The Free Citizen

by T. J. Sedgwick

  “I’m sure your daughter is well aware of this and will confirm the accuracy of my description,” said Dudek.

  Sabine nodded.

  “Bastard,” she muttered.

  Rae saw Dudek’s thin-skinned annoyance beneath the flimsy mask of a forced smile. He guessed he wasn’t used to dissent; fear was what Dudek had probably come to expect from his victims.

  “Good,” he continued cheerily. “Now we’ve established the ground rules, I need you to cross into our Southern Border Zone, Dr Muller. Yes, we know you’re in El Paso-Juarez, den of vipers that it is.”

  “What? Why?” Dr Muller said, caught off-guard.

  “Because you’re going to space, Doctor,” said Dudek, smiling. “We now know that ASTRA only works in micro-gravity—that’s why you built it on the Erasmus. It’s the time-dilation sphere isn’t it? ASTRA is already in the payload capsule ready to go.”

  Dr Muller said nothing.

  “Well then, better get yourself to the border crossing at El Paso-Juarez, Dr Muller. Our people will be expecting you,” he said.

  “How do I know you’ll do what you say?” she said.

  “Do you mean do what I say if you don’t come? Or do what I say if you do come?”

  Rae gritted his teeth at his arrogant smirk, at how he was toying with her.

  “Don’t come, Mom,” screamed Sabine. “These bastards want to kill us all!”

  Just say yes, said Rae. Please… I have a plan.

  Dr Muller nodded, a shroud of dejection over her face.

  “I will come.”

  “Excellent! We’ll have a jet ready for you at the border station. And remember—we’ll be watching. One false move and we’ll let Sabine’s mindchip timer run down. If that happens, the nanites will eat her alive.”

  Stay in contact, mind-spoke Rae to Dr Muller.

  The video-con to Dr Muller disappeared from the wall display to be replaced by a digital timer.

  54:17… 54:16… 54:15

  “Let’s hope Mommy’s more cooperative than this little bitch,” said Dudek, sneering at Sabine.

  She gave Dudek the finger and mouthed, Fuck you.

  Rae watched him redden, a twitch of frustration crossing his face.

  “Captain Rae,” he said, his teeth clenched.

  “Yessir.”

  “Shoot her kneecaps.”

  Rae hesitated.

  Dudek held-out his handgun, grip-first.

  “Well, Captain. What are you waiting for?”

  “But… But we need her.”

  “I promised she will live,” said Dudek. “I didn’t promise she could walk… Go on then.”

  Rae took the gun from Dudek, clicked off the safety and chambered a round. The cell door slid open. He saw Soldier Davis track him with the SMG, stepping to the side to keep Rae in his line of fire as he entered the cell.

  Sabine backed off towards the corner, her head shaking, palms out saying Stop! Rae raised the gun. Time seemed to stand still. Then it happened. In one fluid move, he spun one-eighty, dropping to his knee and fired at the soldier who let off a burst of automatic fire. Rae felt the hammer blow of the round slamming into his chest, knocking him off balance, its progress halted by his sub-dermal endo-armor. Pain swept over his senses like a tsunami as he gritted his teeth and struggled to regain balance. He rolled to the side, behind the glass wall. Bullets were embedded in the ballistics glass, forming spiders’ web cracks but the incoming fire had ceased. Blood trickled from Rae’s head and into his eye. He wiped it away and felt the groove of missing scalp carved by another of Davis’s bullet that had glanced off his head. He looked up to see the soldier slumped motionless on the floor outside. The endo-armor layer below his scalp was scraped, a shallow groove cut into the alloy by supersonic lead. No time to check his bleeding chest. He was conscious and breathing and that was good enough. He got up to see Dudek exiting via the rear doors. Rae ducked out of the cell, taking aim. Dudek slipped sideways through the sliding doors at the same time as Rae squeezed the trigger. The first round missed his back but the second struck his calf. There was a high-pitch shriek, followed by the sound of him clattering to the deck. Lab workers scattered towards the front exit in the opposite direction. With the rear doors now fully open, Rae strode towards the felled Dudek, who was trying to get up. Rae accelerated towards him and landed a savage boot to the bastard’s gut, sending him sprawling. Rae ignored the claret dripping from his wounds and set about tenderizing him like a steak. Seconds later, the psychopath lay sprawled on his back, bloody and broken and barely conscious.

