Metal Heart: Book 1: The Metal Heart Trilogy

by Melinda Crouchley

  “That's more like it,” I say to the empty room.

  I grab four of the large grenades from the metal shipping box and place them carefully inside my pack, wrapping them in my jacket, tucking them in the bottom of the bag. Fragile cargo. I reach back into the container for a fifth device, replace the lid and set the grenade on top of it. I punch in a four digit code and set 25 minutes on the timer to arm it.

  A large pile of packing debris and wooden pallets rests in the back of the room. I pull out the taser and rest the electrodes against a loose scrap of paper in the pile. Pressing the button sends electric current through the material and ignites a tiny fire. It should burn hot enough and big enough to set off the fire alarm, effectively clearing the building before the grenade goes off. It gives off significant heat, so I back away, scanning the room for items with enough height to allow for escape.

  An empty container by the window is portable enough to push up against the wall. I climb on top, and a small hop confirms it will support my weight. Not quite there yet, I jump down and grab another box which slightly teeters while I’m placing it. This is much more precarious and I don't bother with a test hop. It will probably only survive the one attempt. I place a tentative foot on top and it wobbles, confirming my suspicion.

  With a hand on the wall to steady myself and one final nervous glance back at the height of my potential tumble, I move my other foot and leap with all the muscle and strength I can muster. My reaching hands find a tentative grip on the window ledge, my fingers scrabbling about in the dust and dead bugs littered there. I pull my upper torso onto the ledge and walk my feet up the wall, gripping the posts left behind by the recently removed window bars.

  I grab through the window frame at clumps of grass and earth, dragging myself up and out. My stomach and thighs rake painfully across the damaged posts, and I'm fairly certain when I lift the hospital gown there will be long bloody scratches, but there's no time to stop now. I'm out of the basement and up on my feet, scanning the perimeter of my vision. No one.

  My priority now is the airfield. The helos.

  I make good, steady progress across the base. Flat-out running seems like the smart option, but would attract more attention. At the moment I look like a sleepy resident, out for early morning exercise. Except for the bottoms of the hospital gown flapping like waving arms in the breeze. I tuck the excess material down into my pants, but it mushrooms out the top. Whatever. In a few minutes I’ll be a suspect regardless of my attire.

  The snow descends in earnest now, and a thin layer of white forms on the ground. Poor visibility stacked on top of my inexperience operating the Condors is going to make for a rocky start to Plan B. It’s hard to be upset at the fluffy white flakes piling up on all the surfaces. They mute my footprints and blanket the base in a comforting, beautiful silence. This could be the last image I ever see of Fort Columbia. I'm glad it's this and not some drizzly dankness or one of the roasting hot summer evenings. Silent snowfall is a pleasant note to end it on.

  Around ten minutes, the fire alarm in the armory emits a piercing wail. I spin around. A trickle of confused soldiers exits the building, which is not obviously on fire.

  “Come on, get out of there,” I whisper, looking towards the front doors of the armory. Soldiers and guards are usually stationed there, but are now ushering people away from the building.

  About a dozen residents, soldiers, and staff gather two hundred feet from the building. Should there be more people outside? I haven’t collected enough intelligence about the armory staffing to make a judgement call on potential casualties. I’ll assume everyone is smart enough to understand that fire in an armory leads to disastrous situations and therefore evacuated promptly, especially given how often we are drilled on proper evacuation procedure.

  Specialists arrive at about thirteen minutes, roaring down the roadway north of the airfield with full sirens and colored lights blaring, attracting as much attention as is humanly possible at 5am on a Monday morning. I hop out of their line of sight and into the grass, doing my best to look bewildered, sleepy, and completely unsuspicious. My presence doesn’t elicit so much as a second glance by any of the men and women inside the armored vehicles.

  Another twenty minutes of walking and a full visual emerges of the airfield where the giant helocrafts roost. There is zero activity, since most responders are consumed with the armory crisis. Upon seeing the dormant helos, adrenaline and anticipation lurch in me. It's time to take what has been denied ever since I stole my first inoculation. Freedom.

