Ardent Red

by Harry Schofield

  "Whoa..." White gasped through the radio. "Tell me that's not who I think it is!"

  "Who do you think it is, fucking Santa Claus?!" Frost barked. "Tell me you're in position!"

  "I'm getting to the roof now," White informed him. "Morgenstern's coming down to help you!"

  Another volley of plasmafire forced Frost to jump down into the plaza, taking cover behind one of the planter boxes. Bolts hammering into the planter's soil set light to the foliage, forcing it to go up in smoke in a matter of seconds.

  "Keep her out of harm's way, she won't be able to handle this fucker!" barked Frost. "More of his levies will no doubt come to help him! Tell Mags to take up a position on the third floor and keep those fuckers off us!"

  Frost utilised the chance afforded by a gap in the Hound's barrage to cool down his energy caster to pop out of cover for a brief moment, handgun raised. Two tonitruous pops sounded through the air; the first ricocheted off of the Hound's armour, but the second struck true, striking the powerful blaster right on the power pack. The goliath glanced at his firearm as it sparked and shorted, pulling out the pack and seeking to replace it with another on his belt.

  Then suddenly Frost leapt from his cover position, swinging his stun club in both hands. The Hound could spare only a moment to glance at the soldier charging at him when the club struck, arcs rocketing through the armour frame as Frost smashed the weapon into the demon's side. Not to be deterred, he responded with a rapid strike of Frost's forearm with his vambrace, stopping the strike short. A subsequent bash to the chest sent the captain off course, allowing the Hound a chance to grab him, twirl around and throw him away like a soda can.

  Frost smashed straight through the glass window of the clothes shop, knocking down the stands holding the wares. He brushed off the glass and stood to find his adversary forcing his way through the gap to confront him once more, and reached for the stun club that had followed him into the boutique.

  "Where is the key?" the Hound's metallic voice reverberated through his mouth grill.

  "It'll be up your fucking arse when I'm done with you!" Frost swung his club once more at the huge cyborg before him, the blunt instrument seething through the air as it sparked and snapped at the dog.

  Only struck by the first blow across the head, the Hound leaned back to dodge the second, before he threw a concrete shattering punch to Frost's chest; only the metal brace at the centre stopped the blow from disintegrating every rib the soldier had. Frost reciprocated with his foot, shoving the Hound to a distance where he could land another swipe with his club.

  Ducking as another jab sent towards his head blasted a hole into the wall, Frost tackled the armoured giant across the shop. The battling pair charged through clothes racks and the cash register, scattering merchandise and parts everywhere before pummelling another wall and landing in the staff room with a thunderous crash.

  Caked in debris and suit tattered beyond all repair as he lay in the remains of a sofa, Frost leaned to his left side and spat a loose tooth over the armrest. He looked up to where he had thrown the Hound, and spotted his adversary covered in the remnants of a cupboard and shattered crockery as water from a destroyed kitchen sink sprayed his cracked visor.

  "Impressive," the armoured giant's steely voice rumbled like a mountain of metal. "It has been a while since I fought a worthy opponent. I expected you to be a pushover."

  "Glad to have been a disappointment," Frost remarked.

  At the instant that the reply wandered through his toothed helmet's auditory sensors, the Hound froze like a corpse. Frost could see the two dim red lights that formed his eyes past the fissures in his painted maw; as they settled upon the captain's face, they began to glow like twin red supergiants. Before Frost could issue one of his trademark ripostes, the Hound's eyes tightened like embrasures. His spectral breath began to grate, as if the spirit had been transmuted into a leonine demonic form by some kind of magmatic fury.

  Before Frost could realise it, the Hound leapt to his feet with a thud and charged once more through the wall ahead of him, bringing the captain grappled into his armoured gauntlets. Thrown once again to the ground, Frost allowed his battle instinct to take over rather than rationalise what had just happened, reaching for his missing stun club. Only a curt roll to the left precluded his head being punched into bonemeal by the Hound's fist, the strike accompanied by a vicious snarl true to the giant's moniker.

