Samuel sat alone, as had been his custom for the last two weeks, sipping his one drink before retiring to his bunk for the evening sleep cycle. With no natural light present, the Reapers had to rely on their devices to give them any sense of time. The first week of R & R had been scheduled, and that had passed Samuel by in a blurred cycle of fever and medication as his body fought against the myriad of infections he’d picked up while fighting in the murky soup of the lake.
The second week came when the last of the Haggard Sons gangers overwhelmed a cor-sec defense unit and detonated a suicide bomb that collapsed a critical tunnel system nearby. The joint forces had intended to use those tunnels to transport all of the heavy equipment that would eventually be needed to cut into the multitudes of pylons that supported the massive spire city from far below.
The Reapers were pulled from the frontline and stationed at the forward operations base. Samuel knew that most of the Reapers didn’t mind, as they were still getting their hazard rates whether they were being shot at or not. For better or worse the marines had time to relax, though for Samuel that came with some difficulty given the situation in upspire. The marine sipped his drink and wondered just what sort of nightmare was unfolding above him.
“Hey, Prybar, you’ve got that far away look in your eyes,” said Harold joked as he slapped Samuel’s back and joined him at the makeshift bar, little more than a plank of wood nailed across two fifty gallon barrels covered with a tarp, “Thinking about home, eh?”
“Beats the alternative,” answered Samuel, as he nodded at a pair of children taking turns dipping their fingers into what looked to be the discarded remnants of an MRE package.
“I can’t watch that,” groaned Harold, turning away, “Me, Jada, and Virginia gave all our extras out when Boss Marsters wasn’t looking. I’m going hungry as it is.”
“A round for both my friends here!” shouted Ben to the withered old woman who tended the bar as he joined the pair of Reapers.
“You barter by the drink boy, this is downspire,” scoffed the old woman as she made little effort to show her hand fingering the stubby pistol holstered on her hip, “I don’t care if you’re Executive Lord Vorhold hisself.”
“Easy, lady, I didn’t come empty handed,” Ben smiled, undaunted by the woman’s hostility. “I brought two size beta charge bricks and a full toiletry kit that ought to buy us the whole damn bottle.”
“On the barrelhead and we’ll see,” she spit, but already her expression was softening, and soon it became a greedy smile as Ben laid the promised loot before her.
The barkeep poured out four shots of the amber liquid into cups of hammered metal and then passed one to each of the men.
Samuel had taken a liking to the local liquor, though he had specifically avoided asking what was in it or how it was made, as this was indeed downspire. Samuel had found it quite fascinating just how much ingenuity was on display in this subterranean world. They had a use for everything, a skilled scavenger was held in high esteem indeed.
“Drink up, Reapers, the night is young,” boasted Ben as he raised his drink in toast to the other two soldiers, each who met his cup with their own in a soft clunk.
“One for the Stalker in the Dark,” said the old woman in a quiet voice, surprising the marines by clinking her own drink against theirs before hurling the liquid over her shoulder. Ben and Harold looked at her with abject confusion at the waste of good booze.
“I’ve seen others here say the same thing before pushing tidbits of food away,” Samuel remarked, resting his elbows on the bar. He pointed at the two children, “Even starving kids do it. What does it mean?”
“It keeps…them… from getting too hungry or too thirsty,” growled the barkeep as she lined up three more rounds of the liquid, “Its bad luck to talk too much about it. Now drink your drinks and shut up.”
“Let it go, Samuel,” Ben insisted before he swallowed his drink. “We have one night cycle left before we have to put our boots on.”
“What did you hear?” Harold asked.
“Bianca and Patrick overheard Boss Aiken arguing with the quartermaster.” As if the thought of the Boss being angry somehow lightened his mood, Ben grinned.
“There are apparently welding crews coming over from our support cadre, they’ve been pulled from upspire salvage ops and re-tasked to accompany us further down.”
“Ah, they must have managed to find alternate routes into deepspire,” said Samuel after pondering it for a moment, taking a sip from his drink.
