The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  The back door, which led down to the dock, was only twenty or thirty feet away. One Tank Major was at the front of the house, and the other one sounded like it was at the side. No one was at the back.

  “We’re going to run for the water,” Cynthia said. “They can’t swim. We can either get across the water or far enough out where they can’t see us, maybe to a buoy.”

  “That’s all you got?” Mosley said. “Why don’t we surrender?”

  “Because I don’t know what they’ll do,” Cynthia said. She was worried more about Mosley than herself.

  She heard the one behind them move to another part of the house and cleave into it. A moment later, on the opposite side, the second Tank Major did the same. They were coming in.

  “Cynth—” the giant’s voice began.

  “Now!” she hissed. She grabbed Mosley, and they exploded toward the door.

  “I see movement!” the giant roared, and suddenly the house was hit with a tsunami. It pitched and bent as the two Tank Majors blasted through the exterior walls. Cynthia and Mosley slammed through the French doors and bounded down the stairs three at a time toward the water.

  They were still twenty feet from the water when the giants exploded out the back of the house, the back stairs bending and twisting as the Tank Majors rammed them into splinters.

  Cynthia got to the dock first. She heard Mosley just behind her, and behind him, a noise like charging rhinos. She dove into the lake and kicked deep, swimming under water as far as she could.

  A boom ripped past her and turned the lake into a riptide. Pain shot through her body as the water crushed the air out of her lungs, and her consciousness wavered. She held on and kicked frantically, her hands feeling the soft mud and seaweed of the lake bottom. Her her lungs and throat convulsed as they fought against her mind, and she swam hard to the surface.

  As she her head broke free of the water, it slammed into something solid, and for a moment everything was black. Her oxygen-depleted brain thought she was under ice. She frantically scraped at the surface and the object drifted enough for her hands to grip its edge. She pulled herself up and gulped in life. It was a section of dock. She clung to it.

  She looked around her, gasping. She was about twenty-five yards from the shore, and pieces of dock were scattered all around her. Except for a couple of stray pillions, the dock appeared to have been completely destroyed.

  One of the giants was on shore scanning the water. The other was waist deep in it, pushing aside debris. It picked up something in its massive hand. Mosley.

  “He’s aliiiive, Cynthia,” the giant teased. He held Mosley up by one leg as if he were a weighing a bass.

  Then a new voice spoke. This one seemed to come from both of the giants at once.

  “Come to the Twins, Cynthia.” It was Evan. He had commandeered the Tank Majors’ amplified voices. “Sabot wouldn’t want to find his nephew in pieces. He’ll know it was slow . . . and it will be, Cynthia. And for what? We’ll just wait until you sink or come back to shore. Save the boy’s life.”

  Cynthia said nothing. She felt the cold chill of the water make her joints tighten. A wave splashed into her mouth and she spat.

  Evan sighed loudly over the speaker, as if he just darn couldn’t get what the wait was about.

  Mosley came to. Cynthia saw him twisting back and forth, hung upside down and held by the giant’s two fingers. He started to beg and whimper.

  “Tear his foot off.” Evan’s voice echoed over the lake. The boy howled in fear.

  “NO!” Cynthia yelled. “I’m coming!”

  The giants stood down.

  Using the trestle of two-by-sixes as a paddleboard, she kicked toward their wide silhouettes. Halfway in, one of the giants came out and dragged her back to shore.

  Evan kept his word. He let Mosley live. But alive isn’t always better than dead. With death, the dark and quiet fold over you like a well-worn blanket, and the memories and smells, the gentle touches of longing and love, swarm the soul as it’s whisked away. But life can be purgatory. Time can pause, making seconds become hours and hours become weeks. It doesn’t take much. A broken heart, an untimely regret, the bitter pill of an unachieved goal.

  Or, for Mosley, both of his legs minced beneath the knees.

