The Coming Storm_A Pax Aeterna Novel Page 3

  “This is the life, brother of mine!” crowed Francis. “This is the life!”

  Chapter 4

  Cassius

  ‘The life’ continued for another year. Cassius and Francis never told their father where the extra money was coming from, and in any case, the elder Ojun was too ill to rail at them about their links to gangland activities.

  Shandie, now cured of wetlung, quit babysitting to devote more time and energy on caring for Daniel.

  However, despite her ministrations, Daniel died a few months later.

  Cassius knew it was a blessing. Daniel Ojun had barely been able to breathe in his last days. At the funeral, Cassius wept quietly but unashamedly for the man who had always done his best but had always fallen short.

  A promising baseball player in his youth, Daniel had never gotten out of the farm leagues. And with the birth of his eldest son, Francis, he had had to shelve his ambitions to care for his young family. Ill-educated, the best job he could find was that of a trash hauler. Some of the trash was toxic—and, from it, he contracted the disease that finally killed him.

  “At least he died at home,” Francis said, red-eyed, as he shuffled with the other pallbearers toward the gravesite.

  “And we made him as comfortable as we could,” Cassius replied huskily.

  The additional money the brothers brought in meant that they all could eat better. A few weeks before Daniel died, the family also moved into a bigger apartment with a view overlooking a small park, which Daniel could see from his wheelchair near the bedroom window.

  The Rolands sent fresh flowers every three days, a small gesture that nevertheless went a long way toward convincing Shandie that maybe they weren’t so bad after all.

  Or at least, that’s what she claimed.

  Privately, Cassius suspected that his mother was as antipathetic toward the gang as ever, but she was smart enough to know that without them, her life would be a misery.

  The graveside service went on forever, or so it seemed to Cassius. Overhead, the sky was cloudless and the sun bathed them with warmth.

  Cassius looked at his watch and shared a glance with Francis. They had a job that night, even just after their father’s funeral. They had just enough time to put in an appearance at the house for a brief post-funeral meal with relatives before meeting Adan for last-minute instructions.

  After obliging on their family-related responsibilities, Cassius and Francis made their way to the rendezvous point. It was inside one of the warehouses owned by the Rolands, and used as staging areas for certain jobs.

  “Sorry about your dad,” Adan said, his craggy face set in an expression that seemed to hover midway between contriteness and anger. It was, Cassius realized, as close to a look of sympathy as the man could get. “And sorry we had to call you out tonight.”

  “It’s fine,” Francis said. “Distraction is good.”

  “Right.” Adan became brusque, as though standard human emotions made him uncomfortable. “All you gotta do is a quick load-out of some material. Electronics. Three crates. Pick ‘em up, bring ‘em back here. Nothin’ to it.”

  “Okay.”

  “One thing, though...”

  Cassius cocked an expectant eyebrow at the handler.

  “We got a new guy comin’ on, Joseph. He’ll be drivin’.”

  Cassius and Francis exchanged a look. Newbies were often onboarded as drivers, and they tended to be nervous. Still, there was no choice in the matter.

  “We’re good,” Francis said while Cassius nodded.

  Adan gave a little nod and said, “Good. Lemme get him while you change.” He handed them a bag containing moving company overalls. “Be right back.” He hurried away into the farther reaches of the warehouse.

  By the time he returned with Joseph in tow, the brothers were rigged out as movers. Joseph was about Cassius’ age. He was gangly, with a sharp face and cold eyes. Cassius took an instant dislike to him but said nothing, taking Joseph’s hand and shaking it briefly. The guy had a grip like a jellyfish’s.

  “So this is how it goes,” Adan said as Joseph struggled into his overalls. “Joseph, here, drives. Cassius, you do the hauling. Francis, you keep watch. Got your gun?”

  Francis patted his side, where his handgun, a needler, was holstered.

  “Good. Alright, you monkeys. Get a move on,” he said, and then chuckled. “Movers, right? Get a move on?”

  Francis sighed. Cassius made a face.

  The handler shook his head and said, “No one in this outfit got a sense of humor. Go on, get the fuck outta here.”

