Chapter 5: Get OUT!

"Gunnery Sergeant Maxwell reporting as ordered, sir!"

Major McTavish returned the salute with a wry smile. He appeared to be a fairly young man, perhaps as much as two or three decades younger than the Gunnery Sergeant; short brown hair atop a square-ish face with brown eyes and a bit of a dimple. Then again, in a world – or universe – where Confederacy technology could keep you looking young virtually forever, it was hard to tell; the Sergeant certainly didn't look his true age either. The Major only glanced at the Sergeant before returning to looking out the window. "Keep it down, Gunny. You're going to blow our cover."

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" Maxwell asked formally. He'd never worked with Major McTavish so he wasn't sure how strictly the man interpreted the rules. Of course, the Major was a Navy puke – the black coveralls easily gave that away – but Maxwell wouldn't hold that against him; not everyone was good enough to be in the Marines, after all.

"Now and forever, Gunny," McTavish replied with another wry smile. "I don't stand on ceremony much on the best of days – and this is certainly not the best of days."

"Thank you, sir," Maxwell nodded. His hair had been graying at one time but the med-tubes fixed that up. He certainly didn't feel the 48 years he held and his wife agreed; of course, she had turned into a bit of a saucy wench herself. Unlike some of the Confederacy soldiers, Maxwell hadn't left his wife behind when he volunteered; heck she was the best thing to ever happen to him and he knew it. She did surprise him when she suggested an 18 year old high school senior during the pick-up, though. He would never have guessed it but somehow the young girl fit into their household like she had always been there. "What the hell is going on? I've been running pick-ups for nearly a year now and never had more than the usual trouble – and now I've got two squads under me and a Major to tell me what to do? Doesn't make sense, sir."

"You forgot a lieutenant, Gunny," McTavish chuckled. Maxwell appeared to be a no-nonsense Marine; McTavish liked that about him. It helped that his record was a veritable training manual of how to do extractions correctly. It was why he'd personally asked the Director of Evacuation and Colonial Operations to TAD him to this mission. It meant that they had a colonial ship idle but that couldn't be helped. The opportunity here was just too good.

"Sorry, sir?" Maxwell asked.

"A Major and a Lieutenant to tell you what to do, Gunny." McTavish laughed at the Gunny's stony expression. "Mustn't ever forget the Lieutenant. She'll make you salute her for hours if you do."

"I heard that, Major," a female voice came from a nearby doorway. Maxwell was taken aback by the woman who walked through the door. She was gorgeous; long blonde hair, crisp blue eyes and a welcoming smile. Maxwell couldn't help but eye her all the way down; she had curves that should be illegal and probably were in many countries. The black fatigues she wore gave away her service branch – damned Navy again – but in her case he certainly wouldn't mind a little inter-military mingling. "Don't listen to him, Gunny. He's just pissed because I figured this out before he did."

"Gunnery Sergeant Maxwell, this is Lieutenant Capstan," the Major said without looking away from the window. Night was falling outside making the Sergeant wonder what the Major was looking for.

"Sir, ma'am," Maxwell started, looking back and forth between the two of them. "I don't understand. What did you figure out? What are we doing here? Why so much man-power for a simple extraction?"

The Lieutenant looked to McTavish but he just shrugged and went back to looking out the window. "What do you know of the Earth First movement, Gunny?"

"Isn't that a church or something?" Maxwell replied, clearly confused. "I think I remember hearing about some council of churches taking that name last month – maybe the month before."

"The Congregation of Earth First," Capstan murmured, nodding. "They're not the first, though. A political party in the U.K. began it – oh – early last year. They used to be the Great Britain Independence Party but they've gotten a lot more powerful since their name change. Some even think they might have been behind the terrorist attack that wiped out most of the British Royal Family but there's no evidence of it."

"It's spread, though," Capstan continued, glancing over at McTavish whose eyes were focused outside. "It isn't just one movement now. We have groups cropping up all over shouting 'Earth First'. Those, we don't worry about; it's the ones that aren't shouting that have us worried."

The Lieutenant nodded the Sergeant towards the window. "Look out there and tell me what you see, Gunny."

