Rise of Order: An Age of Order Novella Read online

  “What are you talking about?” Macey demanded.

  Nia leaned over the captain, tapping at the display’s faux controls without any hesitation. “He’s right. Controls are dead.”

  She knows how to fly? Damn. We didn’t know that.

  “So now what?” Macey asked. This time her voice cracked.

  Nia looked at her. “We’re going down. Go strap yourself in, Macey.”

  Nia placed two fingers on a red button on the cockpit’s ceiling. “Mayday… mayday… mayday. This is Flight Ryan-Two. We are headed for an unscheduled landing south of downtown Atlanta. Say again, mayday.”

  “It’s dead,” Peter said. “All the controls are frozen.”

  The v-copter’s giant tilt rotor engines groaned as they rotated from flight mode to landing position.

  “Hey, we aren’t crashing!” Wilma called from the back. “There’s some kind of empty field below.”

  “Yeah, in frakkin’ South-A,” Macey screamed at her. She got it now. She was right to be frightened.

  “I see flashing blue lights. It might be the police.” Wilma sounded hopeful.

  “Those aren’t Buckhead cops, you twit. The police in South-A are owned, just like everywhere else.” Macey pulled her left arm to her mouth; the arm without a viser. My eyes narrowed as I watched. She tapped a finger against a spot just under her bare wrist. One. Two. Three. Four. She spoke to her bare skin. “Code word is Winged Falcon. Say again, code word is Winged Falcon.”

  Damn. She had an emergency transmitter under the skin. We’d jammed the visers, but that thing probably used a special frequency.

  My heart raced as I debated what to do. I could grab Macey and try to cut it out. I was bigger than her, stronger. She wouldn’t be expecting it. But then what? She’d already sent a signal, and if I tried anything, everyone would know what I’d done. My life in Buckhead would be over.

  The aircraft shook as we neared the ground, the engines struggling to keep us steady. The hum turned into a roar and the v-copter lurched, then dropped suddenly. Someone screamed. My body was shoved upward; only the safety harness kept me in my seat. Then we were still, and the roar became a fading whine.

  “There are people outside,” Wilma gasped.

  “Do shut up,” Macey said. She was no longer talking into her arm, but I knew the device was still transmitting. The Freder family had the biggest private militia in Georgia, but it would take time to respond to the signal. I imagined burly men with ugly weapons, dressed in body armor, rushing into waiting v-copters up in Buckhead. Dogs unleashed.

  The hatch opened and men flooded in. They wore dark blue police uniforms but had bandanas pulled over their faces. Their skin was darker than any of ours. Two carried ugly black stun sticks, the tips shining with a hungry red glow.

  “Welcome to South-A, ladies,” said one of the intruders. His voice was a little hoarse, but I still recognized it: Wingate. “These men will help you from your seats and escort you to the waiting carriages for your tour. Do us all a favor, and do exactly what they say. Those sticks won’t kill you, but they’ll sting worse than Daddy’s hand on your behinds. Get moving.” He extended a hand to Macey. “Ms. Freder, please come with me.”

  Macey stared at him, outrage in her sneer. “My escorts are usually willing to show their faces.”

  “It’s better for us both if you never see my face. I want to get you home safely. And I need you to cooperate for that to happen.”

  “So, this is about me?” she asked.

  She’s stalling. She knows help is on the way.

  “Not really,” Wingate replied. “Get moving.”

  “What about my friends?”

  He grabbed her arm. Macey spun her torso away from him, as if there were some place to go, but Wingate was too quick and strong. The shaft of the stun stick was on Macey’s neck like a pouncing cat. All activity on the v-copter stopped as the hostages and predators all watched. “Don’t do that again, or you’ll feel the tip.”

  Macey stood, straightening her silky indigo blouse as she drew herself up to full height—just a bit shorter than Wingate’s six feet. “Let’s go,” she said, as if it had been her idea to get off the v-copter in South Atlanta.

  Wingate led her off.

