by Sam Bradbury
I leapt. Made it on to the clanking links of the track and was dragged forward straight away. Quickly I scrambled to my feet and just as the track was trying to take me down with it I jumped and managed to pull myself to a platform. As Rico joined me, I took my M82 from my back and checked my ammo. Time to meet the crew.
Chapter Thirty
We made our way to the first deck of the factory where the inside was just the way it looked on the outside: a cobbled-together patchwork of materials, a collection of repairs on repairs. I’d have liked time to admire the interior design, but two big grunts came to meet us and we dropped them, hardly able to hear the sound of our own gunshots it was so loud inside. We went down a level where we could see the grinders at work, pulling in the scrap to be processed. There we met more guards, but a short firefight later we had the deck to ourselves and we worked our way forward along rusting walkways – Christ, how old was this thing? – meeting the odd sentry and dealing with them one at a time. Now we moved up a level then again to another level, and we were up high now. Two grunts rushed us but we put them down then went to the handrails to look out over undulating hills of garbage, the height allowing us to see way over the scrap yard to the desert beyond where the ISA guys remained trapped by the petrusite fence. I could see Hooper. He was closer now.
We moved up a level where the fighting was still intense, but at last we found the door to the control room. Higs had locked it. I thought of the two pilots I’d seen – the gloating look I’d imagined them having. And I pictured the looks on their faces when we burst in.
Rico set the demo charges and we both stepped back to watch the doors blow, and we burst in.
Hooper had been wrong. It didn’t take him thirty steps to reach the fence post. It took him twenty-seven.
‘Hooper?’ came Narville over the comlink. ‘Looks to me like you’re close. What’s your status?’
‘I’m here, sir,’ whispered Hooper, as though the petrusite might hear him and come closer. As it was it hung nearby, fizzing and dancing.
‘Take it nice and easy, Hooper,’ warned Narville, and Hooper bit his tongue rather than reply, What the hell else do you think I’m going to do?
Instead he very, very slowly bent his legs until he was kneeling, level with the control panel. For a moment or so he basked in the feeling of no longer having to stand up, his muscles relieved at last, but then the green arcs seemed to rustle around him, animated by the movement and once again he found himself going …
dead …
still.
Droplets of sweat made their way down his face. He hardly dared swallow with the fear. And he waited. Until the tendrils of deadly energy appeared to calm and he reached to a pouch in his ACU and brought out a small countermand unit that with the gentlest snick leeched to the side of the control-panel door. He booted it up and watched numbers spin, a series of green lights flicking on until the lock was deactivated, and the door hissed open. Inside was the circuit board. A read-out showed Helghast symbols he didn’t recognize, while bars he took to be energy indicators flickered beside it. He scanned the panel for any sign of an anti-tamper system. Saw none.
‘I’m in,’ he whispered into his pick-up.
‘Perfect,’ replied Narville. ‘Just take it nice and easy.’
Yeah, yeah, he thought. How about you come out here and take it nice and easy?
Now he ran a line from the touchscreen to the console, holding his breath, half-expecting red warning lights to begin flashing. In return it registered the new hardware by doing nothing. Simply continuing to blink and flicker.
‘What’s your status, Hooper?’ said Narville.
‘About to start the hack, sir,’ said Hooper. Very, very slowly he brought the touchscreen to his lap, and switched it on.
The control panel bleeped, not an especially angry bleep, the sort of bleep Hooper would have expected to hear in recognition of the touchscreen.
But then the read-out flashed and the Helghast symbols disappeared to be replaced by a timer and four empty fields awaiting the input of a code.
The override code. The one needed to disable the anti-tamper system, which had begun its countdown from sixty.
‘Sir,’ said Hooper, ‘we have a problem.’
57 …
56 …
I pulled the dead Hig pilot from his seat at the windshield, Rico doing the same, both waving our arms to clear the smoke of the demo charges then seeing the desert to our left and pulling hard on the steering to get us moving towards it. Slowly the factory turned and began ploughing through a mountain of junk, pushing through to the desert where it began to trundle towards the petrusite fence. Jesus, I’d been right about it being a bitch to control. Rico and I struggled with the controls as though we were trying to pull it ourselves, realizing that we had almost zero control over it, just hoping we could somehow negotiate a line to the fence.
42 …
41 …
‘Status, Hooper?’ said Narville in his ear.
Hooper disconnected the touchscreen, trying to move fast without disturbing the ropes of petrusite. He ran a line to the countermand unit, fingers flitting about the touchscreen. He could hear his own breathing; a droplet of sweat fell from his forehead and splashed to the touchscreen. He set the countermand to search for an override code. Around him the petrusite fizzed and buzzed.
34 …
33 …
We were close to them now, and both of us saw it at the same time: our own men, still as statues beneath the canopy of petrusite, unable to move for fear of it striking them, but unable to move out of the path of the mobile factory – guys who couldn’t even look round to see us coming.
‘Left, left, left,’ shouted Rico, and we both pulled to the left, faces screwed up with the effort, desperately trying to steer a path through our men.
