by David Adams
“I’m perfectly comfortable right now. But I’ll be less so when these total strangers start poking around my insides.”
“Don’t worry,” said Chainsaw, “I’ll make sure they buy you dinner first.”
“You’re such a wonderful lady,” said Anne, her voice wholly devoid of tone. “Think of me while you’re eating, and drinking, and otherwise being a walking sack of fluids and organs.”
“If I didn’t know you were a robot, I’d think that was super creepy.”
“Fortunately,” said Anne, “spaceships can’t be creepy.”
One of the ground crew called out. “Says here you’ve got a passenger,” she said. “We can take care of them if you want. Just open up the back and we’ll come in.”
There was something weird about the way she looked at Chainsaw. The way she seemed to be smiling.
“Nah,” said Chainsaw. “Just repair the outer hull. We were exoatmospheric before, so there’s no damage inside. The passenger is my responsibility, and they’re a bit…touchy right now. I’d suggest you don’t go inside, actually.”
“It will be difficult to work without access to the inner hull,” said the crewman, her hair pulled back in an uncomfortable-looking bun. “We’re authorised to work on Confederate military spacecraft. I recommend you permit us access.”
Entirely reasonable, but if her remarkably unstable passenger got wind of that, it would be bad. Chainsaw shook her finger. “Nope. You’re authorised to work on Confederate assets on Syrene,” she said, “but this is a vessel attached to the Varyag. This is a Navy asset. You won’t be getting into the inner hull and I won’t be leaving. Thank you for your consideration.”
The crewman didn’t seem angry. Didn’t seem frustrated at all. Just happy. “As you wish,” said the woman.
To prove her point Chainsaw lowered the cockpit canopy, sealing it again. She settled back into her seat. “Just be thankful you’re a spacecraft,” she said to Anne. “You don’t have to deal with this garbage.”
“I suppose,” said Anne.
“Honestly. I mean it. It could be a lot worse. You could be a ground-pounder. Or a soldier, like those spetsnaz we dropped off earlier.”
“Eh,” said Anne as the landing pad’s lights dimmed and she started the shutdown procedure. “How bad could life on the ground really be?”
CHAPTER 31
Jungle surrounding Hammerfall
SMOKE POURED FROM THE HOLE in Hammerfall, a beacon for the Separatist forces. Pavlov jogged toward it through the thick jungle, a dozen fighters beside and ahead of him, their weapons raised.
He moved through the same killing fields where he and the other spetsnaz, along with Chainsaw, had cut down the Separatist attackers. Through the shredded trees and foliage, past the crater where Jakov had died, past muddy footprints the four of them had left when they had abandoned the building.
For a tantalisingly long time—almost a minute, with Hammerfall drawing ever closer, barely a few hundred metres away—they were entirely unopposed.
Then, about a hundred metres to the hole in the structure, the lead Separatist got hit by a rocket.
The blast threw his body almost four metres into the air. The height of the rest of his limbs, however, Pavlov was less certain about.
Shouts of panic came from the Separatists and Chuchnova.
“Die for freedom!” shouted Dmitriev. Felt odd to be on the other side of that war cry. The Separatists surged forward, a dozen soldiers charging across the churned and blasted mud.
Pavlov threw himself onto his chest, his eyes following the rocket’s smoke trail to the landing pad. Motion. A black dot. He looked through the scope of his rifle. One of the facility’s scientists was shoving a rocket into the smoking end of a launcher, a calm, placid smile on his face.
Time to wipe that smile away. He gently squeezed the trigger.
Click. Jammed. Pavlov tried to cycle the round out, but the charging handle stopped about halfway.
“Incoming!” shouted Dmitriev. The Separatists scattered as another rocket flew in, sticking into the mud and failing to explode.
One dud missile for us, one dud missile for them. God was nothing if not fair.
“Ilyukhina,” he shouted, “kill that guy!”
“That’s what I’m here for,” she said, and behind him, her rifle spoke twice. The scientist’s body blew in half, the launcher falling off the landing pad and disappearing somewhere in the jungle.
