But right before I got to him, he wrenched the pipe apart. I slammed into him, driving him down through another access panel. We fell through the ceiling onto the floor of the communal dome.
I landed on top of him, my good arm pushing at his head and my titanium knee on his breastplate. Even in the light Martian gravity, the impact sent alarms all through my implants. The alarms on his implant must have been worse, because his head and neck curved at an odd angle.
“Kill me, my love,” he whispered. “Kill me, then save them all.”
“I can’t.”
“Please. I must die.”
“No.” I shook my head.
“Please. I beg you. You’re the only one who can save me.”
His enhanced arm reached at my throat.
“You see? Even now I seek to kill you. Don’t let—” His eyes burned with terror and love. “Please.”
I rose. Cries of panic came from behind me as the families realized the warrens were decompressing.
“Save them, my love.” His hand groped after me. “Kill me so you can.”
I stamped once, twice, thrice at the base of his skull with my enhanced leg.
The first did little. The second filled his eyes with love. The third crunched through his skull. His love ebbed until his eyes stared at me with nothing behind them.
No time to grieve.
* * *
I wrenched open the door into the Fielding warren. It was hard to pull with only one arm and the loss of pressure on the other side. I ran toward the room where Eric and I had fought.
My uncle ran past, pushing along cousins.
“Dad!”
“He’s back there organizing,” snarled the uncle.
“Good.”
Idiot! Speaking of organization. I have a comm implant for a reason.
“Sergeant Fielding to all emergency services. We have an emergency decompression in West-Alpha-12.”
“We see it. Don’t you Fieldings know how to use the foam canisters? You know, the blue and yellow cans in every exterior room?”
“We had other things on our mind,” I snarled.
“Fine, we’ll send the patch team since you can’t be bothered.”
“Listen to me, asshole. The breach is too damn large. It can’t be patched in time. If you don’t send medtechs and low-O assistance in the next two seconds, I’ll make sure that every bone in your body has to be enhanced. Got it?”
“What—”
“Send help right fucking now, Mars damn you!”
And to hell with radio protocol.
I left him to it and ran back in. I got two kids under my healthy arm and brought them to safety.
I did it again.
And again.
But the air pressure was essentially gone. My implants’ O2 sensor flashed at me. I had reserves and hyper-efficient lungs, but this was more than even that could handle.
Don’t think about what it will do to unenhanced humans. Just go help.
I found dad. He had made it most of the way back but had tried to flee carrying mom. I picked them both up and ran out with them.
By this point, most of my family was out, coughing and wheezing. I saw most of our kids. A few Allardecks had made it out by this point as well, but hardly any children.
I hesitated for a half-second, but there was no choice. I ran into the Allardeck warrens.
I did not have to worry about arguing with them, as I would have normally. The Allardecks had more things to worry about than a Fielding. I grabbed every kid I could find. I basically threw them out into the communal area and went back.
I had been given over a dozen enhancements over the years. I was, in many ways, superhuman. But even so, my body could only be pushed so far.
My oxygen reserves fell to critical levels. The human parts ached, but the internal painkillers helped with that. Then they fell to critical levels too.
Warning after warning showed up on my implant. I ignored them.
I saw Nick Allardeck. To his credit, he was trying to help two of their children flee. However, he staggered to the ground, dropping them. I grabbed the two kids and left him there.
Fucking Allardeck.
I pushed through the Allardeck pressure door. In the communal area, O2 was plentiful. I staggered back to my feet, taking stock and breathing deep.
So few.
I did not see Beatrice.
Without thinking, I pushed the pain and fatigue away and dove back into the Fielding warren. She was not in her area.
My wedding dress was, though, hanging in front of a window overlooking the Endeavor crater. It flapped in the wind. The red Martian light from the window colored it an ethereal crimson.
No time to grieve, dammit!
I finally found her on the floor in our home school, which happened to be on the far end of our warrens. In her arms, she cradled the girl who had measured me a lifetime ago.
So blue.
I grabbed them anyway and staggered down the hall.
Then my oxygen reserves gave out.
I tried to breath in the remaining atmosphere.
Not worth the trouble.
I ran onward, holding my breath. The door was only thirty meters away. Twenty. Ten.
But the door was shut and would not open.
I set them down and pushed.
I got it open a crack, but it slammed back.
No time for this.
One last try. I pushed with all I had. It opened a little, and then enough for me to get some oxygen. But the crack was only about ten centimeters wide, and the oxygen was not enough. I could feel the door slipping. In desperation I pushed again, and got it back to about ten centimeters, but no more.
I put my back to the door and pushed with both legs, and I could feel it move out again.
Yes!
Then my real leg shattered under the force, and I fell down, the door pushing me back into the warren.
I reached out with my right arm to catch the join. But the air pressure kept pushing the door. In agony, I realized the door was bending the titanium.
In front of me, neither my aunt nor the girl had moved.
Still, so blue.
I remembered Eric’s tears and waited for it to end.
The world started getting darker.
