Black Hawks From a Blue Sun
Page 16
“Geek. Med-kit.”
Beckert jumps to Argo’s equipment and retrieves the kit. He sets it beside the Brick and opens it for him.
Argo reaches toward the tools and winces. Grimacing through the pain, he reaches again and selects his injector. After setting a deep needle depth, he loads a phial into the back of it. Pressing the injector head against his shoulder, he triggers a dose. Swapping hands, he presses the injector against his other shoulder and triggers. Relief smoothes the creases on his weathered face. He wipes his brow and replaces the tool in the kit.
“That was interesting,” he mutters. He rotates his huge arms slowly, working the medicine into the inflamed tissues.
“How do they feel?” Thompson asks.
“Same as before.” Argo looks up at his friend. “Did a good job reducing the joints. Thanks.”
Thompson extends a hand and pulls the big man to his feet.
“Gear up. We’re mov…” Thompson breaks off mid-sentence, cocking his head. The crackle of thrust, then the whistle of hovering turbines grows louder through the narrow corridor.
Argo runs to his armor and starts dressing.
“Sergeant!” Thompson calls urgently. “Does this tunnel lead anywhere?”
“Yes, Major. Big complex. I couldn’t get in, but I’m sure the Lieutenant…”
Thompson strides to the lifter before Beckert finishes his thought. He spins his rifle around and smashes the hydraulic fittings with the butt. Centuries old fluid jets from the broken hoses, and the lifter’s arms descend. The concrete slab grates against the tunnel wall as it lowers then slides from the top of the lifter’s pilot cage. The movement flops the lifter onto its back and the slab comes to rest in front of the corridor, blocking all but a tiny gap.
The Gun runs to the sacks of media records and climbs inside the harness. Argo is fully dressed, sliding his equipment rack into the rails of his armor. The rack sets with a click and he hefts his cannon. Thompson looks him over.
“Amazing we got you through.”
“Yeah,” Argo says, shrugging his aching shoulders. “Let’s go a different way next time.”
Thompson turns to Beckert, who is occupied with a brood of black masked animals at his feet. The Geek tosses something into a corner and the animals go skittering after it.
“Sergeant, on point.”
Beckert nods the affirmative and dashes into the darkness, pistols drawn.
The young operator leads them through kilometers of dark tunnel, up the slick rise, past the acidic tendrils, on to the traffic jam of trains.
Argo’s bulk compresses the train roofs noisily, and the din echoes in the close tunnel. Eager for an end to the metallic groans and pings of popping rivets, the team runs into the wide station.
Beckert leads them to the front of the train and leaps down to the platform. Thompson and Argo thud down beside him, stunned at the scale of death around them.
“Was this a battle?” Argo asks.
“I don’t see any blast marks,” Thompson counters. “What do you make of it, Geek?”
“I think these people were already dying, sir.” The Geek points at the tent with the red cross. “A medical officer was euthanizing them.”
Labset in hand, Argo taps his thumbs against the screen. He strides to the stacks of bones along the wall and sweeps the labset over them.
“I’m not finding isotopes in the remains. But there is a radiation source nearby.” The Brick pivots until he is facing the station hub. “Inside the complex, I’d say.”
Thompson brightens his lamps for a better look, and the bones sparkle as though in a frost. Everywhere he pans his light, reflections twinkle from within the heaps of dead.
He crouches and digs through dusty webs into tangled bones. His hand retrieves a scrap of cloth, something glinting in the middle of it. He flips the cloth over and finds the gold bar of a second lieutenant’s rank insignia.
His hand plunges in again, retrieving a gold insignia with seven leaves in the shape of a star, stem down. The Gun recognizes his own rank of major.
Beckert searches the piles at his feet, coming up with lieutenants, captains, and a lieutenant colonel.
“They’re all officers…”
Thompson nods heavily and continues digging. Toward the bottom of his pile, he finds laminated ID cards, crusted with thick dust. He rubs the dust clear on one of them.
“Lieutenant James Dunbar,” he reads.
Thompson studies the man’s face. The skin is light and even, free of burns or scars. The hair is receded to the top of the man’s head and is close-cropped with patches of gray at the temples. The smile shows white, even teeth.
Unusual to make lieutenant without a mark, he thinks. You must have been a superior soldier.
Flipping Dunbar’s ID to the back of the short stack, Thompson clears the front of the next card. The woman pictured has skin of the deepest brown, and her dark hair curls tightly against her head. Her jaw line is angled and delicate, her lips full. Penetrating eyes stare out from the photograph.
“Major Naresa Embiko.”
Like Dunbar, the woman is free of scars. Thompson mentally conjures Major Chusan and Major Ralla, both of whom bear a visual testament to the trials they have survived—Chusan, especially, with a face that is mostly skin grafts.
Reaching Lieutenant unmarked is a feat. Reaching Major unscathed…that’s unheard of!
