Denholme followed her out of the office. De Schwartz was waiting. Leant up against the door were two rifles and a case of handguns. Helena motioned for Denholme to retrieve them.
“Where to ma’am?” asked De Schwartz.
“Back to the shuttle.”
He hesitated, his face directed slightly away from hers like a naughty child, “Ma’am we cannot clear anyone for take-off.”
“Take me to the commander,” said Helena. De Schwartz, with a trace of stiffness in his shoulders, led them back the way they had come.
The commander did not look pleased to see her. He didn’t bother to straighten up or welcome her but continued with his exertions. Most of the transports were now loaded; the RAPs had already departed. The building they’d been using was empty. It occurred to Helena that the commander was emptying Mbeki first, sending troops somewhere as reinforcements second.
“Commander, thank you for your cooperation, with your permission I’ll be leaving,” said Helena. He briefly looked around and eyed her up and down as if she were a rookie officer bouncing up to report for their first tour.
“You can’t travel directly west of here, Indexiv have pushed through the border from Lobatse. Engagements are currently underway from the border through to Lichtenburg and Rustenburg.” De Schwartz hovered nearby, stoic but ruffled.
The commander dismissed him, the major sighed with relief and ran for one of the transports.
“Commander, why are you evacuating?” she asked
This time the commander did not stop to address her, but walked away, forcing her to run to keep up with him.
“Indexiv will puncture the southern states’ lines within the hour; it is a short drive from their current position to Mbeki.” He stopped and turned around to face her. The dust kicked up by hours of heavy weapons movement collected darkly in his damp and wrinkled face.
“Ma’am, Mbeki is not a fortress and it cannot be defended. We’re moving to secure geography. You would be wise to do the same thing.”
“What do you mean?” she asked
“We’ve been informed the splinter heading this way demands you be handed over.” She started but he held up a hand to stop her, it was the first time he had gestured anything when speaking to her. “You’d better get gone. I’m not interested in what you Families are fightin’ over, I just don’t want it on my doorstep. Yes, we could support you but we are neither obliged to do so nor would be it be in your interests for us to engage. If you are to fall behind their line you should do so alone. Needles and haystacks.”
Helena understood the sense of it immediately but that did not stop the cold and easy logic of his decision leaving her feeling as if she were heading into a night from which all others were fleeing.
There was a high frequency whine at the periphery of her hearing. Like a dog whistle, it pressed into her eardrums and demanded her attention. She stopped paying attention to the Commander, looked into the sky. The commander watched her for a second and spat onto the floor.
“Shit,” was all he said. “Time’s up, Ma’am. They’re firing from the north, you’d best be gone.” She looked back at him, but he was already heading towards the last transport in the column. Climbing into the cab, the APC moved off before the Commander had closed the door behind him.
Helena watched them go, the call of incoming ordinance entering normal hearing range. Denholme dumbly gazed skyward, hands raised to shield his eyes from the sun. Apart from a few people running to make it below ground, they were suddenly alone in an airless quad.
The waspish whine grew until it was a pitched roar. The ground beneath them shook as a wave of bass unsteadied their footing.
It occurred to Helena that they were the only people left in the base. She sprinted for the tank, the idea of being alone and in the open tearing at her chest. Denholme chased after her but was unable to keep pace. By the time he arrived, she was sat in the co-pilot’s seat waiting for him, having logged in. The tank’s AI was ready to go.
Seeing Helena occupying the turret chair he sank down into the cramped confines of the pilot’s seat, gave curt commands to the tank which moved under his instruction.
Multiple rounds of incoming fire could be heard, even through the biopolymer armour casing the two of them could hear a continuous wail of noise. The end of the world in a few dozen kilos of material. They did not wait around long enough to see the clouds of debris being blown skywards.
The surface of the base was being taken apart, the burrowing shells would land later when the satellites, now fixed on Mbeki, had relayed their images of surface annihilation. Helena was thankful that Indexiv had not attacked them using orbital platforms.
They would be locked down until one side or the other had gained some decisive edge in the accompanying electronic warfare raging across the many branes of the Cloud.
She knew the night would bring with it a sky full of flares and explosions as a hot war unfolded in low orbit. She thought briefly of her brother, Michael. He faced the imminent danger of a nuclear missile or high-energy weapon punching a hole through the station where he was based. Michael defended the risk by saying that he had chosen such a life.
In their last conversation before she’d left for the South Pacific, he’d reminded Helena that his job essentially involved being hoisted into a vacuum with only the protection of a thin sheet of metal.
On Earth, damage to a building would probably not impact its inhabitants. Without the blanket of an atmosphere, a hole the size of a pinprick could mean doom for everyone aboard. In this context, the prospect of surviving a strike whose sole purpose was to obliterate its target was laughable. For Michael the war was about engaging the opposition in the Cloud and doing their utmost to keep his enemies’ real weapons seized up and inoperable.
