15. THE WRONG PLACE
14 August 3072
Nix dreamed of falling. Falling from the sky, without a suit or parachute, plunging helplessly straight down, and as the ground rushed up he saw he saw he was falling towards an office tower (of course, there would be a tower), falling straight towards the helipad on its top, falling straight towards a man and a woman standing there. He tucked in his legs and hugged them to his chest. The roof came rising to meet him in a rush, the there was a smash as he impacted, then went through the roof. On the other side was air. He was falling, still falling straight towards a familiar office tower helipad, two people standing there, hurtling up towards him. Impact, resistance, weightlessness. And the falling, falling towards an office tower helipad…
He was pulled from the dream by the sound of someone hammering on the door. Rhythmic cracks, slamming heavily into the plasteel. Not a social call then. He had been half-expecting this for three years now, ever since the invasion. He got out of bed, went to the kitchen, opened the small silver fridge, and pulled out a beer. Tortured, tearing sounds as the door began to tear free of the brackets holding it to the wall. Nix sat down on one of his two plain, plastic chairs, and positioned it so he could see the front door from where he sat. He twisted off the cap with his prosthetic hand, and took a long drink.
The door flew off its hinges, revealing a squad of Word of Blake militiamen holding a pneumatic battering ram. They dropped the ram and came storming into the apartment, guns ready. Several people were shouting at him variously to freeze, to get on the ground, to raise his hands and to stay where he was.
He liked that advice the best, so he followed it. “Door was open,” he said, mildly.
Two remained in the kitchen, their guns leveled at his chest, while he heard the other four banging doors and shouting orders to his empty bedroom and bathroom. He took another drink. The four returned, empty-handed, squeezed into the far end of the room, out of arm’s reach.
“At ease,” said a new voice, one Nix had heard before, quite recently. The militiamen lowered their needlers. A hooded figure entered the apartment, and threw back its cowl as it stepped into the kitchen. A face with flat, silver eyes and a tight, cold smile. A gloved hand reached over and took the top of the other chair, dragged it protesting squeakily across the floor until it faced Nix.
“Make yourself at home,” Nix said into his beer as the other sat down stiffly on the chair.
“Forgive their over-enthusiasm. You can’t be too careful these days. But there I go, nattering on about things you already know very well,” the man continued, pulling off his gloves and folding them neatly in his lap. “You’re something of an expert in caution, aren’t you Mister … Rei?”
“You have me at a disadvantage,” his eyes flicked to the militiamen. “And at gunpoint.”
“That’s the funny thing: I’m not sure I do.” The other man smiled. “You know, the Word of Blake has captured a number of Federated Suns databases over the years, yet until our occupation I can’t find a single record of a man named Nicholas Rei.” The head tilted slightly to one side. “Why would that be, do you think?”
Nix shrugged. “Looking in the wrong places, I guess.” He set down the beer. “Look, it’s Yeager, isn’t it? Yeager, old buddy, I hate to be rude to a guest, but does this visit have a point?”
“Of course, you’re a busy man, aren’t you? All those days lifting potatoes or whatever it is.” Yeager’s smiled disappeared.
“Tell me, where did a dock worker lose an arm, Mister Rei?”
“Odd choice of words.”
“Which?”
“’Lost’,” he said. “Like it’s just going to turn up one day at the bottom of a box of MechWarrior trading cards and old porn holos.” He looked down at the unnaturally smooth surface of the arm. The skin tone didn’t match any more, not after years of living underground on Schedar. “New Avalon, ’67, the year I quit the AFFC. Not sure what it was, to be honest. Gauss slug or autocannon, maybe.”
“Another thing we have in common, Mister Rei. I have my own … memories of New Avalon. Although, I confess to being a little disappointed. How far the mighty have fallen,” Yeager shook his head. “Dock worker? You could do so much better.”
Nix arched an eyebrow. “For instance?”
Yeager leaned forward. “A man of your talents, not to mention enhancements, would always have a place with us.”
Nix threw back his head and laughed. “You’re offering me a job?”
“That was not a joke. Here, with that arm, you’ll always be a cripple, an outcast, a freak. Among the Word of Blake, you would be an equal, a comrade, perhaps one day a leader. We know that cybernetics are, if not the future, then certainly a future. The least you could do is consider what I’m saying seriously.”
