As he ran, his external mics caught a strange whine. An instant later his leg servos pulled a punch-drunk stagger and started moving sluggishly. He ducked into cover, heart racing.
The pain in his arm was intense. The armor was slick with blood. His lower tricep area was mangled, jagged pieces of armor protruding from the wound. Although the round could have taken his entire arm, that was small consolation just then.
He felt the surviving pressure pads around the wound tighten, the life support in his suit working to stem the flow of blood. A sharp stab smarted his hip. A moment later the pain in his arm dulled to manageable levels and a feeling of crisp alertness came over him. The condition monitor had just contributed an analgesic and a stimulant to his bloodstream.
Able to think clearly again, Randal made the connection between the odd noise and his suit's unresponsiveness. The rumors of a man-portable EMP unit must be true. A near-miss of electro-magnetic pulse had scrambled the microprocessors in his suit's legs.
Staying and fighting was lunacy, but the Fists stood between him and the door.
Then he noticed the thin shafts of light entering through the bullet holes in the wall. Of course! The warehouse was essentially a thin plastic shell. After firing off a couple bursts to keep them dancing, he ducked his head and charged the wall, ramming it hard with a shoulder. The brittle plastic shattered, pieces bursting outward.
Coming out on the street, Randal glanced at the sensor projection on his HUD, expecting multiple blips. Nothing showed.
Somehow that bothered him more than if they were waiting for him. They must be stalking his people out there. Stalking Ariane. He looked over the maze of possible routes she might have taken, trying vainly to discern which way she had gone.
A wave of dizziness struck him, and he pushed his worries aside. He needed to reach a safe house before blood loss put him down. The bum leg loosened up as the travel-by-wire system rerouted to bypass the damaged processors. Making for the nearest safe house, he gave thanks to God that he saw no medic suits lying among the dead.
For the first time in weeks he really prayed. "Merciful God, please watch over her."
***
Just as the other scout troopers had done in the mountain pass, Nabil charged impossible odds to save his compatriots. Ariane saw one of the Fists fall to his assault. Another seemed to stagger. Strangely, though their arms were extended toward him, the others didn't seem to be firing at Nabil.
He was almost on them. She saw his jets engage and the scout suit arc through the air. He was jumping into the middle of them.
The graceful parabola was cut short as he plummeted to the ground, falling like a stricken raptor.
There was no time to mourn. Running past an abandoned bistro and a looted digital art gallery, she and Hiranyagarbha came to the Terrarium. "This way," she called to him, nearly losing her footing on ice as she changed direction. "We can lose them in here!"
Shooting out the glass plating on an exit of the Terrarium, she led him inside. The room was wide and high-ceilinged. A few overhead lights were left burning. Holographic projections of famous Terran historical figures stood on stone pedestals around the room. Nothing looked damaged or missing from the place. Apparently, relics of earth didn't offend the Khlisti censors.
Whenever the Hegemony had colonized a planet, they inevitably built Terrariums. Holding together an empire spanning hundreds of star systems required more than just battlecruisers; cultural memory was needed, a vestigial sense of loyalty to mother Terra. Terrariums were a core part of that endeavor — half museum, half temple to the glory of distant earth.
Before they'd gotten far she heard shouts outside in guttural Russian. "We can't outrun them..." Hiranyagarbha sounded winded.
You can't outrun them, Ariane thought, but repressed the selfish impulse. Nodding, she took up a position behind one of the stone pedestals. Her partner did the same, sheltering under the hologram of a man in flowing blue caftan. Looking up, Ariane saw an Asian figure in black lacquered armor holding a curving sword. His nameplate was printed in both roman letters and what looked like kanji script. Tokugawa Ieyasu, it read. She looked away quickly; it reminded her too much of the things outside.
A ratcheting sound came from Hiranyagarbha's direction as he chambered another missilette from the boxy, top-mounted clip on the launcher. "I will take the first one," he said, "you target the second."
"All right."
"We will hit them and then run."
