by John French
The captain looked flustered, and glanced down at the parchment in his hand. Brel almost felt sorry for the guy. Almost.
‘Yes,’ stammered the captain. ‘Yes, it’s been accounted for. You have a replacement attached to your squadron.’ The captain looked up. ‘Sergeant Brel?’
Brel let out a breath and raised a hand. ‘Sir,’ he said in a flat voice.
‘Your machine is attached to Lieutenant Tahirah’s outfit.’
Brel nodded acknowledgement, and avoided the lieutenant’s eye.
They were going out. After all this time war had found him again. Beside him Jallinika was whispering curses. Calsuriz and Selq were quiet. Brel felt nothing, as though the order had hollowed him out. The captain was still talking, but Brel was not hearing it. The world was the slow rumbling pulse of blood in his ears. The memory of Vandorus came to him again then, bubbling up, hot and vivid. Forests burning around him, the sound of rounds ringing on the hull, the bright instant the energy beam hit his machine and turned the world dark. And then all the rest came, one after another – all the battlefields, all the dead with their charred smiles. When the pain bloomed in his skull it was a relief, drowning memory in bright sensation.
‘My name is Akil.’
Brel looked up. The briefing had broken up around them.
A man stood in front of him. He was lean and handsome with dark eyes and hair. The drab overalls marked him as one of the civilians pulled together and given basic machine training so they could act as guides on the surface. It was worse than ridiculous.
The man called Akil, smiled. He looked like he was used to being in charge, and used to money too. He extended his hand in greeting.
‘I believe I am your scout,’ said the man.
Brel looked at Akil’s hand then turned away. Beside him Jallinika grunted in amusement, but Brel said nothing. Inside his head the fires of memory still danced and the dead were grinning at him in welcome.
This is not my world. This is not real. This cannot be real. The thoughts looped through Akil’s mind as the machines crawled through the corpse of the Sapphire City. He wanted to look away but his eyes had stayed fixed on the narrow slot of armourglass since they had emerged from the shelter.
Fog hung over his view like a curtain. There was no sun, just a diffuse yellow glow that seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes the fog thickened and they had to halt. In those moments he found his mind forming images in the shift and swirl beyond the armourglass. He would watch and wait until he could see a few metres, then start to drive again. Occasionally the fog would peel back and show him what it hid.
Buildings still stood, but they were empty shells. Wooden balconies, doors and window frames had collapsed and dissolved to run down the stone walls. Skins of iridescent moisture clung to the fallen glass of windows. He saw the dead, too. At first he had thought that they were heaps of mud or sewage. Then he had seen half-melted teeth grinning from the slime. He had stopped looking so closely after that.
The two-man scout vehicle he was driving was a low slab of welded metal with a raked front. It apparently had a name: Talon. He had driven and piloted many different machines in his life, but nothing quite like Talon. Tracks ran across its front and up and over the top of its flanks. A sealed socket at the front waited for a weapon which had remained unfitted. When Akil had first seen it, the machine’s hull had been a raw grey. Now slime mottled its surface.
Inside Talon the only noise was the engine and the suck and hiss of the air system. To Akil’s ears it sounded like the beat of a dying man’s heart. After a while he had found that he was waiting for every wheeze of air. He could not hear Rashne, but he knew that he was there, crouched in the small cargo space, hugging his knees and not looking at the armoured crystal viewports. Rashne was a soldier, a signal operator, but if it had not been for the uniform Akil would have thought him a boy. Rashne had looked outside only once. He had pressed his face against the glass as the fog rolled around them. He had seen, and stared for a minute before curling up in silence.
Both Akil and Rashne wore enviro-suits of thick rubberised material inside the vehicle, their eyes looking out of circular eyepieces, mouths connected to air bottles by tubes. Talon had tracks, like a battle tank, but no turret. The empty weapon socket was situated next to Akil’s control rig. He was not sure if they did not trust him or simply did not have the correct weapon. The vehicle’s controls were simple: two levers and two pedals. They had given him six hours’ training. Now, grinding through the outskirts of the dead city, unable to see where he was going, linked to the rest of the squadron by a scratching vox, he wondered how they could ever have thought that was enough. Controlling the machine was like wrestling an iron herd beast, the controls responding either hesitantly or with a sudden surge of raw power.
