ARDENT RED
By Harry Schofield
Copyright © 2019 by Harry Schofield.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express prior recorded permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in critical reviews or other non-commercial purposes permitted by copyright and fair use law.
KDP ISBN: 9781796637182
For questions or permissions, contact: [email protected]
Front cover image by Patrik Björkström.
All characters and events portrayed in this book are purely fictional. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and unintended by the author.
Published and distributed on paperback format with Kindle Direct Publishing, a service provided by Amazon.com, Inc.
Published in the United Kingdom.
First Digital Edition Publication February 2019.
I dedicate Worlds Asunder to:
Victor Stratford, Trevor Lail, Janis Šnepts, and all the others I've had the honour of creating the Frencoverse with;
Dad, for supporting me throughout it all;
Jay, for being an amazing little brother;
Zoe, for being the ultimate friend;
Ness, Roisin and Dave, all for fuelling my literary passion;
and Mum, who I know is proud up there in heaven.
CONTENTS
Chapter One7
Chapter Two 21
Chapter Three38
Chapter Four 53
Chapter Five 69
Chapter Six79
Chapter Seven93
Chapter Eight115
Chapter Nine 129
"When the stars threw down their spears
and water'd heaven with their tears,
did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
~ William Blake, The Tyger ~
CHAPTER ONE
Tuesday, 19 April, 2140 AD
LOCATION: Port Royal
Merchant Republic of Ceres, Asteroid Belt
Day length: 9.01 standard Terran hours
Surface gravity: 0.029g outside of local artigrav field; 0.994g within local artigrav field
Population: 5,102,096
"I am just a servant of the Broken Angel!"
The blue armoured fist crashed into Strachen's ruined face like a hammer, scattering teeth and globs of fluid once more. Hate fuelled his resistance against the beast of a man that had beaten him bloody, asking the same question over and over. Even as he lay tied into a metal chair, Strachen could find only a queer sense of admiration for his captor.
"This is your last chance. We know it was here. We know it came from here. We know you rigged it. Now where is it?!"
"I am just a servant of the Broke-"
The interrogator gripped Strachen by the collar of his bloodied t-shirt, the former's gunmetal blue eyes meeting with the latter's machined grey.
"Do you have any fucking idea what you've unleashed on your own compatriots?!" he roared, leaving Strachen's face pocked with spittle. "You can stop this madness. You can save thousands of innocent lives right now!"
"Innocence is the first casualty of war, not truth!" Strachen continued to defy. "I am just a servant of the Broken Angel!"
"Frost!" A woman's voice bearing a gruff, light quasi-Germanic accent called for the interrogator from the top of the stairs, a thin spear of light piercing the darkened, dingy shop basement. "Precentor wants you to stop fucking around with that mechanic," she called down again. "They just called in to say they found the truck."
"Where is it?" asked the man identified as Frost.
"Seventeenth Road, heading northbound for Tereshkova Square," the woman answered again.
"City Hall..." Frost muttered to himself, standing up as he turned to the steps. "Pack up. We head out in two mikes – no later!"
"Good news," he turned back to Strachen, hand resting on his pistol grip. "We don't need your stupid arse here any more. And neither will your Sokolova once she realises you've fucked her over."
Strachen raised his battered head, a broken-toothed grin lurking behind his wispy brown hair. When he caught proper sight of his captor for the first time, he beheld a tall, heavybuilt Caucasian man, coarse of face, with shags of brown hair reaching to the start of his neck. He was clad in the dark blue plate carrier and black exoskeleton of a local paramilitary captain, the silver circle with a firm OCCS at the centre on his chestplate marking his affiliation as with the Occator Conglomerate Corporate Security Division.
At the spectacle, Strachen loosed a wheezing laugh.
"Do you really think you can beat her? Do you believe you can stop the Emancipation of Man? You will live to see your delusion for what it is."
"Maybe I will," Frost shrugged. "Maybe this is all pointless, and maybe I am a deluded fool. And maybe I'll live to see what happens after Sokolova and the Iron Knights decide to burn Earth to cinders, if I'm lucky. But you know what I know?"
"What do you know, Mister Frost?" Strachen rasped.
Frost's right hand reached for the gun holster on his side and drew forth a sleek handgun. A high-power 10-millimetre Mark 45 Police. Standard issue for the corporate security personnel on this planet and the armies of the United Federation of Earth as the Mk.45 Military, Strachen recalled.
"You won't get to see what happens after," Frost taunted Strachen with a straight face.
"Martyr me, then, Edward Frost," Strachen demanded.
"That was the plan."
A thunderous pop rang through the shop basement, reducing the upper half of Strachen's head to a shattered mess of gore and skull fragments.
~
Port Royal was one of many settlements established on the dwarf planet Ceres during the new Age of Exploration in the second quarter of the Twenty-First Century, before the Second Great Depression proceeded to ravage Earth in the 2040s. Like these settlements, it was initially an outpost for American and European spacefaring corporations to conduct ventures into the newfound enterprise of mining the Asteroid Belt. Here was where the original settlers of the Belt, many of them hired workers from the West, established their own homes and those of their future children.
