by M. R. Forbes
Natalia didn’t move. She could barely make out the chiseled face behind the tinted visor of the helmet, but she could see serious eyes staring back at her. She clutched the letter opener in her right hand, holding it down beside her and slightly behind by her leg, out of sight.
Space Force armor didn’t have many weak spots.
But she knew where all of them were.
She swung her hand, bringing the opener up and slipping it into the small crease between the body armor and helmet, With all she had, she shoved the dull weapon six centimeters into the woman’s neck. At the same time, she pulled herself out from between the wall and the pistol so when the soldier reacted to the sudden pain by squeezing the trigger she was already out of the way.
The bullet hit the wall, and Natalia pushed the woman all the way across the corridor and against the opposite wall. When she let go of her and stepped back, the woman slid all the way down the wall, dropping her gun and gripping the letter opener in her neck as blood spilled down her armor.
At the approach of running boot steps from down the hall, Natalia jerked her head toward the other soldier running back toward her, gun in hand. Taking advantage of Natalia’s distraction, the wounded soldier grabbed her weapon and leaped up from the floor, the letter opener still stuck in her neck. She threw a quick punch at Natalia, but Natalia saw it coming. She threw her arm up to block the punch and ducked low, stepping into the soldier and trapping the soldier’s pistol between them, rendering the weapon ineffective. She grabbed the woman’s arm and turned, using momentum to throw the woman over her shoulder She went down in a heap with the woman, hoping it would keep the other soldier from shooting.
They scrambled on the floor, each trying to get leverage against the other. The soldier was stronger than Natalia, especially with the augmented strength of her body armor. “Die, bitch,” she hissed, getting a gloved hand around Natalia’s throat and squeezing.
Natalia grabbed onto the letter opener and pressed her palm against it as hard as she could, pushing it further into the woman’s neck at the same time she was being choked to death. The dull blade managed to sink in far enough to cut an artery and blood began spraying from the wound.
The other soldier saw his companion was injured and doubled his effort to come to her rescue. Natalia desperately reached for the woman’s pistol, still gripped in the female soldier’s other hand. Natalia couldn’t breathe at all beneath the grip of the woman’s mechanically-assisted hand. She was already getting lightheaded.
She couldn’t worry about that now. She needed the other woman’s gun to get free of these soldiers and warn the others. Hallia was in danger!
She found purchase on the floor with her feet, using her legs to drive down and forward. The soldier tried to hold Natalia in place, but she was bleeding out, dying, and her strength was beginning to wane. Natalia managed to scoot across her body, grabbing at the gun and yanking it out of weakened fingers. She twisted back, swinging the weapon toward the second soldier. The motion of the rifle in his hands made it clear he had decided it was worth the risk of shooting his counterpart to get rid of Natalia.
They fired at the same time, on one side a three-round burst, on the other a single slug. Natalia’s round hit the soldier in the neck, finding the space between the helmet and the armor and digging into flesh. His first bullet hit her in the upper arm. The second shattered the other woman’s arm just above the hand holding her throat, and the third went wide, missing them both entirely.
Suddenly able to breathe again, Natalia gasped in pain as the other woman dropped her limp hand from her throat. She threw herself back against the wall, gasping for air and watching the second soldier collapse just two meters away. Braced on one hand, he tried to lift his rifle to shoot her again, but the weight of it was too much. He fell forward onto his face and died. Natalia closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall, relieved she was still breathing. There was no way she could have held her own with the second soldier.
Her arm, the one still holding the other woman’s gun, was on fire and limp at her side. And her eyes were filled with tears from her pain, blurring her vision. She sat there for a few seconds, drawing huge gulps of air. Then she pulled the belt from her pants and rolled her shirt sleeve up, wadding it up around the wound in her upper arm. She then wrapped her belt around it, crying out as she tightened it down to staunch the bleeding. She wrapped the loose end of the belt around her arm and closed her arm down on it, anchoring it in place.
She made herself get up and stood there a moment, willing away her sudden dizziness. This ordeal wasn’t over with yet. Far from it. Finally able to push herself away from the wall, she walked over to the second soldier and grabbed his rifle, pleased with herself for her aim. All of those hours practicing with Hayden had been worth it.
She ran down the hallway to the office where the phone sat on the desk. She picked it up and pressed zero.
All the phones in the building connected directly to the Sheriff’s Office in the second underground garage of the tower. The routing for the few other locations where they had wired comms had also been set up there. A woman answered on the third ring. “Sheriff’s office.”
“It’s Natalia Duke. Tell Sheriff Kin the tower is under attack. The Governor is dead. He needs units in the lobby ASAP.”
“Uh. Pozz that, Mrs. Duke,” the deputy replied. “We’re on our way.”
“Deputy, wait.”
“What is it?”
“Tell him to bring the Butcher.”
Natalia dropped the phone. She left the office, running back to the two dead soldiers. Combat armor like the kind they were wearing wasn’t easy to come by. It also wasn’t Centurion, which meant the attackers were most likely from Earth. But who down here had access to multiples of old armor? Who down here had access to a dropship? She had also seen the starship. And it wasn’t the Singapore.
