by Kent, Steven
Sharp as needles and harder than steel, the fléchettes pierced combat armor, leaving a pinprick entrance hole on one side and a pinprick exit hole on the other. The lethal darts bored into the concrete walls as if they were made of cloth. They burrowed into the ceiling above us, vanishing into soft tiles and shattering light fixtures.
In the courtyard, our rockets were about as effective as a strong wind. The blasts threw Mooreland’s Marines off their feet and cast them aside like toys, but their shielded armor protected them from shrapnel.
“We can’t hurt the speckers!” somebody called on an open line.
“Shoot and run! Shoot and run! Shoot and run!” Thomer shouted, as he moved up and down the hall, his voice as dry as desert sand.
Men were dying. I watched one of my men stand, aim, and fall before he could fire; fléchette holes dotted in his helmet, his chest plates, and his shoulder plates. He fell on his back, and thin streams of blood leaked out of the holes. The man next to him sprang for the window, tripped over the body, and was shot in the head at least five times before he could steady himself.
I prepared to fire my first rocket. Taking a deep breath, I slid up to the edge of the casing, aimed the launcher into the crowd, and pulled the trigger. I did not wait to see what I hit. The moment I fired, I dropped down to safety. Dozens of fléchettes struck the spot from which I had fired. By the time they hit, I had already pulled my second rocket launcher and moved to a new spot.
As I lay on the floor, I looked across the darkened hall. Dead men in armor lay in odd poses along the floor. The waist-high window casing protected us as long as we stayed down waiting to shoot, but they left our heads and chests unprotected when we stood to fire. I saw men with shattered visors and men with holes in their helmets, men with blood leaking from so many holes in their armor that they looked like they were covered in sweat.
I climbed to my knees, peered out from behind the casing, and fired my second rocket.
“Harris, where are you?” It was Hollingsworth.
“I’m still in the building,” I said.
“You need to get out of there, sir. If we don’t blow those charges now, the Unifieds are going to enter the building,” Hollingsworth said. He was polite, respectful, a nice guy. In a deferential way, he had just told me to get my ass out of the building.
Looking around the hall, I realized I was the last man there. In the time it took me to fire my second shot, everyone else had left or died. As I crawled toward the stairs, I saw a man rolling on the floor. He held an armored hand against his left shoulder as he rolled from side to side. My visor identified him as Corporal James Mattock.
“Mattock,” I said on an open frequency, “we need to get out of here.” I saw three separate streams of blood running down his arm. “Mattock,” I repeated.
He did not answer. He just lay there, writhing like a dying snake. I reached a hand under his arm and pulled him with me. When we reached the stairs, I heaved him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The Unified Authority did not necessarily make the fléchettes the new Marines used out of the same depleted uranium we used in our stealth weapons. It occurred to me that the uranium they used could even be enriched.
If Mooreland’s men were using hot uranium, the damage to his shoulder would be the least of Mattock’s problems. Shooting heavily radioactive materials through your enemies was a good way to make sure they died no matter where you hit them.
Mattock did not sag like a dying man; he rolled and twisted and tried to put a hand over his wound. Holding him tight so that he would not roll out of my grip, I started down the stairs. Along the walls, I saw the charges Thomer’s men left behind. Wires wound around the corners, leading from one bundle of explosives to the next.
“Are you clear, General?” Hollingsworth asked.
“Still on the stairs.”
“You better hurry, sir. They’re already entering the garage.”
I clattered down the stairs as quickly as I could with Mattock over my shoulder. Jumping a couple of stairs, I overshot a landing and slammed into the wall. Somewhere along the line, Mattock’s hand dropped from his wound and he hung limp and lifeless along my back. Hating the situation and loathing myself for doing what I had to do, I dropped the inert body and ran.
Skipping the top floor of the garage, where the fighting had already begun, I sprinted down to the second floor. “Clear!” I yelled, as I crashed out of the stairwell, slamming the door behind me.
The explosion was a classic example of Marine Corps overkill. The blast caved in the stairwell and the surrounding walls. The door I had just slammed closed came flying out of its jamb like a cork from a champagne bottle.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Doctorow and his men had enough weapons on the second level of the garage to launch a minor world war. Racks of M27s and particle beam cannons lined two of the walls. Crates of grenades stood in stacks that reached the ceiling. Preparing to fight the Avatari, the Unified Authority had sent three million men with enough munitions to wage a prolonged war. Now, only their surplus gear survived.
Hollingsworth’s men rigged charges around the tops of the pillars. Using my night-for-day lenses to look into the shadows, I spotted the wires, but the emergency lights were bright enough to keep my visor switched to tactical lenses. Without night-for-day vision illuminating the shadows, the charges were invisible.
The garage rang with the echoes of gunfire and explosions. One floor above me, war had gone full scale. Glare and shadows flashed on the wall along the ramp out. I picked up battle chatter on every frequency as I scanned the interLink.
I contacted Hollingsworth and told him to begin evacuating the garage. I contacted Thomer and told him to retreat.
