“Pretty sure it’s called ‘magma’ until it breaches the crust.”
Gordineer rolls his eyes. “Dude. I don’t care.” He shakes his head. “Anyway if it goes too deep, won’t it end up cooking itself?”
“Kinda doubt the fucksack is planning on doing us all a favor like that.”
“So...then what?”
I throw out my hands. “I don’t know! That’s what I’m goddamn asking.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Have you survived this whole time off dumb luck?” Fend off an incoming headache. “Can someone please get Plissken in here?”
My pudgy-saucer pal bumps me. “I’ve been busy, you pissy-pants mongrel.”
“I see you’re coping well.”
“Suck my exhaust.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
Gordineer coughs to get our attention. “Uh, can we focus on the task at hand?”
Plissken puffs his thrusters. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re both morons.” He spins. Bobs toward me. “This planet, as you might say, has gone fucky.”
In all fairness, I warned you about this...
“Hey.” I tap Plissken’s side. “If we can figure out what it’s doing, we can—”
“What, stop it? No. We can’t. It doesn’t matter what that thing does.” He hovers. Pauses. “You may not have noticed, but in the entirety of our time together, I never once suggested that we could save this planet. Not once. My efforts have only focused on keeping your kind and my kind alive.”
...when you might’ve been able to do something about it.
Plissken says, “The Earth is gone. Lost. Winning was never an option.” He gets indignant. “I never told you we could save the world.” He moves closer to my face. Gets right in it. “I never lied to you that way. But at the same time, what did you think was going to happen here? We were all fucked from word one.”
I stare my friend down. “You’re right. You didn’t lie to me.” I rub my face. Crack my neck. “Do...what you’re doing. Get the saucers working.”
Plissken is quiet for a moment.
We’re face to face.
I say, “You can.”
He bobs. “I will.”
Lights flash in the command center again. Red and panicky.
A young woman says, “We just lost an expeditionary force in Brooklyn. Six survivors down. Ditto the Bronx. Shit. Queens, too.”
I turn to her. Calmer than I was before since Plissken is here to keep me in check. “Lost em to what?”
She presses buttons that I guess answer the question.
Says, “The bugs, sir.”
A hologram flutters to life. The last thirty seconds of a live feed from some survivors’ helmet cameras. They’re underground. In the subways. Can’t tell which line. Coordinates put em somewhere near the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.
I count three survivors. One dude and two women. They’re talking about getting grub back in Manhattan when they’re done with their run. Every hundred feet or so, one of the women pops a small sensor to designate the area “safe.”
The other woman holds up a hand. Says, “Wait. Movement ahead.”
The dude shoulders his pulse rifle. “Probably our new cockroach pals, right? Rules of engagement are to leave em alone and they’re supposed to leave us alone. How big’s the signal?”
“Pretty goddamn big. Moving fast.”
“Let’s get the fuck outta here then. The robots can figure this out later.”
A noise creeps into the air. Sounds like bacon sizzling. A thousand jostling legs and mottled mandibles the click in the damp tunnels.
The outline of a bug appears ahead of the survivors. Its antennae flick back and forth. The creature tastes the air. It stays partially in the shadow of a wrecked subway car. Light from the expedition’s optics bounces off its chitinous carapace.
Then there are five bugs. Ten. Twenty. A hundred.
A writhing wall of chittering insect insanity.
The roaches screech. Hiss.
The survivors turn tail. Run.
Then they scream.
Then their screams become wet gurgles.
I blink. “Why the hell would they turn against us?”
Gordineer says, “We turned against the pilots hoping we could use their shit to get off this rock, right?”
I shake my head. “No, I—”
No. Wait.
I did.
Cuz every species can smell their own extinction.
35. Just One More Little War
To the cockroaches, we got everything they want. Including spaceships.
If they can fly em—and I guess they think they can—then they can flee. Start an advanced la cucaracha civilization elsewhere.
Thing I can’t balance in my brain is: I eradicated the skinnies. Did what I thought needed doing. Told the roaches they got a spot on the ships if needed.
So why attack?
Maybe they’re sick of being underground.
Maybe they’re being territorial.
Guess you can’t be a New Yorker in New York anymore.
Look at you. You’re fuckin pathetic. Always flirting with the inevitable, but never sealing the damn deal.
Life pisses. Shits. Farts. Fucks. Creates. Recreates.
It bleeds. Leads.
Dies.
The strong crush the weak.
The brave fight.
The stupid fight cuz they think they’re brave.
The unfortunate fact is that you enabled liars.
The cockroaches who tricked you into a handout.
Trying to save everyone saves no one.
How many did you kill in the name of peace?
Fuck you.
How many more will you kill in the name of peace?
Fuck you.
Have at it then.
But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I sniff. Wipe my nose.
Look over at the twins.
At the sleeping form of DeVille.
Say to myself, to them, “Promise is a promise.”
Feel my dad’s Colt on my thigh.
Catarina’s eyes on me.
Yeah.
