Blue War: A Punktown Novel

by Jeffrey Thomas

  FOURTEEN: CONDITION ORANGE

  Rick Henderson doubted that his office and quarters were bugged, but to be on the safe side he and Jeremy Stake sat in the mess hall of the Colonial Forces base to discuss in further depth Stake’s quick return trip to Punktown. The last of the lunch periods had ended and they were alone in the large, sun-filled room except for a few workers cleaning distant tables. Stake had another coffee in front of him, found that he lived from one to the next, the rungs of his life’s ladder. You had to have something to count on.

  Henderson said, gently, “You made some good progress, Jer. For a minute there I thought you were a little too tied up with that personal business of yours.”

  Stake avoided his friend’s eyes. “That would appear to be finished now.”

  Henderson obviously knew it was best not to pursue that statement, and instead said, “Do you think you came back prematurely? This Persia Barbour should be pushed some more. Maybe I should call her myself?”

  “Let me try calling her again, first.” The investigator downed a little more coffee. “I’ve been debating whether or not to fill David Bright in on what I’ve found.”

  “So you can collect the extra money he offered if you’d help him?”

  Stake gave Henderson a look. “Rick, I’m not after his money. I didn’t make him any promises.”

  “Sorry, Jer. But I think we should keep him out of this at the moment. He’s too volatile.”

  “Maybe we could use that to our advantage, so he can press matters that might be too delicate politically for you and me to press directly.”

  “Still, I’d rather not align ourselves with him too much. It’s not that I want to distance myself out of fear of being dragged down with him – it’s just that he’s an unknown quantity.”

  Stake recalled the question he had asked himself: if the accident with the smart matter might not be so accidental after all. He grunted, “Yeah, okay, Rick.”

  “Okay, now my turn to update you, Jer.” Henderson slipped some photo printouts from an envelope he’d brought with him, but kept them face down on the table for the moment. “I went to Gale and told him you’d heard there was some gear and scraps of clothing found in the pits where the clones were discovered. I let him know that I’d have preferred to be made aware of this little detail, and he kept his cool the best he could and apologized for the oversight. I asked to see them, and later on he brought them to me.”

  “From where? The science chief told me she hadn’t seen them. One would think he’d have turned them over to her, for dating and possible DNA traces.”

  “I don’t know where he had them stashed, but anyway, I took some shots of them to show you when you got back, in case he isn’t inclined to show them to you in person. This is them.” Now Henderson flipped the photos over. Stake picked up the first.

  The photo was of a few frayed rags of clothing, blue camouflage very leeched of color. So faded that maybe Stake could have believed Hin Yengun had been mistaken when he said the rags didn’t look like uniform remnants to him – if Stake had not found out what he had in Punktown.

  He examined the next photo and it didn’t take him long to identify the piece of equipment it portrayed, even though Stake had never really used one of these devices himself despite his deep penetration forays. The device utilized metamaterials to reroute light rays around an individual, thus rendering a soldier invisible to his enemies (and his friends, too, unless they wore special goggles). The problem with these devices, though, had been that the red-flashing eyes of the Ha Jiin were more sensitive than those of Earth humans, and they had still been able to discern enough of an irregularity to give a soldier away at close quarters. Not to mention that the Ha Jiin began stealing the special goggles off the bodies of dead CF soldiers, and of course the invisibility devices themselves. Stake believed the simplest approach was often the best. He had stuck to conventional camouflage and the polymorphic ability he had been born with, to sometimes imitate Ha Jiin features.

  Next photo. A common CF sidearm, and a magazine of bullets resting beside it. Henderson explained that the bullets were AE gel caps. These projectiles, after penetrating a subject or even bursting against them, released autolytic enzymes which set into motion a rapid, devastating self-destruction of the body’s cells. They had been used during the Blue War but had since been banned due to public outcry that it was excessively cruel to make an enemy die by swiftly rotting away. The good thing about these bullets, though, was that the enzymes were always tailored to the particular race one was engaging, so that an Earth human accidentally caught in the crossfire or shot by a stolen gun loaded with such ammo would not suffer the same decomposition.

