TerraCom Inception

“The European economy had been determined by corporate influences since the colonial period of the early seventeen-hundreds. This is a trend that continues to this day, where one of the prime justifications for the expense and difficulty of maintaining extra-solar colonies is in the opening of new markets, but for the EuroCon it was a metaphorical deal with the devil. Public taxes, in response to public pressure, were kept at minimal levels. Proprietary fees levied on the companies doing business within the European Community were used to make up the difference… any commercial entity engaging in transactions was subject. Starting from approximately the year twenty-eighty, all aspects of European society reflected the growing influence of corporate culture; advertisements took the place of popular art, all the best schools were company schools, loyalty to company began to supercede loyalty to country… all in all, the situation was not new, but rather resembled the corporate structure of Japan from an earlier time, but to a hyper degree the zaibatsus of nineteen-eighties could only wonder at.

The large corporations that managed to plant themselves firmly into the economy, despite the costs, evolved into the first sovereign states of their kind. At one point in the early twenty-second century, the Dornier-Dassault dialect of the Common Commercial Language was the third most widely used language on the continent. When the Neo-Colonial War erupted, the European Confederation came to lean even more heavily on their corporate allies, for when they ran short of funds for munitions, loans were provided. The day those loans were called in was the day the devil came to collect what was due. All that remained of the European Confederation was the name of the continent it once controlled.”

Jena slept until the grav-lev abruptly slowed. Her eyes snapped open as she lurched forward against her lap belt. She turned as Kinkaid tapped her on the arm.

“You dropped these,” He said and offered her the earpiece and datapad that had dropped to the floor. “I suggest you pay greater attention to your things, Commander, but your timing is very good… we’re about to arrive in France.”

She looked out the window and could see faint glow on the tunnel walls from someplace ahead. The light began filling the tunnel as the train started moving again. After a few minutes of creeping, the train emerged into the city of Calais. The first thing she saw outside the window was a ghostly armored assault train rusting on a siding. Once capable of transporting a battalion of shock troops to England along with a dozen fighting vehicles, now patches of armor had been stripped away, leaving holes Jena could see through. There were people living inside, figures huddling around glowing thermo-casters or sparking burn-barrels who watched the diplomatic train pass.

“Calais is a city under siege,” Kinkaid said and peered over her shoulder at the EuroCon security troops that fought to hold back a mob pushing toward the open tunnel entrance. The troops carried modern rifles but were dressed in old uniforms covered with patches: company logos. “It’s always been a collection point for refugees trying for NorCom territory. Until the tunnel was closed, stowing away aboard a train was the best way to get across the Channel. The refugees kept coming even after the trains stopped running. There are places in this city that are savage and degenerate, even the police won’t go there. The authority that remains here is very well armed. It’s the only thing keeping order. Police do not fire warning shots here.

“If things are so bad, how come we didn’t invade a long time ago?” Jena said as a hulking Messerschmitt armored vehicle (AFV) rolled along the side of the guideway on its wide treads, illuminating the crowd surging toward the tunnel with the searchlight mounted next to its main weapon- a powerful coil-gun (Similar to a rail gun). Security troops armed with shock-batons waded into the mass of people, breaking up the group in smaller sections that could be more easily managed, scattering others, and crumpling those who felt their electric touch.

Kinkaid sat back in his chair and said, “Wouldyou want to deal with this mess, Commander? Would any sane political entity? Of course not. The only reason why a one-world government could possibly work here is because the problem is so great. Now the NorCom must act. Before we were content to let the EuroCon sleep in the bed they made, but the consequences of allowing European civilization to collapse are too dire to ignore any longer.”

Jena watched the lights of the super-towers flashing in the far off Calais city core, where the elite insulated themselves from the masses. To the south, the glow of the Paris megapolis tinged the horizon, identifying the greatest jewel in the European Confederation, home to 33 million people. The train began picking up speed as they passed the Chunnel terminal facilities and started through the abandoned industrial parks ringing the city. Idle factories towered over the grav-lev guideway like the rust-streaked walls of a crumbling metal canyon. Geneva was six hours away.

