by Luke Norris
Here she was in this military vessel. It was absent of any comforts, every feature had a practical utility. Bullet scars on the metal and blackened burn marks were a vivid reminder that this landing craft had deployed drivers directly into hot combat zones on more than one occasion. The drivers were impervious in their pods, of course, first-stage weapons and explosives ineffectual.
“Suit up!” she instructed. The drivers turned and retrieved their machine pressed jumpsuits from their pods and put them on. All but one. Number nine stood there, still, as if the command had never been given. It was extremely disconcerting to not have a driver obey immediately, even though she knew this one would only listen to Seth. It made her fingers tingle and her pulse race. The thought of not having a driver, within a few meters proximity, not fully under control was terrifying. Many of the thrill-seeking second-stagers were experts at augmenting their metabolisms so they could participate in combat planetside. Not Medom. Why some of the others would put their bodies on the line was beyond her.
Driver number nine was particularly bone-chilling to look at. He had a metal plate running from his neck across the side of his head and covering his temple. Eyes were small, deep-set, and expressionless. His arms were clearly bionic. Seth had put some artificial skin over them for some odd reason, but metal tubes and tendons could be seen bulging out of the shoulders and other places on the arms where the skin had perforated. What a hideous sight. The bionictech was clearly something Seth had built himself—nothing like the new bionictech available in Terras. Nevertheless, impressive.
“I’m also leaving you with a ward drone,” Seth said.
Those words struck fear into her heart, as they would any early-trader. A ward drone was a tool of a U.W.F. protector. What was Seth talking about?
“It is exactly what it sounds like,” Seth said, anticipating her thoughts. “An older model that Li managed to acquire. An antique protector ward. I’ve reprogrammed it not to shoot drivers, so you’ll have double protection.” He gave her a wry smile as the drone hovered up beside him. Blazing hydrons! Seth was definitely loopy. That very device was probably responsible for the deaths of other E.T.s.
“This is complete overkill,” Medom said quietly. “Is this extra security all because of the one man who kidnapped Terrom?” She looked at the twenty super soldiers and the drone, “I’ve got enough firepower here to take control of the city!”
“Only if the blanketing happens successfully today,” Seth reminded her. “Hence the precautions.” He started walking down the ramp, driver number nine shadowed him protectively, a few steps behind. Seth looked extra pale and skeletal in the sunlight. He even winced as though its natural light offended him.
I need some space in here to prepare without these bulking drivers clogging up the place, Medom decided. “Drivers, form up outside the ship and do not enter unless I command.”
*
Oliver rounded the reservoir carefully and hunched down behind a small wooden unit that housed the pipes entering the large concrete reservoir. He cautiously held the small mirror above the unit to act as a periscope. He rotated it slowly until the landing craft came into view.
What he saw was so utterly disheartening that he dropped the mirror in despair. Twenty or so seasoned drivers stood in formations in front of the craft. This was the end. It was the worst scenario he could encounter right now. The drivers had positioned themselves in small squads far enough apart as not to be a single large target.
He knew this would be the end, but he’d secretly hoped for more time, another chance to be with Shael. These thoughts were not helping. He’d done such a good job at suppressing the driver within for so long that he was able to feel these human emotions. But these were not what he needed right now, he had to focus. He picked up the mirror and focused it again on the landing ramp.
This time he was careful to be more analytical. It was a good forty meters to the ship’s landing hatch that was lowered like a ramp. He tilted the mirror so he could see inside. Waves of familiarity hit him. This was a driver landing craft. Oliver himself had been deployed in such a vessel. A faint smell of chemicals in the air took him straight back to the ship’s sterile environment.
Something caught his eye. There was a woman inside! She was the second-stager controlling this platoon. She would be giving instructions straight into that helmet. If I could get that helmet maybe I could take command of this platoon of drivers, Oliver thought. There was a higher chance of finding a one ended stick, but he had to try.
