I haven't mentioned this on the blog, but I made it into Round 2 of the
Short Story SmackDown being put on by Wattpad ScienceFiction. From all the challengers, I'm part of the final 13. All the writers in this round are
really good, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. To read my Round 2 entry,
click here (or just read it below)
The dreadnaught shivered and groaned as its shields absorbed the impact of a thermonuclear explosion on the port side. Paul watched through his gunner port as the hull of the insurgent flagship splintered and broke apart. Parts of the ship had already started to re-enter the planet's atmosphere and disintegrate. Some of the insurgent swarm ships and fighters attempted to dart through the coalition blockade, but most continued to press the futile attack on the coalition ships, even though their own fleet had been all but wiped out.
"Keep firing, dammit!" Paul's commanding officer barked over the comm-link.
Paul swiveled in his gunner pod, locking on an insurgent drone nexus. He squeezed the triggers, his one hand aching from the hours of battle while his cybernetic prosthesis continued to function tirelessly. The plasma-shells tore through the paper-thin bilge of the insurgent ship and within seconds the reactor core detonated, blowing the ship into tiny pieces. Almost immediately, the drones under its control faltered and then went idle, floating harmlessly in whatever direction they had been traveling in a moment before. Paul cracked the knuckles of his natural fingers, and then went back to firing.
Everywhere that Paul could see through his gunner port, similar scenes were playing out. With no more capital ships to provide cover for the rest of the fleet, the coalition was tearing through the insurgent fleet effortlessly. Paul wondered how much longer the insurgent forces would continue to fight this hopeless fight. Better to be taken as a coalition POW than die in the cold vacuum of space for a lost cause, Paul thought.
Almost as soon as the idea passed through Paul's mind, the battle stopped and the space visible through Paul's gunner port became completely still. Paul's gunner pod locked, rotating around so that it was docked in travel position. Paul hit the call switch.
"Hey, what gives?" he asked the operator.
"Can it, Kobashigawa," came the reply from his commanding officer. "The Supreme Commander will be on the line any moment,"
Paul flipped the call switch and slumped in his chair. If he'd learned nothing else from being a gunner in the navy, it was to be patient. As he waited, Paul craned his neck to look out the porthole in the back of his gunner pod. The dreadnaught had turned on its axis so that Paul's back was now facing toward the planet. Through the opening, he could see clouds stretching out over the horizon toward a moonrise. From this angle, it was as if the battle that he had just been fighting had never happened. "All you've got to do is look at things from a different direction," Paul whispered to himself.
"The War is over," came the Supreme Commander's rich baritone over the encrypted comm-link. "The remaining insurgent forces have submitted articles of surrender. We've won, boys. We're going home." The comm-link hissed for a moment and then went silent.
"That's it?" Paul asked incredulously. The Insurgent War had only been going for a little over a dozen months, but this abrupt ending still felt anti-climactic. Wasn't there supposed to be some epic final battle? Wasn't there supposed to be a final showdown? A few hours ago, the insurgent fleets had been the bane of this system. But now, after the Second Fleet had more or less caught the insurgent fleets gathered with their collective pants down, the insurgency had been crushed and tossed into the junk pile of history.
The hatch to Paul's gunner pod popped open with a metallic clank and he climbed out. Up and down the ship, other gunners were climbing from their pods as well.
"Hey! Kobashigawa! Can you believe it? We got 'em!" called one of Paul's shipmates.
Paul shrugged his shoulders. "I can't believe it. I mean... It was all so fast."
"Yeah, we really stuck it to those bastards," whooped another gunner. "Good thing, too. I'm getting space sick up here. I'm ready to go home."
Paul thought about that for a moment. He had assumed the Commander's words were hyperbole.
"I don't know, Tom," Paul said. "You really think we're going right home?"
"Hell yeah," Tom laughed. "You know how expensive it is to keep the fleet in orbit. The government is going to discharge us as soon as technically possible. You watch, we'll get our walking papers within the next twenty-four hours. I bet they've had admin processing everything since the moment the admiralty realized that there was a slim chance we'd crush the insurgents. They'll dump our sorry asses the minute we dock."
Seventeen hours later, Paul Kobashigawa found himself on a transport ship back to his hometown. On the short ride home, he felt a nervousness bubbling up in his guts. He hadn't been home in months and he hadn't left on the best of terms with his parents. Would they be happy to see him back? He checked his navy-issue watch. At this rate, he figured he'd be home just in time for everyone else to be waking up.
