Raiders

by Malone, Stephan

  “All troops stand point at the door!” General Berg screamed into the darkness. His command was repeated by unseen Sergeants, Majors, Lieutenants to the lower ranks. But there was no need since everyone sustained the same thought. The Raiders are coming to kill us off. They’ve found a way to raise the door!

  The remnant of armed men and women both flopped down to prone or tucked themselves behind storage containers for cover. They watched for any sign of the glass moving while they created a defensive line. The citizens scurried as best they could to the far end of the cave-room almost eight hundred meters away.

  They all had taken up positions to defend the remnant population. Julian heard the unique, distinct sound of Kama’s Coilgun as it spun up to charge. She was only twenty meters away from them in the foregone darkness.

  Eventually everyone found their place and the echoed cacophany lowered into a nested silence. The unarmed people could hardly see anything from the cave’s far end excepting the light that filtered in. A diffused glow anemically reached from beyond the glass where the City outside remained powered still.

  They watched and they waited. Five minutes, ten, twenty, nothing. They saw no movement, no activity, nothing at all on the defensive line. Soldiers beaded down their sights and swept side to side, their breath timed to advantage, every cell in their body wired in, as any fighter engaged knows so well.

  And then, the City lights fell. All of them, every single one. Presently the rectangles of light from outside the glass winked into oblivion and the overwaven darkness consumed Level Seven and all within.

  Nobody knew what to do. They couldn’t see a damn thing. Only darkness ahead, sprinkles of tiny light behind and away. Even their vision enhancers would not work in such a spectrally starved theatre. A flash briefly broke through the dark, the unmistakable discharge of a weapon. Where did it come from? Its source unseen, no sound at all. And the glass barrier remained unmoved.

  Another flash shocked itself into the cave-room. And then three more, rapid. Flick flick flick. If any of the lights were on the flashes would not have been seen. But against the murk the flickers were as clear as any falling star against a blanket night.

  And then, everyone's Personal Assistant armbands vibrated once, followed by a message. ON the bands' faces a simple counter revealed itself. It ticked incrementally higher. +5. +9. +14.5. +27.5. Faster and faster the numbers rolled while the flashes increased from somewhere above and outside the cave.

  “It’s a gantry gun! She got one online!” Someone yelled from the far end of the cave. The soldiers slowly emerged from their covered positions and walked cautiously to the glass. The first ones to reach the barrier looked up to see what was going on while their armbands read out even faster, larger numbers now. +468.0, +511.0, +599.5. They couldn’t see much but they did catch glimpses of Raiders far above. They shot their Coilguns toward the unseen weapon which viciously spun and slid on its rails. One Raider flipped violently over the Level Five banister and fell into his ragdolled end.

  The Gantry Gun was the last of four. Mounted high above quickly fabricated scaffolding its barrels glowed orange and red against the darkness. The Raiders desperately fired at it with their Coilguns from all sides but Veliosa targeted them just as fast as they could squeeze off a single Coilround. For every Raider that she presently targeted active, six more were in her cue to be next. Her detectors everywhere, mostly unseen, three thousand two hundred eyes in this singular avenue of death.

  Veliosa knew that the Gantry Gun’s armor was no match for the Raiders’ Coilguns. So she slid the gun side to side and never stopped it once as it spun over and under the mounting rails. The gun’s six thousand round capacity, less than a thousand remained. The bearing assembly glowed dimly from the stress. Smoke oozed from the rails as they strained and slightly flexed. Flash flash. Flick flick flick. +2324.5. +2571.0. +3351.0

  At once, the flashes stopped their strobed apparition. The numbers on everyone’s Personal Assistant bands ceased their upward count. Frozen in, the number +3976.5 glowed on their bands. And then, beneath the final count, a simple message.

  Best. V3LU514.

