by Richard Fox
Smoke assaulted Ely’s eyes and he began choking. Heat grew against his back and flames roiled beneath the ceiling. He tried to unfasten his restraints, but they wouldn’t budge.
“Help! Help me!” He kicked at the floor as the smoke grew thicker.
A hand slammed against his chest, jerking the buckle away, and there was a groan of failing metal. His world lurched and he went tumbling through the air. His seat slammed into the dirt and the smell of pine needles tinged with smoke greeted him as he struggled to breathe. He stared up into tall trees, some of the branches licked by flames.
He tried to sit up, but the restraints held fast. “Ah…come on.” He struggled again, then flopped back against the seat.
A guard leaned over him and held up a fist. He snapped his fist twice and a Ka-Bar blade snapped out from a forearm sheath. Blood drained from Ely’s face as the knife slashed at him. He gave off an undignified yelp but the cut went through the straps and not his body.
The guard picked him up like he weighed next to nothing and set him on his feet. The other two had taken cover next to thick trees and scanned the forest.
“Any crash you can walk away from? Am I—”
The guard slapped a big hand against the back of Ely’s neck and brought Ely face-to-face with the plain metal of his helmet that offered only a vision slit across the eyes to look into.
There was a click as a speaker powered up on the guard’s helmet.
“Shut your mouth,” the guard said, “or I will rip out your tongue. We have to deliver you alive. Undamaged wasn’t specified. Follow?”
Ely almost answered but opted to nod furiously instead.
“Something scrambled our engines. Forced us down. We don’t have any comms either, so it’s got to be rebels,” the guard said. “Stay close. Run and I’ll kill you. Follow?”
Ely nodded again. He touched his pocket with the compound injector and nodded again. His body felt on edge, but he blamed that on the adrenaline and not the Qa’Resh probe further invading his nervous system.
The guards formed a tight perimeter around Ely, so close that he could barely see around him over their bulk. A shove told him which direction to walk—not that he knew where they were or where they were going. But he had no reason to doubt that any of his identical security detail would fail to deliver on the promise of bodily harm should he cause any trouble.
They moved slowly through the forest until the lead guard froze. Another pushed Ely down to his knees. He heard them speaking but couldn’t make anything out.
There was a whack and the lead guard stumbled back, a fresh gash across the forehead of his helmet. The guard shifted his momentum, lowered his shoulder, and charged. The other two opened fire, their gauss carbines snapping and muzzles flashing.
Ely crawled forward and froze as a blur came out of the woods. Light melted around a shape as it drew closer and closer.
The hot metal of a carbine barrel pressed against Ely’s temple and he gagged on the stench of ozone.
“Nothing personal,” a guard said.
The other shouted a warning as the blur launched forward and speared the brute about to shoot Ely in the midsection. The impact knocked the guard off his feet and he went down in a heap with the other guard.
A camo cloak slipped off a Strike Marine in full power armor as he fought with the two guards. The Marine slammed his hands against a guard’s chest and jerked the guard forward, slamming his helmet into the guard’s. There was a clang like a church bell ringing and the Marine shoved the guard away, a deep dent like an inverted nose on the guard’s faceplate.
The Marine looked at Ely, his full-face helmet scuffed and marred by old battles. His head snapped to one side as the other guard rolled onto his back, carbine in his hands.
Bullets struck the Strike Marine’s chest, spinning him back and into a tree trunk. The guard got to his feet and dropped his empty carbine. He drew a pistol in one smooth motion and aimed it at the Marine’s face as he strode forward. The Marine, one arm clutched across his body, looked up and into the barrel.
A shot snapped over Ely’s head and hit the guard in the wrist. Blood splattered out from the seam of the guard’s armor and the pistol popped into the air. The Strike Marine stumbled forward with a roar and tackled the guard. The guard shifted his weight forward and shoved the Marine aside, but the Marine kept his grip on the guard.
The pseudo muscles incorporated into the Strike Marine’s armor whirred and the Marine slammed the guard to the ground.
