Ceaseless (20 page)

“Shit...
shit
!” he cried.

His hand fell on the pistol with the nanotech. He still had it. Allan tore it free from its holster, took aim and fired once. The round hit the killer directly in the faceplate. There was a curious white spark that was not quite a spark and immediately the killer went limp and fell back off the car and onto the road, rolling a few times.

“Guess it still works,” he muttered.

“Good thing we recovered the spare bullets,” Poet said. “Look, there's the starport. We can get the fuck out of here and maybe contact Montgomery. Either way, we're heading for the third destabilizer.” He twisted the wheel around and brought what was left of the vehicle straight up to the gate they had passed through less than an hour ago.

“Come on,” Poet said, hopping out.

“Hold it!”

Both men froze instinctively, but relaxed when they saw it was merely a trio of security personnel for the airport. “Identify yourselves,” one of them demanded.

“Captain Henderson and Captain Richards. We're with Special Operations and right now we need you to get the fuck out of the way,” Poet replied.

Allan glanced back over his shoulder. His eyes widened and he felt sick, hot terror shot through him as he spied the lumbering figure of the killer.

“He's back up,” Allan said.

“Who's back up...who the fuck is
that
?
What
is that?!” the officer in charge cried.

“Evacuate the area right now!” Poet snapped. “Allan, shoot him!”

Allan took aim. He didn't have long, the killer was really picking up speed, hastily closing the gap between them. Allan fired. The shot missed by inches as the killer dodged, then crashed into the group of them like a missile.

“
Go
!” Poet screamed.

The killer grabbed the head of the nearest officer and crushed it like a grape, spraying the others with an awful mixture of gray-and-red gore. The two remaining officers took a few steps back and opened fire. Allan leveled his pistol at the killer, who suddenly turned and punched him in the chestplate so hard that it cracked even further. The force of the punch picked him up and sent him flying several feet back.

“Allan!” Poet cried, making for him.

He made it took steps, then the killer grabbed his arm. Completely ignoring the hail of gunfire, the killer reached out and gripped Poet's right wrist. Bringing down his other hand in a sharp, chopping motion, the killer completely severed Poet's arm up to the elbow. Allan coughed violently as he took aim a second time with his pistol and fired. This time the round hit the killer in the chest. He immediately went limp.

“Run!” Allan screamed, groaning as he climbed to his feet and rushed over to Poet. “Get the fuck out of here! Now!”

He grabbed Poet and hauled him to his feet. Poet's remaining hand was over the stump of his arm, which spurted blood through his fingers. Poet muttered incoherently as they rushed across the landing pads. Allan felt the burning urge to stop and apply at least
some
medical aid, but he tossed a quick glance behind him and saw that the killer was already stirring. There was no time. There was never any time, it seemed.

They reached the back of the ship. Poet was sluggishly trying to get his medical kit out. The back ramp, mercifully, was still open. They stumbled up it. As soon as they were clear, Allan smashed the close button and screamed for the pilot to take off. Immediately, the ship began to ascend. Dropping to his knees, Allan grabbed the medical kit out of Poet's hands, tore it open, grabbed a coagulant, ripped the top off and poured the powder over his stump.

“I think it's too late,” Poet groaned. Allan began to respond, to say something cliché that people always say in hopeless situations, but Poet's remaining hand shot out and gripped Allan's shoulder. “Get to the last destabilizer. All the information is in my database. Pull it, look at the information. The code is in my comms catalog with Montgomery, the location is in my navigational database. Get...the job...done...”

His hand fell away and all at once, Allan realized the man was dead.

Which meant that he was likely the last one who knew about this plan, about their goal and the threat, because there was a good chance that Montgomery and the rest of the Special Operations personnel were dead as well.

Feeling the press of time, he worked quickly, relieving Poet's central database from his suit and plugging it into his own. He began to stand, then remembered something, stopped and grabbed Poet's pistol. Extracting the magazine, he pocketed it and stood. Hurriedly, he made his way to the cockpit and closed the door behind him, leaning against one of the walls. He activated Poet's database and began going through it.

“Where are we going?” the pilot asked.

“Hold on,” Allan replied.

“We've got a contact, coming up on us fast, an intercept course,” the pilot said.

Allan felt a stab of fear and shifted his focus to the navigational core. After a moment, he had the data he was looking for. He fed the coordinates to the pilot, who made the appropriate corrections. Allan glanced over the instrumentation panels.

“How long until we get there?” he asked.

“It's about an hour's flight,” the pilot replied.

“Shit...what's the situation with the pursuer?”

“Whoever he is, he's on an intercept course. We'll be in weapon's range in about thirty seconds. And yeah, we're maxed out for speed.”

“Fuck, can we fight him?”

“No, not unless we turn around.”

“Shit, shit...” Allan considered it for a moment. “Wait, this cockpit is an escape pod, right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Can you make it so that we eject and the rest of the ship smashes right into that fucker?”

There was a brief pause as the pilot considered this. “Yes. We can do that. Obviously we won't be able to fly anymore.”

“All right, find the nearest inhabited structure and make for it. Then do what you need to do,” Allan replied.

“You got it, boss,” the pilot muttered.

Allan hesitated for a moment. Here was a man who hadn't been briefed on anything, who had no idea the implications of what they were doing, who was laying his life on the line. All of it without question.

“Thank you,” Allan said quietly.

The pilot grunted as he worked in response. Allan felt a wave of lethargy wash over him. He didn't have the time or inclination to explain the situation to the man. There was nowhere to sit, unfortunately. Which wasn't good, because they were about to-

“Shit,” the pilot muttered as gunfire raked across the hull, racking the interior will dull, hollow thuds. Allan decided to sit on the floor.

