Stormblood

by Jeremy Szal

  The Berserk killsquad of Harvesters who’d carved up the town had set up a temporary camp in the remains of the bombed-out schoolyard. Chatting, sitting around and eating from nutrition packets. Swinging from a tree next to them by a length of rope were two teenagers, riddled with bullet-holes. They’d been using them for target practice.

  Any other type of soldier in the SSC would be trained for this. To follow protocol and procedure, neutralise the enemy and bring them in for questioning.

  But stormtech was designed to react to our emotions. Harvest had reduced cities to rubble, shot down evac ships, set forests on fire, trained their soldiers to hunt Reapers like animals across the planet. Now we’d walked through a civilians’ pyre, the stormtech swiftly converting our grief and horror into blinding fury.

  We all moved as one.

  Alcatraz blasted the squad leader in the back of the skull with his shardpistol. Cable grabbed a man, dragging him across the ground and smashing his head against a rock. Ratchet blew a sniper’s hand off at the wrist before following up with a headshot as Myra and I each throttled the trigger of our marksman rifles. I don’t remember how long I fired or how many I hosed down. Only that we fought until the echo of gunfire stuttered to a halt and the Harvesters stopped moving. That silence descended again. The rage leaking away as we glanced at each other across the smoking camp of dead Harvesters. Realising what we’d done, what we’d carry with us for ever. Alcatraz placed a hand on my shoulder, breathing hard.

  There was a scampering noise from the schoolyard. We snapped around as one, weapons readied. A young girl, caked in ash and dirt, streaked from her hiding place, running away from us. Cable reached her just as she tripped and sprawled in the mud. We watched as he knelt down and gently scooped her up in his powerful arms while she spluttered and sobbed into his chest. Cable whispered to her in her own tongue as he hugged her, her cries dying down to moaning whispers. Although I didn’t understand a word, I didn’t need to. He clutched her to his chest, not letting her see the devastation as he carried her past the massacre, past the burned pyre, past the burned bodies, all twelve kilometres to our fallback point. Each of us automatically watching his flank as we walked.

  You can’t explain to people who weren’t there the bond from being stuck in that hell, your fireteam the only anchors to sanity in a hell gone mad. A reminder that life and goodness still exist somewhere in the galaxy. How that sense of friendship and unity draws you closer together.

  My radar chimed, dragging me out of the memory. Someone was trotting down the blackened steps. A skinnie, wrapped in stained clothes and pushing some kind of shopping cart, his body streaming with violent blue bursts of lightning. He scratched at bulbous growths protruding from his arms and legs. Probably couldn’t even feel the stimuli, his skin was so scabbed and scarred. His bloodshot eyes darted back and forth, like the shadows couldn’t hold all the ghosts he was seeing. He was picking through mounds of trash when a trio of skinnies peeled from the darkness towards him. He jerked upwards, running away with his cart as they chased him with makeshift weapons, screaming. Their feet slapping on the pavement as they disappeared into the network of alleyways with the rattling of metal.

  Half a dozen more skinnies shuffled past before Artyom came along. I sat up as he keyed the code on a datapad set into a secure lockup. Blackened shutters rolled back to reveal an armoured door that groaned open as alloy bolts shuttered back. The Hippo was lifted out of a subterranean storage compartment, bogies whirling as it rolled out to meet Artyom.

  ‘Got him,’ Grim whispered.

  ‘Stay sharp,’ I told Grim. I raced down the crumbling stairs, hugging the scissoring shadows of the piazza, stormtech roiling down my hamstrings. My thermal vision had turned Artyom into a humanoid coal through the plasma-punctured walls. His gait was slow and casual as he led the Hippo across this forlorn, forgotten chunk of Compass. My jaw clenched as I closed the distance over debris and the skeletal spines of rebars. However he was involved, I’d find a way to get him out.

  He zigzagged down a staircase into the courtyard of a ruined mansion. A thin, cadaverous figure was leaning casually against a retaining wall, hands tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket. Middle-aged with a blonde beard streaked with grey. No visible weapons. I tensed, actively combating my body’s urge to go for my shardpistol and end this now. I snapped off my thermals to get a better look and cranked up my audio amplifiers. Voices materialised as stuttering cyan soundwaves in my HUD.

