Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  “Why do you keep talking about him like he’s still alive?”

  “Why is it so hard for you to accept that a part of him is? We know what we’re talking about here. You’ve mostly seen us as fighters, but we’re an Intelligence unit. Information is what we do.” She pointed out across the city, moving her finger in a wide arc. “Somewhere in the files of Section 9, there’s a dossier on each of these buildings. On each of the people in these buildings. On all their pets. Knowing what’s going on is essential to our job.”

  “Even if what you’re saying is true, though, it isn’t him. It’s like a corrupted file.”

  “No argument here. But why does it matter?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t figure myself out, so how could I possibly explain myself to her? “I don’t know what’s going on with me. Something to do with Gabriel dying maybe.”

  “That makes sense. You need some time to sort it out. But we don’t have the time right now.”

  “I know. We need to get down there and rescue those civilians before the Nightwatch kills them all.”

  “Barrett, listen to me. If you don’t want to call it Marcenn, that’s okay with me. You can call it whatever you want. The Hive, okay? The Hive is up to something, and the only reason they’re killing everyone down here is to keep us from stopping them up there. If we go fight them on the lower levels, we might save some people. But it’s what they want us to do, and that probably means it’s even worse.”

  “So what are you saying?” I ran my hand through my hair, a nervous gesture. “We just abandon them all? Declare them a lower priority and wish them the best?”

  “I might have a solution, but we need to give Young a few minutes. I’ll make you a deal. You give Young the time he needs, and if he can’t do what I need him to do then you go downstairs. We’ll take the upper levels. If he can do it, you join us in the fight up there.”

  “Why do you need me? Aren’t you people super-soldiers?”

  “We haven’t even seen the big hardware yet. Mar… the Hive’s been holding it back. We need the extra firepower.”

  This was a big change from an hour before, when she had balked at the notion that she might need any backup. “Okay, I’ll wait a minute. If Young can give us a real solution, I’ll come with you.”

  “Good man. Let’s go back inside.”

  Before we could, we saw the other members of the Section 9 team moving in our direction—the vaguely sinister Veraldi, the sleek and confident Raven Sommer with her precision-optic sniper rifle, and the enormous Bray with his equally enormous weapon. Bray had a cart for all his ammo drums, and he was pulling it behind him like a little boy pulling his baby sister.

  Capanelli saw them too. “Family reunion time. Come on.”

  When we got back in the building, Jones was staring over Young’s shoulder at one of the computer screens. He glanced in my direction when we came in. “Feeling better?”

  I ignored him. “Did you get it done?”

  Young scoffed. “Did I get it done? Come see for yourself.”

  He gestured at the screens, which showed a constantly shifting panorama of scenes from around the living tower. Streets, storefronts, crowds of people, the elevator doors…

  “What am I looking at here?” asked Capanelli.

  Young’s grin was so big it made him look like a snake. I thought he was about to dislodge his lower jaw and swallow her head. “It’s not what you’re looking at, it’s what you’re looking through. The eyes of the androids!”

  “So, we can see through their eyes now?”

  She didn’t seem to grasp the importance of what he was saying to her.

  “We have the video, we have the audio, we have it all. Here, listen.” He touched one of the screens, and a woman’s voice came over the speakers.

  “Well, I hear there’s some sort of rioting up on Level 250. I don’t know what it is, but I hope the Nightwatch takes a firm hand.”

  Bray, who had just come in the door, stood there staring at the screens. “What?”

  “Don’t judge her too harshly, Jonathan,” said Andrea. “She has no way of knowing what’s really going on.”

  Raven Sommer came in. “I think the level’s clear. The Nightwatch have all pulled back to the hub. Some of them are going up and some down. What about us?”

  Veraldi came in after her. “We could split up, but it wouldn’t be tactically efficient. I say we go up, get this dealt with once and for all...”

  I broke in. “There are a lot of people down there.”

  “Let’s not get bogged down in that again,” said Andrea. “Young, are you saying we have total control over the android proxies?”

  He looked perplexed, and more than a little frustrated. “We own them. We own them completely. Wasn’t I clear about that?”

  “So, you’re their general now. If you can run them from right here, I want you to use them to take the lower levels. Stop the Nightwatch from killing people, detain or neutralize as needed. Got it?”

  Young’s eyes filled with joy, like an eight-year-old with a new package of toy soldiers. He sat down at his screens and got busy commanding his robot army.

  Capanelli turned to me. “Satisfied, Barrett?”

  “Okay.” I was honestly relieved. Considering that it was an android that had killed Gabriel, I wasn’t all that comfortable with having them as allies, and I was going to feel a lot better about it if I didn’t have to see it. I know they’re just machines, but it was still hard not to take it personally.

  Andrea turned her attention to the whole crew. “On your toes, everyone, we’re heading up. We’ll take it level by level. This is a search and destroy op.”

  “Search and destroy?” Veraldi looked mildly incredulous. “Do you have any idea how many people we’re talking about here?”

  “I don’t want you to kill everyone, Veraldi. Just the Nightwatch. If you find any survivors, you have my permission not to kill them.”

