Son of Sedonia

by Ben Chaney

  The sound of a shifting brick yanked him to the present. He whirled, eyes wide and staring into the twilight. Thieves... Most left the gardens alone out of respect and those that didn’t answered to the T99s. But that didn’t mean a few didn’t sometimes get desperate. And people that desperate were dangerous. Matteo remembered the gun in his bag. Light footsteps approached through swishing leaves. Against the pounding in his chest, he pulled the satchel open and reached in.

  “Matteo?” said a soft voice. Matteo hesitated. Raia stepped out of the rows, squinting in the darkness. The pounding in Matteo’s chest continued, but in a different way as he removed his hand from the bag.

  “Over here,” Matteo said, standing up among the plants. Raia jumped a little, then placed a relieved hand to her chest. She looked so different without her skin-tight club clothes. She wore a modest, angled dress, cinched at the waist with a long, patterned scarf. The fabric fluttered softly against her curves in the hot, dry wind.

  “Sorry...didn’t mean to scare you,” said Matteo, shying away from the curves. Something dawned on him in the anxiety. “You lookin’ for me?”

  Raia nodded. Even with so little light, the deep blue of her eyes flashed as she turned away in the dark.

  “Doc told me you come up here at night...when everybody else is in bed. Wanted to talk without anybody seein’,” she said. Matteo darkened.

  “I get it,” he said.

  Suddenly worried, she shook her head.

  “It ain’t like that! If somebody saw us...if somebody heard me...Oki’d take me out,” Raia said. Matteo waited, curiosity boiling in his head. She must have sensed it. “You gonna say ‘yes’ to the boss...right?”

  “I...” Matteo looked down at the satchel, “I don’t know, yet.”

  “But...I can’t be your girl, if you ain’t a Nine,” she said, “If you was, Oki couldn’t touch me or you...”

  Matteo’s head swam with a sudden rush. She...wants me? No one ever had. At least no one he’d ever heard of. A legion of flies buzzed in his stomach. What the hell do I do with that...? Raia broke off eye contact, and looked around the place.

  “Why you come up here so late?” she asked. Matteo lifted inside. Nice, I can answer that.

  “It’s quiet,” he said, “Calm. I feel more connected up here. Somethin’ about the plants helps. Reminds me we’re alive...not just dying.” He snapped out of it, noticing her blank expression. Part of him dimmed. The whole thing had just sailed right over her head. He wanted her. He had always wanted her. But in his gut, Matteo knew Raia wasn’t a part of the path. He didn’t want to know it.

  “I can’t...” he forced it out. To his surprise, a grin creased Raia’s full lips.

  “Come on,” she said, cocking her head and tilting her hips, “Every Nine needs a girl. And not every girl can get a man like you.” She waited for an endless moment for him to respond. He had nothing. Raia seemed to sink then turned to leave. Dammit—.

  “Hold up!” Matteo said. He stooped, reached into the satchel, and pulled out the gun. It didn’t seem to weigh as much as he stuffed it into his waistband. “I’ll...walk you home.”

  Together, they made their way through the eerie quiet from central to Southwest Rasalla. Despite knowing the way like the back of his hand, he found himself unsure of the allies, stairwells, and catwalks. The gun tugged on his shorts too much, so he kept it drawn. He felt her eyes on his back as they crept through the district. It was a relief when they reached the Dyer Walk. A long alley where the Blue Ladies and their girl helpers spun their own cloth, dyed it, and patterned it to be sold in Falari Market. The normally vibrant colors of the hanging wet fabrics all looked cold gray at night. Matteo and Raia started up the gradual slope of the Walk.

  Matteo felt her inch closer to him, then slip smooth fingers around his arm. He was glad it was too dark to read his expression. Just take her back to her place, then go home...take her back to her place, then go ho—

  BOOOOM! The two of them dropped into the cover of an alley on instinct. Looked up to the sky. A bright orange glow surrounded a mushroom cloud to the South. As the rumble subsided, dogs all over the Slums started barking. Followed soon after by the shouts of dwellers.

  “Maybe one of the labs,” Raia said, “Oki’s guys ain’t too smart, maybe they—” Gunshots. A few at first, then more, streaking white-hot bursts into the sky in all directions.

