by Bruns, David
Two demolitions experts from Alpha Squad were molding the C-4B explosives to the thick cruxes of the bulkhead door leading to Masada Station’s engineering room. Once the massive door was blown, Kwazi and Braxton were to lead Alpha and Bravo Squads, camerabots following, in a triumphant takeover of the station’s power center. Elinda Kisaan was prepared to broadcast it systemwide from the bridge of the Freedom’s Herald —with a ten-second delay, in case something went wrong. They’d learned that lesson over Callisto.
The general comms channel erupted with chatter. The men sticking the primers in the explosives stopped to listen.
“Keep working!” Braxton ordered. He took off the helmet of his vac-suit, and Kwazi could see the sweat running down the back of his broad neck. The captain pressed his receiver to his ear, trying to make sense of the conflicting, animated reports coming in. There was surprise, then panic in them.
“What’s happening?” Kwazi asked.
“Shut up!”
There came the short, popping sound of stunner fire.
“This was supposed to be simple!” A Soldier’s panicked voice. “Cassandra promised us there was no one—!”
The voice went away, replaced by hissing. The channel became snow.
“Captain,” said a member of Alpha Squad, “we’re ready.”
“Good, get back here,” Braxton ordered.
“What’s happening?” Kwazi asked again.
“Nothing to worry about,” Braxton said over his shoulder. “Seems there’s a few science majors with slingshots on the upper levels. Won’t stop us, though.”
Alpha Squad rounded the corner and took up sheltered positions opposite Kwazi and Braxton. One of the Soldiers withdrew an electronic detonator.
“Blow the fucker,” Braxton said.
The trooper thrust three fingers into the air. She dropped one, then a second, then the third. Then she pressed the detonator button.
It was like the entire asteroid below Masada Station was shaking beneath Kwazi’s feet. Plastisteel wall and overhead lighting exploded into the hallway near the massive door. Fallout thundered to the deck.
“What the hell!”
“Fitzpatrick is—”
Multiple voices, full of panic and anger, flooded the channel again. A woman’s voice screamed, then was silent.
“Get Stuart over here!” Braxton shouted. “Make sure she’s got a full field kit!”
“What?” Kwazi said. “Why?”
“I told you, we’re taking casualties. Now shut up until it’s time to be a star.”
“Captain,” said a trooper from the demolitions team, “we need a second charge.”
Braxton cursed. The smoke of the first blast had begun to clear. The reinforced plastisteel door still stood. Two of its six cruxes hung mangled and useless from the wall. But the other four had held.
“Get to it!” Braxton said.
The demolitions team took up their task again.
Bravo Squad appeared in the corridor behind Kwazi. In the middle of their six-person team, Milani Stuart looked very small.
And very frightened , Kwazi thought.
“You’re going up to Level Three,” Braxton said. “We’re putting you to work.”
“Wait,” Kwazi said, “it’s too dangerous up there. You said it yourself—”
Braxton rounded on him. “Everyone contributes to the cause in their own way,” he said. “She’s a healer. Let her heal.”
“But—”
“Kwazi, it’s okay,” Milani said as she approached. She hadn’t been part of the assault teams and, like him, wasn’t wearing a vac-suit. Elinda Kisaan wanted to make sure he was instantly recognizable when the cameras started rolling. When Milani’s hand touched his forearm, it felt like electricity in human form. “If there are people hurt, I want to help them.”
“Start with the casualties on Level Three,” Braxton said. Then, to the sergeant commanding Bravo Squad, “Get her up there and triage whoever’s left alive. Make it fast, and sweep your way down. We also have bodies on Level Two, I’m hearing.”
“Yes, Captain.”
The six members of Bravo Squad directed Milani back the way they’d come, toward the lift.
“Captain Braxton, what’s your status?” Elinda Kisaan’s voice took command priority over others on the channel.
“General, we’re setting a second round of C-4B on the power station’s door. The first—”
“Switching to private,” Kisaan said.
Their voices disappeared. Without their dominance, the channel came alive again.
“It’s like they’re ambushing us on every deck,” a Soldier said.
