Earthfall (36 page)

Well, this could end pretty badly for me—

Andrews lunged toward him just as Law fired. Two rounds struck him right in the chest, making him falter, but his body armor stopped the small bullets cold, and the ballistic plates inside the tough Kevlar composite dissipated the shock across his entire torso. It felt as if someone had punched him hard in the chest, and his breath left him in a rush. Despite this, he charged right into Law, using his entire body as a battering ram. Law shouted as Andrews crashed into him, driving him back against the instrument panel. The rifle went off again, discharging into the copilot’s seat. Andrews pinned Law against the panel and reached down with both hands, fumbling with the weapon as Law tried to pull it away from him. Realizing he’d never be able to take control of the weapon in such close confines, he hit the magazine release and tore it free. The magazine dropped to the cockpit floor with a clatter. Law howled and released the weapon and slammed a fist against his facemask. Andrews felt the air seal pop, and a red light came on just below his visor. Contaminants were now able to enter the suit’s closed system. He responded by slamming into Law again, fists flying as he punched the smaller man in the face once, twice, three times, shouting incoherently as blood exploded from Law’s nose. Law sagged and fell to the left, across the pilot’s seat. Andrews reached for him, but Law grabbed the control column and pushed it fully forward. The SCEV’s turboshaft engines shrieked as they dutifully spun up, delivering full power to the transmission. The rig’s knobbed tires spun as they sought traction. They found it, and the rig lurched forward.

Heedless of the SCEV’s uncontrolled roaming, Andrews grabbed Law and battered him relentlessly. He grabbed Law’s neck in both hands and slammed his head into the instrument panel, tearing open his scalp. Law released the control column and lashed out with an elbow, slamming it into Andrews’s face. Andrews’s head snapped back from the impact, striking the cockpit bulkhead hard enough to stun him. He felt his legs go weak, and he reached out to grab the copilot’s seat. He noticed the impact of Law’s strike had, rather serendipitously, resealed his respirator facemask. Law kicked Andrews in the chest and drove him out of the cockpit. As the SCEV lurched across the landscape, Andrews felt his balance slipping away, and he fell half inside the open airlock. He thrashed about on the cold deck, which was already patterned with a sprinkling of dust. He grabbed a handhold and hauled himself to his feet and tried to unsling his rifle, but his movements were made clumsy by the heave and sway of the uncontrolled SCEV.

Law appeared in the airlock’s doorway, blood streaming from his nose and his lacerated scalp. He glared at Andrews as the veins in his forehead pulsed with a sudden power. Andrews felt that peculiar electrical sensation building around him, and he released the handhold, grabbing his rifle in both hands and raising its barrel, intending to fire on Law from the hip. He never made it. Before he could do more than raise the weapon, his nerves erupted in a blinding, searing agony that brought him to his knees. He screamed, loud and long, caught up in the embrace of an exquisite agony he had prayed he would never feel again. Andrews started to black out, and he looked up at Law, seeing him as if through a rapidly lengthening tunnel. He tried to will himself to raise the rifle and fire, but his arms refused to comply; his body was shutting down in a final attempt to ward off the agony. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come, leaving Andrews gasping for breath. A sudden bout of nausea grabbed him, and for a moment, he feared he might vomit into his facemask. He reached out for the handhold, and the assault rifle slipped out of his grasp as he lolled against the side of the airlock. It was right at his knees, only inches away. He reached toward it with a trembling hand, but the SCEV heeled upward and the rifle slid away from him, coming to a rest against the blood-splattered deck at Law’s feet. The smaller man fell to his knees and grabbed the weapon, pointing it at Andrews. Law looked drained, diminished; dark circles had sprouted beneath his eyes, and the blood continued to flow from his nose and scalp, leaving him wearing a mask of bloody gore across his face.

“Did you really think you could beat me, Andrews?” His voice was barely a ragged whisper above the beeping alarm, the howling wind entering the open airlock, and the slowly winding-down engines. “Did you
really
think you would win?”

