Heart of Annihilation (6 page)

“Where’s Rose, Corporal?” Sanderford barked. The boots scuffed up a great deal of dust, muting their individuality.

Door hinges complained. A moment later, a grunt of pain sounded from inside the Hummer. My head pounded. I could barely make out the words through my hollow left ear.

The scuffling of feet. A dragging sound. The boots stepped quickly back and a camo-clad body fell onto the ground. Thurmond’s blue eyes stared at me for one second, tight and angry, before he was yanked upward. Only the backs of his boots were now visible.

“Don’t make me ask again, Thurmond.” A soft thud and oomph of air released from his lungs. Thurmond’s hand and knee appeared. “Where’s Rose?”

“W-why would I know w-where she is?” Thurmond wheezed and coughed, a painful wracking sound.

“I’m telling you, Sanderford, he doesn’t know anything,” Justet said. “You think she’s hiding in his cargo pockets or something?”

“Or something. Lewis, check inside the Hummer. Make sure she’s not under a tarp or a blanket.”

The Hummer rocked and the wheel above my head slid further into the ditch. I slid with it. Thumps pounded over my head and a minute later a voice spoke.

“Nothin’ here, Sarge.”

“W-why do you want Rose anyway?” Thurmond said.

“Dust coming!” The nasally, broken-nosed voice of Private Luginbeel called out from farther away.

“Last chance, Corporal.”

“Come on, we’ve got to go. Someone’s coming!”

“Where’s Rose?”

Another thud sent Thurmond gasping and coughing again. I pressed a hand to my mouth.

“If he’d seen her she’d be in the Hummer with him, Sanderford!”

“Tell me where she is!”

“Bring him with us—”

“Where is she?”

I clenched the grip of the rifle. I could take the shot. Any shot to stop this.

“Sergeant Sanderford!” Justet seemed to remember his officer’s rank and dragged it out from where it had been hiding with his backbone. “Tie him up. We’ll take him with us. That’s an order! Let the boss decide what to do with him.”

A moment of silence and then Thurmond’s hand and knee disappeared. The boots scuffed up more dirt and thumped out of sight.

Somewhere in my mind I saw myself rising from behind the Humvee and placing a bullet into the back of Sanderford’s head. My fictional self then raced around the vehicle and beat the snot out of Justet and the rest of his cronies, after which Thurmond and I would turn over the survivors to the MPs for the court martial—a great heroic act that remained dormant in my mind.

I remained where I was, a single soldier with a single round. Even if I made the perfect shot I would still have a half a dozen other soldiers and their dozens of rounds to contend with. I know what I’d do in their boots. Put a gun to Thurmond’s head and threaten to kill him. That’s what my heroics would get me. That’s what it would get Thurmond.

I stayed under the Hummer, hands tight on the rifle. The stench of motor oil burned my nose and something else burned my eyes. The rifle seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, my legs a million. It took everything I had to force myself to stay still, to avoid the easiest, most violent option. My head hurt.

Somewhere out there a motor started with a rumble. Voices argued. The old, loose gears of the Deuce ground into drive, and still I didn’t move. Tires crunched on gravel. The vehicle picked up speed and the sound diminished in the distance.

Nothing. Silence. Still I stayed under the Hummer, my mind rattling over the insanity of my plan. Again and again and again and again.

A breeze lifted a curl of hair and brushed it against my cheek. Startled, I batted it away. My foot jerked. Then the rest of me moved. I slowly slid out from under the Hummer and crawled out to the road, dragging the rifle along behind me.

I gazed down the empty road in the direction of the base, my thumb absently circling the rifle’s forward assist. The plume of dust that was supposed to be the approaching vehicle turned before reaching me. The small convoy of Hummers unfurled onto a road to the south.

Air guard base? That’s what they’d said. It could only be the base connected to the Salt Lake International Airport that we’d flown out of on our last annual training run to Alaska. It was the only place within a hundred miles that could fly out a C-130.

Wheels up at twenty-three-hundred hours. And, unless I was very much mistaken, they were taking Thurmond and flying to Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Home of the “alien base” and information about Retha and Dad.

