by K. M. Herkes
“Yes, I can. We were there to protect innocents, not avoid losses. If that pyro had hit full ignition five minutes later, she would’ve incinerated five hundred people. You know how to do the right thing. Hansen and her butterbar don’t deserve you.”
Before rollover, Kris would have blushed at a compliment. She still felt a rush of warmth. It was good to be wanted. “Well, they have me. I’ll make the best of it.”
“There’s a bunk for you in our dorm if you want it. You get to request assignment after you re-test, you know. Your transfer was bullshit. It’s automatic after barracks violence, but in your case—the rotten assholes were gone, and us girls would’ve held your hand through the worst of the aftermath, if we’d been allowed. We’d love to have you back.”
“I can’t.” The thought of it sent fear washing over her. Knowing her assailants were dead—execution being the punishment meted out to all violent rollover criminals—that was the only reason she slept at all some nights. “No. I couldn’t handle the memories.” Specifically, she couldn’t handle seeing Jack Coby every day.
“Too bad,” Amy said. “Mandatory therapy is not bullshit, but bitch sessions and pedicures help too. Guess I’ll have to come and visit your new digs more often.” Amy stood and stretched, yawning. “Things are winding down. You don’t go home alone, not with that doggy collar on. You’d be a target for every bigoted redneck in the county. Want to come with me, or wait ‘til last call and let Jackass escort you?”
The dance floor was empty, and only a few tables were still occupied. Sergeant Coby and a T-series woman Kris didn’t recognize were deep in conversation in a booth. There was no reason to stay, and every reason to leave. “I’ll come with you, but I’m warning you now, it won’t work.”
“What won’t?”
“You’re going to spend the whole walk trying to talk me into transferring back. It won’t work.”
Amy grinned. “Smartypants. See why I want you on my team?”
They were nearly to the door when the plan fell apart. Two teleporters in uniform appeared back-to-back in the middle of the dance floor. One was looking straight at Kris.
“Locked,” she said, and the partner facing the other side of the room said, “Confirm lock.” The world turned inside out, and Kris sank knee-deep in snow.
Amy fell on her butt in a drift. “What the actual fuck?” she said, and the porters disappeared.
Chapter 2: Somewhere Definitely Not The Owl’s Nest Saloon
A sphere of dim red light floated overhead, illuminating a fifty foot circle of snow well enough make out the crates stacked at the center. Kris’s breath clouded the air in front of her face, clearing when she took in a lungful of searing cold. Her skin automatically rippled and thickened in response, and she held her breath until she was sure the pacifier would ignore the protective reflex.
Alarm klaxons and sirens wailed in the distance. Lieutenant Akron’s voice shouted orders nearby in the dark. The lit circle had the look of a night operation in progress, but that was where familiarity ended. But I’m off-duty was Kris’s first thought, followed by, And I’m restricted. And this isn’t even my unit any more.
Confusion was no excuse for inaction. Kris turned to check her six. Sergeant Coby had been scooped up too. All around, porters popped in with passengers and out again. Most of the arrivals were as inappropriately dressed as Kris was. Pinpoints of light flared and disappeared far out in the darkness too: Marines ’porting into perimeter positions. It was definitely a major op of some kind. A lumpy object fell out of nowhere, and she automatically lifted her arms to catch it.
Beside her, Amy cradled her own bundle of boots, harness and weapons. A pale figure who looked like an albino fox in a uniform trotted past in the distant gloom. Amy took a deep breath and bellowed, “LT, what the fuck is going on?”
“Shut up, suit up, and pump up,” Lieutenant Akron called back. “Brief in five.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Amy shook her head and started dressing.
Kris did the same. She was nearly done when a tingle of power stroked over her, lighting up her nerves and sending the pacifier into conniptions. “Not now,” she whispered at it as she buckled up. “That isn’t me. Behave, you stupid thing.” She did not want to be sedated in the middle of a crisis.
“Sorry, Stan. My bad,” Sergeant Coby said behind her. “I wanted to burn off the booze ASAP. Forgot about your collar already, because, y’know, drunk. Hang on.”
