by Jeremy Szal
I twist around, hackles raised, desperate for a new target, when a Harvester blasts his scattershot inches from my head. I smash my elbow into his helmet, then headbutt him, cracking his visor open. His face is splashed with sweat and twisted with fury. I’m slammed sideward into the dirt, my helmet cracking on a stone. My left side aches and I’m vaguely aware a second Harvester blasted me with a scattershot. He’s standing above me, the muzzle parked on my visor. I’m sure I’m dead, but the flat crack of Myra’s sniper rifle saves me, snapping through the shipyard and pitching the Harvester sideways, his skull smoking. The second Harvester dives for cover, but Myra’s faster, the round sparking off a guardrail and slamming into his chest. I snatch up his fallen scattershot, the world thudding like it’s got its own heartbeat, multicoloured gunfire grazing past my head.
Ratchet’s slammed up against the ground by a Harvester in gunmetal armour, a boot in his face. The Harvester snaps his head around towards me as I dash towards them, my reflection distorted in his visor. Ratchet reaches upwards to shove his blade into the Harvester’s gut. It sinks through the shielding and armour, hilt-deep, deeper still as Ratchet smashes the hilt with his fist, stabbing through his spine. I haul Ratchet to his feet, his depleted shields spluttering, our armour scraping together. A grenade rips out five metres away, polarizing my visor and showering clods of dirt over me. A Harvester in bulky blue-black armour feints around us, unleashing three-round bursts. We turn on him together. He ducks around me as I aim down the scattershot, the weapon shuddering in my hands as the convex slug-rounds tear into him. He’s slammed back, his hand blasted to a bloody stump, his crumpled chestplate smoking. He tries to go for his handgun, but I level the scattershot upwards and punch a slug through his face, splitting his head apart, his body spinning down the walkways. Another tries to hack me apart, but Ratchet’s already skidding around him, shoving the blade into his neck, black blood flowing.
And that’s when I see Drummer.
He’s sprinting up towards the Harvesters on the raised walkways. More enemies. More monsters who’d string Reapers for us to find. The stormtech roars with anger as I run after Drummer. There’s a red-hot flash overhead, and I open my mouth to yell a warning, but Drummer’s slammed to the floor, armour clanging, clutching at his abdomen. Thick, red liquid pumping out.
White-hot rage tears through me as I hear the Harvesters above cheering about taking one of us down. I gather myself and leap, ignoring the covered staircase and powering up the ruined walls towards them, mind nothing but fury and rage. A volley of bullets explodes inches from my face, pinging off my armour, carving up the support walls. The world has tunnel-visioned as I throttle the trigger of my marksman rifle. Crack! The bullet explodes out, punching into the first Harvester’s chest. I’m leaping across the support beams, lining up the second. Crack! The second Harvester is kicked backwards into the sheer drop below, clanging off the cross-linked pylons. I hear the high-pitched whine of a smelter-grenade being primed. The Harvester’s face twisted with fear as she bends back to throw it. Crack! I blast her in the arm, the grenade dropping to the floor and igniting, bright as a sun going supernova, wrapping her and the remaining Harvesters in a roaring explosion. Adrenaline rolls through me, muscles tight against my armour, already sweeping for the next target.
At the edge of my hearing, a wet, choking sound.
Drummer.
I rush back to him, the battle-adrenaline ebbing out of me. He’s spluttering on the grating. His eyes twitching and confused when I rip his helmet off. His hands leaving smears of blood as he paws at my chestplate.
‘Hold on, man, hold on,’ I pant, trying to put pressure on the wound. But there’s so much blood. So much damage. Too much for the stormtech to repair. His shaking hands find mine, and we lock fists against his wound.
Wind whistles over the mountain ridgeline. Lightning strikes the distant horizons. I can smell rain.
Between one blink and the next, my friend is gone.
I’m sitting on a munitions crate in the hangar bay when Alcatraz plants himself next to me. I watch the bruised storm clouds churning over the sweeping landscape. We’re both still in armour. There’s blood caked on my chestplate, in my gloves. Underneath it, I can feel the blue, alien essence twitching through my flesh like seaweed in a never-ending current. Curling around my ribcage. Squeezing my heart.
It saved my life today.
