Hard Drop (26 page)

Flip looked up to find MAP-11 watching her from the landing, calmly waiting as if he knew she was scanning the contents of the system library and pulling every last scrap of the research that had led to his creation from its database. As if he knew that had been her mission all along. She stood tall and returned his stare mutely, watching until he turned at last and disappeared up the ramp, leaving her alone with the slumped bodies in the empty hall.

EIGHTEEN: AFTERSHOCK
 

The ramp seemed much steeper on the return, but the team surged upwards with newfound conviction, spurred onwards by the bombardment overhead. Judging by the rate of the impacts, extraction was going to be hard to make, and Tyco set a blistering pace for the surface. The light had shifted high overhead; the sunlight now gleamed orange, darkened by the swirling dust thrown up by the shuddering earth. It gave everything the feeling of a flood plain before a tornado, gloomy and darkening and ominous. The continuing explosions overhead did nothing to dispel the overwhelming sense of doom. Tyco ignored them; the navy would hear his complaint, yet again, when they were safely off-planet.

A trail of blood led the way up the ramp; the marker of the lone, escaped rebel who had gone before them. He may have made it out, but he had not gone unscathed. Chip smiled as he saw it: at least someone was having a harder time on the way up than he was.
 

Hog ran behind MAP-11, marveling at the ease of his motions and the untiring, measured pace of his run. He turned and looked over his shoulder, caught her eye, and nodded. Hog smiled sheepishly and looked away, grateful that MAP-11 was the silent type.
 

Flip caught up to Shelley easily. He was red-faced and sweating hard, unable to keep up with Tyco’s Pace, but she had to give him credit – he was giving it his best. He stared at her as she passed, resentful of her youth and speed. She returned the compliment by ignoring him, smiling to herself quietly as she pushed ahead. It was about time he recognized his place.
 

The way back through the maze of corridors was much easier; the team had no trouble keeping up with an exhausted Shelley, and less to fear from the shadows now that MAP-11 had arrived. Flip found herself staying near him without meaning to, collapsing the team’s combat formation inwards. She wasn’t the only one: the whole team clustered tightly around MAP-11 as if for warmth.
 

Chip strode on ahead, keeping wide distance and turning a wary eye towards MAP-11, as if expecting a murderous relapse at any second.
 

They reached the blast door unmolested. After what they had seen below, the destruction here no longer seemed quite so impressive, and the hushed tones which they had used earlier disappeared.
 

“There’s gonna be a few more waiting for us.” Chip said quietly, nodding past the blast doors, his eyes following the blood trail right up to it. Tyco racked his rifle in acknowledgment.

“That’s a good bet.” He said, and joined MAP-11 in front of the door. The creature stared the thick stone and metal as if he could see through it.
 

“How’s it looking? Tyco asked, only half-joking. There was no telling what MAP-11 was capable of.
 

The dark visor turned back to him, staring down at him quietly. The creature shrugged, its massive shoulders rising and falling with a heavy grace.
 

“That good, huh?” Tyco smiled thinly. MAP-11 responded by unlatching his safety and stretching his neck. It cracked audibly, painfully loud, and Tyco flinched as he turned away.
 

“How much time?” Hog asked him, and Tyco checked the read-out for the hundredth time.
 

“Four minutes.” He said, then cycled through the display options, bringing up the distance to the extraction point, shaking his head. “Five clicks in four minutes.”
 

Hog sighed heavily as another massive impact detonated outside, close by now, shaking the structure and rattling the massive doorway in front of them. “Join the corps and see the galaxy.” She said, and shook her head.
 

“Galaxy’s about to get a whole lot smaller.” Chip chimed in from across the room.
 

Shelley nodded along, smiling thinly, unable to decide if they were joking or not.
 

“We have a plan, yes?” He said. “There is a plan?”
 

“Sure.” Tyco answered, and turned back towards the door. “Rendezvous and evac.”

Chip shook his head sadly, weary and resigned. He grinned and spat. “Cap,” He said, “That’s impossible. We can’t make five in four on foot. Not even half that, if we’re lucky.”
 

