Columbia

by Chris Pourteau

  Hatch assessed Logan, knowing what the right answer to her question was. He gave her the fence-sitter answer instead. “Detail two of your people to carry him. When we come back up from below, he’s your problem.”

  “I’ll go last,” said Logan, finding Hatch’s eyes. To the older woman, he said, “So whoever volunteers needs to know, they’re going last too.”

  Hatch nodded and turned away.

  “Can we get on with it now?” Stug whined.

  Hatch clapped him on the shoulder and led the way.

  Going down was easy. The facility was virtually deserted. More evidence for their theory that Transport had, indeed, evacuated most of its troops already.

  Hawkeye and Pusher descended the stairs from the roof, cautious and covering one another like they were trained to do. Trick came next, and Bracer watched their backs.

  When they made the second floor, the only way to get past the security lock on the door was to blast it. No one had the required palm print to fool the scanner. But they had to scout the floor, clear it if possible. As soon as they were through, the sergeant and spotter pushed into the hallway, pistols at the ready.

  Empty.

  They backed out again and continued down the stairwell to the first floor. Pusher flinched as she blasted the second palm reader granting them access to that level of the facility. They were trained to be quiet—and they were being anything but.

  She cracked the door with her foot and swung her pistol down, ready to shoot anyone resisting their progress. But, as with the second floor, the first was empty.

  “Maybe we can move a little faster,” she said over her shoulder, descending the stairs.

  “Don’t get cocky,” replied Trick. “When it seems easiest is the most dangerous time.”

  “Hey, Captain, you’re really getting this command thing down,” said Bracer.

  “Move,” ordered Trick.

  Without warning, the lighting turned a harsh red and the facility alarm began pounding their ears.

  “Shit,” said Pusher, hunching down on instinct and sweeping the corridor with her pistol. No enemy were evident, but they soon would be. “What’d I do?”

  “Maybe nothing,” said Trick. “And there’s no need to tread lightly now, Sergeant.”

  “Sir, yes sir!” Pusher motioned to Hawkeye, and the two of them headed down to the common room level. The commandos switched from stealth mode to engage-and-destroy.

  “Really think it was wise leaving the scavengers in charge of the rear guard?” asked Stug.

  Hatch moved with his back against the wall. It made him a thinner target should an enemy soldier suddenly appear from below and start shooting while they made their way down the stairs to The Dungeon.

  “Our other choice being?”

  “Okay, there’s that.”

  “You don’t get paid to strategize.”

  “I don’t get paid at all, now.”

  “Well, there you go. Stop trying to think.”

  Hatch threw up his hand, and Stug stopped short. Boots echoed from the other side of the door below—probably the escorts for the last bunch, responding to the alert.

  Stug hopped to his left and kneeled, while Hatch dropped to one knee on the right. They were exposed on the stairs, no cover to protect them. But they had the element of surprise, as well as the high ground overlooking the open kill zone below.

  The door below was flung open and a guard came through. Two more were right behind him. The first man had already taken two of the stairs before noticing the men blocking his way on the landing above. And then he was dead and falling back down.

  His comrades stopped, surprised as he fell down the stairs in front of them, then took hasty aim. But all their recent overtime spent guarding prisoners had deadened their reaction time; they were slow. Hatch and Stug were not.

  It was over quickly. Hatch and Stug stepped over three bodies at the bottom of the stairs.

  They took up positions on either side of the door, now blocked open by the arm of one of the fallen Transport soldiers. Stug peeked through the crack.

  “Looks clear,” he said, one eyebrow raised.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of that joke?”

  Stug popped his head through the open door. A laser blast shot past him, and he pulled back like a turtle on speed.

  “Close?” asked Hatch.

  “I’m bald now.”

  “You were bald before.”

  “Oh.”

  They were stuck. And running out of time, Hatch knew. How quickly was the question.

  “We’ve got to clear those soldiers.” Hatch could almost hear the tick-tock of the okcillium clock in his head.

  “I have an idea,” said Stug. “I’ll go first.”

  “I like this idea already.”

  “When I say, open the door. You’ll know what to do after that.”