Thompson clears the remaining two cards and fans them like a short poker hand. With their ethnic variety and even complexions, the soldiers in the photos resemble colonists more than cadre. And not one of them shows the grim intensity of an operator. Not one.
He tosses the cards back at the skeletons, wondering if these faces represent the future of a blended colonist/cadre population. The thought of new generations inheriting colonist frailty is taxing. But the bones remind him these faces belonged to living people. His disgust at their weakness shames him.
“Major, have a look at this.”
Thompson looks up to see Beckert standing at the entrance to the main archway, staring straight ahead.
The Gun jogs over and glances into the four-meter-tall hallway. About ten meters in, a floor-to-ceiling gate blocks entry with stout bars. At the base of the gate a pile of bone stands two and a half meters high like a frozen wave.
Thompson’s eyes squint at the spectacle. He takes tentative strides into the hallway, noting the gravel of crushed bone underfoot. Dark stains cover the floor and streak the bare concrete walls.
From the bone pile’s density, he guesses in life the bodies must have reached the ceiling. Testing his theory, he shines his lights to the top of the gate. Dark stains smear the arch.
“They trampled one another, trying to get in,” Thompson announces.
“But why weren’t they let through?”
Thompson wades into the pile. Brittle bones snap and collapse at his touch, wafting clouds of dust, and he lowers his face plate.
The pile rises past his chest, and the Gun uses his rifle butt like a spade to clear a path. He finds compact footing the closer he gets to the gate—the pulverized remains of those crushed by a panicked mob.
That soldiers could do this…officers, no less…it’s inconceivable!
Standing at the bars, Thompson looks into a wider chamber with sentry posts on each side. Bone fragments spill through the bars, littering most of the chamber floor. Bullet holes and dark spatters mar the wall of the left sentry post. Streaks from the spatters lead down to a skeleton wearing a flak vest, an open faced helmet, and boots. A small handgun lies beside the remains.
Beyond the chamber, the arched hallway continues many meters before ending at a vault-like door. A large eagle, wings spread, is emblazoned on the door with a vertically striped shield over its body. Above its head is a circular field with stars arranged in a six-pointed-star pattern. One talon grasps a branch with leaves and berries, the other grasps a cluster of arrows. The eagle’s beak holds a flying banner, reading, “E.
PLURIBUS UNUM”, and beneath the eagle the number “1775” is printed boldly.
Thompson studies the emblem, observing the recurrence of the number thirteen: the stripes on the shield, the stars in the circular field, the number of leaves and berries on the branch, the number of arrow heads, the number of letters in E PLURIBUS UNUM. The significance eludes him.
His eyes fall to the stout bars of the gate. Time seems to have had little effect on them. He grasps with one hand and pulls, but the gate is firmly rooted. Polished metal shines in the spot his hand rubbed clean.
Thompson wades back toward Beckert, crunching and snapping through the dusty bones.
“Get Brick.”
“Aye, sir.” The young operator runs back to the platform, where the medical tent glows with internal light. Beckert runs up and throws back the tent flap. Argo stands facing the surgeon’s skeleton, examining the injector.
“It’s just as you said,” Argo says, turning to face his comrade. “He was euthanizing them.”
“Lieutenant, the Major is asking for you.”
Argo’s eyebrows lift, and he tosses the injector into the dead surgeon’s lap. The skeleton collapses.
“Let’s go, then.”
Beckert leads the Brick into the arched hallway. Thompson waves to the big man, beckoning him toward the gate.
“There’s a barricade we need to get past,” Thompson states.
“Ok. What are we looking at?”
“Solid core, steel alloy. Nickel based, most likely.”
The Brick sets his cannon down and strides up the path Thompson made through the bones, enlarging it. He leans close, inspecting the bars Thompson rubbed clean.
“Yup, nickel based,” the big man confirms. “Good welds, too.” He grabs the bars with both hands and rattles violently. “Don’t typically see this alloy outside of engines and reactors.”
“Why’s that?” the Gun asks.
Argo faces his friend. “Thermal tolerances are very high. My torch won’t cut it.” He turns back to the rugged bars. “Gonna take a while to grind.”
“Can’t you blast it?”
“I’d bring the roof down.” Argo juts his lower lip. “And this gate would probably still be standing.”
Thompson grimaces. “Get started. I’ll keep watch.”
“Understood.” Argo steps from the pile and removes his back rack. He pulls a rugged power tool from a compartment and fishes for a drill bit.
Thompson crooks a finger at Beckert, indicating he should follow. The Gun leads the young operator out onto the platform.
“Start scouting the other tunnels. Move fast, engage nothing. When you return, challenge word is redline. The reply word is blueshift. Understood?”
“Aye, sir. Redline, blueshift.”
“On your way.”
Beckert salutes. He leaps up to the nearest train roof and fades quietly into the darkness.
