Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  Veraldi grinned. “They’d be glad to see the back of us. But we shouldn’t change directions now, it might tempt them to try their luck again. The train station is right up there, and the trains aren’t running. With StateSec fighting to reestablish order and the trains stopped, we can probably just climb up and walk the rail.”

  Jones nodded. “Yes, we take the train tunnel through the wall. Okay, Tycho, could you use your skeleton key to get the rail maintenance access open?”

  “Sure.” I sprinted ahead and hacked the maintenance door. That wasn’t the hard part, though. The hard part was the pylon ladder, a long climb up the front wall of the train station. If anyone saw us from down below and took objection to our presence, they’d be able to aim carefully and pick us off one by one while we tried to climb.

  As the others caught up with me, I pointed up the long metal ladder. “We’ll be easy targets up there.”

  “Easy targets for who?” asked Sasha. “They’re too busy trying to kill each other down there to worry about us.”

  “No, Tycho’s right,” said Andrew. “Anyone could shoot us. StateSec, the Kagebushin, anyone who recognizes our pictures and wants to collect on the contract.”

  Veraldi craned his head to look up the ladder. “We’ll just have to take that chance. If we can get up that ladder, we’ll wind up on the level above this one and can cross over easily to the other side through the unused train tunnel. It’s too good to pass up.”

  I wondered if it wasn’t too good to be true, but I wasn’t the field commander so I kept my mouth shut. Vincenzo went in through the access gate before anyone else—he just didn’t like to let anyone else take point—and Andrew went after him. Sasha was next, leaving me to bring up the rear.

  It was a long climb, but my curiosity about what was happening on the street below us made it even longer for me. I kept pausing and looking down, checking out the battle as it unfolded. The StateSec officers still weren’t using live ammunition, but they were firing gas grenades directly into the crowd with a horizontal trajectory instead of letting them arc up and land on the protesters from above.

  As they must have known it would, this was resulting in horrible head injuries. The protesters dragged a fallen comrade out of the way by his feet. The wound in his head left a streak of blood along the pavement. Once he was gone, the crowd took their revenge. A half-dozen firebombs came arcing out and landed among the StateSec officers in bursts of flame. One officer got hit and ran off panicking in a cloak of fire.

  How long could this go on before somebody died? Had someone already died? I didn’t know. I glanced up the ladder and saw that my companions were well ahead of me. I was only about a quarter of the way up by this point. I reached up for the next rung, deciding that what I should really do was to focus on the task at hand.

  That’s when I heard the screech. It was a strange sound to hear in East Hellas, where there is normally no vehicular traffic of any kind, but it sounded just like a speeding car. When I looked down at the street again, I saw an armored vehicle barreling down the street at high speed while civilians dove out of the way in one direction or the other. Even the StateSec officers had to jump to avoid it, although they looked like they might have been expecting its arrival. When it rolled to a halt, the side of the armored vehicle slid open and three massive figures unfolded themselves from inside and stepped out onto the street.

  The first one I saw was vaguely canid, though less so than the cyborg we’d seen on the train. The creators of this one—most likely including the man we were trying to escort out of the city—had given it a dog-like body and goat-like legs, a combination that seemed alien and disconcerting.

  The second looked something like a polar bear and was by far the most frightening cyborg I’d seen up until that moment. In the Arctic city of Sif back on Earth, I’d seen a few dejected polar bears poking around in the trash at the city dump. I wouldn’t have wanted to get too close to those bedraggled creatures, but they were more sad than terrifying. This thing was majestic, the sort of monster you could imagine a caveman fighting back at the beginning of human history—except that its white color came from nanosuit plating instead of fur.

  The third made the second one look like a cyborg teddy bear. It was a good fifteen feet tall, with long arms that reached all the way to the ground, and its body looked like a nightmarish combination of different primate species. Mounted on the monster’s back, it had what looked like two ship-to-ship cannons.

