Son of Sedonia (39 page)

But as the sound approached, he knew it wasn’t a Scout. Too throaty and sharp.
A Fury? No...a Zeus...
It was. There was no mistaking the knife-edged silhouette as it barreled down on the top tier. The T99s seemed to recognize it too, high-tailing it on top of each other back down the escalators. The Zeus opened fire into the enemy, cutting a red swath through their ranks. Vaughn and the EXOs lifted their guns in the air and howled.

“Okay, pick your targets, guys! Push ‘em all the way back!” The group went to semi-auto, cleaning up what the Zeus missed on its first pass. But as they reached the edge of the top tier and looked down, they saw the rest of the horde. T99 soldiers supported by Outer Ring workers in weaponized loader rigs. Steel plate armored trucks with mounted machine-guns. And a mobile, deep-core laser drill platform.

The Zeus’ sensors didn’t register it as a weapon right away, reading only the gathering heat source at the front lines. It cost Kabbard valuable microseconds in reaction time. He sucked in a breath, held it, and rolled left to avoid the initial path of the beam as it bore a blinding hole through the night. The Zeus was fast, but not faster than light. The beam swung to follow Kabbard as he struggled to stay ahead and come about for another run.

“Arm salvo!” he shouted to the Zeus console. Four red lights appeared on the Zeus diagram in the canopy glass, followed by the ‘Armed’ message. As the heat of the laser drill distorted the canopy glass, Kabbard screamed.

“FIRE!”

The payload fell away just as the laser clipped the Zeus’ right wing, sending Kabbard into a slow spin. He felt the shock of the explosions beneath him. Through the whirling chaos, he caught blurred glimpses of the top tier of Dynex Valley Mall, and pulled against the spin with all the strength his ill-fitting Augs could muster. Pops rippled through the cockpit moments before impact.

FwwooooOOOOOP! BANG! The Zeus’ impact foam dulled the crash, but it still felt like absolute shit. The undercarriage ground to a stop in the concrete beneath him as he struggled to dig out. Finally, the canopy blasted off the frame, deflating the foam around him. Aching from head to toe in his old, tight-fitting Augs, Kabbard climbed out to the sound of cheering.

A group of what looked like kids in EXO kit rushed over to him, jumping up and down. Kabbard noticed the glow below to his right. The salvo had found its mark, decimating the T99 ranks. He allowed a half-smile to cross his face before straightening.

“Who’s in command?!” he barked.

“I-I am, sir!” said one of the rookies.
No...not rookies anymore.
These guys had really been through the ringer. Augs torn to hell, blood and dirt all over. A few had holes through them, leaving arms dangling limp. Kabbard squinted at the commanding officer. Recognized him.

“You’re the ‘sir,’ Officer Vaughn, I’m a civilian,” said Kabbard, saluting. He turned and trotted to the wreck of the Zeus. Yanked open the rear hatch.

“Weapons! Ammo! Grenades! Take what you can, sir, it’s gonna be a long night!” Kabbard hefted two crates out and slid them across the ground where the EXOs tore them open. For himself, he took his favorite out of the hatch. A belt-fed fifty cal SAW. Even with his Augs on, the thing weighed more than he remembered.

“Sir—uhh...Mr. Kabbard,” said Officer Vaughn, limping over, “Is HQ gone?”

Kabbard chambered the first round of the ammo belt and paused. Nodded.

“Saw it go up right after I left the armory.”

“So that’s it? There’s no one else coming?”

“Governor Sato will call in the Feds, but who knows when they’ll mobilize.” Kabbard saw the young officer sink.
Sato probably can’t even get that much done.
He cleared his throat. Spoke to Vaughn loud enough for the other men to hear. “What are your orders, sir?”

Vaughn looked back at the men. All waited, weapons at the ready.

“Okay...I want claymores set up in stages at each escalator! You six, set up along the front line! You three—” Vaughn stopped as he saw something over Kabbard’s shoulder. Kabbard turned in time to see the RPG smoke trail streak toward the fourth tier.

“INCOMI—”

BOOOOM! Kabbard woke up in mid-air, just in time to feel himself crunch down into a flower bed. The Zeus had gone up in flames, and EXOs lay scattered across the tier. Only four were moving. The rest lay still in smoking heaps.

