by Rick Partlow
That decision was made for me when I saw the security guards. That catwalk wasn’t nearly wide enough for me to even think about bull-rushing through them, and I really didn’t want to kill anyone.
To the left was a long, open path to another platform, a landing pad, with two of the little aircraft on it, and it was damned tempting to go that way, hop in one of them and try to fly out of here. The only problem with that was the fact I had no fucking idea how to fly one of them and if it turned out I couldn’t, we were going to be stuck on that platform with no way off except under guard and under the gun.
Straight ahead though, the walkway disappeared into the woods. I’d been to Redwood National Park once when I was a kid, one of the rare vacations my family had taken. The path into the trees reminded me of a bridge over the road into the Ladybird Johnson grove, but that wasn’t why I chose it. They wouldn’t be expecting us to go that way, which made it the best way to go.
“Come on!” I urged her. “It’s too fucking narrow for me to be holding your hand, so are you coming with me or not?”
She didn’t say anything that wasn’t profane, but she ran ahead of me and that was good enough.
“Get out of the way!” Strawbridge yelled, waving at Helta civilians on the walkway. “Move or I’ll knock you off the damn side!”
I couldn’t tell if the Helta were male or female, young or old, but they weren’t children, which meant they were old enough to know better and they got the hell out of our way. How they managed to squeeze aside on a walkway about a yard wide, I have no idea, but we went through the middle and they didn’t fall off, so mission accomplished.
The sun—well, the primary star, anyway—was beating down on us like it was taking sides, I was soaked with sweat and I wished I’d thought to take off my jacket, but that ship had sailed and I wasn’t about to stop for it now. At least I’d unbuttoned it when I’d drawn my gun. It was harder running with the Glock at high ready, but you didn’t just let your arm flop around with a loaded gun, and there was no way I was going to try to run with a pistol with no safety stuck in my pants.
The trees had swallowed the path, growing close on either side and I didn’t see any breaks ahead, which might mean we were heading into a residential area. Which could be an obstacle or an opportunity, depending on how civic-minded the Helta were and whether any of them kept banker’s hours. One unoccupied house and we’d have a place to hole up, rest and regroup. At least there shouldn’t be any more security this way.
The path curved to the right and yes, of course…there was a security team heading our way. I grabbed Strawbridge by the shoulder to stop her and nearly sent us both tumbling forward, and I wasn’t sure if she was cursing me or our luck or the four Helta soldiers closing in. One of them raised a sonic stunner and I pushed Strawbridge behind me and raised the Glock. No choice now except surrender or shooting the fuckers, and I wasn’t going to surrender to someone who’d just sentenced us to death.
“No!” Strawbridge yelled and pushed my arm away, stepping in front of me.
The lead Helta security officer fired.
The scream was inside my head, tearing at my brain from the inside, and even then, I knew it wasn’t a direct hit. Strawbridge had taken the brunt of it, and she was either unconscious or dead, falling backwards like a marionette with the strings cut. I tried to reach for her, tried to help, but my inner ear was fucked and I was falling. Right off the side of the walkway, nothing between me and the ground but thirty yards of air. My foot left the edge and I knew more certainly than I’d ever known anything that I was going to die.
Chapter Fifteen
I’m not afraid of heights, I’m scared shitless of falling. I know, it’s a hairsbreadth distinction, but one that seemed pertinent as I tumbled into space. I thrashed sideways because the trees were in that direction and some hind-brain instinct told me to fall that way instead of into an uninterrupted, ninety-foot drop.
The branch was growing in just the right spot. Oh, sure, it could have been higher up and saved me from slamming into it hard enough to crack a couple of ribs, and it could have beent thicker and not splintered right after I hit it, but that’s just whining. It was the sort of luck even an agnostic deist might consider divine intervention, though the exclamation “Oh, God!” as I bounced off and resumed my fall was much more a curse than a prayer.
Another branch, this one ten yards lower and I aimed for it this time, smacked into it with the heels of my boots and it held, but I was slipping again. I spluttered incoherently and lunged, catching the limb under my left arm. The breath exploded out of me, replaced by pain from those cracked ribs and hoped one of them wouldn’t just say “fuck it” and try to leave through my lung.
I hung by my left arm, ten yards above the ground, way too far to drop without breaking a leg, chuffing like a diesel engine, my thoughts bouncing between a conviction that this branch was the best thing in the universe and I never wanted to leave it and the burning question of how I was going to get down. Then they started shooting at me again.
I heard the scream, felt the vibration through the tree when the sonic beam smacked into it just a few yards away from me and I gritted my teeth while the branch juddered and tried to figure out where the shots were coming from.
There. Above me, back where I’d fallen, one of the Helta security troops was lying on his belly, his sonic weapon extended over the edge, trying to get a better bead on me.
My gun. Where was my gun? Had I dropped it?
Damn. I’d taken that Glock off a dead Russian FSB agent who’d been sent to kidnap me in Bend, Oregon. Jambo had saved me from them and I’d taken the Glock 9mm with me to the Truthseeker and kept it this whole time, when I could have grabbed an issue SIG handgun from the armory whenever I wanted. Somehow, that pissed me off more than Joon-Pah betraying us, more than these Helta dumbasses trying to capture us, more than me letting Strawbridge down and leaving her up on that walkway, unconscious or dead.
