by D. P. Oberon
Yoriko worked it out first. “Sara, I think that’s the key. That’s why it was cut differently,” she said. “That’s the key.”
Saradi didn’t hear Yoriko. Her lips opened, closed, and she swallowed. “Bheem?” she called. “It’s me, Saradi.”
His eyes fluttered revealing yellow crust on their sides and the whites of his eyes so bloodshot they looked to be all red. Trisdale didn’t even have to put any effort into holding him.
Peng shouted. “Sara, the dog tag is the key to the rockets. Don’t give it to him.”
“Screw you, Trisdale! What the heck you think you’re doing?” Buckingarra shouted, slamming a fist against his chest. He ran toward Trisdale. The Warrant Officer pointed the SR2 at Bheemasena’s leg and fired. The sound of the gun shot hit Saradi like a punch. She recoiled as if she’d been the one hit.
“Get the fuck back!” Saradi screamed at Buckingarra. He stared at her with huge eyes. Eyes so like Bheemasena’s. His hands up. Saradi realized she’d pointed her LR4 at her own squad member.
“I only shot Bheem’s left foot,” Trisdale said. “Put your LR4 down. Let’s stop playing. Give Buckingarra the dog tag and he will give it to me.”
“Why?” Saradi asked, fumbling under her armor for Bheemasena’s dog tag. She sighed as she found it. So this is the key? She had wedged it there to keep it secure.
She held dog tag out to Buckingarra. He mouthed, Are you sure? She nodded. He stalked toward Trisdale slowly, both his hands up, the dog tag clearly visible in his left hand.
Trisdale grabbed the dog tag with a triumphant smile. He laughed and used his free hand to point at the ground.
He said, “You see that glinting piece of white jutting from the ground. PG9. Self-detonate in three seconds once I move past its perimeter. I’m going to lower Bheem here, right at the edge of the perimeter.” He walked back until he almost stood under the shadow of the Khufu-core’s foyer.
Trisdale said, “I’ll disable the self-detonate when I’m away safely. Do not come after me. Is that clear?”
“Clear,” Saradi growled.
Trisdale threw Bheemasena’s body so that his face would slam into the ground. Saradi leaped forward and caught Bheemasena before he hit the floor as Trisdale sprinted for the Khufu-core entrance. She picked up Bheemasena’s frail body and ran behind a triangular titancrete seat with grass in the middle, probably where office workers used to have lunch.
Buckingarra sprinted after Trisdale. Yoriko grabbed a puzzled-looking Peng and dove behind the fountain with him.
Saradi thought by now she would’ve been past the stage of being caught surprised. Apparently not.
Ganmi, battered, her entire bot face smashed, decloaked in front of them. Electrical flashes of light peppered her core. Her face stained with digital tears. She looked at Peng. “Goodbye,” she said.
Ganmi again formed a net and blanketed herself over the PG9.
The explosion that followed ripped a cavity into the ground and thousands of stones shot out like flechettes. They shuddered against the fountain, toppling the center statue, and against the foyer slagging it to dust.
Ganmi’s eerily human scream melded with Peng’s as the reverberations from the explosion continued unabated.
Another punch of force ripped through Saradi, and she remembered that PG9s issued multiple detonations in three-second intervals. She kept her head down.
“Bheem?” Saradi said once the ringing had stopped and her bones felt solid again. She grasped Bheem’s chin with long, shaking fingers tilted his head so she could look into his eyes.
She kissed him on his cold, blue-tinged lips. Her tears bathed his face as she pressed her cheeks against his and wept.
There was a mote of warmth there, deep down, that told her he was alive. Her forehead leaned against his, and then he spoke, his voice coming from the depths. “Saradi? Is it really you?” His large eyes blinked like a mole emerging from a cave.
“Yes, yes it’s me.”
“The dog tag is the key,” Bheemasena said, and then he went quiet.
“I know,” she said. “Yoriko told me. She always tells me those things.”
“We’ve got to go and get him. He’s heading to the Khufu-core.” His breath rattled in his throat. He felt lighter than Novalie in her arms.
“We?” Tears fell down Saradi’s cheeks. “We need to heal you. You’ve been tortured.” Her eyes swept over his naked body and a rage began to build inside of her.