  “Shoot me,” he croaked.

  “You don’t deserve a quick death, you murdering bastard,” said Rae.

  “Shoot me,” repeated Dudek.

  “Not worth the bullet,” he said, before stamping hard on the bastard’s face, extinguishing his life.

  “Good riddance,” muttered Rae as he turned and ran back to Sabine’s cell.

  Somewhere, in the back of his mind he wondered what Dudek would’ve been like without the mindchip. It was too late for him now—probably had been long ago. Redemption still held out for Rae and his beloved Cora, and many, many others entangled in the nightmare. But not unless he and Sabine got out of there.

  “Thank you,” she said, striding with a limp towards the doorway, ignoring her own nudity.

  “Let’s get you some clothes,” he said.

  “We need to decontaminate first,” she said, no hint of a German accent like her mother. “Come on.”

  He ran to the fallen Davis and took his SMG as Sabine moved quickly to the decontamination suite. Next, he found a scalpel and ran back to the dead Dudek, crouching beside him and lifting his right hand. He felt the web of skin between his thumb and fore finger. A small lump—an RFID tag. He cut it out and took it with him. When he arrived at the decontamination room, Sabine was already in one of the booths. A hissing sound told him it was doing its work, cleansing her of the deadly nanites. He stripped, put his uniform in the disposal chute and entered a decontamination booth along with the two weapons, carefully clasping onto the RFID tag and the wasp-drone. Water sprayed at him from every direction, turning crimson as it mixed with the blood still trickling from his wounds. It threatened to dislodge the RFID and wasp, but he held on to them tight while still allowing them to be cleaned. He hoped they’d survive the battering. The water stopped, and the mist filling the space was extracted. Next, bright pulses of heat and light forced his eyes closed. A fan kicked in and warm air dried him in ten seconds before the door opened. He saw Sabine, now clothed in researcher-wear: blue pants and a white lab-coat, her damp blonde hair straggly and free, her shoes simple, lace-up flats.

  “Swallow this,” she said, handing him a red and white capsule.

  “What is it?”

  “It neutralizes the nanites inside your body. Take it, just in case they deactivate your mindchip and you’re exposed.”

  He swallowed the capsule, then found an extra-large researcher’s uniform. But there were no shoes large enough on the rack, so he went barefoot.

  “Where’s ASTRA?” he said, pulling on the pants.

  “It’s already loaded onto a rocket in one of the silos,” she said quickly.

  “Take this,” he said, passing her the handgun.

  She tucked the gun into her waistband, then spotted something and ran over to the first-aid kit on the shelf.

  “Let me dress your wounds,” she said, eyeing the blood-filled bullet strikes on his chest and head.

  “It’s ok, they deflected off my endo-armor.”

  “Oh, of course. Endo-armor,” she said. “Should’ve guessed.”

  He put on the researcher’s tunic, placing the wasp-drone in his chest pocket and Dudek’s RFID chip in his pants pocket.

  Dr Muller, do you still read me, he mind-spoke.

  No reply.

  “The comms relay’s offline,” he said to Sabine. “We need to get word to your mom, tell her to abort her border crossing.”

>   “We can’t hang around,” said Sabine. “Whether she comes or not, they’re going to launch ASTRA to the SS Zenith soon. They’ll be planning to send Mom up on a later launch.”

  “How does ASTRA work? Why’d they need to send it into orbit?” he said while checking the submachine gun.

