B-spine

by Cam Winstanley

  “Chalk Leader…” he transmitted, “let’s hit it.”

  They moved forwards in a V-formation, Perry at the back as eight M-81 rifles swept every window, waiting to return fire that didn’t come. They stopped at the front entrance’s steel shutter, rifles covering the windows above as Hemblen and his pointman, Jaime Calderon, fixed a cutting charge frame to the bare metal. “Ready to blow,” said Calderon as downtown shuddered to a different blast.

  “Cooper for Chalk Leader… we’re in the loading bay. We made it!” Glass tumbling from shattered windows broke on the street like waves as the blast echoed away. Hemblen pointed to three of his guys.

  “Roger that Coop,” he said. “Push on inside. Walton, Denny, Gauthier – skirt round and attack the north side.” They turned and lumbered off as Calderon fired his charge and, through a rush of heat and smoke and showering glass fragments, Hemblen’s attack broke into the building.

  Calderon went through the smashed shutter first, slinging a cluster of FlashBangs into the smoke-filled lobby then crabbing left, firing all the time. Hemblen went next, dodging right as the deafening cracks and magnesium pulses of the FlashBangs strobed his movements. He crouched behind a potted plant, then a plush leather couch. He came to the marble-topped reception desk and rapped off three-round bursts at each elevator door, then at the stairwell entrance. The guncam in his M-81 rifle duly took visuals, hard-etching the time, date and location of each shot into its memory.

  Hemblen paused to reload, releasing the bulky cassette off the back of his rifle and pulling a fresh one out of the ripstop nylon pouch velcroed on his thigh armor. With twenty 12mm SLAPs – Standard Light Armor Piercing – and twenty simmunition rounds to each cassette, each mercwar magazine weighed more than most battlefield weapons.

  “Walton. I’m ringing out.” Dave Walton’s voice came shrill and panicked over comms. Hemblen slammed the new cassette into place and cocked his rifle as comms opened again to broadcast heavy calibre gunfire.

  “Boucher – ringing out.”

  Two of his Chalk gone already. Hemblen could imagine the gathering gloom of colored FlashBang smoke in the loading bay. He could visualize Walton and Boucher disconnecting from their rifles then holding them high above their heads while their armor strobes flashed defeat.

  Hemblen keyed his mic. “Chalk Leader for Cooper. Loading bay sitrep.”

  Straight back at him. “Cooper – two down and we’re pinned down. Heavy fire from the crane gantry. Ready to advance on your word. Advise.”

  “Negative,” said Hemblen. “Maintain position and establish a base of fire. Keep them busy.” He stood up and took a hit straight away, the pain in his chest making him drop back behind the reception desk. He grimaced as the stab of the electric shock faded and a single red light glowed on his forearm display. Mercwar had given him eight free hits… Mercwar had taken one away again…

  He stood, rifle raised and saw the shooter running away from the lobby, a hunched mass of armor showing only ass and legs as he stumbled past high-art office decor. Hemblen fired off six shots in a rapid, rolling blast but the figure kept running. Maybe he’d fired only simmunition, the hits logged electronically. He knew many could tell whether they’d fired a live round or blank simmunition from the way the rifle recoiled but it was a trick he’d never mastered. All he knew was that he aimed for the center of mass with the intent to kill and that every twenty shots, blank or live, he had to change the cassette.

  “Leclerc – ringing out.” The decoy team were drawing fire but that was their job – to keep the defenders on the wrong side of the building. With the south side lightly covered, Hemblen and his crew charged away from the lobby. They fired down corridors. They fired through an atrium area. They blasted off full cassettes of simmunition at tinted windows that might have been hiding Aurora Bor defenders. Finally, they caught the rearguard in the open expanse of the empty cafeteria.

  Hemblen was the first to see them, kicking the double doors as the three defenders spun round to return fire. At a range of under ten meters, with his rifle already to his shoulder, Hemblen didn’t even aim. He just pulled the trigger.