  Hatch nodded. He had complete confidence in his old war companion.

  Stug pulled the dead porter blocking the doorway into the stairwell. Hatch caught the door before it locked tight. The sergeant picked up the corpse and held it vertically in the air in front of him, the dead soldier’s toes dangling over the floor.

  “Now.”

  Hatch yanked open the door and Stug barreled through the opening, the dead porter leading the way like a lifeless shadow cast in front of the sergeant. Stug hunkered down behind his corpse-shield, producing a long, ululating yip-yip-yip woooooooooo roar that heralded his charge up the long corridor.

  Laser fire erupted from the far end of the hallway, slagging flesh and uniform together. Using Stug and his body-shield for cover, Hatch moved into the open and returned fire, slowly walking up the corridor behind Stug’s steam train like an Old West gunfighter. He popped one of the soldiers with his first shot, but then Stug was too far away from him. Too close to the enemy for Hatch to shoot safely past the sergeant.

  The other porter—there were only two—wised up and began firing at Stug’s feet, clipping the sergeant in the ankle. But instead of stopping, Stug merely bellowed louder as he stumbled forward. When he neared the ankle-shooter, Stug launched the corpse, pockmarked with laser blasts and scorched beyond recognition, ahead of himself.

  The porter fell backward beneath the weight of his dead comrade and shot wildly. Stug easily ripped the laser pistol from his hand and pummeled him with it till Hatch got to him and caught his hand in mid-air.

  “I think he’s done.”

  “I hate being shot,” yelled Stug. A little boy with the lungs of a bear. “Hate it!”

  Hatch bent over and searched the guard who no longer had a face. He found what he was looking for, a small box with two buttons on it. He took the man’s laser pistol and stuck it in his belt, then handed the other porter’s sidearm to Stug. He picked up a bandolier of frag grenades the dead man had been carrying and draped it over his back. “Can you walk on it?” he asked Stug.

  “Yeah. Still don’t want me to think?” Stug gestured at what remained of the corpse-shield and its former comrades.

  “I rescind my order,” said Hatch. He pushed the buttons on the device he’d found. First the left, then the right, then both at once.

  “What are you doing?”

  “This thing should open the cells down here. It’s not working.”

  “Here, lemme,” said Stug, holding open his palm.

  “I just tried—”

  “You remind me of my ex-wife,” the sergeant griped. “Gimme.”

  Hatch handed it over. Stug smashed it against the wall.

  There was a humming along the entire length of the corridor. Tumblers turned. Locks disengaged.

  “See?”

  “One of these days you’re gonna do something like that and screw us worse than we already are.”

  “But not … today.” Stug tried to pronounce the cliché triumphantly. But the searing pain in his ankle wrapped the words in a grimace.

  Heads began peering out of cell doorways. Some of them were bleary-
eyed. Some emaciated. All were terrified by the laser fire they’d heard, even through their sealed cell doors.

  All but one.

  “Man Mountain!”

  Stug’s injured scowl fled his face. “Anne!” This time when he ran up the hallway, his stride was limping, but his arms were empty and open.

  “Put it down!” repeated Pusher. “We’re on your side!”

  “How do we know that?” asked a woman from behind a post. She’d already put three shots over the door—the same one Hatch and Stug had passed through on their way to The Dungeon, minutes before. Now it was full of armed soldiers.

  “Bridget!” called Logan from his cot, weakly. “Stand down. Soldier! Identify yourself!”

  “Sergeant Emma Ellis, Alpha Squad, Bestimmung Company, TRACE!”

  “Logan, we don’t know these people—”

  “Logan? Logan is that you? It’s Sergeant Ellis—Pusher. Remember me?”

  Logan coughed, trying to form words. Bridget glanced around her post at the woman she’d been shooting at. Matthias stood up from his crouching position on the opposite side of the room.

  “It’s okay,” wheezed Logan, trying to be heard over the facility-wide alert. “I know them. It’s okay.”

  Entering the room cautiously, Pusher kept her laser pistol in one hand but raised both as a gesture of peace. Hawkeye, Trick, and Bracer followed her through the door, weapons ready. Bridget and Matthias both mirrored Pusher’s stance, weapons retained but pointed at the ceiling.

