Old Ironsides

by Dean Crawford

  Nathan turned to his left a little and from nowhere shimmered into view a holosap. Doctor Hans Schmidt smiled at Ceyron.

  ‘You’re deactivated!’ Ceyron roared.

  ‘Was,’ Schmidt corrected him. ‘Nathan here felt unsure that I would have been responsible for the selling of high-lethality street drugs across the orbital cities, an insight for which I am truly grateful.’

  ‘It’s over, Ceyron,’ Nathan said. ‘Marshall is innocent and you’re looking at life inside for what you’ve done.’

  Ceyron’s father-figure act vanished in the blink of an eye, his gaze cold now, remorseless.

  ‘I could have you killed in an instant. All I have to do is shout for help.’

  ‘There’s no point,’ Schmidt said quickly. ‘You kill him, you’ll only harm yourself. There’s no escaping your fate, Ceyron.’

  Ceyron’s features twisted with rage.

  ‘They’re poisoning our species with their drugs and their crime!’ he growled. ‘They’re the Aleeyans all over again! If we don’t destroy them, they’ll destroy us from within!’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Nathan said. ‘But without people like you at the top, mankind will survive a lot longer even with the crime and corruption. It’s you who lost your way, Ceyron. Give it up, before somebody gets hurt.’

  Ceyron snarled at Nathan. ‘To hell with you!’

  The director general reached for his desk and hit a small button. Instantly from the metal walls of the office shot two drones, both of them modern and sleek unlike the ones Nathan had encountered down on the surface. Their bodies were sheathed in chrome, their movements rapid and their wings beating far more vigorously as they zipped into motion and rocketed toward Nathan.

  Schmidt glanced across at Nathan. ‘Run!’

  Nathan darted away from the two drones as Ceyron made for the office exit.

  ‘Cut him off!’ Nathan yelled as he dashed behind the desk and rolled beneath it as the two drones zipped over his head and overshot.

  Nathan scrambled from beneath the desk as the drones veered off to avoid the massive windows, climbing and turning hard as they aimed back toward Nathan.

  ‘The office doors have been sealed,’ Schmidt replied calmly as he turned to watch the drones. ‘Incoming!’

  Nathan looked desperately about for cover as Ceyron hammered the doors with his bare hands and cried out for help, as though it were his life in mortal danger. Nathan could see no escape from the drones as they rocketed down, swinging their ugly chrome abdomens toward him, their stingers like vicious hypodermic needles three inches long and aiming directly for his chest.

  Nathan backed up against the desk and his hand brushed against a huge vase filled with plants suspended in what looked like water. He whirled and grabbed it as the two drones roared in, then upturned it and hurled the contents out toward them. A thick, heavy globule of translucent gel shot from the vase and slammed into the nearest drone as Nathan ducked out of its way.

  The glutinous gel lodged in the drone’s wings and it plummeted past Nathan and slammed into the desk, its metallic body scraping across the glass surface as it smeared a trail of gel behind it and toppled off the far edge.

  Nathan whirled as the second drone screamed in and he held the vase aloft with the open-end toward the drone at the last moment. The drone shot into the vase, the impact almost knocking Nathan over backwards as he upturned the vase and slammed it down onto the office floor. The trapped drone buzzed and clattered against the glass as Nathan fought to keep it trapped inside.

  ‘The windows!’ Nathan gasped at Schmidt. ‘Blow the windows!’

  Schmidt complied in silence, and suddenly the hard-light windows were shut off and a brisk wind gusted into the office before seeming to haul the air from the building. Nathan wriggled out of his jacket and rolled it up before he stuffed it into the vase opening and pinned the vicious drone inside.

  Nathan leaped to his feet and hurled the vase through the open windows, and it tumbled out of sight over the ledge and plummeted to its doom a thousand feet below them.

  ‘Nathan!’

  The doors to the director general’s office burst open as Kaylin Foxx rushed through, her skin taut on her face and sheened with sweat, her gait unsteady as she took in the scene and then saw Ceyron turn to the wall alongside him.

  ‘Look out!’

  Ceyron pulled a pistol from within another of his concealed wall compartments and fired it at Foxx, the blasts hitting the wall alongside her and forcing her back out of sight as the director general lunged forward and sealed the doors once more from the inside.

