Shadow on the Sun (7 page)

CHAPTER 10

The Hive

Olympus Mons

ANNOS MARTIS
239. 2. 12. 14:31

 

 

“No, not eat your brain per se,” Mimi says, “but certainly erase every thought and memory you have ever had.”

“Which is not on my to-do list,” I say. “Time to accelerate that escape attempt.” For the last two weeks, I've been planning an escape. The best time would have been during a training mission. The plan was to fake being gassed, surprise a couple of guards, then steal a truck/boat/turbo bike and haul butt. It was a good plan.

“It was a high-risk plan with a very small margin of success,” Mimi says.

“If you call seventy percent a small margin.”

“More likely, thirty percent.”

“Fifty percent.”

“Forty.”

“Like I said, it was a good plan.” But now, all that precision planning is shot. I have to get off this mountain stat, and oh yeah, that HVT is coming with me. No way am I leaving something that could win a war behind.”

“Discretion is the better part of valor,” Mimi says.

“If that means that it's better to be a living coward than a dead hero”—I sneak a peek at Lyme, whose back is to me— “then I think it's a load of guanite.”

“I concur,” she says, as I—

Sit bolt upright.

Grab the armalite from the gurney.

And snatch Lyme by the collar. Then yank him backward so that he's off balance and the muzzle of my rifle fits nicely in the notch that forms his occipital protuberance.

“Ha!” Mimi says. “You
have
learned something by osmosis.”

Ignoring her, I put my mouth next to his ear. “Not a sound, or I'll put a round in your brainpan.”

Lyme makes a low groan and struggles against me. But I've got him, and he can't slip loose. “Ah, Jacob,” he says in a raspy voice. “I thought you might be awake.”

“Liar.” I push him toward the door. “You were taking me to the Nursery. You're planning to erase my memories. Because stealing my AI isn't enough, is it?”

Lyme laughs, and he doesn't resist, except to walk more slowly than I'd like. I plant a knee in his lower spine. “This is your grand escape?” he says. “I admit, I expected it when you were less docile, but lately I had begun to believe that you had finally given in. You never were particularly tenacious. Dolly—”

I clap a hand over his mouth. “No calling your AI for help.” I push him out of the room, expecting two guards. But the doorway is empty. “Mimi, do a scan.”

“Negative,” she says. “Dolly is not aware of my presence. If I do a scan, that hussy will perceive it.”

“Skip the scan, then,” I say.

“The guards are around the corner,” Lyme says when I loosen my grip on his mouth. “This pair has a habit of leaving their posts. Please shoot them for me.”

I yank harder on his collar. “This isn't a game.”

“It
is
a game, Jacob,” he says. “One that you are destined to lose. What I don't understand is why you didn't simply strike me and flee. You could make quite the run of it. You are very good at running away.”

I long to throttle his neck. “You're very good at staying in one place, like in a prison cell.”

“He is baiting you, cowboy,” Mimi says. “Do not let him goad you into losing your focus.”

She's right. He has goaded me my whole life. And I'm sick of it. “Won't work, Lyme.”

“Lyme?” he says as we cross the hallway, and I glance ahead to where the guards are standing, gabbing with two others. “Have you forgotten that I am your father?”

“No, but you have.”

“Touché,” he says.

I step out into the open, using him as a shield. “Gentlemen and other assorted Sturmnacht scumbuckets, drop your weapons and start running.”

The four of them look up, startled. They jump as if jolted by a live wire when I shove Lyme toward them.

“Now!” I shout. “Before I split his skull!”

“Follow his order,” Lyme says, “and I will shoot you all myself.”

Their eyes dart from him, to me, to my weapon, and back to one another. It's like watching bioengineered cows in the biodome make a group decision.

I don't have time for this
chùsheng
. With a quick shove, I knock Lyme forward. When they move to stop his fall, I launch a front kick at the nearest guard. He reaches out, exposing his ribs. I hear the crack, then slam my boot on his foot. He bends over, and I follow up with a thunder fist to his left kidney.

That's one down.

The next guy turns as my elbow catches him in the ear. He stumbles backward, so I shove him into the third guard. They both fall in a tumble of arms and legs.

