The Tyr: Arrival #1 The Tyr Trilogy

by Richard Fox

  Now he felt nothing but the urge to kill as he dropped onto a tile roof. His wide metal boots crushed the roof and he slammed into the floor. He turned, firing his machine gun into the dust and smoke, hearing only a high-pitched whine from the drugs and a constant roar of amped-up men and women through his radio.

  Kill markers popped up on his quota field and he charged forward. He punched through the wall and out into a square in the center of a village, a beautiful fountain in the center.

  Target icons popped up on the second story of a nearby building, but someone else shot it up, the rounds tearing through the walls then exploding within the room.

  He tried to curse out whoever stole his kills, but the screaming he heard was coming from him.

  He stomped around and ran through the fountain, bashing the centerpiece aside and into a shower of masonry fragments and water. Lowering a shoulder, he burst through a brick wall. Bound books and scrolls fell around him and he ignited his flamethrower.

  Camacho lashed flames against wooden desks and the tinder piling onto the floor. Gold stars lit up on his quota board and a wave of ecstasy flowed through him as the system rewarded him for annihilating the building.

  He punched through the other wall, his limbs feeling sluggish and drool moistening one side of his face.

  Jackpot.

  A group of Tyr fled before the demon that had just emerged from the burning building. Camacho tried to smile, but his teeth were clamped onto his lips.

  “Threat warning. Threat warning.” One side of his HUD flashed.

  A Tyr armored car came to a screeching halt a few dozen yards from him and alien soldiers jumped out over the sides. Camacho stood pat as they opened up on him with rifles, the hits barely registering as they ricocheted off his armor. He loped forward, bending at the waist to lead with the wolf’s head visage.

  He grabbed the lead Tyr soldier by the leg and thrashed him against the cobblestone road, bursting him apart. Oversized claws built into his hands clamped down on another’s torso. He lifted the screaming Tyr up and activated the flamethrower, burning off the soldier’s face and leaving his head a blackened skull that lolled to one side and snapped free of the spine.

  The system rewarded him with another dose. The quasi-AI aboard his suit knew how to appreciate a glory kill.

  He twisted his entire body into a punch that obliterated the head of another soldier and carried through into the side of the armored car. He buried his arm up to his elbow and felt something jostling against his hand. He gripped something soft and struggling, then pulled a Tyr soldier through a hole far too small for his body.

  Camacho dropped the bloody meat and did a double take.

  The cliff side of a nearby mountain was deep blue. Thousands of feet of crystal sparkled in the early twilight like a giant geode cut open by God so that He could appreciate its beauty when He looked down from heaven.

  A circle with a slash through it pulsed on his HUD over the azure mountain. Off-limits to destruction.

  “Underperformer. Who is investigating?” asked a slightly agitated female voice. A timer appeared on his HUD along with an arrow to the west. His drip halted and the Rage cleared from his mind to the point that coherent thought was possible.

  “Agnello? Agnello, what the hell? You’re at zero!” Camacho ran toward a small building where his squad member was on the other side. The tally for his entire squad pulsed beneath his: Darla was almost to her first bonus hit, Tak and Shijir weren’t far behind, but Agnello didn’t have a single kill to his name.

  Camacho skidded around the corner. Agnello was there, his flamer pointed down at an elderly Tyr man crouched against the wall. The Tyr had one hand up and was babbling in an alien tongue.

  “Your gear not working?” An itch began in the back of Camacho’s mind as withdrawal hinted at pain if he didn’t kill again soon.

  “I c-c-can’t,” Agnello said, his teeth chattering from lack of Rage. “They look—ugh, it hurts—they look just like us.”

  “So? You’ve got a fucking quota, cherry! You don’t produce, your work falls on the rest of us. Corp doesn’t credit us for those kills. Now get it in gear!”

  Camacho reached for the old Tyr but pulled himself back. He had to get the new member to contribute to keep the kills coming, to keep the drip into his bloodstream.

  “He-he’s with a dead one,” Agnello said. “Female. Like his mate or something.”

