Rebels in Arms

by Ben Weaver

  “Oh, yeah you did,” I countered.

  He just snickered at me, then pressed his head back into his jumpseat and closed his eyes.

  For the next few minutes, we rode in silence, and I noticed that Jing would not look my way. I wished there was something I could say to her. I wished we had met under different circumstances. I wished she would just look at me.

  As we made our final approach toward the Wardens’ Orokean Perimeter Command Post, I called out, “Hey, Jing?”

  She lifted her chin. “What?”

  “You, uh, you all right?”

  “I’m good. Thanks.” She looked quickly away.

  And I sighed.

  Five major cities had developed on Aire-Wu: Cynday, New Sky, Orokean, Butanee, and Zhou, with a combined population of nearly 898 million people. Sure, that number is small when compared to Earth’s population, but it’s large for a colo. In fact, Aire-Wu was the second-most-populous world, just behind Rexi-Calhoon. And because so many people had chosen the Earth-like globe for their home, and so much grain, timber, asbestos, and gypsum were exported from her fertile ground, she remained one of the most heavily defended worlds of the Seventeen. The fact that the Wardens had created a shipping hub on her moon and had established several command posts on the outskirts of all the major cities was of little surprise.

  What did surprise us was the sudden particle fire that stitched ragged holes in the tarmac, just a few meters off the ATC’s bow, even as our landing skids touched ground.

  “Captain?” cried Colonel Beauregard, leaning forward to shoot a gaze into the cockpit.

  “Sir, the scope indicates multiple alpha bogeys, sir. Looks like a squadron. Insignia and IDs coming through now. They’re Eastern Alliance atmoattack jets, but DTR also indicates that these particular craft were captured by us.”

  “Tawt out,” ordered the colonel.

  “Negative, sir. Tawt computer has been infected with a virus.”

  “Then get us over to that hangar. Now!”

  I threw up the jumpseat’s safety bars and cupped hands around my eyes as I went to a porthole. The hangar, a huge silver dome rising at least five hundred meters, lay about a kilometer away, and I nearly fell over as the pilot got us off the ground and swept along the tarmac, banking suddenly toward the east. In the background lay rolling, tree-covered hills, and some of those trees rose even higher than the hangar, with diameters probably reaching several hundred meters. My gaze suddenly turned skyward as the squadron of atmoattack jets swooped down, firing mercilessly upon the hangar.

  “It’s some kind of commando operation,” yelled Ms. Brooks, her own gaze darting wildly around the hold. “A complete inside job, with traitors rising all the way through the ranks—because there’s no way they could’ve gotten fighters through planetary defenses.”

  “We’ll analyze this later,” barked the colonel. “Captain, get us to the goddamned hangar!”

  “Sir, the hangar is gone, sir.”

  “Then get us to the south-side access hub. Now!”

  Jing came up behind me, put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Wait—”

  She vanished.

  “Oh, no,” moaned Breckinridge. “Jing, what’re you doing?”

  “Yeah, what is she doing?” I asked.

  Breckinridge explained that Jing would will herself into the cramped cockpit of one of those atmoattack jets. She would kill the pilot, disengage the tactical computer, and get out of there before the fighter meteored its way down to explode in a billion pieces across the tarmac and surrounding field. I riveted my gaze on the sky, saw one fighter veer off from the others then turn erratically and begin to plummet.

  “One down,” Breckinridge said.

  “What if she blacks out from the maximum G?” I asked. “She can’t force the blood back into her brain. She won’t make it out.”

  Breckinridge glanced soberly at me. “That’s right. She won’t.”

  “Okay, hatch down, Captain!” yelled the colonel. “Skins up. Let’s move!”

  Paul had unclipped particle rifles for us and began distributing them as the rear hatch dropped away, and the muffled booming from outside became an ear-shattering thunder. The stench of burning fuel and kicked-up dirt competed with a sweet scent I would later learn was similar to that produced by one of Earth’s evergreen trees. And still more stimuli pounded our senses: the echoing report of cannons and subsequent ground explosions, the whine of our own turbines, and the residual explosions thundering inside the now heavily damaged hangar. I had a pair of seconds to hop down from the ramp, get my bearings, and see the smoke rising into a sky so pure and blue I could hardly believe the color.