Then the rescue teams arrived. Their hydraulic opener succeeded where I had failed. They wrenched the door open, and my arm was free, though curved and wrong-looking.
I tried to rise but could only get to my knees.
The first person in a pressure suit tried to pull me, but I waved him off and pointed behind me. He nodded and picked up the girl. Another handed me an oxygen mask. Then he picked up Beatrice.
I sucked in all the O2 I could. With some oxygen, I was now able to rise and hop out of the warren.
People filled the communal area. Many were lying on the ground or against the wall. Medtechs moved hastily around, looking grim.
I finally made it to my parents. I collapsed to a knee next to my mom. Dad was also there, holding her hand and crying.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I think Allardeck tried to get Eric to kill me by hacking his implant. In the end, Eric caused the decompression.”
“What!”
I nodded. “Eric fought it. I’d be dead if he hadn’t. He gave me a chance.”
“I’ll kill him.”
“Eric’s dead.” I pointed across the room, then covered my face. “I killed him.”
“Not him, his father.”
“He’s probably dead. I don’t know for sure, but he’s still in there.”
“Allardecks!”
“Leave it be, Dad. We can hate each other tomorrow.”
“How many did you save?”
“People? Or Allardecks?” I snarled.
He grimaced. “People, I guess. I don’t want to kill most of the Allardecks.” He spat. “Nick, though.”
“I don’t know. Dozens, I guess. I could replay the re
cording on my implant, but not now. Please, by Mars, not now.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, his face troubled. “We’ll have to see it someday.”
“I’ll just download it. I don’t think I ever want to see it.” I looked over at my aunt. A medtech was covering her with a blanket. “So much I don’t need to see ever again.”
He looked at my shattered leg and crushed, curving arm. “You could hardly have done more.”
“I guess.”
“I don’t see how you survived at all.”
“I’m part of the Martian Special Forces, now,” I spat out. “We don’t get to die. They’ll just give me the new model arm and replace the leg. Everything’ll get fixed right up, and I’ll be back to going wherever they need someone to be shot.”
My mom coughed, and we both turned to her. She lifted her hand to touch my face.
“Saw…saw you.”
“Stay quiet, mom. You’ll be fine. Just rest.”
“Love you.” Her arm fell back to her chest. Fortunately, I could see she was breathing.
My dad stroked my hair, just as he had done when I was a kid. Just another completely human Martian kid.
I held mom’s hand.
“I have to go. Stay here,” he said.
I nodded.
I shut out all the noise and just stayed there.
Then, finally, hospital gurneys arrived in sufficient numbers. They lifted mom up on a gurney and I rose, standing again on one leg.
They saw my leg for the first time, and with horrified noises rushed to get another gurney for me.
I waved them off and hopped over to Eric. I curled up next to him, holding my dearest love.
Medtechs came up to me.
“Sergeant, you’re hurt. We have a gurney, and we need to get you looked at.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, probably so, given the readouts your implant is feeding us, but you’ve got to come with us.” He glanced at Eric with sad eyes. “We’ll take care of him.”
“I love him.”
“We know.” He reached out a hand, braced to help up someone with my mass.
I kissed Eric on the cheek and let them help me sit on a gurney.
And it was such a relief. My adrenalin subsided, and all I could do was cry in long, loud sobs.
“Tonya?” My father had returned, escorted by my uncles. They had troubled looks on their faces. “Tell me again what happened.”
“Someone, I think Nick Allardeck, hacked into Eric’s implant and forced him to attack me.” My eyes turned cold. “Couldn’t have me for a daughter-in-law, I guess.”
“I sort of understand that. I didn’t want Eric as a son-in-law.” My dad’s face turned grim as he looked around the dome. “But I don’t understand doing what he did. How’d he do it?”
“I don’t know exactly. The truth is each enhancement is just one more component of us. Just like any other computer part. They’re wired into the implant that’s connected to our brain.”
They glanced at each other.
“That’s what we thought,” he said. He looked around. “You saved so many people here. And you’ve done us proud in the MDF. All those awards.”
“Yeah. Useless pieces of paper and ribbon.”
“I guess.” He fidgeted.
“What is it, Dad?”
“Honey. I love you.”
The uncles nodded. One said, “We love you.”
“What, then?”
Dad’s lips twisted. “We love you, but…” He gestured to the dome. “What Eric did here was evil.”
“Mars damn you! No one would be alive now if Eric hadn’t fought the implant to give us a chance! Don’t you get it?” I started up off the gurney. “He’s a fucking hero!”
Dad shook his head. “None of us, Fielding or Allardeck, would be dead now if it weren’t for him. At least, what he was at the end.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tonya, we’re scared of you.”
“You’re scared of me? But—”
“Not just you. It’s Eric and the others like you.” He glanced around at the rescue efforts. “Honey, you’re not my little girl anymore.” He pointed at my broken leg. “You’ll be even less her when they fix that.”
“But, I’m still me!”
“Maybe.” He bent his head for a moment. “But we don’t know that. You knew Eric, but these aren’t the deeds of the man you knew. They’re of someone else, and we don’t know if you’ll ever be someone else. Someone who could do…this.”
