The Sword

by J. M. Kaukola

  He glanced back to her, cool eyes under heavy lip of his helmet, and said, “Ma'am, I don't want to hurt you, but if you do that, I will answer with force.” His words weren't threatening, more remorseful, but backed with steel. He had no room to bend.

  She changed tactics. Words were her weapons. Engage the subject. Humanize yourself. Her son wasn't much older than this officer, they may as well have gone to school together. “Please,” she started, then glanced to his name-plate, “Lieutenant Tully, I am begging you, do not do this.”

  “I have orders, ma'am.” He motioned for the cutters again.

  She jerked against the chain, just enough to force the cutting soldier back, and pleaded, “What's your name, Mister Tully?”

  “James, ma'am. Please stand down.” Again, he was very polite, but without room to budge.

  “Why are you doing this?” She demanded.

  “Orders, ma'am.” Done with the dance, he turned to his soldiers. “Cut her free, gently.”

  Two soldiers grabbed her, stopped her from wrenching the chain, while a third moved to cut. Unable to stop the cutters with physical motion, she instead demanded, “There are laws of military conduct, James! What does the Unified Code say about this?”

  The bolt cutters closed on her chains. Lieutenant Tully answered, “Ma'am, this is a complex situation without clear-”

  “The bomb, James! Durandal! The Airship! The framing! Those were your people they burned!”

  There was a snap, and her right arm was free, but they held her down again, and forced her back against the wall. There was a zipping noise, and her hands were secured together, on the remaining cuff, pressed against the side of the hall. She'd bought her crew a few moments, but she was out of the fight, now.

  Maybe.

  Tully didn't move. Her last question must have dug deep, because he glanced to the billboards outside, the rooftops and glass walls that showcased the data streaming from the Waste. He answered her, his voice a little closer to cracking than she'd heard before, the first sign of humanity behind the disciplined 'yes ma'am, no ma'am' he'd been offering, “Ma'am, it could all be propaganda. Striker is involved. I will fulfill my mission, and let those on site sort out the mess.”

  “That's not enough!” She insisted.

  Tully glanced back to her, from the blazing lights of the cityscape. “It has to be, ma'am.” He said it, almost sadly, and then ordered, “Dena, Lopez, stay here and keep Miss Owens safe. Everyone else, stack up.” He pointed to the broadcast door, and his team moved forward.

  Zip-tied and cuffed to the wall, Owens watched as Tully's squad ran the fiber camera under the door, used the penetrating scanners on the wall, coordinated quickly, and then battered the door aside with lightning precision. One moment, they were in the hallway, the next, they flowed like water into the news room.

  On the screens, she saw Richard Walden suddenly stare straight into the camera, his voice now hurried, and declare, “Marines have entered the news room, and they are armed-”

  “Shut it down! Now!” She heard Tully order, his voice echoing from the room next door and from the monitors, and the news feed went black. On the monitors in the hall, on the buildings outside, the feeds from the Waste pressed on, but the newscast was suddenly silent. Redundantly, she heard Tully order from the newsroom, “Shut it off!”

  There were a few screams in the room, and the calls of the breaching team, and the occasional crash of equipment. Beside her, one of the soldiers said, “They got the primary transmitter. We're done here.”

  The other stared out the window, to the broadcast playing from the scrolling advert-bar on the side of a lift bus, and said, “It's still up. There's gotta be a secondary!”

  A moment later, Tully stormed from the news room, flanked by an old soldier, with more tabs and stripes on his uniform than any of the rest. Tully approached her, leaned against the wall, almost casually, and asked, “Where is the other transmitter, ma'am?”

  She shook her head, “I don't know.”

  “Please don't lie, ma'am.” Tully stated calmly, far too calmly. “It really makes my job difficult.”

  “I don't know.” She repeated. “Honest to God, I don't.”

  He grimaced, leaned back and whispered to his sergeant, but before they could decide course of action, Tully's radio chirped, and he stepped aside, grabbed it, and answered, “Juliet Two-Six, here.” He stared hard at the silent broadcast on the night sky.