  Twenty One

  The lights came back on. Slowly they warmed and glowed until the cave-room was alive once more. Nobody could figure out how Veliosa or Venusia had pushed the messages to everyone’s Personal Assistants with the smartnet being down. They guessed that she somehow used the cave’s power wiring to drive in a signal perhaps. Whatever the case may be, no further messages were received by Veliosa, again.

  The Polar City’s government leaders decided that it was time to get out of the cave and the Military officers agreed. There was one problem though. The Raiders stationed over a hundred of their people to watch over their every move. The only way out was through the intake vents and the only way they could escape unseen was to block the glass somehow.

  So they started to stack whatever they could to occult the Raiders' view from outside the glass. They used crates, cots, shirts, used empty food containers, tables, blankets and even shoes to plug up the holes. It took the better part of a day.

  The Raiders did not appear to care while they watched them from the other side. After all, what did it matter? Even if they did escape through the intake vents the people of the Polar City would have to scale down the mountain cliffs. Then they would be far outside the City and could never get back in once they did so.

  Even still, the people of the Polar City blocked out their view in spite of the obvious. The less the Raiders knew the better, they decided.

  On the second day they built a pyramid of sorts to gain access to the vent. The makeshift platform was about thirty meters tall at its apex. Three City engineers made their way up the massive ventilator space while volunteers helped them along. They strung Neverfails on the sides to provide for some light. It took two more days but eventually the engineers were able to fabricate a lift mechanism with simple ropes and guided pulleys. They could pull up two at a time. It was tested using six sacks of dry rice and was finally ready by the end of the third day.

  General Berg announced as loud as he could with the help of a local distribution transmitter that sent his voice to everyone’s Personal Assistant band. “Leaving is voluntary. Those who choose to stay will have to take care of one another. If you leave, with us, then there is no turning back. We will not be able to enter the City again. Doing so would be suicide. There’s the chance that the Raiders will come after us once we are outside. It’s a risk you will take if you go.”

  “Then what General?” A woman asked. “What are we gonna do when we’re out there? Make a new camp?”

  “Yes. But our only real option now is to attempt to contact Polar City Six,” Berg said. The cave filled with murmurs and surprised whispers. General Berg held up his hands. “I know, I know. They are fifteen hundred kilometers away. But they have a hell of a lot more heavy ordnance than we do. We can’t communicate using our regular equipment obviously.” He paused and looked over toward the crate blockade that covered the glass barrier.

  “So we’re gonna walk there?” Another person yelled out. Several people laughed at the prospect.

  An officer spoke up as loud as he possibly could. “We have three shortwave radio transmitters available here somewhere,” he said. “Haven’t found them yet in the pile but its our only real chance.”

  “Shortwave?” Someone protested. “Are you serious? Nobody’s used those things in centuries!”

  “The radios are all we have. Stay or go, it’s entirely up to you. But we have to at least try,” General Berg said through the transmitter.

  Kama and Dusty found Julian and Aurelia while the General spoke. Eventually Mirabella and Calliope were rediscovered among the thousands of crates and boxes, the Citizens and the soldiers who had survived. They met up with Kama early on, back when they first evacuated to Level Seven but the two young girls were too shocked and pained, so they kept to themselves for all this time in Level Seven.

 
But now the two girls emotionally recovered, at least somewhat, from the tragic fall of Polar City Three. “Sure could use one of those bubble teas you make,” Kama said as she winked to Calliope in hopes that she would cheer her up even a little.

  “Sorry, we’re fresh out of mangoes and tapioca pearls,” Calliope abstractly waved her hand toward a row of large crates. She shook her head, shrugged and let out a fleeted hint of smile, just for a half-second. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

  So the newly reunited friends decided they would go outside with the others. There were a few that stayed behind, about three hundred give or take, mostly the elderly or heavily injured or cautious parents with children far too young to make it down the perilous mountainside.

  It took three days to lift people up and out of the cave-room, two at a time and then another full day to lift up supplies mostly repacked into unused crates. Amazingly they made it down the mountainside unimpeded. The first ones to go out had enough time to dig out a rudimentary switchback path to aid in the mass descent.

