“I have to...” Berenson started.
“I'll get you. Sit still.” Clausen ordered, and he picked up the autoinjector.
Berenson nodded, weakly, and asked, “Sergeant?”
“Yeah?”
“Hit me with all six.”
“What? No.”
“Get it over with. I do not think I could endure this until the end, if I would take them in sequence. I am near breaking. If you are to help, then help. Get this over with.” Berenson hissed. “And standby on the paste.”
“Paste?”
Berenson pointed towards his dresser, where mason jars of sickly brown smoothies waited. “To refill my reserve tanks. Biomass. Tastes terrible. Everything I need.”
“You drink it?”
“Mostly.” Berenson admitted. “Mine is a limited form of invincibility. There lies the secret to my survival, in all its lack of glory.” He tried to smile. “Tanks run out, and my body eats itself for repairs, starting with the marrow reserves. It is a terrible way to die.”
Clausen nodded, and readied the injectors. “You sure about this?”
“Always.”
Clausen brought the first injector down, and Berenson snapped like a rubber band. He howled, once more, as he drew taught. Clausen grabbed the second injector, brought it home. Berenson’s howl became a cry, then faded into a drowned whine. Again and again, Clausen stabbed him. He ignored the spasms, the seizures, the protests and gasps, until Berenson lay still, eyes glossed over and a dull whimper on his lips. Clausen struck the final dose, hurled the silver cylinder to the floor, and waited.
Berenson was still, his eyes blank. He stared into space like a puppet, with only the slight rise and fall of his chest to indicate that life remained. As Clausen watched, the supersoldier grew thin, gaunt, and skeletal. Berenson’s torso thinned, his fingers withered, until they were little more than bony claws. His eyes sunk into his skull, his nose flattened.
Clausen stood vigil, and poured the paste down Berenson's throat, mason jar after mason jar of the foul fluid. Berenson’s pallor faded, his fingernails cleared, his withered limbs filled out, once more. Clausen dumped liter after liter of the stinking jars into the dead man’s open mouth.
It took seven minutes for Berenson to recover.
One minute, he was silent, but for ragged breathing. The next, he bolted upright, and vomited an awful mixture of silver, brown, and red across the floor. He shook, heaved, and rolled to his knees. He gasped for air like a drowned man. He toppled from the bed, as he perched on the edge, and spewed out the awful alchemy across the wooden floor. Clausen caught him under the arms, kept him from plunging into his own waste.
His lungs finally clear, Berenson let out a long, animal howl. He screamed, hacked, and screamed again, before breaking off into a chain of numbers, recited the Fibonacci sequence from one to forty-one-eighty-one in rapid order. Then he fell silent.
Clausen asked, unsure, “You good?”
“Nearly.” Berenson answered, still gasping for air. “Nearly.” He dropped back onto the bed. His his hands rested weakly in his lap, his head hung low.
“I'm still making you come to dinner.”
Berenson turned, painfully. He craned his neck, and stared incredulously at Clausen. With a note of admiration, he said, “You are far more diabolical than I gave you credit, Sergeant.” He spasmed, then snatched another jar from the counter. He chugged it, his eyes closed and nose wrinkled. Finished, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and said, “Give me a minute, or four, to finish my repairs.” Berenson poked at the bed, caused the empty injectors to roll into his thigh. “Were you aware there was a broken spring in this mattress? I could feel it, every time I seized. That kind of poor maintenance reflects upon the entirety of this hotel.”
He’s back. Clausen asked, “Why didn’t you ask for help? You needed it.”
“I did not.” Berenson protested.
Clausen raised an eyebrow, and pointedly glanced to the mess of blood and vomit on the floor, then to the injectors, the broken bed, and then back to Berenson.
Berenson threw up his hands in defeat, and admitted, “Fine! I did not ask, for the same reason I did not tell you when I had grown sick, Sergeant.”
“Posturing?” Clausen asked. “I didn’t take you for the stupid macho type.”
