Lacuna: The Prelude to Eternity

by David Adams

  Scalded, half blind, and stunned, Cheung stumbled to her feet, scrambling for her weapon. It was nowhere to be found. Raising a glove to cover her eyes, she looked skyward, at a massive ship coasting to a stop in the sky above her, the underside illuminated a menacing red by the burning wreckage of the tank, punctuated by golden flares of light as the ammunition and fuel within Steel Bitch popped and exploded.

  Cheung scrambled away from the fiery heat of the inferno, her weapon forgotten. Her suit’s life support protocols kicked in, dispensing painkillers against her burns with a soft hiss. She ran across the dunes, tapping her arm-mounted radio control.

  “Cheung to all units—into the facility or hide amongst the dunes. Spread out and let the fly boys take care of this one.”

  A Broadsword, smoke trailing from its engine, smashed into the ground nearby, disintegrating into a roiling inferno as the wreckage spun over the ground, shedding debris before finally coming to a halt on the sand. Cheung stared at the flaming wreckage for a split second. There was no way anyone could have survived the impact.

  Her tac-helm filled with chatter and the screams of the wounded. Secondary explosions crackled from the burning tank as the inferno devoured its fuel and munitions stores, its turret twenty metres away, the ring a smoking hole.

  From the billowing dust that seemed to choke everything, a stumbling figure emerged. Keller.

  “Verdammt du hurensohn. Ahh, fuck, nnngg…”

  “Keller, you okay? Hey!” Cheung sprinted over as another barrage hit the sands all around them. She pushed the German woman onto her back as red-hot sand landed all around them. “Keller, you hit?”

  “Yeah, my fucking hand. Piece of debris from the tank.”

  Cheung felt her way down Keller’s arm, finding the end of her arm a bloody stump spurting onto the sand. “Shit.” She touched her radio. “Corpsman! Corpsman! We got wounded here!”

  A thick American accent answered her, weirdly calm despite the chaos around them. “Everyone’s wounded. Deal with it the best you can.”

  Cheung could not see them. The voice was as a ghost. She looked around the blasted, scorched landscape, but all the corpsmen she could see on her display were occupied.

  Best to do it herself. Cheung pulled out her coagulant pack and jammed it onto the scorched stump of Keller’s arm as explosions burst overhead. Cheung risked a glance at the sky—the defending ship lit up with dozens of explosions, her visor filtering out the bright light of missile detonations. Another shock wave passed over her, and then a wave of blast-heated sand fell over her like heavy rain.

  “Doesn’t look good,” she said, gripping Keller’s shoulder. “We gotta get outta here. Come on, you.”

  Cheung stood and, with a loud groan, pulled Keller to her feet.

  “Thanks,” Keller said. “Shit hurts less than you’d expect.”

  “That’s partly because of the morphine and partly because of the shock.”

  Keller slung her arm across Cheung, and the two stumbled away from the barrages. “I’ll take what I can get at this stage.”

  Cheung’s tac-helm beeped. A red square appeared over the other side of the dune. “We got contact,” she said. “Fifty metres distant, in cover.”

  “Well I can bleed on them if that would help.”

  “I’ve only got my pistol.” Cheung reached down with her free hand, clasped the grip of her weapon, and drew it. She clicked off the safety with her thumb and brought it up.

  A Bevra drone, its four arachnoid legs skittering over the sand, crested the ridge. With the precision available only to robots it examined her, then lifted its weapons, a faint hum filling the air. The drone’s weapons glowed with the buildup of energy.

  Cheung squeezed the trigger, her pistol barking twice, each of her two rounds striking the unyielding metal of the drone with the sound of a gong.

  “Well, shit.”

  A figure appeared behind the drone, outlined against the sky, a weapon raised in its strong arm. The blade descended, slicing into the drone’s insectoid rear section with a shower of sparks. The construct twitched, spasmed as though in pain, then slumped forward onto the sand.

  Stumpy tore his blade free. [“Come, feeble Humans!”] he roared. [“The battle has barely begun!”] With that, he charged away, disappearing behind the dune once more.

  “Okay,” Keller said, “so they actually use those swords. I thought they were just ceremonial.”

