Distant Worlds Volume 2 Read online

  A trio of guards escorted them towards a tented area adjacent to the parking lot. Several long tables were set up there, with a line of recently arrived laborers already filing through along to sign their contracts. After they finished, they were assigned to work crews and directed over to the job site. The operation was immense, far beyond a scale Dmitri imagined possible.

  He took his place in line, shuffling ever closer to the tables beneath the tents.

  A hovercar zoomed overhead, circling the work site several times before finally swinging downward. The craft landed about fifty yards from the tents, and three men wearing black suits stepped out. One of them opened the back door to help a silver haired woman in a blue dress exit the car.

  Even from a distance, Dmitri recognized her. Masha Tvorinsky, a leading Moscow executive with a stake in nearly every commercial and residential property in the outer ring. She had a reputation for surprise inspections, which made even the most seasoned contractors nervous.

  The three bodyguards escorted Tvorinsky away from the car as work foremen all over the job site scurried over to greet her. Several security guards exchanged confused glances, many of them radioing for instructions. For a span of several seconds, they took their attention off the workers.

  Dmitri wasn’t sure how it started, but he knew something was wrong when a gunshot went off somewhere behind him. Screams and shouting followed as the great mass of workers broke ranks and scattered, some of them diving for cover while others simply ran back towards the buses. Men and women crashed into each other and pushed past their fellows in a desperate attempt to get clear of the chaos. Dmitri was swept up in the panicked surge, elbows, knees, and shoulders buffeting him from all sides. Several more shots rang out before Dmitri noticed a handful of laborers running towards Tvorinsky.

  He’d lost track of Ninel and the big man from 13C, but he spotted them among the group charging the executive. At least two dozen of them ran full speed and closed in fast as Tvorinsky’s bodyguards tried to get her back to the hovercar. A few security guards opened up with their submachine guns, but most were swept away in the tide of panicked workers, unable to bring their weapons to bear. A shower of bullets took down seven or eight runners, but the rest rushed onward.

  One of Tvorinsky’s bodyguards drew a pistol and fired off a series of deadly accurate shots, each squeeze of the trigger sending a worker to the ground. His fourth bullet caught Ninel in the shoulder and she fell in a heap of flailing limbs.

  “Ninel!”

  Dmitri pushed free of the crowd and ran to her, never once pausing to question why he was risking his life for a woman he’d just met. Bullets whizzed past in the air, but none managed to find him. Ninel had gotten to her knees by the time he reached her. He grabbed her and pushed her to the ground as another gust of bullets flew by overhead.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  She struggled to get free, but Dmitri held her fast.

  “Get off me, damn you!” she said. “The bitch is going to get away!”

  A bodyguard shoved Tvorinsky into the hovercar while the others provided cover fire. One of the workers, the big man from 13C, managed to slip through the barrage. He barreled past the bodyguards and leaped onto the hovercar’s hood before reaching down to touch his boot.

  Ninel managed to get in a laugh before a massive explosion vaporized the hovercar.

  The shockwave threw the two of them back several yards. Dmitri couldn’t tell if he’d lost consciousness for a few seconds or if he’d merely been rendered blind and deaf by the explosion. His chest felt like someone had pounded it with a sledgehammer.

  A thick cloud of dust swirled over the entire work site, making it difficult to see more than a few feet in any direction. When it cleared, the security guards would be coming for Ninel. For that matter, they might shoot her and everyone else just to be safe.

  They had to get away while they had the chance.

  His entire body aching, Dmitri hoisted Ninel off the ground. Her shoulder was bleeding badly now. “Come on. We have to get out of here!”

  “B… bridge,” Ninel said. “There’s a bridge… three blocks… west. Sewer access… resistance safe… safehouse…”

  She barely finished the last word before she slipped into shock.

  Resistance.

  Could she mean the Moscow resistance?

  Dmitri didn’t have much of a choice now. He couldn’t get back to Podolsk without help, and he wasn’t likely to get it from the local authorities. Even if no one had seen him run to Ninel’s aid, they still had a bus passenger manifest showing him sitting between two known terrorists.

  As far as the ACC was concerned, Dmitri might well be “contaminated” by that brief contact.

  Cursing, he pulled Ninel alongside him as he trudged over the broken earth.

  He wondered if Inga would care if he didn’t return to the shelter, or if she would even be there when he got back. Every time he tried to picture her, he could only see that wretched face she’d made when he left her that morning, a look of utter defeat and apathy. He realized now that his wife had died a long time ago; her body just hadn’t realized it yet.

  For a moment, he wondered if he wouldn’t be better off just sitting down and waiting for a guard to put a bullet in his head.

  Then he heard a voice, a faint echo still lodged somewhere deep inside his memory.

  Help, Papa!

  Katerina.

  She was still out there somewhere, locked up in an ONY lab like some kind of exotic animal.

  If the Moscow resistance had the resources to pull off the attack he’d seen today, maybe they could help him find her.

  Renewed purpose gave his muscles new strength, and he lifted Ninel over his shoulder to carry her through the swirling dust.

