The Eve of War

by Christopher Hopper

  Magnus’s power level flashed. One of his cells had been crushed in the impact, leaving him with just over half power. Several other icons blinked at him, indicating damage assessments. The only two indicators that really mattered at present were his oxygen level and his weapons system: both nominal.

  “Get up, Adonis,” he said to himself. He climbed to his feet and saw a flame-covered Jujari thundering toward him. The fated creature swung its keeltari at his head, but Magnus ducked. He raised his MAR30 and drilled the beast with a blaster bolt to its skull. The Jujari toppled, and Magnus stepped over it. A second canine warrior lunged at his flank, but his armor’s proximity sensors registered the motion in time for him to dodge the attack. The Jujari swung a clawed paw with such effort that it spun itself over in midair. The warrior’s back elbow hammered Magnus between the shoulder blades, but his armor absorbed the impact. Magnus pivoted and landed a blaster bolt in the beast’s burning midsection and another to the side of its head. It was dead before it hit the floor.

  A man in Republican attire, or what was left of it, threw himself at Magnus. Bloodied arms slid down his armor, which was bathed in flickering orange light. Magnus begrudgingly pushed the man away, torn about whether to end his misery, and moved toward the dais.

  Burning bodies littered the platform; several still moved. Magnus’s AI raced to identify non-Jujari life-forms, but the brutality of the ordnance was so indiscriminate that it made the computer’s job next to impossible. Against the back wall lay the mwadim with most of his backside blown out. Magnus’s helmet’s AI suddenly tagged a body between the mwadim and the wall with “high probability.”

  “Awen!” he yelled through his speakers and bounded over the Jujari carcass. Her robes were burned, and she was bloody, but she was alive. A quick bio scan showed high concentrations of adrenaline, spiked blood pressure, the onset of shock, and maybe a few broken ribs, but—amazingly—nothing fatal.

  She clutched her hands to her chest, mumbling something over and over. “I won’t let them have it. Won’t let them.”

  “Awen, can you hear me?” Magnus said.

  “I won’t.”

  “Awen! It’s me, Adonis—it’s the lieutenant. We’re getting you out of here. Hold on.”

  She screamed as Magnus picked her up in one arm. His servo-assisted armor made the task effortless even though Awen hardly weighed a thing. However, Magnus was more concerned about not causing her any more pain than with the amount of energy he had to expend to carry her.

  “Asset secure,” he said over TACNET to no one in particular. He wasn’t even sure who had comms left. When no response came, he decided to ping the shuttle. “Falcon One, do you copy?” He waited a beat then repeated himself.

  Nothing. More yellow icons switched to red as the seconds ticked by.

  Finally, a static-riddled voice came over TACNET. “This… right. All hands… exfil… Zulu Niner.” It was Wainright. Magnus’s HUD couldn’t pinpoint his signal, but the captain was alive, and now he knew the revised exfil location.

  Most of the humanoids had succumbed to the smoke and flames in the ballroom. Meanwhile, a small battle raged between the Jujari and the Marines, most of it in CQB—close-quarters combat. Even though the canines were on fire, they did not go down easily. It seemed like the only sure way to take them down without a blaster was a blade to the carotid or femoral artery or a skull penetration—all while avoiding their razor-sharp teeth and claws.

  Magnus took out three of the stronger enemies from his place on the dais while his AI simultaneously laid a course to the exfil coordinates. His HUD projected an illuminated path that ran through the center of the ballroom and back to the main entrance. Magnus jumped off the dais and moved to the right, retracing his earlier steps along the room’s perimeter but careful to shield Awen from any burning fabric. As he shifted right, new cackles filled the air.

  Magnus saw movement at the entrance, and dozens of Jujari reinforcements stepped into the room. “Perfect.” Over general TACNET, he asked, “Anyone got eyes on a secondary egress?” But the channel was still flooded with screams and shouts as men fought for their lives.