  Not to be deterred in his blood rage, the Hound drew out of a pouch behind his shoulder cape a machete-sized serrated combat knife, a button press covering the blade in a broiling sheath of magenta plasma. His sincere intent on killing Frost now abundantly clear, the captain dove ahead of him to dodge a backhand swipe. With the Hound rearing his hand back to bring a stab down into his opponent, Frost ripped a water cooler from the wall and blocked the impending death blow, the water gushing from the pierced canister boiled to steam in an instant. He grabbed the handle and struck the berserk colossus across the helmet, widening the crack in his visor before shoving him away once again, the Hound smashing apart a dressing room. There was no question about it: if Frost planned to survive the next few minutes, he would have to reacquire that stun club.

  Sprinting to his feet, Frost dashed for the ruined staffroom where he had dropped the weapon. Scanning through the rubble as a booming crescendo sounded into his ears, he caught a glint next to the sofa he remembered falling into, and was soon upon the club like a hawk. The instinct to turn around did not fail him, as the Hound was bearing down on him at great haste – the giant was sent packing once again by a ferocious blow to his midriff. Then another to the other side. Then once more to his head. Each subsequent strike that followed was accompanied by a growl from Frost, gradually knocking the Hound backward until he crashed through the glass window behind him, re-emerging to a firefight on the street outside.

  True to Frost's prediction, the street was now populated by a group of knight levies to reinforce their lord. Several lay dead on the road already, either riddled with bullets or missing a chunk of their bodies. The rest had positioned themselves onto the roofs of shops and inside windows, the few still on the street being mowed down with thundering autocannon fire as the clatter of tracks marked the arrival of green armoured fighting vehicles.

  Morgenstern, key still in her trouser pocket and now sobered up, had positioned herself on the hotel's third floor as Frost had instructed by proxy. Now strapped into her own exoskeleton and wearing her helmet, M224A1 assault rifle in hand, she was taking sporadic pot-shots at levies distracted by the arrival of Wayland Company's security forces, leaning from her position in the window to shoot at those carrying RPGs to use against the incoming armoured vehicles. Another enemy in her scope had his head popped open by the rifle's high-calibre rounds, prompting the others to look toward her; every attempt at retaliatory fire merely saw her duck back into cover and move over to the window in the next hotel room.

  Morgenstern shifted her rifle across the roof on the other side of the street, when the sight of motioning caught her eye. Before she could blink, she saw that one of the levies had picked up an RPG from one of her earlier kills and had now turned it toward the window. She fired the gun, but not before a puff of smoke filled the rooftop...

  "Aw, nuts!" she growled, making immediate effort to dive away from the window.

  The next thing she knew, the warhead struck the wall as if Thor himself had swung his hammer into the hotel's wall. Morgenstern was catapulted forward, straight through two walls and into another room's en-suite. Judging from the gout of water currently squirting on her helmet's visor, she had crashed right into a sink. She thanked in silence whatever guardian angel was here for her that the RPG had fired an anti-tank warhead rather than high explosive, or one half of her would be splattered all over the wall and the other may well have crashed back into that party.

  "Schieße, I'm going to be feeling that in the morning..." Morgenstern grunted to herself, checking her pocket. As she felt nothin
g there, however, she patted her trousers down more frantically, before her wide-eyed face settled on what looked like a data key, snapped in twain and soaked in the water.

  "Fuck..." she cursed aloud at the sight of the destroyed Ardent Red key. "That is so not good! That is so not good!"

  Back on the street, the Hound lay on his armoured back like a turtle. Looming over him stood Frost, bruised across the face but relatively unharmed save for his shoulder burn, stun club clutched in his hands. Ready to deal the finishing blow, Frost raised the club to strike the Hound's helmet like a warhammer.

  Then a seething, boiling pain rocketed through his shoulder, sufficient to force a pause as his attention returned to the plasmatic burn. Afforded a new opportunity to retaliate, the Hound leapt to his feet with a crash, twisted his knife forward and rammed it straight into Frost's stomach.