  Nathan searched desperately for cover as Ceyron turned and fired at him.

  ***

  LII

  Nathan leaped to one side as the plasma shot rocketed toward him but he could not hope to avoid it entirely and he cried out as searing heat and pain struck his right shoulder. The blast splattered white-hot plasma across his upper arm, and with his jacket gone there was nothing to protect him from the white pain that ripped through his flesh.

  Nathan leaped instinctively backwards and away from the agonizing pain and hit the ground hard as he tumbled through the deactivated windows and landed on the thin ledge outside, the wind tugging at his hair and fanning the pain. With one hand he tore at his shirt and yanked off handfuls of burning fabric, the stench of smoldering flesh and skin tainting the air before the gale whipped it away. He heard his flesh hissing as it burned and he threw his hand over the glistening, blistering wound that was blossoming darkly upon his shoulder as he scrambled to get to his feet.

  Ceyron’s boot slammed into his chest and he tumbled backward as his lungs convulsed. Nathan hit the ledge on his back, one hand still gripping his injured shoulder as the director general loomed over him. The small, silvery pistol he held in his hand aimed unwaveringly at Nathan’s head, Ceyron’s grim smile framing the weapon.

  Nathan looked behind him and his stomach clenched as he saw the dizzying drop to oblivion far below. He turned back and Ceyron’s grin twisted with malice.

  ‘You’re just one more undesirable,’ he snarled, ‘consigned to history.’

  Nathan made a play for the pistol, whipped one hand up to grab the barrel but Ceyron was too quick and too wary. The pistol jerked out of Nathan’s reach as Ceyron stepped back a pace, and a strange clicking sound drew their attention. Nathan looked down and saw the chromium form of the gel-drenched drone crawling out of the office toward him, its wings useless with the gel sludge clogging their mechanism but its legs still active.

  Ceyron smiled as he lowered the pistol and stood back to let the horrible machine do its work. Nathan kicked out at the drone, his boot hitting it square in the face, but the drone was robust enough to take the blow and it scrambled back toward him.

  ‘You’re done, Ceyron!’ Nathan snapped above the gusting wind, praying that Foxx would get through the office doors. ‘None of this makes any difference!’

  ‘I know!’ Ceyron replied. ‘But it makes me feel better about it all!’

  The drone scrambled closer, made to twist its abdomen around to puncture Nathan’s left leg with the wicked needle. As it turned, Nathan slammed his right boot down on the drone and then hooked his left beneath it. With a heave of effort he lifted the drone up and flicked it high into the air over his head.

  The chrome body of the drone flashed in the sunlight as it arced over his head and plummeted over the edge of the precipice and tumbled away into the silence far below, its wings beating uselessly.

  Ceyron roared and rushed forward, swung a heavy boot into Nathan’s side. The blow tore the air from Nathan’s lungs and he rolled away and toppled over the edge. He swung his left hand up in desperation and caught the ledge with his fingers, his right arm still throbbing with pain and hanging uselessly from his side as he looked up and saw Ceyron glare down at him.

  There were no more words from the director general. He merely observed Nathan for a moment, dangling by his fingertips above a thousand foot fal
l to certain death, and then he lifted his boot slowly, let Nathan see what he was about to do, and stamped it down hard.

  Nathan’s finger bones broke in unison beneath the blow with a crack that he could hear above the savage wind, and for a brief moment in time as his grip loosened and he knew that he would not be able to hang on, he realized that his life was finally over. An image of his wife and child flickered like angel’s wings glimpsed beating from the corner of his eye, and then Nathan’s broken hand slid from the ledge and his stomach rose up into his chest as he plummeted away from the ledge.

  Nathan tilted over onto his back as he fell, saw the broad blue sky above him and for a moment felt as though he was barely moving at all. Then his back slammed into something hard and he heard a whine of a mass-drive as it compensated for a shift in weight.

  Nathan lay stunned for a moment and then looked around to see the hood of a police cruiser, and behind the windscreen two beaming faces. Vasquez and Allen waved at him as Vasquez called out through a loud-hailer that echoed off the huge building alongside them.

