Atlantic Littoral: House of Refuge

IV

“You’ve killed us!” Horacio’s voice was so taut it became shrill. His big frame trembled with anger and fear. Agnarsson said nothing. He charged the bolt on the CR-10 rifle and re-checked the safety. He wondered if Vietes would shoot him if he handed the gun over to him.

The three of them were gathered in the ‘storm cellar’, a watertight keep in the center of the station, partially beneath the waterline. Behind its armored bulkheads and hermetically sealed hatches were the armory, sick bay, the emergency stores, and a secondary command center from which the refuge’s sensors, radios, and weapons could all be controlled. It could be steered from here as well, though that was of no use now. The refuge, unlike many seasteads, had its own engines, but she moved with all the grace and speed of a pregnant cow; outrunning the swift hydrofoil that menaced them was impossible.

“You killed us!” Horacio repeated. “You locked us in here to die! God damn me! We should have left in the lifeboat!” He appealed to his daughter, his eyes red and filled with tears. “Forgive your father for being so stupid and reckless.”

“You wouldn’t have gotten far,” Agnarsson said. “Their drones would have picked you off as soon as you left the well dock.”

Horacio punched the wall and roared. “What difference does it make? They will come here and kill us!”

“That remains to be seen.” Agnarsson tried to reflect calm, but his patience and his courage were fraying.

“They will just shell us. They’ll sink the whole refuge,” Sandra said. Her voice and her manner were disturbingly calm.

“If they do there’s nothing we can do about it.” He slung his rifle and turned his attention back to the arsenal, loading a drum of three-inch flechette shells into an automatic shotgun. “But if they were going to do that, I think we’d be dead already.”

Agnarsson tossed a flak jacket and a helmet to each of them. “Put them on and keep them on,” he ordered, then turned to Sandra. “Have you fired a gun before?”

Her eyes glinted. “Yes.”

He thrust the shotgun into her chest. She grunted as she tucked it under her shoulder. “It’s heavy.”

“Yes, well it’s not a bread knife,” Agnarsson said. He moved behind her, pulled the strap across her body and adjusted it so that it bore most of the weight of the weapon. He told her how to brace it and where best to aim. All day long he had schemed to remove the girl from a world of murder and mayhem and now he armed and instructed her on how best to kill other men. The irony wasn’t lost on him, but scruples and idealism wouldn’t save her life now.

Her father looked on at the scene in wonder. “My daughter is no soldier,” he said.

Agnarsson glared at him. ‘Only now you realize it.’ He wanted to give voice to that thought, but the words caught in his throat. He knew that his judgment wasn’t fair, that wars had a way of dragging people in, even those who tried mightily to avoid it, but still he held Horacio Vietes responsible for his family’s peril.

“Hail the ship,” Horacio said, almost at a whisper. He licked his dry lips. “Hail the ship. Tell them that I will surrender. Just spare my daughter.”

“Papa, no!”

“They’ll execute you summarily,” said Agnarsson.

“But my daughter will live. And you.” Horacio sagged visibly. “I have already brought death to too many.”

“That’s out of the question. Out of the question!” Agnarsson yelled, suddenly ashamed of his resentment for the man.

“For God’s sake, what other choice is there?”

Now it was Agnarsson that punched the wall. He turned round fiercely, pointing at Horacio as blood dripped from his split knuckles. “This isn’t just about the here and now! It’s about every man, woman, and child who will ever set foot on a refuge, every innocent huddled in a camp or hiding in their home! This is about civilization itself. I won’t give that away, not in the face of all the bombs and guns on the planet! Because if I do, it won’t stop here. There won’t be any stopping it, anywhere.”

He pushed past Horacio, making for the radio in the command center. He should have had it on already, been listening for messages from Atlantic Littoral or any ships that might come to help. He blew a thick layer of dust off the buttons of the long-neglected console and tuned the receiver to the emergency channel. The loud thrumming and screeching from the speakers startled him, and he switched it off with a groan.

“Is it broken?” Sandra asked. She had come up behind him silently, watching him with other words in mind than what she spoke.

“They’re jamming us. They’re drowning out the distress call.”

“Someone would have heard it already,” she suggested.

“Yes,” he said stiffly. “Yes, they might’ve.”

"You are not a coward, Justin,” Sandra said. “It was despicable of me to say so. Everyone who lives on the sea is grateful for lifesavers like you. You are very courageous, and I am sorry for thinking otherwise.”

Agnarsson unslung the rifle and flopped backwards into the chair. He looked over his shoulder at Sandra; she looked absurd in the bulky body armor, cuddling the shotgun.

Sandra walked over beside him. “What now? Do we just wait?”

Agnarsson cocked his head. “What else is there?”

“You’re from North America, I think,” she suddenly said.

He answered slowly, as if he had to work to stir up the memory. “Cascadia. I was born in a place called Cowichan, on Vancouver Island.”

“Did you like it?”

He nodded. “Very much.”

“Of course you would. North America is free,” she mused. “You can go anywhere. And you can say what you want, and buy and sell what you want. You can make a living without anyone’s permission.”

“Not everywhere.”

“But for the most part. There are governments, but they are small and weak. No standing armies, no secret police. For the most part.”

“For the most part, that’s true.”

“You can’t know what it’s like here. We weren’t so lucky last century. The invaders didn’t make it this far, there was no one to burn our capitols and break our shackles. That’s what the Colorados fight for.”