“No, not that. Look at me.” Berenson said. “I am not a person, not really. I am a concept. Everyone knows who Striker is, correct? Even on your side, you know what I am, what I can do. I am invincible. I am faster that every person alive. I can outwit anyone. I always have a plan. I am not a fighter, I am the platonic ideal of a warrior.”
“Sure.”
“I can not show weakness, not to your unit. The only reason they think they have a chance is because I am on their side. I am still the demon, but now I am in their corner. How would morale fare, if they saw me sobbing, broken on the floor of dive motel because of a tiny little needle? How would they stand against Tiberius, if they saw me sucking amniotic paste from jars full of shame?”
“Bullshit.” Clausen stated.
“How?”
Clausen said, “I can't fucking believe this. You go out of your way to call me on being a self-made martyr. You pull emotional warfare of a whole new level, just to bring me around-”
“Yes.”
“And you're doing the same shit.”
“Well, hypocrisy has always been a key feature of the Titan Five series.” Berenson said. “And self-analysis was sadly lacking in the final production.”
“Unbelievable.” Clausen said, mostly to himself
“What can I say? I am a terribly flawed superman.”
“Come on, you ready to head down there?” Clausen asked.
“A few moments, please.” Berenson said, holding his side. “I need to wipe off my insides from my outsides.”
“I'll wait.”
“Of course you will.” Berenson sighed. “Give me a minute, please.”
“Take your time.”
They sat in the dark, Berenson trying to fight through the pain, Clausen pulling him along. Finally, Clausen asked, “So, do you think we have a chance?”
“You want an honest answer?”
“Preferably.”
“Slight.”
“Striker’s got a lot of firepower out there.”
“It is not that.” Berenson said, with a wince. “It is the sheer arrogance of what I am asking.”
“Tying to stop his revolution?”
“Not just that, Mister Clausen. Tiberius has an easy job. He does not have to change a thing. The world is boiling on its own accord. He just pushed on a few key places, and then let everyone damn themselves. That is his favorite trick. If he died of an aneurysm today, it would not alter the path. The course is set, and the whole world is sailing blindly forward. Revolution - his revolution - is not a radical departure, it is inertia, the consequence of the human condition.
“What we are attempting, though - what I am attempting - that is radical. I should not have called it a gambit, just a gamble. If we do everything right, if we stop all his plans and defuse all his bombs and spread the message, then we are still relying on a statistical impossibility. I am not asking for a revolution, I am asking for fourteen billion simultaneous revolutions. The arrogance of it boggles me, and it is arrogance of my own creation!
“All he needs, is for nothing to change. I need everything to change. It is not humanly possible. I can not do it. We can not do it. We just set conditions, shove the first rock, and hope for an avalanche. It is irrational, it is quite probably impossible, and it is all I have. Do you know how maddening that is?”
Clausen nodded, and agreed, “Look, if anyone could pull it off-”
“Do not finish that sentence. I am not some legendary hero. I am a weapon. A fickle, chaotic weapon.” Berenson paused. “Do you know what the Titan Five project was supposed to produce? What it was intended to be?”
“Field commanders, right? Generals for the Fact
ion?”
“No, that is just how we were used.” Berenson shook his head, gave that weak smile. His shoulders were slumped, and his voice distant, as he explained, “Long before the corruption, the Faction had ideals and goals. Before the power crazed ideologues and psychotic killers, they were scientists, engineers, and philosophers. They split from the Authority because of its backwards beliefs on AI and bioengineering, and they pushed for better future. A transhuman future.”
“Dangerous stuff.” Clausen said.
“Perhaps, but only for of its potential. The Faction's early leaders developed plans for entire lines of post-humans. There was a design for every role, a role for every person. There were soldiers, sure, and workers, but also thinkers and advisers, each perfectly suited for their niche. We would love our role, we would exalt in it. No one would be forced into the machine, but we would leap willingly to carry our weight, freeing the vast masses to choose their own destinies. We would liberate humanity from the base bindings of nature, and deliver a golden age.
