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  RUMORS OF WAR

  The Green Zone War – Book 1

  By Jake Elwood

  Copyright 2018 by Jake Elwood.

  This is a work of fiction. A novel. Totally made up. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, space pirates or interstellar conflicts is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Author Notes

  Chapter 1

  "It's too late for peace!"

  Tom Thrush froze the lecture that was playing on his desk and looked up, annoyed. For the last half hour he'd been studying while demonstrators chanted slogans in the quad outside. For the most part he'd been able to tune it out - but things were getting worse.

  "The price of peace is oppression!" It was a woman, her amplified voice rising until it became an unintelligible screech.

  "It's exam week," Tom muttered. "Can't you save the galaxy later?" He synced the desk to his glove, checked his glove display to make sure he had everything, and stood. He'd have to continue this in a coffee shop.

  He walked down the stairs, his irritation growing. It blended with the constant stress of Exam Week and built toward real rage. He fought the anger down. His temper had gotten him into trouble before. He didn't need another incident, not over something as petty as a student demonstration.

  A wave of cold air hit him as the doors to Aldrin Hall slid open. It was a beautiful winter morning, the air crisp and sharp. He took a deep breath, felt his nostrils go numb, and set off across the quad, snow squeaking under his shoes.

  The pro-war demonstration had attracted a dozen people at its peak. Now, less than half of them remained. They stood in a cluster, holo-displays flickering in the air above them, haranguing passersby.

  The buildings of Prairie University loomed around them, and Tom made himself lift his gaze. He was an architecture student, and the glorious University buildings had kept him inspired for three and a half long years of study. He took in the details as he walked, the high copper roofs turned green with age, the faux pillars and arches around every window. For buildings with such mundane purposes they were magnificent, and his irritation faded as he drank it in.

  All his annoyance came flooding back when a young woman stepped into his path.

  She would have been pretty if she'd been a bit less wound up. She was tiny, her head barely reaching Tom's chin, with the pointed features of a pixie. Those features were twisted now in frustration, and Tom felt a moment of sympathy. She'd been out here for over an hour, championing a cause that clearly mattered to her deeply.

  And everyone was ignoring her.

  His fleeting sympathy vanished as he tried to step around her and she moved to block his path. "Don't you know there's a war going on?" She wasn't really talking to him. She was talking at him, venting. "Half the galaxy is fighting, and what's the United Worlds doing?" Her hands flew up, making Tom flinch. "We're sitting on the sidelines! We're doing nothing, while people suffer and die in the coreward zones."

  "It's terrible," Tom said insincerely. The other protesters showed much less zeal. A tall young man with a blond mustache met Tom's eye and gave him an embarrassed shrug.

  The girl said, "You're Cree, right? There's a Cree community on York that had to be abandoned when the League invaded. Don't you wish you were out there fighting for your people?"

  "I wish I was studying for my exams," Tom said. "Excuse me." He stepped around her.

  Her hands closed on his sleeve. "You can't just walk away from this. People are dying!"

  Tom, his annoyance turning into real anger, tried to pull his arm free. The girl hung on with surprising strength. "I need to study," he said. "I've got an exam tomorrow." He planted his feet, jerked hard, and freed his arm. He turned his back on her and started walking.

  "You have a responsibility to the galaxy! You have to get involved." Her feet crunched in the snow as she stomped along behind him.

  He didn't turn around. "Get away from me, you crazy bitch."

  "You're a coward!" A small fist thumped into his back.

  He spun, and she took an involuntary step back. Then her face collapsed into a snarl. "Coward," she repeated, and lifted her fist.

  Tom punched her. His fist seemed to move on its own, slamming into the center of her face with an impact that jarred his elbow and shoulder. She flew back, her eyes comically wide, and landed on her rear end in the snow. He had a quick glimpse of blood gushing from her nose and coating her upper lip and teeth before she clapped both hands to her face and let out a wail.

  Tom stared down at her, horrified at what he'd done. She was asking for it, said a nasty voice in the back of his mind. Still, shame twisted his guts as blood trickled from under her hands to splatter across the front of her coat. His knuckles stung. How hard did I hit her?

  "What the hell?"

  Tom looked up. The whole group of protesters was moving, and he had a moment of real fear. Most of them, however, rushed to the girl on the ground.

  The tall man with the blond mustache came toward Tom. "What did you do?" His voice was a mix of rage and shocked disbelief. "What the hell did you do?" He stepped in close, planted both hands on Tom's chest, and shoved.

  Well, I'm not going to stand here like an idiot playing whose-turn-is-it-to-shove-back. Tom looked up into the tall man's face, said, "This is what I did," and swung his fist.

  The man leaned back and turned his head, and Tom's fist just grazed his cheek. A big fist came looping around and connected solidly with the bridge of Tom's nose. His head snapped back, blood gushed into his mouth, and a burst of pain made him cry out.

  A red haze settled over his vision, rage suffusing him, washing away every other thought. He snarled and hurled himself at the larger man.

