by P. R. Adams
“Ready.”
“Inbound,” said Headey. “ETA, three minutes.”
“No rush.” No rush ever again.
He saw it then: The telltale flicker of lights approaching in the western distance. He descended the rungs slowly, readying himself.
Blinking, sucking in the suit’s recycled air, shaking away doubts and fears, he crossed to the doorway. He gripped the handle and set his shoulder against the door. He knew better than to seek courage from inside; he was spent. He twisted the handle and leaned against the door, feeling it shudder against him.
A hallway spread out before him, ghostly white. Rimes stared for a moment, then stepped to the closest door. He kicked it in and shouted.
“Any survivors, come out! We’re here to rescue you!”
He moved to the next door and repeated the process, his mind struggling to block out what he was seeing. Bodies, charred, twisted. Their near-skeletal faces stared at him, horrified, caught in incomprehensible agony.
He thought back to Sahara. The entity and its plasma that had flash-burned its targets.
Again and again he kicked in doors and shouted. There were no survivors.
Finally, he ran for the door to his own apartment, throwing himself against it with every bit of force he could summon. The door shattered, and he fell face first into a fine layer of ash. He spat and shoved himself up.
“Molly! Jared! Calvin!”
He saw them, and his voice devolved into wordless mewling. They were waiting for him in the living room, arms open, waiting for his embrace. He ran to them, gathering them, holding them close. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he struggled to apologize for his failure, for abandoning them.
He pulled them free, easily cutting through the charred bonds that held them to the blackened frames of chairs. Unconsciously, he noted the small pile of viscera—nearly burned to ash—beneath each body, the way their legs had been bound, the lack of any remnant of clothing. Killing them hadn’t been enough. The mercenaries had needed a new level of depravity, had plumbed the depths of inhumanity.
Rimes staggered back toward the stairwell, hugging his family against his chest. They were remarkably light in his arms despite the weakness he felt. At the stairwell door, he felt the heat. It was more intense now, the flames rising, consuming whatever they could. He shoved the door open.
Oblivious to the flames rising around him he climbed the ladder again, the skeletal remains held against him by his wounded arm. Tears left a salty trail on his cheeks, then quickly evaporated in the heat. Flames licked at his feet as he reached the roof. He was vaguely aware of gunfire as the shuttles descended, turned, and hovered. One of the shuttles had no cockpit, only a charred, gaping hole. The other opened its airlock.
With robotic stiffness, Rimes walked toward the airlock. Each step came easier than the last. He glanced back, saw blinking lights on the horizon. Distractedly, he realized they were enemy gunships flying in from Halifax. Reinforcements.
He stepped into the airlock, refusing offers of assistance.
Squatting in the open airlock, one arm wrapped around the blackened bones, the other clinging to a safety harness, he watched the post slip away beneath him. The shuttle was alone now, its pilotless twin still barely visible hovering above the tower. Muzzle flashes glittered all around the post and the forest surrounding it. The mercenaries had all raced to Rimes’s home at the summons, come to take him down. Their gunships were over the post now, pursuing with reckless speed.
“Now, Dariusz,” Rimes said. “Now.”
He closed his eyes and buried his face against Molly’s skull, felt wispy patches of ashen hair crumble against his cheek. Even through his closed eyes he could feel the brightness of the blast and feel the flames washing over the home he’d carved from Plymouth’s red clay heart. Kwon was a deep, guttural growl rumbling through Rimes’s gut, a different and more terrible power than he had ever known.
He kissed Molly one last time and accepted who—what—he had become.
18
24 December, 2173. Plymouth Colony.
* * *
Rimes watched Singh Bey Airport from the crest of a shrub-covered, gentle hill. He was cloaked in heavy, three-meter-long leaves plucked from one of the southern forest’s older trees. The leaves were thick enough to block whatever heat leaked through his armor and dark enough to blend into the wilder growth covering the hill. Still as he was, not even computerized sensors would pick him up, and in Plymouth’s muggy, equatorial heat, he wouldn’t register as a thermal blip. He chewed on a sweet piece of the genetically modified sugarcane that had adapted to Plymouth and slowly shifted left for a better view of Delta City below. Leaves and vines crunched beneath his elbow, filling the air with their rich, earthy scent.
