CHOP Line

by Henry V. O'Neil

  Straight for the river.

  The brace sent him somersaulting through the air, his straightened leg whipping his body over and then over again. Visions of a bright sky, then sand, then the smoke rising from the settlement, then the sky, then the river. Hurtling along, arms flailing at nothing, knowing the thing had made sure he wouldn’t land inside the safety of the swimming area. Crossing the distance with incredible speed, unable to do anything about it, the evil water rushing up.

  His oscillations slowed just enough for him to see a cluster of color, a dozen or so Whisperers still running in his direction, and then he was descending. A scream of mortal terror welling up, the arc directing him for the very center of the water, finally getting his right leg tucked against the brace and wrapping his arms around his face.

  He hit the water like a dart, feet first, moving so fast that one moment he was cutting the surface and the next he was striking the bottom. The pain jolted through both legs, the wound from the wolf bite blazing hot while the rest of him registered the startling cold. The current grabbed him, spinning him around as his arms stretched and pulled and tried to reach the air. He could see it, high above the dark depths, but the unseen forces shoving and tugging him sent him back down. He’d barely inhaled half a breath before impact, and his chest ached.

  Stroking hard, both arms going up and then away, kicking with the one good leg, horrified that the brace was pulling him down. Unable to make out anything in the darkness, startled when his boot struck bottom again, pushing off but he’d landed on a pile of rocks and they shifted at the wrong moment, ruining his launch. Sediment burned his eyes while the torrent propelled him downstream, but then his head broke through for just an instant, his mouth stretching open to its limit before the current got him again and yanked him back down.

  Still fighting, feeling the weight of his sodden fatigues taking him away from air, seeing the light receding, and then he bounced off of something solid. Something metal. The deflection spun him around, just long enough to see an angled section of fencing buried in the riverbank. The swirling water pushed him away from it, but not before he remembered what it was. One of the anti-snake obstacles, to keep them from building up a head of steam.

  The swimming area! He’d landed upstream, and was being swept toward the fence. If he reached it, there was a slim chance of climbing up before the snakes got him. A frigid hand pressed against the back of his head, somersaulting him, driving him lower, a chilling reminder that he might drown before he reached the obstacle at all.

  Now summoning everything he had left, tearing at the cold liquid that enclosed him, kicking madly, and there was the light again, if he could break into it just once more, his lungs were crying out for it, he might be able to see the fence.

  The braced leg, trailing behind him, slammed into two large boulders and wedged tight.

  Abruptly anchored, Mortas was shoved forward at the waist while the rushing water continued to buffet him. The pressure jammed the brace even deeper into the space between the rocks, and he thrashed around in a desperate effort to break free. He could see the stones, huge, unmoving, and the current fought him as he tried to set his right boot against one of them for leverage. His hands slipped along the smooth material when he reached to tug the leg loose, water rushing up his nose, his chest threatening to explode, and then a dark form flew up over the rocks and into him.

  He had no air left for screaming, but he tried anyway as the phantom’s enormous jaws closed on his chest. It was the size of a man, and moving so fast that it yanked off his pinioned boot and sent both of them tumbling away from the rocks. Helpless in the grip, numbly surprised to feel no pain yet, he twisted in its grasp until his cheek was pressed right up against the face of Erica Varick.

  The Banshee’s eyes were enormous, and she was shouting something that he couldn’t hear, bubbles spewing from her mouth, but it all ended when they slammed into the fence. The impact tore them apart, and Mortas found himself spread-eagled sideways against the rigid mesh, pinned by the flow. The water and the sediment turned his eyes into slits, but even so he knew he saw movement.

  The first snake missed them completely, charging forward with such abandon that the torrent carried it straight into the barrier. The entire wall reverberated, shaking Mortas free, and then he was rolling upward and trying to find a handhold, fueled by the terror of knowing he was in the water with the monsters. The spaces between the links were too small for all four fingers, so he jammed three of them in and reached up with three more.

