The December Protocol

by Devin Hanson

  He’d be damned if he died now.

  With an effort, he calmed the panic in his thoughts, concentrating on taking slow, deep breaths. His heart rate dropped, the pounding frenzy in his temples eased away. There was no light within the crate, even around the cracks, so he shut his eyes and extended his other senses. He felt a faint vibration. He was on a tram, or some other form of suspended transport.

  Okay, that was a start. He was traveling somewhere. From Acheron Cluster, the longest trip by tram was no more than twelve hours. How long did he have left? The stabbing pain had been enough to wake him, but it wasn’t really that bad yet. It would keep getting worse until he finally died, but that was many hours away. He estimated he had maybe eight hours of functionality left before the pain grew so bad he’d be reduced to curling in a ball and waiting for death.

  When he had found Dr. Lenbroke, he’d still had had two days left before his scheduled treatment. No, that wasn’t right. It had been in the evening of the second-to-last day. Then he had spent the night in the cage with the girls, and fought Anton and his men in the morning of his last day. Given the strength of the pain, it was in the evening of his scheduled treatment day.

  The methodical thought process eased him. He had already been traveling for several hours, then. He would reach his destination, wherever that was, before his eight hours were up. Systematically, he began flexing his muscles, trying to get circulation moving in them again. Compared to the pain in his vitals, the ache of cramped muscles was barely worth noticing. But if he was going to come out of the crate in any sort of fighting form, he couldn’t do it with numb limbs.

  For a while, the pricking of returning blood to his extremities distracted him from his chest pain, then the numbness faded and he was left with the twisting knife in his chest. It felt like heartburn and appendicitis, mixed with the sickening agony of a blow to the groin and the stabbing throb of a kidney punch, all at once.

  Pain is a difficult thing to quantify in the moment. After a certain threshold, inane attempts at numbering the levels became pointless. On a scale of one to ten, Min would have said with confidence that he was at a solid nine. But then some new pain would stab through him. Would that be enough to raise the bar to ten?

  What about when that new pain blended in with the general agony and a fresh lance raged through his body? What could he call that? Eleven? And what if he grew accustomed to the persistent torment? Did that somehow lower the level of pain he was in to an eight, or maybe even a seven?

  Pain is subjective. A degree that might be considered intolerable could become unremarkable, given the proper mindset and circumstances. A man with a broken leg can run for miles if he is being chased by wolves, when he might otherwise be in too much pain to even stand.

  The body has mechanisms for managing pain, such as endorphins and adrenaline. Similarly, the mind has methods of embracing pain: necessity level, anger, distraction, pure cussedness and willpower, to name a few.

  Min had ample opportunity to experience all of these. The crate he was in offered little in the way of sensory stimuli, so he had nothing to do but wallow in the agony. There were times when he was sure he was about to die, that all his calculations were off and he was minutes away from complete organ shutdown. Other times, sometimes only minutes separate, he found the pain to be unremarkable, certainly no worse than he had suffered innumerable other times. He blocked the pain with meditation, and when that failed, his body flooded his system with endorphins. And when those glands ran dry, he screamed his agony into the uncaring darkness.

  If he could just do something, even for a moment, if he could see something, hear something, smell something other than his own drenched animal pain, it would give him something to focus on.

  Time passed. Slowly or quickly, it was impossible for Min to tell. He could have been in the crate for ten minutes or five hours. After the endless period of stillness, Min felt a jolt in his crate as it struck something. New pain surged as muscles tensed, but it was welcome. Change, even if it brought more pain, meant things were coming to an end. Maybe not now, maybe in ten minutes, or an hour, but soon things would end one way or another.

  Further jolts and a sudden thud as the crate left the suspension system flooded Min’s body with adrenaline. The pain was ever-present, how could it not be, but it was secondary to the coiling readiness of his body. When the lid opened, he would do harm.

  A minute passed. The peak of endocrine response faded and Min’s focus slipped. Gradually the pain returned, leeching the strength from his muscles and corroding his willpower. When the lid finally opened, it was all he could do to lift his head and squint into the blinding light.

