As she sprinted toward the city gates, she contacted the commander of the city garrison.
“It’s a quad!” Cassandra Sora said, jogging alongside Ash inside the mech dream, looking completely freaked out. “It’s only one of them, but nothing we’re doing is having any effect. It’s already slaughtered dozens of civilians. You need to get here, now!”
“We’re on our way,” Ash said, the dream translating the mech’s exertion as a simulated ache in her own muscles. “Hold on as well as you can. We’ll be there soon.”
Chapter 2
Under Attack
For Lisa, the journey from Alex to Eresos had dragged on, seeming to last forever.
I wonder why, she thought sarcastically.
Maybe it was the fact that one of them needed to stay in the cockpit at all times, weapon in hand, to make sure the pilot followed the course they’d told him to follow. Lisa had instructed those in the other shuttles to do the same thing with their pilots.
Maybe it was the way Rug insisted on pacing up and down the craft, when there truly was no room for her to do that, especially with two other Quatro occupying the shuttle. Lisa had twitched every time the massive alien brushed her leg, and when Rug had bumped into Andy, Lisa snapped at her to lie down and stay there.
That brought her to the real reason the trip to Alex had seemed to take forever: Andy needed medical attention, and he needed it right now.
Lisa had done everything she could with what she’d found inside the shuttle’s medkit, which was missing a lot of essential supplies. Apparently the pilot hadn’t been performing his checks anywhere near as often as he should have.
Despite her efforts, a quick glance at Andy’s vitals indicated he needed to see an actual doctor, as soon as possible.
You don’t have to be a medical professional to figure that one out.
On her HUD, most of Andy’s body was rimmed with red-tinged yellow, communicating sub-optimal health. His left leg, which now ended at the knee, terminated in a scarlet sun on Lisa’s HUD, and his right leg was covered in maroon patches. A readout told her that the risk of infection was high, and the prophylactic antibiotics the medkit was supposed to contain had been one of the things missing due to the pilot’s negligence.
“Tell dad I can prepare supper,” Andy muttered. “I don’t need him. I don’t need the guilt trip. I’ll do it.”
Andy had fallen unconscious hours ago, and strangely, Lisa took solace in his occasional delirious muttering. It meant he was still alive; that his brain still functioned.
Other than monitoring his state using his vitals, all she could do was keep his forehead wet with water from a canteen she’d found in the back of the shuttle. She was doing everything she could to fight the fever that had already begun to form.
An hour before they reached Eresos, Lisa started getting updates from the system net about a battle that was underway just outside Ingress—the city where the space elevator terminated.
Of course. Of course there’d be a battle there now. It’s not like we’ve faced enough problems.
The battle was between Darkstream troops on one side and Quatro on the other. Humans accompanied the Quatro, and some of the social posts had identified those humans as mercenaries.
The battle itself was being recorded by civilians who were documenting it from atop the city walls.
A few of the Quatro seemed to be piloting mechs of their own. Then, Lisa saw a video of yet another mech, this one a biped with similarities to those controlled by the aliens. It took on two of the Quatro mechs at once, and it won, even after the aliens ran it through with massive, razor-sharp lances.
Lisa didn’t relay any of that to Rug. She didn’t want to agitate the alien any more than she already was.
That changed when she received the alert from Ingress:
“INGRESS IS UNDER ATTACK! ALL DARKSTREAM COMBAT UNITS GO TO THE CITY AT ONCE!”
Partly, she felt surprised to still be receiving alerts from Darkstream. I guess they haven’t gotten around to removing me from their database after what I did to Laudano and his soldiers. Or maybe they’re just that desperate.
Either way, she knew she now had to break her silence about the Quatro’s involvement in the strife around Ingress.
“Rug,” she said, and the alien’s enormous head snapped up to look at her, quicker than Lisa would have thought it could move.
“Yes, Lisa?” she said. “Do you have news of my people on Eresos?”
