Croutl looked like he was about to say something, but thought better of it. “Wait here,” he said instead, getting to his feet. “I’ll scout ahead.” He continued his climb, rapidly moving out of sight.
“Bruuuuuuce,” Stein whined. “You’re making us look bad in front of the army guy.”
“Sorry, Stein. I didn’t know this was a dating opportunity for you.”
Stein patted Bruce on his hand. “Ha.”
“I should have guessed when I saw you’d shaved your mustache,” he added, earning a punch in the neck in response.
They sat quietly for a few minutes, Stein looking at the map on her terminal, Bruce breathing. Eventually, the sound of footsteps approaching from above, both of them readying their pistols. A landing above, then Croutl’s face appeared, staring down.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said.
§
“Yeah, that’s definitely not a regular gun,” Griese said, looking at the magnified image on the terminal he had pressed against the window. “Muzzle flash is too blue.”
“Sure sounds different,” Ellen agreed. Lying one window over, she shifted behind the rifle, panning it slightly to her right. “What do you think?”
Griese watched the blue flash a few more times, thinking. They had set up in the upper floor of an apartment on the corner of Africa and 7th. Kinsella’s army had stalled; all of the fools who enjoyed getting shot had gone down in the first few waves, leaving the slow and gun shy to carry on with the advance. Those still interested in the fight were taking cheap shots at the security forces from range, but that was a diminishing number; most were milling about somewhat aimlessly. A few had started looting. The security forces seemed content with that state of affairs, simply holding their new defensive perimeter, not trying to push the mob back.
That was the case until the past few minutes, when new, bluer muzzle flashes started appearing on the security lines. “I dunno,” Griese finally said. “Though I’ve got a guess.”
“Yeah, so do I.” A moment later, “Ahhh, hell.”
“What?” Griese asked.
“He’s bleeding. Shit, he’s really hurt. They’re really doing it, those fuckers. They brought out the bolt throwers.”
“What is it?” Griese looked up at Ellen, who had shifted her rifle to look down at the streets closer to them.
“Some dumb kid’s bleeding on the ground. Screaming his head off. They shot him, Griese. They shot him.”
Griese tilted his terminal around until he could see what she was looking at. A young man on the ground, blood pouring from his leg. Too far away to hear him, but he looked to be screaming in agony. Eventually, some brave soul dashed out into the street and dragged him behind the lee of a building. “Was that what we were waiting for?” he asked.
Ellen seemed to have more or less recovered from her previous experience with the security counter–sniper, or at least claimed she had. Griese had his doubts, but he carried them quietly. And with Stein and Bruce doing something dangerous, there was no way his wife wouldn’t want to help, or at least do something equally dangerous herself. And with only the one obvious tool at their disposal for ‘helping,’ they had marched into the aft to do just that. What their ‘help’ would entail wasn’t explicitly discussed; they had yet to decide what rules of engagement they were going to use. Griese hoped it would be obvious when they saw it.
“It might be, yeah,” Ellen said quietly. “Where was he shooting from again? I lost him.”
Griese began panning the terminal back to where he had first seen the blue muzzle flashes. But he couldn’t find them — all fire from the security officers seemed to have stopped. “Maybe it was a warning?” he said.
“Yeah, well, maybe we should warn them, too.”
Griese swallowed and began panning the terminal around some more, looking for the guns. “Whoa.”
“What?”
“It couldn’t be him.”
“Who? What? Where?”
“Back. Back. Like to 2nd Ave. Standing in front of the van on the right. Who’s that?”
He waited for Ellen to find what he was looking at. “The chief of security?”
“That’s where, what, and who I’m looking at.” On the screen, Griese watched Chief Thorias gesturing down the street, at this magnification, almost seeming to point right at Griese. A couple of the officers gathered around him were clearly holding long guns.
So faint he could barely hear her, Ellen said. “I’m going to do it.”
