CROSS FIRE

by Fonda Lee

  “No kidding.” Donovan relaxed his grip on the wheel and eased the vehicle forward. Erze almighty, he’d handled SecPac skimmercars in high-speed chases before. This rusty machine only moved in two directions, and not very quickly; how hard could it be in comparison?

  “Where are we going?” Dr. Nakada asked, sounding as nervous as a hitchhiker who wasn’t sure he’d made the right decision.

  “Let’s get off this campus and away from the sapes first.” Donovan glanced over at Nakada. The metal box containing the vials of deadly chemicals was braced between the doctor’s feet on the floor of the passenger-side front seat. There was nowhere more secure to put them. Donovan was eager to leave quickly but decided he would drive as slowly and smoothly as possible. The nerve agent might be harmless to Anya and the doctor, but if a vial of the stuff broke while Donovan was at the wheel, they were all dead.

  “Oh no.” Anya grabbed Donovan’s arm and pointed out the window. A white SUV had just pulled into the parking lot. Behind the wheel of the SUV, Javid spotted them going in the opposite direction and slammed on his brakes. His face contorted in near-comical disbelief. For a second, Donovan felt an almost near irresistible urge to grin at him.

  Then the door of the vehicle flew open and Javid jumped out, drawing his gun and opening fire. A bullet cracked the upper left-hand corner of the truck’s windshield. Donovan’s resolution to drive with extreme caution flew out the window. He floored the gas, clutched the wheel, and roared the truck through the lot toward the street. “Get down!”

  Anya covered her head with her arms as she ducked below the dashboard. Dr. Nakada moaned and clutched the door handle. Gritting his teeth, Donovan barreled the truck toward Javid. The man’s eyes widened, but he stood his ground and fired again. Another shot punched through the driver’s side of the windshield. Donovan flinched as the bullet passed inches from his head. Hurling curses, Javid leapt out of the way, firing once more into the side of the truck as it careened past him.

  Donovan took a sharp turn onto the main road, concentrating on driving the rickety contraption while glancing behind them. Javid was on his feet and running, but in another second he was out of sight.

  “Oh God,” Anya cried. “Stop, stop. He’s been shot.”

  Donovan glanced over and sucked in a breath. Dr. Nakada was slumped against the far door, clutching his stomach, his face sallow with pain and surprise. Blood soaked through his shirt and coated his hands and lap. Anya was wedged near the floor of the truck, trying frantically to scrabble for something under the seat. “Pull over! He needs help.”

  “We need to get off this road first.” Otherwise, Javid and the Sapience cell members would spot them easily. Donovan sped away from the campus, down a commercial street, turned behind what looked like a warehouse, and rattled the truck to a stop. He slammed the gear shift into park and jumped out, then ran around to the other side of the vehicle and pulled the passenger door open, catching Nakada as the man slid partway out.

  Anya, her hair mussed, her shirt and hands red with the doctor’s blood, pulled an emergency first aid kit from beneath the seat. She pressed gauze padding to Nakada’s stomach, applying pressure to the wound. The pads were soaked through almost at once. The cracked leather seat of the truck was slick. Nakada moaned in pain and fixed Donovan with the most pitiful expression. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I’ve caused nothing but harm.”

  Donovan held the man’s frightened gaze and spoke with convincing insistency. “There’ll be time to change that.” With bladed fingers, Donovan tore the sleeves off his own shirt. He wadded one piece of fabric into a tight square and tied it over the bullet wound, securing the makeshift bandage in place by wrapping around Nakada’s waist with additional strips of fabric ripped from his other sleeve.

  “We need to get him to a hospital.” Anya continued applying pressure as Donovan yanked the final knot tight, eliciting another moan.

  “The local hospital is one of the first places Javid will look.” By now, Javid would’ve run back into the basement lab to search for Kevin, and finding him missing, he would’ve gone to the Sapience cell to sound the alarm. People would be searching for them all over town and the call would be spreading nationwide through the network of Sapience sympathizers. Every second of delay was one they couldn’t afford.