  At first squeeze, the M-81 pulsed a narrow beam microwave to the impact point. The beam caught an embedded mercwar armor sensor which pulsed hit status data back. The rifle’s fire-control registered two hits remaining on the target, so locked out the rifle’s live-fire section. As the guncam took a clear visual of the target, the firing pin dropped on a simmunition round and Hemblen’s rifle thundered in the enclosed space of the cafeteria. Time elapsed – a tenth of a second.

  To Hemblen, it was no time at all. He saw a target and fired, plain and simple. As he leveled to fire a second shot, the figure hurriedly yanked the oversized ring out of his rifle grip and let the rifle fall to the floor. With the gun deactivated and the embedded strobes flashing all over his armor, he was out of the firefight but safe.

  To his left, his Aurora Bor team mate did the same as Crash The Pad poured on fire but the third one was either too brave or too stupid to notice the electric shocks zapping his chest and the warning lights flaring on his armor. He kept firing until Calderon’s M-81 registered no more free hits and switched fire control to the live-fire section. Three SLAP rounds blasted him off his feet in a dust cloud of delaminating composite armor and he ended up twisted over a stack of plastic chairs. Calderon paused only long enough to pull the ring out of his rifle. The others didn’t even break stride.

  Hemblen stopped them a corridor short of the loading bay firefight. “Everyone, reload now,” he said. “Calderon, get Cooper and to identify where they’re taking fire from. Pepper, get in a position to clear the crane gantry when I give the word.”

  “That’s six floors up,” panted Tom Pepper.

  “So start running. Go, go!”

  Pepper lumbered towards the stairwell as Calderon patted his back. “Coop says Aurora Bor are firing from the crane gantry, both sides of the loading bay and from the windows at the far side.”

  Hemblen carefully peered through a window that overlooked the loading bay then dropped back down. “Chalk Leader for Coop,” he said. “There’s a whole bank of windows at the far side. Live fire to identify the enemy.”

  He looked up again as Cooper toggled his rifle’s fire-control thumbswitch and blasted the concrete wall above one window with five steel-cored SLAP rounds. “Roger that Coop, we’re on it. Everyone move in five…”

  “Hold on Hem,” keyed Pepper as he pounded up the stairs. “Not in position yet. Repeat, I’m not…”

  “Four, three…”

  “Damn it Hem, I’m not…”

  “Two, one, go…”

  Crash The Pad sacrificed style for speed as the final shootout came down to numerical superiority. As Cooper and the others broke cover in the loading bay, Hemblen’s crew burst in from behind and everyone traded point-blank fire before fumbling to ring out. With eight hits to three, the result was never in doubt.

  Pepper hit his mark seconds later, blundering along the overhead gantry firing – boom, boom, boom – at the maximum three rounds a second. His target fumbled to ring out and Pepper, his vision blurred by sweat, only realized he was chopping him up with live fire after he’d sent four SLAPs into his back plate. His victim screamed, fumbled to ring out and dropped his M-81. Before the heavy rifle clanged off the loading bay floor, Perry the Union rep was calling the action over.

  Peace came quickly and decisively. As the Mercwar Union rep thumbed his Slate, a metallic snap echoed through the landing bay as the bolts on all mercwar rifles locked back. “Weapons safe!” shouted Perry. “Union after-action and MedAssist personnel in here now.”

  Hemblen keyed his mic. “Chalk Leader to Chalk One,” Hemblen said, “let’s get out of here.” As he pushed the shattered loading bay door aside, he unclipped his face shield on one side and it swung away in a shower of sooty sweat. The cold morning air on his wet, red skin felt good. He checked his watch and saw the assault had taken seven minut
es. Not a bad time to change ownership of a facility insured for twenty million dollars. Not a bad paycheck when he claimed his percentage either.

  He breathed deeply and felt his heart slow because everything was simple, safe routine from now on. A MedAssist vehicle disgorged a medical team with a stretcher. They’d fight to pound life back into the Aurora Bor soldier left broken in the cafeteria and bring down the guy Tom Pepper had shot up on the crane gantry. Crash The Pad hadn’t taken a single live round.

