Metal Deep: Infinite - Metal Wing: Episode 5 (7 page)
Read Metal Deep: Infinite - Metal Wing: Episode 5 Online
Authors: GX Knight
One of Sabra’s features was Whisper Flight. The attribute sacrificed speed for stealth, but we were able to glide in and land under the cover of darkness without anybody hearing us. It helped that the streets were empty because of Wyld’s lockdown.
At first I wanted to get to Starshine out of concern for her as her boyfriend. I’m not sure what was driving me to see her now, other than perhaps the need to confront her as her victim. I did still foster hope that, despite her father’s plans, perhaps she still loved me as much as she once said. I had to know for sure. I hated to admit that I still loved her.
There was a clothing store in the opposite direction of where I needed to be at the hospital. It shouldn’t have been closed, but because of early curfews they couldn’t be open after sundown. I wondered if economic strangulation was also part of Wyld’s plan. Sabra talked me through disarming the alarm, and I helped myself to a new suit. I trudged back to Sabra and left my warsuit in the underbelly cargo hold. I needed to sneak my way in, and I couldn’t do that dressed like a walking tank-man. Most everything on the warsuit was modular, so I kept a wrist communicator, attached my pistol holsters to a shoulder harness that could be concealed by the coat, and I put the folded mask and goggles in my pocket… just in case.
Sabra swept the area with her sensors. Starshine was certainly there. There were a lot of guards posted around the complex. Word about my escape either hadn’t made the wire, or they didn’t think I would be there. The guards didn’t look like men who were on the lookout for someone specific. Sabra guided me around and through them with no problems all the way to a gazebo outside the main hospital entrance. All the doors were covered, and there were no windows large enough to get into below the fourth floor.
“Great, now what?” I whispered into the cuff on my wrist.
“Do you not have two pistols strapped to your chest?” Sabra crackled through.
Was she serious? “Stealth is supposed to be your expertise,” I almost shouted, “And you want me to get into a firefight at the front door?”
“Well, I was thinking the back door would be more opportune,” she said. “Security inside is rather light, so once you deal with the outside patrols, you’re essentially home free.”
“Hey, let’s not become bloodthirsty killers on our first night out on the town, okay? I’m going to try something else. Guide me to the doctor’s parking lot.”
Two close calls later I made it to where the employees parked. I pulled out the goggles and used the blue night vision to peek inside the lines of expensive cars until I found what I was looking for. Sabra remotely disabled the alarm and unlocked the car of my choice. I stole a lab coat and name badge. Of course it would have belonged to a woman. The badge had a picture of a dark haired girl with cheeks so angled she could have been a man. Her name was Patreece. Unfortunately, Patreece’s lab coat was about two sizes too small. Sabra actually let out an electronic version of a laugh when I told her, and then she tried to be funny asking, “Are you sure it will work because she looks like a guy, or because you look like a girl?” Computers with a sense of humor, or at least trying to have one… It was still so odd.
I ignored her.
“What are you going to do now?” Sabra questioned.
I’d take a play from my arena days. My second season, we had a guy on our team who was terrible. Instead of acknowledging his weaknesses, we talked him up during the preseason as if he was going to be the biggest threat out there. He knew he was an average player, but he was a great actor. The other teams showed so much respect in covering him, the rest of us were left free to do what we needed to do. We called him Dupe, and I was going to steal one from his playbook.
“Watch and learn, Wingnut.”
I took the badge, and draped the small coat over my arm. I fast walked through the parking lot, put the goggles back in my pocket, and then grabbed my folded face mask and held it up to my ear as if were a phone. When Sabra registered what I was doing all I heard was, “This is not recommended.”
I began yelling things into my mask I thought an angry doctor who had just been called in would say. “Why am I just finding out about this now? Well, who’s the attending physician? What kind of incompetent, halfwit would order a frolonoscopy at this stage of the diagnosis?”
“A what?” Sabra interjected quietly from my cuff as I passed a guard who didn’t know whether to stop me or get out of my way. I guess I sold the angry doctor play, because he stayed out of my way.
I ignored Sabra and approached the main checkpoint at the employee entrance. I waved the badge at the guard so all he could see was a blur, and then waved it in front of the magnetic reader that unlocked the door. The light turned from red to green, and an electric door folded open. “You tell them if they’re not prepped and ready for surgery in five minutes everyone in that department is fired. I’m trying to save a life.”
There was a quartet of guards and they looked to one another in silent communicative stares. I went in hoping to put as much distance between me and them as I could, but before I could make it to an elevator, one of them lifted his rifle and spoke, “Excuse me, sir, but we need you to stop right where you are.”
