by Isaac Hooke
I glanced to my right. Hijak. He nodded grimly.
Another Centurion clambered over the northern edge.
I took it out immediately.
I realized most of us had migrated toward the southernmost edge of the rooftop, leaving the other sides unguarded.
In that moment, I remembered the Chief’s words. Lead them!
“Lui, Skullcracker, cover the southern edge,” I sent. “Hijak, take the north. Manic, the east. Snakeoil, the west. Skullcracker, you’re the wildcard. Help out the others as needed. I’m going to look after Bender.”
My brothers tossed grenades toward the building edges, then low-crawled to reposition themselves and cover their assigned sections. I almost expected Snakeoil to countermand me—as breacher, he was considered second in command after the Chief. But he leaped to obey. I guess he was just glad someone else was stepping in.
When I reached Bender, he was staring up into space. I did a quick scan of his wound.
Bender blinked. “Go away. I’m fine. Just need . . . a breather.”
“Grenade!” Skullcracker shouted.
I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Skullcracker and Lui leaping from their compromised cover. Behind them, an enemy grenade went off.
I pulled the pin on my own grenade and tossed it at the southernmost edge to keep their attackers occupied. When the grenade detonated, Skullcracker and Lui were already in place behind new superstructures, and they resumed firing.
I returned my attention to Bender.
“Why you still here, bitch? Said I’m fine.” He started to get up, but winced.
I forced him down, and dragged him behind a small dish-like superstructure for cover.
“The bullet hit your spleen,” I said. “Basically destroyed it. The jumpsuit absorbed the rest of the impact. Spared your other organs.”
“Great. Told you I’m fine. Now help me up, would you?”
“Not until I fish the bullet out of you,” I said.
“No time,” Bender said, shoving me aside. “Guess I’ll . . . just get up . . . on my own.”
He still had surprising strength, and against my better judgment, I capitulated.
I surveyed the rooftop, switching between the POV cams in the helmets of my squad mates. “Bender, reinforce Hijak on the northern side. I’m going to help Skullcracker and Lui on the south.”
“Fine, bitch.” He wormed toward Hijak, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. I shook my head. Someone would have to patch him up, soon, if he didn’t do it himself.
I low-crawled toward Skullcracker.
Gunfire came down at me from above as a Centurion used its jumpjets to land on top of one of the larger superstructures.
I rolled to the left, firing as I did so, and took out the robot with a lucky shot. In the middle of my roll, I realized a puddle of glowing liquid was right beside me.
One of the Phants.
And I was about to roll right into it.
There was no way to halt my momentum. I couldn’t even fire my jetpack, not without fuel.
I was going to be incinerated.
I closed my eyes.
The roll completed and I came to a stop.
I was still alive.
I opened my eyes, expecting to see a glowing puddle beneath me, but instead I found a patch of bare roof.
The Phant had retreated.
The glowing entity had assumed a position one meter away from me, and there it remained, motionless.
Curious, I lifted a hand toward it.
The Phant didn’t move.
However, when I low-crawled my entire body toward it, the glowing liquid retreated.
I think I knew what was going on.
“Guys, the Phants can’t harm us,” I sent over the comm.
“What?” Snakeoil returned. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. The EM emitters repel them.”
“Good to know,” Hijak returned.
The attack eased somewhat, and we advanced to the edges of our respective sides to fire down at the Centurions climbing the walls, also taking out any combat robots that tried to jet across from the surrounding buildings.
Hijak meanwhile persuaded Bender to let him take off his upper body assembly so he could apply a skin suture to the wound. Just like the Chief, Bender would still bleed internally until we could get him to a Weaver. I sent Skullcracker over to watch their six as Hijak worked.
Snakeoil and I returned to the Chief, who yet lay beside the payload. Liquid Phants were nearby, though they left a one-meter gap around him.
Hands pressed to ears, aReal still lowered over his eyes, the kid cowered against the payload beside him. Though the child himself didn’t have an emitter, he was protected from the Phants by the Chief’s emitter, as well as the emitter attached to the payload.
I purposefully stepped toward the Phants and they scattered.
“Can’t believe we noticed this effect only now,” Snakeoil commented.
“The scientists who developed the emitters probably never got closer than a meter to their Phant subjects,” I said.
“I don’t blame them,” Snakeoil said.
I knelt beside Chief Bourbonjack. He was awake.
“You have to get off this rooftop, Rage,” Chief Bourbonjack said. “Collect whatever fuel you can from the downed Centurions. Then get everyone out. Don’t worry about me.”
“We’re not leaving you behind,” I said.
“You are, goddammit.”
Snakeoil did a quick scan of the area.
“Then you’ll have company, Chief,” Snakeoil said. “I just checked. Even if we collected all the fuel from the fallen robots, there’d only be enough for three or four of us to make a few good jumps out of here. The rest have to stay.”
“Maybe we should draw straws,” Lui said, coming up beside us.
“No one is drawing straws.” I stood up. “Because no one is staying behind.”
“I am,” the Chief asserted.
