Fire of the Dark Triad Read online

I turned and saw Remir standing over the first dead soldier holding his machine gun. He knew how to shoot, I thought with brief amazement.

  We had very little time before Homeland Security would react to the loss of communication with the convoy.

  “Kir, take over the car with Lita. Open the detention cell,” I ordered, running to the van where she was locked in the windowless back compartment.

  The back door rose up. Lita was there alone, sitting on a metal bench in the far corner. A translucent tape held her hands together and she awkwardly rested them on her lap. I resisted the urge to look at her face.

  I heard approaching steps and twirled around. Remir stood right behind me holding a bared dagger that he had probably picked up from the same dead soldier. Once again, for a split moment I imagined how soft my skin would feel against the metal, but Remir jumped inside not looking at me and began cutting the band that tied Lita’s wrists.

  “Stay here and hold on tight. I’ll need to drive this thing as fast as it can go,” I closed the back doors and ran to the driver’s seat. As the car began to turn, I felt soft bumps under the wheels. I recognized what it was, and I figured out that I had just discovered something about myself. I could’ve just as easily knocked all these soldiers out temporarily, but I had simply wanted to kill them. My cognitive emotional intelligence informed me that other people would experience an emotion of guilt at this moment. I wouldn’t even know how that felt, in accurate accordance with the theory.

  A reconnaissance motorcade left the gates of the Homeland Security headquarters and moved in our direction.

  “Kir, jam their engines,” I asked.

  “Nick, I can’t. They are all in manual mode.”

  Sure, I thought, someone guessed this part too.

  “They are getting all their patrol cars ready,” Kir was monitoring headquarters communication lines. “They realized that they can only rely on actual visuals.” It wasn’t surprising considering that Kir blocked all their feeds and satellite images.

  They wouldn’t know what happened until they got to the dead convoy. It gave us a relatively safe half-hour before they would identify the missing transportation van.

  “Kir, interrupt all government electronic communications across Beta Blue,” I ordered. “Let them take time driving around to pass the orders.”

  Kir sped up in the direction of my shuttle, which I left moored on the mountain slope above Oren. He used the shortest possible route, not bothering to avoid local police patrols. Without direct orders they wouldn’t even think about stopping a vehicle adorned with high-ranking military insignia.

  My only focus now was getting out of there as quickly as possible, and all complications between me and Remir and Lita were temporarily put on hold. But the two of them were there, locked in the back of the van, without any clue about what was going on. I turned off the portrait mode of the camera, and projected all Earth satellite footage onto the van screens.

  “We’re going to my shuttle,” I used the audio, “it is parked in the mountains behind Oren.”

  Neither of them replied. I guessed that part of their reaction was pure aftershock, but it was also a reflection the simple fact that there wasn’t another option for them. They couldn’t fight this rip current, not without me anyway.

  We all watched the aerial view of the motorcade now surrounding the stopped vehicles and dead bodies.

  By now Kir had successfully jammed all communication lines on Beta Blue indiscriminately, so to report on the situation, one of the cars had to turn around and speed back to headquarters. Its top speed was almost twice that of our transportation van.

  I told Kir to track it on the maps as the three of us watched two pulsating dots. One was moving towards Oren, the other towards Homeland Security headquarters, closing the distance with unnerving quickness. I always underestimated the level of excitement one can get from watching a chase. Of course, it helped that there were lives, mine included, at stake.

  The reconnaissance car finally reached the base. I told myself to enjoy the last moments of relative calm as dozens upon dozens of high-speed attack vehicles burst out of the gates and spread out in all directions.

  None of the silver wasps left the ground, though. There were too many critical electronics inside of them, and it was clear that I would simply crash them down. It was a relief. I didn’t want to kill people, who had done nothing to me.

  The good news was that this fleet was their only chance at stopping me. However, within a short time they would reach other bases and get additional vehicles on the road, and I was now a well-defined quarry. They acted in a very coordinated way despite the lack of electronic communications and were methodically setting up roadblocks slowly cutting off the number of usable routes.

  We had been off the main roads for a while now playing hide and seek, weaving through the narrow back streets of provincial towns, ducking behind tall buildings, crossing unpaved patches of ground. The occasional regular police patrols, not clued in on the situation and totally confused by the lack of ability to communicate remotely, gave us the right of way with speedy politeness.

  Finally, I started to relax – we were getting close to the point where I came down to the valley from the mountains. I silently thanked Kir. His judgment was impeccable as long as there was a solution to the posed problem.

  Until there wasn’t.

  “Nick, we can’t proceed without crossing a visual field of at least one of the military vehicles.” It must have been my imagination that Kir sounded concerned. He wouldn’t survive without me, but as far as I knew such considerations were not a part of his program.

  “Turn off autopilot,” I said.

  We had to cross the familiar agriculture field, the one I’d walked through on my way to Oren, and I didn’t need a satellite feed to recognize the sleek shape of an attack vehicle parked in the middle. I asked Kir to give me the weapon capabilities of this model.

