E-Day

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Fear is a tool. Use it to guide your heart and your hand.

  “Fortitude and valor is the path to honor,” Akira whispered.

  He thought of the men and women in the forest, considering their fate. Sighing deeply, he opened the short-range comm line and reported his plan to recon enemy positions.

  A rough voice replied.

  “Negative, Sergeant. Return to rendezvous,” growled Battalion Captain Tran.

  Akira didn’t have a chance to respond. A violent thumping like the clap of thunder came over the hill. He flattened his body into the mud. The ground shook and rumbled from the impacts of another round of incoming mortars.

  The enemy’s fire was drawing closer to the battalion.

  Clenching his jaw, Akira’s thoughts turned to his brother Kai, also a Piston, and Kai’s wife, Lise. He had not seen them in almost a year. War had separated them, with Kai and Lise living in Megacity Phoenix, halfway across the world.

  A shell exploded close to Akira, showering him with splinters. He clawed at the ground, trying to dig into the mud, cold adrenaline pumping through his vessels, telling him to run. To flee.

  Fortitude and valor is the path to honor.

  Akira repeated his mantra as he tried to keep from panicking during the incessant fire. The words flowed through his mind until he lost track of time and realized the shelling had finally stopped.

  He slowly lifted his helmet and wiped his faceplate clean. His ears rang, but his hearing was already settling. Over the noise, came a clanking sound from above his position. He pulled his rifle and aimed the barrel at the burned trees at the top of the hill. The targeting system on his HUD danced until it found a contact.

  A hoofed leg stomped the ground.

  He pulled his finger away from the trigger and lowered the rifle from a stray hybrid stallion the color of night, with dark brown eyes. The animal hobbled toward Akira on partial prosthetic legs.

  Part biological and part mechanical, this creation of Dr. Otto Cross was just one of the Coalition’s modified war beasts. The horse’s natural brain was unaided by AI, but its body was enhanced with prosthetics and armor, allowing it to run faster and withstand enemy fire.

  Maybe I can ride him out of here, Akira thought.

  “Easy, my friend,” Akira whispered forcefully.

  The beast definitely favored his left front leg, keeping the weight off the other front leg. Bending down, Akira noticed a shard of shrapnel sticking out of his damaged right hoof.

  “Hold still,” Akira said. “This might hurt a little.”

  He took out his multi-tool and used the pliers to clamp onto the piece of metal, wiggling it until it popped out.

  The horse let out a long, happy neigh and slowly placed his leg back down. Lowering his head, he then nudged up against Akira as if to say thank you.

  Akira unscrewed the gas-filter canisters on his helmet and tucked them into a pouch on his chest. Next, he caked mud on his armor, spreading it out. Without the canisters, Akira looked almost like a Coalition soldier.

  The hybrid animal watched him curiously.

  “Easy,” Akira said again. He reached up, took the reins, and hopped over the saddle. In the mount, he recalled his days riding as a young boy, hoping they would come back to him.

  It took a moment to get adjusted with his boots in the stirrups, but the horse didn’t seem to mind.

  Akira gazed over the battlefield and considered his orders to return to the frontlines. Smoking craters and burning trees stretched across the horizon. Mounds of dirt smoldered, and a wave of smoke drifted over the ocean of fallen trees burnt to embers.

  The night vision optics did little to aid his view. The enemy could be anywhere, but he had the chance to save countless lives by finding them with the Coalition horse.

  Howls rang out through the night as he gave the beast a kick to the flanks. They started downhill, halting on the slope to look east.

  A pack of three Coalition Iron Wolves bolted across a ravine and into another section of forest. The hybrid wolves vanished into a curtain of smoke, but not before Akira spotted the barrel of a plasma cannon pointing in his direction from nearly a hundred yards away.

  He braced for the incoming shot, but the barrel turned away.

  His disguise was working, and now he knew an enemy location.

  Akira quickly accessed the coordinates on his mini-map. After confirming them, he sent them over the short-range comms to Captain Tran.

