by B. V. Larson
“Clear!” I called back to the team after looking around cautiously.
They advanced timidly into the open space behind me.
The area under the dome was impressive. As I’d expected, the light here had a bluish cast to it. There were buildings nearby. They got bigger and bigger in a stair-step formation as they moved away from us. The largest buildings were under the peak of the dome, almost scraping it. Those nearby were necessarily squatty.
The weirdest thing was the smoke outside. It encircled the dome completely, reaching about ten meters up the side of the dome on every flank. We were in a sea of inky darkness, but the sky overhead could still be seen.
The power truck we’d seen earlier was still parked nearby, but no one was around to drive it. I found the first of the enemy dead a few meters off.
“Looks like this guy was killed when Harris set off his bomb,” Kivi said.
“Yeah, looks like. Kivi, get into that power truck and try to get it running.”
She did so effortlessly, and we climbed in. The power truck was bigger than a pickup truck, but there wasn’t enough room in the cab for everyone. The troops in the back had their rifles balanced on the basket-like rim that surrounded a flat bed.
I wasn’t sure that going for a ride in the truck was a good thing or not, but it stood to reason that we’d be pinpointed by their security no matter what. I figured we might as well move fast and have a look around before they sprung their next trap on us.
We headed into the center of the “city” without hesitation. I drove, because I pretty much knew everyone else was going to take their time.
Squeezing what appeared to be an accelerator-rod, I had the machine revving down streets and shaking as it made hard random turns. The streets were deserted and quiet. If I hadn’t known there were people here watching for us, plotting to kill us, I’d have thought the place was abandoned.
“Where are we going?” Kivi demanded.
“We’ve got to put some distance between us and the original scene of the crime,” I told her. “Haven’t you ever run from the cops before?”
She looked at me in shock and shook her head.
“Have you got anything on your radio yet?”
“Yes,” she said. “That black vapor was definitely interfering with our transmissions. We can talk to the ship if you like.”
I didn’t like, but I pulled over and shot a beam up to Nostrum. To my surprise, Graves himself answered.
“McGill?” he asked. “Are you still in the field? What’s your status?”
“Yeah, I’m down here all right. I’m inside the dome.”
“That’s great… Yes, we’re getting location data on you now. There’s a power station about two hundred meters south of you. Head that way, and have your weaponeers knock it out.”
“Uh…” I said, looking around at my handful of troops. “We’re fresh out of weaponeers, Primus. I’ve got four heavies and one tech left.”
“Shit… All right, you have to try anyway.”
“You got it, sir. We’ll do it, or die in the attempt. Just one thing: how’d you get back up aboard Nostrum?”
“I died, of course,” he said, sounding irritated.
“Right sir, but your command unit was way back in the mountains. How’d they get to you?”
“That thick vapor you see outside is hiding an enemy force of automated defense vehicles.”
“Hiding what, sir?” I asked.
“Crab-things. Some kind of biological combat system. They used the cover of the vapor to approach our units and destroy most of our troops. We’ve lost a lot of good equipment down there today.”
That was classic Graves. He considered human bodies to be cheap and easily replaced. A good rifle, however, was another matter entirely. A gun or a space suit was harder to replicate than a soldier, and that made such things more valuable to him.
We followed his directions and made it to a building that was pyramid-shaped. We climbed out of the truck and approached the structure with our weapons at the ready.
“They can’t use black smoke and giant robots on us in here,” I told them. “They don’t want to wreck their precious living environment.”
“I have to admit,” Kivi said, “I’m starting to want to blow a hole in this dome and finish them all.”
“Yeah, I don’t blame you Specialist. But we’ve got orders. Take down that door.”
As my tech, she approached and tried it first. It was locked, and hacking it turned out to be hopeless.
“Good security,” she commented.
“That’s why I said to take it down. Do we have to use plasma rifles, or do you have a better trick in that bag of yours?”
She made a face at me and pulled a small charge out of her rucksack. She stuck it to the door bolt, backed up, and set it off.
Maybe the enemy had been waiting for this moment, watching and hoping a sealed, hardened door would stop us. But the second we knocked it down, they sprang up and went for broke.
They fired a shower of accelerated rounds down at us from every neighboring building. They’d come out of nowhere, from our point of view. The buildings had no windows—but they did. They weren’t there one minute, then the next they were all over the place.
Fire-colored tracers streaked down, connecting my troops with the muzzles of enemy weapons now and then. Many missed, but several of my last troopers got hit. Two of them lived through the initial barrage, and we all returned fire.
The good news was the enemy had no armor. They weren’t the best shots in the world either. Five, ten, fifteen of them went down, while we blazed back plasma bolts and ducked for cover.
“Science nerds my ass!” Kivi exclaimed, ducking down under the power truck with me. “These guys are fighters. We should put them down right now!”
“Agreed. When I’m a tribune, this kind of bullshit will end. All the resources we have at our disposal and here we are dicking around in a fire-fight under this dome.”
She gave me a brief, searching look. “What makes you think you’ll be a tribune someday?”
“It has to happen. Nothing would make Harris angrier.”
