by Jamie Sawyer
NEW DEVICE ON BATTLEFIELD NETWORK, my suit said. COMMENCE SYNCH?
Do it, I thought-commanded.
Now, this was more like it. I could feel the tank around me, could sense movement through the walls of the shanties and ruined structures of the Barrows. And not just this tank; I sensed the other three that made up the troop, moving across the district as well, clearing a safe route to the cosmodrome. All were engaging targets—both Directorate and Krell—and laying down a curtain of withering firepower.
Distance to the cosmodrome: two kilometres.
Just two klicks.
“Are we going to make this?” Dr. Locke asked me.
“Sure we are,” I said.
“Nothing can stand in our way,” Lopez reassured her. Now that she and Novak were outside the vehicle, we were using suit-to-suit comms again. “We’re Sim Ops.”
“We’re Jackals,” Feng said. “And never forget it.”
“Have you ever fired one of these things before?” Dr. Locke persisted. “The tank, I mean.”
“No,” I answered. “I haven’t. Have you?”
She shook her head, settled into the crew station beside me. “No.”
“Then be quiet and sit still.”
The smell of burning flesh from Dr. Locke’s exposure to the rain was almost overwhelming inside the cramped cabin.
“Hey,” Lopez said, “back in the hotel, what exactly happened to you, Feng?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just before Kwan got wasted,” she said. “He was spouting some garbage. Words that didn’t make sense.”
“Everything bastard says is rubbish,” Novak said.
Feng focused on driving the tank, but he shook his head. “I … I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure you do,” said Lopez. “Kwan was talking about ‘all-hallows eve,’ or something. What did he mean?”
“I didn’t hear,” Feng said.
It sounded a lot like Feng was trying to convince himself of that. His hands, even in his gloves, were shaking. Before I could ask any more questions, a dozen more hostiles appeared on the tank’s scanner.
“We’ve got company!” Lopez declared. She had already started picking off targets with her plasma rifle.
“I see them.”
Using the main gunnery console, I set most of the tank’s weaponry to auto-fire—it was made to pilot itself, using an advanced AI module, after all—but took over manual operation of the plasma turret. I fired at a nearby shanty, and watched as a half-dozen Directorate bodies were backlit by blue fire.
We turned a corner, rolled over another building. The tank’s frame shook, but held out. Plascrete toppled around us. The null-shield absorbed gunfire in the rear. I heard Novak howling, wolf-like, as the tank fired another volley of smart missiles. All around us, Directorate troops advanced and were cut down.
“We’ve got two dropships overhead!” Lopez yelled.
“Where’s the third?” I asked Zero.
“Already gone,” Zero said. “The fishes took care of it.”
“I’d say two dropships are enough of a problem though,” Lopez added.
The MBT’s sensors detected both surviving Dragons circling the building. They flew low, raking the structure with kinetics, pounding it with missiles. Although it felt like the whole damn thing was going to come down on top of us, the tank just rolled on and on, hull vibrating as it took impacts. Lopez and Novak both cursed.
“Hold on up there,” I said. “Feng, keep us in cover, and drive through whatever you like to get us to the cosmodrome.”
“Copy that,” Feng said, doubled over the controls. Was he actually shaking, or was that just the movement of the tank? It was hard to tell.
TANK A-16 OFFLINE, my armour told me. Meanwhile, tank A-17 was taking heavy fire. Tank A-18 was almost at the cosmodrome now, and I saw that it was engaging Krell primary-forms, their infected outlines unmistakable. Primary, secondary and tertiary forms were flooding the city, pouring out of bio-pods.
We slammed through another wall. The tank barely lost pace, crushing debris beneath the heavy grav-plates. Novak and Lopez held on, cursing loudly.
“I meant what I said,” Dr. Locke muttered, over the thump-thump of frag missiles discharging. “Back in the hotel.”
“Sure.”
“I need you to promise.” She tapped her shoulder, where the starmap was located. “It comes to it, you need to make sure that I don’t end up in Directorate hands. I’ve seen what they are capable of.”
“I’m kind of busy right now.”
“I mean it!” she implored.
