Burning Eagle

by Navin Weeraratne

  The temple complex unfolded beneath them. White ziggurats and step pyramids climbed out of the ghats. They were linked by thin stone bridges, soaring over black, jungle, Xeno-gardens. Robed attendants cast shadows from brazier pillars. They looked down on winding light snakes of thousands of yellow, pilgrim-carried, oil lamps.

  The Crossbows parted, and arced towards different parts of the city. They each found and orbited squat, block forts, walls tall as elephants. All at the same moment, they drifted right above the rooftops, and lowered.

  Lines baled and ninjas fast-roped down. HUD faceplates snapped down, diamond-edged knives and silenced pistols were drawn. The Crossbows rose and whispered away, a side gunner thumbed-up to men looking elsewhere.

  “Team Blue in position,” I whispered into my relay.

  “Acknowledged,” came Koirala’s reply. “Good Hunting Jahandar.”

  I looked back at my squad. Myself and Khalid were slinging short stock, personal defense weapons. Silenced pistols and knives were all we hoped to use, but I had no illusion that would last. Saleh had a small tank strapped to his back, a tube running to his unusual gun. It was a flamethrower. We couldn’t trust a nano-dispenser in case it was hacked. All the Gods in heaven however, were welcome to try and argue with napalm.

  Diamond carried a pair of machine pistols. He had access to our entire inventory, and he stayed with his stock kit. There was something massively illegal about the man – in any other circumstances I’m sure I’d be supposed to shoot him or something. He turned and smiled at me. The bastard could read minds.

  “Don and activate cloaks. Let’s go!”

  We went invisible.

  We really had no intel worth a damn, but we knew we had to go downwards. There was nothing complicated about stairs. We were inside the fort and down two floors before we encountered our first sentry.

  Sleeveless shirt and light pants, all royal blue, like the Xeno-priests’. Over it she wore a vest of diamond armor plates. She carried a Calamari pattern energy weapon, a smooth, black, pod she fitted her arm into, with a side grip for her other hand. I hadn’t seen one of those in months. She looked up, alert, her dark eyes bright and intelligent.

  We walked right past her.

  We encountered more, all guards, all armed. Most had Calamari weapons, the rest had the sort of gear we saw the insurgents packing. Just better. They were always getting better. There were a couple of close moments with Diamond, but we made it to the basement.

  Two guards stood by a cage elevator. They looked bored.

  “Khalid,” I whispered.

  “Affirm.”

  The first guard stumbled and fell backwards, blood fountained from his torn throat. The other sentry turned and stared with eyes wide as saucers. His mouth opened as if to speak, and I rammed eight inches of diamond blade under his chin and into his brain. Twist. Tear out.

  “FUCK!”

  “Diamond! This is a stealth mission!”

  “Sorry. Just – it’s a lot of blood. Suddenly.”

  Fucking civilian. I pulled an ampoule from my belt, it was dark green with a needle-plunger on one end. I stabbed it into the guard’s chest. Beside me, Khalid was doing the same with his victim.

  Moments later, the guard’s eyes opened. I deactivated my cloak. He looked at me, confused.

  “Get up,” I pulled him to his feet. He tottered, but kept it together. Spider silk strands gleamed under his chin, as it was being knit back together. “What is your name?”

  “I – I don’t know.”

  “What day is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You are a guard. Just guard this, and don’t let anyone else come down. Tell them those are your orders. It’s for the Eye, the Great Eye. Understood?”

  “Yes, priest.”

  I got into the elevator, the blips on my HUD followed me in. The cage elevator was pretty simple, just an up and down button. I got us descending. The two guards looked down at me, confused.

  “What the hell was that?” asked the largest blip.

  “They’re called Walkers. You pump a dead soldier full of nanites and he’ll get back up. He’ll keep running for a few hours. Walkers are confused, hesitant, and unresponsive. They can stall the enemy, and at best no one may even realize they’re dead.”

