by M. ORENDA
“Surprise,” Logan mutters inside his suit. “Fire down the hall, and you break the big windows. Break the big windows, and you can’t breathe because you’ve got no helmets.”
It’s a good standoff. The only problem is that he’s only got two tanks left and that’s not enough to hold them for long. They’re going to keep coming, or maybe just charge outright, and overrun him.
He grips the axe handle, grimacing at the second yellow tank at his feet.
I know you will not let them kill me.
“Put down the axe!” one of the Bounders calls down the corridor. “Stop fighting and you won’t get killed. We don’t care about you.”
Logan shakes his head and doesn’t reply.
“I’m guessing you’re the last Assaulter,” the guy says, his voice booming, confident. It even sounds like he’s smiling, bullshitting over the pleading sounds of his own wounded. “It takes Earthbound tenacity to fight when losing’s easier. Red Filter slaves haven’t got it in them but you know that. And this… it’s noble, but it’s wasted, and you know it. We’ve got a few grenades left. You’re not the only one who can hurl things from behind corners. You’re free to die the way the rest did, or just let us through. We’ve got a ship coming with everything necessary to extract us. There’s enough room on that ship for you. We could use someone with your skills. There’s nothing left for you here.”
Not going to happen.
The guy waits, listens, then switches to a different approach. “Do you even know what you’re protecting? Look out those windows, hero. You like what you see? You like what’s going on here?”
You claim to murder my team, and you want to talk ethics?
The guy does, and he keeps going. “You let us in, and you’ll get a ticket out of this. You don’t have to help. You don’t have to break your code. Just stand aside, and we’ll put a stop to all of it. You want to put a stop to it, I know you do, because it’s not exactly honorable, is it? Human experimentation? What’s next? When you start changing humans, where do you stop? Who wins? C’mon, hero, think. Who wins? Who always wins?”
Logan presses his lips together, trying to block the memory of Niri. He can’t do it, her soft murmurings, and her nightmares, and her gods, the dark interweaving of delusions instilled in her by those willing to do anything to achieve absolute power… The ones who always win.
He slides his gaze to the windows. The play of light now is brighter now, hot yellow greens, sparkling with intense glints of white. It strikes him as a representation of fear, or perhaps anger, and it’s a stab to the gut because he’s not fighting for this. He’s not fighting for it. He’s not fighting for them.
And if someone had told him that he’d be standing here alone, closest brothers torn away, forced to confront the end-results of Red Filter politicians and their plots, the lies and destruction.
But none of it changes anything, does it? The one thing the team managed to hammer into his thick skull is that it doesn’t matter what other people do, doesn’t matter what they threaten, and doesn’t matter what they promise, because none of it exists after the lights go out. Honor, sacrifice, standing your ground when others abandon hope… That goes on. That outlives the mundane violence of others. He took an oath to uphold the ethos of the team, and those bonds are stronger than blood, stronger than death. If the others are gone, then it’s them he’ll honor with his last breath, not this idiot.
“Stand aside,” the guy says. “If you don’t, you’re just going to die. And for what? For Red Filter profit? For Martian ambition? It reaches too high, hero, and you know it. What’s in this for you? What’s left?”
Honor.
Logan nods, repeating the thought because his hands are shaking, mind frozen up. He focuses on the next tank.
Run, Niri. Survive. You’re not them. You’re not it. You’re not this. Live to remember who you are, who we are.
Sucking a quick breath, he heaves the axe.
Gunfire. Voss tries to focus, but the echoes rattle from somewhere distant, and it’s impossible to move. His armor doesn’t respond, the visor black, powered off, the suit too heavy for some reason.
Something happened, but the memory of it is vague.
It’s no real surprise because it’s happened more than once over the years, a blackout, a dazed moment spent sucking air through his teeth, wondering where the fuck he is. What decade, what planet, what battle? Is it gun chatter or drone speak, or the chime of a two-tone alarm?
