The Core

by Jack Robuck

  Trague howled out a maniac laugh. He shoved Glazier hard on the shoulders with both hands, and when Glazier came bouncing back, Trague socked him with a roundhouse across the temple that dropped the doctor to the platform. Trague started up the stairs. Matthew saw his opportunity. He rolled over onto his belly, and grabbed the assault rifle. He brought it up to sight, and slowly squeezed out the extra space in the trigger pull. Just as he was about to fire, Glazier rolled to his knees in front of him.

  Matthew leaned hard, but the gun went off, and a long burst of assault rifle rounds tore just over Glazier's head. One caught Trague in the back, and six or seven others ripped into the oil tanks and dispersal pipe system overhead. Thick black liquid shot from the central tank halfway across the big square room, and continued spurting while a steady stream poured down onto the staircase and catwalk from three places above.

  Trague turned, in shock, pain and rage. He raced back down the staircase, tore the assault rifle from Matthew's arms, and fired wildly into the air, spraying bullets everywhere. Pipes burst, and thick plastic hoses ripped fully in two. Oil and red hydraulic fluid sprayed down onto the room like a sprinkler system, and covered everything in a slippery, noxious layer of goo that choked Matthew's nose and throat closed.

  Trague took the assault rifle by the still-hot barrel, and flung it end over end across the room. He picked up Matthew fully by the arms and raised him up to eye level. He pressed his bloody, oil covered face right against Matthew's nose, and whispered, “None of us are dying here boy. Not me. And not you. This place is me. And all of you...are mine.”

  He opened his mouth wide, and clamped down on Matthew's jawbone. Matthew could feel teeth ripping through the skin of his flesh. He could feel teeth against his own teeth, inside his mouth. He started to black out just as Jimmy came into view behind Trague and slammed the butt of his pistol down onto his skull. Trague released Matthew and fell to his knees. Jimmy pointed the pistol at Trague's face and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. The slide was open, and the chamber was empty.

  Jimmy cursed, and spat out blood. He released the slide, and slammed Trague in the temple again with the butt of the gun. Trague slumped down to his hands and knees. Jimmy grabbed Matthew around the shoulder, and Matthew grabbed Glazier's hand and pulled him to his feet.

  As they stomped up the stairs together, they could hear Trague behind them, saying, “Wait. Wait!”

  Ahead, Natalie and Gusset were struggling with Rachel. She was waking up, and they couldn't get her to duck under a stream of hydraulic fluid shooting from a severed hose right across the narrow catwalk. Matthew pushed Jimmy ahead to help them, grunting, “Go, go!”

  He tightened his grip around the doctor's torso, and trudged on, one palm pressed against his bleeding face. Behind him, he could hear Trague crawling up the staircase on one hand, and one elbow, still favoring his mangled forearm. As the traffic jam ahead cleared, and he and Glazier reached the catwalk, he tried to figure out how they should get across.

  His heart was working like one of the big pumps in The Waverly's horticulture module. His head felt like he would pass out at any moment. Glazier pushed away his arm, and grabbed him by the shoulder, shoving him ahead. Matthew ducked under the red, oily stream and turned back, waiting for Glazier. As soon as the older man was clear, Matthew saw movement behind him on the stairs. Trague had reached the catwalk, and was pulling himself to his feet.

  Matthew grabbed Glazier by the hand, and yelled, “Come on!” They stumped forward along the catwalk as fast as they could, but looking back, Matthew could see Trague lopping forward. He was building to a run, sprinting, and he burst right through the stream of oil, blasting the spray across everything, including Glazier and Matthew. The Sunjumper was pouring blood and red oil, and they eddied down his skin in a muddy glaze.

  Trague ran forward, grabbing Glazier's shoulders with both hands, and spun him around. He shoved him back onto the railing, his face under the hydraulic fluid water-fall, and punched him at double speed, over and over again. Glazier dodged and blocked with his forearms and elbows, but he couldn't see, he was fighting for air, and he was taking solid punches to the chin and nose. His skull wouldn't take much more.

  Matthew stood there, frozen in horror, staring at Trague's back, and as he looked, he noticed Trague's cigarette package, crushed, in his back pocket. He stepped forward, reached out his hand, and snatched the package from Trague's pants.

