Chapter 2: Taking the Leap

“Hermes, what are his vitals?”

Octavia Capstan didn’t even realize she’d started calling the Earth-at AI by Calix’s anthropomorphized name. All she was really aware was how worried she was. She wouldn’t admit it to herself, but she had a vested interest in the young man lying in front of her. He was more than just another recruit. She couldn’t bear to concede it to herself, but this was personal. Her connection to him went beyond the Navy. It went beyond the Confederacy. It was personal.

Through sheer force of will, she kept the tears in her eyes from falling. She couldn’t allow her focus to be on him, so she turned it to the situation. The whole thing was a mess. Then again, it seemed messes congregated around Calix. At least this time it wasn’t his fault. The Earth Firsters had taken all of them by surprise.

She never really noticed her focus had returned to the young man.

“Heart rate is slightly elevated,” Hermes replied promptly. “As is blood pressure. Blood oxygen is a nominal 97%. He’s sustained some damage to his left tympanum, ossicular chain and cochlea. He has a fractured septum and some hairline fractures along his fifth, sixth and seventh costals. Nothing is life threatening, however.”

“Why isn’t he awake then?” Octavia demanded worriedly.

“He is awake,” Calix muttered. It sounded like he was hearing through mud and there was a very loud, very strange ringing but he was able to hear his friend. “He’s just keeping his eyes closed while he gathers his thoughts.”

“Calix?” Octavia said loudly and with a high pitch to her voice. She definitely did not squeal, however. She was quite certain of that. She was not someone who squealed, no matter what idiot got blown up. Certainly, Naval Lieutenants didn’t squeal. She was fairly certain there was something in the regs about it.

She pulled the young man into a sitting position and wrapped her arms around him. “You idiot!” She berated him, squeezing him in a hug. “You absolute moron! Why does this keep happening to you? How dare you worry me like this!”

Calix winced. His ribs hurt. Of course, that was basically what Hermes had just said but it was nice to have independent confirmation. He also assumed the slight wetness he could feel on the lobe of his left ear confirmed Hermes’ other diagnoses as well. He already knew his nose was FUBAR.

“You are further damaging his ribs,” Hermes chastised the Lieutenant. Strangely, Calix didn’t have as much trouble hearing the AI as everything else around him. Something to file away for perusal at a later time. Right now, he hurt. Everywhere.

“He’s lucky that’s all I’m going to damage,” Octavia sniffed. Still, it wasn’t seemly to be hugging a lowly ensign – especially when the hugged party wasn’t even aware of his status yet - so she eased off and helped him lie back down. Fraternization and all that. Of course, the Confederacy really didn’t have any rules about fraternization, but she could deal with that later.

“If you’ll inject him with the ampoule, I can have the nanites repair the damage in a few minutes,” Hermes droned. Calix wasn’t certain but he could swear the AI had an amused tone to his voice. He idly wondered what that was all about even as he felt a small prick on his throat.

“Just sit still, Calix,” Hermes said calmly. “I’m directing the nanites to the damaged areas. You’ll feel some slight discomfort in your chest, face and ear but it will be over in a few minutes.”

“What happened?” Calix asked as he felt a burning pain start in his chest. There was a series of sharp pains in his nose and a painfully tight pressure around his left ear but he worked hard to ignore them.

“By cutting the Plexiglas window, you weakened its tensile strength until the atmospheric pressure forced the whole unit to crack, explosively alleviating the building’s decompression,” Hermes responded.

“I kind of remember that part,” Calix interjected. “I was actually counting on it. I was wondering why everything went boom after that.”

“The sudden change in air pressure caused the penthrite explosives the Earth First attackers had set at the door to detonate,” Hermes explained. “Their detonation started a chain reaction which also caused the window charges to explode.”

“Damn,” Calix winced. “How about the civilians? Are they... ?” His voice trailed off. He wasn’t all that certain he wanted to know.