The first Fist through the door took the missilette squarely in the breastplate. Between the warhead and the ammo explosions it set off, the suit burst open like an overcooked sausage. Smoke from the launcher's backblast filled the room.
Not even breaking stride, the second armored trooper stepped over his fallen comrade. Ariane fired on him. She was still a terrible shot, but she saw flechettes strike home, mostly in the arm. Then the rifle cycled empty, dying in her hands.
Extending an arm in her direction, the Fist took aim with its cannon. Before closing her eyes in dread, Ariane noticed the weird angle of its barrel.
There was an explosion. Ariane opened her eyes to see the Fist running crazily in a wide loop, one arm dangling limply to the side. Then it fell, face-first.
"You bent the gun barrel - he blew himself up!" she heard Hiranyagarbha yell. "We had better get moving."
Suddenly, a gray death's head emerged from the smoke cloud obscuring the exit. The bulky suit moved with deceptive swiftness, leaping on her instantly. It plucked the useless rifle from her grip and snapped the stock as if it were a twig.
Hiranyagarbha pointed his launcher at the Fist, yelling in what Ariane thought must be Hindi. He had no time to fire as the thing pounced. Its free hand grasped him in curving talons, raising him to eye-level.
Ariane skittered backward, using the distraction to escape.
Glancing over a shoulder, she saw poor Hiranyagarbha struggling to free himself until the thing tossed him dismissively against the wall. A low laugh rumbled behind her. "Where are you going, child? The fun is only beginning."
***
Nabil woke up dead.
The world around him was one of impenetrable darkness. It was soundless. And worse, it was not void — it hemmed him in, immobilizing him.
He thrashed against the metaphysical prison. It couldn't be! Where was the heavenly light? The White Throne of Judgment? Perhaps it was Hell. Maybe his hard heart had kept him from Paradise.
He struggled once more to move. It was futile. Howling impotent rage, his words came back to him after traveling no distance at all.
Sweat stung his eyes. The air around him was stale. He breathed shallowly. None of it made any sense. It wasn't until he felt himself being moved that the truth came to him. Only then did he recognize the feel of the pressure pads against his skin and the familiar smell of the suit's plastics.
He was a prisoner inside his own armor. It had lost power. He was blind with no viewscreen; deaf without external mics; mute without speakers. And he had an awful suspicion who was toting his armored coffin.
The sensation of movement stopped after a time. A vibration coursed through the suit, making his teeth chatter. They were cutting him out with a vibratool. He lay still as the dissected sections of armor were pulled free. Whoever his captors were, they'd be on guard just then. Better to wait for an opening than be gunned down in an empty gesture.
He raised an arm to shield his eyes - it felt like they were shining a searchlight at him. Someone pressed a weapon to his temple. "A familiar face," he heard a voice say in Russian. "The Colonel will be pleased. Very pleased, indeed."
The weapon was pulled away from his head. Its owner pistol-whipped him and then he felt nothing.
***
As Ariane ran, the chilling laughter followed her. The Fist didn't gun her down, as he easily could. In fact, he did not even seem in a hurry.
The next section of the museum was a retrospective on flight, with digital projections and p
hysical models of man's progression to space travel. She took no notice of these, mindful only of what lay behind her. Coming to an intersecting hallway, she turned to the left. If only she could find an exit!
Feet pounded on the synthetic marble floors. The echoes grew quickly louder.
She darted into one of the darkened side rooms. Filling the room was a large, white, model of a ziggurat. It was multi-tiered, with statues on the corners of each level. It would be perfect cover until her pursuer ran past. Then she could slip away.
"This impressive building is called the Congressional Palace. It is the meeting place of the Hegemony Senate," a pleasant female voice said, the holographic projection of a young woman appearing beside the model.
Too late, Ariane noticed the motion detector on the display. She searched frantically for a way to turn it off. Inexorably, the virtual guide continued. "The actual Congressional building is located in the European Provinces of Terra, in the city of Brussels."
