The Township

2407.02.11   //Jacob Watz//

trees dead grass gone soil washed to sea

– scratched into the wall of the Liberty Airlock Antechamber, Section 13C

The air leak was easy to spot on infrared. Cool air billowed from a fracture in a steel connecting plate on the second floor. Jacob Watz switched off his optics and sized up what he would need to do.

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“Engineering Control, this is Technician Watz. Arrived at One-Six-Delta and spotted the leak. Over.”

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“Proceed, Watz,” Dominic replied. “Be advised, Weather says the inbound storm has picked up speed. Now approximately twelve klicks north of your position. ETA: fifteen minutes. Repeat: one-five minutes. That means you’ll be walking home in the dust, but I’ll keep you oriented. Now, hurry up. Over.”

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Jacob cursed under his breath then hit the shortwave button. “Wilco, Control. Watz out.”

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The first two rungs on the bottom of the ladder were broken, and the third was ocher with rust and bent downward. Flakes of iron oxide fell when he brushed it with his glove. He grabbed both the outside rails and placed his foot on the third rung, then pushed himself up in one swift motion. He was sweating in earnest now. His atmosphere suit’s cooling system kicked up to two notches below maximum. The circulation fans buzzed loudly as they tried to clear the fog from his visor. With a slight shake in his hands, he clipped the harness of his atmosphere suit onto the service rail. Like the ladder, it was badly corroded. He snapped the carabiner shut, screwed the locking sleeve closed, and gave the harness a tug. The service rail moved more than it should have. He told himself that it didn’t matter. He’d never fallen while performing a repair job before. He grabbed the rail and shuffled toward the location of the damage.

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Jacob looked over the job carefully. Most leaks were caused by oxidation, the gradual wear of windblown dust, and botched indoor repairs. But the damage here was the result of violence. Half a square meter of concrete was missing from one of the panels. The connecting plate that once held it in place was bent inward around a projectile impact and torn up from shrapnel. Both old and new patches were welded over the worst of the damage. He flipped on the infrared camera. The leak came from between two of the old patches.

The District of Liberty had been decimated in the Conflict 30 years ago. The strikes had started here, and Chairman Debrell had sent handpicked units from Security to deal with them. When they failed to break through the tunnels, they bombarded the residential structures from the outside with railguns, believing that their shocking escalation would force the dissidents to surrender. Instead, it led to an uprising spanning the entire district. By the time Debrell had put down the revolt, thousands were dead and a third of Liberty had to be abandoned. If this structure could not be repaired, it would join the other structures in the slowly expanding Dead Zone of Liberty.

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Debrell had long since been deposed and executed, but many officers in Engineering and the other departments had played a role in the violence. It was something no one wanted to discuss, at least in the open. Jacob knew it would be for the best if he fixed the leak and gave no one a reason to talk about it.

Jacob removed a patch from his backpack and placed it over the source of the leak. The angle was no good. He moved it around, trying to get it into a position where he would not need to weld over another repair or the gash in the metal, but found nothing that worked.

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“Control, this is Technician Watz. Poor angle on the repair for a standard large patch. Request a custom fit and delay of repair until tomorrow. It would be better to seal the wall on the inside, remove the corroded metal, and replace the entire connecting plate. I can snap a photo of this for you right now. Over.”

“Received, Watz. Wait.”

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Jacob kept looking over the damaged metal. Something about the prior repairs seemed wrong. The patches were bulging outward rather than inward, and there were scratch marks and exposed shiny metal around the orange rust, as though someone had been working on it recently. They’d done a terrible job. Jacob wondered how whoever had done this had qualified for Outside Maintenance.

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He exhaled loudly and leaned back, letting the service rail take his weight. The metal bent back but held him in place. He’d already been outside for almost two hours. The temperature was 44°C and climbing, and the wind kicked up swirling dust devils in the narrow corridors between the structures on the edge of the inhabited portion of Liberty. The long shadows of the morning were shrinking. Soon there would be no escape from the bright sunlight and the heat. According to the calculations in his work plan, Jacob had just another hour before the batteries would hit safe minimum, but the incoming dust storm would force him inside well before then anyway.