  “The time-dilation sphere only works in micro-gravity—they know this now,” she said. “ASTRA is only part Artificial Intelligence—it uses multiple human brains working in parallel with a powerful quantum computer inside the time-dilation sphere. The sphere accelerates time inside ASTRA. The AU are nowhere close to achieving technology like this. Mom and the Erasmus team had achieved one month per second and sustained it for nearly a minute. Imagine that: twenty-five minds and a quantum computer all communicating frictionlessly. What they could discover in sixty months, or sixty years…”

  It boggled Rae’s mind, but there was no time to lose. If they could launch the rocket, ASTRA would be out of reach and the Regime would have the upper hand. Once on board the SS Zenith, the American Union’s space superiority would keep it there, out of reach.

  20

  There are hunters, and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience, and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.

  Jim Mattis

  “L et’s go,” said Rae. “Lead the way to the silo.”

  Sabine nodded and moved to the exit doors, handgun drawn. Rae followed with the SMG at the ready. He heard boots running towards them in the corridor outside.

  “We’ve got company,” he said and stood at the side of the sliding doors. “Take up position over there.”

  He pointed to behind the bank of lockers. Sabine darted over and slid in behind. Seconds later, the doors opened. Two soldiers came barreling through, one leading the other. As Rae took aim, the rear guy saw him and struggled against his own momentum, turning clumsily while raising his SMG. The crack of a single shot rang out and the first guy slumped dead from Sabine’s bullet. Rae shot the second guy at close range, the three-round burst sending him sprawling to the ground. He leant down and pocketed a spare magazine from each dead soldier and peeked into the corridor.

  “We need to go right,” she said urgently, eyeing the doors.

  The glass exploded around his head as muzzle flashes erupted from the right. Rae counted two shooters—one either side of the open double doors at the end of the corridor. If he and Sabine didn’t cross the twenty-meter kill-zone soon, more soldiers would arrive, pinning them down. Another burst cut up the floor near his bare feet, spraying up concrete fragments and dust.

  “Swap guns,” he said to Sabine. “Suppressing fire on the end doorway when I move.”

  She nodded, taking the SMG and spare mags as he grasped the handgun.

  He moved to the sliding door—now shattered and jammed open. On the opposite side of the corridor, to the right—half-way along the kill-zone—was a recessed doorway. The double glass doors were translucent and closed but set back. Would the recess be effective cover? Did enemies lurk behind the doors? No time to delay. The longer they waited, the harder it would get.

  “Now!”

  Sabine opened up, staging her three-round bursts, suppressing the shooters as Rae sprinted. Her firing stopped, and still running, he saw the guy emerge, taking aim. Rae didn’t break stride, raised the handgun and fired a single shot, hitting the guy’s left shoulder, sending him back to cover. His cries continued from behind the doors at the end, while Rae slid into the recessed doorway, flattening his body from harm. He readied himself to provide covering fire.

  “Ready, Sabine?”

  “Ready to move!” she called back.

  In one swift move, he targeted the doorway. A moment later, the machine-gun-toting soldier emerged and zeroed in on the now running Sabine. Rae fired a single shot. The round struck the enemy’s SMG as it fired, shifting its aim. Sabine ducked reflexively while still running, then executed a combat roll and fired well-controlled bursts at the bogie. Rae seized the moment and advanced on the pinned enemy, covering the ten meters in a little more than a second, arriving to floor the soldier with a pistol-whip. A single round finished him off. He scanned small lobby to the Cybernetics Lab, with its reception and seating area. It was empty, but the sound of barked orders and running feet told him that wouldn’t last.

  “Clear!” he called. “Come on, Sabine.”

  She joined him and grabbed another SMG mag and reloaded.

  “Which way?” he said, looking around.

  The chatter of approaching jackboots told of a platoon-sized force converging on them.

  “We can’t take the main tunnels—too much resistance.”

  The sound of an electric drive grew closer from behind the lobby doors—the armored vehicle he’d seen earlier in the main tunnel.

  “You know another way to the silos?”

  “There’s a panel marked Services, over there, behind the reception desk.”

  “Ok, let’s go.”

  She crouched behind the desk, removed the panel and opened the entry hatch to the space behind the wall. He squeezed his large frame through after her. The tunnel was one-and-a-half meters in diameter, but with most of it taken up by pipes, conduits and cable trays, only the narrowest of accessways remained along the near-side wall. Cabling ran beneath the grating underfoot and a ghostly white light shone from above. He twisted around, replaced the panel and closed the access hatch.

