Pressure Suite - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3

by Various Writers

  She checked her watch. “Less than an hour until the attack and all we can do is sit here.”

  “That’s just fine with me,” Avan said, a little too loudly for Velora’s peace of mind. “All this draftee wants is to get home alive.”

  “And I don’t? That’s pretty stupid, Private.” Velora kept the tone of her voice amiable. “I think the only difference between us is commitment.”

  “Maybe. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody in this war. I serve my time, keep my skin on and go home. You career people, this is your life—all this killing. I think it stinks.”

  “Keep it down,” Velora said, staring at him coldly. “You think it’s all about killing, is that it? Well, let me tell you, Private, this is my first major combat mission and I’m just as scared as you are, but I’m never going to get ahead in any game if I’m dead. As far as proving myself, I didn’t do very well at that when I ran away from the fight yesterday,” she whispered sharply.

  Avan’s cynical smile vanished in a blink. “Run away? What were you supposed to do, stay there and die? That’s not commitment, that’s stupid. People were running for their lives all over the place.”

  “Not corporals,” said Velora, looking at the floor.

  “Oh shit,” mumbled Avan. “I rest my case.”

  Velora sniffed disdainfully and muffled her voice with a gloved hand. “You remind me of my brother, the would-be artist. Nice, gentle guy who hates everything my father ever stood for and isn’t afraid to say so. He was the one who was supposed to be the soldier, not me. But he’s not here and I am, and whatever happens, I’ll do what I have to do. Got that?”

  Seconds stretched to one horrible moment of stunned silence, and then Avan smiled at her sadly, hands playing with the controls on the radio. “Yeah, I’ve got it. Among my several weaknesses, I also have a big mouth. I’m here too, Vel. I just want to go home alive,” he whispered back.

  “Okay, then—we just stay here quietly until our people are in the street. There won’t be many Kraa out there once the hills are cleaned, but if we’re spotted, it only takes one salvo from a Chug and they’ll take us home in a bottle. And we’ve got this little girl here. She understands everything we’re saying, you know?” She looked down at the tiny child snuggled against her, a death-grip on the doll with one hand and the thumb of the other firmly locked in a speechless mouth. The pretty head turned again towards the bloody remains in one corner of the room. Velora turned her around, hugged her tightly, looked into those sad, dark eyes and swallowed hard.

  “God, Avan,” she whispered, “she’s only a baby.”

  Velora checked her watch. Only forty-five minutes until the microwave burn. But from the instant she looked at the watch, it was only fifteen minutes until their own private war with the Kraa began.

  In all the horror she had dozed, awakening with a start when Avan prodded her. He was right next to her under the window, whispering frantically into her ear, “Vel, wake up, there’s screaming out in the street!”

  She jumped to a crouch so quickly that the child nearly fell over, gasping in surprise. It was the first sound she had made. Velora peered over the window sill and saw a small group of civilians in a cluster in the middle of the street, surrounded by six armed Kraa. Women and two older children. The Kraa were poking them with their weapons, moving them across the street in a group and directly towards her hiding place. Down the street, the crew of the idling Chug was climbing up onto the machine and dropping down inside it. Directly in front of her, the engine of the previously silent Chug roared into life, and a snake-like arm reached out to slam shut the entrance hatch. The vehicle lurched forward and rolled quickly down the street to her left.

  The cluster of terrified civilians drew nearer and Velora could hear the women pleading in their rough, Toronton dialect: “Please, leave us here and save your own lives. Not the children! Please, not the children!” A Kraa growl that was a laugh answered their cries for mercy, and Velora’s face flushed with the sudden realization of what was about to take place. This room in which they had hidden themselves would soon be a killing ground again. The Kraa knew their enemy well: to kill civilians in the open would invite an immediate attack by microwave.

  “Avan, take the girl to the kitchen and don’t fire until I do. They’re coming in the front, six of them and a bunch of civvies. Move!”

  Avan grabbed the little girl’s hand and duck-walked across body parts and the slippery floor, the child stumbling along behind him. They disappeared down the hallway. Velora backed into a corner by the window, the MAW-44 covering the front door.

