Carbon Run

by J. G. Follansbee

  The four marched down the stairs, through the lobby, and out in the open to the car. Bill cringed, waiting for the shot that didn’t come. The few pedestrians ignored them, passing the colonel’s body as if unattended corpses were a common sight. His eyes stared up into the smog. Bill wondered what would happen to his brother’s body, but he did not feel any great loss, apart from the regret that comes from wishing he had tried to know his brother better. He reached out to him when Anne was born, but he never followed up. It didn’t occur to him then that Anne deserved to know her uncle, if only because he was family. Keeping her from him was cruel. Perhaps Raleigh could’ve offered something good to her, if not to me. Bill also remembered his brother’s words at the hotel: “I’m sorry that I didn’t take the time to get to know her better. Or her father.” They once had common ground—Anne—but it was too late to share it.

  The scissor doors of the police car lifted, and they slipped inside. The fit was tight and uncomfortable. Kilel croaked a command in Russian, and the car’s controls woke up. The doors slid shut. She spoke again, and the car accelerated.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The police car jostled Janine Kilel and the three passengers as it avoided the ruts and potholes in the gravel road leading out of Run. Despite the pain in her shoulder, she reached into a compartment labeled with a water droplet and the Cyrillic “X2O.” Another compartment contained a well-stocked first aid kit. Bill Penn helped her with an injection designed to kill pain without dulling the senses. Next to the first aid was a larger, unlabeled compartment. Kilel queried the car’s AI and found two automatic pistols. Each had two clips and she loaded a clip and a shell into the chamber of each gun. As her strength returned, she updated the AI’s instructions with spoken Russian.

  “What did you tell it to do?” Molly Bain pushed her auburn hair away from her face. Even disheveled and bleary-eyed, the woman was alluring. Envy was an unfamiliar emotion for Kilel, but she felt like an awkward teenager beside her.

  “I told it to go to Dudinka without stopping.” The car swerved to avoid a chuckhole. “We’ll arrive tomorrow.”

  “How many languages do you speak?” Molly said, sounding curious.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Just making conversation,” she sighed. “We have a long drive ahead.”

  “I took a year of Russian in college.” Kilel did not want to engage with the woman, whose history Kilel knew, at least as far as the Spike was concerned. She may have paid a debt to society, but she can never repay the debt to the earth.

  “How did you join the BES, Inspector?”

  Kilel directed her gaze out the window at the opaque wall of vegetation. “Your former brother-in-law recruited me.”

  “Raleigh?”

  “I was in graduate school, studying environmental history and public policy. I had submitted my master’s thesis on the early air quality policies of the old U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. My adviser sent it to Colonel Penn.” Kilel flashed on Penn’s body lying in the hotel square back in Run. Emotion rushed into her, led by a feeling of sorrow she hadn’t known since her mother’s death. “That was before he became a colonel.”

  “Were you close to Raleigh?”

  Was I close to him? Was he more than my boss? “He supervised me on several cases. He is... was my lead on the oil-smuggling case.” The sorrow was almost uncontrollable, which embarrassed the officer.

  “I’m sorry if these memories are painful,” Molly said.

  “It’s my wound,” Kilel said gruffly, glancing down at her injury. I’ll show no tears in front of this woman.

  Molly edged closer. “Let me see.” She lifted the bandage. “I’m not a nurse, but I don’t see any fresh bleeding. You’ll have a nasty scar if it isn’t sewn up soon.”

  Bill stirred from the backseat. “Something to tell your grandchildren.”

  Kilel didn’t realize Penn was listening. The idea of grandchildren had never occurred to her.

  Molly returned to her place in the car. “Is there someone in your life, Inspector? Your non-professional life?”

  Kilel paused. The last person to ask her that question was her father. They spoke infrequently now. “No. My work is very demanding.” Kilel closed her eyes. “I’d like to rest now.” She doubted her three prisoners would attempt an escape.

  The car drove on in silence, though Kilel stole a glance now and again at the family, though the word applied only in a descriptive sense. Anne Penn and her father were close as parent and child. The relationship between mother and daughter was a different story. The young woman stared out the window, attempting to ignore Molly, whose face begged for acknowledgment. She wants to connect with the girl, even after twenty years of absence, or perhaps because of it. Molly lifted her hand to her daughter’s tousled hair, as if to stroke it.

