Unclear Skies

by Jason LaPier

  “What is this?” the woman said. “Is this real?”

  “Shit.” Troyo extended the screen on his WrappiMate and angled it at Runstom as Harrison, Leesen, and Polinsky appeared in the doorway.

  “What, what is it?” Leesen said.

  “You were right,” Harrison said. “Willy won’t let me go out there, the sonovabitch.”

  “Rhonda, I told you,” Polinsky said. “It’s protocol.”

  “What is it?” Leesen repeated, touching Troyo, then Runstom.

  Runstom looked at the screen. He pulled out his notebook and noted the time.

  The poorly-shaven private looked up from his handypad. “What’s Space Waste?”

  CHAPTER 8

  Dava looked down the hall. The klaxons had finally ceased their bellowing, but the lights continued to tint everything red. The hallway looked like a war zone, with the scorch marks of Johnny Eyeball’s pulse rifle running up and down both sides, the color of the lights making it look like the walls themselves were bleeding.

  She listened to the gunfire in the distance. It was short. Bursty. Steady in volume. Not moving. Probably not hitting anything, but not wild or desperate. Someone was holding position. She pulled out the handypad with the map on it. Either it was broken, or all the guards were dead; no red blips appeared on the screen.

  So then who was shooting, and who were they shooting at?

  She ducked back into the control room. “Frank, we almost ready? It’s time to go.”

  “Yeah, yes. Almost locked up.”

  Freezer had spent more time covering his tracks than he had on disabling the system to begin with. He kept going on about how he was going to make it impossible for anyone to reverse what he’d done. It seemed critical to him that his sabotage stuck. She wondered if he was just busy leaving his mark.

  Eyeball came trotting down the corridor. “Where’s Frank?”

  He was coated in shreds of flame-retardant and his armor smoked where laser fire had scorched it. “Frank’s here, we’re almost ready. Where are Thompson and Barney?”

  “Covering the front.”

  “Guards?”

  “Drying on the wall. But we got other problems.” He strode to the console. “Get up, Frank. We’re leaving and I’m not letting you out of my sight until we’re back at camp and I have my whiskey.”

  “Okay, okay,” Freezer said as he tapped. “Okay. Done! By the way, you can have that gun back. Dava took it.”

  Eyeball hauled the hacker to his feet and yanked him toward the door. “Don’t want the gun. Want the whiskey.”

  Dava let them take the rear. She went ahead with her own pistol drawn, a compact piece that she didn’t bother with unless she really couldn’t get close to her targets. She wove her way through the corridors, passing the occasional crumpled uniform, vita-stat monitors faintly glowing red. When she reached the front hall, Barndoor and Thompson were on either side of the main door. Thompson had her Tommy-Gun and leaned out every few seconds to fire a burst. There was the limp, broad body of a guard lying between the open doors.

  Dava slid up behind Barndoor. “What’s the situation? Who is she shooting at?”

  “Fuckin’ ModPol.” He spat and then winced. His right arm was soaked wet with dark plasma and he held his scattergun weakly in his left hand.

  She watched Thompson and when the burst came, Dava used the cover to lean around the door and take a look. She pulled back as a retort sprayed at them, peppering the doorway. She’d seen a few vehicles, armored rovers of some kind. The Pollies were using them as shields. She guessed they had a lot more ammo than her Wasters did.

  “They got a sniper,” Barndoor said. “Hit me in the fuckin’ arm.”

  “Maybe it’ll improve your aim,” Thompson yelled over between shots.

  “Fuck you, Thompson! Fuck your stupid skinny ass!” He looked at Dava. “First I get stunned by one of those dumb-ass guards. And when I come to, we come back here to check the perimeter and freakin’ ModPol shows up. And not the cop edition either. These fucks are military. Not Pollies. Fenders.” He grunted as he inspected his wound, then looked up at her again. “What are we going to do? We can’t take ’em. There’s too many.”

  “No, I don’t think we can,” she said. She looked back to see Eyeball holding Freezer around the corner, well out of line of anything that might come through the open doorway.