“The Titan Five series was to be the Guardians. We were the final step in the circle.” Berenson drew his head up, and stared straight at Clausen, as he said, “It was not about DNA and cyberware and imprints, though. It was a comprehensive redesign of the human psyche. We would own nothing, control nothing. We would sleep with the soldiers and laborers, we would eat in the cafeterias, we would serve and protect the new world, and the old. In return, all would listen. When we asked, we would receive, not because we were over another, but because we were beyond caring about things like wealth or power or prestige.
“We were to be the final evolution of a soldier, the ultimate protector, philosopher-kings, above fear or failure. That was the intent. The result...” Berenson trailed off. “The Faction was corrupted long before I was conceived. Truth became lies. The ideals became doctrine, freedom became control. Words became bullets and bombs, and the Titan Five project was altered. We would be the ultimate killers, unchained and unfettered.”
Clausen stood silent. Berenson was many things. Terrifying. Infuriating. Occasionally pitiable. Perhaps misunderstood. Now, though, he was broken. Berenson sat on the bed, slumped, hands folded together, his final, brutal confession brought to light. Clausen tried to find the words, but words had never been his strength. He simply admitted, “I can't imagine what that feels like.”
“It feels like… a fledgling with shorn wings. Always with the urge to fly, but knowing that you can do nothing but fall.” Berenson met his eyes, once more. He stood, and added, “Perhaps that is the selfish reason for what I do? Maybe I am trying to redeem the Project, to justify my existence? Or, is that just another layer of deception?” His customary smirk returned, like a safety blanket. “After all, I have the sheer gall to try and remake the entire world.”
“I'm glad. The world needs it.”
“You say this, because you are trapped on the same sinking boat as I. You are biased.”
“Sure am.” Clausen stated. “Now let's get some grub, huh?”
“Fine.” Berenson agreed, and took a faltering step towards the door. With each step, he grew stronger, until the limp was gone, and he stood straight. At the door, he stopped, and turned back, to ask, “Brian?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For coming back for me.”
#
Corporal Tip Herren died, on the second level of launch control, when automated combat drones overwhelmed his position, and cut him down with repeating DEW fire. Vids and games tended to portray lasers as cutting implements, weapons that killed with clean burned cuts, but Herren knew better. Military lasers cycled their pulses at the low end of radio frequency, constantly adjusted their focus to deal with contaminants in the beam, such as the sudden boil-over that occurred when the beam struck water-rich flesh.
Upon impact, such beams would detonate the surface of the target, shut down, allow the rapidly expanding material to cool, before blasting again. Lasers didn't cut through meat, they pounded through, like razor-bladed impact hammers, torqued away vast quantities of mass as they explosively bored through man and material.
Herren felt the sudden heat on his chest, the spray on his face. He recognized the sudden wrenching pain, a moment before he also realized he was blind. His last thought was that he must have been facing his shooter, but then the world became cold, as well as dark. He landed atop his weapon, but he never felt the landing.
Beside him, Sergeant Felicia Monterra felt the machinegun jam. The belt kinked, snagged under Herren’s body, and the killbots swarmed over her. They came like a clattering wall, a wave of metal insects hungry for her blood. As they closed on her, she made one last attack, and tapped the clacker on the octo charges that ringed the upper level. With a terrible roar, the smoke billowed from the higher stories. The tiered spoke of the base rolled over itself as it fell. In a waterfall of fire and concrete, Monterra, Herren, the killbots, and the entire firing position plunged into the black depths of MacPhereson.
The concussion rolled over her like a wall of punches. One moment, the hallway ahead was filled with the cresting wave of armature drones and DEW fire, the next, there was nothing but a spinning, ringing, shaking chaos. She heard none of the tremendous blasts, witnessed little besides the sprays of dust that hammered her goggles. She felt it, though. Every tumbling, chaotic moment. From the Cataphract's view, high above, the detonation may have been impressive, but from the ground level, the explosive chain merely looked like a shaking floor, a wall of dust, and a pile of plasteel rubble.
