Imperator

by Nick Cole

  “Got it!” shouted Barr. “Old-school smarty RPG from Third Iran just before the Exodus. I had some ECM codes loaded up in my HUD just in case they brought out their old caveman sticks and stones from back in the day!” He said all this while firing on full auto.

  “They movin’ up on us in teams. Looks like a rush!” cried Nogle. He unloaded a blur of charged hyper-destabilized energy on some unseen target.

  By the time Casper reached Dunbartty, he was dead. His eyes had glazed over, reflecting the bright fire all around, staring skyward. The medic shook her head and high-crawled away.

  “He’s dead,” Casper announced to no one as the Martian infantry squad engaged targets from almost all points of the compass.

  No one replied.

  Instead they just kept killing everything out there on the streets for as long as they could in the time that remained to them.

  Within minutes, that first Savage assault stalled. The Savages pulled back, leaving their dying to moan in the streets. But the respite was brief. Five minutes later they tried a diversion, a feint at the left flank. Meanwhile at least a platoon of them tried to take the rear alley leading into the building. An alleyway where Esmail had set up micro-mines and a kill zone.

  The Savages were almost right up on the door when Esmail detonated the smart mines. Graphene tape that mimicked any surface it was attached to suddenly sprayed an explosive mist across the alley. A picosecond later the mixture ignited.

  A smell of burnt flesh mixed with micro-circuitry flooded the building as the waves of heat pushed the hot air in at the defenders. The attackers had been roasted.

  But two more platoons of Savages were already stacked and ready to overrun the alley. They came into the tight passage, firing hard and pushing behind a screen of something that shifted and blurred.

  “It’s their peripherals!” whispered Casper, watching a live video feed of Esmail’s HUD. A wall of steel butterflies was blocking Esmail’s fire. A few shots were getting through, but not enough. The Savages were closing in.

  “Duhrawski!” shouted Trask to the squad’s heavy gunner. “Redeploy the pig to assist Es!”

  Sniper fire zipped from the rooftops while more Savages tried to take the streets out front. They moved from cover to cover, sometimes taking up positions behind groups of dead comrades.

  Duhrawski heaved the massive KS-249 up from the position he’d taken at the front. He hustled back to the dark rear rooms that opened onto the alley. A moment later Casper heard the heavy weapon spooling up.

  Normally they’d fire the weapon in bursts. Now, within the tight passage of the alley, no targeting would be needed. The Savages had bunched up behind their butterfly shield and were trying to surge for the door all at once, stumbling over the dying and ventilated to get at Esmail. Esmail had been hit, but still he fought back, holding his KS out beyond the frame of the door and spraying the alley. The wild and erratic fire was chewing up the Savages and their shifting shield.

  It wouldn’t be enough. The monsters were determined to get through.

  And then the 249 opened up, and it was all over for them.

  The heavy weapon shredded the butterfly shield and tore through both bunched-up platoons. The voluminous fire worked the dead and the running over without distinction. Duhrawski was thorough. In the end, nothing moved in the narrow rear alley.

  “They done, Sarn’t,” he said over comm in the silence that followed. His voice was flat, even, as though one hundred and twenty-odd corpses, some on fire, and most of which he had personally eviscerated, wasn’t as terrible a thing as it actually was.

  In addition to Esmail—who wouldn’t let anyone check him—Trask and Nogle were also hit. As the medic rushed over to Nogle, Casper made it to Trask. A bullet had smashed into the sergeant’s forearm, which now hung limply against his armor. Casper placed a medical cuff over the elbow, just above the wound, and expanded it. The pumping blood that indicated a destroyed artery trickled to a stop. The cuff also flooded the local area with pain tranqs, leaving behind only a dull ache in the pain receptors.

  “You want some Chill?” Casper asked. He’d heard the slang the Martian infantrymen used for their anti-shock/anti-anxiety meds.