Griese licked his lips. “Are you sure? I could…”
“No.” He looked up from the terminal. Her back rose as she took in a breath. A click from the rifle. She shifted slightly to the side. Her back fell. A familiar crack filled the room. Griese didn’t even bother to look.
“Hey…,” he said softly, crawling over to her.
“I’m fine,” she said. She rolled away from the window. “We should reposition.”
“Ellen…”
“I’m fine, Griese!” She glared at him. “He brought it on himself. They all did.” She grabbed the rifle and stood up, moving to the back of the apartment. Griese felt incredibly cold and looked down at the goose bumps on his forearms. He got to his feet, rubbing his arms, and followed her downstairs.
Outside, they stayed on the edges of the street as they moved to their next spot. They headed back to 8th Avenue, a block closer to safety, a prudent move should this suddenly lethal war get any worse. Ellen stood out of Griese’s way as he blew the lock on the door of an almost identical apartment. Across the street, Loyalist soldiers streamed in and out of another apartment, the Loyalist’s makeshift headquarters.
The lock popped, and Griese shoved the door out of the way, stepping inside. “Oh, goddammit,” Ellen said behind him, stopping just inside the entrance of the apartment.
“What is it?” he asked, turning around.
She looked back at him, hands on her hips. “You didn’t happen to bring the charging cable, did you?”
“Are you serious?”
“Don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at us.”
“You sounded mad at me,” she said. A small grin. “I guess we forgot, after the last time.”
He bent down to look at the gun. “So, it’s done?”
“One shot left. Maybe two.”
Griese looked at the orangish glow from the charge indicator. “Well. Let’s go get the cable, then.”
Ellen looked up at him. “Both of us? You’re the one who forgot it.”
“I’m pretty sure we both forgot it.”
“That’s not how I remember it. Go on. I’ll be fine here.”
“I’m not going to leave you here in the middle of a war, lady.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t doubt it. But I’m pretty sure this is one of those things that was in our vows. Sickness. Health. Peace. War zones.”
“I don’t remember you saying that.”
“Well, it was maybe between the lines.” Griese grabbed her hand. “Come on, let’s go.”
She twisted her hand out of his grasp. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
Years of experience had taught Griese it wasn’t wise to push her when her fur was on end. Years of experience worth ignoring in this particular circumstance. “Ellen…”
“Griese!” She snapped at him. “If those assholes try anything, I will shoot them.”
“You’ve got one shot, Ellen.”
“Then you’d better fucking hurry back with that charging cable!” Her nostrils flared. An uneasy moment passed between them. Finally, her expression softened. “Look. If anything goes wrong, I’m out of here in a second. I won’t do anything dumb. Now, please. Go. Hurry back. I’ll be fine.” She smiled and squeezed his hand.
“I’m not going to…”
“I want you to go.” Griese felt his face sink. “It’s…” she tried to explain. “I just don’t want you around for this.”
If I c
an’t be around for it, then you shouldn’t be doing it. That was a wise thing to say. I’m getting you out of here right now, you bloodthirsty bitch. Less wise, but certainly to the point. There were, in truth, many things he could have and should have said, other than “Okay,” which is what he did.
She bent in to give him a kiss, a good one. She stepped away. “I’ll be fine.”
He nodded dumbly, and backpedaled awkwardly to the door. He stopped. “If our guys start running away…”
“I’ll run, too. In front of them. Let them be the dead heroes.”
“Good.”
Ellen smiled, then crept upstairs. Still not sure how it was happening, or why he was letting it, Griese backed out the door.
§
When they finally reached the 20th floor, Croutl showed them the problem. “That’s not supposed to be there, is it?” he said, pointing at the closed bulkhead door.
Stein examined the door. It looked similar to the bulkhead doors currently in place along the street levels of the ship, but much less dirty. Trails of fresh lubricant along the edges told her someone had been maintaining it recently. “I’d say it looks like it’s meant to be here.”
“Kind of a shame that it’s closed, though, isn’t it?” Bruce said.
