Men of Stone (The Faded Earth Book 3)

by Joshua Guess

  She reached toward the gun to put the man out of his misery and only a burst of last-second caution froze her hand. Keene was smart. Devious. There was no way he would send weapons into the Protectorate with even the slightest chance they could be used against his soldiers.

  Instead she pulled the short blade from its compartment on her abdomen, sliding the folding weapon out of the shallow space with a practiced motion. She extended it and stabbed without slowing to aim. Not hard since the target sat in mute horror, unmoving. Her enhanced strength made the job easy, in physical terms. The tip of the knife parted bone like butter. There was hardly any resistance.

  Mentally? Not so easy. She did it. Beck didn’t hesitate or pull the strike. Her follow-through broke the tip off as it passed all the way through the skull and into the back of the helmet’s interior. The body went limp and another little piece of her withered.

  And if she had to, Beck could and would do it again a thousand times over before the day came to an end.

  She pushed the dead man out of the chair and nudged his body away before carefully taking a seat. Making sure not to move her arm within a foot of the abandoned gun, Beck ran through the comm system checklist as fast as her half-remembered training would allow.

  Item three turned out to be the culprit. The squelch feature for the entire Rez was enabled. Using one of their extremely limited soldiers to cut off all Deathwatch comms was bold but obviously effective. Beck threw the switch and was immediately blasted by chatter from every Watchman in the Rez.

  She keyed the master mic. “Hey, comms are back on, you noisy assholes.”

  There was a pause as most of the Watchmen took in the words. Before they could all start pestering her with questions at once, Beck squelched them again.

  “This is Park,” she said plainly. “Overwatch is not here. Not sure what happened to them. If you’re out there, come back home and take over for me. I’ll man the console until you get here, unless you’re dead. Then I’m here for the duration, I guess. The rest of you tap into the feeds and watch for heat spikes. I’ve rigged the cameras so they can see the bad guys, but it’s basic. You should be able to catch any shots they let off on thermal imaging.”

  She flipped the comm on once more and leaned back. The requests for data would come soon, and she would have to cycle through the camera feeds to find targets. Beck had no doubt the enemy was up to more than just wandering around killing anyone they came across. Even if pure destruction was his ultimate goal, Keene was smarter than that. He would have some plan in place to maximize the effectiveness of his soldiers. You don’t spend decades committing wholesale murder with the efficiency of an accountant just to let your carefully laid plans hinge on one-on-one fighting.

  “Turn your sniffers on,” Beck said. “Keep an eye out for explosives, bioweapons, anything that might cause mass casualties or property damage. I’m going to start feeding you locations as soon as I spot anyone, so get your fire teams together.”

  If any of them minded being told what to do by a woman not yet twenty years old, no one said a word about it. Instead she got a ping from a familiar source.

  “Park,” she said with amusement in her voice.

  Eshton’s reply was light. “Good to have you back, boss. We ran into the local overwatch. She’s out here kicking ass, or trying to. We’ve only seen two enemies, and they just took wild shots at us before running off. Jen and Wojcik are chasing them down now.”

  Beck felt a stab of panic in her chest. “Without backup? That has to be a trap.”

  “I don’t know,” Eshton said. “They seemed scared when they spotted us and ran away. Jen just told me on team chat that they dropped their guns.”

  Beck glanced over at the weapon next to her, horrible understanding dawning.

  Then she saw the emergency beacon light up on her HUD.

  It was coming from Jen’s armor.

  24

  Wojcik saw Jen snatch up the gun just as Beck’s warning came in over the comm. Jen paused in mid-motion in front of him, her head cocked as she listened. The weapon in her hand did nothing sinister. There was no timer ticking down, no ominous whine. He was moving with the inevitability of a freight train through a world suddenly filled with air as thick as oil. Every pounding footfall took a subjective eternity.

  He reached her and snatched the weapon away, tossing it. Less than a foot from his hand, it exploded.

