Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  “Doesn’t it seem like they’re trying to split us up?”

  “Yeah, maybe. But that keeps them from concentrating their forces too, so it’s a wash.”

  Floor 300 was the top floor, the place where the Tower 7 elite had lived and played. Every building we passed looked sleek and elegant, the kind of place where you’d look over your shoulder the whole time you were in there, expecting security to ask you for your membership card. There were no garish signs or advertisements, just quietly understated plaques with the names of the buildings on them: The Concord, The Jefferson, and so on.

  The only exception to the quiet elegance of the place was the occasional mansion, including the estate of the tower governor, Octavian Tantu. When the crisis started, the governor was back on Earth for a specialized surgery and so he played no role in our approach to the emergency. On top of that, everyone knew that the Nightwatch commander was the real power in any Venusian living tower. The governor’s role was mostly ceremonial. They made up for it by letting the man live in a huge house where doing next to nothing would be as comfortable as possible.

  We passed the gubernatorial mansion, and I glanced over at the rose marble pillars as we went by. Something moved in the yard, then something flashed. The bottom floor of the building behind me became a cloud of flames and broken, flying chunks of plasticrete. I stumbled forward and fell over as the blast wave hit me, and saw Jones get knocked down too.

  Something was coming, but I couldn’t see properly. It looked like a ghost, floating toward me through the flames and smoke. No, not a ghost. One of the Eleven, armed with a still-smoking rocket launcher. It was advancing steadily, not seeking cover, implying that it was only checking if we were as dead as it expected us to be.

  I scrambled for my heavy rifle, which was lying a few feet away from me. Black smoke billowed from the rubble as it burned. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked as though the lone Eleven leveled its rocket launcher. I pulled the trigger, taking no time to aim. I listened and waited, but there was no trace of the man.

  I turned over. “Are you okay, Jones?”

  He struggled to his hands and knees. “Yeah. Did you get it?”

  “I don’t think so. I can’t see it.”

  “We need to keep moving. I mean, a rocket launcher?”

  He had a point. My armor was strong, but it wasn’t strong enough to take a direct hit from something like that. As soon as Jones was back on his feet we started running, and another storefront blew up nearby. I wasn’t knocked over this time, but something hit me—right behind the knee, another weak point. I barely felt the impact, but the blood on my skin felt strangely cold.

  “You’re limping!” called Jones.

  “Doesn’t matter. Keep running!”

  I turned around and knelt, just in time to see the flash of the rocket. It went over my head, and I heard the explosion somewhere behind me. I was already shooting, but all I saw was a glimpse of movement. These things—I say things, because that’s what it felt like even though they were technically people—these things were fast. It had fired its rocket, then ducked out of sight before I could even take aim.

  I turned back toward Jones, and my stomach flipped over on me. The explosion had caught him, and he was half buried under the collapsed building. I ran over, expecting to find that he had already stopped breathing. The sheer weight on his chest was enough to kill a man, even with the best suit of armor in the solar system, but he wasn’t dead yet. He was staring up at me with a disgusted expression and breathing like an old dog on its way to be put to sleep.

  “Barrett… you jackass… I told you to give me the goddamn heavy rifle…”

  “I’ll get him,” I promised, and was surprised at how grim my own voice sounded. “But first I need to dig you out of here.”

  “Don’t be stupid… I need help. But I won’t get it… if you don’t make it…”

  He was right. If I took the time to try to dig him out, I’d take a rocket to the back. I turned and scanned the street and saw the Thing duck back behind cover. It had been getting ready to shoot another rocket at me! I sent some heavy rounds in its direction just to buy myself a minute, then turned back to Jones.

  “I’ll draw him off. When the fight’s over, I’ll dig you out of here.”

  “The fuck you will… you don’t have any… training for that…”

  I almost laughed. The man was probably dying, and all he could think to do with his time was mock the quality of my training.

  “See you soon, Jones. We’ll take this up later.”

