Fort Liberty, Volume Two Read online

  “What?”

  “I brought sixty men across big sky with me for this job, all of them experienced Assaulter hunters from Earth ghettos, finest in my employ. We need that girl. You know the one.”

  Petra stares at him, lips parted but unable to reply.

  He grins, like the charming psychopath he is. “My powerful friend wants the girl dead before her big scientific debut, which means we’ve got to hit them today. Voss has been ordered to take the girl down-canyon to the BIOSTAT station for indoctrination, and we’re going to hit them hard when they get there… liquidate that whole place. My friend gave us backdoor codes, and we’re already into the BIOSTAT system, already shutting down comms like they’re errors, nice and subtle, already fucking with them. We’ll fly right past the defenses, no problem, but Assaulters could still manually fire a rocket at us from the hangar, or try to take us out before we can land… which is why we got you.”

  “Voss doesn’t care about me.”

  “He cared enough to give you a secure comm link.”

  “Wants to track me. Doesn’t mean he’d die for me.”

  “Who says he intends to? When he finds out we’ve got you, he’ll let us land, thinking he’s going to kill us all, and surprise… there're enough men and firepower on this vessel to vaporize half of Red Filter. He can surrender, or die.”

  “He’s not going to let you land.”

  “Depends on how convincing you are,” Kazak says, leaning forward and spreading his fingers in the light, as if it’s a magic trick. “And we both know you’re plenty convincing when you want to be. I’ve heard that the only reason you’re free, and alive now, is because you caught the colonel’s eye. Pretty Petra, eh? Just like old times. Men would give you anything, and count themselves lucky if they lived to tell about it. So what’s different now? There’s good profit in this venture, I promise you. You’re a good trader. One of the best. You get us into that facility, and you’ll never have to work again. Now’s the time to name your price.”

  “You don’t know Voss.”

  “Oh, I know enough. You know how we kill Assaulters on Earth? We just capture one of them. The rest of them will all die to save that one, a member of the team. Works every time. They’re surprisingly sentimental.”

  “I’m no Assaulter, no member of any team.”

  “He likes you though.”

  “So?”

  “So… you can convince him. We connect, and you tell him that we’ll exchange you for Niri---like that’s all there is to it---and you beg him to save you, tell him you need help. He’ll believe it. I mean, look at you… full of shrapnel. You’ll die soon without someone’s help. You’d die now if I loosened that tourniquet. Assaulters would never turn their backs on such as you, even if President Wexler ordered them to. It can’t fail.”

  “Can’t it?” she asks, mouth parched, tongue like sandpaper.

  “C’mon, don’t play coy. My powerful friend has doubts about you, suspects you’re loyal to Voss, but I said ‘no, that’s not her’. It’s all about price. Don’t waste time pretending it’s not, because there’s a lot of blood here, and maybe you haven’t got much time left. Help us out, and we’ll make you rich, and we’ll get you the med care you need… right after the connection’s made.”

  “Your powerful friend’s going to give me a contract too?”

  He smiles though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, why not?”

  “Maybe,” Petra says, concluding he’s not really all that smart. Can’t be, if he thinks she’s this stupid. “Always up for profit.”

  He slaps his knee. “There you go!”

  “But I don’t like the thought of killing that girl.”

  “It’ll be quick.”

  “I mean… what if she’s more valuable alive?”

  He looks away, shrugs, conceding the point. “I see what you’re getting at, but my friend is not anyone you’d want to cross.”

  “So you say.”

  “It’s the truth. This individual’s got strong opinions, and deep pockets, deep enough to have funded that original militia of ‘subversives’ who tried to kill you before, and then hire me to do this part after they failed… not cheap. This, right here… this is not part of a business plan. This is an insider attack on the system, on the NRM, and the Block 12 corporations, and their research projects, which maybe pose a threat to us all. It’s a reset on the balance of power in Red Filter.”

  “Set to kill the innocent.”

  “Cruel world.”

