Spinward Fringe Broadcast 14

by Randolph Lalonde

  "They hook stimulators up to your hands and feet," the Third Soldier explained. "They use your nerves like conductors, sending more and more pain through your body until you're screaming, crapping yourself. It's so bad that your body starts shutting down. The man at the switch decides how long, how bad you suffer, until he jacks it all the way up and you burn right out, your brain dies."

  "Like a child plucking the wings off flies," Tammy stated defiantly. "It's perfect for the Order, a tool that shows everyone what kind of assholes they are! Let the galaxy see it, I want them to see it, so they know how rotten you are!" she fought, her feet looking for purchase on the floor as she tried to wrest her arms free. "Your monsters!" the lead soldier pressed the transit car call button.

  "These whoresons deserve what I'll give 'em," Frost said.

  "If you have to rescue her, follow her to the town square," Stephanie said. "At least you'll be in position to back up the bots we're sending after Wheeler. Maybe you can get a better shot at freeing Nigel."

  "I don't know where he is, but I can see her," Frost said, pulling an electromagnetic pulse grenade from his thigh pocket and setting it to maximum. "A bird in the hand's worth two in the bush."

  "Frost! You could screw up our whole timetable, she wouldn't want that."

  The transit doors opened and Frost tossed his grenade. "Too late." The thing affixed itself to the back of the closest soldier, going off a second later. His sensors went dark for an instant, but the shielded suit survived the intense blast and his HUD was back before he had time to miss it.

  "EMP!" shouted a soldier as she turned and waved her rifle around. The pulse weapon was dead, Frost could tell from the indicator lights on the top of it, and he snatched it from her hands. With a swing that had all of his suit's strength augmentation behind it, he smashed it into the face of her helmet. The back half of the rifle broke and she was sent sliding down the hallway to his left, a deep dent in the front of her headgear.

  Two soldiers attempted to fire in his general direction, and they would have hit if their weapons worked. Frost punched one in the side of the head, sending it sideways at an impossible, awkward angle, then he grabbed the other's faceplate. It creaked, the face beneath it squelching and crunching as Frost squeezed it in a split second. The soldier fell back, a strange, desperate scream of pain coming from beneath his twisted visor as he scrambled to pull the helmet off.

  Shock and panic rippled through the remaining soldiers as Frost grabbed one after the other, punching each in the head with strength augmentation and hard armour that was made for the punishing, inhospitable conditions of space and herculean tasks like carrying full shipping containers around. He saved the one he named Soldier Three until last. That one rushed into the transit car and was frantically pressing the DOOR CLOSE button. "Does tormenting people make you feel good, lad?" he asked. The door would never close. The EMP disabled it and the whole transit car.

  With a couple glances at an icon in his HUD, he deactivated his cloaking systems. His armour was bloodied, he looked massive as he stalked forward. "Command! This is Sergeant Menka! We have an enemy combatant in the…"

  "They can't hear you, boy," Frost ground the words out through a grin. "Transmitter in your armour's fried."

  Barely making a sound, Tammy moved to stand beside him and took his nano blade hilt from his hip. She looked at it for a moment, then turned it on. The activated black blade hissed to life.

  "I was just preparing you! They say it doesn't hurt as much if you know it's coming! It was a good thing…" Sergeant Menka told her, raising his hands, cowering.

  "This won't hurt for a few seconds, then it'll be worse than any pain you've ever felt," Tammy said flatly. "Maybe it won't be as bad if you know." With a flash of the blade, she cut him from the base of his neck to his underarm on the opposite side then deactivated the blade.

  "Help me," Sergeant Menka said, then he coughed once before he slid apart in two pieces.

  Even Frost had to admit it was one of the more gruesome death's he'd seen as he watched an expression of shocked agony form on the soldier's face. He took the hilt back and turned to Tammy. "The place is going to go on lockdown, I have to get you somewhere safe, and fast." He touched a silver puck to her shoulder and a military grade Haven Vacsuit deployed under her captive's garb in the next second. She tore the flimsy plastic prisoner's suit off with a couple tugs.

  "This building has its own shields, it should be good if we stay out of the way," she said as he clamped a command and control bracer onto her arm.

