by Peter Watts
I smile back, although of course he can’t see it.
And then the ceiling crashes in.
Maybe it’s Ceph artillery. Maybe the place has just taken as much abuse as it can, and something gave way. But suddenly there’s rock and rebar and concrete everywhere, and anyone who still needs to, you know, breathe is coughing up dust and grit out of their lungs, and the viz is down to about three meters of pea soup. Barclay’s shouting “Move out, move out you assholes, don’t wait for us!” and I’m guessing that’s the first order in a long time that anyone on that train actually wants to obey and there it goes, our lifeline, our ticket home, our reprieve for the days or hours or ten fucking minutes until the next assault drops us right back into another no-win scenario.
And behind us, out of the murk, I hear things scuttling and clattering and climbing over all the bodies we left behind.
I don’t know how many of us are left. Eight or nine, maybe. Barclay, me, a handful of grunts I’ve never been formally introduced to. One of them remembers that there’s a couple of jeeps parked upstairs in the main hall, if the Ceph haven’t smashed them to shit.
All we have to do is waltz back up there and get them.
Sounds like a piss-poor idea to me. I’d rather take my chances in the subway tunnel. It’s a safe retreat—or at least if it isn’t, the higher-ups have their heads up their asses and we’ve just fed a thousand civilians to Squiddie—and we’d only be fighting rearguard, not wading back into a Ceph stronghold. But Barclay’s leading this charge, and he’s leading it back upstairs. Maybe he knows something I don’t. Hope so. He doesn’t strike me as an idiot. It’d be a drag to be disillusioned after knowing the man for all of an hour.
We lose another one going back up the stairs: Private First Class Andrea Gamji, her midsection shredded by enemy fire. I’m the last thing she ever sees; one second she’s staring up into this goddamn faceplate and the next she’s just gone, nothing at all left behind these dull frosted things she used to look out from. I rob her body and try to think of her as one of the lucky ones, keep my head down and dodge the incoming.
For about thirty seconds it goes better than I’d hoped. The hall isn’t swarming; the handful of Ceph in evidence seem to be mopping up, not digging in. Now that the backbones have buggered off, they aren’t all that interested in the territory.
They don’t seem to be expecting us. We take out two stalkers, three grunts, and a Heavy without losing a man. We don’t get cocky, though; the losses from Round One are scattered everywhere. Some of them are still moving.
Sure enough there’s a Bulldog parked just outside, visible through one of the holes blasted in the wall. Barclay details a couple of bodies to start it up and back it in, a couple more to check out the wounded, and radios for chopper evac. The rest of us exchange gunfire with the Ceph, and I can’t stop thinking about how thin their ranks are up here. These fuckers swarmed our position like fire ants not thirty minutes ago. Where are they now?
Easy answer: They’ve backed off to a safe distance to give their heavy guns a free hand to mop us up.
It comes through one of those three-story windows in the south wall, you know the ones where the glass sits behind a grid of iron bars. It tears through that mesh like it was tissue paper, jumps into the hall in a blizzard of glass, crashes down like some kind of red-eyed three-legged cyclops scanning for prey. Even inside the suit, my eardrums bleed from the sound.
I think: You again.
Through the ringing in my ears I can hear the Bulldog cough, start up, choke. I hear faint tinny curses from We Who Are About to Die. I give silent thanks once again to PFC Andrea Gamji, who bequeathed unto me the only weapon I know of that can take this fucker down.
I am Golem Boy, zombie, giant killer. I bring up the JAW and I pray to Allah that I can only die once.
There are details you know already: the body count. The men Barclay got out, the men he had to leave behind. You know that his call for chopper evac was turned down flat—too much traffic in Midtown during rush hour, I guess—or if you don’t know you fucking well should.
There are details you don’t need to know, details you don’t have any right to know. I’m not going to tell you what a certain squad member told me before I put a bullet in his brain. I’m not going to tell you what his squadmate told me afterward. Pray to whatever imaginary friends you worship that you never have to find out.
