Uprising

by David Ryker

  “Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. The Duke said that.”

  Quinn fought with duelling urges to both embrace the man and drive a fist into his teeth, so he compromised and did nothing.

  “How the hell did you get here?” he asked Maggott. “You must have set off every alarm in the security grid!”

  “We were halfway to Germany when I got the text from Ulysses,” said the big man. “He said to get our arses back to Moscow and wait fer a signal, then drop in cloaked mode to that floor o’ the Tower.”

  “Oleg wasn’t watchin’ what ah typed, so I jes laid out the plan in the text.” Ulysses shrugged. “All these fellas had t’do was a version of our own skydive—drop like a rock, then hit them inertial dampener thingies. The blast went outward and took out the winder there.”

  “And knocked us all across the room,” Quinn pointed out.

  “Worked, din’t it? Only problem is now that we’re down here, everyone’s gonna be after us.”

  “We’ll need someone to distract the air assault with the Raft while the rest of us get King to the vactrain station,” said Quinn. “I’ll need a volunteer.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Maggott, though his expression said he’d rather do anything else.

  “Are you sure, big guy?”

  “I’d just slow ye doon,” he sighed. “Ye know I’m not good in tight spaces.” His face brightened. “But by God, I’ll lead those fookers on a merry chase.”

  “Atta boy. Gomez, drop us in the street as soon as you see an opening that’ll accommodate the Raft. Then you’re on the ground team.”

  “You agree with that, Han?” Gomez called out.

  “I told you Quinn’s in charge!” she barked fiercely. “If that changes, I’ll let you know. Until then, you answer to him, understood?”

  “Copy that.”

  Quinn was trying to sort out the ridiculous events of the last twenty minutes: they had completed the lion’s share of their mission, found the real Frank King, escaped Oleg and did it all without injury. Han gave him a look that appeared as bewildered as he himself felt.

  “Did all of that just happen?” she asked.

  “It sure did.”

  “And we’re going to get out of this with our asses intact?”

  He grinned. “That’s a distinct possibility.”

  She shook her head. “And this is how you people live all the time?”

  “See what you’ve been missing?”

  They looked into each other’s eyes for a few moments before bursting into laughter.

  “It’s up ahead here,” said Han, pointing to an alley that branched off the street and headed straight into the crumbled remains of a bombed-out building.

  They were pushing their way through the throng of Muscovites who were packed onto Mira Avenue. It was full dark, and they were about a dozen blocks from where Maggott had set them down before disappearing into the night sky. The landing had attracted a lot of attention on the ground, but Maggott had flown off uncloaked to draw the drones away, and it wasn’t long before the locals went back to their business of scrounging out a living on the streets.

  “You’re sure it’s there?” Quinn asked. “It looks like a pile of rubble.”

  “Alina said it’s hidden under a hollow piece of limestone. We just need to push on all of them until we find the one that actually moves.”

  “Good enough.” Quinn sped up and took position next to King, who was walking between Bishop and Gomez. They were all trying to stay inconspicuous, but King couldn’t help himself from gazing around the streets like a bizarre tourist in the worst vacation spot imaginable.

  “It’s even worse than I remembered,” he said. “Poverty, I mean.”

  “There’s another war coming, too,” said Quinn. “That’ll just make it worse.”

  “I honestly did want to change things, you know. To take the fate of humanity out of the hands of the military industrial complex and start looking into how humanity could finally reach their potential.”

  “A lot of people say that’s an unrealistic dream, sir.”

  “People who say that are too lazy to use their imagination.”

  Quinn smiled and wondered how easy it was going to be for King to use his imagination when they told him about everything they’d been through in the last few months, and the Gestalt, and the threat it posed to the future of mankind. It was easy for politicians to talk about imagination, but getting them to believe the impossible was something else entirely.

  They reached the pile of rubble and began searching for the hollow stone. They marked out a grid, with teams working each quadrant. Quinn had paired himself with Ulysses.

