by Mike Sheriff
“I’m right behind you!”
Laoshi scrambled to his feet. Within five paces he was running flat out. No counter-fire came from the eastern structure—the blast must have stunned the mongrels hiding behind its outcropping.
Laoshi cleared the open cloister and entered a laneway between the southern structures. He followed its length before veering west and selecting another southbound laneway. Dominus stayed on his heels.
They raced up laneway after laneway, adopting a zig-zagging pattern that favored a southern direction, compelled by undiluted adrenaline. Egressing at breakneck speed was tactically unsound, but they needed to put as much distance as possible between them and the relay center. They reached the end of the fifth laneway and burst into an open intersection.
Fifty yards ahead, a familiar archway caught Laoshi’s eye. He cut his pace and turned to Dominus, chest heaving. “I have an idea.”
“I’m all ears,” Dominus said, panting.
“We could—”
Percussive reports shattered the stillness. Sonic rounds pummeled the ground a few feet to right.
Laoshi didn’t wait to spot their source or ask for Dominus’ opinion. He put his head down and sprinted for the breeding farm’s entrance.
LAOSHI THUMPED TO a stop inside the breeding farm’s arched entrance. Dominus reached it five seconds later. He folded over, breathless. “What are we doing in here?”
“I scoped this structure while I was standing sentry,” Laoshi said, gasping for air. “It runs south for miles.”
“So?”
“So it ranges to within a few hundred feet of the southern border. It’ll give us cover from mongrel attacks.”
Dominus scowled. “Unless they follow us inside.”
Laoshi dismissed the warning—cover from mongrel attacks wasn’t the only reason he wanted to go inside. He led Dominus down the stairs and out onto the elevated concourse. They took the first ladder to the walkway running between the pens. Laoshi stopped when he reached a familiar pen.
Inside, Odessa lay upon the glass slab. The glass chain on her ankle glinted.
Laoshi rushed to her side. He crouched and shook her shoulder. “Odessa!”
She stirred and opened her eyes.
“It’s me,” he said. “I’m here to—”
Odessa squeezed her eyes shut. She crossed her arms before her face as if to ward off a blow.
“Be still, be still. I was here earlier, remember?”
She shrank from him, whimpering. The chain on her ankle clinked and pulled taut.
Dominus stepped inside the pen. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not leaving here without performing one redeeming act,” Laoshi said. “I’m taking her with us.”
“Sha’s silica teeth. You must be joking!”
Laoshi set his rifle on the floor and examined the manacle around her ankle. No obvious release mechanism stood out. He wagered it required a key-code. “Keep watch while I free her.”
“We’re wasting time.” Dominus stepped out of the pen. “If the mongrels come inside now, they’ll own the high ground.”
Laoshi abandoned the manacle—he didn’t have time to finesse its release. He needed to sever the chain—and immediately. Only one solution came to mind. “This will be frightening, Odessa, but it’s for your own good.”
He tugged her foot forward. She put up only token resistance. The first few links of chain dangled over the slab’s vertical face.
“Cover your ears and don’t move your foot,” he said.
She whimpered, but complied. Laoshi snatched his rifle and aimed its muzzle at a single link. He turned his head to shield his eyes and squeezed the trigger.
Glass shrapnel peppered his helmet and body armor. He turned back.
The single sonic round had obliterated the link. Odessa’s foot bore no wounds thanks to the slab’s shielding.
He helped her up. She wavered as if she hadn’t stood in days. “Are you really taking me with you?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“To Daqin Guojin.”
Dominus stuck his head inside the pen. His brow furrowed like a wind-rippled dune. “This is all well and good, but can you hold this conversation on the march, please?”
Laoshi slung his rifle and wrapped his arm around Odessa’s waist. They exited the pen and advanced up the walkway with Dominus close behind.
They passed pen after pen. Most harbored more wretched women in squalid rags, lying prone on the slabs. A handful were empty.
“How long have you been kept in here?” Laoshi asked.
