I was in love.
Some of that bubblegum narcotic might still have been in my system.
* * *
The festivities started up again, but Paige quickly spirited me away down a darkened side corridor on a sub level of the installation. Her demeanor had changed. She was nervous, constantly looking back as if she feared we’d been followed.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re almost there,” she said. “I’ve been preparing for a long time, waiting. You got here just in time. I wasn’t sure anyone was coming at all. It’s been so long since I’ve had orders.”
“Let’s not rush into anything.” My head was still spinning from the intoxicating image of the Brass Dragon’s daughter. I felt as if I’d witnessed some element of nature, instead of just a woman.
“If we’re spotted down here in the maintenance corridors, it will seem suspicious,” she said. “So yes, please, I’d like to rush. Here. This door.” She twisted a handle and I followed her into a room with some kind of giant pipes crisscrossing in every direction. I felt the hum of machinery through the soles of my feet.
“It’s a pumping station,” Turner told me. “Everything’s automated, so nobody comes in here unless something goes wrong—and nothing ever goes wrong.”
She dragged a dusty crate from behind one of the large pipes. It was marked SPARE PARTS and was padlocked. She quickly worked the combination, and the lock popped open. She threw back the lid, revealing a cache of weapons within.
“I didn’t know who was coming,” she admitted. “If it would be a single agent or a whole team. I wanted to be ready.”
I peeked over her shoulder at the contents of the crate. There was quite a selection of rifles and pistols—some military, others civilian. She selected a modest automatic and closed the crate.
She turned back to me, held out the pistol solemnly, like a Pharisee charging an assassin with the demise of a messiah.
I started to reach for the pistol, the training already assessing the pros and cons—12mm, fifteen-capacity clip, a bad bet against power armor, but good stopping power otherwise. A close range pistol best for—
—No.
I pulled my hand back, shook my head.
Turner frowned. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t want it.”
“Look, I know you’re capable,” Turner said. “Maybe you plan to do it with your bare hands, like with a Jovian nerve pinch or something, but she’ll likely have guards around her. You’ve been invited to a private audience with her, but I don’t know the details.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Do you want a bigger gun? Ammunition with exploding tips?”
“That’s not what I mean either!”
“I’m trying to help you, Sloan.” Irritated now. “Tell me what you need.”
“I’m not shooting her.”
“I don’t care how you do it,” Turner said. “Hit her in the head with a fucking hammer for all I care, but now that you’re here, things will move fast. The window for completing your mission is rapidly—”
“I mean I’m not killing her at all,” I said heatedly.
Turner gasped, took a step back from me.
“What?”
“Look, you haven’t been through what I’ve been through. You don’t know.”
“You said the order was to kill her. You told me yourself.”
“Fuck the damn orders.” As soon as I said it I felt the tickle of wrongness at the base of my skull. Every instinct said obey, soldier on, follow orders.
No. No.
“No!” I shouted.
Turner flinched, looked at me with fear in her eyes.
I held up my hands. Easy.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Those orders have been changed so many times they don’t mean anything anymore. They were issued by people who are dead, then changed by their replacements, then changed again for God knows what reason, all from a million light years away. It doesn’t make any sense. I won’t do it.”
She stared at me for a long time, eyes wide, mouth hanging open only slightly. I just looked back at her without flinching.
“But… orders,” she said finally.
I took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Damn it, we’re not machines. We can think. We can feel and reason and resist. We are here—not the Gestapo. I’m not murdering another person simply because I have orders. I’m going to meet her. I’m going to try to understand. Then I’ll decide what to do. Now are you going to take me to her, or not?”
She trembled slightly, most likely wondering where her world had gone, if she’d ever return to a reality she recognized.
“Yes.” It was barely above a whisper. “I’ll take you to her.”
“Good. Then put that pistol back. I don’t want it.” She did so, and we left the pumping station.
TWENTY-SEVEN
First we took an elevator up. There was no display to tell us which floor we were on or how far we’d come, but our destination was high above the ground floor. Turner explained that the elevator only went to one place. When the doors opened, we’d be there.
She took my hand. “I’m scared.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“That would seem to be the most common state of the human condition,” I said, appalled at how intellectual I sounded. “You’re a psychiatrist. You don’t know this?”
“You think I’m exempt from normal human fears, simply because I’m an expert?”
“I guess not.”
“Knowing what I know makes it worse,” she said. “People come to me for answers. You know what the answer is? The answer is, ‘You’re fucked and it’s all downhill from there.’”
“You should put that in a self-help book.”
“This is your fault,” she said. “I wanted to obey orders.”
“We’ve been over this.”
“The single greatest cause of unhappiness is free will,” she told me. “Don’t you see how easy and satisfying it would be to give ourselves up to authority? Parents, God, the Reich. The blissful relief from responsibility, knowing that someone else, someone higher up the food chain, is responsible. Knowing that it’s all out of your hands, and therefore not your fault.”
“You’re not a very good therapist, are you?”
