Terminal Uprising

by Jim C. Hines

  “Copying the captain.” She yanked two cleaners free and began connecting them to her compressor. Once they were hooked up, she dragged everything toward the hole. “I gave you that gun to cover me, dammit.”

  Cate yanked the rifle into firing position.

  Wolf sealed her suit the best she could. It wasn’t airtight, thanks to the holes that had been shot through it, but it was better than nothing. She aimed her compressor wand and squeezed, shooting the two cleaners straight up. Sweat dripped down her face as she waited for the Krakau to return fire or drop another grenade. Clouds of gas obscured her vision. Her eyes watered and burned, but she refused to blink.

  The sounds of digging stopped. The only things coming down from the ceiling were angry Krakau curses.

  Only when both canisters were empty did Wolf stumble back, hacking and coughing. Between the mixture she’d sprayed into the hole and the toxic puddle that had dripped onto the floor, that should give them a few more minutes.

  She shrugged back into the harness, letting the compressor hose and wand drag behind her. Her throat was raw, and her lungs wouldn’t fully expand. She coughed again as she grabbed Melvil’s body and hoisted him over her left shoulder.

  Cate had retreated from the gas. He stood behind a pillar about ten meters back. When he spotted Wolf, he jumped and pointed the rifle at her. Wolf’s visor was still synched to the gun, and showed the crosshairs centered on her chest.

  Wolf didn’t break stride. “If you shoot me, I will shove that gun up your ass, and blow your brains out.”

  Cate lowered the gun. “I didn’t realize it was you.” He paused. “And Prodryans don’t—”

  “You don’t have asses, I know. Don’t worry, I’ll carve one for you.”

  * * *

  Wolf stumbled as a minnow struck her hip from behind.

  “I thought we destroyed these things,” Cate complained.

  Wolf limped around a corner. “I guess they kept a few in reserve.”

  “You have a gift for angering your enemies.”

  Wolf paused to adjust her hold on Melvil, slung over her left shoulder. “The more time they spend chasing us, the longer the others are safe.”

  Nancy waited at the fallout shelter door, shotgun in hand. Cate put on a burst of speed. His wings flapped as he raced into the shelter.

  “Is everyone here?” Wolf called.

  “They’re all inside.” Nancy backed out of the way as Wolf stumbled through. “I was starting to think you’d gotten lost.”

  Two librarians helped Wolf lay Melvil gently on the floor. Wolf turned to help shove the heavy door shut. When that failed, she emptied half a can of spray lube into the hinge mechanisms and tried again. This time, with three people straining together, the door slowly clunked into place. Nancy cranked a metal wheel to drive the locking bolts home.

  The shelter’s main room was twice the size of the Pufferfish recreation deck. Shelves lined the far wall, full of identical white cans labeled in different languages. Metal tracks in the ceiling showed where portable walls could be pulled out and moved to divide the space into smaller sections.

  “There are four more rooms like this,” said Nancy, pointing toward a broken door to the right. In the dim lighting, Wolf hadn’t even seen it. “But there’s no other way in or out.”

  “What will the Krakau do next?” asked the one with the hand injury—Kathleen.

  “Can they blast through the walls or the ceiling to reach us, like they did to get down from level three?” asked another.

  “How the hell should I know?” Wolf pulled off her helmet and rubbed her scalp, trying to think.

  That was the problem. EMC troops were trained to fight, not to think. That’s why every ship had a Krakau command crew. The Krakau made the plans, and the humans carried them out.

  “You’ve worked with the Krakau,” Nancy pointed out. “You’ve been fighting them for months.”

  “We’ve mostly been running away from them for months,” Wolf said bitterly.

  Loud blows from the other side of the door made everyone jump—even Cate, who shed a little more color from his wings in the process.

  Wolf pointed her rifle toward the door, but the pounding stopped. She surveyed the librarians, several of whom were bleeding. The wounds looked minor, and she wouldn’t normally have given them a second thought. “I’ve got more sterile rags to use for bandages . . .”