  A pic snap from Agnello’s cameras hit Camacho’s HUD: an equally old Tyr female was beside the male, no life signs.

  “Then send him to whatever afterlife they share.” Camacho’s jaw began to clench uncontrollably.

  “I don’t…I don’t want to!” Agnello shouted.

  “Fuck it.” Camacho opened the menu on Agnello’s suit and overrode the safety settings to dump Rage into the reticent man’s bloodstream.

  Agnello’s suit swayed from side to side, then an atavistic shriek stung Camacho’s ears.

  Agnello raised a foot and stomped the Tyr to death. He ripped a limb away and tried to force it into the wolf face of his helmet, then lurched away, firing his machine gun indiscriminately and sending a plume of flame over his head. His kill count jumped by two’s and three’s as he tore into a building trimmed in gold with constellations painted on the sides.

  “All members compliant,” the computer told him.

  Camacho sighed as the drip turned back on.

  “Contact. Contact!” Darla shouted and red icons pinged on his HUD.

  Camacho ran to the sound of her machine-gun fire and found her standing in a small copse of trees, her gun arm pointed at a raised highway over a causeway. A Tyr column of military vehicles, some of them burning, were rolling toward the village his squad was in the process of dismantling.

  “They didn’t EMP the place?” Camacho drew down on the lead tank and fired a burst. The hypervelocity round tore through the armor like it was nothing and ignited the shells within the turret. “Cheap bastards. Shijir, Tak! Save bullets and go tear ’em apart. We’ve got you on overwatch.”

  “New guy?” Darla fired single shots, picking off Tyr trying to take cover behind the concrete sides of the highway.

  The system awarded bonus points for opposing military; killing anything that might damage the suits was considered more economically viable than unarmed targets that could be finished off at leisure.

  “He’s still got to catch up.” Camacho glanced at Agnello’s tally. It jumped every few seconds as the Rage kept its grip on him.

  Camacho picked off another tank and his own tally jumped toward his quota. He salivated, imagining the bliss the system would give him once he’d amassed enough skulls.

  A still, quiet voice in his mind repeated Agnello’s protests against the task, but he let it fade away with the thrill each kill brought him.

  Chapter 53

  “Downtime awarded. Downtime awarded.”

  Camacho’s arms dropped to the side of his suit and his system took the edge off his mind, flooding him with tranquilizers. His squad was outside a wooden structure deep in the forest outside their initial target, a long line of dead Tyr that had tried to flee marking their passage.

  “No fair,” Darla said. “Other squads are still stuck in.”

  “We hit our first number. Corp’s happy. That’s all that matters.” Camacho brought up a small plastic nozzle and drank lukewarm water spiked with electrolytes. “Drink up, get set for the next call.”

  Camacho deactivated the pilot flame on his right knuckles as he approached the wooden Tyr building. It had the same golden trim and constellations he’d seen on some buildings back at their initial landing, but this one had a few mushrooms carved into the corner beams.

  Shijir banged his wolf mask into a nearby tree, normal for him during a come-down. Tak walked tight circles around a dead alien. Also normal for him. Darla shifted her weight from side to side, basking in her bonus hit from reaching the quota first.

  There was a tap on his shoulder
.

  Camacho turned around and looked directly into Agnello’s face, his wolf visage flipped up and over the top of his armor. The man’s pale face sagged and his pupils were freakishly wide.

  “How’d you get your helm up? That’s a safety violation.” Camacho tried to log in to Agnello’s suit but got an error message instead. Another glitch.

  “You know what my old job was?” Agnello stared hard at his squad leader, like he was trying to look into his soul. “It was robotics. These things are shit.”

  “New guy…you got a heroic dose of the Rage. You’re going to feel a little off the first time.” Camacho sent an alert signal to Darla, but she didn’t respond.

  “Does the Rage make sure you remember all the faces? I killed them all. I killed them all and I hated it,” Agnello said.

  “I can calm you down,” Camacho said, raising a hand. “Just let me access the panel on your back left shoulder and—”

  “You already fixed me once. Now I can fix me.” Agnello pointed his gun arm at Camacho’s face.