  “What the hell else you carrying?”

  “Rage. You can guess what that does. It will help cover our exit.”

  I was still visible, I took the chance to look at my Geiger counter.

  “Something wrong?” said Diamond.

  “That’s a pretty high count. High enough to – “

  The cloaked forms flicked like images through bad reception – then reappeared.

  “ – high enough to knock out our cloaks,” Saleh finished.

  “Fuck ‘em,” Khalid tore his off and threw it to the ground. “I hate fighting with that damn dressing gown on.”

  “All teams, radiation is higher than expected,” warned my neutrino-relay earpiece.

  “Is it dangerous?” asked Diamond.

  “Nothing military or deep space adaptations can’t handle. Forget the rads,” I holstered my pistol and the still gleaming red blade. The PDW felt much more comfortable in my hands. “We’re about to go hot.”

  “Isn’t that supposed to be a last resort?” asked Diamond.

  “We’re a stealth mission with no intel, and no stealth. This is the last resort. We hit and we keep going. Stop for nothing till you get to the power plant.”

  The elevator came to halt.

  We threw open the cage doors and stepped into a long corridor. Its walls were rough limestone, water dripped forming milky-sick puddles. Dim lights studded the ceiling – electric ones. Power lines and data cables snaked along the walls. They ran down to a T-junction and split.

  Backs against the walls, we crept in.

  A guard in blue robes with a rifle walked across the junction – she didn’t even notice us. I exhaled – I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. I think we all exhaled.

  Then her head popped back around, eyes wide.

  The jackhammer of an PDW went off. Muzzle flashes gave us crouching, long shadows. The priestess was knocked on her back, red expanding on her chest.

  Khalid ran beside me, Saleh’s fuel tank clattered like dishes slammed on a table. We swept the T-junction with red laser sights.

  “Left here,” Diamond’s eyes were on a small tablet. It was clipped to the back of one of his ugly machine pistols.

  “What the hell? No hackable technology on this mission! Did you not understand?”

  “One, it’s not hackable. None of my gear is hackable. I have nothing to do with Union technology, for a reason. Two, it’s partly a directional Geiger counter – it says the hard stuff is thataway. That’s more than yours will do. Three, hurry the fuck up. You just shot someone.” He brushed past me, and moved down the corridor.

  Worked for me. We followed.

  The corridor changed. The rough limestone changed to a wallpaper of gleaming, black, scales. I tapped one – it pressed itself down, and then slowly eased back into place.

  “What the fuck?” Saleh swung his flamethrower around.

  “Easy, Tiger. Don’t shit yourself, but those are insects,” said Diamond. “Servants of the Eye. Must be millions of them.”

  “Those aren’t black!” said Khalid. “They’re brown.”

  “They come in all kinds of colors. And shapes.”

  “Why are they covering the walls?” I asked.

  “I think they are the walls.”

  The tunnel opened into an open cavern, large as a cathedral. Huge, electric lights studded its walls, cold, white, painfully bright. Scaffolds reached up the walls, tangles of wooden beams. Coir ropes and pulleys drew coracles up and down. In them rode blue robes carrying small, clay pots, brimming with pigments.

  “What the – what – what is this?” Saleh lowered his weapon. We all did.

  Every person we saw, had had t
heir eyes stitched shut.

  “Look at the walls,” said Diamond. “There’s your answer.”

  “Cave paintings?” Khalid. “We are looking at a bunch of people without eyes, doing fucking cave paintings?”

  “No, he’s right,” I pointed. “Look.”

  Nearby, a group of painters had moved from random splashing and lines, to something more sinister.

  “Designs,” said Diamond. “Looks like plans for a rail rifle. The painters are channeling.”

  “Fuck this,” I said, “we need to keep moving. Which way, Jack?”

  “Right across – looks like that tunnel near the – near the committee designing tanks.”

  “Let’s move!”

