They came in at a thousand meters per second, says Rawlings, diving through Mars' gravity well from the other side. Two Century-class spacefighters, both well over twenty years old and twenty years out of date, charging in against the Bounty, her Valk escorts, four Eagle Space Superiority Platforms, and the dark mass of Phobos Base itself. The poor bastards didn't have a ghost of a chance. They might have been Unionists or they might have been actual Belt pirates; it doesn't matter now. A single tactical nuke from Phobos Base fried their control systems so badly that the railgun barrage which followed fifteen seconds later didn't even need to account for evasive maneuvers. Both Century fighters blossomed red far beyond eyesight. But Rawlings was spooked none the less, and instead of transferring to one of the big mass driver transports that ply the ether between Mars and Earth--Earth and Mars--we remained on the more agile Bounty for the day-long trip. I took another nap. I sit before his desk, a thin wisp of smoke drifting off the tip of his Lucky Strike. "A duel?" I ask. "To the death. He has dishonored my family, and thus myself." "You will have him killed then?" The old Japanese man in the pinstripe suit shakes his head, exhaling slowly. He looks down, thoughtfully--an affectation drawn from his years as a politician. "A duel," he repeats, violently. "I will kill him with my own hands!" I watch him suck in on his cigarette. His right hand retrieves it from his mouth, blue smoke curling from his lips and his nose. His skin is very yellow with age and illness; but on the back of the hand which holds the dying Lucky Strike is a red circle with an arrow jutting out of it at the one thirty position . . . A droid dressed to the hilt in a tuxedo and red bow tie wakes me from my unpleasant dreams. "Excuse me, sir. Would you care for anything?" I groan and glance out the porthole. "Do you have any Kirin?" I ask, just to annoy him. "I will look," he replies. What an asshole! He's a droid, hardwired to the Bounty's main computer! He should know right off the top of his head! Leah sips something that looks like tea. I make an ugly face towards it and go back to looking out the window. My side of the Bounty is dark and unlit, only the flashing green of the forward lights illuminating the rounded bulk of the cargo hold beneath us. "How long did I sleep?" I ask. "Half an hour," answers Leah, pausing. "Could you please refrain from leaning on me next time?" Disgusting . . . "Uh, sorry," I reply to the fascist. The droid returns with a cold brown bottle and an opener. "Thanks," I mutter to him, breaking open the Kirin. I empty a quarter of the bottle into my system. Damn. I turn to Leah. She is looking at me. "Something wrong?" "You drink often?" she asks, her face somewhat contorted as if examining a particularly violent acne eruption. "It's a vice I picked up in the University," I reply. "Ah . . . the International?" "Yup." "I was a student there . . ." I sip my beer. "What happened?" I ask. "I realized that Aerospace Engineering wasn't what I wanted out of life. I didn't want to sit behind some desk for the rest of my life, typing reports on nothing and working for peanuts." "Engineers get paid a shitload of money, if you'll excuse my French." "Oh sure, lots of money, but what's money? Money's nothing; I wanted to actually accomplish something with my life. Well, designing a better autotransport might make you a heap of cash, but does that really improve the world?" I snort and turn away. "I quit the Chem Engineering program after two years." "Did you drop out?" Leah asks. "Hell no. I switched majors to Journalism and History." I pause. "Where did you go?" "I went to Megapol. Clean off the streets and all that. Blind idealism, I guess, and it took me three years to realize that Megapol was just another company, always watching their stock price more than the crime rate. "XCOM picked me up at a good time; I was nearly fit to leave, anyway. I thought they'd be different. "Silly me." "Silly you," I reply. Leah is silent for a while, her white right hand brushing her lapel. "This is her room?" "Was her room! She's gone now." I glance around the large flat. Tatami on the floor, but a large, Western-style bed against the far wall. The left side of the room is sliding rice paper doors. Potted bamboo stand every few meters there. And pillows are everywhere. From heavy burlap bags filled with straw to tiny, lace-rimmed things, they seem to be the dominant lifeform in this room. A