by Wesley Chu
Half a dozen beams struck her shield as the monitors opened up on her and the shockers. The rear of the floor, which was supposed to be the safest defensive point of her operations, suddenly became a new battlefront. Kuo leaped behind cover while her forces engaged these traitors. She checked her levels: 30 percent. She hadn’t had time to recharge her exo modules since the fighting had begun. It would have to wait; she should have enough to take care of this distraction.
Wing Captain Blackmoore took several beams to the body as he scrambled for cover. He fell onto all fours and tried to crawl behind the shocker line. One of the shockers left the firing line to cover him, but that only brought more attention to them. Both fell to the enemy’s concentrated fire.
Securitate Ewa did not fare better. She was caught off guard by the initial exchange, and was in similar trouble as she tried to leap over the monitor lines and reach the parked collies. A concentrated barrage knocked Ewa out of the air, and she crashed right into the monitors’ midst. A moment later, Kuo saw the red of an exo-chain and then lost sight of Ewa in a swarm of monitors.
Fortunately, several other pods of her forces noticed the fracas and soon reinforced her ranks. They did, however, have to abandon their positions at the stairwells and bridges where some were still fighting. It couldn’t be helped; this new front against the monitors, with the temporal anomaly in their possession, was the priority. The rest of this operation was irrelevant. She eyed the row of collies in the back. This fight was just a distraction, one she should take advantage of. The monitors currently had superior cover behind their supplies brought in for the base, but her forces had them pinned in the southeast corner of the building.
Kuo moved away from the front line and hugged the east wall as more of her troops joined the fight. There was a narrow gap here between the wall and a row of tents. With a little luck, as long as her forces kept the monitors busy, she could move in and acquire the asset before they were the wiser. The sounds of fighting intensified, which made her job a little easier. She began to make her way down the narrow path.
She wasn’t the only one with this idea. She was halfway to the collies when a group of monitors came down from the opposite side, no doubt with the intention of flanking her forces. The two sides saw each other at the same time. The monitors raised their wrist beams. By then, it was too late; Kuo powered her exo and was on them in an instant.
There were four of them. The first took the brunt of Kuo’s charge as Kuo ran her over with her shield. The second, she grabbed with her trunk and shot straight into the air. The monitor screamed as she flew up in a lazy arc and fell halfway across the floor. The third managed to get a shot off that went wide left. Kuo palmed her face with her left hand and slammed her into the wall. The last tried to flee. He got four steps away from her before she wrapped a trunk around him and held him suspended in midair.
Kuo detested people like him. She tsked as she walked by. “For your cowardice, you receive the slowest and most painful punishment.” She took in the fear plastered on his face and squeezed the trunk slowly, tightening its grip on him bit by bit. His body sizzled as the surface of the trunk cooked his skin. The man tried to scream, but there wasn’t enough air left in his body for much sound to escape. All he could muster were soft moans. At some point, not far into her work, he passed out. That didn’t surprise her.
Kuo squeezed the trunk harder until his body exploded. She dissolved the trunk. What was left of the monitor, crushed bones, skin, and blood, fell to the floor in a messy heap. A cruel smile appeared on her lips. This man deserved every second. If a person was to don the garb of a soldier, he had best honor the resources spent to train and arm him. Otherwise, he was a waste.
She continued until she reached the first of the parked collies. A warning appeared on her AI module. Her levels had just reached 15 percent. They were low, but she was nearly finished. Once she recovered the temporal anomaly, she could just fly the still-hovering Valkyrie and leave the planet. Her forces would have to fight their way out, but they were of secondary concern.
The first collie’s hatch was already open, the pilot frantically working at the console. His mouth fell open as she walked in. “What is…?”
She lashed him with the trunk, killing him and destroying half the cockpit in the process. As Kuo searched the ship, a monitor ran in; either he had seen her enter or he had been hiding from the battle. In either case, he was able to get a shot off that was harmlessly absorbed by Kuo’s shield before she picked up one of the supply containers with a trunk and bludgeoned him with it.
Kuo finished searching the ship and continued to the next one. She launched herself to the roof of the adjacent collie and took a moment to appraise the current state of the battle. The monitors were attempting to push her forces back with varying degrees of success. Her shocker line was holding, but there were noticeably fewer of the tall armored troopers than just a few minutes ago. The lack of explosives in their arsenal was really hampering her forces, especially in this situation. Several of the stairwell lines had splintered as well, and one of the northern bridge lines had completely shattered. She had to hurry; things were falling apart.
The next collie was still loaded with cargo, and it took Kuo several minutes to pull out all the containers before she quickly made her way to the next collie, and then to the one after that. She continued around the side of the ship and noticed a young monitor off to the side staring at her. He was frozen in place, shaking badly. She took a step toward him and he jumped, falling onto his back. He scrambled a few paces away from her on all fours before getting back to his feet and fleeing. Kuo let him go. She didn’t have time to chase cowardly nonprofits.