From his position, the airport registered slightly more than eleven and a half klicks distant. Through the carbine’s advanced optics, he could make out enough details to get a sense of the challenges the city presented.
Delta City was nestled in the southern shadow of the low Serenity Mountains range on Riviera’s east coast. Plymouth’s equator bisected the city’s center. The city was a bustling metropolis, home to more than ten million people and Plymouth’s largest university. Built on the Hercules River delta, the city provided a vast array of economic opportunities: mining, manufacturing, construction, and transportation. In the last few years, work had begun on the Hercules Shipyard, a project expected to eventually employ nearly three thousand. Already, ore for the first double-hulled deep exploration vessel—a one-hundred meter monstrosity—was being refined in the nearby Stapleton Ironworks.
Although the thick forest surrounding Delta City had been cut back decades before, the indigenous plant life was resilient, constantly creeping back to the edges of the city’s southernmost expansion: District Seven. There wasn’t much to be done about the forest’s intrusion other than to occasionally send a contingent of heavy earthwork vehicles out and drive back the wild with steel, electricity, and muscle. No one was about to abandon the most stable stretch of land on-planet because of a few fist-thick vines and poison-spitting flowers. Besides, District Seven had been built around Plymouth’s busy Singh Bey Airport, the only airstrip capable of servicing larger orbital shuttles of the sort Delta City’s future was tied to.
At its longest stretch, the airport spanned nearly eight klicks to accommodate the longer strip needed by runway shuttles. Five-meter-high walls surrounded the airport on all four sides, sealing it off from the encroaching forest to the south and west and from the rest of District Seven to the north and east. Rimes focused on those walls. More specifically, he focused on the corpses hanging from the walls that faced the forest. Ropes ran from the corpses’ necks to struts that supported concertina wire. Bloody strips of flesh hung from the wire here and there. The executed had been forced to climb the walls, most likely while their hands were bound.
Based off the even distribution, Rimes estimated a thousand victims, all slowly cooking in Plymouth’s harsh sun. Scavengers had been at many of the corpses already, tearing away ripe prizes.
Rimes lowered his carbine and struggled with the nightmarish phantasms of Molly and the boys writhing at the end of ropes, feebly calling for him to rescue them.
He wiped away tears that felt cold on his burning cheeks.
“Confirm corpses along south and west walls,” Rimes whispered into his earpiece. “I count one thousand even.”
“One thousand…” Gwambe’s voice was thick. He was half a klick northwest of Rimes’s position, overlooking a path often used by mining vehicles. “Confirmed.”
After a moment, Meyers broke in. “Partisans?” From his position in the crook of a tree almost three hundred meters east of Rimes’s position, Meyers was within spitting distance of a small, brackish lake they had used to replenish water.
Rimes looked at the corpses again. “I see women and children. Doubtful there were a hundred partisans, much less a thousand. Those camps to the south hadn’t been visited for a
few days; I’m thinking object lessons.”
The communications channel stayed silent for several minutes. Rimes considered the executions as he surveyed the rest of the city. Metacorporate forces were visible throughout. There was a force garrisoned near the governor’s mansion that was even larger than the airport garrison. Civilian police vehicles had been repurposed to metacorporate security needs. Gunships—there appeared to be two functional and a third under repair—frequently patrolled the city and its surroundings.
“Garrison force, maintenance facility northwest of runway zero-four.” Rimes watched the airport for a moment longer. “Estimate fifty strong. Two functional gunships. Garrison force, governor’s mansion, estimate…seventy-five strong.”
“The police station, it has been converted into a garrison,” Gwambe said. “I see ten in and around. Estimated force: twenty-five.”
“Those aren’t new,” Meyers said. “Where’d they put that force they pulled from Charleston? You don’t just absorb nearly fifty soldiers into an existing garrison.”
