In the Garden of Rusting Gods
Page 3
Three pills. White, unassuming.
So tiny a thing to make a world without gods.
Metal shrieked across metal. Sunlight streaked inside as a dozen gods tore the room apart. The world shook as they blasted through railings and walkways toward her.
She pressed on the cap, turned it. The plastic lid clattered through the grate.
A thousand black tendrils pierced her body, lifted her from the ground, arms spread wide over the vat.
As the light faded, her hand went limp. Gods screamed as the bottle fell into the crimson pool below.
She thought of her starving children, and smiled.
FORWARD BASE FOURTEEN
A warning blip chimed, and a green dot turned red in Sarah DeSouza’s vision.
Droplets streaked her visor, fogged opaque in the New Phoenix humidity so that only her HUD gave any useful information—temperature, vitals, team position, the seventeen rounds left in her magazine, and an endless stream of data from the trackdrones stationed around Forward Base Fourteen. Sweat matted her hair under the helmet, the pungent tang of wet dog and body odor an unwelcome reminder that their last supply drop came too long ago, and with too little.
“DeSouza, status?” Sergeant Brett Jackson’s voice in her ear carried a razor’s edge buried under gravel, both harder and more fragile than months past.
“Track nine went offline.” She punched directions into the keyboard and fine-tuned them through the neural link. “I’m shifting eight and ten to cover the sweep.”
“Battery?”
“Likely. It’s been leaking H-gel since the last attack.” Their most vital and scarcest resource, hydrogen stabilized in a fire-retardant gel ran the microfusion reactors that powered everything from their rail guns to the trackdrones to the AC units and refrigerators, to the massive terraformers looming in skies a thousand miles to the south.
Not that they had any AC or refrigerators, or more than a dozen trackdrones left.
She licked her lips. “When do you think they’ll hit us, Sergeant?”
“Server’s offline, private. Predictive models—”
“When do you think, Sergeant?”
Jackson sighed. “Any time. They’re wearing us down before the headshot.” He paused. “And we’re about as worn down as we can get.”
Her heart skipped. “You think we have a chance?”
He said nothing for far too long. “No. Do your duty, private. It’s all that’s left.”
Jackson and DeSouza, the last of twenty-eight personnel sent to relieve FB14, had survived the past few weeks by blind luck. The Takers had broken their line too many times, carried off too many bodies, or worse, infected them with biomechanical parasites and left them behind. Bodies that came back, armed and augmented with biomechanical appendages a generation ahead of United States technology.
A technician, DeSouza managed the sixty-eight trackdrones slaved to her neural link, so she did more good inside HQ than out in the thick of the fighting.
Eleven. Not sixty-eight. Eight months prior they’d had sixty-eight well-armed and spit-polished trackdrones, and another two dozen wingers patrolling the sky. Seven months of boredom, patrols through the endless forests, defending the supply routes from an enemy that never came.
Then the sky lit up over the horizon, too far to see the mushroom cloud, too far to hear the roar, or smell the burning concrete and bodies. That light severed contact from New Houston and from orbital command. Two weeks later the satlink went down for good, and the attacks had started.
“Private?” Jackson’s voice startled her out of the reverie.
“Yes, sergeant?”
“You can gather wool when you’re dead. Stay alert.”
“Yes, sergeant.”
~
Static scrabbled across the network, and scattered through it fragments of words.
Eyes wide, Sarah cranked the volume and patched it through the PA system. “Sergeant, you getting this?”
Voices. Human voices, the first they’d heard in weeks and in snippets too short to make out. A sob escaped her throat, unbidden and unwanted, and she choked down those that followed.
“I read. Triangulate?”
Her chuckle held no mirth. “I’m not signals. You know how?”
He appeared in the doorway, tear-streaked cheeks glistening, a pistol forgotten in one hand, a crumpled photograph in the other. He rushed the console, dropping the weapon on a chair on the way by, and fiddled with knobs, dark muscles bulging under his tight white T-shirt.
