by Sam Bradbury
No, as it turned out. And what an asshole I was to ever wish for different.
The Helghast had collaborators within our operation, so that when their cruisers entered our atmosphere and the order was given to fire on them, the systems malfunctioned. Their cruisers were able to deploy Overlord dropships and ground troops began the first wave of the attack. First blood to them.
Our infantry had been mobilized the moment our screens picked up the invasion, but we were still caught with our pants round our ankles. Visari sent his youngest and most inexperienced troops against ISA forces, wave after wave of them, cannon fodder. They kept us busy while shock troopers – his more experienced and skilled infantry – secured other areas of the city. In a matter of hours the whole of Vekta City was a war zone, pockets of ISA resistance fighting wherever possible, some civilians taking up arms, most simply fleeing as the Helghast advanced with a ruthless, deadly efficiency.
And they came with the anger and bitterness of the ages flowing through their veins. They came with Visari’s speeches ringing in their ears, his words reminding them that we the humans had stolen from them, had oppressed them – that Vekta was their home planet and that it had been unjustly taken from them. They were brutal in exercising that anger. Fighting with the ISA in the northern part of the city, word reached us that civilians were being ruthlessly slaughtered. I thought of Mom, Dad and Amy, and fought on. I was seeing action for the first time, using live ammunition on live targets. Shit had got real all of a sudden. When a bullet smacked into the grunt by my side and his jaw disappeared, then the next one sheared off the top of his skull and a fine spray of blood and brain matter landed on my face – that’s when it got real. That moment I very badly wanted to be back training or on manoeuvres, or scoping out the honeys at checkpoints, or growing a beard in front of a screen. I was fighting for the survival of my planet and my family, but mainly I was fighting for my own.
Growing up and then joining the ISA I had the idea that the army was a portal to adventure, and that battle was a time of heroism and comradeship. I believed all that recruitment baloney, remember? Sure I pretended to be cynical like everybody else. But underneath it all we loved that stuff about being all that you could be. Wouldn’t have been there otherwise. Me I thought that the army was the ultimate finger to the world – a kiss-off to wage slaves like my dad who sat in front of screens all day, sipping lukewarm coffee from plastic cups, kissing the wife in the morning, again at night, breeding rugrats and watching a life that had once seemed so full of promise reduced to numbers on a bedside clock.
Not for me, I thought. The army was my escape, battle its greatest statement. That’s where I would be truly free.
Bullshit.
It was all bullshit.
Battle’s not about heroism and comradeship; it’s about survival. Battle’s not about doing your duty; it’s staying sane and staying alive – doing whatever you have to do to stay alive. You kill enemy troops not in search of glory or in defence of your planet, but because you want to leave the battle zone in an APC and not in a bodybag. There is no poetry or romance in war; it’s brutal and ugly and terrifying and it turns men into animals – shrieking, screaming and stampeding animals destroying everything in their path.
Eventually I’d change my thinking on that – and I’d realize that changing your thinking is what marks the difference between a rookie and a combat vet – but right then that’s what I believed. That war was just survival.
I guess you know how that war turned out. The Helghast were beaten. Only just. They took one of our nuclear weapons, Red Dust, during their retreat. But they were defeated all the same, and in years to come kids in Modern History will be reading about Jan Templar, whose actions stopped Vekta being overrun. They’ll be told he was a hero and I guess he was – there has to be at least one, right?
It was only later, after the fighting had stopped, that I found out what happened to my family.
My father had tried to protect Mom and Amy, so the Helghast used a bolt gun to nail him to the door. And as he hung there, crucified, they killed my mother. Amy they left alive, but catatonic. These days she sits in a chair in a psychiatric hospital, rocking back and forth, with lunchtime rusk drying on her chin.
During the invasion over 100,000 men, women and children were slaughtered by the Helghast. Excuse me if I don’t break it down into figures for shootings, burnings and beheadings. Let’s just say we had never known such savagery on Vekta, and after the invasion our world was consumed with rage and grief and paranoia and thoughts of vengeance. On Helghan Visari licked his wounds and called our civilian casualties collateral damage in order to divert attention away from what they really were, which was war crimes, while on Vekta the talk was of reprisals, and the ever-present rumour of the ISA retaliation.
