FALLEN DRAGON (74 page)

"But he didn't want a meal," one of the Skins said.

"I know," Lawrence said. "But we brought it anyway. It's a fillet steak, his favorite." He took the silver top off a plate so the Skin could see.

"Okay then, you'd better go in."

Hal was lying on the small cot in the corner of the room, hands behind his head. He looked around when Lawrence and Dennis rattled the trolley across the floor. "I told them I didn't want any of that crap."

"The chef's a local," Lawrence said. "And the guilt's starting to sink in. If we go back and tell him he left it under the grill too long he'll probably need therapy for the rest of his life. You know what a pain these liberals are."

Hal grinned and went over to the trolley. The guard shut the door.

"Sarge," Hal said quietly. "I know what you said, but I've been thinking. I want to take the injection. It doesn't hurt none, and it'll be just like going to sleep. I figure that's for the best, you know."

"Hal, I need you to face the firing squad. I'm sorry, I know it's going to be tough, the toughest it could ever get for anyone. But that's the only way."

"Only way for what?"

Dennis bent down and pulled the trolley's white linen cloth aside. There was a field-aid case on the lower shelf.

"What's that for?" Hal asked.

"A simple way out of this mess," Lawrence said. "Which is the only thing that worries me. Someone else might figure this out. Sit down, Hal."

Hal did as he was told.

Dennis put the case down beside him and opened it up. He unwound two coils of clear thin tubing and plugged them into Hal's neck valves.

"Now listen," Lawrence said, and started to explain.

It was uncharacteristically cold for Memu Bay as the first traces of wan predawn light skimmed eagerly over the horizon. Myles Hazeldine had put on a warm woolen coat to accompany Ebrey Zhang out into the orchard garden at the back of the Barnsdale Hotel. The orchard had been selected because it was enclosed by a tall stone wall.

Myles assumed Z-B wanted to keep the execution private from the morbidly curious local citizens. But Zhang had told him the wall would also help stop the bullets. It had taken a moment for Myles to understand what he meant. "A firing squad?" the horrified mayor had asked. He couldn't believe that even Z-B was this barbaric. Like the rest of Memu Bay, he'd assumed they'd simply administer an overdose of some sedative. That Grabowski would quietly slip from sleep into death and that would be the end of it.

He should have known better. This whole terrible event was never going to finish with quiet dignity. Now he was going to have to stand and watch as bullets tore into a man with an explosion of blood. It was an outrage against civilized decency. He couldn't even feel glad that Grabowski was going to die like this. He'd wanted justice, certainly. But this was more like medieval vengeance.

"The condemned man does have this right," Zhang had explained awkwardly. "There are three methods of execution, and he can select one. If he doesn't, the court will decide for him. It is unusual to ask for firing squad." There was a thin line of perspiration on Zhang's forehead, despite the early morning chill.

Myles didn't ask what the third method was. He followed Zhang to a place at the rear of the orchard garden. His eyes never left the single post that had been set into the ground in front of the far wall. The earth was fresh around its base. Sandbags were stacked up behind it.

This was everything his ancestors had left Earth for. The ultimate act of callous inhumanity. Myles jammed his shaking hands into his pockets and looked at the grass. Think of Francine, he ordered himself sternly, the terror she went through.

Someone was barking out orders. Myles forced his head up.

The sergeant major marched the eight-strong firing squad out of the door and halted them behind the line painted on the grass seven meters away from the post. The unlucky squaddies had been chosen by the old short-straw draw. He'd spoken with each of them beforehand, telling them that Grabowski would want someone who could shoot straight and clean, and they were not to let him down no matter their feelings, assuring them that this duty would never go on their record.

When they'd left the briefing, sullen and subdued, he'd quietly thanked Allah that he wouldn't actually be pulling a trigger himself. Then Lawrence Newton slipped in and had a quiet word. The sergeant major had listened to his old comrade's request and nodded agreement. Anything else, he didn't want to know about.

Edmond Orlov and Corporal Amersy led the condemned man out into the orchard. Hal showed no emotion as they stopped him by the post. Edmond tied his wrists together behind the post and whispered something to his friend. A smile played over Hal's lips. Amersy offered him a blindfold, which he accepted.

The two men from Platoon 435NK9 saluted their comrade and marched away.

The sergeant major looked to Ebrey Zhang, who gave a slight nod.

"Squad, raise your weapons."

The sound of palms slapping precisely against weapons carried across the orchard.

"Take aim."

"Hey, Zhang," Hal called out "You are one miserable fuckup of a commander, man."

"Fire."

Myles Hazeldine threw up. The sound of eight rifles firing at once had stunned him. It suspended time in silence. Then he casually turned his head and saw Grabowski's body shudder as it was thrown back against the post. Blood burst out of his chest with frightening speed. And the big young man was falling, slumping forward onto his knees, with only his bound hands holding his ruined torso up. Sound returned to Myles's universe, a roaring in his ears. A human being had been slaughtered in front of him. Because of him, the deal he'd cut. He knelt forward and vomited helplessly onto the orchard's dew-moistened grass.

Traditionally they were called the burial detail, though on Thallspring there would never be any grave dug for a member of Zantiu-Braun. Company policy governing death away from Earth was for a cremation and scattering of the ashes.

Hal Grabowski's own platoon had demanded the right to perform that last duty, and Captain Bryant certainly wasn't going to try to say no—he really didn't need any open rebellion among his own men right now. So while the firing squad was marched quickly away they walked out of the hotel with a stretcher and a bodybag. They untied Hal's hands as Ebrey Zhang was supporting the retching mayor and laid their dead friend out on the blood-soaked grass. He was lifted gently into the bodybag, which was zipped up, then transferred onto the stretcher.

