“Fuck you, Orphan! This place is a fortress, and we’ve got plenty of everything we need.”
“All right. You can stay in there. I’m going to pull my guys back, then the Dauntless is going to level this place.”
“You’re crazy. You can’t make that call.”
“Actually, I can. I’m the senior-most combat specialties officer on this entire planet, and according to Force regulations, that makes me God. So I’m done talking to you. Come out right now, or you’re dead.”
The two-story white building loomed in front of Mortas’s eyes. Most of the hill’s trees had been taken down when it was built, and the night’s fighting had cleared the promontory even more. An enormous blast door faced the site’s landing zone, but apart from that it had few openings. Mortas, now deprived of the imagery in his goggles, tried to remember what it looked like from above. The exertion of the final battle and the stress of the previous days and nights were finally catching up with him, and the rising sun made him curiously lethargic.
“All right, you assholes. We’re coming out. Don’t shoot. You’re gonna be toast when the corporation hears about this.”
“Stop talking and come out.”
The blast doors gave off a low hum in the early-morning air, and then they burped loudly before growling back on either side. All along the rim, Orphans inched forward on their stomachs and sighted down their weapons.
A bewildered man in an orange coverall emerged first, palms high, eyes frightened. He stopped just a few steps into the open, and no one followed him.
“Keep walking!” Dak hollered, and the man flinched as if he’d been punched. Raising his hands even higher, he trudged across the flat ground until he’d almost reached the edge.
“Lie down on your face and don’t move!” a voice commanded from the other side of the clearing, and he obeyed with obvious relief.
“Let’s go, in there! Walk out to your buddy, find a space, and get your faces in the dirt!”
A column of men slowly appeared, some in coveralls, others in fatigues, and a surprising number of them wearing lab jackets. Mortas counted close to fifty before they were all out and in the prone.
“Anybody else in there?” Dassa called to the prisoners. “If there is, and they cause trouble, you’re all dead.”
“Nobody’s left inside! Tell your men to stop pointing those things at us!”
“Fuck you, asshole!” an unidentified Orphan shouted. “And shut the fuck up!”
“Wyn, take your people and clear the building,” Dassa ordered. “Jan, have half your people cover the prisoners while the other half takes over Third’s part of the defense.” Men in armor and dirty fatigues quickly rushed up onto the flat, directing machine guns into the darkness of the open blast doors. Others approached the opening from either side, hugging the walls, and then they were entering in teams.
Mortas slid back down the embankment a few yards and began moving down the line. The warm dirt gave way beneath his boots, and he had to balance himself with his free hand. Mecklinger’s squad had been assigned to cover the prisoners, and Frankel and Katinka were already spreading their men out to re-form the ring around the complex. It was doubtful that enough Sims were left alive to make another attack, but with the Victory Provisions people neutralized, it was time to turn at least some of the soldiers outward.
He met Dak on the other side of the building, having made only minor adjustments to the positions selected by the squad leaders. A happy thought had occurred to him while he’d been doing this, and he grabbed Dak’s armor.
“No casualties in First. None.”
“This is a new experience for me.” Dak grinned from beneath a layer of grime. “We should do it this way more often.”
“Beats the hell out of Fractus, doesn’t it?”
“Fractus? Fuck Fractus.”
Mortas was hustling back to his original spot when Kitrick spoke on the radio. “All clear, sir. The place goes down into the hill for several levels. Damnedest stuff I’ve ever seen. You and Captain Pappas need to look at this.”
“You are not going to believe what we’ve found out.” Hours later, Pappas was seated at a console in the main operations room inside Almighty. Marines from the Dauntless had just taken the last of the prisoners away on shuttles, and Mortas had entered the building for the first time. Most of Third Platoon was back out on the perimeter, but there was little concern about a possible attack. Pappas and intelligence people from the Dauntless had found the system that allowed the occupants of Almighty to see the Sims even when they’d been wearing the special smocks. According to that imagery, a tiny clutch of the surviving enemy was steadily marching out of the area.