“Can you open it?” Croutl asked. Stein tried the controls, found them locked off, and shook her head. Beside her, Bruce tried pushing on the door. “So, now what?” Croutl asked.
Stein looked at Bruce, who nodded, jerking his head down the hall. “We probably have another way,” she said.
They began making their way along the steeply curving hallways, Croutl a short distance in front of them, moving in a crouch so that he could see further ahead. A minute or so later, Croutl held up his hand, signaling for them to stop. Stein and Bruce nervously waited, watching Croutl frozen in place in the middle of the hall. A few seconds passed before he moved, waving them forward again.
“I recognize that,” Bruce said, seeing the disconnect hatch that had caught Croutl’s attention.
It was the same hatch they had ambushed Curts in. The fasteners on the hatch were still loose, Stein and Bruce easily undoing them while Croutl prowled up and down the hall. The hatch open, Stein stepped inside, turning on her terminal light, illuminating the massive set of interlocked C–clamps, now cut completely through. “Looks like they got another fuse torch,” she said. Bruce nodded and stepped past her to the other side of the cavity. “How’s the hatch?” she asked. “Can you see a way to open it?”
“I think pushing on it will work.”
“What?”
“It’s already open.” Silence for a moment, then a squeaking sound. “Yeah, it’s open.”
“Where’s that take us?” Croutl asked, peering suspiciously into the cavity.
“Closer.”
“Good enough.” Croutl stepped into the cavity to join them.
Stein joined Bruce on the far side, crouched down with his head close to the hatch. He shook his head when she approached, then pushed the hatch a little further. She could see down the core hall, no one in sight. “I’ll go first,” Croutl said. He pushed the hatch a little further open, then stepped quickly through, gun drawn. “Come on,” he said after a moment.
Bruce followed through the hatch behind him, Stein following a second later, stepping into the core hallway. A noise behind her, Stein turning to see a startled naval engineer gaping at them. A shot, a loud one, from beside her head. Charged particles smashed into the engineer’s neck, sending him to the ground. “Yeah!” Bruce hissed beside her, jogging over to inspect his handiwork. “I think it’s the same guy as before!” he said, looking up with a big grin on his face.
“He’s going to develop a real fucking complex about walking down this hall,” she said, rubbing her ear. She turned around, not seeing Croutl anywhere. “Uh…,” she said.
“He went the other way,” Bruce said. He bent down to pick up his quarry, and dumped him back into the disconnect cavity, shutting the hatch behind him. “We should probably catch up.”
They heard him before they saw him. Together they ran up the curve of the ship to see Croutl firing rapidly around a corner. “Two of ’em right in front of the reactor,” Croutl said, ducking back out of their return fire. “They were fucking waiting for us.” He pulled a grenade from his webbing and heaved it down the hallway. Screams of recognition echoed down the halls before a massive thump. Croutl looked around the corner and was again turned back by a flurry of return fire. “How the fuck are there more of them now?” he shouted. He looked at Stein and shook his head. “This isn’t going to work,” he said. Stein felt Bruce’s hand on her shoulder and allowed herself to be tugged back the way they had come. She watched Croutl deliver one last salvo, screaming obscenities before he turned to follow them.
Bruce had just reopened the access hatch to the cavity when a second group of security officers appeared in front of them. Stein cried out in warning, cut short by Bruce shoving her through the hatch. Gunfire erupted behind her. In the cavity, Stein rolled off the naval engineer’s still unconscious body and regained her feet. She looked back into the hall at Bruce, who was clambering into the hatch himself. “Croutl?” she shouted.
“Go, go,” Bruce hissed, pushing her to the other side of the cavity. She opened her mouth to protest, before he said, “He’s down.” Another ungallant shove sent her through the hatch on the other side.
Bruce rejoined her outside the cavity and slammed the door shut. He slotted in one of the fasteners, spinning it partially tight, then added a second one. Before he could finish, an enormous thump from the other side of the door, the vibrations kicking up clouds of dust from the floor. “That wasn’t a grenade,” Stein said. “Shit,” she added a moment later, getting it.
