by Michael Priv
these guys unless I absolutely had to. Such ingenuity, skill and dedication wasted on Pentagon lunatics. Tragic. Linda was reclining again in the arms of one of the Guards, her arm around his neck for support. I suspected the Guard simply enjoyed carrying her around, his paw all over her butt. That made me feel peeved. Or was it just the drugs?
We found the drainage pipe in the darkness. No small feat under the circumstances. The Guards blew away the thick steel bars across the maw with their blasters.
Slanted upward and no more than thirty inches in diameter, the pipe presented a challenge. The Guards barely fit inside and moved with difficulty. Linda and I had to crawl, which was very painful. The prickliness in my cast intensified, the computer compensating for the added aggravation. In addition to the stronger pain, I also felt more buzzed and woozy.
Panting and slipping, our party ascended ever deeper into the hill for maybe twenty minutes until we emerged into a large chamber with a five-foot pipe leading into it from above, and three smaller pipes leading aside and down. One of the smaller pipes was the one we had just climbed to get here. The sparse glow of a single bulb high up on the wall illuminated the chamber. A steel vertical ladder led from the chamber up to a round manhole cover in the ceiling at least twelve feet up. One of the Guards climbed the ladder, pushed the manhole cover aside and peered out. I heard the quickly intensifying sounds of a battle up on top.
The Guard said something incomprehensible but alarming, as evidenced by the other Guards’ sudden agitation. I nudged Alesh in the shoulder for an explanation.
“The hangar,” he explained, rattled, no longer impassive. This was bad. The enemy had reached the spaceship.
“The hanger where the spaceship is parked?” I asked with a knot in my stomach.
“Yeah.” Alesh nodded significantly and walked to the ladder presently being climbed by another Guard. Linda was lifted to the manhole by one of the Guards named Robert. Then a strong hand pulled her up and through the hatch like rag doll. I climbed the ladder, gasping in pain and delirious from the increasing dosages of the drugs. I found myself in a utility room of a huge hangar that I saw through the open door. The hangar was occupied mostly by an ugly, brick-like shaped, beat-up space freighter. Once painted dark mustard color, the transport seemed simply dirty and neglected now. The towering spaceship reached almost all the way to the hangar’s brightly lit flat ceiling at least a couple hundred feet up. Faded writing and markings on the hull did make some sense after a short pause. Standard. Yes, yes, I used to know Standard quite well. We’d been dying to find this bucket of bolts for five thousand years and here it was. Somehow, finding it did not feel as exciting as I thought it would.
The firefight in the hangar intensified. Our team was staging in the safety of a utility room.
“You two stay here,” Alesh ordered, replacing a power pack in his ray gun. “This time I mean it.” The Guards filed out.
“Linda, you stay here,” I said. “Please. You’ll be safer here.”
“No! Help me up.” Linda was trying to get up but clearly couldn’t make it on her own. Good. “Bye, hon!”
“Norman!”
I walked out of that utility room alone, leaving Linda behind in a desperate hope to improve her chance of survival.
56 The great vastness of the hangar was alight with gunfire, grenade explosions and energy weapons’ discharges. The first thing I saw as I took cover behind a small forklift to assess the situation, was the dead body of Robert, a bayonet handle protruding from his chest, and a Ranger’s dead, mangled body next to him. The Guards’ armor could stop a bullet but not a blade.
Slinking along the wall and stepping over several more dead bodies, I entered an opening, the sight of an ongoing firefight. A Ranger behind a large spool of cable was firing toward the space freighter at somebody I could not see. He presented a good target. I took him out with a short burst. That immediately made me a target. I hobbled out of there fast into the cover of the hulking spaceship landing gear—landing gear number one, as it were, according to the faded Standard numeral ‘1’ marker.
Behind the components of the extended landing gear, I joined two National Guard soldiers and several other defenders, including an Adidas-clad Russian, a middle-aged local with a ponytail and two Guards, firing at the Rangers from the cover of the huge freighter’s nozzle and other protruding parts and scattered equipment. The Rangers, fewer in numbers, were deadly accurate. Taking part in the firefight from behind a tangle of hoses and wires for a minute, I saw that I could possibly dislodge two Rangers holed in behind some crate.
