by M. D. Cooper
She reached the end of the steep tunnel. At last. She leapt into the passageway that led to the entrance cavern. She was gasping, and her leg muscles trembled from the effort to rush up the kilometers of tunnel, despite the powered support of her armor. The level ground in the entrance cavern made the going easier for her, and she sped across the space, sending bats flying, until she ran out into the starlight.
An ambulance shuttle was lifting away, and Private Karla and the other Marine who’d taken Isa out of the caverns were walking toward her.
“Thank you,” Erin said, relieved that Isa was on her way to Ushu’s hospital.
She also noticed that the terrorists’ pinnace that had stood in the lot was gone. She guessed that Usef had commandeered it to get Martin back to the capital. If Rahmin Butler had somehow made it to the surface, he would have been disappointed.
“Of course,” Karla said with a nod. “There’s a shuttle coming down for us from the Sark. Once the sergeant gets up here, we’re off to the next site on our list.”
“Good luck,” Erin replied with a nod before turning to climb the short distance to the police cruiser, parked in the clearing above. She ran around the outside of the cave entrance and up the faint trail into the tree-filled slopes of Mount Ida. More uphill running faced her, this time through the trees that she and Usef had walked down among recently, though now it seemed like a long time ago.
The police cruiser was no longer in stealth, and its interior lights shone from its open ramp, seeming to invite Erin in. She walked up the ramp, all her energy drained from her exertion. She headed directly to the control room, where Chief Kang was coordinating the efforts to save Tyre.
Erin stepped into the space, removing her helmet. The officers who had accompanied Kang and the chief herself were alive with action as they buzzed around the holo of Tyre, which hung in the center of the holotank.
They were almost too busy to notice her, but then Kang said, “Erin, you came back. I thought you might stay with the Marines.”
“I wanted to help out here,” said Erin. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing much more to report just yet. The search teams are moving as fast as they can, but they have a lot of ground to cover. Samuel Jefferson sure knew what he was doing when he purchased his land. I was doubtful at first that the terrorists’ plans would have their desired effect, because so many of Tyre’s fault lines run under the oceans, but Onyx did an analysis which showed that the SSS had figured a near-optimal layout. If even half of those bombs go off, the planet is going to see hundreds of volcanoes erupt. It’ll be entirely unviable for decades…maybe longer.”
“I hope they manage to find the shafts quickly,” said Erin. “If we had a week or two, we might get everyone off the planet, but we don’t have anywhere near that long.”
“What’s your estimate?” the chief asked.
“I’m guessing that once Pippa joined up with the other members of the SSS, they had no reason to delay any further. I think they were in the crystal cave to set the charge for the final bomb, then they were going to go off-world while the detonations took place. Maybe they would have gone to Troy afterward, or even Carthage, to try to continue their wave of destruction.”
Chief Kang shook her head. “Why Tyre? What did we ever do to them?”
“Just exist,” Erin replied with a heavy sigh. “Like the rest of the New Canaanites, Tyrians are an abomination to the SSS adherents. You had to be wiped out. But don’t worry, none of those fanatics are ever going to hurt anyone again. Now we just have to destroy their legacy too. What are you doing now? Can I help with something?”
“I think we have everything covered. I’ll show you.” The chief walked with Erin over to the holo of Tyre. “It’s really just a matter of coordinating the search and disarm teams. My officers, Karin and Edgar, are dealing with that. Thank stars the Sark was here, though. Without it, we’d be looking at hours to reach all the sites. Everyone who’s living near a danger zone is evacuating. Luckily the remoteness of the locations means that the people living at those sites have access to fast, efficient transportation. Onyx is helping too. We’re doing everything we can, as fast as we can.”
Erin watched the dots streaming over Tyre’s globe. Would their efforts be enough? Moving away from a detonation site might save the Tyrians for a short time, but if enough bombs went off, their deaths would be inevitable, only slower.
“Oh shit! Fuck! A bomb’s gone off,” one of Kang’s officers cried out.
The holo switched to a satellite view from the site. It was on the Eastern Tyrian continent, a thousand kilometers south of the musical pillars. White-hot heat rippled out from the blast zone. A gigantic cloud of ash was forming. Magma would be boiling up through the cracked crust, sending out poisonous gases, devastating everything it came near.
Erin drew in a breath. If one bomb had exploded, that had to mean the others would quickly follow. The SSS wouldn’t have set wide intervals between each detonation. For a truly devastating effect, all the bombs would have to go off close together, timed in such a fashion that the waves running through the crust and mantle would amplify each other and not dissipate or cancel one another out.
Erin slumped against a bulkhead. It’s too late. She’d taken too long to figure out what Pippa was doing. And now Tyre would be destroyed.
Kang gripped the holo display table. “Where is it? Did we have a team there?”
