Home Planet: Apocalypse (Part 2)

by T. J. Sedgwick

  “Ready to take the shot,” I whispered.

  Laetitia sent her acknowledgement via a HUD text.

  The guards were an untalkative bunch, so I waited for some cover sound, regulating my breathing, applying pressure on the trigger. Then a guard on the right cleared his throat, pushed off the wall and started shuffling over toward the machine gunner.

  “Hey Ro...”

  I didn’t hear the rest as I squeezed the trigger and felt the recoil as the round powered toward the junction box. Instantly, came a crack as the bullet smashed the junction box, plunging the lobby into darkness.

  “What the hell happened?” came an annoyed sounding voice.

  “Damn electricians! Useless bunch of assholes,” said another from the left.

  “Lights are still on over at Sigma, so can’t be a brownout,” a man said from near the entrance.

  “I’ll go get Dylan,” said a young guard, who disappeared into the side door.

  “Time to move,” I texted to Laetitia.

  We ghost-walked around the front to the lobby. The guards weren’t panicking—they must’ve had electrical failures before. Now came the vital moment as we slipped over the threshold and past the machine gun nest on the left.

  The shuffling of feet and the odd conversation masked our ingress and saved the guards’ lives. The side door was on the left-hand wall, near the front. I navigated between a pair of tables and chairs and reached the set of rusty steel doors, Laetitia right behind. Reaching for the handle, I heard footsteps on the other side of the door. I turned around and hand-signaled to Laetitia. We held ourselves flush against the wall moments before the young guard pushed through the squeaking doors.

  “Dylan’s not around. Who else can help?” he said from less than six feet to my right, his breathing heavy as if he’d been hurrying.

  I breathed shallowly, quietly, ready to act should he detect me.

  “Go get a flashlight, I’ll have a look myself,” said a gruff-sounding older man.

  “Okay,” replied the young guy, before turning around and returning though the double doors.

  I reached out and caught the door before it slammed shut. The corridor on the other side was poorly lit so no one seemed to notice. We slipped out of the lobby and into the corridor. Laetitia shot out the light, thirty feet away, taking away the scant glow. We found the stairwell and went down seven levels to the market, through the dim and deserted labyrinth of corridors. The dark corner of the market and the removable panel to the ice tunnel beckoned across the rows of empty market stalls. We’d used stealth and the shadows to avoid contact so far, but suddenly, from nowhere an old woman appeared.

  I raised my gun reflexively, then relaxed as the tiny, shriveled creature dropped her bucket and held up her hands in fright.

  “Please don’t,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered. “We’re on your side. Please don’t mention you saw us.”

  She nodded frantically, picked up her bucket and scurried off.

  We must’ve looked very alien to her and there were no guarantees she wouldn’t report us. But what other choice was there?

  Then I thought of something. A way she could be useful.

  I caught up with her.

  “Please, I don’t mean you harm, I just want to ask you a question. After this, we’ll leave you be.”

  She stopped and turned, still frightened but straightening up she cleared her throat.

  “What is your question, Outlander?” she said in a squeaky voice.

  I wondered if she knew me as The Outlander or just an outlander, not that it mattered.

  “What time are the Games tomorrow?”

  “Well, tomorrow’s Friday, so they’ll be on as usual at 8 a.m.”

  “Thank you. And remember, you didn’t see us.”

  She nodded and we slipped into the darkness and to the removable wall panel and the ice tunnel behind it.

  We retraced the steps of my escape two nights before, passing down the emergency stairwell and the boarded off door that I’d busted through. No one had bothered fixing it. The overflow cells in the former underground parking lot were as dank and dark and deserted as before. Up ahead a thwack preceded a series of piercing screams accompanied by laughter and shouts from two men—presumably guards. My heart told me to haul ass over there and waste the two torturing bastards, but my head told me to stay. This stuff had been going on for a long time and it was my mission to stop it. Intervening now would jeopardize it, so I had to restrain my instincts. I found a cell, checking there was no padlock on the chain link door and went inside. Laetitia followed and we sat down beside one another, backs against the wall in our marine battledress. The visceral cries continued.

  “What is that screaming?” said Laetitia, a note of confusion in her voice.

  Perhaps she’d never encountered torture before.

  “This is a prison. They’re torturing someone. It’s what they do here.”

  “Oh. To what end?”

  “Knowing the way Valdus runs things, probably just for fun.”

  I tried to shut out the noise, but my mind kept focusing on it. It disturbed me deeply, but we couldn’t give away our presence. Thankfully, the guards must’ve gotten bored because after five minutes it stopped. It only made me more determined to take out the lot of them. Although I took no pleasure in killing, these were Valdus’s henchmen and this was war—anyone armed was fair game.

  I settled down on the floor, with Laetitia keeping watch on low-power mode. Away from the shuttle’s power grid, her charge was limited and something told me tomorrow would be a busy day. Sleep came easily with the security my android ally brought. That night, Juliet visited my dreams once again. This time her words unlocked something from a hidden corner of my mind.

  ***

  One second I was with Juliet, sipping a cold beer next to the pool in Hawaii, next I heard a different woman’s voice.

