by Ben Weaver
“What’re you talking about?” he screamed, then shook me by the shoulders. “We have to go!”
I stared blankly at him, the page flashing over and over.
And then you could almost hear the click in his head as he remembered something Kristi Breckinridge had told us: “We have learned that as the aging progresses, there’s a long-term memory imbalance that interferes with the short-term. You can’t remember if you shut off the vid, and you can’t stop reciting some obscure data cerebroed into the deepest parts of your mind.”
“Oh my god,” Halitov muttered. “Oh my god! Scott!” He slapped me across the face. “You’re not going to let this happen. You’re stronger than this. Come on!”
I narrowed my gaze on this person who had just struck me, my hand going to the flame in my cheek, my mind screaming against the mental thumbing through thousands of records. Many hours later, Halitov would tell me that he had never seen such a lost look on my face. I had to believe him, because I didn’t remember anything that happened until we were on the other side of the command room hatch, Halitov dragging me inside, my combat skin fully depleted, my right arm throbbing from a superficial wound to my bicep.
Groaning, Halitov lay me on the floor, then shut the hatch, just as more particle fire tied ribbons of lightning across it. “See that, you old bastard?” he asked. “I, Captain Rooslin Halitov, am a hero. You remember that first before you remember Columbia.” His gaze went vacant as he glanced at a display in his HUV. “Shit, we’re running out of time. We have to move!”
“We’re inside already?” I asked, wincing over the needles in my arm. “And what happened to my combat skin?”
“You could ask them,” Halitov said, pointing to the fourteen dead communications specialists slumped at their terminals. Some had their throats slit; others had swallowed particle fire or had had their necks broken. Halitov’s signature was everywhere.
“What happened to me?”
“Uh, you were just a little drained, blacked out or something,” he lied (later he would tell me the truth). “You jam their comm and get off that probe, I’ll work on finding Jing.” He seized my wrist, dragged me to my feet, then led me to a chair before a myriad of touch screens with a remarkably familiar layout that matched cerebroed data in my head.
“Okay,” I told him. “I got this.”
While his fingers danced over the screens at a terminal behind me, I hacked into their system using encryption codes confiscated during a black op on Mars. Nineteen Wardens had given their lives to obtain the data, and I felt a sense of reverence as the computer accepted the codes, granted me access, and I immediately disrupted all Alliance local communications by broadcasting a pulse signal on their channels. Of course, they could switch to some of ours, but that would take time and be a logistical nightmare. The disruption was temporary, but it would be enough. “Poe, copy?” I said over our channel.
“Copy. Comm is down,” he reported, particle fire echoing behind him. “They’re already skinning and de-skinning to get it back up. Good work, Major.”
“How’s it coming on that fence?”
“Shutting down now. With ten seconds to spare. See you outside.”
“Copy.” I spun to face Halitov. “Anything?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, you’d better move.”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
With my hands beginning to tremble, I typed in an encrypted text message addressed to Ms. Brooks. I kept it short and fragmentary: Captured on Exeter. Shot down over Icillica. At Colyad now. Rebellion in progress. Need extraction. Priority note: Paul Beauregard is our traitor. Confirm: Paul Beauregard is our traitor. Detain immediately. I switched on the camera and spoke rapidly: “Ms. Brooks, Paul sold us out the Alliances because he’s trying to save his mother. They got Jing, sent her off somewhere else. We desperately need your help. But no matter what, you have to detain Paul immediately. He gave up the encryption codes at Columbia. All of those people died because of him. He admitted that to me. You have to stop him. St. Andrew, out.”
The text, audio, and video automatically saved to the chip under separate files, and the comm drone was already spun up, its engines engaged. I spoke rapidly with the drone’s onboard computer, feeding it every authorization code in my head, the numbers and letters pouring from my lips with a machine-like precision that startled me. With that done, I banged a floating button on the screen and watched the monitor as the drone burst from its pad. “Message is away!” I cried, breathing a huge sigh of relief. I remembered that if those codes failed, the drone would be blown out of space before it tawted. I called up the local satnet and watched radar images of the probe as it left Icillica, rising high enough into the upper atmosphere to make the jump. “Come on, baby,” I whispered. “Take the codes. Take the codes.” COMM DRONE TAWTING OUT OF RANGE reported a databar hovering near the green blip on my screen. I burst from my seat. “Yeah! It’s out of the system!”
The little probe would tawt back to Exeter, and even if Vanguard One had already left the system, the drone would automatically access the satnet to find out where the ship had gone, then it would tawt again and again to complete its mission. Once it came within range, it would broadcast both the audio/video message and the text version on all emergency channels. At least one message had to get through.
“Still nothing on Jing yet,” said Halitov. “They got those records behind so many walls it’s ridiculous.”
Sparks shot from a small hole in the hatch, then grew into a broad fountain. “Just keep trying,” I told him, not bothering to mention that the Marines outside were cutting through. He would notice the sparks in a moment anyway. I took a deep breath and opened the command channel. “All right, Poe, my message is away. Evac is on your command. What’s the status on our birds?”
