“The Colonial Senate will never accept it.”
“Nevertheless, this is my position. Nexus Law supersedes local authority. I hereby order you to accept me as the rightful Colonial Governor of Garm.”
“That’s the best you can do?” asked Zimmerman, obviously surprised.
“I am inflexible in this regard.”
On the way back out of the terminal building the Governor was far less outgoing with the media people. His joking, smiling politician’s mantle had been discarded. Instead he sulked, answering their questions only with monosyllabic grunts. This made for bad video, but the media people only voiced their complaints in low mutterings.
* * *
When Zimmerman returned to the militia lines stretched across the tarmac, he was livid with fury. Gray-coated militiamen hustled away the protesting KXUT news team and Zimmerman confronted Ari Steinbach in his command lifter for a second time. Outside, Major Drick Lee carefully focused his handheld laser-snooper on the lifter’s side windows. He adjusted the gain until he had a good clear signal-feed into the speakers implanted in his ear canals.
* * *
Back in the command bunker beneath Mai Lee’s palace the transmission was received and the AI software began printing a hardcopy of the transcript even as the words were spoken.
ZIMMERMAN: Okay, you’re going in now, and I don’t want to hear any more excuses. I want you to wipe them out, I want you to kill them, you understand me?
STEINBACH: Of course, sir. The operation will begin at once.
ZIMMERMAN: Good. What will you do first?
STEINBACH:
Sounding irritated.
Please Governor, let me run this affair without the burden of micro-management. Let the experts handle it.
ZIMMERMAN:
Snorting.
The experts have been as shy as newborn air-swimmers so far! I want to know what your plans are!
STEINBACH: Very well. I have men moving to encircle the terminal. Even now they are out on the tarmac runways. No large aircraft will be able to land and give them support.
ZIMMERMAN: What about the Stormbringers you so stupidly allowed them to gather?
STEINBACH: They have landed on the roof. The plan is to send our own aloft and force them to scramble up to the challenge.
ZIMMERMAN: Why not just blast them? Why don’t we just forget all this pussyfooting around and blow up the whole terminal?
STEINBACH:
Speaking quickly and urgently.
That really isn’t an option, sir. There may be innocent hostages involved, which would make for bad video. Besides, why waste the taxpayers money rebuilding the spaceport?
ZIMMERMAN: Okay, okay, so you fool around and try to draw off the fighters. What about the assault?
STEINBACH: After a period of sniper-fire to suppress the enemy while we maneuver into position, we simply send in the tactical squad, using the rest of the men for backup.
ZIMMERMAN: All right, General. You get a few hours to pull this off, then I call up Fort Zimmerman and order them to ready the missile batteries. If you can’t take them out by then I’ll level the terminal building.
STEINBACH:
Speaking with great certainty.
I assure you, sir, that will not be necessary.
* * *
At precisely 10:00 PM the power went out at the spaceport. Emergency generators in the basement kicked in, and some of the lights flickered back into life. Outside the rain showers had abated for the moment, but the wind had freshened and the temperature had taken a sharp plunge. Shivering a bit as they squeezed off their laser rifles, the militia snipers managed to hit one of the female security personnel with the first volley. Struck in the shoulder, she spun around, gushing blood. A second burning red hole blossomed in her vest and she went down. Everyone else ducked behind their barricades and began firing blindly out into the darkened parking lot.
“Jarmo, dial up the
Gladius
and transfer it to my phone,” said Lucas. He felt he had no choice but to call in his reinforcements.
“Priority signal to the cargo deck, sir?” asked Jarmo, guessing his intentions. He was already tapping his earphone.
“Right. It’s time to call for the Mechs.” The Governor sighed with disappointment. “I had hoped against all rationality that things would somehow turn away from bloodshed. But like so many rulers throughout the ages, I am faced with the harsh requirement of using force or losing the right to rule. I suppose the Nexus aristocracy wouldn’t have chosen me for the job if I would have made any other decision.”
Jarmo was listening with sudden intensity to his headset. “Another attack sir, inside the building.”
“Militia?” demanded Lucas, eyes locking on the giant’s huge face. “If they’re inside already, we’ll have to order an immediate pull back to the inner security zone, damn it.”
“No sir—” he paused, and barked a command for clarification in Finnish. “No sir, someone has killed one of the traffic-controllers in the lavatory. He was just found, strangled to death.”
Lucas’ eyebrows shot up into his hairline. Did they have a traitor in their midst?
“Sir, I would like to examine the scene personally, right now.”
“Now? We’re in the middle of a battle, here.”
“Immediately. There are details to the report that I don’t understand or like. As for the militiamen, given the tactical situation they probably won’t undertake a serious assault until they are fully in position and have done something about our aircraft. This sniper fire is to keep us pinned down while they maneuver.”
“What if they just rush us? I’d like to have my best field commander on the front line.”
“Historically speaking, corrupt police forces fight little better than would hired thugs. They lack dedication, and will use extreme caution while attacking a determined adversary. What I don’t understand is why they haven’t yet bombarded the spaceport from Fort Zimmerman.”
“Maybe Dorman and his buddies aren’t the only Nexus loyal officers on this mudball,” suggested Lucas hopefully.
“Maybe,” agreed Jarmo without conviction.
“Go ahead, find out who strangled the techie and get back up here.”
With a crisp nod of his great head, Jarmo turned and made his way back to the stairs in a running crouch. Reaching the lavatories on the lowest level of the terminal, he met with Jun, who was staring and frowning fiercely into the lavatory. He held his weapon at chest-level, the odd cone-shaped muzzle directed at the wall of stalls.
“Where’s the body?”
