“Yes sir we are tracking them from the Gates!” The wraparound screen revealed one of the drone’s video feeds. “Looks like they fell back about twenty meters from their dead!”
“What are they doing though?”
“Well,” the drone camera focused slightly closer to the Raiders and showed them prone while they aimed their Coilguns in the direction of the Gates straight into the mounded heaps of their fallen. “Damned if I know. What are they doing? They gonna re-shoot their dead? I don’t get this sir!”
The General squinted into the large screen and said nothing for a moment then, “No. Shit, no. Venusia get the mini’s flipped under now!”
Venusia retorted, “But sir they will charge the…”
Berg interrupted her and screamed, “Goddamn it Venusia DO IT I said!”
Venusia responded, “Yes sir. Retreating one-thirty-four banks now!” She tremulously returned. The drone video showed the mini-gun platforms as they slowly flipped up and over, but it was too late.
The Raiders blindly shot their Coilguns straight through their own dead as an unstoppable wave of Coilrounds hit the Gates, some of which hit the presently still-retreating gun platforms. Hydraulic fluid and oil gushed up and away from each platform as if the guns themselves were living entities mortally wounded. Only one mini-gun made it safely back down as it tucked itself under the surface relatively intact. Even that singular survivor was knocked out of service state.
And then, nothing.
A great silence fell across the City. Everyone in the situation room looked at the City wireframe as it slowly rotated, the Gates blinked yellow, some red, one remained a resilient green that offered little comfort to anyone. They were stunned into a sheer loss at what to do or even say, paralyzed and mutestruck, all.
General Berg broke the silent overcloud. “Venusia.” Venusia’s two meter tall avatar remained still, not a word to respond. “Venusia!”
“Yes, General.”
“How many remain.” No response. “How many I said!” The General barked at her.
For thirty seconds Venusia said nothing and only shimmered next to her sister. This was the first time a Greater Assistant had ever done this. The General stared at her even though her eyes were not real, her actual eyes contained within thousands of sensors that were everywhere. The City itself provided her with her sensorium.
“Venusia, I asked you a question!” Berg spit out the words against her blue-white luminous frame.
Without any inflection she simply said, “Forty-two.”
“Forty-two percent, and of that forty-two percent, how many can we dispatch with our remaining defenses? Can you estimate that for me?”
She paused some more then looked over to her sister’s avatar. “Dammit Venusia don’t look to your sister for an answer!” He stepped right up to her avatar, only centimeters away. “How many?”
Venusia said simply, “General Berg, against this we cannot survive.”
The General froze, no blink, no breath, nothing at all.
“I’m sorry, but we won’t. They will kill every one of you, all of you if you stand. The probability of campaign success is now zero point eight percent. That will only happen if we can sustain a five-to-one kill ratio for all, even for the armed citizens.”
Veliosa said, “She is right sir. There is no tactical solution. We cannot win our theatre. There is only one option left.”
Everyone in the situation room jumped when Sergeant Raige’s voice boomed over the intercom. “Guys just so ya know they’re almost in!” Muffled Coilgun shots sounded through the Sergeant’s battle comm as they nibbled away at the Gate from outside. Tink tink tink tink thunk thunk tink. “Ready now! Fuck ‘em up people!” Throngs of shouts echoed from the intercom as Raige’s men and women rallied forth. “Wooo hooo! Hell yeah!!” Sergeant Raige yelled as the tink-tink-tink-tink-thunk-thunk-tink gave way to a bone shattering KA-KLOOONG as Gate Four reverbed and fell onto the concrete below.
“Raige you there?” There was no response, nothing.
And then his communicator keyed down to an uncomfortable zero, a waterfallen hiss laced with spark random crackles was all that remained.
Eighteen
Aurelia, Julian, Dusty and Kama were ducked out behind a concrete planter just south of the City Centre. They were ready for anything while they scanned the street. Hundreds of City citizens took cover behind whatever they could get their hands on. Sculptures, poles, makeshift stacks of pallets and boxes, tables, beds, chairs, bureaus, desks and couches were stacked and thrown sideways from nearby Pods to provide them with cover. The main street illumination system was offline. Only the many thousands of tiny Neverfails remained lit from far above. Some citizens opted to use directional lamps to throw light ahead of their home rolled nests in the hopes that they would see the Raiders early on.
