by Russ Linton
"You attacked those soldiers. Men sent just trying to do their job for their country."
"Your country? The land from here to the sacred Black Hills is ours. Deep into the state you call Nebraska. Those were the terms."
Taking this job, assuming the guise of the Black Beetle, hadn't been a well-thought-out decision. I'm not known for those. First, I'd wanted to survive in a world coming apart where invulnerability was a pipe dream. Second, I needed this goddamn suit to take revenge. I've experienced firsthand how dangerous these fucking guys are. I'm not sure if Lakota Yoda here is looking for sympathy, but it isn't working.
"Don't make me hurt you...again."
"I don't know you, stranger." A quick check of the voice masking and it seems to be operating. "Don't be so surprised. You lie, that's what you do. My people defeated yours, and you sued for peace. Yet you continue to take what isn't yours."
"I'm not here for a history lesson."
"No, there are no more lessons to be learned. History is never a thing left in the past. It follows you. You carry it around in your pocket."
I begin to stammer a response but fall silent. Whatever he thinks he knows about me doesn't matter. He can't understand what I carry and he sure as hell can't get in my way. I can't fix westward expansion, I can only fix the things I fucked up. Setting him and the other Augments loose was the start of all this.
Tomahawk clambers to his feet atop the nacelle. The space is easily broad enough for him to maneuver, though I've got no clue how comprised his vision might be. Partly stooped, he seems to totter. One misstep and he's hitting the ground hard or tumbling through the open hatch into the tower. He places his hands out for balance, and the unsteadiness disappears. A smirk worms through the wrinkles on his face.
The blast of air strikes out of nowhere.
CHAPTER 15
I'M THRUST BACKWARD before the onboard sensors can manage a response. Tomahawk's summoned a gale, very different from the pinpoint slicing and dicing he's known for. The massive blades of the turbine behind me speed up in the sudden gust. I throttle up to stop losing ground.
"Stand down!" I shout.
"Spencer!" Xamse comes in over the communications link. "Do not let him destroy any more of the assets."
"Oh, that's what I should be worried about, the assets," I shout.
"End this by whatever means," he replies.
The old native stands astride the nacelle, one hand outstretched, the other comically holding his gnawed hat to his head. He's laughing, a toothless gash spread wide in the mania of centuries-old revenge. Those damaged eyes can surely see the blur of motion he's created. A white circle marred by a struggling insect.
At his home, Tomahawk must've waited. Let them lead the infirm old Indian to the vehicles until he could see his targets gathered. Ready to leave with a mission complete, their adrenaline ebbed, the soldiers wouldn't have known what hit them. I raise an arm against the howling wind.
"Weapons online."
"Affirmative."
Thrusters and stabilizers have found a counterpoint against the onslaught. The wind turbine's sound becomes the racing thunder of pistons full bore. More power diverts to the engines, but we maintain position. Drake locks on.
"Ready non-lethal."
"Specify system."
As ruthless as Xamse is, he's always had a soft spot for the downtrodden. Growing up a child soldier and then apprenticing as a shock-collared slave possibly put a little shine on his soul. Me? I know the whole damn Augment thing needs to end. Too much damage has been done. Blood seeping out in a sticky puddle across my shoe. A lifeless man with a mask in my arms.
"Tranquilizer."
"Non-lethal unavailable."
"Bullshit. I loaded them myself. Last night."
Ayana. She did her own check.
I feel the tower behind me warp before I ever see it curling along the HUD. Wild pressure fluctuations stop. There's a violent pop and I spin, catching up with the quickly shifting viewscreen. The turbine disintegrates.
Blades as long as semi-truck trailers fill the air with slivers of carbon fiber and bus-sized javelins. Incoming trajectory markers light the HUD and strike in the same moment creating a cloud of atomized fibers. Wildly, I scan for damage as the twisted tower, yanked into the out of control rotation, swings downward, the shattered nacelle a burning hammer meant to drive me into the ground.
No time to move. I catch the incoming wreckage, easily the size of a mini-van, and try to fight physics. Alarms blare as the engines overload. Ground replaces sky, and I try to jet to freedom, but one of the suit's bulky claws snags beneath the torn housing.