  ~

  In an instant the pain in the captain's shoulder vanished like acetone. The gentle bite of his burn supplanted by a soul-ripping infernal flare, shocked by poisoned thorns of electricity. The wretched smell of cooked meat and burnt fabric vanquished every other, even overpowering the vile smell of garbage that permeated New Seattle's backstreets.

  But compared to what he saw as he finally glimpsed the Hound's features through the blood red illumination of his eyes, the agony of being stabbed by an energy blade was but a flea bite. An expression of youthful fury, a solitary mind warped by the furnace of rage, shaped on the anvil of hate. The horror that matched the spectacle snatched Frost's heart in its fist and crushed it into bloody pulp.

  Then the Hound staggered forward, struck in the back by a force of sufficient immensity for him to drop the knife buried in Frost. A powerful shot had smashed square into his armour, the air singed by a distant magnetic thud. As the enraged armoured giant twisted around to face the source of this latest affront, his burning eyes set upon a glint from a fourth four window in the hotel. The next shot struck the right side of his helmet, an entire half of the headpiece shattering like glass as his head twisted backward, as if stricken by a hard punch.

  The third shot barrelled into his breastplate, shattering the hound sigil on it and caving it inward as the armour's wearer stumbled back through the wall, pulverising the corner section. This proved to be the last straw for the building itself, and the roof promptly came crashing down upon the nightmare in shining armour, obscuring the adjacent street in a screen of plaster smoke.

  "Frost!" the captain could hear White calling to him. "FROOOOOOST!!!"

  The team's markswoman had utterly abandoned her post, Gauss rifle ditched atop the floor where she had been firing on the Hound from. White had simply rappelled off of the roof and rushed to the injured Frost in defiance of the battlefield ambience, ignorant of a few bullets streaking past her before one of the approaching IFVs shot out its source. Upon reaching Frost, she threw herself onto her knees and held his head up.

  "Are you alright?!" White tried to reach out to her commanding officer, checking his pulse. The gaze of utter horror on his face as blood leaked from his mouth told her everything she needed to know.

  "Fuck, he's in shock!" she announced with a shriek, turning to the nearby Wilkins. "Get him back to the ship, let the mercs take on these assholes!"

  "But what about-"

  "I said, get him back to the fucking ship!" White's screech interrupted Wilkins' next query, fearful tears streaming down her cheeks. "Fuck the Hound – I'm not leaving Frost to die like this!"

  His consciousness trailing behind him, Frost spared one final despair-infused look at where the Hound had fallen. Tears obscured his vision, before his eyes slid shut.

  ~

  Meanwhile, in the destroyed boutique, three of the knight levies had made their way to the rubble, beginning to sift through the debris for their downed commander. All of their expression bar their eyes were obscured by the masks they wore, yet their eyes were frantic as they shifted their way through the pile of mooncrete, glass and metal rebars.

  A female levy held a shard of wall in her hands when her attention was directed to a rumble within the largest debris pile. Before she could muster an exclamation, the rubble trembled as if beset by an almighty earthquake given armoured manifest. Then, as if Atlas himself was rising from the grave, the Hound exploded from the ruins, showering debris in every direction. His ravaged helmet unveiled a head of shoulder-length raven black hair, coarse of Caucasian face, cybernetic eyes flaring like a pair of fire-infused rubies. Yet aside from such a minor setback, the Hound was all well.

  "My lord, are you injured?!" the levy asked of the Hound, rushing to his side.

  The Knight Lord unleashed a thunderous cough through the cracked mouth grate of the helmet as he brushed aside the soot caking his bent, battered armour.

  "Status report!" he barked, his eyes darting in search of prey.

  "The town's security forces are arriving, and the targets are escaping!" the levy announced. "Shall we bring their heads, my lord?"

  "Let them run, they won't get far!" so ordered Ryan Frost, Hound of Sokolova. "Find the key!"

  "I..." The female levy stammered, fearing how the Hound would react next. "I'm afraid the key was destroyed, my lord..."

