The Kindly Ones

by Melissa Scott

  "Then tell him we'll use pulse code from now on," Moraghan said. "Also, tell him to implement step two if he sees anything moving from Destiny. Is that clear?"

  Corol nodded. "Use pulse code from now on, and implement step two as soon as he sees anything moving out of Destiny. I'll tell him."

  "Good," Moraghan said, and gestured to the woman who'd escorted us. "Get going, then."

  They vanished into the shadows. Moraghan sighed, rubbing her gloved wrist. "We're going to have to break through now," she said, as much to herself as to me. She shook herself, working her good right shoulder, and touched the technician lightly with her gloved hand. "Pass the word, squad leaders to me."

  I didn't hear much of the discussion that followed. The squad's amateur medic, identifiable as such by the heavy first-aid kit slung on her back, touched me on the shoulder. "You're the off-worlder, the medium?" she asked. "Can you give us a hand?"

  I nodded and followed her, dodging the desultory fire from the greengates, across the road. A young man lay pinned beneath a pile of rubble, all that remained of a pledge-store's exotic facade. Another man crouched beside him, holding his hand. I winced, but then I saw that a fallen drum column had taken most of the weight. The young man was alive—and would continue to live, if we could get him out and back to the field hospital. It was getting him out that would be the problem. I crouched beside the medic, sheltered by the piled rubble, and studied the situation.

  "We can't move it," the woman said, simply. "I thought, you're an off-worlder, you might be able to do something."

  The second young man, the one who held the trapped man's hand, looked up at me with doglike hope and trust. He looked like the man who had lost his sister, and I looked away, suddenly afraid I'd fail him, too. "Is there anything I can use for a lever?" I asked harshly.

  The medic nodded, and swept her hand through the dirt until she came up with a thin steel rod. I ran my hand along it, wishing the light were better. It felt like structural steel; if it were, it would be exactly what we needed. Awkwardly, I braced the far end against the ground, not daring to stand, and pushed with all my strength. It held, then skidded away from me across the metalled street. I caught myself painfully on one hand, just short of falling on my face. I could feel myself blushing, and was glad the darkness still hid all color.

  "All right," I said, studying the rubble for a final time. "One of you, cover me, the other get ready to pull as soon as the weight comes off."

  "I'll cover you," the medic said, shrugging out of the aid kit's harness. She picked up one of the men's rifles and stationed herself in the angle of the doorway.

  I looked down at the two men, and saw with a shock that the trapped man's eyes were open, his upper body braced and ready.

  "I'll shout as soon as I'm free," he whispered. The other man shushed him, hands on his shoulders, ready to pull.

  "All right," I said, and fitted the end of the rod under what I hoped was the most vulnerable corner of the dented shutter that seemed to be holding him. The thin drum column had fallen providentially in more ways than one: it lay in a good position to make a fulcrum. I took a deep breath and stood up. I was a perfect target in the waxing light, a darker shadow against the greying light of the street, but I tried to forget that, and pressed on the lever with all my strength. A bolt whizzed past my head, but the shutter didn't move. I swore and tried again, using every gram of strength I possessed. The trapped man gave a hoarse cry, and his friend dragged him backward, scrabbling over the broken metalling. In the same instant, a second bolt seared past me, just singeing the edge of my cloak. I released the lever, swearing, and batted frantically at the sudden flame. I smothered it between the thick folds, hardly realizing I'd burned myself, stumbling against the settling rubble. The medic fired twice, three times, but I knew from her face she hadn't hit anyone. Then she flung the rifle aside, and dropped to her knees beside the injured man, pulling a probe from the kit.

  "Thanks," the other man said, breathlessly, his eyes still on his friend. "We're in your debt—Medium, did she say?"

  I nodded, but my answer was cut off by the sudden shrilling of whistles up and down the line. The injured man muttered something, and the other man looked up sharply.

  "Call-up," the medic said.

  "I've got to go," the second man said, as much to his friend as to the rest of us. The injured man nodded, and managed a sleepy smile: the medic's work was already taking effect.

  "He'll be all right now," the medic said.

