by T Q Chant
“And there are more of them out there,” Dirchs muttered.
“Recommendations? Call the evac shuttle?” That was the kind of leader Ortuz was. He'd make the final call, but he wanted to know what his troops were thinking. One of the reasons Williams was happy to follow him.
“Fuck that, boss. This mission is just getting interesting.”
“Thank you, Miller. Kora?”
“I want a chance to look at these hostiles again, and see how they fooled me before.”
“Cahaya?”
“Sam went through hell to get her message out to us. The least we can do...”
Yvgena and Williams exchanged a glance. Da, the stocky Russian woman's look seemed to say. “I'm with the little man.”
Ortuz glanced at Williams. She mustered a shrug. “We'll probably need a supply drop. Heavier gear and more bullets.”
“First thing on my list. Actually, that's a lie. Cahaya, how's that intel coming?”
“I've got something from the memory banks. Setting it up to play now.” A square of light hit the back wall of the control room and then filled with a jerky image from the Achilles' helmet cam as it trudged up the same canyon they had ventured up today. “File was too corrupted for the full holo, so rendered it twodee.” The image blurred in places, the advanced rendering software filling in gaps in the data as best it could; it gave the whole thing a slightly cartoonish air.
Cane's voice crackled from the speaker, startling them all. The quality was atrocious. “...backtracking Cho's reinf....must be coming from some... Adisa said thou...”
The image staggered briefly. “...sh...ambush...”
“Heh. Fucking told you so.”
“Stow it, Miller.”
The audio died at that point and they watched the rest of the combat in an eerie silence. The Achilles didn't have targeting systems, being a civilian labour multiplier, but Cane had obviously wired some looted weaponry into the systems. Some sort of grenade launcher was hurling white phosphorous loadings out while she engaged any targets she saw with an old-fashioned M-260 cased-cartridge machinegun.
“Her shooting is fucking atrocious. Are we sure she was in the Army?”
“Supply corps. Not hard-assed Tier One fuckers like us.”
Ortuz and Williams exchanged glances, came to a silent agreement not to shut Miller and Dirchs down. They'd earned their Tier One status, after all.
“Still, she does very well,” Ortuz pointed out mildly. “I think those are technically signalling flares she's firing.”
“Williepete burns like williepete, no matter what the tin says.”
The headcam view started breaking up in earnest, shortly after one of the hostiles actually tried a suicide run against the homebrew. Cahaya was muttering to himself. “Data too corrupted at this point... definitely not damage to the hardware...”
Random words suddenly started splashing across the image. Just before the image broke up in static, a single word appeared larger than the others, blood-red and menacing.
“Denotatus. Anyone have a clue what that means?”
“Whatever, that whole fight got very weird very fast. Anyone noticed how she started losing control of systems just after the words started appearing?”
“Yes, and that was just after someone attacked her in close quarters.” Ortuz smoothed his moustache down. “Time to call the Chief, I think.”
**********
Samright felt the change, day by day.
She couldn't place when it started – her collapse in the field, the Marshal’s hate-filled eyes. Maybe even when Bethany had lied for her.
Or perhaps it was the word 'again'.
She may need to go back to the Bright Place...again?
She examined herself in the mirror. Her body was still a patchwork of bruises, although the discolouration on her temple, around the scar, had faded almost to nothing.
Some of these look newer though. The burn on her leg was definitely old, maybe older that the scar. What did that to me?
This Bright Place must be pretty fucking violent, huh?
Bethany emerged from the showers and Sam hurriedly reached for her robe. Before the steam clouded the mirror she caught a hint of the other woman's body under her unbelted robe, soft and curved, pale from a lack of sun. Definitely not hardened by labour. Samrit forced herself not to turn round as she belted her own robe.
“Oh, I thought you were already changing.” Bethany blushed furiously, hurriedly doing up her robe. “We have a long day today! Back in the fields, to provide for the congregation.”
Samrit got the feeling that that her good humour was forced, and her embarrassment feigned.
Or is that wishful thinking?
“Why would I...?” she started to say, and Bethany's eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Not want to spend my day in honest labour?” She guessed from the way Bethany's expression relaxed that her own smile was considerably more genuine.
I really need to know how long I've been here. She didn't know why that was important to her, or how she would go about finding it out.
By the end of the day, she could think of many reasons why she would not want to spend the day harvesting food for the congregation. The backs of her legs and her buttocks ached, as did her back and shoulders, and her hands stung where she had been scrabbling in the dirt. Bethany had gone in to the field workers' refectory already, as the reflected sunlight was beginning to dim. Samrit was washing her hands in brackish tap water outside the long, low building when the one good reason to be out here struck her.
Some of the Unsaved
– the slaves –
were tramping back towards the caves where they were locked up when not working. They looked awful, obviously ill-fed and battered. They trudged along with their heads down, any curiosity beaten out of them along with what spirit and defiance they might have had. Samrit felt a cold rage flicker into life.
One of them, a bedraggled older man (they're all men) happened to glance up as she was staring at them. He met her gaze, a look of surprise and then recognition on his face that he quickly masked, looking back down at his dusty boots. Samrit looked away as well when the overseer (mercifully not Cho, but from his mode of dress one of Jonathan's recently Saved flock) pushed to the front to unlock the gate of the slave pen.
