by John Murphy
Kerrington employed as much diplomacy as he could muster. “I understand, Dr. Houlihan. We’re just candidates on a qualifying mission.”
“Mission Veritas. Yes, I know. I invented the damn thing. What a disaster. I’ve produced nothing but killers. It’s horrible. You people are horrible.”
“We’re not bad people,” Kerrington insisted. “We were just given orders—”
“Ha! So many killers claim they were only following orders.”
“This is different. We were supposed to come here and set off a bomb. But now we see you people are living here, so we’re not going to do that. We aren’t blindly following orders. We’re trying to use good judgment.”
Dr. Houlihan shook his head. “This war is horrible…so much death, so much destruction. It should be stopped—at whatever cost!”
“Yes, we agree!” Dohrn said. “It is horrible! It really should be stopped. We should just come to the table and achieve peace like the Carthenogens teach us.”
Sowell and Mitchell exchanged skeptical glances.
“We’ve come back to remove the explosive devices from your control room,” Kerrington said. He and Dohrn began inching in that direction.
Dr. Houlihan perked up. “Wait.”
Kerrington and Dohrn froze.
“If you want me to let you take your explosives, I want something in return.”
“What?” Kerrington asked. “We don’t have much, just some food we picked up in the forest.”
Dr. Houlihan’s face took on a sinister grin. “No. Something better.”
“Okay, how about our plasma rifles? We’re done with our mission. We’re going to get picked up in less than an hour, so we don’t need them anymore. We can leave them behind.”
Sowell shot a look at him. “So they can be used against future candidates?”
Kerrington waved off the objection.
Dr. Houlihan clasped his arms in front of him and tapped his chin, contemplating.
“What is it? What can we give you?” asked Kerrington.
Dr. Houlihan pointed at Goreman. “Give me the girl.”
Everyone gasped in surprise, especially Goreman.
Sowell said, “Wait, we can’t do that!”
“Sure you can. We need someone to…do the dishes.”
Sinister laughter rose from the catwalks below.
“She wouldn’t be the first person to abandon Mission Veritas,” Houlihan said. “You can tell your commanders that your saucy little vixen here has…defected.”
Kerrington considered his options. “You can take the redhead,” he said, nodding toward Mitchell.
Mitchell stared at him, aghast. “You can’t do that! I’m not some kind of bargaining chip.”
“Listen, Mitchell,” Kerrington said, “you stay here for now. We’ll get the explosives out of the way…”
“No!” Mitchell backed away from the group.
Kerrington spoke over her objection. “We won’t blow them up. When the shuttle arrives, we’ll come back and get you, just like Pima and Carmen.”
“No! I refuse.”
Dr. Houlihan watched with a gleam in his eyes.
Dohrn looked at Kerrington. “It will get them to give up the explosives, and we can complete the mission and get out of this hellhole!”
“Come on, Mitchell,” Kerrington said. “It’s a simple hostage trade. It would only be a couple hours. You’ll be all right.”
Vasquez stepped up. “You can’t do that, man! You can’t trade your people to make yourself look like a fucking hero!”
“You bastard!” Mitchell shrieked. “You’re insane! They’re going to rape me!”
“No, Mitchell. They won’t do that. Just stay here for the team so we can complete the mission. We’ll come back and get you.”
Mitchell shook all over. “No!”
Sowell turned to Kerrington. “We’ve got to come up with something else.”
“No, I can assure you—”
Another hairy figure sprang forward, grabbed Mitchell from behind, and hauled her into the shadows quicker than they could comprehend.
She screamed…and was gone.
Sowell and Vasquez lunged to go after her, their balance impaired, their movements clumsy. Kerrington blocked their way with his arms outstretched. “No! Stand down! That’s an order!”
They turned around, and Dr. Houlihan was gone.
Mitchell’s screams echoed through the shaft.
Kerrington fought to hold Sowell and Vasquez back. “We could get lost in here. We’ll come back with plasmas and find her.”
Sowell and Vasquez eased up, wild-eyed and agitated.
“We may never get her back,” Vasquez said.
“They could hide her somewhere, and we’d never find her. We should follow them now!” Sowell shouted.
“We’re unarmed!” Kerrington said. “They might have weapons. They could ambush us and we’d all be dead. Think for once!”
They stared at one another in anger.
Kerrington breathed heavily. “Let’s go get the explosives before they come back. Then we’ll get the plasmas and go find her.”
A few more moments of angry stares passed, then Sowell backed off. “All right. But let’s be quick about it.”
They piled onto the catwalk leading to the control room. They heard and felt a distinct clank, followed by a long, twisting groan from the metal beneath their feet. Their combined weight was too great for the aging structure. They felt a sudden shift and downward slant.
Another snap echoed down through the bottomless shaft as a connecting bolt of the segment they were on gave way. They froze.
“Oh God!” Goreman whimpered. “I didn’t see this coming!”
More twisting, groaning.
Kerrington struggled to keep the panic out of his voice. “Move quickly, but carefully, back toward the entrance.”