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“Technician Watz, Control. Negative on a custom patch. Deputy Nguyen says we’re empty on Fabrication credits and the repair is urgent. Proceed as planned. Over.”

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“Control, this bulkhead looks like it’s been sliced up for recycling. Whoever did the this must have failed welding in Basic. I need to make a damn sculpture up here to fix this. Over.”

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“Watz, this is Deputy Rebekah Nguyen. Proceed with the repair. Out.”

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Rebekah’s voice got Jacob’s attention. She was a shift manager at Engineering Control and had spent years in Outside Maintenance before hanging up her atmosphere suit and taking a job inside. Dominic liked to put on airs, but Jacob doubted he’d ever seen the outer door of an airlock. Rebekah knew what she was doing. If she ordered the repair done now, she must have a good reason for it. Also, there was an urgency in her voice that Jacob found unsettling.

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“Control, this is Technician Watz. Will comply. Commencing repair. Out.”

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Jacob carefully ran an angle grinder across the area, scraping away the remaining rust. Then he placed the patch over the leak and pushed the button to darken his visor. He had a good angle on one side. With a bright flash and a shower of sparks, the torch melted the metal and fused the patch with the bulkhead. When he was done, he pushed back and looked it over. Perfect placement. So much for the easy work. He placed a second patch over the first, positioning it so that he could weld the two together. This covered the old repair entirely, avoiding contact between the torch and the damaged metal below. The right side of the second patch fused with the first. Jacob breathed a heavy sigh of relief. This was going to be a repair worthy of a training textbook. He darkened his visor again and started welding the outside edge.

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Jacob saw the bright flash of yellow light and felt the patch explode underneath his hand. The service rail snapped, and he flailed with his arms as the blast threw him off the building. When he landed in the dust below, an agonizing jolt shot through his left arm. He looked with horror over the charred and torn fabric where his gloves had been fastened to his suit. He could see his arm through the hole in the fabric. All the hair was burned off his forearm. His skin was seared white. Hot air washed over his body through the hole in his suit as the pain grew more intense. He tried to move his fingers and found that they would not respond.

With the suit compromised, the oxygen from the tank was mixing with the raw atmosphere. The hellish odor of hydrogen sulfide assaulted his senses. He’d be dead in a few minutes.

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Step 1: helmet off.

Step 2: mask.

Step 3: connect the air.

Step 4: helmet back on.

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Having done the procedure many times in training, he went through the motions smoothly with just one hand. Once he had his helmet back on, he took a deep breath of bottled oxygen. The metallic, stale taste assured him that he was no longer breathing in outside air. He hit the shortwave switch.

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“Control, Control, Control,” Jacob said, breathing heavily and mumbling through the oxygen mask. “There was some kind of explosion. I…I’m knocked down, suit compromised. Control, I think we have a breach.”

“Technician calling Control, this is Control.” It was Rebekah. “Say again, all before breach, and give me your name and position. Over.”

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“Control, this is Technician Watz. I was just talking to you,” he said, trying hard to focus. “Location is One-Six-Delta in Liberty. There was some kind of blast. I don’t know what it was. There’s a breach, I think. Over.”

“Technician Watz, I copy possible breach in One-Six-Delta. Wait.”

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Jacob got his feet under him and started locating his tools, but the pain made it difficult to focus.

“Watz, Breach confirmed. Inner doors closed in One-Six-Delta. Wait.” The next message sounded faint, like she wasn’t talking directly into the microphone. “Yes, a residential structure.” There was a response, a man’s voice, but Jacob couldn’t understand a word of it. “I don’t know how many. About 100, according to the charts. They’re locked down,” Rebekah said back to him.

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“Zero-Echo, Zero-Echo in progress,” Rebekah said. “Halt all non-emergency transmissions on this frequency. Technician Watz, this is Control. We have no one close to your position. What is your condition? Over.”

“Raw shit, Control! Atmosphere suit ruptured, burned wrist and hand, and batteries at 38 percent. Over.”

