Cold War 2395, page 24
Though it hurts like a bitch, I find the strength to raise my arm, feebly reaching for his hand. He grabs it and slowly, gently starts to pull me up.
“You just saw it; we’ve been infiltrated. We need to stop Beecher before he cripples our entire military.”
Instantly, I let go of his hand and fall back to the floor.
“Lieutenant!” he shouts as I crash against the ground, having lost whatever magical sliver of strength I had a second ago.
“He’s not . . .”
“He’s not what? Betraying our nation? Not spitting on everything we’ve worked for? Not aiding an enemy hellbent on destroying you, me, and everyone we care about?”
Grimm yanks his hand back and stares at me with disgust.
“You sicken me, Lieutenant.” His voice is cold and foreign in a way I’ve never heard it before. “Your punishment for insubordination will be severe. For now, enjoy your rest while I handle Beecher and make the choice you never could.”
As he turns away from me, I hear a familiar whistle in the air. I don’t have time to get a word out to warn Grimm before it’s too late. The lasso shoots from beneath a shuffling pile of scrap, which displaces to reveal a seriously banged-up Artemis crawling out and regaining his footing. The metal cord wraps around Grimm’s waist, tugging him toward the colonel with a degree of speed and strength he can’t fight. On the other side of the room, Artemis shoots his other lasso over the wedged metal beam dangling a few feet above him, lowering the looped side over the edge to form a noose.
The second Grimm is pulled back far enough, Artemis flicks his wrist and the dangling noose slides around my captain’s neck. The colonel tugs on it, yanking Grimm into the air by his throat. Before Captain can use his rocket boots to escape, Artemis releases the lasso around his waist and relocates it a few feet south, right around his shins. That doesn’t stop Grimm from trying to kick the boots on and break free, but the little bursts he manages are easily countered by some smart counter-pulls from Artemis.
The ACA’s neck brace is thick, but I have no clue how long it can hold up against the kind of metal the colonel’s lassos are made of. If they manage to chafe through the brace . . .
And as if that weren’t enough, now I’m in the worst position of all; the elevator is blocked by the fucking psycho trying to lynch my commanding officer. God, come on, body, work again . . . damn it, work.
“Can’t say I imagined it going down like it’s about to,” Artemis announces, sounding supremely self-satisfied, “but I won’t lie, I’m loving every second of it.”
“Tell me . . .” Grimm coughs, struggling to gather enough air to speak, “how long has your double-dealing been going on?”
It’s not a question, it’s a request—a request for some closure as he prepares to die. I hear it in his voice.
“Grimm, I’m disappointed. I know we’ve had our differences over the years, but really, you let that petty anger of yours blind you the whole time? Who do you think leaked the research to the Russkies in the first place?”
But . . . no, the president said . . .
“Bertram . . .” Captain starts, straining to gulp down more air before asking his question. “Do the Russians have the research backed up somewhere?”
Artemis laughs.
“That’s above my pay grade, Gerard,” he says with a warmth that makes it sound like he’s talking to an old friend. “All I know is, I can’t let you stop that data wipe.”
With his closing statement spoken, Artemis gives the noose another tug.
C’mon, Lieutenant, pick yourself up. Pick your damn self up!
Once again, I feel the tingle, the spark in my fingertips and toes that tells me something’s happening.
I haven’t come so far just to let a filthy fucking turncoat hiding in power armor get the best of Sierra Squad or, more importantly, get the best of me. And in a few seconds, that fucker is going to know it.
Artemis pivots to counter another one of Grimm’s rocket boot flare-ups, forcing him to shuffle to the side and put his back to me. It’s as clear an opening as I’m going to get, so I take it. I ball my fists and push against the floor, forcing my upper body to rise one last time. Foot by foot, I get myself standing, the light noise I create muffled by that of the crackling fires, screeching metals, and other chaos surrounding me. The colonel’s not gonna hear a thing until it’s too late.
I take one step forward to make sure I can move without collapsing. I can. So I take another step forward. And another. Within seconds, I’ve regained the ability to run, and I don’t hold back. I charge like a rhinoceros at the Bolshevik bitch in blue, and just as he senses something’s coming for him, I slam into the fucker like a damn boulder, knocking him to the ground.
Immediately after I gift Artemis’s face a one-way ticket to the floor, both lassos loosen to the point where Grimm falls through them, leaving him to hurtle downward and crash beside me. He doesn’t land on his feet, though; the half-suffocated captain lands on his back and coughs up a storm from inside his helmet. Thankfully, Artemis isn’t doing much better—after all the traumatic head injuries that fucker’s suffered since he stepped foot in the data archive, my last knock to the ground seems to have an impact, sending his dumb little noggin bouncing around one time too many. Good fucking riddance. But I can’t do any more damage; my bare fists won’t impact his armor in the slightest, and he’s not why I’m up and about, anyway. I have bigger priorities—I have a squadmate to find.
I make one more dogged attempt to reach that damn elevator. I shuffle past the piles of scrap and destroyed racks littering the floor, navigate around the thin streams of remaining fire, get past all the bullshit, and finally, finally make it back to the elevator. Pressing a weary hand against its touchpad, I nearly faint when the doors open. Somehow, I manage to stay strong and make it inside the damn thing.
