The Quartz Massacre

by Rebecca Levene

  He rolled with it, rose to his feet and kept on running, kept on fighting. Inside the city, the battle was even fiercer. Pockets of Souther resistance remained, but only small ones - the city belonged to the Norts now and unless Rogue could get to the traitor general, cut the heart right out of them, then soon the whole of the continent would be theirs.

  On the grey, fragmented streets he met his first Kashans. He felt a flare of rage when he saw them in their blood-red uniforms, but he suppressed it because no one fought at their best when they were angry. Still, every time he shot one down he saw the face of one of his fallen comrades and thought that that death at least had been avenged.

  His mind was focussed on one objective, on getting to the traitor as quickly as he could, but when he saw a small remnant of Southers pinned down by a Hoppa there was no question that he would help them.

  The biochips seemed to read his mind. "Enough salvage here for a few Sammies," Bagman told him.

  "Set me on auto and I'll cover you while you collect it," Gunnar added.

  Rogue had already begun assembling Gunnar's tripod, relying on Helm to alert him to any flanking attacks while he did. It took him minutes, too many of them, to pick up enough scraps of equipment and metal to satisfy Bagman, and in that time he saw three of the Souther troops fall to the ground and only one of them managed to stagger to his feet again.

  "Time's ticking," Helm said, as Rogue swept the ground for more refuse, the valuable detritus of war. "We're giving the traitor time to get away."

  "What do you want me to do, leave them?" Rogue snapped, and Helm didn't have any reply to that. Another Souther fell as they watched, a fountain of blood rising from his mouth to splash out and obscure the mask of his chem suit.

  Then, finally, the Sammies were ready, and after that taking the Hoppas down was just a matter of aiming and firing. Rogue left Gunnar where he was for the moment to mop up any Nort stragglers and ran towards the remaining Southers. There were only five of them now, and one of them, he suddenly saw, was Pietr. The boy was favouring his right leg slightly, looking like he'd taken a blow there, but he was alive. Rogue saw the former Nort smile at him behind his chem mask, the wild grin of battle. There was a new confidence to the boy, something Rogue hadn't seen in him during their brief time fighting side by side.

  Only when he got to them did Rogue realise the reason the Southers hadn't been able to retreat. Behind them, looming so large it blotted out the sky behind it, was the outline of a Nort Blackmare tank. Rogue looked at it and cursed - there was no way he was getting past that in a hurry, no matter how many Sammies Bagman made for him.

  "We'll take care of the Blackmare, Rogue," Pietr told him. "There should be a way in to the centre of the city through the storm drains. Take it and we'll cover your back."

  Rogue hesitated a moment, but he knew that his was the most urgent mission so he sketched a quick salute back at Pietr, the same one the young soldier had given him, and then headed into the yawning mouth of the storm drain. When he was still running down it, the bitter rainwater that fled here from the parched surface of Nu Earth sloshing around his feet, he heard an explosion behind him about as loud as you'd expect when a Blackmare tank blew up, and he allowed himself a slight, grim smile. It seemed his faith in the young Nort hadn't been misplaced.

  It also seemed like every damn Nort in the town followed him down there as soon as the smoke from the Blackmare's explosion had cleared, and they had enough decapitators and pillboxes with them to take out a whole regiment.

  But not a regiment of Genetic Infantrymen. Rogue saw soon enough what the problem was: a hotel the Norts were using as a base of operations, pouring more troops out of its doors to face him than should have been able to fit inside it. He decided that they must have tunnelled beneath the place, connected it up to their network of supply tubes and drill-probe tunnels and deeply buried bunkers that had eaten through the surface of Nu Earth like a cancer. That meant the reinforcements they could pipe in through the hotel were effectively limitless.

  Well, that was easily taken care of. "Micro-mines, Bagman, lots of 'em," he snapped.

  He enjoyed the expressions on the Norts' faces as they saw the source of their advantage sealed up behind them, leaving them to face the blue-skinned monster in front of them alone. But he didn't enjoy it for long. There were still enough Kashans around to present a real threat. Beam weapons seared at him, brighter than the sunlight fighting its way through the chem clouds above him. There were drill-probes too, churning up the concrete of the street behind him when they found their way into the hotel blocked, and the ubiquitous Hoppas, strafing the street as he ran.