The light coming from the doorway dimmed.
A black mass blocked the entrance. Now Ariane could see the crescents emblazoned on the thing's shoulders. Crescents for colonel, she remembered with horror. She was face-to-face with Colonel Tsepashin himself.
Tsepashin gave a playful sort of hop toward Ariane and then froze. He was toying with her. She ran to the other side of the model, knowing how futile it was. He could take her any moment he chose.
He advanced deliberatively, extending and retracting his claws. "I think I'll make you hurt first. Medic, heal thyself..."
Oblivious, the virtual guide motioned to the various tiers. "The statues on each level represent a different stage in man's development. Here we have hunter-gatherers, a primitive time when mankind survived by preying on animals, and each other."
The Colonel's jets flared briefly and then he was beside her. It never occurred to her to run or fight. Inside was only a feeling of resignation, of surrender to an inevitability. He seized her by the shoulders, sweeping her to the ground and pinning her. The locks on his helmet popped and it lifted back with a puff of pressurized air. "You rob the game of interest when you let me win."
The face that admonished her would have been frightening even were it not for the eyes, but they were by far the worst – the limpid blue of a frigid winter sky.
Huge hands grasped her helmet, wrenching it open and nearly taking her head with it. He reared back, surprise registering on the impassive face. "What is this? This changes the game." A razor-sharp talon stroked down her cheek. "Your captured friend is a dead man. But you, oh you my dear will be my war prize."
Ariane trembled. Her arms felt powerless, terror enervating her.
And relentlessly the guide kept talking. "Each tier grows progressively more civilized until one reaches the pinnacle of the Congressional Palace. There stands the crest of the Hegemony, the five concentric interlocking rings symbolizing unity. It was sculpted by famed artist Qi Jinghan. The Hegemony stands at the highest peak of man's development, a glorious era marked by peace, enlightenment, and mutual respect of all persons."
Colonel Tsepashin's lips curved in a bloodless smile. "I have worked so hard for the Mogdukh. So very hard. Now he has rewarded me." He pressed a massive, armored hand to her forehead, pulling her hair taut and covering it up. She realized what he was doing — imagining her without hair, which all Khlisti found repulsive. He tilted his head, examining her critically. "You will bear many strong children for the Mogdukh, once your genes are cleansed."
That galvanized her. Dying was better than being made a monster's spoil of war.
Gingerly, she eased a hand beneath her back. Tsepashin took no notice. To him she wasn't even there, not really. She was chattel.
She shuddered as his bulk lowered. He sniffed at her, his nose settling in the hollow of her neck, snuffling like an animal.
Fear-numbed fingers skimmed along the contours of the suit's integral medical pack. Hitting a release, she felt a small hatch pop open. A cylindrical object fell into her hand. Biting down on her lip, she swung the tube up swiftly, pressing it to the man's neck. He shouted in pain and surprise, lurching back and pressing a hand to where the hyposyringe had injected him. "Chyort vozmi!" There was barely time to cover her face before the armored palm rocked her. Reality went blurry for a time.
When the cobwebs cleared, she saw that he had fallen to the side. With his central nervous system going haywire, Tsepashin's body started flopping around uncontrollably.
Ariane scooted back out of reach. Tsepashin gave anguished, animalistic yells, firing wildly, junking the model. She ran from the room, sobbing. Behind her the man was leveling the place, shouting twisted fragments of sentences as his tongue refused to obey.
Though she despised him, the effects of the chemical were terrible. When administered to a nerve gas victim it was lifesaving. Given to someone healthy it was almost as bad as the thing it was meant to cure. Ariane ran blindly, wanting only to escape the screams before they drove her mad.
***
Pain shot the length of his wounded arm as Randal shifted on the lumpy mattress. If there was a comfortable spot on the thing, he'd yet to find it. It took up nearly the entirety of the tiny room in which he lay. The candle resting on the nightstand flickered on slanted roof beams only a meter above him. Claustrophobic by nature, he fought the urge to escape.