  “We gotta go!” Matteo said, grabbing Raia by the arm. They ran down the rest of the Dyer Walk and hung a left up the stairs. Then a right up some more. The pistol grip slicked with sweat in Matteo’s hands. The path ahead led to a mutated block of shacks and cinder-block apartments. Five minutes from home. Familiar jagged shapes loomed over them as they climbed the stairs.

  Strange sounds and voices came from out of sight ahead. Matteo stopped her with his palm just shy of the top of the stairs, and they dropped low. He turned, crawled arm-over-arm, and peeked over. EXOs...at least six.

  One of their dropships sat below on a wide, flat rooftop with its rear hatch open. Some kinda new IG model... Two EXOs kept watch while the others worked, picking up limp bodies and handing them down the line to the hatch. Some bodies were T99s. Others’ shoulders were bare. Matteo ground his teeth and squeezed the gun grip. Remembered Jogun. Raia crawled up next to him and put a soft hand on the gun. Wide-eyed, she shook her head ‘no.’ He bit hard into his lower lip. Inched back down the steps.

  They took a side route back toward the Stack. Along the way, they saw one of the IG ships take-off in the distance. It rose, turned, and started its ascent when the sharp hiss of an RPG round sliced the sky. Matteo and Raia ducked as they watched the missile arc and hit the ship. It sparked, burst into flame, then listed off to the West. Crashed with a loud boom...right where it shouldn’t.

  “Daddy!” Raia yelled, breaking into a dead sprint. Matteo ran after her as fast as he could. Every alley and turn toward the Stack brightened with a fiery glow. No...please, God...come on, man!

  The EXO ship had flipped sideways, plowing directly into the top three container apartments. The Stack burned as the ship’s chemical blood spurted onto the flames. Two figures sat wedged in the cockpit behind a fractured glass canopy, taking pistol pot-shots at the angry dwellers who had already started to gather.

  “NO!!!” Matteo sprinted through the crowd toward his toppled apartment, ignoring the gunfire. He stopped as the heat seared his front. It was already gone. His house. The seeds... He dropped to his knees and bowed into a tight ball. Screamed. The sound joined the chorus of screams behind him.

  POP! Another shot from the cockpit...followed by wail to silence all the others. It felt like death. He turned to see Raia on the ground holding her father in her lap. A red hole gushed in the man’s chest as he died by inches. The prosthetic leg jerked in the dirt, then he was gone. Raia’s dad had put her through hell growing up. The fights, the binges, the bruises. Raia was hardly ever home these past years. That what it means to have a Dad? The question stung. Jogun had been the closest thing to one he’d ever known. As tears ached in his eyes, he turned to look at the ship. Hate washed over him like an acid bath.

  Matteo strangled the pistol grip. Shaking, he lifted the weight. Aimed at the struggling pilots.

  BANG! B-B-B-BANG! B-B-BANG! The pilots’ bodies burst in a flurry of glass, sparks, and blood. An instant of horror passed before Matteo realized he hadn’t fired. Cheers and shouts picked up as a pack of T99s flooded into the street, armed with rifles, SMGs, knives, and sheet metal machetes. Suomo ran to the center of the block, and hopped up on a smoking rubble pile.

  “Brothers and sisters! This here is the day we been waitin’ on!” Suomo shouted. The other T99s let out a whoop and raised their weapons.

  “That’s right, the War of the Righteous has started, y’all, and they,” Suomo pointed to the dropship, “hit us first! Now, I got word from my boy Oki that he’s got three more of these motherfuckers caged up on Daigi’s roof!” He turned and looked at Matteo. Ke
pt his voice loud for the crowd.

  “You wanna go back to ya homes and hide, good luck! Ain’t nobody stoppin’ you. But if you wanna fight, don’t matter if you got the Mark on your arm or not, you come with ME!” Suomo turned and trotted down the pile. Quick as cats, the other T99s locked and loaded their guns, and loped after Suomo. A handful of the survivors hobbled off quickly down alleyways and side-streets. Mostly the elderly and their caretakers. Some of the husbands and wives who had children. The others looked at one another and the ruins around them. A middle-aged bald man with a rock-solid paunch knelt down and picked up a long piece of re-bar. A young woman, whose’ child lay bloody and lifeless beside her, tore a strip out of her shawl and wrapped it around the end of a long metal sliver. Clutched it.