In the face of increasing regulation on Earth and the rise of the quasi-fascist Commonwealth of Mars, many of the Belt settlements became headquarters for the companies granted the associated contracts. Thus much of its wealth was accrued via investment into the space industries – not just asteroid mining, but also hydrogen mining from the nearby gas giants to power the nascent fusion economy. Being the most settled naturally-occurring celestial body in the Belt by a considerable margin at this stage, Ceres had grown to such a stage of independence from the remaining Earthbound polities that it could be considered a nation-state in its own right. As a result, the newly-independent corporations formed their own federated state in the Belt with the purpose of protecting their wealth. This state would become, and continued to be, known as the Merchant Republic of Ceres.
Eighty years on after the Scramble for the Belt, one could observe great difference. Port Royal, situated on the Cererian equator, was no longer a humble Belter colony and spaceport, but a prosperous resort city resting between solar Core Space and Frontier Space. A brilliant rainbow of neon signs and holographic billboards illuminated the silver, distinctly ultramodern architecture of the many tower blocks that composed its central business district. The result was a fabulous metropolis to rival the grand supercities of Earth and even the illustrious art-deco megacities that dotted the Commonwealth of Mars; a display of corporate power.
Some of the towers were the fabulous penthouses belonging to the executives, shareholders and other associates o
f the Occator Conglomerate, the corporate alliance managing the town, the industrial sites, mines and the many proletarians that operated it all. Others were hotels intended as accommodation for the panoply of space tourists travelling from all across the Solar System to visit the Asteroid Belt. On the ground below, a transparent covering of quartz-glass propped up by steel beams shielded the streets and its inhabitants from the star-pecked permanent night of outer space.
FA-DOOOHM!
A tonitruous fulmination at the city's heart, a pillar of cerulean fire rising under the vast glass dome at the city centre, served to shatter the resident tranquillity with instant effect. Volleys of screaming voices ran from lightning bolts thrashing from the inferno's heart, electrical whips melting all to fall to their touch before their locus faded into nothingness. The eruption left behind tiled stones melted to lava, and an immense hole in the four-pronged Port Royal City Hall's western wing.
"Precentor, this is Ground Floor, presence of high-yield plasma-based explosive device confirmed. Please advise, over!"
"Ground Floor, this is Precentor – make sure all civilians are clear of the A-O. We can't afford any further worker casualties at this point!"
"Affirmative, Precentor – Ground Floor out! You all heard him, men! Get those civ-"
THWACK!
A bullet cut off the commandant's address, having bitten deep into his throat as he collapsed with a thud.
"Incoming!" a comrade shrieked as the murderous bullet morphed into a barrage peppering the bollard she was hiding behind.
Armoured corporate security operatives ducked behind what scant cover Tereshkova Square could proffer, their commanding officer bleeding to death behind another bollard. The occasional thump of a coil-rifle marked return fire from the CS troopers surrounding the besieged city hall, but the self-dubbed servants of Sokolova remained steadfast, and especially considering the tide of terrified innocents streaming past. Every rifle-clutching attacker wore miners' attire, with the exception of purple bandannas obscuring their mouths and noses. The periodic rumble of a chaingun seemed to betray the presence of powered armour, most probably jury-rigged from mining exosuits.
The attackers had stricken with inhuman haste and precision, as all Knights of the Order of Iron had made a point of doing. Moments earlier, a makeshift armour-clad truck had smashed its way straight through the CS perimeter. The security personnel were left utterly powerless to stop it from carrying its explosive payload to the now thoroughly obliterated western wing of Port Royal's city hall. At the moment of detonation, men and women within the crowds had unveiled machine guns and opened fire on the perimeter from behind. These same fighters were now hastily entering the breach at the city hall and taking up positions.
"These civvies aren't making this easy!" another voice bellowed.
"You heard our orders!" the first mercenary barked back. "Get them behind the perimeter! If too many of 'em die, the board will have our asses for breakfast!"
"How the fuck are we supposed to stop them dying when these dickheads are shooting at them?!"
"Perhaps try this newfangled thing called shooting back!"
A hail of bullets pattering against the mooncrete plaza made it clear that such a feat would be far easier said than done. Most of the civilians had evacuated the area, allowing for the security forces to return heavier fire to the terrorists with their coilguns. The brief interval had, however, also spared the enemy a chance to magnify their own volume of gunfire.
The two mining exos painted in knightly colours stepped forth from the inferno swathing the city hall's western wing, bringing heavy machine guns to bear. A great tirade of cannon fire washed over the hastily crafted perimeter, dust clouds thrown into the wind as bullets ricocheted into the air. Some shells would disintegrate hapless security personnel into a puff of red smoke and gore. Others would rise into the air, striking the heavily-armoured quartz dome high above, fortuitously to little more effect than leaving scuff marks on the glass. More still would surge into the crowds ahead, the destructive effect on unarmoured citizens being fantastically more profuse than security personnel with at least some defence.
"We can't deal with this kind of firepower! Where the fuck are our reinforcements?!"
