by J. N. Chaney
In another quarter of the celebration, RSG and NG rivals were mingling with the crowd and looking for a fight.
“What do you see?” Elise asked.
“This festival is about to get a lot less festive. We’re almost through it.” I jumped down, leading the girl and her father toward a set of stairs that descended into a low area where large ships could be docked and repaired.
A volley of gunshots echoed behind us.
“None of this would have happened if you had just taken me to the proper authorities,” Hastings said.
I ignored him and kept moving.
NO MISSION WAS EASY, but this was fucking ridiculous. I started to wonder if Hastings was right. Maybe this was all my fault. Did collateral damage matter here? I tried not to think of men, women, and children getting blasted into the void or crushed by collapsing infrastructure.
“Callus has summoned reinforcements. From what I can see, they’re all spec ops. That’s almost a full Battalion,” X-37 said.
I repeated what X had just told me.
Crouching beside me, watching the same area I was looking at, Elise seemed younger than she was. “What does that mean?”
“It means they brought enough firepower to have a war,” I told her. “A Union destroyer can deploy a battalion of spec ops soldiers and a division of troops. There’s a good chance they expected to storm Dreadmax. Given the timeline, I imagine the rules of engagement would be very relaxed.”
“What happens to all these people? Not that I care. Even the shipbuilders are despicable,” she said.
I shifted my position so that I could see back and make sure the doctor hadn’t run off. He sat with his back against a railing near the center of the building we were on, looking as beaten as any human being I had ever seen.
“Your dad looks tired,” I said.
Elise didn’t respond.
I wanted to ask what she meant about the shipbuilders but didn’t have the energy or the need to argue. They were obviously saints compared to the RSG, but my own experience with humanity had been generally disappointing. There was good and bad in everyone. “Grady told me he put in a request for an evacuation. He seemed to think there is some sort of contingency for the civilians.”
“You believe that?” she asked.
“What the hell happened to you that you’re so untrusting of human nature?” Something was wrong with this kid.
“You really don’t want to know,” she grumbled. “I wish they’d never brought me here.”
“Tell me about that. The real story.”
Her tone betrayed her frustration. “I have my own conspiracy theories about secret labs and my father’s work. You know what he did to save me and what that could mean.” She paused. “But what makes you think I know the real story? They took me from the one place I was starting to fit in and kept me locked in a tower. The literal tower, kind of like the metaphorical version of my childhood. Safety and comfort, sure. Freedom, not so much. I’m sick of it. If we get off this place, I’m never going back to that life.”
Callus’ backup teams searched on a grid pattern, pushing a hungover group of civilians ahead of them.
“X, how bad is our timeline?” I asked, instantly regretting the words. Dreadmax would probably explode in the next ten seconds just to teach me not to jinx the mission.
“We have far exceeded the estimated time of collapse. My analysis shows that there is a shrinking area of survivability on the top deck. You might want to keep that in mind.”
“Thanks, X.”
“What’s it like having nerve-ware? That’s who you’re talking to, right? Your Reaper AI?” she asked
“Yeah, kid. It’s not as fun as it sounds.”
“I wish I was a Reaper,” she said through clenched teeth.
I used my augmented left arm to turn her head until she was forced to look into my cybernetic left eye. “No you don’t, kid. Never wish for something like that.”
She jerked away from me. “You’re such an asshole.”
I wondered if the doctor wasn’t right about turning ourselves in. If I could find somebody other than Callus, it might be the only way to survive this clusterfuck. "Stay here and keep an eye out. I'm going back down to check on the doctor."
"Good luck with that," she said, arms crossed.
"Do you know how to whistle?” I asked. “Signal me if the spec ops team gets close."
She whistled a familiar melody, then a darker, sadder tune. “One for the Union, and the other for Dreadmax baddies."
“Good thinking.”
I found the doctor munching on a protein bar. "Where did you find that?"
He slipped it back into a pocket. “I've had it for a while."
"Keeping it until you need it, that's smart. Elise might need one soon, if you have more stashed away," I said.
He looked away guiltily.
"What are you really doing here, Doc?” I asked.
He tried to back away, avoiding eye contact. “I told you everything. The Union funded my research, extremely important research that will help a lot of people someday."
I listened to what he was saying, but also watched for non-verbal cues. He wasn't exactly lying, not yet, but we had a long way to go in this conversation.
"Things got complicated,” Hastings explained. “There were accusations against some of my associates. Claims of disloyalty to the Union. They took hostages like Elise to force good behavior. It sounds bad when I talk about it like this, but the things we were working on were bigger than each of us individually.”
"Nice. I'll put your name in for father of the year."
"My research on Elise is irreplaceable!" he insisted. “You have no idea what I learned simply from working on her and adjusting the formula. It was revolutionary.”
"Interesting. I thought you gave her that medicine to save her from a childhood illness. Now it sounds like she was just a lab rat," I said.
"I don't have to take this abuse,” he scoffed.
