River of Pain

by Christopher Golden

  “Marv! Sing out, ya bastard!” Stamovich barked. “Where are you?”

  Brackett started around the core, nodding to Nguyen to proceed. They hadn’t taken two steps when they heard a reply.

  “Here! Watch yourselves!”

  Then another voice, screaming.

  “Send us home!”

  Brackett hadn’t run another three steps before he saw the burly bearded man lying on the ground. Blood streaked his face and caked in the hair on the left side of his head. His eyes were open and one hand rose to wave them back—or perhaps in a plea for help. He clutched his left leg, and Brackett realized the angle of the limb was all wrong.

  Broken bone, and a bad one.

  “Curtis!” Lt. Paris shouted.

  Three more steps, and the whole scene came into view—it was the last thing Brackett had expected. He drew his weapon before his mind even had time to completely make sense of the dynamics playing out in front of him.

  A ginger-haired man with mad eyes stood with his back to the wall, holding a female marine from behind with one arm, choking her as he held what had to be her own gun to her temple. A dozen feet away, deeper in the oily, flashing red shadows of the processor, another marine stood with his feet planted, his gun aimed at the ginger man and his hostage.

  It wasn’t hard for Brackett to figure out who the players were. If the guy with the broken leg was Curtis Finch, this had to be—

  “Otto!” he roared. “Let Private Yousseff go!”

  Draper—who else could it have been?—cast a quick glance at the new arrivals, but didn’t dare take his focus off of Otto Finch for longer than that. He shuffled a bit to his right, moving toward the other marines. Brackett and Stamovich were side by side now, and rushed up to take position beside him. The rest found cover.

  “Back off!” Otto screamed. His voice melded terror with the timbre of a child throwing a tantrum, and he stared around at the newly arrived marines as if the wrong twitch would make him explode. “Stay back or I’ll kill her! I don’t want to… I didn’t ask for this, but I swear I’ll do it!”

  “Draper, report!” Brackett snapped.

  The sergeant glared at him, then shot a questioning look at Stamovich.

  “New CO,” Stamovich called.

  “I’ve got eyes, Stam,” Draper sneered. He took a step nearer to Otto, who shrieked until he moved back again.

  Curtis Finch gestured to Lt. Paris, and she raced over to kneel beside him.

  “Sergeant Draper, report!” Brackett ordered.

  “What does it look like, sir?” Draper barked. “You need me to spell this shit out for you?”

  “He wants off!” Yousseff shouted. Her expression betrayed no fear, but Brackett could see it in her eyes. Colonial Marines were tough as nails, some tougher, but no warrior wanted to die a hostage. It looked as if she was having trouble breathing.

  “What the hell do you mean, off?” Lt. Paris called.

  “Off the planet!” Yousseff snapped, then she coughed.

  “Just send us home!” Otto shrieked, wild eyes darting back and forth, tears flowing. Snot dripped down over his lips. “I don’t care about money anymore! I don’t need a dollar of what we’ve earned up here! Just take me and Curtis and put us on a ship for home!”

  The whole tower shook, as if the ground shuddered beneath them. A crack like thunder exploded in the air, and a fissure opened in the shell of the core, black smoke billowing out. An explosion rocked the unit high overhead and Brackett looked up to see orange flames gouting out into the swirling debris of the storm.

  A quarter of the roof had just blown off.

  “You got it!” Brackett said urgently. “Whatever you want, Otto! You want to go home, I’ll make sure you get there!”

  “Captain—” Draper warned.

  “How do I know?” Otto screamed. “How can I believe anyone in this damned place?”

  The grinding inside the core grew louder still. Brackett wracked his brain, trying to figure out what he could possibly say that would calm Otto Finch. The man had experienced some kind of psychotic break. There was no way he would believe any promise Brackett might make about getting him and his brother off-planet.

  His brother.

  Brackett glanced across and saw Paris kneeling with Curtis Finch. Sweat beaded on the man’s pale forehead. From this angle, Brackett could see a small puddle on the floor beside him, where Curtis had vomited from the pain of his shattered leg. He looked desperate, gripping Paris’s sleeve as if pleading with her.