  ‘Hey, Mueller,’ said Artyom, ‘you’re early.’

  ‘You have it?’ Crystals were embedded in the man’s stained teeth, catching the light as he spoke.

  ‘As always.’ Artyom spoke casually, his posture showing the ease of someone who’d done this many, many times.

  ‘Have to check. You know the drill.’ Mueller scanned his palmerlog and the belly of the Hippo spilled open. Even if I hadn’t expected the contents, the jackhammering of stormtech against my chest would have told me what it was. Stormtech canisters. The Harmony symbol etched on the metalwork.

  ‘Four?’ He gave a low whistle, checking each canister.

  ‘You ask. I deliver.’

  A grin split Mueller’s face. ‘Great job as always, Artyom.’

  ‘Had them stolen ages ago. Couldn’t risk moving the supplies, the heat’s been on me. Better to wait until we’re in the clear, you know?’ Artyom leaned against a scorched column. ‘You know how it is.’

  ‘Remember, the long game is what counts. You stay out of owned territory and meet your quota, you’re good.’

  ‘I’m hitting it, no problems there. I might even have a little extra this month.’

  ‘Good man, good man.’

  It felt like my guts were being sucked out of me by hard vacuum.

  ‘Do you have to head straight off?’ Mueller asked as they turned towards a door, the Hippo lumbering behind them, its wheelset whirling.

  ‘I’ve always got time for a drink.’

  Mueller clapped a friendly hand on Artyom’s shoulder. ‘We got a special of offworld vodka shipment today. Thought you’d like to try it.’ Their voices died down as the sliding door clanged shut behind them.

  ‘Vak,’ Grim whispered on the other end. ‘I’m so sorry, man.’

  I barely heard him. My brother was dealing the most illicit drug of the last century. He was part of an organisation that was poisoning stormtech and killing Reapers. And not because he had to. He was a major, long-standing cog in their machine. And he clearly had no plans to stop.

  There’s something that every stormtech user experiences at least once. The Non-Reversal Crisis, the xenobiologists call it. It’s the moment you realise that this biotechnology from a long-extinct alien species is now locked inside your body for ever, because you put it there. It’s fused to your blood cells, your flesh, your pheromones, your nervous system, and it’s never, ever coming out. No unringing the bell. I’d had it at the end of a long day of training during the Reaper War, when I’d caught a glimpse of my reflection and not recognised myself with the blue lashing through my chest, arms, and legs. I’d sunk to the cold floor of my quarters, my entire body racking with sobs. Unable to breathe, unable to even raise my head, fighting back the urge to rip it from my skin and nerves.

  This felt similar. I’d been so very wrong about my brother. My memories – my guilt, my determination to protect him – had blinded me. Even when he had practically told me.

  Stupid. So sodding stupid.

  I mentally picked myself up, gathering my thoughts together. The shardpistol gave a little whine as I snapped it into combat-ready mode. ‘I’m going after them,’ I told Grim, the tugging in my gut egging me on. ‘You know the score. I’ll be in touch.’

  I cut him off before he could protest.

  Keeping to the shadows between the columns, I followed their pathway across the derelict courtyard towards the mansion
. I don’t go anywhere without knowing where the exits and blind spots are. I kept an eye on my flank as I advanced, scanning for tripwires Grim might have missed. Nothing. Broken ventilation clanked and crunched high above me. My comms spluttered and vanished as I walked. Signal jammer, and a strong one at that. Guess I really was on my own. I glided out of the darkness and made a beeline for the doorway, eyes peeled for secondary entrances and surveillance gear. Up a short flight of scorched stairs, heading for the shadow of a crumbling balcony. I’d almost made it to the mansion when there was a dull, familiar click behind me.

  There’s only one thing in the universe that sounds like that.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said a voice, barely above a whisper. He must have been watching over the deal, only to catch me. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Of course. I was fully suited up in armour. He couldn’t see me. Couldn’t guess Artyom was my brother. Had to keep it that way for his sake.

  I tried to turn my head. ‘I—’

  The weapon nudged my helmet, hard. ‘Eyes straight, mister. Eyes straight.’

