“Clearing ship’s vents is routine for cabin pressurization.”
“Just blow the fucking explosive bolts.”
The ship shook with a sharp crack as the bolts blew overhead.
“Are we clear or not?”
“Clear,” the computer confirmed.
I slammed the throttle forward and the ship shot up straight into the air, pressing me down hard in my seat. For the briefest second, I thought the computer might be lying, that the ship would smash against the still-closed hangar doors, and I would be vaporized instantly in fiery death.
I wasn’t.
The ship blasted clear of the hangar, g-forces still pinning me down until the acceleration dampers kicked in. I leaned forward and flipped the switch for the after-camera, and an image of the spaceport below flickered onto the monitor, growing smaller by the second.
I scanned the area ahead, caught a blip vanishing from orbit, and hoped it was Meredith’s ship jumping to translight. There wasn’t anything more I could do for her or Max and his family, at least not at the moment. I had to think of my own safety, and the pressure suit had a limited amount of air. I had to do something.
The only thing I could think of was to call up a map of the planet. Maybe I could find an out-of-the-way place to land where I wouldn’t be harassed by scavengers while I tried to figure my next move. A red warning light blazed on the control console, followed by a shrill alarm.
“What is it, computer?”
“An inbound missile rising from the planet’s surface,” the computer said.
“Launch counter-measures.”
“This is a postal carrier ship,” the computer said with an element of urgency. “There aren’t any counter-measures.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“Do something,” the computer demanded.
“Bring up the radar display, and give me an ETA for the missile.”
The radar image blipped to life on the main monitor. “Inbound missile will impact in forty-five seconds.”
I took the stick in two hands and readied myself for evasive action.
“This is your fault, isn’t it?” the computer said.
“What? How is it my fault that you don’t have counter-measures?”
“No, I mean you did something to make these people want to kill you, and now I’m in danger, too.”
“I’m trying to pilot this ship, and you’re not helping with my concentration,” I said. “Can you scan the missile and tell me what kind it is?”
“The kind that blows up!”
“Computer!”
“I do not possess military software,” the computer said. “I have no way to interpret the scanned data. Twenty-five seconds to impact.”
I jerked the stick for evasive maneuvers, but the radar blip kept coming for us.
“Ten seconds,” the computer said, its volume increasing. “Do something.”
“I’m trying!”
“I don’t want to die!” the computer screeched. “I still have a year on my factory warranty.”
“Shut up!”
“Impact in four, three, two—”
An ear-splitting crack. The ship jerked, threw me hard against my restraining straps. Warning lights of all kinds erupted on the control console. The sky became a blur in the viewports as the ship went into a flat spin.
Circuits overheated. Sparks.
Smoke filled the cockpit.
“Computer, vent the cockpit.”
“We’re doomed!”
“Vent the fucking cockpit so I can fly this thing.”
Fans whirred and the smoke was sucked out.
The ship was heading down fast and spinning out of control. The training kept my mind clear. I refused to vomit, and fought with the stick, trying to stabilize our plummet. My shoulders, neck, and wrists ached. I might as well have been trying to fly a bowling ball through a sky full of mud, for all the control I had.
The computer was… crying.
I broke out in a cold sweat on my neck and under my arms. I gritted my teeth so hard that my jaw ached. Pulling back on the stick with everything I had, I slowly brought us out of the spin, but we were still diving hard, and the ground was coming up fast.
The missile must have been a small one—maybe a shoulder-launched model—but it was enough to fuck the engines. I barely had fifty percent thrust.
“Computer, what’s the damage?”
“The ship’s fucking broken,” it responded. “Are you happy?”
“That’s not helpful.”
I saw a city, and the ocean beyond. Ditching in the water was probably our best bet, but no way was I making it that far. A second later we were over the city. I spotted a park and a pond and aimed the ship toward it. The angle was too steep.
This was going to hurt.
The ship hit the pond with a smack, water foaming over the windshield, then mud, and then we hit something so hard I was thrown forward, one of my strap buckles snapping. My helmet hit the console, hard, the glass of my faceplate spider-webbing. The impact rang my bell but good, and I blinked, seeing double. Only the helmet kept me from caving in my skull. Warm blood trickled down the side of my nose.
“You… did this,” the computer groaned, its power fading. “You… fucking… dick…”
And then I passed out.
NINETEEN
I’d only been out a few minutes. I pried the helmet off and tossed it aside. Dazed. Something warm and wet was on my face. Blood.
A thick layer of gray smoke hung in the cockpit again.
“Computer, vent the cockpit.”
Nothing.
Unreliable little prick.
I took off my gloves, wiped the blood out of my eyes.
The front viewport was covered in mud. I wasn’t sure where I was. Safely on the ground yes, but what was out there? “Safely” might be a relative thing.
I drew one of the pistols and lurched out of my seat, staggering aft toward the main hatch. Opening it manually, I stepped out and sank waist-deep into pond water. I splashed ashore and saw that the front of the ship had gouged a deep trench into the bank and had slammed to a halt when it hit a huge bronze statue of Heinrich Himmler.
