by Mark Harritt
He yelled at one of the officers, and pointed toward the canyon, “Go find out what the hell is going on!”
Technically, she out ranked him. For a moment, she looked like she was going to chide him for speaking to her disrespectfully, but her courage failed as he grabbed her and pulled her close, snarling into her face, “I said go find out what the hell is going on!”
She fled away from him.
Something hit the ground with such force that Fancheion felt it through his feet. He felt two more impacts and then his men started screaming. Fancheion grabbed his rifle and ran toward the screams. He didn’t know what the hell was going on. There were no explosions, no gunfire, nothing that would indicate that they were being attacked. He wondered if somehow the masers had caused large rocks to be hurled into the encampment.
Then, suddenly, it became clear what was happening. He had to cover his eyes as streams of incandescent fury cut the darkness and slammed into the encampment, slaughtering his men. A ripping sound buzzed in his ears as he heard the screams of dying men. He no longer had to wonder if his people were being attacked. Now he knew they were.
He yelled out to the soldiers around him, “They’re here! They’re attacking us!” He pointed at the area where the incandescent streams of fire were coming from. “Go there, kill them all!”
He ran toward the source of the screaming, but before he could get there, the trails of fire and the ripping sound stopped. He didn’t stop, though. He ran to his men. He strained his eyes in the night to see the enemy, to see the tall automatons that had killed his men, had killed his Shaedur. He felt more than heard the stabilizers of the automatons as they ran, but he couldn’t see them. He was horrified that the enemy might get away, denying him his vengeance.
“Where are they?” he screamed into the night, frustrated, wanting to taste the blood of his prey.
Then, in front of Fancheion’s eyes, one of his men went down screaming, half of his body flattened, ground into the mud, blood and entrails oozing across the earth. It looked like he’d been stepped on by a giant, but there was nothing there. Fancheion raised his rifle to shoot, but he felt a sudden shock, and he fell onto the ground, his rifle forgotten. He was in shock and couldn’t speak, blood running out of his mouth. His shaking hands felt around down where the pain was. His lower body was gone, entrails and muscles cauterized where the pulse laser had cut him in half.
As he lay there dying, one thought came back to him. It was during the briefing that Om Varee had given Taectis, and the advice Om Varee had given her as Fancheion waited just outside the door, on guard. He had listened as Om Varee told her, “My advice is this: If you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone. If you attack them, they will do everything they can to destroy you.”
Fancheion’s entire body started convulsing. He howled into the night as the darkness claimed him.
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Chapter Seven
Mike pulled himself as far back from the open gate as possible. There was no way he could take on two guards at once in his condition. Trying to start an attack from within the cell would put him at an immediate disadvantage, so he continued playing the part that he’d crafted. He pulled his legs back, whimpering, and urinated again to make them think that he was afraid of them. The shock batons darted through the metal strips of the cage to drive him out, but he wasn’t going to let things play out that easy. He had to get Zrelnta and Gom’druer pissed off enough that they didn’t realize what he was doing.
The two Turinzoni guards cursed him and lashed him with their batons, Mike’s reticence working them into a frenzy. Finally, unable to drive Mike out with the shock batons, Zrelnta had enough and pointed at the Mike and told Gom’druer, “Get him out of there.”
Gom’druer grimaced and growled as he dropped down to his knees to crawl into Mike’s cage. Mike tried to fight, and started slapping at Gom’druer’s hands. Gom’druer had enough and punched Mike. it wasn’t with all the force that Gom’druer could muster, but it rocked Mike back.
Gom’druer grabbed Mike’s wrists and started dragging him out of the cage. Mike waited until Gom’druer was clear of the cage and then he hooked a foot against one of the bars and shot forth with all his strength. Gom’druer and Mike went down in a pile, with Gom’druer on the bottom. Zrelnta started cursing again, hitting Mike with the shock baton.
