by Nancy Kress
“We don’t—”
“The Settlers have three of them, plus one kid.” Sergeant Tasselman had registered all the Settlers, with as much information as he could pry out of them.
Hillson didn’t convey his surprise, but a pleased look crept into his eyes. “Yes, sir. Permission to accompany the superhearer.”
“Permission granted.” Jason turned back to the clear dome. “Hillson, you ever fight in a Stryker?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Me, too.” Jason could almost feel the inside: hot metal, the stink of too many bodies in too tight a place, of urine and bad breath and ammo, the Congo jungle vivid on the view screen. But remembering the inside of a Stryker was better than remembering what the outside had done to an enemy village.
To Hillson he said, “The three adult superhearers are Sarah Waters, Colin Jenner, and Benjamin Corrigan. Take Corrigan.”
“Yes, sir.”
The bombing had stopped now. The Strykers sat motionless, waiting. Jason sent for and briefed Elizabeth Duncan. “Sir,” she said, “there’s no need to go yourself.”
“I’m going. Take command.”
“Sir—”
“That’s all, Major.”
Her expression didn’t waver. If she disapproved—and of course she did—it didn’t show. Once again, Jason marveled at her self-control. It was an admirable military trait, but it also made him uneasy. She would back him up on this counterattack, but how far would she back him up on a direct defiance of HQ? He wasn’t sure, which is why he hadn’t as yet told her his entire plan.
And, of course, she was right to disapprove of his going outside. He could have used any of J Squad to convey orders to Li, and Li would accept them. Impossible to explain to the hyper-correct Major Duncan why Jason had to go outside himself. He could barely explain it to himself. But this mess was his responsibility, and he was going to fix it.
Lindy’s voice in his head: You think you can control everything.
Uncharacteristically, Duncan tried again. “Permission to speak, sir.”
“Go ahead.”
“You should not go yourself. Sir. Send me.”
Was she offering a genuine strategic assessment, or was she starting to take control of J Squad? Jason suspected that what had happened at HQ had been a junta-style takeover. General Hahn had been killed or imprisoned by Strople, who had his own agenda for the war. Strople could not have done that without convincing control of HQ officers. Was it possible that Elizabeth Duncan also—
No. He was being paranoid.
He said to Duncan, “Dismissed, Major.”
She left. Half an hour later, Hillson returned. “Sir, Corrigan was in Lab Dome. One of the scientists found out he had some sort of biology background and they’re using him in research. Captain Goldman took him through the tunnels. He says he heard troops near the exits of both tunnels, but not directly above either exit.”
Shit. “Did he hear any heavy vehicles?” Not that Corrigan’s report would be conclusive. A Stryker could be in place already, quietly waiting. Or just heavy ordnance.
“No, sir. Sir, with all respect—you shouldn’t go yourself.”
Sometimes Hillson seemed to reach into Jason’s head and extract his thoughts. It could be very annoying.
Jason said. “If this doesn’t work, it won’t matter who goes. Not in the long run.”
No one would be left to care.
* * *
He waited until well after nightfall. In full armor, Jason was a walking metal can equipped with the best sighting, communications, and killing tech of ten years ago. The J Squad soldiers with him looked equally formidable. But if there was another Stryker waiting at the top of the tunnel, they would all be hamburger in five seconds.
The unit stood, helmets off, going through weapons check in the storeroom at the bottom of Enclave Dome staircase. Jason had chosen Enclave tunnel precisely because it was used more, bringing in supplies and game, and so more likely to be known to New America. They would expect him to use the Lab Dome tunnel exit, which they might or might not know the location of.
The storeroom smelled of onions, but there were too many empty crates around. It was October; ordinarily, Colin’s Settlement would be supplying pumpkins, apples, pears, late tomatoes. Not this year, and not ever again if this plan didn’t work.
Jason and Kandiss, the only members of J Squad who were not RSA survivors, activated esuits.
“Okay,” Jason said, “listen up.”
