They took up positions on either side of the door, now blocked open by the arm of one of the fallen Transport soldiers. Stug peeked through the crack.
“Looks clear,” he said, one eyebrow raised.
“Don’t you ever get tired of that joke?”
Stug popped his head through the open door. A laser blast shot past him, and he pulled back like a turtle on speed.
“Close?” asked Hatch.
“I’m bald now.”
“You were bald before.”
“Oh.”
They were stuck. And running out of time, Hatch knew. How quickly was the question.
“We’ve got to clear those soldiers.” Hatch could almost hear the tick-tock of the okcillium clock in his head.
“I have an idea,” said Stug. “I’ll go first.”
“I like this idea already.”
“When I say, open the door. You’ll know what to do after that.”
Hatch nodded. He had complete confidence in his old war companion.
Stug pulled the dead porter blocking the doorway into the stairwell. Hatch caught the door before it locked tight. The sergeant picked up the corpse and held it vertically in the air in front of him, the dead soldier’s toes dangling over the floor.
“Now.”
Hatch yanked open the door and Stug barreled through the opening, the dead porter leading the way like a lifeless shadow cast in front of the sergeant. Stug hunkered down behind his corpse-shield, producing a long, ululating yip-yip-yip woooooooooo roar that heralded his charge up the long corridor.
Laser fire erupted from the far end of the hallway, slagging flesh and uniform together. Using Stug and his body-shield for cover, Hatch moved into the open and returned fire, slowly walking up the corridor behind Stug’s steam train like an Old West gunfighter. He popped one of the soldiers with his first shot, but then Stug was too far away from him. Too close to the enemy for Hatch to shoot safely past the sergeant.
The other porter—there were only two—wised up and began firing at Stug’s feet, clipping the sergeant in the ankle. But instead of stopping, Stug merely bellowed louder as he stumbled forward. When he neared the ankle-shooter, Stug launched the corpse, pockmarked with laser blasts and scorched beyond recognition, ahead of himself.
The porter fell backward beneath the weight of his dead comrade and shot wildly. Stug easily ripped the laser pistol from his hand and pummeled him with it till Hatch got to him and caught his hand in mid-air.
“I think he’s done.”
“I hate being shot,” yelled Stug. A little boy with the lungs of a bear. “Hate it!”
Hatch bent over and searched the guard who no longer had a face. He found what he was looking for, a small box with two buttons on it. He took the man’s laser pistol and stuck it in his belt, then handed the other porter’s sidearm to Stug. He picked up a bandolier of frag grenades the dead man had been carrying and draped it over his back. “Can you walk on it?” he asked Stug.
“Yeah. Still don’t want me to think?” Stug gestured at what remained of the corpse-shield and its former comrades.
“I rescind my order,” said Hatch. He pushed the buttons on the device he’d found. First the left, then the right, then both at once.
“What are you doing?”
“This thing should open the cells down here. It’s not working.”
“Here, lemme,” said Stug, holding open his palm.
“I just tried—”
“You remind me of my ex-wife,” the sergeant griped. “Gimme.”
Hatch handed it over. Stug smashed it against the wall.
There was a humming along the entire length of the corridor. Tumblers turned. Locks disengaged.
“See?”
“One of these days you’re gonna do something like that and screw us worse than we already are.”
“But not … today.” Stug tried to pronounce the cliché triumphantly. But the searing pain in his ankle wrapped the words in a grimace.
Heads began peering out of cell doorways. Some of them were bleary-eyed. Some emaciated. All were terrified by the laser fire they’d heard, even through their sealed cell doors.
All but one.
“Man Mountain!”
Stug’s injured scowl fled his face. “Anne!” This time when he ran up the hallway, his stride was limping, but his arms were empty and open.
“Put it down!” repeated Pusher. “We’re on your side!”
“How do we know that?” asked a woman from behind a post. She’d already put three shots over the door—the same one Hatch and Stug had passed through on their way to The Dungeon, minutes before. Now it was full of armed soldiers.