  “St. Andrew, right here!” called the colonel from behind me. He stood beside a rectangular hatch, an access hub leading down, into the ground, and probably used only by airfield maintenance personnel. Halitov rushed Ms. Brooks onto the ladder inside the hub. Meanwhile, Breckinridge and Paul fired ineffectually at an approaching airjeep manned by two Eastern Alliance Marines, a gunner and pilot who were skinned up and wearing dark green uniforms. The airjeep’s big gun spewed a thick bead of fire that rose cobralike from the tarmac and whipped forward to strike the energy skin over the ATC’s canopy. The pilot wasted no time dusting off, leaving us exposed.

  I threw down my rifle, thought of how Jing was risking her ass up there. I sprinted toward the airjeep, and while I had forced the beads from particle rifles to bend back toward the Marines who had trigged them, I had never disrupted a weapon as large as an air-jeep’s cannon. I ran even faster, reached out, felt the bond between me, the ground, the airjeep, and the bead those Eastern Alliance Marines directed at us. But that bead felt too directed, too strong, and though I tried like a son of a bitch to bend it back, it wouldn’t budge.

  With its engines kicking up dust devils tipped on their sides, and with the screaming roar continuing from those atmoattack jets as they began a strategic bombing of the command post, I drove myself into the gozt and came at the two Marines. Twice their beam ricocheted across my skin, and a nanosecond later my tactical computer warned me of the drain even as I reached the gunner, forced my bare hands past his skin, and choked him. My momentum dragged him out of his seat, and we both collapsed behind the airjeep, hitting the field in a cloud of dust. He struggled frantically to free my hands from his throat. I released one. Thought of ripping off his tac, then reached for my Ka-Bar. Thrust to the heart. Withdraw. He gurgled…and…was gone.

  The pilot wheeled around, using one hand to steer the ship, the other to operate the gun. He zeroed in on me. I stood there, taking the bead a moment before leaping straight up and rolling forward, timing his approach a little awkwardly but still managing to come out of the roll to drop squarely on the hood with a terrific thud. The pilot, a young blond man with remarkably large ears, gaped at my appearance and jammed his control stick hard to port, but not before I kicked him under his chin, kicked him so hard that he blew out of the jeep and thudded onto his back. I jumped off the hood, turned a moment to see the airjeep nosedive and burrow a sizable ditch before the turbines overheated. I ran over to the pilot.

  “No! Please!” he moaned. “I can help you.”

  I dropped to my knees behind him, held my Ka-Bar to his throat. I felt him shudder as it dawned on him that his combat skin could not protect him from me.

  “How can you help me?” I asked.

  “If you let me live, I’ll tell you who we are.”

  “What do you mean, who you are? You’re an Eastern Alliance Marine. And I want to know how you people got down here.”

  “I’m not working for the alliances. They just want you to think that.”

  “Then who are you?” I screamed.

  “I’m Second Lieutenant Kayleb Addison, Seventeen System Guard Corps, Special Operations: Rebel ten-seven.”

  “Rebel ten-seven?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yeah.”

  I jerked away my Ka-Bar and pul
led him around. “If you’re lying, you’re dead. Let’s go.”

  PART 4

  Rebels in Arms

  15

  Lieutenant Addison and I were the last ones down the hatch. Distant thunder from the aerial bombing droned on in a timpani roll as I sealed the door after us.

  “Who are you?” Halitov asked, as Addison hopped down from the ladder and de-skinned.

  “Your new best friend.” The guy raised his palms in surrender and fixed Halitov with a twisted grin.

  We stood about ten meters below the surface, near five intersecting tunnels with placards marking different maintenance stations or travel ports or operations centers. Breckinridge, the colonel, Paul, and Ms. Brooks were at tablet terminal, trying to pull up defense status and make contact with the post’s CO. I de-skinned and told Halitov to watch our new guest, then jogged over to the colonel. “Sir.”

  “We’re little busy, Mr. St. Andrew.”

