by K. M. Herkes
For the first time, she wondered if Coby felt the same guilt everyone kept telling her that she shouldn’t feel. She looked down at the top of his helmet, at the vulnerable back of his neck, and she knew the answer. She hadn’t been the only victim that night.
Her tears ran down her throat because her eyes no longer allowed them to spill out. “I don’t hate you for not saving me,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault. I should’ve stopped them before it got out of hand.”
When the sergeant looked up, his expression was full of shocked anger. “That’s bullshit. I should’ve seen you were vulnerable. I should’ve put those fuckers on report the first time one of them made a pass. I should’ve kicked —”
Kris raised a hand, and he stopped speaking. God, he really is young. He tried so hard, just like I did. Her attackers had been sentenced and executed. Maybe it was time to bury all the should-haves with them. Her heart thudded hard, and muscles shifted under her skin. “I’m in, Sarge. I won’t freeze, I swear. Count on me.”
Coby’s face slowly went blank, hardening to the steady, impersonal mask Kris was used to seeing. Then he nodded. “Good.”
The ground underfoot quivered, the air rumbled, and then the earth shook hard. Above the horizon to the south, the sky glowed red, under-lighting a plume of gray smoke. Lightning splayed through the smoke. The lieutenant’s voice spoke in Kris’s helmet speaker, crackling with static. “Team One, you’re a go.”
Less than ten minutes later, he said, “Team Two, move to Point Charlie. Containment and ‘port-out both failed. We have a standoff. Engage on judgment.”
Point Charlie was a slight rise outside the Fort Atkinson camp gates. Their access porter missed the altitude and brought them in twenty feet too high. Kris sank to her ankles in frozen dirt on landing. Coby and Amy crashed down on her left, and snow lifted around them in a whirlwind as their air elemental—Private Erica Rasmussen, from North Dakota by way of Empire Company—brought herself and their three extraction porters safely to earth. She collapsed into a snow bank with a cry of pain.
The exit porters started cursing their absent compatriot over the radio. Kris lifted the elemental clear of her snowy nest. “Ankle?”
“No. Backlash. I’m drained. Oh, shizzle.” The woman bent double and clutched her head with both hands. “Ouch. Pug knuckles, that hurts.”
“Fast thinking.” Coby halted beside Kris. Steam rose off his armor where snow had melted already. “I was sure we’d be cleaning up porter pancakes.”
Kris realized with a stab of jealousy that the sergeant had recovered from a worse landing than hers, checked on the teleporters, and oriented himself in the time it took her to help the air elemental stand up.
Practice makes perfect, she reminded herself, and thought of how many times she’d said that after her daughter’s skating lessons, after cheering for her son at track meets, after clapping at debate competitions. Coby had been a Marine most of his life. He’d had a lot of practice landing on his feet.
Rasmussen said, “I’m empty, Sarge. I’m a close-in specialist, not a force generator.”
“You saved lives. All that matters. Hold here with the go teams.” He looked down the hill. “You never would’ve had a chance for a chokeout anyway. Look at that.”
Kris followed his gaze. Just outside the camp gates, a standard visitation bus had run off the road and sunk to the wheel wells in mud. That stretch of road—a hundred feet in front and a hundred behind the bus—now sat at the bottom of a crater with sheer, raw walls at least thirty feet high. A bright fountain of lava bubbled up from the ground a few yards in front of the vehicle. The surface of the fluid was cooling to black, but it still crackled orange within, and it was piling up in mounds that crept in worm-like lines towards the bus.
Steam and smoke rose in clouds from the disrupted earth and the lava flow, obscuring most details, but the bus’s gray and white paint scheme made it stand out. The roof had a charred hole in it, right in the center. A woman dressed in nothing but a glowing cloud of power stood beside that opening, gesturing up at the trio of Tees and the earthmover at the top of the cliff.
“That,” Sergeant Coby said, “is one hell of a standoff. We’re definitely looking at a K-strike. Where are the pyros?”
Amy joined them and pointed to two lumps in the roiled earth near the bus. The air shimmered over them, hot enough to dispel the rising fog. “There, I’ll bet. She got the jump on them.”