‘What’s happening, Captain?’ asked Hooper. His fingers didn’t stop working on the touchscreen, eyes flitting from that to the countermand unit, then to the timer and back. All he could hear suddenly was the thunder of something at his rear – what sounded like a huge vehicle getting closer, and closer. Then the countermand bleeped happily, displaying the code, and Hooper looked at it for a second.
It was four zeros.
Those lazy fuckers, they had a four-zero override code.
As fast as he dared he disconnected from the countermand, ran the line to the fence control and began to input the code, eyes going to the timer. The noise of the vehicle behind was deafening, the ground shaking.
10 …
9 …
8 …
The read-out flashed gratefully. And paused. And then as if to say, You didn’t really think we’d use a four-zero override code, did you? it started again.
4 …
3 …
2 …
Hooper squeezed his eyes shut and thought of home.
We hit the fence post full on and straight away the petrusite went down. I just had time to see Hooper diving out of the way as across the desert the fence flicked off and the world no longer had its green haze.
We’d taken damage, though. Nothing could withstand that kind of petrusite energy, and the factory was suddenly rocked by a series of explosions from below, even as it trundled on. In the control room we were thrown about as the factory began to go up around us; the only thing not affected was the tracks. Then the glass of the control room came in as the walkway outside went up, ripping a hole in the cabin through which we saw … Jammer. She was on an Intruder now.
‘Get on,’ she screamed. Again, no invite needed. We looked at each other then leapt – just as an explosion ripped through the cabin – landing in a heap on the Intruder, Jammer speeding away as the factory finally ground to a halt and burst into flames.
Jammer caught my eye. ‘You guys ever think of leaving before the explosions start?’ she said, with a half-smile.
I grinned. ‘You can do that?’
PART THREE
Chapter Thirty-one
Narville’s men pushed on, crossing the remaining stretch of desert and reaching the outskirts of the city. Meanwhile Rico regrouped with his Raiders to ready them for the final push towards Pyrrhus and the space elevators, giving his orders over the comlink. There was a sense of urgency in his voice. Like me, he was seeing the sky. Where before it had been full of enemy battleships, now it was emptying. They were going into orbit, probably heading for the space station, and from there they’d warp to Earth, taking the same path as the scout ship earlier.
Time was running out. For us. For Earth. We needed to move quickly, that much at least was clear.
Clear to everyone, it seemed, but Captain Jason Narville. Because Rico had barely finished barking, ‘All right, people. Let’s move out. Raiders, I want a full sweep, kilo protocol,’ when Narville was breaking in and overruling him.
‘Cancel that order, Raiders,’ he snapped, sounding like he was ready to blow. ‘This is the captain. Hold fire and stay in defensive positions.’
I was on the Intruder when it happened: me, Rico and Jammer on the deck. One of those moments when I knew things had just gone from bad to worse. I could tell from the set of Rico’s jaw and the way his eyebrows knitted close together.
‘Narville,’ he came back, the whole unit able to hear him, ‘that doesn’t make any sense. We need to –’
But he was stopped by Narville going to a secure line, and next thing was holding his earpiece away from his ear as the captain came on, all guns blazing, loud enough for me and Jammer to hear him shouting, ‘Sergeant, don’t you ever question me on an open channel again.’
‘You want to listen to what I have to say before you say no?’ Rico shouted back, and I shared a look with Jammer, partly to acknowledge the shitstorm that was brewing. Partly because I just wanted to share a look with Jammer.
‘Velasquez,’ I heard Narville rage, ‘apart from being ill-conceived and poorly executed, your plans cost more lives than they save. So no. I don’t want to listen to what you have to say.’
‘My plans cost lives?’ retorted Rico, flaring, ‘How many people did you …’
But he seemed to calm down before he said anything that might get him court-martialled, getting hold of himself before he continued, ‘Look, all I’m saying is we need to scout ahead, okay?’
Narville wasn’t budging. ‘You have your orders, Sergeant,’ he said, like that was the end of the matter. ‘This is not a discussion.’
From across the deck of the Intruder, I saw Rico go several shades of purple before exclaiming, ‘Motherfucker,’ and instinctively I reached to take his shoulder and calm him down.
‘Let it go, man,’ I said.
‘Sergeant Sevchenko,’ said Narville over the comlink, breaking off his secure line with Rico – something that would only enrage Rico further, I knew.
‘Sir?’ I replied.
‘Report to my position immediately.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
‘Can you try and do what Narville’s asking?’ I said to Rico, thinking that yet again I was having to keep the peace between these two – just in case we didn’t already have enough to contend with. You know, little things like reaching the space elevators, finding a ship, doing something about the impending attack on Earth.
Rico frowned at me. But he knew that the stakes were higher than any grudge he held against the captain.
‘Sure,’ said Rico as the Intruder landed and I disembarked. But as I jogged away I glanced back to see him and Jammer deep in conversation. Cooking up something? Maybe. Maybe not.
Or maybe I should just do what I was told and report to Captain Narville, even though I had a strong hunch I knew what he was going to say, and that it would be asking me – correction: telling me – to keep a tighter leash on Rico.