  There were footsteps by the door and hysterical screaming overwhelmed the growls of the Kraa. The door burst open and the civilians piled in, shrieking at the sight of what awaited them. The guards pushed in behind, teeth flashing from thick, reptilian faces. Women and children stumbled to the far corner of the room, huddling there as the guards, backs turned to Velora, raised their weapons, but at that instant one of the children saw her and pointed. All eyes moved towards Velora’s grim face and the weapon she held as she snapped it on auto and sprayed the enemy with splinters of death. Four of the Kraa went down on their faces in a pulpy mess, and a five-foot section of wall disappeared in smoke. The fifth guard had stationed himself by the hallway, too close to the civvies for a clean shot, and now he was turning, bringing his weapon to bear on her. There was an explosion from the kitchen, and the Kraa’s chest erupted in a fountain of blood and shredded tissue. Avan. First kill.

  “Avan!”

  “Yo!”

  “Take them out back to the shed now.” Velora jumped up to look outside and stared straight into the face of the sixth Kraa guard, who had remained outside. His claw was a blur, coming straight through the window and grabbing her by the throat, pulling her up on her toes as spots of colorful light danced before her eyes. She rammed the MAW’s muzzle up under his chin and emptied the magazine into his nightmarish head.

  “Out the back, out the back!” she screeched at the civilians and then coughed, grabbing at her throat to feel where the guard had clawed her.

  The little girl darted into the room and threw herself into the arms of one of the women whom she apparently recognized, the woman sweeping her up with a tearful cry. Women and children stampeded down the hall and out the back door. Outside, the Chug that had been passing by had now stopped and was backing up across the street and turning towards her. No rotating turret, but it was quickly coming into position for a shot. Velora sprinted from the room and down the hall, slamming the back door closed as she exited and saw Avan herding the civvies into the nearby shed. “This way!” she called to him, and he ran to follow her as she moved away from the shed. They had gone only twenty yards when the house behind them erupted in a ball of fire and then shattered as flying embers.

  Reaper fire ripped the ground around them and Velora cried out as a splinter tore across her left cheek. Avan was right behind her when she went in the front door of a house and straight out the back, temporarily hidden from the view of the advancing Chug. They entered the neighboring house from the back and crouched in the kitchen, Velora pulling the radio from Avan’s back. “Tell them what’s going on and get help! In a minute, we’re outta here!”

  Avan was sending frantically when she looked out the front window in time to see the house next door destroyed by withering fire from the Chug, which then turned and headed straight towards them. It pulled up close, nearly on the porch of the building. “Thermite!” Velora screamed. “Lock and load, and get out of here!” She pulled a magazine of Red-Dot thermite cartridges from her belt, slapped it into the MAW and leaped back to the kitchen, where Avan was struggling to load up the radio. “Leave it! Let’s go!”

  Avan followed her out the door. She turned right and crept up alongside the building. The Chug’s rumble vibrated up through the soles of their boots. She turned over her shoulder and mouthed, “Get anybody?”

  “Think so,” Avan mouthed back.


  Velora peered around the corner of the building, pulled back and yelled, “Follow me!”

  The explosion was deafening as the Chug fired, but by then they were climbing up onto it and the building they had left disappeared in flames. Velora stuck her MAW muzzle into a forward port and fired three times. Screaming came from inside the chug. “Get the hatch, get the hatch!” she yelled.

  Avan scrambled to the top hatch as it popped open, a claw outstretched. He pointed his MAW straight down and emptied the entire magazine of thermite cartridges into the living space of the Chug. Flame shot skyward and the claw disappeared. The machine’s surface was suddenly too hot to stand on, but as Avan clambered down he yelled as blood spattered from his left leg below the hip. He fell heavily at Velora’s feet. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” he cried, rolling in the red dirt. A Reaper had hit him from the side at close range, well above the knee.

  A Kraa came around the Chug, his eyes turned down to sight on Avan, and Velora shot him with a Red-Dot at point blank range, the heavy body flashing to ashes in seconds.