The rich, burnt-wood smell of bourbon filled the room, with oniony human odor beneath. Thanks for sharing, jerk. She frowned at the uncharitable thought, and the smell.
Behind Sergeant Jackson’s back, Sarah picked up his weapon. One round chambered, nothing in the magazine, the grip clammy with sweat from being held too long. She plucked the picture from the console and smoothed it out. A chocolate-skinned woman cradled a black-haired baby to her breast while Jackson beamed with a father’s pride.
A woman’s voice filled the room. “Forward Base Twelve, do you copy?”
Jackson leaned in and pressed the COM button. “This is Forward Base Fourteen. We are low on supplies and expecting attack. Do you read me?”
“Forward Base Twelve, this is Eagle Command, do you copy?” she repeated.
Leaning in, he raised his voice. “Eagle Command, this is Forward Base Fourteen requesting immediate evac.”
“Forward Base Twelve, this is Eagle Co—” Her voice exploded in a burst of static.
“Fuck!” Jackson slammed his fist on the table. “Eagle command, do you copy?”
He tried for hours, in turn broadcasting a distress signal and sweeping for replies. None came. Night fell, and with it the trackdrones switched to thermal imaging in her mind.
A ragged moan erupted from Jackson’s throat, followed by rasping hyperventilation.
Sarah stood and backed away, tucking the pistol into the back of her pants. “Tomorrow, Sergeant. They’ll find us tomorrow. We’re going to be okay.”
He lifted his face from his hands and stared at her with bloodshot eyes devoid of hope. “Give me my weapon.”
She shook her head. “I think it’s best I hold onto it for tonight.”
“Private, give me my weapon.”
“No, sergeant. You can court martial me when we—”
The chair flipped as he came out of it in a bull’s charge. She spun, but not fast enough.
Air blasted from her lungs as he checked her into the wall. Strong hands crushed around her throat. She clawed at his wrists, gaping and gasping and pleading with unseen eyes. Face twisted in hatred and despair, he screamed at her, hot spittle spraying her face, burnt wood and ethanol and unbrushed teeth. “Give me my gun!”
Her knee glanced off his thigh.
Pain shredded her thoughts as he slammed his forehead down on the bridge of her nose. Eyes rolling back, she balled one hand into a fist. She punched, but with no leverage it bounced off of his muscled abdomen. He screamed, slamming her head into the wall with each word.
“Give. Me. My. Gun. You. Fucking. Cunt.”
The world hazed to a muddy red as she groped back. Hot agony shrieked up her arm as her fingers crushed between the pistol and the wall. It slipped free and she brought it around. Rail weapons make no sound as they fire, save for the click of the trigger.
The recoil ripped the gun from her hand, and in the deafening silence Brett fell back. She gasped precious air into her lungs and dropped to her hands and knees. Her pointer and middle fingers bent at unnatural angles, but she couldn’t feel them through the consuming fire in her chest.
Slumping to the side, she rolled her eyes up to her assailant.
Brett lay back on her cot, only his legs visible over the side, but hot gore steamed on the wall behind him.
And as the world slowed its spinning, she stood, and looked down at Sergeant Jackson.
The bullet had entered under his sternum and traveled upward, tearing a gaping hole that left pieces of ribs and shoulder behind him on the bed. A pungent mix of blood and fresh shit filled the room. Her gorge rose, then chunky red-and-brown vomit erupted from her mouth to join the sticky mess.
Bile burning her throat, she grabbed the cot one-handed and dragged it into the hall. That done, she sat back down at her desk to monitor the drones.
Drone two died at three a.m., and drone seven an hour later. They hadn’t been damaged.
She fanned the rest out to cover her escape route and grabbed what she could before the Takers breached the perimeter.