  I’d already seen what I needed to see. His handgun was retooled for high-calibre, armour-piercing rounds. They’d punch clean through my helmet and splatter out my visor, dicing my brain into fish meat. I’d no doubt he’d do it. Some guys think a ranged weapon makes them the boss of the room. Others understand that a gun is a tool. It only matters if you’re willing and able to use it correctly.

  This guy was the latter.

  My shardpistol was torn from my hand. Screwing the handgun to the back of my neck, he marched me down a series of miasmic hallways, infested with leaking plumbing. My comms were still dead. Minutes later, we reached the shelled-out remains of a compound. The words Crimson Star Industries were trapped in a glass frame above the lintel. The door dilated open and I was shoved into the vestibule. ‘Got a visitor,’ he shouted as the door slammed shut, heavy bolts thudding home.

  Workstations, flexiscreens, storage cabinets and sofas sat atop a stained rug covering a spacious room. My visor picked up greasy smears of food and the powdery glimmer of grimwire on the glass desks. Place was lived in. A cracked viewport peered out into a small garage, the curving walls a smear of crumpled service machinery. The sort of place where they’d construct customised chainships and small spacecraft, outfit them with tattoo-like paintjobs. The skeleton of a black chainship, as if chiselled from space itself, was still suspended in front of a colourful catalogue of decals. Thigh-thick powerlines and rusted docking tubes jutted from scuffed decking like broken spinal cords. Long abandoned, the war had turned the whole place to a crumpled shell.

  And now it was a base of operations for a stormdealer syndicate.

  ‘Lasky? What is it?’ A woman wearing an underskin with an arterial pattern trooped into the vestibule, chewing gum. Her long black hair dripped around her head like a stream of crude oil, her collarbones festooned with tattoos. She swore in Korean as she saw me. ‘Who’s this?’ she rasped. Her coal-dark eyes flickered over me like a butcher inspecting a cold slab of raw meat. It was the same calculating look I’d seen on a girl on New Vladi as she ran a kitchen knife down another girl’s face because all the boys said she was prettier.

  ‘He was following Artyom and Mueller,’ Lasky said, handgun still fixed against my neck. The little runt had dirty blonde hair, slicked back from a strangely childish face. He was a head and a half shorter than me, but a weapon’s got a way of equalling the dynamic.

  She tilted her head back to call out without unlocking sights with me. ‘Hausk! Lyndon! Get in here.’ Lead-heavy footsteps echoed as two more men approached. They both wore armour, engraved with markings that placed them from some installation or wayward spaceport far from Compass. They were twins, ugly as each other, though one had dyed his hair a fiery red, and the other had a face crisscrossed with so many pockmarks and scars it looked like a butcher had used it as a chopping block. I decided the ugly one was Lyndon. ‘Hideko, what’s going on? Are we blown?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m handling it,’ Hideko snapped. Both men shut right up. She was evidently the boss around here.

  Hausk was squinting at me, as if he could somehow see through my visor. ‘Who the hell is he?’

  ‘What an excellent question.’ Lasky moved around in front of me to thrust the handgun under my chin, tilting my head upwards. ‘You heard the man. Who are you?’

  I was increasingly sure these guys were the ones dealing poisoned stormtech, torturing and murdering my friends. If they found out I was with Harmony, they’d bury me alive. If they thought Artyom had double-crossed them, they’d bury him with me.

  Lasky jammed the handgun harder. ‘Who are you? Why were you following us?’

  ‘Which one you want me to answer first?’ The words were barely out of my mouth when I realised my mistake.

  A grin spread on Lasky’s face. ‘That’s not a Compass accent. He’s not from here.’ The grin widened as he patted my shoulder. ‘We progress.’

  ‘Cut him out of that armour,’ grumbled Hausk, ‘or put a bullet in his face.’

  Grim would wait twenty-four hours to hear from me before alerting Harmony. If they took him seriously and acted fast, maybe they’d find me, but not before these guys got the cutters and electric grinders out.