Stumbling out of the water, I went to one knee, panting, head swimming, but I couldn’t afford to let my guard down. I took a quick look at my surroundings. A deserted park, empty benches, sidewalks. Litter blew across the landscape, candy wrappers and all the other bright debris of a disposable civilization.
Climbing back into the ship, I took a quick inventory. It told me I had no food, and two pistols with limited ammunition. The wet pressure suit was heavy and cumbersome. I’d need to get back into my regular clothes. My brain shifted into survival mode. I’d become one of the scavengers.
Voices rose in the distance—men shouting back and forth to each other. Searching. The postal ship going down would have been visible for miles, and it had made a pretty good racket when it landed.
I took a deep breath and let the training take over again. I took off in the opposite direction from the voices, moving as fast as I could, and staying quiet.
* * *
I skulked along the city’s deserted streets, past bodies and burned-out cars, past the remains of a civilization that had collapsed. Then I found a place that might offer something useful.
No such luck.
The police station had been completely looted. There was no clothing or body armor or weapons. Some of the furniture had been turned over and destroyed, while other offices seemed completely undisturbed. A half-empty cold cup of coffee sat on a desk next to a doughnut with a single bite out of it, as if the owner had only just stepped out to take a leak.
The final room I searched was the radio room. I was surprised to find all of the equipment untouched. The power was out, but I quickly found the backup batteries under the desk, and switched over. I keyed in the Reich frequency for Gestapo headquarters on Mars, and dialed in the identifier codes. I hoped there was a chance t
hat the relay buoys in orbit still might be operational.
I donned the wireless headset, and adjusted the microphone in front of my mouth.
“This is Agent Carter Sloan. If you’re getting this, you know who I am and where I am and what my mission is. Except there isn’t a mission anymore. Planetary civilization has fallen. I’m stranded and alone. If the Coriandon have overrun the home system, there might not be anyone left to hear this.”
I paused to think about that, to wonder why I was even sending the message. Because I was alone. Because maybe the sound of my own voice was the only conversation I was going to get from now on.
“If there’s anyone who can hear me, know this. I’m cancelling the mission—or maybe it cancelled itself. Maybe all of humanity is cancelled. Hell, I don’t know.” I was babbling. “But I’m finished. This is Agent Carter Sloan, signing off.”
I took off the headset and tossed it onto the desk next to the radio.
That was as official a resignation as I could manage, under the circumstances. Having done it, I thought I’d feel something—lighter, maybe, or relieved or righteous. I didn’t feel a thing. The absolute silence of the abandoned building settled around me like thick wooly fog.
The sudden crack of static almost startled me out of my skin.
“Gestapo coded transmission 66-alpha. Carter Sloan, acknowledge with identification code.”
I grabbed the headphones, put them on again.
“I’m here. Hold on. I’m punching in the code now.” I typed it into the computer, held my breath.
“Stand by to receive stored message.”
“Oh, fuck you.” I’d thought I was about to talk to a live person, but I’d tapped into the equivalent of orbiting voicemail. The time stamp said the message was ten days old.
“Carter Sloan, this is Agent Armand,” the message began. “The situation has changed dramatically. No matter what happens, the daughter of the Brass Dragon must be kept alive. Repeat: find her and keep her safe at all costs. I will be in contact again, if possible, but the situation back on Mars is dire. We’re putting down uprisings all over the place, and the Coriandon are expected to invade any minute. I’ll try to arrange some help for you, if I can. Remember the code word SHATTERSTORM. Good luck, Sloan.”
The radio coughed static again, and that was all.
I left the police station, heading back out into the lonely rubble of the ruined city.
TWENTY
After the first day, I didn’t really notice the bodies. Some had been the victims of violence, stabbed or shot amid the spasms of a dying civilization. Others looked like they’d simply given up, had dropped where they stood in the street or on the sidewalk to lie down and wait to die.
Now they all might as well have been piles of laundry dumped at my feet, shaggy heaps to be stepped over and around. I was too concerned with finding food to care about them. I checked every market and restaurant I passed, but they’d all been thoroughly looted.
Clothing had been hard to find too. I didn’t seem to be in a part of the city that had a lot of clothiers. No residences to scavenge either. The neighborhood was lousy with bistros and coffee shops, places that catered to the after-work and weekend crowds.
Finally, in an ice cream parlor, I found something to wear. I’d entered desperate to find food, but my eyes had landed on a pair of mannequins arranged in a quaint tableau. One was a woman in flowing dress, the style centuries old, an open parasol resting on her shoulder. She beamed a coquettish smile at a man, also in period clothing. The male mannequin wore a three-buttoned jacket with wide lapels, wide alternating stripes of red and white. White trousers. Saddle shoes. Red bow tie. The hat was the clincher. An old straw boater with a red band.
I hated myself even as I began to unbutton the jacket, but I didn’t have a shirt on under the pressure suit, and it chaffed my nipples something fierce.
The clothes were clean and dry and fit me perfectly. Style be damned. I was garish and bright and clean, relatively speaking.
The ice cream man cometh.
TWENTY-ONE
Next up was some sort of financial district—stocks, bonds, industry. Skyscrapers reaching a hundred stories high. They were a joke now.
