The Quartz Massacre

by Rebecca Levene

A figure began to resolve itself in the shadows of the corridor ahead of him. He could see the glint of its sniper rifle. It was pointed at him.

  Rogue knew he had seconds at best. One of the Nort guards had fallen beside him. He dropped quickly to his knees, fumbling awkwardly with his bound hands to grab the cuff key from the Nort's belt, then fumbling some more to get it into the release mechanism of the cuffs.

  "Hurry it up, Rogue!" Bagman said.

  The key jammed in the third cuff. Rogue gave up, dropped the key, and wrenched the cuffs apart with brute strength. He was just up, fists clenched in a fighting stance, when the figure finally stepped forward out of the shadows and into a pool of light. His hands unclenched themselves.

  "It's a female GI!" Bagman said.

  She smiled at Rogue. "The name's Venus," she said, as if he might have forgotten. "I was sent here by Colonel Kovert as your back-up."

  Rogue couldn't quite take in the fact that it was her. He heard Helm muttering in his ear, and knew the other GI was having the same problem. Ever since the Quartz Zone, he'd thought of himself as all alone, the last of his kind. The existence of the GI Dolls hadn't really registered. Anyway, they'd always been told the Dolls were a non-combat unit. Judging by the professional way she was handling her sniper rifle, that had been a bunch of bull. Then what she'd said registered. "Back-up?"

  Venus smiled, the heart-stopping smile that had had Helm eating out of her hand from day one. "You're not the only one who wants to nail the traitor." She stooped to pick up one of the dead Nort's guns and tossed it casually to Rogue, then turned to stalk off down the corridor without even waiting to see if he was following. She had an easy arrogance that was both infuriating and provocative. "Come on," she said back over her shoulder. "You want to debate the chain of command, or do you want to kill that traitor and get your friend back?"

  "That's Venus?" Bagman said. "Now I see why you were so crazy for her, Helm. She's got the kind of body that kills - and I'm not talking about with a gun."

  "Yeah, well I'm still crazy for her," Helm said. "So keep your observations and your eyes to yourself. That goes for you too, Rogue."

  "Hey, the only thing I'm interested in is another soldier to help get Gunnar back and nail that traitor," Rogue said.

  "It had better stay that way," Helm said gruffly. Then his voice softened. "I can't believe she came back for me. Guess she must really love me, right?"

  Rogue didn't think there was any safe reply to that. He quickened his pace to follow Venus and pretty soon there was nothing to concentrate on but fighting. He guessed some kind of security camera must have picked up Venus's little rescue, because the Norts were coming thick and fast. There was no time for subtlety. It was just shoot, kill, move on.

  Except this battle was different from all the others he'd been fighting over the last days. He had another GI by his side - even if she was a Doll - and suddenly fighting was a pleasure again. He saw a Nort trooper training a Lazooka on Venus and took him out with an armour-piercing round before she even knew he was in danger, then spun and let off another round straight into the faces of the reinforcements coming at him from the narrow side corridor.

  He didn't even see the Nort who was creeping up the corridor behind him, belt knife raised for a killing blow. The first he knew of it was when Venus fired a shot that looked like it was coming straight for him but cleared his shoulder by no more than an inch to streak through his would-be assailant's throat.

  Venus grinned, the feral grin of battle that he knew he was wearing too. "No need to thank me, Rogue," she said.

  Helm sighed in his ear, "What a woman!" - as he was updating Rogue's heads-up display, pinpointing every Nort biosign on the base.

  The fight out to the docks was brutal and bloody, but the blood wasn't theirs. There was no way raw Nort troopers were going stand up against two GIs fighting back to back. Rogue, high on the crazy euphoria of battle, didn't think there was any force in the universe that could, not in a fair fight.

  He was almost sorry when it was over. It took him a moment to register that every Nort around him was a corpse. The only one left standing was the base commander, Gunnar clutched tightly in his hands. He could see that the commander's finger was squeezed on the trigger, so hard his knuckles were a leprous white, but Gunnar's muzzle remained stubbornly inert.

  "Do you want to, or shall I?" Venus asked.

