The Free Citizen

by T. J. Sedgwick

  He pushed away the erroneous thoughts, chastising his own mind for wandering on dangerous ground.

  Hail President White! Hail the Renaissance! Freedom Through Struggle!

  His mental recital seemed to cleanse him, restore the feeling of pure patriotism all Citizens held dear.

  His grip on the handrail beside the hatch grew tighter in anticipation, his muscle movements re-acquainting themselves with micro-gravity.

  It’s showtime, he thought.

  One deep breath later he opened the hatch.

  4

  Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  T he hatch opened with an almost inaudible electrical whir punctuated by the slightest puff of air as the pressure equalized between Darkstar and its unsuspecting host. Bright light streamed into the capsule. With an effortless confidence, Rae pulled his invisible body, pistol first, into the L1 module. He glided in zero-g towards the equipment-covered center pillar scanning for Screamers. As he gently collided with a computer display and integrated control panel on the center pillar, Darkstar’s hatch slide shut, its stealth coating transmitting the starfield beyond. A second later, the Erasmus’s docking port closed too. To the Screamers on board, it would look like just another unused docking port.

  Focused, his reactions primed, he swept the scene, his pistol like the rest of him, visible to only himself via his helmet display. Perched on the center pillar, movement caught his eye. Was there something emerging from the farthest docking port—the Skylon’s berth? He closed one eye, zeroing in. Nothing. He held his breathing steady.

  Was it real or was it adrenaline or just imagination?

  He bided his time, ears trained for sounds front and behind. Just the sound of nearby airflow, the hum of electricity, a distant sonorous creaking. Then the slightest of vibrations foretold its coming as it emerged from the docking port—head first, snarling, an ear-splitting scream of anger, its face turned to face him. He paused, swallowing down hard, shocked by its look of pure evil—the razor teeth, the furrowed brow, the dark veined face with a strangely morbid complexion and those eyes… Killer’s eyes, red and tortured, boring into his soul. It came straight towards him, its filthy, clawed hands outstretched. He fired. The high-pitched zip, zip of a suppressed double-tap to its head lost in the background noise. Two perfect holes in its forehead, dark red mist and fragments spraying from the back of its skull as the body rotated from the impact, still floating towards him. He awaited its arrival, looking aside the disgusting beast. He pushed it by the shoulders, and it reversed course, floating languidly back from where it had come.

  Now there was a body, he’d need to move fast. A piercing shriek came from the opposite direction, near the entrance to the first of the lab modules. This time two Screamers—one crossing the threshold, the other hanging, sneering in the hatchway. They paused and conversed in their hideous language, the one in the hatchway pointing its vicious hand at the corpse behind the invisible Rae. The other seemed to stare right at Rae, despite his transparency. The Screamer pulled himself towards Rae as the other one turned in the hatchway to summon others. Rae didn’t wait. The last thing he needed was the entire horde converging on him. He fired twice: once into the fast-disappearing Screamer’s back, the next into the advancing foe’s eye, a dark, bloody hole replacing it. The first Screamer writhed, making otherworldly squeals while floating into the lab. Rae pushed off towards it, firing two more silenced rounds. The first missed, embedding with a sonorous clunk into something metallic and unseen. The second round glanced off the target’s morose, hairless scalp taking part of the skull with it in a fireworks display of blood and bone.

  If that lab’s occupied, I’ll need to clean up fast, stop the alarm spreading, he thought, pulling himself several more times, faster still into the open hatchway.

  The docking module he was exiting met the lab module at right angles midway along its length. Two new alien screams came from the lab, drowning out the thrum of the station. They must have seen the fleeing Screamer floating in, dead. Or maybe the fragments of cranium and gore from its head. Rae broke his flight and peeked his head through the hatchway, assessing left then right. He was in target acquisition mode, his eyes disregarding the complex array of equipment lining every part of the cylinder’s curved wall. There they were: two Screamers to the left, both clad in white, the first the figure of a small woman, the other a slim, tall man. Both with a deadly stare. Both advancing on Rae’s position … or was it to their dead friend who’d floated into the lab? It was hard for him to tell with the corpse just a meter in front of him.

  No reasoning with them, he decided, firing a single shot into the male’s head, adrenaline snapping his aim in an instant to the female and giving her the same treatment.

  Five down, ten to go and no station-wide alarm sounding yet.

  Rae was a practiced and efficient killer. Those deemed enemies of the Renaissance deserved no mercy. He was a patriot to the core, the fundamental good of the new America’s mission, and its way of life, learned through half a lifetime of service—first, in the US Army Infantry, then the US Army Rangers, then the American Union’s Covert Action Group. The CAG was a combined Special Forces unit in which he’d risen to the rank of Captain, commanding his own company but often going solo. Assassinations of state enemies, sabotage, espionage—all were within scope for the loyal operative.

  The second lab module saw four more targets neutralized.

  Nine down, six to go.