  Matteo stared down at the gun. He’d never seen bodies come apart like that. As the others left to follow Suomo, he stayed still. The street grew quiet except for the roaring fire and groans of hot metal. He looked up and noticed she was staring at him. Raia still sat with her father on the ground, clutching the man’s ratty, blood-soaked t-shirt. Her eyes shimmered as her face contorted in pain. It cut through him.

  “Don’t worry,” Matteo said, tucking the gun tight in his waistband. Easier to run that way, and he had catching up to do. “I got this.”

  12

  Courage

  “JESUS CHRIST, KID, could you try to jerk my fucking shrap-torn leg any more? I don’t think it’s cut deep enough, so why don’t you just go ahead and punch the wound while you’re at it!” Shima clutched the collar of Vaughn’s flak jacket. The rookie worked to remove the mangled Augmentor shin-plate. Charred chunks of sheet metal peppered both of Shima’s armored legs, some making it through to flesh. Someone had tossed a popper-bomb into their shelter. Not enough to kill, but just enough to maim. It had been quiet since then.

  “He ain’t ever field dressed a wound before, Shims, let me take a look,” said Mason.

  “No! Stay on those windows! I want your eyes on the roofline, not some Red Gate—AAH!” The shin-plate popped free. Several blistered cuts and punctures covered the skin underneath. Vaughn set the shin-plate aside and grabbed the forceps from the med kit. One by one, he removed the remaining bits of shrapnel...some deeper than others. One was in at least four centimeters. Shima unsheathed his field knife, making Vaughn jump, but flipped it around and stuck the rubber grip in his teeth. Bit down as the forceps went in and grabbed the hot razor-sharp metal. Vaughn slid it out with little extra cutting.

  “That’s the last one,” Vaughn said, reaching for the antiseptic spray, bandage and gauze. He sprayed the length of Shima’s calf and shin, pressed on the bandage seals, and wrapped it.

  “Not bad for a first try, kid,” Mason said.

  “Yeah, it’s fantastic, now get your weapon and take a window,” Shima barked as he pushed up on his good leg. Vaughn looked out his side. The long range thermal data had cut out shortly after the explosion, so they were down to personal optics. IR mode in their Neurals turned night into a cloudy day, but shadows moved everywhere. The blank, black windows seemed to watch them in their sad excuse for a shelter.

  It was a half-finished addition to the rooftop of a shop building. Four brick walls rose in varying heights to form a small room. The windows were open gaps with barely enough wall to stand covered on either side. Vaughn crouched beside one. Slice the pie. Be a smaller target. He stilled himself as he backed away from the window and pointed his SMG’s iron sights along the edge. Slowly swept right. Nothing appeared in the crosshairs. Only the patchy, gray faces of chaotic buildings, silent in their stacks. Flashes and the distant report of gunshots advertised the battle raging all over the Slums. Jesus, what the hell did we start? He lowered his weapon an inch.

  A white-hot shape bobbed into view then disappeared.

  “Movement! I’ve got movement!” Vaughn rasped, choking the foregrip on his submachine gun.

  “Great! Where? Call out the fucking location!” Shima hissed. Again, he pushed himself up on his good leg and peeked over the window ledge.

  “Yeah—!—uh—it was Eas—er—North at my two o’clock...I think, sir.”

  “You think?”

  “I’m pretty sure, sir. It was there, then it was gone again, sir.”

  “Jesus...” Shima sank back into cover and pressed his throat node. “Theta Squad to HQ: What the hell is the ETA on my evac?! I’ve had my beacon blinking its ass off for over five fucking minutes!”

  “Be advised, Theta, all friendly aircraft are either currently engaged or flying home to re-arm. A gunship will be dispatched to your location as soon as I’ve got one for you,” the voice hummed in each of their ear implants.

  “All of them? The whole fleet?!” Vaughn’s voice lifted a little louder than it should. Mason hissed and patted the air with a hand. The rookie groaned and leaned up to scan the roofline again.

  “Over half my squad is KIA, I’m wounded and immobile, we’re stuck in darkest Rasalla with hostiles closing, and you’re telling me there’s not one goddamn ship?!” Shima looked like his face would explode.

