by Jamie Sawyer
“We’ll take a shortcut through that building,” I said. “Move fast; on me.”
As soon as the drones passed by, I darted into the hotel’s open reception. Bricks and concrete crunched underfoot, but the noise was covered by the din of the pouring rain. Dr. Locke next, then Novak, Lopez, Feng. Inside the reception, then behind some mildewed furniture. The once-gilded ceiling sagged in several spots, and more water poured in from holes in the plasteel structure. But it was dark inside, and out of the immediate sensor-range of the Directorate commando and the drone swarm.
“That was close,” Lopez muttered.
“Can we rest for a moment?” Dr. Locke said, trying to catch her breath.
Whatever my opinion of her, she looked drenched and in pain. Where the rain had made contact with her face—the scant exposed flesh between goggles and mask—she had already developed uncomfortable burn marks.
“Only until that swarm passes by,” I said.
Another explosion sounded. Felt like it had come from behind us.
“The Dream is over,” Novak said.
I used the downtime to try to open a link to Zero. “Do you copy, Zero?”
The line hazed, popped, but SECURE COMMS appeared in the corner of my HUD. “Firebird reads. What’s your status?”
“We’re making progress, but it’s slow. We have the asset. Any more activity in orbit?”
“The fleet is adopting a defensive line around Kronstadt. We’ve managed to get closer; Captain Lestrade says we’re still dark.”
“Stay hidden. Do not reveal your location under any circumstances.”
“Affirmative.”
“The Directorate are searching for us down here. There’s an army of them.”
“I’m detecting other ships jumping in-system as well,” said Zero. “Captain Lestrade says that their Q-signature is not, repeat not, Directorate.”
I frowned. “Well that’s just great. Some good news would be appreciated, Zero.”
“I’ll do what I can from here.” Was that excitement in Zero’s voice?
“Unless you can get some guns on these bastards, I’m not sure you’ll be much help, Zero,” I said. “Jenkins out.”
“Zero out.”
Feng put a hand on my shoulder, interrupting the communication. “Ma’am,” he said. “We’ve got trouble.”
The Directorate Shadow prowled into the open reception area, and the drone swarm cautiously advanced around him. We were going to have to move, and soon. Novak, Feng and Lopez had also seen the approaching hostiles and were prepared to bounce.
“Are you ready to move again?” I asked Dr. Locke.
She nodded. “I think so.”
I turned to the Jackals. Nodded at the decayed and half-collapsed staircase that had once dominated Hotel Restov’s foyer.
“We’re going to go up, through the hotel,” I decided. “We’ll take those stairs. Use your EVAMPs. We reach the roof, then bounce to the next building. Got it?”
“And me?” Dr. Locke asked.
“I’d suggest that you hold on tight.”
Dr. Locke grabbed my armour for dear life. “Fly friendly,” she said.
“I’ll try.”
The Directorate advanced into the hotel. Six commandos now, all armed with heavy rifles. The drones started to separate, their electronic senses reaching out into the dark …
“Go, go!” I ordered.
I fired my EVAMP. The pack ignited, propelled me through the reception. I grappled with the bannister of the stairwell. Gunfire chased us, hard rounds pranging off the walls.
“Grenade!” Feng declared.
He tossed a frag behind us. The explosion sent a shockwave through the stairwell, but we all held on. Up another level. The rain was everywhere, clouding my vision. Lopez opened up with her plasma rifle. A hostile bio-sign on my HUD winked out of existence.
Drones flew by. Their red eyes tracked my movement, doubtless feeding their intelligence back to the commandos. One-handed, I fired my rifle. Plasma lit the corridor blue, dropped a wave of drones. I touched down, running now. Dodged a hole in the floor, through a curtain of rain water. Dr. Locke screamed, her survival suit hissing as it made contact with the liquid.
“Feng, Lopez! Covering fire!”
The two fell back, in a combat-crouch, as the Shadows came up the stairs. They exchanged gunfire with plasma fire, the roar of weapons discharge filling the dead hotel.
