Combat jack

by Gavin Smith

  We had to jump a partially collapsed section of the stairwell to reach the forty-seventh floor and as I landed, a lump of masonry hit my side a glancing blow, sending me sprawling. The others were long gone but our route out was still there. The central elevator shaft had been largely unblocked and lead all the way to the basement car park. The cables were still load bearing, and we’d attached climbers to them to get up here. It had been slow progress winching ourselves up forty-seven floors. Our descent was going to have to be a lot quicker.

  We ran towards the elevator shaft. Walkers swung up through the empty windows and onto our floor. There were a lot of Them. They had to crouch due to the low office ceilings. I realised I was screaming, fuelled by adrenalin and fear, as I started firing short controlled bursts into Them. Black liquid flew off Them. Ripples flowed over Their armoured bodies. The long concentrated bursts from the railgun shook debris and dust down on us. I watched as one Walker staggered back through a gap in the wall, its tendrils flailing for purchase, and then fell out of sight.

  The building shuddered again as Dorcas fired four grenades from his Steyr’s underslung grenade launcher at another of the creatures. The successive explosions blew it back out of the building.

  Their return fire sent us diving to the ground as the power and the fury of it bisected everything at about waist height. Support pillars were shot through, and any remaining furniture disintegrated.

  “Now use the rocket,” Gregor’s calm voice over the tacnet. Prone, the launch explosion badly burnt the back of my neck, but the missile caught one of Them dead centre. The distance between the Walker and me was too short for its point defence to work effectively. The explosion blew a large hole in its central mass, rupturing it, sending black liquid splashing across the floor as it stumbled out the glassless windows.

  Gregor fired one of his Laa-Laas. He was a little further away from Them than I, and the Walker he was aiming at managed to hit the incoming missile with a beam of black light. The missile detonated, sending dust and debris raining down on us. The concussion wave battered my teeth together painfully and rolled me across the floor, but the Walker was blown out into the sky, tentacles thrashing wildly.

  Even the lenshead was getting stuck in. His antique weapon wasn’t doing much good except as a distraction, but he fired long and accurate bursts into the Walkers. He hadn’t stopped laughing, though it had acquired a manic tone.

  Dorcas was rapidly reloading his grenade launcher as I emptied mine. The floor was rocked and we were battered by overpressure and debris as the Kiwi fired one of his back mounted Laa-Laas. Another Walker disappeared from sight as I hit it again and again with my grenade launcher. I started to reload the launcher as Dorcas fired his. More long bursts from Gregor as he fired from a kneeling position. We were relying on thermographics to aim now, as the air was thick with dust. A large lump of masonry fell through the ceiling and crashed through the floor, narrowly missing Gregor and the lenshead. Another lump of masonry fell through the ceiling and crushed one of the Walkers. A missile exploded in the dust and knocked Gregor over, and I couldn’t see any more Walkers, even using thermographics.

  “Clear,” Gregor said over the tacnet. I searched my immediate area, scanning for any heat signatures. Nothing.

  “Clear,” I ventured.

  Dorcas echoed me.

  “Clear,” said the lenshead. Clearly he was enjoying playing army. I gave some thought to kicking him down the elevator shaft – it would get him out of our hair, and save ammo.

  It had been my first firefight with the Regiment and I hadn’t fucked up too badly. It was only as I considered this that I registered the red warning icons on my IVD. I’d been hit with shard, beams and multiple pieces of shrapnel. The integrity of my armour had just about held up, but I was bleeding from both my arms and my right leg, and I had two bad cuts on my face.

  The building was feeling decidedly unsteady and the sound of parts of it collapsing had become almost constant. Dorcas, who looked like he’d taken a bit of a battering, made for the elevator shaft. He tossed a climber at the cable. The climber gripped the cable and wrapped itself around it. Dorcas yanked hard, testing the cable. We were acutely aware that the building had been extensively damaged, and were hoping the cable assembly at the top hadn’t been hit too hard. The cable held, but that was no guarantee it wouldn’t give out when our combined weight was on it. Dorcas swung out into the shaft. The cable took his weight and he didn’t plummet to the ground.