  “You know, Andrea,” said Jones, “that sarcasm of yours is going to backfire one day. Veraldi here is a sharp guy, but if you tell Bray that killing everyone is optional, he’s just going to take you literally and do it.”

  “What are you saying?” Bray looked suspicious, like he thought Jones was probably making fun of him but couldn’t quite say how.

  Andrea shook her head. “Just to be absolutely clear, it’s a search and destroy op against Marcenn’s Nightwatch. Nobody else, unless you’re absolutely certain they’re also infected. And take prisoners if you can. We need to be able to study this phenomenon.”

  “I don’t think that’s likely,” said Veraldi. “They fight like fanatics.”

  “I know. Just do it if you get the chance. You joining us, Tycho?”

  “I’m with you.”

  “Glad to hear it. I’ll pair you with Jones again. The two of you can give each other fire support.”

  Jones wasn’t thrilled. “You need me too? I was thinking maybe Young could use my help.”

  Young glanced up from his screens, his face appalled. “Why would you think a thing like that?”

  Andrea laughed. “Don’t worry, Thomas, he’s coming with me. Get moving, Jones. You know you need to log enough hours to stay combat qualified.”

  Jones was pouting, but he got his helmet back on and prepared for battle. I glanced at Young’s computer screens and saw his android proxies crawling down the walls of the elevator shaft like hundreds of ants. The Nightwatch officers in the shaft at the time made an attempt to fight back, but the robots swarmed over them before they got more than a few shots off. One of the screens showed a Nightwatch officer shooting at the approaching proxies as they crawled rapidly toward him. When the one whose eyes we were looking through reached the officer, its metal arm reached out and just casually hit him in the face until he lost his hold and went plummeting down the shaft to his death.

  Young’s face was entranced, like commanding a robot army by remote control was exactly what he was born for. I shook my head
, muttered “to each his own,” and wandered over to stand next to Jones.

  “You did okay out there last time,” he said. “I guess it’s not so bad.”

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  “Don’t get too excited. I still think you’re undertrained.”

  If Jones ran the Arbiters, everyone would go back to training for six months of the year, and they’d have to double the size of the force just to keep the same number of active Arbiters in the field.

  19

  Up on Level 295, Jones settled into position a few feet away from me. “Here they come. Get ready.”

  I didn’t see the need for that, because I was already settled with my weapon aimed at the approaching enemy. If that isn’t ready, then what is? But Jones seemed like the sort of person to use ten words when one would do, or even when none would have been just as effective. It seemed like an odd habit for a spy.

  When we entered the elevator shaft, we found that the Nightwatch had already withdrawn roughly half of their forces up to Level 295 to concentrate their firepower, while sending the rest down below Level 250 to carry out more massacres. Reports from Young’s control station suggested that his androids were killing the Nightwatch officers down there a lot more quickly than they were killing civilians.

  Our own encounters with the diehards at the top of the Tower were also driving their numbers steadily downward, although they were making us fight for every inch we took from them. Now they were attempting to stage a counterattack, and Jones and I had the task of holding the line while Capanelli and the others flanked them.

  “Why did we get the job of human target drone?” I grumbled to Jones, while the Nightwatch moved up the street in our direction.

  “Bait. Our job is to be bait. So just hold your position.”

  Like I said, he was lazy about fighting but he wasn’t a coward. Jones didn’t waver, he just stood there with his weapon ready while they drew closer and closer. It got to the point where I wasn’t sure if he planned to shoot them at all. I glanced in his direction just to see what was up, and that was when he fired his first burst. It took down an officer, entry and exit clean through his chest. The others scattered for cover, but I managed to wing one of them in the leg before he joined the others.

  They returned fire with a vengeance, probably hoping to force our heads down so they could move up. I saw a few of them break off, following standard tactical doctrine by sending flankers against a defended position. They never made it anywhere near us. I heard shots from nearby and knew that our own were coming in for the kill.

  Sommer’s scrambler was active in the area, so I couldn’t see where our people were. But I didn’t need to. One of the men down the street from us suddenly stiffened, and a pink mist burst from his head. He slumped to the ground as his skull collapsed. The others searched almost frantically for any sign of the sniper, but Sommer was far from their only problem.

  I glimpsed a subtle distortion in the air and knew that Capanelli was only a few feet away from them. She shot one man in the back, then darted away before the others could respond. She shot another from the side, and they made the sudden decision to abandon their position.

  Just a few bloody hours ago, the Nightwatch had been taking no heed of casualties. With their numbers depleted, the hivemind was now a lot more cautious. It pulled away from contact like a child pulling its hand back from something hot. But it was getting bolder. The attempted counterattack meant it still wanted to drive us away, which probably meant we were getting closer to whatever it was so determined to defend. If that was the case, we could expect its resolve to stiffen soon.

  Now that they were retreating again, we moved up the street, though we didn’t just rush after them. That’s a good way to walk into an ambush, and the false retreat is an ancient tactic. When we reached Capanelli, she dropped her camouflage briefly.

  “This is about to get bad. Veraldi says they’re bringing the heavy stuff up.”

  “Understood,” said Jones. “Keep a defensive stance?”