The conversation between the primary team and Grace Bell was inaudible, but the screams and cries of the bus’s remaining occupants carried up the hill on a hot, stinking breeze. Even as Kris took in the scene, those voices got weaker and fell silent. Her stomach knotted up. Her daughter had done a whole science fair project on volcanoes once. She’d been fascinated by all the various ways an eruption could kill people.
She whirled back to Rasmussen. “Do you have anything left, Private? There’s gas coming up with that lava. They’re dying, down there.”
Rasmussen groaned and got to her feet, only to go down with a sob a second later. “I can feed in some oh-two, maybe a few minutes’ worth.”
Sergeant Coby keyed his field radio. “We need air reserve in the hot zone, LT. Any and all air that can be spared. One with wings would be nice.”
“Negative,” came the response. “They’re needed for camp evac. Zeus is ready to roll, and the satellite clears horizon in five mikes. Keep the target distracted, keep your exit lines clear.”
Sergeant Coby pressed the radio to his forehead. Kris stifled a mixed impulse to either to pat him on the shoulder or burst into tears. A moment later, Coby said, “Goodie, Stan, on me. Let’s go pretend to be backup.”
Chapter 3: Incident Site, near Fort Atkinson, Kansas
A quick jog brought them to the edge of the crater just as two small figures emerged from the bus to sit at Grace’s feet. The fog rising to the bus roof now. Kris could barely see the children, but she could imagine them all too clearly. She knew the faces that went with wails like the ones she was hearing. Their eyes would be squeezed tight shut against the unfairness of the world, mouths full of white baby teeth opened wide to cry out all the misery ever felt, and their faces would be streaked with dirt and tears.
“Please, oh, please, someone help,” Grace shouted, down in the fog. “I don’t want this. I didn’t mean to do any of this. Please don’t let me hurt anyone else. Please, please, please, someone stop this. Please save my babies. I only wanted to go home. I only want to go home and stop feeling all of this. Please make this stop.”
Kris’s heart broke, listening to that plea, and when she looked away, she saw the earthmover from Team One crying without shame. The woman had dramatic gray eyes in a dark brown face, and her features were crumpled up with a grief that looked as deep as the emotion ripping through Kris’s chest. Her lips were moving.
“Poor babies,” she was saying, over and over.
“Help me,” Grace Bell screamed, and the world shuddered beneath their feet and kept on shaking.
An idea hit Kris out of nowhere. It was crazy, but it would save lives even if it failed in part. She made herself stop thinking about the possible cost. Everyone on that bus had a family. Everyone in the camp, all the hundreds who would never be evacuated in time to avoid becoming collateral damage in the strike, all of them had lives too. Her plan would be better.
“We can stop this,” she said and glanced at the earthmover’s badge. “Corporal Evans. You and me. You’re a stone-caller, right? You’re blocking as much as you can, but she’s too strong, right? You want to help me save those babies?”
Evans nodded fast. “How?”
“We go in. You shield us, I get her up where it’s cold and airless and there’s no earth to keep pushing at her. She’s out of control now. Maybe she gets herself together. Maybe not. At least she gets a chance, and if it doesn’t work—well.” The two of them would smash into the planet instead of the rock the Zeus satellite was maneuvering into place now. The
fringe benefit was that they could be aimed somewhere safe and isolated. Somewhere not here. “You got that?”
“Got it.” Evans took a deep breath. “Let’s do it. Gotta be fast.”
“Sarge,” Kris said, turning to Coby. “I have an idea.”
He was listening to something, head down, nodding. He held up a finger: wait. Amy looked down at Kris with narrowed eyes. She stood head and shoulders over the sergeant, at his back like a guardian statue. Wait, she mouthed.
A chunk of the crater’s raw earth wall broke and slid loose like a calving glacier. Kris’s lips lifted off her teeth in an involuntary snarl. The time to wait was over. She hit the radio channel for the exit porters back on the hilltop. “Exit, Corporal Stanislav. I need a quick-and-dirty lift to that bus, and five seconds after, I’ll need a boost straight up. How high can you send me?”