  A hand latched onto his shoulder, yanking him skyward, his head finally breaking the surface but no time to savor the oxygen even as he gulped it down. The toe of his boot couldn’t find a purchase, and his left leg hung as if paralyzed. His fingers drove into the holes, one after another, his arm muscles pulling him up, and then the weight was increasing because he was leaving the water. The entire wall shook again, no doubt from another snake running into it, and he remembered how the evil things would lunge up on land a short distance to snag their prey. The next ones would leap for his back, tearing him from the puny handholds, back into the water.

  “Climb! Climb!” Varick was hollering, almost in his ear, and he looked up to see she still had him by the shoulder. Her left arm was stretched far above her, but she couldn’t move while pulling him. In his mind he saw one of the snakes snatching her from the wall.

  “Let go! Get over the top!” His throat was full of sand, the words coming out as choking rasp, but she wouldn’t do it. The fence rose another ten yards above them, and even though Mortas knew it was impossible he forced his tiring arms to drag him higher. The water on the other side was empty, so inviting, so safe, and he knew they’d never reach it.

  The river erupted behind them, water spraying them both, Varick yelling instructions at someone while he remembered Elder Paul speaking of anti-snake devices. More explosions, more spray, from concussion grenades being hurled into the water. A moment later the holes in the mesh in front of him turned a brilliant green, then the sash shifted to show a human face. A flabby cheek pressed against the barrier, arms outstretched, grasping the links and straining, and he recognized Nibbit. Other figures crushed in against the fence as if trying to reinforce it from the other side.

  Struggling higher, reaching a point where Erica had to let go, seeing her clamber up a couple more handholds and reaching down again.

  “Keep going! I’m all right!” he yelled, and then another sash was in front of him and he understood what they were doing. The colonists were building a human wall on the other side, right to the top so that they could assist the two soldiers.

  “Come on, Jan!” a woman’s voice grunted, and he was looking through the barrier at Felicity, hugging the fence and wincing as more Whisperers used her as a ladder.

  He almost answered her, but that was when the snake shot up from the river and latched onto his leg. The teeth bit into the brace, and for a moment he was somewhere else, nighttime, in the middle of a hurricane of fire, being knocked to the ground by a giant wolf. The snake’s jaws caught on the brace somehow, and its full weight yanked him down, pulling his hands from the fence.

  The pain in his injured leg only registered slightly, causing him to dumbly wonder just why all these monsters wanted to bite him in the same spot, quickly replaced by the question of why he wasn’t back in the river already. Mortas looked up to find Varick there, both hands gripping his fatigue shirt, hanging upside down because the Whisperers had reached the top and held her by her boots.

  The snake thrashed in the air, now desperate to let go because it couldn’t breathe, threatening to break the chain of damp hands and sodden fabric keeping him aloft. Erica lunged downward with one arm, then the other, locking her hands behind his back and pulling him up so that their heads were touching.

  “Not letting go,” she growled in pain. “Not losing you.”

  Taking hold of the fence again, he weakly kicked the thing to no effect, as its tubular body whipp
ed back and forth. The brace slid down, digging into the flesh at his ankle, and another salvo of stun grenades sent geysers of water into the air.

  “Room! Give me room!” He heard Dru’s voice, and saw the bodies shift around below him on the other side. A slim pole came through, and a fiery vibration convulsed the muscles in Jander’s trapped leg. The snake went crazy just then, getting the full voltage of the shock-stave, and its agonies tore it loose. It fell back into the water, and then Mortas was ascending without effort. Hands grabbed his neck, his shirt, his arms, his belt, hauling him and Erica up and over, and then the entire human pyramid collapsed backward into the swimming area.

  Mortas was in the water for only a few seconds before a multitude of hands took hold of his wet clothing and carried him out. His eyes rebelled against the sunlight, closing over the stinging sediment, so he couldn’t tell who was doing what anymore. An authoritative voice, too young to be Varick’s, was calmly directing the removal of his brace. The straps were released, and only then did he feel the excruciating pain in his ankle.

