Killzone, Ascendancy

by Sam Bradbury

  He was moaning from inside the cabin as Rico and I arrived and rapped on the side of the suit to let him know we were there. In response there was a muffled greeting that might have been a cuss. Or maybe just confirmation that we were ready to roll. We were going to take the bridge.

  With a great clang, the sound of metal complaining and gears engaging, the Exo started up and took its first steps forward towards the bridge. Overhead were Helghast cruisers, blue petrusite beams pulsing and crackling, aimed at what I didn’t know, but at least it wasn’t us. Fighters roared overhead, and dropships too, and now I saw that from the dropships came lines, and more Helghast infantry were descending onto the highway in front of us, scurrying for cover, most heading for a barricade about halfway across the bridge.

  The Exo took its first steps. Straight away the Higs on the bridge opened fire, the range making the barrage ineffective – for now. Dorweiler returned fire from the Exo, sending missiles into a building on the opposite shore. Fire bloomed briefly before the building seemed to disintegrate, falling in a cloud of dust and debris. Rico and I moved up behind the Exo. Enemy infantry opened fire from behind a barricade halfway across and it sent us scurrying to take cover. That barrier, I thought. That was going to be tough to break.

  From somewhere came an RPG round exploding into the road nearby and lashing us with grit and stones, turning everything into razor-sharp shrapnel. I shouldered the assault rifle and squeezed off a few rounds at the barricade. Smoke drifted across the road, blinding me for a moment. There was another explosion to my right and I was sent to my knees, my ears ringing, feeling warmth on my cheek.

  I felt to check the ear was still there. It’s an automatic reaction in the field. When you get an explosion nearby, a frag grenade or an RPG – one that knocks you off your feet, sends you deaf or blind for a moment – your next thought is of the guys who get arms and legs torn off, who say the first they knew of it was either seeing their leg across the other side of the road or feeling for it and finding nothing there but a mushy stump. The body’s good like that. It gives you a few moments’ grace before it tells you that you’ve lost one of your limbs. Only then does the pain start. So you take the hit and you feel to make sure all your bits are still there.

  They were. Just blood, a minor laceration, nothing to worry about, no ear missing. I got to my feet. The Exo was raking fire across the barricade, Helghast there throwing up their arms as they died. It was about to crash through when from the other side leapt a troop transport – least that’s what I think it was. This thing was like a mechanized bug, with four heavily articulated and armoured legs. It looked like they usually came with a full complement of three Hig troops ready to deploy from the spine – I guess they could penetrate deep and quickly that way – but this one was without cargo, which was how come it was light enough to bound over the barricade and come at the Exo before Dorweiler could use missiles on it.

  In an instant the Exo and the carrier were locked in combat. I thought of Dorweiler, sweating. Chain guns must have been jammed or reloading because he engaged the claws, and for a moment the two were going hand to hand, looking more like fighting men than mechs.

  ‘Hold her, steady, Dorweiler,’ I muttered, dropping to one knee and rattling off a clip at the bot, the bullets spanging harmlessly off its armour. Another bang, another RPG blast, a shower of concrete and debris. By my side a trooper went down clutching his neck, a jagged disc of metal jutting from it. It had severed his carotid artery, and a mist of red spray haloed him as he sank, dead before he hit the deck. Squinting through the smoke I could see the telltale red glow of the Helghast infantry finding their cover and crouching. Our infantry was moving up the flank. The rattling of assault rifles was like static against the great ringing of metal that came from the struggling bots.

  Rico and I concentrated our fire on the Helghast carrier, hoping to at least give Dorweiler the edge. Maybe it worked, because with a great screech the Exo slammed a foot into the bot. Then he activated its boosters, shooting the Exo into the air and landing on top of the carrier, finally disabling it. I pictured Dorweiler grinning in the pilot seat. We’d be hearing about that one for a while. And now – cool as you like – Dorweiler kicked the carcass of the troop transport at the barricade, shoving a hole into it.

