Killzone, Ascendancy

by Sam Bradbury

  ‘I know you’re here,’ growled Orlock. ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ and he began to make his way along the corridor, to try to flush out his enemy.

  Outside the battle still raged, the two fleets pummelling each other. No quarter asked and none given.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Jammer had moved through the ring with her men at her back. Finding a console she quickly hacked in and located the main comms room. At the same time she saw that men were being deployed in their direction and was just warning the team when the first shots rang out.

  She ducked down. The ring was a series of platforms, most of which were lined with systems equipment, and there wasn’t much room for cover. She fired a clip off then slammed in another mag, spraying wildly in front of her to discourage any capture troopers coming forward. Across the walkway were Hooper and the other men, firing forward and edging up the corridor.

  So this was it, she thought. The Higs had sent a reception committee. Any hopes she had of reaching the comms centre easily were dashed. Might as well get on with it.

  ‘You there, Jammer?’ asked Rico over the comlink.

  ‘Copy that,’ she yelled.

  ‘Do I hear shots?’

  ‘Roger that also.’

  ‘How hot are you?’

  ‘I’m hot, Rico,’ she yelled back, and neither of them bothered to make the obvious joke about that.

  Bullets rang around the area. She was right. They had sent capture troopers after them, perhaps hoping to limit the damage to important equipment in the corridor. She hated capture troopers. She hadn’t told anybody. She wasn’t that dumb. But capture troopers – they scared the bejesus out of her.

  One came forward now, screeching, with his sword raised. He appeared round the side of a partition behind which she was taking cover and she had no time to swing up her M82 and fire, instead snatching her pistol from its holster and firing blind, directly into his face. He screamed, splattering her with blood as he staggered back, most of the front of his face disintegrating. Now came another and Hooper dropped him with half a clip. Next she saw one of her men go down as two of them outflanked him, and before she could do anything about it the swords flashed and there was an arc of red blood, bright against the grey and silver of the walkway, and the man screamed.

  Jaw set, she took down both of the capture troopers, then crouched and ran across the walkway to the dying soldier, checking for a pulse.

  There was none. She closed her eyes and said some silent words as around her the gunfire ceased at last. The unit sent to take them out had been small, more like a recon party than anything else. But soon they would send more men. And more determined men. And they would be less concerned about the damage caused.

  Her team began making their way up the walkway again and she keyed to Sev on her headset, thinking that she could have chosen to link with Captain Narville if she was observing the proper chain of command, or to Rico who was after all Raider Command, and who had been checking on her, but she’d chosen to speak to Sev instead, and she allowed herself a smile as she spoke to him.

  ‘Sev. Jammer. What’s your status?’ she asked. She hardly needed to ask. Over the line she heard the gunfire, and screaming.

  ‘We’ve encountered heavy resistance, but otherwise everything is peachy keen. What’s your status?’

  ‘We’ve neutralized a unit they sent after us, now it’s quiet,’ she replied. ‘Back-up will be along presently so I’m going it alone. I’m going to let the team take care of any reinforcements and see if I can make the communications room by myself.’

  ‘Negative, Jammer.’ She couldn’t help but feel a thrill at the obvious note of worry in his voice. ‘Stay with your team.’

  ‘Why, Sergeant Sevchenko, are you worried about me?’ she teased.

  ‘Oh no,’ he laughed. ‘I’m worried about your team with you gone.’

  ‘Well, they’ll just have to manage,’ she said. ‘I’ll move faster alone.’

  ‘Copy that,’ replied Sev, sounding reluctant. ‘At least between us and them we should have enough of a distraction.’

  She called Hooper over and pointed further along the corridor where the path diverged. ‘I’m going left, you and the rest are going right,’ she told him.

  After the men had moved off, she was left alone in the corridor for a moment, and she looked around at the corpses littering the floor, including the one ISA trooper. She moved over to the body, took his dog tags and looked at his name. Jim Watts. She would make sure he was remembered.

