by John Mierau
He wondered if he’d be captured and killed by Earthers or turned into paste by a Reacher bomb first.
Lee decided he’d rather rip his lungs out on the escape hatch than sit around and find out.
He wedged himself into the hatch and pushed. His boots found perch on the side of the cockpit and pushed again. The door wouldn’t give another inch. Lee knew his body would, and he made it happen.
Lee lost himself in a haze after he broke his first rib. The animal inside wanted to survive and kept pushing, and pushing, and pushing—until he was through.
The ground rose up and punched him in the side of the head. Hot knives stabbed his left side and he gasped in pain, rolling onto his back.
The pain brought a fresh wave of adrenaline, and Lee’s palms and ankles kicked at the ground, inch-worming his punished body under the shadow of the statue that had caged him.
He panted, unable to move any further. He stared up at the surreal, changing sky. His ears rang, his body vibrated in a way that had nothing to do with the death and destruction tearing into the Row.
Somehow, his nasal prongs had stayed in place. He spun the tank at his waist wide open and sucked pure air. Trembling hands dragged his pack closer, fumbled for drugs to kill the pain every shallow breath reignited.
The drugs and the air helped a little. The searing agony wasn’t gone all the way, but he could see past it, think past it. He reached back into the pack, searching for another piece of equipment. One every bit as precious as the drugs. The distinct, metallic sound of a slide chambering a round interrupted his search.
Lee looked up. An angry woman with brown skin, shaved scalp, and a bloody officer’s uniform was closing the distance, both hands white-knuckling a pistol pointed straight at his head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The IRC had crashed Gov’s comms planet-wide when they activated long-ago planted worms in Reach’s satellite network. Well back from Government Row, transmitters and redundant transmitter scrambled all terrestrial frequencies to deny the Earthers a fallback means of communication.
The Earthers were in the dark. The same couldn’t be said for Jake's soldiers, tearing their way through the Row. Each mechanized suit formed a node in an encrypted mesh network, connecting each mechanized battle suit to the dropship still hovering out of weapon’s range on the far side of the hill. As long as those suits were sending back real-time data, out of range didn’t mean Willard Tsu was out of the fight.
Six missiles streaked away from the hovering dropship and towards the hole Grunt and Bone had made between the towers. As soon as they were away, Willard swung his neural interface crown down over his head. Ignoring the creepy, changing lights washing over his ship, he closed his eyes and extended his consciousness.
He’d want to puke for a week straight after this. Despite that, guiding the ultra-maneuverable drones each missile carried was Will’s second favourite wartime activity, after flying.
Six was a bit much: he could juggle four input sources pretty damn well, but after that, he lost focus. That wouldn’t be a problem today. He let onboard computers guide four ahead while he took control of the last two. One was shot down by a gun placement on the left-most of the three towers, but the other soared past unscathed. Once it was through, Willard steered it into a steep turn, targeting the ground forces between the middle and right-most towers.
He killed the feed before impact. Willard Tsu wasn’t a soldier because he liked killing.
Hell, he wasn’t even a soldier, so much as a guy that wanted to protect the love of his life from harm. And kick bullies’ asses. And fly things hard.
His mind switched to one of the remaining missiles and tagged the meanest battle suits he could find. Moments before each impact, the drones ejected from the missiles that housed them. Rotors extended, and Willard could maneuver the flock again.
He skipped his vision from drone to drone, making good and sure each of the missile’s targets were down. They were.
This wasn’t the Row he remembered protesting in with Elena not two years ago. Everywhere his drones looked were shattered statues, craters in the long stone walkways, and shattered crysteel domes over small, ornamental gardens. Much of the damage looked recent, too. He flipped his ‘eyes’ to a drone hiding in the shelter of a high building and focused on the West.
“Ah, hell.”
Explosions reached high into the crazy-colored sky. Buildings fell. Streaks of tracer fire illuminated dozens of hard-fought battles.
