Burnt Worlds (47 page)

“Yes,” said Saparun’s voice, “three.”

“Okay,” said Dillon.
 
“who among us are the three best shots?”

“Perkins is good,” said Lee.
 
“And Amoroso.
 
I’m not bad, but Perky’s better.
 
Are you a good shot, sir?”

“Nah,” grunted the Captain.
 
“I’m scheduled to re-qualify next month.
 
Wasn’t looking forward to it.
 
Sap?
 
Cho?
 
Tassali?”

“I am mediocre at best,” said Saparun.

“I am proficient, yes,” said Amba quietly.
 
“I have had some training.”

Dillon met her eyes and she grinned; that same grin again.
 
“Okay,” he said.
 
“Perkins, you take the one on the right.
 
Amoroso, the one in the middle.
 
Tassali, the one on the left is yours.
 
See if you can poke your barrels out there without setting the things off.”

“Sir,” said Lee, “we’ll need some way to get the guns to reveal themselves again.
 
I’ll jump between these two trucks, and see if that wakes them up for a moment.”

Cho, out of sight several vehicles away, spoke up.
 
“I’m pulling rank here, Lee.
 
I’m faster on my feet than you are.
 
I’ll do it.”

Dillon saw Lee nod.
 
“Very well, sir.”

The Captain turned back to look at Amba, and saw her carefully leaning past the edge of the vehicle, only the muzzle of her small pistol and half of her helmet poking around the corner.

“Okay,” said the Captain.
 
“Shooters ready?”

Two human and one Palani voice answered immediately.
 
“Ready.”

“Cho, whenever you’re ready.
 
Give a count.”

“Aye aye, sir,” came Cho’s voice.
 
“On three.
 
One, two, three!”

Still leaning his back against the vehicle, Dillon turned his head to look at Amba, whose back was facing him.
 
Far off to his left, he heard the burst of projectiles hitting the ground, like a pail of gravel being splashed across the tiles.
 
In the middle of the noise, he heard Amba say, “There you are,” followed by two soft chirp-like squeaks from her gun.
 
A second later, Dillon could hear two muted explosions.

“The Tassali got hers,” said Lee.
 
“Perkins?
 
Amoroso?”

“Perkins here, sir.
 
Got mine.”

“Sorry sir,” said a disappointed Amoroso.
 
“Mine hit too far right.”

“Damn it,” said Lee, “you’re jerking the trigger again.
 
I keep telling you about that.
 
Captain, another go?”

Dillon nodded, though most of the team couldn’t see it.
 
“Yes.
 
Everyone aim at the last target.
 
Okay Cho, go ahead and taunt it.”

“Aye, sir.
 
One, two, three…”

The sound of incoming projectiles was sporadic and short-lived.
 
“Got it!” cried Perkins.

Dillon stepped over toward Amba, who was still leaning around the back corner of the vehicle.
 
Putting one hand on her shoulder, he stepped behind her, leaning further out into the gap.
 

Cho’s voice was breathless in their helmets.
 
“Captain!
 
Nothing’s shooting.
 
I think we got them all, sir.”

“Understood.”

Dillon looked past Amba to the square beyond, making a note of the terrain that lay ahead of them.
 
A little over a hundred metres to the front of the building.
 
The square was paved with the usual smooth black tiles, but in many places it was covered in a layer of grey dust.
 
The dust was deep in places, and just ahead of them it formed a drift tall enough for them to hide behind.
 
Beyond that, there was a dozen metres of open ground before a pair of abandoned vehicles, then small patches of open ground from truck to dune to truck again, right up to the building.
 
Apart from the occasional wisp of dust, there was no movement; stillness and silence had returned to the dead city.

“Okay,” said the Captain, trying hard to maintain an even tone though his nerves were in knots.
 
“We’re going to move from cover to cover.
 
Keep your eyes open.
 
Anything that moves, and isn’t us, is probably going to be a problem.”

He took his hand from Amba’s shoulder and stepped around her, into the pockmarked gap between the vehicles.
 
He felt her hand on his shoulder, not a touch of affection but a firm grip ready to pull him back, as he stepped forward into the gap.
 
Looking to his right, around the front of the vehicle, he could see along the line of parked trucks, nose to tail across the square, at a distance from the building.
 
He saw Lee looking out from behind the next vehicle over, and the suits of the rest of the crew were visible in gaps further along the line.

“Go,” he said, and took off at a run.
 
The Tassali initially fell behind, but after a dozen more strides they arrived at the dune together, crouching in its shadow, sinking in dust up to their knees.

“No shooting so far,” he said.
 
“That’s good.
 
Moving again.”

He jumped up again, and tried to run over the top of the dune.
 
His feet quickly sunk in up to his waist, slowing him almost to a stop.
 
Beside him, Amba said a word he didn’t recognise as she stumbled and pitched forward, landing on all fours in the dust at the top of the drift.

Up on the ridge line of the dune, Dillon suddenly felt exposed, and panic began to gnaw at him as he quickly stooped and put his hand under Amba’s arm, pulling her up.
 
With his help she shoved herself to her feet and the two of them surged ahead, stumbling down the far side of the drift, leaving a cloud of airborne dust as they hit the bare tiled ground at a run and sprinted to the parked trucks ahead of them.
 
They paused, catching their breath, as Dillon turned to check the progress of the rest of the crew.
 
Lee and Perkins were running for Dillon and Amba’s location, and the others were charging at another group of vehicles some distance away.

“You good?” asked the Captain.