  “The rest of you form a line. Hands on the shoulders of the girl in front of you. Keep it tight. Now,” barked another of the men. He was stocky, with a mane of oily black hair and a shiny red bandana concealing his lower face. His deep bronze fingers squeezed a stun stick as he spoke. He stared at me with contempt. “You stand right in this spot.” He pointed a stubby finger at the floor. “Move off it and I’ll make you dance.”

  Had Wingate told them about me? I doubted it. I did as Red Bandana instructed. My blood was racing and my fingers itched. I should have been scared, but I wasn’t. My father had told me that would happen. Wilma placed her sweaty palms on my shoulders.

  “Go,” he ordered. We did.

  I walked down the v-copter’s traction ramp and onto rough concrete. The flashing beacon of an ancient gas-powered police cruiser provided some illumination. I could make out a pair of rusted, hoopless basketball poles on either side of the blacktop, and behind us were a collection of pre-fabricated housing modules and a squat multi-story building missing at least half of its windows. A sign high on one of its walls read “Carter High School.” Just below, someone had scrawled “Prosperity through Order” in fluorescent paint.

  Several blocks away I could see the lights of the soaring towers of Peachtree Street, but between there and here there was mostly darkness. A scream echoed from somewhere in the distance; our captors paid it no mind. A rumbling minibus with its headlights switched off rolled into the parking lot, headed toward us. Everything went black as a sack was placed over my head, and my hands were clasped behind my back with a plastika zip cord. I yanked to test it; the binding was strong and tight. A person normally wouldn’t be able to break free. I wasn’t sure if I could or not.

  The bus’s rattling drew closer until I could smell cheap, adulterated gasoline. The high-pitched hum of a scanning device pierced my ears. I heard a gunshot from inside the v-copter. Then another. So much for the crew. I knew what had just happened, but it wasn’t quite real. Tonight, I was cold steel, my normal feelings suppressed. That’s what I’d agreed to. Damn my father.

  “Full scans and checks before we put them on the bus. We’ll take no chances on meeting some Abolitionist militia or Exec-Protect, or whoever else is handling security in Buckhead these days,” Wingate ordered.

  Humming noises whizzed around me. The scanner found nothing. My viser was taken, and a pair of rough hands searched me all over. I jerked away. The goon snickered.

  “I’ve done about a million of these, honey,” he said, his thick accent making each word longer than it needed to be. “Some are more fun than others, though. How come you aren’t wearing jewels like your friends? We’re halfway to rich already from what you girls are wearing.”

  “Eat a deuce, jack-A,” I answered.

  He chuckled. “That’s some ugly words for a richie.”

  The same hands grabbed my arm and pulled me onto the bus. It was like being touched by a burning iron. He shoved me onto a torn, cushionless seat. The footsteps of the other abductors and my classmates followed. If they’d discovered Macey’s transmitter, no one was making a fuss about it. The engine revved and the bus lurched forward. The police siren on the second vehicle sounded for a second before it was silenced.

  The sounds of the South-A streets seeped through the windows. Yelling, crying, motorbike engines, laughter, shattering glass, the occasional gunshot. We’d all seen vids of South-A. It used to be Southie territory, but they didn’t have the strength to hold it any more. No single faction held sway here, nor any corp, nor the current Abolitionist government or any militia. People did what they wanted. Developers like Macey’s dad used South-A horror stories to peddle their secured, integrated housing developments. The Orderists—the respectable on
es that condemned violence—warned it was what the whole country could become. The drug oligopolies supposedly tested their latest concoctions among the street walkers. And some folks just lived here. The unlucky ones.

  “Checkpoint,” warned a voice.

  “Whose?”

  Someone let loose a string of what I presumed to be expletives in a language I didn’t recognize. More voices, more conversation that I couldn’t understand. There were bits of twisted Spanish but it was mostly unintelligible. Barriola, I guessed. I didn’t need to understand the lingo to get the gist: the checkpoint was unexpected.

  “A peep out of any of you, and you get a bullet in the skull,” someone growled.

  “Let’s get this resolved quickly,” Wingate said. “But be ready for anything.”

  There were heavy footsteps as someone exited the bus. Wingate, I assumed. Maybe another of his men followed. Angry shouts greeted the men. There were uneasy breaths all around me. The stink of sweat and fear became thicker than the odor of the cheap gasoline burning in the bus’s engine.