Jun just nodded toward the stalls, keeping his weapon at the ready. Drawing his own plasma handgun, Jarmo squeezed past him and into the lavatory. He noticed that the floor near the stalls was coated with an odd liquid that was both slippery and sticky at the same time. He assumed it was liquid soap. He found the body in the third stall, and immediately realized why Jun had been so cautious.
The strangled man lay sprawled in an undignified pose with his head shoved down into the toilet. His neck had been squeezed with such great force, that it had been all but removed from his torso.
“A giant did that,” said Jun at the door. He and Jarmo shot each other worried looks. “Had to be a giant to crush his neck like that.”
Jarmo nodded, the killer had to have fantastic strength to squeeze the flesh off of a man’s neck, right down to separating the vertebrae. The neck looked like the remains of a ripe banana squished in a pair of vise grips. “Could have been a giant,” he agreed.
He began a closer inspection, and discovered more of the slimy fluids that puddled the floor of the lavatory. There was an odd stink as well, that of a sewer, mixed with something else. It was an acrid, fishy smell.
He searched the rest of the stalls, finding nothing of note. When he finally returned to the body, he was frowning intensely. He wasn’t a man who enjoyed mysteries. Reaching down into the mess in the toilet bowl, he pulled the head out by the hair as gently as possible under the circumstances. Laying the corpse face up on the floor he examined it and the bloody interior of the bowl.
“Very interesting,” he muttered in Finnish. “Come, what do you make of this, Jun?”
Jun moved to his side with only the slightest hint of hesitation. They were not normally squeamish men, but these were extraordinary circumstances. “What do you see?”
Jarmo indicated a circle of puncture wounds around the base of the neck and a matching circle under the chin. He then pointed out the gouges in the toilet bowl.
“Do you suggest that the man wore rings, or perhaps a clawed glove of some kind?”
“Perhaps,” said Jarmo, rubbing his chin. He wondered if perhaps a mechanical hand would have the strength to perform such a feat. A hand like that of a mech, for example. That still would not explain the slimy jelly-like liquid, but it was a start.
Still, though, he couldn’t help but feel that there was more to this, that he was missing something. Something about the bizarre murder triggered off a tingle of danger in his mind, a primitive fear of the unknown.
Walking over to the utility closet, he forced the lock with a twist of his huge wrist and looked inside. With the long barrel of his weapon, he poked around inside the closet.
“What are you looking for?” asked Jun curiously. He had come forward, but wasn’t quite looking over Jarmo’s shoulder.
“I don’t know. Something strange. Ah, more slime!” he said discovering a damaged vent and more of the glistening, jelly-like substance. “Some kind of animal has been in here, it must have gotten into the air ducts. I don’t remember reading about anything like this in the file-tapes, though.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of snake,” said Jun, peering into the closet that was more than filled by Jarmo’s great bulk.
Both men froze as they heard an odd splashing sound coming from the stalls. It was as if the toilets were gargling. Soon after, there was a wet, slapping sound. Jarmo put a big finger to his lips and the two of them bent down to look under the doors.
The sounds suddenly stopped. The giants exchanged glances and leveled their weapons. Whatever it was, it had heard them.
Baring his teeth in an unconscious snarl, Jarmo leapt forward and threw open the stall door from which the sounds had been coming. A ghastly creature sat there, half-in and half-out of the toilet, at their approached it reared its ugly head. The sucker-like mouth was bloodied. It had been feeding on the dead man’s corpse.
Jarmo fired and the thing sprang at the same time. The plasma burst missed, but took out the rear wall of the restroom. The shrade landed on Jarmo’s chest, sticky sucker-feet gripping his clothes and the flesh of his neck. He was yanked forward into the stall as it struggled to pull the rest of its body out of the plumbing.
Four giant hands grabbed the thing immediately, and a struggle of unnatural strength began. Grunting and heaving, the two men managed to rip it loose from Jarmo’s chest, although it was like pulling apart welded steel. With a final, mighty thrust, they threw it to the floor of the restroom and blew its head off as it humped for the utility closet.
Breathing hard, the two giants knelt over the twitching body.
“Incredible,” breathed Jarmo. “If this is an indigenous life-form, it’s something they left out of the briefings.”
Jun wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. “Almost had you.”
Jarmo nodded, “I don’t know if I could have pulled it off alone. I want you to take this thing back to the security center. See if the medical center people can identify it.”
Jun looked disgusted for a moment, then pulled off his jacket and wrapped the thing in it. Jarmo accompanied him out into the terminal, waving off the security people who had come to investigate the plasma burst.
Before he was halfway back to the security center, Jarmo heard the crackle of gunfire outside. He was already trotting when his phone beeped. Beginning to run, he snapped, “I’m on my way.”
Thirteen
At about ten o’clock Thursday night, the battle for the spaceport began in earnest. The first steps went according to plan for Steinbach, as he succeeded in drawing off the enemy Stormbringers with his own. Steinbach followed up by sending in his tactical squad, almost fully accounted for now, with the militia men backing them up.
The tactical squad moved through the parking lot at a brisk trot. Captain Qing at the point felt invulnerable in his full body-shell armor. The men behind him cheered as they broke from cover and charged the remaining distance to the doors. A wild volley of covering fire from the militia lashed the building in front of them.
Inside, the front line of security people pulled back to the escalators, leaving their dead behind. A group of giants let them pass, then opened up with plasma rifles as the tactical squad tackled the barricades. Despite their body-shell armor, several men went down. The rest took cover and opened up with automatic rifles and exploding slugs. A vicious firefight at close range began.
“Pull them back, Jarmo,” insisted the Governor.
“They have to hold until the Mechs arrive, sir,” replied the giant.
“Pull them back! We can’t let them get slaughtered. We can hold the security center, let them have the rest.”