On one screen, an apartment building was enshrouded in black smoke and writhing flame, while on another a small gang of hooded youths wielding metallic baseball bats swung again and again at the armored windows of a shop on west-ninth. Chaos was already ruling the streets and he knew it wasn’t going to get any better as months and years of restrained anger and hatred for the law exploded in one uncoordinated and yet perfectly aligned burst of violence and outrage.
‘We gotta do somethin’,’ he said, almost to himself.
‘Nothing we can do,’ Allen insisted, sweeping through reports flooding in from across the city. ‘The people are on the rampage and half of our officers are either pinned down or have abandoned their posts to protect their own families. Can’t say I blame them.’
‘Yours okay?’ Vasquez asked, suddenly concerned as he looked at his partner.
‘They’re holed up pretty good in Arcadia Heights,’ Allen said. ‘It’ll take a hell of a crowd to break through the security there.’
Arcadia was located near South Two, one of the better neighborhoods where people still looked out for each other and drugs were something that the residents talked about happening someplace else. Vasquez figured it would hold out for a good long time, long enough to work something out.
‘Where are we on the vehicle that hit Viggo’s escort?’
‘Got a search underway,’ Allen replied. ‘City computer’s running slow and admin’ aren’t at their desks, so it’s taking a while.’
Vasquez bit his lip in frustration and glanced across at the news feeds. An anchor was gesturing to an image of New Washington behind her, rolling shots of the violence on the streets and banners streaming below her identifying gangs roaming the streets and footage of the governor’s craft fleeing the city with his entourage being run repeatedly. But it was the permanent superscript along the bottom of the display that shocked him.
PLAGUE OUTBREAK ACROSS ORBITAL CITIES
Governors flee their posts as law and order breaks down
‘Damn media are fanning the flames,’ he uttered bitterly. ‘This stuff’s reaching ordinary people and giving them the reason they need to either panic or find the next ride out of town.’
Allen nodded. ‘It gets worse.’
Before Vasquez could reply Allen fed a news stream to the main screen, and they both stood and watched as the station’s landing bay doors were sealed in unison as thousands struggled to get to shuttle craft. The huge doors rolled down in their dozens, shuttles already airborne pulling up short of the blast doors and being forced back. Outside the station, pairs of CSS Phantom fighters cruised, their weapons live.
Vasquez took a pace closer to the screen. ‘They’re locking us in,’ he said in disbelief.
‘Quarantine protocol,’ Allen replied, ‘standard procedure. They don’t want infected people getting out and spreading the disease to the surface.’
‘No,’ Vasquez uttered. ‘Wouldn’t want their nice clean planet sullied by folks like us, right?’
Allen watched the screen before him and then it emitted a tiny victorious ping.
‘Got it,’ he said. ‘The vehicle that hit Viggo was a rented Celice. It got dropped off at a service point on North Four.’
‘So far, so normal,’ Vasquez said as he joined his partner at the work station. ‘What about the perps?’
Allen watched as footage from the service point showed four men get out of the vehicle.
‘There’s no identification transponder on the vehicle,’ Allen said. ‘No information trail to link it to an owner.’
‘Can you follow it?’
Allen was already manipulating the controls, tracking the craft manually as it cruised above the crowded city streets amid the streams of air traffic.
‘It lands at fourteen-oh-seven, Blackwater.’
‘Great,’ Vasquez said, knowing well the dark and dangerous streets of North Four and the Blackwater complex, yet another series of housing projects erected decades previously. ‘They’ll have vanished from there.’
‘Yeah,’ Allen said, ‘but the vehicle tracks on. They must have left the driver, and look where he goes.’
Vasquez checked the screen and saw the vehicle cruise into a waste management facility near the station’s central hub and spaceport.
‘What the hell’s he going there for?’ Vasquez said, and then he got it. ‘They’re trashing the vehicle. They must have paid somebody off at the facility to scrap it.’
‘And that means we have a trail.’
‘How long?’ Vasquez asked.
