Stormblood

by Jeremy Szal

  In front of me, Ratchet yells down the commslink. He’s been hit. He’s alive, but his thrusters are dead and he’s spinning off-course. I grit my teeth as I push everything my armour’s got into full-throttle and charge after him. The sky spasms with lightning and streaks of red gunfire, shedding light on a rushing river beneath us. The ground slams up as I grab Ratchet around the waist, hook my body around his, and brake us both as hard as I can. I crank my shielding so hard I can see a blackness oozing out of my armour like ferro-fluid, cocooning me in an additional layer.

  We hit the river hard enough that I black out for a second. My armour tightens around me, sealing against the water. The surface shimmers like mercury above me. Teeth gritted, I kick off the muddy banks, the stormtech lending me the energy to burst through the surface, hauling Ratchet with me. Vision swimming, I activate the emergency override key that Reapers only give to their fireteams. Ratchet’s armour unlocks and he pukes out a chestful of water then sprawls next to me. I help seal him back up in armour, extend a hand and haul him to his feet.

  We’re just in time. Two Harvesters climb the hill, rifles already unshouldered and levelled in our faces. We run together, acting on pure, frantic terror, our bodies supercharged with fury, mud splattering under our boots. At this close proximity, I feel every round rippling against my shielding. A bullet grazes my helmet. I smash into the first Harvester with a loud crunch. His rifle goes off inches from my head, a scream of light in the dark. I break his arm over my shoulder and slam him so hard against the ground he bounces back up. I whip around to see Ratchet being shoved face-first in the muddy water, his visor smashed, suffocating. I tear the Harvester off my friend and he turns on me, slamming his helmet against mine. The world clangs and rattles as I crash backwards through the mud and the Harvester blasts me with a kind of military-grade electropole. My body shudders as I’m electrocuted. I can smell my body hair burning. The Harvest slips and staggers over in the mud and howling rain, electropole raised towards me. Dripping with mud, Ratchet leaps on the Harvester’s back, stabbing his blade hilt-deep between the Harvester’s shoulder blades. He screams, tottering sideways, Ratchet growling like a frenzied animal. I dive for the dropped handgun, mud spraying across my visor. Fingers numb, I fumble it upwards and blast a planet-sized hole in the Harvester’s throat. He splatters and dies in the mud with a wet gurgle. Ratchet swears, thrusting his combat knife in and out of the Harvest’s back.

  ‘Ratchet,’ I pant.

  ‘What!’ he growls, ripping the blade out and planting it down again.

  ‘I think we got him.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’

  We take the time to retrieve our weapons and run for the rest of Ghost, the siege already well in progress. A tangle of platforms and runways lead to a scattering of soaring highrises that feed into the mainframe of the central building complex.

  There’re no formations, no attack plans, no strategy in place. It’s little knots of chaos, exploding over into one big tangle of carnage. Space Battalion Reapers are smashing apart a cluster of Harvesters blocking the entrance to the compound. Harvesters perched up on a walkway pour volleys of gunfire down on Reapers hacking their way up a bottlenecked stairwell. A Drop Trooper’s head disappears, his legs following, plasma fire carving the rest of his fireteam up in burning chunks. Squadrons of gunships and fighter-ships are entangled in chaotic dogfights above us, railguns streaking in furious explosions and lighting up the whole battlefield. They rake the ground with searing plasma streaks a kilometre long, turning metal into glass, decimating buildings, vaporising Harvesters and Reapers alike. I dive for cover. A smelter-grenade explodes in a furious ball of fire, spraying out what looks like luminescent orange goo. Whoever touches it screams as it eats through armour, muscle, tendons.

  I charge, the fighting drawing me in like a gravity well. Somehow, I know how to find the thick of the battle. My HUD reconfigures to the scattershot clutched in my hands. I pull the trigger, tearing mouthfuls of concrete from the walls, blasting Harvesters on the other side. Dust swirls. Rain punches down. I take out a Harvester charging for Ratchet, swerve around to hack at another and sending him smashing sideways. A Berserker tries to send a jacketed slug through my chest, but I’m ducking and weaving, a stray streak of blue blaster-fire searing by my shoulder. I slam my elbow into his jaw, teeth rattling loose, before nailing three slugs into his chest, blood spraying on someone’s visor. I’m spinning around. Eyes darting. Hands clenching. Ready for the next target.