  “Mr. Luker, it’s 7 a.m.,” said Laetitia quietly through the headset, tapping on the helmet which I still wore.

  My eyes parted.

  “Thanks. Give me a second, please.”

  I felt drowsy and tried to recall what Juliet and I had discussed in the dream. If I didn’t get it now it’d be lost. And then it came. As we’d sat at the table on the patio of her hotel in Hawaii—a place I’d only ever seen in real life on a display—she’d detailed why she was there. It was business of course—I knew that—but the specific purpose of her trip was related to the Forever World. Then her words crossed the barrier of time and surfaced in my mind.

  “Branch facility... I’m here to set up a branch facility.”

  As drowsiness receded, I began to wonder if it was all my imagination or if I’d ever actually heard her say this when she video called me from Hawaii many lifetimes ago. Dreams were weird like that—a mish-mash of hopes and fears mixed into a cocktail of memories.

  I suppressed those thoughts and sat up, reaching for a high-energy ration bar and the water tube connected to the pouch on my back. I finished off a second bar, and Laetitia and I made our final plans. Within the next two hours our futures and those of everyone in this Godforsaken city would be redefined. That was if we succeeded. If we didn’t then our fate didn’t bear thinking about. One thing was for sure—like Laetitia, if it came to it, they would not take me alive.

  At 8:10 a.m. we left the cell. The Games would already be underway, the first of the condemned down in the pit fighting for their lives. We followed the old concrete wall on the left, passing the empty cells on the right until reaching the active area of the prison. Rifles raised, I led the way. Despite Laetitia’s superhuman reflexes and armor, she’d not been here before and I knew where I was going. The long walkway with cells on either side was lit but gloomy. We advanced down toward the far end, passing several prisoners. One asked who we were. We just ignored him and kept going. Halfway to the end, the sound of guards walking and chatting announced their impending arrival. As they rounded the corner
fifty feet away, I shot one in the forehead with Laetitia shooting the other guy. They fell forward like ragdolls and we closed the distance in seconds to see another guard sleeping at the entry desk. Laetitia wasted him and we took a left into the stairwell, which led up to the fifth floor. We heard them from two floors above—a whole group of guards heading our way. We retreated to the corner on the landing, keeping ears out for enemy approaching from below. Six guards, their rifles slung, arrived just feet from us. With wide eyes and panic-stricken faces, they reached for their weapons as we dispatched them with silenced three-round bursts. They had no time to cry out, keeping our presence concealed. Sooner or later, someone would find the trail of bodies, but by then I hoped it’d all be over. For Valdus, not us. We stepped over the bodies and ascended the remaining flights of dingy crumbling stairs with missing handrails. They brought us to a set of rotting double doors.

  I sent a HUD text to Laetitia. Fifth floor lobby. We enter in NE corner. Wall to left with old elevator shaft. Entrances to conference rooms twelve through four o’clock. Immediate right is entrance to old indoor pool. Minimize exposure time in open lobby, but neutralize all targets to secure our rear.

  She gave the signal to say she understood.

  I eased open the left door and counted four guards—two at twelve o’clock, two at three o’clock—then relayed this via HUD text to Laetitia.

  We were ready and I counted down, me on the left door, Laetitia on the right. We pushed open the doors and engaged the targets simultaneously. I took out the two at three o’clock, dark red stains blooming on their white coveralls. As they fell, a man and a young boy entered from the far doors seemingly in a hurry to get to the Games. The boy pointed at the dead guards and the man stopped to look in disbelief. From my right, I could hear the crowd jeering and shouting. We entered the lobby and calls of alarm came from the open door to our immediate right as guards saw their fallen comrades. One raised his rifle toward Laetitia, who’d already taken down one of the other two. He got three quarters the way to horizontal when I put a round in the side of his head. He fell backward, but fired into the ceiling. Laetitia hit the third guy and I was ready for all hell to break loose, with guards coming at us from all directions. But the noise of the Games continued without interruption as we entered the final corridor to the pit. The men’s locker room was nearest—on our left fifteen feet away. That was the place I’d awaited my bout three days prior. But I didn’t want to go that way. Once we left the corridor and entered the arena, it’d be one big firefight. We needed to neutralize the guards and get to Valdus without shooting any civilians. And that meant taking the far entrance—the one Valdus and his entourage used. It lay up ahead on the left another sixty feet past the locker room.

  We dashed up the plain, concrete corridor to the makeshift doors, which opened outward. They were nothing more than a pair of hinged sheets of ply with circles cut for handles. We peered through the handle holes, identifying targets. I could see the back of Valdus’s head through several rows of well-dressed men and undressed harem girls. Once we opened the doors, we’d be right behind where they sat. There’d be guards immediately inside the double doors on both sides. We had to move fast. At some point, reinforcements would be at our back.