  Podolsk, Russia: November 27, 2417

  Once Ninel set her mind on something, no force on Earth could make her reconsider.

  That same determination kept her alive the day they met. By the time they reached the safety of a resistance safehouse, she’d lost so much blood that she could have passed for a ghost. None of her compatriots expected her to survive without proper medical attention, but she not only held on during that night, but the next one and the one after that. Those who knew her best joked that she was probably just too stubborn to die.

  At the moment, however, Dmitri would have appreciated some flexibility.

  “I don’t like it,” he said. “The rail yard is way too exposed. We couldn’t secure it if we had a hundred men. Even if we could, there’s no cover overhead. If the meet gets blown, every military grade drone within ten miles would be on top of us before we have a chance to shit our pants.”

  The truck swayed as it rolled down the crumbling, uneven roadway. Ninel fought to keep the wheel steady and pushed the accelerator down farther, straining the antiquated electric motors in the wheels.

  “We’ve been over this, Dmitri,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”

  Dmitri looked out the passenger seat window. Steel bars covered the glass, making the truck’s cab feel like a mobile prison. He thought back to his first ride alongside Ninel, on the armored bus pulling out of the Podolsk transit station. The memory seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “We should have brought Pavel and Gregorii. One of them, at least.”

  Ninel shook her head. “Two people. Those were the terms. They wouldn’t agree to the meet otherwise.”

  “How do we know they’ll keep their end of the deal?”

  “They’ve got a reputation to keep. Word gets out they screwed us over, they’ll find their list of buyers drying up.”

  Maybe.

  Podolsk was a long way from Singapore.

  The rail yard had stood abandoned for more than a century. Rumor had it that a tanker hauling radioactive waste exploded there, contaminating the whole area and forcing the place to shut down. Radiation warning signs surrounded the yard’s outer fence, lending credence to the accident claims, but no
one knew for certain if the story was true. Podolsk was full of old industrial areas that the ACC falsely designated as hazard zones just to keep squatters from occupying them.

  Ninel steered the truck off the highway and through a gap in the rail yard’s fencing. Stacks of rusted container cars rose high above the frozen ground, many of them as tall as apartment buildings. If Dmitri squinted, he could almost imagine they were driving down the narrow, crowded streets of some dismal twentieth century metropolis.

  Must have been a hell of a time to live.

  The truck pulled clear of the stacked cars and veered into an open space in the center of the rail yard where a tangled mass of steel rails crisscrossed the ground, lines leading out in every direction. Three control towers loomed over the area, providing a clear view of anything approaching the central rail hub. Old electric and communications lines sagged from over a dozen teetering poles and bent antennas scattered about the yard. Abandoned, half-collapsed buildings surrounded the area, some no larger than the truck and others big enough to hold a drydocked Martian freighter.

  A truck almost identical to theirs sat parked in the center of the yard. Four people stood next to it, one of them waiving.

  “That them?” Dmitri asked.

  Ninel nodded as she steered towards the Singaporean merchants. She brought the truck to a halt about fifty feet short of the group.

  Dmitri opened the glove box and took out a pistol.

  “No,” Ninel said. “No guns.”

  He glared at her. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Trust me.”

  Sighing, Dmitri returned the gun to the compartment and closed the lid. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  They climbed down from the truck and walked over to meet two of the four men halfway between their vehicles. The other two stood with their truck. Dmitri watched them closely, trying to see if they had a hidden weapon, but he was too far away to tell for certain.

  “You’re late,” one of them said, a rail thin man with wire frame sunglasses.

  Ninel shrugged. “Traffic.”

  “You brought what we asked for?”

  “Wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t.”

  The man nodded. “Bring it out, then.”

  “Not yet. Not until I know we’re getting what we were promised.”

  He adjusted his sunglasses and looked at the man next to him. When his partner nodded, he shrugged and gestured for them to follow him.

  “Come see for yourself.”

  They followed him around behind the truck. The canvas cover was already pulled back to reveal a hover cart resting on the truck’s bed. A large crate marked with Korean lettering sat atop the cart. The man produced a handheld controller from his pocket and tapped in a code to activate the hover cart, which lurched upwards with a hiss and inched out of the truck, finally coming to rest alongside them. Ninel inspected the crate for a moment before stepping back.

  “Open it,” she said.

  The man unlocked the crate’s latches and pried the lid open. A grayish metal cone rested inside, nestled amidst a bed of straw packing.

  “You’re sure it’s authentic?” Ninel asked as she inspected the device.

  “Recovered from the mud of a lakebed outside Seoul last year. Detonation system malfunctioned en route to the target, but I can assure you the warhead is intact.”

  “And the yield?”

  “One point five megatons. As I said before.”

  Dmitri stared at the antique warhead, a relic of a forgotten nation’s desperate attempt to blast its enemies out of existence. He wondered if it was a bad omen that those enemies had endured to the present day.

  “Do we still have a deal?” the man with the sunglasses asked.

  Ninel nodded. “We’ll need help unloading the truck.”