He moved into view shouting, “Iron on the LZ. I say again, we have iron on the LZ. All Tees clear fifty downwind before pumping up.”
He was already rigged for combat: uniform pants, harness and helmet on, eyes bright below the brim of the raised visor. How did he dress so fast? Kris wondered.
He carried a melee baton in one hand and a field radio in the other, and leftover energy from his rampage flare wisped off him in a glowing mist. The scutes of his full armoring bulged over bands of augmented muscle.
“You all right?” he asked.
Kris jammed her boots onto her feet with an aggravated stomp. “No, I’m not all right! I shouldn’t even be here. I’m restricted, dammit.” Her heart pounded, and the pacifier kept griping away, although it hadn’t started its warning vibration. Annoyance was a relatively safe emotion. “What kind of stupid fucking question is that, Sarge? What the actual fuck?”
The equipment harness would not cooperate. She loosened the buckles and muttered another few expletives under her breath. Before rollover, the worst word she’d ever said aloud was darn. Everything had changed since then.
Amy cleared her throat, loudly, and Kris froze. What am I thinking, sassing a sergeant?
Amy said, “I’m stepping aside to pump up, Stanny. Be right back.”
Sergeant Coby moved in, and Kris stumbled back a step without thinking.
Coby leaned back to look up, squinting at her. “There’s a trick with that, when it’s this cold. Lift your arms, and I’ll show you.” When Kris hesitated, he added mildly, “Want me to make that an order? Want Goodie to do it instead?”
The one question was a trap, the other was an admission of failure. Kris lifted her arms. Coby tugged at the snagged harness, just so, and everything slid into place over knobby armor and cloth. He backed off, and Kris did up the final buckles. Then she shrugged experimentally to see if she could do it herself next time.
She never doubted there would be a next time. Waking up sweating and terrified, knowing she was useless and a coward, bursting into tears for no reason at the strangest moments—when she suited up for work, those weaknesses disappeared, replaced by purpose and determination. She could do the job. It was just too bad she couldn’t do it properly today.
“I can’t join formation,” she pointed out. “Not with this collar on.”
“The iron is coming off,” Coby said, turning to survey the area. “Gunny! A hand, here.”
Kris tensed. “What? How? Only the psych board has the codes, and I’ll get in trou—”
Before she got any further, Gunnery Sergeant Rivera arrived. He was dark-skinned and bald, and had no physical variance at all, which meant he looked human in most circumstances and like a midget next to Sergeant Coby. He leaned way back to look Kris in the eye. “Worried about going on report? Now? Y’might want to rethink your priorities, Marine. I’m authorized for field evals, so bend over. This won’t hurt a bit.”
It was an order so she obeyed, but she wondered how he could remove the device without setting off the anti-tampering feature. Rivera could bench-press a whale and cross a football field too fast to be seen, but he wasn’t invulnerable. The explosion would knock Kris out. It would blow off the gunny’s arms.
He raised his hands and held them at her neck. “Who’s doing the honors?” he asked.
“Me,” Amy said, striding up. She really looked dragon-like now, with every spike raised in full armor, gold and thick. The LEDs on her custom headset were all lit too, glowing like jewels against her horns. She smiled down
at Kris and slipped her fingers under Rivera’s hands, around the pacifier. “See what we’re up to, smarty?” she asked.
Kris nodded. “You’re going to flare.” The activation protocol would give Rivera an instant’s leeway to yank it clear before it detonated, and Amy’s armor would protect him from the blast. “That will trigger me too, won’t it?”
“It’ll hit like a hammer,” Amy said. “Ride it and bank the power. You can do it.”
The gunny took a firm grip on Amy’s wrists. “On my mark. Three, two, one, mark.”
It was over so fast Kris didn’t even have time to blink. The night flared orange, heat blasted her face, Rivera was laughing—and the screaming power of Amy’s rampage hit like a kick to the spine. Kris bucked and shuddered as the fire in her body sparked awful memories of the last time she’d been pumped up this high. The need to use those pulsing, growing muscles drove out rational thought, demanding she destroy things. Her legs cramped with the strain of standing still when she needed to leap and run and hit-hit-hit the whole world.
