On Silver Wings (5 page)

She located the tether site easily enough, and much of the tether as well. The material had fallen down around the site, and was lying like cable strewn around where it had fallen. She frowned, shaking her head. There wasn’t remotely enough tether lying around to account for the entire hundred and sixty thousand kilometer length.

‘
Proc, analyze and locate the end of the tether
.’

The image of the tether was suddenly highlighted in blue as the computer in her chest began by tracing the entire length of the tether in its attempt to comply. After a few moments of this playing in the background while she continued to move through the town square the computer chirped its victory in her ear and highlighted a section of the town.

She made her way in that direction, still keeping to the shadows despite the total lack of life so far.

The end of the tether was somewhat more spectacular than she’d expected, given that even miles of the cable weighed only a few hundred pounds. The end was located in a crater that had once been someone’s house, unless she was seriously mistaken. The crater had been caused by the tether car, a self-powered and autonomous vehicle that ascended and descended the carbon highway to heaven.

The car was also constructed of superstrong and ultralight materials, mostly the same carbon fiber and nano-mesh construction as the cable itself, but even so it weighed as much as ninety five miles of the cable due to its power systems and climbing motors. Weight which was entirely concentrated into one relatively compact object, that must have hit with one hell of a bang.

She winced as she climbed down into the crater, forced to sling her rifle in order to make her way down the debris strewn hole. It had struck like a bomb, was her first observation, and ironically it was the first bit of destruction she’d seen that made sense and followed a pattern she knew. It was textbook, actually. The impact had shattered the prefab finish of the dwelling, sending fiber-board and glass shards flying out in all directions. At the center lay the car, its structure mostly intact, long snaking coils of the tether curled all around.

The car had been quite high up when the tether was cut, she decided. Its fall had turned the vehicle into a low yield kinetic weapon. Low yield, but more than enough to destroy this home, and probably scare the bejesus out of anyone within three klicks.

It would have been, as she surmised, one hell of a bang.

“Tether... tether... where is the end of the tether?” She frowned, picking through the mess.

Orbital tethers were among the strongest constructions ever devised by men. They could not only haul materials the hundred and sixty thousand kilometer trip from surface to orbit, but also hung on to the weight and inertia of the transfer station at their far end as it swung around the world like a lead sinker on a string. Anything that could break one, would have left a mark, and she dearly wanted some evidence of what she was dealing with.

Locating the end of the carbon ribbon among the coils and coils of it that lay strewn around it’s fallen car was easier than one might have presumed. She started at the car, and found that the tether had been cut above the car’s position, so she just tracked along that length, which was, thanks to the laws of physics, on top of the pile.

What she found when she picked up the length of ribbon cable, however, was less easy. No burn marks of a laser or energy weapon, nothing that indicated the use of explosives, and no sign of any physical cutting tools. It looked like it had simply snapped like a strand of taffy. Sorilla hadn’t even known carbon could pull like that; in fact she was reasonably sure it couldn’t

Sorilla slumped down, sitting on the coiled cable as she held the torn end in her hands, and just stared at it.

What in the name of all that’s holy happened here?

No answer came on the whispering wind, but she hadn’t hoped to be so lucky. Sorilla shook herself slightly, laying the end of the tether down as she pulled her knife from its sheath. She twisted the pommel, causing the edge of the blade to glow for a brief moment as the power core imbedded in the weapon caused the molecules along the edge to align, then she drove the blade into the tether.

When she had hacked off a foot of the tether from the end, she stuffed it in her pack and started to climb out of the pit. She was half way up when a low rumble vibrated through the ground, too low for her own ears to hear, but enough for her fingers to feel and her computer aided senses to easily pick up.

Sorilla paused, the ridge of the crater just a few meters away, and looked around slowly as she pressed herself into the crevices of the debris and waited. She had to control her breathing, keeping it slow even as her body demanded that she openly pant for oxygen. The sensation of the rumble passed, but now she felt like someone was sitting on her chest, squeezing the breath of life from her lungs, and her heart was beating faster as something caused it to strain for each pump.

