Son of Sedonia

by Ben Chaney

  “I should kill you too!” The wild stare on Oki’s face was like nothing Matteo had ever seen. A rabid Pit dog ready to rip your throat out with a crooked grin.

  “Oki, chill!” Suomo shouted above the gunfire and nearby screams. The T99 Boss crouched at the open end of the balcony, leaning out to fire a burst from his brand new EXO submachine gun. Oki released the choke hold, dropping Matteo gasping to the ground. Matteo felt something shoved into his chest.

  “Drop this again and I fuckin’ blast you!” Oki said. Matteo fumbled at the pistol grip then took hold. Another burst from the EXOs made everyone duck again...except one of the younger Nines. The boy took a round full in the face, making a canoe out of his head. Thick wet droplets landed on Matteo’s arm. The shooting stopped and something dragged him up by the hood. He choked himself on the hoodie collar as he tried to stay down.

  “Shoot, goddammit!” Oki’s voice cracked as he screamed. Matteo cringed at the gunfire pounding his eardrums. Oki slapped him in the face.

  “SHOOT!”

  A flash of rage set Matteo’s mind on fire. He flexed his fingers around the grip as his heartbeat jackhammered over the muffled pops of pistols, rifles, and SMGs. The blood. It pooled on the ground by the T99 boy’s shattered head. Raia’s face appeared to him. Staring. His body trembled as he wrestled with the will to do something. Anything. The wheezing tickle in the back of his throat turned every breath into a saw blade as his knees started to buckle.

  Suddenly he was lying back on that rooftop six years ago. Helpless as he watched Jogun shudder and twist with every punch, kick, knee, and elbow. For years he had dreamed of the ways he could have hurt them, should have hurt them. The thousands of things that would have saved his family. His grip on the pistol tightened. Inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale-INHALE. He whipped the gun up, pointed it at the glowing building. The EXOs inside moved in flickering blurs.

  Matteo fired a shot and all but dropped the gun as it kicked. The sensation sent needles down his spine. He brought up his left hand to steady his aim. Two more shots. The rounds blasted dusty chunks out of the brick wall.

  “That’s RIGHT!” Oki slapped his back so hard it gave him a funny taste in his mouth. The others looked over at him too, all smiles. Matteo managed an insane laugh. Movement in the right window caught his eye. A pulsing shadow that seemed to turn toward him. With a sharp breath, he focused on the shape, looked down the sight, steadied the weapon, and squeezed the trigger. Since he was ready for it, the shot felt more like a little pop The shadow jerked and fell out of view.

  Cheers picked up all around him. Oki grabbed him by the shoulders and shook. He tried to smile at them, but his mind struggled with the new data. I got one. I killed an EXO. A hail of bullets sprayed into the balcony and everyone got down. Matteo dropped with a limp thud. The sudden rush made him dizzy. He pressed himself as low as he could as dust and debris rained down from the balcony wall. It stopped. The others got up.

  “One down, two to kill!” Suomo said from somewhere close-by, “Rasalla!”

  “RASALLA!” the T99s shouted as they opened fire.

  Between three-round bursts through his iron sights, Vaughn saw a broad, heavy shape slump and fall out of his peripheral vision. A red distress icon appeared in his Neural beside the name. ‘Mason.’ He ducked into cover and turned to see the old vet clutching his left shoulder joint, struggling through wet gasps for air. The man seemed more pissed off than anything.

  “Sergeant!” Vaughn screamed, lunging toward the wounded vet.

  “Get the fuck back on that window!” Shima shouted as he continued to pump controlled bursts from his side of the shelter. Before Vaughn could protest, Mason planted a boot in his flak jacket and shoved him backward. Vaughn heard the sounds outside getting louder. Closer. He peeked back over his cover to see T99s crawling up the side of the building. Reflex spun his rifle up to drill the closest of the group. They tumbled backwards, knocking a few of the others off. Wild shots cracked in the air as they whizzed past close enough to graze Vaughn’s helmet and visor.

  “Theta Squad, this is Odin Six Four. Request sit-rep, over,” said a calm voice in his inner ear. Shima stabbed two fingers into his throat mic and shouted.

  “I’m wounded, we’ve got a man down, and about ten-thousand fucking angry locals closing! We need every goddamn thing you can give us NOW!” The pause that followed made all the screaming hell of the fight seem quiet. Vaughn dropped five more climbing bodies in the time it took for the reply to come.

