Saints of the Void: Atypical

by Michael Valdez

  Something that might help with all that tedious scavenging were those five huge construction lights visible on the second floor. They were the kind that held six rows of six powerful bulbs and featured a bulky generator at the bottom instead of a quadropod stand. One was on the pedestrian walkway, slightly to the left of that centered escalator. Then there was a pair of the big pieces of equipment on each balcony above the space just past the tunnels; all five were covered in tan tarps.

  It was out of the ordinary that the equipment was here, yes, but they may have broken down during the scrapping of the place and been left by the worker bees. The ones on the balconies were several paces away from the waist-high borders, their centered hydraulic pole extended for maximum height, the same way they’d be set up to look down into quarries. Even under tarps, it was obvious that the spotlight sections were aimed down at where the tunnel let the trio into the main hub. So how are all five of these machines broken down, in those perfectly placed flanking positions? And aimed at the only place they could possibly use to enter the space?

  Dastou noticed on either side of him were sets of steps carved into the concrete, meant for maintenance crews that needed access to the track level, a safer alternative than jumping a meter down into the gaps. Those steps would make good cover, too, if he laid down on them, which was an odd thing to think at that moment. A Saint needed to trust his instincts when strange warning signs and suspicions started popping up from background information to top-of-mind, so...

  “This is it, then,” said Trenna. “I’ll show you where we spent time in this area, then we can look around for clues I guess. I’m not really sure how you want…”

  “Stop, Trenna,” commanded Dastou when he saw the girl starting to walk forward again. Nes grabbed the girl’s right arm tight to make sure she didn’t go anywhere.

  “Ow! What’s going on?” She held fast and turned her head just enough to see the others staring at the same spot.

  She looked that way herself, towards a very faint blue glow reflected on the stainless steel handrail of the pedestrian bridge near the spotlight; it was the glow of an active-but-not-on indicator. A shadow shifted, and the sheet draped over the spotlight on the bridge was pulled off. The ruffling noise of the fabric was almost instantly followed by a loud klak-klak that echoed throughout the boarding area. That sound signaled the thirty-six small but powerful diode bulbs of the construction light being turned on full blast, forcing Dastou’s group to instinctively shield their eyes. Four other sets of ruffling-cloth-and-klak-klak noise combinations made it a safe assumption, even with eyes closed, that the other lights were coming on, too.

  Dastou’s intuition made him rush to the left, blindly aiming to get to those nice, useful, probably incredibly hard concrete steps. He pushed Trenna as he moved and hoped Nes, since he still had his hand on her arm, pulled her with him. Then came an onslaught of a near-deafening, instantly recognizable noise: automatic gunfire.

  Chapter 5

  Well, that’s settled, thought Nes. He always had doubts about the “cognitive suture” training Dastou put all DSF agents through during their time at the Ornadais Academy. As a rookie, he simply stuck to his guns, literally, and became proficient with firearms, figuring that was the way to go. Veterans, a funny term considering that the organization was not even a decade old, would tell him “trust us, you’ll be amazed” or “don’t worry about it until your life is at risk.” He never fully bought into it, not until a few seconds ago. Bullets flew overhead, he was safely in cover, but his mind was occupied by a single amazing fact: when it came time to act or die, he was as fast as a Saint.

  Alright, enough chest pounding and back to the current situation. The concrete maintenance steps that served as cover did their job, and Nes was not in any danger. He had made sure to land slightly on his side to avoid damaging the assault rifle buckled to his back. Trenna was right next to him, lying closer to the ground thanks to her size. She didn’t take the landing too well, getting her breath knocked out from the impact and hitting her hip hard against the edge of a step, but she was alright for now.

  The consistent whizzes and pews of ammunition flying around, hitting everything but their targets, made Trenna keep a hand over her head instinctively while the other was on her injured hip. She shook with fear, a cry escaping her whenever a bullet hit something near their cover. At least she kept the bare minimum amount of composure needed to keep from running screaming back down the tunnel, getting riddled with bullets along the way.

