Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  He slipped into an alley. “We have to keep moving. I’m not sure how many of those suits they have, and we don’t want them to see us first.”

  “Why didn’t we take the suits?”

  “Why what now?”

  “We took the guns, but not the suits. So, why didn’t we take the suits?”

  “Gene-lock ID. Lethal poison injection for the wrong user. It’ll shut off automatically in about twelve hours, but we don’t have long enough to wait for that.”

  “Holy shit.” Who would have any need for a suit that would be impervious to small-arms fire, capable of blasting through a plasticrete wall, and deadly poison for any unauthorized user? Was this even military tech in the first place, or some illegal black-books project?

  According to my scanner, Capanelli was waiting on the other side of the alley. She dropped out of camouflage as we approached. “You two needed rescuing, so I sent Veraldi back in your direction.”

  “And I thank you for it,” said Jones. Whether from sarcasm or who knows what, he stuck out a hand for his commanding officer to shake. When she went to do it, I heard a sudden popping sound and saw a hole appear in her prosthetic hand.

  “What the fuck?!” she gasped and jerked her arm back. We didn’t hear anything, but another hole appeared in the wall behind us.

  “Snipers!” snapped Jones, then he shoved Andrea back through the mouth of the alley. I went through just after them and felt something fly pass my face, then saw another hole in the wall. They had a coilgun.

  I checked my scanner, which ought to have shown the snipers. There was no sign of them at first, but then a dot flickered on my screen and disappeared. Another shot came down the alley, chipping the plasticrete next to my head.

  Capanelli snarled. “Thermoptic camo! We need to get out of sight!” It must have been a bit ironic to have her own methods turned against her like that.

  Anyone wearing thermoptic camouflage will not only appear to the eyes as a nearly invisible shimmer but will also show up on scanners as an occasional blip—there for a second and gone just as quickly. We couldn’t scan them, we couldn’t see them, and we couldn’t even hear their shots.

  We ran down the alley, but despite her wound Capanelli didn’t go invisible on us. That would only have made us the more viable targets, the combat equivalent of saying, get those guys, not me!

  We had no idea where the snipers were, and they could just as easily be on the move anyway. More than anything else, we just needed to get inside and away from the windows so we could figure things out. As we cleared the alley, the first thing I saw was a little dessert shop. With any luck, they wouldn’t even see us duck inside.

  The windows exploded as we went through the door, glass shards flying in all directions. So much for luck.

  We kept going regardless and crouched down behind the customer service counter. A shot hit the wall above our heads. If they could aim at the counter, their bullets would go right through it. Even if they had a bad angle and couldn’t, we were still pinned down.

  Capanelli was furious. “Those sons of bitches. My goddamn hand! Do you have any idea how expensive these are?”

  Jones didn’t sound all that sympathetic. “We’re fully covered, and you know it. We’ve got bigger problems.”

  She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, like she didn’t want to look at her damaged limb anymore. “Says the man with two arms. You’re such an asshole, Jones.”

  “I know. But let’s stay focused, huh? These guys have us pinned down.”

  Reasonably sure I wasn’t in immediate danger of being shot, my confidence was starting to come back. “Maybe not. I’ve got this gun of theirs. Maybe it will be enough to drive them off.”

  Jones shook his head at my recklessness. “Be my guest, buddy. It’s been entertaining. But if you’re moving forward, could you maybe grab me an éclair from the display case? Just toss it back here before they get you.”

  “Those éclairs are synthetic, like everything else here. They’ll have reverted to slime.”

  “Well, who’s the asshole now?”

  We didn’t have much room back there, but I managed to wiggle myself into position with my looted weapon. I crawled along the floor like a snake until I could just see the tops of the nearby buildings. The snipers were likely up there somewhere, either on the roof or behind one of the windows. I aimed over the buildings and unleashed a furious barrage from the heavy rifle. The idea wasn’t to hit anything—I didn’t know where they were, after all—but to get them to seek cover, allowing us to slip the trap. In that tiny room, the sound of the weapon obliterated every other thought. It seemed to keep going even after I eased off the trigger, lingering in my ears as a high-pitched screeching tone.

  A shot hit the counter and went clean through it, then continued on through the back wall and into the street outside.

  “Holy shit!” yelled Jones, realizing that they didn’t have any cover at all. They scuttled back into the corners, and I stopped firing and lay completely still.

  “We’re fucked!” I pressed my face down, hoping I could stay lower than their line of sight.

  “No kidding!”

  We were shouting, just trying to be heard above the ringing in our ears.

  Capanelli got irritated. “For fuck’s sake! Even when I’m shot, I still have to do all the thinking?”

  She tapped her helmet, opening a channel to Sommers. “Raven, Andrea. We’re pinned down by snipers. Think you can do a Pavlichenko for me?”

  There was a pause, then: “Yes, I know I’m yelling, Sorry. Our friend the Arbiter tried to shoot the building down. Okay, thanks. I’ll feed you the info as you go.”

  There was another pause then: “Jones! Can you stop panicking long enough to do something useful?”

  “I’m not panicking, this situation is just—”

  “Whatever! Listen up. Do you still have that heat-signature app in your dataspike? The one you were so proud of a few months ago?”