  The gruff voice came back, “Juliet Two-Six, this is Papa Romeo, Actual, we are seeing that the broadcast has rerouted itself. Can you confirm?” For a moment, Owens wondered why they were using old shoulder mics instead of their integrated sets, but then she remembered the broadcast, and she had to suppress a slightly vindictive smile. Chain me to a wall, will you? Then she remembered she'd done it to herself, and was a little less gleeful. She still made sure to listen carefully. Information was her trade, after all.

  Tully replied, strain in his voice, “Roger that, sir. Be advised, we've disabled the primary site, but the broadcast is coming from somewhere else.”

  “Acknowledged.” The radio replied. “Maintain your position, and place the entire staff into custody.”

  Tully snagged the mic a little harder than he'd intended, nearly banging it and his fist from the glass with his motion. He asked, “Sir, that's a lot of people-”

  “Comply, Two-Six.” The voice gave no ground.

  “Wilco.” Tully said. He turned, to glance at the viewer, as another feed sprang to life, a second newscast replacing the one he'd just shut down. He snagged the mic, and demanded, “Sir, are you seeing-”

  “Stand by!” The voice ordered, and the radio went silent.

  On the screen, a news anchor, still setting her lapel mic into position, said, “This is Lindsay Forrester, broadcasting from the Mirror in Vancouver, assuming the broadcast. Please allow us a moment. We were not expecting this to be routed to our station, but since we have the airwaves-” the young woman glanced back, towards the floor director, then back to the screen, “we'll do our best to keep you informed, and we'll attempt to determine the fate of our colleagues in the New York branch...”

  Through the office, the few functional phones began to ring, to chirp, and to chime, filled the floor with a chorus of electronic demands. The feed continued. In the center of the hall, Tully turned slowly, and she could see the invisible vice closing around the young officer, as he glanced from monitor to monitor, from his men to her. She stated simply, “You can't stop it, now, James. You can only shape it.”

  Tully worked his jaw, chewed on some piece of invisible gum. He watched the battle unfold in the Waste, stared at the unending avalanche of horrors. Durandal. He spared a glance back into the newsroom, where his men stood guard, over terrified volunteers - good citizens scared of their own military. He listened, to the ringing phones, the unanswered calls. Who was calling? What assumptions were they making? He swallowed, and turned to his sergeant, “Pops?”

  The grizzled man replied, “Sir?”

  Tully spoke low, so she couldn't hear him, but she listened for a living, and it wasn't hard to make out his stress-heightened question, “Tell me, what do you think this looks like right now?”

  The sergeant mulled over the question for a moment. Tully trusted this old man, Owens could tell. His body language was transparent: the way he leaned into the conversation, the way he nodded when the sergeant talked. These words were important. The old man replied, “I think it looks bad.”

  “Wonderful.” Tully said. “Now everyone thinks we just greased the news crew.”

  “Quite possibly, sir.”

  Tully inhaled sharply, like he was choking back an explosion. Instead, he whispered, “Alright, Pops, what the hell do I do?”

  The sergeant said, “Sometimes, when the car skids out, you slam the brakes. Other times, you gas it, and turn into the slide.”

  Tully exhaled, just as heavily as he'd inhaled a moment before.

  The ser
geant added, “However this goes down, I'll back your play, sir.”

  The young lieutenant turned back to Owens, and asked, “Alright, ma'am, what's your position?”

  She said, “It can't be stopped, but it can be shaped.”

  “To what end?” He demanded.

  “To save the world.”

  Tully glanced, once more, to the broadcast. She could see it clearly on his face, now. 'I should be there, not here.' That feeling was written onto every one of the marines in the hall. The madman had told her, “Striker turns the mundane into terror. I will allow that, and counter with knights, to slay his monsters. Give me a myth, Miss Owens, and let it work its wonders.”

  Tully said, “Son of a bitch.” He made it more of a sigh than a curse. He straightened, and said, “All right, ma'am, you're back on the air. Keep the content the same as before. Any 'start the revolution' bullshit, and you're offline permanently.” He was remarkably calm for the degree of shit he'd just stepped into.

  She saw him turn, glance to his men, looking for someone to stop his call. No one protested. After a moment, he ordered, “Dena, cut her free. Let her brief her people.” To her, he asked, “Ma'am, are you being level with me?”

  “Absolutely.” She said. “It can't be stopped.”

