by Rick Partlow
“Stay where you are!” I snarled at them. “Lay down fire on the shuttles! That’s a fucking order!”
The CSF troopers were shooting at me. I was dimly aware of it, and it seemed to have the same level of importance as the weather or the time of day, as if the passing plasma-wreathed bursts of coherent light were a fireworks show in the distance. I felt the incandescent heat as one of the bursts went only centimeters to my right.
“Goddamnit, Munroe!” That was Victor, and I saw the electron beams from him and the others seeking out the shuttle to the left of the one we’d already damaged.
Sparks and flame and smoke and an echoing, rolling clap of thunder filled the air distracting the Corporate Security troops, but I didn’t even glance back at it. My eyes were fixed on Calderon, watching him stride purposefully up the boarding ramp of the last shuttle in line, two armored troopers at his heels. I cursed under my breath; I was still a hundred meters away from him and I wasn’t going to get there in time.
I was so intent on catching him before he could take off that I didn’t notice the CSF trooper until I almost collided with him. He was side-stepping, facing back towards the gantry where the others were still firing their beamers, and he had his pulse carbine shouldered and facing them as he tried to maneuver around the wing of the damaged shuttle to look for a clear shot.
I had a half-second’s glimpse frozen in time by my headcomp; he wasn’t wearing a helmet and his weathered, pug-nosed, square-jawed face showed a forty-something man who’d lived his life hard and hadn’t bothered to conceal it. For all I knew, he had a family waiting for him somewhere, people who loved him despite what he did. I caved in his skull with a stroke from the massive stock of the electron beamer and didn’t stop running to watch him fall.
The shuttle’s belly ramp was closing, its takeoff jets whining to life, drowning out the sounds of the gunfight as the shuttle grew closer and the others farther away. Above it all, a shrill alarm began to sound and I gave a short glimpse upward. Somewhere far above us, the double doors that were supposed to act as an airlock for departing ships to keep the hangar sealed against the outer atmosphere were both opening at once. It was Calderon’s doing; he didn’t give a shit whether his troops on the hangar floor suffocated or were poisoned by the chlorine as long as he got away. Honestly, I didn’t care about them, either, but it meant that he could fly the damned bird right through the hole in the roof and then he’d be gone.
I considered for just a moment stopping and trying to disable the shuttle with my beamer, to stop it from taking off, but my headcomp told me in an instant that it wouldn’t work. Even with all five of our weapons firing together, it had taken several seconds to take out the grounded assault shuttle, which wasn’t trying to evade. I kept running.
I was sprinting fast, faster than I ever remembered thanks to the reflex armor, but I was still five or six meters away from the shuttle when the belly jets roared with a surge of power and the aerospacecraft began to rise up on jets of steam. The heat washed over me, taking my breath away even through helmet and armor, and I stumbled to a halt.
The ship was about three meters off the ground when it spun its nose around with a swirling tornado of searing wind, turning to face the elevator gantry, where I’d told Sanders and Vilberg and Victor and Kurt to stay and cover me, where I’d thought they’d be safe.
And then it opened fire. The proton cannon mounted under its nose tore reality to shreds like the fist of a god and ripped through the wing of a grounded shuttle partially blocking its way before it exploded against the base of the elevator gantry. The whole structure exploded with an incandescent fireball that seemed to swallow a quarter of the hangar in its wrath, and the lift platform began to collapse in on itself almost in slow motion, disappearing into the flames.
A cold knife plunged into my guts and the only thing keeping me from screaming was an emptiness that kept me from taking a breath. Then I noticed that the shuttle had wavered in its flight, its hull dipping towards me, and I jumped as high and far as the lower gravity and my reflex armor and my visceral rage could take me. The world was a blur on either side of me for the space of a heartbeat before my shoulder slammed into the hull just aft of the portside wing. I scrambled for purchase, nearly sliding off the slick BiPhase Carbide of the delta wing and barely keeping on my feet as the shuttle hovered, climbing slowly towards the ceiling.