  As the giants secured Cynthia and walked away, and Mosley heard their truck fire up, and its diesel gurgle dissipated into the night, he would have taken his own life if he could. But he couldn’t walk. He couldn’t even crawl. And the pain shooting up his body was napalm. The water’s edge was feet away and he dreamed of rolling into its shallow, lapping waves and drowning. The pain of moving was the only thing that held him in place. Like many of the grievously wounded in war, he lay panting, alive but not there, waiting for footsteps, and praying that the next face that came into view was a concerned ally, and not a foe.

  = = =

  The lake house looked like a wrecking ball had gone through it. The roof listed to the side; the walls were shattered. Outside, the car was crumpled like a soda can.

  Sabot ran through the empty house. He went outside and yelled for Cynthia and Mosley. A whisper came from the lake. He followed it to a thick group of cattails and stumbled across Mosley. His nephew was belly down, his face at the water’s edge—he had almost made it.

  Sabot turned him over. Mosley didn’t have the energy to scream.

  “What happened?” Sabot said. “How long ago?”

  “Tank Majors came and took her,” Mosley said through shallow breaths. “I don’t know when.”

  It was cold, and Mosley’s lip trembled. Sabot’s hands felt rudimentary heat in three-degree increments, but it was clear that in addition to shock, his nephew was suffering from hypothermia. “I’m going to pick you up.”

  Before Mosley could object, Sabot lifted him gently into his massive arms and carried him like a bride to the house. Tears rolled down Mosley’s cheeks, but he didn’t cry out. Sabot pulled a couch from out of the debris and laid Mosley down on it, then built a bonfire from the strewn guts of the house around them.

  “I need to get you to the hospital.” They had no car, only the motorcycle. “I’m really sorry.” Sabot started to cry, in his own way: he had no tear ducts, but his eyes twitched back and forth. He put his head in his hands for a minute and then pulled it together. This was no time to wilt.

  “I have to get help,” he said. Mosley nodded and fell asleep, the orange flicker of fire caressing his face.

  Sabot rode the bike three miles around the lake, looking for help. He ignored the flashing red digital readout that indicated the battery was almost flat.

  At the first house, no one answered the door. The second house was dark. At the third house, an old woman stopped short when she saw the hulking giant through the window.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know who I am?” Sabot asked. The woman looked scared. Behind her, a man with gray hair and a bent back walked toward them using a cane.

  “No,” she said.

  “My name is Jeremiah Sabot. I’m Cynthia Revo’s bodyguard. I have an injured man three miles north and our car is . . . not functioning. Is there any kind of medical anything out here?”

  “Is it safe?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Sabot replied.

  The man finally made it to the door.

  “You’re in luck, son. I broke HR policy forty years ago and married my nurse.” He glanced at his wife. “I was family practice.”

  They didn’t have a car, but they had a wheelbarrow for work around the yard. Sabot ran it to the lake house, put Mosley in it, and carted him back.

  “You’re one of those . . . Tank Minors,” the old man said. He had a stethoscope pressed to Mosley’s chest and his wife was checking the boy’s blood pressure. “Hon, when you’re done, could you get me a bottle of aspirin?”

  The old woman judged Mosley’s blood pressure stable, then went to the back of the house.

  “He’ll need a specialist,” the man said
. “It looks like his legs were run over. We got nothing like that out here.”

  “I can have someone come out,” Sabot said. “Do you have any transportation?”

  The man rubbed his chin. “Not really. We get supplies twice a year out here, and it costs a shit ton. The Jacobs down the street have a vehicle, but it’s like a golf cart—it won’t get you far. We have mountain bikes.”

  “Bicycles?” Sabot said.

  “Yep.”

  “Would you trade one of your mountain bikes, plus your care for my nephew until help arrives, in exchange for a two-million-dollar motorcycle?”

  “Take the bike,” the old doctor said, then looked Sabot’s massive frame up and down. “In fact, you may need both of them.”

  Ten minutes later, Sabot pedaled toward Chicago at a steady thirty miles per hour. The bike groaned in protest and the chain skipped gears. Slung to Sabot’s back was a custom 4-gauge shotgun and a bandolier with thirty shells. The doctor was right—it would have been nice to have had the second bike. The iron filly between his legs wasn’t sounding so good.

