Gigi Gagnant stood in the
small, empty auditorium with a dozen other paramilitaries. Most of them
shuffled nervously behind her, red X’s on their shoulders in place of unit
markers. Penal duty, just like her. Welcome to Obsession.
She was angry now, always
angry. She didn’t know what she’d done to earn a position in this place. None
of her people did. She only knew that like the others, her team had been sold
to L-I Space and Missile for corporate asset reclamation. She and her original people
had completed five missions already. Seven was supposed to see them clear.
They were at the edge of the
tunnel complex LISM Security now controlled. In the past two weeks, there’d
been a major offensive. Scrolling through the maps she’d stored in her nightshades,
Gigi was increasingly convinced Torrado had created a salient and they were in
it. As she and her team had approached through the newly reclaimed passageways,
she’d heard the languid exchange of gauss weapon fire echoing from several
corners away.
The room was tiered, only
without seats, desks or tables. Like a Roman amphitheater. Or a tiny coliseum. The
walls and steps shone like obsidian, the native stone melted smooth when it was
first carved out to seal in atmosphere. Later cracks from asteroid collisions or
unknown stresses had been filled and sealed with a composite binding agent,
like veins of quartz running through the faults and fractures of a metamorphic
rock.
Three doors broke the
geologic illusion, two forward and one to her left. The side door was a hatch
to the corridor beyond, airtight like almost all compartment entry and egress doors
in the complex. Both others were standard interior doors, but heavy and reinforced.
The one nearest the hatch was sealed with a corporate cipher-lock. An armory
she knew from previous missions. LISM didn’t trust prisoners with weapons until
they had to, and even then would only activate them at the last possible minute.
The other door troubled her a little more. It was a gunmetal gray composite in
the shape of a standard door, mounted flush, yet devoid of either a keypad or
handle. No hinges were visible. A private cubicle for the briefing officer? A
cell? Neither made much sense.
“Who’s the BAM?” a sonorous male
voice whispered somewhere behind Gigi.
“Bam?” a puzzled response
came, another man.
“Broad-Assed Marine,” Gigi
answered casually over her shoulder without turning to look. “Hers is the ass
you’ll follow if you want to stay alive.”
Before either could respond,
Torrado strode in through the exterior hatch to give the briefing. He stood before
them like a band leader in the crisp, black uniform of an L-I Space and Missile
Security officer. The bars of a captain shone on one tab of his collar opposite
an LISM corporate logo, like a cop. Something about the twin bars particularly
galled Gigi. Civilians shouldn’t be allowed to co-opt military rank as if
they’d earned it. But she knew better than voicing her objection. This was an
LISM Security operation. Hell, Obsession was an LISM world, though technically
off the books.
“Ok, people, settle down,” Torrado
said. It took only a moment before a nervous silence descended.
“The Greens have set up a new
bio-weapons lab somewhere in this sector. Your mission is search and destroy.”
He paused for a moment, surveying the group. “How many of you have been in a time-lock
before?”
No hands went up. Even Gigi
hadn’t heard the term.
“It’s like a camouflaged safe-deposit vault.” He pointed to the featureless door. “This complex is riddled with them. They weren’t designed by the Greens, or by anyone we’ve encountered. Their primary function remains unknown. The tech guys think they might tap into Transit Space. What we do know is that once sealed they are almost impossible to detect. Once a time-lock goes active, nothing short of a bunker-buster can destroy it. But our people in Cyber-Warfare Division cracked the lock and hacked the code for the mechanism.”
Torrado paced up and down on what passed for ground level, looking grave, as if he’d spent too much time in too many military entertainment sims. If it were possible, Gigi hated him even more. “Time flows differently in there. By the time you emerge, we will have pulled back from this sector. When the time-lock re-opens, twelve hours should have elapsed and you should be somewhere deep in enemy territory. Find the lab and destroy it then get back inside the zone. Our sentries will be looking for you.”
“It’s like a camouflaged safe-deposit vault.” He pointed to the featureless door. “This complex is riddled with them. They weren’t designed by the Greens, or by anyone we’ve encountered. Their primary function remains unknown. The tech guys think they might tap into Transit Space. What we do know is that once sealed they are almost impossible to detect. Once a time-lock goes active, nothing short of a bunker-buster can destroy it. But our people in Cyber-Warfare Division cracked the lock and hacked the code for the mechanism.”
Torrado paced up and down on what passed for ground level, looking grave, as if he’d spent too much time in too many military entertainment sims. If it were possible, Gigi hated him even more. “Time flows differently in there. By the time you emerge, we will have pulled back from this sector. When the time-lock re-opens, twelve hours should have elapsed and you should be somewhere deep in enemy territory. Find the lab and destroy it then get back inside the zone. Our sentries will be looking for you.”
Yeah, Gigi thought. Just like
the last recon when they almost killed us because word hadn’t filtered down,
and you hadn’t given us the proper passwords.
“Why don’t we just cut their
power and air and be done with it?” one of the replacements asked, the only
woman Gigi had seen back there.
A good question. Standard
denial tactics. Gigi had asked the same on her team’s first mission.
Obsession was an asteroid
field positioned at the L5 point in a binary system composed of an M5V red
dwarf and its brown companion chasing each other like gravitational predator
and prey. Planetologists thought that as much as ninety percent of the field’s
content was shards from a captured dwarf planet that had been shattered by a
large cometary body which had somehow survived the system’s tidal forces. The
bulk of the field was composed of V-type asteroids with differentiated
interiors, stratified geologic layers of crust, mantle and ancient core. They
averaged 50 km in diameter. And they were riddled with rare iridium.
Extracting that isotope and processing it into LISM corporate profits had become Director Brianna Subramainan's only obsession, earning the system its unofficial name. The Greens’ recalcitrance in ceding their claim saw the project undermanned and over budget, harder and harder to hide from the rest of the board. With each passing year, Brianna's dream of springboarding her position deeper into the corporate ruling class faded a little further. But she was monomaniacally driven in a way only the director of one of human space’s largest Interstellars could be, well and truly obsessed. So rather than cutting her losses and burying her financial failure in some unauditable report, like an all-night gambler in deep with a brewing hangover, she kept doubling down in hopes of breaking even with a single throw. Rarely a winning strategy.
Extracting that isotope and processing it into LISM corporate profits had become Director Brianna Subramainan's only obsession, earning the system its unofficial name. The Greens’ recalcitrance in ceding their claim saw the project undermanned and over budget, harder and harder to hide from the rest of the board. With each passing year, Brianna's dream of springboarding her position deeper into the corporate ruling class faded a little further. But she was monomaniacally driven in a way only the director of one of human space’s largest Interstellars could be, well and truly obsessed. So rather than cutting her losses and burying her financial failure in some unauditable report, like an all-night gambler in deep with a brewing hangover, she kept doubling down in hopes of breaking even with a single throw. Rarely a winning strategy.
