by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 7, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Voychek stood at the edge of the crater, heavy boots slowly sinking into the dusty surface as he surveyed the damaged instrumentation balloon below. He could feel the wind whip frozen particles the size of grain pellets in torrents around him, the staccato beating against his suit muffled by the hardened exterior.
His suit was virtually impenetrable. The balloon, however, hadn’t done nearly as well.
Grunting, he half walked, half skied down the gradual slope of the crater wall, stopping when he reached the equipment pod. The meter plus wide spherical canister appeared to have clipped a sheer face as it fell, the top having been sliced off neatly, coming to rest a dozen metres away from the rest of the container and its battered contents.
Further still lay the harness that had attached the balloon to the equipment pack, now limp in the dust, the risers and lines splayed out, the burners torn off and the silver expanse of fabric fluttering limply in the solar wind, its skirt and lower panels shredded like so much swiss cheese.
Voychek walked to the canister lid and kicked down hard on one edge, the piece bouncing up into his waiting hand as though it were a skateboard and he a free-wheeling teenager.
He chuckled, dropping the shell back into the dust and again kicking hard at its edge, flipping it up into his hand.
From the command tower, his compatriots watched in puzzlement through long glasses.
“What the hell is he doing out there?” The balding Dominic scratched his head absently.
“Who knows, who cares. Not my problem until he brings that gear back in for me to fix.” Chase turned his back on the large observation panel and walked away.
Outside, Voychek threw the sliced off section of shell face down in the dust where the harness lay, then stood on it, wedging his boots between the cross-bracing and turning the toes out to grip the panel. Bending, he picked up the harness leads and flicked them, as one might coax a horse to action by snapping its reins.
The lead lines rippled outwards, lifting the tattered fabric out of the dust only momentarily.
Voychek snapped the lines again, then pulled back hard, the tension pulling a larger section of fabric into the inhospitable atmosphere where the whipping wind snatched at it. The increased pressure filled the section, pulling it further off the ground and taking up the slack in the risers and lines with considerable force.
Voychek tensed, heels pushed hard into the plate beneath him, holding steady in the shifting surface dust. Knees bent, arms straining he coaxed the battered balloon fabric higher off the ground until it cleared the crater lip and caught the full force of the wind whipping above it.
Voychek shot forward like a rocket, instinctively turning himself and angling the board so he was being pulled along sideways. Digging in at the last possible instant, he used his forward momentum to climb the side of the crater wall diagonally, and worried for several long seconds as he shot vertically out of the crater, high above the surface, still travelling forward at great speed before gravity brought him back down hard. He tucked into a crouch to take up the impact, then bounced back up to skim across the landscape throwing great plumes of dust out behind him.
From the observation deck, Dominic lowered his long glass and smiled.
“Don’t expect Voychek back anytime soon. Looks like before he salvages any of the equipment, he’s going to salvage what’s left of his afternoon.”
As Voychek raced towards the horizon Dominic added “He might be calling for a ride.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 16, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The soldier sat on the corner of his footlocker in the virtually empty barracks, the barrel of his sidearm pressed against his temple.
A respectful distance away, Major Ramses watched the younger man calmly, speaking in soothing tones with a Southern accent.
“Son, you don’t have to do this. There are people here that can help you, whatever it is you’re feeling…”
The soldier cut him off. “That’s the problem, sir. I don’t feel. There are soldiers in my unit that bleed, that scream, that cry sometimes when people die, but I don’t do any of that. And then there’s this.” He trailed off and raised his left arm into the light. Where the skin had been burned away, metal braided fabric showed through underneath. “I don’t know what the hell I am, but I’m sure as hell not one of you.”
Ramses raised his shoulders in a shrug. “Don’t be so sure,” he chuckled. “Look, son, we’ve been patching you boys up with all kinds of new medical tech. You got shot up pretty bad, and you were out for a while. The docs did the best they could do for you, and look at you. You’ve got a fully functioning arm, no missing pieces. The skin will grow back, or we’ll graft it fresh if it doesn’t. New parts don’t make you any less of a soldier, any less of a man.”