He glanced at my uncles. They nodded. “We love you. But you’re no longer welcome in our warren. We just—” Tears came down his cheeks.
My implant flashed a new alarm: Analgesic Supply Exhaustion Imminent.
“We just can’t,” he continued.
I stared at my dad, my soul falling to pieces around me.
Then, thankfully, the analgesics failed. A shattered leg and crushed arm drove away the anguish of my well-seeming form.
* * * * *
Rob Howell Bio
Rob Howell is the creator of the Shijuren fantasy setting (www.shijuren.org) and an author in the Four Horsemen Universe (www.mercenaryguild.org). He writes primarily medieval fantasy, space opera, military science fiction, and alternate history.
He is a reformed medieval academic, a former IT professional, and a retired soda jerk.
His parents discovered quickly books were the only way to keep Rob quiet. He latched onto the Hardy Boys series first and then anything he could reach. Without books, it’s unlikely all three would have survived.
His latest release in Shijuren is Where Now the Rider, the third in the Edward series of swords and sorcery mysteries. The next release in that world is None Call Me Mother, the conclusion to the epic fantasy trilogy The Kreisens.
You can find him online at: www.robhowell.org, on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00X95LBB0, and his blog at www.robhowell.org/blog.
# # # # #
Forty Acres and a Mule by Luke R. J. Maynard
The gunship touched town at Miyagino just after midnight in a gravel parking lot barely big enough for a dozen cars. The base commander had been kind enough to clear the lot, but not to such a distance that the whine of the engines didn’t set off a couple of car alarms coming down. Valentine had slept most of the way in, but the chorus of sirens and chirps was enough to break the monotony of the jet engines and pull him back from his dream. He straightened up in the chair and shook the cobwebs from his head as his neural systems came back online.
“What the hell is that?” he muttered. The gray-haired, heavyset pilot shrugged with his eyebrows, since his shoulders were hard at work holding things absolutely still.
“Touchdown momentarily, agent,” said the pilot.
“D’you set us down in the middle of a goddamn toy store?”
“Sorry about that, Chief. Bit of a tight squeeze.” The pilot grimaced as he brushed the antenna of a satcar with one of the stabilizers.
Valentine peered out the window. “It is at that. That’s all you’ve got in Sendai? My second wife had a shoe closet that big.”
“That’s all we’ve got,” said the pilot. “The Japanese don’t take too kindly to our presence after the Kuril Wars. After that gong show on Broutona, we’re lucky they let us keep a P.O. Box for fan mail.”
“You get fan mail?”
The pilot laughed so hard the wheels bounced as they hit.
“No,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Valentine. “I’m not looking to build a summer home here. We’ll be in and out before they know we were here.” He clapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Thanks for bringing me all the way out here, Major.”
“No one else I trusted to fly under the grid,” said the pilot. “You want something done right…”
“You going to check in with the folks on duty?”
“I’ll see to it, Mr. Valentine.”
“Good man.” Valentine palmed his
pistol, fingered the sensor until it came online, and holstered the live weapon as he reached for his briefcase.
“You expecting trouble, Chief?”
Valentine slid open the door. “It’s only trouble if you don’t expect it. Give my best to base command.”
“You’re just going to walk off down the street?” asked the major incredulously. But before he could get it out, Jimmy Valentine had done just that.
* * *
The beer here came in half-liters, in cases of 20, which made the math easy. Terry Cullen had always been good at math. Six cases by four, stacked six high to a flat: fourteen hundred and forty kilos per lift. Terry’s skeleton was sustained-carry rated to sixteen, which should have been a fine buffer. Only he figured that some pencil-necked bean counter in Logistics had failed to account for the weight of glass, and the weight of three thousand bottle caps—and that was why Terry crunched painkillers like candy and had a wicked buzzing in his legs when he bent at the neck now. It’s why his maintenance bills, physio, chiro, nano, had all spiked in the last year.
Then again, it was why cybernetically altered super soldiers earned two thousand yen an hour to the regular stock boys’ nineteen hundred.
A cut above, my ass.
As a high-end Class 4 Mule, at least, Terry had been fitted for stealth as well as carry strength. The other Mules on the assembly line whined at the joints as they loaded truck after truck. Terry felt the uncomfortable heat and buzz in his joints, but the whole system was quiet enough that he could hear the metal fire door unlatch even over the hum of the conveyor belts.
With a sigh he set down a ton and a half of booze and hit the red stop button on his conveyor belt.
“I don’t say nothin’ till I see a badge,” he began—but stopped when he caught sight of Jimmy Valentine’s shadow. He stepped back, and his hand went instinctively to his hip.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he snapped.
Valentine raised his eyebrows. “Wow,” he said, nodding to Terry’s weapon. “A pricing gun? You going to kill me with that?”
Terry laughed in spite of himself, but felt the little machine in his hand, weighing it. It definitely had some metal in it. He put it back in the apron’s holster, beside the pocket for sale stickers.
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