“Convincing me of your politics isn’t going to help us any, Sandra.”

She shrugged. “I’m not trying to convince you. You already know it. You know what things are good and worth dying for.”

“I also know that there are things worth living for,” he answered swiftly. “And I wish you weren’t so eager to die. Or to kill.”

An electronic warning tone sounded. Agnarsson swiveled to the tactical console, saw the radar screen flashing, and then several things happened almost simultaneously. The walls vibrated, shaken by the full-throated roar of the 30mm gun on the deck above them, and then a deafening report rang through the hull, rocking the refuge violently. The camera feed and radar from the deck gun went black.

“They’re shelling us!” Horacio shouted. He ran to shield his daughter and she clung to him.

“No,” Agnarsson hissed. “It’s that damned drone! It took out the gun.”

Suddenly, defense laser control toned and a synthesized voice blared: “Engaging target. Engaging target. Engaging — Contact lost.” Short seconds later the station was jolted again, though this blow was much weaker than the first.

“What happened?” Sandra yelled over the commotion. Agnarsson couldn’t answer. All he could see was that the camera feed on the south end of the observation tower had gone dead, while the one facing to the west showed movement: two gray shadows bouncing on the waves, long frothy wakes stretching out behind them.

“The boats are coming,” he said.

V

It took more than an hour for the Argentine boarding parties to land and sweep the upper decks of the refuge, and Agnarsson, who watched most of it on camera, found their pace agonizing. They moved painstakingly through every corridor and compartment, turning over beds and tables and ransacking closets. He watched impotently as they set demolition charges on the remaining autocannon turret and rolled grenades into the lifeboats, but not once did they destroy one of the cameras. Whether it was an oversight or done with intent to demoralize the survivors, he couldn’t know, but more than once he saw marines look into the cameras through the eyeslits of their knitted face masks.

And now, at last, the Argentines were at the door. Their time had run out and no one had come to the rescue.

Agnarsson withdrew toward the rear of the room, knelt behind the blockade of heavy cabinets and bunks that they’d turned over for cover and to deflect grenades. He spared a glance back at Horacio and Sandra Vietes, watched their lips move with whispered prayers. Horacio squeezed his daughter’s hand and then took up his rifle, kissed her on the forehead, and stepped toward the blockade.

“Stay behind me,” Agnarsson said. “Stay with your daughter.”

Horacio’s eyes did not move from the armored door, which rang with the incessant banging of hammers and grinding of metal. The muffled voices of the Argentines could be heard through the door calling for explosives. “It should be me up front,” he said. “I set this in motion.”

Agnarsson shook his head gently, patted him on the shoulder. The other man relented and took up his rifle in the corner of the room, his body shielding his daughter.

“They’re going to blow the hatch. It’s going to be loud, but don’t panic.” Agnarsson told them. “The second you see an arm or a leg through the breach, shoot it. Remember, they’re going to have to come through a small opening one or two at a time, so we have the advantage. We don’t need to run around, just stay low and stay behind cover. Sandra? There’s no choke on that gun, so for God’s sake don’t fire from directly behind me, or you’ll cut me to shreds.”

Sandra nodded, then quickly turned to her father. “I love you, Papa. I’m not afraid.”

Those were the last words Agnarsson heard before the world filled with smoke and thunder. The blast wave hit so hard that for a moment of stupefying fear he thought he’d taken a bullet in the chest. But he was still kneeling, still breathing, and his finger squeezed the trigger even before his conscious mind recognized the mass emerging from the smoke and dust as a human body. The body rocked backwards, lost its footing, and fell back through the ragged metal hole in the door that had just become visible. Another body came into view and he fired again.

Bodies. That’s how he thought of them as he watched them fall: they were not living men, not the fragile vessels of human souls. At best they were actors in a play, and the crescendo of gunfire was the orchestra. The rifle at his shoulder was his violin, and each fret of the trigger the signal for another body to drop over. The drums rolled staccato behind and in front of him, the muzzle blasts and the tanging whip-crack of bullets cutting through the air, breaking and ricocheting off the walls. A hand grenade skipped off the cratered floor, bounced back from the barricade and exploded, the crash of cymbals, and then the orchestra went quiet.

No, it went on playing, only he couldn’t hear it anymore. He felt the beat go on in his chest, in his vibrating skull. He could taste metal, felt hot blood running down his cheek. He was on his back. He rolled onto his knees, grabbed the rifle and tried to steady his arms enough to swing it into position. There was a short pile of bodies at the breach. Limbs thrust out from behind cover, dragging one of the fallen back through the door. Another grenade rolled in and this time Agnarsson threw himself to the deck. The blast slammed the cabinet back into his side and the metal bit into his arm.

Behind him he saw Horacio and Sandra flattening themselves against the bulkhead as bullets cratered all around them. They were still firing when suddenly Horacio spun like a top and flopped face down onto the deck. Agnarsson groped for his rifle, brought it back to his shoulder and peeked over the rim of the barricade, but he could no longer see the blown open hatch or the stack of bodies. There was smoke everywhere, smoke that seared his throat and made him clamp his eyes shut in pain. He tried to slow his breathing, but he kept gagging. He rolled to his feet to get away from the suffocating cloud but crashed on his side almost instantly. The pain in his right leg was so excruciating that it felt surreal, like it had disconnected his mind from his body; his own scream sounded distant through his burst eardrums. The world spun away vertiginously and he screamed no more.