Wyatt didn’t understand what he saw.
A dozen or so bodies knelt in a large circle, legs drawn up underneath them, foreheads touching the floor so that their heads were all near each other. Most had on athletic clothing. A few wore the heavy utilities of a Julietan farmer. One person was naked, his ribs and spine pressed against gaunt skin.
The blood trail led to a gap in the circle. It almost seemed like the person they had found outside had given up their space and left.
“What. The. Hell?” Laramie whispered.
The squad stood at the threshold, staring at the strange configuration of motionless people. Izzy glanced at Laramie as if this was yet another strange Juliet custom. The staff sergeant just shook her head.
“Are they dead?” Maya asked.
“The body outside walked out under his own power,” Wyatt said. “Corpsman—check ‘em out.”
“Yes, sir,” Izzy said.
He lowered his Vector and stepped carefully forward. Medic training was mostly about patching holes, but he had more clinical training than anyone else here. And because of that, what? He’d be better able to assess what was happening?
He chose a woman next to the open gap with the blood trail. His flashlight beam swept over a gray track suit with white stripes.
“Hey,” Izzy said, his voice soft. “You okay?”
He knelt and put his gloved hand on her shoulder.
Instantly, the woman sat up and looked at him. Izzy jumped back with a start.
Despite having two tactical flashlight beams shining right on her face, the woman seemed oblivious to the others in the room. Her blond hair was pulled back in a frayed ponytail. Wyatt could see the splotches on her face from malnutrition. She stared without expression at Izzy, who still crouched at eye level with her.
“Iz, ask if she’s okay,” Wyatt said.
The two of them continued a wordless gaze. After several moments, Wyatt cleared his throat to repeat himself.
Before he could get the words out, Izzy’s body convulsed with a violent spasm. He grunted in pain.
“Iz!” Laramie yelled.
Wyatt’s first thought was that his trooper was being electrocuted—a sudden seizure, a wet shower area, a potential short circuit that had darkened the lighting.
But the shower floor looked dry. And this disheveled, starving woman seemed unaffected, just sitting there in her kneeling position with her eyes locked on Izzy ...
A hollow feeling hit him in the gut.
Wyatt raised his Vector and pointed it at the woman. “Get down on the ground! Get down on the ground now or I will fire on you!”
No reaction. The woman might as well have been stoned. She stared at Izzy with no emotion while every muscle in the corpsman’s body clenched tightly.
Wyatt pulled the trigger.
The Vector punched a large hole through the woman’s shoulder, vaporizing flesh with the sound of a bug zapper. Instantly she flopped to the floor. Izzy slumped sideways next to her. Wyatt kept his weapon trained on the woman’s body.
“Laramie, pull—”
The room spun. Wyatt couldn’t tell if he was falling or floating. He put his hand out to steady himself and connected with something flat and hard, the floor maybe, and through sheer will forced himself to focus on the blur in front of him. His vision was strange, as if looking down a long tunnel surrounded by an angry swarm of golden insects.
Pain.
“My head!” someone said.
His mind ignited with a fire that burned its way into every nerve. Wyatt hit the ground in absolute agony. Through his tears, he could barely make out several human shapes watching him from the circle. Four or five of them now, turned toward him, sitting upright. Looking at him. The shining specks dove in at his eyes, ripping into his flesh.
“It hurts!” the voice cried out again. Maya.
A prone body caught his attention. Wyatt thought he recognized the clothing. It was a uniform of some kind, with a bulky vest and a short, stubby length of metal nearby.
Something told Wyatt it was important. He pushed off the floor with burning arms and moved toward the shape. His body screamed as his hand closed on the vest. He couldn’t tell what he was doing. Every gasp of air hurt, every conscious thought writhed under the assault of the specks as they bit at his brain. Only the habits of endless training pushed him to keep his grip on the vest.
He pulled himself and Izzy back to the other side of the bulkhead.
A momentary lessening in the sea of fire. Wyatt drew a ragged breath and struggled to get to his feet.