“What’s my name? My tags say Walton, Emmett J., but I don’t remember that. I don’t remember where I came from. If I dug through the skin on my chest, would I find metal there too? I expect I would. I’m not a messed up man, I’m messed up, but I’m no man. Why can’t I even pull the trigger on this thing?”
Emmett pushed the gun hard into the flesh of his scalp, straining with visible effort to pull the trigger, but his trigger finger wouldn’t budge. Gradually he slid the barrel up until it cleared his short cut hair and without hesitation his finger responded, firing off a round into the bunk beside him, the flash burning a path across the top of his skull. He quickly pushed the gun back to the side of his head and tried again to no avail.
“If I was human, I could end this. I don’t know what the hell I am, sir, but if I was human, I could end this right now.”
Again, his slid the barrel up the curve of his scalp until the barrel cleared the top of his skull and squeezed off a second round.
Neither man flinched as he jammed the still hot barrel into his cheek, the flesh singeing beneath the metal.
Major Ramses considered the soldier for a moment, and then spoke almost in a whisper.
“Sicherheit deaktivieren. Sicherheitsautorisierung echo november delta.”
Walton’s German was rusty, and as he traced a line up the side of his face with the barrel of his gun, he worked out ‘Safety’ and ‘Authorization’, and the acronym was easy…
The weapon fired again, the bullet tearing into the soft tissue and stopping cold against his armoured brainpan, the recoil and impact tearing the weapon from his hand.
“I’m sorry son, but even if I let you do it, won’t do you no damn good.” He shook his head in resignation. “We’ll get someone down here to patch up your software. Can’t have you breaking down in a platoon with meat-bags in it, you’ll upset morale something fierce.”
Walton sat startled, hand stinging and head ringing.
“At Ease soldier.” Ramses walked towards the barracks door, pausing only to add “Status-Herunterfahren”.
Behind him, Walton, Emmett J. slumped forward motionless, the haunted look in his eyes frozen in place.
by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 12, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Geff opened and closed his eyes. The darkness was absolute, so neither state made a difference. He could feel rather than hear the thin air screaming past his projectile encasement, launched as it was from near the edge of the atmosphere at a target halfway around the globe from where he strapped in.
If the engineers had missed one calculation, if the production crew had misaligned one scrap of material.
Now was not the time to think of such things.
Geff gauged the time from the insertion and readied himself for braking and impact, for it was the time to think of those things.
Anyone at the airfield looking at radar would see nothing, his vessel entirely organic. No metal, no electronics, a bernoulli laser guidance system lit the target and optics and thermally activated flaps course corrected on the way down.
It was the highest tech brute force incursion vehicle Geff had ever seen.
As pressure marked a set altitude, explosives deployed flaps and chute panels, slowing the multi mach decent rapidly, Geff feeling the crush of deceleration. Seconds ticked by, then the pressure eased as the panels disintegrated into dust, lost in the late evening cloud cover.
Geff bit into his mouthguard and let his body relax.
The missile struck behind hanger three, puncturing the ground and digging in nearly thirty feet. Inside the vessel, Geff decelerated the length of the capsule itself, the material beneath his feet collapsing into the crumple zone, gradually slowing him to merely a jarring thud as he reached the bottom and stopped.
For a long moment there was silence. Geff flexed. Feeling no broken bones, he relaxed.
“That was the easy part.”
Pushing at the capsule panel in front of him, he set off a series of charges around the outside of the craft, then pushed around until part of the shell broke away, finding himself with a rough access point into a maintenance tunnel. Uncanny precision.
Pulling himself through the opening and finding the tunnel empty he unholstered his Glock and set off along the route he’d been memorizing for weeks.
It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach the fueling tanks buried beneath the hanger floors, by which time he imagined a large contingent of soldiers would have gathered at the hole he created top side. He hoped the hole would have caved in on itself, masking the true nature of the impact.
Up a ladder into a brightly lit hallway. Geff worked his way carefully towards the pilot’s ready rooms without seeing anyone. Inside he secured a helmet and gloves which mated perfectly to his suit. Again, the depth of the intel and the precision of his engineering team was commendable.