“Those are the only people I can really trust,” she whispered to herself. “Even if they are Unsaved.”
Somehow, the concepts of Saved and Unsaved didn't hold as much weight with her as they had done when she first awoke in the hospice.
You're going to have to be smart about this.
“Yes. Yes, I am,” she told herself, whichever self it was who kept offering her advice.
**********
The supply drop was being done by pod – with confirmed hostiles in the area, the Chief wasn't going to order a shuttle run until it came time to extract the team – and that would only happen when the job was either finished or had gone completely sideways.
The delivery pod came in hard and hot, a fiery ceramic meteor that glowed fiercely first with entry heat and then the one-shot braking rockets that lit not long before it ploughed into the rocky desert, out beyond the abandoned settlement site.
Williams didn't get to enjoy the view – she and Miller were on op-duty, dug in on a low rise three hundred metres north of the landing zone, scoping the desert in the direction of the settlement and the high ground that rose beyond. Cahaya and Kora both had eyes in the sky as well, but after their first contact Ortuz wanted some old-fashioned assets looking out for the enemy.
The rest of the team, including Cahaya and Kora, who would normally be backstopping from a distance, were at the landing zone as the supply pod came in. Williams kept half an eye on the feed from Ortuz's helmet cam, with most of her attention on the target zone.
“Quickly now, people. This thing coming down was the finger of God telling the world where we are.” The feed showed Yvgena stumping forward in the Achilles suit – cleaned
and certified by Cahaya – to open the rapidly-cooling ceramic tube and start pulling out shockgel packages and foam matrices containing the heavy weapons, ammunition and ratpacks they'd ordered up.
“Contact,” Miller muttered. “Sector three, three klicks.”
Williams dropped the feed and focused on the target zone. Sure enough, a line of figures was moving out into the desert from the wreckage of the settlement. “Confirmed. I count ten, ten plus. They're a lot easier to spot out here.”
“Eye in the sky has them as well – still spoofing us but it's less effective and I know what I'm looking for now.” There was a pause. “They are armed. Still not able to get target lock.”
“Copy that. Alright, people, let's get Yvgena loaded up and fall back. Williams, Miller, engage only if they show hostile intent – we don't know how many groups are involved here, let's not make any new enemies.”
“Could be why they're easier to see – different bunch of losers.”
“Stay focused, Miller.” Williams was thinking hard, remembering the military history seminars she'd paid attention to while the rest of her intake in basic was dozing off. “They were only able to creep up on us before because they were using tunnels. We're off their home turf here.”
“Yeah, think you may be right.” Miller paused. They're setting up something. Yep, that's a mortar.”
“Eye in the sky is picking up multiple groups now.”
Williams checked back. Ortuz was busy passing area effect munitions – Firestorm and Metalshard missiles – to Kora to load into Medusa's hungry magazine. The others had finished attaching the gear to the Achilles' external load points. Dirchs was busy strapping on the harness for a 14mm rotorcannon, a look of glee on his face.
“Miller, Williams, target designate for Kora – mortars, any other heavy weaps.” Ortuz sounded nothing but weary – what should have been a simple snoop and scoot mission was turning into a full on knockdown and dragout.
Williams clicked on her targeting laser and hooked it into the team combat net. She didn't mind a good scrap once in a while, and this mission had been getting boring. “Copy that. Locking in.”
“Target tagged. Yeah, they're firing – incoming, people.”
Watching down her scope, Williams had a nice clear view of the enemy for the first time; despite that, all she could make out were indistinct figures in baggy desert gear. As she watched, one of them dropped a fat bomb into the simple tube weapon. She heard the report of it firing, a flat crump, a moment later. Then the howl of the bomb going overhead. “They're just ranging you in.”
The rounds fell short – she watched the explosion from Ortuz's feed, a plume of sand and pebbles rising.
“Kora, if you wouldn't mind...”
“Firing now.”
This was the sort of work Medusa's drones were designed for – pinpoint deletion of targets designated by the rest of the team. Kora'd dialled up Hornet missiles for this work, neat little HE/Frag warheads that came screaming down from the orbiting drones, homing on the laser designation. The mortars and their crews disappeared in the explosions. “Seeing a lot of secondaries,” she reported.
“Daft bastards must have stacked their ammo right next to the tubes.”
“Keep scoping – we're going to move on you, consolidate and return to the bunker.”
“Copy that.”
“Got another mortar tube, lighting it up.”
“Got a...not sure what the fuck it is, but I reckon it wants destroying.” She was scoping in on something that looked like a rocket launcher or other projector, probably the most modern-looking thing she'd seen from the hostiles so far.
“Firing Hornets,” Kora reported. “Wait, what the...some sort of malfunction...drones are firing again, I didn't...”
The third mortar tube was obliterated, but the fucked-up system Williams was targeting was missed by thirty metres.
“Fuck, Kora!” Dirchs roared in her ear. “You just killed Ortuz! The boss is down!”
CHAPTER FOUR – (RE)LEARNING THE RULES
Observe. Learn. Plan.