I reached the next stairwell. My suit had started to map the interior of the building, second-guessing possible routes to the roof. The corridors were wide, rotted carpet lining the floors. Doors on each side, a window at the end. That was floor to ceiling, and open to the elements, glass long since scavenged or removed—
Light stabbed at the window. The nose of a Dragon dropship was visible there, hovering low. Active VTOL engines threw out debris and rain water. Dr. Locke put a hand to her face, the glare of the dropship’s spotlight blinding without a proper tactical helmet.
“Desist,” boomed Kwan’s amplified voice. “We have the building covered.”
A hatch in the Dragon’s hull opened, beneath the cockpit, and a ramp lined up with the empty window. The platform extended. Only I was in a position to see what was happening, and the sight sent a spike of hatred through me.
Back on Jiog. The cold. The hunger. The torture …
My simulated skin crawled.
Commander Kwan, wearing his full exo-suit, strode down the ramp, the string of medals pinned to his armour jangling as he moved. The arrogant bastard wasn’t wearing a helmet, despite the sulphurous rain, and his lip curled in disdain as he tasted the air. He was flanked by a squad of commandos, their rifles trained on me and Dr. Locke.
“By the authority of the Greater Asiatic Directorate, and the Bureau of Shadow Affairs,” Kwan declared, “I hereby authorise your detention.”
“Who does she have with her?” asked another familiar voice.
Feng’s mother.
Tang stood at his shoulder. She too was dressed in armour, but her suit had been modified with the addition of a dozen robotic appendages, some tipped with razor-saws to cut open armour, others with scalpels, more yet with sensory probes. Snake-like, the devices twitched and swayed, as though agitated. Tang still wore a mask over her lower face, her medical lenses flipped over her upper face: ready to commence torture at a moment’s notice.
“We will see,” Kwan said. His hand rested, threateningly, on his redactor: the interrogation instrument holstered like a pistol. “Shadows, secure the prisoners.”
“You’re not taking her,” I said.
“The Aeon will finally be ours,” Kwan said, balling an armoured hand into a fist. “This is a momentous occasion.”
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with, Kwan!” I yelled back, trying to decide exactly how we were going to get out of this mess with Dr. Locke intact.
“We know all that we need to,” Tang said. She looked farther down the corridor, to where Feng was braced. “Ah, my errant son. You are returned to us.”
“He is a disappointment,” Kwan said, “and will be the first to be executed.”
Lopez and Feng were pinned down somewhere behind me, their combat-suits absorbing heavy weapons fire at an alarming rate. Novak was picking off targets opportunistically, but the Directorate were now flooding the hotel with personnel. Commandos appeared at every entrance and exit to the corridor, weapons locked on us.
“Desist,” Kwan repeated. He drew the redactor now, and its many mind-probes quivered ominously. “We have risked so much to follow you here, into Alliance territory, but our prize cannot be denied.”
“And this one,” said Tang, her mechanical limbs shifting arrhythmically, “is of some importance to you?”
I looked at Dr. Locke, and there was knowing in her eyes. “You can’t let them get this map,” she said bluntly. “See to it.”
“Surrender now,” Kwan demanded.
I thumbed a grenade from my harness. One flic
k of the activator, and it’d be over. Back on the Firebird. But if we took that route out, Dr. Locke wouldn’t be coming with us. Better that the Directorate don’t take the prize, I decided. Dr. Locke would thank me for it in the long run. I retreated down the corridor, towards the other Jackals.
“You will do as ordered!” Kwan said, his eyes flaring with anger. “Weapons down, now!”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said. “These skins: they’re disposable.”
Kwan’s face crumpled in annoyance. “You and your meat puppets.”
Dr. Locke drew up close to me. “But I’m not,” she shouted. “And I’m the key to your Aeon.”
“You are liars,” Kwan said. “All liars!”
“Then you’ll be fine with my activating this grenade,” I said.
I could see that information trickling into Tang’s brain.
“We must have her,” she said, robotic arms stirring. She looked like some sort of mechanical version of a Krell bio-form, multi-limbed and dangerous. “We must secure the Aeon! Shadows, detain the prisoners!”