  Looking across the left side gap, the Saint was in an identical position to the corporal, keeping his bald head down. A slip of adhesive-backed wax paper was on the gravel where the trio stood a moment before. The paper held a set of four intricate symbols that created a hypnotic suggestion – “ignore” to be specific. Looking up to the balcony above Dastou, three men were changing positions to fire on them from somewhere besides directly above; it was a life-saving difference in enemy location. When had Dastou put that Stitch on the gravel? The corporal’s temporarily inflated ego lost some of its pressure upon realizing how amazingly cunning his friend was in the heat of combat.

  Nes also became aware that he was getting used to the ambient brightness. The five sets of lights being on at the same time washed almost all the detail out of the world, even when looking down and away from them. He checked one of the pockets on his supply belt and felt for a small sphere, found it, then held it in his palm. Before acting, he needed to check with Dastou. Nes’ throat mic was active, so he just turned up the receiver volume by thumbing a knob on the transceiver on his belt, and spoke at a normal volume.

  “So... this is a trap then?” Nes asked.

  “Jackass,” responded Dastou, his own mic allowing for easy conversation.

  “Says you while hiding the same way I am.”

  A couple of big pebbles of concrete bounced onto the Saint’s head after being shot off from the top of the maintenance steps, distracting him for a moment. Nes noticed a change in the consistency of the gunfire.

  Dastou spoke after a surge and subsequent downturn of bullets flying. “It sounds like they’re trying to conserve ammo, firing in bursts. They probably wanted us closer and with nowhere to hide.”

  “Thanks for explaining ambushes to me, Your Lordship,” said Nes. He paused during a short eruption of fire near his own skull. “Now, what the fuck are we going to do about this?”

  “I’ll go up the nearby escalator, you go the other way. If a prisoner can be taken, I’ll handle it. You, though… you do what needs doing, Nes.”

  The order was clear, but Nes had never killed before. He barely got his next words out without his voice cracking. “Yeah. Yeah, I got it.”

  Nes turned down the volume of his earpiece using another knob on the transceiver. He changed his tone of voice to carry over the gunfire, and moved a little closer to the girl so she could hear.

  “Trenna, we're going to be moving soon. Can you handle that?” he asked.

  She looked at the injured side of her hip, then looked up at Nes and gave a pained, unsure nod. Nes' mind would have to be as focused on combat as keeping the girl alive, so he took her not-quite-ideal agreement as the best he’d get out of a civvie.

  Nes now put his attention on the mini-flashbang marble in his palm. He pressed two buttons on the surface of the small ordinance, then threw it straight into the air. He covered Trenna’s face as soon as the device was airborne, careful not to break her glasses. He couldn’t be sure if she’d be confused by an order to protect her eyes with so much craziness happening around her, and opted to take care of it himself. He closed his own eyes as tight as possible, and preemptively grimaced.

  The marble exploded after a little over a second in the air, just long enough to reach the second tier. On detonation, it created a light that was damn near like the sun. The cranked-up brightness of the construction equipment diodes washed things out, made it impossible to do much without half-closing your eyes, but they were not wea
pons. The flash grenade, however, emitted a sudden, painful, headache inducing brightness, evidenced by the abrupt halt in gunfire. Even those members of the ambush group whose eyes were not in the direct line of sight of the blast would be blinded by reflected luminescence. That was only the first of two functions for the marble.

  Almost immediately following the flash was the bang: a powerful, short range sonic pulse. It felt like too-close thunder but without the full breadth of noise, and Nes’ whole body vibrated. The distinctive sound of glass shattering took over, which would be from the construction lights and the very closest storefront windows on the second floor. Eyes still closed, the corporal felt bits of glass landing on him and heard it become dead quiet, telling him it was time to counter. He got away from Trenna, opened his eyes, and deftly unbuckled the assault rifle on his back.