  There was plenty of cover, limestone blocks and statues of giant insects. We crossed the distance in pairs, covering each other. We were unchallenged, by the blind or otherwise. The painters turned and tracked us as we passed, but otherwise ignored us. They spoke a language I didn’t want to understand. Microwave and radio intercepts from Tennyson had sounded similar.

  Right as we were reaching the end, defenders poured out of the tunnel.

  We slammed down into cover and shot them as they came. Saleh and Khalid moved round to flank the entrance. Diamond dual-wielded – single shots, each one a kill. I knew a gengineered crackshot when I saw one.

  But there were just too many. They began to use their own dead for cover. Two brought up a crewed-gun on a tripod mount, nothing ineffective about a classic pattern machine gun. We’d never get passed it.

  Khalid opened up with the flamethrower.

  Men and women screamed, running and falling about. Their robes and body fat burned. The heat cooked bone, napalm burned through eyes.

  All around us, the painters continued, uninterested.

  No one else came through the tunnel.

  “Saleh, Diamond! Cover the tunnel!”

  I ran forward and waded into the dead and wailing dying. The most awful noises you will hear from a man, are his last sounds. They are wails and croaks, weakening, till they stop. The stench of burned hair, metal, and flesh stuck in my nose. One man crouched over a woman’s body, he kept shaking it and muttering to it.

  I grabbed his arm and spun him on to his back.

  “What’s down that tunnel? What’s down that tunnel?”

  His eyes glared red. He snarled words I didn’t understand through teeth filed down to points.

  I shot him through the throat.

  “Keep moving. Saleh, you take point.”

  We tossed in a couple of flashbangs and then entered the tunnel, unopposed. On the relay, the other teams had all reported in going hot. The defenders were forced to split between our threats, and we’d killed almost thirty people on our own. They simply can’t have had that many fighters down here. It looked like we were through the worst.

  Then we came upon the second cathedral.

  It was larger than the first. A perfect dome, its walls were smooth and shone like polished marble. Along the walls, fractal holo patterns flashed and scrolled. They were iridescent, shifting colors like a tapestry painted in an oil slick.

  The floor was a reflecting pool, the water coming up to our knees. In it were translucent white squid-like creatures the size of small dogs. They swam in packs, avoiding us. Rising out of the pool were stone plinths, tall as elephants and three times as wide.

  “What’s on those?” Khalid asked, point at the plinths. “Is it - art?”

  One plinth was a Burning Man frame, but made from diamondoid cooling rods and photo optical relays. Projected within it was a blue holo of a man screaming.

  On another, was a miniature step pyramid like the ones on the surface. It was made from the burned, blackened, bricks of data security cores – each one deliberately cracked open.

  On a third was a four-armed woman, wearing a sari. She floating on a lotus flower shaped from superconducting power coils. Her body was frame of spun, gold, wire. Her sari was a pale translucent material -I recognized what were once tattoos and birthmarks.

  “These are AI parts,” said Khalid.

  “We found Paradiso’s Transcendants,” said Diamond slowly. “These are mementos. This is a trophy room. The Xeno Transcendent – “

  “Is a serial killer,” I finished.

  Diamond slapped the tablet on his gun a couple of times and held it up.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He tore it off and threw it into the water.

  “It got hacked after all,” he shrugged at my frown. “We’d better hurry up.”

  “Hostiles!” Saleh and Khalid slammed behind a plinth.

  There was only one other entrance, it was at the other side of the cathedral. People were streaming out of it, but they weren’t taking up positions. They stood in rows, a solid mass of people. About a third seemed to be children. None were armed.

  They blocked the way forward.

  “This is Blue Team, we have a problem,” I relayed.

  “What is it?” snapped Koirala. I heard heavy gunfire in her background.

  “Civilians are blocking our path. We can’t get round them and they don’t look like they’re going to move.”

  “Shoot them!”

  “Sorry, say again? Did you say shoot the civilians?”