Pavlov hammered the charging handle of his rifle, trying to clear the jam. The round had wedged in there good—a failure to eject like that was typically easy to fix, but this one just didn’t want to come out.
Option. He needed an option. Miraculously, one presented itself: lying in the mud, almost within arm’s reach, the plastic stock of a gun. Pavlov scrambled in the mud, crawling on his hands and knees over to it.
Chuchnova’s varmint rifle.
The 6-1 was probably the worst gun he could possibly find in the ruined debris of the battlefield, but it met one single important criterion: it was a gun, and it was loaded.
Falling in the mud had done it no favours. Pavlov cycled the 6-1, clearing the current round and chambering a new one. He hunted for a new target, searching for the bobbing of heads that would signify movement. He saw one. Shot it. The head sprayed pink mist and slumped behind the lip of the landing pad.
Two more targets presented themselves. Pavlov took them down in turn. The 6-1 was surprisingly easy to shoot; perhaps he’d been too harsh on it.
Carefully, methodically, Pavlov put rounds down range. Ilyukhina suppressed them with bursts from her rifle and Pavlov picked them off.
He almost, for a brief moment, began to think he could win.
Almost.
CHAPTER 32
Jungle surrounding Hammerfall
HE HAD A STABLE FIRING platform here, but he was getting bogged down, and when the defenders organised properly, their position would be terribly exposed. The only option was forward.
“Moving!” He snatched up his jammed rifle, slinging it over his back. With the snap-hiss of bullets flying all around him, Pavlov got up and ran. The Separatists and Ilyukhina covered him, then it was his turn to cover them.
He fired the semi-automatic rifle carefully, mindful that he didn’t have any spare magazines. The scientists hid and moved with skill that should have been beyond them, but they were inexperienced. They rose up, fired several bursts, and then ducked back into cover.
More than enough time for Pavlov to sight them in and end them.
Then the 6-1 ran dry. He touched his radio. “Ilyukhina, cover me. I have to fix this jam.”
“Got it,” she said in his ear.
Pavlov pulled out the magazine and mud poured out of the weapon. It was full of the stuff. Cука блядь! When had this happened? The stuff was wedged inside, forced inside, packed in…almost deliberately so.
The only other person who had touched his rifle was Dmitriev. Pavlov swore under his breath and, jamming his fingers into the magazine port, scraped out as much as he could. Cука блядь, Cука блядь, Cука блядь…
A burst of machinegun fire splashed into the mud beside him. That was enough cleaning. Pavlov changed magazines with a speed that could come only from practice, yanked back the charging handle as hard as he could, chambered a new round, and squeezed the trigger.
It fired. Smoke poured from the barrel as the wet mud inside boiled, and Pavlov hated to think what it was doing to the accuracy of the weapon, but the perfect was the enemy of the good. The action of the gun worked the rest of the gunk out, and when he changed magazines again, the fresh one went in fairly smoothly.
As he was looking for a new target, something made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Some feeling that he couldn’t explain, as though God were personally reaching down His hand and guiding him.
Pavlov listened to that guidance, swinging his rifle low. A brief glint of metal caught his attention, a gun
barrel he was looking straight down. His visor drew a blue box around it.
BD-140 Sniper Rifle
He was about to be killed.
Instinct and training took over. The shooter would have to be directly behind the rifle. Pavlov clicked the full-automatic switch on his rifle and held down the trigger, spraying the bush with everything he had, dumping his magazine, leaves and mud flying in all directions.
The rifle slumped and fell into the mud.
A little too close for comfort. Pavlov quickly scanned the tree line, looking for additional snipers but saw none. Around him, the gunfire died down as the scientists were eradicated by Ilyukhina and the Separatists. None of them surrendered. Pavlov had expected that.
Still, so far, only scientists had opposed them. The truly dangerous opponents, the spetsnaz, were inside.
Waiting.
Hoping for a brief respite, Pavlov reloaded and ran his eyes along the landing bay, looking for any signs of survivors. Any threat. Any opportunity to pop one of those crazy arseholes and put them out of their misery.