  “Frakkin’ police are worse than the gangs down here,” someone muttered.

  One of the other kidnappers hissed him silent. Voices floated in from outside. They were animated, but the yelling had stopped. For now.

  “Trouble coming. I know it.”

  A pistol’s safety latch clicked beside me. I twisted the band holding my wrists together and shifted around in my seat, struggling to keep still. I was blind and trapped, yet still elated. A tiny voice inside me knew that I should have been feeling the opposite: every moment we spent here was time that the Freder militia had to track us; they could be lifting off on v-copters even now. Yet I ached to hear a gunshot, to break my bonds, to hit someone. I’d been warned about the side effects of the drug in my system, about the urge to fight battles I couldn’t win.

  There was laughter from outside. “How much?” More Barriola followed.

  I strained to hear, imagining that I was outside the bus. My pulse quickened. The voices became clearer. Wingate was talking, and there were two other speakers—locals with thicker drawls. Ominous barks punctuated their sentences.

  “Deal,” one of the locals declared, sounding pleased.

  Footsteps followed, and several seconds later Wingate’s voice rang out as he stepped back onto the bus. “Get moving before they change their mind and have a look around.”

  The bus pulled away.

  “What did that cost?” asked one of the ruffians.

  “A lot,” said Wingate. “I paid them in richie girl jewelry. But that’s the way jobs go. Let’s get this done and it won’t matter.”

  We moved quickly, the engine rattling. We were making sharp turns, and I was constantly colliding with the window beside me.

  “Almost there,” Wingate said, sounding relieved. “Next turn is the street.”

  That was when I heard it. In Buckhead, it was a common enough noise—the sound of v-copter propeller blades chopping through the air. This was like that, but faster, deeper. And it was getting louder. Wingate heard it too.

  “Step on it, Ace,” he urged.

  The driver hit the gas. The minibus’s engine revved, its pistons whining in protest. The bumps came quicker, harder, and I was tossed upward and backward against the hard seat. Wind from a v-copter’s turbines, sent street debris flying into the side of the bus; it sounded like a rainstorm. We took another hard turn, the wheels screeched and the odor of burnt tires flooded my nostrils.

  “Go, go,” urged Wingate. “This street’s too narrow for them to land. We can make it. They can’t do anything from up there without risking the girl.”

  Wrong.

  The sky above us shrieked as the v-copter guns opened fire.

  THREE

  The minibus lifted onto two wheels, the momentum slamming me against the window. Grunts and screams erupted as others were tossed from their seats onto the floor. Another volley of cannon fire burst from above, the ground trembling from the impacts. My ears stung. The shots were close.

  “That’s the safe house,” Wingate yelled. “The garage door is open. Drive onto the sidewalk if you have to. We just need to reach it and get to the tunnels.”

  “They’ll kill us if we move!” one of his men protested.

  “They’re trying to scare us. They won’t fire on this bus.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, too.

  The wheels spun again. More burning odor. We lurched forward, the engine wheezing. We traveled another twenty feet before the v-copter’s guns rang out again. This time it was a shorter burst: targeted fire. A hollow explosion followed, like a balloon pop amplified a thousand times. My heart jumped. The tires, I realized. Metal scraped against concrete as the bus dragged itself forward, struggling for traction.

  “In there,” Wingate urged. “Get as far inside as you can, out of their firing angle.”

  Somehow, the bus managed to turn. There was another hard bump. I tasted blood in my mouth as my teeth slammed together. The bus gave a final lurch, then stopped.

  The bag was ripped from my head and my bonds were cut three-quarters of the way through with the precise slice of a blade. They’d snap easily whenever I chose. Wingate’s eyes stared into mine for a fleeting instant. There was apology, urgency, and a plea for help swirling in a sea of dark emerald. I couldn’t see the rest of his face behind the bandana, but I knew it well enough: square whiskered jaw, crooked nose, sharply angled brows. When I was growing up, he’d reminded me of a cowboy from an ancient sim.