***

UM-4/Avalon

Kray was jolted to waking by the thump of the UC-11 setting down. The pain suppressors he had taken during the flight muted the engine noise, like the rest of reality, making everything seem hazy, almost thick, and soft around the edges. Blurry faces that he should’ve recognized peered down at him like fiends.

"Let's go! Everybody out!" The crew-chief bellowed out. Two pairs of hands reached into the passenger bay and grabbed Kray by his combat harness, dragging him out of the cargo bay onto a litter that was too short to accommodate his lanky frame. His boots flopped off to each side of one end while his head lolled over the other. The skimmer he could barely make out lifted off as soon as everyone was clear.

The sky above him was grim, filled with foreboding gray clouds that promised more rain, the air was filled with particulates that had to be more than stim effect. The world he saw was upside-down, though he could identify buildings as his head bounced, back and forth, with each step in the litter-bearers uneven gaits. Flames licked at broken out window-frames as high-rise hab-complexes burned, sending pillars of smoke billowing hundreds of feet up to merge with the low clouds.

Two men carried him towards a large bunker. As they got closer, he could see it was the entrance to an underground gravlev station, gaping like the mouth of a huge beast about to swallow him whole. There was a billboard broken over it that provided jagged carbon-fiber teeth. He recognized the silhouette splayed across the crumbled surface as the new Avianca Banshee. He’d wanted a Banshee. The LZ had been set up in a parking lot.

He felt his stomach churn as the porters came to the maw. Kray looked down and reality dropped away into blackness, but there is light further below, and an echoing keening. The porters, each wearing civilian clothes, lifted the litter to the "traverse-slope" position and started down the stairway. A burning surge came up his throat as the world spun. He got his head turned to the side before it reached his teeth.

"Another shower today! Hell’s pit!" One porter growled as he felt a warm fluid splashing down on him. He stopped and rested his end of the stretcher against his hip.

"Not the last one by any effect,” The other one said and halted their descent. “Skim off and get back to the handles.”

"Fek it anyway." The first said, wiped the vomit off his face, and they continued on down the steps. The front of the litter slipped out of the porter’s hands and smacked down on the cement as they posted to change position at the bottom of the steps. The second porter swore and wiped his hands on trouser-legs already stiff with blood, succeeding only in further smearing what had already leaked in copious volumes from prior wounded.

“Not bad, chumpka, if that’s the worst that happens, you should be so lucky.” The porter said and wiped at the slick handles.

Red, red, everywhere was red. It was on the uniforms of the doctors and nurses who worked frantically on patients that were punctured, lazed, or blown apart. Some were missing arms or parts of arms; ragged flesh hung from shoulder sockets charred black. Where legs should’ve been were shrapnel-torn stumps wrapped in tourniquets or seeping dressings. Kray had never seen what artillery could do up so close; all around him was macabre, abstract art. Octavia… Avalon… now he’d bled on two worlds.

“Don’t drop him here! Get him to the triage point!” A bag-eyed nurse waved the porters onward. Red stains blotted out the camouflage patterns on the uniforms of medics and orderlies who struggled with casualties, physical and mental. The pain for a few had become too great and they thrashed on their litters, being held down as robo-docs did their work. Others sat away from the bedlam staring blankly at the walls. Medics could only guess at what they were seeing. Kray knew they were watching friends exploding.

The route to the triage was demarcated by a red trickle that over time had become a stream. Life-saving operations were going on all around him; shrapnel-perforated sections of intestine were being cut away. Gaping holes blasted into living flesh were being closed and sealed with surgical foam. Limbs that could be saved were being rejoined, but the efforts were not enough for some. Those beyond help were wrapped in shipping plastic and stacked like cordwood on the maglev guideway.

Medbots, docs and medics struggled to treat wounds caused by weapons in which they had no experience treating. Most there were too young to have served during Octavia. The orderlies lowered him with as much tenderness as they had left after hours of unloading the maimed, mangled, and butchered. The synthetic endorphins were wearing off. Kray struggled with the pain as a medic stopped and slotted one of his dog tags into a boxy, hand-held scanner. His tags were chipped with his medical history and blood type. The medic downloaded the information on the tag, then put the scanner aside and leaned in closer.

"What's your name sergeant?" The medic asked. Kray concentrated on the face in front of him and tried to endure the agony.