  Trask shook it off, breathing heavily. “Nah,” he waved. He gritted his teeth and breathed through his nose as the pain began to disappear. “Stuff makes you sloppy. Ain’t got time for that. We’re getting out of here. Promised my wife…”

  He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Though Trask couldn’t use his left arm, Casper could see that the sergeant had pushed the pain aside. His face regained a look of desperate fear.

  “They comin’ at us again, Sarn’t,” said Nogle over comm.

  Trask hobbled over to the window and peered past the few shards of shattered night-blue glass that remained in the dusty frame. Down the street, a large mass of Savage marines were coming for them again. As though they hadn’t just taken severe losses. As though they hadn’t been checked in the least.

  “Movement over here too,” said Duhrawski, who’d repositioned the pig back into the main room.

  “Here too,” said Barr. “Right down our throats.”

  The Savages were coming at them from both flanks and right into the front entrance. Three directions at once.

  “Light ’em up!” screamed Trask. He fired on full auto out the front door.

  Duhrawski cut down wide swathes of the incoming Savages on his side. Green-hued bursts illuminated the faces of the buildings across the debris-littered street like tram cars racing by in the night. But the other two groups closed faster than the surrounded infantrymen could return fire.

  “Comin’ at me again,” whispered Esmail over the comm. His voice betrayed no emotion.

  “Can you hold?” shouted Trask between bursts.

  “Do my best, Sarn’t.”

  Casper raced back through the shadows, sidearm out. In no time he was alternating fire down the alley, covering Esmail as the wounded man struggled to reload his rifle. The soldier had been hit worse than anyone thought. Now his fingers trembled as he tried to rack fresh charge packs.

  Over comm, Duhrawski said, “Pack swap!”

  “Covering!” shouted Trask.

  A violent explosion shook the building.

  One of the Savage marines in the alley got close enough to lob a grenade into the small room where Casper and Esmail were holding out. For a brief second they looked at each other in disbelief.

  Which was all wrong, Casper would think years later on the mushroom trail, lucidly hallucinating in the depths of the jungle. Esmail hadn’t looked at him at all. They hadn’t checked in with each other. Instead Esmail, who’d been sitting splay-legged, his back to the wall, merely stared at the rolling grenade in utter disgust. Then he turned over on his side and executed a near perfect soccer sliding kick, sending the grenade back out into the alley.

  It exploded in the Savage marines’ faces.

  A shockwave of noise and dust stunned Casper, who was crouched near the door. The force of the blast, which the Savage marines’ swirling mechanical butterfly field had attempted to contain, pushed Casper onto his back.

  Two more Savages tried to rush the door with the explosion still ringing in Casper’s ears.

  Casper fired his sidearm. He’d always been a steady shot. Always qualified. Been in tight spots before. Both screaming Savages, howling like ghosts behind their mirror masks, went down.

  And more appeared in the doorway.

  Esmail got the mag in, pulled the charging handle, and practically lunged toward the doorway, firing on full auto. Casper didn’t see who he hit, but Esmail kept firing until the charge pack was burned through. Then he popped the industrial diamond-tipped blade from beneath the barrel of his weapon and started stabbing and slashing.

  Casper regained his knees, then his feet, and followed Esmail out th
e door, blasting at the attacking marines, who seemed to not yet comprehend that they were being counterattacked.

  Now, almost unconsciously, Casper and Esmail were pushing into the alley, unable to go back, Casper shooting down Savages and Esmail working his bayonet-led rifle like a jackhammer on the post-humans.

  Miraculously, they cleared the first alley and came to a wider alley that ran parallel to the main street. Through the buildings they could hear the fury of gunfire mixing into a discordant symphony of violence and chaos.

  “Too far!” Casper gasped. “Gotta pull back and protect the rear.”

  Esmail stopped as though only now suddenly coming to himself. He’d gone a little berserk. Or a lot berserk, judging by all the dead in the alley.

  Then Casper spied something farther down—something that didn’t make sense. The corpses of Savages lying farther down the alley, just visible in the half-light thrown from the enigmatic sources of the main hab.

  “We didn’t kill those,” he whispered.

