Intrinsic Immortality: A Military Scifi Thriller (Sol Arbiter Book 2)

by J. N. Chaney

  The fear took over then. I needed to do something, but all I could think about was Daphne. Her last few minutes must have been like this, watching the water rise inexorably as it seeped in through the ventilation and the gaps between the body and the crushed passenger door.

  I’ve been in a lot of desperate situations, like being trapped by heavy battle androids in an apartment building or hunted by Nightwatch officers in impenetrable nanosuits. As bad as those situations were, neither of them felt as hopeless and desperate as those first few seconds in my car.

  I felt completely powerless, like I’d been caught in some kind of karmic beartrap and had no choice but to die. The water kept rising, slow and steady but clearly unstoppable. I was in terrible danger, but I knew exactly what I needed to do; I had been trained in how to deal with exactly this situation.

  There were a series of steps. The first was to wait, because I needed the pressure inside the vehicle to equalize with the outside. The next step was to get a door open. The third step was to swim away from the entry into the water. The fourth step was to reach the surface, and the fifth step was to reach the shore.

  My breathing calmed as I remembered, and I consciously shut off my own emotions. It took an effort of will, but I felt the coldness come down over my thoughts. Daphne died like this, yes—but I didn’t have to, not as long as I stayed calm.

  I checked my mental state by listening to my breathing. It sounded calm and regular, if a little deeper and faster than normal. So far, so good. I had no choice but to wait, so I used the time to improve my situation. I unclicked my seatbelt but found the mechanism was damaged. When it wouldn’t open, my breathing sped up a little. I heard a sound from outside the car, a distant popping I couldn’t identify. Not knowing what it was, my mind was distracted for just a moment. I gained control of my breath, realized I could cut myself loose, and retrieved my knife from my belt.

  The exact same knife I had killed several Nightwatch officers in hand to hand combat with on Venus would save my life again, as long as I could stay calm and focused on the task at hand. Once I made the cut, I dropped halfway toward the water with a sudden lurch, and the knife slipped out of my hand and disappeared.

  So much for that. I had cut the strap, but I was still hung up on something. There’s a time to be calm, and there’s a time for desperate effort. I yanked and kicked, letting myself give in to panic. I felt something give way, and my body dropped down into the rising water.

  The cold made me gasp, and I fought to a sitting position. These cars are well-armored, and the water was leaking in so slowly that I still had time to think. I found myself wondering about the continued popping sounds.

  What was going on outside the car?

  “Street view and sitrep.” No response. The AI was dead, probably killed at the moment of impact. I wouldn’t know till I got out there, so my best bet at understanding my situation was an educated guess.

  The level of force needed to send a vehicle flipping end over end would also be enough to destroy whatever did the damage unless it was uparmored like a troop transport. Whoever was chasing me, they had access to military or paramilitary resources. So, not a random attack but an intentional assassination by professional killers.

  They would want to make sure they had fulfilled their contract, so they would probably be waiting for me when I reached the surface unless StateSec had already arrived. I needed to make sure I had a weapon, but I wasn’t armed and geared like I would usually be on a mission. This was a day off after all, and a visit to Sophie’s was not a situation where I’d expected to end up in a firefight.

  Fortunately for me, I’m as paranoid as any other Arbiter. In the seat above my head, I had a submachine gun with a full magazine of ammo. All I had to do was fish it out, and I would at least stand a fighting chance. I reached up toward the seat but the frame was badly bent. I couldn’t get my fingers between the seat and the floor.

  I would just have to take my chances… no. I still had that knife, assuming I could find it in the water at my feet. I reached down carefully and felt around for my missing blade. My fingers closed on it, but the cold of the water made them numb and clumsy. When I pulled the knife out, blood was streaming from my fingers. I couldn’t afford to care; I had to concentrate on getting that gun.

  I spit out a long strand of blood and phlegm, got a grip on the slippery knife, and started sawing away at the upholstery above my head. The water reached my knees, and I noticed it was starting to flow in faster. I didn’t have much time before I had to open the door and either make my bid for escape or drown because I had waited too long. The temptation was just to go, but if they gunned me down when I reached the surface then all this effort would have been for nothing.

  If I had seen what I’d be doing now the day I bought that car, I would never have paid extra for the genuine leather. Be that as it may, I yanked and cut until the seat was in shreds, then wrestled the case out through the ruin of upholstery.

  The water was rising, but I took the time to return my knife to its scabbard while hugging the case to my body. When I opened it at last, clicked the magazine into place, and put the strap around my shoulder, I gave a shout of triumph.

  My sense of victory didn’t last for long. I was still in the car, settling down into the bottom of the river. The water was rising, and there was a good chance I had a gunfight ahead of me as soon as I poked my head out of the water. My car’s 25% chance of survival had only been talking about the crash, so my overall chances of lasting through the next half-hour were probably more like 2.5%.

  That thought should have demoralized me, but for some reason it had the opposite effect. As soon as I realized that my triumph was temporary, and that I was probably about to die no matter what I did, I felt a surge of euphoria. If I was going to die, then it didn’t really matter what I did next, right?

