Old Wounds

by Michael D. Britton

  #

  Jack sighed heavily as he opened the flimsy white door to the supply closet in his cramped quarters. There it stood – the body suit he had come to hate.

  The Project New Home recruiters had tried to use it as a selling point – a mechanized outfit that would allow Jack full mobility. Between the suit, and the moon’s reduced gravity, they told him, it would be like getting a new lease on life.

  Originally designed as a muscle-enhancing exo-shell for lunar miners, the suit had been adapted to act as a new pair of legs for Jack. Only problem was, the neural interface gave him blinding headaches every moment it was connected.

  He preferred to keep it in storage and use the chair – a decision that had caused constant arguments between him and Pamela.

  But the wheelchair wouldn’t cut it for this mission.

  With a groan, he pulled out the bulky apparatus and started the process of slinking into it. It smelled of polyurethane, synthetic lubricant, and old sweat. He tapped the hip-mounted controls to fire up the bio-servos, and in a few moments he was on his feet again, for the first time in months.

  He wobbled slightly, caught his balance, and then the pain behind his eyes kicked in – right on schedule – and persisted, steady and strong.

  “Oh,” he moaned, wishing he could pluck out that portion of his screaming brain. As usual, the pain flooded backward slowly, extending into the center of his head, and then to the base of his skull as the interface completed its primary connection.

  He walked stiffly to a locker, where he kept his side arm, holstered it and moved out. Along the way, his motions became smoother, so that by the time he’d reached the ground floor exit from the main structure, he appeared to move as anyone else – with the exception of the faint whine of the bio-servos.

  He met up with his team, who had gathered a cache of weapons from the compound’s tiny armory. They spoke little as they headed off together, bouncing gracefully in the moon’s weak gravity toward the location Jack had identified as the most likely position of Turner’s rebel hideout.

  As they approached their destination, Jack slowed down a little, taking stock of the scene.

  “Why do you think they’re at the reactor control building?” asked Rogers, a young sandy-haired man – barely twenty – and a brilliant chemical engineer. He kept fiddling with his gamma rifle, obviously uncomfortable with the firepower in his hands.

  “I ran an ID locator scan, tracing the movements of Turner and likely accomplices for the three months prior to their dropping off the grid. They covered their tracks well, but some patterns emerged in the data. The trail leads here. Besides, Turner knows strategy, and Reactor Control’s position gives him an upper hand if things go south.”

  “G-go south?” asked Rogers.

  “Yeah,” said Jack. “If backed into a corner, Turner may decide to set the reactor to overload, force my hand.”

  Jack motioned for his small team to take cover, and they all ducked down behind a shallow gray outcropping a few meters from the edge of Reactor Control’s sculpted courtyard and reddish-orange exterior walls. “Okay, I want Johnson, Gomez, and Lindt to take the back. Rogers, Hampton and I will go in through the front. We’ll be on comm. Let us know when you’re in position, and we’ll enter at the same time. Go.”

  Jack got word from the rear team and gave the go command.

  The high whistle of gamma rifles echoed through the concrete halls of the ground floor of Reactor Control, accompanied by bright flashes of purple light.

  Hampton went down.

  Rogers took a glancing blow to the shoulder that left a nasty black burn, but to his credit, he stayed on his feet.

  Jack took a direct hit to the shin, but as it missed all the bio-servos, he didn’t feel a thing and it didn’t affect his mobility at all.

  Turner had trained his rebels well – this assault on his stronghold was not going so smoothly.

  When Jack and Rogers reached the access point to the underground floors, only one member of the rear team was left – though seven of Turner’s men were down.

  “By my count,” said Jack, breathing heavily, “that leaves Turner and five more. If they’re all here – which they probably are – that means we’re still outnumbered two-to-one. Let’s forget the elevator and take the stairs, so we’re not sitting ducks.”

  Jack, Rogers and Gomez crept down the cement stairwell, weapons raised and eyes flashing. Jack blinked hard and gulped as he tried to ignore the dull pounding and sharp pains inside his skull. With one hand, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and moved the shiny black hair out of his eyes.

  At the bottom of the stairs, another brief firefight.

