the high brass.  Anyway, my mother's got connections, some all the way back to Earth.  She's untouchable, and she'll know what to do. We just need to get back to South Island and tell her what we learned."  He squinted at the sky and continued, "Your father couldn’t order a flitter search, but Sattari for sure could. It’s a good thing Keith warned us he was in Lansbury.  It gave us time to escape.”  He jabbed a finger at a flashing speck of light in the cloudless sky.  “I see it.  It’s headed this way.”

         An icy ball formed in Taggart’s belly.  “God’s nails.  I know an outcropping of rock where we can hide.”  He stood and snatched up his backpack. 

         Together, they scrambled across the rocky terrain, over pile of irregular boulders, alightiing underneath a stone overhang.  Taggart knelt on the gravelly surface and peeked at the sky.  “It’s circling.”

         Kendi knelt next to him.  “They seem to be looking for a place to land.”

         “You think they saw us?” 

         “By it's markings, it's a private flitter. It won't have infrared or motion sensors like the cops or military would. I don’t see how they could spot us with just eyeballs. It’s harder to see stuff from the air than you’d think, especially in this half-light.”

         Taggart thought he caught a tinge of doubt in Kendi’s tone.  It was too late now to do anything but wait and watch.  And pray.  Not that he expected God to listen to him, or that even believed any more. 

         Sure enough, the flitter swelled in the sky and approached a flat space in the ravine about two hundred yards distant.  It hovered a few feet above the ground, and its vanes whipped up clouds of sand and dust while the engines whined. 

         Then it was down, and sudden silence gripped the barren rocks.  A door opened and a ramp deployed.  Two men stepped out, carrying something between them.  Something black and man-sized, but limp and sagging, like an over-sized bag of loosely packed wheat.  They dumped it on the ground, and the dim mutter of voices reached Taggart’s ears. 

         He strained, but the distance and the wind defeated his hearing. 

         Next to him, Kendi gave a little gasp and gripped his hand.  Taggart glanced at him, and Kendi’s eyes bulged.  His face turned almost gray in the dim shadows. 

         He must have seen something, but what?

         The two men fell silent and traipsed back into their flitter.  In moments, it rose into the sky and headed east, back toward the village of Lansbury. 

         Taggart heaved a relieved sigh.  “They’re gone.”

         Tension edged Kendi’s voice.  “Yeah, but what did they leave?  Did you recognize either of them?”

         “No.  Did you?”

         “I think so, but I’m not sure.” He stood, bumped his head on the overhanging outcrop and winced. “Let’s check out what they left here.”

         Taggart worried at Kendi’s tone.  “You think it’s something bad?”

         “Maybe.  Can’t be good.”

         Taggart followed Kendi to the drop site.  The closer they got, the more it looked like they’d left a body behind, not a sack of wheat.  But something was off.  He couldn't quite put his finger on it.  Worry fluttered in his belly.

         When they finally were close enough to touch, it was obvious.  The two men from the flitter had dumped a body here, a mile outside the settlement, where no one would ever find it.  A human body.

         It lay in a twisted heap on the sandy soil, dressed in mottled gray-and-white trousers and shirt. Polished jack boots gleamed in the light from Kennebec.  Kendi shoved at it with a foot, and it sprawled onto its back.

         It had no head.

         The neck ended in a stump.  Jelly-like maroon glop oozed out and glistened in the twilight.  Bile burned the back of Taggart’s throat.  The glop was the color and consistency of Aunt Prudence’s boysenberry jam.  An image bubbled in his brain, one of him spreading the red stuff on her sourdough bread and taking a bite.  His stomach clenched.

         He bent over and threw up.  The sand absorbed a puddle of stinking vomit. 

         Kendi held his shoulders.  “It’s all right.  Makes me sick, too.”

         When Taggart answered, his voice quavered and he made no effort to steady it.  “Who could do that to someone?”

         Taggart's mouth formed a grim line. “Someone depraved.”  He pointed to the corpse.  “Those are Marine winter fatigues.  The tag over the left side of his chest says he's Grand Alliance Navy.  But look at the one on the other side.”

         Taggart wiped tears from his eyes and gazed at the blurry corpse.  A plastic nametag pinned to the shirt read, “SATTARI.” He stared in wonder at Kendi.  “It's him.  Someone killed him.”

         Kendi snorted. “You think?  No great loss, if you ask me.  At least he’s not looking for us anymore. Now we can head back to the village instead of freezing our butts off out here tonight.”

         Taggart tried to control his trembling.  Murder.  A mortal sin, no matter what.  “We have to report this.  He deserves a decent burial.”  Even if he was a hateful bigot who would have killed both Kendi and Taggart without a second’s thought. Or the least remorse. 

         But how could they tell anyone?  Sattari might be dead, but that wouldn’t stop whoever he was working for from continuing to look for the two of them. They knew too much. Sattari's death, especially this death, might make them even more relentless. 

         Kendi said, “This could work to our advantage." He plucked both of the plastic tags from the corpse and stuffed them in a pocket. "I’ve got a plan.”