Rocket’s Red Glare

by David Hardy

  “Copy, keep sharp, Fallows out.”

  Kali hung, waiting. She saw how the wavering spots of her flashlight beams excited the bugs below her. The stimulus seemed to be driving them into frenzies of pointless motion.

  After what seemed an eternity, Tolliver came back across the com-link.

  “The remote’s analytical engine is giving me a 76% chance that a low-setting stun blast won’t, repeat, will not, trigger a collapse. You copy, Kali?”

  “I copy,” Kali said.

  Fallows could hear the lack of enthusiasm in her crewmember’s voice. The field officer came across the com-link, her voice steady, neutral.

  “This is your call, girl,” Fallows said. “You wanna come up, you think it’s too risky, that’s fine with me. Understand? We’ll send a combat-tech into the hole with a flame weapon to clear the nest out. No shame in being smart.”

  Kali digested Fallow’s words, turned them around and scrutinized them carefully for subtext.

  “I come out, what happens with my bonus? I still get the extra percentage points?”

  “You get the hostile recon bump, Kali, but I got to give the secure and recover bonus to whoever pulls the merchandise out.”

  Inside her helmet, Kali cursed silently to herself. She resisted answering then mouthed a second swear. An initial secure and recover bump was fat, extremely fat. Morbidly obese fat. For crawling into a roach nest the company would pay the max, no questions asked.

  “I’m doing this," Kali replied after only a brief hesitation. “Tolliver, wind me up ‘til I holler.”

  “Copy, going up.”

  As she wound back up away from the mag-lev car, Kali secured Tolliver’s sidearm in her belt. From her cargo pocket she pulled the smooth cylinder of the flash-bang concussion grenade. Roaches were tough. Tougher than people.

  “Stop,” she said when her feet touched the lip of the opening.

  A flash-bang would work on roaches, but not as well. If she tried to clamber up into the tunnel and then throw the grenade there was every possibility that by the time she got back into position and Tolliver started the feed again, that the bugs would no longer be discombobulated. Merely pissed off.

  She flipped the trigger on the grenade and thumbed the timer down to 003 seconds. She wanted an airburst, theoretically anyway. She looked over to one side, saw only dark, looked back the other way, saw only the same. If the pocket of rubble collapsed, she was screwed, no way around it.

  Suddenly 76% wasn’t such a huge fudge. Suddenly that 24% seemed not just possible, but frighteningly probable. Why am I here, again? She thought. Oh yeah; thanks, Kevin, you mother—

  She released the grenade canister and let it fall.

  2.

  You can’t leap a chasm in two jumps – Winston Churchill

  For a long moment she could watch it as it fell, spinning end over end. Then it tumbled away out of her arc of light and she lost it. When that happened Kali instinctively shut her eyes against the flash.

  For one long, improbable moment there was nothing. Then she saw the flash through the polarized plate, through her squeezed shut eyes it blinked like a star going nova. Then the whump-boom as the thing detonated. Her ears went pressurized instantly and when she spoke into the com-link her voice sounded far away and tinny.

  “Go, Tee, go!” She knew she was speaking too loud, couldn’t help it, didn’t care.

  Tolliver answered something she didn’t understand and she felt herself begin to drop as the cable went out. Hands empty, Kali stretched them out before her as she shot down. The pool of light from her headlamps grew and flattened as she dropped closer. She saw the pile of rubble, then the mag-lev car, then the door.

  She was going to come in too low, she realized. Bugs were strewn across the front of the carrier, thrown helter skelter by the blast. Most were belly up, legs fat as fingers and long as a grown man’s forearms waving like grass, futilely. As she got close Kali arched her back like an Olympic diver and swung herself forward.

  She reached out with one hand and just snagged the hand railing of the mag-lev car. She yanked hard and pulled herself over until her chest came up high centered across the handrail.

  “Stop!” Her voice still sounded like a bad recording with the volume turned almost all the way down to her own ears.

  Tolliver was keyed to her voice and the cable halted immediately. Kali scrambled forward and fell bodily onto the door of the mag-lev car. She swung her arm and knocked a stunned bug flying. She rose up to her knees and pushed two more of the fat things out of her way. Already the insidiously hardy mutants showed signs of recovery.

