Slab City Blues - The Collected Stories: All Five Stories in One Volume (37 page)

“Exterior scans show no opposition,” I said, skipping through the camera feeds. “That won’t last.” I hit the ramp release button and Phaedra’s people were the first out, suit-thrusters blazing as they deployed in a loose perimeter.

“Colonel, Lucy,” I said. “Time to go.”

No response, just the sound of her breath, choked and close to a sob. I cursed and propelled towards the bridge, finding her still in the pilot’s seat staring at Riviera’s inert form. The starboard window had shattered under the impact of the bot along with a good sized portion of the hull. Riviera’s upper half had taken most of the blast, his optic array floated in pieces from the remnants of his helmet visor amongst a haze of crimson droplets.

No time,
I thought, fighting down the rage and clamping a hand onto the rear of Lucy’s suit, hauling her from the seat. “We gotta go.” She allowed herself to be dragged outside before struggling free, her breath harsh in my ‘phones as she tried to control her grief. I took the carbine strapped to her thigh and pushed it into her arms, staring into her eyes until the sobs faded. “Use this only if you have to. Leave the fighty shooty stuff to the others. Your job is the engines. Upload the hack and get back here. Don’t wait for us.”

“Where’s Riviera?” Janet asked.

“Dead.” I ran through my suit’s various scans and stopped at thermal as it picked out a cluster of glowing smears approaching from a port-side corridor. “Company’s on its way,” I said. “Best get to it.”

“That’s our cue, my dear,” Mr Mac said, patting Lucy on the shoulder before favouring me with a mock salute. “Onwards to glory, my captain.”

“Don’t fuck this up, and if she dies you better have beaten her to it.”

I watched them form up with Phaedra’s team and burn towards the stern then turned about, aiming for the corridor my heads-up display indicated as the most direct route to the bridge. “I’m primary infiltrator,” I told Leyla and Timor. “You two are flank-guards. Janet, stick to me like glue.”

As expected, all undamaged exits from the rec concourse had sealed against hard-vac the moment the fail-safes detected a hull-breach. “Running overrides,” I told the others, as we halted before the sealed doors. I slotted a data stick into the door control and punched icons on my wrist console. “No way to know how long it’ll be before Vargold’s security AI changes the codes so move quickly.”

I raised the Ruger as the doors irised open and fired a grenade into the corridor followed by a two second burst of 10mm. More than enough to shred the two suited-up Astravista Security mercs sent to greet us. “No prisoners,” I added, somewhat redundantly.

We blasted through three corridors in quick succession, meeting piecemeal resistance for the most part. They came at us in pairs or alone, displaying either poor training or suicidal courage. Most wore tech-suits rather than combat models and some had weapons incapable of piercing our armour. Here and there, we came up against an experienced and well-armed veteran, but without back-up they didn’t have much chance. It was clear to me they were struggling to form a cohesive response to the assault; Vargold’s plan hadn’t envisioned anyone being nuts enough to try a boarding operation.

“Oh give it up, you stupid FUCK!” Leyla yelled, the last word punctuated by the point-blank burst of carbine fire she put into the head of a particularly stubborn merc. He’d held us up for a full thirty seconds before one of Timor’s grenades took his arm off. Still he’d tried to resist, fumbling for a frag with his remaining arm as we closed in.

“What are these people on?” Timor wondered, breath ragged over the comms.

“Fanaticism,” Janet told him. “Always a potent drug.”

A shudder ran through the ship and the surrounding walls began to shift, the detritus of combat swirling about then abruptly smearing onto every hard surface. My suit’s boots thumped onto the deck and the Ruger, suddenly heavier than an anvil, tore itself from my grasp. “Vargold’s initiated the spin,” I said, grunting as I raised my now-leaden arms to tap a sequence into my console. Behind us a sealing bulkhead slammed closed and dust blew away from the vents in the walls as I replenished the atmo. “De-suit,” I told the others, hitting the quick release on my breastplate.

We climbed out, Leyla concealing a wince as she put weight on her partially healed leg. I was tempted to leave her here to guard the suits, but knew we had no time for the inevitable argument. We pressed on towards the bridge, the sudden absence of armour instilling a sense of nakedness. I’d had the foresight to stow a carbine as a secondary weapon and I also had the Colt strapped under my arm, both coming in very handy when what can only be described as a howling mob came charging at us from a side corridor.

