Some Fine Day (6 page)

“Let’s go, Jake,” I hiss.

But his temper is boiling now. Boys are such fools sometimes. He swings at her, and she neatly sidesteps the hook punch and punches him in the side. No, stabs him in the side. I see a blade slick with blood slide out from between his ribs, and Jake’s eyes go round with shock. I kick it out of her hand and then something that feels like an armored truck hits me from behind and my feet leave the ground as I’m seized in a bone-crushing bear hug.

I can’t believe it, but the big one is on his feet again.

“Get down!” someone screams, and I try to duck as a gun goes off, four shots in quick succession.

It’s the security chief. He manages to hit the woman in the shoulder, and I think the ox too, but now there’s dozens of figures running toward us down the beach, closing in from about thirty yards, and I can’t shake loose, I can hardly breathe. I try kicking Goliath in the crotch, but it’s like kicking a boulder.

The mole is moving, I can see it, the hatch still open, arms waving from inside, beckoning.
Hurry up!

Security chief points the gun directly at the giant’s forehead and pulls the trigger. The hammer clicks down on an empty chamber. It’s the worst sound in the world.

And then the giant lumbers off, still holding me in a death grip, and over his shoulder I see the mole slow and pick up Jake and his savior. The gap between us widens. For a split second, I see my father’s face. I hear him call my name.

The hatch closes.

The spirit of cooperation that permitted the Consortium to complete its work amid global chaos soon disintegrated under the weight of political pressures and looming famine. Communication between the far-flung colonies was severed.

I watch with a kind of sick numbness as the mole points its nose down and starts burrowing into the sand. The first wave of raiders hits before it’s completely submerged and starts pounding on the steel-plated sides with their clubs. It’s useless, but a mob instinct has taken over and they have to vent their rage on something.

I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen to me next, so I try to analyze the situation the way I’ve been taught, work the angles, see things from their point of view.

First off, it’s a disaster that some of us escaped.

Their lead time to take the loot and run has now shrunk dramatically. Six hours back to Raven Rock, say two more to scramble a fleet of moles or diggers packed to the gills with soldiers, another six hours for the return trip. It’s one thing to hit a bunch of tourists in the middle of the night, quite another to face hundreds of heavily armed, highly disciplined troops who specialize in counterinsurgency and scorched earth tactics.

I wonder if I can stay alive for fourteen hours.

The ox finally puts me down but keeps one hand the size of an oven mitt clamped firmly around my arm. I don’t bother trying to shake it off. My knees are wobbly, and I’d probably keel over if he wasn’t holding me upright.

The woman with the braid approaches us, barking out orders. Her face is tight from the bullet wound in her shoulder, which must hurt like hell, but she’s calm and in charge, which is reassuring. At least there’s a chain of command here.

In the light of the burning tents, I see figures hauling off the wounded and scavenging through the debris. The heaviest activity appears to be around the scientific equipment, but the food services pavilion is a close second. And the open bar. The air reeks of charred flesh and urine and the acrid stench of burning plastic. I try to keep my face impassive, but my eyes are watering and I feel like I might be sick.

The woman eyes me up and down. I’m barefoot and about a hundred pounds soaking wet. Still, she looks at me like I’m some kind of venomous insect. Not a major threat, but perhaps best crushed anyway. Then her gaze lingers on my coat, narrowing slightly. She cocks her head, as if considering something.

“Take her to the
Solar Wind
and put her below,” the woman says finally. She starts to walk away and the beach tilts at a dizzying angle. “Unless she bleeds out first.”

And that’s the last thing I hear before the darkness takes me.

In my dream, I’m back in uniform, not the navy blue of the Academy but the solid black jumpsuit they wear in special ops. We’re a team of four, and we’re all wearing balaclavas, but I know the big guy in front of me is Jake.

It feels like late afternoon by the quality of the light, although its source is indeterminate, as it always is underground. We’re in Greenbrier, one of the poorer districts. The streets are deserted. Jake holds up a hand, gestures to the windows of the housing complexes on either side.
We’re being watched
.

I unholster my sidearm but keep my finger loose on the trigger and the muzzle down. There’s so many windows, thousands of them. I don’t see anyone, but the hair on the back of my neck is tingling. Yes, we’re being watched.

Jake gives a signal and we crouch down, backs to the graffiti-covered wall. The agent next to me has bright blue eyes and a medium build, could be a man or a woman. I check the hands. They’re smallish and fine-boned. So, probably a woman. The other has brown eyes and gloves. Perfectly androgynous.

A bus rolls past the end of the street, empty except for the driver hunched over the steering console. It’s electric, like all vehicles, and very quiet.

What’s our mission? I can’t seem to remember.

It’s something important though.

I’m filled with a sense of urgency and I’m terrified we’ll fail. But fail at what?

Then I feel something warm running down my face and pull off my balaclava. My hand comes away red. Blood. I have blood in my eyes. I think if I can just wipe it away, I’ll be able to remember. So I use the mask like a cloth, but it keeps coming, soaking my jumpsuit and boots.

“There’s the target,” Jake says.

I see a little red-headed boy of about eleven step out from a doorway across the street. I recognize him. He was on the. . .

“Your hit, Nordqvist,” Jake says. “Take him out.”

I look down at my gun. It’s a 9mm semi-automatic with an extended magazine that holds thirty rounds. Some of us carry fancier laser stuff, but good old-fashioned bullets never went out of style. I know this kid. How do I know him?

“Target’s on the move,” Jake says, as the boy starts walking towards us. He’s looking straight at me, his face expressionless, naked except for a dirty white T-shirt.

“Mission window’s closing,” Jake says. “They’re coming for him, goddammit. That’s a direct order, Nordqvist!”