By the time the transport reached the transit center, the sun was just beginning to peek up over the horizon. He looked out the window of the transport ship, marveling at how much things looked the same, and yet how much they had changed. The change was most evident in all the fortifications. Heavy mechs and ion cannons dotted the streets in key locations. Paul shook his head again as he thought about how quickly the insurgency had gone from a global threat to a fading memory... not that anyone in this town knew it yet, unless they had woken early and heard the news.
The shuttle landed with a heavy thud. Paul disembarked, shouldering his navy-issue duffle bag and cut through the sparse crowd toward the exit. Outside the station, a heavy mech scanned Paul's face with a green sensor, its gatling cannon trained on Paul's torso. Once it was satisfied he wasn't a threat, it stomped off down the road, scanning other people leaving the station.
Paul's parents lived only a few blocks from the transit station, so he seized the opportunity for a brisk morning walk. All the time he'd spent in orbit, cooped up in a navy ship, had left him longing for fresh air and the reassuring press of a planet's gravity. But even so, by the time he reached his parent's house, he was winded. The air here wasn't as oxygen rich as the air on the ship. And his body wasn't used to being pulled downward with such a consistent force.
"Christ," Paul huffed, checking his watch. It had taken him twenty minutes to walk such a short distance. He leaned against the front door the catch his breath, but as he did so, the door opened and he nearly fell over as he tumbled into the house.
A pair of strong hands caught Paul under his armpits and hoisted him back upright. "I wondered when you'd be home," said a familiar voice.
Paul turned to see his father giving him a disapproving look. This was more or less the lukewarm reception Paul had expected.
"Hey Dad," Paul said awkwardly. "Have you heard?"
"War's over," Paul's father said flatly. "No thanks to you."
Paul couldn't help but grimace. "What do you mean, Dad? I was up there fighting the insurgents. I was at the last battle. I did my part."
"Don't feed me that bullcrap, Paul," his father snapped. "The Agency for Central Investigations sent a couple agents over last week. They've got your number, Paul. You're a deserter and a thief. You thought you could fool us all by running off to the navy and then cutting out when the going got too tough. Well, now you're going to have to pay the consequences."
"What the hell are you talking about, Dad?" Paul asked. "I literally just got off a transport. I walked here from the station."
"What's going on out there?" came a voice from within the house.
"Paul's home," his father said, "but he's leaving."
"Paul?" his mother cried out. She ran to the doorway, nudging Paul's father out of the way. "Oh, my little boy! I'm so happy you've come back to us!"
"He's leaving, Betty," Paul's father said again.
"Oh, stop that, Yoshindo," Betty said. "Don't listen to your father, Paul. Come in, come in."
"Goddamit, Betty, you let him in and we're harboring a criminal! He made his own bed, let him sleep in it."
"Hold on," Paul said. "Just hold on! What is all this you're saying about me being a criminal, Dad? I just got home. I was in the War! How can I possibly be a criminal? Look, I've got my discharge data right here." Paul pulled out a datasheet and handed it to his father.
Yoshindo snatched the datasheet from his son and scanned the information. "Hmmm," he hummed thoughtfully. Paul's father had been a cryptologist before he retired. Authenticating government issued datasheets had been his specialty.
"This looks authentic," he said at last. "There," Betty said, reaching out and taking Paul's hands. He could feel her squeezing on his natural hand tightly while she barely put any pressure on his prosthesis. She'd always been careful with his cybernetic hand, ever since he'd gotten it as a boy, even though it was all but indestructible. "I knew there had just been some sort of misunderstanding."
Yoshindo said nothing, turning and going back into the house. He had always been a distant father, but as he aged, he had also become conspiratorial and suspicious.
"Come in," Betty said warmly. "Come in! I've been so worried about you. Come in and eat, eat, eat! You're as thin as a rail."
Once Paul had taken a seat at the breakfast table, he didn't waste a moment asking what was going on. "What do you mean when you say that there were some ACI men here looking for me, Dad?" he asked.
"Oh, that was just nothing," Betty said quickly.
"It wasn't nothing, Betty," Yoshindo snapped. "They were looking for you, Paul. It was serious. Seems you've been running a racket. Insurance fraud. Credit fraud. Tax fraud. Not to mention deserting your post. They had a long list of offenses. They had datasheets. They had photos. Seems you've been a busy boy."
"That's impossible," Paul said. "I've been in orbit."
"So your datasheet says," his father said skeptically.
"This makes no sense. There must have been a mixup," Paul said. "I don't get it at all."
"Oh, let's not talk about this right now," Betty said. "Let's just enjoy our first family breakfast in far, far too long. I'm making your favorite, Paul!"
"I'll just have coffee," Yoshindo grumbled. "And the news."
At his insistence, the wall of the kitchen erupted in a collage of news networks.