single katana graces the right hand wall. I stride over to the rice paper wall and pull it aside. Transparent thermoplastic shields look out over the small pond rimmed with spruce a dozen floors below. Its final rays filtering through the steel and cydonium towers of downtown, the waning sun paints the pool an eerie red. I whistle softly. Turning back to the room, I match the gaze of old Japanese man. His eyes are a cold, cold brown. "Is that the sword?" I ask. He nods. I awake in a cold sweat, cramped and more tired than when I first closed my eyes. "Where are we?" I ask. My right arm spasms; my left feels like a thousand needles are ripping out of my skin. I turn to Leah. She is asleep. A single tear runs down her right cheek. Calming myself down and wincing in pain, I wait for bloodflow to be restored in my left arm. Damn. I hate it when I sleep on a limb. Hate it so much that I usually make a point of sleeping "in the position of a corpse" as Confucius would phrase it. Casket-style, I like to say. I peer around the cabin of the Bounty. Across the aisle are Rawlings' personal attack-dogs: a dozen hardnosed, black-clad Internal Security Centurions. They carry plasma sidearms but I know that normally they would wear red bulbous Marsec Flight armor, a type four plasma rifle in one hand and a short cydonium sword built into their other arm. Rawlings personally consulted on the suits' designs, building them to be fast and silent, the evolution of the XCOM armors of yesteryear. But they do not wear that fine armor today; no, it is just the black jumpsuits with the thin red double helix running down the outer seams of their pants, the shield-and-spear insignia of Marsec and Mars and Man on their left shoulders, their ranks on their right . . . the double helix is a special symbol, reserved only for the Centurion teams. These are the most elite warriors of mankind, assembled from the choice genes of gifted donors. They are stock-gene monsters, perfectly Aryan, right down to their pale blond hair and crisp blue eyes with better-than-human vision. I'm vaguely amazed that I can pull these facts out of my head. I look over the Centurions; they sleep with all the puppy peacefulness of Rotweilers under the spell of Mister Sandman. The soldiers sleep soundly, with all the calm of fanatics. Do they dream? Compared with that image of tranquility, Leah is a complete mess. That pioneer tear led the path for a hundred more, and she silently weeps for someone, her mouth moving without words. Damn. I sense a presence at my back; turning slowly, I peer into the scarred, enigmatic face of Rawlings. "Yes?" I ask him. He frowns. "Do you have a question?" he replies. "Do you?" I answer. He smiles slightly, that same "gotcha" grin that he used moments before severing that creature's head from the rest of its body. "I have no need for questions," he intones, "for I have all the answers." I raise an eyebrow at him. A second drags by. He chuckles--a pig-like, snorting sound--and beckons me out of my seat. "Just climb over," he whispers, and I unstrap, twist around, and awkwardly make my way into the row behind Leah. Rawlings steps down the aisle, headed for the small stairway in the back of the Bounty. "Where did you get that . . ." I search for the word, all the familiar female monikers drawing blanks. ". . . Nazi?" I finish. Rawlings isn't amused. He takes a seat on the second step and stares at the back of Leah's head. "She's everything I know about this latest incarnation of the organization known as XCOM." I snort and sit down in a deserted seat. "But why do I have to sit with her? I mean, us 'Marxists' are proven to be allergic to fascists like her." "The Race of Man isn't what it used to be," deadpans Rawlings. "They fucking raided the Church of Sirius! I mean, I was there . . ." My voice drops off as Rawlings resumes his wicked smile. Squeeze squeeze. Squeeze squeeze. Two down, none to go. "How?" I ask, immediately remembering the psionic interface rigged to my head for the last two weeks. Rawlings plays the Cheshire Cat. I shrug and laugh. "I should have known." "Now you do." A moment of silence. "And I do too!" "Funny, grandpa." "'He's making a list, checking it twice, knows who's been naughty or nice,'" sings Rawlings. Face red, I stare at the short carpeting on the floor. Rawlings hums the ancient tune for a couple more measures and then is equally as quiet. "My God, you are the fucking puppet master." "Goes both ways, Karl," he says, still faintly laughing. "But at least I have a