  After that, awareness came only in flashes. Hands clutched at him, tugging at his arms, trying to hold him back. The blond man backed away, arms curled around his head. Then he ran, and Tom shook off the clinging arms and gave chase.

  He ran, snarling with every breath, pursuing a fleeing figure who remained maddeningly out of reach.

  He didn't remember catching the man. He didn't remember what came next. When the red haze lifted Tom was panting for breath. He stood doubled over, his elbows on his knees, gasping and wheezing. For a time that was all he knew.

  Other sensations gradually caught his attention. His lungs ached, and he had a stitch in his side. His hands hurt. He looked at the knuckles of his right hand. They were a mess, red and swollen, with drops of blood splattering the sleeve of his shirt. His left hand was covered by his data glove, but it felt just as bad. He spent a moment staring at it stupidly, wondering what had happened.

  Only then did he see the man on the ground in front of him. He was curled on his side, one arm around his ribs, the other protecting his face. Only one corner of the mustache showed. It could have been any color; the mustache was completely soaked in blood. More blood covered the side of the man's face. It soaked the collar of his shirt. It pooled in his ear. He looked like a corpse, but he
was sobbing, a wet, pathetic sound that made Tom straighten up and stumble back in disgust.

  Feet scraped on the pavement behind him, and he whirled. A young couple, eyes wide, backed away from him. He looked around, saw more faces staring, more people edging backward like he was a rabid dog.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaled, and shook his head to clear the fog of adrenaline. His nose still bled. He spat a mouthful of bloody saliva into the gutter and opened his eyes, looking down at the bloody form on the pavement. Aggravated assault, whispered a voice in his head. Assault causing bodily harm. A felony conviction. You're in trouble. Serious trouble.

  "It was self-defense." He mumbled the words, and they rang hollow. I chased him. He looked around, trying to get his bearings. He couldn't even see the buildings of the University. I chased him for blocks. I ran him down and beat the living hell out of him. That's not self-defense.

  He didn't have the strength to run. He lurched away from the injured man, grimacing as people flinched away. I need to find a car. He tapped his glove to activate it, and watched bursts of static flash and churn on the palm screen. Data gloves were practically indestructible. You could put them through a washing machine, run over them with ground cars. He'd never succeeded in damaging one before. How hard did I hit that guy?

  Feeling lost without a data connection, he staggered to the next intersection and turned the corner. I should have gotten implants. The familiar silvery shape of a public zipcar caught his eye and he hurried toward it.

  The cops will figure this trick out. They'll take remote control. He switched the car to manual, overrode half a dozen safety admonitions, and turned east. Stellarville was a small city, and he quickly reached the outskirts.

  As he passed the last tall buildings the familiar shape of the Interstellar Launch Tower loomed on the horizon. It was the most magnificent building in a couple of thousand kilometers, and it stirred the usual jumble of emotions within him. Obsolete now, the tower had once been humanity's gateway to the stars. It was built to generate a portal into seventh dimensional space. Now, ships had their own portal generators, but a hundred years ago they'd needed the tower.

  The problem with a device that used eighty thousand gigawatts of power every time it fired was that no one wanted it next door. People thought it might explode, or burn. The Cree of Spirit Lake had made a leap of faith and allowed the tower to be built on their reservation. The construction of the tower had spurred the creation of Stellarville.

  Tom was proud of the tower, proud of the gamble his great-grandparents had taken. The tower had brought prosperity and influence to the Cree nation, and it had sent thousands of his people to the stars.

  But the tower itself galled him. It had become a symbol of the Cree nation, but no Cree had participated in the design or construction. He'd grown up in the shadow of the tower. He'd seen it every day. It had goaded and inspired him. It was the source of his dream.

  Tom was going to become the first great Cree architect. He would design new buildings, equal in grandeur and significance to the tower. The dream had taken him away from his home and into Stellarville and it had sustained him for three and a half difficult years at school.

  And now it's over.

  "You should stop the vehicle." The calm voice came from a speaker in the car's dash. "Or at least slow down. You don't want to cause a crash."

  "Kiss my ass," Tom muttered, and twisted a little harder on the speed controls. The car didn't go any faster.

  "There's nowhere to go," the voice continued. "You're only making things worse."

  For most people that would be true, but if Tom could reach the Spirit Lake reservation, he'd be beyond the jurisdiction of Canadian law enforcement. They wouldn’t extradite him, not unless the blond man ended up crippled, or dead. Tom cringed inside. Please, don't let him die.

  The council might just turn him over to the Canadian police, but he thought not. They'd deal with him pretty harshly – he didn't want to think about what that would be like – but at least he'd avoid prison time.

  Lights flashed in the rear-view screen, and a red icon told him there was a police flitter directly above the car. Tom ignored it all, focusing on the launch tower like an upraised steel fist on the horizon dead ahead. If I can just reach it …

  The tower, once a symbol of mankind's escape into the wide galaxy, suddenly felt like a prison he was rushing toward. He remembered leaving home, moving to the city, scared and excited and full of a sense that his world was expanding. He'd expected his world to keep on growing as he launched his career as an architect.

