Messenger

by James Walker

  The squadron members cheered.

  “Shown here's got no military training, just a civilian license,” Cena said. “But he already has combat experience. In his first battle, he fought one-on-one with a Spacy augment in one of their latest suits.”

  This elicited exclamations of approval from several of the squadron members. Vic objected, “People keep saying that, but they always neglect to mention that I got my ass kicked.”

  “That doesn't matter,” Cena said. “If a rookie goes one-on-one with a Spacy augment and lives to tell about it, that's a win in our book.”

  “All right, that does it for the introduction,” Tinubu said. “Both of you pick a pod, and may the best pilot win.”

  Glad to get out of sight of so many eyes, Vic opened up the nearest dive pod and climbed inside. Just before he closed the hatch, Cena grinned at him from her own pod and held up one hand in the V-for-victory sign.

  Then the hatch closed, and everything went dark.

  26

  Once the hardware came online and loaded the simulation, Vic found himself seated in a cockpit. The viewscreen showed a blasted cityscape not unlike what he imagined Hongpan's outer districts might look like in another 20 years. Although the basic controls were familiar, the instrument panel was more complex than the models he had operated in the past. Before he could begin to puzzle out the controls, the instruments alerted him to an incoming transmission. Cena's face, now surrounded by a protective helmet, appeared in the corner of the screen.

  “Corporal,” she said, “you are now seated inside a virtual rendering of an MDX-2 Mad Ox heavy ground warfare exosuit. Are you familiar with this model?”

  “Uh, no,” Vic replied.

  “Then you're in for a treat.” Cena's enthusiasm showed clearly on her freckled face. “The Mad Ox is one of the finest ground combat suits ever developed. It features advanced composite armor, full N.B.C. protection, E.M.P. shielding, robust sensor and communication suite, and massive firepower in a fully modular weapons loadout.

  “We've got a few of these in our squadron, by the way,” she added. “Snatching these off the black market was the best thing that ever happened to us. It's a two-seater, so you can have a pilot and a gunner if you want. We've got more suits than pilots, so we just use it in single-operator mode.”

  “Right,” Vic said uncertainly.

  “You don't seem impressed,” Cena said, disappointed. “Well, you will be after you've seen this baby in action. Let's start with the basics. The feet are equipped with rollers. Ever use those before?”

  “Wheels or treads on the feet to enable greater mobility than locomotion alone can provide,” Vic recited. “I've used them before. Some of the heavier construction models have them.”

  “Great, I can skip that explanation, then,” Cena said. “Now, the sensors and communications are more sophisticated than civilian models, but you can read all about that in the manual. Only other thing to worry about right now is your weapons.”

  Vic nodded. “So what have I got to work with?”

  “Well, like I said, the Ox's loadout is modular, so you've got lots of options,” Cena explained. “First, there's your firearm. The two most common choices are a GAO-9 Vengeance automatic rifle or a Renay-1100 armor-piercing shotgun. There are other options, but they're generally pretty specialized. For melee, the V.C. Volcano heat edge is standard equipment. Each shoulder has a hardpoint which can be mounted with a missile pod or a rotary gun. The missile pods can load all kinds of ammo—anti-personnel, anti-air, anti-armor.”

  “Automatic rifle or shotgun for the firearm,” Vic parroted. “Some kind of heat weapon for melee. Rotary gun or missile pods on the shoulders. Missile pods can take lots of kinds of ammo.”

  “It sounds kind of clinical when you put it that way,” Cena complained. “But that's pretty much it.”

  “So what would you recommend against another Mad Ox?” Vic asked.

  “Missile pods with anti-armor warheads for the shoulders,” Cena said. “Could go either way on the firearm. The rifle has a higher effective range, but the shotgun is deadlier at close range.”

  “Guess I'll go with the rifle.”

  “I'll use a shotgun then, just to make things interesting.” Cena's shoulder bobbed up and down as she input a sequence of commands that Vic could not see. “There, done. You're now fully loaded and ready to go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Any last-minute questions?”