DON’T BLOW IT
I acted perturbed toward the five guards that surrounded me, hung up my “phone,” and put it back in my pocket. The guard took my badge. Patreece’s hair was longer than mine, but he didn’t immediately notice. He was trying to match the changes that
could
have been. I wasn’t sure if it was the lack of light out there, or her man-cheeks that kept this lie afloat, but between the two, I was hanging in there, but only by an unraveling thread.
“Your name is Patreece?” He said in a mocking tone.
“That’s right, Patreece Bonoman. It’s a family name. Pat to my friends.
Doctor
Bonoman to you.” He still looked unconvinced, so I continued, “And I have a patient about to go into surgery. Do you want a call to your commanding officer regarding your active role in a patient’s death? As you well know, most of the people in this facility are here because they are either important, or related to someone important, so unless you want to end up guarding one of the polar caps as your next assignment because a senator’s cousin didn’t get timely treatment, I suggest you cut the schoolyard butt-grabbing and allow me to be about my business.”
He was contemplatively speechless.
Just then a voice piped in over a loudspeaker. The nurse at the front desk looked confused for a second, but returned to her magazine as Sabra’s becoming-familiar tone rang out through the ward, “We need Doctor Bonoman to Frolonoscopy, room three-thirteen STAT!”
I grabbed the guard by the arm, “My God man, it may already be too late.”
The guard turned as pale as the taupe on the side of the building, and he pushed the others out of the way. “Good luck, Doctor.”
“Good luck to
you
,” I said as I ran into a waiting elevator in the back of the lobby.
Once the doors had closed I lifted the cuff to my mouth, “You know, we make a pretty good team.” The statement made me a little sad, and maybe a little hopeful. I had a team once, but they were gone. I didn’t think I would feel that sense of trust again.
Sabra didn’t say anything in response to the accolade. She simple stated, “Rayce, go to the top floor. You’ll find Starshine Wyld checked in as S. Worther.”
On the top floor, I ducked into one of the locker rooms and found a white coat that actually fit. I put it on, ready to continue, but I had to stop. I was getting lightheaded again. The familiar hospital smells caused my nausea to kick back in as my brain seemed to reprocess and connect the scent of the sterile environment I woke up in, to that horrid odor of my friends’ burning flesh after the blast. I was weak, and my stomach sick. I perched against the wall trying to stable myself, desperately not wanting to eject what little remained of my last military lunch.
“What’s happening to me?” I asked Sabra trying not to sound panicked.
“The NX-8 is wearing off,” She said. “According to a report it would have more than just physical benefits, but emotional and psychological as well. The readings I’m taking through the cuff show you’re in a state of shock associated with a traumatic stress attack. If you were still in your warsuit, you would be fine right now.”
I spoke heavy words in between deep breaths, “Couldn’t. Had to blend in.”
Sabra was nice, but she had her sharper side as well. She piped back through the cuff, “Oh. Because, a vomiting mass of a man found writhing in the middle of the hallway floor will be so much more inconspicuous.”
I flipped the cuff to off just as Sabra started another jab. I wiped away beads of sweat from my forehead, and I pressed my face to the cold wall. I closed my eyes and took long, deep breaths. I focused on the sound of air passing my lips, rolling onto the wall, and away from me. I tried to imagine I was free on the wind, far away from having had my perfect life stolen by harsh truth. After a few minutes, I found some control. Nausea still tickled the back of my throat, but I was okay.
Another press of the button turned the cuff on. “Okay, I’m back. Sorry about that.”
Silence.
“Sabra?”
Nothing.
“Come on Sabra, I had to have a second to collect myself. Don’t give me the silent treatment.”
She did not respond.
“Great, a computer with hurt feelings,” I mumbled. What do you buy a plane to say I’m sorry I hung up on you?
Nobody questioned my disguise as I made my through the ward. I found a board with a list of patient’s names. Sure enough, I saw her alias “Worther” written next to a room number. I did my best to remain calm and collected, but I felt as if my unsettled stomach might leap from my body as I found her room. I put my hand on the doorknob and let it rest there for a moment before I slowly opened the door.
Light from a few instrument displays leapt from the dark like little beacons, but in the rest of the room, shadows hung low and pooled like clouds from every corner. The bed was in the back hiding from me behind a beige hospital curtain. The tip of the bed’s foot was the only part visible. I moved past a couple of chairs and a small table, and I placed my hand on the cloth divider that separated us. I grabbed the curtain to pull it away, but I felt another jolt as I had back in the pistol lab when I connected with the gunsmith.