Before the elevator doors close, I see the captain climb on top of Artemis and start to pummel him once more. Though the scraps on the ground block my view of the colonel’s body, I can only imagine that savage blows like the ones he’s receiving mark the end of his run as an undercover commie. It’s scary seeing Grimm go berserk. But what scares me more is the look he gives me when he stops breaking the body he’s on top of and spots me in the elevator.
That look is the last thing I see before the doors close and I’m whisked off to the top of the Spire.
CHAPTER 21
Beecher
Eight minutes.
Only eight minutes left on the timer. We were that close to losing all the marbles for good. Now I just have to babysit the wipe for the final stretch and make sure it happens.
A nervous jitter runs through my body as I look out the glass walls of the command center, toward the dark matter storm raging just beyond the Spire. With every passing second, thousands of petabytes of the most valuable military research in the history of man are being wiped from existence, their purge monitored by none other than myself. The two technicians who were stationed here lie in the eastern corner of the unlit room, slumped behind a desk next to the elevator shaft, concealed in shadows so no one can see their bloody, beaten faces. That leaves the rest of the sweeping, panoramic overlook untainted by the ugly face of death. I’ve seen enough of that today.
If I make it out of here alive, no doubt I’ll be held for high treason, sentenced to a military execution, and put down like any other war criminal—the whole nine yards. If that’s the price of preserving the universe’s freedom for a bit longer, I’m game. I’ll take a meaningful death over a regretful life any day of the goddamn week.
Can I be sure what I’m doing is right? No, not at all. The only thing I can be sure of, the only thing I know without a doubt, is that power corrupts, and absolute power like the kind being dealt with here in the colony would corrupt absolutely. I can’t let a stain like that spread onto the red, white, and blue flag I’ve dedicated my life to protecting. I hope Gourd forgives me when he finds out what happened here.
I drum my fingers against the master control monitor, watching the remaining data percentage dwindle. It almost hurts, seeing it all flushed down the drain, the collective work of humanity’s best scientific minds scrubbed from the tower’s servers and subsequently from history itself. If Faust was telling the truth when she said the colony was the sole home in the universe to Russia’s variant of the fuel, then only those of us who fought here today will have ever had to experience a world where it was successfully militarized.
I hover over the monitor, hoping sheer desire will make the data erase faster, fast enough that it’ll all be over before—
“Beecher!” Gourd stumbles out of the elevator behind me, his breath quick and voice concerned.
Why? Why did he have to come here?
“Man, you’re not safe. Cap’s gunning for you. He thinks . . .”
“That I’m an obstacle?” I turn around to face him. He looks awful; his condition’s way worse than it was back in the courtyard.
“That you’re an undercover Russian operative,” Gourd replies, flailing his arms, closing the gap between us. “Because you disobeyed an order, and we just found out Colonel Artemis was working with the Russians.”
My whole body freezes. “That explains it . . .”
“Spit it out!” Gourd says, shaking my shoulders.
“He’s been suspicious of me ever since we left Wesley behind. I heard him try to bait me over the PA system. He’s sure I want to sabotage the mission.”
I know what Gourd’s going to say before the words are spoken. I can’t even bring myself to look him in the eyes.
“Well, that’s bullshit,” he says, spotting the big flashing monitor behind me, obviously not stopping to wonder why I’ve positioned myself so carefully in front of it. He marches past me to see with his own eyes that I’ve stopped the data wipe, per my orders, like a good Marine.
“But that’s the thing, Gourd . . .”
He leans over to examine the panel, his eyes growing wide as he sees the wipe’s status.
“I do.”
Seven minutes.
“Why?” he shouts, extending a hand to commandeer the control panel.
Before he can reach it, I catch him with my functioning ACA arm and hold him in place, the two of us a near equal match of force. Gourd without any armor at his current strength versus a reluctant me in a half-functioning suit would be too close of a fight to call in advance, and we can’t let it come to that. I can’t let it come to that.
“You saw what it did: the planet, the machines, Alpha Squad. All of it! It’s too dangerous as a weapon!” I shoot back.
“That’s the same bullshit Artemis said,” Gourd roars. “You’re one of them?”
He dives for the panel, but I whip around and hook my arms under his shoulders, restraining him.
“I don’t care what Artemis said; I’ve never met him. And I’m not one of them. Got it?”
“You’re lying!”
With his upper body still trapped by my arms, he lifts his legs and kicks off against the control panel, knocking us both backward. We fall to the floor, landing within a few inches of each other. Not giving Gourd a chance to sit up, I roll over and climb on top of him, again restraining his arms as best I can.
“Stop it! I don’t know what the fuck you saw or heard, but I don’t care! I’m not doing what I’m doing because of anyone else!”
His face flashes with confusion before getting angry again. He finds a reserve of strength I’m not expecting and knocks me off, proceeding to reverse our roles and get on top of me, trapping my weary frame against the floor.
“You’re betraying our military!” He raises a fist, gearing up to knock my lights out.
