More fire sweeps my trench, and the remotes’ missiles arrive. My visor blanks out the blinding flares of the plasma explosions, then the trench and surrounding regolith is afire with exploding submunitions. My armor’s ablative coating boils away in the UV glare, but my shielded systems survive the EMP. I’m slammed into the ground when my reactive armor goes off, blasting out plate sections to try to deflect the rain of armor-piercing darts from the sky. Searing pain—darts from the bomblets went through my armor. The armor’s gel seals the holes instantly, and the monster goes to work repairing the wounds in my back.
The trench is covered in scattered new craters of red-hot glass. My countermeasures cloud is mostly gone. I’m picking up lots of short-range radar targeting and jamming; it’s two remotes and a cluster of SPGs closing on them. Static pulses from explosions. My cover is almost gone, and the active and passive stealth of my armor is ruined. All kinds of red lights are going off on my displays.
It’s now or never. I pop up to take care of the remaining remotes.
One remote is already going down, shredded by multiple SPG hits. The other is firing lasers at the closing SPGs, blasting them out of the sky. I blast away at it, sending it tumbling. The remaining SPGs close on their wounded target and detonate on contact, turning the remote into a hail of white sparks.
I’m about to move to a new position, when I notice an unexploded bomblet from the remote’s bombardment. It isn’t a dud; it’s a smart mine. I’m trapped in a minefield.
The Terrans make their move and stay behind cover while sending clouds of SPGs my way.
* * * * *
Chapter 77
The incoming SPGs sort themselves into three different waves, approaching from different angles. They are almost impossible to make out due to the countermeasures SPGs among them, jamming my passive systems. From the bits of radio transmissions coming through, the Terrans are moving, likely in behind the SPG bombardment, with their weapons targeted on my position. If I pop up to take out the SPGs, I’ll be under fire from the whole squad.
I’m also picking up a lot of coded stuff coming off the minefield around me. I shouldn’t be able to. The mines are networking with the Terran forces’ suits, and apparently, mine too. Of course, I am wearing a stolen Terran suit.
“Sharron,” I whisper, “can you break into the mine network?”
Her image appears to float in front of my vision. “I think so…” The enemy SPGs are closing fast.
“Can you do it?”
“Yes.” A signal goes out from my armor. The entire mine field is now displayed as a pattern of green dots on a 3D map. They’re all mine, but they will still give out a false safe signal. I redirect their targeting.
The anti-aircraft mines go off first. Miniature rockets leap into space as streaks of white fire, blasting into the oncoming SPGs. Bright blue and white explosions strobe as they detonate, filling the vacuum with shrapnel. The SPGs detonate and more metal rain flies.
Even after that, the Terran forces are still coming. Brave men. It’s a shame they are fighting for the Terran State.
They charge into the live minefield they think is safe. Volcanoes of plasma erupt. Disc mines pop up and send out rings of lethal, armor-piercing darts. Cluster mines scatter submunitions and then explode in a series of flashes. Directional mines aim, then fire, their sleeting hail of explosive darts at their targets. I can feel the moon shake and hear the screams on the radio.
When I pop up, the battlefield is a series of glowing craters, armored bodies, and pieces of armored bodies. Three are still trying to get up and fire on me. I sweep fire across them, taking out one, two—
Darts hit my shoulder, shattering it, throwing me back into the trench. On my back, with my carbine in one hand, I see movement. An SPG comes flying over the trench, and I take it out with a short burst. Then I see the last Terran coming cover the ridge and empty my last magazine into him.
A waste of good men.
The armor over my shoulder is ruined, and the joint underneath is a wreck, so I order the armor to immobilize my broken shoulder. It won’t take long; I can already feel the bones beginning to knit back together. The pain from the rail shot, internal bleeding, bruises everywhere, and the broken shoulder fades as the suit’s pharmacopeia goes to work with painkillers. Nothing helps with the steadily building heat though. I’m past sweating, and I now see the world through a feverish haze.
The firefight has kicked over a hornet’s nest. Lunar police patrols and vehicles are pouring onto the surface. Space traffic overhead is being redirected. It sounds like the Lunar military is going to get involved pretty soon. I still can’t vent any of my suit’s heat, and it is slowly cooking me alive.
I still need to find a way to get to the hospital, unobserved, before it explodes or the Lunar police and military fall on me.
* * * * *
Chapter 78
The suit I’m slow-roasting in will hide my IR signature, but my stealth coatings are gone. If I can’t hide my signature, I can still try to look like the regolith around me. I order my suit to release the rest of its sealant gel over its surface, then I drop and roll in the moon dust. The dust will eventually ruin the joints of the exoskeleton, but it should reflect like the lunar surface on a casual scan. Maybe.
I start gliding across the lunar surface and don’t immediately die. So far, so good.
Space, overhead, fills with whirling and flashing dots—ships, weapons platforms, and space-borne soldiers in zero suits. Demands to stand down blast through vacuum on the radio. The Lunar and Terran forces blast demands at each other. The good news is that none of this is directed at me. The bad news is, if they all start shooting, I don’t know when it will stop.
