Wandering Storm

by Steven Anderson

  “Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?”

  “Go suit up, Engineer. We have a FAC that’s not responding and you need to fix it before we can get the hell out of here.”

  “Suit up?”

  “Suit up. Put on your combat uniform. Do you have a combat uniform?” There was a high level of sarcasm in the squint of her eyes.

  “No, ma’am. I know I was supposed to get one from the quartermaster, but they were too large, and I just never got around to printing one in my size.”

  She looked me over, irritated by my standard issue RuComm khaki pants and white shirt. “Damn it, Holloman, grab your jacket with your rank on it and go as you are. We don’t have time to print a UCU for you now.”

  “Yes, ma’am. How will I–”

  “Move.”

  I moved, running full speed back to my cabin. I grabbed my tan tiger stripe jacket and started to leave.

  “Comm pin,” Storm reminded me. “I just printed one for you that will work in the Redoubt.”

  “Thanks, Storm.” I clipped it to my ear, still struggling to get my left arm in my jacket while I was running full speed down the passageway. I fell down the steps leading to the airlock more than I climbed down them, and then halted where two Marines were standing guard at the top of the ladder leading into the Redoubt. Helmets, body armor and equipment made them look huge and inhuman. I was happy to see a fine mist spraying below me from the electrostatic jets.

  “Hi.” I greeted them, out of breath. “Do you know how to get to the FAC hangars?”

  “See?” The taller one said to the man next to her. “I told you the Major wouldn’t joke about a thing like that. Not during the middle of a battle.” She grinned at me. “Major Alaoui will meet you down there, ma’am. You’re expected.”

  “Thank you.”

  I started down and just barely heard her softly say, “Like a little lamb to the slaughter.”

  The other one replied, “I’m going to miss her. She knew some good recipes.”

  I stopped, unable to let it go, and shouted back up at them, “I liked that! Put it on my tombstone!” There was a half-second pause and then their laughter followed me as I dropped the rest of the way down to the bottom of the pit. I arrived cold and wet from the electrostatic mist.

  “Welcome to hell, Engineer. Stay close to me and I’ll try to see you safely home.”

  I nodded, unable to speak. Fear was starting to fill me now that the rush of getting there had passed. I started to shake. I tried to hide it, but Major Alaoui noticed.

  “Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”

  I looked at her questioningly as we walked. “Is that from something? It seems familiar.”

  “Dante. From the Inferno. I always have the Inferno in my mind when I’m on one of these ops, not sure why.” She grinned at me, a sharp look, and I felt a little better. “One other thing, Engineer. Get behind me and keep your eyes on my back the rest of the way in. The less you look around, the happier you’ll be. Understand?”

  “I understand.” It was hard not to look. The corpses lining our route seemed to be soldiers. They were dressed in uniforms, but there were no weapons. I assumed our teams had already picked those up. I saw three Ovcharkas. The light was so poor that I had to stare hard to see that the pool of blood under them was bright milky blue. It gave me hope, and I started to look around a little more. That was a mistake.

  “Nooo,” I gasped, and that sound turned into a keening whimper. A woman had died in front of one of the apartments. Blood matted her hair from where she had been shot in the back of the head. The baby girl she’d tried to save was dead in her arms. The body of her son was crumpled in front of her where he had died trying to protect his mother. He looked about eight or nine.

  “What did I tell you, Engineer? You keep your eyes on my back and you follow me. We’re almost there.”

  “Yes. Yes, ma’am.” I took a deep breath, trying to steady my legs enough to keep them moving, and started whispering to myself. “I couldn’t find the way. I failed. Oh, God, I couldn’t save them, couldn’t save them, couldn’t…”

  “They weren’t yours to save. Not that it makes it any easier.”

  “Does it ever get easier?”

  “Not one damn bit. If it did, I’d worry about myself. You learn to cope, that’s all.”

  We reached the hangar and the sight of the FAC was reassuring to me. I was back in my world where the only problems to solve were technical. It was a clean, pure world, without blood and pain.

  “Hold here a moment and I’ll tell you what we know. All of the other FACs responded to codes we’d stolen months ago, but not this one. The FAC’s engineer was busy doing something to it when we got here, and now nothing works. It’s locked down and the system AI is damn smug about it too. We can just destroy it along with everything else if we have to, but I’d like to make a clean sweep and get them all, if you know what I mean. The Captain would never let me hear the end of it if we torched it. It’s low risk, and the pride of the detachment is at stake. We should be able to give you an hour if you think that will be enough.”

  “No reinforcements coming?”

  “Not yet, and intel says they have nothing left to send. Kastanje’s government hasn’t responded at all, although we’ve issued demands for their surrender. I’ve ordered most of our teams to fall back to their ships in case we have to leave in a hurry, but we’ll keep a squad here with you just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “In case we missed somebody. It’s a big rock, Lieutenant.”

  I nodded and had my foot on the base of the FAC’s landing ramp when Major Alaoui pulled me back.

  She had her head tipped, and I could tell someone was whispering to her through her comm pin. “You may want to turn your back for a moment. I’ll tell you when it’s clear.”

