Gravlander

by Erik Wecks

  Katy decided that she had no intention of getting caught by Harvey Mercer or anyone else associated with Maximus. “I’ll move the body. You keep the weapon pointed at the hatch and then go out when the door is clear. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Katy looked forward and started pulling the cadaver into the dumpster. It was a far more awkward task than she would have hoped. His belt got hung up on the edge of the door, and he was surprisingly heavy, having been both well fed and a miner. Tugging on his arms wasn’t enough, and she had to reach forward and grab the back of his belt to get him over the lip. His belt buckle clanged as it let go of the hatch. The sudden motion as he slid forward on his face caused Katy to slip on the muck. She fell backward with the body landing partially on top of her. The whole thing turned out to be a far noisier process than she’d hoped.

  Sapped by the effort, Katy leaned back, hoping to take a breath before trying to get the body off her, but Alia went by her, holding the weapon awkwardly. Katy wasn’t surprised to see that Alia’s hands were shaking.

  Heart pounding, Katy pushed the dead man off her body and scrambled over the top of him to stay with her partner. When she emerged, she found Alia crouched down next to the dumpster, looking through the scope.

  While Alia remained crouched, Katy turned toward the loading dock and carefully poked her head above the rim. The whole thing was a bloody mess. At least one body remained on the loading dock almost right above her head. Katy guessed that was the man who they’d heard. His belly had been slashed opened and cauterized by some kind of energy weapon. It was a fascinating wound that Katy was instantly starting to treat in her head. Then she looked at his gray face and recognized that the life had long fled his body. She might still have revived him with the full weight of the Gallant behind her, but not here. His was not the only blood on the dock. It looked as if at least two other bodies had been dragged off the dock and into the open doors of the complex’s storage room. All was dark inside the compound now, except for the dim flicker of flames still burning somewhere further in.

  Feeling relatively safe that Neilson and his goons weren’t going to suddenly appear behind her, Katy turned around and examined the rest of the square. It all seemed clear to her, although the noise at the end of the alley sounded like it was drifting in their direction. Putting her hand on Alia’s shoulder, she said, “I think we need to go! We need to get clear before we get trapped in here again.”

  Alia nodded, and then stood up. Holding the gun to her shoulder, she pointed it at the ground and sprinted forward to a position along the wall where she could peek around the corner and look down the alley that led to their escape. Katy followed behind, allowing Alia the lead and wondering where she’d learned to hold a weapon like a soldier.

  Once Alia saw the alley was clear, her shoulders seemed to loosen. She still held the rifle at the ready, watching the alley, as it was their only means of escape without going back into the burning building behind them. “Now what?” she asked.

  “The containers,” said Katy. “If the job went sideways, we’re supposed to launch the containers to the evac site and wait there for the Clarion.”

  Alia grimaced. “It’s going to be a long three months.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Well, no matter where we go, we have to go through the alley.” Alia jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Unless you fancy a trip through the burning building.”

  Katy looked back. Flames had now engulfed one of the two storage rooms and were curling out around the top. The inside of the building looked to be glowing. She patted Alia’s shoulder. “I’m right behind you.”

  Alia nodded once and took off running down the long alley. They were just a few feet from the end when a fierce battle erupted in the street directly in front of them. None of the combatants could be seen, but weapons fire, including cutting torches, pulse lasers, and the zip and skip of fletch rounds passed back and forth.

  Alia skidded to a halt and turned. Looking panicked, she shook her head.

  Katy halted with her. For a moment, the two women seemed lost, unsure whether to hold their ground or go back. Alia, who was looking back up the alley, grabbed Katy by the arm and started to run even as Katy turned. About halfway back, a scaffolding of some sort clung to the side of the building. At first Katy thought it a temporary repair structure, but then she realized that it was bolted into the fibercrete. A small ladder descended to the ground and above that, steep stairs rose between a series of platforms, each of which hung on the building underneath a window.

  Pulling Katy forward and moving her toward the ladder, Alia whispered fiercely, “Up the fire escape!”

  Fire escape? thought Katy. Don’t they have anti-grav blankets or belts? Even as she bolted toward the ladder, Katy was struck again by how little she understood of the Unity and how backward it was compared to the Empire it had defeated. Katy reached the bottom of the ladder, which was still some two and a half meters above her head. She jumped and missed the first time but got it on her second try. However, she had expected it to hold firm. It did not. Instead, the ladder descended rapidly to the ground with a loud groan, and Katy fell with it. She only just managed to avoid being pinned to the ground by the carbon and steel contraption.

  The loud clang of its impact made Alia wince, but she reached down and pulled Katy to her feet. This time she had to speak loudly to be heard over the fighting. “Up!” she said, gesturing to the ladder with her weapon. Katy was just starting to climb when she noticed a silhouette at the end of the alley, now sheltered only centimeters from where they had stood moments before. She hesitated, and then she climbed as quickly and quietly as a cat. Alia came right behind her.

  Katy had just reached the first platform when another two or three fighters stepped into the alley. One of them yelled to his companions. The third person, who had just entered the alley, started to run toward them.

  Alia dropped to the ground with a muttered, “Fuck!” She raised her weapon.