“VAUGHN!” Kabbard yelled. It sounded like he’d shouted the kid’s name into a pillow. He winced at the pounding in his skull as he rolled on the gutted flower bed. Against the firey backdrop at the tier’s edge, shadows climbed up. Kabbard scanned the ground around him. Found the SAW. In an agonizing lunge, he dove for the weapon, scooped it up, and opened fire.

The shadows screamed as they fell back, but more shadows replaced them. An endless wave of devils cascading over the edge. Kabbard’s Neural readout beeped at seventy-five percent ammo. Then fifty. Then twenty-five. It ran dry as they closed on him.

“COME ON!” Kabbard screamed, losing his voice. He tossed the SAW aside, and reached behind his back. Detached the two-and-a-half foot carbon steel short sword from his back panel.

“YOU WANT THIS CITY?!” Kabbard sprinted toward the gathering crowd with Augs at full tilt. “COME BLEED FOR IT!”

The honed, vibrating edge of the blade sailed through bodies as the horde converged on him. He cut one from neck to armpit. Lopped another open at the waist. Kabbard’s Augs screeched with every desperate, swing, kick, elbow, and punch. Until finally a shot shattered his knee. Kabbard howled and doubled over onto his side. Hands reached in for him. He writhed, hacking a few off until he caught another round in the forearm, and a final one through the other knee. The blade dropped to the ground as the rabid throng reached underneath the former Sergeant. Heaved him up over their heads.

Kabbard screamed a curse, silencing the crowd for the briefest instant. It roared from his throat in no language and yet all languages. As the blood loss took him, it stopped.

43

Underground

WHAT LITTLE LIGHT
there had been in the cavernous service tunnels suddenly vanished, leaving Corey and Liani surrounded by darkness. The tiny flood lights from their rail car kept Liani from totally freaking out, but the echoing void ahead swallowed all light after a few feet. Corey assured her they were going the right way. Their rail car was a Department of Energy personnel shuttle, designed to move freely on independent power to damaged points on the Grid. Input the Grid location you needed to access, and the uncomfortable bucket whisks you off along the edge rails. Liani shifted in the oversized harness of her hardened plastic seat.

They didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Straight for a while, then a gentle curve right, then straight again, intersected at regular intervals by crossing tunnels of the same gargantuan size. The ‘walls’ were a jumble of wires, jutting machinery, and massive pipes. The guts of Sedonia City.
Power goes in. Shit goes out.
They passed one of the giant garbage scows, frozen in the process of being loaded for a run to the Pits. The rotting stench of it stung her sinuses.

“We’re almost there,” Corey said, raising his voice above the noise of the engine and rail wheels. Liani nodded without looking. She’d barely said three words to him since Matteo, but here in the dark on the way to God-knows-where...her shell cracked. The thought of opening her mouth in the sour, rushing air made her choke, but she felt the words coming anyway.

“Listen,” Corey said after another turn, “Liani, I’m sorry. I wanted to save the kid too, but...”

“It’s okay!” Liani blurted, “I mean...it’s not ‘okay,’ but...I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I mean it’s like you said...this is bigger than us and him. We need to play our parts, and it wouldn’t have done any good for us to get killed on the train...I just—” She felt his thick, warm fingers wrap around her left hand. A split second told her to pull away, but she hesitated, lingering in the moment as it dawned on her.

“Oh,” she said. Her heart raced, pumping her skin with tingling blood. Her mind left, taken over by the sensation. It rippled down her arm. As she squeezed his hand she felt a spot of rolling wetness creep down her cheek. His thumb caressed a soft patch on her index finger.
Oh boy...

“We do this last thing, and that’s it,” Corey said, “We go back up, head East, and wait this out.”

“What if it works?” Liani asked. The question seemed to blow through him. He rubbed the sweat-laced stubble collecting on his cheeks.

“No way to know how it’ll land,” Corey said. The billions of possibilities rushed through Liani’s head as she asked herself.
Would everything just collapse?
The City, stripped of its dysfunctional but staggeringly complex government...would everything just die? Or would people fight just as hard as the rebels to ignore it? Desperate to keep their lives the same.

“But we’re journalists,” a smile crossed Corey’s face, “We report the truth as best we can. People make up their own minds.”

The final truth of it snapped together inside her like a puzzle piece. She smiled and took a deep breath. Gave Corey’s hand another squeeze.
I’m going to explode.