  Blaster fire streaked at him from across the room, and Magnus ducked behind a pedestal. One shot glanced off his shoulder, deflected by his armor’s resonant defense generator. He cursed, knowing Awen’s head was there, but when he looked down, he saw that she’d repositioned to his center mass. He had to get her out of there.

  The thought had no sooner passed through his brain when a third explosion detonated. The force threw him and Awen backward, only this time, there was no sandstone pylon. Magnus felt the lurch of free fall. He still clung to Awen as she screamed and grabbed at the air. The pair rolled away from the building and raced to the city street, but not before Magnus saw a fire spout erupt from the window, the space above their heads filling with debris.

  Stabilization measures deployed, his HUD flashed.

  A series of powerful rocket bursts jerked Magnus upright and worked against their descent. But the effort was short-lived as the low power warning sent the jump system into fail-safe. Gravity stole them back, and Magnus’s stomach lurched. He detached his sling’s quick-release clip and threw his MAR30 over his head. The mag lock pulled it between his shoulder blades. Then he selected his grappling hook and aimed his forearm at the building opposite him.

  Shoulder and elbow servos whined as the tip launched from his wrist in a concussive burst. Microfiber filament trailed the projectile as it buried itself in concrete and then snapped taut. Razor-sharp hooks deployed in a puff of dust, and Magnus saw the instantaneous secure indicator in his HUD.

  “Hold on,” he yelled to Awen over externals. He wasn’t even sure if she was conscious. He hoped she wasn’t, for her sake.

  His armor’s servos had strained to absorb their fall’s kinetic energy when the filament snapped taut, more precious power draining from his remaining fuel cell. Their fall suddenly redirected to a lateral pendulum swing, and Magnus extended his legs toward the oncoming building. Both feet crashed into a concrete pylon, the fabric on either side blowing away from the concussion.

  Magnus initiated the rappel command and selected, instantly giving gravity most of what it wanted. He backpedaled the building face like a spaceball player in spring training, the soles of his boots thumping rhythmically down the side. He cast a quick look over his shoulder to see a street filled with curious Jujari. Fortunately, they seemed distracted by the ball of fire atop the building and not the figures coming down in the debris—at least, not the living ones.

  Magnus armed the variable-output detonator on his hip, selected smoke and ring pattern, and let the grenade self-deploy from his torso. The VOD fell the remaining twenty meters to street level and deployed a ring of thick white smoke wide enough for them to land in. His filament reserves had more than enough to get them there, but he wouldn’t need it. At ten meters, Magnus severed the line and sailed the rest of the way down. He used both arms to cradle Awen and slammed into the ground.

  They’d made it but with little time to celebrate. The words proximity warning flashed brightly in his HUD. Magnus did a quick visual scan, but no collision was imminent. Then he looked up. A burning chunk of debris the size of a speeder had broken free of the mwadim’s building and was hurtling toward them. Magnus’s brain was faster than his helmet’s AI as he concluded, You’re not getting clear.

  Chapter 7

  Awen knew they were falling. Her stomach lurched just like it did during shuttle entry. She felt the urge to reach for the small bag in the seat back as the image of a bowl of sorlakk spun in front of her. All she really wanted, however, was a soft bed. Vomit and sleep, she told herself, feeling like a small child with the flu. Just throw up, and then you can go to bed.

  A loud pop startled her. Then the feeling of a thousand knives stabbing her rib cage overcame nausea and fatigue. She tried screaming, but a jarring change of direction took her breath away. Her head slammed against… a trooper’s
chest plate. And then she was swinging sideways toward a building. No, they were swinging sideways, she and the cranky lieutenant in the black-and-gray armor.

  The trooper’s feet extended and crashed into a vertical support. Awen noticed the shrouds ripple away from her as if someone had dropped a large stone in a pond. Then she felt herself descending again, a fast-paced thunk-thunk-thunk churning beneath her. More stabbing in her sides. And then free fall.

  When is this going to stop?

  Awen was wide awake when the trooper hit the ground. Somehow, by a miracle, they’d made it out of the building. The explosion. The mwadim. She couldn’t think straight, but she knew they were safely on street level. The trooper had saved her.