  “I really don’t think the Kel-Voran do anything ceremonial.”

  Keller laughed, but her voice trailed off. “I don’t… I don’t feel good.”

  “Okay, enough walking.” Cheung eased Keller down onto the sand. “You need to conserve your energy. You’re still bleeding a lot.”

  “Yeah, the suit gave me another shot. I feel really sleepy.”

  Cheung looked at Keller then tapped on her wrist-mounted keypad, bringing up Keller’s vitals on her visor. “Your heart rate is down, but you should be fine. We really need to get a corpsman to look at you, though.”

  “I’ll be alright. I’ve had worse.”

  Cheung grinned at her. “Don’t you dare go all black knight on me, dummkopf.”

  Keller’s tone became almost playful. Almost. “Your pronunciation is awful. Ten points for effort, though.”

  She started to reply, but a blue flash at the side of her tac-helm brought her out of it.

  “Corpsman here. Who’s wounded?” An Iranian-suited Marine, his tac-helm adorned with a white circle and a red crescent, ran up to them. Cheung noticed his gloves and chest were splattered in blood.

  She jabbed a finger down at Keller. “Her. Lost a hand.”

  The corpsman crouched beside her. “She’s lost a lot of blood. I’ll have to stabilise her here.”

  “Do it.” Cheung wanted to stay but couldn’t. “Can I leave you here?”

  “Yeah,” Keller said, “go.”

  The corpsman gave her a critical eye, frowning. “Your plan is to piss them off with your sidearm? I don’t see you with a rifle.”

  “I lost it in the bombardment. And actually, I lost my pistol, too.”

  He reached behind him, taking his Dragon’s Breath off his back and handing it to her. “Take mine. Go get one for me.”

  Cheung took the rifle, peering at it curiously. She was very familiar with the base design, but that one had been modified with extra sights and laser markers. Further, it had been spray-painted black.

  “What the hell’s this?”

  The corpsman jabbed a needle into Keller’s arm, talking as he worked. “Standard Dragon’s Breath, with Hellfire rounds. The ammo’s an Iranian invention—same size, same weight, twenty percent more firepower.”

  Cheung removed the magazine. The rounds were also black. She reinserted it and chambered a cartridge. “I suppose it’s what they say. Once you go black, you never go back.”

  He grinned over his shoulder. “You’ll have to ask Captain Liao about that one.”

  Cheung winced. “Ooo. Burn.”

  The corpsman linked up an IV to Keller and then, apparently satisfied she wasn’t going to bleed out, turned his attention to Cheung. “Speaking of burns, your face’s looking real red.”

  “Yeah, but I’m fine.” Cheung gave a wide smile. “Drugs are wonderful.”

  The corpsman turned back to Keller, nodding. “Okay, well, just make sure you get that checked out when this is done.”

  “Right.”

  Cheung stood, gave Keller a final nod, then made her way over the hill. Her radio chirped.

  “Lieutenant Cheung, this is Commander Iraj. Report status.”

  “That’s going to be difficult for me to do, Commander. I’m currently separated from my team.”

  “What do you know, then?”

  Cheung crested the rise, getting a good look at the battlefield. The smoke from the bombardments had cleared, and the scene stretching out before her was a chaotic mess.

  The tank’s hull continued burning. Few Marines remaine
d. Most had, judging by the many footprints, run through the now-open doors while others had retreated into the dunes. She could see the green diamonds of hundreds of suited Marines inside the structure, the flashes of their rifles and the explosions of their rounds filtering out through the broken doors and painting a field of twinkling stars on the golden backdrop of desert sand. Broadswords ran gun-runs over the action, their turrets swinging wildly as they sought drones still exposed, each round an angry red firefly darting to the ground to explode in a puff of sand and flame. In return, the blue beams of the Bevra drones reached out for them, seeking to bring the gunships down to the sand.

  Dotted in the sea of blue diamonds were clumps of grey ones, the grey indicating an inactive suit or one with no life signs. Dead Marines.

  She estimated that nearly a quarter of their force had been lost, including the tank that had been an unexpected boon—so swiftly given and then taken away—and more constructs seemed to arrive by the minute. As she watched, one of the Broadswords running low cover took a blast to the foresection, blowing the cockpit to cinders. Flame poured from the gaping hole in its structure as the ship turned over and plummeted to the ground, exploding in a shower of flame.

