Steven Kent - The Clone Empire

And then the event began.

A quarter of a mile deep in the tunnel, I did not hear or feel a thing; but when I looked back up the tunnel, I caught a brief glimpse of the glowing red sky, the color of lava or maybe molten metal. Anyone near the front of the tunnel was already ash; but this far in, with the lake distributing the heat, we were safe. There was plenty of cool air in the tunnel; and as long as we stayed behind the metal door, we’d be safe from the backlash when the superheated atmosphere came down. Freeman and I dashed the last few yards and ducked behind the door. By that time, though, the shooting had stopped.

The last thing I saw as the engineers rammed the doors in place was a passel of militiamen lined up like stones in a cemetery. They stood facing toward the mouth of the tunnel, their backs bathed in shadow. Beyond them, I could see just a sliver of open sky in which the colors were all wrong, and the air itself seemed to have caught on fire.

They must have all seen what I saw before they sealed the doors. Ava, her courage spent and her strength gone, sat on the ground crying like a child. When her boyfriend tried to comfort her, she pushed him away. Mars’s army of engineers stood silent. I lost track of Freeman.

It was crowded in the tunnel, Mars had a thousand men in his Corps of Engineers; but I think every soul in that tunnel went through the next dark hours feeling alone. Mars came to me and said something about Noah closing the doors of his ark. I heard the words, but I wasn’t listening. I did not respond.

It would be like this all across the galaxy—running, warning, hiding, waiting. The Enlisted Man’s Empire still had twenty-two planets. The thought of trying to rescue so many planets left me exhausted. The thought of failing left me hollow.

I needed to sleep.

I had come to rescue people, and now I wanted to escape from the few people I had actually managed to save. No one paid attention to me as I pushed through the ranks of engineers, slowly walking deeper into the tunnel. I removed my helmet. The air was still and cool. It was musty and smelled of iron. I tasted ash in the air, but that might have been my imagination. I could not tell.

Deep in the tunnel I spotted the shuttle, parked under a flickering light that only illuminated its nose. Nobles sat inside the cockpit doing what he always did when he was nervous, checking instruments, running tests, distracting himself. I watched him, not really paying attention as I stared in his direction.

I had no idea how much time passed.

Ava found me. She planted herself in front of me and stared into my eyes until I looked back at her, then she pressed herself against me. I think she wanted me to hold her, but I felt nothing for her at that moment. I had come all this way because I loved her. There was a time when every man, woman, and child on the planet could have died, and I would have considered my mission a success because I had rescued Ava. Now she stood before me, wanting me to make her feel safe, and I would not even wrap my armor-plated arms around her.

“They’re all dead?” she asked.

I said nothing.

“Could you have stopped this?”

“No,” I said.

“Hold me,” she said, and she pressed the side of her face against the cold and hardened plate that covered my heart. She locked her arms around me the way a frightened little girl might lock her arms around her father. I let her hold me, but I did not put my arms around her. After a moment, I stepped away.

“Don’t leave me, Wayson,” she said; but she was too late, I already had.

Later, I had no idea how much later, we heard the thud of the atmosphere crashing back into place. Some men moaned, and other men shouted, but the impact was not especially loud.

Freeman found me, and said in a soft voice, “We’re going to open the shield.” He stood behind me. I could not see him, but I could feel his presence.

As I followed him toward the shield, I saw Ava begin to sob. I watched her fall to her knees, and I felt no desire to comfort her.

I placed my helmet over my head as I followed Freeman toward the front of the tunnel. Holding our guns ready, we waited as the engineers pulled back the doors, revealing a scene I’d seen too many times before—the aftermath.

The tunnel was intact, but its contents were in tatters. Men lay like puzzle pieces across the concrete. The heat had not penetrated that far into the tunnel, but the pressure from the atmosphere had. There was blood on the ground and on the walls. Two overturned jeeps sat in a pile. I took my first tentative steps from behind the steel doors and stopped.

Not all of the men were dead. A half dozen militiamen sat huddled along one wall of the tunnel. They had blood on their faces and bloodstained clothes and blood in their hair, and they looked stunned as they sat and moaned. I stepped over a body and saw blood running out the man’s ear.

“Maybe the medics on the Churchill can save them,” Freeman said.

The Churchill was a fighter carrier, it would certainly have beds and medicine. “Do you mean save them or fix them?” I asked.

Freeman said nothing.

Walking just outside the door, I found two more pockets of survivors. Three men sat beside each other, they were silent and still. As I approached them, one looked up into my visor, and asked, “Is it over?” He yelled the words. The heat hadn’t reached these men; when the atmosphere dropped back in place, the pressure it created obliterated their eardrums.

But it wasn’t physical pain that left them numb. They had lost everything and everyone that meant anything to them.

“Harris, come here,” Mars called over the interLink.

He stood in a little clearing. I went to join him.

Not far from Mars, a single body rested against a wall. The Right Reverend Colonel Ellery Doctorow, president of Terraneau, sat with his finger still around the trigger of the gun he had used to kill himself. His head had shattered like a melon tossed from a tall building, but I recognized his tailored suit just the same. The jolt of recognition did not include sympathy; I felt nothing but disgust for this man whose high ideals and sense of self-importance had cremated an entire population. How many millions had he killed with his visions of moral superiority simply because he did not trust any authority other than his own?

I came up beside Mars, who was dressed in his engineering armor. He stared down at Doctorow. I had no idea what he felt; but I thought his feelings toward Doctorow might not be any kinder than my own.

“General, should we take your shuttle out?” he asked after several seconds passed. They really were magicians, Lieutenant Mars and his engineers. They saved ships, built bridges, dug tunnels, and resurrected the left-for-dead.

“Give it a few more minutes,” I said, remembering the tests Freeman had run on Olympus Kri. “Let’s let the dust settle.”

Outside the tunnel, the sky would be filled with soot and steam and smoke. The final dregs of Tachyon D would still be dangerous as they traveled their circuits like angels of death.

Mars did not leave. He stood there, beside me, staring down at Doctorow’s lifeless remains. He did not speak for several seconds. I could not see his face through his helmet, but I could imagine his expression. He was new to this kind of war. The first time you see the bodies and the blood and the waste, the muscles in your face go numb and your mind goes numb and you feel as if you are no more alive than the men lying on the ground.

“What about the other planets?” Mars asked. “Is it going to be like this? Can we save them?”

I took a deep breath, held it in my lungs until I felt them searing; and even then, I still did not exhale. I thought about the Unified Authority, its leaders waiting for another chance to betray us, and the Avatari traveling from planet to planet, burning entire worlds.