Nix nodded absently a moment, as though in thought. “Tell you what,” he said at last. “You get one of those fine folks from the Cordial Cooperative down here and ask me nice, and maybe I’ll think about it.”
Yeager sat back in his chair, which creaked uneasily. “Gentlemen,” he said loudly, to the militiamen. “If I might have a word with Mister Rei in private.” The men glanced at each other, then retreated into the hallway outside the door. Satisfied, Yeager turned back to Nix. “They are dead. On my orders. As you—and any semi-intelligent citizen—are perfectly aware.”
“That sounds an awful lot like an admission of a war crime, Yeager old chum.”
“You wonder about our methods? The purpose of our terror?”
“Yeah, sure. In a what-the-hell kind of way.”
“Bombing, gassing, massacring people so they will unite behind us. Ludicrous, isn’t it?”
Nix waved his hand in a well-you-know kind of way. “One way of putting it.”
“Any reasonable person would put it that way. Luckily, our followers, even our leaders, have bid a fond farewell to reason in favor of fanaticism.” Yeager flicked a speck of dust from his robe, as though to brush his compatriots from his clothes like dirt. “Let me be clear: They are fools, all of them.”
That caught Nix’s attention, as the man had probably known it would. “Then why?”
“Because the Inner Sphere is a jail,” Yeager held up his hands and made two fists, wrists together like a prisoner.
“Keeping us locked together, fighting with the same weapons, over the same scarred ground, until we wipe ourselves out. There will never be peace in the Inner Sphere. Too much time has passed, too much blood has been spilled. As long as we stay, we will never evolve as a race, never move forward. A dead end, destined for extinction.”
“’Destroy the village in order to save it’, that’s your answer?”
“Yes! Yes, exactly! Cut away the cancer to save the body,” Yeager beamed, sweeping his hands apart, as though breaking invisible chains. “What is the purpose of terror? The purpose of terror is terror, because only terror can set people free. Like birds that have lived too long in cages, they will never voluntarily leave the prison of the Inner Sphere. So we must make them abandon their homes, their cities, their worlds, and flee for their lives. Many will die, yes, so the rest may live. Sacrifice billions, hundreds of billions, so that millions may live. We must scatter humanity to the far reaches of space. Only then will we adapt, evolve, find new ways of being, move forward. Cybernetics, selective breeding, genetic engineering, hive minds, cloning, every path must be explored, because a species with only one path is on a path to extinction. Only destruction provides a path to the future”
Nix looked down at his prosthetic arm, feeling the fingers as they flexed. It didn’t feel much like the future. “You know, I bet the fella who took my arm off felt exactly the same way,” he paused, mouth half-open, aware that whatever he said next might be the last words he ever did. What the hell. “He thought he was cutting the cancer away, saving people from themselves, just like you. He was okay with a few people dying, if that’s what it took, just like you. Only, I’ve noticed, when people like you and him say ‘people will die,’ what you mean is ‘people who aren’t me.’ Funny how the people talking always figure they’re the ones who are going to be part of the righteous or the genetic elite or the cybernetic pioneers Which got me thinking. Maybe. Maybe people who say ‘cut away the cancer’ are the cancer. Maybe what’s holding us back, if there is anything, is the folks who think they’ve got it figured, and what they’ve figured is that all they need to do is kill enough of the rest of us and it will all work out.”
Yeager was silent, his mouth pressed into a thin line. Finally: “Well, I hope that’s not your final answer.”
Nix snorted. “If that makes you feel better. Now, maybe you can take your pals here back to the station and let me get some sleep. Unless this was one of those ‘join us or die’ deals, in which case you’ll be taking them to the morgue.”
Yeager seemed to consider that. “There are six of them, you know. Hardly seems like a fair fight.”
“Feel free to call for reinforcements.”
That produced a chuckle. “Now, now, Mister Rei. There’s confidence, then there’s arrogance.” Yeager stood, pulling his gloves back on. “Think about it, Mister Rei. This isn’t about which lord gets to park his posterior on some imaginary throne for a season or two before the next one knocks him off. This is about the future of the human race.” Yeager walked back to the doorway, looked down at the shattered remains of the door on the floor. “Pity about the door. Consider it a gentle reminder. We’ll be in touch.”
The militiamen fell into step behind him, footsteps echoing into silence as they marched away.
A delicate rain of plaster fell from the shattered door lintel.
“Arsehole,” Nix told the empty kitchen.