“I have to go,” Lisa said, dropping the pieces of her pressure suit. “Tessa, if you could take over for me?”
Her friend nodded, and Lisa ran back into Habitat 2. By the time she found Rug, she was completely out of breath. The alien was doing what she always did: pacing the streets of the city, completely ignoring its inhabitants.
“Rug,” Lisa managed through her panting. “You have to leave. It isn’t safe for you here anymore.”
Rug regarded her with large midnight eyes. Those eyes always seemed so calm, and they still did now, reflecting none of the anxiety Lisa was experiencing. “Why do you say so, human?”
“I just heard from one of my Darkstream bosses. He ordered me to either arrest you, or…or exterminate you. I have to assume the Darkstream soldiers in transit to here will know I’ve been given those orders, but either way, I doubt they’ll react to your presence positively. I have no idea when they’re going to get here. They could arrive within the hour. I’m not about to let any harm come to you or your people, Rug. I refuse to. Especially after everything you’ve done to help us.”
“And I refuse to abandon you to Daybreak, Lisa. I know that the others of my drift will feel the same.”
“You don’t understand, Rug. You must leave.”
“No, Lisa. You misunderstand me. We will leave Habitat 2. But we will not go far. My drift will remain nearby, and when Quentin Cooper returns to try to take from you what is rightfully yours, we will strike him with the full extent of our fury. That is not open to negotiation.”
Lisa felt a smile break over her face, and she surprised them both by reaching up to wrap her arms around the large alien. Rug seemed to take it in stride.
“Thank you, Rug.”
Chapter 15
Operational Details
The Darkstream soldiers finally arrived, and they didn’t bother to notify Lisa until their shuttles were landing on the roof of Habitat 2.
She quickly assembled a welcoming party, consisting of her, most of the new council, and some of the habitat’s prominent business leaders, including her friend Phineas Gage.
She even included Candace Peele, owner of the Swinging Eel, whose clientele had once consisted mostly of Daybreak and Three Points members. Peele herself had never been found guilty of anything, and the Swinging Eel had fallen on hard times since Quentin Cooper’s defeat.
Peele was currently in the midst of a halfhearted rebranding, but sometimes Lisa suspected she was quietly rooting for Cooper to return and take over Habitat 2 once more.
The freight elevator from Habitat 2’s roof opened, and a squad’s worth of soldiers poured out. Lisa was surprised to see that Mario Laudano was one of them.
She marched forward, drawing to a halt in front of him and stomping her right foot perfectly in line with her left, coming to attention. Her right hand snapped up to her temple in a crisp salute. “Welcome to Habitat 2, sir. I was not aware that you planned to personally lead the battalion.”
Laudano returned her salute, his much sloppier than hers, as though he found the exercise tiresome. “Ranking Darkstream security personnel don’t typically make a habit of keeping seamen appraised of every little operational detail.”
Well, this seaman happens to have saved this city. She didn’t say that, though. “Yes, sir. Where are the rest of your soldiers?”
Laudano’s mouth twisted slightly. “They’ll be down shortly.”
And so they were. Ten shuttles had made their way from Valhalla, carrying a sizable force.
Things changed rapidly, after their arrival.
For one, Laudano’s people were even more standoffish than the Quatro had been toward humans who weren’t Lisa, Tessa, or Andy.
The Darkstream operatives marched the streets stiffly, in full uniform and carrying heavy artillery everywhere they went. Like the Quatro, they did not stop or make way for anyone else, instead claiming the right-of-way everywhere they went.
Lisa’s workload diminished drastically, which was a welcome change. However, the work she did find herself doing was much less interesting than investigating and prosecuting Daybreak, or helping the new council get accustomed to their administrative duties.
On his third day in Habitat 2, Laudano offered to renew Darkstream’s old contract with the council at a cut-rate price. It was an offer too good to refuse.
Not long after, Laudano approached Lisa in a jet-black pressure suit as she was training her militia out on Alex, in the evening hours after she got off work.
The militia had more than tripled in size since she’d started it. That only amounted to sixteen members total, but they’d come a long way, and she was proud of them.
That ended today, apparently.
“What is this?” Laudano barked over a wide channel, so that all of Lisa’s militia men and women could hear.
Hesitating, Lisa indicated her soldiers with a spread hand. “These people want to help defend their homes when Quentin Cooper comes for it.”
“I just brought an entire Darkstream reserve battalion for that purpose.”
“I realize that, sir…but the more fighters we have, the greater our chance of victory will be.”
Laudano shook his head back and forth vigorously. “Our chance of victory already rests at one hundred percent. As you well know, Darkstream soldiers are highly trained, and mine are some of the most battle-hardened in the entire company.”
I’m not sure Tessa would agree with that assessment. Indeed, the ex-soldier stood stiffly nearby, glaring at Laudano through her faceplate.
The commander didn’t seem to notice. “Speaking of which, Darkstream did not invest tens of thousands of credits in training you, Seaman Sato, so that you could give away that training for free. You are to desist immediately. That’s an order.”