I reach for that feeling, gripping the stormtech hard. Letting it wash over me. Lapping up its sensations, the quiet fury bubbling inside my chest. Feeling the untapped potential inside me for the first time.
Alcatraz sighs. The crackle of gunfire from training VRs echo from the barracks. It seems like an age before he speaks. ‘Not going to lie to you, Fukasawa. This is just the start. Tomorrow is going to be hard, and the day after even harder. You’re going to feel so angry and exhausted you could die; you’ll feel you’d rather eat your own gun than return to duty. You’re going to be dropped in some of the worst places in the universe to be shot at, stabbed, ambushed and slammed into the mud. You’re going to see more friends die in ways no one was ever meant to see.’ A hiss of air as his helmet unseals, he removes it and glances at me with blue strands lashing up his cheeks. ‘But the rest of your fireteam will always be there for you. Doesn’t matter what those Harvest pigs throw at us, we’re going to fight them to the bitter, bloody end. Together. Maybe you’ll die on the battlefield tomorrow. Maybe I will. But you’ll die in the arms of a friend, of a brother. Come hell or high water, we stick together.’ He drops his dog tags into my palm, the Reaper salute engraved in gunmetal. It’s a declaration of loyalty, of shared brotherhood. Thunder grumbles in the distance as I turn them over. ‘That’s a promise, Fukasawa. You’re a Reaper now. We’re blood brothers. Forever and always, until we’re nothing but dirt and dust. We’ll do right by you. Will you do right by us?’
I remove my helmet, pull off my own dog tags and drop them in his hand. Alcatraz nods, slings an arm around my neck and pulls me over in a half-hug, half-headlock. ‘Until we’re dirt and dust,’ I say, my throat suddenly tight.
Alcatraz releases me, claps me hard on the shoulder. ‘Come on. We’re going to bury Drummer. Can’t do it without everyone present.’
My armour groans as I stand to go to the funeral of a man I barely knew. A man who died for me, for people he loved, and for people he would never meet. Everyone has congregated outside, around his armoured body. His arms were placed in the Reaper gesture for the last time, his tags given to his closest friends. Reapers nod to me as I pass. My fireteam clapping me on the shoulder for the first time.
They’d die for me.
As I would for them.
For the briefest of moments, I feel at peace.
15
Return of the Storm
Our slipship rumbled as it soared to the top of the pixelsheeting roof, the Hovergardens sprawling beneath us. Towering fruit trees, crop fields, vertical orchards, botanical enterprises and vineyards were smears of red, yellow and orange against the deep, verdant green of the rainforest. Climate-controlled biospheres glistened like giant ovoid eggs laid by some alien creature. Lines of guided tours twisted through Compass’ central greenhouse, forking off to the sectors housing alien flora, grown from seedbanks donated by various species. Octodrones swooped through the thick foliage, scooping up bulbous fruits. From this angle, our little ship was the axis and the rest of Compass was the wheel, rotating around us like a planet in orbit.
The microinsulation didn’t quite muffle the outside roar and Kowalski had to raise her voice to be heard. ‘You’ve ridden in these before?’
I nodded, readjusting my grip on the webbing straps. I elected not to mention the conditions weren’t quite the same. The hard spacedecking floor wasn’t spattered with blood and severed limbs. Or littered with twitching bodies, ear-shattering explosions rippling under us as we tore into the churning sky with A
nti-Hull Targeting Missiles streaking past and nanogun rounds hammering our armoured hull. No dread icing through our guts as we waited for the one lucky round that’d blast us out of the sky.
So, yeah. Very, very different conditions.
I’ll say this about Kindosh: she wasted no time in making a decision. No red tape, no bureaucracy, no argument when I insisted on tagging along. I wasn’t exactly in prime condition for the field, but someone needed to guide them through the compound. And if my brother might be in there, I would be, too.
As a First Class Primer, Kowalski was able to work solo in the field, and to commandeer any enlisted servicemen under Harmony’s Special Service Command. Today, she led a six-strong squad of Shocktroopers, under the name Team Twilight. Trained for flexibility on the battlefield, Shocktroopers were the backbone of Harmony’s infantry, working closely in their tightknit fireteams and outfitted with supersoldier augmentations for various assignments. Like Reapers, their long-term operations in the field had evolved into their own gestures and lingo. They were distinguished by their angular, sturdy armour built to resist heavy damage. I was introduced to two of Kowalski’s most trusted men: a short man called Kuen who said too much, and a lanky weapons expert called Vanto who said too little.
