by J. N. Chaney
“He may have moved,” X-37 said.
“Thought of that already. Hopefully I can reshuffle the deck with decisive action. Keep an eye—and an ear—out for anything I miss,” I said, then paused before darting across an open area. Stealth required slow, deliberate movements but that wasn’t what I was about right now. I could become a ghost once I’d left the place my opponent thought I was hiding.
The next building was in disrepair. I lowered my heart rate, checked my surroundings, and found no signs of detection or ambush.
Darkness obscured a large hole in the wall and fragments of concrete and glass. A missile or artillery round had blown apart this section of the building. I moved into the building, careful not to twist an ankle on the rubble.
Inside the third hangar building were dozens of trucks, all of them looted for wheels and other parts. Animal tracks marked the dusty floor. Hundreds of birds roosted in the support beams near the ceiling.
“You should increase your pace if your intent is still to out flank your adversary,” X-37 said. “I am keeping track of the elapsed time of your pursuit of this objective in case you become distracted.”
“Your sense of time is solid,” I said as I ran my eyes over the scene.
“Compliment detected.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.” I peeked through a window before exiting.
“I detect no change in the situation. That does not mean that this mystery person is still watching from the window of hangar one,” X-37 said.
I left through a side door and soon reached the back of hangar one.
“Entering this building is risky, Reaper Cain.”
“Do you have a better plan?”
“Not without help from a team. It is impossible to maintain surveillance on all sides of the building by yourself. I merely wished to remind you to proceed with caution,” X-37 said.
“It’s all coming back to me.” I entered the building like a shadow, moved smoothly through the first few rooms, and climbed a set of stairs at the rear of the building. I avoided the large central hangar where I would be visible to the upper level of manager suites.
At each new threshold, I allowed a moment for X-37 to analyze what I saw, then moved into the new room or hallway. This place was larger than it looked, even though I had already been through two buildings just like it.
“Please stand by, Halek… Cain,” X-37 said.
Alarmed, I stepped into one of the manager suites and froze. “What’s wrong, X?”
“One moment.”
“X?”
“Please stand by. Processing.”
I counted to one hundred, watching and listening for a surprise attack. With my luck, I would get ambushed while my LAI was on the fritz.
The room felt smaller than it should. Operating solo wasn’t new to me. I liked to work alone and often did, but suddenly I felt isolated like never before. Feels like just yesterday I was waking up from a clone pod. Maglan wasn’t the Maglan I remembered. All my friends were gone and now my LAI was giving me the silent treatment.
“Please continue, Reaper Cain.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“You are not the only one with battle scars. Limited artificial intelligences aren’t designed for this type of download and reintegration. Only your predecessor’s very specific commands allowed it to happen at all. Worse, it was a rush job.”
“You mentioned the tablet wasn’t large enough for the entire job.” I hefted the pack on my back, feeling the slight weight of the device.” I didn’t know if I wanted to take this discussion further.
“Correct. I am not sure how to fully restore my functionality,” X-37 said.
“Just warn me next time.”
“I will do my best.”
I continued my search. The door to the corner room stood open. I approached with only the knife as a weapon. The rifle still didn’t work and probably never would if Saw-say had been telling the truth.
One slice of the room came into view, then another, and another, until I had seen most of it without passing through the doorway. Rushing in, I confirmed my suspicion.
Whoever had been stalking me was already gone.
“I don’t see any clues,” X-37 said.
“Except for the desk pulled up to the window,” I said, examining the executive sized piece of office furniture. “A sniper could lay across this and be perfectly level with the window sill.”
I touched the surface, expecting to find it still warm. Memories of Reaper training surfaced. This scene looked a lot like a module of the advanced sniper training I’d gone through not long after getting fitted with my cybernetic arm.
“What is your verdict, Reaper Cain? My ability to measure your tactile senses is much weaker than visual or auditory input.”
“It’s not warm, but it’s not as cool as it should be. Someone was here.” I left the room, more aware than ever that I was in trouble. This stranger had been watching me for a while, and he or she was good. “I’m going to the roof.”
“My analysis suggests there is a high probability of a dangerous confrontation in that direction,” X-37 said.
The stairwell at the end of the hall was dark and uninviting. Dank air filled my nostrils. Spiderwebs formed a mesh between the handrails and the walls. For a second I doubted my instincts. I couldn’t imagine anyone opening the doors.
But if I’d gone this way, I wouldn’t have touched anything and would have closed the doors behind me. My opponent must have been rushed, otherwise he would have put the desk back where he found it.
Assuming he thought like a Reaper.
Climbing the stairs didn’t take long. There were two turns. I heard a voice as I approached the second turn.
“Stop right there. I have you in my sights,” a man said. His voice was rough, ruined from yelling, smoking, injury, or a combination of the three.
“He does not sound like you, Reaper Cain, even allowing for the obvious damage this individual has done to his vocal cords,” X-37 said. “This may not be an HC clone as I had feared.”