  Wingate’s attention shifted elsewhere. “Get the hoods off them all. We need to move. Get to the bolt holes.”

  There was a chaotic press of bodies. Wilma’s eyes were bloodshot and wide as she hurried off the bus. The rest were herded after her. Only Nia struggled, slipping out of her captor’s grasp; her eyes flicked to the gun at his waist, but her hands were bound. Another of Wingate’s ruffians grabbed Nia’s arm and yanked her toward the exit. She bit him, as quick as a snake. He howled, striking her across the face with a tight fist. Nia crashed over the seat in front of her, blood oozing from her mouth. Suddenly, I wanted to fight, although I wasn’t sure against whom. My hands formed fists, but I shook my head to banish the sensation. The rogue policeman grabbed Nia by the neck. She winced as he pushed her forward. I got off the bus ahead of them.

  We were inside a derelict warehouse. There was little else there except four walls, us, and several piles of building debris. There had once been a second floor, but it had collapsed, revealing the building’s crumbling ceiling some thirty feet above our heads. The place stank like a clogged sewer.

  Red Bandana hovered at the garage door we’d just passed through, peering carefully into the street. “The police cruiser is toast. Benny and Giff, too.” He shook his head as he turned his gaze upward. “Bastards are dropping ropes. They’re coming down! Frakkin’ commandos or something. There are Georgia National Guard markings on that thing—those are the governor’s men.”

  Wingate pointed toward an alcove at the back of the building. “The old bathrooms—lift the floor boards. Each one has a tunnel.”

  “You don’t think they’ll find us down there?” screamed another of the men. “We’re done. You screwed this one up, Winny.”

  “There are explosive charges in the tunnels—we’ll close the way behind us. They won’t have digging equipment. And they won’t know which exit we took or where those tunnels lead.”

  Except they will. Because of the tracker.

  “Give it up, boys,” said Nia. Every head turned toward her. Dried blood was splattered on her purple chin. “We’ll get them to spare your lives. My mom works for a government security company—she’ll put in a word if I ask her. You’ll get a government trial, maybe you’ll walk. But only if this ends now.” She looked at Wingate, then at me. Something in her eyes sparkled with triumph despite her predicament. She knows about me. Too smart for her own good.

  “Your mommy ain’t the forgiving type, I’m su
re. Gregory Freder sure as hell isn’t. Only one way out of this for us,” Wingate said. He pulled something out of a black canvas bag—short rods of some kind. To his men, he yelled, “Get moving”

  A blinding flash of lightning ripped through the warehouse. The air tingled and sizzled, and one of Wingate’s men gasped. There was a hole with the circumference of a dollar coin clean through his chest, wisps of smoke rising as his flesh smoldered. He toppled to the ground.

  Everyone froze except Wingate, who ran toward the open garage door. Outside, men in olive combat fatigues, each of them wearing a black helmet with a dark visor that covered the upper portion of their faces, filled the street. They carried rifles, strange ones with short, stubby barrels.

  “Force weapons!” someone screamed.

  “Everyone cover your eyes!” shouted Wingate as he tossed one of the rods outside, dropping to the ground as he did so. A moment later he hurled another. I turned away, waiting for an explosion, but there was none. Instead, light became day, or something like it. An ugly white blaze blanketed the area outside the warehouse, its luminescence so intense that even facing the opposite direction and shielded by the warehouse walls, I had to squint.

  “They’ve all got night vision on,” Wingate said with satisfaction. “The whole damn lot of them should be blinded by the flares.”

  He tossed something else. “Move!”

  This time there was an explosion. The ground shook, and debris fell from the ceiling. I found myself smiling for some reason. I turned away when I saw Nia watching me. I shouldn’t have been enjoying this.

  “Let’s get out of here before the next group arrives.” Wingate didn’t spare a glance at the dead man lying on the floor, his body steaming like dinner.

  “No way,” I yelled at him. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  He turned to me, his eyes tight. Annoyed. Puzzled.

  “You’ll have to drag me,” I said.

  Wingate got it. He grabbed my arm, and I allowed myself to be hurled forward toward the escape tunnels with the others. I pretended to stumble.