  “What does he mean by no sense of humor?” Joseph asked as he guided the truck out of the warehouse. “I got a sense of humor.”

  Cassius scratched his head and said, “Get used to it. Guy loves jokes—but can’t tell them for shit himself.”

  “Where we headed, anyway?” Francis asked through a yawn. “Adan never told me.”

  “Robot storage facility,” Joseph said, tapping the map screen on the dashboard. “MyBot Systems.”

  “Over on 45th and O’Donnell?” Cassius chuckled. “Know it well, know it well.”

  They drove through the streets with Francis riding shotgun, keeping a wary watch out for potential hijackers. Some people in Centralia were so desperate they’d try anything, even robbing a moving van, especially one that had no obvious connection to the Rolands. But there were no incidents, and they pulled up at the storage facility shortly before midnight.

  It was guarded, as Cassius expected, by state-of-the-art bots. But the truck was broadcasting an ID signal known to the robots, so no alarm was sounded. In addition, Cassius had override codes that allowed him to get past the robots and unlock the warehouse doors.

  Adan had given him instructions on where to find the components that were wanted. Cassius had no trouble locating them since all the aisles and bays were clearly marked. He set about gathering the goods using a tow motor forklift. He rather enjoyed scooting up and down the aisles on the vehicle’s noiseless rubber tires.

  This is what some people do for honest work, he thought. If they don’t mind being bored out of their minds after twenty years of it...at least no one working here will catch wetlung.

  Cassius’ chest tightened as he remembered his father. Then he shook his head and focused on the situation before him.

  He had secured everything on his ‘shopping list’ within a quarter of an hour. He brought the tow motor to a halt beside the delivery truck, climbed down from the saddle, and began loading the boxes and crates into the back of the truck. Joseph, the driver, sat in the truck’s cab, hand dangling out the window. Francis stood to one side, staring around the grounds, alert as always for possible trouble.

  Just as Cassius was lashing down the final crate inside the truck’s cargo area, he heard a shout.

  “The hell?” he muttered, catching sight of Francis running toward the sound. There was another shout, then the zeeet of Francis’ handgun.

  He made sure the crate was safe, then he jumped down to the ground and hurriedly pulled down the rear door. Joseph had climbed out of the driver’s seat and stood beside the truck, clenching and unclenching his fists, his adam’s apple bobbing nervously.

  “What is it? What’s happening? Are we okay? Maybe we better get out of here? Where’s Francis?” Joseph said, panicking.

  “Oh, man, shut your pie-hole,” Cassius grated. “Everything’s fine, shit happens, you know?”

  Francis trotted toward them from an alley between the warehouse and an office trailer.

  “What’s going on?” Cassius asked.

  Francis shook his head in disgust. “Some scum making a late-night inspection. I had to shoot him.”

  “Shit, man,” Joseph said, his eyes going wide. “No one said anything to me about anybody getting shot.”

  “You’re in a gang, you idiot. What did you expect, tea parties and doilies?” Francis spat.

  “No—well…no, but maybe we ought to go to the police, huh?
I mean, killing that guy wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “Cripes, Joseph, don’t you have any kehonnies at all?” Cassius punched the driver lightly on the arm. “Sometimes you gotta improvise.”

  “What?” Joseph asked, his eyes shifting nervously.

  Francis shook his head. “When things go south, you have to run with the wind. Change the plan on the fly, right?”

  “Y-yeah. Sure. I guess so.”

  “Come on, help me get the guy into the truck.”

  Francis and Joseph vanished around the corner into the alley, while Cassius rolled the rear door up. Moments later, they returned with the body of a thirtyish man, a cluster of plastic needles bristled like glass darts in his chest.

  “Good placement,” Cassius said as he helped them manhandle the body into the truck.

  Francis scoffed. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, pulling himself up into the back. “I’ll ride here with this guy.”

  Joseph seemed so rattled that Cassius insisted on driving back to the rendezvous point.

  Adan was waiting for them. He wasn’t happy about the shooting, but he accepted Francis’ story that it was unavoidable.