But long before LISM’s interest,
someone very clever had gathered two roughly equal-massed, circular cones and
laced them with gravitic drives to where they now circled a center of mass in
space between them at a radial velocity that simulated just under one standard
Terran G. No one was quite sure who had tunneled out the complex within the two
Geminal cones, or how their fields were entwined, but experience had taught
them that the grid was inextricable linked to those gravitic drives. Cutting
power to any given sector risked breaking their delicate detente. So as long as LISM remained, the Greens would
stay one tier up on Maslow’s Hierarchy. Her job was to make sure they didn’t
climb a second.
“I don’t pretend to
understand the physics,” Torrado answered impatiently, “but if we drop the
grid, the two Geminal cones will fly apart. So, like our motto says: Relentless
forward progress.”
“It’s why God created
infantry,” Gigi mumbled to Wilmots standing beside her, who then finished the
protocol with, “And the reason boots on the ground never become obsolete.”
Torrado glared at them, then
keyed a remote. The reinforced door to the armory swung open. “Gagnant, you
have twenty minutes to get them organized.” He left through the same hatch he’d
entered. It echoed shut behind him like a tomb. Apparently, that was all
briefing they’d get.
Gigi stepped down to the
central arc of the floor, and surveyed the group in front of her. She hesitated
to call it a platoon as she wondered how many had formal military training. The
replacements could be almost any convict with a military or security background
whose prison contract had been sold to LISM.
Her core team watched her
expectantly, wondering how she would integrate in the strangers. Of the six
she’d arrived with less than a month ago, only four remained.
Bryce was a Peacekeeper. He
was the only one she knew had been through LOW OrbIT basic, if only as a
driver. He was competent but no marine.
Maahes was a CuFF and a Navy
gunner. As a combat feline, his LOW OrbIT training had differed. But his superior
senses and stalking instincts gave him an advantage in the tunnel complex, so
she’d made him her alternate squad leader.
Wilmots had been in Customs
Enforcement but had gotten caught up in the mess on Darwin, one of the handful
rounded up by Lt. Freeman at Blind Mouth Bay
Baidu was a cop before he
signed on for Darwin
That left the two she was
missing. Neither had been soldiers but she still felt their loss, if only
because she knew their capabilities.
Meinert had seen action in
the Reconquista as a civilian contractor who’d signed on with the Interstellars’
private army. Though she was capable and dependable, she’d never adapted to
close quarters that didn’t involve a vehicle. She’d been KIA their third time
out.
Patel had been an EMT and a
pacifist from Blood. Gigi had no idea who he’d pissed off to end up here but
she missed having a medic on her team. He’d gone MIA on their disastrous fifth
mission which on Obsession meant presumed dead.
The eight replacements, a
tier back, remained almost complete unknowns. She treated them like any new
class of green recruits.
“Look who we got stuck with?”
The same voice as earlier, though Gigi now detected the clipped, rugged accent
of a remote Fringe colony. It wasn’t hard to spot her antagonist. She didn’t
look up at many people. She stood even with the average man on level ground.
This man had to be pushing two meters even without a couple multi-centimeter
steps up to his tier. But Gigi knew people miscalculated her height based on
how much they feared or respected her.
“I suppose we will have to
take orders from her pussy, too,” he continued, gesturing to Maahes. That got a
laugh from the six men clustered around him. The lone woman, who stood apart,
didn’t laugh. She just tried not to look too scared.
Gigi fixed the man with a
long, hard look. Okoronkwo was the name stenciled on his uniform. He was tall
and muscular with a sharp, angular face that somehow made him look demonic. Not
his fault but Gigi suspected he played off it. His ebony skin and dark eyes
didn’t hurt the impression, though in her mind it wouldn’t have matter if he’d
been deathly pale. She was surprised he hadn’t tinted his eyes red. Probably a
genetic purist, maybe a paternalist, fringe of the Fringe. As long as he wasn’t
a supremacist, she didn’t care. Then she spotted a silver tattoo that she
recognized as the team insignia for the Destroyers of Souls, a zero-G soccer squad,
running from the back of his hand into his shirt. That and his cropped, graying
hair confirmed an impression. He was a bully, a sports hooligan who had been at
it long enough not to feel the need for affectations. She’d run into too many
of his type growing up in the contract mines on Lode. But she knew how to
handle them, even if she was growing tired of doing so.
Wilmots saved her the
trouble. “Watch your tongue, snack-size, or one of us will find a better use
for it. I think Maahes needs a bath.” Her beaded maroon hair rattled as she
spoke, a sure sign of her annoyance.
Maahes raised a gray paw and
washed it, slowly extending and retracting his claws, then dragged it across
his face and whiskers. “Keep that veggie-breath away from me,” the automated
voice from his comm unit intoned flatly. “God only knows whose ass that mouth had
to kiss to get this assignment.”
That drew more nervous
laughter from Okoronkwo’s coterie, though his expression remained pinched and
unreadable.
“Listen up, mushrooms,” Gigi
broke into her briefing using her command voice. “If someone told you this was
a democracy just because you don’t see any rank, then they’ve been feeding you a
load of shit and keeping you in the dark.”
“Now, normally,” she
continued, “I’d tell you that at the end of this mission, half this unit will
be casualties. Problem is the five of us down here are occupying the prime
seats already. So maybe two of you survive. On a good day, I’d just turn you
all over to Maahes to find a place to hide the bodies and be done with it. But
I actually like him, so we’ll divide you up and try to keep you all alive. You
will do as we say or someone will shoot you. If not the Greens, then one of us.
Now stay where you are while we pick teams.”
She motioned her core team to
huddle around. “Baidu and Bryce will be with me. I’ll take snack-size, the fawn,
and the golden boy in back. Can you and Wilmots handle the rest?”
Maahes eyed the crowd behind
her then nodded in a somewhat alien gesture.
“You sure you don’t want us
to take him?” Wilmots asked. “I’ve dealt with his kind before.”
Gigi shook her head but
appreciated the offer. “With only one sidekick, he’ll be mostly harmless. Besides,
only former military would call me a BAM. So I want him on point with us. If he
can follow orders, he might just be useful.”
“Big if, Lieutenant,” Maahes
said. Even with a comm unit that made him sound like a ground-nav program
giving directions, he still managed to make his cynicism known.
Gigi shrugged. “Any other
concerns or questions?” No one spoke up. “Ok, then let’s see what poor excuse
for equipment Torrado gave us this time and get them loaded up.”
For once, the equipment
proved state-of-the-art, almost as good as Gigi had seen in the LOW OrbIT
Marines. The body armor was a de-militarized version used by corporate
security. Practically that meant the coverage was slightly less and the
ballistic composite didn’t go through quite the same rigorous quality control.
The gauss rifles, on the other hand, were full mil-spec, only a couple generations
back. The INS gear included an integrated scanner with a programmable interface.
The comms were fully encrypted spread spectrum. For once, they had a full
compliment of tactical lights, filter masks, goggles, med supplies and
miscellaneous personal tools, plus three days of rations and recycling stills. That
alone said this mission would be tough. But no smart camo, heavy weapons or drones.
