by William Cray
37
The Stratospire
Large Capacity Elevator
Her Talon up and sweeping the darkness of the Large Central Elevator, Anne Braiselle stalked into the central elevator shaft, her S.P.E.C.A.T.S. armor empty and discarded.
She had completed the demolition of the antenna array with miniscule power reserves, using the last iota of energy to keep her warm and hack into the Stratospire’s control system. The bombarding Intruder influence had ended, but for a fleeting moment she felt a strange sensation as the elevator opened. Somehow she associated the strangeness with the Major. She took the feeling as confirmation that he was alive and still in the fight. The hope renewed her determination to find her commander.
Wearing the black, form fitting, thermal lining of her battesuit, she ripped away the breather and cast it away as she entered the elevator’s rank and metallic interior. The platform was soundless as she navigated the sparse lighting of the interior with her Talon. She switched off the night vision system as she entered the contrasting light and shadows from the platforms center. The beacon of the Intruder influence that had drawn her in was gone and so was any sign of the Major. The emptiness brought a chorus of dread as the smell of blood and gunplay permeated the air as she moved in.
As she slipped into the center of the elevator she saw the control cupola, not recognizing what it was at first before turning her full attention to the bloody scene that lay in front of her. Against the machine she saw him. Moving quickly towards him she passed a horribly wounded man, whose cranium had been shattered with a violent close range impact. It had been instantly fatal, yet the body still seemed to call to her even in its catastrophic disfigurement.
Anne found Rory Duran leaning unconscious against the machine. A young, dark haired woman rested her head in his lap. Lying near her was another victim, with dirty blond hair wearing a sparkling mid-dress, her lifeless body in a pool of dark blood. Swift knelt down next to Duran, ripping her gloves off, then grasping his head in her hands.
Anne activated her emergency transponder. Using her medical architecture she assessed Duran’s wounds. The damage was critical. He had been shot several times, and the wounds were near critical. There was a stream of dried blood which trailed from his ears and the corners of his closed eyes. He had massive internal bleeding. His brain was clearly traumatized, but she couldn’t find any external cause. She tried to access his medical architecture to assist her triage, but all the external links were severed.
She turned her attention to the dark haired woman in Duran’s lap whose life signs were faint, but she was alive. The woman stirred and Swift felt the ping of an Intruder wave just below the surface, like a cotton string running across her scalp.
Anne grabbed her by the arm and dragged the unconscious woman away from Duran. She felt the twitch of motion against her hand as the dark haired woman squeezed back gently in response to Anne’s touch. Swift set her down carefully, then pulled out her Talon and executed her with one round to the head, the shot reverberating in the elevator. The Intruder sign disappeared. But there was something else. There was something still alive inside the woman. Swift knelt down and used her palm to quickly scan the woman’s body. She was pregnant.
“Damn,” Swift said aloud.
She turned back to her commander. Reaching into her emergency dismount kit around her waist on the battlesuit liner, she tore open a plastic tube of bio-mass gel, smearing it onto Duran’s chest after cutting away his tattered shirt, nearest the open wounds. With a long knife she sliced a six-centimeter gash in her lower arm, allowing her blood and free nanites to flow from her and into his open wounds.
She watched him for a long moment. Speaking to him in hushed tones of hope and reassurance, she coddled him, but anguish edged her quiet voice as he continued to fade.
She ignored the second younger woman who seemed so out of place but was clearly dead. There were others around the compartment with broken bodies and the comatose stare of the Intruder victims she had seen in the aftermath of Earth.
A shallow breath escaped Duran’s lungs, and for an instant she felt tension in his muscles. Her heart leapt as she felt a final gasp for breath escaping him, but the tension continued to increase as if he were fighting something. His unfocused eyes opened, as a stream of green data flowed across his optical filaments. The machine would never quit.
