by Rachel Aukes
SURRENDER THE SILO AND WE’LL LET YOU LIVE.
Kit snickered. He knew murcs better than that. He accessed the silo’s communications system and sent a response to display on the panel at the entrance door. The murc squinted at the panel, frowned, and hustled back to his commanding officer to report.
“What’d you tell them?” Grundy asked.
“I told them to surrender and we’ll consider letting them live,” Kit replied.
Grundy smiled. “I like your confidence, even though it’s more than a little foolhardy.”
“They have no intention of letting anyone in here live,” Kit said.
“I suspect you’re right.”
“So you need to tell me how we can stop them.”
“First, we need to disable the entrance.”
“You can do that?” Kit asked.
“Yes. There’s a sequence to implode the entrance, forcing it to collapse in on itself.” Grundy went to a terminal and opened the help screen.
Kit’s brows knitted together. “You don’t know the sequence?”
“I do. It’s just my security credentials, but I need to find the right screen. Ah, here it is.” He tapped the screen, and a menu appeared. He pulled out a keyboard. Kit glanced at the outside feed in time to see the tank fire. He didn’t get a chance to yell before the blast rocked the room. Kit and Grundy were knocked to the floor. Everything went black.
Emergency lights blinked on. The air was thick with dust, and Kit coughed. “Are you okay, old man?”
“Yeah. But, crap. Now the systems are down.”
Kit looked at the screens and cussed. “I guess that means we’re not collapsing the entrance.”
“We can still do that.” Grundy sounded sad.
“Okay. Then how do we do it? That was a warning shot. They’re not going to wait long before they blast the entrance wide open.”
“It can be collapsed manually from just inside the outer door.” Grundy started toward the door.
“But I thought you said the whole thing collapses when you do that.”
“It does.”
Kit’s jaw tightened. “Grundy, that’s a suicide mission you’re talking about.”
The old man stopped in the doorway and faced Kit. “You need to disable the elevator and block the walkways. That should slow them down, hopefully, long enough for Val to arrive and save the day.” He sneered. “I’d even be okay with her Zenith friends helping out if it means everyone inside this silo will be safe.”
“Grundy…”
The old man waved him off. “There are forty-three people inside this silo counting on us. We have to do what we can to protect them, no matter the risk to us. That’s our job.”
Kit gulped, then nodded. “That’s our job.”
Grundy then gave a small smile. “And try to stay alive. She likes you.” The old man slipped through the doorway and disappeared.
Kit clenched his fists, furious. He’d been through war, seen it all, but it was the damned heroic sacrifices that haunted him the most.
He shook off the mood—he didn’t have time to sulk. He opened all the munitions lockers and was disappointed. Blasters, stunners, and batons. No explosives of any kind. He supposed explosives were dangerous in a silo, but he really could’ve used some. Instead, he added three blasters to the one he carried.
Whoomp.
Loss sucker-punched him in the gut. Several tons of concrete and steel had just collapsed on a man far better than him, and he prayed that Grundy’s death had been instant. “I’ll see you in the afterlife, old man,” he said softly.
In a rush, he pried open the battery compartments on the three blasters. Blasters, when fully assembled, were durable, safe weapons, but expose the battery to high temperatures, like from a photon blast, and you had an impressive explosion.
He walked out of the security room and propped the three blasters, batteries exposed, equidistant from each other around the walkway. He then took thirty paces away from the nearest blaster and raised his own. He aimed carefully at the center blaster, hoping that the heat generated by the first explosion would detonate the other two batteries. He consciously slowed his breathing and, on an exhale, squeezed the trigger.
His shot found its target. The blaster exploded, the shockwave throwing Kit back, followed by two more explosions. The walkway shook and rattled beneath him, and he saw it pull free from the wall. The section nearest him fell away, and he leaped out and caught the wall, dropping his blaster and grabbing onto the railing with his right hand. He slammed into the wall and cried out in pain.
As he hung there, he watched the walkway break apart, the support collapsing for several levels before the walkway stabilized. He hung there, with no floor below him and no access card to get through any doors.
“Well, shit.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Rex ran to his cutter. He’d never been a fast runner, but he felt slower than ever as he sprinted, exposed, through the ruins.
The ground troops hadn’t filtered out of their transport yet, so no one was taking potshots at him. He took advantage of the opportunity to run out in the open, in a direct line to where Beatrice was parked at the edge of the ruins, not far from the first MRC transport, but decently hidden. The small horseshoe-shaped valley seemed an odd place for ruins, but Rex had long since quit trying to figure out why humans did things before the fallout.
Every structure in the ruins was made of the same thick concrete, so he imagined it had been a compound of some kind. It was an ideal ambush point, but made for a lousy escape in the middle of a fight.
There was only one way out, and that was straight past the tank and transport. If he decided not to risk it, he had an aerial drone stashed in the back of his cutter that he could send to the silo for a situation report.
Beatrice had an armored hull—he liked to call her thick-skinned—so blaster shots wouldn’t damage her. The tank’s cannon, on the other hand, could take her out with a single shot. That was something he needed to avoid.
He reached the crumbling wall concealing their vehicles, tossed his blaster onto the passenger seat, and jumped into the driver’s seat.