  Erinyes. The bosses at Ares Terrestrial had sent the Erinyes in against their own people. For a brief moment, I thought the cyborg chimeras were just there to terrify the crowd into submission, to drive back the rioters, but no. As I clung to the ladder, my eyes wide with horror, the ape-cyborg reached down and grabbed a man up from the street in its massive hand then threw him casually against a building. The man’s body shattered like overripe fruit on impact. Whoever he was, the man hadn’t even been one of the rioters. He was part of the crowd from Fuji Section, which had not yet done anything to attack the security forces other than to block their way. Most of the crowd on that side had already started running, but the ape-cyborg quickly caught up with them and started tossing people left and right and crushing them underfoot as it charged through the mass of people. The bear-cyborg turned on Hafidi’s supporters and waded right into them, tearing and smashing with its massive claws. The canid darted in behind it, savaging anyone who fell to the ground.

  The horror unfolded in a matter of seconds, but it felt like much longer than that from my vantage point on the ladder. I hesitated at first. I had a job to do, a specific job that didn’t have anything to do with what was happening down there on the street below me. If I got involved, I knew I couldn’t expect the others to help. In fact, they would probably just leave me to it while they accomplished the mission.

  Then the ape-cyborg leaned over on its long arms, aimed its two cannons down the street at the fleeing crowd, and fired directly into them. The blast wave shattered storefronts and rattled buildings throughout the block. The pressure wave swayed my grip on the ladder and the heat stung my eyes.

  The results were sickening, but I didn’t have much time to think about the bloody mess it made of the crowd, because I was already jumping down from the ladder onto the rooftop below. Unlike my earlier jumps, this one was flawless, and was followed by a series of equally flawless jumps—rooftop to fire-escape landing, fire-escape landing to street.

  By the time I was at ground level, dozens of the protesters had produced their own weapons and opened fire. That’s the thing about a city as heavily armed as Hellas. Lethal force is always an option, and as violent as things had been up until now, the protesters had actually been showing restraint. Now the guns were out, and what had been a riot became a shooting war.

  The StateSec officers were running, seeking cover in the nearby buildings. They were all wearing armor, but I saw one of them fall anyway. The shooters weren’t aiming primarily at the officers though. They were kneeling in the street, firing desperately up at the behemoths attacking them. As far as I could tell, those with guns were trying to buy time for those without to get under cover.

  It wasn’t working. As I aimed my own weapon, the bear-cyborg reared up on its hind legs and just absorbed all their fire, knowing that its armor would stop anything they could throw at it. Its arm split down the middle to the elbow then opened like a clamshell to expose the barrel of a heavy gun. It swept across the crowd with automatic fire, killing everything that stood in its way in a sickening display of violence. Bodies were shredded into a fine mist of gore and shards of bone, and the survivors were drenched in the blood and viscera of the dead.

  I shot the creature in the back with a depleted-uranium round. It reeled back at the impact then started to lumber in my direction. I hit it again and it flinched a little, then it dodged aside with incredible speed. It knew I could hurt it now, but it had nowhere to run except into the buildings. As I kept firing, it smashed its way
through the storefront next to it in a burst of flying plasticrete.

  I’d made it run, but I had little time to savor the victory. The canid was coming in a series of rapid jumps propelled by those goat-like legs. I aimed and fired, but it had jumped again by time I pulled the trigger. Another jump and it was almost on me, springing across the space between us. I didn’t aim this time—there would have been no time for it. All I could do was to raise my weapon and shoot instinctively in something not far removed from a blind panic.

  It hit the canid in the body, and the thing crumpled to the ground in front of me as the uranium round went right through it. Its feet scrambled for purchase on the blood-slick pavement, and I took careful aim directly at its head. I was about to fire, but it suddenly found the purchase it was looking for and bounded off and disappeared through a nearby window.

  From the street up ahead of me, the protesters were now raining fire on the buildings the cyborgs had retreated into. Their weapons simply couldn’t pierce the creatures’ armor, but they had realized I was here to help them and they were doing what they could. I felt that surge of emotion that sometimes happens in battle, the intense desire to do anything I could to help my comrades, these people I didn’t even know.