That's two and three down.

“Technically,” Mimi points out, “they are still capable of fighting.”

“Close enough in a pinch.” I round on the fourth guard, a slightly built guy with a purple scar that covers half of his face. I used to have a scar like it, until Lyme's cosmeticians removed it. “You used to be a Regulator?” I ask him.

Surprised, he lifts Lyme and spins my angry, embarrassed father to his feet. “How'd you know?”

“Lots of soldiers in my unit got those when CEO Stringfellow set the Big Daddy chiggers loose on us,” I say. “So how about I take the general, and you find a line of work where your boss isn't trying to kill you?”

He starts to pull his sidearm. “Ancient history.”

“Must be,” I say, “because you didn't even recognize the man who did it to you. Meet CEO Stringfellow, aka Mr. Lyme.”

The guard looks at Lyme with moon eyes, and I can see the gears turning in his head. He turns the weapon toward his boss.

“Paska paskattaa skeida!”
I say, and next thing I know, I'm having to coldcock the guy to save the life of the man I was threatening to kill.

I pull a smoke grenade from my own ammo belt, yank the pin with my teeth, and toss it. “Take a deep breath,” I tell Lyme while clapping a hand over his mouth again.

I half push, half carry him through the billowing cloud, which will in a few seconds fill the entire hallway. It's like carrying an empty suit. For a second, I feel a twinge of anger and sadness that catches me by surprise.

“Dolly has sounded the alarm,” Mimi tells me.

“Fine by me,” I say aloud. “Now you can do a scan and show me the best route out of here.”

“That would be through the Nursery,” she says, and then adds, “Beat you to it.”

“You're talking to your AI?” Lyme says, his voice hoarse. “Impossible! Dolly eradicated her!”

“Right, just like the Earth eradicated smallpox two centuries before they weaponized it and used it on Mars.”

“Cowboy, I read eleven human biosignatures,” Mimi says. “Nine of them are Alphas in their cradles.”

“The other two?”

“Just your average human types.”

I kick the nursery door open and start shooting. “That, I can handle.”

The two average human types turn out to be Lieutenant Riacin and a technician in a lab coat. They both dive behind a console as my spray of bullets chases them away from the cradles.

“You missed,” Mimi says.

“Meant to.” I didn't need to shoot blighters, just chase them away. The last thing I want is those cradles opened. I could take on any of the Alphas or maybe three of them. All of them would be . . .

“Impossible,” Mimi says.

“A challenge.” I push Lyme into a chair and yank a length of cable from the back of a multinet screen. “Hold out your hands.”

With a wry smirk, he complies. I wrap the cord around his wrists and cinch the knot. Riacin peeks out from behind the panel.

I fire a shot to keep his head down and am distracted by the observation window. Outside, Hellbender One is being filled with petrol, and a crew of mechanics is doing a systems check.

“What do you hope to accomplish, Jacob?” Lyme asks. “Even if you manage to escape the Nursery, you will never survive. Olympus Mons is the highest mountain in the solar system. Do you intend to sled down it?”

“Just hope I don't use you as the sled.”

I open fire into the observation window until the clip is empty. The barrel is glowing white hot. The window is full of spiderweb cracks but still intact.

“It appears that I still know more than you,” Lyme says.

I pull a white phosphorus grenade from my belt and toss it into the epicenter of the cracks. A few seconds later it ignites, creating a man-sized hole. A blast of arctic air rushes through, sucking in snow and ice. Soon the wind is blowing so hard, the multinet monitors begin to fall off the walls.

Alarms ring out. Sirens blare. Emergency lights flicker on and off rapidly, so that everything looks like it's moving in slow motion.

“Maybe not.” I give his chair a good kick. While Lyme is spinning, I grab the high-value target from its place of honor.

“Dolly!” Lyme cries. “Alert!”

But it's too late. I tuck the case under my arm and dive out the window. Hit the deck with a forward roll. Then come up sprinting for the opposite end of the rectangular steel platform.

Toward the Hellbender.

Which has finished its system check and is beginning to lift from the landing pad.

“You are insane,” Mimi says.