I had a flight to catch.

Caz
Retha
10 years pre-RAGE

Caz lay on her bed, subdued. She should have been sobbing her eyes out. Instead, she clutched the pillow tight under her chin and methodically pulled threads from its decorative, metallic tassels.
One-twenty-one, One-twenty-two.
One hundred and twenty-three threads. The same number as the members on the Dimensional Congressional Council. Caz rolled onto her back, taking the pillow with her, and stared at the black ceiling.

The Dimensional Congressional Council. They, at least, were a large, cold entity she could blame everything on.

Vin was gone for the rest of the year. A business trip of sorts arranged by his esteemed father, DC Commandant Paliyo himself, to teach Vin the ins and outs of what would one day be his honorable position. What wasn’t there to love about a trip to one of the lower dimensions? To engineer a peaceful overtaking before the Heart could destroy them? In fact, it was just the thing to break in your young, impressionable son. The one who’d been spending too much time with the wrong girl.

It might not have been so bad if Vin had put up a bit more of a fight about it. But he’d talked in circles, trying to convince Caz of how important he was. This was why he’d been asked. This was why he needed to go. And of course the distance would be good for their relationship in the long run.

It was fortunate they’d been nestled in their usual meeting place, a small natural cave in the middle of the Vislane envirophylum, when he’d broken the news. Caz had thrown a tantrum capable of blowing every conductor within twenty grids.

The only consolation Caz had was the plain silver ring circling her finger. Vin had given it to her yesterday before he officially left. There was genuine sadness, even regret in his eyes as he’d placed it on her finger. Using her thumb she rotated it around her middle finger, taking pleasure in the feeling of ownership it gave her.

Caz breathed out a sigh and curved her fingers around the tassel. She released the smallest amount of electricity from her fingers into the tassel. The metallic threads jumped and danced, sparking a vibrant light across her dark walls. Her door squeaked. A sliver of brightness cut across her face. She severed the current and dropped the pillow to her chest.

“What do you want, Xan?” She didn’t have to look. Who else would it be? The door opened a bit wider.

“Vin really left, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nope.”

“Okay then.” The light on her face narrowed.

“Wait.” Caz rolled onto her stomach. “Do you know anything about the LRM?”

Xander paused in the doorway, one hand on the knob.

“The what?” He stared blankly at a silver disk in his other hand.

“The Liberated Rage Movement,” Caz said. “Some extremist faction that wants to take over Retha. Make us free or something.”

“Yeah, sure. Heard of them.” Xander shrugged. “What about it?”

“Vin was just . . .”

“Just what?” Xander opened the door a little wider, a concerned twinge contorting his voice.

Caz expelled a breath and sat up. “It’s just that he wouldn’t stop talking about it. Asked me to look into it while he was gone.” Bitterness crept into her words, and she realized that she was going to ignore his request deliberately. The pure spite of the decision would keep her warm at night in his absence. “Never mind.” she slouched against the bed frame. Her mind circled the track of resentment that their last few moments together had been to talk about something as idiotic as the LRM. Retha’s two laws would prevent the infant faction from ever gaining traction anyway. She hoped Vin wasn’t taking them too seriously.

After a moment she realized that Xander was still darkening her doorway. He looked exhausted. Sometimes she believed he never slept. When would he have found the time, between fighting to stay in the top five in his academia classes and being a constant buffer between his bickering parents and impulsive sister?

“What do you have there?” she asked, hoping for something truly spectacular.

He looked up. A smile lit his face and he waved the silver INFOD, an information disk she had come to crave anytime she saw it in his hands. “Only the latest and greatest problem Mom and Dad haven’t been able to solve.”

Caz’s heart thumped heavily in her chest. “You mean for the Heart—!”

“Shhh!”

She heard a door open and close from deeper in the house, and then their parents’ squabbling voices. Xander shut the door behind him. Their parents wouldn’t check on them. They never did.

“You mean for the Heart of Annihilation?” Caz whispered, making room for Xander on the bed.