  ‘That’s seven lives you’ve got left, Ironside!’

  Nathan barely had time to respond as he looked up and saw Ceyron’s horrified face above them. The director general whirled out of sight and the police cruiser rose up swiftly in pursuit, Nathan hanging on with his injured hand and weak right arm as the cruiser ascended to the ledge.

  Foxx was nowhere to be seen but Ceyron was already at the doors of his office and begging for help once more. Nathan watched the director general for a moment and then two plasma guns emerged from recesses in the vehicle’s hood. Nathan looked over his shoulder at Vasquez. The detective was glaring at Ceyron with the kind of look in his eye that Nathan had seen all too often back in the day.

  ‘Vasquez,’ he cried out above the wind and the whining mass drive. ‘You kill him, he won’t suffer. You put him in prison, he’ll suffer for the rest of his natural life. Don’t deny him punishment! Don’t deny yourself the satisfaction of waking up every day knowing that the asshole is rotting in a squalid cell in Tethy’s Gaol!’

  Vasquez fingered the trigger of the cruiser’s guns as Nathan watched Allen’s hand rest on his partner’s shoulder.

  ‘He’s right, Emilio. Let’s put this sucker behind bars, then go visit him every once in a while to laugh at him.’

  Vasquez scowled and pulled the trigger.

  Two plasma bursts rocketed out and shot through the director general’s office, and as Nathan turned to watch they shot over the kneeling man’s head and slammed into the locked doors. The blast smashed through the locking mechanisms and fried the circuitry, and moments later armed guards burst through the battered doors with Foxx at their head, her pistol pointing at Ceyron’s kneeling form.

  Even above the cruiser’s drive, Nathan could hear her voice.

  ‘Franklyn Ceyron, you’re under arrest for treason, conspiracy, attempted homicide and genocide! Stay on your knees and put your hands behind your head!’

  Nathan felt the police cruiser tilt gently forward, and he slid back down the hood and onto the ledge as Vasquez guided the cruiser away to land nearby. Nathan, his legs weak and pain still ripping through his shoulder, limped to where Foxx was fastening a pair of cuffs around Ceyron’s wrists, the once proud and revered leader now sobbing quietly, his head hanging low.

  Two police officers hauled Ceyron to his feet and dragged him away as Foxx watched them leave and then staggered to one side on legs that looked fit to collapse.

  Nathan nipped forward and wrapped his left arm about her waist, supporting her and wincing as the broken bones of his left hand rubbed each other as he tried to hang on to her.

  ‘You need to get back to the hospital,’ he gasped.

  Foxx glanced at Nathan’s injuries. ‘You first. You’re a wreck.’

  ‘It’s your fault, you let me walk in here with a genocidal maniac.’

  ‘I just saved your ass.’

  Foxx’s indignation vanished as she noted the blackened, smoldering flesh of his right shoulder and began fussing over it as she tried to pull bits of burned fabric from the wound.

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘How the hell do you call that mess fine?’

  Nathan slumped against Ceyron’s desk as two medics hurried toward them, concerned looks on their faces as they saw Foxx likewise leaning against him. Vasquez and Allen hurried into the office behind the medics and jogged up to Foxx’s side, each taking one arm and helping her down onto a gurney that had been wheeled in by office staff with traumatized looks on their faces.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ Nathan said as he slid down and sat on the office floor with his legs splayed before him.

  ‘Okay,’ Vasquez said as he knelt beside Foxx and watched as the medics began tending to her wounds.

  Allen smiled at his partner’s casual dismissal of Nathan’s wounds as he looked across.

  ‘You did good,’ he said to Nathan, ‘real good.’

  ‘Police found the stockpile,’ Nathan guessed wearily.

  ‘All of it,’ Vasquez confirmed. ‘Marshall’s off the hook, Ceyron’s goin’ down. He won’t see the light of day again if we have anything to do with it.’

  Foxx turned her head and whispered a warning. ‘Marshall’s here.’

  Allen looked at Vasquez. ‘You cracked his jaw, right?’

  ‘It didn’t go down like that and you know it. We had him bang to rights, he’ll understand. The admiral will be as pleased to see me as I will be to see him, you wait.’