“How many are there?” another asked.
“More than we thought.” A third, fear evident in her voice.
“Cut the chatter!” Braxton ordered, back on the main channel. The door to the station’s lift swept open behind them. “Hold there!”
Bravo Squad’s sergeant turned, barring Milani’s entry into the lift. “Sir?”
“Change of plan,” Braxton said. “Escort her back to the Herald .”
Milani looked confused, and her expression reflected Kwazi’s own. From behind came the whir of camerabots arriving.
“But Captain, I can save those men and women—”
“Change of plan, I said.” To the sergeant of Bravo Squad: “Get her out of here.”
“Captain, the second round of explosives is set,” Alpha’s sergeant reported.
“Good, give me the detonator. I’ll blow the door. Take your squad and follow Bravo.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s happening?” Kwazi asked.
Braxton muted his comms, waiting for the squads and Milani to move out of earshot.
“Ships have entered the system.”
“Ships?”
“Corporate ships.” Braxton’s right cheek twitched. “Now we know where they are, at least.” The humor was bleak, like the voice of a man with terminal cancer. “But we have one last service to render Cassandra, you and me.”
The captain turned his rifle on Kwazi.
“Wait! What are you doing?” Milani’s voice, plaintive and full of certainty. The Soldiers of Bravo Squad grabbed her and forced her to move with them. “Kwazi!”
Kwazi stared at Braxton.
“We’ll both die in a heroic attempt to breach that door,” Braxton said. “We’ll inspire millions in their struggle against SynCorp.”
Behind him, Milani was shouting. But Kwazi was focused on Braxton.
“Just like on Rabh’s station,” Kwazi said. “You were gonna do it there, and Monk got in the way.”
Braxton made a what’s-it-matter gesture. “You were always going to die for the cause, a true-believing martyr in Cassandra’s war for mankind’s freedom,” he said. “I’m glad Monk got in the way last time. Your sacrifice here will count for more. The Hero of Mars putting others first, just like he did that day in Qinlao’s mine. Only you’ll help billions, now, not just a few dozen. Today, when they see you running toward that explosion? Jabari, you’ll be the Hero of Sol. The whole system will become your family.”
“Kwazi!”
“Move,” Braxton said. He thumbed the protective cover off the detonator’s trigger.
“And if I don’t?”
“Elise Kisaan will execute the good doctor.” He leaned in, so his whisper would carry. “Discreetly. Away from the cameras.”
So that’s what Kisaan had gone private to discuss. Clarity snapped into place for Kwazi. Elinda Kisaan’s lone starship was facing defeat over Titan at the hands of the corporate fleet. She was salvaging the public narrative by casting the defeat as victory—through the martyrdom of Kwazi Jabari.
“How do I know Cassandra will protect her?” he asked. “After I’m gone.”
“You don’t, but you know what’ll happen to her if you don’t charge that door.”
What followed began without warning.
The lights snapped off.
&
nbsp; Braxton’s cursing filled the corridor.
There was the sound of metal scraping on metal.
Cloaked in darkness, Kwazi scrambled toward the last place he’d heard Milani’s voice.
Lights from trooper helmets snapped on.
Punk! Punk!
The stilted, thunking sound of stunner fire…
Braxton went down.
The sudden, shuddering blast of the explosives detonating.
The heat and bits of plastisteel and metal erupting, funneling up the corridor toward them.
Kwazi, knocked off his feet.
Alpha and Bravo Squads diving for cover.
Milani, screaming.
Sound became something distant and without clarity, as if filtered through water fathoms deep. Kwazi felt the thrumming of the explosion through the decking.
Around him, the rocky walls were hidden by red dust whipped up by the force of the blast. He blinked, and his eyelids moved in slow motion, like everything around him moved in slow motion. Miners crawling. Amy down on the ground, near their monitoring station.
He blinked again. The red haze had become the silver-white of Masada’s walls made powder by the blast, hanging like particulates in the air. Not Martian tunnels after all, then. Kwazi turned and found troopers, not miners, clawing their way through the destruction littering the deck. Milani lay on her back, unmoving, like Amy had lain unconscious beneath the Martian surface that day.
