by Sam Bradbury
I heard a crackle of something in my ear and turned my head away from the great roaring of engines from above me.
‘Sergeant …’
‘This is Sevchenko,’ I said, startled. ‘Captain Narville, do you read?’ If they were within comms range, he had to be near.
‘Sergeant, finally,’ he replied, voice full of gravity. ‘I hope you’re looking at the sky.’
I was. I swept my gaze left and right and all I saw was warships. At the same time I saw one of the cruisers seeming to blink and crackle, then light swept over the whole of the ship and it appeared to pulsate for a moment or so. Preparing, I knew, to warp. It did. With a pop and sizzle that left a shrinking white burst of light in the sky, the ship was gone.
‘That was a warp launch,’ I said.
Next to me Rico was nodding. ‘A forward scout ship. That means the rest of the fleet launches within the hour. Sev, the invasion’s started.’
‘Captain,’ I called into my pick-up.
Narville sounded grim in my ear. ‘We saw it, Sergeant. Sev, if we’re going to get the warning out, we need to find a ship as fast as we can.’
I looked ahead of me. The only way to it was through the junkyard, a ribbon of trash.
We made our way down. Everywhere were the carcasses of vehicles, huge mountains of waste metal of every sort: panels, turbines, wheels, cabins, barrels, piping, tubing, girders … Everywhere – everywhere we looked were the remains of machines, industrial, agricultural and military. Here in these machines was a history of the Helghast, layers of it, fossilized. It was as if an independent city had somehow sprung up in here too, because we soon found this world of garbage was intersected by roadways and walkways, creating a maze within the trash. As we made our way through it, canyons of junk metal rose on either side of us, creaking and clanking in a wind that blew dust and dirt into our eyes.
We passed through tunnels in the junk, through chains that clanked when disturbed. The place was almost ghostly quiet, I realized, the noise of the fleet a distant background rush.
All we had to guide us was the four pillars of the space elevators in the distance, but as we tried to make our way towards them we’d find ourselves stuck in blind alleys or doubling back on ourselves. Our only choice was to try to reach high ground, so we scrambled up some makeshift steps to get our bearings, with both of us feeling a bit shamefaced if I’m honest, a pair of grunts who couldn’t negotiate a rubbish pile.
‘Hey, how come you let Earth burn?’
‘Ah, we got held up. Garbage was a bitch …’
At the top of the steps we cast our gaze around and the first thing we saw was our guys. Way off in the distance, moving across the desert in the direction of the Pyrrhus outskirts.
It was a raggle-taggle collection of vehicles, scavenged from the enemy by the looks of things, though I saw a few Archers in there as well. Looked like Doc Hanley had been putting his time leading the men to good use. Maybe I’d underestimated him.
Rico, seeing them, pointed. ‘There they are.’
Meanwhile I was sniffing at the air. Below, in the scrap yard, there had been the oppressive smell of … I can only describe it as dead metal, festering rust. Up here I could smell something different. Something that smelled like …
‘Ozone,’ I said. ‘I can smell ozone.’
‘How can you smell anything?’ said Rico disbelievingly.
Because it’s so strong, I thought, my attention going now to a series of fence posts that lay outside the boundary of the space elevator complex – towards which Narville and his men were travelling, dirt billowing behind their speeding vehicles.
It was … it was a fence I realized, and what I could smell was petrusite. It was …
… switching on.
At the same time as an alarm sounded, the fence begun to sparkle and light up, activated by the first of Narville’s vehicles, a tank and buggy that were instantly vaporized. We watched the explosion flower then die. Suddenly the posts were linked by a wall of luminescent green light, that same oily sheen that seemed to cast the world in a ghastly emerald hue.
And we stood on the top of the scrap pile and watched as our men walked into the trap. Watched, feeling helpless.
Chapter Twenty-six
‘Nobody move. Everyone stand absolutely still.’