  As Hemblen crunched over broken glass, the Union after-action team started working, shooting visuals of every broken window and smashed door. Within the hour, they’d walk the building, clearing unexploded FlashBangs and picking up brass shell cases to clean and reload. They’d dig out every SLAP fired, some out of Aurora Bor armor, others from the concrete wall where Shane Cooper had identified the enemy position. They’d log every bit of damage – the reception signing-in book scorched by Hemblen’s muzzle flash, the plates smashed during the cafeteria firefight – and the loser’s insurance would pay for it all before Sue For Peace took possession of the building to defend it against possible counter-attacks. Mercwar was, after all, a simple, streamlined and straightforward alternative to business.

  At the back of a utivan, Hemblen pulled the ring out of his rifle and left it dangling from his armor on its curled steel flex. He handed the weapon back to a Union guy. The gun’s telemetry would be used to construct a precise model of the whole firefight – who shot at what and from where. The guncam images would show that everyone had hit places not faces, that they’d earned not burned, that only the people who hadn’t stayed down had gone down.

  “Seven minutes…” grunted Perry the Union rep. “That’s pretty smooth for a crew I’ve never heard of before.”

  Hemblen took it as a compliment. “If you’ve seen Crash The Pad’s schedule, you’d appreciate the rush, Perry.”

  “Forty targets in sixteen days,” nodded Perry. “That’s ambitious, I’ll give you that.”

  “Forty two,” Hemblen corrected. “Chalks Two and Three go next then we hit another building in seven hours. You ready to start processing us in again?”

  Some people puked after assaults, the adrenaline high just too much for them. Others laughed it off, reliving the best moments in animated conversations. But as Hemblen waited for Perry to recheck their armor and issue fresh rifles and ammunition for the next attack, he kept his mind on the job and sipped water. It was dangerous work for sure, but it had always felt like work, never combat.

  He’d never been hungry or thirsty during mercwar, not like he’d been in his dusty bunker on the Southern Wall. He’d felt stress but never the fear of days under artillery or the horror of tending wounded waiting for days for a Medevac helicopter.

  When it went well and it seemed to be just a noisy contact sport, Hemblen felt good about it. When it went badly, when his crew got hurt and bystanders ended up strapped to medical gurneys, he hated it. This one had started out fine but forty two buildings in sixteen days… how long would their luck hold out?

  Thursday 13 March

  08:23 am

  FRESH FROM SLEEP in Scott Karpel’s shipping container home, Kirsty’s shift runs fine… all things considered. There’s a glitch at the start when, bleary-eyed and in the middle of the night, she thumb-prints Slate to activate it and there’s a message for her in front of pending cases. She reads it a few times and it makes her stomach roll every time. It’s an automated message so her supervisors haven’t been informed yet but it’s the first indication that time is running out.

  She rides the Tramtrax between cases since she’s got Kareem and Judy Alexis in tow now and thinks about Slate’s warning until 4am when she’s sure to wake Arnold Jarrow up from his deepest, most comfortable sleep. But when she calls him from a paybooth, he’s clearly been dozing on his desk in an otherwise deserted office.

  “I told you there’d be problems,” she tells him as he yawns and straightens his tie. “FedNet has noticed that I haven’t uplinked any cases for days. They’ve told me that unless I default to automated uplinking by the end of the week, my entire caseload will be subject to a person-to-person review. That means Arclights will be out of my hands.”

  The old man looks tired and worried and gray. “Can’t you stop it?” he croaks.

  “I can stop it by adding Arclights’ security visuals and biopsy samples to my existing visuals and interviews,” she replies. “Give me my stuff now and I can still make this go away.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling my superiors,” says Jarrow. “They know it’s in our interest to finish this promptly but they’re not telling me why they’re stalling. I simply don’t understand the delay.”

  Kirsty could almost feel sorry for Jarrow. Almost. “You’re not used to this line of work, are you Arnold?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s the nature of corporations that unpleasant work is delegated to subordinates.”

  “Shit rolls downhill, huh?”