Then both of them noticed it at the same time. The tunnel ahead turned left, but they could see the walls better than usual...and from farther off. A pale light shone on the networked piping and conduits on the wall, coming from an unseen source around the corner. The faint, echoing murmur of moving machinery bounced and clinked through the metal cavern.

“Must be them,” Corey said, “Grid’s all run by Outer Ringers, nobody else comes down here.” He pushed up against his harness, arched his back, and reached behind him. Before she could ask, he pulled out a gun. A shiny pistol with a snub nose and a short handle. Corey couldn’t even fit four fingers around the grip. He popped the tiny magazine out and checked the bullets.

“Uh, whoa, what the fuck are you doing? I thought you said it was
them!
” Liani said.

“It is,” said Corey as he reloaded the mag and pulled back the slide, “Probably. But there
is
a war going on...I figure that makes us war correspondents. Morris Locke carried one the whole time during his coverage of the Mumbai Siege—”

“Jesus, Corey, put it away! Have you ever even fired that thing?”

Corey inspected it for the safety switch, clicked it, then put it back in his waistband.

“I...No.”

“Great.”

Their railcar rounded the corner, immersing them in the shocking brightness of a battery of flood lights. Two massive, flat platforms sat side-by-side on the tunnel’s main center rails.
Construction and maintenance platforms...
Mechanical arms craned up thirty stories to the ceiling and walls, frozen in half-completed tasks. A Grid Station sat adjacent to the gargantuan equipment, recessed into the tunnel wall. A group of figures waited at the rail dock.

Whoever they were, they soon noticed the approaching rail car. It seemed to make them nervous. Three of the figures ducked down while two other ones stood ahead. Liani squinted.

“Corey,” she said, “they have
real
guns.”

“This
is
a real gun!”

“Shh!” she planted a jab in his hip. Corey composed himself and lifted his hands in the air. Liani did the same as their rail car jerked to a stop, docking at the station. Clamps snapped shut on the track, trapping them there.

“Who the hell are you?! What are you doing here!” shouted one of the two gunmen. They looked to be wearing black at first, but Liani’s heart stopped as she recognized SCPD blue.
Cops
.

“We—uh...we...” Corey stammered.

“...missed the trains headed East!” Liani finished, “My...husband and I...we missed the trains and had no place else to run...”

“It’s true!” Corey followed her lead, “I worked for GloboMetro News and we did a piece on Grid worker conditions a few months back...figured the tunnels would give us a shot at getting someplace safe.”

The cops looked ragged. Terrified. They kept their guns trained on Liani and Corey.

“Bullshit! That were true, you’d be headed
away
from the fighting, not toward it!” said one of the cops. His dark black skin poured sweat.

“
Toward
the fighting?!” Liani shrieked at Corey without skipping a beat, “Babe, are you fucking
kidding
me?!”

“I—must have misread the map controls, excuse the shit outta me! I
am
trying to save our asses, you know! It’s your fault we missed the goddamn train!” Corey fired back.

“
My
fault?!”

“SHUT UP! Both of you!” yelled the other cop. One of the other three behind the officers peeked out. A slightly chubby woman in her mid-forties, she trembled like a cornered mouse.

“Excuse me?” she said, “I think they’re telling the truth.”

“What?” the cop’s gruff question made the woman cringe.

“I-I saw that young lady on the news last week...doing a story from our Central Hub. She was covering the ongoing negotiations between Governor Sato and Mr. Finley.” Slowly, the cops lowered their weapons. Everyone relaxed as the woman continued.

“Sorry about that...Li...Liani is it? I’m Connie Dreivan, City Municipal Supervisor for this Grid sector. Governor Sato sent down everyone he could to investigate the blackout...the officers just wanted to keep us safe. I hope they didn’t scare you too badly.”

“That’s alright,” Corey said, “We’ll turn around and leave you to—”

The towering mechanical arms burst into animation on the main platforms behind them. Liani felt like she leaped out of her skin. The arms retracted with a hiss of hydraulics and buzzing of servos, folding neatly into their designated places on the platforms. Liani spotted the incoming headlights first. The Virton employees and SCPD officers had no time to react.

Rapid shots echoed through the tunnel as the five citizens burst in sprays of neon blood. The flood lights underscored every detail, throwing highlights on Connie Dreivan’s beaded necklace as it flew apart. Corey and Liani scrambled to click out of their harnesses and drop behind cover in the rail car. Corey took out his gun. The shooting stopped, replaced by whooping laughter.