“I think I hear ‘em,” Aurelia said.
“What? I don’t hear nothin’,” Dusty whispered.
“No, I definitely heard one of those,” Aurelia said as she pointed her battle rifle at Kama’s Coilgun.
“Knock it off guys. Stay focused,” Julian said. And they did just that. Six minutes passed. The City was all-quiet except for the unmistakable sounds of guns in the distance.
A muffled cough came from the street’s opposite side. Julian’s ears picked up on every shuffle, motion, heavy breath, sigh and sniffle from anyone within a hundred meters around him. He looked around. All eyes were presently trained on the street that headed toward Gate Four, its end almost a kilometer away.
The gunshots drew closer but were still far removed from their position. A single Coilround thwapped into an overturned table and went cleanly through the wood. Two women and a man jumped back from behind the table, their newly issued Citizen rifles rattled away from their hands in surprise. Miraculously they were unharmed, sheer luck’s grace on their side.
They could hear shouts and yells but could not make out what was being said. Everyone tensed and dug in as best they could. And then, about thirty Military soldiers sprinted toward them. They waved their hands and yelled as they ran, “Level Seven! Go to Level Seven! Go! Go! Run! Everyone Level..!”
At first nobody moved from their position, unsure of what to do. Had the Raiders overtaken the Gates that fast? Julian thought. It seemed so impossible. Yet, that was exactly what happened.
The soldiers ran past the four and continued to yell down the street. “Level Seven everyone! Go go go!” The fastest of the Raiders emerged into the crude light cone made by cleverly positioned lamps and lights laid on their sides. They were about eighty meters away, barely illuminated from that distance but in clear evidence. Three quarters of the Citizens shot at them as they peeked over their cover. A few Raiders fell immediately while the rest fired back with their Coilguns at what they guessed the Citizens hid out. Ka-thunk, ka-thunk, their Coilrounds reached into the blind and scattered light. Screams of pain shocked the street alive. A few Citizens lay dead or nearly so as they rolled their bodies back to the momentary safety of their cover lines.
The four stood over the concrete planter and engaged the Raiders almost as a single unit. “Left! Left!” Kama yelled as she sunk two Coilrounds into the temple of an onrushing Raider. His legs accordioned in and folded down at once. The others followed her cue and trained their sights on the left side. “Straight up!” She yelled and they again followed her suggestion and waved their barrels directly ahead.
Julian could barely make out the Raiders as they were so dimly lit but fired at whatever he thought was a halfway decent chance of an enemy body. Aurelia and Dusty could see them somewhat more clearly, but not by much. Thanks to Kama’s genetically modified retinas she could resolve the enemy with a fair lead for her friends.
And then, as a wave or flood would come, a wall of Raider soldiers punched through the outer light cones, a hundred so or more abreast. They yelled and they shot ahead and advanced quicker than anyone expected. Kama yelled, “GO!” openly to everyone. The Citiz
ens that remained alive bolted into the darkness, back to the street that was behind them.
Julian, Dusty and Aurelia ignored her as they continued to shoot. The Raiders’ front line was now about fifty meters away, closer now. Kama shot as fast as she possibly could. Five seconds later she lifted her Coilgun and repeated, “Let’s GO!” And then she ran.
“Ah screw this shit!” Aurelia said and with that all three followed Kama as she disappeared into the darkness beyond. Unsure of where to go Dusty slowed down a little. Aurelia said, “The big stairs are this way!” Kama soon found herself about twenty meters ahead of them. She turned round and vigorously waved. “Come on!” They ran to catch up to but it was difficult to see whether they would trip over anything or anyone in their path.