‘It takes at least two days for trash to be compacted, but if they paid somebody off it’ll get fast-tracked,’ Allen said as he grabbed his jacket. ‘All we gotta do is get there first!’
*
The noise on the streets hit Vasquez hard as he followed Allen outside. Crowds were running this way and that, most of them seeking out a small number of cabs still running routes despite the terror infecting the city.
A hooded man dashed by, loot under his arm as he flashed a finger at Vasquez, who reached instinctively for his blaster. Allen stayed his hand with a firm grip.
‘No, not here. You open fire and the crowd’ll turn on us. Lose your badge.’
‘You kiddin’ me?’
‘Lose it,’ Allen snapped, ‘or we’ll be targets before we know what’s hit us.’
Vasquez scowled but he tucked his badge out of sight beneath his jacket and followed Allen through the crowds dashing this way and that as they headed on foot for North Four. The perfect blue orb of the Earth above was stained with brown as smoke from fires billowed unchecked into the atmosphere above and then rolled over in thick vortexes as it was dragged back to the streets by centrifugal force. A dense smog was already settling over the city and as he ran with Allen across a public square Vasquez could hear people coughing.
‘MonoRail is still running,’ Allen called as he spotted a silvery monorail pulling into a nearby platform.
They changed direction and dashed toward it as the doors opened and a handful of confused, frightened passengers spilled out. Behind them, a man with a mask over his face wielded a pistol and gestured at the driver to close the doors.
Allen accelerated, and moments later Vasquez followed him as they leaped aboard the monorail just as the doors were closing.
‘Hey, get on your knees and empty your pockets!’
The gunman aimed his pistol at them, his voice rough and angry.
‘Sure thing!’ Allen said, his hands in the air as he stood in the center of the rail car and blocked the gunman’s view of Vasquez, giving him the chance to draw his pistol. ‘Take it easy, man!’
‘On your knees, now!’
Allen complied, dropping fast as Vasquez opened fire.
The shot zipped over Allen’s head and hit the gunman square in the chest. The blue-white plasma shot ripped into his flesh and tore a deep lesion into his torso as a cloud of acrid blue smoke spilled into the air.
The gunman screamed, his agonized cry cut short as he collapsed onto his knees, the pistol still in his grasp but his arms now limp by his sides as he fell forwards onto his face on the deck. The stench of burning flesh filled the car as Allen dashed forward and yanked the pistol from the gunman’s hand.
Vasquez saw the driver staring at them with eyes wide, fear torturing his expression. Vasquez pulled his jacket aside to reveal his badge and the driver slumped in relief.
‘Blackwater,’ Allen said, ‘can you get us there fast?’
‘After what you boys just did I’ll take you to Nirvana if you want,’ the driver replied and opened the throttles.
The monorail surged forward, Allen hanging on to a grip as the vehicle hummed along the magnetic line between the towering city blocks. Elevated above the city streets, he could see the masses running this way and that as rain began to fall through the smoke tumbling over the city.
‘This place is going to fry if we don’t do something real soon,’ Vasquez said. ‘It already l
ooks like a war zone.’
Allen looked up at the planet below, saw Phantom fighter’s wings flash as they cruised outside, their pilots no doubt looking in at the chaos.
‘They’re searching for a cure,’ he reassured his partner. ‘They’ve got to be.’
‘You know how long it took to figure out a cure out the first time around bro’?’ Vasquez shot back. ‘A century.’
‘That was back then, this is now,’ Allen replied. ‘We’re not in the twentieth century y’know? We have proper technology now, and scientists already have a head start in curing alien viruses. It won’t take them so long this time.’
Allen saw a giant screen showing a news feed from Neptune, and against the vast blue planet he could see the shape of the mining platform. Alongside it were ranks of Aleeyan ships arrayed in battle formation, no doubt awaiting the arrival of Titan and the CSS fleet.
‘Man, when they get there that whole thing is gonna kick off in a major way,’ Vasquez uttered. ‘First pitched battle in our own solar system for over a hundred years man.’