  He stormed through the busted barricade, announcing his entry with a series of missile blasts. The chain gun was operational again and he raked it across a building to our left, turning everything to rubble, Helghast infantry screaming and exploding in a shower of red. Now the enemy were retreating up the bridge, taking cover and returning fire but losing formation and unable to muster a counter-attack in the face of the Exo’s firepower.

  But Dorweiler must have taken damage during the fight with the troop transport. His armour was breached, perhaps. An RPG round rocked the Exo and the next thing we heard over the comlink was Dorweiler. ‘This is Exo One. I’ve sustained heavy damage. Resuming forward progress.’

  But as he did I could see the rear of the battle suit on fire. I began to run.

  ‘I see flames, Dorweiler,’ I said into my pick-up. ‘Do you copy?’

  ‘Negative.’

  Trying to catch up with it. Christ, he didn’t know.

  ‘Get out of there, Dorweiler,’ I screamed. ‘You’ve got flames. Get out of there now.’

  ‘This is Exo One,’ he said, trying to maintain radio protocol. ‘Critical systems failure.’

  Narville’s scream came over the comlink. He’d seen the flames too. ‘Dorweiler, bail out.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s stuck.’

  A sudden blast of thick warmth as the Exoskeleton went up. In the cabin Dorweiler burned alive. His scream in my headset became a crackle.

  ‘The Exo is down,’ said Narville flatly. ‘Armour Five. Sevchenko and Velasquez are alone out there. Get your ass in gear.’

  ‘I’m on it, Captain,’ replied Armour Five from an Archer.

  Rico and I moved up, Narville yelling at his troops for cover fire. Most of the Helghast were in disarray after the Exo offensive, but those who weren’t retreating had dug in. They needed picking off and clearing to allow the Archers through.

  Rico and me. We’re good at picking off and clearing. Real good at that. Any Helghast who stayed behind paid for their bravery.

  I found cover and opened fire on a building to my left, almost a whole mag, seeing a Helghast fall in a welter of blood. Another was thrown back with the flesh of his face turned to mash.

  From behind me I heard the rumble of an Archer and it crashed through the final barricade. Its cannon spoke, wiping up the last of the Helghast on the other side. They were mostly gone now, and what was left of their force had retreated so they could regroup someplace else. At least we’d given ourselves a breather.

  ‘The area is secure,’ shouted Rico in my headset. ‘We are green.’

  Our infantry was mopping up as we rejoined Narville, who had bad news. Was there any other kind? Our last three cruisers – the ships we were relying on to get us off this rock – were tracking twelve Helghast battleships on their way.

  They didn’t have long, I thought. We had to get the rest of the convoy together and make it to the extraction point. Narville had other ideas. He wanted us to push through to the extraction point without waiting for the rest of the column.

  ‘We can’t afford any more hold-ups,’ he snapped before I could protest. ‘Sevchenko, we need a route to that crater now, or none of us are leaving. You’ve got the HAMRs. When you see Helghast armour, you punch right into it. We’ll ram us a route back home.’

  He turned. ‘As long as everyone follows orders, we’ll be fine,’ he said, as though he was telling himself, not us.

  Watching him go, I realized I knew pretty much zip about Captain Jason Narville. I knew that he’d been on secondment to Earth when the Higs attacked Vekta, and that he was one of those who didn’t make it back in time to help repel the invasion. Even though we’d kicked ass it had hit Narville hard
that he wasn’t around to do it, but, hey, we all have baggage. Mine is that I should have been with my family the day the Higs came calling. Should have died with them or died protecting them.

  And you tried not to let the baggage get in the way in case it made you scared or angry or careless or any other shit that stopped you being a good soldier.

  So what of Narville? I’d heard the grunts talking. Seen them standing around in groups muttering about how Narville was spazzing. In other words: making decisions with his heart and not his head. Me, I knew that he’d been in charge of the operation to take Visari Square when we’d invaded, and that he’d done a great job, so I’d been giving him the benefit of the doubt. Up to now that was. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  But, like I say, that’s the military. So Rico and I trotted to the HAMRs, ready to do the captain’s bidding: take out any Hig armour, punch our way through to the extraction point. Should be a gas.