He winces, pain ripping down his back, the skin of his shoulder wet from… something.
“---because you’re not dead,” a voice threads through the comm. “Your armor is locked in life support stasis, and the guards are coming to help, but you got to try. You’ve got no protection, and it’ll take your voice to reboot in battle mode. Don’t pretend you can’t either because it takes more than a bomb, and a modest drop to hurt a monster like you, so I need you to come to and----”
Petra. Incoherent.
He tries to find some pause to interject, but she keeps going, and the words slip of reach.
“We both know it,” she says it with force, as if she can push her will through the comms if she tries hard enough. “You’re hurting, maybe, but I’ve seen your scars, and you’ve seen mine, and I know it takes more than this to put you down. Men like you get up. Don’t you tell me you can’t, because your boy’s in trouble, that medic of yours. He’s pinned, and the guards are coming, but it’ll take time, so you got to get up. You got to---”
He can hear the words break, reaching the point at which it overcomes her. These aren’t the words she wants to say. There’s a pause, a thinning of static, and he can hear her take a breath, emotion ringing from her voice when she speaks. “Jared, I---”
“Reboot tactical,” he says, hoarse, his mouth cold and dry. The suit’s computer comes out of life support dormancy, filling the visor with glowing streams of data. The view is fragmented, system information scrolling through shards of visor damage. “Locate rifle.”
“Rifle location unknown.”
“Locate pistol.”
“Pistol location unknown.”
“Diagnose limited movement.”
“Systems are online. Movement is obstructed.”
“Display obstruction.”
The visor opens a glowing holo window. His armor appears in blue. Several lines---snapped elevator cables----are pulled tight around his suit. One of his arms is bound to his chest plate, with the other trapped underneath him. A thick metal braid has wrapped itself around his neck.
“Jared?” Petra asks.
“Comms off,” he commands, knowing that others might be tapped in, and she’s unschooled in why he needs silence.
Shifting, he frees one hand and slides his tactical knife from its sheath.
The blade has a slivered monomolecular edge, making it sharp enough to slice through armor when enough force is applied.
He pushes it through the cables, hearing cold tendrils of metal snap away. His arm is free. He drags the line down from his neck and cuts it.
Assault rifles are still chattering.
Logan. Niri.
Men like you get up.
His body protests it, muscles screaming as he grabs onto one of the tunnel supports and heaves himself up in the darkness, multiple warnings indicated in his suit visor. Shortness of breath. Weakness. None of it matters.
He tightens his grip on the knife handle.
And just like that, nothing hurts.
Logan puts his strength into it, heaving the axe, growling as the blade chops through the valve. His last air tank launches in an explosion of cold air. The tank rockets down the hall, busting plastic walls and toppling into the tight line of Bounders.
Someone catches it in the chest.
Howling. Screaming.
He blocks it.
Fall back.
No time.
He charges the landing and hurtles the railing, catching his boot on the metal. He drop
s, crashing onto a desk below, then the floor.
The Bounders don’t waste time. He hears them coming, chasing the him to the railing, and firing down into the pool of workstations. Everything shreds, pieces of desks and chairs flinging into the air.
Nothing to do but ball up tight.
He yells through his teeth, covering his head, and thrashing back under the cover of a plastic desk. He’s waiting for it. Any second.. the round that’s going to rip through his skull, his chest, the instant he goes from scared to lifeless. There is no thought, only terror.
“Cease fire!” the lead guy calls out.
The shooting stops with a few extra rounds fired in honor of ‘fuck you’.
A moment drops into silence, and he hears nothing but his own rasp of breathing. He’s shaking hard, the plastic suit liner chittering at his neck.
“Might as well come out,” the Bounder CO says. “We can introduce ourselves, talk this over like men. Maybe you heard of me Earthbound. Kazak? Old Moscow? Wanted by your masters at Rhys Corp for several years now.”
No, Logan thinks. Never heard of you.
