HOUSE
TITLES BY MATT DINNIMAN
Operation Bounce House
DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL SERIES
Dungeon Crawler Carl
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario
The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook
The Gate of the Feral Gods
The Butcher’s Masquerade
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
This Inevitable Ruin
Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon
THE SHIVERED SKY SERIES
Every Grain of Sand
In the City of Demons
The Great Devouring Darkness
DOMINION OF BLADES SERIES
Dominion of Blades
The Hobgoblin Riot
The Grinding
Trailer Park Fairy Tales
HOUSE
PENGUIN MICHAEL JOSEPH
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For Sexita
DAY ONE OF FIVE
CHAPTER 1
‘Oliver, you must remove yourself from bed. Priscilla is missing.’
I opened one eye, groaned, and rolled over. My pounding head felt as if it was caught in a press. My lips felt burned and cracked. I’m still drunk. Christ, how did I even get home?
The floating, humming form of Roger moved closer to my head. ‘Oliver, are you still inebriated? You must get up. Priscilla is missing.’
‘Who the hell is Priscilla?’
Zap.
‘Ow, fuck!’ I cried, sitting up in bed, rubbing my arm.
Zap.
‘Roger, stop. Jesus.’
Roger’s correction stinger crackled with electricity. It retracted back into the robot’s abdomen with a metallic shing.
‘Rule number four,’ the floating robot said. ‘No swearing.’
‘I know the rule, Roger. Why are you in my room? Even if I was still going to school, it’s Saturday.’ I blinked a few times, still disoriented, trying to remember what Roger had said. I had dirt and grass on my arms. I pulled the blanket back to reveal sheets covered with mud, like I’d been dragged home and then unceremoniously dumped into bed. ‘It is Saturday, right?’
‘It is Saturday indeed, Oliver. To answer your improperly formatted query, Priscilla is one of the honeybee scouts. She must be retrieved. That is why I am here. No other honeybee assets are available to do the job, as all are engaged in the harvest or undergoing scheduled maintenance. This means you must do the retrieval. I will accompany you.’
One of the honeybee drones? My arm throbbed, and my mind still swirled with fog. It’d been a while since Roger had corrected me. I’d forgotten how much it hurt.
‘I can’t believe you stung me.’
‘I was under the impression you didn’t swear anymore, Oliver.’
‘I don’t when you’re around. I was half asleep. I’m still half asleep.’ And half drunk.
I yawned, and I regretted it. It felt as if something fluffy had curled up and died in my mouth. I desperately tried to remember what had happened the night before. The party. Rosita’s ranch. Rosita and I had gotten into a fight. It was over something stupid. She’d said it was over. The whole village was there. A wave of vodka-flavored nausea swept over me. Everything hurt. I was going to puke.
‘Which one is Priscilla?’
‘Priscilla is unit number 418. Long-range scout number three. We will proceed to her last location on the map and attempt to recover her.’
I pulled myself up, smearing more dirt across the sheets. A small plastic Tyrannosaurus rex toy fell off my headboard. I spent a moment putting the Earth artifact back into its rightful place with the other figures. I took a moment to blow dust off the line of colorful dinosaurs. I then spent a good ten seconds looking for my boots before realizing they were still firmly attached to my feet. They were caked in mud.
My brain was finally starting to catch up. ‘Wait . . . “Priscilla”? Are you dating her or something? Since when do the scouts have names?’
‘They have always had names, Oliver. Your grandfather had names for all of us, but he turned off the designations when we were repurposed for agriculture. Your sister reactivated the labels yesterday during her lesson at the control center. Are you not going to change your clothes? Rule number nine. Always maintain good hygiene. It appears your clothing is quite dirty.’
‘We need to go back to the numbers. It’s going to be too difficult to remember four hundred thirty different names.’
‘Lulu made the change in the control center. If you wish to change it back, you will have to implement the change there. I must warn you, your sister was quite taken with the idea of having individual human names for each of the honeybees. She inquired about painting the names on each unit. You have clean clothes in your closet.’
‘If we’re going out there, I’m just going to get dirty again. I’ll change and shower after we get back. Speaking of my sister, where is she? Rule number eight. Isn’t this her job?’
‘That is correct, but Lulu did not come home last evening. It appears she is located seven point one two kilometers northeast of here. When she awakens, as she is undoubtedly in a similar state as yourself, she is scheduled to travel to Burnt Ends for her Saturday supply run. She will not be back until it is dark.’
‘Wait, really? She’s still at Rosita’s ranch? How did I get home last night?’
What was the last thing I remembered? Sam and the twins had run back to the Serrano ranch for more booze. My sister and Ariceli had been out in Rosita’s greenhouse along with several others blasting music. I’d been with Rosita in the main house, and I’d complained that everyone wouldn’t stop talking about Earth politics. She’d snapped at me, and, and . . .
‘Melissa and Trixie 2 brought you home,’ Roger said. ‘You were retrieved at Lulu’s request. You were unconscious.’
‘Wait, who brought me home? Were they drones?’
‘Melissa and Trixie 2 are scouts. This is why you were dragged and not carried.’
‘Trixie 2,’ I muttered. I rolled my shoulders. They had dragged me home? Christ, how drunk had I been? My arms were a little sore, weren’t they? The thought of being strung between two of the wobbly dog-sized robots was terrifying. They weren’t meant to carry something as heavy as me, especially not the smaller-sized scout robots. They wouldn’t have been able to fly, not with my weight. I was lucky I hadn’t been brained against a rock. ‘How far out is the unit? What’s her name again? Melissa?’
‘Melissa is recharging in the barn. Priscilla is the missing one.’
I sighed. This naming thing was never going to work. I reached for my com bracelet to send a text message to Lulu, and I grabbed my bare wrist. My bracelet wasn’t there. I started to curse out loud, but I caught myself.
‘Okay. Where’s the unit? And where’s my bracelet?’
