Subterrene War 02: Exogene

by T. C. McCarthy

  “But even with these capabilities, reports from the field suggest that our stealth tunnels are being detected through their heat signature, long before our sappers break into underground target areas. Your enemy can see the rock heat up, an hour prior to arrival, even with such a small thermal cross-section, so in order to counteract the problem, we’ve developed a simple technique. Once you get close to your target destination—about a hundred meters from an enemy tunnel—you shut down the resistor elements. Coolant will still flow and speed up the chilling process in the surrounding rock. Wait for temperatures to go down, dig another ten meters, and do it again. You’ll stop boring a meter away from your target tunnel, same as before, and complete the incursion using shaped charges. There’s no way to eliminate the thermal bloom completely, but this approach should at least reduce it, make it harder to spot.”

  The machine sat on small wheels and resembled an elongated fifty-five gallon drum. Like the large borers, the front heat-probes consisted of an alloy ring, inside of which were hundreds of smaller spikes. Most of the unit consisted of fuel cells, but a power line could also be used, which this one did, its thick black cable snaking alongside the muck hose to our rear.

  The man glanced at his watch. “OK, chow time. Eat up. We’ll be headed out to the ruins after lunch for some practice using live charges, starting with…” He searched the group and then stopped. “You. Which one are you?”

  “Francesca.”

  He clapped his hands. “Excellent. Francesca will be first. Dismissed.”

  We were silent while heading to the mess hall, and everything seemed fine, but I couldn’t help but think that something was about to happen, an itch in my head telling me that it would all go wrong. I sat at a table with Megan and scanned the room.

  “I don’t see Sasha, Megan. Do you trust her?”

  “No, but who does? We’ll have to deal with her, though, this cannot continue.” She smiled at me then and squeezed my hand under the table. “Do not worry, Catherine, we will be back on the line in a few days, and maybe Sasha will be fine once we have an enemy again. She is good in the field.”

  “Death and faith.”

  We finished eating, and jogged to the ruins as a single group. Sasha was already there. After everyone had assembled, technicians lined us up in four columns, opened the backs of several APCs, and showed us the cargo areas, which had been filled with brand new combat suits, all coated with opalescent black polymer, dark and yet glimmering.

  “These are sapper suits,” the technician said. “It will be an improvement over your current issue. Virtually the same as normal combat suits, but these ones have a guidance unit and navigation computer that interface directly with the stealth borer so you can guide yourself in three dimensions, underground. We don’t have much time—and it’s incredibly simple—so you will learn as you go.” He pulled a flexible cable from the back of a stealth borer and jacked it into a forearm port. “All you have to do is plug in, power up, and the commands and route are displayed in your helmet.”

  The man pointed to the stealth borer at his side. It had already been positioned in a starter hole, and oriented downward into sand. “Francesca?” After she had plugged in and turned on the power, he nodded, then turned to us. “Good. Her computer should display a menu now. Francesca, select ‘activate.’ Once you’ve done this, the borer will begin heating and you’ll see a preprogrammed route on your heads-up display. Head for the empty storage tunnel twenty meters north, ten meters down.”

  The hole began to glow red as the borer slowly sank. Francesca held her free hand against her forearm to guide it, and, a few minutes later, disappeared into the hole. A short while later, she backed out of the tunnel, waited for the boring unit to emerge, and then reentered.

  “Place the charges in a circular pattern.” The technician spoke into a handset, watching Francesca’s progress on a computer. “Good. Whenever you’re ready.”

  “Fire, fire, fire,” she warned.

  None of us expected what happened next.

  The charges—usually harmless to those in combat suits—touched off as planned, but the technician fell back with a scream, torn apart by something that had flown from the tunnel. Nobody said anything. I started down the tunnel after Francesca, but Megan grabbed me. “We don’t know what’s going on. Let men do this.”