  They walked far into the forest and the blindscrubs beyond. When they got to about three kilometers outside the City Wall, they stopped. They set up a large camp, refugees disenfranchised from their nearby home. A thick early-day fog vapored in while they discussed and planned their way. The suspended mist gathered itself onto their arms and necks. It felt good, a welcomed change, a moistened organicity to that sterile and insulant experience that was Level Seven. They set their tents to right and they cooked their food on smokeless stoves. They gathered wood for backup fires just in case and scouted a perimeter to see what was going on out there, if anything.

  “No enemy detections sir,” a recon soldier reported to the General. “Gate Six is still under repair as well. None of them are outside the City itself though. Not a soul. I mean if there's anyone out there, we didn’t see them.”

  “Good. Keep alternate patrols and report back immediately if you observe anything. Use your Personal band if you can. They’ll work out here band to band.” General Berg packed a pinch of tobacco into his pipe and lit it. The fog moistened everything which made the shredded pungent leaves a little harder than usual to push into a sustained ember.

  Aurelia, small team of five engineers and two radiomen worked the three shortwave radios to no successful end. They tried for days. They tried to send out a hail on thousands of different frequencies with a preference for the single sideband mode since that held the highest promise. Hisses and pops were all that could be heard in their headsets and speakers.

  “Ah, damn it,” Aurelia ripped off her headphones and threw them down. “Static’s driving me crazy.” Static did not exist on the neutrino radio.

  “We have to keep trying,” one of the engineers said.

  “I know, I know. I just need a break,” Aurelia said. She walked to her tent. This is hopeless, she uttered to herself.

  And so it went for three more weeks. They watched and they listened for anything, any sign or hint of contact from the faraway Polar City Six that was constructed near the old Goose Air Force Base near the Atlantic, abandoned centuries ago. Polar City Six’s Military Centre was much larger and more suited for combat theatres of such scale. Polar City Three however, what was left of it anyways, was primarily for research and education in the applied science disciplines. Nobody would have guessed in a hundred million years. An invasion of men and women who were stronger and more resilient than they could have ever imagined would emerge from the Great Wastes to the south and take their City away.

  Five more days went by. Aurelia became more frustrated as she used the antique shortwave radio. Kama helped with the perimeter guard but wondered if her labor was worth it. The Raiders had trained her for recon duty after her tenure as a Chosen elite woman wore thin. The irony was not lost on Kama that she presently used that same training against them even now. But there was the ever-present lump in her heart, a loss of soul that for a short while she found a home within the Polar City. For the other part of her life she had also had a home, if she could indeed call it such. Back in Reso, and now what? There she was in the middle of the woodlands, no place to call home with only a thread-spun hope to hang onto that she would somehow make it back there once again, back to Polar City Three because it felt right and her spirit and her heart simply told her that that was where she was supposed to be and nowhere else. Only there, inside.

  Two scout soldiers rushed back to the camp short of breath and red-faced. Nobody appeared to be behind them as they raced past the perimeter guards. At first the guards held up their rifles to the branches and leaves as they waved side to side from the recon mens’ passing. And then they relaxed. “What the hell’s their hurry?” a perimeter guard asked.

  The other guard simply shrugged. They looked back toward the large camp compound behind them.

  “Planes!” Corporal Mailer said as he tried desperately to catch his breath. “Past range. Southeast.” He could hardly speak two words in between breaths. Several soldiers and a few civilians slowly circled around him. He identified them as propeller driven airships that were filled with superheated hydrogen. Minutes later everyone could hear the distinct sound of propellers infuse the air.

  The entire camp erupted to life. Everywhere people asked and wondered what was going on. “Raiders?” “Should we shoot at them?” “Who are they?” Some asked who had never seen a living airship before. There were no answers for the moment.

