Anti Life

by Allen Kuzara

  ANTI LIFE

  ALLEN KUZARA

  Copyright © 2016 Allen Kuzara

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN:1533526702

  ISBN-13:9781533526700

  Cover art by Laura Molen. www.lauramolen.com

  This book is dedicated to my lovely wife Gena on her birthday.

  Table of Contents

  Part 1 - Novos

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 2 - Constance

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part 3 - Outpost

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part 4 - Breakdown

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part 1 - Novos

  Chapter 1

  Colonel John Alvarez was suspicious of success. Docking in enemy territory wasn’t supposed to be this easy. If they had been detected, there wasn’t any indication.

  Alvarez opened the access hatch and gave the signal. The five-man crew exited their craft and fanned out into the arrival bay. After taking their places, they looked back at Alvarez and waited for further orders.

  Colonel John Alvarez was young to be in a command position. Too young, but these things happen in war, especially with an untrained force of guerrilla fighters.

  The station was a ghost town. Alvarez expected as much. The message that Novos Corp intercepted stated the space dock was temporarily understaffed, maybe even unmanned. The garrison of troops normally stationed there had been redeployed to a nearby skirmish.

  I hope they’re right, Alvarez thought. By this point in the Fight, the Statists had become brutal with off-worlders. He didn’t know if it was true, but Alvarez and everyone on this mission believed the same thing: Statists took no prisoners. They wouldn’t bother taking space rats down to Earth.

  Through covert surveillance, this station had been monitored by Outer-Five corporate settlements from day-one of the Fight. The Global Union of Nations, commonly called the Statists by the Outer-Five, had set up a self-imposed embargo, a blockade orbiting the Earth. Its function was two-fold: to eliminate trade with the Outer-Five, and to keep off-worlders from hitting vulnerable targets on Earth’s surface.

  It was believed that if they could find an opening, a weakness in the blockade’s defenses, that it would be simple for the Outer-Five to shove ballistic missiles down the throats of the Statists defenses and hit key targets on the planet’s surface. So far, the Statists’ defensive strategy had worked, but they were relying on a highly leveraged position; almost all their armament systems were in geo-sync orbit. “Crack the shell,” General McKinley had said, “and the egg will run.”

  Fisher broke the silence. “Looks like nobody’s home.”

  “I-I-I bet we could make it back for Donaldson’s game tonight,” said Jitters, the youngest squad member. He was barely a teenager. “H-h-he promised me a t-t-two-to-one handicap if I came.”

  “Don’t celebrate just yet,” Alvarez said. “Everybody keep quiet and keep your eyes peeled. Let’s get this over with.”

  Alvarez led the men to the single hallway that exited the bay. He knew where he was and where he was going. If you’d seen one elevator station, you’d seen them all. He looked at the walls. On top of the industrial-gray primer was a mosaic of scrape marks and paint chips deposited by unwitting transport drivers. It would seem beautiful if it wasn’t a common feature of all commercial ports. These places were designed for utility, without aesthetic considerations. They just had to work.

  Alvarez felt exposed. He had little cover to hide behind, and everything was over-sized to accommodate the massive containers, parts, and machinery that were transported daily to and from the planet’s surface.

  As the team traversed the hallway, ceiling lights flickered. Their path grew darker with each step. Alvarez reassured himself; the Fight made poor house-keepers of us all, he thought. Parts of Novos looked no better.

  They turned a corner and realized how much they had relied on docking bay lights to illuminate their way. Alvarez reached for his rifle’s light attachment and turned it on. The others followed his example.

  He looked down the hall into virtual darkness. He hesitated as he raised his light, fearful of drawing unwanted attention. The hall, he knew, would open up into a storage bay. He spotted vertically stacked shipping containers.

  To his right was a set of windowless bay doors. The momentary gladness Alvarez experienced from not having to travel further down the hall vanished and was replaced by new anxieties. What was behind these doors? He knew there was an elevator terminal, the connection point between earth and space. Almost everything and everyone got off world via an elevator. Ship propulsion was simply too impractical, inefficient, and expensive to use for transport on any world with significant gravity.

  He knew what he had to do in there: get in, set charges, and get out. The real question—the one that mattered now—was whether the terminal was unmanned as Novos had promised.

  Alvarez ordered his men to line up against the wall on both sides of the bay doors. He wished for a quick or quiet way to enter the terminal, but there wasn’t one.

  Here’s the moment of truth, Alvarez thought. He engaged the wall console, and the doors split in the middle, slowly and loudly pulling apart.

  “Go!” Alvarez shouted as he entered the room. His eyes scanned for movement, for threats, but found none. He stopped, and his men nearly ran over him. There in the center of the room, unguarded, was the space elevator terminal.

  There was a problem. The cradle—the compartment that carried people and supplies up and down the elevator—wasn’t in the station. It had to be down below, somewhere between them and Earth. Their objective was more than just blowing up the elevator terminal. They needed to plant one detonator in the station and send a second one down the cable with the cradle. The two explosions would disable the terminal and disrupt the elevator’s geo-sync stability. The station would be crippled.

