Episode 3 | Chapter 20 - Operation: Material Obligation

Episode 3 - Plowshares

Chapter 20 - Operation: Material Obligation

“What do you mean you don't accept Agricoins? I’ve saved up 15,000 Agricoins over the last twenty years, what are they worth if I can’t get my family out?”

“Intertrain does not transact in local currencies. I-Euro’s only,” explains a tired clerk at the Intertrain station flanked by APS wearing urban camo with rifles across their chests. A Canis sits at the feet of one, panting and wagging its short tail.

“Where can I buy I-Euros?”

“You can’t. I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told everyone else the last four days, Plowshares doesn’t exist anymore, the value of Agricoin credit is non-existent. You couldn’t buy a single I-Euro if you had a million Agricoins.”

“But I’ve never been allowed to buy I-Euros, I'd never even heard of them till all of this. What am I meant to do? What was the point of anything?” cries the desperate man.

One of the APS soldiers shoves him in the shoulder with the butt of their rifle, barking a commanding “Move along!”

“Oi, eyes front!” snaps Blake silently in my ear via the Vespa.

I’m sitting in the passenger seat in the cabin of the armored-bus, Blake next to me with a rifle shoved down the gap between our seats. I glance back at the screen of my tablet even thought I can see the street in front of us is empty just fine.

“No symbionts on the street ahead,” I confirm. A whole rats-nest of sensors has been assembled on the dash in front of me, cables leading back to my tablet and the battery pack on my lap. Admittedly it can see where I cannot, so it is still useful. Plus I’m not sure what I would say if I didn’t have it to protect me from revealing my sight. I twist one of the cords impatiently around my index finger.

The train station at Borough is just about the most chaotic thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

Communities of free-men have assembled in the streets, a minimal number of symbionts flying above or perched on their shoulders. They jostle with one another in crowds in front of a supply tent being managed by APS with crates of bottled water and rations. Fights are breaking out about supplies as simple as freeze dried fruit, flour, and bottled water. Beyond, in buildings with smashed windows and looted lobbies, serfs watch from the upper levels in the shadows. What was once an organized footpath seems a warzone now, although most are giving our armored vehicle a wide berth.

APS hover in the periphery, not intervening as long as the inhabitants don’t come too close to the train station or shelters prepared for their own equipment and men. They stand between the barricades in urban camouflage, planted feet and wide stances keeping a supervisory eye on the chaos. An assortment of Canis and Ursus stand just as alert with them. A whole team of Pteropus are hanging from the edges of the tents, swinging upside down wrapped in cloaks of their own leathery wings in vibrant colors.

Equipment with any value is already sold, the huge harvesters and tractors that would have once plowed the fields are silent and missing. Recruiters have already swept the populace, acquiring any person with a useful symbiont that might be salable to another company - first to go will always be those with symbionts that can generate electricity, or run carbon scrubbers, or the ion pumps used for removing water contaminants too small for filtration. The water purification facility has long since shut down, the batteries at the now non-functioning generators will likely lose power sometime during the night. This is truly the last dying gasps of a city-dome.

Kinda puts things into perspective. I don’t ever remember going hungry or worrying if the oxygen would run out, even if I didn’t much like the food.

I lean out the window and look across the barren fields beyond the buildings. Where once symbionts would have pulled agricultural equipment there is only a thin layer of friable dust resting between the ruts in the soil, occasionally disturbed by the shuffling step of the massive herd of symbionts beyond. Horned heads and dark eyes watch, restless hooves pawing at the infertile earth. Bos, Oryx, Kobus, Cervus, too many to species to name.

The occasional desiccated stem withers under the yellow sky. Not even weeds grow without heavy human intervention and copious soil amendments.

I can see Aster over with the APS Commander, who is gesturing broadly about the ration distribution operation in front of the train station where most of the APS troops are gathered. Aster is straight backed and stiff shouldered, the model soldier. He gives a sharp salute and pivots back towards us, head turning to watch the crowd as he returns. His voice carries in our ears, “We’ve been given permission to move through. APS is assigning one of their own to us though.”