Narville looked around at his men. They were trapped. The fence, sensing an incursion, had engaged, destroying the first two vehicles that had triggered it. Many of the troops were caught outside the petrusite’s reach and Narville saw Jammer in virtual safety, but those in the immediate vicinity of the posts – including himself – now found themselves enclosed by a bubble of it, with volatile tendrils of it reaching from the bubble canopy – reaching for them like fingers feeling blindly for food.
Now he looked to where an Intruder was similarly trapped by the seething bubble. On it were four Raiders looking carefully about themselves as the thick phosphorescent ropes of petrusite waved dangerously above them, every second threatening to bring death closer. One was less careful than the others, Narville saw – Badger his name – his movements were more jerky than the others, his eyes wider.
‘Don’t move,’ repeated Narville.
Somehow these tendrils of petrusite sensed movement. But Badger wasn’t listening. Narville saw him doing the very opposite of staying still, instead cringing away from the dancing arcs of energy as they seemed to close in on him. He needed to stay still, goddamnit. He needed to stay still. The other Raiders on the Intruder saw the danger too, and were imploring Badger not to move. Now the entire unit was aware of it, a hush descending on the troop so that for moment the only immediate sound was Badger’s frantic jabbering. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. What the hell … I can’t do this …’ Openly struggling with the urge to simply leap from the Intruder and run screaming over the desert.
‘Badger, stop moving, man,’ shouted Jammer.
‘Do not move, soldier,’ ordered Narville. Others were shouting too, their pleas having the opposite effect on Badger, as though he was panicked by the sudden urgency in their voices, his fight or flight instincts kicking in.
And suddenly everyone in the vicinity – Narville, Jammer, the other Raiders, everyone – knew that Badger was about to try to make a jump for it.
‘No,’ shouted Jammer. Everybody frozen in place like statues, nobody able to reach out and stop Badger.
‘Don’t,’ shouted Narville uselessly.
Badger jumped.
He never reached the ground. Multiple petrusite creepers leapt towards him, greedily hoisting him above the deck of the Intruder where he was suspended for a moment, wriggling as though impaled on a hook, screaming in agony as his insides were liquefied before exploding, spraying his team with gore. But the petrusite hadn’t finished, suddenly arcing further afield and this time catching the Intruder. On it the three raiders had no time to scream and simply disintegrated, their dropship exploding beneath them as the petrusite reached for another vehicle nearby, an Archer that went up with a whump.
For several moments afterwards the unit simply stood stock still, their eyes on the burning wrecks of the Intruder and the Archer, scraps of flaming flesh now dotted around the area.
Jammer’s headset crackled. ‘Jammer, what’s going on?’ demanded Rico.
‘Sir,’ replied Jammer, ‘we just lost five guys.’
‘So what’s Narville’s plan?’ asked Rico.
‘We’re gonna hack the fence,’ she said. ‘Stand by.’
The comlink clicked off and she watched as Narville took Hooper by the shoulders, instructing him on how to penetrate the petrusite defences. The circuits were located in one of the fence posts nearby. But to get there Hooper and his touchscreen had to negotiate the petrusite tentacles. A minefield where the mines drifted around and were attracted by movement.
Encouraged by Narville, Hooper swallowed his fear and, carrying the keyboard, took his first step towards the unit. The petrusite around him became excited. He felt perspiration make
its way down his cheek. Tried to control his breathing. He waited until the twitching bolts of petrusite had settled, then took another step.
He looked across the haze of green and estimated the steps between him and the circuits. Thirty or so, he thought.
He took another step. Twenty-nine.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Over in the scrap yard Rico and I watched, with Jammer filling us in. In the distance the fleet still hung in the air and I saw two of them warp. Like blips on a screen: one second there, the next not. Closer by, but still difficult to see, were our guys trapped by the petrusite, all of them depending on the progress of Hooper.
Who was moving very, very slowly.
Rico echoed my thoughts.
‘This is taking forever,’ he said. ‘We need something faster than this.’
My attention had been taken by something to our right, further along the scrap yard – something that belched and rumbled as it moved lugubriously along the horizon. I tapped him on the shoulder and pointed him in the direction of what I was looking at, enjoying the look on his face as he turned and took in the sheer scale of it.
