Soldier

by David Ryker

  “Good,” Alice said darkly. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here before the guards show up.”

  The cold seeped into my bones, darkness covering me like a blanket.

  In the empty nothingness, I felt the wind buffeting at me. I felt heat on my face, pain in my chest. Something was pulling at the hair on my arms. My neck felt strange, my head heavy. I could feel something hard under my back and my calves. I was jostling. My chest was throbbing, my skin warm with blood.

  My head touched something cool and hard and then there was pressure on my body. I couldn’t breathe. Everything was tranquil, my mind a stagnant pool of water in a cave, still and dark.

  The cold edge of a scissor blade pressed against my stomach and then traced a line up my body to my collarbone. My shirt fell into two halves and then my heart exploded with fire and I sat bolt upright, my eyes shooting open, stinging in the halogen lighting of the cargo hold of our Tilt-wing.

  Greg was crouching over me, huge and imposing, his camera dome moving and scanning me. I could feel the cold radiating off him.

  To my left on her knees was Everett, scissors in bloodied, gloved hands. On my right was Volchec, hypodermic in hers. They both looked drawn and on edge.

  I gulped down air and filled my tightened lungs. I was lying on the floor of the cargo hold, my midriff stained red with blood.

  “Christ, Maddox,” Volchec sighed, tossing the needle into the medkit open next to my hip. “I don’t know if you’re crazy or stupid, or both.”

  I stared down at my chest, at the patch of blue-green jelly spanning from my sternum to my shoulder on my left side. Through the translucent substance I could see the dark patch of raw flesh.

  “You’ve got balls,” Everett laughed, “that much I know.”

  I swallowed and laid my head back. “What happened?” I croaked.

  “You got shot,” Volchec said flatly. “Your AI here kept us clued in — told us what the hell was going on as best he could — that you and Kepler had pistols on each other. And then that you’d been shot — by her. That your vitals were spiking. That you needed Medevac. He picked you up, brought you into the ship — saved your life, I’d say.”

  I sighed and let a thin smile spread over my lips. “Thanks, Greg,” I mumbled.

  “So, you want to tell us what the hell was going on, ‘cause I feel like we’re getting half the story here. One minute I’m telling you to keep an eye on things at the bar, and then my feed goes dark.” Volchec stood up now and paced in a circle. I could feel the floor shaking under me. We must have been over the city. It wasn’t the quiet hum of orbit. “Next thing I know, I’ve got your goddamn AI telling me you’ve been shot and need immediate medical.”

  “Greg,” I grumbled.

  “Greg?” She stopped and glared at me. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That’s his name,” I said, closing my eyes.

  “It’s just a goddamn machine, Maddox!” she yelled without warning. I could feel her over me now, gesticulating wildly. “Tasked with keeping you alive! And you seem to be testing those core functions to their fucking limits. So I repeat — tell me what the fuck is going on, right now — because I’ve got two guys chasing ghosts in the middle of the city, one MIA, and another half-dead on the floor of my fucking Tilt-wing!” Her voice echoed off the metal hull and stung my ears. She turned away and started pacing.

  I tried to sit up and Everett helped me. My chest was still on fire — one of my ribs had to be cracked, at least. The bullet had definitely broken skin, torn into the muscle, too. The stem-gel was an analgesic, a potent painkiller as well as healing and staunching agent, but the damage was severe and it was hurting — dulled or not.

  “We…” I trailed off, my brain fuzzy. “We needed to keep our cover. The mercs invited us over — Alice… We, uh — we spoke to them about the Iskcara—”

  “You did what?” Volchec zoomed back over, arms folded, leaning in to catch my strained words.

  “We got a line on it — they were looking for some mercs for… something, I don’t know what. But, they weren’t sure — said we needed to prove that we were serious. That we wanted the job.”

  “And she shot you?” Volchec’s voice dropped straight into incredulous.

  I nodded. “Yeah, we had to… try to shoot each other. Said they needed three guys, not four.”

