by M. D. Cooper
“Hurry up,” Cara shouted. “If you want an escort, I’ll help you. Otherwise I’m leaving you here.”
“All right,” the first guard called. He lowered his gaze to search the control panel on the wall.
“Stop,” the mean-faced guard said. “I’m still not convinced. What block did you work?”
“All of them,” Cara said, calling his bluff. “You must not have been here long.”
“Let her in,” the other guard said. “I’m not getting trapped here. Especially not if the place is irradiated.”
A heavy lock system cycled, and the security door slid to the side. Cara strode through the opening and shot the sour-looking guard in the gut. He bent over, eyes wide with pain.
The others stared at her with terror on their faces. She waved the pistol at them.
“Get out of here before I change my mind,” she said. “Watch out for a group of prisoners in the main yard. They looked mad.”
The two guards stood frozen until she drew down on the closest. He raised his hands, then spun and sprinted out the door. His comrade followed.
Cara turned her attention to the room beyond, where hundreds of cabinets were identified by security tokens. She walked into the room, checking racks and cabinets until she found the one she was looking for.
Cara told him.
Felix made some thinking noises and the cabinet clicked. The narrow door swung open to reveal a deep storage locker with only one item inside.
Cara reached in and dragged out a battered grey weapons case covered in faded markings from the Terran Space Force. Recessed straps at various locations on its edges and sides allowed it to be stowed or carried in different configurations.
She set the rectangular case on the floor and operated the manual lock, opening it to reveal a collection of weapons nestled in protective plas. Most of the case was taken up by a multi-purpose combat rifle with a grenade launcher attachment and sniper extension. The plas around the rifle was filled with two pistols and a shock baton.
Staring at the weapons for nearly a minute, Cara pulled off a glove to brush her fingers over the rifle’s stock, followed by the body of the standard-issue TSF pulse pistol below it.
Satisfied nothing was missing, she pulled her glove back on and sealed the case. She hefted the container as she stood, the guard’s pistol back in her free hand.
Felix growled.
The schematic appeared on her HUD, with a path into the maintenance sections of the current level where the lift shaft was located.
Cara hefted the case and ran out of the storage room, checking for movement in each new area.
Felix grumbled and fell silent for the duration of the long trek to the surface.
SURFACE TENSION
STELLAR DATE: 3.13.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Summerville Regional Justice Center, Jerhattan
REGION: Earth, Terran Hegemony InnerSol
After an hour of slow climbing with the case hanging from her harness, Cara reached the upper levels of the prison. She pried the lift doors open to find a posh indoor mall full of shops selling luxury goods, with marble paths between. A large fountain with a statue of a winged cherub sat in the middle of the closest section, a chandelier rotating slowly above.
Cara eased over the edge of the lift and picked herself up. She spent a minute adjusting the TSF case so it hung across her back like a body-sized shield, which forced her to holster her guard pistol and carry the guard’s rifle at port arms. Both weapons still carried full charges, so it didn’t make sense to leave anything behind.
As she slowly walked forward through the quiet mall, she found herself recognizing many of the goods on display in the crystalline windows. Bits of memory flashed in her mind as details surfaced from the vibrating world.
Cara passed through a central area with seating and dark food booths scattered around. Another still fountain stood nearby. She found the quiet fountains especially disconcerting, expecting something to attack from their water at any moment. The feeling didn’t make any sense; she simply knew she distrusted the water for some reason.
The path displayed on her HUD took her through the indoor mall to what looked like a collection of smaller offices. From there, Felix seemed to believe there was access to a small launching pad reserved for the facilities’ executives. Cara found herself hoping she would find a few stragglers.
So far, she’d seen no one in the upper areas. In fact, aside from a few distant explosions, the lift shaft had only creaked and moaned with air movement—there had not been much sign of the battles in the lower sections.
Cara checked a corner where the row of shops ended, finding a carpet-lined corridor that led to a set of blank doors. The HUD path led her to the doors, which she found locked.
Felix said.
Cara inspected the hinges and ran a quick active scan, which identified the doors as simply plas. She backed up and charged the center line. The doors burst open on a corporate office suite.
A soldier in light combat armor stood in the middle of the hallway, his helmet in the crook of his elbow.
Cara stopped short, registering the soldier as her HUD highlighted movement in fourteen other locations in the space. The markings on the soldier’s armor didn’t match any recognized military, which meant he was a merc or private security.
The soldier spotted her before she ducked behind a partition, and threw himself into a nearby cubicle, shouting a warning to the rest of them. A second later, projectile fire blazed through the thin surrounding walls, focused on the spot where Cara had been standing a moment before.
With her free hand, Cara yanked the TSF case off her back. She hooked her forearm through two side straps and held it like a shield. Projectile fire impacted and glanced off the reinforced material as Cara fired her rifle from the hip, looking for better cover.
On her HUD, her onboard NSAI mapped the room and identified
two desks in a nearby cubicle that would provide limited protection. Cara slid into the nearest cubicle and grabbed one of the grenades from her harness. She set it to limited anti-personnel and lobbed it over the cubicle wall. A flash and explosion followed, and her HUD confirmed she’d neutralized two of the attackers.
Not enough.
Cara oriented her HUD’s map and located the exterior wall. Yanking another grenade free, she set it to maximum concussive power and tossed it at the wall. The orb arced into the plascrete surface and stuck, then exploded a second later. Five meters of wall disappeared in a cloud of dust and pulverized plascrete, and a cold wind from outside blew into the office suite.
