The Quartz Massacre

by Rebecca Levene

  "Seal the building!" Hoffa screamed.

  He only hoped it wasn't already too late.

  The battle was fiercer than any that Rogue had yet fought. The shattered landscape of Nu Paree was a nightmare to traverse, offering concealment for Nort snipers, or targets for Hoppa missiles that threatened to bring the shattered masonry down on top of him. There were decapitators everywhere, the whirring blades of the little flying robots buzzing like insects as they swarmed towards him, hungry for his flesh. He took out a cluster now, aiming for the leader, knowing that once it was gone - seared into a ball of fire - the rest, mindless without it, would soon follow. He didn't wait to watch it happen. He just kept on moving forwards, fighting, racing along the dry riverbed that ran like an artery right into the heart of the city.

  He knew that the important thing was to keep going. If he ever lost his momentum, the Norts would work out that he was only one man and that there was no way he should be able to be taking out so many of them unopposed. They were firing wildly, and not well. They'd even managed some friendly fire incidents, and he'd seen a stray round from a Nort hell cannon barrel into the wall of the cathedral itself.

  Ahead of him, he saw a pile of ammo crates and he was about to drop a micro-mine or two into them, leaving a surprise for the Norts behind him and maybe taking out a couple more of the Hoppas that were closing in fast when Helm said, "I'm picking up a strange signal from those crates. It's some kind of weapon."

  Rogue almost didn't bother to check, but the Hoppas were nearly on him now and any weapon he could find had to be good news.

  Especially when it turned out to be a Sammie launcher. Grinning in triumph, Rogue strapped it the bottom of Gunnar's barrel and took down the nearest Nort with just two shots.

  "Woo-hoo!" Gunnar shouted. "Now we're cooking!"

  Rogue felt good about it too, but he knew they shouldn't get cocky. At the moment they had the advantage of surprise. The Norts thought they'd kept the area clear with their Hoppa air surveillance and the constant ground patrols, but it had made them careless. Even better, it meant that the bulk of their forces were stationed on the perimeter they thought they'd established.

  Rogue had a few clear minutes until they all came piling back in, and he intended to make full use of them.

  He threw himself to the side and rolled forward, and then ran on, not stopping to look at the deep crater the missile meant for his head had made in the compcrete of the fallen wall. Gunnar was constantly moving in his hands, spraying fire left, right, behind him. Gunnar could aim for him even when he couldn't see.

  The dying screams of the Norts were muffled behind their chem suits, but Helm helpfully amplified them for him, just so he'd know he was doing his job well. It gave him no pleasure, just a grim sort of satisfaction.

  A whole company of Norts rose ahead of him suddenly. They'd been hiding in a crater in the street he hadn't even seen and now they were almost close enough to touch. Before he even had time to ask for it, Bagman's robot arm had pulled a micro-mine from his pack and flung it towards the Norts.

  "Jump, Rogue!" he shouted.

  Rogue didn't need to be asked. Using the superhuman strength of his specially bred muscles, he vaulted over the heads of the startled Norts, clearing them by a good three metres. Still, when the mine went off beneath them, the force waves from it pushed him unstoppably through the air, throwing him into the wrecked remnants of what must once have been a rich man's playcruiser. He rolled with the fall and kept on running, ignoring the searing pain from where the blast had scorched the skin of his back.

  The cathedral was in sight now, looming darkly over the streets like a curse. But always there were more Norts. One emerged from a side street, and as Rogue ran, he took him out with a casual machine-gun round, having only a second to see the startled look on his round, babyish face as the bullets tore the chem mask right off him.

  "Should'a got us re-gened before this," Helm said. "That way, if you don't make it through, we'd still have a chance."

  Rogue didn't say anything. He needed to conserve his breath for the frantic run. There was no way the people in the cathedral hadn't heard the firefight. Hoffa was probably already making plans to escape. Rogue had to expend all his energy, use every breath in his body to get there before Hoffa did.

