by J. N. Chaney
I twisted to minimize the impact and retreated, tripping over myself and firing my HDK with one hand. It was such an amateur-ish move, I was actually embarrassed.
He came at me like a pro, moving smoothly in a shooting stance with both hands on his weapon now, firing short bursts that tore through my light recon armor.
“Fuck, he’s fast!”
X-37 didn't have a chance to respond.
"Just don't quit, Cain. That'll ruin my image of the last Reaper."
"Who the hell are you?"
"I'm the guy they made to replace you and the rest of the Reapers.”
X-37 pushed information and advice at me in tactical mode, but even that was too slow. I reloaded and pulled the trigger at the same time the stranger slammed in a new magazine and fired. I struggled to my feet and retreated around the corner.
With my attacker barely a stride behind me, this was little more than a stall tactic.
"You're moving toward a ledge!" X-37 shouted, ringing my ears with several loud tones. When nerve-ware hit the max volume button, it rattled my teeth.
The spec ops man laughed as he transitioned from his rifle to a handgun, much faster than a reload. I wasn't sure how many times his bullets hit me, but I knew I’d struck his body armor multiple times and his helmet at least once despite how fast he moved.
I retreated until my back was to a railing. Behind me, the deck dropped away to a landing pad ringed with construction equipment and buildings of all shapes and sizes.
“Stop!” I shouted, hoping to stall with negotiation.
“Hah! I’ll bite. What’s your game, Reaper?”
“Who the fuck are you, really?”
“Captain Marley Callus. Now die!” He front-kicked me off the ledge.
“Five meters,” X-37 said fatalistically.
My back slammed onto the deck.
Lights out. Game over.
THE SOUND of the super soldier’s boots striking the deck woke me up.
It was about the only piece of luck I had. My HDK rifle was gone. The auto blade in my Reaper arm refused to extend. I desperately felt around for an alternative weapon and came up empty. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
I rolled onto my side just in time to vomit up the grey ooze I had consumed from the mystery fridge. The spec ops soldier ran at me, kicking me square in the ass and launching me forward, where I slid on my face before I could get my hands in front of me.
“That seemed unnecessarily personal,” X-37 said.
“I hate it when you get into observer mode.”
The soldier came at me again, inspiring me to scramble to my feet and run several steps before my legs gave out. Dreadmax was spinning more than usual. I started out falling on my face but somehow landed on my side like a power drunk.
My attacker stopped to laugh, then yelled something at his team, who were watching from the landing. “I told you Reapers were nothing.”
I grabbed the deck with both hands and pulled, scrabbling my feet behind me like a fish out of water. From a certain height, the landing area looked smooth, like a picture of military order. From my vantage point, it was a tangle of industrial rivets, tracks for railcars, and openings.
I came to a metal grate.
“That’s for drainage in the event of a fire with the need to deploy water and other anti-combustion chemicals,” X-37 said. “It dumps into the sewers.”
“Don’t care.”
The soldier’s feet pounded across the deck. “Oh no you don’t!”
I shoved myself through the gap and fell blind.
13
EMERGING from the pipe into stagnant water wasn’t my finest moment, especially since I had gone face first with my own vomit liberally smeared down the front of my gear.
“Don’t open your mouth,” X-37 said.
For an artificial intelligence designed to make me the most efficient killer and infiltration specialist in the galaxy, X-37 had some weird hang-ups. Why should it care about whether or not I gagged on the sludge splashing all around me? I was more worried about water snakes or whatever might live in this slop.
I saw the room in layers of shadow that even my cybernetic optics couldn’t sort out. When I stood up, I was almost waist deep. A filmy layer that looked like the skin of some rotting alien beast covered everything. The smell drove my stomach into new convulsions.
Turning right, turning left, I looked for the cause of a splashing sound. “What was that?”
“I have no data on what might or might not be in the sewer.” X-37 seemed distracted.
“All right. This isn’t so bad. Probably just rats. More scared of me than I am of them.” I did a circuit of the room to be sure there were no real dangers and put my imagination in timeout. None of the spec ops soldiers, including the main asshole who thought he was such a bad ass, had elected to follow me this way.
I bent at the waist and put my hands on my knees, not sure if I needed to puke or scream. My bones ached, probably from flexing against the carbon fiber sheath that had kept me from being crippled ten times during this shit mission.
“X, I have water leaking into everything.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Well, no shit, X. But that doesn’t mean I want sludge down my shorts.”
“At least you didn’t open your mouth until you emerged.”
“Good point. What is that smell?”
“Take a guess, or better yet, don’t worry about it. My suggestion is to get moving as soon as possible.”
Once I’d climbed out of the sewer, I tried to remove all my weapons and clean them. The compact first aid pack and gun-cleaning kit were waterproof. The problem was I didn’t have any weapons.
The arm blade eventually responded to some tender loving care with the gun-cleaning kit, thunking out a little slower than usual but locking into place without a major problem. I left it extended until I was certain the housing was dry, then retracted it as I marched through an unlit section of Dreadmax.