“I’m not sure,” Odessa said, clutching his arm. “Five years?”
“Five years?”
“Yes. Longer in Havoc.”
“Were you born here?”
“No,” she said. “My parents were captured by mongrels when I was six. They were part of a silica-sourcing expedition.”
Laoshi nodded. Over the centuries, the mongrels had captured thousands of denizens who’d ventured beyond Daqin Guojin’s borders. It was their primary method for introducing new technologies and expertise into their colonies. “Where were you from in Daqin Guojin?”
Odessa squinted as if excavating a long-buried memory. “I think it started with an N.”
“Nansilafu Cheng?”
Her eyes brightened, showing the first signs of life since they’d met. “Yes!”
Laoshi managed a smile. “That makes you a Slavv. You come from a tough lineage.”
“So I’ve heard,” she said. “My mother and father went to the Great After when I was twelve. I was selected as a breeder a year later.”
“Selected?”
“For my reproductive capability. My ability to maximize production.”
“Of babies?” Laoshi asked.
Odessa’s expression darkened. “We don’t call them that.”
“What do you call them?”
“Nothing, but the mongrels call them units.”
The term confounded Laoshi. He slowed his pace. “And what happens to these units?”
She gazed at him like it was the most obvious question ever uttered. “They’re processed into food, of course.”
The horrid statement drained every impulse to flee from Laoshi. He halted. “What?”
Odessa cocked her head. “This is a breeding facility for food production.”
Laoshi cast his stunned gaze at Dominus. “Did . . . did you know about this?”
Dominus offered a grim nod. “Vandarian mentioned it during the reconnaissance mission in Decay. I thought he was making it up to unnerve me.”
Laoshi spun back to Odessa. “Do you know where they keep these babies?”
“Yes,” she said. “In the incubation chamber.”
“Show me.”
THE INCUBATION CHAMBER lay three levels below the surface. They accessed it via a spiral staircase located midway down the pen level. Unlike the pen level, the chamber ranged as wide as it was long. It reinforced the staggering scale to which the mongrels built their underground structures.
Odessa led Laoshi and Dominus toward a waist-high glass railing that stretched for hundreds of feet. Beyond it, a wall of noise rose as substantive as any physical wall. By the time they reached the railing, the din was overwhelming. Laoshi leaned forward and gazed into the hollow thirty feet below.
Row upon row of glass basins filled the yawning pit. The basins held babies . . . tens of thousands of babies. Lengths of black tubing stretched above the basins, paralleling each row. Thinner tubes branched off from them like arteries in a body. Roughly half coiled downward into the tiny mouths. The babies suckling on the tubes appeared at peace. The rest gushed an unbroken torrent of anguish.
Laoshi blinked, unable to process the sight . . . and the sound. The noise he’d heard outside the structure hadn’t come from the women in the pens. It had come from these wailing infants. “What . . . what are the tubes for?”
“Feeding,” Odessa said. “Usi
ng the milk of the breeders.”
“Why aren’t half being fed?”
“They’re being weaned,” she said.
Laoshi glanced at Dominus.
His lower lip quivered as if struggling to bottle his rage. It must have been difficult to hold it in. Little Cordelia was only a few months older than these children.
“This is where hope comes to die,” Laoshi said.
Dominus grunted and wiped his eye. “Hope’s Graveyard.”
Laoshi turned to Odessa. “How many breeders are kept in this facility?”
“I don’t know. Hundreds, perhaps.”
Laoshi made a rudimentary count of the basins. “How can they produce so many offspring?”
“The mongrels use artificial insemination to induce multiple births,” she said. “They also genetically alter our gestation periods to maximize production. A good breeder can produce two broods of ten units each in a year.”
Laoshi shook his head, unnerved by her casual explanation. “And these babies. Where do they go from here?”
“Once they reach their nominal weight, they’re weaned and transferred to the slaughterchamber.”
Bile climbed Laoshi’s throat. He retched on the rancid liquid.