Tyco turned on him with the calm, clipped, fury of a drill sergeant. “You’re going to say that?” He growled. “After everything we’ve done here?”
 

Chip stared at him sullenly, unbending misery in his eyes. “We can’t do it, Cap,” He said, sticking out his chin. “You know that.”
 

“Of course it’s impossible!” Tyco barked. “That’s why they send us! Or have you forgotten who we are? We’re not favored children, we’re not recruitment posters, we’re not role models – we are the last resort they’ll never admit they have! If it were
easy
, if there wasn’t a
deadline
, if they expected us to
come back
, they’d send someone else! So man up and deal with it, because this is the job, and those are the breaks!”
 

Chip stood, angry and frozen, weathering the storm of Tyco’s anger without making any attempt to defend himself.

“So if four minutes is all we get,” Tyco continued, with icy calm. “We make it work. Understood?”

The two men stood, inches apart, staring at each other angrily, one fully at the end of his rope, the other nearer to it than he cared to admit, the tension building around them.

Flip cleared her throat nervously, cutting into the charged calm. “There is…another option.” She said, uncertainly. They turned towards her as one, Shelley included, with distinct surprise in their expressions.
 

“There’s a launch facility about 3 klicks north-northwest of here.” She continued. “I marked it on the way in.” She held up her display as if to demonstrate she was serious, proving it did exist.
 

“Three klicks…” Hog started, doubtfully.
 

“I left a truck up on the hill.” Flip said. “It’s in bad shape, but it should run. If we can reach it, we’ll have a chance.”
 

“Where is it?” Tyco asked. Flip pointed through the ceiling towards the hillside, approximating the top of the slope where she had left the vehicle.
 

“It’s flipped,” she said, and nodded at MAP-11, “But with his help…”

Tyco turned to look at Hog, Chip, and MAP-11, confirming they had heard. He ignored Shelley.

“Everyone got that?” He asked.
 

They nodded their response.
 

“Good.” He said, and turned away from Chip with finality. “Whatever’s out there, keep moving and don’t look back.”
 

They nodded again, and he smiled, the reins now firmly back in his hands. “Check your mags.” He said. “We’re going out.” And he placed his hand on the door controls, counting down quickly. “On my mark Three. Two, One – “

And he plunged his hand against the mechanical override, forcing a crack in the sealed door. Light poured in through it blindingly, flooding the room and offering the team a precious, much-needed second for their eyes to adjust.
 

And then the mechanism engaged, and the door flew open in front of them, leaving them exposed and squinting into the bright orange daylight.

Effective as the blazing helicopter had been in cutting down the pursuing rebels, the flame of its demise had also served as a brightly glowing beacon visible halfway across the city. A dozen rebel platoons had made their way towards it, toiling up the half-destroyed staircase and emerging up onto the plateau. They had not tried the blast doors because there was no point in doing so. Since the early days of the uprising, the old research facility had been locked down tightly, and no amount of leverage or explosives since had made any headway on the solid stone and metal. Nor did the soldiers examine the surrounding hillside – whatever strange troops had come this way, they were not a threat now, and there was no point in wasting effort going after them. Instead, the platoons had remained, exchanging cigarettes, resting their legs, and looking out idly over the city below. They kept a token guard while they smoked and laughed, happy for the lull in their duties, unconcerned with the missing troops or the threat they represented.

Until the doors had cracked open, and the lone soldier had emerged, eyes wide with terror, voice hoarse and cracking feebly. His uniform placed him on the other side of the mountain, though how he had come through the facility was unclear. His platoon had been wiped out, he kept saying, they had stumbled on something horrifying in the darkness below and they were all dead, all except him.

The first bomb punctuated his words with a scream as it fell from the sky, roaring to earth and disappearing between the skyscrapers of the new city below. The impact was immediate and bone-jarring. The rebels crouched instinctively, shielding themselves as they peered down at the city below, watching the clustered buildings crumble into a cloud of fiery dust.
 