  She swallows, energy drained, pain seeping up through layers of analgesics, the sting strong enough to bring tears. Show no weakness. Keep him talking. “Can’t bargain your life on the word of the powerful, especially not in Red Filter. Keep the girl alive, and we’ll have something to negotiate with.”

  He considers it again, taking longer this time. “Been trading tech a long time, got my hooks in everywhere. Girls like her have been born on Earth for decades, always hush-hush, something new, something engineered, and extracted by Assaulters when they’re old enough, or when they’re compromised, and brought to Mars. There are rumors about why they’re crazy. The Bounder Army learned to hunt them, found out that they’re not so human, after all. And this Niri… she’s the newest, the latest version, and my Red Filter friend believes she needs to die, or else she’ll give power to the wrong people here, change everything in on this world, and by extension, Earth, where I make my modest livelihood. We all got something to protect, Petra. And maybe killing this girl is the best way to do that. It’s in your interest too, I think, to keep things the way they are. Guard your profit. Let the powerful have their wars.”

  Petra tries to hold his gaze, the pain spreading hot needles under her skin, making it difficult to draw breath though such desperate emotions tend to make lying easy. “My price is high.”

  “Smart girl.”

  “I’ll open the channel, and say what’s got to be said. And you’ll make sure I live, and your friend pays me equal to what you’re getting, minus crew and material expenses.”

  “Done.”

  “Get me my suit helmet. Locator makes the connection.”

  “Not yet, but soon. I have them dose you up to keep the pain bearable, and keep your head clear. Won’t be long.”

  Petra keeps her voice steady. “What happened to my crew?”

  He shrugs, smile never wavering. “They’re alive… for now. They’re aboard our other ship, which will come in and extract us after we’ve met our objectives at BIOSTAT. The extract ship has taken a different route to obscure our full presence on the SAT system, but they’ll arrive at the extract time and provide whatever support is needed. We put your crew on that ship, and they’ll be safely returned to you at the end of this operation.”

  Lies… Petra returns her gaze to the ceiling, knowing what men like this bring with them, knowing what their promises are worth, and how it ends. She’s been at the mercy of such before, men who’ve got the coldest hearts, and the brightest smiles, men who will deceive the dying just to get one more ‘favor’, one more concession out of those they’re busy killing in one way or another.

  Of course, the deal to call Voss is false on both sides, because she’s going to use that connection to warn the colonel of exactly what’s heading his way. She probably owes him that much.

  And because it needs to be done. And because she wants to.

  Maybe there’s a chance of her surviving, but it’s slim, and to hold on too much just brings on desperation, when anger is what’s needed to avenge the injury, and tip the scale in a friend’s favor.

  Sometimes, it’s the idea of the future that’s got to be let go.

  And anyway…this is something like the end she expected, having earned as much, as both smuggler and killer in her right, though her reasons were maybe purer. This is what’s been sown.

  She presses her lips together, steeling the words inside. One warning, Voss. From me to you, gonna be time for one warning. For the sake of all yo
u’re protecting, you better take it.

  TRANSFER

  FORT LIBERTY

  OPHIR CHASMA REGION

  MARS DATE: DAY 25, MONTH 12/24, YEAR 2225

  A soft chime sounds in the darkness, two-tones, one high, one low, ascending in a way that tries to be cheerful, but settles into desperation given enough time. Voss lets it go for another minute, awake but slow to respond, slow to accept the hour for what it is, which has become routine.

  He lies there, on a rack with a soft white mattress because Red Filter compartments don’t come without, and winces at the pain of ageing muscles worked over in the simulators, the ache of old joints, pieces of human machinery torn, broken and repaired too many times to remain perfectly still now, even during sleep.

  Age. Maybe that’s part of it. But he knows there’s more.

  “Awake,” he admits, and the chime shuts off. Dusky light filters in from the two simulated windows in his compartment, each offering equally commanding views, golden slices of the Valles Marineris Canyon taken from the top of Fort Liberty Tower.