Without waiting for an answer, Law raised the assault rifle and aimed it at Andrews’s head.

The SCEV heaved once again, this time with great violence as the deck tilted upward at a crazy angle. The rifle fired a burst on full automatic, right across the airlock’s overhead, missing Andrews entirely as he fell backward. He bounced off the airlock’s ledge, then tumbled out of the vehicle as it crashed to a brutal halt. Andrews heard rock crumbling and metal screeching as the SCEV bucked to an explosive standstill, then he slammed into the hard ground. Fire blossomed along his right wrist and he grunted, but the pain was nothing compared to the tapestry of agony Law had crafted with his inhuman powers. As a cloud of dust boiled across him, he pushed himself to a sitting position. He felt a strange buzzing sensation in his head, and he wondered if he had suffered a concussion somewhere along the way. He looked up at the SCEV towering over him at a drunken angle. The rig had impaled itself on a spire of rock, and one of its front tires was tilted at a crazy slant. He could tell just by looking at it that the rig’s front axle had been shattered. The SCEV had gone as far as it could go.

“Mike! Mike!”

Rachel’s voice sounded tinny and distant over the radio. Andrews made to answer, but he couldn’t form any words. He cleared his throat, staring up at the SCEV. He felt like he was swimming in a world full of cotton, and most of it had managed to wind up in his mouth.

“Rachel,” he croaked. “Stay where you are. I love you, baby.” He tasted blood in his mouth, and he felt more pain in his chest when he breathed.
Cracked ribs, if I’m lucky
.

Law appeared then, slumping against the doorway of the opened airlock. He looked down at Andrews with bleary eyes, moving unsteadily. His face and the front of his dark, rancid garments were soaked in blood, but he still held onto the assault rifle. He slowly raised it, bringing it to bear on Andrews.

“Why?” Andrews shouted suddenly. “
Why?
All we wanted were the core supports. If your people hadn’t attacked us, we would’ve been gone by sundown!”

Law smiled crookedly. He paused to spit out a bloodied, fragmented tooth, then looked down at Andrews as he sat in the dust. “After all we’ve been through … after years of disease, famine, violence … you expect me to believe your intentions were nothing but
honorable?
Tell me another one.” He waved an arm, indicating the dark, storm-torn wasteland surrounding them. “Look at all you’ve done. Look at the legacy of mankind. Your kind’s a
plague
on the planet!”

“Your people are going to die anyway!” Andrews shouted.

Law shook his head. “Think so? That we can’t survive another day without your supposed help? We’ve sucked it up for a decade, Andrews! Though the sickness still claims many of us, with every generation, we become stronger. We adapt.”

Andrews laughed. “Adapt? Adapt for
what?
Take a look around, pal—there’s nothing left to inherit! You’ve got all these mental powers—you
know
we could’ve helped all of you to live as people again!”

“People destroyed the planet, Captain,” Law said wearily. “My family will live. They’ll be better than what we were before. Something admirable.”

“Admirable, huh?” Andrews chuckled humorlessly. “Try amoral, you sick fuck. It’s a much better fit.”

“History’s written by the winners.” Law seemed to gather his remaining strength. He pushed himself upright and stepped away from the airlock’s sill. He shouldered his rifle and aimed it squarely at Andrews’s head. “I’m sorry, Andrews. But it’s just too late for me to take any more chances.”

Light flared suddenly through the gloom, shining across the SCEV’s battered frame. Law looked up, and his mouth opened in frank shock as the illumination grew in intensity. A growing wail could be heard above the wind, and gravel crunched behind Andrews. He turned and looked over his shoulder, wondering if what he saw was a mirage or merely wishful thinking.

Emerging from the clouds of dust behind him were two SCEVs. Their minigun turrets were fixed on SCEV Four as they braked to a halt fifty meters away, their engines spooling down, their floodlight arrays blazing.