They had been driving for hours. Akil had no idea where they were. He had been heading south, using the vehicle’s compass. The major arterial road to the nearest settlements ran along the coast, and before the bombardment the journey to the city’s edge would have taken no more than half an hour. They had been moving for six hours and still they had found no sign of any enemy. Occasionally he saw something that he thought he recognised. A building or statue would suddenly appear out of the fog for an instant and then fade again. Each time he had tried to figure out where they were, but failed. The entire squadron would come to a halt. He had convinced himself several times that the compass was wrong and that they were heading north, or going in circles.
He tried not to think too much, not to think about why this had happened, not to think about all the people he had seen crowding the streets as the alarms sounded. Not to think about his daughters in his house, far to the south.
They would have just been going to sleep, he thought, and then cut the thought away as quickly as it formed. He was not sure why he had volunteered for this. Anger was part of it, anger at what had been done to his world; guilt as well, but he had an unpleasant feeling that more than anything it had been because he had wanted to look at the hell above ground and know that it was real. He knew now.
He blinked. The world outside had peeled back to show him a bare shore to the left of the road. The sea was the colour of a bruise and heaved with a thick slowness. Heaps of oozing matter lay along the tide line. It began to rain, greasy black drops spattering across the armourglass. He halted the machine, and turned to Rashne. The boy was looking back at him, eyes wide behind misted eyepieces, knees gathered to his chest. Akil nodded.
‘Tell the others that we are on the eastern coast road.’
For a moment Rashne did not move. Then he unfolded and began to flick switches on the equipment that crowded the compartment. He plugged a lead from his suit’s comms into the main bank, twirled a dial, depressed a switch and began to speak.
‘Lantern, this is Talon.’ A surge of static followed Rashne’s voice, then a low hissing half-silence. ‘Lantern, this is Talon.’ The static rose again, then faded back to a low moan. Rashne began twirling dials, saying the same phrase over again: ‘Lantern, this is Talon.’ Akil could hear the boy’s breath sucking at the end of each transmission.
‘Rashne,’ said Akil into his own vox. The boy did not answer but flicked and twirled the vox-controls, his voice now a pleading monotone. Akil turned his head to look out of his front view slit. Thick yellow fog pressed close against the glass.
‘They aren’t there.’ Rashne’s voice was low, as though he was talking to himself. Akil turned to look at him. The boy was slumped with his head resting on the vox-panel. ‘They aren’t there.’
Then he looked up, and Akil noticed the beads of moisture smeared across the inside of the boy’s eye lenses.
‘We are alone,’ said Rashne, and Akil felt the world close around him like a cold hand.
Silence ground forwards through the murk, tatters of bio-sludge trailing from its tracks and the long barrels
of its main gun. Slime and debris crunched and sucked under its tracks. Its exhausts coughed in the soup-thick air. Silence was a Vanquisher, a machine made to kill others of its kind, and it bore its purpose with the scarred arrogance of an old warrior. She had fought on Credence, and Arzentis IX, and taken damage on Fortuna. It had been that damage that had marooned her on Tallarn; her masters had moved on, leaving her to be repaired but never to rejoin them. Brel had never ridden Silence into battle, but he did not doubt her. They were alike, bred of the same substance and experience.
‘Where the hell have they gone?’ muttered Brel, looking at the screen of his auspex. Five minutes earlier the Talon had vanished from their screens, and now the whole squadron was getting static when they tried to raise them on the vox.
‘Idiot was supposed to know this city,’ said Jallinika. ‘Now he is just gone.’