~
Boots crunched across generations of leaves that choked out any undergrowth. Sarah carried everything she could manage toward the rising sun and Forward Base Twelve: two bladder canteens—one of clean water, the other the remnants of the bourbon taken from the small shrine in his room where Jackson had planned to kill himself—a drone power core and six feet of heavy wire, one microfusion antipersonnel mine, and a pistol with four rounds. The rifle had more ammo, but she couldn’t manage it as well with broken fingers. Firing a pistol left-handed might work. Might.
The world rocked as Forward Base Fourteen’s power core detonated. A scaled-up version of the drone cores, her training at scuttling the small equipment translated exactly to the larger machine. She stumbled on, one foot in front of the next, her HUD displaying GPS information and highlighting obstacles in her path.
Three days to Forward Base Twelve, and possible rescue.
One foot in front of the next. One foot in front of the next.
~
Her HUD blinked red, once: enemy signature detected. Ducking behind a tree, she scanned left and right. A double triangle, red on red, highlighted a dark shape under a fallen log. She staggered toward a babbling stream, not having to feign her exhaustion or thirst.
Kneeling, she put the pistol on the ground and winced as she lowered to take a drink, eyes closed to track the stealthy shuffling behind her. Her right hand throbbed in time with her racing heart, and the cool water held a metallic hint of blood.
The rustle turned into a charge. She rolled left and choked up the pistol, firing twice at the humanoid shape flying toward her. The double-tap took it center-of-mass at point-blank range. Puffs of black-red hydraulic fluid sprayed the trees behind the Taker, and it shrieked with a voice not its own.
Corporal Nedel’s body collapsed and writhed as the Taker’s biomechanical dendrites and hydraulic muscle writhed and squirmed to repair the damage to its host. She rolled to her feet, stepped forward, and put her foot on its back to force it still.
As she shot the neural cortex embedded into his lower spine, a tendril stabbed from between its ribs, an icy lance that punctured straight through her boot and the foot inside. Grunting at the sudden pain, she reached down and pulled out the ropy black mass. It came free with a slippery, wet feeling, but no blood leaked from the wound.
She looked around, using the HUD to highlight any further danger. The woods stood quiet under a blue sky, a beauty she hadn’t noticed in her determined run toward Forward Base Twelve. She sat next to the body and pulled off her boot and sock.
And gasped.
Tiny black filaments writhed around the wound.
“Oh, fuck you,” she snarled. She looked up at the sky and laughed, a mirthless despair given voice. Her eyes fell to the pistol. A single round remained. She sighed and murmured, “You can’t have me you sons of bitches, but I’m not going out like that either.”
A quick search of Nedel’s body told her what she didn’t want to know: he carried no food, no painkillers, and no knife.
It took more effort than she’d imagined to remove a belt with two broken fingers, and more to loop it and twist a long stick through it. Working methodically, she hummed a lullaby her mother used to sing, something to distract her from the gruesome task at hand.
She worked a single strand of copper wire into a loop, one end twisted around an oblong rock, a cave man electrician’s garrote. She took off her pants, tightened the belt tourniquet above her knee and the makeshift cutter below it, then clenched a stout stick between her teeth, and took a deep breath.
She rolled her weight onto the stick to hold it in place, grabbed the rock, and lay back so she wouldn’t have to look. Eyes squeezed shut, she bit down on the stick and mumbled around it.
“I’m not becoming one of you motherfuckers. I’m not.”
She twisted and slid the rock back and forth. Her skin parted in a line of hot fire. Another twist, another slide, another jolt of crippling madness and pain. And another, and another. Blinded by tears, she tried not to hyperventilate, but passed out multiple times. She’d wake, crying, and grab the rock. And twist, and slide. Twist, and slide. Even as the circle tightened through the tendons and ligaments of her knee. She couldn’t give up; she had work to do. Twist, and slide.
An eternity later the leg came off, a relief that brought no relief. She sighed and forced her cramped fingers to open, dropping the makeshift saw. She drank the whiskey, three whole swallows of soothing heat, and didn’t bother to pour any on her wound. No point in disinfecting a dead woman.