“Major … Major … Can your hear me?” Anne said, echoing in the silence of the great shaft. She tried again before he stirred. As he came to consciousness Anne recoiled, feeling a presence flow across her. She turned around to look for the source of the alien feeling, raising the Talon in her hand. Then the feeling seemed to focus in on her.
“Swift?”
She turned back to Duran, realizing he was the source of the Intruder presence. She hesitated a moment looking at Duran before kneeling back to him, wiping away a formation of tears at the edge of her hazel eyes.
“Rory … Yes, it’s me. Take it easy. How badly are you hurt?” Referring to the report his cybernetic systems would be streaming to him through his eye filament. But he never answered. His glazed eyes swept left and right until he found the body of the young woman that had been in his lap, just a foot away from him now. A moment of anguish swept over his face before he slipped back into unconsciousness, his body going limp.
“Rory … Rory! Stay with me,” she pleaded. After a long moment she was sure he was beyond reach. The Intruder presence had faded and disappeared with him. Knowing he would soon be gone, she turned to look at the young dark haired woman who lay lifeless just feet away from them.
Through the blur of tears she shifted over to the woman, placing her hands on the woman, using the sensors in her fingertips to feel for life signs. To Anne’s surprise she picked up biological processes still occurring within her. Anne pulled the knife from her hip belt again and cut a second incision on her left arm. She ignored the pain as blood ran down her arm. Swift let her synth-blood trickle down into the woman's wound. Tiny nanites went into the body of the woman, in an attempt to stabilize the life still within her. It was a battle Swift didn’t think she would win, but as she would at least try to protect the innocent life inside her.
For a moment she looked into the woman's pale face, wondering what Duran's concern had been for her. She had the Intruder taint, but so did the Major. Had she just been an innocent victim caught in an epic struggle, or was she the Intruder, somehow related to the violence and chaos in the city. With a strange emotional pang, Anne wondered if the woman had meant anything to the Major.
Not wanting to confront the wash of emotion, she turned away from the woman and returned to Duran. She ran her hands through his close-cropped hair, then touched the failing warmth of his face. She passed her blood into his again, transferring her vital nanites into him.
Anne Braiselle-Cannis sat down next to her commander, waiting for retrieval, holding him close.
Stratospire
Zenith Coupling
Emergency Docking Ring
John Cochrane raced around the Stratospire’s Zenith Coupling in his gamecock scrabble stride, following the wall displays as the Large Capacity Elevator raced up from the surface. Glancing out of the broad windows, the outline of a large delta wing transport had docked hull up at the emergency access port. Moving as quickly as his gait would allow, he positioned himself between the access corridor and the docking ring to India Five-Two, which hung on the towers exterior like a manta. The elevator slowed as it approached, and then finally stopped on his level.
Cochrane gripped the assault rifle at his side. The doors slid open and a phalanx of faceless silver beasts stepped into the corridor, glowering above him as they entered. Cochrane began to speak, but a loud articulated voice boomed through the suit as an armored hand reached out to him and calmly forced him out of the path.
“I’m sorry Colonel, you have to stand back.”
Cochrane backed up, though trying to wor
k through the armored gatekeeper whose hand held him at bay without crushing his collarbone.
“Is Duran with you? Who is in command?” Cochrane belted out in defiance.
Again the voice behind the metal spoke as it pushed Cochrane back another step. This time with more force, brushing aside his resistance.
“I’m sorry Colonel Cochrane,” resounded again as more force and authority was applied from the faceless armor. “Make way. There’s nothing you can do.”
Cochrane was pushed back down the hallway as more armored figures piled out of the elevator, six in all, taking up guarding positions on either side of the corridor, forming and impenetrable cordon of silver titans.
“Damn you,” Cochrane screamed. “Let me through!”
