More city blocks. The construction style remained the same, but porticos gave way to entry vestibules and other signs of residential buildings. Each structure shared walls with the building next to it, creating rows of houses and shops that would have appeared as one if not for variations in paint and shutter styles.
Wyatt eyed the street with caution. His helmet fed him a green threat indicator through his neural stub but he wasn’t quite sure he believed it. After all, the Ibex had appeared without warning. The constricted hadn’t been aggressive, but then they were.
He opened another private channel. “Chris, we shouldn’t stay exposed like this. I want to get off the street.”
“Not much choice on this stretch. We need to cover half a klick north, and that’s not the way the alleys run. When we cross the river, we’ll get back to cover.”
They passed more buildings and came to a substantial-looking bridge. Ten meters down, a wide river flowed briskly past them and churned against the pylons. Yellow sconces on the embankment fought in vain to illuminate stairs descending into the mist.
“Lieutenant,” Chris called. “We head down the stairs here. A maintenance catwalk runs underneath the bridge, so stop at the first landing and swing over the rail.”
“Copy that.”
Finn disappeared down the stairs, then Chris, then Laramie. Wyatt switched his neural feed to the video from Laramie’s helmet. The narrow metal staircase rocked back and forth with each trooper’s step. Below the steps, a current slid by with swift menace. Wyatt noticed that Laramie had both hands on the stair rail, and walked at a slower pace than the Marine in front of her.
“Laramie.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t look down.”
A pause. “Not helpful.”
Wyatt reached the stairs and climbed down to the first turnaround landing. The people in front of him were well on their way along the ricketiest catwalk he had ever seen in his life.
He had just hoisted himself over the rail when his leg practically exploded beneath him.
Agony dropped him face-first onto the catwalk. Every nerve, every muscle fiber seemed to contract at once with such force, it ripped the conscious thought from his mind like the rush of a mad river. His hands clenched the expanded metal of the grating, desperate to hold fast, filled with such tension that he was sure he would squeeze holes in the catwalk. The roar of the river filled his ears. The only thing that kept him from screaming was that he couldn’t unclench his teeth.
He gradually became aware of his own breathing. At first he didn’t know where he was, or why he was on his hands and knees. His arms shook as they held him up. The inside of his CORE helmet felt damp with sweat. Then he realized the anguish was no longer there. The pain was gone—but then, so was all feeling in his leg, the way a deafening noise could rob all sense of hearing.
Wyatt managed a glimpse at his prosthetic. His legs seemed fine. Everything looked normal, no big deal.
What just happened?
Clacking approached from behind. Wyatt turned to see Maya reach the landing. She paused to assess the catwalk, not noticing what had happened to her squad leader.
Wyatt tried to stand up but found his leg with the prosthetic wouldn’t respond—not even the part of him that was still organic. He grabbed the railing and forcibly manhandled himself into an awkward, bent-over posture with his good leg. His sense of touch had fled from the artificial sensors wired into his nerves. His prosthetic was a dead weight, frozen into a half-bent position.
Maya swung over the railing behind him.
He couldn’t let his troopers see him struggle. Wyatt grabbed the handrails and hauled himself forward to make room for the rest of the squad. A dull ache filled the dead space occupied by his leg. He had to figure out why he couldn’t control it.
At least they were sneaking around undetected in the dark.
On cue, Wyatt’s threat indicator jumped from green to orange.
“Ground patrol on the bridge,” Chris said. “Everyone down.”
Wyatt dropped to one knee—a ready-made pose, given his situation. He saw Chris and Laramie exchange hand signals. RESIT had a large vocabulary of gestures for use in the soundless environs of space, but Chris flashed some that Wyatt didn’t recognize. Something specific to the Marines, perhaps.
He could hear the engine of a heavy vehicle on the bridge. It stopped with a squeal of brakes. A few more noises preceded a hatch opening.
Laramie turned back toward Wyatt. She made a V with her fingers and pointed at her eyes behind the CORE faceplate. Then she gestured above her head.