“Why can’t we just drill right through the base of the spire itself?” Harold argued, as if the other two soldiers were management. “We’ve been pushing through District 12’s downspire for weeks and I don’t see how that’s a better use of resources.”
“Likely the surveyors and engineers reviewed the architectural data and determined it to be more profitable to send Reapers the long way in on foot than to drill or blast down to deepspire,” Samuel replied as he finished his drink and stood up from the table, “It’s just like back on Tetra Prime, they’ll shove us through the meat grinder if that means the balance sheet looks better when the mission is done.”
“City demo is complicated stuff, could be that some of the structures down there are so old that nobody really remembers how or why upspire doesn’t just collapse, especially considering that all of the industry is concentrated right there at the base of the spire,” mused Ben.
“You guys talk shop even when we’re trying to get a load on,” grumbled Harold, as he shoved the pair of friends ahead of him and deeper into the refugee sprawl of FOB Specter’s makeshift red light district, “Let’s go find Vol and he’ll show us where the real party is.”
HARD MEAT
Samuel and the rest of the Reapers in the squad going into deepspire were gathered around the hole that was the entrance giving their repelling gear and weapons a final check.
“Reekertown,” Boss Marsters stated flatly, staring down into the blackness.
“Last stop where you’re likely to meet anything walking on two legs you’d want to call a man,” said Vol in a tone that bespoke both a sense of pride and dreadful certainty, almost as if the ganger was pleased about the fact that he was going down there despite his fear. Vol's words hung in the air for a few moments as the Reapers considered them.
Samuel silently looked Vol up and down, really seeing the man for the first time.
Though technically a civilian by military standards, Vol was certainly a veteran, and his life as a ganger was displayed in his very dress and manner. The man was covered in homemade tattoos, most of them a variety of hash marks and repeating symbols that seemed to tell a story, even if in a language that only other gangers would understand. No doubt they were the story of his life, a record of his deeds, and when combined with the various scars visible on the man's face, arms, and neck, his life had been quite full.
Vol was shorter than most of the marines, perhaps the result of malnourishment as much as genetics, and though his body was thick with corded muscle, the man's face betrayed his chronological youth. Underneath the patchwork armor, the tattoos, scars, and general downspire filth, Samuel realized that Vol was in his late twenties at the oldest.
“Detailed recordings of the Rotted King's intelligence briefing was made available to squad leaders prior to deployment, therefore, we have an adequate appreciation for the dangers ahead. With respect, let’s just get on with it shall we?” Boss Aiken snapped as he released the catch on his repelling line and disappeared into the darkness below.
“Hey, Boss,” Vol said as he looked gravely at his own reflection in Boss Marster’s Reaper helmet, “Them Reekers is hard meat, we better step light and bang it for keeps.”
“Understood,” nodded Boss Marsters as he leaned backwards over the edge of the vertical concrete tunnel, “Tillman, Hyst, you two send Vol down then tie off this line. I want it set in case we need a hasty retreat.”
With that, Boss Marsters kicked off and relea
sed the catch on his repel line to descend. Not long after Vol, Samuel, and Virginia made their landing and rushed to catch up with the platoon as it moved out. The Reapers moved with a purpose while still doing their best to keep the noise signature as minimal as possible despite their bulky combat armor and weapons.
Vol moved easily and quietly among the ranks, taking point as he led them through the labyrinth of tunnels. The only illumination came from the Reapers gun-lights and muted lightsticks, but the ganger seemed to move more by touch and sound than he did sight.
It wasn’t long before Vol started using the iridescent paint that Boss Ulanti had scored for him from the quartermaster in order to mark traps and it was a most useful tool.
Vol silently pointed out a series of graffiti symbols painted on the wall, in what substance Samuel couldn’t tell, though it had to be blood or excrement considering the smell. They had finally entered Reeker territory, and once they crossed the threshold of those gang signs there was a cleverly disguised trap nearly every thirty meters. Most of them were spring-loaded projectiles made out of scrap metal. It was unlikely they would have been strong enough to penetrate the marine combat plate, but none of the Reapers wanted to test the potency of their armor against them.