  I fired another burst and ran across the street, drawing the possessed Nightwatch officer in my direction. It fired another missile, and I had to swerve out to the center of the street to escape the explosion. My injured leg twisted out from under me, and the Thing paused to reload. I propped myself up on one elbow and turned to aim, intending to make sure this time. It suddenly looked up at me, then darted off as fast as a rabbit.

  I struggled to my feet and chased after it with weapon blazing. I finally hit it, but even with the heavy rifle its nanosuit absorbed most of the power of the shots. They should have ripped the Thing to pieces, but instead the impact just made it duck away, as if in pain, and drop the rocket launcher.

  I didn’t let up, holding the trigger down as I limped straight at it. It grabbed for the rocket launcher, obviously hoping to regain its advantage and finish the fight, but suddenly gave up and retreated into a nearby building.

  The Thing was bleeding, but I didn’t know what other weapons it might have access to. I reached the rocket launcher and picked it up, slinging my heavy rifle over my shoulder. A thick, dark, streak of blood led into the building, a luxury apartment complex with a plaque that announced it to be The Grove.

  I checked my scanners, fully expecting them to be scrambled. They weren’t. Raven Sommer must not be nearby, or she must have come up from the dark for some reason. With my scanners functioning, I could see that there was no one in the building except the wounded Nightwatch officer, who was crouching behind the door waiting for me to come in after him.

  I backed up about fifty feet and aimed the rocket launcher at The Grove’s front door. My target bolted for the back, making it out just before the rocket hit. The explosion destroyed the lobby, blew out all the windows on every floor, and shook the foundations, but for all that fury it didn’t hurt my enemy. How the hell had he known? I looked around and caught a glimpse of one of the Eleven on the roof of the building behind me.

  I barely moved—mostly because I barely had time to move—but it was enough to dodge the shot, which missed me by maybe fifteen centimeters and went into the now-burning building. I dropped the rocket launcher and aimed my heavy rifle, but the new enemy was no longer there.

  What the hell was going on here? No matter what I did, these things were always a step ahead. I was staying alive, at least for now, but every time I had a clear shot at one it would bolt away. I’d been in a lot of bad situations since this crisis started, but this fight was the hardest I had ever been in.

  Andrea’s voice came in over my dataspike. “Barrett, Capanelli. Why aren’t you with Jones?”

  “A building fell on him. He’s still alive; I’m trying to draw the Eleven away from him. Two of them are on me right now.”

  “I see them. Sit tight, I’m coming to you.”

  I wasn’t sure why the Eleven weren’t using scramblers, but as far as I could tell the only interference was from Raven Sommer, and she was somewhere on the other side of the level at this point. I didn’t have a visual on the two officers near me, but I could see that one was still on the other side of the building I’d just fired a rocket into, while the other was in one of the buildings across the street.

  The blood from my leg was leaking into my boot, making my foot wet and sticky. I had a rocket launcher but no more rockets, a heavy rifle that could hurt my enemies but not kill them, a rifle that couldn’t hurt them at all, and a knife.

  Leaving the rocke
t launcher where I’d dropped it, I slipped into the lobby of the Grove and got myself behind a pillar. I’d have an easier time evading these two if I went dark, but then Andrea wouldn’t be able to find me either. Worse than that, she could stumble into one of the Eleven when she wasn’t prepared for it. So, I stayed visible, but it wasn’t long before I heard footsteps approaching.

  “You haven’t killed me.”

  August Marcenn. He had shattered his own mind like a broken mirror and scattered the pieces all across the tower, and now his face seemed to jeer at me from every shard.

  Another footstep, creeping closer. “You haven’t killed me. You haven’t killed me.”

  I ducked out from behind the pillar, firing a burst at the approaching officer. The thing was fast—almost superhuman, but there was something a little different this time. Something about the way it had bolted seemed almost panicky. I had the impression I might have surprised it, even though it had succeeded in evading me once again.

  The lobby was silent. Plasticrete dust rained down from the ceiling, and the Grove creaked. It was an ominous sound, but it gave me an idea. All I needed was an opportunity to try it out, but first I would have to make it out of here alive.