She’d pulled back her respirator and goggles, exposing her blistered skin. Her survival suit was torn in a dozen places, exposing her shoulder. The map glittered there, powered by her body’s energy.
“This was meant for Lazarus,” she said, “but I think that I can trust you.”
The tank shuddered with an enormous explosion. A fire team in the rubble were equipped with a shoulder-mounted missile launcher—a TAC-76 support weapon. The tank fired a volley of self-guided flechettes in response, but it was too late. Fire rippled across the hull, sent us careening into another wall.
“Shit!” Lopez screamed.
“I have them,” said Novak.
He leapt from the tank and fired his plasma rifle on full-auto through the smoke and debris. Novak cut down the tac team, and the tank ploughed on through the Barrows, threatening to leave him behind.
“Novak, get back on the fucking tank!” I shouted. “Feng, keep us moving!”
WARNING! WARNING! SECURITY BREACH DETECTED, my suit told me. My HUD began to fill with error messages, broadcast directly from the tank. SYSTEM INCURSION.
And now, whether I wanted to admit it or not, it was undeniable that Feng was shaking. Something was very wrong with him.
“What are you doing, Feng?” I asked, grabbing his shoulder.
SYSTEM BREACH! INCOMING TRANSMISSION.
One of the Dragons, its hull smoking, chin-gun still spitting rounds, hovered a safe distance overhead. I saw it with the tank’s eyes, watched as the holo-image of Tang’s face appeared, projected above the Barrows. I took some small pleasure in the fact that she had been injured in the dropship crash, and by the way her face was messed up, pretty badly at that. She was bleeding from lacerations across the cheek, and most of what remained was burning from exposure to the rain. This transport had obviously recovered her, and no doubt Kwan, from the wreckage back at the hotel.
Tang’s voice spilled out of the dropship, amplified so that it resonated across the Barrows. The tank’s AI threw code across the main console, attempting to translate the transmission. Nonsensical sentences appeared on the viewer.
“Azimuth, faith, fire. All-hallows eve, by the light of the cold night. Dark is the sun’s wet embrace. The science of violence calls to you.” Then, in Standard: “Come alive, my son.”
Everything around me seemed to stop.
The dropship gently quaked on its axis.
The metal in Feng’s head.
Feng sat bolt upright. He jerked the control sticks of the MBT, and the tank careened starboard. We hit a pillar. The hull roared, and truck-sized chunks of building came down on us. Lopez was still on the outside of the hull, and she shouted in protest. There was nothing I could do to help her. Get clear! I wanted to shout. But all I could focus on was Feng.
“What is he doing …?” Dr. Locke started.
I didn’t answer. My hand was already on my sidearm, the plasma pistol unlocked from the mag-strip on my thigh.
I was simulant fast, but so was Feng.
The tank’s cabin was filled with noise: alarms whining, the engine squealing in protest, hull groaning with the force of the collision. Tri-D alerts were being projected from every console, plastered across the inside of my HUD.
But all of that was background, just static to distract me.
Feng was the main event.
Private Chu Feng—member of
the Alliance Army Sim Ops Programme, Jackal, friend—was activated.
That was the purpose of the metal in Feng’s head. A neural-plant, Maberry had called it. Physically, the device was in Feng’s body aboard the Firebird. The activation code hit Feng’s simulated ears, and the simulant down on Kronstadt relayed the string of words up the neural-link, to his real skin.
Feng’s right arm twitched, as though he was no longer in control of it. Which, I guess, he wasn’t. His head snapped in my direction.
I had my pistol up. I fired off a pulse, aiming for his shoulder.
In the closed space of the tank’s cabin, it should’ve been impossible to miss. But Feng twisted sideways, and the plasma bolt hit the tank’s drive console. The tank veered, crashed into a wall. Came to a stop.
“What’s happening in there?” Lopez asked over the comms.
Lopez had survived the crash. Novak had pulled back to the tank. The Jackals’ bio-signs were stable: no serious injuries.
“Get in here!” I ordered.
Feng reached for his own pistol. The weapon unlocked with a loud schnick.