“What else?”

“Show me, show me!” It was all she could do not to shout.

If there was one thing that could take her mind off Vin it was the endless puzzles, broken road maps, and unsolvable problems her parents ran across with their newest and most devastating weapon. This was the one, her mother said, that would allow them to retire. This was the one that would end even the idea of war with the Thirteenth Dimension. But they didn’t know if it could work.

That was where Caz and Xander came in. Xander had been sneaking information from their parent’s lab for the last several years and feeding it to Caz. Caz would then work the problems in secret, reveling in the emotionless nature of numbers before having Xander send it back. Her parents would then proceed as if they did the work themselves. No one ever spoke of it. Plausible deniability and all that. What Caz needed now was to get the equations right.

Xander inserted the INFOD into the wall receiver and applied a charge with his hand. The bare wall opposite the bed lit up, revealing lines of numbers that scurried from left to right in tiny, neat rows.

Caz sighed, losing herself. Occasionally she’d reach out a finger and cast one aside or replace it with a hastily tapped out row. Xander sat beside her on the bed, part of the background.

She didn’t know how long she worked before Xander startled her.

“Did you hear about Zak Faras?” he asked.

Caz paused for a miniscule moment, and then pretended he hadn’t spoken. How could Zak Faras be more important than this problem? She almost had it if she could—

Xander went on. “He overdosed on Direct Current.”

Caz ignored him.

“His parents think he took Azshatath. You know, that drug that helps with voltage asthenia. Nearly took out his entire grid,” Xander paused before continuing, “Except I know Zak, and he wouldn’t.”

Xander shifted beside her on the bed.

“There it is!” Caz found the hole in the equation. A few flicks of her fingers rearranged the numbers. This was what she lived for. Making order out of chaos. Filling in that gap. Shuffling the twelve and the three to the power of . . . oh! No, they shouldn’t do that. If they subtracted to allow for the storage of energy, taking into account the covariant formula and electromagnetic force, it would make the quantum mechanical effects negligible thereby stabilizing what remained of the . . . Ah ha! Her fingers flew across the wall, and it all came together.

There it was. She sat back. As clear as Retha on a moongrave night. How could her mother have missed it?

“Look, Xan!” She practically shouted. She couldn’t take her eyes from the blissful harmony of the equation. “It’s not about detonation and expansion of the core, it’s about—”

“Did you hear me, Caz?” Xander’s voice penetrated her euphoria. “Zak Faras is dead.”

Voltage erupted from her fingers, overloading the receiver and plunging them into darkness.

She muttered her most injurious cuss words and felt around on the wall for the reset. Her hand felt the imprint, and a blue light scanned her palm. The receiver lit the wall again, driving black numbers across Xander’s illuminated face.

“What do you mean he’s dead?” Caz kept her voice cool, calm. She locked eyes with her brother.

“I mean
dead.
Fried to a crisp.”

“Dad takes Azshatath. At the most it would—I mean, come on! It’s never killed anyone before.”

“That’s because no one would take it unless they had to. Zak didn’t.” Xander stared at her with his most irritating, all-knowing expression.

She dragged her eyes from him and examined the problem on the wall. Hopefully the overload hadn’t wiped out her alterations. She was in luck. There they were, perfect, harmonious.

“What a shame.” She coughed into her hand. “Too bad nobody cares a picoamp about a drone like Zak Faras.”

Xander made a noise in his throat.

“Look, Xan. Look at this. It’s the piece they’ve been looking for!”

“Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Zak.” Xander’s voice was quiet and probing, with much more intensity than he usually directed at her. She wished he’d go back to walking on eggshells.

Caz leveled him a cold stare.

Xander closed his eyes. When he opened them she saw the retreat. He gave Caz a thin smile, and turned to look at the wall.

This would
finally
enable her parents to begin production of the prototype. Now all she had to do was make them see that she was needed in the lab.

She flicked her eyes away from the equation. Her thumb rotated the ring on her finger.

I jerked myself awake. The tips of my fingers touched the ground, keeping me from falling over.