Okay, Wyatt nodded. Get eyes on.
Come on, leg. Work.
Laramie gave a thumbs up and waddled around Chris toward the stair hanger at the far embankment. Wyatt switched again to Laramie’s video feed. He noticed this time she didn’t look down.
At the stairs, she hiked herself over the railing and crept cautiously upward.
Wyatt watched as an armored personnel carrier with six large wheels came into view. The body had a heavy, sloping hull designed to deflect ground blasts. A 25mm rotary cannon sat atop a mounted turret, brooding and lethal.
This was the police? Wyatt thought it looked more like mechanized infantry.
The rear hatch had been popped open and half a dozen armed men milled about. Two figures lined the far railing of the bridge, facing away. Laramie zoomed in. One man seemed to be urinating off the side.
“Stretching?” Wyatt whispered to himself.
He clicked the comm. Laramie wouldn’t reply verbally, but she could still listen. “Get a close-up on the vehicle,” Wyatt said.
The video feed swept over the APC, recording dimensions for later analysis around armor thickness and speed. An exterior bulge next to the rear hatch caught Wyatt’s attention.
“Go to that container housing on the back. What is that?”
Laramie zoomed in. Wyatt scowled as he realized he was looking at a drone pod.
This patrol carried a groundside version of what Razor had used on the freighter near the quantum gate. RESIT used it as a last-ditch direct-action weapon. But the housing on this one appeared worn and well-used.
Everything Chris had told them about martial law, curfews, and corralling infected citizens took on a new level of immediacy.
“Break’s over, back in!” shouted a man’s voice.
The armed figures filed back into the vehicle and pulled the hatch shut. A moment later the engine revved and the truck lurched into a steady pace across the bridge toward the warehouse district.
The noise faded around a corner. Laramie flashed a thumbs up from her observation point and the team silently finished crossing the catwalk to the other side.
Halfway up the far stairs, Wyatt’s leg started to tingle. A moment later he found he could move it again. Whatever had caused his prosthetic to fry the wireless connection to his brain had mysteriously resolved itself.
At the top of the embankment, Wyatt tried to partition off his own problems and called Chris on a private channel.
“That group of police didn’t look like they were directing traffic, Chris.”
A few seconds ticked by without a response. Wyatt started to signal again when the reply came.
“They’re not. That was an extermination team. But they’re gonna wish they were just traffic cops when I’m done with them.”
“Do you—”
“We’re almost at the safe house.” Chris sounded annoyed. “Let’s get there before we run into any more distractions.”
The remaining column filed out from underneath the bridge and returned to the cover of narrow back streets. Wyatt couldn’t wait for their march to be finished. His leg seemed to be working again, but his entire body ached from the heavy gravity. Whatever was waiting for them at the safe house, he hoped it involved sitting still for a while so he could inspect his prosthetic.
Armed death squads. Airborne patrol vehicles. Military spacecraft quarantining th
e quantum gate. Chris’s explanation of the government’s plan made no mention of doctors treating the ill. No research on the nature of the infection. No scientists racing for a cure.
Wyatt bought into the existence of constriction. He had seen it in Parrell. Yet were these the actions of a desperate society battling a health crisis? Were the government’s actions really focused on resolving the outbreak? To Wyatt, it seemed like dictatorships had risen from less.
“We’re here,” Chris said on the comm.
A series of five-story row houses lined the sides of another constricted street. The facades consisted of the same brickwork construction they had seen on the other side of the bridge but with more grime and a dingier appearance. Wyatt didn’t see anything interesting or distinctive to draw attention. That must have been the point.
The Marine master sergeant turned to face the others coming up behind him. “We have a security protocol. Finn and I will go in first. Wyatt, when I signal for you, you come in. Then we can file in the rest a few at a time. Anyone who’s waiting outside needs to keep out of sight. Sid will stay with you to help pull security. Got it?”