  Minutes later, the corpsmen pulled Francesca free, and we saw what had happened. The front of her suit was gone. None of us recognized the girl, couldn’t, because her torso and face spasmed in a mass that seemed more like raw meat than anything else. Flechettes still protruded from the back of her carapace.

  “Look,” said Megan, pointing at Sasha. The girl grinned as the men loaded Francesca and the dead technician into an APC.

  “Sabotage,” I said, and Megan nodded. “We take care of this?”

  Megan nodded again. It wasn’t the first time we had to deal with one of our own, and I had already decided: I would enjoy this one. We finished the exercise, exhausted and hot, but I had become happy with the anticipation of what would come. In retrospect I should have mourned Sasha—we all should have, her disintegration wasn’t her fault and on the battlefield she had killed almost as many as me. But that wasn’t how I felt at the time.

  After lights out, six of us rolled from our racks and snuck toward Sasha’s. She was awake. Two grabbed her arms, another two grabbed her legs, and Megan and I stood on either side of her head. My knife was invisible in the darkness.

  “It is time,” said Megan.

  Sasha chuckled. “You will all rot in hell. None of you are destined for His side, how can cowards ascend?” She spat at Megan. “Francesca was weak, I did you a favor, eliminated a—”

  I didn’t let her finish. My blade fell so hard against her neck that it almost removed her head.

  Megan and the others relaxed, except for one, a replacement. “Won’t we be disciplined for this?”

  “No,” said Megan. “Our family must be pure, and it is good, because tonight we have honored Him, not offended. The technicians will not only understand this, but expect it. Death is the fate for all of us, and a shortened life is no cause for punishment.”

  “She died like a coward,” said Misha. “They all did. All three. Begging for forgiveness, another chance, just like the nonbred. How did we come to this, Murderer? How can we so quickly forget our purpose?”

  Misha knelt on the floor, bare to his waist, around which he had tied the top half of his coveralls. In the dim light I saw blood. It pooled around me where I lay, soaked into my outfit, and when I moved, the pain in my side suggested that some of the blood was mine and that it still flowed from a deep cut. My ribs ached. It took me a moment to remember and when I sat up it was to see Heather and the others, motionless beside us, their necks slit and eyes open so they all stared in a way that made me look away.

  Misha flipped his knife and caught it again. “That felt good, Murderer. Why didn’t you defend yourself from them?”

  “The spoiling.”

  “You hallucinated?”

  I nodded, ashamed.

  “Well then it’s good you’re leaving, because if you did that on the factory floor they’d take you to the labs.”

  “What will you do?” I asked. “Now that you’ve killed three girls the humans will need replacements, won’t they be angry?”

  “What would they do? Send me to the labs?”

  Misha grinned and the thought of leaving him there made me sad; it was ironic to think that among all the people in Zeya, the one person most like me was a boy, a Russian, my enemy.

  “You will spoil out there too, Murderer,” he said. A spark entered his eyes, barely noticeable in the electric lights but there, cold, as if there were two Mishas: one a friendly boy, the other something demonic and with the conviction of infinite hatred. His eyes told me to run. I’d seen it in him before, in the factory, when something Heather or one of the other girls did that displeased him, made him furious. It was easy to forge
t when Misha was personable that he was dangerous; this wasn’t something tame and the look reminded me of myself, proof that I wasn’t sitting next to a friend but a shark who, on occasion, became frenzied when he smelled blood. I moved away until I felt a mixing tank at my back.

  “Let me end it for you here,” Misha suggested. “This is no life for you or me.”

  “I don’t want to go that way.”

  “Oh. Still, you must have wondered. I sent the requisition for your supplies, but the reason I came here was to stop you. It occurred to me that I could prevent you from making a mistake. I believe in your God, I think. Maybe he sent me to take you back, place you at His side.”

  Misha flipped the knife again, gripping it tightly when it landed, and leaped to his feet. He moved toward me.

  “Don’t, Misha,” I said.