  I wait another five minutes for the full force of my distraction to work its magic. I back-track and slip into the shadow of the administration building, crouching behind a squat bush. My biggest concern is the explosion won't draw the guards off the hangar gates, and I will be forced to disable them with other, more violent means. The heart implant jack-hammers in my chest. I check the time on the band. It should have gone off by—

  The initial explosion isn't excessively loud or forceful. The armory emits a tinny popping sound, like a firecracker going off in a metal bucket. Then, as if the firework multiplied, several more explosions occur right on top of another. A chain reaction of grenades, igniting one then the other. The ground rumbles underfoot and from my crouching position I'm thrown against the admin building. I gain purchase and peek my head around the corner to get a better vantage point at the devastation I’ve created. Blasts flare from the armory basement, shooting metal, brick, dirt and glass into the air. I hadn’t considered how detonating bombs in the basement might weaken the support structures of the building. The whole damn thing could come down.

  Shouts and the clatter of boots hit the snowy pavement. I duck back into the darkness and the scant protection of the bush before they reach my position. It doesn’t matter anyway, the guards attention is clearly on the chaos in front of them. They are flat-out running and I twist my head around to see they’ve abandoned their post at the hangar gates. I bet on their instincts working ahead of their good judgement. If there is no superior officer around to tell them any different, these are the kind of people who come running to the aide of those who might be caught in an exploding building.

  There are good people at Fort Columbia. Real heroes.

  And I’m not one of them. At least, not tonight.

  The entrance to the hangar is unguarded. I scan my band to gain admittance, watching the electric gate discharge and the metal and razor wire material roll away to allow access. Slipping past the security measures, I note how eerie and desolate it is without the bustle of military personnel. I'm used to traversing this part of the base in daylight, with soldiers and officers scattered about the yard.

  Tonight, right now, it's me and the birds. Immense, powerful metal birds. Some of them doomed to never fly again. I move swiftly but quietly across the empty space and slide in between the rear compartments of two helo-crafts. I drop the pack from my shoulders and extract one grenade, removing the adhesive pad and sticking it to the outer wall of the aircraft engine. I punch in fifteen minutes on the timer then pause for a moment, pressing my lips against the metal.

  “You deserve better,” I whisper to it.

  It takes eight minutes to arm the rest of the grenades and select one of the Condors to fly out of here. Another two minutes to gain entry to the helo and hack the security code to start the engine. It’s easier than I imagined it might be. The interior cockpit looks and feels exactly like the SIM so any confusion is neatly eliminated. The only real difference is the smell.

  This helo has spent time in combat. I’m trapped in here with the scent of sweat and fear and blood and death. It's a familiar odor. It’s haunted me my whole life, in one form or another. I tap the ignition and lift sequence into the soft keyboard. The helo rises up off the platform and banks sharply left, the muted electric engine and strong blades levitating the mammoth machine.

  The band inexplicably shimmers to life, schematics popping up purple, shifting to blue. Phosphorous sne
aks up my forearm and into my bicep. The throbbing travels up the side of my neck and temples. I fight the controls to level out but the helo has a mind of its own. The barely airborne Condor rises, falls, and banks right. Right is not good. To the right looms the hangar, where eight other Condors are rigged to explode and hopefully take the rest of the fleet out with them. I don’t want to go there.

  But the controls do not belong to me anymore. The glow from my body is what the aircraft listens to. And I don’t control that either. Fear lurches in the pit of my stomach and electricity crackles around the band. I move it away from the keyboard before it can do anymore damage. The helo rights itself at the last moment, dodging the building but clipping and grinding metal off the rear propellers.

  A damage alert flashes on the schematic monitor in front of me. I dispatch a robot to deal with the minor electrical malfunction resulting from the collision and breathe a sigh of relief. The helo, finally straightened out, soars cleanly above the airfield and past the sparsely staffed control tower. They buzz the helo and a female voice fills the cockpit.

  “Condor nine, who authorized takeoff?”

  I set my mouth in a grim line, disabling their audio signal. Their techs work quick and bypass the move within seconds.

