TWENTY-FIVE

Brooklyn was sleeping hard, dreaming, when the alarm went off. His feet were on the floor, and he was reaching for his pants almost before the caterwaul registered.

“Fuck is it?” Demarco said, rising to his elbows.

Fire, meteor strike, cattle stampede… there was no way to tell. Brooklyn pulled on his boots. “Stay here. I’ll take a look.”

He twisted into a T-shirt as he made for the door. Their stay had been light on emergency protocols, but knowing Tommy, there had to be some. Smart money was on staying put. He opened the door in time to see the mechanic, loaded with gear, bound past on her way to the garage. “What’s happening?” he said.

“Pressure loss at the entrance. Might be deliberate.” She put a long gun in his hands. “We’ll take your truck.”

Brooklyn’s ass had barely touched the passenger seat before she put the Trailduster in gear. “Shouldn’t we have vacsuits?”

“Tossed an evac kit in the back. It’s got emergency breathers if it comes to it.” She wasn’t sparing the speed, and the electric motors, one for each wheel, whined in protest. “Vac curtain’s s’posed to drop when somethin’ like this happens. Pray they worked.”

If not, anyone in a sealed shelter would be fine, but the crops would be ruined. People caught without a suit or a breather would suffocate.

Brooklyn raised his hand to the ceiling to keep from bouncing into it. “Any idea what made the hole?”

“Pissed off The Wild Bunch pretty good when we went after them the last time.” She spun the wheel and accelerated the buggy around a water tank. The move looked practiced. “Or it could be a rock. Won’t know until we get there. Tommy sent teams to the cardinal points in case it’s a diversion.”

Smart. Won’t get us all racing in one direction and shot to pieces from another. “This was s’posed to be a vacation.”

She cackled. “Looks like you bought the adventure cruise!”

A heavy carbon fiber curtain had dropped in front of the tunnel to the primary airlock. The mechanic sniffed. “Air’s still okay. Guess the hole ain’t too big.”

Or someone sealed it up behind them. Brooklyn inspected the rifle she’d tossed him. An M-1 Garand. Out of date, but clean and well-maintained, with an extra clip webbed to the stock. Sixteen rounds total.

“Can you shoot that thing?” she said.

“Some.”

“Don’t do it ‘til I tell you to. Might be the only ones we see will be friendlies.”

“Copy that.” He ran through a weapon check to give his hands something to do other than shake.

The mechanic braked hard and slewed the Trailduster into a skidding stop, passenger side pointing down the tunnel to the airlock. “Guns out!” she said. “Finger off!”

Brooklyn aimed the Garand out the side window, claiming as much cover as the door offered. It wouldn’t be much, considering how easily he’d broken and bent the driver’s-side hatch earlier. The mechanic ducked out of the truck and darted to the back, some kind of pistol in hand. Brooklyn counted to twenty and tried to relax.

“Come out careful,” she said. “Give me a hand with the repair kit.”

Brooklyn crept his door open and slid along the side of the truck to join the mechanic. He handed her the rifle. “You cover, I’ll carry.” The mechanic’s kit was efficient, and he lifted it easily to his shoulder. “Which way?”

She pulled a radio off her belt. “Sit tight a sec. Let me check in.”

The first shot pinged off the side of the truck an inch from her head. The second spun her to the ground. Unsatisfied, the guns continued to fire.

Brooklyn made a long arm and snagged the mechanic’s boot. Between his amped-up strength and the low gravity, it was nothing to pull her into the lee of the Trailduster, temporarily safe from the bullets hitting the other side.

Suppressing fire. Keeping us pinned down so they can…

It didn’t much matter. Brooklyn’s heart pounded waves of sick, green nausea into his guts. His skin was clammy, and he had to piss worse than anything. If I ask them to stop for a sec, maybe they’ll–

The mechanic clutched his ankle. The bullet had struck high on her right chest, almost her shoulder. “What’s happening?” Her voice was tight and thready with pain. She still had the rifle.

“We’re pinned!” One of the buggy’s tires blew, then another. We just fixed this thing! The Trailduster listed to the passenger side, ironically providing even better cover. Brooklyn forced himself to breathe slowly, in nose, out mouth. “How bad is it?”

“Think my vest caught some of it.” She scrabbled with her arms and motioned for Brooklyn to help her up to sit against the back tire. “How many?”