Lisa hesitated. “I do, actually. I have news of one of them, anyway. And it’s not good news, Rug.”
“Tell me. Do not be hesitant.”
“All right. Well, I’ve been keeping this from you—I’m sorry, but I thought it best, considering your agitation. Some of your people seem to have acquired mechs of their own, and one of them is rampaging through the streets of Eresos right now.”
Rug regarded her silently, totally motionless. After several moments, Lisa began to wonder whether the Quatro had gone into shock.
Lisa cleared her throat. “Do you…do you think you can talk to it, Rug? Get it to stop, somehow?”
“I can try,” Rug said, and she didn’t speak again.
“Good,” Lisa said, with a glance at Andy. For a while, I thought things would become simpler once we reached Eresos. How stupid. “That’s all I ask, Rug—that you speak to it, and try to convince it to stop killing humans. Then, hopefully, we won’t have to kill it.”
Chapter 3
One Rocket Each
When Wound’s tunnel broke through to the planet’s surface, he emerged inside a cramped basement. Stone stairs led to an upper floor, though they were too narrow to accommodate him, and the door at the top was too small for him to pass through.
So he blasted it apart with a single shot from one of his energy cannons, leaving it a gaping, smoldering aperture.
Pouncing through, Wound came upon a frightened family sitting around a table, participating together in a meal. The largest, hairiest one of them got up, brandishing a small knife in its hand.
Is that a joke? The whispers asked from inside Wound.
He crossed the eating room in one stride and crushed the human with an enormous metal paw. Then he turned a low-caliber gun on the three that remained and put a swift end to them.
All four members of the family now lay strewn across the floor, having assumed the various twisted postures of death.
It’s beautiful, the whispers remarked. What a beautiful tapestry they make. Should we stay and admire it forever?
“No,” Wound muttered, and turned enormous energy cannons on one of the walls. He blasted it, causing it to disintegrate and reveal a narrow alley. Opposite the structure where he’d emerged sat another squat dwelling, over which hung an iron sky.
The weather’s changing.
Just as were the fortunes of those humans that dwelled in this city.
The ones who benefited from the oppression of my brothers and sisters.
For a moment, that didn’t seem like justification enough to proceed with the slaughter.
Don’t I welcome the oppression of the Quatro? They deserve it, after all.
The whispers answered: These humans have your mate somewhere in this settlement of steel and filth.
“Ah,” Wound muttered. “Yes.”
He stalked out of the exit he’d created, following the alley toward a busier street, with vehicles the humans called speeders zipping back and forth along it. As Wound approached, a man and a woman passed the alley mouth as they progressed down the sidewalk.
His mech’s heavy footfalls made them turn as he stepped onto the street, and they screamed, but Wound ignored them for now.
Yes. In addition to the speeders, there was also ample pedestrian traffic.
They will hear my demands. But first, I must teach them to listen.
Twin heavy machine guns projected suddenly from Wound’s shoulders, even startling him a little. Inside the alien suit, his barest whim often manifest
ed as dramatic physical phenomena.
Luckily, this phenomenon suited his purposes.
He sprayed the young, screaming couple with bullets, throwing them back to lie supine on the sidewalk—their bodies tattered, metal-ridden remnants.
Then, Wound galloped down that sidewalk, crushing any walkers too slow to get out of his way while firing rockets at the individual speeders; one rocket for each vehicle. The speeders lacked armor of any kind, and so one rocket seemed to do it; tossing them into each other, leaving massive dents in their metal bodies. Occasionally, the explosions were enough to tear the speeders open.
Before long, humans with guns came against him, seeking to stop his stampede, or maybe just to slow it.
They failed. Wound brought his energy cannons to bear once more, turning the puny creatures into scorched, smoldering lumps. He knew that if he used enough energy, he could cause them to disintegrate, just as he’d done to the walls of the structure he’d emerged inside. But he wanted to conserve his power, so that he could continue to attack until they gave him what he wanted.