  There was nothing to worry about if it was all going to end the same way, which meant it was all just a game. The goal wasn’t to go on living, but just to live for as long as possible. Two minutes instead of one, or five instead of two. Bonus points for kills, taking as many of them to the grave as I could drag down with me.

  The water was now at my chest, and it was almost time to make a break for it. I turned around, positioning myself to get out the passenger side door. Once the water stopped flowing into the car and the pressure equalized, I opened the door. After that, let the games begin!

  My heart was pounding wildly as I prepared to start playing. I could hear it in my ears above the rush of water, above my hoarse breathing, above whatever that popping sound was.

  And then I got it. That sound was gunfire, which meant the killers were definitely still up there. Were they just firing into the water, hoping to hit me by blind chance? Somebody up there really wanted me dead and was prepared to go to great lengths to make it happen. Why wasn’t StateSec on the scene yet? Or maybe they were, and the hitmen were actually so determined to kill me that they were even willing to engage local law enforcement to do it.

  So much the better. I grinned like a death’s head as the water reached my chin, then I took several deep breaths and held the last one. It was time to go. I popped the door seal and pushed it open through the dark green water. I saw a fish flit past through the reeds and mud, braced myself with both feet and grabbed the sides of the door with both hands, then pushed off into the river.

  I didn’t go straight up. The air escaping the car would have bubbled up to the surface and flagged where I’d landed. Instead I swam away from the car, not completely sure what direction I was going but confident that anywhere was better. When I had gone as far as I thought I could manage, I drifted slowly upward, careful to make no sound at all as my head broke the surface.

  My body was desperate for air by the time I got there, and it was all I could do not to gasp so loudly they could have heard me from the riverbank. That would have cut the game short, so I fought my burning chest and breathed in slowly and evenly.

 
I looked around, moving smooth and deliberate. There was something burning up on the road, most likely a vehicle. I was drifting toward it, carried along by the river current. There was the bridge up ahead of me, and shapes moving on top of it. I couldn’t see them clearly at first, but they seemed to be pointing down toward the water.

  There was a sandbar in the river just below the bridge, and a huge, tangled pile of trees and other random flotsam. If I could float up there, I could conceal myself among the intertwined branches while I called in reinforcements.

  I drifted closer and was finally able to identify the figures on the bridge. Four armored men were aiming down into the water and taking shots occasionally. I couldn’t make out any details from this distance, but they gave a paramilitary impression. At first I couldn’t understand why they were shooting randomly like that, but then I realized they wouldn't be able to use thermal imaging or backscatter scans to find me. Water is effective enough as a radiation shield to disrupt any scanning capabilities the men might have. They had misjudged how long it would take me to float down to the bridge, but in general they had the right idea.

  I wished I had something other than a submachine gun. Since the killers were armored, I wouldn’t be able to just unleash on them and kill them all. I needed to take precision shots, targeting the weak points in their armored suits, and that’s something a submachine gun just can’t do. The only way I’d be able to kill them was from almost point-blank range or by aiming directly at the face.

  I thought of Raven Sommers, the Section 9 sniper I had briefly met on Tower 7. She had a way of showing up, taking out your enemies from some hidden location, then disappearing again like a vengeful ghost. I could sure have used her help right then.

  I didn’t even have to try to reach the tangle of trees; the current pulled me to the same spot. This had an added benefit, because I was able to use the debris to screen my approach. I bumped up against a sodden branch and held on tight, watching the enemy to make sure they hadn’t spotted me.

  They took no notice, but one of them unclipped a grenade from his belt, primed it, and tossed it into the river. It exploded with a gush of water that jumped up three or four meters, and then they all started shooting again.

  I just stayed there behind the trees, as the bullets whizzed past, making the water splash and ripple like an artificial rain shower. Blood was trickling down my face, leaking out from the cut on my fingers and pooling in my mouth. Everything hurt and everything was wet, but I waited there patiently. Every second I lived was a win in the game, and there was no reason to rush the situation. A branch snapped in half about three feet away from me, but none of the bullets got any closer than that. Time to call in the reinforcements—

  No, not yet. One of the four men stepped forward, picked his spot in the river carefully, then dropped from the bridge.

  It was a strange sight to see, because it didn’t really look like a jumping human. There was no fluidity, no bracing for impact. He just plummeted straight down, like a falling boulder or a huge chunk of metal.

  My skin crawled at the sight, and I couldn’t pinpoint why at first. What I did know was that if he was in the water and almost totally armored, my odds of killing him from my current position depended entirely on ambush. I would have to stay still, wait till he showed himself, then shoot him in the head from as close as possible.

  But what if he spotted my legs kicking slowly? I glanced down into the water below me but couldn’t see him. I didn’t like my chances, especially not if he decided to head straight for the little island or, worse yet, throw a grenade in my direction just to make sure.

  I ducked my head back underwater and pushed away from the sand bar, kicking as quietly as I could manage. I had to fight the current, but if I could make it to the far bank…

  They started shooting again from up on the bridge, though I had no way of knowing whether they’d seen me or not. The bullets sliced through the water to my right and left. Where the hell was StateSec? There had been a serious car crash, vehicles were on fire, and men were shooting guns and dropping grenades in the river. How could that possibly have failed to attract attention?

