Star Soldier (13 page)

Twenty-nine hundred kilometers thick, the mantle was composed of molten olivine rock: iron and magnesium combined with silicon and oxygen. Overall, the mantle was solid, but under these terrific pressures, it behaved like a plastic. Under the slow, steady pressure the material flowed like extra-thick molasses, but sudden changes in pressure would cause it to snap and fragment like glass.

Beneath the mantle pulsed the outer core. The Earth’s inner core was solid. Both halves were constituted mainly of iron in an alloy form with a small amount of sulfur or oxygen. Because of the heat and pressure, the outer core was molten iron, hot to a degree almost unimaginable.

Heat and pressure of such extremes prevented the use of any known material in shaft construction.. Magnetic force alone formed the walls of the long narrow mine sunk deep into the Earth. Incredibly powerful magnetic shields shoved against the unrelenting pressure of crust, mantle and outer core. The terrible heat from the Earth itself powered these shields, and everything livable had to stay within them. Generators of brutal efficiency and power cooled the temperature inside the shaft. A breech anywhere along the line would destroy the entire deep-core mine.  This core heat provided Greater Sydney and much of Australian Sector with its energy needs.

Therefore, the main safety feature was already built into the deep-core. The only way lava could possibly geyser up the mine and onto the surface was to send a tiny plug of it, like a man spitting—a little spurt of molten metal would destroy the magnetic tube behind it as it went. But such was the Earth’s ability to spit that Sydney and everything around it for fifty kilometers would be annihilated. The design and safety features of the mine ensured that process could only be triggered at the deepest section of human habitation, the bottom core station, which hung just above the Earth’s outer core.

The bottom core station was the elevator’s destination.

For a time, Omi and Marten watched the gauges. Suddenly Marten trembled. The psychological weight around him became more than he could bear. He staggered to a cot conveniently provided and slumped upon it. He shut his eyes and his breathing grew even. Exhaustion claimed him. He dreamed of being crushed to death, of Major Orlov sitting on his chest and smothering his mouth with a rag. He clawed against her brawny forearms to no avail. Then, sluggishly, with infinite slowness, he grew aware that he dreamed and fought to wake up. His eyelids unglued and his vision swam in blurry confusion. He groaned, but couldn’t hear himself. Nausea burned the back of his throat with threatened vomit. He concentrated, swung his legs off the cot and rubbed his eyes. A horrible headache pounded. He squinted. The blurs wouldn’t go away. A bolt of fear stabbed him. He bent his head between his knees and told himself to relax, to breathe deeply. He did, and he found that if he pressed his hands on either side of his head that he could focus.

Turbo lay sprawled on the floor, drool spilling from his open mouth. He stared glazed-eyed at the wall. Stick squeezed his eyes closed with ferocious intensity and breathed in and out as if he were a bellows. Omi kept jerking the slide to his assault carbine open and shut, open and shut. Fifty cartridges lay at his feet, but he seemed oblivious to them.

Marten willed himself to his feet, but found that he couldn’t move. Weird gusts of air puffed his cheeks. He frowned. Then he realized that he brayed moronic laughter minus the sound, or the elevator was too noisy to let him hear his own laughter. He slapped a hand over his mouth. Then, after he’d settled himself, he put his hands to his knees and slowly rose to his feet. Systematically he lurched to the depth gauge. The others ignored him. He positioned himself before it and concentrated with everything he had. It swam into view: 2850 kilometers. Just as slowly, he realized they were almost there. It seemed impossible that the pressure could affect them, no matter how terrific, when kept at bay by technology. Maybe man wasn’t conditioned to take it, or maybe some sixth sense felt the world’s weight. Millions of pounds of pressure per square inch… or maybe the awareness of being buried alive more horribly than any dream was too much for the human psyche. Only a superior will could stand it, only a stubborn mule of a man.

There was something just on the edge of Marten’s awareness. It could help him, he knew, but he couldn’t think of it. Oh! Yes, of course. He dug the medkit out of his jacket and pressed it against his arm. The red light flashed and stopped. He hadn’t felt anything. Was it broken? Then a wave of cool relief flooded through him.