He put his back to the bulkhead with the door in it and slid down to the floor. The jump ship took a dive, then twisted to the left, then climbed for altitude. Allan looked down, then closed his eyes, trying to ignore the bumps and shudders. He waited, seconds ticking by, listening to the pilot mutter to himself, making calculations.

When it happened, it happened fast.

There was a sharp metallic echo that tore through the ship, followed by an immense silence as the engines cut out and then disappeared. Allan felt his stomach break free from its moorings as the cockpit entered free fall.

“Did it work?” Allan asked.

The pilot began to respond, but was interrupted by a not-so-distant rumble. “Yep, whoever was in that ship is fucking dust now,” he replied, chuckling grimly.

“If only,” Allan muttered. He glanced up, opened his eyes. “What kind of landing abilities does this thing have?”

“Not as much as I'd like. It's really more of a last-ditch kind of thing. But I'd suggest you hold on to something because the survival rate-”

The cockpit smashed into the ground.

Despite having held onto whatever he could find, Allan shot forward and rolled across cramped interior of the cockpit. A sharp bark of pain escaped him and he smashed into some of the instrumentation panels, his head banging against the inside of his helmet, his bruised and tired limbs seeming to cry out at the abuse.

All was still, then.

They'd crashed, and he was still alive. Allan groaned as he rose shakily to his feet.

“Come on,” he said. “Help me find a way out of here.”

He looked around the top of the cabin for a long moment before realizing that there hadn't been a response. He looked down at the pilot and saw the man was still sprawled across his workstation. The straps holding him had broken. Blood was leaking slowly out of him from some wound. Allan reached down, grabbed the man by his shoulders and lifted. The pilot's head hung at an awkward angle and he could see at once that not only had his throat had been cut fatally by some debris, but his neck had also been broken.

“Fuck,” he whispered, laying the man back down.

He was alone now. Truly alone. Well, except for the killer. Who was probably on the way. Never enough time. It took him a moment, but he soon remembered the easiest way to escape one of these things. Glancing up, Allan spied the escape hatch. He reached up and opened it, a weary smile growing on his face as he stared up into the sunshine. Quickly, he clambered up and out of the hatch, staring around him, expecting to see the killer.

Several hundred meters back, he could see the smoking wreckage they'd created. He thought he could see a shape coming towards him. When he turned his gaze back in the way he had to go, his eyes fell on a jeep, manned by two soldiers in tank-tops and fatigue pants. They were both leaning against the exterior, staring at him.

“Hey!” he called, hoping off the cockpit and hurrying over to them. “I'm with Special Operations, I need your jeep.”

Both men seemed to pale at the mention of Spec Ops. One of them glanced down at a rolled up joint in his hand.

“Uh...” he managed, then he threw it away.

“Look, just...get in the jeep,” Allan said, throwing open the driver's side door and hopping in. The others hesitated further, then hopped in after him. He spied the distant shape of their outpost, which happened to be in the direction he needed to go, threw the jeep into drive and took off, stomping on the gas pedal.

“What the fuck's going on?” one of them asked.

“You don't need to mention the weed, right? I mean, it was just a little,” the other said timidly.

Allan laughed. Even though it was legal now, weed was most definitely off limits when you were on-base or on duty.

“I don't give a shit about your weed. I'm dropping you off at your base and taking the jeep. Officially Spec Ops business,” Allan replied. He hesitated as a thought occurred to him. “Also, listen, I need you to get in contact with...someone high up. Colonial Authority.
Someone
who runs this fucking shitheap of a planet. I need you to order a planetary evacuation. I'm destroying this planet. Do you understand me?”

There was dead silence in the jeep.

“Do you fucking understand me!?
That's a fucking order
!” he snapped.

“Yes, sir!” they both replied in unison.

“Good.”

They drove on until they'd reached the base, at which point he shouted for them to get out. Once they were gone, he stomped on the gas pedal once more, hurrying across the desert, hoping against hope that he could somehow get this done.

There was only one thing left to do now. Just one more thing. Start the last destabilizer, and then...what?

What exactly was he supposed to do next?

Allan supposed it didn't matter.

He drove on.

Chapter 16

–
Planet Killer
–

Alone for the last time.

Allan watched the miles of sun-drenched wasteland roll by as he sped as quickly as the jeep would allow. There were no structures. No people. No vehicles. Nothing to indicate that anyone had ever lived on this miserable planet. Only the desert and another mountain rising up in the distance, presumably where he had to go. He'd activated Poet's database and pulled the information from it. The final destabilizer was in another cave system.

He tried to stop looking in the rearview mirror, but it was a difficult thing to break. He kept expecting to see a cloud of dust, a speck of a vehicle on the horizon. The killer was coming for him. Somehow, someway, he was coming. And if Allan died, so did everyone else. For a moment, he lamented his task.

It wasn't just not fair, it was insanity. He hadn't asked for this crap, didn't want to do anything more than have a normal life. But what
was
a normal life? Trying to find it here, on backwater Lindholm, had failed utterly. But what could he do? What was there to be done? Part of him was angry. This was the fucking twenty three hundreds, for fuck's sake! How did they not have answers to problems like his at this point!?

But what
was
his problem, anyway?

He couldn't quite pinpoint it, except that anything resembling 'life' grew harder and harder to maintain, even on a basic level, while the job got easier. Fear was important to have in a job where you were there was a good chance you were going to die at any moment. But there had to be a balance of it. Not too much, not too little. Too much, and you froze. Too little and you ran off like a dumbass into the field of fire because you thought nothing could happen to you. Sometimes Allan thought he'd found that equilibrium.