They came at us in a frenzy, many with untreated wounds or burns. They were either unarmed or wielding makeshift clubs, falling over each other in their desire to get at us. I saw a uniformly wild cast to their eyes, the same blind devotion I’d seen in Blair’s gaze before he went into bomb-mode. Also, many were screaming, the words a chaotic babble at first, becoming clearer as they surged closer. “From light we are born…”

I put the carbine to my shoulder and fired off a long burst, drowning out the screams. About a dozen went down, followed by a dozen more as Leyla and Timor opened up. The bodies piled up quickly, but still they came on, clambering over the mound of corpses, screaming out their mantra even as the bullets tore them apart.

“Alex!”

I turned, finding Janet standing in the path of a second mob, claws fully extended as she awaited the onrush. I moved to her side and started firing, cutting down the first rank before the magazine emptied. I reached for my Colt, but they were on us before I could clear the holster, clubs and fists raining down. I backed up against the wall, kicking out and trying to free the Colt. A wet splash across my face and the press of bodies was gone. I collapsed to my knees, head reeling from multiple blows, dragging in air and shaking the confusion away. I staggered to my feet, Colt raised and saw Janet wreaking havoc.

She moved like a whirlwind of flesh and claws, scattering the mob before her, body after body slammed into the walls with spine-shattering force. She would pause now and again to finish one who managed to get close enough to land a blow, claws clamped onto head and chest to expose the neck before her fangs tore most of it away and she hurled the corpse at the remaining mob. I retrieved the carbine from beneath a decapitated corpse and reloaded, staggering to Janet’s side and unloading an entire magazine into the seething mass of crew.

Silence descended as the carbine fired empty. The crew lay around us, bloody and twitching, the wounded still babbling their inane creed. “…to light we return…” I knelt beside a young woman little older than Lucy with a gaping hole where her throat had been. I pulled up her sleeve to reveal the forearm, picking out the tell-tale hypo-marks in the flesh.

“Fanaticism to order,” I said. “Undergoing the same immersion treatment as Corvin and the others was probably a pre-requisite for recruitment to this merry band. We’re lucky he didn’t have time to splice them, too.”

Janet made a small sound and I saw she was fighting down a sob. “Had to be done…” I began but she shook her head.

“I…” She paused to swallow, fully-fanged and blood-spattered features rendered even more nightmarish as she turned to me with a smile. “I think I’d like to announce my formal retirement from the Lorenzo City Police Force.”

I reached for her hand, feeling the claws recede as I squeezed. “Just one more thing to do.”

Chapter 25

“Lost some of
your mer-people getting here,” Lucy told me via the comms array I’d salvaged from my abandoned suit. “Had to ditch our suits a few decks back. Looks like Vargold sent most of his trained people to guard the engines.” Her cam-feed played over the cavernous expanse of the
Jason Alpha’s
engine room, huge magnetic generators and power relays the size of trains. A number of bodies were scattered about, including two with silver-grey skin.

“Phaedra?” I asked.

“I’m here.” She stepped into shot, her face showing the strain of recent combat. “Erik isn’t.”

I swallowed commiserating words. Sympathy wouldn’t help just now. “Grieve later. We have a job to do. Lucy, how long to run the hack?”

Lucy’s cam hesitated before swivelling towards another body, this one still alive and propped up against a power relay. “Through and through to the lower abdomen,” Lucy said as Simon knelt to apply a field dressing to Mr Mac’s wound. “I was too eager… Came through the door too quickly… He took my bullet, Alex.”

I watched the image linger on Mr Mac’s bleached features. “The hack,” I said.

Her cam swung towards the main control terminal where a data stick blinked in the input port. “It’s already uploaded, but the AI’s fighting back. Every time I initiate a shut down sequence, it finds a way to reverse it.”

I pushed aside the readout visor and fixed my gaze on the door ahead. The last one before we made the bridge. “Should be able to help with that shortly. Stay on comms.”

The door shuddered in response to my command, opening then closing like an industrial cutting machine as the ship’s AI fought it out with the General’s hack. Luckily, it hadn’t fully adapted yet and the door finally stuck halfway open, allowing me to peer through to the bridge beyond. I could see only one occupant, a tall figure with long dark hair, standing before a large flickering holo display. He didn’t bother to turn as I made my way inside, the others following close behind. A brief scan of the bridge confirmed it; Vargold was all alone now.

“So you sent everyone you had left to stop us,” I said, striding forward.