Ely spotted the pistol under a bush and crawled for it. He heard the clang of gauntlets against armor and grunts as the battle between the two warriors continued. Ely shot his arm into the bush and felt the pistol. He pulled it out by the barrel and fumbled with it.
The guard was on top of the Marine, raining unanswered blows onto the Marine’s helmet.
Ely took aim and pulled the trigger.
Nothing. He squeezed hard, but the trigger still wouldn’t budge. He looked for a safety switch, but he couldn’t find anything.
“Hey, asshole!” Ely stretched his arm back and threw the pistol with everything he had. The weapon smacked the back of the guard’s head and he stopped pounding on the Marine just long enough to look back at Ely.
Ely couldn’t see the man’s eyes, but he felt the hatred even from beneath the helmet.
The guard picked up the pistol and there was a whine as the weapon powered up. He brought the barrel down to aim at the Strike Marine’s face.
A Ka-Bar snapped out of the Marine’s forearm housing and he slammed the blade under the guard’s chin. The Marine twisted the knife and a glut of blood ejected from the wound. The guard toppled to one side.
The Marine rolled onto his hands and knees, then brought one arm across his chest. Blood dripped from bullet holes and the Marine let out a low groan, then collapsed to the ground.
“Corpsman?” Ely hurried to the Marine’s side and shook him. “Corpsman!”
There was a snap of branches behind him.
The guard with the deep dent in his helmet sat up, and Ely saw a single eye looking at him from the cracked vision slit. The guard slapped at the holster on his chest that held his pistol. A shot rang out and a bullet flew through the vision slit, piercing the guard’s face. The bullet hit the back of his helmet but lacked the power to shoot out the other side. Instead, it rattled inside the guard’s skull like a can of paint in a shaker.
The guard flopped back to the ground.
“Move!” Ely was shoved away and hit the ground.
A Marine with a camo cloak over his shoulders and a hood over his helmet rolled the injured Marine onto his back. The man’s armor was a solid mass of blood and dirt. The new arrival moved a palm slowly over the injured Marine, then his hand clenched into a fist.
Hoffman removed his helmet and dropped it to the ground, then gently took Par’s helmet off. Par’s breathing was shallow, his eyes unfocused and staring at nothing.
“Sir…sir, you there?” Par asked, coughing up blood.
“I’m here, Marine.” Hoffman gripped Par’s hand and held it to his chest. “The kid’s safe. Well done.”
“They were gonna…gonna…”
“I know. Quick thinking. Violence of action. You made me proud.” Hoffman brought Par’s hand to his mouth and kissed his knuckles.
“Grace…I can’t see her. Can’t see her, sir.”
“She’s waiting for you.” Hoffman looked away.
“Get the kid…get the kid…” Par coughed and kept trying to speak, but there were no more words. Hoffman held his hand until Par stopped breathing and his body went slack.
Ely took a few steps toward them, his heart racing. “We can’t…can’t we help him?” he asked.
“My corpsman is over there.” Hoffman crossed Par’s hands over his bloody chest, then flicked a hand toward the forest. “She’s dead too. First bastard got her. I had to kill him and I didn’t get back to Par fast enough.”
“I tried
to—”
“Their guns are gene-locked.” Hoffman kicked the pistol away from the dead guard. “You didn’t know. But you kept trying. My name’s Cpt. Hoffman, Terran Strike Marines. You better be Elias Hale.”
Ely raised his arms slightly and flopped them against his sides.
“Come here.” Hoffman put a hand on Ely’s shoulder, then drew a small two-pronged device off his belt.
“What’s that for—ah!”
Hoffman jammed the prongs under Ely’s collarbone and a burst of electricity spiked down Ely’s arm. The limb twitched uncontrollably and Ely tried to catch his flopping arm and press it against his body.
“Geist tracker. Everyone’s got one.” Hoffman tapped the device against his power armor. “They explode if exposed to air after they’re implanted, unless you burn them out first. If it makes you feel any better, we all had ours burned out this morning.”