  He popped up from cover with substantial speed, especially considering the awkward position he forced himself into for the steps to protect him. Three attackers were still visible from their chests up in the middle of the walkway near the center spotlight, making themselves easy targets as they rubbed their eyes. Nes’ vision was still a bit fuzzy, but he was able to see enough to start shooting, barely putting pressure on the trigger.

  A single short, sharp pop-pew from the DSF weapon echoed through the now quiet hub, and a bullet to the chest took down the one on the middle. Two more trigger pulls, the next bullets from the corporal’s gun hit a woman left of the first victim in the shoulder and sternum, a mist of blood filling the air near her for a moment as she went down. Nes heard the wet noises of blood splattering on the walkway, and forced his breathing to stay calm.

  Right of the first target was someone who, despite the swiftness and accuracy of the counter-attack, realized what was happening and tried to duck below the retaining wall of the bridge. That was an unfortunate decision, since now the only spot to aim for was his head. Pop-pew, and a bullet entered his temple and came out of the other side, neither happening cleanly or quietly.

  Wet, gross noises. Still breathing calmly.

  Another two ambushers on the bridge decided that it was time to blindly fire down at the targets of their failed trap, forcing Nes to bend down again. Looking to his left at the other set of low concrete steps, Dastou was gone, as expected. From the initial sounds of gunfire, the space available to the enemy, and locations of the five construction lights, there were at most eight more of the assailants for to him take down. Dastou’s side didn’t count, as the Saint would tear through anyone there like with an unstoppable ferocity.

  Looking toward the far right, where the Saint said Nes should get to, the corporal saw two men running down the ascending side of the escalator. Those two must have only been hit by reflected light from the marble, so their vision was good enough that they decided to rush down. They weren’t trying to hide their advance, though, making the idiots just a notch above target practice. Staying half-ducked, Nes pulled the trigger confidently.

  He fired just twice, in rapid succession, and aimed perfectly. The shots came with so little time between them that the second man shot didn’t even react when the first was hit, a single bullet to the heart for each of them.

  The dead men tumbled down the ascending side of escalator stairs, the clattering of their guns making more noise than their bodies as they fell. They crumpled on top of each other at the bottom. The flashbang marble’s blinding effect should be wearing away completely soon, so Nes would have to move to a safer position. He squeezed Trenna’s shoulder to get her attention.

  When she looked up, eyes a little red behind her glasses but apparently seeing clearly, he spoke. “Wait a bit, keep looking in my direction, and follow the wall to the boarding area when I give you a signal. Stop, then, come to me I say it’s safe.”

  He wasn’t sure if the compound instructions were too much, but he had to trust her. The corporal first made his way up the short set of steps they hid behind and onto the middle boarding platform. He used the wall on his right to naturally lower the number of his sides open to attack from four, not including above thanks to Dastou’s hypnotic Stitch, to three, whatever good that would do. He descended the other side of the middle platform’s maintenance steps in one leap, swiftly crossing the track gap beyond and passing another tunnel opening on his right in this symmetrical hub. He used two jumps to get up the stone steps leading to the northbound boarding platform, getting down on one knee in a firing stance as soon as he could.

  He was on the exact opposite side of the room where Dastou would have gone up, and had a good view of the first level. He shifted his weapon along with his eye line in swift motions, trying to find targets. There were no observable threats, so he got up ran in a half-crouch to the escalator’s descending side, making sure to do a visual check on the two bodies at the bottom of the ascending end. They were pretty dead, barely any blood pooling at their location since their hearts stopped instantly.

  He was momentarily distracted by the fact that these bodies were so close. He’d not only never killed anyone before today, he’d never even been in real combat. The metallic smell of blood, as little of it as there was thanks to direct shots to the heart, gave him the beginnings of a painful headache along with the sudden need to vomit. He forced himself to again attention to what he was doing, and his food to stay where it was. He didn’t want his burgeoning DSF Badass persona to go completely to waste if Trenna slipped on his thrown-up lunch.