I slammed a fist into his arm. The armour plating on his wrist deformed, and he dropped the weapon.
“What are you doing, Feng? Stop this!”
Feng grabbed his mono-knife. The blade lit, bright. He swiped it, towards me, moving faster now.
I tried to dodge, but there was nowhere to move inside the tank, no way to avoid the blow. The blade sank into the chest-plate of my armour, the cutting edge piercing the medi-suite dispenser on my torso, working its way right through the Alliance badge on my breast.
“Stop!”
“You’re hurting her!” Dr. Locke yelled. “Why are you doing this?”
But Feng wasn’t listening. He pinned me to a stanchion beside the crew hatch, both hands reaching for the hilt of the blade. It sank deeper into the armour plating, the powered edge sufficient to pierce my suit.
“Feng!”
Determination was blatant on his face. He ground his teeth, beads of sweat forming on his brow. His eyes—visible through the face-plate of his helmet—were black pools: pupils completely dilated.
“Fight it!” I screamed.
I forced one hand around the hilt of the knife, in an effort to stop him from ending me. Used the other to form a fist and slammed it against his helmet, so hard that the face-plate cracked. To my left, Dr. Locke was crawling up the interior wall of the cabin, trying desperately to find some way out of the vehicle.
The crew hatch groaned open. Lopez and Novak peered inside.
Feng didn’t even respond. The knife moved a millimetre farther, and I could feel the heat of the thing against my undersuit.
“Get him off me!”
Novak ducked low, grabbed for Feng’s shoulder. There was such little room to move that he had limited leverage, but he managed to grasp Feng and slam him against the damaged console.
I breathed a sigh of relief—yanked the smoking knife free of my chest. Lopez’s mouth was still an O of surprise, unable to comprehend what she was seeing.
“He just went crazy,” Dr. Locke said. “He lost it!”
“He’s been activated,” I said. My medi-suite was busted, fluid weeping from the torso plate like blood from a wound. The only explanation I could muster was, “Feng has metal in his head.”
Novak and Feng were going toe to toe. The Russian planted a fist into Feng’s face, smashing the remainder of his visor. Back against the cabin wall. Novak went to punch him again, almost filling the tight space, but this time Feng rolled out from under him. He swept a foot at Novak’s knee.
Novak yowled and staggered backwards, his left leg twisting in a way that would probably be debilitating if he weren’t in a sim. Feng followed up with his left elbow, the limb turned into a weapon by his armour.
But Novak wasn’t stupid. He followed the momentum of the kick to his leg and ducked beneath Feng’s elbow. Then he pulled up his right arm, a mono-blade in his hand. The knife glowed as it ignited. Novak brought it up, towards Feng’s rib cage—
I stepped in. Grabbed Novak’s knife arm.
“No! We can’t kill him!”
Novak fought me. “He is Directorate!”
Lopez threw off her indecision and shot Feng in the right leg. Without so much as a sound, he collapsed backwards over another crew station. His armour was shattered, bright red blood pouring from the injury.
“If you kill him,” Lopez said, “he’ll extract.”
“So?” Novak said. He was still amped with battle-fury, just looking for something—anything—to kill.
“Zero’s up there on the Firebird,” I said. “And so are we.”
“Ah, shit,” Novak said, finally understanding.
Feng was sprawled across the console. He didn’t look so much defeated as just readying himself for the next round. Even as we watched him, he went to stand up on his damaged leg. His bio-signs were spiking, alerts crawling all over my HUD.
“Then how do I stop him?” Novak said, as though this was suddenly all his problem. “Bad words?”
I looked down at the fluid leaking from my medi-suite. It gave me an idea.
Like most Sim Ops combat-suits, the Pathfinder armour was equipped with a neural-link. As squad commander, I could remotely access the medi-suite on every team-member’s suit. Dispense sedative, I ordered, as the Feng-puppet barrelled towards Novak. Give him everything you’ve got.
WARNING! BEYOND SAFE OPERATIONAL LIMITS! COMBAT CAPACITY WILL BE IMPAIRED—
Do it.
The drugs hit Feng’s bloodstream immediately. He shuddered. His eyes rolled back in his head.
