A Hole in the Sky (3 page)

“What have we got?” Kawecki demanded. “Any casualties?”

“Yeah,” Rigg said solemnly. “Mason took one in the ass.”

“It snuck up behind me,” the big man said defensively. He had short hair, dark skin, and a moon-shaped face.

Kawecki chuckled. “I’ll put you in for a medal. Okay, check your weapons, and let’s get going. Target practice is over.”

After a ten-minute walk, the team arrived at a spot where a construction project had been under way. Lucy led the group back behind a pile of lumber to a point where three sheets of plywood were leaning against the wall. Once the sheets were lifted out of the way, a hole was revealed. “You’ll have to crawl on your hands and knees,” she commented. “But it’s okay to leave your packs on.”

The woman led the way, and one by one the men followed her. Light flooded the tunnel, and when Voss stepped forward, he was completely unprepared for the sight that greeted him. Lucy saw the look on his face and nodded knowingly. “This station is located underneath
the public area in front of City Hall. It was intended to be a showpiece when it opened in 1904. But passenger service was discontinued in 1945 and the station was sealed off later on. We use it as a gathering place, and one of our people is a damned good engineer. He tapped into the Chimeran power grid and restored the lights.”

“It’s beautiful,” Voss said as he looked down the tunnel. The first decorative arch featured intricate tilework, the next boasted insets of colored glass, and brass chandeliers hung in between. The effect was stunning.

“Come on,” Lucy said. “The rest of them are camped in the mezzanine.”

As the team followed Lucy into the lobby-like mezzanine they saw that dozens of soldiers, ex-soldiers, and citizen freedom fighters had responded to the nationwide call. Some of them knew one or more members of the incoming team, so there were lots of raucous greetings, friendly insults, and man-hugs as old comrades were reunited.

Kawecki, Mason, Rigg, and the rest were soon lost in the social melee. Voss was standing by himself when Lucy reappeared with a bespectacled man at her side.

“President Voss? This is Doctor Fyodor Malikov. I understand that you two have been in frequent radio contact but have never met face-to-face. Doctor Malikov, this is President Thomas Voss.”

“Tom is fine,” Voss said, as he shook the other man’s hand. His handshake was surprisingly strong for one who looked so frail. Judging from appearances, Malikov was in his late fifties or early sixties. He was mostly bald, with a halo of white hair and a full beard. His face was gaunt and his clothes were tattered.

Voss knew Malikov had been forced to flee Europe for the United States after the Chimera broke out of Russia. He’d been instrumental in creating the serum that the
Sentinels relied on and the new Hale vaccine as well. This vaccine could not only alleviate human suffering by making humans immune to the Chimeran virus, it could reduce the number of pod farms and the forms they produced.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you in person,” Malikov said. “How is the vaccine production going?”

“We aren’t producing as many doses as we’d like,” Voss replied, “but it’s ramping up. And getting the vaccine out to the people takes a lot of effort, as you can imagine.”

“I understand,” Malikov said. His eyes were bright. “Meanwhile ve must either shut the tower down or destroy it.”

“And how is that going to work?” Lucy wanted to know.

A long moment of silence passed as Malikov looked down, then up again. “I don’t know,” he confessed.

“You don’t
know
?” Voss demanded incredulously. “We brought all of these people here to New York, and you don’t know?”

“That’s the reality of the situation,” Malikov said defensively. “Vonce ve get inside, and fight our way up to the control room, I’ll figure it out.”

“And if you don’t?”

Malikov met Voss’s eyes. His gaze was unapologetic. “Then we’re going to die for nothing.”

The attack on the tower was scheduled for 0830 the following morning, but for Kawecki and the rest of the soldiers the evening was a rare opportunity to get together in groups of five or six and shoot the shit. And whenever soldiers gather, talk inevitably turns to old battles and old buddies. So as Kawecki and some of the surviving Sentinels sat on their packs and passed a bottle
of Jim Beam around, the subject of Joseph Capelli was bound to come up.

“I say Capelli did the right thing,” a soldier named Budry said as he took a sip and wiped his mouth. “Hale hadn’t had an inhibitor treatment in a long time. The poor bastard was about to turn. Joe did him a favor.”