I don’t know what the hell I’d intended to do when I jumped, or if I’d just acted out of blind rage, but by some favor of the gods of war, I was only a few meter from the shuttle’s service airlock. I could feel my feet skittering backwards again and I knew I had seconds, if that. I aimed the beamer at the right edge of the airlock’s seal, braced myself as much as possible and held down the trigger.
There was thunder and lightning, and fire and steam, and pieces of something flying away wreathed in flame, and then my headcomp was telling me that the beamer’s power pack was spent. I let it drop away as I lunged forward, not knowing what I was lunging toward or if I’d bounce off the hull and get thrown off the side. My fingers caught an edge and I felt searing heat burning my hands even through my thick gloves. I ignored the pain shooting up my fingers through my palms and held on anyway, putting every bit of strength I had and every bit the suit gave me into yanking myself through the ragged, seared hole where the airlock hatch had been.
I collided with the yielding polymer surface of an equipment locker in the aft end of the shuttle and stumbled forward a step trying to get my bearings. The whole interior of the craft was roiling with smoke and heat and I couldn’t see a damned thing even on IR and thermal, and my helmet’s audio sensors were flooded with the roar of the engines. Which is why I didn’t see the CSF trooper until after he’d shot me.
The laser was attenuated by the thick smoke, and his aim was hampered by the bad visibility, but at that range, it burned through my armored vest and the reflex armor beneath it and I felt a searing hot spike of pain pierce the right side of my chest. The heat was chased out by a wash of cold agony and it was impossible to draw a full breath and I wanted to curl up into a ball and die, but that just wasn’t an option.
My pistol was in my hand like it had been there the whole time, though I didn’t remember pulling it out, and I could see the black silhouette of the CSF trooper just in front of me. He was bracing himself against the rows of acceleration couches, lit from behind by the cockpit display, his pulse carbine extended in one hand as he fought the bucking of the shuttle. I jammed the trigger down and sent half a magazine his way, hoping I’d hit him and maybe something important behind him.
Baseball-size flares of light erupted like fireworks in a chain between the shooter and the cockpit; and suddenly, the shuttle lurched to the side, half out of control, and I saw the one who’d shot me tumble over, but I didn’t know if it was from the shots or the turbulence.
I saw sparks and more thick, white smoke pouring out of the cockpit, and the shuttle began to list to starboard, throwing me up against the bulkhead hard enough that my pistol fell out of my burnt fingers and clattered down the aisle. I pushed away from the yielding, padded surface and grabbed at the back of one of the seats lined up along the starboard side, pulling myself up toward the cockpit. There were two of them left there, an armored, helmeted CSF guard in the copilot’s seat and Calderon to his left, in the pilot’s position.
The panels in front of Calderon were crackling with static electricity and malfunctioning holographic displays and I could see him waving at the smoke rising up from the damage that the rounds from my pistol had inflicted. His controls didn’t seem to be working too well, or else he simply couldn’t see to operate them through the smoke. To his right, the armored mercenary was struggling with the steering yoke at the copilot’s station, trying to keep the craft in the air.
Calderon’s head twisted back toward me, and confusion turned to panic in his eyes. He clawed at the quick-release on his harness, yelling something I couldn’t make out at the CSF t
rooper beside him. I looked around the body of the man I’d killed, trying to find his pulse carbine or my pistol, but I couldn’t see through the thick haze of smoke swirling like a dust-devil as it poured out the hole in the hull. I’d just have to do this the hard way.
“Hey Albie,” I said over the external speakers, wishing I had time to take off my helmet and let him see my face, “I guess you didn’t learn from your mistakes after all.”
“Munroe.” I couldn’t quite hear the word, but I was sure that’s what he’d said.
There was a horrified expression of realization on his face, and he was grabbing frantically for the gun on his belt as he left his seat. Even with a collapsed lung, I was still faster than him, and I was already moving; I had my hand around his wrist before he could bring the pulse pistol up. He fired anyway and I felt a flare of pain along the side of my leg, but the reflex suit kept me upright even when it felt like it wanted to buckle.
