by J N Chaney
I took those stairs two at a time, which might not have been the best idea in retrospect. As I was reaching the top, the damaged staircase gave way with a screech and went crashing down, and I had to push off and jump across the gap or I would have gone down with it. Even though I didn’t have the advantage of Andrea’s powerful prosthetics, the lower Martian gravity was still a huge benefit to a born Terran like me. I made the jump, and I made it with enough of a margin that I was able to land on both feet and come up shooting.
I got the drop on a gangster and hit her twice in the chest, knocking her flat on her back. I put a bullet in her head as I passed. I was about twenty meters and a corner away from Andrea, but I could hear the rattle of a furious gunfight. The whole point of a flanking attack is to come in from the side, so I started shooting again the second I turned the corner.
That was all it took. StateSec and the syndicates had been holding their own against Andrea by firing from behind cover, but when I came in from the blind side, they broke and ran. Tried to run, anyway. I didn’t want to give them a chance to regroup and rally so I just kept shooting as they stumbled over each other.
Just three made it out of the killbox, and they died in front of the security office doorway. The others lay either dead or dying, moaning and writhing on the floor as we approached.
Andrea looked around. “Right. Heavy weapons.”
“That all depends on whether we can get in the locker.”
East Hellas didn’t acknowledge the authority of the Sol Federation, and the smart thing for Ares Terrestrial to have done would be to build all their own secure systems from scratch with locally sourced components. That would have prevented me or any other Sol Federation operative from using a skeleton key, because the backdoors the key relies on simply wouldn’t exist. But the corporate mind isn’t always quite as sharp as that. I had already used my skeleton key successfully to take control of one of their trains, meaning it was likely they were importing whatever they needed from off-world, backdoors included. If they’d been as careless about sourcing here as they were with the trains, I’d be in within seconds.
I turned and walked through the door marked SECURITY OFFICE and reached for my skeleton key, then I stopped short and laughed out loud.
“What is it?” asked Andrea.
“They left it unlocked. They just left it completely unlocked.”
The StateSec officer who’d been handing weapons out was nowhere to be seen, and the weapons locker was wide open. I could hardly believe it was really going to be that easy.
“Hold back and go slow, Tycho. Check for traps.”
She was absolutely right—there’s no such thing as a free lunch—but this turned out to be an exception. There was no tripwire or bouncing betty mine waiting for me. The only thing inside the room was a locker and weapons rack full of military-grade arms, the East Hellas answer to any sudden incursion from the West.
Andrea came in behind me. “There’s everything we could possibly want in here. The others can take their pick of whatever they want.”
“I’m not sure how they’re supposed to get up here,” I pointed out. “The staircase fell while I was climbing it.”
“Then beggars can’t be choosers. Take what you can carry. Prioritize available ammo and stopping power. I’ll keep watch.” Andrea took up position by the door and cloaked as I turned back to the locker.
There were a pair of bullpup shotguns, half a dozen machine pistols, half a dozen rifles, five submachine guns, and two grenade launchers. I ruled out the high explosives because they were as likely to kill friend as foe in close quarters, and the practical ammo cap was too low to be much help in a protracted fight. The shotguns had a similar drawback, but if anyone could be a surgeon with a slug, it was Bray. I shouldered one and found a canister of shells.
That left Veraldi, Jones, and Young. The rifles were the obvious choice, and as expected, it had been the obvious choice of StateSec as well. There was only a single, half-empty canister of rounds with a matching caliber, and not a single magazine. We could loot more ammo from the dead, but until we did we’d be counting every shot. The machine pistols and SMGs on the other hand—
“On your time, Barrett.”
Andrea’s not-so-subtle order clinched the decision. In close quarters, the range of a rifle didn’t outweigh the bulk, and ammo in hand was worth more than the possibility of finding it downrange. I slung two submachine guns around my neck and took a machine pistol with my free hand. The syndicates seemed to prefer lighter calibers, so if things got bad we could always take more ammo from any gangsters we ran into.