  Besides, Helm was right. Rogue was risking all of their lives and he hadn't really given them much choice, which meant he owed it to them not to die. He flicked out a shot that took one Nort through the heart, then another that blasted the one behind him through the head. And he kept on running.

  In a scrubby landscape that wasn't quite desert nor grassland, a figure bent over a Souther corpse. After a moment, it reached out and flipped it over, wincing at the blood that oozed out of the many wounds. It pulled open the chem suit - this soldier didn't need to worry about toxins now - then drew out the dog tag from beneath his fatigues and read the name.

  Sergeant Steel.

  So, it looked like Rogue really had gone rogue, finally living up to the name which had never quite suited him back on Milli-Com. Back when he'd been just another GI, a good one, maybe the best. One who'd obeyed orders, smartly, not dumbly, just the way he'd been trained. Now he was killing his own side, killing the men sent to bring him back in. That had never been in his training.

  What would Colonel Kovert make of that?

  Pietr had to spend three hours psyching himself up for it, and then another two preparing the speech he was going to make in his head. It wasn't like he didn't have the time. Now that the action was over, he found himself with a permanent halo of space around him, no matter where he went. If he walked into a tight group of soldiers, all laughing over some joke with post-battle relief, they'd mysteriously part around him, as if he was surrounded by some sort of personal force field.

  Or, more likely, as if he was suffering from some affliction that none of them wanted to catch. He knew what the affliction was. Cowardice. Well, he would show them. He would prove that he was no coward, and no traitor either. He would prove it to them, and more importantly he would prove it to himself - and to Jaze.

  When he strode towards the group eating their rations round the burning remains of a Souther tank, he saw them look up, and then look down again, pretending he wasn't there. That he wasn't even worth noticing.

  He almost gave up at that point. But then he remembered what Jaze always used to say about him, that he was a quitter, that he didn't have the guts or the balls to see anything difficult through to the end, and he cleared his throat. "Listen," he said.

  There was absolutely no reaction from the men in front of him. He could see the bald patch on the top of Schulz's head as he bent to his plate of grey slop, and the clicking of their jaws seemed unnaturally loud in the silence they'd left around his word.

  "Listen," he said again. "I know what you all think. About me. I know you think I'm a coward. But it's... it's not true. It's not fair."

  Schulz did look up at that. "Go away, Pietr. There's nothing you can say to us that will make up for what we saw you do."

  "I'm going to hunt him down," Pietr said.

  That did get a reaction. Some of the other soldiers looked up. Schulz frowned. "Hunt who down?"

  "Him, the Genetic Infantryman. The one who killed Natashov. Who killed my brother."

  "Yeah? How'd you know he killed Jaze?" Schulz asked. "They all look the same."

  "There are some faces you don't forget," Pietr said, and for once his words were treated with respect. "I know I should have got him before, but I wasn't ready. I am now. I don't care how long it takes, or how hard it is. I'm going to hunt him down and get my revenge for what he's done." He felt his confidence growing as he spoke the words. He knew it was the right thing to do. It was what Jaze would have wanted him to do.

  Schulz laughed at him. He turned away from Pietr to face the other men. "I get it. He's planning to desert and he's making up his excuse ahead of time." Then he lowered his head and carried on eating, as if Pie
tr had disappeared again.

  Furious, Pietr lashed out, striking the mess plate from Schulz's hands. The grey gruel splashed onto the soldier next to him who leapt up with a cry of annoyance. Pietr ignored him. "Think what you like," he shouted, to all of them. "But you'll think different when I come back with the Rogue Souther's head in a bag."

  Then he strode out of the camp and he didn't look back. All he had to do was prove that he really was right.

  Far away from the battle, in a little café that was still miraculously standing, Bland and Brass sat sipping coffees.

  They'd brought the usual portable field generators with them, so they'd been able to slip out of their chem suits. A robot walked over to the table, servers chugging as legs that hadn't moved for decades were pressed into reluctant service. Bland had mended it as soon as they'd found the restaurant. No point eating out if the service wasn't up to scratch.