I forced his gun hand out and away and I was about to break his wrist for him when the ship lurched to the side yet again and we spun around, flipping back over a set of acceleration couches with him on top. We were rolling on the deck between the seats and there was another flash of laser fire from his pistol, but I had no idea where the shots had gone. I was getting tired of the damn wussy laser pistol and I finally grabbed the barrel and ripped the gun out of his hand so violently that I heard his fingers crack and he howled in pain, clutching at them. Then I was surging up, pushing him off of me and swinging the butt of the gun like a club.
I didn’t think to shoot him; I didn’t think at all. I just saw Bobbi and Sanders and Victor and Kurt and Vilberg disappearing in waves of fire, and I smashed him in the face over and over, and when he went backwards to the deck, I followed him. I was down on one knee, swinging the handle of the weapon up with a spray of blood spatter, swinging it down with a crunch of bone, hearing an animal growl echoing from somewhere close by, and only dimly realizing that it was coming from me.
I tumbled off of Calderon’s body, rolling off to the side and crashing into the seat stanchion, and I realized abruptly, through the fog of pain and hate and rage, that the shuttle was spinning and yawing wildly, out of control. I looked up from the ruin that had once been the handsome tailored face of Alberto Calderon and saw that the CSF mercenary who’d been trying to fly the shuttle was slumped forward in his seat, with a smoking hole through the back of his helmet. I suddenly knew where Calderon’s last shot had gone.
“Shit,” I muttered, trying to get my feet underneath me, trying to make a lunge for the cockpit.
But we were only about thirty meters off the ground, and there wasn’t nearly enough time.
Reality rose up and smashed into me with the weight of a planet.
Chapter Twenty
There were voices. I couldn’t understand them, or maybe I could but they had no context. Voices mixed and merged and faded and disappeared and then became louder and yet not any more coherent. Gabble and chatter and words that made sense on their own but not together.
What was a Secarius?
Who was Caleb Mitchell?
“Boss, are you awake?”
I blinked and then squeezed my eyes shut as bright ceiling panels flared purple in my vision. I cracked one eye open and saw the face of Braden Vilberg looking down at me.
“Is this Hell?” I croaked.
“You’d think so,” Eli Sanders said, crowding Vilberg over, “but it’s still just this piece of shit planet.”
“Believe it or not,” I rasped with a throat as dry as sandpaper, “it’s really good to see you.”
Vilberg handed me a cup of water and I downed it with a sigh of relief.
Slowly, I raised my head and looked around. We were in some section of the base I hadn’t seen, enclosed and low-ceilinged with comforting beige walls and a small team of med-techs moving from gurney to table to floor, one patient to another. I was out of my combat gear and dressed in some sort of generic grey, stretchy T-shirt and shorts, and stretched out on the floor, which I guess showed how important they considered me.
I wondered why I wasn’t cold but then I noticed that I was lying on an anti-shock matt and both of my legs were in bone-knitter casts from mid-thigh to my ankles. Another was under the shirt, wrapped around my waist like some kind of psychedelic yellow girdle. I’d seen them before but never worn them; I’d always had access to an auto-doc, which was faster and more comprehensive. These things targeted broken bones with specifically engineered nanites and fed the nutrients they needed to fix the damage directly into the bone marrow.
I didn’t need to ask how badly I’d been hurt; my headcomp provided me with a detailed list, from the punctured lung to the compound fractures in both legs to the five cracked vertebrae. I also knew why I wasn’t feeling any pain; between my own pharmacy organ and the helmet and the stuff the techs had given to me, I was practically floating. Checking off the items on the list in my head, I couldn’t help but whistle softly.
“How the hell did I survive that?” I wondered aloud.
“These damn things,” Sanders admitted, holding up an arm still encased in the reflex armor. “The docs say the suit kept you from being hurt even worse.” He shrugged. “That’s basically the only reason Vilberg and I aren’t dead, between the explosion and the fucking elevator falling on top of us, almost.”
I looked around again, frowning.
“Where are Vic and Kurt?” I gestured at the med-techs. “Are the docs working on them?”