“That’s bullshit,” Yorba replied bitterly. He had a head of unruly hair and a beard to match. “Hale was the best we had! And maybe Malikov could have saved him. Plus this is the U.S. Army, goddamn it! Or what’s left of it. Since when is it okay to shoot your commanding officer? No, I’d say Capelli got off easy. They should have put the SOB in front of a firing squad.”

“How ’bout you, Captain?” a Sentinel named Russ inquired, as the bottle came his way. “Was Capelli right or wrong?”

“The asshole was
wrong
,” Kawecki said darkly. “I fought alongside Hale and he was a fine officer. And, if I run into Capelli, I’ll blow his fucking brains out. Any further questions?”

“No,” Russ said with a boyish grin. “I think that covers it.”

“Good,” Kawecki said as he stood. “This meeting is adjourned. Go get some sleep. We have a whole bunch of stinks to kill in the morning.”

It was July 4th, and Voss had been up all night. Not because he had to be, or wanted to be, but because he couldn’t sleep. Now the task that once seemed so achievable, and even glamorous, was beginning to look like a suicide mission. The tower was much larger than he had imagined it to be, and it was crawling with stinks. Worse yet, Malikov wasn’t sure of what to do if they made it to the control room. So, having allowed his visions of glory to get the better of him, Voss was going to die.

But it was too late to change plans or back out. All Voss could do was shoulder his pack and follow a double column of soldiers up the Lexington Avenue Line towards the intersection of 42nd and Third. That was where the alien tower had grown to dwarf the Chrysler Building and touched the sky itself. A six-inch-thick Chimeran power conduit led the way.

A scouting party had been sent ahead and reported everything was quiet so far. But that couldn’t last for long—and it didn’t.

The battle began fifteen minutes later as they passed under 35th Street. The first sign of resistance came when three elongated Hunter Drones dropped out of a ventilation shaft and opened fire. The effort wasn’t enough to stop Voss’s team, so Voss assumed the machines were supposed to simply delay them.

If so the tactic wasn’t very successful, because Kawecki had been expecting something of the sort and his men had two L210 LAARKs (Light Anti-Armor Rockets) prepped and ready to go. The Drones barely had time to open fire before they were destroyed in quick succession.

The rocket launchers were a bit of overkill, but Kawecki figured the LAARKs wouldn’t be of much use inside the tower, and he wanted to hold casualties to a minimum going in. “That’s what I’m talking about,” one of the men said, as a still-smoking carcass clattered onto the tracks. “We’re kicking ass and taking names.”

Once the party’s leaders arrived at the point where the tower’s metal roots blocked the tunnel, they climbed up onto the platform and took up positions around the stairs as the rest of the troops came up to join them. Over Voss’s objections, Alvarez, Mason, and Rigg had been assigned to guard Malikov and himself. So wherever they went the others followed.

“Okay,” Kawecki said over the radio. “Let’s go upstairs and waste some stinks. Over.”

With a shout of approval, the single-file column of soldiers surged up the stairs, past an empty ticket booth and into the tower itself.

Voss
heard
the battle before he had a chance to join in it, as the human invaders made violent contact with a force of snarling Hybrids. Heavy fire lashed back and forth, and Voss heard screaming as people began to fall.

The politician had to negotiate his way around a half-dozen bodies as he and the rest of the soldiers pushed their way into a huge lobby. Voss tilted his head back to see a circular platform with thick supporting columns on both sides of it. A walkway spiraled up and away from the platform. It was connected side-to-side by a network of crisscrossing sky bridges.

As Steelheads appeared on the platform above and fired Augers down into the crowd below, Lucy jerked spastically and went down. A soldier fell as Kawecki said, “Kill those bastards! Everyone else onto the elevators. Move!”

Voss had seen the elevators too, three of them on each side of the lobby. He led Malikov, his bodyguards, and a dozen other soldiers over to one of the circular platforms. Mason slapped a control, curved doors slid into place, and the elevator began to rise.

Malikov studied a brightly lit panel on the wall. “This symbol is for the control room,” the scientist said confidently, pointing at a star-shaped icon. “If ve stay on the elevator it will take us there. Tell the others.”

At that moment the platform jerked to a halt and the doors opened. “Hold that thought,” Voss said. “It looks like the stinks shut the elevator system down.”