A promise is a promise.
36. Dulce Bellum Inexpertis
I pull all the exploratory teams outta the boroughs. From now on, we hold Manhattan from Twenty-third Street up to 181st. And that’s it. Fuck the rest of it and fuck everything else, too.
We pour napalm and poison in the subways. Seal the entrances.
Plissken demolishes most of Washington Heights. Makes room for the saucers and the repair bays.
Only takes the clever metal kiddies a day.
The Talos pilots who can—me, Plissken, Aiden, Athena, Booker, Sarah, Harryhausen—we move the alien ships. It’s kinda like helping your lazy-ass friend carry his couch. Except, y’know, the better part of a quarter mile in diameter.
Surprisingly light.
For a warframe, anyway.
We gather the wreckage in Queens. If there are cockroaches around, we don’t see em. They oughtta be smart enough to avoid tangling with a Talos. The weird thing is, there’re no bodies either. No dead pilots. No dead biological warmachines. Nothing.
Roaches picked the park clean.
Which means the pricks were starving.
And now they’re probably inflating their population.
It’s great. Just fuckin great.
Takes about eight hours, but we get all the crap into Manhattan. Even the command coupe Clyde managed to chuck out into Flushing Bay near LaGuardia. Move the saucers and the parts of saucers. Each onto their own repair area.
Then the machines get to work.
Me and Plissken lock our warfram
es onto the Beast. He hovers outta his. I climb outta mine.
He says to me, “I assume you know why the pilots had no intention of rescuing any other survivors? Same reason they refused to allow us access to their gravity generators and force beams. Or, at least, the technology behind it all.”
“Scared of the parasite getting off-world.”
“Getting off-world uncontrolled. Yes.”
“Well, the rest of those blue bastards are gonna love us in a little while. Speaking of which, how soon do you think you’ll have everything operational?”
Plissken mumbles to himself. “All of the robots know what I know about the ships now. The issue we have is fabricating the spare parts. That said—” Plissken bobs. Ponders. “It shouldn’t take more than twenty-four hours per saucer.”
“So we should be good to go in five days. And there’s enough room for the survivors and the robots?”
“Yes. Though the question of where we’re supposed to go remains.”
I shake my head. “Man. Anywhere but here.”
* * *
Now it’s a matter of murdering bugs. Which I’m fine with.
Feels like a full-circle kinda thing.
Any insect incursion topside is greeted by bullets.
Most of the survivors ditch their Pegasus suits for the old Spartan power armor—cuz fuck maneuverability when extra armor’ll keep your limbs intact.
And they’re all pretty pissed off now.
Ain’t a bad thing. I need their mojo up. I need em to want to kill.
Man, they sure do wanna now.
The expeditionary forces were the first real attempt to reconquer areas at the behest of the survivors themselves. It was their party. Not something I told em to do.
I take the express elevator to the top of the command center in the Beast.
Walk to the railing on the crow’s nest. Scan along the East River. Queens-side to Brooklyn. Data from Plissken’s drones coupled with my handheld optics—fancy binoculars—show me a big fat legion of bugs gathering on the southern side of the shattered Manhattan Bridge.
Maybe they’re smart enough to know that the BQE and Battery tunnel are fucked at all times of the day. Maybe they just wanna stare at us from across the river.
Who gives a shit.
I press a button on my optics. Tag the group. A couple hundred cucarachas.
I shout to all the survivors manning the command center: “Who wants to make some bad guys go boom?”
A dozen hands shoot into the air.
It’s the same as asking a high school class who wants an easy-A.
I say, “I’ll mark the targets, class. Brought enough for everyone.
“Go hogwild.”
Thuds sound off from the Beast. Antimatter missiles. Can’t feel a damn thing, though. That’s the beauty of a miles-long hundred thousand-ton machine. Even if you’ve got kill-happy people launching artillery that’ll eliminate a quarter-mile of real estate with every blow, dude, it’s a smooth ride.
I watch the missiles streak across the sky. Smirk.
Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO cease to exist.
So do all the roaches there.
I smirk. “Can’t stop progress.”
* * *
That afternoon, I give the survivors the best order they’ve ever heard: Weapons free.
They can slaughter any damn thing they want. Long as it isn’t a robot or another survivor. Otherwise, again: Hogwild.
And y’know what?
The survivors are a shitload happier.
It’s cathartic. A jaunt with wrath.
Fun, if you haven’t been doing it since your mid-twenties.
I think I’m on year thirteen, but I dunno.
Gets all fucky in my brain when I try to figure out how old I am.
I know I’m grey around the edges. Some on the sides of my head. The hairs random in my beard. Stress. Stress and just being so fuckin tired. Even though I can’t sleep. Durandal keeps my insides young but he doesn’t bother with the skin. So I look like a walking scar.
A walking scar in Spartan power armor.
Which I’ve never worn before. To be honest, it’s a bit tight in the dick area. But I guess snug is better than losing your junk in the folds.