  “Wish I had a sniper rifle,” Barndoor muttered, then leaned his head back to yell. “If I had a sniper rifle I’d kill every last one of you fuckers!”

  “Are you kidding me?” Thompson stopped shooting to pop the ammo drum out of her gun and replace it. “Barney, even if you had a sniper rifle, you’d be lucky to hit a barn door. That’s why we call you Barndoor!”

  “Fuck you, Thompson!”

  “Sit back,” Dava said, pushing down on Barndoor’s shoulder. “Let me get a QuikStik out of your pack so you don’t bleed out and slow us down.”

  He sat back and closed his eyes while she dug out the medkit and pulled his sleeve back. The shot had gone clean through his forearm. She couldn’t tell if it hit any bones, but it was bleeding excessively. She applied the QuikStik to both sides and it gelled up and set almost instantly. The stuff doubled as a painkiller, so she hoped it would help Barndoor hold it together.

  “Okay, stand up.” As he did, she stood up with him and pulled the strap of his scattergun over his shoulder. “I know you can’t use that right arm, but just hold the gun like this and do the best you can with it. It’s good for short range, at least.”

  “Okay,” he said quietly.

  “Thompson, cover fire!” she called. “Come on, Barney – fall back to where Johnny and Frank are.”

  They quickly got back to the corner and she shoved the handypad into Freezer’s hands. “What are our options? We need another way out. Is there anything underground?”

  He tapped at the pad. “No, nothing underground out here. Hmm. I think this might be a garage, back here. Which would mean a door, and maybe even a vehicle.”

  “Atta boy,” Eyeball said, slapping Freezer so hard on the back that he almost dropped the handypad.

  Dava took it so she could see the map and plot a route. “Okay, I’m going to lead us to the garage,” she said, tracing her finger along the path so that Freezer could see it. “The four of us need to move to that side while Thompson covers. When we get there, Johnny: I want you to cover so she can get back here to us. Ready?”

  Freezer nodded, Barndoor grunted, and Eyeball winked. “I can almost taste that whiskey now,” he mumbled dreamily, then leaned around the corner and shouted. “Thompson, cover fire! Give us four bursts, then come back!”

  She slapped a new drum into the submachinegun and let rip, and Dava sprinted across the space and into the far corridor. Freezer and Barndoor were right behind her, with Eyeball trotting behind them. He leaned out and the pulse rifle chirped its high-pitched report. Seconds later, Thompson was diving behind him and sliding into the hallway on her belly.

  “Try to keep up,” Dava said. She rehearsed the route in her head and took off.

  She had not chosen the most direct path to the garage, but instead created one that included short sprints and corners. They made it through the first few turns before they could hear the ModPol bullhorn echoing through the building, demanding their surrender.

  Eyeball whooped as he blasted away from the rear. “Gettin’ hot back here, Dava!”

  “Keep moving,” she yelled. “We’re close.”

  She came around another corner and almost barreled into a man in a long, white coat. He was gray-haired and tall for a Sirius-fiver. While she twisted to keep her balance, he spread his arms wide and wrapped them around her.

  “You bastards attacked us!” he yelled, lifting her up from behind. He was strong, and her arms were pinned and her legs came off the floor. “You won’t get away with this!”

  “Dava!” Thompson shouted. She leveled her gun at him. “Put her down, you old ass!”
>
  “You’re not going to shoot me,” he said, slowly backing into a side room. “You’ll hit your friend, here.”

  Barndoor shoved Thompson aside and aimed his scattergun by laying the barrel across his bad arm. “Oh, I’ll shoot you, you sonovabitch.”

  Dava lifted her legs, bringing her knees to her chest. When the man’s legs came into view, the scattergun erupted. She crashed to the floor as the man howled.

  “Goddamn, Barney,” Thompson said. “You shredded his foot! Not a bad shot from three meters away.”

  “Alright, dammit,” Barndoor said over the wounded man’s frantic screams. “Let’s just get the hell outta here.”

  Dava picked herself up, cursing herself for being careless. Trying to keep track of the team and keep track of herself, it was too much.