The rumour was on point. We were planning retaliation and it was called Operation Archangel. It was during preparations for the operation that Templar brought me into Special Forces. His idea was to put together an organization of small squads, four or five men each. Hand-picked – there would be no more traitors in our ranks if we could help it – they were chosen for their skill, courage, initiative and resourcefulness. How the hell I ended up there I’ll never know, but Templar saw something in me and I was attached to Alpha where I ended up second-in-command to Rico. Thanks to his personal experience of being betrayed by two officers, Rico was a bit of a firework to put it mildly, but Templar trusted him and in return Rico trusted Templar.
So that was us: Rico in command; me, second-in-command, then Shawn Natko and my old buddy Dante Garza. We were being assembled for the biggest military operation our worlds had ever known. Objective: to bring Visari to justice. To end the war.
The night before the operation was due to start I visited Amy in the psych hospital, to maybe say goodbye. A duty nurse stopped me and I read her name badge: E. Purrslip.
‘You’re Amy’s older brother?’ she asked. Life had got to her. The psych hospital had got to her. She was pale and drawn and there was no longer light in her eyes.
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘Tomas Sevchenko?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, puffing out my chest. Did she recognize me? I wondered.
She gave me an appraising look. ‘Well, you should button up your coat, Mr Sevchenko,’ she said at last. ‘Amy’s likely to have an episode if she sees your uniform. She becomes hysterical when she sees soldiers and uniforms.’
And with that she went, pumps squeaking on the corridor floor, and I looked down at myself, ashamed. What was I thinking, coming here in uniform? Jesus.
In the end I just gazed at Amy through the doors of the recreation room, then left. The next day I went to war.
We dropped in Pyrrhus. Our aim was to try to capture the city and, though we met fierce resistance the moment we landed, things were proceeding according to plan – until the Helghast switched the lights on: electric arc towers powered by a rare element called petrusite.
Let me tell you about petrusite. Volatile as all hell, it takes its charge from the air, condensing it into a high-voltage and very powerful force that the Higs had mainly been using as an energy source. On our team was a scientist, Evelyn Batton. She realized that the Helghast were harnessing the power of petrusite and using massive amounts of it against us – defensively, in the case of the arc towers; offensively in the case of arc cannons. During the operation Evelyn was captured along with Natko and my old buddy Garza, and, attempting a rescue, Rico and I came up on Colonel Radec interrogating them. Just as I was trying to work out a way to outflank them, things got heated and Rico rushed in, like an asshole. Garza was killed in the firefight.
Shit was getting bad then and we attempted to regroup at our cruiser, New Sun, but we were boarded by the enemy, and Radec mounted an assault on the bridge. He wanted the codes for Red Dust and he got them. Killing Evelyn and wounding Templar first, he managed to download them from a console then left the stricken New Sun. But he made
a mistake, Radec did. He left Templar alive. We can only guess at what happened next, but it seems certain that it was Templar who sent the New Sun crashing into the Tharsis Refinery, destroying the Helghast petrusite grid.
With the defence grid deactivated, we had the smell of victory in our nostrils. But it was then that Radec detonated the bomb. Most of our forces went with it as did thousands of Helghast, but I guess to Radec and Visari they were dispensable, more collateral damage and a small price to pay for liquidating the invading ISA force.
There was still one more chance, which was why Rico and I decided to mount an attack on Visari Palace and hopefully end this thing once and for all by taking Scolar Visari captive.
Well, you already know how that turned out. And I guess with the fact that Rico was responsible not only for Visari’s death but also indirectly responsible for Garza’s, you can understand why I considered putting a bullet in him.
I guess, with Rico being Rico, you can guess why I never had any intention of going through with it.
I didn’t know it then, but pretty soon it wouldn’t matter what the hell I’d decided.