“Dunno. Lots.”

She snorted. “Tommy said you were some kinda super soldier. Second I saw you, I knew he was full of shit.”

Brooklyn’s mouth twisted. Professionally chicken shit, that’s me. The shooting slowed and stopped. Out of ammo or waiting to see what Brooklyn and the injured mechanic would do. Sneaking in for an up-close kill. Brooklyn’s enhanced hearing wasn’t picking up anything useful. He took the gun. Haven’t fired a fucking shot.

“What’s your name?” Brooklyn said.

She peered at him quizzically. “You making friends or starting a shit list? Ruth Jones. Worked with Tommy on the Moon.”

He nodded. The M1 was obsolete well before he entered Basic training, but Demarco had one in De Milo and showed him a thing or two. It was a quick weapon, semi-auto, and the clip popped out with a brassy ping when it was empty. Sixteen shots. How many bad guys could there be? He rehearsed his next few moves in his head. The adrenaline shudders vanished, and his blood went cool. The fear was gone. He was a program about to execute.

“Well, Ruth, fuck it.” Brooklyn twisted to his feet and used the inclined hood of the Trailduster as a shooting platform. His vision did the swimmy thing, and he found his first target. Squeeze. Hit. Next target. Squeeze. Hit. Next target. Squeeze…

Brooklyn welded a patch on the airlock while Ruth supervised from a sitting position. The part of the bullet that got through her vest had gone up and out taking some of her left trapezius muscle with it. They’d made liberal use of the first-aid supplies in the emergency kit. Tommy and his crew showed about halfway through the repair work and offered to take over, but Brooklyn waved him off. The chore kept him from thinking too much.

“Seven shots, seven hits!” Ruth crowed when he’d helped her past the carnage and into a position to assess the damage to the lock. It wasn’t bad. They’d knocked a big enough hole in it to open it up, but not so big to cause a lot of problems fast. The emergency curtain had kept damage and casualties low: a sunflower patch, one of Tommy’s people who’d fallen and smashed in her visor, and most of the attackers.

Brooklyn had tried and failed to avoid seeing them as he searched for signs of life and made safe their weapons. To a one they were underfed, wearing patched-near-to-useless vacsuits, dirty, and likely dying of lung cancer. Mars wasn’t kind to life on the edge.

He’d ended the fray without a scratch. The raiders had come out from cover and were making a slow approach to the Trailduster. He’d caught them completely by surprise. Pop, pop, pop.

“Who were they?” he asked Tommy once he’d finished the repairs to Ruth’s satisfaction. Only then had she allowed herself to be put on a stretcher and loaded into a vehicle for the trip home, the battered Trailduster on a tow chain again.

Tommy spread his hands. “Wild Bunch, probably. Be awhile ’fore they get the nerve up to try something like this again. Might have put them out of business completely.”

Brooklyn shuddered, a comedown from the adrenaline rush or something else. I was on vacation, man!

Tommy thumped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get you back and put a drink in front of you.”

Someone else took care of the Garand and the corpses it had made. The ride to the compound was a blur, and the drinks made things even fuzzier. Demarco poured the first round. At some point, Ruth joined them, arm in a sling and against Zawadi’s advice. She told the story of the shootout with a vicious glee, describing things she could not possibly have seen from her seat against the tire. Pop, pop, pop. She winced at the pull in her sutures as she raised an imaginary rifle and took aim. Seven shots, seven kills. Target. Squeeze. Hit. Next target. Squeeze…

Brooklyn excused himself to vomit and came back to drink more. The raiders had deserved it. Nobody forced them to blow a hole in the airlock and come after all that Tommy had worked for. Still, especially with humanity on the run, evicted from all they knew and loved, every round fired seemed like an obscene gesture.

Demarco helped Brooklyn weave back to the bunkhouse and pull off his boots. He filled several glasses with water and stood by to make sure they were emptied.

Brooklyn swung his feet up onto the bed and let the pillow take the weight of his spinning head.

“You gonna be okay, man?”

“First time I killed someone.”

“Well–” Demarco paused. “Prob’ly not the time fo’ that.”

Brooklyn slurred something that could have been taken as “fuck off and let me sleep”, and Demarco went to his own bed, missing the tears that filled Brooklyn’s eyes and ran across his cheeks into his hair.