  “Roger Theta, Odin Six Four en route to your RFID signals for Purge and evac. ETA: 1:30 minutes.” The relief washed through Vaughn to the point of feeling faint. He tensed and shoved the rifle butt deeper into his shoulder. Pick your target. Fire. Pick the next target. Fire. The Red Gate combat mantra returned to him as intended, but the other word the pilot had used tugged at the back of his mind.

  Purge. Hope and dread came in equal parts where one of those was concerned. The new gunships were outfitted with BASE platforms. Broad Area Stun Emitters. The half-sphere shaped delivery mechanism would extend from the underbelly of the gunship, charge in a matter of seconds, then send a one hundred-foot diameter sonic blast. They’d done it to him in basic. After the initial full-body slap, it had felt like his spine turned to cotton. Every muscle fiber simultaneously lost tension and then it was lights out. A two-hour coma followed. Then the sum total of every hangover he’d ever had.

  The Aug gear would dampen the shock of this one, but the thought of anything like that sensation shivered down his backbone...and there was still a chance of being knocked out. Long enough for T99 reinforcements to arrive. Naked in the hornets’ nest. He glanced at the ETA displayed in the upper middle part of his vision. 1:14. He had shot or killed six men since the pilot’s broadcast. Eight took their place.

  The noise in their shelter suddenly dropped down a layer. Enough to make them both pause and glance. Mason lay toppled on his side, weapon resting in an expanding pool of flickering blood.

  “Mason! Not now, goddammit, it’s time to work! MASON!” Shima screamed. The old vet didn’t move.

  “Reloading! Last mag!” Vaughn threw the spent one aside and somehow stilled the shaking enough to click the new one in place. He squeezed off two bursts before he heard it. A hundred or more voices chanting at once. Each word a hate-filled bark.

  “Ra-sa-lla, Ra-sa-lla, we-fight-for-our-home! From-scrap-and-from-ashes-and-dirt-we-are-grown! T-ninety-nine-soldiers, our-blood-for-our-own! DIE-EXO-DIE-EXO-in-pain-all-alone!”

  Matteo felt the words flow like molten metal in his veins. The fear receded, replaced with something else. All around him, the T99s shouted in one voice. Oki spat the chant, firing bursts in time with the lyrics. Suomo stopped firing to howl it in all directions. The voices lifted high above the gunfire. One full repetition later, ’Matteo had memorized the words.

  “Ra-sa-lla, Ra-sa-lla, we-fight-for-our-home! From-scrap-and-from-ashes-and-dirt-we-are-grown! T-nine-ty-nine-soldiers, our-blood-for-our-own! DIE-EXO-DIE-EXO-in-pain-all-alone!”

  This was new. Hate, fear, grief, and joy all focused into one feeling that came roaring out of his gut. He yanked himself to his feet and fired five rounds before the slide cocked back. Empty. A slap hit him in the chest. Oki’s hand pinned a fresh pistol mag to it. Matteo could hardly believe this was the same guy.

  “T-nine-ty-nine-soldiers, our-blood-for-our-own!” Oki pushed his face close to Matteo’s as he yelled. Matteo took the mag. Wide eyed and smiling, he rejoined the chant as he fumbled with the weapon.

  “DIE-EXO-DIE-EXO—!” The roar of hover-engines drowned them out and panic ripped through the crowd. Some, mostly T99s, leaned out and fired at the gunship. Others turned and ran for low ground, scrambling down ramps and stairwells, or climbing down wall ledges. A few jumped. Matteo tried. He pulled himself up onto the side railing and looked for a place to land in the alley below. The ship was on top of them, the air thick with a deafening hum and the smell of ozone. That pile of
tin. I’ll get cut, but it’ll break the fall. As he lunged, Oki grabbed his hood and yanked him back into the balcony. Dazed, Matteo watched Oki’s pinched face contort as he soundlessly screamed something. Matteo couldn’t tell what. From his place on the balcony floor, he saw a shiny dome of metal come out of a belly panel on the gunship. Bullets plinked off of it as it started to glow...and shake. It shook so hard and fast that it blurred into a shape twice as big.