  ‘Oh, I’d like to,’ said Lasky. There was a glimmer of cruel curiosity in his child-like eyes, as if he wanted to start hacking and sawing away at my body, just to see what fluids would leak out. ‘If only we had the tools to do it without killing the sod. But she’ll want to talk to him. You don’t wear this sort of gear for a stroll in the park.’

  The temptation to butt him in the forehead, hear the crunch of his nose breaking, swipe the shardpistol from his hand and blast away was so strong I could feel my arm almost swinging into motion, the muscles twitching.

  Lasky rapped my visor with my own shardpistol. ‘Someone sent you here. And you’re going to tell us who.’

  My neck flushed hot with stormtech and the words came spilling out. ‘They’ll come for me,’ I rasped. I glanced about for exits, blind spots, tunnels I could dart into. Nothing. Hausk and Lyndon were already moving behind me, hands flexed and drawn into a fighting stance, as if waiting for me to try. ‘They’ll come here and mow you all down.’

  ‘Bleeding stars, just shoot the bastard and peel him apart afterwards,’ grumbled Lyndon. ‘Get it over with.’

  But Lasky only grinned. ‘Oh, haven’t you heard? People are going to come for him.’ He stuck his face inches from mine. ‘Who is?’

  I clamped down hard on the stormtech, glued my mouth shut. Put my two objectives at the forefront of my mind: not, under any circumstances, taking my armour off and risking Artyom, and getting the hell out of here.

  Lasky’s grin was hungry. ‘All right, tough guy.’ He gently patted my chest. ‘I want you to remember you had a way out. You could have talked to us at any time. No one to blame but yourself for what’s coming.’

  Hausk and Lyndon moved towards me. I jerked away on instinct, but they cornered me, grabbed one arm each, kicking my legs out from under me and slamming my helmet back against the concrete. My body pressed up against the wall, I watched Hideko toss Lasky a matte-black gizmo the size of a fist and slap it against the side of my head. Spindly needles going rat-tat-tat against my helmet as it secured itself. My HUD scrambled, readouts and icons flaring in and out like neurons firing, all devices and security dying. Overriding and shutting down my suit. I couldn’t get it off now, even if I wanted to.

  Hausk and Lyndon jerked me to my feet, twisting my arms behind my back and marching me down a series of shadowy hallways. With the device fizzling against the side of my helmet, walking felt like I was encased in wet cement. Hideko walked in front and Lasky from behind, heavy footsteps echoing across the scuffed floor. Reaper training teaches you to suppress fear, to channel it into something proactive. Formulating an escap
e route, clawing up a weapon, getting an emergency signal out. Anything that’ll keep you breathing long enough to fight back. But coldness was starting to fester inside me, born of Lasky’s smile, and I’d realised the types of people my captors were. It would be so easy for them to kill me, as they had Alcatraz and Samantha. Leave me Blued Out on hard concrete. Another dead Reaper on the pile.

  Would Artyom even care, when he found out?

  At the far end was an image on the wall, like a tattoo stamped in concrete. A thick, matte-black shape, the edges entwined together and vibrating with an outline of dark energy.

  Tried to get a better look, but the world kept sliding in and out of focus. The gizmo crackled against the side of my helmet again. I just had time to recognise the whining prime of an EMP before it exploded in my skull. The world glared hot white, shadows spearing through my head. Blood and metal filled my mouth.

  ‘Is the son of a bitch down?’ one of them asked from a hundred light years away. My knees gave out under me. ‘Good. Get him locked in.’

  The concrete floor came rushing up like a kick in the face.

  11

  Nightware

  I emerged from deep smothering darkness to find myself strapped into a metal cradle. Thick, titanium restraints clamped tight around my wrists, ankles, thighs, between my legs, over my shoulders and crisscrossed my chest. Metal shackling had been secured along my spine, locked around my neck. The reclined cradle was deep and sturdy, built for carrying fully-armoured men in chainships, now retrofitted to secure prisoners. I tried to move, but I might as well have been wrapped in concrete. The cradle registered even my feeble struggle and all the restraints tightened with bone-crushing force.

  I settled back, sweating and raking in lungfuls of air, my hands clenching, the cradle hard and humming against my back. They hadn’t carved me out of my armour. Not yet.