  Sabine was already way up ahead, crouch-walking fast, her limp seemingly no impediment. Straining to keep low, the much larger Rae followed awkwardly and uncomfortably in the hot tunnel air. He kept his ears trained for sounds of pursuit, but instead heard the distant blaring of the klaxon, shrill and insistent. It stopped, and he could just make out the muffled PA announcement.

  “Attention, attention, attention. Launch from Silo One will commence in five minutes. All personnel to follow launch protocol. I repeat…”

  “How far is it?” called Rae.

  “Not far,” she gasped. “But if they’ve closed the blast doors we’re screwed.”

  Sabine had stopped up ahead, at the point where the tunnel took a sharp left turn. He waited behind her as she put her ear to the hatch.

  “Listen,” she said, shuffling forwards to make room.

  He listened through the hatch and heard an electric drive cut out then boots on concrete.

  “Outside is the main entrance to the silos,” she whispered. “There’s a huge blast door that can seal off the silos from rest of the bunker.”

  He pushed his ear harder against the hatch, finger in his left ear to cut the noise of pipes and the buzz of electricity. He made out a commanding voice, the southern drawl somehow familiar.

  “Attention!” called a woman’s voice.

  Boots snapped to attention.

  Then it clicked. It was General Hood with his beautiful, robot-like Servile.

  A pause, then she continued.

  “The general is here to witness the launch,” she said. “Open the blast doors, immediately.”

  It surprised him they hadn’t sequestered Hood with Sabine and he on the loose. He guessed that whoever ran bunker security thought he could catch them quickly and avoid embarrassing himself in front of the general.

  “But—but sir, it’s protocol to—” came the guard’s voice.

  “Just open the damn door, son,” said the general. “And get someone to adjust your command hierarchy. My instructions are protocol.”

  “Yessir!” cried the soldier.

  “General Hood’s here,” whispered Rae. “They’re opening the blast door to let him through.”

  “What are we gonna do?” she said.

  “I’ll take point. Be ready to take up position in the hatch.”

  She nodded sternly, and he opened the hatch. The whirring of the opening blast door sounded through the panel behind which he hid. He had the element of surprise, but once that panel came off…

  “Four minutes to launch,”
said the PA system.

  With no time to waste, he slowly eased down the panel enough to form a gap at the top. An infantry fighting vehicle guarded the silo entrance. General Hood, his aide, and a soldier stood on the nearside of the IFV with another pair of boots behind it, on the far side. To the right of the general, an electric cart—like the one Rae had rode earlier—sat empty, dwarfed by the gray bulk of the armored vehicle. The general brushed his dark moustache with his good hand, tapped his foot impatiently. His Servile aide stared, eyes glazed waiting for the blast door to retract into the ceiling to Rae’s left. Beyond it, a wide, dimly-lit tunnel, extended fifty meters through the granite. The end of it was a bright, half-circle of artificial light. In whispers, he conveyed what he saw to Sabine.

  “That’s where the space-launch silo is—Silo-1—straight ahead,” she said in a low voice. “The other missile silos are off a branch, halfway down the tunnel,”

  General Hood got back into the cart with his aide. The electric drive eased them towards the door. They halted, waiting for the gap to heighten. Moments later, the cart accelerated under the blast door and into the gloomy tunnel. The blast door stopped, then it started closing, a falling curtain on their hopes of thwarting the launch.

  21

  The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

  Thomas Jefferson

  S abine said, “Are they closing the door?” with a look of anxiety.

  He nodded.

  “Just wait… a little longer…” he said, still holding the panel, eyes fixed on the blast door as the sound of Hood’s cart faded.

  The near-side soldier now stood to the right of the hatch, the other one still beyond the IFV with its turret facing right, away from the blast door.

  “Three minutes to launch,” said the public address system.

  “When I move, you need to be right behind,” he said. “Ok?”