  As that thought registered, she felt something deep—deeper than nausea, deeper than the stabbing pain in her ribs, deeper than the headache that threatened to crush her temples together. In the fabric of all things, a disturbance cried to her. It was the tremor of something important. No, something dangerous. And it was racing toward her like a comet.

  Awen saw it then, a wave pushed by another wave pushed by another wave. From behind the waves, a force full of dark energy hurtled at her and at the trooper. It threatened to silence them. To silence her. It had the power to shatter her life into a thousand shards, to end all the breaths that were so painful to take.

  So she stopped it from coming.

  • • •

  Magnus covered Awen with his body and braced for impact. He was reasonably sure that this was the end, and he was only sorry that he couldn’t preserve her life any longer. In fact, the thought of protecting her filled him with a strange emotion, a sense of purpose beyond his duty —perhaps even a sense of a calling.

  And then he grieved. For the briefest of moments, he mourned not being able to see this last mission through to a successful end. He thanked his warrior ethos, which had seen him through so much. It could not see him past this. It wasn’t strong enough. He wasn’t strong enough.

  But more, he grieved for Awen. He believed she had more to see. More to do. Despite her insufferable love for this degenerate species, she was worth something. Worth more than him. It was just ironic that she’d die while trying to save a species that wouldn’t think twice about killing her.

  Then Magnus got tired of grieving. It was exhausting. And he was pissed off. Couldn’t death get on with the business of killing him already? Apparently, “hurry up and wait” was not only the unspoken motto of the Galactic Marines but of death too. It was infuriating.

  He opened his eyes. Proximity alert still flashed in his HUD. The whole “life flashing before your eyes” thing felt overrated.

  Proximity alert.

  He looked at the clock and watched two interminably long seconds tick by. He chanced a glance at the falling debris.

  Like a shooting star suspended in flight, the concrete slab hovered a meter above them.

  Proximity alert.

  “What in all the cosmos?” he said aloud. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or shout. He’d gone mad. Or maybe he was dead, and this was the afterlife: one continuous image of your last moment. But he felt himself breathing. He felt Awen in his arms.

  Awen. The Order of the Luma. But they couldn’t achieve this sort of manipulation… could they?

  Suddenly, the mammoth block started shaking. Time to move, thought Magnus. He pulled Awen in and rolled out from under the concrete. Whatever power had held it aloft vanished, and the thing crashed into the street, not as if it had only fallen a meter or two but as if it had dropped from the top of the skyscraper with all that kinetic energy stored up inside like a capacitor set to discharge. The force threw him forward. He rolled again, careful to keep Awen close. Bits of debris peppered his armor, scattering around them.

  Then Magnus heard her raspy voice. “I’m not completely helpless, trooper.”

  “No,” Magnus replied, suddenly fearful of the woman he held. “No, you’re not.”

  Low-power mode initiated, read his HUD. That meant environmental systems, servo assist, comms, armor defense resonance, navigation, targeting, and weapons systems had all gone offline. The AI would also hibernate. He’d have basic visuals, audio, air filtration, and whatever natural structural resistance his plating could provide. Not awesome. Definitely not awesome.

  They needed to get off the street, and judging from the cackles rising throughout the city, they didn’t have much time.

  • • •

  “We need to find cover,” Magnus said. His voice sounded softer than before, but that could have been from the ringing in her ears. “Can you stand?”

  Awen hadn’t thought of standing. But thinking about it made her tired. So tired. And she was hot. The air seemed to burn her skin in a thousand places. She touched her forehead and brushed aside rivulets of sweat, noticing then that she was clutching something in her other hand. She looked down at her blood- and dust-caked fist. She wanted to open her fingers to see what was inside, but they ached too much to move. The mwadim. He’d given her something just before…

  Before what? What had happened to him—and to the meeting? An image flashed in her mind: a misshapen maw and bloodshot eyes.

  The mwadim is dead.

  No, she concluded. He can’t be. If the mwadim is dead, then that means…

  The word—the one that terrified her more than any other—filled her mind. She had committed her life to reversing, to preventing, to eliminating it. War.

