by Devin Hanson
“I am,” Cynthia agreed cautiously.
“You’re bleeding.”
Cynthia glanced down at the blood streaming from her finger tips and grimaced. She hadn’t realized her cuts were so deep. They weren’t spurting, so she hadn’t hit an artery, but she had made a mess of her wrist while sawing at the plastic band.
“Here.”
She looked up in surprise, suddenly aware that she was dizzy. The boy had walked past her to Bremen and had used a folding utility knife to cut away a strip from the man’s sleeve. He folded the cloth into a pad and pressed it against the mangled mess of her wrist.
“Hold it in place.”
Numbly, Cynthia complied. From his work tote, the boy produced a fat roll of duct tape and started running a strip around her arm, starting halfway down her forearm and overlapping the turns as he moved forward, finally pulling hard and taping the makeshift bandage in place with a great deal of pressure. Her hand tingled and the pain in her wrist made spots dance in front of her eyes, but the bleeding had stopped.
“You need water,” the boy was saying. “Lukewarm. If you drink something cold now you’ll pass out. Is he alive?”
The question focused Cynthia’s attention. Her head was swimming and she realized how much blood she had lost. “Unconscious,” she managed.
“Okay. Stand there,” the boy said firmly, directing her to lean against the wall. “Stay standing! Try to breathe deeply.”
Cynthia complied and closed her eyes, swallowing against the sour taste in her mouth. Her head was spinning, but as she took deep breaths she slowly regained some control. She opened her eyes again and saw the boy had dragged Bremen to her room and was going through the man’s keys looking for the right one.
“What’s your name?” she asked
“Jackson. Uh, Jackson Harding.”
“You know how to keep your head in a crisis,” she said, a little admiringly.
“I’ve had practice,” he grunted. The lock yielded to one of the keys and Jackson dragged Bremen inside. A moment later he came out with the water pitcher from her room and a cup. “You aren’t the first person I’ve had to patch up in a hurry. Drink. Sips only at first.”
Cynthia nodded. The warm water felt good going down and the last of the spinning faded away. “Thank you, Jackson.”
Jackson looked at her warily. “For the record, I think Wharton is a psychopath. I got marched down to the Basement by force. I would never threaten a matriarch.”
Cynthia held up her bandaged wrist. “As far as I’m concerned, you’ve saved my life, Jackson. If the both of us can avoid getting killed for the next couple hours, I promise you you’ll have all the protection and gratitude a matriarch can offer.”
He turned his head away. “Yeah, well. Let’s just try to stay alive first. Keep drinking, I’ll be right back.”
She drank down the remainder of her cup and poured herself a new one. Her stomach felt full, but she forced herself to keep sipping. Jackson came back from her room with Bremen’s shotgun slung under one arm. He locked the door behind him then threw the keys into the next room over.
“You know how to use that?” Cynthia asked, nodding at the shotgun.
“No. I just didn’t think leaving it in there with the man was smart.”
“Give it here.”
Jackson handed her the shotgun and she examined it, turning the weapon over in her hands. It was crudely made, hastily machined but no less functional for that. She cracked the breech and folded the barrels down. The shells were of the same quality as the gun, serviceable if not pretty.
“Do you know what they’re loaded with?” she asked.
“Shrapnel,” Jackson shrugged. “There’s a crew cutting apart nails and screws with clippers and packing the shells. They were using ball bearings at first, but they ran out.”
Cynthia frowned. It was a little worrisome to think of all those extras running around with guns that could breach the habitat’s hull if they were fired in the wrong direction. The shotgun loads would be devastating against unarmored targets, though. Even against a man in ablative armoring, it was likely to break bones.
“Wharton is mad,” Jackson said.
She saw the fear in his eyes. An extra would know better than anyone what weapons like this would do to the habitat’s integrity. “Not mad,” she corrected him. “Just desperate. And desperate men do dangerous things. So, now what do we do?”
“Fasten, foresight, focus,” Jackson muttered.