The world flips. I'm rushing toward the earth on my back, several tons of wind turbine bearing down on top. I yank at the trapped arm, trying to peel away serrated metal with my free pincer. Thin, the housing flakes and tears but the arm remains wedged. In the relentless bubble of the HUD's view, I see a quick flash of Tomahawk dancing on the edge of the opposite nacelle, higher and higher above me, then my view fills with the wreckage.
I'm pounded flush into the ground.
Suit restraints hold my body in place while organs jostle in their bone cage. The impact dislodges the trapped arm. A wet pop issues inside the armor and I realize that's my shoulder. Stars burst on a black field filling a view made of dirt and curled metal.
The HUD becomes a ghostly afterimage then disappears entirely.
Darkness.
Spencer?
"Mom?"
Could she be here? Could I be anywhere but here? Darkness takes over. Flickers of light.
I fight to pry my eyes open. The HUD strobes like a felony traffic stop. Warnings and status alerts cover every inch of the screen. Against the black soil, they're blinding in intensity. Both sides show nothing but dirt. The wrecked hull of the massive generator teeters squarely front and center, pressing the Battle Armor deeper. A sliver of sky peers from a gap on the upper right.
My left arm is dead weight, pinned between the turbine and my body while I attempt to wrench the other free. Still pointed to the sky, the fall has forced that arm deeper into a wad of steel and aluminum.
"Battle Armor, you there?"
"Non-lethal ord–nance not rec—recommended," he sputters, caught in a past loop.
"I need...I need to get out."
"Unable to comply. Egress. Egress. Egress."
"Open an outside channel."
"Commu–ic–ic offline."
Teetering, the massive generator groans and shears free of the damaged nacelle. I can only watch as several tons of smoking, sparking wreckage lurch downward with an ear-piercing screech. It suddenly stops, waiting just beyond the wall of twisted metal.
Lungs tight, each breath comes in rapid bursts. Dampness stings my cheeks and eyes. This isn't how this was supposed to happen. Frantic, I scan all sides. The HUD jerks, trying to provide the three-sixty view. A sliver of sky is all I've got left.
A pink, fleshy worm wriggles out of the dirt to slink across the HUD. Static serrates the reticle which tries to follow it. Drake burbles nonsense, his voice drunken, slurred. He probably wants to vaporize the threat.
"We're worm food unless you get us the fuck out of this," I say.
Static filled, Drake's incomprehensible reply garbles over the speakers.
"Fuck!" I shout.
Flailing inside the Battle Armor doesn't cause the actuators to react. The suit jerks and tightens with each attempt. Plaintive whirs sound along the joints. A violent kick elicits a cold hiss on my thigh and wetness trickles down my leg. The cloying smell of hydraulic fluid concentrates in the cabin.
"FUCK!"
For a moment I lose sight of the sliver of sky. Fine dust trickles into that one open space. Its collapsing, entombing me. Drake has gotten his own revenge from the grave.
The gap tears open.
Top down, the wreckage is being whittled away. Slices of nacelle scythe off in sharp-edged layers. One surgical cut separates the forward turbine f
rom the generator. The coil of dense metals wobbles, then is shoved to one side before coming completely free of the base and crashing to the ground beside me with a shuddering thud.
More sky. I can see the other wind turbines. A pair of jeans held up by a turquoise and silver belt buckle stands beside their narrow towers.
Tomahawk straddles the edge of the depression. He makes one more slice with his hand. A wafer-thin section of housing sloughs away, so weightless it almost drifts.
I struggle one more time to stand. Without the crushing weight, motion has returned to the joints, but not enough. He's left a tangled chunk encasing my right arm. My left arm won't even respond with or without the suit. Neither leg does more than twitch.
Tomahawk squats over my grave, peering into the HUD. One of the Black Beetle's arms pinned, the other pointed skyward, he doesn't appear concerned. He squints and then peers into the sun. "Ten years it took for my people to build these. On our land. Ten years because our land isn't ours. We wait on the white man's permission for everything. We did this so your people could charge your phones, stare at your hands. So mine might not die so young."