  “It’s all right, Jan. All that weight pulled your brace half-off.” A body dropped to its knees next to him, bumping into someone holding his hand. Fingers pried his eyelids open and rinsed them with clean water.

  “Where’s my handheld?” he sputtered. “I have to call the Ajax.”

  “I’m on it, Jan.” Erica spoke from nearby. “They shot down the drones, and they’ve got emergency teams shuttling down.”

  “How bad is it? The casualties?”

  A hand pressed against his cheek, and he looked up at a colonist he didn’t know. Her black hair stuck to her face and neck, but he recognized the voice of the medic when she quietly gave him the news.

  “It’s not your fault, Jander. You’re here on a mission of peace.”

  He struggled free of the people trying to help him, and sat up with difficulty. “How many?”

  “Our people are tending to them now. There are three dead and eight wounded.” Dark eyes spoke to him without blinking. “Elder Paul has crossed over.”

  The group around him had already diminished, but one of them returned to slide an arm around his shoulders. “Do not grieve, Jander. Erica was telling us all to hug the dirt, but Elder Paul knew you couldn’t run on that leg. He yelled for us to save you, and then we were all running. We saw what Amelia did to you, before the scooters caught her.”

  Varick joined in, pulling him close to whisper in his ear. “They wouldn’t listen to me. I told them to stay put, to let me get you. We’d both be dead if they had.”

  He reached up a hand to grasp her arm, pain shooting through a thousand tiny cuts on his fingers. A dull throb of betrayal woke up inside him, but he had to know if the thing had evaded their precautions. “What’s the Ajax say about the alien?”

  “Everything’s under control.”

  Hours later, with the fires at Gorman Station extinguished and the casualties evacuated, Mortas unfastened an intricate harness holding him to a seat inside one of the Ajax’s shuttles. Varick was already up, standing in front of him, waiting to help. Dried sand encrusted her hair and fatigues, and her hands mirrored the spidery latticework of cuts on Mortas’s fingers.

  “This can wait, Lieutenant.” Captain Everest, commander of the Ajax, spoke through the bud in his ear. “They’re not going anywhere, and my med teams tell me you’re awfully banged up.”

  “It won’t take long, Captain.” Mortas reached for Varick, who grasped his wrists and pulled him up onto his right leg. A new brace covered his entire left leg, including the foot this time. He winced when he put weight on it, but then nodded at Erica.

  “Not sure what you hope to accomplish. They’re all asleep,” Everest continued.

  “I guarantee you, that thing is not asleep.”

  “My people checked out every inch of that boat. Every reading says they’re all in stasis.”

  “Then this will take even less time than I expected.”

  “I’m not comfortable, letting you and Varick on there alone.”

  “With all due respect, Captain, I’m in command of everything that involves the alien.” Erica slid his left arm up over her shoulder, and they began to walk. “Are we in agreement?”

  “As much as I’ve ever agreed with an order I thought was foolish.”

  “Sounds like you and I have had the same experience in this war. I’ll let you know what we determine. Mortas out.”

  One of the shuttle’s two pilots, its only other passengers, activated the side hatch without a word. Varick and Mortas passed into a short umbilical, a passageway connecting the shuttle with the craft that had tried to whisk the alien away from Roanum.

  “They said this boat was built for snatch missions like this one,” Erica commented, her right arm around his waist. Sand cascaded off of them as they moved. “Super-fast, just big enough for a set of Transit Tubes, headed to rendezvous with a Step-capable ship. The crew and the alien were probably inside the tubes before they left Roanum.”

  The hatch leading into the special craft was open, and a low red light bathed its interior. They turned left as soon as they were aboard, to face a double row of the coffin-like Transit Tubes. There were ten of them, stretching away in the shadows.