No one had been through this area in a long time. Even before the station became a maximum-security prison, it probably was mostly maintained by bots and drones.
“Take the next ladder. There is a transportation tube above this section.”
“I’m about done with trains and train tracks,” I muttered as I poked my head over the top of the ladder and looked around.
“It’s the best, and cheapest, way to move anything on a station this large.”
“Thanks for that extremely valuable information, X.” I climbed out of the pipe, moved away from the opening, and sat against the wall. “How long have we been separated from the principal?”
“Four point five hours. Six hours remain before the mission clock expires.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Don’t argue with me, Reaper Cain. You’ve been hit on the head several times. Trust me, I’m here to help.”
“Then help.” It felt like a dick thing to say, but I wasn’t in the mood to say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ or explain exactly what I expected the limited AI to do.
The tracks were narrower than what I’d encountered before getting separated from my team—probably one of the personnel lines that had moved crewman, pilots, and soldiers to every part of the battle station before everything went sideways.
There were actual lights in places—dim but functioning. I found a set of locked escalators and ran up to the next sub-level. “How far down am I, X?”
“Technically, you have never left the first sub-level. Each layer of the ring is fifty meters thick and contains its own infrastructure. The closer you get to the spire in the center, the less like a space station and the more like a naval vessel it becomes.”
I jogged along the track, unburned by weapons, ammunition, or supplies. “What is the structural integrity of my armor after jerk-face kicked my ass?”
“You’d be better off ditching it.”
“Thanks, X.”
I stripped down to my soaked jump
suit and under-layers before picking up the pace. What I found at the top of the stairs was a way point, a terminal where workers could disembark and head into various work areas.
“What are you looking for?” X-37 asked.
“Bathroom. With running water if possible.”
What I found was even better, a temporary dormitory with functional showers and an actual kitchen—not some laboratory for making gray slime.
“That other place was definitely not a kitchen,” I said.
“Which causes one to wonder exactly what you ate two helpings of.”
“Let’s never talk about that again.”
I showered, shaved, and, well, did other things that needed doing. In one locker, I found a jumpsuit, work belt, and boots that fit. On the way out, I smashed open a vending machine and ate the oldest powdered sugar donut in the galaxy—which tasted glorious.
“There is good news,” X-37 said. “While you were screwing off, I continued to analyze station schematics and probable travel routes of your lost group.”
“That is good news, X. Thanks. I’ll put a little something extra in your next paycheck.” Running in dry boots felt like a luxury. “Tell me the rest.”
“Continue this direction, avoid confrontations with gangs, cannibals, or spec ops soldiers who want to kill you, and you should arrive at your destination in less than one hour,” X-37 said.
It took me forty-two minutes. I watched the platform that Grady had barricaded for another five minutes before making my approach. My old friend had seen action since we parted. He had bandages on his face, left arm, and a splint on his leg—the same leg that had been shot earlier. It was a new injury and caused him to limp badly.
“Grady, I’m coming to you,” I announced before I approached. The radio sounded more garbled each time I used it.
“I see you. We’ve been attacked three times since you went off gallivanting,” he said. “You’re going to have a hell of a time reaching us without crossing a kill zone.”
I studied Grady from a distance. He was as tough as any spec ops soldier, but he had more wounds than I did. X-37 kept tabs on my hormonal output and all my bodily functions. The Reaper AI could, and often did, tweak things a bit to make sure I recovered quickly and grew as strong as possible from whatever exercise routine I had access to. That was one of the reasons I’d been able to stay strong during my confinement. Aggressive hormone regulation.
With my artificial left arm enhanced by bionic servos, the advanced optics of my left eye, and the carbon fiber sheaths protecting my bones, I had a better chance of surviving this mission than he did.
Unless he had been upgraded, which certainly would have explained his faster-than-normal healing. I thought I would know if he’d undergone anything close to the transformation I’d suffered. Seventy-eight percent of the subjects brought into the Reaper Corps went crazy from the pain of the treatments long before they were ever put into the field.
Grady was tough, but he wasn’t that tough. I had wiring that was less than five molecules wide twisted through my nerves. The doctors had promised to avoid pain centers, but they were full of shit about a lot of things. And they had lied more than they breathed.
“I didn’t think the RSG or the NG could make it this far,” I said. “Who the hell’s been attacking you? Can I get across the kill zone if I move fast?”
This was a test question. Did my friend really want me to survive this mission?
“No, they’ve got a sniper and their close quarters team has unlimited ammunition, apparently. What’s an NG? Never mind. I’m not sure what’s happening, but I think there’s a spec ops team trying to take us out.”
“You mean that wasn’t part of the plan?”
“Where have you been?” he asked after a short pause.
“Here and there. Ate something questionable. The usual stuff you’d expect on a suicide mission.” I saw Elise and the doctor. Tension I didn’t realize I was holding slipped away, relaxing my shoulders and arms. “I ran into some spec ops soldiers who tried to kill me. That makes sense, given my situation. I’m surprised they’d try to take you out and risk damaging the principal.”
