The Fall: Crimson Worlds IX (30 page)

He took as deep a breath as he could and gripped the pistol hard in his hand.  It’s time, he thought.  It’s finally time.  He jumped up and ran through the door, firing at the descending guard as he did.

He saw the man lose his footing and fall to the deck, trailing blood behind him.  Cain finished him with two shots to the head and threw himself against the wall next to the ladder, staring up cautiously.

He thought of Sarah, and he wondered if the image of her in his mind would be his last.  He felt the ache, the terrible pain of realizing he would never see her again, never feel her soft hair in his hands.  He only allowed himself an instant of remembrance, but no more before he pushed her back into his memories and focused on the matter at hand.  After all these years of combat, of brutal fights all across occupied space…all the thousands dead, friends lost…he could feel it in his gut.  He was about to enter his final battle.

Warren’s command car raced down the blasted streets east of Paris, swerving around the gaping shellholes and piles of shattered rubble.  He still couldn’t believe the last message, and its meaning had only partially sunken in.

It had been a special top level communique, and the coded message it carried was one he’d never expected to hear.  Black Zero.  The CEL’s code for an imminent full scale strategic nuclear attack.  Armageddon.

He’d frozen in place when he first got the message.  Then he’d resolved to stay where he was and die in his headquarters, surrounded by his men.  All that had taken perhaps 30 seconds.  Then his officers had grabbed him and forced him into the truck.  He was the hero of the CEL, revered by the men he had led to victory, and they intended to save him anyway they could.

The truck screeched to a halt, and a cluster of soldiers pulled open the doors.  “Please, sir, there isn’t much time.”

Werner stepped down from the truck, half under his own power and half dragged by his men.  They pushed him forward to a waiting chopper.  It was one of the few aircraft left on the western front - in the whole CEL, in fact – and they’d commandeered it to get their commander to safety.  Or whatever would pass for safety in the post-apocalyptic world that was coming for them all.

Werner turned and stared back at his men, still arguing he intended to stay with them, but they pushed him onboard and slammed the doors shut.  He looked out, and his eyes caught Potsdorf, standing in the middle of the cluster of officers, staring up toward the chopper.  He caught Werner’s stare, and he stood firm and saluted the general one last time, just as the aircraft lifted off.

“No, go back.”  He stared up toward the cockpit, but the pilot didn’t move.

“I’m sorry, General, but we have to get you to safety.  There is no time.”

“I don’t want to be separated from my men.”  Werner’s voice was hoarse, ragged.  He stared down through the window to the cluster of soldiers gathered together, watching the chopper hurry away.  They were all doomed, and they knew it.  Paris would be targeted by multiple city-killers, warheads with yields of 20-100 megatons.  Werner’s officers were less than 8 kilometers from the city’s center, still in the 95% kill zone.

“I’m ordering you to land this craft, Major.”

The pilot just ignored the CEL general for a few seconds.  Then he said, “I’m sorry, sir.  Protocol requires you be evacuated to the safest location possible.  Incoming telemetry reports we have less than eight minutes until initial impacts.”

Werner turned and looked back toward the ground.  He couldn’t see his people anymore, but he knew they were there, standing where he’d left them.  Where they would die.

Huang Wei sat in the Committee room, listening to the reports coming in one after another.  He was terrified, shaking with fear as he sat before the assembled leadership of the CAC.  He’d been hit hard by the news that Li An had been conspiring with the new Alliance president.  He’d sparred with C1’s wily master before, but he’d never imagined she would actually commit treason and make common cause with the enemy.  Her actions had driven the CAC to the brink of launching a full scale strategic assault, even as the scanners picked up the massive Alliance launch that had beaten them to it.

There were almost 12,000 Alliance warheads now making their way all across the globe.  All five of the Powers in the CAC bloc had been targeted, and there was no question of the intent of strikes so large.  Annihilation.

Wei had ordered the CAC’s counterstrike, every bit as comprehensive and destructive as the Alliance’s.  Both sides would do everything possible to intercept the incoming warheads, but Wei knew that was pointless.  The attacks were too massive, designed to penetrate the best defenses the Superpowers possessed.  Enough warheads would get through.  Every city on Earth would be destroyed, wiped off the face of the map as if by some biblical disaster.  Factories, industry, military bases, power plants, infrastructure…in 20 minutes, virtually all of it would be gone.  Destroyed, blasted to dust, and the twisted wreckage left behind would be poisoned with radiation for decades.