This thing was off-the-scale big. As big as an apartment block turned on its side, a huge warehouse on tracks, grinders at its front, cranes bristling along its back. It was a factory. A mobile factory. Commandeer it and nothing could stop us.
‘… or bigger,’ said Rico, his eyes lighting up. He keyed his headset. ‘Jammer, we’re making a move on the mobile factory. Can you fly?’
‘Negative,’ replied Jammer, ‘but I can find something else.’
‘Roger. Meet us at the factory,’ finished Rico. We scrambled down the steps and back into the scrap yard, straight away finding ourselves right back where we’d started, ducking down blind alleys, taking wrong turns, lost in the metal labyrinth.
‘There’s no clear route to the factory. We going to have to go round,’ directed Rico, and my heart sank. So far we’d managed to avoid any engagement with the enemy, but now, moving closer to the middle of the scrap yard, we were likely to encounter resistance, so it figured when two sentry bots then suddenly rose from the scrap and turned our world into bullets and sparks.
Christ, I hated them. This model wasn’t fully operational during the Helghast invasion of Vekta, so we hadn’t had the chance to see them in action until we responded with the attack on Helghan, and what we discovered was that they were tough little motherfuckers. Like the ATAC, they were styled to resemble flying bugs; they were equipped with two Sta3 LMGs, and they hated to lose.
We dived for cover. Through gaps in towering piles of junk I saw the two hovering metallic insects swoop and intersect as though jockeying for the better position, both of them trying to get closer, each wanting the kill. That was one of the things we’d been quick to learn – that sentry bots like to get up close and personal. An LMG when it was mounted on a flying machine like that, it lost its accuracy so they needed to get near to their target to finish the job. Pretty quickly we’d worked out that our best defence was to try to inflict maximum damage from range.
‘Need to draw his fire,’ said Rico. Like me he was watching the two bots through the scrap.
‘Who goes?’ I said.
He looked at me. ‘Gotta be your turn, man.’
I shook my head. ‘I took out the rigs.’
He sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll go.’
Sometimes it takes paper-scissors-stone to decide, but not right then. Rico leapt quickly from cover, crossing to a rusting turbine. Eagerly the two sentry bots followed and I pulled the rifle to my shoulder, finding myself with a clear shot at the rear of the first one – just as it opened fire on Rico. Shells pounded into the turbine and I could just see him sheltering beneath the onslaught as I filled the bot with a clip, straight away seeing smoke pour out of it and hearing the engine stutter. Gotcha.
Now. Where’s the other …
Bullets rained around me. Bastard had outflanked me, come up on my side. My boots kicked in the dirt as I desperately scuttled out of the line of fire, reloading at the same time. My rifle jammed but Rico was there to save my ass, rising from cover and blasting the bot before it could unleash another assault. It was enough to send it off-balance and it went skittering away. At the same time I spotted a weapons rack and whaddaya know – they had a boltgun. I snatched it up, turning it over to inspect it. Man, I loved these puppies. We called them the Handyman. Weaponized industrial tools, they fired heavy explosive-tipped bolts that could pin a grunt to a wall before exploding. Messy. And as for sentry bots …
I listened for the sound of the sentry bot as it came back round. It was stuttering a little, already wounded. Okay, I thought, this should be short and sweet. Then I rose from cover, hoisting the boltgun, found the sentry bot in my sights and fired. It shuddered as the bolts found their target and I turned away as it exploded, raining hot metal on me. The other one was still out there, but it was damaged, and when Rico drew its attention with a short blast I was able to target it with my new best buddy, The Handyman, and he was the one getting a frag shower.
Both of the sentry bots were smoking ruins now, but Rico and I waited until the coast was clear before moving off, getting our bearings from the giant moving factory ahead of us and making off towards it. It was still our best chance to bust through the petrusite fence.