  “Very good.” Stake was nodding. “This is all very convincing. But it’s all stuff that Gale could have dug up elsewhere. I don’t buy it, Rick. This is pretty arrogant, actually. It has to be a substitution for the stuff he really found, to keep us thinking that we’re dealing with MIA remains here.”

  “So why then, Jer? What is it Gale’s hiding? Are we sure he knows about Wonky Science and their government contracts?”

  “Has to be. But not just him. Maybe if he found out what I’ve found out, and took it to his superiors, they told him to keep a cap on it. You leaked it to the media about the clones, so now they have to let you go through the motions of an investigation, but they don’t expect you to get anywhere with it. The question again, Rick, is how far do you want to push it? This could put your career on the line.”

  Henderson sighed, staring down at the photos scattered between them. “Brian should never have come into existence, Jer, but he did, and he’s a living child, a human being. He very probably has relatives who should know about him. At the very least, he himself has a right to know who he is and where he came from, when he’s old enough to comprehend it. Again, I’m glad I leaked the story. With cloning being off limits to the public, I was afraid they might use that excuse or some other to destroy him. I guess it’s like you said before. The kid is my pet.”

  Stake smiled. “Now I remember why you’re my friend, Rick.”

  When they had finished, like two ordinary enlisted men Henderson and Stake walked their trays up to the conveyor that would take them to be washed behind the kitchen, but one of the cleaners hustled over to intercept them. “Captain, please, let me take those,” he said.

  “Thank you, private.” As Henderson handed his tray over, the little comp clipped to his belt chirped and he lifted it to his face. On its screen Stake saw one of Henderson’s immediate assistants. “Yes, Diane?”

  “Sir, I thought I should let you know that a group of Jin Haa clerics has assembled outside the front gate. It appears they’re doing what the Ha Jiin clerics have done in Bluetown a number of times – chanting some kind of ritual.”

  “It’s an exorcism, to drive out evil,” he told her.

  “Well, it’s drawing a crowd of spectators, sir, and they’re looking kind of worked up, especially the young guys.”

  “Okay, Diane. Be advised that we might want to announce a condition orange if things get too rowdy. Is the colonel aware of –”

  Before Henderson could finish, the world burst into strobing light and blaring noise. Revolving lights spaced across the ceiling flashed orange, a klaxon was sounding and an unexcited voice over the public address system repeated, “Condition orange. Condition orange.” All this, Stake thought, to alert the sleeping, the deaf, blind and comatose.

  Henderson turned to Stake and said, “Get to your quarters and lock yourself in, Jer. I’ve got to reach Gale.”

  “All right, Rick. Be careful.”

  Henderson rushed off toward the mess hall doors, holding his comp up to his face again. Stake started walking after him, but when Henderson ducked out the detective changed direction and moved to a long wall comprised of floor-to-ceiling windows. These windows could be tinted opaque, but presently they weren’t, and gave a fairly unobstructed view of the barrier of energy that surrounded the Coloni
al Forces outpost like a wall. This barrier could also be made opaque, but currently it was only tinted the soft blue color that let people know it was there, so they wouldn’t walk into it. Normally, the barrier would not carry a stunning charge, but Stake knew that during a condition orange – an alert to possible aggression – the barrier would deliver a considerable shock to anyone who made contact with it.

  From the windows, Stake could make out the group of clerics Henderson’s assistant had mentioned. They were distant from him, beyond the energy barrier, but he knew very well what they looked like up close. During the war, he and his team had holed up for a while in a remote Ha Jiin monastery. The CF soldiers had rounded up and corralled the monks until their departure. It was during this stay, in fact, that Thi Gonh and another Ha Jiin guerilla had been captured. During this stay, that Stake and the enemy sniper had entered into an unconventional relationship behind the closed door of her makeshift cell.