I flick the safety off, get the target in my sights. He’s close enough now that I can see the spray of freckles across his nose. He’s a skinny little thing. Barefoot.

I lower my gun.

The mole. He was on the mole.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “No kids. I don’t do kids.”

Jake turns to me, his eyes full of love and pity. And then he shoots me in the face.

I wake up breathing hard, a pain in the center of my back that feels like someone drilled a hole there. I’m face down on the floor, but the floor is
moving
, a slow lateral roll with the occasional forward pitch thrown in for good measure.

For a few seconds, I have no idea where I am. More than a few seconds, actually. I’m resting on rough wooden boards, and the walls are creaking. I hear a rhythmic rushing sound all around me. The faint cries of seagulls.

Seagulls.

It starts coming back, fragmented images of dead bodies, burning tents, the sharp wail of the motion sensors. My father’s face as the hatch slams shut. I push up to my hands and knees and the room cants hard to the left, sending me sliding across the floor into a line of barrels. The impact is agony.

It’s too dark to see well, though dim light is seeping in from a little round window. Something smells awful. The ceiling is disconcertingly low, just high enough to sit. When I look out the window, I realize I’m on a ship. That should have been obvious, I suppose, but I’ve never been on one before and the all-over pain makes it hard to think. A few dozen other boats, small and weather-beaten, keep pace to the side. We must be pretty far out to sea because the water has changed to a gunmetal grey color. No engine sounds, so I guess it’s a sailing ship, a fairly big one.

I know almost nothing about boats. Our naval capabilities withered to zero when we retreated below the surface. Same for aviation, although we have flight simulators at the Academy. The military is supposed to be experimenting with planes that can fly through the storms, but it’s all very top secret, just rumors around the Academy.

The ship shoulders through a mountainous swell and skims down the other side, and my stomach follows suit. Partly from seasickness, but also despair.

So much for fourteen hours to rescue.

Archipelago Six stretches for more than five hundred miles and contains almost twice that many islands. The perfect hideout for pirates, or whatever these people are. As long as they keep moving. Because by the time the satellites spot them and the moles arrive, they’ll be long gone. The thing I don’t understand is how they avoid the hypercanes. I’ve seen the storms on TV and they’re simply monstrous. The surface of the Earth is about as hospitable as Mars for any prolonged period of time.

I guess they’ve found a way or I wouldn’t be here right now. But drifting on this vast expanse of water, I still feel uncomfortably exposed. The more I think about what’s out there, the more I feel a weight pressing down on my chest. It gets worse and worse. I start dripping with sweat. So I look around the hold, try to focus on the details, to actually
see
what my eyes are looking at instead of the scary movie playing in my head.

Other than the barrels and a few crates, the space is empty. There’s no door, just a square hatch in the ceiling that must be bolted tight from the other side because it doesn’t budge when I give it an experimental push. I lie on my belly, mouth full of dust, and must fall asleep for a while since it’s dark when I open my eyes again. The motion of the ship has altered, more forward pitching, less side-to-side. Maybe we changed course.

I’m hot and my skin feels tight, like my head and hands are a few sizes too big. It occurs to me that the awful smell might be my wounds.

I drift in and out, and think I hear voices above me, a loud argument. One wants to help, and the other, a woman, keeps saying there’s not enough to go around. She repeats a word that sounds like
pika
. I try to call out but my throat is too dry to make a sound. The blackness is so total it’s like being buried alive. Only the creaking of the walls reassures me that I’m in a ship’s hold instead of a grave. Then there’s a flickering light, something stings my arm, and I slip into nightmares of tiny spiders, fangs glistening with poison, creeping out of the cracks in an endless, horrible flood.

A long time later, hours or maybe days, I’m not sure, dawn comes and I cry a little just to see the walls again. It’s been ages since I did such a thing. I’d almost convinced myself I’d forgotten how, which is ridiculous. Anyone can be broken.
Anyone
. I’m not there yet, though the darkness got to me worse than it should have, considering I’ve spent long periods hooded and bound in stress positions during RTI, resistance to interrogation training. I think about this for a while and realize the crucial difference is that no matter how bad it got, I knew there was a limit. I knew what was coming. With these people, I don’t know the limit. I don’t know anything about them. Maybe there
is
no limit.

Raindrops lash the porthole, a word some pedantic part of my brain recalls from a book, maybe one of the Wilbur Smith epics.
Porthole
. I place my hand against it, fingers splayed wide. It’s small enough that they touch the rusty metal rim, but it would be so much worse without it, I think. So much worse.

There are stitches over my left eyebrow, which I discover by accident when I cough and it feels like someone hit me in the head with a rock. There’s also a bottle of water in the corner that I’m certain wasn’t there before. I drink the whole thing and don’t care that it has an unpleasant, salty aftertaste. The fever seems to have broken, and my back is better too, still sore but not in the inflamed, deadly manner of infections.

I think about Jake. If he was lucky, someone on board the mole had surgical skills. Abdominal wounds can get very bad, very fast. But this makes me remember the dream, and I don’t want to remember it right now, so I lie in front of the porthole and watch the heaving horizon. For a long time it stays the same, featureless and boring, although fixing my eyes on a single point seems to help with the sickness. Then islands start appearing, some no more than a single bunch of trees, others much larger and dark green. From a distance, they look like mossy boulders.

After a while, the pain in my back turns to a maddening itch. I peel off the filthy, blood-stained coat I took from the medical pavilion and gingerly reach around behind me. There’s more stitches back there. Someone sewed me up. There’s also a clean spot on my right arm that bears a faint puncture mark, like from a needle. Antibiotics, hopefully. I must have slept through the whole procedure.