by Tom Doyle
“What are you doing?” repeated Scherie.
“This mission is scrubbed. We’re out of here, up the stairs.”
“No.” She tugged me back. “Duty. Got to do something.”
Yes, we did, if only to cover our escape, if not free up Scherie’s sight. And, for the long shot, to kill Chimera. Why waste a good storm? I didn’t have time to calculate the EMP versus probable hardening of Chimera against it. I needed to touch a conductive wall, or even the right part of the floor, or …
There, a bulge in the granite wall plane, a telltale of an electrical panel. I expected little human resistance. The Pentagon’s sad-sack contingent of weathermen was up top, fighting against Morton craft with pissant breezes. H-ring would not stop me; though hermetically sealed against exterior craft, its interior mundane utilities were probably neglected.
I stepped away from Scherie. “I’ll need some room for this.” And she’d be fried if she touched me. I reached one hand back toward the elevator shaft, in case the bolts tried to strike down to me through it. I placed my other hand on the panel, to give the bolts a place to go. I didn’t think about my feet; proper grounding wasn’t going to help much.
Unlike much of American craft, “pulling a Franklin” required formal words, because the focus was that much more intense. The words weren’t originally American, but they were the mantra of those who wished to incarnate Prometheus. Or to become a suicidal human lightning rod.
I shut my eyes. In the skies far above, my storm chased its own tail, waiting to be whistled to heel. I called: “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds!”
The total power of a bolt of lightning runs in the terawatts, the force in the gigavolts. In nature, that power is never concentrated.
I drew down three bolts at once, focused to a point. Trinity.
I had stood near explosions before. I had never stood within one. Brightness burned inside me. The sound took time to come back, to squeeze me from all sides. I fell into darkness …
“Get up!”
… and arose to flickering emergency lights. Assisting her command, Scherie pulled me up by the arm. Her vision seemed to be better. She yelled above our shared deafness. “Goddamn it! Did you just try to kill yourself again?”
I shook my head.
“Then what’s that smell?”
I gagged on the mix of ozone, burning insulation, and burnt hair (mine). “Electrical failure.”
True enough—the regular power grid must have failed. Cameras and mundane security might be out. I felt the air, hoping for a stillness that would mean an enemy’s death. No such luck. The tick-tock pulse still permeated everything. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. For a moment, everything was clear.” She reached out her hands toward the center of H-ring. “If I can just…”
Two pairs of feet were sprinting down the dark corridor. Another pair of feet was closing from the other direction. My training was quicker than thought. I hockey-checked the distracted Scherie toward the other wall, just in time to meet the impact.
With little craft left in me, it came down to simple physics. The two men tackled me to the ground.
“Stay down, Major,” said the larger guard. “Don’t make this worse than it is.”
The smaller guard flashed a pocket light in my face. “This isn’t Endicott. Who the fuck are you?”
* * *
Endicott dodged down the PRECOG spoke of H-ring, then walked purposely across the cut-off corridor. He planned to come at the stairwell from the other side. A breach alarm meant something going down in the entrance area, and he’d rather fight with someone who wasn’t his father.
The usually eerie noise of the PRECOG area was eerily absent—no mumbling farseers, no restless analysts. Had something they’d seen driven them AWOL? That scary thought had come far too late to help.
He loped toward the stairwell. It took a moment in the dim uncertain light to make sure the area was clear. Then he heard a woman yell. “Fucking blind again!” The thud-smacks of physical combat sharply echoed from the elevator’s direction.
Endicott approached. Shadows danced in the strobing world up ahead. A silhouette twirled two partners: first one, then the other, then both in unison before tossing them Endicott’s way. To look on the fight from outside was outstanding, beautiful even, so joyful it must be a sin of deadliness.
Then the winning fighter moved toward Endicott. Endicott felt the ambiguous grace of the moment. “Morton. I knew it was you. Thank God you’re here!”
