by CJ East
The teens were the hopeful encouragement of a world running down - Zhukov, Kinch, Chang, Grace, Venkat, and Sashenka. Zhukov never clicked with the younger pack, whether by choice or by orders.
Kinch bit down on this lip as he lifted his head with regret and nervous energy. He groped in the darkness for his bug-out pack and pulled out the light stick, flipping on the red filtered light. The low-level light frequency was strong enough for him to see at close range and would conceal glare from the search teams. He produced the explosives and the wire from the pack. He had worked with dual detention explosives for years. They could be set for countdown delay, remote detonation or a combination of both. There couldn’t be any booby traps now, Viktor had the ethical high ground now to conscript the remaining Colonists and integrate them into the search teams to find Kinch “for his own protection”. Kinch was branded a danger to the IMC.
“Stupid!” he forced out in a harsh whisper.
He set the countdown settings on two C-9 cakes for a three second delay and placed them back in his pack. The other four he synced to the remote. He placed one small cake of remote-synced explosive against the far wall and hid it under a pile of rubble.
Kinch placed the light between his teeth to free up his hands. Opening his med kit he unwrapped a sterile scalpel and rolled up the sleeve of his right arm. Tilting his forearm to the red light, he ran his fingers over his flesh tracing the direction of his veins, noticing how thick his new muscles were. He inserted the blade into him forearm and slid it through the skin and down through the muscle. His right eye quivered as he spread the open mouth of the wound to expose the tracker. He was no longer a moving dot on a grid.
Kinch used the scalpel to flip the tracker out of the gash in the direction of the C-9. He stared at his blood reflecting from the red light on the scalpel. The plan had gone sideways, but he convinced himself he had the situation under control. Events were now in motion impossible to be stopped. He felt the small doubt creep into his mind. He proclaimed aloud to the doubt and himself - willing his words to be reality, “I am the only one who can stand against Viktor. Anyone who would join me would be killed. This is my fight alone.”
He wound a bandage around his forearm and a small strip around the blade of the scalpel, shoving it into his boot. Unrolling his sleeve over the bandage, he pushed himself back to the stone wall. He picked up his dagger and rotated it in his hands. It glowed a reflected deep red, mesmerizing in the total darkness of the hall.
Would his Grandfather approve of what he had done? He and Sully were friends. Yes, he would have done the same thing, but would have been successful. He had trained Kinch his entire life to be warrior. The McGrath family, starting with his Grandfather, had pledged loyalty to the Warrior Guild. As American society began to unravel, role specialization became more necessary as systems, institutions and even cities began to fail. Role specialization was a guaranteed career path in a time of uncertainty. The Warrior Guild was the least prestigious guild, not the golden tickets of the Technology, Science and Business Guilds, but it was his heritage.
Kinch’s Grandfather, Dr. Gale McGrath, had helped to build the warrior program and was chosen to administer it. He had been a Commander with the Ireland special operations forces and captivated Kinch with epic stories of sorties in Somalia, Croatia, Lebanon, and many more. He had immigrated to the United States after the Great North Sea battles, but never spoke of that war.
Kinch had once asked his Grandfather why he had left his beloved Ireland, a fair question for a young boy. He remembered how his Grandfather had put down his hunting rifle and gazed into the burning sunrise with a distant eyes. “Love is a distinctly human emotion, my son. You can love your country, but your country can’t love you back.” Kinch never brought it up again.
Kinch pulled the wire he had stolen from the maintenance area. He began to measure it around the scabbard. He would attach the dagger to his belt to free his hands.
His Grandfather would be disappointed Kinch let his emotions rule him. As a student of Sun Tzu, it was the constant refrain of his Grandfather, “Remove emotion from the strategy.”
Chang’s memories had become his own. The breaking of Chang’s will, his friend’s strong, precious spirit was the source of Kinch’s rage. Emotions had to be put aside, controlled by concentrating on his training. Success would involve picturing the end state of the conflict and working backwards.