  The Singaporeans pulled their truck forward and went about loading up the assorted crates and sacks Ninel and Dmitri had brought with them as payment. Dmitri guided the work, careful to point out the most delicate goods, usually surplus medical supplies and sensitive electronics. The Moscow resistance had been raiding shipments into the city for months to build up enough valuable goods to cut a deal as big as this one.

  After unloading the truck, three of the Singaporeans verified and counted the contents of every container while the fourth logged the results in his NetMini. When they finished, Ninel walked over to them and held out her hand.

  “Are we good, then?” she asked.

  The man with the sunglasses checked the final tabulation before tossing the hover cart controller to her.

  “Good,” he said.

  Ninel handed the controller to Dmitri. “Get it on the truck.”

  Dmitri got the hover cart into position while the Singaporeans went about loading up their many crates and sacks. The cart’s engines gave off only a low hum, but as he directed it into the truck, he noticed a high-pitched whir that hadn’t been there before.

  “What’s that sound?” Ninel asked. “Is that coming from the cart?”

  He had the cart in the truck now, but the sound only grew louder. When he cut the engines, it didn’t stop.

  The whirring noise wasn’t coming from the cart.

  Dmitri looked up and spotted an oblong object with flashing lights streaking through the sky towards them.

  A military hovercar. Probably on routine patrol for any suspicious activity.

  Their presence at the rail yard certainly qualified.

  “Shit,” he said. “We’ve got company.”

  Before Ninel could respond, the Singaporeans spotted the car. They shouted at each other in a language Dmitri didn’t understand. He didn’t need a translator to see they were angry, especially when the man with the sunglasses pulled a gun from his coat.

  “Down!”

  He grabbed Ninel and pulled her behind the truck before the Singaporean fired. The bullets ricocheted off the truck’s metal bumper. Dmitri ran to the passenger side door, pried it open, and went for the gun in the glove box. Ninel pushed past him to climb into the truck as one of the Singaporeans stepped into view.

  Dmitri barely bothered to aim, firing off three shots blindly. One of the bullets caught the man in the stomach and he doubled over with a groan.

  The truck’s engine growled to life.

  “Get in, Dmitri!”

  The man with the sunglasses peeked out from behind the truck, pistol in hand. Dmitri squeezed off two more rounds to warn him off, then leapt into the cab.

  The hovercar was nearly overhead, blaring its presence over a megaphone:

  “HALT! THIS IS A RESTRICTED AREA! YOU ARE UNDER ARREST! THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!”

  One of the Singaporeans opened up on the hovercar with a submachine gun.

  Ninel slammed down the accelerator and the truck lurched forward. The buzzsaw roar of a high caliber assault rifle carried over the truck’s engine as it pulled away from the yard. Dmitri looked in the rear view mirror; the ground erupted all around the Singaporeans like they stood in the center of a hailstorm. The man in the sunglasses tried to get to their truck’s cab, but he only made it a few steps before a shower of bullets tore him in half.

  Once all the Singaporeans were down, the hovercar swung around to chase the escaping truck.

  “Faster!” Dmitri said. “They’re right on us!”

  Ninel yanked the wheel to make a sharp left turn, leading them deeper into the rail yard.

  “Where are you going? We can’t get out this way!”

  “We’ll never outrun that thing in this bucket,” she said. “If we can get to one of the old rail tunnels, we might have a chance.”

  The truck lurched and bounced as Ninel steered it over old rail lines, walkways, and ditches. Dmitri managed to snap his seatbelt into place as a streak of bullets tore the cab’s ceiling apart.

  Ninel cried out.

  One of the bullets had struck her collarbone, ripping her shoulder from its socket and splitting one of her ribs through her chest.<
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  “No!”

  The truck veered rightward, throwing Dmitri back against his door. A railway tunnel ramp swung into view ahead of them, leading down into the ground.

  He looked back to Ninel. She didn’t seem to notice that half her upper body had been shredded. Her iron face focused only on the road ahead.

  She straightened the truck’s wheels and mashed the accelerator.

  “Ninel,” he said, “don’t—”

  Another storm of bullets rained into the cab an instant before they entered the tunnel, this time catching Ninel squarely. Her body jerked to the left, turning the steering wheel more sharply than the truck could handle. The big wheels lost contact with the ground.

  Dmitri closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  The truck rolled at full speed, tumbling over multiple times as it cascaded down the ramp and deeper into the railway tunnel. When it finally landed on the driver’s side, momentum carried it another forty yards before it screeched to a halt in a cloud of black smoke.

  Dmitri hung from his seatbelt for nearly a minute before he finally accepted that he was still alive. The cab’s interior was covered with blood after Ninel’s remains had scattered everywhere during the crash.

  Poor girl…

  He remembered the hovercar. It would be landing outside the tunnel to investigate the wreckage. If they found him there, they would put a bullet in his skull and Ninel would have died for nothing.

  “Goodbye, Ninel…”

  Dmitri unlatched his belt, pushed his door open, and climbed out of the cab. The tunnel was almost pitch black, filled with dust and smoke. A fire burned somewhere nearby.