Gom’druer pushed Mike up, and Mike fell away from them, toward the cages that held Rich and Craig. Gom’druer got up cursing, upset that Mike’s filth was all over him. He ran forward and started kicking Mike, yelling curses at him. Mike retreated up the walkway, trying to keep Gom’druer from damaging him. Zrelnta was following closely, but he was behind Gom’druer and couldn’t get around him to throw his own kicks.
Mike fell against Craig’s cage and felt a hand snake out and just as quickly retreat. Mike kept retreating from the blows. He went past Rich’s cage next, but he stayed away from it. Gom’druer was livid. He pulled his shock baton, and the onslaught against Mike intensified as Gom’druer kept kicking him, but also clubbed him with the baton, shocking him as well.
Mike cried out weakly, turned and tried to run up the center of the walkway. Both Gom’druer and Zrelnta had room to get to him now. Mike was taking a lot of damage, and hoped that his plan would work, preferably sooner than later.
His prayers were answered by the sound of the gates crashing down behind the guards.
As one, the two guards turned to look behind them. Rich and Craig stood on the walkway. Craig flexed his hand and made a fist, over and over. Craig turned and threw the key down the walk. It hit the surface of the walkway and slid down to land next to one of the Contai cages. A hand appeared and grabbed the key, putting it into the lock.
The guards had forgotten about or completely discounted Mike, a mistake they would come to regret. Gom’druer staggered forward as Mike punched him in the back of the neck. As weak as Mike was, the Turinzoni’s neck was too muscular to snap with one blow, but he staggered forward, stunned, his shock baton dropping to the floor.
Zrelnta whirled to see Mike standing, the masquerade finished, a coward no more. The dispassionate, murderous stare made Zrelnta flinch. Mike punched with his good hand, the element of surprise on his side, catching Zrelnta in the face, breaking his nose. Blood spattered across Zrelnta’s face and he staggered back. Mike watched as shock and surprised turned into anger. Zrelnta snarled as he brought the baton back and brought it forward in a roundhouse blow to hit Mike. Mike didn’t have any choice. He raised his semi healed broken arm to block it, hissing in pain as he felt the break snap again. Tears clouded his eyes as he jabbed at Zrelnta, who backed away.
There was a cry as Craig and the two Contai overwhelmed Gom’druer, leaving Rich free to join the fight against Zrelnta. Zrelnta’s eyes showed white as he glanced behind him. Craig and one of the Contai were holding Gom’druer down as the other Contai bludgeoned him to death, Gom’druer’s blood painting them in streaks of red.
Rich ran at Zrelnta. There was nowhere for Zrelnta to retreat to. Rich and Mike started throwing blows at the guard. When Craig and the two Contai joined in, Zrelnta went down quickly, crying out from the pain. Soon, there were no more cries, the corpses lying inert on the walkway. With both guards dead, they quickly stripped them of keys and anything that might be used as a weapon. Rich offered one of the batons to Mike but Mike shook his head and motioned to his broken arm.
“Better if you guys use it. I’m not a hundred percent.”
“What now?” Craig asked.
Mike pointed at the door leading back into the laboratory, “We go rescue anybody that’s still alive, and we get the hell out of here.”
They walked to Brett’s cage, and only then did Mike understand the horror of what the bio engineers had done to him. His body was a mass of suppurating, weeping tumors. He had a massive tumor on the side of his face. That was the reason that he’d sounded so different. Mike looked at Brett, and h
e couldn’t keep the pity out of his eyes.
Brett turned his head, looking away from Mike, “Leave me, I’ll just slow you down. I can’t walk.”
Mike shook his head, “No way in hell. We all leave here, or we all die here. I’m not leaving you here. You’re one of us.”
Tears rolled down Brett’s cheeks as he nodded, relieved that he wasn’t going to be left behind.
Mike motioned at the lab door and told the others, “Go, I’ll help Brett. Kill anybody that’s in there, find weapons for us. If they come at us, I want to make sure we kill as many of them as possible. We aren’t going to be caged again.”
Rich and the others turned toward the lab. Mike reached in to help Brett get out of his cell. Mike was hampered by his broken arm, and Brett’s mobility was hampered by his poor health and his knee. Finally, Mike was able to help Brett out, and then helped him up and leaned him against the cage. Mike held his broken arm close to his torso.