  “You told them about Mac and Fish?” She wasn’t letting anything slide.

  “Yeah. They were smart — knew it couldn’t just be the two of us.”

  “What about us?” She gestured to Everett.

  I shook my head this time. “No, I kept you out of it.”

  Volchec breathed slowly. “That’s good. But still — what you did was stupid. She could have killed you. Or you could have killed her.” She shook her head at the whole sorry situation.

  I tried to laugh but coughed painfully instead. “She wouldn’t have — at least I hoped. We had a deal — she’d win out, shoot me, and keep her cover. Refusing would have only given us away, and then they’d have bolted. At least this way, the trail’s still hot.”

  “And I supposed you were just hoping she wouldn’t hit anything vital?”

  I smiled to myself, rubbing my chest, but the ache wouldn’t abate. “Not quite — I linked us,” I said, touching my temple. “Neurally — when we were on the station and they were installing the chip, they mentioned it. Greg walked me through how to do it. I didn’t know what we were walking into — thought it might have come in handy. I was right.”

  Everett turned her bottom lip out, looking at Volchec. “Smart. It’s not commonly done — doubt they’d have expected it. Especially if they’re not familiar with every scrap of Federation tech.”

  “And Kepler agreed to that?” Volchec pressed, well aware of our situation. She looked at Greg, and then back to me. “Because I’m sure your AI here relayed to you the statutes surrounding nonconsensual neural interfacing and the penalties it carries?”

  “Uh, not exactly.” He had tried but I’d told him to can it. “But if I hadn’t…”

  She waved her hand. “In any other situation, I would have been talking about boundaries and laying out punishments, but it seems like you might just have pulled something off here…” She bit her lip and shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this — but good job.”

  Everett squeezed me on the shoulder and I turned to her. She was nodding at me. I returned it.

  Volchec went back to pacing. “So you said they wanted three mercs, right? Did they say what for?”

  “No, I didn’t get that far.”

  “Kepler’s still off comms. I’ll raise MacAlister and Sesstis, brief them on the situation.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Rest up — wait for the painkillers to kick in. Then get suited up — you’re going back out there.” She turned and headed back up to the cockpit.

  When she was gone, Everett offered me a hand and helped me to my feet. “Nice job,” she said quietly. “Quick thinking.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. “And… you were wrong.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Was I? About what?”

  “About Alice — and the others. We’re not alone out here.”

  She smiled sadly at me. “You may not be — but I am.”

  I shook my head. “No, you’re not.”

  “Oh yeah, and how do you figure that?”

  “Because if nothing else, you’ve got me. I’m watching your back — you can count on that.” I held out my hand for her to shake it, figuring it was a reasonable enough substitute for a hug. I didn’t think we were quite there yet.

  She stared at it. “You don’t need to do that — try to make me feel like you give a shit.”

  “But I do — I realized that we all have to look out for each other, or this whole thing comes apart at the seams. It’s trust — you know?” I could hear my blood pumping in my ears now and feel it under the stem-gel. “And you can trust me.”
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  She clapped me on the shoulder instead, not caring how much it hurt — and it was a lot. “Those painkillers hitting you hard, eh, Red?” She shook her head, laughed it off, and then walked past me.

  I sighed and wobbled on my feet. I felt Greg move behind me, and then the cool steel of his huge hand under my arm. I leaned on it and steadied myself, sighing as Everett disappeared into the cockpit and closed the door behind her.

  “James?” he said quietly.

  “Yeah, Greg?” I didn’t turn around.

  “I thought that was a nice thing you just said.”

  “Shut up, Greg.”

  15

  “Maddox, come in.” Everett’s voice crackled in my ear, staticky and muffled.

  I touched my finger to the comm. “Yeah, I hear you, what’s up?” I was sitting back inside Greg, on overwatch for Alice’s op. She, Mac, and Fish were down there in the city, getting ready to do something pretty insane, and all I could do was sit back and wait for it to go sideways.