  She shook her head. “No. You can’t defend against what they’re about to throw at us. Stay as mobile as you can; don’t try to hold ground. Hit and run.”

  “Perfect.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic—after all, the idea of fighting something we couldn’t defend against was far from appealing—or if he was really pleased about it. Looking back on it, I guess it makes a certain kind of sense. As an infiltration specialist, the idea of fighting guerrilla-style might have been more to his liking than trying to hold a fixed position.

  “Young’s unstoppable downstairs,” she told us. “His androids are cleaning up. Let’s see if we can equal his kill-count.”

  As a law enforcement officer, I found that a strange mentality to say the least. I didn’t even answer her, I just kept moving up the street while she slipped back into near invisibility.

  Jones pushed open the entrance to a building across the street. The gold lettering above the ornate glass doors read Torrence Center. “Come on, Barrett. Let’s get out of sight before the monsters spot us.”

  I followed him in, and we found ourselves in some kind of training facility. There were lockers and shower rooms, a complete weight-training gym, a martial arts studio, and an ice rink.

  “What was all this for?” I asked.

  “Olympics,” he replied. It took me a minute to get what he was saying. More ancient history from Earth, revived here by the nostalgic colonials. We skirted the edge of the ice rink, where two of the Olympic hopefuls lay gutted by their own ice skates. I’d seen so many bodies by this point it barely even registered. Just one act of pointless cruelty among so many.

  When we reached the other side of the building, my scanners suddenly blinked back into life. Sommer must have moved out of the area or shut off her scrambler. Jones stopped by the door as he checked his own scanner. “Three Nightwatch, headed our way.”

  I could see them too, three orange dots moving straight toward the Torrance Center Olympic Training Facility at charging speed.

  “We should be able to handle three on our own without too much—”

  “They’re not stopping,” he interrupted. “They’re not even slowing down! Shit, is this—”

  The wall exploded. Two feet of plasticrete, and it burst apart like papier-mâché. Shards of wall flew in all directions, and a sizable piece smacked against my visor. I started shooting in a panic, not even knowing what was coming through the wall. I quickly realized it didn’t matter because, whatever it was, my gun couldn’t hurt it.

  I fell back, blinded in a cloud of dust from the plasticrete. I didn’t see Jones, and wondered for a moment if he was already dead. It was difficult to make out our enemy, just three vague shapes that kept advancing steadily.

  What the hell was this? These three weren’t androids. My sensors read them as humans in polycarbon armor, but they may as well have been walking tanks. They’d shattered that wall just as carelessly as if it were made of glass and they could clearly shrug off small arms fire.

  If I couldn’t shoot them, it was only a matter of time before they shot me instead. The one in the lead raised his weapon, and I threw myself through the door to the weight room. The wall evaporated, or at least that’s what it looked like in the fraction of a second before I hit the floor and tucked into a roll. A moment later I heard a roar, like the sound a monster makes in a nightmare before it rips your head off. I looked back and saw that the wall hadn’t been completely destroyed, just a chunk about the size of my torso into which the helmeted face of a Nightwatch officer was now peering dispassionately.

  It paused when it saw me, said, “You haven’t killed me,” and then collapsed to the ground, blood gushing from its open throat.

  Veraldi glanced in, wiping his blade on his sleeve. “Get up, Barrett, we’re not done.”

  “Is Jones…?”

  “Jones is here,” said Jones, poking his head in behind Veraldi. “You don’t look too good, t
hough. You okay there, Barrett, or do you need me to write you up a leave slip? I can put mental health crisis or emotional trauma, whichever one you think the Commander will sign off on.”

  “Shut up, Jones, I’ll be right with you.”

  They pulled their heads back, and I took a minute to remember what it was like to breathe. Then I thought about those guns the Nightwatch had just been chasing me with. Anything that can punch a hole that big in a two-foot-thick plasticrete wall is probably worth grabbing. I came out of the room, saw that Veraldi had already looted the dead, and asked, “Is there one for me?”

  “One for Jones and one for you,” said Veraldi. “I prefer my knife.” He left the third weapon where it had fallen and handed the other two to us. They were heavy, almost as heavy as everything else I was carrying put together. “Just be careful, gentlemen. Prototype tech like this has a way of backfiring. Nasty shit can happen. Which reminds me, don’t touch the suits.”

  He wandered off, and I turned to Jones—who was already cradling his new toy. “Nasty shit like what?”

  Jones shrugged. “It’s all a matter of perspective, if you ask me.”

  “But what did he mean?”

  “Melted body parts. Irreversible chain reactions. You know.”

  He wandered out into the street, and I came running after him. “Is there a perspective where that isn’t horrifying?”

  “Ah, the gun’s perspective? I don’t know, Barrett, just stop whining.”

  This guy was fucking with me again. I cursed him mentally but did my best to keep up. There were things I wanted to ask him.

  “How did you survive that, Jones?”

  “Training. Superior training. To be more specific, although this shit is highly classified, I stepped out of the way. You, on the other hand, stepped straight back. Repeatedly and quickly. I think the technical term for it is running away.”

  “You got out of there too,”

  “Yes, but sideways. Superior training.”

  I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to provoke any more of what passed for wit with this guy.