I grabbed the front of his jumpsuit and pulled him close. "You do, Doc. But only if you want to keep breathing. I don't have anything to lose. Piss me off, things will go badly for you."
"Are you taking me to the Union or not?" he said, feigning confidence. “They can punish you even here. No one can stand against the government. Not against them. They control everything. Isn’t that why you’re here? Because they control you?”
I ignored the question. “What I do really depends on what keeps the most people alive.”
Hastings laughed skeptically. “You’re concerned about innocent lives? That's an interesting thing to hear from a Reaper."
I glared at him. "Ex-Reaper."
The doctor shook his head with a cynical expression on his face. "I doubt you can leave that behind so easily. You don’t fool me, Reaper Cain. You like killing too much. I think you’re just looking for an excuse to kill me and my daughter.”
I stared at him for a long second. “Not your daughter.”
He stopped talking after that.
23
I GATHERED up our little squad and moved out, determined to put as much distance between us and the Union commandos as possible. Avoiding the RSG, or even the NG, was hit or miss. Their presence was random and extensive. Thankfully, their preference for loud vehicles, rage music, and the random discharge of weapons made them easy to track from a distance.
Their numbers and the limited terrain was the real problem. Dreadmax looked huge from space. It was millions of tons of metal, ceramics, and other hardware, but on the surface, it quickly felt like a microcosm.
Slab and his goons were still looking for me, I was sure, but that didn't worry me as much as what Callus would do if he cornered us. Random violence from gangs didn’t compare with the lethality of spec ops teams.
I couldn't give Elise to the Union. There was no safe place for her, not on Dreadmax and nowhere in the Union if she became a fugitive. As for the doctor, who knew the right thing to do. The mission
had been to rescue him for the Union.
What they did with him after that wasn't my problem. I should throw him back to the wolves.
Briggs wouldn't have turned me lose without a plan to put me back in the box or take me out of the game entirely. I understood the danger, but I also knew there was no way I was going back.
I figured that out the moment I entered the warden’s office and saw him leaning against that desk. Hard eyes, hard face—the man was a lot like me but older, with more people willing to die for him.
I needed to pull off a double cross worthy of the Reaper Corps and the darkest of dark ops. Dreadmax would have been the perfect place for a double betrayal if not for the thousands of innocents—or nearly innocent—people who were about to die. “We need to move fast. They’re going to see us. Don't stop no matter what. But most importantly, listen to me and do what I say."
I needed bait, but to make it believable, it had to be all three of us.
"What are you doing, Reaper Cain?" X-37 asked.
I wasn't sure what to say, because X hadn't used my name like that for a long time. Maybe this was random, but maybe it meant something. Trusting a limited AI was a mistake too many Reapers made. They started feeling like part of themselves and it was easy to forget the technology had been made by the Union.
“I'm going to steal Callus’ ship,” I said.
"This is a miscalculation on your part. Abort. Recommendation: run for cover immediately,” X-37 advised. “The ship is on fast approach."
"I already made up my mind.” Up until now, Callus’ teams had to chase us through the surface maze. From the time we stepped into the festival grounds, we’d become vulnerable to a ship assault again. That was what I was counting on now.
"There is a sixty-four percent chance they will shoot first and ask questions later," X-37 said.
I didn't respond.
"What’s your Reaper AI telling you?" Doctor Hastings demanded.
The recon ship materialized out of thin air. I saw a distortion in the air moments before it dropped down, weapons aimed and turbines flaring to slow its abrupt descent. The deployment ramp dropped before it had fully landed. Heavily armed and armored spec ops soldiers swarmed out and took positions to secure the landing zone. These weren’t in recon gear—they were ready for a full-scale battle.
Callus came out in the second squad, seconds after the first. He was bigger than the others, moving with a relaxed grace that betrayed nothing.
"Stop, Cain. Running will just get someone hurt,” he shouted.
“I told you to run faster!" I yelled at Hastings and his daughter without warning and striked the doctor hard enough to knock him off his feet. “Just take them. I'm not going back to get executed. You’ll never take me alive!”
"You don't have a choice, Reaper!” Callus swaggered forward, ready to fight. "I didn't come this far to miss a chance at the title. You had a reputation when you were in your prime. I want to see if the stories I heard were true."
His team surrounded Doctor Hastings and Elise.
I turned and sprinted away from the landing zone, ducking into a hiding place.
"You're not as clever as you think you are," Callus yelled after me.
I stopped as soon as I was out of sight and listened to the commandos arguing with Elise. Her father tried to calm her, assuring her this was the best possible scenario.
“He should have delivered us to these fine soldiers a long time ago,” Hastings ranted.
“I hate you!” his daughter shouted back.
Callus’s second in command ignored the father-daughter squabble and shouted orders. “Red squad and Silver squad, pursue and apprehend the remaining target.”
"Belay that. It's a trick. Halek Cain was a Reaper. He wouldn't give up his principal so easy. Not while they are still alive," Callus said. “He knows the end of Dreadmax is long overdue. Stay sharp. Check the doctor and the girl for improvised explosive devices.”
A few moments passed.
