CHAPTER 20

Lumiea

Year -20 (L.D.)

Rain had darkened the soil, glistening over grass, and set a chill in the air. Aeryn and the rest of her squad walked quietly in formation down the cracked pavement of the decades-old remnants of an old world neighborhood. Most of the damage from the Liberation was left to history books with most war zones long since rebuilt and now thriving. In desolate areas, however, where resistance had not surrendered and the fighting continued, the scars of the war their planet faced lived on.

Sensors had detected body heat in this area overnight. What the war had not destroyed of the dilapidated and unkempt apartment buildings and homes, time finished off. Time and rebel forces who could find use of just about anything it seemed. There wasn't a sliver of glass to be seen in any window. Aeryn had heard they collected and used the glass for shrapnel bombs. She imagined much of the debris could be used this way.

Considering that this zone was strictly off-limits, they assumed that any trespassers were rebel forces. And so here they were, on their first patrol, seeking out any life in the desolate area.

Their analyst, Trin, peered through the glasses that assisted her in taking measurements and data. "Nothing. The drones probably scared them away."

"What do they do here, anyway?" Nikka peered through the scope of her gun to study a roofline. "There's nothing here."

"They're just on the run, I think," Jace said. "Sometimes they'll return to ground they lost once we don't have so many troops patrolling."

"I can't wait until we get to go do real work." Alix rolled his shoulders. "They don't need us for this. Drones can handle it."

"Good practice," Trin said. "Hang on. There's fingerprints on the door over there. Let's check out this apartment."

As the bioengineer, Aeryn always walked in the center of the group, flanked by two combat soldiers and behind another. She carried weapons as well, but her focus was not on identifying and neutralizing enemies. It was her job to monitor everyone's equipment and health and to constantly assess the environment for any resources she could use in the event of an emergency. Helping to patrol was a secondary objective. She'd never seen so few resources as here. The soil had even been dug up in some places, likely mined for minerals.

When they entered the apartment, she remained by the door with Trin as the combat soldiers searched each room. It was hard to imagine that this was once a home. Anything of value had been taken long ago. The rooms were caked with dust and debris. She expected to see old furniture abandoned here, but there was nothing. Rebels must have taken the wood and fabric of the furniture over the years until it was all gone.

Splatters of dark, old blood stained the hallway ahead. People had died here, hadn't they? Long ago before she was born. Had Aeryn ever truly imagined what it was like to live through the liberation?

It must have been terrifying for the families in this home to see soldiers from another world come to their planet and fight their soldiers. They had no way of knowing they could trust the Federation or that everything would be better once the fighting ended. Her stomach twisted at the thought of children cowering as strangers opened fire on the streets.

The war hadn't affected every neighborhood in the world. The Federation believed in minimizing the loss of life, property, and prosperity to the greatest extent possible. Unfortunately, war had come to plenty of homes.

Aeryn and her squad would bring such destruction to Earth.

There would be children there too. Children who didn't understand what was happening.

Nausea churned in her stomach.

"Clear." Her comrade's voices rang out throughout the apartment.

"They were here within the day." Trin lifted a swab she had run along a torn piece of cloth darkened with blood.

"We better keep searching then," Jace said.

The day continued much like that. It took hours before they found further sign of human activity, this time in the form of bread that mice had carried back to their nests. Aeryn tried not to imagine the days when life thrived here, when death came, all the dark and quiet days that followed.

What did Aeryn know about life and death or saving planets? But that question felt like an excuse. Shouldn't she understand the cause she'd dedicated her life to?

The lifelessness of the neighborhood crept into her bones like a deep cold.

Eventually, it turned to sorrow that for a small amount of her world, the fighting never ended. There should have been peace by now. Liberation Day had come for Lumiea before Aeryn was born. Her parents had only been babies the day their world changed forever. While Aeryn didn't know a different way of life, she'd learned about life before the Federation in school and heard plenty from her parents. Eventually, every nation on the planet had agreed to join the Federation, but some regions fell to warfare. There were those who said they would never surrender. Her mother had told her that as a girl she hadn't believed it was true.

But it was. To this day small factions refused to concede defeat. The Federation could have wiped these people out, but their guiding principle meant this was not an option. Life, property, prosperity. These were to be preserved to the greatest extent possible. The rebels were not wiped out, but controlled. And once the dissent reached a level that the governments of Lumiea could handle independently, the Federation left it to them out of another core value that worlds needed to have as much independence in their governing as they could be trusted with.