He instead saw a steel drum, almost a metre in diameter and twice that long, roll down the landing pad and off the edge, tumbling as it fell into the jungle, landing in front of the hole in Hammerfall’s wall with a splat. Another followed it, and then another and another. They sat there in the mud, forming an extremely crude—and frankly ineffective—barrier in front of the hole.
Cautious, Pavlov zoomed his visor. The drums were water barrels, empty, each perforated by a handful of bullet holes. Perhaps they had been damaged in the battle and come loose, but Pavlov did not recall barrels—empty or otherwise—being stored on the landing pad.
Nothing happened. The jungle birds started to sing again, celebrating the end of the loud gunfire.
“Advance,” called Dmitriev. “We have to get out of the open before more of them come.” Lacking a better option, Pavlov did so, rejoining with the rest of the Separatists.
“Nicely done,” said Dmitriev, smiling a half-moon. “We might just win.”
What a fucking arsehole. Pavlov stormed up to him, withdrawing the magazine and tilting his weapon upside down. “No thanks to you!” he spat. “Look at this shit! What did you do to my gun?”
Dmitriev blinked. “Oh shit,” he said. “Sorry. I…forgot.”
“You forgot.”
“Uhh, yeah.” The guy rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “I wasn’t confident giving you your weapons back, given everything, sooo…”
“So you fucked it like it was a two-rouble whore working the spacedock on High Vladstock?”
Dmitriev shrugged helplessly.
Ilyukhina emptied her water canister on his rifle. The water that came out of the weapon was brown. More water, and it started to clear.
“Dick,” said Pavlov, glaring at Dmitriev.
“That’s a gendered insult,” Dmitriev said. “I thought we were better than that.”
“I don’t give a shit. I thought we were better than sabotaging our allies’ guns and then forgetting we’d done it.”
Dmitriev’s cheesy grin didn’t abate, and Pavlov opened his mouth to continue the tirade, but realised he was missing someone.
“Where’s Chuchnova?” he asked. “I saw her cut and run, and I have her rifle here…” He touched his radio. “Chuchnova, you okay over there?”
For a moment, there was no response, then a quiet, “Yes.” Another pause. “S-Sorry, I’m not a soldier. I’m just a scientist.”
“It’s okay. We’ve cleared the way to the facility. No sign of my comrades, however, and you won’t be much good against them… How about I just leave your 6-1 here, and you can catch up when you’re feeling better, yeah?”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go back to the launcher and get in the cabin. That should protect me from the explosion.”
After a quick check for ammunition and wounded—three Separatists had been killed, and one wounded too badly to continue the fight—the group reformed and jogged toward the hole in Hammerfall’s side. The water barrels slowly sank into the mud, the pile of steel drums barely a metre high. Easily climbable. Whatever attempt the crazies had cooked up to stop them getting in was not going to work.
As they got close, Pavlov heard a faint hissing coming from the barrels, high pitched like escaping air. He examined them closely. Definitely empty. But something was making that noise…
The Separatist near him coughed, loudly and wetly. There was a shake in his hands Pavlov knew all too well—adrenaline. An excess during stressful situations could cause it. The guy coughed more, hunched over as though in pain. That wasn’t normal.
Then the others started doing it, coughing and gagging, and as Pavlov watched, Dmitriev unclipped the gas mask from his belt and pulled it over his head.
“Best close the breach in your armour,” Dmitriev said, his voice muffed by the mask, pointing to the crumpled spot on Pavlov’s arm. “Do you have any sealant?”
“No,” said Pavlov, his breathing quickening. “Should I just hold it closed? Will that work?”
“It could be activated on contact.” Dmitriev reached around behind him and withdrew a small can of foam. He sprayed it over the crack, sealing it. “That should do the trick.”
If it didn’t, he wouldn’t have to worry about it for long. Fortunately it seemed to hold.