  “They’re all right.” Nancy took Wolf by the arm and tugged her toward the open doorway. Wolf didn’t have the energy to resist. “Let’s see if we can find some water in this place.”

  The second section of the shelter was identical to the first. The third had stacks of ancient bedrolls, so old and decayed they crumbled at a touch.

  Nancy walked toward the shelves with their endless cans. “We’re supposed to save these in case of famine or emergency.” She grabbed one. “I think this qualifies.”

  She drew her knife and used a pointed notch on the back of the blade to pierce the top edge of the can. She levered the blade two more times, opening a triangular hole, then poured a stream of brown powder into Wolf’s hand. “Try it.”

  “It looks like sand.” Wolf brought it to her mouth, touched the tip of her tongue to the powder. “Not bad.”

  “Not bad? Cocoa powder is one of the hallmarks of human civilization.” She poured a stream directly into her mouth, swished it around, and swallowed. “Eh, you eat gray slime through a port in your gut. What would you know?”

  “Reminds me a little of Merraban sweetgrass tea.” Wolf brushed the rest from her hand.

  Nancy glanced over her shoulder, checking back the way they’d come, then shone her light directly into Wolf’s face. “What the hell is wrong with you, child?”

  “You need to take command. You or one of the other librarians.” Wolf double-checked her shoulder to make sure the glue was holding.

  “Do we look like soldiers to you?”

  “I can be a soldier,” said Wolf. “Whoever’s giving the orders needs to be clever. That’s not me.”

  Nancy stood on her toes, peering so closely Wolf could smell the cocoa on her breath. “Is that what’s going on? You’ve decided you’re too stupid to lead?”

  “You haven’t?” Wolf snorted. “Maybe I’m not the only stupid one here.”

  “Call me that again, and I will knock you on your ass.”

  Wolf raised a hand in surrender. “I’m just facing facts. The Krakau say it’s because our blood doesn’t carry enough oxygen for brain development, or something like that.”

  “Bullshit. That’s what they want you to believe.” Nancy stepped back. “I used to think the same thing. I thought feral humans were animals, and I expected you people to be little better than cavemen. Melvil’s research papers proved me wrong on the first point. Your team did the same on the second. You’re ignorant in some areas. A lot of areas. But that’s not your fault.”

  “Ignorant, stupid, what’s the difference?”

  “Everything. Don’t ask stupid questions.”

  “The point is, the Krakau have control of level four. They’ll get through to five soon enough. I don’t know how to stop them.”

  “You slowed them down,” said Nancy. “And Gleason won’t make it easy for them. She’ll scatter folks throughout five, make the Krakau work for every capture.”

  “But she won’t get her people killed in the process.” Wolf picked up another can. According to her monocle, this one contained dried grain.

  “Have you ever been in a firefight before?”

  “I’m in charge of communications on the Pufferfish. Before that, I was a janitor.” Wolf shrugged. “We’ve gotten into a few fights lately, but . . .”

  “Bloody hell. You thought it would be easy, didn’t you?” Nancy turned away in disgust. “Thought you’d run around with your guns and pla
y hero. The bad guys would all drop dead or run away.”

  “I didn’t want your people to get hurt,” said Wolf.

  “We don’t want to get hurt either, genius. Melvil didn’t want to get hurt. But we knew what we were getting into.”

  “You thought I knew what I was doing.”

  “Suck it up, buttercup.” Nancy poked her in the shoulder. The uninjured one. “You want to mope about your fuckups, do it on your own time. None of us have done this before either. The worst we’ve faced are angry ferals or those damn dachshunds.”

  “What’s a dachshund?”

  Nancy ignored the question. “Every librarian in this shelter has studied you and your team since you arrived. From the way you fought Gleason’s team to a standstill back at the library to your captain’s idea about hitting the Krakau at Armstrong to your plans for slowing down the attackers here. Every one of those librarians chose to follow you.”

