The Blood Service

by Allen Ivers

  Aaron couldn’t leave his post on the drill bit. He spun about, looking back at the mewling beast behind him.

  A great deal of cosmetic damage — along with two gear systems completely shattered, but the worst of it was the motivator: the rotating piston arms were on an irregular rhythm, biting on the downstroke and loose on the upstroke. The bearings were loose on the floor, having been blown free of their casing.

  The engine would eventually work itself to death, and then the rig would be a very impressive paperweight.

  But the drill would still work.

  “She’s DOA, Jensen! Who knows how much time she’s got in her?”

  “Like we weren’t fully committed already!” Jensen shot back, “Dropping the hammer!”

  With the minefield behind them and the Repeaters off-target, there was the third and final obstacle, the most literal of them.

  The Wall itself was six feet of solid concrete, reinforced with rebar, and encased in half-inch steel plating. The Jergad had only made it this far a handful of times, and powerful conductors cooked any beasties that had managed to try and climb that steel barricade.

  The drill would run electricity just as well, so that steel casing had to be cut free.

  Aaron slipped a pair of goggles over his eyes, lest he blind himself with this task.

  “Let’s go, Aaron! Now or never!” Jensen was right. If the rig froze up on them, they’d never get going. The rig wasn’t driving out of this firestorm; may as well get digging.

  No mining rig in the universe cut its own hole. Three industrial-strength lasers were mounted on a reciprocating ring around the drill bit. Their range was minimal, but they could prime a cut through any surface known to humanity -- they had been used on everything from diamond mines to the sides of comets.

  Commanded from Aaron’s seat, the ring lit up and started quivering. Aaron was a scant dozen feet from the Wall’s exterior shell, watching as the three beams danced around a perfect circle, each laser cutting a third. They danced back and forth several times a second, boring through the third line of defense.

  It was only time now. Could they hold the rig?

  It was then Aaron realized, he couldn’t hear the Repeater fire anymore.

  “We’re rounding third base!” Jensen called out, “Tell me you got that rocket-boy!”

  “He’s down,” Nora crackled through the radio, “But I’ve got activity at the Eastern Repeater.”

  “They’re taking it manual,” Bray guessed, “You gotta start drilling now.”

  “We’re working just as fast as we can! Ya can’t rush these things!” Jensen objected, almost like an egotistical artist, but Aaron knew he was right. If they tried to drill before the shell was broken, the current would cook the computers and most likely kill all passengers.

  They had to have a clear channel to dig into first.

  Bray was less convinced, “You are out of time! They will sight you in! Let ‘er rip!”

  “Two more minutes! That’s all I need! Give me two more minutes!”

  Aaron watched as the metal glowed red, then to a blazing yellow. Sparks of molten slag spat off of the Wall as moisture boiled and burst, chunking chips of fire off of the block. Larger bits simply sloughed off, dripping to the ground far below.

  The distant cacophony of gunfire and shouting and other bloody operas all paled against this simple quiet tableau, hissing metal and primary colors.

  The howl of a Repeater round broke Aaron’s reverie. That was close. Far too close.

  By going manual, they had cut the computers -- and the Queen’s interference -- out of the equation. It was a cumbersome method requiring the Repeater to halt all fire while they cranked the individual gears and locked it into its new place.

  He would hear the ones that missed, followed by protracted silences as the turrets realigned. The shot that killed him would not so courteously announce its coming.

  Finally, the half inch steel disc fell free, revealing the mottled concrete surface behind.

  “Down and clear!” Aaron shouted.

  “Follow the yellow brick road!” Jensen cheered.

  The drill roared to life, the ancient dragon shaking off a years-long slumber. It whirled at first, stuttering, before spinning into a feeding frenzy, its teeth hungry for fresh stone.

  It lurched forward, an impatience to its lunge, teased and withheld for too long.

  Aaron waited with bated breath as the head lowered into the porous stone surface. This was either going to work, or their plan died right here.

  It was harder to tell which protested louder: the Wall or the drill. It pulled the cement into its teeth like the Wall was made of plaster.