That prediction soon came true, as
all
of the tubular lifts opened to spill their passengers out onto the circular platform Voss had seen from the lobby below. As the humans exited, they were immediately confronted by the stinks who were already on that level. More of them
were charging down the spiral ramp from above as a swarm of Drones appeared.

A hellish battle ensued. Wraith miniguns harvested the Chimera like wheat in a field, V7 Splicers chopped the stinks into chunks of raw meat, and an L11-2 Dragon sent tongues of fire up the ramp. But it made no difference, as the now flaming ’brids, Steelheads, and Ravagers charged through the conflagration to grab humans and wrap them in fire. The screams they produced overlaid each other.

Every time the President tried to advance and join the force at the foot of the ramp his bodyguards cut him off. So Voss assigned himself the task of dealing with the seemingly endless waves of Drones. But no matter how many of the machines he destroyed, there were always more.

He fired the carbine until it ran dry, reloaded until all of his spare magazines were empty, and switched to the Rossmore. Malikov was firing too. Patrol Drones exploded left, right, and center as empty casings arced away and bounced off the floor.

But there was no cover to speak of, and the floor was slippery with human blood as men fell in twos and threes. Bodies lay everywhere, and the sound of gunfire started to dwindle as the Chimera began to run out of targets.

Voss was convinced he was going to die. He was resigned to that fate, when Mason stepped in to clip a rope to the D-ring at the center of his combat harness. Voss opened his mouth to object, but Kawecki was there to cut him off.

“Mason is going to lower you over the side, sir. We’re sending Malikov down too. Once you hit the floor, unhook the rope so we can use it again.”

Voss said, “Wait just a goddamn minute,” but that was as far as he got when Mason plucked him off the floor
and dumped him over the side. There was a sudden jerk as he fell four or five feet, followed by a twirling descent. That was when Voss spotted the seething mass of Leapers waiting below. They made a horrible gibbering sound as the President freed a grenade, pulled the pin, and let it fall. The bomb hit, bounced, and went off with a loud boom.

Voss knew that shrapnel from the explosion could hit him as well but figured that was the chance he’d have to take. He needed a landing zone and got one as the exploding grenade created a bloody 360-degree bull’s-eye for him to put down in. Pieces of hot metal hit him, but he barely registered the pain while his boots hit and he hurried to free the rope. Then the line was gone, quickly snaking upwards, while Mason peered down at him. There was a muted thump when Malikov landed a few feet away. “Ve are supposed to run!” the scientist yelled, as his line was retracted.

“Screw that,” Voss replied, while he blew a half-dozen charging Leapers to bits. “The rest of them need a safe place to land.”

Malikov nodded and began to blast away. Kawecki landed a minute later, quickly followed by Mason and Rigg, all of whom had rappelled from above. Rigg’s nickname was “Pretty Boy.” But it was hard to tell if he deserved the title because of the bloody bandage wrapped around his head.

“How many more?” Voss inquired, shoving shells into the Rossmore.

“There aren’t any more,” Kawecki answered grimly. “Shuck that pack, Mr. President, and follow me. It’s time for us to get the hell out of here.”

Fire lashed down as the humans dropped their packs and zigzagged across the floor, firing while they ran, killing anything that moved. Then they were through the
open door, following a well-plowed path east, as Hybrids poured out of the tower and gave chase. “The-East-River,” Kawecki said as they pounded along. “We’ll-look-for-a-boat.”

They paused a few hundred feet farther on, turned to fire on the Chimera, and had the satisfaction of seeing a dozen of them go down before resuming their flight. The snow continued to fall as they followed a well-worn stink-path through the wreckage of FDR Drive and down to the East River. And that was where Voss saw a broad expanse of drifting ice! It was moving at a good three or four miles per hour. Visibility was poor, but they could still spot open channels, as the entire mass drifted towards New York Bay.

“Come on!” Voss shouted, skidding down a slab of concrete to the river below. “It’s our only chance!” And with that, the President of the United States ran for his life.

The Deep Home Saloon and Pleasure Emporium occupied the lowest level of a parking garage in Burlington, Colorado. The top two levels had been bombed into rubble, a half-dozen vehicles trapped inside. What light there was came from lanterns hung at regular intervals. They conspired to produce a soft, smoky glow and shadows that danced the walls as people moved about.