One Man's War

by Steven Savile

  I did.

  I scooped my friend up in my arms and rose.

  The smoke had already formed a thick blanket above our heads and was slowly seeping down to fill the room. We were breathing it in. There was nothing we could do about that.

  I heard voices beyond the blast door, muffled. No doubt screaming, “Get back!” as the detonator on the frag bomb counted down.

  Fate stepped on the black plate he’d dropped, and in the silence between heartbeats and the explosive force of the blast doors being ripped apart, buckling and twisting under the intense heat of the detonation, a beam of blue light arced up, slowly beginning to solidify into a hologram-clone of Randall Fate, an M76 rocket launcher in its hands. I would have bought it, coming in through the smoke and damage. The illusion was good. But it was only going to give us a couple of seconds as the assault teams’ bullets were deflected by Fate’s hologram back at them. It didn’t solve anything. Not really.

  But Fate’s one devious bastard; this was only part of the illusion.

  That’s why we’ve stuck with him for so long.

  When it comes down to it, there’s no one better for getting you out of a jam. He thinks about five steps ahead of the enemy. “Links hands,” he yelled barely a second before the doors blew. I grabbed Martagan’s outstretched had as shrapnel ripped toward us, the full force of the shockwave bowling us off our feet. We hit the floor still holding hands, but there was no smoke, no hail of debris, not smoke and fire from the blast.

  We weren’t in the lab.

  We were back in the sub-basement where we’d come through the sewerage pipe. The rusty iron light pulsed. I felt sick. Dislocated. It took me a moment to get my bearings and grasp what Fate had done.

  I knew why he’d been the last one out of the room before we’d gone up.

  He’d set up a teleport.

  It was a one-shot deal.

  He’d known the hit squad was behind us. Only now they weren’t. Now we were behind them, and they were staring at an unflinching hologram of Randall Fate and filling themselves with lead as they tried to cut it down.

  Like I said, he is one devious bastard.

  “We’ve got to get up to the roof,” he said. “Marco, are you okay with Swann?” I nodded. “Okay, Lisl, you and me take point, anything moves, shoot it.”

  She ratcheted the pump action on her shotgun and nodded grimly.

  We had the chip, we were behind enemy lines. All was good.

  Apart from the fact the skyhook was still two hours away.

  Teleportation, even over a couple of hundred feet always left me feeling sick.

  I guess it’s down to the whole matter of life being scrambled and unscrambled in the space of a heartbeat. It’s disconcerting, to say the least, no matter how many times you go through it.

  Fate pocketed the home plate. It wasn’t like they could follow us down here when they worked out what had happened, but it was some seriously expensive kit, and the serial numbers were always traceable if you knew what you were doing and had enough money to follow the breadcrumbs through the dozens of illegal transactions that led back to our door. So he wasn’t about to leave it behind and invite more trouble our way.

  We didn’t have long before they’d work out what we’d done, so we needed to take advantage of the few seconds he’d bought us with his bait and switch.

  “We need another way up,” Swann said. “Get me over to the computers, and I’ll try and find us a route.”

  “No time,” Fate disagreed. “We go up, take those bastards by surprise, and don’t stop until we reach the roof.”

  Martagan nodded.

  We hit the stairs, Fate and Martagan leading the way. I was a few steps behind them. Swann was heavy in my arms, but he was locked and loaded. He didn’t need his legs working to be lethal. All I had to do was concentrate on climbing as fast as I could. He’d take care of any Bleeders who got in our way before we got to the roof.

  We heard gunfire above us. They were still shooting at the fake Fate. The hologram would only last for a couple of minutes. But even the dumbest grunt would figure out what was happening long before then. There was only so much damage a man could take before he went down, whereas a hologram would stand there, unbent and defiantly unbroken even under the most intense hail of gunfire, giving every bit as good as it got for as long as the power fueling it lasted.

  We rounded the next level of stairs.

  Martagan fired first. No questions. No warning. No hesitation. She put a dozen shells into the backs of the men going toe-to-toe with Fate’s hologram, downing them with brutal efficiency. They didn’t know what hit them. They didn’t even have time to scream.

  The stairwell reeked of ozone, blood, and fused metal.

  I picked a careful path through the detritus of the explosion, reaching the twisted door in time to see Fate’s hologram flicker and fade.

  It was a mess. Huge chunks of masonry and buckled metal blocked the way, forcing us to tread carefully as we negotiated it.

  The gas—whatever it was—was still pouring into the lab, choking the air.

  I looked down and caught a glimpse of silver: the dog tags on the corpse closest to me had spilled out as the Bleeder fell. I dropped to one knee so Swann could snap the chain and pocket them. I wanted to know who, exactly, Fate had pissed off, because it wasn’t about a crew being dispatched to take us out. No, what it was all about was who had dispatched them, which corporate big-wig he’d screwed with, and those dog tags were a link in the chain back to them. Follow the money, find the man who wants you dead. Just because we’d taken his team out didn’t mean it was over. If anything we’d just made things ten times worse. He’d just send another wave at us and another until we were worm food.

  We carried on up after the others.