“But, sir—”
“One more word, and I’ll mark you for disciplinary action. I’m not one who stands for having his orders questioned. Not in the slightest.”
“Yes, sir.”
With that, Laudano spun neatly on his heel and marched back toward Habitat 2.
“I don’t trust that at all,” Tessa said, and Lisa’s HUD told her she spoke over a two-way channel.
“Neither do I.” She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but the fact that Laudano would want to stop her from increasing residents’ ability to defend themselves seemed very odd. It reminded her of the way the commander had insisted on the arrest of the Quatro, even though the aliens had helped retake Habitat 2, which should have been obvious to anyone with a system net connection.
Laudano still hadn’t asked what had become of the Quatro, and Lisa wondered whether he would. Maybe he had chosen to assume she had actually killed them, but wasn’t interested in dealing with the paperwork that would result from discovering that she had.
She opened up a wide channel with the members of her militia—one that excluded Laudano, who still hadn’t reached Habitat 2 yet.
“You heard the commander. I’m going to have to stop using Darkstream resources in order to train you.” That hadn’t been exactly what Laudano said, but the interpretation suited her purposes. “So I guess we’re just going to have to continue our training in lucid, aren’t we? I’m sending you the code for a meeting lobby now. In the meantime, I suggest you all go perform some ‘non-training related PT’ with Tessa, so that she can ensure your implants are calibrated to accurately reflect your physical abilities. Just as a favor to you, of course—nothing to do with our militia.” Lisa smiled at them. “I’ll see you all tonight.”
Chapter 16
Eyes Aglow
Gabe took pride in the fact that, the next time Jess appeared to him, he managed to keep his composure.
This time, she wasn’t standing directly in his path. Instead, he spotted her on a low hill to the right of the swath left behind by the quad. He almost missed her, in fact. That notion struck him as incredibly bizarre.
Imagine missing your own hallucination.
Would
it still be hallucinating if you didn’t even notice your delusions?
It was a question for another time. For now, he stopped amidst the downed and splintered trees, staring at her and keeping his mech’s hands by its sides.
“Why are you running?” Jess said, in the same matter-of-fact fashion she’d always said…well, pretty much everything.
Gabe didn’t answer.
She looks just as beautiful as the day we…
No. More beautiful. Her beauty was increased by the fact he missed her so much.
“Are you running toward something? Or from something?”
“Toward,” Gabe said.
“I say from. And I think I’m right. So now that we’ve determined that, the only thing that’s left is to find out what it is you’re running from. Could it be the Quatro whose air you turned to fire under the orders of your employer?”
“Jess. Please.”
“You didn’t even give them the chance to fight, did you? You incinerated them in their homes. Is that how a soldier behaves?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I’m wrong about what you’re running from. What do I know? I do like guessing, though. Let me guess again. Maybe you’re still running from the Bastion Sector, back in the Milky Way. I was born in the Milky Way, just like you. But I only spent a couple of years there. I didn’t get the chance to see the things you saw. To do the things you did.”
Gabe didn’t speak, having already gained the sense that doing so would only make things worse. That had often been the way, with Jess.
“Are you running from the boy you found, after UHF bombs destroyed the radicals’ base on Thessaly? He begged you to kill him, didn’t he? He was gone below the waist, completely gone, and he was bleeding out, but it was taking a long time. There was no saving him. Probably. Either way, he begged you to kill him, and you did it. Didn’t you?”
Everything in the world had turned various shades of blue. A MIMAS mech could not weep, but the dream did turn everything blue.
“Have you forgotten about the boy, Gabe? Have other horrors replaced his memory?”
A strong wind picked up, causing the sapphire trees to sway.
“I’m glad to have reminded you about him,” Jess said. “He seemed like he was probably a nice boy, all things considered. And he was even younger than I was when I died.”
Jess vanished, and at the same time, the woods regained their normal colors. Gabe was alone again.
He resumed running.
It was beginning to get dark. But something made him feel like he was getting close. The woods were thickening, and judging by the slightly reduced length of the quad’s strides, as indicated by its tracks, it had been slowed by it. Not by much, but some.
Gabe was not slowed. His path had been cleared by the quad’s labor, and soon he would catch up.
Then, I’ll kill it. For Jess.
The woods ended with an abruptness that clearly wasn’t natural. Someone had cleared a wide space, for defensive purposes.
Indeed, a tiny cluster of structures lay in the middle of the cleared area. When Gabe consulted his map, this wasn’t on it. That meant mercenaries.
The thought didn’t stop him. Nothing but death would, now – he’d resolved that long ago.
Instead of stopping, he charged faster, intending to take anyone who remained in that ramshackle settlement by surprise.
But it was he who was taken by surprise.
The buildings were arranged in a rough circle, and in their center stood the quad, its eyes aglow in the waning light.
MIMAS mechs were much taller than Quatro, but inside its own mech, the alien came almost to the shoulders of Gabe’s.