“No, it doesn’t make me feel any better.” Ely grimaced as his arm spasmed. “Little warning next time?”
“Might’ve set it off if you’d flinched.” Hoffman looked over the dead and sighed. “All right, this is what we’ve got to do. Drag the Mitchells back to the air car and I’ll rat-fuck the grav engines. Batteries will ignite and that’ll flash-fry everything. By the time the Commissariat catch up, we’ll be long gone.”
“Wait…what’s going on here? Past couple days have been weird enough, but if someone—meaning you, as there’s no one else out here—in…where the hell are we?” Ely slapped a mosquito on his neck.
“Canada.” Hoffman grabbed the hand of a dead guard and dragged the body over to the other, then proceeded to drag them both toward the crash. “They were taking you to the Geist ship over Juneau, where an un-living monster was going to flay you open until she figured out how to remove that bit of Qa’Resh tech you’re carrying around. My team…I’m going to get you off this prison planet and through the Crucible to friendly forces.”
“Not that I’m for being flayed open, but what ‘friendly forces’?”
Hoffman got the corpses to the air car, hefted one up, and dumped it into the open door. He leaned against the underside and looked over a sparking wheel well.
“OK.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I hate to be literal, but we ain’t out of the woods yet. There’s a chance the Geist will catch up to us and what you don’t know you can’t divulge. Follow?”
“That’s what they said.” Ely swallowed hard and pointed at the dead guard.
“I doubt that’s what they told you.”
“No. ‘Follow.’”
“They’re templated off a Strike Marine. We all have a way of talking. Let me guess, you got to know one of the Shannons pretty well?” Hoffman slung the other body over his shoulder like a sack of bloody potatoes and worked it into the opening.
“There’s more than one Shannon?”
“I’m sick of killing her. But yeah.” Hoffman tapped Ely on the shoulder and led him back to where Par lay.
“I don’t follow. No, wait…”
“Geist conquered Earth.” Hoffman pointed a knife hand at Ely’s midsection. “Marc Ibarra refused to be evacuated and stayed behind. He wrecked every single foundry module in the system and destroyed the procedural fields on Hawaii and Mars. We thought he got them all, but there were some tubes in slow transit out to Pluto when the Geist hit. Those tubes had some old templates on them, templates that the Geist and their Naroosha buddies put to use.”
“Why were there any procedural tubes? I know all about the Hale Treaty. My father’s the one that—”
“Shut up,” Hoffman snapped. The Strike Marine clenched his jaw and Ely could tell he was fighting down emotions. One of Par’s hands had fallen to his side, his fingers curled into a claw. “Just shut up for a minute, kid. This is the worst part of being an officer.”
Hoffman bent over, picked up Par’s camo cloak, and handed it to Ely. “Your old man’s a Pathfinder. He teach you how to wear one?” Hoffman asked.
“Yes, sir.” Ely slipped it over his shoulders and used the ties inside the loose fabric to tighten it against his arms.
“We’ve got to take care of our dead. I owe it to them.”
****
A pair of body bags lay in a clearing beneath a starry sky.
Hoffman had taken care of the last dead guard, then put the dead Strike Marines into black bags each had folded up on their equipment rig. He buried their armor beneath a fern bush.
Ely wore Grace’s helmet. Its internal IR comms and optics let him see and speak to Hoffman securely, even though they were largely invisible beneath their active camo cloaks. The helmet stank of old sweat and Grace’s flowery shampoo, but he was glad to have it. Walking blind through the forest while following a ghost would have been a rotten cherry on this particularly awful day.
“You of the faith?” Hoffman asked. “Saint Kallen?”
“I go to church, but not a Templar or anything. Dad…he knew Saint Kallen when she was alive. Told me stories about what she was like. My family never could get into seeing her as something…holy? That’s not right.”
“Then pray for the souls of good Marines that died so you might live.” Hoffman went to one knee, his gauss rifle in one hand, his head bent.
Ely folded his hands and tried to find the words. A knot formed in his chest and emotion threatened to overwhelm him.