  “Look, I want to thank you,” he said. It came out as a grunt since the rock he was pushing turned out not to be the one. “For taking the lead at Oleg’s. You probably saved our lives.”

  “No prob’ly about it,” said Ulysses. “Ah did save yuh.”

  “And I want to apologize for believing that you’d ever, you know, betray us like that.”

  “No need. Mah plan hinged on yuh believin’ it. Wouldn’t work otherwise.”

  “I suppose.” He stopped his search and looked Ulysses in the eye. “It’s just that, after everything we’ve been through, I want you to know that I do trust you.”

  “Ah wouldn’t trust me if ah was in yer shoes.”

  Quinn frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we’re diff’rent people, Quinn. Ah ain’t a Marine, and ah ain’t never gonna be one. Always gonna look out fer Number One, y’hear?”

  “Copy that.” Quinn went back to the task at hand. He supposed he hadn’t exactly gone looking for a tender moment, but whatever he’d been hoping to get out of Ulysses, he hadn’t gotten it.

  “Found it,” Gomez said from a few meters away.

  He rolled back a cube of rock to reveal a hatch about a meter in diameter. Quinn took point down the ladder that led into the darkness below and the others followed. Quinn’s feet came to rest on a solid concrete platform that lit up with fluorescent illumination as soon as it sensed his body weight.

  The tube stretched as far as the eye could see. The train itself sat waiting about twenty meters away, its doors open and ready to receive passengers.

  “Zero better have taken care of our fare,” Bishop said in low voice. “Or this could be the shortest trip in vactrain history.”

  “And we should know,” said Quinn. “We’d be breaking our own record.”

  “Whoo-ee,” said Ulysses as he reached the platform. “Ain’t never seen nuthin’ like this. Howsis thang work?”

  “Once the train starts and the doors are sealed, the tunnel becomes a vacuum,” said King. “Hence the name vactrain. It can travel at more than two thousand kilometers per hour on the frictionless magnetic surface of the track since there’s no atmosphere to slow it down.”

  “An’ where’s all the air go?”

  Quinn pointed to a slot between the track and the platform. It was about a meter wide, with a guardrail on either side.

  “It gets sucked into those channels and then blasted outside through a series of vents. Then it just draws atmosphere in from outside again when the train stops.”

  “Huh. How deep you figger that puppy is?”

  “I couldn’t guess,” said Bishop. “But I’m pretty sure those guardrails are there for a reason.”

  Han walked to the hatch that led into the train and punched in a code on a panel set into a kiosk standing outside it. The screen pulsed light in a circle for a few seconds before turning green. She looked back to them and nodded.

  “The code worked,” she said. “Next stop, Astana.”

  Quinn, Bishop and King all shared a glance that spoke volumes.

  “Watch your step, sir,” said Han. She was standing with Gomez and Shane at the train’s open hatch and reached a hand out to King.

  “I appreciate it,” he said with a smile. “And I’ll never refuse the offered hand of a beautiful l
ady. I may have been frozen, but I’m not dead.”

  What happened next would be etched in Quinn’s mind for the rest of his days, even though it happened in the space of less than a minute. The second both of King’s feet were on the gangway the bridged the platform to the train, Han’s left forearm snaked its way across his throat and pulled him toward her while her right hand emerged from behind her with a pistol that looked almost identical to Oleg Johnson’s Makarov. She pointed the muzzle to King’s temple while Gomez and Shane both knelt behind her and stood back up again holding pistols of their own.

  Quinn felt the world tilt under his feet for the second time that day. He could see Bishop and Ulysses on either side of him moving their hands into the standard position adopted by people staring down the barrel of a gun.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Quinn yelled, instinctively using his most commanding tone. “Stand down immediately!”

  “Sorry, Quinn.” The look on Han’s face suggested she might actually be telling the truth. “It’s ironic; everyone today was talking about how easy it would be to screw over Zero, and yet the ones who actually work for him are the ones who’re going to pull it off.”

