by Alex Bobl
I looked at Wladas. He looked surprisingly calm, content and relaxed. He stood by the wall, away from the rest, fondling his sharp stubbly chin and didn't even pay me any attention as if lost in his thoughts. Kathy, by contrast, was looking around everywhere staring open-mouthed at myself, at the semisphere and at the rods showering sparks as the lightning died away overhead.
"Quit gawking," I walked over to the girl. She turned her back to me and raised her hand to touch the membrane. "I wouldn’t do that if I were you."
"Why?" Kathy gave me a surprised look.
I led her away from the membrane.
"You'd lose your arm before you knew it. This is the latest means of defense which Blank controls."
"That miserable scumbag?" She motioned her head toward the membrane.
"His name's Blank. Captain Rustam Blank, a cyber officer. General Varlamov's adjutant and bodyguard. And his assassin," I added in a whisper so that the guards couldn't hear.
We stepped behind the pedestal.
"And they told us you'd killed the general," Kathy whispered quickly.
I turned to her.
"They didn't really say it to us," she admitted. "The soldiers were discussing it among themselves."
One of the cybers came toward Wladas and pushed his shoulder motioning him to rejoin us. Another pulled the backpack off his back and slammed it to the floor. "Here's a flask of water and some dry rations."
I remembered his name. Badry. Aquiline nose, hazel eyes, a broad forehead, black curly hair escaping from under the raised visor of his helmet. Badry had served in Blank's section ever since the building of the Fort. He was the garrison's veteran often mentioned in dispatches by the general.
"How long are we supposed to hang out here?" I asked squatting by the backpack.
"To the bitter end, Master Specialist," Badry answered and stepped back to his men.
I unvelcroed a flap and pulled out the flask.
"Hey," Kathie called out to them, "and what if I need to go for a piss?"
"Hold it," Badry barked over his shoulder.
His dog-faced associate grinned and guffawed. "Why not," he said in a deep voice. "Let her grin and bare it. That would be a sight for sore eyes."
"Shut the fuck up," Badry cut him short. "This isn't a summer camp, you pervert. You're not in the Fort anymore."
Dog face sulked under Badry's heavy glare but didn't say a word. Kathy, too, swallowed her pride and kept mum. Clever girl.
I took a swig and splashed my face with some water to wash off the caked-on blood and bits of brain. Wladas sat next to me, asked for the flask and whispered quickly, "Soldiers were saying that you killed the general. I don't believe them. This Captain Blank, he came to us and let Wong out. You should have seen his eyes when he did it..."
"Where did they keep you?" Whether Wladas believed me or not mattered little to me at that moment. "Downstairs or up above?"
"Downstairs. In some kind of room, like a cave. We had to go down a long staircase to get to it. I remember there was a strong smell of food there and all along the hallway. As if there was a kitchen next to it."
I nodded mechanically. They'd kept them next to the mess hall.
"Did you see a woman and a baby?"
"Nah," Wladas shook his head. "They put all three of us in that room. Then they let Wong go, and then... we heard a noise, and..." He clung to the flask glancing at Badry who was casting us an attentive eye.
Then Kathy distracted him. She also wanted to drink and sat on the floor next to me. The cybers stood there for a while in silence and then strode over to the opposite wall speaking in hushed voices. Wladas went on,
"From what I heard, they had all left. Almost all of them. A few guards hung about upstairs. Blank took all of the clones with him. Where they went to, I don't know.
"To New Pang to see McLean," I whispered.
"Oh really?" the girl raised her eyebrows.
"McLean is going to send another carula shipment to the Fort," I took out the rations and tore the pack open glancing at the cybers. "They've already come to an agreement. The shipment contains a capsule with an assault virus which will open at a preset time."
"And?" Wladas frowned, uncomprehending. "Okay, so a few people will catch it..."
"Not so," I shook my head. "This is a swamp virus from an alien world that leaked onto Pangea."
"What do you mean?" Kathy took the pack from me and rustled open the crackers.