“James Woods, an eighty-six-year-old white male, suffered atrial fibrillation,” Hermes said softly. “We were unable to resuscitate with conventional Earth tools and have recently been prohibited from using nanites on non-Citizens in this region. In addition, there are five assailants that are dead. The first due to a broken neck I believe occurred when you jumped on him, the second due to a bullet wound suffered when you threw him at the gunmen, the third whose head you severed, the fourth who you stabbed through the heart and a fifth who did not make it back to the tunnel entrance and was caught under the remains of the air conditioning system. There is a sixth assailant who is currently being removed for questioning. All others suffered only minor cuts and abrasions.”

“Wait a second,” Calix asked, his eyes narrowed. “After GlobalTech, I was a non-citizen and you repaired me with nanites.”

“Incorrect,” Hermes replied. “After CAP testing, your designation changed to Military Asset Interest Deferred. At this point, though you were not yet a Citizen, you were no longer a non-Citizen either and nanite repair was authorized. Regardless, at the time of your infiltration of GlobalTech, the nanite prohibition had not been put in place.”

Calix took a deep breath and immediately regretted it as the pain in his right side became more intense. He felt guilt at the death of the older man, but he knew there was nothing he could’ve done differently. The assailant bastards had it coming, just like the rogue elements of the Cholos had a month or two ago.

He paused for a moment, coming to grips with having killed three – no, four – men. Had he had any choice?

The bile in his stomach and the pain he felt at having casually cost five people their lives – even if inadvertently – answered him. He hadn’t had a damned bit of choice. It was either them or him – and the civilians.

Instinctively, he knew that he was going to have to change. He needed to become more than a killing machine if he wanted to survive out there. Otherwise, he’d completely lose himself to the savage within him. “That’s something, at least.”

A few minutes later, Octavia was helping him to stand. She had been silent since the hug, hurrying over to the civilians to see to their care but her thoughts were never far from the younger man. The first time she’d seen him had been when a pickup she’d helped orchestrate had interrupted his burglary of GlobalTech headquarters in downtown Detroit. The young man had proven to be blindingly fast and almost inhumanly agile, briefly incapacitating two Marines – well, with the help of his gadgets, she grudgingly admitted – while avoiding six others intent on putting him down. Then, he’d done the impossible and used another of his gadgets to effectively break through the interdiction field – something she’d always believed to be impossible.

What was even more astonishing was that all of the gadgets he used were of his own design. Sure, they were at least partially based on obsolete Confederacy tech – tech that had been leaked to Earth to try to identify the alien black market and some of the Earth First cells responsible – but he’d taken broken pieces of obsolete tech and created new and innovative devices from them.

Fast, agile and smart; a deadly combination. As she glanced at the decapitated head of one man and the body of another, she realized that statement was very literal. No one he’d gone up against had gotten the better of Calix Flynn Gebel. Even against over-whelming odds, he had pulled off the impossible.

Then again, Calix was always doing the impossible. He had done it so often, she’d begun to think of it as commonplace. She idly wondered if they were saving Calix from the likely-soon-to-be-invaded Earth or whether they were saving the Earth from him. She certainly wasn’t taking odds on how long the Sa’arm would last against him.

“Thanks,” Calix grunted as he made his feet. He rotated his neck and arms experimentally. There was no pain.

“How’re you feeling?” Octavia asked, her eyebrows raised.

“Good as new,” Calix chuckled.

“Good,” she responded. “Get your ass out of that armor so we can get you off-planet. I’m not sure Earth can survive you much longer.”

Calix just laughed and turned to the door – or rather, the huge gaping hole that had at one time been the wall where the door was situated. He couldn’t believe the amount of destruction the bombs had made. There was literally nothing left of that part of the tavern. He could even see the gray of the interdiction field far above him through the missing ceiling.

As he was coming to grips with the number of explosives needed to cause that much damage, he was assaulted by a 168cm black woman. Even with tears pouring out of her bright, blue eyes and her long, coarse, frazzled and unkempt, dark brown hair, the woman was beautiful. She grabbed his upper arms, her face looking at him beseechingly. “My daughters?” she asked plaintively. “How are my daughters? Are they ... are they ... please God, don’t let them be...”

“They’re fine, Yolanda,” Calix said softly.