* * *
Zack dozed on a pallet in a corner of his lab. He was dreaming something formless but menacing when someone shook his shoulder, hard. Instantly he bolted upright and lashed out.
“Jesus, Zack, don’t assault me!”
Lindy Ross, crouching over him. Zack looked wildly around. No one else was in the lab, and only a dim night light burned.
“What the hell are you doing, Lindy? What time is it? What’s happened?” Fear spitted his guts.
“It’s not Caitlin or Susan,” she said quickly. “It’s midnight. I need your help.”
“My help?”
“Yes. I have to move Colin Jenner and I can’t do it alone.”
That made no sense. “What? Move him where? You want an orderly.” And then, “Is he dead?”
“No, he’s not dead. I can’t move him alone with his injuries and tubes unless I use a carry-bot, which can’t go down stairs.”
“Down stairs? Why would Colin go down any stairs?” Was Lindy delusional?
“I’ll explain later but I need help now, while I can do this in secret, and you’re the only one I trust. Come on!”
She tugged on his arm, and Zack rose, befuddled by sleep or its lack but responding to the authority and urgency in her tone. They moved swiftly through the artificially night-dimmed corridors to the infirmary. When Zack tried to whisper a question, Lindy put her finger to her lips.
Colin Jenner waited in a powerchair. Lindy whispered to Zack, “If we run into anybody, say that you need tissue samples from Colin for your research. Come on.”
They moved, a silent ghostly group, past the cubicles with v-comas, who were beyond hearing anything. God, so many of them! From a side room came night nurses’ voices, weary and yet strident, arguing about something. Beyond the infirmary, the corridors were empty. They went through the first door to the tiny enclosure at the top of the staircase, Lindy squeezing in Colin’s bulky chair. She closed the door behind them.
Zack said, “Are we going down to the bird lab? Why? And where’s the guard?”
“Went comatose a few hours ago. Zack, you can get down there. Give the security system your scans.”
“Not until you tell me what’s going on!”
Colin said, “I’ll tell you. The underground annex will have a small airlock and then a long tunnel to the outside, as an emergency escape hatch and—”
“I know that, Jenner!”
“What you don’t realize is that there’s a whole New America army camped all around us, with tanks or something like tanks, and—”
“How do you know?”
“I looked,” Lindy said. “Observation deck is off-limits now, but I’m a doctor. With a good enough story, soldiers let me go places they won’t let other people go.”
“And anyway, I hear them,” Colin said.
Of course. Zack hadn’t put it together. If Ben Corrigan could hear “something different out there,” so could Colin Jenner.
Lindy said, “We’re going to take Colin through the tunnel to its exit somewhere in the woods. We need you because you have security clearances for the airlock scanner—you’ve gone outside to obtain sparrows. Colin’s going to listen to find out whether there are New America troops right above, waiting for us to come out like rats from a burning sewer. If not, I’m going outside and try to call the signal station. I have an earplant and mic, you know—doctor’s privilege. Mine aren’t military but maybe the signal station will hear us. Otherwise, there’s no way to tell them what’
s going on.”
Zack was appalled. “New America will hear your message, too. They’ll pick up your location instantly.”
“I’ll walk a long way from the tunnel exit before I signal.”
“Lindy, they’ll mow you down!”
Lindy said, “Help me with Colin’s chair. We can’t jiggle him too much.” She took off her long white coat. Under it she wore a jacket, military pants, and boots. An assault rifle was strapped across her chest.
Zack said “And even if you reached the signal station, what good could they do?”
“Send missiles. Jason can’t fire outside, and we’re just sitting here like caged sparrows in the bird lab. And if the signal station can’t fire missiles, they can at least send the Return to rescue us.”
“No,” Zack said. “It’s an insane plan.”