  For a moment, he had to fight the urge to stay and kill them all, every single Kashan, to stain every one of their red chem suits with the red of their own blood. But if he wanted revenge, there was a better one to be had at the heart of the city, tantalisingly close now. The Kashans were enemies, they'd been doing what they were supposed to be doing, though with a brutality and a pleasure he'd never forgive, but the traitor was the man behind it all - and he was supposed to be on Rogue's side.

  Rogue ran on, only taking out the troops who stood in his way, relying on Bagman to guard his rear and warn him when anyone was getting too close. Finally, he made it to the end of the street, so wired on the souped-up adrenaline with which the Gene Genies had filled his glands that the las beams of the Kashan's rifles had started to seem solid to him, as easy to dodge as the obstacle courses they'd set them back on Milli-Com, when he still hadn't known what real battle was.

  One flick of his wrist, and he sealed off the entrance to the street behind him and suddenly there were no more Norts. The street ahead, the wreckage of the city, seemed empty, almost preternaturally quiet.

  Rogue drew in a deep breath, pulling his mind back into his body from the strange place it floated when he lost himself in the fight. I'm a fighting machine, he thought. It was a phrase the Gene Genies had used often, but for the first time he fully believed it. He was a machine made to fight, but that didn't mean he didn't have choices. His body was a machine, but his mind was his own, and this revenge he was about to take was for him only, not for Kovert or Milli-Com, but for him, Bagman, Gunnar, Helm, Atlas, Zealot, Jitters and all the other GIs who were real people with real names, whatever the Gene Genies might have taught them.

  Rogue could see it up ahead, the building that contained the man who could end this all.

  "Nearly there, Rogue," Gunnar said, and Rogue thought he could hear some of his own feelings in his comrade's voice.

  But he was a GI, and the fight was never really over.

  "Look out!" Helm screamed, a micro-second before the shot struck, just soon enough for Rogue to leap out of the direct path of the bullet. It struck the ground beside him, shattering as no bullet should, and when whatever was inside it splashed out and onto Rogue's leg. It burned.

  Rogue had never felt pain like it. He didn't think, up till that moment, he'd ever really known what pain was. Until then, he hadn't yet met anything that could really hurt him.

  "Rogue, it's the same stuff they used to kill Helm," Bagman shouted, horrified.

  The safest thing to do was retreat. The sniper - the master sniper, Rogue was sure, because Rogue had failed to finish him off before - could be hidden anywhere, and the street didn't really offer any cover.

  But retreat wasn't an option. The traitor general lay ahead, and therefore so did Rogue's path. He ran, weaving, diving, and the glass bullets fell all around him, their uniquely lethal toxin spraying out, vaporising in the air so that even his lungs were filled with the hideous, tearing, burning sensation. The toxin dragged at his insides, telling him to slow down, fighting against him for control of his muscles and sinews, but he couldn't let it win.

  The run down the street was the longest he'd ever taken, and when he made it he still couldn't quite believe he was safe. Though safety, of course, was relative.

  "He's got us pinned down," Rogue said to the chi
ps, his voice rough with pain. "Not sure how much longer we can last here." The fire had stopped for the minute - the ammo must be too precious to waste - but Rogue knew it would start again as soon as the sniper had found another perch with a clean shot. And beyond the end of the street, there was nowhere else to run.

  "Not going to be a problem, GI," said a voice that wasn't Helm or Bagman or Gunnar, a voice he could hear both from his radio and from closer at hand.

  Rogue snapped his head around to see Venus crouching in the street behind him, her leg still in bandages and her expression fierce. Then she gave him that crooked half-grin he knew so well. "I can help you."

  "Venus!" Rogue said. "Get back, damn it, you're not well enough for battle."

  "I'm well enough to cover your back!" she snapped back. "I've got a fix on his location but I can't get a shot off from here. I'll play decoy, let you get the shot in."