  Rogue grinned at her. "Be my guest."

  The Nort commander had realised by now that his gun was useless. He drew the belt knife that hung at his waist and charged towards them with a hoarse cry of mingled rage and fear. Venus's shot dropped him like a sack of potatoes while he was still ten feet away.

  They heard the thud of booted feet on metal behind them and by unspoken consent Venus went back to cover the doorway while Rogue strode forward to pry Gunnar free from the base commander's already cooling hands.

  "Good to be back in friendly hands again," Gunnar shouted over the roar of machine-gun-fire as Venus fought back the last of the Nort troopers. Rogue wasn't sure, but he thought he detected a note of guilt in his friend's voice.

  He didn't have time to worry about it. "The traitor general, where is he?" he demanded.

  "Took a Hoppa out of here as soon as the shooting started," Gunnar said in disgust. "I heard him talking about Nu Atlanta."

  "That must be the Norts' next target," Venus shouted back from the door. Her eyes remained fixed outside as she picked off the Norts with clinical precision. "With what the traitor knows about our defences there, the attack on Nu Atlanta could make the Quartz Zone look like a field trip."

  Rogue knew that she was right. He realised that his mission had taken on a whole new complexion. Now his hunt for the traitor was about stopping a new massacre, not just revenging an old one. The patrol boat he found docked at the exit to the base couldn't get them out of there fast enough.

  Bland stepped delicately over a corpse, careful to keep his shoes away from the pool of blood spreading out through a crack in the chem mask from the hole in its forehead.

  Beside him, Brass let out a small yelp of surprise as the body below him let out a sudden twitch and a shuddering moan, dying but not yet quite dead.

  Bland paused beside the still warm corpse of the base commander to smile at Brass. "Well, it seems that once again our friend has made his escape."

  "Just as well," Brass agreed. "Can't have that Souther technology falling into Nort hands without certain people who shall remain nameless acting as the middlemen. Where would be the fun - and more importantly the profit - in that?"

  Bland nodded as he pulled out his radio, already tuned to the appropriate frequency. "There would be no fun, or more importantly profit, at all." He switched the unit on, and after a moment the signal was picked up at the other end. He listened for a while, saying nothing, because signals could be traced no matter how careful one's encryption. Then he slipped the unit back into the breast pocked of his suit.

  "Well?" Brass asked, raising an eyebrow.

  "Our operative has acquired the target," Bland informed him. "We must simply wait for events to run their course."

  EIGHT

  NO CHIP IN TEAM

  Rogue almost found the boat journey restful. The Orange Sea was probably the quietest theatre of the war, real estate that no one could possibly want to fight over. The waters were a virulent green-blue, brighter than any natural waters had ever been but not in a pretty way. The sky was a yellow shade of the same toxic pigment, so that where it touched the water it looked like a stained cloth, which had been folded upwards, enclosing the world in filth.

  Venus was lying in the bow of the boat, gazing out over the water as if she was hypnotised. Rogue shifted to the other side of the boat, as far away from her as possible, then took a moment to brace himself. He knew what he was about to say was an accusation, and he didn't like accusing his buddies. But at the same time he knew that there was something important he had to accuse them of.

  "So, wan
na tell me what happened back there?" he said.

  There was a pause, a tiny one, just long enough to tell him that whatever was said next wouldn't be the entire truth.

  "You were there too, Rogue," Helm said after the pause. "You saw what happened."

  "Yeah, I saw my gun jam up during a firefight right when I most needed it. So I guess what I should have asked was why it happened."

  There was another pause, a longer one this time. "I'm sorry," Gunnar said eventually. "I let you down, Rogue. I don't know what happened."

  "Scan out, Gunnar. You did let me down, no doubt about that," Rogue said harshly. "But I think you do know what happened."

  "That's out of order," Bagman said, trying to sound angry but coming out defensive instead.

  "It's okay, guys," Helm said. "It was my idea, I'll tell him. And it was an accident, Rogue, whatever you think. I'd suggested to Gunnar that he might want to think about, you know, jammin' up at some non-crucial moment."