  “It’s good that you don’t mind getting your hands dirty on a job,” he said to Francis. He motioned to Cassius. “Come over here, Cash. Joseph, give us a minute, huh?”

  He drew the brothers off to one side. “Look, there’ll be a stink about that guard,” he said. When Francis started to protest, Adan shushed him. “Don’t get all wee-wee’d up, Frankie. We’re gonna pin it on the newb.” He tilted his head briefly toward Joseph. “The boss thinks he’s too soft and will flip on us.”

  “He said we ought to go to the cops,” Francis said, and Cassius nodded.

  “All the more reason,” said Adan. “Look, you guys go home, I’ll handle things here.”

  Cassius and Francis walked away.

  “Kind of tough on old Joey there,” Francis said.

  Cassius shrugged. “Yeah. I kind of don’t like it, but hey—he could’ve figured what was gonna go down if we got in trouble. Come on, let’s go get a drink. We’ve earned it.”

  Chapter 5

  Cassius

  Cassius approached his work with a personal touch. Though constantly preoccupied with his duties as governor, he allotted time every week to visit some of the families in the settlement. Ava didn’t like having to man the office herself in his absence, but after he hired an assistant for her, she stopped complaining—for the most part.

  Today was Sunday, a good day to make appearances among his constituents. Most of his people would be home after church, as farmers in Elban still clung to the old traditions.

  Ava sighed when she saw Cassius headed out the door, basket in hand. “Who is it this time, Little Red Riding Hood?”

  Ava didn’t normally attend church services. She used Sunday mornings to catch up on some of her paperwork—an attempt to get away from her unruly kids, Cassius always thought.

  He grinned at her.

  “Marcus Young is ill,” he said. “I’ve got some jerky and an apple pie that Lyla baked.”

  He snapped his fingers.

  “Oh, did I mention that she baked one for you, too? It’s on top of the filing cabinet next to my desk.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s awfully sweet of her. Send her my love.”

  Cassius waved at her and continued out of the door. “I’ll do that. Be back in half an hour, Ava.”

  “You’re fine,” Ava replied, chuckling.

  Cassius left the office while whistling a jolly tune. The idea of the pie had obviously mollified her.

  Yep...the trick to managing people is to find out what they like, and deliver it. Praise, raise...or pie, Cassius thought.

  He could’ve taken a ground car, but the day was pleasant. Cassius felt complacent enough that he decided to walk.

  It’s that common touch again, he thought as he walked along the little town’s bustling streets; being seen as a man of the people, for the people, and among the people.

  Somehow, Cassius always felt nostalgic when he travelled by foot. He had been so used to getting around with air and ground cars, that it made him feel a little lighter with his feet.

  He remembered the days before he joined the Rolands, when he had to drag his feet to the places he wanted to go. He’d look at his ratted shoes and wish he had a way to get around without having to punish his feet.

  Cassius smiled. He let his memories drift in his head for a while, until he reached his destination.

  Marcus Young was no better, but he put a brave face on his illness.

  “Don’t like being in bed,” he rasped, though his eyes lit up at the sight of the pie. “Got things to do, don’t cha know.”

  “Yup yup, we all do,” Cassius said. “You’ll be up and around in no time, though, Doc says.”

  Marcus grunted. “Doc don’t know his ass from—”

  “Marc, keep it sweet,” his wife, Gail, said. She was a big, dark-haired woman with a generally pleasant disposition.

  Now, though, Cassius noted, she looked careworn and even a little haggard, with wisps of hair floating out of her ponytail.

  “Eat your pie like a good fella,” Gail said. Then, she turned to Cassius. “You be sure to thank Lyla for us.”

  “Oh, I will,” he replied with a grin that masked his worry.

  Marcus Young didn’t look good; the man looked gray and peaked. The farmer insisted he was down with allergies, but it didn’t look like allergies to Cassius—and he knew that Dr. Bergman didn’t think so, either, but couldn’t diagnose precisely what the ailment was.

  Leaving Marcus to his pie and the daytime news stream, Cassius followed Gail into the small house’s kitchen.