“Copy.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
Laramie dispersed the troopers to the edges of the alley. Wyatt let his Vector drop against his harness but kept his hand on the trigger group. He followed Chris not toward the front door but to a utility cover hidden behind some bushy shrubs.
“Something wrong with the door?”
Chris chuckled as he pushed the cover aside. “Yeah. It’s rigged to blow up.”
“You seem to like explosives.”
The Marine unlocked a metal door half-buried in the dirt. “You make do with what you have. Our team took a supply convoy full of it a couple weeks ago. We’re short on small arms, but we’ve got plenty of boom.”
The door opened to reveal a narrow ship’s ladder-style staircase that descended into the dark ground. Even with his CORE helmet, Wyatt couldn’t see anything in the confined area.
“Keep a couple meters between you and me, Lieutenant,” Chris said, taking the first few steps. “These people know who I am. They don’t know you yet. And they can have an itchy trigger finger.”
17
Safe House
Juliet, Alpha Centauri A
23 February 2272
“Where have you been?” shouted a young girl’s voice.
Chris engaged in a heated debate just beyond the door where Wyatt was told to wait. He couldn’t see the participants, but the initial speaker sounded incredibly pissed off. The screaming gave way to sobbing. Another man spoke in a voice too low to hear. Then murmurs, followed in a subdued conversation that lasted nearly a minute.
“Lieutenant,” Chris said finally. “You can come in.”
Wyatt took a deep breath and pushed open the door.
The room had yellow walls, a large oval table in the center, and a cupboard full of dishes in the corner. Five people stood around the table. Chris hovered on the left. Finn stood next to him with a teary, preteen girl clutching his waist. A muscular Hispanic man filled the far doorway with a Vector aimed at Wyatt. A second man stood next to him, overweight and balding.
The pudgy man scowled at him. “So, you’re the freaking hero that let the train get through?”
“Elton,” Chris said.
“Fine. You want me to be nice, I’ll be nice.” He glared despite the words. “Elton Forrestal. Deputy Chief of Staff for Governor Hewitt. Or rather, was.”
“Lieutenant Wyatt Wills. Havoc Company, RESIT.”
“RESIT,” Elton repeated, the word sour on his lips. “What, you guys finally turned on each other, too?”
“Wyatt’s from Proxima. They aren’t the guys who float around Juliet.”
“Proxima?”
“Yes.”
Elton looked Wyatt up and down, his face filled with obvious disgust. Without another word, he shook his head and shuffled out of the room.
Wyatt arched his eyebrow at Chris.
“You’ll have to excuse him. It’s been a hard couple of months.” Chris’s voice betrayed a new, sudden weariness. “Over in the doorway is Alonso—who will be lowering his weapon, thank you. You might remember Alonso from the train. He took the aerobike back after we stayed with you.”
Wyatt and Alonso exchanged nods and relaxed their mutual posture.
“Over here,” Chris continued, “is Calista, Finn’s little girl. Not so little any longer, I guess. She was worried about us.”
The girl stood behind Finn’s back and eyed Wyatt through strands of black hair. Wyatt guessed she was maybe thirteen.
“You’re from Proxima?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“They’re here to help, Calista,” Chris answered. “We’ll talk more about it later. Let’s let the rest of them get inside.”
She seemed to accept this answer. Wyatt wondered privately what defined help.
Over the next ten minutes, the remainder of Wyatt’s squad filed into the house. Chris vanished to talk with Elton while Finn took over as host. Finn explained they had a number of safe houses around the city that they used to stage raids and smuggle key people to safety. Their current location was nice and quiet, and the neighbors rarely cared what went on so long as it didn’t involve gunfire. But the police were relentless. The Marines had established multiple defensive positions on the roof, first floor, and basement. The front door was wired to blow to hell anyone who tried a forced entry.
Finn showed them to a bedroom that was so crammed with mattresses, it might as well have been a giant trampoline. “You can crash here. I’m sure you guys must be beat. I’ll ask Calista what we have to eat.”