But Commander Kwan was looking past me. Looking at Lopez and Feng, at the end of the corridor … Korean started to spill out of his mouth, spoken at such a rate that the words had to be machine-assisted. A translation appeared on my HUD: “Azimuth, faith, fire. All-hallows eve, by the light of the cold—”
Then, an enormous blast wave hit me, and the dropship hovering at the window disappeared in a ball of fire and heat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
COLD RETRIBUTION
“Do you read, ma’am?” Zero asked, her voice cheery-calm over the comm.
“I … I read.”
I picked myself up off the floor, cancelled a dozen damage warnings on my HUD, and rolled to my feet. Miraculously, my armour was intact, and despite the intensity of the shockwave that had just hit me, so was my sim. My hand was still caught in a claw, armoured fingers curled around the grenade that I’d somehow managed to refrain from activating, even as the explosion had hit.
Dr. Locke stirred beside me. She was the only member of the team without a bio-sensor, so I couldn’t read her vitals, but she wasn’t dead. In the circumstances, that was the best we could ask for. I’d protected her from the worst of the shockwave, using my armour as a shield.
“Dr. Locke?” I asked. “You okay?”
“I’m … I’m all right,” she said. Her face was striped with dust and debris, one goggle shattered. “But my arm hurts pretty bad.”
She had been thrown into the wall by the explosion, and she rubbed her right arm at the elbow where it had made contact. I used my HUD as a rudimentary medical scanner and saw that she had probably fractured the ulna.
“You’ll live,” I said. If it wasn’t going to kill her in the next two minutes, then she was just going to have to deal with it. “It’s not serious.”
Dr. Locke gasped at the pain, but nodded back at me. “If you say so.”
“Jackals, sound off!” I called.
The Jackals rose from the wreckage. Our suits were networked, and I could read medical data on each of the team; I knew that they were shaken, but hadn’t suffered any serious injuries.
“Present,” Novak said with a groan. He emerged from a pile of debris where the ceiling had fallen in. The Russian wiped dust from his suit’s visor. “Just.”
Lopez and Feng were farther down the corridor, and in better shape. “Affirmative,” both answered.
“Seal this down,” I ordered. “Kill them all.”
The Directorate had been thrown into disarray, black-armoured bodies cast about the floor with limbs in unusual angles. They might be elite Shadow agents, but the Directorate were no sims. A couple roused, trying to get up. Lopez and Novak saw to them, putting down any resistance with plasma rifle and knife. Novak recovered his rifle, checked it for damage.
“What … what just happened?” Lopez asked.
“I’m not sure,” I answered.
“Don’t worry,” Zero said over the comm. “It was only me.”
“What’d you do, Zero?” Lopez said.
“Don’t ever say that I’m no help on a mission,” she replied. She sounded very pleased with herself.
A ragged hole had been blown in the side of the hotel, where the window had been. The whole structure listed dangerously, groaning with the enormity of the damage it had suffered. I was almost frightened to look outside, to see exactly what had happened, but curiosity got the better of me.
“Well, at least the dropship is downed …” Feng said.
The ship had crashed into the next building, its nose half-buried in the pavement. The fuselage was utterly shattered, the pilot and co-pilot’s bodies sagging lifeless in the cockpit. Despite the rain, small fires had broken across the ship’s ruined hull.
“Was that Kwan?” Novak asked me.
“It was,” I said.
“He dead?”
“I hope so.”
The wreckage contained several black-armoured bodies, but the heat from the burning ship, and the range to the targets, prevented me from make individual identification: Kwan and Tang might, or might not, be among the dead.
“That’s going to be tough to walk away from,” Lopez commented. She too was covered in dust, her armour dinked and dented in numerous places. Something else caught her attention. She pointed into the street. “What the hell is that doing down there?”
An MBT-900 tank was positioned at the end of the street. The tank was literally loaded with armaments, from the phallic plasma cannon mounted on its turret, to the smart missile launchers on its hull, and the bank of anti-personnel kinetics guns studding its flanks. The package was topped by a null-shield generator that encased the vehicle in a blue sphere.