He became vaguely aware of snapping noises. His mind cleared enough to see Maya firing a volley of laser blasts into the shower, her shots wild even though her helmet gave her assisted targeting. He turned to his right and saw Laramie with her arms wrapped around one of the benches. She was retching on the floor.
“Squad, fall back!” Wyatt shouted. “Out of the building, now!”
Maya stumbled backward into Laramie and almost took them to the ground, but Laramie’s body weight won out. The two women locked arms and staggered toward the exit together. Wyatt lifted Izzy’s limp body into a fireman’s carry. The excessive pull of Juliet’s gravity made him wobble, but the burning embers around his vision gave him all the motivation he needed to force his way outside.
A vibrant red on the horizon tinged the otherwise darkening sky overhead. Wyatt could barely see. There was no power, no streetlights to orient them or help them find their way back.
A few blinks of the eye and the embers drifted away.
Wyatt took another dozen steps and slid Izzy onto the ground. The corpsman’s eyes were closed, his face slack. Wyatt ripped his gloves off and found a weak pulse in his neck.
“Izzy? Can you hear me?” Wyatt smacked him hard on the cheek. The trooper lay on the ground, unconscious and unresponsive.
“Isi Watanabe!”
Nothing.
He switched on his comm. “Acid Three, Acid One. We have wounded and need evac. Lock on my position and rendezvous, over.”
Laramie was cursing like crazy and aiming her Vector at the door to the rec facility. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Wyatt flipped open his forearm tablet and poked at the interface. Why wasn’t Gavin acknowledging his transmission?
“Acid Three, this is Acid One, do you copy?”
No reply.
“What the hell?” Laramie muttered again.
“Maya, you transmit. See if your helmet can boost.”
“On it.” Her chin dropped as she concentrated through her neural stub.
Laramie kept her Vector up as she took careful, uncertain steps backward. She edged closer to Wyatt. “How is he?”
“He’s out. Weak pulse.” Wyatt patted his cheeks again. “Izzy. Do you hear me, buddy? Wake up.”
“Lieutenant?” Maya said.
“Yeah?”
“My comm isn’t getting through. I have good ... signal gain ... unnh—”
Pain.
Everything started to go blurry. Maya’s hands clutched her temples like they were trying to hold her skull together. Wyatt didn’t need to ask—he saw the golden specks again, too. He looked at perimeter buildings and glimpsed dim silhouettes watching them from the windows. More filled the alleyways. Gaunt people, lots of them. Silent. Staring.
In the failing light, the brightness of the embers seemed even more terrifying.
“Maya, get us out of here!”
She stumbled away. Wyatt hauled Izzy back onto his shoulders and stumbled after her. He prayed her helmet navigation could get them back through the maze of buildings. His feet didn’t want to go where he directed them, and it was everything he could do to keep his balance.
They reached the roundabout. The golden specks abated before suddenly flooding back with renewed intensity. A Vector snapped laser shots from behind.
“They’re all around us, LT!” Laramie said from the rear.
“Keep moving!”
Maya wa
s shooting too. A distant tickle of engagement protocol laughed at Wyatt from the back of his conscious self. You’re using lethal force against unarmed civilians. Have fun at the court martial.
He let the thought fall aside and focused on putting one foot in front of the other, desperately trying to outrun the flood of searing pain that scratched and clawed at his mind.
“Left, here!” Maya called out.
They ducked left. Again, the embers lessened. Wyatt staggered between rows of container buildings, a warren of dropship housing for a ready-bake frontier town. His concentration cleared enough to try the comm again.
“Acid Three, we need emergency evac. Acid Three, do you read?”
Still no response. Deaf as well as blind. Wyatt could barely see Maya in front of him, his night vision struggling to stay ahead of the golden specs at the edges.
“Right!” she shouted.
Maya made the corner and gurgled out a scream. Wyatt felt it too as soon as he stepped past the edge. Angry specks burrowing with a heat so intense, he felt like his mind was on fire. His knees buckled and he tumbled to the ground.
Laramie shouted from behind. “Wyatt!”