Level Seven was at the extreme bottom of the grand stairway, a wide and gently sloped spiral affair situated in the center of the Polar City near Center Link. Most people simply referred to it as the big stairs, often they would verbalize it as one word, Bigstairs. When they arrived at the Bigstairs they soon found themselves amidst thousands of fellow Citizens all with the same goal in mind. Everyone knew well enough to go down to Level Seven in an extreme emergency. Nobody, however, had ever actually ventured down there before.
Until now.
Bigstairs was in actuality one giant spiral ramp that was a good forty meters wide. There were no physical stairs on it yet the nomenclature somehow hung on through the generations. Aurelia smushed herself into the interior railing of Bigstairs and looked down. She saw the blurred shadow that was Kama who had already reached Level Three, two levels down. “Shit she’s already down to three!” Aurelia yelled to Dusty and Julian then broke into a controlled sprint broken up with shuffles to avoid collisions with other City evacuees.
Kama knew that the further ahead she was the more motivated the others would be to catch up with her. So down she went, quickly down to Level Four, Five and then Six. She stopped for a second to look up the giant spiral’s inner column that towered overhead. She leaned over the banister and grabbed onto a decorative finial for balance. She didn’t see her friends but the fantastic scene revealed thousands of Polar City citizens as they descended Bigstairs. Some walked while others jog-shuffled their way down. It was almost as if Bigstairs held the entire City population upon the shoulders of it’s singular construct.
It was their only chance now, Level Seven. It was either that or they die and Kama knew it to be true just as strongly as she knew her former fellowmen, the Raiders who presently spirited closer upon the fleeted City.
Kama arrived at the Bigstairs final landing and looked around. It ended at the extreme bottom of the massive cavern complex that made up the Polar City. Level Seven was poorly lit and cobwebs and dirt were everywhere. A palpable dampness suspended all round her that was not felt at the higher levels above. It was cold and stale and everything smelled like water and moss and moistened rocks.
Five minutes later Julian, Aurelia and Dusty caught up to her. “Now what?” Aurelia asked through her shorted breaths.
“I think we’re supposed to go there,” Kama said and pointed toward a large mouthed cavernous opening. It was a rectangular shaped entry that was crudely carved into the deep. They looked further across and discovered that there were five similarly shaped entryways each spanned twenty meters side to side. They were interposed with vertical rock columns that were three meters thick.
The group were soon nudged in the direction of the entryways as people emerged from the Bigstairs and walked toward the entries. They found themselves in a huge mega-cave. It was roughly cut for utilitarian space and volume with little concern for aesthetic appeal. Scattered throughout the mega-cave otherwise known as Level Seven were crates. There were thousands of crates with labels like PC3/MODULAR TENT Model No.466 and CCX/WOOLBLANKETSxGROSS and PCX/IOWATER EXP 10x2558 stencil-sprayed onto them.
Throughout the five hundred meter deep cave people stood and sat and huddled in the damp, shocked and numbed into a silent, soul-barren state that only those who have been through hurricanes or tornadoes or wars know all too well.
“This is it?” Aurelia said with exasperation while she rested her battle rifle’s stock on her left foot. “This is Level Seven?”
“What were you expecting?” Dusty asked her. “Should we go somewhere else? You got a better idea?”
Aurelia waved her free hand in the general direction of the entryways. “I was expecting a fucking door is what I was expecting!” She said, then laughed nervously almost as a resign. “Holy shit! Fuck this,” She said.
Julian put his hand on her shoulder pad. He really could say nothing to her or offer any words of comfort for no other reason than he agreed.
A voice announced from hidden speakers built into the rocks somehow. “Attention! Please stand clear of the Barrier!” It was Veliosa’s voice.
“Barrier?” Kama asked. “What barrier?” While she shook her head in disbelief, hundreds of vertical red lasers illuminated the entryways.
Veliosa repeated. “Please stand clear of the Barrier!”
People shouted from the Bigstairs as they ran to the entryways. “Wait! Wait! People still comin’ down! Wait!”
Veliosa’s voice announced, “Barrier will be lowered in three minutes thirty seconds! Stand clear of Level Seven Barrier! Attention!” She said.