Lindy moved so close to him that their feet almost touched. Her eyes, inches away, bored into his. He smelled her musky female odor, overlaid with smells from the old jacket. “Let me tell you what’s insane, Dr. McKay. It’s insane that my ex-husband didn’t foresee this. I would verbally flay him up one side and down the other except that I know beyond a grain of doubt that he’s already doing that to himself. It’s insane that New America found antique weapons that what is left of the entire United States Army didn’t find, or at least didn’t find here. It’s insane that we live in structures we didn’t build, don’t understand, and can’t alter by so much as a molecule. It’s insane that the only way the formerly greatest military machine on Earth can only communicate with itself is through one lousy comsat or else with human signalers through one relay station, like a nineteenth-century telegraph office. It’s insane that New America can hold us in a state of siege until we either starve, or all fall into v-comas, or start eating our comatose patients, whichever comes first. All those things are insane. Getting a signal to the Return so they can rescue us is the only thing not insane.”
Rescue—how? All at once Zack realized that Lindy had lied. She was keeping secrets. Colin Jenner probably believed the Return, which had conveyed him unconscious from the Settlement to the base, was going to swoop down and carry everyone off to safety. Lindy knew that the order would be to bomb the hell out of New America and everything else in a mile’s radius.
Or did Colin know that, too, and was still willing to help Lindy even to the point of her own death?
And how long could the overcrowded, underprovisioned domes hold out without food coming in from the forest or Colin’s Settlement?
Zack closed his eyes, opened them, and began easing Colin’s chair down the steep, narrow stairwell.
* * *
Kubetschek took point. J Squad moved through the airlock that the “super-aliens,” whoever the hell they’d been, had designed, and into the bot-bored tunnel beyond. A generation ago, on the Embassy, the analog of this airlock had served as a submarine bay under New York Harbor. In Colin’s Settlement, it had led to a wide tunnel that slanted sharply upward to bring in stored crops. In domes used as Army bases, the tunnels went downward first so they could be more deeply buried, and were fortified with steel and concrete.
Jason walked directly behind Mason Kandiss. The only light came from their helmets, and the Ranger was a huge dark silhouette. They all moved quietly, but if New America was above them, and if they had among them a superhearer, then the enemy knew what Jason was doing. No way to calculate the odds.
At the end of the tunnel, Kubetschek and Goldman mounted the stairs. The others covered them from shallow alcoves built into the tunnel walls. However, that wouldn’t help much if strong enough explosives came down from above.
Goldman tapped in the code to open the hatch. The old, familiar tension tautened the base of Jason’s skull.
The two men touched the mechanism that raised the heavy, camouflaged hatch at the top of the stairwell.
It made a shocking amount of noise as soil, bushes, small rocks slid off the rising hatch. Dirt and pebbles clattered down the stairs, mixed with fat droplets of rain. But no larger noise of enemy fire. Kubetschek sprang through the hatch, followed by the other three members of J Squad. They took up defensive positions while Jason, at the top of the stairs, spoke urgently into his mic to the comsat somewhere above.
“Signal station, come in—code red, repeat code red!”
“Signal station here,” Li said, sounding startled. “Sir?”
“Execute Operation Flamingo in five minutes. Repeat, execute Operation Flamingo … verification code Delta Whiskey Alpha. Repeat, Delta Whiskey Alpha.”
A bullet whizzed past his helmet.
Instantly Kandiss was firing. Goldman covered Jason’s body with his own as he shoved him back down the stairwell. Jason yelled, “Go! Go!” and all of them scrambled through the hatch, followed by a torrent of rain splashing down the steps. Goldman stayed to lock the hatch as the rest of them ran back through the tunnel.
Something heavy rumbled overhead.
A sniper … the stray bullet had come from a sniper, but more of the New America force had not been that far away. And now they knew where the hatch was.
Ten minutes. They had maybe ten minutes …
Boots rang staccato on the metal plates of the tunnel floor. Behind Jason, Goldman pounded along until he caught up to the others. The tunnel was wide enough for only three raggedly abreast.
Go, go, go … ten minutes. He didn’t know what would happen if they were still in the tunnel when the Return dropped down from orbit.
* * *
In the other dome, Zack and Lindy bumped Colin’s powerchair down the steps, one at a time. Colin winced but didn’t cry out. “Christ,” Lindy said, “you’d think the Army would have sprung for powerchairs that can climb up and down steps!”