  Trick rushed over to Logan as his soldiers took up guard positions at the door. The entire room stared open-mouthed at them. The red-alert lighting and screaming alarm only heightened the tension in the room.

  “Logan, you’ve looked better,” said the captain, kneeling beside him.

  “Felt better too.”

  “Stug and Hatch. Seen them?”

  Logan nodded. “The Dungeon. Looking for Mary.”

  Trick looked relieved, if annoyed. “Sounds about right.”

  “Listen to me,” said Logan, grabbing Trick’s left arm with his only remaining hand. “You need to get my people out of here.”

  The captain stared at him, then looked around the room. He catalogued what he was seeing in his head: more than two dozen civilians, many of them hardly able to move. And the enemy would likely attack them at any moment. They aren’t the mission, his training said.

  “Hatch promised,” Logan lied.

  Trick sighed. That sounded about right, too. “Sergeant!” he yelled over the klaxon. “Start ushering these people up the stairs. Get them to the roof.”

  Pusher hesitated, and Trick hardened his expression. She nodded and began giving orders to Bracer and Hawkeye.

  Turning back to Logan, the captain of B Company asked, “What about you?”

  “I’ll slow them down as best I can. Just get them out.” The ex-TRACE spy dropped his head to the floor. “Wish I still had my Bowie knife—”

  Behind Bridget, the door exploded inward. Caught in the back by the blast, she was killed instantly, pummeled by fragmented concrete and steel. Trick threw himself over the prostrate Logan, covering the wounded man’s face against the raining debris. Screams erupted from the civilians in the room as they scrambled faster toward escape.

  The shapes of Transport soldiers appeared through the smoke and rubble, firing wildly and randomly, assuming everything in the room was a target. Trick pushed himself to his knees and passed a last glance at Logan. The captain’s expression carried with it a hard truth.

  “Go!” Logan said. “I’ll buy you what time I can!”

  Bracer and Pusher had immediately dropped to defensive positions flanking the rear doorway. They returned Transport’s fire as the civilians threaded between them, pushing one another forward in their haste to find freedom. Hawkeye had taken point and was leading the Wild Ones toward the roof. A few of the salvagers went down, shot in the back, as the porters established a defensive perimeter around the gaping hole they’d blasted in the far wall.

  Transport troopers poured through that hole like cockroaches. A few surgical strikes by Pusher and Bracer took out enough porters to force their comrades to crawl over them, stemming the tide somewhat. But Trick knew his team would be overrun soon. In the end, warfare is always about the math.

  Trick scrambled backward toward his soldiers, leaving Logan to his chosen fate. When Trick reached the firing line held by Pusher and Bracer, he turned and knelt, blasting laser fire as fast as his finger could pull the trigger. That gave Pusher and Bracer a chance to pass through the door behind them. They immediately took up positions in the hallway.

  “Now, sir!” yelled Pusher. She and Bracer provided cover as Trick withdrew under heavy fire, lasers blasting chunks of concrete from the walls. The Transport soldiers were hunch-running to take up positions behind the load-bearing posts in the center of the room. Several were nearing Logan’s cot. As Trick passed through the door, Bracer stood and pushed the last of the Wild Ones in front of him up the stairs.

  Trick saw the final scene play out. Logan had played possum, but now he threw off the blanket covering his mortally wounded body, his one good hand gripping a laser pistol. Three skulking porters went down. The fire from the cot drew the attention of others, and numerous laser blasts zeroed in on the bedridden man who was shrieking, taunting death. An instant later, only a smoking ruin of bandages and pulp remained. It was the last image Trick saw before Pusher slammed the door shut.

  The sounds of laser fire in the common room were muffled now. But closing the door had been a symbolic gesture at best. The porters were coming.

  Pusher motioned for Trick to stand back, then turned her pistol on the locking mechanism and fired a long burst where the door and jamb met. The metal on both sides melted together. “It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing,” she said.