  I had a triangulation app myself, but it wouldn’t do much good with snipers on the move. A heat-signature, app, though…

  If it was a good one, it could interface with the Tower’s environmental control computers and draw us a picture of a moving heat trace. We could use that to guess their likely movement pattern.

  “Ah, I see! Hold on just a second.” Jones was excited. The prospect of doing something about these guys before they got to us revived his spirits. He was silent for a minute, but when he spoke again his voice was confident. “I’ve marked the area where Raven should look for them. Search inside the green ring on the schematic.”

  We heard a single shot, then a pause of about three seconds, then another shot. Andrea tapped her helmet again. “Raven? Oh, that’s beautiful. Two shots, two kills, against thermoptic camo? I’m putting you in for a medal, my dear.”

  She was grinning. “We’re good, you two. Let’s get moving. Bray’s out there gunning down whole hordes of these guys while we’re hiding in a pastry shop.”

  I could hear it in the distance—the sound of Bray’s enormous weapon breaking the last of the Nightwatch’s human wave charges on Level 295. The whole “one crisis, one drop team” thing was a point of pride with a lot of Arbiters, but this guy could handle a small civil war all on his own. As long as you didn’t care that he solved every problem the exact same way.

  I glanced at the display case as I stood up. Just as I’d thought, there was a slick of visible slime pooling up below the synthetic éclairs. Jones saw it too and gave a mournful look.

  “You know, Barrett, the thing I hate most about pessimists like you is how often you’re right.”

  20

  Getting up to Level 300 took a lot of fighting, but with our combination of skills and tech the battle could only ever have gone one way. After Veraldi and Jones took out their heavies and Raven Sommer hunted down their snipers, the only thing the Nightwatch had left was the human wave. Bray had everything he needed to deal wit
h that, although he ran out of ammo for his heavy machine gun on Level 297 and had to beg Jones for his heavy rifle just so he could keep fighting. By that time, though, the last of the waves had already been broken and we were down to mopping up pockets of resistance. When we reached Level 300 at last, we had started to relax a little. It was easy to think of the fight as being all but over.

  In a combat situation, that’s almost always a mistake. They took us by surprise, although they weren’t even trying to kill us yet. When we came through the doors, they were perched on the roof of a nearby building like man-sized vultures, staring down at us as we entered.

  Eleven figures, inhuman and eerie. They wore form-fitting nanosuits, making them look like faceless mannequins. At first, I thought they were androids, or something more alien than that. But these eleven were people, at least in the biological sense.

  “What the fuck?” Bray was staring up at them, his face mesmerized.

  Veraldi nodded, as if he’d expected this all along and was almost relieved to see it with his own eyes. “The nanosuits. These are the last of the Nightwatch. The last eleven.”

  The one on the far left spoke. “We are The Eleven.”

  The second one replied, or simply continued the thought, “We have not forgotten.”

  Then they all spoke at once. “You haven’t killed me.”

  Jones spoke just above a whisper. “You’re right, Tycho. This is really creepy.”

  Andrea stepped forward, holding her weapon in her left hand while her damaged prosthetic dangled on her right. “What do you want? The time for negotiation has long passed.”

  They answered her in a wave of speech, starting first from the left and going all the way to the eleventh on the far right.

  “We want you to understand,” said the first.

  “We had a duty,” said the second.

  “Not to the Sol Federation,” said the third.

  “Nor to Tower Seven.” The fourth.

  “And not to the Nightwatch.” The fifth.

  “But to the human race.” The sixth.

  “This… higher duty.” The seventh.

  “Has been a burden.” The eighth.

  “So many horrors.” The ninth.

  “So much death.” The tenth.

  “And no choice.” The eleventh. “No choice at all.”

  “That’s never going to fly,” said Andrea. “You’re guilty of genocide. Every last one of you is a mass murderer.”

  “Concepts,” said the eleventh.

  “Just words.” The tenth.

  “No relevance.” The ninth.

  “No weight.” The eighth.

  “To live.” The seventh.

  “To protect the species.” The sixth.

  “If some must suffer.” The fifth.

  “If some must die.” The fourth.

  “What use are concepts?” The third.

  “What use are words?” The second.

  “We serve the glory.” The first.

  “The glory? What glory?” Andrea was mad, but she was at least as baffled as she was angry. The Eleven’s deranged sense of poetry was disorienting, upsetting.

  “The glory of the race. Of what the human race has built.”

  When they all spoke at once, it was enough to make your skin crawl.

  “Kill them all.” Bray’s voice was quiet. Sober. “We have to kill them all.”

  “Walk away,” said the first.

  “Just walk away.” The sixth.

  “We will let you live.” The eighth.

  “Just walk away. Go back to your ships and leave. Do not prevent the work.”

  Andrea changed her tone, speaking to them like a stern but indulgent mother. “We need to understand. You can’t expect us to just walk away unless we understand.”

  “What?” said the first.

  “What?” The third.

  Then, all at once: “What do you need to understand?”

  She made a gesture with her hand, as if to say all this. “What is the work? What could possibly be so important? Why would you ever want to kill more than half a million people?”