  Johnny’s gun burst once from the last corner they’d come around, then she could hear it clicking dryly. She sprinted back to lean around and look, Thompson and Barndoor following close behind.

  “Let him go!” Eyeball roared, clubbing a Fender with the empty rifle, then pulling back to crack another in the helmet with the butt of it. There were six or seven of them, a tangle of arms and guns, Freezer and Eyeball wrapped up in the melee.

  “Sonova.” Barndoor leveled his shotgun.

  “No!” Thompson pulled him back. “You’ll hit Johnny and Frank!”

  A couple of the Fenders shot looks at the sound of her voice. Barrels raised and lit up the corridor. The three of them ducked back around the corner.

  “Dammit, what are we going to do now?” Barndoor said.

  Dava looked the other way. “The garage is just down there.”

  “So what, we’re just gonna leave them?”

  “No,” she said. “Yes. No. We have to get out of here. If we can get to the observatory we can get everyone else. There’s a lot of them but we’ve got more. We can come back and overrun them.”

  “ModPol’s not even supposed to be here.” Thompson looked like she was trying to control her breathing. “Boss Jansen said they didn’t have jurisdiction on Vulca.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Dava said, swallowing down any thoughts she wanted to spew about Jansen. “They’re here. Now we need to get back to the rest of the crew if we want any chance of getting Frank and Johnny back. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Runstom stared half at his notebook, half at the floor of the barracks, trying to think. The others hovering in the corners of his vision – Leesen, Polinsky, Harrison, Troyo, and four privates in the Trial ModPol Rapid Onsite Defense Unit – had all gone silent at the last words spoken: Space Waste. It wasn’t even that they all knew what that meant; it was that they could see on his face that he knew what it meant, and it was bad. He just had to think it through. What were they doing on Vulca? How did they get as far as they did without putting the whole moon on alert?

  “Willis,” he said, raising his head to meet the security head’s eyes. “Is there any way to find out if there were any landings?”

  “You mean, like ships?”

  “Yes. Any kind of vessels landing on the surface.”

  Polinsky scratched his head. “Well, ships land at the dock every day.”

  “What about elsewhere?” Runstom asked. “Somewhere outside of a dock. Would any landings like that be tracked?”

  “Traffic Control might know. I guess.”

  Runstom took a step toward the security officer. “How do we contact Traffic Control?”

  “I guess we can send a message …” he said, looking away.

  “Then do it.” Runstom turned to Leesen. “Doctor. Nothing in the messages you got from your people said anything about an attack?”

  “No,” she said quietly. She had her handypad in her hand, lifted to her chest as if she might re-read the messages, but she just stared ahead. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Wait,” Polinsky said. He cocked his head at his pad. “I just got something. There’s a radio call coming in.”

  “Radio?” Leesen said. “You actually use radio?”

  “Only for emergency communication.” He tapped at the pad and then tapped at a small earpiece. “Hello? Can you read me?”

  “Can you put it on speaker?” Runstom asked.

  “Yeah,” Polinsky nodded. He padded around his waist until he found a small rectangular device, matte gray with mesh on one end. Speaking into it, he said, “Gorman, start over. Can you hear us?”

  “Yeah,” the speaker crackled. It sounded miles distant, weak. “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “What’s the situation?” Runstom said, leaning close to the device.

  “I just got out of there. It’s – there’s a whole army down here.” There was a pause. Runstom thought he heard some noise, almost like the clearing of a throat. Then the speaker blurted back to life. “I know I’m not supposed to leave my post, but all our comms are down. I made a break for it on an ATV so I could get on the radio.”

  “Gorman,” Polinsky said, enunciating into the device. “How many are there? How many?”

  “I have no idea.” There was almost a laugh, but it was hard to tell through the static. “I saw half a dozen vehicles coming when I first took cover. When they overwhelmed the front and came in, I started to make my way to the back where the garages are. Every room I passed, there were these guys in black jackets swarming over everything.”

  Runstom took a breath. “They’re after something.”

  “What?” Troyo looked from Runstom to Polinsky. “What are they after?”

