Stephen Berry - The Battle for Terra Two

Oblivious to all else, bleeding in a dozen places, the UC sergeant walked slowly, painfully to the woman. As he reached her, she sat up and spat, white spittle smearing his crotch.

John saw it before it happened. "Sergeant!" he snapped, voice ringing across the plaza. "Take her into custody!" He scooped up the dead corporal's minimac.

Gleaming black, the NCO's steel-toed boot broke the woman's jaw with a loud snap, slamming her head onto the paving. "Nigger whore," he said, the long burst from his minimac smearing the cobblestones with blood and brain.

John put three bursts into the sergeant, toppling his body across the woman's.

"God bless America," he said, letting the minimac slip to the ground.

Black uniforms filled the plaza. After a while, they took him away.

Surely one of history's great ironies: The same day Roosevelt heeded Einstein's admonition to scrap the atomic bomb proposal as "the beginning of the end of humanity," Hitler directed Heisenberg to "proceed with all dispatch on Prometheus.''

– Harrison, ibid., p. 38

It was very hot in the small, white interrogation room. Stinking of sweat, eyes burning, John dropped his head, trying to avoid the burning track lights and the water carafe, just beyond reach on the table.

They'd searched him on the plaza. Taking his ID, a graying captain had put him aboard a helicopter, escorted by two senior NCOs. "You'll have to see the colonel," he said.

As the chopper lifted, John saw them zipping Wenschel into an olive drab body bag.

A silent lieutenant had escorted him from the heliport to Interrogation, deep within the Hospital. Shackling arms and legs to the metal chair, he'd mumbled "SOP" and left. A moment later, the lights had blazed high.

He waited a long time, counting slowly to five thousand and thirty-eight before Aldridge came, squinting through his bifocals in the blazing light. "Erich," he called. "Dim those lights, please."

In the subdued glow, Aldridge took out a key, unfastening the fetters. As John stretched and rubbed his limbs, the colonel poured him a glass of tepid water. He tossed it down. "Thank you, sir," he said hoarsely.

"Send you into town and you kill one of my men, Major." The colonel's voice was mild as he pulled up the other chair and sat facing John. "Why?"

"Because he disobeyed my direct order, sir."

"Not because he brutalized and killed a desperate, beautiful young woman, Major?" His tone was all gentle rebuke.

"She was a beautiful killer, sir. She murdered a whole lot…"

"Eleven."

"Eleven innocent people. She certainly wasn't deserving of mercy."

Aldridge nodded, smiling his wistful scholar's smile. "True. And I've found that summary execution has a soothing effect on the genteel classes, far beyond the value of the intelligence we usually extract-it's policy for such incidents."

He rose, pacing for a moment, then turned, big hands gripping the back of his chair. "Your action was ill-advised, Harrison, but I'll support it. Sergeant Hallam disobeyed a direct order. You were within your rights, especially not knowing my policies." He wagged a bony, admonitory finger. "Don't do it again."

"No, sir. Sorry for the trouble. Who was the terrorist, Colonel?"

"Some nameless ganger on courier run. They have friends among our technoaristocracy, Major. Revolution may be fueled by peasant hatred, but it's always directed by middle-class malcontents. Mao, Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, Engels, General Giap, all come to mind.

"Did you know that Giap was briefly a busboy here in Boston, at the old Parker House?"

"No, Colonel, I didn't," said John dully.

"Yes. Trained at Carlton House, London, as achef de cuisine. Imagine eating a five-star French dinner prepared by the scourge of French colonialism."

He stood.

"I'm assigning you as patrol officer for the next week- good way to learn procedure. You'll be working with Erich's special troops. Better get some rest."

John rose, limping painfully as the blood surged back into his feet.

Aldridge helped him to the door, where a barrel-chested sergeant major waited impassively. "Erich's first-rate, Harrison. Watch him and learn."

John and the NCO gone, Aldridge spoke. "What do you think?"

"Maybe," replied zur Linde, voice hollow over the monitor. "Certainly he bears watching.

"His retina scan came back during your chat, sir."

"Positive, of course," said Aldridge. "Of course."

"Keep on him, Erich, keep on him. If he's Opposition, we'll want to know everything before he's killed. Klar'V "Klar, Hen Oberst."

Turning the field jacket collar against the biting wind, John adjusted his starhelm and stepped cautiously into what had been a street.

This part of the city was utterly destroyed, worked by howitzer fire into story-high mounds of masonry that choked the once broad avenues, ruins the starhelm showed in green-white-red phosphors.

Alone with the night and the northeast wind, John moved through the desolation like a wraith. Overhead, the stars shone cold and hard, undimmed by urban albedo. Here and there the rotting vestiges of shattered elms jutted through.

The gargoyle was an impish green through John's starhelm, grinning viciously atop a great tumble of hand-dressed granite. Further back, a mountain of broken stone towered-marble angels, gargoyles, saintly visages poking out of the wreckage. He halted by a half-buried brass cross and waited.

Sensing a presence, John whirled, finger curling around the minimac's trigger.

A boy stood there. A small, thin boy in worn corduroys, ragwool sweater, sneakers and a pair of nitespecs. John's weapon didn't waver. "You have something for me?" he asked softly.

The boy extended a torn piece of cloth. Fishing in his jacket pocket with his free hand, John withdrew an equally torn patch. Together they formed a compass rose with bayonet-fixed rifles, rampant. "OK," John nodded as each repocketed his half. "What's your name?" he asked, lowering the minimac.

Turning noiselessly, the boy disappeared behind the gargoyle-topped mound. Following, John saw the hole yawning amid the rubble, a great slab of stone looming to one side of it. Monkey-agile, the boy scuttled down metal rungs set in the shaft's concrete. With a wary glance at the thick slab, John followed.

The shaft dropped a hundred yards, opening onto a large tunnel. The rungs ended in a tiled wall, just above one of a set of railway tracks. The only illumination was in infrared.

The boy did something to one of the cracked wall tiles. High above, the slab swung silently down, sealing the shaft with a faint hiss. Without a backward glance, John's guide set off down the tunnel.

They walked a long time, the crunch of their feet in the gravel sending the big sewer rats scampering, squealing in protest. Once they forded a rushing stream where it'd washed out the railbed, collapsing a section of wall. A graceful, frail gazelle, the boy leaped nimbly along a row of eroded, half-submerged cinder blocks, gaining the opposite bank with dry feet. Burdened by uniform, starhelm, equipment belt and weapon, John plowed through the cold, tugging water.

His guide led on through a final series of cross tunnels, then up a ladder identical to the first, emerging from behind a false bookcase into a library: deep burgundy carpet, mahogany paneling that reached up to the high ceiling, ornate kerosene lamps, red-leather sofa with matching armchairs and a crackling fire in the fieldstone hearth. A balcony with more books girdled the room, breached by a spiral metal staircase.

The ganger came from the other side of the fireplace, silken red hair cascading over the shoulders of her black UC battlejacket, a chunky, stainless-steel magnum holstered at her slender waist. Extending John a crisp, dry hand, she sized him up with cool, green eyes. "Welcome to Viper Command, Major Harrison. I'm Heather MacKenzie, lan's sister."