“Should be ten to fifteen minutes per bar,” the Brick yells from the hallway, “provided the bits hold out.”
Thompson nods. “Sooner is better, Argo.”
“Roger, that.” Argo’s grinder shrieks to action. He lays into the rounded bars, sweeping the bit up and down with a storm of sparks.
Thompson leaps up to a nearby train roof and walks out into the open station. Once he has a good view of the adjacent tunnels, he takes a knee and clicks his lights off. One tunnel glows with light, dimming quickly as Beckert progresses deeper into it.
Good hunting, Sergeant.
The Gun lifts the rifle scope to his eye and sweeps like a turret. No heat sources are visible, no motion, only the fading light from Beckert’s tunnel and the metallic screech from the archway. And the sea of dead surrounding him…
Thoughts of these people trickle through his mind: thousands shambling and crowding in search of safety, the panic and terror which drove them to trample one another, the sentry who witnessed a flood of people breaking against his gate but would not or could not let them in. He shivers, gripping his rifle for reassurance.
His thoughts turn to the enemy, the ones responsible for the chaos and destruction, the ones responsible for humanity’s annihilation and the Cadre’s desolate life among the stars. Do they know where he and his team are? Are they waiting above for them?
He looks straight into the tunnel which brought them out of Washington. The sparks from Argo’s grinding provide just enough light for night vision, and Thompson traces the dented roofs back.
If the enemy gets through that corridor, we left an easy trail to follow.
Operator instincts urge him to keep moving, to do anything but loiter here. It feels like madness to stay.
He looks over his shoulder at the gate. By Beckert’s reckoning, a military command center lies beyond that portal with the promise of answers, technology, and information. The temptation is too great to pass.
A loud clang precedes the cessation of Argo’s grinding.
“Blast it!” the Brick curses.
“You all right?” Thompson calls out.
“Broken bit,” the big man yells back. After a moment, the grinder spins up again. Argo leans into the obstinate bars, showering himself and the dusty bones with sparks.
While the grinder roars on and on, Thompson maintains his rigid stance. His eyes scan one tunnel to the next and back. Steely arms keep his weapon level, ready for the slightest hint of the enemy.
His stomach growls, reminding him of the six hours since he and his team ate.
He thinks about the idea of food, the mess, the waste.
With all they know about physiology, I’d think the MedTechs could give us a battery. Or something…
The Gun’s mind wanders in the low light. He thinks about Cadre One, his home, and how it came to be that a life of service earned him and Argo permanent exile.
By murdering your own kind, he recalls bitterly.
The muscles of his jaw flex. Even if I wasn’t exiled, there’s no home in the Cadre anymore. Criminal, unforgiven, despised, I’m an outcast in the very halls I live to defend. And the Europa? Too much harm done. I could never outlive the suspicion, the latent mistrust.
It was a relief to be chosen for this mission, he admits to himself. It was an honorable solution, and I owe the Counselor a debt of gratitude…
If not for the Counselor, our two groups would never have a chance.
Thompson contemplates the white-coated man, wondering how he convinced General O’Kai to give him custody of Maiella. Smart as the Counselor is, however, the thought of him supervising the rowdy woman makes him grin.
She’ll test you, Counselor, I have no doubt.
His sharp eyes continue the vigil when it suddenly occurs to him that this planet is home now. Not the Europa, nor Cadre One, but this world—with its toothy predators, sweet air, and flowing waters—is home.
The thin shell of gases around the planet are perfectly balanced for human respiration. The dense web of life, its interdependence and competition, ensnares him with its lure of abundance. The incredible vistas from the mountains and hills, the warmth of a yellow sun instead of the withering rays of the Cadre’s blue sun…
The dried-out remains below are proof enough that humanity once flourished here, but more than proof, he feels a belonging. Dormant parts of him were awakened with his first breath of open, planetary air.
Having Maiella with him would complete the ideal. If she were here, instead of Beckert, they could transmit the mission data to the orbital relay and escape to the wilderness, maybe live for a while at least. But she is not with them, and his promise to O’Kai was sincere.
Sending Beckert back will require transport, and that means directly confronting this enemy to get it. For the Geek to have any hope of escape, he and Argo will have to remain behind and hold the enemy back, somehow.
With all the firepower in orbit, Argo and I won’t last long.
The Gun sniffs hard, shoving the gloomy thoughts aside.
It’s a good death. He looks dow
n at the skeletons, his face hardening. And the blueskins are gonna feel it.
The grinder winds down unexpectedly.
“Gun, contact!”
Thompson spins in his crouch, rifle ready. Argo snatches his cannon and runs out of the hallway. He swings past the corner and takes a knee, aiming the big weapon toward the gate.
The Gun zooms the view in his scope. Five bars of the gate are severed, telling him Argo was cutting for over an hour.