Hard luck harry in deadt.., p.1
Hard Luck Harry in Deadtime, page 1
©2025 by F.A. Corporan and S.E. Bryan
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-68513-651-2
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PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING
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“For Ana, who taught me to think critically, question everything, and that nirvana was in my head. Thanks, sis.”
–F.A. Corporan
“For Tony and Edward, two of the best people I know.”
–S.E. Bryan
Chapter 1
“It’s only hubris if I fail.”
–Julius Caesar
The Hawaiian Islands stretched along the Pacific Ocean in a tidy green line, 6,423 square miles of tropical paradise. The experimental Kāne (Kah-neh) Dark Matter Reactor had been named after the Hawaiian god of creation and the sky. According to a later version of the Kumuhonua legend, Kāne formed three worlds: an upper heaven of the gods, a lower heaven above the earth, and the earth itself as a garden for mankind.
The Kāne Reactor had been built to save that garden.
Nestled on the other side of Oahu, the reactor was miles away from the Ko’olau Mountains, where overrun youth shelters had once swelled with muscular energy into interconnected encampments run by some of the few remaining Kapuna elders. Generations later, under the ministrations of the Reunited Democratic Socialists of America and SOAR IV, along with hefty donations from the DiCaprio Foundation and Harpo Organization, the encampments had long since evolved into a thriving and creative cooperative.
Very few of the Ko’olau Mountains community, however, attended the Kāne Reactor’s activation and probably wouldn’t have done so even with a gun pointed at their heads. Though nobody actually believed anything would go wrong, they were wise-minded to think why stand right at the doorway and tempt fate? Not that forty miles would have helped anyone if something were to go awry. But no one was thinking in those terms, mainly because the alternative was unfathomable.
Everyone remembered that day, the perfection of that day, the crystallized moment featuring utopia’s best as streamed and Holo-Cast and pixjumped across the world—the cerulean sky, the quixotic breeze, the arching palms.
Outside of the reactor complex, a small, excited congregation idled together as a single organism. The experimental reactor operated using a thimbleful of exotic matter which had been excruciatingly collected over twenty years. In theory, the reactor could power a large city for fifty years (if the calculations were borne out). The rhapsodic crowd outside inhaled that promise, a heady perfume of hope and optimism, as they counted down from ten to zero in a triumphant roar.
Scientists would later theorize that as the DMR powered up, a micro-fluctuation appeared in the Higgs Field. For the duration of an attosecond, in that specific location, a false vacuum decay weakened the wall between two divergent universes just enough for them to brush against each other. And out of the miscalculation came a microsingularity in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, creating an explosion later estimated at 100,000 megatons.
The fury was elemental and anarchic.
Exaltation abounded one second, terror the next, sliced off mid-cry as the crowds, the arching palms, the mountains, the beaches, the Kapunas’ descendants, the hotels, Oahu, and the entire island chain were consumed and incinerated. The Pacific convulsed, vomiting its innards skyward milliseconds before they were vaporized. A titanic mushroom cloud raced thousands of miles in minutes, halfway around the planet, permanently disrupting the rhythm of the earth.
A chilling dissent sped through the sea, startling billions already wide awake and billions more from their dreams with an eerie, pullulating shriek that some believed poured straight from Heaven. In actuality, as the detonation boiled away immense expanses of the sea and everything in it, the high-pitched keening resulted from molecules being torn asunder and separated into their elementary particles at hypersonic speeds.
The Kāne Reactor, ironically named, annihilated the god’s earthly garden in one fell swoop. But the Earth had still been exceedingly lucky that day, because the reaction spent itself almost instantly, and the universe continued on like it hadn’t even noticed the blasphemous tinkering of hairless primates.
Chapter 2
The People’s Republic of Mars (the “Red” Planet)
Winn Sanders could see the dome of Zumba City gleaming from three point two kilometers away. Though his helmet was tinted, he still found himself squinting in the weak Martian sunlight as he gazed across the dunes. Zumba City, the Jewel of Mars, he mused, preoccupied. His hands slowly tightened into fists inside his gloves while a low, insistent beeping filled his ears.
Winn tapped his wrist to pop the glitchy readout on, revealing a mild carbon dioxide warning. Why am I breathing so hard? he thought, then noticed his fists. With a force of will, he loosened his fingers. It’ll be okay, he told himself, but his eyes again sought out the city’s distant dome, and his thoughts wandered.
The magnificent transparent aluminum dome protected a cluster of medieval-looking high rise buildings and other structures built in the old Zumba crater. The older edifices featured the elaborately scalloped roofs and other familiar flourishes of early Martian architecture. The ability to build high was a point of pride for every Mars-born resident, and renowned Red Planet architect Auxencico Gosse was no exception.
One stately edifice in particular, Gosse’s personal testament to the expanded boundaries of low-gravity architecture, was capped by a soaring gilded cathedral spire. Gosse Spire, as it was called, immediately became a popular hangout for the local kids, especially for those who used the apex as a speed gliding leap-off point.
