by Jeremy Szal
‘Nothing makes you feel worse than failing a child,’ Alcatraz says as evac airships lift off from various strongpoints, down into the bodies and destruction.
I’m barely listening. There’s another mutilated Reaper nailed to a pole in the centre of an ash-caked courtyard. Only, this one’s arm is jutting outwards, pointing east.
Directions.
The skull and lightning bolts on his chest indicate he’s part of the Space Battalion: Reapers who’ve been in orbital combat and boarded enemy spacecraft. His name is Paz Viska. I’ve never spoken to him, but I know he’s been missing for weeks. I get the feeling I’m about to find out why.
We go east to another tortured Reaper. And another. And another. Each one with an arm strung up and nailed to the post to point in the same direction. Until we reach a bombed-out garrison holding a rusted cage dangling from the ceiling. Inside are Reapers, so mangled they’re barely recognisable. And with it is a video transmission; a Harvester with a scrambled voice explaining that since we’ve been scavenging their weapons and tech to learn their strategies, so in turn they’re going to take the one thing we have that they don’t.
Stormtech.
There’s video footage of them vivisecting Reapers and subjecting them to horrific experiments. Learning how it alters and strengthens our biology for the battlefield. Testing how much strain our bodies can take. How the stormtech responds to torture. How Reapers respond to unimaginable pain and horror. Showing us how they’re going to keep capturing Reapers and pulling them apart for their little studies, including us.
Ratchet stumbles sideways and just gets his helmet off before he pukes all around his boots. I’m doing likewise, heaving next to him.
‘What they were doing to him,’ Ratchet half-growls, half sobs.
‘I know, man,’ I say.
‘We’re in a nightmare,’ Cable says from behind us.
It’s more than that. This is horror beyond everything else. This is the squirming, evil rot hiding beneath the skin of civilisation, devouring and consuming everything good and right that’s ever happened in the universe.
Ratchet turns to me. ‘Don’t ever let that happen to me,’ he pants, his bloodshot eyes darting back and forth.
I squeeze his shoulder. ‘I’ll kill them all before I let them touch you. I swear.’
‘No matter what,’ Ratchet says.
‘No matter what.’ Cable helps me to my feet while Myra and Alcatraz help Ratchet.
‘Even if you have to put a bullet in my brain, you don’t let them take me,’ Ratchet says, putting his helmet back on.
Alcatraz gets right up in Ratchet’s face, their visors knocking together. ‘Don’t you ever say that again.’
‘I’ll die before I end up like that,’ Ratchet snarls back.
‘We start thinking like that, we’re already dead. They’ve already won.’ He taps his commslink. ‘Why do you think they sent this transmission to every Reaper and Harmony outpost on the planet? They want us to give up. They want us so scared we forget to rely on each other. We don’t let this trip us up. We use it. We turn it against them.’ He looks at each of us in turn. ‘You hear me?’
That’s the thing about war. It’s a hurricane of chaos. It’s volatile. With every operation, we don’t know what horrors we’re going to find or who’s going to make it out alive again.
In this hellscape of horrors, this overwhelming darkness, there’s only one thing anchoring you to sanity. The men and women standing by your side, facing it with you. More than that, we’re each other’s hope of surviving. Harvest knows that. So they try to go for the heart.
One by one, we nod an affirmative to Alcatraz’s question, giving the Reaper gesture with a sincerity that didn’t previously exist, and we start to free the murdered Reapers.
When we’re not in the field, we’re training for it in the state-of-the-art gravity gymnasium and the training VR, pushing our stormtech-fused bodies as hard as we can. First we weight-train in gravity chambers, then with hand-to-hand combat, and finally the worst part: pushing our metabolisms and stamina with a test of endurance, submerging ourselves in pools of icy water. Everyone else does the required ninety seconds, but Ratchet bets he can beat me by a full minute. I’m stupid enough to take him up on it. Six minutes later, I drag myself shivering from the tank while the rest of the fireteam laughs. Ratchet grins at me through the glass and lasts eight and a half minutes, just to prove he can.