  The hum gathered into a high pitched squeal over crushing vibration. Oki released Matteo as both of them pressed palms over their ears. Matteo felt like he was screaming. Couldn’t be sure. It all suddenly paused in a moment of charged silence. Time enough to look up and then—

  BOOOOOOOOOooooooommmm. A pale blue wave of light burst from under the gunship, spreading instantly over the entire block. The shock of it threw Matteo back into the wall, buckling the flimsy metal. His vision flashed stark white. Then black.

  13

  News

  “SHIT SHIT SHIT shit SHIT!” Liani pressed the yellowed elevator button half-a-hundred times, watching helplessly as the lit numbers crept toward her floor. Normally, she added some ‘elevator wait time’ to her morning routine, but nerves and caffeine had caused some difficulty in the outfit selection process. First the black top with the white blazer. Then the purple sport coat and white dress shirt. Then the maroon blouse with black slacks...the blouse had looked cute in the store, but in normal light it made her look like she had love handles. She had torn it off and barely fought the urge to stuff it into the incinerator chute before returning to the black top and blazer. The meltdown had taken at least a half hour.

  The memory chip in her purse stayed fixed in her mind’s eye. It had taken the better part of a week to work up the nerve to contact GSBC Channel 17 with the story. The ‘past due’ notices from her landlord spilling out of her inbox gave her the final nudge. This whole ‘doing-the-right-thing’ shit had better pay off. GSBC was already skeptical of her, and being late wouldn’t help her cause.

  After a long pause on the floor below her, the elevator doors slid open. She nearly barreled into an elderly man as he stepped off.

  “Excuse me!” she blurted. The man, unoffended, looked her up and down and whistled. It sent a chill up her back, but was it’s own kind of reassurance. She flashed a crazy grin at the man and hammered the button for the fiftieth floor lobby. He gaped at her, smiling. Thankfully the doors shut before the pervert could put whatever crossed his mind into words. She fussed with her troublesome reflection in the elevator walls for the entire thirty floors down to the lobby. Better this than obsessing over the clock. She did anyway.

  Finally, the doors opened on the fiftieth floor. The lobby looked nicer than it had any right to, especially considering the apartments in the place. A broad arcade of windows looked out over the main landing pad and Superway terminal beyond. They’d even sprung for shrubs, pathetic though they were. Her heels clacked a furious rhythm on the linoleum floor as she sped toward the front entrance. At the front desk, the block manager’s head snapped up at the sound.

  “Ms. Ray! Ms. Ray!” he called after her. She pretended not to hear, entering the revolving doors. The bald squat little man pursed his lips then held a button behind the desk. The revolving doors stopped, trapping Liani inside.

  “Ms. Ray,” he cleared his throat loud over the intercom in the entrance, ”you are aware that your account is fifteen days delinquent?” Liani pushed at the door. Over 300 tenants in his block alone, and he remembers everyone’s name and rent status.

  “Well aware, Mr. Korvan! I’m on my way to an interview right now so I can fix that!” She folded her arms so she couldn’t yank out her carefully styled hair. In the long pause that followed, she thought about trying to break the glass with one of her heels.

  “The full balance, including rent and late fees, is due by the end of the month, or eviction will follow.” A buzz came over the intercom and the doors resumed spinning. They almost knocked her down. She stumbled out onto the sidewalk then stormed off toward the terminal.

  The train arrived as she did. A long, snaking row of segmented cars hung from the mag-lev rail. The Superway network could take you across town in minutes, but you had to pass security, pay for entry, and catch a train first, a tricky business in this part of town. Eff these heels! Liani retracted them, ran flat-footed to the turnstyles, and passed her forearm over the scanner. But instead of the good beep, it screeched with the bad beep. Text flashed red in her Neural display.

  “Overdraft Warning,” a digital voice said in her ear, “press ‘Accept’ to withdraw the funds from savings with a surcharge, or ‘Decline’ to—” Liani punched ‘Accept,’ hoping that she might somehow break the simulated button. The usual tiny vibration of a button press was all she got. Liani pushed through the retracting gate, sprinted through the closing train doors, and found a seat.