She shot me a dirty look.
“So far, you’re not much of a spy.”
The elevator doors opened. The hall was wide and bright and white—no surprise there. A red light blinked down the center toward the doors at the opposite end, leading us on like we were coming in for a landing. When we reached them a dulcet, androgynous voice seemed to come out of midair.
“Identify please.”
“Doctor Paige Turner. I.D. code 32B27G. I have Carter Sloan with me. He should be a recent addition to your databanks.”
“Voice pattern recognized. You and your guest are cleared to enter, Doctor Turner.”
The doors slid open, and we entered a small anteroom where Mueller waited for us. He’d changed out of his party pajamas and wore a black suit, a patch with the swastika and the dragon over one pocket. He smiled like a politician, and we shook hands.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. “We’re all excited to move forward.” Mueller’s eyes shifted to Turner. “Can we have a moment, doctor?”
“Of course.” She continued on through the door ahead of us.
Mueller shifted his attention back to me, his demeanor serious. “Please understand that only a very small inner circle of people have access to the daughter. This is a special privilege both for practical matters, since we need you to escort her to Mars, and because she’s keen to meet you. You come from an era before the Reich had betrayed its purpose. She wants to get to know you.”
“Thanks. I’d like that.” As I said it, I realized it was true.
“So you’re with us?”
The slightest hesitation, and then I nod
ded quickly.
“Good. We’re glad to have you on board.” His voice changed, taking on a conspiratorial tone. “This is big, Sloan. The biggest thing in the history of the Reich. It starts right now.”
He ushered me through the next door.
You could only really think of it as a throne room.
It was completely white, but not blinding and harsh like the hallway or the infirmary where I’d woken up. The light was soft and natural, pouring in from the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the far wall. In the center a throne sat upon a raised dais, and a woman sat upon the throne.
The daughter of the Brass Dragon.
She rose slowly, regally.
On either side of the throne, a man in black power armor stood at attention, each holding a lethal-looking automatic pulse rifle. Their mission was clear. Obliterate anyone who tried to harm a hair on the daughter’s head. Relief flooded me that such an eventuality would no longer be an issue.
She glided down the steps toward me, her dress flowing around her more like light than cloth. She was perfect and commanding and her gaze upon me made me feel as if I was the only other being in the universe. She smiled, and I felt light, as if I were made of some cool spring mist. She was anything any person could want—mother, lover, savior, friend. I could get lost in those eyes for the rest of my life.
She lifted a hand as she approached. To shake mine? To embrace me? Some other welcome? Her mouth opened to speak, and I breathlessly awaited the first syllable she would ever say to me.
The room shook with thunder, and blood exploded from her chest. She staggered back, eyes wide with disbelief and betrayal. I didn’t even have time to react before another shot took her in the shoulder, spinning her back toward the throne. Blood splattered in every direction.
I looked back to see Paige Turner holding the pistol in a two-handed grip, white-knuckled. Her lips curled back in a feral grimace, teeth white and savage. She fired again and again and again and—
And then suddenly she was dancing, a shaky, jerking jig as fountains of blood erupted all up and down her torso. The rattle of high-powered pulse rifles. The sharp scent of copper and cordite. The armored guards ceased fire, and Turner went down like a marionette with her strings snipped.
I dropped to my knees next to Turner, gathered her in my arms, her blood warm and wet as it soaked into my clothes.
“What did you do?” I demanded. “What did you do?”
She coughed, blood covering her bottom lip. “Or… or… orders.”
“You fool. You little stupid fool.” My mind scrolled though the first aid techniques that had been programmed into my brain. All useless. Turner’s story was coming to an end and nothing in heaven or hell would stop it.
She smiled up at me, white teeth stained with blood.
I wanted to tell her something comforting, something to let her know it hadn’t been in vain. That she’d done the right thing—but I didn’t want her riding to the afterlife on the wave of a lie. So I returned the smile and brushed her hair back behind her ear.
The light went out of her eyes, and there was only a corpse. I felt my eyes grow hot. They started to ache, and then went moist, and suddenly I had no idea who I was or what I was doing here. Why? The simpler the question, the more impossible the answer.
“Aw shit.” The voice came from over my shoulder. I turned my head to see one of the armored guards approaching. He took off his helmet. The guy underneath was remarkable in his pale plainness.
“What the hell? Again? How did she get a pistol in here?”
Mueller spread his hands, and he looked pissed. “You tell me, Jerry. For crying out loud, Turner has been with us since nearly the beginning. How could I know she’d go bananas out of the fucking blue like that?”
“So, you want I should do a cleanup?” the other guard asked.
“No, Duane,” Mueller said. “Just leave two dead fucking bodies in the middle of the fucking throne room. Of course fucking initiate a fucking cleanup.”
“Okay, okay,” Duane said. “Just asking.”
Mueller pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Jesus. I mean, come on. How about a break?” He looked up and saw me. “Sorry about that.”
I blinked at him, mouth working, trying to say something, but my brain unable to supply the words.