Kuo continued searching the row of collies for the temporal anomaly, killing monitors who got in her way. There were nearly twenty collies. Still, as long as none of them took off, that temporal anomaly was here somewhere. She found two monitors guarding the hatch of one collie near the back. They both saw her as she rounded the ship and fired. She dodged one beam and her shield blocked the other, and then she attacked, not bothering to create a trunk, to conserve levels. The closer monitor fired again, but she was able knock his arm upward. She rammed a fist into his gut, turned and threw a spin kick across the other’s face. Both of them fell at the exact same time. Kuo looked down at her handiwork. No wonder these worthless creatures worked at a nonprofit agency.
She opened the hatch and found a woman snoring softly on a metal bench in the center of the collie. A cryo band latched onto her wrist was connected to the collie’s source panel. Kuo tilted her head and studied the temporal anomaly. This slight person was the Nutris scientist who had kept her on this mud ball planet for the past year? She was the source of all her recent frustrations? This girl had better be worth it.
She took a step into the collie and suddenly felt the pull of an exo-chain around her shield. Before Kuo could react, she was pulled roughly to the ground. She tumbled and was instantly on her feet. Immediately, she took a full round of blaster shots, depleting her shield to critical levels. It still held, but the exo-chain prevented her from creating a trunk.
Kuo lashed out blindly. The holder of the exo-chain couldn’t be too far away. She was rewarded with a grunt and then another pull as both of them tumbled to the ground. Again, she was back on her feet in a second. She faced her assailant. He was a gaunt man, thin and pale, unclean. Definitely not one of the monitors. A savage, perhaps?
He glared at her with hate in his eyes. “I’ve been looking forward to running into you, Securitate Kuo. I have a debt to repay that is long overdue.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
CORPORATE CONFLICT
Within a very short span of time, James and his small force of guardians became inconsequential in the battle for the All Galaxy Tower. Something near the back of the floor had attracted all of the Co-op’s attention away from the bridges. Not that James was complaining; they were getting their butts kicked. Even now, scores of the Co-op were rushing toward
the south end of the building. Had Murad’s Elmen or Kut’s Wallstreeters, the two tribes who occupied the building south of the All Galaxy, broken through and sent reinforcements?
James ordered his guardians to take a position at the shadow of the entranceway. Staying low, he moved forward on his own and snuck into Crowe’s office off to the side. He hoped the old man was safe, but anyone who’d been on this floor when the Co-op attacked was probably dead or captured. Since the enemy had first attacked, he had not seen any of the Flatiron fights, and that saddened him. That meant their entire tribe’s blood was on his hands. Just like Oldest Qawol’s. Just like Smitt’s.
He entered the room and silently crept along the near wall, hiding behind one of Crowe’s wingback chairs. The Co-op had turned this room into a makeshift guard tower. A rack of blasters was laid neatly next to the door, and there were stacks of energy magazines next to it. Next to the fireplace, if James didn’t know better, he would have sworn was a coffee machine. For a second he wanted coffee badly. It had been months since he last drank a cup, and going clean only made his body want another vice to latch on to.
Someone at that far end of the room coughed. James froze and peered over the side. A figure stood in the shadows with his back to him. How James hadn’t notice the man in the white uniform was beyond him. His senses were failing him, forcing him lately into several mistakes, careless ones that could get people killed. That had already gotten people killed. He counted a few beats as the trooper whistled and continued loading energy magazines into blaster rifles and then racking them against the wall.
James waited. A window of opportunity came when the trooper knocked over a small stack of the magazines and got distracted. James leaped out from behind the chair and closed the distance. One hurdle over Crowe’s desk, and he was on the trooper, swinging once with his rifle to knock him down and then raising the butt of it high into the air to bring it down on the man’s face.
James slammed the rifle down to crush the trooper’s skull and stopped centimeters before it would connect. The initial blow had knocked the trooper’s white helmet off. He was a teenager, a young one at that, probably the lowest ranked of the Valta forces relegated to this guardhouse. It brought him back to the Nazi soldier he had killed at Königsberg Castle, the unknown young man who was just about this kid’s age. He wondered only one thing at this very moment.
“What’s your name, kid?”
The young trooper, terrified, eyes squeezed shut with one hand trying to protect his face, pried one eye open. “Wh … what?”
“Your name. What is it?”
“Es … Estan.”
James took a step back. “Get up, Estan. Are you armed?”
The young trooper shook his head and scrambled to his feet. “I … my…,” he stammered.
James pulled the boy to his feet and motioned to the door. “I’m going to let you live. Dying here is shit for someone so young. Stay out of this fight. If I see you again, I’ll kill you, so just go.”
“But I’m contract bound to—”
“Get out!” James pushed the boy hard until he tumbled into the hall. The young trooper fled, whatever else he was screaming lost in the chaos of the battle outside. James looked over to the bridge entrance and signaled for his guardians to join him. His twenty survivors, staying low, scrambled into the room a moment later. James handed each one a blaster rifle as they walked in.
“Why did you let that Valta go, Elder?” one of the guardians asked.
