Killzone, Ascendancy

by Sam Bradbury

  We moved out, going fast but as silently as possible – out of the clearing and into the jungle, which danced and shone around us, assaulting us with new sights, sounds and smells. The Higs were out there. They had to be. And the way it looked they’d neutralized Bandit Recon.

  Again, though: there was no Helghast air support. No blanket bombing. No tracer fire ripping up the jungle.

  ‘It’s too quiet,’ said Kowalski, echoing my thoughts as we moved through the vegetation scanning for petrusite spiders, burster plants. Anything that crawled or slithered or looked like it might snap. And of course …

  Higs.

  We saw them before they saw us, most likely a small recon patrol. There would be a troop transport around here somewhere, probably one of the new spiders we’d seen back in Pyrrhus – what seemed like a lifetime ago. This was just the kind of terrain they were built for …

  And what do you know? They weren’t Helghast military. Sure looked like them at first glance, but no – they were Stahl’s men. Dead men, soon to be. We picked them off. But did it up close and personal, with knives and death grips. Then we saw it: the troop transport, sitting in the middle of a clearing, and there, on the other side of the LZ was the rest of the squad. We crept into their area, taking more of them out with silenced shots. One was a capture trooper, on his uniform the logo of Stahl Arms. It was capture troopers I’d seen taking Gedge. I felt a worm of disquiet in my stomach.

  We left the Hig troop transport crew dead and moved on, getting closer to the uplink, when suddenly we were stopped by a noise at our twelve. Then we saw one of our guys – Bandit Four – running across a small, craggy clearing. On him in an instant was a capture trooper, who took him down and disabled him, then picked up his unconscious body and slung it over his shoulder. Other Higs were arriving. Now I saw more troop transports, and I laid a suppressing hand on Kowalski’s M82 when he brought it to his shoulder.

  ‘No,’ I whispered. I didn’t want Bandit Four taken any more than he did, but we had to get the uplink back – and we couldn’t afford to give away our position with the numbers against us.

  We watched as Bandit Four was heaved into a nearby dropship, and the air was full of engine noise as the ship took off.

  We looked at each other, frowning, then carried on, making our way through the jungle as quickly as before until, about one and a half klicks later, we came up on the ridge above the wreck of the Valiant – a chunk of her, at least, what had once been the comms centre. There in the ship’s gashed-open belly was the radio uplink, somehow more shiny than the twisted and burnt metal that surrounded it. Also among the wreckage was the odd bit of evidence that Bandit Recon had made their camp there: a bed roll, one or two billycans. But there was no sign of the troops themselves. The place was quiet.

  We were about to climb down when suddenly there was the roar of dropships and we flung ourselves out of sight as the air above the wreck filled with Overlords – three of them, all bearing the logo of Stahl Arms. Infantry lines unfurled. Down them came Hig grunts.

  I keyed my headset and toggled to base. ‘Captain Narville, this is Sevchenko. Come in,’ I said into the pick-up.

  The headset clicked. On came Narville. ‘Speak to me, soldier. Do you have a visual on the uplink?’

  ‘Yeah, I see it all right. But, sir, there’s a massive military build-up here. They’re obviously not here for a downed cruiser. You need to evacuate the camp immediately.’

  ‘Sergeant, please don’t make me repeat myself. It’s beyond necessary that I have that uplink. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Can do.’ My heart sank. Fucking Narville. Couldn’t see the threat when it was right there in front of his face. I turned to Kowalski. ‘Okay, I’ll deal with the uplink. You get back to base. Try to convince Narville to get everybody out of there.’

  I watched him go, then crept forward, closer to the wreck of the Valiant. The Hig troops had begun to disperse outwards, creating a perimeter, and they weren’t paying as close attention to their LZ as they should have been, so I was able to climb down into the crater unobserved and found cover between some rocks – where what I saw made me catch my breath.

  There, standing among the broken metal shards of the Valiant, were three Hig soldiers, obviously enjoying themselves – having the time of their lives at the expense of an ISA guy kneeling hurt at their feet.