He merely glanced over his shoulder before returning his gaze to the holo. It was a forward view largely obscured by the moon’s bulk, a blue, thumb-sized half-circle slowly cresting the lower hemisphere as the
Jason Alpha
maintained its course. Vargold continued to regard the view as I came to his side, arms folded and face serenely contemplative. Deciding this wasn’t the time for subtlety, I slammed the carbine stock into the small of his back, sending him to all fours with a shout of pained surprise.

“Were you under the impression,” I said, filling my fist with his hair and dragging his head back as I pressed the carbine’s muzzle into his temple, “that I was fucking about here?”

He replied with a teeth gritted smile, grunting the words out. “Did… you… think… I was?”

“Gonna need you to shut this ship down, Mr Vargold.”

“Can’t.” His smile broadened. “Won’t.”

I moved back and tapped an icon on my comms controller. “Kruger, you reading this?”

“Alles ist klar, Herr Hauptmann.”

“Any problems?”

“Casualties heavier than expected, but we have the ship.”

“Set course, maximum thrust. Then get clear.”

“Jawohl.”

I accessed the bridge controls and switched the holo to the port-side optical array. I saw Vargold shudder as the image came into focus, one of the escort corvettes, badly damaged and trailing debris from the hole Kruger’s assault team had blasted in its side. Fortunately its thrusters were still operational, bringing it about and commencing a full burn towards the
Jason Alpha
. “Five hundred twenty-seven seconds to impact,” Kruger reported. “Punching out now. Best of luck, Herr Hauptmann.”

“Not one boarding party, but two,” I told Vargold. “Something you might have learned if you’d actually fought in the war; always have a contingency.” I trained the carbine on his knee and put a bullet through it, leaving him convulsing on the deck, choking down screams. “Your great project is about to become a lunar debris field, and I think you should stay and watch the show. After all, you paid for it.”

He clenched his teeth and blinked up at me, his expression markedly less pissed than I wanted it to be.

“Alex!” Lucy’s voice, shrill and urgent in my ear.

“What?”

“The main drive just started powering up. We’re less than seven minutes from going to relativistic speeds.”

I glanced up at the holo, watching the blue half-circle continue to ascend above the grey arc of the moon.

“Won’t be… everything I… wanted,” Vargold rasped. “But enough…”

A ship this size slamming into the Earth at relativistic velocity… Nuclear winter kind’ve thing.

I dragged Vargold up, forcing his head forward to expose the small round bump in the flesh behind his ear.
Sub-dermal smart, he’s got a direct neural link to the ship.
“Shut it down,” I said, pressing the carbine’s muzzle harder into his flesh. “Last chance.”

A deep, guttural laugh, then he spoke, voice rich in amused satisfaction, “From light we are b-”

The carbine burst blew his head apart and I let the twitching corpse fall to the deck. “Lucy, you have to shut down the engines.”

“I can’t. The hack just isn’t taking. It’s slowing the fusion reactions, but not enough…”

Another voice broke into the comms, laboured and heavy with suppressed pain. “What if… we… remove the hack?” Mr Mac asked.

“It’ll power up in seconds,” Lucy said. “At the current trajectory…” She trailed off.

“Better… than the… alternative, wouldn’t you… say?” Mr Mac enquired.

“Has to be done manually,” she said in a small voice. “We don’t have time to code up a remote link.”

A very short pause. “Then… I suppose you’d better… be on your way, my dear.” I watched him nod to Simon, the mercenary helping him up and half-carrying him to the terminal. “Escort her back… please,” Mr Mac told him, nodding at Lucy. “You’ll find triple… your usual fee in your account… as promised.”

“Three hundred and fifteen seconds,” Lucy told him, voice receding as Simon pulled her towards the exit. “Otherwise the trajectory will clear the surface…”

I watched Mr Mac slump against the terminal, hand reaching out to rest on the data-stick before Lucy rounded a corner and he was lost from view.

“Back to the suits,” I said, running from the bridge with the others at my heels. We sprinted through successive corridors, leaping the mound of corpses and making for the junction where we’d left the suits. As we ran Mr Mac’s voice provided an unwelcome commentary I couldn’t bring myself to mute. “I… never told you… why I deserted, did I, Alex?”

“Doesn’t matter now,” I said.

“There’s no mystery,” he went on. “I was afraid… plain and simple. I knew… none of us were coming back. I asked Consuela to come with me… Did you know that?”

I climbed into my suit and hit the rapid-seal command, the constituent parts closing around me. “And I’ll bet she told you to get lost.”