Then Amy’s arms were around her. “Breathe, baby. Suck it in. Suck in the calm, blow out the excess, find the sweet spot.”
Kris inhaled Amy’s perfume along with all the other scents in the cold air, brought them deep into her chest. Pheromones could damp the internal shifts the same way they could send an uncontrolled rampage roaring through a whole T-series unit like a storm. She pictured herself balancing in the flow the way her daughter Eryka glided along smooth cold ice on the edge of a skate blade. The energy cooled in her veins, answering to her will, and she exhaled, whistling.
Rivera brushed debris off his hands and handed Kris her combat helmet. “Not bad for a boot. I like a fast learner.”
Amy followed him when he walked away, and Kris fell in behind her. They joined the crowd gathering around the supply drop. Tents, frames and tech were unboxed, and the command post went up in less than ten minutes. Sergeant Coby huddled up there with Rivera and a Tee wearing sergeant’s insignia who Kris didn’t know.
She only recognized a dozen people, in fact, and when a short woman went zipping by with a power cable, Kris spotted a unit badge she didn’t remember. She eyed the other personnel—seven Tees, two pyros shimmering with heat on bare patches of ground, a variety pack of carnies whose powers could not be discerned from their variant bodies, others looking as human as any null—and then sorted through her mental file of scenarios.
More than a platoon was present, but no squad was represented in full, and most of them had arrived unprepared. This was a scratch op, and that meant the whole Battalion was responding to emergencies. Multiple rollovers or unsanctioned power demonstrations must happening at once.
They were deployed in an attack formation, not the standard envelopment used to contain a hot rollover. All around there was only snow, more snow and a low, rolling horizon. The frigid air carried trace odors of old vegetable oil, smoke, sulfur and metal. The scents told Kris there were paved roads nearby, and a kitchen large enough to need a commercial grease trap.
“High-power meltdown at a DPS camp,” she said, thinking aloud. “A new quakemaker or pyro, judging from the number of Tees here. Where, I wonder? Is this Kansas? Alaska? Is DPSC Anchorage on flatlands?”
“It’s Kansas,” Lieutenant Akron said as he passed by. His tail was flicking in agitation. “You want to run the briefing for me, lance corporal?”
Kris wanted to sink right into the snow and die. Her body had other ideas about what to do with the embarrassment. Her dorsal spines rose and went rigid, and her harness creaked as scutes shifted and settled.
Amy elbowed her in the ribs. “Down, Marine.”
Lieutenant Akron stopped beside Gunny Rivera under the command post awning. His pointy ears swiveled back and forth as he looked over the gathered troops.
When he was done making them all wait, he said, “Listen up, people. Mercury is riding a rollover cluster tonight. Over a dozen deployments nationwide. Every on-duty unit was already engaged when a divination tip came in from a fortuneteller in Allegheny. We’re stuck punching the hunch ticket on a breakout prevention.”
He bared his teeth at the collective groan that met his announcement. “Yes it’s possible we’re here for nothing, but if the stars align wrong, then a new R1-A is about to go natural catastrophe all over DPSC Fort Atkinson. She’s a plate-shaker. If the situation develops as predicted, we are tasked to stop her at all costs.”
He went over the details of the plan, and Kris was struck by its similarity to the containment scenario she and Amy had discussed at the party. The differences made this a far riskier proposition. Detaining an unwilling intern on the verge of rollover was one thing. Stopping someone who could already express her new talents was another.
If the earthmover did commandeer a departing bus full of visitors in a doomed escape attempt, then she was as good as dead. Even the trapped visitors in the bus would be considered expendable balanced against the population of the state or the eastern half of the country. An earthmover who could interfere with plate tectonics was a threat to millions.
