Lasertown Blues Read online

  Boggs came to with his suit stripped down to his waist and an IV in his arm. He blinked. The medic standing over him looked anything but sympathetic. Boggs tried his mouth to see if it, at least, still worked. “Did everybody get in?”

  “I guess. You’d better take it easy, Pops. That heart isn’t what it used to be.”

  “Or the rest of me, either.” He lay back, sweat trickling across his bald pate. “Who came in?”

  “About twenty of you guys. I guess,” and the medic shrugged, “we owe you diggers.”

  Boggs’ chest swelled a little. “I guess you do,” he said, and turned his head quietly to rest. His eyesight swept across the pile of deepsuits in the bay. There was no armor standing in the corner. He looked back to the medic. “Hey—you!”

  “C’mon, old man. Thought I told you to take it easy. We’ll have someone take you to ICU in a couple of minutes.”

  “No, no, wait. Where’s the guy in the battle armor? Sandy hair, blue eyes… knows what he’s doing.”

  “Nobody like that came in. Some mouth with black hair changed suits for a fresh one and left again. That’s it.”

  Boggs closed his eyes again, this time tightly, feeling too old to cry. Jack hadn’t made it. He’d known Jack was hurt, but not complaining. Well, that field of rocks out there between the mines and the domes had claimed some of the best. As something akin to agony squeezed at his heart again, he lay very still.

  Amber opened her eyes. Colin leaned over her, holding her chilled hand in his warm one. “Are you all right, child?”

  She sat up with a jerk, expecting to see the Milot’s body stretched out beside her, knowing the psychic energy with which she’d finally lashed at him. But there was no sign of K’rok. “He must have a thick skull,” she muttered, as Colin helped her to stand. Her knees threatened to buckle and he slid a chair under her.

  “Can you breathe?”

  Her throat felt as though it had been ripped open. He passed a glass of water to her and she sipped at it gingerly. “Yes, but it hurts.” She fingered her throat, feeling puffiness, and knew she must be purpling already. Her voice was a whispery husk of its normal pertness when she asked, “Did you tell him?”

  “Yes. It served no further purpose to hide it from him.” Colin rubbed his hands together. His knuckles were thickened and as she looked at them, she saw the tiny scars of someone who’d either worked hard or fought hard.

  “What’d you think he’ll do?”

  “I don’t know. He may well destroy the site after he’s examined it, but somehow—I don’t think so. No. I envision him as a gladiator determined to make a last stand, but against whom or why—”

  “Thraks.”

  “Maybe. If they wanted to, they could have hit it anytime. No, I think they want to examine it fully before they do.” Colin stood up, rubbing his jaw. “Perhaps now is not a good time, but—”

  Her senses tingled. “For what?” she shot back, looking up.

  “The miners have overrun the Thraks. I’m told they got hold of the laser cannon and caused some considerable damage. The warship has pulled back, to a more distant orbit. Lasertown is back under Dominion control again.”

  Amber would have grinned, but something in the Walker’s demeanor told her this was not a cause for celebration. “What happened? Where’s Jack?”

  “They told me it was a heroic effort—”

  She pushed herself to her feet. The cords on her neck constricted with pain and grief, and she brushed it away. “Tell me what happened!”

  “They’re not sure. The miners who survived brought the cannon into the domes, playing the odds that the Thraks wouldn’t hit us and cause a major incident. Jack didn’t make it. There’s an old man in ICU, by the name of Boggs—”

  “We know him. You and I met him when we got stuck down there. He’s the shift supervisor. What happened to him?”

  “Heart attack. He’ll be all right, but he says Jack ran into K’rok and the berserker covering their escape from the mines. He said Jack seemed to be hurt… heard him breathing hard over the com lines, but Jack kept on fighting. And when they had to make a run for the domes, Jack didn’t follow. He’s locked out, Amber.”

  “He’s not dead. I know it.”

  Colin looked at her kindly. She thrust out, pushing back his sympathetic hand, and turning away. “I know he’s not dead.”

  “Maybe not. If you’re well enough, I’m going to go down to the locks. They need people with deepsuit experience to help bring the bodies back in. I’m hoping I won’t find Jack down there.”