“Your idea that Almighty had been using drones to attract more Sims turned out to be accurate.” Hitting a few buttons, Pappas played a time-lapse schematic that showed numerous flights going out from Almighty for hundreds of miles and then looping back, day after day. “They wanted to bring Sam here in large numbers.”
“Son of a bitch,” Dak said.
“It gets worse.” Pappas switched the screen to actual footage of Almighty and the surrounding jungle. Roughly a mile away from the hill, a small white cloud erupted from the greenery. A black object shot straight up out of the jungle, then neatly sailed down toward Almighty’s roof. Seemingly at the last second, a round hatch opened to receive the object.
“What was that?” Mortas asked, his mind still numb with fatigue.
“The whole point of this installation,” Dassa responded. He’d removed his helmet and goggles, leaving ruts in his cheeks and the outline of the eyepieces in the dirt. “The lower levels are some kind of crazy laboratory. That thing we just saw was a capsule. They’d sown the area with mantraps, and when a Sim got grabbed, it shot him up in the air and delivered him to a cage downstairs.
“They’d electrified the floors and, judging from the footage they didn’t manage to destroy, they were trying to find out if Sam can be taught to perform basic tasks. They’d show the prisoner a video of a human in the same cage, moving colored blocks from one spot to another, then they’d shock him until he did the same thing.”
“I knew there was something really wrong with those guys, just from the short time we were guarding them.” Dak shook his head. “Half-crazy looks, some of ’em giggling, the rest looking like they were headed for a firing squad.”
“Let’s hope so,” Pappas answered. “These sick bastards kept really good records of the whole operation. Those drone flights attracted several hundred Sim leftovers. Once Sam saw enough of his buddies take the ride to Almighty, he got serious. Started gluing the heat-shield material onto the smocks, but our Victory pro friends stayed ahead of them. They applied a special filter to their sensors, and it let them track Sam wherever he went.
“That’s why they hit that one jungle patch with knockout gas. Sam was avoiding the mantraps, and they needed some new subjects. Our sensors couldn’t pick up the signatures, but theirs could. And they never shared that with Broadleaf or Cordvine.”
“But what were they hoping to accomplish?”
“I believe somebody somewhere has decided the Sims could be an excellent labor force.”
The group went silent for a few moments, then Dak spoke. “These cells down below. Any occupants?”
“Two, but somebody shot them before we came in here.”
“Anything else?” asked Mortas. “Please tell me that’s all.”
“There is one more thing, a recent data feed sent to them with heavy encryption.” Pappas looked at Dassa. The company commander spoke.
“Sergeant Dak, no offense, but I’d rather you didn’t see what we’ve found.”
Mortas frowned in confusion, but answered as if he understood. “Whatever it is, if I’m allowed to see it, my platoon sergeant should as well.”
“All right.”
Pappas punched some more buttons, and a tape began to play. Mortas recognized it immediately, having lived through it less than a year earlier. It was the room on Glory Main where he and the alien had been locked in the transparent tubes. The lights were flashing, and the alarms were going off, and the nude form of Captain Amelia Trent was being burned with chemicals in order to force the alien to reveal its true shape. In the tube across from her Mortas saw his own collapsed form, screaming while fire burned up the swarm of tiny black moths into which the alien had burst during its final moments. Although he’d seen the video before, he believed it was being kept a secret.
“What the hell is that doing here?” he asked, more befuddled than angry.
“Near as we can tell, it was sent to every Victory Provisions station in the war zone. We haven’t decoded the orders that came with it yet, but I think someone is trying to find another one of the aliens you met.” Pappas looked up at him. “If their plan is to turn the Sims into a slave labor force, a shape-shifter who can communicate with them would be a big help.”