He couldn’t believe it had come to this.  A century of peace shattered, and in just over a year, mankind was falling into the abyss.  It was worse than the world wars of the 20th century, deadlier than the Unification conflicts that wracked the globe for 80 years.  Mankind was finally destroying himself.  And this time there would be nothing left.  Nothing but a few pathetic survivors, starving and sick with radiation, wandering through the wilderness.

Wei let out a deep breath.  Thank heaven his predecessors on the Committee had built the undersea sanctuary for the CAC’s elites.  The Alliance bunker in Virginia would be destroyed, he knew, obliterated by the burrowing 50 megaton “diggers” that were even now heading its way.  But the CAC facility was deep under the rocky bed of the South China Sea, safe from enemy ICBMs.

“Chairman Wei, we are receiving reports of enemy naval craft.  They have broken through our cordon and are approaching the base.”

Wei felt a cold chill run down his spine.  He’d been scared to face the future, to deal with the almost total-destruction of the CAC.  But he’d believed he and his fellow elites would survive.  Now, he knew he was looking at his own death as well.

“All naval units are to intercept immediately.”  He’d lost all semblance of strength and dignity, and he was like a child begging for help.

“All vessels have been destroyed by Admiral Young’s forces, Chairman.”  There was a short pause.  “We are tracing multiple undersea warhead launches from the Alliance fleet.”

Wei fell back into his seat, tears streaming down his face.  It was over, and he knew it.  In five minutes he would be dead.

The Virginia countryside was quiet, and the sun was bright in the late morning sky.  Much of the Alliance outside of the cities was toxic and polluted, but the hills around the government’s wartime base had been carefully cleaned up and preserved.

The grass was waist high, blowing gently in the wind.  A man walking across the idyllic setting would never know he was standing above the largest underground facility in the world, a massive fortified base built to house the Alliance’s government and its highest-placed politicians in time of war.

That base was now in an uproar, though the hysteria and panic were not apparent to an outside observer.  The new president of the Alliance was dead, murdered…and the entire nuclear arsenal of the Superpower had been launched, an action that had triggered massive counterattack from all the other Powers.

Anti-missile batteries were firing from carefully-situated locations, filling the sky above the bunker with small, fast rockets, designed to intercept incoming warheads.  There were similar systems around all the Alliance’s cities, though none of them matched the massive array protecting the Virginia refuge.

The countermeasures shot down dozens of warheads, but the Alliance’s enemies knew what it would take to penetrate the defensive systems, and missiles streaked toward the Virginia fields from a dozen trajectories, splitting into multiple warheads, each designed to burrow deeply into the ground before detonating.  Only a tithe of them had to get through to do the job, but over half of them made it, redefining the term overkill as they did.

The first wave of warheads slammed to the Earth, exploding with unimaginable nuclear fury, sending huge clouds into the morning sky, black and heavy with the now radioactive dirt and shattered rock the bombs clawed out of the ground.  The fallout clouds from the burrowers would be particularly radioactive, and they would spread death on the winds for hundreds of kilometers.

Wave after wave followed, each successive flight of missiles digging deeper into the savaged ground, tearing out the remnants of the Alliance’s base, hollowing out the last refuge of the government that had ruled with brutality for over a century.  The politicians and generals below were incinerated and crushed by cave-ins.  They were blasted by lethal doses of radiation and burned beyond recognition.

When it was over the once beautiful stretch of rolling hills had become a ravaged and toxic wasteland, and in the crushed and melted remains of the Alliance government’s last refuge, not a soul remained alive.

“Let’s go.  Get down behind that bank.”  The dropoff was about 5 meters, and Axe’s people were climbing as quickly as they could, digging hands and feet into the cracks and holes in the concrete wall.  The depression had been a roadway at one time, but now it was almost entirely grown over, with just a few chunks of old asphalt to give a clue what it had once been.

“Come on, Ellie.”  Axe reached his hand out to the girl.  “I know you’re scared, but we need to get down there now.”  Axe had seen the smoke trails in the sky, and he knew what they were immediately.  He was hopeful his people were far enough away from the city to survive, but he knew they still needed cover.

The girl hesitated, afraid to climb down the steep embankment.  She shied away from his hand.

“Ellie, please.”  He was hanging on the edge of the dropoff, his foot wedged into a large crack in the concrete.  “You have to trust me.”

She paused for a few seconds, staring back at Axe.  She looked like she might run for an instant, but finally she reached out and took his hand.

