Long Fall

by Chris J. Randolph

  She originally intended to call it Unicorn because it was a ridiculous thing that rightfully shouldn't exist... but unicorns don't fly.

  As she pierced the cloud cover, Amira finally got a good look at the raging firefight concentrated to the west. Blade Valkyries pirouetted in the air, dancing past screaming balls of plasma and larger projectiles that burst into clouds of glowing cobalt, while Yuon Kwon hunted after them like piranha eagerly snapping at a bucketful of fresh chum.

  But neither group paid much attention to the falling shrapnel or the armored troopers hidden among it. Amira's team slipped by unseen, finally slowing a few tens of meters off the ground. Purple jets erupted at their calves, hips, and shoulder-blades, gleaming like stars at sunset.

  They'd been given an extra boost thanks to the living cells in Amira's newest armors, which could hold a charge beyond their technical limit. The surplus decayed quickly, though, making it good for high speed insertions like this and very little else.

  Her team of nine sliced through the forest's canopy and dropped to the soil as lightly as falling leaves, while piles of junk metal clattered noisily all around. The troopers were already behind cover by the time the last fluttering piece of scrap had hit.

  "We're on the ground," Amira said.

  Tom's voice came back. "Roger. Pegasus en route to holding position. Good luck, Chief."

  "Yeah, fucking thanks," Amira said, and the armor was smart enough to keep the unnecessary barb to itself. Then she said to the team, "Weapons hot, but keep a low profile. Don't let anything see you... and don't let anything that sees you live."

  With that, they moved out into the dense forest, hugging trees as they crossed over softly rolling terrain, and marching as quiet as ghosts. They were practically invisible from more than a few paces in the dappled shade, and even thermal scans would fail to see them; the armors' skin mimicked background heat, adding subtle variations like shifting tiger-stripes. Any waste heat produced by the myofibers that drove them was recycled back into the batteries for later use.

  They covered several kilometers quickly with a roaring maelstrom chewing up the skies above them. The landscape became more and more tumultuous as they progressed, riven and churned up as if a massive jackhammer had assaulted the Earth. Trees were uprooted and tossed over, tangled roots still clinging to clots of soil that faced the heavens.

  "This place looks like hell," one of her troopers said. It was Misha, a younger soldier, fresh faced but for the cold darkness that haunted his eyes. That wasn't a particularly rare feature these days.

  Another of the troop, Tamsin said, "Either someone has a quite large new weapon..."

  Amira finished the thought, "Or we're not getting the whole story."

  None of this destruction had been apparent in the satellite scans provided by the Fleet. Amira imagined that an unspoiled jungle and a ruined one probably looked awfully similar from orbit, but Donovan knew a damn sight more than he was sharing. It was the same old tune playing out again and again, and she'd once again allowed the extra-large chip on her shoulder to influence her decision.

  "Tracking motion ahead," Tamsin said.

  The armors shared sensor information across their network, and everyone reacted at once. They put trees between themselves and the approaching signature, some hunkering down on one knee, while dozens of sharp and curved weapons trained on the transgressor.

  "Hold," Amira said quietly.

  With all of their sensors working in tandem, the distributed network was able to refine the scan. The contact was small, slightly cooler than the surrounding environment, and moving at a deliberate pace. It was creeping, and might have gone unnoticed by less sophisticated equipment.

  With a thought, Amira's armor switched to engagement mode. An array of electrodes dotting the inside of her helmet began to send small pulses through her skull and into her brain, while her air supply was simultaneously doped with a cocktail of psychotropic compounds. Time slowed, became more fluid, more fascinating like high-speed film.

  Her lungs filled and she felt her torso swell, while dragonscale shifted and slid to compensate. One interconnected system. The armor felt more awake, more connected to her. She felt more alive inside of it, integrated into a single closed circuit without beginning or end.

  Their target approached the sundered ridge up ahead and Amira waited. She remained relaxed and still, free of tension or anxiety and simply ready to react.

  The contact stopped. It held its position. It backtracked a few paces.

