Embustero- Pale Boundaries

by Scott Cleveland

  Detonation circuit test: complete. Circuit status: operational.

  The command post staff relaxed and notified the shelters where the Fort’s inhabitants had gathered as a precaution against an accidental detonation. Hal’s relief sprang not from the unrealized potential of an accident but the fact that he wouldn’t have to repeat the journey through the nightmoths’ lair to troubleshoot and repair circuits.

  The ground shook violently.

  Tamara Cirilo lost her balance going up the steps to the second tier and clutched at Hal’s arm. He grabbed the handrail to save them both from a painful tumble back down to the ops floor.

  “Did they go off?” someone below cried. Half a dozen voices replied in the negative. The earth groaned; a vibration crawled up Hal’s legs. Light fixtures began to swing. “Shit!” someone else shouted. “Earthquake!” People on the ops floor dove beneath furniture and braced themselves in doorways. Hal pulled Tamara to the top of the stairs and took shelter against the outside wall.

  McKeon joined them a second later. “Talk about bad timing,” he mumbled. To the ops floor: “Call the shelters! Tell them it wasn’t the nukes!” It was too late. The camera in the corridor leading to the main shel­ter showed a crush of gridlocked bodies as those believing the weapons had detonated struggled against those trying to escape the danger of a temblor-induced collapse, and immobility drove everyone to a full-blown panic.

  The rumble died away and the vibrations ceased. People emerged from beneath their desks shaken and cautious. Calls began to go out for damage assessments and medical assistance. Tamara headed back down the stairs. Hal collared McKeon before he could follow.

  “Prep for another circuit test once things settle down,” he ordered, “and find Nowatchik. I want the lab integrity checked ASAP.” One ruptured dispenser could expose everyone in the Fort and the vaccine was useless after infection set in.

  The floor in the middle of the ops center dropped a few centimeters.

  Hal caught the motion at the periphery of his vision, calling his attention to the phenomenon as those experiencing it made startled grabs for support. The room fell unnaturally silent; all eyes converged on an unoccupied chair rolling toward the disturbance on wobbling castors.

  The tableau held a moment during which time the facial expressions of those with quicker faculties turned to horror. Hal watched in dumb amazement as a sinkhole opened up, swallowing desks, consoles and people in a roar of screams and crashing concrete.

  A choking cloud of dust shot up from the huge hole. Personnel and equipment continued to vanish into the maw as the edges crumbled. It stopped as abruptly as it had begun; individual sounds emerged as the rubble came to rest somewhere below. Sobs of fear and disbelief emerged from the fog around him; moans and cries of pain drifted up from the pit as shock wore off and the victims found their voices.

  Tamara Cirilo’s throaty, terror-filled scream rose above the noise. Hal covered his nose and mouth with a shirttail and made his way toward the source. His outstretched hand found the rail at the head of the stairs leading down to the ops floor. It shifted in his grasp and Tamara uttered another frightened cry.

  The weight of the concrete below had pulled the upper anchors partway out before the floor fractured, leaving the stairs dangling over the void with Tamara clinging to them for dear life. Below her the bottom anchors held tight to a chunk of floor weighing several hundred kilos. There was no telling how much more weight the surviving anchors could support.

  Hal threw himself to the floor and reached out for her. “Tammy, climb up to me!”

  “It’s m-moving!”

  “Not that much. It’s only a couple of meters.”

  “I can’t! Get a—get a rope!”

  “There isn’t time! Stop bawling and act like the tough bitch you always pretend to be, damnit!”

  If Tamara Cirilo detested anything, it was criticism. She got a toehold on the inner edge of one step and shifted her weight. The lack of movement on the part of the stairs gave her the confidence to climb another step, then an­other.

  A dozen or more people were trapped in the lower tier offices, but safe from immediate danger. Another handful huddled against the far wall on a ledge of floor less than a meter wide. McKeon shouted instructions to the able-bodied among them.

  A sharp pop issued from the darkness inside the pit; a grappling hook flew into the second tier and bounced off the wall. Someone below hauled back on the line until the prongs caught on the rail. More hooks shot up; some fell back without finding a purchase but most set solidly.