  “Gorman,” Polinsky said into the communicator. “You still there? Gorman?”

  “What would they want out there?” Troyo turned to face Leesen. “What would they want from the observatory?”

  “Maybe they want to do some research,” the scruffy private chimed in before he was shushed by his squadmates.

  “Well, looks like we lost Gorman,” Polinsky said, angling the comm device to look at some lights on the side. “Not a scrap of signal now.”

  “Stanford, what are we going to do?” Troyo leaned in close to Runstom. “Maybe it’s time we thought about getting out of here.”

  “No, we’re not leaving.”

  “But these guys are – I mean, do you know what they’re capable of? This is Space Waste.”

  Images of the prisoner barge being torn apart flashed in Runstom’s head. George Halsey’s face, blood running from both nostrils and from his mouth as he lay helpless in a bullet-stormed corridor. The last of his strength used to clutch a live grenade. Swarms of leather-clad psychopaths loosing hell from jagged weaponry. The narrow escape before Halsey blew up himself and Runstom’s pursuers. The desperate, cowardly flight Runstom took on the stolen personnel transport. Pulling away from the barge and watching it slowly bleed air and any chance of anyone else making it out alive.

  Runstom found himself pinning Troyo against the wall with a forearm. He released the man and swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Space what-now?” Polinsky said. “What are you fellas talking about?”

  “Space Waste,” Harrison said. “Figures you’ve never heard of them.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Rhonda?”

  “It means you Sirius-5 domers are goddamn sheltered—”

  “Stop,” Leesen said, cutting her off. “Mr. Runstom. What does this mean?”

  Runstom sighed, looking at them each in turn. The four privates looked confused; he guessed that some of them had probably heard of Space Waste, but nothing more than scary stories told by more experienced Defenders. Harrison might have heard enough to know they were to be feared, but had she ever encountered them? She was not afraid enough for him to believe that she had. Polinsky looked skeptical, but Leesen was getting paler. Troyo looked as though he wanted to find a nice solid bomb shelter to lock himself into for the next week or so.

  “It means Vulca is under attack,” he said.

  “We should prepare to defend the city,” Troyo said. “Willy, how many security personnel do
you have on staff here?” Runstom looked at the man, trying to determine if he’d had a change of heart about facing Space Waste. Then he realized Troyo was just playing the odds: the city would be easier to defend than any other part of the facility.

  “Well, I have about – uh, sixteen on duty right now. In town anyway.”

  “Altogether?” Troyo said. “On and off duty?”

  “Oh, uh, forty-seven. Some of them will be sleeping right about now.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Willy,” Troyo said. “Didn’t you hear Stanford? We’re under attack!”

  “Wake them up and get them on alert,” Runstom said. He looked at his notebook again, and with renewed focus started reading what little he had. One event at a time. What did it mean?

  “What about the observatory?” Leesen said, coming between the three of them.

  “Maybe they’re okay,” Polinsky said. “The alarm was at the power relay.”

  “Yeah, that’s where Captain Oliver said she was engaging them,” one of the privates said. “At the power relay.”

  “Why would they go after the power relay?” Troyo said. “There’s nothing there.”

  “The power relay is attacked,” Runstom said, reading from his notebook. “Then the observatory loses power.”

  “That’s the target?” Troyo said. “The observatory?”

  Runstom looked at Leesen. “What’s at the observatory, Doctor? Anything worth taking?”

  “Equipment?” she said, her breath halting. “Hardware? I don’t know. The people are worth more.”

  “Yes, yes,” Troyo said moving in on her. “Who or what, then? What’s there they would want?”

  “I don’t know,” she breathed. She looked Runstom in the eyes. “What will they do to the people there? My – my researchers?”

  Runstom looked at Troyo. “Maybe nothing. If they stand aside, the Wasters – the attackers – might leave them alone. Come on, Mr. Polinsky,” he said, heading into the hallway. “We need to secure the city.”

  “Mr. Runstom!” Leesen came swiftly into the hallway and spun in front of him, stopping him with her hands, then brought them together in a clasp. “There’s something else.”