Homeguard

by Jason Cordova

  “I’m okay with not having one.”

  “Very well.”

  “What do I call you?” Aurelia asked after a beat.

  “My operating system number is…” it began to rattle off a long series of numbers and letters before Aurelia interrupted it.

  “No, too long. How about…Sfyri?”

  “I do not understand,” came the reply.

  “I’m going to call you Sfyri,” Aurelia explained. “I’m not going to remember all those numbers. It’s too long. Can…can I call you Sfyri?”

  “This is an acceptable designation,” the AI replied after a brief pause. “I will now answer to all questions that begin with the designation ‘Sfyri.’”

  “Good.” Aurelia breathed a small sigh of relief. There was no way she was about to say all fifty-four letters and numbers of Sfyri’s designation every time. She felt around in the suit and saw that it began to mimic her movements almost instantaneously. A small smile grew on her face as she realized she was almost driving a Wraith suit. Her excitement levels quadrupled in the short span of a single heartbeat. “Okay, so about this calibration thing—”

  “Aurelia?” a voice called from outside the double doors. She shouldn’t have been able to hear it, but the suit’s advanced sensors picked up the vibrating voice patterns through the wall. A small face appeared in the lower right-hand corner. Aurelia gasped as the familiar face of Collyn appeared. Below her face was her numerical designation and rank.

  “Oh no…” Aurelia hissed. “I am so busted.”

  “Is this individual a threat?” Sfyri asked. A small targeting reticle appeared on the screen as the scene changed. Aurelia could see the outline of Collyn through the double doors. In the center was a defining heat display. The suit had already determined the best way to dispatch Collyn, and it involved blunt force trauma via the doors.

  “No! She’s my friend,” Aurelia stated firmly. “Don’t hurt her.”

  “I would not fire the weaponry in this suit without proper authorization,” Sfyri commented. The AI’s voice sounded almost offended to her. “Besides, the only weapons this suit has at the moment are defensive laser mounts in the shoulders, in case of a missile attack. That being said, the best way to deter this threat would be to force the doors at an outward trajectory to incapacitate the individual on the other side. I estimate forty-six pounds of pressure per square inch on each door, roughly thirty-two centimeters off the ground, would provide the highest odds of permanent injury and/or incapacitation. Explosives would be preferable due to safety concerns, but the suit is more than capable—”

  “No, we’re not going to hurt her. Can you unlock the doors and let her in?” Aurelia asked. “And remove the helmet?”

  “I can unlock the doors,” Sfyri agreed. “However, if the helmet is in the ‘down’ position, any conversation we have will be detected by others in close proximity. This would alert someone to my presence in the suit, as well as making your head vulnerable. I would recommend against this. Do you wish to continue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lowering helmet.” Sfyri complied, and the armored helmet seemed to melt back into the neck. Aurelia blinked as the dimly-lit, orange-hued screen disappeared, and the bright overhead lights flooded her vision. Purple spots danced in her vision for a few moments before her eyes adjusted. Aurelia had forgotten she’d left the room’s lights on.

  “Aurelia?” a cautious voice asked as the doors opened. Collyn’s head popped into the room and looked around. Aurelia saw the woman’s eyes lock on the suit. “Oh, my God…what have you done? What did I tell you about touching things around the base?!”

  “Look what I found!” Aurelia exclaimed proudly. One armored hand waved. “It’s a Sfyri! Can I keep it?”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Five

  Gabriel

  The deeper into the city he moved, the darker Gabriel’s surroundings became. It was a combination of the setting sun and the tall skyscrapers blotting out much of the natural light within the confines of Marigold City. On an intellectual level, it was obvious to the Darkling. On a spiritual one, however, it did not bode well for him or the Third Regiment.

  The regiment’s ranks had been devastated thus far. On top of that, comms spoofing was still an ongoing problem, though that had been mostly taken care of when Gabriel had taken control of all unit comms. His suit was able to relay secure transmissions between various squads and Esau now. This enabled Wraith squads to focus more on the mission at hand and ignore most of the asinine orders they’d received, such as walking down a wide street and into the arms of entrenched Goliath battle tanks.