  Nes held the rifle at the ready and looked at the girl. It had stayed quiet since the flashbang, the only sounds being the corporal’s gunfire, blood spatters, or bodies hitting the ground, so she was able to slip her head out of cover just enough to see him. He nodded deeply at her, the signal he told her to wait on. Trenna got up and started to jog with a limp, using the wall as a crutch to help with her injured hip.

  When Nes touched her shoulder for attention earlier, he had attached an “ignore” Stitch to it after having already removed a corner of the adhesive backing. It flapped a bit as she limped along, but at least it was staying on. Anyone looking down would see her for only a second, and then their minds would disregard her entirely.

  Trenna crossed the gap and tunnel on her right, going the exact same way Nes did moments earlier. She reached the boarding platform by climbing the concrete steps on this side of the room, and Nes put his palm up toward her, an easily recognizable signal to stop. He scanned around for targets again, and then waved permission for her to come to him. Trenna walked as quickly as she could, clearly in pain. Nes’ headache was getting worse by the second, though he had quelled the need to barf well enough to do his duty. When Trenna reached him at the escalator, she practically collapsed to her knees, but he caught her and set her down more gently. When she looked at the raggedly-dressed bodies on the rise near her, she couldn’t help but say something.

  “Jakob... and Brayson. They’re...” she tried to say before Nes took her chin in his hand and yanked her attention to him.

  “Not now, understand?” he said firmly, leaving no room for misinterpretation. “Not yet.”

  Trenna got the gist, and blinked back tears. Nes pointed up the escalator, signaling the need to crawl up. She said nothing, but he knew she’d follow.

  “Stop rubbing your damn eyes and look for them!” someone said from the balcony above the pair on this side of the room.

  Someone very near the first speaker complained. “I am looking. And I don’t see shit at the tunnel. They’re gone.”

  The Stitch worked, apparently, since this person must have been scanning the area during Trenna’s progress to the escalator. He’d been hypnotized by the symbols on the paper to neglect the person or area near it.

  “No,” the first man said, “they wouldn’t just leave. Get everyone still moving and search this place. Fucking kill that goon, and don’t forget the acolyte bitch.”

  Nes started crawling up the escalator using knees and a forearm, holding the rifle near the trigger with the other hand. It was a rough
go with the steps being metallic and somewhat jagged on the edges. Trenna was close behind, getting the hint to be quiet after hearing those two voices so near, voices she would recognize like she recognized the dead men below. Nes never saw anyone trying to keep their fear, real fear, in check before, but he figured Trenna would be a textbook example if Dastou felt like writing about it.

  The pair was near the top of the escalator after a minute of crawling, and heard a lot of movement, mostly footsteps, getting closer. Nes was thankful for something to concentrate on, and he noticed his mind shifting into high gear again. Academy members called it going “fully Saint.”

  Five sets of footsteps, diagonal towards me from the left, all armed thought the corporal, and he only barely understood it as he figured distances in a flash. Looking down at Trenna, he saw that she hit her breaking point when the footsteps came, and she froze in place. Tears streamed down her face, but she was still quiet as a mouse, thankfully. The Stitch he attached to her shoulder was gone, only a corner of the rectangular slip remaining on her t-shirt. Nes looked past her and saw it halfway down the escalator. There was no way they could go back and get it, and he only bothered to bring one, forced hypnotism not being his most well-trained combat skill. Her best protection was now gone, and she would be safe here only if he provided the necessary distraction.

  The corporal went ahead with what was probably a terrible idea, and started barking a pretend order. “No! Stay down there, at the tunnel. I’ll check the balconies when you’re safe.” His acting was probably better in those daydreams Dastou seemed to have all the time, but it should do.

  It worked, and the footsteps stopped. The ambient noises that revealed their weapons were now more apparent. The enemies were getting ready to fire wherever he popped his head up, thinking that he foolishly and accidentally revealed his position near them. Trenna grabbed his leg near the ankle, and looked at him from her position lower on the staircase, scared of what he was planning. Nes smiled lightly, nodded, and she let him go with a look of worry taking its place alongside her fear.