I will tell you it wasn’t the pinger that nearly did us in. It wasn’t just the pinger. It was also the Ceph dropship that kept shooting at us through the roof; fucker zipped around like a moth on uppers, it was almost impossible to hit. But the N2 isn’t exactly dog food, either, you know. I dip, I weave. I jump wreckage and piled corpses with a single bound. Somewhere in that shitstorm the pinger goes down in a gout of red fire and I don’t even get to do a victory lap because that alien motherfucker up above the skylight is still raining glass and hollow-points down on the zone.
I don’t take it out, not directly. I wing it, though, knock it off-kilter, send it skidding sideways into the MetLife Building; and MetLife finishes the job. The ship goes up like the Pickering reactor, it’s a beautiful sight, Roger, a glorious sight, but even that doesn’t last because now the whole damn skyscraper’s leaning over in the wake of the blowout, leaning down over the station, and it’s really damn lucky that Barclay’s Banditos finally got that truck running because we barely make the running jump onto the tailboards, barely grab the last bus out of town before MetLife just tips over onto Central and buries it in glass and steel and concrete. Down for the count, for the second time in eight years.
So now we’re flooring it down East 43rd and Central’s just a pile of dust and debris in the rearview. I can hear Barclay down in the cab talking to Dispatch; the local airspace is too hot for traffic but they can probably set a VTOL or two down in Times Square so that’s where we’re headed. But I barely hear that over the other voice in my head, this giddy hysterical voice saying We made it out we made it out we made it out. I don’t know how many times that cycles before another little voice cuts it off with: Whaddya mean, WE?
And that’s the first time I notice. Barclay. The driver. Me. We’re the only ones on board.
Nobody else made it.
They give us twenty minutes to get to evac before the VTOLs withdraw. We pick up a few stragglers on the way—a couple of battered jeeps with even more battered-looking grunts inside, the remains of an airborne battalion on West 43rd, pinned down by angry Ceph and feeling very damn lucky we happened by to lend a hand. By the time we run into the wreckage piled across West 43rd it’s just this side of midnight, and raining. We ditch the vehicles and crawl through the wall of debris on foot.
I’ve never been to Times Square before. Supposed to be the heart of the City That Never Sleeps, right?
It’s not sleeping now.
The traditional line of cabs is still there, although by now most of them are smoldering shells. Half the surrounding buildings have been skinned in patches, five stories of façade ripped off halfway up one tower, a big smoking hole punched into the top of another. An abandoned NYPD van has taken out the front of the Hard Rock Café, a fire engine’s plowed into a USAF recruiting office (not that there’d’ve been anyone lining up to enlist anyway). I have to laugh; even this deep in Armageddon the billboards and marquees are still lit up, scrolling down, ticking along: DOUBLE TEAM YOUR TASTE BUDS. BROOKLYN BRIDGE: MILITARY TRAFFIC ONLY. THIS APOCALYPSE BROUGHT TO YOU BY NIKE.
The only other sources of light are the lines of halogen floods glaring down from the big prefab barricades that wall the square off from the rest of Manhattan. The cookie-cutters have been especially busy here: Every side street’s been sealed off, every avenue blocked by ten-meter walls of interlocked blast-hardened concrete, flat and featureless except for an occasional reinforced hatch to let in the refugees. The barriers even extend inside the perimeter, an extra layer of protection between the square at large and the actual evac site at the nort
h end. Like the fortified keep inside a castle, or a cross section of a giant two-chambered fish heart scaled at ten thousand to one.
We make our way through the ventricle: sandbag revetments, blast shields, pillboxes installed along strategic lines of sight. Voices and VTOL sounds drift over the top of the inner wall. Barclay leads me through into the keep and I’m pleased to see that as his official escort, I’m exempt from being threatened by my own side. Over on the other side the VTOL is spinning up, its belly full of civilians pathetically happy at the prospect of dying somewhere else. The ones left behind jostle and cry and push against a line of marines ringing the load zone. The civilians beg to be taken away; the soldiers make promises and deliver warnings and hope like hell the refugees don’t realize how easy it is for a mob to swarm a single-file perimeter.
