Tyger Burning

by T. C. McCarthy

  “But not anymore. Not since the Sommen packed up and left Earth. Now things go down that none of us understand and if I didn’t know any better I’d say those stories about demons and ghosts were true. Drifters don’t just die anymore; they disappear without a trace and I have to conjure up some excuse for the chief on Sunny Side. We lost three more today and if we keep going at this rate, the incoming supply of prisoners won’t make up for the ones we lose. So I don’t have the time to play games with you; I know you’re no country idiot.”

  “I’m not playing.” Maung was angry and relieved at the same time—angry at being thought a liar, relieved that he finally didn’t have to hide. “Half of me is artificial and so I lost part of my brain. I am dumb, Nam. I’m the country idiot until I can switch on my semi-aware, which holds half my memories in its storage units—memories of my wife and child that I can’t even access.”

  Nam gripped a nearby table. “Bullshit. That’s a load of crap.” He looked at Maung for a few seconds. Finally he shook his head and said, “You’re serious? My God, the Chinese did that to our people—stripped pieces of their brains?”

  “They had to,” said Maung. “The original goal was to create super-awares that looked human so we could move freely and avoid Allied targeting. But there’s only so much room in a human skull and Chinese specialists needed space to place their equipment. They picked out small parts of our brains—along with the top half of our spines. They also replaced most of my upper skeleton with some kind of metal, to store information and make an antenna. The good news is that I’m superhuman. The bad news is that I’m alone, and most people want me dead so I have to let the super part of me sleep. I can’t ever get back to being just human.”

  “I’m sorry, kala. It must be hard—harder than I can imagine because most of us can’t even begin to think what it’s like. And to have to hide it for as long as you did.”

  A holo floated over the main control panel and Maung stared at it, a three-dimensional map with yellow dots showing the locations of all the drifters, and he tried to find his dot but the information jammed in his head, making him want to slam his fist into the wall. His eyes teared. If he were somewhere on Earth, he would get up and run, ignoring the consequences.

  “I can’t see my family,” he said. “My son.”

  “They’re supposed to allow you some video contact. But with who we are and why we’re here, you can forget it; be patient, Maung. Here, at a prison, you’re safe—at least from the police. Though I don’t know which is worse.”

  Maung nodded. He wasn’t looking at Nam, but figured the man stared at him. “What does the Old Man in Charleston want from me?”

  “You’re a hero.” Nam put a hand on his shoulder and turned Maung to face him. “To those of us who know the truth, you’re a spark of hope, that maybe we can be more than spoil from yet another lost war.”

  “I’m no hero. All I want is to see my son become something. The sooner I repay my debt, maybe the sooner I can go home.”

  Nam laughed and grabbed him by the other shoulder, shaking Maung gently. “That’s good. Because what the Old Man in Charleston wants is what I want: to figure out what’s happening to my drifters. But I’m sure Than told you not to get your hopes up about going back. Finding the lost drifters though . . . It will give you something to do. Maybe forget Earth for a while.”

  “So I merge.” Maung shrugged and pointed at the holo. “I scour the prison computer systems for information and figure out if it has anything to do with the military or Sunny Side.”

  Nam held up one hand. “Not yet. We can’t have you merge for now.”

  “Why?”

  Nam pointed to the holo map and mumbled something into his throat mic, so that blinking red dots appeared. Now that Maung saw them he noticed how many there were, thousands sprinkled evenly over the complex and nonmoving. “What are they?” he asked.

  “Sommen mines. Traps. The ones we know of and have no clue how to disarm. If you activate your semi-aware, they’d detect your signal and you’d be dead within minutes. Null fibers won’t mask your signal once you broadcast outside your suit.”

  “Do you have a surgeon on site?”

  Nam frowned. “He is Japanese. On Sunny Side, and more corrupt than a gutter plum. Why?”

  “Because,” said Maung. “I know of another way—an access port that I haven’t used since training, after which they sealed it inside my skull. You’ll have to cut me open. If we do it that way we can use shielding to prevent my signal from going far, because I can insert directly using a cable. But the last thing I want is infection; best if a surgeon does it.”

  Nam called Than back and while they waited he said, “We will not cut you open. Not yet. The risk of having our doctor reveal your secret to others is too great, and I must weigh those risks against what can be gained.”

  “Can I trust the other guards?” Maung asked. “The ones here, under you?”

  The airlock opened and Than entered. While he removed his helmet Nam nodded and pointed at Than. “You can tell them what you are, Maung. All of them are loyal to me and to you—to any Burmese. This one most of all.” Nam laughed then.

  “What is so funny?” Than asked.

  “Put your helmet back on,” said Nam. “I need you to take Maung outside and show him the ropes. Start with our high ground, he may as well get used to it and you should know, Than: this is no simple country Burmese. Have respect.”

  “So who are you?” Than asked.

  They’d been walking in silence for ten minutes, and Maung still had trouble getting accustomed to light gravity; he had to move in a way that combined bouncing off the floor and then pushing off walls and ceilings so that more than once he flipped over and had to regain control. Holes in the wall suggested there were once hand rails, long since removed for their metals.