So what was the end state? Volkov, his Russians, and Tai dead. Hunt Tai first, the biggest game he could bring down. It would also demoralize the weaker opponents. Separate Tai from his party, eliminate him from the strategic equation. In the algorithm of survival, age wasn’t a factor. It was skill, strength and training which was surpassed only by Viktor. If he was equal to Tai, he needed the differentiator of surprise.
He coiled the wire tight around the scabbard, working and reworking the placement with patient attention as he thought through his plan. The cold calculus of strategy was a welcome comfort to Kinch. It removed himself from the equation - polished over his weaknesses, insecurities, and doubts. It transformed reality into a story problem for him - a clearly defined problem in need of a valid and well executed solution.
He wasn’t scared anymore. The logic gave him confidence and chased away his small creeping fear. His survival became a percentage, a process. It was his job, a duty he had been raised to defend and had to drive to conclusion. God only knew what his colleagues in the Warrior Guild on Earth were doing now. He slowed his breathing, opened himself to the darkness of the tunnels and tuned his hearing to the distant rhythm of the Colony machines.
He had been taught patience with endless war games. Hours, days at a time sitting or lying motionless. A slow, deadly game of chess anticipating a single shot or moving in for a knife thrust. Games only, high stake games, with extensive Post Mission Reviews and severe punishment for mistakes, but never death.
Kinch had only killed in hunting and found it distasteful. The animals were always shocked with their terrible, dumb expressions inevitably connecting their eyes with him and giving him a fearful question that haunted him - “Why?” When he was young he lied to his Grandfather and argued he found evidence that vegetarianism was better for his training.
Gale McGrath was a man of towering intellect, a Professor of Literature and Military History, writer of scores of books on preparing for, avoiding, and executing conflict. He knew the hearts of men as an instructor, tearing them down to their base elements and reassembling them as killing applications. His response was ominous, “Let’s test your theory in the lab.”
The lab crushed and squeezed theories into reproducible tests, distilling their essence down to truths. The truths born from the lab were the lessons of the boy’s youth intended to further his mission. Enhancement of the mission objective success was a truth. Failure was an unacceptable falsehood.
A vegetarian warrior was a preposterous concept, yet his Grandfather indulged him. Warriors were omnivores - opportunists, never limited by internal factors. Limited not by ideology, but external resources. Gathering wild edible food had been all but impossible and exposed him to the unnecessary danger. His Grandfather was always a step ahead, knew where Kinch would need to travel for edible plants and would lay in wait. When he did eat, the energy gained was less than it took to travel and gather. The exercise was a complete failure.
His Grandfather had understood the 10 year old Kinch’s natural aversion to taking an animal’s life and allowed the lab to grind the aversion out of him with the proof of logic as any classical mentor would. Kinch was home schooled by the Doctor in the classical trivium - grammar, logic, and rhetoric. War was an elective. Gale McGrath was much kinder than the crucible of four millennia of warfare training.
Kinch leaned back as he slid his legs forward. His back straightened against the stone wall as he inhaled the dry, rocky air and exhaled a measured breath to release the tension. He worked the muscles of his legs to ease their stiffening. His mind shifte
d away from the past as he thought of his friends - Sashenka, Chang, Venkat and Grace. They should be safe from reprisals since Kinch established he had gone rogue and was working alone.
Sully and Jeff. He would have followed either of them. Sully would have given Volkov a run. Kinch smiled at the thought of watching the two locked in combat. A better fate for his friends. They were robbed of the chance Kinch was embracing. Sully would have wanted a warrior’s death. He would miss the man, perhaps in the future he would have time to take inventory of his emotions. God, he would miss him.
The other Americans, Kindred and Alexa, they had drive, but those scientists were Sully’s resistance? Kinch felt a twinge of sadness for them. Especially Jon Kindred. He was the alternate who took Kinch’s place on the American team when they washed Kinch out of the program. Jon was a nice enough guy and went out of his way to smooth over all the potential awkwardness between them. He and Alexa could be assets to Kinch in rebuilding order if they were shrewd enough to stay alive.