  She could see her own reflection in shiny black eyes the size of industrial ball bearings. There exoskeletons felt hard as wood under her touch and the damn things were impossibly heavy for their size. If they swarmed, she died. Kali pushed the thought from her mind, trying to retreat from her growing fear into action, submerge herself in motion. Somewhere, deep in the back of her mind, she was screaming every time she touched one of the disgusting, voracious things.

  “Give me a meter of play,” Kali commanded Tolliver.

  She spun around and went to work on the door. It had been stuck for a long, long time, down here. The hinges resisted movement and the lock mechanism refused to execute. Stubbornly Kali yanked. She hissed out loud with her effort and felt the bolt finally give, grudgingly. The door sprang open about 3cm before sticking again.

  Around her Kali could sense the milling bugs recovering. There had to be at least a hundred thousand sets of scissor edged, serrated jaws around her. Each pair hungry, starving for her, mindless and insatiable in their hunger.

  Kali moaned low in her throat as she pulled at the door, it refused to move. With desperate inspiration Kali reached over to her equipment belt and pulled her stun stick free. Able to channel up to 70,000 volts of current, the stick itself was a collapsible baton with an insulated handle.

  “Red Sentry to Fallows,” Eaton’s voice broke Kali’s silent concentration. She heard the stuttering barks of the perimeter team’s crew served weapon behind Eaton’s calm voice. “I have breach. I have ‘eyes on’ Skells count, over. Jesus, boss, there must be a hundred of them.”

  Kali shut her eyes tight.

  ○●○

  Kali snapped her wrist and opened the baton. She didn’t power the stun stick up, but instead shoved it into the narrow opening of the mag-lev car door. Using it like a hooligan tool or crowbar, she shifted her weight against it, throwing her body into it.

  “Tolliver, Kali, you copy that?” Fallows demanded.

  “Roger,” Tolliver answered.

  Kali was too winded from her exertions to reply immediately. Under her pressure the door gave a few centimeters, fighting her every bit of the way. Then some point of demarcation was reached and the door popped open with a sound like a gunshot and slid back, almost dumping Kali into the car.

  “Pull her up!” Fallows barked. “Gold team, move to Red’s twenty!”

  “Roger!” Tolliver answered.

  “Negative!” Kali shouted. “Negative! I’m on site!”

  “Baby, I like the money too, but we’re hot now,” Fallows said.

  “No! I’m inside, let me get it! It’ll only take a moment. Tolliver, feed me slack!”

  Kali powered up her stick and began swatting at roaches as they lumbered across the mag-lev car, curious but not yet frenzied.

  “Drop me, Tolliver, damn it, drop me!” Kali screamed.

  Hitting the bugs felt like whacking a support beam with a baseball bat, the recoil vibrations traveled right back up her arm, painfully.

  “Fine!” Fallows snarled. “You’ve got 30 seconds, Kali! You read me? Three-Zero seconds.”

  “Copy. Tolliver, feed me slack!”

  Tolliver punched the command and Kali suddenly felt her support drop away. She tumbled forward through the open door and into the car. She twisted as she fell, struck a seat and bounced back into the open aisle. She fought to catch he
rself but stubbornly held on to the stun stick.

  She managed to get her head right side up as she slid down but could do nothing to control her forward momentum. Her light beams spiraled crazily inside the car as she tumbled.

  “Cut! Enough, Tolliver! Cut."

  Her slack played out and snapped short, throwing her forward past her own feet as she slid to a stop at the bottom end of the mag-lev car. She landed hard amid what she took to be sticks or splinters, felt them snap and crumble under her weight. She looked around and bit her lip to keep from uttering a surprised scream as she came face to face with a leering skull.

  She had landed in a pile of skeleton corpses, clothed in scraps of rags. Their skulls grinned at her even as her clumsy movement snapped their ribs and arms. Dust swirled up in miniature tornados through the swatch of her illuminator beams. Kali cast about her, looking frantically for the target, time seemed to be running in fast forward.