Calix had an eight-point-eight CAP score. The Capacity, Aptitude and Potential (CAP) system was a complex, subconscious-level, voluntary test available starting at fourteen years of age. It was the primary method the Confederacy used to determine if someone on Earth were worthy to be extracted from the planet and become a citizen in the Confederacy. Any score of six point five or higher was eligible. However, the CAP score was also used to determine how many people who scored below a 6.5 you could take with you when you were extracted and taken to the stars.

The catch was that a Citizen became utterly and completely responsible for the under-scoring people. They were nominally called ‘dependents’ of the high scoring ‘Sponsor’ – but the truth was something far different. Basically, they became slaves or, potentially, concubines. For every whole point of six or above, subject to the six-point-five floor, a Citizen was able to take two additional concubines. With an eight point eight, Calix was entitled to six.

He’d reached the Digiroo restaurant with three women he wanted to take with him. Thankfully, they wanted to go with him, knowing they’d be his property – basically, his sex slaves – once they were extracted. He’d also brought two other women he’d been obligated to take with him – two whom he’d promised his recently deceased cousin, Rico, to take - one of them being his cousin’s wife and the other his cousin’s wife’s sister. With five women, he’d thought he’d need to only select one more at the extraction.

In its infinite wisdom, however, Hermes had decided his cousin’s wife and her sister were a contractual obligation and dubbed them supernumeraries, so he’d had to select three more women. Yolanda, a Nubian goddess almost three decades his senior – but still within child-bearing years which was all the Confederate AIs were concerned about - had been one of those three women. She had two under-fourteen daughters – twin girls. They’d been with her when the unexpected extraction had occurred and had subsequently been sent to the pub.

The daughters were sent to the pub because the Confederacy didn’t expect anyone to rely on faith to find compatible concubines. The whole purpose to the concubine arrangement was to produce as many children as possible to populate colony planets throughout this part of the galaxy. So, extractions also became a venue where sexual compatibility was ‘tested’. Basically, the citizens or sponsors took potential concubines for a sexual test-drive. Those who were underage and those who couldn’t or didn’t want to volunteer to be a concubine were sent away for their own innocence and protection.

It was the whole reason he’d entered the pub in the first place. He was accompanying Yolanda to get her daughters. When things started going sideways shortly after entering, he’d pushed Yolanda to go get help both to protect her and because he really wanted the help. He didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, but he preferred it when the odds were in his favor.

“Fine? But ... the explosion ... and I heard they were sucking the oxygen out of this room...” Her voice drifted off, looking in Calix’s eyes for confirmation.

“All true,” Calix replied quietly. “But I have it on good authority everyone except for an elderly man got through with just minor cuts and bruises. Come on, I’ll take you over there now. Just be careful of the debris.” He carefully held onto her arm, steering her through the bricks and stones and steel that had once been a wall of the pub.

“When did you change clothes?” Yolanda asked absently. When she’d met the young man, he’d been wearing a bulky shirt and formless slacks. She’d thought he was probably sensitive about being chubby – or maybe even downright fat – and wore the clothes to hide his obesity. The fact he didn’t ‘take her for a test drive’ before offering to take her off-planet supported her perception.

Now, though, seeing the padded black clothing he had on, she was forced to revise her opinion. He looked bulky all right, but it was definitely NOT fat. The black clothing was obviously contoured, so she couldn’t be certain what he looked like underneath it, but she definitely needed to revise her opinion of him.

She had to revise her opinion of his age, too. She’d thought he was in his late twenties and maybe even his early thirties - still younger than her but at a manageable level. In the bright light, however, she had to revise her opinion lower – maybe even much lower. If anything, he was in his early twenties and maybe even younger – maybe even in his late teens.

She frowned as she considered the differences. At forty-four, she would be old enough to be his mother. Heck, he could very well be younger than her own sons – Jerome was twenty-one and Davey was eighteen. What the heck was she doing with someone so young? How could she go through with this now??

She studied him for a moment. He was tall, a definite point in his favor. At five-six, she wasn’t overly tall herself, but she preferred men who dwarfed her a little bit. His shoulders appeared wide and he held them back, his spine straight and erect. Those were more points in his favor - she preferred a man who didn’t slouch.