Brett was hurting, Mike could see it in his eyes, but it was more than just the physical pain, “I can’t walk without help, Mike.”
Mike nodded, “Don’t worry. I need your help also. Two crippled men fighting a war.” He helped Brett stand up. Brett put his arm over Mike’s shoulders, and they slowly made their way to the laboratory. The door was ajar, so Mike pushed it open with his foot. They stepped into the hallway.
The boys had made a mess of things. There was one Turinzoni corpse twitching in the hallway. Blood covered the floor, pouring from the cracked skull of the guard. Mike and Brett added their bloody footprints to the others that led down the hall. There were two doors, one on either side of the hall, set across from each other. Mike saw that the major portion of the blood trail went into one room, came back out, and went down the hall. One of his men had gone to check out the other room as evidenced by the single set of foot prints that led into it.
Mike and Brett limped to the two doors. Mike looked into one, and he found what seemed to be a break area with chairs and tables, with another Turinzoni corpse bleeding out onto the floor, his skull turned into mush, with what was left of his food scattered across the floor. The corpse was facing away from the door, so Mike had no doubt that the guard had probably poked his head out to see what was happening in the hallway, and was overcome when the others saw him. With no place to run, he’d been brought down and killed on the spot. Mike helped Brett into the break room, moving around the corpse on the floor. Mike had to kick a chair away from the table so that he had room to lower Brett into another.
As he lowered Brett, he told him, “You’ll be fine here.”
Brett looked up at Mike, afraid, “What do I do if they find me?”
Mike had no emotion on his face as he told Brett, “Do anything you can to ensure you’re not taken alive. We won’t have a chance to escape again.”
Brett hung his head and nodded.
“That’s not going to happen, though. We’re going to find a way out of here, and then we’re all leaving.”
Brett sighed, understanding the improbability of what Mike had just told him.
Mike looked around. This was definitely a break room. He walked over to a large piece of equipment with a door on top. It sounded like it was humming. That was a sound that Mike hadn’t heard in a long time. It was the sound of an air conditioner or a refrigeration unit. He opened the section on the left and found food. He started salivating. He grabbed packets of food and walked back to Brett. He dropped them on the table and dragged the table closer, maneuvering it so that Brett could easily grab the packages.
Brett stared at the food, but not for long. He started ripping the packets open and grabbing handfuls, shoving them in his mouth. Mike rummaged through the cabinets looking for water to drink, but what he found was probably better. There was a large knife in one of the cabinets. He pulled it out and walked back over to Brett. Mike put the knife down next to him.
Brett glanced at the knife, and then looked up at Mike. Mike looked at him without saying a word. Brett nodded, and started eating again. Mike took a handful of the food and shoved it into his mouth. He didn’t care if it was someone’s half eaten lunch or not. Right now, it was the best thing he’d ever tasted in his life, and certainly beat the slop that he’d been eating.
Mike looked back at the refrigerator. He walked over and opened the other half, and found where they put the drinks. Mike shook his head. He wasn’t thinking straight. That was the first place he should have looked. He was in shock and he knew it. His arm hurt terribly, pulsing where it had been broken, but he pushed down the pain. He had no time for it until after he got everybody out. Mike rummaged around in the refrigerator. There were flavored drinks, so he grabbed two and brought them over the table. After he sat them down, he told Brett, “Enjoy it. You know what to do if we don’t come back, or if they find you.” He picked on of the drinks up and held the top out to Brett. Brett looked at the bottle, then looked at Mike’s broken arm. He opened the bottle for Mike. Mike drank the cold drink, gulping it down until it was gone. He tossed the bottle on the floor and wiped his hand across his mouth. He turned to walk away.
“Mike.”
He looked back to see gratitude in Brett’s eyes, “Thank you.”
Mike waved off the thanks, “You’re one of us. You’d do it for me.”