“Hey, any grenades?” I yelled to the Russian, as he was the closest. He shook his head. A large red fire extinguisher hung on the wall about forty feet away from my position. “Cover me!” I yelled again and wobbled as quickly as I could toward the wall, dodging bullets. Everything hurt and the whole world was heaving up and down like crazy from all the drugs, but I made it to the wall and tossed the fire extinguisher toward the back of the crate used as a cover by the two Rangers. The Russian shot the fire extinguisher. It rocketed out, spinning, dislodging both Rangers out of their nest. They both died instantaneously in a hailstorm of bullets and energy flashes. I hobbled back to my cover. Another Ranger, overzealous in his attempt to avenge the other two, jumped in the open from behind a pickup truck, hosed down a position to my right and immediately collapsed, almost cut in half by a ray gun blast. I glanced over to find my National Guard neighbor also dead, slumped against the landing gear.
With the Rangers ’ attack deflated in my location, the defenders counter-attacked, sending the remaining Rangers retreating elsewhere inside the hangar, pursued by the motley crew of locals, armor-clad Guards, A5B and soldiers.
Keeping close to the huge nozzle, I circled the other landing gear to see how we’d fared. Emerging quietly from the mess of hoses and wires, I saw Roberts—His Holy Excellence himself—among several Rangers, setting up some kind of a device with a cheerful, prominent “Radiation Hazard” emblem stenciled on the housing, at the landing gear number two. The Rangers held back the Base defenders positioned along the wall.
My shot at Roberts went wide, attracting a firestorm in my direction. I dove, pressing into the concrete floor in a fetal position behind something too small to serve as a cover, my consciousness teetering at the edge. The pain was truly overwhelming. I didn’t think the painkiller dosage the medic had given me for the next twentyfour hours was sufficient to keep up with my exploits. The idea was probably to lay in bed quietly for twenty-four hours instead of doing somersaults. Concern for Linda gripped my heart. Presumably, she stayed in the utility room but knowing her, deep inside I knew she wouldn’t.
The firestorm suddenly shifted away from me. I looked up in time to see Stan leading an attack on the Rangers, flanked by Klimek and two other Guards and followed by half a dozen Native Americans and a Russian right behind him. They used the diversion I created to make a move. About a dozen Guards—Alesh and Bruno among them, were engaged in a firefight a bit further down. I also caught a glimpse of more A5B fighters, a couple more Russians, the locals and two Army soldiers were attacking further along the landing gear number two.
My AR-15 was empty, so I tackled Roberts who ’d just finished setting up the nuke. The fight with Roberts was over in under a second—my personal worst ever. He greeted me with a straight torso kick, and my world exploded with unbearable pain. I collapsed, screaming like a baby. Roberts laughed. He must have known what the dinged-up, dirty, yellow cast around my chest and abdomen signified.
With the last shreds of consciousness, I willed myself to get up but only made it to a squatting position. Roberts, still laughing, pulled out a gun and pointed it at my head. “Like I said, a worthless pipsqueak,” he said, scowling just as Stan tackled him. They both tumbled but jumped right back on their feet. Roberts punched Stan in the nose, hard. Stan missed the punch. He moved uncharacteristically slow. The steel handle of a commando knife, sunk to its hilt in h
is side must have been the reason. Stan connected on second attempt, throwing Roberts against the landing gear. They both dove for weapons. Roberts retrieved his handgun, and Stan grabbed my empty AR-15 from the floor. Roberts fired, Stan didn’t as the gun was empty.
“No,” I croaked, trying with awkward desperation to pull my Nighthawk out, fighting through the unreal pain and drug-induced confusion. I couldn’t get myself coordinated for the life of me. “No!”
Stan, shot in his bullet-proof chest, stumbled backwards under the force of the bullets, tripped on something, and fell. Roberts now knew that Stan’s gun wasn’t loaded. He leveled his Glock deliberately at Stan’s forehead. Stan started getting up, staring straight into Roberts’ eyes. The large shape of Klimek suddenly dashed in front of his father. Roberts’s bullet hit Klimek in the chest and made him stumble backward, throwing Stan off his feet again. Roberts’s second bullet hit Klimek between the eyes. His dead body collapsed next to me, his head turned my way, unseeing eyes locked on mine. Roberts’s third bullet was aimed at the spot where Stan was a second ago, before Klimek knocked him down.