  Then her gaze went to the outside, where she saw Stahl’s huge battleship. As she watched, a large turret on the underside of the ship was moving. A petrusite cannon, she knew, but bigger than any other cannon of that type she’d ever seen. Green energy flicked around it as it charged up, ready to fire, and she leaned to get a better look, wondering what it could be about to fire upon, when a bolt of petrusite shot from it and into two Helghast battleships.

  Both cracked open and split, tumbling away, crippled, and for a moment she stood open-mouthed, unable to believe what she had seen because it looked like an enemy ship opening fire on another enemy ship, and how could that happen? She wondered if they had somehow infiltrated the enemy’s structure to such a degree that they had people on board their command ships and that meant the day was won. But, no, that couldn’t be. And, anyway, now she saw missiles being deployed and pretty soon a full-scale battle had commenced. And even though it looked almost too good to believe – as though her eyes must surely have been deceiving her – the fact was that the enemy were fighting. They had opened fire on each other and were fighting a civil war.

  This was good. Properly good. At best it meant no attack on Earth. At worst an enemy that was more concerned with its own squabbles than with taking out the ISA. Either way she should move on to the comms room while they were still out there kicking the shit out of each other.

  She put a hand to her earpiece, about to speak to Sev or Rico, just to check they were seeing the same thing as her, when suddenly there was a noise in the walkway and there in front of her was a Helghast infantryman.

  She was unarmed.

  She braced herself for the bullet. Oh, you stupid bitch, she thought. You dumb rookie. What kind of fresh-out-of-training recruit leaves their M82 and their sidearm lying on the deck? All she had in her hand was Digweed’s dog tags, and the only weapon she had on her was her combat knife, which was strapped to her thigh.

  The Hig stared at her but didn’t open fire, and she thought she knew why he hadn’t killed her yet, and that gave her a chance.

  Then the trooper spoke. ‘The knife,’ he said simply. He indicated with the barrel of his assault rifle. His voice was gruff, betraying no emotion.

  Okay, she thought. This was good too. He was underestimating her. She could use that. She nodded, pretending to look frightened. She needed him over-confident and careless. With over-emphatic movements she moved her hand to her thigh, which she brought forward a touch then slipped open the catch on the sheath of her combat knife.

  ‘Very slowly, pretty lady,’ said the soldier. ‘Don’t try anything fancy.’

  She shook her head as though to say she wouldn’t dream of it as she reached for the knife and withdrew it from its sheath.

  ‘Drop it to the floor,’ he commanded.

  Now she had the knife clear of the sheath and in one fluid and highly practised movement, flicked it up, caught the blade between thumb and forefinger and threw it forward, directly at the soldier.

  When Jammer had joined the ISA, all she’d wanted to do was be a pilot. Truth be told, she hadn’t given much thought to doing much else when she got there. She just wanted to fly. Pretty soon, though, she’d worked out that things were tough for a woman in the ISA. She had to work harder to gain the respect of her comrades, and being their equal wasn’t good enough. She needed to be better than them. And while being a pilot came naturally to her, the combat skills she needed to work at, so she’d
taken to spending hours at the range. Hours of target practice with pistols, rifles and knives. Especially knives. When you were a woman in a man’s army and, when you looked like Jammer, you perhaps had greater cause to be proficient with a close-quarters weapon, so Jammer had paid it special attention and she’d got real good with it.

  There were some who said that she never missed. Which meant that as soon as the knife was in her fingers he was as good as dead.

  But there was a minor difference between knife target practice on a range and on a space station being buffeted by war outside. The range wasn’t in danger of suddenly lurching to one side. Which is what happened now. Whether it was an aftershock or shrapnel she didn’t know, but just as she threw the knife the entire structure listed, throwing her off-balance.

  The knife spun through the air, a flicker of silver steel, and instead of a slamming through the right eye-piece of the soldier’s respirator mask, it speared him in the arm.