“We’re good, chief.”
Andrea decloaked and we left the security office. She then hopped lightly down and landed gracefully in the thoroughfare, and I jumped down after her and landed with much less grace.
I handed out the weapons. Johnathan’s face lit up as he loaded his new shotgun, and Andrew gave me an approving nod as he took a submachine gun. Thomas accepted his machine pistol with either mild curiosity or complete indifference. It was hard to tell. I slipped off the other submachine gun and offered it to Vincenzo.
“Keep it, But thank you, Tycho. I’ve made a knife.”
“You made a knife?” asked Andrea incredulously.
“I made a knife. It’s fairly easy. Just a shard of broken glass and a strip of cloth.”
To each his own, but Vincenzo’s choice made no sense to me. I kept the SMG for myself, deciding to use it until he inevitably changed his mind.
On the floors above, no one had stirred since our successful counterattack. I should have known better than to think it was over, but we tend to believe what we want to be true. As we turned and started walking west again, I started thinking about the after, of sharing a post-mission beer together in some West Hellas bar. That’s when the shooting started.
A bullet cut the air about six inches to my right, and I realized that the holographic emitter had just saved my life. I’m not afraid to say that this time I took the attack personally. In my mind, I had already been sitting in allied territory with a drink in my hand, telling exaggerated war stories. Now some shitheel wanted to shoot me in the back?
I spun around and cut loose on the syndicate gunmen creeping up behind us. The Black Kuei gangsters dove for cover, but not all of them made it, and as they dropped to the floor, I suddenly started screaming for no reason I could really articulate.
“Come on, Barrett!” yelled Andrea. “Get your ass behind cover!”
I turned and saw that everyone had already found spots to hide, and all of my enemies had done the same. I took cover behind the smoking wreckage of the train car. Andrew Jones was already there.
He shook his head. “Panic.”
I thought he was saying that I had panicked, but then I remembered it was just his nickname for me. “Yeah. That’s me, alright.”
He started laughing quietly. “Do you have any idea how you looked out there? You were all aaarrrggghhh! I’m such a badass! I’m gonna kill everyone on Mars!!”
“I’m ready to be done with this shit.”
Andrew’s smile faded. “I know what you mean. Hey, what the hell is Vincenzo doing?”
I looked where he was pointing and saw Veraldi slipping through a doorway. “I’m fairly sure he’s not deserting. He must be flanking them to get close enough to use that knife of his.”
“You mean that shard of glass wrapped in a bloody rag? Well, come on, we’ve got to cover him.”
He popped up and took a shot to make sure our enemies kept their heads down. A second later, I did the same. I didn’t duck down immediately, though. I was confident that the afterimages generated by the holographic emitter would confuse any sharpshooters on the other side as long as I kept moving, so I spun from side to side and took shots as the opportunities presented themselves. I finally ducked back behind the train wreckage after taking out three shooters.
“Pleased with yourself?” asked Jones.
“Absol
utely. Yes. One hundred percent.”
“Okay then.”
On the other side of the train wreckage, Andrea came out and laid down a ferocious barrage of covering fire for Jonathan Bray, who advanced rapidly across the gap between us and the syndicate shooters with his shotgun roaring. While this was happening, Thomas was trying to tell me something from a few feet behind me. I wasn’t really listening, because I was trying to see where Veraldi had gone.
“It says here,” Thomas droned, with his head cocked to the side as he interpreted the data coming in over his dataspike. “Tertiary forces are withdrawn from the area...”
A group of syndicate gunmen burst from the same door Veraldi had disappeared through earlier. Thomas Young, clearly irritated that they had interrupted him while he was speaking, half-turned in their direction and casually gunned them down without even really looking.
I sometimes forgot that he had the full combat capability of any other Section 9 operative. He not only had the training, but he was also pretty talented. It just didn’t interest him.