  One caught the clothing of a woman on the ledge. She cried for help as it pulled her inexorably closer to the edge. Her neighbors tried to rip it free; someone had the presence of mind to unbutton her blouse but her arms tangled in the sleeves. They managed to hold her for a few more seconds but the weight of climbers on the rope carried her over the edge, screaming.

  A hook narrowly missed Hal as it fell past and caught in the steps below Tamara. Tension pulled the bottom of the stairs to one side; concrete around the intact anchors next to him shattered. Tamara made a final desperate lunge and caught his arm as the stairs gave way and fell out from under her.

  McKeon arrived to help pull the terrified woman to safety.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Hal demanded. A racking cough overtook the Chief of Security and he could only point helplessly at a uniformed figure clambering over the rail where the first line had taken hold. The goddamned Minzoku! Hal jerked out his needle-beamer and fired. Dust ignited in the beam’s wake as it crossed the intervening distance, engulfing the commando in flame. He collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut and tumbled off the rail.

  Return fire from inside the pit pockmarked the walls and ceiling. Two more command post staff fell over the edge wounded or dead. Commandos wearing respirators and goggles swarmed up the ropes. Hal took down one more before McKeon dragged him and Tamara toward the exit.

  They burst through the doors into sunlight and fresh air. McKeon’s security personnel were just arriving, unsure of the emergency they faced. Across the square the main shelter was emptying rapidly. “Get them back inside!” McKeon shouted. Hal turned toward Tamara and realized that their appearance must be horrific. They were coated from head to toe in gray dust, eyes ringed by dark mud from tears.

  The sound of gunfire inside galvanized the security forces. They clustered around McKeon for orders, leaving Hal and Tamara unescorted for the moment. People milled about the shelter entrance in panic and began to scatter into the Fort’s facilities. The Onjin had been totally taken by surprise. Hal saw little chance of a successful counter-attack before the Minzoku were firmly entrenched inside the Fort.

  “We’ve got to get to my shuttle,” Hal told Tamara. “Where’s Sergio?”

  “He should have been in shelter two,” she replied. “He could be anywhere by now!”

  Sergio wasn’t the only Family member left in the Fort, either. There was no way to locate them all; the shuttle couldn’t hold but a dozen anyway. Hal and Tamara represented the most valuable prizes, at present.

  An explosion blew out the doors behind them. Tracers sizzled through the hole indiscriminately. Bodies fell around the two Onjin; Minzoku commandos poured out under the cover fire, ducking left and right without encountering any significant resistance. Hal pulled Tamara around the corner of the building with him and headed for the west sally port.

  McKeon rolled out from under the bodies of friends and coworkers, people who’d looked to him for leadership and became shields instead. Those able and wise enough to run, did. He watched Margerrison stagger off a few meters holding his gut, turn and fire into the doorway disgorging Minzoku commandos. Their light body armor was more than a match for his sidearm. Counter fire cut him to pieces.

  McKeon used the diversion to dash around the same corner he’d seen Tennison and Cirilo duck behind. They were already gone. A Minzoku soldier peeked around the wall behind him for a second too long; McKeo
n shot him above the collar of his body armor and he fell back in a fountain of blood.

  A stream of bullets from another direction pitted the masonry beside him; pain knifed through his left forearm as he scrambled away and pushed through an overgrown shrub onto a narrow breezeway between the buildings.

  Pounding feet and Minzoku voices closed in. He couldn’t reach the other end of the breezeway in time, but there was a fire exit door on the right at half the distance. He fished out his rarely used master key, praying that the door wasn’t one of those overlooked at the time of the last rekeying. The lock turned grudgingly; the hinges groaned. He opened the door just enough to admit him and pulled it shut as machine guns chattered blindly from on the other side of the bushes.

  McKeon performed a quick self-assessment while he waited for the Minzoku to pass. The wound on his arm was deep and bloody but not life threatening; probably a ricochet or concrete spall from the wall. The magazine in his pistol was half empty, though he only remembered firing once. He swapped it for his full spare.