  “Useless. The smart shells won’t pop on Corp equipment. You’ll just scratch my paint and add to your debt.” Camacho raised his palms up in a defensive pose.

  “I…will fix…me!” Agnello thrust the muzzle of his gun arm into his own face and opened fire. His head exploded into a red mist and the weapon kept going, sending shells careening off the back and against the front of Camacho’s suit.

  Camacho punched hard on the back of Agnello’s gun arm, crimping the feed line inside the armor and shutting off the bullet supply. Agnello’s suit stood in place, blood pouring down the front in thick lines.

  “Another cherry goes pop,” Darla said. “Corp really should screen shitheads better.”

  “Ah…damn it.” Camacho shook chips of skull and grey brain matter off his hands. “Now I can’t even slave his suit to get it to follow us.”

  “This mean we have to wait for it to get extracted?” Darla asked.

  “Yes. No. I don’t…let me ping a Myrmidon. There should be one of them down here.” Camacho continued a long line of expletives as he tried to open a comms line. He bounced the request off a Corp satellite, then stepped away from Agnello’s suit.

  He shook more viscera out of his hands. “Gross…ugh…” Camacho had few foibles, but wearing human blood was one of them. He double-checked that his comms request was still open, then kicked open the door to the wooden building.

  Rows of neat pillows on a golden carpet led up to what looked like a shrine, in front of which sat offering bowls on a low wooden table. Candlelight wavered off liquid in some of them.

  Camacho stomped forward, his footsteps cracking the wooden floor. He stopped in front of the shrine and reached for one of the bowls surrounded by many small cups. He looked away when he saw remnants of Agnello between the fingers.

  “You OK in there, boss?” Darla asked.

  “I’m breaking seal to clean up. Don’t let any indigs sneak up on me.” Retracting one arm back into his suit, he pulled an emergency release. His wolf face lifted up and the armor split down the middle. He touched the drip on the side of his neck, feeling the wide heavy-gauge needle beneath his flesh. There was a moment of hesitation before he slipped it off his body, and he felt like he’d lost an old friend as he disconnected from his one source of positive feelings.

  It would be all right, he told himself. Just a few minutes until he could hook up again, and the drip wasn’t even on.

  He got out on wobbly legs and almost retched at the smell coming off his armor. Did the whole planet reek of burnt hair and vinegar, or was it just him?

  He picked up a ceramic jug and poured water over the bloody hands of his suit, washing away most of what Agnello had contributed.

  “Fucking corp. They know nausea gets worse after the drip stops. They’ve never had to clean up a suit after you puke in it…” He kicked a grey lump away.

  He leaned over a dark broth and sniffed at it. His stomach settled a bit at the earthy aroma.

  “What’s this?” He dipped a finger in the bowl and brushed the liquid against his lips. When it passed the taste test and didn’t make his lips go numb, he picked up a small cup and turned it around in the candlelight, appreciating the beautiful patterns hand painted on the side. They reminded him of the nebula in the sky, and he wondered if there was a correlation.

  “I’ve got my serum, to hell with it.” He dipped the cup into the broth and drank deep.

  His stomach felt even better, so he drank more. It had notes of cherry and cinnamon that made him think of home. He shrugged, picked up the entire bowl and put it to his lips, drinking greedily until something bumped into his upper lip.

  He pulled the bowl away and saw partially rehydrated mushrooms at the bottom, swaying in the broth.

  “Not bad.” He wiped his arm across his mouth and got back into his suit. His hand seemed to go blurry for a moment, then solidified as he clenched it into a fist. The wolf helm snapped tight and the HUD lit up. His call was still on hold.

  “You OK in there, boss?” Darla asked again. “’Cause it’s pretty dead out here. And over there. All the way back to where we landed.”

  “I’m solid,” Camacho said, exiting the building. The colors of the distant azure mountain seemed even more vibrant, despite the sun’s fading twilight. The pale red of the surrounding nebula was almost electric with intensity.

  “Whoa,” Camacho breathed.