Kivi chuckled and returned fire again. I could tell by my unit vitals we only had two other men left, and they were hugging the big wheels.
It was really hard to have a firefight with people up above you, especially while you’re lying under a truck. Just ask anyone who’s done it.
Although they’d lost their initial element of surprise, I could see we weren’t going to win this. They were pulling up vehicles now, makeshift power trucks with higher powered guns mounted on the back of them. These blazed away, damaging the power truck we hid under. It might not run anymore, by the look of it. A trickle of fluids came down from the engine, staining my already smeared faceplate.
“We’ve got to make a break for the building,” I said.
“We can’t,” she said. “It’s too far, too open.”
I glanced over to my right, and I saw what she meant. The door hung open, but it was a good ten meters away. That was too far by half with all the incoming fire raining down on us.
“Here’s the deal,” I told her. “I’m getting into the pilot’s seat, and I’m ramming that wall. Crawl fast, and go under the truck to the doorway.”
“You’re not sending me?” she asked. “Why would you want to die that way?”
“You’ve got the bombs in your ruck,” I pointed out. “Move! Everyone else, covering fire!”
The last two troops I had that could lift a rifle poked their noses out and shot at the enemy wildly, on full-auto. We didn’t hit much, but we made them duck. These rogues had seen a lot of losses on their side already, and they may not even be trained to fight.
I got into the pilot’s seat and rammed forward the power-bar. Cranking the steering mechanism to the right, I slammed the power truck into the smoldering doorway.
Along the way, unfortunately, I felt a hard bounce as I went over something soli
d. It could only be a body—one of my troopers.
I hoped that it was one of our dead. If it was one of my last survivors, it better not be Kivi. She’d be mad at me for years.
Regardless, I scrambled out of the truck and rushed the door.
I didn’t make it. To be honest, I hadn’t really expected to make it.
A big round caught me in the back and dropped me straight on my hands and knees. This one had gone through my armor—I saw the exit at the edge of my shoulder plate. Maybe it had hit a weak spot that had been hit before, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t really matter. I was lanced through, a sensation I knew all too well.
Getting hit by a hot bolt, rather than a solid kinetic like a bullet, caused a very different kind of wound. The heat burned you clean through. There wasn’t as much bleeding, because the vessels were cauterized to ash. But it wasn’t a pleasant way to go down. The tissue damage was tremendous, making more of your body non-functional immediately.
Knocked off my feet onto my face, I scrambled up—or tried to. Blood ran down, and the left side of my body didn’t work so good. My arm dangled loosely, and I had to lever myself up with my right. Fortunately, my right side was up to the task, and my rifle was attached to my suit.
Crawling, my armor took several more hits in the back as I made it under the vehicle and then into the power station. I took a second to look back.
Kivi was dead in the street. I’d be damned if the power truck hadn’t run right over her. Checking my HUD, I saw the others were dead-red, too.
Cursing, I did an about-face to go get her rucksack, but I knew it was no good. For one thing, the enemy was cautiously approaching from every side now. For another thing, Kivi’s ruck was crushed under the same wheel that pinned down her broken spine.
Not knowing what else to do, I staggered into the dark building and managed to get square onto my feet. A few twisty passages and rooms led me to something that looked important. It was a glowing light surrounded by water. A Geiger counter on the wall indicated dangerous levels of radiation. These rogues might have evolved over time to take more rads than we could.
Not seeing anything else to do, I shot the glass encasement, hoping to rupture it. To my surprise, it broke, releasing a spray of hot steam.
As my faceplate had cracked and my suit was no longer in one piece, I was good and seared by that heat. I did a little screaming, but I kept firing until my rifle was empty.
Lying on the floor to avoid any more steam, I tried to ram another charging pod into my weapon. It was harder than it should have been. I knew I was dying, and my fingers were fumbling. Doing it with one hand was damned near impossible.
A face loomed close to me then. It was a female face.
She was lovely. So long and thin, with high-cheekbones like a fashion model back home. She had eyes that were tight slits. A small mouth, a long neck and long hair.
To me, she looked very human, but almost surreal. It could have been my blood loss, but I didn’t think so.
Why do skinny women look so much better to me than skinny men? I don’t know, but they do.
“You’re lovely,” I croaked at her.
She pointed a rifle at me and crept closer. Her face took on a curious expression.
“You live?” she asked, speaking with a soft, sing-song voice. “Do you yield?”
“Yield? You mean give up?” I laughed at that. Blood bubbled out of me as I did so. “No, Legion Varus people never give up. I’ll die now, but I’ll just come back tomorrow and finish the job.”
“The tech-smiths simply wish to work unhindered to further our research,” she informed me.
As she spoke I noticed some sort of badge bearing crazy symbols on her clean white garment and wondered if it was her name or title or maybe some company logo.
“Why would you work so hard to end us?” she asked.
“End you? We’re just trying to get you off-planet. To evacuate your people, if possible.”
She shook her head bitterly. “No,” she said. “We have devices. We talked to those who agreed to leave—but now, they are no more.”