  She looked down, saw a rusty switchblade knife caught between the sternum and collar bone of one of the skeletal remains. She looked down, saw the handcuffs, dulled by exposure, locked to the thing’s wrist at one end and the handle of a locked briefcase at the other.

  “We’re falling back! There’re too many!” Eaton’s bark broke the intercom silence. “Freak! We got too many here, fall back to the shuttle!”

  “You heard him, Tolliver,” Fallows said. “Get her out!”

  “Copy!”

  Kali lunged forward and grabbed the briefcase handle. A weight dropped onto her, hard. The impact threw her roughly forward and her faceplate bounced off the metal rim of a hard plastic seat bench. The briefcase jarred loose from her grip. She felt the leg pinchers of the roach grasp the folds of her HEV suit. In the next half-a-heartbeat she felt a solid, bruising weight strike her legs and then cling.

  Tolliver began dragging the feed in. Kali’s feet were jerked out from beneath her again and she was stretched out, being pulled back up the canted path of the aisle toward the exit. She lunged toward the briefcase, her fingers inches from the handle. A third weight landed fat across her shoulders.

  “No! Wait! I got it! Stop!” she screamed out. Tolliver cut the feed.

  “Leave the goddamn field remote, Tolliver!” Eaton snarled from out of nowhere. “They’re on us!” From behind Eaton, over the air a man’s scream tore out and then was cut, abruptly, off.

  Kali, ignoring the danger of the mutant roaches, thrust herself forward and her fingers snagged the chain linking metal cuffs between skeleton arm and briefcase handle. Just as she hooked it Tolliver shouted “We’re going, Kali!” and began rolling her in.

  Kali held onto the chain stubbornly, refusing to release her prize even as she was hauled bodily into the air. The bugs likewise refused to release their prize. The skeleton jerked up off the tilted wall of the mag-lev car, dragged by the handcuffs.

  Kali half turned, crunching her upper body toward her waist, the arm holding on to the briefcase and skeleton dangling down behind her. She thumbed the power to her stick “ON” and then clicked it back off. The risk of juicing herself was too great and if she spasmed or blacked out she would lose her grip on the briefcase, her paycheck.

  She grunted with effort as she struck the roach clinging to her legs. She hit it hard in the side, it felt like punching a semi-truck tire. The thing sagged under her blow and turned its mandible toward her baton. She smacked it again and knocked it loose.

  The cable pulled her clear of the mag-lev car door. Kali stabbed the tip of her baton under the body of the bug clinging to her helmet and thrust the shaft down. She snarled once and prized the monster free of her HEV suit helmet. As the briefcase cleared the doorway the skeleton hung up on the door, wrenching Kali’s arm painfully in the socket.

  The final roach skittered across her body and rushed up toward her face. Its working jaws filled Kali’s faceplate and its viscous spittle spilled across the surface. Kali retched, coughed as she felt the muscles of her shoulder shriek in protest as she refused to let go. The cable stuttered, sending a shock through her tautly stretched body as it fought to recoil against the obstruction.

  Kali whacked the bug across the back but due to position her blow was ineffectual. The roach’s jaws pressed against her faceplate as it sought to prize out her eyes. A mindless revulsion gripped her as she stared straight down the bug’s working mouth and into its throat. If it could get a grip it was easily strong enough to crack her faceplate, Kali knew.

  She threw her baton aside and scratched for her pistol. Lightning forks of pain shot down the arm holding the briefcase. There was a snap and the skeleton’s arm broke free at the shoulder. Kali jerked up at with the sudden release and the cable bucked wildly before drawing her up further.

  Squelch inside her helmet broke again and a desperate, random voice, punctuated by the weapons fire and screams behind it, shouted out, “Jeric’s hit, Jeric’s hit!”

  She drew her automatic in a fluid motion and thrust the muzzle against the attacking cockroach. Kali made a hard, animal sound, half terror, half rage and pulled the trigger on the pistol. The muzzle flash lit up before her eyes and the pop-pop of the pistol sounded like a chorus of angels singing hosannas.

  The thing sagged under the small caliber impacts even as Kali jerked up through the air of the cavern. Its legs scrabbled for purchase, pincher limbs grasping desperately. The yellow yogurt of its body fluids smeared across Kali’s faceplate. She bucked and twisted until it was hanging downward instead of resting on her for a moment and she triggered the pistol again.

