Raising Caine - eARC (50 page)
Read Raising Caine - eARC Online
Authors: Charles E. Gannon
Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Space Opera, #Alien Contact, #General
* * *
Caine Riordan stumbled into the small glade he’d designated as Point Bug Out: the place where the survivors had stored their gear before dispersing to their various defensive positions. There was water here, and he’d need it if he was going to…to…
Suddenly, the sun was glinting directly down through the trees. Riordan discovered he was on his back, gasping. Couldn’t breathe, despite the filter mask. He’d obviously lost consciousness and fallen, but couldn’t remember it. And still couldn’t breathe: his lungs worked, but his mask wasn’t allowing in any air—
He pulled off the mask, drew in a breath: ragged, tight, insufficient, but he could feel his ability to reason returning. The smell of the environment rushed in at him as he sat up, turned the mask over to inspect the filter warning indicator: had the filters failed, clogged?
The indicator’s small panel was still green. But whatever else was happening, it wasn’t allowing air into his lungs. Protocol was to never crack the hermetic seal on the filter compartment, but the resulting contamination wasn’t going to kill him any faster than outright suffocation, and he had to get moving. No time for a better plan: he popped open the filter compartment.
The first thing he noticed was that the wires leading from the filter sensor to the indicator had been cut and reattached so that the sensor had no power and the indicator would always read green. In the next moment, he saw that the filters were resting low in the compartment, almost as if—
He pulled out the filters: they had been shaved to half thickness, and the back side of them, the part that was in contact with the native air, was caked with green mold. Riordan shuddered, tossed the mask away, felt nauseous:
there are a lot of ways to die, but betrayal by a friend, a team-mate, may be the worst.
So: the traitor had gotten a hold of his filter mask at some point, sabotaged it. But when, and who? Caine tried to think back along the events of the past two weeks—
But couldn’t. Possibly because he was still bleary from the pain and near-asphyxiation, but also because he was unable to still the contest between his most primitive impulse
—screw this; you’ve got to run now!—
and his rational impulse
—take a few seconds, because if you run into the traitor, you’d better know it
.
He closed his eyes, tried to push his mind past the fog that kept him from disciplining it.
But nothing. And even when he abandoned trying to figure out who had done this to him, he was too tired to think of any course of action, any plan, other than running as far and as fast as he could. The mind that had always been ready with options and alternatives was now just a froth of disorganized facts and memories. He kept trying to pull up a stratagem, a new approach to the current crisis, but it was like trying to draw water from a well that you could see was dry: no matter how many times you lowered the bucket, that repetitive act just didn’t bring up any water. He tried to rise, discovered that his limbs were all at once heavy but somewhat insensate, wondered how long he’d been sitting, dazed.
The southern edge of the glade rustled. He turned in that direction, tried rising again, fell on his side, wheezing—as Keith Macmillan came bounding out of the bush, florid, shiny with sweat. He saw Caine, froze, then rushed over. “What the hell—? Where’s your mask, Riordan? Are yuh daft? You’ll—”
“It was killing me.” Caine gestured toward where it lay in the low fronds. Macmillan stared, frowned; his teeth gritted. “Right. We’ve got to get you out of here, Caine.”
“No. You can still run. Better if. We split. Up.”
“Nonsense.” Macmillan rushed over to the packs. “I’m traveling pretty light, now. Fired the rifle dry. Tossed it. Only weapons we have left are these bloody combitools.” He grabbed one, snagged some rations as well. “Now let’s get you moving.”
Riordan knew he should reject the offer, order Keith to go on his own, but whatever part of his mind elevated rationality and duty by suppressing primal self-interest, failed. He tried to rise, did, then staggered and fell flat on his ass.
How dignified.
Keith strode over quickly. “Here, I can help.” He reached out a hand—but before Riordan could clasp it, Macmillan’s thick paw grabbed his duty suit. His other arm slammed the combitool down into Caine’s left tibia.
Pain shot up and outward from the shattered bone. Riordan vomited as he fell backward, the treetops spinning around his narrowed field of vision.
“Wh-why?” he asked the sky, since he could not see Macmillan and was sure that if he moved his head, he would vomit again.
Macmillan sounded like he might cry. “Because they might want you alive, damn it.”
Caine seemed to dip down into and then rise up out of a heavy, hot fog; he wondered if he had blacked out momentarily. “No—why, why betray us? Betray Earth? You’re—you’re IRIS.”