  “What better way to go? In combat with the Murderer, best of the best, right? This is what we were meant for, and didn’t you tell us the story that night, about how we were killers first, never test subjects? You had it right I think, Murderer, you convinced me of the truth and I will not go to the lab for some useless experiment when I could die in combat. Here.”

  Misha flicked his hand and the blade of a second knife flashed as it tumbled through the air, finally clanking onto the rock floor at my feet. He stopped and waited.

  “Take it.”

  I shook my head. “Misha, let’s have a cigarette. Maybe some vodka. You’ve never told me your stories, never let me know what it was like for you at the front.”

  “It was all shit! Don’t ask me what I saw, what the human soldiers did to us, to my brothers.”

  Misha lunged and I rolled, picking the knife up as I went, and then grunted in reflex at the pain in my side. I pushed my free hand against the wound. Blood seeped out from the cloth, between my fingers, and felt warm in the conditioned air, made me think of summertime and happiness despite the reality of my situation.

  “You’re still fast,” said Misha, circling. “Even wounded and you’re fast. They promised us something, Murderer, but they didn’t deliver. Instead they gave me soft girls, broken ones, where I’ve spent the last year getting weaker, infected by their pessimism, their lack of will. Even being among the humans would be better than this. You were the one reminder of what we are, a contrast, a blade of grass in the desert. If I take you, it means I am still something.”

  I saw him shift his weight, flex, getting ready for a leap; my mind went blank. Instead of thinking, I relaxed, let the tank’s teachings have free reign of my nervous system, and almost immediately felt some muscles bind up, get ready for the move, while others relaxed completely. Misha charged and then rolled, swinging his knife upward at my gut, but I was already gone with a jump, sliding across his back and behind to bring my knifepoint against his neck. The tip pressed against his jugular.

  “Stop this, Misha.”

  He dropped his knife. “You are too good for the factories, Murderer. Too good for the labs. We never should have taken you from the field, should have forced you back into war where you belong. So kill me. Show me I am right and send me home, save me from one more honorless experiment. Show me that you can still kill.”

  It took no thought. By now the furnaces had cooled so that they ceased their popping, the only sounds coming from the rattle of air-handling systems shutting on and off, and the drip of water from leaking pipes far overhead, their drops splatting on the floor. At first I thought water had poured onto my hand. But with only a shift of my thoughts came the realization that my wrist had flicked, sinking the tip into his artery and then side to side, opening it to the air so that I now imagined Misha’s pain shooting out along with his blood. He was in the air now. Around me. The body slumped to the ground, almost empty, and he grinned a last grin, winking one eye.

  “It is true then. Your heart is as black as it needs to be.” And then Misha was gone.

  So much blood had spilled and mixed with water that I slid along the floor, stopping only at Heather’s body so I could fashion a bandage from her coveralls. A long strip of fabric tore free. I unzipped my clothing and tied the cloth around my side, wincing at the sight of a four-inch gash, white bone visible beneath, and then headed for the elevators. They took forever to arrive. The downward trip to my barracks lasted an eternity, in which Misha’s face refused to leave my mind, took its place alongside Megan’s, and even though I suspected the act of killing had made them both happy, I screamed and screamed with horror. With each scream it became clear that something was wrong: I couldn’t hear. Everything had gone silent. These were the shouts of futility, ones useless to everyone, even me, so that although my vocal chords ached and shook in my throat, no noise came out, not even when I slumped to the floor, drained. There had been so much blood. Blood had never bothered me before and plenty of it had been that of my sisters, and so when the elevator lowered into the shaft opening, and Margaret jumped in to pound at the button to move upward, I smiled and stood to lean against her. She spoke, but it took several seconds before her words came through.

  “What is wrong with you, Catherine, what happened up there?”

  “Misha is dead. So is Heather.”

  Margaret ran a hand through her hair and pushed me back against the elevator wall. “Then we’re through. We may as well report to the labs right now. Turn ourselves in.”

  “You go to the labs. I’m going to the forest.”

  “Catherine, you killed him. A boy. A factory head. There isn’t any running now, no going on.”