James shrugged. “Just paying a ghost back.” He gave them all a quick crash course on how to handle the Valta rifles. “Better versions of the crap you’ve all been using. It’s a little heavier, but there’s no recoil like the projectile weapons. You also shouldn’t have to worry about reloading as often.” He gave the group about a minute of practice before urging them out of the room. Chances were, that young trooper had not heeded his advice and had gone to find help. James would hate to have to kill him so soon after letting him live.
It seemed he didn’t have to worry about that, though. Whatever chaos was unfolding on the other end of the cavernous room was spreading. Eriao led a large group of guardians out of the eastern stairwell and punched through the Valta lines. The northern stairwell was experiencing a similar surge, though the enemy line there held for the moment.
James climbed onto a stack of containers hugging the east wall and looked to the south. His mouth dropped. How could this be possible? The Valta soldiers were fighting ChronoCom monitors! He looked over to his left, where the guardians at the north stairwell struggled to make headway. He should be there with them right now. However, something bigger was happening.
“Elder James,” Eriao said, running up to him. “It is good to see you still breathe.” A crowd of his guardians from the eastern barricade rushed past him toward a group of troopers holding back the northern stairwell guardians. “Shall we join them? If we can merge your group with mine, we might stand a chance of pushing the enemy back.”
James couldn’t take his eyes off the south end of the building. The fighting there was the heaviest, and the monitors were slowly losing. The only reason the Elfreth had any chance right now was because the Valta forces were so focused on the monitors. Once defeated, the megacorporation could just turn around and wipe out the Elfreth.
He grabbed Eriao by the sleeve. “Listen, we need to help those people over there.”
The war chief frowned. “The monitors? Why? Let them kill each other.”
James shook his head. “The only reason we’ve made any headway here is because they’re fighting. Once Valta wipes the agency forces out, they’ll crush the Elfreth.”
“What’s to say if the monitors win, they won’t crush us as well? Let them weaken each other, and then we take our chance with the survivor.”
It was a tempting plan, but James’s gut told him otherwise. Eriao was rightfully biased. The agency was responsible for the attack on the Farming Towers that killed many of the tribe, but things had changed. The man who had led the attack on the Farming Towers now actively salvaged for the Elfreth. The woman they had taken in as a refugee now led them. Something Levin had told him before he left for Earth Central rang in his head: they couldn’t do this alone. Elise, Grace, Levin, the Elfreth, all of them, needed help if they were going to survive and make any of this work.
“ChronoCom isn’t the real enemy,” he said. “They’re the lesser of the evils.”
Eriao was not convinced. “These same people were killing us only hours ago.”
“Take control of the guardians at the north stairwell.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I need to find a way to get in touch with the monitors. We need to work together. That’s the only way we can we beat Valta.”
“Are you sure, Elder? Is this really the right choice?”
“I don’t know,” James admitted. “But I believe so.”
Eriao grimaced and then finally shrugged. “How do you intend to reach them?”
“I’m not sure,” James replied. “Sneak or fight my way.”
“You’ll never make it alone. Valta controls the entire center and has those monitors completely surrounded.” Eriao put a hand on his shoulder and pointed to the east side of the cavernous room. “There is where their lines are thinnest.” A dozen pods of Valta troopers were positioned from near the center of the floor all the way to the wall. There were still fifty meters of troopers he needed to get through to reach the monitors, but that was far fewer than the hundreds of troopers and shockers battling the monitors and Elfreth on the other parts of the floor.
“I guess that’s where I’ll try,” said James.
“I will send guardians to help you clear a path,” Eriao said.
James shook his head. “A few won’t make a difference. It’ll just attract more attention.”
“Then I will send all of them.”
“Wait, no,” James protested. “You need them to relieve the guardians at th
e north stairwell.”
“If you truly believe what you say is critical to our survival, then they will have to hold a little longer.”
Throughout most of his life, James had always been ready to die: when he was a teenager trying to survive at Mnemosyne Station, when he was just an initiate at the ChronoCom Academy, and when he was a chronman for twenty years. He was ready to lay his life down for Elise and even the Elfreth. For them to do the same gave him pause.
“It’ll be a massacre,” he said quietly.
Eriao looked around the room. “Look around, Elder. It already is. Let us find a way to end it.”
Within a few moments, the war chief had rallied all of his guardians and ordered them to strike at a single point in the Valta line and drive a wedge between the troopers on that line to the monitors on the other side. James watched as the guardians lined up and prepared to charge the Valta defensive positions, humbled at their faith and bravery. The crew that was with him at the bridge lined up at the front. The surviving flyguards pushed their way through the crowd until they were at his side, his honor guard. Chawr stood to his left, Hory to his right, and Dox right in front.
James leaned in to Chawr. “You know, you can’t die. Who’s going to maintain the Frankenstein?”
Chawr grinned. “Why, you, Elder.”
Eriao screamed at the top of his lungs, and then the large mass of guardians charged at a full sprint, shooting as they covered the distance between the two forces. The troopers opened up on them, and the first line of guardians fell. A few seconds later, the guardians crashed into the makeshift line of crates the Valta forces hid behind, and then the two sides meshed into a general melee.