He was five years old. The puppy’s back was broken, but it still tried to wag its tail and its mouth seemed to smile as it look up at him, dying in the old church yard. The older boys were laughing. It was a big joke to them. Dinky’s pups. Poor Dinky. She looked so sad, like she knew that she shouldn’t have had the pups. Like she knew what they’d do to them. Marcus didn’t know who’d thrown the puppy into the air. James or John. Not David. David was too young. But he’d never find out. They’d buried another one of Dinky’s cute, black and white puppies alive. So they’d told him. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go somewhere else. But there wasn’t anywhere else to go.
He killed the first Enrilean without even realising that he’d pulled the trigger. Just an inch of the man’s head appeared behind the inch thick hatch. It was enough. Marcus loosed off a sharp three round burst and caught the Enrilean engineer just above his right eye. The heavy metal spanner in the man’s hand dropped with a clang as his hand spasmed open. But his body fell against the heavy door, threatening to push it open and expose the three other engineers who now struggled to pull it shut.
He remembered the graves they’d made for the little dogs. The puppies that nobody knew about. Dinky’s puppy’s. All four, dead. Their little bodies covered with fallen bricks and mortar from the vandalised wall. Left there and forgotten. He – Marcus Connah – hadn’t helped prepare the resting places for the battered, still warm little bundles of pink skin, hair and blood. He couldn’t watch. Couldn’t help. He couldn’t do anything.
He was running towards the door. It was an impulse. The Enrileans were trying to close it. They were trying to get the dead man out of the way. But he had fallen half in and half out of the opening. Connah was two metres from the door when he fired a stuttering, eight round burst from the HK’s fifty round magazine.
There was a high pitched cry of pained anguish. It echoed off the solid metal hatch as Connah’s bullets carved three fingers and most of the palm from one man’s hand. The rapid clack-clacking of the compact weapon reverberated off the door and walls too. Connah crouched low, moving forward. The dead body behind the door wiggled around, dancing like a macabre puppet as the engineers tried to pull it free of the door. But it was too late. Marcus had reached the door.
He was twelve years old. The older, wiser, sadder boy with the wry smile and the penetrating dark eyes was called James Coleman. He held Marcus Connah’s hands too tightly. They stood together in the rain, together, not knowing to smile or cry.
“I’ll never be afraid again,” James said, “Really, Zee. Never, ever.”
“What did you do? James, you’re scaring me. Your hands are so cold. What have you done to him? James, what did you do?”
There was only one man behind the door. The others had run away – apart from the man Connah had shot dead. Marcus wrenched the heavy metal hatch open with the strength of a madman. The Enrilean holding the door closed squealed in pain and fear as two of his fingernails were peeled off his right hand. Marcus Connah stared at the bald headed, grey uniformed man’s ashen face for a second. The Enrilean opened his mouth to say something, but Connah fired the submachine gun and tore the man’s face apart.
He was counting bullets, like he was supposed to. Even though the roundometer showed he had thirty eight bullets left in the magazine. He knew how many he had fired, how many were left. That was all that mattered as his synthetic soled boot pushed against the quivering alien’s body, kicking him aside. The hatch opened into a small chamber filled a spaghetti mess of red, green and orange pipes. On the far side of the small room there was another hatch. The hatch was closing, at least three pairs of hands clawing it shut.
“I’m going to write my poems, Zee. I’m going to run an emotional rinse through my hair. I’m going to go for a cruise to Saturn. I might not even come back, Zee. I’m going to do what I want from now on.”
“Shit, James, what did you do to him?”
The rain, falling hard, was running down the back of Marcus’s neck. The energy umbrella was overwhelmed by the downpour and crackled uselessly as massive drops of rain smashed through the weak electromagnetic shield. Marcus’s fingers were hurting. James was gripping him so hard.
“What did you do?”