He pulled her off the edge and grabbed her firmly in his arms.  She shrieked and squirmed, trying to escape, but he held her tightly and scrambled to the ground.

“Everybody, get down and cover your heads.  And keep your eyes closed.  Whatever you do, don’t open your eyes until I tell you to.”

He dove to the ground, holding Ellie tightly under him, just as the first warhead struck New York, and the blinding light flashed over them.

Axe stayed firm, his arms wrapped around the terrified girl, listening as the first blasts echoed over their position.  He had no idea what was going to happen next, but he knew one thing for sure.  The world would never be the same.

Cain crouched on the ladder and thrust himself up hard, ignoring the pain in his wounded leg as he popped above the floor, staring down the corridor.  His pistol was firing before his conscious mind even identified the targets, and two guards fell to the ground immediately.  They had been heading toward the lift, and Cain had taken them both by surprise.

“That’s six,” Cain muttered to himself, scrambling across the deck, checking to make sure both men were dead.  He grabbed their pistols, shoving one in the waistband of his pants, and he turned back toward the ladder, holding a gun in each hand.  His shoulder hurt like fire, but he ignored it and gripped the gun tightly.  He needed the firepower, and if that meant his shoulder was going to hurt more, so be it.

He was walking back toward the ladder when the alarm went off.  That’s it, he thought.  Anybody who hadn’t known he was there did now.  He slid to the side of the ladder and peered up, ducking back immediately as a blast of gunfire erupted from above.

Fuck, he thought, leaning his arm out and returning the fire.  He had to get to the upper deck.  Stark was up there, and nothing was going to keep him from wasting that mad son of a bitch.

Six men, he thought…how many does that leave?  He looked around the ship, trying to get a feel for the size of the crew.  Ten more, he wondered…fifteen max?  None of it really mattered.  Not as long as they had him pinned down.

He looked around the corridor, searching for another way up.  His eyes stopped on a ventilation grate, halfway down the corridor and about two meters off the ground.

He leaned out and fired half a dozen rounds up the ladder before ducking back.  Maybe, he thought.  Just maybe.

He made his decision in that instant.  It was the only chance he had.  He fired another burst of shots then he raced across the hall, shooting at the grate covering the ventilation shaft.  It took five shots, but the thing fell off and crashed to the ground at his feet.

He didn’t know if his body had enough left to do what he was planning, and he was sure either way it would hurt like hell.  But there was no choice.  He slipped the two pistols in his belt and took a deep breath, launching himself upwards and grabbing onto the bottom of the vent.

His shoulder erupted in pain, wave after wave of agony.  Cain could feel every fiber of his being screaming for him to let go, but the grizzled Marine was still in charge.  He gritted his teeth and exerted all the strength he had left, slowly pulling himself up to the meter-wide opening.  He was almost in when he heard boots coming down the ladder.

“Fuck,” he gasped, realizing he wasn’t going to get up in time.  He let go with one hand, reaching for one of the pistols.  His other arm couldn’t hold his body halfway up, and he fell back, barely hanging on.

He fired half a dozen shots, and the dark figure fell from the ladder and crashed into the deck with a sickening thud.  “Seven,” he whispered to himself.

He shoved the pistol back, but it slipped from his sweating hand and fell to the deck.  He growled at himself, but there was no time to worry about it.  He still had two guns.

He extended his arm again, pulling as hard as he could, shrieking at the pain when he could no longer stay silent.  Blood was pouring out of his wounds now, and his uniform was covered with huge dark patches.  But somewhere he found the strength he needed, and he pulled himself inside the large duct, just as he heard more steps coming down the ladder.

He wanted to lay back, to rest…even for a few seconds.  But he knew he didn’t have those seconds.  He had to keep going.  He had to see this through to the end.  He pulled himself forward, slowly, agonizingly.  He had to get to the upper deck.  He had an appointment with Gavin Stark.

“Let’s go.”  Teller’s voice was loud, commanding.  He’d led thousands of men into battle, but now he had just one thing to do…get his men the hell off the base before Stark’s self-destruct sequence blew it – and them – to bits.

He turned and glanced at the prisoners.  “Let’s go.  All of you.”  He had no doubt how Cain would have handled the situation, and he’d thought about doing the same thing.  These men were not innocents; they were Stark’s henchmen, and he didn’t doubt each of them deserved death.  But Teller didn’t have the dark side Cain had always possessed.  He couldn’t sentence these men to die with a stare the way his friend could.  Perhaps they would be executed for their crimes, but Teller wasn’t going to shoot them in cold blood – or leave them to be vaporized.