What he needed.
“Where is my mate?” he bellowed as he rampaged through the city streets, across sidewalks and through roadways, firing energy at structures as often as he did at living beings, wrecking both. “Where is my soul?”
A Quatro emerged onto the street he charged along, from a lane that ran perpendicular to it. He’d been about to send an energy blast that way, but he reined himself in at the last instant.
“My love…” the Quatro said.
Wound took a stuttering step forward, and then he came to a halt, scrutinizing the female Quatro that had come before him.
“My…my soul?”
Part of him rejoiced at the sight of her, but another part couldn’t seem to accept it. That part of him hadn’t ever expected to find her here. Not really. That part knew that this killing spree had never truly been about finding her—it had been about something else entirely, something the whispers would reveal to him in time.
“It is I,” she said.
“No,” he said quietly. And then, much louder: “No!” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “You are not real. You are an impostor.”
“It is truly I, my soul.”
“Impossible! Your claim makes a mockery of my love’s memory. She is gone, long gone, and there was never any hope of our reunion, except in my dreams. Do not cheapen my memories by attempting to trick me!”
“My love…”
“No!”
Wound turned, scrambling back the way he’d come, almost losing his footing as he fled.
Seeing his long-lost mate, real or not…for some reason, it had ruined everything he’d wanted to accomplish here. Her appearance meant he couldn’t be here right now. It meant he needed to be far away, as soon as possible.
At last, after dashing through streets and lanes and alleyways, retracing his route with the help of his suit’s HUD, he found the building where he’d first surfaced.
Wound leapt through the hole he’d made in the outer wall, and then he fled down the jagged mouth that had once been the door to the basement.
Wound fled back through the tunnel he’d dug.
Chapter 4
Swath of Destruction
As Gabe reached the bottom of the hill atop which the Quatro had started their tunnel, Ash appeared before him in the dream, looking harried. During remote communications, the dream rendered her as outside of her mech, and her face had paled, her short wheat-colored hair glistening with sweat.
“Sir. Did you get the alert?” she asked, somewhat breathless.
“What alert?”
“Ingress is under attack by a quad! It must have still been inside the tunnel all along.”
“Damn it,” Gabe spat, using his momentum to run up the incline, turn in a tight arc, and then head back toward the city.
“What’s happening?” Captain Arkady Black asked, from where he still sat, strapped to Gabe’s shoulder. “Why have we reversed direction?”
“There’s a quad inside Ingress.”
“I see. Let me down, then, Roach. I have to go meet the commander of the Ingress garrison.”
“Negative. I don’t intend to slow down, and at this speed, you’ll be injured in the fall if I release you.”
“I’m giving you an order, Chief!”
“And I’m ignoring it. I told you. I’m done with Darkstream.”
“Darkstream isn’t done with you,” Black muttered darkly. “Of that, I can assure you.”
Ingress’ gates stood open, probably from the passage of the five MIMAS mechs piloted by Sweeney, Arkanian, Jin, Gonzalez, and Lafontaine. Gabe ran through, ignoring the guards who cried out in surprise as much as inquiry.
It didn’t take long for him to find evidence of the quad’s presence—buildings smashed open, blackened speeders lying belly-up on streets and sidewalks alike—and, worst of all, the charred remnants of human corpses.
The swath of destruction stretched in two directions, and after a brief study of the damage the alien had done, Gabe chose to sprint to his right, basing his decision on which way most of the scorch marks faced.
He didn’t have long to go before finding something entirely unexpected. It was a Quatro, but one that wore no armor. Even though Gabe commanded his arms to take shape as massive energy cannons, his confusion caused him to hesitate momentarily, which saved the alien’s life.
“Wait,” it said, and the fact it could speak took Gabe aback even more. He’d known they must have had some way of communicating with the mercenaries—else, their alliance would have never come about, and even if it had, conducting it would have been a logistical nightmare.
