Esther nailed two more at the feet before she dropped back and twisted her nozzle as a veritable shower of debris was thrown at her. Something hit her high in the back, but she shrugged it off as she started sweeping her front in broad waves, laying a quagmire on the ground. Most of those charging danced back, but two more were caught. Someone got around her, though, a large man with a bar from the gate in his hands. Esther didn’t even see him until something flashed by her to flatten the man. She immediately sprayed the two prone figures, only realizing that one of them was Jim as the foam encased both men.
Shit! Jim!
But she didn’t have time. More people were rushing her, and she was busy for the next two minutes, laying out sheet after sheet of foamcrete. She wasn’t trapping many, but she was keeping them at bay. Finally, the assault petered out, with 20 people pulling back and staring at the two.
“Where are we at,” she asked Paul.
With a very labored voice, he said, “Down to 31%.”
“You OK, Paul?” she asked.
“Took something to the head. But I’m still standing.”
Esther took a quick look back. Blood was streaming down the side of his face, but he smiled and gave her a thumbs up.
The initial frenzy of the mob had abated. A few people ran out of Ward 1, carrying a piece of equipment as a trophy of some sort while shouting aloud, but for the most part, the people around Esther and Paul were a little more wary. The 30 or so people who were trapped in the foamcrete either looked resigned or where issuing dire threats of what was going to happen when they got free.
A wave of weariness swept over her and the adrenaline that had kept her going petered out. But she had to put up a good front.
A 30-something woman, her red hair almost unnaturally bright in the sun, came running from the back of the lab. She spoke with a few of the mob, and after a moment, most of the group followed the woman. A few moments later, Esther could hear pounding from the other side of the building.
“What’s going on out there?” Bing asked.
“You’ve got some people wanting to get in. I don’t think they can, but if it looks like they will, let me know.”
“Can’t you do anything about it?”
Esther looked at the ground between her and the building. It was covered with differing levels of foamcrete—as well as trapped bodies. Whatever feature had kept the pads level during construction could not deal with the haphazard spraying she and Paul had done. Esther didn’t think there was a way for Paul and her to haul the dispenser to the other side.
“That’s a negative for now,” she told him.
“We still need time.”
“Understood.”
“Ma’am, can you please help me? I promise, I’ll just leave,” a heavyset man called out.
His leg was bent backwards, his body leaning forward. He must have been trying to yank his leg free when the foamcrete set, and the position had to be uncomfortable, even painful.
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” she said.
“I promise, I’ll leave. I won’t come back.”
“It’s not that. I don’t have the capability.”
The man started softly crying, his left leg, which was free and holding the bulk of his weight, trembling.
“I’ve got a chisel,” someone called out. “Will you let me free Deke?”
Another man was standing out of her range. He’d stayed when most of the rest had left for the other side of the lab. In his hand was a power-chisel he’d scrounged from somewhere. Esther immediately knew he’d searched for it as soon as this Deke had been trapped. The chisel could be used as a weapon against her, but she felt the man was sincere.
“Go ahead.”
She kept her wand trained on him as he hesitantly made his way forward to his friend. He gave her one last wary look, then knelt and started the chisel. Bits of foamcrete flew with each blow, and within a couple of minutes, enough had been knocked away that Deke could pull out his leg. He collapsed on the ground, crying.
His friend helped the heavy man up, and his leg held. Esther had been curious about it, but evidently, Erik had been right in that the man had only been trapped, not injured by the foamcrete.
Other trapped people started crying out, but with a tenderness that indicated something more than casual friendship, the smaller man helped Deke off the field of foamcrete. He dropped the chisel on the ground and headed for the ruined gate.
“Can I get freed?” and “What about me?” hammered Esther from all sides, many of those pleading for help being those who were wishing her graphic violence only five minutes prior. She was not about to let any of them free.
But matters were taken out of her hand. As Deke and his partner exited the compound, two trucks came up and settled onto the ground. Moments later, the pink helmeted figures of a UAM peacekeeping team debarked. Each of them had sidearms on their thighs and carried riot batons. Immediately, loose groups started scattering, rushing to get out of the way.
Two platoons of disciplined troops marched into the compound. One of the officers scanned the area and locked eyes with her. He marched up, and Esther saw the Brotherhood patch on his right arm in counterpart to the pink UAM patch on his left.
“Where is Dr. Glory to Him?” he asked without introduction.
Esther’s pride prickled, but only for a moment, and she pointed to the door.
As he marched over to it, she called out, “Don’t interfere. They’ve almost got a cure.”
He ignored her, so she called up Bing to let him know that UAM was on the scene.
“Paul, can you hook up the catalyst?” she asked.
“Give me a moment,” he said to her, then to someone else, “Hey, you, if you want your friends freed, I need your help.”
Esther didn’t look to see to whom he was talking. She went right to where she knew Jim was buried. She’d been able to keep his image, trapped in the foamcrete, out of her head when she was still fighting, but now, with the UAM peacekeepers taking over, her heart was heavy. Once again, he’d saved her ass, and once again, it had cost him.