  Something occurred to me. “Got a climber have you?” I asked the lenshead, who had finally stopped laughing. His face fell almost comically. He looked stricken. “See you later then.” I couldn’t help but feel a small burst of satisfaction.

  “I’ll take him,” said Gregor. “That means you provide cover.” Which meant I went last.

  The lenshead looked relieved. He had the courtesy not to look smug. Gregor’s gyroscopic harness folded the railgun up onto his back and he hooked his climber to the cable.

  “You’d better hold on,” he told the lenshead seriously.

  The pair of them swung out into the elevator shaft. I heard the sound of metal complaining higher up, but the cable held. They disappeared from sight as my audio dampeners struggled with the thunderous roar of heavy and sustained shard fire from the Hydra’s cannon. It went dark outside, then half the side of the building collapsed down towards street level. Dust engulfed me. I struggled to find the cable to attach the climber to. I cast the climber at where I thought the cable was. Bits of masonry and other debris were raining down the shaft. The floor was beginning to feel less and less like a floor and more like a violently moving platform. I hoped that Gregor had dropped the lenshead, after all the trouble he’d caused. Maybe that had been Gregor’s plan all along. It would look better on the after action report.

  The climber caught. At least I thought it did, I still couldn’t see anything. I yanked it hard. It didn’t give, much. All I could hear was the constant avalanche of concrete. I swung out over the drop, almost surprised when I didn’t immediately fall to my death. I engaged the climber, sending instructions for a rapid descent through my palm-link. Sizeable bits of reinforced concrete were landing on me, and I couldn’t waste a moment. I suddenly dropped. Panic overwhelmed me as I thought the cable had snapped and I was battered about between the cable and the shaft wall. A large chunk of masonry hit me in the shoulder, hard enough to make my left arm go numb. Another smaller piece hit me in the head. Despite my helmet, I think I lost consciousness momentarily. My IVD certainly jumped.

  A hard yank brought me round as the climber tried to brake. I glanced up to see the sleeve of the climber glowing red, smoke billowing out of it. The ground came up to meet me hard. I kneed myself in the chin, biting my tongue. I was in the pit at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Rubble was still raining down on me. Some of the pieces were large enough to really hurt.

  I unclipped the harness from the now fused climber, and clambered out of the pit, through the wedged open elevator door, and onto the lowest parking level. It was full of the skeletons of old ground vehicles. Most were expensive executive cars from sixty years ago.

  I was disappointed to see that the lenshead was still alive. He, Gregor and Dorcas were sprinting towards the two Land Rovers. I ran after them. Behind me, the elevator shaft collapsed in on itself, and a cloud of dust shot out of it, engulfing us and covering the floor.

  I reached the nearest Land Rover. The lenshead was in the passenger seat, behind the wagon’s railgun. Ash was climbing out of the driver’s seat and into one in the back, plugging herself into the wagon’s short-range anti-armour battery. Dorcas had leapt into the gunnery seat for the heavy plasma gun.

  I threw myself into the driver’s seat, pushing my SAW into its clips. I leant back and the wagon’s interface jacks slid into my plugs. Ahead of me, Brownie was driving Eddie’s Land Rover. I mentally pushed my vehicle into gear, fed it fuel and shot it across the car park towards the exit ramp. I had to slew
the wagon violently left and right to avoid more falling masonry.

  The Land Rover was airborne from the speed with which it came out of the garage onto the ice-encrusted, fog-shrouded street. I threw it to the left, away from the big fucking mech. I could feel the Hydra’s presence behind us. Felt the earth move beneath the wheels with every step it took.

  Visibility was shit. I couldn’t see more than twenty or thirty metres in front of the wagon. I was using the Land Rover’s forward scanners to try and avoid the worst of the rubble.

  I actually screamed as a tentacle whipped out of the fog right at my head. I ducked under it and accelerated. Berserks and Walkers were all over the shop, surrounding and moving in on us while obscured by the fog. I could see Them as heat phantoms on my thermographics.

  We were running close to the other wagon. I caught glimpses of it through the freezing fog. I could hear railgun fire, and the white light of repeated plasma fire illuminated the fog.