  “We’re pulling into orbit,” she said from what I could piece together. “It’s — storm is really getting — high winds — stay in contact — we’ll — good luck —” And that was it. I leaned forward and stared up through the domed part of the screen in front of me at the darkening storm clouds.

  The weather was volatile on Telmareen if nothing else. I was on top of one of the tallest buildings in this zone of the city — a spired tower-block of apartments. Volchec had done a really fancy fly-by where she’d hung the ass of the Tilt-wing just over the edge of the building before she took off toward the clouds. Greg had casually stepped off the ramp and onto the roof, and after I remarked at it, said that it was all about physics and he didn’t expect me to understand — I wasn’t sure if it was an insult or not, so I let it slide.

  We’d had word that Alice had arranged to meet up with Mac and Fish and that they were heading across to the sunny side of the world to do what the mercs had described as a ‘quick job.’ They’d put me on overwatch on one of the tallest buildings so I’d have a clear line of sight to where they were — or at least where we thought they might be.

  I didn’t really know what to expect on the bright side of the planet. The dark side had been all cold tundra and dirt, and I supposed that the side where it was always light would be all desert. That turned out to be totally wrong.

  The city straddled the dark-light border, but while those living on the cold side had to deal with perpetual ice, those in the sun got a choice between meadows, forests, jungles, prairies, and then the endless desert. Just where the light began to strike the streets and sides of buildings, moss and grass were growing — hardy plant life and ragged evergreens jutting out of the ground. From there, it spilled into pines that rose over the buildings and hugged the bases of the blocks and towers. Further away I could see the lush greenery of a jungle — vines and trees with huge canopies enveloping and creeping up the glass offices and apartments. Beyond that, the sun was baking the foliage into a pale brown prairie grass, and then, it was nothing but sand. Greg told me that it was imperative that there be as much plant life as possible maintained to keep the atmosphere oxygenated, so the city was built in harmony with what organics already existed. It made sense — and was sort of beautiful, in a weird way. A perfect blend of nature and industry coming together in a way that it never had done on Earth. That’d always been the story that was flying around, anyway — that humans just took advantage of the planet until they’d used it all up, and then they jumped ship and let it float, dead and rancid, in the farthest corners of space. I’d made a mental note to make the pilgrimage there one day, just to see — but the journey would take months, even in hyper, and I didn’t know when I’d get that sort of time to myself, or if I ever would.

  Greg crouched a little lower against the wind and rested a hand on the concrete surface we were perched on.

  The band of jungle was like most jungles supposedly were — humid and hot. The water spilling out of the trees — transpiration, Greg called it — was rising, and then being heated and blown hard into the dark side of the city, where it was hitting the wall of frigid air and being pushed upward. Greg told me that it was creating a column of hot and cold air that was rising and then super-cooling before folding back on itself and falling, before getting swept up again. As such, it was creating a pretty intense storm. The air was thick and heavy, and the pressure was mounting. The first rumbles of thunder were already brewing and the clouds were swirling overhead. It’d happened in a matter of hours. Everett and Volchec had been doing laps around the AO and identifying potential targets as I tracked the mercs through the city, but now they’d been forced to pull out of the atmosphere or get fried.

  I’d asked Greg about the spire that was on our building, as well as all of the other buildings that had them, too. Lightning rods, he’d said — before adding that the F-Series was fitted with electrical dampeners that should protect me if we were struck by lightning — though, for the first time since I’d known him, he wasn’t prepared to calculate the odds for me. I didn’t quite know how to feel about it.

  After Alice had stepped over my bloodied corpse outside the bar, she’d headed into the city to meet Mac and Fish in some alley with the Mercs, leaving her rig at the bar. Mac and Fish had already been given the heads’ up from us as to the situation, and acted accordingly and sufficiently coldly when they met up. We’d been listening in on comms on the ship.

  “Where’s Red?” Mac had asked.

  “Red’s out,” Alice replied.