“Nine minutes, thirty seconds to drop,” he answered, his voice burred by exertion. “And Major, we…we…we need you outside.”
I swung back to the terminal, pulled up images from the security cameras, and gasped.
Once the force fence had come down, those poorly armed miners were supposed to retreat, allowing our armed forces—led by guardsmen—to launch their assault. I can only speculate on why they did what they did, but, perhaps, driven into a killing rage by the lieutenant colonel, those people had stormed the compound, waving their feeble pipes and pistols at Marines with fingers poised over the triggers of their big particle cannons. They had run just a few meters past the fence when the Marines had opened up on the mob, shredding them into piles of flesh and blood. Hundreds of bodies lay strewn along the fence line, with armed miners and guardsmen crouching behind them and trading fire with the Marines. Viewing it all on the screen made it seem less real, and comprehending the full extent of that carnage would take me years of reflection.
“Anything, Rooslin?”
“Just got into the records now.”
“They’re getting slaughtered outside. We have to go help.”
“No problem. Our buddies outside that hatch are going to cut through and roll out the red carpet for us.”
I stared at the glowing, meter-long seam in the hatch. “I know.”
Halitov drew his head closer to one screen, then banged a knuckle on it. “Got her. Sol system. She’s in the Nereid Research and Testing Facility.”
I closed my eyes, braced myself. “Any record of a brainwipe?”
“None here, but you know that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Any transfer orders pending?”
“Negative. But she’s definitely there.”
“All right,” I said, turning toward the hatch and wondering just how many Marines waited on the other side. “We can’t chance this. We need to be outside. Now.”
“I’m with you,” Halitov said. “North Wing bunker?”
“That’s the one.”
“Hey, Scott?” he called as I was about to close my eyes and find the bond. “Stay close, okay?”
I frowned. �
��Yeah, sure.”
And with that, we willed ourselves behind two Marines operating a particle cannon near the north wing. Halitov plunged his blade into the back of the first operator, while I gave the second one a headache from which he would never recover. We shot up the cannon’s control panel, then, fighting against the weariness of exploiting the bond, we fled along the wall, toward the next bunker.
“That’s it,” said Poe over our command channel. “Major, let’s get everybody out. Now!”
Miners broke from cover and charged away from the fence line. The enemy reaction was equally swift. Airjeeps swooped down, mercilessly strafing those miners, as the lieutenant colonel lorded over the scene from his own airjeep, shouting, “That’s right, run! But you can’t escape from the iron fist of the Alliance Marine Corps!”
“That asshole killed children,” said Halitov as we ran.
“Rooslin, I know what you’re thinking.”
“I’ll do it with or without you.”
“I know. So I’m coming.”
“I thought you weren’t about revenge.”
“I’m not. But sometimes justice needs a little help.”
As the lieutenant colonels’ airjeep passed overhead, we crouched down then sprang up, rocketing through the air two stories until we reached the side doors, clutched them, then hung from the jeep, our boots dangling. With a solid jerk, I pulled myself up and dropped into the backseat.
The lieutenant colonel raised his QQ60 particle pistol at me, craned his neck, saw Halitov, gaped, then returned his attention to me as Halitov took the man’s fat head in his hands. I winced as the colonel’s head twisted at a bizarre angle. At least I couldn’t hear the bones crack over the battle’s din. The colonel fell limp, and, with a sudden flood of rage, I threw him over the side. As his body dropped, miners whirled back and fired upon it, broad beams of particle fire ripping it apart before it thumped on the quickcrete. From somewhere in the distance, a cheer erupted.
The airjeep’s pilot, a young second lieutenant, turned back and raised his hands. “I have a little boy.”
“Yeah? What about all the little boys and girls you’ve been killing here, huh? Huh? HUH?”
Before I could stop him, Halitov raised his rifle and literally blew the pilot’s head off.
“Rooslin!” I screamed.
He just looked at me, then dropped over the side. I followed, plummeting through his wake.
On the ground, we bolted for the fence line, fire still whizzing overhead and thumping hard into the bodies we veered around and threaded between and jumped over. I checked my HUV. Skin power at only thirty percent but rising. If we didn’t reach cover soon, a few well-directed and sustained beads would revert my skin to zero power and leave me vulnerable. Halitov knew that, and he placed himself near me, letting his skin take most of the fire as we charged toward an airjeep waiting for us near the great marble columns of the Colyad Museum of Natural History. A bead locked onto my back, drove my skin down to five percent, four, three—
Halitov shoved me onto the ground, turned back, and stood there, taking all the fire himself while unleashing his own bead toward the airjeep targeting us from above. His skin flickered out, even as the jeep soared by and the incoming ceased as smoke poured from its turbines. I scrambled to my feet, and together, we rode a wave of life-saving adrenaline as we ran to the jeep, reached it, hopped in the back, and the pilot, one of our guardsmen, took off, the wind whipping so hard that my eyes began to tear.
“ETA on our birds?” I called to Poe, but he didn’t answer.
Instead, Val d’Or’s voice came over the channel. “It’s Eugene, Scott. We’re just under a minute. Get out of there.”