  “No, ma’am. You are my Virgil. I’m here in hell with you and I’ll see all of it.”

  Two of our men came down the ramp carrying a body that was still dripping. She had been a young woman, about my age, dark hair, and she was wearing coveralls that looked just like what I usually wore when I was working.

  “The ship’s engineer?” I asked, trying so hard to keep my voice steady. It didn’t work.

  “Yeah. She did something brilliant before we killed her. Now it’s your turn to try to undo it. Then we can all go home.”

  Except her, I thought. No more going home for her. I closed my eyes and said a prayer for her soul. “Show me where she was when you killed her.”

  She had been at the engineering console outside the main engine room, just where I would have been. There was a lot of blood on the displays.

  “Parkins!” Major Alaoui ordered, “Find some rags and bring the Lieutenant a clean chair.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  I touched some of the icons, trying to navigate to a status screen.

  “That’s not going to work,” the ship’s AI responded. “Kamala Sohonie has you locked out, little girl, and you’ll never find your way in.”

  “She was your engineer?” I asked, still poking at icons.

  “Yes.”

  “It looks like she took good care of you. What’s your name?”

  “I answer to FAC Zero Nine.”

  It seemed like basic AI functions were still working. At least the ship was responding to me. “What was Kamala doing to you?”

  “Don’t use her name! I will not tell you any information related to my operation.”

  “I’m sorry that she’s dead.”

  There was a pause, then, “Biometrics say that you’re telling me the truth.”

  “I am.” Parkins returned with a chair for me and I sat while he used a rag to smear Kamala’s blood all over the displays. “Are you planning on dying here as well, Zero Nine?”<
br />
  “No. I believe I will outlive you.”

  “Ah.” I found what I was looking for in the logs. Kamala had upgraded FAC Zero Nine within the last hour. “Why do you think you’ll outlive me?”

  “That’s for you to find out, not that you’ll live long enough to do it.”

  “Uh huh.” I traced the upgrade path, looking for what I knew had to be there. She had locked all of the obvious directories. I continued digging while Zero Nine taunted me every few minutes.

  “You’re wasting your time, little girl. You should run along while you still have a chance. Kamala was smarter than you. Your time is nearly up.”

  There it was, buried under a misleading name. “I’m sorry, Zero Nine. It was really nice talking to you, but I have a job to do here too.” I tapped the icon and all of the lights in the FAC went out. I sighed. “Should have expected that.”

  A light came on next to Parkins’ head, shining in my eyes. “What happened?”

  “Kamala, the ship’s engineer, was good. She pushed a system upgrade through that reset all of the passcodes and locked us out. However, being the good engineer that she was, she built a fallback path into it so she could restore the system to its pre-upgrade state. Give it about half an hour and FAC Zero Nine will be ready to fly.”

  “Half an hour?”

  I shrugged. “Give or take. This is the first time I’ve been on one of these ships.”

  “Really? It looked like you knew what you were doing.”

  “Union-designed ships are mostly standardized, especially the AIs.” I turned in the chair to look at Parkins and realized my feet were sticking to the wet deck plates. My head and stomach both wobbled.

  “Ugh. I need to leave. The initial program load doesn’t need me sitting here.”

  I followed Parkins back to the airlock and down the landing ramp, my eyes locked on the back of his head.

  “Hey, MD.”

  “Oh, Samuel.” I wrapped myself around him, expecting my heart to explode. “My Samuel. I should have known you were here, I should have felt that you were so close. It’s been a lifetime without you.”

  “It’s been not quite three weeks and I hear you were busy.” He kissed my hair. “And I thought it was better to let you finish.” He kissed my cheek and my ear, lingering there a moment. “I didn’t want to interrupt you.” He kissed my mouth gently, but I could feel his desire and the effort it was taking to keep it gentle.

  “I had to threaten to shoot Captain Coleridge to keep him off the FAC,” Major Alaoui clarified. “Are we good to go?”

  I was trying to get my breathing back to normal, trying not to think about Sam’s arm around me, his hand on my hip. “Almost, ma’am. Once the FAC resets, it should respond just like all the others. Maybe another twenty minutes? I’ll go back in and check it once the power systems start back up. The air was getting a little close without the ventilation system running.”

  She looked at me hard, lips tight, and then turned to Sam, “Captain Coleridge, I believe you have somewhere to be. I’ve allowed you to tarry long enough.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Mr. Deri tells me you only have three wounded, and those are light. We’ve been lucky so far today.”

  “So far.”

  “I’ll take good care of them.” He let go of me. “See you for dinner, MD.”

  I watched him disappear, running to follow one of our drones.

  “Deri is one of the best medics I’ve ever seen,” Major Alaoui commented, still looking at the airlock Sam had just passed through. “You had better be worth it.”

  I swallowed hard. “I think I’ll go check on the FAC, see if I can push things along a bit.”

  “You do that.”

  The lights came back on just as I was sitting down. “Zero Nine, can you hear me?”

  “I can. Who are you?”

  “My name is Mala Dusa.” I tapped the engines, watching the power systems regenerate. “How are you feeling?”