“We’re all connected,” Kazak offers. “You know me through Petra. You remember Petra? I’m sure you do. Hard woman to forget. Face like an angel, only she’s been a whore since she was a kid. Daughter of a famous willow house girl, and managed to put more men in their graves than any Red Filter pirate before her. Did you know that?”
Logan didn’t, and doesn’t care.
“Too bad no one told your CO, right?” the Bounder snorts. “If he knew the kind of woman she is… you think he would have let us in here? Gave it all up for that? Niri’s no different, hero. She may look innocent, but she’s carrying the destruction of everything we know inside her. You gonna give up the human race for that? Tell me where she is, and you go free.”
It sits, and it burns, because Logan’s seen it. He's all traces of Niri consumed by something she can’t fight, her eyes lit with the glow of alien thought, her fingers stroking the plastic of his visor as if she’d never seen him before. Still there. She’s still there.
Kazak is negotiating a path around destroyed desks, coming straight for him. “Is she in that pretty birdcage out there on the rocks?”
Buy time. Buy time.
“It didn’t work,” Logan says, knowing his position is about to get discovered anyway. He unzips the suit’s hood and pulls it back, sucking in debris particulate and gun smoke. “It didn’t work. She’s not compatible.”
Kazak moves the way an experienced fighter would, with the intention to charge in hard and assert control. The guy’s on top of him right away, bent forward, rifle muzzle glaring down. He squints, breathing too hard. Logan can see the sweat glossing his forehead. Not as cool as he sounds, amped up and ready to make bad decisions.
Logan lifts his hands in view. “She’s not compatible. Nothing happened.”
“You saw it?”
“Yes.”
“They let you see it?”
“Yes.”
“The full indoctrination?”
“Whatever. She passed out and woke up. Nothing changed.”
“And so that means we leave?” Kazak scoffs. “They train you to be that stupid, kid? Where is she?”
“I don’t know. They took her.”
“Who took her?”
“We didn’t exchange names.”
Kazak curses, steps back and jams his boot into Logan’s stomach. The force nearly lifts him. His insides lurch, his body contorting to protect itself. He gasps air, and it feels like nothing, like he’s going to suffocate.
Kazak kicks him again, raging. “Who the fuck are you? To try and fuck this up? You’re going to lose your head now, boy. That’s what we do to Assaulters. We’ll cut it off your shoulders and take it to that alien bitch so she knows what’s coming.”
Kazak starts to punch him, blow after blow, Kazak’s anger so much larger than the man himself, psychotic. Logan feels bright stinging bursts, his lip torn, that fist crunching his jaw. Blood fills his mouth. A flash, impact to the eye, and he’s blind, coughing, struggling. No use trying to protect himself. Somewhere in the middle of it, he sees Voss, a father from another life…slipping away.
He tries to hold onto it, and everything goes surreal.
Gunfire explodes from the upper deck. Rapid. Controlled.
Imagined?
No. The guys on the stairs are screaming. Some are hit, but the gunfire doesn’t stop. It keeps going, full auto, vicious.
It chews everything on the stairs and sprays into the large observation windows, webbing the cracks all the way through.
Kazak stops hitting Logan and stumbles back.
A nightmare version of Voss drops in from above. He lands on a desk, and it busts apart beneath him, sliding him onto the floor beside Logan. Voss rolls up, armor charred, visor cracked. He’s taken an enemy weapon---probably from the wounded in the hallway----and he raises it toward Kazak.
He pulls the trigger and gets an empty click.
He tosses it, drawing out his knife.
Kazak’s trained on him, but Voss doesn’t care.
Voss lunges forward.
Kazak’s shooting, but the shots go wild. A round blows a piece off Voss’s armor plate, flinging splinters.
Voss plows into him and keeps charging.
All the way to the windows.
Kazak starts screaming, but Voss is an old soldier, and there’s no stopping him. This is death. This is revenge.
They crash through the windows together, dropping into the glow on a burst of crystal glass shards. Logan seals the hood of his suit, still spitting blood. The smell of it fills the suit, his breathing loud and wet.