‘Priscilla lost contact with the control center two hours and ten
minutes ago. She is seven kilometers southwest of here. Your bracelet is being repaired. You vomited directly on it last evening, which is a direct violation of –’
‘Yes, I know. Rule number two. Always keep your bracelet in good working order. Southwest. So, she’s in the hills?’
‘That is correct.’ Roger rotated in midair to reveal the small, dingy screen on the bottom of his abdomen. The cracked display barely worked, and I had to squint to see what he was showing me. It was a relief map of the low, hilly swamps with a blinking dot.
I groaned. This was going to take hours. ‘If it’s in the hills, I won’t be able to bring the quad.’
‘That is also correct. The quad is with your sister anyway. I have already packed your repair kit. If you aren’t going to change your clothes, I will wait for you to vomit, and then we will leave.’
‘Let’s go now,’ I said, pulling myself to my feet. The world wobbled, and my stomach lurched. What was it Rosita had said last night? You’re a worthless, shiftless dirt jockey who will die alone ? ‘I’ll vomit on the way.’
The Rhythm Mafia Tapes. Scene one.
Description prepared by Lana Lipovsky for the Joint Republic Hearing Committee on the New Sonora Incident.
This is a written description of the scenes as shown via multiple streams during the final night of the Operation Bounce House disaster. The recordings are part of an unfinished documentary broadcast by one Rosita Zapatero, twenty-six, a colonist farmer on the planet New Sonora. Records indicate Zapatero is a descendant of colonists from Hibisco and Forlorn, two of the fifteen generation ships that originally settled New Sonora. Most of the colonists in the subsequent videos are descendants of one of those two ships, unless otherwise noted. (See exhibit 5 at the end of the full report titled ‘The 15 Colony Ships.’) The documentary video itself is available as exhibit 13 under the header ‘Night Five of Five.’
We are in a barn. A thin, dark-haired man is playing an upright bass. Behind the man are several instruments, including a drum set, a few amplifiers, and a PA system. A banner on the wall behind the drum set reads, The Rhythm Mafia.
There is no date on this particular clip, but evidence suggests this was filmed approximately six months before the incident.
The man is Sam Amboya, twenty-five, a colonist farmer. He shakes his head to the rhythm while he plays the large instrument, which is unfinished and appears to be made of plywood. Watching from a chair with her arms crossed is a red-haired woman. She is Harriet Riggs, a twenty-four-year-old colonist. Records indicate her as a direct descendant of the ship Quinceañera.
ROSITA (OFF CAMERA): Okay. Introduce yourselves.
SAM: My name is Sam, and this is my soon-to-be-wife, Harriet. I slipped one past the goalie, if you know what I’m saying.
HARRIET: Sam. Don’t say it like that.
SAM: How else would I say it?
HARRIET: I don’t know. We’re going to have a baby. They’re going to see this one day. They don’t need to hear their father say he ‘slipped one past the goalie.’ I took a pill to dissolve the pregnancy blocker. There is no goalie.
Sam leans his bass up against the wall. He moves his face to the camera and grins.
SAM: Hey, kid. If you’re seeing this, I want you to know something. I banged your mom.
Harriet shouts as she jumps up from her chair, picks up a drumstick, and hurls it at a laughing Sam. The camera cuts before the drumstick makes contact.
(A time cut.)
Sam is sitting on the ground with a small mark on his forehead. Harriet sits next to him with her head on his shoulder.
SAM: What’re we supposed to be talking about again?
A new voice speaks off-screen, and the camera swivels, revealing a wide shot of the barn. The barn is filled with multiple charging pods for the honeybee drone robots, which at this point are still outfitted strictly for agriculture. (See exhibit 2 entitled ‘The Honeybee Drones.’) This is a tall, twenty-five-year-old male colonist with dark hair. He is Oliver Lewis. (See exhibit <Redacted>.) He has a large wrench in his hand, and it appears he is in the engine compartment of a combine harvester.
OLIVER: You’re supposed to be talking about our band.
ROSITA: Ollie, don’t talk! The camera will track you.
Oliver grins and holds up his hands, which are black with oil.
OLIVER: It’s not my fault if the camera loves me.
SAM: I gotta ask. How many dirty movies have you two made with this camera anyway? And can Harriet and I borrow it?
ROSITA (TO OLIVER, LAUGHING): Just let us do this, okay? You said we could use your barn. This lighting is only going to last a little longer.
OLIVER: I gotta go check on my sister in the north fields anyway. I’ll see you tonight, beautiful.
ROSITA: See you tonight.
Oliver, still grinning, drops the wrench, which clatters loudly; then he rubs his hands on his pants and goes outside.
HARRIET (TO SAM AS THE CAMERA SWINGS BACK TO THE COUPLE): Why don’t you ever call me ‘beautiful’?
SAM: Because you already know how I feel about you, babe. He puts his arm over Harriet’s shoulder. She makes a derisive snort, but she nuzzles closer to him.
ROSITA (SIGHS): Tell us more about the band.
Sam visibly brightens.
SAM: We’re called the Rhythm Mafia. It’s Ollie on drums, our friends Tito and Axel on guitars, and me on bass. I’m basically the singer now after Ollie’s sister, Lulu, quit, but I’m not very good. We’re looking for a new one. We practice once a week if we can. But during harvest, it can get hard to find time to get together. And sometimes we get together and we don’t actually practice. We just talk and drink.
HARRIET: Sometimes?
ROSITA: Why do you still do it? I asked Oliver, and he says he likes band practice. Axel says it’s Tito’s favorite thing in the world. I get that they like it, but none of them can explain why. What about
you? You say you’re not very good. You’ve never played a show. There’re not too many people to play for even if you did set up a concert. You put that one song online, but I saw it has less than a hundred downloads.
Sam reaches over and kisses Harriet on the top of the head. She snuggles even closer to him. He leans into the camera.