Rimes thought about that for a moment. “Task it to Banh and Dunne.” He scanned the shipyards again. “Garrison force, shipyards, storage facility. Estimate fifty strong.”
Meyers whistled. “So, three hundred. Conservatively. If they pull out of Howard Plains that’s nearly another fifty.”
“They won’t clear Howard Plains,” Rimes said coldly.
Meyers and Gwambe said nothing.
Rimes had made clear there would be operations only he knew about. Everyone understood the need for operational security. The metacorporate forces had become even more brutal since Concord’s destruction. Even the hardest soldier would break under the sort of torture the mercenaries had turned to.
Rimes was waiting in the center of camp when Banh and Dunne returned to camp. It was shortly after midnight, their approach cloaked by a heavy rain. Rimes stood and waved for them to head into the improvised shelter he’d set up as his command post. Once they were out of the rain, he stepped into the shelter.
Rain thumped against the heavy, vine-bound leaves that acted as a roof for the shelter. Two branches rested in the cradling bough of an ancient, sagging tree that ran nearly horizontal a couple meters off the ground. The shelter had a roughly rectangular shape, approximately three meters on each side. More leaves covered the ground, providing insulation as well as some level of protection from insects.
Rimes settled to the ground and pulled off his headgear. Banh and Dunne did the same, then took slow pulls from their water bottles. Rimes waited and watched them.
Finally, he asked, “Did you find the Charleston force?”
“Thirty, tops, Colonel,” Dunne said. “They had a lot of wounded, and the mercenaries are running low on medical supplies. They’ve cut the civilians off. Some emergency cases. There’s a lot of bribery. It’s ugly.”
Bribery. Cooperation. “Where are they?”
“Weatherby Hospital. Southeast side of the city,” Banh said, then opened a workspace in his BAS and shared it with Dunne and Rimes. Then, he dragged a map of Delta City into the workspace and began overlaying imagery collected during the reconnaissance, highlighting various points as he went along. Dunne dragged in more imagery and data.
Rimes examined the map as it filled out. Buildings transformed as new images replaced those from a few months prior. Delta City had suffered terribly under the metacorporate occupation. The people captured in photos looked emaciated, broken. Buildings seemed unnaturally enervated. Damage—bullet holes, fires, craters—was visible through many sections of the city. The destruction seemed indiscriminate, nonsensical, more cosmetic than structural or functional.
“The partisans surrendered, just like we suspected,” Dunne said. He pointed to a building that had suffered recent fire damage. “Twenty-two of them locked up here in the jail. Mostly cops and security people. They’ll be executed today or tomorrow.”
“It was surrender, or see one thousand people executed a day, Colonel,” Banh said. “The first to go were prisoners, people they had rounded up with ties to the governor, business leaders, and other troublemakers.”
Rimes nodded. The mercenaries were operating off long-established methods for dealing with partisans: start by rounding up people in positions of power, establish expectations for operating under the new regime, announce executions and other acts to intimidate and break down resistance.
Rimes looked at images of the citizens again. “How’s the food supply holding up?”
“There’s rationing,” Dunne said. “They’re really relying on shipments from Howard Plains. That’s probably the biggest challenge to their fear tactics. People get hungry enough you never know what they might do. They’re having power problems too. Mostly it’s rolling brownouts, but they’ve had full-blown outages. They killed some of the engineers early on, and now they’re paying for it.”
“Any friction between the mercenaries?”
“Yes, Colonel. Quite a bit,” Banh said. “Not enough for things to break down. Not yet.”
“Patrols?”
Dunne highlighted the main thoroughfares of each district. “The garrisons used to send out a pair every hour to walk their section of the city. When the partisans killed a couple they switched to four. Now, they go out in groups of six or eight, or they don’t go at all. We saw one patrol the whole time we were there.”