Protected by their various implements, Pavlov, Ilyukhina, and Dmitriev could do absolutely nothing but watch as the invisible, deadly nerve gas spread amongst the remainder of the Separatist forces, slowly killing them.
CHAPTER 33
Pavlov’s Cell
YANOVNA TAPPED AWAY ON HER tablet. “How certain are you that it was nerve gas, rather than some other kind of chemical agent?”
Pavlov gripped the edges of his bed and squeezed until his knuckles hurt. “What do you want me to say? Do you want me to describe the effects of the gas to you?” He leaned forward. “Well, first of all, their muscles contracted. Their jaws clenched. Their hands became fists. They twitched and jerked, their heads swaying violently around. They lost motor control. The chemicals blinded them. Choked and burned their lungs. They became little balls of people that finally, in great agony, died in the mud as we watched. And then they—”
“Okay,” she said, holding up a hand. “I got it.”
“Do you?” Pavlov glared at her. “Because I got more. It went on for, like, two minutes. They barely made a sound, they couldn’t. They just kind of gargled—”
“I get it,” she said. “They died. Spare us the gory details. They’re not necessary for the report. What I should know, however, is how they got it. Pretty certain that nerve gas isn’t standard equipment at research facilities…”
“I have no idea.” Pavlov shrugged. “I’m guessing the scientists cooked something up. My understanding is that sarin gas is just two chemicals mixed together in the right ratio.”
“It’s much more complicated than that,” said Yanovna. “The ingredients, in lots of ways, are more dangerous than the gas itself. Methylphosphonyl difluoride, one of the chemicals, is highly corrosive and requires specialised equipment to hold; even in liquid form, a tiny leak would be devastating.”
Methylphowhatnow? “I didn’t exactly memorise Better Killing Through Chemistry, okay?”
“That’s not a real book,” said Yanovna.
Pavlov released his bed, taking a couple of slow, deep breaths to calm himself. “And…I don’t know how they got the gas. I can only assume it was a nerve agent, but it might have been some kind of other horrible choking, paralysing thing. All I know is that it killed everyone pretty good.”
“So you said,” said Yanovna. “And then what happened?”
* * *
Outside Hammerfall
Pavlov would take the sight of the gassed Separatists dying to his grave. Their bodies all bundled up, like they were huddling for warmth in the sweltering jungle. The silence was eerie; no birds, no chatter, no moving things at all, save themselves. Th
ey stood in an empty nothingness where life had once been.
“Chuchnova,” he said, unable to keep the tremor out of his voice. “You out there?”
“Yeah,” she said, panting into the microphone. “I’m almost to the launcher. Is everything okay?”
“Listen to me very carefully. Do not approach Hammerfall. The crazies have deployed some kind of gas. Everyone is dead except Ilyukhina, Dmitriev, and me. Lock yourself in the SAM battery—it’s NBC rated—and activate the filters. Do not open the door until we blow the reactor and burn away the chemicals, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, and in the background, Pavlov could hear the hiss of an opening metal door. “I’m getting inside. I’ll lock it up good.”
“Good,” he said. “There’s one missile left, and Ilyukhina took off the safety bolt, so it’s live. Just call out your target and the computer will do the rest.”
“Right,” said Chuchnova. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
“Good luck,” he said, and then—surrounded by gas that was kept out only by their armour—he and Ilyukhina stepped inside, Dmitriev behind them. Pavlov inspected the sealant on his armour. Whatever it was seemed to have helped, but moving his arm caused it to creak ominously. If gas got past the seemingly feeble barrier…
Best not to think about it anymore. There was no point.
Carefully putting one foot in front of the other, Pavlov advanced into Hammerfall. Every step felt closer to danger; the lights were off, every computer terminal unpowered. He and Ilyukhina navigated using their thermal cameras; Dmitriev used a small hand torch.
The further they travelled into the dark, the more concerning the lack of electricity became. The missile strike had only damaged the outer smart-steel layer…the power network might have been disrupted, but it shouldn’t have been out for the entire building. No lights. No cameras. No microphones. That was good, right?