  “Fisher, call up the cradle,” Alvarez commanded. “Jitters, go sweep behind those shipping containers. Make sure we’re alone.” He turned back and faced the hangar doors. “Mendez and Stewart, guard the entrance. It’s our only way out of here.”

  He walked toward the massive wall console, an array of computers, monitors, and communications hardware. Their job was simple enough, as long as they had no guests. He needed to check the rest of the station. Some of the commands he entered were executed, but others required a key code. He couldn’t access visual reports. He continued to search the accessible files trying to gather as much intel as he could.

  “It’s all clear, sir,” Jitters said, coming up to Alvarez.

  “Confirmed,” Alvarez answered, his voice rough. He maintained his focus on the console, scanning as many files as he could access.

  He recognized the sound of the atmospheric lock opening and the elevator cradle entering the station.

  “It’s up, Colonel,” Fisher said.

  Alvarez turned to see Fisher with his back to the elevator. He wore a dumb grin. Something blinked red behind Fisher. On the cradle Alvarez saw a plasma detonator.

  “Get down!” Alvarez shouted. He tackled Jitters, landing behind one of the shipping containers. He heard the nauseating hum of the detonator charge up. Then a bluish-white light permeated the room as the
intense energy dispersed.

  It was a trap. The words echoed through Alvarez’s mind as he jumped to his feet. “Jitters, get up,” he said while tugging his arm. Jitters didn’t move. He couldn’t have been hit by the blast, Alvarez thought. They were behind the containers, and Alvarez was on top him. He must have been knocked unconscious.

  He peeked around the container and saw Statist troops flood the room. There were too many to count. The lack of blast fire told him that Mendez, Stewart, and Fisher were already dead. The detonator got them.

  He gritted his teeth, toggled his rifle to wide-spec, and spun around the corner. With the element of surprise, he mowed down a handful of troops. But he was hopelessly outnumbered, and the volley of return fire forced him to retreat.

  Somehow his mind ignored his immediate concern and puzzled over how he had gotten there. It was an ambush, he decided. It was a carefully crafted snare. And he was caught in it. Whatever intel Novos had intercepted was bad. He had been setup. Now, it was only a matter of time before he was dead or captured.

  What was the difference? Statists don’t take prisoners of war. He wasn’t a soldier in their eyes, because he didn’t fight for a nation state. He was less than human to them, he thought. Why was he waiting? Maybe he could take out two or three more before they got him. If he did nothing, it would only be a matter of time before one of those goons tossed a detonator his way.

  That was it, he thought. There was an idea, the only glimmer of hope. There was a way to finish the mission. To live, to survive, was an impossibility. But there was a chance he could finish the job and take those jack-booted thugs out with him.

  “I’m coming out!” he shouted. “I surrender!”

  The blast fire ceased. He heard one of the troops yell, “He’s giving up. Cease fire.”

  He knew what he had to do, but his legs wouldn’t move. He heard the same voice again. “Come out with your weapon above your head.”

  Maybe they do take prisoners, he thought. Probably they would torture him—Statists called it interrogation—in order to extract information. Then they would kill him. That’s what he counted on, anyway.

  He slowly stepped forward. His heart pounded in his throat, and his knees threatened to give out from under him. He heard the same voice again. “Put your weapon down and get on the ground!”

  Alvarez heard the command, but it sounded distant. It was as if he was underwater listening to poolside shouts. He couldn’t bring himself to look up, to face his accusers. Instead he stared at the elevator terminal. The discharged detonator, blackened but otherwise intact, sat on the cradle. The plasma burst was devastating to organic tissue, but metallic structures were immune. He moved slowly toward it. His foot hit something. He looked down to see part of Fisher’s torso. The blast had blown him into pieces.

  The shouts continued. “On the ground! Move any closer and you’re dead!”

  Alvarez stopped. His weapon was high above his head. To his right was the elevator terminal. He could see underneath the cradle, fifteen feet down to the closed atmospheric lock. He got down on his knees slowly, his rifle still above his head. Like an act of worship, he lowered it to the floor.

  “He’s got a detonator!” shouted a different soldier.

  Alvarez held a live explosive device in his right hand, previously hidden behind his rifle stock. With the primer initiated, the device would activate three seconds after it left his palm. There was no turning back now.

  He had made two correct guesses: the troops would let him surrender, and they wouldn’t fire when he revealed the detonator. Their abhorrence for him and his kind was only surpassed by their desire to live. Alvarez promised himself that he wouldn’t make the same mistake they had.

  “Disengage your detonator, or we’ll shoot!” screamed the first man.

  An empty threat, Alvarez thought. If they were going to shoot him, they would have done so already.

  The Statists troops, without receiving the command to do so, slowly backed away toward the entrance. Alvarez glanced at the elevator beside him. One toss down the shaft, and the terminal would be disabled. But if the explosion didn’t kill him, the Statists would.

  The soldiers’ shouts became an unintelligible clamor. Some stomped their feet, while others made broad gestures with their hands and weapons. Alvarez sat, crouched on the floor. His upper body levitated inches above the ground, still in worship-pose. His hand, gripping the grenade, shook as he mustered courage. His next move would be his last. This is it, he thought.