Hard as it was, I looked away from the Helta soldier at the ground. To my left, bare ground, probably a death sentence, or at least a hard enough fall to leave me helpless, which was the same thing. To my right, a smaller tree of some type I couldn’t have identified with a gun to my head, maybe another five or six yards down to branches capable of supporting my weight, and three or four yards away horizontally. Still too far, too hard a hit.
But there was one more branch on this redwood, just a couple of feet long, not nearly strong enough to support my weight for more than a couple seconds…but it was just a couple yards down, and all it had to do was break my fall. A very persistent part of my brain wasn’t happy with the idea and would have been quite satisfied to stay where I was for eternity rather than jumping again, but I had to overrule it.
Another sonic blast, closer this time, close enough to send spears of pain up my ear canals and into my brain. I jumped.
I very nearly missed it, my right hand brushing leaves and twigs and not coming up with anything substantial to grab, but my left closed on it, the rough wood digging into my palm hard enough to draw blood, hard enough my left shoulder nearly separated. It was already hurting me and the flare of pain would have made me let go in a couple of seconds even if the branch hadn’t begun splintering.
Desperate, I pushed away from the redwood with the flat of my boots, launching myself out into the branches of the lower tree. I covered my face with my hands and felt twigs snapping, leaves fluttering loose before I caught something about as big around as my arm and held on despite the agony in my shoulder and my ribs. I might have whimpered and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
I climbed out of that tree like it was on fire, barely ahead of another shot from the sonic rifle. The blast sent loose wood flying like grenade fragments and something hit me in the bare skin on my neck. Blood trickled down my back but I couldn’t stop to check. I jumped the last five feet to the ground and ignored a flare of pain in my knee, starting to run almost before I hit.
I lef
t shouted warnings behind me, running with everything I had left, because to stay meant captivity and execution.
And wondering what the hell I was going to do now.
***
I’ve had these dreams. I don’t know if everyone has them. I asked my therapist once, but he told me to concentrate on myself and stop worrying so much about being normal. In the dreams, I would be across town and realize I’d left my car at home or at a friend’s house and, rather than do something sensible like ask someone for a ride or call for a taxi, I’d decide to run to my car.
It was always at night, and I was always dressed for a night out on the town, but it never seemed to take any real effort to keep running, no matter how far it was. I never knew what it meant, and if Dr. Yasrebi had a clue, he didn’t share it with me, but the dreams stopped at some point after the Truthseeker arrived and I’d never had them again.
Now I was living one of them, except it was daytime and running took so much effort. Roots and tangled underbrush tried to trip me up like some mischievous alien trickster god, the damned dress pants were chafing and even my socks were wringing wet with sweat. I’d stripped off my jacket but I didn’t throw it away because it was going to be night sometime and it would get much, much colder at night.
I was thirsty. My feet hurt. My shoulder hurt, my arms were scratched all to hell and those damned cracked ribs hurt really, really bad. I would have killed to be in Patel’s clinic with the fancy Helta laser that could mend broken bones in a minute.
At least I had some idea of where I was going. I wasn’t sure if anyone would be there, but I was circling back to where we’d left Pops and the Delta team. I’d dropped a pin on the location in my comm unit’s dead reckoning map and even though the thing was useless for actually communicating with anyone and I’d turned off the external signal to keep the Helta from using it to track me, it still made a damned good navigation system.
I had two miles to go if I went in a straight line, which wasn’t going to happen in a fucking forest where I had to avoid every clearing and stop every few minutes to duck and listen for anyone following me. I didn’t hear any Helta, but I kept hearing something. Several somethings, breaking brush somewhere around me. What sort of wildlife did they have here? Deer? Elk? Tigers? I wish I’d asked. I never saw whatever they were, though I’m sure they saw me.
I didn’t sweat the animals. They were my friends, because the more large mammals around, the less chance they’d be able to pinpoint little old me on thermal imaging. I watched for drones, too, though I didn’t know if they would be too small to see. They had to have surveillance drones, didn’t they? I mean, I knew they didn’t go for armed drones because of the ECM the Tevynians had stolen from them, and they didn’t believe in autonomous armed robots, but they had to have surveillance bots here. How small could they be? Would I miss them? I’d heard insects buzzing around…were those the surveillance bots? Were the Helta following me from one of their flyers up above, unseen?
I realized I was having a hard time getting my breath and I stopped and put my back against a tree and tried to calm down. It had been hours. If no one had found me yet, they’d either lost me or they’d stopped looking. I needed to think.
Facts. What did I know?
Fact: the Helta female in charge of this place now was our enemy. Was it permanent? Could Strawbridge talk her out of it? Was Strawbridge even still alive? I was assuming the sonic weapons were nonlethal, but I didn’t have any proof of that.
Fact: the Helta were jamming our comms. Even if they hadn’t been, I wasn’t going to try to use mine when they could use it to track me down.
Fact: I couldn’t count on Joon-Pah or any of the other Helta to help me.