“Eorol!” He spoke quietly into his comm-band, “get ready to fire up the wasp. I’m about to attempt something. I want you to pick up Shael and get back to the compound and then take them into hiding as we discussed.”
“What are you attempting? Let me help.”
“It’s much worse than I could have anticipated. I have one… very far-fetched chance. But if I give you the word, you get out of here! Understood?”
Eorol was silent several moments, “consider it heard.”
That was not the sort of ambiguous answer Oliver needed. He didn’t need Eorol trying to be a hero. Eorol had no idea what was behind that reservoir. Enough military to wreak havoc on an entire city.
He checked the two zewka handguns he’d brought. They were crude things, inaccurate and held only five shots each. They’d be about as much good against twenty drivers as a butter knife against three hundred Spartans.
No more time to waste. As the adrenaline started pumping, he felt Cougar the driver awakening. Focus consumed him. Singular purpose. But that is what each of those drivers would be feeling. Speed was key to reach the ship. His metabolism began augmenting. The sounds of birds dropped in pitch like the Doppler effect. The flowing Tashka river became a low hum. He took several meditative breaths. This was it, the end.
Oliver fully committed and sprinted for the ship’s lowered hatch door. He closed the distance at impossible speed. A unit of five drivers were slowly turning their heads toward him, and reaching for their blasters in the same slow motion. Now. Oliver leaped. His augmented body propelled him higher than an Olympic athlete. Nine feet, ten feet. He sailed high over the soldiers, in the same motion he trained his guns on them. It was not required yet, they were far too slow. He landed in a short role at the base of the hatch and came up with his pistols pointed straight at the second-stage woman.
She locked eyes with Oliver. Her expression slowly morphed from awe to recognition, then to terror. A large drone rose behind her. Then, as if shot from a sling, it zipped up to Oliver’s face, stopping less than a meter from him. A blue energy beam was glowing threateningly. A blaster.
A quick glance at the woman’s relieved expression confirmed it. This drone was about to make him dust. It hovered in front of him for what seemed like a very long time. He was still boosting but could sense the drivers behind him converging on the hatch.
The drone swung around behind him scanning the back of his head. Like an assassin breathing on his neck, he could feel the energy charge from the drone’s primed cannon. It’s warmth made the tiny hairs on the nape of his neck stand on end. Without warning the drone raised up, no longer interested in Oliver and zipped back down the aisle, to behind the equally baffled second-stage woman. The drone swung in a full one-eighty to face back toward the hatch like some confused guard dog.
Both Oliver and the woman seemed to recognize the implications in the same moment. The drone had not seen Oliver as a threat for some reason. Their eyes locked. She was vulnerable, an unattended chick in the nest, and the predator had arrived.
She screamed into her headset. “Drivers. Stop this man!” She backed frantically away from the hatch area. “Protect me at all costs.”
Oliver dove towards her taking her wrist. Her almost submissive body language told Oliver instantly she was not a combatant type. She preferred to do things from the comfort of the ship. The helmet. If he could take the helmet from her, maybe the second stage language would let him command the drivers.
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The drivers! Oliver stole a glance behind himself. Already, several burly drivers were bustling through the door and bearing down on him. They had blaster guns. But they holstered these as Oliver pulled the second stage woman in front of himself. The drivers hardly checked their speed. Drivers were programmed with only one way to negotiating a hostage situation, neutralize the threat.
Oliver could hear their thoughts, the mantras, he was one of them after all. The aisle between the driver capsules was narrow, only allowing for two men abreast. This might buy him a minute if he was lucky. But virtually an entire driver platoon was here to take him out. He might be able to take on two, maybe three. No, this was it. He was done. Unless…
Oliver pulled the helmet roughly from the head of the woman and held it near his mouth without trying to put it on. “Drivers,” he commanded in the second stage language, the driver language was a simple hybrid of the Terrasian language. “Drivers, stand down!”
“You are a second-stager?” the woman asked shocked. “What are you thinking?”
The drivers weren’t responding to his command. Why not?