It made no move toward him, and Gabe did what he could to arrest his own momentum, catching himself on the side of a shed, which caused the wood to splinter, buckle inward, and crack.
Twin cannons formed to flank the quad’s head, pointing straight at Gabe.
He leapt to his left.
Chapter 17
Feedback Mechanism
Gabe tucked into a roll as a blast of energy made a crater where he’d been standing. The quad turned to fire on him again, but he was still moving, speeding up, and the shot only succeeded in catching another wooden structure ablaze.
Ducking behind a third structure, he paused for a second to gather his wits and attempt to formulate some kind of plan. But the Quatro piloting the quad clearly had no intention of giving him any time for that. It fired again, this time with what seemed like armor-piercing rounds, against which the building Gabe hid behind offered basically no protection.
A round caught his arm, denting it and flinging it backward. Another hit his shoulder, causing him to spin. He turned into the revolution and fled once more, retracting his hands against his wrists and spinning up both auto cannons to fire on his enemy as he did.
The Quatro was completely undeterred. It ran straight into the hail of bullets, the ordnance making pinging sounds as it glanced off of the quad’s armor.
Steeling himself, Gabe squared up to meet the charge, bracing himself by shifting his right foot back and bringing both hands up before him, metal fingers spread to catch the beast.
The quad simply trampled him, heavy paws knocking him down and pummeling him into the earth.
He cried out in agony as the dream tried to convince him that his body was shattered beyond repair, bones ground to dust, organs ruptured like overfilled balloons.
Maybe that feedback mechanism is a little too intense. Or maybe his body really was destroyed.
Deciding to do what he could to test the hypothesis, he pushed himself to his feet, forcing himself to run at his foe, who was coming about to charge again.
This time, Gabe was ready. With a mighty leap, he sailed over the quad, pelting it with his autocannons all the while.
A weapon that closely resembled a rocket launcher took shape from the metal on the quad’s back, and indeed a rocket emerged from it, timed to catch Gabe at the peak of his jump. The missile scored a direct hit with his right side, and the explosion threw him farther into the air, limbs flailing uncontrollably.
As Gabe descended, the quad’s tail took the shape of a great blade poised to skewer him on the way down.
It was possible that the MIMAS mech’s armor was strong enough to withstand being run through, even with its full weight coming down on a single wicked-looking point.
But Gabe wasn’t eager to test that. Instead, he fired every rocket he had in his arsenal in the quad’s direction. The effort served to stabilize his descent somewhat, and he turned his auto cannons on the alien once more as he finished falling.
The kickback from his firing served to push him backward slightly, and he missed the blade by a matter of centimeters.
Extending his own blades, Gabe drove them forward into the quad’s armor, producing a piercing shriek of metal against metal. His effort produced only thin, white lines, like those made by a butter knife across a wooden table top.
The Quatro spun, swinging a massive paw at Gabe’s head in a gesture reminiscent of the one that had killed Tommy deep underground. Gabe felt sure he had time to dodge, but he was wrong. The blow knocked him to the ground, where he rolled sideways to avoid whatever the Quatro was planning next.
Gabe regained his feet, but immediately a blast of energy threw him straight through another structure. He landed inside, his entire body on fire.
The quad came in after him, landing on top of him, raking him with razor claws that had formed the moment the Quatro had need of them. Furrows of pain sprang up all down Gabe’s body.
He let two grenades tumble out of his grenade launchers, without actually launching them. Both exploded, causing Gabe’s anguish to spike brutally but forcing the Quatro to ease up enough for him to scramble out from underneath it.
Charging at one of the unbroken walls, he succeeded in breaking through to the outside.
There, he came face to face with a group of two dozen mercenaries, be
aring all manner of artillery. They stood approximately thirty meters away.
Two of them directed rocket launchers at Gabe and fired.
Chapter 18
Creative Karma
Another energy blast followed him between the trees as he attempted to flee into the rapidly darkening woods.
The dry, leafless trees all around him exploded into flame, and Gabe pitched forward, face-first into the forest floor.
He staggered once more to his feet, a rocket sailing past him to hit an unusually large tree, which the explosion enveloped. Gabe stumbled around it, though the heat found him, spurring him to run as quickly as he could.
His mech was behaving erratically. He suspected the fight had done serious damage to the actuators and servomotors in several of his joints, as he was having great difficulty in making the MIMAS go where he wanted it to.
An attempt to sprint between two trees resulted in colliding with the leftmost one, causing him to spin and almost lose his balance again. He found his feet, somehow, and staggered on, the shouts of the mercenaries close behind him, their bullets ripping up the ground all around him.
Make for the densest cluster of trees. That’s your only hope.
Gabe did. It was almost night, and he prayed his pursuers would lose track of him…if he could just keep moving.
His HUD had been nagging him to review his vitals, but he hadn’t found the time for it in between running for his life. While the dream interface granted him an incredibly close connection with his mech, it distanced himself from his own body.
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