"Let me finish," I hissed. "It's a long story. You'll have to believe me. They've modified the virus so that it kills slowly to make sure it spreads everywhere on the planet. And when the pandemic gains momentum, it'll be too late because by then, I'd have disconnected Pangea from Earth."
Kathy and Wladas stared at me without saying a word trying to take it in.
What an idiot I was! They didn't know anything! Not about biocyne nor about the fact that it was extracted from carula produced at McLean's seaweed farms. Neither did they know about the portal machine nor the beacons.
"In short," I said, "don't ask questions, just believe me that if the capsule with the virus in it reaches Earth, there'll be hell to pay."
"I don't give a fuck," Kathy said out of the blue. "Let them all croak. I don't have anyone there."
"But I do have family," Wladas transfixed her in dismay.
"Eat," I hissed and shoved a cracker in my mouth. I took a can opener which was included with the rations and ripped open a can of beans. "I don't want the cybers to suspect anything."
"Yeah right," Kathy opened a pack of disposable spoons. "Can you tell me Mark why you're fussing so much? Is it for the Feds?"
"It's for my wife and daughter," I answered nibbling on a cracker. "Blank keeps them hostage. And will continue to keep them until he doesn't need me anymore."
"Wait," Wladas grabbed my hand preventing me from taking another bite of my cracker. "Did you say, disconnect Earth? How are you going to do that?"
He looked at the semisphere on its pedestal, then raised his eyes to the rods protruding from the impossibly high vaulted ceiling. "Do you know how this thing works? This machine?" He scratched his cheek and lowered his gaze. "You think it can take you back?"
"It can," I whispered before swilling down the rest of the cracker with some water. "I can go back to Earth. I can travel to other worlds. I can..." Now that was a thought! I could use the machine to travel across Pangea itself. If the machine had been able to teleport me from the swamps back to the gasometer, I could now try to get closer to New Pang - either to the beacon in the bay or to the one in the estuary, by the loggers' camp. In the latter case it would be quite a hike to get to the city but nevertheless. I could still catch up with Blank and meet him fully prepared to free Mira and my daughter. He'd never get the virus to Earth.
"Why would you want to disconnect Earth and Pangea?" Kathy asked.
"To make sure the virus doesn't find its way back," I said. "Here in the swamps... how can I tell you... the swamps are part of their natural habitat..."
"You mean the swamp was sucked in here just like the Kola Peninsula was?" Wladas ventured.
"Exactly," I glanced at the cybers.
The soldiers sat on the floor backs to the wall, their legs outstretched. Dog face busied himself with his pulse gun: something was malfunctioning in his video sighting unit. Badry leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
"Now," I said as quiet as I could, "listen up. We can handle these two. But the operator," I motioned with my eyes at the communications officer by his equipment stand, "he's behind the membrane."
"There's another way," Wladas interrupted without turning to me. "Let's say I know how to turn off this membrane for a while."
For a few seconds I stared at him unblinking. Then I said, "What do we need to do?"
Wladas paused twisting the plastic spoon in his hands.
"We'll have to kill one of the cybers."
"I can smoke 'em both if you want," Kathy shot the guards a prickly
glare.
"Wait a sec," I said.
Wladas went on, "Whenever one of us goes through the optical membrane into the opening, it is in fact activated, but in an integral part the protective field registers a security code which only Blank knows. While letting us pass, the membrane reads our neural parameters. Just like the mind scanner at the jumpgate exit, remember?"
I nodded. I thought I knew what he was implying.
"The processor's memory," Wladas whispered in excitement, "controls the membrane. It contains the data of everyone who passes through it."
"But that data is unique," I butted in. "Our nervous system, our brain, our conscience..."
"Exactly," Wladas' eyes glistened. In his excitement, he waved his spoon around. "The membrane identifies all who attempt to cross the field as enemies, even if they possess the key. By the key I mean the code that can increase or decrease the protective field's intensity."
"Yeah," I promptly shoved a cracker in his mouth because he had suddenly sat up straight staring at us.