“Rage, sometimes you have to face the facts,” Lui said. “Not all of us are going to make it out of this. I’d gladly stay behind so the rest of you can go.”
“As would I,” Snakeoil said.
“We all would,” Lui agreed. “Which is why we have to draw straws, to see who gets the honor.”
“No one is staying behind,” I growled.
I didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t.
I glanced at the collapsed stairwell. “We’ll take the stairs.”
Lui shook his head. “When we clear the debris, there will be Centurions waiting on the other side. All the way down.”
“We’ll deal with them.”
Lui raised his hands in defeat. “Fine, let me know what you all decide.” He turned around and began weaving his way back toward the southern edge of the rooftop, where Skullcracker had relocated.
“Even if you get me off the rooftop, I’m not going to make it,” Chief Bourbonjack said.
I squeezed my jaw. “Find me all the hospitals within a thirty-klick radius,” I instructed Snakeoil. “Try to identify those in fortifiable locations.”
The Chief chuckled. “Never going to give up, are you, Rage?”
“No, Chief,” I told him. “I don’t know the meaning of the words.”
“Listen to me,” Chief Bourbonjack said. “It’s better if some us die, rather than all of us.”
“Is it?” I told the Chief. “Easy enough for you to say. You get to be one of the dead ones.” That sounded cold, I know, but it was how I felt. “What about the rest of us? We have to live with the guilt, knowing we left behind the best of our teammates. I can’t do it, Chief. I can’t.”
Perched beside the Chief, the kid abruptly removed his aReal visor and looked up at me. He had this deer-in-the-headlights look on his fa
ce. I felt for him: if I were a kid I’d be terrified, too. It was partially my fault the kid was up here, stuck with us. I was the one who had spotted him in the first place. He probably would have been better off if we’d left him alone.
I went to the child, glad for an excuse to suspend the heartbreaking conversation I was having with the Chief, if only momentarily.
“I’m scared,” the child said in Korean-Chinese.
“Be strong, kid,” was all I could come up with. Like I said, I was never good with children.
The child flinched when Skullcracker’s heavy gun went off nearby. “So loud.”
“Nothing we can do about that,” I said, letting my aReal translate. “That’s the sound of us saving your life. Get used to it.” Harsh words, I suppose, but I had no idea what else to say.
The kid mumbled something in response. The translation came from my helmet aReal: “Why don’t you fight them with ATLAS mechs?”
I smiled sadly. “I wish we had some ATLAS units, kid. I really do. But all the mechs in this city are controlled by the enemy.”
The child spoke again. “I know where you can find three mechs untouched by the Yaoguai,” came the translation. Yaoguai. That’s what the SKs called Phants. The fear was obvious in his voice.
I frowned. My gaze dropped to the miniature ATLAS 5 the kid still gripped tightly in one hand. “This isn’t a game, kid. We don’t need toys.”
“No, the mechs I’m talking about are real. Not toys. ATLAS 5s. Made of steel. Taller than you. Three times as big. With guns and missiles. And shields. Big shields. Untouched by the Yaoguai.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” I said. “Don’t be joking around about this, kid. All our lives are at stake here.”
“I saw them just this morning,” the kid insisted.
I felt my brows draw together. “Where?”
“My friend Giger’s garage,” came the translation.
“If I showed you a map, could you mark it out?”
“No,” the kid said. “I only know the way from my apartment. It’s five blocks away from there.”
“Your apartment . . . where we found you?”
He nodded.
The apartment wasn’t all that far behind us.
Maybe this was the way out I was looking for . . . if the squad siphoned the fuel from the downed Centurions as the Chief had suggested, we could send three or four of us out into the city and retrieve those ATLAS 5s, potentially drawing off much of the horde in the process. Then the selected men could return in the mechs and extract everyone else.
Assuming, of course, that what the kid said was true, and that those we sent actually made it.
Was it worth the risk?
I glanced at the Chief, who was close enough to have heard the whole exchange. There was a glimmer in his eyes, one I hadn’t seen since we’d boarded the Skull Ship, and I knew the answer to that question immediately.
Hijak, Skullcracker, and I made up the fire team sent to retrieve the ATLAS mechs. The kid would hitch a ride with me.
I’d taken Skullcracker along because he had the privilege escalation kit known as the SACKER installed in his embedded Id, which we’d need to authorize our access to the SK mechs. He still had that leg injury sustained on the first day of our operation, of course, but so far it hadn’t hindered his performance. I knew I could bring him along and trust that he wouldn’t slow us down or mess up.
I’d chosen Hijak because, in addition to his high sniping scores, he had an outstanding ATLAS qualification rating. I’d seen him pilot a mech twice in battle and the second time he’d been in an ATLAS 6. Though Manic and Lui were the platoon’s official ATLAS pilots (along with Bomb, who was with Digger Squad), I wanted someone with ATLAS 6 experience just in case. Manic and Lui hid their disappointment well.