  The second man nodded, and darted away.

  "Will you be all right?" I asked.

  The medic nodded, pointing to a button on her kit. "Oh, yes, I've called for a pickup. It's a pulse code, so they'll find us, don't worry."

  A tremendous roar drowned out anything else she might have said. I winced, instinctively putting my hands over my ears, and turned to face the greengate. Leith had ordered her people to haul a sonic mortar into position at the center of the street, aimed to batter down the Brandr barricade. Even as I realized what had happened, it spoke again, flat waves of sound that shattered one of the shutters making up the greengate barricade. The last whole window remaining on the groundcar shattered in a spectacular spray of glass. Thinly, through the ringing in my head, I thought I heard a cheer.

  The mortar fired again and again. I fell to my knees, wrapping my arms around my head, afraid I'd be permanently deafened by the crashing roar. Then it stopped. I lifted my head cautiously, afraid it would fire again, and heard a faint cheering. I shook my head, trying to get rid of the cotton-wool that seemed to fill my ears, and thought I heard the sound of blasters. I peered cautiously over the lip of our barricade, and saw that the greengate barricade had been broken, its components strewn in shattered fragments across the metalled street. The stub of the drop bar pointed at the ground, its mechanism destroyed. Our people—more people than I had realized were here—were running forward, mouths open as though they were shouting. Without knowing quite why I did it, I pulled myself across the barricade and followed.

  I don't remember much that is coherent about the next hours. At some point my hearing returned, because I remember Leith's squad encountering another squad of ours, dug in around a dirty basement cabaret theater where a Brandr troop had barricaded themselves. Leith shouted, "Bar the door and leave them. Damn you, listen to me!"

  Her last words were drowned by a feral scream, a woman's voice. Guil ex-Tam'ne rose like a fury from the rubble, assault gun held lovingly before her. She stood, seemingly unaware of the blaster fire from inside, heedless of the bolt that clipped her shoulder, knocking her backward a step or two, and fired repeatedly into the door. The steel rang and shattered. Guil shrieked again, wordlessly, and charged the stairs, the rest of the squad following.

  "Guil, no!" Leith shouted, but the words were lost in the sudden roar of blaster fire from inside. She looked away, the soldier's mask cracking briefly into something alive and tragic. Then she had mastered herself, and turned her back on the theater, stalking away toward the next objective.

  I remained for a moment, I don't know why, and saw Guil emerge, assault gun still cradled in her hands, followed by perhaps half of the people who'd followed her in. There was blood on her hands and on her vest, and more blood smeared in her white-blond hair, but I doubted much of it was her own. She was smiling fiercely, eyes oddly unseeing. I started toward her, but she turned away, pointing toward the center of the Necropolis.

  "That way," she shouted. The people with her raised a cheer, and started after her.

  I hesitated for an instant, then walked to the top of the stairway that led down into the basement. The light was growing stronger every minute, but the entrance and the first few feet of the hall were still in shadow. I paused again, then flicked on my handlight and went down two steps, shining the light ahead of me into the cabaret theater.

  The sight sent me scrambling back up the stairway, retching convulsively. The floor was scorched with blaster marks, and patc
hed here and there with great smears of blood, as though some giant insect had been crushed against it. Blackened bodies lay where they had fallen, limbs shriveled to bone. I leaned against the stair railing, vomiting. When I had finished, I stood there for a long moment, trying to steel myself to go down into that butcher's den. No one could possibly be alive down there, I thought, at the same time hating myself for my cowardice. That crew didn't leave anything living. I shuddered convulsively, too sore and empty to be sick again, and pulled myself away, hurrying after Leith's squad.

  Some time later in that nightmare day, I fell in with another medic, and stayed with him well into the clock-evening. He was an older man, who wept constantly and silently for no cause I knew, but a good doctor. He treated Brandr and Halex indifferently, and the Brandr ghosts as well. Seeing that, I stayed with him, not wanting him to lose his life for treating them. There were plenty of wounded ghosts, too, and I did what little I could for them, treating their injuries and telling them to get out of the Necropolis if they could.

