The Dawn of the Future

by Jun Eishima

  　“The troops don’t seem too happy lately,” she heard Biggs say. “Lot of ’em are startin’ to wonder if command thinks they’re disposable.”

  　“No different than one of their toys,” Aranea replied. “Just a number on a report. Same as a magitek trooper. Or a daemon.”

  　An MT or a daemon could be force-marched until its strength gave out, and it would never utter a word of complaint. But the soldiers on the recovery effort were living, breathing people. They tired. They needed sleep. They couldn’t shovel muck and lift debris forever.

  　And it was hazardous work to boot. The majority of Altissia’s citizens had been evacuated and were safe outside the city, but Aranea and the others were still reeling from the scale of the casualties racked up during the Hydraean’s rampage. They’d all lost friends and comrades, and the conditions were shit, so it didn’t seem out of line to drop a complaint or two. Or three. Or four, or five, six, seven . . .

  　“Even lower than that,” Biggs intoned, without so much as raising an eyebrow.

  　“Lower than what? Lower than a daemon?”

  　“You think I’m wrong?”

  　“Nah,” Aranea shrugged. “You’re probably right.”

  　She’d have been hard-pressed to argue anything else. Unlike the MTs and daemons, which were still relatively expensive to produce, mercenaries came cheap. Find the ones desperate for their next paycheck, scoop them up for next to nothing, and throw them at a low-level problem. That was the logic of the top brass. They didn’t even bother trying to hide it anymore.

  　“Still, work is work,” she added. “I’ll see the job done, but . . . I gotta tell ya, I’m pretty sick of military life.”

  　Aranea gave another sigh that transformed into a yawn. Biggs and Wedge soon followed suit. It was a bizarre little song sung in round, with yawns instead of words.

  　“Too tired to get worked up about it, though,” she grumbled.

  　She had to hang on only a little longer. In less than a minute, familiar sights would roll into view below, and then they’d be prepping for landing. After the devastation they’d witnessed in Altissia, the run-down landscape of Gralea might as well have been paradise on Eos.

  　“Fancy a taste to celebrate a job well done?”

  　A flask was thrust in Aranea’s direction.

  　“I’ll pass, thanks,” she said with a small wave of one hand.

  　She figured she could probably down a bit of the stuff, but she also knew full well that alcohol wasn’t what she needed right now.

  　“I’m more interested in a nice, soft bed right,” she added. Clean, starched sheets with that delectable stiffness, and a firm pillow with just the right amount of give. Space to stretch out her arms and legs to her heart’s content. Bliss.

  　Her reverie was interrupted by the sound of a distant explosion and the violent pitch and roll of the ship. Suddenly, the world was upside down. Biggs’s flask went flying, and just after it, a flurry of popcorn fluttered through the air like snow. The ship’s shrill alarm hammered on her ears.

  　“Close call on the port side,” Wedge’s voice came from directly above her. Aranea realized she was sprawled out on the deck.

  　“What do you mean ‘a close call’?” Biggs demanded. “We’re in imperial airspace, aren’t we?”

  　Questions later. Actions now. Rubbing the sore spot on back of her head with her left hand, Aranea sat up and reached for the comm with her right.

  　“All units scatter! Evasive maneuvers!” she barked.

  　“Roger, evasive maneuvers.” The reply rolled in from several voices in succession.

  　Aranea climbed to her feet, her mind already focused on their next steps. With any luck, they’d have bought themselves a moment of safety. Now it was time to figure out what the hell was out there.

  　When it came into view on their screens, her eyes widened. The thing was massive. They could see it wading through the capital’s skyscrapers on its two gargantuan legs, orders of magnitude larger than any of the daemon-based tech they’d seen before. Regardless of its size, its imperial origin was as clear as day. “Just what we needed,” she said. “Another big-ass magitek armor.”

  　Biggs chimed in, “I’ve heard about this thing. Think it’s called Diamond Weapon. Or somethin’ like that.”

  　The name didn’t take long to place.