Hoffman leaned forward and pulled a tab on Par’s body bag. There was a hiss and the bag tightened over the corpse. There was the sound of sand sliding against sand as the body disintegrated. He did the same for Grace. Hoffman stood and looked up to the sky.
“The Saint lives.” Hoffman looked at Ely, then thumped him in the chest.
“The Saint lives,” Ely said.
“Those are Crusader words.” Hoffman rolled up the two now-flat bags and snapped them onto his armor. “Know them. Might save your life sometime soon.”
“If you say so, Mr. Hoffman.” Ely shifted under his camo cloak, remembering just how poorly they let heat and moisture escape. “What now?”
“Left foot, right foot.” Hoffman hefted his gauss rifle in both hands and started walking. “We’ve got a ways to extraction. Should be a movement to daylight. Besides, I don’t have as much faith in the Big Boss’ claims that he can keep the Geist off us.”
“What extraction?” Ely asked. He had to lengthen his stride to keep up with the Strike Marine.
“Can’t tell you yet. You know anything about some kind of special engine? Faster-than-light engine? The fuel, specifically.”
“Shannon was curious about that too. She was disappointed when I told her that the FTLs run off Astranite. Really fascinating substance. They had it in the dwarf galaxy where Terra Nova is. Its composition is unique, some kind of a quantum fractal that—”
“You have it or not?”
“That we think resulted from a rare type of supernova, like gold, or any element heavier than helium, actually. I can show you the Holzburg equation and—”
“I may be an officer, but I’m still a Strike Marine. Smaller words and more profanity.”
“Then…no? Unless they loaded up the foundry matrix.” Ely tapped the back of his helmet. “Sorry.”
“How’s your uncle? Jared Hale?” Hoffman asked.
“You know about him?” Ely perked up.
“I know his face.”
“Huh. He’s had a rough time in Terra Nova. The first wave of colonists had it pretty good for a while. He even got married, but then the colony found these three exiled rulers imprisoned in a nearby planet. And then…”
****
Shannon rinsed the last of the conditioner out of her hair and appreciated a few more seconds of hot water. This level of the Commissariat’s residential tower had no utility rations. There was nothing wrong with enjoying one of the few perks of her position. She tested the weight of the bottles on the shower rack and frowned.
While she had no concerns over affording a few amenities, the factory that made
her preferred hair-care brands had been destroyed during the Geist takeover, and there weren’t many bottles left. She’d need to stop by the contraband stores and see if any more had been confiscated.
She slipped on a bathrobe and went to a foggy mirror. Wiping the condensation away, she looked herself over, including the faint scars running along the edge of her face. The work looked sloppy, but her face matched what she remembered.
How long had she been out of the tubes? Her mind had been updated with everything relevant since her last sacrifice, but they never gave her benchmarks, such as when the last version of her had perished, or how.
A throat cleared behind her.
She spun around and snatched up a short pair of scissors as a weapon.
Nakir stood in the doorway, a crowd of shock troops behind him.
“Commissar.” She smiled and let her robe fall open just enough to attract eyes, but Nakir’s chrome mask didn’t budge. “I take it there’s a problem?”
“Where’s the boy?” Nakir stepped closer and Shannon straightened up, her back against the sink. “He never arrived at Exalted Noyan’s ship.”
“I saw him off.” Shannon shifted the grip on the scissors to strike, but her arm flicked them away. Disloyal thoughts were not tolerated. The Naroosha programmers made sure of that. “Weather problems, perhaps?”
Nakir brought a hand up and twisted a silver spike out of thin air as strands of light danced down his fingers.
“Your loyalty is absolute,” he said, “but your competence can be questioned. Perhaps we’ve copied the copy too many times. Deep-seated errors that have risen to the fore over time.”
“I will never betray the Geist. I will die and die again for the cause. If the boy isn’t with Exalted Noyan, then why are you here looking for a reason to pin the blame on me? Why don’t we obey their orders and find out what happened?” Shannon sneered at him. “Converts tend to have the most zeal, but there’s always the sliver of doubt, isn’t there?”