“No,” the officer, Edgar, replied. “That site wasn’t at any of Jefferson’s properties.” He consulted his readings. “The nearest city is Kedesh, but according to the blast data coming in, it shouldn’t be affected. We don’t have any records of habitations in the affected zone. As far as I can tell at the moment, no one should have been hurt.”
“Good work, Onyx,” Kang said through gritted teeth.
Despite the AI’s assurances, Erin waited tensely to hear the announcement of another detonation, and then another. Was it only a matter of time? She counted the seconds as they ticked past.
Onyx placed detonation estimates on each of the suspected sites, and Erin’s eyes were welded to them as the team progress reports came in.
Everyone in the room barely drew breath as team after team called in that they’d successfully defused their bombs. After forty minutes, there were just two more. One that a search and rescue team was heading to on the far southern reaches of Western Tyre, and the last, Sergeant Grey’s squad was flying to, four thousand kilometers north of the Mount Ida Caverns.
The teams reached their sites with mere minutes left on Onyx’s estimated detonation timers, and Erin found herself gnawing on her lip, begging the stars for the teams to find them quickly.
The final seconds saw Chief Kang pacing, while officers Karin and Edgar clenched their fists in mute fear. Erin tasted blood in her mouth and forced herself to stop chewing her lip just as both teams called in.
The room erupted in cheers, with everyone crashing into one another for a trembling embrace.
“Onyx?” Kang asked a minute later. “Are we in the clear?”
Erin exhaled with relief as tears of joy streamed down her face.
Tyre was saved.
RECOVERY
STELLAR DATE: 03.23.8937 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Ushu Hospital, Ushu
REGION: Tyre, New Canaan System
Isa woke to the sound of voices speaking quietly and the tapping of footsteps on floor tiles.
She was lying in a dimly lit room, though brighter light shone through a half-open door. She felt calm, peaceful, and extremely woozy, like she’d drunk more than one of Mikkel’s famous cocktails aboard the Odyssey. She felt so woozy, in fact, that at first, she only lay still, without bothering to figure out where she was or trying to remember how she’d gotten there. The room’s single window was set to a soft green opaque color, so she couldn’t even tell what time of day it was.
Eventually, however, a few events from her memory filtered through to her conscious mind. She recalled that she was on Tyre, and she’d been in a cave full of crystals. Then she seemed to remember something weird had happened. She’d imagined she was back on Sirius and that she’d been left behind, but after that, she realized she wasn’t there at all, and some people had come to rescue her from….
No, that wasn’t right. Something else had happened.
But she couldn’t remember what. Though she was back in the hospital; she knew that. In Ushu. She’d been making an infomentary for Placement Services.
Isa continued trying to figure it all out while her thoughts gradually cleared. When a shadow blocked the light from the door, Isa turned to see that it was someone in a medic’s uniform. As their eyes met, the man smiled and walked into the room.
“So you’ve come around at last,” he said. “We were running a sweep. I lost. I thought you would wake up at least an hour ago.”
“What?”
The medic smiled again. “The doctor gave you something to keep you under for a while and give you time to recuperate. It turned out that you were a little oversensitive to the medication, so you’ve been asleep longer than we expected. But don’t worry. You’ll feel fine in a little while. Your system has processed most of the drug.”
Isa lifted a hand to her head. She remembered she’d hit it on something. Or something had hit it. But the pain was gone now. She touched her scalp through her hair, but she couldn’t feel any scab or bruising.
“You had quite a wound there,” the medic said. “And some micro-hemorrhages in your brain tissue, but we fixed all that for you.” He was checking the screen above her bed. He looked down at her. “I guess I’m not making a whole lot of sense right now, am I?”
And my leg, Isa was thinking. Something happened to my leg.
Isa’s heart leapt, and happiness flooded through her.
Isa said.
“You seem to be recovering well,” the medic said, apparently picking up that she was speaking to someone on the Link. “I’ll be back in a while.”
Isa barely noticed him leave.
What was Erin doing on Tyre? Isa battled the fog that was clouding her mind.
Then Erin was gone.
As soon as she was alone with her thoughts again, Isa’s memories of recent events came back in a rush. She groaned and lifted a hand to her face as she remembered Martin’s lifeless body. Pigtail had murdered him, but then Erin had shot her dead. Isa didn’t think she would ever forget the woman’s sightless eyes below the hole in her head. Yet the memory brought Isa no satisfaction, not if Martin was dead.
She also recalled the shot she’d taken to her thigh. She touched the spot, but her skin was healed, and the wound no longer gave her any pain. The terrible feeling of extreme thirst had gone too. She remembered crawling over the rough, sharp-edged ground inside the crystal cave, but when she looked at her hands, the skin was healed. It was fresh, pink, and soft. She imagined that her knees were probably the same.