I must have dozed off again. It wasn’t surprising, considering everything I’d been through in the past few hours. But leaned up against a building? I gently touched my puffy eye, encouraging it to open a bit.

The ride from Camp Williams to the Air Guard base, a nearly straight shot down Redwood Road, was slow considering that the bruised Hummer hadn’t wanted to reach speeds higher than thirty miles an hour. Fortunately, getting onto the Air Guard base was as easy as showing my military ID at the gate and dropping the commander’s name. The young security police had jumped at mention of the commander, and waved me past the barricades with flustered efficiency. Apparently my suspicion about the commander had some truth, and she was expected. I wondered, as I parked my Hummer in a more southern parking lot and walked up the narrow, nearly deserted streets, how much the guy at the gate was getting paid. Maybe he was just concerned that his face would end up like mine.

I’d gotten here well ahead of Justet and his troops, leaving me ample time to sit out of sight in the weeds between two buildings just off the runway, fingering my bruised ribs, and going through every piece of paper and scrap of information I’d committed to memory about Dad.

The C-130 Hercules hulked on the tarmac, a dinosaur of a plane: simple, pale, and gray as a ghost in the darkness. I remember a civilian telling me once how the C-130 was her favorite plane, with the cute pug nose that looked like it needed a smiling mouth painted under it, the low plump body and high tail to accommodate the rear hatch. However, no one who had ever flown in one could call it “cute.” Not with its notoriously loud, turbulent rides and uncomfortable seating conditions. The rear hatch lay across the ground, a hospitable ramp waiting patiently for the commander, Justet, and, hopefully, Thurmond.

The quiet drone of a motor hummed into the silence. I dropped to my chest, wide awake now. Headlights raced across the buildings and the plane before the tires squealed to a stop beside the ramp. I pulled my rifle closer to my body.

After a moment, the Hummer clunked into reverse and moved in a backward arc until the front was lined up with the ramp. The gears changed again, and the Hummer disappeared into the belly of the plane. Headlights danced in the puny windows of the C-130, and everything went dark again.

A few moments later a couple Deuces, with braced canvas tents covering the gear in the back, grumbled from behind the row of hangers. They parked in a neat diagonal row near the hatch of the plane. The headlights glared in my direction, as though to flush me out. Soldiers swarmed from the vehicles, muffled shadows behind the lights.

I counted figures as they unloaded duffles, boxes, weapons, and crates from the vehicles and carried them into the plane. The accuracy of the count was sketchy at best, and there was no sign of anyone looking remotely like a POW.

It took everything I had not to fall prey to the guilt over my role in Thurmond’s abduction. It would be fine. He’d be fine. He was a soldier.

One of the Deuces started with a hefty roar. It lined up with the plane’s ramp, headlights sweeping the tarmac, and eased after the Hummer into the belly of the plane. Red taillights winked against the torsos of the men as they followed it.

I swung the sling of my M-16 over my head, so the rifle hung down my back, and got to my feet. My knees inquired shakily if I really, truly wanted to do this. The transport aircraft roared to life with a sudden, jarring rumble. I dropped back down.

I couldn’t see the red painted flight line, the one guarded by the SPs, but I had to assume it wasn’t being watched. Not on an off-book mission such as this.

Another Humvee rumbled up next to the plane and screeched to an angular stop. There was just enough light coming from the National Guard fire station a few hundred yards away to highlight a pair of long legs strapped in combat boots as they stepped from the missing front passenger door.

The tall, slender form, the stern cut of the hair hanging at a precise angle from under the beret, the slashing scar across her eye, and the sharp features bringing to mind a resolute hornet—there was no mistaking Major Kuntz, the commander.

My focus deteriorated. I wasn’t surprised. Angry, maybe. My confidence in the chain of command and belief in the inviolability of military leadership was scarred beyond redemption. But her hard, irrefutable presence was still hard to swallow.

No wonder she’d been so mad when I’d socked Justet in the mouth. Was that why she’d sent me into the armory when Justet was about to show up? For an offense as small as that?