Mortas stepped out into the daylight with gratitude. Shuttles were landing and lifting off with regularity, and large stacks of supplies were starting to form. Dirty soldiers were moving the crates and boxes away from the landing zone, and after so many days and nights beneath the jungle canopy, the direct sunlight was brightening their spirits.
“Looks like we’ll be getting some nice, clean water,” Dak offered from his side.
“That sounds good.” Mortas ran a hand through his hair, reluctant to put the helmet back on. “You know, I was feeling pretty happy about this mission until I went in there. Now I feel . . . dirty, somehow.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that bad, sir.” Dak’s tone was humorous. “For one thing, I finally got to see what that alien looked like. She was a fine figure of a woman, and I don’t blame you for nailing her. You being an officer, I just naturally assumed she was fuck-ugly, but she was okay. Until the acid started eating her, of course.”
Small, frustrated laughter bubbled up from inside him, and Mortas laid his hand on Dak’s shoulder. He was about to speak when Dassa called out to him.
“Jan, can I have a word?”
He slapped Dak’s armor once, and walked back to the blast doors where Dassa stood. The twenty-year-old company commander looked uncomfortable, and Mortas steeled himself for more revelations of barbarity from the chamber of horrors under their feet.
“Yes, sir.”
“The Step’s been reinstituted, so we’ll be getting a resupply of everything the Dauntless doesn’t have.” The news didn’t fit Dassa’s demeanor, so Mortas stayed silent. “Listen, Jan, I only just got this. It’s the explanation for why the Step was suspended for so long.”
“Go on, sir.”
“It’s about your father.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Smoke from McRaney’s crashed ship hung in the air like a shroud. The saucer had broken in half when it hit, the rear portion resting against the hill where Ayliss’s house had been and the front half burning not far from the tunnel entrance. Ayliss had carried Tin down the back side of the ridge when she’d regained consciousness, delivering the Banshee to a makeshift aid station at one of the rear exits. Elated colonists had told her about gunning down the few survivors among the pirates who’d emerged from McRaney’s ship.
Movers kept arriving with more dead and wounded, but she didn’t wait for a ride. The climb back up the escarpment had been painful, but Ayliss had kept her Scorpion ready as she walked through the forest of black spikes. Coming to the far side, she’d looked down to see a group of the veterans admiring the wreckage, pointing and laughing. She recognized two of them, and felt the anger welling up inside her again. Good.
Skittering down the slope, Ayliss kept her eyes fastened on the pair of missile gunners who had abandoned the one launcher Lola had left them. The same weapon Blocker had used to fell the steaming brown disc that they found so funny. Happy faces turned in her direction when they heard her boots scrunching on the scorched dirt, and then she was swinging the Scorpion’s butt straight into Birthmark’s cheek.
The man fell hard, grabbing his face while the others took several steps back. It was only then that Ayliss realized what a fearsome sight she must have presented. Her fatigues were covered with dirt and blood, her hair was matted with camouflage paint and more dirt, and the right side of her blackened face still stung from the pebbles embedded there.
“What was that for?” Birthmark finally managed to say.
“Get on your feet. You and your partner are going to help me find Blocker.”
“Who?” the other one blurted, so she knocked him down too. The rest of them decided they weren’t with the unlucky pair and quickly backed off toward the tunnel.
“Blocker. The man who picked up the missile you threw away and shot down this stinking cow pie of a ship. It landed on him, and we’re going to find his body. Now let’s go.”
They came to their feet slowly, uncertain and afraid, but an angry motion with the rifle got them moving. They had to skirt the wreckage for several hundred yards, and then she made them climb the slope in front of her. The hospital was completely gone, but she knew Blocker would have run for it.
The incline was steep because so much of the ground had fallen away with the ship’s impact, and the ascent was made far more difficult by the field of debris. Huge rocks, many of them black with Go-Three, had been tumbled everywhere. Up the hill, a large segment of the mine’s security fence had been yanked down the slope in a twisted tangle of bent poles and shredded wire. It was like that for two hundred yards on either side of the wreck, and Ayliss began to sense that the mission was pointless.