  “But it can be shaped.” He finished. “Get back on the air, and let them know we’re on your side.”

  The broadcast continued.

  #

  At MacPhereson, the list of the dead grew by the minute.

  The unfortunately-named Peter Peters died when the laser beam ripped apart everything north of his ribcage.

  Peters, formerly a Terran Provisional Authority Staff Sergeant, had been providing covering fire from the MacPhereson control center server farm. He'd been braced through the racks of drives, cable housing, and coolant pumps, attempting to reload his weapon, when the AISAS unit trudged into view. To his credit, he'd nearly gotten his k-gun back in action before the cycling beam tore through his cover, him, and the wall behind his ravaged body. This opened a dangerous flank into the main communications relay, and onto Firenze's vital broadcast.

  As the AISAS began to lope down the hallway, the ASOC team diverted firepower to suppress. Hill's Rolling Thunder was necessary to cover the observation deck, so Specialist Tyler Janning displaced, instead. Janning engaged with his M26 SASR. His shots were accurate, but ineffective against the reinforced armor. The juggernaut raised its anti-armor weapon.

  Outside the compound, Sergeant Luis Diaz had climbed to the midpoint of a sensor mast, where he and Specialist Allison Trevinger laid in the M299 Bizon heavy k-gun. Despite the whipping storm, and the fact that they’d been nearly buried in false sand, Trevinger noted the threat. Janning’s TACNET feed pinpointed not one, not two, but three AISAS units on the open flank.

  The sniper unit was tasked to assist.

  Diaz checked his prefire list, ignored the winds that ripped his scarf from his enviromask, and trusted Trevinger's adjustments. The crosshairs settled over the armored unit, 'hidden' behind an umbilical arm, and Diaz touched the firing stud.

  The Bizon was both older and more powerful than the SPKR M1 “k-guns” in use by the assault teams. Unlike the more compact personal weapons, the Bizon required a dedicated standalone power supply (carried by the loader), a tripod, and a quick-changed barrel. Also unlike the smaller k-guns, the Bizon could not be utilized for a rapid mobility environment, and its distinctive firing profile made it a risk to use during line-of-sight engagements. Further, its recoil was notedly excessive, with the air detonation at muzzle commonly damaging the eyes, nose, and sinuses of its operators, and the risk posed to the nervous system from its repeated operation had mandated a limit on how often the weapon could be discharged in training. In counterpoint, its sheer firepower had kept it in service for over thirty years.

  When fired, the Bizon did not crack, or boom. Instead, the air repented for the sin of density, and consigned itself to flame.

  The blast from the muzzle extended forty feet, carved a column of light that lanced through the walls of the compound. The first wall was reinforced plasteel, dense and strong, but at the impact velocities of the Bizon's kinetic slug, it may has well have been four millimeters of jello. The bulkheads behaved as a fluid, folded along the plasma corridor, and crashed into the hallway behind the blazing remains of the slug.

  That slug, a majority of its mass reduced to plasma, impacted the AISAS unit in the rear of the pack, at a thirty-two degree angle. The slope was irrelevant, and the mighty powered armor became so much liquid fire, plunged in on itself along the angle of impact.

  Like a ragdoll, the goliath folded. Like tissue, it tore. Like a moth a blast furnace, it boiled, and its remains crashed against the far wall as the slug punched through, to embed in the ground beyond, leaving a trail of fire through the brand-new windows it had carved in the corridor.

  On the weather mast, the back-blast smashed Diaz's goggles into his face, cut them into his skin. The concussion shoved him back, slid him over the grating, even as he clung to the hard-mounted weapon. His vision blacked out as his headset dimmed against the sudden flare, and he felt the heat roll over him. The grime and char caked onto on his goggles blinded him. There was no way to visually check the Bizon, but he could hear the coolant pump, feel the heat boiling away.

  The TACNET overlay chimed, showed him the weapon was ready to fire. Beside him, the animated frame of Trevinger picked herself up from the blast, and she slammed the next round into the chamber. She was as blind as he, relying on the TACNET transmitters to see via projections, but her hand slapped him on the shoulder. The weapon was ready.