That’s about the time the Ceph breach from 42nd and Broadway.
Nothing’s linear after that. Everything happens at once: I’m back outside the keep, forming up ranks with a bunch of Echo-Fivers who must’ve drawn short straws. We man our pillboxes and bring our guns to bear and light up everything down the avenue that walks or squirms. The floodlights at our backs pin the slugs in bright white circles while the Ceph shoot out their reflectors one by one. At least I don’t have to scavenge the bodies of dead comrades for ammo; there are caches stashed everywhere and it’s even raining down from on high, clips and belts and RPGs delivered by human chains over the top of the inner wall. And all the while the VTOLs come and go, drop down empty at our backs and lift off wallowing and straining against the weight of too much loaded meat. Most of the time those cattle cars disappear over the skyline; sometimes they just crash into it, spewing smoke and fire and burning bodies. Barclay’s shouting simultaneous orders in ten different directions. Somehow he manages to keep the fog of war from closing in completely.
Some panicked teenager shouts into his mike with a voice that cracks midsentence, then goes dark: heavy assault units crawling up Broadway. The perimeter is long since breached but so far the walls themselves are holding. That’s something. Not enough, not for long: One Ceph gunship comes down over the keep and it’s a slaughterhouse back there.
A Pinger steps in from stage left and rattles the rooftops. The lights go out. I mean everything: The floodlights on the barricade. The ABC news ticker down the street. The Hard Rock Café. Nike. BMG, Viacom, Planet Hollywood: all dark, all dark.
Madison Avenue has fallen.
We fall back, too. Barclay’s orders.
The ground’s shaking under my feet when I hit the northern hatch. I risk a look over my shoulder but the pinger’s still advancing, not crouched down the way it does when it shits out one of those sonic blasts. I get back through the barrier in time to see a VTOL stagger up into the sky. I look around, do a double take: The place looks downright empty.
No civilians. No lights. The ground shakes again. Someone comms down from the battlements: For some reason the Ceph are pulling out. So are we. The latest incoming VTOL radios in for an update, and Barclay himself lays it down: “Cyclops Four, you’ll be the last—going to be cramped but we’ll get everyone out this time.”
I can hear our getaway softly slashing air in the distance; it drifts into view over the ramparts as I watch. But the tremors haven’t stopped. In fact, they’re getting worse.
Barclay notices: “Cyclops Four, be advised we have unstable—”
I guess he hasn’t been here before.
The ground bucks underneath us; the asphalt splits down Seventh like someone unzipping a duffel bag. A few of the guys yell incoming! and look around for airborne bogeys but they’re looking in exactly the wrong direction. The spire ruptures the center of the compound and punches into the air like a giant fist; electric auroras writhe along its sides. Humvees, blacktop, shattered sewer pipes—that whole thin crust of shit we call civilization—tumble and bounce down its flanks. A jeep flips over and nearly squashes a medic. Cyclops Four rears back, slews to starboard, skids back out of sight like a toy thrown by some spoiled and angry child.
I wait for the impact. It doesn’t come. The spire grinds to a halt, steaming.
“Cyclops Four, this is Barclay, can you still land? We are evac-ready, repeat we—”
“Colonel Barclay, I really must advise you against that.”
Hargreave.
Nobody speaks for a moment. The spire towers over us like a great twisted backbone: dull orange embers glow in twisted bands along its length. Volcanic DNA.
“Who the hell are you?” Barclay says at last.
“Jack Hargreave. Colonel, there isn’t—”
“This is a military channel.”
“—really time for introductions. You and all your men—”
“Get off this channel, Hargreave.”
“I would love to comply, Colonel, believe me. I have my own problems at the moment and I have no time for this bullshit, but I promise that if you let that chopper continue its approach you will be killing everyone aboard. Not to mention whatever remnants of your command remain on the ground. That thing has reflexes. You must deal with it first.”