The darkness faded, and Monterra clawed her way out, first from her mind, and then from the rubble. Her TACNET was down, her HUD cracked. Her armor was torn. She was bleeding. At least two ribs were broken, and she could feel the tear of the crystal storm on her skin. She knew she should simply stay buried if she wanted to live, but right now, that wasn’t an option.
The team in the silo was under attack. She held their flank. She needed to be back in the fight.
She squirmed out from under the pile, crawled over the 'sands' that flooded the wreckage. In moments, the storm had claimed the ruin, and by the time she broke free into the green-orange glow, her position resembled less a control center, and more an open amphitheater to the apocalypse. Across the base, gunfire flashed. The boom of the Bizon and roar of the Rolling Thunder sent cacophonous waves over the structures, while the snarl of needlers and anti-material lasers hurled death right back.
Hand over hand, she crawled through the rubble, until she found a weapon. The scattergun was still operable, and it was loaded with microgrenades. Monterra, despite herself, grinned, as she patted the gun on the barrel, like a dog. Good boy.
She pulled her way through the debris, until she broke onto the surface. TACNET was shot, so she cleared her HUD, and eyeballed her targets. The VIPER units were up Alpha’s ass. She gave a quick once-over, and read the grim battlefield. When her position fell, the they’d taken out Gerdoux. That could not go unanswered. She stood tall, silhouetted against the fallen tower and the maelstrom, and pulled the gun to her shoulder.
The scattergun belched, hurled the swirling crystals away as it flung microgrenades from the canted muzzle. Again and again, it thumped, pounded the high explosive charges into the open flanks of the attackers, dismantling, disorganizing, and dismembering all in its path. She swept it like a room-broom, fired through the holes in the walls and tears in the umbilicals. The orange wind whipped over her, scoured her. A piece of her armor was snatched away into the tumult. She ignored it.
The magazine clattered empty, and she rammed home another. The one-woman artillery barrage continued.
It worked.
Her assault made them give pause, and they were forced to turn and engage her-
There were tiers of destructive power on the battlefield. Some weapons, like the ASG-4 in her hands, were deadly; some, like the M299 Bizon heavy k-gun, were destructive; yet, none of these could compare to the sheer mindless devastation of the Rolling Thun
der.
One moment, there was a flanking force approaching her position, descending from the rise near the power plant. The next, there was no assault force, no rise, and little left of the power plant, itself.
Instead, a monumental blazing gap split the air, like a sun dawning over the waste, twisting even the winds of the maelstrom apart as it brought divine retribution. The fire grew, billowed, and rolled. The repeated AM strikes compounded, chained across the flank. Into the light went man, machine, and earth, and only smoldering glass and watery heat emerged.
She made a mental note to thank Reaper for that damned cannon. She owed him a drink if they lived.
For now, though, there was a fight.
She turned to engage, near the laboratories. As those forces tried to turn upon the Rolling Thunder, she returned the favor, sowed chaos in the enemy ranks, until the Bizon on the observation mast spoke again, and started punching great holes in the enemy lines.
They fell upon her, then, but when Felicia Monterra died, she died with her ammunition depleted, her sidearm empty, and with her combat knife jammed into the throat of the VIPER that killed her. The list of the dead grew, but for each name written, a blood price was demanded, paid in full and no credit honored.
#
The list of the dead grew, but Grant Firenze was only dimly aware. Deep in the net, everything was data, tides of color and intent that threatened to swallow him whole. He barely had time to react, let alone process.
The first steps had been simple. Compared to NODA, MacPhereson’s Phalanx AI was nothing more than a toy. He opened and shut doors on command. He turned off lights and air cyclers. He wrecked aerial drones in their own launch-housing. He even crushed two VIPERs in a malfunctioning elevator. He did all of this, while balancing the TACNET load, holding network dominance, and maintaining the stream out of the base. That datastream was life itself. It was why they were here.
In MacPhereson, ASOC bled and died. The world watched, helpless, transfixed in their classrooms, houses, and jobs. They stood in squares and stadiums, churches and bars. They clumped in hotels and hospitals, in tenement slums and Senate halls. As one, they watched.
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