The Gunnery Sergeant looked out for a few moments and then shrugged. "A building. Approaching night. A river. I'm not sure what you're asking me, Lieutenant."

"Okay, maybe a different question," Capstan murmured. "What don't you see out there, Gunny? You know what I don't see? I don't see protesters. I don't see buildings and property torched or blasted by protesters, either; there's urban blight, sure, but not damage caused by rioting citizens. Do you know why you don't see any of that, Sergeant? Because you're in Detroit, Michigan."

"Detroit was built on union labor," Capstan continued. "Even now, after all these years, the unions still hold sway. There was an effort many years ago to make Michigan a 'right to work' state; they even succeeded in passing laws allowing it. You know what those laws did? Absolutely nothing. The unions cried and whined then went out the next day and it was business as usual."

"The metro Detroit area, including Detroit and most of her suburbs, has the lowest CAP testing rate in the country," Lieutenant Capstan said quietly. "Maybe the lowest of any large metropolitan area in any CAP accepting country. It stands at marginally over 3%; that's about 108,000 people in an area of about 3.6 million. Every news broadcast, radio broadcast and governmental meeting has at least 5 minutes built into it decrying the CAP system, the Confederacy and anything else alien in nature. You know why? The unions. The unions are all about making sure that all of their workers are treated equally – then along comes the CAP and not only exposes the differences between their workers but even dares rank them. The unions didn't like that. They've passed resolutions and even tried passing laws to change it. They held card burning protests back in the early days – until they found out that the CAP cards won't burn. Did you know that there isn't a single CAP testing center in the Detroit city limits? Detroit passed an ordinance against it. Several of the suburbs followed suit; the only testing centers within 100 miles are in Bloomfield Hills and Ypsilanti. Detroit's also passed ordinances making it illegal for anyone to leave the Earth from within the city limits. This isn't like the legislation currently moving through California which bans the Confederacy from entering its borders – this literally says people in Detroit can't leave the Earth. Thankfully, the federal government shot that down or else we wouldn't be here today; evidently it was un-Constitutional and comes dangerously close to kidnapping."

"All of that," Capstan continued, "means that Detroit is practically perfect as headquarters for some of those Earth-First idiots. When Israel fell a few weeks ago taking Mecca, Cairo and the rest with them, the southern suburb of Dearborn – with the highest per capita Muslim population in the United States – rioted in the streets; Novi, Southfield and Bloomfield Hills – with a significant population of Jews – had protests and demonstrations. Detroit? Most of the newscasts, radio broadcasts and internet news originating in Detroit spent more time on how this was caused by the CAP system and the Confederacy than reporting actual news on the war."

"What has that got to do with this pick-up, Ma'am?" The Gunnery Sergeant asked, his eyes narrowing. "Are we picking up some of the bureaucrats or union leaders? Maybe some of those 'Earth First' groups?"

"Oh, no, Sergeant," Capstan laughed. "We're picking up the people who are supplying the Earth-First and related groups their weapons and money."

"Not quite, Octavia," Major McTavish turned, frowning. He turned to the Sergeant. "We have reason to believe that GlobalTech is... acquiring ... Confederacy tech in order to try to reverse engineer it and build weapons for certain anti-Confederacy groups. They've hired some of the best and brightest and put them to work figuring the tech out. Anything that can't be used as a weapon, they patent and make money from – and the money gets funneled to the same groups."

"That building," Lieutenant Capstan said, pointing at the GlobalTech building, "is the largest hub of the alien technology black market."

"Holy shit," Maxwell hissed. "I always thought our tech couldn't fall out of our hands. Don't they have fail safes in place so that anything falling out of our hands self-destructs?"

"You know that and I know that," McTavish chuckled. "No one has bothered letting GlobalTech know it."

"We've been ... well, seeding ... obsolete tech for months now, trying to figure out who was behind this," Octavia admitted. "The AIs assured us that it was all harmless crap but Dervish isn't as convinced. After reading some of the scans, I'm not so sure either."

