by David Ryker
Guards whose mental faculties were seriously diminished stumbled into each other trying to carry out the order for the better part of thirty seconds. Finally, one of them succeeded it was silenced, and the sudden lack of sound felt almost as loud as the shrill scream had been.
Meanwhile, the guard named Holden was lying in a heap on the steel floor under Ridley, who was breathing heavily and grinning ear to ear.
“I did it,” she panted. “He’s dead.”
Kergan sidled up to her and put an arm on her shoulder. “Do you feel better now?”
“Much.”
“This is chaos!” Sloane shouted. “Immediate full attenuation is the only solution!”
“I suppose I can’t argue with you,” Kergan said absently. “But it will have to wait.”
He pointed to the monitors, and Sloane saw what he was seeing. When he did, his insides felt as if he was falling a great distance.
Well, isn’t that interesting, the voice inside his head jeered.
“What the hell, Dev?!”
Bishop’s hands were clamped over his ears as Schuster worked feverishly on the virtual keyboard of his stolen wristband.
“I don’t know!” he cried. “I must have entered a wrong letter or number!”
On the monitor in front of Chelsea, Quinn was motioning frantically into the camera from his position in the Yandare cell block. Ulysses was doing the same outside of the Saints’ cells.
“I know, I know,” Schuster moaned as he tapped. “Just… give me… There! It was an O instead of a zero!”
And with that, the alarm stopped.
“Thank God,” Chelsea sighed.
She had only a moment to recover her wits before she saw every polycarbonate on every monitor slide open simultaneously.
An instant later, every single inmate in Oberon One was loose in the corridors. And they were pissed.
36
Quinn had been in more than his share of fights in his life, first in the slums of the Bronx, then in basic training, then in more than fifteen years as a Marine in peacetime and wartime. He’d been on hundreds of missions, and seen things that many of his fellow humans couldn’t imagine.
But nothing had prepared him for this.
The chaos was absolute as the Yandares sprinted through the corridors, grabbing any object they could find to use for a weapon. Some did handsprings and cartwheels, others leapt through the air and bounced off walls. Still others climbed everything they could get their hands on.
“The guards’ll meet us in th’ mess, if they got a lick o’ sense,” Maggott puffed as he jogged along beside Quinn. “They cannae hold their position in the bridge, or they risk boxin’ themselves in.”
“You’re not as dumb as you look,” Quinn joked. “They have to go through the armory on the way. Even if all the shock rifles are charged, that’s a delay of probably five minutes.”
“Should give Schuster n’ Bishop enough time to join us. Then th’ party c’n really start.”
The stopped for a moment and Quinn barked, “Rendezvous at the mess hall and prepare for combat!”
The Yandares rushed past them, making Quinn wonder why he’d even bothered. He didn’t need to tell them how to fight.
They rounded a bend in the corridor and Quinn could already hear the Saints, though they had to have been better than fifty meters away still. Ulysses had worked them into a frenzy, which he hoped would be enough to keep the guards distracted long enough for them to—to do what?
Fighting isn’t a plan, Napoleon, he scolded himself. And we can’t stop them without killing them.
What choice was there? None that he could see, despite his best efforts. If they didn’t fight, their minds would be taken over, or they’d be killed. If they did fight, their minds would likely still be taken over, or they’d likely still be killed, but they had a slightly better chance of that not happening.
About thirty seconds later, the Saints began to pour into the corridor, along with members of the associated gangs, until there was a long line of angry people rushing toward the corridors that would lead to the central tube, and from there to the mess hall. He caught sight of Ulysses in the lead position, marching like a soldier born, even though he had no formal service.
Ulysses nodded as they met up. “What happened with the alarm? Fit to bust my eardrums!”
“Snafu,” said Quinn. “We dealt with it.”
“Mess hall, huh? Makes sense.”
“Yup. Open battle zone, they’ll have the high ground. Assuming they know their asses from a hole in the ground, of course. If they’re all idiots, we might have to go looking for them.”
Ulysses shook his head. “Kergan’ll know, man.”
“Yeah,” Quinn sighed. “I guess you’re right.”
“Can anybody join this party?”
Quinn turned to see Bishop and Schuster bringing up the rear behind the Saints. Chelsea was with them.
“Sorry about the alarm,” said Schuster. “Couldn’t be helped.”
“We wouldn’t be the Jarheads if something wasn’t FUBAR every ten minutes,” said Bishop.
Quinn examined Chelsea’s face closely, looking for signs that she wasn’t ready for what came next. He didn’t know a lot about her, but what he’d seen so far had impressed him.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “I saw combat in the war. As a medic, of course, but there were still people firing at me. I’ll be fine.”
“We’re going to be going up against your people.”
“They’re far from my people, Quinn. I barely know any of them, and as for Kergan or Ridley, I won’t hesitate.”
“We’re probably going to lose.”
She smiled wanly. “Better to go out fighting, right? Quinn, I saw what you all saw, and you all saw it twice. Maggott saw it three times and it put him in a coma. Whatever it is, it has to be stopped.”