  “Holy shit. It’s Min Yang.”

  Min’s eyes adjusted slowly. Hands helped him stand from the crate and guided him to a soft cushion. When he could open his eyes for more than a second without the light burning them, he gradually made out a familiar face.

  “Captain Jiahao?” Min said. He swallowed, his teeth locked against a moan of pain. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why the Captain of Cluster Affairs had helped him out of the crate. He had been shipped to the captain?

  “You look like shit, Min,” another voice said.

  Min turned his head, squinting against the light and made out his lieutenant, the woman directly senior to him and the one who had assigned him the Chow case in the first place. “Lieutenant Ruu?”

  “Well, at least his eyesight works,” Shun Ruu said wryly. “With investigative skills like that, it’s no wonder you blew the case.”

  Sudden cramps doubled him over and he clutched his stomach, unable to stop the keening that escaped his lips.

  Lieutenant Ruu’s face tightened with concern and realization washed over her. “He’s going into withdrawal. Min! Look at me.”

  Min tried to focus on her face. Her grip on his jaw supported his head and forced him to turn and face the light directly. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but the washes of pain.

  “His pupils aren’t constricting.” Ruu’s voice came from far away. “He’s running out of time. A few hours, tops.”

  “Isn’t that in a manual somewhere?” Captain Jiahao mocked. “Don’t engage the suspect when you’re due for a Womack treatment?”

  “You have a stash, right? Hurry up and give him a serum shot. I’ll make sure he reimburses you.”

  “Or maybe we wait.”

  “What? You can’t be serious. Look at him!”

  “Think for a second, Lieutenant. This might just solve all our problems.”

  Min lost track of the conversation. Desperately, he latched onto the shred of meaning he had gleaned. There was Womack serum nearby. It was close, and Ruu would give it to him. With an effort of will he forced his body to relax despite the waves of agony sweeping him.

  He opened his eyes and found the captain leaned over him. The man’s eyes were cold. “Are you listening, Min?”

  Min nodded fractionally. “Please,” he croaked, his throat sore from his earlier bouts of screaming.

  “Here’s the deal, Min. We’re in a bit of a pickle. You know too much. Lieutenant Ruu believes if you gave your word, you’d drop the case and forget what you know. I think she’s wrong, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.”

  Min closed his eyes for a moment. The effort of following the meaning in the captain’s words was draining. What did the captain mean? His thoughts moved sluggishly, and the underlying meaning to the captain’s words finally sunk home. Captain Jiahao was the corrupt marshal? And Lieutenant Ruu was also complicit. That might explain why Ruu had received the transfer. Jiahao was securing his chain of command with corrupted officials.

  Jiahao seemed to be waiting for something, and Min concentrated. The captain had asked him a question.

  Ruu was partially right. If he gave his word, he would follow it to the best of his ability. It’s just that he would rather die than promise to let these child-killers get away with their crimes.

&
nbsp; He spat, but didn’t have the lung power to drive his spittle to the captain’s face. It rolled out of his mouth and slid down his chin. Rage poured over Jiahao’s face. Abruptly a heavy pistol was inches from Min’s face with the captain’s finger tight on the trigger. Min leaned forward and pressed his forehead into the barrel.

  “Fucking do it,” he rasped.

  “Captain!” Ruu snapped. “Not here.”

  “You know what, Yang? I’ve changed my mind.” The captain put up the pistol, breathing heavily. “I want to watch you scream as your organs tear themselves apart. You’ll beg me for the treatment before the end, and I will make you promise. You’ll eat your God damned righteousness before I let you die.”

  Jiahao grabbed Min by the front of the shirt and hauled him to his feet by brute strength. Min dangled in his grasp and struggled to get his feet under him. Pain exploded in Min’s chest at the sudden movement and his vision pulsed as he teetered on the edge of consciousness.

  The captain waved a syringe in front of Min’s face with his free hand. “Your treatment, Min. It can end, right here, right now. All you have to do is promise me.”