“As I was saying,” he continued as the last of the bodies hit the floor. “It seems that Ares Terrestrial has dispatched something to the area. They’ve called back reinforcements.”
I stuck my head out, trying to get a glimpse of whatever he was talking about. Up ahead, I saw Vincenzo crouching over a Black Kuei gunman and cutting his throat with that piece of jagged glass. Several feet past that, I saw Bray using his bullpup shotgun to blow another gunman’s head clean off. The scattered survivors were running straight into the path of a vehicle that had to be what Thomas was talking about.
“Well, shit,” I breathed.
I ducked back behind cover, and Andrew gave me a concerned look. “What is it, Tycho?”
“That armored vehicle heading this way. I’ve seen it before. The Erinyes are coming.”
20
Jones called out to Andrea. “Capanelli, we need to get out of here! NOW!”
A message came over our dataspikes.
What happened?
I subvocalized an answer. There’s a troop transport headed this way carrying Erinyes. More of the cyborgs from before. We can’t stay here!
As so often happened, two or three of the words came out garbled and meaningless. She must have understood me though, because she immediately sent out a message to the whole team.
Section 9, fall back. Push for the bridge.
I didn’t know what bridge she was talking about, so I checked my schematics of the DMZ. Sure enough, there was a bridge separating East from West at this checkpoint. The schematics marked the space under the bridge with the words Old Hellas. I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to consider what that even meant. I was just thinking of how much of a bottleneck that would be. When we made our run across the bridge, it would be all too easy to gun us down from behind. It was almost suicide, but now that the Erinyes were coming all we could do was run.
As we fell back, we were slowed by the security turnstiles. Designed to control and restrict traffic through the DMZ, the same thing could have been found almost all the way to the front entrance until we smashed a train through it. Beyond the trail of blood and destruction, the turnstiles and secure corridors leading to them were still in place. We would have to make our way through a glass-walled labyrinth, and we would be under fire the whole time.
There was nothing else for it, so it just had to be done. I backed into the turnstiles, watching the thoroughfare for shooters. The armored vehicle came to a stop, and like before, the side opened to disgorge the Erinyes inside. Up until that moment, the Black Kuei and StateSec had been working hand in hand to try to finish us off, but the Erinyes apparently had no such alliance. I couldn’t quite see what was happening from where I stood, but there was a blur of a movement and frenzied screaming, then the gangsters and StateSec officers were running back in our direction. Not to chase us, but to escape.
Of course, I didn’t take that to mean they wouldn’t kill us if they caught up with us. I fled into the turnstile corridors, turning left and right as I ran through the snaking path. Someone screamed behind me, and I heard a wet crunch. I picked up the speed, and after a few more turns I caught up with Andrea. She was behind Ivanovich, walking backward to make sure he was covered.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“Thomas and Andrew are ahead. Vincenzo is running interference, he just sent me a message. I haven’t seen Jonathan. He must still be behind you.”
“There’s nothing good behind me.”
“He’ll catch up. Stick to the mission, Tycho!”
The last time I thought Jonathan was dead, he showed up right when I needed help. The man was unkillable. Unstoppable. But something felt wrong. I had already stepped outside of the mission once and didn’t relish the idea of doing it again, but as soon as I heard that Bray was missing, what I was going to do next was inescapable.
Despite Andrea’s order to stay on target, I turned and ran back in the direction we had just come.
Did it take any courage to run back toward whatever had caused those sounds I had heard? Not at all. Courage is action in the face of fear, a decision to act despite rational instinct. I had no time to think, so I had no time to make any real decision. I just turned and ran, determined to find Jonathan before it was too late.
As I turned a corner, a StateSec officer came stumbling up to me with both hands clasped over his stomach, stepping on his own entrails as he tried desperately to hold them in. He stumbled and fell to the floor, dead. I jumped over him to keep going, nearly running headlong into a Black Kuei gunman clutching his throat and making a gurgling sound. He bled out right in front of me before I could even push him away. As he slumped down lifeless into my outstretched arms, I shoved him away from me with both hands and kept on going.
