Matthew Costello - Rage

Raine could now see a bit of the inside.

Dark. He stopped, listened. No talking. All quiet on the good ship Gerald R. Ford.

He edged out on the rock some more, as far as he could without falling off. He crouched.

Eyes locked on the opening.

The smooth metal. No visible handholds within this garbage chute of an opening.

No time like the present, he thought.

He leapt.

His midsection slammed into the floor of the opening, his feet dangling, pointing straight down to the gorge floor below. His palms were flat, hands pressed hard against the smooth metal.

While being careful not to lose any of his precarious purchase, he slid first one hand, then the other, to the side, searching for something to grab. At first he felt nothing, and still dangling, getting into the carrier had turned even harder than it first seemed.

But then he felt an edge. He closed his left hand on it, and now in one great effort worked to pull and kick himself in. Wriggling, he slid into the aircraft carrier.

No alarms, no guards.

Sloppy damn security, he thought.

He started making his way forward to the generator then, and the cable feeds that led into the fortress beyond the carrier.

Raine knew he didn’t have time to move slowly; he had to get through the maze of hallways as fast as he could.

He opened his pack. The muzzle of his M16 stuck out.

Time to take it in his hands.

If he met anyone, he would just have to deal with it fast.

As if on cue, when he turned the corner he walked into a pair of Enforcers, their helmets off, talking.

They didn’t look all that intimidating with their robotic head gear off. But their weapons-they looked powerful.

They both did a double take seeing him.

Guess they don’t get too many visitors down here.

Noise or not, he had no choice. He started firing, and the two Enforcers fell to the ground.

Now he began a steady jog, taking care not to go so fast as to slip into oxygen debt.

As Raine ran, he heard alarms go off. Had cameras picked him up? Were the bodies found? Whatever it was, they knew he was here.

Not something he didn’t expect.

Ahead, four Enforcers started marching in his direction. Two stopped, took aim, and started laying down covering fire while the other two raced ahead.

Damn.

It was always a shitty procedure to field-test a weapon during an operation. In this case, he had no choice.

He reached up for one of the darts and, using the same stance he took with his wingstick, threw it.

It hit one of the front runners, who stopped as if someone applied the brakes. He reached up to his neck. His partner kept coming. Raine crouched down to the side, making himself as small a target as possible, blindly firing his machine gun. While still sending out a spray of bullets, he fingered the mind dart control device, and as soon as his fingers touched it, it must have sent a signal to the nanotrites now flooding the Enforcer’s body.

He could hear more Enforcers arriving, creating a wall of shooters, filling the corridor with smoke and sending bullets flying all around him like a swarm of wasps.

Raine slid his thumb on the controller, and the dart forced the Enforcer to turn around. Another slide, and the puppet moved toward his Authority buddies.

They recognized that something was wrong, and a few began targeting him.

Amazingly-the bullets did nothing.

Or, rather, they didn’t stop him. The guy walked on, and then-in an increased state of agitation-both his hands went to his neck, then to his head, like a human marionette.

He would keep moving on his own; Raine didn’t have to do anything more with him, so he dropped the control device. He took time to aim his rifle at the lone Enforcer still running madly toward him.

Points for bravery… none for strategy.

He riddled the guy with bullets, not knowing where the armor was greatest.

As that guy fell, the Enforcer with the mind dart reached the wall of shooters.

With perfect timing, he exploded, a human bomb of blood and bone-the bone shredded into deadly shrapnel, the nanotrites themselves apparently explosive.

When the pinkish fog cleared, nobody was shooting, nobody was moving. And the way to the cable room, to where the ship’s power fed into the Capital, lay ahead.

“Thanks, Kvasir…”

Raine stood up and resumed his jog.

In the generator room he spotted the massive two-foot-wide cables that carried power from the belly of the ship, out through what had to be a hangar deck opening, and on into the fortress city.

He remembered what Portman had told him about the explosives he carried, the homemade grenades.

“Pull the pin, and toss it. Fifteen seconds. Tops.”

Not much confidence about the devices’ timing from Portman. He would just have to hope the big man knew what he was talking about.

Raine went to where the cables led out-then separated-heading in different directions. He scrambled on top of the giant cables, using them as if they were a bridge leading out to the city’s perimeter.

Would two of the grenades be enough?

He’d probably get only one shot at this.

He looked up. A small device hovered above the area, a red light at the front.

Surveillance.

They know I’m here, and they will know I’m coming.

Let’s hope they think this is just about sabotage.

Raine walked across the cable bridge, joining up with the other end of the road that led across the flight deck of the carrier.

He got two grenades out.

He brought his hands close together so he could pull out both pins at the same time, a tricky, fumbling move.

Not one I’ve done before, he thought.

He pulled the pins, and, without counting, tossed them into the cable room.

One landed in the crack between the two cables, the other rolled to the floor, feet away.

Close enough?

Raine turned and started running. Barely watching where he was going…

The two explosions, within seconds of each other, showed that at least the grenades worked.

He had barely gotten off the ship.

And still running, he risked looking ahead.

The Capital.

A massive structure, like nothing he had seen in the world before. Newly built.

And he also saw that parts of it had turned dark.

Did I do enough damage? Did I buy enough fucking time?

He caught himself. A… to B… to C.

He was on to the next part of the mission.

That one lay ahead.

Inside the Capital.

And that’s all he let himself think about.

Raine looked at the fence in front of him, and at the gun turrets that dotted each section of it. As he approached, they didn’t move at all, all pointing aimlessly at some spot back by the carrier.

Power down. Good.

But for how long?

Inside, he saw the main buildings of the Capital, and they were not the haphazard collection of shapes and leftover pieces of Wasteland junk. These were stories high, forming a sleek metal fortress.

Now dark.

No backup power kicking in?

If only he could stay that lucky.

He pictured the layout that Elizabeth had showed him, and which building he had to get to.

Already he saw figures running all around the inner area. Enforcers kicking into action while the power got restored.

Raine had debated blowing a hole in the fence-but with the Enforcers already on the move, that would bring them right to him. So he took hold of the steel mesh and started climbing right near one of the inactive gun turrets. It dawned on him that the fence was probably electrified as well.

Without power, though, the way into the Capital lay open.

At the top, he swung over, climbed down the other side for a few feet and jumped to the ground.