Chapter Five
We had to fight our way back to Narville. Every inch of the way. Find cover. Squeeze the trigger. Short, controlled bursts. It was exhausting, brutal and hand-to-hand at times. The Higs were throwing everything they had at us. Someone up top thought that by throwing everything at us their sheer numbers would overwhelm us, but that guy whoever he was had to be a politician or a despot, not a soldier, because that’s not how war works and it stopped working that way centuries ago. I’d take one trained, committed and disciplined soldier over a hundred rookies any time. Any time.
Plus, we were determined. And the closer we got the more determined we became. And we were redlining determination now because we were closer to the river, and that meant we were closer to the crater and therefore to the extraction point and why not go the whole nine yards – we were closer to getting back home.
But it also made us closer to the epicentre of the blast and Red Dust was living up to its name. The air was thick with it. It coated us with grime and clogged our nostrils and seared our lungs. We were tired. Weighed down with body armour, ammo and our rifles, it’s a miracle we stayed as alert as we did. But we did. Which was why Rico and I saw the Helghast before they saw us.
We came up on them through the wreckage of a once-proud building, steel tendrils poking from its carcass. On the other side of the wall, huge shards of tortured metal thrust from the ground like knife blades, glowing red. Still searing hot either from the blast or some other ordnance – something that had opened a crater in the earth.
And it looked as though the Helghast wanted a piece of whatever was in that crater, because here on the other side was an Overlord dropship. We saw it at the same time and instantly crouched, at once becoming part of the rusty landscape, both silently wondering if we’d been spotted. I shifted, brought my rifle forward and looked down the sights at what was below. Flicked the safety off. Not far from the dropship were three of the enemy: what looked like a scientist, as well as two hazmat troopers, and they hadn’t heard us or they’d have been making for cover right now rather than continuing to do what they were doing, which was …
Bad.
The petrusite kind of bad. In the centre of the pit was a lake of it – and it was green. Green light danced and sparkled across its surface. A pool of colour within the rubble of the blasted city that would have been beautiful if we didn’t know exactly what petrusite could do. And that was the regular petrusite. This particular stuff – this was different to what we’d encountered before. It was more alive somehow. More active. Certainly the Helghast were taking no chances. The two hazmat troopers were wearing radiation suits, as was the scientist. Irradiated petrusite? Rico and I shared a look, maybe coming to the same conclusion at the same time. We watched as one of the canisters was offered to the reservoir, dipped in and filled. In response the amorphous green glow became even more energetic, frantic almost. As though it resented being disturbed and was fighting back like a dog resisting on a lead, gnashing its teeth and snapping its jaws. Then suddenly the tendrils of energy entwined round both canister and tongs, rearing up before the scientist had a chance to react and for a moment it looked as though he might be pulled, screaming, into the river of dancing petrusite, until one of the troopers moved forward to steady him. Their relief palpable, they withdrew the canister, which automatically sealed, and the three of them began to make their way back to the dropship. Their backs were to us now and I levelled the rifle at them, Rico doing the same.
‘Let’s get down there,’ he said.
‘That’s not our objective, Rico. We’ve got to stick to Narville’s orders this time.’
He didn’t argue – there’s a first time for everything. Then I saw that he was regarding his gloved hand. On it liquid seemed to shimmer.
‘What the hell is this stuff?’ he said, eyebrows knitted close together.
I said nothing, instead watching as the dropship took off and taking note of the logo on the side – the logo of Jorhan Stahl’s Stahl Arms.
I knew about Stahl Arms. The corporation that made the StA-52 assault rifles used by the Hig grunts. But what kind of weapons were they making now?
From not far away came the crackle of gunfire and we scrambled to our feet, nodded at each other to go.
Time to rejoin the battle. Time to find Narville, cross the river and get off this rock.
Chapter Six
It felt like an age, but we found him, and Christ knows how, but we arrived in one piece. Trouble was we were the only ones at all glad about that. When we finally hooked up with Narville, he looked us over like we were a pair of cockroaches and I had the feeling it was more than just our lack of regulation military headgear that had put the stick up his ass. Just the sight of Rico and me riled him. Like he blamed us for getting him into this mess.
