by William Cray
Duran reached out for controls as a shuffle behind him scrapped across the floor. Rolling quickly, he pulled up the Talon. He caught the silhouette of a weapon arcing towards him and a dark shape behind it. Duran froze as he waited for the rifle to open up, but nothing came. He repositioned to gain a better firing angle as the rifle tracked him sluggishly, trying to lead him as he slid across the floor.
“Put your weapon down. Constabulary officer,” the shape behind the rifle called.
Duran tensed on the trigger, examining the obscured figure through the night vision mounted on his weapon nose. The bank of panels hid the figures face, but a dark patch on his deep thigh looked like the flow of red arterial blood on his uniformed pants leg. The heavy LKE assault rifle was being held up by one unsteady arm, its open maw waving towards Duran in a quivering hand. The voice was weak but familiar.
“Floss? Is that you?”
The voice repeated, laced with wavering intensity. “Put your weapon down now, I’m a Martian Constab...”
Now more sure, “Floss, it’s Duran.”
The voice hesitated, “Duran, is that you? I mean…the real you?” The exposed gun barrel relaxed then snapped back up with renewed strength.
“Floss. You’re injured. Lower your weapon and I’ll come over and look at it. Kaf, Floss, what happened here?”
The voice was silent for a moment, “You first Duran. Lower your gun. I’ll shoot if you come a step closer.”
Duran felt for the taint of Celeste, listening with all his concentration for the Intruder control, but the white noise of the overwhelming antenna above blanked out any prescience his ability had granted him this close. Duran knew he should pull the trigger. He would be just one more casualty in a day that was full of them. The mission didn’t distinguish friend or foe. Duran's finger tensed on the trigger. He watched as Floss wavered.
Why am I taking this chance, Duran thought? Again his finger tensed, the trigger backing up to the first stop, scant ounces of pressure from firing. Duran saw the fear on his face through the low light illumination and the wound was real.
A metallic rifle barrel clanged against the floor, followed by a long airless gasp from Floss.
Duran eased off the trigger. “You’re injured.” He said.
Duran moved over to Floss, lowering his weapon as he approached. Floss slid back down against the far wall, letting out an audible groan as he came to rest on the floor, the black stained leg extended. Floss put his rifle on the floor beside him, then, using both hands started to redress the flimsy cloth bandage covering the deep gash on the outside of his left thigh. The cut was between two seam plates of his leg armor protecting his upper thigh. Pain rifled through Floss's eyes as the bandages pealed back, reveling the black gash. Duran watched his eyes, looking for any sign Floss wasn’t himself. Those under the Intruder domination had always had that blank stare that saw everything and at the same time, saw nothing. But he’d never been this close to someone under the Intruder’s control. The pain was real. So was the fear. Duran holstered the Talon and the room was dark again.
“Let me look at it James.” Duran kneeled down next to the grimacing Floss as he undressed the bandage, each layer pealing back bloody tissue and gauze packed into the wound. The blood was red and still flowing. Duran pulled the release tab on Floss’s lower torso armor and it fell away, exposing the wound in the poor light. Duran ran his hand across his vest front, activating a light strip on his vest, casting a yellowish blue glowing directional light that followed Duran’s eye’s like a headlight.
Floss stiffened as Duran went to work on the leg, “Rory, what the hell is going on? My team went haywire. Kim stabbed me as I tried to get away.” He looked away from the wound, towards the ceiling, his eyes glassed over in pain and confusion. “They just turned on me right after we got here to reinforce Team Four. Everybody is going crazy.” He cradled his head in his torn and bloody gloves. “My head is fucking pounding.”
“I’ll explain later James. How long ago did this happen?” Duran asked.
Floss gritted his teeth as Duran ripped away the blood soaked material around the gash. “About half an hour ago. They must’ve left me alone to come after you when I barricaded myself in here.”
Duran looked down for the purple stain of blood in the light that would be pooled on the floor somewhere. “Can you walk,” Duran asked.