SAM: Don’t get me wrong. I love Harriet, and I love that I’m having a kid with her. We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, and I won’t ever regret that. Our great-great-grandparents all died on a spaceship so we could have a place of our own. But is that it? If that’s all we’re doing, how does that separate us from all the other animals out there? Have you seen how sad the old people around here are? Have you ever looked into the eyes of Mrs Xalos? Or Mr and Mrs Gonzales? I love them, but what do they have? Do you see how empty they are? It’s like they’re zombies.
The camera starts to zoom in tight on Sam’s face.
SAM: No, we’re not good. We’re never going to be famous musicians. But it doesn’t matter. When I’m with my best friends playing our stupid little hearts out, I’m not thinking about the farm or that biological imperative to have kids or anything other than the music. Yeah, I do want to play a show one day. I want to play a concert, even if it’s just for Mr Yanez’s magic chickens. That’s all we really have here. But at least it’s something that separates us from the animals. It’s joy, it’s happiness, it’s life beyond just procreation. And if we don’t have something like that, then what’s the point?
CHAPTER
‘Oliver, what is the square root of 576?’
‘I don’t care,’ I said as we trudged south through the mud and knee-high reeds. As I trudged through the mud. Roger buzzed over my head, zipping back and forth, constantly commenting on how slow I was moving. ‘Nobody needs to know that sh . . . stuff.’
Roger buzzed angrily as he passed. ‘That is incorrect. Oliver, I am worried about your progress. Your New Sonoran and Earth history scores are adequate, but your arithmetic is lacking. We must quiz.’
I watched the rickety old bot zip forward in the air, leading the way. I sighed. Damn you, Grandpa Lewis, I thought for the millionth time. Sometimes I wondered if he’d planned it this way, deliberately leaving the nanny system installed. Lulu certainly thought so.
‘Maybe we can wait until tomorrow when the other two scouts are recharged, and we can send them out.’ My boot made a sucking noise as I took a step. ‘Or you can go alone.’
‘If Priscilla is damaged, time is of the essence. With the loss of Hannah last season, we have only three scouts left and can’t afford to risk the integrity of one to rescue another. And, Oliver, you know I can’t leave the safety of the ranch without a companion.’
‘I know,’ I grumbled. ‘Rule number one.’
Rule number one. Protect Roger. Without Roger, the entire farm collapses. He must never leave the ranch alone. He must be maintained weekly. Protect Roger at all costs.
The other two honeybee scouts, 410 and 413, whatever their names were, were in their three-times-a-month repair sequence and recharge. To remove them prematurely would supposedly damage their already deteriorating systems. And because of reasons I didn’t understand, we always had to charge two at a time. The charge
happened every Saturday on a rotation, so each of the three charged two weeks in a row, took a week off, and then started again.
We called them honeybees, but I knew they were much larger than the Earth bugs they were named after. Apparently, the earliest versions of these things had been based on dogs. We had three different models. The vast majority on the ranch were the drones designed with bigger batteries and less autonomy. We had three scouts left. Two if 418 – Priscilla – was gone. They were a little smaller than the drones. And we also had Roger, the ‘hive queen’ AI unit. He was the smallest of them all, about half the size of the rest. The size of a cat.
It’d been seventy years since the planet was first settled. My grandfather Edward Lewis – though everyone just called him Lewis – had been born on the Forlorn, one of the fifteen hulking generation ships that had brought settlers to the planet. He had been trained as an engineer and honeybee mechanic. They were already in orbit when he was born, and he’d been seventeen years old when they first settled on the city of Fat Landing. Four years after that, his group settled here in the Baja peninsula, seven thousand kilometers away near the edge of the great ocean, and created the agricultural hub of Burnt Ends. Grandpa Lewis had been assigned a fleet of roughly five thousand honeybee production machines, complete with an additional fifty hive queen bots, and for the next five years, he’d overseen the construction of most of the farms and industrial buildings in the area. A fact, fifty-plus years later, he would never shut up about. Not until the day he died.
The honeybees had an intended lifespan of five–ten years of heavy labor, after which they would start to break down. As far as I was aware, the four hundred thirty remaining honeybees on our farm were the sole enduring honeybees on the entire planet. Roger, whose real name was actually Roger-Roger, was the last hive queen in existence. Once he finally fell out of commission, that would be it. We’d still be able to send the drones out on simple agricultural tasks using the control center, but they wouldn’t work in unison like they did now. And the scouts, if any were left, would cease to function. By the time my grandfather’s outpost- establishing mission was complete, he’d been only twenty-nine years old, and as he explained
it, he’d been told to ‘fuck off and die on a farm somewhere.’ So that was pretty much what he did. He established a farm with my grandmother Yolanda, and five years after that, they had my mom. It was around the same time he’d discovered the local government had all the remaining honeybees just sitting in a warehouse somewhere, decommissioned and doing nothing. He’d requested two thousand units so he could see if he could repurpose them to help with agriculture. They’d agreed.
‘I have found Priscilla’s signal,’ Roger said as we reached the top of a small hill rising out of the swamp. The mud and reeds were replaced with large round bushes that leaked a thick sap that was next to impossible to get out of clothes. The shrubs were called plica bushes, and they were everywhere. They smelled something awful, like the wet underside of a lamb with a skin infection. They grew fast, too, and I had to be constantly vigilant they didn’t get a foothold on our land. Their roots were a bitch to dig up, and as helpful as the honeybees were, they were shit at digging up roots.
We reached the top of the hill, and I wheezed for breath. I looked south, trying to see if I could see the great ocean. I couldn’t. All I could see was more bush-covered hills. I was finally starting to sober up, but I still felt I was going to be sick at any moment.
‘How far?’
‘Just one more kilometer past that next hill.’
‘What was she doing out this far anyway?’
‘We detected an unknown radio signal on the surface, and one of Priscilla’s duties is to investigate unknown signals.’