  Esmail threw his rifle down and picked up one of the Savage rifles. It was long, vented along the barrel, and had a semi-triangular drum magazine and a pistol grip instead of a stock. “I’m out of charge packs.” He bent to a few of the corpses, searching them for more magazines.

  Casper walked down the alley, crabbing, alternating scans to check his six. When he reached the bodies, he found they’d been killed by KS fire. Telltale charred flesh wounds dotted their flesh/mechanical corpses.

  Esmail came up with the Savage slug thrower he’d commandeered. “No wonder they’re such bad shots. This beauty is all spray and pray.”

  Casper ignored the comment. “Look. One of ours must’ve made it out of the cornfields. We didn’t kill these guys.”

  Esmail scanned the area. “Getting nothing on our HUDs… can’t tell you who’s still active in the unit roster.”

  Casper spotted a small alley to one side, so narrow that one would have to move through it sideways. He activated his searchlight and shined it into the darkness.

  Esmail cursed and told him to shut it off. Casper knew that soldiers were serious about noise and light discipline. But if one of their men was out here, they needed to find him and get him back inside the perimeter.

  Down the narrow alley were two more bodies. Savages. Heads hung at odd angles. Dead metallic butterflies around them like discarded toys.

  “Whoever it was… they went that way?” Casper whispered, turning off his light.

  “How do you know they didn’t come from that way?” Esmail asked.

  I don’t, thought Casper.

  “You head back, Sergeant. Secure the rear entrance. I’m gonna find our lost soldier and get him back inside. I’ll give a low whistle when we come down the alley. Signal back with one so I’ll know it’s clear.”

  Esmail acknowledged with a subdued yet typical Martian infantry “Oorah,” then limped back down the alley and disappeared into the wan darkness.

  Casper adjusted his gear, swapped charge packs on his sidearm, and squeezed into the narrow alley.

  As he stepped over the dead Savages, he saw that one of their mirror masks had fallen off. The face that stared up at him was elfin and beautiful. Almost perfect, if not for the lolling purple tongue. The eyes, though… they were not the eyes of a human. They had been replaced by bio-circuitry that, theorized Casper as he passed, must somehow interface with the mirror masks. It was like looking at a lonely high mountain lake, and finding a face beneath the calm water staring back at you with dead eyes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As the alley widened, Casper found more corpses along its length. All of them had their necks broken. The alley twisted and turned, but it was generally heading back toward the cacophony of battle noise along the main street.

  Duhrawski’s 249 was working the street in high-pitched close bursts of hectic fire. Savage weapons were obnoxiously burping out their sprays of lead in terse replies. Explosions sounded sporadically, concussive strikes, some clearly from grenades, others more like mortar rounds being called in on the building. But inside the tight alley sound bounced about, masking much of the directional information.

  Finally, up ahead, the alley opened out onto the main street. Remaining in the darkness, Casper peered ahead at some Savages who were setting up a tripod-mounted assault gun.

  One of the Martian infantrymen was mixed in among them.

  The soldier kicked one Savage, sending him flying backwards out of sight. The infantryman then lunged forward, reached right through a second Savage’s shifting hypnotic butterfly net, and pulled the post-human’s head toward his own. In the same motion, he lowered his bucket and slammed it into the Savage marine’s head. Even above the circus of battle, Casper heard the sickening crunch of bone. The Savage went lifeless and slumped to the dark street.

  The third Savage marine, who’d been smart enough to grab a slug thrower, brought it to bear at just the moment the Martian soldier pulled the machete from his back with his off hand and made a quick clean slice through the Savage’s unprotected neck.

  The head came off. Mostly.

  Casper ran down the alley, following the barrel of his sidearm onto the main street. The Martian soldier paid him no heed. Already he’d secured a Savage weapon and was unloading a full magazine on a nearby group cowering behind what might have been an overturned dumpster. The targets of his fire twisted and slumped. Blood sprayed in the gray twilight, looking dark and final, like some artist’s commentary on everything that was wrong with how wars are won.