I jogged through the rubble, getting a good look at the remains of what had once been Pyrrhus, the Helghast capital city. Last time I’d seen it was through a snowstorm of ash and it had been ablaze, a world of debris strewn with bodies and wreckage. Then it felt as though the city would stay burning forever, and would remain in a permanent state of scorched horror.
The Helghast had been busy in the meantime, however, that much was clear. It was as though the ruins of the city had been turned upside down and emptied of debris then placed the right way again, leaving just the empty bomb-damaged buildings, the scarred streets and sunken roads.
I dropped down into a trench and jogged along it towards Narville’s position, pulling myself out at the end and making my way towards where he stood, another grunt approaching him at the same time, who was catching his breath as he gasped, ‘Sir, we’ve captured a bunker full of Helghast ordnance.’
‘Where?’ asked Narville, taken by surprise. You couldn’t blame him for that. Good news had been in short supply these last six months or so.
The trooper pointed away. ‘A couple of klicks that way.’
What Narville intended to do about that I never found out because he looked up to see me approaching and his face darkened. He was thinking, no doubt, of the argument he’d just had with Rico.
‘You might want to keep your friend on a tighter leash, Sergeant,’ he said tightly.
See? I was right about that.
Sucks being right sometimes.
‘Sir, with all due respect,’ I said, so only he could hear me, ‘he saved both our lives. You and me – we’re only here because of Rico.’
Narville looked doubtful, but only for the cameras. I could see that he knew I was right. He of all people. Narville would have died at the hands of Jorhan Stahl’s executioners without Rico, not just a victim of the war, but a point scored in a propaganda battle. And that was no way to go at all.
He knew this, the captain did. Deep down he knew that even though he disliked some of Rico’s methods, and even though some of Rico’s methods could be wrong-headed and plain dumb, he got things done, and there was no better soldier to have at your back.
Narville opened his mouth to speak, but I never got to find out what he was going to say, because there was an enormous sound, like the entire world was splitting in two and we were both clapping our hands to our ears and wheeling round to see …
Oh no. A MAWLR.
As we watched, it rose from the crater, four spidery legs extending as it unfolded from the landscape, the huge main cabin swivelling and pivoting, looking for all the world as though it were an animal waking from sleep and stretching its neck.
It towered above the crater, Christ only knows how many tons of war machine bristling with weaponry: AA cannons, LMGs and, of course, a petrusite cannon. Located on one side of the main cabin, the cannon was almost half the size again, and it crackled and popped with deadly blue energy as though just beginning its charge.
Now the MAWLR moved. It crabbed like some bad-dream sea-creature looking around itself and seeking out its prey. And it didn’t have to look far, because, below it, the ISA troops had been making their way across the rubble of the cityscape to the space elevators, and maybe a few of them had been remarking that things were quiet, but, hell, the Helghast were staging a major invasion of Earth so most likely there would be just a small unit left behind to guard it – when suddenly the space elevators’ defences had engaged. And it wasn’t a small unit. It was a MAWLR. And it had brought some pals. Because at the same time as the gigantic mech appeared on the skyline the comlink was alive with our troops reporting hostile activity from within the space-elevator station. They were mobilizing.
‘All troops,’ ordered Narville, the panic etched on his face, ‘do not engage. I repeat, do not engage.’
Do not engage? I thought. What the fuck?
‘What are you doing?’ I called to him, my voice almost lost in the deafening blare of the MAWLR.
‘We’ll get to that weapons bunker,’ he yelled back, running for his tank, ‘regroup there.’
I stood with my mouth working uselessly for a second. Wow, Narville loved to regroup. And when it came to not engag
ing he really was your boy.
Then the MAWLR’s main cannon began to charge, petrusite wrapping itself round the barrel in a loving embrace. The huge cabin swivelled to target us and it softened us up with a WASP attack, a cluster of eager missiles that made the ground erupt around us, knocking infantry off their feet. Then it hit us with a petrusite bolt and two Archers were sent spinning and exploding. I saw a guy blown apart in a red jumble of arms and legs; others burning, screaming.
Narville was screaming orders into the comlink, but the troops had lost formation and were scattering. Ordered not to fight back they were doing the only other thing they could. They were running. Suddenly I was cut off from Narville. I keyed the headset and told him I’d meet him at the bunker, then grabbed the ISA guy from earlier.
‘The weapons bunker,’ I shouted at him, ‘where is it?’
‘Just follow the trench.’ He pointed, and darted off.
I ran into the trench. The walls rising on either side of me were shaking, earth crumbling off as the ground seemed to quake under the force of the MAWLR’s attack. As I ran, I heard Rico over the comlink, still arguing with the captain.
‘Narville, do something,’ he insisted. ‘You have to attack,’ he was still shouting as I reached the bunker, where the captain, Hooper and two other guys stood watching through observation slits in the concrete – watching the MAWLR turn our fighting men into fleeing livestock.
Again, I heard Rico come over the comlink, and I could hear it in his voice that he’d finally lost patience with Narville, and that he’d decided to force his hand. And that, I knew, was very bad indeed.
‘All right, Raiders,’ he announced now, ‘this is Raider Command. Form up on me. Get ready to go in. Armour Command, what are your orders?’
He’d batted it right at Narville: make your choice, man.