  He couldn’t help but admire the audacity of Den Tun’s attack despite the fact that it had almost killed him—twice. He’d genuinely believed that the earthquake was what it seemed until the first grappling hook sailed up from the bottom of the pit. How long had it taken the Minzoku to undermine the building without being detected? It was a huge investment for a single-use tactic, evidence of Den Tun’s confidence—or desperation. Either way, the old man had taken a pragmatic view—he had nothing to lose by trying, even if it meant killing potential hostages.

  It also redefined McKeon’s place in the scheme of things. Obviously he wasn’t viewed as much more than an informant and an expendable one at that. He couldn’t cry too hard about the deception; the Onjin had more to gripe about than he did. He’d have to embrace Den Tun’s pragmatism, accept the role and try to salvage what he could.

  His agreement with the Minzoku was still viable: the vast majority of the Fort’s inhabitants were contained, preventing the needless slaughter of civilians and facilitating a rapid occupation. He could claim credit for that, unwitting though it was. Halsor Tennison and Tamara Cirilo, the two most valuable bargaining pieces, had slipped away but McKeon knew where to find them, if they were alive, and if he could get there in time.

  Sporadic gunfire marked the Minzoku’s progress through the Fort, moving quickly, with clearly defined objectives. Troops flanked Hal and Tamara and could not have missed seeing them from across the street, but let them go in favor of capturing the residential buildings nearby.

  Extended bursts of concentrated small-arms fire erupted when the Fort’s security forces engaged the invaders. The whump of grenades brought the encounters to an abrupt end. The absence of heavy machine guns or beam weapons meant the grenades probably belonged to the Minzoku. The Onjin wouldn’t have passed up the heavy firepower available in the armory in favor of small antipersonnel charges if they’d made it that far.

  Hal tapped his access code on the sally port’s keypad. He half expected to find a horde of commandos on the other side waiting for their comrades to let them in, but the approach through the minefield and fences was clear. A single-point-of-entry tactic smacked of over-confidence, but he couldn’t argue with success.

  Tamara slipped through first. Hal turned to close the hatch behind them but a filthy, blood-spattered arm thrust through the gap. He backed up, centering his aim on the door as the pursuer emerged and found McKeon’s startled eyes hovering in his sights. He pulled his Chief of Security through the opening and put his weight against the door to close it.

  McKeon was bleeding heavily from a wound on the back of his forearm. “They got us cold,” he panted. “Most of the civilians were still in the shelters—they’re trapped, now.”

  “What kind of counter force is left?” Hal asked.

  “Started out with three-quarters of my people,” McKeon said, “but they took out the control net when they hit the command post. We’ve got no way to coordinate a concerted counter attack. The Minzoku are taking them down by ones and twos.”

  “The shuttle’s guns could give us the edge,” Tamara suggested. “The Minzoku don’t have anything big enough to bring it down.” And because most of the Fort’s citizens were still in the shelters Hal could be less discerning about what he blew to hell.

  “It’s our only chance, now,” he agreed.

  “Too dangerous,” McKeon argued, eyeing the killing field between them and the shuttle. “They’ll pick us off from the trees.”

  Exposing themselves to cross the killing field was a calculated risk: Den Tun might prefer them alive but consider killing them an acceptable option with escape the alternative. Dead, he could still claim them as hostages and gain a temporary advantage through the Old Lady’s uncertainty. But every moment they lingered the Minzoku tightened their grip on the Fort and brought the three Onjin closer to discovery. Hal could not abide the thought of standing in Den Tun’s presence as a prisoner.

  “I’d rather take the bullet than surrender,” Hal said flatly.

  “So would I,” Tamara said.

  McKeon debated whether or not to hold them for Den Tun’s forces. It was two against one if he tried; he couldn’t get back through the sally port for help and there was no telling how long it would take before the Minzoku found them. He might convince them to wait, at least, for nightfall, but there was no doubt in his mind that if the Minzoku discovered them first they would resist. The commandos demonstrated considerable restraint but did not hesitate to kill when fired upon.

