Silent Order_Image Hand

by Jonathan Moeller

  He started to turn, and then the roof clanged.

  His gaze snapped back just in time to see metal fingers grasp the edge of the roof, and then one of the Iron Hands he had seen in the laboratory vaulted up. The Iron Hand was a hard-eyed man with shaggy blond hair, his face gaunt and sharp, scars visible on his right hand and forearm.

  A glove and leather bracer, of course, covered his left hand.

  His right hand held a plasma rifle, the emitter swinging towards March. But leaping onto the roof of a moving truck was not a great way to stabilize a weapon before firing, and a burst of automatic plasma bolts howled past March. He snapped his pistol up and fired, aiming for the Iron Hand’s center of mass. But the truck’s vibrations threw off his aim, and instead, his plasma bolt hit the center of the Iron Hand’s rifle, blowing it to shards.

  The Iron Hand reacted without hesitation, flinging the ruined weapon at March. He tried to dodge, but he didn’t have enough room to do it without falling off the side of the truck, and the stock of the spinning rifle hit him in the face. He heard something crack – probably his nose, to judge from the spike of pain that flooded through his head.

  March squeezed the trigger again, but the plasma bolt sizzled past the Iron Hand’s head. The Machinist commando leaped forward, his left hand grasping a matte black combat knife. March snapped his left arm up to block, and he caught the descending blade against his forearm. Had the knife struck his right arm with an Iron Hand’s strength driving the blade, it would likely have cut it off. As it was, his cybernetic arm resisted the cutting edge with ease, though the impact nearly made his knees buckle. March swung his right fist and hit the Iron Hand across the face with the barrel of the pistol. The commando staggered but swung the knife again. March had to raise his left arm to deflect the blade once more, the knife rasping against the metal of his limb.

  The Iron Hand took a fraction of a second to retract his knife, but that was all March needed. He squeezed the trigger, and the plasma bolt punched into the Iron Hand’s stomach and burned out his back. The commando staggered, and March shot him twice more in the head.

  The dead man fell off the side of the truck, hit the road, and bounced away. March wasn’t sure if his plasma bolts had hit the hive implant in the Iron Hand’s skull or not, but either way, the commando was out of the fight.

  March caught his balance and turned, ignoring the pain in his face and the blood dripping from his mouth. The cab, he needed to shoot into the damned cab. He took a long step forward, raising his pistol to aim.

  And as he did, he saw that Slovell was indeed driving the truck. Slovell also held a plasma pistol of his own, the weapon coming up, and March jumped back and almost lost his balance. Slovell opened fire, and three quick plasma shots burned past March. He fired back, trying to keep his balance, but his shot came nowhere near hitting Slovell or the cab.

  Slovell fired again, snarling in fury. That meant his attention was on March and not the road, which meant he didn’t see that the street was coming to an end ahead. They were hurtling towards a shopping mall, with an enormous glass entrance leading into a shop-lined atrium. Unfortunately, there were no concrete bollards in front of the doors, which meant there was nothing to stop the truck from crashing into them.

  March had a second to react, and he threw himself flat against the roof of the truck, still clutching the pistol in his right hand, his left arm thrown over his head. Another plasma shot burned past him, and Slovell shouted a curse.

  The truck crashed into the doors at least sixty kilometers an hour.

  There was a tremendous smashing noise, and the jolt almost threw March from the back of the truck. Shattered glass rained around him, and he felt the top of his left arm scrape against the metal doorframe. Had his right arm hit the doorframe at that speed, it would have been ripped from its socket, and he probably would have died of shock and blood loss a moment later.

  As it was, pain still shot down his shoulder and back.

  The truck skidded through the doors and smashed into a large ornamental fountain in the center of the atrium. The front crumpled like an accordion, and March was thrown forward. He hammered his left hand down, and his metal fingers punched through the truck’s roof and held him fast. For a moment sheer pain and shock paralyzed him, but he shoved to his feet. March just had time to notice that his left sleeve and his coat had been cut to ribbons by both the Iron Hand’s knife and the broken glass, that blood was dripping down his chest and face. He jumped off the left side of the truck, his pistol swinging towards the driver’s side window.

