"Hackers."
"So? What about them?"
"That's the third story I read in this dump that has a hacker in it." Tana stood up and snorted. She picked up her coil-gun and shot a round through the rejected relic. A fine tuft of dust poofed around the old book as her bullet shot through with a thhwwunk. "Stupid."
Cormac advanced his glasses with his index finger. "Never knew you were so passionate about story clichés."
Tana said, "It's not that. But you can't just throw a keyboard under some random character and have them type type-ity type for thirty seconds." Tara pantomimed typing on invisible keys. "And they magically hack into a secure network or cyber-safe."
"You would know." Cormac resumed his inspection of the dust-borne books that lay everywhere. The abandoned library was unlit, save for their solar torches. Their voices echoed against unseen pillars and shelves with a haunted resound.
"Yeah, I know. Just look how long it took me to break you into this worthless hole." Tana walked toward Cormac and brushed his face with her leather-wrapped hands. "C'mon, I'm bored and horny."
Cormac froze and said, "Maybe you should check on the bikes, Tana."
Tana lay her coil-gun against a pile of books next to Cormac and pushed him back. "Come on, we won't hurt anyone. She'll never know."
"Tana."
"Feel good?" Tana forced a kiss and rubbed herself against him.
Cormac stroked her leather wraps for a few seconds but then regained his senses and pushed her back. "Tana! That's enough! Stop it."
Tana ignored his objection and rubbed her hand on his groin. "C'mon, just fu—"
Cormac shoved her away. Tana's armored leather pants bumped and squeaked as her rear end slid across the five hundred year old stonework floor. "I said stop it! God damn it, Tana! Pull yourself together."
Tana huffed and fluidly sprang herself into a stand. "Whatever, old man."
"Please go check on the bikes."
Tana, a twenty-six year old statue of leather and scars, simply stood there.
"Please, Tana. Just go," Cormac said.
She spun away and disappeared into the darkness, her shadowed mirage following the faint Lumina One markers that led the way outside. In the distance Cormac could hear her faintly repeat, "Old man. Idiot."
Cormac looked around him and exhaled, resigned. They told him that she might be unstable, but he never expected something like this. Tana was about as stable as a vial of nitroglycerin, he decided. He was supposed to simply travel with her into this vacant vault of a city-world lost forever. She could explode at any moment, but he still needed her hacking talents to blow the abandoned library's digital protections clean away.
Perhaps it was really her that carried him here and not the other way around. He didn't know, but it really didn't matter. The endless piles of books waited around him in stacks and heaps that loomed unconquerable. He picked up another book and blew the dust from its cover. The title and author were long gone, the book's surface rendered to ash and rot.
But this one was an easy one. It was written in old world German. Cormac buttered through the pages, at least the ones that were legible. There were pages that had only a handful of words that he could read, the rest randomly blotted into oblivion by mold or water or fire or the mouths of hungry insects. Others were more or less intact, the edges frilled and beaten in, their margins sacrificed to save the precious innermost ink.
He determined that it was a book about the then modern automobile manufacturing process. He couldn't be sure of the publication date but guessed that it was probably printed sometime in the early 21st century based on the phrasing and binding manufacture. The book wafted of mildew, an early specimen, perhaps one of the first books ever printed in someone's own home. The personal bookmaker machines were old 3-D printers that reproduced books anywhere in the world on demand. All that was needed was the digital master file. He wondered what the world would have been like if the do-it-yourself machines and the e-book revolution never happened in the first place. It was stunning, he thought, how fast the world of big-boy publishing changed back then, only to disappear from greatness forever, the years far away. Must have been a crazy time, he supposed.
Tana returned. She sneered at Cormac. "Bikes are fine, old man."
"Stop calling me that."
"How old are you?" Tana aimed her coil-gun at his forehead and pulled the trigger. Cluck.
Cormac shuddered at the sound.
"Hahah! Gotcha, old man!"
"Tana, please stop."
"Stop what?"
"Stop being a nutcase."
"Well, I won't." She pulled her coil-gun and shot a coil-round just to the left of Cormac's head. "Go ahead and tell me how messed up I am, old man."