“Hello, darlin’,” he said as he powered her up. He throttled forward even before the system checks had finished, and tore out from behind cover, his heavy-duty alloy wheels kicking up gravel as their jagged teeth bit into the ground. He slewed around the original transport, ran over a couple of bodies, and aimed at the tank.
The tank’s cannon rotated down to target the cutter, but Rex was already too close for a safe hit. He cranked the yoke left to avoid ramming the tank, and the back bumper made a horrendous metal-on-metal screech as it scraped down the giant armored vehicle.
The transport had parked behind the tank, and murcs were pouring out of the back. Rex was on them before they could react.
“Whee!” he exclaimed as he plowed through them, running over a couple while others frantically scrambled to get out of the way. Once he was through the group, he increased acceleration to full power and streaked through the funnel. Blaster fire shot past him on both sides.
He didn’t worry. Instead, he laughed. He hadn’t lied when he’d told Val he’d come to get whatever was in Sloan’s vault. But he loved action, especially the sort that involved using murcs for pinballs.
Once he was clear, he activated his armlet to look at the three red pins Val had put on the map to mark the ancillary silo doors—all within a thousand feet of the main entrance. He’d already marked the primary entrance with a blue pin when he and Kit first arrived. He tapped a red pin that seemed the safest bet, and drove toward it. When he was a couple of miles from the silo, he felt the ground rumble, and knew a tank was active in the vicinity. He slowed and found a roundabout path. He parked less than ten feet from the indicated entrance, though he saw nothing but flat, ordinary ground. He tried to call Kit again, but there was no signal. The murcs had, no doubt, initiated a signal blocker.
Rex grabbed his b
laster and jumped out. He paced out a grid where the entrance was supposed to be, tapping the ground with his foot. Thud, thud, thud, thump.
He walked around to the back of his cutter and pulled out a small shovel. Returning to the spot, he went down on his hands and knees and began to dig. The clay was sunbaked, almost ceramic. Smoke billowed in the distance, accompanied by shouting, and he dug ferociously, like a mouse trying to get below ground before the hawk reached it. Finally, using his suit’s enhanced strength, he punched through solid layers until he reached metal. He cleared away the round cover.
The door had four handholds, between which was a single panel covered by a metal plate. Rex flipped up the plate and touched the screen. It came to life, with red stripes outlining a keypad. He glanced at his armlet for the six-digit access code Val had given him, and tapped the symbols on the panel. The red line turned green, something inside the door clicked, and the cover dropped several inches and retracted into a frame.
He lowered his head into the opening, saw a ladder going down to a dimly lit corridor. “Hello?”
When no one shot at him, he rotated and climbed onto the ladder. Halfway down, he accessed Beatrice’s control panel from his armlet. With a few motions of his fingers, he moved the cutter, parked it directly over the opening, and activated its lockdown mode.
Finished, he climbed the rest of the way down. At the foot of the ladder he found a panel on the wall. He tapped it and selected the option to close the cover above him. “Easy peasy, summer breezy,” he said in a singsong, albeit gruff, voice, and started walking in the direction of the silo, as conveniently marked on the tunnel walls.
He’d only gone a few feet when a series of explosions erupted inside the silo.
“That’s not good.” He took off at a run and continued another few hundred feet through the narrow tunnel until he reached a door. He opened it and nearly stepped out before he realized there was no walkway. “Whoa,” he said, and grabbed the doorway. He looked up to see everything in the central opening destroyed—the elevator, walkway, and several doors—all blown to bits. He looked down to see the walkway missing for another several floors. That would pose a challenge. He looked around at the devastation, and his eyes stopped on the man hanging by one hand from a railing above him.
Rex waved. “Hi Kit.”
“A little help over here?” Kit gritted out. He was panting and didn’t sound so good.
Rex started unraveling the grappling hook on his battle harness. “Say the code word.”
Kit’s face twisted, but Rex couldn’t tell if it was from pain, exhaustion, or having to say the words.
“Rex is a god among men.”
Rex grinned. “Hang in there, buddy. I’m on my way.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The sand kicked up before Joe heard the zing of the blaster. He ducked farther behind the sandy knoll Val had built up as an extra defense. The concrete wall crumbled a little more with every shot, and soon they’d have nothing left but the sand pile.
“Do you have a shot at the tank yet?” Joe asked.
“Not yet. The first transport’s in the way,” Val said as she looked through the scope on the grenade launcher.
Using his elbows, Joe crept forward to peek over the sand. Through a crevice in the wall, he saw the MRC transport he’d arrived in, the dead soldiers still strewn around it. Behind the transport, the massive tank loomed. A transport was big, but a tank was three times the size. A huge black heavily armored cube, a tank’s only weaknesses were its cannon rotation, a narrow slit that wrapped around the diameter of the tank that required a sniper’s eye and luck to hit, and the track system, which the transport currently blocked. The underside was unprotected, meaning that a good explosion in the right place—ideally just beyond the track system—could burn it from the inside out.
The tank’s turret moved continuously. Every time one of Val’s rebels took a shot, the tank targeted their position and blasted it. Meanwhile, two separate squads of murcs crept closer to the ruins.