  Flames from Kraa cinders licked at her boots as she stepped around the Chug and saw a wedge formation of infantry moving towards her from the airfield. She emptied the Red-Dot magazine at them, five of the heat-seeking thermite projectiles striking home, but still the line of shrieking creatures came on. One hundred yards away, then seventy, then fifty. She fired furiously, mindlessly, magazine after magazine, then scrabbled at her belt and found nothing there. Avan moaned as she tore his ammunition belt from him and grabbed up his MAW. By the time she aimed it, the nearest Kraa was only twenty yards away. She sprayed their ranks with Red-Dots and Reapers, weapon on full automatic, the Kraa now stumbling over the bodies of their dead but still coming, screaming just as when they had come at her from the hills. Save one round for yourself, she remembered.

  As she grabbed her last magazine, the ground around the Kraa erupted in a wall of dirt, pieces of shattered bodies flying in all directions. Two D-7s swooped low overhead, spraying the street with their Gatlings, on course for the airfield and releasing their missiles a second later. Flames from exploding Gulls belched into the sky as the two-place fighters turned and came back to tear up the street one more time. Velora crouched behind the Chug. They passed over her, veering sharply left and right over a burning Chug at the edge of the village. Clouds of steam surged up from the hills, punctuated with small jets she knew were microwaved Kraa exploding like boiling water balloons in their spider traps. Through the roiling steam she saw the APDPs coming in, dropping wave after wave of troops that raced towards her. Only then did she glance up the street, and, seeing no life there, got down on her knees beside Avan.

  One leg and side were soaked in blood, and his face was ashen-grey. He mumbled something incoherent and his eyes rolled around, not seeing her. “Avan, they’re here, they’re here! Hang on!” She slapped his face once, gently, then a second time, hard. “Don’t you dare die on me now! Don’t you DARE!”

  Colonel Andrist looked up from a table heaped with paper as Velora entered his Quonset and saluted him smartly. He returned the salute and smiled. “Good to see you alive, Corporal. For a minor operation, this thing turned into quite a mess that could have been avoided with some accurate reconnaissance. Still have all your parts?”

  Velora took a deep breath, her intestines a tangled knot sending pain messages to every nerve in her body. “Sir—there’s something I have to tell you, and it’s not easy. But I have to do it, sir, with your permission.” She clutched at her pants to keep her hands from shaking.

  Andrist leaned back in his chair and made a teepee with his hands in front of his mouth. “Go on,” he said.

  “During the attack yesterday, when we were surrounded and the Kraa were all coming at us from the hills, sir, I—I ran. I ran from the fight, sir. I have no excuse. It was—a reaction. I felt I had to get out of there, and I did.”

  Andrist chuckled. “Right into the enemy camp, from the sound of it. Bad thing for them.” His smile faded as he saw the look on her face. “What’s your point, Corporal?”

  Velora was near tears. “I acted in a cowardly manner, sir. That’s my point.” And that is the end of my career, she thought.

  Andrist sighed. “Tell me what happened. Everything.”

  And so she told him everything, from the moment she fled until the time she was fighting from behind a burned-out Chug, expecting to die.

  “Now, I want you to think about what you just said, and tell me if those were the acts of a coward.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “They were not, Corporal. I had three hundred people in that attack yesterday, and the only reason any of them came back was because the squad leaders knew when to get the hell out of there and stay alive to fight today. That’s just smart, Corporal. You stayed alive, and today you engaged the enemy on your own terms. And shot the hell out of them. And saved lives. That’s why I’m putting you in for Officers Training School just as soon as I can find the damn form in this mountain of paperwork. Expect your orders to be cut within a week. You have a lot to learn, but you will be one damn fine officer someday. Anything else?”

  Velora stared in disbelief. “No, sir. Uh—thank you, sir.”

  “Good. That private who was with you is outside. I’ll decorate the both of you when we get back in orbit.” Andrist stood up, reached across the table and touched her bloody cheek. “Nice wound there. Rub a little salt in it, should make an attractive scar. Let the troops know their officer has seen combat. Dismissed.”