  In the third lab module, housing horticultural and biological experiments, he killed two more. Then he caught sight of something behind him in his peripheral vision. Movement. He turned quickly to see a Screamer emerge from inside some sort of glass cabinet, making for the hatch he’d recently entered through. This one was strangely silent, but a Screamer nevertheless. Then he realized he was wrong. It wasn’t heading for the hatch at all but the thing on the wall beside it. It reached for the red emergency handle. Time slowed down. Rae raised his gun and fired. The hole in the foe’s beastly left hand appeared all but instantaneously. But the right hand reached up and yanked down the emergency lever, engulfing him in the noise of a shrill alarm. Beacons flashed an urgent red strobe. He finished off the flight-suit-clad Screamer, damning the bastard for shitting on his plan. Then the hatches began to slide shut. The module with the sphere was just beyond the hatch opposite, its two-meter-wide aperture narrowing from the side as its sliding door closed. It wasn’t closing fast, but it wasn’t slow either. Rae kicked off a glass cabinet hard, cracking it, and propelling himself at the diminishing way-to-target. Mid-flight, he tucked in his arms, straightened his legs, wondering how strong the door servos were. Half a second before reaching the hatch he knew he’d slip through. As he tucked his head down to reduce his profile further, the last thing he caught sight of was the feet exiting the distant end of the large module, half a football field away. Once through the closing hatch, he scanned the scene—no sign of Screamers. He watched the far hatch close. At the same time, the hatch behind him clunked shut.

  Trapped, damn it! Three enemy remaining. Alarms blaring. Element of surprise gone.

  He knew Screamer reinforcements would come to the Erasmus eventually, but it wasn’t like calling a police drone back home. Intel during the briefing had indicated three days until the next Skylon visit. The nearest responders were thought to be the Democratic Alliance’s Earth Observatory, Gaia Station, in a completely different orbit. Center had said in the briefing that enemy launches from Earth could be dealt with, but only if the mission was jeopardized. Not for the first time, that thought brought home to Rae how vital this mission was. To interdict an Alliance spaceplane was a risky action and hard to make deniable. Something close to the threshold for war. He wouldn’t call in support lightly, that was for sure. And if he did, would it come, or would they just disown
him? Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if war was unavoidable given the spread of the Screamer parasite. It had caused fortress America to pull up the drawbridge and re-double biosecurity measures like never before. The real worry was the Badlands—the Military Operations Zone covering the lion’s share of American territory. For sure, it was heavily patrolled, but it was a lawless place inhabited by millions of Illegals and terrorists. The Mexico and Canada border zones were heavily policed, its walls a triumph of American engineering. But it simply wasn’t possible to cover the entire coastline, despite the best efforts of the military. No border was completely secure.

  His thoughts snapped back to the here and now as he surveyed the cavernous module. The inside surface of the twenty-meter-wide cylinder were hidden by computer cabinets, displays, workstations and several transparent-walled rooms housing robotics apparatus. In the center of the module, around half the width and most of the length, was occupied by the sphere and its surrounding server-type cabinets of computer kit that he’d seen on the 3D rendering. The device was in the sphere, but it looked hewn from solid alloy, the six tubes entering orthogonally looked integrated, jointless and of the same gray metal. From those tubes, multiple smaller conduits emerged and connected the sphere tubes to the dozen or so cabinets surrounding it. Scanning around, something in one of the glass-walled rooms caught his eye. Twenty-something meters away—close to the mid-point of the module, on the right-hand wall, stood a bank of stainless-steel cabinets which reminded Rae of super-sized refrigerators. There was something else in the glass-walled room. Curiosity got the better of him—he pulled himself towards it, alert to danger, but sensing no threat. Grabbing onto the door handle, he decided to remain outside. If Screamers returned, he wanted a clear shot. Beyond the glass door, in the middle strapped to a specimen table, was the thing that had drawn him there. A human brain sliced clean in two, tethered scalpel floating nearby beside a hose that looked like a vacuum extractor. He snapped his head left. A faint clinking noise from behind the far hatch. It grew louder. Rae looked for the nearest cover and found it behind a server cabinet—part of the central sphere complex—placing it between him and the far hatch. He was still for all intents invisible, but part habit and part precaution drew him behind cover.

  Concealment ain’t the same thing as cover, boy! came the voice from his basic grunt training all those years ago.

  He poked out his head, getting eyes on the far hatch, his pistol-wielding hand steady and ready. Then two things happened. First, the hatch began to open. Gradually, the white hatch slid aside to reveal the darkened place beyond. The rhythmic clanging continued to emanate from the same direction—now only louder. Then the second thing happened. Rae couldn’t react fast enough. The hatch behind him was open, and inside, ten meters away were two large Screamers holding full-length ballistic shields. Their diabolical snarling faces filled the bullet-proof glass apertures near the top. Their reddened killer’s eyes stared straight at him.

  How the fuck? Where’d they get shields? Intel didn’t say anything about that!

  His stomach clenched tight, momentary shock suppressed. They hovered, anchored by the hatch, side-by-side offering a wall of impenetrable shield. But they didn’t advance. Rae couldn’t tell if they could somehow see him. The stealth suit wasn’t perfect, sometimes betraying its user with a heat-haze-like silhouette.

  Maybe Screamers’ vision is better than ours, he thought.

