Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  We went down the staircase and out through the front door, and I think I sweated the whole way. It felt good to be working with a partner again, though—even if it was the almost-offensive Andrew Jones. Working in pairs is just the Arbiter way of doing things, and a lot of tactical scenarios would make more sense to me with back-up.

  “What’s the plan, Jones?”

  “Connect-the-dots. If we move from one of my people to another, we have a much better chance of making it to Young with as many limbs and organs as we have right now.”

  “That does seem better than the alternative.”

  Glancing at my schematic, I could see where Young was—unfortunately, he wasn’t all that close.

  “Shouldn’t we get him to meet us halfway?” I asked.

  “I’ve already sent him the message. Don’t hold your breath, though. Young is fully capable of deciding that whatever he’s doing right now is a higher priority than the chain of command.”

  So, Young was a genius. In my experience, the only people who completely ignore the chain of command are blockheads and geniuses. Blockheads ignore orders because they’re too stubborn to change their minds, and geniuses… well, it’s exactly the same really.

  “Shouldn’t we be going dark?” I asked. Jones didn’t reply, but he made a vaguely contemptuous sound. What happened next was a masterclass in infiltration, and I’ve remembered what I learned that day ever since.

  When you turn your scramblers on, the enemy’s scanners won’t work properly, and neither will your own. Other than the occasional blip on the screen, nobody within range will have any idea where anyone else is unless they have eyes-on. On the other hand, everyone will know that someone in the neighborhood has gone into stealth mode, which tends to encourage them to go on the hunt.

  Jones took a totally different approach. Instead of moving from cover to cover while zigzagging to his target, he moved like a confused and panicky civilian. Hide in this burned-out storefront until someone wanders onto the street, then move at top speed out of the area. Hide in the shadows of this abandoned building until there’s an explosion nearby, then bolt like a frightened rodent and find a new place to hide.

  To anyone watching us on their scanners, we wouldn’t look like hostiles. We’d look like noncombatants, allowing us to move across the city without drawing any particular attention. Of course, the Nightwatch was systematically killing all the noncombatants, but that didn’t mean they’d dispatch a squad just to hunt down two especially skittish victims. Their basic attitude to us was probably “all in good time.”

  It was often frustrating, because we’d be hiding for extended periods of time while fighting raged only a few streets away. But Jones took his infiltration skills seriously, and he didn’t seem to be at all interested in seeking out combat. Our job was to get the dataspike to Young, and until that job was completed, we weren’t necessarily expected to do anything else.

  Looking back on it all, I’m not even sure it was any slower than it would have been if we had done things the normal way. When we broke cover, we always knew whether there was anyone nearby or not. Without our scramblers on, we could just move when no one was in a position to shoot at us—and knowing that for a fact, we could move quickly and efficiently.

  We were forced to slow down a little as we got into a more heavily inhabited area, because our scanners couldn’t tell us if the people in the nearby buildings were noncombatants or hostiles. Still, Jones made few concessions to the possibility of an ambush. We were heavily armored, and his method ensured that our enemies would probably mistake us for civilians unless they were looking right at us. If anyone did ambush us, the armor should keep us safe until we could either kill them or get to cover.

  It didn’t work perfectly. People shot at us twice, although it wasn’t at all clear who was doing the shooting. It could just has easily have been a panicky civilian, not a Nightwatch officer. When the shooting started, Jones turned in the general direction of the attack and unleashed a stream of fire over the tops of the buildings, so they’d keep their heads down. Then we slipped into a building across the street and heard no more from them.

  In our fitful way, by stops and starts, we were heading in the direction of a man named Jonathan Bray. The personnel file listed him as point man and heavy weapons specialist, and based on his picture he was born for the job. He was a mountain of a man. His head alone was so broad he could probably have used it to knock a door down. His expression suggested he had just slipped someone’s wallet out of their inside coat pocket and was now on the way to a casino-brothel to spend his take.

  According to the scanner, Bray was completely surrounded by a frighteningly large number of people who crowded every street and building around his position. Either he was using a bunch of civilians as human shields, or he was under siege.

  Despite what Jones had said a few minutes ago, I doubted that going anywhere near that scene would help us keep our limbs intact. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Jones?”

  “I am. Don’t worry about it.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to such a bland assertion. Don’t worry about it? We needed to help him, but we also needed to get the dataspike to Young. One goal contradicted the other.

  “Here, take the dataspike. I’ll go help Bray.”

  “I don’t think so, Barrett. You didn’t want me to have it, so now you’re stuck with it.”

  “So we’re taking it into that?”

  “Taking it into what? Bray is fine. He’ll have that area mopped up by the time we get there.”

  We weren’t all that close yet, but I could already hear a distant roaring sound. A heavy weapon, most likely a military machine gun. If anything, it was even more powerful than the machine guns mounted on the droid that killed Gabriel. According to Capanelli, those androids were only one of the high-end weapons Marcenn had been busy acquiring before the crisis started.

  Jones and I were crouched in a doorway, waiting for something we could pretend to be scared of so we could run through the nearest intersection without attracting a hunting party.

  “Do you hear that gun?”