  “I can handle this,” Ms. Brooks told the colonel, who reluctantly detached himself and came toward me.

  “Sir, that guy over there says he’s Kayleb Addison, says he works for Rebel ten-seven. They’re responsible for the attack here, but they want it to look like an Alliance attack.”

  “Clever. The Guard Corps can’t get rid of us publicly, so they bring in your former Special Ops group to pose as alliance Marines, then they can blame it all on the alliances so the Guard Corps’s hands remain clean.”

  “You saying you believe him, sir?” I asked. “I was going to kill him, then he confessed. But he seems way too forthcoming. Maybe he really is working for the alliances. Maybe this is their way of making the Corps grow more divided.”

  “I refuse to believe that the Alliances got people down here—not with the defenses we have in place. We’ll get this Mr. Addison over to the operations center, ID him, and I suspect we’ll learn that he is who he says he is…”

  “Colonel? Have a look at this,” called Ms. Brooks.

  He strode back to the tablet terminal, and I joined him, where on three different conventional screens we watched the last of the atmoattack jets break into a flat spin and disappear over a mountainside.

  “Okay, sweetheart,” muttered the colonel. “Now you come back to us.”

  And with that, Jing appeared on the other side of the hub. She clutched the wall, leaned over, and retched. I rushed over to her, put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m okay,” she said, rolling out of my grip. “Guess I pushed it a little too hard. But see, I told you I’d be right back.”

  “Lieutenant? Tell me,” said the colonel.

  “That squadron was only one of about ten or fifteen,” Jing explained, still gathering her breath. “I can’t take them all out. They’re still bombing the western hangars. Triple A batteries are gone. Our own atmoattack jets have either been destroyed or infected with viruses. It’s…bad.”

  “Got interior vids back up,” said Ms. Brooks. “Oh my God.”

  Images of utter carnage played across the three screens. Colonial Wardens lay slumped across their operations center stations, their heads caved in by particle fire. More bodies lay on the floor and across more terminals. Bodies were everywhere, and Ms. Brooks switched to the cameras in the hall, where the same twisted and bloody carpet unfurled all the way to an intersection.

  “Tacs indicate life signs remaining in about thirty-seven, but all have been critically wounded,” she said, reading a databar on another screen. “This entire base…it’s…gone.”

  “And they timed this attack pretty well, didn’t they, knowing that the both of you would be on planet,” I said.

  “That’s right,” added Addison from across the hub, with Halitov keeping him under close watch. “You two are the primary target.”

  “Oh, man. We have to get the hell out of here,” said Halitov warily. “And I mean now.”

  “Brooks, see if you can bring up our ATC pilot,” suggested the colonel.

  “Forget that, sir,” said Jing. “He’s already been taken out. Channels are jammed as expected, so we can’t contact Vanguard. And they’ve pretty much destroyed every other ride out of here, except the subway. We might be able to take it back to Orokean, if they haven’t cut the power.”

  The hub’s ceiling hatch blew inward and dropped hard onto the deck.

  “Go!” screamed Halitov, as he skinned up and started for the shaft of light piercing the smoke and falling debris. He directed his particle rifle up, toward that light, and cut loose with a savage stream of fire. “Come on! Come on!”

  At any moment they’d drop in a smart schrap grenade, and I knew Halitov knew that, so I couldn’t figure why he wanted to play hero by standing there and pumping out rounds. Did he really think his efforts would buy us that much time? “Rooslin!” I hollered. “Let’s go!”

  My words echoed as the grenade hit the floor.

  He gaped at me. I gaped at him. And we reached into the bond. The world froze a second, then everything save us moved in that strange, submerged slowness:

  The smart schrap erupted from the orb and, like a miniature supernova, the gleaming cloud swelled. The others had already started down a shaft leading to one of the subway entrances, but I realized we were now cut off from that shaft and would have to find another. We ran toward the nearest conduit, feeling the smart schrap’s heat on our necks. I wouldn’t dare chance a look back, but judging from the shadows on the wall, we beat the first wave by just a meter or two.