  Amber didn’t say good-bye. She couldn’t. Her throat ached as if it would burst. She heard the door open and close behind Colin. As it closed, she let herself fall back onto the chair. She curled up and opened up her mind, searching desperately.

  “Bogie, stop. I can’t go much farther.” Jack reeled back in the suit, feeling his muscles go, sagging. But he had the feeling that even if he passed out, the armor would carry him onward.

  The suit staggered to a halt. *Boss, let me touch you.*

  “No!”

  *You gave me life, Jack.*

  He closed his eyes. The stilted mindtouch was gone, matured into communication that was undeniable. He wanted to thrust it away and could not. It burned through his brain like a hard wire. “Get out of me,” he said.

  *Let me help.*

  Behind his closed eyelids, the monstrous image of the berserker flared into sight.

  “Jeezus,” Jack said wearily. “You just want to keep me alive long enough to—to—”

  *Boss!*

  Jack opened his eyes at the hurt. Feelings? Now the sentience had feelings? If only Amber were here. He chinned off the holograph field and pulled an arm carefully back out of the sleeve. He touched his flat stomach. The skin was icy. He probed gently and the resounding burst of pain made him gasp and nearly double over, except that the armor caught and held him.

  Bogie said, *Boss, we’ve got to go. If you won’t let me heal you… I’ve got to go anyway. There’s no more time.*

  “No. You’re not going anywhere. I’ve turned off the field.” Jack laughed softly, bitterly. “I’m going to die here, standing up in this thing, and when you do hatch, you’ve got nothing but vacuum to hatch into.”

  *Jack. Please turn the holo back on.*

  “No.” Jack tilted his head back, resting it against the circuitry and chamois at the back of the suit. “I want it this way.”

  For the tiniest past of a second, he felt a fluttering touch, not Bogie, but terribly familiar.

  They both said simultaneously, “Amber?”

  *Amber?*

  And then the touch was gone.

  It spurred Bogie. *Jack!*

  Before he could answer no again, it gripped him. He clenched his teeth and felt the inexorable pressure on his neck and skull. “Bogie. What the hell are you going?”

  *Turning the holo back on, Jack.*

  It pushed his face into the switching and the rosy field came back on.

  With a jerking movement, his arm went back into the sleeve. Jack clenched his fist, thinking momentarily of turning his weapons on himself.

  *I wouldn’t do that, Jack. Just remember that where there’s life, there’s hope.*

  Jack smothered a groan as the armor reeled back into movement. Then he spotted a blip on his short-range tracking. Turning his head slightly, he saw other signals coming in on his long-range. The long-range told him that the Thraks were moving again.

  And something else was out there in space, besides.

  Amber lurched back in her chair, holding her throat with both hands, trying to soothe the pain of her injury. Hot tears slid down her face.

  He was alive, she knew that, and in the grip of Bogie’s madness. There was nothing she could do for him. Nothing. Her influence had gone the way of Jack’s. The battle armor was carrying him away from the domes and to his death and there was nothing she could do but wait.

  She scrubbed away the tears. T
hen wait she would. Because the Bogie she’d touched had a curious feeling for Jack even as it forced him across the dead moon landscape on a mission of madness. She had to believe that it fought its own will to survive, had fought it for months, not wishing to feed off Jack any more than Jack wanted to be consumed. It grew to life, slowly, painstakingly, linked to Jack by something it could not comprehend.

  She prayed it was love.

  Jack snapped to with a sudden awareness, like a second wind. He discounted his alertness, having seen it before in dying men. But it stood him in good stead now as the short-range tracking screen showed him a blip just around the sharp crest of rocks they were rounding.

  “Bogie,” he said. “We’re not alone. Give me back control. Whatever it is, is lying in ambush, and you don’t have the finesse yet to face it. If you want to get where you’re going, you’re going to have to give back control now.”

  The armor staggered, and then Jack felt command return to him again. He moved quickly, tacking to the right, but it was too late.