The two men glanced at each other, and I knew. They didn’t have to say it.
“They were too close to the cannon shot,” Vilberg told me anyway, and I wished he’d shut up, because if I didn’t hear it then it wasn’t real. “There was nothing left of them.”
I sank back to the warming matt, trying to breath. My chest didn’t hurt from the laser wound; it had been hours ago, and my nanites had already sealed it and knitted the damage to my lung. But the pain in my chest wasn’t from a physical wound.
Victor and Kurt had been with me since Demeter, nearly as long as Sophia. They couldn’t be gone…
I shoved the hurt down deep inside and shook my head. There was something else I had to know.
“I killed Calderon,” I told them. “What have you heard about the op? Did we pull it off?” I shrugged and winced slightly as I felt a tugging in my back from the work the cast was doing. “I mean, we’re alive, so we obviously did something right, but what about the mission? Did they find Uncle Andre?”
“We’ve been bugging people for details for hours,” Vilberg said, shaking his head and shifting to a sitting position on the floor. “From what we can tell, Cowboy got killed by one of those Glory Boy commando types Murdock sent along. Damiani they weren’t sure about, not at first, but about an hour ago, someone told us he escaped on a shuttle and tried to make it to a transport in orbit, but both ships exploded. As far as they know, he’s dead.”
“Thank God,” I murmured, running a hand over my face. Mostly, I was thankful someone else had killed Cowboy, because I knew I sure as hell couldn’t have, not in a straight-up fight. “So it’s all over.”
“Yeah,” Sanders agreed. He looked at something past the wall, some memory light-years away. “You know, Vic and Kurt, I’m not sure they wanted out of this, out of what we do…” He waved a hand in resignation. “What we’ve done. I don’t know what they would have wound up doing now that it’s over.”
“For some people,” I admitted, “the war never ended. And it never will.”
“How about you, Boss…,” Sanders stopped himself, mouth twisting into a smile. “I mean, Munroe?” I snorted. Yeah, I wasn’t his boss anymore. “Is your war over?”
I wanted to be reassuring, to tell him what he needed to hear. Instead, I was honest.
“I guess I’ll find out as soon as they let me go home.”
***
Inferno was still the humid, oppressive hell-hole I remembered from the war, and twice as bad in
the afternoon, when 82 Eridani beat down on the pavement like an oven and roasted anyone unlucky enough to be walking under it. I still felt the sweat trickling down the small of my back as I walked through the entrance to General Murdock’s suite of offices, but the blast of cold, climate-conditioned air turned it to a damp chill, like putting on wet clothes during a snowstorm.
“I’m here to see the General,” I told the live, human clerk at the reception desk outside Murdock’s personal office. The Technician Second Class eyed me dubiously, the corner of his mouth quirking up.
I was still wearing the reflex armor, mostly because I didn’t have any other clothes. They’d ferried the Nomad down to Inferno while we’d been on our mission and every piece of civilian clothing I had was in my cabin on that ship. And they wouldn’t let Sanders and Vilberg and me board the ship until I’d reported to Murdock, so it was this or shorts and a T-shirt. I’d considered carrying a sidearm just to see how they’d react, but I’d thought better of it.
“You’re Sgt. Munroe,” he said, more a formality than a question; I was sure he knew exactly who I was. “Just a moment.”
“Send him in,” Murdock’s bland, soft-toned voice came over a concealed speaker somewhere on the desk before the Tech-2 had a chance to announce me.
The clerk nodded to me and the door slid aside. I took a breath and stepped through. The office was as unassuming and generic as Murdock himself, decorated in your basic Professional Fleet Officer motif, except for a single extravagance: a katana hung on the wall, its hilt wrapped in what looked like shark skin, its blade polished and oiled but with a tiny nick here and there that made me think it had been used, in training at least. Beneath it, but just as sharp and deadly, Murdock waited for me at his desk.
The door slid shut.
“Have a seat,” he said, shooting a glance at the upholstered chair across from him. He didn’t get up, but I didn’t take it personally.