Lopez caught him as he fell.
“Good night, Feng,” she said.
“He cannot be allowed to extract,” I said. “Not until we all do.” I opened a comms channel to Zero. “Firebird, do you copy?”
“We copy,” said Zero. “I see that the MBTs are all gone.”
“That’s an affirmative. Listen, we don’t have much time. Feng has been compromised.”
“Say again?” Zero replied.
“He’s been activated by the Directorate. I can explain later. Right now, I need you to keep him sealed in his simulator-tank. Use a sedative at your end, if you have to.”
The downers in Feng’s blood would only sedate his simulant. He’d need an extra dose to his real skin once we broke the neural-link.
“Is he okay?” Zero asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Keep his neural-link open. If he extracts, do not make contact with him.”
“Solid copy,” Zero said, although I could tell that she wanted to know more.
“We’re proceeding with mission plan. Jenkins out.”
“Zero out.”
“What do we do?” Lopez queried.
“It’s not over until we’re dead,” I said. “We go on. We’ll proceed on foot; it’s not far to the cosmodrome.”
Lopez didn’t dissent, but stated the facts: “We’re still a klick out. Even if we get there, are we sure we’ll be able to take a transport?”
“We have to try.”
I plodded out of the MBT’s open hatch. The Directorate advanced through the ruins of the building, the Dragons’ searchlights probing its remains. I fired off a volley of plasma, caught one of the Shadows, but another two appeared, forcing me back into the cover of the tank. Krell skulked at the edge of my vision, my suit identifying primary-forms—reduced to thralls by the infection—through the dense smoke.
“It’s too hot out there,” Lopez said. “We have to pull out.”
Dr. Locke met my eyes. “I understand,” she said.
“We’ll keep going—”
“No, you won’t. Lazarus wouldn’t have it any other way. He wouldn’t want the Directorate to take my intelligence.”
“You barely even knew the man—” I started.
“But I knew his legend.”
I sighed. The shriek of advancing Krell was audible on the air, an
d another bio-pod screamed by above. I cast an eye over the tactical scanner. Both remaining dropships continued to circle overhead.
“We’re finished,” Dr. Locke decided. “We have to face it.”
“I’ll make that call,” I said. “If we don’t get you off-world, Locke, this is all for nothing. The galaxy will burn. Warlord will win.”
And Riggs too. It’s him that you really want to see dead.
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Dr. Locke said with an air of resignation to her voice. She ripped back the entire arm of her suit, fully exposing the starmap. “Look at me. Please.”
Then I realised exactly what she was doing. My HUD read the data embedded in her skin, in her flesh. The map was much more than a tattoo. The visor of my helmet was almost overloaded with information as it read the subdermal data.
“Capture the image,” she said. “Use your helmet.”
The mission wasn’t over. Not yet, not while we could still get this information off Kronstadt. I scanned the whole map. The amount of data contained in the graphic was incredible. The whole operation took a few seconds—during which the Directorate began to renew their attack, and my bio-scanner continued to fill with hostiles. Once it was done, I activated my suit’s transmitter: sent the package to the Firebird.
“I wish there was something I could say,” I told Dr. Locke.
“Seek the Aeon,” Locke told me. “That’ll be enough. Do you still have that grenade?”
“Of course.”
All around us, the Krell and Directorate clashed. The ground rumbled with incoming projectiles, the Dragon dropships gunning down bio-forms as they converged on our location.
“You want to do the honours?” I asked as I produced the frag grenade. At this proximity, the blast would catch us all. The Jackals would extract, and Locke would be killed.
“You take care of it.” Dr. Locke smiled. “Make your own legend, Lieutenant Jenkins.”
The world turned white.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SLEEPER: ACTIVATED
And then I was back in the simulator-tank.
“Secure Feng!” I ordered.
Some impressive lacerations pocked my chest, stomach, limbs, face—pretty much everywhere—but while the agony of being killed by a grenade was enough to slow me down, it wasn’t enough to take me out. Obviously, none of the injuries were real: they were just ghostly stigmata, reminders of the real thing. I dragged my sorry ass out of the simulator.