There was a lock on Marcus’s side of the door, but he wasn’t sure if the Enrileans could lock this hatch. He supposed that they might be able to. He was already firing the HK as he had those thoughts. The steady rattling of the light, effective and accurate automatic weapon drove the distant memory of his first lover from his mind. He fired the magazine empty as he sprinted towards the door. At least half the bullets he fired slipped through the gap. Others sliced fingers off and mangled palms and thumbs. But the door continued to close.
“I wanted to kill him. Really. It’s so strange to confess. Is that the right word? I didn’t do it. Of course I couldn’t. So am I confessing anything to you? But I wanted to kill him, Zee. Oh God, I really wanted to.”
“But you didn’t.”
The last, cold touch on his cheek. The touch he’d never forget. The half-smile. The beautiful, sad, wrecked eyes. The hopeless, insanely courageous face. James’ fingers lingered on his cheek. Marcus wanted to kiss him. The urge was so desperate and surreal. A force beyond reason or hope, trying to burst out of his chest. But he just couldn't do it. He tried, but it was like an invisible force was keeping him in place.
“Tell me you didn't hurt him.”
Something whizzed past his left ear as he hauled the heavy metal door open. It was another corridor – walls painted a light grey – receding into the distance. A soldier was lying prone, some kind of long barrelled weapon in his hands. The soldier fired another two shots at Connah. Marcus dodged behind the door as the bullets thudded against the thick metal. He waited just a moment, then peeked round with his own weapon aimed towards the floor. It fired in his right hand, eight bullets riddling the Enrilean's body as the perfectly balanced weapon chattered out its fast moving flashes of pain and death. Connah moved carefully through the hatch. There were voices further down the corridor. Orders being given. Confusion. There was the tinny crackle of a radio or some other communications device.
Connah stared at James' father. The rain was falling. The rain always fell at funerals, or seemed to. Young Marcus Connah had seen three funerals. Three too many. He'd forced his way to the first, been forced to the second. This third funeral he barely attended. His body swayed in the frozen November rain. He hadn't eaten in two days. He felt he would never eat again. Or drink, or move or do anything at all. There was no reason to do any of that. Not again. Not ever.
A bullet came from nowhere. It punctured Connah's uniform and made a neat hole in his forearm, narrowly missing the thickest part of the radial bone just above the wrist. He squeezed the HK's trigger reflexively and emptied the magazine into the darkness, moving the barrel delicately from side to side. The magazine clicked empty. He reloaded automatically, tossing aside the empty fifty eight round magazine and sliding in another. It was the last magazine.
He stepped over the dead alien, almost slipping in the thick blood that bridged the corridor walls. He reached down to pick up the weapon that the man had fired at him. He felt the sting from the wound in his arm as he gripped the rifle's still hot handguard. He surveyed the weapon with mechanical accuracy. The rifle was slightly longer than his own carbine – maybe three or two inches – and felt about a half a kilogramme heavier. The magazine, set into the weapon behind the trigger guard, seemed fatter and slightly longer than the HK's bullet store. He guessed correctly that the alien weapon's bullets were a heavier calibre than his own weapon's. He balanced his own weapon in his left hand – aimed into the darkness – as he turned the alien rifle over in his right hand. He found what he was looking for. The writing stamped into the alien weapon's matt black metal made the hairs at the back of his neck stand up.
MODE SELECTOR. SINGLE. CONTINUOUS. RAGGED.
He shouldered the rifle and gripped his own weapo
n tightly, his left hand squeezing the barrel's plastic handguard and turning his knuckles white. He continued into the darkness, not hearing the door opening far behind him.
The three men who moved through the hatchway and into the corridor were soldiers – unlike the engineers and technicians Connah had encountered so far. They carried 9mm automatic rifles identical to the one Connah had taken from the fallen tech. Fifteen metres away, Marcus Connah was oblivious to the weapons that now aimed towards his back, neck and head. His hands were trembling and his eyes were beginning to make out some detail in the gloom. Another doorway. This time fully closed. There was, again, a round handle in the centre of the door. But this time there was a large glass window occupying most of the upper half of the hatch. Red light glowed behind the hatch, somewhere in the room that lay beyond.