  Swann was heavy and getting more so every twist of the stairway. Every muscle in my back and legs burned. Breathing hard, I stopped trying to focus on anything apart from putting one foot in front of another.

  He knew he was a burden, but at least he’d stopped with the nonsense about leaving him behind.

  That wasn’t an option.

  Swann leaned over my shoulder, aiming down the sight of his G1 Jackal assault rifle back the way we’d come. If there was ever a man I wanted watching my back, it was Swann.

  As we hit the roof access door, I heard cries behind us. More men were coming. Akachi’s own security team, no doubt.

  It wasn’t over yet.

  Fate used the dead white coat’s eyes to circumvent security on the door. The fresh air—hot and humid—hit us like a sledgehammer. I staggered out into the bright light of the African sun.

  The rooftop wasn’t entirely flat; there was the glass dome in the center and various cooling vents and towers where ventilation shafts opened out onto it. Plenty of cover for our rear-guard action. We needed to set up to make sure we had all points of ingress covered. We didn’t want anyone sneaking up on our six unannounced. That meant identifying the most defensible point and digging in. Martagan and Fate were already on it.

  I set Swann down and propped him up with his broken back against one of the metal cooling vents with a good view of the door.

  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  There wasn’t so much as a small black smudge to suggest the skyhook was on its way.

  But we still had the best part of two hours left before it arrived.

  “Bollocks,” I muttered, erudite as ever.

  I set myself up with as wide a field of vision as possible, with eyes on the door, and waited for the fun to begin.

  It didn’t take long for the first wave to reach us.

  They were grunts. Cannon fodder. By definition, Bleeders. They weren’t meant to do anything apart from keeping us busy. Six of them came spilling through the door. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Not that I’ve ever shot fish in a barrel. I’m not even sure how easy it’d be to shoot fish in a barrel given the refraction and the fact they’d be swimming every
which way, but you get the point. They couldn’t go anywhere. Stepping through the door was suicide.

  Martagan and Swann had a field day. They took turns picking the Bleeders off, right, left, right, left. I signaled Fate. He came across to where I was hunkered down.

  “This feels wrong,” I said. “It’s too easy.”

  He didn’t argue with me, which is never a good sign.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “They’re up to something. They have to be.”

  He nodded.

  “But what?”

  “If it were me, I’d blow the roof and to hell with it,” I said. “They know we’re digging in for evac, they also know there’s no sign of the skyhook on any radar, so why waste lives needlessly? Place charges beneath us, blow the whole place to hell and us with it.”

  Again, he nodded. “I was thinking a little less drastic, but the same general lines.” He looked over at the edge.

  “You think the real force is coming up another way?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  I crouch-ran from my cover across the rooftop to the edge and leaned over. There was a mobile platform, some sort of rig set up for keeping all of that glass sparkling, but I couldn’t see anyone on it. Fate checked the other side. As he stuck his head out over the edge, it was greeted by the staccato rattle of gunfire. He pulled back, fast. Score one for Fate.

  I hustled over to the other side to join him.

  They were climbing up the glass, friction gloves meaning they could move fast, like spiders, but the gloves needed to be in contact with the glass to stop them from falling. Metaphorically, at least, they had to fight with one hand behind their backs. I’d take any advantage on offer. I’m not proud. I’m also practical. They’d fragged us in there. I felt it was only fair to return the compliment. I unclipped one of the three grenades from my belt and pulled the pin. There was a ten-second timer on it. I released the trigger, counting to eight, then dropped it over the side. It bounced off the glass. A second later it blew, taking the side of the building and the Bleeders coming up the glass wall with it. I felt the heat of the explosion on my skin and turned in time to see Swann put down the last of the first wave with a single bullet to the throat. He was showing off. The man didn’t die immediately. He squirmed on the rooftop, clutching at his neck trying to stop the air from leaking out of the gaping hole Swann’s bullet had made and then trying to block it long enough to suck down another breath as he struggled to inhale.

  The sound of wet flesh slopping about between his fingers was music to my ears.

  I stood on his skull, putting him out of his misery, and piled the six corpses up to make a barricade.

  In the few minutes respite, we took stock of the situation.

  We weren’t helpless. We’d got some serious kit with us, including my favorite toy. It cost a small fortune, we’re talking serious black-market tech that involved crossing more than a few greasy palms with silver, but in practice, it’s worth every single dime spent on it. It’s built into the weave of my suit. All I have to do is trigger it, and it emits an electromagnetic pulse that screws with targeting and threat sensors—that’s the joy of intelligent weapons, they can be pretty damn stupid at times—and winds up having Bleeders shooting at their own crew. What’s not to love?

  “Bring ‘em on,” I said, patting my chest.

  Fate knew what I had in mind.

  He approved.

  I stood behind the barricade of corpses waiting for the second wave, ready to raise some hell.

  I could hear them on the stairs.

  I knew they wouldn’t just come pouring out through the door this time.

  Things were about to get interesting.

  Something came rolling out through the doorway. For one sickening second, I thought it was a frag bomb. It wasn’t.

  It might have been better if it had been.

  I launched a blistering barrage of shots that should have cut them in half.

  Thirty men streamed out through the door, and my bullets weren’t doing anything. Beside me, Swann and Martagan were having no more joy.

