by Watson Davis
I waited, hoping for a response, not hearing anything from her, but I did hear something. Lorber. I climbed up beside her, slipping out one power pack, replacing it with a new one.
"God-fucking-dammit, Hero!" Lorber screamed over the open channel. "What took you fucks so damned long? Did you stop for crumpets on the way?"
"Ah, air!" Malordo's voice came over the channel, Boultinghouse having replaced her cells. "Sweet Nemesis."
"Come on," I said. "We've got to hurry and get to Motayen and his team."
Boultinghouse asked, "But have you guys seen Vanessa?"
# # #
Christal pushed the kid into a holding cell in Esmeralda Precinct Station No. 2. She shoved him in with three other young hoodlums, all of them with their hair long on one side, short on the other, their clothes tight, with alternating stripes of yellow and blue, the lot of them drunk and chanting, "We are One!"
She slammed the door shut.
Wendell shook his head, leaning against the pink-tiled wall, his thumbs hooked into his belt. "Go easy on him. He's a good guy."
"Are you going to take his side?" Christal asked, pulling the latex gloves off her hands and tossing them in the trash. "Is this a guy thing? Sticking together?"
"Nooo, no, no, not at all." Wendell strode to the exit, placed his palm on the security pad, and the door whooshed open. "But you were in a bad mood that day."
"You bastard." Christal swung her arm, motioning for him to go first. "You are taking his side."
Wendell shrugged, striding into the main cube farm of the police offices. Around them the officers of the station were going about their business, speaking to civilians about whatever problem they were having at the time, speaking with each other about cases, about suspects, about who they liked in an upcoming football game. Wendell said, "He does bring us burgers every week, and there's the whole football thing."
Officer Callejas spun in his chair, an uncharacteristically happy expression on his oval face. "Is it burger day?"
Christal stopped, bending down to put her face into Callejas’s, saying, "No." She continued in Wendell's wake toward their cubes.
"Are you sure?" Wendell asked, frowning. "It's Friday, and Friday is burger day. Therefore, today is burger day."
"Yeah." Christal waved her hand, shaking her head. "His team's on some sort of hush-hush mission. Again."
"Well…" Wendell eased himself into the chair in his cube, spinning around to face Christal. "If it's not burger day, you're absolutely right, he is a fucking asshole."
"Thank you." Christal shifted her firearm to the side and sat down.
"Frankly,” Wendell said, “I'm surprised you guys haven't shacked up already. You spend enough time with each other, might as well get the tax break."
"But, no." Christal leaned back in her chair, moving her hand over her desk, bringing up the holo-feed of open cases and requests. "Mr. I'm-Damaged-Goods isn't ready for that sort of commitment. I think I'm going to tell him to commit to me or we're done."
"Let's not get crazy." Wendell blinked. "What would happen to burger day?"
Insubordination
"Vanessa never hailed me," Master Sergeant Malordo said, shaking her head. "But I got real busy in a hurry. What would you do?"
"Grab Tam and Palson, and get back to the ship," Kevin said over the group channel.
Malordo peeked around a corner, aiming her pistol via the reticle in her suit, and readying to fire. "I don't know, Kevin."
"Malordo, that's an order," Fine said, his voice harsh, verging on petulant. "Edmund's last order."
"I thought you guys deserted us hours ago," I said.
"We are no longer docked," Kevin said. "We've got missiles in the Old Girl's tubes, ready to smash the station to atoms."
Malordo turned to me. "What do you think?"
"To be safe, we should get Tam and Palson both back to the ship," I said, launching myself over to Palson's body. "The fewer corpses we leave behind the less chance of anyone finding any trace we were here."
"Damn straight," Kevin said.
"I don't want to leave any of our people out here in this death-trap, and we've got five missing." I hooked into Palson's powered-down backplate, sending an override slave command, triggering his sniper clips to pop out. "I'm going to go find them and drag them out before Kevin nukes the station."
"Edmund ordered us to go and blow," Fine said from the control room, enunciating each word like we were having problems understanding him.
"So?" I took Palson's cartridges and replenished my ammo. "Why are you still here? Why haven't you blown us all to hell already?"