It was growing more and more difficult for the on-board filters in the marine’s helmets to scrub the foul stench that began to overwhelm the location. It was little wonder, thought Samuel, using his gun-light to illuminate passageways and dark corners as the platoon moved through the deadly gloom, that they were called Reekers.
According to the terse brief given by Boss Marsters to the platoon before deploying from FOB Specter, this Reekertown had been built in and around the central sewage hub of the spire itself. While it was not the Basin, it was nestled adjacent to the Alpha Target and once cleared of hostiles would provide the Reapers with an ideal staging area.
Using the stories and crude drawings of the Rotted Kings gangers the engineer corps aboard the tug had extrapolated that one of three primary entries into the Basin was located within the settlement.
The plan was for Tango Platoon to make a covert approach from within the tunnel system, relying upon their ganger guide to prevent them from getting lost and ending up wandering downspire. The cor-sec forces, who numbered nearly seventy-five shooters thanks to the troop surge ordered by Reaper Command several days earlier, was supposedly going to drill through from the top down.
Where they kept finding more cor-sec troopers was beyond Samuel. As he’d taken a look at them in FOB Specter as they arrived on the crude trams, he was skeptical that any of them had more than a few days of training. More than likely they were freshly bonded into Grotto and willing to accept combat duty in exchange for smaller bonds.
Samuel supposed that it was a sound plan, if one were to consider the lives of the cor-sec troopers to be basically expendable. No doubt they were cheap shooters in the eyes of Grotto Corporation, he thought grimly as he made his way through the half-light, and management would consider them an acceptable loss so long as the objective was taken.
The Reapers were to launch a lighting assault on the settlement, using their supposedly superior firepower and advanced training to throw the Reeker defenses into abject chaos. This would, theoretically, prevent them from mounting a counter-attack on the cor-sec forces who would pour in from the drill chutes. It was a full scale shock and awe strategy, and Samuel hoped, for the sake of the untested cor-sec recruits, that it worked.
Samuel’s hopes were dashed as the sound of gunfire began to echo through the tunnels. Whatever was going on, it sounded like a war had broken out somewhere in the darkness. It was far too distant to be anyone inside the tunnel system with them, and the marines began to look at each other in confusion. Boss Ulanti and Boss Marsters traded a grimace. Ulanti turned to the platoon.
“The plan is humped,” she said matter-of-factly. “Reaper support must have gotten greedy with the drill and they’re already through.”
“What we’re hearing is cor-sec getting its ass handed to it,” Ben growled as he shook the dripping sewage off of his heavy machine gun. “What’s the play, Boss?”
“We move as fast as we can through the traps and then we engage,” said Boss Marsters as he nodded to Vol, who smiled wickedly before he and the platoon leader began rushing through the tunnel.
“So much for making plans,” laughed George Tuck as he let out an exaggerated sigh, falling in step with the rest of the marines as they ran down the tunnel towards the sound of gunfire.
Samuel was near the back of the column of marines as they jostled to push through the small tunnel exit and into the chaotic firefight below. As Samuel finally squeezed his bulky armored frame through the passage he got his first full view of Reekertown and the bloodbath that was unfolding within.
The settlement wasn’t so much a coherent series of buildings as it was a tangled mess of gangplanks, netting walls, zip-lines, and scaffolding. There were buildings of all shapes and sizes, uniform only in that they were all haphazardly built out of scraps. What it lacked in planning it certainly made up for in size, as the settlement easily spanned twice the distance of FOB Specter, which had, until that moment, been the most spacious place Samuel had seen in this cramped and murky underworld.
Tango Platoon had spread out as more marines followed Boss Marsters and Vol through the opening, but there was little room for large squad movements.