  Horrifying, confusing, and beautiful all at once.

  Cheung shouldered her rifle, marching down the dune, using the weapon’s laser sight to find the range to her targets. She squeezed off a pair of shots, but both went wide, blasting small craters in the sand. Then she touched the Talk key on her radio.

  “Hope you have a better plan than just sitting up there, Commander.”

  “We’re working on it,” said Iraj. “Resistance from above has been light.”

  She began to jog—the action hurt her legs, but she used the pain to focus. “We should have the facility secured within ten minutes.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. Keep at it. Iraj out.”

  Damn fleeters. Another round of orbital support rained down, blasting up the dust once more. The smoke of the battle, the massive amount of explosives, and green casevac requests clouded everything, and once more Cheung could barely see more than two hundred metres in any direction. Still, her tac-helm was her guide, and it showed her she had targets aplenty, driven out by the bombardment. She jammed another clip into her Dragon’s Breath rifle, finished before the previous spent magazine hit the sand. She lined up her sights on another drone, but a rumble under her feet stopped her.

  A metal claw, whirring and covered in blades, leapt out of the sand, nearly skewering her. With a surprised shout, she dove clumsily to one side, scrambling backward as the construct climbed out of the dune.

  Almost twenty-five metres tall from the base of its claws to the top of its giant head, the metal arachnid shook away the sand like a wet dog.

  Strong hands grabbed her, dragging her back and out of the way of the metal claws. Fortunately, she held onto her borrowed rifle, dragging it across the ground. The metal creature ignored them, turning toward the battle, lumbering with great thumps of its metal claws. Cheung was dragged down into one of the many craters that dotted the ground, then hands searched her for injuries.

  “Ma’am! Are you hit?” asked a strongly accented American voice.

  Cheung raised her hand then pulled herself to her feet with the stranger’s help. “No, I’m fine! What the fuck is that thing!?”

  “A target, ma’am.”

  Without so much as a nod of agreement, she and the American raised their rifles together, kneeling in the crater and lining up the large body of the lumbering creature. They both fired, their heavy rounds leaving thin trails of smoke as they leapt toward the target. They burst against the drone’s metal hull and gouged out twin holes in the metal. Giving an almost feral howl, the robot dove toward the sand and disappeared in a cloud of dirt.

  “I think we got it,” she said.

  “I think we just pissed it off.”

  A beam from a Bevra’s cannon struck the sand in front of them, and the two ducked down, using the lip of the crater for cover. The stranger extended a hand. “Samuel O’Hill, Seventy-fifth Rangers. US Army. Attached to the Washington.”

  She took it, squeezing his hand firmly. “Cheung. First Marines, People’s Army Navy Marines. Meeting a lot of new faces today.”

  “It’s weird, but I guess that’s one of those things with combined operations.” He looked around. “Who’re you with?”

  “Alpha company. I can’t find my squad.”

  “I’m with Echo. Can’t find mine either. Did you see where that drone that shot at us went?”

  Cheung shook her head, risking a peep over the lip of the crater. No sign of the drone. “It was here, just before.”

  A loud, nearby explosion blew sand over both of them. “Well, shit.” She shouldered her rifle, giving the Ranger a grin. “Back to it, I suppose.”

  “Back to it. On three.”

  They broke cover, moving out of the crater together. Cheung covered the left, and the Ranger covered the right. Three Broadswords, acting as a wing cutting a swath through the smoke with effortless ease, swooped overhead so low she could see the pilots. Colossal drones pressed their weapons out from the sand, shooting up into the haze, firing at targets in orbit.

  She grabbed the Ranger’s shoulder and pointed with her other hand. “Look! Aren’t those things supposed to be dead by now?”

  An area, no more than fifty metres away, of sand was pulsing and growing, as though some powerful force were pushing up below it. Cheung immediately touched the talk key on her wrist.

  “This is Lieutenant Cheung, fire mission, coordinates as follows: yankee niner, hotel six-one. Danger close, fire for effect.”