Willard felt the pit of his stomach drop. Operation Sinkhole was well under way.
It was horrible.
He looked up again, and rolled his flesh eyes in his flesh head, finally realizing what the colors meant. The convoy was already here, and the IRC and Earth Gov were racing to a photo finish for the whole enchilada.
This was going to make one hell of a chapter in the history books.
Willard activated the team channel with a thought. “Ladies and gents, this is your captain speaking,” he droned. “Thank you for flying Angel Air.” Before his meathead brother-in-law or anyone else could complain, he got down to the business of overwatch, calling out targets and coordinates.
All the while, he ignored the freaky sky and studied the ground. Lee and Sameen were out there somewhere, and he was going to find them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“What fucking coward shoots a man in the back of the head?” Noelle roared at the man. No. The assassin.
The Reacher was hiding between a dead mech and a toppled statue. Short black hair was plastered to his head. Red angry welts from a neural crown flared on his forehead and temples. A strong face, but shot through with panic and pain.
He wore a Gov uniform. Smears of oil discoloured the chest. His body jerked in time with a series of explosions to the West, but his eyes never left Noelle’s hands.
Noelle dearly wanted to watch his body jerk to the tune of the gun in her hand…but she couldn’t make her finger put pressure to the trigger.
He was beaten, bleeding. Finished.
So was she. Her legs buckled, and then she was on her ass. Crying.
Belated sirens crowded out the noise of the shelling. She laughed bitterly, and stared up past the towers.
“Look!” Noelle waved the gun into the sky.
Noelle took a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes, watching small dots fill the sky.
The cavalry.
“Was it worth it? They’re here! The convoy made it, and you threw his life away for nothing!”
She lifted her gun hand to her face to wipe away a fresh batch of tears, and stared at the dried blood caked there.
She bolted up and stumbled over the man, pushing the gun between his eyes.
The man just nodded. Acceptance filled his eyes. Acceptance, and relief.
Though the world raged around her, his words still reached her ears.
“See you soon, Maggie.”
She shook, outraged. He’d lost people, too? Too bad! They all had. That didn’t give him the right!
The anger couldn’t maintain. His broken body trumped it.
He’d fought and killed for something he believed in. Something greater than himself. He fought for his people, just the same as she fought for hers.
She pounded the side of the pistol against her forehead, hating herself for the burst of understanding, but it was too late. She couldn’t un-see him.
She looked up into a sky filling with smoke. She didn’t know if it was the crying or shit from the explosions to the West that made them hurt so bad.
Noelle stared at the broken man on the ground beneath her. She hated him, but she couldn’t end him.
She turned and walked away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jake rubbed his forehead against the absorbent pad beneath his interface crown. Something was wrong with the venting on his suit. He was burning up in here! Then again, the aurora messing with his eyes was disappearing behind smoke. When contact was thick enou
gh to make smoke stick around in Reach’s soup-thin atmosphere, you knew you were in the shit.
Other than reduced visibility and a short in the AC, Jake had nothing to complain about. Mostly thanks to luck and that idiot his sister had married.
Angel was their ace in the hole—not that he’d ever tell Willard that! After the pilot’s original missile barrage finished off the Row’s East perimeter defense, there were only a few mechs and AV’s left to contend with on the streets of the Row. The towers weren’t firing anything, anywhere, and all ground troops were racing into battle with the forces of Operation Sinkhole.
Jake was getting antsy. They were halfway across the plaza already, and no sign of Paladin or Ghost. He was starting to think…
His left ear pinged. A hot spot at ten o’clock and rising. He bent at the waist and looked out the crysteel port in his helmet. A ball of white and red flames spat and sparked as it climbed in the air.
Outstanding.
“Wicker, you’re in charge. Danger, watch her ass and keep batting cleanup. Angel, you stay on overwatch. As soon as fucking possible, get yourselves West for insertion with the line.”
“What, you gotta take a leak, Sarge?”