“We haven’t had this happen in a while,” he said, “so we’re caught a tad off guard. We’ll get it sorted out.”
I let Turner slip from my arms and staggered to my feet.
“Sorted out?” I looked down at the daughter of the Brass Dragon. She’d fallen awkwardly, one arm twisted back beneath her, legs together at the knees then spreading apart. She looked like wax. “Sorted out?”
Mueller gestured vaguely at the men in the power armor. “Duane, take care of this, will you?”
“Right.” Duane already seemed bored with it.
Mueller smiled tiredly at me. “You probably have some questions about this?”
“What the fuck?” My hands trembled.
“Now that you’re in our inner circle, we were going to reveal our secrets… but gradually,” Mueller said, and he looked around. “I think we’ll need to accelerate the timetable a bit under the circumstances.”
Behind him a hatch opened in the wall. Two robots emerged like little bulldozers. They rolled across the floor, scoops lowering, and pushed the two corpses across the floor. Thick red streaks trailed behind them.
“The daughter of the Brass Dragon is too valuable to our plans,” Mueller continued.
Another hatch opened on the far wall and the robots pushed the bodies into it, the hatch immediately slapping shut again. Other robots had already moved in to scrub the blood from the floor.
“So naturally, we’ve taken the appropriate precautions.” He gestured at another large section of wall that was sliding back to reveal a hidden room. A line of six-foot glass tubes could be seen within, each vertical container hooked to cables and machinery. The thrum of an electronic heartbeat pumped through all of them. A nude woman floated in each tube, eyes closed, sleeping peacefully. Exact replicas of the daughter of the Brass Dragon.
“Clones,” Mueller said.
I blinked at the glass coffins, the women inside waiting for the breath of life if they were needed, like Christmas wrapped dolls waiting to be played with. Duane moved to one of the consoles, tapping instructions for the computer to bring one of the daughters online.
“We wanted to work with authentic DNA,” Mueller said. “We tracked down a direct descendant, and keep her in the detention area on one of the sub levels. Clones are easier to control obviously. Too dangerous to use the real girl. It will take a few minutes to download the memories into a new clone and charge the hypno-emitter, and then we’ll be up and running again.”
My mouth felt dry, and my head was spinning. I gathered myself enough to speak.
“Hypno-emitter?”
“A little gadget we put into each of the clones,” Mueller said. “It emits a subliminal wave that causes people within the clone’s radius to see her as godlike. It’s the real reason we don’t allow brain implants, since they could easily filter out the wave. We’ve spent a long time turning her into a powerful symbol. Those close to her need to feel she’s special, on a visceral level.”
“Fake,” I said. “It’s all fake.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Mueller said irritably. “It’s real because we say it’s real. We’ve made it that way. It’s the reality we’ve created. The one we’ll enforce.”
I was rapidly recovering, my mind clearing. The training was good for something. I measured risk, considered alternatives as I absorbed all of this new information. My mind was a sharp and agile instrument which came up with a plan.
I needed to get the fuck out of here.
TWENTY-EIGHT
They let me go back to the modest quarters I’d been assigned, to make ready to implement their plan. Using my contacts and authority, I was to help
one of the clones infiltrate the most secure levels of Gestapo headquarters back on Mars, positioning her for the coup, while armed men and women waited for the signal. It would all happen quickly.
Blitzkrieg.
I had other ideas.
Arriving in my quarters, I changed back into the suit I’d picked out in the infirmary. I would have preferred a survival suit, but anything was better than the pajamas. Then I took the elevator to the same sublevel I’d gone to before with Paige. I paused at a safety station where a fireman’s axe hung next to an extinguisher and a first aid kit.
I took the axe.
The corridor was deserted, and nobody saw me enter the pumping station with the axe resting casually on my shoulder. I knocked the padlock off the weapons crate and tossed the axe aside.
Opening the crate, I examined my options. There was a variety of pistols, but I chose a pair of giant 12mm automatics for the simple reason that they came with dual shoulder holsters and plenty of extra magazines. I took off my jacket and strapped them on. There was a little beamer with a thumb trigger, too. I strapped that to my belt. There were a few long-range rifles and street sweepers, but they’d only draw attention as I tried to make my way out of the complex.
Which presented another problem. I’d need some kind of boat or submersible. I hadn’t been conscious when they’d brought me in, so getting off the island wouldn’t be easy.
Back out in the corridor, I caught an elevator and went down another level. The corridors were lined with exposed pipes and wiring, and there was a constant hum of machinery. There was a framed map on the wall, on it a red star with the words YOU ARE HERE.
If I turned right, the corridor would take me to the submarine pens. I had no idea what sort of security to expect, but I was going to need some sort of transportation. A left down the other way would take me to the detention center.
I mentally scrolled back through my conversation with Mueller.
“We wanted to work with authentic DNA,” he’d said. “We tracked down a direct descendant, and keep her in the detention area on one of the sub levels.”
Gestapo Mars Page 14