  Is this guy crazy, too?

  One way to find out. Brackett ran from cover and slid to his knees beside the lieutenant. In the process he dropped his exo-mask.

  Paris turned to him.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, Captain, do it fast,” she said. “Curtis says we’ve just got minutes before this place tears itself apart.”

  Otto started shouting again. Brackett saw Draper motion to Stamovich and Pettigrew, who each eased a bit closer, as if they didn’t really believe that Otto would kill Sgt. Yousseff. The wild-eyed ginger choked her harder, and screamed at them to stop.

  “One more step and she’s dead!” he screamed.

  “Otto, listen to me!” Brackett said, rising to his feet again. “You won’t just be killing Sergeant Yousseff—you’ll be killing all of us, yourself and your brother included! Curtis says we’ve only got minutes before the core explodes. Look around, man! Half the roof is gone, all this fire and smoke… we’re dead if we don’t go now—”

  “Take Curtis out!” Otto shouted, fresh tears cutting clean lines in the soot on his cheeks.

  Brackett holstered his gun and held up his hands.

  “We all need to go,” he said. “Not just your brother.”

  “Take him out of here!” Otto screamed.

  Brackett stared a moment at the profound fear in Otto’s eyes, and then nodded, turning to Paris.

  “Get him out.”

  He glanced around. “Nguyen! Hauer! Help Lt. Paris bring Curtis to the crawler!”

  As the marines hustled to obey, slinging their weapons, Otto went still. Yousseff tensed as if to attempt to escape his grasp, and Otto jammed the gun against her temple.

  “What are you doing?” Otto screamed, not at Yousseff but at the marines moving his brother. “Leave him alone!”

  Lt. Paris snapped quiet orders to Hauer and Nguyen. One of the men rushed to a control panel, yanked it open and began to tear it from its hinge as the other helped Paris work Curtis out of his jacket.

  “We’re going to get him out of here, but we’ve got to stabilize his broken leg first,” Brackett called to Otto, sweat running down the back of his neck. The temperature inside Processor Six continued to climb. “It’s a bad break, Otto. He can’t walk! Do you want your brother to die here?”

  Torn, Otto stared. For several seconds he squeezed his eyes closed and then the words erupted from his mouth.

  “Fine! Take him out!”

  Paris nodded to Nguyen and Hauer, who worked hurriedly to slip the small metal door underneath Curtis’s legs. Then they wrapped his jacket around both legs, tying them to the metal. Curtis cried out several times, and when Nguyen tightened the jacket, he screamed and fell unconscious. Even over the roar and rumble of the failing processor, that scream crawled under Brackett’s skin.

  “Go, go!” he snapped.

  Hauer, Nguyen, and Paris hoisted Curtis off the ground and carried him in a rush toward the exit. If he hadn’t already been unconscious, Brackett had no doubt the screams would have been hideous as his broken bones ground together.

  “Captain!” Draper barked. “We don’t have time—”

  Brackett held up a hand to silence him, turning to Otto. He didn’t like the look of Yousseff, whose gaze had begun to droop.

  “We’re out of time, Otto,” Brackett said. “We’re going to help Curtis, and we can help you too. I will do all I can to get you both sent home, but you’ve got to let Sergeant Yousseff go right—”r />
  “I need to hear it from the company!” Otto shouted, his voice cracking. “I want their guarantee!” The desperation in his eyes spoke of a profound fear that Brackett knew he could never assuage. Otto behaved like a man in a nightmare from which he could not wake. But he wasn’t sleeping. This was all real, and deadly.

  “Otto, we’ve got two or three minutes!” Brackett called. “Let Yousseff go now, or we’re all going to die in here!”

  “Captain Brackett, we’re out of options!” Stamovich shouted.

  “Damn right we are,” Draper snapped.

  He shot Otto Finch through the left eye, blowing blood and skull fragments and gray matter onto the wall. In death, Otto’s fingers twitched and the gun in his hand went off. Yousseff shouted and pushed back, but the corpse’s hand had already begun to jerk away and the bullet went astray, firing up into the smoke-filled darkness overhead.

