Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake

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Title : #15.5 : MID-WAKE

Series : Survivalist

Author(s) : Jerry Ahern

Location : Gillian Archives

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His right forefinger moved along the ribbed surface from outer lip to suture, dwelling for a moment in the recurve of the spire, then moving to the apex and stopping there. The interior surface of his right thumb settled at the inner Up. He raised the object gently and studied it minutely. A simple univalve, not yet polished smooth by the cocoa-colored wet sand which still clung to it. John Rourke looked to the south and west. The sun washed the Yellow Sea with orange light. He remembered once, a very long time ago, picking up a large shell his father had brought back from “somewhere in the Carribean, John” and placing it beside his ear. He had heard then the same sound which he heard now, but now it seemed all around him.

John Rourke crouched nearer the advancing white froth, his right knee almost touching the surf, his right hand still holding the seashell. It had recently been placed here, and the organism which had lived inside it was not some relic from another age. The sea was alive.

She was almost a quarter mile down along the beach. Rourke watched her, the water seeming hesitant as it raced toward her, then slowed, then retreated. He let the shell fall from his fingers, washing his hand of sand in the cold water. The surf reached out to her, he realized, as he had always reached out to her. Uncertainly. Reaching, drawing back, afraid of her touch.

Rourke rose to his full height, his shoulders shifting under the weight of the double shoulder holsters and the

pistols which they carried. The wind was rising, a fine mist on the air, and he turned up the collar of his leather jacket against it. He found the battered Zippo in a thigh pocket of his Levis and drew a thin, dark cigar from his shirt pocket. The tip was already excised and he bit down on it, and cupped the lighter in his hands. He rolled the striking wheel under his thumb, his eyes squinted behind his dark-lensed sunglasses, watching Natalia across the blue-yellow flame.

John Rourke chewed down on the cigar, rolling it into the left corner of his mouth, cupping the cigar beneath his right hand. He watched her. His left thumb hooked between the haft of his knife and the black leather sheath’s belt loop.

He watched her… .

He watched her. She was dressed in some sort of battle gear, Kerenin surmised. The jacket she wore was black, like the rest of her clothing. The jacket was wide open, a holster on each hip holding it back. The wind caught her hair as he studied her, her hair almost black as well. The helmet rangefighter’s LCD readout put her at 125 meters. He touched his chest pack. Her face came toward him on zoom. She was exquisite. And she was not Chinese.

A white female who was some sort of warrior? The high, black boots—they looked to be made of some smooth substance. What was called leather perhaps. The hairless skin of a dead animal. Though unlike these, which shone with the ebbing sunlight, the footgear of the Chinese soldiers were of this substance. This woman was long-legged. Her stride was purposeful, like a man’s stride. Kerenin felt a smile come to his lips.

He tucked fully beneath the waves, feeling his wings fanning outward. He drew his gloved fingers together, the fingers linked and drew himself downward, kicking, the wings responding as he rolled and settled to the shallow bottom of the shelf. His men waited, their transparent hydrogen-powered wings gently pulsating, keeping them

erect. He glided toward them on the blades of his flippers, his wings compensating for his buoyancy. The six leaders moved closer to him and they all placed their helmets near one another, huddling. It was the only way to be heard.

Olav Kerenin spoke. “Select six men. There is a woman walking alone on the beach and I wish her apprehended so I may interrogate her. Alexandre—you will lead this detail.”

“Yes, comrade major.” His youngest lieutenant nodded, carbon dioxide bubbling from the escape valve in the crown of his helmet as he spoke. “But Comrade Major Kerenin—six men plus myself for only one Chinese woman?”

“She is not Chinese, Alexandre.” There were murmurs from the other men huddled with him, a sea of bubbles surrounding him. “And she is armed. Use extreme caution that she is not injured.” Kerenin dismissed the woman from his thoughts, and Alexandre’s question as well. The man at his right had spoken not at all. Kerenin addressed him. “Boris—you will lead the raid against the Chinese power installation. No prisoners unless an officer or a recognizably important civilian.”