  Velora turned to leave, still stunned as Andrist said softly, “If the General had seen you out there today, he would’ve bawled like a baby.”

  Avan was lying on a stretcher near the Quonset, attended by a medic. Velora rushed to him and fell to her knees, shouting at the medic, “Is he all right? Is he all right?”

  The medic looked bored. “He’s going home. My guess is he’s got a five-year limp ahead of him.”

  “There goes my dancing career,” said Avan weakly. “Guess I’ll be an architect instead. Hey, look who’s here!”

  Velora looked up, finding herself surrounded by the group of Torontons they had saved from slaughter. The little girl was with them, and she stepped forward with a shy smile. “Her name is Myreika,” one of the women said, “and she wishes to thank you.”

  The girl put her bloody arms around Velora’s neck, and pressed against her.

  “Oh, darlin’, you’re okay, you’re okay.” Velora hugged the child fiercely, then looked down at Avan’s grinning face.

  “Tough guy,” said Avan.

  Velora reached down and squeezed his shoulder. “Yeah. And you, too.”

  The Crossing

  By Fox Mc Geever

  Yes, I’m starting to like it here in Sweden. There’s something about the forests, lakes, and coastline that reminds me of home and makes it easier to feel comfortable in Carmody’s house. In an odd sort of way, I’m starting to feel gratitude and not hatred towards him for tempting me here.

  His letter arrived almost a year to the day after his disappearance. It didn’t contain much, just an address in Sweden, the location of some spare keys to his rented house, and a message asking for help.

  Sweden. When I said the word out loud, it didn’t sound like a big deal. Exotic, almost. It was only when I checked out the airline timetables that I discovered just how big a deal it was.

  A twenty-two hour trip. Three flights. A $1,200 ticket.

  But how could I have refused him?

  Doctor Herbert Carmody had been my inspiration since the day I started at TrentLabs, a light I followed through many a dark day when my projects ran over deadline and upper management cracked the whip. I guess his mentoring had something to do with our backgrounds. We were both from Boston, both second-generation Irish, and we’d both passed through Harvard—albeit twenty-seven years apart.

  The similarities ended there. While I doubt if anyone remembered me at Harvard, Carmody was a legend. The
y even had his picture hanging in the Harvard-Smithsonian above a plaque hailing him as the genius who’d inspired a new generation of particle physicists with his work on string theory and the LHC in Cern.

  Besides, I needed a break. Though the Hermanta project had finished up a month before, I’d been working seventy-hour weeks just to catch up on the paperwork. Opening Carmody’s letter was like opening a window out onto another world where the air was fresh and stimulating. When I called in sick, Frank Bowers didn’t even ask what was wrong. He said he understood, and told me to rest up for a week or two if I wanted.

  I didn’t give TrentLabs another thought. All I could focus on as I crossed the Atlantic was what I’d say to Carmody when I saw him again. Why had he dropped everything and disappeared? Why had he ignored my emails? How had he managed to clear out The Room in TrentLabs without security being aware of it?

  And, most importantly, what had he been working on in there?

  The Room. Those two words always made me shiver. Despite running half a dozen projects at any given time, everyone knew he was working on something else in his own private lab. Nobody, not even the techies, knew what he was up to in there. It was tucked away deep in the bowels of the main administration building, and the only way down there was past a manned security gate and two iris recognition biometric security doors.

  According to a systems analyst who talked a lot when he drank, TrentLabs only allowed Carmody to have the place after he’d threatened to quit, and nobody knew how to get in there. Carmody had hooked up his own security system, and TrentLabs security had to cut their way in with an acetylene torch once they realized he wasn’t coming back.

  Apart from a stack of crumpled paper coffee cups piled in a corner and a lot of burn marks on the walls, they found nothing inside. That’s what really spooked everyone. Everything had disappeared without a single CCTV camera or security guard catching anything.

  The analyst’s cousin was a friend of Tom Raffan, the TrentLabs CEO. I believed him.