“Baider. We have to push on.”
“I can't...can't go on. This is it for me, Cap. I got nothing left.”
The shocking revelation brought George rudely to his senses. “Damned if you’ll stay here! You can't get her back if you don't help me. You got it? You love her, you’ll get off your dead ass, not die here like some wimp!” He glared at him, but Baider’s eyes were squeezed shut, his shoulders trembling.
“George...George ‘Cap’ Guntz-Schumer.”
“What the hell...” George jerked around to see a tall, muscular figure in skintight black and thin, black ankle-boots emerge from the mist. No gloves, no headgear. The stranger smiled warmly and offered George a hand up. Two men appeared behind him carrying long, thick silver tubes.
Baider lunged to his feet and reached for his .45.
“I’m Eric, from Nayork. We have transport waiting. We deeply regret that we were unable to save your friend.”
Chapter Thirteen
01:08 Hours August 16, 2057 - Earth
“Approaching the fourth gate, Colonel.”
Above the hauler's muffled whine, Garson's words echo along the damp, laser-smooth granite walls. O'Brien glanced at the blurred chronometer glowing at the center bottom of the windshield. A half hour in. Still nothing. The entrance tunnel had ramped upward through several turns, then leveled out. Slush puddles spread wet fingers across the yellow polycrete floor. They thinned and broke like bow waves as the hauler approached.
A half hour. Felt like forever. He closed his rummy eyes, just for a moment.
Beneath him, the high-pitched turbine peaked and dropped off. He snapped awake. How long had he dozed? He knuckled his eyes, then jerked his gloved hands away. Raw flesh flamed. Grimacing, he cursed himself for no other reason than he had no one else to blame.
"Fourth gate, Colonel."
O'Brien stared out the windshield until reality once again imposed order. Captured in the halobeams loomed a razor wire gate, and beyond, a shiny black security station protruded from the left wall. Two bodies in khaki uniforms lay sprawled between the gate and station. That made six so far. The ramification was disquieting, but he was too damned ill to care anymore. How long before his insides rotted beyond recovery? All he had to do was close his eyes, give in. No! He shoved back in the seat and squared his shoulders.
“You okay, Colonel?"
"Sure...hell no. You?"
"Sick as a dog. Want to check out the shack?”
"No. Keep going."
Peering into the darkness ahead, Garson rolled his gloved hand about the control grip until it squeaked. He stopped when O'Brien shot him an irritated look. Past the gate, he thumped a foot, the other, thumped them both, then thumped out a popular tune until sweat bristled his face.
O'Brien caught Garson's sidelong glance. Misery crowned blood-shot eyes sunk in pallid, red blotched skin, framed by sweat-greased hair in disarray. They must all look like that. He certainly felt as bad as Garson looked. He had the sudden, mad desire to laugh at the absurdity of their situation. First contact. For over a hundred and fifty years, writers had warned of Mankind's annihilation by an alien race. What were the...
“Tough staying awake, eh Colonel?”
Startled, O'Brien dragged himself awake. “Probably the tokes.” The pressure of the seat against his backside had become intolerable, as had the constriction of his boots and the soft, sweaty resistance of the envirosuit. He struggled to keep his painfully raw eyelids from closing.
"And radiation." Garson's knowing nod turned to a worried frown. He nudged back the control. The hauler slowed to walking speed. "What should we be looking for, Colonel?"
"A Decon unit, security barrier, big doors, I assume." O’Brien leaned forward, searching the darkness beyond the rectangular splash of the halobeams. “It's an NAF research facility."
"North American Federation?"
"Yes." O'Brien glanced at the blurred data displayed low on the windscreen before Garson. He leaned closer and squinted. The data remained indecipherable. "How far in?”
“Two point five four kilometers.” Garson coughed and wiped his mouth, streaking the back of his glove with bloody spittle. “Should start losing our hair soon.”
“Don't be cute.”
The tunnel ramped up through a long curve, then leveled out and widened. O’Brien stifled a yawn and blinked to clear his vision. No better than seeing through a dew streaked window. “Must be coming to something.” He could sense a change in the tunnel's atmospherics.
“I think you're right.” Slowing the hauler to a crawl, Garson leaned out the cab window and looked back.