He stopped struggling against the beast as stretchers began to pass through the elevator door and into the docking ring. The first stretcher passed weightlessly, carried by two M-Teks on suspension lifts. Rory Duran lay across the first, with a covey of machines and displays straddling the sophisticated medical gurney. Duran’s face was visible through the hazy mask, pumping vital fluids and air into his motionless body, but it was him. Anne Braiselle followed, still in her black S.P.E.C.A.T.S. liner, her face downcast behind her commander’s gurney. Cochrane called out to her, but she moved on without taking note of his pleas. Three more gurneys passed, two women and the shattered remains of a man, gruesomely maimed. Each had a sophisticated array of med gear arrayed across them. He spotted a dark haired girl he remembered as Celeste Von Heiden. The medical machines hovered over her midsection, working frantically even though she was clearly dead. The other two stretchers might have well as been coffins.
Cochrane resumed his struggle as the last gurney entered the transport. A final helmetless figure with a long hooknose passed in trail, this one not in armor, but an unmarked military environment suit. The man turned to face Cochrane, then walked towards him. With a touch of his hand, Cochrane’s gatekeeper stepped aside.
“Colonel Cochrane, I’m Thomas Anwar.”
Cochrane looked back hard at the bookish man, who seemed more a teacher than a hardened warrior leading these soldiers. Cochrane straightened his Commando uniform, evaluating Anwar, “Is it over? The Intruders?”
“Yes. We believe so. But not without cost I’m afraid.” He glanced back over his shoulder.
“Major Duran?”
“We are doing everything we can, but time is short and our doctors do not believe he will survive.”
A pang of loss and the need to apologize to Duran washed over him. He needed to tell Duran he forgave him for the Intruder moon so long ago. “May I see him?”
“No.” Anwar replied, “I’m sorry, we will be pulling out as soon as I board. Major Duran requires very specialized care and we must move quickly. He deserves at least that effort from us after his long service. But we must attempt to revive him, if only briefly, to determine if the threat is ended.”
Anwar continued. “I want to thank you Colonel. You have proven a great service, and your actions have saved a great many lives today. You have our thanks and the thanks of the Empire.”
Cochrane stared at Awar for a long moment. “Colonel, I hope you will keep this encounter with Major Duran and his team in the strictest confidence as your duty requires. There will be no questions from your superiors though others may come asking.”
Cochrane nodded, watching the last armored figure pass. Probably another of the men and women from the Intruder moon he knew so long ago. One of the twelve who burned down his battalion. But he felt a deep kinship with the warrior inside the silver suit. They both had seen battle with the Intruders up close. He turned to Anwar, a man who didn’t seem to share the bond, but his eyes were full of genuine concern.
Cochrane followed with his eyes. “The gurney is a poor shield for a warrior to lie upon in his final moments.”
Anwar nodded in understanding, “He will not be forgotten.”
Elijah Cole stood outside the fusion plant among the dead of his men and women that had fought on both sides in the past hours. He walked between them, checking each of them, seeking a sign of life in each face, some of which he recognized. A heavy despair fell over him as each person he checked failed to show a glimmer of the life that existed just a few hours ago. Another entry in the butcher’s bill was written.
Rescue teams had not been given clearance to return to the Radiation Exclusion Zone so the survivors picked through the aftermath with a solemn exhaustion. Many of the younger troopers were elated to survive the ordeal, but the veterans, went about the recovery tasks in quiet professionalism. They would pay the emotional toll later.
Stopping at each victim, Cole did the best he could to dignify their separate endings by rearranging their death pose, closing open eyes that were still filled with shock, or folding arms across mortal wounds to hide the agony of their final moments. Others were too badly damaged to mask their ending or the way in which they waited for it. Simple coverings of medical blankets or loose Redcoats had long run out but Cole wouldn’t allow the media to display the graphic and terrible nature of their honored dead, so he did the best he could and shrouded them in a thin cloak of dignity.