  "The Merciless is about to come down on us like an anvil on a rat. We don't want to be here," he said. "Stay behind me." Frost ran down the hall, away from the transit lift. At the end there was a transparent section, and he collided as hard as he could with it. The inertial dampeners compensated for the collision, which dented his elbow plates, but did no damage to the window.

  "I think I see a scratch," Tammy said when she caught up. That smirk wasn't genetic, it was all hers. "Nice effort, though. I felt the floor shake."

  "You've been learning wise-assery from my nephew," Frost said as he took a Hull Buster from his belt and affixed it to the transparent metal. "Just be happy this isn't intelligent plating." With the push of a button, the ten-centimetre-wide cylindrical device that reminded him of a tall can of crisps spread a containment cone from the middle and began blasting through along the inner edges of the metre-wide shield. A few seconds later, the device stopped and dropped away, retracting the cone. There was a deep circular groove burned into the window, but it wasn't burned all the way through.

  "Does my suit have cloaking? If hiding in place is the only idea, I could head down to the sublevels or…"

  "Ye of little faith," Frost said, turning the strength augmentation all the way up again and anchoring his feet. He put all his effort into bringing his fists down against the circle in the middle of the window, aware that his physical strength was only one percent or less of the suit's power. The circle of transparent metal snapped along the edges but not along the bottom, bending down part way. He smashed it again, pushing it down so there was enough room for them to escape. "All right, time for a piggyback."

  "I don't see jets on that suit," Tammy said warily.

  "The shielding system under the overlapping armour slats across this whole heavy suit double as barrier thrusters so… Never mind the details, I can fly. You're light. Get on my back."

  Tammy did so, sealing her hood up after a moment of struggling with the command and control unit on her wrist. "You've done this before?"

  Once her suit affixed to him, Frost ran through the hole, leaping into the open air past it. "No," he said, glancing at the icon to activate flight mode. It warned him that; A FRIENDLY UNIT IS CURRENTLY ATTACHED. THE FLIGHT PROFILE IS RECONFIGURING. PLEASE WAIT…

  "We're gonna die," Tammy groaned.

  There was nothing to grab on to. The building leaned away from them, the cliff was below and several dozen metres behind them, and there was nothing but green jungle far, far below. "I'll be fine, this suit has dampeners," Frost muttered to himself. "A grapple line, too," he said the last under his breath, looking for an icon or activator that would turn it on. "If I can find the controls …"

  "I heard that," Tammy scolded. "You're a terrible rescuer."

  READY! The indicator on his HUD said, blinking large and red then minimising to the upper right corner of the visor. He activated the flight system and they decelerated into the treetops, only clipping a few branches on their way down. They were half way down to the forest floor when they stopped falling. "Are you all right?" Frost asked.

  "That could have been worse," Tammy said. "I'm fine."

  "All right, I'm going to expand my cloaking system so you're hidden, then we're going to fly to the town square."

  "With me on your back like a baby monkey?" Tammy asked.

  "Aye, unless you'd rather wait here and hope someone has time to come by and pick you up. You'd probably get maroone
d here," Frost said. "The evacuation alarm is about to sound and we're about to get a ride from Samurai Squadron. Well, Samurai Squadron and a couple hundred flying friends."

  "Okay, then I'm your baby monkey. Where's Nigel?"

  "We think he's in a storage spot under town square. We're about to go find out," Frost said as he finished checking the stealth system. It was just barely able to work its magic on him and his passenger.

  "Then let's go," Tammy said, kicking him in the ribs.

  "No one likes an impatient monkey," Frost said as he sent them upward, out of the trees then towards the square, where he hoped he could find Nigel in time.

  Seven

  Walking to The Gallows

  * * *

  Technicians made final adjustments to the platform that would rise right though the base of Ayan's statue in the middle of the square. Nigel could hear the murmur of the crowd outside. Wheeler and the Order had all the people gather there. That was key. That was good. "Hang on, Nigel, we're working on a plan to get you out of there right now," Stephanie's voice said in his ear. The subdermal receiver was the best piece of tech he ever had. There had been so many scans, even a medical one, and it defied detection.

