We Dare

by Chris Kennedy

  It had happened before, after all.

  Once the rabbi sent a message it was clear, my family returned to their warrens.

  The hall was a mess, but the caterers had already started to clean up. We did not wait to watch them split the leftovers into two equal portions, one to each family. No, we had pressing business elsewhere.

  The best hotel on Mars offered rooms to couples getting married. It knew they would get a bunch of O-credits as wedding gifts and it gave a slight discount if you paid in oxygen. A good deal for all, since their O-bill had to be incredible.

  The honeymoon suite was all we could have hoped for. Our own private room. Not a bundling closet, our usual location for previous opportunities, but a real room with a real bed. And a bathroom with unlimited hot water.

  We sat on the bed. Despite our enhancements, we were both exhausted. They had not yet invented an implant to deal with emotional fatigue.

  “Well, no one got killed.” Eric smiled.

  “And only one injury, which frankly was my uncle’s own fault. Noob mistake in Martian gravity. Forgot he wasn’t on Earth.”

  “Will his knee heal?”

  “I didn’t check, but mom didn’t seem worried.”

  “Good, no one really should get an implant if they don’t have to.”

  I smiled wryly. “Anyone break your record yet?”

  “Not yet. I’ve still got more enhancements than anyone else.”

  “Thought so. My first rule in this marriage is that you’re not allowed to get shot anymore.”

  “Anything you say, my love.” He laughed at me. “And not for nothing, you got more enhancements than most. You don’t get to get shot either.”

  We shrugged with rueful smiles. Getting shot was our job, after all. Once a soldier received his first enhancement, which automatically included an implant to properly run it, he was statistically much more likely to survive combat. So, command gave us more training, called us Special Forces, and kept sending us out. We kept getting wounded, which meant more enhancements. With each new add-on, our odds to survive any single engagement kept getting better.

  But they sent us to every battle. Sooner or later even the best odds run out.

  Our titanium hands touched as we remembered absent companions.

  Eventually, I smiled slightly. “Oh, I suppose I’ll agree to that. It does seem fair, after all.”

  Eric kissed my cheek with a tenderness no one in the MDF suspected he had. Then I kissed him with no tenderness at all.

  I leaned back with a broad grin on my face. “You remember, though, that not every part we got is fake, right?” I spread my legs. “In fact, I seem to recall you have something that’s quite sufficient in its natural state.” I checked my implant. “We’ve got 27 hours, 17 minutes, and 43 seconds until we have to report back. I suggest we use our original parts for every single second we can.”

  Eric’s laughter was as mocking as I could ever remember, but this time, he mocked the world.

  We made full use of the private room, which had cost quite a bit of our O-credits. But what else were we going to spend it on? By this point, we barely breathed oxygen at all, anyway.

  * * *

  I woke up.

  Something was wrong.

  My implant radar showed no major troop movement, so the Chinese were not attacking by land. I accessed the Command feed. The position of Federated States and Chinese warships above Mars had not changed. I saw life signs in various places, mostly sleeping cubicles at this time of night, though the hotel bar was full.

  Thank goodness, the truce wasn’t broken.

  However, Eric stood looking through the window at the Meridiani Planum.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He did not move.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” I got up out of bed and went to him.

  He shook, like he was having a seizure. I reached out to him in terror.

  Slowly, in sharp jerks, his head swiveled to face me. Tears streamed from his original eye.

  “What is it?!” I tried to handshake implants, but he would not let me in. He shrugged my hand off his shoulder.

  “Eric, talk to me.”

  “I…My father—” He blinked his good eye and suddenly talked as if to someone else. “I can’t. I can’t do this.”

  “What?” I grabbed his arm and twisted his two hundred and fifty kilos around. “What can’t you do?!”

  He put a hand on my cheek. “My implant OS. He got the MDF codes.” He paused, then said through clenched teeth. “And when we got ready this morning, my nephew…” He yelled to the ceiling. “No!” He shook his head. “I won’t do it.” Then he yanked his human arm down to hold his artificial hand. He turned away, staggering toward the door.

  Could Nick have done that? I shook my head. Didn’t matter, someone had done something.

  I threw on my MDF uniform and went after him. He appeared clearly on my radar, though he could have blocked me with his EW suite if he had chosen.

  He ran on a direct line to the West-Alpha-12 communal dome. There, in the center one had to choose. Fielding or Allardeck.

  His icon stopped. I raced to catch up.

  His icon took a step toward the Allardeck pressure door. I breathed a sigh of relief. But then it halted again.

  I burst into the dome. “Eric!”

  He glanced back, a sick look on his face, and tottered toward the Fielding entrance as if dragged toward it. Then his implants and muscles started working together and he straightened up.

  He yanked open our door before I could get to him. He closed it after him.

  I chased straight through, and he was waiting for me. The punch from his titanium hand sent me rebounding off the door. The door crumpled slightly under the impact.

  Fortunately, he struck me in my breastplate, and he retained enough control to avoid putting all of his strength into the punch.