Anything could be the spark that sets the whole thing off. An accidental discharge, someone panicking, a targeting radar interpreted as a threat. Or, a hospital exploding.
I want to warn them, to tell them to evacuate. I move faster.
With all the satellites and spacecraft overhead, looking down, there is zero possibility of disappearing. But I don’t have to; I just have to attract less attention than all the other chaos is attracting.
With all the people running about on the surface, I don’t stand out much. I’m just another figure, desperately making his way across the Lunar surface. It won’t even seem strange that there is movement toward the hospital; there are quite a few people going toward or away from it. Strategic computers are analyzing patterns to find small teams or pairs, not someone making their way, alone, to a hospital.
There it is. Looking over a ridge, I can make out the low outline of the hospital. The large, square, low building is brilliantly lit up. Emergency vehicles are landing and taking off from the roof, leaving the long blue trails of their engines. Ground vehicles are coming and going in a barely controlled chaos around the building, kicking up plumes of regolith. Spacesuited figures are everywhere, working with the vehicles and loading and unloading around the main hatches.
You would see this kind of activity during an emergency. You would also see it if a lot of material was being moved out. They’re getting rid of the evidence, right in front of everybody. Time is running out.
* * * * *
Chapter 79
There is no way to sneak past the large crowd of spacesuits outside. All of my reactive camouflage and stealth coatings are long gone. What remains is a moon dust-covered, worn exoskeleton with lots of damage.
With a command, the coolers turn on again in the armor, dropping the heat from BBQ down to tropical hell. My radiator fins are emitting heat again, but I’m not going to be hiding anymore anyway.
Since I can’t sneak past, I walk right up to the hospital.
The guards raise their weapons, sighting in on me. Then they wave me toward the door where surface workers with damaged suits are filing in. I get in the queue.
It’s all about what they see. People know what a hardsuit with intact, reactive, armor plates looks like. But the grit-cover
ed exoskeleton underneath looks a lot like an industrial spacesuit. My suit is obviously damaged, so they need to get me inside quickly. I’m clearly not a Terran soldier; all the action is going on over by Singularity Tower, and I’m not carrying any weapons.
Hopefully, I won’t need any weapons to end this.
“Brandt,” Sharron’s image floats in front of my scratched visor. “What’s the plan? What happens next?”
“I sneak into the hospital and disarm the bombs before it blows up. Maybe I can even get together enough evidence to stick it to Singularity and the State of Terra while I’m at it.”
“But…how?”
“I’m figuring it out as I go along.”
“Any certain way to prevent the bombs from going off once we’re inside?”
“Nothing is certain, Sharron.”
“Look, Brandt. I may be an artificial intelligence—” I knew it! “but I’m also Sharron. I want to live.”
She’ll be incredibly useful in the hospital. Necessary, even. Still, I’m basically working for her. Also, I can’t take any chances with someone watching my back that isn’t fully committed when it gets bad.
“Sharron, do you want me to download you before I go inside? You can contact the Lunar police and give them the info from Doc’s computer.”
It only takes her a microsecond. “No, I want to be there. Let’s finish this.”
That’s the Sharron I know.
I pause at the entrance. I’m about to willingly go back into the place that killed me before. With no weapons and a damaged exoskeleton. In minutes, this place will be radioactive rubble. This is nuts.
Still, I’ve got a second chance. A chance to make good on a bad life. If I leave now, I’ll probably live…and have to live with all the deaths I might have prevented. I’ve got a chance to make things right, a chance I don’t deserve. I don’t want to blow it again.
I take a deep breath and step into the hospital.
* * * * *
Part Eleven: Descent
Chapter 80
The blowers blast the regolith off me in great, gray clouds as I step in. My exoskeleton is still a mangled, barely patched together mess. The shoulder joint looks like it’s frozen shut, even though my arm underneath is now healed. I get a lot of looks as I step into the lobby, but there are other people with busted-up suits too.
They wave me over to a hall where people are being stripped carefully out of their damaged spacesuits. There are a good number of wounded here. Partial decompression, puncture wounds, and burns. It isn’t pretty.
Am I responsible for this? I avoided firing in the direction of any habitats. Did enemy fire hit people and vehicles when they missed me? Lots of fragmentation weapons were going off at high altitude, and there was no atmosphere to slow the shrapnel and darts, so lots of sharp metal must have been raining down pretty hard. There’s no telling what firing incidents or vehicle accidents may have happened in the chaos.
I didn’t harm these people. If I keep telling myself that, maybe I’ll believe it. I know the State of Terra caused this crisis, but that doesn’t make it feel any different. I’ve got to shut this down before it gets worse. In the confusion, I make my way into the hospital corridors.
The hospital is in pure chaos. Patients and staff crowd the halls. Spacesuited lab staff are moving out powered carts of…something. I’m not sure what is in those sealed carts, but if they want to move them out, it’s likely bad news. Once everything is out, they can blow the place. Every piece they move out is less evidence of what happened here. Each lab sample will help them set up this atrocity again that much more easily. I can’t let that happen, I’ve got to slow them down.