  “Copy that,” the captain replied. This time he did not tell Akira to retreat.

  Akira gave the stallion another kick in its flank, and the beast continued down the hill. At the bottom, it crossed a murky stream. He gripped the reins tightly as the animal trotted through the slurping mud.

  Hunks of armor protruded from the muck, shielding the rotted flesh of their former owners. Both Coalition and Nova Alliance dead littered this stretch of land, which neither side had taken the risk to retrieve.

  Trapped under a fallen tree and covered up to its chest in mud, a Hummer Medical Droid reached up toward Akira. Half of its titanium head was crushed, and the facial screen was destroyed.

  It looked as if it was suffering, and Akira found himself pitying the machine, struggling to remind himself it was not actually human. He moved on, steering the horse deeper into enemy territory.

  Another howl called out to the west.

  Akira froze when he saw the green dot on his chest.

  An enemy sniper was checking him out.

  He held his breath, waiting. But the dot flitted away.

  There was no time for relief. On three blackened hills to the east, he saw movement among the burned trunks of trees. He pulled his RS-3 phased-plasma pulse rifle to scope the terrain, sighting the location of mortars under a camo thermal tent. Using the built-in optics in his faceplate, he marked the coordinates and transmitted them over the short-range comms.

  Akira slotted the rifle over his back when a sniper shot whizzed through the air.

  He had been made. It was time to move.

  Pressing himself tight against the horse’s neck, he gave the stallion a good kick on both flanks and whistled, launching it forward just in time to avoid a second round that would have cracked through his faceplate.

  Plasma bolts exploded from the trees to his left, then his right, in a rapid staccato burst in sync with his heart.

  “Go, go!” Akira shouted.

  He kept low on the horse and relayed the location of the enemy machine-gun positions tucked between the clusters of rocks and bushes.

  Mortars thumped into the air followed by the exhaust trail of a flare that burst overhead, spreading a brilliant and blinding light over the battlefield. Akira closed his eyes while his tinted faceplate adjusted.

  Rounds and plasma bolts lanced around them as the stallion galloped over an open field. In the fading glow of the flare, the distant hills came alive with enemy fire, giving away all of their positions. Barrels extended out of dugouts covered by brush, from tunnel entrances, and from behind rocks.

  Akira rode the horse through a ravine and up the slope where he had discovered the beast. Shouting voices exploded out of the forest.

  As he got closer, he realized it was his battalion, and they were screaming his name.

  “AKIRA!”

  They had tapped into his video feed and had been watching all this time. Now they could see him on the stallion from their position.

  Bolts seared past the stallion, and mortars exploded around him, showering Akira with dirt and grit. He hung onto the horse with all of his strength as the landscape flashed by. He wasn’t sure how fast they were going, but it had to be thirty or forty miles an hour, an amazing feat on this terrain.

  The horse wheeled around a cluster of trees and pounded through a clearing. It jumped over logs and boulders. More shots cut through the air around him, each shot missing only because of the speed and grace with which the horse navigated
the battlefield.

  Until one didn’t.

  The bullet hit him in the side, knocking him off the beast. The horse crashed into a creek with a splash. Akira landed on his back at the base of the slope, pain shooting up his spine.

  The world went dark for a beat. He tried to move, but the impact of the fall had paralyzed his stunned body. He blinked away stars, his vision clearing until he could see the horse again.

  The stallion limped on three legs, whinnying, one of the prosthetics smoking from a direct plasma bolt.

  Shouting filled the night, accompanied by the cacophonous blare of a horn.

  Akira thought he heard his name again.

  As the pain numbed, he slowly crawled up the creek bed to retrieve his rifle. Twelve blurred figures emerged on the hilltop above him.

  His comrades had come to help!

  Akira blinked again, his vision clearing enough to see the soldiers’ energy swords, energy axes, and rifles. Armet helmets with slitted viewports stared down on him. A comet marked the soldiers’ chests: the logo of the Coalition.

