Raiders (3 page)

Aurelia closed her eyes from overwhelming fatigue. She had still not fully adjusted to the bright hospital surroundings around her. He inspected the Circulator machine which hummed away. Without opening her eyes she told Julian, “Yeah that thing’s evidently my new best friend.”

“I know. I’ve been here every day since they dragged you back in past the Wall. I think the hospital's gonna cut me a paycheck, been here so much. Been helping them out doing stuff just to pass the time. Pretty sure I can run that thing. Hell I’ve watched them run it long enough.”

“So you’re gettin’ another paycheck? Awesome, we’re gonna be rich!” Aurelia exclaimed, laughed at herself and then coughed. The Circulator beeped twice. “Oh crap I keep forgetting I have to hold still while I'm hooked up to that. Damn it.”

Julian massaged her right arm. “We’re gonna get you out of here soon, you’re looking good babe. They said your heart stopped somewhere out there. Heart stopped dead right there where they found you.”

“How long?”

“Five weeks, two days,” Julian said.

Aurelia kept her eyes closed and wrinkled them even tighter. “What about the two Raiders?” She asked. “What ever happened to them?”

“Well, the Mil-5 team’s primary objective was to retrieve you on rescue but they found both of the Raiders anyways. One of them just popped a round into his own skull before we captured him. You had already tagged him so he was bleeding pretty bad they said. The woman tried to do herself too.. Something about a wire. But they managed to stop her.”

“Where is she now?” Aurelia asked.

Julian said, “She’s locked down pretty tight in the City prison. Military Centre, solitary. I went and saw her a few times just because. Ya know what's weird though? Nobody’s contacted us to negotiate for her release. The Polar City’s borders are all quiet. No spies, no recon attempts by them, nothing. It’s like whoever sent them just wrote her off as a loss.”

Aurelia reached her right hand to hold Julian's and said, “So she is definitely a Raider.”

“Yes, she is, an Alpha no less, at least that’s what Intelligence thinks.”

“Great. When I get off this thing I want to see her myself.” Aurelia tried to rub her face but ended up smacking herself with her left hand. “Ouch! Jesus.”

“You still aren’t used to the prosthetic. Take it easy.”

Aurelia opened her eyes for a second, just long enough to glance down at her left upper arm. The prosthetic was simple enough. It was shaped like an adult upper arm with no wires, lights or indicators. There were no access panels to open unlike the science fiction movies’ portrayal of futuristic bio-prosthetics from centuries gone by. Reality proved to be something quite different altogether. The prosthetic arm was entirely self-contained and perfectly sealed. The shell was soft and sort of skin-like, carbon black. It was as close to a real human arm as science and engineering could generate in the 26th century.

Six days went by and the Aurelia found herself home again. Julian had just come home from his workstation. Today was an easy day at the office for Julian, nothing dramatic to talk about really. The City’s governing body released new Mission Guidelines that require Julian’s Division to use less energy for operations, and to do this Julian and his colleagues were tasked with finding a way to decrease their energy operating budget.

Aurelia was still not her normal self although she could get through the day without any help. She did not care to be coddled to or propped up on a pair of crutches. She wanted to get back into the action again but that was going to take a while. For now though the best that she could hope for was to be afforded a tactical update on the military goings-on since her battle. It was something to look forward to, anyways.

She brewed a pot of coffee, a somewhat bitter affair since the Arabica coffee species went extinct almost three centuries ago, another casualty of the runaway hostile climate on the surface above. In its place the Robusta species remained as the dominant coffee source, a plant grown in the massive transparent dome called the
Lens
. Robusta coffee plants proved to be less finicky with their humidity and nutrient needs versus the other species. Despite the benefits, Robusta coffee made one seriously bitter cup. Mug ‘o acid, Julian called it even after his attempts at amateur kitchen witchcraftery to balance out the acid. His secret brew was chicory and bicarbonate and also a little bit of dried honey. Aurelia found it amusing that Julian preferred to use ingredients with a shelf-life of forever.