  “Your geerl here done shot him to prove dat she seerious ‘bout dis credit,” the blue-skinned woman, who we’d now found out was called Kera, a long-time merc and a regular thorn in the Federation’s side, had said, holding her hand up like a gun. “Pap! Right in de chest.”

  Mac had smirked. “Good riddance,” he said, a little too convincingly. “Kid was a soft-touch, anyway. Never cut out for this shit. Was only a matter of time. Least his death was worth something in the end.”

  Volchec had stared at me after he said that. “He’s playing a part. Don’t take it to heart,” she’d said.

  I hadn’t thought to until she’d said that.

  “So what’s the gig?” Mac continued.

  Kera was the talker, that much was for sure. “You tree gotta do something for us — make sure we can trust you, aye. Just a little job.”

  “Spit it out,” Mac snorted. “I’m on tenta-fucking-hooks.”

  “Der be an Iskcara reefinery a hundred kilometers sunny-side. Day be bringing a big shipment into da city in a few hours. ‘Nuff to keep us all in steel for a while to come.”

  “And you want us to knock it over?” Mac’s voice was hard and without a hint of incredulity.

  “Oh, he sharp,” Kera laughed. “I like him. Yeah, yeah — you get the Iskcara, we tell you where to take it, and den you get de credit.”

  There was silence on the line for a few seconds after it as we presumed Mac and Alice were deciding what to do. Saying no would blow their cover, or at least throw it into question. Saying yes meant robbing a Federation Iskcara refinery. And considering none of this was really known to the Federation, it meant that there was a really good chance it was all going to go sideways, and that blood was going to be spilled. Volchec’s knuckles whitened around the table in the center of the cockpit as we all sat around it in silence. We’d promised to remain quiet not to screw up their flow during the talks, but I could see that Volchec was dying to jump in. We still didn’t know who the mercs were working for, and if Mac and Alice turned on them, managed to apprehend them — it would be an interrogation and all that shit. And during that time, if their employers didn’t get wind of what happened, and the merc cracked, we’d maybe have a line — but that was a lot of ifs. And that was banking on the fact that the mercs, who must be pretty hardcore to be as embroiled in this shit as they were, didn’t just draw and pump a few bullets into each of them before they could even do it. And without Volchec to
guide them, tell them to go either way, they had to make a call — keep the ruse going.

  “Alright,” Mac said coolly. “If that’s all.”

  “If that’s all!” Kera laughed. “De transport sets off at ten, Feddy Standard,” she finished, her voice dwindling. “Don’t let dat boy death be in vain, now.” The sound faded to nothing and then they were gone.

  Mac sighed on the line. “You get all that?”

  Volchec folded her arms, gripping her biceps with vice-like fingers. “Yeah,” she said gravely. “We got it.”

  I thought back to that conversation as we stood on the rooftop, the first drops of rain starting to spatter on the screen in front of me. Ahead was a wall of concrete and glass, but Greg had painted Mac, Fish, and Alice in red. Their outlines were projected through the buildings, tracking slowly through the jungle portion of the city toward the desert. The refinery was well over the horizon, but time was creeping on and the transport would be leaving soon.

  It was a gravilev truck delivering cores to one of the spaceports in the city. There were a couple it could have been, and the manifests and routes were never released to try and prevent this sort of thing from happening. The only reason the refinery was so far outside the city was because of how volatile Iskcara was. If anything went wrong, it needed to be at least that far away so that the blast radius wouldn’t engulf the city. The reason there wasn’t a space port at the refinery was just the sheer heat that it endured in such a sun-beaten spot. The refinery was sunk into the surface where it was cooler, but ships coming in to land there would be exposed to some serious heat. It was much safer for them to land in the city, and the Iskcara to be shipped to them in transports. And while that made them a target, sure, the Telmareen Guard were only a stone’s throw away at any one time. I could see the Central Telmareen Guard Tower a few kilometers away. It was the tallest building in this zone — a narrowing spire littered with fixed wings and other vehicles. They all nested against its sides like roosting bats, ready to peel off and fly to the aid of anyone who might need it. And when they did, they acted mercilessly.