  Poor kid. It was Bandit Six, I was sure of it. He knelt as though trying to catch his breath, his head hung, ropes of blood and snot trailing from his mouth and nose. The men were yelling at him, tormenting him. One of them held a weapon, a huge thing that I’d never seen before, with some of the same characteristics as the VC5 Arc Rifle but much bigger, more evil-looking, and he was shouting something at Bandit Six. Then grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to his feet.

  ‘I said get up,’ he growled.

  Bandit Six was looking at him, barely able to focus, his head lolling with pain. He was thrown to the deck, snivelling as he was kicked.

  ‘You’d better go. Run,’ jeered the first Hig.

  The second chuckled and hefted the arc rifle. The effort of doing so meant he had to lean back slightly as Bandit Six got to his feet and with a cry of despair began to run. Right towards where I was hidden.

  Our eyes met for a moment and I saw the recognition register on his face. Then the rifleman opened fire. It didn’t matter that he was off balance and barely aiming the rifle. The petrusite found its target, knocking Bandit Six to the ground, where the lethal energy swarmed over him. He screamed. Looking up, he saw me again and his hand was outstretched, trying to find mine. I reached forward and suddenly he was hoisted away from me. A second bolt from the petrusite had taken him and was lifting him, his entire body now engulfed by swirling, glowing energy. Screaming, his eyes bugged. Blood began seeping from his ears and nostrils and mouth. His skin appeared to ripple, twist and distend as though in zero-gravity training. Or as though his entire body was being incinerated from the inside to the out. Finally his eyeballs burst and thick purple fluid gushed from his nose until at last he simply exploded, blood, flesh and other matter showering me in my hiding place.

  ‘I love this thing,’ cried the Helghast soldier, holding the arc rifle like it was a prize catch.

  I touched my finger to my face and looked at Bandit Six’s blood. I’m not a vengeful guy, believe it or not. I knew that most enemy grunts were just like ISA grunts. They were guys doing a job, and they had families – wives, kids, girlfriends – just like anyone else. Being a fanatic, it doesn’t stop you loving what’s yours. But these three – these three had lost their humanity. I watched them take off in a dropship, leaving a small squad behind them, then took a hold on myself. First job was to get that uplink working and I was in no mood to pussy about.

  I moved into the crash site and took them out one by one: assault infantry and capture troopers. I kept my temper in check. Kept it together. Tried not to be vengeful and cruel, emotional or careless. Stayed cold and professional. Until the crash site was clear once again and – for the time being, at least – was under ISA control. Now I moved to the uplink, hit keys on the console display and felt a surge of relief as the screen glowed a comforting blue. Numbers spun, readings flicked on and off. A link blinked into life and Earth came online. I patched in Narville, and pictured him standing in the comms room, hunched over the uplink console. Over my headset came a voice from Earth, sounding distant amid the interference.

  ‘Earth verify – uplink lima – verify command code …’

  Narville came on. ‘Blue Command, this is Captain Narville. Verify delta echo two three kilo.’

  In return there was static.

  ‘Blue Command,’ said Narville, just the hint of concern in his voice. To get this far then lose the link again – that would be the ultimate bitch. ‘Do you read?’

  ‘Go ahead, Captain Narville,’ said General Bradshaw. It was a voice I knew well.

  ‘General, thank God. The Higs are kn
ocking at our door. Can the fleet still find us if we have to move?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘General?’ said Narville.

  In a sombre voice the general said, ‘Captain, listen to me. As of last night, the Vektan colonial government has capitulated. All hostilities are to be ceased immediately.’

  My stomach lurched and when he recovered his voice Narville sounded as shocked as I felt. ‘What are you talking about?’ he managed.

  ‘The war is over, Captain,’ said the general matter-of-factly. ‘You and your men will have to surrender to the Helghast forces so we can negotiate your release as prisoners of war.’

  ‘Forgive me, General, but are you out of your mind? This is the Helghast we’re talking about. You have no idea what they do to their prisoners.’

  Surrender? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I went cold.