He heard a faint deadening of the machine rhythm. Something was breaking the pattern of sound, overlapping a new pattern. Distant and from the left, from the bio lab. He pulled the display screen he had taken from an excavator station. He logged in, not as himself, but with the administrator account with TED’s access privileges. He pulled up TED’s profile and opened the colonist tracking application.
The screen showed named dots on the Colony schema overlay. Three groupings were moving through the Colony. A group in the bio lab led by Zhukov, another group moving through the living quarters led by Brzezinski, and Tai’s group in Operations. Sashenka and Venkat were with Tai heading towards the transport depot.
Viktor, Arjun and Doug were in the control room. Viktor had taken time in his preparations, an indication the Russian commander had run into resistance with the colonists or else had a multi-layered plan.
He rose to his feet, slipped his belt off on the right side, and fed it through the scabbard loops. He held his breath, listening to the new distant sound. He cinched his belt tight, gave a firm pull down on the scabbard. It held. Kinch bowed back his young shoulders as he pulled on his pack, confident and strong. He swiveled back in the direction of the sound coming from the bio lab. Time to go hunting, he thought, and slid down the dark hallway towards his prey.
Hunters
Kinch listened outside the door to the depot. There was no movement, only the constant droning of machines dutiful in their purpose. He shot through the door and scaled the ladder to the storage area above the transport bay airlock. If Sashenka or Venkat came up the ladder first, he would have them send up Tai. If Tai came up the ladder, a blow to the head and the 15 foot drop would give Kinch the opportunity to finish him off without sustaining any damage. He could then backtrack through the unfinished tunnels towards Brzezinski’s party.
He hid near the ladder where the entrances from the commons and ops area could be seen. He pulled out the display screen and checked the app. Tai, Sashenka and Venkat were in the Ops hallway. He slid the screen onto the floor as he watched the doorway. A head popped out and ducked back. A few seconds passed until Tai stepped through the passage and into the open depot.
His black hair matched his coal black eyes as he scanned the garage. He held a long aluminum bar in his right hand, relaxed at his side. Tai was mid-twenties and had fought in elite forces with the People’s Liberation Army. Kinch remembered Chang telling a story from one of his self-defense training classes - how Tai bragged of gouging a South Korean prisoner’s eyes out with his thumbs.
Tai turned and gave the tactical hand signal of all clear through the passage. Kinch furrowed his brow with confusion. What was he doing? Sashenka and Venkat didn’t know hand signals. The two figures of Zhukov and Brzezinski filled the passageway. The Russians entered the garage and moved to the back of the depot blocking the exits, waiting.
Kinch checked the trackers in the tunnels. Three dots were moving away from his tracker chip and C-9, towards him and his two Russian opponents. It was trap.
Kinch slid down and pulled two time delay explosives and disarmed the safety. He peered around the corner. The Russians were gone. He checked the passages. He saw a shadow. Viktor must had radioed Kinch had explosives. He flipped the safety back on and slid them into his jumpsuit.
Tai had looked through the lockers and under the benches. He placed a big, calloused hand on the ladder and looked up. He adjusted his grip on the aluminum bar to its middle and placed it on the rail as he climbed. Kinch steadied his breathing. There would be one chance.
Kinch leaned his shoulders and head against the stone wall. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and made the Sign of the Cross. The rhythmic clank of Tai’s metal bar grew louder until it stopped. Kinch rose to his feet, back sliding against the wall. He heard one more metal tap and counted - one, two, three - then spun from the corner facing the bent Tai at the top of the ladder. Kinch twisted a scowl and swung his right leg hard at the surprised man’s head, his full front steel-lined boot connecting into Tai’s teeth.
The aluminum bar twisted from Tai’s hand as his arm flailed backwards in an arch and then returned to the ladder. The bar clanged in the distance. Kinch was already swinging another kick when Tai squared both hands to the ladder. Tai looked up in time to see a blurred black boot catching him under the chin and snapping back his head with great force.
Tai’s grip did not hold. He flew back in an unconscious arc, landing on his head and back, rolling to his side in a limp pile. Kinch checked the exits, no movement. He jumped over the first rail and placed his boots on the side of the ladder and slid down. Still no movement from the exit. He watched Tai’s chest for breathing.