  Slovell was gone. Had he hit his head on the steering wheel and collapsed? No, the passenger’s side door was open. That meant that Slovell and Skinner had gotten out of the truck and run around the right side of the vehicle, and…

  March realized the danger just in time and whirled as the sole surviving Iron Hand ran around the back of the truck, plasma rifle tracking towards him. But March was ready, and he shot the Iron Hand in the head. He stalked forward, and Slovell and Odin jumped from the back of the truck, guns in hand. Odin had been hurt in the crash, a gash down his forehead just below his hairline.

  Glittering black slime leaked from the wound. Odin didn’t have blood, but Machinist nanobots.

  Both Slovell and Odin held plasma pistols leveled at March. Slovell grasped his in a two-handed grip, his hands trembling a little. Odin’s gun hand was as steady as a rock.

  “Goddamned Calaskaran spy!” said Slovell. He bared his teeth in a crazed snarl, his eyes glittering. “You’ve always persecuted me. You’ve always persecuted me!” He let out a wild laugh. “But it ends here! We’ll start a war, and the Falcon Republic will destroy Calaskar!”

  “Sure you’re going to live to see that?” said March.

  “We have the drop on you!” said Slovell. “Put down your gun!”

  “One of you is going to die,” said March.

  “Yes,” said Odin. “Exactly right.”

  He seized Slovell with his left hand and wrenched the film producer in front of him. March fired, and Slovell intercepted the plasma bolt aimed at Odin. Slovell let out a final shriek and fell, smoke rising from the crater in his chest. March started to dodge, but Odin had already pulled the trigger. The plasma bolt clipped March’s right shoulder, pain flooding through him, and March stumbled, losing his grip on his gun.

  Odin smiled as he shifted his aim for the kill…and then his head snapped to the side.

  Eighty’s car roared through the ruined doors of the mall.

  Odin flung himself to the side and raced towards one of the shops lining the atrium, and Eighty’s car crashed into the back of the wrecked truck. Plasma fire stuttered from the windows as Eighty and Winter opened fire, but Odin moved like a snake as a dazed-looking Skinner ran to his side. The Cognarch and the Machinist agent smashed through the glass door of one the shops and vanished into it. March snatched up his dropped pistol, ignoring the pain in his right arm and wiping the blood from his face with his left hand as he did.

  “Jack!” Cassandra scrambled out of the back of the car. “You’re hurt!”

  “Yeah,” said March. “Eighty, does that car still work?”

  “Should,” said Eighty, scanning the shops. “I didn’t hit the truck that hard.”

  “We’ve got to move,” said Winter. “The Northgate police are mobilizing. They've declared a terrorist attack on the rampway, and they’ve called for troops from the military.”

  “Yes,” said March, and he scrambled across the hood of the car and into the back of the truck. Cassandra climbed up after him, concern on her face. Perhaps she thought he would fall over, and given how much he was bleeding, that was a reasonable fear. “I just need to get this.”

  He saw the radiation weapon lying on the floor. One of the impacts had knocked it over, smashing some of its components, and March wondered if it had been too damaged to fire. Perhaps that was why Odin had been willing to flee.

  Though given a choice between his lif
e and the Firestone relic, March knew how Odin would choose.

  The Firestone rested in its wire cradle, and March stripped off his ruined jacket.

  “Cassandra,” said March. “You’ve got a phone on you?” She nodded. “Take as many pictures of this thing as you can.”

  She pulled out a phone and started taking pictures. March knelt, plucked the Firestone from its cradle with his left hand, and wrapped it in his coat. Hopefully, that would keep visible light from touching it.

  “We really have to go!” called Winter.

  “Yes,” said March, staggering a little as he got to his feet. He must have lost more blood than he had thought. “Yes, we do.”