I finally managed to get my Nighthawk out, but my shot went wide again. My hands were shaking too much, and I couldn’t see straight. Fire from somewhere to my right clipped Roberts’s ankle, sending his body headfirst into the landing gear component. He hit the steel hard but grabbed on and remained on his feet, blood oozing down his face. I shot him again, this time more successfully, hitting him in the leg. Roberts fell but immediately rolled, despite the wound, and fired at me and at somebody else to my side. My thigh was hit, no longer protected by the armor, but I didn’t feel a thing. I stole a glance to my right in time to see Linda, her leg in yellow cast, on the floor holding her belly. Stan lunged past me. More soldiers joined in, both the Rangers to help Roberts and National Guard to stop them. The shooting intensified. I jumped on top of Linda, protecting her with my body.
The shooting finally stopped. “Let me see,” I asked Linda quietly. She allowed me to look. The bullet did not penetrate the armor. They never do. Linda’s face was ashen. She must have bitten her lip and now blood was running down her chin. I knew how she felt.
“They’ll fix you right up, hon,” I assured her. “What took you so long?”
“I was looking for you all over the place,” Linda explained. I kissed her on the cheek. Getting off that floor was the hardest thing I’d experienced in a very long time. No idea what other bones were now broken in my body or how the bullet in my thigh affected me, but it all hurt like hell. Linda also managed to get up. We held on to each other.
“Can we go home now?” Linda asked, leaning into my chest.
57 The medic dug out a bullet from my thigh without any additional pain killers. I was exhausted to the point of no longer caring. I ignored pain, having lost track of the damage. He also replaced the medication packs on both our casts. That did make me feel better. Feeling extremely weak and disoriented but otherwise relatively tolerable, I sat with Linda on some crates next to the freighter, watching Stan and his wife, Zhdana, kneel over the dead body of their son. The place was destroyed, dead bodies everywhere. Apparently, there were no captured Rangers except Roberts. I found it very hard to believe that the entire Rangers’ battalion was a clean wipeout with no prisoners or wounded, but I had no strength to investigate the atrocities.
Several Guards were attending to the long line of the wounded in wheelchairs, on gurneys and ambulatory—the locals, Army soldiers, the A5B fighters and the Russians lined up to use the revival tube. Linda and I joined the line. A pretty female Guard, Bogdana, brought some oversized wheelchairs for us.
A commotion at the entrance to the hangar attracted my attention. “Fuck you! You’re all dead!” Roberts yelled at the Guards, who were dragging him out of the hangar.
Clinching my teeth, I got up with Linda’s help. “Where are you taking him?” I asked, approaching the group.
“Throwing him out to the locals,” a Guard explained. “Stan’s order.”
That shed light at the miraculous absence of prisoners or wounded. I knew there was a simple explanation. “You !” Roberts yelled, staring at me. “Pipsqueak, you think I’m afraid of their picks and shovels? Will give me more to bitch about later. You watch your back, you and your Aunt Jemima there. Time comes, I’ll find you both!”
I pulled out my Nighthawk and shot him in the forehead. The Guards dropped Roberts’s dead body on the floor.
“Hey,” one of them yelled at me. “Stan’s order!” I ignored him. Soldiers didn’t deserve to die by shovels, even Roberts. Executing a prisoner was acceptable in my book, but not all the prisoners and the wounded indiscriminately and not with shovels.
The place was being rigged for obliteration. Guards were setting up charges. Eugene, his arm in a yellow cast as well as his thigh, and one other Russian, also covered in yellow and bloodied, were walking slowly among the wounded, searching, their sniper rifles still slung behind their backs together with their folded stock AKs.
“Eugene!” I yelled—as happy as I could master under the circumstances.
“Have you seen any of my guys?” Eugene asked with no preambles. He looked exhausted. “ Yeah, right here, waiting for the tube, man.”
“Tube?”
“ A medical device. Like a super-short hospital stay. Only takes a minute to get you all squared away. You should definitely take a ride.”