  “Eleni Garza, this is home base, you are not authorized to pilot Condor nine,” a stern male voice says.

  “No shit.”

  “Return to alpha hangar.”

  “No.”

  “Garza, you are in violation of directive 17. You have ten seconds to comply.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “We are taking direct control.”

  The autopilot clicks on and the helo, now roaring at high speed over the airstrip, makes a hard left, hard enough for the metal to shudder and whine in protest. We’re heading back towards the hangar. I wave away the projected board with its haptic keys, grabbing the hard control, making sure to keep my left arm far away from the electronics.

  “When Condor Nine lands, you will report to the nearest military police officer for arrest and detainment,” the male voice insists.

  I yank right on the wheel. I might as well be punching the wind, it's that futile. Nothing happens. My teeth clench and jaw aches with the effort of suppressing contact with the surrounding electronic devices. But I’m not making a dent in regaining control. I sweep the soft keyboard back into existence.

  “Work with me here,” I plead to the monstrous aircraft.

  I punch in the security code again, but the error message offers a patronizing chuckle in reply. This isn't working. I can't let them win. I haven't even left the base yet. This is pathetic. All that destruction at the armory and the hangar, it would be for nothing. I won't let that happen. I don't want to go back there. I can't go back there.

  There is no Plan C.

  The first of the grenades attached to the helos explodes. An orange fireball billows up through the drifting snow, engulfing the aircraft. Then the other goes, and the next, like flicking over a line of dominoes. It's horrifying and beautiful and terrible. The scream of tearing metal punctuates the symphony of low booms. The heat generated by the destruction penetrates the helo shields and sets off a mild alarm on the interface in front of me.

  “Garza, are you responsible for this?” the voice demands.

  Without further deliberation, I grab for the keyboard. The band flares on before it makes contact. I tap at the buttons, pulling letter and number sequences from digital memories I didn't possess until now. Each line of code is met with that chortling, mocking error message. I slam both fists down on the keyboard projection in frustration and it melts into thin air.

  I snatch the wheel and the glow bursts on my arm, rolling like a shockwave over my temple. My heart stutters. My grip tightens and I jerk the steering wheel in the opposite direction of the hangar. With an unhappy groan the helo pivots, wobbling and teetering on its access, but achieving stabilization.

  “Garza. What are you doing?”

  I fire up the forward arms and take a practice shot against signage lining the airstrip.

  “Stop talking to me,” I shout over the roar of the guns. The band flares. The speakers embedded in the ceiling and walls crackle and go silent. I did that. The glow did that.

  The helo lifts higher into the air and the speed increases, putting more distance between the aircraft and the hangar. There are three or four hundred feet to go before we’ve cleared the electric chain link fence lined with razor wire, along with three rows of defense cannons surrounding the entire airfield. They are the next obstacle to overcome.

  “Go faster!” I yell to the machine, the engines picking up speed with a sharp squeal.

  I aim the guns at the first line of cannons and unleash a barrage of ammunition. One cannon explodes in a magnificent burst, but a second next to it fires off a couple rounds before succumbing to a similar fate. The cannon shot hits the mid underbelly of the Condor, and a schematic snaps on in front of me, isolating the area and showing me the extent of the damage. I dispatch another robot for repairs. Any doubts they wouldn’t fire on the Condors are wiped cleanly from my mind. If the cannons don’t work, they’ll send out the drones next.

  The drones are sleeker, faster and better equipped for aerial combat. The helos are basically air tanks used to haul equipment and soldiers. The forward guns are mostly for defense. Making it past the cannons isn’t going to be the hard part. It’s the drones I should have worried about. Not the Condors. Why didn’t I figure that out sooner? Destroying the armory and the alpha hangar wasn’t enough. I couldn’t get them all.

  I wasn't prepared enough for this.

  I pound my fist against the steering wheel and at the same moment, realize it’s coated with blood. My nose drips freely, a tiny red river cascading down my chin. My attention diverted, the front of the helo dives towards the powdery earth. Firing on the cannons was not a great idea. They will disable the Condor by crashing it straight into the ground if need be. I jerk up on the controls and the craft shudders, groaning back up into the sky. A wave of nausea passes over me.