  The stormtech growls with warning. I jerk sideways, a railgun blast arcing past my neck and erupting a junction box, blue sparks showering out. A Harvester chops at me with his combat knife and clangs against a pillar, wood splinters spraying in my face. Ratchet hacks at him with his blade, gets him down but turns to be overpowered by two more. I rush to help him but a shuddering blast in my back sends me crashing down, my armour clanging against the concrete. A forest of legs around me, helmets knocking, arms reaching for me, trying to claw me up. Hostile faces swarming above me, the glint of knives, mud showering. A boot slams into my face. There, another Reaper about four metres away, in the same position next to me. He turns to notice me just as the blade comes stabbing down, punching through his visor and pinning him there. He goes limp. More bodies slam down between us and he disappears. Hands lock around my legs, more boots against my helmet, scattering stars across my vision. Ratchet is gone, swallowed up by battle. Bodies piled up around me, grunting, twitching, the world a deafening smear of anger.

  Someone pours engine solvent onto my helmet. It condenses on my faceplate, leaving oily streaks on my chest. Armoured figures slam down on top of me, crushed against me in battle.

  I’m in a body pile. We’ve seen this before, so many times. If the weight of armoured men doesn’t crush me, I’ll burn alive when Harvesters torch the pile. I struggle, thrashing against others. Legs kicking out, cracking against my visor, stomping my hand into the mud, trying to keep me down. Sweat trickling into my eyes, fogging my vision.

  I’m dead.

  I’m dead.

  No.

  I pour all my fury into the stormtech, demanding everything it’s got. It goes ripping down unearthed parts of my body and slithering deeper and deeper inside. I convulse, a sudden electricity jumpstarting my body, and I’m tearing upwards, out of the body pile like I’m swimming through it. Fighting my way through it. Fists shattering into helmets, smashing across jaws, clawing at faces. Metal crunches and dents as I reach the edge and grapple with a Harvester, bloody teeth gnashing. I slam my helmet into his throat, hear him wheeze as I throw him sprawling backwards and smashing apart a barricade, splinters showering. I sense a knife being plunged down and grab the Berserker’s arm mid-strike. I rip the blade out of his hand and stab him through the chest and out the other side. I kick him backwards, his legs thrashing as he goes spinning over the edge. I chop at a hand trying to claw at me, the arm going limp and it’s owner roaring, and I lunge forward and open up his side with a hard slash. I reel out of the way of a blade thrust and kick the assailant staggering sideways and slipping in the mud. I rip out my sidearm as he rears back up to stab me again, blasting him before wheeling around to shoot another Harvester flanking me, the two of them twisting as they go down. Splattered with mud, I burst out of the fray, handgun raised, teeth bared, heart pumping.

  I see what’s happening.

  We’ve made a massive push for the central building, at the cost of many men. Reapers and Harvesters alike are being cut down around me. Screaming and splashing into the mud. The air’s heaving with crisscrossing gunfire. Marble pillars vaporized to ash, metal exploding in glowing-hot chunks. Corridors choked with the crush of desperate men. Entire fireteams of Reapers so desperate to tear down their enemies they run straight into a line of fire, heedless as they’re punched full of smoking holes. An injured Reaper is still fighting, refusing to retreat, even as he’s swarmed by a squad of Berserkers, cutting
him in half in front of his fireteam. Men peel away from cover, preferring to dive into the fray instead of quietly flanking their enemy. A Reaper sprays an autocannon in wild shuddering bursts, bringing an entire concrete walkway smashing down on a dozen Harvesters.

  I watch an entire battlefield go insane.

  Harmony did all this.

  They knew what we’d become.

  They lied and deceived and tortured us.

  All to make the perfect soldiers.

  I look down at the blood coating my hands, a slow horror building in my throat.

  I’m exactly what Harmony wanted me to be.

  A monster.

  We win the battle, but there’s no joy. No celebration. We’re broken ghosts, staring at the mangled corpses sprawled at our feet. Ratchet’s sitting by himself, eyes bloodshot, shoulders slumped. I want to go over and comfort him but I’m afraid of what he might do. What I might do.

  I’ve heard the Canine King’s been killed. I don’t know who did it or how they got him. The mad warlord is just another corpse on the pile. He’s gone, and we’re left to survive this hell.

