E-Day

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  For the past decade, Akira and Kichiro had fought in places like this, leaving a trail of bodies in the mud. Together they had helped push the Coalition toward defeat. Only two cities remained under enemy control and today, Akira was leading Shadow Squad to the frontlines of Megacity Moscow on a new mission—track a missing recon team of Nova Alliance Pistons that had vanished hours ago.

  Command worried about a new type of enemy soldier designed by Coalition Dr. Otto Cross in a desperate plea to hold onto the cities. Rumor had it, the enemy doctor was not alone in creating a new type of warrior. Through the ranks, word of a new Nova Alliance creation, an all-knowing and all-powerful AI, had spread like wildfire.

  Akira looked down on the Pistons who watched him and the four other members of Shadow Squad that followed Kichiro across the forward operating base.

  He still remembered vividly when he had been a sergeant fighting on the frontlines like this. When battles were fought for days, just for a small stretch of land.

  But Akira was no longer a Piston.

  He was a vessel designed to end the war.

  Captain Akira Hayashi was an Engine.

  At forty-one years of age, he was old by the standards of ancient warfare, but his body reflected that of a muscular twenty-five-year-old, thanks to the cellular growth treatment he received every few months. And with a body fat index of just five percent, he was almost pure muscle.

  Under his two hundred pounds of power armor were augmented organs: bigger lungs, a more powerful heart, and bones almost as strong as the titanium plates bulwarking his body from helmet to boot.

  He neared the frontlines of the encampment where his squad of four other Engines joined him.

  “They think you’re a god.” The chipper female voice of thirty-four-year-old Staff Sergeant Maria “Frost” De Leon surged into the implant behind Akira’s ear.

  “Gods can’t die. We can,” replied Sergeant First Class Emilio Perez from Megacity Los Angeles. He was the oldest and quietest on the team.

  A striking contrast to Sergeant Tadhg Walsh, the youngest and largest member, who constantly wore a chip on his shoulder and had a mouth that knew few boundaries.

  “A warrior never dies!” he bellowed. “We just cross the bridge to Valhalla for more ale and women!”

  “Ay-oh, ale and w—” Ghost started to sing, until Frost cut him off with an elbow.

  “You’re supposed to be a gentleman,” Frost said.

  Akira looked back at Lieutenant Shane Rossi, the “Ghost” who had descended from the sky a decade earlier to help save Akira from the Coalition hordes in Yamanashi’s Sea of Trees.

  Fate had brought them together, and bloodshed had bonded them. Akira had quickly surpassed the lieutenant in skill on the battlefield, earning him leadership of the squad, but Ghost didn’t care about rank.

  They were brothers bonded in blood and the best of friends. If it weren’t for Ghost and Kichiro, Akira would never have survived the years that followed that fateful day in Yamanashi.

  Chemicals flooded his brain to suppress the memories and free Akira of the painful thoughts, another tool that his armor deployed to keep him in constant fighting condition.

  The five Engines of Shadow Squad continued across the front lines, each wearing custom armor and helmets. Unlike Pistons, they were allowed some discretion in their appearance. Akira had long, black hair, often pulled into a ponytail. Tadhg had even longer curly brown hair. Perez shaved his head and was covered in tattoos. Frost had buzzed one side of her head and left the other long. Ghost had slicked-back hair and a cigar in his mouth at almost all times.

  Their helmets and armor reflected their personalities. A red oni mask, representing a Japanese supernatural ogre, was attached to Akira’s kabuto. The Samurai inspired helmet had a Hachi composed of elongated plates that overlapped. Two red horns rose off the dome. Directly above the Mabizashi, or visor, there was a V-shaped datemono that served as a decorative crest.

  Akira had also used the sharp datemono as a weapon in battle.

  The unique kabuto and oni mask had become the Shadow Squad logo that also included fiery red eyes and two crossed Katanas behind the helmet. The logo was notorious throughout the Nova Alliance empire, and wherever the Engines deployed.