"They're clear,” a soldier said. “Should we take them onto the ship?”
Callus hesitated. “Check them again then lock them in the brig.”
24
CROUCHING LOW, I darted across the trench, ducking around the corner as soon as possible. Callus and his team secured the large, flat area around their ship, aiming guns at the tangled maze I’d returned to. For a moment, I thought I had done my job too well and they had missed seeing me. A heartbeat later, I heard one of them shout out to my position.
I needed them to come after me while I was still close enough to the ship that I could double back and get inside. Best-case scenario, Callus came with his men, I ditched the lot of them, and then only had to overpower a pilot and copilot to get control of the recon ship.
I'd used the technique before. It never felt like it would work, but I had good luck with it. Moving through the maze, I quickly found my way back to the small landing area and saw Elise and the doctor zip-tied just inside the door. Apparently, they hadn't made it to the brig yet. The security team was fixing electronic restraints to keep them from taking over the ship before taking them inside.
That wouldn't work on me, because my Reaper AI was part of my nerve-ware. It went where I went. When I had been on death row, they had counter measures in place. That was then, this was now. They turned me loose on a mission and they were going to get more than they bargained for.
Neither squad had followed me into the maze, which was a huge fucking problem. No plan survived first contact with the enemy, but this little stunt hadn’t even gotten started before it failed.
“I told you to abort,” X-37 said.
“Fine. Log it. We’ll talk about it later,” I muttered, not really in the mood right now.
The squad stayed near the deployment ramp. Callus moved forward, straight for my position. He laughed and shook his head.
"Nice trick, Cain. But I read about all your tricks when I was preparing for this mission," he said, then addressed his team. "Go back inside and ready for ship security. He's going to try to steal it."
"I really don't like you," I said.
"That's a shame. You should like me, because I'm going to do you a favor. I read your psych profiles and how much the torture and killing bothered you,” he said. “You won't have time to think about it in hell."
"That's not really helpful.” This guy was an asshole. “Was that a joke? Don't quit your day job."
He came at me right when I thought he was going to make another insult, thrusting his rifle forward with a bayonet that extended.
I slipped to the right, aiming my pistol before I realized that was what he wanted. What he’d apparently forgotten was that I wasn't some recruit fresh out of basic training. Rather than leaving my arm extended to find the shot, I pulled back as close to my body as I could without interfering with the slide and fired until he staggered backward from the impacts on his armor.
My victory was short-lived. He regained his balance and attacked before I could reload or transition to my HDK, which was what I should've used in the first place if I'd been ready.
It had been so long since I’d faced an adversary of this caliber that I’d made a mistake. This was how a Reaper died, taken down by his replacement.
I pushed my increasingly dark thoughts aside in favor of instinct and rage. It was time to fight angry, something I normally avoided.
He lunged forward to tackle me. I let him drive me back and spread my feet wide to establish my base as I pushed down on his neck and one of his shoulders. Once I’d stuffed the takedown attempt, I grabbed his right arm and leveled it down, using the strength of my augmented left arm to apply pressure to the elbow joint.
He was smart enough not to resist, choosing instead to fall and twist until he was facing me. I still had hold of his arm, but it was the wrong angle to break the joint.
He kicked me in the stomach, driving me into the air. It took me longer than it should have to fall. Weak gravity added a dangerous dynam
ic to the contest.
I looked to my right and saw we were close to the gravity generator. The entire area was marred by rust and disrepair.
He flew at me with a punch that glanced off my light recon helmet. If I've been a bit slower, he probably would've cracked it down the middle. Almost simultaneously with this attack, I launched counter attacks, striking him several times on his torso, driving one particularly savage half-fist into his armpit where his armor was weakest.
He flinched and staggered back. I jumped forward with an action-video-quality front kick that blasted him into the air.
“Cain!” he shouted as he wind-milled his arms and legs.
Three or four seconds passed before I was satisfied he wasn't coming back down. I presented my middle finger to answer his curses and turned away, wishing I had a Starbrand cigar to celebrate.
“You should finish him,” X-37 said.
“Agreed.” What did my AI think I was doing out here, playing rock, paper, scissors?
I jogged to my HDK and picked it up, then fired several rounds at him just to be sure. He spiraled away from Dreadmax, not as fast as he would have if we were truly in the void but with a certainty that meant his death.
It wasn't long before I lost view of his silhouette against the flickering environment shield.
I scooped up my pistol, slamming it into the holster as I rushed for the deployment ramp of the recon ship. It was nearly closed when I dove through and rolled to my feet. A squad of spec ops soldiers and ship security Soldiers rushed me. I fired and reloaded but was quickly subdued.
"Nice try, Reaper,” the security chief spat.
“Piss off!” The lights went out as one of his men slammed a stun baton on the back of my helmet.
WHEN I WOKE UP, Doctor Hastings was tending to my injuries. He looked somber and grim, tired and hungry, like a man who regretted his choices.
"Their medic checked you out first, but I convinced them I was a doctor and needed to have a look," he said.