  Each monk wore a beautiful blue robe, a small black hat with three corners, and had a gaping hole in place of a face. As young initiates, they began smoking an incense with cancerous properties, so that their faces were eaten away over the years, a demonstration of their selfless devotion. They were essentially identical cloned soldiers of their faith, blind to the distractions and temptations of the material world, but though they no longer had lips to speak with they were still able to render their chanting. Stake could hear this chanting noise now, rising higher. A flush of gooseflesh swept over his arms. He remembered the chants of the detained monks at the monastery. He had never grown used to it. He had heard stories that, if they really wanted to, the clerics could kill a man with a certain pitch.

  A mob was swelling behind and to the sides of the exorcists, excited by their presence, inspired by their eerie chants, though their own shouts and curses were mostly drowned out by reverberating intonations that seemed a combination of deep moan and floating howl. Even the klaxon inside the base had become overwhelmed by the sound. Stake saw the churning protestors, mostly young men, waving their fists and throwing objects up over the top of the barrier; fruit and whatever rubbish they could find around them. The barrier could be raised higher than the buildings within the compound, and a ceiling of energy then extended across to protect the base from air attack, though Stake supposed they didn’t consider that likely.

  Stake saw CF soldiers, helmeted and carrying assault engines, scrambling within the compound. A hovertank glided to a stop, blocking a little of Stake’s view of the barrier, but he could see a new disturbance taking place out there. He realized it was a group of Jin Haa policemen, trying to drive the rioters back away from the wall, cracking batons made from lengths of something like bamboo across the shoulders and legs of some of the more unruly people in their path. Stake saw one bare-chested young man lash back, punching a militia man in the face. It won him a barrage of batons that drove him to his knees and elbows, with his hands laced across the top of his head to protect his skull. Other protestors, watching this, only seemed to grow more outraged and agitated. Fruit and trash started flying at the riot squad in addition to arcing over the wall.

  Stake wondered if the tank would receive orders to open up on the crowd with a sound cannon or broad shock beam, either of which would be nonlethal and either of which could fire straight through the energy barrier at its current setting. He also wondered if the assembling troopers had been instructed to use only gel caps loaded with a paralyzing drug, should the need to fire arise. He imagined Gale would be concerned about not killing any Jin Haa. Not out of a moral consideration, of course, but a political one. For the meantime, the CF people were holding the fort and letting the police try to quell the uproar, but they were outnumbered. Stake feared that it would be the police who ultimately opened fire with lethal ammunition and exacerbated the political situation themselves. Stake could see them being accused of looking after the Earth base instead of their own people. Might it have been better to let the protestors get the shouting out of their systems, and not engage them this way? Stake thought the best course of action would be to appeal to the exorcists to cease the chanting meant to drive out these demons who had invaded their world from an unseen realm, and infected the land with their monstrous blue city. Then might the rabble-rousers settle down and disperse?

  The two table cleaners, various kitchen workers, and other of the base’s personnel had gathered along the windows by this time to gaze out as Stake was doing. Someone came beside him, almost brushing his elbow, and he recognized the person’s perfume before he looked to see Ami Pattaya standing there. She smiled faintly. “Hey, shy guy. I saw you looking out. I just heard there’s another protest going on outside our embassy, too.”

  “More monks?”

  “Yeah. And more people like these.” She nodded her head toward the chaos they were witnessing. “Maybe it’s that awful sound that’s got them so crazy.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over it.

  Despite the furor going on outside, Stake remained focused on the science chief. “Ami, did you ever ask the colonel to let you run tests on the gear the Ha Jiin found with the clones – to try to establish how long it was buried, and see if any DNA could be recovered?”

  “No, I told you – he said there was very little stuff, and it was very nondescript.”

  “Could you do that anyway? Ask him if you can examine it? Where does he keep it, anyway, if not in your lab?” At no time did Stake mention the photos Henderson had shown him or their particular subject matter. He had as much as dismissed them.

  “I don’t know; in his quarters, I imagine.”

