“You’re crazy. There are two-hundred of them and two of us. If we start taking out Daybreak members, we’ll get gunned down faster than we can say boo.”
“There were two-hundred of them. At least a quarter of them are dead by now, and most of the rest are out on Alex, fighting.”
“What in Sol are you talking about?”
“My girl Lisa Sato. She’s done it.”
“She’s not your—” Phineas stopped himself, shaking his head. One thing at a time, Phin. “What do you mean, done it? What has she done?”
“Brought back reinforcements, is what she’s done! I heard her over the short-wave, giving an ultimatum to those Daybreak jerks, real steely like. Reminded me of Tessa Notaras, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s out there, too. We’re taking back this town, Gage. Now take the damned gun.”
Still, Phineas hesitated, studying O’Toole’s gap-toothed grin, trying to decide whether the old lech had finally lost it.
“How do you know a quarter of Daybreak’s people are dead?”
“Got a nerd to hack the exterior feed. They got one hell of a battle brewing out there, Gage. It’s time we got one started in here.”
He’d heard enough. Phineas pushed away the rifle O’Toole was offering him. “Get that away from me,” he said.
Then he plucked another firearm from where it dangled at O’Toole’s hip. “I’m taking the Uzi.”
Chapter 55
Take No Prisoners
The Battle for Habitat 2 dragged on through the night.
Darkstream pressure suits could hold three doses of stims, and well before the eastern sky began to brighten, Lisa used them all.
How long have we been fighting? It seemed like eight hours at least, and it probably was. Maybe more.
The Daybreak beetle had trundled up and down the valley for the first part of the battle, providing a focal point for the enemy’s defense against Lisa, Tessa, and the Quatro.
The second group of fighters to emerge from Habitat 2 had no beetle—probably they hadn’t modified a second one, and unmodified beetles were next to useless in traditional combat, which was why Andy had long since driven to safety.
The Daybreak reinforcements moved to back up their lone beetle, but shortly after, Lisa had finally managed to secure a vantage point close enough to make a move against it. She’d ripped a grenade from her suit’s waist, pulled the pin, and lobbed it as hard as she could, spraying the Daybreak soldiers with bullets as it flew.
They returned fire, and she ducked, but then they realize what she’d done, and the shooting stopped.
Peeking over the rise, Lisa saw them fleeing from the beetle as fast as they could.
Did I…?
Fire had blossomed from underneath the enemy beetle, spreading across the ground and lighting up the night. The rear hatch opened, and three figures leapt free of the vehicle, two of them landing upright to join the others in fleeing. The third went sprawling on the ground, leg twisting, followed by an attempt to crawl away from the fire as fast as possible.
The enemy beetle hadn’t exploded, but it was clearly disabled, and it had ceased to be an effective rallying point for the Daybreak fighters.
After that, they scattered into the hills.
Lisa strapped her sniper rifle to her back once more, after that. It was useless, but she didn’t want to abandon it, for fear that the enemy would pick it up and use it to their advantage later.
That had been hours ago. Now, she stalked through the hills, suit audio jacked up to amplify any and all sounds.
On her way down a shallow hill, she nearly stepped on a Daybreak thug hiding in a crevice. He spotted her around the same time she did him, and he managed to get his gun out, but Lisa put a round each in his neck and chest before he could fire. He slumped back into his hiding spot and moved no more.
When she picked up his pistol, she found that it had a silencer, and so she clipped her assault rifle to her pressure suit, holding the pistol before her instead.
This part of the battle was the tensest yet—the protracted creeping through pitch-dark hills, forever hunting for an enemy that was hunting her. Every sound made her twitch. Including her own footfalls.
A noise made her spin around, and she tried to track the source with her pistol’s muzzle.
Just some skittering rocks.
Then another Daybreak fighter appeared before her. The woman got off a round, but she was clearly as excited as Lisa, and the shot went wild.
Lisa took full advantage, bringing her pistol up and firing twice. One shot missed, but the other took her target in the shoulder.
Staggering backward, the woman managed to raise her gun once more.
A shot went off, and Lisa dropped to the ground at the same time, so that the bullet went over her head.
On her stomach, she couldn’t raise the pistol’s barrel enough to hit any vital organs, but she fired at her target’s shins, and one of her bullets must have hit. Her adversary fell to the ground, clutching at her right leg. Lisa regained her feet.
“Please,” the woman said over an unencrypted channel. “Mercy.”
“I—” Lisa shook her head. “I can’t. We don’t have the ability to take prisoners, and I have no reason to trust you. I can’t just leave you here.”
“Take my guns. What am I going to do? Look at me. I’ll probably die anyway, if my suit doesn’t manage to seal the holes you put in me.”
Lisa raised her gun to point at her enemy’s head.
I’d be letting everyone in Habitat 2 down by not doing this.
Her finger shifted on the trigger, began to squeeze…
She eased up. “Toss away your weapons, slowly, so I can see what you’re doing.”
“Okay. Yes. Thank you.” The woman did as she was told, and Lisa stepped forward, kicking away the weapons even farther.
“Is your suit sealing properly?”
“I—I think so.”