  ‘Those are your orders, Captain,’ continued the general. ‘Stand down and surrender. The Helghast have agreed to abide by the rules of war – you will be treated humanely.’

  I thought of Bandit Six. I’d seen the humane way the Helghast treated their prisoners. Were Gedge and Bandit Four being treated humanely? Somehow I doubted it.

  That moment the screen flashed a warning. The signal had been intercepted. ‘Captain,’ I yelled, ‘they’ve picked up our signal. You need to stop this transmission right now.’

  Christ they were fast. No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I saw dropships in the air above me. They were heading west – heading towards the camp.

  ‘Sir, get the hell out of there,’ I called, ‘but don’t surrender. Tell me you’re not going to surrender.’

  ‘Copy that, Sev,’ said Narville.

  Suddenly bullets raked across my position and I was sent scuttling for cover. Not for long, though. I’d had enough of this shit. We’d been betrayed by Earth; we were being left to rot or die at the hands of the Helghast torture masters. I was mad now.

  I tossed a frag and felt nothing but grim satisfaction as two Higs died screaming, perforated by shrapnel. I put my head down and started running back towards base. Any troops I came across along the way – they died. Until I found myself coming upon one of ours, a grunt lying on the deck.

  Shit, it was Kowalski. He was drenched in blood, trying to speak. I knelt to him, took his hand and shushed him as he breathed his last breath in short shallow gasps, and when he died I put my hand to his eyelids and closed them.

  Another guy dead. Another visitor to my bad dreams.

  This is bullshit. That’s what Rico would say if he was here now. This is bullshit. He’d be right.

  I got to my feet, called into my headset, ‘Captain, this is Sevchenko. Do you read me?’ He came online. In the background I could hear gunfire, screaming and explosions. They’d found us. At last, after all those months of searching, they had found us – and by the sounds of things were annihilating us.

  ‘Captain Narville,’ I called, ‘do you read?’

  ‘Little busy right now, Sergeant,’ he replied.

  ‘Okay. Okay. Hold on. I’m on my way.’

  ‘Negative,’ he snapped, ‘we’re evacuating, the base is overrun. Proceed to the rendezvous.’

  No way. No way was I doing that.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Not a chance.’

  I had to reach them. Had to be with my men.

  I stood. ‘Double-time it, Sev,’ I said to myself, and set off, coming closer to the base now, starting to see our grunts making their way away from it, some kind of evac in place at least. I saw Doc Hanley, his arm round a wounded soldier, helping him away from the clearing. Behind him came Junior, doing the same. Others were helping sick and wounded men. They pointed me back along the path in the direction of the camp from where I could hear staccato gunfire and the thump-thump of mortar rounds landing, more screaming. Now came more of our ISA guys.

  ‘Narville’s back at the base, holding it while we evac,’ screamed one at me, just as an enemy dropship roared overhead.

  I stopped. In one direction went our boys, moving to the rendezvous point. In the other direction lay Narville. And who knows why the captain had decided to make a final stand. Rico would say it was because he was a pussy who’d finally found some guts from somewhere. But I thought different. Narville wanted to make amends. He wanted to be the captain who stayed behind and died so his men could escape, rather than the captain who failed them, and I could see that. I could understand that.

  Maybe I should have left him to it, but something stopped me. Something in me wouldn’t let him die like that, and I dashed down into the base, now thick with smoke, in the middle of it Narville, who almost put a bullet in me before he recognized me – then acknowledged me with a curt nod. I took my place beside him and we kept up a covering fire as the last of our grunts scrambled up the path and away from the base. And then – they just kept on coming, the Helghast. Jesus, it felt like there were a thousand of them. We took out as many as we could. We must have dropped at least ten each, but they had the numbers and it was just a matter of time before they took us.

  We kept firing. Kept dropping them, standing back to back now. The only cover we had was the smoke of the battle and I guess Narville thought the same way I did: that it was better to go out like this than surrender and die slowly in captivity. That this would be a good death.