  However, the drill was used to soft clay and sandstone, not reinforced cement. If they plied too much torque rushing it, they were liable to bind the bit on the rebar and debris. They had to push with just the right touch.

  Aaron tried to shovel the crumbling bits out of the hole and away from the drill – his hands a scant few feet away from the gnashing monster. Aaron could only pray that the rig didn’t snap a rod. They wouldn’t be able to back the drill out, let alone have the time for it.

  “Jensen, Aaron! Time for school!” Nora gave the order.

  They were out of time. “Ten more seconds!”

  Aaron watched the drill bit sink into the Wall, finally burying its pipe out of sight. They were nowhere near through.

  “No more time! Get out of there!”

  The drill whined, like a kicked dog. A bit of chunked rebar had caught in a flute, halting the spin. Ignorant of the blockage, the rig’s computer pushed and pushed. If that shard wasn’t removed, it would snap the drill rod in two and their plan would die with it.

  Aaron glanced up at the shooters on the Wall. Everyone was looking out and away. It was a four-foot jump across the expanse into the breach.

  He dropped his rifle and jumped into the hole.

  “Aaron?!” Eden screamed, more surprise than concern.

  He grabbed the offending rebar, trying to tug it out of the flute. It was hot, scorched by the midday sun and the friction of the cutting. And it was stubborn, locked into place by the pressure of the pushing drill.

  Gunfire whistle past, shots dancing off the drill pipe. The garrison was trying to snap the pipe. Aaron could see Eden’s car drift close, with Nora leaning off the tail.

  At the peak of the arc, Nora was stationary -- a perfect firing platform. She snapped two shots just before the cruiser zipped away again. The gunshots ceased, paired with a pained cry as someone fell from the Wall’s deadly heights.

  Aaron wrapped his hand around the pipe, his knuckles bare against the drill bit. This had all the ingredients for him to lose a hand.

  And the rebar came free.

  Like a monster uncaged, the drill roared to life again, hurling debris with renewed vigor. Ungrateful at his help or his presence, it tossed a chunk of concrete directly into his head.

  Aaron keeled over to the ground. The reverberating pain filled his head with fog, his eyes unwilling to focus on any one thing for longer than a second.

  He was sure he’d cracked his skull right open, and if he didn’t push hard with both hands, it would uncork its load onto the ground like the most demented champagne.

  Nope, just felt like it.

  With a steel buzzsaw at his back, Aaron had no room to get a run-up. He was going to have free jump back to the rig. Every moment he lingered risked something juicy and ugly.

  He squatted low and frog-jumped the gap.

  Not even close.

  He landed chest first into the lip of the rig’s drill bay, knocking the wind out of him like he’d been hit by a car. Shocked, stunned, out of breath, and bleeding, he promptly slipped to his fingertips.

  “Aaron -- goddammit!” Bray cut his own objection short, “Suppression fire, now!”

  A shot snapped into ledge right between his hands, chunks of metal skipping against his hands and face. A few inches had been the differ
ence between shrapnel exfoliation and having no head.

  His sweaty fingers slid along the edge, the metal lip biting into his hand. Nothing to kick against. There was no way he was going to pull himself up.

  Far to his left, the Repeater tower had just finished anchoring itself to a new position. It would fire on him any second and take the rig out in a cataclysm of fire and molten metal.

  It was an ugly twenty-foot drop to the ground, where he would most certainly be crushed by the collapsing rig.

  But five feet down was a tear in the hull -- where the first rocket had struck. It would lead to the rig’s transmission assembly.

  He would never dare crawl through it while the rig was active -- but this lawn ornament was never moving again. And he was out of options.

  Aaron let go, tucking his legs forward to snag the jagged lip, catching it like a kid on a slide. He slipped down into the inner entrails of the rig, banging off of gears and pipes as he went.

  There was precious little room, not even enough for him to crouch, as he wormed through legs first. He scooted along, bracing himself on support beams and dormant gear systems, wriggling through whatever cavities were open to him.

