Messenger

by James Walker

  “I am gonna be pissed if the target isn't here,” Omicron muttered. “All right, next.”

  No sooner had the marines taken their first step toward the next cargo car when a burst of automatic gunfire erupted from its attached passenger compartment, shattering the windows. In unison, the marines threw themselves prone. Bullets ricocheted off the catwalk and Omicron heard a grunt as one of the rounds struck a marine behind him, though his armor should have protected him from serious harm.

  “Return fire!” Omicron shouted.

  The sound of gunfire swelled to a crescendo as a score of marines opened fire on the passenger compartment, joined by brilliant ruby lasers from the battle drones. Omicron fired a round from his rifle's attached grenade launcher and watched in satisfaction as it tumbled through the broken window and exploded, filling the compartment's interior with flames.

  “Cease fire,” Omicron ordered.

  The sound of gunfire died away. The only sound in the wake of the brief, thunderous exchange was the crackle of flames from the mangled remains of the passenger compartment. Scorch marks and hun­dreds of bullet holes scarred its frame.

  Seeing no signs of movement through his multi-spectrum visor, Omicron clamored to his feet. The rest of the marines followed suit, keeping their weapons trained on the cargo car.

  “Well, gentlemen,” Omicron crowed, “it seems we've found the target. Let's have a peek inside this container, shall we?”

  “Um, Lieutenant?” one of the marines ventured. “Are you sure the grenade was a good idea? If the target's been damaged...”

  “Shut up. I know what I'm doing.” Omicron inclined his head in the direction of the cargo container. “See? Just some light surface damage. The contents are fine.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The marines advanced cautiously, alert for any signs of movement from the container. As they drew near the car, a noise from below made Omicron stop. He heard the accelerating whine of an engine followed by the roar of igniting rocket boosters.

  “That's...” Stomach lurching in realization, Omicron spun to face his subordinates.

  “Spread out,” he shouted. “Those are—”

  The metallic, humanoid form of an exosuit burst into view from behind a nearby building, soaring over the marines' heads, propellant erupting from its legs and backpack. A burst of fire erupted from the exosuit's gigantic rifle, blasting one of the battle drones to pieces and severing the catwalk. The marines on that side pitched forward as the severed catwalk drooped, threatening to break apart. At the same time, a second exosuit appeared in the air and raked the opposite catwalk.

  “Fuck!” Omicron stumbled, struggling not to fall and topple off the catwalk's severed end. “Bail out!”

  Omicron grabbed the handrail and vaulted over it into the empty space beyond. As he began to fall, he activated his armor's zero-g maneuvering thrusters. They sufficed to slow his fall so that he landed on the roof of the nearest building without injury. He spared a glance at the catwalks and saw the surviving marines emulating his example.

  From his vantage point on the roof, Omicron raked the sky with his gaze and spotted a third exosuit flying through the air. He took aim with his grenade launcher and fired. The shot missed by a couple of meters and fell on a building behind its target, blowing out several windows. As it reached the peak of its arcing jump, the exosuit targeted the rooftop where Omicron stood with a burst of fire.

  Omicron leapt off the building and dropped several stories, firing his thrusters again to prevent his legs from shattering with the fall's impact. Several panicked civilians brushed by him, screaming and stum­bling in their desperation to escape the battle zone. Ignoring them, he grabbed his comm and shouted into the receiver.

  “Retriever to Claymore. Claymore, do you read me?”

  “Retriever, this is Claymore,” came the response from Ensign Taggart. “We read you. What's the situation?”

  “We—”

  As Omicron spoke, a crack like a peal of thunder signaled the firing of another weapon. Two rockets appeared from behind a group of buildings several blocks away and flew in a lazy arc into the station's web of support shafts. At the peak of their trajectory, they burst like fireworks, radiating azure light clusters in all directions.

  Omicron's transmission dissolved into a burst of static. He cursed and shoved the comm back on his belt, staring at the expanding blue lights in disgust.

  “Silence particles,” he spat. “Those idiots in intelligence never said anything about this.”