In truth, it puzzled her that anyone managed to keep up the fight when it was completely pointless. The Omni-AI monitored their entire planet and the nations of Lumiea continued to follow the laws they had agreed to with the Federation. Less than one percent of the world continued to rebel. They threw their lives away for nothing. Aeryn didn't understand why they would want to go back to how things were before, anyway. No one in her world went hungry anymore, not unless they were criminals who refused to abide by the laws and participate in society. Omni-AI had helped to lower petty crimes and to predict natural disasters with a high degree of accuracy. The benefits were too great to count, even ignoring the fact that Lumiea had been at severe risk of societal collapse at some point before the Federation stepped in. Many of the rules their world had agreed to involved not destroying one another in war or destroying the rights of normal people.

As far as Aeryn was concerned, they had a pretty good deal going. Sure, it was expected of citizens to follow the rules. Any society would expect that. Aeryn figured that the old who had been on the front lines of fighting against the Federation had raised their children on propaganda that convinced them to deny themselves the lifestyle the rest of the world enjoyed.

The rebellion needed to be contained so it would not spread like a cancer throughout society. It had become the job of young soldiers who needed to train to help keep the dissenters from spreading or from disrupting society.

After half a day of patrolling, they crossed paths with another squad and shared their information. When someone came to replace them and they returned to camp for the night, Aeryn felt exhausted. Even though they hadn't done anything, remaining alert for so long and having to be prepared for danger–real danger that could cost someone their life–wore on her mentally.

It frustrated her as well to see an abandoned town that could have been cleaned up and made into something useful go to waste. When they'd flown into this uninhabited zone, Aeryn had seen with her own eyes how civilization shrank back from the desolate warzone. Such a waste. Seeing the remnants of the war, she understood for the first time why resistance had continued in the first first few years after Liberation. People had lost their homes and their way of life. It was an impossible transition. But why still? Were these rebels fighting for empty apartments? They claimed to want agency and freedom. Aeryn felt she'd always had both. She didn't need to fight a pointless war to win it.

The cost of Liberation and the continued rebellion must have worn on the others as heavily as did for Aeryn, because that first night after returning to camp, everyone had gone to bed as soon as they could. There was no drinking or dancing. Certainly no kissing. Only quiet.

In the morning, Aeryn walked with the group, finding that she missed the training grounds. She wasn't used to being on duty constantly but with so little action and far too much time to think. Her thoughts had gotten away from her yesterday.

Things the second day were different, however. They were adjusting to the duty and everyone was more talkative.

"I never thought I'd miss the bed in the dorm." Aeryn grinned at Nikka.

"These cots killed my hips. I swear it's not necessary. We surely could have something better. It's got to be some stupid character building thing."

While everyone talked casually, even Trin, the most serious of them all surprisingly turned out to be Jace. Gone was the playful smile, the teasing, the willingness to talk. The only time he really had anything to say was in regard to the mission or to respond to a question asked. While he wasn't completely cold or dismissive, his attention was entirely on his mission.

Even Aeryn knew to take a bit of stress relief when there was time for it. But Jace was all business.

They'd just laughed at a joke Alix made, when Trin raised her hand. Everyone fell quiet.

"Heat signature," she whispered.

Silence followed. Someone was here.

Trin transmitted the rest of the information through their earpieces. The voice she'd chosen for her AI had a smooth cadence that was inherently calming. Smart. Because Aeryn's nerves felt completely shot now.

They crept through an alleyway with silent steps to get closer to the coordinates. She'd thought that her instinct would help her shut off her fear like she'd learned to do in training, but she struggled to keep the tremble from her fingers as they drew closer.

Once they were close enough to pursue the rebels but still far enough away to stay hidden, Aeryn removed the mini-drone, hardly the size of her pinky, from her pouch and released it. The video would transmit to their devices, but it would also go directly to Trin's neural implant so she could visualize it in her mind, or have it cast over her glasses.

Aeryn flipped her wrist to look at the small square screen. The drone closed in on the alley where the heat signature had been identified. Swooping past the crumbling corner of a building, it stopped directly where the rebel should be.

Except a plain brick wall met them.

"That can't be right. I see it right now." The voice in her earpiece was Trin's this time even though her mouth didn't move. "There's a clear heat signature in the shape of a person."

But no one was there. It was a trick.

"They have mods," Jace said, his voice low and filled with danger. "Good ones. It's a trap."