  In a low voice, Misha said, "What's it doing?"

  The amorphous blob resolved into a humanoid figure leaning against something, with an assault-rifle in its hands. Its breathing and heart-rate were steady.

  Amira smiled inside her helmet, and said "We've been made." She waited a beat and added, "Hold here. Misha, Tamsin, you're with me."

  The three of them headed off at an angle and circled the ridge. finally taking cover behind a large boulder. It gave them decent protection, but it also blocked their thermal optics.

  "Fire-team, give me a distraction."

  Something snapped loudly back by her team and she advanced. Coupling leaps with small bursts of glowing jets, she and her teammates bounded forward and closed on the still obscured target. Broad-leafed plants parted around them, and they rushed forward.

  A rifle barked. Its bullet ricocheted off a nearby tree with a queer echo.

  Amira bent her knees, came back to the ground, and slid in the dirt and gravel, with both teammates doing the same a few meters behind. Her eyes went wide.

  A man stood in front of her in torn cargo pants and a tank top that might possibly have been white at some point in the distant past. His skin was covered in mud and soot, revealing spots of a rich bronze beneath. One hand held an assault rifle down by his side, and the other, covered in ropy twisting scars, held a live grenade.

  His hair was dark and curly, and his slim face was half covered in a ruddy beard. His eyes were bright, active, curious.

  He waved the grenade. "Care to join me for a barbecue?" he asked.

  That voice. With a start, Amira recognized the man under all the dirt and unkempt hair. Her brow furrowed, and a crooked grin tugged at the edge of her mouth. Her armor interpreted the physical cues, and strips of friendly blue lights lit up all over it.

  In disbelief, she said, "Jack?"

  Jack Hernandez cocked his head to the side and squinted. Then he put on that ridiculous smile of his and he chuckled awkwardly. "Sal? Damn small world, isn't it?"

  "Getting smaller all the time," she replied with mirth in her voice.

  She managed not to laugh somehow. Who else did she expect to find here in the middle of this mess? There was only one person on the planet stupid enough to kick two angry dogs in the jaw and think he could simply slink away.

  "Stand down, team. We've found our VIP."

  Chapter 11

  Turn It Up

  Jack Hernandez felt a bit like a fairy-tale princess. He'd found himself lost in a dark and foreboding forest beneath skies filled with fighting dragons, until his knight in (rather dull) armor arrived, quite literally swept him up in her powerful arms and whisked him away.

  He'd done his level best to refuse, but Sal claimed they could cover ground faster if she carried him. He grumbled and finally relented, but she didn't have to carry him around like a new bride. He was quite confident he could've ridden piggieback and been just fine. Just fine.

  If Jack and Sal had a different relationship, the whole situation might have seemed oddly romantic. Instead, he felt the way he would if Leo Nikitin had decided to carry him somewhere; and knowing Nikitin, he'd also have insisted.

  The one bright spot was that it didn't take long for Sal and her troop of tin soldiers to ferry him back to his camp, where he was set down and generously allowed to stand on his own two feet again.

  He started to dust himself off, but stopped when he realized the dust was just covering up several layers of d
irt and mud. His personal hygiene had seen better days, but it'd also seen worse ones. Much, much worse.

  Jack smirked. "You, uh... you don't expect a kiss or something, do you?

  The lights on Sal's armor reappeared and turned a shade of plum, and the front of her helmet levered open to reveal the scrunched face of a woman who was almost perfectly unimpressed. Jack was pretty sure he'd made the same expression when he was nineteen and his skeevy uncle tried to sell him most of a car, but he couldn't be sure because there'd been no mirrors or windows to see his reflection in.

  Her helmet snapped shut again. "So," she said in an oddly buzzing voice, "what the hell happened here, Jack?"

  He scratched the back of his neck while something exploded a couple hundred meters north of them. "Kinda complicated," he said. "Can we focus on getting out of here first?"

  A dense boom echoed off the land followed by the sound of things clanging, clattering, crunching into the dirt. Jack couldn't hear the pilots screaming as they died, and he counted that as a small blessing.