“They have voice recognition,” she said wrestling against Oliver. “They will only follow my instruction.”
“Aargh!” Oliver threw the helmet on the ground and shoved the woman behind him so he would have free movement to face these drivers. He was an intruder in the hive and was about to be swarmed by angry bees. It seemed fitting somehow to Oliver that facing down twenty drivers and a second-stager would be the way he went out. As soon as the woman was behind Oliver, and no longer a factor for the drivers to weigh in their single focused minds, they sprung on him.
The first driver drew his utility blade and wielded it expertly. Oliver disarmed him lightening quick, then threw successive punches to the man’s rib cage. Boosting compounded the force of each punch tenfold. The driver dropped to his knees. Unable to lift his arms from broken ribs. But two fresh drivers instantly took the place of the fallen one. He blocked the blows that rained from two opponents and executed a hook kick to the man’s temple with the heel of his boot. The next received the base of Oliver’s palm under the chin. But as those two drivers crumpled, two fresh ones replaced them. Oliver felt the fatigue of boosting. This was not sustainable much longer, not at this intensity.
He fought desperately. Heroically. Even when he felt the first knife enter his side, he fought on. Another blade scored across his left arm. It was so deep he felt the sinews and tendons slice apart. His arm was rendered lame. He felt blows batter him, one catching him in the head.
In his dazed state, he heard the roar of straining turbines engines, accompanied by a powerful blast of air into the cabin. Dust, blades of grass, and other debris were kicked up outside the hatchway making it hard to see. As a gap in the throng of drivers opened, and the dust cloud cleared with a powerful gust, a window was created for Oliver to see straight out the hatchway door. Outside, behind the throng of drivers clawing their way to him, hovered the wasp twenty meters away.
The wasp was tilted forward at such an angle that Oliver could make out the despair on Eorol’s face. Eorol could see the obvious. What was he thinking? He needs to get Shael and get out of here. This was the end for Oliver, but Shael could still get to safety. He felt another driver’s utility blade bite into his arm deeply, cutting sinew and muscle, and the sickly crunch as in was stopped by the humerus bone.
In that moment the wasp leveled out, and the skids of the aircraft came into view. The tubular housing containing the test rocket rose higher until it aligned itself perfectly with the door of the ship’s open hatchway. In a moment perfect lucidity in the chaos and pain, Oliver starred down the barrel and saw the only logical avenue left to him.
“Fire that rocket, Eorol!” Oliver’s voice was labored and raspy. Had the blade punctured his lung? “Fire the rocket, and get Shael out of here.”
There was silence. Oliver drove a knife into the wrist of a new aggressor. The driver had an enormous scar running horizontally through his face, so disfiguring that Oliver was sure the man’s mouth would never close. The knife worked its way through the small complex metacarpal bones of the driver, and when he tried to pull it free he could not, it had lodged itself tight; instead the arm was flung like wharf rope. Bright red arterial blood from the ruptured brachial artery sprayed over Oliver and the driver. Another driver rounded on him instantly.
There had still been no response from Eorol. Had he even heard? Now was the moment, he’d lured the entire platoon into the craft. They were like fish in a bucket.
“Now Eorol!” Oliver screamed.
He heard the words of acquiescence from his friend. “I will get Shael out of here, Oliver, I promise!”
*
Eorol listened to the orders being repeated a second time with a heavy heart. Ponsy’s hammer! It was carnage down there. Oliver would be butchered by these soldiers. How he was not already was a mystery. He caught glimpses through the throng of a blur. Flashes of steel. An energy blast. Miraculously, Oliver was still able to talk to him on the comm-band.
He looked at the modified control panel of the wasp, the box for the remote launching switch was there in front of him. Had Oliver always intended for Eorol to be in this position? Had this been some kind of suicide mission from the start? He lifted the cover and hit the priming switch, then placed his forefinger over the launch switch.