A constant handicap that meant they might never win this war.
While Wilmots and Bryce ushered
the replacements into the armory, Gigi and Baidu downloaded the latest overlays
from Gigi’s nightshades into each squad’s INS with Maahes looking on. Once
everyone was geared up and reassembled, Gigi checked their comm algorithm to
ensure they were all on the same frequency hopping scheme.
Fifteen minutes later Torrado
returned with a satchel slung over one shoulder, accompanied by a man in a
uniform marking him as LISM Medical. While Torrado pointedly ignored the team
that would do his dying, the medic pulled them aside one by one to inject them
with a green Immunity Booster. Something in the way the man consulted with each
of them in a whispered tone reminded Gigi of a priest at confession giving out
penance and absolution. When her turn came, she said nothing, just accepting
his benison with a grunt. Once the medic had finished, Torrado simply keyed the
second reinforced door open and instructed Gigi to load her team.
Inside she found a plain,
gray, composite compartment with benches lining two opposing walls. The entire
plane of the ceiling glowed with icy cold-light. A keypad hung above one of the
benches near the corner with alien markings stenciled above it like warnings or instructions, though
the panel itself appeared opaque and dead.
Essentially a freight elevator with seats.
Maahes and Wilmots took one
side, Gigi, Bryce and Baidu the other. The replacements arranged themselves in
no particular order. Most sat holding their gauss rifles between their knees as
there was nowhere else to store them. Gigi’s body armor bit into her spine where
it connected awkwardly against the hard, flat-backed wall of the compartment.
If they stayed in here long, her lower back would begin to ache from the lack
of support.
“I saved you a seat,
Torrado,” Gigi smiled sweetly, scooting over and patting the bench beside her.
“Seeing what combat looks like outside a sim might build you some character.”
He sneered back then entered
a sequence on the interior keypad. It danced with violet light where his
fingers connected then faded back into lifelessness. “You’ve got five minutes
to unload after the doors open. Those Immunity Boosters are only good for three
days, so don’t screw around, Gagnant. Mission failure
doesn’t work off your debt.” He backed out, activating their weapons with the
remote as the doors began to close. He quickly tossed in the satchel which
landed at Gigi’s feet with a thud just before the doors sighed completely shut.
She picked it up and set it on the seat beside her. Charges to blow the weapons
lab.
Sealed inside, the recon team
waited, unsure exactly what they were waiting for or how long it would be. At
first they just tried not to stare across at each other. Baidu configured the
INS like a soldier cleaning and reassembling his weapon. Bryce tugged on his
horseshoe mustache, lost somewhere in thought. Wilmots played with the beads in
her hair as she checked and rechecked her gauss rifle. Maahes sat beside her
with his gray paws folded beneath him, silent but watchful.
The replacements looked
uneasy and uncertain, though most had the good sense not to fidget. Only
Okoronkwo seemed unaffected. He stared at Gigi like one of those stone heads from
that island on ancient Earth. He remained enigmatic as she stared back. She
only realized he was focused at a point just beyond her ear when his eyes briefly
flicked to hers. Feeling guilty, she looked away.
The
fawn distracted her with a nervous question. “How far do you think we’ll get?”
Gigi’s
eye’s flicked to her chest. Sagnol was her name. Gigi smiled coldly, patting
the satchel beside her. “With any luck, all the way to their bio-weapons lab.
Just do your job, Sagnol, and we’ll all come out ok.”
“One
recon platoon with no support or heavy weapons?” Baidu kicked in from the other
side of Sagnol.
“The
last heavy weapons you laid your hands on, Baidu, ended up on the
black-market,” Gigi shot back with a grin. “Isn’t that how you got here?”
Bryce
and Wilmots laughed. Baidu just smiled. But the ice was broken. Everyone began
to relax, settling into their seats for the duration. Like a true soldier, Maahes’ eyes slowly drifted shut.
A
sudden queasy lurch dropped into Gigi’s stomach, like she’d stepped on a grav
plate well out of calibration. The ceiling light not so much flickered as
rippled between bright and dim, drifting from icy blue to almost ultraviolet. She
felt disoriented. A couple of the replacements clutched their stomachs. One
doubled over. She saw a twisted
expression play at the corners of Okoronkwo’s mouth.
A
second later, both ends of the compartment sprang open. Followed nearly
simultaneously by the distinctive sound of gauss rifle fire stitching a neat line
of divots along the opposite wall, trailing from high to low before shattering
keypad panel with a wisp of acrid smoke. Two replacements went down when that
line intersected them, the golden boy and one other, the former with a small,
almost bloodless wound just above the bridge of his nose like a Bloodite’s
bindi, the latter moaning, clutching his abdomen, blood oozing between his
fingers.
Time
slowed as Gigi’s combat reactions kicked in. The compartment was a death trap.
She needed to get them out. No one awaited her encouragement. The replacements were
already stampeding the other door.
When
Gigi tried to call them back, she found her comm channel flooded with static.
Jammers. She shouted orders for her squad to lay down suppressing fire, and for
Maahes’s squad to pull out the wounded. In the confusion, one seemed to hear.
So
she resorted to Leadership 101. First she pushed Baidu down, back toward the
door taking fire, then she clutched the collar of a retreating Sagnol and slung
her onto the bench, all the while shouting a repeat of her orders, desperate to
be heard above the din of more incoming fire before a retreat turned into a
route.
Gigi
then knelt beside the door, ducking out to return fire in short, controlled
bursts down the perpendicular corridor the time-lock emptied out on. An instant
later, she noticed someone standing over her, doing the same. Okoronkwo. She
adjusted her nightshades to mark weapon signatures. Baidu, now recovered, used
her fire to grab cover behind a row of lockers lining the wall opposite the
time-lock door. The three of them laid down a burst of sustained fire, allowing
Sagnol to scurry across, too, where she clung to the wall behind Baidu. Now
Gigi could setup a bounding overwatch to secure the corridor and cover Maahes’
retreat.
Gigi spared a glance over her
shoulder back inside the time-lock. Bryce had scooted back in and now clutched
the gut wound under both arms. He was the last of their team inside except the
KIA. The body of the golden boy slumped against the bench, eyes wide, staring
at the ceiling, blood trickling down the wall toward his shoulder. A wave of
guilt washed over Gigi as she realized she’d never learned his name. But this
was exactly why: the fuckers would just die on her anyway. Names held power through
the attachment they created.
No time to think about that
now. Gigi flicked her eyes to the chronometer integrated in her nightshades.
Less than a minute had elapsed. She set a timer for three. She shouted to Bryce
that they would cover here while Maahes found a place to regroup. He had three
minutes. Bryce flashed the universal sign for understood, and began to drag the
gut wound out.
Just as Gigi turned back to
the task of securing the corridor, both compartment doors began to slowly drift
shut. What the hell? That hadn’t been five minutes. She caught the chronometer
hanging in her peripherals. More like one.