  Brackett stormed across the shuddering floor as the whole processor rocked and clanked around them.

  “Dammit, Draper, what the hell was that?”

  “Taking action, sir!” Draper called. “You said yourself we don’t have time to waste.”

  Pettigrew and Stamovich nodded in agreement. Furious, Brackett felt his hands close into fists, but he forced them open again. Draper would have to wait until later.

  “Move out!” he shouted, gesturing to the rest of them—Pettigrew, Chenovski, and Stamovich—as Yousseff staggered away from Otto’s corpse, trying to catch her breath. “But we’re taking the body back with us! His brother’s going to want to bury him!”

  “Screw that!” Draper barked. “Friggin’ lunatic nearly killed Yousseff. We’re not risking our lives for the guy!”

  Despite the mounting danger—the seconds he could feel ticking away on his internal clock—Brackett stared in astonishment as Draper tapped Stamovich and the two of them broke into a trot for the door, with Pettigrew hesitating only a second before following.

  Son of a bitch is mine, Brackett thought.

  “Captain!” a voice called.

  Brackett turned to see Chenovski trying to lift Otto Finch’s corpse from the floor. Blood and gore had already baked onto the hot metal wall, but the pool on the ground around the dead man had widened and Chenovski slipped a bit as he tried to hoist Otto up. Brackett ran toward them. Something moved to his left and he glanced over to see Yousseff, who had at last recovered her breath.

  Together, the three of them picked Otto up the way the others had carried Curtis, and they lurched for the way out. The whole processor seemed to tilt and they careened off the frame of the open door before bursting out into the darkness and the shrieking grit-storm. The wind swept them aside and they bent into it. Without his exo-mask, Brackett could barely make out the heavy-crawler. The three marines who had disobeyed his direct order were trudging toward it, fighting the gale. Seeing those escaping figures gave him additional motivation, and he shouted to Yousseff and Chenovski.

  They made it to the crawler twelve long seconds behind Draper and the others. Aldo met them at the back of the vehicle, where the ramp was down, and helped Chenovski drag Otto’s corpse inside, placing him beside his unconscious brother.

  “Why did you help?” Brackett asked Yousseff, shouting to be heard over the storm.

  Yousseff stared at him. “You gave an order.”

  Brackett knew that wasn’t the real answer. Yousseff was one of Draper’s cronies, or she wouldn’t have been picked to accompany the Finchs.

  “Let’s move, Captain!” Aldo shouted, waving them along as he ran back toward the driver’s door.

  A pair of explosions came from Processor Six. Yousseff turned to stare at the tower, and Brackett followed her gaze toward the gout of flame rising from the shattered roof of the thing. He put a hand on her back, gave a little shove, and Yousseff seemed to snap from her momentary trance. They ran around up the ramp in a stoop, slamming down into seats even as the door ratcheted shut and the ramp retracted.

  “Strap in!” Aldo shouted, and the crawler lunged forward, the grit-storm scouring its shell as it rumbled across the rugged terrain.

  Brackett found a seat, glanced across the heavy-crawler, and realized he was directly opposite Draper. All eyes in the passenger section of the vehicle were upon him, the other marines wondering how he would react to Draper’s insubordination.

  Remaining silent, the captain ground his teeth so hard his jaw hurt. His first instinct was to put the bastard in the brig the second they returned to Hadley’s Hope, and keep him there until he could arrange for Draper to be transferred away from Acheron. The trouble was that he didn’t know how much backup he’d get from his own superiors. If he put Draper in the brig and then had to release him, it would undermine his authority even further than Draper’s actions already had.

  “Listen to me, you son of a bitch—” Brackett began, leaning forward and pointing.

  At that moment, Processor Six exploded. The blast rocked the crawler to the left. Hauer and Pettigrew fell into the space between the facing rows of seats. Even muffled by the storm, the thunderous noise of the explosion made them all wince, and Yousseff covered her ears. Something crashed down on the crawler’s roof, and Aldo swerved to avoid a flaming chunk of metal that struck in front of them like a meteorite.