The men stared back, and the fear in their eyes was plain.  They didn’t expect mercy from their enemies any more than they’d ever given it themselves.

“Now!” Teller roared.  “Or I will leave you here to be blasted to atoms.”  Teller’s mercy had a limit, and he was very close to it now.

The men leapt up and followed, moving out into the corridor, stumbling after the line of Marines heading to the airlock.

“Let’s go.  Move.”  Teller was urging the Marines forward.  They had less than ten minutes, and he had to get everyone off the asteroid and blasted off before the reactor blew.

He’d already sent two groups out through the main airlock and back to the fleet.  Admiral Mondragon had landed half a dozen retrieval boats, and there were two still on the surface, either of them big enough to handle Teller and the last of the Marines.

“You have 30 seconds to get into survival suits.”  Teller stared at the prisoners, waving toward the racks along the wall.  “Because in 31, we’re depressurizing the airlock and moving out, and I’ll be damned if I’m delaying that timetable for any of you.”  Mercy had its limits, and they weren’t very far.

The terrified captives raced to the wall, climbing into the emergency gear as quickly as they could manage.  Thirty seconds wasn’t enough time, but fear motivated them, and they managed it somehow.

“Depressurize.”  Teller watched as the gauge on the wall showed the drop to vacuum conditions.  Then he nodded.  “Open the door.  All personnel, onto the ships.”

He waved for all the Marines to go, the last two leading the dazed prisoners in front of them.  Teller took one final look behind him and scurried across the dusty gray surface and into the waiting ship.

“Take off,” he yelled into the com, and he sat down on one of the benches and strapped himself in.  “Let’s get the hell out of here before this thing blows.”

Cain winced again as he squeezed his shattered shoulder up through the small duct.  The passageway had narrowed considerably, and Cain’s large frame barely fit through the opening.

He’d lost one of his guns, but he still had the other two.  He could see a shaft of fuzzy light ahead, and he knew it was another ventilation opening.  If he’d kept his bearings, it had to be the bridge, or a compartment near there.  He scrambled forward, pushing himself as quickly as he could.  It wouldn’t be much of a mystery to his enemies where he went, but if he could climb there quickly enough, he might get lucky and get out before they managed to pin him down again.

His stretched his hand as far as he could, his fingers gripping a small ridge around the inside of the vent.  He pulled his face up and looked out into a small room.  He let out a deep breath.  There was no one there.

He knew he didn’t have much time, seconds probably.  He pushed against the grate, trying to knock it off, but he knew his strength was starting to fail him, and it didn’t budge.  He threw himself hard against it, with all the minimal momentum he could generate from his constrained position.

He kept it up, slamming into the grate, and each time his body shook with pain.  Finally, it gave way, crashing loudly into the floor.  Cain knew someone would have heard the sound, so he shoved himself out of the vent as quickly as he could, falling over and landing hard on the floor.

He felt the bone in his foot snap, a strange numbness for an instant, followed by more pain.  His eyes were tearing and his mind was howling in his head, begging to surrender, to give up.  The man had taken all he could, but the Marine was still holding, barely, clinging to the mission.  And behind it all was the monster, the frigid creature of pure hate that now drove Erik Cain.  This avatar of death didn’t care about pain; it didn’t care about survival.  It only wanted one thing.  And as long as it drew breath, it would keep going.  Until Stark was dead.

Cain’s instincts were true, even through the agony and fatigue, and somehow he found he had the guns in both hands, firing full as his enemies charged into the room.  The firefight only lasted an instant, and when it was done, there were three more of Stark’s men dead on the floor, and Erik Cain had taken another shot, this one in the thigh.

He’d slipped to his knees, but now he pushed himself back to his feet, somehow again shoving aside the pain and the weakness threatening to take him.  He stared around the room, his eyes settling on a strange device along the wall.  Cain was no engineer, but he’d been on dozens of spaceships, and he’d never seen anything like the glowing cylinder in front of him.  Hmm, he wondered…what could that be?

The stealth device, he thought suddenly.  It had been a guess at first, but then it all began to make sense.  There wasn’t a doubt in his mind, and a wicked grin slipped onto his face.

He stepped back and steadied himself against the wall, staring at it for an instant before he raised his arm and opened fire.