  The bug released its hold and slid slowly from its purchase before falling away, back down into the darkness. Kali felt a hard impact as she was pulled through the entrance of the narrow tubule opening and she lost the pistol. Desperate, she clung to the briefcase with both hands as the field remote reeled her back up to the surface like a trophy fish on a tourista’s line.

  ○●○

  The sounds of gunfire and screaming men overwhelmed Kali as she emerged from the tunnel entrance. She rolled over onto her back and sat as Tolliver slapped the field remote’s winch to a stop. Kali sat up, keeping the briefcase close beside her as she worked desperately at the harness attachment secured around her ankles. Over by the tractor tread mounted robot, Tolliver bent down and began working at two bulging satchels riding on the vehicle superstructure.

  Kali saw movement to either side of her and turned to look. Red Sentry tumbled into the shallow crater around her. The three-man fire team appeared to have lost their crew served weapon and each of the combat techs was using their auto-carbines. Rounds from armed Skell Alphas tore through the air around the salvagers. The impact of errant rounds punched into the ground and sprayed debris.

  Eaton rose up to one knee beside Kali as she freed herself. His carbine was snug in his shoulder and he fired in controlled bursts.

  “You get it?” he asked between shots.

  “Bet your ass,” Kali answered.

  “Nice,” he grunted. “Tolliver, what the hell are you doing? We have to fall back.”

  “The field remote moves too slow, the Skells will get it for sure!”

  “So freaking what!” Tolliver snapped.

  “So I just initiated the timer on its breaching charges. If those freaks want it so badly, let ‘em have it!”

  Kali looked over, could see the numbers on the breaching charge detonator screen counting down. She leapt to her feet and began following Tolliver. Behind them Eaton and the rest of Red Sentry covered their retreat as they scrambled up out of the pit. Kali snatched the skeleton arm from the briefcase and hugged it tight against her chest as she climbed.

  Cresting the lip of the crater, Kali looked back. Tolliver was running in front of her, leaving Red Sentry about halfway up the crater slope. On the far side she saw a mob of Skells pour over the rim into the shallow blast basin. Skell Alphas hid behind rubble piles and poured covering fire down on the retreating salvagers.

  Kali turned around and suddenly the ha
rsh light of the sun was blocked in front of her. She looked up and saw the gray-green hide of the hobgoblin Skell as it bounded out of nowhere for her. She hated the LGMs with a passion, fucking hated them. Instinctively she held up the briefcase and blocked an impossibly strong swipe of the thing’s claws. She sagged under the impact and the Skell screeched in triumph.

  Kali was struck hard from behind and knocked to the ground. She grunted as she hit the flash-boiled dirt. She felt a hand in the center of her back, pressing her down, then the sound of rifle fire inches above the back of her head. She strained to lift her head up and saw the Skell staggering back, a staccato pattern of bloody holes stitched across its chest.

  The thing flopped over backwards and the weight on top of Kali shifted. A strong hand caught her under the armpit and roughly hauled her to her feet. She came up fast, getting her feet beneath her and immediately started running. Eaton followed right beside her, carbine held in one hand.

  From behind them the explosion triggered and the blast sent a flash of heat searing past the running figures. A column of black smoke roiled up behind them as they navigated the last of the rubble between them and the ship, following close behind the fleeing Tolliver.

  3.

  You do not greet Death. You punch him in the throat repeatedly as he drags you away – French Foreign Legionnaire at battle of Dien bien phu

  When it happened, it happened fast, Kali reflected.

  One minute the Whiskey & Water’s salvage crew were performing their operations and up-keep with a bored diligence, racking up the commission profits. The next moment the observation post sentries were laying down suppressive fire as the crew collapsed backwards from the perimeter toward the dubious safety of the industrial CDV shuttle.

  Now the Skells were at the outer doors and just that quickly things had fallen apart. Fallen apart to such a degree that they weren't going to be put back together again.

  Kali was a realist and she accepted the certainty of the situation with cynical detachment. When the Skells made it through the outer doors she would fight, but she didn’t expect to live.