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“Watz, is your torch functional?”

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He looked over the laser torch and saw that the blue LEDs were still on. “Affirmative torch functional. Over.”

“Roger torch functional, Watz. You’ve got five minutes of good visibility left. Can you perform a temporary repair to slow the loss of good air? Over.”

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Jacob looked up at the hole above him. He tapped the shortwave button and tried to speak but no words came out.

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“Watz,” Rebekah said. “The tunnel doors shut automatically when the hydrogen sulfide alarms went off. We have a civilian population in that building and we won’t be able to get them out with that breach. About 200 people at normal capacity. The emergency oxygen supplies are inadequate, so they are breathing outside air. Can you put a temporary patch over the breach? Over.”

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Jacob thought about the terrified people inside and realized he had no choice but to do his job. He tried to put aside any thoughts about his own safety. “Affirm on the repair. Over,” he said as he started walking toward the ladder.

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“Copy affirmative, Watz. After repair, proceed to One-Seven-Echo and plug in. Let’s get those batteries back in the green and keep you cool for the return trip.”

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Jacob looked down at his suit. The charging port was bent inward, and the cap was missing. “Negative on charging, Control. Connection damaged.”

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“Copy damaged connection. After repair, proceed to nearest airlock. From your position…” she paused, as though double-checking something. “It will be Oscar-Alpha-Five due south.”

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“Say again, Control,” Jacob replied in disbelief. “Oscar-Alpha-Five? Inside the Dead Zone?”

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“Affirmative, Watz. Oscar-Alpha-Five. The next operational airlock is four klicks north. You’d never make it in a compromised suit. Oscar-Alpha-Five is one-point-six klicks south and stocked for emergencies. Good luck and hurry. Control, out.”

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He picked up his tools and ascended the ladder again. The pain in his left arm shot up into his shoulder with throbbing intensity. What worried him most was his left hand. It was completely numb, which could mean nerve damage. The loss of an arm could mean discharge from Outside Maintenance and maybe the end of his career in Engineering. He might be looking at a lifetime of dull indoor scutwork like repainting tunnels if he was lucky or collecting and hauling organic waste for reclamation if he was not.

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When Jacob reached the second floor, he found the service rail bent outward and broken. The harness would be useless right where he’d need it most, so he decided not to clip in. Jacob tore away the failed patch, which was hanging by a single corner, then placed another over the leak. The hot, dry wind blasted through the open hole in his atmosphere suit and accentuated the awful stinging in his arm as he lifted the patch and pinned it in place with his elbow. Jacob pointed the laser toward where the two new sections met and began to weld. Little by little, he watched as the patches fused together. He moved his elbow away and welded the other sides. Dust started to roll over the top of the building.

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“Control, the patch is in place. Confirm that air pressure has stabilized, and I’ll bug out. Over.”

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The reply was mostly static, but Jacob made out a few words. “Watz this is… Affirm… Storm inbou… out now… evac…”

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“Say again, Control.”

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More static.

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“Control, this is Technician Watz. I do not copy. Over.”

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Nothing. The wind was howling over the ruins to the north, picking up debris and filling the air with metallic dust. It wreaked havoc on the old transmitters, especially the poorly maintained ones in the district of Liberty. With his luck, one of the electrical boxes was cracked and there was a short somewhere in the nearest comms tower.

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He climbed down the ladder. OA5 was one of very few intact structures located inside the Dead Zone of Liberty, surrounded by the derelict remains of buildings lost in the Conflict. There would be no navigation lights to guide him on his way and no rescue mission to carry him to safety if he collapsed. The tunnels linking the structures in Dead Zone to the rest of Liberty were sealed off. The entire area was off limits except in emergencies. Still, the backup power in OA5 was intact, and the oxygen generators worked. If Jacob could make it to the airlock, he could find the supplies he needed to survive while he waited out the storm.

The air turned a reddish-brown as the dust grew thicker. Jacob walked south, following the bearing of his compass. He tried to determine his location based on the shape and number of buildings he passed, but this quickly proved impossible.