Dominus grabbed his arm. His gray eyes were rimmed with red. “We can’t do anything for them. We have to go.”
Laoshi shook off his friend’s hand. “This is grotesque . . .”
Odessa nodded. “This is how the mongrels sustain their population.”
“And is our feeding method any better?” Dominus asked. “The only difference is we let our prospects age longer before culling them.”
“But we offer them a chance to escape the grooll mill.” Laoshi motioned to the pit. “These babies have no choice.”
“Humanity made a choice to survive the Cycle of Extinctions,” Dominus said. “That comes at a price.”
“If this is what it costs to be human, I want no part of the exchange,” Laoshi said.
“Come on,” Dominus said. “We have a rendezvous to make.”
Laoshi retreated from the railing, the images beyond it searing his mind. Havoc had given him yet another vision he’d never forget.
THEY REGAINED THE walkway and preceded south, skirting between the pens at a jogging pace. Laoshi took the lead with Odessa at his side. He suppressed the incubation chamber’s revolting revelations by focusing the sum of his attention on her.
He marveled at her strength. Despite years of immobility and producing Sha-knows-how-many-babies for her mongrel captors, she’d kept pace with minimal support and no complaint. Her breathing wasn’t even as labored as Dominus’. He lagged the pair by five feet, broadcasting his fatigue through the occasional mumbled curse. Slavvic women truly were a pillar of strength.
The pen level seemed to stretch for an eternity. Laoshi was beginning to doubt whether it would end when a joyous sight snared his focus.
Five hundred feet ahead, opaque nullglass panels rose twenty feet into the air. They marked the breeding farm’s southern terminus.
The objective.
He broke their collective silence. “When we get back to Daqin Guojin, we have to petition the district commander for a new mission.”
“What new mission?” Dominus asked after another breathless curse.
“To come back and free these women and children.”
Odessa gazed at him. Her hair jounced in time with her stride. Sweat streaked her face, rinsing away the worst of its grime. “You would do that?”
“It’s the right thing to do,” he said.
The answer earned a smile—the first genuine smile she’d offered. It conveyed a natural beauty that her unnatural circumstances had masked.
“Not sure I’d be all that keen on coming back here,” Dominus said, wheezing.
Laoshi grunted. If it meant liberating these wretched creatures, he’d be first in line to volunteer. Whether his Jireni superiors would see the moral argument in—
Percussive reports erupted behind him. Sonic rounds flashed overhead and shattered a pen’s wall. He pounded to a halt and whirled to the threat.
One hundred feet to the north, a dozen mongrels advanced along the elevated concourse.
Laoshi hoisted his rifle and returned fire. Two hands wrapped around his webbing and tugged him inside a pen.
They were Odessa’s hands. She gave him a meek smile.
Dominus crouched against a wall. More rounds smashed into the adjacent pen. “Yeah, I’d really want to come back here.”
Laoshi dropped to his stomach. He crawled forward and peered through the pen’s narrow opening.
Twenty feet away, an access ladder ascended from the walkway to the concourse.
His hand went to the last proximity charge on his webbing. He tugged it off and waggled it before Dominus. “Here’s a way to deny them the high ground.”
Dominus snorted. “Who’s the lucky cudd who gets to place it?”
“My idea,” Laoshi said, “so I’ll do it. How’s your power supply?”
Dominus checked his rifle. “Twelve percent.”
Laoshi rose to a knee. “Be sure to use it.” He set the charge’s delay timer for thirty seconds and took a deep breath. “Ready?”
Dominus nodded and stood, keeping his head below the pen’s wall.
“Tarry!” Odessa said. She leaned forward a planted a kiss on Laoshi’s lips. “Tread carefully.”
Laoshi blinked, stunned by the show of affection. He glanced up at Dominus.
He rolled his eyes. “Nice to see someone’s enjoying his time in Havoc.”
Laoshi cast off the warm afterglow of her kiss. He needed to tap cold inhumanity to pull this off. “Ready?”