“Thank you.” Wyatt looked around at the mattresses. “You have a lot of guest beds. How many of you are there?”
“Enough to cause trouble. We’re just one cell. There are more.” Finn scratched the reddish stubble on his chin. “But you saw the patrols. We’re getting killed off, slowly but surely.”
Wyatt studied the Marine. Deep-set brown eyes stared back from a sea of freckles. Finn stood a little shorter than Laramie but had the same stocky build.
“You’re from here, aren’t you? From Juliet.”
“Born and raised.”
“Is the rest of your family safe?”
The hesitation betrayed the answer. “Get some rest, or whatever it is you’re going to do. I’ll check on you in a bit.”
A moment later, Wyatt and Laramie were alone.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I don’t know. You?”
“They know how to fight, I’ll give them that. But I’ve been watching them. Chris seems like one of those guys who’s angry at everything. You know the type. Sooner or later they lash out, do something stupid.”
“Like kidnapping?”
Laramie gave him a careful nod. “Governor Hewitt is the most powerful man on the planet. Are we really falling in with the guy who filched his daughter?”
Wyatt thought for a few moments. The last thing they wanted was to draw attention to themselves on a covert recon. But he also didn’t feel like they had other viable options inside a foreign, unfamiliar city. Laramie was a country girl. His RESIT team was trained for space operations. Without help, they would stick out like a sore thumb.
“We’re pretty far out of our element, Laramie. We need to go with the hand we got dealt.”
“Let’s just be careful, LT.”
“No argument there. Set up a rotation for security—with our guys. Two at a time, on our own comms.”
“On it.” She looked at him again with an odd look. “You should grab some sleep, LT. You look like hell.”
“I’m sure we all do.” No sooner had he said the words than a wave of weariness fell over him. The heavy gravity tugged at him. Wyatt shook his head, trying to make the feeling pass.
Laramie wouldn’t have any of it. “It’s okay, Wyatt. I’ll get our guys
set up. Someone’s got to take the first nap shift. It might as well be the boss man.”
“No,” Wyatt started.
“Really.” She gave him a stern look.
The yawn crept out of his mouth before he could stop it. “All right.”
“This may be the first time you’ve ever listened to me.”
It was a sign of his exhaustion that Wyatt couldn’t remember making a wisecrack back.
***
A field of stars twinkled across the night sky. Wyatt marched over a shallow hill to find a sandy beach, gentle waves rolling to the shore from Lake Michigan. He loved coming here at night, free from the city lights and bustling noise and constant motion. The lake meant escape. Peace. Wyatt popped off each shoe from the heel and pressed his bare feet into the cool sand. It caressed his skin, crawling between his toes, clinging to his feet with each step he took toward the water. When he drew a deep breath, the humid air carried the tang of sea life mixed with the scent of the swaying grasses that clung to the nearby dunes.
Home.
He walked toward the water. The tiny waves poured onto land only to tumble back into the lake without a chance to sink in. Wyatt closed his eyes and listened to the harmony of life and nature. He wished Sara could be here. He could still taste their last kiss from saying goodbye, the salt deep in his lips. Why wasn’t she here?
The waves crashed, and Wyatt knew immediately from the frothy aftermath that something was different.
He opened his eyes to a harsh glare that made his stomach drop. The lake had turned black, save for the alkaline foam that floated across the surface. Proxima peeked over a horizon of the broken salt flats and banished the gentle stars with angry flares. The green sea grasses were now the stunted dark weeds of Tiamat. Wyatt felt his face contort with disgust.
The air burned. He turned to move away from the water and felt his feet on fire. Then his ankles, his leg. His leg. He watched in horror as the sand reached up around his calf like the tentacles of some ghastly octopus. Chemical burns blotted his skin before the flesh tore away in tiny strips. Wyatt’s leg disintegrated to the bone, only the bone wasn’t white, but rather charcoal gray and stainless steel, studded with mounting points for false muscles and the lies of being whole.
Escape Velocity (The Quantum War Book 1) Page 12