  I doubt anyone left alive could tell you how the fire started. The power was off, though that hardly mattered to us as the Eclipse ended, but there were other fuel lines crisscrossing the Necropolis. Maybe a stray blaster shot hit a pile of vulnerable costumes and film somewhere in the backstage of one of the theaters. It could even have been set by angry para'anin. The first I remember is smelling smoke as I knelt beside a wounded girl, pinning her down until the anesthetics took effect. I looked up, startled, and saw a column of dirty smoke rising against the cloudy sky. The shock must have shown in my face, because the doctor looked up, too.

  "Not good," he said, and sniffled, dragging a dirty hand across his stained face.

  "How far away do you think it is?" I asked.

  He shook his head, frowning. The wind, which had been blowing fitfully since the Eclipse ended, shifted then, bringing a sudden warmth and a smell of burning. "I don't know," the doctor said aloud, stuffing the probe back into the side of his kit, "but I don't think we should wait for a pickup." He nodded at the girl, soundly asleep now, her burns wrapped in layers of plastiskin. The drug pack taped to her chest moved slowly in time with her breathing. "You can move her, it's all right."

  I hesitated—the burns under the bandages were deep and ugly—but the wind strengthened a little, bringing a wisp of smoke with it. I coughed, my eyes watering now, then bent and lifted the girl. She was very light, bones seemingly as hollow as a bird's. I had no idea whether she was Halex or Brandr, living or ghost.

  "This way," the doctor said, and pointed.

  I followed him through the twisting streets, trying to carry the girl as carefully as possible, until at last we reached Moraghan's temporary headquarters in one of the Necropolis's open squares. She had commandeered a couple of groundcars somewhere for the wounded, and I set the girl in one, glad to turn the responsibility over to someone who knew what he was doing.

  Moraghan and a pair of squad leaders, one of whom carried his arm in a sling, were standing in the center of the square, looking up at the swelling pillar of smoke.

  "We still can't raise the aid post," the unwounded one was saying nervously, his fingers tapping on the butt of his blaster.

  "Surely they pulled out," the other one murmured, but his tone was less certain than his words.

  Leith circled her left wrist with her unscarred fingers, turning and twisting it in their grasp. Her eyes met mine, and I nodded. She gave a sigh of relief, and beckoned. "Trey'll go and make sure."

  The squad leaders gave me a rather dubious glance, and I nodded again. "That's right, I'll go."

  "And I'll go with you." That was Corol, appearing suddenly at Moraghan's elbow. I guessed he had carried his message and returned, but I wouldn't've cared if he'd simply appeared out of thin air. I was very glad of the offer.

  "Thanks," I said.

  "Take one of the carts," Leith went on, and gestured toward them left-handed. "They're slow, but you may want them, if. . . ."

  She let her voice trail off, mind already elsewhere, but she didn't have to complete the sentence. We would need something like the flat-bed carriers to transport the wounded, if the aid post hadn't been evacuated.

  Corol nodded, and swung himself onto the driver's perch, hands and feet feeling for the controls. He checked the power indicators, and then released the main brake, hands flying immediately to the steering levers. "Come on, Medium!" he shouted.

  I hauled myself up into the bed behind him, and a voice called, "Wait, I'll come, too." It was the old doctor, a tear still gleaming on his face.

  I pulled him up, and Corol engaged the engine. We shuddered forward, gears clashing, and then he had the hang of it. He turned us neatly, and headed into the smoke. First it was just tendrils and the smell of burning. Then, backed by the fitful wind, it grew thicker, great gusts of it blowing across the street like fog. Corol coughed hoarsely, wiping at his streaming eyes. I leaned forward, trying to take shallow breaths, and steadied his hands on the controls. We slowed, the cart shuddering in protest.

  "Here, take these." That was the doctor, scrambling toward the driver's perch, a surgical filter pulled tight across his nose and mouth.

  He held two more in his outstretched hand. I snatched them from him, and clamped one across Corol's face. He jerked his head, adjusting it, and I pulled the tabs tight around the back of his head. His coughing stopped, and he was able to lift a hand from the controls to settle it more comfortably.