He laughed, normally, although still without sound. He stepped beside Omi and put his hand over the gunman’s, the one working the slide. Omi squinted at him, but it didn’t seem that he saw Marten. So Marten pressed the medkit to Omi’s arm. No red light winked. Nothing. Marten checked the medkit and found that it was empty, or empty of whatever drug could help the gunman.

Marten shook Omi.

Omi scowled, but there still wasn’t any focus in his eyes.

Marten went to each of them in turn. It was as if they were in cocoons, in their own worlds. He didn’t know the deep-core term for their condition, although he was sure there was one. One thing seemed to make sense, if they had gone schizoid then surely some of the red-suits had too—he hoped.

Marten also hoped the drug in his bloodstream would last long enough so he could do the job. He readied his assault carbine. And on impulse, he went and pried the vibroblade out of Stick’s grip, sliding it in his boot. Then he went back to the depth gauge and watched.

In time, the noise level lowered. He shouted, and was rewarded with a new sound: his voice. That made his heart pound. Here it was—savior of Sydney or just another loser to Social Unity. Marten didn’t know it, but a vicious snarl twisted his lips.

The elevator pinged.

Marten staggered to the door. It was like wading through gel, slow, difficult work. He had to concentrate to move.

A hand on his shoulder caused him to whip his head around. Omi glared at him, a death’s head grin exposing his teeth.

“Do it,” hissed Omi.

 The box shuddered to a halt, the doors slid open and Marten Kluge waded alone into the deep-core station.

18.

The floor of the deep-core station thrummed. A prickly sensation scratched at Marten’s nerves. He’d heard before from a news show or a spy video, he couldn’t remember which, that the discharges of magnetic force off the molten metal created strange electrical currents within the station. It felt as if spiders with sandpaper feet scurried across him. He kept rubbing his arms and rolling his shoulders. And he kept a sharp lookout for red-suits.

The station was grimly utilitarian. Thick ablative foam walls, dull gray in color, sectioned the place into what seemed like hundreds of tiny rooms. The hall ceilings hung uncomfortably low. The light-globes embedded in them radiated almost no heat. Every time he entered a new room through a hatch, he had to duck his head.

His mother had once taken him to a museum. He remembered seeing submarines from the Twentieth Century. It had been in a conflict called World War Two. The rooms and the narrow hatchways of the deep-core station seemed similar to those WWII subs. Gauges, dials, control boards and computer screens abounded everywhere. Emergency breathing masks hung on all the walls, along with fire extinguishers and heavy-duty tanks filled with construction foam. When sprayed and exposed to air, the foam quickhardened into a lightweight, durable wall. Riot police and soldiers used construction foam, as did firefighters creating a fast firebreak. Marten realized that fires must be a constant hazard on the station.

He touched the ablative foam wall. Hot. He looked around warily. The foam walls seemed to mute sound. He barely heard his footsteps. They were muffled, almost noiseless.

He crept down a small, steep set of stairs and peered onto the next floor. It was just like the previous floor. Then an odd
clang
sounded. It seemed to come from all around. An eerie c-r-e-a-k of ghostly quality followed. The entire station shuddered. In his fright and surprise, Marten almost lost his balance and tumbled down the stairs.

His heart thudded as he hurried up them instead. Those noises didn’t sound good. He wondered if it was stage one of Major Orlov’s objective. Or was it merely regular deep station occurrences? He had no way to judge, but he felt that time was running out. Assault carbine at the ready, he hunted from room to room, straining to hear anything that would lead him to the enemy. The thick foam walls absorbed sound, so that the station seemed empty, lifeless, dead. It gave Marten an evil, creepy feeling. Was he too late to change anything?

Then he stumbled onto PHC-created carnage. It looked like a kitchen, a food center with a microwave and a refrigerator. Pockmarked ablative foam lined the wall, where laser beams had hit. Gray smoke curled from each pockmark and gave off a horrible stink. Draped over several small tables were six bodies, each in the brown coveralls of Deep-Core. The laser burns that had killed them still smoldered.

Rage filled Marten, at such wanton murder, senseless slaughter. He had to stop Major Orlov and her killers.

He increased his pace, but it was impossible to run. The psychological pressure wouldn’t allow it. It felt as if he
dragged
his legs against a horizontal gravity. Then he heard a sound, a voice. He slowed to a creep, peering ahead so hard it seemed as if his eyeballs would spill out. He mouth went dry. His fingers stiffened.