  Stamovich swore loudly, and immediately the others began to taunt him for showing fear. That lasted only seconds, as they all returned their attention to the silent hostility crackling in the space that separated Brackett and Draper.

  “You were saying?” Draper asked, his voice dry, tone full of disrespect.

  “I’m saying it’s been an ugly first day at my new command,” Brackett said. “But I’m willing to bet the ugliness is just getting started for you, Sergeant. You, Stamovich, and Pettigrew are confined to quarters upon our return, and you’ll stay there until further notice. If you think there won’t be consequences for your actions today, I can only assume that your previous CO gave you the impression that rank meant nothing out here on the edge of oblivion.

  “I’m here to disabuse you of that notion.”

  The corner of Draper’s mouth lifted in what might have been a smirk, but otherwise he had no reply. The others were also wise enough not to speak.

  The crawler rolled on.

  * * *

  They were halfway back to the colony, the storm at last beginning to subside, when Julisa Paris crawled from the rear of the crawler and slid into a seat beside Chenovski.

  “Sorry, Captain,” she said. “Hauer did what he could. Shock and blood loss took a toll. Curtis Finch is dead.”

  Brackett let out a heavy sigh and laid his head back against the juddering wall of the crawler.

  “Crazy prick wanted off the planet, him and his brother both,” Stamovich muttered. “Looks like he got his wish.”

  “How is that getting his wish?” Chenovski asked, sneering at him. “They’re never getting off Acheron now. They’ll be buried here. Whoever they’ve got back on Earth will learn they’re dead, and just carry on. This place is so far away from home that these colonists might as well be dead already, in the minds of the people they left behind. If this was more than just a post for me—if I knew I was here permanently—I’d lose my shit just like Otto did.”

  They rolled on for a minute or two, all of them just taking that in. The marines began to stare at their feet, or tried to see out through the windshield, though Aldo waved for them to stay seated.

  Yousseff nudged Brackett with an elbow. He’d been aware of her beside him, but had been too preoccupied with his anger to do more than acknowledge her.

  “You asked me why I helped you carry him,” she said quietly, so that over the roar of the engine and the whoosh of the diminishing storm, only Brackett could hear.

  “It wasn’t just you obeying an order,” he replied, and it wasn’t a question.

  Yousseff dropped her gaze a moment, and then turned to face him.

  “I could feel his fear,” she said. “Otto cou
ld be a pain in the ass, but I liked him well enough. The guy just fell apart, Captain. He didn’t want to hurt me—he was just terrified. I hate that it ended like this.”

  Brackett narrowed his gaze.

  “What could scare anyone that much?”

  Yousseff shrugged. “I don’t think it was anything real. Nothing tangible. Acheron just got under his skin. He convinced himself there was something on this damned moon for him to fear, something that was gonna kill him. He was afraid he was gonna die if he didn’t get off this rock.”

  Brackett glanced at Draper.

  “I guess he was right. But it wasn’t Acheron he should’ve been afraid of.”

  10

  THE COST

  DATE: 10 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1648

  Newt never minded being thought of as a child. She knew some kids who became very angry when grownups dismissed them as little, but Newt considered that a pretty silly thing to get mad about. After all, they were little. It wasn’t as if the grownups were trying to insult them with the truth.

  Really, she wasn’t in any hurry to grow up at all. Adults were grumpy a lot. They got stressed out over things that didn’t seem that important—sometimes about disagreements they assumed were going to happen, but which had not happened quite yet. Her parents were the perfect example. Lately they’d seemed all worried about things Newt freely admitted that she didn’t quite understand.

  What she did know was that there seemed no point to any of it. Stress made them both tense and edgy, and it crackled between them like that invisible energy that always gave her shocks when she dug through freshly laundered clothes in search of matching socks.

  Static, Newt thought, proud of herself. Of course—that’s the word.

  The static electricity that sizzled unseen in the air between her parents over the past few months had kept growing stronger, but it had never been as bad as today. Newt had been in their quarters doing her homework, and had seen the way they navigated their way around the rooms, sometimes avoiding each other… and she’d had to get out of there.