Marines started backing down the ramp in a trickle. These were the men at the back of the battle, men who might not have fired a single shot. They ran down quickly, hid as best they could, and turned to cover the ramp. They hid behind pillars and corners. A few fools hid behind crates of grenades; the wooden sides of the crates would offer little protection against fléchettes.
I ran to the side of the ramp and pulled out my particle beam pistol. The little gun would probably have no more effect against shielded armor than an M27, but I had to try.
More of my men retreated down the ramp, now in a steady stream. Some men backpedaled, firing up at the enemy as they came. Some ran and dived for cover. From my hiding place, I watched as swarms of fléchettes turned men into mist. Men hit while running for cover fell and slid along the floor. Men hit while returning fire collapsed where they stood. A few toppled over the side of the ramp.
One man fell in front of me. He was gut-shot, but not dead. He landed on his back on the concrete, his hand over the lower part of his stomach. He squirmed, his movements getting slower and weaker. I wanted to save him, but I couldn’t. I wanted to kill him and put him out of his misery, but I could not bring myself to do that, either. A few moments passed and his squirming stopped. Blood trickled from holes in his armor.
My men continued their retreat. The ramp was wide and open, offering no chance of cover or concealment. When I peered over the edge, I saw more of my men falling than reaching the bottom. The screams and sounds of panic I heard over the interLink left me numb.
I opened up a channel to Thomer and yelled, “Get them moving, Thomer. Get them down to the third floor! Get them into the tunnels. They’re dying up here!”
The combat reflex was in such full flow in my veins, it was almost joyous. I watched men retreating past me. They no longer stopped to fight. Sprinting across the concrete, they hit the bottom of the ramp, rounded the corner, and continued deeper into the garage.
One man came limping past me. He had streams of blood pouring out of three holes in his leg, but he kept going. In another minute, poisons from the fléchettes would kill him, but the man kept going.
Time had become as transparent as glass to me now. Seconds had no meaning as I prepared to fight and kill.
&n
bsp; More of my men backed down the ramp, firing particle beams up as they went. As they walked past me, three men hiding along the base of ramp opened launched grenades.
“Get them out of here!” I called to Thomer.
“Fall back,” Thomer gave the order even before I finished. The glow of shielded armor spilled over the ramp as Mooreland’s men started down. I waited, holding my particle beam pistol ready.
Fléchettes flitted through the air, scratching chips from the concrete walls and pillars, drilling through crates and racks of weapons, forcing men from positions they had already been ordered to abandon. The tiny metal darts drilled into walls. Some banked off the concrete, making the tinkling noise of breaking glass as they dropped on to the ground. Over my head, an exposed pipe burst and light bulbs shattered. More of my men fell as they retreated.
Wanting to see what a particle beam would do at close range, I shot out of my hiding place, stood along the side of the ramp, pressed my pistol right up against the knee of an advancing U.A. Marine, and fired. The sparkling green beam struck his shielded armor and disappeared. The man did not even flinch.
And then I felt pain, a sharp and brilliant jolt. My fingers flew open. My hand went numb and I dropped my pistol. There was a moment of dead silence in my head. Then, I felt the fire in my skin. When I drew back my hand, I saw holes in my armor. Blood trickled out over my forearm and palm. I had been shot twice.
First, I felt dizzy and then confused. The warmth of my combat reflex comforted me for a moment and then it faded.
The shielded Marines reached the bottom of the ramp. Having seen the rest of my Marines in retreat, they must have expected to find the level empty. In the moment it took them to spot me, I dived behind a stack of crates and tried to roll to safety. Fléchettes ripped through the air around me. Crates shattered in a storm of dust, darts, and splinters.
“Harris, where are you?” Thomer asked.
“I’m coming,” I said, the words slow as they rolled from my lips. “I’m on the second . . .”
The blood from my hand and arm did not stain my armor; it beaded and rolled across the slick, dark plating the way raindrops roll down a well-waxed car. My forearm burned, my hand was numb. My injured arm dragged as if it had fallen asleep. I tried to make a fist with my right hand as I used my left to crawl toward the next ramp down. I could not even make a fist, my fingers would not cooperate.
So many fléchettes hit the box beside me that the wood disintegrated and grenades rolled to the floor. I tried to pick one up with my right hand and could not close my fingers around it. I picked it up with my left and realized I would need my injured right hand to pull the pin.
“Are you hit?” Thomer asked.
“My arm,” I said. The slurred voice in my helmet did not sound familiar to me. It sounded as if it came from a drunk man.
Bringing myself up in a sitting position, I slumped across the ledge overlooking the ramp to the next floor down. There was a ten-foot drop. I managed to thread my right pointer finger through the loop of the grenade pin, and held my right arm steady as I pulled the grenade away with my left hand. As the pin broke free, I saw men in glowing, shielded armor coming around the corner. The bastards looked like angels in the darkness. My head filled with mist and cobwebs, I bowled the grenade in their direction.
The bastards fired back at me. Fléchettes hit the rail around me, glancing off the metal in a dance of sparks and chips. One dart struck me in the leg as I swung it under the rail and rolled over the ledge. The grenade exploded. I did not see what it did to the bastards. I dropped ten feet to the concrete below, landing on my back.