  "Thanks," he said, voice distorted by the filter.

  I nodded, hastily fitting the second mask over my own nose and mouth. My eyes still watered, but at least I could breathe. "Where is this aid post?" I asked, and hardly recognized my own voice.

  Corol shrugged, fighting the controls. "I thought you knew."

  "About two more blocks, then down the street that angles off to the left," the doctor said, hitching himself still farther forward in the cart's bed, until he was braced against the low front wall. "It was a clinic to begin with." His voice trailed off unhappily, and Corol and I exchanged nervous glances. The smoke was growing thicker, though the fickle wind had changed again, blowing from behind us. Bits of charred material—paper, cloth, light things—drifted in the air around us, which was growing uncomfortably warm. I took off my cloak, wadding it securely into a corner of the cart, and saw Corol wrench open the neck of his tunic. I had been hearing a sort of rushing noise for some time now, I realized, and had dismissed it as wind or water. It was the sound of flames.

  "I don't like this," Corol muttered. "I don't like this at all."

  Neither do I, I thought, but said nothing, not wanting to seem less brave than they. The noise of the fire was growing steadily louder, and Corol throttled back, crashing the gears, until the cart was moving at little better than a walk. His thumb was poised awkwardly on the gear button, I saw, ready to throw the machine into reverse. Dense black smoke billowed from behind the buildings ahead of us, rolling in a dirty coil across the street, but as yet there was no sign of flames.

  Then we'd reached an intersection, and the doctor was pounding on Corol's shoulder, pointing to our left. I swung around, startled, then realized we'd reached the turn. A street angled to the left, as the doctor had said, but instead of leading us farther into the fire, it made a sharp turn, leading off at about a sixty-degree angle from the street we'd been following.

  "That's a break," Corol said, and gunned the engine, swinging us rapidly into the new street.

  We needed one, I thought. On the far side of the intersection, the first rank of buildings was still untouched, but I could see a little way up the street before the smoke cut off my view. Flames danced behind the thermal windows. Even as I watched, the glass shivered along the highest row, and the fire burst through, tongues of flame licking eagerly at the roof.

  "We'd better hurry," I said, and somehow managed to keep my voice even. Corol nodded, face set and grim. At my side, the old doctor shook his head, eyes fixed on the fire.

/>   "There's never been anything like this," he said. "Never."

  "Is this it?" Corol called, hand hovering on the brake. The doctor tore his eyes away from the fire and nodded, pointing to a building to our left.

  "That's it."

  It was a storefront clinic, the sort that you find in the poorer parts of every Conglomerate city, typical except for the heavy wood-and-metal shutters drawn tight across the doors. One of the shutters hung loose, its steel hinges shattered, and there was just enough room for a person to squeeze through the resulting gap.

  "Looks like they pulled out already," Corol said, but he throttled back even further until the cart was barely moving. He gave me an inquiring glance.

  I looked back over my shoulder at the fire. It was coming closer, there was no question about it; already smoke was trickling from the roofs of buildings lining the intersection. We couldn't stay long—but I couldn't leave without being sure there was no one left inside. "I'll just take a quick look," I said, and swung down from the cart before I could change my mind.

  "Wait," the doctor called. I turned, and he tossed me the handlight I'd left in the cart. I caught it, and ducked under the twisted shutter.

  It was cooler inside, and the air was cleaner. I switched on the handlight and swung its beam across the room ahead of me. At first, I couldn't make sense of the lumps and shadowed shapes strewn across the floor, but then the beam caught and centered on something recognizable. It was a man's body, mostly intact, sprawled protectively across a second, heavily bandaged body. The plastiskin was brown with dried blood, but I couldn't be sure whose it was. I swallowed hard, tasting bile, and swung the beam back again, looking for whole bodies. There were a lot of fragments, and the floor and side wall were splashed with brown stains. I was about to back out, shaking and sick, when I heard a faint sound from the far end of the room.

  I swung the handlight reluctantly in the direction of the sound. The beam flashed across a heavy counter, its polished face pitted and scarred from the explosion. The sound came again, a sort of mew that resolved itself into faint words.