  Anya opened her mouth as if to argue, then closed it and nodded. “You’re right. Every hospital’s overloaded and there’ll be sympathizers on staff who’d tip off Javid.” She gnawed on her bottom lip, her voice strained. “Where, then?”

  Donovan eased Nakada back into the passenger seat, making up his mind. “The Round. We have the best hospital anywhere in the country.” More important, the Round was the one place Sapience could not follow. Eugene Nakada, bleeding out from the gut in an old pickup truck, held knowledge of the exocel inhibition reflex as well as the recipe for Sapience’s chemical weapons. His life was a planetary security issue.

  Muffled sounds and banging issued from the truck bed. Kevin was conscious again and very angry. Donovan opened the drop gate and lifted the cover. Kevin was lying on his side, dirty and bruised from being tossed around by the rough ride. At the sight of Donovan, his eyes lit with a hatred that promised every form of slow and horrible torment if their positions were ever reversed. Donovan hopped up next to him. “This is for Jonathan Resnick,” he said, and punched Kevin straight in the jaw, knocking him out cold again.

  Donovan slammed the drop gate, locked the flat cover, and jumped back into the driver’s seat. His comm unit vibrated again and he glanced down at it long enough to see the priority message from Commander Tate: YOU ARE AWOL. REPORT IMMEDIATELY.

  With Anya still wedged between him and the half-conscious Dr. Nakada, Donovan turned onto I-80 and gunned it for the Ring Belt.

  “The Round is over two hours away,” Anya said.

  “Stomach wounds don’t kill quickly. We’ll make it.” If this petroleum burner didn’t fail on them and if Sapience didn’t find them before they got there. The ride was silent and anxious. The sound of wind whistling through the bullet holes in the windshield overlaid the rattling of the truck and the frequent whimpers of pain from Dr. Nakada.

  When they were about halfway there, Anya said, “Javid might have people watching for us already. It’ll take longer, but we should circle the Belt. Come in from the south end instead of the west.”

  Donovan nodded. He’d already been mentally mapping a non-intuitive way through the Belt that would take them to the SecPac underground entrance. “Anya, you can’t come into the Round.”

  “I know. You’ll have to let me out once we’re in the Belt. It’ll be too dangerous for you to go back to the SRP in Buildertown. Just let me out anywhere. I’ll find my way back. You have to save Eugene.”

  “What if Javid or other True Sapience come after you?”

  Anya’s eyebrows drew together pensively as she rubbed at the dried blood on her hands. “Minh will keep me safe. So will Saul.” She raised her head and stared out the window. “Kevin had a lot of friends, but … there’re also a lot of people who’ll be glad to see him gone.”

  The buildings of the Ring Belt started to come into view long before the Round did. Donovan did as Anya had suggested, veering onto a secondary highway that took them on a route that added another twenty minutes to their already long drive before they entered the industrial area near SecPac’s unmarked compound. “Anywhere here,” Anya said.

  Donovan pulled up to a bus stop. As he let Anya out of the truck, he retrieved the envelope of Dr. Ghosh’s memory discs and put it in her hands. “Give this to Saul. Explain everything. If the doctor doesn’t make it, or if anything happens to me, it won’t be lost. Some other scientist and some other exo will do what we couldn’t.”

  Anya nodded and tucked the envelope into the pocket of her shorts. Donovan glanced around the gray cement surroundings. It seemed beyond wrong to simply leave Anya here alone and possibly in danger. She placed a hand on his cheek and turned hi
s face back toward hers. Her gaze was firm, reminding him without words that she’d been staying alive in the bad parts of the Ring Belt for a long time. “Trust me.”

  Donovan met her eyes and felt his heart clench. “I’m glad I did.” He pulled Anya forward and kissed her. He felt as if he were stealing something, one last bite from an undeserved meal, one last look at something he could not have, and even as their lips met with fierce urgency, he felt with an inexplicable and sad certainty that it would be for the last time. He let her go.

  Anya swallowed and dropped her eyes to the concrete. She glanced over at the rear of the truck and her mouth tightened into a pale line of guilt and regret.

  “I’ll turn him in,” Donovan said. “But I won’t hurt him.”

  “What will happen to him?”

  Donovan hesitated. “Do you feel like you need to know?”