  That’s when the first round hit, a deafening gong that robbed him of his hearing, but he could see the darts of fire and light slash through the rig above him like the spears of an angry God. Tiny beams of hot metal sprayed through, pinned open by rays of sunlight that now had entry into the bowels.

  His hearing properly blown, he didn’t hear the next shot, but the rig shook and whole bulkheads buckled with each successive hit. Sparks and hot metal rained around him, singing his clothes and scalding his skin.

  He laid back against a steel pipe, his arms slick with oil and sweat. He would be crushed by the collapsing rig, shot through with molten copper, or cooked alive by the fire.

  Beneath him was a curious sight -- dirt. The rig was missing its underbelly plating.

  Aaron rolled off the pipe and dropped to the ground. It was only a five-foot fall, but it was still like a swift kick to the gut, someone planting a foot into his abdomen and snapping all of the air out of his lungs.

  The rhythmic chugging of the Repeaters continued, pounding liquid drives into the side of the rig. And Aaron could feel the metal beast start to groan, no longer able to support its own weight.

  It swelled for the briefest of moments, like a collapsing star, all the repeated explosions pushing outward on the hull. Then it collapsed on itself, giving out one last gasp and crumpling to the ground.

  No time to breathe or wipe the sweat from his forehead. Aaron rolled out from under the collapsing whale, scrambling to his feet. Metal shards rained down around him, threatening to crush and spear in equal measure.

  Perhaps it was luck, or maybe the Queen’s strange power had some hand in it, but nothing struck home. What rained around outside of the rig was minimal, the steel beast preferring instead to sink down onto itself. This titan of industry simply deflated to sag in the dirt.

  Cheering erupted from the fortifications above, the attackers plan thwarted. Celebrating too soon.

  Because as Aaron peered through the dusty fog, the first thing he saw was the gaping hole in the fortifications, six feet across in a perfect circle -- the drill had done its work.

  The second thing he saw was a cruiser zipping in close, low and slow. Aaron could swear he heard the individual pulses of the laboring Maglev engine.

  A single arm stretched out from the side, reaching for him. He grabbed it. The vehicle slowed just long enough for them to swing him aboard before tearing off through the cloud.

  Eden sat behind the controls, her hands dancing across the dueling consoles, leaning over to tab a co-pilot’s controls, before snapping back to adjust on her own. She was hard at work but hardly strained.

  Nora gripped her throat mic, “We got him!”

  “You’re a psychopath, Aaron! A beautiful, beautiful psychopath!” Jensen shouted.

  Aaron melted backwards into Nora, finally allowing himself to breathe easy but unable to tear his eyes off of Eden’s impressive display at the controls of two different seats, “You used to play piano, didn’t you?”

  Eden smirked, almost charmed by the cognitive dissonance it took to make that connection, “Nora, concussion protocol.”

  That wasn’t a no. Nora flashed her tac light across Aaron’s eyes, before giving a casual thumbs up. It wasn’t until she poked at his new head wounds, dipping her fingers in the drying patches of blood, that the examination hurt.

  “You’re leaking, bud.”

  “Yeah, I’m used to at this point,” he huffed back at her.

  She pursed her lips with a tilt of her head, agreeing with the diagnosis and absent a pithy comeback of her own, “He’s not dying.”

  “Keep him that way!” Eden snapped, as she spun her hand across the display.

  The cruiser spun to, bringing its nose to bear on the collapsed rig -- and the exposed hole in the Wall. “Triggers light!” Bray crackled through the radio, “Conserve your ammo!”

  Nora handed Aaron a rifle -- Eden’s. It had been caked with dirt from a dozen other missions, spackled with old alien blood, and the polymer stock bore a carving of a square cross, itself collecting dirt in its grooves.

  She tapped him on the shoulder, bringing herself close to his ear. “Full mag, no regrets.”

  Huah.

  She slipped out from under him, head low to avoid the wind shear, as she settled up in the co-pilot seat. She shouldered her rifle, tracking for targets to pop into view, like the most demented carnival shooting gallery. Aaron’s head lolled over, as he let himself catch his breath.