“No …” Law’s voice was barely audible above the din of the storm and the idling rigs sitting nearby. “No, no, no,
no!
”

Andrews snapped out of his funk. He reached into his knapsack and pulled out the M320 grenade launcher. Grabbing its pistol grip in his right hand, he flicked off the safety and raised it, pointing it right at Law. Law became aware of this a moment too late, and both men fired at the same time. A hail of bullets slashed at the ground right in front of Andrews, peppering him with debris. At the same time, the grenade launcher bucked lightly in his hand, and the forty-millimeter round slammed into Law’s waist and exploded, blasting the man right in two. Ribbons of gore splattered across Andrews before he could move, and he closed his eyes instinctively. When he opened them, Law’s ragged torso lay right before him. As he watched, Law’s remaining arm flailed about, grasping at air, fingers curled into claws. Their eyes met, and Law’s lips moved soundlessly. Blood bubbled upward from deep inside him, and whatever Law was trying to say was lost as he choked on his own fluids. The light faded from his eyes, and Andrews watched as dust covered the mutilated corpse, turning the warm blood into a pasty crust.

He became aware of someone calling his name. He looked up as a figure loomed over him. It was Mulligan, and his white environmental suit was almost brown with filth.

“Mulligan,” he said, stupidly. “You made it.”

Mulligan nodded, looking down at the disfigured corpse. “So did you.”

Other suited figures appeared. They reached down for Andrews and, as they hauled him to his feet, another jolt of pain from his injured ribs made him pass out.

L
aird, Leona, Kelly
, and Rachel had been taken down from the ridgeline. All were alive, though Laird and Leona had been injured in Law’s missile attack. The Hellfire had detonated thirty meters from their position, and both had taken shrapnel and shock damage from the blast, but were expected to survive. They were conscious and mostly alert when they were brought aboard SCEV Seven, which had been designated as the medical evacuation vehicle. Andrews, Kelly, Laird, and Leona were stationed in the vehicle’s rear compartment, where two medics and the base surgeon tended to them. Andrews had suffered a broken left wrist and, as he had thought, several cracked ribs, but his injuries were considered light. Laird and Leona both had concussions and lacerations that needed to be cleaned and sterilized due to their exposure to the elements, and Kelly was in severe pain from her fractured femur. The surgeon elected to wait until they returned to Harmony to set the break, but his portable X-ray and follow-on ultrasound diagnostics revealed she hadn’t suffered any major blood vessel damage. She would have a difficult recovery, but she would live.

Once everyone was stabilized, they returned to the base in SCEV Seven. Mulligan remained behind to assist in the recovery of the core supports, and by the time the rig returned to the base, he had already reported that the supports were in good condition. Rachel had been right; while they couldn’t stand up to an immeasurably more powerful earthquake, the objects were tough enough to survive an explosion caused by an anti-tank weapon. Upon their return to base, Andrews and the others were transported by litter down a personnel evacuation stairway, one that had lain dormant for almost ten years. There wasn’t enough power available to operate the vehicular lift, so they had to be transported to the base by manpower. Andrews wanted to walk and save everyone the effort of carrying him, but the base surgeon overruled him. He would be transported like the rest of the wounded, his dignity be damned.

“Look at it this way, you get a hero’s welcome no matter how you get home,” Rachel had said to him on the way down the dark, winding staircase. She had been ordered to return to the base with the others, even though she had offered to assist in the recovery operation. It had been decided that she had been in the field more than long enough, and for that, Andrews was thankful. With the storm bearing down on them, he didn’t want her exposed to the environment any longer than she already had been.

SCEV Three remained on the surface for another day, the core supports secured safely aboard as her crew weathered out the storm. There was no way they could enter the base while the storm raged above in full fury; there were far too many obscurants, and the radioactive fallout stirred up by the storm was lethal even through an environmental suit. Rachel had told them the core supports would be lightning magnets, and that settled the issue. No one was willing to venture out with the supports; not because they might be killed, but because Mother Nature might deliver some award-winning examples of bolt lightning that could compromise the supports, wasting the team’s hard work and sacrifice.