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As the storm intensified, he lost all notion of where he was. His throat became parched and his arm felt as though it had been dipped in molten metal. He forced himself to keep stepping forward.

A soft hum filled Jacob’s ears. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes and regain his balance. The ringing in Jacob’s ears grew louder. Slowly, the dust storm seemed to recede. Jacob looked up. The sky had turned a beautiful shade of dark blue, like the sky he knew from video footage on the network but had never seen with his own eyes. Losing his balance, he dropped down to one knee and braced himself against the ground with his good hand. The dust storm, the pain in his arm, and the whole broken world around him slipped away like a bad dream.

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Jacob’s father made a soccer ball out of worn-out rubber seals and old plumbing tape. Jacob danced with anticipation, imagining how he was going to fake to one side and then step over the ball like the heroes of the game he’d seen on screen.

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“I’m going to be the striker!” Frankie yelled.

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“No! You said I could!” Jacob yelled back.

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“You can both be strikers, midfielders, goalies, or whatever you want. There’s only two of you,” Jacob’s father said.

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“What are you going to be?” Jacob asked.

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“I’m going to stay here with your mother.”

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She smiled at them from across the room.

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“I have to go to work soon anyway. Here.” He dropped the ball on the ground. “Now, be careful not to get in the way of the neighbors, and don’t hit anyone with the ball!”

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The two boys ignored him, screaming with glee as they kicked the improvised ball out the door and down the hallway. It bounced off Old Man Miller, who scowled at them as they ran away laughing.

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The pain returned. Red-hot needles writhed through Jacob’s arm like maggots burrowing into a corpse in a Reclamation chamber. He opened his eyes to currents of dust flowing around his helmet, obscuring even the shapes of his own feet. The dust got into his atmosphere suit and chafed against his burned skin. He knew that heat, dehydration, and hydrogen sulfide could make a person hallucinate. They could also kill. He bent his neck down and gulped water from the straw inside his helmet. When he looked back up, he felt the helmet shift against the neckplate. It was loose, and he tried again to twist it back into place. The helmet slipped in his hands and would not latch. Dust was in his hair, nose, and eyes. Blinking rapidly, he tried to see through the dust and cling to reality. Foul air from under the mask filled his nostrils with the hellish stench of hydrogen sulfide. The outside air burned his eyes and his throat. The humming in his ears returned, and the pain grew dull before everything went black.

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Cass was half asleep with her head on his shoulder, her bare chest pressing against his. He gently ran his fingers through her long, black hair and kissed her forehead. She turned her head and gazed at him with her large, brown eyes wide open in the dim light of his bunk. Cass sighed, kissed him back on the lips, and brushed his hair with her hand.

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“Let’s just stay here,” she said. “Bash Engineering training and exams and ration cards. I’d rather just…” she sighed. “Just do what we did tonight,” she said, laughing.

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Jacob smiled back. “I think we’d get hungry,” he replied. “I’m hungry already, and we’re out of rations.”

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She slapped his shoulder playfully. “It’s just like you to ruin my dream by bringing reality into it,” she said, kissing him again.

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A powerful gust of wind sent Jacob falling onto his side. He heard groaning that he recognized as his own voice. Dust blew into his helmet and settled on the visor with a soft sound that reminded him of rain.

He put both hands on the ground and pushed himself up, sending a jolt of pain from his burned arm up into his shoulder. He took his right hand and twisted his helmet, which finally locked into place. His compass showed him pointed south. The airlock was less than two klicks from his last reported position. He had a chance. He turned his suit’s cooling setting up to maximum and took a step forward. The display showed the battery at 30 percent. The cooler air and water helped him cling to consciousness, maintain his balance, and trudge forward at a steady pace.