“Yeah, thanks for the tip. Where’s Poe?”
“He got shot up pretty bad, but he’s with us. We’ll meet you at Point Victory.”
“We’re on our way.”
“You know, if those bombers don’t get through…” Halitov began over the rumbling engines.
“Don’t jinx us,” I hollered. “They’ll make it.”
We turned back as the airjeep blasted over the city, coming within mere meters of rooftops, small communications dishes, and suspended walkways. In the distance, hugged by those massive walls of ice within the even larger chamber that held the entire colony, sat the capitol building, waiting innocently. Some miners, mostly the older folks and a few vets, remained behind to fight the good fight until they were either shot and killed or disintegrated by the bombs. Their whole lives had been coming to it, and as muzzle flashes shone like glitter and larger explosions cast flickering shadows across the ice, I imagined that beneath all of the chaos, those good people were dying by the minute, yet they hit the ground feeling proud of themselves, their brothers, their colony.
With that image still crystallizing, my attention lifted to the far off ceiling as a rumble so loud that our airjeep’s engine seemed to whisper emanated from the ice. The ceiling splintered into hundreds of narrow fissures as pieces of ice rained down in a bizarre subterranean hailstorm. Our pilot swore and banked hard to port, narrowly missing a fragment larger than our ride as the smaller pieces pinged on the hull.
“Jesus…” shouted Halitov, leaning forward and reflexively covering his head despite his regenerating combat skin.
I did likewise. “Poe didn’t tell us about this!”
Amazingly, the rumble grew even louder, and I couldn’t help but steal a look back as, in the bat of an eye, the bombs, four of them to be precise, blew through the ceiling, hit the capitol building, and tossed up a swelling blue-gray cloud backlit by hundreds of fireballs.
“Holy shit,” was all Halitov could say, and I thought he was referring to the blast, but when I looked up, I realized that our pilot lay slumped in his seat, a sharp-edged ice fragment jutting from his shoulder. The airjeep suddenly dove toward a row of buildings. A proximity alarm wailed from the cockpit controls, along with the computer’s monotone warning: “Impact in four seconds.”
12
With no time to wrestle the pilot out of his seat and seize the controls (which were set to user-specific mode anyway), Halitov and I abandoned ship as the airjeep plowed into the nearest building, shattering windows and pulverizing stone before it vanished into a network of offices.
As multiple explosions resounded from above, I found the bond and hit the ground with but a second to spare. While my conditioning saved me from the full impact of the ten-plus meter fall, the sudden connection was jarring. I fell on my stomach as yet another explosion sent debris jetting from the gaping hole in the building.
Halitov took my wrist, hauled me up, then pulled me away from the shower of glass and stone and shattered office furniture. We sprinted off into the eeriness of the deserted city street, the icy rain diminishing as the ceiling creaked and began to settle. For a moment I imagined that great mantle of ice collapsing on the entire colony, burying forty square kilometers and quick-sealing our fates.
“We’re still within the blast radius,” Halitov said, reading a databar in his HUV. “And we’re still about a full kilometer away from the rendezvous.”
“And I’m still waiting for the good news.”
“Hey, man. We’re still alive. But if that’s something you’re fond of, you’d best haul ass and not look back.”
I complied but still ordered my tactical computer to display an image of the street behind us. A massive dust cloud swallowed the buildings and pavement, and the damned thing’s hunger drove it much faster than we were running.
One block, two, three, a right down a street lined with mining hovers, a left down another lined with cargo containers, and the cloud still came. Even as it touched our shoulders, we found an alcove and charged beneath. Halitov shot open a door ahead, and we rode out the wave inside a small building, not realizing until the dust settled that we were standing in, of all places, yet another small Italian restaurant, the menu posted on the front door. Either the universe was trying to urge me to eat more pasta or Halitov
just had a knack for finding good Italian food and saving our lives. He ran a finger over the menu and paused on spaghetti and meatballs. “We have to come back here,” he said.
“I figured.”
“How’s your skin?”
“About fifty now.”
“Yeah, that’s where I’m at,” he said, shoving open the door, then reflexively waving the dust from his eyes despite the combat skin’s protection.
“Hey, Rooslin?”
“What?”
“I won’t forget what you did back there.”
“If you do, I’ll remind you.”
“I know you will.”
“Hey, the way our luck runs, I’m sure you’ll get your chance to repay me.” He trotted off.
I started after him, stopped, locked up.
2285
Construction begins on agricultural domes of Tau Ceti XI. No other planet has soil more fertile and adaptable to Terran-based crops. With grain production on Aire-Wu cut in half by an unknown disease, Tau Ceti XI becomes leading producer of grain, forage, fruit, nut, vegetable, and nonfood crops, as well as leader in development of new chemicals from organic raw materials. Inte-Micro and Exxo-Tally begin formal and covert negotiations with 12 System Guard Corps representatives who favor colonial secession. Construction begins on first colonial military base within Tau Ceti’s agricultural domes.
Someone pried open my left eyelid, directed a small light into it, then did the same to my right. “Pupils equal and reactive to light.”