  Of course, he’s not in the tower.

  He’s in a basement, at best, and real windows (if they were in a position to offer an outside view) would reflect a few meters of dark basalt, a perpetual night of olivine rock, its porous, potholed mass shot through with flecks of white crystal, or silvery blooms of cold iron.

  Doesn’t matter. The compartments of average citizens all have the same artificial windows, which offer all the same selectable views, and it might be possible to tell something about a person who chooses the open plain over the towering ridges, or the clear night over the hazy glow, or the one who deviates and selects jungles with waterfalls on a planet that has neither.

  Voss hasn’t selected anything beyond his own waking times. The compartment does what it does. It offers him food, and he refuses it most of the time. It makes environmental adjustments for whatever preferences it observes, and he couldn’t care less.

  It offers soothing suggestions when he rips awake from a nightmare, and he curses under his breath, wishing he could punch it into permanent silence. The dreams aren’t a new thing, but the intrusion of another voice---with its idiotic preprogrammed wisdoms---is.

  His previous tour at Fort Liberty had been short, and ceremonial, as a uniformed campaign ornament with all the appropriate medals, paraded around at the behest of Rhys Corporation, and housed in one of their Spartan quarters. No pretense of windows. No auto-attendant. The dreams came all the same, but he woke to silence, which was a luxury he didn’t fully appreciate at the time.

  He gets the same dreams on Earth, but not often, because they simply never happen in full kit, flying through chop, when the seat’s bouncing, and every guy on the team is knocked out because the fight’s still a few hours away. They don’t happen between missions, when he’s training or planning, coaxing numbers out onto grids, waiting for the moment that green light comes.

  Those are on-times, body and soul, and nothing hurts.

  The aches and pains, the nightmares, that all happens when it’s quiet, when the air is too clean, and the mattress is too soft, and the sounds that are supposed to be there… aren’t.

  So it happens in Red Filter with a frequency that borders on the insane, triggered by nothing, by glossy hallways, and shiny suits, and blank expressions, the blithe chatter of those who dance around in idiotic circles.

  He endures the irony and the boredom during waking hours, but in sleep, the mind turns, taking him back to places that no longer exist. There are many to choose from, but the subconscious id favors an Earthbound fire base he left over a decade ago, set on cold stone ridge, under a murky sky and a milky crust of toxic snow, the wind howling through jagged crevices and over bleak outcrops.

  The base itself is gone, its plywood barracks disassembled, protective bastions broken down and dragged away, his footprints among the hundred or so lost to time. And when he’s there, he’s usually alone, just listening to the wind, feeling the same ominous weight that the place always had.

  Only sometimes, he’s not alone. He catches movement in his peripheral, but when he turns, there’s nothing there, or almost nothing. Shadowy forms, some hint of a helmet and a shoulder passing behind a bush, some part of a uniform, some quiet whisper to let him know the brothers he lost are still there, still doing what he told them to do, only they’re wondering where he is.

  Occasionally, they cross into full view, not misshapen or bloodied, not with the merciless wounds he remembers, but tortured by time all the same, starved out, and grey, their uniforms tattered on skeletal frames, boots shredded apart, with sand sluicing through the open rips, as if their likenesses are formed from dust and will alone, and they’ve been trudging in circles searching for him---the man who was supposed to bring them home---and for the base that simply isn’t there. No racks for their wraithlike forms, no warmth around fires gone cold, no sustenance for stomachs spun with empty air… all of it gone, and not in the mists of victory, but because it was deprioritized, a block of line items crossed off a list of expenses.

  That’s the reality he wakes to.

  Every time, it takes a piece of him.

  Every time, it gets harder to turn off the wake chime.

  He pushes up, drops his bare feet to the stone tile and leans forward with his elbows on his knees, listening to thick sound of air hissing through filters, waiting for the mind to reorganize itself the way it always does.

  He rubs his beard, its short growth silvered and broken by scars.