‘Sevchenko,’ he shouted over the noise of engines, ‘glad you could join us.’ To Rico he nodded, barely acknowledging him.
We started walking, past the wounded laid out on the road. One grunt screaming; looked like a tank had crushed his legs. Probably one of ours, poor bastard. No amount of blood plasma was going to help him. Two medics knelt over him, shaking their heads hopelessly. By their side Doc Hanley was using a defib on an infrantryman whose helmet was shattered, the white bone of his skull exposed. I looked away.
Around us towered the remains of buildings, raining debris. Everywhere lay bodies and piles of rubble. Once-ornate railings had been twisted into grotesque shapes and Helghast flags still fluttered, blackened and tattered. I took a look at what was left of the convoy. We were not far from the bridge now and I could see it stretching over a river that steamed, as though shrouded in fog. The roadway was a jumble of broken-down and burnt-out vehicles, of ruptured concrete and shapeless metal, like some giant had slammed his fist down onto it.
And waiting to cross it were our tanks. Archers. They were light and fast – and shit-hot at dealing with enemy infantry. Not so effective with anything over thirty tons, though. And looking down the line there weren’t too many of them into the bargain.
‘Is this everybody?’ I asked, trying to keep the disbelief from my voice.
Narville looked over the top of his map. If he had looked pale and drawn back at the palace, well he was a picture of health then compared to the way he looked now. The battle from there to here had added years to him.
‘The damn convoy’s scattered all down the river,’ he said, unable to hide the note of resignation. ‘We’re pushing through so we can secure the crater for the evac.’ He indicated the tanks.
I looked at Rico just as he was looking at me. We had this habit of doing that, like we had some kind of psychic link. He’d be thinking what I was thinking, which was that we should wait for the rest of the column to join us. Sure, I could see what was on Narville’s mind. After all, we had three cruisers engaged in a battle over
the crater and though they were heavily armed and the Helghast no longer had the element of surprise, the Higs had the numbers. Our cruisers couldn’t hold out for too much longer.
But even so.
Hanging back, I whispered to Rico, ‘I’m not sure this is a good idea. The thinner we spread our numbers the easier it is for the Helghast to pick us off.’
‘Yeah, good point,’ replied Rico from the side of his mouth.
But the difference between Rico and me is that I keep this shit to myself. Rico on the other hand …
‘Sir, with all due respect, I’d like to suggest –’ he called to Narville, who immediately wheeled round to confront him.
‘No. I think I made it very clear that I don’t want to hear a single word out of your mouth,’ he yelled.
That shut Rico up.
‘Sev,’ roared Narville, ‘take Velasquez and his mouth out of my face. I need to have you on point. We’re going to use the Exo to clear the road.’
And that’s the thing about the military. You got any uncertainties or doubts, you keep them to yourself. You just secure that shit. And then you carry on with the task of babysitting a big mech to clear a bridge strewn with barricades and enemy infantry.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
As we began to walk away, Narville bawled at us, ‘Pick up your feet. The closer we get to that crater, the closer we get to home.’
Rico would be thinking the same as me: that we had a long way to go yet.
We reached the Exo. Inside it was Dorweiler and he had to be hotter than all hell in there. Exoskeletons are one-man, two-legged mobile battle suits. They’re heavily armoured and heavily armed: a chain gun, steel claws and missile battery. They’re also highly mobile, so perfect for operations like this one, with debris and wreckage to negotiate and clear. Big as the Exo was, though, there wasn’t much room for the pilot, and inside it, squished into the central cavity like meat rations in a tin, was Dorweiler. Partial to the odd cheeseburger or three, Dorweiler hated Exo detail, but got it because he was one of the best. Not everybody can handle piloting the battle suit at the same time as managing chain guns and a semi-automatic missile battery. Dorweiler was one of those who could, and since they weren’t about to redesign the Exoskeleton around either his stature or his diet that meant he had to suffer.