Joe frowned. If they didn’t take the tank out soon, there wouldn’t be anyone left. “We're sitting ducks out here. A one-eyed monkey with a bad aim could take us out.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Val said without looking.
He glanced at her, then again at the transport. He swallowed. “We can’t keep this up. I’m going to get that transport out of the way. Tell your people to cover me. Be ready to hit the tracks.”
Val snapped around to eye him. “What?”
He didn’t wait, or else he’d second-guess himself. He pushed himself up and sprinted, using the ruins for cover as much as possible and ignoring the soreness in his thigh and side. The murcs, seeing his uniform, didn’t fire at first, but once someone shot in his direction, others joined in, and soon Joe was diving behind a rock. He really missed his exoshield.
More blaster fire was followed by the tank’s booming cannon, and he jumped to his feet again. Val’s people were all laying down fire, mostly at the murcs, but one or two were wasting shots by firing at the tank. The distraction was enough to take the heat—literally—off Joe, and he zigged and zagged to covered positions until he was on the opposite side, then went for the transport. He could’ve taken out a couple of murcs from behind, but he chose not to draw attention to himself; his priority was opening a path for Val. The transport was still powered on, and all Joe had to do was shift it into gear. He increased power, and the heavy transport accelerated slowly enough that the murcs in front of him were able to get out of the way in time.
He parked the transport when its bumper tapped the first wall, and was out of his seat and aiming his blaster at the open back door in under two seconds, ready to shoot any murcs who would no doubt come at him. Instead, he had a front-row seat for a smoking orb that arced from the ruins and disappeared under the tank. A bright light burst out from under the tank, followed by a whoomp. Smoke billowed from the turret and out from underneath the armored behemoth, and the cannon was still.
Joe grinned and went to rejoin the fight, but the murcs he’d expected had jumped into the transport through its bay door. He dove behind a seat, firing as he hit the hard metal floor. The murcs had fired high, missing him, but he fired low, hitting them in the legs. As they fell, he fired again, finishing them.
He scrambled to the edge of the doorway for cover and searched for targets, leading with his blaster. There were none behind the transport, so he jumped down and carefully made his way around the back. There, he found the remaining murcs, who were falling to nonstop blaster fire. He remained under the safety of cover until the sounds of battle gave way to silence. He stayed where he was for several more seconds, knowing that adrenaline made trigger fingers itchy, and him wearing an MRC uniform didn’t help. He cautiously moved into the open and waved so that Val’s security forces didn’t mistake him for a murc. When no one shot him, he checked the fallen soldiers to make sure no one was going to jump up and shoot. After he’d verified they were indeed dead, he yelled, “Clear!”
Val and a handful of her people emerged. When he counted only four others in addition to Val, he hoped the rest were staying behind cover until Val told them everything was okay. But he knew better than to hope—the tank had packed a wallop, and every blast had taken lives.
Rather than join Joe, Val jogged through the ruins, checking on each of her fallen comrades. While she did that, he collected blasters from the murcs and piled them nearby. When he noticed a woman with a vacant expression standing in the middle of several bodies, he snapped his fingers until her eyes focused.
“Start loading these into a cutter. We might need them,” he said with as much gentleness as he could muster.
Giving her a task served to distract her, and she began ferrying the blasters to the cutters.
Val joined him, her features dark.
“We’ll give them a proper sendoff later, but we need to get to the silo right now,” he said.
She nodded and turned to t
he four remaining rebels. “Take everything you can carry and go to the silo. If the tank’s still operational when you get there, keep driving. Don’t come back until we have it knocked out of commission.”
There was a brief protest, but they followed her orders.
“I hope you have more grenades for that grenade launcher,” he said as he followed her to find her cutter, plus two more, concealed by a high wall.
“I don’t,” she said.
He paused, and she kept walking. The world suddenly felt heavier. He opened the door to get in, but Val stopped him.
“Hold on. I have something for you,” she said, and opened the back. Inside, the cargo space was filled with weapons, and his exoshield.
He grinned and pulled the armor to him, hugging it. “I missed you so much.”
Val almost smiled. “Okay. Now we can go to the silo.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Kit was seconds away from losing his grip when Rex grabbed him. He struggled to find anywhere on Rex’s exoshield to grab and ended up sliding his hand through the harness, using the crook of his elbow to secure himself.
“Hold on,” Rex said, and pushed off, jumping across the open center of the silo and to the doorway from which he’d come. He’d embedded the grappling hook high in the wall beyond the doorway, so as soon as they reached the end, Kit untangled his arm and collapsed, panting.
He’d never appreciated being alive as much as at that moment. He cradled his right arm against his chest, his muscles weak and shaky from holding his weight for so long.
Rex reeled in his grappling hook. “I bet you never thought you could be so happy to be in another man’s arms.”
Kit chuckled with genuine amusement. “You’re right.” He opened his eyes and looked up at Rex. “Thanks. If you hadn’t shown up—”
“Now, don’t get all mushy on me,” Rex interrupted, then he held out his hand. “All right. Quit lying down on the job. We’ve got work to do.”