“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s hit the mess hall and stop these motherfuckers.”
“Damn right.” She grinned. “And try to forget the fact that they’re all going to be armed and we’re not.”
The bridge thrummed as Sloane activated the amplifier, filling the room with white noise and white light.
“How long will it take?” asked Kergan. Sloane could hear agitation in his voice.
“A while,” he replied. “You know attenuation is delicate at the best of times. Using the amplifier requires finesse; otherwise, you risk simply killing them all, or wiping their minds clean.”
“We have no choice now.” Kergan pointed to the bank of monitors. “Every inmate is free, and they will confront us. Eventually, they will break through our forces—they outnumber us five to one.”
“Our minds are multifaceted,” said Sloane. “We adapt.”
The guards were marching toward the entrance to the bridge, where they would take the corridor to the armory, then execute the rest of Kergan’s plan. He had sent Iona along with them, which had hurt him, leaving him alone with Sloane and a babbling Kevin Farrell.
“Now that push has come to shove, I wonder if we need to change our approach,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Sloane felt a trickle of unease run through him, no doubt prompted by his companion mind.
Don’t trust him, it said.
I’ve ordered the guards to engage with deadly force,” said Kergan. “It occurs to me that we only need a small contingent to build what we need. Extra bodies are pointless when they don’t have work to do.”
Deadly force?
“That is wasteful,” said Sloane. “Tell them to simply stun. I will have the amplifier fully activated soon enough.”
Kergan cocked his head. “You yourself have said they may all die during the attenuation.”
“It is a necessary risk!” Sloane felt the all-too-familiar sting of frustration. “You are advocating slaughter for no reason!”
“Perhaps, but it’s great fun. I’m enjoying all this immensely, especia
lly when Iona killed Holden.” He smacked his lips and swallowed. “His suffering was incredible. I understand her obsession now completely.”
The amplifier had reached a different frequency, and the element was starting to speak to Sloane. It was opening his mind to those of the people within its radius, giving him fleeting glimpses into their thoughts. But the chaos there was echoing his own. So much violence. So much pointless agitation.
Humans don’t like being slaves, said the voice inside him.
That—that is of no consequence, he replied.
Yeah? Then how come you still haven’t used that thing?
Sloane felt his anxiety along with the frequency of the amplifier. Meanwhile, the images on the monitors showed him something unexpected.
“The inmates are entering the tube,” he said.
“Yes.” Kergan’s tone was more subdued now. “Their logic would suggest that they meet in the mess hall, where the guards will have the advantage of higher ground to combat the greater number of inmates. Their strategy is to overwhelm the guards with a wave. That is not going to happen.”
“Where are the guards?” Sloane asked, but the voice inside him already knew the answer.
“Why, they’re in the tube, of course,” said Kergan. “That’s the true high ground.”
Oberon One was much taller than it was wide, which allowed the entire inmate population to travel through the tube at once. Quinn thought, under different circumstances, the sight of nearly two hundred people floating upward simultaneously might have been impressive, even inspiring. Instead, it felt ominous.
He and the other Jarheads, along with Chelsea and Ulysses, were bringing up the rear. That normally wouldn’t sit well with Quinn, but he had plans to move to the tip of the spear once they reached the mess level. Marines were used to being on the front lines, always.
“Only a few more minutes now,” he said.
“Oorah,” his men replied automatically. Battle again. It had been a while.
Chelsea Bloom took Quinn’s arm as they began their ascent, hitching a ride as he pulled himself up.
“I just want you to know something.”
“What’s that, Doc?”
“I believe you and your men are innocent, and if we get out of this, I’m going to try to help you clear your names.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “What made you see the light? I mean, aside from the fact we got invaded by alien mind parasites?”
“I’ve seen how honorable you Jarheads are,” she said. “The way you carry yourselves, your honesty. The way you instinctively put others before yourselves. There’s no way you could have committed treason.”
“I’m with her,” said Ulysses. “Kills me to say this, but you Jarhead are stand-up fellas. I’m proud to be fightin’ next to y’all.”
Quinn felt an absurd flash of emotion. Here, now, at the end, he managed to get his men the respect they deserved. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“I appreciate that,” he said quietly. “I’ll let my men know.”
As it turned out, he never got the chance, because a moment later, electric blue fire was raining down on them from above.
37
“Incoming!”
Even fifty meters down, Quinn could make out the flashes of the shock rifles as they blasted downward into the crowd of inmates. The Yandares at the top were the first to be hit, as evidenced by their shrieks.
“Goddammit!” Quinn barked. “They were waiting for us!”
What had been the controlled chaos of a makeshift army marching to battle had suddenly turned into a slaughter. Through the mass of bodies above him, he could see the guards were entering two at a time from the bridge level, circling the tube like skydivers in a ring formation. They were firing downward, and because the shock rifles had no recoil, they didn’t have to deal with any unwanted motion in the zero-gravity space. All they had to do was wait a second for the weapon to recharge and fire again.
The charges from the rifles were specifically designed to be non-lethal when used judiciously, but multiple blasts could easily kill the victim. And the guards were firing at will.