  The girl flinched and rumbled, “Don’t touch me.”

  “Anne, I want to tell you...”

  “Are you going to say something melodramatic, like, you’re sorry? You abandoned me and Dad, just like you were ready to abandon someone else.” Anne pointed at Kilel, who feigned sleep.

  “I’m not proud that I left you and Bill to follow my dreams.”

  “You ought to be ashamed.”

  “I’m not ashamed either.” Molly’s voice firmed. “I did what I thought was right for me.”

  Anne hissed. “You are the most selfish woman I have ever known.”

  Bill was attentive, Kilel saw, as he let the drama play out.

  “Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I should’ve come home, or found a way to work away from Algid.”

  “You’re every child’s nightmare.” Anne returned to the window.

  Molly was unfazed by Anne’s hostility. “I see you here, now. I saw what you did back in Run, how brave you were. I saw you go out to your uncle. I see you are better than me, more than I deserve in a daughter. I am who I am, Anne. I’ve made my own way, in my own way. No one’s choices are ever perfect.” Molly reached out to Anne again, but she cringed.

  “You can’t escape your responsibilities to others because it’s inconvenient,” Anne said. “I was not a barrier to sidestep.” Anne struggled to hold back tears. “All my life, I saw other kids with mothers who showed up at school events, who explained how to be a woman to their daughters, who picked them up from camp. I sometimes imagined what it would be like, to have two parents instead of one. You say you’re sorry. Don’t be. You got what you deserved.”

  Anne’s response hurt Molly. Kilel measured the sting of the words in how she clasped her hands and interlaced her fingers. Kilel’s mother was a vague memory, except for the sorrow. She died of cancer when her daughter was ten, though her father claimed that the Spike had killed her. She was one of tens of millions of victims, real and imagined, of Molly Bain and Martin Scribb.

  The inspector edged toward the police car’s dash and peered at the gravel road. It cut through a series of sandy ridges. Instead of following the contour, the roadbuilders sliced into the ridges to keep the road flat. For a few seconds, walls of scree rose on either side of the car, before falling away until the car came to the next ridge. The car’s AI attempted to maintain the speed ordered by Kilel, but it slowed to avoid damaging the undercarriage.

  The travelers left the smog of Run behind, but dusk had fallen, and visibility was limited. Kilel kept the headlights off; the car’s radar saw obstacles long before a human and its GPS systems kept the car on course. No other vehicles came near. Kilel spied a wide curve ahead, with the exit hidden behind another cutting. Her anxiety surged. She checked her staser: ninety percent charged. “Mr. Penn, can you handle a weapon?”

  “Yes, but...”

  A thud against the armor plating of the car interrupted him.

  “What—”

  Kilel ducked when another thud hit the car. She peered over the dash, and she switched on the car’s night-vision enhancements. The windshield flashed green. Kilel made out the contours of the road, the vegetation
, and heat signatures of...

  “Mother,” she said. “Get down!”

  A series of thuds raked the armor on the car’s left side so hard the car swerved to the right. The AI recovered, but slowed the car, making it an easier target. An object smashed into the armored roof, but didn’t shatter it. Kilel addressed the car’s AI in rapid-fire Russian, and it crossed and recrossed the imaginary center line in the road. The car slowed further to perform these maneuvers, and more shots hit home.

  “What are we going to do?” Molly said, her voice high-pitched.

  “The car is built to withstand high-velocity rounds,” Kilel said. “We just have to get past the shooters.”

  An alarm sounded from the dash, but before Kilel and the others reacted, a loud bang lifted the vehicle’s right side a meter off the roadbed, and it crashed into the ditch between the road and the rising scree wall. The explosion tossed the occupants like dolls, but the reinforced roll cage of the car prevented shrapnel from turning their bodies into mincemeat. The power systems failed, and the dash, as well as the night vision, dimmed to nothing. Kilel smelled smoke. The scissor doors opened. “Everyone out. Get down into the ditch. NOW.”