  Letting the two Onjin take their chances increased the likelihood of McKeon’s personal survival but left him with nothing to bargain with—and would cost him dearly if they succeeded. If he went along, and they did reach the shuttle, McKeon could offer Den Tun not only the pair of Family members but access to a starship—while bargaining from a position of strength.

  “Go then,” McKeon sighed. “I’ll cover your backs.”

  Tennison took off across the field at a dead sprint. McKeon held Tamara Cirilo back for a count of ten before he sent her off. Fifteen seconds later he followed.

  The ground was saturated from snowmelt and spring rains. The clay soil clung to their shoes like slick, heavy overboots. Tamara went down in the mud twice but was up and going again before McKeon reached her.

  A shot cratered the ground a meter to his right. McKeon and Tennison both turned and fired back at a commando on the top of the Fort’s wall. The soldier vanished behind a puff of smoke and rock dust and did not reappear. It wouldn’t be long before others took his place, and the accuracy of their rifles didn’t fall off with distance as fast as the Onjin’s handguns.

  McKeon surrendered to his training and the instinctual tendency to place himself between his employers and danger. He paused every few meters to scan their back trail, giving Cirilo time to pull ahead before his faster pace overtook her. Tennison reached the kill zone around the shuttle and crouched, stabbing at the controls on his fob.

  A shot rang out from the forest, kicking up a spray of mud ahead of Cirilo. She dodged right; a second shot bracketed her, a clear warning not to continue. McKeon launched a volley of rounds toward the source without any expectation of hitting anything. The shuttle’s hull prevented the sniper from getting an angle on Tennison, who was closer, but Hal couldn’t get a clear shot at the sniper for the same reason. He motioned them to hurry and Cirilo made a beeline for safety.

  Her left leg collapsed; her scream of pain and the sound of the shot reached McKeon simultaneously. The shuttle’s sentry gun opened up, blowing two meters out of the base of a large tree at the forest’s edge. The timber groaned as it fell, vanishing from the skyline with a crash.

  A shot from the Fort’s wall showered McKeon with dirt as he reached Cirilo. The sentry gun spat energy and blew a section of parapet into whistling shrapnel. McKeon threw himself in the mud next to Cirilo and ripped open her pant leg. A white sliver of bone protruded from the exit wound; the moistu
re-saturated ground beneath her ran red with pulsing blood. He clutched the pressure point at the top of her leg, deaf to her renewed screams.

  “I need help here,” he shouted at Tennison. “She’s bleeding out!”

  Hal ran over, stripping off his shirt to use as a tourniquet. “We’ve got to get her inside!”

  “We’ll never make it,” McKeon insisted. “We’ll both catch a slug!”

  “Not likely,” Hal said grimly. “The fire-finder’s on.”

  McKeon realized suddenly that the gunfire had slacked off. The shuttle’s high-speed optics picked out each round fired and mapped the projectile’s trajectory back to its point of origin, painting a target for the sentry gun. The Fort’s wall was lined with commandos but none dared fire without paying with their lives.

  The two men hoisted Cirilo off the ground and headed across the boundary around the shuttle marked by rotting animal carcasses. They lowered her next to the hatch while Hal tapped in his authorization.

  “Wait!” a distant voice cried. Against all odds, Sergio Cirilo had evaded the Minzoku and escaped through the sally port but it hadn’t closed behind him. Four commandos emerged and shed their gear in an effort to cut him off before he reached the shuttle. “Wait for me!”

  “Sir,” McKeon reminded Hal, “the sentry gun—!”

  “Sergio, stay where you are!” Hal shouted. “Don’t come any closer!”

  Hal couldn’t leave Tamara and McKeon without the shuttle’s defenses turning on them, instead. Their shouting voices drowned each other out; Tamara fought through the fog of pain as Sergio neared the kill zone, nearly lunged beyond the bubble of immunity around Hal’s fob before they caught her. “Daddy, NO!”