  We’re all running on borrowed time. Our bodies just refuse to accept it.

  Reapers prowl the battlefield in a daze. Saws glinting as some try to remove their teammates from the smoking shells of their armour. Others just staring off into the distance, like there’s an answer out there somewhere.

  There’s a commotion beyond the edge of the concrete runway. I frown and scrape off the ledge I’m sitting on, crunch across the spent ammo and broken ordnance. A massive Reaper in armour is stumbling around a muddy clearing piled with the dead. Shovel-like hands twitching by his sides. He’s got post-war cravings. He – or his stormtech – doesn’t want to let the adrenaline high go, desperate to find a way to reclaim it. It’s a feeling I know very well.

  Out of nowhere, the Reaper turns and smashes a fellow Reaper across the head. His neck bends at an unnatural angle as he crashes down, dead before he splashes across the mud. My mouth goes dry as he kills another. And another. A Drop Trooper puts up a good fight, but the Reaper knocks him to the mud and kicks him in the side of the head until he stops moving.

  He’s massacring his own side.

  As one, Ghost and a dozen other Reapers run down the muddy slope towards him. When we get closer, my heart drops and lands soggily at the bottom of my guts.

  It’s Cable.

  Ratchet tries to calm him. But the man who carried that refugee girl for twenty kilometres slams his fist into Ratchet’s chest, throwing him back into the mud. Ratchet’s head cracks against a stone. Gasps and yells ripple along the crowd. Cable reaches down and grabs Ratchet by the neck and lifts him back up. Ratchet’s legs thrashing as Cable tries to choke the life out of him.

  He freezes.

  Because Alcatraz has a pistol pressed up against his forehead.

  The sticky circuitry inside Cable reconfigures. Reassesses the threat to his life against the lure of the high. I see his eyes uncloud. He drops Ratchet to the ground.

  ‘You’re my brother,’ Alcatraz shouts into the pouring rain. More Reapers are gathering. Lightning glints off their armour and faceplates. ‘But I will not let you do this. I won’t let you kill us. I won’t let you betray yourself.’

  I swallow. We swore we’d protect each other from whatever the planet threw at us.

  I never thought that could include each other.

  ‘Don’t make me do it, Cable,’ Alcatraz begs. His trigger-hand shakes. ‘Please. Don’t do it.’

  Horror curdles over Cable’s face as the realisation hammers home. He sees the broken bodies of the men he called brothers. Only hours ago, he fought with them. Now he looks down at the dripping blood coating his hands, feels the stormtech swirling in his system, hungry for more. The same stormtech swirling inside me, inside all of us.

  He reaches out to Ratchet. Ratchet scuttles backwards, his chest heaving, his throat red and eyes bloodshot. Cable freezes. His hand drops. Ratchet watches it drop and looks up at his friend with fear and trepidation. Cable blinks long and hard, delaying reality for one more second. Stares at the gun against his head.

  All he wanted to do was find a home and a family after his had been destroyed. A place he could feel at peace in his heart. Feel safe.

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ Cable whispers.

  ‘I know,’ Alcatraz says.

  ‘I never wanted to. I never … I couldn’t … I don’t—’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Tell them for me. Tell them I fought to the end.’

  ‘I will,’ Alcatraz says. A tear trickles down his cheek. ‘You’re my brother, always. To dirt and dust.’

  ‘To dust and dirt,’ Cable repeats. He steps back. Watching with big, gentle eyes, the gathered Reapers around him. Knowing they can’t unsee what he’s done. That he can’t undo what’s been done. Instead he crosses his arms in the Reaper salute and takes a long look at the fireteam he fought and bled and laughed with. He turns and walks away.

  I try to follow him, but Alcatraz and Myra grab me. ‘Let me go!’ I roar.

  ‘It’s what he wants,’ Alcatraz whispers.

  ‘It’s not right,’ I say. Alcatraz yanks me back. ‘It’s not right.’

  ‘His last choice, Vakov. Let him have it.’

  Tears fog my eyes as Cable sinks to his knees in the middle of the field, watched by thousands of Reapers. Tears trickle down his cheeks, drip down his chin. He tilts his face up to the howling dark, into the pouring rain of his homeplanet. As if searching for an exit, an escape in the cloudy sky somewhere.