Boultinghouse hunkered down beside Tam, mimicking me, supplementing his ammo from her suit.
"I'm giving you the opportunity to get your heads right and live," Kevin answered.
"So what's the plan?" Malordo asked.
"I don't think we should separate." I closed my sniper ammo store and checked my slugthrower counts, transmitting a command for Palson's suit to release his slug clip. "We're stronger together."
"We don't have all day," Kevin said.
I lifted Palson's chain gun, taking all his ammo. "We don't know how many more of these things there are, but there were enough to take down First Unit. I say we go down this main corridor and find Edmund's unit. If he's there and functional, he takes charge. If not, we bring out whatever's left of them, load them up, and try to find a way to the ship in an escape pod."
"You're assuming I'm not going to follow his last order," Kevin said. "The three of us out here can raze this whole place to bits with you guys on it, and head home with a clean conscience that we’ve done everything we could. I say you gather up Tam and Palson, and you get your asses back here. You’d better hope we're not gone."
Malordo nodded to me. "Let's go get Edmund."
Kevin huffed out a frustrated sigh over comms. "Goddammit."
# # #
"Mark, left quarter," I said, picking my shots, holding on to the jamb of a door, the chain gun coughing death and destruction, my ammo reserves evaporating as emptied shells flew back behind me. "Sly, fall back."
Blood and chewed-up debris, human and not, clouded the corridor, blocking any chance of seeing, with only our instruments giving us an indication of where things were and what to shoot.
"There's a new bunch coming in through the side hallway," Sly said, kicking against the ceiling, propelling himself backward with jets of gas from his boots.
I fired two grenades into the center of the mass before me, the concussion blowing bits of bodies out toward us, but clearing us a space.
"Come on back!" Malordo yelled. "We're ready for you."
"Let's get the party started!" Lorber said.
"Here we come." I whirled and hurled myself down the hallway. Sly squeezed off two more rounds before jumping after me. We flew into the chamber, twisting and propelling ourselves to the sides, separating to clear Malordo’s and Lorber's views.
"Come to mama," Lorber whispered.
I took up a position guarding one of the side halls, switching my ambient mic off, ducking my head, expecting a deafening roar from Lorber’s mini-cannon behind me, but nothing happened, and still nothing happened. I dropped the smoking chain gun, pulled out my pistols and aimed at a cluster of the creatures banging on a wall farther down the hall. I picked them off, one headshot after another.
I glanced back at the corridor Sly and I had evacuated, expecting to discover a bunch of these zombies rushing into our little ambush, but nothing showed up: no chalky-skinned arms, no dark eye sockets, and no open mouths with stained teeth. "Where are they?"
"I'm not seeing any movement," Lorber whispered. "Well, except for floating clouds of fluid that used to be zombie power-leach things."
“Maybe they’re not as dumb as they look,” Malordo said.
I switched my ambient mics back on. An odd noise came from down the hall I'd cleared. I cranked up my sound, closing my eyes, hearing a scratching and clinking, the
sound of heavy breathing, grunting. My motion instruments registered nothing, but I heard it. "I've got something. Sly? Can you cover me?"
"Be with you in a beat."
I edged into the hall, arms straight before me, tracking back and forth, slugthrowers ready to fire. Sly landed behind me, his boots thudding against the ceiling, and he slid to cover one side. I edged to the other to stay out of his fire zone.
"I've got you," he said over my comm.
I darted forward, both hands raised and ready to fire, moving toward the source of the sound, scouring along the wall until I saw a fine mesh, an almost invisible vent. The envirosystem? "There's something in here, something in the ductwork."
"Shoot it," Sly said.
"Here they come!" Behind me, Lorber’s mini cannon roared to life, blasting out explosive shells in ear-splitting thunder.
My mics.
I screamed, squeezing my eyes shut, my hands slapping against the sides of my helmet out of an instinct from before the dawn of time, the initial salvo from the mini cannon deafening me before the dampeners activated automatically.
Sly must have fired, thinking I was under attack. Flurries of fine, white dust kicked up before me, slugs hitting the polycarbonate, exploding the material, with a bit of liquid mixing in, turning it red.