  “Nice job, Sergeant. Now get these people to the roof before the porters remember there are other doors they don’t have to bang their heads against.” Trick mentally tipped his hat to Logan as he spoke. Saving as many of the Wild Ones as he could was one promise he intended to keep. “I’ll go after Stug and Hatch.”

  “But sir—”

  “Go, Sergeant! That’s an order! Up, up, up!”

  Legacy

  “Sean!”

  Hatch moved quickly past Stug and Anne, who was back in the big man’s arms, her own arms wrapped around his bull neck. Hatch stuck his pistol in his belt and knelt beside Mary’s cot. He took in her face, the combination of sadness and joy and relief creating a new expression he’d never seen before. But that was Mary Brenneman. Just when you thought you had her figured out…

  “I thought you were dead,” he said, touching her cheek.

  The old fire of the QB—her eternal will to resist a destiny beyond her control—replaced her initial relief at seeing him. Her eyes focused sharply, her jaw muscle clenched. Hatch was glad to see it. Her cold dedication to survival filled his heart with hope.

  “No, not dead. Not yet,” she said. Stug nodded a greeting to her and carried Anne into the corridor to give them a moment. “I see Stug’s as subtle as ever.”

  “We have to get out of here,” said Hatch, taking her hand. “No time to explain. Come on.” He began to rise and draw her forward off the cot.

  The sadness returned to her face.

  “Sean, I—”

  “Talk later, move now!”

  Hatch pulled her arm with more urgency. He’d expected her to swing off the cot and bound into his arms. Instead, she half fell out of bed, releasing her hand from his in a desperate attempt to catch herself on the cold floor. She screamed in pain and Hatch backed up, unsure how he’d hurt her.

  The blanket fell from across her legs.

  Hatch looked down. At first his brain refused to process what his eyes saw. Though still wearing the tunic of her TRACE uniform, she wore only civilian shorts from the waist down. And her legs … they didn’t look like legs at all.

  B
loated with wounds, they resembled blackened alien appendages attached to a human torso. Her shins were dinted inward in multiple places. Cavities marked them with purple bruises like craters in the smooth surface of the moon. Like someone had scooped out bone and left bloodied skin resting in its place. Her knees, too, were swollen, the body’s reaction when bones are crushed. The top of a shin bone shone white where it poked through the skin.

  Hatch couldn’t stop staring at Mary’s legs. Or thinking, perversely, of how he hadn’t been able to stop staring at them when they were together—what seemed like a lifetime ago. They were now a grotesquerie, a sideshow for carnivals, a tribute to human cruelty inflicted for pleasure.

  Mary cried out again as she tried to raise herself back onto the cot. Her voice bound humiliation and fury in a ferocious shout of pain.

  Hatch snapped out of it and hurried to help her. He heard her gasp, groaning, as she tried to minimize her movement.

  “The day they took me at the Armory,” Mary said through gritted teeth. The throbbing pain subsided to its normal level of the past week: a constant, piercing ache. “They broke my legs, Sean.”

  Hatch found Mary’s eyes. His own wavered beneath tears as the reality of her condition bloomed inside him like a black cancer. Fear, rage, grief, frustration—all fought with one another inside his gut.

  “Gutierrez,” she said, her own gut churning at the look on Hatch’s face. His expression betrayed a feeling of abject defeat. “He learned his lesson when I was a kid, I guess. He wasn’t going to let me escape again.”

  “We’ll get you out,” Hatch whispered. “Stug! Stug, get in here!”

  “Sean—”

  “Quiet, no time for debate. There’s a bomb—”

  “A bomb?”

  “No time to explain! Just sit tight … Stug, get your ass in here!”

  “Sean!” she said, trying to make him stop, to get him to see reality.

  “What the hell’s taking so long?” asked Stug as he stuck his head back in from the hallway. Anne was still in his arms.

  Hatch turned his eyes to the big man, and Stug stopped moving. If he’d been holding anything other than a twelve-year-old girl, he might have dropped it then and there. Stug had never seen the look on his friend’s face he found there now. He wasn’t even sure what it meant. But the hopelessness mixed with an unwillingness to accept the inevitable frightened the big man more than a firing squad of porters ever could.