  In the dim twilight of the street battle, all was chaos and confusion. Green fire spat from the surrounded defenders, while the Savages stopped to fire short bursts of bright gunfire and shift positions for new cover. But in the light of an explosion, the soldier turned, and Casper saw that it was Rex. His oldest friend, who he thought had most likely died only an hour ago. An hour in which he’d pushed those mortal thoughts away, because there wasn’t time to deal with it, what with all the running, hiding, firefight, dying, and assaulting from a dark alley into the flank of an enemy assault.

  Rex didn’t even bother to question how Casper had ended up on his six, Terran Navy sidearm in hand. The even-then-legendary Tyrus Rex acted as though this too was just as normal as any of the other millions of minutiae that made up his life of fable and myth.

  Some of the Savages turned back to see why their heavy weapons assault team wasn’t putting rounds on target anymore. One of them spotted Rex and Casper and howled. Casper shot the post-human in the chest, and the Savage went down. But other Savages were already seeking out the targets who’d invaded their flank.

  Rex ran to his right, strafing a large group as he went, drawing them away from Casper, who continued to shoot down Savages all around them like some defiant hero making a last noble stand despite the overwhelming odds.

  Surely someone had done this at least once before.

  Surely there was a still a thing called bravery somewhere in the darkness of history.

  Rex moved quickly, firing short bursts into the charging waves, avoiding fire from the defenders, surprising the attackers and cutting them down. In seconds a mad crossfire had stalled the Savage attack. The Savages in the center—thrown into confusion, sensing the loss of forward momentum, denied an exit, and unsure of their orders—broke.

  Trask by that time had line-of-sight comm with Rex. He shifted the light infantry’s fire and brought the full weight of it to bear on the mass of Savages moving in to breach. Another crossfire hurricane evolved between Casper/Rex and the besieged light infantrymen. The Savages were being smashed between hammer and anvil, until at last they fell back and scattered, disappearing out into the strange forever-midnight cornfields.

  In the aftermath of the battle, the street was littered with bodies. Rex began collecting magazines and rifles. Casper did the same, ignoring the mirrored faces of th
e dead Savages staring up at him as he liberated them of their ammunition. Thinking not of the strangely beautiful faces hiding beneath their soulless masks.

  Soon he and Rex were hustling back inside the building, and Rex was issuing new orders. They were ditching their issue rifles. Which was fine; most of them were down to one or two charge packs at best anyway, and the 249 had fired dry in the last moments of the slaughter.

  “It’s time to exit this area. We’ll make toward that pyramid up-cylinder. If we can find a terminal and hack into the ship’s operating system, we should be able to find out where they’ve taken Red Queen.”

  In all the mission briefings, Reina Benedetti had been referred to as “Red Queen.”

  As the soldiers gathered their gear, redistributed ammo, and patched up as much of their wounds as they could, Rex turned to Casper. His face was blank, like a bot’s mockery of human expression. Except those sorts of bots wouldn’t exist for another several hundred years.

  “You’re having a hallucinogenic reaction to the mushrooms, master.”

  ***

  THK-133 was leaning down over him. Casper was on his back, watching the jungle light undulate in the treetops above.

  It looked like afternoon light.

  They were deep inside a beautiful emerald jungle. Flowers were exploding, popping and spraying prismatically all across the lush landscape. Every palm leaf seemed to curl or twist, to wave gently at him. Lush trees stared down at him, smiling their wizened smiles.

  Casper looked up at the milkshake sky and saw an emerald dragon wandering through the vibrant trees. It turned and stared down at him like it was a real thing. As though wisps of smoke were truly rising up from its flaring nostrils.

  Well, thought Casper. I’ve gone completely mad.

  “The local flora and fauna,” lectured THK-133, “seem to have infected you with some sort of contact poison, master. It may even be an inhalant, though I don’t possess a sensor array configured in a way to detect such particulates. But we’ve been marching for hours and you haven’t said a word… master. Unless moaning like a Syclopian rotuaro counts as words. Languages are not my specialty. So possibly it does. Nevertheless, you seem to be suffering from ill effects.”