  Matthew called out, too quiet, at first, but louder. “Trague. Hey, Trague. Trague, you fuck. Yeah. You...You mind if I have a cigarette?”

  Trague turned, shoving Glazier to the steel grating with a final dismissal. He stepped out from under the thick red spew toward Matthew. “Come to me, you little piece of shit,” he bellowed, reaching out for Matthew’s throat with one hand as he slowly paced toward him. His face, his torso, his hands dripped in viscous red fluid that hit the floor in thick waves.

  Terrified, Matthew tore open the cigarette packet, and emptied its contents into his hands. He backed away, letting the lightweight paper and tobacco cylinders roll onto the catwalk, and leaving a small plastic lighter in his palm. Trague met eyes with him, and realized his intention. He rushed forward, but Matthew balled up the packet, and flicked the lighter, setting it on fire. He thrust the burning paper into Trague’s oil-covered chest just as the man hit him with his full weight, sending them both reeling onto the catwalk.

  Trague screamed as the oil covering his body was engulfed in flames. Matthew struggled to crawl out from beneath the burning man. Trague jumped to his feet and ran back the way he had come. The flames caught from his burning body onto the hydraulic fluid, turning the shooting stream of oil from the broken hose into a ten foot jet of flame focused directly on Trague’s chest and shoulders. The man violently wrenched himself away.

  Glazier was on his hands and knees, crawling, and Matthew couldn't let him catch fire. He rushed forward, turning his face from the heat, and rammed his shoulder into Trague, flipping him backwards over the railing. Matthew saw his body collide with the top of an oil tank and a row of pipes before hitting the ground.

  Matthew beckoned to Natalie and Jimmy. “Go!” He saw Natalie head for the ladder to the roof, but Jimmy sprinted toward the skyway control center. Matthew grabbed Glazier by the shoulders and dragged the older man across to the staircase. The leaking jets of oil were catching flame from one to the next, and a thick black smoke was forming a blanket across the ceiling. Through the steel grating below, he could see Trague crawling toward the door, beating his body to put out the flames.

  Gusset was helping Rachel up the ladder, and Matthew threw Natalie up her shock baton through the hatch, and pushed Glazier ahead. They all reached the ship just as Jimmy was coming up the ladder.

  Matthew helped him guide the cargo bay door open. “Where’d you go?”

  Jimmy grinned through a blackened and bloody face. “I liked your fire so much, I figured we’d better open all the pumps. Let's get the hell out of here before the whole place blows.”

  The group stumped up the ramp in various states of consciousness. Jimmy jumped up to the front and in a moment, the floor lurched beneath them. Through the window, the roof dropped away. Smoke poured from the open hatch.

  After a few minutes of shocked silence, Gusset muttered, “How the fuck are we still alive?”

  No one spoke. Natalie yelled up to the cockpit. “The town. Where I was captured. We can hole up there. It’s straight east of here, about 600 miles."

  Jimmy said, “Okay, I think we’re in the clear. There’s no radar signal showing up behind us anywhere. I’ll head in that direction.” He set the ship to autopilot, and slid between the bucket seats, returning just as Natalie was offering Rachel a hand up from the floor.

  Rachel accepted the offer, pulling herself to her feet. She quickly yanked Natalie forward, off balance, and punched her. Natalie landed on the hard steel decking. As Rachel closed in, Natalie pressed off the floor with her hands and one foot,
bringing the other boot-tip swiftly up into Rachel’s oncoming face. Rachel rolled starboard, pushed off the bulkhead, and fell into Glazier’s bear hug. Gusset and Jimmy were picking up Natalie, and simultaneously holding her back.

  Rachel struggled against Glazier’s grip, but he held her tight, bellowing, “What the hell is going on?”

  Rachel relaxed, and pushed his arms away. “This bitch is one of them, that’s what. Who the fuck are you? Huh? Just some random local? I don’t think so.”

  Jimmy let Natalie go, and stepped into the space between the women. He raised the Fleet pistol toward Natalie, but held up a hand to Rachel. “Woah, now. That doesn't seem very likely, she just helped save your ass. Nobody takes a beating like that just as a disguise.”

  Rachel shook her head, wiping blood from the corner of her mouth.

