by Nick Cole
Death squads are the Ultra basic rifle unit. They wear heavy armor plating over their arms, chests, legs, backs, and feet. They have helmets that look like modern versions of the ancient Spartan war helm. If you get close enough, or so I’ve heard, you can see a fiery burning eye scanning back and forth through the visor where the eyes should be.
Stinkeye once said, “Dey a cyclops, little King. Monstahs from another galaxy not this one. No man evah wanna be one o’ dem killers. But dey can make ’em. Dat’s what the Monarchs do. Make monsters. Just like dey made me.”
Chief Cook called him a liar. They were both drunk and looking to go at each other with knives. They’ve done it before. Both have scars given by the other. Cook’s got one on his belly. Stinkeye’s left arm doesn’t work like it really should because Cook caught him with the knife there one time and it cut real deep. They were both so drunk neither remembered it.
“It’s a tac sensor, you old fraud!” bellowed Cook that time we were talking about the Ultra bucket. I noticed he kept his hand in his pocket where he kept the flick knife he used. He slugged his drink with the other. Priorities. Safety first. “It’s constantly assessing and interfacing with the Combat Skin they wear over their faces, you dumb spook. They see the whole battlefield in ways we don’t, Stinkeye. Hell, it might as well be damn magic as far as we’re concerned.”
True enough, I thought as I pressed the firing button on the minigun and tried to carefully murder them. Some clown in the background circus of my mind giddily chiming in that I was probably going to kill half of them the way normal guys die when you burned two hundred extremely high-cycle rounds in their direction at this range. Not Ultras of course. But the clown of infinite possibilities laughs insanely at this bit of reason and merely tells me to just enjoy the fun of full-auto gunfire whoopee.
They moved fast. The Ultras. A little faster than humans. Scattering to get away from my burst. Some got hit. Bright flashes indicating glancing blows from rounds that would go through an engine block and then kill a roka boar gone mad on savage weed.
The clown in my mind who’d been giddy about killing everyone now cried out in melancholy at my failure to commit mass death. Oh well, he moaned and twirled away as he chased a balloon while I watched the Ultra death squad mostly survive my hail of gunfire.
The clown was probably some of the drugs still coursing in my system. Yeah. That’s it.
“Team One neutralized!” shouted the Monarch in the silence once the fifty stopped killing. “Switching to engage forward!” she barked like a boot drill instructor.
I had no problems with that.
The rest of Reaper was engaging forward. One Ultra was down in the open as the Ultras out there disappeared into the shadows, their armor shifting camouflage to adapt to light and shade for maximum concealment. Return fire came and Nox died with a hole dead center in his head. Still sitting there in the driver’s seat.
They say the Ultras are all next-level shooters.
They say true.
I was gonna die.
We were all gonna die.
Chapter Thirty
The Kid slid out of the back of the Mule and began to fire short, controlled bursts at something. That made me happy. I was hoping he had targets and wasn’t doing that new guy thing of just contributing bravely with wasted ammo. Motivation and fear mixing for the sublime cocktail of Hey, I saw a guy do this in a spectacuthriller once.
Questions I would ask if I had time, and there wasn’t any due to incoming:
One. Was that guy in the spectacuthriller just some rando who got killed by the main dude and went down looking good? A stunt guy and not the hero? ’Cause the rule of thumb is stunt guys are always dead guys. Just sayin’.
And two. You realize that’s just digital entertainment, right? Simulated surreality. Real gunfights, in real reality, are short and violent, said the sergeant now into the first full minute of an actual gunfight with real live Ultras and wondering when the adrenaline was just gonna peter out and leave him real tired. And out of ammo.
Above me the Monarch called the Seeker was sweeping the street with suppressive fire. I felt a rumbling through the frame of the high-speed vehicle and realized it wasn’t coming from her weapon. It was coming from the ground beneath my worn combat boots. A round and a couple of its friends skipped off the pavement nearby around our ride and made me wonder what it would be like to have my ankle or foot blown off right about now.