He staggers up, limping to the broken window. The cave spreads out beneath him, it’s ledges and pools dancing with frenetic thought, bright yellows and greens. Alarm. Fear.
Voss appears below, pushing up from the rock, and grabbing his knife.
Kazak is flat on his back, convulsing as he tries to breathe toxic air. His body is broken, his back, his right arm.
His eyes are wide with fear.
Voss has no sympathy.
The colonel kneels beside the man and grips the knife handle with both hands, jamming the blade through Kazak’s skull. Crunch.
Kazak’s body jumps.
Blood spurts across the rock, .
The colony softens its hues, deep blues, deep thought.
Voss crawls away from the body and rests forward on his arms, his head bowed. He looks back at Kazak, then away, as if he’s struggling to lock it down, force it into the box where his own inhumanity hides.
Logan watches him, overwhelmed. He catches movement on the rocks below and realizes that Niri is there too.
She’s standing on a ledge, patterns of light moving over her white gown.
She watched the fall.
She watched Voss kill Kazak.
He expects to see some trace of fear, shock, horror. But it’s not there. She gazes at Voss, and she’s completely calm.
No, it’s more than that.
She’s fascinated.
BIOSTAT STATION
HANGAR LEVEL
MARS DATE: DAY 25, MONTH 12/24, YEAR 2225
Alive. Voss is alive.
Petra can’t see him. He’s disappeared from all the screens, but she can see his medic, alive and well on the observation deck. The kid is staring out the large windows, stunned maybe, but in no particular grief, which can only mean that his commanding officer is decidedly not-dead.
Jared.
The skimmer’s tracking alarm sounds. “Aircraft inbound. Arms detected.”
“Designate aircraft as Enemy,” Petra says, and feels it swelling up, the fear building as that blip on the tracking screen jumps closer. It’s the same panic as before, only the memory of her previous defeat now adds to it, her body wrung through, and unsteady in anticipation of further damage.
No more captures.
No more torture.
> The odds aren’t stacked in their favor. Looking out the skimmer’s shattered cockpit, Petra can see Wyatt moving into position, climbing to the top of the transport wreckage with a rifle nearly longer than he is. He’s going to try to take out the pilots if they get close, but it’s not so easy under gun and rocket fire. He’s too exposed to survive either of those for long.
His subordinate is already kneeling by the hangar entrance, his armor a black shadow against the hot glow of atmosphere shielding. A rocket launcher is balanced on his shoulder, pointed into the chill of Martian daybreak, waiting for that fat transport to slip into effective range.
Maybe the kid gets it right with the first shot. Maybe he blows that transport to pieces. Maybe he saves the station by blowing her crew---souls that mean everything---into the sand along with their captors.
Maybe. Maybe not.
It’s her blood on the floor of the skimmer, her pilot and crew maybe trapped inside that vessel. And she’s supposed to not be Petra, in a situation that clearly requires a suicidal criminal bent on justice?
The system flashes a warning light. “Enemy at three kilometers, and closing. Heat spike detected in weapons systems.”
“Flight panel,” she murmurs. “Engine start. Manual Control.”
Power surges through the vessel. The monitoring screens vanish in holo, replaced with a wrap-around flight console. The engines charge up, snapping with electricity before issuing their bizarre buzz.
“Caution, caution, caution,” the skimmer starts streaming its damage in one window, flashing system failures, fuselage breaches, and inoperable life support. “Caution---”
“Override all,” she says, reaching for the pilot mask and securing it over her face. “Power gun.”
“Gun not responding.”
She grimaces, glancing up to see Wyatt gesturing angrily at her. The message is clear. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?
No time for explaining. Not that she would anyway
The extract ship breaks into effective range on the tracking screen and begins firing it’s gun. Bullets sear through the atmosphere shielding. The hanger lights up. Rounds blast through the wreckage, tracer fire bouncing off rock walls, and slicing through metal.