  Shit, thought Jammer.

  The Hig screamed in pain, reached and pulled the knife from his shoulder and in the next instant had leapt towards her, bearing down upon her, screaming that she was going to die.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  ‘They’re firing on each other,’ said Rico, scarcely able to believe it.

  We stared, all of us with our mouths hanging open. Because what we were seeing was the enemy tearing itself apart. What we were seeing was the enemy doing our job for us. And in that moment things changed.

  Space was full of detonations, missiles and there was the constant whump-whump of explosions. Pieces of flying shrapnel and debris spattered gently against the observation windows so that it was almost as though we were all watching the grand finale of a blockbuster movie. Like it didn’t involve us somehow. Then what we were seeing was ships belonging to Stahl, moving through the battle, heading towards the station.

  ‘That’s the same type of ship we saw earlier,’ I said, putting two and two together all of a sudden. Stahl’s strike ships were the only vessels capable of moving through the shield. If we wanted to get close to his cruiser then we needed to get hold of those ships – and they were coming our way.

  ‘Did anyone see where they were going?’ I asked.

  Narville cottoned on. ‘The second pier,’ he said, our thoughts in sync. ‘I like your thinking, Sevchenko.’

  So did Rico. He opened a comlink. ‘Jammer, forget the communications room. We need access to those strike ships.’

  But Jammer was a little busy right then. There was the small matter of fending off her attacker who was coming at her with all of the strength and ferocity of a fighting dog. In this case a particularly angry and enraged fighting dog.

  He grabbed her round the neck before she had a chance to duck under his grasp, and then was swinging her about the walkway, her legs kicking uselessly. Her hands went to his arms, and she tried to wrench free of his grip, but found she was unable to and choked, desperately gasping for air. Her vision clouded, becoming grey at the edges, and she realized that she was going to black out if she didn’t find air.

  And she didn’t want to go like this.

  Not like this.

  Kicking legs found purchase on the edge of a console and she thrust backwards, enough to push the soldier off balance and send him flying, his head striking a panel as he fell. At last his grip relaxed and she was able to pull free, landing on her hands and knees for a second, choking and gulping down precious air.

  The Hig was on his feet in seconds and lumbering towards her. She looked up to see him towering over her, and then saw black as he lashed out a foot that caught her on the head, a blow that would have knocked her unconscious, but was absorbed by the fabric of her hood. She spun away and scrambled to her feet as he came forward yet again. Throwing herself between two units, she lay there for a second desperately trying to regain her senses in order to fight back. There was a brief moment of respite as the Hig, grunting, could do nothing but aim useless kicks at her, unable to fit through the units himself. But she couldn’t remain there for long. The unit was between him and the other weapons and he’d seen them, and was now rushing forward to pick one up. The fight was over in his mind. She could see that. He simply wanted to finish his victim now.

  With a frustrated shout, Jammer pulled herself up and hurled herself from between the two units, grabbing the Hig as he tried to run past. Now it was her turn to have him by the neck, and at the very least she had managed to arrest his progress, stopping him from reaching the rifles. She squeezed. He gasped. But he was much stronger than her. He would easily shrug her off, and even now spun and thrust himself backwards, shoving her painfully against a row of cabinets.

  She held on. Grimly, she held on. He did it again, propelling them both back with a crash against the cabinets, and again she saw stars, wondering how long she could hold on. She still held Digweed’s dog tags and with a flash of sudden inspiration slipped them over the trooper’s neck and began pulling, garrotting him.

  Both of them in silent agony now. She, rammed against the cabinets; he with increasing pressure on the dog tags round his neck.

  And then she could no longer hang on. The last of the strength finally left her body and she was forced to let go, crumpling to the floor, back against the cabinets, watching groggily as the soldier staggered, coughing, away. She still had Digweed’s dog tags in her hand, she realized, and she gripped them tightly as the Hig made his way over to the rifles, and reached down to pick one up. Turning to face her, he raised it to his shoulder.