Aurelia surveyed her garden-wall which appeared to be doing well in spite of her absence. “How did you keep my wall alive all this time?” She yelled out toward the other side of their Pod. They were allowed to have a single garden-wall because they owned the Pod outright. Renters were only permitted standalone modular mini-gardens, but nothing much beyond that. Sometimes the City's rules were a bit overzealous.

Julian’s disembodied voice returned her question from their bedroom. “Yeah I gotta be honest, I was getting kind of desperate there. I paid that girl down the street to help me save it from dying. Kid’s a natural.”

Aurelia said, “What kid? You mean Anlith?”

“Yeah, Anlith. Ran into her coming back from the Night Market and asked her if she could help keep your garden wall from dying off. I offered twenty credits a week.”

Aurelia waved her hand over her Blushing Bride plant which proudly bloomed out of the garden-wall. “Well she did an awesome job. I'm glad you didn't let it die. Color looks different though. Did you notice?”

Julian said, “Anlith asked me if we liked blues or pinks better. I told her blue so she added something to the soil to lower the acidity. Hell I didn’t even know flowers could change color like that. She was happy to come over and fix your garden though.”

Aurelia poured a cup of coffee for herself. “Always thought she was a quiet one. But she’s at that age.”

Julian walked into their kitchen. “Yep. Fun times, don't miss 'em.” He paused then said, “The Colonel's debriefing starts in an hour. We should go soon if we’re gonna make it.”

Aurelia poured some bitter Robusta coffee into a travelling cup and said, “Okay, let's go.” They left their Pod which they referred to as their
house,
even though the Pod was integrated into the massive underground City within. They walked through the City’s main tunnelways toward the Military Centre which was about one and a half kilometers away. On their way they walked by a class held on a City micro-park. The Lessons teacher stood in the middle of a semi-circle of student. He produced a lightmap that suspended itself in mid-air. The lightmap glowed in three colors, red green and white. The handheld lightmap's generator was an older model, though. The device was worn around its edges from a century of use. But it was dependable and sturdy enough.

Julian listened to the teacher as they walked.. The teacher raised his hand and suspended it onto the lightmap in the area of the former Southeastern United States. He asked his student, “Now, this area right here. Does anyone know what this small stubby landmass used to be called?”

A young boy eagerly waved his hand in the air., “Ooh, Washington!”

The teacher offered his student a puzzled look. “You didn’t do the homework at all, did you Morri?”

“No sir.”

“That’s fine. Now anybody else?”

“I know! They called it Florida Mr. Verden. It was one of the original fifty United States, underwater now,” another student responded. She said, “Most of it's under the ocean now.”

“Yes! that’s a tough one sometimes because most of it isn’t on any modern map. See here class?” As the teacher tapped his fingers across his forearm-worn Personal Assistant band the former State's outer border increased in size until the year-stamp display stopped a backward roll from 2511 to 2075. “This is what the State we called Florida
used to look like
before the Big Event. Now, can anybody draw the boundaries of the New Great Desert for me?”

By now their backs were to the class as Julian and Aurelia continued to walk toward the Military Centre. They would have taken their bikes but Aurelia had trouble with her balance. Julian regretted not buying her a three-wheel recumbent cycle but the money was tight and Aurelia’s military disability payments were not much to live on.

They arrived at the Military Centre. They passed under the security booth’s three-scan biometric clearance arch.. Aurelia spoke into her left upper arm’s bio-prosthetic, “Victoria where’s the debriefing?” Her mute prosthetic offered no answer.

Julian said, “You still can’t get used to walking out the door without Victoria, can you?” He spoke into a nearby kiosk. “Assistant, where is the debriefing location please?” Julian never really liked bodyworn Personal Assistants.

“Room-seven C, Julian. Fifth floor. Would you like me to draw a waypoint or a light-path for you?” The kiosk had no display screen, only a camera, a basic laser scanner and an unassuming single speaker. The kiosk itself appeared to be an integrated part of the building structure altogether. This was an intentional purpose in design as people grew tired of invasive screens and higher technology that were once everywhere from centuries past. As with all automated assistants within the Polar City the kiosk was a very low power device thanks to the ferroelectric three-phase capacitors that replaced the old power-hungry transistors.. Transparent and extremely
low energy technologies
were everywhere and simultaneously nowhere. The City only had so much power and every milliwatt was carefully audited and scrutinized.