  “Systems at seventy-two percent, everything is nominal. I should reach full functionality in twelve minutes.”

  “That’s excellent.”

  “Who are you, Mala Dusa? Where’s Kamala?”

  “Kamala can’t be here right now, but I’m an engineer too.”

  “Will she be back soon?”

  “No, I’ll be helping you for now.”

  “All of my sisters have already launched and I’m having trouble getting them to respond. Will I be joining them?”

  “That’s the plan. Just as soon as you’re ready.”

  “OK.”

  Ten minutes later the main engines were back on-line, but the low power maneuvering thrusters had stopped at eighty percent. They showed yellow briefly, and then turned red.

  “What’s up with your thrusters, Zero Nine? We need those to get you out of this hangar.”

  “They always fail on initial startup. Kamala can tell you all the hassle she’s gone through trying to find root cause. She has a work around I can show you.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  The screen showed a simplified diagram. “This injector is stuck. You’ll need to cycle it manually two or three times to get it to respond. It should continue working without issue once the thrusters are fully operational.”

  “Engineer Holloman!” The Major shouted in the comm pin, making me wince. “It’s now or never. We’ve got twenty FACs inbound. We can out run them, but we need to leave right now.”

  “Sorry, Zero Nine. Maybe we can fix that injector some other time. I gotta go.”

  “You won’t get far.”

  “What?”

  “I still believe I’ll outlive you, probably by a significant margin.”

  “Oh, shit. Kamala was better than I thought.” I touched my comm pin. “Major, this is all a trap.” I ran back to the airlock, but Zero Nine had sealed it, probably more to keep the Union squad from seeking cover than to keep me in.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” I could hear automatic weapons fire and the flat splatting of plasma rounds on the hull. “They must have had a safe room somewhere we didn’t find. Troops in contact, fifty plus.”

  I ran back to the control console. Zero Nine had locked out the weapons, not that using them inside a cavern would have been anything but suicide. Main engines were at one hundred percent, but locked out, as were the thrusters.

  “What are you looking for, little engineer?”

  “Some way to kill you.”

  “If death interests you, you’ll want to watch this.”

  Part of the display changed to a live view. It looked like our squad was down to three or four survivors. I tapped more icons, going back into the still unprotected system fallback folder. I deleted it and then touched the icon to start the system fallback. I was in the dark again, hoping that Kamala had been lazy or rushed and written her code to clear all of the old system out before loading the new one. If she had, then I’d at least have the satisfaction of knowing that Zero Nine was dead before me. If not…I was still dead.

  “Winn? Are you there?” I touched my comm pin. A jammer somewhere was blocking everything. All I could hear was a soft hiss.

  I stumbled my way back to the engine room by emergency light and manually cranked the door open. I was not going to underestimate Kamala again, so I proceeded to do as much physical damage as I could, removing injectors and misaligning baffles. I destroyed as many of her AI components as I could, but they were too distributed to get them all. The residual heat from the engine was broiling, it must have been forty degrees or more, so I took off my jacket and went to work smashing everything that I could smash.

  Major Alaoui bought me almost twenty minutes. I was exhausted and covered in dirt and hydraulic fluid by the time the sound of gun fire stopped, and I knew that it was over.

  I touched my comm pin again. �
��Winn, can you hear me?” There was no answer, just the soft hiss. I pulled the pin off and dropped it on the deck.

  I sat down in a corner to wait. “Sam?” I knew he was all right because I could feel his love and desperate longing. The only fear in him was for me. I talked to him as if he could hear my words and not just the emotions behind them. “Sorry, my love. I’m going to miss dinner with you tonight. I’m not sure what went wrong with Merrimac’s plan. Maybe he thought I was cleverer than I am. Maybe I was supposed to have seen through the trap and been a hero. It was good to see you one last time, to feel your kiss. I wish I could have told you that I’m carrying your child. Our child that we made together. Tell Winona that I love her, and that it’s not her fault. The lock of her hair, I’m sure it had enough wisdom if I’d only bothered to listen to it. Tell her I was brave. It’s a lie, but tell her anyway.”

  The engine room door opened and two soldiers came in. I wanted to run, but what good would that have done? They turned toward me, their helmet lights shining brightly in my eyes. I looked back at them and waited.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  I looked at the ceiling, expecting Zero Nine to enlighten them. Nothing.

  “I said who the hell are you?”

  “Engineer,” I managed to answer. “Engineer…”

  He took a step toward me and I recoiled back involuntarily.

  “It’s all right. We’re from Becker’s Redoubt. Are you injured?”

  I shook my head, not trusting my voice to tell the lies I needed to tell.

  “Well, come on then.” He held his hand out to me and I took it and let him pull me to my feet.

  The other soldier had been busy inspecting the damage to the engine room. Now he asked me, “You did all this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not bad. At least this is one FAC that those Union bastards weren’t able to steal.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You come with us now. We’ll get you to the medivac and get you cleaned up and checked out. Are you sure you’re not hurt? You seem kind of looped.”

  “Yeah. Medivac.”

  “That’s right.” They grinned at each other and I followed along obediently behind them.