This was too much like a fair fight. And I hated fair fights for sure.
“Quake…” I murmured as I fumbled in a new mag, my fingers feeling thick through my assault gloves even though I’d cut the index finger on the glove off. That finger was trembling like Monarch action heroes don’t in the latest spectacuthriller.
Then the building Nether was near during our initial comm interaction just collapsed in on itself, imploding in dust and moaning steel at once in an almost underwhelming and unceremonious anticlimactic moment. He’d created a null space in reality beneath the foundation and just dropped it. The buzz and the hum were gone, and I realized they’d been there, building like some unholy atonal orchestra of the damned through the first moments of the gunfight. That had been pure Nether and it had gotten so loud I’d had to block them out over the high-pitched whine and blur of the minigun. The weapons system I was now dumping as much as I could at the enemy from my hiding place down in the well of the passenger seat. Incoming rounds were nailing the Mule and making small explosions or sharp cracks. Spider-webbing the high-impact glass and smashing into the armored engine block. Later I’d find out the explosions were a result of the vehicle’s reactive armor skin. Small explosions on impact directing the force of the rounds away from the armor and critical systems.
These things were way above Strange’s pay grade. Too bad for that special operations det that got blown all over the sea. Good for us.
I had doubts we’d roll out of here in this thing. Serious doubts.
But then again, I had hopes. If just to have something to hold on to.
I was fear-swearing when I told the Kid to use his ’nades.
A couple seconds later I heard the spoon pop on a fragmentary grenade and clatter on the Mule he was covering behind. At that moment, out over the city, doomsday sirens began to open up, finally moaning and then wailing at all the horror and violence that was being done. I don’t know if that had anything to do with this fight or if someone had simply finally gotten around to sounding the general alarm usually reserved for stray comet strikes, falling meteors, and bad starship re-entries. Not that you could do much about those. Not that you could do much about Battle Spires either.
“Grenade out!” Kid shouted like a good soldier. I swore and gave an Ultra surging right at us everything the minigun could do. Some kind of shield shimmered to life as that cat went down on one knee from multiple hypersonic impacts.
I whooped.
I’d hit one. Damaged him at least. Hey, it wasn’t a kill. But it was something for our side.
The Kid’s grenade detonated off to one side and blasted straight into that one. The Ultra rocked, absorbing the detonation with most of his armor. He stumbled. But he didn’t go down.
I stopped firing in stunned disbelief.
Not. Down. From. A. Grenade.
This is like fighting a fight you can’t ever win. Which would make it not a fight. But rather a received beatdown. I think too much. I’ve been told that before.
I swore and spooled up the minigun.
The guy stumbled some more, regained his composure and began to advance, waving with one arm in the standard infantry leader Follow Me.
“Eat this!” I roared and held on to the jumping, blurring minigun exceeding the safety parameters as all six barrels went forbidden popsicle. Turning into bright glowing sticks of molten heat. Smoke obscured my vision, but I was sure I was landing hits.
&n
bsp; Then I was out of ammo.
And the guy was down on his back, riddled by hundreds of smoking holes. Somehow, we’d collapsed some kind of personal defense shield and cracked his armor integrity.
More of his kind swarmed in response. The Monarch hit one Ultra in the bucket with the fifty at twenty meters and blew that guy’s head off, even as the rest of his armor got racked by fire and the shield shimmered and distributed damage as best it could.
You could kill ’em. But the ROI was expensive.
“Belt change!” shouted the beautiful Monarch above me. The vehicle was getting dinged by incoming fire, but she was working like it was just another training exercise. Flip feed tray. Clear feed tray. Drag a new belt out of a can. Attach belt. Open fire once more.
I crawled on my belly forward and fought from behind the ceramic tire of the Mule with my Bastard. Armored run-flat ceramic tires make good cover. I knew that from past experience.
I applied good marksmanship where I could and killed none of them. One of the other Mule teams from Reaper, Jacks’s team I think, deployed a grenade launcher and began to ruin their left flank.