  The offending Darkling had yet to be found, which irritated Gabriel. He knew the planet was big, and Marigold City was huge by comparison to the rest of the cities on his home world’s surface, but he should’ve been able to see some sign of a Darksuit. Instead, all he could find was white noise and frustration. Whoever was out there was good. Shelving his irritation, Gabriel decided to focus on the task at hand.

  Standing over fifty stories high, the Mauser Tower was the tallest structure on Belleza Sutil. It even gave a few of the Core worlds’ largest buildings a run for their money, though all paled in comparison when placed next to the Gran Via on Trono del Terra. An engineering marvel coated with a dark blue glass, the Mauser Tower shone like a jewel in the daytime. At night, the windows of the building gave off a gentle glow as the wiring in each window was dimmed to the absolute minimum. The building was one of the key centers of commerce on the planet. Gabriel knew it well, since he’d done his internship there many years before.

  “They’ve got antitank shooters up there, and spotters, as well,” the Wraith before him reported as Gabriel searched for the building’s schematics and floorplans. He was familiar with the fortieth floor, since that was where he’d spent most of his summer internship, hiding among the large cubicle farm while learning about interstellar commerce and what went into powering the mighty Dominion economy. It had been a brain-numbing experience, though he’d come to understand just how little he’d actually learned while earning his ICE degree from Caballero University. Theory versus practicality was the rudest lesson college students faced upon hitting the job market.

  “Can’t we just drop the place?” Esau complained as he joined Gabriel in the shadow of the building.

  “As tempting as that would be, no,” Gabriel said as he found the schematics at last. He frowned. “There’re people living on floors twenty to thirty. If the schematics are still the same, there’re about five hundred people living in there right now.”

  “They probably all left,” Esau countered. Gabriel shrugged.

  “We can’t kill civilians,” he reminded his best friend. “Otherwise we’re no different from the occupiers.”

  “Can we announce over a loudspeaker that they need to get out before we destroy it?” Esau tried.

  “What if the marines inside are holding hostages?” Gabriel suggested. “And those civilians want to get out, but can’t?”

  “Well, shit,” Esau muttered. “Didn’t think of that.”

  “Wraith suits are too big to clear it properly,” Gabriel continued as he shrank the schematics down on his HUD and looked up at the towering building, “but we can’t leave those snipers up there to support the Goliaths in the streets. What I wouldn’t do for a squad of Darklings right now…”

  “You’re going to clear the building by yourself?” Esau asked, his tone neutral. Gabriel shrugged.

  “Someone has to do it,” he replied. “My suit can fit through those doorways. Wraith suits can only do the lower twenty. You can’t tell by looking at it, but the building narrows as it climbs higher. To compensate for the change, the higher up you go, the narrower the rooms get. Not really noticeable when you’re not in a suit, but when you’re twice as wide as a normal man, fitting through those sucks. The Darksuit can handle the upper floors.”

  “Okay, take Dry Burn’s squad and start at ground level,” Esau su
ggested as Gabriel shared the layout of the building with him. “Let them soak up the brunt of the counterattacks inside. If you don’t get to the upper floors, we’re going to be picked off, slowly but surely, and I won’t have any other choice but to level the building.”

  “Esau…” Gabriel looked at his friend.

  “I don’t want to, Omelet,” Esau said in a quiet voice, their comms channel secured so no other Wraith could hear. “God help me, I hate the idea. But unless you get that thing cleared, we’ll have no chance of winning this fight.”

  “I’ll clear it,” Gabriel swore. “But if you drop that building, I’ll kill you myself.”

  “If I drop it, you’ll already be dead,” Esau countered. “Don’t die on me.”

  Gabriel switched frequencies and found Dry Burn in short order. The large Wraith was on the south side of the building, having lost two of his Wraiths to the Goliath tanks, but otherwise in good shape ammunition-wise. He ordered them to breach the south entrance and meet him on the west side.