Without being able to hear, my own voice echoed deep in my head, bassy and faint. "Hold up, Sly. Hold up. I can't hear."
I'm sure he answered, but I couldn't hear a damned thing; I only knew he'd stopped firing because of the lack of new damage. A wetness tickled my ear, sliding down my neck, warm. My med unit was flashing, demanding attention I refused to give. I ignored my injury and I wedged my fingers into the edges of the duct to find an invisible seam, and ripped it apart, revealing a grate. Sly loomed above me to the right, his pistol aiming down into the gap I had created. I pulled the grate open.
A hand reached out, the movement jerky, a hand inside a gauntlet—a FountainCorp recon-suit gauntlet. I grabbed the hand and pulled the person halfway out: Vanessa, her suit almost dead, almost locked up.
I pulled my bag around, yanked out two power packs, and replaced the first. Her chest expanded, sucking in a huge breath.
Sly tapped my helmet. I glanced around. Enough of the creatures, these once-people, these zombies, had dodged the team's fire to start spilling into our hallway. Sly's shots slashed into their bodies, tearing chunks of them away, flesh and clothing flying, but they kept coming.
I slammed a power pack on Vanessa's abdomen. She snatched it from my hand. My voice sounding odd and muffled, I said, "Kevin, please turn on Vanessa's weapons."
I knelt, aiming at this new threat, finger squeezing the triggers of my slugthrowers. Vanessa rolled over, her slugthrowers bucking in her hands. Faintly I heard, "Hero? Hero?"
I turned to see Sly shaking his head, making a hand sign to retreat. I nodded, shooting and backing up, turning to guard our rear, letting Vanessa and Sly slip past me, down the hall away from the chamber with the mini cannon, away from the corridor leading to the ship, away from the corridor leading to Edmund, away from every damned thing that was important.
I imagined Kevin shrugging his shoulders, throwing up his hands, taking off, and blowing the whole thing. What a clusterfuck.
More and more zombies clogged the far end of the hallway, the chamber lost in the distance, in the literal haze of battle, of dust, debris, lumps of once-living flesh and fluid and goo.
I pulled up the schematic of the station between shots, commanding it to find an alternative route to where Edmund had entered the laboratory. A light showed up, changing the orders to come in some other way, another lighted track appearing. I sent the route to Sly and Vanessa. I said, "Should the three of us try to get to Edmund?"
Sly paused long enough to give me the thumbs up. Text scrolled on my screen. "Malordo and Lorber are falling back to the ship. Some creatures looped around, trying to cut them off. We're screwed any way we go."
"Let's bypass all that and go to Edmund."
Sly and Vanessa gave me the thumbs up. We turned and ran.
# # #
A headless body filled the breach First Unit had cut through the door. Sly floated in from the ceiling, aiming down, and blasted the creature's chest to pieces, just in case, blowing the mess down into the floor.
Vanessa jumped forward, twisting herself to land with her back beside the doors. I darted through the opening, panning my weapon across the room: holding cells to my right, to my left a bank of control consoles, the walls charred and pitted from slugs and blaster fire.
First Unit's Callus and Landry stood side by side on the ceiling, a ragged hole between them, feet planted, boots latched onto the ceiling for extra stability. Callus cradled his sniper-rifle in his arms while Landry balanced his chain-gun on his left hip with his pistol in his right hand; both of their suits were dead and locked in position.
At the far door, a zombie in a lab coat turned toward us, its shoulders hunched; it moved slowly, lazily, as though lifeless, as though a breeze twisted the creature around. A shiny black tongue hung from its darkened mouth. I blew its head off.
Sly moved forward, pulling power packs from his bag. Vanessa escorted him, arms moving, covering up, down, forward. Too many damn places to hide. I pivoted to cover our back, for the first time seeing the cells beside us, the cells we had entered beside.
A girl swam in the zero-G of her cell—a normal-enough-looking teenager, unaffected by whatever had infected the other inhabitants, possibly protected by her incarceration—around sixteen standard years old, greasy hair snaking around her face, her palms on the smudged plexiglass, fingernails scratching at it, her face desperate, mouthing the words, "Help me," over and over.