“Ulanti, Marr, Tillman, find the Basin hatch and secure it!” came Boss Marster’s iron edged voice through the platoon’s com-bead as he raised his rifle to his shoulder and squeezed off a three round burst. “Tuck, holster your sidearm and get that flamer spitting, the rest of you pair off and engage at will.”
The platoon erupted into action as the veterans surged forward, dragging the newer members of the platoon along in their wake.
Spencer smacked his armored fist onto Samuel’s shoulder plate and as quick as that the two of them broke away from the opening and sprinted towards a mounted ladder leading down. Spencer raised his rifle and began laying down cover fire as Samuel ignored the rungs and allowed his weight to carry him swiftly down a lengthy drop before his boots hit the metal grating below. The marine shouldered his rifle and began scanning for enemies.
All around them the settlement was quaking with movement as the Reekers reacted to the premature cor-sec attack. From his perch, which was still easily four stories above the watery floor of the gigantic hub chamber, Samuel could see the evidence of cor-sec’s ill-fated assault.
From his vantage point it looked as if the drillers had chewed right through the upper decks, just as planned, and dropped the assault chutes. Samuel had only used the chutes during Reaper basic, and honestly, he was thankful that they'd never found occasion to deploy them during his years on the payroll.
The assault chutes were rapid-inflate, hard rubber slides, much like those sometimes used as emergency escape devices in large factories. With a few modifications in the bullet resistant polymers coating the chute, the Reapers were, in theory, able to use them as a way of delivering foot soldiers into close quarters combat zones that were otherwise impassable or less than ideal for traditional repel lines.
For better or worse, Samuel had always been in situations where there were an abundance of stairs, footholds, or pick points for repel lines, not to mention firefights in zero gravity.
The one day they trained on chutes in basic, Samuel had decided the devices had earned their nickname of 'suicide slides'. Mag had postulated that whatever contractor had been pitching these chutes to Reaper Command must have made quite the demonstration.
The general idea was that the marines were intended to be shooting at the enemy during their descent, adding to the shock effect of the tactic. Unfortunately, the uncontrollable velocity that a fully armored Reaper achieved if he or she descended more than a few meters was sufficient to dump them into the combat zone in a crumpled heap at least thirty percent of the time. Landing on your back or cras
hing face first into a firefight was no way to survive said fight. Unsurprisingly, most Reaper leaders avoided the chutes when there was even a slim possibility of an alternative method.
Samuel was positive that the cor-sec leadership was either not informed or didn't care, as they had ordered their seventy five trooper unit to drop right into the center of hostile territory from nearly fifty meters.
Samuel could see a small pile of cor-sec trooper corpses, perhaps as many as two dozen, at the base of the chutes, which were slick with gore.
From what he could see it looked as if the Reekers had heard the drill, which was no surprise, and had mustered around the chutes. When they deployed and the troopers began sliding down, en masse, it must have been one hell of a shooting gallery. The mounds of spent brass scattered across the ground under the entry point and around the bodies told the story of a massive firefight as the rest of the cor-sec troopers spread out into Reekertown.
It was difficult with all of the smoke and noise for Samuel to make any attempt at counting, but he did see that cor-sec's assault had left its mark on the enemy. Bullet holes peppered all of the ramshackle buildings around the entry point and Samuel could see more than a few ganger corpses draped across the railings, hanging from nets, or laying broken upon the same ground floor as the cor-sec casualties.
Spencer continued to lay down fire as Samuel scanned the scene. Once the marine's magazine clicked empty he caught Samuel's eye as he reloaded.
"I'm on you, Prybar," Spencer racked the slide of his combat rifle to chamber the first round. "Pick your battle."
"Cor-sec obviously got hammered when they dropped in. Considering their equipment and training, they're probably at seventy percent casualties at this point," Samuel said in disgust, “C’mon.” He began sprinting down the gangplank towards a series of zip lines, most of which were cocked and ready, "Let's do what we can to keep the rest of them out of body bags."
Dead Worlds (Necrospace Book 2) Page 4