  A squad of rebel soldiers came around the corner behind Omicron and fired several poorly-aimed shots in his direction. He dropped two of the rebels with a quick burst from his rifle, then fell back and darted around the corner of the building, where he ran headlong into a group of survivors from his squad.

  “Lieutenant,” the nearest marine cried. “What is this shit? We were supposed to be up against a pack of disorganized hicks. It's the whole damn rebel army!”

  “Quit whining,” Omicron snapped. “The comm's dead, so we'll have to communicate by foot. Second squad should be on the other side of these buildings—whatever's left of them. Go find them and tell them to link up with us. We'll hole up inside the buildings and use them for cover against their exosuits.”

  “S—sir.”

  As the messenger ran off, Omicron turned to the other marines. “OK scrubs, stick close to me. We'll use the terrain to our advantage. These subbie wipes may have the firepower, but they'll have a hard time bringing it to bear if we use the buildings for cover.”

  Without further prompting, the marines broke the windows on the building behind Omicron and climbed inside. Another rebel squad came around the corner and was immediately driven back by several bursts from Omicron's rifle, followed by a grenade. With the coast momentarily clear, Omicron leapt through the nearest window, vanishing from sight.

  5

  “Retriever to Claymore,” Omicron's frantic voice sounded over the comm. Explosions and gunfire were audible in the background. “Claymore, do you read me?”

  “Retriever, this is Claymore,” Taggart replied. “We read you. What's the situation?”

  “We—”

  The transmission dissolved into a burst of static. Taggart traded surprised glances with the rest of the bridge crew, then glanced over his shoulder at Koga and Falsrain.

  “It seems Lieutenant Omicron has engaged the enemy,” Koga observed. “Ensign, can you get a signal?”

  Taggart shook his head. “No, sir. I can't raise anyone. The whole station's gone silent.”

  Koga's eyes narrowed into angry slits. “Silence particles. They actually smuggled them onto the station.” He glanced at his commanding officer. “Orders, Commodore?”

  Falsrain tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. “We'll send in another force,” he said at last. “All drones this time. Dispatch a company of Watchdogs seeded at intervals throughout the station. And give them air support. A squadron of Slayers should suffice. Their mission is the annihilation of all enemy forces inside the station.”

  A brief silence followed this command. “But sir,” Koga ventured, “with communications down, we won't be able to coordinate the drones from here. We'll have to deploy them in autonomous mode. Relying on optics alone, they won't be able to distinguish targets very well. The collateral damage will be—”

  “Irrelevant,” Falsrain cut him off. “The rebels reap what they sow. If they insist on fighting in a heavily populated area and rob us of the ability to control our drones, they're all but begging us for a massacre. So be it. We'll grant their wish.”

  Koga could not hold his superior's cold gaze. He looked away and repeated Falsrain's orders to the bridge crew.

  “Contact the flight deck,” he commanded. “Tell them to ready one of the Ambitions with Watchdogs in autonomous configuration and drop them throughout the station. Also prep a squadron of Slayers for precision bombing runs. All drones are to be issued a single directive: complete
annihilation of all hostile forces inside the station.”

  *

  A few minutes after the announcement by Governor Song concluded, Vic had almost reached his apartment. He was about to turn onto the street where the apartment complex was located when some­thing in his peripheral vision gave him pause. He glanced to his left and looked up through the web of support shafts at a strange vision unfolding higher up the curved surface of the station's cylindrical inte­rior.

  “Flashes of light?” he whispered. “What's going on?”

  A crack like a thunderbolt reverberated through the station. The next instant, Vic saw two rockets erupt from the center of the flashing lights. Before they reached the central shaft, the rockets detonated, scattering thousands of blue pinpoints in every direction. Simultaneously, every monitor in sight became engulfed in static, their images distorted almost beyond recognition.

  Vic spun around, his gaze flying to and fro, his breath quickening in his throat. Everyone around him mirrored his confusion. A few people in the crowd pointed at the distant flashes and shouted in alarm.