  For a moment, Rogue thought about protesting. It was a risky strategy, risky as hell, and if anyone was going to set themselves up for target practice, it should be him.

  "Let her do it, Rogue," Helm's voice said softly in his ear. "She's a soldier too."

  Rogue wanted to argue, but Helm loved Venus, and Helm was right. She was a GI too, she had her own revenge to take, and he had no right to stop her taking it. He nodded. "C'mon guys, you heard what the lady said. Time to end this."

  "And if you miss," Helm said, for Rogue's ears only, "the traitor won't have to kill you, cause I'm gonna do it for him."

  Then Venus stepped out of cover, and time seemed to slow to a crawl, as if the black hole above them had suddenly drawn closer, warping and distorting everything around it.

  Rogue saw Venus walk out, head held high, gun tracking imaginary threats, not a trace of fear in her face, though he could read it in the stiff set of her shoulders and the quick rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. He watched, finger itching on Gunnar's trigger, so tense it felt as if the muscles in his arms had tied themselves in knots.

  "Where the hell is he?" Bagman grouched, but Rogue didn't have any attention left over for the words. All of it was on Venus, focussed in as narrow a beam as the energy rifles the Kashans carried.

  Then, far from the angle he was expecting, over to his left, it came. There was too little time between the red flash of the sighting laser and the shot that would inevitably follow it, nowhere near enough time for Rogue to locate the source of the laser.

  As if a part of his brain that had been sleeping before suddenly woke up, he just knew where the beam was coming from, high up on one of the grand, ruined buildings lining the street.

  His own shot rang out before he'd even had time to send the message from his brain to his trigger finger.

  For one horrible moment, he thought he'd missed. His body curled in on itself, waiting for the return shot to ring out and for Venus to fall, screaming in agony.

  The shot never came. Instead, far above him, he saw the black dot of the sniper's body, growing and spinning as it fell to earth, until finally it smashed down on the rubble only a few metres from Rogue. The mask was entirely shattered, the flat hate-filled face inside fully revealed. Rogue's shot had taken it through the forehead.

  "Gotcha," Rogue said, all the tension draining out of him.

  Venus smiled over at him, more warmly than he'd ever seen. Then she put her game face back on. "Get going, Rogue. I'll keep you covered from here. And be careful. Kovert's up to something but I don't know what."

  "Don't worry, Venus," Rogue told her. "Kovert and me want the same thing here." He picked up his radio and punched in Kovert's frequency. "I'm almost at the traitor's position."

  A thousand metres away, safe from any danger, Kovert smiled, but only with his mouth. His eyes remained as cold and hard as pebbles on the toxic shore of the Orange Sea. "Excellent work, Rogue Trooper. You know what to do next."

  He was very careful to ensure that the radio was switched off, the connection severed, before he turned to the Souther Hoppa commander behind him, a young man who'd risen fast through the ranks because he obeyed every order that was given to him. "Get your squadron into the air," Kovert told him. "You know what to do next."

  THIRTEEN

  THE TRAITOR GENERAL

  There was no one to stop Rogue getting into the lift that took him to the very top of the vast building, but that was because they were all waiting for him there, rank after rank of them, ready to defend the man who should have been their enemy and had made himself Rogue's instead.

  Rogue could see the traitor above him, perched on his balcony, and even from so far below Rogue thought that he could read the triumph in the man's scarred face. Rogue had crossed half a continent to find this monster - and he'd hidden himself behind defences that even Rogue couldn't penetrate.

  Wave after wave of Norts came at him, snipers and Hoppas and decapitators and what must have been every last Kashan left on the planet. He took them out almost as an afterthought. There was only one thing he was interested in: the man on the balcony above him, shielding himself behind all these other lives, and behind layers of defensive shielding, too, but still visible and therefore still vulnerable.

  "There's too many, Rogue!" Bagman said.

  "Scan out, Bagman!" Gunnar snapped. "We can deal with anything the Norts throw at us."