“Fall back!” Quinn hollered.
“Yandares do not leave in the middle of a party!” Yukio cried from somewhere at the top.
“Southern gennelmen don’t let women eat their lunch, neither!” one of the Saints shouted. He sounded on the edge of laughter.
“They’re all in, man,” Ulysses said from below Quinn. “Some of ‘em have been in here as long as you and me, Quinn, from the beginning. And they’re warriors. No retreat.”
Quinn scowled. It wasn’t the situation he wanted, but it was the one he had been dealt.
“Orders!” Bishop shouted.
Above them, the melee was full on now. Bodies floated everywhere, and were being pushed out of the way by inmates as they advanced up the ladder. Quinn had a brief, crazy memory of a military history book he’d read once, about how warfare up until the 20th century had consisted mostly of men lining up and rushing at each other head-on. The soldiers knew full well that their chances of survival were practically nil, but they did it anyway.
But the history of war was the history of humanity, and the outcomes of wars had shaped the world as they knew it. Had shaped the human race along with it.
“Sir!” Bishop called again. “Awaiting orders!”
Quinn hesitated. It was possible they could win—even now, he could see men in guard uniforms being pummeled by Yandares, a couple others floating around motionless. But there were dozens of inmates clogging up the pipe now, and he had no way of knowing if they were dead or simply unconscious. And this wasn’t just a battle for a piece of ground so that someone could move the lines on a map.
The stakes here were literally the survival of the human race. If they won, humanity would go on. If they lost, humanity got subjugated and damned to slavery for the rest of time.
Chelsea gripped his arm. “Quinn! What do we do?”
The word sat in his heart like a scorpion. He had never used it on the battlefield. Indeed, until this moment, he wouldn’t have believed it was in his vocabulary.
“Retreat,” he said finally.
“What?” Ulysses glared at him, incredulous.
“Eyes up down b’low!” Maggott yelled as his massive bulk started down the ladder toward them. Schuster and Bishop followed close behind.
“We have to get off the station,” said Quinn. “And we have to get out of this tube now, before they seal off the exits. The fourth level will take us to the hangar bays.”
“You ain’t gonna abandon my men, Quinn!”
“He’s right, Ulysses!” said Chelsea.
“I ain’t listenin’ to you, lady! Now you bastards join the fight or I’ll kill ya where you stand!”
“You know me, Ulysses!” Quinn grabbed him by the shoulders. “I don’t back down! But this is the only way I can see out of this. If the inmates lose and Kergan manages to take over the minds everyone on the station, there’s nothing to stop them from carrying out their plans to reach Earth. If that happens, then what we’re doing here will take place on a global scale. Only we can stop that. If we succeed, we might be able to save these people later on, but at the very least, we’ll be able to avenge them.”
“I c’n give ye a shove upwards if yuir dead-set on dyin,’” Maggott offered. “Otherwise, get outta the way.”
Ulysses goggled at him. “You just gonna listen to this joker?”
“Always have,” said Bishop. “Always will.”
Schuster shrugged. “Oorah, motherfuckers.”
Quinn, being below his men, was the first to start climbing down toward the exit to the fourth level, followed by Chelsea. First Schuster, then Bishop, shoved past Ulysses toward them. Then it was only Maggott standing between Ulysses and the melee above.
“Decide now,” said the big man, his voice steel.
Ulysses drew a deep breath. “You really trust him that much, huh?”
&
nbsp; “Aye.”
The Saints’ leader took one last, longing look upward at his men as they fell to the blasts of the shock rifles and wrestled with guards, slamming against the steel walls of the tubes and the other bodies around them. Their shouts of pain and triumph, mingled with the chilling shrieks of the Yandares, filled his ears.
“If this don’t work, I’m takin’ it outta every one o’ yer asses,” he grumbled. But he took the rungs and started making his way downward.
“Don’t start wi’ mine,” said Maggott. “Ye’ll be full before you can get to th’ others.”
38
Kergan watched the chaos on the monitor bank in front of him, his hands clasped behind his back. His expression was blank, but Sloane could feel the waves of frustration emanating from him.
“Well, that’s not working out the way I’d hoped,” he muttered. With that, Sloane sensed a flash from Kergan’s mind ordering the guards to stop using lethal force.
Stop him, said the voice in Sloane’s head. He’s distracted.
Sloane quailed at the thought. Stop him? How? His species did not fight among themselves. They let others do it for them.
On the monitor, Iona Ridley floated by in the midst of the chaos; it was the first time he’d seen her. It was then he noticed that she was carrying an extraction device in her hand.
“Where did she get that?” he asked, alarmed.
“I gave it to her, of course,” Kergan replied. “Try to keep up, man.”
Sloane watched in horror as Ridley wrapped her left arm awkwardly around the neck of a Yandare woman with short pink hair, and placed the muzzle of the extractor next to the struggling woman’s temple. Ridley was bracing herself against the wall with her feet.
“Iona, I told you no,” Kergan said in a warning tone.
The next moment, pink hair and crimson blood painted the walls of the tube around her.