“Sorry?”
“The extra’s safety creed. First, we secure ourselves. Then we think ahead and know what we will do before taking action. And then, when we do act, we do it without distraction.”
Cynthia nodded. “There’s sense in that. Are we safe here?”
As if in response, the door around the corner slammed open and a man’s deep voice bellowed, “Secure the matriarch!”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
The first people to see the Venusian sky from within the cloud layers were stunned by the perfect blue of the heavens. They had seen video footage from drones, of course, but a digital screen can only portray a limited depth of color. The atmosphere of Venus had an almost perfect blue refraction index, without all the muddying of color from the diversity of elements on Earth.
Between the snowy white of the sulfuric acid clouds and the flawless blue sky, comparisons to Heaven were obvious. There, among the clouds, the first scientists made their home. The arrival of the immortal matriarchs, impossibly young forever, only cemented the conviction among the religiously-inclined residents of Venus that humanity had found the Promised Land in mortal life.
Dennison flinched as the wall next to his head exploded in slivers of plastic and synthetics. Ricochets howled and he felt a sting on his cheek followed by hot pain. Bryson rolled out around the corner and his suppressed pistol coughed back. A man shrieked and Bryson swung back into cover again.
“They are at the extreme range of monomol rounds,” Bryson said grimly. “They’ll wise up soon and find some piece of mobile cover, and then we’ll be in trouble.”
Dennison swiped at the blood trickling down his cheek and plucked free the shorn head of a screw from where it was embedded in his skin. “Shit. This went to hell in a hurry, didn’t it?”
“What’s keeping them?” Farrell growled.
Dennison shared a glance with Bryson. “On it. Can you hold the corner?”
Bryson ejected his magazine and looked morosely at the rounds he had remaining. “For a short while. Our Everard friends had better hurry, though. I do not fancy our chances fighting our way out of here, and it will get worse the longer we wait.”
Dennison clapped him on the shoulder and turned away. The extras had effectively trapped them in a dead-end collection of hallways and rooms, so it didn’t take long to find the rest of the ainlif.
“There you are,” Derek cried when he saw Dennison. “The room she was supposed to be in was empty!”
“Tabitha, verify the room the matriarchs are being held in, please.” Dennison got out his tablet and pulled up the rendering Tabitha had produced from security footage. “I’m at the junction of hallways two-B and five-C.”
“The last footage I have of Matriarch Romaine showed her entering a room near the end of five-C, Ainlif.”
“Should be at the end of five-C,” Dennison relayed, and pointed.
“We checked there, god damn it,” Derek growled. “Your AI screwed up, Romaine.”
“Back off, Derek,” Ferguson said, stepping up to stand next to Dennison. “Tabitha got us this far. We just need to take it the rest of the way.”
“Rest of where?” Derek demanded. “All it’s succeeded in doing in getting us trapped in this god damn hallway!”
“Will you shut up for just one minute? I’m trying to think.” Dennison snapped back. Derek’s constant impatience and buster was fraying what was left of his tolerance.
“Screw you, Romaine!”
; “That’s enough, Derek!” Evan cried and shoved his brother against a wall. “Get ahold of yourself!”
“This piece of shit dragged us down here, and now we’re all going to die because of—”
Dennison tuned Derek out and focused back on his tablet. “Tabitha, can you show me the footage of Alana entering the room?”
“Of course.” There was a pause, then the video started playing on Dennison’s tablet.
He watched as his mother enter the room, watched as the thuggish extra locked the door and walked away. Dennison had watched the short clip dozens of times. It was an oblique angle; the camera wasn’t actually pointed at the door Alana was being led into, but at one across the hallway and down a door. Only the wide-angle lens on the camera let it pick up Alana’s entrance to her room at all.
“Find the camera,” Dennison said suddenly. “Ferguson, Evan, we’re looking for the camera that picked up the footage. It’ll be flush on the ceiling or tucked above a doorframe.”
