by Matt Forbeck
“We have to try,” she said. She glanced back at her son and then shot the doorman a look that informed him that she would not be dissuaded. “Is it better to sit here and wait for the end?”
“Surely it won’t come to that,” the man said, but his voice trailed off at the end.
“Many thanks to you too, Mr. Goodman,” Dorothy said, showing her true affection for the man. “But you’ve always been a bad liar. We have to try. For Peter’s sake.”
She whispered these last words, although she suspected her son heard her just the same. At this point, she didn’t—couldn’t—care. She just needed Mr. Goodman to move.
The man stood there and stared at her for a moment, then flushed with embarrassment, although for her or for himself Dorothy could not be sure. “Of course, ma’am,” he said softly. He unlocked the door and held it open for both Peter and her.
“Thank you,” Dorothy said. She surprised herself with how grateful she felt.
“Cardinal watch you,” Mr. Goodman said. He tipped his hat to them as he let the door close behind them. “And keep you safe.”
Dorothy grimaced at the man, then spun on her heel and ran with Peter into the night.
The side street on which their apartment building towered lay deserted. If not for the wailing sirens and the planes growling overhead, she might have been able to convince herself that it was just another typical night in this Imperial city.
As she and Peter neared the cross street, though, the extent to which panic had gripped the city became apparent. The streets were clogged with people on foot. Car traffic had gridlocked so badly that people had given up on driving and abandoned their cars where they sat.
A few of the cars had been overturned, and those cars and some others had been set on fire. Dorothy found this strangely comforting, as they provided illumination in the parts of the city in which the lights had gone dead.
People charged back and forth in every direction, seemingly without aim or reason. Dorothy put her arm around Peter’s shoulder and pressed into the river of people, angling for a current that would take them in the direction she needed to go.
At one point, she nearly tripped over a fallen man who lay unconscious in the street, possibly trampled to death. She wanted to stop to offer him a hand up, but the crowd pressed her past him before she could try.
The windows of every shop they passed stood shattered, and people stormed in and out of the places carrying food, drink, and anything else they could get their hands on. Some of the looters carried things such as couches and refrigerators, although Dorothy couldn’t imagine what use those things would be in times like these.
As they reached the corner of Sterling, Dorothy spied a squad of Imperial soldiers standing atop the back of a flatbed truck, licking their wounds and loading their weapons. One of them sat next to the others, clutching to his head a fistful of gauze that was soaked through with blood.
“Excuse me!” Dorothy said to the soldiers as she and Peter drew near. “Excuse me!”
The troops ignored her, not wanting to be bothered by a woman wandering through the riot with her son. They had bigger concerns, she knew, but she needed their help and was determined to wring it from them.
Shouldering her way across the stream of people, Peter in tow, Dorothy finally made her way to the truck. She pushed her son underneath the truck, where he’d be relatively safe, then climbed up on the back of the flatbed.
“Please!” she shouted.
At first, she thought that one of the soldiers might shoot her. The only thing she could think of was, Don’t let my body fall in front of Peter. But then the sergeant in charge of the unit came over to speak with her.
“My husband is in the 501st,” Dorothy said, shouting over a burst of gunfire that seemed far too close. “How can I get to the family transport point?”
The soldier’s face fell. “There’s no way,” he said. “Serenity Center’s been cut off.”
“Please!” Dorothy said. “There must be some route we can take.”
The soldier scowled, then began barking out directions to her, stabbing with his finger to illustrate how she should proceed. She repeated the plan back to him, and he nodded, then wished her good luck.
She lowered herself back to the pavement and pulled Peter out from under the truck. She kissed him once more, then put her arm around his shoulder again and dived back into the seething mass of people.
14
Dorothy shoved her way through the crowd until she and Peter made it to the far side of the intersection. Then she led him into a darkened alley that snaked around the backs of the buildings. On any other night, she never would have dared enter such a place, but according to the sergeant she’d spoken to, she had no choice.
They emerged from the alley onto Paladine. The towering building before them had gone up in flames, and glowing pieces of it were falling off—or were being tossed—and cascading down from its heights like meteorites. They splattered on the street, sending splashes of sparks everywhere.
A team of medics raced past, bearing wounded soldiers on stretchers. Bursts of automatic gunfire sounded from above, and Dorothy craned her neck to see a brace of heavy machine guns chattering away at something farther down the street, providing the medics with cover.
Peter stopped for a moment, frozen in fear, and Dorothy could not blame him. Determined to get to the transport point, she gave his arm a hard yank and hauled him into the street after her.
As they ran behind the medics, Dorothy glanced back to see what the soldiers were firing at. At that moment, a rocket shot down from the rooftops and sailed overhead.
Dorothy followed the rocket’s trajectory and saw it slam into the street behind her. The explosion illuminated an entire army of mutants marching up the avenue behind them.
The rocket smashed into the lead mutant, a monstrous creature that walked like a man but stood as tall as a giant. It seemed to be made entirely of thickly stacked layers of muscles without any skin to cover them, and it carried a sixteen-barreled rotary machine gun Dorothy recognized as an Imperial Charger.