“All right.” Lisa sighed. Again, she’d almost let her fear push her into doing something that wasn’t her. Her fear of defeat, of failing everyone she knew.
That wasn’t enough to compromise who she was. It couldn’t be. Yes, she’d fought hard today. Yes, she’d killed people, for the first time in her life. But she still clung to the belief that she was a good person.
She glanced around at their surroundings, keeping her pistol leveled at her prisoner, ready to swing it around to point at a new target if one appeared.
Now what?
She couldn’t carry the woman’s weapons. Not while continuing to fight. And she couldn’t leave her here with them.
In the east, the sky had begun to brighten. At first, that made Lisa glad, but then she realized…
Oh God.
The Quatro would be rendered useless during the daylight. They wouldn’t be able to bear the weight of their enormous weapons, nor could they repair their pressure suits if they tore. If Lisa, Tessa, and the Quatro couldn’t end this battle fast, at best they would lose their only chance to save Habitat 2.
At worst, they’d die.
Indecision tore at her. She glanced at the woman again. Should I have…?
No. No matter what happened, killing an unarmed person was not the right move, even if that person had helped terrorize Lisa’s friends and neighbors.
Still, her heart rate spiked as she continued to scan her brightening surroundings.
Then, Tessa’s voice was inside her helmet, and this time, it wasn’t a reconstructed subvocalization.
It was just Tessa, and she sounded relaxed: “Lisa. It’s over.”
“What? How?”
“The people of Habitat 2…they rose up. They took their home back from Cooper. And once the ones we’re fighting realized they’re stranded out here…”
“They gave up.”
“Yeah. They were probably already pretty stressed out as it was. Cooper fled in a beetle less than an hour ago, apparently. I doubt he was expecting to fight Quatro on Alex.”
“Hey, Tessa?”
“Yes?”
“You didn’t call me girl. You called me Lisa.”
“So I did,” Tessa said, and Lisa could hear the smile in her voice. “So I did.”
Chapter 56
Clutch
When Gabe had first seen the Quatro pouring into Plenitos through the rent in the walls they’d made, he’d frozen, stricken by the thought that this was surely karmic retribution for the things he’d done in Darkstream’s name during the taking of Eresos almost twenty years ago.
Then the flashbacks had begun anew, just snippets at first, their impact amplified tenfold by the dream.
He’d been riveted in place by them. They’d shattered his drive to continue fighting.
How embarrassing that Jake Price had been the one to snap him out of it.
“Come on!” Price had bellowed, charging across the battlefield, and the effect had been akin to a church bell on Sunday, ringing with Gabe’s head inside it.
Price had sprinted toward the teeming Quatro, opening up with both autocannons, followed closely by Ash Sweeney and the rest of the team.
Sweeney. Jess’s sister. Ash still didn’t know Gabe’s connection with her. But the thought of Jess rekindled his rage—his lust for vengeance.
And he’d charged after them.
Now, the last of the Quatro stalked the city’s northwest quadrant in a pack three-hundred strong, which stretched across four streets at any given time. They made short work of anyone in their path, as well as every glass storefront they encountered.
The store windows weren’t meant to withstand bullets, or even a fully grown Quatro leaning against it with its front paws. Other than building the shelters, no one had planned for the Quatro ever getting this far.
And yet here they were.
Gabe had already given the order for what was left of Darkstream’s reserve battalion to muster in a square directly in the path of the alien horde. In the center of the square sat a gigantic, circular fountain that gushed water several meters in the air before it came back down to splash into a large basin.
His team gathered in the square, too. Everyone except Price.
“Where is he?” Gabe yelled over the team-wide, and even he could hear the manic edge in his own voice.
He saw Ash raise a metal hand to point.
Following the gesture, he saw Price, emerging from between two buildings.
The ground began to tremor, and on the opposite side of the square, the Quatro were beginning to step out onto the square as well.
“Form up,” Gabe barked over the battalion-wide. “This is it.”
“Clutch,” Ash said.
“What?” he said, whipping around to face her.
She was still looking at Price.
“That should be Jake’s nickname. Clutch. Because he always seems to arrive at the last minute, and that last minute always seems to be the one that matters most.”
“Clutch it is,” Gabe muttered, striding to the front of his forces’ formation.
The moment he arrived, the air beside him flickered, and Captain Black appeared beside him.
“I saw you fall to pieces outside the city,” Black said, his eternal calm apparently intact. “If it happens again, well…I doubt I need to outline the consequences. If you survive this, you’ll be discharged, probably dishonorably.”
“It won’t happen again,” Gabe said flatly.
“Good,” Black said, vanishing.
“Hit them,” he ordered over the wide channel. “Now.”
His team of mechs had assembled directly behind him, at the very front of the Darkstream reserve forces.
They surged forward as one, a single fist of steel and death that swung forward to smash the Quatro apart.
“Grenades first,” Gabe subvocalized. “Then bayonets, once we’re among them.”
The volley of grenades sailed overhead in a wide arc, creating a crescent of explosions deep within the Quatro ranks.
The enemy enveloped Gabe’s team, then, surrounding them, swarming between them.