Dominus raised the rifle’s stock to his shoulder. “Ready.”
“Covering fire!”
Dominus swung the rifle over the wall and loosed a long burst. Sonic rounds streaked upward, hammering the concourse and stopping the advancing mongrels.
Laoshi dashed to the ladder and climbed. Sonic rounds pinged off its rungs, inches above his head. The mongrels may be pinned down, but they were still firing blind. A unaimed shot could cull him as easily as an aimed one.
He reached the top of the ladder and wedged the proximity charge between two cross-members. He pulled his feet off the rung and hand-slid thirty feet onto the walkway. The impact earned a grunt. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
Dominus and Odessa darted out of the pen. They sprinted down the walkway, steps ahead of him. Laoshi held his rifle above his head, muzzle trained backward, and fired an extended volley. His finger was still on the trigger when the charge detonated.
Its thunderous blast was followed by crashing glass and screams. He glanced over his shoulder.
The concourse north of the blast point collapsed. Mongrels plunged thirty feet into the pens below. None were firing now.
Laoshi doubled his pace and caught up to Dominus and Odessa. After another minute, they reached the southern terminus’ nullglass panels. No exit was visible.
Dominus swore under his breath. “All this way to find no exit?”
Laoshi examined the closest panel. “Would a sonic round penetrate it?”
“It’s nullglass,” he said. “I doubt it.”
Laoshi leveled his rifle. “One way to find out.”
“Tarry!” Odessa said. Her eyebrows arched. ““Perhaps we should back up?”
He lowered the rifle. “Good idea.”
They retreated twenty feet from the panel. He aimed his rifle and squeezed the trigger.
The sonic round slammed into the panel. It rattled and cast off small fragments, but held intact.
He loosed a prolonged burst. Chattering reports obliterated every other sound, but the rounds failed to breach the nullglass. He lowered the rifle and cursed.
“Bide a second,” Dominus said. He reached into a web pouch. His hand came out with a wedge-shaped sonic charge. He held it up, grinning. “The extra one you gave me in th
e junction chamber.”
Laoshi nodded. “That should make a decent dent.”
Dominus raced forward and rigged the charge flushed against the panel’s base. He darted back to Laoshi and Odessa. “We’ll definitely need more stand-off distance.”
They retreated a hundred feet and sought cover inside an unoccupied pen. Laoshi drew the auto-detonator from his web pouch and programed its command menu. “Stand by for firing!”
Dominus covered his ears. Odessa followed his lead.
Laoshi triggered the detonator.
A deafening blast rocked the pen, warping its walls. Shrapnel hissed past its canted opening. Laoshi leaned out to assess the damage.
The nullglass panel was gone. Its absence allowed an unhampered view of a handful of structures to the south . . . and the desert a few hundred feet beyond them. Pale blue firmament hung over the desert—the sky had lightened since they’d entered the breeding farm. Dawn was less than fifteen minutes away.
“Well?” Dominus asked, huddled against the wall beside Odessa.
“I can see sand dunes,” Laoshi said.
Dominus slapped his shoulder. “Then we’ve no time to waste.”
8
Rendezvous
THE STRUCTURES FIVE hundred feet to the south appeared unoccupied. Between them and the breeding farm, a dozen domed shafts dotted the hard-packed sand like boils on fevered skin. They stood waist high—high enough to conceal a mongrel.
Laoshi lowered his rifle. He raised his hand and waved it back and forth.
Dominus and Odessa picked their way through the shattered nullglass panel and joined him. Odessa lifted her face to the sky, eyes growing ever wider. “I haven’t seen the sky in five years,” she whispered. “It’s so . . . beautiful.”
Laoshi gazed at her. Despite the ragged clothing and accumulated grime of her captivity, so was she.
“Any of our mongrel friends around?” Dominus asked. “Or are they all asleep?”
“None I can see,” Laoshi said. “But I’d wager that last sonic charge will have woken them.”
“Let’s not linger then,” Dominus said. “I’ll take the lead.”