  Etched into the front of Frost’s faceplate was a skull with stitched lips, black eye sockets, and flower petals, an homage to the Day of the Dead. Tadhg had a reaper’s skull-face etched onto his helmet, a nod to his former Droid Raider uniform. A Spartan-shaped shield hung over Perez’s back, with the Shadow Squad logo engraved over the central spike.

  A sudden bout of growl-barking exploded from behind the group, and they stopped to let their droid wolfdog, Okami, catch up.

  The cybernetic canine bolted ahead, prompting Kichiro to raise a leg and hoof the ground in agitation.

  The fifty-pound metal wolfdog circled the stallion, playfully nipping at his hooves. Okami was known for his fun nature and was almost as famous as his handlers. But unlike other Engine squads with German Shepherd, Rottweiler, and Doberman droid breeds, Okami looked like a small wolf, with gray hair, crystal blue eyes, and a little black button of a nose.

  Enemies underestimated Okami due to his size, and that was exactly why Akira had picked the droid to join Shadow Squad. He was fierce, and that made his Japanese name perfect. The translation meaning, fierce wolf.

  Akira whistled for Okami to follow them. Then he steered Kichiro toward the Pistons in the trenches and dugouts ahead. Most had their helmets off, staring up with broken gazes that seemed to brighten some at the sight of the Engines.

  To the Pistons, the giant men and women provided a rare beam of hope that the end of the war was near.

  But Akira knew if the radio transmission was true, then the war wouldn’t be over anytime soon, not with a new type of deadly Coalition beast among their enemies’ ranks.

  Akira pulled up the recorded comms from the moments before the recon team vanished.

  “Echo 1, this is Red Bird actual. A smoke curtain is blocking our views of the quarry.”

  Static.

  “Echo 1, Red Bird Actual. Multiple hostiles on scanners… still no visual.”

  There was a short pause.

  “We’ve got movement, four contacts, potential hostiles, over.”

  White noise cracked over the next pause.

  “Echo 1, we have Breakers, and something else out here that looks like a rep—”

  Guttural screams of horror followed.

  “Red Bird 1, Echo 1, come again, we did not get your last. Over.”

  That was it, and Akira had no idea what to make of it. He guessed that a pack of Iron Wolves had gotten them, but there were no staticky howls on the comms.

  We will find out soon, Akira thought.

  He stopped at the final trench to look out over the apocalyptic view.

  A skeletal forest formed a fence on the other side of a cratered four-lane highway, now strewn with charred vehicles. Foundations were all that remained of buildings that had once stood in this area. Ten years of fighting had reduced it to a wasteland.

  “All right, listen up,” Akira said. “We have no scouts or UAVs in the area and no intel aside from the transmission.”

  “What else is new?” Frost said.

  “We don’t need intel. We’re Shadow Squad, baby,” Tadhg said. “Know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Don’t call me, baby. Know what I’m saying?”

  Frost stepped up to Tadhg, jabbing a finger into the armor over his sternum. Ghost stepped between them to intervene, proving to be the levelheaded gentleman once again.

  “Show some respect, Tadhg,” he said.

  Tadhg put up a hand. “I was just messin’.”

  “You guys done?” Akira asked. He dismounted his horse and joined the squad.

  “We play this smart and go in on foot,” he said. “I’ll take point with Okami. He’ll sniff out any explosives.”

/>   “Death from the Shadows,” Tadhg grunted.

  “Together, we are one,” Ghost added.

  The rest of the squad repeated the mottos.

  Akira motioned for his horse to stay. Kichiro snorted and hooved the ground, not happy about being left behind. Reaching out, Akira put a hand on the muzzle of his loyal friend.

  “It’s okay, boy. I’ll be back soon.” He looked out over the hundreds of Pistons watching them. A sergeant climbed out of a trench and grabbed the reins.

  “Take care of my stallion,” Akira said.

  “I will, Captain,” the Sergeant replied. “Good luck.”

  Akira nodded and set off with his squad. He pulled a grenade-sized drone from his vest pouch. The blue droid sprouted hummingbird wings, which whipped the air as it hovered.

  “Go to work, Blue Jay,” Akira said.

  A beep came over his comms, acknowledgement from the droid as it flew off toward the coordinates. The mirrored feed emerged on his HUD as the drone flew out over the road and forest.