  She wasn’t looking at him. Her sunny nature, as he remembered it, was clouded over. Stake still studied her. At this point he was disinclined to think she was as innocent of knowledge as she claimed. She was Gale’s lover, after all. In his current frame of mind, Stake wondered if Gale might even have sent Ami to his room that time to see what the detective was about.

  “Oh my God, look,” she said, pointing out the window as if to distract him from his scrutiny.

  The barrier had thus far kept the rioters out. Stake had seen a few people, blundering into it as they jostled each other or dodged the cracking batons, violently repelled by the transparent energy field. Hoverbikes did not ride high enough off the ground to clear the top. Now something else was coming along, however, wading through the crowd, parting them like grass. Angry policemen smacked their sticks against the legs of three giant yubos, but by then the lumbering animals had just about reached the barrier already. The single back tentacle of each was held high, and at their ends, their strange hands held a trio of Jin Haa men aloft. For a delirious moment, Stake thought it might be Thi Gonh’s husband and his two friends, but it was not.

  The yubos dangled the men over the top of the wall, and let go. One yubo, maybe because of the blows it was receiving, stepped too close to the barrier and its thick appendage was jolted. Stake could hear the behemoth’s bellow of surprise and pain.

  The three Jin Haa who dropped inside the compound hit the ground hard. One rolled onto his back, gripping a shattered ankle and crying out. The other two scrambled to their feet. Both of them were carrying something small and dark.

  “Dung,” Stake said, as one man cocked back his arm to hurl a grenade at several Colonial Forces men charging toward him.

  They opened fire with their assault engines. The man flew back, the grenade going out of his hand behind him. At the same moment, the other man tossed his grenade beneath the stationary, floating hovertank.

  The detonation under the tank barely rocked it, did not pierce its heavy armor. The dropped grenade, though, bounced toward the man gripping his ankle. He turned his head toward it in realization, then he was gone in a flare of light and a burst of obliterated flesh and bone.

  This second explosion was doubly potent, as it set off the grenade in the injured man’s possession. A wave of concussion rolled toward the mess hall windows, causing them to vibrate slightly against the ha
nds and bodies of those pressed there. Ami turned her face away instinctively, as if afraid the glass would shatter, or the explosions blind her, or the flying blood splash the pane in front of her eyes.

  The second, double explosion had thrown onto his back the man who had tossed his bomb under the tank. Badly wounded, he lifted his head a little, only to be shot almost point-blank by a female CF soldier who had just run up to him.

  “Real ammo,” Stake murmured, seeing the man’s head drop back, and the puffs of misted blood from the bullet hits in his chest and neck.

  The blasts had rocked the people on the other side of the barrier, as well. It was one thing to throw fruit, another to throw bombs. They began to scatter in all directions, some screaming, the militia taking advantage of the situation by chasing after them to make sure they didn’t reassemble. The yubos were wheeling away from the wall, and Stake saw a teenage Jin Haa boy trip and become trampled under their massive feet.

  The chanting of the monks ended. They appeared stunned, swayed as if awakened from a bout of communal sleepwalking. The klaxons inside the base changed their tone to reflect the new state of affairs. The bland voice returned to announce, “Condition red. Condition red.” Full out attack.

  “I’d better get to the infirmary,” Ami told Stake, spinning away from the window. “They might need extra hands.”

  Stake watched her race off across the mess hall – as fast as her clacking high heels could take her, as if it were him she was fleeing from – before he turned again to watch the anarchy just on the other side of the glass.

  ***

  That evening he watched the VT in his room with almost the same feeling of dazed horror, feeling like a spectator to disaster all over again, except this time without the lovely and well-endowed Ami Pattaya at his elbow.

  In the mess hall, Stake had been watching Ami’s face, listening to her voice and gauging her demeanor, as he asked her about the fragments of uniform. The first time he had asked her about them, in his room, she had been very casual about it. This time she’d been much more tense. Stake figured that while he was back on Oasis and Henderson had asked Gale about the salvaged items, Gale had let Ami know that the two men were inquiring about them.