Another fell soon after, and then more, and the sky turned a sickly gray. The rebels found cover where they could, many of them huddling inside the facility’s tall stone colonnade, watching as the line of orbital bombardment advanced ever closer, ever higher up the through the city, churning the asphalt and brick below into a thick morass of molten debris. It was possible, they knew, that the bombs that would kill them had already left the hangar bays overhead, and were even now streaking through the atmosphere towards them, but still they stayed, cowering, in the shadows.
 

They had all but forgotten about the frantic survivor in their midst when the blast doors opened again. The gathered troops turned to stare into the dark, unable to make out what lay behind them, in the darkness of the facility.
 

Tyco came first, stepping boldly into the light with his rifle raised, staring down the sea of hostile faces in front of him.
 

They rose as one, rifles clattering, boots scraping the concrete, licking their lips in anticipation as they cocked their weapons and prepared to fire.
 

MAP-11 emerged behind Tyco, his massive size dwarfing the machine gun in his hands, each scale of his armor shimmering a different shade of the orange-gold sky above. If he had been frightening in the dim blue darkness below, he was magnificent in the sunlight, shining golden and invincible.

A hush went over the rebels. Chomping at the bit only seconds earlier, they had been bloodthirstily certain of their victory over whatever men emerged from the dark pit, but MAP-11 was no ordinary man. They stared at him, transfixed, watching as he stepped forwards past Tyco, putting himself directly in the line of fire fearlessly and without hesitation.
 

The wounded soldier groaned pitifully, rising to his feet with shaking knees and trying to shove his way through the crowd, away from the creature. But there was nowhere for him to go as the ranks closed around him. He cowered, hemmed in on all sides as MAP-11 approached without slowing, in time with the shuddering drumbeat of explosions leveling the city below. Frantic, he stared up at the creature above him and fell to his knees.
 

“Please…” he said, sobbing the word out between deep, aching breaths, bowing his head pitifully before the monster looming above him. “Please, I don’t want to…” His voice petered away into his heaving chest.
 

MAP-11 turned his head dramatically from one side to the next, staring down the remaining rebels. He stepped forward emphatically, swinging his leg easily past the shaking soldier, ignoring the defenseless man at his feet in favor of the armed men in front of him. It was hypnotic and imposing; one by one the soldiers stepped backwards, until the line broke and gave way and a gap formed in the ranks to let the creature pass. First one, then another, then a whole wave of rebels fell to their knees before him, surrendering the way.
 

Tyco stared at the prostrate rebels, awed by their sudden, abject surrender, he followed MAP-11 closely, stepping precisely in his footsteps, waving for the team to follow. They crept through the ranks as one, tightly-grouped unit.
 

Hog kept her eyes trained on MAP-11’s back, avoiding the stares of the dozens of clustered rebels. She fingered her rosary with superstitious precision, keeping her eyes low and praying, convinced that if she looked up and met even one set of eyes, it might break the trance MAP-11 had inspired, and they were too exposed to chance that.
 

Chip, by contrast, stared the rebels full in the face, watching their solemn expressions as they looked up at MAP-11, shaking his head in quiet amazement. The soldiers kneeled in surrender, some open-mouthed, others tight-lipped and grim, dropping their rifles sullenly as the creature stepped through the ranks. Still others fell prostrate, bending their heads low to the ground, praying to be spared. To a trigger-happy pessimist like Chip, none of it made sense.

Tyco waved the team closer as the rebel ranks closed behind them, grouping them around MAP-11 in a tight semicircle. Now completely surrounded, they had no choice but to continue out into the crowd on the ice-thin hope that the rebels wouldn’t come to their senses. No one spoke for fear of breaking the spell.
 

Shelley barely dared to breathe. He stepped quickly to keep up with MAP-11, trying to wend his way over and around the outstretched arms of the rebels underfoot. His foot slipped on the slick pavement and landed loudly, too near the outstretched gun arm of a kneeling rebel. The man looked up at Shelley and snarled, the muscles tensing all the way down his arms, but with a sullen look at MAP-11, he made no attempt to attack. Shelley stared, horrified and repulsed, at the sight of the savage man before him. He reached for his pistol, extending it slowly with a shaking hand, fully determined to shoot.