The thunderous rattle of a twenty-millimetre autocannon from behind allied lines served to answer the panicking contractor. A dark-blue painted eight-wheeled armoured personnel carrier forced its way through the throngs of civilians as the remote weapon system atop its hull spat hellfire into anything that moved within the building ahead. Two more MRAPs were close to follow, one of which lacked armament.
The armed exos ahead turned their attention to the approaching convoy, only for their bullets to ping off its armour without trouble. They in turn found themselves torn to pieces by the heavy autocannon on the vehicle's roof, their cobbled armour shredded by high-calibre fire with laughable ease. With the bulk of their firepower dispatched, the remaining masked fighters pulled back into the building. Some were cut down by rifles, others ripped apart by the MRAP's cannon, but their exodus was a swift and orderly one.
The side doors on the MRAPs slammed open as the vehicles rolled to a halt just ahead of the original perimeter; from within each leapt out a squadron of heavily armed mercenaries, an entire platoon immediately proceeding to take up fighting positions within the hot zone. First among equals was a certain Captain Edward Frost, heavy assault rifle clutched in his armoured gauntlets as he made his way front and centre.
"Should have driven us closer," he announced with a smirk. "I wanted to hit them with my bayonet..."
"Helluva good start, boss," spoke a different woman to the one who had brought Frost from the shop basement before, her voice a distinct southern English. Cradling a scoped long-barrel Gauss gun, she was smaller in stature than her beastly commander, her silver-blonde hair cut short, and a pair of tactical glasses covered her eyes.
"We still have to kill them first," Frost remarked. "White, get yourself and Morgenstern on the nearest roof. I want overwatch across the A-O!"
"Right," White, the addressed woman, acknowledged.
The captain readied his rifle for combat, only to turn his head to the sound of crying. With a bemused look Frost caught sight of a shaking security operative on the floor, curled up in terror as he looked up.
"I thought we was gonna die..." the operative whimpered to the captain.
"And you will die if you don't stop fucking crying!" Frost bellowed at him, raising his clenched fist before motioning to behind him. "Reform the perimeter away from the fighting and keep the civvies behind it! Every single wanker on the other side that's not us, give him a spare arsehole!"
"Incoming! INCOMING!!!"
Frost's attention was once again diverted, this time to a puff of smoke rising from the city hall. A rocket shot into the stale air, curving onto a horizontal flight path toward the arrived convoy as it screamed over the captain's head. Then it dove, slamming straight into the top of the frontmost vehicle, the one with the cannon – a thundering eruption of fire rolled through the street, leaving a wrecked MRAP and scattered bodies, casualties of shrapnel.
"What the hell was that?!" one of the mercs shouted.
"That was a Spider-Two anti-tank missile," Frost answered through gnashed teeth. "I recognise the flight pattern. Tartarean Armaments. They definitely didn't find those on Vesta..."
Another missile rose from the same position as the first, once again surging toward the gathering. This time the next MRAP behind it was ready with a square, telescope-like object rising from the roof. As the missile grew near, the laser point-defender gave off a bright blue flash, and the incoming projectile detonated above Frost's head with another booming crash.
The destruction of the second Spider missile signalled another surge of purple-masked fighters from within the ruins ahead, their renewed assault heralded by whooping battle cries.
"Put fire on them, you wankers!" Frost roared at the mercenaries around him, rallying th
em for war as he drew forth his own heavy battle rifle. The high-powered M224A1 Cyclone still bore the faded black and white livery of its former owner, a renegade Sparrow Corporation security trooper.
The hybrid sights settled upon one terrorist with a squad automatic weapon, his head poking over a planter box. Frost tapped on the Cyclone's trigger and the rifle jerked back with a dull stutter. The .338-calibre round it spat out sailed across the battlefield and struck its mark; just as with Strachen in the basement, the insurgent's head exploded into scarlet rain.
A further four trigger taps yielded a stuttering shot each, every single opponent caught in his sight dropping down to die each time. Some attackers wearing body armour needed an extra few shots, but the Cyclone performed admirably. Now under Frost's command, the rest of the mercenaries opened fire with their coilguns, the entire plaza now an orchestra of thumping electromagnets and rattling rifle fire.
Checking the magazine counter on the rifle's side as he charged forward, his weapon bearing fifteen rounds remaining, Frost made his way toward a burned-out hovercar wreck. With the might of his exoskeleton he grabbed the husk by the underside and flipped it onto its door, rifle bullets slamming into the roof with a cacophony of metal pings and scrapes. Cars in and of themselves were useless for armour, Frost thought to himself, but the heavy artigrav plates on the bottom could deflect an incoming bullet once it had passed through the roof or electric engine block. With bullets and coilgun blasts seething and whistling around them, three more contractors joined their captain behind the car.
"You there! Help me lift the car on the count of three!" Frost bellowed at the soldier nearest to him, then turned to those on the flanks as he grabbed one of the plate struts. "You two! Stay behind the car, shoot anything on our sides!"
"Right, boss!"
"On three – one ... two ... three!"
The battered hovercar left the floor with a groan, held just above the pavement by two exo-equipped security contractors. Bullets pattered all around them, many impacting on the car body with a clank, but the improvised shield held up in the face of adversity.
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