  “Nothing to say this time?” I mocked it, creeping out from my cover behind the pillar. On my backscatter scan, I could see that the other one was down on the street now. In another few seconds, it would reach the Grove. I had to get out, or I wouldn’t last long enough for Andrea to do me any good.

  The Thing I was stalking darted across the lobby, taking a shot as it went by. The shot hit me, but my armor deflected it. Now that it no longer had the rocket launcher, it was down to a sidearm. I had the advantage.

  With a surge of adrenaline, or primal bloodlust, I held the trigger down and swept the room. I couldn’t see the officer, but that heavy rifle could punch through walls. Wherever it was, my weapon would find it. The officer behind me started running, coming to the aid of the one I was chasing. I ran as well, but I wasn’t really chasing anyone. I just wanted to get out, and going on the offensive seemed like the best way to do it.

  Just as I reached the back door, the room went quiet. It wasn’t quiet for long though, and I didn’t understand it at first. I kept my finger on the trigger, not realizing I was out of ammo. Then a rocket streaked past me, went out through one of the broken windows, and exploded above the street outside.

  The second officer was in the lobby. Worse than that, it had the rocket launcher. Even worse than that, I was on empty.

  I didn’t push open the door; I ran right through it. Broken glass flew everywhere, and I stumbled out onto the street and landed on my hands and knees. I could hear myself yelling, but it sounded like a cry from another world. I couldn’t believe it. These things wanted me dead so badly they were willing to fire a rocket launcher indoors just to get at me.

  I wanted to get up. I needed to get up. But something was wrong; my body wouldn’t obey my mind’s commands. I heard their footsteps as they approached, walking with measured slowness. I heard the click of a rocket being loaded into the launcher. I heard their voices, speaking together at the exact same moment.

  “You haven’t killed me.”

  Then I heard a POP, and a grenade flew in above my head. I didn’t see what happened, but the sound of the explosion was like a gentle overture compared to what happened next.

  The walls of the Grove, already weakened by the rocket I’d fired, came tumbling down in a wave of plasticrete and rebar. The building remained standing, but several tons of rubble came right down on the two Nightwatch officers. One moment they were alive, calmly loading the rocket launcher, the next moment they were buried, although neither of their indicators blinked off of my scanner.

  A hand grasped my arm, and Capanelli pulled me up. She dropped her camouflage and helped me stand, propping me up on wobbly legs. “I can’t believe they’re not dead yet. Hold on a second.”

  A hand jutted out, trying to claw its way through a mountain of rubble. Andrea loaded another grenade into her launcher. A head poked out of the debris, and she shot the grenade directly at it. One light blinked out, and a few seconds later the other did too.

  “That’s two of them down. Thanks for setting them up for me.”

  I grimaced. “Sure. That was one hundred percent intentional. Strategic, even.”

  It was partially true. When I was in the lobby, my brilliant idea for how to kill these things was to drop a building on top of them. When it had actually happened, the only thing I was trying to do was run for my life. So, it was a matter of luck, but at least I was right that we could kill them that way.

  “Sorry for the delay,” she said. “I checked on Jones. Turns out he’s better at handling this sort of thing than they are.”

  It was a grim joke, because Jones had only taken a glancing blow. Yes, he was buried, but he didn’t take a few tons to the top of the head like these two had. The fact that they had even survived that for a few seconds was frankly horrifying, especially considering that I had no weapon capable of piercing their armor.

  “Do you need some grenades?” asked Andrea. “These should be compatible with your rifle.”

  She pulled three off her suit, and I accepted them gratefully. Even if a grenade wouldn’t do the trick, it was better than nothing.

  Then I remembered what I’d noticed. “When I was in that building with them, I almost surprised one.”

  “They’re slippery bastards, what do you mean you almost surprised one?”

  “It managed to dodge, but it looked like I startled it. That’s the first time I’ve seen that. They usually seem to know what I’m doing before I know it myself.”