  Bill was the first out, crawling between the door and the crumbling wall of the road cut. Kilel heard more thuds. The destroyed car offered a measure of protection, if they stayed out of sight. Anne crawled after her father. She was followed by her mother. No one was injured. Kilel handed the pistols to Bill, safeties off. She felt his fingers grasping the weapons as she held them out. Then she herself scrambled outside.

  Molly and Anne huddled together at the bottom of the ditch, which was filled with fetid water. Bill fumbled with the pistols. “Give me the other pistol,” Kilel ordered. Anne’s eyes followed the weapon. Above them, the pop of rounds coming from the assailants sounded like large drops of rain, though the sky was clear.

  “What now?” Bill said.

  Kilel assessed the situation. They were pinned down by an unknown enemy, though the list of candidates was short. She had a staser and a police-issue automatic pistol with twenty rounds. She flicked off the safety of her staser. She was uncertain about Bill’s abilities to handle a weapon. Did he set up this ambush? No, he has more to gain by siding with me. The area was so remote, even her powerful com detected no towers. Her com found the BES satellite overhead, but she stopped herself from sending a call for help, wondering if the ambushers were monitoring. “We’ll have to see what they want.”

  “You mean, negotiate?” Molly said. “With whom?”

  A distant female voice called out. “Inspector, are you all right?”

  Kilel said to her companions, “Get under the car.” All four crawled underneath the smoldering vehicle, which protected them from attackers above. The car sat with its rear half above the point where the roadbed pitched down into the ditch. That gave Kilel a view up and down the road for fifty meters. Bill took a position next to Kilel. A half-moon rose above the horizon, scattering muted light on the scene.

  “We don’t want anybody else hurt.”

  “That’s Micah Panang,” Bill whispered. “I think she’s the one who shot you, Inspector. She’s got a rifle. Gore is probably with her.”

  Kilel was unsure who Gore was, although Martin Scribb had used the name too. “The fire that hit our car was automatic weapons. They’ve got help, but they don’t know whether we’re dead or alive.” Kilel considered their options. “Mr. Penn, when I say ‘Go,’ fire a few shots toward the voice. Got it?”

  In the half-light, he nodded.

  “Go!”

  Bill lifted his pistol above the level of the road and fired five shots in rapid succession. At the same time, Kilel lifted her head and her staser above the road edge. She spotted movement and discharged the weapon twice. Nothing happened; no ping, or scream, or anything that told her that she hit something. The discharges reduced her staser’s reserve to thirty percent.

  “That’ll keep their heads down for a little while,” Kilel said.

  “Fighting us is pointless. We only want you. The others can leave.”

  “Don’t believe them, Bill,” Kilel said. “You and your family will be just as dead as I will be if we give up.”

  “How do you know that?” Molly’s fright was telling. “They might let us go.”

  Bill shook his head. “Kilel is right. I saw Gore murder thirty of my shipmates on Aganippe. He’ll kill us without thinking twice about it.”

  “What are we going to do?” Molly said. “They have more guns than us, and more people. We’ll never get out of here.”

  “Where would we go, Inspector?” Anne said. “We’re a hundred miles from anywhere.”

  The pain in Kilel’s shoulder screamed, despite the painkiller, and she felt the sticky wetness of fresh blood. “We have one chance of surviving more than a few hours. We’ll have to draw them out and take out as many as we can. Maybe we can drive the rest under cover for a time. We’ll make for the bush and head east. I might be able to call for help if we can get into range of a com tower. My com battery is getting low. I don’t want to risk draining it on a satellite call.”

  “What if it doesn’t work?” Molly was terrified.

  “We have to fight them,” Anne said, defiant. “We can’t just wait to be slaughtered.”

  Anne, Kilel noticed, had stayed calm, like her father.

  “Follow my lead, Bill. Get ready to shoot anything that moves but stay on the ground. We won’t have a second chance.”

  A hail of bullets slammed into the broken vehicle.

  Bill’s face twisted in the gloom. He was terrified, despite his calm. “What if they shoot you where you stand? They want you dead.”

  “Thugs like to gloat before finishing the job. At least I hope that’s true.” Kilel crawled out from underneath the car. “I’m coming out!” Kilel got to her knees as she yelled into the darkness. “I’m giving up!”