  Chapter 8

  War proved the elasticity of time. While the artillery whistled down and the earth shook around him, Raimey retreated into this mind. The five minutes of fire and concussion booms felt like hours, and he thought about everything, from his childhood—the time he stole a toy truck from a neighbor and never told anyone—to his Uncle Jerry, who drank most of his life, found a good woman and turned his life around, and died six months later. Every thought was about choice, and Raimey came to a stark realization, possibly before his death: he had stopped making any.

  He knew when. It wasn’t after he’d agreed to become a Tank Major. It was days later, when he saw his wife for the last time, and spoke to his daughter through a curtain.

  “I thought we had more time,” Tiffany had said.

  No one but me, my love.

  The last blast echoed through the broken city. Raimey waited for a moment, and when he was convinced it was over, he dragged himself out of the building, like a boy from a ball pit. His body hissed from the heat, and the systems designed to protect his fragile flesh eased back from the red. He let everything settle.

  He searched for Juhavee, following in the direction he had fled, and found him a half-mile away, driving back toward him.

  “You made it!” Juhavee said in disbelief.

  Raimey wasn’t in any mood for banter, but he was happy to see the little man still alive. His tank would be useful. “We have to move. There’s no telling if another artillery strike will come.”

  “Lead the way.”

  As they crossed the bridge, John kept an ear open for any telltale booms. Just before they reached the other side, Raimey had Juhavee hang back while he approached the bunkhouses. They were abandoned. Food was out in the open, as were water and other supplies. Stafford and the Russian Tank Major had spoken about forces leaving. Raimey waived Juhavee forward.

  “What does this mean?” Juhavee asked when he saw the bunkhouses.

  “It means they’re almost done with what they came to do,” Raimey said.

  ===

  The road to Boma was only a road in the loosest definition of the word. A mile in, and the pavement vanished under a mudslide. Raimey sank knee deep as he trudged along, but the torque from his electric motors overcame the suction easily.

  The mud was too deep for the Abrams, though. It wallowed and slid, getting stuck every forty yards. Juhavee attached tow chains and Raimey helped drag it out, only to have it get stuck again. A stretch of road that should have taken twenty minutes to traverse instead took hours. To their left, the brown-churned water of the Congo River rushed by. While John tugged and pulled, lurching the tank forward, he dreamt of swimming.

  After a few miles, Raimey finally felt substance under his feet. A half mile after that, they rose out of the muck. The “road” at last became a road. Raimey jogged to make up time and Juhavee followed, the tank treads sloughing off mud in long flaps.

  Raimey wondered what he would find in Boma. Stafford had said he worked for the Coalition and that Evan commanded him. If that was the case, did Packard? Raimey had been special forces for over thirty years, and the one thing he knew about the military was that more often than not, the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. That seemed to be the case here. No synergy, a complete conflict of mission.

  Normally, Raimey wouldn’t have an ethical debate about such things—they would just group and sort. But something here was putrid, too under-the-table, too far removed from the ethics—yes, ethics—of war.

  “The children,” his wife said in his ear, as if he was stupid. He shook his head, trying to get her out. Yes, the children. Raimey had seen mass graves. He had helped fill many. He had seen indentured servitude, the Coalition bathed in it. But he’d never seen a gross exploitation of children. Yet it was the core of the mission—Stafford had indicated as much—and their end game was so vile that they had hired a team of mercenaries to complete it.

  Another thing John had learned in his thirty years as special forces: there were some truths he would never know. Because while the hands would occasionally cross and stumble, they were as deft as a magician’s and as secretive with their tricks. Soldiering and missions were the byproducts of planning and interests. The long view never flowed downstream. The mysteries lay with their makers. They sent others to die or triumph under whatever pretenses would best help them achieve their goals.