  That was the highpoint of my battle with the three Erinyes, the point where I still thought I had a chance of winning. Then I heard a sound, a terrible sound like a building had decided to start walking in my direction. When I turned to look, the looming figure of the ape-cyborg was headed right for me.

  If it had used its cannon, that would have been it for me. I’m not sure why it didn’t, unless it just wasn’t possible to carry that much ammo inside of its body. Whatever the reason, it was clearly planning to just grab and throw me, splattering my body all over some nearby building. I pulled the trigger, but it dodged my first shot effortlessly. It was getting closer with every second, covering several feet at a stride.

  That’s when I remembered the holographic emitter I’d taken from the body of the Kagebushin assassin. I turned and ran for cover, reaching down to my belt at the same time to turn on the device. As I reached the overhang of a nearby building, the bear-cyborg came bursting out from its hiding place and charging straight into the mass of citizens.

  They died where they stood, firing hopelessly into the manmade monster as it tore at them. The canid came after it, leaping out and landing in the middle of the crowd. There was a spray of blood, and someone’s severed head went flying.

  Instead of chasing me down, the ape-cyborg barreled straight into the hapless crowd and joined in the slaughter. Thinking the holographic emitter would give me some advantage, I ran out into the street again and opened fire on the three cyborgs.

  The ape-cyborg paused to look at me, then crushed the man it was holding. Blood seeped between its fingers, and the man’s head lolled off onto the street. It tossed the remnants aside then reached straight for me with unerring accuracy. Holography couldn’t fool the creature—it knew exactly where I really was.

  As the thing’s arm swept down to grab me, I realized my death had come. Since that was the case, there was nothing left except to meet it well. I stood straight up, firing up at the thing repeatedly as its huge hand came down at me. Those depleted-uranium bullets made a comparatively tiny hole in the monster’s massive frame, and they just weren’t powerful enough to stop something as big as this.

  Then something hit it, and hit it hard.

  The sound of the impact was almost deafening, and it shook the street so hard I saw something break off one of the buildings and collapse as I stumbled and fell to one knee. The creature staggered, and my mouth hung open in sheer amazement as I realized its entire chest had just been partially caved in by something.

  There it was up above me, a looming, unnatural amalgam of bioweaponry and robotics, and something had hurt it. Badly. It was down on one knee, confusion evident even on its featureless face as it tried to process what had happened. I was just as confused. I couldn’t even think of anything that could do that, except maybe a vehicle-mounted weapon such as a tank-killer or a ground-to-air missile.

  The ape-cyborg looked up, finally focusing on whatever had just done that. The bear-cyborg and the canid were both approaching rapidly, and the bear-cyborg was raising its arm to unleash a burst of machine-gun fire. There was another shattering impact, and the ape-cyborg’s right arm crumpled underneath it, causing it to collapse onto the street. The other cyborgs retreated, seeking cover in the buildings again. A third impact hit the ape, and the nanosuit plating on its chest began to fracture. A spiderweb of cracks spread out from the impact point, and it looked down at its own wound as if in disbelief.

  Completely absorbed by what I was seeing, I hadn’t even turned to see what was causing all this damage. I finally did and was so surprised by what I saw that it didn’t even register at first. There was something big, holding something that looked too big to be held.

  It was Jonathan Bray, advancing down the street with a massive anti-vehicle cannon cradled in his arms like it was just an ordinary rifle. As I watched in awe, he adjusted his aim to direct suppressing fire at the building the bear-cyborg had retreated into. The weapon roared, and the sound of shattering glass and collapsing plasticrete came from the street behind me.

  That cannon he was carrying was not a handheld weapon. It was only ever meant to be mounted on a vehicle hardpoint. The man’s physical strength was nothing short of terrifying, but even more amazing to me was the simple fact that he was still alive. I scrambled to my feet, not knowing exactly what to do or say.