“The charges,” Bruce said. Stein’s shoulders slumped. The explosive charges Croutl was carrying must have been hit. Her mouth went dry and she started to slump to the ground. “Come on,” Bruce said, grabbing her under the armpits and spinning her in the direction they had come from. “We’ll be unhappy later.” Another shove, and they were off.
She would remember very little about their retreat down the stairs. The gravity kept getting stronger, that much stuck out. Unless it was her legs getting weaker.
§
Half an hour. That’s how long it took someone to tell him that Thorias was dead. Incompetence by design; the only people who knew were security officers, and the only person they knew to report to was Thorias. There was no second–in–command. Thorias had five or six third–in–commands, but none of them had anywhere near the authority to speak directly to Helot.
It had been up to Helot to notice that his security chief wasn’t answering his terminal. It had been up to Helot to ask someone directly. It had been up to Helot to ask again when that someone froze solid. “He’s dead, sir,” the officer manning the tactical table eventually said. He pointed at something on the map, a squiggly line which evidently meant something to him. “See? Dead.”
“What.” Not a question, just a statement. The only thing Helot could think to say. The officer squirmed some more before confirming what he had just said and explaining what had happened. Someone had apparently shot Thorias in the head, that’s what happened.
Helot didn’t really recall what happened for the next few minutes, although by the way people treated him afterwards, it may have involved a little bit of going completely berserk. He definitely recalled some screaming. He also may have tried to flip over the tactical table, the seven ton behemoth that wasn’t just fixed to the floor as much as it was an essential part of the floor. And he definitely recalled ordering everyone to go kill everyone else, an order which thankfully wasn’t acted on. Even once the scope was clarified — “Kill them, you fools!” — someone probably pointed out that that was impossible. There were too many of them.
Whether he calmed down, or simply ran out of gas, Helot eventually found himself on the floor, leaning against the unflipped tactical t
able, Curts gently reminding him that they only had another few days left to finish cutting the disconnects. They could dig in. Hold off the Othersiders. This didn’t sound berserk enough to Helot, but it had a certain appeal, in that it was the only plan they had.
And then someone informed him that the Othersiders had almost snuck into the core. They had actually been two decks above Helot. Where they were setting off bombs and killing more people.
Another short spell of berserking, more calls for everyone to kill everyone, now accompanied by a strange, deafening static noise, which he later realized was probably the sound of his brain failing. Again, Helot woke up to find himself staring at Curts’ uselessly flapping jaw. Why wasn’t he out killing everyone? What was so important to say that he had to stop killing everybody?
“Sir?” Curts said, his voice trembling.
Helot jabbed a finger into the engineer’s chest. “What? What is it? We’re about to be overrun by bomb–throwing morons, and you’re standing there burbling like an idiot.”
Curts flinched, looking away. Not meeting Helot’s hate–filled gaze, he said, “I’ve got an idea. How to stop them, I mean.” He fidgeted with something on his terminal. “It’s a little crazy, though.”
“Good. Make it crazier,” Helot said. “All the way crazy.”
“Sir?” Curts blurted, looking confused. Helot felt a pain shoot up the right side of his face, then realized he was clenching his teeth too hard. He waved his hand in a circle, beckoning the engineer to continue.
“Okay.” Curts moved forward to the tactical table, bending over the map. He zoomed the screen out until it displayed the entirety of Level 1. “Here’s where th–th–the Othersider forces are,” he said pointing at the shaded semicircle that was the source of Helot’s troubles. “Okay, here’s my idea. We still have c–c–control over the bulkhead doors. All of them — across the ship.” He tapped on the map to indicate a bulkhead door on Africa Street just past the barricade the Othersiders had blown through. “They could have disabled our controls, but I don’t think they’d have done that. Can anyone else think why they might?” He looked around the room as a sea of blank faces looked back. “Anyways, I don’t think they have yet.”
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