  Sweat dropped into my left eye, blinded me for a second until I blinked it away, only to feel Halitov’s hand latch on to my wrist and yank me suddenly down another corridor. He threw me around the corner, where we both shadowhugged the wall. We didn’t move. We didn’t breathe, just released ourselves from the bond as the wave burrowed into a far wall and kept going.

  Faint thuds resounded from the hub, and Halitov chanced a look around the corner, recoiled, even as shimmering rounds drilled into the wall near his head. “Shit,” he groaned, flinching against the salvo. “They’re closing in.”

  I tipped my head toward the corridor, and we dashed off, passing the bodies of several MPs and six or seven administrative personnel who had fallen in a terrible little row, as though they had been lined up for execution.

  “Want to go back and take them out?” Halitov asked, as we reached a second hub and found a placard directing us to a subway entrance. “Jing and Kristi can take care of the others.”

  “No, we meet up with them.”

  “Oh, really?” he asked, then dropped to the deck, pulling me with him as a salvo exploded overhead and tore the subway placard to ribbons. “Sounds easy. It ain’t.” He bolted to his feet and launched himself up, into a chak, turning in a wide arc while extending his right leg to form the ai, a deadly floating kick, counterkick. He neared the point man of a squadron of Eastern Alliance Marines (or at least a squadron of people wearing those uniforms), and before the guy could cut loose with a single round, he broke the man’s jaw with his boot, then, with his other boot, drove the cartilage in the soldier’s nose into his brain.

  As Halitov came down from his vault, I charged the squadron myself—since my overzealous partner had already committed us to the bout. I opted for the somersault-and-kick combination of the dirc, and I ripped through the move as the five or six other Marines positioned near the walls tried getting a bead on me. One actually did, and several rounds pinged off my skin as I came down on her, driving her so hard into the deck that my boot snapped her neck. She made a weird noise before her eyes rolled back. Strangled cries came from a few of the others, and Halitov screwed his face up into that flushed, predatory mask and broke bones as though they were some light, delicate wood. Stray rounds ricocheted around us as I took on the last pair of grunts, and, trying to ignore the fact that they might be members of Rebel 10-7, that they could very well have served under me, I worked my Ka-Bar with smooth and chilling efficiency.

  Halitov and I stood over the bodies. I turned to him and be
gan laughing, a laugh that bordered on hysterical, on utter grief. He glanced oddly at me as I bared my teeth and panted, then glanced at the bodies. “It’s not about sides anymore,” I said, my voice coming in a growl. “It’s about killing everyone, killing everything. I don’t want to be this person, this person who says fuck it all and just kills. This is not being a soldier. It’s not.”

  “We got a subway to catch,” Halitov said, sliding a hand around the back of my neck and shoving me forward. “And if you think killing and being a soldier don’t go together, then you got a real bad memory, ’cause you’ve killed at least as many as I have.”

  “Believe me, I know,” I muttered, then broke into a jog toward the subway corridor.

  We found a lift and dropped down to the loading platform. Breckinridge contacted us on a private channel and told us to meet the others at Gate 17, a number I found painfully ironic.

  As Halitov and I neared Gate 15, a bullet-shaped maglev train blasted by us, its windows and doors splattered with ever-changing patterns of graffiti created by a local parasite that young thugs mixed into their paint. Though we kept close to the platform’s rear walls, and I only paused for a second to glimpse the train, Marines positioned near the platform’s edge, just a meter from the train itself, popped up like computer-generated avatars. Hell didn’t just break loose; it exploded.

  We dashed forward, held under as many as twenty beads, the dimly lit platform glowing in an eerie, fluctuating firelight that made it hard to see. I tripped over some kind of scanning device rising to about knee height, and fell into Halitov. We crumpled, swore, scrambled to our hands and knees. Then, the fire tapered off into a series of muffled cries.

  I rolled over, watched Breckinridge, Paul, and Jing working through the Marine snipers in a smooth, graceful ballet of blood and death.

  As Jing ripped the particle rifle from the last Marine and split open his skull with it, Breckinridge shouted for us. We clambered over the small scanner and joined her and Paul in a race to Gate 17, where the maglev train had pulled to a stop. We dashed through the doors.