“For fuck’s sake, do you people talk to each other? Ben just told your sergeant we can put one of you in orbit if you want,” came the dry response. “Problem is that we can’t guarantee you’ll hit the roof, and we sure can’t bring you back. No line of sight, no radio beacon. Why the fuck—”
“On my mark, send me in. Five seconds, take me out to the edge of atmosphere.” Kris and pulled Evans into a tight embrace with one arm. The ground underfoot shook harder, and a low rumble built in the air. “Vector it horizontal, if you can. Get satellite tracking on us ASAP, after. I don’t think we’d survive reentry.”
“Uh—you, private? Say again?”
Kris snapped, “Yes, me. Do your damned job. On my mark.”
“Shit,” the porter said. “Okay, your funeral.”
Amy had stopped eavesdropping on Coby’s conversation and started listening to Kris. She was shaking her head. No time to waste. Kris lifted her free hand in farewell. “Mark.”
The world slid sideways, and she was standing in fog that reeked like rotten eggs in a hot locker room. There was nothing in front of her. She spun around. Evans yelped as she was swung off her feet, and then Kris was staring up at the bright glowing form of Grace Bell. The woman was being swallowed alive by power she could not contain.
“Help,” she whispered, and her children screamed.
Evans hummed a note under her breath. The bus listed sideways, and the children shrieked again, carried away from their mother on a rising wave of pale stone. Kris leaped for Grace, and the rock kept rising behind the woman like rolling surf.
The wave came crashing down on them both just as the world slid sideways again. Stone pressed into Kris from all sides like a giant’s hand, squeezing tight. She hadn’t noticed the porter cursing in her radio earpiece until his voice abruptly cut off.
The cocoon of rock loosened to a shell at arm’s length as Grace’s power flared. Kris took a breath, amazed. Air from rock: only one or two R-series rollovers in history had ever come into that kind of power. Her stomach and her ears sloshed, and dizziness washed over her. This time, the targeting on the teleport must’ve been perfect. Gravity was barely a force, gently pulling her backwards as if she was halfway falling into nowhere.
Grace flailed, kicking and screaming, and it took every bit of Kris’s self-control to keep from crushing her in self-defense. The woman was tiny and as soft as a pillow. Kris could have beaten her in a fight even before she hit rollover and changed into what she was now. She let her own power rise, edging to the precipice of full rampage. Then she made her arms and body into a cage, containing Grace the way she’d held Matty when he was a toddler throwing tantrums.
“Shh,” she said. “I’ve got you. Calm down. Don’t stretch that stone too thin, there’s nothing outside but space. Be calm. Ride the power, they tell us Tees. Can’t be too different for you. Get a grip on it, and everything will be fine.”
“Oh—oh—oh!” Grace shivered as if she was freezing to death, but her body was feverish hot. “I couldn’t bear it, I had to get out, and oh, God, he said no, I had to stay, and they made me get off the bus, and I got so angry, and—I killed him, and the world started coming apart, and I can’t. I can’t. I killed him, didn’t I? What am I going to do?”
“Be strong,” Kris said. “I don’t know who you killed, but your kids are alive, and they need their mother. Don’t leave them alone.”
“I can’t,” Grace whispered. The shivers got worse, and the soft flesh against Kris’s arms began to harden. “It’s too late for me. I can feel it coming up inside. It’s going to come out. I can’t do it.”
“You can. You can be as strong as you need to be,” Kris said, but Grace only whimpered, and her body shook until the tremors became one long unending spasm.
She kept getting hotter too, until everywhere their bodies touched felt as if it was about to burst into flames. Kris growled and let herself tip into full rampage as smoke rose off her armor. Her vision sharpened and went red around the edges, and the pain disappeared. Her body sang with strength, and she felt invulnerable.
Grace turned, pulling in her legs, and rested a hand against Kris’s shoulder. The armor sizzled and popped. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for saving them. Tell them I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough.”
And then she melted away, flaring bright orange and then white-hot, molten and excruciating. The flow splashed over Kris’s throat and mouth, smothering her screams, and then the stone shell around her shattered, bursting outward in a powdery, soundless explosion. Before she lost consciousness, she saw stars in their millions, spangled across a velvet black sky.