It was the same story the whole way. Dead, dying, and mangled people choked the path. I jumped over bodies and shoved past the walking wounded, just trying to get out of the labyrinth so I could somehow find my missing teammate.
I don’t know why, but I was assuming the whole time that he was still where I’d last seen him, and that I would have to get all the way back there before I could do anything to help him. Based on all the carnage, the Erinyes were obviously up ahead. I had no plan for getting past them, other than to improvise somehow.
No doubt that’s what many of the dead had been hoping to do. A few of them—the lucky ones?—had nonlethal injuries, like the man whose hamstrings had both been cut. He’d be crippled for life without prosthetics, but for some reason his life had been spared. As I ran past him in the corridor, he was still trying to crawl on his elbows to get away from the things I was running toward. He looked up at me as I went by, his face fearful and uncomprehending.
Then I turned another corner and saw the body of a massive human being slumped over against the walls, bleeding and unconscious. In my head, I still had to get back to where I’d last seen Bray, striding forward with his shotgun while his enemies ran away in all directions. It was a long second until I got the picture and understood that this broken body in front of me was the man I was looking for.
I heard a sound, a kind of wordless pleading. When I looked up, I saw a gangster backing fearfully away from a cyborg with three long claws on the back of each hand. It was the same one we’d encountered on the train, white nanosuit skin splattered in blood, its crown of horns tinged with red. The syndicate gunman was whimpering, a pitiful mewling sound. His weapon, a submachine gun with an extended magazine, hung useless from his limp fingers.
The clawed Erinys walked gracefully forward and passed one of its razor sharp blades through the man’s open mouth and out the back of his neck with an almost effortless precision. As the gangster died, he stared up at the cyborg chimera with eyes wide and hands weakly raised, looking almost like he was praying to the thing that killed him.
Ares Terrestrial was so determined to kill Sasha Ivanovich that they had released the cyborg Erinyes to ki
ll every living thing they found at the checkpoint, no exceptions for either allies or employees. Was this how it always ended with these creatures? Were they just unthinking beasts set loose in the direction of the company’s enemies, or did these things understand?
As I stood there staring with my jaw hanging open, the clawed Erinys seemed to notice me. It cocked its head to the side, and I wondered for a moment if it remembered who I was. Then it glanced down at the huge shotgun Bray still clutched in his hand. My eyes followed its movement, and both of us must have realized the same thing at the exact same time.
This was the only weapon in those narrow corridors that could possibly hurt it.
I dove for Bray’s shotgun. In the low Martian gravity, I practically flew across that corridor. Even so, I only grabbed the shotgun just in time to duck below the Erinys’s sweeping talons. I hit the floor with my shoulder, awkwardly leveled the gun at the Erinys’s chest, and fired. The heat and roar of the shotgun so close to my face, in such a tight space, was agony.
The shot hit the cyborg full in the chest and staggered it, but failed to knock it off its feet. As I tried to recover from the blinding light and deafening sound of the shot, the Erinys paused as well. It stood still and stared at me with its eyeless face, like it was calmly curious about who I was and why I was trying to hurt it.
I aimed this time, tilting the gun to the cyborg’s head, and fired again. It dodged just as it had on the train, but instead of closing in to counter-attack, it darted back around the corner so quickly I hardly had time to process its absence. A glass wall in front of me splintered as a trio of spider’s webs appeared on its surface before exploding into a thousand shards. I heard shooting up ahead, followed by screams, then silence once again. A spray of blood hit the other side of the wall beside me, startling me back into full alertness.
Despite their lethal nature, these cyborg chimeras seemed to almost always run if you hit them with anything they could feel. It was kind of strange, the way they would shy away and find a place to hide like that. Whatever the reason for it, I wouldn’t have much time before the Erinyes were back on top of me. They didn’t stay away for long, and the shotgun wouldn’t hold them off forever. To save Bray’s life, I’d have to get him out somehow.