  “What's going on? Do you think it's some kind of accident?”

  “Could it be an equipment malfunction?”

  “It looks like a battle.”

  Battle... Battle?

  The word echoed in Vic's mind. His worst fears had been realized. Battle, inside the station—this horribly fragile station, dependent on an intricate web of delicate technologies to protect its thousands of inhabitants from the cold vacuum of space.

  “Thera's soil,” he whispered as the full realization washed over him like an icy wave.

  The monitors began flashing distorted red warning messages while the loudspeakers broadcast a static-tinged prerecorded message. “Emergency. Emergency. A threat to the structural integrity of the station has been detected. All residents, please go to the nearest emer­gency shelter and await further instructions. The markings on the streets will direct you to the nearest shelter. Remain calm and proceed to the shelters in an orderly fashion. All emergency response personnel, man your stations and stand by for orders. Repeat...”

  Arrows on the street lit up, pointing the way to the shelter. Numbly, Vic followed them at a brisk walk, fighting the urge to break into a run. He glanced at the faces of the people around him. Most of them looked as scared as he felt, but no one seemed to be panicking.

  Vic could not prevent himself from looking back in the direction of the battle. The distant explosions had expanded in scope since the last time he looked. The fighting was spreading.

  Vic lost all sense of time. In the face of the fear that the station would disintegrate before he could reach the shelter, every minute seemed like an eternity. Irrationally, his fear turned to anger at the station's designers. Just how far away was the shelter? Didn't they take the residents' safety seriously?

  A deep rumble put an end to Vic's confused thoughts. He stopped as the sound grew in intensity, oblivious to the people brushing past him. As the noise drew nearer, it clarified into a mechanical roar. Vic knew that sound. It was the sound of an aerospace engine.

  An enormous military transport craft appeared over the buildings behind the evacuees. Something was ejected from the transport's hold and fell with a crash about a block away. The transport screamed overhead, hugging the ground close enough to buffet the people below with a shockwave.

  A flicker of relief kindled in Vic's mind. The transport bore the markings of T.U. Spacy. Whoever they were fighting, their opponents would be quickly overwhelmed in the face of such reinforcements.

  That thought gave Vic pause. The military had responded quickly to the battle—too quickly. The nearest base was much too far away to permit such a swift reaction. That meant there had to be a force near the station, or maybe even inside the spaceport. But why?

  The screeching buzz of energy weapons cut through Vic's relief like a knife. The sound had come from just around the corner. Had the battle spread this far already?

  Another scream of energy rent the air, followed by terrified cries and a howl of agony. In an instant, the orderly evacuation turned into a stampede. A confused tangle of humans engulfed Vic, throwing him to the ground. He curled up into a ball to protect his head and chest, hoping that he wouldn't be crushed to death by the panicked flight.

  The shrill blast of energy weapons erupted again, together with a wave of warm air washing over Vic's body. He opened one eye and saw the ruby glow of a laser flashing just a meter over his head. Piercing cries of agony punctuated the scene of madness. A warm, steaming liquid splashed Vic's coat, followed by the nauseating reek of burnt flesh.

  Numbly, Vic propped himself up on one elbow and glanced behind him. A robot shaped like a four-legged beast grown monstrously huge stomped down the street toward him, its sensors sweeping back and forth in search of additional targets.

  With a desperate cry, Vic staggered to his feet and ran. He spotted an open window on the wall to his left and leapt through it, landing on the floor of an office. An instant later, another laser raked through the window, scorching the wall over his head.

  Vic scrambled through the office door and into an adjoining hallway, sprinting with all his might. The sound of shattering ceramics told him that the death drone had followed him into the building.

  Somewhere in his addled brain, Vic realized the drone had been dropped from a transport with Spacy markings, yet it was going on a deadly rampage in the middle of a crowd of evacuating civilians. What the hell was going on? Had it malfunctioned? Or was the Theran Union attacking its own people?

