John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Hope lifted its head—and then ducked back into its hole.

The Second Alliance chopper was headed straight for Badoit’s VTOL, on its way to shoot their only hope of escape out of the sky.

Bibisch wailed in frustration, picked up the Stinger, and ran to the door.

Torrence, at the window, shouting at her, not even sure what was coming out of his mouth. Some way of saying: Don’t!

Then she was outside, kneeling among the flowers, aiming the preloaded Stinger into the night sky.

Torrence gaped at her watching through a shattered window, seemed to see her in some kind of compositional frame then: French Woman With Missile Launcher Amid Flame, Flowers, and Moonlight.

Torrence wanted to run to Bibisch, but he was afraid to take his eyes from her, insanely sure that if he looked away for a moment she’d be dead. So he stood there, firing furiously past her at the confused SA soldiers, trying to give her cover.

She braced to fire the Stinger…

And she fell, as SA rounds found her. They shot her through the side, the hip, and a forearm.

Torrence yelped like a kicked dog. Should he run to her? What could he do for her, now?

And then she was up, gushing blood but getting to her knees. She raised the weapon, fired the Stinger. The rocket, before launching, flared a pool of mystic light around her. It arced into the sky…

As she spun around, struck by another burst of enemy gunfire, smashed flat onto her back. Blood splashed, mixing with a sweet confetti of yellow flower petals.

Torrence found himself running toward the door, shouting wordlessly—shrilly and uncontrollably, because he couldn’t do anything else.

Then the Stinger struck home. The heat-seeking missile ignited the Second Alliance chopper, made it a ball of blue and yellow fire in the night sky, rivaling the moon.

Ran out the door, jumped down off the train. Metallic smack sounds as bullets hit the train near his head. Shouting, sirening his way to her, he kicked the Stinger launchtube aside. Bullets searing past him so close he could smell the friction of their passage in the air.

Glimpsed, in moonlight and fire, the slick blue and red of her insides showing through a hole in her belly.

Flashing red lights.

As he picked her up in his arms, ran back to the train. It seemed to take forever. The other resistance fighters giving him cover. He made it to the chrome steps. Going to make it inside.

Something smacked him hard in the back of his head. He was falling…

Failing forward, toward the chrome steps of the train. Never hitting the steps: Falling right through them.

“I don’t know,” someone said in French. “Maybe trauma, cerebral hemorrhage, maybe only a bad graze. I have no equipment. Don’t know.” Levassier’s voice.

Daniel Torrence was surprised he could understand this Frenchman. He’d picked up a lot of French after all. He congratulated himself, feeling childishly proud. His mom would be pleased. Wait till he told Kitty, his sister Kitty, that he could understand French.

She’d be impressed.

He wasn’t sure if his eyes were open or not. After a moment, he decided they were. He was beginning to make out the ceiling of a train. What train was it?

I open my eyes in the morning, and for a minute or two I’m just here… and then I remember… you know… that I’m dying…

The train. Bibisch. “Is she okay?” His tongue felt thick.

He could see Levassier now, with Steinfeld, bending over him. Steinfeld, from this angle, looked like he was mostly beard.

Torrence slowly began to get feeling in his arms and legs. He became aware that the world was vibrating, shaking—each movement rippling pain through his skull.

The train was moving.

“Bibisch…”

“She’s badly hurt,” Steinfeld said. “But still alive.”

“Do not move,” Levassier said in English, tightening the bandage around Torrence’s head.

“The train…”

“Bones contacted their computer, found a way to get the train’s power back on,” Steinfeld said. “Not for long, probably. But we’ve moved away from them. We disabled their trucks. They’re closing in on us, of course, but we’re going to—”

The train ground to a halt. Torrence heard Bones’s voice. “That wasn’t me. They overrode me.”

Steinfeld moved out of Torrence’s line of vision. “It’s okay—there’s the transport from Badoit.”

“How many did we lose?” Torrence asked. Shit-motherfucker, but it hurt to talk.

Steinfeld said, “Too many. I should have sent only two or three with Hand, slip them out of the city that way. But I was afraid they’d get caught, and I thought if we escorted them, we could fight our way through… his information, his reporting to the world—it could be the difference between winning or losing. It may be our only hope. But it was a stupid decision. A decision out of fatigue. I should have sent you with them, alone, underground perhaps. But I thought the train… Stupid…”

“How… many…?”

“Hand is alive, and Barrabas and the American—”

“How many?”

“We lost all but seven, with four surviving wounded. Eleven left. The others are all dead.”

“They shot me in the… head?”

“Your head was turned when you were hit,” Levassier said. “I think it is just a graze. But you have concussion. Maybe.”

Torrence heard the thunder and shriek of Vertical Take-off and Landing engines—a big one. The transport. It might be able to get them out of the country. Or it might be shot down.

No. Hand had to get through. Tell the world.

Get up. Protect Hand. Bibisch.

Torrence turned slowly on his side, groaning, levering to get up. Levassier tried to restrain him. “Wait for the stretcher, imbecile!”

Torrence shook loose from Levassier. Nausea gushed up in him. He turned over and vomited.

And then fell forward in it.

“How are things going in Admin?” Stoner asked distractedly as they waited for Russ to get there.

Stoner wasn’t really interested, Claire thought. There was something else…

“Lester’s faction is a serious pain in the butt,” Claire said. “They want to declare the Colony its own sovereign socialist state. Confiscate all UNIC funds for people living at the Colony. They talk about striking—but they’re a minority of the technickis. I doubt a strike’ll happen.”

“Lester’s charismatic,” Stoner said. Still sounding as if he were thinking about something else entirely. “That can make a minority into a majority. Maybe you should…” He broke off, embarrassed. “Sorry. CIA reflexes. Old habits die hard. Never mind.”

What had he been about to suggest? she wondered. Assassination?

“Lester’s not angry enough to pull it off,” she said, chuckling. “We’re not mistreating the technickis enough.”

Stoner nodded, not giving a hot damn himself. Claire glanced at the broad, high-resolution screen on the left-hand wall, just now coded to window —it was a shot of space from the astronomical camera at the “north” end of the colony. It showed a fiercely bright field of stars, one of them a little bigger and more colorful. Venus. There was a fringe of glow on one side of the colony, from the sun just out of shot, and on the other a sort of violet and scarlet aurora, like a smeared crab nebula, that was the result of solar wind reacting with the anti-ionization shield of ice-fog they manufactured from the ice asteroid. It was a nonbreathable but protective atmosphere, of sorts, for the outer skin of the Colony on the sunward side. “Pretty view today. Looks almost like a real window, this new screen. Good resolution.”