Aida’s eyes flickered quickly as she looked around, the soft green glow of her implants looking out eerily from the dark paint that covered her face.

They were out there, somewhere, they had to be. Whatever this feeling was, it wasn’t natural. It wasn’t panic, someone was doing something nearby. Something to her, that had the back of her mind gibbering wildly, screaming at her to fly. Run. Bolt for her life. There was no enemy here to fight, so she must flee.

She held her ground, digging deeper into the crevice, and refusing to give up her position. Patience was her mantra, wait the enemy out. Minutes, hours, days, and weeks. Whatever it took, wait the enemy out.

That changed when an earsplitting crack ripped the air near her and something moved in the corner of her eye.

MOVE!

She shoved off her concrete perch, out and into the air on instinct along, just scant instants ahead of a huge chunk of stone that slammed right into where she had been, pulverizing the locally mixed concrete back into the dust from which it came.

“Ah!” She yelped as she misjudged her landing, twisting her ankle against the uneven ground, then scrambled back into motion as she barely dodged another, smaller, stone.

Her rifle swung up as she hit the ground rolling, tracking as a piece of the crater wall shifted then exploded as another chunk of rock flashed out at her. Her finger brushed the trigger of the chunky weapon, its coils of superconducting monofilament pulsing once in response. The hundred gram chunk of depleted uranium erupting from the muzzle at barely eight hundred feet per second, hissing softly through the atmosphere as it was propelled on its way.

The round’s scramjet motor didn’t have a chance to ignite, its guidance fins only barely deployed, before it slammed into the chunk of rock and exploded in a chemical flash. Sorilla threw up her arm as she was showered with slivers of stone and washed over by the smell of chemicals from the round’s fuel and shaped charge.

She spun, rifle seeking out another target as her eyes flashed slightly brighter as her implants made the final step up into full blown combat mode.

Ultra-fine filaments deep in her brain matter intercepted sensory inputs she didn’t even realize she was hearing and seeing, and threw the numbers down to the processor in her chest for crunching. Others sent electrical signals instead of intercepting them, regulating the adrenal response to a sustainable level as she dropped the rifle butt to her hip and rested it there as she turned slowly around.

That feeling was still there, that pressure on her chest, making her feeling panicky and tense. The rumble was there too, in the background her implants could still detect it, and she could hear occasional cracks from around, and even below her.

Time to pull out,
She thought, twisted quickly as she slung her rifle and sprinted for the crater wall.
Caught in enemy territory, alone
,
my location blown wide open, under fire with no targets in sight. This is what the term ‘advancing to the rear’ was invented for!

She scrambled up the concrete debris, rifle banging against her back as her ankle screamed at her, intent on getting the hell out of the deathtrap prison that the crater had become. Almost to the top, another crack of sound startled her into half turning. The motion saved her life as she caught a fist sized piece of stone in her right shoulder, instead of the back of her neck. She went down, losing ground as she started to slide back down the crater wall. She screamed out in pain as she snapped her left arm out, snagging the lip of the crater ridge, and hung on.

Another rock slammed into her leg as she forced her right hand to join the left, pulling another scream from her throat.

“God damn it!” She ground up, pulling herself up and over the lip to sprawl out into the streets of the colony proper. “PROC! Enable Spinal Shunt!”

She hadn’t subvocalized the command, but her implanted pico-processor caught it anyway, and in an instant all the screaming sources of pain from her lower body vanished as she rolled over to her stomach and pushed up off the ground, instantly breaking into a sprint as she headed for the jungle line.

She hadn’t gone more than ten meters when the rumble became audible, and the buildings around her began to visibly shake. Sorilla pushed hard, hoping that she wasn’t running into a trap, and dove for the perceived safety of the dense jungle with every ounce of strength she had.