Floss shook his head. He pointed to Duran’s shoulder. “You’ve been hit.”
“Your’s is worse.” The cut was deep into the muscle and made by a long metal object that was very sharp, probably a fighting knife of some kind. It was clean, in and out. A single smooth thrust. Normally a knife fight was full of jagged scars and ripped meat. Floss was in pain, but very lucky, Duran thought. The stroke just missed an artery. If he hadn’t shown up when he did, Floss might have bled out.
Duran pealed back his left sleeve, opening the armor layer and exposing the fleshy underside of his arm. He reached for his own knife but it was gone, lost somewhere in Hab-11’s streets. Duran patted down his vest quickly, but found nothing he could use to slice open his own skin and transfer a few of his precious nanites to Floss to speed the repair process of his wounded friend.
He turned to Floss. “Give me your knife.”
“Why?”
“Just give it to me. We have to hurry.”
Duran patted him down until he found the ribbed handle sticking out of a black sheath on his tactical suit. He pulled it out. As it uncoiled he could see a dark rivulet of purple liquid coating its tip. The handle was slick with it.
Duran jerked back, just as the intense shocking numbness rifled through his nervous system. His legs collapsed, sending him to the floor. He tried to look up but his head lay on the floor, immobilized. He couldn’t move. The flicker of the disruptor flashed in the room as Floss kept the cop issued hand held unit pressed against his neck. Floss kneeled, despite the pain from the deep wound in his leg. He pulled the blood stained knife from Duran’s clenched hands. Watching him from the corner of his eyes, Floss rolled him over onto his stomach. The pain so evident just a moment ago was gone. His eyes were the dead orbs of domination.
Duran lay helpless. The disruptor was pressed firmly against his exposed flesh. His head rolled forward as Floss pressed his numb face into the cold floor, exposing the base of his skull. Duran felt the cold of the knife tip suddenly against the base of his skull, near his relay antenna. The link to his external systems cut out with a jarring flicker. All the data relays to his vest and infoboard dropped off his eye filament. His internal systems showed damage now appearing on the back of his head. Floss had severed the antenna at the base of his skull. Nanites raced through his body to stem the damage as the knife continued to slice through the bundle of relays there. Floss was cutting through the mesh under his skin.
He watched out of the corner of his eye as Floss raised the knife high, poised at his neck.
Power Dome 4
Radiation Exclusion Zone
Mars
Almost there.
Sliding down to one knee, Cole squeezed off a shot, but the assault rifle clicked empty before his rounds found their mark. He tossed it away and drew his side arm, checking the magazine. It too was almost empty. A neuro beam swept across his exposed group from behind the last barricade, dropping two of his officers as they dove to the ground. “Cover!”
Two more shots rang out then the beam dropped off, releasing its blue grasp on the two downed officers. A PF trooper rushed over to them, rolling them over and checking on their limp forms. They were going to be ok, but they were out of the fight. The last barricade was finally clear, but the cost was terrible.
One of the troopers called out. “Gather weapons and ammo.”
Elijah Cole bent down on one knee, catching his breath at the entrance to the fusion plant control room. Leading a small group of police and soldiers through the maze of the fusion plant, battling the Intruder controlled oppositio
n at every junction, he left behind dead and wounded comrades on both sides, and now he crouched at the threshold of their objective, near physical and mental exhaustion.
This kind of stuff is years behind me, Cole thought.
He kept his marksmanship good over the years, but he spent up to fourteen hours a day sitting in a chair staring at the world rushing around him. He was a desk jockey. But this time, he was in it, deep. His fishbowl was smashed and the fight was on. He was feeling the rush again of his youth, a beat cop on mean streets and he missed the feeling. But reliving his youth in adrenaline charged euphoria didn’t stop his body from aching like the old fishbowl piranha he was.
