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As the City Burned 

         "You have to do something!" Tarin stood on the streets of Saleen, the tower burning like a pyre before him. "My sister is still in there!" He pointed skyward, toward the thirty-ninth floor that held the apartment his family owned. Or had owned, until the Virenari came.

The officer pressed his palm into Tarin's chest. "There's nothing we can do, son. I'm a security officer, not a firefighter. Even if I was, there's no equipment for kilometers. None that works anyway. I'm sorry, but the best thing you can do is to get out of here. That tower will collapse any minute."

Tarin felt tears streaking his face, both from the raw emotion and the acrid smoke in the air. Black waves of it rolled across him; cinders and ash clung to his clothes. It looked as if all of Saleen was aflame. He clasped the officer's forearm. "You don't understand. She's only ten. She can't get out of there on her own."

"And we can't get in." The officer pushed his hands away. "Look, kid, maybe she found her way out before the orbital bombardment. She's probably waiting for you somewhere. Have you tried her comm?"

"The comm towers are down." Tarin shook his head. "Can you try?" The military had their own comm towers, in case of just the emergency that had befallen the planet of Marik. Those were hidden, with incredible range, and odds were they were still running.

The officer stepped back. "Sorry. Official use only."

"Official use? What in hell does that mean? If saving people isn't an official use, then what is?" Tarin felt his fingers clench into fists and stepped forward. The officer outweighed him and stood a few inches taller, but Tarin had no doubt at that moment that he could have taken the man to the ground.

"I'm here to evacuate as many as possible, not waste time trying to save someone who may or may not be there. And even if she is, we can't get to her." The man gave Tarin a hard stare. "I have a job to do. There are more people out here, and them I can save. I'd advise you get out of the city. The next bombardment will hit any minute, and you could be killed."

"Give me your comm." Tarin advanced again, jaw set.

The officer's hand dropped to his waist, where he wore a small blast pistol. "Get back, son. Don't make this worse."

"Give me your comm!"

"If I have to warn you again, I'll shoot you. That won't do your sister any good, now will it?"

Tarin stopped in his tracks. The man was right. He was wasting time. He knew Carina was in the building, and if he didn't do something soon it would be too late. "Fine, go. I hope the Virenari already killed your family."

The officer cringed, then spoke so quietly Tarin almost didn't catch it. "They did, son. They did." He turned and jogged down the street, waving at a group of people trying to load suitcases into their hovercar.  

The base of the tower had taken a direct hit during the last barrage from the Virenari Cruiser. The blast had knocked Tarin flat, and ripped the tower's metal skin into stripes. I-beams and other supports snapped and lay scattered; it was a wonder the tower could even stand considering the extent of the damage. Glass and debris littered the street. Tarin could see what was left of a man who'd been coming out of the tower just as the salvo hit. A heavy laser bolt had clipped his waist, tearing him in half and scattering his intestines like thick, bloody ropes over a crashed lifttruck. All that remained of his body was the torso from the chest up, his mouth twisted forever in a final scream. His lips had burned off as fire exploded out of his mouth, and his teeth looked like blackened stumps after a forest fire.

The fire had worked its way up the tower from there, and quickly. The metal melted and dripped down in long streams, while the carpet and wiring and wooden furnishings fueled the blaze. The tower was only forty-seven stories high, and the halo of fire now ringed the thirty-third. Of the floors below, only a charred skeleton remained.

Tarin tore off his shirt and tied it around his face. He'd seen the trick on a holovid about firefighters; he had no idea if it would work. He glanced up at the window he knew Carina was trapped behind. I'm coming. Just hold on. Throwing caution aside, he sprinted for the base of the tower.

The outside may have quit burning, but the interior had not. Flames ravaged the lobby, burning computers and desks and once-cushioned chairs as if they held no value at all. Tarin could see more bodies fallen in various poses of death, most aimed toward the door. A young mother clutched her child to her chest, and would forever. A piece of metal the size of Tarin's arm passed through both bodies; the end was still red-hot.

Tarin ran to the lifts, feeling the stifling heat close in around him. His throat burned with each breath, even through the shirt. He punched the lift call button twice, and it didn't even light up. He hit it again; nothing. Either the city's power grid was still down, as it had been for two days, or the building's wire conduits had been severed. Either way, the lift was out of the question.

He sprinted for the stairwell. The door had a sign above it with the word 'First' printed on it in red letters. The sign canted to the left, one of its support screws broken. Tarin swore; it would take too long to run up thirty-nine flights of stairs. But he had to try. He lashed out with a foot, smashing it dead center into the door. The door fell backward.

Into nothing. A laser bolt had passed directly through the stairwell, angled downward as it fell from the Virenari Cruiser, and blasted the concrete into dust. Tarin stepped inside and looked up. The stairs hung in space a meter over his head. He almost jumped and hauled himself up, but then he saw that another bolt had passed through two stories higher. If the stairs started again after that, he couldn't see them. A dark, empty stairwell reached upward with rough holes blasted in its walls.

He heard the next barrage a moment before it hit. The flash of red light seemed to come from everywhere, and Tarin fell forward with a cry. He wrapped his arms around his head and tucked his knees up to his chest. The roar sounded like standing under a Tiger-class Destroyer as it lifted off from the spaceport. Concrete and metal flew in all directions. Something hit him in the back; he rolled to the side just in time to catch another chunk of metal in the shoulder. It sliced deep into his flesh and flew past to crash against the wall. Dust and grime covered him.

The sound ended as abruptly as it had begun. Tarin could smell the sickly burn of laser fire. He pulled himself to his feet and looked around. The blast had mostly missed the tower, but a smaller building across the street was gone. Just like that. He stumbled outside and stared at the pile of rubble covered in a cloud of ash. One moment the building existed, the next it did not. He swallowed. Dust coated the inside of his mouth.