Chargers were too heavy for a man to carry and usually sat on a reinforced tank mount. Dorothy spotted the remnants of the mount dangling from the bottom of the gun as the monster shrugged off the rocket blast and kept coming.
Behind the great beast marched scores of smaller creatures. Some wore military uniforms, but others were dressed in civilian clothes, and Dorothy spotted a few women and children among them. The most terrifying creatures, though, charged along at either side of the giant mutant.
These two beasts stood on four legs like a horse but had a monster’s upper body—including a set of arms and what could only be described as razored bone wings—where a horse’s head would be. A reptilian head topped each creature’s shoulders at a height of at least a dozen feet, and their eyes burned bright and red at Dorothy. Somehow, though, she was sure the creatures could smell her more than they could see her.
Dorothy screamed and sprinted up the street, pulling Peter after her as fast as their legs would carry them. At one point, they wound their way past the medics, the men in the stretchers slowing them down too much.
They emerged into another intersection. To their right, close to where dead street signals had once flashed, a full platoon of soldiers stood behind a barricade made of wood and barbed wire. They had their guns leveled straight ahead, pointing at Dorothy and Peter.
Dorothy’s heart seemed to stop in her chest. Then she realized the men were aiming not at them but over them. She turned and saw a new horde of mutants charging up the street at them from the left.
Dorothy screamed as the soldiers opened fire, heedless of what that might mean to Peter and her, but the great roar of their guns drowned out the sound. She ducked, grabbed her son’s hand, and pressed through the intersection as fast as Peter’s shorter legs would let her.
As they raced forward, she dropped their suitcase, and it spilled open on the slick pavement.
Peter stopped and tried to go back for it, but she refused to slow down or let him go.
“Leave it!” she told him. If they didn’t reach the transport in time, they would have no need of any of their belongings, no matter how precious they might seem.
At the end of the street, Dorothy spied their goal: the Serenity Center. They had made it here. Now all they needed to do was reach the roof.
The square in front of the skyscraper stood clogged with hundreds of people struggling to get into the place. Someone had shattered the plate-glass windows fronting the foyer, allowing people to stream in faster, but once they got inside, they had to wait for the elevators to come to pick them up.
Dorothy forced her way up to the front, elbowing aside those who refused to move. A team of well-armed soldiers stood in front of the bank of elevators, refusing to let anyone in. A handful of bullet-riddled bodies lay bleeding on the floor as a testimony to how seriously they took their mission.
“I’m an officer’s wife!” Dorothy shouted when she got close enough for one of the soldiers to hear. “My husband serves in the 501st!”
The Imperial soldiers, part of the legendary Blood Berets, scoffed at her at first. When she produced a pair of tickets, though, their tone changed.
“The transport’s about to take off, ma’am,” the lieutenant said. “You’ll have to hurry.”
The crowd protested as the lieutenant escorted Dorothy and Peter past the other Blood Berets and into the elevator, and the desperate souls surged forward. A trio of bursts fired over their head cowed them once more, driving them back.
Lieutenant King opened the gate to a stairwell and ushered Dorothy and Peter inside. “A few floors up you’ll reach an elevator,” he said. “It should take you right to the top.”
“Thank you,” Dorothy said, near tears.
King grimaced. “Don’t thank me yet, ma’am. From what I hear, it’s not much better on the roof. Good luck.”
At that moment, the people in front of the building started to scream. Then came an unearthly howl that no human voice could have produced. The whirring chatter of a rotary machine gun accompanied the noise, forming a symphony of death.
“Fucking hell!” King said. He slammed the iron gate shut behind Dorothy and Peter, then charged forward to join his men. The screams only grew louder.
Dorothy grabbed Peter by the hand again and charged up the spiral staircase. After a short, awful climb they reached the elevator lobby, where they found a small car waiting for them, its doors gaping wide.
An instant later, the doors slid shut, enclosing them in the elevator car, and Dorothy felt them lurch toward the heavens. The screams and gunfire faded far below.
Dorothy took advantage of the quiet moment to hold Peter to her once more. “I love you more than life,” she said. “No matter what happens, you must know that.”
“I love you too, Mum.” Peter wiped the tears from his hot cheeks, and she felt him tremble against her.
Before the doors opened, Dorothy’s heart fell. She could hear the roar of the people on the roof over the transport’s growling engines. When the elevator arrived and opened, the noise went from tolerable to deafening.
Scores of people stood gathered around the transport ship. It could have held only a hundred souls at full capacity, and Dorothy could see by how low it rode on the roof that it had reached that limit long ago. A trio of Blood Berets armed with Interceptor submachine guns stood before the transport’s entrance, and they were taking no more passengers.
One of the Blood Berets looked at his watch and gave the signal to the crew aboard the ship to wrap things up. They had to leave, and soon.
Once more Dorothy fought her way to the front of the mob. She hadn’t come this far to give up now. She noticed one thing as she shoved the people in front of her aside: Almost all of them were grown men. There were few women and no children to be seen. That alone gave her hope.