A number of fatalities would follow due to updrafts ripping the daredevils from the intended path down into the park below, instead slamming them into the clear, curved aluminum or spiriting them away straight into other buildings. Security measures added over time to curtail trespassing were all but ignored. Now it was almost a rite of passage to either leap off the spire at the very most, or summit it at the very least.
Winn remembered those days well, since they hadn’t been too long ago for him—the gang of kids bypassing security mechanisms, alarms, securely locked doors. The fear and excitement, the muffled laughter, the incredible height, the hammering wind. The view, breathtaking and vast.
Winn had never leaped off Gosse Spire. Something had always gotten in the way—his glider needing repairs, a close friend seriously injured while landing. But that had been years ago, and now he promised himself soon. He’d do it very soon. If things went well today. Maybe even tomorrow . . .
Zumba City, Mars’ first settlement, had always been Winn’s home. He’d been born there. He knew every street, every alleyway, every brick in every building. He’d never been to Earth and only knew of it from stories he’d heard, along with educational training, of course, on fused quartz crystals, and then old-school photos, video, holos, and related media. When Winn thought of Earth, he thought of two things—how weird it would be to walk around on a planet without a protective suit and helmet. And the Kāne Disaster.
Winn knew about the Kāne Disaster, better known as the Kāne Event, from school but hadn’t had to suffer the consequences. He’d heard that many of those who had survived in the rest of the world had come to realize they would have preferred to vanish amidst the heat and light. It would have been quicker and easier than what lay ahead.
Because not only was it not the beginning of the end of humanity’s perpetual environmental failings, but it was the beginning of something much worse—Earth as a freeze-dried rock where any and every potential resource available and/or yet to be discovered was mined, plucked, planted, skinned, harvested, drilled, deconstructed, and devoured. A purgatorial uphill walk on a down escalator. Except for those who, by fortune of birth, or through long-held relationships with those same, or those with an amassed wealth which could have fed whole countries for decades, of course. Life continued on for them, altered, but much the same, although delays and waiting periods in acquiring desired products and services swelled annoyingly.
The collective eye had slowly swiveled (again) toward Mars. Although terraforming had already been in operation for decades, this had largely been forgotten by the distracted and trying-to-survive masses. Decades earlier, after the Space X bankruptcy had sent everyone fleeing and the market plunging dangerously for days on end, all discussion of rockets and space travel and the Red Planet had been dropped from the public eye like a hot potato.
Until the Hawaiian Islands had disappeared and the world had gone cold.
Once interest was renewed in Mars, Winn knew it hadn’t looked good in the beginning. The average temperature was an unendurable minus sixty-three degrees Celsius. Wind speeds picked up to twenty-five kilometers per hour in the summer, up to thirty-five in the fall. Scientists labeled the climate unpredictabl e. Romantics called it whimsical.
It was thought that the oxidization of the soil prevented any biological formation. The lack of oxygen and water combined with intense ultra-violet radiation, dust storms in the south, and severe temps culminated in unacceptable conditions for life.
But, as Winn had learned in school, the decades passed, during which the aggressive terraforming eventually raised the temperature, increased the pressure, and transmuted the deadly atmosphere toward something more hospitable. It was the tip of the iceberg for the future of complete habitation. But something had begun. Mars had been jumpstarted for new life.
In fact, approaching from the depths of space, a visitor would be surprised to observe not the Red Planet but instead a rusty orb with specks of green and a smattering of city lights at the day/night terminator.
Winn had celebrated his twenty-first birthday yesterday. His girlfriend had made him a red cake with a green filling, the colors of the People’s Republic of Mars flag—red with its green flower in the middle. Well, almost a cake. It had been dry and tasted strange because of the alternate ingredients used, since the 3D printer needed servicing. But that hadn’t mattered. It was the thought that counted.
Which brought Winn’s straying thoughts full circle back to today, back to the cloying anxiety he couldn’t shake no matter how many times he pictured himself, tomorrow, or more likely in a few more days, leaping off Gosse Spire into the empty air, after all was said and done and things were back to normal here.
Because, as it turns out, Mars was at war.
To the Federal Union back on Earth, the Martians were just squatters. They should not have seceded.
Outside the Zumba City power station, Winn pried his eyes away from the Dome, regulating his breaths, and continued stacking sandbags. He had joined the People’s Militia like his father and his grandfather before him so that he could protect their planet, and today they were in full defensive mode. Winn was ready, but he could not control the nostalgia rising in him, a pull toward the familiar, a buffer against the charged atmosphere.
All around the station, militiamen were posted behind perimeter gun emplacements, and others stood at various positions, tensely watching the horizon. Apart from their glass helmets, the bulbous suits of the civilian fighters resembled the Michelin tire man from old-time commercials. They’d been using them for years, unable to afford upgrades. The outside material on all of them was stained red from the sand, and they were grimy and worn. More than a few of the fighters had applied FlexiTape over holes and tears.
The tension in the air twanged Winn’s nerves, and he didn’t like it. All he knew was that they had been assigned to hold the power station. And he was ready to protect it with his life.
Zumba City, thought Winn with a deep, abiding love. The Jewel of Mars.