  Min got his feet under him and with great difficult managed to take his weight. His knees threatened to buckle and he swayed, but he looked Jiahao in the eyes. “Never.”

  The captain’s face twisted. “We’ll see. Ruu, get him into a suit. We’re going for a drive.”

  Giving the order was easier than following it. Ruu left the room and came back a minute later with a general issue marshal space suit. It took her several minutes more to wrestle Min into the suit and Min didn’t fight it. He didn’t have the energy, and the thread of sympathy he saw on his lieutenant’s face gave him a slim fragment of hope. Ruu didn’t like what was happening to him any more than he did.

  It wasn’t surprising. Ruu was a wujin, Jiahao was not. All wujin knew the pain that withdrawal brought and you had to be a really sick bastard to wish that on someone else. Jiahao didn’t know. Couldn’t know. And while Ruu might be going along with it for now, she couldn’t condone it forever.

  “Thanks,” he said quietly as Ruu fit the helmet onto his head.

  “I’m not helping you, you stubborn bastard. I’m just making sure there’s no blood in my office.”

  “Still.” Min held Ruu’s eyes until she averted her gaze.

  The initial movement to get into the suit had spiked Min’s pain, but as he went through the familiar motions, he either grew accustomed to the pain or it had faded somewhat. It wasn’t alleviated by any means, but he found that he could stand without assistance and even walk after a fashion.

  Min felt something dig into his back through the suit fabric.

  “This is loaded with slug rounds. They’ll punch straight through you. Just follow the good lieutenant and no funny business. There’s no need to look around, I’ll be right behind you. Lieutenant, lead the way to the garage.”

  They made an odd trio, Min thought. He was barely mobile, swaying and staggering. Ruu led the way, tall and slender, her vaguely aristocratic face set and grim. The captain followed last of all. Min presumed he had put away the pistol while they walked. Even the captain would be questioned about why he was leading a prisoner in a space suit around at gunpoint.

  Min didn’t see anyone else on the short trip down to the garage. It must be late at night, he reasoned. If it were during the day, there would be dozens of people about. The marshal garage had several dozen vehicles parked in it, ranging from small two-man runabouts to massive sixteen-wheeled armored personnel carriers designed to rapidly move a dozen men in full battle gear between clusters on the surface.

  The captain led them to a search and rescue rover with a passenger cabin separate from the driver’s bay. An airlock in the rear allowed entry into the pressurized cabin, and a large, multi-dimensional scanner array loomed on the roof, giving it the appearance of being top-heavy. Such vehicles were necessary to perform field repairs on a damaged suit, and the scanner could pick up electronic traces for miles.

  Ruu and Jiahao took turns getting into their own suits, while the other held a gun on Min. It was grimly amusing to Min. He didn’t have the strength to run or fight them for the gun. Still, they weren’t giving him even the slightest hint of an opening.

  Once suited, Ruu directed Min into the cabin with a pistol of her own. Min climbed stiffly into the cabin and collapsed into one of the seats, too drained to sit up straight. Ruu climbed in after him and settled onto a bench on the far side of the cabin. She kept the pistol trained on Min unerringly.

  Min hinged up the face mask on his helmet. He felt claustrophobic and the open air of the cabin felt good on his sweaty face.

  “You should have your helmet sealed during airlock cycles,” Ruu said, her voice coming from the speaker at her belt.

  “Yeah.” Min leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “I’ll take my chances.”

  The rover hummed as Jiahao powered it up. From inside the cabin, Min couldn’t see outside, but he could guess what was happening easily enough. A few starts and stops as they passed through the airlock to the slopes of Olympus Mons, then a bumpy ride that told Min that Jiahao wasn’t using the autonav system.

  “He’s going to kill you, you know.”

  Min lifted his head and found that Ruu had hinged up her own faceplate. Her eyes were sunken, the dark circles standing out against her white skin.

  “Yeah. He murders children for a living, I hardly think he’ll suffer moral qualms about killing me.”

  “God damn it, Min. Don’t do this to yourself! All you have to do is give your word. You’ll get your treatment. It’ll be distasteful for a while, but you’ll get used to it. It’s better than dying.”