  "Yeah?" Rogue said. "And why was that?"

  Helm started to speak but Gunnar interrupted. "I was only thinking about it, Rogue, honest! Just considering the possibility, I wasn't ever gonna do it, and then I don't know, I musta accidentally triggered some mechanism inside and it happened for real. But I'd never have left you high and dry in a fight on purpose, never. You gotta believe me!"

  "Well, maybe I do," Rogue admitted grudgingly. "But that still doesn't tell me why you were even thinking about it."

  "'Cause you're never going back to base!" Bagman blurted. "You're just going to keep on and on, and you'll never catch that traitor and by the time you've finished all three of us are going to be dead, only this time there'll be no coming back from it."

  "I promised you I'd bring you back before that happened," Rogue said, but he could feel his anger diminishing. At the other end of the boat he could see Venus watching them under half-closed eyelids, but she didn't join in. She knew this was a discussion where she had no place.

  "I know," Bagman said. From the tone of his voice, Rogue knew he'd have been hanging his head if he was able. "I know you'd never let us die on purpose, Rogue. It was just - getting bodies again was a higher priority for us than getting the traitor. You don't know what it's like, to lose all that and think that you might not get it back again."

  "It's true, Rogue," Gunnar said, his tone unusually contemplative. "It's not just about not being able to eat, or breathe, or feel the earth beneath our feet. It's about losing ourselves, who we are. Too much longer in here and I'll stop being Gunnar. All I'll be is the gun, and there'll be nothing of the man left to put back in a body."

  Rogue didn't like hearing his own fears for his friend echoed back at him. Maybe they were right. Maybe he had been so focussed on avenging his dead friends that he'd lost sight of the ones who were still living.

  "Okay," he said. "I get where you're coming from. But now we're talking about an attack on living Souther forces, we're talking about another massacre unless we can stop it."

  "Agreed," Helm said. "And after that..."

  "After that," Rogue said firmly, "I'm still going after the traitor, because while he's still alive he's still a threat to the South. But I give you my word: I'll get you back to base before anything bad happens to any of you."

  "Your word's good enough for me," Bagman said. He sounded like he meant it.

  "You ain't never let us down before." Gunnar sounded about as apologetic as he ever got. "All I ask is that you remember we're still GIs, we're still a team - you've not suddenly got promoted general. If there's a decision to be made, we make it together."

  "Just like old times," Rogue agreed. "What do you say, Helm?"

  "What the others say," Helm said. But of all of them, Rogue thought he was the only one who didn't entirely sound as if he meant it.

  He didn't have a chance to press him further because Venus suddenly stood up from the bow, making the little boat sway in the rising swell. Her expression had lost the dreamy cast she had worn as she watched the water. It was now combat-sharp, like it had come into better focus.

  "Potential hostile twelve degrees starboard," she said. "I'm getting it in my sights." As she was speaking she unsnapped the sniper rifle from her waist. It fitted into her shoulder like that was where it belonged, but when she'd got it there, her finger hesitated on the trigger. She squinted through the eyepiece. "Amend that," she said after a moment. "Looks like one of ours."

  Treading carefully so as not to unbalance her, Rogue joined her in the bow and raised Gunnar himself. The distant black dot on the horizon suddenly expanded, filling the whole field of his vision. Venus was right. The ship - wreckage, really - carried Souther insignia. But more than that, he recognised the figure standing up in it, frantically waving a white flag.

  "Sister Sledge," he said.

  "You know her?" Venus sounded astonished, and maybe, he thought, just a little jealous. He didn't know what to make of the latter, except hope that Helm hadn't noticed it.

  "Saved our bacon back on the mainland," Rogue said. "Guess we'd better go and pick her up."

  Venus dropped her weapon and turned to stare at him incredulously. "You're kidding, right? Rogue, we're not messing around here."

  "I know," he said, leaning over the control panel and laying in a new course when it became clear that she wasn't going to do it. "But I owe her. And there's no way she could last much longer out here. Her boat's half eaten-away already." When Venus continued to stare accusingly at her, he added, "I'm not leaving her there to die."