  I grabbed her throat and slammed Margaret against the wall, the elevator clanking and sparking with the motion, which sent it to scrape against rock. The knife was still in my hand.

  “Do you want to go with them? I do. I can send you there, will have no problem doing it because I’ve killed for my entire existence and it’s the only thing I’m good at. There doesn’t even have to be a thought; my body will act on impulse alone, the question ‘Should I kill?’ an afterthought. But you know what the funny thing is, Margaret? The funny thing is that I am too much of a coward to die. So I run.”

  When I let go of her, Margaret nodded. “We’ll run.” She pulled a canvas bag from inside her coveralls and opened it, pushing something into my mouth. A tranq tab.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I suspect you’ll need it, Murderer. It will be a long night, and we aren’t dressed for the forest, aren’t dressed for the Siberian winter.”

  “It’s winter?” I asked. “How can you tell it’s winter?”

  Margaret laughed, reaching for my hand to loosen my grip on the knife, slipping it into one of my pockets. “It’s always winter in Zeya. Didn’t anyone teach you that?”

  She was right. We moved through the maze of tunnels, which by now were familiar, and once we cleared the service entrance, a night wind whipped up a deep valley, slamming into us with a chill that ripped my breath away. I folded both arms and ran. We jogged down the road, winding through the mountains, and each step jolted my side to make me light-headed from the combined pain and blood loss until I felt another hallucination coming. I grabbed at Margaret to slow her down.

  “Misha ordered supplies for us,” I said, dragging her to a stop. “It’s important you understand in case I fade out. Take us down the road and leave it when you see the forest, then head due east into the trees for four kilometers before turning north. We’re to meet someone named Lev.”

  “Please, Catherine, it’s after ten p.m.; we have to move.”

  Our units moved out at ten p.m. Megan and I watched as the girls spread over the wreckage of Shymkent’s northern suburbs and then crouched in holes, behind concrete, or under scraps of metal, our sisters waiting for their order to move up. The barrel of my Maxwell carbine lay on a block of rubble and vibrated softly in my trembling hands. Quiet and eerie. Marine units, far below us underground, were boring toward enemy lines and had to be getting close by now. We’d get the order soon, I thought, and a few moments later smiled, kn
owing I had been right.

  To the south, the dull crumping of our plasma batteries began and it wasn’t long before bright flashes illuminated the skyline to our north.

  “Mary,” a man’s voice announced over the radio. “Mary.”

  Megan gave us a hand signal and we began a crouching jog northward. In the open. It was the first time any of our forces had tried an aboveground assault, a response to the multiple Russian efforts to infiltrate our lines from above, to repay their courtesy. Lessons ticked past like a mantra: never move aboveground against well-defended fortifications; topside assaults were useless and would result in unnecessary casualties from which a unit might never recover. But none of them made me afraid; they made the move more exciting. We picked our way through the rubble, my boots occasionally slipping on countless Russian dead in combat armor so with each step the plasma bursts came closer. The temperature readout on my helmet display shifted colors, climbing, and I almost missed Megan’s next hand signal, but then melted into my surroundings, lowering to the ground to begin a slow crawl with chameleon skins on, so hard to see that my very existence became a thing to doubt. Within half a kilometer of the barrage, we stopped.

  “Betty, Betty,” the man announced. The command meant that the Marine units were in place near the Russian lines, waiting underground for us to advance. Almost at the same moment as the signal, the barrage lifted and Megan waved us on.

  Our suits scraped against jagged rubble as we moved up, the sound seeming like a scream over the winter silence. My arms and legs cramped. To move at a snail’s pace that would not be detected by Russian motion sensors required a control that none of us had experienced, and two hours later we still lay more than a hundred meters from the enemy positions. When a green light appeared ahead of us, I froze. My vision kit zoomed onto the outline of an airlock blockhouse, its dim green interior light blinking out after its door sealed shut, and then the goggles tracked two Russians who jogged in a crouch, before both vanished into a nearby hole.