  “Is that the line he fed you?” Min turned his head, unable to keep looking at Ruu.

  “You think I like the position I’m in? I wasn’t too different from you, you know.”

  “Except you took the deal. What happened to justice?” Min felt anger rising in him, hot and raw. The pain was forgotten as he glared at Ruu. Only the gun leveled at his gut kept him from lunging across the cabin and sinking his fingers into her eyes. If he weren’t already on the brink of death, he might have risked it anyway. A flesh wound would be worth taking Ruu down.

  “You can’t help anyone from the grave, Min.”

  “I’ve lived for over two hundred years. The thought of dying doesn’t bother me that much anymore.”

  “So that’s it, then? The Min I heard about wouldn’t give up on life. He’d fight.”

  The rover bumped to a halt. Ruu’s radio crackled to life and Jiahao’s voice came out, muffled by distance.

  Ruu slid her helmet shut and gestured for Min to stand. “End of the line,” she said. “Last chance.”

  Min flipped her the bird then closed his faceplate and stood. He staggered over to the airlock and fit himself inside it. His anger at Ruu was starting to fade and the pain was coming back even stronger than before. It was all he could do to breathe and remain upright.

  The airlock cycled and he stumbled out. He reached for a handhold, missed, and tumbled out of the airlock to the ground. For a dozen feet he slid down the slope, before coming to a halt against a rock. It was night time and the stars overhead were crisp and bright. It never ceased to amaze him how bright the stars were on Mars. There was no light pollution to dim them, no atmosphere to blur them.

  Below him, the slope of Olympus Mons dropped away an impossible distance, with the plains of Gordii Fossae stretched away endlessly. Barely visible on the horizon, the craters of Gigas Fossae were smudged with the thin film of atmospheric dust. It was a hauntingly beautiful view. There were few times when the atmosphere was as clear as it was right then.

  Footsteps crunched in the powdered dust and Jiahao loomed over him. “You’re pathetic,” his voice sneered over the intercom. “Pathetic in life, pathetic in death.”

  “Yeah well.” Min struggled to raise himself to a sitting position and managed it, eventu
ally, with the help of the rock. “You try missing a Womack treatment, see how well you do.”

  “Do I look like a fucking idiot?” Jiahao waved his gun, gesturing for Min to stand. “There’s a reason I haven’t made the jump just yet.”

  “Probably couldn’t find a fragrant enough asshole to bury your nose in. No wujin I know would sponsor a piece of shit like you.”

  “You think you’re funny? We’ll see how much you’re laughing when you’re dying out here, all alone.”

  Min got his feet under him and struggled upright. He stood, swaying and panting. “I touch a nerve, Jiahao?”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  Up the hill, the airlock finished cycling again and Ruu climbed out, with considerably more grace than Min had managed.

  Min nodded up toward Ruu. “Is this how you trapped her? Blackmail her into joining your little gang?”

  “Leave me out of this, Min,” Ruu said.

  “Or what, you’ll shoot me? Somehow I don’t see the lieutenant cozying up to a career dickhead like yourself.”

  “You idiot,” Jiahao said, his grin audible over the intercom, “It was money that made Ruu give up her vaunted integrity.”

  “What, she was falling behind on her Womack payments?”

  “Her girlfriend, actually. Forever in love, or some shit like that. Until her crappy art stopped selling and our little Ruu’s paycheck couldn’t cover both of them.”

  “So you keep her girlfriend alive? That’s got to be expensive.”

  “Not really,” Jiahao laughed.

  “Ping died,” Ruu said shortly. “An accident with a loading dolly.”

  Min coughed out an incredulous laugh. “You really believe that? Ruu, this piece of shit had your girlfriend killed so he wouldn’t have to keep up on the payments. Isn’t that right, Jiahao?”

  “No,” Ruu gritted out. “I saw the scene myself.” Her stance was locked up, her hands clenched into fists. “The dolly’s sensors had been obscured by paint. The same paint she was using the day… fuck does it matter to you, Min? She’s dead!”