If Carina's tower fell, the amount of debris would bury him.

With climbing the tower no longer a viable possibility, Tarin ran across the street. The towers in the heart of Marik clustered together, and the one directly opposing Carina's still stood in one piece. He didn't know how it had survived the attacked, save that it must have been on the fringe of the bombardment. He shoved the door open and darted inside, running for the stairs.

A man with an armload of clothes looked at him with wide eyes. "Kid! You don't want to go up there!"

"I have to." Tarin pivoted past the man and kept going.

"We have to get out of the city!"

"Then get out!" Ignoring the alarm blaring over the building's emergency systems--separate from the central power grid--Tarin shoved the stairwell door open and took the stairs two at a time. He stopped only once on the way up, to grab a length of rope from a janitor's closet. It had the same breadth as his finger, and he had no way to tell how long it was. But it would have to work. The streets were thin here. It would be enough.

Tarin reached the thirty-ninth floor, panting for breath. He shouldered his way through a locked apartment door--who thought to lock their door with the world falling down around them?--and stumbled into the room beyond. He darted around a table and four chairs, past a leather couch, and threw himself against the huge plate-glass window that looked out over the street.

He could see her. Carina stood, pressed as close to her window as she could get, staring downward. Her mouth opened in a choking sob; tears streaked her face. Her hair hung in tangles around her shoulders, covered in ash that had risen on the updrafts. She wore blue overalls and a pink shirt, and clutched her favorite stuffed daulbeast against her chest.

Behind her, flames licked up the walls. The fire had moved up to her floor during his climb. Smoke filled the room, a dark layer against the ceiling that lightened as it reached toward the floor. A loveseat burned bright like the end of a match. Tarin could only imagine the heat.

Tarin grabbed a metal chair from the table and hurled it through the window. The glass shattered in a rain of splinters that covered the floor and fell to the street below. The chair spun out of his field of vision. Hopefully no one was unlucky enough to survive the entire attack and die when the chair struck them in the skull on the way down. The window stood as tall as him, and Tarin jumped up on the sill with the rope in hand.

Carina saw the chair's flight, and looked up in surprise. Her eyes grew as huge as the sun over Marik when she saw Tarin; her jaw dropped open. She yelled something, but he could hardly hear it.

"Break the window, Carina!" Tarin pantomimed smashing his fist against the glass. He held up the rope. "Break it and I'll come across!"

She understood, but shook her head. She pounded her fist, so much smaller than Tarin's against the glass. It held firm. Metal reinforcement fibers ran through it, to keep kids from breaking it and falling to their deaths. Tarin cursed. Carina began crying again, beating at the glass with both hands.

Maybe he had something he could throw across. The glass would shower over her, but cuts and scrapes would heal. He had to get her out. Tarin held up one finger--wait--and jumped from the sill.

Everything was too big. He grabbed a chair, but didn't think he could throw it the distance. Not hard enough, anyway. A plate and cup sat on a counter, but both were ceramic. He could hurl them over, but they'd shatter long before the glass would. Even if he threw an entire set of dishes, one at a time, he wouldn't be able to batter his way through. A few books lay about the floor, along with a model of a Scorpion snubfighter, but none of them massed enough. The Scorpion almost did, but the nose snapped off as he picked it up, falling away from the swept-back wings and ridged dorsal fin. Whoever had made it had been anything but professional.

He yanked open a pair of cupboard doors, tearing one right off the hinges. Pots. Metal pots. He grabbed one, discarded it, and grabbed another. It looked like it had been used to cook soup at one point, and never washed again, but it was heavy. He ran back to the window and jumped up.

The flames had closed in on Carina. Her chest heaved with every breath in the oxygen-starved air. She'd stopped crying, and slumped against the window as if she could loose her footing at any moment. Her fist still beat against the window, but slowly and without any force behind it.

Tarin held up the pot. "Carina! Watch the glass!"

She nodded, a barely perceptible movement, and lurched to the side. Not out of the way, but close enough. Tarin threw the pot with every ounce of strength he had left.

And missed. It sailed across the open space and hit the window at the very bottom, where the support bar connected it to the building's outer surface. That bar was made of solid steel, and wouldn't give unless the Virenari hit it with the next round of shots.

Behind Carina, something exploded. It looked like the stove, or the heating unit. Either one could have done it, considering the power cells they used had never been designed for such intense and prolonged exposure to heat. The flare looked like a star going nova; for a moment, the apartment was nothing but a glowing ball of light. Then the light faded back. The glass, stubborn as always, held firm.

Tarin heard her screaming before he saw her. Carina still stood, plastered against the window, but no longer away from the flames. Her shirt and overalls smoked as they caught fire, and she beat the flames out with her hands. The carpet all around her threw up torrents of dark smoke. Choking punctuated her screams as she inhaled. She slammed her hands against the window, terror rejuvenating her effort. Her fists pounded forward again and again, to no avail. A bloody streak appeared on the glass.

Tarin crouched in the window, screaming along with her. Sobs wracked his body; he couldn't get there in time. So close, and yet that quarter-inch of reinforced glass proved too much to overcome. He ignored the fall before him, the danger to himself, and held his head in his hands. He wanted to tear out his eyes, or his ears, or both. Anything to stop the pain before him. Anything.

Carina's screams faded away. Tarin looked up, and saw nothing but flames in the apartment. He felt bile swell up his throat, and choked it down. He stared, waiting for a miracle, clinging to the barest thread of hope. But Carina's face never appeared in the window again. The flames burned bright, consuming everything in their path.

Ten minutes later, Tarin stepped down from the window, walked halfway across the living room, and was sick.