“Where’re we headed ma’am?” asked Denholme, pricking her isolation. She had reviewed their options as she waited for him concluding their only chance of escape was to head for the old city, into the radiological poison that was Johannesburg. If they could get there and hang low for an hour or two, it would give them a chance to move south, to try to outflank the incoming Indexiv splinter that was headed their way.
She expected the splinter would be under the command of another Oligarch, someone as much trained for war as she was trained for diplomacy. Desperate to avoid such a confrontation, she decided to flee, taking the commander’s advice to fall behind enemy lines unobserved.
Knowing she was the point of the advance left her feeling numb.
Why are they coming for me? All they have to do is reach the boy first. It didn’t make sense that they wanted her too. She hoped she’d not have to find out.
Helena refused to let her Secondary AI suppress the release of the chemicals that gave her butterflies in her stomach, knowing it would keep her focused on flight.
“Head for old Johannesburg, due east, I’ll give you directions when we reach the conurbation.”
Denholme swung the tank around and threw them towards the nearest exit from Mbeki. Helena tried to patch into the geostationary network of satellites only to find Indexiv had co-opted those over Johannesburg, denying her access. There was no way for her to check the impact patterns of incoming fire.
They would be heading towards their hideout under a hail of high explosive strategic warheads. It would be like a mouse dodging shotgun pellets. As they sped towards the perimeter of the compound, the sound of the shelling changed. The deep whumps of impacting shells were replaced by smaller crumps followed swiftly by sonic booms. The bombardment had reached its second stage, highly specific high-yield strikes aimed at dismantling the base’s ability to respond when ground troops moved in.
Helena’s Primary AI suggested that they stood more chance of escape during this phase. The battalion would be prioritising weapon systems, communication relays and roads. Its confidence did not make Helena feel better.
Denholme got them to an exit whose gate hung open, a mess of tangled polymer wire and m
esh. A smoking crater whose epicentre was all that remained of the road that exited the base.
Helena assumed the radiation wasn’t going to be lethal in the old city, but knew she was hoping to catch a break.
They reached what remained of the outskirts of Johannesburg half an hour later. Unlike the centre of the city the old shanty towns had collapsed, rotted away utterly. All that remained now were the roads, rusted sheets of corrugated tin and clumps of earthwork rarely topping the height of a man.
Dust swirled across a scarred and crumbling road. Nature had rewilded the environment. Insensible to the dangers of radiation damage, vines and ivies crawled along between lean-tos and sheds. Except for the termites, whose haunting chimneys towered higher than anything left by man, little else had returned.
The conditions were too barren.
They entered the city along the remains of an arterial highway. Helena was scoping with the turret, trying to get used to the controls in case it came to a firefight. She sat on a feeling of being out of her depth, leant back from the scope wondering if it was even worth her time trying to familiarise herself with it.
A collapsed sign propped up half way across the road signalled the beginnings of Auckland Park. The majority of the buildings in the area had been gated, set back from the road, it had once been a place of plenty.
The city had seen rapid changes in shape and prosperity in the years leading up to the Evacuation, but the north of the city had consistently been the most prosperous, and therefore the whitest. As they skimmed through, raising clouds of powdered tarmac in their wake, they were watched by packs of sickened dogs, their tails hanging limply between their legs.
Helena wanted to head south then back out west. As they crossed the city the eerie quiet of empty streets echoed inside the cabin.
She wanted to find the person who’d destroyed the city and ask them why. Why had they done it? With all the centuries of building, of people cooperating, why had they broken everything in that one act of destruction?
Helena had never known anything like it. In her lifetime, no barrier had ever been insurmountable. She prided herself on her move from one division to another in the face of opposition from within her family and without. It had taken everything she had to make it work. Yet all her achievements seemed as nothing in the light of what she faced, the struggles of someone who had never been outside of her own house. She tried to view this as a reason to see her current situation as nothing more than another challenge to overcome. The illusion fell away as soon as she tried to put the thought in place.
She was alone, unable to risk communicating with the Bureau, Euros or her own family.
All she had was Denholme. He was as far from her kind of people as the base Normals Indexiv wanted to destroy were inferior to him.
Are you so different? asked her primary AI.
She felt a chill ascend her spine as it spoke, tried not to think about what it might mean for her if she didn’t get home soon. She treated its question as white noise to be endured.
They crossed into Newtown, the high towers of old downtown less than a kilometre away, their expensive sculptures, once manicured parks and broad boulevards wilted under time’s glare. They passed museums on their right, nestled among living spaces. Old signs, peeling and broken hearted, invited them to see the Worker’s Museum, a history of South Africa. One state of many which hadn’t survived the flood of High Technology.
Turning north, they emerged from the cover of crumbling buildings. Denholme brought the tank to a halt, setting her down on the earth. Leaves and dust, polythene bags and torn shreds of tyres scattered from under them. He waited for Helena to decide what she wanted to do.
Helena turned her viewfinder first one way then another. She was looking at the last accurate maps of the city, nearly two hundred years old and useless in the face of the decayed landscape before her. They had passed roads where there was no passage, collapsed buildings and wrecked vehicles barring their progress.
