Summary: By Corry L. Lee Read by MK Hobson Discuss on our forums. First appeared in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Vol. 28 (winner) (2011) All stories by MK Hobson All stories read by Corry L. Lee Rated 17 and up for language Shutdown By Corry L. Lee The alarm blared over the forest’s metallic rustling, and my HUD’s red warning light glazed the view through my faceplate. Ten seconds until the defense scan hit my position. Ten seconds until any motion, any electrical signature would whip vines down from the iron-cored trees, wrapping me as surely as steel cables, pinning me while cutter-bugs took me apart. My muscles clenched, and I froze. The training sims hadn’t prepared me for the terror twisting my gut, for the way my heart seemed to dance a _pas-de-bourrée_, its ballerina toes rapping against my ribs. I didn’t have time to panic. I chinned my skinsuit’s kill switch and dropped to the forest floor. In the silence after the klaxon died, my breather hissed out one final gasp of oxygen. The red glow faded from my faceplate and the forest closed in, dark without the HUD’s gain and unnaturally silent without the suit’s audio pickups. Weak sunlight filtered through the thick canopy, yellowed by sulfur gas, enough to make out shapes but not details. In sims, they’d cut our visual enhancement, but they must have extrapolated badly because the shadows had never been this deep, the shafts of sunlight never so diseased. I crouched on a patch of dirt, crumpling fallen leaves but avoiding the forest’s ragged undergrowth. I folded my legs beneath me, splaying my arms for balance. My hands slipped on the metal-rich berries that covered the ground as if someone had derailed a freight train of ball bearings. I swept some impatiently aside and rested my helmeted forehead on the dirt. How much time had passed? Eight seconds? No time to worry. Gritting my teeth, I stopped my heart. A vise seemed to close about my chest. Sweat beaded on my brow as I dragged in one last breath, my body panicking, automatic reflexes screaming at me to fight, to struggle, to escape. I fought them as Sergeant Miller and Captain Johnston trained me, fought them and stopped breathing. My vision narrowed. My lips tingled and went numb. _Twelve minutes_, I repeated to myself as the forest grew dark and disappeared. _You’ll come back._ The words echoed in Sergeant Miller’s clipped bark. Just a few minutes ago he’d given me the thumbs-up after checking my suit’s seals. He’d rapped his knuckles against my helmet for luck, and I’d stridden toward this forested hell. # “So, Amaechi,” Private Yaradua said as I topped my glass off from her flask. “If we were back on Hope’s Landing, what would you do with your last night?” “I’d go whoring,” Obasanjo said. “Nice place in Makurdi where–” “Wouldn’t call it _nice_,” Tamunosaki said. “You mean cheap.” “No, not that place we went with Akpu-nku. There’s one uptown.” Obasanjo shrugged. “Might as well spend all my money, right?” He said it like a joke, but nobody laughed. Yaradua knocked her glass back, and Balogun focused on twirling her knife. We headed planetside at 0800 tomorrow, and MilComm gave slim odds that we’d make it back. The silence stretched, Obasanjo looking expectantly around for someone to agree with him. Yaradua clanged her empty glass down on the table. “I didn’t fucking ask you, Obasanjo. I asked Amaechi.” “She’d probably go to the ballet,” he said with a snort. The corners of my glass dug into my palms; I wondered if I could squeeze it hard enough for it to shatter. The two missing fingers on my left hand itched. I twitched the stub of my middle finger, and contemplated slamming my glass into Obasanjo’s forehead. If it weren’t for those [...]