“You expecting something?” The churning in O’Brien’s stomach had worsened. His bowels felt like they were melting.
“This place gives me the creeps.”
“Like we’re walking on someone’s grave.”
“Yeah. Or into a trap.”
The tunnel ended thirty meters ahead, blocked by a monolithic polyfiber barrier with V formed diagonal yellow stripes. Garson brought the hauler closer then eased the machine to a stop. To O’Brien’s surprise, the barrier split in the middle and slowly rumbled open to echoes tumbling upon themselves.
“What do you think, Colonel?” Garson pushed back, stretched his arms and legs. The seat's faux leather gave way with a gentle whoosh.
“May be automatic.”
“Proceed?”
"Yes." Fatigue driven exasperation urged O'Brien to lash out at the junior officer, but he stilled an irate outburst with considerable effort and cleared his head. He still had a job to do.
Garson eased the control wand forward. The rising wine of the hauler’s hydrogen turbine pierced the eerie silence as the carrier inched ahead. Behind them, the barrier rumbled anew and before the hauler's halolamps splayed across another set of doors, they were blocked in. With chilling finality, the barrier thudded closed. Instantly the tunnel blazed with light from a hundred points along the walls and ceiling.
“State your name and position.” A masculine, mechanical, voice surrounded them. O'Brien and Garson shrank into the concealing darkness of the hauler cab, and shielded their eyes. “Colonel Kaider O’Brien, USAF, Commander of the Mars Exploration Base.”
Silence. Adapting to the light, O’Brien examined the walls and ceiling for a com or scan vid. Though impossible to make out details, he noted a dark aperture to the right of the doors, about the size of a pet door.
“You can't be Colonel O’Brien. It would take months...” The voice trailed off into a muffled, undecipherable discussion. At least four voices. “Okay, okay. Step out and approach the ID con to the right of the doors before you. Right hand on the sensor pad and either eye to the retinal scanner.” Another pause. “Slowly...or we’ll have to fry you.”
One trembling footfall after another, O'Brien's thick, soft-soled space boots scuffed faintly on the yellow polycrete, bringing him ever closer to the con now extended from the aperture. He felt messed up inside — liquefied muscles and bones turned to jelly, held together with spongy sinews. Lucidity came in waves, like the waffled lighting. "Just my imagination," he muttered in a moment of clarity. It was getting harder to pull his thoughts together. The speaker was a civilian and unfamiliar with military security protocols. Did he have...could they really fry him?
“Colonel?” Tammer called softly.
O’Brien glanced over his shoulder. The journalist looked like a bulky extension of the hauler. A horrid, gravelly croak broached O'Brien's lips. “Stay where you are.” He reached the ID con and clung to it, barely able to stand. Trembling with fatigue, he locked his knees and bent his face against the retinal scanner. Despite the cool, dry air wafting down, sweat gathered on his brows and dripped. Salty perspiration burned his raw flesh.
“Welcome to NAORC, Colonel O’Brien.” The voice sounded conciliatory, though no less mechanical.
O'Brien pushed away from the con and steadied himself. The massive doors to his left rumbled and parted. Warm air gushed over him and figures
in white swept through.
A young man approached, gloved hand extended. O'Brien gathered his remaining strength and met him with shoulders squared.
“We can see you need meds, Colonel." The radiation suit's external com masked his voice with tinny acoustics. “Let's get you inside."
“And you are?” O'Brien ignored the proffered hand and the man let it fall to his side.
Willard Jeffries, Sir.” A smile split his freckled mug behind the clear, rectangular face shield. “Assistant to the Adjutant Facilities Coordinator.”
“Mr. Jeffries, I've got four very sick people with me.”
"Not to worry, Colonel O'Brien." Jeffries leaned around, pointed to the hauler and waved several of his people towards it. He raised his voice. “Get them through Decon then to Med, stat.”
With some apprehension, O'Brien watched as white figures leading gravpads rushed across the cold polycrete floor to Tammer, Linda and Garson. A few continued to the back of the hauler. Despite the high intensity lamps, the sudden activity in the tunnel was a blur of motion interrupted by tinny, urgent voices. Overwhelmed and panicked by the sudden clamor, O'Brien stepped back. He tried to gather his wits, defend himself, but a ruby-haired beauty swept around Jeffries and took him by the arm. With her touch, relief washed through him like a warm rinse.