On the outside, Isa was healed, but the inside was another matter. Her recollections sparked guilt in her, as thoughts like that always did. The feeling rose up, threatening to consume her. Once again, she’d survived when others had died. Why? What had she done to deserve it? She’d been the one at fault. She’d allowed herself to be taken in by the Tyrians. It was she who had introduced them to Martin.
Isa stared up at the ceiling. She knew she should feel relieved, joyful even, that she was still alive, but her feelings were leaden. She couldn’t understand why this gift was thrust into her hands again and again. Why was she always the exception?
“Hey,” a voice exclaimed.
Another figure stood in the doorway. Isa couldn’t make out who it was. It wasn’t the medic. This was a woman, but the light from the corridor was throwing her face into shadow.
“Is it okay if I come in?” the woman asked.
“Sure,” Isa replied.
Though she didn’t know who she was speaking to, she welcomed the distraction from her thoughts. When the person walked closer, however, Isa realized she did know her. It was one of the crew who had rescued her from the crystal cave when she’d been there the first time. Isa remembered the woman’s name was Stefana.
“Is it okay if I sit down?” the medic asked.
“Go ahead,” Isa replied, though there were no chairs in the room. Instead, Stefana perched on the side of Isa’s bed. She was in uniform, so Isa guessed she must have finished a shift.
“So you returned for another stay?” Stefana joked. “You must love this place.”
Isa smiled wanly. “I had to be rescued from the same cave again, if you can believe it.”
“No kidding,” Stefana replied. “I heard all about the shenanigans that went down over there. I didn’t realize you were involved. Lucky escape for you, and the rest of us. Are you okay now?”
“Yeah,” said Isa. “I seem to be.”
Stefana didn’t answer immediately, as if weighing her words. Then she asked, “Are you sure?”
Isa was taken aback by the directness of the medic’s question. “Yeah, of course. I’m all healed up. Can’t you tell? They did a good job.”
“Good. They usually do.” Stefana let the silence stretch out.
“What makes you ask?” Isa said eventually. “Do you know something I don’t?” She was trying to be humorous, but her tone sounded flat and lifeless, even to herself.
Stefana studied her for a moment and said, “It’s probably none of my business, but you don’t seem okay to me. Not for someone who’s survived a life-threatening event. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I thought the same when we picked you up.”
“You did?” Isa said. Part of her wanted Stefana to shut up there and then, and part of her wanted to hear more.
“I did,” the medic said. “Isa, I love my job. I’ve done it for a long time, which means I’ve seen lots of people in medical distress of one kind or another. Lots of people who’ve been saved from a dangerous situation at the last minute. And in that time, I’ve gotten familiar with the typical reactions. Not everyone’s the same, you understand, but there’s a range. And you don’t fit in it.”
“You think I should be happier.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Maybe,” Stefana replied. “Like I said, there’s a range. Some patients are overjoyed, some massively relieved, some are still in shock. But you… Isa, I want to check, do you mind me telling you this? I’ll stop if you
want.”
“No,” Isa said. She’d allowed the ball to start rolling; she might as well see where it went. “It’s okay. Go ahead.”
“All right. It’s possible I’m reading you wrong, so bear that in mind. And hell knows, I’m just a medic, not a psychologist. Also, not everyone wears their heart on their sleeve—you could just be hiding it well. Some people are reserved like that. But what I noticed is that you don’t seem to care that you survived. It almost seems like a burden to you.”
Isa heaved a sigh. “That’s…yeah. You’ve got it right.”
Stefana tilted her head. “Why would anyone feel that way?”
Later on, when Isa reflected on the conversation where Stefana had winkled the truth out of her—the first and last time Isa spoke of those things—it struck her as odd how easy it was to tell an almost-stranger everything that had been bottled up for so long. The words that flooded from her mouth would have been slow, hesitant, and difficult if she’d been speaking to anyone she knew well. Yet with the medic, she was finally able to break down the dam that she’d built up inside herself over years.
She told Stefana of all her fellow Noctus who remained enslaved at Sirius, and of everyone who had died at Victoria. She explained how it had been by the merest fluke that she herself remained alive, and how that fact filled her with guilt. She even told Stefana of the thoughts that overwhelmed her sometimes: that she owed something to the people who had died, and that she must live a perfect life in order to somehow make it up to them.
She also told her of the frequent nightmares she experienced, which returned her to the hard, dangerous life she’d once lived. Lastly, she confessed what had happened to her on her first visit to the crystal cave, where her nightmares had played out in her waking moments, mixed in with flashbacks to real events.
Finally, what seemed a long time later, Isa had told Stefana everything. She felt unburdened and somewhat relieved, also a little embarrassed. But overall, she was just as troubled as before. It had been good to get it all off her chest, but she didn’t really feel any better.