"Fine. You're not crazy."
"That's better." Tana slinked up to him once more. "So you really don't want to do me, huh?" She twirled around on one foot. "I'm twenty-six," she teased while she extended her words. "I know things." She winked, smiled, and turned around on one foot, like a toybox ballerina.
Cormac wasn't quite sure what got into him, but he decided to play along. He mimicked Tana's taunt and turned around in place. "Forty-six! I know shit too!"
Tana stared at him for a second, speechless. And then she burst out laughing, her voice bellowing against the distant unlit library walls. She laughed so hard she plunked onto her rear, the gel-lined leather armor insulating her from any pain. Dust and webs pillowed into the air. And even then she kept on laughing.
Cormac lowered his arms. "Glad you found that amusing."
"Yeah," Tana managed to speak in between snorts and bubbles. "That was good."
Cormac plopped down next to her. With a whisper he said, "Listen. I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm sure it'd be great, I mean you and me and whatnot. But you know what happen when we go back."
Tana wiggled her right foot. "Yeah, so what? Screw it, let 'em fry me. They can all go to hell! What do I care?"
Cormac looked at the metallic brace wrapped round her ankle. "Besides, I have a wife, you know?"
"Sure, yeah," Tana responded.
"Look, you are very beautiful. There's no question." Cormac brushed her face with his hand, her scars rumpled against his fingertips. Tana lowered her head so he couldn't see her eyes any more. "But we have things to do here. I need to find evidence of what happened. What they were thinking. Why they let it all go. The world. Everything."
Tana nodded her head but kept her face down. "Okay."
Cormac raised her head to meet his with his hand. When she looked at him, her young face reddened and puffed, and they kissed. She pushed herself on top of him and they kissed some more against the silence. The solar torches' low-pitched hums were the solitary sounds amidst their tangle interdict.
A loud rumble echoed throughout the abandoned library. The vibrations were so strong that they knocked one of the solar torches from its small tripod mount. Tana jumped off of Cormac and looked up. Together, they froze in place as if the lights were suddenly turned on and they were discovered by unseen canonical parents. The resonant boom attenuated into a raw, profound silence.
"Second level," Tana said. She grabbed her coil-gun and looked through the scope. "Wake up your girl," she whispered from the side of her mouth.
"Right," Cormac responded. He scuttled over to his roll-along bag and produced a sphere ringed by tiny propellers a foot or so in diameter. "Vana. Seek," Cormac whispered to the balloon. He crawled behind a four foot tall hill of books where Tana lay on her belly.
The probe-sphere floated up and made its way to the second floor balcony. It gently bounced off the balcony's outer rail and then ascended to within two feet of the ceiling arches far overhead. The sphere threw out a visible red laser to highlight the intruders position. Cormac's personal assistant band beeped low three times, a wrist-worn signal from Vana that there were three of them tucked away up there, somewhere beyond the verge of failed and worm-thinned beams.
"Three to two, e
asy enough," Tana whispered. She looked at Cormac, who presently scanned the balcony above. "Cor," she said with a pressure.
"What?" he said quietly but did not break his focus on the hovering probe.
"Get your rifle, dummy," she said with a hint of irritation.
"Good point," Cormac responded. He briefly smiled, scrambled for his glasses, and pushed them onto his face. He nearly forgot that his coil-gun was even next to him. He had been reading through books and pieces of books for seven hours straight.
"Throw down your weapons and surrender! You are trespassing!" one of the three soldiers announced from above.
Cormac said, "We're only here for the shelter! From the Great Storm! Please leave us alone. We don't mean any harm," he lied.
"This library is sealed! The Council of Emperor has declared it!"
"Yeah, well you should have tacked a damn sign on the front door that said that!" Tana yelled back.
Another voice came down from the dark balcony. "Surrender, or we will shoot!"
Tana yelled up to the shadowed balcony. "Fine! Come down here and get us, you ass!" She turned her head to Cormac, who lay belly down and behind the book pile. She never would have thought in a million years that books could be used as a protective bastion. Then again, they had no sandbags or hescos nearby, so the stacks of ancient books would have to do. "Stay right here. I'll take care of these shitheads," she whispered.