clean conscience." I think hard for a long moment. Then I look up, a smile of triumph on my face. "No," I reply, "no you don't." Rawlings snorts. "Precious few things," he slowly states, "do I fully regret." "You've killed out of malice." He closes his eyes and smiles grimly. "A drop in the ocean, Karl." An ocean. Quite the apt analogy. But not an ocean of sorrow; no, these waves froth red, deep crimson laced with the greens of non-humans. A tumultuous sea of the dead, each and every one of hundreds of souls, some alien, personally delivered to that next world by the trigger finger of Jack Rawlings. It's barely the foam that he regrets! "We all do what we have to, Karl." I turn away from him in disgust and look back at Leah. "Correction. You and Colonel Hierro are everything I know about XCOM. "You're my brain trust." "What, did you play Peeping Tom with her head also?" Rawlings oinks. "The physical sensations of females are not the subject of my curiosity . . . taking psionic implants from the opposite gender is a good way to go crazy, Karl. Or at least transvestite." That's . . . more than I needed to know. "But you two really should learn to get along. I suspect that you'll be seeing a lot of each other until this war is through." I raise my eyebrows. "War?" "War. The bugs are coming in from the dimension gates, they are theoretically unlimited in number, and I don't know a damn thing about them beyond that." "War." I repeat the word, rolling it over my mouth like a strange object. The last time I heard it mentioned, Diablo and the Axemen went head-to-head in the mother of all turf battles. Humans versus humans, a lot of VD infected blood spilled, nothing more. Silly how I long for the bad old days! "XCOM is fighting them, then?" "I suppose you could say that." "Are we going there to help them?" Rawlings is ominously silent. "Are you going to destroy XCOM?" What the fuck? I'm not sure if I'm the one asking the question, or if I'm just a proxy to Rawlings' internal dialogue . . . but the question gets asked. The last two syllables are almost shouted over the hum of the Bounty's engines. Rawlings stares at me like I'm an idiot, opens his mouth, and then pauses. He looks far away for a moment. His answer is barely audible. "I don't know, Karl." The Bounty docks without incident at the High Orbit Receival/launch Dish Earth--the HORDE--and Jack, Leah, and I stagger out into the 0.9 G centrifugal force of the space station. Originally a near Earth asteroid captured just before the Second Alien War, the HORDE has been hollowed out, smoothed off and populated, leaving its ultimate appearance as something of a large pachinko ball with a half- kilometer diameter dent in one side. Coated with solar panels, the HORDE rests in that peculiar space where the gravity wells of Earth and the Moon nullify each other. Like I said, we disembark and eat a very light meal--Leah and I become queasy with the slight gravity difference. "I think I'm going to puke," I slur. "Me too," echoes Leah. Rawlings is about to chirp something snide about our inability to handle anything but liquefied foods when he is beat to the punch. "If I may interrupt?" I turn my head to face this new speaker, a thin, lean man with a bald head and waxy skin. His jaw is sharp and well-defined, his irises are bright blue, and his pupils are a dull red. Android, obviously, dressed to the hilt in a double-breasted black suit with red trim. It's our servant from the Bounty. He looks like a lawyer. "What is it, Glen?" "We have a situation, sir," he states, a deep, mellow British accent rolling from his mouth. Rawlings stands and gestures for us to do the same. "The quarantine?" The droid nods. "The terrorists destroyed the number three bulkhead in chamber eighteen. Security only discovered the breach fifteen minutes ago." "Why was that? Didn't the barricade's alarms trigger?" "Most likely someone assumed that number three's alarms were the result of the radiation surge. Most of the debris was cleared before Security was able to get a visual confirmation of the puncture." "Was the repairs crew properly shielded?" "No, sir." "Put that entire roster in containment. Seal off everything in a two chamber radius of chamber eighteen. Get six Security teams in there yesterday." "Already done, sir." Rawlings sighs. "I should have seen this coming." One more item catches his mind. "Glen, demote the Security officer who didn't report the alarms." "I also took the liberty of debiting his back pay fifty thousand dollars, sir." "I don't