Tyger Burning

by T. C. McCarthy

  When he was ready, Maung launched the attack. It wasn’t designed to destroy his enemy, just distract—to give him enough time to permanently deactivate the elevator while skimming Chinese tactical data from any communications picked up by Dark Side relays. It was like he stomped on an anthill. Bursts of colored packet traffic shot toward him and Maung mentally chuckled while distributing his programs like seeding a field, taking only milliseconds to gather the information he needed before blowing the elevator power supply with a surge. After finishing, he withdrew.

  Nang’s face went pale. “You’re a Dream Warrior,” she said.

  “Yes.” Maung reached up to unplug. His arm was tired and his heads-up clock showed that only a few minutes had passed, but the level of exertion had been so intense that he barely found the strength to grab the data cable and yank. Nam helped him.

  “I’m a Dream Warrior. The last one. The Americans killed all my friends and my wife, but somehow I got away. They’ve been chasing me ever since the war, and ever since the Singapore Sun.”

  “That’s not—” she said, but Maung interrupted her.

  “I destroyed those ships off Ganymede. The captain gave me control of his ship and I used it to take the over one of the Chinese vessels.”

  “He’s our best,” Nam said, nodding. “Pa, I don’t mean to be rude. I know you two have a lot to talk about, but our people are dying and we have a long way to go.”

  Than folded his arms. “A long way? It’s hundreds of klicks, Nam! All hand over hand and you two are freakin’ nuts. Like a couple of kala.”

  “Wait,” said Nang. She stopped staring at Maung and kicked off toward the barracks. “Stay here and don’t move. I know something that could make this a faster trip. Much faster.”

  “I hope they have cigarettes on Mars,” said Maung. “Because I could really use one now.”

  Maung had to practically hold Nam back. “We can’t go yet. Give her a few more minutes.”

  “We’ve already given her ten. They’re dying over there, Maung!”

  He was about to answer when Nang returned. Maung couldn’t stop smiling since there had always been the possibility that she had gone to report him or that she simply would never come back, but there she was. She dragged a bulky object—something like a combination between a backpack and tanker ship. Before he even pinged his semi-aware, it gave him the data.

  “It’s a maneuvering pod,” Maung said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Think of what?” Than asked.

  Nang grinned and held up the pack. “It’s for work outside the asteroid when we need to suit up and replace hardware at the docking port, or wherever. There are control jets and it has enough fuel for one hour of continuous acceleration. It’s designed to fit in tight spaces.”

  “How nice,” said Than, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Such equipment doesn’t exist on Dark Side; we just get safety harnesses and handholds. What a luxury it must be to work over here; what bravery it must take.”

  “Shut up,” said Nam.

  Maung grabbed the pack. “I’ll take the lead. The first half we’ll be falling so we can tie into each other to keep from drifting too far apart. We can’t get going too fast or someone could get hurt just by touching the wall. So use your hands and feet to decelerate; we’ll keep our speed reasonable. Then, once we pass the asteroid’s core I’ll use the pack to accelerate so we can keep our speed up. We’ll see you when we get back, Nang.”

  “No you won’t,” said Nang.

  “What?”

  “I’m coming too. The pack was my idea. I may not be as smart as a Dream Warrior, but I know how bad things would get if the Chinese take Karin’s dark side. There is no safe place, Maung.”

  Nam pulled nylon cords from his pouch and the four tied off to each other. Maung took Nang’s hands. He looked through her faceplate and at first she didn’t look back at him, but when she did she smiled.

  “I wanted to tell you on the Sun,” he said. “About me.”

  “You should have. I don’t know what to say to you right now.”

  “I’m not who I used to be.” Maung paused. Even with all the data and processing power he had, trying to express feelings left him frustrated. “I’m not a killer anymore. I just want to find someplace to live without being hunted.”

  Nang nodded and pointed to the elevator portal. “I know. We can talk later. Right now it’s time to get moving.”

  “I’m serious; you don’t have to go with us.”

  “The hell I don’t,” said Nang. “I don’t know what I think about you right now, but I’m still not letting the Chinese kill you before I do.”

  She drove Maung forward, helping him squeeze the backpack unit through the narrow hatchway where it dangled from a strip of webbing, and then he popped through, sliding down the narrow shaft to make room for the next person. It was dark ahead. Maung used friction to slow his descent and thanked his ancestors that the tube was ultra slick, because its diameter was barely wider than he was, and Maung knew that he’d be bouncing off the walls once he accelerated; the trick was to keep everyone sliding at the same rate—something that would be difficult—so the group stayed evenly spaced. Finally Nang radioed that she was in.

  “Here we go,” Maung said. He let the semi-aware take over, feeling like a spectator as the computer guided his hands and knees against the walls. The acceleration was instantaneous. In less than a minute they reached one hundred kilometers per hour and Maung smiled at the minute pressure changes his system made, keeping his hands pressed against the tube walls. Maybe, he thought, this would work.