Crap, crap, crap.
I turned away, my throat tight.
Sly changed out Callus's power packs, and Callus moved, stretching his arms out, his sniper-rifle rotating, searching for targets.
I called out, pointing toward a door. "Can you cover the entry over there?"
Callus waved and moved to guard the entry from the main corridor, unlimbering his chain gun.
Sly inserted new power packs into Landry's suit. Nothing. No response.
Text appeared on my screen: "Motayen and Moritz down below."
I motioned to Vanessa and she nodded.
The two of us flew headfirst down through the breach into the lower level, a computer room, our slugthrowers firing even as our heads cleared the hole, taking out several creatures peeling themselves off Motayen’s and Moritz's armor to attack us.
We took our positions, Callus and Sly following us down with their guns blazing, until we were alone with the carnage. I pushed myself over to Motayen's side, slipping out his first power pack, then his second, replacing them with new ones. His suit sprang to life. Without waiting for a response, I moved to Moritz, extracting her power packs and inserting fresh ones.
A hand clasped my shoulder, spinning me around. Motayen stood before me, motioning up through the gap. I nodded. Sly went first, me second, each of us taking up our spots, guarding against any newcomers.
Text popped up on my monitor: "I gave orders." My audio channel indicated a closed line to Edmund.
"Yeah," I said, shrugging, moving forward to secure our entrance to this area. "I wanted a chance to talk to you about the exact wording of those."
More words crawled across my display: "We should all be dead by now."
"If we don't get out soon, we will be. But…" With the whole crew moving toward the door, I stopped, and grabbed Edmund by his arm. "I need to ask a favor."
Edmund hesitated.
# # #
I lugged Landry's armor, guiding the unwieldy collection of metal and microfiber down the hall, the rest of the team working together and escorting me, moving around me, covering me. I forced myself forward, ignoring the aching in my head, the pressure in the back of my throat, and the desire to fall to my knees and empty my stomach.
Edmund indicated
a hallway. Malordo went first, followed by Sly, and then Vanessa.
Edmund pointed to me, gesturing for me to come forward. I launched myself, my arm clamping down on the waist of the armor, landing against a wall and leaning forward.
Edmund sped past me to a spot on the wall, signaling everyone to form up around him. He punched through a specific point on the wall, revealing the escape hatch hidden behind it, the sheetrock tearing into strips, breaking apart between Edmund's fingers in a white cloud.
Sly and Vanessa guarded the front side, no one worrying about the back side. Sly's sniper rifle fired, and a body flopped. The body rolled over like a discarded doll, a puppet with the wires cut. Callus opened the hatch, rotating the wheel, and pulled the portal open, the door heavy even with his suit augmenting his strength.
Edmund led the way, headfirst, weapons hot. Callus motioned for me to follow. I turned Landry's armor around, inserting her feet first, taking care to reposition the legs so she slid right in. Edmund grabbed her from the inside, directing her the rest of the way in. With her inside, I looked up at Callus, and he nodded for me to go next.
I wriggled into the lifepod, squeezing myself in. Callus, Vanessa, Sly, and Malordo fit themselves in. Malordo reached out, grabbing the hatch and yanking the thing almost, but not quite, closed. We shifted, making more space, and she slammed it once more. This time she got it to close.
Edmund hit the button, and the pod shot out, the sudden acceleration forcing us all down, all of us reaching out to steady ourselves, our hands banging against each other.
When the tiny rockets ran out of fuel, our weight fell away, leaving us blind, me deaf, in a dark pod, floating in space. Until the pod jerked to a stop, smashing us all together and into the ceiling. After an eternity, the hatch opened, harsh light flooding the small pod, and Kevin motioned us out.
I never thought I'd actually be happy to see Kevin.
But I was.
# # #
"If you're going to get your Family contacts to do your dirty work," Brigadier General Jillian Busque said over their encrypted comm line, "let me know first. I had to come up with explanations for ditching all my logistics arrangements once the station blew."