  "It's okay," he said quietly, serenely as he and two others were guided onto the platform. They were held in old storage rooms under the square until then, and in just a few hours he got used to the regular sounds of the manufacturing centre below. That stopped about an hour before they came to get him, and Samantha told him why. Manufacturing, picking, services of all kinds were stopped so everyone could gather in the square. Wheeler was changing tactics.

  "It's really not okay," a short young man said from his right. His eye and lip were swollen. Unlike Nigel, who only had wrist cuffs for restraints, the shorter fellow had cuffs on his ankles, his waist, neck and wrists. "They're going to torture us until the crowd gets the message. It could be a while, some of those people aren't too bright. Oh, and then we die."

  "Stop it," said a woman with long brown hair. Nigel recognized her even through her dishevelled hair and bruised face but couldn't recall her name.

  "Sorry, Councilwoman, I voted for you, you know," the short fellow said.

  "Thank you," she replied. "I wish I could have done more."

  "So, what are you getting the wire for, stretch?" The short one asked.

  "Murder. My picking partner wouldn't stop talking about the Order. My name's Nigel, by the way."

  "I'm sure there was more to it than that," the Councilwoman said.

  Nigel looked at her more directly and remembered where he saw her. "You were in the virtual tour. Councilwoman Mischa Konev, a volunteer child advocate too." She was shaking, it was hard to watch. "I'm sorry you're here." Even though he had reassurances from Stephanie and Samantha, he was settling into the idea that there were too many things for the few people in his resistance to do already, a save wasn't coming.

  "Former Councilwoman," she said. "Are you really here because you killed someone for just talking?"

  "You're right, there was more to it, I wish I could tell you more," Nigel replied quietly, watching relief cross her face. To his surprise she leaned against him. It was a quietly desperate reach for relief and comfort, and it served him as much as Mischa. "How long were you kept in a cell?" he asked her quietly.

  "I don't know, they wouldn't let me sleep," she replied.

  "'There was more to it,'" the short guy mimicked sourly. "What? Did he insult your sister? Eat your pudding?"

  Nigel shook his head at him. "It's not worth talking about right now, I don't want my last minutes spent describing something I regret."

  "Quiet down! The Admiral is here," a soldier barked as another separated him and Mischa.

  "What's your name?" Mischa asked the short fellow when the soldiers stepped back to the edges of the platform.

  "Brannen, and before you ask, I'm here because I killed two soldiers and tried to steal a planet hopper, what did you do anyway?"

  "I was getting people together, running secret meetings. We were trying to contact the Nafalli so we could coordinate, but soldiers took me into custody the night before we made a breakthrough. Someone told them everything. They haven't let me eat or sleep since."

  "Wait, you were captured a couple days after the occupation started," Brannen said. "That's a long time."

  "You get used to the hunger, it's the worrying that's making me crazy," she forced a little smile, Nigel felt more despair for her than he'd ever known for himself. "I keep thinking they'll have my people lined up in the front row when we get out there. That they'll shoot them as soon as I can see them. The Order likes to make an example." Her tears threatened to flow.

  "I would have heard about that," Nigel whispered, catching her brown-eyed gaze and holding it. A glimmer of hope and relief flashed there for a moment.

  "Man, enough with this waiting. I know the Order is made of assholes and screw-ups, but this is ridiculous." That prompted one of the guards to bash Brannen in the small of his back with his rifle butt, almost sending him to his knees.

  He was one of the loud ones, the type Frost told Nigel to avoid more than once. They got silenced quick, the Order of Eden feared dissent more than just about anything. He wished he could tell Brannen and Mischa that there would be a rescue attempt, but saying anything could tip the soldiers off, and that was as bad as turning traitor.

  A frame made to stand four captives up was carried onto the platform. Acid roiled in Nigel's stomach, he started sweating. It wasn't clear if that was the torture device or just a big restraint, but his instincts told him to fight. With a clang that made Brannen flinch, they put it down.