“Yes, comrade major.”

“Comrades, you have your orders. See to them.” Kerenin’s wings opened wider as he pushed off toward the surface, the two Spetznas who always accompanied him rising from the ranks below and flanking him. Beneath him the others were dispersing, Captain Boris Feyedorovitch marshaling the other four officers to him, Alexandre selecting six men for his mission on the beach. Alexandre looked up and signaled the men of his unit to follow as he started for the surface. Kerenin let the young officer and six Spetznas pass, hovering instead over the staging area, his own two men still flanking him.

The hydrogen extractors on the “Iron Dolphins” were revving up, men making last-minute equipment checks of the cargo bays, then positioning themselves behind them, others straddling their machines and jump-starting them. Boris Feyedorovitch was hovering some ten meters below

Kerenin, at his unit’s right flank. Feyedorovitch made hand and arm signals, the Iron Dolphins fanning outward as they started along the shelf toward the land-point a kilometer away. Kerenin checked his wrist chronometer. On schedule, perfectly so. Thanks to the Iron Dolphins they would be at the land point in just under five minutes.

Kerenin started for the surface, not quite Breaking Atmosphere, his two men flanking him, holding his breath and drawing himself into the shallows of the surf so he could remove his helmet without flooding its interior. This made for some considerable discomfort, the dampness always unnerving to him. He had voluntarily undergone hypnotherapy and no longer—at least consciously—feared Leak.

He could see the woman more closely now, perhaps a quarter kilometer away. He raised to his knees in the surf, separating helmet from suit. It was necessary to dip his face into the water again to breathe. As he raised his head, he at last had the seal and opened it, removing the helmet, exhaling, then inhaling deeply, feeling the slight burning sensation in his throat and nasal passages that was the usual thing when one shifted from derived oxygen to atmosphere. He signaled the two flanking men to spread out to either side.

He looked further out into the surf. Alexandre and his men were Breaking Atmosphere, some already with their helmets removed, others with their pistols drawn, but Alexandre signaled them to put the weapons away.

The woman seemed not to have yet noticed Alexandre and his six Spetznas. She was still walking, more slowly now. Kerenin thought he could detect her sweeping her hands back through her hair. The wind here chilled the exposed skin of his face, but his body was warm in the Environment Suit. He started trudging up through the surf, to get a closer look.

The woman saw them now.

They charged toward her, bright steel flashing in the woman’s hands from the holsters at her hips. There was an earsplitting roar as a tongue of fire licked from one of

! the objects, and Kerenin realized it was a handgun. One of ‘ his Spetznas pitched backward into the sand as Alexandre and the other five men swarmed toward her. There was another shot, and one of the Spetznas stumbled and fell forward, his right leg twisting beneath him. Kerenin, his helmet going to his left hand, broke into a run along the boundary of the surf, his other hand going to the holster at his right thigh but not yet freeing his weapon. His two men drew closer to him now.

The woman’s pistols discharged again, Kerenin seeing the flashes in the twilight grayness as two of the Spetznas threw themselves against her.

As he neared them, he could see the woman, her guns gone but back on her feet, her body moving fast, her hands moving, one of the Spetznas who had brought her down cartwheeling head over heels into the sand.

And then in her right hand, as she edged away from Alexandre and the three men still standing, he saw a flash of steel. It was a—it was a knife, but unlike any he had ever seen, opening and closing as it sang through the air before her, like a shield rather than a weapon, separating her from the three Spetznas and their unit leader, but unlike shield or weapon somehow a living thing in her hand.

Kerenin moved in from the water, knowing he was indulging in morbid fascination. The woman was a fighting machine. Already, one of his Spetznas had sustained injuries from her knife. The man had fallen to his knees, crawling away along the beach as Alexandre and the remaining two men backed away from her, drew their sidearms, and then slowly closed around her. She wheeled, vaulted, feigned a thrust, keeping Alexandre and the two remaining men off balance. The third Spetznas was on his feet again, his right arm limp at his side, a piece of driftwood in his upraised left hand like a club.