  Vic stumbled into an atrium, his feet pounding across a floor polished to reflective perfection. At the sound of robotic legs clattering be­hind him, he flung himself behind a nearby pillar and watched in horror as a laser arced to his right and then to his left, only prevented from exploding his body into a superheated pile by the sturdy column.

  As soon as the laser faded, Vic sprinted for the doors, flung them open, and ran out onto the street. He stumbled to a halt and doubled over in exhaustion, hoping the doors would at least slow his deadly pursuer while he paused to catch his breath.

  A clang and hum of heavy machinery made Vic look up in alarm. On the far side of a nearby intersection, a warehouse gate rumbled open, revealing a group of exosuits within. Vic recognized the model. They were construction types, but they had been heavily customized, outfitted with extra sensors and assault rifles.

  As the gate finished sliding open, a group of pilots clad in unfamiliar combat gear ran into view. The clattering of their suits reached Vic's ears, only to be drowned out by the roar of another aerospace craft. But this one was different than the transport's deep rumble—harsher, shriller, like the whine of a demonic sword cutting through the air.

  A sleek bomber screamed overhead. Vic looked up just in time to see a blurred shape detach from the bomber and drop on the warehouse.

  The next thing Vic knew, he was lying on his back, lights dancing in his vision and a high-pitched whine buzzing in his ears. Slowly, he pushed himself into a sitting position. As the lights in his vision faded, the remains of the warehouse swam into view. The flames cast a crimson glow over the surroundings: buildings with blown-out windows; mu­tilated remains of the pilots slain before they could reach their vehicles; and an exosuit that had fallen in front of Vic, its hatch hanging open like the maw of a beast.

  The sound of shattering glass told Vic that the bestial drone had figured out how to continue the pursuit. For a moment, he continued sit­ting on the ground, staring blankly ahead. The weaker part of him wanted to lie down and sleep, to let this madness fade into a nightmare, to wake up in his soft bed back on Thera...

  The weaker part lost.

  Vic shouted to give strength to his battered body and pushed himself to his feet. He ran forward, climbed into the cockpit of the exosuit, and struggled to strap himself into the tilted seat. Through the open hatch, he saw the drone crash through the doors of the office building, pause to scan
its surroundings, then scuttle toward him.

  Vic turned the handle to seal the cockpit. The hatch closed, plunging everything into darkness just as the drone opened fire with its laser, melting the upper layer of the canopy's armor plating.

  Under the dim glow of the exosuit's passive lighting, Vic frantically input the startup commands. The dim lighting swelled to a brilliant radiance as the suit hummed to life. One by one, the components of the omni-directional viewscreen flickered on and holographic readouts ma­terialized over the console.

  Vic's eyes swept over a rapid succession of status messages. Whoever had customized this exosuit, they had pulled out all the stops. It had extra armor plating, an enhanced sensor and communication suite, souped-up engine and actuators to compensate for the extra weight—and weapons. One Valiant H22 heavy assault rifle with six spare magazines and a Kusanagi molecular cutter, whatever that was.

  Despite the customizations, the controls felt familiar in Vic's hands. He knew how to operate this machine. He had spent months of intensive training in models just like it.

  With this, he could survive.

  6

  Under Vic's guidance, the exosuit pushed itself off the ground and rose to its full four-meter height. Vic dropped his gaze to the sensor readout and cursed in annoyance. A wall of static and jagged shapes filled the readout together with the flashing words, “Silence particles deployed—long-range sensors and communications offline.”

  So, Vic couldn't rely on the sensors to act as his eyes. He looked up and swept his gaze across the viewscreen, searching the wrecked street for signs of movement. He saw nothing but smoke and dust. The killer drone had vanished.

  Suddenly Vic heard a muffled blast of energy and the sizzle of melting metal while his status readout flashed a warning on his suit's left leg. The drone had crawled directly underneath him.

  Vic backed up several steps until the drone came into view. He manipulated the limb controls to raise the suit's arm, bringing the rifle to bear on the drone. Two crosshairs appeared on the screen with num­bers flashing underneath them. He frowned in puzzlement. Why were there two targeting reticles? Did it have something to do with range?