  Sal paused to think while her troopers stood in defensive positions, bristling with sharp and curving weapons like the bladed tips of medieval lances. These MASPEC armors were radically different than the ones Jack remembered from just a year before. These were smaller, more sleek and stylish. He imagined they were how amphibians might look when drawn by a luxury car designer.

  The sound of a cannon rose above the din of the firefight, thumping like a metal band's bass drum. More explosions followed.

  Sal made up her mind. "What condition is Felix in?"

  "Between bad and worse. Not sure which direction it's going just yet."

  She walked over to the wounded Yuon Kwon and gently stroked his leathery skin. Felix let out a quiet and warbling squeal, which Jack had come to understand as a whimper. He only showed that kind of vulnerability around friends, and then only when he couldn't maintain a brave front. This was bad.

  Sal stepped around Felix's side and inspected the wound, bracing him with both hands to reassure him and steady some of his spastic quivering. She very gently lifted one of the many loose edges of Jack's hasty bandage-work and peaked beneath. "You never should've been in a firefight, you poor little guy."

  Jack felt the sting of that.

  "Why the fuck didn't Donovan mention it was you... or at least that the ship was Yuon Kwon?" She let out a long and low growl, and the lights on her armor pulsed red. They dimmed again and she said, "Banks and Wei. Bring me the welding torch and a patch plate."

  Jack's jaw tightened and he tried and failed to push her away from his partner. "You can't just weld a piece of metal onto him, Sal... He's not some damn junkyard beater!"

  She didn't turn. Her armored hand held him back easily. "Relax. I'm just using the plate to cauterize the wound. He's bleeding out right now."

  The anger still boiled in his chest, and it found a new target. "He won't be able to take that kind of pain. Don't you have some way to anaesthetize him?"

  Her head turned and he could see her eyes through the visor. They were full of sympathy. "I've only got what I've got," she said in a level tone.

  Jack understood what he had to do. His anger evaporated and his head drooped down, while he felt like a complete jackass for his outburst. He said, "Then I'll help him."

  He didn't wait to hear what Sal had to say. He just nodded, turned away and climbed into Felix's crew compartment.

  He crawled across the slanted floor and onto the saddle, got himself comfortable and took a deep breath. The cradle remained closed and no slim arm reached out to hold him.

  "You need me," he said aloud to Felix. "This is going to hurt so much worse than... It's going to hurt worse. "

  The cradle held firmly closed for a moment, then shivered and opened to him.

  Jack reached inside and as his hands come to the ends of the pockets, he could feel that Felix was still tentative. The ship was scared for him.

  Jack leaned forward and touched his head to the soft plate.

  Flash.

  The pain.

  It was so intense that he lost himself momentarily. He was confused, feeling as if his ribcage were hanging open exposing his heart, his madly pumping lungs. He resisted the urge to roll into a ball and cry out.

  But the pain was constant, and that meant it was predictable. Tractable. If he could just see the edges of it, he could grab hold and steer it in a more manageable direction. He could sublimate it.

  Then he had control.

  "Ready," he said. His own teeth remained clenched together while the words were broadcast in radio; he wasn't adept at speaking through Felix though, and he was sure the signal sounded like an absolute mess from outside.

  His many eyes tracked Sal, watched her hold a torch to the dark metal plate which she'd already bent into a more useful shape, and she kept at it until it was white hot. Then she glanced up at Felix questioningly, looking for all the world like an angel through alien eyes, a gleaming creature shining bright in numerous spectra of light.

  With as much conviction as he could muster, Jack said, "Do it."

  And she did.

  It wasn't heat or pain, and it wasn't like the torture Jack had suffered at the hands of Kai. That had been cold, calculated, and designed to avoid real injury.

  Hot metal pressed into his open wound and he scrabbled against the feeling, but it sucked him down and pressed his face into its vibrant, serrated bosom. It thrashed hard and refused to be gentled.