  “Why are you doing this?” asked Bishop. “If you’re not working for Zero, then who—”

  He didn’t have to finish; Quinn could see the answer dawning in his eyes even as he realized it himself.

  “Drake,” he spat. “You’re double-crossing Zero for Drake, you assholes! How stupid can you be?”

  “There’s a war coming!” Gomez pointed his pistol at Quinn. “And if you don’t know which side is going to win, then you’re the idiot!”

  “How did he get to you?” asked Quinn, fuming.

  “We went to him,” said Han. “When Zero told us about this mission, I knew there was something going on. Drake figured out that it was King we were going to find in Moscow, and he definitely didn’t want him falling into Zero’s hands. So he offered us a billion-dollar deal and we took it.”

  “Drake is a double-crossing son of a bitch. Why the hell would you trust him?”

  Han lowered the pistol a bit so that it was no longer digging into King’s skull. To his credit, King was holding his composure despite the circumstances.

  “Drake made us who we are, Quinn. He plucked us out of obscurity and gave us a lifestyle we never could have dreamed of. We never stopped being loyal to him, even when we started working for Zero. Zero knew that, which is why he sent you here with us as insurance.”

  Bishop barked a bitter laugh. “This is rich! Turns out we can trust an inmate who used to be an enemy in prison, and we can’t trust the fellow Marines we shared a fucking trench with for years!”

  “Hey, lady, ah ain’t loyal to nobody but m’self,” said Ulysses. “So if you need another body on this train—”

  “Oh, please,” Han scoffed. “Any idiot can see you’re one of them.”

  “You got me wrong.” Ulysses took a few tentative steps toward the gangway, so that he was only a couple of meters from her. “I play fer the winnin’ team every time.”

  Han moved the muzzle away from King’s head and pointed it directly at Ulysses. “Stay where you are,” she warned.

  Quinn took a breath, and with it a leap of faith. He hopped to his left, in the direction opposite of where Ulysses was standing, and rolled onto the concrete platform. The move accomplished its goal by distracting Han long enough for Ulysses to approach from her blind side and grab the Makarov. Quinn knew that Han and her men would do whatever was necessary to keep King alive, which meant they wouldn’t use their weapons in close-quarter combat for fear of hitting him.

  Han pushed King forward with her left hand and pulled back with her right, trying to keep control of the pistol while keeping King safe. But she didn’t catch him full center and instead the push spun him so that his belly slammed into the guardrail on the side of the gangway.

  Quinn watched in horror as King’s waist folded over the top of the guardrail while his momentum kept him moving forward. The weight of his upper body drew him down until he was dangling on the railing over the narrow chasm that drew the air out of the tunnel, staring down into the blackness below. An instant later, Ulysses launched himself forward, his hand still controlling Han’s weapon, and grabbed awkwardly at King’s jacket. He yanked back with all his strength, pulling King back on to the gangway while managing to toss the Makarov toward the platform, where Bishop knelt and snared it before it hit the concrete.

  Quinn felt his hopes rise for a fraction of a second until it became clear to him what was about to happen: Ulysses had put so much effort into getting King upright again that his own backward momentum sent him sailing into the rail on the opposite side. A moment later, his rear end slammed into the rail and he flipped backward in the exact opposite motion that had endangered King—only no one was there to grab him. His legs flipped up and carried his body through the rest of the motion and dragged him down into the chasm below.

  25

  Oscar Bloom rolled his eyes as Morley Drake ranted in his commlink’s holographic display.

  “Calm down, for God’s sake,” he said when the tribune finally stopped for a breath. “I can see the vein in your head throbbing.”

  “You idiot,” Drake growled. “I haven’t needed my nitro for weeks, and yet I talk to you for five minutes—”

  “I told you, Schuster is here. Don’t worry about it.”

  “And I told you that I want to see him right fucking now!”