  Seeing nothing in an infrared scan, Akira whistled at Okami to lead the way. The wolfdog went ahead, sniffing the snow-carpeted terrain.

  Akira moved faster to keep up, with Frost close behind. She cradled her long-barreled RS-10 .50-caliber sniper rifle as she jogged, an energy sword slotted over her jetpack. Over his shoulders, Akira had two energy blades forged to look like the katanas displayed back in his home that had been handed down from his ancestors.

  Tadhg lumbered after them, carrying a phased plasma pulse cannon, nicknamed the “Weapon of Mass Destruction” (WMD). A long energy sword with a sawtooth blade rose over his wide shoulders.

  Ghost and Perez held rearguard, carrying standard RS-3 phased plasma pulse rifles and energy swords custom-forged by the Nova Alliance’s master bladesmiths.

  Watching his HUD, Akira’s eyes flitted between the video-feed from Blue Jay and the view from the rifle scope that Frost was glassing the area with. She angled it at every foundation and hillside in quick movements. Of all the snipers in the Nova Alliance Strike Force, no one came close to her ability to put a bullet where it counted.

  Shadow Squad melted into the night as the Engines slipped into the forest. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called. Akira couldn’t help but wonder if it was a wild one or another beast in the Coalition arsenal, courtesy of Dr. Cross, who used all sorts of animals as spies, including tarantulas and insects mounted with tiny cameras for recon. The heat signature of the owl came into focus, but then flapped away, fleeing from a nest high in the branches.

  Not a spy, Akira noted.

  He motioned the squad to continue.

  They made good time on the trek to the quarry where the recon team had last radioed in. Akira scoured the most recent satellite pictures of the area on his HUD. Dozens of buildings in various states of disrepair still stood in the industrial area bordering the crater that was once a quarry. He had selected their route before the mission began, but he always liked to keep things fluid once he hit the field. As they approached the quarry, Akira adjusted their entry based on the aerial view from Blue Jay.

  Akira gave Frost a hand signal, and she took off toward a tower. Okami set off toward a row of trailers, with Akira and Tadhg close behind. Ghost and Perez took to a hill of trees for another vantage.

  Blue Jay quickly detected three Iron Wolves from the sky. Okami saw them too, and returned to Akira, tail between its legs.

  A howl pierced the cold morning, answered by two more.

  The pack of Iron Wolves hunted in the abandoned town beyond the industrial zone. Blue Jay followed them for a few blocks before they vanished into the rubble.

  Frost finished climbing and set up her rifle in the tower across the quarry, the sights flitting over mounds of droid parts.

  Facial screens that had once displayed the face of Megacity Moscow’s AI city administrator were now shattered. Lizard-like eyes stared up lifelessly from the top of metal skulls.

  The humanoid frames of the black and yellow Hummer Droids that had helped build the megacities were piled all around. Slender service and Medical Droids formed other mounds, their white parts hardly recognizable under the reddish dirt that covered their mechanical corpses.

  Akira motioned for Tadhg to push up into the industrial zone. Okami followed the two men through the trailers and toward two warehouses with caved-in roofs bordering the vertical edge of the quarry.

  They started down a road snaking through the tiered levels, passing hundreds of droids hacked apart by Coalition energy blades. In another pile, Akira saw the tangled humanoid limbs and faces of companion units, which looked more flesh than alloy.

  Every single droid had its chest plates removed. The Coalition had destroyed the valuable processor units hidden inside the mess of wires and servers.

  Akira used his HUD to access his infrared and electric sensors. The passive sensors swept the area for signs of body heat or heartbeats. The reading came back negative. No human life out there, hostile or friendly.

  Tadhg gripped his pulse cannon by the front handle and connected the stock to his belt as they followed the road twisting along the excavated walls of red dirt. At the bottom, tucked away near an abandoned electric skid loader, was what they had come here to find.

  Okami darted ahead, sniffing the ground and leading them right to the corpse of a Piston. The armored torso and helmet were splayed open like the broken shell of a crab. All four limbs were gone, and streaks of blood trailed away from the joints.