  He screamed. In voice and radio and patterns of strobing color that appeared on his writhing skin, all at once and in perfect concert.

  Then it was done.

  He was shaking all over, from the tips of his toes to the furthest edges of his hull. Then the cradle released him and he snapped into his own body like a broken rubber band. Still convulsing, muscles refusing to obey his fleeting commands, he barely managed a stunted yelp as he flopped out of the saddle and passed out.

  Chapter 12

  Red Queen

  "He's down," Wei said.

  Amira tapped into Wei's video feed and saw Jack Hernandez crumpled against the side of Felix's crew compartment like a hastily discarded doll. A scan through different sensors showed he was in good health though, if more than a little unconscious.

  She couldn't blame him for passing out; she'd seen surgery done without anaesthetics several times since her return to Earth, and it was always pretty much the same. The only difference here was that the usual blood-curdling screams came across in not only sound, but also color and a particularly shrill radio spike.

  That last part was going to be a problem.

  Her troops were already in motion, expanding the guard perimeter to prepare for something horrible. While continuing to engage one another, the fighters above were already closing in on the signal's source, trading blows as they circled ever inward.

  "Bring him out," she said. "Carefully, Wei."

  "Roger that, Chief."

  Tom's voice broke in over the comms. "What on Earth was that, Sal?"

  "A fuck-up," she replied. "I should've jammed the signal first."

  She'd been too hasty, hadn't thought through the consequences. She got like that when friends were in trouble, always leaping into action before her brain had a chance to catch up, while better decisions weren't ever more than a single breath away.

  Tom said, "Don't think you coulda. We got an earful at twenty klicks, five-by-five."

  Twenty kilometers meant Pegasus had already retreated to its secondary holding position.

  "Shit," she said. "We're gonna need air support and fast here."

  The line went quiet. "Be tough, Chief. We caught someone's attention earlier but managed to slip it. Don't wager they'll be so aloof a second time."

  The fighters kept drawing closer, like flies onto the scent of a fresh carcass.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  "Then it's gonna be tough," she said. "Guns blazing, Tom."

  "En route. Who's t
he enemy?"

  Amira gritted her teeth. "Whoever's in your way."

  "Roger," he said in a solemn voice, and that was all.

  Gordon Wei climbed out of Felix's interior with Jack Hernandez hanging groggily on his shoulder.

  "How's he doing?"

  Jack spoke before Wei had a chance. "Coming around," he said. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was moving as if he'd just woken up to an epic hangover. "How bad is it?"

  For a second, he looked like he might throw up.

  Amira shook her head. "Felix is bad but stable." Then she pointed a finger at the heavens and said, "But worse is coming in fast."

  "Yeah," Jack said. "Story of my life."

  "Can you hold a gun?" she asked.

  Jack said, "Uhhh..." Then he dropped to his knees and started vomiting in the dirt.

  Amira said, "Right."

  Not that it made a difference. His adorable little assault rifle wouldn't do much against the metal and chitin hurricane whose eye they were sitting in. She considered the possibility of enemy ground troops as well, but decided they were just about the least of her worries at that moment.

  She spoke into the team channel. "Go to anti-air profile. If anything comes within five-hundred meters, open fire."

  She'd spoken too soon.

  "I've got movement on the ground," Tamsin said. "To the north."

  "Confirmed," another trooper piped in.

  Tamsin added, "Six of them, seven meters high. Unknown signature."

  The Oikeyan Heirath walkers were about that height, but they didn't run as hot as these things, and the New Union didn't have anything in that scale at all. In fact, the Earth had rarely built vehicles so tall, and Amira struggled to imagine a 600 tonne dumptruck barreling across the jungle.

  These new things were a bona-fide surprise, and Amira had never liked surprises. She'd always been terrible at waiting for them.

  She leapt into motion. "Change of plan. We can't engage here, so we'll draw them off westward if we can. Wei, stay with the VIP... and Pegasus, keep air units off those two. Pick them and the Yuon Kwon up when you can."

  Everyone confirmed at once in a noisy chorus, then went to work.