  Still operating on sensors, he trusted the HUD to designate the targets in the hall below. The other AISAS units were still advancing, and Janning was pinging the powered armor for strikes. Diaz aligned on the target, and fired again.

  The Bizon bellowed, time and time again, until the plating below the tripod began to buckle, until his armor was singed and burnt, until his goggles cut so deeply into his face that blood pooled around his mask. The cannon reached a deadly hand over the base, flanked down, through walls, through roofs, through floors, like the merciless finger of God, until the defenders were forced to break their attack on the server farm and assault his nest.

  “Never let anyone talk you up a tree” he'd often joked, but he broke his rule, this time. When the heavy units turned on him, he could not hide, and he could not run. He fired once, twice more, until the autocannon fire punched fist sized holes in his torso, and less than three minutes from when he fired his first shot, Luis Diaz joined the list of the dead. For a moment, silence reigned over the base, and the Faction counterattack resumed.

  That was when Allison Trevinger took up the weapon, and the fury returned.

  #

  Far above the killing grounds of MacPhereson, the TNS Cataphract kept silent vigil. For all the vast data flowing through its combat information centers, the noise never rose above a dull hum - whispers drowned in the whir of machines. Two rows of computer stations, run through like inverted feeding troughs, dominated the room, while linked tiers of viewscreens commanded the fore. Across these walls of displays - each attended by a designated officer - the ship’s lifelines tapped out precision rhythms. In every moment, reams of status reports rolled silently over screens, courteously compiled from secondary command centers. Directly behind the bridge, through a pinched bulkhead, like a giant martial peanut, the Operations Center stood in blazing contrast. Row after row of towering databanks flashed with kaleidoscopes of data, attended by scurrying swarms of junior officers, each on a mission discreet and incomprehensible. It resembled nothing so much as a freshly kicked hornet’s nest, abuzz with motion and intent.

  She’d never been on a naval bridge, but Velasquez was surprised by how damned tight it was. The Ops Center holotables were glittering chaos, metal islands in stormy seas. The bridge itself was an opera-house closet, stuffed so full of ‘important things’ she
might choke on the heavy air. Wedged in the hatchway between the two worlds, it was preposterous to consider how much firepower was packed under every sailor’s fingertips.

  It was maddening. The Cataphract was stuffed to bursting with guns, missiles, lasers, and men. It could bring more firepower to bear on a single axis than had been carried by every combined Navy in the pre-Collapse world. It could incinerate cities. It could render entire continents uninhabitable. It was a heavy-weight prize fighter, his adrenaline pounding, his battle-ardor rallied. It was completely useless.

  Velasquez ignored the electronic symphony playing through the Ops Center, and focused on the CIC holotables. On that table, MacPhereson glowed, sprawled out in wireframe grandeur. Every inch of it was clear, ripped apart into cross-sections and denuded from every angle by grasping sensors and swarming drones. Even the TACNET feeds from the battle below, so boldly hurled across the world, were fed back into the Ops Center, crunched, and processed into actionable data.

  Actionable data we're just sitting on. Again, she thought of that prize fighter, gloves on and ready for battle, being handed a scalpel and asked to conduct surgery. While drunk. She almost wanted to laugh, it was so absurd. What a perfect analogy. Enough firepower to level any opponent, and unable to bring it to bear. That was the Faction’s mistake, last time. That was the Path’s mistake, both times. They stood up. They called us out, and we laid them down. She glanced to the controlled chaos in the CIC. So much firepower, for a war Striker refuses to give us. No, the fight isn’t down there. It’s up here.

  She turned from the screens, to the the laser-beam stares of the sailors around the battle-boards, where they clustered and pointed and whispered. They want to be down there. She turned back, to the other end of the hourglass, where Captain Nereza Sodineri leaned over the shoulder of her gunnery officer and consulted, her captain’s boards shining under the hard lights. They all want to be down there.

  One of the monitors on the bridge flickered, the signal stuttered, and was replaced by the EBS logo, followed by the direct feed from below. It was gone in an instant. The electronics warfare teams was doing an excellent job. They cut the pirate broadcast when it burst through, kept the command center sanitized, but they were plugging holes in a failing dike. Someone had modified the EBS code, made it override non-critical military channels. The crew had seen it. She’d seen it. Too far. This is gone too far.