  And then ships came into view although they were miniscule specks against the blue and orange early evening sky. They serenely floated in and drew close enough to the camp that they could be identified. These could only be the great platform ships. There were three of them, each over two hundred meters long and with twin fuselages that suspended a large platform amidst them.

  Polar City Six had five of them. They used the monster airships to transport supplies and people between the Cities. Polar City Three was purposely built en route to the other Cities but it was not home to any of these craft, although they had a landing site for them just outside Gate Two. The airships came and went once every three months as they made their way across the Arctic northlands, east to west and back again. For one hundred and fifty years there were no hydrogen based dirigibles in the skies since the great Hindenburg tragedy of 1937.

  It wasn’t until two technical advances came to light that the great airships took to the air once more. The first was the invention of the special solar film that superheated the hydrogen to over two hundred degrees Celsius. The hot hydrogen was infinitely safer, it’s upper flammability limit beyond the reach of flame. You could stand in the middle of an airship’s envelope with a lighter and it would never ignite with the provision that you were impervious to the two-hundred and thirty degree Celsius gas.

  The second invention was the advancement in lithium-aluminum alloys which were highly resistant to hydrogen exposure degradation and would not soften under high internal heat.

  The airships quietly hovered down to the campsite. It wasn’t difficult for them to spot several thousand people on a forested hillside from the air. They floated close enough that the Personal Assistant bands would work from one to another. A voice from the leader ship said, “Help us anchor down! We’re gonna throw out some lines, they need to be tied!”

  A few Officers on the ground guided the ships as they eclipsed the campsite of direct sunlight toward a field not far from the camp. The engineers suggested that they sledgehammer three or four inter-spaced stakes per line and lash them together for added purchase. It went quickly. Workers and soldiers both followed the directions and drove in thirty mooring points for the ships, more than enough to keep them tacked to the earth.

  When the airships were safely tied down they rolled large ramps from the platforms which met the ground with a low toned ba-thwwoom. Troops marched down the ramp in rows of ten abreast. They smiled and mingled with the lost and desperate refugees of the fallen Polar City.

  General Berg walked up while he star
ed at the twin bodies of the lead ship. On its side, a painted dragon violently blew fire toward the craft’s nose. Below the dragon were the words that announced its manufacture's origin, Aeroscraft WSB-4990-D.

  An officer walked down the ramp alongside his soldiers and recognized Berg immediately. It was General Bjørg Christie. Christie produced a cigar, bit the end off and then lit it. After a generous puff, “So Otto, I hear you lost your city.”

  General Berg burst out in a laugh. Despite the gravity of the current state of things he couldn’t help himself. He raised his eyebrows and looked back to the distant Wall. “Yeah, looks that way Bjørg. How did you know? We’ve been trying to raise you on the shortwave radios for weeks.”

  “Shortwave? Never heard of it,” Christie said. “Wait, that’s an old type of radio, yah? No gravity waves just something else they used to use back whenever.”

  “Right. They called them, eh, just radio waves I think,” Berg responded. “I don’t know. Not important though.”

  “Hah! They sure named it on the money back then, didn’t they? Well, I don’t know about any shortwaves but we recorded a distress call from you.”

  “On what?”

  “They said it was neutrino so I suppose, well, a neutrino radio. Name Aurelia was tagged so we guessed that was the operator,” Christie said.

  “I’ll be damned,” Berg said.

  “What?” Christie asked.

  “Oh nothing.” Berg held up his palm. “I can’t believe you came though. I mean Bjørg, just look at you!” He grabbed Christie’s shoulders. “I don’t think my brain’s even registering that you’re standing right here in front of me!”

  “Well here I am,” Christie smiled and responded. “So what are we lookin’ at? Fill me in.”

  “Raiders. From Reso. They overtook us with Coilguns. Figured out how to mass fabricate the damn things.” Berg pointed his pipe stem toward one of the derelict Auto Turrets in the distance. “Took out all our defenses like they were toys. Lost over half my troops.”