  Gabriel moved out from behind cover and went dark, using the long shadows of the buildings to conceal his movements. Random fire from the streets struck close by, but the combined Chameleon and Erebus programs continued to distort how both the sensors and naked eye saw him. There was no guarantee the Goliaths couldn’t see him, but there were none of the deadly tanks in sight. A risky maneuver, but Gabriel figured battles were oftentimes won on a stupid gamble.

  He crashed through one of the concrete planters that lay in front of Mauser Tower’s plaza and slipped on a large plant. Whirling his arms, Gabriel managed to avoid catastrophe by crashing into one of the outer walls of the building. Showering plaster everywhere, he cautiously slammed himself up out of the rubble and glanced around.

  “That was pretty slick, Omelet,” Esau said over the comms. “You practice that move?”

  “Shut the hell up,” Gabriel muttered, embarrassed. He had a reputation for being less than graceful in a Wraith suit, though he’d thought that had passed when he’d donned the Darksuit. His bad luck in suit-related accidents would continue, apparently. He grimaced and pressed his body back into the dent on the wall as more gunfire erupted from nearby. Some of the shots came dangerously close, and it would be a horrid fate to die while someone was shooting at something else entirely.

  “Hold on, laying down suppressing fire,” Esau told him, and suddenly fourteen Lynx cannons opened up from Esau’s position. The marine platoon that had been attacking him—or more accurately, the mysterious dent that had appeared in the building’s wall—were completely wiped out by the withering hail of fire from Esau and his Wraiths. After a few more seconds, the gunfire tapered off. Esau clicked the comms once. “Okay, Gabe, you’re clear.”

  “Thanks for watching my back,” Gabriel said as he spotted Dry Burn’s team inside the glass doors. The massive Wraith suits looked comical inside the tiny, cramped space. It was a bit surprising, actually. Gabriel had expected the lobby of the massive high-rise to be large and luxurious. This was most decidedly not fancy. He switched his comms over. “Scott, it’s Gabriel. You read me?”

  “Loud and clear, Darkling,” Dry Burn replied. “Lobby is secured. Four enemies dispatched. Awaiting orders.”

  “Go floor by floor using the stairwells,” Gabriel said as he showed them the floorplans via their HUDs. “They probably have them boobytrapped, so use caution. Take the southwest corner stairwells; I’ll take the northeastern ones. Clear up to the twentieth floor, then secure the stairs. Do your best not to harm the civilians. Await my all-clear signal, then rejoin Commander Morales outside.”

  “Copy that,” Dry Burn confirmed. “Are you clearing the upper floors?”

  “Affirmative,” Gabriel answered. “I’ll fit, since my suit is smaller. You guys make sure you check every single room down here, though. Don’t take anything for granted. Catalog every civilian who leaves, and upload their face and name to the ’net. Commander Morales is running facial recognition on enlisted and active duty marines in case some try to slip past. Also, stay on your toes. These marines are tough, and digging them out is going to be a challenge.”

  “We’ll get the job done,” Dry Burn said.

  “All right.” Gabriel nodded. “Good hunting, boys.”

  “You too, sir,” Dry Burn replied.

  Gabriel turned and scanned the lobby for signs of boobytraps. The suit didn’t detect any, but that didn’t mean much when the enemy had a pretty good idea of how the suits worked. The deadliest bombs were passive until they were remotely activated. There were few ways to avoid those, but it wasn’t entirely impossible. Still, one had to be actively looking for them, and no small amount of luck would be involved.

  There was nothing to suggest a bomb lay in wait nearby, so Gabriel sprinted across the lobby to the stairwell on the far side of the building. He slammed through the door and rolled on the concrete, the suit searching for any threat. Slapping an open palm onto his thigh, the hilt of the suit’s blade formed in his hand. He grasped the weapon, pulled the glowing, orange-tinged sword from the sheath, and looked up.

  “Fuck,” Gabriel whispered as he realized he was going to have to climb fifty flights of stairs. The worst part of it was, his legs were still suffering from muscular atrophy from his nine months as a prisoner on Maelstrom. He’d regained some of the strength, but there was no telling how long it would take for them to fully recover. It was fortunate he could rely on the suit to enhance both his endurance and power. None of this changed the fact that there were a lot of stairs in his very near future.