Soldiers were shouting and firing randomly into the dust cloud as Cara launched across the room, still using the TSF case as a shield. She felt the force of rounds hitting the case, pressing it hard into her shoulder as she leapt through the jagged hole the grenade had made.
The ground was at least twenty meters below her.
Cara’s HUD flashed red as she fell, highlighting three parked vehicles and more plascrete below her. There was nothing remotely soft to land on except the roof of a small ground transport, which crushed around her legs as she hit square in its center. Cara bent her knees as she impacted, and her armor absorbed most of the force, until her heels hit the ground, and she felt like an iron rod had skewered her spine. She stumbled to the side, the vehicle’s crushed metal body tripping her up, and she fell face-first on the road.
The TSF case skittered away from her, taking her rifle with it. Cara lay for a second, head spinning, wondering if she was under the spell of the docility buzz again. Her helmet glitched, sending flickers of light across her vision. She was dimly aware of the HUD’s radiation warning beeping at her.
How bad is it? The display didn’t read properly.
Cara silenced the alarm.
It was dark, with the only light shining down from the hole in the third story of the building where Cara had just been. Soldiers were crouching in the hole now, searching for her with rifles at their shoulders. They were backlit and difficult to see with her naked eyes.
She got her hands under herself and pushed upright to pull her legs free of the smashed car. Her right leg came free, but the left seemed wrapped in metal ribbon that only grabbed tighter the harder she pulled. As she struggled, projectile rounds peppered the ground around her.
They’d found her.
she asked Felix.
Cara finally wrenched her other boot free and rolled away from the fire, dragging the TSF case with her. Rising quickly, she dashed toward the building and flattened against the wall.
Looking away from the building, she took in the sight of about two hundred meters of open space, then a line of grey-trunked pine trees. The radiation zone was everywhere she looked. The rads seemed worst in a flat area that she realized was full of rubble and a few stick-like tree trunks. A road led away into the woods, evidence that she was far from any city.
She looked at the sliver of moon overhead, making out the thin strand of High Terra, glimmering against a blue-black night sky.
At least the sky made sense.
Shouts floated down from above, but her pursuers couldn’t see her now. If they were any good, they’d be sending offset rounds her way, or calling in drone support. Either way, she couldn’t stay where she was.
Slinging the case across her back, Cara pulled her last grenade free and set it on EMP. She would need to get as far away from the irradiated zone as possible, or run the risk of frying her own equipment.
Including my connection to Felix, she realized.
Cara dashed toward the tree line. She turned as she ran and lobbed a grenade toward the hole in the side of the building. With the orb airborne, she increased to a sprint. The weapons case slapped her back as she pumped her arms. Rounds hit the case and kicked up dirt around her.
When the grenade detonated, Cara hadn’t quite reached a safe distance; her HUD went white, sliding into static snow.
She kept running. After a few seconds of blind escape, Cara’s HUD flickered and cleared. She had almost reached the tree line. In a wash of static, Felix’s voice emerged mid-sentence.
<…the worst! Do you realize that? I’m supposed to help you, and I’m starting to think the safest place for you is back in that cell under Link suppression. It’s bad enough if you hurt yourself, but you’re going to get me hurt as well. You think you’re operating in vacuum, here? You aren’t in the Scattered Disc anymore, Cara Sykes. Everything you do is under a microscope. Every official in SolGov could tune in and watch your escapades if they want. You’re a walking interplanetary incident. What am I supposed to do with you?>
She reached the tree line, breathing hard. She slid to the ground behind a larger trunk and rolled onto her stomach with her rifle aimed at the prison facility. She breathed a few seconds to calm herself, then studied the building’s dark façade with her HUD.
She didn’t really know what to say yet, but figured stating the obvious might have a calming effect.
Cara’s HUD wasn’t picking up any organized activity around the building. The EMP blast appeared to have done its work. There were several bio signs, but they weren’t moving. The grenade might have actually sent several of the closest soldiers into cardiac arrest.
Cara said.
Cara stared through her faceshield to a spot she couldn’t quite see on top of the building where the icon floated.
Felix seemed sufficiently distracted from his earlier tirade, so Cara rose beside the tree trunk and atta
ched the case to her back again. She hooked her rifle into her chest harness as if preparing for an airdrop, then flexed her knees to check her suit’s augmentation. Each system came back green, so she set the leap response to maximum, and launched into a bounding run across the open space between the tree line and the building.
With each leap, she rose higher, until the fall sent a flutter through her stomach, and then Cara bounced to a level with the roof.
Somebody fired at her from a broken window on the side of the building. Her HUD marked the attacker in red, but Cara was already flying in a high arc toward the roof of the structure. She came down in a roll among box-shaped environmental control units that ended at a launchpad where a very small shuttle sat waiting.
The background radiation levels lowered slightly as Cara jogged to the egg-shaped shuttle. Felix popped the door, and she stuck her head inside to find a tight space that would barely fit one person.
Cara shook her head and set to work tearing out the required equipment. The suit’s augmented strength made the task easy, although she was slightly worried she’d damaged the hull. Felix didn’t express any concerns.
In ten minutes, she had the case jammed in next to the single passenger seat, and Cara had pulled her armor off so she could fit inside the tiny escape shuttle. She didn’t like the idea of letting the armor go, but there was no choice. She also didn’t like that she was wearing prisoner’s overalls, her inmate number stenciled across her heart.
Once she was squeezed into the seat, her seat harness fastened, and the hatch sealed, Felix took control of the launch sequence. The little craft rumbled as its engines warmed up. The minimal display showed only green overall status and little else, indicated by a bouncing smiley hedgehog that Cara found infuriating.