Birthmark and his buddy stopped climbing when they reached a ledge formed by a large slab of Go-Three, and she joined them in order to get a good look around. Her eyes stung with the smoke, tearing up.
“I’m sorry, Minister. Really. But do you think there’s any chance we’ll find . . . anything in all this?” Birthmark spoke in a halting fashion.
“We’re going to keep looking until we find him.”
“Maybe he got away. Maybe he’s down at the tunnel right now. Did you think of that?”
Ayliss felt the tide surging inside her again, and welcomed the rage. She’d had this same chickenshit in her sights once before, and because of his cowardice Blocker was dead. If the two of them had just done as Lola had commanded, they would have shot down the pirate vessel and then been entombed beneath it. The thought almost put her over the edge, but she needed their help, and so instead of shooting, she yelled at the top of her lungs.
“Because of you two, the best man I ever knew is dead! It should be you buried here, not him!” Tears ran down her cheeks, stinging the cuts, and Ayliss knew that she couldn’t blame them all on the smoke. “Now I said we’re going to keep looking until we find him, so get looking!”
“Would you please stop shouting? I have one hell of a headache.” The voice came from just above them, behind a heap of mangled wire and tangled cable. Eyes wide, heart thundering, Ayliss went right over the obstacle, mindless of the way it tore her trousers and cut her hands. Finally freeing herself, she saw the face she’d never expected to see again, caked in dust, but alive.
Blocker was pinned with his back to the hill, an enormous utility pole resting on his torso armor. His legs were buried under a slide of shale and dirt, but he was smiling when she reached him. The Scorpion bounced on the ground when Ayliss dropped it, and she was reaching to embrace him when she remembered he might be grievously injured. Squatting next to him, her hands fluttering in the air, she asked in a tiny voice, “Are you hurt?”
“A little. One of my legs is folded the wrong way, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the other one’s broken too. Hard to tell.” He glanced up at the crest. “I almost made it. I was just topping the rise when the whole thing went out
from under me. Fifteen years in the war and barely a scratch, and look what happens when I take my old job back.”
Now her arms were around his neck, and she was crying and whispering directly into his ear. “Don’t you ever leave me again, Big Bear.”
His hand came up, grasping the back of her shorn head. “I left you once, Little Bear. Never again.”
Birthmark and his partner were gingerly picking their way over the wire when Ayliss remembered them. Snatching up the rifle, she came to her feet. “Get over here right now, and dig him out! And if you hurt him—”
“Ayliss,” Blocker barked.
Her eyes turned, alight with joy and anger and relief, and she flashed him a smile before turning to the others.
“Just don’t hurt him. All right?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In his palace in the city of Fortuna Aeternam, Horace Corlipso awaited the imminent attainment of a lifelong goal. The midafternoon sun streamed into the room from the windows facing a long balcony, and the rays warmed him through a thin robe emblazoned with the Corlipso family crest. The server girl Emma walked out of the bedroom, slipping a strapless blue dress over her head, wincing slightly. Fresh bruises were rising on her back, and displaying pain was a sure way of getting more of them.
“Pay attention to this. History in the making,” Horace instructed her while activating a button on a remote control device. The nearest wall, normally a plane of gilt and filigree, opened to reveal a wide screen on which the face of Reena Mortas, nee Corlipso, soon appeared. At his urging, the Emergency Senate had unanimously selected Reena to fill in for her missing husband as the supreme political leader of the settled planets. Horace found it amusing that they felt the promotion was temporary.
“It is with great sadness that I must now tell you that our leader for the last six years, our brave member of the hallowed Unwavering, our Chairman, and my beloved husband, Olech Mortas, is missing.” Reena wore a dark suit with a high collar, and her red hair was pulled back in a bun. Seated behind Olech’s desk, she was addressing the entire race over the Bounce.
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