“I have control of the motor pool,” Zero said.
“We can see that,” I answered.
“That … that is awesome,” Feng muttered.
The tank had an anti-gravity drive, but something that big required a boatload of force to stay airborne. It hovered a foot or so off the ground, crushing stonework beneath its bulk as it pivoted on its axis to better track hostiles. The surrounding air rippled, the small bones of my ear vibrating in time with the thrum of its engine. We watched as the vehicle’s weapon systems activated, firing missiles and plasma bolts into the surrounding streets.
“How the damn did you do that?” I asked.
“Easy. We’re in orbit over the city. When you told me about them, I tried to initiate the remote link to Alliance ground vehicles.”
I still couldn’t actually believe that Zero had done it. “Nice work.”
“I never doubted you, Zero,” Feng said. “Now, could you send a shuttle our way?”
“I’m good,” said Zero, “but I’m not that good.” She gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “But if Captain Lestrade keeps the Firebird in this orbit, I can maintain control of all four tanks. I can clear a path to the spaceport.”
“Fucking A, Zero. You’re the girl.”
“I try. It was actually easier than I thought it would be. Nadi taught me a work-around for some of the security protocols. It was as I thought: the motherboards weren’t actually fried, you see. They just needed a reboot and soft upgrade, and, well—”
“Okay, okay. We get the message. Thanks for the save.”
The Directorate were regrouping, and fast. Drawn by the explosion, a handful of Shadows stirred on the closest rooftop. They opened fire on the MBT with grenades, probably high-ex anti-tank munitions. The tank’s null-shield rippled, repelling the impacts. It responded a second later, and a bolt of blue fire hit the building, which promptly toppled into the street.
“Get moving,” Zero suggested. “There are three more dropships out there. Those tanks can take some serious damage, but they’re still only ground vehicles.”
It wasn’t just the Directorate we had to be worried about. The outlines of bloated bio-ships wavered on the horizon, and the sky was filled with bio-pods. I could hear the
shriek of infected Krell on the wind, above the churn and pop of the burning dropship and collapsing building. Kronstadt was dead. It was just a matter of whether we were going with it. Time was running out.
“Hold the nearest tank’s position,” I said. “We’re hitching a ride.”
Using our EVAMPs, we bounced into the street below. I popped another couple of Shadows with my plasma rifle, and Lopez laid down covering fire with a frag grenade. That kept heads down long enough for us to reach the tank. We dashed through the null-shield, and Zero opened an access hatch on the flank using the vehicle’s remote control facility.
“Get in,” I ordered Dr. Locke.
She did as she was told, clambering inside. Given her height, that was no easy task. The MBT-900 plainly wasn’t made to hold much in the way of a human crew. In theory it was fully automated, but because machines make mistakes just as easily as the rest of us, it had a backup crew compartment.
“That’s going to be cramped,” Feng said, shaking his head.
The tank’s interior was dark, lit only by the tri-D schematics that reeled off firing solutions and tracked enemy movements. I climbed in behind Locke, Feng following me, but there wasn’t room for Lopez and Novak. The Pathfinder suits and Dr. Locke’s size made the small space even tighter.
“What’re we supposed to do?” Lopez moaned.
“You’re riding up top,” I said. “It’ll give you a chance to up your Directorate kill-count.”
“Sounds like you’re trying to sweeten the deal,” Lopez griped as she climbed into position on the hull.
Novak just grunted a laugh. “Up close and personal. Just how I like it.”
“I’m transferring manual control to the tank,” Zero said. “I’ve already plotted a course back to the cosmodrome, but if I lose connection, you’ll have to take over.”
“Fine. Feng, you’re driving.”
“Copy that,” he answered. “Moving off.”
The tank’s enormous chassis was suspended on a dozen anti grav-plates, powered by an engine that was more than capable of taking the Jackals’ additional weight. We shifted portside, tracking Directorate hostiles as they advanced on us through the Barrows.