  I bounced back, scything my leg at his ankles. He jumped over the move, lashing back with a side kick. I slid the kick past me with my enhanced arm, and then punched just above the back of his knee, where the implant connected to what remained of his right thigh.

  Even with my human hand, only strengthened with calcium supplements, he felt the blow, as that had always been a tender spot.

  We reset and circled each other.

  His human eye stared in horror. His enhanced eye merely gauged my next move.

  He shuffled forward, holding his bruised leg back. Then he snap-kicked at me, which I knew he would follow with a sweeping leg kick and a series of punches. It was a combination that had won him many a bout on the training salle, and he had used it at least once in combat that I had seen.

  Fortunately, though, I had seen it enough to know just what to do. I feinted to my right and jumped to my left, pushing the sweeping kick past me. Then I hammered into his back plate three times with my titanium hand, bouncing him off a plastic interior wall.

  Other than cracking the plastic, the blows did not do much, of course. I was trying not to hurt him, but sometimes heavy impacts forced our implants to react. I hoped that might give him time to regain control, but even if that was possible, those blows were not sufficient.

  My father and three uncles came to the door leading farther into the warren. They were all armed, but their hand weapons probably wouldn’t bother Eric in the slightest.

  Eric started toward them, but I tackled him, yelling, “Get the fuck outta here!”

  Eric kicked me loose from his leg, but in the time it took to do that, my relatives stepped back, closing the door.

  Thank goodness.

  We rose and circled again. He tried another move I had seen before. The results were similar to the first combination.

  He tried again.

  I realized his implant was fighting with ingrained moves. What little control he retained meant his implant could only use maneuvers Eric had practiced with or which came with our basic martial arts uploads.

  I had to fight out of the
norm.

  Our training emphasized aggressive fighting. Usually, we were faster and stronger than our opponents, and we ruthlessly took advantage of it in battles.

  But not now.

  I backed off and circled around. I hesitated and feinted. I zigged, when our training told me to zag. I struck not when it seemed right, but when it seemed wrong. It slowed me down, but also confused his implant.

  I hammered a side kick into his ribs when he overextended, then got a hold of his arm and flipped him onto the ground.

  He eluded the elbow smash, rolling out and around to crack the back of my enhanced leg.

  Enhanced or not, it hurt, and I backed off to give my implant time to deal with it.

  Then he charged at me. The charge was as reckless as I could have hoped. I feinted the wrong way according to our training, then took his two hundred and fifty kilos and flung them against a wall as hard as I could.

  I picked the wall carefully. It was not one to the outside, where it was -66C today in the Martian atmosphere, now up to almost five hundredths of an atmo after thirty years of Federated States’ terraforming. No, it was the heavy wall that separated us from the Allardeck warren.

  Over the years, both sides had drilled many a hole to slide through a microcam. But those were small and subtle. The hole he created when I slammed him into the wall was not.

  He folded the heavy sheet plastic back into an Allardeck storeroom, making a gap over a meter square. There had been a shelving unit against that wall. It slammed into another and all of their contents crashed to the ground. The crash sent vibrations bouncing throughout both warrens.

  My enhanced hearing dampened the crash, but immediately returned to full sensitivity. I heard shouts of alarm from both warrens. I routed an emergency message to all the Fieldings to stay where they were, which I should have done much earlier anyway.

  Eric shook his head. I stepped back.

  Please, let that have worked.

  His human eye cleared for a second. He started to relax, and I stepped toward him. But then the enhanced eye focused on me again.

  I had given up my advantage, and he took the chance. His kick knocked me against an exterior wall. I felt it crack, ever so little, but enough that the air in the compartment started trickling toward it.

  My enhanced hearing heard the fans in the environmental controls kick in to adjust. Microcracks were a common problem in New Pittsburgh and easily fixed. Accidents happen, after all.

  But his follow-up punch was no accident. I managed to push it past my head and his titanium fist drove through the exterior wall. The trickle increased to a steady stream. Not enough to completely depressurize everything, but clearly as much as the environmental system could handle.

  Alarms appeared on my implant. Not that I had time to pay attention to them.

  I eluded his next attack, rolled away, and got free. I resumed my earlier tactics. He pounced again, but again I moved away. And again, but this time he lunged a little too far forward. I started to take advantage of his lack of balance, but he was too quick, so I stepped back out of range once more.

  Suddenly, something yanked me back. I broke the grip of a hand reaching from the gap in the Allardeck wall, but not before Eric jump-kicked at my head. I got my shoulder up, barely, but his kick hammered it. My collar bone and shoulder socket had been enhanced years ago after a shell fragment went through them, but my humerus was still human.

  And now it was broken, making my arm useless.

  My implant automatically eliminated the pain signals and sent healing nanos to the location, but they would need days to do anything. Like as not, they would simply replace the humerus after all of this.

  If I had an after.

  I circled away from the wall, now clearly seeing Nick Allardeck leaning through the hole with a nasty, triumphant snarl.

  “Kill her, Eric. Kill her now! Then all the Fieldings!” he shouted.

  The shout stopped Eric. He turned, slowly, fighting every centimeter, toward his father. He tried to move that way, but his body, his enhanced body, betrayed him.