  “Where’s your boy Titus?” he asked the woman.

  “Oh, Tite? Mending some fences. Kyle Garrety’s zeohogs broke through into our pasture and rooted the place up.” She sighed. “Tite’s not feeling so great either, but he’s better than Marc.”

  She sighed. “Tite’s not feeling so great either, but he’s better than Marc.”

  “Allergies too?” Cassius made a mental note to ask Doc Bergman about the sixteen-year-old’s health.

  Gail shrugged. “That’s what they say.”

  “You seem well.”

  “Oh, I’m healthy as an ox.” She smiled, but the gray patches under her eyes belied her words. “You know, the Garretys are sick, too. All of ‘em. That’s why their damn ‘hogs got through the fence. Kyle’s been too ill to take proper care of ‘em.”

  “Hmm, no. I didn’t know that,” Cassius said.

  “You got one or two members of pretty near every family around here sniffling and blowing their noses,” Gail said. “Some bug going around, I guess. Harvest is due in in a couple of weeks, and the way it looks to me is you might need bots to augment the workforce.”

  Cassius rubbed his chin. If that was true, he’d have to put in a requisition for the mechanisms as soon as he could. He put a red star on his mental note about Dr. Bergman.

  Come to think of it, hadn’t Franky had a runny nose for the past couple of days?

  A twinge of unease flickered through him.

  “Well,” he said. “I know the doc has ordered a shipment of antibiotics...he’ll have plenty of stuff to keep the fevers down until it passes.”

  “I sure hope so.” Gail shook her head. “Doesn’t seem like allergies to me, though, Cash, you know? I mean, when Marc gets up to go to the bathroom, he has to hold on to the bed sometimes, and when he walks he’s kind of shaky. Last night, he went to pee but ended up in Tite’s room. I got to him just in time before he peed on the boy’s wall. He made a joke out of it afterward, but I didn’t think it was very funny.”

  “No, I can’t blame you,” Cassius sighed. “Well, look, Gail, I have to get back to the office. You take care, and let me know how Marc’s doing.”

  “Will do. Thanks, Cash. I appreciate it. We all do.”

  Gail gave hi
m a quick peck on the cheek. He walked back slowly to town along the main road, lost in thought. He stopped and called Dr. Bergmann through his wrist slipstream device.

  “Cash, I don’t have one clue about this thing,” the doctor said once Cassius got through to him. “I do know that the people getting sick are mostly the men working at the fields. Craig Lownds called it ‘crop fever’ when I saw him yesterday.”

  “What, in your office?” Cassius asked.

  “Uh-huh. He doesn’t like being sick, so he came to me right off. All I could do was give him antibiotics.”

  “Okay, yeah. Crop fever, huh?” Cassius frowned. “Did you do blood work on him?”

  “I certainly did. He has slightly elevated levels of troponin,” the doctor said as he shook his head.

  “You’re losing me. Pretend I’m a jerkwater provincial politician who doesn’t know jack about medicine.”

  Bergman chuckled, then grew serious again.

  “It’s a marker for heart damage,” he said. “Severe infections can increase its levels, and can lead to congestive heart failure.”

  “Severe...but no one’s severely sick, right?” Cassius replied.

  “No, but look; we’re living on an exoplanet, and even though we’ve all been inoculated against infections six ways from Sunday, who knows what our scans might have missed? Or what antibiotics couldn’t flush out?”

  “Shit. Okay, Doc, thanks. We’ll talk again soon.”

  “Count on it,” the doctor said before Cassius cut the slipstream link.

  More worried now, Cassius picked up his pace.

  Better get those bots on order today, he thought.

  A block from his office, he saw his poker buddy Davon Martinelli approach him on the sidewalk. Cassius smiled, but Davon didn’t return it.

  “Cash, you hear how people are getting sick?” Davon asked anxiously.

  “Yeah, Dav, I was just out at the Youngs’ place to see Marc. Gail said that Titus is feeling drippy, too.”

  “This is what we get for allowing Lange to start farming land in Anupao,” Davon said. He coughed, which sent an unpleasant shock to Cassius.