Also a fact, though, was that these were the Helta I was dealing with. I’d let myself panic, dwelling on the situation, on me alone versus a whole planet, but this wasn’t a planet of warriors. They’d been losing badly in a war against humans much more primitive socially and technologically than us, which was why I was here in the first place. I was expecting spy bots and drones and troops scouring the woods, but maybe they weren’t thinking like humans. Maybe they were thinking of me the way they’d thought about the Tevynians before, that I was a primitive, unprepared, lightly-armed, helpless. They didn’t need to worry about me because I’d pop up eventually, probably half-dead and begging for them to take me prisoner.
Which wasn’t to say I should take them lightly, but I needed to stop panicking. I could get out of this.
Something moved off to my right. I don’t know how I knew it wasn’t an animal, but I did. There was a qualitative difference between a four-legged animal and a two-legged humanoid walking and I couldn’t have described it if asked, but I knew it when I heard it.
There was someone down here with me. Was it a Helta soldier? One of those security guards? I breathed long and slow and silent through my nose and stayed stock still against the tree. When I looked around, I used my peripheral vision rather than moving my head. No sudden movements, not even a deep breath. I was back in the woods, hunting deer with Uncle Jared. Dad hadn’t been a hunter, hadn’t even owned a gun, but Jared had been cool to hang out with. I was a teenager when the cancer took him and I’d cried. But he taught me how to stalk deer, how to become part of the woods and wait them out.
Another footstep, closer this time. Maybe twenty yards away. Slow, stepping carefully but not expertly. Not at home in the woods. Tired, not paying attention. Not a Helta. I spun away from the trunk of the redwood and Jack Patel screamed.
“Shut up, damn it!” I hissed, clamping my hand over his mouth.
His face was slick with sweat, his clothes were torn and ragged and stained and he smelled really bad, and dried blood splattered his forehead. His eyes were wide and wild and he would have hyperventilated if I hadn’t been basically suffocating him.
“I’m taking my hand away,” I told him. “Don’t fucking yell again.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, Andy,” he gushed so hard I thought he was going to cry or possibly puke. He collapsed into my arms and sobbed. “Oh, dear God, I have never been so glad to see anyone in my whole life, including my parents and my wife. I’ve been wandering around these fucking woods for hours and I have no fucking idea where I am….”
Patel was near the ragged edge. The man didn’t make a big deal about it, but he was a pretty devout Christian, though the particular denomination escaped me, and he didn’t swear. Usually.
He did smell like shit, though, and I pushed him away gently but firmly.
“If you started from where I left you this morning,” I told him quietly, “you’re only about two and a half miles away as the crow flies. If they have crows on this world.”
“Just two and a half miles?” He seemed outraged at the possibility. “But I’ve been walking for hours!”
“In circles,” I assured him. “Forget that for now, though. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
He seemed to run a mental checklist and patted at himself as if to make sure he hadn’t lost any bits along the way.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I mean, I hurt, but I don’t think I’m injured.” He touched his forehead and winced. “Except the cut on my head, and that’s stopped bleeding.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
“Dude, you tell me!” he insisted, his voice raising for a second before he remembered where he was and quieted down again into an angry hiss. “One second, everything was fine. We were hanging out, and everyone was cool and I was sitting there listening to your friend Pops tell this story about when he was in Venezuela, and then I had to use the bathroom. And you know how the bathrooms are here, Andy, I was hanging out over the edge of nothing, peeing, and then there was this sound like nothing I’d ever heard, like a million demons screaming inside my head. I don’t know where it came from. It was like it was coming from every direction, and I don’t know what it did, but I got dizzy and fell right out of the damn bathroom, right off the edge!”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in their bathrooms, they have like this chute that directs everything to the compost pit.”
“And you fell into the compost pit,” I guessed, holding a hand over my nose.
“Not all the way,” he protested. “Just like, you know, up to my waist. And I found some water and washed off most of it.” He moaned. “I wish I could have trusted the water to drink. I’m dying of thirst man, haven’t had anything to drink since breakfast.”
“Try not to think about it,” I urged him, mostly because I was trying not to think about it and I didn’t want him reminding me. “What happened then? Did you see anything?”
“I climbed out,” he went on, “and I was trying to see what was going on and there were those little airplanes or helicopters or whatever you call the things they fly around in, and they were firing what seemed like some sort of weapon into the house. The air in front of them was wavery, like a heat mirage, and the noise was just horrible.”
“They’re sonics,” I told him. “I think they’re nonlethal but I’m not sure.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” he agreed, nodding, eyes narrowing as he considered it, probably trying to figure out the medical effects of a sonic stun beam.
“And then?” I prompted, trying not to get too impatient with him.
“Well, I hid, of course, because it didn’t look very good. It looked a lot like they were trying to kill us. And I saw them carrying your friends, the men on the team, out of the building into a few of those flyers, armor and all.”
Shit. They’d been captured. So much for Pops getting me out of this.
“They’ll probably take them to the same place they have Delia,” I mused. “Wonder if they got Julie….”
“Delia?” he repeated. “Dude, you gotta tell me what’s going on! Why did they attack us? Did the vote go bad?”