“I’m a father before I’m anything else, Caine. And I wish it was me lying there. I surely, bitterly do.” His voice was choked, may have stifled a sob.
Riordan rolled his head around, fought through the pain to frame a question. “What do you mean, a father?”
Macmillan rose, listened for something in the bush, then crouched back down. “This time last year, I was just a highly trained grunt from Dundee with a wife and a daughter in Aberdeen. I’d been sent to Australia during the war. I was security for where the Dornaani were being stashed; we called it Spookshow Prime. That was where I met Downing and Rinehart, heard about you, was recruited into IRIS to be back-up security to Sigma Draconis. But I was granted leave, first.”
Macmillan’s voice became thick. “There was no external communications at Spookshow Prime, so the first I knew of my daughter’s leukemia was when I walked through the door to surprise my family.” He choked, went on. “Quite a surprise. She’d been a solid little tomboy when I left; less than half a year later, she was a wee ghost of a thing. ‘A highly aggressive and unusual sub-variety,’ they said of the leukemia.”
He spat. “It was their way of saying they’d never seen it’s like before. And I found out soon enough why they hadn’t. First time I took her for one of her follow-ups and treatments, some unctuous bastard of a suit sidled up to me in the waiting room. ‘It’s a shame so many of the children here don’t have a chance,’ he says. ‘How fortunate that your daughter does.’ I stared at him, because it was the only alternative to beating him senseless. And that’s when he put the hook in: he had a treatment. Highly effective, he said. Almost miraculously so.”
Macmillan ground his fingers together until they were white on the handle of the combitool. “I knew what I was agreeing to. But I would have done anything for my little Katie. Anything. And by the time I left, she was running around the house like a wild thing, once again.” He smiled and tears ran down his face. “Complete remission, they said. A miracle, they called it.” He looked at Riordan. “These people—whoever or whatever has infiltrated and infected CoDevCo and other megacorporations—are bloody monsters. There’s nothing they won’t do.” He stood, wielded the combitool, stared at Caine for several seconds. “Since the regret of a damned man isn’t worth a pin, I can only offer you one thing you might value.”
“What’s that?”
“I can kill you, make it look like I had no choice. Better that than—”
The ferns on the southern side of the glade whispered apart: Pandora Veriden emerged from between the leaves, frowning. “You bastard. You fucking bastard,” she whispered. Riordan wasn’t sure whether she was cursing at Macmillan’s perfidy, or annoyance at her own inability to sneak up on him silently.
Macmillan stood. “Guilty as charged, Ms. Veriden.” He studied her, saw what Caine had noticed immediately as well: she no longer had her rifle. The flaps of her bandolier were all open; she too, had shot her weapon dry. Without turning back toward Caine, he strode steadily, even grimly in her direction.
And stopped when a water strider crashed into the clearing from the east, evidently having followed Caine’s path. The huge creature surveyed the tableau, snuffled in Caine’s direction, emitted a vaguely distressed grunt.
Riordan knew that Veriden was fast, but had never realized just how fast: before Macmillan had recovered from his surprise, she had sprinted to the strider, bumped into its leg. It was startled but did not flinch away as Dora remained in contact with, and seemed to rub herself against, that faintly shaggy leg. Then she darted toward the survival packs.
But Macmillan jumped to interpose himself between that source of combitools and Dora. She shied back, tried circling around to get at them; he shifted with her, slipped the hammer covering off his tool. Now he had an axe.
Dora glanced at it. “You’re crazy if you think they’re going to let you live.”
“Who?”
“Whoever bought you, asshole. You think you can get rid of us and return home as the sole survivor of the legation? That you alone, Ishmael, have lived to tell the tale? Bullshit: you’re a loose end. They’re going to snip you off.”
“Maybe so, maybe not. They may have other uses for me. Hardly matters, though. My Katie is cured. Nothing else—”
Veriden feinted left, lunged right toward the handle of the closest combitool. But Macmillan was quicker than he looked, too; the axe head swept around so fast that it whistled. Veriden had to bend back sharply at the waist to avoid it. She danced away; he side-stepped warily forward.
Veriden studied Macmillan carefully, then glanced at Riordan, who saw that, in a split second of partial distraction, she was computing odds, making a decision. She dodged in toward Macmillan, who swung at her again, but missed more widely. Eyes narrowed, calculating, she studied the big Scotsman closely. Then she glanced over at Caine, nodded briefly, and darted for the tree line on the west side of the glade.