  She looked up at the daylights, shining far above us. Then she looked at the Grove, and the ruined state of its rocketed lobby. “Huh. I wonder…”

  She didn’t get the chance to complete the thought, because a voice came in over our dataspikes. “This is Bray. Bastards have me pinned down. Can’t seem to get a shot at one.”

  “Hold tight, I’m on my way.” Capanelli turned to me. “Bray needs some backup; do you think you could use those grenades to draw their attention? I’ll send Sommer your way.”

  She was basically asking me to act as human bait again, but considering that she’d just saved my life I could hardly object. “You got it.”

  She activated her camouflage, and I saw the shimmer as she moved away. We hadn’t had time to talk, but an idea was starting to take shape in my mind. She must have been thinking of it too, considering the way she looked up at the daylights. The Eleven were fast, the Eleven were strong, and the Eleven always seemed to know what we were doing.

  But that was outside, where the daylights shone down on everything and the security cams were always rolling.

  I went in through the personnel file on my dataspike and tried to open a channel to Young down on Level 250. He didn’t reply, and I had to stay moving to do what Andrea had asked me to do. I went out to a nearby plaza, stood there completely exposed, and waited for one of the Eleven to notice. When I saw a dot moving in my direction on the scanner, I started to move away slowly. Then my scanner blinked out, telling me that Raven had entered the neighborhood.

  Trusting in the sniper to keep me covered, I tried to get out of that plaza before the Eleven spotted me. I didn’t move fast enough, as heavy rifle rounds slammed into the buildings around me and blasted huge hole through walls and doorways.

  I turned around and saw the approaching officer. I fired my grenade, hoping to hurt it or at least hold it in place. It returned fire, running in so quickly that my grenade exploded harmlessly behind it. I could have screamed, but I kept my head and tried to load another grenade. As I was fumbling with my weapon, it suddenly glanced up at a building behind it and then veered away, dodging Raven’s sniper shot. As I watched with my jaw open, it disappeared down a nearby street.

  I was sure at last. These Things could see us; they had a bird’s eye view on whatever was happeni
ng. I tried Young again, but still received no answer. Why wouldn’t this guy take my calls?

  I thought of trying Capanelli, but Bray put out an open call saying he was pinned down. All he had now was a heavy rifle, which was only capable of wounding the Things at best. If Andrea was helping him, she already had all she could handle and then some.

  I thought of Veraldi—he was the second in command, he could order Young to answer me—but when I opened the connection, I heard the ragged breathing of a wounded man. “Veraldi? Can you hear me, Veraldi?”

  No reply. Wherever he was, the close quarters combative expert had been badly hurt. He was either unconscious or close enough to it to make no difference. My scanners came back online then, telling me that Raven had left the area. When I checked on Veraldi, his light was unmoving with no enemies nearby. I didn’t know what had happened, but they had taken him out and moved on to Bray.

  I now knew what their strategy was. They were staying on the move, intentionally separating us, because they knew something we didn’t. They could see through the surveillance cameras, giving them an objective picture of the entire battle and allowing them to move as one with full knowledge of the environment. By exploiting our individual weaknesses—Bray without his big gun could barely hurt them; Veraldi was strongest in close-range; Raven couldn’t hit them if they kept to cover—they could hunt us down and take us out one by one.

  “Goddammit, Young, answer!”

  No reply. But then I had an idea, although it made me feel like an absolute monster. I ran back toward Jones, knowing that he worked with Young or at least he wanted to. Young hardly seemed to listen to anyone, but I hoped that maybe he would listen to him.

  “Jones, are you there? Are you with me, Jones?”

  No reply on the dataspike. No one wanted to talk to me, or maybe everyone was hurt. Either way, we were fucked. Unless I could get a message through to Young, and unless I was right about the cameras in the first place.

  I turned a corner and saw one of the Eleven looking down at Jones. It raised its weapon for the kill, but then glanced back at me and darted off just as quickly. If not for the grenades Capanelli had given me I wouldn’t have had anything that thing would have been scared of. As it was, I didn’t have long before it came back to take a shot at me.