  “Affirmative, Theta. Recommend you dig in, and stay quiet, we are coming.”

  Shima clenched his fists and almost punched the wall. He ripped his ammo pouch open, took out a live ammo mag, and dropped the active spur mag out of his SMG.Loaded the rounds.

  “Sir? I thought we only had clearance for non-lethal.” Vaughn said. Shima took out a flash suppressor and screwed it onto the barrel.

  “T99s don’t give a damn about spurs, but they respect bullets. If we’ve got any hope of holding ‘em back long enough we’ve gotta hurt ’em,” said Shima.

  Mason and Vaughn changed their magazines. Vaughn finished screwing on his suppressor and looked back through the window. Just in time to be blinded by a flash between two buildings. He cringed and spun back into cover as nearby whoops and shouts broke the silence. Vaughn’s eyes cleared in time to see smoking red lights arcing through the sky, over their wall, and landing in the middle of the shelter floor.

  “Flares!” Shima yelled as he lunged toward them, putting weight on his bandaged shin. He landed directly on the wound, yelled, then grabbed at the flares. Threw two of them out. Three more fell in. Then two more. They heaped in a glowing pile as the first shots zipped through the walls.

  “SHIT! Fire at will!” Shima screamed. The body heat signals poured out of the twilit slumscape. Vaughn couldn’t hope to prioritize targets. The muzzle flashes looked like the grandstands of the Sedonia Civic Arena during the half-time show. As the brick and concrete flew apart around him, Vaughn shrank into cover, clutching his weapon. He couldn’t think, let alone move.

  “Wake the fuck up, kid! Kill or be killed!” Mason’s voice came through low and deep in Vaughn’s implant radio. Vaughn looked to the veteran EXO as the man squeezed a few three-round bursts out of the weapon, each at a specific target. Shima did the same on the opposite wall, blood pouring down his leg as he stood on it to get position.

  Flip the switch, flip the switch, flip the switch. Vaughn hit himself in the helmet. His legs wouldn’t budge. Concrete exploded everywhere, making their cover look more like coral. He clamped his eyes shut. Felt his heartbeat in his throat. All sound around him turned to white noise. Then something opened his eyes.

  He found himself staring into the burning phosphorous light of the flares. Time slowed. In the space he felt his heart and his breath. His hands and his feet. His arms and his legs. Fear was still there, but it seemed more like another appendage. Something else to work with. The order eclipsed it: Kill or be killed. Gritting his teeth, he leaned out of cover and pumped half a mag into the growing mob.

  Matteo sprinted across the rooftops toward the flashes ahead. He jumped over alleys, raced up and down stairs, and swung onto catwalks, movements he’d seen Jogun do a hundred times. Yet now on the way to his own battle, it felt different than he’d fantasized. Part hunter and part hunted. Righteous and terrified. Distant thoughts screamed faintly to
calm down and turn back. The drive to listen gripped his chest. No home to run to.

  The half-finished shed on the roof of Daigi’s shop glowed blinding red from the inside. Dark silhouettes peeked out of the windows then darted out of sight, each time followed by a pounding hail of T99 bullets. A hazy bloodshot cloud surrounded the building. Through it, Matteo saw the dwellers climbing up the fire escape. It wouldn’t be long now.

  The first building to his right had a balcony on the top floor where a few T99s took cover. This close, he could see the sparks and chunks of shrapnel burst from the surrounding buildings. Bullets, not spurs. He crouched low behind a rooftop wall, and waited. The shape of an EXO leaned out from behind his cover and fired at the balcony. The T99s ducked. Some sprayed blind shots over the railing. The shooting stopped a second.

  Matteo took his chance. Three huge strides and he pushed off on the fourth, flying down toward the balcony. He grabbed the awning and swung inside, kicking one or two gangsters in the process. They shoved him off and into the corner. His gun skittered across the floor somewhere.

  “The fuck you think you doin’, man?!” a voice screamed. Matteo pawed around in the dark for the pistol.

  “Left window! Shoot the bitch!” another one shouted. Gunfire erupted. Matteo crumpled into a ball and clapped his hands over his ears. The noise. It felt like the shots were going off inside his skull. The sour smell of gunpowder choked him first, then someone’s hand did it for real. Slammed him against the floor.