As Eorol looked back towards Oliver, the last two drivers entered the into the hatchway of the ship. Sweet Verity! He would be mauled, and it would not be fast. He would honor Oliver’s last request. It was a last mercy he wouldn’t deny his friend.
“Shael forgive me,” he whispered and flicked the switch down. There was a deafening roar, and the aircraft jolted backward as the three-meter rocket ignited and spewed jets of fire from the launching tube. Thrust, unmatched by any technology in Arakan, shot the rocket forwards. The acceleration over the short distance was unlike anything Eorol had seen. The rocket’s guidance fins had been removed so it would be wildly inaccurate. But at twenty yards away it wouldn't make a pebbles difference to the black mountains. Eorol watched the rocket scream into the door of the ship.
The rocket itself had no ballistic missile head. But it was ultimately giant fuel tanks with alcohol and liquid oxygen. Eorol had seen the devastating effects of the volatile mix on failed launches. He pulled the wasp back in anticipation, a jarring maneuver that lurched his stomach, just as the rocket plowed into the ship.
There was a moment's pause, then a deafening rumble. The shock wave that followed rocked the wasp violently. A dark orange and black fireball rolled into the sky. The heat was so intense, even through the wasp's visor, Eorol felt his sweat pores open instantaneously, and droplets of moisture trickled down his temples. The smell of burnt alcohol and charcoal was heavy in the air. Turbine four, the one closest to the inferno, sputtered and coughed. Components had melted and were caused malfunctions.
Eorol gained altitude slowly and was relieved when he could be sure he’d escaped the grisly scene. He angled the wasp towards the Tashka, in the direction of their camp. Shael would be waiting. Sweet verity, he still had to face Shael.
Shael came sprinting to the wasp as soon as Eorol touched down on the pebbly shore at the rendezvous point. Eorol had already leaped onto the beach before Shael had reached the aircraft. He went down to his knees in contrition.
“No!” she said. “No. Get up, Eorol. Tell me where he is.” She refused to accept any penitency from him. She cast a hard glance towards the reservoir he’d come from.
Where did she draw such strength? Eorol thought ashamedly, looking at Shael’s fierce expression. Maybe it was denial. They both watched black smoke rise into the sky, the harsh stench carried on the breeze and made their eyes sting.
“I’m sorry, Shael.” Eorol had tears in his eyes. “He couldn’t get out, there were far too many.” He took her shoulder, drawing her attention gently back to him. “But his last words were to get you to
get you to safety. We need to go right now. These people are bad news, Shael,” he shook his head. “I have dealt with enough rough customers under Arif to know these soldiers were something else…”
Shael faced him. She had such fierce eyes.
“Eorol, did you… see it happen?”
“I saw it. There can be no doubt. Nobody is coming out of that.”
“You saw him… his body?” Her composure slipped for a millisecond, Eorol saw it, the fragile girl under the surface ready to break.
“The jet fuel exploded and incinerated everything.” He closed his eyes as if it would delete the memory. Those men, they were melted like candle wax in a furnace.”
“You saw his body?” she insisted.
“I didn’t need to, Shael,” Eorol assured her. “There is nothing back there but ash.”
Why did she look relieved? Everybody had a different way of dealing with the shock of losing somebody. They had to get the hell out of here. Eorol could feel the weight of retribution that would surely come. Every second here was dangerous. His danger perception was heightened. Those soldiers he’d seen struck fear in his heart. The only time he’d felt similar fear was from Arif Zewka when he’d ordered Eorol to carry out the hit on Oliver, and then Oliver’s reckoning. Whoever these enemies were, they dealt in that kind of fear like it was as abundant as water in the Tashka.
“We have to get Oliver,” Shael said pulling him towards the wasp, “and get out of this place. Others will be coming very soon.”
“Shael we are not going back to that inferno. Trust me you don’t want to see it.”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m leaving Oliver behind.”
“He’s dead, Shael.”
“Ha,” Shael laughed. “He hasn’t told you explicitly who he is, has he? Get in, Eorol! We’re going to collect His Highness.”