  I saw the line of used shells filling up on the rooftop, and it really was a line, like the shots had hit a wall and simply fallen in defiance of any kind of physics I understood.

  I knew what had come rolling out through the doorway: a deployable force field. It wouldn’t last forever, but right now it was giving them the perfect cover to storm the rooftop.

  I turned momentarily to scan the horizon looking for any sign of rescue. I’d have had more luck if I was out hunting a unicorn. No doubt about it. We were in the shit way up over our heads.

  “I have absolutely no intention of dying here,” I said. It was becoming a mantra. I don’t think the universe believed me.

  This time Fate had no witty one-liner comeback, a sure sign things were grim.

  There was no way we could hold the roof for the best part of two hours. I’m a born optimist, but even I’m not blind. The second that shield fell we were finished.

  Thinking fast I pulled the second frag bomb from the clip and pulled the pin. I saw the look of abject terror on Randall Fate’s face, and I don’t mind admitting I enjoyed it just a little bit. He thought I was going to hurl it at the invisible barrier and blow us all to kingdom come. I’m not an idiot. I had something else in mind entirely. Unfortunately, we didn’t have ropes or belay pins which would have made it a lot easier. No. That wasn’t true, we did have ropes. Thick cables were dangling off the side of the building where I’d already blown the window cleaner’s platform to hell. It was all coming together. I didn’t throw the frag grenade, I ran around to the far side of the glass dome and set it down, releasing the handle in the process. I had ten seconds to get as far away as possible, which meant the other side of the glass dome, knowing it was about to unleash a molten hell of razor-sharp glass shards and shred anything unlucky enough to get in their way. Clowns with guns to the left, death by fire and glass to the right. Some choice.

  “Down!” I yelled.

  They didn’t need telling twice.

  The explosion ripped through the glass dome, what remained crumpling inwards. Most of the glass fell rather than flew, so it rained down on the atrium far below instead of cutting into us and left a huge sinkhole that plunged all the way down to the sub-basement hundreds of meters down. Suddenly we had choices. “Help me with the ropes,” I yelled at Fate, my ears ringing. I couldn’t hear any answer. He was on his feet and following me, dusting off the debris that had showered him. Sometimes, with a good crew, the link is almost telepathic. You just know what the other person needs. Martagan and Swann made damned sure no one was sneaking around the edge of the force wall while Fate and I hauled up the steel ropes that dangled from the heavy winch and threw them down the sinkhole in the center of the building.

  I sent Fate over the side.

  I looked at Swann. “Can you do it?”

  “One way to find out,” he said, bleakly. He was right, of course. I couldn’t carry him down and climb. The exospine gave him incredible upper body strength, assuming none of the centipede interfaces that locked into the upper vertebrae had been dislodged or broken in the biomech warrior’s attack. If they had evolution had about a nanosecond to fashion wings for him before he hit terminal velocity. He slung the assault rifle over his shoulder, and I carried him to the edge. Shots rang out behind me. Martagan laying down covering fire. I sat Swann down on the edge. He grasped the thick steel rope and slid out over the side. I turned my back. I couldn’t look. Two men were trying to work their way around the extremes of the force field, but Lisl had them covered. She was like me. She enjoyed it when things got rough.

  I expected Swann to scream, but after a couple of seconds without the tell-tale muffled crump of impact, I focussed on what still needed to be done up here.

  I laid down covering fire for Martagan as she retreated to the shattered dome.

  “Ladies first,” she said.

  Who
was I to argue?

  The steel rope twisted around in my hands like a live snake.

  The weight of the others and their frantic downward scramble made it almost impossible to hang on as it bucked and thrashed. In a perfect world, we’d have had those easy catch-and-release clamps and basically rappelled down the shaft in a couple of seconds, no damage to our hands in the process. No such luck. And it was a long way down.

  Losing my grip wasn’t an option.

  The thick coil of rope didn’t stretch all the way down to the ground. There was a winch up top that was used to raise and lower the window cleaner’s platform. It was mechanized, but I was banking on it spooling out more steel rope as we descended, our weight too much for the lock. There’s a delicate balance when it comes to desperate measures. Too much give in the mechanism would have us hurtling to the ground.

  As it was, we weren’t going down fast enough.

  Gritting my teeth, I pushed on, one eye on the edge of the dome, expecting to see the enemy crews leaning out over it at any second.

  We were a long way from the balustrades on every story. There was no way to just reach out and grab one without turning the steel rope into a giant pendulum.

  My shoulders burned from the hand-over-hand descent. The abrasive steel fibers scored my palms, filaments cutting deep into the skin. I wrapped my ankles around the rope and tried to slide a few feet at a time, but going down the rope that way tore mercilessly away at my palms. I kept on going down, urging the others to go faster. Whatever damage was done could always be fixed. Being dead couldn’t. I’m not some sort of pro-human lobbyist. I don’t believe natural is best. I’ve got absolutely no problem with synth skin on my palms, or manskin as I think they call it these days, even if I burned the flesh down to the bone. Better that than the alternative. Always.

  Two stories.

  Four.

  Six.

  Eight.

  Ten.