  My left temple heats and the band burns white hot. A virtual flashes out from it, depicting a running, wild series of codes and communications between it and the aircraft. The remote force exerted by the control tower is extreme. It’s too much. I can’t put up enough firewalls and do enough damage control to safely operate the aircraft anymore. A dozen techs must be patched in, attacking from all angles. Combatting this, along with manipulating the forward guns and out-maneuvering the pack of drones I see on the monitor screaming across the airfield towards my coordinates…it’s too much.

  The cockpit doubles and triples in my sight and a stronger wave of nausea rolls over me. The virtual code snaps off and the band blazes to a red hot temperature. It sears my wrist. The smell and sensation hit me with a combined force and my stomach loses to the third round of sickness. I vomit on the steering wheel. I lose the controls and the helo dips towards the ground.

  A cannon blast hits the rear propeller and blows the tail completely off. Warning bells and error messages pop up, flashing red flags and adding to the deafening, disorienting noises all around me. Cannon fire, pieces of helo exploding, the hum of the approaching drone engines. The helo begins its spinning descent to the ground.

  The first blast from the drones cuts through the exposed end section, hitting the windshield of the cockpit, shattered glass exploding outward into the howling air. I duck against the wheel, abandoning the controls, cradling my wounded, burnt arm against my chest. I’m going to crash. This Condor is going to crash and explode and this time I’m really going to die.

  “Help me, help me please,” I whisper, my head bowed against the controls.

  The helo gives several violent, bucking shakes. A crippling pain stabs my head, my body recoiling in agony. I open my watering eyes. The entire bowels of the cockpit are engulfed in the smokey blue emanating from my skin.

  The error messages on the monitors spin out code
, 0s and 1s flashing across the screen faster than I can read them. The band sizzles, but the virtual is back up and talking to the aircraft. I’m talking to the aircraft and the band relays the messages. I need it to keep me floating in the air as long as possible and effect the safest landing possible. That’s what the code says.

  The dizzying spin and tumble of the helo diminishes to a few dips and hiccups. The relentless pound of plasma fire does not cease. I dispatch the entire army of available repair robots. They work tirelessly to put out electrical fires and stitch together damaged circuitry to keep the propellers spinning. I wince as one of them takes fire from a drone and drops smoking to the floor in front of me. Its scrabbling legs and wings fall silent, its single bright eye blinks out.

  I drag my head up to peer out the missing windshield, the wind buffeting against my ears and sucking away all sound except for the boom of cannons and snip of plasma guns. My hair batters like a hive of angry wasps around my head. Snow whips past my ears and stings my eyes. The view in front of me is the dead, brown grass at the end of the airstrip. We’ve made it past the third row of cannons. We’ve made it to the fence. But we’re not high enough to pass over them.

  An extraordinary peace falls over me.

  Condor Nine slams into the electrified wire, turning the aircraft into a giant microwave. The powerful blue flames pass over me. I use the momentum to jump back into the belly of the helo. I grab onto hanging netting and a loose, flapping seat belt, ducking into the empty seat to brace for impact. The Condor roars towards the ground and five seconds later we hit, spinning a hard left across the slick snow, the propellers ripping up huge chunks of earth in their wake. Plasma ammunition wicks into the dirt around us and stops. The bird is down.

  I am free.

  I roll over and drop off the seat, now parallel to the ground. The Condor is on its side. The seatbelts dangle like tongues above me and one of my feet is caught up in the netting. I extract it and scoot to the other side of the helo. Legs shaking, I lean against the curved, buckled ceiling for support. Electricity and exposed wires hiss and pop around me. My head swims unhappily as I pull myself upright. I rest for a moment and then advance towards the end of the helo, blown open by the drones and cannons. Crisp, early morning air pours in and blazing white light assaults me. The wail of sirens drifts over from the base. The crunch and rumble of approaching tanks shakes the helo material, rattling my ears. Boots slap against wet earth. Drones sputter overhead.