His pale body is almost purple with cold when he finally climbs out, grinning. ‘What’s the matter, Fukasawa? Can’t handle a bit of chill?’
‘How the hell can you do that?’ I manage through still-chattering teeth.
‘He was raised by wolves,’ Myra calls.
When Ratchet turns his back on me, I shove him into the tank. He splutters and thrashes while the rest of the fireteam laughs.
‘He’s going to get you back for that,’ Alcatraz says.
‘He can try,’ I say.
Alcatraz shakes his head. ‘Oh, he will.’
I turn to see Ratchet launching himself out of the pool. He slams me to the ground and starts punching with frozen fists. My fireteam cheers as I try to wrestle him into a lock. He punches me in the armpit, reaches around to grab a fistful of my hair. My scalp burns as he jerks my head back, digging his knee into the base of my spine, his fingertips scrabbling and clawing at my eyes, going for the kill.
I’ve got no reservations about doing the same. Teeth gritted, I slam the back of my head into his nose. He gasps as I drive my elbow into his stomach, right below his ribs. His grip weakens and I tear free, flip myself over, chopping a strike at his throat to daze him as I wrap my arms around his body, crushing his arms to his sides while he thrashes and tries to bite me. It’s like trying to hold down a psychotic goat. Finally, I pin him under me. ‘Truce?’ I ask into his ear.
Ratchet growls and thrashes. I repeat the question and he gives a begrudging nod. I’m expecting him to be furious. Instead, he’s got this ear-splitting grin on his grime-smeared face. ‘You won the battle. But I’ll win the war.’
Soon, we’re all able to last eight minutes in the freezing water. Then ten. Then fifteen. Our endurance, strength and agility slowly improves with training. During one session, I notice people watching us from the observation port. They’re without name tags, their rankings a blurred smudge in my shib. I’ve heard rumours of Intelligence Officers hanging around, but I dismissed it. No non-combatant comes to a planet under siege unless they’ve got a death wish. But when they watch us train, I can’t help but feel they’re taking notes.
The gymnasium’s large enough to accommodate entire squads of Reapers, including members of the Drop Shock Battalion. These heavyweights specialise in getting dropped from orbit in coffin-sized pods and landing behind enemy lines. They’re tough as chainmetal and can’t stop talking about the killer that is gravity, but friendly enough. We’re chatting away, until a squad of non-Reaper SSC soldiers enter the room. The new arrivals keep a wide berth, giving us dirty looks. A Shocktrooper looks at me and spits on the floor. Ratchet bares his teeth and gives off a low growl until they back off.
‘I didn’t ask you to do that,’ I say, sitting on a padded workbench, the armpits of my suit dark with sweat.
‘Nah, you didn’t,’ Ratchet agrees. ‘But you needed me to.’
‘What’s with them, anyhow?’ I ask.
‘Maybe it’s pheromonal,’ Ratchet says. ‘The stormtech changed the way we smell, yeah? Well, I reckon something about it freaks them out, down in the brain stem.’
Myra snorts at that. ‘Hardly. They’re just jealous.’
‘He didn’t look very jealous to me,’ I say.
‘Reapers are the frontline elite. We’re stronger, smarter and faster. More adaptable. More responsive. Even our armour’s calibrated for Reaper response-times. They’d break their own necks if
they tried to wear our gear. In the field, we make them look like bright-eyed trainees.’
‘We’re all on the same side,’ Cable mutters.
Myra squats down in front of him. ‘Cable, I love you, but you’re beyond naive if you’re swallowing that. You’ve seen the crap the Common’s been saying about Reapers? What they’ve been calling us? The only difference is that these guys have seen us in action.’ She nods towards the SSC men gathered in their tightknit circles. Staring at Reapers in gravity chambers cranked to three times what their unaugmented bodies can handle. ‘They want to be us. They can’t. So instead, they hate us.’
‘They aren’t the only ones,’ Alcatraz says. ‘You hear Harmony’s set up a tightbeam relay for interstellar communications? They want us to talk to a bunch of trauma counsellors.’
I stare at him. ‘You don’t think that’s a good idea?’
Alcatraz snorts. ‘Don’t tell me you were thinking of signing up.’