  These were not his comrades.

  Akira swiftly brought up his plasma rifle and fired a concentrated blast of bolts into the nearest figures. Three of them toppled and rolled down the hill.

  His rifle stopped firing, but Akira pulled the trigger over and over, not realizing he was out of ammo until the Coalition soldiers standing above him started laughing.

  Akira tossed his spent rifle and took a step to the side, falling back down in the slick mud. The stallion was behind him, grunting and holding up the injured leg.

  The beast backed away as Akira reached over his shoulder and drew his energy cutlass. He held the heated orange blade in both hands as the soldiers scurried down the hill toward him.

  There was no way he could take them all, and he couldn’t outrun them.

  He recalled another quote from the Warrior Codex as he considered his limited options.

  Courage is a decision that can evade death.

  Raising his sword, Akira fell into a defensive stance, the same stance handed down from a family of warriors that dated back to the samurai.

  Samurai never surrendered.

  And like them, he stood his ground.

  Akira let out a scream as the first soldier raised an axe. Seizing the opportunity, Akira thrust his sword deep into the soldier’s thick armor, plunging it through his heart.

  He drew the blade out as the second soldier swung a sword. Akira dodged the attack, and the bulky man lost his footing, carried by momentum, falling into the mud.

  Akira removed the soldier’s head from his neck with a downward stroke. Then he backed away as three more soldiers approached. They all wore the same heavy armor, great for hand-to-hand combat, but terrible for maneuvering in this slop.

  Even without his exo, Akira was faster and more agile.

  All three Coalition soldiers charged. Two stumbled right away, and the third slipped, sliding down right toward Akira’s blade. He dispatched him with a swift stroke across the chest, the energy blade simmering through the armor and into his rib cage.

  The other two men attempted to right themselves, but Akira sliced his sword into their skulls with swift crunches. He rotated the red-hot blade toward four more warriors just beyond the puddles of thick mud. These men were smarter than their dead comrades. They had switched to their rifles.

  Chest heaving, his armor covered in mud, Akira strode toward them, screaming. Muzzle flashes sparked as they fired. He felt the bullets slam into his armor, knocking him backward. As he fell, he saw a flash of metal slam into the men, trampling them.

  Akira pushed himself up, staring in shock at the stallion that had run them down.

  It hobbled down toward him and he reached up for the reins when another bullet hit him in the back. He rolled on his side, trying to look up as the blurred shapes of more soldiers crested the hill.

  Another bullet punched into his arm as he reached for his sword.

  More of the warriors emerged at the top of the hill to his right, and then to his left, stampeding down like a herd of enraged bison.

  Akira used his good arm to push himself up and face the onslaught like a true warrior.

  “Come on!” he yelled.

  His words were drowned out by a whirring noise, followed by a deep tenor voice with an Italian accent. “AI is salvation!”

  Five Coalition soldiers vanished in a flash of light.

  Akira brought his hand up to his visor to block the blinding glow. When he lowered it, the Coalition soldiers fell apart, their upper bodies sliding off their hips and legs.

  Blue torches from jetpacks descended from the sky, supporting armored figures that fired plasma cannons into the hillsides Akira had marked. The closest of the warriors landed near enough that Akira could see the logo of the Nova Alliance Strike Force on their armor—two saw-toothed swords crossed behind a Silver Crane.

  These were Engines, genetically-modified Nova Alliance warriors designed to end the holy war between the Coalition atheists and those who, like Akira, believed AI would bring salvation to their dying planet.

  Akira had never seen one this close in battle before, but he recognized the famous shining golden plates of Major Dimitri Contos and the spotless white armor of Sergeant Shane Rossi, the “Ghost”.

  The legendary warriors swooped down, gripping energy swords twice as long as Akira’s standard weapon. They raised the glowing blades above their helmets, the napes curving off their chins like ancient Corinthian soldiers.

  With each strike, a Coalition soul departed the Earth.