  The alarms and red strobing continued relentlessly, pouring forth more stress. They didn’t seem armed—otherwise they’d have pulled their weapons already. So, he decided to try something. Rae let go of the cabinet and pushed off gently towards, and to the right of, the Screamers. He observed their eyes. First, they didn’t track him. Then they did, following his exact path.

  Fuck.

  The right-hand Screamer extended his hand, pointing something at Rae.

  Energy weapon? Taser?

  He didn’t wait to find out and fired twice, smashing whatever it was from its hand, sending it behind the shield and taking off two clawed fingers in the process. Then the Screamer made a mistake, releasing the shield and turning for the exit. Rae got him twice in the back. Now just five meters and side-on to the second Screamer, its flank was exposed.

  Easy pickings! thought Rae, as he swiftly planted two more in the once-human.

  Their bodies floated limply nearby the open hatch. Rae caught his breath. If the intel was right, there was just one left on the station. His retrieval work would be a lot easier with zero left.

  Their fate was sealed the moment they let me in, he thought, considering the fact this was a civilian installation, armory or not.

  He might have had some misgivings if these were humans, but these things ceased to be people when the parasite had co-opted them. He pulled himself close to the floating dead, detritus and droplets of blood from their wounds spreading like a cloud of death. He wanted to check out the weapon the Screamer had pointed at him. Nearing the corpse, he pushed it and the shield aside looking for the weapon. All that greeted him were weapon fragments, the largest of which looked like part of a casing—a once-rectangular, plastic shell with half a broken circuit board still affixed to it. It couldn’t have been a firearm—maybe a Taser as he’d suspected.

  Makes sense, he thought, given the fragility of the pressurized station.

  He didn’t have the same concern with his own hollow point rounds—bad for Screamers, good for space stations.

  Screamers looked bad enough in life and even worse dead, so he was keen to call time on searching the area. There was the sphere to take and it sat less than twenty meters away. But a single enemy remained if the intel was correct. He scanned around, listening carefully—no sign of it nearby. There was a decision to make: get to work on extracting the sphere or hunt the Screamer. The thought of the possible armory and the way they seemed to track his position, despite his stealth suit, made his mind up—the Screamer had to die first.

  Rae set off moving cover-to-cover, module-to-module. He flew through more labs, an accommodation module, recreation and exercise rooms and the command module, but found nothing. He managed to shut off the station’s alarm and emergency strobe lighting, bringing relief to his senses. He flew another circuit around the station, scanning each module, listening and observing, silently drifting like an apparition. He found no Screamer. No evidence of it. No sound of a living thing—just electrical, mechanical and structural sounds of the SS Erasmus. He hung in mid-air thinking, anchored to a fixture in the corner of the docking module. An idea came to him. He re-entered the Darkstar capsule via the hatch, sat in the command seat and summoned Darkstar’s computer with his thoughts.

  Darkstar, attempt a hack of the Erasmus’s internal security cameras

  “Welcome back, Captain,” said the Darkstar’s computer. “Initiating hack…”

  A short pause, then, “Connection established. Hack successful.”

  Darkstar, display all internal camera feeds. Monitor feeds for Screamers.

  His mind’s eyes simultaneously saw all forty-eight surveillance feeds, while the Darkstar’s computer watched the same. He decided to give it a while before going back for the primary objective: extraction of the sphere.

  His enhancements kicked in after five minutes, allowing crisp concentration in the face of little of interest. Fifteen minutes passed. Then there was movement. A Screamer—checking out the two dead with the shields. He couldn’t see the face, but from the body shape and the floating, collar-length blonde hair, this one had been a small, slim woman. He exited Darkstar, cutting the close-range mind-link, and flew at a furious pace to the beast’s last known location.

  Easy prey!

  Through the dock, then the two smaller labs and into the third. Then he saw the blue-flight-suit-clad figure inside the sphere’s module. It darted to the side, behind the hatchway. It seemed to sense his arrival. And Rae had noticed something else—it held a device just as the last one had. He raised his pi
stol and moved towards the open hatch. As he drew close, a hand appeared from the side of the hatchway, and in it was the device. Before Rae could fire, a dazzling red light flickered to life, engulfing his vision. He willed his gun to fire. Nothing happened. Then his world went black.

  5

  The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

  Marcus Aurelius

  R ae emerged slowly from his dreamless blackout. The bright lighting overhead dazzled his eyes, adding to his throbbing headache. He steadied his breathing, quickly assessing that he was still suited, viewing the world via his helmet display. He tried to move but couldn’t. He strained to lift his arm against some constraining force and realized he was tied to the stainless-steel table in one of the glass-walled rooms in the L2 module. There was something else too. Something about his own stealth-suited body. He was mostly visible. Covered in what looked like a rushed spray-paint job in a dull shade of gray. The steel table below him showed through the untarnished stealth coating in random slivers and patches untouched by the paint. And not only had he lost stealth but his sidearm was missing, the curly tether floating loosely from his hip. His headache began to fade, to be replaced by a sinking feeling in his gut. What else could they have done to his suit? If there was a breach or they’d messed with the re-breather, then parasite spores might already be inside his body. If that happened, then he’d rather be dead. Accessing his visor HUD with thought, he did a status check.