Jerry almost shot her when Sorilla stumbled out of the jungle, the muzzle of his rifle seeking her center mass as he’d been taught many years earlier. He recognized her before his finger reached the trigger, however, despite the glistening reflection of starlight on her face that obscured her features.

He lowered the weapon in relief, blowing out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Damn it, Sergeant, you scared the ever living...”

He stopped as she did, frowning when she didn’t say anything.

“Are you alright?”

She dropped to her knees, her rifle falling from her hands as her arms fell numbly to her sides and she sat back on her heels.

“Jesus!” He exclaimed, rushing forward as she started to fall. He caught her before she hit the ground, and lay her down on the soft jungle floor before drawing his hands back and realizing that they were wet.

He lifted them to his hands, frowning, and smelled them.

The odor was distinctive, a copper tang that he could instantly taste at the back of his throat.

Blood.

“Oh Christ...” he muttered, eyes and mouth open wide as he looked down at the unmoving body for a moment. “Light... I need a light... have to...”

He almost jumped out of his skin when her hand snapped up and snagged his wrist, her eyes turning toward him, glowing that eerie green.

“No light,” she said, “I’ll live.”

He let a few breaths out, trying to keep his hands from shaking. “What the hell happened?”

“Don’t know.” She said, looking up at the sky from where she lay, still unmoving, on the ground. “Never seen anything like it before.”

“Did you see them? The invaders?”

She shook her head, “Didn’t see anyone. No one there to see.”

“What? There had to be...”

“No... I would’ve have seen them... heard them...” Sorilla was whispering, eyes flickering wildly as she seemed to be speaking to herself. “This is... new.”

Jerry could have cried. New. She had staggered back, beaten and bloody, and all she could say was that it was ‘new’. God, this woman was something else. Jerry closed his eyes, trying to get a handle on his breathing and the shakes that were starting to come.

“Are you sure you’re ok?”

She snorted, shaking her head. “I said I’ll live. I’m not ok.”

“Can I do...” He looked down helplessly.

“No...” She shook her head, “I’m already being healed. Just... settle in. It’s going to be a long night.”

He frowned.
Already being...?

“What are you talking about? You don’t have your suit...”

“Don’t need it,” She smiled, her teeth black with blood. “Bacteria in my blood, already juicing up. I’m gonna be sore in the morning, but I don’t think I’ve got any ruptured organs... nothing you could do if I did. Get some rest. Gonna need it.”

He shook her head, forcing his questions back as he nodded and sat back.
Bacteria in her blood?
God he wanted to ask, but even if he didn’t feel like he needed rest, she sure as hell did. He’d ask in the morning, if she were better.
Oh lord, I hope she’s better. It’s a long fricken way back to the camp.

*****

She wasn’t fine when the sun rose, but she could charitably be called better. Jerry watched her break camp alongside him, the way her fingers didn’t close quite right around things she picked up, and her footing wasn’t quite right.

“Spinal shunts are illegal, you know.” He said, finally putting it together.

“Not for military personnel,” she replied without looking up.

He shook his head, “They were banned for a reason.”

“I’m aware of the risks,” She said, straightening up and shouldering her pack. “But unless you’d rather carry me a hundred klicks back to the camp.”

He had to concede the point, at least for the moment, but wasn’t especially happy about it. “At least tell me that the threshold isn’t a hundred percent.”

She quirked a slight smile, “I’m a big girl, Reed. I can take care of myself... but since you asked, no, it’s an adaptive threshold algorithm. Right now it’s holding just under fifty percent.”

Fifty percent. That wasn’t so bad, he supposed. At a hundred percent, the shunt was effectively the equivalent of being a quadrapalegic, at least from the body to the brain. Signals going the other way were passed along fine, for all the good they did. People didn’t navigate well when they were cut off from all sensation below the neck.

A fifty percent threshold rating didn’t cut the signals in half, instead the system was designed to intercept only signals which passed a certain frequency threshold. Light tactile sensations were unaffected, but more extreme signals, such as those caused by injuries, were intercepted before they could reach the brain.