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A few minutes later, Jacob took another step but found empty space rather than solid ground. He stumbled into the cavity, hit a hard surface, and rolled to one side. When he got up, he saw a wall behind him. He took a step forward and found another wall. Both sides of the cavity were metal, but the center was dusty. This could only be some part of the Township lost in the Conflict; perhaps a collapsed tunnel. He felt something snap under his feet. The base of the cavity was filled with small, brittle sticks. He picked up one of the long, dry objects and held it before his eyes. It looked like a human bone, though he’d only ever seen them in diagrams. He walked on, feeling more crunch beneath his boots. There were piles of them on the edges of the trench.

Jacob spotted a door on the wall. He brushed away the dust to reveal a message etched into the metal.

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SELF-SUSTAINING TOWNSHIP INITIATIVE, NEW HOPE

CONSTRUCTION SUPPLY & STORAGE

SE UNIT B

Authorized Personnel Only

Lock Requires Clearance Level 2

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The Engineering manuals said that every one of the temporary buildings erected during the Township’s construction had been demolished a century ago. This door should not exist.

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Through the dust, Jacob thought he could see a building above the trench. The lights seemed to be turned on and glowed a faint yellow. The dust grew thicker, and the building faded from Jacob’s view.

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He knew there was no time to dwell on what he had found. His throat was parched, and his head ached. The hole in his atmosphere suit prevented the cooling system from being fully effective. He slogged forward. The trench took a sharp turn to the left and then began to disappear. Something appeared ahead, like a shadow through the dust. As he staggered toward it, the dark spot became broader and more angular. He could make out gray concrete. It was a building that had been part of the Township, but it had been abandoned for a very long time. He spotted a long, wide-open airlock on the bottom floor. There, he took shelter from the dust storm and tried the shortwave again.

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“Control, this is Watz, pick up!”

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No reply.

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Jacob was reaching the end of his endurance. Desperate to lighten his load, he slipped off his backpack and laid his laser torch on the ground inside the airlock, where there was at least some protection from the wind. He tried the radio once more.

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“Control, Control, Control, this is Technician Jacob Watz. I need your help. Come in.” He waited. “Please, come in. Come in, or I’m going to die out here.”

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“Technician Watz, this is Control. Roger, your… Zero-Echo in prog— … Give me your status, Watz.”

Jacob sighed with relief when he heard Rebekah’s voice, even though the reception was poor. “Control, my suit’s compromised, water supply exhausted, batteries just under 18 percent. I request read on my position and heading to Oscar-Alpha-Five. Repeat: request position and heading to Oscar-Alpha-Five. Over.”

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“Say again…transmission…status and request.”

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“Control, status is suit compromised, no water, batteries at zero-one-eight. Repeat: status is I’m bashed. Bashed to hell. Give me my position and heading to Oscar-Alpha-Five. Active positioning doesn’t work in the Dead Zone, and I’m bashed and can’t think straight. Give me a read. Over.”

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“Watz, I read your position as between Two-Two-Charlie and Two-Four-Foxtrot, no firm fix. Recommend heading Two-One Southwest. Repeat: Two-One Southwest. Over.”

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“Wilco, Control, Two-One Southwest. Thank you, thank you. Out.”

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Jacob tapped his wrist and zoomed in on 22C on the HUD map. If he was in the middle of the range he’d been given, there were another two structures immediately to the south, then OA5. Hope gave him strength. Jacob resized the map and stepped back into the storm. The air outside was dangerously hot. Still, his tired legs moved more easily now that he believed he knew where he was going.

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About 15 minutes later he arrived at an airlock with an illuminated green panel. He stooped down to read it. OA5. Jacob keyed in the passcode on the console, and the doors ground open with the screech of unlubricated metal. Feeling exhausted as much as relieved, he put out a call over the radio.

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“Control…I’ve made it. I made it. Thank you, thank you, Rebekah. I owe you one. Over.”

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“Technician Watz, Deputy Nguyen is offline. This is Deputy Spruance at Engineering Contr—… Roger, your arrival. You are to return to…first light tomorrow and await debriefi—Until then, maintain radio silence. Out.”

It was a strange reply, but Jacob did not have the energy to contemplate what it meant. The airlock doors were opening. He had survived. For now, that was all he cared to think about.

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Find the rest of the story here.