“That's the same thing you told me the last time I hijacked a Hellbender.”

“That was just luck.”

I hit the afterburners. “Maybe I'm feeling lucky.”

The pilot turns toward me, the motion of her head bringing the nose cannon into firing position. She watches me for a second, then remembering that I am the same Alpha Dog that has just been carried off her ship, opens up with a barrage of rounds that rip across the platform and catch me right in the chest. I regain my balance and aim for the fuel trolley on the other side of the landing pad.

“Sorry,” Mimi says. “I am a bit rusty.”

“No blood, no foul,” I say.

The trolley driver spots me coming and inexplicably, decides to be a hero. He leaps from his seat and holds up a wrench. Without even breaking stride I knock him aside, launch myself to the top of the trolley tank, sprint into the blinding wind and—

Jump!

My momentum carries me past the platform. Steel becomes air. The deck becomes a bank of clouds.

“Don't look down!” Mimi calls out.

But of course I do.

I always do.

And as always, it ends badly.

CHAPTER 11

The Hive

Olympus Mons

ANNOS MARTIS
239. 2. 12. 14:31

 

 

A wave of vertigo hits me, and I flail madly as the arc of my dive begins to carry me downward. Then somehow, in a stroke of spastic dumb luck, my free hand slaps against one of the Hellbender's landing skids. My fingers close, and I swing my other arm and the case over the skid.

“Got it!” I yell.

“Lucky catch.”

I swing up to the gunners' nest and pull myself inside. “I'd rather be lucky than good.”

“Then it's good that you are lucky,” Mimi says. “Heads up, cowboy. Hostile closing on your six.”

I turn back, thinking that it's Riacin coming after us with a pistol.

Wrong.

It's Sarge, and he's dragging a minigun across the platform.

A squeeze of the trigger unleashes the weapon, and it chatters like a broken chain. I dive out of the way, and Sarge sprays the Hellbender. A half dozen shells find their mark in the body of the copter, and the pilot rolls aft to avoid the rest.

“Stop shooting at me!” the pilot yells.

“Yeah! What she said!” I slam a clip into my armalite, flick it to semiauto, and shoot the ammo chain that runs into Sarge's gun feeder. The chain shatters. The gun jams. The ensuing torque rips the weapon from Sarge's hands. He lifts his head, roars like a stuck rat, and shakes a fist at me.

“Is he really shaking his fist at me?” I ask Mimi.

“Yes, despite the obvious cliché.”

In reply, I smile and blow him a kiss.

The gesture he returns is almost as clichéd and much more profane. He grabs the broken chain and flings it at the Hellbender. It whips through the frigid air and falls impotently into space.

At which point, the pilot decides to tip me out of the hold.

“Hey!” My feet fly out from under me. The Hellbender, soaring at an angle so severe it is almost sideways, veers away from the platform and plunges down into nothingness.

“I'm going to puke,” I moan as we rip through the cloud bank, wisps of condensation lashing against my face. I jam the handle of the case into my mouth and hold it with my teeth while grabbing the hatch handle.

“Negative,” Mimi says. “Visceral readouts show no abnormal activity, other than mild acid reflux.”

“Then I'm going to die!”

“Only if you let go of the hatch. The pilot will not crash her own velocicopter just to get you. Focus.”

“Easy for you to say! Your stomach isn't lodged in your nostrils!”

“I was a soldier once, too,” she says, and that kills the argument. How can you debate the fear of death with someone who has already died?

“Fine!” I try to swing back into the bay, but forces exerted by momentum and gravity slam my legs back down. So instead, I punch the plexi out of the door, loop my arm through it, and hold on.

“Get off my ship!” the pilot yells.

“Be glad to!” I yell back. “Just land the carking thing first!”

“No can do!” she shouts. “Either you surrender, or I'll dump your carcass on the side of the mountain!”

“That's not much of an option!” I scramble higher. “I'll take C!”

“There was no C!” she yells.

“Now you tell me!” I swing my legs up. “I demand a retest!”

Its red and blue lights flashing in the sky, the Hellbender swoops down the north face of the mountain. Below, I watch the lights of the massive military complex Lyme has built—gunships, tanks, artillery, infantry as far as the eye can see.