“Trust me, I’ve been surprised by a lot of things since I jumped down into this mess.”
“You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes,” I said.
“Isn’t that the truth.”
“Stand by. I may have a way to reach your position,” I said.
“Negative. I can take the doctor and the girl and meet you at the landing bay,” Grady said.
“I want to get squared away before that. Ten to one odds the pick-up will be sketchy.”
What, no response, you back-stabbing asshole?
Grady’s mic clicked a few times, indicating he was starting and stopping the transmission, probably at a loss for words. “You’re not the only one getting screwed here.”
14
“THAT’S YOUR BEST IDEA?” I asked X-37.
“Yes, sir, it is,” X-37 said.
I hated heights. Thinking about the cable crossing made my hands shake. The only thing worse was complete failure and the real chance of death that would come with it. The doctor was a pompous asswipe, the type to put scientific research above humanity. His daughter was as annoying as any teenager I’d ever met. My best friend from spec ops was probably going to betray me.
My bones ached, my heart raced from whatever X-37 was doing to my hormonal profile, and the gray slime I’d eaten earlier was still talking to me. Now I was expected to run the rooftops of a decommissioned battle station with a failing gravity generator and sketchy atmosphere shield.
“I promise there won’t be any more cables or bridges. The schematics show one narrow walkway that is out of view of your destination, and thus not likely to be targeted by the enemy sniper.”
“You know they’re just trying to keep us here until their sodding super soldier catches up,” I said, climbing up the back of a building and crouching low as I moved across the first rooftop. The route X-37 had plotted for me circled the area with only a few deviations from what I might have picked myself.
The heads-up display in my left eye was necessarily small and limited. My right hand cramped each time I climbed a ladder. The cybernetic-enhanced left arm could mimic the discomfort of my natural right arm for the sake of coordination, but I asked X-37 to turn that feature off.
Having one arm without pain and one arm with pain might throw off my coordination, but I doubted it. I’d had the artificial limb long enough to know what I could and couldn’t do with it.
Phantom pain was another issue. It was worse when I thought about how I’d lost the arm, but I tried to put that image out of my mind. Unless I had a lot of time on my hands, like when I’d been confined to death row.
That woman holding my hand as she dangled from a bridge. Talk about a nightmare. It felt like a lifetime ago.
In a way, the worse this mission got, the better I felt. At least in my head.
I was on my third building before I saw the next major obstacle in the way of rescuing Hastings and his daughter.
The gangs of Dreadmax had found a way across the power plant exhaust trench. They had vehicles that must’ve allowed them to drive a considerable distance to the next actual bridge. No hand-over-hand cable shenanigans for them.
Lucky bastards.
I watched the RSG mob search and wasn’t sure if I needed to laugh or curse. They started off in organized groups but were easily distracted. Infighting, laziness, and homemade liquor further diminished their effectiveness. “I should be thankful they’re so unorganized, right?”
“The RSG search tactics are inefficient, which is good for us,” X-37 said.
“Are there any talk boxes up here?”
“None are shown on the schematics.”
It would’ve been nice to check on the security camera to see what Bug and his friends could tell me. I was dying to know if they had eyes on the spec ops team hunting me. Were they talking to
that fuckstick?
“Why do I keep finding myself in the highest places you can find?” I looked down an alleyway so dark, I couldn’t see the bottom. The walkway swayed slightly, which I blamed on poor construction in a haphazard design. Dreadmax was like any other space station this size. It had gravity generators, but also relied on rotation to provide some of the effect. When this was out of sync, there were random vibrations and other side effects that made crossing the highest parts of the top deck uncomfortable. I tried not to think of the structural degradation that mission planners gave as a reason for their accelerated time line.
“What am I missing, X? I’d really like to see the spec ops guys that are after us.”
“We should’ve spotted them by now, regardless of how professional they are. But you had the same training and better tools. It’s unlikely they have cybernetic enhancements equal to what the Reaper Corps provided you,” X-37 said. “However, it’s equally unlikely they have left the area for no reason. Would you like me to designate a name for the unit and leader?”
“Sure.”
X-37 started to give me random numbers and letters.
“How about we just call him the super soldier ass-munch and his posse?”
“That seems like a long, unnecessarily imprecise description,” X-37 said.
“Super soldier it is. He has to have some upgrades to have thrashed me like that.”
“An alternate explanation is that you are losing your edge.”
“Bite your tongue.”
“We’ve discussed your colloquial phrases and their complete irrelevance to a nerve-ware AI.”
“Don’t ever change, X,” I said, rushing across the unstable foot bridge.
“I won’t.”
I moved as close as I could to Grady and the principals. He didn’t respond to comms. All I heard on my end was static. Whenever I saw Elise, I thought she was looking for a chance to run but hesitated to leave her father. There was a weird vibe between them, like maybe she’d as soon stab him as save him—but she protected him and pushed him to keep going.
“Are we being jammed?”