Unless there was something else. Something she’d hinted at last night when she was setting me up for a beating. I couldn’t remember the precise words she’d used, what with being assaulted and marked for death and all. But it itched in the back of my mind, like the memory of a memory you can’t pin down.

The commander’s mouth pressed in a hard line. She placed one hand on her hip. The other hung stiff at her side, long fingers twitching to the beat of some abrupt tune in her head. She rotated slowly on the spot, taking in everything around her. She paused, her eyes burning into my location. I couldn’t have felt more vulnerable had I been standing in the middle of the runway waving my arms and shouting.

A movement from the plane made her look away to regard the man coming down the ramp. I crouched low, my boots crunching softly on the weeds. I couldn’t hear Lieutenant Justet’s voice as he shouted to the commander over the roar of the propellers. Major Kuntz nodded with a smile. Justet hooked a finger next to his collarbone, drew a chain away from his neck, and pulled it over his head.

I knew what it was before I saw it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the chain as it changed hands. The commander shined a penlight on the swinging tags.

The half circle pendant caught the light, flashing a dancing reflection onto the damp runway. She gave Justet another of her curt nods, slung the chain around her own neck, and dropped the tags down her shirt. The driver of the Humvee pulled a duffle bag out of the back seat and handed it to her. The commander clutched the carrying strap of the duffle and, with one brief but comprehensive surveillance of the runway, she followed Justet up the ramp.

Electricity crackled through my extremities and collected in my fingertips. The propellers of the plane slowed, and then resumed their thundering wind.

I forgot about Justet and the aliens, about Sanderford and the guns, and even all about Thurmond. I saw myself striding up to the commander and snatching the tags from her fingers before plowing a voltage-charged fist into her face. The violence of the idea coursed pleasure through my body. She had no right to touch my possessions.

No right,
agreed the voice.

Like a junkie wanting nothing more than the next fix, my focus zeroed in on the commander.

The pendant. The plane. The pendant. The plane,
the voice in my head chanted.

My vision tunneled. Without another moment of hesitation, I made a crouching run toward the plane.

The plane’s engine revved from an idle to a higher pitch. My mind flashed to the image of the commander holding the penlight on the glimmering pendant, and an irresistible need for the object overpowered any second guessing. I was to the ramp in a few seconds.

My brief peek into the plane’s interior showed mostly the beefy back end of the Deuce, but I also took in a portion of the faces and their locations. The majority of the people lined the walls far to the front, and they were busily settling into the pull-down mesh seats. Major Kuntz stood toward the front of the plane, listening to an airman.

My eyes went to the thin line of tiny, duplicating, silver beads around the commander’s neck. With a single glance behind me, I abandoned any more thoughts of an alternate action.

The ramp pressed against my belly button. The toes of one boot scuffed across the tarmac. Then I was on the ramp. My knee hit the rough traction. I rolled once, putting the bulk of the Deuce between the people and me. I stalked forward in a very low crouch to reach the Deuce, dropped to my belly, and crawled under it
.

A pair of combat boots and the olive drab pants of an airman thumped past the front tires. I drew my feet to my body, trying not to think.

The deafening noise of the aircraft muffled slightly. The gears to the ramp groaned in tune with the plane’s rumbling as the hatch raised in preparation for takeoff. The plane moved.

The finality of the ramp rising, my irrevocable permanence aboard the aircraft, was almost more than my nerves could stand. I pressed my hand to my mouth, and a tiny thread of blue light stung my cheek. I jerked my hand away from my face. Electricity snaked between my fingers. The hypnotic glow shivered an exquisite ache through my hand and down my arm.

I had only a moment to consider that stowing away right under the noses of my enemies might be considered a derailment from rational thought before acceleration punched me in the side. The plane raced forward. I slid backward.

I scrabbled my fingers across the wheel of the Deuce. The nails of one hand dug into the tread while my other hand gripped a grime-covered pipe above my head. With an abrupt lift that left my stomach on the ground, the plane cast off the demands of gravity.