  Three of Turner’s men hit the ground in seemingly-slow motion, and Gomez took a fatal shot to the neck.

  “In there,” Jack said to Rogers, indicating the main control room and likely location of Turner.

  Jack used the extra strength of his servo-assisted legs to kick the door in with a crashing sound.

  He faced a stand-off.

  Turner, armed with two hand guns (one held by his prosthetic left hand), a tall black man – Jack thought his name was Ingrams – armed with a gamma rifle, and a sultry red-haired woman, also armed.

  Pamela.

  Pamela Chang.

  Ex-wife Pamela.

  Now Turner’s girlfriend.

  “Hello, Jack,” said Turner coolly. “The president’s lackey, now are we?”

  Jack took in the scene. He looked Pamela up and down. He hadn’t seen her in a while, and was surprised to see a sizable bulge in her midsection. She spotted him eyeing her.

  “I’m five months along, Jack. You going to shoot a pregnant woman?”

  “Is it . . . mine?”

  She shrugged. “We’ve been separated for four months. So, probably not.”

  Turner cast her a lightning-quick glare. He clearly believed the baby was his. “A touching reunion, Jack, but we have other business to sort out ‘ere, don’t we?” His Scottish accent always thickened when he was tense.

  To Jack’s right, Rogers held steady, his eyes wide and his finger on the trigger of his gamma rifle.

  “Marcus,” said Jack, “is all this really worth it? What do you think you stand to gain by staying here another three years?”

  “Jack, don’t be so short-sighted,” said Turner. “It’s not just three years – I’m buying permanence. We’re developing our own raw matter cube creation facility right here at New Home so we can be truly independent.”

  “You are? With your explosives expertise, I presume?”

  “No,” said Pamela. “With my energy expertise, and the help of any of the fundamental particle scientists who’ll join us. As for those who won’t – we’ll force their cooperation, if necessary.”

  “Always the reasonable one, weren’t you?” Jack said.

  “Jack, you’re such a fool,” Pamela continued. “The government has abandoned us. The writing was on the wall months ago. So I started tackling the problem of raw matter cubes, and I believe we can develop a production facility in two years and begin raw matter cube creation by half way through the third year.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me with this plan, Marcus?” asked Jack.

  “You’re just another bureaucrat, now, Jack. Better to leave the trailblazing to those willing to do what it takes.”

  Jack raised a hand to his head as a stabbing pain shot through his temple.

  “So you see,” continued Turner, “I would be the king of this new world, and we could survive here indefinitely, generation after generation.”

  With that phrase, Pamela rubbed at her bulging belly.

  “How many people are you willing to kill to become king of the moon, Marcus?” Jack asked through gritted teeth.

  “As many as it takes,” said Turner. “Including you.” He raised his weapon, aiming at Jack.

  Rogers started, his itchy trigger finger firing off a blast toward
Turner, Pamela and Ingrams.

  The beam struck Ingrams in the belly, and he fired back as he fell, strafing Rogers across the legs. Rogers crumpled, but still managed to fire again as he went down.

  The wild shot hit Pamela on the side of the head, opening a smoking wound that bled profusely and sent her careening back to the concrete floor with a thud.

  Turner took cover behind a huge bank of computer hardware and fired blindly.

  Jack rushed to Pamela’s side and dropped to his knees.

  With her eyes rolling back in her head, she whispered, “The baby . . . the baby is yours, Jack.”

  “Turner!” Jack roared. “Cease fire! Cease fire! We need medical support!” A pool of dark blood formed under Pamela’s head and fanned out across the floor. “Now!”

  “Jack, I saw the life leave her eyes – it’s too late for her. You won’t draw me out with that ploy!”

  Jack cradled Pamela’s body. “Turner, you idiot, there’s still hope. And if she doesn’t make it, we’ll only have ninety seconds to save the baby. I’ve seen Dr. Casarra do it.”

  “Forget it, Jack. There’s too much riding on this.”

  “Turner – we’re less than an hour away from annihilation. They launched a warhead. But I cut a deal.”

  Turner called for medical, and tossed his weapon out from his hiding place.