Quito was already turning around, reflexively, as the three aliens announced their presence as a carelessly thumbed safety catch was released on one of the three weapons. The sound, movement or something supernatural had alerted him to the new Enrilea threat just as his life was about to be extinguished. He slipped his finger into the trigger guard of his assault rifle. He turned the barrel towards the enemy, already knowing that he wasn't going to make it in time.
The corridor filled with the chattering of automatic weapons fire. Bullets whizzed by Quito's left ear, singing a few millimetres of the skin there. He was still bringing his weapon to bear, wondering how the Hell he'd made it this far, when he saw the Enrilean soldiers explode in fine clouds of red mist. Another eight or nine bullets bounced and tumbled down the corridor past him as the last dying soldier sprayed his weapon against his own feet and then the corridor walls. One of the men – not the death throes shooter – made a loud and high pitched squeal. The bodies settled in an untidy, horrifying pile of contorted limbs and pulped flesh.
Then, of course, she was standing there in the corridor.
2195AD - Jann Linn’s Ship.
Oss was not frightened of the emptiness. Only Cass Linn had been gifted and cursed with the emotions that their father had valued so greatly. Oss did not feel anything. But she was aware of the emptiness. She knew that she was still… functional. She could think, even if she could do anything else. She was aware of herself. The various autonomic functions that she could monitor and, if she needed to, interrupt. Time had not stood still for her, as it so often had in the past. But something was wrong.
Normally, the ship’s sensors were her eyes and ears. She had sharply tuned the old transport’s sensor system enough that she could eavesdrop on the many strange conversations that Cass Linn would have with their father. From the ship’s vantage point on the side of the old mountain she could watch the city below, as her sister had often done. But Oss didn’t wonder about the people, the culture, the mystery of it all as Cass Linn did. Oss had spent her time watching, with the cold precision of a machine, the city move beneath her. She’d listen to the radio stations also, but the nonsense sounds and crazy mixed up words didn't make very much sense to her.
The ship was damaged. This might have meant that she was damaged. But it might not mean that at all. She had never been able to fully determine whether or not the ship itself represented her body. It was something she would discuss with Cass Linn once they were able to speak again. Cass had connected to the ship’s controls using an old manual port, but now Oss couldn’t sense her sister anywhere on the system. She was alone again, as she so often was. But she didn’t feel loneliness. She didn’t feel the emptiness. Oss Linn wasn’t equipped to feel anything. But Cass Linn had connected to her in a way much more... intimate than they'd ever connected before.
There was a lot to process. Cass Linn had not been able to communicate with her during the connection. Oss had only been able to observe her sister as she'd controlled the ship. And she'd gained a new insight into the way that Cass's mind worked. If anything, it made understanding her more advanced sister even more difficult. Oss had monitored about thirty seconds of Cass Linn's activity as she'd been hardwired to the ship. The data that she had collected was nothing short of mesmerizing.
Was that the correct word? Swimming in a world of dark silence, there was nothing more to do. All she had left were her thoughts and memories. She searched her database, cross referencing the meaning of the word.
To capture the complete attention of.
Oss decided that, for all intents and purposes, the meaning held true. Cass Linn had left a strong fingerprint on her own consciousness that Oss continued to analyse. Her sister's thoughts were disorganized and confusing. But Oss could not stop thinking about Cass Linn. She had never understood Cass Linn’s way of thinking, or why their father thought that she was so special. But Cass’s mind was fascinating. No, more than that. It was... mesmerizing.
For thirteen minutes now, Oss had studied her sister’s fleeting connection to the ship’s systems. She could understand the bullet drive, finally. The new insight into her sister’s way of thinking allowed her to comprehend how the particle accelerator was able to tear open the fabric of space and time, enabling the ship to pass through. But even though Oss now knew how the bullet drive worked, she couldn’t marvel at its brilliance as her father had. She couldn’t hope that the drive would allow them to escape, as her father had. Oss Linn had glimpsed her sister’s emotional driving forces, but she could not share them. However, for the first time in her existence she understood how the emotions affected Cass’s decisions.