  Vic thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I think I'll just have to learn by doing.”

  “Well, then.” Cena's mouth spread into a dangerous grin. “Let the game begin. No rules. Winner is the last one standing. Good luck, rookie.”

  “Uh, hold on,” Vic said. “I did think of one question.”

  Cena froze in the middle of switching off the transmission and looked up at the screen. “Hm?”

  “Have you ever lost one of these matches?”

  The dangerous smile returned. “Nope.”

  The transmission terminated. Cena's face vanished from the viewscreen.

  Vic's gaze fell to the sensor readout. It was filled with static and flashing the message, “Main sensors offline—lidar operative.” So the simulation included the effects of the silence particles. It would be a game of hide-and-seek, then.

  Vic's starting position was in an alley. He inched his suit toward the street in front of him. The responsiveness was on the sluggish side, but that only stood to reason, given the model's mass.

  He reached the end of the alley and leaned out into the street, glancing to the left and right. He saw nothing but the blasted, crumbling remains of tall buildings. No sign of his opponent.

  A warning trill brought Vic's gaze back to the sensor readout. It was picking up a signal directly behind him. Using the rollers to skate along the ground, he executed an arcing maneuver to take cover behind the building on his right. A series of thunderous cracks rang out and large chunks were blasted off the building, showering his exosuit. The proximity of such powerful impacts made him flinch.

  “Pretty realistic simulation,” he muttered.

  He aimed his rifle around the corner and fired off several bursts. There was no response. The echoes of gunfire trailed off into expectant silence.

  Rather than rushing into the alley whence the shots had come, Vic moved down a block and entered another alleyway. A pile of rubble blocked his path, but he climbed over it and proceeded to the end of the alley. He peered around the corner and saw nothing but a deserted, rubble-strewn street. He lowered his suit to a crouch and proceeded into the street.

  The moment Vic stepped out from behind his cover, Cena's suit emerged from an alley about two blocks down, its weapons trained in his direction. It was Vic's first view of a Mad Ox's external appearance. It was a bulky suit, its limbs and torso encased in thick, angular armor. He did not have time to get a more detailed impression as Cena opened fire with her shotgun, filling the street with a cacophony of cannon fire.

  Vic put full power into the rollers and took cover behind a pile of rubble. Although he lowered his suit as much as he could, his left missile pod stuck out and was struck by one of the shotgun's enormous pellets, rendering it inoperative.

  He realized that staying on the defensive would only delay his defeat. If he was to have any chance of victory, he would have to take some risks. He took an instant to steel himself, then spun out from behind the pile of rubble and raked the street with fire from his rifle.

  Cena's suit vanished behind a building before any of Vic's rounds could find their mark. A fraction of a second later, he realized that, as she moved behind cover, Cena had simultaneously fired a missile from one of her pods.

  Vic skated into the nearest alley and watched in horror as the missile bent around the corner and flew toward him. He flung his suit to the ground just as the missile struck the wall over his head. A shower of debris rained on his suit, one of the pieces striking its head. The sen­sor readout went blan
k.

  “Not like they were much use anyway,” Vic muttered.

  He returned his suit to its feet and reentered the street. He ran from corner to corner, alert for any sign of movement. Cena had ambushed him twice, and he had managed to survive both times. He did not want to give her a third chance.

  The sound of metal scraping across concrete alerted Vic to Cena's position. He slipped into an adjoining alley and managed to get behind her, but her sensors must have alerted her to his presence, because she spun and opened fire at the same time as he did. Then she skated around a corner and out of sight. Vic followed, the two of them weaving through the labyrinth of alleys and trading fire, striking only glanc­ing blows that failed to penetrate each other's armor. Finally, Cena's fighting withdrawal took her into a dead-end. Her suit glanced over its shoulder, taking in the wall behind her, just as Vic rounded the corner.

  “Made a mistake that time, didn't you,” he exclaimed as he fired his rifle.