“Okay, we will. Just want to check on my guys first,” Eugene gave me a long stare. “I knew you were trouble, Norm. A clerk? Spaceships and shit? You’re a fucking handful, man.”
“Thank you for your service. Your country won’t forget you,” I replied. “ And I won’t forget my country, either,” he waved me off. I kept staring at the Russians as they moved away. I knew I’d never see them again.
Eugene turned around to face me again. “Hey, Norm! Don’t call me, if you need anything. Call somebody else. Call the Cubans! Call the Yakuza, the stuckup fucks. That’ll teach them. I don’t care who you call, just don’t call me! Okay?”
“Okay, man, you got it! Say ‘hi’ to Aunt Rosa!”
Eugene waved his goodbye. I waved back.
The line to the tube moved fast. Linda was rolled into the tube chamber first. I knew she was in good hands. I briefly reflected that having Murabian medical technology at your disposal when a chunk of concrete as large as half of a Volkswagen happens to smash into you was an exceptionally good thing indeed.
One of the Guards finally rolled me into the chamber. I knew the place, I’ve seen it twice already. I wasn’t feeling all that frisky on the previous occasions, either. Two Guards placed my body on a roll-up bed in front of the tube’s maw. I saw one of them giving me an injection but didn’t feel a thing. I passed out and regained consciousness seemingly instantaneously, wishing I hadn’t. I should have started getting used to the way I felt fresh out of the tube by now.
I found myself prostrate on a blanket in the concrete corridor, fully dressed in my own clothing, recovering next to Linda, who was already up. She kissed me on the lips, I struggled to return the kiss, lost in her eyes.
Only a few minutes later we joined the eclectic throng in front of the freighter’s airlock, ready to board. All tired and bloodied, groggy, exhausted and disoriented, most of us recently out of the tube, the crowd consisted of the surviving Guards and the A5B and, inappropriately, a young Native American couple. Shockingly, I spotted one of the Russian Clydesdales, wearing a Rangers’ Kevlar, too small for him, over his very dirty Adidas jacket. In the aftermath of the battle, nobody seemed to give a flying hoot about the locals and a Russian Mafia soldier boarding the space transport bound for one of Baltizor worlds.
Linda and I walked over, supporting each other. “Do you realize this is a spaceship departing to another planet?” I asked the Russian. He just nodded, eyeing both of us with mild curiosity. “You that Norman kid, right? And this is the girl?”
“Right. This is Linda. Hey, why don’t you return
to San Francisco with Eugene?” “ Already been to San Francisco,” he replied, turning away, and shrugging his massive shoulder. “Too foggy, mortgage too high, traffic bad.”
“Try Hawaii,” Linda suggested.
“Been there. Hate the Mariachis,” the Russian informed us over his shoulder. “That’s in Mexico, not Hawaii,” Linda pointed out.
“Been there, too,” the Russian shrugged. “Beggars all the time.” “Still not Hawaii,” Linda insisted.
“Good luck, man!” I waved him off, pulling Linda away.
“Been there,” I heard behind my back, “too expensive. Aloha my ass.” Linda wanted to reply but I pulled her away from the Russian. The Guards’ presence on Earth was over for now. The prison facility was off line, protective field generators down.
“You’ll like Baltizor, I promise,” I assured Linda. “I know, Picky, I know.” Linda put her head on my shoulder , her arms around my neck. My heart sunk with a premonition. She turned to face me, took my face in her hands, and covered it with kisses.
“What is it, honey?” I breathed out almost inaudibly. “I’m not coming with you, Norman,” she finally said.
I knew she’d say that. Deep down inside I always knew she wouldn’t leave. “After everything we’ve been through?” I asked. “Are you sure? Back into the same snake pit again?”
“I can’t leave my people, my family—my everything. I won’t run away, Picky. I want to help here. I’ll find Bob and join the School.” Linda looked deep into my eyes. I knew her decision was final. Teardrops rolled down her face. “Thank you for everything.” She peered into my eyes. “We’ll meet again someday. We always do.”
“I’ll try to be tall, dark and handsome next time ,” I promised. “You don’t have to,” she smiled through tears.