Kris understood the woman’s desperation all too well. She wanted to go home too. She wanted to tuck her children into bed, to cook suppers and box up lunches, to return to an everyday life. Some days, her heart ached from wake-up to lights-out, and every glimpse of regular life was a reminder of what she’d lost.
Sympathy would not stand in the way of duty. Contain, protect, preserve: that was the motto of Mercury Battalion. Kris had waved good-bye to a camp bus carrying away her children every weekend once she’d finished rollover and earned the right to visitations, before she went to Mercury to star her real training. In her mind’s eye, she saw Eryka’s smiling face pressed against a window, could see her waving back. When she imagined that bus sinking into a fiery mass of lava, her heart thumped and her breath shortened.
The earthmover’s name was Grace Bell. The lieutenant added that humanizing touch apologetically, but Kris was glad to have a name to put into her prayers. Predictions went wrong. A tiny element changed, and a crisis never happened. She sent her hopes rising to heaven in silence, and she followed Amy and Sergeant Coby to their designated ready point.
They were the reserve. If they went into action, it would mean dozens were already dead and thousands more were doomed. If the primary team failed, then she, Amy, and Coby were charged with pinning down Grace long enough that an orbital bombardment could be precision-targeted. Kris had started the night terrified of a bar fight. The possibility of being pulverized in an artificial meteorite strike before dawn really put things in perspective.
She prayed for Eryka and Matty, and even for Matheus, should she die here. Most of all she prayed Grace Bell found the strength to not break down and start a chain of destruction that might kill them all.
The rest of their team—four porters and an air elemental—joined them, and Sergeant Coby ran a capabilities-and-limitations briefing. Then he insisted on role-playing potential scenarios while they waited for orders. Kris appreciated the effort. Dry runs were no substitute for unit experience, but studying maps and walking through mission variants kept everyone too busy to contemplate the odds.
The primary force could level a small city in short order, but it might not be enough. Their leader was the strongest earthmover available: a reservist whose control was precise enough to make rock flow like water. She was backed up by three Tees from Lone Star company and two pyros from NYC. Their potential opponent was magnitudes more powerful than all of them put together.
Please let the threat window pass, Kris prayed once more, after finishing a scenario that left her and Sergeant Coby a hundred yards from the rest of the team. Let it be a false alarm.
She jumped six inches when the sergeant said, “You ready for this, Stan?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Her temper spiked. She’d been transferred to a shitbird squad and stuck with a collar after that night, and Coby had gotten a promotion out of the incid
ent. There was only so much unfairness a woman could swallow. “Why are you always riding my ass? You’ve been on my back ever since Day One when you went and told the whole squad to call me Stan. Do you know what that felt like? Do you know what it did to me?”
A few of her new teammates had used that name against her at every opportunity. They’d made it a slur against her femininity, wearing down her belief in herself. Encouraged by her silence, the predators nipped and chivvied her until she was exhausted, and then they’d pulled her down. Not her fault, her counselor kept telling her, but she still wondered what would’ve happened if she’d stood up for herself at the start.
And now she wondered, why is he letting me get away with this now?
Coby looked down. “I didn’t see it, no. Not until too late. It was the teeth.”
“What about them?” Instantly she saw his slashing fangs, splashing blood everywhere, heard his bass voice roaring, bestial with fury, saw bright eyes maddened with pain and humiliation, locking with hers across a white tile floor smeared with red. Felt the burning power of his rampage carry her into a wild place where only violence made sense.
She bit her tongue, fighting the flashback. Comprehension burst through her on the metallic taste of blood. K was the toughest consonant to relearn after rollover. It slid the tongue along the side fangs. Some Tees never mastered it. Good Lord. He deliberately picked nicknames that were easier to say.
“You’re hesitating,” Coby said abruptly. “Tonight. You freeze up any time I’m near you. If I remind you—if you can’t focus—I’ll stand you down.”
The threat shocked her. If he excluded her and the others died, how would she live with herself? Wait. It isn’t a threat. It’s an offer. If Coby sidelined her, then she would be safe, as safe as possible, anyway. He was trying to go easy on her.