That was Samrit's mantra. She didn't know where it came from. Her first instinct had been to walk up to the Unsaved the next time they were out in the field, but some newly awakened sense of caution – or just common sense – warned her that this was probably suicide, one way or the other. Suicide by Bright Place? She didn't know if it was forbidden for any of the Saved (and Bethany had told her she had been redeemed) to interact with the slave labourers, or whether she would just rouse Cho's suspicions; she wasn't especially keen to find out either way.
So she worked in the fields with Bethany, pulling weeds and watering and helping to harvest the seemingly endless crops. She kept her eyes and ears peeled, observed the routine of the overseers and their charges every day. She realised, watching them, that she didn't have much time. The Unsaved were truly being worked to death, obviously underfed and kept out in the fields for the entire day without a break. There must have been a hundred or so in the group she saw, and as far as she knew it was the only group of slaves in the city.
“But why are they not given the opportunity to go to the Bright Place?” she asked her mentor after a local week in the field. They were taking a short break in the shade of a rusted, broken-down harvester. The sun was hammering down through the cracked sky above them and the mirrors made sure there was little shade to be had.
Bethany gave her the same indulgent smile she always brought out at such times. “Many of their former brethren took that opportunity when it was offered to them and have become a part of our community. These few who are left refused even that opportunity. They are being given the chance to repent and accept the Brightness. I thought I already explained this.”
Samrit gave her a wan smile. “Sometimes I forget things.” She gestured vaguely at the scar in her temple. “Were there...any others? Others who did not get the chance to be saved?”
It was one of those odd questions that popped into her head occasionally, prompted by some vague shadow of a memory. Glancing at Bethany, she realised she needed to start being careful about asking things like that.
The smile was definitely forced now. “What an odd question. No, of course everyone from Jonathan's community was given the chance of grace.”
Samrit nodded, searching for a suitably trite response. One came easily to mind. “It is good that only a few did not take that chance.”
“And that you were one of those who did.”
Samrit met the other woman's assessing gaze and smiled before pushing to her feet and dusting her palms off. “I'm going to stretch my legs before we go back out.”
Curious, she wandered around the machine that had sheltered from the blazing sunlight. It was a great metal beast, probably automated, but sadly fallen to decay. She walked the full ten metes of its length, peering up its sheer sides, and idly kicked the rusting tracks.
Turning round the end, she noticed someone had stacked a couple of old crates to give access to the huge hopper at the back, no doubt where the grain was kept after it had been sucked in through the voracious maw of the machine. She put a foot up onto the first crate, which creaked under her weight. She paused, breathless with the sudden sensation that she was perhaps doing something wrong. In the quiet that fell, she thought she heard movement – perhaps a whispered voice – in the darkness beyond. Reaching up to grasp the lip of the compartment, she pulled herself up, surprising herself with her returned strength.
She quickly realised why someone would want to get into the cavernous space. The Saved lived pretty much on top of each other, with no chance of privacy; families lived in the honeycomb warren of caves up either side of the canyon while unmarried adults lived in segregated barracks deeper within the subterranean city. The fields offered one of the few areas where they could mix, and this wreckage of a different age was one of the few places that might afford a bit of privacy.
Samrit dropped back before either of the couples she'd spotted not
iced her, flushing with embarrassment and confusion over what she'd seen. She knew all four of the people in there were committing a terrible sin – if they had been married, there would have been no need for them to hide their shame in the ruined harvester; indeed, there was no way that one of the couples could have been married.
Another part of her questioned whether what they were doing was really so wrong. So they're having a shag. You gotta admit, this place is a bit tedious, so you can't blame them.
Quietly, she eased herself down from the crates. She was about to head back round to Bethany, debating in her head what to tell her (if anything) when she realised Cho was watching her from two fields over. The big woman was shading her eyes, and even at that distance Samrit could feel her suspicion and that odd, personal hatred the other woman seemed to hold for her.
**********
Williams' heart was actually beating faster as she checked her feed. It was still showing Ortuz's push, but that was just static in the corner of her vision. She switched to Dirchs's feed and got a view of rocky ground as the big German sprinted to Ortuz's position. As soon as she saw blood splatter and chunks of flesh she knew there'd be nothing they could do for the team leader. Dirchs took a knee next to the body, which basically ended from the chest up. Ortuz's life had been wiped away by a kinetic needle, a shard of tungsten hitting him so fast it had obliterated his identity.
“Shit.” That made her the team leader. Kora was talking to herself, talking to everyone else, trying to work out what had gone wrong with Medusa. Cahaya appeared to be in shock. Dirchs and Miller were demanding to be cut loose on the hostiles, Yvgena was threatening to ditch the Achilles suit with their precious supplies so she could join in.
“Alright, everyone shut the fuck up!” She thought fast. The hostiles were moving up but at least they didn't seem to have any more mortars; hardrounds were starting to crack over her head. The freaky heavy weapon was still active. She tagged it for a direct kill and shunted the image to Miller. “Cahaya, Kora, you shut Medusa and Snoopy down right now – everything but movement. Yvgena, Dirchs, we're coming to you. We have been made so get ready to lay down covering fire.”