  “Fucking what?” Solanus came online through his suit link.

  “Unit CCI-8C, reporting an employee failure. Suit not responding to slave commands.” Camacho broke into a giggle then caught himself.

  “Which…oh, him.” Solanus accessed Camacho’s suit remotely and his HUD blinked as it snap-downloaded data back to the Matsui. “Another cock-up for this planet. The rest of you better pick up his slack or it’ll be a bum performance report for the whole mission and then bonuses get iffy and…8C your heart rate’s elevated.”

  “Is it? I feel fine,” Camacho said as the bark of a nearby tree began to twist. He closed his eyes hard and the tree was normal when he opened them again.

  “You shouldn’t be this close to stim burnout…maybe Zike altered your formula for better performance. Your buddy isn’t the first one to check out today. Move to LZ-99E and hand off the suit. I reset your master/slave beacon so you should be good now.”

  “Yup! Hee hee.” Camacho accessed Agnello’s suit and it moved a few steps behind his. He walked forward and the armor with most of a corpse inside maintained his shadow.

  “8C, you got contraband on you? You so hard up you can’t go thirty minutes without a fix?”

  “Negative.” Camacho became dead serious. “I adhere to all Corp-poor-ation policies.”

  “You fuck up your next quota, you’re getting a blood panel. Don’t give me a reason to cut you off. Solanus out. Goddamn worthless junk—”

  Spirals formed in Camacho’s vision and his face went flush as hash marks formed into grids then broke apart like a net on fire.

  He tried to speak but could only manage a baby’s babbling.

  “Boss, you figure out how to talk to Tak?” Darla nudged him on the shoulder and everything came back into focus.

  “What? Where?” Camacho bent his arms halfway up. “How long did that last?”

  “How long did what last? You got some of the shit the ship’s crew have? And you’re not sharing?” Anger crept into her voice.

  “I was here the whole time? Whole time…right. Follow me. We’ve got to drop dipshit’s gear off then we’re on to our next target.” Camacho tried to walk straight but veered into a tree. He backed up and managed to stay on course.

  Tak lit the building on fire before falling into the squad’s loose formation.

  Camacho’s tongue felt fat in his mouth, the taste of the broth heavy in the back of his throat. Just what had he drunk?

  His drip activated and a small icon showing the new feed appeared in the bottom corner of his HUD. He
kept walking…but didn’t feel anything.

  He nudged the drip against the side of his suit and got a quick electric shock from the system warning him not to do that again.

  Camacho stared at the road they were on, ignoring Darla’s pestering about their new quota now that Agnello was gone.

  The black road began to undulate like the ocean and Camacho thrust his hands out to balance himself. He didn’t sink as tentacles of some long-forgotten sea monster reached up from the abyss.

  He screamed and shuffled off to the gravel shoulder where the rocks twisted into eyeballs that blinked at him. Camacho ignited his flamethrower and tried to burn the eyes away. The flames shot up into towering spirals of red and orange, tornadoes that seemed to charge at him one moment, then retreat into the distance the next.

  The flames vanished and Camacho found himself in an open field, his squad standing around him.

  “Did you…did you all see that?” His breathing came hard and the drip reading on his HUD was as high as he’d ever seen it, but he still didn’t feel the buzz.

  “See what?” Darla pointed up. “Retrieval’s almost here.”

  “No, we were miles away when we…” Camacho looked up.

  The nebula pulsed in the sky as constellations twisted into faces, some laughing, others crying, one looking right at him. That face pressed against the sheen of the nebula, coming closer and closer to Camacho.

  It opened its mouth to speak, and Camacho began screaming.

  Chapter 54

  Michael kept putting one foot in front of the other as the early morning chill made his breath steam and his lips ache. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been walking, but he’d done everything he could to break ahead of the refugees fleeing King’s Rest since the attack the night before.

  He looked over a shoulder. Smoke was still rising from the city.

  His feet ached and his stomach rumbled. Movement to daylight was something his father spoke of as a punishment when he was in the Corporation’s military; this felt even worse than the war stories let on.