She pulled him up easily. “Yoriko? Peng?” The two were caked in dust and dirt, and Peng bled heavily from a gash on his forehead where his helmet had cracked, Yoriko’s left arm looked sickly misshapen, like it was broken.
“Do you have any medi-bots?” Saradi asked. No they don’t, they gave their medi-bots to you, a voice inside her head said.
Yoriko and Peng ducked suddenly as a sniper rail tsked past them, slamming into the fountain. They whirled around and opened fire.
“Shit,” Saradi said, gently lowering Bheemasena to the ground. She stood behind a cracked wall several meters behind Peng and Yoriko and fired over them, providing them with cover.
“We have to go after them, Sara,” Bheemasena said, weakly clawing at her. “The rockets.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry about medi-bots. Stinj.”
Saradi stared down at him and her heart seeped. There were no medi-bots. She wished they hadn’t used them on her. Buckingarra was the only one with any medi-bots remaining and he’d charged after Trisdale.
“Get me three stinjs and I can last a battle, please?” Bheemasena stared at her. Her little brother.
“Okay,” she said, crying openly now. She wanted to tell him how much he loved her. She wanted to tell him that he had a daughter to return to.
A lull in the sniper fire made Saradi jump up from their hiding spot and run towards Peng and Yoriko. She skidded in front of them.
“Give me your stinjs,” she said, holding out her hands.
Peng and Yoriko unhitched their stinjs and slapped them on Saradi’s palms. Saradi unhitched her two PG9 grenades and handed them one each.
“Bheem and I are going after Trisdale. You guys do your best. Okay?” Saradi found it difficult to see through the stinging tears in her eyes.
“Oorah!” Peng and Yoriko shouted.
“Oorah,” Saradi whispered, patting them on the shoulders.
She ran back towards Bheemasena the tsking of sniper rails whizzing past her again. She bent over Bheemasena and said, “I’ve never done three stinjs in my entire life. You’re going to get a monumental crash from this.” She slammed a stinj directly into his left thigh, then the right thigh, and finally in the left arm. As soon as the caps detected his skin they faded and the needles jerked out. The orange fluid drained.
Bheemasena’s eyes flared and he jerked his head up and around as if he’d just woken up from a dream. Saradi held out her LR4 to him. “Take this; I can use the handguns.” His left foot looked partially eviscerated but now with the stinj flowing through him he didn’t feel it.
Saradi couldn’t believe she was doing this. She had come here to save her brother, not to go into battle with him.
“So, Sara, how do you like the army?” Bheemasena asked in his almost normal voice as they sprinted into the foyer of the Khufu-core.
A huge explosion behind them propelled them forward.
“It’s okay,” she said, holding his hand. “It’s okay.”
Chapter 39 – Final Countdown
Saradi and Bheemasena ran up a wide set of obsidian stairs that led to the mid-level of the Khufu-core.
“I think I’m missing a lot of the story. What happened here?” Saradi asked as they ran up the stairs. Bheemasena took them two at time. The juice pushed him forward like a banshee. She winced at the sight of his destroyed left foot. It oozed blood with each step he took. Bheemasena was so high on the stinjs he didn’t even bother to put less pressure on it.
“Trisdale was on the original mission with us, part o
f Bravo One Alpha. He’s the traitor. He’s the reason Funafuti and Nathaniel are dead. I managed to infiltrate the Khufu-core and changed the launch authorization. I embedded it in my dog tag and gave it to Penelope Ali. I didn’t tell her it was a key. I didn’t trust anyone. I hoped it would get to you and then well … you would come.” He smiled at her suddenly. “Remember, back in the kitchen? Nova’s tenth birthday. A year ago now. How are they?”
Saradi swallowed. “They’re good,” she said. “They miss you. Mom misses you every day. She’s gone gray because of you.”
“Make sure you tell them I love them,” he said. And then quickly, as if to override her, he added, “Trisdale has a deal with the China People’s Empire. He intends to send the iordite to the orbitals over China.”
“What’s our plan?”