He grabbed the hilt of his dagger as he circled behind Tai’s back. He pulled the dagger from its sheath, spun it over his hand into position, and brought it down on the faint, pulsing vein of his neck. He leaned over the body to see the wide, unfocused eyes, the blood flowing from his face, and the back of his head. At least something was going according to plan, Kinch thought.
He sheathed his blade and pulled a C-9 packet as he dashed to the passage wall near the tunnel entrance. Kinch caught a shadow in the far exit. Zhukov ducked back further into the passage talking on his com-link. Viktor was coming.
“You will not want to do anything stupid, boy,” Brzezinski’s thick accent taunted him from behind. “You act like a crazy, impertinent child. How many innocent lives will you take, coward?”
Kinch slid the pack from his shoulders, opened the flap and began to work the remote detonation explosives, numbering them to match the blue print in his mind.
Brzezinski was stalling, and was pretty bad at it. “Just a few more, Brzezinski. Why don’t you come help out your socialist comrade Tai? Looks like he’s got a migraine,” he smirked as he programmed the C-9 into the remote.
There was a slight pause and Brzezinski continued in a low, deliberate tone, “When you gasp for your last breath and are drowning in your own blood, I will be standing above you.”
Kinch raised an eyebrow as he deftly programmed the last explosive into the remote. “Brzezinski, your alligator mouth always writes checks your hummingbird nona can’t cash. If you were half the man you pretend to be, then your oafish, effeminate peshka would walk down here and make good on your empty words.” He picked up a remote explosive and tossed it towards the exit where Zhukov was hiding. He placed another hidden against the wall behind him.
Tense Russian words were heard down the hall. It was a one-sided conversation, and he could only hear the more emphasized phrases like “Do it myself” and “Put down the pup.” Then a crestfallen “Yes, Sir.”
Kinch threw the last charge onto a tool bench across the depot. The only safe zone would be in the back of the garage, near the air-lock to the transports and excavators. He stood and slung his pack.
“What’s the matter, Brzezinski? Dada doesn’t want you to get hurt playing with the rough boy? I knew you were are a fraud of a man. An
yone who threatens as much as you is a coward.” He moved his shoulders up and down adjusting the pack and stepped into the hallway. He had to draw Brzezinski into a conflict before Viktor came.
The Russian’s head was peeking around the corner. He nodded and stepped into the hallway, his large, muscular bulk taking up most of the dark hall. Kinch could see the shadowy outline of his features - a hunched, tense neck and clinched fists ready to pound.
Kinch scratched his head and looked over each shoulder in mock bewilderment. “So are you working up to something here, or is this some kind of staring contest, big mouth? I bought your threats, now I want a delivery.” The man stood in silence, waves of fury radiating towards Kinch.
“Since you appear to be having a manhood crisis, I’ve got a question for you. Is it true what they say about Russian mothers? In your case, I would assume it is true, specifically about your mamochka. I heard that - ”
A large hand reached from behind Brzezinski’s corner and slammed hard on the upper shoulder. Brzezinski stepped back a few detached, drunken steps. Viktor filled the space whispering a single word to his enraged soldier, “Soon.”
Kinch felt the air pressure of movement behind him. He had not felt an awareness of this level since he was out in the lab. He turned to see Zhukov standing in the passageway across the depot.
“Ah, Comrade Volkov. Maybe you can help us out, your dog here would like to have his testicles to finish his staring contest, and I was wondering about Russian mothers,” Kinch smiled.
“I don’t have time for your puerile nonsense, Mr. McGrath. As acting Security Director I am placing you in custody for the murder of Hong Li and Tai. We need to work this out without anyone else being hurt, young man.”
“So yeah, Viktor, Tai isn’t technically dead. He’s a trooper and hanging in there. Sorry to hear about Hong Li, but he laid hands on me first, a simple case of self-defense. I’m sure when my charges come before your desk for judicial review, you will exonerate me of these baseless charges,” Kinch delivered in mock sincerity.