The two securing bolts at the other end gave way, and the twelve-foot segment of catwalk dipped perilously downward.
Forgetting care, they scrambled as quickly as they could to get off the falling segment. Dohrn tripped and sprawled, her fingers clutching the metal grate. The catwalk swung down beneath her, leaving nothing but a quick slide into the void below.
Kerrington bent to help. “You’ve gotta back me up on this whole thing, all right?”
“What?” Dohrn stared at him in alarm. “What are you talking about? Pull me up! I’m slipping!”
He struggled under her weight until Sowell helped. Together, they got Dohrn up onto the stable portion of the remaining catwalk. The three of them sped back to the junction platform.
Dohrn turned to Kerrington. “What did you mean back there?”
Kerrington pulled her in close. “Since I saved your life just now, when I make my report to command, you’ll back me up on what just happened with Mitchell.”
She stared at him in disbelief. Then Kerrington added, “And I will forget what you said about killing us to defend the Carthenogens.”
Dohrn nodded. “All right.”
Sowell waited on the exit path. “What about the explosives?”
Kerrington looked around, assessing their situation. “Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
CHAPTER 27
15 Minutes to Extraction
THE SIX REMAINING CANDIDATES streamed out of the mine complex. Sowell and Vasquez raced to their gear. Kerrington and the others caught up as the first two donned their equipment.
“Okay, candidates, we’re done,” Kerrington said, struggling to catch his breath. “I’m pretty sure we’re close to the pick-up time. We’ll just wait here for the shuttle.”
“Wait! That’s bullshit, man,” Vasquez said. “You said we’d go back and get her. You can’t let them take Mitchell! Who knows what th
ey’ll do to her?”
Sowell huffed. “There’s no doubt what they’ll do to her.”
Goreman sobbed, gasping for breath.
Sowell fumbled for his helmet. “We’ve gotta go back and get her—by force, if necessary.”
Sowell and Vasquez picked up their plasma rifles.
“No!” Kerrington said. “We aren’t going back there. I’m not going to risk any more casualties. This mission is done. We’ll tell them what happened and they’ll send down reinforcements to retrieve her.”
Sowell flipped up his face shield. “You don’t know that! You don’t even know if a shuttle’s coming to get us. Those animals are probably—” He caught himself, as if the obvious was unspeakable. “They’re probably abusing her right now!”
Kerrington stood in their path. “You guys can’t go in there to save her, guns blazing. We can’t be killing a bunch of innocents.”
Vasquez got in his face. “They aren’t so innocent now, are they?”
“We’ll put our plasmas on stun! We gotta get Mitchell back.” Sowell changed the mode on his rifle.
“He’s right, man. You wouldn’t want to be left there,” Vasquez said.
“Soldiers get captured in real combat. We have to think about what’s best for the mission. She’s a POW until we get reinforcements!” Kerrington’s voice was near hysteria.
“You gave her up!” Vasquez shouted.
Kerrington would have none of it. “No! This mission is done. This is all bullshit. Ever since we touched down, everything has gone wrong. I can’t believe how bad this has been. If you guys weren’t such a bunch of unqualified fuckups, none of this would have happened!”
13 Minutes to Extraction
Killian had swung wide of the landing pad to avoid recapture. He crept along the catwalk in total darkness.
The metal grating added to the pain of his bleeding feet, but the strong effects of the dense nitrous oxide helped him ignore it some.
He thought of his rescuers from Bangkok. They almost scrubbed the mission rather than risk killing civilians. If he encountered civilians in the mine, he reconciled that he would scrub this one, too. Still, his hunch was the ones he saw were hostile.
“Hello!” he called. “If you can hear me, get out! I’m going to set off the bomb. Get out for your own safety.”
Silence.
He tried to guess what kind of damage might occur. Would just the control room be destroyed? Maybe some of the catwalks? Or would the whole place come down? He was uncertain.
He felt his way along the handrails.
He found the junction platform. The glow from the light stick that Dohrn had tossed illuminated the area with a faint white light.
He repeated his warning twice more.
His eyes adjusted to the light. He was able to make out a gap in the catwalk before him.
He looked around in confusion. Had he taken the wrong path? He could see the control room ahead, but couldn’t figure out how the gap had gotten there or how he’d traverse it to get to the explosives.
He noticed a pipe overhead crossing the gap. It was thin, but after testing, he was certain it would hold his weight, even though it flexed quite a bit. He had traversed similar obstacles on the O-course in basic. Although back then, he hadn’t been injured and exhausted. He had no other options.
He jumped up and grabbed the pipe, swinging from hand to hand. The pipe was dry and layered with dust, giving him better purchase. The muscles in his back stretched and tore. The cuts from the crystal fragments stung, making his breath come in short gasps.
Halfway across, his hand slipped on a slick spot. As he scrambled madly to regain his grip, his other hand began slipping, too. He used his momentum to scramble to the far side of the gap. The suspension rod extending from the ceiling jerked and rattled wildly under his weight.