Whatever Macmillan had been expecting, it obviously had not been that. Looking quickly from the leaves shuddering where Veriden had plunged through them, and where Caine lay wheezing and bloody, he grimaced. “Bollocks,” he muttered and turned to sprint after Dora.
Riordan felt as though he might vomit again, pushed that feeling away, looked around. What could he do? He had no weapons and he couldn’t flee anymore. Maybe he could hide—?
He turned toward the northeast edge of the glade. The group had scouted this site quickly—they’d had little chance to do otherwise—but there were two bumbershoots which had fallen, side by side, just inside that tree line, with a sizable depression between them. Riordan frowned: the chance that an enemy would fail to detect him there was next to zero—
He angrily dismissed that thought: there was no other plan.
And odds that are
slightly
better than zero are, well, better than zero.
Gritting his teeth against the pain of dragging his broken left tibia behind him, Riordan began to crawl the ten meters toward the fallen bumbershoots.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Southern extents of the Third Silver Tower; BD +02 4076 Two (“Disparity”)
Dora Veriden sprinted hard for the far inland clearing where Riordan had sent Nasr Eid to stand watch on that flank.
Most likely to keep him out of the way of people who can stand up in a fight.
But now, Eid—and what he was overseeing—might just be her salvation.
Well, that and Macmillan’s physical condition. He was a big man, but beefy; a bear, not a tiger. And she could outrun a bear. All day long, if she needed to. But she didn’t have all day.
She stopped, caught her breath, listened. Yes, there was Macmillan, bashing his way through the brush, following the trail she was carefully leaving for him to follow.
Keep running, big guy; keep pushing and sweating and gasping.
She angled away from Eid’s position:
can’t get there too soon. Have to make sure Macmillan is exhausted, first. So let’s you and I take the scenic route, you traitorous asshole.
Dora stretched her almost disproportionately long legs into an easy, deerlike stride. As she ran, she chose her path by the terrain: first a patch of rough ground, then a large clearing—
yeah, you’ll see that and try to make up the distance between us by sprinting
. She stopped again, listened for Macmillan’s approach, heard it faintly.
He’s less tired than I thought; probably got a little stamina back when he was talking with Riordan. Well, you’ll be running out of that second wind any time now. And you can’t afford to let me go, can you? Not only would that displease your masters, but knowing your story, I might pop up on Earth someday, surrounded by Slaasriithi diplomats and ruin you. Or your sacred memory, if the bastards who hired you clean up their loose ends.
Dora swung back toward the clearing where Nasr Eid was waiting. Or rather, where he was supposed to be waiting.
Either way, though, that little glade is the ace up my sleeve.
From the start, she had been worried that the unknown traitor might become active once the attackers arrived. So she had not gone immediately when Riordan had sent them to their first defensive positions, but had lagged behind, had heard Caine instruct Nasr “to watch a large clearing that is on our other flank—and you’ll have some local help.” Intrigued, she had stayed around long enough to learn about the nature of that local help. And now she was very glad that she had.
Macmillan’s thumping progress was a bit louder.
Good; spend yourself.
She picked up the pace: she’d need a few extra minutes to locate Nasr and set her plan in motion.
She scanned for anything that would serve as a reasonable weapon as she ran, but was disappointed: no serviceable rocks amongst the few she passed, and the plants on this planet did not tend toward hardwoods with heavy branches or shoots. No crude clubs or spears lying ready to hand, therefore.
As she neared the clearing, she called out to Nasr, concerned that if she approached too quietly, he’d be startled, let out a shout, and ruin
everything
.
Eid responded, rising up from the blind that the convectorae has fashioned for him. “Ms. Veriden, what has happened? I have heard much shooting and then—”
“The battle is not over yet, but it will be soon. You only have to do one thing.”
Eid visibly shivered. “And what is that?”
“Run through the bait zone.”
Nasr turned, eyed the winding path she had indicated. “I am not sure if—”
“Nasr, have the Slaasriithi biomarkings ever failed to work? And you got a special dose from Unsymaajh, so you are perfectly safe. So what I want you to do is run down that path”—she took his arm, both leading him in that direction and blending the tracks she was leaving with his—“and keep running. As far and as fast as you can.”
That’s probably what you’re best at, from what I’ve seen.
“But what good does—?”