  I dropped a Hig to my left then turned – too late to catch a capture trooper right in my face, his knives slashing at my assault rifle, which dropped from my fingers.

  This is it, I thought, going down. This is death.

  Sucks to die on Amy like this, I thought, as blackness embraced me …

  I’m all she’s got.

  You know how you feel when you wake up after a moment like that? It isn’t relief. Because just for a moment there you were dead and the pain was over. The fighting was over. There was no more killing, no more disgust and shame and guilt. Just peace.

  Then a capture trooper kicks you into consciousness.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ he commanded. I blinked. Over me stood a Hig dressed in a hazmat suit. In his hand he held a small biometric scanner with a luminous green screen that he ran over my face. It bleeped affirmative.

  ‘This is him,’ said the capture trooper. ‘Report to Chairman Stahl that we have positive ID on both Narville and Sevchenko. Mission is accomplished.’

  From my position on the ground I looked to my right and saw a dropship. In the hold sat Narville, his hands secured behind his back, and our eyes met, but his were dead, expressionless. This wasn’t how he wanted it to be. He’d seen himself going out in a blaze of glory, not like this, not at the hands of some Helghast sadist somewhere. Now I was pulled roughly to my feet, my hands secured with a tie and shoved towards the dropships.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I shouted at one of my captors.

  ‘I said get in there,’ he rasped.

  ‘And I said fuck off,’ I retorted, sounding tough and defiant. Sounding more tough and defiant than I felt. As my two guards climbed in with me the dropship began to take off, and my mind was racing.

  Think, Sev, think.

  How the hell was I going to get out of this one?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Funny. It was the first time I’d ever been inside a Helghast Overlord. A prisoner in one, for the love of Mary. And you know what I was thinking?

  I was thinking: Well howdy-doody, this is one kick-ass dropship.

  My hands were in restraints and I’d been shoved into a rack normally used for seating nervous but combat-ready Hig grunts. They’d be clicked into harnesses and preparing to use the ship’s rappelling system. That’s right: rappelling system. You know how we dispersed from Intruders? We jumped off them. And harness? We got a handrail.

  My two guards thought it would be a gas not to strap me in so I was thrown about the cabin as we sped low across the Helghast mountains, dipping and banking in a convoy of four. I soaked it up, but I did a lot of shouting, like every tumble I took was ki
lling me, while they stood hanging onto straps, jeering, kicking me and occasionally reaching to deposit me back in the rack ready for the next time I was pitched face-first from my seat.

  Laugh it up, guys, I thought. Laugh it up. I needed them thinking I was softened up and weak, because not securing me into the harness was their first mistake – and I didn’t want them correcting it.

  Then the climate changed. The temperature dropped and what I saw from the window was no longer the lush green of foliage, it was white and aqua-blue, and it rippled and shone.

  We were flying over the Frozen Shores now. The Helghan Arctic. And the turbulence in the cabin ceased so at last I could sit, careful to look groggy but defiant, staring at my two guards in the rack opposite. They watched me implacably from behind their respirators, red goggle eyes glowing, their assault rifles on their laps.

  Okay, I thought, what did I know about the HGH Overlord? That they’re armed with twin-mounted VnS-10 Scylla machine guns and missile pods. And that they’re heavily armoured. The window had to be a weak spot, but otherwise Overlords were like aerial tanks, about as far removed from Intruders as you could possibly imagine.

  The Helghast had the tech edge on us, that much was clear, I thought, then reminded myself that it came at a cost we weren’t willing to pay – living in service to the state and to the military. Visari was right when he told his people they were no longer human; he’d turned them into machines.

  You can try to hide your humanity, I thought, thinking of the sweethearts’ picture I’d seen. But you can’t wipe it out. Somewhere in every Helghast lived that human. And that, I suddenly realized, was a fact I could use to my advantage.

  I stared out of the window at the blur of the water as we rushed across an endless sea. The ship weaved between two icebergs, but I stayed on my seat. Then I returned my attention to my two guards.

  ‘You know what he said when he died?’ I said. ‘Scolar Visari? You know what he told us?’