“Oh Hayden, what kind of mess did you get mixed up in now?”
She leaned over the dead female soldier and started pulling off her helmet. Wounded or not, she had to get to her daughter, and it was suicide to go after the attackers without protection. This woman was a little shorter than she was, a little leaner, but the armor was made to have some give.
Wounded or not, it was out of the question to not go down there at all.
Chapter 37
It took Natalia three painful minutes to strip the soldier out of her armor and replace her overclothes. It felt like forever, but it was faster than she expected considering the injury to her arm. There was no way to avoid being late for the action.
Better late than never.
She spared one last glance down at the soldier before lifting her helmet off her head. The woman had tattooed her entire body with black bones, as though she were some kind of dark skeleton. It made her appearance a strange cross between menacing and comical, and it served to remind Natalia of King and the Scrappers — the military group that had run Sanisco before the formation of the United Western Front. Were these the same kind of people? Murders and cannibals and wanton, careless killers, only with more high tech gear?
She dropped the helmet over her head, reaching back to connect it to the body armor and activate the Advanced Tactical Combat System. Immediately, her visor filled with a map of the tower leading down the stairs, along with markers for the positions of the other networked attackers.
They had already reached the lobby, and judging by the color of the marks they were engaged in combat with Sansico’s defenses. Sheriff Kin and the deputies had gotten there in time. Now, could they stop the offensive?
Probably not without help.
She picked up the rifle she had taken, extracting a wire from the back of it and plugging it into the armor, linking it to the ATCS. A reticle appeared on her visor, showing her where the rounds would go if she fired the weapon from her hip. Being able to hold the gun low and still aim was immensely helpful since she couldn’t raise her arm.
“Okay,”
she said out loud. “I’m ready.”
She started for the stairs, only a few meters away.
“Bones!”
The voice was deep, booming and unexpected, taking her by surprise and causing her body to quake. She froze for a second before recovering and continuing for the stairs.
“Bones,” the man said a second time. “Do you copy?”
Natalia ignored the voice, opening the stairwell door and swinging the rifle down the steps. The shaft was nearly silent. All of the action was thirty floors down.
Laughter flowed through the helmet’s speakers as Natalia descended. She found the first body two floors later, face down on the landing, bullet wounds in his back. Her body tensed and her mind urged her to hide. She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t. Hayden would be so disappointed in her. They had promised to protect these people.
“I know you aren’t Bones,” the voice said. “Her health marker was red for almost five minutes before miraculously turning green again. You took her armor instead of Corporal Dune’s, which means you’re female. You know how to put it on and connect the ATCS, which means you aren’t a typical Earther. And you were able to kill Bones, which means you’re one hell of a fighter.”
Natalia still didn’t answer. She reached the landing and turned the corner, her knees going weak when she did.
The enemy soldiers had caught up to the rest of the clerks on the next set of stairs and had cut them down en masse. A line of bloody bodies littered the descent to the next landing. A group of them were piled at the bottom.
“You son of a bitch,” she said, activating the comm.
“So you do speak,” the man replied. “I see in the tactical you’ve reached the herd. I didn’t really come here to kill so many, but we have to send a message.”
“What kind of message?” Natalia asked, returning to her descent.
“Don’t fuck with us,” the man replied.
“Why did you come here, if not to kill? What do you want?”
“I’m looking for something and someone. I’ve heard I might find it here.”
“Heard from where?”
“A little sheriff told me. Sheriff Hayden Duke. Do you know him?”
Natalia almost fell down the stairs a second time. She fought to control her emotions, to stay upright and focused. Not only had the man confirmed this was related to Hayden and Bennett’s mission to catch a fugitive, but he had spoken to Hayden.
“Hit a nerve, did I?” the man said. “I guess you do know him. I don’t think it’s a stretch for me to call you by your first name then, is it Natalia?”
She didn’t answer him again. She started taking the steps two at a time, descending as quickly as her tired legs would carry her. He knew too damn much about her, and about this place. She had an idea what it would take to get Hayden to talk about it. What had they done to him?
“You know who I am,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me who you are?”
“Natalia Duke,” the man said. “You’re as much of a thorn in the side as your husband, aren’t you? He warned me about you, did you know that? In between his screams. He told me if we challenged you we might regret it. I do regret losing Bones. She was a good soldier. But to be honest, I’m not impressed overall. My name is Stacker, by the way. General James Stacker.”
“He’s dead then?” she asked, doing her best to keep her voice from quivering.
“Have you ever hurt so bad you believed death would be preferable to life, Natalia?” She had, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “That’s where your husband is right now.”
“I’m going to kill you, General. One way or another.” She lowered the rifle and grabbed the helmet, tearing it from her head. She squatted down on a step, holding the helmet upside down in her lap. She undid the top of the body armor to reach into the pocket of her tank top. She lifted out a small, flat multi-tool. As lead engineer, she never went anywhere in the city without it.