“Sharron,” I sub-vocalize, “I need you to make it look like the containment is failing in these crates. It’ll buy us time.” She nods, and I slip one of the code breakers onto a nearby cart.
Alarms sound instantly. The staff in spacesuits duck and pull back from the sealed crate on the cart. Interesting reaction. I also pull back, grabbing my code breaker.
A swarm of spacesuits pile over the cart, analyzing it and trying to figure out how to seal it back up. It won’t seal up, of course, because the crate isn’t about to open; all the signals are false.
“The seal is about to break!” one yells. They begin to shove the cart back, deeper into the hospital, toward the elevators. No one says anything as I lend a hand in getting it into a crowded elevator. No one thought to question the helping hand of another friendly Terran during the crisis. I had to be with them, right? In the emergency, normal caution was forgotten. They’ll figure it out any second, though.
The doors roll shut, and we begin to descend to the murder-lab. Just me, the crate, and four spacesuited figures. Cheerful music plays from the ceiling.
I put the code breaker into the elevator panel. “Sharron, please isolate.”
There is a brief, uncomfortable pause when all four spacesuits turn to face me.
* * * * *
Chapter 81
“Wha—?” one of them begins. I don’t hear the rest because my knee to his faceplate drops him cold.
The damaged exoskeleton slows me down. One of my arms is immobilized, and I have to push against all the grit and damaged joints. I have a fraction of my normal fighting ability.
It doesn’t matter. These guys aren’t fighters, so I take them apart with a series of jabs, knees, and elbows. The padding of their spacesuits keeps my blows from killing them, but they aren’t getting up any time soon. In seconds, they’re all out cold on the floor. Good thing there is a hospital nearby.
“Sharron, buy me some time.” The elevator slows and then stops, but the doors don’t open. She’s simulating the elevator stopping at each floor and sending false images from the camera, showing people getting in and out. Still, there will be no bypassing the security level. That’s the bottom for any shafts from the hospital. I’ll have to make my way through the guards again, without alerting anyone.
Time to get out of this rig. It’s awkward removing the exoskeleton with one arm, and it sticks for a moment when I split open the chest section. Still, I force the whole thing open and off and dump it on the floor. I try not to think about the smell as I stretch.
Plop. A chunk of reeking, grayish flesh falls to the floor. When I feel my face, it feels wet, and more slides off. My face is melting, again. Once was enough for a lifetime.
The grayish outer skin that kept me alive in vacuum is dying and sloughing off. I’m covered in wet, stinking slime that is sliding down my legs. Sharron sounds like she wants to vomit, and she’s an AI.
OK, then. I strip off my bodysuit and other clothes, and a lot of the gray stuff comes off with a wet, sucking sound. I try and scrub as much of the stuff off as I can.
I strip off the spacesuit and clothes from one of the men. He groans faintly and shifts his bruised face, but his eyes don’t open. I get the clothes and suit on. Sharron reprograms the suit with the man’s ID and clearances. It should work as long as I stay in the suit.
How to get rid of the bodies? This elevator has a ceiling hatch like the last one. Sharron opens it, and I get the four up there, along with my ruined exoskeleton and old clothes. That still leaves all the reeking slime on the floor. Hmmmm…
“Sharron, when I get to the security level, can you send a message that there has been a spill of some of this lab crap?”
“Sure thing.” Her image comes up on the visor of my borrowed spacesuit. She looks down at the gunk. “The way this stuff looks and smells, no one is going to want to have anything to do with this elevator.” She looks up. “Are you sure you want to leave them alive?”
It’s a good question. Those four work in the murder-lab and are as guilty as the doc. Still, I don’t have to kill them right now. I’d like to keep the killing to a minimum. There’s been so much death already.
“Sharron, each one of those scum has information that can help bring this whole thing down. Not just this place, but the whole organizati
on behind it.”
She nods. “Here we go.”
The doors open on the security level.
* * * * *
Chapter 82
The doors open into the chaos of the security level. Guards and staff, all in spacesuits or protective gear, are rushing about, carrying crates, pushing carts, and carrying stacks of materials. It’s nice of security to pitch in like this; they don’t pay me any attention as I push my cart out of the elevator.
As I push out, staff scramble to get into the elevator I’m leaving.
“You don’t want to go in there,” I warn. “That gray stuff is leakage from one of the symbiont experiments.” Technically correct. “It could still be active. You’ll want to clean up and decontaminate before going in there. I’d put the elevator out of operation and seal it until a decontamination team arrives.”
They hesitate, then look at the glop on the floor. They seal and lock the doors as I move on. More time bought.
The halls are packed with staff trying to go the other way. With my bulky cart, I barely manage to make any headway. Also, I’m attracting attention as the only one moving stuff the wrong way. I’m tempted to use the bulk of the cart to bulldoze my way through.
A guard taps me on the shoulder. “What’s this?” He points at the cart. “Get this the hell out of the way! We need to clear this hall.”
“I wouldn’t get too close to this case.” I point at some of the gray glop that spattered on the cart. “We’ve got a leak here, and I don’t know how it’s going to react.”
Warrior- Integration Page 18