Paying Dues - A Sallie Starlinger Story

A Purpose and a Promise

Red lights began flashing all over the rooftop and from the windows below. An obnoxious klaxon sounded from speakers all over the building including the rooftop. After the third shriek from the klaxon, a male voice came over the speakers. "Ready code India! Ready code India! This is not a drill." Sallie had done her research and she knew that "Ready code India" meant that there was an intruder in the building. All soldiers were to assume defensive positions. That included the NCO in the rooftop control booth. Within seconds, he would come out of his shack to order his subordinates to ready the antiaircraft missiles. Then, he would discover that his two subordinates were dead.

Sallie bolted toward the control booth with all the preternatural speed her builders had designed into her tiny body. She kicked nearly soundlessly off the wall of the control booth next to the door and vaulted herself up onto its roof. Sallie crouched over the booth's door and pulled the autoinjector from her pocket. She disabled the autoinjector's safety and waited for the door to open. After only a couple of seconds, the NCO, a sergeant first class by his insignia, stepped out of the booth. He was still securing his rain poncho and helmet as he looked around. The man immediately noticed that the two hulking launchers were still inside their weatherproof housings.

"All right you maggots," the sergeant shouted as he scanned the rooftop for his subordinates, "why the hell are these missile launchers not being readied to fire? We are Code Fucking India!" Now the man looked around confusedly, trying to find the two privates in the sheeting downpour.

Before he could spot them, however, Sallie sprang upon him from atop the control booth. She aimed her boot right between his shoulder blades. The impact sent the unprepared man sprawling to the roof surface and knocked the wind out of him. He made a feeble effort to throw her off of his back, but he was no match for Sallie's strength. She clamped him in a headlock with one arm while her other hand fired the autoinjector into the man's neck. He bucked a few times and then went limp.

"Don't worry. It's just a paralytic," Sallie said to the helpless man as she heaved his limp weight up from the roof's surface. "You can't move, but you can still breathe and everything. I need you alive to activate the missiles."

Sallie, no bigger than a girl in her early teens but stronger than any man alive, then carried the full-grown man over her shoulder. She carried his weight easily back into the control booth and sat him down in his chair at the missile control panel. She walked over to the hatch in the floor which led via ladder down into the building below. She closed the hatch, dogged it, and poured liquid weld along its perimeter. Within seconds, the liquid weld reacted to the metal of the hatch and welded it permanently shut. Now she didn't have to worry about anybody coming from below to interrupt her.

Now that she had total and uncontested control of the rooftop, Sallie went back outside. She went to the nearest of the two missile launchers and pressed the button to retract its weatherproof housing. That done, she put the launcher into its standby position. The big missile launcher with its two antiaircraft tactical defense missiles rose on its gimbaled base and awaited instructions to fire. Sallie repeated this process with the second launcher. Now that both launchers were ready to fire a total of four missiles, Sallie placed a hand on one of the missiles. This missile was a machine, just like her. It had been built for a purpose. That purpose wasn't to sleep beneath a weatherproof housing. This missile, her brother machine, had been built to destroy a target. Tonight it would finally be allowed off its leash to fulfill that purpose.

"I promise," Sallie said to the missile. Then, she walked unhurriedly back through the heavy rain and the flashing, red emergency lights to the control booth.

Inside the booth, on the security monitors, Sallie could see that nearly a dozen soldiers had now taken up defensive positions around Brig. Gen. Siskin Lia's office. Good. That meant that the general herself was still inside the fortified office, feeling safe behind her walls of crystalanium and armed guards. It would be a real shame if somebody were to launch four tactical defense missiles at that office.

Sallie accessed the data terminal and brought up the command screen which controlled the missiles' targeting systems. She entered the coordinates of Gen. Lia's office and flagged the office as a hostile attacker. She pressed the initialize command and waited as the data terminal pinged the QuantumScale Processor hidden somewhere within the paralyzed first sergeant's body. If she had killed him, the QSP would have gone offline and she wouldn't have been able to reroute the missiles using his access. As it was, however, the data terminal received the confirmation signal from the sergeant's QSP and seemed satisfied that an authorized user was in the control seat. The computer took the new coordinates and sent them to the missile launchers outside on the rooftop. On the terminal screen, a ten-second countdown began. Outside, all four missiles' engines began to shriek as they came to life.

Sallie's brothers were readying themselves to fly.

And so was she.