They carried him away as the mayor and the senior officers went back into the hotel. The cleanup detail emerged after that, to take down the post and remove the sandbags.

There was the blood to be washed away, too. By midmorning, there would be no trace left of the execution.

The burial detail carried the stretcher through the rear corridors of the hotel and out into the small courtyard used by delivery trucks. A van was waiting there to take the body to the crematorium. Its doors were opened quickly, and the stretcher pushed inside. Had anyone managed to see the interior, they would have been surprised to see how much medical equipment was inside. It could almost have been mistaken for an ambulance.

"Go!" Lawrence yelled at Lewis.

The van sped out of the courtyard.

Dennis was already ripping the bodybag open. "Oh hell," the medic grunted when he saw the mess of gore that was Hal's chest. "How many bullets?"

"Only three," Lawrence said. He caught sight of the body. "Sweet mother of Fate! Can you do it?"

Dennis was already activating Hal's Skin suit, which lay crumpled in the corner of the van. He brought the extension tubes out and began plugging them into the kid's valves. "Cut the shirt off."

Blood began to squirt out of the jagged wounds, pouring onto the floor of the van. Lawrence took a scalpel and sliced the shirt fabric, pulling the saturated cloth aside, leaving room for Dennis to work. When he brought his hands away, they were dripping blood.

For the first time he began to have doubts—something he hadn't acknowledged before. He refused to let doubt be part of the equation as he focused himself on accomplishing just one thing: not letting the bastards murder Hal. He wanted a victory over KillBoy as subtle and devious as KillBoy's relentless assault against the platoons on the streets of Memu Bay. But now he could actually see the terrible damage that the bullets had caused....

Dennis was trying to clamp off the torn arteries in the chest cavity. "His heart's so much raw meat. We'll have to drain and reinflate the lungs."

"The brain?" Lawrence demanded. "What about the brain?"

"I don't know." Dennis gave him an anguished look. "It was seven minutes." His optronic membranes were scrolling medical data almost too quickly for him to follow; Hal's Skin was using up its drug capsules at a dangerous rate as it tried to minimize cellular trauma.

"But we superoxygenated his blood," Lawrence said. "You said that would last him."

"It should, it should." Dennis finished clamping one artery and went for the next. "Odel, anything?"

Odel was attaching a sensor to Hal's scalp. He looked at a palmtop display. "Not yet. Still flatlined."

"Come on," Dennis screamed at the kid. His face was streaked with Hal's blood, which he'd smeared there with the back of his hand.

"Lewis, how long till we get there?" Lawrence shouted.

"Three minutes, Sarge."

"Is he alive?"

"I don't know," Dennis barked.

"Three minutes, Dennis, that's all. The crash team's waiting."

"Crash team?" Dennis's voice was veering toward hysteria. "Crash team? One struck-off doctor and a couple of field medics, and you expect them to perform a fucking heart transplant?"

"It's a biomech heart, Dennis, you just plug it in and switch it on."

Dennis laughed. "Oh, Jesus fucking Christ"

"Dennis! What about Hal?"

"I'm trying, god damn you." There were tears in the corners of his eyes. "I'm trying."

"Hey," Odel cried. "Hey, I've got brainwaves showing here."

Hal's mouth dropped open. His tongue flopped about weakly as he gurgled through the scarlet blood that was foaming out of his throat.

"Hal!" Lawrence shouted. "Hal, you hear me? You hear me, Hal? You hang on for us, kid. We've got you. We won't let you go."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Santa Chico
.
The original paradise planet.

From orbit its colors were intense—Earth-like, but brighter, more alive. There were no pastels here, no gentle shadings. Vegetation was vivid emerald; fast-growing, all-conquering. That made the few real deserts intolerably bleak: hot as hell and dry as Mars. Barriers between the extremes of rich life and barren desolation were short, making the contrasts ever more striking. The oceans that covered over half of its surface were livid sapphire. Snow-white clouds were magnified by the deep atmosphere as they hurtled through the high, turbulent jetstreams.

The air with its 30 percent oxygen content was poisonous to unmodified humans. But for native life, the abundant gas was raw nuclear power to its biochemical processes. Evolution here had grown thorns on everything.

For some it was a magnificent challenge. A chance to live differently, abandoning the strictures that governed society on Earth.

Just how differently, Corporal Lawrence Newton was only just realizing. Now that the company of eight platoons had arrived at the chemical-processing factory, all he could see was decay. The facility was spread out over several acres. Its design illustrated only too well the new angles with which Santa Chico's inhabitants set about attacking old problems. The closest he could come to describing it was organic gothic. Large sections of the machinery were alive, membranes and nodules blending smoothly into the metal and plastic portions. Or had been alive. Or were still alive but de-evolving, reverting to more primitive forms. He couldn't quite decide. The factory obviously hadn't been in use for some time.

It had been sited in a small valley that was a natural habitat for the gargul plant, a bush of yellow-and-scarlet sponge-like dendrites whose sap contained wondrously complex molecules that could be employed as vaccine bases. Such compounds were a big factor in the original settlement effort. Santa Chico's vegetation was a natural pharmacopoeia, which when harvested properly produced an astonishing array of medical and industrial applications. Now the garguls had returned to the factory, growing over and under the inert machinery. In many cases, Lawrence could see fissures in the pipes and organolytic crackers allowing the bush to take root. Fluffy lichens tarnished the big metal mountings. Pink moniliform fungi spiraled up support struts. Vines and creepers scaled the highest burner towers, forming thick-webbed buttresses.

Jeeps and trucks transporting the platoons fanned out from the narrow, overgrown track and halted beside the fecund equipment. Captain Lyaute ordered a sweep of the area. "I know it looks like a complete waste of time," he told the pla
t
oons over the general frequency. "But we have to find out if anything can be salvaged from this crock of shit."