“No thanks.” Julian and Aurelia walked away from the kiosk and toward the lift hall. The elevators were two cars tall to reduce energy consumption. They served two floors at once. A few moments later they entered the debriefing room.. A soldier guarded the door and recognized them on sight. “Go ahead guys. Starts in about five minutes.”

They sat down toward the back of the room with roughly two hundred in attendance. Shortly thereafter Lieutenant Colonel Eiger walked onto the presentation stage. “Good afternoon everyone. Ladies and gentlemen. This meeting is to debrief you on our current situation regarding the enemy Raiders. All information gained by this debriefing should be considered standard classified so please shut off your Assistants now if you haven’t already done so.”

Aurelia whispered at Julian as she nudged him. “They aren’t going to call us up there are they?”

Julian softly responded, “Don’t think so. No.”

Colonel Eiger continued with his presentation. “The first item on order is that we have captured one of their own. She is being held and studied now. She is the only remaining survivor of a firefight that happened about five weeks ago not far from the western Gate Six. We have a team of expert physiologists, psychologists and military interrogators mulling over her. Presently we believe that she is quite valuable from an intelligence standpoint. Unfortunately she was almost certainly fed an unknown exotic array of mind control drugs so our progress on her is slow so far.”

Colonel Eiger’s intern pressed her Personal Assistant's display and then a large overhead map rendered above the audience's heads. It zoomed in from a large view of the entire Earth down into the region around the Polar City with an outer radius of fifty kilometers. The City itself was marked as a small dotted placeholder in the center of the map. Three red illuminated stars marked the locations of the last three skirmishes which included the location of Aurelia's well known firefight of which she alone survived. Colonel Eiger's intern spoke. “As you can see on this situational map above here there has been an alarming increase in Raider engagements. Their groups are suicidally small and we detect no forces building up any sort of a position anywhere within the City's outer boundaries. We are unable to determine what the purpose of these groups are. Whenever they are captured they simply kill themselves outright using their own weapons or sometimes neurotoxins.. So far they have succeeded quite well to that end..”

The Colonel resumed and said, “But they have to have a reason. We haven’t seen a single Raider anywhere for over sixty years, and now all of a sudden here they are on our doorstep for no reason. Our best guess is that in the Dead Latitudes there must be a substantial population of Raiders but they are so remote we believe that they will not pose any real threat to our City. So we have no idea what their agenda is or how many of them are even out there running around..”

Colonel Eiger’s assistant shrank the large lightmap down and away from the audience using her Assistant wrapped around her left arm. A new display emerged, an image of the Raider's Coilgun. The intern said, “Here is our most disturbing find. This Coilgun here. The engineering and design that went into this thing is impressive. How they could have even fabricated this weapon is beyond us. What we do know is that almost all of our body armor and most of our ordnance shields are essentially worthless against this gun.” The large Coilgun diagram changed from a standard photograph into a wireframe schematics. “This Coilgun platform was built on a twenty-stage design, nothing earth-shattering here but the control circuitry was built using a much more complex polyphase acceleration process. When the projectile passes by one coil within the gun, the coil reverses polarity at just the right time to generate an incredible forward momentum. The circuit complexity is,” the intern paused in search of an adjective, “well it’s just impossible to imagine how they did it. To be honest we can’t even come close to anything like it.”. The innovation spells bad news for us because we have no tactical answer to this particular weapon.”

Colonel Eiger resumed. He said, “We are going to place the City on a conditional state of alert. Our lab technicians will continue analyzing the Coilgun and we will try and eek out any information from our new capture.. Our hope is that we can come up with a set of countermeasures to either disable the Coilgun or at least develop a shielding material that can hold up to its projectiles. Now we will discuss the citywide roll out for yellow state and what is expected from all Divisions, and you.”