"That's why you're here," Major McTavish said solemnly. "The party over there is a once in a lifetime opportunity to deal a strategic blow to the anti-Confederacy camp. Most of the engineers and scientists who have been working on reverse engineering the alien tech are over in that building having a nice party. A large portion of those scientists and engineers have a cap score of 6.5 or above. We're going to take GlobalTech's brain trust and scatter them across the colonies."

"However, Major McTavish has gotten it into his head that they could have some potentially troubling weaponry over there that may give us a hard time," Capstan interjected. She looked over at the Major, who'd turned back to the window and frowned. "He might be right."

The woman shook her head and turned back to the Gunnery Sergeant. "Once we pick their brains, so to speak, it should leave them reeling. Then, later next month," Lieutenant Capstan smiled, "we're going to use some of our own alien tech to do a little market manipulation. GlobalTech is going to be a big loser. I dare say that we'll have them in bankruptcy within the year; especially since, at about the time we're killing their stock price, we'll also be swooping down into this rancid cesspool and picking up every piece of Confederacy or Sa'arm technology we can find."

The cold, sparkling gray wall sent a shiver straight up Calix's back. An interdiction field. He'd read about them on the dark web; more, honestly, than he wanted to. The field had been the subject of much scientific inquiry since the very beginning and someone – a user with the handle ZenMaster – had compiled an awful lot of data about it. There was spectroscopic analyses, gravimetric analyses, radiational analyses – heck, even first-hand encounter descriptions. ZM, whoever he or she was, was very thorough.

This was something that Cal had not planned for. Not in his wildest nightmares had he even considered the possibility that he'd be caught on the wrong side of an interdiction field. Of course, he should have considered it; the party below would probably hold a whole mess of rich folk just waiting to get off planet. He shook his head and berated himself for his poor planning. Detroit proper was not a hotbed of pick-up activity – as a matter of fact, he could count on one hand the number of pick-ups that had occurred anywhere near here – so he'd lulled himself with the false security that it wouldn't happen here. He was going to pay for his faulty logic.

Still, the party was below and, as far as anyone knew, no one could come up to the fourth floor. Maybe he could just hide out here until it was over. He doubted anyone would bother coming up here; besides, the rich people were probably all below having the massive orgy that made up these stupid things. The more he thought about it, the more he liked that plan. If he was careful – and quick – he could even get away during the mass confusion that always seemed to come at the end of these.

He looked back at the interdiction field. Now that he had some skeleton of a plan in place, it didn't look so scary anymore. Night vision only showed it as static and the thermals were all over the place. He set his helmet to record and flicked on the embedded spectroscope – he'd rarely had need to use it and it drained a lot of power but if he could gather some good data, maybe he could figure out how it worked.

Strangely, the readouts in his HUD looked vaguely familiar but he couldn't place it at first. He'd seen a similar static somewhere – and similar thermal signature, he was certain of it. He racked his brain, flipping through readouts of the data he was gathering. It wasn't until he was looking at EM band emissions that his eyes widened in surprise.

He couldn't be sure – not positively – but the interdiction field looked like a highly modified and highly advanced version of a gravitonic field. He narrowed the EM band and was surprised to see a shadow – or maybe an echo? No, neither; the field wasn't a single gravitonic field but rather two with some kind of powerful energy band between them that defied Calix's ability to describe – or understand. The two fields were composed of randomly oscillating and yet strangely complementary wavelengths; if you could somehow create a generator to match them, you could theoretically just walk through – but the wavelength pattern seemed complete chaos. Matching it seemed an impossibility.

Still, he did have a gravitonic generator of his own. Single shot and it tended to explode but if he could somehow manage to have it form fully open instead of 'popping' into existence – and if he could somehow get it to form around him instead of inside of him – and if he could get it to last two or three seconds – and if it didn't explode – and if his armor could take the discharge from whatever the hell that energy was between the two fields – then he might, just might, have a way out of here.