  I didn’t share Kir’s answer with Lita and Remir. They didn’t need to know that this elegant-looking car carried missiles capable of penetrating the armor of our transporter as easily as a paper bag.

  Calm down, I told myself. They can’t use the lock-on feature in manual mode. So it was Kir and I fused together against their human reactions. Stop this bullshit, I said to myself. I had no chance of crossing a space so wide without being shot no matter how elaborate my escape zigzags were. These were not inexperienced shooters.

  I looked around. We were hiding behind the wall of the last structure separating Oren from the rural area, next to an enormous parking lot for heavy agricultural machinery. Normally, they would be out working in the fields, but today they remained abandoned, idling in sleep mode, exactly as I had seen them on the night of my arrival.

  The gates were locked with conventional metal bolts. I thought that I might as well make some use of our mighty armor and drove the military van straight through.

  Inside the yard I stopped the car, jumped out and opened the back door. Lita and Remir had the same silent question in their eyes, but I didn’t feel like explaining. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it was our only chance.

  I had a very vague idea about what exactly these machines were supposed to do, but I had Kir check their maximum speed. It was unexpected luck, but those bulky caterpillar-like contraptions happened to have the ability to move relatively fast when not engaged in their primary harvesting activity.

  I allowed the adrenalin to hit my brain, and the beat of blood in my temples became a cadence of music, celebrating the start of the most reckless adventure of my life.

  “Lita,” I said pointing to the rows of identical machines, “pick one.”

  She looked at me in confusion.

  “Fine,” I said, “I’ll choose then. This one looks the coziest.”

  I walked to a random vehicle in the middle, climbed the ladder to the driver�
��s seat of the wide cabin and motioned for Remir and Lita to get in. I didn’t know how to operate it in manual mode, but I hoped I wouldn’t need to.

  “Kir,” I said, “drive them out, slowly. Spread them over the field. Keep me away from the middle.”

  The metal giants around us suddenly came to life, folding their mechanical arms in preparation for movement.

  Remir understood. He grabbed Lita’s hand and helped her up into the cabin. It was a bit tight, and his shoulder pressed against mine, but we fit.

  “Here we go,” I whispered as we exited the gates in a line of peacefully humming combines.

  It took us several minutes to get into the open.

  The car in the middle of the field didn’t move. The appearance of the harvesting machinery could have very well been the decision of law-abiding, but confused citizens to conduct business as usual.

  The landscape looked idyllic – a gentle breeze sent waves across the golden wheat field, creating various shades of yellow under the bright afternoon sun. The cooling system didn’t work in automatic mode and the mid-summer heat spread through the open windows, adding to a lazy atmosphere of carefree calmness.

  The expanse to the base of the mountain steadily decreased as the line of harvesters slowly advanced across the field.

  The distance to the assault vehicle was steadily decreasing as well. It still sat motionlessly, and I could already see the complicated system of radar, completely useless now, dark-tinted windows and a gun barrel sticking out from a slit that encircled a smooth bump on the roof. It was well out of Kir’s bio-transmission range, unfortunately.

  Suddenly, the barrel slowly rotated towards the closest combine – the soldiers in the vehicle had apparently started to suspect that something wasn’t quite right.

  A loud hissing sound ripped through the air, and the ground in front of the approaching machine exploded in a fountain of moist brown soil.

  “Kir, stop it,” I said. The combine obediently backed off, flashing its headlights in acknowledgement, and stood still. But the rest of the harvesters kept moving forward as if oblivious to the incident.

  I sensed hesitation from the car operators. After a couple of minutes, another missile hit the ground in front of another combine. The machine backed off in a similar fashion and lifted its mechanical arms in a human gesture of surrender.

  Soldiers in the car seemed thoroughly confused because for a couple of minutes again nothing happened. I smiled – the standard protocol of requesting an order from above was out of the question.

  “Think for yourselves, my friends,” I said through my teeth. “Sorry, you aren’t used to this.”

  Remir looked at me sideways, but didn’t comment.

  Finally, the vehicle darted forward and came to a skidding stop in front of the first stalled combine. Two uniformed men jumped out and ran towards the cabin.

  From a satellite feed, I saw a winding dirt road that led up from the valley in the general direction of my shuttle.

  I allowed myself a glance at Lita. She was tightly gripping the handle of the side door, strands of her hair were drenched with sweat and stuck to her forehead. She had been biting her lips so hard that their color seemed to have been painted onto her white face.

  She didn’t notice my glance and kept staring straight ahead.

  The shrill sound of an alarm pierced the air, and a flare exploded high above.

  In satellite view, several identical vehicles in the nearby area left their current positions and picked up speed in our direction. I counted five of them, and each sent a flare up as they approached.

  There was another loud hiss. A combine close to the middle of the line exploded and a sound of cascading metal parts reverberated through the air. The assault car was back in the center assuming the best shooting position.

  “They figured it out. Showdown time,” I said, closing the windows. “Kir, put all the harvesters at full speed in a random movement pattern. Keep at least two of them between me and the point of fire. Drive straight to the mountain road entrance, maximum speed.”