Chapter 4: Aftermath, Incident Site near Fort Atkinson, Kansas
Dawn cast a warm pink glow over white snow and torn black soil before the recovery team brought a scorched lump of fused rock and flesh safely back to earth. The mass came to rest near the center of a huge clearing which had been a crater a few hours earlier. Murmurs rose from a waiting crowd. A scattering of hesitant applause followed.
Jack Coby shouldered his way to the front of the officers and journalists who had gathered on short notice for this event. They wouldn’t have given way for him, a lowly sergeant, but in front of him walked Colonel Galloway and Lieutenant Akron. Today, for once, everyone was giving Mercury Battalion’s commander and her chosen representatives the respect they deserved.
The previous night had been the worst outbreak of uncontrolled power incidents since the first wave of rollovers occurred in the forties. Tens of thousands had died on that long-ago day, and the property damage climbed into the millions of dollars before the accounting was done.
Last night’s casualty count was under twenty, nationwide, and even the land here at ground zero of the worst containment was on its way back to normal only hours later. Mercury Battalion had done itself proud, and it was only right that its commander be first on the scene for the return of one of her own.
Kris’s sacrifice had saved thousands at the very least. That fact might be enough, Jack thought, to someday forgive her for doing it. Right now, only exhaustion was keeping him off an emotional cliff. If one more person congratulated him on his quick thinking and command ability, he was going to hurt someone.
Behind him came the rest of the Gateway Company personnel who’d been scrambled for the containment here. They were somber, as befitted the occasion, but their heads were up, their faces shining with pride, and in most cases with tears. They were here to bring home their fallen.
Retrieving a human-sized object from high-atmosphere before it burned up on re-entry had taken the coordinated efforts of two teleporters, three telekinetics and two flight-capable air elementals. The mostly-civilian team stood in a huddle around the object of their efforts, and as the last elemental landed, he spread his wings wide, hiding the scene from all the prying, curious eyes.
A moment later, the team leader turned and yelled out, “MEDIC!”
Chapter 5: Marine Camp Butler, Elgin, Illinois
Kris didn’t expect to wake up, but she did.
Every part of her body hurt. Her teeth hurt. Her feet hurt. Even her eyebrows hurt. There
were enough aches in enough places, to make her tremble with panicky memories, and that brought her trembling to the edge of rampage, with power pulsing into her veins. It smothered the worst pain, and some of the scabbed burns that covered her from her stinging scalp to her sore toes began to tingle and heal.
She took her time sitting up and setting aside flashes of the past. Once she was vertical, she swallowed pain that had nothing to do with her troubles now, and she gently put all the guilt and the grief back in their boxes. She went to tuck a curl of hair behind her ears but found only bare skin and more scabs. Her head was bare, and her eyebrows hurt because they were gone.
As soon as she looked around the room, she recognized it as one of the Tee-series isolation rooms in the sick bay back at Camp Butler. Unless all Tee-series hospital rooms were built from the same blueprint, which she supposed was possible. Anything was possible. She wasn’t dead. She marveled at that miracle, and then she wondered, how long have I been asleep?
Had she missed her weekly video call with Eryka and Matty? Had someone told her children about the mission? Who had broken the news to Grace Bell’s family? Had the poor woman left behind a husband? Parents? Siblings? Who was taking care of her children?
Kris got all the questions lined up just as a familiar corpsman came into the room carrying two steaming bowls of porridge on a tray. Each of the bowls was as big as the woman’s head. Kris thought the name was Farina, but she peeked at the badge just to be sure. Nothing was making much sense any more.
“Hey, Private,” Corpsman Farina said. “Let’s stop meeting like this, okay?”
“Am I dead?” Kris asked. “Because I feel very odd.”
“It’s a normal kind of odd. Last time, your head got squished too, so this part was over before you woke up.” The corpsman smiled and checked on assorted lines of fluid and dials, marking everything in her little book. “Your body heals fastest in rampage, so you’ll keep cycling as often as your cells can manage it. It’ll be a while. They had to trigger you twice on-scene to get your lungs healed enough to breathe. Rest, ride the surges, and eat up.”