Патрик Томлинсон - Children of the Divide

A quick one-two-three burst erupted from the rifle with a deafening cadence, filling the tunnel with the echoing sounds of its thunderclaps. The first two rounds missed their target by less than a finger-length, but the third struck home into the right side of the first Atlantian to present themselves. The recipient rocked back from the sudden transfer of kinetic force, but quickly came to their feet and returned fire. Lacking hearts to stop, Atlantians were devilishly difficult to kill with single shots unless landed directly in the head, a fact that was both beneficial and detrimental to Benexx’s chances in the short-term.

The tiny bullets sliced through the air faster than sound itself, some barely missing Benexx’s head. Ze turned and ran down the hallway, deafened by the gunfire, muzzle flashes seared into zer vision. Ze pointed the rifle back down the tunnel and blindly sprayed a long burst as ze retreated, hoping only to convince zer pursuers to get back under cover and put an extra bit of distance between them.

Sprinting through the dark, Benexx was suddenly struck in the left leg with a white-hot pain just above the knee. Ze let out a shocked yelp of surprise as much as agony as zer leg gave out and sent zer crashing to the floor in a heap. The rifle skittered away from zer grip and came to rest against the far wall, its cone of light pointed back down the hallway, while the bomb remained in zer other hand.

Ze’d been shot. The bullet passed cleanly through the meat of zer leg without hitting the cartilage or expanding very much, not that it hurt any less. It felt like ze’d been run through with an electrified spear. Benexx scrambled back to zer feet, heavily favoring zer left, and moved to grab the gun, only to be driven back again by a barrage of incoming fire aimed at the light. The shooter thought ze still held it. In an instant, Benexx decided to use the diversion to maximum effect.

Ze planted the bomb on the opposite side of the passage even as another burst of fire tore into the rock face, then hopped away as quickly as ze could, dragging a hobbled left leg behind zer. Even over the ringing in zer ears, Benexx heard shouting break out behind zer, goading zer forward. Digging through the pack, zer fingers urgently felt for the detonator until they wrapped around the familiar pistol grip and pulled it free.

Then Benexx’s retreat came to a screeching halt. A rock wall blocked the passage ahead. Zer head spun, clamoring to spot an opening in the rock, a hole in the ceiling or floor, anything that ze could use to continue onward.

Nothing. It was a dead end.

The sounds of feet slapping on stone and shouted commands filled zer ears as despair flooded zer mind. There was no way out, and ze hadn’t covered nearly enough ground to have gotten clear of the blast radius.

A voice accustomed to being heeded barked at zer to turn around. A weakened, exhausted part of Benexx’s brain obeyed without resistance. Sula stood there, several steps ahead of a half dozen of zer compatriots, three of which held their own rifles.

“Nowhere left to run now, little bearer. You are proving to be more trouble than you’re worth. Your value to us as a hostage does have limits, you know, no matter who your parents are or how famous you think you are. I have half a mind to order you shot right here and dump you in a hole next to Jolk. You two deserve each other.”

A ray of red hot fury shot through the stifling blanket of hopelessness that had descended over zer soul. Dying down here alone was bad enough, but the thought of zer body spending eternity trapped next to Jolk’s filth?

Benexx held up the detonator where everyone could see it. The temperature in the cave seemed to drop twenty degrees in less than a second. Sula’s skin went blank with the shock and realization that ze wasn’t in control of the situation after all.

“What is that?” ze asked.

Benexx pointed to the pale-faced human bombmaker standing to Sula’s right. “Ask him, he knows.”

Sula conferred with the man, who nodded confirmation.

“I see,” ze said quietly, then cleared zer throat. “And what is your detonator connected to?”

“Oh, just a little bomb I scratched together from a few kilos of your stolen explosives. It’s about twenty meters behind you, around the bend. You all ran right past it.”

“That puts you in the blast zone as much as any of us.”

“Sure does.”

Sula smiled warmly. The forced, unnatural sight of it turned Benexx’s stomach. “Come now, young bearer. You don’t want to die here, alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Benexx taunted. “You’re all right here with me.”

“Stop this foolishness!” Sula snapped. “I am not an unforgiving host. You are scared, and cold-headed. You’re confused. I’m sure you’re starving by now. If you set down that remote, I promise you a fine meal. We will share food from our table, an equal share, in recognition of the… unexpected bravery you have displayed.”

“I’m not hungry,” ze lied.

“I salute your boldness, but if you think you’re going to negotiate your way out of this tunnel–”

“I’m not interested in negotiating anything with you,” Benexx interrupted.

“Then what are you interested in?”

Benexx savored the terror on Sula’s face, ze even managed a smirk.

“This.” Ze pulled the trigger, and the world went white with light and noise.

Twenty-Nine

Icons filled the map room like a swarm of colorful, two-dimensional insects. Jian’s head had been spinning for the last hour, trying to make sense of layer after layer of the raw data. For the first full day he’d spent on this rogue mission, his greatest concern was not being able to glean enough information from the facility’s sensor nets.

But then he’d made the language breakthrough. The facility’s AI systems were devilishly clever and picked up on Jian’s linguistic inputs incredibly fast. Now, the data came so fast and furiously, it was like trying to stay seated, on a barstool, on top of a geyser.

The scope, breadth, and resolution of the available data was simply mindboggling. Jian scarcely knew where to begin looking. At least twenty different filters stacked one on top of the other, bristling with information. Jian could look up the barometric pressure, wind speed direction, temperature, humidity, and particulate density at any given altitude above Shambhala. A cargo jet making the trip between Shambhala and G’tel cropped up as an anomalous atmospheric disturbance. Jian tagged it, marked the anomaly as an “airplane,” and moved on.

Moving to the water, he could sound off on ocean currents, acidity, salinity, oxygen levels, plankton blooms, even crop fish migration patterns. But there was a big difference between tracking schools of hundreds of millions of fish, and identifying and pinpointing a single individual Atlantian. Staring at the flood of information in front of him, Jian was certain the facility possessed the resolution and sensitivity necessary to find Benexx. And he was just as certain he had no idea how to begin to ask it to.

Instead, Jian had spent the last couple of hours clearing the board of things he figured weren’t of use. The layer monitoring ozone thickness and opacity to solar radiation probably wasn’t going to be of any help finding Benexx, so down it came. The layer tracking planetwide precipitation and lightning activity was similarly fascinating but useless, so he swept it away. Not that meteorologists and agricultural planners down in Shambhala wouldn’t absolutely salivate at the chance to tap into the feed, but for Jian right then, it was a distraction.