  As the med team bust in, Jack quickly told them the situation, and they got right to work.

  Turner came forth, his arms over his head. “All right, Jack, you win. What did the president promise you, anyway?” He sneered at his former commander, shaking his head slowly. “You really are one of them now, aren’t you, Jack?”

  “We’re getting a year of raw matter cubes. It should be enough – we can implement your plan, with all of New Home working together, we should be able to get our own raw matter production up and running in half the time you estimated.”

  Turner watched as the med team carefully moved Pamela’s body to a stasis chamber. “I’m sorry, Jack. It wasn’t meant to happen this way.” His blue eyes met Jack’s. “Why haven’t you called the president to call off the strike?”

  “Because it’s not over.” Jack raised his weapon. “You need to give up your team on Earth, or there’s no deal. Talk. Or start losing more body parts.”

  Turner shook his head. “No way, Jack. I won’t rat on them. They’ll be killed.”

  Jack shot at Turner and blew off his right hand.

  “Aaaargh!” screamed Turner, clutching the stump with his prosthetic left hand. “I said I won’t talk!”

  Jack shot off Turner’s left foot.

  “Okay, okay!” whimpered Turner. “It’s Hamish.”

  “Your son? The one living with Marjorie in New York?”

  “Jack, he’s only nineteen. He was just doing what I told him to.”

  “And he’s working alone?”

  Turner nodded.

  “I’m sorry, Marcus. It’s him, or all of us. I’m calling it in.”

  “Nooooo!” Turner lunged at Jack, his prosthetic hand outstretched. It held a blade he’d pulled from his belt with lightning speed.

  Jack jumped back, but not fast enough. He fell on his back, and dropped his gamma rifle. Turner buried the knife in Jack’s right leg, midway up the thigh. Jack felt nothing, but it severed a bio-servo and shorted out the whole suit.

  Jack pulled himself backward with his hands, struggling to reach his gun.

  Turner stabbed at Jack again, this time slicing into Jack’s waistline area, hitting him at the far edge of his belly, making a clean-through wound.

  Jack felt that one.

  His fingertips managed to touch his weapon, and he pulled it closer, grabbed it, and fired at Turner as the knife came down once more – right toward Jack’s heart.

  The blast hit Turner square in the chest, just below the neck, and knocked him backward.

  Jack activated the comm bud in his ear, contacting the president.

  “It’s Hamish Turner,” he said, panting. “That’s the one running the bombs in Washington. Now call off your warhead.”

  “The clock is still ticking on the Capitol bomb, Jack.”

  Jack crawled over to where Turner lay. Turner’s eyes were rolling in his head. “How do you stop it?” Jack yelled, grasping Turner’s face with one hand. “Turn off the Capitol bomb!”

  “Only . . . only if,” Turner gasped, “they let him go.”

  “You hear that, Madame President?” said Jack. “He won’t stop the bomb unless you leave his son out of it.”

  “All right, fine,” said Stevens. “You’ve got a deal. Just deactivate the bomb!”

  “Seven, seven, two seven,” Turner whispered. “Enter that into the console over there.”

  Jack dragged himself to the console, his dead legs heavy. A thick trail of blood flowed from his thigh wound, and his head felt light and dizzy.

  Seven.

  Seven.

  The room started spinning as the blood loss took its toll on him.

  Two.

  Blackness.

  #

  Jack awoke in the medical bay.

  He looked to his right, and saw Turner propped up in a hospital bed.

  “Hello, mate,” said Turner.

  “What happened?”

  “You were unable to follow a simple command. I had to finish the job for you. I pressed the last seven.”

  “And the . . . the baby?”

  “In stasis. They say she’ll live.”

  “Why aren’t you in prison somewhere?”

  “I’m a hero, Jack.”

  “You cut a deal.”

  “Of course. I saved Congress, saved New Home, saved you, saved my son, saved your daughter – and saved Pamela.”

  “She’s – alive?”

  “Yeah, Jack, she’s alive. She’ll never walk again without bio-servo assistance, but she’s alive. She wants nothing to do with you, though. Blames you for everything.”

  Jack rested his head back on his pillow.

  That was a wound he could live with.

  THE END

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