* * *
I recognized Endicott well before I heard him. I had no time for personal matters, but no rules-of-engagement hesitation. I’d have to at least knock out Endicott; more probably I’d kill him. The mission took priority; Endicott was collateral damage.
Yes, kill him! From high above the tons of sodden earth that pressed down on this stone crypt, the Left-Hand spirits offered their usual advice. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, I thought. The red tick-tock magic of Chimera wasn’t helping my sanguinary mood. I’d have to do it eventually—why not now?
An arm’s length away from Endicott, I assumed a combat stance. Endicott just stood there, looking at me as if I were a confusing foreign film.
From behind me, Scherie called. “Where are you? You’re going the wrong way.”
Shit, another fucking oracle. With preternatural speed, I grabbed Endicott’s uniform. “You have one chance. Where is Chimera?”
The asshole smiled. “Back that way, like she said, just down the hall. But you may have to kill some other people first.”
“Are you one of them?”
“Hope not. Let’s move, I’ll explain as we go.”
And just like that we were stepping off the line to our doom in crisp military cadence, like when Hutch called me in for special discipline back at the academy. I hooked an arm around Scherie, who tried to keep pace without stumbling. Her head jerked as if dodging paparazzi flashbulbs, but her blindness seemed less complete.
“This guy with us?” asked Scherie.
“Seems so,” said Endicott.
“Here’s a stupid question,” I said.
“Why should you trust me?” said Endicott.
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t try to kill you. Rogue Gideons.”
“They said ‘Endicott’s orders.’”
“Yep. That’s probably right. But not me.”
“What happened to Family responsibility?”
Endicott patted his side where his sword should have hung. “I’m working on it. Oh, the head hound was Madeline Morton.”
I remembered with satisfaction where I had left Sakakawea. “Great Auntie Madeline is resting in peace.”
“Nope.”
“I killed her. Extremely dead.”
“Not according to Chimera. Tall and thin and young and here in H-ring.”
“How the hell does it know?”
“Because it’s Roderick. Or what’s left of him.”
I felt sick horror, but little surprise. “More bad Mortons as usual suspects. Sorry.”
“That’s OK. Abram, who should have slain them, is also wandering around here in another skin. You might remember him as the Red Death.”
“Hooah. Anyone else we have to kill?”
“Hope not.” Endicott looked worried about someone though. Then he lowered his voice. “What’s the mundane GF doing here?”
“Take another look.”
“Shit, she’s high craft.”
“You got a problem with that?”
Endicott extended his hand to her. “Welcome to the American Families.”
But the half-blind Scherie left him dangling. I shifted her over to between Endicott and me. “Major, stop shaming me for two seconds and lend a shoulder. She’s not seeing so well.”
Endicott got under Scherie’s other arm, and she hung between us as we marched forward. “Careful with this cross we’re bearing,” I said. I remembered Endicott’s repressed smile regarding biblical epics
. “Where’s your messiah now?”
“Not ready for jokes, Mr. DeMille,” said Endicott. In the weird light, scattered forms of H-ring staffers passed. We did not look out of place in the chaos.
“So, ma’am, what can you do?” asked Endicott.
“Drive out spirits,” she said, “possessing or dead.”
Endicott whistled. “Outstanding. Sounds like a talent made for our bad guys.”
“Have to see them first,” she said.
“Right,” said Endicott. “Wondered why they were running up the craft utility bill down here. I’ll get you to Chimera, close enough to spit. We’ll hit Roderick, and hope that’ll draw the others out. Just a little farther.”
But ahead, the backlit forms of four men formed a line blocking our advance. With silent coordination, we turned. Three Enhanced Combat soldiers and a woman were lined up, blocking our retreat.
Even in the poor light, I recognized the woman. My pride at graduation, the thrill of my first mission, didn’t compare to this. “Hutch! You’re alive!”
I stepped forward, but Endicott’s arm leapt out to restrain me, leaving Scherie to stumble and feel about. Endicott whispered, “She said you tried to kill her.”