  Anya considered. “No,” she said finally. “I made my choice.” Without looking back, she turned and walked away, swiftly and purposefully, rounding the corner and disappearing from sight. Donovan held on to the door of the truck, nearly overcome by the urge to go after her, to make sure she got to safety. Again, he remembered wretchedly what she’d said to him the previous night: You do whatever you have to do. Sometimes that means you have to leave.

  He got back into the truck. The interior stank of blood. “We’re almost there, Doctor,” Donovan said. “We’ll get you patched up.”

  At first, he thought that Nakada had fallen unconscious, but then the scientist replied, in a weak and tremulous voice, “When you take me into the Round, whether I live or not, I’m not coming out again.”

  Donovan glanced at the man and kept driving. “No,” he agreed.

  Nakada nodded, resigned. “You must think I’m a horrible person. You’re wondering how Tamaravick could’ve ever befriended someone like me.” Donovan didn’t answer. Nakada gave a painful cough and said, “I used to be a different person. A scientist-in-erze. I’m not that person anymore, but I never wanted to kill or hurt anyone. Not even exos.”

  “Don’t talk. You should save your energy.”

  “I had no choice.” Nakada sounded truly plaintive now. “When I left the erze, I had nothing anymore. I depended on Sapience for everything—safety, shelter, supplies, the ability to pursue my research. Kevin kept insisting that I focus on weapons development. I couldn’t keep putting him off. You know what he does to people who betray him …” Nakada’s eyes closed. For several minutes, the cab of the truck was silent save for the man’s ragged breathing. “It will be good …” he wheezed, “to stop running.”

  The guards stationed at the SecPac compound nearly shot them. Seeing an unfamiliar pickup truck heading straight for the barbed wire fence, they raised their rifles and screamed warnings until Donovan stopped the vehicle and got out with his striped hands over his head, shouting back at them that he was a soldier-in-erze.

  Then they recognized him from the day before but were understandably bewildered by what had happened to him in such a short period of time. His face was bruised and patchy with thickened panotin, his shirt was torn and bloodstained, and his electricycle had been replaced with a petroleum-burning junker with bullet holes in the windshield, a man trussed up in the back, and another one bleeding all over the front seat.

  “The man in the back is Kevin Warde, one of the most wanted terrorists in the country,” Donovan told them. “Look him up if you don’t believe me. And that’s Eugene Nakada, another high-value Sapience fugitive. He’s been shot and he’s going to die if I don’t get him to a secure hospital immediately. I need to get into the Round. Now.”

  The guards were non-Hardened SecPac reservists whose erze status was only good for five years at a time; Donovan outranked them on account of being both an officer and an exo. They scanned the pickup truck, verified Donovan’s identification, then let him into the compound and through the metal doors that led down into the tunnel under the wall.

  Donovan’s mind was racing as they reached the end of the dim underground passageway. How was he going to get through the Round unnoticed in this exhaust-spewing piece of scrap metal? The fuel gauge on the truck was red and he swore any minute the engine would die. Before he could formulate any good solution, the gate opened, exactly where he’d entered next to the Pen on the SecPac campus the day before.

  The truck chugged heroically past the guard box. Donovan’s heart skipped a beat. The woman who’d waved him through on the way out was not there. The guard box was empty. Instead, standing at the corner of the road was a zhree with thin, jagged stripes. One of Gur’s Soldiers.

  The Soldier waved Donovan to a stop. He walked up to the strange machine, tapped the hood curiously, and motioned Donovan out of the vehicle. Donovan got out, an explanation forming on his lips.

  “Humans are no longer allowed in this area,” the Soldier said brusquely. “They’re to remain in designated areas in the Round.”

  “I … didn’t know that, zun. I just returned from the Ring Belt, and need to …” I need to speak with someone who understands what I’m saying. It was obvious the Soldier did not understand a word of English, and he didn’t have a translation machine with him. He eyed the human with wary distaste, as if Donovan were an animal making unusual noises.

  Humans confined to designated areas? What in all erze was going on? There had never been any restrictions on human movement within the Round. Everyone here was marked; that was the whole point. “Zun, let me through. It’s important.” Donovan pointed to himself, to the truck, and then in the direction of the main road beyond SecPac campus.

