Hard Drop
Page 24
But none came. The small group of defenders now lying half-naked in the frigid air of the bridge had been enough to take the ships, it seems, and hold them. Their stench was unbearable, permeating the thin air all around. A thin layer of dust and filth coated everything, making the ground slick beneath Tyco’s feet.
“Captain - !” A voice called in the silence, troubled and angry. The Captain’s head swung around, and he led the way forwards, following it.
At the far end of the bridge, a soldier stood staring, pointing down towards the ground. He was staring at a small pile of whitewashed bones, picked clean of their meat and laid out in a grotesque pattern on the ground. One, snapped in half, bore a distinct resemblance to a human femur.
They led the way directly up to a large metal door at the far end of the bridge, its lock blinking a deep red. Jagged, bloody scratch marks covered its surface, trailing angularly down, the metal flaking in thin, parallel strips, five lines at a time.
“They were trying to get in.” Tyco said quietly. The Captain turned and nodded curtly.
“Get it open.” He said, his tone grim and pointed. A veteran stepped forward through the ranks with a pressure torch and went to work.
Ten long minutes later, the last bolt stripped and the door fell away, clattering loudly to the floor. Third in the row of soldiers, Tyco stood with his rifle ready, staring into the dark as the heavy dust settled. He felt a heaviness in his stomach as he stared expectantly towards the darkness. The flashlights fixed to the front of the troopers’ rifles circled nervously, peering inside the chamber, flickering across its thick metal walls.
They had rushed into the darkness, senses tingling and fingers tensed on their rifles, staring into the darkness beyond. The bright lights of the bridge had melted quickly into darkness, and the metal walls, cascading onwards like so many metal ribs glinted dully in the darkness.
"Where are we?" One of the veterans breathed, his voice hushed, betraying just an edge of tension.
"Fuel compartments." A voice behind Tyco replied, and in that instant he recognized the faintest glow of active fuel rods, the unblinking eyes of active fission reactors, staring back at the group through the open portals marking the edges of the open circle like predators waiting to strike. Only then did he register the rapid ticking sound that filled the passage: the rattling tachometer on the veterans’ rifle. They had reached the source of the radiation leak.
"We've got fifteen minutes." The veteran nodded. "Let's sweep it and seal it. Don't hang around."
With that, without another look back he had disappeared into the darkness, whistling thinly as he did.
Tyco eyed the open reactors and the silvery darkness lying ahead. He shifted his grip on his rifle and went, wading out into the blackness to search the cavernous dark.
He found the man with three minutes to spare, lying in a crumpled heap over the mechanical override mechanism, his body limp from the exhaustion of fighting the radiation that filled the chamber. His uniform marked him a marine engineer, and the caked bloodstains surrounding the holes in the fabric said all that was needed about his experience in the battle for the ship. One hand was badly burned, still clutching the torch that he had used to melt the door override and reduce the reactor control computer's receiver to a molten, ragged lump of metal, cutting the reactors off from all shipboard communication.
He had come to as Tyco reached for him, his eyes adjusting slowly in his skull-like, sunken face, alarmed at first, and then relieved, his lips shifting slightly across yellowed teeth into a leering smile.
"Thank god." He said, and then added, vengefully, "Are they dead?"
Tyco nodded. The man smiled again and raised himself slowly, bracing his frail body against the hard metal console, and stared into the darkness around him, as if seeing it for the first time. "Let's get out of here."
Tyco had called for backup and a stretcher, studying the man carefully. He had little to fear from him, so thin and ravaged was his body. His time in this cell must have been terrible, he thought, imagining the cruelty of those who had locked him in an open reactor pit.
"I don’t understand.” Tyco said at last, staring at the man’s thin frame before him. "Why didn’t they kill you, like the others?"
"They thought they had." The man answered stiffly, his voice scratchy in his dry throat, but not without a touch of pride. "They left me for dead. Covered in bodies. Took me two hours to crawl out.”
“So they chased you in here.” Tyco nodded, shaking his head pityingly. “And locked the doors behind you.”
“No.” The man answered, shaking his head. “They didn’t know I was in here until it was too late.” He held up his torch proudly. “By the time they figured it out, there was nothing they could do about it.”
Tyco stared, seeing the deep-set purples in the man's skin where his capillaries had burst, seeing the heavy bruising across his skin and the haggard, emaciated frame that barely fit his uniform. He marveled at the amount of pain the man had suffered, and suffered willingly.
"You could have escaped." He said, at last. "There were ships in the hangar with mid-range engines! You could have made it to a moon, or a station. No one would have blamed you - !"
But the man shook his head and frowned, grimacing as if the thought hurt his ears.
"Where would I go?" He had asked, spitting out the words and baring his teeth. "Where would I go, knowing they were still out there, and I let them escape?" He stared at Tyco through the darkness, his suffering now visible in every inch of his body. "No," he said at last, falling back against the console, his voice falling to a whisper but losing none of its spite. "I stayed to finish the job the only way I could. To make sure they bought it too. To make sure they came with me."
He broke into a cough, harsh and feeble and guttural, doubling over across the metal grate behind him. And Tyco looked away, out of respect and shame, struck by the full force of the man's conviction, feeling his judgment harshly in the darkness.
Later, Tyco watched silently as they carried him away, his frail limbs and red-splotched skin stirring just slightly under the thin blanket, his hands limp at his sides, clasping and unclasping as if not quite ready to let go of the torch.
And now, as his gaunt frame shifted on the stretcher, his smile shone, skull-like and triumphant, an answer to the darkness after all this time.
Fifteen years later, Tyco remembered that look above all.
With stiff legs, as night overwhelmed the terrible sunset, he rose at last. Without another look at the open hills, he turned and made his way back into the command center.
TWENTY-ONE: AFTERLIFE
The rescue bark descended in a long, arcing spiral, scattering trails of lingering smoke behind it as it burst through the blood-red sky at dawn.
They had come faster than usual, Tyco considered. He had been wise to use Flip’s identification on the comm. Without her, they might not have come at all.
The ship was hardly bigger than the command center itself. It came to an abrupt stop mere yards away, hovering over the concrete runway. Two men leapt down from within, hurrying past Tyco as if he wasn’t there.
Nor were they surprised by MAP-11 when he came to life, menacingly at first until he recognized the intruders as friendlies. He followed them out onto the strip, keeping a watchful eye as they loaded Chip through the ramp at the rear of the machine. Flip followed, limping and leaning against MAP-11. Tyco lingered, last on the tarmac, staring out at the devastated city and the smoke cloud still streaming from its embers. He had lost more here than he wanted to admit, and yet now in the leaving, he felt a crushing sadness.
Soon, he thought, he would have nothing left but the dogtags in his hand to remind him of the men and women he had lost here. Soon, the city below and the planet as a whole would be forgotten, consigned to footnotes in Admiralty logs. Soon, he would retire, one way or another, and then there would be nothing left.
Soon, he thought, but not yet.
There wa
s work to do.
THE END