  “Put your staser on the ground.”

  Kilel complied. Her heart pounded, but the pistol in her waistband offered comfort.

  “Go to the center of the road and come forward ten meters.”

  “You understand what will happen if you kill me?” Kilel said. “You’ll be caught and dissed.”

  “Shut up. Now stop.”

  A female figure came forward out of the darkness. She wore night-vision glasses.

  Bill called out from the wrecked police car. “Micah! It’s me, Bill. Anne is with me. You have to let us go.”

  Another set of bullets pocked the ground near the car. A female voice cried. Kilel couldn’t tell who it was.

  Micah said sadly, “It’s too late, Bill.”

  Kilel saw her chance. In a motion as smooth as a cobra’s strike, she reached behind her and pulled out the pistol. Micah, distracted by talking with Bill, flinched, then dropped as Kilel’s first bullet struck her through the left eye. Kilel turned to her right, but saw no one else in the darkness. Pain tore through her calf, and she fell on the gravel road, her wounded shoulder grinding into the packed rock. The fall knocked the pistol from her hand. She reached out to it, but a boot kicked it away. She followed the leg up to the face, and she gasped, in pain and in shock. Even in the faint light, Kilel saw the assailant wore no night-vision glasses. It didn’t need them. It had the eyes of a cat, the pupils dilated, ready to kill.

  “I commend you, Inspector, on a brave effort,” the tiger-man said. “But you’ve failed.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I was called Gorov many years ago. I am Gore now.”

  The pain in her leg and shoulder overwhelmed Kilel, but she wanted to know why she was about to die. “Tell me... tell me who...”

  “Who is running our little enterprise?” Gore’s tongue licked his distorted mouth. “Someone in power, high up, but I don’t know who, specifically. The information is... What’s the English word? Compartmentalized. I don’t care, as long as I know where to find the oil and how I will be paid.”

  Kilel laid her
head on the dusty road. The creature confirmed what she had suspected, but she doubted if she had time to make use of the information.

  Gore growled. “I also have instructions to kill you, and I know how to follow orders. Good-bye, Inspector. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

  Gore raised a pistol to Kilel’s head. She could distinguish the individual hairs on Gore’s hand silhouetted in the starlight. She had no idea her natural night vision was that good. Perhaps it was the heightened senses she heard accompanied the experience of death. It would have been an interesting discussion with Colonel Penn.

  A tiny movement caught her eye, paired with a pop. Gore’s gun dropped to the ground. He roared with pain and raised his arm, spraying blood from the severed artery in his wrist.

  “Gregori!” Molly sprang from the damaged police car, followed by Anne. Kilel felt as if she was slipping into a void. Bill was prone on the ground, bleeding. Hit by one of the last rifle rounds. Anne held her father’s pistol before her. She was on one knee, both hands aiming the gun. “I’ll kill him,” she shouted to anyone who was nearby. “Any more shooting and I’ll kill him.”

  Molly folded her hand over the mangled paw of the tiger-man. “No, Anne. I’ll take him away. Go home with your father. Go home now.” Molly lifted her voice. “He’s shot. The captain is hurt. I’m bringing him to you.” Molly pushed the creature ahead of her, leaving the lifeless body of Micah behind.

  Kilel’s mind cleared a little, and Anne kneeled next to her. She laid the pistol on the ground. “You’ve been hit again. Dad is hit too. He might be dead.”

  Anne’s touch confused Kilel. The young woman stroked the inspector’s hair. Perhaps it was the same touch she offered the birds. Bill was a lucky man. Mike Schmidt was a lucky man. The darkness around Kilel confused her. Is this the end of my life? Or are the stars just the stars?

  “Take care of the birds, Anne.”

  The half-moon slid into her field of vision. A crunching sound entered her consciousness, the sound of feet on gravel. Anne backed away, and Kilel’s physical pain was magnified by the separation. She heard a second pair of feet on the road. The gait was regular—and inhuman. She thought of Gore. The sounds stopped centimeters from her. She reoriented her head and saw a shape, black as death, outlined against the cliff. It absorbed light as well as blocked it.