Zack puffed, “You don’t want … my opinion … on what the Army chooses to spend on or … not.” God, he was out of shape. Lindy was lifting and hauling easier than he was. “Jenner, you okay?”
“Yes.”
“I’m trying to not … sorry!… Okay, we’re down.”
“That’s the airlock and decon to the tunnel,” Lindy said, unnecessarily. “Zack, scan it open and then you stay here.”
“I’m an RSA survivor and—”
“We don’t need you. Colin will listen at the tunnel hatch, and if it’s safe, I’ll go out and contact the signal station.”
“This whole idea looks stupider now that I consider it.”
“Good, I’m glad you think so, because you’re not participating any farther than this. Just wait on this side of the airlock to help with Colin’s chair after we get back.”
“If there’s a hatch, what makes you think you can lift it alone?”
“It will have hydraulics.”
“Do you know that for sure? You don’t. And, Lindy—what if there’s a code to open the hatch?”
“There is. I know it.”
Zack didn’t ask how. She’d been married to Jenner; she could have been told, or have stolen, any number of supposedly restricted things. He said, “I don’t think you should—”
“Zack, now!”
Zack put his eye and finger to the scanner. It said, “Retinal scan and digital chip match. Dr. Zachary McKay.” The airlock/decon chamber slid open.
Colin powered himself inside behind Lindy and raised his hand to the CLOSE DOOR button. The door closed.
Zack sagged against the wall. Would he ever see either of them alive again? And if Lindy succeeded in this mad scheme to alert the signal station, would either the soldiers there or the Return act without orders from Colonel Jenner? In fact, could anybody even pilot the Return now that Branch Carter was in a v-coma?
Spaceship, Monterey Base, signal station—each locked separately, unable to reach the others except by desperate measures, no better than the caged sparrows in the bird lab. Was this any way to run a war?
* * *
Decon could not be rushed, but without decontaminating everyone, RSA would win. They all went through the decon
process at once, a tight fit for so many bodies. Jason counted each agonizing minute, squashed against Goldman and Kandiss. Kandiss’s AR-15 jammed into Jason’s side.
When decon was done and the airlock finished cycling, they exploded into Enclave Dome’s storage area.
Thirty seconds. They’d made it with thirty seconds to spare.
* * *
Zack couldn’t see Lindy and Colin—why didn’t the airlock have some sort of wall screen to the tunnel beyond? Or something like that? Or—
The world shook and screamed and threatened to break apart.
Zack threw himself into the airlock and slammed his fist onto the DOOR CLOSE button. Another explosion shook everything—an earthquake? Now? It seemed long minutes before the airlock opened on the other side. Colin, the superhearer, sat just beyond the airlock with his hands pressed tightly to his ears; tears made trails through the dirt on his face. But he cried out to Zack, “Get her out!”
Lindy lay a short distance along the tunnel, which rained dirt and stone from gaps between the sagging ceiling plates. Zack grabbed Lindy, who was conscious but looked dazed—had she hit her head? She screamed when he grabbed her under her armpits and dragged her, but Zack had no choice. If that had been an earthquake, there could be aftershocks and the entire tunnel could collapse. He shoved Lindy into the airlock, closed the door—thank the gods that it still closed—and pushed START DECON. Come on, come on …
Decon hadn’t finished when everything shook again. But the airlock was part of the original alien structure and didn’t crack. Lindy moaned. Zack said, his voice too loud and too shaky, “Earthquake!”
“No,” Colin gasped.
No? Then what?
“Bombs.”
Whose? Did New America have those kinds of weapons? The dome had held … but what if it didn’t go on holding?
Lindy moaned again. Then silence.
* * *
Jason said into his mic, “Major Duncan?”
“Operation Flamingo successfully executed, sir.”
“On our way up.”
J Squad, too disciplined to cheer, nonetheless looked as if they were hallooing and slapping each other on the back and high-fiving. But there was only Goldman saying, “Well done, sir.”