The Eternity Brigade Part 17

Hawker took one of the grenades from his jumpsuit, tossed it at the computer and left the room, never looking back. The explosion rocked the bunker and increased the feeling of panic within the headquarters. People began running around without purpose, certain that the enemy had arrived. The confusion only helped his cause; no one paid any attention as he took the elevator to the surface along with twenty other frightened fighters and left the bunker in the general stampede. He was back in the open now, free to move around once more.

Half of his task had been accomplished. This army's copy of his ident.i.ty file had been destroyed; they could never resurrect him again. But there was one more to go; the other side also had a copy of his pattern-and until that copy was also destroyed, he would never be free.

As soon as he could conveniently do so, he broke away from the panicked mob from the bunker and set off on his own. Staying with the others would be suicide; in their hysterical rush, they would simply begunned down at leisure by the enemy artillery. He had to be by himself, where he could move with caution and stealth.

He found a deserted spot hidden from view, ripped off his red armband and replaced it with the blue one he'd taken from his dead double. The other Hawker had been wearing a uniform similar enough to his that he could pa.s.s as the man he'd killed. The only problem might be language; if the attackers had been better prepared, as it seemed obvious they were, they may have had time to implant a common language in all their soldiers-and if it was one he didn't speak, he'd be spotted as an infiltrator despite his blue armband.

He stopped by a corpse on the ground and ripped off a piece of its uniform, then wrapped it tightly around his head as a bandage. Now if anyone spoke to him in a language he didn't understand, he could pretend he'd gotten a head injury that affected his hearing and left him in shock.

He'd seen that glazed expression on comrades' faces thousands of times throughout his career; now he hoped he could emulate it successfully.

He skulked through the ruins until he was well behind the blue lines.

The soldiers here weren't nearly as trigger-happy. The slight mop-up action was all being handled by the front-line troops; the job of these soldiers was to occupy and hold against possible counterattack-which everyone on both sides knew was an impossibility. The mood of these fighters was lighthearted, even boisterous. They were triumphant, they were in no danger. There was nothing for them to fear.

Hawker walked through their ranks to the rear, attracting hardly any attention. Once they'd noted the color of his armband and seen the stunned expression on his face, they weren't interested in him any more.

They didn't want anything to spoil the feeling of triumph, least of all the knowledge that they, too, had suffered some casualties. The soldiers ignored him as though they hadn't even seen him.

His disguise took him well back into the blue ranks-far enough to see that they'd brought a mobile field headquarters with them. This was something like a floating six-story building, riding majestically across the open ground outside the ruined city on a cushion of antigravity. Hawker was delighted to see it. Such a facility indicated that this army was self-sufficient, with no need to be supplied from the outside; all its services-hospital, mess and administration- could be found in that one building.In particular, that meant it was much more likely the records of its soldiers were here in the field, rather than many kilometers away at an established base. A mobile field headquarters could travel where it pleased and duple its troops as needed-which, at times, was much better than dupling the troops at one central location and distributing them later.

Hawker's pattern would be on file here, simplifying his mission considerably.

The mood back here was relaxed, confident. The blue side had won the battle, totally crushing all red resistance. Their jubilation meant they were less tight with their security than they might have been under more strenuous battle conditions. Hawker walked in plain view to within fifty meters of the mobile headquarters before receiving his first challenge.

"Halt. Where are you going?"

The guard had spoken Arkasan, a language Hawker understood.

Relieved that he didn't have to continue his sh.e.l.l-shocked act, he said, "Special mission from patrol five. Our f.u.c.king commers went out on us, so they sent me back to get some more. Don't know why we bother, nothing's going to happen out there. We really smashed 'em today."

The guard smiled and pointed at Hawker's bandage. "Looks like you saw some action."

"Yeah-slipped on a loose stone and hit my head." Hawker tried to capture the tone of irony that the guard could commiserate with. Only a fellow soldier could truly appreciate these little absurdities life constantly offered-and it would make Hawker's story that much more believable.

As he'd hoped, the guard waved him inside with a slight smile and no further questions. Hawker once again found himself inside a military base with only the vaguest idea of where he was going-but he'd search this entire structure from top to bottom if he had to; he'd come too far and suffered too much to be stopped now.

The mood within this base was the exact opposite of that in the bunker.

Here, everything was triumph and calm confidence, the easy feeling of superiority that let the troops relax and take things easier than they otherwise might have. The practical effect, though, was much the same-Hawker was allowed to roam the corridors without much interference, as long as he always pretended to know where he was going and what his specific orders were for going there.At last, though, Hawker reached an area he was not permitted to penetrate. Relaxation was one thing, but a total breach of security couldn't be expected here. The forbidden area was locked with ident.i.ty-required doors, and in addition was guarded by two live soldiers stationed out front who told him in no uncertain terms that the resurrection computer was off limits to anyone without specific authorization.