  He watched in astonishment as Cena's suit leapt in the air, planted its feet on the walls to either side, and used its rollers to shoot up the sides of the buildings. Vic's aim followed her upward, but too slowly to overtake her. When she reached the top, she propelled her suit off the side of the taller building and cartwheeled out of view, onto the roof of the shorter structure.

  The next instant, another missile flew from the top of the building. Vic sprayed fire at it and, mostly by luck, struck it with a rifle round, causing it to explode in midair. Cena leapt over his head onto the roof of the next building, leaned over, and fired several rounds from her shotgun. Although Vic ran from corner to corner, Cena was able to easily keep pace with him by staying on the rooftops, all the while tearing chunks off his armor with blasts from her shotgun. One of the shots disabled his other missile pod. He was being taken apart piece by piece, saved only by the Mad Ox's extreme durability—but that would not hold out forever.

  Realizing that being stuck at ground level put him at a crippling disadvantage, Vic tried to mimic Cena's maneuver by riding the rollers up the sides of the buildings. For an instant it seemed that he would suc­ceed, but then his right foot slipped, sending him spinning through the air. His suit flew out of the alley and crashed into an open plaza.

  The jarring impact left him momentarily stunned. He noticed Cena appear on a nearby rooftop just in time to roll out of the way of another shotgun blast, then jumped to his feet, leveled his crosshairs over her suit, and pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  One of the pellets from the last shotgun blast had torn through his rifle. Vic threw the useless weapon aside and took cover behind a crumbling wall so that Cena did not have a clear line of fire.

  Seeking a better angle of attack, Cena jumped the gap to the next building over. As she landed, the roof cracked and then gave way beneath her suit's bulk, the entire structure collapsing in a cloud of dust and debris. Through the dust, Vic saw her suit sprawled in the middle of the ruined structure, half-covered with rubble, its shotgun lying sev­eral meters away.

  Cena had destroyed all his weapons, save one. He drew his heat edge—an enormous sword with a superheated blade—and lunged, intending to slice her suit in half.

  Cena recovered in time to draw her blade and met Vic's swing with her own, showering the surroundings with melted slag. She drove him back and regained her feet, but Vic continued pressing his advantage, swinging wildly without pause, forcing her to stay on the defensive.

  Finally, one of Vic's swings got past Cena's blade, cleaving through her suit's shoulder and severing her sword arm, but the force of his lunge caused both suits to lose their balance and fall to the ground in a tangle. Vic managed to disentangle his suit from Cena's and raised his blade for the finishing stroke just in time to notice the shotgun pressed against his cockpit.

  Bang.

  The screen went red, then faded to black and displayed a terse message in scarlet text.

  “You are dead.”

  *

  The system released its hold on Vic's senses, returning him to the real world. As the dive pod's hatch swung open, he realized the simulation room was filled with cheering. The next moment, he was swept out of the pod into a crowd of soldiers slapping him on the back and offer­ing congratulations.

  “That was one hell of a show, Corporal. You seriously don't have any military training?”

  “I've never seen anyone give Northwood that much trouble before—and a rookie at that!”

  “Where the hell did you learn to pilot an exosuit like that?”

  Cena emerged from her own dive pod and stood at the edge of the crowd, covered in sweat and looking peevish. “Hey, what am I, chopped liver?” she demanded. “I beat him, didn't I? I—hey, what's so damn funny?”

  Several of the other squadron members were laughing. Even Tinubu could not quite prevent himself from chuckling. Their mirth only made Cena more petulant.

  “Even you, Captain?” she cried.

  “I'm sorry, Sergeant,” Tinubu replied, still chuckling. “It was just—the look on your face when the building collapsed under you—it was priceless.”

  Vic looked up at the large monitor, which was displaying a view of the battlefield, along with interior views of the cockpits, both empty now that the simulation was over. The words “Winner: Sgt. Cena Northwood” flashed across the scene.

  “I think we've got a new Number Two for our squadron,” one of the pilots said.