That suited Oneiri well. It gave them room to bring their bayonets to bear. Soon, each mech was covered in fur and flesh and blood.
Driving his blade into hide after hide, opening wound after wound, sending arc after arc of scarlet spurting into the air, Gabe lost himself in the dance of battle.
The roar of the remaining tanks’ guns, the mortar shells, the automatic gunfire…it sounded muffled, to him. Everything did. His world was made of his blades and the Quatro flesh they found and the sky that flashed over and over with his rage, in colors that matched the viscera covering everything.
Soon, the mortars and tanks stopped firing, since to do so would endanger friendly units, locked as they were in close combat with the aliens.
Gabe wouldn’t have been able to say how long it lasted. Hours, days, minutes.
At any rate, it ended. He whirled to find his next target and found nothing but a square littered with corpses, both Quatro and human.
Other than his team of mechs, Darkstream’s reserve force was significantly diminished. The tanks remained, but few soldiers were left, and that included the mortar teams’ numbers.
Gabe strode over to a petty officer he recognized. “Where’s Commander Clifford?” he rasped.
“Dead, sir,” the petty officer said. His name was Hayworth, if Gabe remembered correctly.
Nodding, Gabe turned, striding through the sea of bodies to reach the massive fountain in the center of the square. Without ceremony, he mounted it with a single step, turning to face what remained of his forces.
He spread his metal hands wide, taking in the entirety of the square, which soon would acquire the stink of death. Insects had already begun to light on the bodies.
Soon, they’ll cover them.
“These beasts are evil,” Gabe said. “Plain and simple. Today, we beat back evil—barely. We prevented them from taking what was most dear to us—barely. But they’ll come again. They’ve tasted success. They’ve tasted human blood. And now that they have the taste, for as long as they live, they’ll never stop hungering for it.”
“So let’s make sure they don’t live much longer!” shouted Hayworth.
“I agree,” Gabe said, nodding at the petty officer. “Let’s.” He swept those gathered with his gaze, metal head creaking softly as it turned. The battle haze was still leaving him, which the dream rendered by making the faces of his audience shimmer slightly. “Let’s hit the Quatro in their home, now, with everything we have. Let’s do to them what they just tried to do to us. Let’s make it so they can never hurt us again.”
That was it—all he had. The speech brought ragged cheers and a grim resolve, which Gabe could see etched in the face of every soldier. He could even see it in the posture of his team members.
Since before the battle, he’d suspected that the Quatro must have had a reason for hitting Plenitos. Possibly, they’d been provoked—they’d certainly been provoked twenty years ago, when Darkstream’s forces had first driven them deep underground, using the most devastating weaponry they had access to.
He no longer cared. Provoked or not, the Quatro had taken everything from him that had given his life the paltry meaning it had had. His love, as well as his pride.
They’d taken everything that had driven him. And now, nothing drove him, except his desire to kill every last Quatro on Eresos.
The sky stopped flashing, settling into a red the color of blood.
That seemed fitting. The sky mirrored the ground, and soon the ground itself would be soaked through.
Chapter 57
A Troop of Giant Aliens
The Quatro couldn’t fit through the regularly sized airlocks, and so Lisa had to order the vehicle bay airlocks opened for them.
Normally, the decision whether to open up the vehicle bays for a troop of giant aliens would have fallen to Chief Lannon, head of security for Habitat 2, but unfortunately he was unable to dispense
his usual duties due to languishing in an eight-by-six cell. As for the other Darkstream employees, it turned out the company had negotiated with Daybreak for their release from Habitat 2, and they were long gone.
So Lisa had made the call, and now forty-two Quatro roamed Habitat 2’s wider streets, leaving narrow lanes on either side of them—enough space for little more than a hoverbike to pass.
The aliens seemed totally unconcerned about blocking traffic, unless it was the part of traffic that consisted of Lisa, Tessa, and Andy, and the vehicles they drove.
Before the Battle for Habitat 2, Lisa had doubted whether the Quatro had it in them to be as vicious as battles tended to require.
Now, they surprised her in the opposite direction, with their cold demeanor toward every human that wasn’t one of the first three they’d spoken with.
The communication barrier wasn’t the problem. The Quatro translator had progressed to the point where their speech was basically indistinguishable from colloquial English.
Basically.
No, the Quatro simply didn’t seem to like the majority of the human species. Or at least, the majority of the portion they encountered.
When she asked Rug about it, the alien paused pensively. “How best to explain,” she muttered, midnight eyes staring into the distance. Before she spoke again, those eyes locked on to Lisa’s, unwavering.
“In providing you succor while you were stranded on the barrens of Alex, we signaled that you were part of our drift—to you, and to ourselves. As far as we are concerned, you, Andy, and Tessa are Quatro as well as human.”
Lisa blinked. “What is everyone else in Habitat 2, then?”
Rug snorted, sounding like a horse, or at least like the recordings of horses Lisa had heard. “They are potential Meddler agents.”
“But…they’re humans, too. They’re my neighbors, friends. If they’re agents, then wouldn’t we likely be agents as well?”
“We have already taken that gamble, Lisa. It was a necessary one, and there is no going back.”
“Then why not take it with the others?”
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