“Why?” returns Everett’s voice. He’s standing in the back of the bus above the cabin, where part of the roof is open and he can lean overhead and watch the situation from on high.

“Says it's so we have someone who knows the local situation. But mostly they don’t trust us, and I don’t trust them. Stay sharp.”

I can almost feel Everett’s brooding annoyance over the silence that follows.

A few waved hands follow and a soldier jogs up to Aster. A thin, dark haired man who salutes and shakes Aster’s hand, then begins to walk with him back towards the bus as they briskly talk. At his tail, from between the tents, a black bodied Panthera begins to follow.

Unlike the one at that manifestation that was striped in white and black with gold horns, this one is slimmer with rosettes of black on the deep sienna brown of its hide. Its lower jaw hangs slightly open as it pads after its host, lower lip shaking with each step. Brass colored eyes gaze from side to side as it weaves between the barricades safely clear of the crowd. I glance at my tablet screen, counting the dots on the screen and cross-referencing them out the window. Just like Pooka, the sensors can’t detect it.

We got eyes on him?

Pooka wheels above through the air, the wings of his Aquila form catching the slightest movement of the still air. We bank, skimming low over the buildings and come in overhead, and watch the trailing Panthera from above. Pooka clicks his beak in confirmation. As long as you don’t blink your sight off for our bodies.

“Attention men,” announces Aster aloud from the side of the bus. “This is Cain. He’ll be joining us.”

“Pleasure’s mine, cobs,” calls Cain in greeting.

I hear the back of the bus unbar, and Aster and the new man climb in the back. There’s two loud raps on the back of the cabin and Aster’s voice is just audible, “More out Blake.”

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“Copy Commander.” Blake’s Bison lowers his head and leans his shoulders forward into the weight of the vehicle, starting a thundering charge up the road. I brace a few of my instruments against the dash, and we make quick progress through the streets, Rishi checking in to confirm our position and get operational updates.

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“I mean we knew it would get bad, we didn’t think it would get this bad,” says Noah Morgan, President of whatever Plowshares is these days, to Aster as Everett counts heads and marks them off on his tablet.

We’re on the third floor of the old Executive apartments, the last remaining members of upper management and the family they had not gotten out yet are all assembled onto the same floor for our extraction. Mostly it’s their adult partners or older children, but Noah, a middle aged wispish man with dark skin and what was probably a sharp fade that has now grown out, kept his two young daughters with him to the end. Like it was some noble gesture, going down with the ship.

I have a handful of water bottles in my arms, bringing them around to the gathered management, some still wearing suit pants and collared shirts, sitting on military cots instead of the synthetic leather furniture they were used to.

“How do you mean, Sir?” replies Aster with the perfect amount of polite interest, one hand has his thumb tucked into his armor, the other wrapped around the rifle hanging across his chest. His symbiont dances on the top of his head in odd juxtaposition to the character he’s playing.

“Until twelve months ago I really thought we could save it. Six hundred families have relied on Plowshares for generations, and I’m the one to finally see our downfall,” sighs Noah, twisting a silver ring on the knuckle of his finger. “I didn’t really blame them when the looting broke out. A band of free-men tried to hold some of the middle management ransom till they worked out Agricoin and credit would be useless to them, and that only the C-suite got paid in I-Euro. That put a target on our heads quick... Let alone…” he sighs and abandons the thought. “It’s hard to keep on trying when they’d rather use you for a coin than cooperate… But it’s not like there is much help left for us to give,” continues Noah, head in his hands and sitting despondently on a collapsible military supply chair.

I hold my tongue and pass another water bottle out, Blake stands at my side handing out blankets and a piece of fresh fruit to everyone from the supplies we bought with us.

“Was this a long time coming, Sir?” questions Aster mildly.

Cain is positioned by the doorway, leaning as a guard against the outside world. His Panthera remained outside, but followed us the whole drive. He loops his fingers through his belt loops and turns slightly to listen to the conversation.