I stopped dead. ‘Wait. You detected an unknown radio signal out here on the surface in the middle of nowhere, you sent out a scout bot, and the scout disappeared? Don’t you think – I don’t know – that you should have led with this information? Or maybe sent another scout with her?’
‘Oliver, the other two active scouts were unable to investigate because they were occupied taking your unconscious form back from the other ranch. They had already entered their scheduled maintenance when Priscilla disappeared.’
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
Shing! The correction stinger emerged from Roger’s abdomen, and faster than I thought possible, he zipped forward and stung me in the arm.
‘Goddamnit,’ I said. ‘Gah!’ I cried a moment later as he stung me a second time.
‘Rule number four. No swearing, Oliver,’ Roger said.
‘Roger,’ I said, breathing heavily, ‘I hate you.’
‘It’s customary for unruly students to hate their tutors, Oliver. Students are less likely to learn in too permissive environments.’
‘You’re not my teacher anymore. I’m not a student. I haven’t been for years. You’re a hive queen. If you weren’t so valuable, I’d turn you into yard art.’
‘Artistic interests are fine if they are pursued during your leisure time, but you should focus your attentions on furthering your core studies. Yes, artists are important to the persistence of culture, but artisanal skills must take a back seat to functional skills when a colony is still in its early stage. Your band is a good example of this. Luckily, your percussion talent is such that a career in music will never be possible.’
I started to say something back when I was interrupted by the sound of something mechanical coming from the next ridge over. It was a hissing followed by a clang, clank, clang. There was something else, too. It sounded amplified, like it was coming through the loudspeaker at the community auction house, but it was still too far for me to understand. It almost sounded like . . . like screaming.
‘Roger, what is that?’
‘It sounds like a juvenile having a temper tantrum,’ Roger said. ‘It is amplified through a public address system. I am detecting multiple strange signals in that direction when there were none just a few moments ago. This signal is closer than Priscilla’s.’
‘Yeah, but what’s the machine? It sounds like a tractor with a thrown tread.’
Right at that moment, the large colorful contraption crested the distant hill. It was maybe a hundred fifty meters away. I just stood there, dumbfounded.
The machine was about three meters tall, and it walked on two
legs, though one of them was heavily damaged, probably the cause of the loud clanging. Each step came with the sound of scraping metal followed by a noisy clank.
Oof. Before I could get another thought in, I was on my back. Roger had flown down and pushed my legs out from under me.
‘Stay down. Do not allow it to see you,’ Roger said, hovering low to the ground.
I rolled to my stomach and turned, hiding behind a plica bush. The robot thing fully emerged above the next hill. ‘It’s a giant honeybee,’ I said, ‘but with two legs instead of six.’
‘Oliver, remain hidden. Do not move unless it approaches. Then run. Do a zigzag pattern if you must run,’ Roger said. He buzzed off to the side, disappearing the way we came. He kept low to the ground.
‘Roger,’ I hissed, but the small hive queen was gone. I returned my attention to the giant robot. I gawked at it through the thick bush. I cursed myself for not bringing my bracelet. I didn’t carry a camera drone with me like Rosita always did, but the bracelet itself had a zoom and pop-up-screen function, or I could tap into Roger’s feed and watch from there.
The weird reverse-jointed legs on the robot met at an egg-shaped body that looked too small to hold an actual driver. A long cannonlike device hung on the left side of the body, and a four-pack missile launcher was on the right. Three of the four missile tubes were empty. Multiple antennae rose off the back of the machine.
But strangest of all were the paint job and accessories. It was decorated bright purple and had green spikes down the center of the egg, making it look like it had a Mohawk. Words I couldn’t read at a distance were painted across the front, but the distinctive shape of a penis was crudely drawn on each of the two legs, both pointing upward with little liquid squirts coming out of the top.
A mech, I thought. That’s a goddamn mech. It was just like the ones in a hundred animes and comics and video games that had come with us from Earth. As a kid, I’d spent hours drawing these things or playing one in my game system. I hadn’t known they were real. But what was with that paint job? And what was it doing here in the middle of nowhere? Where had it come from?
Heat waves radiated off the machine, and a line of dirty black smoke chugged out the back as it took a tentative step down the hill. The damaged leg whined ominously.
‘There’s nothing here!’ a young male voice cried from the machine. Now that it had crested the hill, I could finally understand what it was saying. It had a weird accent. Earth. This was someone from Earth, which was impossible. ‘You said it would be a target-rich environment! This is bullshit!’
There was a response, but it was muffled like the source of the voice was coming from the same microphone.
‘You promised me, Mom. You promised. You’re a fucking bitch.’
There was a sharp retort I couldn’t understand.
‘No, you told me I was going to the city. There’s nothing here! You promised. You ruined my birthday.’
The machine turned to the left and the right, the egg shape rotating as it took in the area. A low mechanical yet alien whisper rose from the machine when it moved.
‘I can’t get there. It’s too far. Stupid thing is broken. And it reacts slow.’
‘. . .’
‘How was I supposed to know that? They messed up the design. You’re gonna have to buy me a new one.’
Another angry response.
A high-pitched piercing wail emanated from the robot, distorting over the speaker. The egg body started bouncing back and forth, whisking as it moved.
It was the kid. He was squealing.
What the hell?
CHAPTER 3
I finally realized what I was seeing and hearing. This machine was being controlled remotely. Controlled by a child. A child who was still on Earth. And for some inexplicable reason, the kid was arguing with his mother over a loudspeaker.
My eyes instinctively moved to the sky. The gate. I couldn’t see it, but it was up there. One needed a telescope to be able to see it, and even then, it was visible only at night. I’d been looking at it my whole life. My grandfather had had a telescope nest sitting on top of the barn. He’d made us look at the gate dozens of times over the years. Sometimes if we watched long enough, we could see the drones zipping about up there, piecing the gate together. We’d sit on the roof and eat Popsicles, and he’d tell us stories about Earth, even though he’d never been there, either.