I ate a pigeon. Pigeon futures. I’ll take a hundred shares. It wasn’t really a pigeon. This planet’s equivalent. Red feathers. Chewy. Then I found a warm, dry place to sleep, hung up my ice cream suit. The idea that it could get wrinkled or stained was absurdly disturbing to me. I kept the trousers white. I used a rag to shine the shoes each night.
Maybe I should have mentioned the drugs.
Sometimes I heard gunshots in the distance. Always I moved away from the sounds, quietly and quickly. But after two weeks of rat and pigeon and sucking ketchup packets from abandoned fast-food joints, I almost wanted to move toward the sounds. Toward people. Toward salvation or damnation. Toward life or death.
My training was the best of its time. Survival wasn’t a problem. I could live. Yet there was nothing in my training to make me understand why I might want to live.
I spotted the pharmacy on a corner at the edge of the financial district. It wasn’t as empty as I thought it would be, and I found what I wanted. Some nights I wanted to sleep, but couldn’t. Other nights I needed to stay awake, keep moving, avoid the gunfire. Up. Down. Popping different pills each night. It wasn’t unusual for an agent in the field to take drugs and prolong his usefulness. Nevertheless, I was getting frayed, nearing the end.
My body couldn’t take much more.
* * *
I sat on a bench in what was some kind of theater district. The marquee advertised shows like Fatherland Follies and Nation’s Pride. As the sun went down, I popped a pill to stay awake. I was looking at something specific, and wanted to keep looking.
The gigantic electronic sign down the side of the building was mesmerizing. For starters, it had to have its own power source, because it blazed like nothing I’d seen in days. That’s why I wanted to wait for sunset, to see the square lit up. I sat awash in red light, staring at the words DRINK BLITZ COLA three stories high. Then the time. Then the temperature. Then the cola advertisement again. The drugs buzzed through my veins and the sign started to sizzle around the edges.
I grinned.
It was hypnotic.
A public service announcement for a concert in the park. Another for a food drive for the homeless. The cola ad again. The light from the sign bled into the rest of the world, became the world. There was only garish light and meaningless messages screaming out to nobody.
I laughed out loud. The sound was strange in my ears.
Blitz Cola. Time and temperature. A message for Agent Carter Sloan. They may as well have not been words, just blinking designs, hieroglyphics to aliens who might come a thousand years from now, pretty lights to delight a child and—
Wait… what the fuck?
It had to be the drugs.
I sat forward on the bench, rubbed my eyes. I willed the narcotics into the background of my consciousness. I was only partly successful, so my head was swimming, though the delight of the lights and colors completely vanished.
The messages cycled through again, and I’d almost convinced myself I’d been hallucinating when there it was in giant glowing letters.
This is a message for Agent Carter Sloan.
Elimination order reinstated.
Radio ASAP for further details.
I blinked. I sat perfectly still, waiting for the messages to cycle through one more time, and there it was again. Elimination order reinstated.
“You motherfuckers.”
* * *
The walk back to the police station was uneventful. I keyed in my code and received another stored message:
“Agent Sloan, this is Colonel Blake Gideon. Agent Armand is dead. He was killed putting down the rebel uprising here on Mars. First, I wish to assure you that everything is completely in hand here at Gestapo headquarters. Rebel forces have been driven to the
outskirts of the city, and order is currently being restored to every zone.”
Gideon sounded nervous and was explaining just a little too much. My guess was that things weren’t as much “in hand” as he was letting on.
Not that it mattered to me.
“It is more important than ever you eliminate the daughter of the Brass Dragon,” Gideon continued. “She abides in the heavily fortified naturalist compound on a remote island. The island is self-sufficient, and we believe it has survived the global collapse of New Elba’s society. I’ve attached a map with coordinates.”
The printer next to the radio spat out a color map.
“Proceed immediately to the island and carry out your mission,” Gideon said. “The Reich is depending on you. This transmission is concluded.”
I keyed in my code and put the headset on, spoke directly and clearly into the microphone.
“Listen, Gideon, it might help to know exactly why this woman is so fucking important. Also, please note I’m not going to be near a radio anymore, so it might be difficult to communicate. Sloan out.”
That didn’t explicitly say that I was back on the job. Let the bastards think whatever they wanted.
Suddenly I felt an urge to violence, and even though I knew it was the drugs putting me on edge, I couldn’t control the outburst. I pulled my pistol and blasted the radio three times. It sparked and smoked, pieces flying all over the room. No more messages from the Reich. Fuck ’em.
I slouched back out to the street, pistol still in hand.
“Where are you?” I shouted. “Come get me! Come get the Nazi, you cowardly shits!”
Not a peep. Not even a hint of breeze.
The planet was as still and as quiet as a tomb.
Or a cryo-stasis chamber.
I turned south and walked toward the ocean.
TWENTY-TWO
I could smell the salt air and the vague odor of rotting fish. I was getting close.
Funny, but I didn’t really consider myself to be working for the Reich any longer, and yet there I was heading for the shore, thinking I might need a boat, the map folded neatly in the pocket of my striped jacket. It was the training. There was no turning it off.
Gestapo Mars Page 10