Orson Card - Earth unavare

“All of them, I hope. We need a lot more than five.”

“My money is on Mazer Rackham. The one who gave you his gun.”

“Surrendering your weapon is hardly the trait of a supersoldier, Calinga.”

“Under the circumstances I thought it smart.”

“Would you ever give up your weapon?”

Calinga shrugged. “Depends. If it meant I got a better, more powerful weapon in return, one that was better suited to the task at hand, then absolutely. I’d surrender that puppy in a heartbeat. And that’s what Rackham did. By giving you his weapon, he got a bigger, more powerful weapon in return. You. He knew that you with his weapon was better than him with the same weapon. And it paid off. You took out several men, including me. And I don’t go down easily.”

“I don’t need me to take out the enemy. I need men who can take out the enemy without my assistance.”

“You need men who can think unconventionally and do things that traditional soldiers would never consider. Him giving you his weapon seems like out-of-box thinking to me.”

“It’s not enough to think outside the box,” said Wit. “We need men to tear the box to shreds and burn it.”

“So he should have broken your gun into tiny pieces and set it on fire?”

“I’m not criticizing his decision,” said Wit. “Under the circumstances it might have been the smartest course of action. But it would have been better if he had kept the weapon and taken out all those men himself instead of having me do it for him. Besides, knowing what and where to attack is far more important than knowing how to attack.”

“But he was humble enough to realize that he wasn’t as good as you. That has to count for something. I’ve read the guy’s file. He’s young, but he has a head on his shoulders.”

“They all have heads on their shoulders,” said Wit. “Although a headless army would certainly intimidate the enemy. What would we call ourselves, ‘The Sleepy Hollow Squad’?”

“‘The Guillotined Gang,’” said Calinga.

The noise outside the truck increased as they got closer into Auckland and traffic picked up. They exited the highway north of town and moved west toward the shipyards. After a series of stops and starts, the truck parked. Wit heard the driver and passenger doors open, and then the rear door of the trailer slid up. Two MOPs soldiers in civvies were standing outside.

The semi was parked inside an abandoned warehouse on the waterfront. Wit had paid cash to rent it for the month, but he hadn’t bothered with any of the utilities. Other than a row of small generators humming quietly in the corner, the warehouse was empty and quiet.

One of the MOPs soldiers spoke with a British accent. “How was it riding in the back with the stiffs, Captain?”

“They’re not dead, Deen,” said Wit. “They’re sleeping.”

“When they wake up, they might wish they were dead,” said Deen, laughing.

“Anyone who wakes up and sees your face, Deen, will think he has died,” said Calinga. “And it won’t be heaven.”

“You’re a bucket a laughs today, Cali,” said Deen.

Deen hit a button in the rear of the truck. The wheels spread farther apart, and the bed of the truck lowered to the ground. He and the other MOP, an Israeli named Averbach, brought the stretchers out onto the warehouse floor. While Wit checked the candidates’ vitals one last time, Deen and Averbach changed into full combat gear. Black body armor, boots, helmet, sidearms, assault rifles. When they were finished, they looked impenetrable.

“We all set?” asked Wit.

“The room’s prepped and ready,” said Averbach. “You tell us who’s first, and we’ll get them in position.”

Wit pointed. “That one. Mazer Rackham.”

Deen and Averbach each took one side of the stretcher and pushed it toward the administrative offices on the far side of the warehouse. Wit followed. Calinga stayed behind with the other stretchers.

They pushed Mazer through a series of doors until they reached the room designated for the screenings. It was roughly ten meters square, probably an old conference room. No windows or furniture. Bare walls. One door. High ceiling. Like a cell, only for white-collar office workers.

Deen and Averbach pushed the stretcher to the middle of the room, pulled the straps free, and then lifted Mazer off the stretcher and gently laid him on the floor.

Wit removed a metallic crown from the bag he was carrying and placed it on Mazer’s forehead. The crown had three bands: two that wrapped around the side of Mazer’s head, and a third that went up over the top and extended three-fourths of the way to the back. Wit entered a code on the front of the crown and then lifted Mazer’s head while the two bands on the sides extended to each other and locked together in the back, securing the crown to Mazer’s head. Wit gave the crown a tug to make sure it was tight. Mazer would likely get a migraine from the pressure, but that was the least of his problems. Wit then pulled an injection dot from his bag. The dot was a small coin-sized disc with adhesive on the back. Wit stuck the dot atop the veins in the bend of Mazer’s arm, then stood up and turned to Deen and Averbach. “You guys ready?”

The soldiers nodded and took their positions inside the room, guarding the door. Wit placed a flat holopad on the floor and extended two slender vertical posts from the back corners. He then retrieved his bag and pushed the stretcher out into the hall, closing the door behind him. Moving quickly, he went to a small office three doors down, where an identical holopad was up and ready. Wit turned on a monitor, and an image of Mazer Rackham asleep on the floor flickered on-screen. There were Deen and Averbach, rifles slung over their shoulders, on either side of the door, blocking any escape.

Wit leaned forward and put his face into the holospace above the holopad. On the monitor, a hologram of Wit’s head appeared above the holopad on the floor beside Mazer, as if a ghost one floor down was poking his head up through the floor for a look around.

Wit entered a command on his handheld, and in the other room, the injection dot initiated. A tiny needle pierced Mazer’s vein and injected the drug to counter the tranquilizer. Mazer blinked his eyes open. Two seconds later he was up, bent low in a crouched position, with one hand on the ground in front of him, helping him maintain his balance. It looked like a weak, defenseless position, but Wit knew better. Mazer was set to spring upward and attack. For a moment, Wit thought Mazer would strike then and end the screening. But then Mazer ripped the injection dot from his arm and tossed it aside, still blinking his eyes and forcing himself to wake.

Wit’s hologram spoke. “Lieutenant Rackham, should you ever be captured, there is a high probability that you would be tortured for information. The device you’re wearing on your head directly stimulates various brain areas. With it, I can make you experience agonizing pain, see blinding light that you can’t shut out, or feel like you need to pee so bad your gut will explode. It’s not pleasant. If you give me the information I want, however, I will stop the pain. Let’s complicate matters further by saying the information I seek would likely compromise fellow members of your unit and most certainly lead to their deaths. Now, let’s pretend the information I want is the name of your first pet as a child. Tell me that name now or suffer the consequences.”

Mazer smiled. “Seriously? Torture? That’s your special screening? I’m surprised, Captain. I was anticipating something a little more innovative.”

A light on the front of Mazer’s crown blinked, and Mazer threw back his head and screamed. His whole body buckled, and he crumpled to the floor, stunned. He lay there trying to catch his breath.