“Just do it.” He looked uncertain. Time to change the incentive. “Nasr, if you do this, it’s a near-certainty that you’ll survive this battle.”
Eid’s eyes widened. He turned and raced down the path, flinching as he traversed the bait ground. Which of course, elicited no response, thanks to Unsymaajh’s marking.
Dora retraced her progress, backed up by stepping into each of the tracks she had made just before. When she drew alongside a thick patch of foliage, she took a wide sideways step off the path, ensuring that the first footprint she made in leaving her prior tracks was obscured behind a sizable frond. She moved carefully into the taller growth, checking to make sure she left no obvious trace of her exit from the main trail. Paralleling it, she crept to a position seven meters back from the bait ground. Once there, she lowered herself into a sprinter’s crouch, calmed her breathing, and listened.
She didn’t have long to wait. Macmillan, thrashing his way through the closely spaced bushes and fronds, was audible fifty meters away. At thirty he slowed, then stopped.
Probably sees the clearing up ahead. Figuring out how he wants to approach it.
Which prompted Dora to review what she knew of her adversary: a career soldier, tough, smart, a little past his prime, probably chosen for the legation because despite a few extra pounds, he had absolute determination. And, they had probably thought, absolute integrity. But whatever his fitness or ethical flaws might be, he was a dangerous opponent: quick reflexes, even if he wasn’t a particularly fast runner, and daunting upper body strength coupled with some kind of martial arts training. But, looking at his build, she eliminated a variety of styles of self-defense: anything that required extreme flexibility of the torso, or relied heavily on kicking, was unlikely. He was too heavily built for the first, and didn’t have the leg snap for the latter. Which, together with his exhaustion, determined her tactics.
Pandora Veriden was not accustomed to being surprised; indeed, she prided herself on not being subject to that reaction. Consequently, she was not only alarmed but annoyed when she heard a dried frond snap very nearby. Rather than turn her head, she moved her eyes in that direction.
Keith Macmillan had clearly seen her path, but had been cautious in following it; he was paralleling it four meters to the right. Which would bring him within three meters of where she was crouching.
Damn it; can I take him here? In this thicket? Can’t tell. Just gotta wait and see what he does.
Macmillan, surprisingly stealthy, was unable to fully conceal his labored breathing as he approached and passed within two meters of where Dora was crouched behind a fan-shaped fern. He stopped a meter further on. Dora could see his feet under the lowest leaf covering her: he was still facing further along the trail she had made—well, the one Nasr Eid had made at her behest. Which meant he was looking at the tight foliage hemming in the bait ground.
She waited, ignored the sweat running down from her brow, her armpits.
Okay, Macmillan, so you’re trying to calculate if that brush is so thick that it would obstruct a surprise attack, prevent an ambush. And you’re balancing that against your tactical training and instincts: to never take an apparently unavoidable path. But the clock is ticking, you’re exhausted, and if you don’t have my head on a stake when you meet your masters—
Macmillan slipped out of the undergrowth and back on to the trail, glancing at the scattered leaves and bent fronds that marked Nasr’s passage. Decided, he hefted his combitool and moved forward quickly, entering the bait ground.
Macmillan got three meters further along the path before a thin, shrill keening rose around him. Surprised, puzzled, he stopped, lifted the axe—
And was suddenly at the center of a cloud of what looked like flying, fanged salamanders with far too many eyes. Landing in his hair, on his florid face and arms, they began biting, darting off, flying back in for another mouthful. Macmillan swung the axe fruitlessly—
Despite the uneven ground and obtruding foliage, Dora sprinted the twelve yards separating them in just over four seconds. He clearly heard something behind him; he’d half turned when her flying kick hit him like a jackhammer, dropping him. She rolled up, backed away—and was surprised at how fast Macmillan recovered. But he was being swarmed by flying, biting salamanders, and Dora was not. A few ventured near her but, upon coming closer—particularly where she’d rubbed up against the water-strider—they shied away with an annoyed snap of their translucent wings. Macmillan feinted with the axe; she backed up a step, but did not watch his eyes, or even his elbows. Peripherally, her attention was riveted on his feet: where and when he commited to an attack with an axe would be decisively signaled by his stance.
Macmillan was sly; he shuffle-stepped. But Dora had been in far too many melees to be taken in; the arch of his first foot remained high when his toes hit the ground, a physical sign that this was not to be his last step.
He swung, missed, planted his feet as he pulled back the axe to swing again.
Gotcha.