Hawker had come this far; what he was looking for was on the other side of that door, and he wasn't going to let himself be stopped now. He walked back to the first crossing corridor and stepped into it, out of sight of the guards who'd turned him away. The hallway was almost empty, and Hawker dallied innocently until there was no one around to observe his actions. Then, taking one of the grenades from his pocket, he tossed it down the corridor to the end. Just as it exploded he started running back to the guards.

"Quick!" he yelled. "One of their saboteurs got inside. He's that way!"

The guards took their rifles, which had been slung casually over their shoulders, and raced forward to see what the matter was. As soon as they were past him, Hawker took out his own pistol and shot them both in the back, then turned the laser on the security door. The laser's beam was not strong enough to penetrate the door, so Hawker reached into his pocket for another grenade and threw it at the portal. The blast opened a satisfactory hole for him-but it left him with just one grenade. He would have to save that for the final task.

Hawker leaped through the hole, gun drawn. There were more soldiers here, but they were all choking and stunned from the smoke of the sudden explosion; Hawker killed them before they could even shoot back. With most of the opposition gone, Hawker ran down the hall checking every doorway. Most of the rooms in this section were just offices for the battalion staff, unoccupied and unimportant. Twice he came across other people, and shot them down without even caring who they were. Only one thing mattered to him now: finding that resurrection computer. It had to be here somewhere.

Hawker became a demon possessed, a fanatical killing machine with but one goal. Nothing could be allowed to stop him in his quest. All the army's training, all those centuries of combat and conflict, had prepared him for this day, and he was honed to a razor's edge. He would not die before he found the room he sought.There was a guard outside the computer room when he came to it, but Hawker killed him and ran through the door. Suddenly he confronted his nemesis, the machine that had brought him back to a life of h.e.l.lfire and d.a.m.nation time after time. Hawker gave a grim smile, knowing that this time he would even the score forever. He lowered his gun and reached into his pocket to pull out the last grenade.

"Hold it, motherf.u.c.ker!"

The voice was vaguely familiar. Hawker turned quickly to find himself staring down the sights of a laser pistol. The man behind the pistol was Thaddeus Connors. Hawker's own pistol had been lowered; there was no way he could raise it to shoot before Connors could kill him.

"h.e.l.lo, Connors," he said. His voice was preternaturally calm, a fact that surprised even him. "Remember me?"

"I remember a lot of people." Connors was wire-taut, only a micron away from murder.

"I saved your life. Remember China, back when this whole f.u.c.king mess started? I dragged you across fields at night, and I hid you from the enemy in the daytime."

Connors laughed coldly. "Yeah. If it wasn't for you I wouldn't be here now, right?" No resurrectee could say that and mean it as a compliment.

"I can fix it all now, if you'll let me. If I destroy this computer, all our patterns are gone; they'll never be able to duple us again."

"Cut the bulls.h.i.t, whitey. There's no way out of this, never. This is h.e.l.l, don't you know? G.o.d sent us all here for our crimes. We're all d.a.m.ned souls. It's His punishment, and there ain't nothing no one can do about it."

Hawker's mouth was dry. Thaddeus Connors had been a problem ever since the two men had first met, and he would continue being a problem to the very end. Perhaps some little spark of grat.i.tude way in the back of Connors's mind had kept him from killing Hawker outright-but that margin was rapidly eroding. As bad as the situation was, Hawker would have to do something.

He raised his pistol and fired straight into Connors's stomach. Theblack man fell back, dying-but even before the beam had hit, his own laser was lashing out, scoring Hawker's body.

Hawker should have died then. Connors's beam cut right through his vitals, missing the heart by no more than a millimeter. The pain was blinding, and Hawker fell to the ground like a lump of lead.

But he was not dead, not yet. He had a purpose that would not let go of him, would not let him stop. As long as the computer still existed, all his lives had been for nothing. He could not die now, or his labors would have been lost.

There was something hard and smooth in his left hand. The grenade.

He still held the grenade. He could not turn his head to see it, but he had handled so many grenades that his fingers knew its surface intimately. Set it, he ordered his hand, and the fingers moved slowly to obey. First he turned one small dial, then another. A timer fuse. Fifteen seconds. With the last gram of strength in his body, he pushed the grenade away from him along the floor, toward the computer, knowing there were millions of things that could still go wrong. Maybe he hadn't set the grenade right.

Maybe there was a third record of him somewhere. Maybe...

Jerry Hawker did not live to see the explosion, nor to realize that it produced more than satisfactory results. But that, in and of itself, was a victory.

At long last, and forever, Hawker knew peace.