  From our wagon the lenshead was firing the passenger seat railgun. Gregor had clipped himself to one of the rails in the cargo bed and was trying to fire his railgun as best he could, but he was being thrown around about by my necessarily erratic driving. Likewise Ash was firing her SAW inaccurately, not willing to use the missile battery yet. Dorcas had the plasma gun angled upwards and I had a horrible feeling he was firing it at the Hydra. I wanted to tell him not to do that, that it would only draw the mech’s attention down on us.

  “Missiles, three-sixty spread, now!” Eddie ordered tersely over the tacnet. Ash stopped firing and grabbed the trigger mechanism for the battery. The missile battery spun until it was pointing to our rear, then fired half the payload. The missiles flew into the obscuring fog. The battery swung to the left and fired the remaining missiles. I could see the brief contrails from Eddie’s jeep as their battery fired forward and to the right.

  We were in a circle of fire as the missiles’ warheads exploded, lighting up the fog, showing us the Berserks and Walkers moving in on us. It also showed me how pitted our Land Rover’s armour was. Shards sparked off the armour and black beams scorched it. More red warning icons appeared in my IVD, warning me of the imminent collapse of the wagon’s armour’s integrity.

  I found myself driving through an explosion. As a Berserk flew past me, I hit it with the wagon, and sent it tumbling over the Land Rover, feeling the impact in my teeth. Even in the air it swung its weapon glove at me, just missing.

  Once more, oxygen seemed to be sucked out of the air, and I felt nauseous. On my IVD, in the window for the Land Rover’s rear facing camera, I could see the world glow blue. The fog burnt away around the Hydra, like toilet paper thrown on a fire, exposing us, and exposing the streets crawling with Them. Fire against the two Land Rovers intensified. A shard grazed my face and almost took my chin off. There were more impacts against my armour, kicking me back into the seat. The enormity of the lumbering war machine behind us terrified me, and I desperately tried to find an unblocked street to turn into, anything to get off this main drag. The Entropy Cannon fired. The crumbling building next to the Hydra seemed to throw itself up into the air as the beam shot through it at a steep downward angle. I guessed there were a few fewer Heavy Battle Tanks in the British Army now. The building collapsed on the Hydra. The Hydra walked through it.

  The dust cloud from the collapsed building engulfed us. I accelerated, trusting the scanners and the three dimensional topographical map overlaid on my IVD to navigate and avoid driving into Them.

  Out of the choking dust I saw the ground erupt in a line that reached out to Eddie’s Land Rover as the Hydra fired one of its heavy shard cannons. The right side of the Land Rover was immediately destroyed. The Land Rover was blown off the ground and rolled in mid-air before slamming into the street in a shower of sparks and ice crystals.

  Berserks and a few Walkers surged towards the fallen Land Rover. I watched Eddie stagger out of the wreckage firing her SAW at the surrounding Berserks. A Walker whipped one of its tentacles towards her. Her head jumped off her neck. She fired a moment longer and then her headless body collapsed. She was dead. They must all be dead. I started to drive past. The fog rolled over us again.

  “Get to the other wagon, now!” Gregor ordered. Reluctantly, I turned our wagon towards the other Land Rover. I drove blind through the fog, their position marked by the other Land Rover’s transponder on the map overlaid on my IVD.

  They loomed out of the fog ahead of us. Dorcas fired the plasma gun at the Walker again and again. The barrel was burning red above me as white flame rapidly ate away at the Walker’s body until it collapsed in a deluge of black, still burning, liquid.

  We were just in time to see the Blame run through with a Berserk’s weapon glove, the spiked blade appearing through her back. The lenshead and Dorcas were both firing ahead, trying to clear some of Them away from the other wagon. Gregor and Ash were firing into the fog behind and to our sides as Berserks came sprinting out of the fog.

  I barely had time to draw the Mastodon and fire as a Berserk charged out of the fog to my left. I squeezed the trigger on the big revolver as quickly as I could, feeling it buck in my hand from the massive recoil. I emptied the cylinder into the Berserk just as it reached me. It dissipated into black liquid, showering me with itself. I felt some of it in my mouth. It tasted acrid and chemical.

  Farrow was staggering backwards from the wrecked wagon towards our Land Rover, firing long bursts from his railgun. Every burst ripped up a Berserk, but there were just too many. I watched as They concentrated fire on him. He got hit so often that his flesh was churned inwards. What landed on the icy road wasn’t even recognisable as a human corpse. It was just constituent parts.