  Raimey had no mission, no orders to follow; he had to go with his gut. And his gut said that everything about this felt wrong. He knew that, at the end, if Packard and the Mort Vivant lay dead and the children were set free, it was quite possible the Coalition would come in and say he had made a mistake. He could live with that.

  He could die with that.

  A few hours later, Juhavee spoke. “We’re close.”

  The clear air had browned from the constant purge of smokestacks. The water had taken on a reddish hue, and trash littered the bank.

  “How far?” Raimey asked.

  “A mile or so. What are we going to do? We can’t just go in.”

  “You can’t,” Raimey said. The area around Boma was tall, rolling hills. “Come with me.”

  They veered off the road, rising away from the river. The tank did fine on the ascent. From here they could see the city. It looked more like a prison. A moat surrounded it, with only one road leading in. Raimey had imagined a dilapidated town, and the buildings on the perimeter didn’t disappoint. Most of them were as brown as the soil and nearly as dirty. But farther in was a row of massive factories. Tiny dots moved to and fro—thousands of people.

  “What are the factories for?” Raimey asked.

  Juhavee pointed to the first two factories. They were black with soot, their huge smokestacks billowing poison. “Those process the raw ore”—Juhavee dragged his finger over to two massive cargo ships in port—“for shipment, there. And the cargo ships bring materials from other places”—he moved his finger to the farthest factory, which was low and sleek—“for that factory to manufacture circuitry for the region.”

  Raimey pointed past the factories to a massive structure offshore. It was barely visible in the smog. It looked like an oil rig with Mickey Mouse ears. “What about that?”

  Juhavee squinted. “I’ve never seen that before.”

  “No idea?”

  “No idea.”

  “Then that’s probably why they’re here,” Raimey said. “Come on.” He showed Juhavee where he wanted him to be.

  = = =

  Packard stood on a podium, looking out at the crowd of warlords and tyrants that had all come to Boma for the auction. His right cheek had popped, and the slurring had come back into his voice, his tongue clearly visible as it danced through the auction. Behind him, below, were a thousand children. On each side of him, his hands on their shoulders, were twin brothers. They looked horrified.

  “Do I hear two for two? Two oun
ces of gold for these fine lads! Twelve to the day, strong as mules. Looking for a new home!”

  “Twenty carats of diamonds!” a warlord called out, showing a handful of glittering stones.

  Packard waved the offer away. “Diamonds aren’t worth shit. Gold, copper, mercury—give me something I can use.”

  “TOW missile system,” another said.

  Packard raised an eyebrow. “Functional?”

  “Yes. But I want ten boys for it.”

  Packard looked off the side to Salt, who nodded. “Fuck it, sold. Grab eight more, but that TOW better work.”

  Salt took the boys away, and another walking skeleton ushered the winning bidder toward the back to pick out the rest.

  “Look at that deal! We’re moving units, people.”

  The auction continued. Packard started bundling. One at a time was taking too long. He was in a good mood. They had found the three they had needed. Stafford was dead, but hey . . . cost of war. When his crew had reported back on how much damage the other Tank Major had caused, Packard had decided he couldn’t risk it. So Stafford had become cheese for the trap.

  Packard smiled, and it stretched his seams, showing his teeth and tongue. War had death, it had tragedy, but it also had spoils. And Packard liked spoils.

  “Sold! Ten ounces of gold for twenty of your choosing. Get back there while the getting’s good! People, the quality is only going to drop. You don’t want to be picking from the one-armed ones, do you?”

  The warlords laughed and Packard kept the bids coming.

  = = =

  Raimey made his way down the hill through the trees and thicket. He moved quietly, carefully avoiding anything he might snap or crush. Power reduced patience, Raimey had learned.

  As he got closer, he saw the moat. It was thick with muddy water and the lone road into Boma rose above it, creating a kill zone. Raimey weaved his way around the perimeter of the bog to get as far from the road as possible. On the hill, it looked like most of the town was at the factories and dock. Where he was, he saw and heard nothing. The outlying shacks were crumbled and unlivable; the air was choked with mosquitos. He wouldn’t live here either, if he had a choice.