  “I don’t want.” The first.

  “I don’t want.” The ninth.

  “I don’t want.” The fourth.

  “We don’t want anything. We never have.”

  “Then what are you trying to accomplish?”

  “Forget this.” Bray was shaking. “I’m going to blast them all.”

  “Hold up,” said Veraldi quietly. “Just hold up.”

  “The great work of the human race is in terrible danger. We acted to protect the glory. We would do so again. Do not prevent the work.”

  Capanelli threw her hands up. “You’re going to have to do better than that. That doesn’t tell me anything.”

  “There are…” said the first.

  “There are…” The second.

  “Insidious powers.” The third.

  “Insidious powers.” The fourth.

  “Old.” The fifth.

  “Old.” The sixth.

  “Dispassionate.” The eighth.

  “Dispassionate.” The ninth.

  “Dispassionate.” The tenth.

  “Old and dispassionate.” The eleventh.

  “Old.” The seventh.

  “Insidious powers, old and dispassionate.” All at once.

  “You’re not old!” shouted Bray. “You’re not that old! Come on!”

  “Not us,” said the first, and the phrase was passed down like a murmuring whisper from one end of the roof to the other. “Not us. Not us. Not us. Not us. Not us. Not us. Not us. Not us. Not us. Not us…”

  “Then who?” insisted Andrea. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Insidious powers, old and dispassionate. Powers we are working to undermine.”

  “Hold on a minute.” This was Jones, who had been uncharacteristically silent up until that moment. “Hold on a minute. Let me get this straight. Are you saying you’re the good guys?!”

  The fourth replied for them all. “We serve the glory.”

  “The glory of the human race?” asked Andrea. She sounded like them, echoing their thoughts like that.

  “The glory of what the race has built. It is in mortal danger!”

  “Why aren’t we killing them?” This was Bray, who probably would have asked the same question under much less extreme circumstances. Still, he had a point.

  Whether he had a point or not, no one answered him.

  “Why?” asked Andrea. “Why would anything we’ve built be in mortal danger?”

  “The insidious powers,” said the third.

  The eighth echoed him. “Powers.”

  “Are you talking about… aliens? An extraterrestrial race?”

  Silence. The Eleven stared down at us, neither confirming nor denying.

  “You’re talking about aliens.”

  “We are alien. Not as you are.”

  The first added its own commentary. “Not extraterrestrial.”

  “I… I don’t understand.”

  “No.”

  I thought I might, but I didn’t feel confident enough in my interpretation to step up and argue for it. They weren’t like us, but they weren’t extraterrestrial either. Not alien but alienated.

  The seventh spoke: “We work for unity.”

  The third: “For glory.”

  The tenth: “To prevent the sundering.”

  All eleven: “We work for the unification of all mankind. To prevent its sundering.”

  “Enough of this.” Andrea dropped the indulgent mother act. Her voice became cold. “August Marcenn, you’re under arrest for crimes against humanity. In all your bodies.”

  They made a sound, which I would have interpreted at first as a hissing deep in the throat. It took me a minute to recognize it for what it was. The Eleven were laughing.

  Bray raised his heavy rifle, but they were already moving. Like spiders scuttling away from a potential threat, they scattered from the roof
top and disappeared in all directions. They didn’t even walk upright like human beings, but on all fours—and they were fast.

  “What was that?” asked Bray.

  Raven shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Never.”

  Andrea Capanelli was back in field commander mode. “Drop it. We can worry about what they were saying later, when none of it matters. Right now, we need to hunt them down.”

  Veraldi bit his lip. “I don’t know, Andrea. Nanosuits…”

  “I know. No real weak points. You’re just going to have to give up your knife for now.”

  He shook his head, not in defiance of her order but in deep disquiet. As a fighter, I try never to get attached to a particular weapon. That can leave you feeling naked if you lose your access to it. Veraldi’s whole thing was that he was the unit’s expert knife fighter. Without that identity to lean on, he was going to be less of an asset and more of a liability.

  Raven shouldered her sniper rifle. “I’m heading out. If any of you need anything… you won’t know where to find me.”

  Jones rolled his eyes as she walked off. “She says that every time.”

  “Why doesn’t she use a spotter?” I asked.

  “She has an application for that,” he answered. “Sommer prefers to work alone. She prefers to do pretty much everything alone, actually. She doesn’t like people.”

  “It’s not people in general she doesn’t like,” said Capanelli. “It’s just you, Jones. Get out there with the Arbiter and try to take one or two of these guys.”

  “How are we supposed to kill them? Those nanosuits will absorb most of the energy from anything we throw at them.”

  “You’ve got one heavy rifle between you. Get creative and you’ll be okay.”

  Jones turned to me when he heard that. “I need that heavy rifle.”

  “The hell you do.”

  He gave me an exasperated look. “Do you really think you’re going to be more effective with that than I will?”

  “I don’t know. If they get me first, you can pick it up and compare how we do.”

  We moved out, with Jones grumbling the whole way. I wasn’t sure about our approach. “Why are we fanning out?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be fanning out? We’ve got eleven possessed mass murderers to track down.”