With Macmillan’s body twisted away, the axe still cocking back for a lethal blow, Dora jumped in with a side-kick that punched directly into her opponent’s kneecap. He yowled, faltered; she let split-second instinct inform her that there was no ruse in either, and followed with the hardest spinning roundhouse she could deliver.
An idiot attack, really, unless you know—
know
—you have the time to deliver it.
At which point, it was like hitting your adversary with a sledgehammer.
Which was the result. With his knee already buckling at an unnatural angle, the kick caught Macmillan in the ribs. Two snaps—one small and reedy, the other heavier—accompanied the impact. Dora both grimaced and grinned:
lost my little toe; he lost his ribs. I’ll take the trade.
Macmillan had also lost the grip on his weapon; Veriden kicked it away. When he brought his head up—eyes desperate, pleading—she gauged his probable reach, danced to the outside of his left arm and front-kicked him square in the face. He went back with a grunt, his eyes unsteady.
Good
, she thought, pushing away some of her sweaty hair.
Now, to get permanent control of the situation—
* * *
The howl of pain with which Macmillan came back to his senses was sure to call down his employers, so Dora made her speech quickly. “So how’s it feel having a freshly broken leg, bitch?”
Macmillan’s face was a rictus of pain; his left tibia was not merely broken, but splintered. A tooth of bone peeked through the savage wound.
“So here’s what I want to know, loving father: when your leash-holders come and find their dog laid out, immovable, what do you think they’re going to do? Take you back so you can lick your wounds in their kennel?”
“Don’t care,” Macmillan groaned. “Did this. For. Katie.”
“Yeah, well, I hope it was worth it. You’ve killed a lot of good people. Well, I’ve got to get going; don’t want to be here when your owners show up and find I’ve lamed their bitch.” She turned and darted out the other side of the bait ground, his curses following her. She ran until he was completely out of sight, then doubled back and padded toward her first ambush point, but further into the woods, virtually invisible behind the canopy of a small cone-tree.
Dora only had to wait two minutes before she saw the first signs of the attackers; movement in the brush on the eastern side of the glade. Meaning they had probably not found Riordan; if they had stumbled across that first clearing, they would have seen and followed the trail that she and Macmillan had left. Which means they would have entered this glade from the north.
It was another minute before two clones emerged, sweeping the tree line with their weapons, then staring at the occasional winged newt-gators that landed on Macmillan, took a savage tear at his flesh, and flew off again. The Scotsman, between swatting them away and occasional groans, produced and choked down a mix of pills that looked like painkillers and the amphetamines that Riodan had been popping.
After walking the perimeter of the clearing, and detecting where Dora’s and Macmillan’s tracks had entered it, the clones waved an all-clear. Four more figures entered the open space.
Dora did not even have to think about identifying their leader. His weapon, a liquimix Jufeng, marked his status as clearly as his height and distinctive facial features: angular, with prominent cheekbones and a high forehead. Not only taller than the clones, he had the tigerlike build of a decathlete on steroids. The clones hung at his heels, alert to his commands, like a pack of hounds following a hunter.
The leader approached Macmillan, gestured for him to be pulled beyond the ready reach of his winged tormentors, looked down at the broken man.
“You are Macmillan.” It was a statement that bordered on a question as he assessed the man’s shattered leg. “You have been bested in a fight. And you have failed in your mission.”
Macmillan gasped out responses through his pain. “I performed the instructions I decrypted from the file that your people added to my palmtop, the one that was in my coldcell. I got rid of the first saboteur after he crippled the Slaasriithi ship. I sabotaged the group as best I could down here, made their leader sick—”
“Not so sick that he couldn’t mount a disappointingly effective defense. Well, let us call it a delaying action. The automated weapons platform we found: it was of Slaasriithi manufacture?”
“Yes. They brought it up about an hour before you arrived. There was no way for me to—”
“Failure is failure,” the leader decreed. “I understand what you attempted to do: cripple them, yet keep them together so we could easily locate and exterminate them.”
“Yes, after
you
failed to take care of them in orbit and the legation split up. After that, I had no way of getting the job done myself. There were too many survivors planet-side, and Riordan and Veriden were both dangerous enough on their own. No opportunity arose where I could be sure of killing one without the other being aware that I had done it. And then I would have had to kill the second one and finish off all the other survivors. So I did the one thing that ensured they would all be destroyed: I remained with them. So I could be your beacon.”