“Get back!” he yelled. “Back from the corner!”
He managed to shrug Izzy off and pushed him to the side. His brain wailed in pain.
“Contact front!” Laramie yelled. Snap-snap-snap.
Wyatt felt the heat from the Vector exhaust. He turned his head and saw a dark human shape collapse in front of them. The agony of his mind diminished ever so slightly. But Maya had dropped to all fours and her own weapon lay on the ground next to her.
“Laramie, get her back!” he said, pointing. He fumbled with his Vector, trying to control his fingers through the haze.
The darting shape of his staff sergeant whooshed by and grabbed Maya by the collar. The return trip wasn’t as quick. Wyatt could tell Laramie was struggling to move her feet. He searched the darkness for enemies and popped off shots at the shadows.
Laramie almost toppled over as she just barely got out of the intersection. She grabbed Maya’s shoulder. “Where do we go?”
“We can ... we can reroute that way ...”
“Go!” Wyatt said. I’ve got Izzy, just go!”
Laramie gave Maya a shove to get her going. Wyatt let his Vector drop against its strap and lifted Izzy up a third time. His thighs screamed with a fury almost as great as the wisps of light in his eyes, but he forced them to move again, one foot in front of the other, desperate to keep up with his teammates. They were getting far ahead of him, nearly lost in the darkness.
“Turn right!” a voice yelled.
He thought he saw them dart around some kind of small tractor. Wyatt made to follow but he trailed by a good ten meters, and when he rounded the corner he didn’t see either of them. He kept going on faith. The golden flecks seemed to recede. His head cleared enough to take stock of his body’s exertion. Lungs burning, back under strain, his arms and legs leaden with fatigue. But at least his prosthetic felt great.
“I’ve lost sight of you, Maya. Where are you?”
The comm remained silent. Wyatt approached a T-intersection and slowed his pace. “Laramie, Maya, do you copy? Do I go left, or right?”
He stood still and waited for a reply. The chirps and whistles of nighttime insects spilled into the air, signaling the beginning of a new day for the lower orders of the ecosphere. But his comm was still dead, and no reply came back through the darkness.
“Laramie?”
Silence.
“Maya, where are you?”
A knot began to form in Wyatt’s stomach. It wasn’t fear, exactly. But as he stood in the intersection, he realized his mistake in dashing off to investigate the carrion birds. His team was in a town full of dead bodies. They didn’t know what had caused it. And they shouldn’t have done a recon without better preparation for whatever danger existed here.
Not they. He. Wyatt had given the order.
You’re the one who designed the mission. This is all on you.
A distant, fiery roar scratched the back of his brain.
The embers were coming back. They were following him.
Left it was.
Wyatt trudged forward, hoping fate and God would give him a break. He went straight down a long road, then a left and a right around some buildings he didn’t recognize. He thought he was heading in the right general direction. He just needed a bit of luck to not find himself trapped in a dead end.
Which was exactly what happened next.
The road ended in a sort of cove surrounded on three sides by cargo containers. Wyatt desperately searched for an alley or any sort of exit. The night proved too dark. Cursing, he let Izzy’s weight slide off him to the ground and switched back on his Vector’s tactical flashlight. A quick inspection revealed he was cut off no matter how hard he looked.
“Come on, Iz, back we go—”
Pain.
The embers turned hot. Wyatt fell to his knees and managed to squint past the golden flecks to see a dark shape stepping out of a doorway. The figure’s eyes were impossible to see in the dark, yet they bored into his soul, the specks of light dancing in a vortex around his peripheral vision.
“Laramie, I’m in ... trouble, do you ... copy?”
The figure moved toward him. It was an older man, thin, frail, but walking with a power that seemed beyond the physical. Crippling agony ripped into Wyatt’s head. He tried to lift his Vector but it seemed to weigh a thousand kilos. Instead, Wyatt crumpled as the flames rose around him.
“Acid Two ... help ...”