Across the desert, those ISA troops not trapped by the petrusite had remained close by – apart from Jammer, who’d taken off in a buggy – but all they could do was offer moral support to those who remained prisoners of it; who had now been standing for what felt like hours, stock still, not daring to move and reluctant even to talk. They were wondering how long they could stay this way. At what point would fatigue take over? Who would be the first to drop from sheer exhaustion and what would happen when they did? All focused their attention on Hooper, who was slowly – very slowly – making his way towards the circuit box. Each step he took disturbed the petrusite which would fizz and whip around him for a while – and during that moment he would stand and wait for death, praying that it would be quick and thinking of his two girls back on Vekta. He hoped they were doing well with their schoolwork and being good for Mommy while Daddy was away fighting the bad guys. And when death didn’t come, he let his heart rate settle and then took another step, still counting, still waiting for death to come.
Chapter Twenty-eight
We’d worked our way round. Found a main route through the scrap yard then came into a clearing. Looking around we still had visual on the mobile factory. The top of it was just visible above the mounds of trash ahead of us, its rumbling even louder now. While to our left were the four columns of the space elevators in the distance, and there, I knew, were our men, trapped by the petrusite. Hold on, guys, I thought. We’re almost there.
Then we saw the barricade. A huge sealed metal gate between us and the factory.
Frustrated I looked left and right, hunting for another way through to the factory that was slowly, inexorably making its way through the junkyard. Sure it was slow, but it would soon be out of range, and we had to reach it soon – especially as we were beginning to see more enemy activity now. The alarm had been raised and Hig grunts were taking up elevated positions on the other side of the barricade, snipers and infantry. Next they’d send dropships and then we’d be knee-deep in bloodthirsty Higs. We moved to cover and I peered around the side of a huge corrugated metal panel, scanning the area for something – anything – that might be of use.
‘What about that?’ I grabbed Rico and indicated a crane off to our left. It was on our side of the barrier and dangling from the arm was some kind of military vehicle. A big one, the remains of an AAPC, it looked like.
‘What about it?’ said Rico.
‘You ever hear of a wrecking ball?’ I asked him.
‘Can’t say I have.’
‘Jesus, Rico, did you learn anything at school?’ I laughed.
Rico grinned. ‘I never went to school, asshole. You got a probl
em with that?’
‘Only that it would help when I’m explaining my next half-assed plan, that’s all. Okay, you see that crane? You see the personnel carrier? What’s going to happen if we swing the APC into the barricade?’
‘No more barricade?’
‘That’s right. Give yourself an – argh.’
Suddenly Rico was dragging me back into cover – just as a bullet thunked into a piece of scrap behind me, the sound of the shot a millisecond behind it. I’d have been inspecting my own brains right now if Rico hadn’t seen the tattletale red of the sniper’s laser-sight on my forehead.
‘You give yourself an A,’ he said sardonically, ‘for asshole.’
I told him I owed him one and he told me he’d add it to the bill and then I took another peek round the side of our cover. So now they were taking shots at us. Peachy keen. Looked like it was going to be an interesting run to this crane.
Now we left cover, crouching and spraying bullets to give ourselves a bit of breathing space. I heard a loud humming and spun to see a sentry bot hanging there, mocking me, seconds before it opened fire, sending me scurrying back into cover and looking for Rico who was crouching in what looked like an old cruiser cabin, rifle perched on the window ledge. With one hand he gave me a thumbs-up, then opened fire on the bot. Taken by surprise, it was thrown back, already exploding as it hit a rusting tower and crashing to the ground, gushing thick black smoke. Fun wasn’t over yet, though, and now bullets pinged to the metal around me. Their snipers had found their range. I risked a look from cover to see Hig snipers, their hoods pulled over their heads and the distinctive red strip at their eyes. They’d taken up position on scaffolding between me and the crane. Shit. These guys – they were deadly with the VC32. Not only that, but further along the scaffold on a platform I saw an emplaced Sta3 LMG, one with an armoured screen. They were powerful and they made a hell of a noise, but they overheated quickly. That might be a weak spot, I thought, especially if I could draw the gunner into opening fire for any sustained length of time.