  　“So this is what they deployed in Insomnia.”

  　A magitek armor with enough destructive force to lay waste to the Crown City overnight. No doubt whatever hangar the empire used to store it was equipped with an extensive array of restraints and precautions. Yet here it was, loose in the imperial capital. It just went to show that no amount of planning could account for everything. Perhaps they hadn’t foreseen how powerful the thing really was. Maybe it had grown anxious for a bit of freedom and tore its way outside.

  　At any rate, based on the current imperial response, it looked like there wasn’t much hope of getting it back under control. Conventional MAs surrounded Diamond Weapon on all sides, laying into the hulking giant with everything they had. It was clear they’d given up on any attempt to secure the daemon-infused monstrosity. They were out to destroy it.

  　Closer inspection revealed the plating on Diamond Weapon’s upper arms and chest was already stripped away, exposing its innards. Though command referred to it as a magitek weapon, it still writhed like a beast in pain, roaring, swinging its massive arms and stomping its feet against the ground with the impact of each new volley.

  　Aranea couldn’t get over the size of the thing. Even its actions were massive. Each of its movements sent nearby high-rises shaking and crashing to the ground. Its path through the city was marked by a trail of empty craters where entire blocks of buildings once stood.

  　Diamond Weapon roared again, and this time a segment of its head began to glow. It was a big red orb-like protrusion that looked like some kind of bulging tumor. “Cores,” the researchers called them. The cornerstone of daemon-infused magitek design.

  　The bulbous core grew brighter and brighter. Then there was a great flash, which condensed into a wicked red beam. The beam started at one end of the imperial combatants below and swept across the field of battle, mowing down one MA after another, until the ground forces were no more. Aranea would have kept staring in rapt horror, mouth open in shock, but for the weapon’s next target: the beam flicked up into the air, streaking toward the airborne division’s inbound ships.

  　Messages from friendly craft bombarded the comm.

  　“Incoming enemy fire!”

  　“We’re hit!”

  　“Jerk 1, Jerk 2, damage critical!”

  　“This is Amigo 2. We’re taking heavy damage!”

  　There were more shrieks of terror than status reports. Airships were spewing flames, plummeting from the sky. More lives being snuffed out. More comrades lost. She felt the slow pulse of anger rising in her blood. “Come on, boys. We’re going to take Tiny out.”

  　She kicked her seat and headed back toward the cargo hold. Biggs hollered after her, the confusion in his voice shading into full-on consternation. “Uh, Lady A? That’s just the sleep deprivation talking, right? I know you don’t mean it, ’cause that would be crazy.”

  　Of course she meant it. And sleep-deprived or not, she wasn’t crazy.

  　“Maybe this is all just a dream,” Biggs continued. “Someone tell me I’m having a bad dream.”

  　“Then it’s time to wake up. Let’s go.”

  　Her head felt like it was made of lead, and her body was desperately crying out for rest, but what they were seeing on the viewscreen was all too real, and someone had to stop it.

  　“Wedge. You’re on helm,” she ordered, as she grabbed the Stoss Spear in one hand. Her longtime companion. One faithful, piercing point, rigged up with a magitek engine for enhanced performance and output on the battlefield. Here was a bit of magitek she didn’t mind.

  　S
he adjusted the frequency on her comm and sent a message to all ships in the 87th Airborne. “Listen up, people! I’m gonna need you all to stay on this thing as long as you’re able. Got that?”

  　She received several replies of “Roger,” plus Biggs’s comment of “Lost her mind, I tell ya.”

  　And with that, Aranea threw open the hatch and dove out.

  　The wind roared in her ears. She saw the capital’s ramparts directly below. Gauging her altitude by eye, she made slight adjustments to the Stoss’s inertial dampener. One straight dash along the wall would be enough to bring her next to Diamond Weapon, and then it’d be goodbye, Tiny.