Allen stared at the screen but said nothing, knowing that the battle would likely be as bloody and desperate as all the others had been over the years, except this time it was happening in humanity’s own backyard while they were also facing annihilation by yet another alien virus.
‘Here you go,’ the driver said as the monorail slowed. ‘Rather you than me.’
The doors hissed open as the monorail slid to a halt and Allen activated his gravi-boots and stepped out of the vehicle with Vasquez right behind him.
‘Hey, what am I supposed to do with this guy?’
Allen looked back at the driver, and knew that he didn’t have time to worry about the smoldering corpse still lying dead on the deck of the car.
‘Take a picture and tell the precinct what happened when all of this is over.’
‘And don’t touch the body,’ Vasquez added, ‘or they might think that you did it.’
Allen didn’t hear the driver’s response as they hurried across the platform and descended down into the hordes below. Crowds were still surging toward the landing bays, hoping to find an escape route off the planet. He heard shouts and screams, fights erupting as crowds burst from the elevators. Some people were deactivating their gravi-boots and hurtling over the heads of the crowd in an attempt to get inside first, bodies spinning out of control both on the ground and in the air.
‘They’re gonna die in the stampede,’ Vasquez said.
‘Gotta stay with the priority,’ Allen said.
Vasquez hauled his pistol from its holster and with Allen ran toward the landing bays, veering around the huge raucous crowds as they hurried toward the municipal trash depot. The dense ranks of desperate faces thinned and huge trash bowsers came into view, parked in ranks outside the main facility itself.
The entrance was rimmed with black and yellow chevrons as Allen hurried inside. The workstations and cranes were abandoned, the gigantic machinery used to crush trash to a pulp ready to be ejected into space for orbital burn-up still grinding and turning all on its own in a clanking metallic chorus.
‘Over there.’
Vasquez pointed ahead, and between the piles of caged trash they saw the sleek hood of a black Celice. Allen ran toward it and then threw himself to one side as a plasma shot rocketed out from between the cages and zipped between them.
***
XXXIX
Allen rolled hard on the damp, dirty deck as he came up and aimed at the tiny gap between the cages from where the shot had come from. Another crackled past him at high speed and shot over his head.
‘I got him!’ Vasquez cried and opened fire.
Allen fired a moment later, their combined blasts hammering the cages and sending white-hot plasma spraying across garbage trapped inside. Within moments both cages began to burn as flames snarled from the densely packed trash.
‘He’s running!’
Allen leaped to his feet and sprinted for the gap. He jumped through the snarling flames, his eyes watering as the smoke clogged them and he saw a figure dash away from him and clamber up a ladder that led into the armored cab of a crane. The driver yanked the heavy door shut, and then the huge crane swung around and a magnetic clamp descended down toward them as Allen spotted the black Celice parked nearby.
Allen sprinted across to the vehicle and hit the door button. The sleek door swung up and over and he jumped in and searched for the ignition system. The Celice’s control panel glowed into life as he turned to call to Vasquez.
‘Get down!’
Vasquez shot through the flames between the garbage cages and dove down, rolling as the huge magnetic clamp swung through the air where he had been running a moment before. The huge clamp missed Vasquez’s head by inches and then continued on its path to crash though one of the burning cages and send it flying across the dock with a trail of burning debris and flames billowing behind it. The massive clamp swung Back toward Allen in the Celice, threatened to smash it to smithereens in one blow.
Allen threw the throttles forward as the vehicle’s gull-wing doors closed. The Celice lifted off the deck and moved forward and then the huge clamp slammed into it. Allen was hurled sideways as the craft spun in mid-air, the trash facility whirling around him in a blur as he fought for control.
The Celice steadied and then careered through the air once more as a loud crash crunched in the rear of the craft and Allen saw the huge clamp hit the rear-end of the vehicle and then stick fast. Allen threw the throttles wide open, the Celice spinning violently as he hung on for grim death, but the magnetic clamp was too strong and the Celice could not break free.