Nevertheless, he was thankful. Given the pinch he was in, the safe house of Goodwife Onodugo was a godsend. The old woman was not a medic, but she had a cool head and a steady hand with needle and thread. His arm might throb like the devil, but the bleeding was staunched.
The Irregulars had put in a lot of time on the bolthole. To make the room they had built false walls on both sides of the attic to keep it symmetrical. After creating the door, they had camouflaged it almost perfectly. And best of all, they had scrounged a load of insulation not long before. If the Abkhenazi came through with thermal sensors, as they often did, it would take a ton of what the heathen called luck to spot heat signs through the thick insulation.
With immediate concern for survival gone, Randal had time to brood on the misery of his situation. Another wave of pain from the unanaesthetized wound made his teeth grit. Pain is just weakness leaving the body, he tried telling himself. More troubling than the wound was Ariane's fate. Had she escaped? Was she captured? Was she lying wounded somewhere, waiting for him to help?
Nightmare scenarios kept playing in his head. Time and again he clamped down on them, trying to find the austere comfort of Stoicism. Throughout the course of the war it had never failed him. He was as hard as he needed to be.
But it would not come. All his rationalizations and resolutions not to worry folded when faced with the prospect of losing her. If it was the end, they would never be reconciled. He wished he could go back - he would tell her she was right about everything. He'd tell her anything not to have this gulf between them.
She was right. Out of fear, or callousness, or something, he had held her at arm's length. She deserved better than the limbo he kept her in all the time. Guiltily, he admitted to himself that she was spot on about his relationship with God as well. Functional atheist described him to a tee.
Closing his eyes, he prayed. It was awkward at first; he felt guilty, like calling a friend long neglected. But God was there in the stillness. Soon the feeling passed, replaced with a sense of homecoming.
Out poured all the fears and self-loathing he'd harbored for so long, all the anger. Being a commander was isolating. Always there was the need to seem in control. When it came to weakness or human frailty it came down to this: others may, the commander may not. For months there had been a tightness in his chest so strong that at times he fought to pull in a full breath. A centrifugal sense that if he loosened his grip for even a moment, everything would fly apart.
But there, in the darkness, Randal remembered something he had lost. God was there to listen, and more, His was the unseen hand behind it all. Suddenly he saw the larger pictu
re. A person must be faithful to his calling, but he wasn't God. It was wrong and arrogant to imagine that somehow he was the decisive factor.
He asked God for Ariane's protection. Then he asked for grace to accept the answer, whatever form it took. Afterward, lying alone in the tiny room, Randal's arm still throbbed. There was still a hard knot of worry in his gut for Ariane.
Subtly, though, it was all different. For the first time in ages he glimpsed another way. Rather than looking within for strength to persevere, he looked outside himself, beyond the space and time of the circumstances threatening to break him. The bleak equanimity of Stoicism was replaced with a quiet peace.
Most of the candle was puddled in the base of the holder when the scraping of moving furniture came through the wall. Randal took up his sidearm from the nightstand, just in case.
The panel was pulled out and Goodwife Onodugo peered through the opening. The dark skin of her face showed few signs of age, though the tips of her hair were gone to gray. "A second of you has come looking for shelter. I hope you don't mind sharing?"
"Of course not. Please send them in. Her in?" The last was a hopeful question.
"Yes, a young lady. She looks to have been through a hard time. I'll be back shortly." She disappeared before he could probe further.
A few minutes later the goodwife crawled into the tiny room, pushing a tray with tea and two shriveled baked potatoes. Considering the famine, Randal knew what a sacrifice they represented. After setting the tray on the nightstand, the woman checked his dressing and left.
Voices whispered outside and Ariane crawled into the cubicle. She looked like her own ghost.
Thank God, thank you God, Randal thought over and over. A giddy feeling of relief passed over him. Behind her the panel was replaced, the hope chest slid back to cover it. "Ariane, I'm so sorry. You were totally right the other night. I was an..."
Knox's Irregulars Page 24