“You need to get the rockets to the orbitals over Australia. Insert the key into a small compute column. I’ll get Trisdale. But hey, we’ll probably have to improvise.”
It was like they were back at home. It felt so easy to banter with him. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
He laughed.
The stairs turned translucent beneath them and became less steep. Beneath them, an entire forest of tall, black compute columns glowed with intermittent organic lights. There were no railings on their passage now; if they fell they’d be skewered on one of the compute columns.
Their breath puffed out in spumes in the frigid air. Bheemasena didn’t seem to register the change in temperature; sweat streaked down his face washing some of the grime away.
“Buckingarra went after him,” Saradi said. “Maybe he found him.” Her AI paused mid-way between auto cycling through her lenses and settled on a thermo-graph two layers deep, but then it reset to her normal, unenhanced vision. Her CoNBAT and AI interfaces, which had been on the fritz for a while, went completely blank. Nothing worked here. Her tech upgrades were ineffective. Whoever ran this place didn’t want anyone peeking.
“Don’t trust anyone from here on out,” Bheemasena said. “We’re almost there.”
They reached the top of the pyramid. From there, a crystal clear transpasteel bridge spanned the pyramid. A sour stench wafted to Saradi’s nose and she recognized the smell of overworked compute columns. The walkway they were on continued ahead, lining the pyramid’s walls.
Saradi made out a figure hunched over the compute console in the center of the bridge. Bheemasena turned to her. “This is it big sister. Thanks for coming to get me.”
“We’re going opposite directions right?” Saradi said.
“Yep, eyes open,” he said, and then he crept over the platform. He turned back, as if sensing she stared after him. He smiled and gave her a thumbs up.
Saradi ripped off her boots and left them there. She didn’t want to make noise as she ran around the edge. She ran, keeping her focus on the center, trying to ignore the fact she could slip on the smooth glass and plunge to her death.
“Where did she go? I told you to stand guard you damn fool. Where the heck is that dog tag?” Trisdale’s voice. Who was he talking to?
“Catch,” another voice said.
“You idiot, it could have fallen,” Trisdale said.
“Just hurry up and launch already.”
Saradi stopped at the edge before turning into the central passage that led straight to Trisdale. Bheemasena would be on the exact opposite end.
“That PG9 would’ve taken them out,” the second voice said. Its familiar sound grabbed at Saradi like the claws of a dragon, digging deeply, painfully. She shook her head in denial. It couldn’t be. The thin, transpasteel glass shuddered as somebody walked close.
“She’s like her brother,” Trisdale said. “Sticks to your boots like shit. Can’t believe the bastard encoded the key in his dog tag. All this damn time it’s been in my sights.”
“What now?”
“After I program the rockets’ new trajectory the triants should arrive to pick us up,” Trisdale said.
A robotic voice boomed in the pyramid. “Rocket launch authorization required.” It belonged to the Khufu-core’s AI.
An audible click followed. The AI said, “Rocket launch authorization accepted. Launching in T-minus ten seconds.”
Saradi knew she had to act. She ran out of the corner. The man whose voice she didn’t want to recognize stood directly in front of her, his face covered in shadow.
“T-minus nine seconds.”
Saradi raised her SR2, priming the shot without a thought. The man turned and the light tore away from him like a blanket.
“T-minus eight seconds.”
“Bucki?” she said, her hands trembling on the gun. “What are you doing?” But she knew.
A gunshot rang out from the other end of the bridge, sending Buckingarra to the floor. His double shoulder-mounted LR4s fired at Saradi.
While this place disabled her tech upgrades, it was the organic upgrades that saved her. The superheated flechettes zinged at her. Her left arm erupted in a burning sensation from shoulder to elbow, and her right arm shot out grasping at air. She fell over the edge of the bridge, and twisted to grab the ledge. She held on and swung her body under the bridge, kicking both feet out, then reached to grab a thin power conduit that ran under the middle of the passageway. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding as her fingers curled around the cord.
“T-minus seven seconds.”
Her two SR2s fell down and clattered to the floor far below. She hunched over, upside down, trying hard to hold on as the force of gravity pulled at her. Her fingers trembled, tendons screaming.