‘It wouldn’t be such a bad idea to learn how to cope a little better.’
He spits at his feet. ‘What would you say to them that we can’t say to each other?’
He’s got a point.
‘What would you say?’ he prods.
I think about it for a moment.
‘I’d tell them how I can’t wait to get back into the field,’ I say. My fireteam listens in silence. ‘That I wake up sweating and itching at night, counting down the hours to our next mission. That I’m agitated when I’m not in my armour. That the sound of incoming fire doesn’t scare me like it did. That I know none of this is normal, but something deep inside is telling this is good news. And that freaks me the hell out.’
It’s not until the words are out that I realise how much I needed to say them.
‘I feel it too,’ Alcatraz says. ‘I heard sub-orbital cannons raining down from the VR training rooms and half-hoped it was Harvesters. Had my rifle out and everything. Got halfway down the stairs before I realised.’
‘I spend hours in the gravity gym, working out until I can sleep,’ Cable admits.
‘That doesn’t sound normal,’ I say.
‘There’s not much normal about alien DNA,’ Myra mutters.
Alcatraz nods. ‘That’s why we talk. We communicate. Hell, if we don’t trust each other in here, how can we trust each other out there?’ He nods towards the SSC troupers. ‘If we don’t, we’re just like them. And if I was out in the field with those guys, I’d be more worried about them than the Harvesters.’
I’m in the middle of my armour diagnostics check-up when Commander Sokolav comes to see me.
I know Harvesters are dialling up the pressure, homing in on our outposts, raiding supply ships, blockading civilian evac routes and shooting down observation drones. Trouble’s brewing. The Commanders and Primers feel it, too, so do all the Reapers in Tusk Battalion. We’re on Prime Standby Alert. If there’s an emergency we’ve got to be out the door in seconds with our fireteams and straight into a dropship for rapid deployment. I haven’t been out of my armour for nearly two months. During a PSA I can’t leave it at all.
I stand in a spotlight on a metal podium while eggheads and armour technicians fuss around me. Lifting my arms, rotating my shoulders, replacing a kneecap. Tightening a plate here, readjusting a seal on my helmet there. The armour straps clamp down hard over my shoulders, my chestplate tightening. The latches locking me in place loosen and I step off the podium with a hiss. The technicians stand to attention as Sokolav approaches, but he makes an at-ease signal. I follow him across the scuffed and scarred armoury.
He claps me on the shoulder. ‘You keeping well, son?’ he asks in Japanese. He’s long insisted we disperse with the formalities.
I switch easily to the language. ‘Well enough, given the circumstances.’
Sokolav snorts. ‘You never did do small talk, did you?’
The walkway wraps around our home base. Him a slender figure in his dark blue Commander uniform with his mop of grey hair and eyes that look like they’re chiselled from salt-weathered rock. Me clad head to toe in bulky armour. He’s the only other person from New Vladivostok I’ve met in the army. The only person from my past. He feeds himself a burner, lights it. Drugs are banned for all Harmony SSC servicemen, but who’s going to tell the man who built Reapers what to do?
I glance around at the secondary home base we’ve established as we’ve ventured further across the planet. Vast swathes of dark green rainforest cover the landscape, sprawling across jagged terrain of squat mountain peaks and deep valleys. Above us, the cloudy sky’s that same bruised colour. The unpleasantly muggy air heaves with shockwaves as interplanetary dropships and troop-transports lift off the landing pads. Below us, armoured Reapers and SSC men carry munitions and supply crates between the assembly of prefab barracks, armouries and hangars that make up our home base.
And looming over it all are these immense, overlapping domed shields. A smoky cyan with a hexagonal pattern, stretching dozens of kilometres across. Without them, the never-ending barrage of Harvest artillery fire and sub-orbital railguns would have smashed us into powder. Through the warbling shields, and through a clear patch in the clouds, there’re squadrons of Harvest combat-ships circling us like vultures. Harmony gunships and countermeasure drones soar up through the shields to meet them. Red and blue streaks of plasma fire and flashing nanogun rounds burst through the clouds like metal thunder.