Still, he hadn’t expected to hear one of the beasts speak to him so plainly. And the way the thing had spoken to him had been deliberate, measured, even though it had only said one word, her tone …
Intelligent. The analysis of both Gabe and his alien mech was that the being before him possessed a high degree of intelligence.
That’s not going to do much for my nightmares of slaughtering Quatro. He still had those, and they tormented him even more, now that he spent every second inside the dream.
“Let me down,” Black demanded, and Gabe did, rapidly generating a grasper smaller than the mech’s regular hands to pluck the captain from his shoulder and set him on the ground, somewhat roughly.
With a brief glare for Gabe, Black headed down a nearby lane.
Gabe turned to the alien. “Are you the Quatro that was attacking this city?” he bellowed.
“I am not. But I just confronted the one that was, and he fled.” The Quatro paused, then added: “He is known to me.”
Gabe glared at the alien for a moment, his blood pounding hotly through his circulatory system, which was newly encased in metal. His brain ached.
Then, cursing, he ran straight toward the Quatro.
It braced itself against the ground, as though preparing for battle, and he screamed, “Get out of my way!”
The Quatro did, and he charged past, toward the city walls.
“Someone deal with that beast!” he yelled as he ran, hoping that members of the city garrison lingered nearby.
We can’t allow a Quatro to roam the city, whether it’s piloting a quad or not.
“Do not hurt him!” the Quatro called after Gabe, which surprised him all over again.
Does it really expect me to spare an enemy who slaughtered dozens of my own?
Just before reaching Ingress’ wall, he ignited his launch thrusters, which carried his bulk up and over the towering barrier of steel. Atop it, a handful of civilians were using the wall as a viewing gallery, and their heads tracked Gabe’s progress through the air.
Those directly below him would feel some of the heat of his passage, he knew.
Serves them right. Hopefully it will teach them to stand idly by while others fight, as though battle were some sort of spectator sport.
The exhaust wouldn’t ha
rm them, at this distance, so he considered the discomfort they would experience acceptable.
He came crashing down outside the city, hitting the ground running—straight for the hilltop, where he knew the quad would emerge.
The brittle, short-clipped grass blurred below him, and the hill grew quickly in his sight. It still shocked him to experience the sheer speed with which he could cross distances inside his new body.
He caught the quad just as it was scampering out of the tunnel, and he barreled into it, sending them both careening down the steep hill. They tumbled, rolled, and flipped down the incline, locked together by Gabe’s death grip.
At the bottom of the hill, he managed to channel their momentum by bodyslamming the alien mech into the hard-packed ground, causing the earth to tremor.
As the alien regained its feet, Gabe willed his arms to become broadswords, and he adopted a ready stance, facing his adversary.
But the Quatro had no interest in fighting him. Instead, it retreated the moment it regained its feet, limping slightly at first, but quickly recovering.
Gabe cursed once again, ordering his broadswords to become energy turrets and sending white-hot threads across the plain to chase the quad.
But the Quatro randomized its path skillfully, and only one of the shots connected with it, causing it to stumble to the left before it recovered once again.
With that, the quad was gone, disappeared beyond a shallow rise near the horizon.
Gabe might have chased it, but it could have taken hours to catch up. Days, possibly. And he felt bound to return to Ingress and make sure the Quatro he’d left there hadn’t harmed anyone else.
He turned toward the city again, vowing to find the quad that had escaped him, and to make it pay.
Chapter 5
The Beast
“Clear,” Lisa said over the militia-wide channel, which was the signal for the other half of her fighters, led by Tessa Notaras, to leapfrog ahead of her own squad to scout the next street while Lisa’s squad provided covering fire.
Lisa swept everything she could see with her assault rifle’s scope while keeping a close eye on her HUD, which would represent enemy units with red squares the moment she or one of her soldiers identified them.
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