  Searing agony ran up his arm as he flinched away from the blast. Only random luck saved his visor from being eradicated by shrapnel, his massive frame blocking Jen completely. The rest of his armor held out—or at least there were no other blooms of pain from the hard impacts against his plate. A moment of clear logic reminded him it was possible the mind-numbing hurt going on in his left hand might be washing out lesser pain.

  “Oh my god,” Jen said, rushing to his side as he fell to one knee. His visor was still dark from the blast, polarized to protect his vision. It would clear in moments. Show him whatever horrible reality sat at the end of his hand. “I activated my beacon. Just stay still. If there’s a medic they’ll be here soon.”

  The world faded back into view. Wojcik forced himself to breathe as his hand resolved in front of his eyes.

  It was both not as bad as he feared and somehow worse for that. The hand was not missing, not eradicated in the explosion as some part of him expected it to be. But what was left was a parody of the strong limb it had been a minute earlier. The metal of his gauntlet took the brunt of the abuse, fracturing into shards from the violence of the blast. The skin was gone, washed away by heat or force or both. Raw and red and bleeding, splinters of steel jutted out from every exposed inch that wasn’t lacerated to the bone.

  “Catastrophic damage detected,” his suit belatedly said. “Employing emergency measures.”

  The lining of his suit expanded to tighten at the wrist just inside the portion of his forearm not ruined by the makeshift bomb. The flow of blood slowed at once. A needle pierced the crook of his elbow at the same time to deliver medication. It felt cold in his veins.

  His HUD told him the particular cocktail of drugs the computer decided on. Painkillers to keep him from passing out. Halcyon to calm down his central nervous system and mind. A small dose of Vigilance to keep him sharp and moving. It was a strong combination. The speed with which the panic and fear melted away from him created a sense of unease the drugs didn’t touch.

  It shouldn’t be this simple. People hurt and reacted to it the way they did for a reason.

  Beck’s voice rang out over the comm. “Wojcik, I’m getting telemetry from your suit. I took a look through your camera. It’s…” She didn’t seem to know what to say. Maybe because she didn’t want to make him confront it.

  “Bad,” he said. “Really bad. I don’t know how much fighting I’ll be able to do.”

  Jen, as true to her nature as ever, thumped him on the helmet. “You’re not doing any, dumbass. You’ll end up killing yourself.”

  He grunted noncommittally. “Need to warn everyone about those guns. They’re like land mines.”

  “Already done,” Beck said. “You didn’t hear me?”

  “No. Must have been distracted. Can’t imagine by what,” he said in an attempt at wry humor that fell flat. “What do you want me to do? How far is the nearest medic?”

  A long pause followed before Beck replied. “There was only one here to start with. I sent her to the Loop station. There are bound to be injured civilians.”

  Wojcik absorbed the news. “Okay. So no medical treatment.”

  “Wrong,” Jen said. “You go to the Loop station. Beck can ask any civilian medics to help out, too. Get yourself there and have someone get a trauma pack on that. Maybe even work on it some.”

  Wojcik pushed himself to his feet. “There aren’t enough Deathwatch out here. You need every able—everybody you can get.”

  “Jen’s right,” Beck said. “Get your ass to the station. That’s an order.”

 
He wanted to argue. Nearly did. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. He was their tank, the guy who was supposed to throw himself into the brawl and draw the enemy’s attention. Going out of the fight before it even started was wrong. It felt like a betrayal. If only he’d yelled at Jen to drop the gun instead of grabbing it…

  She might be dead. The blast destroyed his hand from a foot away. What would it have done to her if she’d been holding it with the vulnerable visor or her suit facing the thing? He had done his job even if it wasn’t the one he imagined. And he paid a price.

  “Yeah, okay. I’m going,” he said. “So long as Jen goes back to the team. I don’t need an escort.”

  Jen put her fists on the metal hips of her armor indignantly. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You’re the one who’s hurt.”