  She didn’t have much time to enjoy the commute. Only three minutes to cross the twenty mile span from her building into downtown. All the same, she kept her eyes glued to the clear bubble canopy of the train car. To the left and right of the suspension rail, the off-white, stained buildings of her Inner Ring neighborhood passed. Liani’s place would have been considered a high-rise a few decades ago. Her floor might have even been penthouse level. But as the final alley of scrapers passed in a blur, the glowing blue splendor of the midday Center Ring appeared. In its beating heart, the Trade Mesa. A gargantuan, flat-topped structure that sat lower than the thicket of shining towers around it, but dwarfed them all in scale. Only Sedonia Tower stood above and behind it in grandeur. The curves of over a hundred different superway rails converged on the Mesa, and steady streams of air traffic filed in and out of thousands of open ports.

  She missed Mesa Park. The three-square-mile green preserve that stretched out from the southern base of the Mesa. Trees, shrubs, boulders, gardens, ponds, and lakes. She could almost smell the fresh air through the Plexiglas. Each day before a shift at GloboMetro, she’d been able to steal an hour to go running through the elaborately woven paths, passing Sedonia City’s best and brightest as they did the same. For the first time, she had felt comfortable. Confident. At home. And now because of that fucking stunt, I’ve got one last shot at it all. Then it’s back to bartending...or jail. Bitterness and nerves crept back in, spoiling the sight of blowing leaves and shimmering blue pools. She took out her compact mirror and fidgeted with her makeup for the last minute of the trip.

  The Superway rail banked left and dipped out of Mesa Plaza, heading into the sweeping grid of towers. The GSBC Channel 17 headquarters appeared, twenty blocks or so from the Plaza. It’s angular structure and shining windows would have made it impressive on its own, but it looked sadly average in this sector.

  Another ten blocks flew by before she reached the connection station. She hoped her luck would continue and there would be at least one shuttle waiting for her to just grab and make it to the office. She waited at the door for the train to stop, glancing feverishly at her watch. 9:58 AM...come-on come-on COME-ON! Finally, the train hummed to a halt and the hatch flashed open. She bolted out onto the platform toward the shuttles. Watched helplessly as a passenger entered the last one, closed the gull-wing door, and floated away.

  She felt the second meltdown of the day boil up into her temples, but by now people were noticing her. From TV, she hoped...not because she’s a crazy lady in an ugly blazer on the verge of leaping from the platform to end it all as a bloody stain a hundred meters below in the Foundation levels. The arriving troupe of shuttles yanked her from the whirlwind in her head.

  “Ooh ooh OOH!” She ran as fast as heels could go to the first one in line and hopped in. 10:01 AM...maybe their clocks are slow...or mine’s fast? Mine’s fast. Calm down, Liani. She sat up straight and smoothed the wrinkles from her outfit.

  In front of her pounding heartbeat, Liani Ray was all charm and smiles on her way through the megalithic GSBC lobby. The morning sun streamed in through toweri
ng arches, bathing the vast flowing chamber. She felt good. Scared shitless, but good. It would be nice to finally toss off the weight of the conspiracy. Wait ‘til they see this. It’ll be like a dropped a bomb on the place...this is just the beginning. An intern almost ran her over on his way through the doors. He was gone before she could think of something passive-aggressive to say, but then she noticed the rest of them. Other interns, reporters, fact-checkers, managers, art directors, cameramen, crew-men. All ran to and fro through the lobby. Some babbled into Neural screens or to one other as they rifled through floating interface. She caught bits and pieces of conversations as she wove her way to the high front desk at the back of the room. They added up to something big.

  “What the hell do you mean, it’s still raw?! We need those shots cut together five minutes ago!”

  “Are we sure about this wording?”

  “If you don’t have final approval, then put me on the line with someone who does!”

  “No way we can air that!”

  “...well figure it out! ‘Massacre’ doesn’t exactly have the best connotation...”

  Massacre? She waved off the sinking in her chest as she approached the front desk.

  “Excuse me,” she said. The receptionist didn’t seem to hear. She almost said it again when the woman reached over and pointed to the scanner panel on the front of the desk.

  “Check in here then have a seat, someone will be with you as soon as possible.” The woman tapped a few icons on her Neural and started talking to a face on a screen. Liani fidgeted for a second, then rolled up her sleeve to scan her forearm. Her profile appeared on the receptionist’s display followed by the text: “4.678 minutes late.” Liani grimaced until the receptionist shrank the profile window and stuck it into a queue of other profiles.