  Now, it was all crashing inward, shrinking to once again fit in the stifling confines of the Spirit Lake reservation.

  The cop at the side of the road was just a dark blur in the corner of Tom's eye as the car whipped past. Tom didn't see the disrupter, but he knew he'd passed over it when white light engulfed the car. His screens erupted in static, the controls went stiff in his hands, and the faint hum of the electric motor vanished. The car coasted, losing speed, and finally came to a stop.

  Tom kicked the door open, got out, turned to face the launch tower, and started to run. He could see the flash of red and blue lights on the asphalt in front of his feet as police vehicles pulled up behind him, but he didn't turn to look back.

  A stun blast hit him across the back, his skin going cold. Every muscle in his torso contracted and he stumbled to his knees, then toppled forward and landed on his chest.

  The road was cold against his cheek. His breath fogged the air in front of him. With a tremendous effort he heaved himself over onto his back. He could see cops converging, but he ignored them, looking up at the sky instead. A flash of silver caught his eye, a shuttle rising into orbit where it would rendezvous with an interstellar ship. He stared, wishing he could trade places with someone on that distant ship. Even if I was going off to war, it would be better than this.

  Tall figures loomed around him, men and women made burly and anonymous by helmets and light body armor. "You're under arrest," a man said, clipping a cuff around Tom's wrist. "You had a nice run, but it's over now."

  Chapter 2

  "Mr. Thrush. You're in a lot of trouble."

  Tom gave the woman across the table from him a flat, hostile stare. Her name was Laycraft, according to the nametag on her jacket. She wore a smart pinstriped suit that made his own dirty, rumpled clothes seem all the more pathetic. She matched him stare for stare, and he had to admit she was better at it than he was.

  "Spare me the tough guy routine, all right? I've seen it all before."

  He shrugged. "Then spare me the speech about how much trouble I'm in." His nose was completely plugged with med gel, making him sound like he had a bad cold. He fingered the bridge of his nose. "I was attacked. It was self-defense."

  Laycraft waggled her hand in a so-so motion. "You have a mediocre case. You chased that man for three blocks before you, let me see, knocked out two of his teeth and gave him a concussion in," she pretended to glance at a data pad, her voice becoming ironic, "self-defense." As he started to speak she said, "Then you resisted arrest and took a blue zip car beyond city limits. That was technically theft."

  "But-"

  "I'm not just blowing smoke up your backside when I say you're in a lot of trouble."

  Tom lapsed into a sullen silence.

  "However."

  He looked at her, then away, refusing to take the bait.

  "There were ameliorating circumstances." She glanced at his nose. "And you're not exactly a common thug." She glanced at the pad. "You're a student in one of the most challenging architectural programs in North America, with grades that are … adequate, at least."

  He glared at her. He'd worked bloody hard for those "adequate" grades she so casually dismissed.

  "And you have no implants," she continued. Her brows rose. "Is that a Cree thing?"

  He shrugged. "Sort of." Some of his people felt that electronic implants were an outrageous violation of a person's bo
dy, a travesty no one should tolerate. Others shunned implants as a way to differentiate themselves from Canadian society, where implant use among adults was close to ninety percent.

  Some Cree just went ahead and got implants.

  "Well, it could be your 'get out of jail free' card." When he gave her a blank look she frowned for a moment, then continued. "Here's the thing. You broke the law. You had obvious reasons. If someone punched me in the nose, and I had the ability, I'm not sure I wouldn't do exactly what you did." She thought for a moment. "Actually, I'm sure. I wouldn't do it. But I understand the urge."

  Tom said, "I-"

  "Hush," Laycraft said. "You committed a violent crime. We have to address that. We can't just turn you loose. But we understand your position, and we don't think prison time is appropriate. Not if it can be avoided."

  Here it comes, Tom thought. However it is they're going to railroad me, I'm about to get the sales pitch.

  She looked at him, waiting for him to speak. All he did was stare at her, and the corner of her mouth twitched in a hint of a smile. "As you may have heard," she said, "there's a war brewing in the coreward systems."

  Earth's oldest and wealthiest colonies were toward the galactic core. Long since independent, they'd formed a dozen different nations, most of which were now at war with one another. It was the single biggest military conflict in human history, and it just seemed to keep growing.

  "So far, the United Worlds has managed to remain neutral." Earth, once the central power in the settled galaxy, was now just one more member of an interstellar alliance rimward of the spreading conflict.

  He didn't speak, didn't ask the obvious question. What does any of this have to do with me?

  "You might not have heard that the military is recruiting aggressively," she said. "Qualified and willing recruits without implants are scarce on the ground these days."

  He stared at her, letting his disbelief show. She wanted him to join the army?

  Not likely.

  "You won't even have to leave the system," she said, leaning forward and resting her forearms on the table. "You can join the Home Guard. The Guard's full of eager would-be soldiers who want to see the galaxy. Most of them would love to transfer to the regular forces. You can take a spot here so one of them can leave."