“Bridget!” called Logan from his cot, weakly. “Stand down. Soldier! Identify yourself!”
“Sergeant Emma Ellis, Alpha Squad, Bestimmung Company, TRACE!”
“Logan, we don’t know these people—”
“Logan? Logan is that you? It’s Sergeant Ellis—Pusher. Remember me?”
Logan coughed, trying to form words. Bridget glanced around her post at the woman she’d been shooting at. Matthias stood up from his crouching position on the opposite side of the room.
“It’s okay,” wheezed Logan, trying to be heard over the facility-wide alert. “I know them. It’s okay.”
Entering the room cautiously, Pusher kept her laser pistol in one hand but raised both as a gesture of peace. Hawkeye, Trick, and Bracer followed her through the door, weapons ready. Bridget and Matthias both mirrored Pusher’s stance, weapons retained but pointed at the ceiling.
Trick rushed over to Logan as his soldiers took up guard positions at the door. The entire room stared open-mouthed at them. The red-alert lighting and screaming alarm only heightened the tension in the room.
“Logan, you’ve looked better,” said the captain, kneeling beside him.
“Felt better too.”
“Stug and Hatch. Seen them?”
Logan nodded. “The Dungeon. Looking for Mary.”
Trick looked relieved, if annoyed. “Sounds about right.”
“Listen to me,” said Logan, grabbing Trick’s left arm with his only remaining hand. “You need to get my people out of here.”
The captain stared at him, then looked around the room. He catalogued what he was seeing in his head: more than two dozen civilians, many of them hardly able to move. And the enemy would likely attack them at any moment. They aren’t the mission, his training said.
“Hatch promised,” Logan lied.
Trick sighed. That sounded about right, too. “Sergeant!” he yelled over the klaxon. “Start ushering these people up the stairs. Get them to the roof.”
Pusher hesitated, and Trick hardened his expression. She nodded and began giving orders to Bracer and Hawkeye.
Turning back to Logan, the captain of B-Company asked, “What about you?”
“I’ll slow them down as best I can. Just get them out.” The ex-TRACE spy dropped his head to the floor. “Wish I still had my Bowie knife—”
Behind Bridget, the door exploded inward. Caught in the back by the blast, she was killed instantly, pummeled by fragmented concrete and steel. Trick threw himself over the prostrate Logan, covering the wounded man’s face against the raining debris. Screams erupted from the civilians in the room as they scrambled faster toward escape.
The shapes of Transport soldiers appeared through the smoke and rubble, firing wildly and randomly, assuming everything in the room was a target. Trick pushed himself to his knees and passed a last glance at Logan. The captain’s expression carried with it a hard truth.
“Go!” Logan said. “I’ll buy you what time I can!”
Bracer and Pusher had immediately dropped to defensive positions flanking the rear doorway. They returned Transport’s fire as the civilians threaded between them, pushing one another forward in their haste to find freedom. Hawkeye had taken point and was leading the Wild Ones toward the roof. A few of the salvagers went down, shot in the back, as the p
orters established a defensive perimeter around the gaping hole they’d blasted in the far wall.
Transport troopers poured through that hole like cockroaches. A few surgical strikes by Pusher and Bracer took out enough porters to force their comrades to crawl over them, stemming the tide somewhat. But Trick knew his team would be overrun soon. In the end, warfare is always about the math.
Trick scrambled backward toward his soldiers, leaving Logan to his chosen fate. When Trick reached the firing line held by Pusher and Bracer, he turned and knelt, blasting laser fire as fast as his finger could pull the trigger. That gave Pusher and Bracer a chance to pass through the door behind them. They immediately took up positions in the hallway.
“Now, sir!” yelled Pusher. She and Bracer provided cover as Trick withdrew under heavy fire, lasers blasting chunks of concrete from the walls. The Transport soldiers were hunch-running to take up positions behind the load-bearing posts in the center of the room. Several were nearing Logan’s cot. As Trick passed through the door, Bracer stood and pushed the last of the Wild Ones in front of him up the stairs.