  With the raucous crowd chanting, “Kill her! Kill her!” on my mark, we did two things. First, Laetitia started dropping guards viewed through the door handle-hole. Few spectators seemed to notice at first. At the same time, I sent a grenade though the other handle-hole, closely followed by a second. I crouched down, shielding myself from the blast and moments later the stun grenade burst. Immediately it dampened the chants to nothing, which morphed into screams and cries of panic. Laetitia continued shooting guards, unfazed by the flashbang. The delayed timer ran its course and the second stun grenade erupted just before we burst into the packed room. The next twenty seconds were a blur of close and medium-range takedowns. And then a hammer blow, deep and powerful, struck me. I was hit. The shooter caught me dead center in the chest armor, knocking the wind from me but doing no lasting damage. I ducked behind Valdus’s cowering entourage, hiding between the bleachers. The shooter popped his head from the inside the changing room and that was the last thing he ever did.

  The sounds of gunfire fell silent, but screams and panic filled the room as the people started making for the exits.

  “Secure Valdus!” I ordered Laetitia.

  “Acknowledged,” she said, and she pushed her way through the VIPs toward the crouching despot. Two well-dressed lackeys—still recovering from the flashbangs—tried to impede her. Both suffered her wrath as she smashed her rifle butt into them—one in the gut and one in the face.

  I took out my .45 caliber pistol and fired three shots into the ceiling.

  “Quiet!” I shouted at the top of my voice.

  With another two ceiling shots from the handgun, they complied.

  Scared-looking VIPs parted as I strode toward the pit. Suppressed sobs broke the hush. I reholstered the .45 cal and jumped down next to the two mismatched figures. A fatter, uglier version of Baltan, sporting a bushy red beard, was in the center just feet away. He stood behind a kneeling young woman that reminded me of Myleene, her face one of pure terror. The brute clasped her long, dark hair with one hand and wielded a sword with the other. I didn’t have to guess what he was planning on doing with it.

  “Drop the sword, tough guy!” I said angrily, pointing my rifle at his head.

  He might have been an asshole, but he wasn’t stupid and he dropped the blade.

  “Now, let her go and move over there.”

  He complied, jogging to where my barrel directed.

  “Now lay face down. You move, I shoot.”

  Again, he complied and I helped his frightened victim to her feet. She ran to the ladder and got out of the pit.

  Laetitia had Valdus by his scuff of his neck by the pit’s edge, his fearful-looking entourage frozen on the bleachers behind. For the first time, the arrogant smirk had left his face, now he glowered at me, defiant and angry.

  “Right, now listen up people,” I called. “Nobody move. You won’t be harmed—unless your name is Valdus—as long as you do not resist. This place needs a new leadership—”

  Valdus’s voice boomed out. “How dare you come here and—”

  I shouted over him. “Laetitia, shut him up would you please?”

  She nodded, picked him clean off the floor and whacked the side of his head with her palm, dazing him into silence.

  Then from nowhere a fat Baltan-wanabe came barreling from the locker room with a knife. Onlookers fell over themselves to move out of the massive guy’s way.

  “Woman! You have insulted the Great Marshal! Now you will die!”

  I smiled crossed my face.

  You don’t know who you’re dealing with.

  Before he reached Laetitia, she threw Valdus into the pit, where his shoulder smacked into the hard concrete floor. The assailant was coming at her, knife raised and at considerable speed. With his teeth gritted, he went for the kill, but met the iron grip of her hand on his wrist. She held his wrist with the knife aloft as he tried to punch her with his other hand. She grabbed that wrist too, so he went to kick her, but quicker than the eye could see she landed a devastating kick to his groin. His instinct was to fold, but Laetitia held him suspended then twisted his knife hand. He cried out and dropped the knife and she kept on going until the bone snapped. Bored of toying with the two-hundred sixty pound attacker she picked him up above her head like a particular light barbell, then tossed him fifty feet through the air to end of the pit. He hit the deck with a sickening thud and didn’t get up. The crowd looked on wide-eyed as the tall, lithe superwoman scanned the humans in her midst for new challengers. There were none and whatever authority we’d lacked before we’d now cemented firmly in place.

  “Does anyone else want to try?” I said, scanning my audience’s reaction.

  No one said a word. Good, I had their undivided attent
ion.

  “Now you’re listening, let me tell you a story, a story about the once-great nation in which this city stood over half a millennium ago. Your language and the ancient items you mine from the ice originate from this nation, a nation called the United States of America. It wasn’t the only advanced country of its time—there were many others around the world—but it was the one that ran this city. The city of Los Angeles …”

  I told them how things used to be. How there was a justice system and however flawed it was, it had to be better than a tin-pot dictator deciding people’s futures on a whim.

  “And in the United States a supreme law ruled the land—the Constitution. Many centuries ago, I swore an oath to uphold that constitution and now I want it reinstated. It’s not for the good of me—we’ll soon be out of here—but rather for the good of you and all of your future generations. This may take many years and I know some of you folks may not read too well, so we’ll talk you through the Constitution right now, then we’ll write it down for you. It’s important you listen because afterward, you’re gonna vote on it.”

  I knew most of the Articles and Amendments, but not all I’m ashamed to admit. Laetitia’s database did, though.

  “Laetitia, please can you explain?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Luker,” she said, still holding a miserable-looking Valdus.