Cormac nodded. His face was red and hot, and his glasses were fogged over from his anxious evaporate. His eyes stung as acidified sweat trickled over them.
Tana rapidly plugged three magnetically propelled coil-rounds into the darkness above her. Thwwunkk-thwunnk-thwunnk, she shot up and away, eight times faster than any bullet ever crafted. The large center chandelier, ancient and festered with webs and cocoons, wiggled off a fragile phantom of its shape. The dust vibrated from the crystals and gently cascaded onto the floor below.
Tana spirited from the book pile's safety and cat-walked toward the balcony's stairwell, which was a spun iron skeleton construct. It creaked and groaned with her slightest touch. She knew she could never get up to the balcony unheard. Unseen perhaps, but not with the silent advantage that she needed. No, they would definitely take her down before she could plant so much as a single foot upon the balcony's upper landing.
The soldiers fired blindly at Cormac's position. Tana guessed that they were almost directly over her head. She could just barely see Cormac. He was about thirty meters away, hugging the library's floor even tighter while bullets rained around him and interrupted the gentle sleep of dust and paper. Cormac braved a quick peek-and-shoot as he fired his coil-gun. His shots were poorly aimed as he reached deep against the deadly unprotected air. Simultaneously, the soldiers shot three more times from their covered advantage. Vana, the probe, exploded as it was hit, and its internal hydrogen subsequently ignited. Vana was not a military probe but meant for research and exploration and the occasional critter control if the situation had ever called for it.
Incredibly, one of the Emperor's soldier-men yowled out in pain. "Ahh shit! I'm hit, I'm hit!"
It was sheer luck that Cormac had even shot one of them. The wounded soldier-man yelled out for all to hear, over and over. Tana could hear them scuffling about as the wooden floor-planks overhead whined and squeaked in response to the intrusions of weight and foot. She took advantage of the moment and flew up the spiral stairs of iron. The column growled so strongly under her boots that she was certain they heard her.
But they didn't. The soldiers were too busy trying to keep their fellowman from bleeding out. She heard one of them say, "Hold still, damnit, I can't get at it!" Tana arrived to the spiral stair's upper deck and then stopped. The soldiers had their backs to her as they hunched over their causality, a tactically ridiculous choice. They were probably young and inexperienced, she thought. In all likelihood, this was the first time they had dealt with a wounded friend in actual, real-world combat.
Tana looked around the balcony's sides and wished there were more targets to engage or soldiers to fight, but there were none. They were young, she considered. Oh well. They certainly weren't going to get any older. She looked down to Cormac's position on the ground floor but could not see him anywhere. He was safely pocketed behind the sanctuary provided by the four foot tall pile of books. "Hey!" Tana yelled and then shot her coil-gun straight at the soldier on her left side.
He flung himself away and then slid in his own blood across the ancient wood. Tana had hit his aorta, and the pressured blood gushed in streams of bright red ahead of him. The dark fountain distracted Tana for only a hair of a second, but it was enough time for the remaining live soldier to jump away and scramble toward the balcony's edge. He swung around, leaned against the wooden rail, and managed to shoot two rounds at Tana.
But he was too slow. Tana reacted and strafed to her right, just enough to throw the soldier's aim off. She shot him square in the chest, and he buckled against the oak and maple wooden railing, which was a delicate ghostly crick of its original self. He tried to regain balance to stand, but it was no use. The soldier's self-induced momentum pushed him back even more, and the wooden banister surrendered to the soldier's unbearable weight as if it were fabricated of trick-carved balsa. The soldier-man thudded and collapsed into a heap ten meters below.
Tana slowly walked toward the broken beams but did not lower her guard. She looked down. The soldierman thrashed and screamed, his mouth and face ringed in bubbles and foam and blood. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Cormac stand up, his face painted with relief that the skirmish was so quickly over.
Except that it wasn't. The soldier wielded his battle rifle, aimed at Cormac, and managed to fire off a single shot before Tana peppered him with coil-rounds. The soldier's grip let itself loose against his weapon's drop forged metal as he lost his mortal bound.