  He nodded. “Sure. That’s Bray at work. Have a look at your scanners.”

  I did, and he was right. As I watched, several of the little glowing dots surrounding Bray went black and disappeared from my schematic. If we were closer, I could have seen their shapes on my backscatter or thermal imaging scans. As it was, all I saw was the map marking their locations as they fell. The numbers surrounding Bray were getting smaller almost every second, but there were still so many of them I didn’t know how much difference it would make in the end. They’d overrun him before long, wouldn’t they?

  There was a burst of gunfire from a few blocks away, and Jones took off running through the intersection. I followed as close as I could. His method was a bit of a paradox. If you’re worried about taking fire, you keep your head down and try to flank. Unless you’re a civilian, in which case you either hide in place and wait to die or you bolt in panic. By doing the exact opposite of everything that made sense to me, I was successfully moving around in a free-fire zone without my scramblers on.

  We passed through the shell of what had once been a store, but the place was gutted so badly I couldn’t even tell what they had sold there. It was a familiar sight now, but we had to step over dead bodies to get through the place. As far as I could tell, three or four people had been trying to take shelter when the flames swept through the building.

  They were all sitting together against one wall, but their bodies were burned completely black and some of their limbs had melted together, making it hard to tell how many had died. When the fire control systems came on overhead it had doused the fire, but thin little wisps of smoke were still drifting up from the sodden floors and carbonized bodies.

  I checked my schematic again. It was hard to believe, but there were only about half as many of those little dots surrounding Bray now. As I watched, at least twenty-five or thirty
of them broke cover and started to cross the open area around Bray’s position. I heard the report of his heavy gun, and the dots started to disappear from the schematic right in front of my eyes. From twenty-five or thirty down to ten or fifteen, then seven, then three, then none. He had slaughtered them all, but another human wave was gathering steam for another charge.

  “They’re not afraid,” I said. “Not individually.”

  “Why would they be? They aren’t individuals.”

  He certainly seemed to be right. I couldn’t help but feel that Bray needed some help. He could handle a wave attack, but what if all the men he was fighting decided to attack from different directions at the exact same time? He’d be killed by one bunch while he was gunning down another.

  “He needs back-up,” I insisted. “I’m going in.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll cover you. But try not to get shot by Bray, he’s not exactly a sharpshooter.”

  Now that the daylights were on above our heads, there’d be no cover of darkness. As soon as I showed myself, they would know I was no frightened civilian. So be it, then. I was sick of hiding, even if it had helped us get this far. I went out the back door of the store and crossed the last few streets between us and Bray at a dead run.

  Now that I was close, the sheer power of Bray’s heavy gun was among the most intimidating things I’d ever heard. Once it started speaking, every survival instinct in my body and brain told me to find the darkest hole I could find and pull something in with me to hide under. Instead I advanced until I could see the Nightwatch, aiming out the window at Bray’s position. From where I stood, there was still the corner of a building between me and Bray. I aimed at the Nightwatch officers I could see and opened fire.

  One tumbled from the third floor and fell to the street below. Another slumped over dead in the broken window. Another turned and shot at me, only to crumble and fall back into the apartment.

  From the building behind me, Jones was picking his shots methodically. He took out one who was squaring up to launch a grenade at me. He killed another who came running out from a nearby building in my direction. Bray had stopped shooting, possibly because he wasn’t sure of our location and didn’t want to mow us down with friendly fire.

  As I came around the corner, I saw the mounds of dead Nightwatch officers before I saw Bray himself. He must have been holding this position alone for hours, gunning down one human wave attack after another as they just kept throwing whatever they had at him. As soon as I showed myself, I heard the BRRAAATTT of his weapon again. He knew where I was now and could fire freely at the Nightwatch positions with no fear of hitting me. I almost ducked when I heard that sound, because it was just that terrifying. Despite my instinctive reaction I backed him up, picking out Nightwatch officers from the nearby windows and shooting them down.

  As soon as the enemy realized that Bray had reinforcements, they decided it was time to end this one way or the other. From every window, Nightwatch gunmen opened fire. From every building, they came pouring out like a surge of floodwaters. As I saw them coming, I had a sudden and vivid understanding of what it must have been like to be in one of those ancient battles I had studied back in school. A Roman legionary facing the charge of the Huns could not have been any more awestruck than I was at that moment. The sound of their boots alone was like the thunder of charging horses.

  It caught me flatfooted, standing in the middle of the street like a fool while an army ran straight at me. Then Bray pulled his trump card—a barrage of rockets, streaking out over the heads of the charging Nightwatch officers before splitting off in multiple different directions. Every rocket found a window, and every window exploded all at once. The façade on the building across from me collapsed with a deep rumble, raining plasticrete rubble on the rear of the enemy charge. Dozens of men went down beneath it, but the men at the front didn’t even slow down.

  It woke me up, and I started firing directly into the oncoming horde. Jones was next to me a moment later, cursing loudly and grabbing my arm. He half knocked me and half dragged me to a wall of sandbags, behind which was Bray’s position.