Trick saw the final scene play out. Logan had played possum, but now he threw off the blanket covering his mortally wounded body, his one good hand gripping a laser pistol. Three skulking porters went down. The fire from the cot drew the attention of others, and numerous laser blasts zeroed in on the bedridden man who was shrieking, taunting death. An instant later, only a smoking ruin of bandages and pulp remained. It was the last image Trick saw before Pusher slammed the door shut.
The sounds of laser fire in the common room were muffled now. But closing the door had been a symbolic gesture at best. The porters were coming.
Pusher motioned for Trick to stand back, then turned her pistol on the locking mechanism and fired a long burst where the door and jamb met. The metal on both sides melted together. “It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing,” she said.
“Nice job, Sergeant. Now get these people to the roof before the porters remember there are other doors they don’t have to bang their heads against.” Trick mentally tipped his hat to Logan as he spoke. Saving as many of the Wild Ones as he could was one promise he intended to keep. “I’ll go after Stug and Hatch.”
“But sir—”
“Go, Sergeant! That’s an order! Up, up, up!”
Legacy
“Sean!”
Hatch moved quickly past Stug and Anne, who was back in the big man’s arms, her own arms wrapped around his bull neck. Hatch stuck his pistol in his belt and knelt beside Mary’s cot. He took in her face, the combination of sadness and joy and relief creating a new expression he’d never seen before. But that was Mary Brenneman. Just when you thought you had her figured out…
“I thought you were dead,” he said, touching her cheek.
The old fire of the QB—her eternal will to resist a destiny beyond her control—replaced her initial relief at seeing him. Her eyes focused sharply, her jaw muscle clenched. Hatch was glad to see it. Her cold dedication to survival filled his heart with hope.
“No, not dead. Not yet,” she said. Stug nodded a greeting to her and carried Anne into the corridor to give them a moment. “I see Stug’s as subtle as ever.”
“We have to get out of here,” said Hatch, taking her hand. “No time to explain. Come on.” He began to rise and draw her forward off the cot.
The sadness returned to her face.
“Sean, I—”
“Talk later, move now!”
Hatch pulled her arm with more urgency. He’d expected her to swing off the cot and bound into his arms. Instead, she half fell out of bed, releasing her hand from his in a desperate attempt to catch herself on the cold floor. She screamed in pain and Hatch backed up, unsure how he’d hurt her.
The blanket fell from across her legs.
Hatch looked down. At first his brain refused to process what his eyes saw. Though still wearing the tunic of her TRACE uniform, she wore only civilian shorts from the waist down. And her legs … they didn’t look like legs at all.
Bloated with wounds, they resembled blackened alien appendages attached to a human torso. Her shins were dinted inward in multiple places. Cavities marked them with purple bruises like craters in the smooth surface of the moon. Like someone had scooped out bone and left bloodied skin resting in its place. Her knees, too, were swollen, the body’s reaction when bones are crushed. The top of a shin bone shone white where it poked through the skin.
Hatch couldn’t stop staring at Mary’s legs. Or thinking, perversely, of how he hadn’t been able to stop staring at them when they were together—what seemed like a lifetime ago. They were now a grotesquerie, a sideshow for carnivals, a tribute to human cruelty inflicted for pleasure.
Mary cried out again as she tried to raise herself back onto the cot. Her voice bound humiliation and fury in a ferocious shout of pain.
Hatch snapped out of it and hurried to help her. He heard her gasp, groaning, as she tried to minimize her movement.
“The day they took me at the armory,” Mary said through gritted teeth. The throbbing pain subsided to its normal level of the past week: a constant, piercing ache. “They broke my legs, Sean.”
Hatch found Mary’s eyes. His own wavered beneath tears as the reality of her condition bloomed inside him like a black cancer. Fear, rage, grief, frustration—all fought with one another inside his gut.
“Gutierrez,” she said, her own gut churning at the look on Hatch’s face. His expression betrayed a feeling of abject defeat. “He learned his lesson when I was a kid, I guess. He wasn’t going to let me escape again.”