  The touch of a soldier on his shoulder prompted Nigel's worst instincts. There was no way they were going to lock him in that frame. His long-fingered hand grabbed the lip under the soldier's helmet. Instincts from dozens of dirty fights drove him as he twisted it hard, rotating the helm sideways, then he tripped him into the next nearest soldier. Another grabbed at him, and gripped the edge of his gauntlet plate then dropped to his knees, dragging the soldier down with him. Off balance, his opponent couldn't do a thing as he kicked his feet out from under him then leapt at the guard who was taking aim with his pistol. A flash of pain overwhelmed his body for an instant.

  When he came to, the soldiers were fastening the neck restraint that would hold him to the metal frame. "Nice try, stretch," Brannen said.

  They were all secured to the frame, which held them upright with their arms and legs open a little. The people gathered in the square would have a full view of them as they were tortured. Nigel couldn't turn his head but that was the least of it. The rest of his body was completely immobilized by a dozen or more straps and braces. With a technical, impersonal touch, their baggy plastic prisoner jumpsuits were removed. "We're ready to go," someone said behind.

  "Whu?" Nigel managed to say, his mouth uncooperative thanks to the stun hit he just took. He wanted to say; 'What? Where's the courtship? I like to be wined and dined before the clothes come off," but he only managed another disappointing; "Whu?"

  "Whatcha got to say there, stretch?" Brannen asked, laughing.

  "Don't laugh, it's stun sickness," Mischa chided. "It'll pass in a moment, Nigel."

  "Just in time for you to feel everything," Wheeler said from behind them on the platform, the words sounded like they were coming through a grin.

  "The hologram's up, the Admiral is live. Raise the platform," a guard said.

  Well, so much for the assassination attempt, Nigel thought. Wheeler isn't stupid, I guess. He won't appear in front of all of Haven Shore personally.

  The platform moved up quickly, and Nigel was astonished at the sight of thousands of people filling the garden space and the rest of the city square. There were no cheers, the sounds of shuffling and murmuring greeted them instead. It quieted slowly until the silence was so utter that you could hear one person cough somewhere in the middle of the multitude. They stared.

  "H
aven Shore, and all good people of Haven," Wheeler announced with so much fanfare that you'd think he was performing for a roaring crowd. "I have shone a bright light on the truth so you can all see how corrupt and foul the people you called leaders and heroes are. I understand that it's hard to move on. It's natural to take a moment to grieve when you've seen a comforting lie disproven. Sadly, we live in a modern culture that moves quickly, and you must move with it. You must move on."

  "Fight!" It was the last thing Nigel expected to hear Mischa shout from her restraints. "Fight them! You're together! It's their mistake! Fight!"

  A gag was roughly shoved into her mouth and clasped behind her head. The crowd was stirring, so many murmurs and shuffling feet at once created a low, loud sound that reminded him of the ocean waves. He liked her spirit, but it was the wrong time. They needed the crowd in place, that was the whole point of them timing their action with Wheeler's big speech and the executions. If the crowd listened, if they started fighting, then there would be chaos, and getting everyone out would take longer, maybe too long. "Survive!" Nigel called out. "The best way to defy them is to thrive and wait for the right time!" he was surprised that he could shout anything intelligible at all, his tongue still tingled a little, but the words were clear enough. A gag that tasted like plastic was strapped onto his head roughly and efficiently.

  "We have confirmation; there has been a jailbreak at the Shard Facility," a guard said. "We're moving ahead."

  A surge of hope filled Nigel, and he grinned around the gag, a tear rolled down his cheek. I’m going to get out of this.

  "I know there are a few amongst you who don't believe in what the Order is doing here," Admiral Wheeler continued. "It's time to move on from that rebellious spirit. It's a child's instinct to rebel. You must not give in to that urge. We must be reasonable, we must be adult in our thinking as we rebuild this ravaged galaxy. The people you see in restraints are dangerous malcontents. Two are murderers, the third is the worst. She pretended to lead people, to care for the most vulnerable segment of your population; children. Mischa Konev was turning parents and young people into a rebellious faction when we caught her. She was about to get people killed for nothing. Nothing! They're unrepentant, so they must be eliminated, but not before we make an example of them. These destructive acts prompt punishment, their suffering has to be seen so unreasonable, misguided people are given pause. I don't take pleasure in this, I wish they could have been productive members of our society so they too could aspire for our universal fate; immortality in the light."