No time to decide. It was
either in or out. If she sprinted, she might make Bryce’s side. The gut wound’s
feet had just cleared the far door. That meant abandoning Baidu and Sagnol. No
way. Okoronkwo had fixed her with an evil eye as if calculating that she would
discard the other two as collateral damage when the door scissored past. In
another second, the decision would be made for her.
“Cover us!” she screamed across
at Baidu and Sagnol. She dove out to the center of the corridor, tucked and
rolled prone, barely feeling the sting of impacts against her chest. Flicking
the gauss rifle to full auto and trying to ignore the adrenaline, she concentrated
on using the nightshades to walk her fire to a target about twenty meters down
the corridor, lurking at a corner. One string of enemy fire quickly ceased.
Her nightshades registered a shadow
pass over and behind her. She disregarded it, adjusting her stream of flechettes
to the other corner at the top of the hall where more fire originated. This
one, too, stopped, though Gigi was uncertain whether she’d hit the target or it
had merely ducked out of sight.
Before she could decide,
someone grabbed both her feet and hauled her backwards. An instant later, she
was crowded with the other three behind the shallow row of lockers that
provided their only cover. The center of her chest now burned as if someone had
dropped lighted nic-stick down her shirt. The slowly spreading sensation of
liquid warmth didn’t put it out.
She’d have to deal with that
later. Right now they’d have bigger problems if someone ducked back around the
corner and laid down more fire. They needed a place to regroup, somewhere defensible.
When she looked across the
passageway, the time-lock was gone. Her nightshades couldn’t detect so much as
a seam or an energy signature where it had stood open less than a minute before.
The corridor they occupied
was lighted by sporadic, recessed cold-lights, significantly fewer than when
they’d entered the time-lock. A glance behind her revealed more passageway,
lined on the same side with more lockers. On the opposite wall about ten meters
back was a hatchway, shut. Twenty meters farther back, another closed hatch
sealed the passageway behind them like a blind alley. If those two hatchways
were secured, the four of them would be ducks of a carnival sim when the next
assault came. And if more enemy lurked behind them, her people wouldn’t last two
seconds in the crossfire.
She scanned her squad,
evaluating. Sagnol was scared but still functional, though Gigi couldn’t tell
for how long if she was given time to think. Baidu was scanning the INS
display, presumably to pin down exactly where they were and options for retreat.
Okoronkwo swung his weapon back and forth between the two corners from which
they’d been taking fire in front of them. He raised a hand and tapped his
helmet, the universal sign for listen.
Gigi concentrated a moment to still her ragged breath, then heard it, the sound of a body being dragged away. Their unseen enemy was either in retreat or preparing another assault. She checked the round counter on her gauss rifle. Down half. Another firefight like the last and she’d have to change magazines. Not good with them all jammed into the same piece of cover. One grenade could take them out.
With nowhere to pull back to,
it was time to seize the initiative. Gigi tapped each of her people’s helmets
in turn, first verifying no one else was hit. Then, with quick, clear hand
gestures, she motioned that she and Okoronkwo would secure the corners ahead of
them, him left, her right. Staying behind the lockers, Baidu would cover high,
Sagnol low. They would advance when she waved them forward. She just hoped
Sagnol didn’t get too excited and mow them both down.
With a quick countdown on her
fingers, she signaled Okoronkwo to lead off. She followed at a sprint half a
second later. Gigi reached her corner a few seconds back. Okoronkwo’s legs were
longer and he knew how to make them work.
Crouching at the corner, Gigi
scanned her sector. She looked out into a nightmare scenario. A twenty by twenty
meter chamber with intermittent, recessed cold-lights, only a quarter of which
functioned. She counted two open passageways in her sector alone. Along with four parallel banks of floor to
ceiling lockers to the right side of center that could easily conceal another
passageway from view, maybe more. She tried to decide what they’d stumbled
into. A school? It didn’t matter. She cycled her nightshades through their
settings, low-light, IR, UV, energy signatures. Everything came up clear.
She looked to Okoronkwo. He
signaled the same. She scanned his sector quickly, counted two more passageways
and a hatchway several meters down an adjacent wall. She’d have a hard time
securing this space with all of Maahes’s squad too, never mind just the four of
them.
A training sergeant’s voice
echoed through her head. Keep them moving, lieutenant.
She signaled the other two
forward. She related a change of plans. Sagnol would take up position as
sentry. Gigi and Baidu would clear the doors behind them with Okoronkwo
providing cover. Fewer potential friction points.
The three of them quickly
secured the corridor. The dead-end hatch led to another passageway. The nature
of the complex beyond seemed to change. The side hatch led to a room almost
exactly like the briefing room they’d departed from but not quite. Two small
interior rooms, neither cipher-locked, both empty, no exits. Stacks of chairs
strewn across top two tiers, one overturned and spilling down a level. Only a
smattering of the recessed cold-lights glowed dimly overhead. Small changes.
Gigi left Okoronkwo in the chamber’s
hatchway supporting Sagnol, while she and Baidu retreated inside to sort out
where they were. Or more importantly, where Maahes might be. The big man
divided his attention between watching them over a shoulder and looking up and
down the hall.
Gigi leaned in over Baidu’s
INS display. “Have you nailed down our position?”
“Everything syncs up to right
where we started. Except that door,” he pointed to the far one, “was the time-lock
but now looks like an office. And there should be almost a mirror image of this
room backing up to this wall. Plus there were no lockers in the passageway when
we came in.”
The burning in Gigi’s chest had
mostly dulled to a throbbing ache just below her breastbone. She had to get a
look at it. “See what else you can find.”
While Baidu fiddled with the
INS, Gigi unstrapped the chest plate of her armor. Tacky blood stuck it to her
shirt, and her shirt against her chest.
“What’s our time lag?” she
asked as she peeled up the armor like a day-old bandage and carefully pulled it
away. At least a centimeter of flechette protruded from the inside. Another
half a centimeter and it would have ricocheted through her abdomen. At least
blood wasn’t pumping from the wound, merely oozing.
“There’s no way too tell,”
Baidu said. “All I have is subjective time until we find a source to sync to.”
“What about this jamming? Any
way to punch through it?” Gigi tried to worry the fragment free of her armor but
it snapped off, slicing open her thumb and forefinger. She cursed as she dabbed
them on a bandana she pulled from a pocket. Okoronkwo watched her intently as she
knocked the jagged edge flush with her utility tool.
“All the channels are locked
up tight. Unless we find the source, we’re down to shouting range.”
Beautiful. “Any idea where
the hell Maahes is?” She looked down at her shirt. A little more blood welled
out from the hole left by the flechette. She pulled up her shirt to get a
closer look. Okoronkwo’s gaze snapped back to the passageway suddenly as if
studying something very interesting in its highest corner. Gigi wasn’t modest but
his reaction made her self-conscious. As she examined the wound, she turned
away from both men, though neither appeared to be watching.