  “But—”

  “Interrupt me again, and I will punch you in the eyeball.” Nancy paused, fist cocked. “That’s better. We lost a friend. We’re all struggling to process that. But this woe-is-me routine you’re working on? All that tells us is Melvil died for nothing.”

  With that, she turned away and began searching the shelves.

  “I wanted to be assigned to infantry,” Wolf said quietly. “They sent me to SHS instead. To be honest, I wasn’t that great a janitor, either. Captain Adamopoulos once threatened to send me back to Earth if I didn’t shape up.”

  “The horror.”

  “Cruel and unusual punishment,” Wolf agreed, pacing through the darkness.

  “They assigned your captain to SHS, too,” Nancy said without turning around. “Think that was because she didn’t have what it took?”

  Wolf’s mouth pulled into a wry grin. “They were probably afraid she had too much of it, whatever it is.”

  What would the captain do in Wolf’s position? Wolf snorted. Probably come up with a clever plumbing-related trick to overpower and humiliate the Krakau. Only Mops had known they couldn’t beat the Krakau in a direct fight. That was why she’d snuck off to attack Armstrong instead.

  Wolf stopped moving. She aimed her lamp at the concrete ceiling. “How did they manage air circulation for this place?”

  “Pardon?”

  “LockLand built this fallout shelter to house thousands of people. Tens of thousands. That’s a lot of body heat and carbon dioxide. You’d have to have a way to bring in oxygen and cool air.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Wolf crouched to inspect the base of the walls. “Those Krakau probably came here in a troop transport. A transport that’s currently sitting on the surface, waiting to take them and their prisoners back to Armstrong. A transport with very few Krakau left behind to protect it.”

  Nancy returned a can to the shelf and turned around. “That’s better. What about those fighters?”

  “I don’t know,” Wolf admitted. She’d forgotten the fighters. “All right, think of this from the Krakau point of view. LockLand is infested. We’re the vermin, and the Krakau want us cleaned out.”

  “How flattering,” Nancy said dryly. “Where are you going with this?”

  “We had some kind of Quetzalus worms get into the food processing machinery on the Pufferfish a while back. Ugly little bastards, like squirmy feathers with big eyes and bigger pincers. We’d spray every nest we found, but they’d just scatter.” Wolf looked up. “The Krakau working their way through LockLand, they’re the spray. The fighters are out there waiting to pounce if we scatter. They won’t be parked here. They’re circling the surroundings, watching to make sure nobody sneaks away.”

  “What does this have to do with air vents?”

  “We bloodied their beaks. They wouldn’t leave us here unguarded. Before we can get out and go after that troop carrier, I need to know what they left outside that door.” Wolf started back toward the others. “I say we send out a drone of our own.”

  * * *

  “It’s a plumbing snake.” Wolf set the coiled metal hose on the floor and switched it on. It twitched and flopped like an addlebrained worm as it extended to its full two-meter length. “Designed to crawl through pipes and remove blockages.”

  “How does this help us, exactly?” asked Kathleen.

  Wolf pointed to a small, covered vent in the base of the wall. “We send it out through the air ducts to see what surprises the Krakau left for us.” She sat down and grabbed the front end of the snake, currently fitted with the default attachment that looked like three concentric rings of metal teeth. Working the best she could one-handed, she hit the release and unscrewed the teeth.

  “How smart is that thing?” asked Nancy.

  “It’s not.” Wolf twisted the new attachments into place with a click. Another adjustment activated a data feed on her monocle. She pointed the snake at Nancy and was rewarded with a grainy image of her wrinkled face. “But I can see through its eye, and I’ll be guiding its actions.”

  She used her teeth to tug her glove over her left hand, then waited for the sensors in her uniform to synch up with the snake. Twitching her arm forward sent the snake moving. She ran through a series of motions, making it turn its head in different directions, curl around in a circle, and rear up until it stood nearly a meter tall, balanced on its coiled tail.

  “Can you make it do tricks?” asked one of the librarians. Someone else smacked him on the shoulder.