  An Israeli voice answered. “This is Switchblade, please confirm coordinates, we see nothing.”

  Cheung tapped her finger on her armoured suit in annoyance. “It’s a subterranean target, Switchblade. Coordinates are accurate. Execute fire mission.”

  “Confirm target as yankee niner, hotel six-one. Danger close, fire for effect.”

  She watched as the three Broadswords came about, hovering at forty-five degrees to the target, all three ventral turrets swinging around and firing together. Three streams of high explosives poured into the ground. At first, it seemed to be nothing but sand, but as the explosive shells dug deeper, they revealed the glinting metal of the massive drone’s skin. The shots bore into its body as it broke the surface again, roaring and flailing its giant blades helplessly at the hovering craft, who coldly and unsympathetically continued to pump it full of high explosives.

  Then the tip of the large creature’s claws split, revealing twin glowing lances. Each hummed, then twin beams of light reached out to the lead Broadsword, slicing into its hull. The spaceship continued to fire, all the way down, its weapons spitting defiance until it crashed onto the desert floor, crumpling but not exploding.

  The large construct, too, crumpled in a heap, its body a crater-strewn, smoking ruin. Cheung and the Ranger ran towards the downed Broadsword.

  “Cheung to surviving Broadswords, continue close support and engage targets of opportunity, we’ll check out that wreckage.”

  “This is Harlot. Bruiser is breaking to engage targets. We’ll remain here and cover you while you extract the wounded.”

  If there are any, Cheung thought to herself. As she drew closer, though, she saw a small hammer smash one of the cockpit windows and a bloody figure climb halfway out, appearing to get stuck.

  She and O’Hill scurried up the crumpled hull to the cockpit, her hands reaching for the pilot’s. “Stay still,” Cheung said, “you might have spinal injuries.”

  “I feel fine. You look like shit, though.”

  For a moment, she thought she was being genuinely insulted but then remembered what her suit must look like to an observer—covered in blood and scorch marks and pitted with sand. “Hey, you want me to leave you here?” she asked, reaching down and grasping hold of the metal frame of the window, grunting as she worked the metal. “O’
Hill, help me with this.”

  Together, groaning with the effort, the two managed to pry an inch or two of extra room, and the pilot wiggled free.

  “Anyone else in there?”

  “Heaps. The crew. We gotta get ‘em all out.” The pilot looked around, dazed. “Where’s the SAR team?”

  Cheung grimaced, looking through the hole in the glass at the crumpled inside of the ship. “We’re it.”

  “Oh.”

  “We have to secure the area,” said O’Hill, “and wait for support to extract these crew.”

  That was going to be difficult. “Defence perimeter, then.” Cheung snatched a claymore from her pack. On the front was written, “FRONT TOWARD ENEMY”.

  “Don’t tell me how to live my life,” she said, jamming it into the ground. It was an American design, similar enough to the Type 66 she’d trained on.

  “What?” said O’Hill.

  “I was talking to the mine.”

  He laughed. Cheung laughed. The pilot stared incredulously.

  Her radio crackled. “How’re you doing down there, Lieutenant?” came Anderson’s voice. In the background, klaxons wailed, alarms she recognised as overload warnings and system outage alerts.

  “Having a whale of a time, Captain. Christmas came early this year.”

  “How are you finding the resistance?”

  “Glorious, Captain. Bevra drones light up real good when the Wasps strafe them with their cannons, and we’ve got Broadsword gunships running close air support for our Marines. They just took out a fuck-off massive, previously unseen model of tin can, but we lost Switchblade. I’m assisting with the crew recovery now. Could use a hand.”

  “Very good, Lieutenant. We’re encountering increasing resistance up here, but I think that big guy was controlling them. We’ve got them on the defensive. Stand by for good news.”

  She laughed, reaching out and clapping the dazed pilot on the back. “Always ready to hear good news, sir.”

  The hull of the ship began to move, rumbling as though threatening to take wing once more. She reached for her rifle as the sand surrounding the ruined ship erupted, revealing the burrow-holes of nearly a dozen constructs. They quickly shook off the sand and, with clinical precision, aligned their weapons on the group, pointing them directly at the three Humans sitting atop the ruined Broadsword.