“Storm’s comin’ in.”
Carl’s voice came, low but taut, into Winn’s earpiece. Winn stopped stacking mid-action and turned to see a wall of sand like a tsunami racing toward them, edges black and boiling, sparking with lightning. A moment later, a figure appeared from behind a dune.
Winn murmured, almost to himself, “Scout’s back.”
The scout’s transmission stuttered as he approached: “Th-s-storm! In-side—”
Suddenly the scout flew forward violently and flopped onto the sand. He sprawled there, unmoving, his back blown open, the rubber of his suit a ruined hole. Winn stumbled back, rigid with dawning.
The storm . . .
He bellowed, “They’re in the storm!” as a crimson dagger of light pierced the roiling dust.
Seconds before his heart was atomized, images flooded his mind—the endless lanes and channels of the City, sheets of Martian sunlight slashing down, the awesome, unbound beauty of Gosse Spire. He observed the laser forever extending, a spear of amber aimed at him alone, him alone, unwavering, and still the images surged, interspersed with new sensations— a gloved hand sinking into the red Martian soil, the rusty-colored soil giving way, an intense heat like nothing ever felt before, maroon granules twisting in the sun, the red, the red blood bursting from his chest, his mouth, spraying the inside of his helmet, indescribable pain, no time to scream, only time to fall backwards into the russet dust of his beloved planet.
Winn’s corpse toppled into Carl who staggered and screamed, “SENTINELS!”
***
First to clear the dust storm, the Sentinel Vanguard Leader rallied forward as satellite transmissions reconnected, streamed through logic circuits, probability matrixes, and topographical map representations of the antimatter reactor—a large containment dome surrounded by a cluster of adobe buildings. It fed vital power to Zumba City. Contour lines snapped into place from multioptics: lidar, infrared, real-time telemetry. A suite of attack protocols were updated and networked across other units.
Vanguard Leader decrypted packets of classified information in nanoseconds. Verify: Secure antimatter reactor. Second verification: Other considerations rescinded.
The militiamen came into sight, terrorists all. They would be eliminated, and the objective would be achieved. The Zumba City Offensive was the last offensive against the People’s Militia. Now they would sue for peace. To achieve that end, the Feds released their ultimate weapon, the Sentinels. Cloaked in mystery like legendary demons of wind and fire, if you had the misfortune of seeing one, you were already dead.
Vanguard Leader pierced the distending curtain of dust, slaloming like a skier across the dunes on jet-powered footpads. Behind him, nine other units emerged, each three meters tall, each ten tons of brutal war machine, anthropomorphic, multioptics adjusting, arm-mounted lasers hot and ready.
The nanosecond-long electronic pulses that networked between each machine could be roughly translated into words: “Engage at will. Vanguard Three, come with me. We will secure the reactor.”
The transmissions manifested to the other units as supreme confidence, perfunctory routine. But these machines would follow Vanguard Leader into hell, or the sands of Mars—take your pick—because myriad other campaigns had known only success, every fighter emerging unscathed.
Vanguard Leader’s dissemination of probability trajectories and satellite images of gun emplacements, troop capabilities and site weaknesses were meticulous and ultraprecise, down to weapon strength, design, and functionality from hand held pulse rifles to stationary rail guns.
A pair of mechanized marauders veered from the main group. Vanguard Three joined Vanguard Leader while the eight remaining machines sped away, lasers wreaking havoc on gun emplacements as the storm slammed full-force into the structures.
Deep within the complex, a shoulder-fired rocket blasted V Five’s chest open, sending it crashing through an adobe wall. V Two bulleted past then spun on its jets, flying backwards to pinpoint Five’s location before transmitting: “Vanguard Five—critical damage. Repeat, critical damage.”
“Disregard non-functional units, Vanguard Two. Proceed on mission.”
Nanobits of data were logged in Vanguard Leader’s file labeled for later inquiry. In a flash, a million permutations of probability filtered through Vanguard Leader’s tactical algorithms. How could he have missed a shoulder-fired rocket? The only conclusion he reached every time was: human error. Someone was manipulating the data.
Outside the ruined building, militiamen stood hoarsely cheering until movement within the ragged hole stopped them cold. Recognizing critical damage and following pre-established mission protocols, V Five clawed its way from the rubble, malfunctioning hydraulic joints shrieking. Once upright, it lumbered toward the stunned men.
A synthetic voice placidly announced: “Critical damage. Self-destruct initiated. Three, two, one.”
The zombie machine collapsed into the emplacement, crushing one fighter, then detonated, taking the scrambling rebels with it.
The rest of the People’s Militia were faring just as badly. Black smoke spewed from firefights and skirmishes around the complex, pouring out of obliterated compounds and swirling into the flaying winds, intensifying already-obscured visibility for the rebels and further handicapping their efforts.
Naïve, slaughtered twenty-one-year-old Winn had been horribly wrong to think the skirmish might be over within days. Because the arrival of the Sentinels and the resulting engagement was like a sledgehammer pounding down on a pencil tip, bringing the end much faster than anyone could have possibly imagined.