Had Hutch been playing me? Like snooping around my parents’ bedroom, but I had to do it: Show me her sins. Instantly, I felt the vertigo of trying to read a newspaper, only to find out that it’s in another language. I didn’t know Hutch’s sins; I had never looked. But this woman had a strange constellation of alien-looking characters that refused to resolve to plain letters. Hutch’s spirit had been seriously fucked with.
“Goddamnit,” said Scherie. “Losing it again. Not good, not good.”
Hutch nodded at us. “Captain Morton. Major Endicott. Ms. Rezvani. My orders have changed. I’m escorting you to Chimera.”
Endicott glanced at me. “Been ‘escorted’ lately?”
“We’ve got to go with her,” I said.
“We, Kemo Sabe?” asked Endicott.
“We’ve been out of touch,” I said, punctuating the key words as if they were parts of spells. “I’d like her to meet Scherie.”
“When we get the time,” said Endicott, picking up on the code.
“I’ll let you know.”
Hutch smiled, but showed no other emotion at seeing me again, not even a handshake with her slingless arm. Instead, she and her three ENCOMs made a diamond around us, and shepherded us through the line of four barring the way to Chimera. With Hutch leaning on her cane, we didn’t move at her usual brisk pace. Hutch’s injuries had a familiar pattern, if I could only remember where …
“Shit shit shit! Blind blind blind!” In counterpoint to the H-ring alarm, Scherie sounded off like a schizo Tourette’s siren; our escorts didn’t seem to care.
“The airlock is about thirty meters ahead,” said Endicott. We turned the corner between the countercraft and black ops facets. A door sign said “Office of Technical Management.” In front of the OTM door stood two technicians.
Endicott pulled Scherie’s weight away from me. “Seen any interesting immorality lately?”
I couldn’t see what had set off Endicott, but instantly followed the order. Again I thought, Show me their sins.
It only took a second of burning neon letters. I saw those nearest to me first. Endicott had a shitload of Pride, but it didn’t appear that attempted murder was on his soul. Our guards had some nice but conventional transgressions. Hutch I already knew about; what the hell could Endicott be getting at?
“Tall and thin,” Endicott had said. And here in H-ring.
Then, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the technicians. They seemed to avoid my attention like Roman avoided sight. The male tech was a Times Square of exotic transgressions, variations on soul torture and mental rape, much like Sakakawea had been.
But the woman tech had the exact same sins as Sakakawea. A fingerprint of the soul, and a dead match for Auntie Madeline.
Hutch gestured at the techs with her less injured arm. “These two will guide you to Chimera’s interface. No, Major, not where you had your previous discussion. Please hurry. We don’t have much time.”
“Hypothetically…” I started.
“I’ve got no fucking idea,” said Endicott, reading everything he needed to know in my face. “You had something in mind before?”
We needed to play our cards. “Yep, it’s time.”
Endicott grasped Hutchinson in a clunky embrace. “It’s so good to have you back, Colonel.” Old John Endicott better not have been looking.
“Sorry, honey,” I said, and I shoved Scherie stumbling toward Hutch. “Think Helen Keller!”
Somebody pulled on the marionette’s strings, and Hutch’s body recoiled out of Endicott’s grasp and away from Scherie’s touch. But the puppet’s left hand was of a different mind. It pushed through the sling and reached toward Scherie’s sightless groping fingers.
“fmmmufffa,” said Scherie.
Two of the guards restrained Endicott and me; their senior stood ready to assist. The gray-haired tech stared at Hutch; the woman tech advanced with malice toward all.
“What was that, dear?” I said.
Scherie stared back at me with eerie calm. “I said, ‘Get the fuck out of her you motherfucking abomination!’”
Scherie’s craft this time was more like the pop flash of a camera than the blinding light-force of a nuke; she was growing efficient. Hutch screamed, the male tech screamed. The restraining guards looked about for order; the senior guard turned to the technicians. The woman tech laughed, a sardonic stamp on some deadly punch line. I knew for certain this could only be Madeline.