Barclay has delivered no commands to Cyclops Four but I can’t help noticing that the sound of those engines seems to have faded a bit into the distance; someone up there is taking Hargreave seriously even if Barclay doesn’t.
But Barclay does, eventually. He stands there with his hands wrapped around the grip of his Majestic and you just know he wishes it was Hargreave’s neck. But when he goes back on the air, it’s only to say “Cyclops Four. Back off. Return to operational height.”
Barclay waits until the sound of the rotors fades away, never taking his eyes off the spire smoldering in our midst. He tweaks his mike. He speaks with slow, deliberate calm.
“So what, exactly, does our resident self-appointed expert suggest?”
“The spires are essentially an area-denial bioweapon,” Hargreave tells him. “Their current iteration seems designed to render a given area safe for alien habitation.” (A twitch at the edge of Barclay’s mouth: point to Nathan Gould.) “They have a baseline activation cycle for routine operations, but they accelerate that process in response to incursions of—well, of pests. Once the spire is up and running, it perceives the approach of any incompatible biosignature as an increased threat, and will discharge preemptively—at the cost of overall coverage, but even premature, er, ejaculation would be more than enough to infect all of your men.”
“Recommendations.” Barclay’s voice would freeze beer in the keg.
“You must neutralize the spire, of course.” Hargreave pauses like a stand-up comic timing a punch line. “Fortunately, I’ve provided you with the means to do just that.”
Suddenly everyone’s looking at me.
I’ve been here before. Last time it didn’t end so well.
Hargreave is all about climbing the spire and getting in from the top. Fuck that: I’m all about not getting shot out of that thing like a spitball if Hargreave’s hack goes south again, and that means having an escape hatch right down here at ground level. What’s really odd is that I find one. I circle the base of the thing, climb across torn-up pavement and plumbing, and of course there’s nothing familiar about it at all. It’s alien.
And yet not, somehow …
There’s a segment just a little off-kilter from the others, a slipped disk, a fused vertebra: whatever you want to call it. Most people wouldn’t even notice it; someone with an eagle eye might see a slight flaw in mass-production, a cosmetic glitch. I look at it and a familiar voice whispers, Access panel. I wait a bit but it doesn’t tell me anything else: not combination lock or key code or press and turn.
So I blast it open with a sticky grenade.
A stiff breeze tugs at me from the hole: pressure gradient, just like before. I bet these things are pneumatic, I bet they suck in a huge long breath to build up the pressure for the Great Spore Pukefest. Which means we’ve got time as long as it’s still inhaling.
When it
stops, boys, head for the hills.
Inside it’s the same layout: the silo, the curved panels, the seething currents of spore. The same virtual vulture sitting on my shoulder, reminding me how little time I have, how vital it is that I compromise the settings for spore dispersal, how it’s so much more likely to work this time. I wonder about the hole I’ve just blown in the side of this thing—an open door between the spore in here and all that unprotected meat outside—but the pressure differential should keep everything contained. Assuming it lasts.
Besides, it’s not as though the whole area won’t be rotten with spore if I just stand back and do nothing.
So: the same smash and grab, the same blood-chilling cries from an alien machine in pain. The same dark blizzard of uncontained spore swirling around me, cutting my viz to zero, clinging to the surface of the Nanosuit like a billion antique keys in search of microscopic keyholes.
The same static discharge. The same tactical countdown:
Incoming Protocols Detected
Handshaking …
Handshaking …
Connected.
Compiling Interface.
But this time: COMPILED.
RUNNING.
And suddenly, spore sparkles into snow, electric white. The air hums around me; it’s coming from the suit, it’s the sound of a cascade, of a million tiny voices learning a new song and teaching a billion others, of a billion teaching a trillion. It’s the sound of mimetic fission.
It’s the sound of a process that sucks power like New York on New Year’s. It’s the sound of an alarm going off in my head, red icons blooming across my sightscape, energy levels dropping like bricks off a cliff.