“Please, come with me, Colonel.” The woman indicated a gravpad hovering nearby. “We have the finest medical facility and staff anywhere in the world.” She beamed and waved over an aide guiding the gravpad.
Assisted by the Jeffries and the freckle-nosed woman, O’Brien lurched to the gravpad with the last of his strength and lay down, appreciative, yet still wary.
"Preliminary scans indicate severe radiation poisoning, Colonel," Jeffries prattled on, "but we can rectify the damage. Super cocktails, system flush, that sort of thing. Here we are."
Jeffries assumed control of the gravpad and walked beside it through the second set of massive doors. A large titanium air lock stood open to the left, DECON stenciled in bold white letters above.
"I'll meet you on the other side, Colonel." Jeffries patted O'Brien on the shoulder. "You'll feel much better tomorrow after rest and meds."
With the situation out of his control and not trusting his voice, O'Brien nodded. He watched Jeffries disappear through an oblong bulkhead hatch to the right. For a moment he tried to focus his painfully swollen eyes on the smiling redhead, but she too disappeared. The airlock glided smoothly shut behind him and seated with a solid whump. Grateful, yet apprehensive, he was unwilling to close his ravaged eyes while the med team quickly and professionally stripped, gently scrubbed, then sonically cleansed him.
In a blurred, half-remembered sequence he was familiar with, O'Brien was decontaminated, redressed in pastel blue pajamas, white ankle socks and red slippers, and delivered to an antechamber. Unceremoniously reunited with the other survivors, he raised a hand to acknowledge them and discovered IV receptors on the underside of his wrist. Beyond exhaustion, he let his bandaged hand rest on his chest. There seemed little point in trying to speak. He drifted in and out of consciousness, despite the constant verbal murmur and the hum of powerful machines.
In a short time, the survivors were transported to a round, industrial-sized gravator. They ascended past seventeen luminescent green cargo-net gates before the tubular-railed disc came to rest at a brilliantly lit chamber. It looked like a civilian hospital with warm, mauve-papered walls, still-life prints and expansive landscapes. A young man wearing jeans and an Air Force dress blouse greeted them before a small army of smiling men and women in blue or green scrubs descended. Their patients gently transferred to med beds, the workers connected each of them to an array of black-cased equipment and IV dispensers. Though it wasn’t his intent to be rude, O’Brien's responses to their overwhelming curiosity were clipped. He was exhausted and irritable, though he did his best to conceal his rising ire.
Once again before an audience, Tammer was uncharacteristically subdued, though he made a gallant effort to answer the staff with his usual in-depth commentary. But when his voice dropped and he began to slur his words, his listeners excused themselves until only two remained. Ministrations at last completed, they suggested he rest, and politely accepted his request that they leave. The ward illumination dimmed.
Beneath guarded eyelids, O'Brien studied the bustling and inquisitive crowd gathered at the nurse’s station just beyond the ward entrance. By ones and twos, with frequent glances his way, they departed until the duty nurse was alone.
O'Brien's cursory examination of the ward revealed little. Across the way, on a tall silver table beside a door marked 'restroom', a simple black cylinder glowed deep blue within a white cone-shaped lampshade. Farther in was a med-sleeper surrounded on three sides by a black-shelled monitoring system. From it came fitful snores. Sergeant Doomes.
“We made it, Colonel,” Linda whispered hoarsely from the sleeper beside him. “Thank you.”
“Get some rest.”
"Is that an order, Colonel?"
Not unless you wish to make it one," O'Brien deadpanned, feeling incrementally better. The meds had kicked in, and something else. Same sense of euphoria as when Tammer shared tokes with them. Marijuana? This was a medcenter, not a hospice.
From beyond Linda, Garson tried to sit up, but failed. “I owe you one, Colonel.”
“We owe each other one.”
“Goodnight, Colonel,” Tammer grated.
“Goodnight, Tammer.”
*****
O’Brien woke to a darkened ward and the hush of ventilated air. Clueless as to his whereabouts, he lay still. His sideways glance caught movement. A med worker in blue pastel scrubs stood at the foot of Linda’s sleeper, holding a dimmed palmlite.