Cole, gathering himself, motioned for one of his team members to scan the interior of the room with a portable dyna-scanner. With Isley dead on the street behind them, Cole had taken control of the tactical situation. It was much easier to take the burden of leadership rather than take the time to sort out who could continue on in Isley’s place. He had gotten them this far, but they had paid a high price.
A Territorial Guard engineer named Ursa, if he remembered right, edged forward under the cover of the last set of barricades to the large solid sliding doors and activated the switch on a long elbowed device. Through the tactical data net each member could see the hazy, unformed results of the scan, almost useless because the micro-meter waves wouldn’t penetrate the reinforced duridium shell that protected the inner control room. The very security measures designed to protect the facility from an attacking enemy, now foiled his team, and left a trail of killed and wounded behind them. Cole cursed under his breath as the dyna-scan operator shook her head at the results. They were still blind beyond what they could see with their own eyes.
“Ok … “ Cole said into his collar microphone, “We do this the old fashion way. Sergeant, demolition charges … what do we have?”
Several voices responded as each man and woman in the tiny assault force checked their depleted inventories for anything that could be rigged, jigged or spiked to improvise demolition equipment. One of Isley’s steel-eyed operators took charge of the inventory, grabbing and assembling the miscellaneous items and emptying a heavy satchel he carried on his shoulder. After a moment’s analysis, he reported to Cole.
“Sir, it's gonna be close but I think we can get through if we set it up just right. We'll only get one shot.”
The engineer, Ursa, looked down at the strewn relays and block charges, tossed in a pile like the pieces of a smashed vid console, shaking her head. “That door is reinforced duridium, and that’s just the shell. It’s gonna take a tank to punch through there. We don’t have enough.”
One of the younger troopers spoke up. “Can’t we call in an airstrike or something?”
Isley’s man snapped back. “Because if they missed we could have three bloody power dome disasters worth of radiation on us.” He turned to Cole. “I’m trained for this.”
Cole stood up from his crouch, peering back down their avenue of approach, strewn with debris and smashed equipment. Occasional shots still zipped in their direction from wounded attackers, unable or unwilling to regard their injuries and continued to fight on under the Intruder’s control. They were down to seven total and all the P-Teks had been shot away. Cole looked back to Sergeant, now jamming pieces of the puzzle bomb together in a fuzzy framework of explosive blocks and exposed electronics, measuring with a trained eye, then looking back to the door with quick estimating glances. This is the man that should be leading the assault, not me.
“What’s your name Sergeant?”
“Blaney, sir.”
“How long Blaney?”
“Ten minutes. Eight, if the rigs are already set up with data relays. Most of them look like they are.” Sergeant Blaney said.
“Alright, make it count,” Cole replied with a nod, then turned to the others. “Ok, we've got eight minutes for an entry plan,” as he called up the TacNet. He gathered four troopers besides himself, the four most heavily armored and the most experienced. They began their preparations in earnest as Corporal Ursa began placing charges, Blaney dictating where to place them and how he wanted them oriented.
Eight minutes and twelve seconds later … “Fire in the hole!”
Four plasma burners ignited in a hot flare, superheating the large door’s framing recessed in the wall, creating a plume of hot metal that scorched their exposed skin and seared their nostrils with fumes of noxious residue. The bright glow burned into the duridium, casting the corridor in a phosphate yellow glow as the plasma detonators sparked against the weakest parts of the door’s framework, superheating them and stressing their architecture with molten fire. Over the painful, hissing burn, Blaney bellowed again, “Fire in the hole,” as they covered their faces and ears. They tightened grips on weapons and shields, preparing to follow behind the blast.
The last explosives triggered against the heavy door. The explosion shook the floor and shattered the hallways remaining décor as a massive shockwave fired up and into the doors base, jarring it violently against the superheated hinges. They failed in place with a loud shearing pop.