‘Quiet,’ said Brel, staring at the auspex screen. Shapes and colour washed across it. They had been four – the two Executioners, his own Vanquisher, and the scout machine. The green markers of the two Executioner hulls hardened and then blurred as if sinking back into the distortion. There was no sign of the scout. The scanner had been lousy with interference ever since they had left the shelter, but this was worse.
‘Silence, this is Lantern,’ Lieutenant Tahirah crackled in his ear.
He blinked. The inside of his suit lenses had fogged. The distortion buzzed across the auspex. He did not bother looking out of any of the periscope blocks. There was no point. If they could not see the scout on the screen then they would not be able to see it by staring at the fog outside, even with infra-vision.
‘Damn it, Silence – respond.’
‘This is Silence, go ahead,’ said Brel, his attention not leaving the screen. Something was itching at the edge of his senses. A green blizzard briefly blew across the auspex.
‘Can you see anything?’ asked Tahirah.
Brel was silent. Blood was pounding through his skull. Screams rode on the surge of his breathing. It was like it always had been. Like all the places where he had killed, and come out alive hoping never to go back. The blur of static boiled across the auspex, then dimmed. He felt like he was waiting for something.
Calmness spread through him, as soft and sudden as a light turning off.
It’s going to start again, he thought. All of it, just like before. He felt his body and mind fold over the feelings of panic, and slip into a calm rhythm. It was so familiar that it felt almost like coming home.
‘Lantern, this is Silence. I see nothing,’ he paused. He licked his lips and tapped Jallinika once on the right arm, an old command given without words. The breech of the main gun opened and swallowed a shell. Brel felt the clunk of it closing in his bones, another old sensation returned after so long. ‘But something is wrong, Lantern. Something is out there. We should light weapons.’
‘What?’ Tahirah’s voice was a disbelieving crackle. ‘You can see nothing, but there is something out there?’
‘Light your weapons. I don’t care if you have rank over me. Light your weapons.’
The pause lengthened into the squall of distortion.
‘Lantern, this is Deathlight, what are your orders?’ The voice was Hector, commander of the squadron’s number two machine. Hector was firm, but Brel could hear the tension in his question. The other crews would all be feeling what he felt – the heavy, caged sensation, and the acid taste of adrenaline. They would all be feeling it, but no one outside Silence would know what it meant.
Beside him, Jallinika was murmuring something to herself. A prayer muttered to an outlawed god.
‘All call signs.’ Tahirah paused. ‘Light your weapons.’
The glass trembled against the side of Akil’s head. The engine was still running, of course. They needed it to power the air system. He shifted his head slightly. Behind him the vox-unit was still breathing static into the cabin. It sounded reassuring, like rain pattering on the roof at night. Rashne was weeping, the sound of the boy’s sobs cutting into and out of the internal vox. Akil listened but said nothing. They were lost. They were alone, and it was now just a matter of time until the engine ran out of fuel and the air stopped. He wondered if he would take off his suit and open the hatch before that point. At least that would be the end of everything, and an end he deserved. He thought of his daughters and whether they had survived.
The glass trembled against his skull again. He raised his head and put his hand to the glass. A low bass vibration met his touch, its note out of sync with the rumble of the vehicle’s engine, the sound of heavy tracks shaking the ground.
‘I hear something,’ said Akil quietly. Rashne sobbed again.
Akil keyed the internal vox and spoke more loudly. ‘Rash, I hear something.’ He looked around and saw that the boy had looked up at him, eyes wide behind misted glass. Akil nodded. ‘Can’t you hear it? They are out there, they are close.’ He paused. ‘Try the vox again.’
Rashne turned and began to flick switches.
‘Any call sign, respond if you can hear this. This is scout unit four, First Squadron, Amaranth Company, Seven Hundred and First.’
Akil shook his head, as if trying to shake the smile off. Relief and exhaustion flooded through him.
We are not alone.
He slumped forward, head resting on the armourglass he had been staring through for hours. His eyes flicked to the forward viewing slit. The fog had smothered them again, hiding the landscape behind yellow silt veils. He was about to turn to Rashne when he saw something move in the fog.