One of the Ultras dropped to one knee, cranked a long canister from off his back and onto his shoulder, and fired a recoilless rifle round.
I heard Jacks yell, “Run!” and everyone did in the seconds before the guy pulled the trigger. A moment later that Mule exploded but I was pretty sure someone got killed.
I slithered backward, got to my knees, and shoved a new magazine in.
“Full auto it is,” I told no one and popped up and dumped on the nearest Ultra. I didn’t stick around to see what I’d done to him as I was back down and working a new magazine in. That was when Stinkeye hunch-ran up and slammed into the Mule’s rear, near my position, gasping heavily and reeking liquor and weed.
“Looks real bad, Little King.”
“Grenade!” shouted the Kid, who then amazingly grabbed the Monarch off the gun and pulled her down behind the Mule for cover like he was trying to impress my new crush.
Good for him.
Dark thoughts of every NCO told me the Kid was gonna dive on it and be a real hero. A dead hero. But when you’re young, being any kind of hero is enough to make you do something stupid and try to save your friends.
One time, this guy we had back on another gig dove on a grenade that landed on our rooftop sniper overwatch. Buzz saw it come over the top and roll toward the center of the building’s roof. It was a hot desert world but the guys were fighting like hell to use a lot of AP. Which was good for Buzz. We were all wearing as much armor as we could, and as little clothing as possible because that place was one giant furnace. Some guy in Ghost even wore a short dress and when everyone made fun of him, he told them it was a native kilt from his world. But we thought he was just making that part up. Anyway, Buzz dives on the grenade like a real hero, except it was an EMP device. It shut down all our electronics until we could boot them again, and we had to fight iron sights for about twenty minutes, but we got them back up.
Buzz had jumped on the device thinking it was a grenade. Sacrificing himself for us. His brothers. His reward. We laughed at him and started calling him Buzz because after that he had a real bad ringing in his skull that he said he could feel in his stomach. It never stopped until he got it on Blue.
We were grateful in our own way. Yeah, we laughed because it was really too much to think about. How close we’d come. What he’d intended. Sometimes you just have to laugh at the serious stuff because if you don’t, you’re afraid you’ll lose some kind of edge.
And that’s the only way to survive as a merc. Always having an edge. Like I said, I want nothing to do with a fair fight. That’s the best way to lose.
The explosive the Kid had alerted us to went off and rocked our Mule, detonating on the driver’s side. I felt blood on my bicep. I’d gotten a hot scratch. It had also slashed my Grim Reaper Astronaut tattoo right in half. Time would tell if that looked cool, or just ruined it beyond recognition. If I got killed like it was looking like we were all about to, then who cared.
Right?
I heard the soft purr of the eel girl and regretted I’d never hear her again. She’d asked me once… “Can you have no regrets, my estrangier? In zis life? Are zhere none?”
And now I knew the answer. Or at least I thought I did.
I had choices here and none of them were good. Behind us the crawler was rocketing off into the night. Dog was pulling out to cover the retreat.
The captain was in my ear on comm.
“Reaper, what’s your situation?” Dry. Cool. Calm. Collected in a gunfight.
I tapped the comm and covered one ear.
“Reaper’s holding the junction, sir. We got Ultra rifles at fifty meters and closing. Wounded and dead.”
“Pull back. We’re rolling, Reaper.”
I didn’t know if that was possible. I hoped it was. But I didn’t know if it was.
I looked at who I had on my side of the bullet- and explosive-riddled Mule. The hot Monarch babe. The Kid. She had her sidearm out. The Kid was rocking his Bastard and watching the far corner of the vehicle for us to get flanked. Behind us, the other Mule that had been hit, burned. Mule Three was still active and engaged.
I looked down at Stinkeye. He was muttering and his old wrinkled eyes were squeezed tight shut. Silver tears ran down his tanned and weathered old cheeks.
Sweet. My Voodoo asset had just gone fetal.
Way to go, Orion.
“Pull back, Reaper,” said the Old Man over the comm. “We are leaving this area.”