  He ran back to the car and climbed into the passenger seat, scanning the stores for any sign of Odin, but there was no trace of the Machinist Cognarch.

  Eighty turned the car and drove back into the street, and they fled as the wail of sirens filled the night.

  Chapter 10: Victories

  It took six days and tens of thousands of credits worth of bribes before March and Cassandra could leave Raetia.

  The first forty-eight hours were the hardest. The police investigated the shootout on the rampway and the crashed truck in the mall as a terrorist incident. March, Cassandra, Eighty, and Winter abandoned the car, set it on fire to destroy any DNA traces, and retreated to Eighty’s building and listened to the police transmissions. For a while, the investigation intensified and then died off. Both the Northgate City police and the Falcon military seemed inclined to chalk up the fight to a battle between the slum gangs. Evidently, the occasional shootout in the slums was not uncommon, though it was rare for the battles to spill into the wealthier arcologies.

  Slovell's death was a bigger challenge, but Falcon Intelligence covered it up. Evidently they had been looking for an excuse to get rid of him for some time, and March had forced their hand. Lurid stories exposing Slovell as a serial killer who preyed upon young women filled the media, and the Roger Slovell Center came to a sudden and ignimonious end.

  Getting off Raetia proved a challenge. March and Cassandra needed to bring the Firestone with them back to Calaskar, and there was no way they could take it on a commercial starliner. All baggage and cargo aboard a commercial starliner was regularly scanned and searched, and while cargo handlers and pursers could be bribed to look the other way, the Firestone was too valuable and too dangerous to trust to a bribe. In the end, March and Cassandra had to leave Northgate City, travel to another of Raetia’s cities, and use the spaceport there. Winter’s money bribed a shuttle pilot not to scan their baggage, and once they reached Raetia Station, March paid an exorbitant fee to a Mercatorian privateer to take them to Alexandria Station. Fortunately, the passage fee was enough that the privateer didn’t bother to search their cargo, and they left Raetia Station without incident.

  Four days later, they reached Alexandria Station and boarded the Tiger, and while March did not allow himself to relax, he felt better about their chances should they encounter any trouble. Better to travel aboard his own well-armed and well-armored ship rather than relying upon starliners and foreign privateers.

  “You know, I’ve missed this ship,” said Cassandra as they walked into the empty cargo bay, their boots clanging against the deck plates. She set down the case holding the portable Eclipse device, and March walked to the strong room door, trying not to wince as he did. He had used a lot of first aid nanobots on his wounds, and the various genetic and nanotech alterations of an Iron Hand let him heal far faster than an unmodified human, but that came at the cost of fatigue for days, and he still felt battered and aching.

  “As have I,” said March, locking the case holding the Firestone inside the strong room.

  “Hello, Vigil,” said Cassandra.

  “Greetings, Dr. Yerzhov,” said Vigil’s smooth, calm voice. “Welcome back to the Tiger.”

  “She’s always so polite,” said Cassandra.

  “Come on,” said March. “We’ll get underway.”

  “Strange that I miss this ship, you know?” said Cassandra as they climbed up the ladder to the dorsal corridor. “I mean I was scared to death half the time I was on the Tiger. We got chased by President Murdan’s secret police and the Machinists…”

  “I think I have an idea about that,” said March.

  The door to the flight cabin unlocked, and March dropped into the pilot’s acceleration chair as Cassandra took the co-pilot’s seat. The consoles powered up, the displays glowing, the blue status holograms appearing in the air.

  “What’s that?” said Cassandra.

  “The last time we were here,” said March, starting Vigil on the Tiger’s preflight sequences, “your life on Oradrea was over. Then your life on Calaskar started, and you like that better than Oradrea. That began here.”

  “So the Tiger’s a happy memory,” said Cassandra, and she patted the co-pilot’s console affectionately. It was such an unexpected gesture that March laughed.

  “I don’t think there are too many people with happy memories of this ship,” said March, watching the engine check numbers scroll across the display. Once he got back to Calaskar, he would have to realign and demagnetize the reaction chambers for the ion thrusters, but they would be fine for now.