Radar says the cockroaches are massing under Madison Square Garden. Which makes sense. Cuz it’s Madison Square Garden.
Theory goes: Since it’s a nexus of subway tunnels, the bugs probably think it’s their best way of getting topside for an assault. If they break the barriers, get through the poison and the napalm, then, yeah, they can stream up.
But it’s too obvious. Even for cockroaches.
I put survivors at Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Thirty-first and Thirty-third Streets. A nice ring of anger for the bugs.
But me? I vote for Times Square. A bigger nexus of dirtbag dipshittery.
Subways. Tourists. Hobos. Peddlers. Disney.
Take your pick.
I wait near New York City’s single greatest hive of madness and villainy: The Port Authority Bus Terminal. Hang out alone. Dressed like this. At Forty-second and Eighth.
Clearly, I’m asking for it.
I’ve got my pulse rifle. One mag in the well, five in my carrier. Six hundred rounds. My dad’s Colt in a cross-draw chest holster. M1911 on my thigh. Incendiary and standard grenades in my ruck as well as medigel.
All I need now is someone to piss me off.
Shouldn’t take too long.
I lean back against a burned out Ford in front of an abomination of an eating establishment kitty corner to the Port Authority. Was a Chevy’s at some point. But it never stopped being a tourist trap.
Come for the crappy, cheap drinks.
Stay for the lousy service.
Madame Tussauds is nearby. Up the block. Never been, myself. Eerily lifelike wax figures of famous dead people ain’t really my thing. Plus I think they all melted in the airstrikes anyway.
Other survivors are positioned around the place. Just a precaution. They hang out along Fortieth, Forty-first and Forty-second streets. Then Eighth and Ninth avenues.
After two hours, there’s still no action. Anywhere. And I start to feel like I’m just farting around with my thumb up my ass.
I check in with the command people on the Beast.
They got nothin.
I groan. “All right.” March over to the Port Authority’s big concrete and brick columns. The ones that hold up rusty green steel that’s pretty much always looked like it was gonna come down on some poor dope’s head.
The front doors to the north terminal—glass long gone—ain’t wide enough for me to walk through. Even sideways. So I use the power armor’s muscle enhancements to rip the frames out. Step in. Rip out another couple door frames.
I walk into the Port Authority proper.
To be honest, it doesn’t look much worse than it did before. It’s dark. Creepy. The chances of being attacked by a rat or a deranged lunatic are about the same.
I activate the low-light compensator on my helmet.
There are cracked pale tiles smeared with grime. Brown tiles splashed with old blood and gore. Railings and walkways above me show the remains of vegetation and parasitic life that bots and survivors burned with flamethrowers when we first arrived.
I pass an ancient Hudson News stand. Wonder for a minute if there’s any smut left to browse through. Then take a slow walk over to the subway level entrance.
“Oh boy. This’s gonna be fun.”
Power armor’s got bigass feet, so traversing the stairs is more complicated than it should be. But I manage to get to the lower level without breaking my neck or any other necessary bits.
Still don’t have dick on radar, though.
That’s kinda troubling.
I’
m so used to relying on machines, it’s hard to trust my own senses in the darkness. But I try it. Cuz this ain’t right. There oughtta be something down here.
Bugs evolve faster than humans. Simple fact. Every generation adapts. This’s why farmers used to have so much trouble with pests.
They’d nuke one generation, but the eggs exposed to the poison’d be immune.
So if I was a sneaky cucaracha, what skills would I want to help me dodge those pesky human folks and their robots?
Being invisible to radar and my suit’s infrared and motion sensors is a good start.
I flip open my visor. Flick on my headlights. Ignore most of the bells and whistles of the power armor. I scan and pan over the area near the subway turnstiles with my own bald eyeballs and ears.
Movement. Somewhere out there.
I saw it for a second. A fleeting shadow. Fast.
Glass shards and tiling crunch under my heavy feet.
I pop a flare. Drop it at my feet. Pop another flare. Toss it passed the turnstiles where my headlights can’t quite reach.
“Ah. Shit.”
It’s never a good thing when I’m right.
There’s a whole horde of cockroaches. Thousands of legs. Antennae. Clicking pincers. Fluttering wings. Bugs that’re suddenly real fuckin interested in this bright red thing I tossed into their midst.
And these chittering pricks are different from the other ones. Near perfect black. And not shiny at all. Their matte. Drab.
Radar-absorbing.
I pull the pin on an incendiary grenade. Side-arm it over the MTA turnstiles.
It explodes. Coats a group of a dozen in beautiful licking flames.
The roaches scream. Screech. Flail. Their innards hiss. Cook.
A few of the bugs burst from internal pressure. Their pale guts splash against the floor and ceiling in the wide-open space.
I hose others down with explosive rounds from the pulse rifle. Quick, short pulls of the trigger that split their heads and send their important pieces bouncing away from em.
The roaches rush me.
They cling to the walls. Scuttle on the ceiling.
Kill Machine (The Hroza Connection Book 6) Page 17