  He turned back to me and suddenly, as if the effort to get to his father had drained all of his will, came at me again. His titanium hand shot toward my temple. I moved to block it, but it had been a feint, and his kick hammered into my already broken arm.

  My implant was unable to completely block the pain, and I gasped. His eye cleared momentarily when he heard me gasp, and his next strike came in slow enough I could lurch away.

  “Now, Eric, finish her off!”

  I realized Nick had a pad in his hand. Between yelling at Eric, he kept jabbing at it.

  His control over Eric?

  I shifted to my left, then my right to avoid Eric’s strike. I did not try to attack, merely to elude.

  It was not the way of the MDF Special Forces to elude for long, and his implant kept anticipating a strike.

  And strike I did, but not at Eric. Instead I rolled out of an attack—right over the broken arm—relying on the implant to dampen the pain and sprang at Nick. His reflexes were only human.

  I grabbed the pad out of his hand and slammed it to the ground, shattering it in a startling burst of plastic and components.

  Bouncing back into my stance, I looked at Eric with hope. He was shaking his head. His eyes narrowed again, though, and he launched another attack.

  This time, I responded as the MDF had trained us. I led with a kick at his knee. The kick pushed the titanium joint back with a crunch. Then I slammed my titanium arm into the side of his head.

  The control on his implant broke for just a second. But only for a second, and he flipped me sprawling in front of the crack in the wall. His father reached down. I batted his hand out of the way as I continued to roll into another stance.

  But my broken arm slowed me. Eric was right there to hammer a series of punches at my breastplate. They would have killed a normal human, but fortunately my armor did not—quite—break.

  My implant noted: Breastplate Integrity Compromised.

  No shit.

  I had no time for a fancy move, so I just punched with a short jab to his nose.

  It knocked his head back and I had time to get back to my feet. I turned my right side toward him, shielding the wounded shoulder and putting my enhanced arm forward.

  He jumped at me, this time with an odd hesitation.

  The jab might have done something.

  I caught his leg and slammed him to the ground. He bounced, twisted out of it, and came down with a hard thrust at my left shoulder.

  I pivoted, pulling him along his line of attack, and then pirouetted around him to reset.

  His eyes were clear, but the implant still controlled his muscles.

  “Kill me,” he hissed.

  “What?”

  “You’ll have to kill me.”

  He kicked out. I blocked it.

  “I can’t…” He shook his head. “Too much—Too many implants.”

  He kicked again, this time crunching into my titanium-enhanced thigh. My implant redirected that pain as well, but I staggered back, trying to regain my balance.

  Eric did not take advantage of the opportunity, though. Instead, he swung at his father. Nick ducked and the wall took part of the punch, but I heard him cry out.

  Still alive. Too bad.

  My lover turned back to me; his eyes flickering in and out of control. He bounced into a combo; one I had never seen him use before. It startled me.

  His kick struck my titanium leg, sending more warnings into my implant. The next punch added more warnings.

  But I was able to block the follow-up attack, making him slightly off balance. I stomped on his ankle, bending it out of shape. No doubt, his implant sent him a series of warnings too, but unfortunately bent titanium joints could still be used, even if awkwardly.

  Still, it staggered him.

  He glanced at me. Then at his father, who had pulled himself back up, blood streaming down his face.

>   “Do it, Eric. Finish her off. Finish all the Fieldings off.”

  He stared at his father with loathing, but he still could not gain control. He hesitated.

  “Do it!”

  He twisted back into a stance, and then glanced around as if shaking his head to clear it.

  “Eric!” both his father and I yelled.

  Quicker than I could have imagined, he struck.

  But not at me.

  He rushed Nick and ripped open the wall between the two families. Essentially, the two rooms were now one.

  Startled, his father staggered back onto a pile of debris. Eric ignored him and jumped back toward me. In my stance, I stepped back to avoid Eric’s next assault.

  However, he turned to the hole his fist had made in the exterior and yanked it, turning the small hole into a huge opening to the outside. One well beyond what the environmental system could control. One well beyond any normal patching could fix in the time we had.

  “No!” I yelled into the wind, but he was not done.

  He jumped straight up to a hatch in the dropped ceiling. There he hung for a moment with a sick look in his eyes.

  I realized what he intended. “Eric, you’ll kill us all!”

  He glanced down at me. A teardrop fell, seeming to levitate as it accelerated at only 3.7 meters per second squared in the meager Martian gravity.

  We stared at it until it splashed onto the ground.

  I looked back up at my husband.

  “I can’t stop. I must kill all the Fieldings. I just can’t stop,” he whispered. “But I can also kill the Allardecks. My family doesn’t deserve to live.”

  “No!”

  “Forgive me, love.” He pulled himself into the crawlspace.

  I jumped up to chase. He was ahead of me by several meters. I crawled after him as fast as I could, which was difficult with a broken arm. He reached the joint air system.

  I rushed at him. No finesse in this charge, just everything I could do to stop him from breaking the environment system that was the only hope of both the Fielding and Allardeck families.

  He watched for half a second, and his ambivalence almost allowed me to reach him.