One part of it was a small screwdriver, and she used it to quickly undo the screws inside the helmet, removing the foam lining and then opening a compartment underneath. A circuit board rested there, four wires stretching from it toward the rear of the helmet. She used another part of the tool to slice the green one quickly. The UWF had a few suits of Space Force combat armor they had collected too, and she had made sure to learn exactly how they worked. She didn’t bother returning the panel over the board, but she did put the lining back in so the helmet wouldn’t rattle around on her head. She stuck it back on, navigating the menus until she reached the diagnostics, confirming she had conserved the network while taking the suit off it.
In other words, she could see the bad guys, but the bad guys couldn’t see her. Perfect.
Natalia kept descending, twenty-seven floors until she neared the bottom. That was when she first heard the gunfire and the screaming, and the din of a hard-fought battle. At least Sheriff Kin and his deputies weren’t going down easy.
General Stacker knew she was in the stairwell or had been when she pulled the ATCS. She had half-expected him to come up to find her, though she imagined he knew she would have heard him coming long before he arrived. She was fortunate to have made it this far, but she abandoned the stairs now, pushing out onto the third floor. The tower had been an office building once. The tallest building in Sanisco. Now the third floor was used for housing, each of the offices a small apartment for the deputies who didn’t have any other family. There were too many of those to go around — trife survivors who had spent their lives orphaned and living in fear while King had still reigned. They had been eager to join Hayden to build a better world.
Today they were dying for it.
She crossed from the stairs to the lifts, tapping the control panel and keying in the admin code. She had directed the clerks to the stairwell because she thought they would have a better chance of escaping. She had been completely wrong. None of them had escaped except her. Would their fate have been the same if they had taken the lift? She pushed out the guilt. There was no doubt it would have. All they had to do was clip the lines or drop some explosives on the cabs, and the result would have been the same.
The doors slid open. She continued tapping on the pad, and the lift began to rise. She stopped it on the fourth floor, directly above her. Then she leaned out and looked into the shaft. There was a maintenance ladder built into the far wall that ran the length of the shaft. It was a good thing because the lift went all the way down to the fifth floor of the subterranean garage, a long way past where she wanted to be.
She checked the helmet. She was close enough to the enemy now that she could see their positions. It appeared as though they had gotten Sheriff Kin caught in a crossfire, with some of the soldiers coming out from the stairwell and spreading across the lobby. A second group entered from outside, probably after jumping from the dropship. There was also the distinctive larger shape of the Butcher. The robot was the only thing giving the enemy pause and keeping the deputies alive.
The lift shaft was behind the enemy line, which meant she was behind the enemy line. All she had to do was sneak down there, open the door, and blow the hell out of the soldiers from behind. She could see where all of them were positioned and she could plan her moves before she made them. Typically, she might have balked at shooting someone in the back, but after what they had done to the unarmed, civilian clerks...
Fuck them.
She took a few steps back. Her heart was racing so hard it hurt, and now not only was her arm throbbing, so was her shoulder. It was going to hurt even more in a second. She ran forward, jumping when she reached the edge of the lift. With the suit bolstering her strength, she made it across the three-meter gap to the ladder and latched onto a rung with her good hand. Planting her feet on a rung, she closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the ladder to stifle an outcry as tears poured from her eyes. If only Hayden were here. This kind of thing was more up his alley than hers.
She moved slowly on the ladder, which fortun
ately was positioned next to the lift doors on the ground floor. She stopped when she was next to it., Even with the helmet dampening some of the sound, the fighting on the other side was so loud it hurt her ears. She checked the positions of the soldiers, forming her plan of attack.
Then she tapped the internal access control to activate the doors. When they parted far enough for her to swing through, she leaped onto the floor, and without wasting any time taking in the whole scene, she zeroed in on her first target and attacked.
Chapter 38
James fired another plasma bolt into the side of the strange portable barrier the enemy forces had set up for protection. The plasma sizzled against the surface, the gas spreading around it in a flare of blue and orange before vaporizing it without creating much damage at all.
He cursed for the hundredth time, wondering what the barrier was and where the fuck these people had gotten it.
“Tinker, we can’t penetrate their defenses,” James said. “They’ve got a shield of some kind, whatever its painted with its immune to plasma, and too thick for slugs to penetrate.”
His eyes narrowed when one of the enemy soldiers shifted the barrier while a second stuck a rifle out through it and opened fire, spraying bullets back at him and the Liberators. Rounds pinged off his armor, and the soldiers beside him ducked back behind the furniture they were using as cover.
“Find a way through it, General,” Tinker replied. “The area is too small for a rocket unless you want to lose half of what’s left of Midnight Platoon?”
James flinched, looking up at the line across the top of his visor. He only had ten soldiers left, half with him here and half outside. Damn it. They had expected resistance but nothing like this. Not only had fucking Natalia Duke killed one of his best in Bones, but Sheriff Duke’s people had high-end weapons and limited armor, along with these barriers and worst of all, a fucking Space Force defense robot.