  When he doesn’t find one, my friend sticks his service pistol under his chin and pulls the trigger.

  We bury Cable by the cliffs facing the mountain valley, sloping down to curving hills and sweeping grasslands. We bury him in his armour, next to the Reapers he killed. We agree not to remember him in his final moments, but to honour his courage and sacrifice. He was a Reaper until the very end.

  We’ve all seen the alien monstrosity fused for ever into our bodies for what it really is. The stormtech gives us wings, but takes the sky away. It’ll help us survive this war, but at what cost? Will I even recognise myself at the end? The things we’ve done, the things we’re going to have to do.

  Harmony got the soldiers they wanted. In exchange, we’re going to be fighting an unending war of our own. Hell of a price to pay.

  I’m sitting by the edge of the cliff with the rest of Ghost. Dawn’s beginning to claw its way across the sky. Shavings of light slip over the windswept mountains and rocky hills.

  ‘I wish he could have seen this,’ Myra says.

  Tears bead in Ratchet’s eyes. ‘If I hadn’t backed away, if I told him it was okay, maybe he’d—’

  ‘No. No,’ I tell him. ‘This isn’t on you. It’s on them. It’s on this stuff inside us.’

  ‘We’ve got a choice, don’t we? All of us.’ Ratchet wipes his nose. ‘What if it’s me next? Or you?’

  How the hell do you answer something like that?

  ‘Cable told me about a word they used on this planet.’ Alcatraz talks without looking up. ‘It describes someone willing to venture out into the worst storms to help others. No matter how hard or brutal or bitter the weather, they had the bravery and guts to do what needed to be done for the people they cared about.’ He rakes in a long breath. ‘I don’t know the original word. Only the translation. Stormblood.’

  He spreads his arms to the stormy sky above, distant lightning forking down as he thumps his chest. ‘That’s what we are, every single one of us Reapers. We’re not fireteam Ghost. We’re not Tusk Battalion. We’re stormblood. And as part of our new pact, I want you guys to promise me something. If it happens to us, we have the guts to end it. Before we become monsters.’

  I close my eyes. The stormtech slithering through me like tox
ic water, turning everything damp. ‘Deal,’ I say.

  ‘Deal,’ Myra mutters.

  ‘Deal,’ Ratchet whispers.

  ‘And on the flip side, if one of us gets killed, we hunt down whoever did it,’ Alcatraz says. ‘Even if we have to go to the ends of the universe. We do what needs to be done.’

  ‘Deal,’ I say.

  ‘Deal,’ Myra mutters.

  ‘Deal,’ Ratchet whispers.

  A rippling echoes soundlessly through the dawning skies, shuddering through my bones. A Harvest dreadnought slams into existence above us. Stark blue with a zigzagging orange streak, it’s arrow-shaped design typical of Harvest warships. It’s followed by a second dreadnought, its engines burning from warpspace travel, then a smattering of ancillary warships, frigates, and military-class corvettes.

  ‘The bastards already heard what happened to their outpost,’ Myra growls.

  The stormtech’s a biotech bomb, ticking down with every combat encounter. But it’s also saved me countless times. Saved my fireteam. Armoured me against the hell that’s hammering down on us all.

  I could ignore it and die right here.

  Or I could gamble again and lean on it until I can’t any longer.

  I gather the squirming dark monstrosity up, letting it writhe and twitch inside me, fusing its sticky blue threads tighter and deeper into my body.

  Alcatraz stands and looks back at the stirring crowd of Reapers scattered around the captured outpost. ‘Many of our friends and squadmates are dead,’ he yells. ‘This planet is dead. They killed it.’ He points towards the incoming battle fleet. Reapers pick themselves up, turn towards him in the sunlight. ‘We can lick our wounds and mourn. Or we can make their deaths mean something. No one will fight for us. The Common will never remember what we did here today, what we do tomorrow. But we will. Because we’re a family, until we’re dirt and dust. Are you with me?’

  One by one, hundreds of Reapers cross their fists across their armoured chests. A promise. A declaration of undying loyalty. Alcatraz makes an addition to his fireteam name, so it reads as Ghost Fireteam – Stormblood. One by one, hundreds of Reapers make the same change, the icons popping up in my HUD, until we’re all one unit. One family. One shared promise between us all.