For Tana, the exchange was all a blur, a dreamlike smoky wisp beyond real. She flew down the iron spiral staircase and sprinted toward Cormac. He had managed to crawl behind the book pile out of sheer instinct.
She slipped and fell nearly on top of him while he lay there, hyperventilating. His normally red face was now cold and white. "Jesus, why did you do that? Why did you do that?"
Cormac only stared up at the beautiful arches overhead. Their shadow-lines twinkled and danced, animated to life from centuries of burial by the solar torches' light.
"Why did you do that?" she said for a third time.
"I don't," Cormac paused and then coughed while he breathed shallow. "I don't know." He wiggled his head side to side. "Just a damn idiot, I guess," he said and then smiled.
Tana crouched and stared, her facial scars raised and violent. "Shut up, shut up. Don't say that," she said. She was out of breath, not from recent events but because she was reasonably sure that Cormac would not be going home with her. She darted to Cormac's roll-along bag and reached inside. "Okay, what do I need?"
"Metal," Cormac coughed. "...Band," he managed to squeak out.
Tana tossed out clothes and food bricks and water bottles until she produced a steel bracelet. She held it up like a child who had won a new stuffed toy at the county fair.
"Yes," Cormac breathed.
Tana grabbed the roll-along bag and threw it next to him. Cormac held up his right wrist. Without further instructions, she strapped it around his arm. The metal surface changed to black. White characters resolved on its surface fifteen seconds later. It read BP55/27 P174 SO81%.
Cormac rested his head back. This is pretty bad, he thought. Tana had found the stash of auto-gel squares inside the bag. She grabbed one, broke the seal, and slapped it onto his wound. Cormac recoiled at the gel patch's cold slimy texture. "Can you...start an IV?"
"Yeah, sure," Tana responded. She was trained for just about anything that needed to be done in the field in a pinch. She could even operate a gravimetric radio if she had to. It was then that it occurred to her that she should have already known what to do without
asking. The short battle must have caused her to lose focus. She cursed herself for being so out of it. It wasn't like her.
Cormac closed his eyes and lay still, in spite of the pain. Tana extracted the instant IV kit from the medical case and lay the guidance prongs alongside of his inner arm. Two jets of antiseptic liquid squirted from the guides' inner surfaces, and then a hair-thin laser beam pointed toward the dead center of his antecubital space. A quick tinny beep signaled that it was in the best angle. She slid the needle past his skin where the laser terminated. Dark blood slowly dripped back. Tana then screwed on the IV solution, a self-contained box with a tube connected to one corner. The IV pack was self-infusing once it detected that it was connected. There was no need for gravity or anything else to push the life-saving fluid in. The device was designed to be plug-and-play and was even armored with a carbon-steel shell. It would work even if it was hit with live fire.
Cormac said, "Tana," and then relaxed to flaccid. The medi-band glowed menacingly red around his wrist. Two over-sized numbers replaced the previous readout: 2 and 6. Tana knew what they meant, but first she had to wrap the thumper around him.
She removed a rolled-up band and unraveled it. She positioned him onto his side, slid one end of the band under his shoulder blades, and then rolled him back. She pulled it taut until both of the ends met. And then she locked the large straps together with three easy-push snaps.
The thumper automatically inflated itself snugly against Cormac's chest until it could expand no more. She pressed the device's only button. After a few seconds and blips the thumper started rapidly pushing on his chest. It made a swooshing sound with each deflate, thump, shhwwew, thump, shhwwew.
She inspected the medical case. There were twelve ampules. Each one had a large number emblazoned on their plastic shells, two of each, numbered one to six. She grabbed the number two syringe and pushed it into the IV tubing's only access port. And then she repeated with the number six. She looked at the metal bracelet. It read wait, with a countdown in seconds: 105, 104, 103.
She gave him a few rescue breaths. Tana couldn't remember if it was two or four, but she figured two more wouldn't hurt, so she gave all four. The thumper detected her rescue breaths while she couched her mouth against his and briefly stopped its thumping while she desperately tried to revive him.
Winds of Change: Short Stories about Our Climate Page 20