The molded contour of the suit he was wearing spoke of large and muscular arms. While she believed men and women were equal – different but equal - she loved the feeling of security she felt when her man would hold her close in strong, loving arms. It was as if her man was protecting her, keeping her away from the ills of the world. She liked the feeling. She wanted a man that was strong and confident.

Her first husband had been that way. Rasheed was a big, bear of a man. He was larger than life. Whenever he walked into a room his big stature and even bigger, booming voice drew every eye to him. He reveled in being the center of attention – but he wasn’t all flash. There was a bite beneath his bark. He’d always said that there was a time for talking and a time for fighting and he wasn’t afraid of either. She’d loved that about him.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one to succumb to his charms. She’d caught him with other women three times. The first time she’d come into his office for lunch unexpectedly, only to find him playing hide the sausage with his executive assistant. It had taken time and he’d had to crawl for her but eventually she’d forgiven him. The second time, when she caught him and her former best friend in her car, she hadn’t. The third time, with some young bimbo in their marital bed, was three times too often and she’d cut him loose.

Her brows drew together. She’d not been able to share Rasheed – so why was she willing to share this – this boy?

As soon as she’d asked the question in her head, she answered it. She would do it to save her daughters. She’d put up with it so her daughters had a chance at safety when the Sa’arm came.

Detroit had done a thorough job in minimizing any possibility of safety the Confederacy provided. The politicians, media and even the unions (which often seemed like all the same thing) had sloughed the incoming Sa’arm invasion off as unsubstantiated rumors. For over a century, Detroit had been owned – lock, stock and barrel – by the labor unions. Local politicians couldn’t take a poop without the unions approving and regulating size, shape, color and odor.

The Confederacy wasn’t union-friendly – they believed every person should be treated individually instead of the ‘everyone is the same’ mentality of the unions – so the Confederacy wasn’t welcome in Detroit. The Confederate message had been trivialized and largely erased. It was an easy thing for the unions to accomplish, since they owned every ostensibly credible news outlet in the city.

Like most things the government tried to keep secret, rumors of the coming invasion – and all it entailed – leaked out like a sieve. As is so often the case in such matters, the rumors and innuendoes were worse than the truth and had incited a mild undercurrent of panic amongst the Detroit population and its environs. The government at both the local and state level, however, continued to pretend everything was fine and the Sa’arm didn’t exist.

It was as it had always been - own the news and you own the message. Own the message and you owned the Truth. Truth – with a capital ‘T’ – was perception, after all. If you owned all of the information fed to the people, you could make whatever Truth you wanted. Federal politicians had been using the axiom since the early days of the twenty-first century.

It wasn’t lost on Yolanda that the unions had even managed to censor the Internet thanks to the so-called LaShonda’s Law. A little 12-year-old girl named LaShonda had been lured to meet with a sexual predator. He’d raped her repeatedly for just over a year – and then murdered her when she’d become pregnant. The predator had been caught burying pieces of her body. The outcry had been fierce and, in the knee-jerk limelight of public opinion, they’d managed to wean local control of the Internet feeds from the FCC.

Rasheed, her former husband, who was the Chief Information Officer for a large auto parts supplier, had explained to her how sexual predators weren’t the only users being censored. Detroit hadn’t even been aware of the Confederacy for close to six months after the rest of the country.

Her second husband had been taller and slimmer but just as bold and brash. Davis had been a legend – at least in his own mind. Every moment with him was an adventure. With Rasheed, she’d had sedate little vacations to a warm, tropical beach or a summer visit to a villa in Italy. With Davis, she went backpacking in the Amazon or kayaking category five rapids. She’d drawn the line when he’d tried to talk her into mountain climbing, preferring to watch as he climbed Mount Fuji and Table Mountain. She’d laughed at him as he described the joy of pitting his body against Mother Nature, scoffing that it was just too dangerous. In the end, she’d been right. She’d lost Davis to the Half-Dome rock formations.