My mind searched like a light until it landed on Starshine. I felt her, awake, alert, but frightened. A shot of adrenaline caused this new mind-light I had to keep searching. I found someone else with us. They were old, could have been ancient, and in a word: sinister. I flung the curtain aside, and my eyes fell to an empty bed. Slowly, I scanned upward to a couple standing out on a balcony. I saw Starshine, shivering, and in front of her, Uncle Raven, who was holding a gun to her head.
I made cautious, deliberate steps toward the door as he waited for me to join them outside. I forgot about him for a moment as I witnessed the horror-show of injuries Starshine had sustained from the falling debris after the explosion. The entire left side of her face was disfigured. Half of her golden hair had been burnt away to a bandaged scalp, and her right arm had been amputated about three inches above where the elbow used to be.
Uncle Raven read my expression, “All of this trouble for a broken thing like that. You know she doesn’t even like you. Seems I recall in situations like this when you were younger and training on the Laser Ball courts you’d call Do-Over and then start again after you messed up. You have fallen in line with our best laid plans up until today. What do you say we call a Do-Over and get back to our business?”
“What’s that, the business of taking over Bathesda? I think I understand now.
“General Wyld believes he’s bidding for power, but you’re using him to get Bathesda
and
Calvaria. What’s the next step? You kill him and become the people’s hero for saving them from the violent dictator? After that you start your empire with your engineered ultra-soldier-nephew at your side? The question I have is
why
? Where do you plan on going? Back to our home world?”
“That cunning little tin can,” Raven said impressed. “That’s one of the reasons Spyral was meant for you, and not Sabra. Sabra was supposed to my chariot. I boosted her logic process a thousand fold. Those A.I. are a tad unpredictable before they’re broken in, but then so are you. I should have made sure she was conditioned first. At the end of the day, I suppose knowledge is more powerful than an arsenal of weapons.”
“I noticed you made her fast too. That so you can flee like a coward whenever there’s trouble?”
“There’s always wisdom in cultivating an appropriate exit strategy.”
“Oh yeah, Uncle, and what’s your strategy here? You’re now holding a girl hostage who means nothing to me.” Starshine didn’t move. She seemed completely catatonic as she stared at the wall with an obvious emptiness, unaware that she was a hostage. I pulled one of the pistols from beneath my jacket and aimed it at my uncle, “without her as a bargaining chip, you seem to be out of options.”
Uncle Raven laughed, “You think I’m here to stop you? I created you. I’m here to save you. My entire life has been devoted to making what you are right now. Things may have skewed slightly from the original plan, but the goal hasn’t changed.”
“Then why are you pointing your gun at her?”
Just then I felt another tingle, as the door to the room flung open and General Wyld answered my question. He stalked toward us with his own gun drawn, “Because he sprung the trap that was set for you. That isn’t his gun he’s holding.”
I jerked the other pistol and pointed both my guns toward a very menacing General Wyld. At the same time Starshine snapped out of her trance she’d been faking, elbowed Uncle Raven with her one arm, and then spun kick the gun. It flew out of his hand and fell over the edge of the balcony. She pulled an identical gun from beneath her hospital gown and pointed it at my uncle at the same time he was pulling his own pistol to point back at her.
We had ourselves a standoff. My uncle versus Starshine, and me versus the general.
I had no idea Starshine could be so brutal. I never would have thought she could be the warrior type. I couldn’t believe how deeply I had been deceived. I had to give it to her; when it came to acting she had me and Dupe beat handily.
“Drop, it
honey
,” She said through a sneer, “Or I get even with your uncle for getting the best of me before you got here.”
I held my gaze and my guns on Wyld. Two blue dots danced on each of his cheeks, “You do that, and you won’t be Daddy’s little girl anymore.”
There was a long silence. I could hear the hallway outside filling with guards. Air-chopping VTOL’s started to buzz around us. Their search lights sped back and forth across the windows until the spotlights stopped on us.
“Give it up,” Wyld ordered. “You are surrounded.”
I considered his position, and I had to agree. Things seemed grim, but before I could make up my mind on whether or not I was going to surrender, a whooshing sound zipped past us. Less than a second later, balls of lighting screamed out from the black of night and crashed with thunderous claps into the VTOL’s. They fell to the ground and exploded into columns of fire that reached up far higher than we were.
War broke out just after the last VTOL crashed. Everyone started firing.