Once everyone was safely on the ledge, Jack took a good look down and the scale of it struck him with a touch of vertigo. He had a tingle at the back of his knees and a sloshy feeling in his stomach, and then it was gone.
“Hustle up,” he said, moving away from the ledge. “Let’s get this done and get out of here.”
They scurried down the tunnel, and fifty meters later, it opened into a round room full of golden light, brighter than midday.
Jack shielded his eyes and looked for cover. From what little he could see, the room was filled with circles of alabaster columns, and pieces of equipment whose shape he could hardly make out.
The team moved in, ducking behind one column and then the next. After a few moments, Jack’s eyes adjusted to the light, and his movements became less frantic. He was reasonably sure they were alone.
“It’s a damn sauna in here,” Trash grumbled.
Albright said, “No kidding. Seems we found the furnace.”
Jack waved the team forward, and idly wondered if they’d find a monster shoveling coal at the center.
The columns were staggered so that they were never in direct light for long, and soon they reached the innermost columns where the heat grew unbearable. Jack had just started thinking about how to proceed when their amazing luck struck again.
They heard the clothes-washer sound of a flyer. The team ducked down into the shadows and did their best to fade into the woodwork. Moments later, a set of eight monks came walking by, their robes shining like glittering gems in the fierce, burning light. As with every other set of monks, they kept their heads down and marched by obliviously.
“I understand the robes,” Albright whispered to Jack. “Betcha those guys are nice and cozy with all that heat reflecting off ‘em.”
Jack was sweating profusely. “Wish I’d known that earlier. I feel like a Christmas roast.”
Then Jack heard a sound unlike any other come from the center of the room. Countless warbling tones were layered atop one another, each warping the sounds around them. It was a choir of songbirds singing in chorus through a collection of transforming distortion pedals. If Jack didn’t know better, he’d think only a synthesizer could produce a sound so starkly unnatural, so beautifully beyond comprehension.
When he peaked out from behind his column, he saw something even more perplexing than the sound: the eight monks stood around the center of the room, where a miniature sun floated in mid-air surrounded by a cage of the glowing orange cables. The burning ball had grown darker since Jack and his team had arrived, and it was now dark enough to look at directly. The red-orange ball slowly rotated while small tongues of flame arced out from its surface.
The monks had their arms raised toward the tiny sun, like refugees in a war torn land crying for someone to take them away. Their synthesizer sounds grew louder, and the sun darkened in response.
Then the noise stopped and the monks lowered their arms, shrank, slumped down as if energy had been sucked right out of them. They stood there in silence looking at the ball of fire, then turned, headed back to their craft and left.
“What the hell?” Jack asked.
Albright shook her head. “I don’t know, but I wish I had a Geiger counter. Something tells me we shouldn’t stay in here any longer than we have to.”
The sun pulsed, throbbed, and slowly brightened.
The demolitionist had a thoughtful look on his face. “If that’s a fusion furnace,” he said while scratching his head, “this might just work, chief. We take out its containment and the whole reaction goes out of control. Kablooey! Everything in a hundred klicks is black fertilizer.”
“Jack…” The tone of Albright’s voice spoke volumes.
“I know,” he said.
Trash said, “We gotta get a move on.”
Somewhere in the past, Jack was sitting in a packed room full of new recruits. He was lost and angry. “Will we engage civilian targets?” he asked, knowing damn well what the answer would be.
“We don’t have all day,” Trash said urgently, and the insistence in his voice dragged Jack back into the present.
His head was a jumble of thoughts, feelings and emotions. Two images kept assaulting him; one a fresh memory and the other a vision of the future yet to come. The rhino child’s bright eyes held hope for a better tomorrow, then was snuffed out by a white-hot explosion that left nothing behind but a scorch mark.
“We’re aborting,” Jack said.
“What?” Trash barked.
“It’s one thing to take out their power. Deal a blow to their infrastructure, but this… I won’t commit genocide.”
“Genocide? This is justice.” Trash reached into his pack and pulled out his det packs. “If you don’t have the balls, I do.”
Before the last word came out of Trash’s mouth, Jack drew his pistol and leveled it square at his head. “I’d sooner kill you than let you do this, McGrath.”
“What’s your malfunction, Jack?”
Trash continued preparing his packs, and Jack took it to the next level. He flicked off his safety, took a long step forward and pressed the barrel flush against the other man’s skull. “We’re corpsmen, God damn it. We’re better than this. Now put it away before I end you.”
Trash gritted his teeth and stared uncut hatred back at Jack. Then he put the packs away.
Jack lowered the gun and everyone started to breathe again. “This isn’t how we operate. Not ever. No matter how many of us they kill, we don’t turn into monsters.”
Trash looked like he could puke bullets, but he didn’t test Jack’s threat, and it was the right decision. Jack wasn’t bluffing. He’d remembered what he stood for, and he would’ve shot Trash dead.
“So what now? We just bend over and take it? Watch them wipe out the last of us?”
Jack still had the gun in hand, and it felt heavier than he remembered. “No. We fight and survive, but we do it right. Military targets and infrastructure only. I’d rather die by my virtues than live like this.”
Chapter 37:
Detachment
The moment was over, and everything was calm again in the circular generator room. Trash had a twisted grimace on his face, but he dutifully zipped his pack up and slung it back over his shoulder. The insurrection was over.
Jack returned his handgun to its holster. At the same moment, the light in the generator room turned a deep, Cabernet red while the innermost ring of columns slid across the floor, forming a gapless barricade around the miniature sun. A low cry like a giant horn howled across the blue city. None of that seemed like good news.
“What’s going on?” the demoman asked.
Jack’s voice had an edge as sharp as a knife. “We’ve been found out.” He’d followed his conscience, and his luck immediately turned to crap. He didn’t know what message the universe was trying to send him, but he sure he didn’t like it.
Jack rushed back out the entry tunnel and the rest of the team followed. He stopped at the cliff, and when he looked out over the city, he could already see the enemy on their way. Swarms of flyers cut through the air traffic, heading straight for them. All the while, the howl of the giant horn never stopped or faltered.
“What do we do?” Trash asked.
There were too many unknowns, and Jack did his best to process them. He could lay a trap with the explosives and try a pitched battle in the generator room, but there was no way to escape. The enemy outnumbered them by the millions, and would wear them down eventually. It might give Charlie and the others a chance to clear out, though.
The closest flyer was still more than a minute away. “We run. Everybody, back down the wall.”
