The guards broke up and began overseeing the work on the current project. The prisoners were never told what it was, but it seemed to be a physical shielding layer for a fusion plant. It was never anything difficult or complicated Having much of their higher intelligence turned off by the field, the =prisoners were capable of only simple, repetitive labor. Susan stopped in front of her section and began cutting the two-meter thick metal with a low intensity laser, penetrating only a millimeter with each pass. A fully operating industrial laser could cut out the pattern in less than a minute, but then there would be nothing for the prisoners to do.
The prisoners. Once the Resistance's elite Third Regiment, they were now little more than robots. As part of the long process to crush the will, memory was left intact while endorphin production was shut down. The result was a knowledge of what they had been, but no hope to ever return. Nonetheless, with little else to do but follow the same simple pattern for sixteen hours, Susan was unable to keep her mind from wandering down into the past, to the time when this endless nightmare had begun.
***
There was a rain of popping sounds from the seven hovercrafts as Mike kicked in the ion engines simultaneously. Twenty seconds until the hovs would enter phase. A burst of light flashed from the armory as lasers from Marks' group traced their way across the hanger. Susan's spine tingled when she heard Abdih's screech as his men poured from the mess area, splitting into two groups, one to the hovs, one to the armory. Eight seconds to go. Halteman followed Abdih's men, focusing his group of twenty or so on the hovs where the bulk of NATech's squads were, confused at the hov ignition but gamely fighting on. Two seconds left. Susan gripped the guns tight, then started as Abby slapped her on the ass and smiled. She laughed back at Abigail above the booming gunfire and rose to her knees, firing her weapons to give Abigail supporting cover. Time. Abigail jumped to her feet and ran for the rifle that lay beside Lena's dead body.
Susan was firing steadily at the hovs when suddenly they shimmered slightly as they entered phase mode. Knowing she had ten seconds, Susan began firing repeatedly directly at the hovs. The beams passed through, ripping into the NATech elite forces behind them.
There was a brilliant flash and concussion. One of the big guns was firing into the hanger! Susan strained to look through the pops and afterimages that coated her sight. She wanted to fire, but couldn't discern dogs from NATech. She dropped her two guns and picked up the other two, one a slug gun.
Her vision cleared sufficiently, Susan brought up the slug gun and began emptying the fifteen-shot magazine, coolly firing into every NATech target available.
And there were a lot of them. NATech shock troops, eight to ten cohorts, were flooding the hanger. Fortunately the punch gun had done even more damage to their own troops, trapped behind phased vehicles and fully exposed to the concussion, with the Third laying down a withering crossfire. She saw four converge on Sergeant Abdih, so Susie quickly fired three times, killing two and dropping a third. Her clip was emptied with the third shot, so she laid it down and brought up the energy gun.
Too late. Tomah was bleeding profusely from the neck and would be dead in seconds. Susie burned off his attacker's face, then turned toward the ...
Again there was a concussive blast as the punch gun exploded in the hanger. Susan knew it was an all out extermination raid, for NATech had no regard for their own. They were heavily armored, but those that were too close to the blast point died instantly. To NATech, it was worth some of their best troops to utterly destroy the Third.
Susan looked over toward Abby and felt her heart pound. The girl was slumping down to the ground, having been thrown against the wall by the punch gun. As she collapsed, her jacket jumped several times from slugs. NATech had switched off energy because of the chaotic nature of the fight.
Chaos was the operative word. Susan picked up and reloaded her slug gun, then jumped over the pile of supplies she had used for cover. Halteman was on one knee, his other leg blood-soaked, pulling the trigger of his pistol with incredible speed, then reloading in an instant. The effect was a nearly unbroken roll of booms, every shot seeming to find a target.
Three more were closing in on his left flank, so Susan took them out with her pistol. Then kneeling at right angles next to each other, the two continued firing, covering everyone else's withdrawal to the armory. Inside the room, behind the counter, came a soul-freezing mechanical scream. Marks had opened up with his high-speed slug gun.