I felt pain. My thoughts were disjointed. The fall must have knocked the air out of my lungs. I had to fight to breathe. My chest felt crushed.
“You’re not the toughest man in the Marines, just the luckiest,” Ava had told me the last time that I saw her. I did not feel so lucky now. When I tried to get up, my body ignored me.
I kept expecting the combat reflex to revive me, but it didn’t. I felt cold and powerless, the weight of my body holding me down. Wondering if it was shock or radiation, I managed to roll onto my left side. I tried to push myself up with no success.
The world seemed to have left me behind. I thought I heard men fighting all around me, but the gunfire and explosions seemed far away. I reminded myself that I was in a garage, but my thoughts had become a slippery stream of images that never quite came into focus.
“I’ve got you, Harris,” somebody said. Whoever had grabbed me did not give me a chance to stand up on my own. He pulled me along the ground first, and then threw me in the air.
I could feel knots twisting in my stomach. I was upside down, the blood rushing to my head.
“Harris, I’m getting you out,” the voice said. A virtual dog tag showed in my visor, but I could not focus my eyes sufficiently to read it.
Slung over the man’s shoulder, I could barely breathe. My head cleared for a moment, then I vomited. You can drown in your own vomit, I thought. Warm liquid ran into my nostrils and into my eyes.
I tried to remove my helmet, but my arms would not cooperate. They hung like ropes as I wrestled with the acrid-sawdust taste of bile in my throat.
The man carrying me came to a stop. Moving slowly, he lowered me onto my back. A moment later, my helmet came off. I tried to stand up, but my body ignored me. The world was dark and cold around me. Nobody spoke.
The last thing I remembered was an explosion, a thunderous, pulverizing sound followed by a rush of smoke and grit that choked out the last of my breath.
“Did we get them?” I asked.
Nobody answered, as the remaining shreds of my consciousness spun into nothing.
EPILOGUE
GHOSTS, GRAVES, AND DISHONOR
1
I had always prided myself on walking away from battles on the same legs that brought me in. That time, it didn’t happen.
I was already on the mend by the time I woke from an induced coma. A civilian doctor had me make a fist and curl my toes. He poked my fingers with pins and asked me if I could feel the pressure. I assured him I could.
My head hurt. From the moment I opened my eyes, it felt like someone had tried to split my skull in two with an ax.
“You, General Harris, are the pinnacle of genetic engineering. No human could have survived what you went through.”
I wanted water. I was hungry, my head ached, my entire body ached, I felt weak and dizzy and unhappy; but above all, I wanted water. “Can I have some water?” I asked, my voice a gravelly croak.
“Not just yet, General,” the doctor said. I heard the man and saw his blurry silhouette, but I could not get my eyes to focus. The light from the window made my head hurt all the more.
“We still have tests to run now that you are awake.” He sounded young and peppy, excited to run tests on a new patient who should already be dead.
As my head cleared, I became aware of the slings holding my arms and the tubes poking into my flesh. Someone had elevated the back of my bed so that it kept my head raised higher than my feet.
“I was shot,” I said.
The doctor corrected me. “You were shot five times.”
“I got hit in the arm,” I said.
“Two shots pierced your right arm, and three pierced your legs. The darts went right through.”
That accounted for why I was in the hospital, but it did not explain why I felt so sick. Maybe if I took one to the kidney. Something was wrong with me. Then I remembered that the fléchettes were made of uranium. “Am I hot?” I asked.
“You have a fever, but that’s expected after a full blood transfusion. Fortunately, finding blood supplies wasn’t a problem. You have the same blood type as every man in your command.”
“Am I radioactive?”
“Radioactive? No. The darts weren’t radioactive, but they were poisonous. The men you were fighting had a neurotoxin on their darts.
“You were the only one who sur
vived being hit. The poison killed everyone else in a matter of minutes; but you, they hit you five times, and it still didn’t kill you. There was so much adrenaline in your blood that the poison didn’t spread the way it was supposed to.” He sounded excited as he told me this.
“How many men did we lose?” I asked.
As if he did not hear me, the doctor continued raving about my genetic engineering. Then he said, “You are going to have to be more careful next time. We damaged the gland that produced all of that adrenaline when we swapped out your blood. The gland should heal, but I’m not sure how long it will take. Until then, you will need to put up with normal mortality.”
With my eyes out of focus, I saw the world as a fuzzy mixture of bright light and dark colors. I could not see the doctor clearly, but it no longer mattered. I wanted to be alone. I felt tired. All I wanted to do was sleep.
“I need to rest,” I said.
“But we have tests . . .”
“Later,” I said.
“General Harris, you are not out of the woods just yet. We need to . . .”
“I’ll take my chances,” I said. I shut my eyes and pretended to sleep. The doctor stood mute, not knowing what to do. I felt his gaze and heard him breathing. Finally, he left the room.
What was I? If the gland that produced my combat reflex was out of commission, I was no longer a Liberator. I did not have the gland for the death reflex, so I was not a general-issue military clone. I was not a natural-born.
I turned to my old friends the philosophers for an answer, but Nietzsche, Hobbes, Plato, and Kant had nothing to say.