  “Nobody,” said Maung.

  They reached a dead end and Than cracked open a panel, then punched on the tiny keys inside. A wall opened to reveal an elevator shaft.

  “I doubt you’re nobody, kala. Nam just gave you the respect he’d give to one of his equals or to an elder. That never happens.”

  Maung hesitated. Than waited at the elevator doorway, and beyond him was a vertical shaft for a service lift, its walls disappearing into darkness. Maung’s stomach went cold when he imagined how many ghosts might live in such a black place.

  “We’re going in there?” he asked.

  Than leaped. He floated across the shaft and gently landed on the opposite side where he looped his hands around a ladder rung. “Of course. It’s easy. Look, kala, there’s no other way so you may as well go free and easy, just embrace the lifestyle. You won’t even get tired.”

  Than disappeared then without saying another word, pulling himself upward into the shaft. Maung hesitated. He hated heights and knew they were already hundreds of meters from the crater floor, and that if he looked downward it would either be pitch black or there would be lights—going so far down that even lit, he wouldn’t see bottom.

  “Jump like it’s a puddle,” Than said over the radio. “No more force than that or you risk bouncing off and falling.”

  “Why can’t we use the safety line?” Maung asked.

  “You gotta learn to live without the line, kala.”

  Maung inched to the edge. The prayer he said was admittedly self-serving, but this was a terror that rivaled his experience patching the Singapore Sun, and he would rather crawl back into the ship’s guts to fix another leaking pipe than take this leap. Finally, he jumped. Within seconds he crossed and Maung panicked because he moved too fast and hit the far wall with such force that the inside of his helmet rang and both hands slipped from the rungs. He bounced off. Now the ladder was out of reach and Maung watched, horrified, because the rungs moved past as he fell and his speed increased by the second. He had almost reached the smooth, opposite wall. Maung tried kicking off it gently, which was the wrong thing to do because his boot made contact for too long, s
ending him into a violent head-over-foot spin, and although he succeeded in re-traversing the shaft toward the ladder, his helmet hit a rung and sent his head smacking against the hard plastic with a crack. He passed out before getting a chance to scream.

  “Wake up, kala.”

  At first Maung thought it was Nang speaking, and he smiled but couldn’t grasp why she called him kala—or where a Laotian had learned the word. His eyes fluttered open. Someone shone a light through his faceplate and the suit computer was pinging, its computer voice repeating, “Oxygen levels low.”

  “Come on, kala,” Than said, “You OK?”

  Maung shook his head. His back screamed with pain until he understood that his legs were pinned beneath him, twisting into an odd shape, and once he succeeded in freeing them, the pain became more manageable; he’d sprained something, but nothing worse. Maung was still in the shaft, but now sat on a springy web that someone had stretched across and fastened to the walls with bolts.

  “Safety net?” he asked.

  “It saved your ass, kala,” Than said. “They put them in all the shafts when the project first kicked off, so that dumb shits like you wouldn’t kill themselves.”

  Maung stood and tested his legs then moved his arms, relieved to learn that everything was fine; he had a headache and his back muscles were sprained, but he’d live. The shaft was almost pitch black. Except for Than’s helmet lamp, there were no light sources and Maung wanted to get out because he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in some sort of tomb. He flicked on his helmet lamp.

  “We’re below ground, aren’t we?” he asked.

  “Way down. I’ve never even thought of coming this far down and we’re not even at the bottom.” Than pointed to the ladder. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Something caught Maung’s eye. Behind Than was the elevator doorway for this level and it looked out of shape, as if the thing had been made of candy and someone took a blowtorch to it, melting the frame and turning a rectangular opening into a misshaped oval, the top of which was crusted with plastic—frozen in the form of a bubbling and dripping mass.

  “What happened here?” he asked.

  “Sommen,” Than said. “I’ve seen this before but had no idea they attacked down this far. Usually they just rolled a bunch of their nano-weapons into the shafts and let them take care of everyone who was hiding in the sub levels.”

  “How do you know they didn’t do that here?”

  “Because.” Than bounced toward the exit and reached up, breaking off a teardrop of plastic. “They used their personal weapons. None of their nano tech melted like this that I know of, so why? What was so far down here that they wanted to send their troops?”

  Maung moved toward the ladder. “I want out of here.”

  “We have time, kala.” He was already moving through the molten entrance. “I checked the drifters when you and Nam were talking so we may as well explore. Come on and keep up this time.”

  “What about my oxygen?” Maung asked.

  “I clipped an extra tank to your belt.”

  Maung fumbled with the tank but after a few seconds managed to activate it, switching the feed to the new one so the computer stopped complaining. When he looked up, Than was gone. Now Maung drifted alone in the shaft and although it was perfectly silent in the asteroid’s vacuum, what remained of his mind played tricks, forcing Maung to imagine that it was not safe and that someone whispered in the darkness. He kicked away, diving into the corridor after Than.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Steel beams and shards of plastic hung from the ceiling and Maung had to be careful so his suit wouldn’t snag or puncture on jagged edges. He prayed again. Amid the wreckage lay bodies of men and he recognized the uniform of Allied forces, the frost on which made him realize that decompression caught many of them by surprise. Their faces also showed the splotchy red marks of burst blood vessels; some had only made it half way into their suits.