Cole looked up after the second violent flash. The noxious smoke cleared and his heart sank. The huge duridium doors were lodged, but in place. Before Cole could utter anything, a ripping groan surged from the door in a metallic death cry as it sheared and fell forward towards the corridor, smashing to the floor in a deafening clang, its edges burning. Without a word or spoken command, they rose as one from their covered positions. Grenades went in first, thrown long and short, into the open maw, its interior still obscured in the billowing thick white smoke. A series of bright flashes and thundering cracks followed as the grenades ripped off in sequence.
Cole was the fourth man in, raising the assault rifle he retrieved from one the dead members of his team. He rushed in behind the heavily armored troopers. They hung up as he watched the young TG engineer try to push past the debris of the fallen door. She pried the remains free, then moved forward. She yelled as she hit the next barricade of welded form beams and wire that tangled at her knees.
She ducked as murderous fire poured into them. Cole put his shield on the back of the trooper in front of him and yelled. “Push!”
They were clearing the obstacles much too slowly. Slashing fire tore the arms off the young TG soldier in the front. Then her body erupted into flame as a blue plasma ray arced through the smoke. Cole watched her collapse when the military grade beam weapon vaporized her armor and her shield arm fell away. The phalanx of shields broke as it gouged through them.
Cole saw the next trooper in line fall in a pile of burning flames, his eyes melted out of their sockets as he was consumed in a fireball.
The carnage continued to burn through to him as the third man in line managed to hit the floor before the blue plasma scorched him. He squeezed off a single round from the grenade launcher slung under his rifle, sending the finned egg into the flashing blue beam. A sudden jolt slammed into Cole’s left arm as he cleared the door but it banged off his shield, stumbling him as he breached the opening.
No one was in front of him. The others died to get him this far.
Cole pushed forward, into the crossfire, seeing others fall within his periphery as he ducked down. The blue scythe in front of him had cut the others down. Cole streamed rifle fire into the direction of the plasma gun. He waited for it to touch him, but if he stopped now, the squad behind him would slow and the attack would bog down. They would lose what little momentum they had bought with the flesh of their comrades.
Keep moving forward. The rest will follow. He said to himself.
Cole burst through the last barricade and the smoke cleared. He depressed the auto fire on his rifle and poured a stream of bullets into the small cluster of men huddled behind an overturned desk. The men behind it crumpled into bloody spasms as the rounds from Cole's fast empting rifle blasted through the desk and into them. They were already dead. Killed by the grenades.
A ser
ies of thumps and rapid-fire cracks sounded behind him as his team followed him in. The plasma gun arched up then silenced as the rest of his squad hammered away at the position.
Cole dropped the assault rifle as its auto loader clicked empty, drawing his service pistol. Movement beyond the smoke at a control panel near the far left corner of the room caught his attention. He closed the distance, moving through the smoke, yelling, “LTC. Get down on the floor.”
Oblivious to the violence around her, an unremarkable woman worked furiously at a control panel. She had been hit in the hip by what looked like a stray shot, but she pounded away on the controls anyway, as if through prescience she knew her killer was poised behind her.
Cole glanced up at the shattered control schematic on the viewer, with ragged gouges and pockmarks breaking up the display from battle damage. A series of bright red gauges and tracklines, raced throughout the schematic, terminating into a starburst pattern as they converged of the wire-frame image of the Stratospire. The red lines traced through all the shattered reactor images, like the blood of the city pouring into the black tower.
Cole yelled one final warning through the smoke. “Stop what you are doing.” He raised his sidearm as the sounds of battle in the room slacked off.
The woman looked over her shoulder. Fear filled her eyes as she looked back at him, but her work to guide the station’s power continued, directing its flow to the central black torso of the Stratospire.
One node remained. She reached to throw the final lever.
In an instant Cole recognized what she was doing. He squeezed the trigger.
The silenced woman’s body tumbled away from the control compartment, landing on top of another victim. Their mingled pose on top of a slick pool of blood. A small kitchen knife lay on the floor next to them.