  He regretted it now, of course. It was the rudest thing he'd ever come across. He really should have remembered what he'd learnt about Nu Paree back when he was in intelligence.

  "Will messieurs be vacating the table soon?" the machine asked, its voice scratchy from long misuse. "Only as you can see we are very busy." The place was, of course, entirely deserted.

  Bland ignored the machine and turned to Brass. "So, what odds will you give me on the Rogue Trooper surviving this conflict?"

  Brass frowned at him as he sipped his mint tea. "Don't be vulgar, Mr Bland. One should never bet on a man's life. Particularly when our entire plan depends on him surviving. To make a bet would be tempting fate."

  Bland decided that Brass was probably right, and returned to eating his croissant in silence. It would all be over soon enough anyway.

  Hoffa couldn't believe it had all gone so wrong so quickly. His men had assured him that the whole place was secure, the whole town, damn it! And yet he could hear the sound of gunfire somewhere in the outer corridors of the cathedral base. The enemy hadn't just breached the perimeter - he'd annihilated it!

  And all this in front of the Souther traitor, a man who was supposed to be impressed with Nort might, not seeing Nort forces routed by one single man. Still, he reminded himself, it was the traitor's fault that the man was free at all. There was no way he'd be getting the remainder of his fee after this. There was another round of machine-gun fire outside - this one sounding like it was only feet from the door.

  "What's happening?" Hoffa shouted into his radio. There was no reply. "Answer me!" he screamed. He got back nothing but static, and behind that the sound of gunfire and screams. Hoffa was coldly certain that they were the screams of dying Norts. For his entire military career he'd managed to stay well back from any battles, directing from the rear. And of all places, at the absolute centre of his power, the battle was coming to him!

  The static continued for a moment as Hoffa screamed into the radio. Then, ominously, it all went completely silent.

  "Your men are dead, admiral," the traitor's voice said from behind him. "And I'm afraid our arrangement has changed."

  Hoffa spun round to face him. His heart was racing so hard he really feared it might burst. Too many years of good living on the kind of rations you only got when in high command. "What... what are you talking about?" He felt a sudden cold fear when he looked at the Souther's face. He'd never noticed how cruel it was before, how utterly lacking in any human warmth.

  Then he looked down and saw the pistol the traitor general held in his hand. Before Hoffa could really register the reality of that, or the fact that it was pointed directly at his chest, the traitor reached up a hand and pulled down the visor of his chem suit to cover his face. Behind the plasglass mask, his face suddenly looked like a reflection, just an echo of a real person.

  "I can't allow any chance that my identity could be discovered," the traitor said calmly. Then he moved his gun away from Hoffa's chest and towards the wall and fired.

  For a second, Hoffa thought he'd been spared. Then he realised that the round the traitor had fired was a seal-burster. It had punched a hole clean through the wall of his base. Through it, the toxic atmosphere of Nu Earth rushed in with an audible whoosh, a yellow and green cloud that meant only one thing to anyone not already masked.

  "No!" Hoffa screamed. He tried to say more, but he could feel his throat closing up, swelling as the toxins hit it. He fell to his knees, choking. Through eyes that were already boiling in his head, he saw the traitor turn calmly and walk away.

  If Rogue hadn't paused to collect enough salvage for Bagman to make him a couple of Sammies, he might have been finished. As it was, he didn't rate his chances.

  The inner door to the cathedral was guarded. He'd expected that, but he hadn't expected the two huge mechanical suits the guards were wearing, doubling the size of the Norts within them, casing them in almost impenetrable steel armour.

  The first one fired off a round towards him and when he dodged to the side, there was a hail of bullets from the other one waiting for him, two of them searing agonisingly through the soft flesh of his forearm.

  "Sammies, now!" he screamed at Bagman, but even the seconds it took to fit them to Gunnar might be too much. Another spray of bullets splashed towards him. They missed, but the shattered compcrete they blasted from the walls and floor flung shrapnel into his unprotected shoulders.

  "Done!" Bagman shouted.