Weapon stowed, gloved and helmeted he stepped out onto the hanger floor, walking purposefully towards the shimmering craft that rested on pedestals at its center. He couldn’t tell if he was being observed, as any look away from his target would show uncertainty and invite unwanted attention.
Geff reached the entrance to the craft without any resistance at all.
“This is almost too easy.” The thought troubled him, but he climbed inside, and with a brief struggle deciphering the glyphs and the Cyrillic translations tacked up beside them, he closed the outer door.
Geff moved quickly to the cockpit, studying the control surfaces and the scattered notes of the local engineers. Engrossed as he was he was startled by a voice inside his head.
“You intend to remove me from this place?”
“Yes, I certainly do.”
“Good. I wish to leave. What did you bring to free me?”
Geff stopped fumbling at the controls. This was a warplane he was stealing. Wasn’t it?
“What do you mean, you should be equipped with every weapon we need to blast out of here, that’s kind of the plan.”
Geff could feel a flood of disappointment and resignation in the voice inside his head as it spoke again.
“I suppose that means you’re a prisoner now too.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 8, 2011 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Jack shifted uncomfortably against the handcuffs, the straight back of the chair too wide against his shoulder-blades, the wood irritating through the thin fabric of his blazer.
“A little presumptuous thinking you could waltz in here and kill me,” the speaker’s voice high and feminine in stark contrast to the height and mass of his frame, “surely you don’t think me so stupid?”
Jack surveyed the room casually, gauging the distance between the pillars holding the glass ceiling aloft, to the hedgerow beyond, and to the fence line beyond that. He wasn’t cuffed to the chair, so if he tipped it forward, he could slip over and…
“Jack,” the man shook his head reproachfully, “there’s no point in plotting an escape. You can’t get out.” He smiled, running his carefully manicured fingers down the silk of his lapels. “Fitchburg and Sven designed this place themselves. Energy fields outside render me impervious to rockets, energy weapons,” he waved the Berretta he’d taken from Jack, “clumsy men with handguns. You could crash a heliocopter into the roof without causing serious damage,” he paused, his face pulling into a frown, “you’ll have to trust me on that one.”
From a vantage point more than a kilometer away, a third man opened a briefcase, assembling a long barreled rifle without looking, a ritual practiced to the point of reflex. Attaching a oversized scope to the rifle he took up position, located his target and waited.
“Mogilevich, you think you’re avtoritet – a leader, but you’re just a baklany, a punk. You think I’ll be the last one to come gunning for you? Maybe next time I’ll just lob a grenade through your front door.”
Mogilevich bristled at the open disrespect. “Your grenade would be detonated in your hand.”
From the hilltop far away, the rifleman smiled a half smile at the scene unfolding below. Jack was precisely where he gambled Jack would be. Several rounds of drinks were owed, as was the usual.
Mogilevich chuckled, turning his back on his prisoner and looking out into the darkness. “What to do with you, you tiresome thug.”
The rifleman judged the distance, the wind, accounted for the curvature of the landscape and the pull of gravity. A fourteen hundred meter shot would be a long one, but not unheard of. He’d shot farther, in heavier atmosphere. He laid the crosshairs on his target, adjusted, breathed out slowly and felt his heart beat slow. Beat, beat…, beat…, beat – squeeze. The sharp crack of the rifle still hung in the air as he began tearing the gun down again, returning it piece by piece to its case.
Mogilevich’s ears bristled at the sound, but stood amused as the air between he and the outer perimeter coalesced, the long brass bullet gradually slowing from its faster than sound entry velocity to come to a complete stop, suspended in mid air barely a foot in front of him.
Mogilevich chuckled, his chuckle turning to a deep belly laugh, his body shaking uncontrollably as tears streamed from his eyes.
“Two,” he gasped, pointing at Jack, “two failures out to kill me. This is an outrage.” His laughter settled into tentative chuckles as he plucked the stilled bullet from its flight path. “eight point six, seventy millimeter bullet? Lapua? American…”
He stopped speaking, his brain still processing thoughts, but no air moving through his voice-box with which to produce sound.