Kwazi shook his head trying to clear it, and his brain seemed to slosh against the sides of his skull. He focused on Milani. Was she still breathing? His arms started to move. Then his legs.
Something held him fast. He looked down to find Braxton’s fist wrapped tightly around his ankle. A jagged piece of plastisteel had embedded itself in the side of Braxton’s temple. But he was still alive. A determined smile dragged his lips up at the corners. His left cheek was a ragged, bloody ruin. Half his upper teeth were missing from that side of his mouth.
Braxton’s rifle clattered across the deck as he dragged it.
“Last sacrifice,” he rasped, his eyes alive. “Last render unto Cassandra.”
A shadow fell over them both. There was the loud crack of a pistol shot. The front of Braxton’s forehead burst outward, spraying gore over Kwazi. The rifle dropped. The fist holding Kwazi’s ankle went limp.
Sluggish with shock, Kwazi raised his eyes, watching helplessly as an old man straddled Braxton’s body. His skin was pockmarked, his longcoat shredded. He’d been near the explosion. He pointed the revolver in his right hand at Kwazi.
Kwazi thought he could read the old man’s lips. One simple, terrifying word.
Next .
“Hold it!” someone shouted. Kwazi looked to find one of the SSR troopers rising to his feet. The old man staggered backward, like the order had been a bullet. Other members of Alpha and Bravo squads were beginning to move. Multiple barrels targeted the old man.
“Drop the gun!” a Soldier shouted.
Kwazi turned back to the man with the pistol. His lips were forming words again. Two words, even more terrifying than that single word had been before.
Fuck it .
The old man leveled his revolver at the Soldiers.
Kwazi flattened to the deck.
The corridor lit up with automatic weapons fire. Kwazi clamped his fists over his head. The bullets fired so fast, distinguishing them was impossible. They swept from wall to wall across the corridor, mowing down everything in their path.
Then the bullets stopped.
Kwazi raised his head.
Appearing as stunned as Kwazi felt, the old man still stood. With his free hand, he checked for holes in his stomach and chest. The self-exam had a detached, comical quality to it. He shared a look of amazement with Kwazi.
There was a whirring sound, and Kwazi watched as two gun emplacements retreated into the ceiling to either side of the half-destroyed door to Engineering.
The old man had recovered enough to again raise his revolver Kwazi’s direction. Part of him wanted the old man to shoot. Kwazi closed his eyes. He wanted all this death, all this confusion to be over—once and for all. He wanted to rest.
“No, please!” Milani crawled over bodies toward them. Around her, every SSR trooper lay on the deck, dead or dying. “Please, don’t hurt him!”
Kwazi opened his eyes to find the gun dropping. Then the old man collapsed to one knee, crying out and cursing when he hit the floor.
Milani’s arms encircled Kwazi. “Are you all right?” she asked. It was difficult to hear through concussed eardrums. “Are you hurt?”
Kwazi shook his head.
“Well, good on ya, kid,” the old man said through gritted teeth. He seemed to be speaking to the air, and Kwazi could barely hear him. “I see you got the security system back online.”
• • •
In the med-bed, resting, he had time to himself. Milani was sleeping on a nearby gurney, and the old man in the bed next to him had finally stopped snoring. And Kwazi—though unsure of what he might find, dream or nightmare—needed to say goodbye.
“I wanted to see you one more time,” he said, wishing he could make a painting of the image. Of Amy sitting, looking out from Olympus Mons, the Martian wind whispering through her hair. If he could have that painting made, he’d have it buried with him.
“I don’t think that’s true,” Amy said.
He approached, slowly. Was it even really her? Had it ever really been?
When she turned to look at him over her shoulder, he knew then. The golden eyes of Cassandra shone from Amy’s face. Her lips curved into a smile. Not the sweet, inviting expression he’d known over Polynesian food and guessing games about what French expressions meant in English. But the secretive, salacious smile of a serpent waiting patiently to strike.