  Chapter Seven

  Some distance away, high above Pyrrhus in Visari Palace, was the grand senate hall where the Helghast leaders met. At either end of the long, echoing chamber were huge double doors. The wall on one side was hung with paintings and wall hangings celebrating the glory of Helghast; on the opposite wall were ornate windows stretching floor to ceiling, their light casting the room in a grey hue. The floor was an expanse of bronzed marble, polished to a high shine, and moments ago it had rung with the sound of the senators’ boots as they entered the great chamber and took their seats around a long rectangular table at one end.

  These were the evolved Helghast, the leaders. As a badge of their status, they wore no respiration masks. And, though the planet was ablaze and their people dying, they perched on high in the guarded and reinforced room. The Helghast watchwords of ‘duty, obedience and loyalty’ applied to all of the people – but less so to some than to others.

  The senators were not unduly concerned about events preceding their meeting. It was true that they had spent much of the last few hours installed in heavily fortified panic facilities below ground at Visari Palace, emerging only when the ISA had ended their occupation (wrestling with guilt, some of them, knowing that they had remained hidden, leaving their Autarch to face the hostiles alone). It was true that prior to re-establishing supremacy, the ISA had bested their fleet in order to occupy their planet’s orbit. And, yes, it was true that the ISA had deployed multiple battle groups against them, and that the invasion had resulted in untold devastation as well as military and civilian casualties, and that their petrusite defences, while impressive, and certainly effective in the short term, had ultimately failed to keep the ISA troops at bay. It was true also that a nuclear warhead had been detonated in their capital city in order to annihilate the enemy forces, and that their Autarch Scolar Visari had been shot and killed by the ISA scum.

  And yet while any single one of these events might have severely unnerved any other set of senators – Vektan senators, for example – for the Helghast overlords they represented nothing more than a mere pause for thought. Old, fat and corrupt they may have been. Diseased both literally and figuratively they certainly were. But they were tough men, accustomed to war. As accustomed to it as they were to its associated power struggles, and ironically enough it was these they feared more than any ISA bullet.

  With the ascent of Scolar Visari, Helghan had reconfigured itself into a society that glorified combat and exalted military victory above all things, no price being too high to pay in order to secure Helghast dominance, no sacrifice too great. Or so preached the leaders, at least. During their own planet’s invasion of Vekta they had seen near-certain victory metamorphose into defeat. Now they were seeing their imminent defeat become victory. Yet on occasion these momentous events had paled in comparison to the internal fight for dominance, a battle that soon would be fought afresh, with new combatants.

  Visari had been head of the Visari Corporation, which was one of the planet’s primary weapons manufacturers. It was the Visari Corporation that had developed and built the VC1 Flame Thrower, VC9 Rocket Launcher, VC21 Boltgun, VC25 Cannon and VC32 Sniper Rifle. The high-end, high-tech weapons used by the empire’s elite troops. The Visari Corporation was also responsible for originating possibly the empire’s most devastating weapon, the VC5 Arc Gun. Obscenely powerful, it was powered by petrusite. Activate it and a bolt of petrusite would lock on to the nearest available target, resulting in destruction that while not instant, was total.

  In competition, Jorhan Stahl’s Stahl Arms produced a greater number of weapons, among them the assault rifles and pistols used by the infantry, those Helghast the leaders so unthinkingly sent to die. For this reason Stahl Arms was the planet’s largest weapons manufacturer, even though it lacked both the figurehead of an autarch or the technological superiority.

  In the last few hours, though, things had begun to change. And so it was that the senators turned their attention to a section of the table that rose with a hum, clicked, then became translucent before a recognizable image appeared – an image of the ISA forces, parts of the convoy now crossing the Corinth River, making its way to the extraction point.