Two men spoke in monotone voices, and they were just around the hatch. They said that maybe they should rape the system specialist after the major was finished with her.

Marten’s rage burned in him and loosened his stiff fingers. He rounded the hatchway and stepped through.

Two red-suits sat at a small table. Their lasers lay in their laps as they stared at their drinks. They looked up as Marten stepped through the hatch. They had hard, tanned faces, like bloodthirsty weasels given human form. For a nanosecond, Marten and they stared at each other.

“You,” one of them said in a dull monotone.

Marten vaguely recognized the pointed chin. Yeah, that man had given the major the agonizer. That seemed like an age ago.

The nanosecond ended, and the red-suits lunged out of their chairs, spilling their drinks. They were deadly as serpents, almost as fast. Their lasers lifted into firing position as red beams hosed the floor. Marten’s assault carbine spoke—a quiet
cha-cha-cha
. The two red-suits hit the floor dead, riddled and twisted into grotesque positions.

Marten stepped over them, moving faster now. He was certain that because of the walls the sound of his gunfire wouldn’t carry far.

The next moment a red-suit walking like a deprogrammed android almost bumped into him. Marten blew him aside, the red-suit only beginning to realize what had happened as his eyes fluttered for the last time. Marten moved like a killer robot now, a machine. Down a steep set of stairs, turn left, right, right. A red-suit tried to poke a stimstick between his own compressed lips. His face was filled with intense concentration, but he kept hitting his cheek or nose with the end of the stimstick. Marten gunned him down, thankful that the deep-core pressure was making them stupid.

Marten kept striding, but it felt as if he moved through water. His head started hurting and it was hard to concentrate. So he watched his feet, willing them forward one step at a time. When had control of them again, he looked up, hunting, searching. He hurried through a hatchway—and he tripped over a foot. Marten threw out his arms to catch himself. His weapon went spinning, but he landed without knocking out his teeth. When nothing more happened, he looked back.

A red-suit pointed a laser at him. The man had razor-thin eyebrows and the deadly intent eyes of a pit bull. On his suit was the name: Ngo Drang. He was the second guard that had helped the major torture him in the interrogation room.

Drang frowned. “I… I should shoot you.”

Marten sagged in defeat. He didn’t know why Ngo Drang hadn’t already done it. Then he looked at the tight face, at the empty, odd stare in the killer’s eyes.

“Hissss—splat,” said Drang. “A neat laser hole in your forehead.”

“You should take me to the major,” Marten said.

Drang shook his head. “No. I… I should kill you. I don’t know why I haven’t done it already. It’s…” He shook his head, frowning.

“The major wants you to take me to her,” Marten said.

“Yeah?”

Marten rose slowly, noting how the laser tracked his forehead. Deep-core pressure was all he had between him and death. “We’d better go.”

The intense frown left Ngo Drang’s face. “That way,” he said, gesturing with the laser.

19.

When Marten had first stepped off the elevator into the deep-core station, Major Orlov had been twining her thick fingers into the long dark hair of System Specialist Ah Chen. The Chinese technician was exactly the type the major passionately hated: Petite, pretty, with luxurious dark hair and eyes like a vid star. Ah Chen made her baggy brown overalls seem sexy and provocative. Major Orlov hated her on sight. So she gripped the system specialist’s thick hair and yanked her head.

“You’re going to help us obliterate Sydney, my smooth-skinned harlot.”

Ah Chen remained speechless. Tears welled in her fawn eyes and streaked her oval face. She’d squealed in terror until Orlov had forced her to watch the quick and efficient slaughter of her deep station colleagues. The major had grinned and made a running commentary as her killers had hosed the room with beams. Sobs still racked the tiny thing.

“No crying!” Orlov shouted, jerking the small head from side to side.

The little beauty sniffled and sobbed. So the major slammed her face against the wall, listening to the little button nose crunch and break.

“Did you hear me!” roared Orlov, enjoying herself hugely.

Ah Chen bowed her head. Her blood dripped to the floor.

Major Orlov shoved the tiny system specialist ahead of her into the hall, and did so all the way to the main reactor room. It contained a bewildering array of computer screens and keyboards. Openmouthed, terrified technicians stared at them.