"Kr…Kray." He whispered and the medic smiled.

"Do you know where you are, Sergeant Kray?"

"Avalon." Kray said but instantly doubted that. Avalon was supposed to be a paradise. The medic nodded.

"Can you tell me what happened, Sergeant?"

"We couldn't hold them," Kray said and let out a long groan. “Nope.”

"How did you get wounded, Sergeant?" The medic said and scanned Kray’s vital signs with a hand unit. Kray tried to recall everything prior to the flash of the orbital bombardment landing and the feeling of himself thrown into the air but could not. He shook his head and laid it back in silence. The medic nodded in understanding and patted his leg.

“That’s okay, it’s gonna be all good.” The medic said.

"What have you got, Miller?" An older voice demanded. Kray looked up at the speaker. It was an older man with thinning salt-and-pepper hair wearing Captain's bars, looking down on him with hard, practiced eyes.

"He just came in, sir,” Miller said and waved his hand-scanner at Kray. “Severe lacerations to the left lateral torso, left iliac, and leg."

"They warned us about these bombardment cases," The Captain said. "Vitals?"

"He’s hypotensive but stable," Miller said and offered the scanner for the Captain to examine. “His heart rate’s up, but I figure that’s cause of the stim. His last dose of synthetics was thirty minutes ago.”

“What about his level of consciousness?”

"He's alert and oriented to person and place,” Miller said. “They patched up pretty good on the way in, I was gonna give him priority-surgical."

"Fine," The doc said. "Table number four is clear. Get him on it. Hook up the next auto-doc that’s available…and get him two more units of endorphins, now."

"Right, sir." The medic said and waved for assistance. Two orderlies in civilian clothes ran up to carry the litter. Beside him, a chaplain was holding the hand of a trooper, a man so critically injured that he was being passed up to save those with more prospects for survival… a lieutenant from the 10th Infantry with a large, bloody bandage covering half of his face that was scorched black and raw. The man threw off his blanket and abruptly sat upright. Kray was brought to face level with the young officer as the orderlies lifted his stretcher.

"We gotta bug out!" He yells as two, burly, orderlies sprang on him and force him back down, tying his hands to the stretcher with strips of blood-sodden cloth.

"Don't you worry about it, Sergeant." The medic said soothingly and applied a new endorphin patch to his exposed arm. Kray took a deep breath and felt the pain slowly begin to disappear. "Save, serve, support, that’s our motto. You’re twelve hundred miles behind the lines. You’re gonna be all good."

Kray watched groggily as he was lowered onto the surgical table and a Carnegie/Mellon med-bot was wheeled into place above him. The machine looked frightful. It was five feet tall but squat with three skeletal arms. At the end of each arm was a multi-purpose surgical attachment that held multiple instruments; laser scalpels and cutting devices of a more mundane nature, snips, hemostats, a cauterizing iron, and probes of various sizes and functions. The instruments looked clean but the Med-bot was not. Like everything else it seemed, the Med-bot was sprayed with gory paint, which had dried in places and chipped off. When the tech got it plugged into the surgical table, the robot went to work.

A door in the body of the Carnegie/Mellon opened and a bio-scanner unfolded, swept him from head to foot, and retracted again, the whole assessment taking less than a minute. In eight motions, it cut the clothes away from his body with a laser-scalpel and located the wounds in his side, which were sprayed with a menthol/antiseptic wash that stung then cooled his blast-burnt flesh.

Once the area was clean, the machine sprayed on an analgesic. When a metal arm holding a scalpel moved forward, Kray closed his eyes, the thought of it cutting in was making him sick and watching it happen would’ve been too much. The fragments in his skin had been located on X-ray and were being removed with forceps once they had been exposed. A few of them were in deep and Kray could feel a dull sting coming through the endorphin fog.

When the machine could detect no more fragments, his wounds were cleaned and caulked with Med-Foam, then covered with a dermal patch. The heavy foam protected the wound and would promote healing. Soon there would be only scars where lacerated meat had been. The wounds to his psyche would take much longer to heal.