  　But a crosswind blindsided her. Suddenly thrown off course, she lost the timing for the Stoss’s retrofire. This wasn’t going to end well. By the time she realized where she was going to land, she was only a split second away from crashing into a storehouse. She felt the shock of the impact and heard the splintering of the roof materials. Then there was darkness and the smell of dirt.

  　Using her spear and free arm, she shoved away the rubble surrounding her. Finally, light and fresh air were hers once again. She looked up as she pulled herself the rest of the way from the wreckage muttering, “Well, that was graceful . . . ”

  　The roof now boasted an impressively large hole. The light streaming in revealed a silver lining to this little debacle: at least she’d ruined a military storehouse rather than a civilian one.

  　“Daemons. I really can’t stand ’em.” She sighed.

  　Like them or not, she’d still have to deal with them. She stood and brushed the dust off her armor.

  　“Let’s get this over with.”

  　And thus began the single worst day of Aranea’s life.

  The complete destruction of the imperial capital. Those were the words that flashed through her mind as she assessed the damage. That’s how bad the situation looked. From her position atop the rampart, she saw flames and black smoke rising from every corner of the city, as well as countless collapsed buildings and sunken roads. The shadows she observed darting among piles of rubble were almost certainly daemons. They weren’t particularly large, but their sheer number would make them a nuisance to deal with.

  　She caught the sound of a looped recording playing on one of the public announcement speakers mounted throughout the city. “An evacuation order has been issued for all areas of the imperial capital. All civilians must proceed to their designated refuge stations.” The voice cut out at irregular intervals. This particular speaker had probably taken a beating.

  　Just as the thought struck, a splintering sound echoed from the same direction as the speaker. She caught sight of a large daemon ripping through a building, and she muttered, “Lucky for him, I’ve got bigger issues to deal with first.”

  　Diamond Weapon was the priority. If that giant monstrosity couldn’t be stopped, Gralea would be annihilated. It’d be like Insomnia all over again. Wouldn’t matter how much of the rabble she mopped up if the biggest threat remained.

  　“Lady A? You read me?” Biggs’s voice crackled over the comm.

  　“I read you,” she responded, then broke into a sprint along the rampart.

  　“’Fraid we’ve had a bit of an unscheduled landing,” Biggs said. “We’ll get her back up in the air, but it’ll take some time. How are things on your end?”

  　“I’m managing.”

  　In truth, she felt surprisingly good for having body-slammed a roof. She was a bit put out that the threat of sleep still loomed large despite the wake-up call.

  　“You got any way to check if the aerial safety net system is still up?” she asked.

  　Between the dismal state of the roads and the daemon infestation, she wasn’t going to get anywhere fast at ground level. All the time in the world wouldn’t have been enough to reach Diamond Weapon if she had to scramble over rubble and dispatch daemons one by one. It’d be a lot quicker if she were able to jump straight from the rampart to a building, and from there continue rooftop to rooftop.

  　“Looks like you’re in luck. The system’s up and running,” came Biggs’s reply. “Jump to your heart’s content. No need to worry if you botch a landing up there.”

  　“Roger,” she said, then made a leap for a nearby rooftop. Biggs’s intel was solid: her jump overshot the building she was aiming for, but she felt the net activate at her feet. She took a second bound, which propelled her far enough to catch the ledge of the adjacent rooftop. Thank the gods for the net. The system had become standard on high-rise rooftops some time ago, back when the empire still cared about things like safety during routine maintenance tasks and creating alternate evacuation routes. Today, it looked like the net would be keeping her alive.

  　Of course, considering the current state of Gralea, who knew how long the system would remain up. It seemed wise to keep moving, and to be quick about it. The Stoss would keep her alive in case of an actual fall―or another fall, rather―but the daemon situation down on the streets wasn’t going to change anytime soon. Engagements with the enemy would be best kept to a minimum.

  　All in all, the plan seemed straightforward enough―until the flying daemons showed up.

  　Aranea winced. “Oh, great. So now I’ve gotta deal with you all, too?”