  In minutes, it was over. The two augmented soldiers stood in the center of a halo of dismembered bodies.

  Akira tried to stand out of respect but fell back to the mud, only to push himself back up. His body shook from the pain, but he remained standing.

  “Ghost, take that hill,” Contos ordered.

  Rossi blasted his way toward the next target. Contos walked over to Akira, a tower of armored plates over augmented muscle, flesh, and bones. Blue eyes sparkled behind his visor as he studied Akira with his infrared night vision sights (INVS).

  “You fought well, my friend. What is your name?” he asked in a booming voice.

  “Sergeant Akira Hayashi.”

  Contos reached down to Akira.

  “Thank you, Major Contos,” he said, taking his hand. “I’m grateful and lucky you arrived when you did.”

  “Luck did not save you this day. You were meant for armor greater than the plates you wear now.” Contos helped Akira to his feet. “I am the one who is grateful for your bravery. You saved many lives and today you earned yourself a new name.”

  He nodded at Akira and then called out, “Akira the Brave!”

  The Pistons of the Stone Mountain Battalion stormed past, shouting his new name as Contos fired off into the sky with his jetpack.

  Akira watched him go and then limped over to the stallion.

  “And what should I call you, my friend?” Akira asked.

  The beast had saved him from what should have been certain death. Today, he had been fortunate. He decided on the Japanese word for lucky son.

  “Kichiro,” he said quietly at first. “Yeah, I’ll call you Kichiro.”

  Akira grabbed the reins and climbed up into the saddle. He whistled and the magnificent animal hobbled after the rest of the battalion charging across the hills.

  An hour later, they had taken the battlefield. Piston Clerics planted the Silver Crane flag at the top of a scorched hill while the Coalition’s horn calls signaling retreat echoed through the haunted land.

  From somewhere among the trees, Akira heard Ghost singing the Nova Alliance hymn of victory.

  AI is salvation. AI is hope.

  AI is the future of humanity!

  — 1 —

  Ten years later…

  Of all the people Dr. Jason Crichton had watched die in the constant
wars over his forty-two year life, he had never seen anyone die in space. Two-hundred-two miles above the Earth, he watched his sister Petra suffer from Systematic Amyotrophic Nervous Disorder (SANDs) in the spin-gravity.

  They were inside Sector 220, a top-secret medical facility near the top of the habitats built around the Titan Space Elevator. Jason was able to work here without worrying about the laws of the Nova Alliance, which had restricted human and droid-integrative medical procedures on Earth, and outlawed combining human consciousness with artificial intelligence.

  But that didn’t mean he could save his sister. Not her flesh body, at least.

  Most people would already have succumbed to the agony of the disease devouring their nerves and muscles, but Petra was a fighter, dying the same way she lived. With grace.

  Tubes snaked away from her pale, bony limbs, pumping in a cocktail of life-prolonging medicines. Tight straps secured her to the bed to prevent her rotting muscles from spasming so hard that they broke her brittle bones. The straps left bruises on her flesh. And through all the evident agony, she wore a gentle smile.

  “This has got to be the most beautiful deathbed view in history,” Petra said, her kind voice unwavering.

  It was weaker now, and Jason knew the end was near. But he appreciated her attempt to lighten the mood.

  He followed her gaze out the window. It glowed like a lighthouse beacon coming online. The glass tinted to protect their eyes from the brilliant orange disc splitting over the horizon.

  Across the dark hemisphere of Earth, the white and blue shimmer of the Nova Alliance megacities sparkled like grounded stars. They were civilization’s greatest feat of engineering, supporting fifteen of the twenty billion humans on Earth.

  The sun’s rays slowly spread over the dark globe, chasing the shadows away, exposing the reason for the great megacity walls.

  Deserts blanketed continents once covered in verdant life, many of the forests and jungles all but eradicated. Most of the ice caps were gone, having melted and flooded coastal cities, leaving only the tips of skyscrapers to mark the once grand metropolises.