***

SOL-3/Earth

New York

Cutter sat alone in his office on the 71th floor of the TIL arcology, at his desk, face glowing with light reflected from his paper-thin computer display, paging through the terabytes of data he’d classified at level “Onyx”… top secret. He looked up as a signal tone came through the speakers hidden throughout the room and saw a female form through the smoked-glass panels built into the door. He lifted his Krono and checked the time. It was set to company standard and read, “23:30.”

“Come in,” He called and the doors automatically parted, each half sliding quietly into the wall, Leda Montgomery came through with her arms folded and a dismayed look on her face. She moved to his desk as the doors closed behind her. Cutter returned to tapping through data and said, “Your contract stipulates that you don’t have to be in the office later than sixteen-hundred in the evening. Maybe I should call an arbiter to have it renegotiated.”

“I’m in trouble, Arty,” She said as she collapsed into the chair. “I think I screwed up big-time… you gotta help me,” She crossed her arms on his desk and laid her head on them. “Please.”

“First tell me what happened.” Cutter said. His display screen went dark as he set the computer to hibernate and looked up at her. “Did you kill anyone? Were they with this company or some other?”

“No…” Leda said and as she picked her head up, he saw the smeared, dark streaks of mascara that indicated she’d been crying. “Although, in hindsight, I wish I had. It’d be easier then. You know Hailie Celeste, don’t you?”

Cutter nodded, placing the name with the face of a company liason, a willowy, attractive woman he’d seen at several company events, rated at a higher level than Leda was. From their brief interactions, he knew her to be a woman of welcoming disposition with a musical laugh.

“Cairn Wallace told me to come see him, he said it was going to be a sensing session… just to get a feel for what kind of work environment we’ve got on this side of the Atlantic. I’d heard things… and even if I hadn’t, it was obvious that he had a different kind of session in mind,” Leda said, then paused as she dug a pack of tissues from one of the small pockets on her outfit, pulling several and applying them to her nose. “I’m loyal to the company. You know that.”

“You’ve proved that enough times.”

“I found Celeste in the woman’s lounge on the fortieth floor… the one next to the computer lab… she was crying,” Leda said and dabbed at her nose again, then she balled the tissues into a wad and looked around for a receptacle. Cutter held up a small bin that she pitched the ball into. “Wallace told her to go and see him, too. She told me what to expect. He likes to hurt women… he likes to make them bleed. I didn’t really believe it until I arrived at his suite. He was waiting for me in this… this… leather outfit. He had a mask on and immediately started ordering me around. He picked up this…thing… and started telling me how he was going to use it on me. He came at me and I just… reacted… there was a vase on the table next to the door. I grabbed it and smashed him in the face with it.”

Cutter felt his face go slack with amazement and said, “Was he… injured?”

“I don’t know,” Leda said and burst into sobs as she buried her face in her hands. She shook for several moments then lifted her head and found him again, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “I started running… the only place I could think of to go was here. I’ve worked to hard to lose everything now. I’ve done too many things that I’d… I’d hate myself for. It can’t be all for nothing. Please, Arty… you have to help me.”

Cutter began to reply but was cut off by the buzz of his desktop comm-unit. He slowly broke the lock he had on her eyes and addressed the call. He touched an icon on the computer screen and a small window opened. The face of Cairn Wallace appeared. He wore a white bandage on the left side of his head above the ear but, despite his obvious injury, managed a grin.

“It’s nice to know that at least some of the company’s money is being well spent,” Wallace said and chuckled, though the effort made him wince, a pained look that passed as quickly as it had appeared. “There’s no greater satisfaction than a man who’s truly passionate about his work. It’s rare to see someone of you status still in the office so late.”

“The couch in the corner here is very comfortable,” Cutter replied, eyes fixed on the screen, nothing betraying that he was not alone in his office. “Are you all right, sir? When I saw you four hours ago, you were in excellent repair, now I see that has changed.”

Wallace gave a helpless shrug and said, “I’ve been so preoccupied with getting ready for Geneva that I’ve begun losing my attention to detail. I slipped getting out of the mist shower and banged my head against the sink. Talk about bringing things sharply into focus… nothing does that quite like sudden pain,” The CEO laughed again. “Your advisor, the one you’ve been saying such wonderful things about… Leda... I think her name is. You haven’t seen her have you?”