  Before Nathan could reply Admiral Marshall stormed into the office, his fearsome glare burning into them like laser beams as he observed the destruction and chaos around him.

  ‘Well, this is one hell of a mess you’ve created,’ he growled.

  ‘Admiral Marshall,’ Vasquez said nervously as he stood up, a brief, weak smile adorning his face. ‘How’s the jaw?’

  ‘Never better,’ Marshall rumbled. ‘How’s the attitude?’

  ‘That hasn’t changed,’ Allen said with a bright smile.

  Marshall stalked toward Vasquez until he was within reach, and suddenly one hand shot out at the former Marine’s face. Vasquez jerked, threw up his arms in defense, and Marshall chuckled cruelly.

  ‘Two weeks in the brig for striking a superior officer in the line of duty, if you were still in the Marines,’ he said.

  ‘Which I’m not,’ Vasquez pointed out uneasily.

  Marshall watched as Ceyron was led away, and then glanced at Titan. ‘Get those ships back into orbit,’ he ordered the senate members lingering with interest around the shattered office doors, ‘and get back to work! I want a replacement for Ceyron in power before that sun goes down, or you’ll be looking at a real military coup, understood?!’

  The senators hurried away and Marshall looked at Foxx, Nathan, Vasquez and Allen.

  ‘Good job,’ he said simply, then turned and left.

  Nathan let a sigh of relief finally spill from his lungs, and for the first time in what felt like days he surprised himself by falling asleep where he sat on the office floor, surrounded by medics and staff and friends.

  ***

  LIII

  New Washington

  The vast blue dome of the sky was filled with Earth’s baleful orb as Nathan sat on the roof of an apartment building on the South Side and stared at the tattered ribbons and wreaths of cloud scattered across the immense expanses of the Pacific Ocean. He could see California stretching away from him over the shoulder of the planet, the bright sand-coloured limb reaching out into the blue water, and the waist of Mexico twisting toward the vast expanses of Brazil and the Amazon rainforests.

  The rest of the planet was too huge to fit in one gaze but he never tired of looking down upon it, as though the novelty of seeing something that he would not have believed possible in his lifetime would never, ever wear off.

  He rubbed his shoulder with his left hand, which provoked an ache in his finger joints where the last of the healing
was still to take place. One of the major advances of this new age had most definitely been medicine: within forty eight hours of leaving Ceyron’s office the grotesquely burned flesh and skin of his shoulder had emerged from its gel bath looking almost normal, and the bones of his hand had been set and fused using a bizarre paste made from his own stem cells and injected directly into the bone itself. He hadn’t felt a thing: anaesthetic was no longer used, instead special nano-blockers intercepted pain signals as they travelled from the inflicted area to the brain and prevented them from ever completing their journey. People did not suffer any longer once the medical profession were able to treat them, all of which was performed for free as a citizen’s right.

  ‘What are you doing up here?’

  Nathan turned and saw Kaylin Foxx walk out onto the roof, her hands in the pockets of her pants and looking as though the events of the past few days had been nothing more than business as usual.

  ‘I like the view.’

  Foxx looked up at the Earth as she moved to stand beside where Nathan sat and surveyed the vast surface of the planet without any real interest.

  ‘Guess it must be quite the sight for you,’ she said.

  ‘It is.’

  Foxx looked down at him. ‘I’ve got something else for you to see.’

  Nathan looked at her for an explanation, but Foxx did nothing but smile as she turned and walked toward the roof entrance. Intrigued, Nathan stood and followed her back inside.

  The apartment had been given to Nathan the day following the arrest of Director General Ceyron. One of several owned by the Governor of New Washington, it was given over to him to convalesce after everything that had happened, with the compliments of the governor’s office.

  ‘I guess you don’t know half of what’s in here,’ Foxx said as they walked into the lounge.

  Unlike the dark and dangerous labyrinth of the North Side, the apartment overlooked broad green parks and small wooded glades, the towers themselves silvery spires full of light and warmth. They basked in the sunlight streaming through the massive orbital city, making it seem to Nathan almost like he was looking out across New York’s Central Park, Earth’s blue oceans taking the place of a normal sky.