  Katy, unsure of what to do, pressed herself into the wall of the building, seeking the slim shelter gained by putting the fire escape staircase between herself and the fighters.

  The man who had been running toward them stopped. Seeing Alia with her weapon drawn, he put his hands up and let his own rifle swing down by his side. “Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot. I’m a friend. I was sent to find you two. We need your help.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Me? I’m just a miner who lives on this shithole. Listen, you got to believe me. I’m on your side. We want the reclamator to work for everyone, but Neilson doesn’t want that. You have to trust me. Neilson is messing with your containers right now. We don’t know what he’s doing, but we’re trying to stop him. Please come with me. We can’t hold our position very long, so if you don’t come with me now, Neilson’s men will be right behind us. They won’t stop to talk to you. Neilson told his men to shoot you on sight.”

  Alia shrugged. “We’ve got to trust someone.”

  Katy nodded, and both women started to descend back the way they had come.

  Katy crouched in a low ditch that ran alongside the hard-packed runway of the St. Justina airport. Twenty men armed with everything from makeshift shanks to mining lasers lay next to her. Somewhere along the way, she had been given a dirty mining helmet. An anti-personnel flack round exploded so close behind her that she instinctively laid flat and held the oversized helmet on her head and buried her face in the dirt. Pieces of sharpened metal whined as they zipped by. Amazingly, she and those around her remained unscathed.

  When she lifted her head again, she saw a hand reaching down to her, inviting her to stand.

  Katy looked up, reached out, and took the hand of Neilson’s assistant. Katy wouldn’t have said that he looked happy or at ease, but the mere fact that he was standing there when everyone else stayed flat left Katy in awe.

  Katy stood, allowing his confidence to overcome her own fear. Sh
e felt, rather than saw, Alia stand behind them.

  The man nodded, satisfied. He said in a voice at least half an octave lower than the one she had heard in the administrative building, “I’m Craig Gantry. Let’s get some cover, and then we can talk.”

  Without waiting for them to acknowledge his statement, Gantry took off running in the low ditch, bent at the waist and keeping his head down. He used a hand to hold the miner’s helmet on his head.

  Even though the darkness protected them somewhat, occasional fletch rounds zipped by. Once one of Neilson’s men must have seen something against the background because a bright violet mining laser lit up the path right in front of them. Gantry instinctively dropped to the ground in the low ditch where they ran. Katy and Alia followed, landing near Gantry’s boots. For a while, Gantry army-crawled, and when he thought it safe, he stood and sprinted to a low trailer stationed along the hard-packed runway.

  Once he got behind the trailer, Gantry straightened up. Three other men were standing there, two of them keeping a lookout on either end of the container, the other standing hands on hips, waiting for his commander to return.

  The flat open runway lay on the far side of their cover. On this side, a small mound of earth, probably left over from the construction of the airport, sat only a few feet behind the trailer. It rose perhaps twelve feet high. The spot where the six of them stood seemed relatively protected compared to the rest of the wide-open airfield.

  Gantry turned to Katy. His voice was stern, and he rested his hands on his hips, his feet in a strong shoulder-wide stance. “I hope that nothing that’s happened tonight has changed your mind about working with us to clean our soil here on Salvador.”

  Katy took a step backward. She stuttered. “I … to be honest. I haven’t … I’m not really that interested in talking business when my life is still on the line.”

  Gantry frowned a little. “Well, it is exactly your business that has caused this, so the way I see it, you can’t exactly wash your hands of it.”

  Katy felt her anger rise. Something about his tone didn’t sit right with her. She opened her mouth to argue when Gantry interrupted.

  He softened his stance, holding up his hands. “Perhaps that deserves a little explanation. I apologize. We don’t have much time. None, really, but I can see that you need to be brought up to speed. My name is Craig Gantry, and I’ve been working as an assistant for Lars Neilson for the last year, and frankly you are an absolutely poor judge of character if you thought that you could try to do an honest bit of business with him. Neilson was cheating you. Almost as soon as you offered him the reclamator, he saw the opportunity to profit by it. He planned to sell the lithium using another ship, the Brutus.”

  Katy nodded and shared a quick look with Alia before speaking. “We’re familiar with Harvey Mercer.”

  “Then do you realize that he works for the Maximus Syndicate?”

  Katy nodded, and Gantry’s shoulders relaxed. The gleam seemed to return to his eye. “So you know that you were getting scammed. What you may not understand is that Neilson has never forgiven you for what happened last time you were here. The man who attacked you was Neilson’s brother-in-law. The kid was his niece. She died shortly after you left.”

  Katy felt light-headed. Some part of her marveled how she could spend a night getting shot at, and it was the fact that Neilson wanted personal revenge that frightened her.

  Gantry went on. “Maximus does some human trafficking on the side. Neilson’s supposed to take both of you back to a man on Tortuga.”

  Katy clenched her fists. After five months of training with Soren, Katy tried to focus on exactly what she was feeling. Anger and a thorough desire to protect herself flooded in. At first, she tried to observe it, to stand separate from it, creating space for her reason to have its say, and then she decided this wasn’t the time. Someone was trying to kill her and had made plans to turn her over to Chapman, which Katy found less palatable than death itself. This was a moment to let her anger take control and do its job of keeping her alive. “What do you need from me?”