  “He doesn’t, but I do,” Beck interrupted before the other woman could build up a head of steam. “He’s right. We’re short. Head back to Eshton. There’s a lot of work to do. And don’t think the bad guys are tossing away firearms without having spares, okay? Both of you keep your heads down.”

  *

  He chose not to run. Not because of any deep well of masculine pride, just the simple fact that doing so made his hand hurt even through the heavy dose of medication. He’d argued with the suit computer in an effort to get the damn thing to inject his arm with a local anesthetic to no avail. The patient female voice explained that not being able to feel it at all might lead him to damage it further without realizing he’d done so.

  It was a reasonable concern given his life up to this point. One he grudgingly accepted as valid.

  The walk took him down the myriad side streets laid out in narrow grids around Brighton. These were wide enough for two people to walk side by side with ample room between them and the buildings lining the space, but most vehicles would be far too large for them. He felt too big even without the added bulk of his armor.

  The map on his HUD told Wojcik he was halfway to the Loop station when his external mic picked up a sound. Rough and gritty. A boot on dusty stone?

  He stopped a few steps later when another scraping noise caught his attention. His good hand twitched inside the gauntlet, ready to snap up and free his blade from its place on his upper shoulder. Whoever was out here had to know he was aware of them. If they took shots there was nothing he could do about it. Might as well do the damn job.

  “This is Sentinel Wojcik,” he said, deciding not to bother with his Deathwatch number. If someone wanted to come after his family, they were welcome to fucking try it. His grandma was in her late seventies and had arms like a steel worker. “If you’re hostile, come on out and give me a try. I’m down a hand, so you might have a shot.”

  “Thank the Founders,” said a pained voice from his right.

  A woman waddled out from a gap between two buildings small enough that a child would have been hard pressed to fit in it. How this lady, who was obviously—hilariously—pregnant had managed it was a mystery.

  “Ma’am,” Wojcik said. “Were you not able to reach an access point to the undercity?”

  She shook her head, long black curls swishing. “My husband was at the mine. I don’t know where he is now. I couldn’t climb down the ladder. I’ve been walking to the Loop but that lady on the PA system said there are people in armor like yours fighting real Deathwatch. I didn’t know what to do other than hide until it was clear.”

  Wojcik consulted his map. Beck was slowly adding all potential sightings of enemy forces to it. He looked for the nearest ones, then any between here and the Loop. Traveling in a straight line would get him most of the way there.

  “We’re having trouble tracking them,” Wojcik said. “But I’ll protect you as best I can.”

  The woman’s eyebrows rose. “You will?”

  Wojcik wasn’t surprised by her surprise. It was a reality all agents confronted before training was even halfway over, a truth Protectorate society made plain to everyone to some degree or another. People were afraid of the Watch a lot of the time. “Yeah, of course. I can even carry you if you want.”

  Her eyes grew round before she burst into laughter. “I’m so sorry,” she said, waving a hand. “The mental image is just…”

  “Yeah, I know,” Wojcik said with a grin she couldn’t see. “Big, scary Watchman.” He glanced around and saw a small folding chair knocked from its place in front of a metalworking shop. He retrieved it and put it between the woman and him, patting its fabric seat with his good hand. “Sit here and I’ll pick you up. It’ll go faster that way.”

  The laughter on her face morphed into amazement. “You’re serious.”

  Wojcik stared at her dumbly. “Of course I’m serious. Why wouldn’t I be? You’re not running any races in your condition, and this armor can carry five hundred pounds without its motors getting even a little warm. We are in a war zone, though, so make your choice fast.”

  She eyed the chair critically, then shrugged. “Okay. Not a lot of other options. Uh, I’m Andrea, by the way. And thank you.”

  “Welcome,” Wojcik said as she sat down.

  The hard part was getting low enough to fit his arm beneath the chair. Once that was managed, he crooked his elbow and made sure Andrea could hold on to his hand for stability. He stood slowly, letting the load balancing software do its job.

  “You ready?” he asked. “Holding on tight?”