  Brownie was sprinting towards us. He threw himself into the wagon. I didn’t need to be told. I mentally floored the accelerator. The Land Rover surged forwards, clipping a Walker.

  The other Land Rover exploded. I guessed that Gregor, as the second in command, has sent the codes for the self-destruct charges.

  Suddenly, everything behind us went bright white. All of us were silhouettes against the intense glare. The flash compensation on my optics kicked in, but my optics still had a whiteout. Everything went silent. Then my audio dampeners struggled to deal with a deafening rushing noise. I felt the Land Rover thrown into the air.

  Vision returned as we hit the ground nose first. Brownie was thrown forward and almost out of the wagon, but he hit the front roll bar with the small of his back and slumped into the cab. Had he not been as heavily augmented as he was, the impact would have easily broken his spine.

  Behind us the centre of the city was a smoking crater. We had come to a halt. I was appalled to see that the Hydra still existed in the wake of what must have been an orbital strike. Much of the mech was gone, black steam mixing with the fog tendrils creeping back towards the crater, but some of it still remained, floundering around like a horribly wounded, obscene mockery of an animal. I was transfixed by this. Oblivious to the hits we were still taking, oblivious to Gregor screaming at me to drive. Ash grabbed my shoulder.

  “Drive, newbie!” she screamed at me. Berserks were pouring out of surviving buildings on either side of us. The rest of the team, even the badly battered Brownie, were firing, as I moved the vehicle into gear and accelerated away.

  Ahead of us I saw HBT’s use their tracks to pull themselves up and over one of the barricades that blocked the side streets. I swung the Land Rover violently to one side, the smart tires biting into the icy ground to give me traction, to avoid the blast from a heavy plasma cannon. The ground where we had been moments before went up, as concrete caught fire. Some trigger-happy gunner had just shot at us.

  “We’re on your side, you cunt!” I screamed.

  They would need to hide that guy from us later. The tanks, many of them looking badly, and recently, damaged, started to line the road ahead. Plasma blast after plasma blast was hitting the remains of the Hydra. Secondary and tertiary anti-personnel weapons were makin
g quick work of the remaining Berserks. The Berserks’ and the few remaining Walkers’ weapons were no match for the Heavy Battle Tanks’ armour. All we had to do was make their line, and we were safe.

  I had moments to register the loss of the rear left wheel, information relayed by the Land Rover’s systems, and we were spinning. A seven-twenty spin at least, at speed, before jamming the back of the Land Rover under the tracks of an HBT. The tank was trying to stop but couldn’t before chewing up the back of the wagon.

  We bailed. Gregor had to pull Brownie off the front of the tank. We ran. The wagon blew, ammo in the cargo bay cooking off. The tank rolled over the flaming wreckage.

  We dumped Brownie at the edge of the road. He was fucked. He was also our medic. We surrounded him, down on one knee, guns at the ready. Dorcas did what he could to help him. Bad day. Brownie had to live, these guys may not have liked me but they’d, we’d, lost too many today. The lenshead was still with us, down on one knee, antique weapon at the ready. Firing if any of the Berserks got too close.

  Behind the tanks were a line of tracked APCs and dismounted infantry. The infantry looked young and scared, showing a degree of awe as they passed by. They were me, eight years ago. I nodded back to those who nodded at us. Soon they were just shadowy ghosts in the mist as it crept back to consume us.

  “A Walker hit the wagon?” I asked, once Dorcas got Brownie stable, and we knew he was going to be okay. Gregor gave a wry smile.

  “Blue-on-blue,” he said.

  “You’re kidding? Fucking tankies!”

  “Bit closer to home,” Gregor told me. I noticed the lenshead looking sheepish. During the chase he’d swung the railgun round on its mount so it was firing backwards down the side of the Land Rover. I turned back to Gregor.

  “The railgun can’t hit the rear wheel, the mount’s locked so it can’t do that.”

  “I broke it,” the Lenshead said. It was the first time I’d ever heard him sound remotely sorry. Even then, it didn’t seem sincere, coming from him.