Kerenin was about to signal his two flankers to join the fight, and had already started to push away from the rocks beside which he stood. But now there was another man, tall, lean, long-legged, and looking well-muscled, streak—

ing along the beach toward Kerenin’s four men and the woman. The man wore a jacket of brown leather and faded blue pants and military boots. His eyes were shielded by dark-lensed goggles of a type Kerenin had never seen. The injured Spetznas swung his improvised club downward. The newcomer broke his stride, throwing something from the left corner of his mouth—smoke or steam issued from the man’s lips, eddied, and dissipated in the air as in that split second pistols in both the man’s hands discharged.

The driftwood club shattered, the already wounded Spetznas pitched into the sand. The woman fought like a cornered shark—her right hand lashed out, the knife opening and closing, opening, a scream from one of the two Spetznas still standing, his body tumbling back.

Kerenin heard the soft phutting sound of Alexandre’s pistol, the woman wheeling toward him, slashing toward Alexandre with her knife. If one of the darts had hit her, the adrenalin rush she experienced must have delayed any reaction to it. But then the woman stumbled, fell forward, tried pushing herself up, the knife still in her right fist, then fell again.

The running man who had fired his handguns charged toward Alexandre and the two Spetznas, his pistols discharging twice more, one of the Spetznas going down. He wheeled toward Alexandre. Kerenin began to draw his sidearm, signaled his two flanking men into the fray. As the running man fired again, the already wounded, twice-fallen Spetznas rolled his body against the newcomer’s legs from behind, the running man’s pistol shots going wild as he stumbled, fell back.

Alexandre vaulted toward the newcomer, then suddenly Alexandre’s body was sailing over the newcomer and into the sand. Kerenin’s two men charged the newcomer, the man already to his feet, his pistols gone, sidestepping one of Kerenin’s men, wheeling half right, his left foot catching the second man in the groin. The newcomer wheeled again and as he turned toward the second of Kerenin’s men, there was a knife in his right hand, of huge propor

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tions. The knife hand moved upward. Kerenin’s man drew his sidearm. The man moved so quickly Kerenin’s could not be certain what he was doing—but Kerenin’s man screamed, blood spurting from his throat and vomiting from his mouth, his body flopping face forward into the sand.

Kerenin ran from the rocks now, his sidearm in his right hand. He steadied his pistol. The newcomer ducked, Kerenin firing, missing, the newcomer rising to his full height now, his pistols retrieved from the sand, held tight at his sides. The pistols discharged, one of the Spetznas who had accompanied Alexandre dropping his knife, clasping both hands to his abdomen, his legs torn out from under him, falling.

The man turned toward Alexandre, who was leveling his pistol to fire. Kerenin fired, then again. The newcomer fired. Alexandre’s body lurched back into the sand. Kerenin fired again, the newcomer stumbling forward, both pistols discharging into the sand. Kerenin’s man was up, his helmet in his right hand, crashing it down across the head and neck of the newcomer. The newcomer rolled into the sand, firing his pistols, Kerenin’s man falling back. Kerenin was up, running. The newcomer was struggling to his knees, the right side of his face streaming blood from a wound near his temple, one of the darts protruding from the back of his neck. Then the newcomer’s pistols fell from his hands and he dropped into the sand on his face. Kerenin slowed, and those Spetznas who still could closed in, some holding wounded limbs against the pain.

The newcomer rolled on his left side, his right hand groping for the dart in his neck, tearing it from his flesh. He lurched forward into the sand, his right hand groping. His fist closed over the haft of his massive knife and he tried to raise it. Kerenin’s right foot snapped out, impacting the newcomer near the still-bleeding wound at his temple.