  Natalie stood firm, fists on her hips. “Fuck this. You better listen to your friend. Without me, Trague would have two fistfuls of your hair right now.”

  Rachel could barely stand, but she leaned against Glazier and pointed a finger at Natalie from across the cargo bay. “Don’t you take that pistol off her, Jimmy!” She limped to the sloped bulkhead, and flipped the latch on a locker built into the wall. “So you want to tell me you were just in the right place at the right time? Alright. Fine.” She held onto the ship with one hand, and opened another locker with the other. “You helped save my ass, I'll thank you later. But one thing's for sure. You walk like Fleet, and you smell like Fleet. So show me the back of your neck.”

  Natalie narrowed her eyes at Rachel, and lowered her chin. “Fuck you.” She took the tip of her shock baton off the floor, and pumped the handle, but with the battery drained it was nothing more than a black plastic stick.

  Rachel opened a third locker, and found what she was looking for. She pulled a shiny black assault rifle from its rack mount, wrapped the strap around her forearm, and closed in on Natalie. She pulled back the slide, chambering a round, and poked her in the cheek with the cold black cylinder of the barrel. “Show. Me. Your. Neck.”

  Natalie stared into Rachel’s eyes, her own eyes cold, still. “Fine.”

  Natalie stepped away from Rachel, almost in the corner of the bay near the cockpit. She untwisted a piece of twine from around her wrist, and began tying up her hair in a purple pile.

  Matthew looked sideways at Jimmy, who, keeping his pistol trained on Natalie, whispered to him, “All Fleet personnel have acid nodes implanted at the base of the skull. Remote detonate. Guaranteed loyalty.”

  Natalie turned her back and pulled up her hair. Just below her hairline, she had an ugly scarred crater like a child’s balled up fist. She turned to look at Rachel over her shoulder. “I escaped. I got out. I had it removed a long time ago.”

  Rachel shook her head, but she lowered her weapon slightly. “No. No, they can’t be removed. They explode if you try. You couldn’t survive it.”

  Natalie let out a quick, dark chuckle. Her back still turned, she reached down and grabbed her shirt on both sides, and pulled it up and over her dreadlock bun. As she stood there in the harsh fluorescent of the cargo bay, they gawked at her, the muscular, smooth brown skin of her flanks and lower back, and the ruined flesh of her shoulders; skin plowed into rippling scars, the muscles and flesh unnaturally shaped and stretched to cover in some back alley hospital. Boney vertebrae threatened to puncture the white, textural skin.

  She turned, holding her shirt over her chest. The front of her was as curved and muscular as a gazelle, brown and smooth. She stared Rachel down, until the paler woman dropped her gaze, and her rifle.

  Natalie slipped her shirt back over her head, and pulled it down. “You're partially right. I survived it. The doctor didn't.”

  Chapter 7

  The distant muddy forms of buildings rose jaggedly through the heat-haze, and the long grass they’d been flying over for the past few miles began to thin. They set down on a dirt road a hundred yards out, and suddenly they were amongst the townsfolk. There were corrals in the distance, with twenty-foot-tall fences holding herds of lizards lounging in the shade of great canvassed frames painted a dozen dusty colors.

  Natalie led them to a three story adobe building. She sauntered up the steps and across the broad, planked porch. Two scruffy boys, a little younger than Matthew, in suspenders and raggedy jackets sat on a long bench playing chess. They eyed him suspiciously.

  He walked up to them. "Can I ask a stupid question?"

  "I expect you can, stranger."

  "That's clever. Anyhow..." Matthew looked down the main thoroughfare out to the distant plain. "Does it ever get dark here?"

  The boy whose back had been to Matthew turned his head, and tipped back his hat for a long look at the stranger. He squinted his eyes, and finally twanged, "Sometimes. Planet's got a funny orbit, friend. Sort of a wobble, they say. Most everybody lives in this big ring all the way around, between noon and night.” He looked out between two buildings, across a corral, to the distant horizon. “This the sixth sunset today.”

  The other boy grumbled, "How you know it’s a ring? You ain't never been to the other side of noon. Ain't never knowed nobody has neither."

  The first boy gazed out into the amber glow. "Another hour, I expect. And this here's the last one. We'll get a few hours of dark. You wanna pull up a chair, you can watch it turn bloody, and get swallowed up."