I let him talk and killed the external speakers. Systems diagnostics have to offer some clue how to get out of this hole. Joints overstressed, engines overheated. Wormfood, in his attempt to obliterate the wriggly threat on our HUD, has left the weapons online.
If I can just free my arm from the entangled metal. Get a better bead on the monologuing Augment. I manage a fraction of an inch. Enough Tomahawk notices.
He wags a gnarled finger. Squinting again, he scans the field outside my view. A satisfied shake of his head and he flicks his wrist. A javelin-sized sliver of the turbine blade wobbles into the air on a perfectly controlled current, arcing high above. Tomahawk drives his palm straight down.
Immobilized, the suit can't react. The carbon sliver shears straight through the armor. A straw through a telephone pole in a tornado—speed and ferocity overriding the flimsiness of the projectile.
An instinctive flinch inside the space saves my life. Blood trickles from a cut against my ribs. I lie there, breathing fast, staring at the length of blade jutting from the Battle Armor's chest. My chest.
"Earth mother will forget you long before she does us. Your time here is finally over. This land belongs to the Lakota Sioux once more." The aging Tomahawk shuffles to his feet and brushes his palms on his jeans. "That scalping you remembered? Hadn't happened. Yet."
He raises a knifed hand. The blade pinning me down shivers as the air pressure changes. Those harmless swats can shear right through the engine block of a Humvee. He can take my scalp, head, whatever he wants, clean off.
I wonder if Dad saw the glowing re-bar jutting from his chest before he went sightless. Watched it waver in the heat. A split second of vulnerability he'd been trained to ignore, and he was gone.
Vulnerability. Tomahawk's wearing jeans. I've got ballistic plating.
"Battle Armor, fire the Gravitational Shock Wave cannon."
"Target...not...locked."
"DO IT!"
From beneath the encased claw, the shockwave cannon fires.
From far away, the cannon has a destructive push. The closer you get to the source, the more utter havoc wreaked. Even the impaling fan blade shatters as layers of metal obstructing the cannon are obliterated.
The pulse blows Tomahawk away from the depression, chased by the plume of razor-sharp debris. The HUD erupts to declare incoming fire. Armor pings and dents inward, pecking at my skin from head to toe. Lenses on the helmet shatter. I cringe as more metal rains down until it's falling in a gentle, slow trickle.
Whatever was left of the nacelle housing has been blown to shit. With my one good arm free, I roll toward that side. A murderous shout and I claw my way out of the depression. Free, I manage to take a knee. Leg actuators react on one side, but the other is locked in full extension. A wobbling attempt and I'm on two feet.
Tomahawk is a lump of bloodied cloth. Cotton shirt, jeans, and no sign of the cowboy hat. No sign of his head or limbs. He's a shredded torso, extremities blown to the four corners.
Something breaks inside. I should be repulsed, horrified. But it's as though I'm staring at an object. Another piece of wreckage.
"Spencer? Copy?" Xamse sounds over the analog comm channels, every word disrupted by static. "Come in. Spencer? I'm showing severe damage to the systems."
"Yeah. It's a shitshow."
"Has the target been dealt with?"
"Target down. Assets, mostly intact."
I hear him release a heavy sigh. "Unfortunate. But good work. Can you make it back to the base? We'll need to begin maintenance right away. Our client has another mission."
"The armor is trashed," I say. He's quiet. "What? No lecture on the expense?"
"This is why you deployed in the old armor. If you returned, you'd be stronger, and your battlefield experience would make you a more formidable warrior with our prize weapon. My heart is glad to see it worked out this way, friend."
If I returned.
"Uh, yeah, my heart is too. My shoulder? Not so much."
"We'll need to activate the prototype." He sounds pleased.
"You are not sending Ayana to pick me up."
"No, no!" There it is, another hearty laugh at an inexplicable moment. "She would put a bullet in your brain the minute she sees you! No, I'll send the prototype remotely."
"She already tried to kill me. Messed with the ammunition load last night." The last few words come out as an involuntary grunt. Pain in my shoulder sends a spasm across my back.
"And?"