As Cole reached down and crossed the outstretched arms of a young female sergeant from the Constabulary, whom he recognized from her promotion ceremony less than a year before, an officer from New Meridian City P.D. that accompanied him in the final storming of the fusion plant’s control center, came up behind him. The officer waited until Cole had finished rearranging the woman’s arms to cover the wound over her right breast and placing her helmet in the center of her torso to further mask the gruesome exit wound.
“Sir. We are getting reports from the other sectors. Looks like the fighting is over.”
Cole nodded as he stood, moving over to the next victim, this one a baby faced Territorial Guard soldier. The young officer continued. “Reports are heavy casualties.”
Cole stopped, looking down at the young soldier with a tuft of dark hair poking out of his dislodged helmet. “Corporal, one casualty is heavy.”
Cole stared in the distance at the looming Stratospire as the rising sun in the east glinted a pale orange glow off domes in the distance. He wondered if the battle was over for Rory Duran. If Duran had competed his mission and survived it. Survivors didn’t seem to number well on this black day. The weight of the past hours seemed to press him down as he checked the life signs of the young freckle faced boy that had fought and died so valiantly. He checked him as he had checked all the others before him.
A ray of hope flushed through Elijah Cole in the form of a shallow pulse.
1 Year after the Terrorist event in New Meridian City
AFTERMATH
Imperial Consolate
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Earth
“Ambassador Tonaska, I must admit…the story you have presented me is quite beyond my imagination.”
Regia Tonaska simmered inside, listening to Crassis as he unleashed the full arsenal of diplomatic charm and concern in denying what they both knew to be true. Regia waited patiently for the liar to continue his smokescreen, billowing from his ample mouth, but instead Crassis turned those puffy lips to a rich cup of Endran Jiri. She had wanted him to choke on it. It was too rich for even well to do families to enjoy daily on Mars and it was zipped across the universe in sealed barrels inside the Emperors tariff free holds on each passing superlighter. Tonaska abstained from the excess on principle and made it known. If she were throwing daggers today, she would throw them all.
Crassis put the cup down and folded his hands in his lap in infuriating silence, a pliant look of polite disquiet plastered on the face of a barracuda. Tonaska had hoped a denial or even a quasi acknowledgement of the events outlined in their previous discussion would leave an opening, but instead Crassis had decided to allow the silence of the moment to either end the discussion, or bring Regia to reveal more damning points from h
er report of the Meridian Incident, a year past now.
Roberto Giaconna enjoyed the Jiri. He enjoyed many of the Imperial traditions that still tainted the Commonwealth. As an arbiter in this meeting, he was, and always would be a suspect participant, plying to both sides for calm and understanding, but never straying far from his betters, but even he could not stand the awkward silence of the moment, thought Regia.
“Perhaps, there is more, Ambassador? Your report mentioned a ghost ship?”
“Hardly a ghost ship,” she retorted.
Opening the file filament, Tonaska scrolled to the section labeled, Military Component in the report and the mimic files of Crassis and Giaconna followed along. Crassis put down the cup after a second sip, and retrieved the report from the forma seat next to him, touching it with as little skin surface contact as he could manage without the overt impression of handling garbage. Crassis squinted again as if he could barely read it. Tonaska seethed. Crassis probably had a copy of this very report in his old Tiberian Oak desk, had seen it even before she did. Tonaska was a skilled diplomat but she wanted to scream. The Martian red blood of an Imperial heretic burned like lava through her skin.
She continued, Crassis looking over his ancient spectacles at her in mock attention. “This data was collected through the Commonwealth-Mars military cooperation delegation. On the day prior to the Incident, sensors from the Commonwealth Military Depot on Phobos detected the presence of a vessel in low Martian orbit utilizing a Luminous Tritanium dispersion field. The characteristics of the field and subsequent detection of a fire control system from the same vessel indicates that it was consistent with an unidentified Fast Attack Ship. Its origins were not determined conclusively, but it was not Commonwealth. My experts tell me that it was consistent in performance to Gen-3 Imperial models. The vessel was on a surface attack profile and a projectile was detected releasing from it.