  There is a thirteen percent chance that friction could disrupt suit integrity at your gloves and knees, the semi-aware informed him, but Maung shrugged; it was too late now.

  “The fighters launched,” Nang said over the radio.

  Maung almost lost focus, but then corrected speed using his feet. “What?”

  “Fighters. We had three fighters and pilots, just in case we had to defend against something minor—not something this big. I just got a transmission that they took off to try and intercept the destroyers.”

  Maung said a silent prayer, asking his parents to guide the craft even if their pilots weren’t worthy. Especially if they weren’t worthy.

  Despite having the maneuvering pack, they still had to claw their way through the tube for the final kilometer since there wasn’t enough fuel to carry all four of them to the exit portal. The going was difficult—despite low gravity. Without handholds and with walls that were as slick as glass, the group had to press their backs against one side and then used their feet and hands to press against the other, sliding “upward” while moving away from the asteroid’s core and closer to Dark Side. Maung’s shoulders screamed in agony by the time he saw light in the tunnel; he’d had to push the maneuvering pod the whole way up, using only his head.

  He stopped and held position. “We’re almost there. I can see light.”

  “I’m not getting any radio traffic,” said Nam. “Are you, Than?”

  “Negative.”

  Maung made sure his semi-aware stayed in passive collection mode, minimizing any signal leakage that could give away their position. “They must be jamming. Where would you defend, Nam, if you were the guards?”

  “The control center. It’s adjacent to the armory and the mess hall, so you’d have ready access to ammunition and food—maybe long enough to hold out for rescue.”

  Without warning, Maung’s defense system activated, and his concentration broke so that he slipped and collided with Nam, below. It almost caused a chain reaction. Than braced against the walls and supported both the men above until Maung gathered his wits and regained position. His mind raced. The Chinese controlled data feeds on this side of Karin and ran constant random pings designed to overwhelm any logic platforms in range, and the assaults lasted anywhere from one second to a full minute before dying off. Maung relaxed. There was no way to tell when the next would come, but there
was also no point in staying inside the elevator shaft. He pushed upward for the last hundred meters, threw the maneuvering pack out the exit, and rolled into the corridor at the same time he unslung his coil gun. Nam followed close behind, cutting the webbing for him. When Than and Nang emerged, Maung had already compared their position to the data he gathered back on Sunny Side and decided there were probably no immediate Chinese threats.

  “The tunnels are still pressurized,” he said. “We can talk via speaker, not radio.”

  “Where are they?” Nam asked.

  “The biggest concentration was at the Sommen attack site, with a small group hitting the control center to keep our guards pinned down. They want to consolidate the place where the American Dream Warriors fell; it’s important to them for some reason.”

  Than moved closer and Maung heard the nervousness in his voice. “Probably for the same reason it’s important to the Americans. Whatever reason that was.”

  Now that his semi-aware was active, Maung took a second to analyze the data. He was surprised at the answer. “I think some Americans were as shocked to learn of it as we were.”

  “Wait,” said Nang. “The Sommen attack site was part of an old American Dream Warrior program If that’s true how could our people not know about it?”

  “The Sommen. They attack super-awares almost without reason, and then wipe all connections to them that ever existed. I encountered one of their programs; a creeper that was still working after all these years and designed to wipe Karin’s data systems clean—to destroy any super-aware that survived. We saw their bodies. The Sommen kept attacking in waves, oblivious to losses. And this was obviously a secret program. So if the Sommen succeeded in destroying all data centers and personnel associated with it . . .”

  “Then if there wasn’t any record on Earth . . . If it were so secret that this was the only place where records of it existed, most Americans had no idea,” Nang finished, her face pale. “Except for the ones with the highest clearances.”

  The rock shook, knocking out some of the LEDs and then a deep boom followed, rattling Maung’s teeth. He moved forward. His thoughts focused on what needed to happen first and with the adrenaline spike that came from being fully aware, fully activated, he became almost invincible.

  “Where are we going?” Than asked.

  “The Sommen attack site. We’re going to retake it before the Chinese can get any useful data. That site, and me, are the reasons they’re here.”

  Nang moved up behind them and he heard her safety click off. “Are you insane? Four of us? Against all of them and their destroyers?”

  “I was hoping you could send a message,” said Maung.

  “Send one to who? Asking for what?”

  “To your Korean friend. Explain to him what’s going on and convince him to send a team of his best fighters here, to meet us at the site and help with a counterattack. But we can’t let him know what I am. And you can’t tell him exactly what we have planned because the lines are monitored now.”

  Nang sighed. “He doesn’t like you, Maung. It’ll take some convincing and a minor miracle. And you better hope he doesn’t find out who you are; he and all the other guards from the Allied nations will skewer you on the spot.”

  “Fine.” Maung laughed. “There’s a coms port nearby. We’ll make our way there so you can hook in, then book it; the Chinese will surely send a patrol once they zero in on your location.”