As she got closer to the transport, Dorothy realized that it would be impossible for the soldiers there to hear her pleas. The airship’s engines roared almost loud enough to drown out even her thoughts.
Even before she reached the front of the mass of people pressing toward the aircraft, the soldier looked at Dorothy and waved her away. He looked like he hadn’t slept for weeks, and he wasn’t ready to have yet another conversation during which he had to turn people away and let them die.
Dorothy ignored his efforts and pushed on. When she reached the edge of the mob, she realized she had been right. Shout as she might, she couldn’t get the man to hear her.
She reached for her tickets and then realized they weren’t there. She must have dropped them somewhere after entering the building, but she had no idea where. Even if she’d known, she had no time to backtrack for them. The ship would leave in a matter of seconds.
The soldiers backed up onto the transport, each of them covering the others as they moved. The crowd surged forward, some of them grabbing on to the craft’s landing gear, desperate for any sort of ride off the roof, no matter how dangerous it might be.
The Blood Berets fired several bursts of bullets. A few of them went into the air to frighten back the bulk of the crowd. Others, though, made an example of the men who’d tried to cling to the outside of the ship. Such actions might have risked the entire craft’s safety, and the Blood Berets couldn’t have that.
The transport began to creak into the air, and the three Blood Berets leaped back through the entrance. As they stood there, waiting for the craft to take off, Dorothy made one last desperate plea. Forgetting her own fate, she picked up Peter and held him up before her. The adrenaline coursing through her veins made him as easy to lift as when he’d been a baby.
“Please!” she screamed, even though she knew no one could hear her. “PLEASE!”
The last Blood Beret to jump onto the ship handed his weapon to one of his compatriots. Then he reached down and lifted Peter into the safety of the transport.
Peter struggled in the man’s arms, squirming about to shout for his mother. “No, no, no!” he said soundlessly, shaking his head so hard that Dorothy feared for his neck.
She looked up at her son, tears streaming down her face. She screamed his name hysterically. “Peter! Peter! Peter!” She didn’t want him to remember her in these last moments like this, but she couldn’t keep herself together. She knew that at least he would survive, but the terror that gripped her stole that comfort from her heart.
“Mum!” Peter yelled. “Mum!”
“Go!” she finally shouted. She had to be strong for him, she knew, if not for herself any longer.
The transport lurched into the air, and the mob surged ahead. Men shoved forward, desperate for their last chance to live. They climbed over each other and hurled themselves at the ship, grasping at the landing gear and anything else on which their fingers could find purchase.
As the transport lifted off into the air, another overburdened airship came scudding in from down the street. The pilot of the ship carrying Peter did not see it. He must have been too concerned with the scene below him to worry about what might be above.
The higher ship smashed straight into the top of the ascending ship, knocking open its engine compartment. The lower airship burst into flames immediately and then plummeted from the sky like a falling star.
Dorothy rushed to the side of the building, heedless of the danger to herself, the possibility that someone might shove her over the edge. When she got there, she watched the transport plummet toward the street, shedding occupants as it fell.
Then the craft smashed into the pavement below, killing a crowd of refugees who had given up trying to get on the transport and had been looking for hope elsewhere. The fireball that rose from the explosion rolled up the side of the skyscraper until it singed Dorothy’s face.
Dorothy stared over the side of the building in utter disbelief. She could not grasp what had happened. Her last hope—her last reason to live—had died with her son. She had nothing
left.
She was still there, watching the fire burn below, when the mutants finally breached the locked door at the top of the stairs that reached to the roof. The men nearest the door screamed at the sight of the black-blooded creatures, but not for long. In an instant, the mutants made quick work of them, slicing them into nearly unidentifiable pieces.
Dorothy turned and stood at the roof’s edge, waiting for her turn. With Peter gone and Paul probably dead as well, she had nothing left to care about. She no longer wished to live. When death came, she would return its cold embrace.
She didn’t have long to wait.
15
Constantine sat in the boardroom alone. The walls had been stripped bare, with only bits of trash and the naked ends of wires curling along the edges of the floor. Of all the rich furnishings that had once been in the room, only the large table and the chairs in which the council had sat for so many years remained.
The world was coming to an end, and it would happen on Constantine’s watch. This much was clear. He wished he could have somehow seen it coming.
Since his early years in Capitol’s diplomatic corps, Constantine had often wondered if all of humanity stood on the brink of destruction. The launch of the Third Corporate Wars had seemed to confirm that horrible suspicion. He’d done everything in his power to fight against that, to bind together the various corporate factions under the umbrella organization of the Cartel, but they’d reminded him time and again why most people regarded the Cartel as little more than a bit of tissue trying to cover the mouth of a cannon.
Constantine slid open the glass doors that towered behind his chair and stepped out onto the wide stone balcony. He strolled to the tall railing and leaned against it, resting his arms on it as he stared out at the panorama of the city beyond.
New London was an Imperial city, and it showed in the ornate style of its architecture. More than any other place in the solar system, it was the cradle of Imperial civilization. Although the true seat of power now rested in the Reading Palace on Luna, all Imperials knew that their heritage began here. And here it would soon end.