“What are you doing?” Though O'Brien intended to whisper, his voice filled the room.
“Uh...oh...Colonel.” The sandy-haired young man in his twenties reset a writepad and approached. “I just came on duty. Is there anything you need?” he whispered.
“What time is it?”
“Eight-forty-three.” The worker stuffed his hands in his smock pockets and smiled expectantly.
O’Brien tried to sit up, but tortured muscles knotted. He grew dizzy, relented, and lay back. A spasm crawled across his chest, then gentled away. Cautiously, he stretched the kinks from his limbs, marveling at how smoothly his pajamas yielded to his movements. Despite Rapid Recovery procedures, a nurse had explained, his skin could easily be damaged. Fast mending flesh generated copious amounts of heat, which the pajamas were designed to siphon off. The regrowth would be complete in a day or so. O'Brien touched the sleeper control at his fingertips. A gentle hiss and the head of the sleeper angled upward until he could survey the ward without rising. The others were asleep.
“Can I leave the ward?” He remembered Jeffries threat to ‘fry’ him.
“Of course. I’ll get a gravcart.”
“No! No…I can walk. I think.” Every muscle in his body screamed for mercy, but he needed, wanted to be up. Mouth gummy, he assumed his breath reeked like an old garbage scow. He thought to ask for a dentamask, but snippets of their arrival nudged that concern aside. Ah, the redhead. Her soothing presence had served to distract him from the irritatingly invasive decon procedures.
“You sure?” The med worker cocked his head and pursed his lips, appearing silly, though O'Brien figured he had tried for concern. At least he wasn't so far gone he couldn't appreciate the nuances that made life interesting.
“Give me a hand up.” Close enough to smell the mint on his breath, O’Brien clasped the aide’s arm and pulled himself upright. Ice pick jabs raced through his body. Assisted, he pushed up off the sleeper. The room tilted and blurred, then steadied. He nudged the worker away and stood on his own, considering whether to continue or relent.
O'Brien cleared his throat, but his voice never rose above a coarse whisper. “Where can I get a cup of coffee and find someone who can bring me up to speed?”
“This way, Colonel.” Keeping a wary eye on his charge, the worker retrieved a navy-blue cotton robe from a rack on the wall and helped O'Brien put it on. When he appeared assured his patient was able, he walked with O'Brien to a homey enclave beyond the nurse’s station.
"I'll find Mr. Jeffries and something for you to eat." He offered O’Brien a seat.
"Thank you," O'Brien answered before settling into a wide and comfortable sea-moss armchair. He watched the worker fast-walk through a square portal and turn left into a corridor. The man returned shortly with a brown ceramic mug, a cylindrical silver thermug and pastries balanced on a glazed white tray. He set the tray on a finely polished oak end table next to O'Brien. Bold blue letters 'USAF', filled the upper left corner of the tray. O'Brien smiled at that, feeling the pull of new skin at the corners of his mouth.
“Not the kind of fare you ought to be eating, Colonel, but the cafeteria is in shift change."
"This will do." Ignoring etiquette, O’Brien slurped down the steaming, fresh-brewed tea. The rich, cinnamon flavored brew steadied his hands and chased away the last vestiges of sleep. He held out the mug for more.
"No coffee?"
"No, sir. The last of it was served yesterday."
The med worker refilled his cup from the thermug and pointed to the plate.
Ravenous, O’Brien wolfed down an éclair and a cheese-danish. With a tantalizing aftertaste lingering in his mouth, he melted into deep piled comfort and closed his eyes, forgetting the worker hovering nearby.
"Doc Frenhold says with all the meds and vitamins and such she pumped into you last night, you'll be back to yourself in a few days." He leaned closer and O'Brien cracked an eye.
"As long as I can keep it down, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"You're dismissed, Moyle." Jeffries strode into the lounge.
Moyle jerked upright. "Yes, sir. Anything else you need, Colonel..."
"I'll ask for you. Thanks."
"Yes, sir." Moyle slipped past and was gone.
Jeffries settled into a chair facing O'Brien. Unlike the nearly idolatrous warmth offered by the aide, Jeffries was poised, relaxed. He sipped from a gilt-edged blue mug and set it down. “Feeling better, Colonel?”
Mankind's Worst Fear Page 32