  But there were also bodies of those who fought; coil guns lay scattered amid the wreckage along with grenade launchers, left and forgotten so that while Maung heard his own breath through his speakers he couldn’t shake the sensation that this battle had just ended. He kept turning around, sure that a Sommen warrior hid nearby. The dead hands of men and women locked onto their weapons still, faceless people whose suit helmets frosted over from moisture that once came from breath, and their frozen blood covered the hallway—so much of it that Maung had to look away.

  “A slaughter,” he said.

  Than picked his way through the wreckage. “There are only humans here; I don’t understand.”

  “What?”

  “Why there are none of them,” said Than, “no Sommen bodies. Nothing at all.”

  Maung remembered the battle in Charleston—how the American weapons had no effect. “It’s because they have armor like none you’ve seen. Green. Maybe a similar material to what they use for building, and nothing these troops had would have penetrated.”

  “How do you know what Sommen armor is like?”

  “Because,” Maung said. “I fought one. It’s why I wound up here, I had to run from American forces or risk being thrown in prison. Or worse. I fried its armor systems with a transmission.”

  Than laughed. He stopped and grasped the barrel to a coil gun, one that stuck up from the frozen hands of a dead soldier so it reminded Maung of a sapling, and the man used it to make sure he stayed grounded. Then Than reached out and gripped Maung’s shoulder.

  “That was a good joke. You may be a lousy prison guard but you are funny. A transmission, right.”

  Maung laughed too. “Remember what Nam said and how he treated me with respect?”

  “Yeah, I remember. You fell before you could tell me why.”

  “I’m a Dream Warrior—the last one alive.”

  Than said nothing. Maung saw his face through the helmet glass and the man’s eyes were wide, his mouth open now that he’d stopped laughing. “Bull.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Maung said. “Why else would Nam treat me the way he did?”

  It took a moment for Than to speak again; when he did it was a whisper. “You’re telling the truth. Then you’re invincible.”

  “Not invincible. The Americans found a flaw in our system and exploited it to track and kill us. Including my wife. In order to keep from getting caught, and to keep from activating the Sommen mines in the area, I have to keep my semi-aware portion shut down. If I don’t, the signal can be detected.”

  Maung took the lead, unsure of what they were doing or what Than hoped to find. He couldn’t stand another minute among the corpses and prayed there was less blood in the hallway ahead.

  “A Dream Warrior?” Than hissed over his speakers. “Are you freaking serious? Now I need a cigarette.”

  There was a hole in the wall to his right. It looked as though something melted its way through the plastic, insulation, and supports, until gaining access to a room beyond. Maung increased the illumination from his helmet light. The area was small, and looked as though it housed computer equipment. A thin column or tower vanished through a hole in the floor and also continued upward through an open ceiling so that he couldn’t see where it started or stopped. Then Maung saw the corpse. A man in a vacuum suit faced them, suspended by a Sommen spear-like thing that spiked him to the tower so his feet hung frozen in midair. The corpse had no helmet; Maung shivered when he realized that a dead man stared at him, a smile frozen on his mouth as if amused.

  His new oxygen supply was halfway gone. “We should return,” Maung said, “my oxygen is at fifty. And this place is cursed.”

  “A little farther,” said Than. “I at least want to find something to justify what we’ve done so Nam doesn’t give me crap for wasting time. And you have got to give up that country superstition crap, Maung; this place isn’t cursed. It’s just filled with dead people.”

  Maung was about to answer when he stopped. The hallway ahead opened into a huge chamber fille
d with desks and monitors, some kind of control room, he thought, but a portion of the floor was missing in front of them and had he taken another step he would have fallen through. Than whistled and unslung his coil gun, which he held with one hand, using the other to grab onto a molten lump of plastic.

  “What’s wrong?” Maung asked. He whispered it before realizing that he could have shouted and it wouldn’t have mattered, not in a vacuum.

  “There. In the center of the room.”

  Maung looked. It took a second for him to see what Than was pointing at but he made out a shape, a hulking form slumped over one of the tables on a lower level; the room was tiered, with wide platforms that stepped down into the center like a circular amphitheater. Maung squeezed inside.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Than asked. His voice sounded high pitched and Maung heard him breathing rapidly. “That’s a Sommen, Maung. Are you crazy? What if it’s still alive? We don’t know anything about these things!”

  Maung ignored him. He floated over the floor gap and bounced down slowly, drifting closer until his helmet lamp hit the Sommen with its beam. Like everything else, it was frozen. Maung saw the green armor and supposed it was the same material he’d witnessed in Charleston, but which here was masked by a thin coating of frost or dust, and the material pulsated under his light—as if reacting to it. He reached out. Maung’s gloves scraped the dust away and he noticed the armor plates were soft, semirigid, as if constructed of plastic and filled with gel. He pressed harder. Maung raised a fist then and slammed it down onto the thing’s thigh plate and it went rigid, at the same time glowing so he had the strange sensation that his fist stopped before making contact; something repulsed it even before his hand actually hit.