‘Rash,’ he said carefully, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘Are you getting anything coming through?’
‘No,’ said Rashne. Akil could almost see the boy grinning and shrugging. ‘But they are close, right?’
Akil kept his eyes steady on the view beyond the smeared glass. He felt very cold.
We are not alone. The thought rose in his mind, like a chilling echo of a misunderstood revelation.
‘That’s weird,’ said Rashne. Akil heard him flicking more switches. ‘There is something coming over the vox. Listen.’
Rashne raised the volume. After a second Akil heard what he meant: a low growl of noise rising and falling behind the wall of static. He listened more closely. The sound came and went, almost like the breaking of slow waves on a shore, or the beating of a heart.
‘Rash–’ he began to say, but then he saw it again. It surfaced from the fog, like a sea creature breaking the surface to breathe before diving out of sight. He had an impression of hard angles and dull, unpolished steel. It had been close as well, within a hundred metres.
He could hear the frame of the vehicle vibrating now.
‘Rash, shut the vox down,’ he said, panic rising in his voice.
‘What?’ said Rashne.
‘Shut it down.’
‘Why?’
Akil was not listening. He was thinking of when he had watched a sabre cat stalking prey in the equatorial forests, of the way it moved its head as it sniffed the air. He reached out slowly and flicked the engines off.
‘What are you doing?’ called Rashne.
‘Shut the v–’
They both heard it.
‘An engine,’ breathed Rashne. ‘It’s them, they’re here.’ The boy was reaching for the vox.
The tank broke from the fog in front of Akil’s eyes. Its hull was a raked slab of dull metal topped with a domed turret. Slime scattered in its wake as it ground forwards. Threads of red light reached through the fog, scattering as they swept and converged. The turret rotated as he watched, fixing him with the blank gaze of its weapon barrel. He felt with numb certainty that his next breath would be the last.
‘I am sorry,’ he whispered to himself.
The world vanished behind a sheet of white light.
‘Kill!’ shouted Lachlan. Tahirah winced as
his voice roared from her headset. She felt sweat rolling down her skin. The temperature inside Lantern had spiked an instant after the weapon had fired. Inside her enviro-suit the hairs rose across her skin as the plasma destroyer began to recharge. The hull was shaking and bucking as it accelerated into the engagement. Engine noise vibrated through her head.
Crammed into the turret next to Lachlan, it felt like she was riding a boat in a stormy sea. All of the crew wore sealed suits of rubber and treated fabric. Breathing air through a mask plugged into the tank’s air supply, it felt as if she was drowning in the heat and the brain-numbing snarl of Lantern’s engine. She could barely see anything that was not directly in front of her eyepieces, and moisture from her breath was already beading on the circles of glass. The only reason she could talk to the rest of the crew was because of the internal vox.
Outside on the hull a sheet of burning vapour vented from the cone of the cannon. The slime clinging to its hull ignited. Flames crawled across Lantern, scorching the Amaranth stripes from its turret. Black liquid splattered up in its wake, as it dragged a cloak of guttering flame.
For Tahirah everything had started to move very fast from the moment she had targeted the enemy vehicle and Lachlan had fired. She had trained in war machines for half a decade, been through live fire drills and logged over a hundred machine hours. But this was like nothing she had ever felt. Information and sensations washed over her. Dozens of thoughts, fears and possibilities formed and fled in a second. It was like trying to catch hold of a storm. It was the gap, she realised, the gap between training and reality, the gap she had always wanted to cross.
Plumes of heat and gas blurred her view out of the periscope. Red icons painted the point where the enemy machine had been. It was not moving. Good enough.
‘Kill confirmed,’ said Tahirah. The auspex was screeching. A shape had emerged from the green pixel fog. ‘Enemy, left flank, sixty degrees, engage when you see them.’
‘I can’t see them,’ shouted Genji.
‘Traversing,’ said Lachlan next to her, and the turret began to turn in its collar.