“Aye sir,” said Lee, his voice calm.
 
Behind him, Amoroso nodded.

“Everyone’s okay over here,” said Cho’s voice.
 
Dillon looked over at the other vehicles, and saw one of the suits give a brief wave.

“Excellent,” said Dillon.
 
“We’re halfway there.
 
Everyone see if they can get a better look at the place, and mentally plan your routes from here to the door.
 
Keep moving from cover to cover; I don’t care if everything seems quiet, we might come into range of some different security systems as we get closer to the door.
 
So—”

Saparun’s soft voice interrupted him.
 
“If I may, Captain.
 
I am scanning the buildings.
 
The three automated weapons that fired at us… there are others.
 
I count forty-one weapons visible from this location, including the three we destroyed.
 
The others are mostly inert.
 
Some are tracking us but not firing.
 
Several are acting strangely, as if tracking random objects in the sky.”

“Forty more?” breathed Dillon.
 
“Holy shit, that’s a lot.
 
So, you figure they’ve all broken down except the three that shot at us?”

“Yes, Captain.
 
It seems that way.
 
They have been exposed to the elements for over seven hundred years, so it would not be surprising.”

“Yeah,” said Dillon.
 
“We’re really getting off lucky so far.”

“With respect, sir,” said Lee, “I don’t like luck.”

“Neither do I, Lee.
 
It always runs out, eventually.”
 
He sighed, leaning against the vehicle as he slowly looked around him.

He surveyed the broad plaza with the massive buildings that surrounded it.
 
He tried to imagine it full of life, with thousands of people going about their business, or gathered in the square for some great occasion.

Dillon began to think of the day the plague struck.
 
If the leadership knew about the precursor viruses already spreading among the population, they would have been nervous; urgent work on cures would have been underway.
 
But when the viruses activated to become the plague weapon—

He heard the soft chirp of a private channel opening.
 
“What are you thinking, Feda?”

Dillon turned to look at her, and she could see the sadness in his eyes.
 
She nodded.
 
“You are thinking of it as well.
 
The day the plague started.”

“How long would it have taken?
 
You know, to...”

She frowned.
 
“Even one person that was infected with all the viruses, and was present to receive the signal, would have been enough to doom the planet unless they were already isolated.
 
Living tissue would be transformed into more plague, which could easily jump from any organic matter to any other.
 
For a person like you or me, we would have watched our flesh being consumed, until a blood vessel burst or some vital organ failed.
 
Maybe half an hour, for most people.
 
The pain would have been…”
 
She trailed off.

He looked again at the square, imagined the terror and panic of millions of people.
 
Screaming children, people in agony or just quietly accepting their fate.
 
Desperation.
 
Helplessness.

A second private channel opened.
 
“Sir,” said Lee.
 
“Focus, sir.”

Dillon turned his head to look at the petty officer, who was watching him carefully.
 
Perkins was nearby, fidgeting.

“Okay,” said the Captain.
 
“Let’s go.”

-----

The building’s front doors opened easily with a pull, and the team stepped inside.
 
They were in a tunnel-like corridor, ten metres wide and high, and three times as long, opening at the far end into a much larger space.
 
The entrance area was cordoned off, with desks and counters and gates, carefully positioned to funnel people toward security stations up ahead.
 
The walkways led between pairs of tall machines, while cameras and weapon barrels protruded from the ceiling above them.
 
One camera pivoted to look at them, while a weapon began to buzz and click angrily, though it was facing a wall.
 
All the other fixtures remained still and silent.

On a signal from Lee, the armed crew fanned out, walking behind the security counters while the Captain and the others followed them.
 
Dillon reflexively stepped over an empty pile of clothing, stopping at a small handheld device on the floor a short distance away.
 
He bent over to look more closely at it.

Saparun knelt next to him, pointing a small handheld scanner at the device.
 
“A weapon, Captain.
 
Mass accelerator.
 
It bears evidence of use, but its power source is long since drained.”

Dillon looked over at the empty clothes on the floor nearby.
 
“Used,” he said to himself.
 
He looked at the nearby set of empty clothes. “I probably would’ve too.”

Standing up, he tapped his wrist console.
 
“Okay, everyone.
 
Very important tip:
 
don’t touch anything.
 
This thing was a weapon; the next one you see might still be armed.
 
No souvenirs, no matter how cool.
 
I say again:
 
don’t touch anything.”

They walked forward, picking their way around the cordons and counters, until they approached the inner end of the tunnel.

The corridor opened into a giant atrium: a hundred metres across and open all the way upward to the sky a hundred storeys above.
 
The building above them was a massive tube, its inner walls clear and smooth, like a glass sheet that went all the way around.
 
Through the glass, they could see the individual levels above.

The floor under their feet was made of the same glistening black material found outside and on the cylinder ships, flowing from wall to wall as a single, seamless expanse of black.
 

Ahead of them, on a dais a dozen metres across, were five statues of humanoid figures, each of them ten metres high or more.
 
One in front, brandishing a bladed weapon, the four others behind, all of them in determined, forward-looking heroic poses.

“So that’s them,” said Cho.
 
His voice was calm, even soft.
 
“The people who made the cylinders.”

Dillon looked carefully at the one in front.
 
Humanoid in shape, but proportionally thinner than humans.
 
Larger eyes set deeper in their faces, horizontal ridges on their cheeks, and only three digits on their hands and feet.
 
Their chests seemed thin and their abdomens bulged strangely, but he couldn’t figure out what that meant.