With no sign of life, Hutch folded to the ground next to her fallen cane. The gray-haired tech folded over, panting. Madeline pulled out a sidearm from her large lab coat pocket. Smuggling such things into H-ring was foolishly dangerous and very Madeline. She casually tossed the gun to the senior guard. “Shoot them,” she said.
With only time to bend, not break, the compulsion, Endicott said, “Shoot the guards.”
And, with no resistance, the senior guard shot his fellow soldiers. And then he shot himself in the head. Twice. His hand kept clicking on the empty weapon long after his brains and body had hit the ground.
“Who did you think I meant?” gasped Madeline in mock horror.
“Welcome to our Reichstag fire,” said the male tech, in the cadence of the Red Death. Abram. They had set us up as murderers.
Around the corner, on cue, came the commander of Enhanced Combat and his two lieutenants. From the other direction came the ghastly white H-ring uniforms of SCOF Black Ops. With surprising speed, Madeline and Abram made a sufficient tactical withdrawal to appear as bystanders instead of instigators. Abram still bent a bit as if his solar plexus had been worked over.
He’s weakened. Call us, said the distant Left Hand.
“Wait for it,” I said. But they still murmured in my head, perhaps trying to distract me.
“You on the phone with someone?” asked Endicott.
Endicott and I fell into a back-to-back crouch, slide-stepping in arcs around Scherie, Hutch, and the corpses. Scherie huddled over Hutch, whispering nonsense. My feet tracked blood.
“It’s not how it looks,” I said.
“I can explain,” said Endicott.
“Stand down, and submit to restraint,” said the ENCOM commander.
The SCOF commander bared his titillated sadism smile and made no offers.
“Where’s everyone else?” asked Endicott.
“Busy, I expect,” I said. “Don’t let them take the blind weapon.” My girlfriend, the nuke.
These men hadn’t seen real combat in a long time. The ENCOMs and SCOFs were smart enough not to try to hit us one at a time, so they tried the next dumbest thing and rushed all at once, hoping sheer strength and weight of numbers would carry the day. Brutally inefficient, it still might work.
Like a Japanese katana charge, they let loose with all the
ir very nasty craft in their first blow. I braced for the initial wave. From one side, the familiar tools of my work: heart shock, air move. From the other, exquisite pain and a serrated force that attempted to rip spirit from flesh. A practitioner had to enjoy this torture stuff to be good at it. I questioned the encouragement of such personalities as I suffered from their profound malice.
My chest felt cracked; my body felt fractured along molecular fault lines. The Pentagon men were trying to box us in, craftwise and physically, as if we were urban rioters, but crowd control didn’t work for two. Even for craft, willing all these things to happen at once was just too improbable. Like a failure in the Nash equilibrium, they were crowding each other out.
Worse for them, their unnatural assaults on my spirit were all too familiar to me. I crowed, “You’re trying Left-Hand craft on a Morton?”
“Amen to that,” said Endicott.
Craft exhausted, the ENCOMs and SCOFs threw their punches and kicks with a similar lack of coordination. Three fists came at once toward my face; three bodies rushed to tackle me down. We were much more focused: break that arm, freeze up that leg.
From under the blind spot of the surveillance cameras, Madeline and Abram watched. More implacable than emperors watching gladiators, they did nothing to help the assailants.
When it came down to the SCOF and ENCOM commanders, Madeline and Abram slipped inside the Office of Technical Management without even hiding their action. Then, with a backwards run, the area commanders retreated.
I dropped the C-bomb. “Cowards!” Then I examined myself. Aware that our actions were being recorded for a dubious posterity, we had managed to avoid killing these attackers, but at the price of damage to ourselves.
Some of my recent patch-ups felt strained: cracked rib, bruised kidney, maybe a finger or two that wasn’t working quite right. I wasn’t sure about my other internal organs or the number of hairline fractures or the arcane damage from black ops. All put on hold to be experienced later with greater intensity or slowly forgotten in the grave.
“How you doing?” I asked Endicott.
“Usual,” he said. His face looked like a smiling, swelling beet patch.