  There was no time to worry about it. I had to reach the bank, find a hiding place, and call this in. Whoever these guys were, I wanted StateSec on their trail. Even if I didn’t succeed in killing any of them before they got me, that would at least be worth something.

  I went under the bridge, surfaced again on the other side, and took another breath. Where was the man who had dropped into the water? I hadn’t seen a glimpse of him, but I could hardly believe he had held his breath for that long. He was probably diving for the wreck of my car, hoping to get visual confirmation that I was dead inside. I had to make for the bank, where I could at least buy myself a little bit of time.

  I started swimming, trusting in the sound of the rushing water to disguise the noise I made. When I reached the shallows at last, my limbs felt like they were made of cast iron. I fought the pain and the exhaustion, dragging myself over the rocks in a low crawl. The men on the bridge had stopped shooting, but I could hear them calling to each other.

  “Do you see him yet?”

  “I saw something move over there!”

  “Bullshit, he’s drowned.”

  I came out on the bank, surrounded by clumps of grass and algae-covered rocks. I was right under the burning car, and smelled something like melting plastic and roast pork combined. I checked for my weapon and found it still secured around my neck. So far, so good. Now to get up that bank, hide behind the burning car, and call this in.

  I dragged myself up the embankment, slipping and skinning my knees. When I neared the top, I found a body sprawled out on the road in front of the burning vehicle. It was a middle-aged woman, who had apparently crawled from her car on broken legs and arms. As horrifying as it was to see her twisted limbs and know she’d crawled on them, that wasn’t what killed her. There was a little hole in the center of her forehead, and from the lack of an exit wound she’d been staring right up at the killers when they did it.

  I looked up through the open door of the burning car and saw a body engulfed in flames, so twisted and blackened I couldn’t even say whether it was a man or a woman. Across the road on the other side there was another car sitting with its door open. An older man was inside, still strapped into his seat. His head lolled back, and blood trickled down from a wound in his head.

  They were methodically executing all witnesses.

  Almost frantically, I crawled up behind the burning car and brought up my dataspike menu. StateSec could decide who was responsible for this fuck up when they conducted their investigation, but right now the important thing was for them to get on the scene and do it.

  I opened a call channel, but all I got was a blinking red logo for StateSec and a friendly message. No network detected. If you have an emergency, please shelter in place until help arrives.

  No network detected? That was simply unheard of. StateSec are the police, they have a dedicated network all their own, and they do whatever it takes to keep it up and functioning. If a mile-wide asteroid was about to hit the planet, the thing they would keep running until the fiery end would be the StateSec network.

  I didn’t have long to think about it. When I booted up my dataspike, the men on the bridge turned as if in response and started scanning the bank with their eyes. I didn’t make the connection, but by the time I got the No Network message, one of them was pointing in my direction. Then the shooting started.

  The burning car was good cover, but what was left of the body inside rattled and shook as the bullets hit it. With my submachine gun—a weapon that uses pistol ammunition—I couldn’t hope to hit them at range, so all I could do was crouch down behind the flaming wreck and wait.

  One of the men took out a grenade, fitted it to his weapon, and aimed slightly upward. They were going to blow me up, and unarmored as I was, they wouldn’t even have to be all that accurate.

  I jumped up
and ran, firing controlled bursts of cover fire. I knew it was useless, but it might cause them to duck or pause for a moment. Then again, it might not.

  The grenade arced up, came down again behind the car, and exploded in a fireball of jagged metal shrapnel. If I hadn’t run, I would have bled out from a hundred wounds. I ran back up the river, hoping to put the cantilevers of the bridge between us. I needed them close to me, or there was nothing I could do against their armor and firepower. As things stood right now, I was a mouse trying to bite a cat to death.

  They were running toward me, moving with a speed that seemed almost inhuman. I leveled my weapon at the leading man’s face, aimed as carefully as I could, and squeezed the trigger. He twitched his head to the side just before I fired, and my bullets missed him and flew off into nothing.

  So much for the game and so much for bonus points. If I died today, it didn’t seem likely I would take anyone with me. I turned and ran again, legs pounding the pavement with desperate speed. I had a head start on them, but they were closing so fast it hardly mattered. As I raced along, I passed more bodies on the blood-slick street. Some had died in the accident, some had died not long afterward, shot through the head to keep them from talking.

  I got off the sidewalk and slipped down the embankment, getting myself out of their line of fire. I didn’t have a plan, or even the vaguest idea of how to escape this situation. All I knew was to run, and to make myself a difficult target.

  As I ran down the slope, I tripped and skidded a little. I lost my balance and went down on my hands and knees. From the top of the bank, my three pursuers started shooting at me again. With a burst of water, the fourth man came up from the river. He saw me kneeling there and leveled his weapon at me.

  I threw myself to the side, swung my own weapon up, and fired a burst. As I’d expected, the bullets just bounced off his armored torso. He grinned fiercely and turned, but I aimed my weapon straight at his face and he was forced to duck. Instead of opening fire, I stumbled to my feet and started running again.