  Venus shrugged and flopped back down into the bow. "Have it your way. But remember there's a legion of Southers over at Nu Atlanta who are gonna die too unless we get there in time."

  Rogue did remember, so he made the trip over to the wrecked boat as quickly as he could. His eyesight was keener than any ordinary man's, so for several minutes he was able to watch the chem nurse peering anxiously towards him, wondering if the ship heading towards her was friend or foe. When he got nearer still, her expression darkened as she saw the Nort insignia on the front and back. The white flag dropped from her fingers and he thought he saw her tremble. But then she must have spotted the tall blue figurehead at the front of the approaching boat and her expression lightened again. She was grinning when he drew up alongside her.

  "What's a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?" she asked.

  Venus raised an eyebrow at Rogue, but ignored the other woman.

  "Coming to rescue you," Rogue said. "You'd better hop on board. We're heading into battle, but we can drop you shore-side before the action starts."

  Sledge did as he asked, moving far less lithely than Venus, almost tipping the boat over in her scramble to get onboard.

  "I came onboard a troop carrier to treat some wounded," she explained as Rogue tried to get the vessel back on an even keel. "A second later a Nort torpedo hit. I was the only survivor and by the time I'd regained consciousness we were drifting out of sight of land."

  "Yeah?" Venus said. Her gaze took in the other woman with one glance and dismissed her at the same time. "What unit?"

  "Sixty-second seaborn," Sledge said without missing a beat. "They've been brought up to bolster Nu Atlanta's defences. Nort subs are crawling all over the seas around here." She didn't seem offended at the questioning, though her mouth had a slight upward twitch as she spoke to Venus, as if she found the Doll's hostility amusing.

  Venus noticed it and the lines of her face tightened. She didn't say anything more to Sister Sledge, just turned to face Rogue. "Still think it would have made more sense to leave her floating," she said.

  "Ah come off it, Venus," Bagman said. "You're just jealous 'cause she's hotter than you."

  This comment was, of course, just calculated to promote harmony between the two women. If Bagman had still had a body Rogue reckoned it would have been laid out on the deck just about then.

  Sledge clearly decided it was time to make peace. "Sorry, didn't realise you were on a priority mission.
If you can just leave me a transmitter I'll go back on the boat and wait for a Milli-Com rescue craft."

  "Sounds like a plan to me," Venus said. She moved subtly closer to Rogue.

  "Forget it," Helm said. Rogue realised with a sinking feeling that he'd picked up on Venus's jealousy and was fuming about it. "We don't abandon someone in the Orange Sea. Let Rogue look after her, Venus, and you and me can catch up."

  But as they closed in the final distance to shore, Venus went back to lying in the bow, ignoring them all, and Helm was forced to talk to the chem nurse along with the rest of them. Rogue reckoned the best thing he could do was make Helm think he was interested in making whoopee with the newcomer. It wouldn't take too much of an act: she was pretty, her high cheekbones catching the light and her hair picking up golden highlights when the late evening sun briefly burned through the toxic clouds.

  Not as pretty as Venus, though, a treacherous part of him said, his eyes unconsciously flicking to the lean blue form at the other end of the boat. He ignored that internal voice. It was only going get him into trouble.

  "How long you been on Nu Earth?" he said to Sledge instead.

  She sighed. "Too long."

  "Hey," Bagman quipped. "When you're tired of Nu Earth, you're tired of life."

  "What I'm tired of is death," Sledge said. There was no hint of a smile on her face now. "I came here to help, to make a difference, but there's only so much you can do. Most of the time I'm just making the pain less."

  "If you want to help, how about helping us?" Gunnar said. "I know biochips aren't your field, but do you reckon you can tell if we've started degrading already?"

  The chem nurse frowned uncertainly. "Well... I can take a look at you, but I don't know... I'm no engineer." She looked at Rogue, as if asking for his permission.

  He shook his head. "It's up to the guys if they want you to poke around in their heads."

  "You can poke around in mine any time," Bagman told her, a leer in his voice.

  Sister Sledge hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged and reached for the gun. "Okay. Give me a second. Err..."