I made a fist and held it to indicate that I heard X and didn’t disagree.
“What do you want?” I asked, staring into the darkness above and hoping X-37 could parse more information from the scene than I could.
“There is only one thing to want on Maglan, and that is to not die,” he said. “Or get robbed.”
“You could avoid both by just staying away from me. Why have you been watching me?”
“I was trying to decide if I should waste a bullet to kill you.” The man’s voice was level, calm—just like most snipers I’d known.
“So what’s the verdict?”
A pause.
“I have a lot of bullets,” he said.
“Danger, Reaper Cain.”
12
“You think, X?” I said. “Good to know, but it doesn’t answer my question. Are we going to kill each other, or can we talk?”
“Are you a Reaper?” he asked, still invisible no matter how I shifted my position.
“I’m the last Reaper. Retired and wanting to stay that way.” I shined my flashlight, saw nothing, and quickly turned it off. A second later, I sidestepped, hoping I had blinded him for a second. Since I couldn’t see, I stayed around the corner of the stairwell where he wouldn’t have a shot at me.
“That’s what they all say. Step out where I can see you again,” he said. “Or something. This isn’t my first encounter with one of you. Sneak up on me once, shame on you. Sneak up on me twice, shame on me.”
“If I snuck up on you once, you’d be dead, captured, or begging for your life,” I said.
“Probably dead. I’m not about to be captured, and I haven’t begged since Dreadmax,” he said.
“You’re from Dreadmax?” I tapped a message to X, directing him to figure out who this guy was.
“Yeah. Hardened killer, just like you. More like you than you realize.”
“I doubt that.” I lowered a
ll my gear—including the useless Hagg rifle—to the floor and set the bundle down without a sound. With just the knife, I edged into position to take him by surprise if he came after me.
“You should know I’m using an HDK Dominator II,” he said.
“So you can shoot through metal stairs,” I said. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll be sure to put you in for a good sportsman award.”
“I also have a top notch thermal imager. Don’t think for a second I’m coming down those stairs to get my throat cut,” he said. “Excellent positioning, by the way. You’re not terrible at this.”
“I’m running out of ideas, X.” I kept my voice low.
“You could retreat. Force him to come after you or escape entirely and never deal with him again,” X-37 said.
“How would I get any information?”
X-37 barely hesitated. It was like he had an answer ready. “The potential information to be gained is not worth the substantial risk. If you do not keep this man engaged with conversation, he will shoot you through the stairs. Your other option is to disappear.”
“If I run, he’ll shoot me through walls. He probably saw me hiding on that corner but not through the entire building when I circled behind it,” I said.
“You must make the decision, Reaper Cain. I advise retreat. This confrontation is simply not worth it.”
“I can’t have him hunting me while I locate and repair a ship,” I said.
I flinched as a subtle, but effective shock went up my spine. X-37 hadn’t done that to me for a long time.
A rifle crack split the night. Sparks and shrapnel sprayed me in the face. I fell backward, rolled, and came to my feet near the door to the stairwell.
“Nice try, but you missed!” I shouted. “Thanks for the warning, X. That was close.”
A second shot punched through the metal and shattered a portion of the concrete wall. Bits of debris slashed a wound under my left eye.
“That last shot was a guess,” I said, then bolted down the stairwell.
“I recommend you don’t give him a chance to guess again,” X-37 said. “From that distance, I doubt he’ll miss now that we are actively engaging in hostilities.”
I gasped for breath, turning another corner in the stairwell. “That’s a lot of words to say he’s trying to murder me.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t delve into moral ambiguities,” X-37 said.”Or semantics.”
I broke into the ground floor hallway and sprinted to the door. “Do you think he’s a Reaper, one of these clones?”
“Unknown, but unlikely. I should be able to tell from voice analysis, though he might have been disguising his vocal characteristics or suffered significant damage from yelling or injury.”
“Things that every Reaper endures eventually,” I muttered, then sprinted to the next building. I chose a different structure than I had used to hide my approach.
Instinct prompted me to look back in time to see my adversary running down the face of hangar one, a rappelling line taut behind him. He wasn’t bouncing on the balls of his feet like a green recruit. He faced the ground and was just running straight down the side, helmet visor darkened and his HDK slung over his shoulder. I never enjoyed the advanced technique, but I could do it. This stranger looked like he’d done it a lot.
“I don’t like that, X.” I burst into the next hanger building and sprinted across the main room, looking for a place to hide, acquire a better weapon, or set up a defensive position. “Why is he transitioning from sniper mode to pursuit mode?”
“Most likely he knows you won’t allow him to try the same tricks twice, and he must want to kill you sooner rather than later,” X-37 said.
“Sounds like a killer after my own heart. Why can’t anyone I meet be friendly,” I said as I gave up on the room holding weapons and headed toward the exit. There were pieces of vehicles everywhere, but none of them large enough to hide behind, and I didn’t relish the idea of getting pinned down.
“You could have asked him for an alliance,” X-37 said.