Evan gave Derek one last shake then stalked down the corridor, peering up at the ceiling and checking above doorframes. Ferguson went with him, checking the opposite side of the hallway.
“Come on,” Dennison jerked a head at Derek. “Tabitha can only extrapolate which hallway the room is supposed to be on based on camera angles. It’s not a perfect model by any means, but it must be in here somewhere. We’ve got to check the other hallways.”
Derek glared at him, but complied sulkily, picking a different hallway and moving down it, muttering to himself.
“You should know,” Tabitha said politely in his ear, “the Horizon marines have asked me directly for any footage of the matriarchs. I cannot put them off any longer. I estimate their assault will begin in minutes.”
“Damn,” Dennison muttered. “Okay. What, ah, how is the marine commander responding to our current deployment?”
“He is not pleased,” Tabitha replied. “But neither is he surprised. The exact phrase he used is, ‘regrettable collateral.’ Marine guidelines state they will act to secure the matriarchs as their primary focus. If civilians or ainlif do not obstruct, then there will be no immediate repercussions.”
Dennison nodded then remembered Tabitha wouldn’t be able to pick up the gesture without active cameras. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. My advice is you hurry to secure the matriarchs then lie low somewhere safe. I will interface with the retrieval party and direct them to your location.”
“Understood.”
Dennison stood up on tiptoe to check above a doorframe. How large of a lens did the camera need to have? The footage was blurry, so it could have been an expensive pinhole camera, but more likely whoever had installed it hadn’t spent thousands of credits on it.
“Here!” Evan shouted.
Dennison dropped his search and ran toward the call. He found Evan down the hallway they had designated as four-C, one hallway down from where Tabitha had placed the matriarchs as a best-guess. The camera lens was the size of his thumbnail, an unobtrusive lump on the corner of a doorframe. It only took a moment for Dennison to orient the footage to the camera position, then point to a door near the end of the hallway.
“That one!”
Derek pushed him aside and charged the door with a shoulder dropped low. Dennison winced in sympathy as Derek crashed into the door. The honeycomb synthetic of the doorframe shattered under the impact and the door sagged inward, broken free of the guiding rails.
Dennison was right on Derek’s heels and ripped the door the rest of the way free with a few well-aimed kicks. He stepped into the emptied storeroom and a wave of relief washed over him.
Alana Romaine straightened from her combat crouch and a smile broke out over her face. “Dennison!”
“Mother! I—” Dennison caught his balance on his back foot as his mother barreled into him and wrapped his arms around Alana’s shoulders. Her grip around his chest was like a vice. “Easy,” he said softly. “We’re here. It’s okay.” Her shoulders were shaking, and a hot barb of rage twisted through him. Whoever was responsible for this, they would pay in blood.
“Where is she!” Derek cried. “Where is Cynthia!”
Dennison felt a hand grab his shoulder and Alana’s grip about his chest was pulled free. Derek’s wild eyes blazed down at Alana, his teeth bared in fury.
“Damn you, Romaine, where is—”
Dennison stared down at the gun in his hand and the wet splash of blood that dripped from his arm. Derek took a loose step backward, surprise stamped on his face, then collapsed boneless to the floor. Dennison heard an intake of breath behind him and spun, his gun raised and centered on Evan’s center of mass.
“Easy, Dennison,” Evan said carefully. He slowly extended his arms to the side. “I saw what happened. I would have done the same thing.”
Dennison glanced over at Derek. The monomol round had punched up through the man’s abdomen and fragmented inside his chest cavity. Every vital organ the man possessed had been turned to gravy instantly. He was very dead.
“Back off,” Dennison warned Evan.
“Sure. I’m backing up.” Evan stepped back into the hallway. He spoke louder, so the others in the hallway outside could hear, but maintaining his forced calm. “Derek crossed a line. He should have known better than to touch your matriarch. We don’t blame you. If anything, it is our responsibility for allowing him to come with us.”
Chase stepped up next to Evan and glanced through the doorway. He looked at Derek’s body impassively for a moment, then spat to the side before raising his hands as well. “Idiot. Good riddance.”