It took us 133 years to reach New Sonora, fifty years to open the pinhole, and the colony will be sixty-five to seventy years old when the gate’s construction is finished. When it finally opens and reconnects us with home, everything is going to change.
He’d lived to see the pinhole open, but he’d died before the real transfer gate had finally turned on last year. The Earth–New Sonoran transfer gate had powered on and stabilized 201 years after the fifteen generation ships had left Earth’s orbit, seeking out a new home.
I was still waiting for the big change. The pinhole – the microscopic gate that allowed information but nothing else through – had been open for almost twenty years. It had limited bandwidth, but we’d had access to instant news and communication and media from Earth for the majority of my life.
The original settlers had had a library of Earth media, from books to movies to games. My grandfather had been a big fan of
old twentieth-century cowboy movies. I personally liked comics and video games. When the pinhole opened, we’d gotten access to a lot of the new stuff, and it really wasn’t that different from the older stuff we’d seen already. It was almost like progress had stalled once people started fleeing the planet.
It’d been two hundred years since we’d left, and even speech patterns were mostly the same. Movies were the same, especially now that the law made it so AI depictions of humans were illegal. Comics were the same. Games were the same. The only difference was the graphics, and we didn’t have access to the full-immersion rigs that had been gaining popularity in recent years on Earth.
There was a lot of bizarre slang I still couldn’t figure out, even though I regularly watched a lot of Earth media. The music was different, too, and I was pretty sure I’d never understand that. But even though the slang was a lot different, we still understood one another. English and Mandarin were the dominant languages on Earth. Spanish had faded, but it was still spoken. It was just English here on the peninsula, though I knew some of the more remote communities were only Spanish speaking. I could speak a few Spanish phrases here and there. Grandpa Lewis had turned off Roger’s Spanish lessons after Grandmother Yolanda died. He said it hurt his heart too much to hear it.
Last year, when the actual transfer gate had opened, it was supposed to have been this big, momentous thing. But other than a short visit from a Republic ambassador, not much else had happened since. Transfer wasn’t yet open to civilians and settlers, and it wouldn’t be until the quarantine was over in eight more years. No food or trade goods or luxury items from distant planets had made their way to us through the instant transfer gate.
For us on New Sonora, it had been a huge deal. But for those on Earth, it was just another day. They were reconnecting with distant colonies every week, and they had been for years now. They’d developed faster gate-building technology and space drives in the interim, and new colonies were building their gates in ten years or less. Many of the reconnected colonies were newer and farther out, making New Sonora uninteresting to Earth’s population, except as a convenient target for their casual xenophobia.
Voom! I jumped as the cannon on the right side of the mech fired, and a hill a half kilometer to my left exploded in a geyser of dirt and rock and trees. The ground underneath me rocked.
I just stared at the destruction in shock. It was so sudden, so violent.
The kid was still screeching. I was pretty sure he hadn’t fired at anything in particular.
I was trying to figure out what was going on, why he was here. Were they using the hills to test some sort of new technology? It didn’t make sense. There was a quarantine. Nothing in or out except on government business. I remembered what the kid had said. You told me I was going to the city. Why would they send an armed mech to the city? And more important, why would they send one piloted by a child?
A sudden terrible thought occurred to me.
You’re so naïve, Rosita had said to me last night. Everyone had been talking about it.
It’s stupid. It doesn’t make sense, I’d said. Why is everyone always so worried about this stuff? And then I’d waved the camera bug away from her bracelet, accidentally smacking it to the ground, which had made her really mad.
Earth wants to evict us, she’d said as she collected the camera, making sure it wasn’t broken . They just want us on record being defiant.
Why? I’d asked. We haven’t done anything to them. The planet is huge and barely settled. There’s enough room for everybody. We’re not stopping them from coming and starting their own farms.
I never paid too much attention to news outside of the peninsula, unlike Rosita and most of the village, who’d found themselves glued to the intercolonial feeds the moment they had opened up. It didn’t mean I was naïve about everything. At least I hadn’t thought so. My friends were always talking about this or that, about things so far away that they had no impact on us at all.
Even politics local to our own planet seemed so stupid, so unimportant. The prime minister lived in Fat Landing, a city none of us had ever or would ever see. He was always making proclamations,
giving us orders, telling us what we could and couldn’t do. Nobody ever paid attention. There were never consequences. We were literally on the other side of the planet from them, with a large ocean between us if we went one way and a mountain range and desert if we went the other. There was no reliable transportation between the major settlements. We had the unmanned grain train, but that ran only twice a year.
A few months back, we’d received word that everyone had to submit a DNA sample for some genealogy mapping program for the Earth government. Nobody had done it. They hadn’t given us a means to submit the samples, for one thing. And second, according to the original charter, we didn’t have to follow the orders of the Earth government anymore anyway. We were an independent system. The settlers gave up their lives and traveled to a new planet, and their children – or their grandchildren – would inherit the planet. No taxes. No controlling interest. We’d be completely independent. They could take the generation ships back once we opened up the gate, but that was it. That was the deal, something my grandfather had been very proud of.
Then last month, it’d been decreed that anyone under the age of twenty- eight had to travel to Fat Landing to be counted and submit to a health screening. The order had come out of nowhere. It was mandatory. If one didn’t comply, they’d be jailed. The order hadn’t even been signed, so it was unclear if it’d come from the New Sonoran or the Earth government.
Again, they hadn’t given us any direction on how to comply. It was a joke. We had maybe three or four air transports in the whole area, and each could handle maybe ten passengers. The population of the Baja peninsula, including the villages and the hub town of Burnt Ends, was close to fifty thousand people. Plus, harvest season was about to start. It was just ridiculous.
‘Wait, what’s that?’ the kid asked, the robot turning. ‘I see you, fucker!’
The gun fired again, this time into the air. I caught sight of Roger zipping past, buzzing by the creature before disappearing in the opposite direction.
My heart thrashed. No, no, no.