“I’m saving it!” I yell. “You want the blood of billions on your hands when an officer tells you to wipe out a planet with dark matter? Huh?”
He pauses.
Seeing my opening, I don’t let up. “Wes saw the problem. I saw the problem. Why can’t you? Sure, the fuel will help us beat the Russians. But then what? We make every other nation and our own goddamn citizens scared of us when we whip out dark matter every time there’s a conflict?”
“The military wouldn’t use it like that!” His voice is raw, but his resolve is starting to crack.
Behind him, I spot the monitor’s reflection on an adjacent glass panel.
Six minutes.
“No, you wouldn’t use it like that. You really think everyone cares as much as us? Up until a few minutes ago, we thought guys like Artemis were on our side! Do you get it?” As I continue, he eases some of his weight off me. “All it takes is one bad apple for what we found here to kill everyone and everything we love.”
Gourd’s fist remains balled up as he looks at me for the longest second of my life. It’d almost feel invasive if I wasn’t staring at him the same way. Does he understand? Is he following?
He smashes his fist down.
I flinch.
It hits the floor next to me.
“You don’t know it’d turn out like that,” he says, still seething, his breathing heavy and ragged.
“You’re damn right I don’t. And I don’t want to find out. Do you want to see the US turn into one nation under fear, not God?”
He slackens his hold and looks away to avoid my gaze, probably half pondering what I’m saying and half ashamed he didn’t think everything through on his own already.
“Look, Gourd,” I say, desperately wanting to get off the floor, “I’m not going to fight you. So smash my head in and finish the mission, or get off me.”
He stares at me again, clenches his jaw, then makes his decision and rolls off. With a bit of effort, I get my tired body standing and glance over at the control panel’s flashing monitor.
Five minutes.
“But,” Gourd says, forcing himself to stand as well, “we don’t know if the Reds have the data backed up somewhere else. It might be for nothing.” He moves toward the panel, extending an uncertain, shaking hand toward it. Just as he’s about to undo my efforts to make the universe a safer place, he pauses.
“It might. But I’m choosing to believe our president’s dying words,” I tell him.
He looks straight at me, searching for something. “Either way,” he says, “it’s only a matter of time until they replicate the lost research and cook up another batch of fuel. And if our side doesn’t have it by then, how can we fight them?”
I hear the skepticism in his voice. But I’ve talked him down so far; I’m not stopping now.
“Like we did today. We don’t need to sink to their level to win.”
We keep staring, each unsure if the other is really willing to go through with either version of what comes next. After all, is it worth letting the research go? If we secure the station, the US government’s going to swoop in and immediately start reverse engineering every bit of tech from the robots to the cannon. Given the preliminary research our side already has, it’ll likely be just months before they figure out the small stuff and definitely no more than a decade before they crack whatever scientific secrets are behind the big shit here. At best, we’d be sacrificing our careers . . . our lives . . . just to buy mankind another few years.
On the other hand, if we pause the data wipe, the US will be unstoppable almost instantaneously. And if Russia refuses to bend its knee, it’ll cease to exist. Just like any other nation that kicks up a fuss.
No matter which way things go, we lose. But at least with the first option, we buy the rest of humanity time to win. After all, a lot can happen in a few years—years the rest of the universe won’t have if the research here ends up in the hands of remorseless bureaucrats and soldiers thanks to our inability to act.
Something changes on Gourd’s face as I watch him digest the reality of the situation. I see the glimmer of hope in his eyes—the one clinging to the idea that there can still be a happy ending for us—disappear.
“I think you’re wrong . . .” he mumbles. “But I’d hate to live to see the day that you’re right.”
Against all odds, the ogre-sized bald eagle removes his hand from the control panel and shuffles beside me, signing on to help make sure the biggest military advancement in history slips through our fingertips.
“Thank you,” I say. It’s all I can muster.
Four minutes.
“Don’t thank me yet. Cap’s gonna be here any minute now, and he won’t be looking to play games.”
We share a tense moment of silence.
“Maybe we can try to explain to him—” Gourd starts, but it’s wasted breath.
“He’s been ready to leave us for dead based on a bullshit hunch,” I remind my squadmate. “You really think now that he has hard evidence for his theory he’s going to listen to a word we have to say?” Gourd and I look at each other once more as we let the thought of what’s coming next sink in. “He has a mission to complete and just a few minutes to do it; you know what his plan is.”
“He’s not going to go down easy,” Gourd warns.
“Neither are we. You need to hide. Behind that desk.” I point to where I’ve stored the technicians in the corner by the elevator. It’s the only cover in the room; the rest of the floor consists of nothing but open space lined with a row of control panels.
“He knows I came up here, man. He’ll be looking—”
“Let’s bank on him being distracted by what I have behind me,” I say, patting the monitor. No way in hell Captain will care about Gourd’s whereabouts if he sees I’m busy dicking around with the most important hard drive in the universe.
Gourd plays along and dashes behind cover, hunkering beside the bodies while we await our captain’s arrival. Leaning back against the monitor with both hands, I get comfy and make it clear I have something to hide. When those elevator doors open, all Grimm will care about is the forbidden fruit.