“What the hell are you doing, Stinkeye?” I hissed. The Ultras were closing. I could hear their boots and the dribble of their expended brass. My hearing protection was fritzing out because of the volume of fire.
Jacks came around the side of the vehicle, rucksack in one arm, rifle in the other. I could see he had three claymores ready on the top of his ruck. He’d toss it and det as a last line of danger-close defense. Odds that we’d get ruined too were high.
“You see ’em,” muttered Stinkeye to himself. “You see da corpses, da lost souls and all da wretches o’ da darkness… come look at what’s waitin’…”
He murmured like some ancient wizard casting dark spells. Or the tech-monks of Kal Mandoor chanting code in the early evening as the icy winds sweep across their brutal mountains and high cold monasteries. Promising death and salvation. Life and endless sleep. Code forevermore.
“Da blood and da ruin of all dem murders…” he hissed. He was starting to rock back and forth, twitching and trembling as he did so.
“Is this something, Stinkeye?” I pleaded. “Are you doing something that will pull our bacon outta the fire, or…” Are you just drunk and deciding the middle of a losing battle is a great place for the DTs? But I didn’t say that last part even though it was my growing fear.
He looked up at the Monarch woman, glaring pure murder right at her. Black murder and rage deep within those red-rimmed, red-veined, cloudy eyes that claimed to have seen the Outer Darknesses. Hate. Endless cold hate was there too.
I’d seen the same look when his gambling went particularly bad. When he couldn’t buy a good card to save his life and the whole table was just dunking on him. But this was worse. Orders of magnitude worse.
“You at Leon, whore?” he suddenly hissed at the Monarch firing with her sidearm when she could get a shot off. Then he roared it at her.
“You at da Massacre of Leon, witch woman?”
She ejected a magazine and looked at him like this was all just business and even his semantics and histrionics were part of some horrible game she knew she had to play to get where she needed to be.
Then she nodded once.
“I was, slave.” Her voice was cold and cruel. Imperious. What a Monarch is. What they sound like. Who they really are.
Then Stinkeye gave a malevolent smile and hissed evilly.
“Good, girl. Then come to me.”
And whether she liked it or not, he reached out an old claw, his wrist adorned with prayer beads and leather thongs. Charms and stray bullets caught along their ancient twining. His dirty fingernails gripping her alabaster skin between Combat Skin and tactical glove. The one holding her matte-black sidearm.
And he jerked his head back and screamed himself hoarse like he was being burned alive from the inside out. Howling and begging like a sick dog.
“What the hell is he doing?” I shouted at her.
She just watched him. Watched Stinkeye like a mother feeding a child. Patiently.
Then she looked up at me, showing me those deep-blue ice eyes like some world that knew only frozen mountains and cold, endless cold. Eyes as wide as those of the Katari hunters who rule a jungle world as undisputed apex predators. Some of the most feared killers in the galaxy.
“He’s showing them the dead they’ve killed. Watch, mercenary…”
And then she looked toward the battle.
I turned and saw sudden shadowy phantoms like the zombies straight out of horror thrillers. They were endless as a dark sea of rotting and raving corpses can be. And they came running out of the darkness, swarming for the Ultras like plague ants, ripping them to shreds. Tearing them limb from limb as they downed them and pried them from their armor for the tasties they might find inside.
The Ultras, closing to extremely close murder range, began to fire at one another, unable to disbelieve the illusion our Voodoo specialist had just created. I could see both things at once. Reality. And the massacres they’d participated in. Whole planetary populations done to death under the merciless brutality of their cold barrels. Except in this trick the dead didn’t die like they had. In Stinkeye’s vision they kept coming even though they’d been long dead. And then they did worse as the Ultras fought for their lives. These murdered souls screamed all their names and all the death cries as they washed over the death squad like a deep and endless ocean that had more to give than you could ever take. It was horrible and hypnotic all at once. It was real and it wasn’t. It was like looking at a crack in the universe no sane person was ever meant to see.