‘I’m gonna get you! I’m gonna fuck your mom!’ the mech screeched.
Roger beeped a response I couldn’t hear as he continued to zip around the robot’s head. What the hell is he doing?
‘That’s not what she said last night!’ the mech squealed. ‘Ahhh!’
The robot fell over on its side as the already broken leg snapped off in a hiss of steam and fluid. It crashed to the ground and then started to noisily tumble forward down the hill. At the same moment, the final rocket in the bot’s missile tube launched, corkscrewing into the air. It did a wide, hissing circle in the mist and then suddenly veered toward me and my hiding place.
Oh, shit!
I scrambled as it flew in my direction. I jumped to my feet and dived off the top of the hill, rolling forward and tumbling just as the missile overshot me and slammed into the ground right where I’d been hiding. An explosion echoed as loud as a lightning strike, showering me with dirt, rocks, and foliage as I rolled down the hill. My head smacked something hard as I came to a rest at the bottom of the hill, dirt still raining onto me. My ears rang. The world spun. I splotched heavily into mud.
I need to get up. I need to run.
My body wasn’t complying.
The mech and I had fallen off our respective hills, both in the same direction. It couldn’t have been far away. The machine itself wasn’t as loud as before, but I could still hear the kid, and he was wailing. Maybe fifty meters away now, though I couldn’t see the mech from my position. The ground between the hills was muddy and full of reeds.
I sat up, peeling myself from the ground. I tasted blood. I touched the side of my head, and it came back red. I’d cut my scalp in the fall. He’d shot a missile at me. The little shit had tried to kill me. Had he seen me? Or was the missile heat-seeking?
Roger appeared, emerging from the reeds, flying low. He circled me worriedly, clicking. ‘Oliver, how are your bones? Are you ambulatory?’
‘You pissed it off,’ I said. ‘What happened to it?’
‘I cut a support on its damaged leg, and then I lured it to take a step, which caused it to stumble down the hill. I located the locomotion governor and removed it. I believe it is now disabled from making any further movement, though I have not discovered how to interfere with the audio and visual feeds. I believe it is using a communication system I am unfamiliar with. You need to move and get back to the ranch. I have detected a second radio signal farther back. Perhaps a relay to a drop ship, which suggests more of these may be on the way. I am going to investigate while you retreat. The tutoring session is now over. I have implemented the perimeterdefense protocol.’
‘What the hell is that?’
‘I don’t care how much it costs! It’s my birthday, Mom!’ the mech screeched. ‘It’s broken! The stupid thing is broken!’
‘You must proceed back to the ranch, Oliver,’ Roger said.
‘What about rule number one?’ I asked.
‘Perimeter defense takes precedence. Please, Oliver, you must flee.’
I stood all the way up. I had to wipe blood from my eye. I could see the mech now facing forward and down in the mud and reeds, broken at the base of the forward hill. It was wrecked. Its main gun had snapped off the egg shape of the body and lay bent. Its purple Mohawk strands had broken off in the fall. Various metal pieces lay scattered about. It didn’t move at all, though the voice continued to shriek, slightly muffled in the mud.
Holy crap, I thought. My arms were shaking. This is real. That thing is really here.
‘It can’t move?’
‘I don’t believe it can,’ Roger said. ‘But I cannot say with full certainty it can’t harm you.’
‘Do you know where it came from?’ I asked. ‘Or why it’s here?’
‘I am still analyzing it. The label on the side of the vehicle identifies it as a “Model 103.08a Recon Drop Dragoon. Base Edition by Apex Industries.” I attempted to look up the Apex Industries website to get specific info on this unit to gather more information, but the global feed is down. I am moving to the Forlorn connection, but
it is slower. There appears to be a barely legible call sign under the model designator. The etching says “Hobie Martin,” but that name is crossed out with the same simulated spray paint that covers the rest of the vehicle. Under it, written in astonishingly messy penmanship, is a group of nonsensical letters and symbols.’ He then proceeded to spit out a bunch of characters that I couldn’t parse.
‘Let me see it,’ I said.
Roger’s dirty and cracked underbelly display flickered, revealing a still of the side of the mech. I felt a chill when I saw it.
X_SuBhuM@nSlæy3r_X.
‘I think it says “Subhuman Slayer,” ’ I said, whispering the words. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that term. Last night, everyone had been following some commentary from an Earth news program. Some Earthers had been calling us that.
Subhuman.
They called us that because our genes had been altered so we could better survive on this planet. The change was subtle. We looked the same. Acted the same. We could have babies with one another. When we were side by side, nobody would know the difference. Yet, for some reason, it’d become a thing.
But that was nothing new. We weren’t the first colony to do something to raise the ire of the Earthers. Them being xenophobic was their thing. None of that explained what this kid was doing here.
‘We need to tell the others,’ I said. ‘There’s gotta be more of them.’
‘I have already informed your sister of the incident. She has yet to respond. She is likely still asleep. It appears the communication network with Burnt Ends is down. I have overridden Trixie 2’s maintenance schedule and dispatched her to the town to deliver a message to the mayor, per the procedures of the perimeter-defense protocol.’
‘You can talk to Lulu but not to the city?’
‘My connection with you, your sister, and the hive is utilizing the Forlorn ’s connection, not the public satellites. Communication with Burnt Ends relies solely on the municipal feed. It appears all inrange satellites are out of commission. Now you must get out of the combat zone.’
This can’t be happening. This can’t be real.
‘Hey,’ I called, talking loudly. ‘Hobie, that you?’ I took a tentative step toward the face-down robot. It did not move.
I hadn’t been planning on saying anything. It just came out.
‘What?’ the robot asked. ‘Who’s that? Who’s there?’
‘Why are you here, Hobie?’
‘How do you know my name? Who is this? Are you the drone thing flying around me? I’m going to break you into pieces.’
‘I’m not the bot. I’m the person you shot a missile at. Why did you land here?’
‘Fuck you!’