Helena was concerned the satellites that had targeted the base would be looking for her as well. The only way of avoiding detection was to expend as little energy as possible, to hide in the ruins of the old city. The radiation would hopefully make it too difficult to pick out their energy spectrum.
It would give them time, even if it endangered their lives.
Out of nowhere the tank’s auto targeting systems informed her that a number of possible foes had been detected moving south in the streets parallel to them. Denholme must have been locked in as well because he had the tank in the air within seconds. He moved south as soon as Helena gave him the nod.
They could not risk reckless flight, so meandered fitfully down Harrison and then Simmonds until they were less than three blocks from the edge of downtown. Her heart hammered inside her chest.
Coming out into the open, they happened upon a small fire. Around them, scattered awnings and tents were pitched, doorways were open. Lines of crawling vegetables were coppiced along walls where they would receive the most sunshine. Denholme let the tank sit at the entrance to the square. The soft hum of its superconducting magnets was the only sound. Helena was cautious; she allowed the tank’s AI to sweep the area, searching for human beings.
It found them.
More than twenty were within a hundred metres of their position: hidden from plain sight. The heat signatures of their bodies lit them up through walls and debris.
They must have fled as they heard the tank coming, thought Helena.
The AI informed her that those flanking them had stopped.
Her Primary AI chipped in, stating that they were behaving like predators or, more precisely, military trackers.
Her fingers tightened around the scope.
She fought her immediate urge to flee, to order Denholme to accelerate away as fast as he could. She knew a flare of energy like that would draw the satellites’ AIs like a carcass drew vultures.
She took a deep breath, used one of her mindfulness exercises to calm down.
Helena doubted that any crew eking out a life in the ruined remains of old Johannesburg would be armed with enough firepower to threaten them. So she decided to wait and let them come to her.
She asked her primary AI to develop a tactical approach for outflanking the incoming Indexiv force, starting with the current situation. It faded from her consciousness, plugging away. She hoped it was up to the task.
Their pursuers held their ground, out of sight, on the other side of the skeletal flats that stood to either side of their position. A chicken hobbled across the square in front of them, heading for some hessian sacks that lay near the recently abandoned fire. It did not appear well. Helena resisted the urge to take a closer look. She listened to Denholme. His heart was beating at a steady eighty, his muscles were tense and he smelled of anticipation. She ordered her Secondary AI to calm her down, to control her panic response. She wanted to be as self-controlled as Denholme.
A human figure darted across the square, following the path of the chicken. It covered its head with one arm while trying as hard as it could to catch up with the errant bird. The chicken was having none of it, leaping into the air to evade its pursuer. The pursuer stumbled over loose rubble and the bird made its escape. The man lay in the dirt for a few moments before struggling to his feet. Helena risked zooming in on him, letting the auto targeting system worry about the wider threat level. The man was ill, that much was immediately obvious. His hair hung in patchy clumps on his scalp and cheeks. He was bleeding freely from where he had fallen.
Helena recognised the symptoms; radiation sickness from chronic long-term low level exposure. She decided then that they could not stay any longer. There was no way she was dying in some mausoleum to a forgotten society.
The man in the street looked round at the tank but it did not hold his interest. Holding his hands over his eyes in a vague attempt to work out which way his chicken had fled, he started calling out for it. He clambered off in the direction h
e had last seen the bird. It had disappeared with a squawk into a building at the southern edge of the square.
Helena’s AI came back and suggested that those currently flanking them were probably residents of the old city, like the chicken chaser. They were armed, at best, with old automatic rifles. It concluded that they were in no danger.
“Denholme, head south, you’ll come to an old interstate for ground vehicles; follow it. If you can confirm it’s called the M7 even better,” said Helena.
“Yes Ma’am,” said Denholme, and pushed the tank into the square. As he did so the tank’s AI swung the turret round, the controls wrenching out of Helena’s hands. The tank’s AI was not quick enough to stop the incoming rocket propelled grenade from hitting them, dead on. They rocked under the impact. Helena cried out in fear. The tanked regained its balance as Denholme accelerated towards the far side of the square.
Helena’s Primary AI had the humility to apologise for its miscalculation. However, I would point out that these weapons pose a negligible threat.
The tank took care of their attackers before Helena could stop it, unloading one round into the building from where the attack had been launched. The plasma filled ordnance blazed white from within the collapsing building. Concrete dust and flame billowed out of the smashed windows and doors as everything came tumbling down.
Damn! she thought before gingerly disabling the tank’s targeting AI while hoping no one important had been paying attention.
Whatever Indexiv were doing it wasn’t focussed on them. No missile strikes followed in their wake after they left the base.
Chapter 4
SO THEY FLED south. Verdancy returned as they passed beyond the limits of the radiological contamination infecting the old city. Fifty kilometres behind them, she could see splashes of brilliance spatter the sky in the afternoon sun. The bombardment of Johannesburg continued like a perverted jubilee. Helena hoped it was a sign that the incoming forces thought she was still in the city.
A Family War: The Oligarchy - Book 1 Page 8