Using the powered heavy cyclical gun the way a farmer would use his scythe, Marks made broad, sweeping arcs with his weapon. An entire cohort of shock troops, still clustered together, ceased to exist in a single heartbeat. He swung to the hanger mouth. The sun, blocked by wave after wave of troops, suddenly poked through as those same troops either broke formation or dropped to the ground, coating the hanger ramp with a slick sheen of blood. An attack hov screamed down the ramp and was caught in Marks' fire. The side shredded instantly, despite the heavier shielding, and the engine lost its stasis field, venting ion gas into the hanger. The hov, all personnel aboard riddled to doll rags, crashed to the hanger floor and screeched its way toward Susan and Greg. Susan leapt out of the way.
Halteman didn't. He staggered to his one good leg, then jerked as a slug caught him in the shoulder. Staggered, he was unable to dodge the onrushing hov. Knowing it was hopeless, he coolly fired four more times at NATech soldiers before being smashed by the now burning hovercraft.
Susan jumped forward, knowing he was dead, but still wanting to help. A hand grabbed her and she went limp, knowing there was a knife in the other hand. Caught unawares, the NATech soldier foolishly tried to change his attack. It cost him the last two seconds of his life as Susan shoved the gun under her left arm and fired five times, hitting him with four of the slugs, the last one in the head as he fell. Not bothering to check on him, Susan finished the last few steps to the armory and jumped over the counter, hoping they'd look before firing.
They looked. No one shot her. Susan looked quickly over the personnel still effective, then turned toward the entrance, bringing her gun up. More hovercraft were coming down the ramp and there was another heavy ...
The second punch gun fired, this time directly into the armory. Susan felt all the air crushed from her lungs and everything became red, then gray, then black.
Someone was slapping her in the face. She was on her knees and being held up. She raised her hands to defend weakly, but had them brushed aside. Rough hands went over her body, removing her armor and weapons. She opened her eyes.
The fight was over. Her attacker was an elite NATech shock trooper. He had just finished his efficient search of her body, and it was obvious he took no pleasure in it. He was just following common sense procedures. He pulled her up by her torn blouse and threw her sideways toward the doorway.
"She's clean, concussed and partially aware. Toss her into the prisoner transport right away, before she comes to completely."
She felt herself being yanked to her feet and dragged to a waiting phase hov. Unable to resist because of the concussion, she looked around in a daze.
NATech was in the midst of dismantling the base. Two soldiers were looking over the bodies, killing wounded dogs, and calling for medical assistance for wounded NATech personnel. There were at least 150 NATech in the hanger.
She felt her guard/escort come to a stop as a hov passed in front of them. She could have resisted at that point, and did half rise to her feet. But the guard slugged her in the jaw and she slumped back down, still conscious but otherwise ineffective. The guard turned back to the hov which had stopped in front of them. The driver and an officer standing beside it were having a heated discussion.
"You are not authorized to remove prisoners from this compound!" the officer insisted.
"Yes, I am, Captain. Here's my authorization."
A pause. "Geez! What's he want with her?"
"That's none of your damned business, Captain. And what he does with her i
s none of my damned business, either. It is my business to follow his orders."
"Yeah, I can't blame you. All right. I'll record her as killed in action. Just do me a favor, huh? Keep your people under control until after you're out of my sight, okay? You'd think they hadn't been with a woman in months."
The hov pulled away and Susan was carried to the prisoner carrier and tossed in, still dazed from the hit and from the punch gun.
She looked around the dark interior. Raul was lying there, his left arm looking unnatural. Marks was there as well, and perhaps two dozen others. She looked around but didn't see Abby. Strangely unmoved because of the concussion, she sagged against the bulkhead.
"That's it, Lieutenant! Everyone else is dead or too badly injured." He laughed shortly. "Which means everyone else is dead or dead."