He pulled the gravitonic generator from his backpack; it didn't look all that dangerous. It was a haphazardly shaped ball the size of a grapefruit made of small plates of all kinds of different colors and consistencies with a small black button sticking out. Pulling the flat-head screwdriver from his pack, he carefully pried the button off the ball so that is was just hanging from three wires braided together. Grabbing a jeweller's screwdriver from one of the pockets in his armor, he adjusted the magnification settings on his helmet to 10x. Carefully, he began adjusting settings inside the small ball.

He never noticed the door slowly swinging open or the hulking armored man creeping through the doorway.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" The Marine asked slowly. "Looks like I caught me a thief. Put the baseball down, thief and step over here. This is a pick-up; maybe you've heard of them."

Calix's heart thudded in his chest and a cold knot settled in his stomach. The man looked simply, impossibly enormous. He was at least Calix's height, if not taller, and looked like the poster child for Steroid Monthly. What the fuck was a Marine doing up here?

Cal considered his options as he straightened. He'd made some adjustments to his field generator but he was pretty sure he didn't want to do a human test on the fly; that way led to Bad Things™. That meant, he needed to deal with the Marine - which was looking to be just as much of a suicide mission.

The Marine was big so he was probably slow but Cal erred on the side of caution; he'd seen big guys who were pretty darn fast. He was decked out in armor and looked to be holding the menacing looking rifle with his right hand on the trigger guard – so, probably right handed; he should be marginally slower to the left side, then. There was a table between them to provide cover and the Marine didn't know about Cal's armor or its capabilities.

Cal tossed the jeweller's screwdriver at the Marine and started to drop to his left, his right hand reaching down for a zapper. It would probably be completely ineffective against the Marine's armor but much of his face was exposed so that was what he would throw for. Then, he'd bug out of the room and put as much of the building as he could between him and the grunt before he...

The man moved unbelievably fast. Almost faster than Cal's eyes could follow. Calix had read that Confederacy Marines had been augmented to be stronger and faster but he hadn't believed it; they just looked like 'roided out freaks. He believed it now. The weapon in the Marine's hands wavered just a moment before he squeezed the trigger and Cal felt pain crashing through the front of his body. His legs caved for a fraction of a second but his armor managed to dissipate the energy enough to keep him upright and awake.

As he allowed himself to sink to the ground – now seemed like a good time to play possum – Cal pulled out a zapper. He took the fall on his shoulder and rolled under the table, pushing the chairs out of the way. He continued to roll to the other side as he listened to the Marine talking.

"This is Caldwell up on four. The unidentified up here looked to be a thief that had a very short-lived career as a fighter. I stunned him and he's down for the count. Should I leave him here or drag him down?"

Calix wasn't sure what the answer was and the Marine never heard it either. As soon as he caught sight of the Marine, he threw the Zapper at the man's face. The mild explosion startled the man but the pulsing milli-amps made sure he wasn't surprised for too long. Calix rolled to his feet as the Marine fell. He stepped over the man, preparing to put some distance between him and the Marine when the hulking brute reached up and grabbed his left ankle.

Pain. The carbon fiber bar was meant to ward off blows, it provided no relief from someone squeezing the shit out of his leg. The young man never even hesitated however, he rolled his leg and kicked the Marine in the face with his other foot.

Ice cold fear exploded throughout Calix's body. The man's grip barely changed. It was only through sheer luck he was able to roll his leg out of the Marine's grasp.

Cal had had enough. These guys, whatever they were, they were no longer human. There was no way he was going to tangle with them again – this one or any of the others that might happen to be anywhere in the building. He needed a way out and he needed it now. If they caught him – he was a dead man. The rumor was that the punishment for being caught in a pick-up over fourteen and without a CAP card was death. He didn't want to test the rumor's veracity.

His ankle hurt; he compartmentalized the pain and did his best to ignore it. It wasn't broken but it was definitely sprained. There was nothing for it but to go on. He'd get to the other side of the building, cut a hole in the glass and pray that the gravitonic generator would get him safely out. He didn't want to test it but he had no choice, he had to escape. He'd better just hope his armor could protect him from whatever the energy was between those two fields.

Suddenly, he pulled up short. Even if the generator worked and he got out, he was going to be 75 feet above the ground with no hand holds. That was not the way out; it was just another way to end his life.