“Actually, no. Believe it… or not she was just as scared as I was. But she had… something I didn’t, she had you. So… she stayed.”

I accessed the
Jason Alpha’s
systems, finding the attitude controls still off-line which meant we were stuck in a gravity environment. I checked to ensure the others had successfully suited up, then blew every hatch between us and the recreation deck. “We’ll have to bounce,” I told them. “Jump then hit your thrusters.”

It was a bruising and difficult journey, the suits taking considerable damage as we repeatedly collided with hard surfaces, ricocheting along the corridors until we scraped through the final set of doors to be greeted by the welcome sight of the
Aguila.

“I kind’ve… loved her, Alex,” Mr Mac said, voice fading now, words coming in wheezy grunts. “Been feeling… guilty about it… ever since. It’s… the main reason I never… had you killed. In case… you were wondering.”

“And I thought it was because we’ve always been such close friends.” I jumped, the suit’s power-assisted limbs taking me to a height of twenty feet before I hit the thrusters and covered the distance to the
Aguila
in a single bound, landing with the kind of force that made me wonder why my ankles hadn’t shattered.

“No… words of admiration for me?” Mr Mac enquired with a small chuckle that quickly turned into a gasp. “Even now? I’m… heroically sacrificing myself, here.”

“Then it’ll balance your account.” I groaned, rising from a crouch to see Lucy landing nearby, Simon and Phaedra’s people close behind. “Lotta bodies left in your wake.”

“All those bastards… deserved it. One way… or another… You’ll talk to Oksana and Bao… Won’t you? I’d like them to know.”

Lucy was first on board, the rest of us following to collapse into a jumble of suits as the ramp sealed behind us. “Yeah,” I muttered, struggling free of the crush. “I’ll talk to them.”

“Thank you.” A pause as he checked the readout. “Sixty-three seconds. You… really need to… get a move on.”

The
Aguila
lurched as Lucy disengaged the landing gear. Then came the stomach dragging acceleration as she brought the main plasma thrusters on line and gravity faded. “We’re clear,” Lucy reported. The cargo bay holo flickered into life, showing the receding shape of the
Jason Alpha
, soon rendered a dark speck against the vast backdrop of the moon. “Thought you’d want to see it,” Lucy said.

“It’s time,” I told Mr Mac.

“Just one thing…”

“It’s time!”

“You still… haven’t told me… how you caught me.” I could hear the smile in his voice, enjoying my anger even now.

“The Rodins,” Janet told him.

“Ah.” A soft sigh of resigned frustration. “Of course. But I just… couldn’t resist them. Every Achilles… has his heel, eh, Doctor?”

I watched the
Jason Alpha
drift towards the edge of the moon’s arc, ever closer to the blue half-circle.

“You were right,” I said. “You would never have come back from Langley. The ex-filtration plan didn’t include you. Given your erratic behaviour Covert Ops considered you an expendable asset. Needs of the mission, they said.”

“Yes… I thought as much.” Another pause. “It… wasn’t just guilt that stopped me, Alex. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Two seconds of silence, then a faint snick as he removed the data stick. As Lucy promised the main drive came online almost instantly, flaring bright like a second miniature sun before giving birth to its jet. The stream of super-energised matter extended to over a thousand klicks in the space of a few micro-seconds, sending the
Jason Alpha
into the moon’s surface faster than any human eye could hope to capture. I saw the moon tip on its axis as the energy release shattered much of its southern polar region. Vast chunks of moon-rock spun away, a few zipping past the
Aguila
and compelling Lucy to put her through a series of evasive manoeuvres. The larger rocks rose from the surface and tumbled about before slowly subsiding back into the main body. By the time the debris field cleared, the moon had gained a titanic new geographic feature, possibly the largest crater in the Solar System.

“I estimate six percent loss of mass,” Lucy said from the bridge. “Earth’s tidal patterns are gonna be pretty weird from now on.”

“We’ll get used to it,” Phaedra said.

I accessed the news feeds, hearing a chorus of confusion and panic.
Potential first strike by CAOS forces… UN Federal Security insists it has taken no off-planet action… CAOS Central Governance denying all
responsibility…

“Well, at least they haven’t started shooting.”

I cracked open my suit and floated free, Janet doing the same before pressing herself against me. She stank of blood, but I didn’t mind. “You were saying, before,” I said, pulling back slightly to run a hand through her gore-matted hair. “About retirement…”

THE END