  Bray’s rockets were gone now—he’d been saving them all for their big push—so he opened up with his heavy gun. I did what felt like my meager best to give him fire support, targeting anyone who somehow got close. It seemed like there were so many of them, but it didn’t take long to break their momentum. First they were unstoppable, then they were a large but dwindling enemy force, then they were scattered clusters, then they were gone.

  When the heavy gun stopped at last, Bray rested it on the sandbags and stretched. “That shit is exhausting, Jones.”

  Bray cracked his knuckles, and I noticed he wasn’t even wearing armor other than a pair of heat-resistant gloves. As far as I could see, there wasn’t a single scratch anywhere on his body. Dead bodies all around us, and not a streak of blood on this guy. He suddenly noticed me and jerked a thumb in my direction.

  “Who’s the Arbiter?”

  “I’m Ty…”

  He swiveled in my direction with a ferocious glare. “Didn’t ask you. Asked my buddy here.”

  Jones stepped in. “This is Tycho Barrett. He’s with us today.”

  Bray grunted. “With us? Huh. Not with me. What was he doing getting in the way out there?”

  Jones’ voice, as it so often did, had a hint of laughter. “He thought you needed help.”

  Bray looked me up and down, as if trying to figure out what would have given me such a ridiculous notion. One thing you could say about these Section 9 guys was none of them were lacking when it came to self-confidence. Then he looked away. “Used to be an Arbiter. Guns weren’t big enough.”

  If Bray had joined Section 9 just to get access to bigger guns, he had certainly done well by himself. His heavy gun was so massive I didn’t think I could even have picked it up by myself. Its ammo drum alone must have weighed more than my gear, and he had spare ammo drums stacked up beside him.

  My early impression of Bray was that he was an ogre. Simple-minded, huge, and ill-tempered. I’d like to say there was more to him than that, but it is what it is. On the other hand, his lethal simplicity had probably saved a few hundred innocent lives. The neighborhood covered by his position had not been cleared by Nightwatch death squads.

  “Where you headed?” Bray asked Jones, and I knew better than to answer this time.

  “We’re looking for Young. Barrett brought us Marcenn’s dataspike.”

  Bray frowned, confused. “How’d he get his hands on that?”

  Jones clapped me on the back. “He went all the way up top and killed the man himself.”

  Seeing Bray try to process this information was almost amusing. I say almost, because if I had so much as chuckled at his perplexed expression, I think he would have ripped at least one of my arms off. Then he smiled. “Maybe you want a bigger gun too, yeah?”

  I took that as a compliment but didn’t say anything. Bray started changing his ammo drum. “Enough chit chat. Run along.”

  Jones pulled on my arm again, and we started off toward their next position. Once we were safely out of earshot, I leaned in toward Jones and spoke quietly. “What’s the deal with Bray?”

  “John’s alright. He’s just exactly what he seems to be.”

  “Gigantic and mean?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  We resumed the infiltration game, but the neighborhood we were entering had a lot fewer people in it. As we crossed from street to street, I checked my schematic occasionally to see where we were headed. The guy we were moving toward was Vincenzo Veraldi, the second-in-command after Capanelli.

  When we stopped for a minute, I glanced at his profile picture. Veraldi was swarthy, with dark, straight hair that hung below his ears and something in between a beard and stubble. He wore a black turtleneck and a black jacket, and I could only assume he wore black shoes as well. The impression the photo gave was of a fashionable waiter, who would probably know where you could
buy anything from fine antiques to stolen military hardware.

  Unlike Bray, Veraldi wasn’t holding a fixed position. He flitted here and there, changing directions constantly. Wherever he went, one or two dots would disappear from my schematic. He would get so close to them that I was sure they would shoot him, but their lights would always blink out of existence while his would not.

  As I got close enough to see him on my backscatter, I saw that he was using close quarters combative techniques. He would approach his target, whirl out of their line of fire, then somehow end up behind them or to their side. When he came in for the kill, it was always his knife that finished them.

  This struck me as a strange way to fight a numerically strong enemy, but it seemed to be having a tactical effect. There were civilians in the area, but the Nightwatch was so busy trying to track down Veraldi that they didn’t have time to go after noncombatants.

  On the other hand, the man was moving around so much I didn’t know if we would catch up with him to speak with him.

  “Do we need to talk to Veraldi?” I asked.

  “No, not really. Just shoot an officer or two on the way by if you still feel like you need to help.”

  I did exactly that, shooting two Nightwatch officers who stuck their heads out to take shots at us. Unfortunately, their efforts to pin down Veraldi were bringing more and more of them in our direction. When I looked at the schematics, it seemed like we would soon be overwhelmed by numbers now that we no longer had Bray’s heavy gun to help us. With all his ammo drums and sandbags, he wasn’t a mobile fighter.

  Veraldi was, though. As we hid in an abandoned restaurant, he joined us quietly.

  “Is that you, Jones?”

  “Yeah. I’m here with Tycho Barrett, the Arbiter who killed August Marcenn.”

  “Capanelli told me. Impressive work, Barrett.”

  “I didn’t do it by myself.”

  He crouched down next to us, speaking quietly. “False modesty won’t get you anywhere in this unit.”

  “It’s not false modesty. My friend Gabriel Anderson was killed on the way. I wouldn’t have made it there without him.”