He turned away before Brett could say anything else. Before he left the room, he looked down at the corpse, but he could see that any weapons that the guard had possessed had been taken. He stepped back out into the hallway and stared toward the door at the other end, where the bloody footsteps led to a door. Then he looked across the hallway to the half-opened door.
He walked over and pushed the door open. He leaned in to look. It was an office with four desks, probably where the guards spent their time when they weren’t busting prisoners’ heads. He was dismayed by how normal it looked. It could have been any office back in the twentieth-first century on old Earth. The incongruity of finding something so normal here made him feel uneasy, disconnected.
He backed away from the door and turned to follow the trail of bloody foot prints. The hallway stopped at a door, but the door was closed. Mike opened the door, and was surprised to find a set of stairs that led down.
He followed the footprints down the stairs. At the bottom, he found another dead body. This one wasn’t a Turinzoni, and he wasn’t one of Mike’s men, so Mike assumed it was probably one of the bio engineers or lab technicians. He checked the body, but he didn’t find any weapons. This was a completely different hominid species, one that he hadn’t seen before, slender, nostrils high on the face.
He stood up and opened the door. There was another corpse on the other side of the door, another one of the techs. Mike didn’t even bother to search the body. The footprints he’d been following split in different directions, probably to chase down the techs and deal with them. There was no need to stay in a group to take care of the techs. From the amount of blood on the floor and walls, it looked like none of the techs had been hired for their unarmed combat skills.
It was surreal. He didn’t understand what all the equipment did, but it looked like any of the medical facilities he’d been in during his lifetime. Standing here, Mike could almost imagine that the dragons, the monsters, the grey men, and the robots had never existed. He fervently wished that it could be so, that his life could be so incredibly simple once more, his friends, his wives, Jo and Jennifer, still alive. Only the corpses and the expanding pools of blood exposed the truth for what it was.
He followed the trail to another door on the other side of the lab. He pushed it open, and found steps going up, and some going down. The footprints went up, so he followed. There was another dead tech halfway to the next landing. He got to the landing and found another door. There was another set of steps that went up, but the trail led to the door, so he opened it and went inside.
He walked into a hall that had doors inset on both sides. The doors were open all the way to Rich and Craig at the end. H
e started toward them, looking into each room as he passed. This seemed to be where the techs and the guards roomed. Most of the rooms were empty, but some had corpses splayed in different poses. The ones closest to the stairwell had been beaten or throttled to death, but after the first few rooms, most had their throats slashed. Evidently his team had found knives in the first rooms.
He walked to Rich and Craig. Rich motioned for Mike to be quiet. Mike stepped slowly, trying to be as quiet as possible. As he got closer, he noticed they’d perfected their technique to deal with each room. Rich and Craig opened the doors, and the Contai slipped in and killed whoever was in there, with Rich and Craig as backups if needed. There were only three doors left. His men had been very busy.
Mike heard a gurgle as another person died in their room. On the other side, the Contai slipped out. Craig moved to the next door and looked at the Contai, who nodded. Craig twisted the handle and pushed the door open. The Contai slipped in quickly to deal with anybody that was in the room.
Mike heard someone say something in a language he didn’t understand, and then the voice was muffled. There was some knocking about in the room as the Contai dealt with the situation, and then it was deathly quiet. The Contai was covered in fresh blood when he came out. It looked like an arterial spray had caught him across the torso and the face.
Two doors left. Both teams set up for their final kills. Rich and Craig positioned themselves so that they could open the doors.
They looked at the Contai, who nodded. They staggered opening the doors so that the Contai could move without getting in each other’s way. Rich opened his door first, and the Contai leaped forward into the room. Craig’s Contai went next. There was no sound on Rich’s side, but the sound of a struggle came out of Craig’s room. The Contai that was working with Rich surged out of his room to go help his friend in the other room.
Mike turned to Rich, “I think that’s finished. We need to find clothes, weapons, food that we can take with us, maybe a place we can take a shower. If we make it to the street looking like this, with shit and blood all over us, I don’t think we’ll get too far. Try to find our clothes and equipment. I want to contact Mickey and find out what’s going on.”