  “I can stand,” she said, suddenly finding renewed strength.

  “Good.” Magnus pointed through the wall of white smoke surrounding them. “That direction, there’s an alley. I’ll be right behind you.”

  She nodded and felt him prop her up. Her legs ached, her back ached—everything ached. She was pretty sure something in her left leg was broken. Despite the agony, however, it felt right to stand. The pain meant that she was alive, which meant she was a survivor. War hadn’t won, at least not yet.

  Awen took one step then another. She found her stride and then stumbled into a disjointed run. Her one slippered foot took the lead while the other bare foot crunched painfully through the rubble. As she ran, pieces of the falling sky bit into her flesh, the blackened remains still aflame. The smell of smoke seemed to smother her like a blanket, as did the horrific odor of burning bodies. She wondered if some of the ash was from… from whom?

  Awen passed through the white wall, blinked several times, and saw the gap between buildings. She also saw Jujari, but they were all looking skyward. She ducked into the alley and found stacks of small freight containers, each marked with shipping script and connected by brightly colored graffiti. The stacks funneled her in a zigzag pattern and spat her out in an intersection. She stayed in the shadows and turned around to see the trooper running toward her, blaster extended, head on a swivel.

  “We haven’t been seen,” Magnus said. “That’s the good news.”

  “I assume there’s bad news, then?”

  “Yeah. The mwadim’s building is swarming with Jujari, so our primary exfil is compromised.”

  “So we can’t get back to the shuttle, then.”

  “The fact is,” Magnus said, his black visor centered on her face, “I doubt the shuttle is intact anymore.”

  Awen swallowed. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”

  “The plan is to head to Zulu Niner, our secondary exfil. It’s three clicks north of the city. But without navigation, it’s going to be slow going, and without comms, I have no way of knowing where the rest of the platoon is. The mwadim’s building is too hot for us to go searching for anyone, so it looks like we’re on our own for the moment.”

  “That all sounds bad.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not great,” Magnus said, poking his head into the intersection. He looked right and left then seemed to check the fading sun before reviewing the layout of the buildings.

  “So, which way’s north?” Awen asked. Breaths were getting harder to take, and the heat was stifling. />
  “Best I can tell, that way.” He signaled straight through the intersection with the flat of his hand. “But we’ve gotta move fast.”

  Curious, Awen looked at him then stole a glance down the right-hand alley. Packs of Jujari running on all fours raced across the far end, headed straight for the mwadim’s building. The left-hand alley was the same.

  “Ready?” Magnus asked, and she nodded. “Let’s go.”

  The two of them slipped from the shadows and through the intersection, Magnus keeping a hand on her back while he swept the area with his weapon.

  “We’re clear,” he said.

  The next alley had more of the same freight containers interspersed with what Awen could only imagine was food waste and excrement. She moved carefully, taking care not to knock anything over for fear of discovery. The pair of them moved to the next intersection where, again, the left- and right-hand passages opened to streets filled with Jujari. They paused long enough to catch their breath and then crossed to the third block.

  Once safely across, Awen stopped in front of another freight box, this one highly reflective despite some scattered graffiti. She stopped when she noticed her reflection: torn robes, much of the fabric charred or missing, and her skin bruised, bloodied, and blackened. It dawned on her, however, that much of the blood came from cuts not her own. From other people, she realized. From the Luma and the Republicans. And Matteo.

  The full weight of the incident in the ballroom hit her then, knocking her to the ground like a rogue wave at the beach. “They’re dead.” She convulsed, knuckles and knees trembling in the dirt. Then her stomach heaved, and she threw up. “Oh God,” she said, wiping her mouth. “They’re all dead, then, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” Magnus said, crouching beside her. She felt his hand on her back again. “But a lot of people died, yes.”

  Awen felt hot tears running down her cheeks. What happened? she wondered. The ambassador had threatened her, then the mwadim ordered her to the dais, and then… something had hit her, and she was lying beside the mwadim.