  Maung was fully aware. Not just his active sensors worked overtime, but the metallic portions of his skeleton acted like a compact passive receiver and his semi-aware fed data via his retina so that Maung read thermal variations. It was as if he were born with the ability to see across the spectrum; with a flicker of thought he could switch to ultraviolet or infrared vision. And now his aural implants amplified sounds. He was superhuman. Maung judged that the thought wasn’t necessarily organic and that his semi-aware must have detected depression, compensating for it by feeding him flashes of inspiration via adrenaline and neurotransmitters. The compounds bolstered his confidence. The semi-aware was reacclimating to old neural pathways, ones that it hadn’t used even during the more recent episodes where Maung had linked into the data feeds. Those were just a tease. Now it took control without concern for signal leakage, just like it did in the war when Maung slaughtered everything that moved.

  Maung caught himself smiling. Grinning at the memory of so much killing. He shut his eyes and sent a stream of conscious thought to the inorganic portion of his brain, reminding it that his long-term survival prospects improved if he showed some remorse for what happened in the war.

  The semi-aware gave no response.

  “Which route, Pa?” Nam asked.

  Maung scanned the data he’d collected on Sunny Side again. “They have a defensive perimeter one hundred meters out in every direction from where I linked up with the dead American girl at the Sommen site. Sensors fifty meters beyond that. It’s best if we come in from below; we’ll start through the pipe galleries and down the data-feed conduit like we did earlier.”

  “That’ll take a long time,” said Than. “You sure?”

  “How’s it going with coms, Nang?” Maung asked.

  Nang put a hand up to tell him to wait, then lowered it a few moments later. “I think I convinced him. He said he’d put together a group and send them within the hour; they’ll get here about fifteen hours after that, using the prisoner transport shaft.”

  “Yes,” Maung said, turning back to Than, “now I’m sure. The Chinese will focus most of their attention on the incoming from Sunny Side because those guys transmit like crazy. We move now, so that we can be in position to attack as soon as possible.”

  “You’re using the guards as a diversion?” asked Nang. “They’ll get slaughtered if we don’t protect the tunnel!”

  “Not if we get to our positions in time, early enough to attack before the Allied guards make it too far.”

  Maung cracked open an access panel that Nam had pointed out earlier and slithered through; he moved forward so the others could get in, reminded them to keep their helmet lamps off, and slid downward into the pipe gallery as soon as they all connected a fiber cable for communication. With his vision set to infrared, he felt as though he slid through the intestines of a cold dragon, dead for centuries.

  “I’m getting a reading on nanos,” Nam said. “Maybe half a klick to our right.”

  Maung nodded; his semi-aware already posted the data, dots and numbers that represented potential nano activations, probabilities of danger and exposure.

  “The Chinese activated Sommen mines but they have decoys like ours to attract the nanos and then fry them. It’ll help us.”

  Maung slid downward head first. They passed the place where only a while ago they cut into the data feed and now he hugged the plastic conduit with arms and legs, barely feeling the tug at his foot where Nang had a grip. Than was gripping her foot, and then Nam had Than’s. He knew it must be nerve-racking for them not to be able to see but this was the safest way since they couldn’t risk giving off too many signatures, and even waves from their helmet lamps could bounce through the structures and trip Chinese sensors.

  In places, the shielding was faulty. Maung broke through EM waves as if falling through a layer of water, and his systems soaked up the data, sifting it for anything of import, anything that gave a clue to Chinese activity. It was during one of these intersections that he stopped; he told the others to hold in place.

  “Nam,” said Maung, “the Chinese broke into the control center a while ago. All the Burmese guards are either dead or captured.”

  “Jesus,” said Nang.

  “Maung, get us down,” said Nam. “Now.”

  Maung moved faster, loosening his grip a bit on the conduit and letting gravity do the work, pulling them deeper into the complex.

  According to Nam’s schematics, they’d popped out of the conduit and into a service section, where old American corpses littered the flo
or. All of them were suited. Maung figured the men put up some kind of final defense, a last stand against the Sommen where empty rocket tubes and a plasma conduit suggested they risked using heavy weapons in an area where the effects could have been deadly to both sides. Their suits were clawed open. Maung’s semi-aware processed the images and concluded that unlike the corpses he recalled from other locations, these ones were different.

  “Nam,” he said, “look at their suits.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re clawed open in the same way. All of them. Like the Sommen ripped a pattern in them—a word or letter. A symbol.”

  “Maung, we don’t have our lamps on so I can’t see anything. And anyway, I want the Chinese; who cares about the Sommen?”

  Maung guided him closer and leaned down next to a body. He took Nam’s finger to trace the pattern. Then he moved to the next one and did it again so that Nam whistled.

  “OK. They’re the same.”

  “And,” said Maung, “all the corpses are positioned the same way, with their weapons next to them.”

  “So what?” asked Nang.

  “So I’d say the Sommen respected these men. Enough to perform some kind of ritual.”

  Nang laughed. “Or you’re looking at some kind of Sommen magical ceremony meant to curse their souls to eternal damnation.”