‘Oliver,’ Roger said, whispering in my ear, ‘I must insist you go back. We do not want them identifying you.’
‘I’m not going back until we have this figured out.’ I took several more steps toward the thing. My boots sucked against mud with every step. I reached into the muck and picked up a rock, and I threw it at the robot. It clanged loudly against it, but the robot didn’t react.
‘You’re one of them,’ the kid said. It wasn’t a question. ‘How’d you know my name? The repair drone is coming. It’s gonna fix me and reload my ammo, and then I’m going to blow your ass up.’
This thing wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked again.
‘Because I banged your mom, that’s why.’
‘My mom is dead,’ I said, taking another step.
‘You’re dead.’
A moment later, a new, female voice came out through the robot. She also had an Earth accent.
‘Young man, if you’re not an insurgent, you need to get to the capital city. You’re safe in the city. You shouldn’t be playing around in a war zone.’
‘War zone?’ I asked. ‘And what city are you talking about? Do you mean Burnt Ends?’
‘Shut up, Mom,’ Hobie said. ‘God, why are you so embarrassing?’
‘What is it called again?’ Hobie’s mom said. ‘Fat something? That’s the only safe zone. Everywhere else is overrun with terrorists. All the civilians have left.’
‘Fat Landing?’ I asked. ‘Do you know how far away that is? It’s literally impossible for me to get there. And there are no terrorists here. Or wars. We don’t have guns. I’ve never held a real gun before in my life. We’re farmers. I think you’re in the wrong place.’
‘Oh, dear,’ the woman said.
‘He’s lying. If you don’t have guns, how did you break my mech, bitch? It wasn’t that little flying robot, that’s for sure.’
‘Hobie, language.’
‘Mom, will you get out of my room? You’re ruining it.’
‘I didn’t break your mech,’ I called. ‘You tripped and fell down the hill. Your leg was already broken when I saw you. You didn’t answer me. What insurg –’
‘Get down!’ Roger suddenly roared, taking out my lower leg for the second time, this time from the front. I belly flopped into the mud just as something roared over the swamp.
‘Up, up, Oliver, up,’ Roger said.
I pulled myself up. Whirls of steam filled the valley. I couldn’t see the mech anymore. From the low hum, it seemed we’d just gotten buzzed by another vehicle. This one was flying and kicking up mud and smoke.
‘Run. Run home. Now, Oliver,’ Roger said. This time, I did as Roger said. I didn’t argue. I turned, and I ran.
Less than five minutes later, as I rushed back to the farm, a massive explosion echoed over the hills so loud that it shook the earth under my feet, causing me to stumble yet again.
Roger, I thought, pausing to look back the way I’d come. All I could see was smoke.
The Rhythm Mafia Tapes. Scene five.
We see a smiling older couple. Both are sitting on a porch in front of a brightly painted yellow door. The man is Roberto Gonzales, eighty-one, a colonist on New Sonora. He is slightly paunchy and covered with dirt. In his hands is a large white cowboy hat. The band appears to be made of turquoise. Sitting next to him is his longtime wife, Maria Gonzales, eighty. She is sitting on a rocking chair, knitting something that appears to be a shirt for an infant.
ROSITA (OFF CAMERA): You’re covered in dirt. How do you keep your hat so white?
ROBERTO (TURNING THE HAT IN HIS HANDS): Maria is magic. I don’t know what she does. It gets dirty, and the next day it looks brand-new.
ROSITA: How do you do it, Mrs Gonzales? Mrs Gonzales smiles but doesn’t say anything. (A time cut.)
Roberto now has the massive cowboy hat on his head. The shirt Maria is working on is much more complete.
ROBERTO: We’d reached orbit before I was born, but I was still born on the ship. We trained while they did the survey. Maria and I came down at different times. She got down here two years before I did. I was seventeen. I was on Forlorn, but Maria was on Adios. Went straight to the peninsula. Maria came across with the trains to the peninsula, all the way from Fat Landing. He turns and pats her leg affectionately.
ROBERTO: I got lucky she decided to come. Maria puts her knitting down.
MARIA: And don’t you forget it.
They both laugh.
(A time cut.)
Roberto is handing Rosita what appears to be a Popsicle.
ROSITA (LAUGHING OFF CAMERA): I haven’t had one of these in years. Oh, man, talk about a blast from the past.
ROBERTO: I started making them again.
(A time cut.)
Roberto, pointing at a field across the road. The camera briefly turns, revealing a wide dirt road. On the other side appear to be miles of shriveled trees.
ROBERTO: Pedro was allocated twenty acres. Beto Junior twenty acres south of that. We borrowed some of the Lewis honeybees and started the orchard after we got the initial shipment. You know, before it happened. Now it just sits there. You’d think it would make me sad seeing it all like that, but I like the orchard being there right next door.
Maria puts down her knitting, gets up, and goes inside.
ROBERTO: She gets sad sometimes, thinking about our boys. That we never had grandchildren. (SIGHS HEAVILY ) I get sad sometimes, too.
CHAPTER 4
I saw the dust from the quad as I approached the outer boundaries of our property. It was Lulu, and she was leaving the ranch, heading toward me. I flagged her down. She spied me and turned the four-wheeled vehicle off the road to meet me halfway. I bent over, exhausted, as she approached.
She had the broken remnants of a honeybee in the bed of the quad. I recognized it as one of the drones. It’d gotten hit by a grain transport a few days back, and she’d been planning on taking it into town to give to Fritz so he could fabricate a new leg for it.
‘Ollie! Are you okay?’ Lulu cried as the quad pulled up. She jumped from the driver’s seat and rubbed her hands over me. She had to stand on her tiptoes to reach toward my torso. ‘You’re bleeding!’
I looked into her worried eyes. My sister was twenty-three years old, two years younger than me, but she looked very much like Grandpa Lewis in that moment. In the rare moments when she wasn’t saying something caustic or sarcastic, I could see it in her face. That tired, wary intelligence of someone who’d spent their whole life struggling to maintain optimism in an environment rife with hardship.