Kathy who'd all this time been stiff with tension, open-mouthed, turned sharply back to her food and dug her spoon into the beans. Dog face nudged Badry with his elbow and asked him aloud to turn on his laser range finder in order to check his sights' settings.
They busied themselves with their guns while we stuffed our faces, pointing their lasers at various points on the vaulted ceiling. Finally they stopped and started yapping again.
"Carry on," I whispered to Wladas who sat with his back to the soldiers.
"So. The membrane only reacts on the living."
I shook my head, unable to understand what he was driving at.
"It kills all life that passes through it if it doesn't receive the correct security code," he said rapidly. "We've all been in its field. The system remembered us and stored the data in its memory cells. When we cross the field, the system compares the parameters and sends a request to the processor. Then it either lets us through or eliminates us."
"Do you mean," I tapped his shoulder with my spoon, "that a dead cyber could open the entrance? You think his body could cross the membrane and nothing would happen? The field's status would remain unchanged and its potential wouldn't grow, right?"
"Yes, that's right. But only for a second, not more, because the processor's brain would come into discord with the sequential algorithm. My colleagues from the Defense Ministry labs still haven't found the solution to this problem. They didn't think much of it and accepted the membrane as is. Who would think of killing themselves one step from the membrane only to get to the other side as a dead man?"
"Yeah," I glanced at Kathy. She wrinkled her forehead in thought chewing on her spoon.
"So," I started, "we need to get hold of a gun, kill a cyber, throw the corpse into the membrane and shoot the operator?"
"We'll only have a second," Wladas reminded.
The girl shrugged. "So let's try."
And before I could suggest a plan of further action, she got up and said angrily,
"That's it, I can't hold it any longer! Open this thing of yours before I piss myself!"
The cybers stared at the girl who stepped toward the semisphere demonstratively unbuttoning her combat pants. She squatted disappearing from their view.
"But," dog face started.
"Wait!" shouted Badry.
Both soldiers shoved their guns behind their backs and leapt up.
I hate adlibbing. You can never be sure of the outcome.
The cybers split up. Badry ran around our side of the pedestal and happened to be with his back to Wladas and myself. Without a moment's hesitation, I grabbed the collar of his bulletproof vest and his neck with my other hand. I kicked the back of his knees and pulled him sharply toward me, my chest pressing at the back of his head.
It was a perfect lever. His vertebrae snapped. Badry didn't even have time to cry out. Kathy shot up like an uncoiling spring toward dog face and buried her plastic spoon in his eye.
Dog face squealed in pain, his scream resounding in a multi-voiced echo under the vaulting. Clutching at his face, he stumbled and made an instinctive step toward the membrane trying to retrieve the gun from behind his back.
Now every second counted. Kathy grabbed the barrel of his gun and tugged it toward her knocking his feet from under him. He was still alive when he hit the membrane which started rippling from the impact, one moment transparent, the next opaque. His scream was cut short when blood gushed from his severed neck as his head, lopped off by the protective field, rolled over toward the operator in his control center.
It took the duty communications officer some time to realize what was going on. As he started from his stool, I jerked the gun off the dead Badry's shoulder but failed to drag his body to the membrane in order to shoot. I just didn't have enough strength: the cyber trooper weighed over two hundred pounds in full gear.
Wladas came to my aid. He grabbed hold of one of the corpse's arms while I pulled the other. We dragged the body close to the membrane and threw it in. I raised the gun and squeezed the trigger.
The first pulse struck the stand next to the officer burning a hole in it and spattering blue flames. The officer cried out and collapsed on the floor. I shot again but the membrane had closed the gap. With a loud hiss, the pulse hit the murky membrane and shattered into flakes of fire enveloping us in a hot wave.
"Shoot, Mark!" Kathy shouted forgetting that I couldn't hit the target through the membrane. "Can't you see he's getting up! Shoot him!"
The operator grabbed at the stand and heaved himself up. Rising to his knees, he reached for the keyboard - apparently, trying to press the emergency button to warn Blank.