Noah reaches out a hand as I draw near. I place a bottle within it obediently. “We held on as long as we could after bioengineering really took off. There was still a place for commodity chemical production with plants long after most agricultural food production moved to hydro- and aeroponics. Opiates and a few other drugs, a few precursor industrial chemical ingredients, renewable complex carbon sources for hydrocarbons and plastic manufacturing, the like…”

“Technology has moved so quickly the last twenty years. It's just become too expensive to supplement soil that has already given up all it can give, and you just can’t compete the same way for space when we can ferment most of these products in bioreactors now,” adds a woman sitting nearby, still wearing a suit jacket.

Noah nods. “Eventually, it was going to catch up with us. The debts just kept on building up, they were too high by the time we realized we needed to pivot and just the process of trying to get more money to fund modernization alerted our creditors that we were facing issues. They called in what was due, forcing us into administration. I’ve given every waking hour to renegotiating our debts to buy us time to manage this as calmly as we could. Over three hundred years of history, gone just like that now.” His youngest daughter comes to join him, and he holds the water bottle steady for her as she takes a drink.

“We see it happen a lot these days,” adds Cain suddenly from the doorway, checking a message on the underside of his wrist as he speaks. “Every second contract is trying to manage failed city-domes. They can look worse than this, you did a half decent job.”

“Thirty two heads,” summarizes Everett, interrupting the conversation, “It’ll be a tight fit on the bus.”

Aster opens his palm and takes the list off Everett, scrolling it with his finger. “And a cramped fit in the box car,” he adds thoughtfully.

Rishi chimes in through the Vespa, “I’ll organize a second car with Intertrain for tomorrow. We’ll need the room.”

“We can manage,” replies Noah, lifting his hand to scratch at the back of his neck.

“Anyone have any large symbionts we’ll struggle to move?” asks Aster.

Noah shakes his head, “It’s all documented on the list, nothing larger than a Columba. They can sit on shoulders or in hands. We can take turns standing if we have to when folks get tired.”

“It won’t be that tight on the train,” reassures Aster, “but the ride to the station will be cramped. We’ll do our best to keep you comfortable.”

I look about the room and scan all the symbionts on shoulders and sitting on the ground under cots where they won’t trip anyone, all small useless vertebrates who’d never work a day in the labor heavy demands of the fields. The thought gives me an idea. I hand the last water bottle out, returning to my impromptu sensor station and begin counting the symbionts on the screen, clicking the field of view out a little to get a larger shot of the vicinity.

I plop myself down onto the ground, shifting a few of the items on my belt so I don’t sit on them and tugging the body armor around my neck as it slips upwards. “Adrian, can you call someone over here?” I whisper aloud, giving Cain a sideways glance in the doorway.

“Conrada needs someone,” repeats Adrian’s voice a moment later into the Vespa. I pop open a text app on my tablet and begin typing.

There’s not enough symbionts.

Everett crouches over my shoulder, the butt of his rifle just touching my back. I shift silently, sniffing and tap my screen. I can feel his breath on the back of my neck as he reads.

Everett’s voice speaks silently through the Vespa, “What do you mean?”

I clear the line and type a new message. I’m saying based on your headcount and the number of us here, we are one symbiont short. And I will bet it’s Cain’s. I leave off the fact that it can't see Pooka as well.

“What’s up Rhett?” asks Aster.

“Did Cain or the APS Commander give any hint what his symbiont is?”

“No, we got a situation?”

“According to Conrada we’re missing a symbiont,” replies Everett.

“Cloaking species then is my bet. Which doesn’t narrow it down a whole lot at a company like APS. Once someone gets a chance, check our path and the bus for anything unusual. Good work Squall.”

Everett puts a hand on my shoulder as he stands, and I flinch from his touch. His fingers curl as he withdraws his hand. Just as he stands, the lights dim, flicker, then completely go out. There’s a pause as everyone’s heads turn to look at the LEDs overhead and out the window to the afternoon half-light.

“Blake, go get the floodlights out of the bus,” orders Aster, “Conrad, can you get a battery pack hooked up for us?”

I glance at my sensors again, then catch Cain watching me as I stand up.

“Copy,” barks Blake.

I don’t acknowledge the order, but I follow him out. On the street, sitting behind the back wheel of the bus, the Panthera looks at me when I look at it, its lower lip hanging to reveal gleaming white teeth.