The army that Lyme once assembled to fight the bioengineered chigoe called Big Daddies was twice as large, but much less mechanized. Before Lyme turned factories into munitions plants, battles were fought differently, with infantry engaging in hand-to-hand combat more often than not. War was much more personal then.

“How about we take a closer look?” the pilot yells. She veers again, carrying us toward the long, flat plain that extends from the foothills. “Maybe the business end of a battle tank will change your mind!”

The camp is illuminated like a small city. I quickly count out combat regiments of infantry battalions, assault battalions, mechanized armored battalions supported by tanks, heavy artillery, and platoons of support personnel and engineers. In the skies above, I estimate a strike force of at least two hundred aircraft, so many that the sky is full of rotors. It's the most advanced force I've ever seen.

“That caught your attention, huh?” the pilot yells. “Good! Because that's where I'm landing this bird!”

“Mimi,” I ask, “is it too far to jump?”

“No,” she says. “The chance that you would survive is almost one hundred percent, barring a freak accident caused by an unaccounted anomaly. However, you would be faced with the prospect of traveling on foot, and your chances of escape are much greater if you can commandeer this craft.”

“Reckon I'll stay put,” I say.

“It surprises me that you are willing to jump from a great height,” Mimi says.

“Didn't say I was happy about it. It's Plan B. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“This lunatic decides to fly us into the side of the mountain!”

The pilot is so busy yelling at me that she doesn't hear the whistling of the Harpy missile that zips past the window and sails into the night sky.

Whew.

I yank open the cockpit door and slide into the copilot's seat. “Fancy meeting you here,” I say.

“Command! I am friendly! Do not fire!” the pilot screams again. Then she checks her radar screen and mutters a curse. “The Harpy's going to come back to bite us!”

As we watch through the windshield, the Harpy turns mid-path and backtracks. The pilot takes evasive, but the missile still catches us, slamming into the tail of the velocicopter, snapping the rear rotor off. The bird begins spinning. It pitches forward, headed directly for the mountain.

“Mayday! Mayday!” the pilot calls into her headset. “Baby Bird to Hawk's Nest. I've got complete systems failure! Do you copy? Answer me!”

The pilot panics and takes her hands off the cyclic stick, more concerned with calling for help than controlling the vessel. Calmly, I press a button on the panel, switching control over to the copilot. I grab the stick and hit the throttle as the main rotor pulls us toward a jagged cliff protruding from the mountainside.

“That's bad,” I say as the pilot throws her arms across her face and screams.

I kill the engine. The rotor stops. With the rudders responding only because I'm pounding on them, the copter drops like a stone below the cliff, which shears off the main rotor as we pass.

The tail whiplashes a tall tree, and the skids hook the branches. For an eternity of seconds, the ship is suspended by breaking limbs. Then with a creaking sound that gives me enough time to shout, “Hang on!” before we plummet into a snowbank below.

A few moments later, I kick my door open and crawl out through a snowdrift. The world is white, but the stink of fuel fills the air. Move, I think, before this crate blows you both to bits
.
I work my way around to the pilot's side of the cockpit. Her scalp is bleeding, but the cut is superficial and her breathing is regular. I shake her shoulder. When she doesn't respond, I grab a handful of snow and press it against her cheek.

“Huh?” Her head jerks up. She looks about, blinking and groaning, then falls back against the seat.

“Anything broken?” I yell over the wind.

She shakes her head no.

“Mimi?” I ask, knowing she'll be doing a bioscan of the pilot.

“No internal injuries that I can detect, cowboy,” she replies. “But minor breaks in both fibulae. Ask her to move so that we can check for signs of concussion.”

“Squeeze my hands,” I yell. “Good, now move your feet.” Mimi confirms that there are no spinal problems and no sign of serious head injuries. Maybe internal problems from the force of landing, but there's nothing to do for that except get her to a safe area and call for medevac.

“I have to move you,” I say. “Fuel's pouring out of the tanks, and this thing can go up any second. Ready?”

She gives a groggy thumbs-up.

Wedging a foot against the frame, I yank the door open. I lift her carefully from the wreckage and carry her a hundred meters away, where a deep gully forms a natural windbreak.