He had let down his squad on Tiamat. Six casualties in a reckless raid. Now he’d made another wrong decision. Izzy hurt. Maya. Laramie. Where was Laramie? His “little sister.” Don’t let her get hurt. Not Laramie.
Maybe it was right that he should die. Maybe it would be better for all.
God, the pain.
Wyatt tried to cry out but his lungs wouldn’t let him.
A hot breeze swept through the air. Wyatt almost missed the spray of flesh that spurted out of the figure’s chest. The man dropped in an ungraceful heap.
Two more singes of heat and the embers disappeared altogether.
The comm crackled to life again. “Targets are down. Get them out of there, guys.”
Gavin.
Wyatt stared at the crumpled form of the old man. His mind struggled to make sense of what just happened. What he did know was that Gavin must have heard his transmission after all. And once he got line of sight to Wyatt’s pursuers, the sergeant’s L-6 rifle could take out the threat from a far greater range than a Vector.
Wyatt was safe. For the moment.
He glanced down the deserted street and fought back a wave of nausea. The lack of light gave the neighborhood an eerie, malevolent feel. There was nothing Wyatt wanted more than to get back to the Javelin.
11
Romeo. A lyrical name for Juliet’s moon, orbiting its mistress in an eternal embrace. Wyatt sat on a rock and stared at it as it crept toward the horizon. Unfortunately, what he had experienced so far on Juliet was anything but poetry.
He was still having trouble processing the events from earlier. The burning specks. The worst headache of his life. Was there something toxic in that town? Hallucinogenic mold spores, poisonous paint on the buildings, anything that could be explained? All possible. But his gut came up with a different reason and he didn’t want to accept it:
Shambling hulks who stared pain into people.
It had been foolish to just run off deeper into the town. Now they had casualties.
Wyatt decided to go check on them. He stood up, dusted off his pants, and walked toward the cargo ramp of the nearby Javelin. In the distance, the rooftops of Parrell reflected moonlight back into the sky.
Toward the rear of the cargo bay, the crew chief knelt next to a motionless Izzy. Several blankets folded to create multiple layers acted as a makeshift bed for their corpsman. The chief had jus
t finished connecting an IV and was squeezing a saline bag.
“Any change?”
The chief turned his head. “Oh, it’s you, sir. No, still in a coma.”
“How are his vitals?”
“Weak, but stable. His body’s functioning, so that’s good.”
“What about his head?”
“Well, MedSurg doesn’t like his brain activity. Too low in the important places, too high in others. But it hasn’t been able to figure out what to do about it.”
That was bad. The Javelin’s emergency medicine suite should have been able to give guidance on how to care for Izzy, even without their corpsman there to interpret it.
“All right. Well, keep him comfortable and maybe it’ll figure it out soon.”
The chief looked at Wyatt. “How are you doing, sir?”
“Fine.”
“With respect, sir, that was not convincing. Want me to check you out?”
“No. I’m fine.”
Wyatt knelt down at Izzy’s side. His eyes were closed. He looked peaceful. But Wyatt remembered the convulsions that had tortured the corpsman inside the rec center. He said a silent prayer that Izzy would pull out of whatever it was that had happened to him.
When he finished, Wyatt opened his eyes and patted Izzy on the chest. Then he turned to the crew chief again. “How are our ladies doing?”
“Your trooper Maya seemed pretty shaken up. The staff sergeant spent a lot of time talking with her. Then she ate two meal pouches and went to sleep.”
“Sounds about right for Laramie. Did Maya turn in, too?”
The chief shook his head, then jerked his chin toward the front of the cargo bay.
Wyatt peered down the fuselage and saw a lone figure sitting quietly on the deck, knees pulled up to her chin, staring at nothing. He walked over until he stood a meter away.
“This seat taken?” He pointed at the deck next to her.
Maya looked up at him with a start. “Oh. Yes? I-I mean, no, sir. Go ahead.”
Wyatt sat down. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to focus. Even though he was still processing the encounter himself, he had to compartmentalize it and help his troopers do the same. Especially the new ones.
Escape Velocity (The Quantum War Book 1) Page 8