More shots fired at her and she flinched. But Buckingarra couldn’t shoot through the transpasteel glass. He stood over her now, only the glass separating them, and snarled.
“I’ve got her,” shouted Buckingarra. “It’s all good. This spidey bitch ain’t going nowhere except falling to the ground and spearing herself through those compute columns.”
“T-minus six seconds.”
Her hands started slipping from the sweat. Buckingarra waved at her. Goodbye, he mouthed. She had one shot to do this. One shot. Saradi grunted, shifted left and right, gaining momentum for a leap so she could grab on the ledge and swing her body up with one hand. She had to get one foot up on the side of the ledge.
“T-minus five seconds.”
Saradi vaulted. Her head hit the ledge with a bang that made her vision dark, but her foot reached out and snagged the ledge and then she pushed herself right up. She made it.
An LR4 pointed right at her face.
Then Buckingarra Freeman, Saradi’s squad mate, and the joker of the group, fired.
“T-minus four seconds.”
A drill rent itself directly into Saradi’s left cheekbone. She threw herself forward and to the side.
Just before Buckingarra had shot her the air near her shivered—
“Bheem!” Saradi shouted, as she staggered to her feet. Her left arm hung loosely from her shoulder and even through the pain, she could see him as he swung the rifle. Bheemasena smacked Buckingarra’s head powerfully with the weapon. Saradi heard only a muffled “oomph” as Buckingarra’s body flung over the edge.
“T-minus three seconds.”
Buckingarra screamed as he fell. Saradi couldn’t take her eyes away, and watched as his body skewered itself like a piece of meat through the compute column.
“Take it,” Bheemasena shouted at her, holding out the LR4.
Trisdale interfaced with the holo-display panel, his hands moving. He reached for the dog tag in the receptacle, and turned it to confirm final launch just as Bheemasena charged at him. He shot point blank but it didn’t stop a SOHIC soldier filled with three stinjs. Bheemasena slammed Trisdale’s head into the back of the compute node, an audible crack filled the air.
“T-minus two seconds.”
Bheemasena screamed. The fury in his voice gave Saradi pause as she aimed her rifle. He grabbed Trisdale’s head, his hands covered in blood and bashed it
against the compute node. Trisdale grunted, his artificial leg kicked out and Bheemasena spun away.
Saradi fired. The flechettes sheared through Trisdale’s artificial leg and he lost his balance, falling on his hip.
“T-minus one second.”
That single moment was all Bheemasena needed. He lunged at Trisdale, poking his thumbs into Trisdale’s eyes as he took him down. Trisdale tried to shake him off but Bheemasena’s grip was too strong. He lifted Trisdale’s head and slammed it into the ground. Once, twice, thrice.
“Blast off,” said the robotic voice.
Saradi ran toward him. “Bheem, he’s gone.” Trisdale’s head looked like spaghetti Neapolitan.
“Sara, change the course; do it,” Bheemasena’s voice whispered. The huge hole in his chest bled profusely. “Do it!”
Saradi jerked like she’d been slapped.
The compute node blinked at her. All ten rockets had already launched. How did that happen? She didn’t even hear. Her fingers trembled as she called up the flight path. The rockets headed for High Beijing. Saradi overwrote the destination using the coordinates she’d memorized.
Ten thousand feet high the ten rockets changed directions ever so slightly so now instead of flying to China they flew towards the exosphere above Australia.
“Bheem?” Saradi said, going on her knees holding up his broken body. She wanted to tell him that Novalie was his daughter. Instead she said, “Don’t go.”
“Tell Nova I love her.” The light seeped from his eyes.
PART FIVE – HOME
Chapter 40 – Ultimate Price
The lakeside at Fort Windradyne’s green reserves had been cordoned off for the ceremony. Sentry-drones hovered above the gathered crowd, jet-bots flew so high in the sky they were not even visible, and dozens of attack craft stood at the ready. The Greatest Scientist’s holo-banner shimmered in the air alongside the Austra-Asian Empire flag. A hundred feet beneath these banners the AAEDEF soldiers, dressed in army green, air force blue, and navy gray, assembled in three wide columns. All in all, three hundred thousand soldiers stood together, humans and hybrids.