  “Talk about irony. The device that almost killed me at Glory Main was what kept them from getting away.” Mortas reached out for the nearest coffin, and Varick released him. “I can still feel it, how it took over the controls of the shuttle we stole from the Sims, and sent us flying straight for the surface.”

  “I bet the Twelfth Corps commander wasn’t happy when your father made him give up his toy. Considering Twelfth Corps developed it.”

  “I guess that’s what you do with your spare time, when you’re a great big general who isn’t interested in fighting the war.” Jander placed his palms on the electronic coffins to either side, finding he could walk using them as supports. “You develop a next-generation defense, and then the father of the guy you tried to kill with the thing steals it from you.”

  “Jan.”

  He turned in place, seeing Varick’s concern. “It’s all right. I have to do this.”

  “The last alien took over your mind when it was trapped in a sterilization tube. What do you think this one’s gonna do?”

  “That’s what I’m counting on.” He heard the words as if someone else was speaking them. “We have to know the truth.”

  “It’s lied to us the whole way. It’s smarter than we are. You won’t get the truth. You might get more than you bargained for.”

  “That’s why we brought the stunner.” He pointed at the box-like pistol strapped to her thigh. “Don’t be afraid to use it.”

  “Keep your mike on. Get this done.” Varick lowered her voice. “And then come back to me, Jander Mortas.”

  “You got a deal.” Turning on his right leg, he started down the aisle. His arms trembled as he propelled himself, lurching side to side on his lacerated palms. He’d refused the offered painkillers, and his leg felt like it was going to drop off. As he slid along each box, Mortas looked through the viewing pane in search of the borrowed face of Amelia Trent. Each time he was disappointed, seeing only the still features of total strangers.

  The kidnappers hadn’t been identified yet, and the vessel they’d meant to join up with had emergency-Stepped itself to safety when they’d been caught. Just as Leeger had planned, the closest satellites the Ajax had emplaced around Roanum had moved into position to intercept the kidnapper’s craft when it left the planet’s atmosphere. The ship-hijacking system confiscated from the Glory Corps had been vastly improved in the intervening months, and it had directed the escape boat’s systems to take up an orbit.

  Jander’s bizarre locomotion, coupled with the close-up viewing of each tube’s occupant, brought back a memory from Glory Main. When the alien, the first Amelia Trent impostor, had blasted its own consciousness into his mind. Showing him its memories to explain the whole twisted plot that had begun
with his capture while sedated in a tube very similar to these. The thing’s viewpoint had been from above, as if it were a floating vapor, cruising over rows of Transit Tubes and a gaggle of Sim technicians.

  It had descended to look into one of the carriers, and he’d seen his own face.

  The last coffin on the right was different from the others, and so he wasn’t surprised to see the reddish-brown hair and attractive features that had once belonged to a Human Defense Force psychoanalyst named Amelia Trent. She’d died screaming in agony while the original alien had burrowed right into her mind. Mortas had seen that, too.

  The journey down the aisle had tired him out, so Jander pulled himself up onto the Transit Tube’s lid. He sat there, catching his breath and studying the motionless face, unable to tell if the alien was actually unconscious. Looking back at Varick, he gave her a thumbs-up before leaning over the viewing window. He engaged the intercom.

  “I know you’re awake.”

  It didn’t move, but Jander just waited. After several long seconds, the blue eyes appeared and the shape-shifter smiled in amusement. “You look like shit. You should see yourself.”

  Mortas lightly rapped on the lid. “Maybe you should see what I’m seeing.”

  “I knew the trip was taking too long. How did you catch up to them?”

  “You barely left the planet. Remember that secret device on Glory Main, the one that took control of our shuttle and almost crashed us? My father’s people took that away from the Glory Corps and improved it.”

  “You knew someone would try and steal me.”

  “As did you.”

  “But I forgot how hard it is to kill you.”

  “No harder than anybody else. Varick and the Whisperers got me out of the drink. She jumped in with me, in with the snakes. You can use that as evidence for that bullshit story about being impressed by us humans.”