Everyone inside backed away from the ominous laser lines while more evacuants ran across them as they scurried from the Bigstairs final landing and into Level Seven’s massive cave room. The laser beams briefly reflected from the tops of their heads as the citizens passed under them.
“Who is that?” Aurelia asked. “Sounds like that Assistant that was announcing all the stuff about getting everyone ready.”
“Yeah sounds like her,” Dusty replied. “I don’t know.” A few minutes later the last of the Citizens who managed to escape the Raiders ran into the cave.
Veliosa announced, “Closing barrier now! Please stand clear of the red lines!” Some held onto each another in search of comfort, others cried or simply watched the cave’s maw. And then someone ran back out of the cave toward the Bigstairs base landing.
It was General Berg. “Anyone coming down?” He yelled as loud as he could, his mouth cupped with his palms directed up. “Anyone coming down? Hello!” He repeated again. Everyone fell silent and listened with intent.
General Berg yelled up the Bigstairs once more. He heard a woman shriek and scream but it was so far away and removed, probably back up on Level One or Two he thought. She would certainly never make it down alive. Her soul-fought scream lingered for a good five seconds while it bounced off the rocks.
The silence reigned.
“Anyone up there?” The General volleyed one desperate and last time. He waited for anything but heard nothing. He saw no motion or anima from the levels above as a few other joined his brief observance upward. Three-tone alarms resounded as he slowly walked back to the cavern room entrances. Whoa-wooo-waaa the alarm echoed forth in ascending notes. It sounded strangely pleasant although it carried subtle undertones of genuine caution.
And then a sound, like glass rubbed against steel, resonated throughout the cavern. Large transparent blocks of what looked like solid glass about two meters thick, maybe even three, descended from previously unobserved openings in the entryway ceilings. The red lasers remained lit from above. They refracted against the glass blocks as they slowly lowered at a rate of three millimeters a second. The glass barriers slammed down with a ear splitting ttttthhhoooonnngg when they met steel plates that lay on the entrance floor.
The people quietly lined up to look out of the heavy glass barriers. The Military men and women, the civilian police, the medical personnel still dressed in their hospital wear right down to their isolate slippers, the teary eyed children hugged by their mothers, the cooks, the shopmen, the Dome technicians who grew most of the food for the Polar City, the cleaners who still smelled of steam and solvents both, the scientists, the teachers,
the students, the engineers.
None had words to share but everyone looked one to another moment and again, stranger to stranger because under the crushing press of crisis they truly were strangers not evermore from this moment forward.
Nineteen
The Raiders arrived at Level Seven after descending the Bigstairs en masse. For about ten minutes they stood at the glass barrier edge and looked into the cavern where the Polar City survivors stared back at them on the other side. A Raider soldier rammed the glass with her rifle stock which slid off and away, almost as if the glass's surface was greased down. She stumbled at her unexpected change in balance and then shook her head in disgust.
“Can you make out what they are saying?” Julian asked Kama who stood and faced her former clan.
“No, I can’t. Too difficult to tell,” Kama responded.
While Kama and her friends continued to closely observe the Raiders they almost forgot about the thousands of Polar City people who surrounded them. Everyone watched and wondered what on earth would happen next. Hard to believe, Aurelia thought, that they could be so close to so many of the Raiders and yet merely stand there. And yet there they were.
An Elder emerged from the enemy line. He was unmistakable for he was accompanied by two Chosen women, younger replacements that Kama did not recognize nor even know from her previous life. They clung onto the Elder’s arms which were spiraled under his Temple silk wraps similar to the ones Julian and Kama used for their escape from the Reso prison ring.
The Chosen on the left whispered in his ear, then looked at Kama through the glass. She laughed although no sound carried through. And then she slid her tongue into his ear and bit into his lobe, then laughed and playfully patted the Elder on his arm.
Dusty knew that the girls represented what Kama was once. Her previous world, her life was presently quite dead to her inside. Kama quietly stood in line with her newly found friends. All that power simply fell upon her as chains and binds and folds over her eyes, as power often does.
Raiders Page 20