“We’ll get you out,” Hatch whispered. “Stug! Stug, get in here!”
“Sean—”
“Quiet, no time for debate. There’s a bomb—”
“A bomb?”
“No time to explain! Just sit tight … Stug, get your ass in here!”
“Sean!” she said, trying to make him stop, to get him to see reality.
“What the hell’s taking so long?” asked Stug as he stuck his head back in from the hallway. Anne was still in his arms.
Hatch turned his eyes to the big man, and Stug stopped moving. If he’d been holding anything other than a twelve-year-old girl, he might have dropped it then and there. Stug had never seen the look on his friend’s face he found there now. He wasn’t even sure what it meant. But the hopelessness mixed with an unwillingness to accept the inevitable frightened the big man more than a firing squad of porters ever could.
Then his eyes found Mary’s legs.
“Holy Christ.”
“Put the girl down,” said Hatch. “I need you to help me make a litter.”
“Sean, there’s no time for that, you said so your—”
“Shut up!” Hatch’s voice was sharp and bitter. He looked at Mary, apology in his eyes. “Just—we can do this.”
“Stug!” came the call from outside. The sergeant pried his eyes away from Mary’s mangled legs to see Trick jogging up The Dungeon’s main corridor. He was pushing his way through a sea of Wild Ones heading for the stairs and escape.
“Friend or foe?”
Stug said the words automatically. Some part of his brain knew Trick was probably here on orders from Neville to arrest two deserters, but he was still processing the sight of his maimed QB.
“Friend, you big lummox!” chided Trick as he reached the doorway and clasped Stug’s hand in a loose greeting. “What’s all the—”
Trick followed Stug’s gaze. “Captain …” was all that came out.
There wasn’t time for more. Hatch was moving around to the head of the cot. “Stug, get in here and help me secure her. Get your belt off, you too Trick, and we can tie her down for evac.”
Trick moved in to follow orders. Stug put Anne down and followed him in.
“Sean, you’re not listening to me,” said Mary.
“You’re damned right I’m not.”
“Stop!”
The old QB’s voice
of command. The Queen Bitch tone that had earned her that nickname from Neville.
“Sean … the move will kill me. My legs … my legs … they’ve treated them just enough to keep me from dying. They even drop in some morphine now and then. But it’s not enough. You can see the gangrene starting. I won’t survive if you pull me out of here like this.”
“You don’t know that,” Stug said. His voice was quiet.
Mary blinked. “The pain when I move, Sean. It’s horrible.” She sounded embarrassed to admit it. To ask her subordinates, even those she considered her friends, for an ounce of consideration.
“Please,” said Hatch, kneeling beside her again. “Let me try. All of Columbia is about to die, Mary. Please … at least let me try to save you.”
“Let him try,” said Anne. “You always have to try.”
Mary sought the girl’s eyes, so like her own, then dropped her head to the cot, moaning. “At least give me my blanket. Please. At least give me that.”
Stug picked it up off the floor and draped it lightly over her shattered legs. As Hatch used his belt to secure Mary on the cot, the sergeant turned to Trick and asked, “Sitrep topside?”
“There’s a shit-ton of porters in the common room. Pusher and Bracer are evacuating as many salvagers as possible. But we’re gonna have to fight our way up.”
Stug glanced down at Mary, then shared a knowing look with Trick. There was little chance they’d get out carrying her on a litter. Everyone in the room knew it but Hatch. Maybe he knew it too and simply refused to accept it. The odds were just too great.
Transport would kill them all.
Anne will die, Stug realized. It was like a physical blow to his heart to admit it.
“Sean,” he said, not knowing how to speak the truth out loud. Hatch glanced at him, tying the buckle securely around Mary’s chest. “Sean—”
“You gonna help me here or we just gonna wait for them to come to us?” Hatch was grinning like his old warrior self, his hope renewed by the insane idea that they could get Mary out and somehow all survive.
Stug felt a hand in his. A small hand.
“You always have to try,” said Anne, looking up at him.
Tales of B-Company: The Complete Collection Page 24