  ‘You did good, pretty lady,’ he rasped, still catching his breath, and squinted down the sights. She saw his finger tighten on the trigger. She closed her eyes.

  Crack.

  Jammer opened her eyes to see the Hig drop to his knees, a smashed hole where the right eye of his goggles had been, blood pouring down his front. Standing close by was Hooper, his gun smoking. Smiling at her.

  She managed to grin back, thanking him, and pulling herself painfully to her feet, wincing at the pain in her back, just as her comlink crackled.

  ‘Jammer, forget the communications room. We need access to those strike ships,’ said Rico.

  ‘Way ahead of you, boss,’ she croaked. Christ, nothing like a bit of time to recover. She went to the body of the Hig, searching through his ACU for … ah, keycards.

  Next online came Narville, sounding revitalized: ‘All right, troops, this is our chance. It won’t be long before the Helghast know what we’re up to and when they do they’ll come at us with everything they’ve got. We’ll regroup at Pier Two and take command of the strike ships. It’s the only way we can prevent Stahl’s cruiser from reaching Earth. Let’s head out. This is it, boys.’

  Jammer massaged her hurting back and smiled to herself. ‘And girl,’ she thought.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The sentry bots came at us again as we made our way to the pier. I found an LS13 shotgun – great for sentry-killing duty – and made my way onto a raised platform, hoping the extra elevation would help. It did, and I took one out, relieved to watch it spin away and smash into the roof of the module.

  That same moment, Narville was screaming over the comlink. A wrecked ship outside was about to hit the station. Next we were knocked off our feet at the same time as there was a great grinding sound, and the crippled ship collided with the space station. The gravity went offline and everything was floating, us included, as we continued to make our way up the corridor. I found a console and restored the gravity, then we moved on, still seeing the battle continuing outside the window.

  We were looking for elevators to take us to the pier. In front of us it seemed as though the entire Hig army was approaching, while outside a civil war raged. The numbers were against us. The odds were against us. But then, it felt like they had been for the past six months, and now we were closer than we ever had been to warning Earth. We weren’t slowing down now, not for nothing or nobody. None of us. We weren’t stopping until the job was done
or we lay dead, whichever came first.

  We cleared the section of Hig troops and then opened a set of gates, storming through to the next section and raking gunfire across support troopers on walkways. A lift came down, more enemy troops on it, and suddenly the fight intensified, if that was possible. I glanced to my left and saw Rico behind cover ramming a clip into his M82, then standing and rattling off the entire mag. We cleared as many as we could, then a second lift came down and we were tossing frag grenades in to clear it, the infantry screaming as they died. I grabbed a rocket launcher to clear a knot of hostiles taking cover on a walkway behind us and the whole structure came down in a mess of twisted limbs, blood and fire, dead Hig snipers draped over misshapen metal.

  ‘Everybody on the elevator,’ commanded Narville, and Rico took out more enemies behind cover on another walkway above us, and then we were moving to the controls. I glanced behind me, my heart sinking. We’d lost a lot of guys on the way. I tried to do a head count and gave up at twenty or so, but it wasn’t much more than that. Then, as the elevator rose, we got a good look at Stahl’s cruiser – perhaps our first, and I found myself in awe of its sheer size. It was maintaining height in the middle of the battlefield, the petrusite shield still in place, and I could see bombers and the smaller strike ships flitting in and out of a docking section on its underside. Friendly ships could negotiate the shield either way, I noticed. Anything else just bounced off.

  We climbed off the elevator to find a scene of devastation awaiting us. The space station was damaged now. Debris was everywhere: crates and boxes filled the corridors and were falling from the roof of the module. Still their infantry came at us and still we fought on. The strike ships had to be near now and their grunts were frightened and demoralized, their seemingly impregnable space station falling down around their ears. We reached an airlock, activated it and dived inside.