  Despite the sounds of battle and the cries of dying men, Gantry smiled. “I didn’t think you’d be that easy to convince.”

  Katy gazed intently at his face. “Neilson has no idea what he was doing when he sought to sell me. I’d die first.”

  “Katy, Chapman can’t know it’s you,” said Alia. “There’s no way he can.”

  Katy raised her hand and shook her head. No, Chapman knew. She was sure. “Later!” she barked. “One problem at a time.” Then looking back at Gantry, she repeated her earlier question. “What can we do to help?”

  Craig Gantry looked to the man standing next to him. “Tom?”

  The man stepped forward. “Brutus got into orbit sooner than we thought they would. Mercer wasn’t scheduled to arrive in St. Justina until sometime tomorrow evening. By that time, we expected him to find new management in control.

  “We’d hoped that would be enough for a captain like him to tuck tail and head away, but instead, he and a group of about fifteen landed within twenty minutes of the explosion at the administrative building. Then things went to hell. Before anything happened tonight, a group of thirty of my men had stationed themselves around the containers. That’s what this thing is all about, after all, a chance for all of us to finally be free—and we weren’t willing to let Neilson and his handpicked band of thugs sell us out to a syndicate.

  “Anyway, even though most of them had served in the war, and I gave them the best weapons we had, they still weren’t a match for a group of fifteen mercenaries in full tactical gear. The railgun on the ship’s boat took out eight of them before we knew it. Those that made it out beat it back to this ditch, and here we sit, lobbing spit and hate at each other across the open runway. We’ve mopped up the rest of St. Justina, so our numbers have swelled here, and more and more of the townies joined us as word got out about what was happening. Neilson’s never been popular. There might be eighty of us spread out on this side of the runway all told, but the truth is, if we charge across that open ground, a lot of us are going to get killed before we reach those containers, and that’s a problem. We’re already going to have a lot of explaining to do to the Mining Division, but if their best drill pullers and charge setters get killed, they’re going to ask a lot more questions, and they might not take so kindly to our competing with them for selling lithium—especially since we’re re-eds and all.”

  “We need you to get those containers out of there, and fly them over here near to the administrative compound we now control,” said Gantry. “If we have the containers, then Mercer will be forced to charge at us, and with eighty of us over here waiting for them, I can’t see them doing it. Chances are they’ll tuck tail.”

  Katy looked at Alia. “Can we do that?”

  “No problem.” Alia looked around. “I’ll need to sight the landing zone.” Looking at the mound of dirt behind her, she said, “What about up there? Will I be safe?”

  Gantry smirked. “Safe? No, but safe enough.” He looked at the man next to him. “Carper, take her around the back so that no one gets a bead on the two of you, and then help her set them down as close as possible to Admin.”

  “Understood.” The man took off around the edge of the mound, keeping low. Alia followed, crouching in his wake.

  It was less than a minute later when the seven containers lit up all at once and started to lift off.

  Katy and Gantry crouched in the ditch next to the trailer where they could watch. She had her heads-up on and was watching through the eyepiece on the infrared. Mercer’s men had stationed themselves around the containers. She could see some of them scrambling to get out of the way, then the engines washed out her night vision, and she couldn’t make heads or tails of anything on the ground. When she spoke, her voice was grim. “There’s more than fifteen over there. I’d guess they have at least thirty.”

  Gantry sounded frustrated. “That doesn’t surprise me. We h
aven’t found Neilson. My guess is after the firefight in the courtyard, he hightailed it out to the containers, knowing that Mercer was coming.”

  Four of the containers seemed to have little or no trouble. However, three of them stalled. They hung in the air and, for a moment, stopped climbing.

  Even over the roar of the launch, Katy could hear Alia’s frustration. “Damn it! They’re tied down somehow.”

  Suddenly one of the three seemed to sway and then lurched to the side. Not long after, Katy heard a twang and zip as at least one of the carbon-fiber cables that held it snapped under the mounting pressure.

  The giant container dipped sideways, slamming into the container next to it and damaging the engines. The sky suddenly lit up with an explosion as the engine on the second container blew up.

  After that, it all happened in a blur. The first container lurched away from the explosion but lost altitude. It crashed into the third container’s lines, snapping at least two of them. The third container suddenly shot upward, freed by the crash. Having lost one of its two engines, the second container crashed back to the ground, landing hard with a loud boom that could both be heard and felt from Katy’s position. The first container continued clawing for altitude, swaying on its remaining line.

  That’s when Katy noticed in the light provided by the launch that the ship’s boat for the Brutus wasn’t that far away. The final container continued to lurch and sway and tug against its line, but it wouldn’t let go. Katy was reminded of a tethered bird trying to pull itself free by the strength of its wings.

  As it pulled, the forces somehow rotated the container onto its side, and this proved disastrous. Whatever was inside must have shifted, because the computer was suddenly unable to compensate for the sideways drift, and in the end the container came crashing back to ground right on top of the ship’s boat.