"Very well, Sergeant. Lock it up and engage the field."
The door slammed shut and magnetic bolts locked them in. Dim blue lighting illuminated the interior. They felt a lurch, then started moving up the hanger ramp and out onto the desert.
There was a barely audible whine and Susan felt a surge of fear. They were using an alpha suppression field! Scared, she covered her ears, as did most of the others. It was a nearly useless gesture, but the only one available. Within minutes, their brains would have gone through the equivalent of a sonic lobotomy, limiting their intelligence and suppressing their will power. Their only hope now was a miracle.
They had traveled for no more than a minute when that miracle almost happened. Even through the now insistent tone of the field, they heard another, louder scream of sound, followed by a dull boom. A few seconds later, the concussion rocked the hov and made it slew to one side. The pilot seemed certain to lose control, but managed to keep on even enough keel to prevent capsizing. He righted the hov and accelerated quickly.
A second wave hit the hov moments later, but it did little more than rock the vehicle, causing Susan to grab instinctively for support. She should have covered her ears again, but she didn't really want to any more. Instead, she began rocking with the hov's gentle movement, and stared uncaring, unknowing, as the field drove into her mind, boring deeper ... deeper ...
***
The work shift had ended sometime while Susan was drifting in her memories, and one of the guards was pushing her in the direction of the compound. He leaned his mouth close to her ear.
"Another three or four months, little girl, and your brain will be permanent mush. Then you won't be good for work anymore. But we'll find something you're good for, won't we?" He whispered a few explicit suggestions.
She stared at him dumbly, unable to respond, then fell into line behind the one-armed Raul and walked quietly to the mess hall. They stood at a long table and quietly ate and drank their meal. They were served only bland, tasteless food, since anything other than providing nutrition would be wasted on them.
They were taken to the showers where they undressed and showered. Again, it was pointless to provide for more than the absolute essentials, so the water was cold and everyone showered together. Standing beside Billy, Susan should have felt some shyness or discomfort, but there was none. Nor was there for Billy. Neither cared.
They dressed into the clean clothes that they would work in tomorrow and were herded to bed. Although everyone had their own mat, there was only one barracks.
No sooner had they lain down than a guard walked over to the switch and activated the suppression field. Susan lay there quietly, waiting for the slight jolt that always accompanied an increase in the field.
The jolt came, and she started her little game. Whenever the field was increased, she always tried to remember as much as she could, to exercise her mind as a way to resist the conditioning and retain her intelligence. She counted to ten, then a hundred, then two hundred. She ran through the alphabet, first forward, then backwards. There had been some other exercises after that, but she had forgotten them. There only remained one more: Spell her name three times.
S-u-s-a-g-i ... R-l-u-s-a-n ... L-i-t-s-u-s-a-t-l-e. Satisfied she had passed her tests, at least for one more night, she went to sleep.
***
3:00 a.m. Tuesday, October 28, 2679 (Australian time)
"Barrett! We've got a group coming in for you to check on."
Philip Barrett groaned and rolled out of bed. Unlike his fellow dogs, Barrett had his own quarters. And unlike his comrades, his mind was in no way conditioned. Finally, unlike his friends, Barrett's hell was not diminished because of the numbing effects of alpha suppression.
Barrett was a prisoner because of his loyalty. Loyalty to his oath, loyalty to his comrades, loyalty to the Resistance. As a zombie, he had no way of helping them. With him at his medical best, there stood a greater chance that the Third would be rescued.
It was a chance that had diminished greatly, at least in his mind. He had worked hard at keeping his friends in the best possible health, but was slowly losing the battle. Given an opportunity to escape the suppression field now, Barrett was sure everyone would regain all cognitive abilities. But another three months, four at the most, and that opportunity would be gone, and he'd only be caring for NATech slaves. What would he do then? But there was still, despite all that, a slender hope.
