Chapter 32

The next morning I woke an hour and a half earlier than normal and headed straight to the market after brushing my teeth and taking a shower. I wanted to pick out a good gift for my mother and made sure I had enough time so that I wouldn't rush a decision.

After 45 minutes I found what I was looking for. It was a simple gold necklace with a small plate instead of any jewels adorning it. Adorning the plate was an elegant picture of a variety of different flowers lovingly crafted with inlaid white gold. It was simple but nice. It only cost 21 gold but I knew my mother wouldn't like me spending on something lavishly. If I had bought her some gaudy, jewel-encrusted, wallet buster of a necklace, she would likely sell it at the first opportunity and attempt to give me the money.

I had the jeweler engrave a message on the back of the plate. It read, "To my mother. The only constant source of warmth and love I have ever known." It wasn't poetry, but it was the truth. I hoped she'd like it.

After paying the man, I put the necklace in the inside pocket of my jacket, directly over my heart. Where it would stay until I gave it to her.

I wasted another 20 minutes walking the streets and bought some food from a roadside vendor. A sort of sandwich I guess. It had meat dipped in some sauce, lettuce, as well as an assortment of other vegetables wrapped in a dense bread. The man who sold it had brown wheat-colored skin and told me it was food made by his people for generations.

After finishing the food and growing bored with people watching, I proceeded towards my hanger and fired up the simulator to warm up before another day of hellish training. I could smell Alice's scent lingering in the cockpit. It's not like I was creepily sniffing the seat or anything. I swear. I didn't have to. My enhanced sense of smell had picked up the sent without much effort. She must have just left.

Alice had been forced to get up extremely early each morning if she wanted to use the simulator as I had been using the Calipso nearly all day every day for training with Jamal. Despite being able to use the simulator a lot less than she would like, I hadn't heard a single iota of discontent from Alice about it. She treated my letting her use it as a gift and didn't take it for granted. I liked that about her.

After warming up I headed to the training field we always used and found Jamal waiting. We proceeded with training like usual but I noticed that he seemed to be going somewhat easy on me. His verbal abuse didn't ebb any, but he pushed me less physically and seemed to avoid any rough stuff. As he called an early end to the training I learned the reason why.

"The boss has worked out the plan. Everything is set. We leave tomorrow afternoon."

I was stunned. Then ecstatic. Then slightly annoyed.

"You guys don't exactly give much warning do you?"

"Hey now. Don't get pissy. You're the one who set a tough deadline. I only learned about it myself this morning."

I guess that made sense.

"To top that off secrecy was a top concern of yours. That's tough to work out. He only finalized everything last night. If we don't leave tomorrow night, everything falls apart. We are now on a schedule."

Forgetting the fact that Jamal couldn't even see the gesture over the audio-only com channel, I nodded.

"So what's the plan?"

Jamal went silent for a second then answered.

"Not over a channel. We are both in old word armor and it would be hard to listen in to our chatter, but it's still not smart. We have a policy of never talking specifics over com channels. Let me buy you that drink I offered."

I had almost forgotten about the offer to buy me a drink.

"Sure."

45 minutes later, after I had showered in the room used for such things in the hanger areas, Jamal and I sat down at a table in the same place I had first met him. We ordered a drink and Jamal asked the waitress to not bother us for a while.

"This place is great for talks like this. They don't pry and we have connections with the owner. It's why we use it so often. Still… When talking hard facts, time tables and the such, basically anything that could get us killed if leaked, we use this."

Jamal pulled something out of his jacket pocket and placed it on the table. It was an odd thing. I didn't even know what the shape could be called, but it had many surfaces that were perfectly matte black. Each of its surfaces was the same shape. An octagon.

As he placed it down he tapped the top of it 2 times. Suddenly the object raised itself off the table using one of those smooth sides and began to… wriggle? No. Each of its surfaces seemed to separate from the other slightly and then begin to pull in or push out. At times some of them would tilt slightly this way or that.

There was a low pitched whine from the object before my ears suddenly stopped hearing any sound at all and my vision went blurry. A moment later I could hear and see normally again. That wasn't fully true. I could hear and see everything within a meter of the object perfectly. Anything outside that radius was dead silent and blurry as all hell. Nothing more than indistinct shapes.

"What is this thing?"

Jamal smiled at my shock.

"I don't know the name for it. It's old-world tech. It cuts all outside signals and sounds as well as makes viewing us as anything more than two blurs impossible. It's like a Faraday cage, but waaayy better. I wouldn't waste your time trying to buy one at any normal market or online. They are very rare. Not so much because there aren't many, but because they are extremely use-full, for obvious reasons, and cant be made with new world tech. Any that appear on the open market get bought up like hotcakes."

As I raised my eyebrows in appreciation of the device, I asked a question.

"And you bought one? Must have cost a lot."

"Haha. No. It's not mine. The boss has a few. He lends them to his agents. Their usefulness outstrips the money he spent on them. Has probably saved my life as well. Leaked information can be more deadly than a gun. So, are you ready? Did you prepare as I told you?"

Thinking for a moment, I made sure to go through my checklist one more time. I had already gone over it a hundred times, but it paid to be sure. Jamal had told me what was required for our trip on the first day of training. Since then I had silently gathered what was need.

"Yeah. Everything is set. Ammunition, cores, food, water, iodine pills. Thank god we are leaving tomorrow and not tonight. I just checked in with the people repairing my main weapon last night. My rifle should be with the rest of my gear in the Anarchy city mercenary lockup by the end of tonight. Do you have any idea how much extra they charged me for pushing them on the deadline for repairs?"