“If these overlays are
accurate,” Baidu said. “I’m not seeing where his position might link up with
ours. I’d need to map out more.”
“We don’t have time for
that.” The wound was small, the fresh blood merely seeping now. Gigi wiped it
clean with her bandana, then medicated it and slapped a bandage on. “If we fail
this mission, everyone draws another. Maahes knows that, too. And no one gets
left behind. As Torrado would say, relentless forward progress. Ideas?”
Baidu shrugged. “We could see
if the Greens left a trail and follow that.”
“If they’ve got wounded,”
Gigi strapped her chest plate back on, “they’ll probably drag them away from
their nest and lead us into a trap. We’ve seen it before.”
Baidu shrugged again.
Gigi turned back to Okoronkwo
and found he was still studying that same spot near the ceiling in the
corridor. Being respectful was one thing but this was ridiculous.
“You still with us
Okoronkwo?” she snapped, harsher than she meant to.
“I think there is something
up there.” He pointed to where he was looking.
Gigi stepped up beside him,
adjusting her nightshades. Dialing them to look for energy sources, she saw a
speckling of bright spots up in that corner. He must have one hell of an eye. “It
looks like a cable painted with smart camo running along the corner of the
ceiling. The coating must have been nicked a flechette. What do you make of it,
Baidu?” She passed her nightshades over.
“It looks like a landline
someone strung up.” He considered it a moment then handed the nightshades back.
“Which makes a lot of sense.”
Gigi raised an eyebrow. “How
so?”
“When you assault a compound
you cut power and water first thing, then jam communications. Standard police
procedure. The serious fringe groups know that. They hardwire landlines and try
to jam you back.”
Now Gigi understood. “Can you
tap into it?”
“Too primitive.” Baidu shook
his head. “We don’t have the right equipment.”
Gigi thought a moment. “But
if we follow that cable, it’s likely to lead somewhere worth finding.”
Baidu smiled, but it only
lasted a moment. “Anything worth finding is likely to be well defended. Do we
wait for Maahes?”
Gigi considered the question.
Baidu was right but every moment they waited was another moment that whoever
had attacked them could relay word back. They needed to keep moving. “The four
of us will take up recon. We’ll leave a trail of breadcrumbs, one only he
should be able to follow.”
Both Baidu and Okoronkwo
looked at her curiously. She held up her bleeding fingers. “A blood trail.
Nothing too prominent, just enough for him to smell.”
“And if he’s dead?” Okoronkwo
asked.
Gigi didn’t like facing that prospect.
She relied on the little furball. But she knew it was a possibility. “Then
Wilmots or Bryce will have to lead them home,” she answered, suddenly sounding
more grave. She looked back up the hall to where Sagnol kept nervously checking
over her shoulder as if to ensure they hadn’t left her behind. “Either way, we
still have a job to do. Let’s collect Sagnol before she thinks we’ve bugged out.”
With an algorithm input from
Gigi’s nightshades, Baidu programmed his scanner to punch through the cable’s
smart camo. Gigi
marked their starting point with blood, right where the time-lock had opened
but no longer stood.
They
made a quick sweep of the large chamber, both to ensure it was clear and to
make certain there was no connection to Maahes’ initial position that hadn’t
made it onto the INS. They only discovered a blood trail leading between two
banks of lockers, away from both the cable and from Maahes’ last presumed
position.
From there, they began a series of
bounding overwatches down the corridor with the cable. Gigi divided their
experience as equitably as she could, she and Sagnol acting as one team, Baidu
and Okoronkwo as the other. The trailing pair of each team was tasked with
watching behind as well as forward. They operated under tactical lights as the cold-lights
in the corridors became more irregular and unreliable. Almost as though the
power here had become degraded but not quite cutoff.
All the corridors were
uniform, three by three meter conduits with darkly polished walls, broken only
by occasional lightning cracks of filler. Industrial construction as if cranked
out by tunnel grinder with a surface melter trailed behind. Close up, the
inside corners had the barest rounding rather than the normal sharpness of
joined surfaces. The hatches and doors appeared to be later additions with standard
electronic mechanisms as well as manual overrides, artifacts of an extended
human occupation.
The complex reeked of near abandonment.
Pools of sweat, blood or other fluids had been colonized by furry patches of
mold that sometimes phosphoresced when her team brushed too close. Runnels and
rivulets of dripping moisture mildewed and lichened on the walls. Albino
cockroaches scurried at the edge of the light, along with intermittent trails of
eyeless ants and other insectile vermin that always setup shadow colonies throughout
the margins of human space.
As
the team proceeded, the lockers completely disappeared. The working overheads
grew fewer, the shadows deeper, the walls dirtier. Constellations of flechette scars starred the corners, interspersed
with the occasional dark or light powdery nebulae of scorch marks, attesting
to a history of internecine human fighting. Gigi marked the passageway at regular
intervals, as well as each side of every intersection they passed, and both
sides of each corner they turned. Just the barest dab of blood buried where the
floor met the wall.
Three hundred meters later,
Baidu waved Gigi back. She signaled Okoronkwo and Sagnol to take up watch
positions forward. When she arrived beside Baidu, he was studying the INS as if
trying to decode an ancient language without a Rosetta stone.
“What’s up?” Gigi whispered.
“Thought you should know,
we’re officially off the grid.”
“You mean we’ve moved beyond
the map edge?” she tried to clarify.
He shook his head. “The INS
no longer syncs up with facts on the ground. I started seeing small deviations
all the way back to the open chamber where we started but wrote them off as
mapping errors, like the missing room by the time-lock. Now, there are too many
to ignore.”
“So where exactly are we?” she
asked, looking over his shoulder.
“I thought we were headed
toward this nexus chamber here.” He pointed to the display, then to the
intersection ahead of them. “But neither of those corridors heads the right
direction. If we weren’t following that cable, I’d say flip a coin.”
“So we’re effectively lost.”
Gigi glared at the display. That was just peachy. If they couldn’t trust the
INS, Maahes might not find a way to link up with them. And none of them might
find their way back inside the zone. If they weren’t on the right map grid,
where in the hell were they?
Suddenly, the lights of their
two sentries winked out. Gigi and Baidu threw on their low-level filters and
moved up. Okoronkwo waited at the corner. When they arrived, the big man hooked
a thumb toward it. Ahead, Gigi saw the telltale lights of occupation, moving
but not toward her, at least a corner away. Okoronkwo did have a good eye.
She pulled back and huddled
her team around her. Baidu worried over the INS display. Sagnol looked like a
spring wound just a bit too tight. Only Okoronkwo betrayed no emotion.
“We move up by pairs and
reconnoiter, corner to corner.” Gigi tried to keep confidence in her whisper, offering
more reassurance than she felt. “If it’s a sentry post, we’ll see if we can
take them by surprise. If not, we’ll circle around until we find an opening.”
