Нэнси Кресс - Terran Tomorrow

The underground annex came with an airlock, and Jason had insisted that Colin allow a tunnel to be bored away from it, with a hatch hidden in a peach orchard a quarter mile from the dome. The Lab Dome tunnel at the Monterey Base was how Jason had gotten James Anderson into the base stockade without anyone except J Squad even aware that the Gaiist had been captured. Colin used the tunnel only as an additional, cool storage area for fruit, vegetables, and grain. It was, he’d said with the misplaced gratitude that drove Jason crazy, perfect because the metal reinforcing helped keep out mice and vermin.

Jason left soldiers guarding Holbrook’s medical corps, their weapons trained on each of the dome’s above-ground airlocks in case of a rush. Jason led the rest of J Squad to the tunnel exit. When the brush had all been removed, two soldiers lifted the metal hatch, which wasn’t locked; for once Jason was grateful for the Settlers’ casual carelessness about security. Someone below screamed. J Squad raised their weapons. Jason looked down and said, “Christ!”

Three men crouched on the top step, holding shovels and hoes. Below them were jammed more men, women, and children. Did these idiots think they could hold off New America with the weapons of thirteenth-century serfs, and from a position below their attackers?

“US Army!” he shouted. “Come out of there!”

Some did, some ran back down the stairwell, some just cowered. J Squad yanked them all above ground. Jason said to the first adult out, a big man dressed in homespun shorts and nothing else, “How many enemy inside?”

“I don’t know. Maybe two dozen?”

Not good. “Colin Jenner?”

“Inside. Too hurt to move. He told us to come here and—”

“Take charge of these people. Keep them here, don’t let them go back inside the dome until you get an all clear. Understand?”

“Yes.” And then, “If you give me a gun, I’ll defend everybody.”

So they’re not all idiots, Colin. Jason handed over his SCAR. Jason would be in the rear, anyway, and he had his sidearm. The man, in homespun cloth and wooden sandals, held the rifle expertly and checked the magazine in the chamber.

Well.

J Squad poured down the stairwell, sending people back up behind them. Jason followed. The only light came from the tunnel opening, except… what the hell was that? A weird green glow…

People standing in the defense alcoves, or what were supposed to be defense alcoves, holding wooden trenches of biofluorescent bacteria or mold or some damn thing. But the glow helped as J Squad pounded up the stairway to the dome. Rice grains crunched under Jason’s boots. A peach rolled past, leaving juicy smears on the steps. At the top, the metal doorway was barred with wooden slats. No e-locks here. The enemy could have breached this door at any time, which meant they hadn’t known it was there.

He was wrong. But J Squad was ready.

As soon as the point man flung open the door, the enemy fired. J Squad returned fire. Two of Jason’s soldiers went down, but there were only three New America fuckers there and the squad dispatched them and kept going. Experts at clearing rooms, they flowed in three-man stacks from area to area. Gunfire echoed off the metal partitions, thudded on the wooden ones. Jason bent over his fallen soldiers.

Private Sendis was dead. Specialist Lena Tarrant was hit in the chest. “I’ll get medics to you as soon as I can.”

She tried to nod.

Jason ran through the dome, following his troops, issuing orders into his mic. There weren’t two dozen of New America inside, only half that. J Squad, sustaining one more nonserious casualty, killed them all. No chance to take any prisoner.

Settlers cowered where they could. Some lay dead or wounded on the dome floor, smearing it with blood. Jason found Colin unconscious beside an indoor planting bed, a wound in his side and his leg bent at an impossible angle. Bone showed through. A teenage boy crouched beside him, desperately pressing a cloth against Colin’s side.

“Keep doing that,” Jason said. “I’ll send a medic as soon as I can.” He ran toward an airlock.

Outside, all looked quiet. He said over his mic, “Kubetschek, report!”

“No one emerged, sir. All visible enemy here are dead. It’s possible some escaped into the woods but none have fired. One prisoner.”

“Lieutenant Allen?”

“No action at the ship, sir.”

He switched frequencies. “Dr. Holbrook?”

“A lot of casualties. More dead. Inside?”

“Casualties. Send medics and Dr. Ross.”

Lindy ran to the dome and Jason met her at the airlock. “This way. Colin. Multiple wounds.”

He led her to Colin and went back outside, watching the medics work on the helpless farmers shot for the crops they had labored to raise, or shot to bring Jason’s military running so they too could be slaughtered, or shot just for the thrill of killing.

He strode toward the captured New America prisoner.

It was a boy, no more than fifteen, the beard on his face wispy and childish. He wore old boots and a new uniform, its cloth still stiff with the original sizing, possibly captured from the Sierra Depot. His eyes glared at Jason in defiance, hatred, and fear, but mostly fear.

A boy, a private in this undisciplined army. From his age, a new recruit. He would not have any valuable intel.

But Jason would have to find that out for sure.

There were too many wounded to take back to the base in the FiVees. Lindy said, “Some of them couldn’t stand the jolting anyway, over those nonroads.” She waited, looking at him, arms crossed on her chest, blood smearing her jeans and cotton shirt.

Jason gazed at the wounded scattered over the fields, the orchard, by the mill and estuary. The Settlers from the dome and its underground annex had all been brought outside, bending over the injured and the dead or huddling together. Some wept. A heavy-duty medbot transported Colin, still unconscious, on its stretcher. Tubes and wires sprouted from him like the weeds he unaccountably loved.

Lindy said, “Jason—”

“I know.” He would have to contaminate the Return with RSA.

He had Carter lift the ship and set it down in a field of broccoli. Jason and Lindy walked beside Colin’s bot. “He’s lucky,” Lindy said. “The side bullet missed his vital organs. The leg injury is actually worse, a comminuted open fracture. When was his spleen removed?”

“He was just a kid,” Jason said. “I don’t really know much about it.” Another life, like everything before the Collapse. He turned to face her. “Thank you for saving him.”

“You don’t think I did it for you, do you?”

“Not for half a second. But thank you anyway.”

“Damn it, Jason, don’t turn humble on me! That was always your most deceptive move!” And then, a moment later, “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

Before Jason had to answer, Luke trotted up to him. Luke, another superhearer like Colin, another reminder of Before. Colin, Jason, Luke—the three kids who’d been inseparable, who’d had adventures together, who’d pinkie-sworn brotherhood forever. Luke, mentally challenged, had followed Colin to the Settlement, although Jason didn’t know how much Luke actually understood of Colin’s ridiculous Luddite philosophy.

“Colin?” Luke said, his face twisted with anxiety. “Colin?”

Lindy said, “He’ll be okay, Luke. But he has to go to the base. You all do. It’s not safe here.”

“I will go. But not Sarah. She won’t. Not some other people.”

“Christ,” Jason said. Holdouts.

Lindy half turned to look at him; he could see the curve of her cheek filmed with sweat, a strand of hair sticking to it. The sight brought back a hundred inappropriate memories of how she looked after sex. He knew, too, in the way that married, or once-married, people understood their partners’ thought processes, that she was waiting to hear how he would handle those who did not want to leave the dome. Let them stay here and die if more New America’s troops returned here, or manhandle them into the ship?