Allen pulled the throttles back and made to open the door, then froze as he realized that the crane driver had already lifted him fifty feet above the solid deck of the facility. Allen looked through the windshield and saw the gaping maw of the compactor looming ahead of him.
The thought that he could deactivate his gravi-boots and jump clear entered his mind, but he rejected it immediately. This high up, he would be a sitting duck for the gunman.
He made to open the door and climb up onto the clamp itself when suddenly the clamp released the vehicle, reversing its magnetic polarity and thrusting the Celice away to plunge toward the crunching metal jaws. Allen braced himself for the impact as the Celice plummeted down and slammed into the trash compactor, its hood wedging itself between the huge metal jaws. Allen heard the hiss and roar of hydraulic rams hauling the jaws open, and he whirled and pushed hard on the side door.
The warped chassis and frame had buckled the door and it would not budge. Allen cried out and slammed his weight against it, but it remained locked shut as the hydraulic presses whined and the metal jaws plunged down.
The hood of the Celice vanished into the jaws and Allen reared back in his seat as he pulled his legs out of the foot well. The Celice’s front quarter collapsed into a screeching mess of crushed metal as Allen scrambled to find a way out of the doomed vehicle. The hood crunched its way into the jaws and the windscreen finally cracked and split into two pieces, one of which burst out and landed on the fearsome yellow jaws only inches away from the dashboard.
Allen hurled himself down and through the gap and slid down the hood to crash against the huge jaws. He heard the deafening hydraulic whine and hiss once more as though the machine were taking a breath ready to swallow him whole, and he scrambled to pull himself back up the vehicle as the jaws opened and tons of garbage sank toward the throat of the compactor. Allen slid downward in the rush and his legs slithered between the massive metal jaws.
Allen scrambled desperately and hauled himself up toward the roof of the Celice. His fingers slid and scraped at the smooth paintwork but he couldn’t get a hold and then the car shuddered and slid further into the maw of the compactor. Allen looked over his shoulder and his guts clenched as his legs slid between the jaws and the hydraulic rams hissed as they closed down on him.
Allen screamed in horror as t
he jaws plowed into the backs of his knees with the unimaginable pressure of hundreds of tons of force against the ruined hood of the Celice.
A loud hiss emanated from the rams and then they fell silent. Allen’s cry of terror echoed across the bay as he hung from the Celice’s shattered windscreen, and then the compactor’s jaws whined slowly open and the vehicle was released to rest on top of the garbage pile.
Allen slumped in relief against the hood and then looked down over the edge of the machine. Vasquez stood beside the manual control panel. The former soldier looked up at him and winked, one hand on the emergency shut-down button and the other holding his pistol, which was aimed at the head of a man kneeling beside him.
‘You wanna stop messin’ around up there and get some work done?’ Vasquez called.
Allen hauled himself over the top of the ruined Celice and then slid down the side of the compactor. Pure terror metamorphosed into raw rage and he stormed across to Vasquez’s hostage, whom he recognized as the crane driver.
‘Easy now,’ Vasquez said, raising one hand to placate Allen.
Allen ignored him as he reached out and grabbed the driver’s collar. He hauled the man to his feet and swung a punch that connected against the driver’s jaw with a loud crack that echoed across the facility. The driver spun aside and slammed into the compactor with a loud thump, his eyes rolling up into their sockets as Allen grabbed him and dragged him along the deck.
‘Hey, Allen, take it easy,’ Vasquez said.
Allen growled with the effort of hauling the driver across the deck, his gravi-boots dragging heavily. Allen pulled him to the crane’s magnetic clamp, which was now hanging limp and silent in the center of the bay. Allen yanked the man’s legs around and lifted the boots up, and they were suddenly dragged upward and slammed against the crane’s huge clamp. The semi-conscious driver began to come around, hanging inverted from the crane. Allen reached to the driver’s belt and tore off the control to his gravi-boots, then tossed it to one side.
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