I place her against a rock, making sure that her pulse is still strong. I jog back to the copter to retrieve her gear, along with an emergency medical kit and Lyme's HVT. Can't leave that behind.

“Still okay?” I ask, and she groans in reply. “I'll take that as a yes.”

Working quickly, I clear away the snow, then break open a half dozen thermopaks, wedging them around her extremities. Then I wrap her in a thermal blanket. “That'll keep you warm for a least a couple hours.” Which is more than enough time for a rescue.

I pack the rest of the medikit into my rucksack and activate the emergency tracer on her uniform. “A rescue team will be here soon.” I push a tube of smelling salts into her hands. “If you start going under, use this.”

“Thanks,” she mutters.

“Don't mention it.” I pat her on the cheek. “But don't be offended if I never fly with you again.”

 

Teeth chattering from the cold, I jog down the side of the mountain until I reach a rock formation with enough mass to block out recon drones. There are three electronic locks on the case and a touch screen of some sort under the handle. Clearly, somebody doesn't want prying eyes to get inside.

“Astute observation,” Mimi says. “It requires highly trained skills of detection to conclude that locks are meant for security.”

“Ha-carking-ha,” I say. “Instead of mocking me, how about helping me figure out these locks.”

“But mocking you is more fun.”

“It's too cold for fun.”

“You misunderstand your purpose,” Mimi says. “Your concern is not with the locks, but with the object that is inside. You should apply your skills to deducing whether or not it will blow you into microscopic pieces.”

I pause. “Think this might be a bomb?”

“If General Lyme thinks it is an object of high value, it could be a myriad of dangerous objects.”

“So what's your best guess on what it might be?”

“A bomb.”

“Oh.”

“Possibly nuclear.”

I jump back. “Nuclear? Like a dirty bomb? Are you detecting any radiation coming from the cylinder?”

“Nothing more than ambient radiation,” she says.

“So you were just screwing with my head?”

“Affirmative.”

“Mimi!”

“Cowboy!”

“Be serious! This is a very dire matter.”

“I am aware on the gravity of the situation.”

“Then focus,” I say. “We have to decide on next steps.”

“I apologize for my jocularity. I seem to be overcome with an unexpected sense of euphoria. As Homer wrote, ‘A small rock holds back a great wave.' ”

“It's the thin air. It makes you giddy.”

“No,” she says. “It is just nice to be free again.”

I know what she means. I wasn't the only one who spent the last six months as a lab rat. I turn the case over and over, looking for any identifiable marks. It is as clean as a whistle. I've got no idea why Lyme wanted this thing so badly. Now that I have it, I'm not sure what to do with it. “Mimi, we need to get this open. Find out what we're dealing with so that we can get rid of it or whatever to keep it out of Lyme's hands.”

“My original thesis is still valid. We do not know the nature of the contents of the case, so it would be ill advised to open it until we do.”

I run a gloved finger over one of the locks. There is no place for a key, physical or electronic. Even the best lock picker I know wouldn't stand a chance of breaking these babies. It would take someone with a high degree of technological education and good old-fashioned know-how, along with enough natural curiosity to want to solve the puzzle of what's inside. It would also have to be someone I could trust implicitly, without having to worry they would sell me out to Lyme.

Luckily, I happen to know just such a person.

“You do not know if she is still alive,” Mimi says.

“I don't know that she's dead, either.”

“Nor can you be certain of her whereabouts.”

Ignoring her, I step out from under the rock cropping. The night sky is lit with lights of Phobos and Deimos, Mars's twin rocky moons. My night vision lets me easily pick out a path that will eventually lead to a road where hopefully, I can find a ride that will take us east.

“This is your plan of action?” Mimi says. “You are making many assumptions. Assuming that you should go east. Assuming that you can find her. Assuming that the locks can be broken. Assuming that the object inside will not kill you. Assuming that if you survive to that point, that knowing what the object is will guide you in how to best use it.”

“It's called having faith.”

“You think faith is enough?”

“It better be.” I start making my way down the path toward the foot of the mountain. “Because right now, faith is all I've got.”