She closed her eyes at the memory. What was she doing here, with this young man who could possibly be less than half her own age? God, he was so young. He should be chasing young girls through college or maybe even high school instead of asking naked women old enough to be his mother to become his concubine.

She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be doing this with a young man who’d not yet outgrown his body issues. She wondered once again how the CAP system worked. Why did this young man have such a high score?

Then she looked again and shook her head. The way he acted belied his age. Maybe she was wrong about how young he was. He seemed cool and confident. Capable. Ready to do whatever was necessary.

As all of the questions and worries flew through her mind, she reminded herself yet again of her daughters and what they could potentially look forward to if the Sa’arm got through to Earth. Slowly, she nodded. He’d do. He’d have to.

The pub was a train wreck. Everything was in shambles. Glass was over the floor everywhere as were pieces of walls and tables and chairs and who knew what else.

As they carefully moved towards the back of what had once been the pub, Calix pulled up short, his hand on her arm forcing her to stop. Stalking towards them, her face stormy, Octavia looked mad enough to spit bullets. She paused a moment, looking around the pub, before her eyes settled on Calix. Carefully, she weighed how he was feeling. Deciding he looked recovered, she moved forward darkly. He swallowed audibly as her face seemed to get even angrier as she made her way to him. “I thought I told you to go get changed?”

“Well, I – uh – I had to – uh – that is – Yolanda’s daughters are – uh – here... , “ Calix’s voice trailed off, his innate confidence vanishing in the face of the angry woman. His eyes flickered from point to point and he started plotting routes of egress. He was pretty certain he was going to need them imminently.

“You – you – you,” Octavia stuttered. Her eyes flashing, she took a deep breath and blew it out. “Why’d you wade into this melee? Huh? The more I hear about what happened here, the more I dislike it – but we would have gotten through, eventually. All you had to do was sit tight. Wait it out. But, no - you had to rush in and save the day, didn’t you? Did you ever think that maybe if you didn’t try to take on the whole bleeding Earth First cell all by your lonesome some of this – this – this wanton destruction could have been avoided? Did you even think about inviting me to the party? Did you even think that maybe I’d want to vent some of my aggression on their Earth First ass? Barring that, did you even consider to tell me to get my ass over here so I could watch? Maybe make popcorn? This whole thing was terribly inconsiderate of you, wasn’t it?”

Calix began looking around wildly. The way Octavia was biting off every single word was scary. He wondered if the remaining wall were safe to jump over and get out that way.

As Yolanda watched the young blonde tear into Calix, two young girls suddenly came running towards her. Without thought, she tried to pull from Calix’s grasp, but he was holding on too tightly. All she could do was open her arms to her daughters. However, the two girl’s eyes grew wide and they skidded trying to stop. As Yolanda called to them, though, they moved forward again at a slower pace.

“Momma,” one of the girls started as they reached Yolanda. The two were openly gaping between their mother, the tall, shocked young man standing beside her and the angry blonde woman berating him.

Like many of the under-age youngsters, they’d been terrified, especially when those men started tying them and then dragging them, kicking and screaming – well, screaming into the gags the men had inserted – towards the trap door in the floor. Then, they’d watched in horror as a man, dressed all in black, suddenly appeared and started taking down the men kidnapping them. As a matter of fact, the man in black had clothes which looked awfully like the tall man next to their mother – but surely this young kid couldn’t have done all that.

“You’re naked,” the other twin finished. They were close, not only because they were twins but also because there were more than 4 years between the two and their next older brother. They’d been their own playmates for so long, they could almost always finish one another’s sentences.

The girls weren’t so innocent as to not know what their Mother had been doing when she had sent them away. Computer Science was a staple of Cass Technical High School in downtown Detroit – and they were far beyond what their teachers could teach them. They frequented the dark web – the seedy underground section of the Internet. So, they at least knew the rumors of what an extraction was, and they knew what reportedly went on at them.

And, of course, they knew about sex – even if they’d not indulged in it just yet. They’d just never seen their mother completely unclothed. They thought she’d have re-dressed before – and they thought she’d be dressed when she came to pick them up, one way or the other.