That made me frown. Damn it. I knew my people. I knew the hogs, including their leaders and those above them who ruled all of Earth. The decision-makers back home were perfectly capable of such deceit and cruelty.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said, “if it’s true.”
“Will you stop your madness, then?” she asked.
“No.”
“But why? We did not expect you to get this far. Such determination… Why fight and die just to kill us?”
“Because…” I said, my words interrupted by a disturbing gurgle. Air was beginning for form up around my lungs inside my chest. Soon, I knew, I wouldn’t be able to breathe at all. But that didn’t matter much.
“Because of the Galactics,” I told her. “They will erase all the human worlds if they find out what you’ve done here.”
“Ah,” she said, brightening. “You’ve spoken the first words I’ve heard from a human that I actually believe. All of it makes sense, if you are acting out of fear.”
“We are,” I said. “We always do that. My apologies.”
“It’s all right. I must apologize as well. We all have unpleasant acts we must perform.”
Then, she shot me dead in the eye.
I couldn’t blame her for that. In some ways, it was a relief.
-30-
When I came out of the revival machine, I wasn’t angry. I was reflective. I was still thinking of the tall, dream-like woman I’d met, and the things she’d said.
After escaping the prodding of the bio people, I headed for the tribune’s office. I skipped right by Graves, even though I knew that was rude.
Graves was in my direct chain of command, but I knew that telling him about what I’d learned would earn me nothing more than a shrug from him. He’d gladly put out a dozen blazing suns, freezing over planets teeming with people, in order to keep Earth safe. Hell, he’d do it just to nudge the odds in our favor. Death meant little to him.
It was only fools like me, in his view, that went around trying to find a less severe way to do things.
Before I could reach Tribune Deech, however, I had to get past Winslade. He personally intercepted me as I stepped foot onto Gold Deck.
“And what business might you have here, Centurion?” he demanded.
Winslade stood with his hands behind his back, no doubt clasped together. I suspected he might have a needler back there as well, hidden in his palm.
“Hello Primus,” I said. “I’ve got a report to make.”
His eyes became narrower and even more rat-like than usual. “Is that so? Under whose orders?”
“By order of Tribune Deech, of course.”
Winslade gave me an unpleasant chuckle. “Nice try, McGill, but I know you’re lying.”
“Did you know she visited my quarters the night before the drop?”
His snide demeanor faltered for a second. Normally, a man in his position would laugh off such an assertion, but he knew that I’d had a very special, and very inappropriate, relationship with Turov when she’d been running the show.
“That simply isn’t possible!” he snapped. “I would have known about it.”
“Impossible, huh? Just as unlikely as you managing to weasel your way into the graces of yet another high-ranking officer?”
At the mention of his “weaseling” his eyes flashed with dark anger. His hand came around from behind his back.
He was quick, and sneaky, but I was ready for him. I caught his hand with mine and clamped onto him.
“Let go of my hand, Centurion!” he said angrily.
“What? Sorry, sir, I thought you wanted to shake.”
As I said these words, I squeezed his hand for all I was worth. His face changed from rage to pain in a single moment. Then I heard a crackling sound. For a second, I thought maybe I’d broken a bone, but I quickly realized it was something else.
When I let go
of his hand, there was blood and a small, crushed device between our hands. The wrecked needler was no bigger than a fifty credit piece. They tended to be a little delicate.
I smiled as the broken weapon clattered onto the deck between us. My grip had crushed it. They were built to be hidden, not to endure abuse.
Apparently, one could say the same thing of Winslade’s hand. He shook it and cursed me through his clenched teeth. “Insubordinate little…”
“Well, Primus! It sure is lucky that weapon didn’t go off unexpectedly—one of us might have gotten hurt.”
“I’ll have you arrested and permed!” he shouted furiously. “You can’t assault a superior officer on this ship, McGill. I’ll—”
“That would be a mighty big mistake, sir,” I assured him. “I’m liable to confess all my sins if I get arrested now. That would be a crying shame. There are plenty of experiences you and I have shared in our checkered past which I think we’d both rather leave forgotten.”
He glowered at me, but after a moment, a look of alarm crept into his expression. After that, he narrowed his eyes again with a new sneaky thought.
“Wait—what are you talking about? No one would believe you. All those claims of treachery and collusion—they were all disproven years ago at hearings on Earth.”
“I’m sure they were,” I said, “but there might be proof of contradictions. Facts are stubborn things, Primus. There may be a few out there you wouldn’t care to have come to light.”
The truth was Winslade was guilty of a raft of crimes, most of which I was no doubt unaware of. But he knew all the things he’d buried over the years. He also knew that if I was going down, there was no reason for me to keep quiet, even if I implicated myself.
“Very well,” he snarled, clutching his hand. “Go talk to Deech, you’ll get nowhere. She makes Turov seem angelic by comparison.”
As I passed him by and made my way through the passages of Gold Deck, I had to admit I agreed with Winslade on one point. Turov was much better-looking than Deech.
“Centurion McGill…” she said as I entered her office. “Fancy meeting you here. I’ve heard quite a number of stories about you since our last encounter.”