  The Soldier slashed a negative with his fins. “By Kreet, I’m tired of seeing Werth’s creatures prowling around with no restraint.” The Soldier banged the side of the truck with one of his limbs. “Leave the way you came.”

  Donovan shook his head vehemently. He had not come this far to be foiled by an ignorant homeworlder. He couldn’t turn around and go back into the Ring Belt or Nakada would die. If he disobeyed and tried to fight, the Soldier would overpower him in seconds. As he stood, fists clenched, trying to think of a way out of his predicament, the Soldier made an impatient noise, clamped his pincers around the back of Donovan’s neck, and steered him toward the cab of the truck like a puppy.

  Donovan braced both his hands on the sides of the truck door and refused to get in. “Scorching idiot shroom,” he exclaimed. “Get your damn pincers off me. Why won’t you even bother to try and listen?” His armor gave an uncertain shudder. “Wylt,” Donovan blurted.

  Gur’s Soldier gave him a hard shove that nearly banged his head against the doorframe. “Wylt,” Donovan shouted again in inspired desperation, then whistled a short, high note with a trembling, rising finish—as close as he could manage to pronouncing Wylt’s name in Mur. The Soldier hesitated. “Are you trying to say something?”

  Donovan took one hand off the truck and made a short downward stroke with his fingers held flat together as he repeated himself. Words only made sense in Mur with their associated fin movements and pattern, and he wasn’t optimistic he was getting through with his unavoidably human butchering of the name. Nevertheless, the Soldier was puzzled. He released Donovan. “Bag? Crater? What?” Donovan spun around, shook his head in frustration, and tried again. This time, he moved both his hands, then pointed to the stripes on the back of them.

  “A Soldier of your erze,” the zhree deduced. “Wiln? Wylt?”

  Donovan nodded vigorously and dipped his hands in a gesture of fins indicating assent. The Soldier’s fins perked up in self-satisfaction at the success of their arduous attempt at communication. Then they flattened again in skepticism. “You belong to Soldier Wylt?”

  Donovan hesitated, offended, then dipped his hands again. “Sure, yeah, fine. Whatever you need to believe, you dumbass homeworlder. Just call Wylt.”

  The zhree seemed to wage an internal debate. He still looked as if he would like to forcibly eject Donovan from the Round, but perhaps he was under orders to
make nice with the colonial Soldiers. Reluctantly, he lifted one of his limbs to eye height and tapped the communication device strapped just above his foot plate. “Soldier Wylt, are you missing any humans? I found one near the encampment and it appears to be asking for you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re—” Wylt’s voice came through the device as a string of musical notes and flashing light and dark patterns on a small display screen. Before it could finish, Donovan shouted in a rush, “Zun Wylt, it’s me, Donovan. Please, I need your help. I’m on the SecPac campus. This homeworlder won’t let me go and doesn’t understand a thing I’m saying.”

  There was silence from the other end. “Wylt?” Gur’s Soldier prodded.

  “Stay there,” Wylt said. “I’ll come retrieve him.”

  The next several minutes passed in an agony of delay for Donovan. The Soldier detaining him stood patient and unmoving, as the zhree were wont to do, but Donovan paced near the truck like a captive animal. It seemed Gur’s Soldier had been correct; all humans had been moved elsewhere because Donovan could see none of his fellow stripes, only Soldiers. The Round was more disconcertingly quiet than ever, but when Donovan looked up he saw an odd sight: more than a dozen ships—construction paverships, he guessed from the shape of them—taking off from the landing fields near the Towers and speeding across the sky in different directions.

  Dr. Nakada lay stretched, apparently unconscious, on the front seat of the vehicle, his breathing growing more and more labored with each second.

  Wylt arrived on foot in a rotating, multi-limbed lope, his fins fanning slightly from exertion. He stopped rather abruptly at the sight of Donovan, the truck, and Gur’s subordinate, who accosted him at once.

  “All humans ought to be appropriately confined by now.” The foreign Soldier’s tone made it clear he resented being inconvenienced.