“I have to be, Boo,” Yolanda replied, her face coloring in her embarrassment. She looked over to where it seemed the Lieutenant’s chastisement of her sponsor was finally ending. She watched as the woman gave one last expletive laden rant before turning on her heel and marching out of the pub. She almost shook her head in amusement. That woman had designs on that poor boy and he wasn’t even aware of it yet.

Then she frowned. That woman was coming onto what amounted to ‘her man’. She wondered why she didn’t feel more threatened or jealous. Maybe it was because she was already sharing him with 7 other women – how could one more hurt? – or maybe it was because she didn’t love him. She shook the thoughts out of her head and turned back to her daughters. “It’s one of the rules. I can’t wear any clothes until we get where we’re going.”

“Who... ?” the twin on the right started, looking pointedly at Calix. The young man was just starting to sheepishly turn back towards them, his eyes wide and blinking rapidly. She felt a little twinge down near her belly and pursed her lips. He looked pretty tasty.

“ ... is this?” her sister finished. She’d been watching the blonde woman storm out but turned her head back towards Calix at the last moment. She swallowed as she felt a warmth traveling south quickly. Her eyes traveled up and down the young man and she licked her lips. She wanted a bite of that.

Yolanda’s skin was the color of creamy coffee, but the twins weren’t even that dark-skinned. Yolanda’s golden coffee turned to a light caramel latte in her daughters – they could easily pass as Hispanic by skin color and facial features. They had elfin faces which were longer than their mother’s but with fine, dark brown hair waving gently down around their heads to just beyond their shoulders. Their hair had what appeared to be natural highlights tending towards a lighter brown interspersed with the darker locks. They stood just shy of their mother’s 5’6” but their arms were just as toned and their breasts were, if anything, even larger than their Mom’s.

“Serena? Madeline? This is my...” She paused, her face mildly panicked as she searched for the right word.

“Sponsor?” Calix supplied helpfully. His eyes were still wild from Lieutenant Capstan’s dressing down.

“Sponsor,” Yolanda finished, throwing Calix a grateful look.

“But he’s,” the twin on the right started again. Serena was 8 minutes older than Madeline, something she never let her twin live down, and often started the twins’ conversations. Every now and again, however, Madeline would jump ahead – just for variety and to trip everyone up.

“So young,” Madeline finished, her soft brown eyes staring at Calix widely. “He can’t be...”

“Too much older...” Serena jumped in.

“Than us,” Madeline finished.

Calix’s eyes narrowed. The twins were identical but there was just the hint of a difference in their speech. The one on the right’s voice was just a shade deeper than the one on the left. It was almost undetectable if you weren’t listening for it – but Calix had been looking for any way to tell the two apart.

A commotion behind Calix tugged at his attention for a moment. The bottle-blonde woman Calix had decided looked like a little rat, with two protruding front teeth and beady eyes, and a rather tall brown-haired woman who was rounded and over-weight and had rather small, drooping tits, were haughtily berating one of the Marines. The larger man was holding out his arms as if blocking them from coming forward but the two women were angrily moving against him and pointing towards Calix and Yolanda and her two daughters.

Calix frowned but turned back to his charges, confident the Marine could take care of those two. It wasn’t any of his business anyway, he told himself. He turned back just in time to catch Yolanda’s panicked face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I-I-I don’t know how old you are. I mean, I thought you might be in your twenties or thirties when we were in the restaurant but – but now, you seem – younger...”

Calix’s eyebrows raised. “Does it matter?”

Yolanda twisted uncomfortably. “No – no, not really,” she began, her voice unsure. “I-I just – I don’t know...”

“I’m 16,” Calix replied. He studied the woman’s reaction. He could tell that their age difference made the older woman uncomfortable – but it was what it was. She’d have to get over it because it wasn’t going to change.

“Oh,” Madeline started, her face shocked. Strangely, the tingling she felt in he lower stomach seemed to center right between her legs at his words.

“My God,” Serena continued. Like her twin, she could feel herself grow strangely aroused. It wasn’t the first time, of course, but it was the first time a flesh and blood boy had caused the reaction. “He’s younger...”