Our mom had had the same eyes, too. I had a picture of her in my room. Her name had been Cat. Catalina.
Even though Lulu was tiny – four foot ten inches compared to my six foot – she had an imposing presence. She was much too young to have that much worry etched onto her face.
‘I’m okay. Did you get Roger’s message?’ I asked between breaths.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He just messaged me again to come look for you. Did you really puke on your bracelet? Like, directly on the bracelet? Sam won’t stop talking about it.’
‘Roger is okay? There was an explosion.’
‘Yeah, no shit. The whole peninsula heard it. He sent video of what happened. That second ship blew up the mech and then took off back into space followed by a third, flower-shaped thing. They’re gone. Roger found Priscilla. She’s okay. She’s undamaged physically. She had a power failure. She recorded everything that happened before you two morons got there. She automatically turned on her stealth drive for the first time ever, and it fried her whole drivetrain, knocking her offline. That’s going to be a problem because we’re out of the scout-sized batteries. They’re on their way back now, but it’s going to be a bit because she’s on foot, using emergency power. He doesn’t want us to help him. Screw rule number one, I guess.’
I pulled myself into the quad, squeezing my way into the driver’s seat, but Lulu shooed me over to the passenger side. We’d always fight over who got to drive, but I didn’t feel like arguing today. She had the pedals adjusted for her height anyway.
‘Do you know what’s going on?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’ Lulu said as she circled the vehicle back toward the ranch. ‘You owe Rosita an apology first off. We’re under attack.’
‘Why?’
She gave me an incredulous look. ‘Why? Are you deliberately being dumb? We’ve been talking about this for months. You literally just broke up with your girlfriend over it last night, not that you’d remember that part.’
‘But it was a mech driven by a little kid. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It’s Operation Bounce House,’ she said. ‘It’s real, and it’s here.’
We turned onto the road, kicking up more dust, and we passed through the wide-open gate. To the left stood the massive corrugatedmetal barn. We called it the ‘beehive.’ I eyed the platform on the roof with the telescope and all the antennae. The large building was where we housed the honeybees and the repair stations along with the control center. Spread out to the right were the fields. The whole property was a square just under a hundred sixty acres, though some of it was undeveloped. About a hundred twenty acres of wheat, ten acres of barley, and several more off rotation for this season. I had one more for various vegetables along with several of my experimental
crops, including my tobacco. The fields were crawling with the drone honeybees, all chugging along like they had no care in the world. In the far distance at the northwest boundary, I could see a single driverless hopper transport sitting idle just outside the fence, which I thought was strange until I remembered that the planetwide net was down. It wouldn’t be going anywhere until it was back online.
We pulled up to the main house. There were three other quads sitting out front. I didn’t recognize any of them.
‘Why are people here?’ I asked.
‘The whole peninsula is going to be here in an hour or two,’ Lulu said, pulling herself out of the seat. ‘We have the only active feed for kilometers. Maybe on the planet.’
I sat next to Lulu and watched the commercial on the screen for the fifth time in a row. I’d seen it before, but I’d never really paid attention, because I’d had no idea it had anything to do with us. Behind us stood about fifteen people, all from surrounding farms. There were more in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Or lunch. I didn’t even know what time it was. Voices rose from the other rooms. Voices and quiet sobbing.
I rubbed my arm. I didn’t like having so many people in our house. It felt wrong. An intrusion. It made me nervous. Grandpa Lewis had never liked crowds much, either. I remembered Grandmother Yolanda used to have these laughter- filled parties, and Grandpa Lewis would always retreat to this room, his study, to read a book or he’d go out to the beehive.
That had stopped when our grandmother died. Lulu was only six at the time and barely remembered her at all. I’d been eight, almost nine, and my recollections of Grandma Yolanda mostly came in sounds and smells and memories of her warm kindness, though I could remember that day she died as if it had happened yesterday. I could recall the scent and taste of cinnamon and melted sugar. I could feel the dough in my hands.
But beyond that last day, I also remembered how Grandmother Yolanda herself smelled like the fields and grease. She worked hard, and she was always happy and smiling and hugging. When she had
her parties, the house would be full of the cinnamon smell, of talking and laughter and the scent of cooking.
Now the house was full once again. I wasn’t even sure how people had known to come here. Probably because we had the only bracelet repair bay this side of Burnt Ends. Even after Grandpa Lewis died, there hadn’t been this many people. It felt wrong, especially since none of our friends were here yet. Sam and Tito and Axel. And Rosita. Without a way to contact them, I felt strangely untethered, disconnected.
The vast majority of the people here were older, in their later sixties and seventies. A smattering of people my age and younger was here, too, but nobody I knew well.
There wasn’t anyone between the ages of thirty and sixty here. I wasn’t sure if there was anyone that age left alive on the entire planet. An entire generation – my mother’s generation – had died of the Sickness, leaving a gaping wound in the population. That wound had never been more visible than it was now with so many people gathered.
After Grandpa Lewis died, Lulu had moved into his bedroom, and we’d turned this room into Lulu’s computer room. I used to keep a second drum kit in here as well back when I practiced more.
After I’d moved the drum kit out, she pretty much turned this den into her streaming studio. She offered to move to the barn, but I wouldn’t let her. Lulu spent most of her streaming time unclothed. We had heat in the house, and we didn’t have heat in the barn except in the control room.
While Lulu wasn’t ashamed of what she did online to save money for the future and she could be aggressively proud about it with people in our age group, she didn’t normally allow any of the occasional older visitors to our home into this room. If she needed to show someone something on the net, she would bring the screen and keyboard out into the kitchen.
When we’d entered the house, we found Mr and Mrs Gonzales and Mrs Xalos already in the room, already on the computer, with more people arriving by the minute. Both of us had looked at each other, to Lulu’s desk, to our neighbors, to the computer screen they