  Rogue's hands were numb; he almost couldn't feel the missile Bagman thrust at him, and for a terrible second he fumbled it and almost dropped it to the ground. Then it was on, slotted into Gunnar, and he got one quick look at the mechanical arms of the Nort's war suit reaching towards him before it blew up in a gout of red-hot molten metal. Then he spun and took the second one and he didn't even care that shards of the explosion blasted into his flesh, flaying it from his bones, because he'd cleared the way and now there was nothing to stop him from getting into the cathedral and to Hoffa.

  Except something, some twinge in his gut, told him he was too late.

  Inside the chamber was the man that Rogue recognised from the hacked Nort transmissions as Grand Admiral Hoffa. He didn't look capable of engineering the death of every friend Rogue had ever had. In fact, he didn't look capable of engineering anything. He was obviously dying. As Rogue ran up to Hoffa, Gunnar trained on his desperate, gasping form, he saw that the skin on his face had boiled and split, ravaged by the chem which was leaking in through a large hole in the pressure dome.

  When Rogue got close enough, he saw that the admiral's lips were working, but the sound that emerged was little more than a harsh whisper. He had to bend his head down to hear it. "Help... help me," the admiral pleaded. For a moment, the remnant of one of his eyes caught Rogue's.

  "Help you?" Gunnar grated. "The scum who murdered our buddies!"

  Hoffa's ruined eyes flicked round the chamber, as if trying to find the source of the voice. After a moment, they settled back on Rogue. He heaved in a breath, and Rogue could hear the toxins bubbling in his lungs as he did it. "I... I gave the orders, but the information came from one of your own."

  Rogue felt the words like a shard of ice stabbing into his heart. "A traitor? Who?"

  Hoffa shook his head, though Rogue wasn't sure if he meant that he wouldn't or couldn't say.

  Rogue took hold of the admiral's shoulder in a grip that would have been agonising if the man hadn't already been overwhelmed by the pain of the toxins. "Tell me," Rogue said to him, loud enough to be sure that he heard, "and I won't kill you."

  Another coughing fit took hold of Hoffa, leaving a red froth of blood around his lips. For a moment Rogue thought that he was already gone, but then he lifted his arm and pointed towards the airlock door on the other side of the chamber. A moment later his hand reached up to clasp his neck, desperately clawing at it as if he could force a way through for the air which could no longer make it past the swollen constriction of his throat. "Please," he said.

  Rogue released him and stood up. "I said I wouldn't kill you. I didn't say
anything about helping you live."

  He paused a moment longer, to make sure that Hoffa really was finished, then raced towards the airlock door. Outside it, he ran straight onto a Hoppa landing pad. One of the Hoppas, a great brute of a flying machine, was already lifting off from the pad. The air beneath it was churning, blowing up a miniature whirlwind of chem that choked even Rogue.

  "The traitor," Gunnar shouted. "He's escaping!"

  The Hoppa was already fifty feet into the air by the time he'd finished speaking, and receding fast. It left behind the ravaged ruins of Nu Paree - and another empty Hoppa.

  "He's trying to escape," Rogue said. "Let's make sure he doesn't succeed."

  SIX

  CRASH COURSE

  There was a moment of discomfort that Helm might have experienced as pain, had he still had a body, and then he was in. The Hoppa system wasn't like anything he'd yet hacked. They'd had some training in Nort technology back on Milli-Com, but studying the schematics of the big machines was very different from being inside the wires and circuits, his consciousness floating through a landscape that was nothing like the human mind.

  "How you doing?" Rogue's voice asked. It was like a faint echo of a sound, intruding into a world where it didn't belong, then out again, threatening to take Helm's mind back out with it. With an effort that was like clenching a muscle in his head, Helm held himself inside the virtual world of the Hoppa's onboard computer. With an even greater effort, he sent his own voice out of that world and into the real one which at the moment seemed little more than the memory of a dream to him. "I'm working on it as fast as I can, Rogue." I'd like to see you do it faster, he thought but didn't say. The man who'd taken his body away from him was within their sights; it was no time for the team to be squabbling, however much Rogue's take-charge tone might piss him off.