  The sled with the black-suited driver came piling at them. Jack hit the power vault. It drove him up, though not quite as high as he’d planned and Jack realized he was running close to a red field. He fired downward and the jolt rocked the sled, dumping the driver in the dust. The sled nosed to a halt among the rocks.

  The driver lay facedown, quiet, as Jack landed and approached. His side ached again and he hoped he hadn’t spent what meager reserve he had left. Beyond the black-suited man, he saw the widening expanse of a massive chasm, and realized that Bogie had brought him nearly to what must be the Walker site. He looked down at the driver. Another victim?

  As he leaned down, the man lashed out, kicking. Jack rocked back, gasping at the blow to his midriff. The armor toppled and went down. A moment later, the man jumped him, and Jack felt all the wind and life go out of him. Their face plates clicked.

  “Hello, mate,” Stash said cheerfully. “Thought you was left for dead back there.”

  “Not… quite,” Jack wheezed.

  “Yeah? Well, this must be what they call serendipity. You see, I was a bit upset about losing you. You stood to make a great deal of money for me. Now they wanted you alive, but I suppose they’ll take dead as well. After all, that’s what you were supposed to be, wasn’t it, now? Dead as a burned-out chip. But you got chilled down instead and sent off to Lasertown. Don’t go runnin’ off like poor Fritzi, Jack. I scouted his body back there a ways. I’m going to be leaving you here, mate. I can tell from your face and the sound of your breathing that you ain’t going anywhere. I’ll be back.”

  “Where?”

  “Over yonder. I have a little job to do. Me original job. A demo job, and then a hit. Took me a while to get out here without causing suspicion, but I made it.”

  “The… the dig.”

  “Right again. You’re a regular comet. But I knew that the moment I saw you. Knew you was something special and I could make a fortune off you.” Stash made a clicking sound. “Life is beautiful sometimes when it all comes together, ain’t it? I’ll get a fair chunk of credit for blowin’ the site, and then when I bring you in, I can guarantee th’ old Walker’ll be weepin’ at your side, and it’ll just be a touch to take him out. And then I’ll take your body on for another chunk of credit. What a job this was. Worth bein’ chilled down for a couple of months, mate.”

  Stash moved, looking up. After a moment, he bent down again, the face plates nudging. “Want to know something else? I never was in your Guard. You ain’t quite got it all back yet, Jack, after cold-sleep fever. Now you won’t have the time to get it. Rum deal for you. When th’ the word filtered down about what my employer was lookin’ for in Lasertown, I knew it had to be you. You was worth all the trouble I took lookin’ out for you. But Winton told me all about you, you see, and he’ll be happy to get delivery. Got to run, mate. You just lie still and wait for me. If you can hold on, I’ll get some help for you. Winton told me he’d just as soon have you in the flesh. Says you’re a hard man to kill and he’d like to get his hands on you. But he’ll pay either way. So it’s up to you, mate. Too bad you wrecked the sled. It’s wedged itself in pretty good.”

  Jack felt his sleeve being lifted and knew that he was being tied to the sled. He was too cold to move or to protest.

  “See ya, mate. No hard feelings.” Stash stood up, moving out of Jack’s sight.

  In a matter of seconds, the mikes could no longer pick up the scrunch of his footsteps across the rock and ash. Jack watched the short-range screen until his eyelids were too heavy to hold up.

  His last thoughts were of Amber and, oddly enough, of Bogie.

  *Jack.* Bogie probed the coldness within his shell. It frightened him. Cold was dormancy to him. He didn’t want to go back to being dormant. He needed Jack. Jack’s bright, fiery life. His thoughts and his emotions. And because of those other things beyond flesh, Bogie had fought not to grow in the way his kind hungered to grow. He would not rend Jack. He would not!

  But he wasn’t strong enough to refuse all instincts. The call he must answer. That he could not refuse, for he was still too young and weak. And so, though he smelled the congealing blood and felt the icing body, Bogie moved to do what Jack would not let him do earlier.

  He flowed into Jack and moved along the pathways, searching for damage he could repair. He would grow for Jack instead of for himself.