Gigi motioned them forward. At
the next corner, she fed her gauss rifle display to her nightshades then popped
the weapon out low for a look. A small group of Greens clustered over a travel
case of equipment. Behind them lay another intersection.
One by one, cameras and
microphones emerged, then a swivel-mounted micro-gun. Two technicians started
connecting cables, while two soldiers watched lackadaisically. They were
setting up a listening post. Five more minutes and the corridor would be as
good as sealed. Word of their presence must have leaked back. Though these four
didn’t appear to be overly concerned.
Gigi brought up the map
overlay in her nightshades. If the leftmost passageway behind them ran true, it
would lead exactly where the INS said Baidu’s nexus chamber should be, just by
a slightly different path. This might be their only opportunity to see the
mission through.
With quick hand signs, Gigi
signaled four unfriendlies. She carefully dialed down her gauss rifle into
subsonic sniper mode. She had Okoronkwo do the same. She trusted his eye best. She
motioned she would go low, taking the two to the right, and he would go high
taking the pair to the left. He nodded understanding.
On a finger count of three,
they swung around the corner. Again, Gigi tried to ignore the rush of
adrenaline, focusing on the soldier who was her initial target. She squeezed
off a round just as his expression turned from shocked surprise to understanding
that his limbs could not obey his brain fast enough to change the outcome of
the encounter. His brain gave up trying even before he hit the floor. Gigi switched
to the technician without processing what she had done. The girl quickly fell
beside her companion with a soft thud. Then Gigi scanned Okoronkwo’s pair for
another target. Both lay still as well.
Now they were committed. It
wouldn’t be long before the listening post was expected to report in.
Gigi moved forward quickly,
motioning Okoronkwo and Sagnol to take up watch at the intersection. Gigi hauled
the bodies out of the center of the passageway in case they had to retreat. It
was only then that she noticed how young and gaunt all four were, like
undernourished teenagers playing soldier. As did Sagnol who seemed unable to
tear her eyes away from their grimy faces as she passed.
Gigi shook off the thought as
she squatted down beside the micro-gun next to Baidu. They’d been armed. And
she still had a job to do. “Can we take it with us?” she asked.
Baidu looked up from the
controller. He sighed and shook his head. “It will take a while to break it
down. But it looks like they were almost finished. I might be able to bring it
up here.”
“Do it. Then set it to
standby. I don’t want it going off accidentally if Maahes catches up. We’ll use
it to cover our withdrawal if necessary.” She motioned Sagnol to get ready to
move.
“What’s the plan, Lieutenant?”
Baidu asked.
“We flank them through the
tunnels and catch them by surprise. Both these corridors should link up with the
nexus chamber. Sagnol and I will take the rightmost, you and Okoronkwo the one
with the cable. Wait five minutes to let us get in position, then initiate an
assault. We’ll catch them in a crossfire before they before they can react. But
we need to move fast.”
“That map is fucked,” Baidu
reminded her. “You can’t trust it.”
“We have to risk it,” she
replied. “I want a clean confirmation that we achieved the objective so there’s
no way Torrado can mark it as a mission failure. Him and his relentless forward
progress. If we wait, we’ll lose our opportunity.”
“What about Maahes?” Baidu
tone didn’t sound hopeful.
“Any more of these,” Gigi pointed
to the micro-gun, “and reinforcements won’t matter. Plus Maahes’ squad might
just provide a diversion if the Greens are tracking them instead of us. ”
Baidu nodded. “Where’s the
rally point?”
“Back at the passageway by
the time-lock. Make sure you set that thing to recognize me and Sagnol as
friendlies in case it comes to that.”
“Underway, Lieutenant.” He
turned back to the controller.
Gigi left him to it. She rose
to find Okoronkwo staring at her intently. She nodded an acknowledgement, which
he returned with a half-whispered, half-mouthed, “Lieutenant.” The word
startled her. Something she’d done must have made an impression on him to
counter his initial hostility. She wondered if she’d ever learn what it was. Had
he only been pushing her before to see how she’d react? Maybe she’d misjudged
him.
Gigi tapped Sagnol on the
shoulder and motioned down the passageway. The other woman jumped as Gigi
touched her.
“Breathe, Sagnol. Almost
there.” Gigi spoke quietly, laying a hand on her shoulder. She felt it quiver
beneath her palm. She looked Sagnol in the eye as she waited for it to subside.
How had she not noticed before how young Sagnol was? Almost as young as the
girl in the corridor. Almost as young as Gigi when she’d first signed on as a
Marine. Then a sudden realization struck her: Sagnol wasn’t afraid because this
was her first combat mission. She was afraid it would be her last. She wondered
what the younger woman had done to earn her place here. “We’ll see you through
this.”
“You could have left me at the
time-lock.” The younger woman looked up at her. “I just don’t want to let you down,
Lieutenant.”
“I don’t leave my team behind.”
Gigi smiled and squeezed Sagnol’s shoulder gently before turning to lead the
way down the corridor. She set a five minute countdown timer on her
nightshades.
Three minutes later, Gigi
regretted her decision to separate the squad. The corridor had quickly synched
back up the map overlay on her nightshades, then just as quickly diverged again
at the point that turning back meant missing their timetable. So she opted to press
forward, hoping for a break.
It came a moment later when
ground truth realigned with the abstract representation. And evaporated just as
quickly as gauss rifle fire erupted somewhere in front them. Too early. They
hurried toward the sound as fast as Gigi dared without inadvertently stumbling
into an ambush.
Two corners later, they
arrived at the edge of the nexus chamber, a similar configuration as the one
they’d seen before. Only this one was stacked with crates and equipment. And in
place of the banks of lockers stood an improvised isolation lab constructed from
composite framing and clear plastic sheeting.
It appeared luck was on their
side. They were ninety degrees off Baidu’s position. All the fire was drawn that
way. Pulling back around the corner, Gigi began to calculate how far they would
need to retreat to achieve safe distance while Sagnol kept watch behind.
The firing across the chamber
began to wane. Baidu and Okoronkwo must already be pulling back. Gigi scrambled
to set the timers on the incendiaries in the satchel.
An instant later, her world
slowed to almost strobe-light speed as she processed a sudden change in
circumstances. In the corridor behind them, the micro-gun burst into a rage. Something
had gone wrong. Sagnol shouted an incomprehensible warning as her gauss rifle
exploded in a panic. Full auto, no bursts. Perimeter guards must have cut them
off. Gigi wondered if they’d stumbled into a trap. They’d just run out of time.
She abandoned finesse. Thumbing
one of the incendiaries to the shortest delay, she dropped it back in the
satchel. She glanced at Sagnol just in time to see her fall. Winding up like a
discus thrower, Gigi stepped around the corner and sidearmed her deadly burden toward
the lab. It spun across the empty space, its strap revolving around the central
pouch like a kitten chasing its own tail.
