by JR Handley
It is a very short trip to the next City Phase Unit, I assure you. The records I managed to find indicate that the CPU belongs to the 6907th TAC Regiment. If the Fates are kind, the first habdisk inside will suit our purposes.
Sashala followed Jade’s directions to the passageway which connected the two City Phase Units. The path inclined up a full level and then across toward the next unit. She kept a moderate pace and could feel the emergency nanites continuing to do their work.
While limping across the final portion of the connecting passageways, Sashala asked Jade to connect to the Beta City Systems Administrator. The response she received was shocking and unexpected, bringing her to an abrupt halt.
There are two systems administrators for Beta City, each claiming different partitions. One system is locked down, and we don’t have the codes to get in, while the other is corrupted. The corruption to the server means that interfacing with it could kill me. Get me to an empty habdisk, and I will quickly isolate it and make a new server.
Sashala started hacking again. Her hand went to her knee as she buckled over. Blood splashed from her mouth all over the inside of her helmet. Sashala’s nose filled with the coppery scent of her own fluids.
“Jade, even if I get to an empty habdisk, how will me freezing myself stop this radiation from killing me? The emergency nanites are helping restore my movement and mask some pain, but I’m still coughing my lungs up.”
Once suspended in the iced state, your internal nanites will clean your cells of the radiation, Jade explained. They won’t have to focus on other functions as they do when you are awake. Just stay focused, and we will live to fight another day.
Sashala wasn’t a medic, but the explanation was good enough for her. With the taste and smell of blood heavy in her helmet, Sashala focused on getting to one of the empty habdisks. On the way down the ramp that led her out of the passageway, the base rumbled as some of its shock absorbers completely broke off their moorings. The unexpected tremors caused Sashala to trip, tumbling ass over end down the ramp until she hit a wall.
Sashala gingerly stood up, and promptly fell flat on her face. While lying on the ground, fighting the pain, she assessed her injuries. She had Jade run a full medical diagnostic scan from inside her armor and listened to the results. Her leg was broken, there were dangerous levels of radiation in her body, and she was still bleeding internally from several of her wounds. She might survive if she could safely ice herself.
“Another frakking day in paradise,” she said.
After struggling to sit up against the wall, Sashala waited for the pain levels to subside before attempting to resume her efforts. Sitting there, she started feeling sleepy and gave in to her body screaming for rest. While halfway between reality and her dreams, she began hallucinating.
“Hey, lover, it isn’t time to sleep yet,” Matt Weech told her as she stared at him in wonder.
“But, but, you’re dead,” she said in disbelief.
“Yes, I retired, but it isn’t your time. Get to the bunk, sweetie, and dream of the times we spent in the horizontal position,” Matt urged her. “Come on, do it for me. Do it for us. Do it for our son, wherever those frakking overlords took him. Do mind the water.”
Sashala’s eyes snapped open to see that water from the flooding was getting into her open wounds. Her armor patches weren’t holding, due to her abusing them, and the polluted water was interfering with the clotting agents. Ignoring this issue, she painfully shuffled to Habdisk 612, the closest to her, and tried to gain entry.
Sashala was shocked to learn that it was linked to the separately secured network Jade had told her about earlier. She queried Jade for assistance.
You need to move on to the next habdisk, said Jade. That systems administrator has access to higher functions than I do.
“Jade, seriously? Seriously?! How many more frakking places are you going to lead me to before you admit I’m completely and utterly frakked?”
Just one more, Jade replied.
Sashala coughed as she limped towards the next habdisks. Just as she got to the door, she caught movement in her peripheral vision. Not wanting to investigate and take a chance, she stepped through and slammed the door shut.
Once she was clear, and the door had resealed in the habdisk, Sashala gripped her SA-71 and slowly cleared the room.
“I’m not getting bashed in the face again,” she whispered.
Creeping through the barracks, Sashala was surprised by what she was seeing. She’d expected to see an orderly room, like all the rooms she was used to. This space was in disarray.
The barracks appeared to be abandoned by Marines who’d quickly suited up and filed out to complete whatever assignment they’d been given. Duty uniforms were strewn across the floor, and abandoned tablets lay on bunks. It was as if the owners expected to return home at any moment. She let that give her hope, because she would spend eternity on ice if nobody came back.
After clearing the room twice, she set her helmet on a top bunk and began dragging everything she could move. She had to block the door, lest the locking mechanism fail her. She pulled the nearest wall and foot lockers over to make access more difficult.
When it was done, Jade walked her through what she had to do next.
You must be on a bed above the waterline, or your corpse will revive badly damaged. You will also need to run a charging cord and hook a power harness to your armor while you are iced. Remember to strip the AIs you retrieved and stow them in the compartment underneath the rack. Secure my AI chip, as well, since I have made a copy of myself and stored it in the memory of your armor. I will activate the cryo freeze protocol once you are ready.
Sashala was ready for the flash-freeze in under a minute. While she was climbing onto the rack, she heard Hardits pounding on the door as they attempted to gain entry. Sashala moved even quicker. She lay prone on the bed in her armor, with her helmet beside her. Jade addressed Sashala over the intercom.
Emergency Cryo Freeze Protocol will be initiated in two minutes. Emergency Cryo Freeze Protocol will be initiated in two minutes.
Knowing that her AI would continue that countdown for the entire two minutes, Sashala verbally used her override code and told Jade to start the freeze immediately. Sashala never finished explaining why she didn’t want to wait. Her world faded, and her body lay waiting, a weapon in search of a cause.
— About the Author —
J. R. Handley is a pseudonym for a husband and wife writing team. He is a veteran infantry sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division and later the 28th Infantry Division. She is the kind of crazy that interprets his insanity into cogent English. He writes the sci-fi while she proofreads it. The sergeant is a two-time combat veteran of the late unpleasantness in Mesopotamia where he was wounded, likely doing something stupid. He started writing military science fiction as part of a therapy program suggested by his doctor, and hopes to entertain you while he attempts to excise his demons through these creative endeavors. In addition to being just another dysfunctional veteran, he is a stay at home wife, avid reader and all around nerd. Luckily for him, his Queen joins him in his fandom nerdalitry.
Follow the author’s blog at: jrhandley.com
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