"Ha. Not my problem kid. And should it not be done in time, you will be leaving without it. So you better make sure they are on time. If it's not with your gear tomorrow before 10 a.m, it's not going with us."

I nodded and made a mental note to contact the people I had hired to repair the main rife of the Calipso. They were damn good at their job, being suggested by Jarrod I expected no less, but even they had complained about me pushing them on the deadline.

"Good."

That's when I noticed something he said.

"Tomorrow at 10 a.m? I thought you said we leave tomorrow night?"

He crossed his arms across his burly chest while leaning back and nodded.

"Yep. We leave tomorrow at 1 a.m. Our gear, however, will be loaded onto the helicopter before then. We aren't going to pilot them straight to the helipad and jump on in plain view."

He noticed my confusion persisted.

"People take note of stuff like that. No, our gear will be taken away by a "repair company". Some wires will get crossed, some I's wont get dotted and woopsidaisy, somehow our armor will get loaded into a nondescript helicopter inside nondescript shipping containers. People are clumsy like that."

Nodding again as I began to understand how we would leave the city with no one the wiser, I listened carefully as Jamal continued.

"That's also why you will need to contact a certain nearly defunct "repair company" and request repairs on your armor as well as your gear. They will need the authorization to take your armor out of its hangar as well. Don't worry. They don't need access to the cockpit. They use a machine to pick the whole thing up and stuff it into a big metal box. You DO park your armor in the tradition kneeling position, right?"

"Just like in the manual."

I realized I would need to tell Toby what was going to happen or he might react… aggressively should some big forklift or other try to suddenly pick the armor up. I had left him with orders to defend the armor if someone tries to steal it. Toby would probably take such actions as attempted theft if I didn't give him forewarning.

"Good. Besides that, be here tomorrow at 11 p.m. We will have a nice meal and a drink then slip out the backdoor and into the dark dark night. After taking a few "wrong" turns and passing a few checkpoints with some very lazy guards, who won't check any I.D, we will find ourselves standing on a helipad with a nondescript helicopter that has two big nondescript cargo containers inside of it.

After an hour of waiting, the helicopter will take off and leave for a little city that produces high-quality ball bearing to the east. But of course, once we are out of senor range for any of Anarchy cities listening outposts, that helicopter will stop heading to its preplanned flight destination and start heading south by southwest. It will curve its course and dip below any radar until it brings us to within 80 km of another little city called South Valley City, where it will roll two nondescript cargo containers out of its back cargo area and into the open air."

He smiled at me.

"Don't worry. The containers have parachutes."

I rolled my eyes.

"Then we kick the doors off the containers and head to the city. Upon arrival in the city, we will sit around drinking and doing what mercenaries do in their free time. After a day or two, depending on people's ability to keep to a schedule, a trade caravan will pull into the city. A man who is part of that trade caravan, a merchant who has a debt with the boss, will "hire" us to guard his portion of the caravan. We will fulfill our obligations as his guards like any good mercenary is supposed to.

One of the stops along this caravans route is a little piece of shit city called Grey Rock city. Do you have any idea how hard it was to dream up a conceivable reason why any self-respecting merchant would actually want to visit that shit heap? I guess that's beside the point.

While there we will make contact with our "cargo" and get a list of everyone who is coming along. Like you said, seven at most. That's what's been arranged and it can't be changed.

The people on said list will be hired as servants or laborers, whatever suits their identity best, and we will all leave with the caravan. After passing through one city, we will silently and stealthily slip away into the night while on the way to the next city and get picked up by another nondescript helicopter.

That helicopter will bring us back here… a few wires will get crossed and a few I's wont get dotted and somehow our armor is back in the hanger and it's like we never left the city. Some lazy guards will not check our I.D. Your friends will have new clean I.Ds and the job will be done."

Jamal raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.

"Sound good to you?"

Sitting back in my chair, I stroked my beard and mulled the plan over.

"And we will be in Grey Rock before the end of the month?"

Jamal nodded.

"Even if we factor in delays, because there are always delays, we will be in Grey Rock within 3 weeks. We should be back, all said and done, in 5 weeks at most."

I bit my lip and studied the palms of my big hands for a while as I tried my best to poke holes in the plan. When I found I couldn't, I looked up and nodded.

Jamal nodded back before giving me the information for the "repair company" and explaining exactly what I would have to do to give them access to the Calipso and my gear. After that, he clapped me on the back before tapping the matte black device twice and pocketing it.

"Don't be late." Was all he said before leaving.

I sat in the chair for a while and felt that my heart rate was accelerated. It wasn't fear. It was excitement.

It's happening. I'm going to see mother!

After shaking myself free from the excitement I stood up and left. I had things to do tonight. Calls to make. People to talk to. Arrangements to be made. Jarrod had to be called. I had given him some tasks and he would have to be told I would be out of contact for a good long while. Toby had to be warned about the pick-up tomorrow.

It seemed a little early and I wasn't sure if she was ready, but I also had some plans for Alice. Let's see if Alice was more than just a pretty face. Could she grasp the opportunity I offered?

As I walked towards my hangar, I dialed her number.

"Alice. We need to meet."

"Now?"

"Yeah. It's important."

She paused for a second and I could hear her tell her mother she was leaving.

"Ok. I'm on my way. Where should we meet."

"At the hangar."

After the call disconnected, I stuffed the tablet into my pocket and wondered if I was making the right call. Everything would be more simple if I cut her out of my life. Why was I unable to do it? Her story wasn't special. There were thousands of young men and women who dreamed of being pilots who would never get the chance. She was just one of them. Was I that stupid that I would keep sticking my hand in the fire?

After a few moments of searching my mind for an answer, I spoke to myself.

"I guess I'm just a stupid fucking sap."