  Colin straightened up. Emmanuel took the exhausted deepsuit from him and made ready to suit him up in a fresh one. The Walker looked at his aide, a man who’d been waiting many months for him to come so that the site could be documented. Emmanuel and Lenska had gone through seminary together. The small, slight man showed dark marks under his eyes and already gray flecked his auburn temples. Colin hesitated, for he knew that the aide would do whatever was asked of him, and he wondered for a moment if he was going to ask too much, but he had no choice.

  “Send word back to my rooms to the young lady there. Her name’s Amber. Tell her we were unable to find the body.” “Yes, sir.”

  “Then suit up. Get the others together.”

  Emmanuel’s eyebrows went up. Colin snapped, “And hurry. We haven’t any time to waste. Before the Thraks come back in or someone gets some efficient martial law established, I want us out at that dig site. You told me you had everything ready to go.”

  “Yes, sir!” Emmanuel scampered off as Colin fumbled with the interior plumbing of the deepsuit. He had only a moment’s hesitation as he decided how he was going to deal with the Milot-Thrakian field commander when he got there.

  He would wait no longer. The site was his to document. He had hesitated enough and nearly lost it all.

  He would hesitate no longer.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Bogie grew desperate. He could mend here and bypass there, but the spark he searched for he could not find, the spark that set off the fiery essence he’d come to know as his boss. He chased after it, calling, frightened, knowing that his own time of dormancy was growing close if he could not halt Jack’s slide into death.

  He stopped. Amber. Amber could help. Amber touched him as well, but she was more than fire to him. He could not explain it. And now he went in search of Amber, calling her.

  “Bogie.” Amber’s eyes snapped open at the tentative mental call. She reined him in vigorously. “Bogie, what are you doing out there! You’re killing Jack.” She caught the fear and iciness of his sentience and felt an echo of it inside her. Where was Jack? At her wonderment, he caught her up and drew her into Jack.

  With a gasp, she followed.

  ***

  Jack woke. Bogie and Amber nudged at him, driving him. He ached all over and gooseflesh ridged his skin. With the square of his chin, he kicked up the heat in the suit. He lay still a moment, lost in his dreams, waiting for the warmth to revive him.

  He was still hurt, but something had happened while he was under. He withdrew a hand and rubbed the flat of his torso, wincing under his self-examinat
ion. No swelling. Internal bleeding had stopped or he’d be dead. Maybe he was dead.

  He took a deep breath and felt the stab of half-mended ribs. If Bogie had finally gone in, he’d done a hell of a job.

  “Don’t bitch, Jack. He did the best he could.”

  “Amber?” Jack tilted his head up, looking around, in spite of himself.

  “Right. Look for me. Jack, I’m in Lasertown. Where the hell are you?”

  He sat up. The Flexalinks complained slightly. The gauges were holding their own, but barely. He might just get out of this alive. He looked out across the lunar valley. “Amber,” he said slowly, “I’m overlooking the dig site. It’s incredible.”

  Her answer faded beyond his grasp. “Amber?”

  “Jack, Bogie’s losing me. I can’t… can’t hold on much longer. Get up, Jack. You’re still badly hurt. Get up and get moving. Come back.”

  Jack aimed carefully and fired the binding fastening him to the sled. He remembered Stash playing Winton’s game and that he would ultimately be going after St. Colin. “I’ll be back later, Amber, but I’ve got something to do first. Colin with you?”

  “No, he’s…” she faded again.

  “You get hold of him and watch him. Stash is no digger, he’s a terminator. If he gets by me, he’s after Colin. Take care of it, okay?”

  “Jack!”

  The noise of the suit power lifting the sled out of the rocks drove Amber out of his mind. Jack leaned over and hit the starter. It vibrated into life under his gauntlets.

  “All right, Bogie. Let’s take a look at what’s caused all this trouble.”

  *Right, Boss.*

  As Jack descended into the depression of the site, he could see the shapes of machinery left idle under mylar blankets. A few mini-domes had been set up. Two had been pressurized, he could tell by the faint droplets of humidity condensing on the interior. There was no immediate sign of Stash, but Jack found a good-sized target blip moving onto his scanner.