Backup was a smattering of gunrunners in light tactical gear with standard-issue service weapons. I saw Kowalski deep in conversation with her SubPrimers – her second-in-command on the field. Armed with handcannons and heavy assault autorifles with high-calibre rounds, they wore armour with a triple slash on their chests and shoulders. They generally led the charge on high-priority assignments and tactical operations. You knew something was going to go down when you saw them in the field. Jasken, the SubPrimer closest to me, stood in his heavy cerulean armour, the metalwork scuffed and blistered and covered with dozens of names. He wore a dour, distant look on his scarred face. More cynical than disinterested. He was scratching the final details of a skullface onto his spherical helmet faceplate, doing a hell of a job at ignoring everyone else. One of the SubPrimers, Arya, rolled her eyes at the display. I caught a glimpse of stormtech curling under her flesh. I wondered but dismissed it. Reapers have a way of standing; their training written into their composure on the field. She didn’t have it.
The Sub Zeros were easy to spot, even without their fin-dragged helmets and bulky armour that made them look like monsters wrapped in concentric layers of metal and rock. They all stood a little too straight, chests puffed out, staring straight ahead from behind black triangular visors. Their hands seemed to have fused to their long-range assault rifles and scattershots with underslung micronade launchers. They somehow carved out a space around them, like a shockfield, keeping others at least a metre away. Only the most effective and battle-hardened of soldiers in Harmony’s SSC rose to this specialised rank. They operated with their own rules on their own terms. I tried to imagine them stealing children in the night, bundling them away from their homes and parents because Harmony had decided they were prime Reaper candidates.
A different time. A different era. A different set of people making the decisions. But the same blood staining Harmony’s hands.
I turned to Kowalski. ‘Won’t they see us coming?’
‘Not in one of these, they won’t.’ She pointed to a flexiscreen displaying a feed from an exterior starboard cam. The slipship’s polished hull had a black, glossy sheen, before it disappeared in a slow wave that rolled from aft to bow. Only the faintest gold outline of the nanoshielding remained. We were totally cloaked. Had to say, it was impressive. ‘And this is for you.’ Kowalski offered me a thin-gun. The black gel handle adjusted to my grip as I tilted the hardware over to inspect it. Oil-black, snubbed nose and ultralight. You wouldn’t be taking down a mechsuit with this, but at a short to medium range you could still deal out some serious damage. ‘Better safe than sorry, right?’
I flexed my aching shoulders against my armour. There’d been no time to repair or clean it, so I was painfully aware of the two holes in the back and the thick coating of my sweat and blood slathering the insides. I’m used to being trapped in my own stink, but I hoped no one else would notice the awful smell. Hadn’t the chance to get any more sleep, either. Four triple-shot coffees and my rising adrenaline level was the only thing keeping me conscious.
‘That hurt much?’ Jasken turned his skullface towards the bullet-holes in my back. News spreads fast among SSC men.
I shook my head and raised the shoulder in question. ‘Nope. Tickled a bit is all.’
Jasken chuckled. With his deep, sandpaper voice, it sounded more like a grunt. ‘Stupid question, I guess. Still, you want to get that fixed. There’s a guy down in the Upper Markets who knows his stuff inside out.’ A passkey was exchanged between our shibs. Everyone glanced at the exchange. Seemed Jasken interacting was a rare occurrence. ‘A little something from me. Show it to him and he’ll sort you out.’
I nodded my thanks as we fast approached the Warren. Ugly up close, and ugly from a distance. The roads were clotted, charcoal veins that bled through the slate-grey grid of cracked tenements, crumbled warehouses and scorched walls. It looked completely detached from the rest of the level, as if Harvest’s weaponry had for ever ripped the place into two opposing worlds.
It was a perfect hiding place. And still would be, if I’d not followed Artyom.
My guts twitched as we spiralled into a rapid descent. I could only hope Artyom wasn’t caught in the crossfire. I couldn’t hold back the assault on my own, so if he really had stuck around, it was his own fault.