  “Really?” said Cassandra.

  March blinked, realizing that she had a point. He did have happy memories of this ship. The first time he and Adelaide had ever slept together had been on one of the Tiger’s cabins. He frowned and flexed his metal fingers. None of his wounds had been severe, but there had been a lot of them, and some of them would leave scars. Not that he had any shortage of scars, but Adelaide knew them all, and she would notice the new ones.

  “Maybe not,” said March.

  Cassandra blinked at him. “How do you think your girlfriend will react to your injuries?”

  March frowned as the ion thrusters finished coming online. “How did you know I was thinking about that?”

  She smiled a little. “Another intuitive burst. Not scientific, I know, but you do get this sort of faraway look when you’re thinking about her.”

  March sighed. “She’ll see them, and she won’t say anything. She’ll approve, even. She hates the Final Consciousness as much as I do. But it will worry her, I know.” He sighed again. “I’m still thinking about stopping.”

  Cassandra’s dark eyebrows climbed halfway up her forehead. “Really?”

  “That surprises you?” said March.

  “Yes. But I understand,” said Cassandra. “All that shooting and fighting in Northgate…that was awful. I never want to do it again. I never want to leave my lab on Calaskar.” She shook her head. “I suppose the entire thing seems like a minor skirmish to you.”

  March shook his head. “There’s no such thing. Every fight is dangerous.”

  “I know,” said Cassandra. “But you’re so good at violence.” She took a deep breath. “I understand why you would want to stop.” She smiled. “I bet you would make your girlfriend happy if you decided to stop being an Alpha Operative and settle down.”

  “Maybe,” said March. “Maybe I’d be bored.”

  “I doubt that,” said Cassandra. “Censor says no one ever gets to really leave the Silent Order. He’d find something for you to do on Calaskar.”

  “It is something to think about,” said March.

  Vigil finished the preflight checks, and they departed Alexandria Station.

  Two days later they returned to the vast, gleaming expanse of Calaskar Station. March contacted Censor, and the head of the Silent Order congratulated March and Cassandra on their successful mission. A team of military police met them on the docking concourse, and March handed over the Firestone with some relief.

  “Guess that’s that, then,” said Cassandra.

  “It is,” said March.

  “I hope we never have to do that again,” said Cassandra.

  “I’m not going to argue,” said March.

  “Goodbye, Jack,” said Cassan
dra, and she hugged him. He hesitated, and then hugged her back. “Why don’t you come visit me sometime? I’d like to meet your girlfriend.”

  “If I stop,” said March. “Otherwise it’s too much of a security risk for all of us.”

  “I know,” said Cassandra. She smiled again and checked her phone. “I’ve got to catch my shuttle. Our mutual employer wants me to check on something in the Outer System Dock, and then I’m heading back to Calaskar. Jack…”

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Thanks for saving my life. Again.”

  He smiled back. “My pleasure.”

  March walked Cassandra Yerzhov to her shuttle’s airlock and watched her depart, and then boarded his own shuttle to Calaskar City’s spaceport.

  Adelaide Taren waited for him at the landing pad.

  She was always fastidious about her appearance to the point of vanity, but she looked beautiful in the reddish sun of Calaskar, her hair and makeup perfect, and she wore a black dress and jacket that fit her well. Her face lit up when she saw him, and he kissed her.

  “Welcome home, Jack,” said Adelaide.

  She had put such effort into her appearance that he almost felt bad about getting her out of her clothes as soon as they got to her house.

  Almost, but not nearly enough to stop him. Or her, for that matter.

  Later, they lay together in her bed.

  “You got some new scars,” she murmured, trailing her fingers along his chest.

  “Yeah,” said March.

  “Was it bad?” said Adelaide. “I know you can’t talk about it, but was it bad?”

  “It was bad,” said March. “Not as bad as our trip to Vesper Station, but pretty bad. But if I hadn’t been there, it would have been much worse.”