appreciate you enough, you know." "Thank you, sir." Glen marches off, for what reasons I don't know. He must surely have a communications suite rigged into his innards . . . the Senate has banned AI research and development, but I don't see how that would stop Rawlings from having the very best in intel help. "What's the quarantine?" I ask. Glen comes striding back, a fairly humorous sight. A look of quiet determination on his face, a hurried spring in his step. "Old Cydonia," answers Rawlings, setting down his "Coffee Boss" and meeting Glen's eyes. "What now, Karwoski?" he asks. The big droid crouches down to speak in Rawlings' ear. I watch the little soldier's beady eyes bulge with Glen's words, also somewhat humorous. Rawlings crushes his finished can. "Okay, kids, let's move," he orders. Leah and I groggily stand. "Prep a Valk and signal a general evacuation," demands Rawlings to his droid. Karwoski nods and jogs off. "What is it?" asks Leah, suddenly not-so nauseous. "Hangars are this way," states Rawlings, saying nothing more. He sets a brisk pace as red lights flash and menu monitors in the cafeteria go blank. I stagger off after the two. Whatever it is, it can't be good. The crew of this station rushes for the escape pods, filling the gently upsloping halls of the HORDE with a thousand Marsec, Solmine, and Synthmesh employees. A thousand varied black, blue, and orange uniforms rush for the escape pods built into the "floor"of the station; a simple blast of a few explosive bolts, and those tin cans filled with humans are flung away through centrifugal force from whatever impending disaster threatens the HORDE. We, of course, ride out in a Valkyrie. Marsec has one squadron of fighters on patrol at every major facility; another squadron is always on call. Into one of these pre- prepped fighters we flee, my boots barely clearing the hatch before Glen breaks us loose. "What's going on?" Leah repeats for the hundredth time. Rawlings slides into a seat and points for us to do the same. Flight harnesses go on not a second too soon; Karwoski--and whoever else he's got up in the cockpit--kick in the full gravity drives, and our Valk goes rocketing away from the HORDE. Crew compartment shuddering from the stress of conflicting gravitational fields fighting with inertia, Rawlings stammers, "Nuke. The fucking commies put a nuke in the Bounty." "WHAT?" yells Leah. The whole ship is kicked forward how many hundred kilometers, my heart skipping a few beats. Rawlings swears, and I yelp. I think my seat has come loose. "Kill the engines! Turn us around!" Rawlings is screaming as the roar drains from the cabin, replaced by the familiar hum of a grav drive on "cruise." "Sensors have registered a fifty kiloton detonation in the number three hangar bay, sir. Secondary explosions from like ordinance breached the surface of the station. We were inadvertently in the blast cone." "Don't ever screw up like that again! I'll have you built into a pop can dispenser, damn it!" "I'm profoundly sorry, sir. However . . . we did manage to make the lee Van Allen Belt. Radiation levels were only twenty times normal, sir." Rawlings sighs, holding his head in his hands. "You put up with too much, Glen. Thank you for saving my rear once again." "What the hell was that?" shouts Leah. "How did the Union sneak a nuke aboard HORDE?" The short soldier snorts, shaking his head. "That's what the fighters were. They suicided so we wouldn't transfer to another ship or stop at the Mars end of the Escalator. Glen, detain everybody and anybody who was even within spitting distance of the Bounty. I want a lot of commie testicles in a jar in twenty-four hours." "Sir," states Karwoski, opening the crew compartment hatch, "I can't reach Mars." Rawlings frowns and looks up. "What do you MEAN?" "My hyperwave uplink cannot raise Nova Cydonia Command." The two stare at each other for a long moment. "You're kidding me." "No sir. All bands are down." "All bands? Glen, tell me you're suffering some internal-" The droid makes a hint of a smile. "I wish I could say that, sir. I ran a self-diagnostic as soon as the shock front hit us. I am at one hundred percent efficiency. Sir, I am fine." "Is it jamming?" asks Leah. "You can't jam hyperwave-" both Rawlings and I exclaim. "In XCOM we experienced similar such incidents. We attributed it to some form of jamming." Rawlings turns to Leah. His lips moving slowly: "Who was doing it?" "We suspected the aliens, sir." 7/7/98
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