“Okay, we’re going to try and work our way back to you.”
“Your girlfriend escaped,” Mars said.
“Shoot her if she gives you any trouble,” I said. I wasn’t joking.
The sound of a large engine caught my attention. The growl of the engine seemed to fill the tunnel, drowning out the gunfire. It became louder, then vanished under the thunder of a shell striking the jackknifed truck. The blast sent the truck skidding along the street, kicking up a trail of sparks as large as dandelions. A Targ Tank had entered the tunnel. Low to the ground and very fast-moving, Targ Tanks were the Jackal killers and troop displacers of the battlefield.
The tank fired a second shell into the truck, sending it into a slow roll. It crashed into a concrete barrier and smashed it to rubble. Still rolling, the truck rammed into a scaffolding platform and crushed it like a house of twigs. The tank headed toward a dark corner in which Freeman knelt behind a bulldozer.
I pulled my first grenade launcher, flipped the safety, and fired. Before the pill even hit, I’d chucked the first tube and pulled out a second. The first grenade hit home, striking the turret just behind its guns. The second shot caused the tank to skid sideways, crumpling the turret and bending the cannon so that it hung askew.
By that time, I had found a new hiding place. Rocket-propelled grenades were great for killing tanks, but they left a trail of fine smoke that stretched from your target to your front door. I had barely dug into my new spot, semisafe behind a concrete barrier, when Freeman said, “Harris, we’re out of time. We have to get behind the wall.”
Knowing that the militia would spot me the moment I left my new hiding place, I sprang from behind my barricade. I caught a quick glimpse of men pouring into the tunnel, then I began my sprint, thinking I might just survive this action. The militia would shoot at me, but they would not fire missiles. If they fired missiles, they might rupture the walls of the tunnel, and lake water would flood in.
“Mars, close the gates,” I shouted over an open frequency. I knew Freeman would be listening.
“Where are you?”
“We’re on our way,” I said. By the time I said that, it was already a lie. We were both pinned down. The militia had spotted me. Bullets rang out and chipped at the ceiling and the walls of the tunnel.
Freeman fired off the charges I had seen him placing by the front of the tunnel and something amazing happened. Instead of triggering a massive explosion, the charges burst into a wall of flames that filled the tunnel from roof to floor in a solid sheet of fire. He triggered a second of those explosions, then a third.
The militia fired bullets through those flames, shooting blindly, not compensating for the downhill grade. Running just ahead of me, Freeman spun and set off one last explosion. I did not stop to watch the fireworks. I dashed ahead, making my way through the tunnel until I reached the front metal doors, where I did not so much stop as fall. Panting for air, I skidded behind a crane, then slid for cover. Freeman ran in beside me.
Mars and another engineer watched us from behind the door. I could see them; but I could not see if there was concern on their faces.
Bullets struck the heavy metal door; but this was shielded metal, and they might as well have been shooting spit wads for all the damage their bullets would do. The sound of the bullets was faint, a dull thud, then that stopped.
And then the event began.
A quarter of a mile deep in the tunnel, I did not hear or feel a thing; but when I looked back up the tunnel, I caught a brief glimpse of the glowing red sky, the color of lava or maybe molten metal. Anyone near the front of the tunnel was already ash; but this far in, with the lake distributing the heat, we were safe. There was plenty of cool air in the tunnel; and as long as we stayed behind the metal door, we’d be safe from the backlash when the superheated atmosphere came down. Freeman and I dashed the last few yards and ducked behind the door. By that time, though, the shooting had stopped.
The last thing I saw as the engineers rammed the doors in place was a passel of militiamen lined up like stones in a cemetery. They stood facing toward the mouth of the tunnel, their backs bathed in shadow. Beyond them, I could see just a sliver of open sky in which the colors were all wrong, and the air itself seemed to have caught on fire.
They must have all seen what I saw before they sealed the doors. Ava, her courage spent and her strength gone, sat on the ground crying like a child. When her boyfriend tried to comfort her, she pushed him away. Mars’s army of engineers stood silent. I lost track of Freeman.
It was crowded in the tunnel, Mars had a thousand men in his Corps of Engineers; but I think every soul in that tunnel went through the next dark hours feeling alone. Mars came to me and said something about Noah closing the doors of his ark. I heard the words, but I wasn’t listening. I did not respond.
It would be like this all across the galaxy—running, warning, hiding, waiting. The Enlisted Man’s Empire still had twenty-two planets. The thought of trying to rescue so many planets left me exhausted. The thought of failing left me hollow.
I needed to sleep.
I had come to rescue people, and now I wanted to escape from the few people I had actually managed to save. No one paid attention to me as I pushed through the ranks of engineers, slowly walking deeper into the tunnel. I removed my helmet. The air was still and cool. It was musty and smelled of iron. I tasted ash in the air, but that might have been my imagination. I could not tell.
Deep in the tunnel I spotted the shuttle, parked under a flickering light that only illuminated its nose. Nobles sat inside the cockpit doing what he always did when he was nervous, checking instruments, running tests, distracting himself. I watched him, not really paying attention as I stared in his direction.
I had no idea how much time passed.
Ava found me. She planted herself in front of me and stared into my eyes until I looked back at her, then she pressed herself against me. I think she wanted me to hold her, but I felt nothing for her at that moment. I had come all this way because I loved her. There was a time when every man, woman, and child on the planet could have died, and I would have considered my mission a success because I had rescued Ava. Now she stood before me, wanting me to make her feel safe, and I would not even wrap my armor-plated arms around her.
“They’re all dead?” she asked.
I said nothing.
“Could you have stopped this?”
“No,” I said.
“Hold me,” she said, and she pressed the side of her face against the cold and hardened plate that covered my heart. She locked her arms around me the way a frightened little girl might lock her arms around her father. I let her hold me, but I did not put my arms around her. After a moment, I stepped away.
“Don’t leave me, Wayson,” she said; but she was too late, I already had.
Later, I had no idea how much later, we heard the thud of the atmosphere crashing back into place. Some men moaned, and other men shouted, but the impact was not especially loud.
Freeman found me, and said in a soft voice, “We’re going to open the shield.” He stood behind me. I could not see him, but I could feel his presence.
As I followed him toward the shield, I saw Ava begin to sob. I watched her fall to her knees, and I felt no desire to comfort her.
I placed my helmet over my head as I followed Freeman toward the front of the tunnel. Holding our guns ready, we waited as the engineers pulled back the doors, revealing a scene I’d seen too many times before—the aftermath.
The tunnel was intact, but its contents were in tatters. Men lay like puzzle pieces across the concrete. The heat had not penetrated that far into the tunnel, but the pressure from the atmosphere had. There was blood on the ground and on the walls. Two overturned jeeps sat in a pile. I took my first tentative steps from behind the steel doors and stopped.