  Although it was an operation happening just a short flight away it might as well have been on a different planet for all the impact it made on the room. The chamber’s toughened windows were sealed against all pollutants, and that included noise, and the senators watched in silence. Each of the men kept his counsel. Their expressions were blank, thoughts unreadable.

  Now the image expanded, opening out to take in more of Pyrrhus and allowing them to see the ISA forces in greater detail. And it became evident that even though much of the column was able to cross the river, plenty of vehicles and troops remained behind and were scattered throughout the city, fighting their way through to join their comrades.

  This information the senators received with the same attitude of studied dispassion, and then, as the image flicked off, they turned their attention to the end of the table where Admiral Orlock rose from his chair.

  He was a huge and imposing man, built as though hewn from rock. Bald but for an intimidating, bushy moustache, his eyes were cruel black pinpricks. Before the military his youth was spent fighting in the slums of Pyrrhus and down his left cheek ran a large scar, the relic of a knife fight decades ago from which only one man had emerged alive. Unlike many of the senators with a background in the forces, Orlock preferred not to wear his medals, but all knew of his military glories. They knew that he was as ruthless and unsparing with his own men as he was with the enemy. They had all heard the stories of his brutality in battle. To know him was to fear him as an adversary.

  And now he stood with the crest of the Helghast army behind him, and his two guards clicked to attention, the sound echoing around the cavernous room. The scar gave the landscape of his face a parched and arid look; his mouth was thin and dry and when he spoke it was with a pugnacious rasp.

  ‘As the senators can see,’ he said, slowly and deliberately, pacing the length of the table, ‘the ISA forces are in disarray.’

  He stopped and was now standing behind a large, sumptuously upholstered chair – so lavish it was almost a throne – and he laid his hands across its high leather back. This was Scolar Visari’s chair, the assassinated Helghast leader, and if there were those who might have said that Orlock placed his hands on the back of the autarch’s chair in a somewhat proprietorial manner, then they would have been correct. However, a new Helghast leader had yet to be appointed. Those discussions were yet to come. First there was the matter of reprisals, of avenging the death of Visari and punishing the ISA for invading Helghan. This, it seemed, was a task to which Admiral Orlock had appointed himself, and it was clear from his satisfied demeanour that he considered things to be going well in this regard.

  He cast his gaze around the room in order to verify that those assembled were suitably impressed by the progress made so far.

  ‘In less than three hours my soldiers will overwhelm them,’ he continued, his voice like
stones flung at the wall. ‘None of Visari’s killers will survive.’

  At this the senate bowed their heads respectfully, and there was a small outbreak of applause. Just as it was fading came a lone voice of dissent.

  ‘Am I missing something?’ said Jorhan Stahl, who had been sitting regarding Admiral Orlock with rather less reverence than the majority of those assembled. ‘What about the tank group on the left?’

  The room went the kind of quiet rooms do when an unwelcome opinion is rudely offered: a kind of shocked, humming quiet as the senators turned to look at the far end of the table where Stahl sat, languidly smoking a cigarette. Two of his capture troopers stood behind him, alert and ready to come to their master’s defence. He was the only one of them apart from Orlock to come with a personal bodyguard. That fact alone made it clear how seriously he intended to contest the autarchy.

  With a sigh Orlock turned his attention to Stahl. ‘I’m thrilled that the private sector is taking an interest in state affairs,’ he rasped. ‘Again.’

  He raised an ironic eyebrow at the other senators.

  Stahl looked unconcerned. He lacked the military bearing of Orlock; he was smaller and his features were grey and sharp. But the watchfulness of his eyes spoke of intelligence and cunning within, and there was a knowing, disingenuous tone to his voice that tended to unnerve those around him.

  ‘The ISA tank group on the left,’ he said, gesturing at the frozen image on the monitor, his eyes never leaving Orlock. ‘Are you ignoring it on purpose? Or is this all part of some strategy beyond our understanding?’ He smiled thinly.