  　Too bad the safety net, for all its ingenuity, never accounted for the possibility of something unpleasant flying up from below. It would activate to keep Aranea from falling, but it wouldn’t serve as a ceiling to keep the flying daemons at bay.

  　“Well,” she sighed, “let’s get this over with.”

  　She flicked the Stoss’s output to max and flung herself high into the air. At the apex of her ascent, she angled her spearpoint straight down at one of the pursuing daemons. The momentum of her fall drove the weapon deep through its body. Then a step on the antigravity field. Another jump. Fall. Impale. Repeat.

  　With the daemon corpses still skewered on her spear like a kebab, she swung the Stoss in a wide arc, cutting another flying creature clean in two. The corpses soon vanished in a cloud of dark miasma.

  　“I really can’t stand daemons,” she muttered.

  　Aranea straightened up and resumed her rooftop trek. In the city streets below, she caught glimpses of rogue MTs thrashing about alongside the daemons. The control system normally keeping them in line must have been put out of commission.

  　She grimaced. “This is what they get for building an army out of those things.”

  　An MT or a daemon could be force-marched until its legs gave out, and it’d never utter a word of complaint. But while that might make for a convenient, low-maintenance army, the second there was any trouble with the systems keeping them in line, they’d transform from assets into threats. An army of living, breathing humans might require rest and food, and they might complain when conditions were poor, but at least they could be reasoned with and wouldn’t go berserk at the slightest provocation.

  　“And an army of humans won’t start slaughtering their own countrymen for no reason,” she murmured.

  　She spotted a human corpse, head clearly smashed in not by falling debris but by an MT fist. It unsettled her, and she quickly averted her eyes.

  　But the scene sparked a question in her mind. Diamond Weapon wasn’t the only one running amok. The standard troopers were out of control, too, and on top of that, there was the sudden daemon infestation. It seemed a stretch to call all the whole shitstorm a coincidence. Sure, Gralea saw its share of daemons. One or two might pop up in a neighborhood, only to be eradicated or contained in short order. But they never appeared in numbers like this. What she saw now was a far cry from a couple of daemons gone unnoticed while the military had its hands full with Diamond Weapon.

  　She’d heard that the research facility spawned its own daemons these days, for ready availability during experiments. Maybe that could explain the numbers; they could have all escaped from the facility. But for that to happen right at the same moment when
both Diamond Weapon and all the MTs went haywire?

  　“Wait. What if . . . ” she began. The idea that occurred to her was disturbing in the extreme . . . but it didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility. She felt a shiver run down her spine.

  　The comm interrupted her thoughts. It was Biggs.

  　“Repairs all finished. We’re headed your way to provide support.”

  　“Thanks. I could use it.”

  　For each rooftop she crossed, she didn’t seem to be getting any closer to Diamond Weapon. It looked like the creature was moving in random directions, and closing in on it was proving to be a more difficult task than she’d anticipated.

  　“Wandering around like some giant three-year-old lost in a department store,” she sighed. She’d looked after a child about that age once, in the distant past. The memory somehow had floated to mind, prompting the comparison.

  　The monstrous entity turned again, now moving in the general direction of the residential district. She needed to hurry. If she didn’t close the gap and put a stop to the thing soon . . . She shuddered. The most densely packed section of the city, it was almost certain to be filled with residents still struggling to evacuate. Perhaps they could use the cannon on the dropship; rain some lead down on Diamond Weapon and chivvy it along a different path.

  　The comm crackled again. A hint of panic had entered Biggs’s voice.

  　“We’re seeing civilians still in the city. Loads of ’em!”

  　Damn. It was one supposition she’d have been happy to be wrong about. Soldiers should have been on the ground, directing people out of the city. Instead, the imperial idea of an “evacuation” was to loop a message over emergency speakers. And now even that pathetic bit of assistance was vanishing. Daemons and rogue MTs were putting the blaring speakers out of commission one by one. No wonder the city was still full of civilians. She paused on the rooftop she was currently on to assess the situation.