Jack leaned the chair forward until he could slide his hands up and over the back, then stepping through the cuffs to bring his hands in front of him he walked around so Mogilevich could see him.
“Cat got your tongue?” Jack was smiling now. “Contact poison, should keep you paralyzed for just long enough for you to asphyxiate.
Jack fished in the man’s pockets for keys with which he unlocked his cuffs and dropped them both back in his pocket.
“Love to hang around and chat, but you and me, this is razborka, we’re even. Now, dammit, I’ve got to go buy a man a drink.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Jun 22, 2011 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Antonio geared the big Mercedes down, slowing to a crawl before pulling off onto the loose gravel of the motel parking lot. He pulled around the end of the building to his usual parking spot in front of room one twenty five. His mistress never summoned him, he was going to make this inappropriate reversal of roles well worth the trip.
Pushing open the door he stepped into the room lit only from behind the partially closed bathroom door.
“You’d better not keep me waiting now, bitch!” He closed the door behind him, too late catching the brief flash of motion as something heavy met his head. The floor raced up and darkness took him.
Tenn pulled two chairs into the middle of the room facing each other, then picked up Antonio’s limp body and deposited him roughly in one. He bound him with nylon cord, arms first, then legs, then finally wrapping the cord around Antonio’s neck, looping it up around his face and forehead before securing it to the chair-back. Satisfied with his work, he placed a textured metal briefcase on the floor between them and pulled a paper shopping bag down over the bound man’s head.
Sitting in the chair opposite, he shook a Dunhill from a half empty pack, lit it and inhaled deeply.
Antonio woke slowly at first, then as the awareness of his situation set it, he jerked violently, the cord around his neck pulling tight.
“You son-of-a-bitch…” he started.
Tenn interrupted him by kicking him hard in the shins.
“This is where you shut up. If there’s a future for Antonio, Antonio needs to be quiet. Clear?”
Antonio started to protest, but Tenn’s heavily booted foot against his shin made him think better of it. He nodded instead.
Tenn opened the case on the floor and uncoiled a length of red surgical tubing truncated in a ten gauge needle. Without warning, he jammed the needle into Antonio’s thigh, ignoring the resulting yelp of surprised pain.
He uncoiled a second length, this one green, and carefully but quickly slipped the needle tip into a bulging vein in his own arm.
In the case was a control box with a single push button and a digital counter. Tenn pushed the button, and as the counter ticked off the digits from ten to zero, he sat back in his chair, closed his eyes, and waited.
“I kind of like your hooker friend, and your wife as well.” He spoke slowly, white heat crawling up his arm, across his chest and then radiating out through his body. Antonio shivered, urine soaking through his pants. “You’ll treat them better in future, of course.”
As they sat, Tenn visualized the photographs he’d collected of Antonio. Green eyes, the slicked back, neatly parted hair. Pencil mustache, perfect teeth in a wide, arrogant smile.
Creative visualization would make adjusting to the transition easier; he’d not looked at his own reflection in several months.
Muscle twitched and reconfigured itself as nano-tech coursed between the two men, reading DNA code from one and rearranging in the other. Tenn’s hair changed from blond to dark brown. He’d have to have it cut and styled, but there was time for that. Facial hair grew, beard and mustache together. He’d need to shave.
For hours they sat, Antonio silent, Tenn relaxed, occasionally grunting or breathing heavily as some major change was made.
Sometime before dawn, the briefcase emitted a single chime, and Tenn withdrew the needles and repacked the case.
Everything ached, but he pulled himself to his feet and yanked the paper bag from Antonio’s head.
The man stared, blankly at first, then eyes widening with a new found fear. The face before him was unshaven and tired looking, but still a mirror image of himself.
“I’m going to have so much more fun with your fortune than you ever dreamed of, with your women, with your life.” Seconds later the nanos still circulating in Antonio’s bloodstream began to tear his cells apart. He screamed for only a few agonizing minutes before he was reduced to a pulpy mess on the floor that gradually vapourized into the room.
Antonio Tenn was no longer there to witness, having pulled the rumbling Mercedes back onto the highway, heading at high speed for home.