"Kitsune," he told the wall. At once, one network filled the entire wall.
"This is all he does, now that he's retired," Betty whispered to Paul as she poured him a glass of soy milk. "It's Kitsune News, all day every day. I get sick of listening to it, but he won't turn it off and I don't want to argue."
"I can hear you, Betty. I'm not deaf," Yoshindo said.
Paul hadn't watched or listened to any news networks since he'd gone into orbit. Any broadcasts that might affect the morale of the troops was strictly prohibited, and this meant all news and pop-culture. Having been away from the media for so long, seeing it now felt like watching something exotic or even alien.
"... and now for this breaking news," the newscaster said. Paul didn't recognize the blonde life-sized Barbie lookalike. Maybe she was new? Pretty much all the women on Kitsune looked the same. That was one of the selling points of the network.
"Turn it up," Yoshindo barked at the wall.
"We've just learned of a massive data breach at one of the planet's most sensitive rating agencies," the newscaster said. "Officials from the genetic rating agency Unifax have confirmed that the records of more than 50% of the planet have been compromised over the course of the last twelve months in what authorities are calling the largest and most unsettling hack in history."
"Insurgents, that's who did that," Yoshindo said, sipping his coffee. "I'll bet you my pension on that one." "For more on this incredible breaking story, we've brought in data security expert Dr. Andrew Hayes." The newscaster nodded toward a gray man in a gray suit that looked not unlike Paul's father.
"Turn that nonsense off," Betty told her husband. "Can't we have a moment of peace in this house?"
"Let's leave it on, just for a moment, is that okay Mom?" Paul asked. Something about this story made Paul feel unsettled.
"Oh, alright," Betty said, patting Paul on the shoulder. "But after this, let's have some quiet time."
"Thanks, Mom," Paul said, turning his attention back to the news.
"Dr. Hayes, what does this data breach mean for the average citizen?" the newscaster asked.
"This is... Let me put it frankly. It's bad," Dr. Hayes said. "With this breach, hackers are now in control of the genetic data of billions of people. With this information they could easily forge biometric signatures, impersonate individuals to commit crimes and fraudulent activities, and even clone individuals. We're looking at a doomsday scenario, here, and there's not much we can do to stop it. The genie is out of the bottle. It's bad."
"Holy smokes," Paul said to himself. He turned to his father. "Dad, you said the ACI guys had photos of me? Datasheets? Are you sure it was me? Did they give you a good look?"
"I verified the datasheets," his father said. "They had your signature, your profile."
"And I saw the photos," Betty said. "They were convincing pictures. Even I would have been fooled."
"Christ," Paul said. "Do you think my genetic data was stolen in the hack?" His question hang in the air for a few moments.
A loud banging on the front door broke the tension in the room.
"Oh, who could that be at this time in the morning?" Betty asked.
"I'll get it, Mom," Paul said, pushing himself away from the breakfast table.
He opened the front door to two large, serious-looking men in dark suits.
"Paul Kobashigawa?" one of the men asked.
"I'm Paul," Paul answered.
"You're under arrest," the other man said, flashing an ACI badge.
"For what?" Paul asked. "What the heck is going on here?"
The first agent showed Paul a photo of a masked man in a dark suit and tie holding a rifle in his cybernetic hand. "Is this you?" the agent asked Paul.
"No," Paul said, his eyes lingering on the prosthesis. "I just got back from a deployment. I've been in orbit."
"That's not what our datasheets say," the other agent said in a monotone.
"This is crazy," Paul said, stepping back into the house. "There's been some sort of mixup. Have you guys heard about the Unifax data breach? Someone must have gotten hold of my genetic data."
"Look, Mr. Kobashigawa, you can come quietly or we can make a scene. It's up to you," the agent droned.
Paul felt his father's hand on his shoulder. "It'll be alright, Son," he said uncharacteristically.
"No, no, I'm not going," Paul said. "I haven't done anything wrong here. I just got home less than an hour ago. I've been in orbit. I'm in the navy. I've been fighting in the War."
One of the agents lunged for Paul, snapping a cuff around his cybernetic prosthesis. A jolt ran through his arm and the prosthesis went limp. The other agent rushed in, slamming Paul to the ground. Paul made an effort to fight back, but his muscles were weak from having been away from the planet's gravity for so long. He was being crushed under the weight of the agent.
"Gahh," Paul cried. "Get off me, I haven't done anything wrong!"
He was vaguely aware of his mother screaming in the background while his father swore at the agents, but all of this faded into the background as he struggled to breathe under the press of the agent's body. He struggled for another moment before everything went black.