***
The hope blossomed quite unexpectedly during a conversation he'd had with Forncheth only four nights previously. He had lightheartedly insulted the commandant when it was suggested he shift his medical practice to the more proper NATech clinic.
"Come now, Doctor. Surely you can see the futility in continuing to hope for rescue," Forncheth had chided him. "Not only has such a rescue never occurred, it most definitely is not going to occur with the Third. Everyone, including your precious TAU, thinks you were destroyed by the same weapons assault that destroyed Fifteenth, Forty-seventh and Eighty-third NATech brigades."
"What weapons assault? What are you talking about, man?" Barrett had hoped to goad the man into making a slip. He'd had enough to drink to give him that hope.
"You haven't heard?" The colonel seemed surprised. "No, I suppose you hadn't. Well, I can remedy that. Computer!" he shouted. "Access Colonel Forncheth, Level Four limited six. Single wall display."
The far wall faded away and a simple screen appeared.
"Search for and display mission against the Third Regiment of the Resistance that occurred on June Fifteenth, 2679."
The screen dutifully displayed the data, and Barrett read for the first time about the complete annihilation of the base only moments after their prisoner transport had left. He had no idea what could cause such a devastating attack, nor did the report. With suddenly ignited excitement, he did have an idea who could cause it, though. Like Susan, Doctor Barrett had witnessed the exchange between the NATech officer and the hov driver. Unlike Susan, who'd been on her knees, Barrett was standing and able to look into the open air hov and see Abigail's body lying on the deck, one of the soldiers already starting to undress her. This account was proof to him that she had somehow survived, and that this attack was what she would call payback. And payback, Abigail always laughed, was a bitch.
It was comforting to know she was safe, but it was also comforting because if she could, she would find them. If only he could send out some sort of signal. He had an idea. He turned away from the screen, dismissing it with a wave of his hand.
"Yes, yes, Colonel. I'm sure it says exactly what NATech wants it to say. Excellent propaganda to demoralize the prisoners and build up NATech personnel."
"You are calling me a liar, Doctor?" Forncheth inquired softly.
"Eh? Not at all, Colonel! I know you to be a man of your word. I'm calling that report a liar. The source is not one I would trust."
"You have a better source?"
"Not better, but one I would put a little more faith in. The Anchorage Herald has a small underground Resistance newserver that would or would not verify your story."
"Then give me the puterverse location and I'll show it to you."
>
Barrett laughed, refilling the colonel's glass. "I think not, Colonel! Nothing would be gained for me, and you would have NATech shut down that server in a moment. No, it's not worth the risk."
"Perhaps if you accessed it then?"
Barrett stopped his laugh and looked at the colonel long and hard. "Why would you do that, Colonel? I admit, I only need level one access as it's available to anyone with the password. But what's to be gained?"
"Nothing, Doctor! Nothing at all! But what's to be lost? Must everything be a game of win something, lose something? Here. I shall give you access and allow you to use your password." The colonel called up a keyboard and offered it to Barrett.
Barrett stepped up and looked at it. He glanced at Forncheth. "You understand that the password is good only once? That you'll not be able to trace it?"
"Frankly, Doctor, I could not care less about a two-byte Resistance newserver on the other side of the world. But this conversation is interesting. Please."
"Very well. Access, Philip Barrett, Level one."
The screen, still active, shifted and dimmed. Barrett typed in his password and was soon scanning the news article referring to the incident, and verifying the colonel's account. The colonel, for his part, was being very gracious in victory. Barrett turned off the screen, apologized to him, then allowed the conversation to drift to other subjects. Though he remained subdued on the surface for the remainder of the evening, inside he knew he had given his charges the best possible chance from his single access.
***
Barrett finished his long walk to the remote warehouse building that served as his medical facility and mounted the steps. He pulled the door closed behind him quickly; even in the late spring, these Australian nights could get chilly on the southern coasts. He stepped through a small entryway and into the main room. Ten meters up, dim industrial lighting illuminated the group of men inside.
Final Book Page 3