Dennison felt Alana’s cool hand on his arm and he lowered the gun fractionally.
“Thank you for your understanding,” Alana said.
“Still, I would very much like to know where Cynthia Everard is,” Evan said. He let his arms lower slowly back to his sides and forced a smile, but the strain made it tight and without humor.
“If I knew, I would tell you,” Alana said seriously. “Cynthia was attempting to break free on her own. I have not seen her in nearly a full day.”
Dennison’s earpiece chimed. “Warning,” Tabitha announced. “Hull breach imminent.”
Jackson Harding flinched as the door down the hallway slammed and a man shouted an order to find the matriarch. He grabbed Cynthia’s arm and jumped for the storage room next to them. With his heart pounding in his ears, he dragged her through and slid the door shut behind them.
He hadn’t been a moment too soon. Running footsteps pounded past and stopped outside the door to Cynthia’s room, where the guard she had knocked out was locked up. Jackson pressed his ear against the door and listened.
“Where’s the guard? Bremen should be here.”
“How the hell should I know? Oy! Matriarch! You in there?”
“No answer.”
“No shit. Hey, Marcell, you’re the biggest, break this door down. Wharton said we need eyes on the matriarch.”
“I know what he said.”
“Is that blood?”
Jackson flinched away from the door. The last voice had been directly on the other side.
“Hey, why is there blood all over the wall and floor here?”
There was a crash as Marcell broke in the door adjacent.
“Shit! It’s Bremen! The matriarch is gone!”
There was a clatter behind Jackson and he spun to find Cynthia pulling a two-meter length of steel piping off a shelf. The stack of pipes settled and one rolled off the shelf to fall to the ground with a reverberating clang.
Silence fell in the corridor, then something heavy crashed into the door. Jackson stumbled backward and Cynthia caught his arm. She pressed the shotgun into his hands.
“Here. You have two shots, one for each trigger. Just point at the middle of their chest and try not to shoot me on accident.”
Jackson clutched at the shotgun and raised it hesitantly to his shoulder, the same way he had seen actors shoot guns in movies.
The gun felt cold and heavy in his hands. The door shuddered again and Jackson took an involuntary step backward. At the same time, Cynthia stepped forward with the pipe held in front of her with two hands.
He started to call out to her, warn her to get out of the way, and then the door crashed inward. The doorframe shattered and Marcell staggered through, off balance from using his shoulder to batter down the door.
Cynthia twisted her shoulders and the pipe whipped out overhead. The end of the pipe made a hollow, humming whistle, then cracked into the top of Marcell’s head. Marcell slammed face first into the ground and Cynthia stepped forward, driving the pipe forward like a spear out into the hallway. There was a crunch of breaking bone then Cynthia danced backward without the pipe and rolled neatly behind a shelf.
There was a belated cry of outrage and the doorway was suddenly filled with bodies pushing and shoving to get through first. Jackson already had the gun leveled, his finger already on the trigger. Amid the confusion in the doorway, one of the men locked eyes with him and Jackson read the clear intent to kill on the man’s face.
Jackson pulled the trigger and the shotgun slammed into his shoulder with bruising force. He lost his balance and fell back into the shelving behind him, only holding onto the gun by chance more than intention.
Distantly, he was aware that a lot of red had blossomed in the doorway. He scrambled around the shelf, dragging the shotgun after him, sick and panicking. A shotgun boomed and a box of plumbing fittings on the shelf behind Jackson exploded in a howl of ricochets.
Jackson dropped to the ground. Through the ringing in his ears, the screams and cries from the doorway seemed like they were coming through a long tube. He wanted to run away, but the only way out was through the men blocking the doorway. What had possessed him to try and hide in the storage room?
Beneath the shelf he was hiding behind, he could see the tangle of unmoving bodies in the doorway. Marcell was staring directly at him, at it took Jackson a moment to realize that the man’s bulging, bloodshot eyes were locked in death.