Jake cocked both eyebrows. Was that PFC Bowen? The HUD said yes.
Jake had to admit the new recruit had kept his cool and stayed in his slot behind Jake throughout their move into the Row. With a blink and a thought, the HUD confirmed he’d practiced fire control too: his clips were still better than half-full.
I guess that earned him some trash talk, he thought, the corners of his mouth ticking upwards.
“Somebody taught you some decent soldiering, Bone, but we’re gonna have to do something about that mouth when I get back.”
Corporal D’Angery’s voice overrode his on the line. “Sir, request permission to ride shotgun. You know, while you piss.”
“Thanks, Danger, but I can lift heavy things. You get everyone back safe. That’s an order. Move out!”
Silence, then a double-click on the line from Danger’s mic, morose acknowledgement for the order.
“Move out!” Wicker ordered. “And Danger! Watch behind me, not my ass!”
The line of mechs got moving.
Jake turned in the direction of the flare. A drone bounced off his helmet, almost scaring the aforementioned piss out of him.
“You wanna get shot?!” he screamed up at the drone.
Willard Tsu’s cackle polluted his helmet. “Is that any way to talk to your guardian angel?” His brother-in-law’s voice sobered. “I’ll keep an eye peeled for you, Grunt.”
The drone flitted away.
“Thanks, Angel,” Jake called out in his helmet, without activating the channel.
He whipped his head to either side, violently cracking his neck, and loped after the already-dying flare.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
There were no more towers standing to the West.
Thick black smoke veiled the flowing lights in the sky.
Artillery thundered constantly, a discordant barrage unlike anything Lee had experienced.
Lee watched Captain Carson—her name was printed on her left breast—stumble away toward the fighting in the West. He wondered who the commander had been to her. Her pain made him ashamed. Lee was moved by her guts and her dedication. She was hurt, bare-assed except for a sidearm, but she dug deep and somehow kept moving.
He’d liked to have bought her a beer and talked about life. Instead, he closed his eyes and waited for what Reach would throw at him next.
The answer was gunfire.
The statue above him cracked and groaned. Stone dust sprayed down on him. He struggled onto his side. Defying gravity never hurt so much, but he got to one knee and half-leaped, half-fell on a patch of ground clear of Pete Cloke’s shadow.
He landed on his elbow, sparing his ribs, and stared back at his mech.
A dull, patchy yellow scout mech landed on the ground where he’d just lay. The scout mech spun, levelling the rifle at him. He drew in a breath. It felt like inhaling hot glass.
“Sameen?” he wheezed.
“Who else, dumbass?” blared from the scout mech’s speakers. Lee barely heard it over the roar of the suppression fire she was laying down. The mech’s other hand rose into the air carrying a squat pistol that shot off a red and white flare.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jake ran as fast as the suit would take him, raising both arms and letting loose with all six barrels as soon as he cleared the building’s edge.
Red lights blinked on his HUD. Both big-bore barrels were out of ammo, with nothing left in the toaster. He kept running, adding what was left in his rocket pods to the assault.
The mech on the left turned to engage him, but its legs were damaged. The one on the right maintained his direction and rate of fire, cutting a statue of some guy in half. When it collapsed, Jake saw what was left of Lee’s mech.
His small calibre guns ran dry, but not before one sparked a fire on the side of the mech with the gimpy legs. Jake kept running, fast enough to make him bounce in his cocoon. He shot bolts from both rail guns. A lucky shot gave birth to a searing white light: Jake had punctured the mech’s ammo feeder. Every round in its toaster was firing off.
Jake’s HUD screeched a warning: the second mech had a lock on him. Before it could get off the shot, two large holes appeared in its chest from behind. It went still. A second later, two more red-tinged holes appeared in the helmet of the burning mech, and it fell over. A final, dull explosion lifted it off the ground before it settled in a small crater of its own making.
Jake circled around to the right, unable to penetrate the smoke and haze.