As her momentum carried her
back toward the corner, a blur of the images of the nexus chamber whirled by
almost faster than she could process them. But like a shutter opening then snapping
shut, her mind latched onto only one and refused to let it fade, the
freeze-frame of a young child cowering among the crates. Gigi’s chest exploded
in an ache but not from her wound. A memory came flooding back, bodies in a
lake. A rush of emotion overwhelmed her. She couldn’t watch another child die.
Gigi moved before she
thought. Her boots skidded on the smooth surface of the corridor as she
struggled against inertia. Impacts chased behind her as she sprinted across the
chamber toward child. Shards of stone stung her ankles like a swarm of biting
fleas. As she closed the distance, she dove, sliding across the polished floor.
She scooped up the child like an errant hockey puck and cradled him, twisting
her body to shield him as she glided to rest among the crates. She barely felt
the impact of rounds against her back as she curled around him. Her hands
clutched his head tight against her chest plate just as the shockwave enveloped
them in a shroud of cold, artificial night.
---
Gigi awoke with her hands zip-tied
in front of her, surprised that she felt no burns. Her ears were ringing. Her
head felt stuffed with wool. Patel leaned over the child she had saved,
checking him for wounds. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised to see her former medic.
She quickly learned the one
charge in her satchel had blown the others clear. The shockwave had reached her
but the fireball had fallen short. Baidu, Okoronkwo and Sagnol had not been so
lucky. They’d been KIA along with two more Greens from the explosion, plus the
four from the listening post. Patel tended another half-dozen wounded. The lab equipment
was damaged but not fully out of commission. The isolation shelter was a
twisted wreck.
Within minutes, the Greens
were on the move. They hauled the bodies with them along with all of their
equipment and what they could salvage from the lab. They blindfolded Gigi
before they retreated, but not before forcing her to carry Sagnol’s body. Gigi
was surprised how small and light the younger woman felt, how slight a burden
she was now. Suddenly, another memory surfaced, one of digging through a barn
and hauling out a host of small, twisted corpses. In the murky darkness behind
the cloth, she wondered if she’d been transported back to the Farm and this body was
just one more. Is that how this nightmare had started? She was no longer
certain. She could no longer rely on any memory as real.
An indeterminate time later, someone
called a halt. Gigi was relieved of Sagnol and forced to sit with her back
against a wall. The blindfold was taken from her eyes.
They were in another large
chamber, this one long, wide and high, with hatches on all the exits. Maybe a
former gymnasium. Somewhere deep in the unsurveyed portion of the complex Gigi
suspected. She wished she had her nightshades to confirm it.
A large group of people
clustered inside. They were different from the others she’d encountered on previous
missions. This group had families. Most had no weapons, so she tagged them as
refugees. Yet another surprise Torrado had neglected to mention in his
briefing.
The chamber looked like a mini-camp
she might find somewhere in the Stack Maze of Petit Darwin on Home. Improvised
privacy screens strung up on repurposed frames that shielded each family from its
neighbors. A bank of communal shower stalls. Raised bed gardens, a mix of
traditional and hydroponics right next to a public kitchen and refectory. A
complement of water recyclers, methane scrubbers, and composting toilets. A
compact fusion generator. Inductive taps into the Geminal cone’s distribution
network jury-rigged to charge pieces of salvaged electronics gear. Everything
stained, worn and slightly grungy.
The demographics were skewed
toward youth. Mostly couples and families with a range of children from infants
to adolescents. The adults were bracketed by the extreme bounds of breeding
age. Libertarians, pioneers and dreamers in the prime of their productive
working years. Just like contract miners, their faces wore creases, lines and
furrows like scars that proved their able-bodiedness had not seen a moment’s rest.
And just like in the mines, no real elderly or infirm that such a marginal
community could ill afford to feed. Almost everyone showed signs of malnutrition
as well as the green shoots opportunistic disease.
Gigi was thankful for her Immunity
Booster even if it only gave her a few days protection. She could see most of
her captors were infected with a common pathogen as well. The Greens and their
godforsaken plagues.
While she waited, she watched
a group of children strip the corpses of all their clothing and equipment. They
passed the bodies to an older team who began slicing meat from bone, butchering
them like pigs. She quickly turned away, her stomach crawling up her throat.
She focused on the technicians
manning a communications center constructed from a pile of composite cases. Others
began reassembling the scorched remains of the bio-lab. Nearby, Patel and some
soldiers argued, occasionally gesturing toward her. After a heated debate, he strode
over, snagging her comm from a pile of equipment that looked like a holocaust
sorting station, as well as rounding up her team’s IDs. He dropped them in her
lap.
“I convinced them not to kill
you,” he said as he cut free her hands. “Quid pro quo for the child.”
Gigi
rubbed her wrists then dropped the IDs in a pocket. She nodded toward the
improvised abattoir without looking at it. “My people don’t deserve that. Leave
their bodies for a recovery team. Give them at least that much respect.”
“Sorry.”
Patel shook his head, slumping down the
wall beside her. “We
need them for the composters. Blood and
bone meal for gardens. They’re resources we can’t afford to waste. It’s pretty
much subsistence rations down here.”
“It’s disgusting and barbaric,”
Gigi said without meeting his eye.
“You think we want to live
this way?” He turned to stare at her. “It’s not like LISM has given us much
choice.”
“What
the hell are you talking about, Patel?” Gigi shifted to face him. “They didn’t
start this insurrection. I may not agree with their methods but they have the
right to defend their assets against terrorist attacks.”
“Terrorism?”
Patel laughed. “Is that what you think this is? We’re not the ones trading in children.
Or killing them.”
Gigi’s
anger flared back to life. “The only children I’ve killed have tried to kill me
first. Maybe if you Greens didn’t brainwash thirteen-year-olds and hand them a
weapon.”
“You think this some ideological
struggle?” Patel snapped. He swept his arm across the room. “Look around you, Gagnant. This is the real Green Revolution. People who are
sick of their government backing the Interstellars who exploit them. They’re
willing to die just live like this.”
She
barely spared the chamber a glance. “And take anyone who stands in their way
with them. What happened to your pacifism?”
“I
make an exception for self-defense,” Patel shot back.
Gigi
could only stare at him incredulously. He had balls, she’d give him that.
“These
people settled this complex before LOW OrbIT even knew it existed,” Patel
continued angrily. “It was only when their iridium turned up on Anarchy’s black
market that Brianna Subramainan cut a deal with LOW OrbIT for exclusive mineral
rights in exchange for help with Darwin
Gigi
sneered but stayed quiet. Their argument had begun to draw the attention of the
Greens around them who stared at her with open hostility.
Patel
seemed to take notice, too. “Seriously,” he lowered his voice, “how the hell do
you think we both ended up here? The man who sent us needs this place to
succeed. Without someone like you, that would never happen. You and your team are the only ones who’ve survived
five missions. I have no doubt Maahes will survive another five even without
you. That CuFF has nine lives at least.”
Gigi
had been hoping Patel had forgotten about him. But she saw no point in denying
it. “By now, he’ll have pulled them back,” she lied. Or at least she hoped. Maybe
if she stalled long enough, the little furball would have a chance to find her.