  Diamond snapped around, staring at me.

  “Just get it done, Jahandar! Out.”

  “What did she say?” demanded the giant.

  “Move forward. Covering fire, we don’t know if they have shooters mixed in.”

  “What the hell did she say?”

  “Just stay back, Jack.”

  He splashed through the water to stand blocking me. His eyes cut into me like spears.

  “You are not going to kill those people.”

  “We don’t have time for this, Jack. We have a mission and we’re running out of time.”

  A hand as big as a plate clamped around my shoulder. The predator leaned in. I could feel his breath.

  “You are not going to kill those people. They’re noncombatants. Look, the damn power plant is right on the other side, and the Xeno-T has no more fighters. It knows our rules of engagement and all it can do is send - ”

  I fired two rounds into his heart, point blank. Red misted behind him, I knew the exit wound was big enough to put my fists in. He toppled backwards like the tower of Babel, water geysering as he hit. The water turned red around him.

  “Khalid,” I walked over to him, “give me the flamethrower.”

  I took it by the strap from his numbed hands and shouldered the cylinder. I left him and Saleh there, and walked towards the crowd.

  They had locked arms forming human chains. I didn’t understand the words but they were singing, in part harmony. A young woman knelt in front with the children, she had the smile of a proud teacher. A girl, her head a helmet of dark curls, looked up at me with the power that all children carry in their eyes.

  I thought of Farida, and closed my eyes.

  Havelock VII

  … Riots for the third straight day -

  Click

  … security forces struggling to –

  Click

  … spreading to the ninth ship in the fleet -

  Click

  … Nautiloid and Fractal Worm troops -

  I groaned.

  “Sir? You awake, Sir?”

  I opened my eyes.

  The infirmary was more familiar to me than I would have liked. I had never been shot before but I’ve been in for cuts and the odd knife wound. It was soft lights; curtained-off beds; and pretty interns. They’d revel in our manly injuries before moving on to quiet careers of children’s coughs and flu shots.

  “About time you woke up!” it was Blue Eyes. Only one showed: the other hid under the bandage wrapping his head. He sat up in bed, channel surfing.

  There was a heavy cloth wrapped around my arm. I lifted it up off the bed. Immediately, the bones caught fire.

  “Damn.”

  �
�They gave you an oseo-scaffold, Sir. It’s still setting. Should be done by tomorrow they said.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “Days. You were in a coma. You weren’t due to come out till tomorrow.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “At London? It was a disaster. How much do you remember?”

  Everything.

  “I - I must have been seeing things. Where’s Agent Yuri?”

  “I’m sorry Sir. I’m very sorry.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He didn’t make it. I’m really sorry to be the one to tell you.”

  “I said nothing. So I had seen it.

  Of course I’d seen it.

  I stared at the flat screen for what seemed like ages. Perhaps it was. Talking heads gave me vital updates that my ears just threw away.

  “The morgue?” I asked finally.

  “Yes. I can help you go down there.”

  “Thanks. Thanks I’d like that. What – what’s your name? I’m sorry I’ve never thought to ask it.”

  “Anton, Sir.”

  “Thank you, Anton. Please call me Rex.”

  He nodded. “Alright Rex.”

  We said nothing for a while.

  “So – what happened afterwards?”

  “The whole ship went crazy after the massacre. Then the riots spread to other ships. The deportations have stopped dead.”

  “Massacre? How many people died?”

  “Only thirty something in the actual massacre. Four hundred dead in rioting so far, and that’s just London. All the slum ships have been affected. Word at the coffee machine is that we can’t retake control. If this keeps up, even the media are going to figure that out.”

  “We’ll restore control.”

  His brow furrowed. “I really don’t know. We haven’t got the manpower.”

  “Not human manpower.”

  His face darkened.

  “The Nautiloids and the Fractal Worms are asking if we need assistance.”

  “Please tell me we told them no.”