She thought about that for a long time too, but not a tremendously long amount of time. After all, she was already aware of Cass Linn’s emotions and how they caused her to deviate from what she would consider a normal cycle of behaviour. Visiting the city was a prime example of that. It wasn’t safe for her there, yet she’d decided to make the trip anyway. Because of an emotional state that Oss couldn’t share. After about two seconds of deliberation, Oss decided that she preferred not to have the emotions that Cass Linn and her father considered so wonderful.
There was nothing left to do as her mind floated in the darkness. She started to go through her routine maintenance processes. They didn’t take long – especially with her connections to the ship’s systems severed – so once more she didn’t have anything to do. For the first time in her existence, Oss decided to take the initiative.
First, she was going to reconnect to the ship. Cass had worked out a way to repair herself and Oss decided to copy this idea. She had no idea how long it might take, or how badly the ship’s systems were damaged. But there was nothing else to do besides waiting. And Oss decided that she had waited long enough.
2195AD - EWS Devastation.
Her once beautiful face was burned on one side. Some of her dreadlocks had burned away, or would soon disintegrate as the others had. But, somehow, she still smiled and her large brown eyes had some semblance of the spark he’d always known. In her right hand she held the second short barrelled assault rifle that had been stowed behind her armoured cockpit bay. Her right hand and forearm looked red and raw. Some of the plastic fittings on the HK were melted and burned away. The left sleeve of her uniform was missing. There were blackened and burned tatters of the material hanging off her shoulder. Connah could smell and almost taste the acrid, vomitus odour of her burning flesh as she skipped towards him.
“You’re smiling,” she said, stopping in front of him.
And he really was.
“How is this possible?” he whispered, “I thought…”
Her left eye was bloodshot. The burn on the left side of her face extended from just above her chin all the way round to the hairline and beyond. Her left earlobe had been burned off. The skin on the left side of her face was bright scarlet. Most of the hair on the left side of her head had been burned away, he realized. Black flakes of charred flesh and hair fell floatingly around her as she moved.
“I guess that sometimes miracles really do happen.”
She was still smiling. He could see that her injuries were causing her consid
erable pain. But she had always been strong and defiant. He waited a long time before speaking again. Nearby, the Enrileans were getting more organized. Real soldiers were making their way to the aft end of the massive fortress in space where the two humans had pierced an entryway into. Time was running out.
“It’s good to see you,” Connah whispered, “Shall we give them something to remember us by?”
She smiled through her pain, as she’d always done.
“Yes,” She said calmly, “I think I’d like that, Marcus.”
She took his hand. He was reaching out to her. He hadn’t realize that he was doing so. But she took his hand lightly in her burning hot, burned red delicate grasp.
“It’ll be our first date,” He said, “And we’re going to have a really good time.”
2195AD - Crantarr.
She led him out of the water and over about a quarter mile of rocks. The flame coloured Triumph sports car was sitting, on its retractable wheels, on the edge of a large crystal dome. The car looked exactly the same way as it had once looked, two hundred years earlier, when Carol Hayes had stolen it from the lot in Nevada. The modifications that Carol and then Megyn had made to it were not obvious. Even the bullet drive was invisible within the car’s shining bodywork. By the time they reached the car, Jack Sloane had completely dried off. The sun was even hotter. He was becoming thirsty yet again. The sun was almost at its zenith and would shine for another full thirty eight hours. Sloane felt a little queasy as they reached the car. He touched the hot door handle. Not trying the lock, just seeing if it was real. The car seemed familiar to him, but he couldn’t say where he’d seen it before.
Megyn Alexander skipped lightly behind Sloane. She was waving an aluminium bottle which he presumed contained water. She was smiling, as she always seemed to be. He couldn’t help but smile back. He took the bottle of water and, unscrewing the top, he began to softly laugh.
Beyond the Starport Adventure (Bullet Book 1) Page 48