“Feel better now?” Sameen’s voice. A yellow scout mech circled clear of the blaze, one hand wrapped around a limping soldier.
Jake’s chest felt instantly lighter—but for some damn reason his eyes felt wet. Stupid AC. “At ease, officer,” he called out coolly. “Backup has arrived on the scene, ten four?”
“You’ve been a soldier all your life,” Sameen replied through speakers on her suit as Jake got closer. “How do you fuck up the cop talk so badly?”
Jake took a closer look at Lee and the rocks piled back up on his chest. He double-timed it the last dozen steps to their side—-then backed up awkwardly, unsure how to help. “Think Kapoor is gonna charge you for that suit, Paladin?”
A feeble smile from Lee. “I’ll pawn my medals.” Jake only heard the croak over the shelling to the West because of the suit’s amped hearing. The smile faded, leaving Jake’s commanding officer looking more than half-dead. “Crack your suit, Grunt, I could use a walker.”
“Right, yeah! Sorry, Lee.” Jake lumbered around in place and powered down.
A drone dropped out of the sky. “Still in one piece, Captain Stupid? Can’t even commit suicide without us, I see!”
“Situation report!” Jake demanded in his reedy voice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The computer identified Lee’s retina as soon as Jake and Sameen lowered him into the harness. Tiny motors realigned the cocoon to his specifications, and his UI preferences replaced Jake’s on the HUD. The cockpit hissed closed behind him, muting the unceasing thunder of the battle.
For just a minute, alone in the dark, Lee hung his head and let the pain wash over him.
“D’Angery and Wicker’s teams were met by spotters and rushed off the field for a shit and shower,” Willard said, finishing his report over the mech's speakers. “Scramblers are still in place to keep the home team from mounting any last minute comebacks, so we’re on our own until the cheerleaders piggyback us home to drink some shitty beer from a big, sporty cup. Cue mad applause from our dedicated away game fans.”
“Wow,” Sameen said, her voice expressing calm amusement. She was always calm, come rain, come shine, or—apparently—come arrival of an evil oppressor’s interstellar convoy. “You do sports talk as well as your brother-in-law does cop talk. Really, just stop
.”
Lee swore as the mech stabbed his thigh with another cocktail of chemicals. An instant later, he breathed a sigh of relief as the pain receded and his vision cleared.
“You seen the light show, Angel?” Jake called out, jogging back from his second trip to pillage the enemy mechs. “This whole ball game just changed.”
“Stop!” Sameen groaned, rubbing her eyes.
The drugs helped. A lot. Lee put himself the rest of the way back together, stuffing pain behind pressure doors and cycling the locks. “We can’t keep the ships from coming down, but no way do we back off now. Too many…” he took another huge drag of water and cleared his throat. “Too many people gave their lives to get us here. We owe them to see it through, to take as many pieces off the board as we can before they get down here.”
Outside the mech, Lee’s powerfully built sergeant easily lifted a massive clip up into the ammo feeder. Jake slammed the feeder closed and pounded an armored leg twice.
“Pretty!” Sameen cooed over a matching pair of salvaged assault rifles, like other people might gush over puppies or kittens.
“Clear the board. Makes sense to me,” Jake said, kneeling over an ammo crate and stuffing his pockets and vest with extra clips for the rifle. “Who’s first on the list?”
Shame got his hooks into Lee and tore harder than the pain had before the meds.
His mission was to take out command authority in the Row.
He swivelled the mech’s sensor pod ‘head’ and stared in the direction Captain Carson had run.
He was bone weary, soul sick—and committed.
“On me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Noelle stared at the wall of sand, smoke, and thunder that had devoured half of Government Row. She watched two Gov mechs race out of the maelstrom, firing over their shoulders as they fled. Flames grouted out of the side of one. She stood behind an open compartment on the far side of an armoured vehicle, methodically removing equipment and stuffing the combat sling now stretched over her uniform until it was chock full of ammo and gear.