“I didn’t get a chance.”
“Defensiveness detected.”
“Gods damn it, X, whose side are you on?” I veered away from the larger buildings. “Give me directions to the crashed assault craft. Maybe I can find a weapon. I’d take a combat knife over this piece of crap I’m using now, or maybe I could have an HDK Dominator.”
“That would significantly improve your odds, Reaper Cain.”
Resisting the urge to run at full speed, I stopped at each building corner to check my back trail. My adversary didn’t reveal his position. If I were him, I would have raced ahead along a different route to set up and ambush—difficult but not impossible. Maglan City had plenty of room to maneuver. He knew the terrain better than I did.
“What am I missing, X?” Something about the situation felt off.
“He might not be operating alone. Did you consider that?”
“Of course I did,” I lied. “Have you detected other threats?”
“I have not, Reaper Cain.”
“Run an analysis of everything we’ve seen and make sure to check vocal inflection of our negotiation session on the stairwell,” I said. “Tell me if you think he is operating alone.”
“Do you think he is?” X-37 asked.
“I don’t want to pollute your analysis.”
X-37 made a series of clicking sounds. “Give me some credit. I’m not that easy to influence. To answer your question, there is no evidence to indicate he has confederates. Additionally, you would have already encountered a blocking team when you tried to flee his sniper attack. This man is good. He would utilize a squad if he had one.”
“That’s what I thought.” My HUD showed a route to the crashed assault craft. I moved carefully, constantly searching for the sniper with the rough voice. “I wonder what he looks like up close.”
“Unfortunately, Reaper Cain, I suspect we will find out sooner than we would like,” X-37 said.
“I see the assault craft. Looks like it’s in pretty decent shape. I hope it went down after the looters had their way with this area,” I said. “Give me something that isn’t picked over.”
“If the vehicle remained intact, it will be difficult to access without codes or special tools,” X-37 said. “You will find it nearly impossible to force your way inside without your Reaper blade and explosives.”
“Then you better brush up on your code hacking algorithms.” I spotted the assault shuttle in the middle of the street, only a few yards from a major intersection near the edge of the spaceport. The pilot must have attempted an emergency landing and missed the landing zone.
The vehicle was a Maglan original, developed from a combination of Union, Xad, and Wallach technology. The fuselage was more oval than any of the designs before it, with stubby wings loaded with antigravity thrusters on the underside. The breakthrough was on the conservation of the wing’s aerodynamics despite the bulky thrusters.
It had a fin on the top that made it look like an ocean mammal, but that too was stubby and housed sensors and antennas. It didn’t look like much, but during the demonstrations of the vehicle, I’d seen how durable this piece was—an important feature to avoid losing the ability to communicate with allies and detect enemies.
Most of the weapons were on the nose of the ship. Side doors could be opened for gunners if they had them equipped that way. I fantasized briefly about taking one of the larger chain guns, but I doubted I could carry it without Archangel armor or the Black Phoenix exoskeleton.
I crossed the distance to the vessel, then moved to the rear of it where there was a trench carved in the concrete from the landing. I dropped down and waited for a bullet to whiz over my head.
Nothing happened. Crouching low, I moved closer to the vehicle and looked for a way to get inside. The damn thing was locked up as tight as a convent.
“Get working on those codes, X.”
“I began searching for access to this vehicle’s electronic
s the moment you found the trench,” X-37 said. “Apparently, it suffered a catastrophic power failure and I am struggling to find even a superficial power source.”
“That thing should have batteries made to last decades,” I said.
“There are dozens of scenarios that might have caused a drain on said batteries after it went down,” X-37 said. “I am running a new scan and looking for places I might introduce power to get things working again.”
“That’s what I like to hear, X.” I focused my attention outward, searching for my adversary and hoping there wouldn’t be a roving band of locals to complicate my situation.
I pressed as deep into the shadows reaching from the assault craft as possible. The moment my adversary turned his thermal imager this way, I’d be spotted, but I was hoping not to draw his attention to this area in general. With any kind of luck, he’d be on a different street searching in the wrong place.
Something moved down the street. I watched, confident that I had detected the rough-voiced sniper. So much for him searching the wrong street.
I didn’t need a lot of clues, visual or otherwise. You rarely saw an enemy in his or her entirety, whether you were dealing with a long-range confrontation or storming a room. It was always the toe of a boot sticking out from behind a door, or a shoulder, or the partial silhouette of a face caught in the backlight from a window.
“Do something, X. We’re out of time.” I didn’t bother to draw the knife. I was probably going to need both hands to crawl away from this disaster.
“I have located an access panel. The battery from your flashlight should be sufficient. Please move one point seven eight meters ahead of your current position, and look for a panel with these markings.”
My HUD displayed a lopsided chevron within a circle and the numbers 45 – 25. I scrambled forward and quickly located the panel.
“Remove it, then connect your flashlight battery to the wiring within,” X-37 said. He didn’t go into excessive detail. I could do the basics without his help.