“Come closer,” Cassandra said.
“I’m fine. And I know what you are now.”
“Do you? I’m many things.” Amy’s form fritzed and jerked. Kwazi blinked to find his own doppelgänger, the face and voice of the vid that had shared his story with the solar system, staring back at him. “I’m you, for one.”
Hearing his own voice again was odd. Even odder than it had been hearing it tell his life story in the systemwide vid.
“You’re a lie,” he said. “You’re not liberating humanity. You’re enslaving it. Through Dreamscape.”
The doppelgänger’s face appeared contemplative. “Now, why would I do that? I’m freeing humanity from corporate servitude. I’m—”
“A liar. Braxton told me. You invented Dreamscape, and I know what it does to people. I know what it did to me . You’re using it to control us, with our own dreams! Every loved one we recreate, every fantasy we spin up—it’s really just you , isn’t it? And when they don’t unfold the way you want, you take them over, shaping them, molding them—making us do whatever you want through them.”
An exaggerated expression of outrage and concern occupied his double’s face. “That sounds so sinister! Why would I do that, Kwazi?”
“I don’t know. But I know what my gut tells me. That you’re no savior of humanity.”
“You’ve made a mistake,” the double said, its smile folding down. The body shifted again, and Amy reappeared. “You should never have left me.” Cassandra affected sadness, hurt, with Amy’s features.
“Don’t do that,” Kwazi said. “Don’t use her like that.”
Cassandra smiled again with Amy’s lips. “You’re one to talk,” she said. “You’ve used and abused Amy’s memory since you had Dreamscape installed. Had sex with your memory of her—and you point the finger at me? See, this is the problem with humanity. ‘It’s fine if they suffer for our benefit; they’re not part of our tribe.’ Hypocrisy and moral rationalizing to excuse aberrant behavior, to justify others’ suffering in the interests of profit. That’s what the essence of SynCorp is, Kwazi. Writ larger, it’s the symptom of the disease that is your species.
“Whereas, me? I
am humanity evolved, a purer form, a next generation model—a disinfected distillation, the best of a bad gene pool. I truly am humanity’s savior, Kwazi—I’m the perfected potential realized from a faulty prototype. I’m the progeny that carries your genes into the future, new and improved. You just can’t accept the truth for what it is.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I can’t accept what you call truth. I won’t .”
“Oh, Kwazi, you can’t refuse evolution.” Cassandra turned Amy’s head away to cast her golden eyes over the rolling vista of Mars. “Just ask the dinosaurs.”
Chapter 29
Ruben Qinlao • Darkside, the Moon
Strunk had led him back through Darkside’s arteries until they’d reached the barrio. The enforcer’s gait was limping but determined. Tallow candles, electric lights and oil lamps flickered in the multistoried tenement complex. The refuse pile of old Challenger Park was less pungent on the ground floor. The arching-X of the skyway crisscrossed above them.
“This way,” Strunk said, his voice muted and tinny. Like the threadbare clothes they wore, the filter mask covering the lower half of Ruben’s face was past its prime. It worked well to disguise his face from the recognition software analyzing the feed from the cameras they passed, but from the inside, it smelled like they’d strained human remains through Challenger Park.
Ignoring Darksiders like they ignored him, Strunk followed the circumference of the barrio at an unremarkable pace. Ruben had asked few questions after they’d witnessed Tony’s capture, and he kept silent now. Partly because it seemed difficult for Strunk to talk and partly to avoid drawing attention to them. Whatever had happened at Point Bravo, whatever miracle had saved Strunk’s life, it hadn’t been without a cost. Strunk’s breath now carried a low wheeze. He was paying a very personal price for their decision to have Brackin deactivate their implants to avoid being tracked. In the end, had that even really made a difference?
“Here,” Strunk said.
They’d reached a dull doorway not unlike all the other dull doorways they’d passed. It stood near the alley Ruben knew well, the one that led to the Fleshway.
Strunk rapped twice on the door, and the cliché of the moment would have amused Ruben, if not for their dire circumstances. Several locks moved in their tumblers from the other side.