We walk past overflowing civilian shelters. Most of them missed the narrow evacuation window when Harvest dreadnoughts swarmed the Renchio skies. The ones that weren’t killed in the initial onslaught lost everything. We provided shelter, food. Now they’re trapped here hoping we’ll win, otherwise they’ll be at the mercy of Harvest.
‘It’s good to see you still alive and kicking,’ Sokolav tells me.
‘They haven’t found a way to axe me yet.’
‘Damn right they haven’t. As your Commander, I forbid you to go down without one hell of a fight.’ He grimaces as he tugs at his sweat-stained collar. ‘I miss the cold. A man’s not meant to work in these conditions. The heat melts the brain, turns your muscles soft.’
‘Is that a fact?’ I ask.
‘It is if I say it is.’ He leans towards me, that playful glint in his eye. ‘Maybe we should ask for a couple days leave, steal a chainship and shoot back to New Vladi. What do you say?’
‘Since when did you need permission to do anything?’
‘I don’t call all the shots around here, much to my astonishment. It all has to go up the chain.’
‘Better you than me.’
Sokolav takes a long drag of his burner. ‘Could be we need a change in management around here.’
‘You’ve got my vote.’
‘Wasn’t thinking of anything so democratic, but I’ll count on you all the same. You’ve never let me down, Vak.’
We lapse back into a comfortable silence.
‘We’re going to win this war.’ Sokolav squints up at the sub-orbital dogfight high above us. I imagine the deafening roar of the artillery fire from my shell-cannons. The adrenaline soaring in my gut as I spin into a barrel roll. Detonations rippling around me. Boomboom. Boomboom. Boomboomboom. My hands tighten into fists.
‘Because of the stormtech?’ I ask.
‘Because of you Reapers,’ Sokolav says. ‘Because of Harmony. Because we’re brave enough to use the stormtech to do what needs to be done.’ He raps his knuckles on my chest. ‘I’ve seen you in action, son. I know what you’re capable of. Which is how I know you can do what I’m going to ask.’
‘What do you need?’
‘Two things. I want the Canine King dead. I don’t care how you do it. I won’t have any more Reapers end up in his skinning labs. I won’t have him decorating the landscape with our men.’
‘Understood,’ I say. I roll my burning shoulders, armour plates
grinding, watching the dogfight continue. ‘And the second?’
‘That if you’ve got something to say to me, you say it.’
‘About?’
‘Anything. Your fireteam. Your body. Your headspace.’ Sokolav puffs out a stream of smoke. ‘Remember. The stormtech demands respect, Vakov. Fight it, and it’ll fight you. Draw close to it, and it’ll draw close to you.’
I nod. As if we hadn’t heard this half a hundred times already.
‘I’m your Commander, Vakov. Hell, I’m the one who brought you here.’
‘I chose to come.’
‘Doesn’t mean I’m not responsible for you. You know you can talk to me, like you always have. If you need a listening ear, mine’s available.’
Alcatraz’s words come back to me. To Harmony, we’re nothing. A bunch of freak experiments, fighting their war for them. I’d tell my Commander how I’m feeling, like I used to do when I first enlisted. Talk to him about Drummer’s death. The urges fighting through my system. But something holds me back. He’s my Commander, he oversaw my mutation into a Reaper, but there’re subjects I simply can’t talk to him about.
Not like I can talk to my fireteam.
How could he possibly understand? What does he know about what the stormtech wants?
‘I will,’ I say.
Sokolav smiles. He grinds the stub of his burner into the dirt and claps me on the shoulder.
A ground-to-orbit railgun turret rotates upwards. A section of the shielding dilates open as the railgun barks an earth-shattering crack that I feel rattling in my molars. The muzzle flash is so bright my visor polarises. The missile streaks through the clouds and into a Harvest fighter with an electric-blue flash, lighting up the sky. The fighter streaks to earth like an asteroid, smearing a smoke trail across the sky before smashing down in the mountains. Flames go mushrooming up at the crash-site. The shielding irises closed, shrugging off the damage of return fire, a deluge of furious green plasma. Harvest fighter-ships roar away in defeat.