  Wolf flattened the snake to the ground and brought it to the wall. “Pop that vent panel for me?”

  A heavyset librarian with a crowbar pried it free, taking out several chunks of wall at the same time.

  “Your enemy has modern weaponry,” said Cate. “You have plumbing supplies. This is madness.”

  Wolf twitched her fingers, and the snake curled into a fair imitation of a Krakau obscenity.

  “Such foolishness is why the Prodryans will destroy you,” Cate muttered.

  Wolf sent the snake scooting through the vent. Tapping her first and fourth fingers activated the snake’s light. It was too dim to be seen by human eyes—or Krakau—but it was enough for the photoreceptors to build an image. Half a meter at a time, Wolf guided the snake through dirt and cobwebs and the empty shells of long-dead insects.

  “This feels like one of Grom’s first-person shooter games,” Wolf muttered. “If only there were medpacks and a rocket launcher waiting for me to scoop ’em up.”

  “How far have you gone?” asked the man with the crowbar.

  Wolf checked her monocle. “Four meters. The duct sloped downward. I think I’m crawling below the road. Just looking for an access point, somewhere I can get out.”

  She passed several junctions. From the angle, these led off to other parts of the shelter. The duct she was following grew larger, then turned upward. She checked the airflow readings. “Found an exit. I just need to climb a few meters to get there.”

  Wolf bent her elbow, pointing her forearm straight up. The snake followed her movements. Using finger gestures to refine her control, she coiled the upper part of the snake, bracing it against the walls of the vertical shaft. Another finger movement brought the lower half up after.

  By alternately bracing with the lower and upper coils, she slowly climbed toward a gap near the top where the duct had broken partly free of the large fan and temperature control unit. The snake squeezed through the rusted opening and dropped to the floor.

  “I know none of you could see that,” said Wolf. “So just trust me when I say you should be very impressed.”

  “Where are you?” asked Nancy.

  Wolf crept out through the broken doorway. “Looks like Strawberry Road, about ten meters that way.” She pointed ahead and to the right. “I’m circling around to the fallout shelter door.”

  The snake undulated past another doorway and between the leg
s of a penguin statue. Wolf brought it close to the wall to peek past a corner.

  “Two Krakau,” whispered Wolf. “Both armed and armored. Looks like they’re talking to each other.”

  “What are they saying?” someone asked.

  “It’s a plumbing snake. It’s not set up for sound.”

  “We knew they left guards,” said Nancy. “How do we get past them?”

  “I need a distraction. Preferably a loud one.”

  “On it.” Nancy grabbed four more librarians and led them away. Moments later, they began hurling canned food against the door.

  Both Krakau jumped. They aimed their weapon cuffs at the door.

  Wolf tried to imagine what they were saying. Would they call reinforcements? Doubtful . . . nobody had gotten out, and the guards wouldn’t want to admit they were afraid of human prisoners with nothing but primitive weaponry.

  But they kept their attention on the door as Wolf guided the snake closer, circling to approach the Krakau from behind. She barely breathed as each movement closed the distance. Three meters . . . two . . . At one and a half meters, she stopped the snake and finger-tapped a new command.

  The snake rose up. Wolf turned her hand to the right. The snake did the same, centering the Krakau’s body in its visual feed. Wolf elevated her fingers slightly, then made a fist.

  A glob of gel spat from the snake, landing just above the collar of the Krakau’s armor. She spun around as Wolf turned to the other Krakau and repeated the movements.

  Both Krakau began shooting. The visual died a moment later.

  Wolf stood, shook the tension out of her arm, and started for the door. “You can stop now.”

  Nancy and the others halted their assault on the door. Dented and broken cans littered the ground. Several had broken open, spilling dried granules of different sizes and colors. As the commotion stopped, Wolf could hear the Krakau whistling in pain.

  “What did you do?” asked Nancy.

  “We use those snakes to clear plumbing jams,” said Wolf. “Most of the time, the snake can push or dig through blockages. When that fails, it uses an acidic gel that does wonders on biological material.”