  The second cruiser came up into formation beside them. Keira was bent over Solomon, tending to some unseen injury, while Bray and Jensen sat in the front. Jensen gave a short wave, greeting his friend in a lunatic contrast of battle damage and neighborly intentions.

  Aaron waved back, urging his friends to take the lead position. Bray nodded and throttled up. The cruiser was perforated from its previous minesweeping run, but it still had enough heart for one more push.

  The Wall was in full panic mode. A team desperately tried to rotate the Repeater towers to bear on the much smaller targets, perhaps hoping to cut them off with a fusillade of artillery they wouldn’t dare cross.

  The rest of the garrison took up their arms and drew down on the encroaching vehicles. They were the last line of defense. There had to be less than a dozen of them.

  A Regular ran up and down the line, screaming epithets at his Capital regiment, waving a sidearm in their faces. He had all the inspirational vigor of an angry banshee. He seemed to give orders via gun barrel, waving it around like it was a magic wand or an extension of his anatomy. He either didn’t know or didn’t care about its deadly capability, as he pressed it to a Capital’s head, shouting the call to arms.

  One poor Capital froze, panicked and afraid of his entire environment. The Regular pushed the gun barrel into the boy’s temple, screaming and spitting.

  Nora shot first, splitting that officer’s cap at a hundred yards with a thirty caliber round off of a moving vehicle going nearly a hundred kilometers an hour.

  Aaron would’ve showered her with praise if the look of shock on her face hadn’t betrayed how much that was not on purpose.

  It was like she had uncorked a vintage bottle of compressed violence. Gunfire came raining in, skipping off the cruiser’s hull and dancing along the dirt.

  Aaron might’ve sworn they were trying to miss, shooting just close enough to say that they tried. Yes, these were small and fast targets, but they were on a clear predictable path with minimal ability to evade.

  They were better shots than this.

  Bray’s cruiser hit the rig’s body, using it was an impromptu ramp. The maglev transmission easily picked up the hard surface and climbed up toward the gap in the Wall.

  And sailed through.

  Eden pressed her left hand forward, throttli
ng up for their own approach.

  And that’s when the Repeaters kicked in, spitting lances of fire across their path. They had effectively dropped a high explosive lattice over their gateway. The rate of fire made for an imperfect blockade but it was better than nothing at all.

  Any attempt to cross would contend with the split second gamble of catching a 92mm canister to the chest.

  But their aim was off, manually dialed in. It was a little high.

  “Go low!” Aaron shouted.

  “What?!” Eden had clear objections to this plan, but Nora simply smiled, her mind having followed the design just fine.

  Aaron shouldered the rifle, popping off a few rounds at the Wall’s palisade. “Can’t stay here!”

  After a moment’s consideration, Eden re-centered the cruiser on the drill site and its new fiery gates. The plan wasn’t wholly insane, as the Repeaters had set this up with some -- albeit inspired -- improvisation.

  There was a distinct pattern, that if timed just right, an interloper might dance between the shots.

  Aaron scrunched low in his seat, as if ducking might protect him from the ordinance being lobbed into his path.

  The side panels on the cruiser were half inch alloy, designed to be lightweight. He could peer out two sizeable pinholes cut by the small arms fire levied from the Wall.

  If a Repeater connected, the cruiser would become something only suggested by the most outlandish historians to have once been a vehicle. Most people will assume it was some kind of food storage container split open by its rotting contents in a hot summer sun.

  Eden ramped up the miner’s corpse, destined to either crash into the Wall or leap through the piercing gaze of Ares himself. Even the shooters on the Wall paused in disbelief, as they elected to rush the furnace of exploding fire.

  Maybe they were holding out hope for a climax to the fireworks and held any shots that might rob them of the catharsis.

  They were denied, for the Gods were pleased.

  Eden took a low road, bouncing off of some crumpling Rig debris. The cruiser slide through the lower edge of the drill site, passing below the shots like they were riding under two crossed sabers. And if Aaron had been sitting up, he’d have caught a canister to the side of his head. It would’ve been a rather climactic way to complete the set of injuries for the day.