If I told myself that often enough, maybe I’d believe it.
Dust swirled as we landed on a grime-smeared rooftop, cluttered with ratnest shacks. The Sub Zeros surged ahead like a shifting mass of black sand, kicking out the doorway and spilling into the darkness. The rest of us followed as they spread out, searching each room. I waited for the crackling echo of gunfire and screams, sour dread knotting my guts as the seconds dragged by.
It took them three minutes to confirm the place was abandoned. They’d all seen the footage I’d taken in the debriefing. Our rats must have fled their sinking ship the moment I’d escaped.
Kowalski looked ready to punch a wall, and even her Shocktroopers were maintaining a healthy distance. She fumbled for her vaper, soaking up the cloud of fumes. ‘Couldn’t have been more than a few hours,’ she puffed. ‘You’re sure it’s the same place?’
I just looked at her. ‘I know, I know.’ She sighed. ‘I had to ask.’
But it was the same place. Same white-washed walls moist with condensation, the same empty hallways, the same powdery smell. The same particle blaster scorch on the wall.
A rangy SubPrimer called Saren leaned towards me. ‘How many did you see here?’
‘I saw a half a dozen but heard more. Maybe ten, fifteen people?’
‘Could have moved,’ Saren told Kowalski. ‘Taken the canisters, dumped everything in a deprinter, reprinted them up again later. Torched what they didn’t need.’
‘That’s mighty quick work for an entire base,’ I said.
‘This is nothing,’ Saren said. ‘Stormdealers practise a fast-track escape if they’re ever cornered. They call it burning out. EMPs, false DNA sprayers, chem-bombs that scour every surface with microbes to destroy any evidence. The bastards can clear a lab in under ten minutes.’
‘Which means they’ve got somewhere else to move to,’ I said. ‘This wasn’t their only base.’
One of the Sub Zeros – a man with a cinderblock helmet and T-shaped visor – stepped up alongside me. Like the others, his ID tag was an ominous blur in my shib, Classified Intel blinking up when I tried to access it further. He was a ghost. A bloody wraith that existed only to complete Harmony’s most sordid tasks across the Common. ‘There must be some evidence remaining. One way or another, we’ll find it. Even if we have to tear this whole building down.’
I’m no saint, never will be. But something in his quiet, rumbling voice chilled me.
We walked down a hallway slathered in stuttering blue light from a malfunctioning adboard outside the viewport, describing some well-to-do place called Cloudstern. I’d fooled myself into thinking this’d be easy; that the biggest challenge would be protecting my brother while we wrapped the culprits up with a bow. War taught me there’s only so many times you get to make that mistake.
My armour cranked and wheezed around me as I hiked up the stairwell, loud enough to grab Saren’s attention. The Rubix and the armour-piercing rounds had screwed up the circuitry and servomechanisms big-time, and the HUD was locked in a constant spasm. Among all the elite soldiers outfitted in top-notch gear, I found myself annoyed at being the one stuck wearing damaged armour.
I’d been right, though. They had left something behind. We found the cradle, sitting like a gaping silver jaw, limb restraints popped open, gill-like grooves flickering with a sickly green. I could so easily still be strapped into it, my brains being slowly turned inside out. I saw the others keeping a careful distance from it, as if it might lunge out and grab them if they got too close.
Not Jasken. He grunted and smashed the fuse box on the side with the butt of his autorifle. The cradle’s steady hum spluttered and died out as everyone stared at him. He shrugged, propped a casual knee on the armrest and turned his skullface helmet towards us. ‘It ain’t going to bite.’
‘How long were you held here for?’ Kowalski asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, my voice hoarse, flesh tingling at the relived memory. ‘They were waiting for someone to come and interrogate me. They never said who, but they were determined to know who I was working for.’
As I could have predicted, all the servers, substrates and memory crystals had been stripped clean. Even the broken nightware casing was gone, leaving the memories of my torture and escape behind to stir my body up. With my hearing sharpened, the heavy footsteps of the Sub Zeros before me were marginally louder. But it was just an echo of my full sensory capacities on the battlefield, when my body had fired on all cylinders. Kowalski was two steps ahead, orchestrating the search. Between her instructions I heard a sound I couldn’t ignore, like the faintest scratching at the back of my skull.