"What the fuck are you going to do about her?" I shout through the pain. "I nearly died. Tomahawk is...gone."
"Spencer, Tomahawk's dead because he was a warrior. You had to act and survive. Win your battles, or you die. It is a simple, simple game we play with no rules but one."
"What's that?"
"Never betray me."
"Ten-four." I cut the connection and close my eyes. Cool air trickles through the gaps in the armor. The earthy prairie breeze fights its own losing battle with acrid electrical shorts and the kinetic tang of friction-sheared metal.
I could've died. Almost did. But nobody is invulnerable. I'm beginning to understand Xamse's logic and even Ayana. Forged in a different world where survival wasn't a given but a badge worn with pride, life is surrendered only through great struggle or sacrifice. He knows this world, my father's world, better than I ever could. If I'm going to live long enough to face a beast like Vulkan, I need to accept none of this will be pretty. People are going to die.
CHAPTER 16
ERIC WONDERED WHY HE'd agreed to install an exercise room in his base. It even had a treadmill, so he wouldn't run outside and die. Open the exhaust vents in the server farm or the newly working thermo energy core, and it doubled as a sauna.
But it also had her. Screens, microphones, and biometric sensors built into the workout equipment wired like everything else in his life into her. Chroma could track his progress, adjust the difficulty, or even make sure he maintained an optimal heart rate. The last one she loved to do using various ”techniques”.
She could enter any room anytime she pleased. Turn on monitors he'd shut down. Talk to him in the voice of the treadmill.
He had to admit, it had been great fun. Almost like a honeymoon. Not that they were married or even intimate in a physical sense. Just good friends, something he had fewer and fewer of these days.
So he’d taken to covering himself in the latest miracle fibers and ran across the treeless tundra more often than the treadmill. His footing cautious on the glacier-hewn surface, he stuck to the same, monotonous route. It was the same dirt road made for their supply deliveries which were flown in by helicopter or dropped at their bush pilot airstrip.
He powered on against the cold, wishing he'd kept some of the extra fat he used to have. A layer of that could keep him toasty despite the bitter sub-zero chill. On these run
s, he thought about turning back to hide in the heat spewing from the new geothermal core. A fetid, soul-crushing heat. The idea was enough to keep him running.
Chroma and her unexpected ally had figured out how to get the power system back online. They couldn't have made this work without the collaboration, he told himself. This was for Crimson and Spencer. And it was the next level of fucked up. Gruesomely fucked up.
This is for the best, Eric.
He'd thought too loudly. He needed to focus on the run like Crimson had taught him. The dude could fly, but he'd pound boots right beside his soldiers. That year without Spencer, the old man seemed to be looking for a surrogate for his affection and Eric obliged. He did everything asked of him and more. Crimson Mask repaid him with a swift kick in the ass and the motivation to change his life. To both get fit and do something for the world. For himself.
Eric's lungs burned with the frigid air. A growing stalactite of snot dangled from his nose. His eyes felt rimmed with ice. Rocky gravel and snow crunched under his feet. A vast field of ice and faded green lichen clung to the ground for miles, broken up by jagged slabs of rock and boulders. Mountains rose against an iron-gray sky streaked with clouds like wood smoke. He ran toward the distant mountains, their snow-dipped peaks never getting any closer.
"You can do this. Another mile and we're done for the day."
Another mile. His feet, that's where the momentum was. Eyes to the ground, tears freezing against his cheeks, he ran until his legs couldn't carry him anymore.
AN INTERACTIVE ATLAS filled Eric's screen inside the old foreman's office. It had been amazing what they'd accomplished in so little time. He'd been skeptical of Chroma's choice of base. So remote, so isolated, he wondered if they could even survive let alone run a global rebellion. But the Collective had stepped the fuck up.
Deliveries by crazy bush pilots and even military-style cargo helicopters borrowed, bought, or stolen provided a steady stream of much-needed tech and supplies. Eric, or Shortwave, would ask and they would give. As part of the mystery, he never greeted their visitors. They'd leave the goods and go, an offering to the digital god. He'd crank up some of the heavy machinery left frozen in the tundra by the previous owners and drag everything back.