“That’s
not very likely,” Patel replied with a touch of his former condescension.
She
just stared back, her expression flat. Waiting.
“You
don’t even know where here is, do you?” He sneered at her comtemptuously. “You’re
not in the same Geminal cone anymore, Gagnant. The time-lock transported you
over to the other side. There’s no retreat from here. Even if there were, you’ve
been gone more than a week. No one’s looking for you now.”
Gigi
stared at him stonily, as if channeling Okoronkwo’s spirit. So The Greens knew
about the time-locks. That might explain the ambush as soon as the doors
opened. It was only luck that Maahes had slipped away with the bulk of her team.
“That doesn’t make much sense. You just said Torrado needs us.”
Patel
shook his head slowly. “I said the man who sent you here needs you. Torrado
fears you just as much as these people. If you turn on him, he doesn’t have the
forces to stop you from claiming all of Obsession. So he sent you on a suicide
mission without bothering to tell anyone, including Subramainan or her handler.”
They
settled into an uncomfortable silence, both staring straight ahead. This was
all new to Gigi. She hated politics. She needed time to think.
“What do you want from me,
Patel?” she finally asked. “We both know I’m not going to convert to the cause just
because you spared my life.”
“No,”
He smiled wryly. “I never thought you would. But I can get you and your people
out of here. This isn’t your fight.”
“Just
like that? For old time’s sake?” Gigi gave him a long, evaluating stare. “Why
now?”
Patel
met her eye. Then he dug in his pocket and held out an auto-injector filled
with green fluid.
“What’s
that?” she asked, suspiciously.
“Maybe
your ticket out.”
“Enough
riddles, Patel,” she snapped. “What is it?”
“What’s
it look like?” he insisted.
Gigi
sighed. Fine, she’d play along. “It’s an Immunity Booster.”
“That’s
what Torrado told you,” Patel shook his head slowly. “But it’s not. And never
has been.”
Now
she was curious but she waited for him to continue. She hated playing his game.
“It’s
the next generation of mindwipe, better than the ones we saw before. Those
relied on a synthesized cone snail toxin to inhibit the conversion of short-term
to long-term memories. But it had a limited metabolic duration. That’s why all
our previous missions had to be so short.”
“This,”
Patel held up the auto-injector as if to examine or admire it, “this is more
elegant. It’s a tailored bio-chemical cocktail that binds to the receptor in
place of the normal enzyme that forms a memory. Except that it also leaves a little
hook hanging out like a tail. Completely inert until the right molecular machine
comes along and unzips all those memories like unraveling the stitches of a
cheap knit sweater. Then, poof, it’s like they never happened.” He spread the
fingers of his other hand for emphasis.
“Sounds
like you’re in love.” Gigi grew impatient.
“You’ve
seen what simple mindwipes can do. Imagine something more powerful in the hands
of LISM or any other Interstellar, especially without an antidote.”
Gigi
shivered inside. “So what’s this have to do with me?”
“In some ways, it’s less like
a drug and more like a virus. One in a ten thousand people has the antibodies
to resist it.”
“And you think I’m one,” she finished
for him.
“I know you are,” Patel nodded.
“It correlates to the same DNA sequence as resistance to the mindwipes. Your immunity
gets stronger with each exposure.”
“So why not just kill me and
take what you need?” That was the Greens’ well-earned reputation.
“We
need a living sample. A dead one is useless,”
he replied, disdainful as ever. “And it’s easier if you cooperate.”
“And if I agree to help you,
you’ll save my team,” Gigi stated evenly, trying to control her anger. Why
hadn’t he offered this as soon as the time-lock opened? Why did so many of people
have to die? Why was her team being butchered like livestock? It all felt like
a betrayal. “Why now?”
“Call it a resurgence of my pacifist
nature. Do no more harm than necessary.” Then he spread his hands. “Plus it’s
not like I’m in charge.”
His explanation niggled at
the corner of her mind. Another piece of a puzzle slipped into place. “You’re
not a medic; you’re a bio-medical engineer. That’s your lab. You helped design
this drug, didn’t you?”
Patel merely shrugged,
stuffing the Immunity Booster back in a pocket as if to hide it.
Gigi looked to where the
Greens were setting up the bio-lab. She wondered if the plague she saw was just
a side effect of Patel’s failed antidote research. She thought a little longer.
Patel was a coward, not an altruist. He always acted out of fear. Another
memory surfaced. A face and a name. Her eyes narrowed. She turned back to him.
“This all comes back to Nick Michaels. You’re still working for him, aren’t
you?”
Before Patel could answer,
the sound of distant gauss rifle fire echoed from one of the side corridors.
Maahes had found her trial of breadcrumbs.
Soldiers began running in
response to the noise, opening hatches and darting down tunnels. Gigi tried to
gauge their dispositions, and how Maahes might proceed. It all depended on how
much of his squad was left intact. She hoped he’d found the aftermath of her
previous assault and could gauge the Greens’ numbers.
Patel rose to his feet, his
eyes darting around nervously as if looking for a place to hide. He dug in a
pocket and held out her comm. “Decision time, Gagnant. Call off your people and
we have a deal.”
“Why
should I believe anything you’ve said?” she asked without reaching for it. “Why
shouldn’t I just do my job and watch you die?”
Fighting
echoed from a second corridor, one too few soldiers had started down. Maahes
had setup a diversion. His instincts served him well. He’d be here soon. Never fuck with a carnivore.
“It
doesn’t matter.” Resignation crept into Patel’s voice. “As long as Torrado has the time-locks and the memory
block, we are all doomed to repeat this scene over and over again. If not you
and I, then someone else.”
This time she believed him.
In the chamber, families drew
closer. Children whimpered as they huddled to their mothers for protection. They knew what might be
coming. They’d witnessed this too many times before. The remaining sentries
eyed her suspiciously. Too many of those
faces were young and inexperienced. If Maahes broke through, it would be a massacre.
“It’s now or never, Gagnant. I
can make certain no one will kill you before your people arrive. But I will ensure
you remember everything.” In his other hand Patel now held a blue filled auto-injector,
balanced against the comm like a choice. Or a threat. “How many children are
you prepared to watch die?”
A sudden weariness spread
over Gigi like a sickly yellow fog. She carried too many bodies with her now. Baidu,
Okoronkwo, Sagnol, the golden boy. The soldiers at the listening post. All the
girls from The Farm. The burden had grown too heavy for her. She was tired of
killing children for someone else’s cause.
“Drop the jammers, Patel.”
She reached for her comm then paused. “There’s one condition.”
“What’s that?” he asked, frantically
signaling one of the technicians manning the electronics.
“When this is over, you will inject
me with those molecular machines and make me forget,” she implored with more
emotion than she intended.
Patel gaze snapped back and
he stared at her aghast. Then slowly, he nodded.
© 2014 Edward P. Morgan III