"Come on!" the girl gasped. "What the fuck are you..."
She finally understood that shooting was useless.
I slung the gun's strap over my head and shut my eyes feeling my heart flutter in my chest. I took a deep breath and lunged forward.
"What are you doing?" I heard Wladas and Kathy call after me.
There wasn't time to explain anything to them. I only hoped that the portal machine's intellect that had included me in its flexible structure wouldn't incinerate me in its protective field. My death couldn't be in vain.
Heat enveloped my face. The air thickened as the crimson grid reappeared around me. The memory chip screamed signaling an overload and the cracked infrared lens prickled my eye. Then the membrane arched preventing me from stepping through. It shuddered and burst with a crackle like a window pane. Losing my balance, I fell onto my knees and tilted my head back when the dumbfounded officer was just about to lay his hand on the keyboard.
That was it! I didn't have time to stop him!
Claps from an pulse gun behind my back made me duck instinctively. Shimmering trajectories traced over my head. Part of them hit the operator's chest and sent him sprawling over his stand. The other part went higher up.
I turned round. Kathy sat next to the pedestal, her legs akimbo, staring in amazement at dog face's gun in her hands.
"Now that's a recoil," she said with unconcealed admiration. "Now that's a gun!"
Wladas wheezed out loud. Pale, he opened his mouth, pointing at me and at the place where the membrane had just been.
"How? How did you do it?" Finally, Wladas overcame his excitement and approached cautiously the invisible line and the two dead cybers next to it. He reached out with his shaking hand and felt the air. "But..."
I jumped up and ran across toward the stand behind which lay the dead operator. The monitor was broken. A ragged hole gaped in the stationary radio with its molten slide gauge dripping black plastic onto the desk.
I thumped the useless radio with my fist and spat on the floor in anger. Now we couldn't contact the Fort and warn them of the arrival of Blank's cargo. In killing the officer, Kathy had ruined the communications unit. Now we had to find another solution.
Steps and voices came from the hallway behind the equipment.
"Hide!" I prepared
to fire my gun and started moving along the equipment cabinets. "Kathy, cover me if I need it."
I didn't think it was the upstairs guards. Probably, just someone from the former base personnel: laboratory neurotechs who'd heard the shots and had hurried to find out what was going on.
When I took up my position behind a humming server rack, two men appeared in the hallway wearing light-colored protection suits and masks pushed up onto their foreheads; The lab assistant was persuading the chief neurotech to call the guards. But the neurotech hurried ahead, not listening.
I let both of them pass me and stepped into the hallway. When they stopped dead in their tracks staring at the corpses, I shouted,
"Stick 'em up!"
The two startled but obeyed.
"Slowly. Now turn round."
They did.
"How much more personnel left in the camp?" I asked without letting them get their act together. "And how many of them are guards?"
I glanced across my shoulder listening. Had the shots been heard up above?
The neurotechs didn't answer. They just blinked, dumbfounded, keeping their hands raised above their heads.
"Well?" I lifted my gun.
"Three left," the assistant hurried. "They guard the entrance."
His partner bobbed his head.
"Yes," he swallowed, "plus us two, and the communication officer with the cybers, but you've already..."
"Have the guards got a car?"
Both shook their heads. The assistant mumbled that Blank had taken all the transports and told them to wait and keep their heads down.
"Kathy!" I said. "Keep them in your sights. Not a step out of here until I get back!"
I wanted to turn but reconsidered and added, "Don’t touch anything here. Is that clear?"
"Yes!" The girl got up from behind the pedestal and trained her gun on the prisoners.
I ran to the staircase trying to pick out the cracked lens from my eye socket on the way. I passed the "clean" rooms, turned into a doorway and ran upstairs two steps at a time.
I reached the long hallway and headed for the exit illuminated by the crimson rays of the rising sun. Suddenly I stopped dead in my tracks.
Shots rang out on the surface. Carbines pinged, machine guns clattered and pulse rifles whooshed. Judging by the latter, the neurotechs had lied to me. There were many more guards there.