  “Hell, with skills like that, he'll be Number One in a month.” Another pilot looked at Cena and smirked. “Better watch out, Northwood. That top gun title is starting to look a little shaky.”

  Cena glared at him. “Nobody asked you.” Then her expression softened and she elbowed her way through her squadron mates to stand before Vic.

  “That was some pretty amazing piloting, though,” she admitted. “I'm impressed. That was way beyond my expectations.” She extended her hand.

  Uncomfortable with so much attention, Vic hesitated for a moment, then he accepted Cena's hand and gave it a firm shake. “Thanks. Not too bad yourself, Sergeant. None of the civilian pilots I've known could hold a candle to those kinds of maneuvers.”

  Vic did not voice the dark caveat to his praise: that as good as Cena was, she wasn't as good as the augments. They were faster, more aggressive, more accurate, more ruthless, more fearless. If he was to stand a chance against Spacy's superhuman pilots, then at the very least, he would have to surpass Cena's current level—and obviously that went for every other pilot in the squadron, including Cena herself.

  “Well, I'd say you've passed the initiation.” Tinubu came forward and took his turn shaking Vic's hand. “Welcome to the Thunderbirds, Corporal.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Vic replied.

  “Still.” Tinubu released Vic's hand and looked him up and down. “Skilled pilot or not, with that skinny frame, you've got a lot of toughening up to do. Better brace yourself, Corporal. We're gonna make a soldier out of you. And it's going to be hell.”

  Vic's expression hardened. “Just what I wanted to hear.”

  FOURTH MESSAGE: CRISIS ~ INVISIBLE, INAUDIBLE, INTANGIBLE

  27

  Pierson, Childers, and Guntar stood within a vast underground chamber full of scaffolding and the vertical tracks of a cargo elevator currently locked on the upper level. Although no longer operational, the chamber had once served as a storage compound for a surface industrial complex located directly overhead. Due to collapsed tunnels having altered the layout of the Undercity, this chamber was the best location for relocating the Cage and attaching it to the Greenwings' computing cluster. The three rebel officers stood before its ominous facade, now surrounded by computer equipment, with a tangle of cables swarming around its base. Esther stood next to the main console, ex­amining the readouts, while the lone surviving member of her science team and several technicians from the Greenwings milled about, mak­ing adjustments.

  Esther closed her terminal interface with a frustrated sigh,
then turned and walked toward the officers. At their inquiring looks, she shook her head.

  “I've tried just about every technique I know to break the security on this thing,” she said. “I'm a fair hand at cryptanalysis, but my knowledge is a little dated. They seem to be using some kind of new algorithm, something I haven't seen before. We need a specialist.”

  Childers replied, “Sounds like we'll need to contact Professor Harris after all.”

  “You mentioned that name before,” Pierson said. “Who is that?”

  “Dexter Harris is a computer researcher at Teihou University,” Childers said. “His specialties are computer security and cryptography.”

  “Sounds like exactly what we need,” Esther said.

  “Is he a member of your cell?” Guntar asked.

  “Not exactly,” Childers said. “Rather say that he's sympathetic to our cause. He's helped us hack into Colonial Admin's databases a few times, cracked the encryption on some stolen files, that sort of thing.”

  “Then why didn't we get him on board with this project from the beginning?” Guntar demanded.

  Childers looked hesitant. “He can be a little difficult to work with. He's, how shall I put this? An extremely cautious man. An uncharitable person might even use the word 'paranoid.'”

  “How will we get his help with this?” Pierson asked. “Hooking the Cage up to the network would be a dead giveaway.”

  “You're right,” Rick agreed. “We'll have to convince the professor to come here. I think I can persuade him to take some emergency leave, but it won't be easy convincing him to leave the comfort of the Golden Ward and go slumming with us. He'll want some protection.”

  “In other words, an escort,” Guntar said.

  Childers nodded. “He won't be willing to venture too far outside the Golden Ward by himself. Security will be pretty thick at the pick-up point.”