  Slowly, Gabriel began to make his way up the stairwell. The expectation of a boobytrap or ambush—anything really—kept his nerves on edge as he continued up. There were few signs of marine activity in the stairwell—he’d expected at least a lookout or two.

  Nothing to say they aren’t watching me right now with hidden cams, he thought as he passed the eighth floor. The graphite-reinforced steel stairs didn’t even creak in protest as he continued up, which shocked him a little. While a Darksuit wasn’t nearly as heavy as a typical Wraith suit, it wasn’t light. There’d been many times in the past when Gabriel had wondered if the extra armor made up for the loss of mobility in the Mark Six suits. This wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed his mind.

  Then again, I like being able to shrug off hits and not die, he thought, as he crossed the ninth-floor landing. There was no way Esau would’ve survived the Ptolemy drop had he been in a Darksuit.

  The suit suddenly chimed a warning, and Gabriel stopped. The sensors of the Darksuit had detected something. It couldn’t tell him precisely what, however, which was frustrating. He quickly reviewed the sensor logs through his cortex to see what had triggered the alert. Two seconds later, he found his answer.

  A small energy surge had been picked up by the suit when he’d crossed in front of the ninth floor’s door. This had set off a small electrical current, but nothing else had been detected. He guessed a sensor on the other side of the door had detected his suit and armed a bomb to explode when someone pushed through it. Checking it off as a trap on the schematic, he relayed the information to Dry Burn and his Wraiths before continuing upward.

  They confirmed the information had been received, and Gabriel slowed his climb. He knew they were up here, somewhere. It would have been painfully obvious to even the densest marines that eventually a Wraith or two would make it inside the building. Preparations would have been made for that eventuality. It only made Gabriel more and more nervous with each passing breath when nothing tried to attack him. A paranoid only needed to be right once, he recalled—something an old friend from university had told him long before.

  On the twentieth floor, he finally saw evidence the marines had been there. Unfortunately, it came in the form of two young teens, both apparently executed. Their bodies had then been discarded in the stairwell. Neither was in uniform, and judging from their muscular builds, Gabriel deduced they were Sutillians, like him, and had lived i
n an apartment somewhere in the skyscraper. Knowing Dry Burn and his Wraiths had been tasked with this floor, he marked it on the map for them, and made a small notation to keep any marines found on this floor alive for questioning.

  The Wraiths didn’t need to know that Gabriel had no intention of letting any non-civilian out of the building alive, however. He didn’t think they’d care.

  He checked the door for the twenty-first floor upon arrival. The suit didn’t detect any chemical or electrical current on the door, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone inside with a tri-mounted railgun ready for him. Of course, since there were two stairwells that ran up the entire length of the building, it would be far more difficult to guard the inside as well as shoot down onto the Wraiths below. One had to choose to attack or to defend.

  Sensing nothing, Gabriel slowly pushed the door open and slid inside. His Chameleon program was still activated, though he wasn’t sure how effective it would be up close. It was designed to fool visual sensors from a distance, not for tricking the human eye up close. The program created a distorted space where the suit would normally be, not true invisibility. A Darkling would be doubly dangerous, were that the case.

  He moved to the first apartment doorway he came to and pressed his hand against the wood. The suit sensors reached out and listened for any signs of life inside. Detecting none, he digitally marked the door and moved on. This was the case for every door on the floor. Frustratingly slow work, but necessary. The snipers had appeared to be confined to the thirtieth floor and up, but Gabriel was taking no chances. Neither he nor the Wraiths below, who were counting on him, could afford to.

  The next three floors were the same as the first. No civilians or marines were detected anywhere, though Gabriel did notice that two doors had been forced open at some point. Judging by the ransacking that had occurred inside both of them, it had either been marines arresting and removing a protest leader, or looters. Knowing the people of Belleza Sutil, Gabriel chalked it up to marines.