  Andrea let out a nervous laugh. “As ready as I can be. What happens if we run into the bad guys?”

  “I set you down as quick as I can and put myself between you and the danger,” he answered. “Pretty much the whole job description if you break it down to basics.”

  They moved slowly at first, the pace more sedate than when he’d been walking alone. He wanted to get a feel for her weight and its effect on the suit. The balance was better than expected. Most of her weight pushed down on his right shoulder. The arm only had to manage about a third. This was helped by her grip on his fingers with her own right hand. The left grasped the heavy plate over his shoulder.

  After a minute he began slowly picking up speed. The pain in his hand began to return as he exerted himself. A fast walk was all he was willing to risk between Andrea’s precarious seat and his injury, but even that was enough to aggravate the wound. The basic medical training from his days in the cohort with the others told him the suit cutting off blood flow would probably cost him the hand. He tried not to think about it. By some miracle the radial artery hadn’t been cut, but it was doubtful this small bit of luck would save his hand.

  “What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?” Andrea said. She didn’t need to be more specific, considering the obvious mess sticking out of the remains of his left gauntlet.

  “Explosion,” Wojcik said, huffing slightly. “My teammate picked up something that didn’t look like a bomb. I tried to get it away from us.”

  “Hmm. So is that just who you are? The guy who jumps in to help women in trouble?”

  Wojcik, despite his pain and the deepening sense of loss at both losing the use of his hand and being ordered to run away, smiled. “Anyone. Just so happens the people who needed it today are ladies.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a Watchman before today,” she admitted. “Now look. I have one as my trusty steed.”

  He laughed, a lightness rising in his chest. It did not displace his grief so much as draw a line in the dirt and dare it to move even an inch farther. “Well, don’t get used to it. First one is free. Just do me one favor, okay?”

  Andrea looked down at him, a gesture he could see through the camera mounted on that side. “For the guy getting me and my baby to safety? Just about anything.”

  “Next time someone says the Watch doesn’t care about citizens, you remember today. Fair?”

  She laughed again, and he marveled that someone could be so tough. Worried for herself and the child she carried, stuck alone on Rez streets where death could descend on her at any moment, she still fo
und the strength to let out those airy laughs. “After today, if I hear anyone talking bad about the Watch, I’ll punch them right in the face.”

  25

  Just before Beck left the chapterhouse, she sent orders through the Mesh to have every citizen in every Rez escape into the undercity in each. As she posed this as a suggestion to Stein, who was surely stalking around her office in the Spire watching the attack happen in real time, she expected the order to go out quickly. The existence of the undercities was guarded mostly to keep people from tearing holes in the floors of their isolation chambers and ruining their intended purpose. She was willing to expose their existence if it meant saving lives.

  She ran through the streets of Brighton with enough screens on her HUD to almost block her view of the world completely. If they hadn’t been translucent, they would have.

  Five enemies were confirmed dead so far. No one else on her team had been injured, even though two of those kills were Eshton’s. Only three local Deathwatch were killed, but those numbers wouldn’t hold. They couldn’t. She had studied the patterns of sightings and conflicts, and the conclusion was obvious.

  Keene’s soldiers were putting on a show. Distracting. Her suspicion that some larger goal was involved grew to a firm certainty.

  “Anyone find bombs or anything yet?” Beck asked breathlessly as she thundered down one of the main boulevards bisecting the Rez.

  A chorus of negatives washed over the comm from the other teams.

  “Nothing definitive here,” Lucia said in a tight, wooden voice. She had to be worried sick about Wojcik, but she stayed professional. “Jeremy is keeping a cloud of drones around us. We’re watching to see if any of them sneaks away, but if they are it’s not obvious. There’s just too much space to search, and they’re ducking into homes whenever they can.”

  Beck frowned. “But they have to come out again. Right?”

  “No,” Tala interjected. “We checked. Assholes are busting through the walls between units like they’re made of sand. Don’t think our suits could do that.”