  “Looks like we found one of the scouts,” Tadhg said. “Poor bastard.”

  Okami continued ahead, moving around the rocks to another road that snaked into the hillside. Akira followed him, his rifle shouldered, its targeting system searching for whatever beast had done this.

  A trail of blood led to caves they hadn’t seen from above.

  Tadhg stepped in front of Akira. “I’ll check it out.”

  “Not with the WMD, you won’t,” Akira replied. “You want the entire place to come down on you?”

  Tadhg had left a career as an athlete, a professional Droid Raider, and often didn’t think of the consequences of his actions. He was new to the squad, only six months in, and too often used brawn over brain.

  “I’ll handle this,” Akira said.

  He went into the tunnel with Okami, letting the wolfdog sniff for explosives. They pushed down the rocky corridor, passing under snaking lights that no longer worked. Using his night vision, Akira followed the blood trail into an open chamber.

  He halted at the sight of three more dead Pistons. The dismembered bodies crested a pile of corpses in various states of decay, some little more than bones. In other piles across the room were the bodies of dead horses, not too different from Kichiro. There were also mounds of dead wolves.

  Okami sniffed the scraps of twisted experiments that looked a lot like larger versions of himself. But Okami knew, like Akira, that if these wolves were still alive, they would kill without a lick of hesitation.

  “I’m in some sort of Hell Hive,” Akira reported, using the term for the underground factories where Dr. Cross built his freakish animal creations.

  But this wasn’t for just animals.

  Piles of human bodies were scattered in the open room.

  A scan for heartbeats came back negative. It was just Akira and Okami down here. Once again, the Coalition had vacated before the Nova Alliance could figure out what the doctor was up to.

  Okami sniffed the air, and then let out a low growl.

  Akira scanned for anything he had missed. The wolfdog took off, nose to the ground. He suddenly stopped, and his tail went between his legs, an indication he had found traces of explosives.

  Wasting no time, Akira sprang into action, running for the exit and whistling at Okami to follow him. The droid wolfdog bolted out of the chamber with Akira. An explosion boomed a moment later, and a wave of dust and grit slammed into them.

 
Keeping his balance, Akira kept running as rocks rained from the ceiling. He slotted the rifle over his back, reached down, and picked up Okami, shielding the wolfdog against his chest.

  Outside the tunnel entrance, Tadhg waved for Akira to hurry.

  “Come on!” he screamed.

  Akira gritted his teeth, pushing harder.

  The explosion caught up to him when he was ten feet from the exit, crashing into his body. He had just enough time to toss the droid wolfdog right at Tadhg, who reached up with a hand and caught Okami.

  The force of the blast threw Akira into the ground. The gel in his helmet and joints absorbed most of the impact, but the force of the blast still rattled his brain. He lay there, unable to move, stars bursting across the green hue of his night-vision optics.

  Okami didn’t budge and stood there, growl-barking for Akira to get up.

  Plasma bolts lanced across the sky like shooting stars as he lay there, trying to regain control of his limbs. Tadhg lifted his cannon and fired off a flurry of bursts at the walls to the east. Tapping into Blue Jay’s feed, Akira got an aerial view of the battle. Coalition soldiers flooded the quarry, bursting out of a smoke screen from the east and taking Ghost and Perez by surprise.

  According to the drone, thirty-five hostiles were closing in.

  But these Coalition foot-soldiers had no idea who they were attacking.

  Frost fired from the tower, bursting heads with every shot. Ghost blasted into the air with his jetpack, lobbing plasma grenades that blew the heavily armored enemy warriors into pulpy messes. Perez used his shield to block the spears of two attackers. He cut one down with his energy sword in a spray of blood and used his spiked shield to break the helmet of the other soldier.

  Okami nudged at Akira and tried to pull on his shoulder plate with his metal jaw.

  “Bosu!” Tadhg screamed over the crack of his pulse cannon.

  Akira felt a needle prick, the AI in his suit responding to the threat. A cold rush of adrenaline surged through his vessels. It snapped him alert, and he pushed himself up just in time to meet the first three Coalition soldiers who had jumped down the rocky walls of the quarry.