Hijak, Skullcracker, and I quickly salvaged what fuel we could from the jetpacks of the fallen Centurions while the rest of the squad provided cover. In total, the three of us gathered enough fuel for around five to seven jumps each. I would run out of fuel first of course, owing to the extra weight of the kid.
I gave my medbag to Hijak and knelt so that the kid could wrap his hands around my neck assembly and perch above the jetpack, piggyback-style. Lui secured him with spare cord from the multipurpose canister near the front of his belt, and then secured the child-sized aReal over the kid’s eyes.
“Watch something good, kid,” Lui said, according to my translator.
Snakeoil handed me the last of his plastic explosives. “Good luck.”
I gripped him by the hand. “We’ll be back.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
I low-crawled to the northern edge of the building with Hijak and Skullcracker. The remaining squad members laid down suppressive fire for us, concentrating on the Centurions lurking on the destination rooftop.
“First waypoint is clear of tangos!” Hijak said.
“Hang on!” I told the kid.
I stood up and leaped over the building edge.
Gunfire whizzed past from the street as we dropped toward the target rooftop. Our jetpacks fired away, slowing our descent.
The moment we landed, two serpent missiles shrieked through the air behind us. The missiles continued skyward in random directions as if they’d lost their targets. Which they probably had—if the enemy had fired an instant earlier we would have been dead.
The three of us advanced toward the opposite end of the building, away from the horde. The next destination, a rooftop three floors down, was empty.
We jetted across. More bullets came up at us while in midair but we all made it without injury according to the vitals on my HUD. One person wasn’t connected to our network, however.
“You okay, kid?” I said.
“Yes.”
The green dots representing our abandoned squad members blinked inactively on the HUD map. We were out of range. It was up to us, now.
The horde activity around the next building proved even quieter, with the street beyond nearly empty.
When I landed, I glanced over my shoulder to see four Centurions jetting toward us. I eliminated two of them and Hijak handled the other pair.
We continued moving this way from building to building, occasionally delaying to eliminate pursuers. We crossed five different streets in the process and eventually took to the pavement in an avenue that was entirely free of crabs, slugs, and possessed robots. Even so, I heard the agitated clatter of the horde some distance behind us, pursuing.
I glanced at my fuel levels.
“I’m about out,” I said as I ran. I had enough fuel for about half a jump.
“One jet left here,” Hijak said.
“Two for me,” Skullcracker added.
“Kid, you okay?”
“Yes,” the child answered.
As we proceeded toward the kid’s apartment, the sound of the horde was never far behind, and I knew a substantial number had abandoned the thirteeen-story tower to give chase. Maybe all of them did. I hoped so, for the sake of those we left behind.
The clang of steel footfalls soon became the main sound of pursuit: the Centurions and ATLAS 5s moved the fastest, and would reach us first.
We had no time to dally.
I called up our route history on my aReal and led the way toward the kid’s apartment at a lope.
The kid shifted on my back. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw he’d taken off his aReal.
“Do you recognize where we are yet?” I said in Korean-Chinese with the translator.
“No.”
“What’s your name, anyway, kid?” I said, not slowing my pace. “Or should I just keep calling you ‘kid’?”
“I am Tung,” he said.
“Tung. Well, my name’s Rade. Rade Galaal.”
The kid coughed softly. “You told me alrea
dy.”
“Did I? Okay, well, point is, you’re safe with me.”
“No one’s safe,” Tung said matter-of-factly. “Not with anyone.”
He was right. I reminded myself that his family was dead. He’d probably seen them gunned down with his own eyes. My dearly departed friend, Alejandro, had suffered through the same ordeal.
There weren’t any words of comfort you could say to a child who’d witnessed something as horrifying as that. The poor kid was probably scarred for life.
We were almost at the apartment.
“Do these streets look familiar yet?” I said.
“No.” Tung answered. A moment later, he added: “The robots got them. My family.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“When we reach the mechs,” Tung said, “will you kill the Yaoguai?”
“I’ll certainly try.”
Tung squeezed my jumpsuit tighter around the neck assembly. “Kill them all, Rade Galaal. Kill every last one of them.”
It was eerie, and somewhat heartrending, to hear a child echoing the same sentiments that drove me, an adult man. We all wanted vengeance it seemed, even the youngest of us.
Some moments later we reached the kid’s apartment.
“So?” I said, revolving in place.
“Here.” Tung pointed to the right. “That way.”
We hadn’t encountered any enemy units thus far, but the persistent clang of metallic feet continued in the distance, taunting us.
The kid pointed out streets and side streets as we jogged. “Left.” “Right.” “This alley.” “That one.”
In about six minutes we reached the promised garage.
It was some kind of mech repair shop. Five windowless garage doors sealed the bays. There was no geronium caking the shop, despite the fact most of the neighboring buildings were sheathed in the stuff. That was a good sign. I was a bit disappointed, however, because the bays weren’t tall enough to house ATLAS 6s. That meant models fives or lower. Assuming the kid was right.
I gazed at the front door. “Is your embedded ID on the access list?” I asked Tung with help from my aReal translator.