  He kept on firing, pivoting from left to right as needed. The ape-cyborg was badly hurt, but it wasn’t finished. Bray was busy engaging the other two cyborgs to keep them pinned down where they were, so it took advantage of the momentary respite to drag itself under cover. As it crawled away, I regained my presence of mind enough to fire a few shots at it as it retreated. It actually looked back at me as my bullets pierced its leg. It must have been my imagination, but it almost seemed like an accusatory look. After seeing what it did to all those innocent people, I didn’t care. I put a few more rounds through it before it managed to get inside.

  Depleted uranium weapons had served me well when it came to cyborgs, but I had to admit that the weapon I was using just wasn’t powerful enough to deal with the Erinyes. They were just too big, and although my rounds were capable of piercing their armored plating, I had yet to kill a single one of the creatures. Now that Bray was here, I had at least a decent chance of surviving the next few minutes, but I wouldn’t be able to contribute to the fight.

  There was nothing I could do here except slow him down or distract him from the task at hand. I stood there awkwardly, trying to decide whether to fall back or not. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t think of any other option. Then something hard and heavy pressed against my chest, and the air seemed to shimmer directly in front of me. I heard a voice: “The least you could do is to make yourself useful.”

  Andrea Capanelli.

  As she moved away, the weight in my arms became visible—a military-issue squadron assault rifle with heavy, armor-piercing rounds.

  Before I heard her voice, I had just about given up on the idea that she had survived the bombing. It just seemed so implausible, and we’d heard nothing from her in all this time. Yet here she was, and she had somehow managed to find the weapons we needed.

  I raised my new gun and aimed at the buildings, feeling a little like Jonathan Bray. That rifle was huge, although nowhere near the size of what our team behemoth was using. Re-armed and confident, I approached the shattered storefront the bear-cyborg had retreated into. It replied with machine-gun fire, and I was forced to seek cover behind a street-level recycling unit as the rounds streaked overhead and ripped through the buildings on the other side of the street.

  At least now I could return fire with some confidence that none of the cyborgs could simply shrug off what I was sending in their direction. When I pulled the tr
igger, it sounded like someone dropping a heavy object onto a metal table from several feet up. After my first shot, the thing stopped firing. After my second shot, it retreated further into the depths of the building.

  Bray was engaging the ape-cyborg, which still had a lot of fight in it. I wasn’t sure where Andrea was, and there was too much happening to scan the surrounding streets for the telltale shimmer. Should I pursue the bear, or wait for the enemy to come to me?

  I decided to give pursuit, confident that the advantage was finally mine. As I crossed the street toward the shattered storefront, I caught a glimpse of something out of my peripheral vision that just might have been the canid cyborg. When I turned to look, I could no longer see whatever I had seen. I just kept going, figuring that the safest thing was to get out of the open anyway.

  When I entered the store, the first thing I noticed was the body of the owner. A middle-aged Asian man, he lay slumped over the sales terminal. His head had been crushed, and a trickle of something whitish-purple ran down his face from the hole in his head. There was a dead customer lying nearby, her spine twisted at an unnatural angle.

  The bear-cyborg was big, but it was somehow hiding in this low-ceilinged space. As counterintuitive as that was, it matched what I knew about the cyborg chimeras. When they’d arrived in that armored vehicle, they had seemed to unfold their bodies like flowers blooming. Had it truly retreated, or was it only trying to lure me in? With my powerful rifle, I’d had the advantage in a straight-up firefight. If it caught me by surprise, unfolding from some hidden space, then that calculus changed and my advantage was nullified.

  And that’s when it happened, just as the thought occurred to me. I was turning a corner, investigating a hole in the wall, when something expanded suddenly and burst straight out like a rushing freight train. As it scooped me up, wrapping its arms around me, I swung my weapon around. I had no time to aim. If I had waited even the half second, it would have crushed my ribcage. I just pulled the trigger, and the impact of the heavy round at point-blank range caved in the thing’s left shoulder.