  "If I get you some Sammies," Rogue said, "can you take out the barriers the traitor's hiding behind?" Rogue asked.

  "Sure thing, Rogue, but you're going to have to get higher to get any salvage."

  Getting higher meant getting into the thick of the action, putting himself in a place where he'd be vulnerable from both sides. It didn't matter. If he stayed where he was, he could take out ten Norts, a hundred, a thousand even, but eventually he'd lose concentration for just one second and in that second they'd get him and the traitor would get away.

  He had to take the fight forward if he was to win it at all. The air was thick with gunfire and the beams of the Kashans' rifles. Norts must have been dying in the crossfire but they didn't seem to care - the only thing they cared about was taking Rogue down. Rogue felt a bullet brush against his arm, so close it grazed the skin. Another came closer still, in and out of the soft flesh of his calf. It left a sear of white-hot agony behind it, but Rogue cut it out of his mind and kept on running forward.

  The Norts' faces were hidden behind the insect-like masks of their chem suits, but he thought he could sense their fear. They'd thought they had him outnumbered, that here at last they'd found odds that even he couldn't beat, and maybe they had, but now they were realising that to take him down was going to cost more lives than they could have possibly imagined.

  The ground was littered with the corpses of the Norts he'd killed, shotgun rounds when they grouped too close or came too near, machine gun bursts for the ones who hung back, thinking there was safety in distance.

  Rogue felt another bullet pierce him, through the arm this time, then another, and a rifle beam took him through the chest, missing his heart by less than an inch. The thought that he had very nearly died floated somewhere in the periphery of his attention. He kept it there, along with the knowledge that the bodies around him had been people, with hopes and dreams and futures the same as any other human's. They weren't people to him now. They were just obstacles. Enemies.

  And the biggest enemy of all was staying hidden behind the impenetrable screens of his defensive barriers, watching other men die for him. That was all about to change.

  If he'd had time to think about it, Rogue might not have been able to do it. His body was injured, more seriously injured than it had ever been, despite the med Bagman was mainlining into his veins almost constantly. He shouldn't have been able to stand, let alone make it onto the low balcony running the length of the room. He shouldn't have been able to see straight, not with the blue blood running into his eyes from the gash on his forehead where a beam rifle had come within inches of taking his head clean off. He certainly shouldn't have been able to fire, again and
again, with lethal accuracy, taking out the Kashans and the EMP units and the decapitators and the pill boxes which wouldn't stop coming after him.

  He shouldn't have been able to make all the Sammies Gunnar needed, but he did. Then everything seemed to disappear from his vision, and all he could see were the great, reinforced sheets of metal above him, and the traitor who'd taken everything he'd ever known from him cowering behind them.

  "I'm showing you the weak points," Helm said. "All you gotta do is aim and fire and the whole thing's gonna come down."

  The world seemed to freeze into a moment of stillness. Rogue could see the weak points, the exact joints in the metal holding up the balcony where one clean Sammie shot would take out the whole structure.

  He raised Gunnar to his shoulder and fired.

  The world started moving again. The Sammies sheared straight through the metal, tearing it away with a shriek that was almost like a human scream. Behind him, Rogue could hear the Norts who'd been pursuing him so relentlessly turn tail and flee. The wreckage from above was falling straight towards them, huge ragged chunks that would instantly crush anyone caught beneath them, and shards of steel that could tear through a chem suit in an instant.

  Rogue didn't move. He only had a few seconds to take the shot, and there was literally nothing on Nu Earth that could stop him. His own life, even those of Bagman and Gunnar and Helm, were very small prices indeed to pay. It wasn't about revenge, not really. It was about honour, and memory, and all the GIs who'd been bred for war, but who might have lived to know something else, if it hadn't been for this one man.

  Rogue raised Gunnar's sight to his eye. The traitor's face leapt into sudden sharp focus, horribly scarred, and now terribly scared. Rogue had never really thought about this man as a person before. He'd been a concept, a mission parameter, but as he stared at that ravaged face in his sights, he could see the man beneath it, the man who'd had reasons for betraying the GIs, who probably believed he'd done the right thing.