“Wait… wait… wait…” he said.
“Not waiting for anything,” the man who was dragging Jed replied.
Jed was finally able to turn his head, and he saw a brutish man with a heavy beard and a scowl on his face, dressed in animal skins and carrying an ancient-looking long rifle.
“Drone,” Jed said. His voice sounded like the bark of a small dog.
“Drone being dead,” the voice said.
“Who are you?” Jed asked.
The rugged man didn’t reply. He just grunted and kept dragging Jed further into the overgrown thicket. Thorns and branches tore at Jed’s clothes and scraped the bare skin on his arms and hands.
“Just… just… take me to the Amish Zone. I have money,” Jed said.
“Ha!” the man said. “You having money! Right!”
The man spoke a very difficult-to-understand and guttural dialect of broken English. He’d obviously lived a long time separated from the comforts of city life and the society of men. He grunted again and pushed Jed to the ground. Jed jumped to his feet and tried to run, but the rough man was faster, and snagged Jed by the arm and tossed him back to the ground.
“I do have money. I have gold. I’ll pay you to take me to the Amish Zone,” Jed said.
“Don’t wanting your gold, Amish boy. Gonna be paid many more much moneys than you ever paying me.”
“Who?” Jed asked. “Who will pay you money for me?”
“Ha!” the man laughed again. “I will being a rich one, because knowing that your brother will paying all the gold of Oklahoma getting you back from me!”
“My… brother?” Jed said.
“Yeah. Being your brother. Amos.”
KNOT 3:
All Quiet in the Amish Zone
(14
THE SOMA
The old man paced the command deck, hands behind him, eyes fixed on the floor before him as he walked out his frustrations. Despite his age and the weight of responsibility he carried on his back, he stood tall, exuding an air of noble authority.
His body reminded him that authority, like age, comes with sufferings that youth and ambition never consider. Tension in his neck caused his head to throb with dull, radiating pain. To say his headache was splitting would be accurate on multiple levels: his parents would have said he was of two minds; his brother would have told him that he was conflicted; the elders would have declared that his natural man was at war with his spirit man. But however his problems were characterized, they were inarguably rooted in conflict—both the internal and external kind.
Double-mindedness is frowned upon in Amish society. Still, he was torn. There had been a time when his brother would have told him to just grow up and do as he was told. A much simpler time. But that path was no longer available to him—not now, not here, in this world. He’d already grown old, and there was no one to tell him what he should do. Even the bishop would’ve said only for him to do nothing until he’d prayed and received an answer from God. He yearned for the early years when simple prayer would have been enough. But for a very long time now he’d been operating without even the pretense of being guided by Amish culture and community. A plain person wouldn’t fight a physical war for freedom or survival. Perhaps in his heart he was still Amish, but to the Amish he was on his own. Not one of them at all.
And now, on top of all of his other responsibilities, he had his brother to deal with. A specter from his own past. A reminder of who he’d once been… of his Amish beginnings. So his mind was bifurcated, split in twain like that of many men who hold the reins of power.
For most of his adult life he’d been a part of the rebellion, a part of TRACE, and for all of that time TRACE had been at war… a war the resistance must win if freedom was ever again to raise its graying head in the universe. And now his brother had become the key pawn in the game.
He smoothed his hair. This isn’t a game. This is about liberty, life, death… blood… peace.
One part of his mind wanted him to put his worries behind him, to concentrate on the war and the immediate concerns on his plate—problems over which he had some real tactical control. That part of his mind did not recognize ancient clan loyalties, familial bonds, and brotherly love. In fact, his carnal side didn’t bow to any higher power at all. It was coldly rational and without natural affection. His carnal man was all about fighting and destroying Transport until the government decided it would allow men and women to live freely.
The other part of him—his spirit man—rebelled against his sterile, more mathematical inclinations. This second portion of his mind wanted to do whatever he must—damn the revolution—to save Jed at all costs. His older brother was out there, just a boy, young and afraid, with no understanding of the intricacies of this otherworldly conflict. Jed was pure. Maybe the only pure thing left in the universe.
The Tulsa—his flagship, and the largest ship in TRACE’s fleet—hung still in space, five hundred miles southwest of the City and twenty-five miles above the battle-ravaged ground of New Pennsylvania. His mind reeled at the technology on display in the Tulsa. Its stillness alone was remarkable. The ship was virtually invisible to all existing technology: radar, laser, thermal, radiological tracking and scanning. If he ordered it, the Tulsa could sit directly over the City, and Transport wouldn’t even know she was there. Her okcillium-powered weapons systems were unmatched—and some were even untested. The ship was that new.
If he didn’t think about it, when his mind drifted, he could forget he was on a ship at all. The new okcillium drives didn’t even hum, much less vibrate. And the Tulsa was twenty times larger than any other ship ever operated by anyone other than Transport. In fact, dozens of TRACE ships could fit inside the hold of the Tulsa. They not only could, they did. The Tulsa was going to put an end to the long war at last, and Transport didn’t even know she existed. The tide had turned, and the end was very near. And it was all because he—the SOMA—controlled the mines where okcillium was extracted.
He glanced across the command deck. The Tulsa was a secret, even to most of the resistance military leaders who were currently in the field. He’d hand-picked the workers on this ship himself. Now he watched as the men and women of the Tulsa worked. TRACE officers and soldiers went about their shipboard duties unaware—so far—that their long-time commander was vacillating. Hindered from performing his own responsibilities while he waited to hear word about his brother. His hesitation, at this critical moment, was something completely out of character for him. His decisiveness was universally credited as the main reason that TRACE still existed, still fought, and still breathed in the air of liberty.
An assistant approached him and handed him a sheet of clear plastic. When his hands touched it, his BICE activated the sheet and it became, to his eyes only, a document that could be read.
It was a report on the latest movements of Transport forces. This information had already been made available to his mind through his BICE—as it had been to every officer with the appropriate clearance. It was included here just for context and clarity. Nothing had changed in the last half hour.
There was a notation from the armorer that the weapons had been checked and readied. TRACE was poised to attack, but its leader waited.
It still amazed him to see so much firepower under his command. Things had surely changed in the past six decades. When he’d first arrived in Oklahoma, the rebels fought against Transport with sticks and rocks and ancient firearms that were as untrustworthy as they were rare. He remembered spending his eighteenth birthday making arrows from elm and hickory harvested from old, abandoned farms in the green country of northeastern Oklahoma. Now, in this one ship, he commanded enough power to take the City once and for all. Taking the City wouldn’t end the war, not by a long shot, but it would signal the beginning of the end. His spies informed him that Transport—anticipating that a full-scale attack from TRACE could commence at any time—had already removed most executive functions and a good part of their military to the frontier cities behind the Great Shelf.