“Hurry up, Paul!” she shouted.
“I’m going as fast as I can!”
After an eternity, Paul told her she was hooked up. She immediately started spraying the catalyst over where she thought Jim was located. It had only been about 30 minutes, so there was time to get him into stasis and back for a resurrection.
Some of the Brotherhood troopers looked on with interest but didn’t volunteer to help. Most of the other trapped people watched in silence as the foamcrete turned to dust where the catalyst hit it.
She swept the spray back and forth, and when she saw what looked like a thigh, she adjusted to face.
Within moments, the foamcrete had fallen away—and a dusty Jim said, “Took you long enough!”
“Jim! You’re alive!”
“Hell, yeah, I’m alive, but pretty freaking uncomfortable. Can you get me out of here?”
She looked to Paul in amazement. He was already working on the feet of one of the people he’d trapped, and he said, “It’s porous. You can survive for maybe a couple of days inside, if it comes to that.”
She turned back to Jim and asked, “You could breathe?”
“No, I held my breath. Yeah, I could breathe. It was an effort, but doable. And if you’re done with your amazement, I’d really like to get out of here.”
She hit him again with the spray, and within a few moments, he was able to straighten up and stand. Two legs had been underneath him, and both were kicking. Esther freed the man who Jim had tackled. With a roar, the man jumped up, ready to fight—until he saw the peacekeepers. That put a damper on his anger. He positively glowered, but when one of the peacekeepers said he could leave or wait around to go through processing, he took off, but not without a few choice phrases as he exited what was left of the compound.
“Hey, can we go, too?” one of the trapped women asked.
Esther looked at the peacekeep
ers. It was pretty obvious that they were in charge now.
She offered one of them her wand, and he demurred, saying, “You put them in there. It’ll be better for you if you released them in case any civil charges come up.”
Civil charges? They attacked us! I did what I could to stop them without deadly force.
Once again, she had to control her anger. Blowing up at some Brotherhood UAM goon wouldn’t do anyone any good.
“Can you go check on Michelle and the rest? I saw her go down,” she told Jim. Then turning to the 20 or so remaining trapped people, asked, “OK, who’s next?”
Chapter 41
Four hours later, the entire F-AID team was on a UAM truck getting taken to the shuttleport. Their mission canceled, they were being recalled. The UAM had taken over with Dr. Glory to Him as the new joint project coordinator. The time Esther and the others had bought Bing and his team, however, had been enough. The genetic code had been found and analyzed, and the prospective anti-viral Gene and the others had mapped out had been pretty close to what was needed. The UAM-Health team simply took over the process, and the first batch of the drugs should be coming out of the medical fabricators within a few hours. After validation, which might take another two hours if things went well, the drug could be replicated at local medical centers and distributed.
“Not quite what I expected,” Jim said from beside her as the hover made its way through still mostly empty streets. “But pretty rewarding, all said and done.”
“I’m surprised to say I agree with you,” she said, turning to look at him.
He still had the dust from the foamcrete on his face. Reaching into her pack, she pulled out a semi-clean T-shirt and reached over to wipe the bulk of the dust off.
“Thanks, mom!” Jim said, turning his face away.
“Appearances, young captain, appearances.”
He took the T-shirt out of her hand and took over, rubbing his face, but smearing more than removing.
“Better?” he asked, a smile on his face.
She shook her head, then said, “Yeah, perfect,” resisting a surprising urge to wet the edge of the T and do a better job on him.
Hell, am I turning into my mom?
“What’s next for you?” she asked, changing the subject to something safer.
“Who knows? I’ll find out when it happens, I guess.”
“Same here. I’ve still got another nine months or so before I find out.”
“TAC 1?”
“Doing it correspondence.”
“Really?” he asked, and Esther could hear the question in his voice.
“What with my APOC orders delaying me, I’d be a major when I graduated.”
“Oh. So, no company,” he said, immediately catching her drift.
“It’s probably too late, anyway. Between recon and this, I kind of took that off the table for myself.”
“But recon, I mean, we all know what you did on Elysium,” he said.
“Out of sight, out of mind. Now with the gap in reports, well . . .”
“That kind of sucks,” he said. He paused, looked at the others sitting alongside and across from them, then barely whispered, “I don’t mean to pry, but can I ask you something personal?”
Esther stiffened, and she was going to say no, but there was something in his voice that she couldn’t place. She just nodded, still wary, but willing to listen.
“I don’t mean to be, well, critical or anything. I mean, everyone knows you’ve got the chops, but well, the . . . uh . . . the general rumor about you is that you’re something of a glory hound, you know, someone looking to climb the ladder without caring about who you have to step on to get up there.”
He paused as if trying to see how she was accepting it. She kept her face stoic. She’d have expected that some people might think of her that way—she wasn’t blind as to how some people reacted to her—but it still didn’t feel good to hear it.
“But, and this is a big but, if that was true, why did you accept the APOC orders? You could have played it safe, and you’d be getting your ticket punched right now with a company. So, why’d you do it? Why are you in this, well, dead-end job?”