  Bloom felt a twinge of unease for the first time in the conversation. He knew Schuster was here, along with two of the other people his daughter had been gallivanting around with since she got back to Earth. He knew they didn’t matter, but the Indian kid was a golden goose and couldn’t be touched; the problem was that Oscar hadn’t actually seen him since Indira Copeland had taken them away to help with her work.

  “Fine,” he said, knowing things probably weren’t fine but wanting to end the conversation. “I’ll track him down and get in touch as soon as I find him.”

  “You fucking well better,” Drake warned. “I’m done tiptoeing around you, Oscar. Fuck with me again and you’ll pay the price. If you don’t believe me, you’re even stupider than I thought you were.”

  The commlink winked out before Oscar could respond, leaving him fuming. He tried to soothe himself by going over his plan: once he had Chelsea on board for a senate run, he would start plotting Drake’s assassination. Zero would take care of it, leaving the tribune’s seat wide open for Chelsea, and he would do whatever it took to get her into it. When the next war finally came, she would come out the winner, and Oscar would be the power behind the throne. In effect, he would run the world.

  He left the commlink alcove and walked into the adjoining office just as Indira Copeland entered from the other end of the room.

  “Finally!” he growled. “I’ve been looking for you for hours! I need the Indian kid, Schuster.”

  “I have news,” said the doctor, ignoring his request. “It worked.”

  Oscar blinked. “What?”

  “Chelsea’s implanted memories and thoughts are entrenched. She is ready to do whatever you ask of her.”

  Oscar’s heart soared. It was what he’d been waiting for since his daughter returned to Earth. It had taken months, and tremendous resources, even finding a doctor who worked on the outer fringes of ethical science, but it had finally worked. The next step was ready to be taken.

  “I knew you could do it, Indira,” he said, beaming. “I always said you were a genius.”

  “Indeed.” She adjusted her glasses. “And now we need to discuss the matter of my fee.”

  Oscar’s elation quickly dissipated like air leaking from a balloon. “I paid you in advance.”

  “Yes, but I’ve decided it wasn’t enough. I want the same amount again.”

  “It was $100 billion!” he barked. “How is that not enough?”

  “You tell me,” she said imp
assively. “Your fortune is, what, a thousand times that much?”

  “That’s not the point!”

  She tapped at the panel of her wristband and held it up.

  “The arrangements are made with my account. Simply tap your wristband to mine and the transfer is complete.”

  “There will be tax questions!” he sputtered.

  “I imagine those questions would be easier to answer than questions about your relationship with Morley Drake, or Agent Zero. Or the fact you have effectively brainwashed your own daughter. Should I go on?”

  Oscar felt his stomach dropping. He’d never felt such betrayal.

  “I can’t believe you would blackmail me.”

  “And I can’t believe you’re surprised by this,” she said. “You truly are as stupid as everyone says you are. Complete the transfer.”

  He stared at her dumbly for several more seconds before finally lifting his own custom-made titanium wristband to hers and touching the screens. He pulled it back and watched the balance of that particular account drop by $100 billion.

  “It’s complete,” the doctor said.

  “I know,” he snapped. “I just checked my account.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  Suddenly Chelsea walked into the office from the hallway, followed by a young woman and two young men, one of whom was Schuster.

  “There you are!” he cried. “Finally. Drake wants to see you.” He turned to Chelsea. “Darling! Dr. Copeland told me the news, that you’re finally over that damned infection. It’s wonderful, my dear, I’m so happy.”

  “Sorry to burst your bubble, Dad.” The look in her eyes was cold steel. “But it didn’t work. I’m the same person I always was, despite all your efforts to make me think otherwise. I’m not going to be your puppet in the senate. In fact, you’ll be lucky if I don’t actively ruin your life.”

  Oscar felt hot blood rising in his face, and he pinched the webbing between his thumb and forefinger hard to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

  “Ow! Dammit!”

  “Did he really just do that?” asked Schuster.

  “He did,” Chelsea sighed. “I got my brains from my mom. Look, Dad, we don’t have time to go over this anymore. We’re leaving, and I have no intention of coming back.”