  After a minute, he checks the open links on the small holo comm unit clamped around his wrist, scrolling past glowing green beads for Wyatt, and Gojo, and searching for Petra.

  Lately, he’s checked that bead far more than he needs to, far more than what’s required to view the updates she seldom makes. He checks it knowing that he’s going to see no new records, no new locations, a frustrating lack of data. He checks it knowing that it’s some part duty, some part attraction, some part fascination with female train wrecks.

  She’s used to living with threats. She knows how to keep herself alive. That’s what he uses to ease concern when she blinks out though it never really works, and the vulnerability he’s seen, and felt, in her doesn’t help.

  Petra’s bead is dark. And she’s missed a check-in.

  C’mon, Petra…

  An alarm flashes through his auth link in holo. He selects it and the message scripts in shining letters, decoding swiftly as he reads it.

  CATEGORY 5 SANDSTORM INBOUND.

  MISSION LAUNCH TIME ADJUSTED.

  MINUTES TO DEPARTURE: 30.

  Thirty is tight though they’ve already been briefed, and the mission is straight-forward. A transport op. Fly the secret girl, Niri, to the secret bio-research facility, BIOSTAT, located 400 klicks west down the canyon, and then provide extra security during her indoctrination process… whatever that is.

  Simple, but simple things get complicated.

  His team is still picking shrapnel out of their armor from the last attack initiated by the group of unnamed subversives who want the girl dead. Their motivation is still a little fuzzy. She’s a medical breakthrough, with a foreign bacterial element in her blood, and a great scientific destiny ahead of her, and he supposes that someone was bound to have a problem with that.

  No big surprise there.

  Whoever they are, they’ve attacked without warning before, and they’ll do so again. So, it’s the kind of complication that takes time to pack for.

  “Shit,” he mutters, pushing up from the bed and reaching for his uniform.

  It’s Red Filter tech, solid black and tighter than fatigues, temperature and fluid regulating, with a high collar reminiscent of Rhys Corporation dress blacks, only meant for fitting under the weight of armor.

  And just like that… nothing hurts.

  It’s ten minutes after the green light, and he’s pushing to make time, the team assembled in the sulfuric glow of the ready room, met
hodically pulling kit from the metal lockers. They fill up the narrow spaces intended for Red Filter skinnies, standing tall in dark suits and dulled out armor, Earthbound men who could move like cats with over a hundred pounds of kit, now able to carry three times as much in Mars G if they can find places for all of it.

  The extreme environment rifles get slung for the trip out, weapons specifically designed for low temps, with heavy lubricants, and computer-assisted sighting to switch between close and distance shooting in the low-drag environment. The standard assault rifles go too, with suppressors, for the controlled environment inside stations, along with a submachine gun, pistols, EMP grenades, frag grenades, stacks of extra magazines, and knives… the shuffle of lethal equipment set to the rip of zippers and the clack of case latches.

  Gojo has his comm tech, drones and skeetos, tool kits, hack units, various bits of junk he found in supply cabinets and ‘requisitioned’ without paperwork.

  Logan’s medical ruck now has warning labels, because he’s updated it with high-end Red Filter field and surgical supplies, the best of everything, and who knows what that does when it gets shot.

  “Hey Col,” Wyatt, the team sniper, elbows him, grinning, his scalp freshly shaved, tattoos scrolling just above his collar. “You sleeping yet?”

  Sleeping. It’s a joke, and an old one, referring to Voss inside his sphere, the near-silent mode he slips into when he’s focused on what might come at them next, tracking all the elements in play, and where they are in terms of the mission. It’s more like juggling knives than sleeping, but Wyatt is Wyatt.

  “Getting there,” Voss says.

  “Yeah, well… betcha didn’t know that President Wexler has a daughter.” Wyatt says this as if it has no significance, when clearly it might. His eyes are now focused on a handful of range cards. “A director of… something. You know, something important, blah, blah.”

  “Interesting,” Voss says, checking his pistol.