“Why’d you do it? You’re in the same boat.”
“I’m asking you. You’re the Commandant’s daughter, not me.”
Esther leaned back onto the hard slats that served to make a bench seat in the bed of the truck. With their personal gear piled in the middle, it was crowded with nine medical staff, six security, and the two Marines. Somehow, it seemed a little empty with Josiah and Michelle gone, Josiah incinerated and Michelle taken away by ambulance. There were some haggard faces there, faces of people running on empty. But there was something else coming through as well. Everyone was smiling, everyone had that last rush of adrenaline, and the reason was simple. They’d won. They’d defeated the enemy just as much as a Marine battalion defeating an armed enemy. The fact that the UAM was coming in to take the bows and credit seemed immaterial to them. There’d be no medal ceremony, no gathering to welcome the troops home, no declaration of peace for them. Another virus, another medical emergency would pop up, and they’d be sent off again to save lives, even lives that might resent their presence.
“This is why I accepted the orders,” she said, nodding at the rest of the team. “We actually did something here. We were a part of saving lives, lots of lives.
“I mean, I’m proud of being a Marine, and I’m pretty good at it, if I can risk sounding vain. And when the time comes again, I’ll march to the sound of the guns. This, though, this gave me an opportunity to serve in another way, and it’s opened my eyes, even the crap missions.”
“And your career?”
“I’m a better Marine for this tour, and if the selection boards can’t see that, then they’re not doing their job. And if I stall out at major or lieutenant colonel, so be it. Success is what you accomplish, not how high up the ladder you climb.
“Grubbing hell, as my dad might have said. Here I’m pontificating like a preacher on Sunday morning. So, tell me, why’d you accept your orders? To the Third Ministry, of all places.”
“Pretty much the same as you, Esther.”
“My friends call me Ess.”
“OK, Ess. My reasons are pretty much the same as yours.”
There was nothing more to say. She’d said her piece, and that was good enough. She closed her eyes as sleep overtook her, only vaguely aware that she’d slumped over to lean up against Jim.
MARS
Chapter 49
Esther whistled as she sauntered down the corridor to her office. The debrief on Earth had gone surprisingly well. The chairman himself had attended the overview given by Bing, and he’d taken the time to shake each person’s hand and offer his appreciation of their service. The individual debriefs took a little longer, but they were conducted with a decidedly light air.
An FCDC brigadier had attended as a guest, and her actions with the foamcrete seemed to take most of his attention. By now, Esther had found out that the FCDC had an actual riot foam, not unlike what Esther had used on Lorton-Delos and able to deploy in huge quantities, but he seemed impressed with her field expedient solution.
When Esther saw the recordings, particularly the sat view, she was fairly impressed herself. On the ground, she hadn’t quite grasped how touch-and-go the entire fight had been. A few more people making it a few meters closer, and she and Paul would have gone down. With a clear route into the lab, there was no telling what would have happened. At the very least, the sequencing process would have had to start over again. At the worst, the equipment would have been destroyed and the team . . . well, she hadn’t wanted to contemplate that. Whatever happened, tens of thousands if not more people would have died until a new anti-viral could have been developed and deployed.
She slowed down at the D4 office, stuck her head in the door, and yelled at Major Lent, who looked to be neck-deep in work, “Hey Major, ready to get your ass kicked?”
&n
bsp; He looked up, saw her, and smiled.
“Welcome home, the prodigal daughter, and no, I’m not ready to get my ass kicked. I’m ready to do some ass kicking of my own, if you can take the humiliation.”
Esther snorted, then said, “In your dreams, Major, with all due respect, of course. Seventeen hundred?”
“See you there.”
Top Forrester had caught her when she entered the building, telling her that the major had actually been taking lessons. He’d beaten the top two days earlier, taking two out of three games. The top was good; he had been the best player among the Marines when she arrived, but after more than two years, Esther was better than him now. The fact that the major had beaten him didn’t mean much to her, and she was going to enjoy keeping the major from getting too uppity.
She entered her office, which was empty, and sat down at her desk. Her AI had already informed her of her 156 Cat 2 messages. She could have read them on her PA, but she didn’t like using the small screen when she had a 30cm display on her desk. Cat 1 messages were answered immediately, but Cat 2’s could be put off.
“List messages,” she said as she leaned back in her chair.
The list of senders scrolled down the display. She paused on a personal message from Miriam, asking her to call. It was 0430 for her, so she flagged that for action in five hours. One of the last messages that arrived was from Helen-Lee, telling her to report to Mr. Byzantine at her earliest convenience.
Orders? Those are usually Cat 1’s, she thought.
She’d just returned from Earth, and if there’d been another mission for her, she wasn’t sure why they hadn’t just told her instead of having her go back to Mars.
Can’t be that important, then.
She scrolled through more of her messages, dictating out a few answers, marking others for action. There was a personal from Jim, facetiously asking if she got back OK. She laughed and wrote that she’d somehow made it all the way back to Mars without adult supervision and without causing an intergalactic incident.
Esther's Story: Special Duty (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 4) Page 22