She pulled the antipersonnel mine to her and removed the cover. Wires snaked from the fusion core to a customizable trigger mechanism next to a sticker that boasted a kill radius of sixty meters. Left-handed, she discarded the button and tripwire, and instead attached the pressure switch. The sun crested and crept toward the horizon. “Come and get it, you bastards.”
Fever burned through her. She struggled to think, to move, to remember her last act of patriotism and bravery: take as many of those bastards as she could on her way out.
As twilight darkened the woods, it took all her effort to roll sideways, slide the mine and pressure switch under her back, and roll on top of them. The switch primed with a dull snap.
Nothing to do now but live. Takers would ignore a corpse, but injured humans drew them like flies to honey.
Her eyes closed despite her protests.
~
She woke to flashes of light. Biomechanical shrieks in the distance answered dull clicks above her, Takers using human throats to voice their pain and outrage. One eye flickered open, the most she could manage.
Two men in forest camo and helmets stood over her, rail rifles barking silent death into the surrounding woods with casual, brutal efficiency.
“Confirmed alive and uninfected,” one said. “Send medevac ASAP.”
“We’re moving out. Fall back on my position,” the other said.
A chorus of acknowledgments slithered through her neural link.
“No, you can’t,” she said. But nothing came out of her dry mouth. She tried to force her tongue through cracked lips, but the thick, desiccated muscle wouldn’t respond. A knot in her lower back pulsed with the gunfire, a shrieking reminder of the death waiting beneath her.
The first man knelt, fired two shots, and looked down at her. Her own face, wan and wasted, stared back out of his mirrored visor. “Ma’am, you’re going to be okay.” She tried to swat his hand away as he pressed a narcopatch to her neck.
The world swam, soft and warm. Her eyes fluttered as more men backed to stand over her, weapons chattering, a full squad of soldiers in tactical response gear.
“Back!” she tried, but only a giggle came out, a narcotic-fueled manic amusement.
If they heard, they didn’t react. A Brightsky-pattern transport swooped low above them, chrome steel wings blanketing the sky thirty feet above the treetops
, propellers blasting them with a downward wash of air. Two squads of men hung from their deployment pods, weapons flashing as they fired through the canopy.
She slapped at the soldiers as they knelt and reached for her.
“You can’t ….”
“It’s okay, ma’am. You’re safe now. We’ve got them on the run all across the sector. You’re a hero.”
She shook her head. “No!” It came out clear and strong.
“Yeah. You are.”
The medic smiled and lifted her.
THE STAR
“You suck!” rang out over the feedback and the drums, followed by a chorus of boos and jeers. Dominic flinched as lukewarm beer spattered his pants, the plastic cup tumbling away to fall behind the amplifier. His band finished the song under a growing din of hateful discontent, and he stared at his own feet and spoke into the microphone.
“Thank you! We’re Deathsmack, and—”
“And you suck balls!” The massive biker-looking dude in the front row leaned on a sun-leathered barfly, his gray-black beard wet with cheap beer and spittle. She flipped off the band and grabbed her crotch. He followed suit, rough hand sliding over hers to give a comical goose. The crowd laughed.
“Damn,” Phil muttered, pretending to tune his guitar.
Jason hammered the bass drum, the unrelenting beat an introduction to a song they’d just added to their lineup, one of four original tunes in the set. The bass walked, almost bluesy, a contrast to the punk-metal tempo and the Pink Floyd-style rhythm guitar riff, exactly as they’d practiced until Phil botched his intro and came in a measure too late. Dominic sang the first notes, stopped, tried to pick it up on the second line, but Phil didn’t adjust. The melody withered in his throat.
The lights died, and with them the speakers, and the owner stepped up shaking his head, hands raised. “Sorry, boys, but if I let you keep playing we’re not even going to make overhead. Pack up and get out.”