We banked. My hand ripped away from the wheel. I smashed into the opposite wheel, my face and shoulder taking the impact, before being thrown out from under the Deuce against the rear hatch. I scrambled for cover.

I considered making my way to the front and turning myself in, in exchange for a seat with a seatbelt, some earplugs, aspirin, and possibly a barf bag or two. We had to reach cruising altitude at some point though. I could hold on until then. I hoped.

I was dragging my battered body back under the tailgate of the Deuce for the fourth time when something heavy struck me atop my back, flattening me onto my belly. A duffle bag rolled off to the side and slid with a shushing sound against the hatch.

A flash of movement. The dim lights in the plane flickered and went out. At least I didn’t feel the need to check the faces at the front of the plane every few seconds for fear I’d been seen.

I pulled myself into the Deuce, gripping the splintery wood to keep my feet as the plane dropped and then rose. The scent of mildew brought to mind every military vehicle I’d ever ridden in. I stumbled across other duffle bags and equipment—it was amazing that I hadn’t been bludgeoned to death by the entire load.

A sudden drop. I smashed my head into the canvas ceiling and then fell onto something warm, soft, and moving.

My chest lay across a muscled shoulder, my forearm pressing against a nose and mouth. A knee ground into my thigh. I pulled myself off the body I could only assume belonged to Thurmond. A profound feeling of relief washed out a hollow pit in my stomach.

I swallowed back the greeting I really wanted to give, which would include a non-awkward hug and something that didn’t sound sappy in my mind but would certainly come out that way. Instead I kept one hand on his arm, afraid if I stopped touching him for even a second that he’d somehow vanish. I felt around with the other until I found the warm, coarse skin of his face. Blocky plastic indicated tape across his mouth. I caught a sticky edge with a fingernail and pulled gingerly. He jerked his head, leaving the piece of tape in my hand. The lights flickered back on with an additional hum.

The dim light filtering through the canvas gave Thurmond’s face a sickly green tinge. He lay on his side, hands taped behind his back and feet strapped together with more duct tape. The skin around his mouth looked darker from where the tape tore away a layer of skin cells. His eyebrows furrowed angrily at me.

“What the hell are you doing here, Rose?” Thurmond’s voice sounded loud even against the plane’s roar.

“I came to . . .”

I’d come to save him, that’s what I was doing here. The tape finally came away, curling into a thin, tight roll with Thurmond’s assistance. He pushed himself into a sitting position, and I sat back on my heels so he could free his own legs. Thurmond had finished removing the last of the tape when the lights flickered out again.

Except that you’re not actually here for your soldier friend.

The voice was loud between my ears. My head throbbed. I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapped my arms around my legs, and rested my head on my knees.

Something that belongs to me.

The whisper drew me out of my slouch. Like a compass finding north, my eyes searched through the darkness for the commander. Was the pendant warm against her skin as it always was against mine? Was she sitting quietly in her seat, earplugs protecting her from noise and approaching intruders? Was she dozing at this late hour, blissfully unaware that I would be pleased as punch to remove her head to retrieve the tags?

A hand gripped my arm. I jerked away. Red spots blotted against the vision of blood and reclamation.

“Rose?” Thurmond’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

I didn’t say anything. My mind continued to roll over the image of the commander’s decapitation. A combination of delight and horror duked it out for my attention. The confliction wasn’t helping my already woozy stomach. I closed my eyes, trying to help the picture find an exit from my brain before it settled in for good.

Thurmond spoke in my ear again. His lips brushed my skin. A shiver ran up my arms. The red spots faded, along with the ache above my ear.

“I’m not mad, just worried. Okay?” His fingers tightened on my shoulder. “Did you bring help?”

“I’m the help, Corporal. Sorry.” I almost hoped the blunt sarcasm would be lost in the roar. Almost.

Oppressive darkness pressed on all sides. I bounced into Thurmond. He threw an arm across my shoulder to steady himself, then left it there as we leveled again. After a moment he pulled me tight to his side. I stayed there, too anxious to be alone.