  Suddenly, blast fire ripped up the air beside Alvarez’s head, and two of the troops fell dead. Jitters was awake. Wasting no time, Alvarez tossed his grenade into the center of the mob and dove over the rim of the elevator pit. He heard the explosion right as he landed, shattering his ankle on the atmospheric lock.

  “Wake up. John, wake up,” said a gentle voice.

  Alvarez squinted. The room was dark except for light coming through cracks in the window blinds. His eyes now focused, Alvarez saw Nadia, his wife, leaning over him.

  “You’re having a nightmare,” she whispered, stroking his arm.

  “That was no dream,” he said slowly. “That really happened.”

  “The explosion?” she asked, but the she already knew the answer. “That was fifteen years ago,” she pronounced sympathetically.

  She glanced down to the foot of the bed. Alvarez’s arms still reached for his ankle, his body writhing in phantom pain. Then he relaxed his downward reach and self-consciously eased back into a prone position.

  “John, I’m sorry,” she said before looking away. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, and Alvarez thought she was running out of ways to console him.

  Her eyes drifted about the room, then widened when she saw the time. She sat upright, clutched Alvarez’s arm, and said, “You’re going to be late for work.

  Chapter 2

  Alvarez was a bear. His body, still asleep, refused to obey his mind. He swung his legs out of bed. They were heavy, unstable. His mental fly-wheel was no different. Part of his consciousness kept clicking over, drifting back into dream-land.

  What propelled him forward, the essential catalyst evoked by this and other similar situations, was anger. Anger for oversleeping. Anger because there was no one else to blame. Anger because he still hadn’t learned his lesson.

  Why didn’t the alarm wake me?, Alvarez thought. He glared incredulously at the time-stamp on the wall console and tried to recall events from last night. They had fallen asleep watching vid-feeds. He must have forgotten to set the alarm. Why was it when he stretched out a little, indulged in a bit of fun, he seemed to always pay a dear price? A new injection of guilt fueled his anger.

  There was no point in thinking about it now. The moment called for action. He grabbed a shirt and pair of pants and tried dressing as he moved from the bedroom. He threw on the shirt quickly, but the pants were another story. Still struggling with his bad leg, he banged into the hallway wall and a picture frame crashed to the floor. He left it, afraid to look and see which one he’d ruined.

  At the kitchenette, a mug of coffee waited for him. He grabbed it, thankful that at least something was on time, even if he wasn’t.

  He rang the bell at the front door and heard the quiet hum of the service elevator running up to his apartment. Even after dreamless nights, the residential elevator always reminded him of his mission with Jitters.

  This one central shaft was connected to all parts of the orbiter. Like a jack-in-the-box, the elevator made a loud clang that startled Alvarez. Then a much softer bell rang as the apartment and elevator doors, now synchronized, opened.

  Alvarez stepped in and felt the air temperature drop. It wasn’t frigid, but his skin told him he was no longer in his cozy apartment. The air smelled stale, slightly metallic.

  Unlike the crude cradle on space elevators, ones in residential orbiters were rather sophisticated. Their inner compartment had a flat floor on which to stand, but the walls and ceil
ing were spherical. The inner unit was self-righting and glided against an exterior shell, which was bound to the shaft and followed faithfully on its tracks. Passengers maintained their orientation, despite relative changes in angle or pitch.

  Alvarez spoke his destination, “Transit station.” The elevator rushed down the chute. He hoped he was the only passenger along the way.

  There was an elbow-shaped curve near the end of the shaft. Without slowing, the elevator made the sharp turn with ease. Alvarez’s only indication of the turn was the slight sense of weightlessness he experienced as the computer lagged in recalculating the elevator’s artificial gravity. The AG system under the floor had to adjust to the track’s new trajectory.

  The low-pitched hum became softer as the elevator slowed to a stop. The bell rang, the door opened, and Alvarez stepped out onto a platform where a handful of people stood.

  The transit station resembled a large garage or tech bay. It lacked the furnishings and aesthetics that the rest of his orbiter possessed. Its utilitarian look was yet another reminder that Alvarez was on his way to the grindstone.

  Above the transit pad, numerous vid-feeds played on wall consoles. Sensors detected eye contact and with little interference to bystanders, projected focused sound toward the interested viewer. As he glanced at each screen, he heard the program’s volume elevate.

  “Congratulations to Amanda and Terrance Day who are expecting their first bundle of joy…” a local feed.

  “Taking time to plan your death isn’t most people’s idea of fun…” an advert feed.

  “Got more certs than time? Or maybe you have more time than certs. You need little of either with First Novos Fellowship…” a religious feed.

  “You gotta lotta nerve coming back here, Snake Eyes. I thought you were in prison…” an action feed.

  He jumped from screen to screen and finally stared at the least obnoxious vid-feed he could find, the one with the arrival timer. The next transit would arrive in less than thirty seconds. He hated being late, and he hated not being able to do anything about it. He had to just stand there and wait.