Rimes studied the updated map. The mercenaries were spread too thin across the colony, as they were inside Delta City. The city had a half-dozen main thoroughfares connecting the harbor to the government, commercial, and industrial districts. One thoroughfare connected them all to the airport, and a kilometer of that was the Marder River Bridge. Positioned as they were, the mercenaries wouldn’t be able to quickly consolidate forces. They were vulnerable to isolation.
“How many guards in the prison?”
“Five,” Dunne said. “Very sloppy, Colonel. Very lax.”
Meyers appeared outside, and Rimes waved to a spot at his side, then shifted to give Meyers room to sit. An awkward silence settled as Meyers squatted next to Rimes and glared at him.
“We’ve been going over their defenses,” Rimes said, sharing his workspace with Meyers without acknowledging Meyers’s anger.
“I can see that, Colonel,” Meyers said. “I thought we agreed we would do this together. Sergeant Gwambe should be involved as well.”
“We’ll brief him afterwards. Things have escalated. We have a window of opportunity.” Rimes looked Meyers in the eyes. Meyers’s anger at the slight to his position was obvious; Rimes maintained his icy calm. “Now that they’ve executed so many, everything has changed. They’ll be executing the partisans next. When the food shipments stop coming from Howard Plains, it’s going to get worse: mass purges.”
Meyers continued to stare, water slowly dripping from his hair onto his nose and cheeks. “Sergeant Gwambe and I should probably have provided our perspective on this, don’t you think, sir?”
“Under ideal situations, with any chance of different interpretations, absolutely. I don’t think there’s much to interpret here.” Rimes glanced at Dunne and Banh for their perspectives.
Dunne blinked. He looked uncomfortable, and his accent became noticeable. “It’s plain as a dog’s balls, Captain. They’re frightened and desperate. They’ve killed a lot of the civilian power structure already. There’s no support for them. If there’s an opportunity, I think the civilians will do right.”
After hesitating a moment Banh nodded. “The mood is very bad, Captain Meyers.”
Rimes pointed to a building marked armory and power plant. “What are they storing in the power plant?”
Dunne glanced from Rimes to Meyers, as if seeking assurance that the uncomfortable moment had passed. “Mostly confiscated weapons and ammunition, Colonel. I didn’t really see much of value. Sidearms, a few shotguns, and old assault rifles.”
Meyers sighed heavily, signaling his reluctant commitment. “Guards? Numbers, alertn
ess, patterns, shifts?”
Dunne shook his head. “It’s locked; someone swings by a couple times a day, or a patrol—usually six men—checks it. We were telling the colonel they don’t patrol much since the troubles started. That’s about it.”
Meyers rubbed his hands together. “Obvious leadership?”
“Each force has its own hierarchy,” Banh said; he looked to Dunne, who nodded. “The way I see it, an officer and his noncom, sir. The rest, they are just individuals or pairs. There is no real cohesion.”
Rimes stared at the display, fighting back the growl deep in his chest that demanded action now. “How reliable would you say your sources are?”
“Reliable, sir,” Dunne said without hesitation.
“Reliable, Colonel,” Banh said. “They could have turned us in for food or medical treatment at any time. We may never have been loved here, but the locals’ hatred, I would say it is universal toward these occupiers.”
“All right.” Rimes closed his eyes. “Grab a bite to eat, then wake the others. We have a Christmas gift to give our fellow citizens. Captain, I think it’s time we woke Sergeant Gwambe. We have some planning to do and not much time. I believe we should get those Hawkeye UAVs back in the game.”
19
25 December, 2173. Plymouth Colony.
* * *
Rimes sat inside the command post shelter, legs curled in front of him, eyes tracing slowly from Meyers to Gwambe, listening to their breathing and the patter of rain on the leaves overhead. Meyers’s features were rigid, and muscles twitched along his jaw. Gwambe, still shaking off the last traces of a precious and rare slumber, seemed anxious but also sluggish. It was an uncomfortable dynamic, one that filled the little shelter with tense heat, but it was what Rimes needed.
“Let’s start with a quick review of the updates.” Rimes tapped through the highlights on their shared workspace, subtly examining their reactions as the data populated their displays.