  The engine howled and the combine dashed forward, throwing us into the back of the seat. This mode was designed for relatively smooth surfaces, which the field definitely wasn’t, and the machine convulsed in short spasms every time it hit bumps or shallow irrigation ditches along the way. The best I could do now was to continue holding onto the control bar that Kir had locked into still position; Remir was clutching it too.

  For someone not directly involved, the overall scene must have looked comical; awkward bulky machines were running amok like a herd of terrified animals. The part that wasn’t especially funny was that from time to time one of them would go up in a plume of smoke.

  One of the ditches we encountered was deeper than the others, and the combine hit the ground hard. Lita was flung across the cabin. I grabbed her with one hand and pulled her toward the seat. Remir moved over and I squeezed her between us, giving her best access to the horizontal bar. Streaks of blood crossed her face, getting in her eyes and dripping down her chin.

  She noticed my worried glance and said calmly, “Just a cut.”

  The machine coughed and growled like it was hurt, but continued forward.

  The sound of an incoming missile was so loud that I involuntarily ducked, and the first of the two harvesters shielding us exploded, and shards of metal hit our cabin with a series of banging sounds. Kir immediately positioned a replacement, putting another combine in the line of fire.

  I could already see the ramp to the dirt road that led up the mountain when the first of the reinforcement vehicles entered the scene. It pulled over to the first car, apparently for a short exchange, then quickly drove some distance away and joined the shooting. When the third car showed up, I already guessed that we’d lost anonymity by accumulating an obvious cluster of harvesters around us. Indeed, the cars stopped firing randomly and began to remove our remaining shields methodically, taking them down one by one.

  “Kir, can we make it to the road?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  The expression with which Remir was watching me changed. He couldn’t hear Kir’s answer, so my face must have given it away.

  “The van,” said Remir suddenly, “our van, the one we left behind.”

  I should’ve thought of it myself.

  “Kir, drive the van, across the field, away from our harvester,” I said.

  Our getaway car appeared from behind the wall and sped to the mountain from a different angle.

  It was perfect. They all darted after it, every single one of them.

  “Lack of communications leads to inefficiency,” I said, thinking that I would give Remir proper recognition for this later, after we made it to the shuttle.

  Eventually, the van was surrounded, but we had already left the open field and started climbing the road up the mountain. A tall forest of trees formed a visual screen and gave us some precious moments to gain altitude.

  Things in the valley were unfolding rapidly. After a brief inspection of our decoy, the assault cars began turning around. There was predictable confusion as they tried to communicate with the units that were just approaching the scene. Again, I had to give them credit for how quickly they regrouped. Someone obviously had been ordered to stop a combine that was disappearing into the forest because several cars took off towards our dirt road. The remaining group started shelling the mountain slope.

  They couldn’t see us clearly, but they guessed well – the sound of a missile impact was so deafening that only the fact that I was still alive convinced me that they had missed. All I could make out through the cracked windshield was a white blanket of dust. The combine careened, lost balance and stopped, perched on one side.

  My door was pressed into the ground, Remir’s was jammed, but he kicked it open, climbed out and pulled Lita out of the cabin. I
followed, pausing for a moment to observe the surroundings from the raised part of the combine body. It was almost impossible to see anything through the thick cloud of dust, but it was obvious that there wasn’t much of a road left in front of us. I looked down.

  Lita and Remir waited for me on the ground, Lita wiping blood from her face with her blouse sleeve, Remir looking at her with a calm expression of someone fully convinced that this was nothing more than a bad dream.

  Better not to think how much of a chance we have, I thought, jumping down.

  “The shuttle is in this direction, not far,” I waived to the right. “We can get there in twenty minutes if we run.”

  If I ran, I thought. These two were not in the best shape to begin with, and it was unclear how bad Lita’s head injury was. But it didn’t change anything. The multitude of options had been cut down to this last available one.

  I took a straight course to the shuttle, not bothering to go around low shrubs and occasional rocky patches. Remir seemed to keep up, but Lita started lagging behind right away. I slowed, looked back and saw her fall down hard. We backtracked, and Remir helped her to her feet, but she stumbled again, barely taking another step. I stopped Remir as he bent to pick her up.

  “It’ll be faster if I do it,” I said, getting her off the ground and draping her body over my shoulders.

  A nearby blast shook the forest, and the bitter smell of burning trees started spreading through the air.

  “Come on! Let’s move!” I shouted and started running uphill.

  A satellite feed showed the forest canopy punctuated with plumes of gray smoke. It seemed that they were randomly shooting grenade guns. I grinned, thinking that I’d never imagined being in an inferior position with respect to a Mirror World military. But here I was, in a forest foot chase.

  I kept running, trying to ignore the sound of explosions and wincing when sharp low branches scratched my face. Lita’s head was bobbing in rhythm with my movements, blocking my peripheral vision, but I could hear Remir’s winded breathing just behind me. Finally, not too far ahead, I spotted the familiar clearing where I’d parked my shuttle, seemingly an eternity ago.