He turned his final swing into a dismount sooner than he would have chosen. He stretched his legs, landed, and rolled. All-consuming pain from his back stabbed through his body and brain as if he were a towel being wrung tight. His last swing had snapped the suspension rod. Debris rained down, clattering into the shaft.
He looked back and saw the pipe dangling.
Killian turned and stumbled to the control room. It was empty. He got on his hands and knees and felt around in the darkness.
No bomb!
The other candidates must have taken it.
He desperately felt around once more, but found nothing.
He hung his head, breathing heavily. His head swam.
Defeated, he picked himself up and staggered to the catwalk.
The gap.
He wondered if the others had fallen into the shaft.
He looked for a way to cross the chasm. The dim light from the light stick below wasn’t enough for him to see any detail, but he could see that he was on the side of the gap with nothing below. The catwalk on the other side was at an angle, sloping up before him like a steep ramp.
He heard a distant scream for help echoing up the shaft.
Mitchell!
Adrenaline surged through him.
Seeing no other way to cross, he backed up as far as he could and ran, hoping to get his footfalls to land right and maximize his distance. He pushed off and flew face-first across the bottomless shaft. His gut and hips hit the collapsed part of the catwalk, and his chest and arms slammed into the level portion. His entire body jolted with pain. His fingers clutched the steel grate.
He got up and wheezed, the wind having been knocked out of him.
He peered into the darkness and caught a glimpse of a lighted tunnel at the other end of a catwalk below.
“Help!” Mitchell screamed. The cry was faint, but he was certain it was her.
Almost breathless from pain, he scrambled to the junction and found a set of steel stairs that led to the lower platform. From there, he followed Mitchell’s cries for help.
Killian found her in a dimly lit room, where she was on her side, bound, and in a nitrous oxide stupor.
In front of her was the bomb, with its numbers ticking down.
00:05:20
“Mitchell, are you okay?” Killian started to cross the room.
A dark figure stepped between them. It wasn’t the slight Dr. Houlihan. This miner was considerably bigger and bulkier, with long, wild hair.
Instinctively, Killian shifted his weight and readied for an attack.
The troll-like figure made several threatening lunges toward him. Killian dodged again and again.
“Give it up, boy,” the troll said, his voice deep and gravelly. “You’ve already been disqualified.”
Killian’s face twitched in confusion. What could this miner know about anything?
“Let me take her out of here,” Killian said. “At least let me stop the timer.”
“She’s staying with me, boy. Save yourself and leave before I toss you down the shaft.”
It took a moment, but Killian realized Mitchell’s capture and the placement of the bomb made the inhabitants hostile. “Get out of my way or I’ll kill you.”
“You can’t hurt me! I’m unarmed.”
“So am I.”
Killian ran toward him, feinting with an exaggerated haymaker. The miner ducked, just as Killian wanted. Killian brought his knee up, combining his thrust with his momentum, right into the miner’s midsection, then slammed down a hammer strike on the man’s head. The troll fell forward and rolled over and away. He got up and lunged again.
Killian sidestepped, but struck the barreling miner in the forehead with an open palm strike. The man stood up, stunned and wide open to attack.
Killian could easily strike a deadly blow to the man’s throat, or grab his hair and chin, then twist, using the man’s own falling weight to snap his neck. So many lethal options…
Instead, Killian put him out of the fight with a quick chop to the collarbone. The man hollered and reached up instinctively with his other arm, moving it toward the injury, but his arm went slack with pain. He staggered backward, trying to recover, then turned and dashed into a dark hallway.
“Oh, thank God!” Mitchell said listlessly.
Killian returned to her. “Are you hurt? Can you walk?”
“I missed a step when they were forcing me down here. I hurt my ankle.” Her speech was slurred. “I don’t think it’s broken, but I don’t think I can walk.” She squinted at him in the dim light. “You’re covered in blood.”
Killian ignored her comment. He had to halt the timer.
00:03:45
He flipped open the top. The arm and disarm buttons were missing. Only small holes were left where the plastic button stems had been broken off.
“The bomb is going to blow,” he said. “We have to get out now.”
Killian jumped to untie Mitchell. He helped her up. She yelped a bit, but hopped on one foot.
Killian put Mitchell’s arm around his shoulder and helped her hobble to the steel staircase. He unwrapped himself from her arm. Holding the handrail, she hopped up a step, then a second, then a third.
“Can you get up there on your own?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Good, keep going.”
He raced back to the room where they’d been and snatched the explosive device. The orange rope he’d tied on to the handle dangled.
00:02:31
Mitchell was halfway up the steps by the time Killian joined her.
Killian pushed past her and ran up onto the junction, then toward the control room. His feet felt like stumps on the metal grate. In the darkness, he broke his momentum just in time, and found himself teetering at the edge of the gap.
He looked down at the numbers.
00:01:46
He swung the device by the handle and let it go. The rope caught on his left wrist. The weight of the device jerked him off-balance.
He fell forward.
As his body and the bomb slammed into the sloping segment of catwalk, he clutched at the metal grate. He dug his fingers through the slats in the catwalk. The bomb dangled at the other end of his arm.