  The other boy looked Matthew up and down. "Where you from, the dark side?" He grinned, and the first boy laughed. Matthew smirked. "No, I'm from noon. Always lunchtime where I'm from."

  The boys guffawed. "Can't nothing live out there, kid. It'll bake you."

  He smiled. “What's this town called?”

  The first boy spit. “Boomerang.”

  Rachel called from inside the swinging doors, "Cowboy!" Matthew nodded and walked inside.

  *

  Matthew came up from the basin sputtering, and wiped his face on the rolled up sleeves of the linen shirt he'd been given. The strange fabric of the trousers and the clunky feel of the boots completed his impression that he'd gone back in time.

  Other than the automatic weaponry strapped to every hip, and the massive water condensers and windmills that dotted the landscape, he could have been in one of the history videos he'd seen on The Waverly. He rubbed his head with a rough towel and ran a hand back through his hair.

  Rachel was changing too, out of her sweat- and bloodstained clothes. Her breasts swayed loose beneath her shirt as she twisted back and forth getting her boots on. He forced himself to look away, out of the window, focusing on the argument they were having.

  "We've got to go back. You saw the situation. Those people were barely surviving, and what did we do? Burn the place to the ground?"

  Rachel grimaced. "Those people weren't surviving. Their bodies were just doing as they were told. They're gone."

  Matthew shook his head. “I'm not talking about metaphorical death, here. Jimmy rigged that place to blow, and right now half of those people are dying of smoke inhalation, and the other half are having their skin burned off by flaming oil. We could have helped them.”

  “We couldn't have helped them! The six of us got our asses handed to us by two guys. We were lucky to escape in a ship, that, might I add, was barely big enough for all of us.”

  Matthew's mind was already searching for the next point of attack. It was clear Rachel had made up her mind, but he petulantly pushed for some kind of victory. “So it’s six now? What happened, you decided to trust the person who saved our lives when we had no plan, and no tools?”

  Rachel held up a hand. “I said I was sorry. The truth is, we still don't know her that well.”

  Matthew blew up. “I don't know you that well. You don't know me. And I don't know what the hell is going on, and I don't care what happened between my ship leaving Earth, and now, but this is not what was supposed to go down.”

  He paced past the table with the basin to the door and back to the window, clomping on the hardwood fl
oor. "But you claimed yourself that the Admiral is out there scooping up all the civilians he can get, and now, weeks later, anybody who actually survived from the ship is probably his prisoner. My mother might be out there in the desert, right now, in a fucking oil refinery!"

  "I know that, Matthew, but we have to concentrate on the bigger picture. Some of the locals here said that escape capsules were coming down everywhere like shooting stars. There are survivors out there, but we have no idea where, or in what direction. Without that information, we don't even know in which direction to look. We just don't have the technology that the Fleet does."

  "But the Fleet does."

  "Yes."

  "Fine. Then I'll leave right now, and go find the Admiral, and tell him that if he helps me save my mother, I'll tell him exactly where you are."

  Rachel was still. She turned to look him in the eye. "Oh, yeah?"

  Matthew quivered, uncertain. "Yeah."

  "Okay, cowboy. If that’s where you find yourself, go right ahead. You should know, however, that as soon as he finds me and my crew, he'll kill us. He'd probably like to do all sorts of awful things to us first, but he won't. He'll do it quickly. Because he has a plan, and he has things to do. You heard Trague, just like I did. He said there was an investigation going on at the crash site. And with the questions he was asking me before he beat me unconscious, I'm pretty sure they're not thumbing through your library books.

  "If there's any survivors, he's already captured them, and dragged them back to some shithole work camp. If we're gone, he'll go right ahead turning this planet into his own personal kingdom, without looking over his shoulder for us coming after him. And he's not gonna give a damn what kind of bargain he made with you.

  "Your mother, who's out there, somewhere, in a tent on the prairie with some rancher right now, or even on the back of a lizard making her way to you right here, she's gonna get scooped up along with the rest of the planet and ordered on a mucking crew inside the pitch dark shattered piston shaft of a mining hulk on one of the god-forsaken moons, armpits deep in burnt oil sludge."