  In an instant Ryan's eyes grew with dread. The expression hung for a perceptible moment of realisation, before his entire face crunched with a rage that expanded like a star.

  "Get the cocksucker who fired that rocket and bring him to me!" he snarled at the levies, his eyes as bright as blood red supernovae. "I want to tear his head off myself!"

  The trio scattered like cockroaches at once, more fearful of the Hound's fury than death by the corporate security troops converging on the plaza. Ryan clambered forth from the ruins in full, his mechanised boots marching him back into the alley from whence he had come. Bullets skimmed his armour plates as he stormed off into the shadows, sparks showering his surroundings.

  "Prepare the ship for launch!" he commanded into his wrist communicator. "This mission is a bust!"

  ~

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Four years prior...

  Monday, 17 September, 2136.

  LOCATION: Occator Conglomerate Correction Facility 13

  4 Vesta, Asteroid Belt

  Day length: ‎5.342 standard Terran hours

  Surface gravity: 0.025g outside of local artigrav field; 1.048g within local artigrav field

  Population figures unavailable.

  A whiplash.

  Left for dead by the ones you loved.

  A second lash. A cry of agony.

  Punished for a death you could never stop.

  The whip fell once more upon Ryan's bloodied back, a barb built into its length jamming itself into his flesh. Terrible screams issued from the boy's toothless mouth, piercing the modest grey chamber where he was interred.

  Turned into a toy for the amusement of those greater than yourself.

  The tormentor went by several different names. On the first few days, she would be addressed as Bitch, Cunt, Degenerate, and other less than flattering monikers. As time went on, she would become known by such names as Have Mercy and No More. The only name that remained universal to this tough, bald, heavy-built woman of middle age and scarred countenance was Warden.

  Your only companions in this age of darkness were pain.

  This specially designed cell where Ryan was interred was the Warden's own personal dungeon, where she would drag prisoners she especially loathed to bring her and the thugs that came with her some degree of twisted amusement. Broken and thinking he had nothing left to lose after being thrown into this wretched place following that laughable farce of a trial, a bitter instruction for the Warden to conduct sexual congress with several different barnyard animals was what earned Ryan his stay here.

  Anger.

  Ryan found himself jolted awake when water cold as ice thrashed his face. His back seethed and pulsed with horrible agony, mind having turned numb as a dreadful consideration took hold of his mind. He had been se
ntenced to a couple of months here, but Ryan had tried to keep track of the days.

  Terror.

  It must have been at least two months since he came here, closer to three. He had heard in the chatter between those who tormented him about some kind of scheme where prison officials could falsify a prisoner's death, usually to sell him on to authorities that needed him or whatever else one would want to do something like that on. There now existed a real possibility that he would be trapped in this place forever.

  Sorrow.

  All that Ryan could think of throughout it all was how he had gotten into this infernal state. After all of the trust and love that Ryan had invested into the man who did all this to him, who had sentenced him here...

  Hatred.

  Ryan had lost track of the number of times this had happened to him; the brief cessation of this torment arrived once more.

  "Alright, I'm hungry," stated the Warden, clearly in a good mood. "Who wants lunch? I'm thinking we go pick up something from Shash."

  "What should we do with the bitch?" one of the mercenaries asked.

  "Whatever you want," the Warden announced. "Beat him, shoot him, stab him – chop off his cock for all I care! Just don't kill him, I haven't finished with this one!"

  "Oh, I've got a good idea of what to do with him..." the merc stated with a sinister grin as he grabbed Ryan's beaten, bloodied husk.

  "I mean it, Barney – you break him beyond repair, and you will be the next one to be cooped up in here!" the Warden barked.

  "Relax, warden, the boys and I'll be gentle!" Barney laughed as the door slammed shut. "Or at least gentle enough..."

  "Hey, Gunther!" he bellowed to one of his comrades as he dragged Ryan to his next destination. "Was it you or Carl who wanted to know if a boy's arsehole is as tight as a virgin's pussy?"

  Your songs of experience. A wondrous symphony from Hell incarnate. Songs to sing to yourself before the harrowing.