  He winces. “I wouldn’t have put it that way. I suspect I did draw the short straw on this one though.”

  “Out of interest, what’s your day job?”

  He smiles weakly. “Customer complaints.”

  “Oh, the irony,” she says, then hangs up.

  She calls Tim who assures her that yes – he’s watching over the lobby, yes – the residents have been warned to look out for strangers and no – Georgy hasn’t tried to shoot up the building yet.

  At dawn, she stops in a Stop ‘N’ Sip to buy snacks and drinks for her bodyguards. It turns out that, apart from the guns, they’re regular kids. Kareem’s mom worries he’s getting too serious with his girlfriend. Judy Alexis saves her money for ballet lessons. They both order milkshakes.

  Then it’s daylight and she feels safer moving around and her last call is to check a residential Boiler unit with a diagnostic problem that suggests some kind of motor neuron disease. A frail old lady answers the door so Kirsty leaves her guards on the porch, giggling and trading punches to see who folds first.

  She follows the old lady into the living room and thinks she looks old enough to be the house’s original occupant. Then she thinks that the blond kid standing over her husband with a spraygun looks no older than Kareem.

  Kirsty thinks fuck.

  Kirsty thinks she’s dead meat.

  The living room door swings shut and Kirsty turns to see a girl behind her blocking the exit. Two boys sit at the dining table, kitchen stools laid on their sides on polished maple to prop scoped rifles aimed out past the lace curtains. They boys have spiky hair and hooded tops and wallets on chains and the only way they differ from a million other teenagers is the coldness in their eyes as one keeps Kareem in his scope and the other tracks Judy Alexis.

  Kirsty tries to speak but the girl raises a finger to her lips to shush her. She’s got pewter rings on every finger, heavy eye make-up and a cast metal crucifix over layers of flowing black lace. The whole Goth thing.

  “Sit,” she says simply. When Kirsty does, she reaches over to take Slate off Kirsty with her left hand, keeping the right flat against her black skirt so the pistol only hints at violence.

  “Be cool,” she says, “we’re here to talk. Kyle and Bobby Joe only cap your homies if you freak out and start screaming. Understand?” Kirsty nods. The old lady sits next to her husband on the couch and gawps toothlessly.

  The guy standing behind the couch is pale and bleached blond, wiry biceps worked up in a climbing gym snug against a cream multi-pocket waistcoat and sand colored baggies. He’s practically colorless, like the ghost of a G-boy. “Kirsty, Kirsty, Kirstyyyy…” he says. “March eleventh, Arclights nightclub, case pending. What’s the hold-up, sport?”

  “Who wants to know – internal affairs?” She means it as a question but says it too hopefully.

  “We look like Feds to you?” snorts the girl.

  “I’ll ask again, why haven’t you submitted the case?”

  She notices
he’s not denied it. She wonders if he maybe is internal affairs, that this is somehow linked to the message on Slate that morning. Then she wonders if this is Meat4 Power replacing Georgy. Either way, she decides to keep tight. “Why don’t you tell me why I haven’t submitted the case?”

  “Shrewd retort,” he says, leaning forward on the back of the couch. “Okay. So I’m wondering whether you’re stalling for time while you arrange to run off with your buddy Scott Karpel.”

  Her heart misses a beat because Scott might be dead too. “You followed me?”

  “Sure, Kirsty,” he snorts. “Set up a laser microphone to catch voice micro-tremors on Scott’s window. Piece of shit electronics took an age to calibrate so we only heard his travel tales and his offer to extract you. So is that it? Are you cutting and running from your job?”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  He looks pissed and steps over the couch, bouncing down next to grandma who flinches and holds grandpa. “You don’t have to do anything,” he says. “Just as don’t have to let you leave this room alive. But since I’m here in the spirit of cooperation, I’ll give something up first. We’re after some dude called Bishop because he’s after us. For the first time in weeks, he broke cover and headed to a nightclub called Arclights. He showed up, we showed up, you showed up. Does any of this ring a bell?”

  She tries to look calm but feels her eye twitch. “I saw Bishop,” she says.

  “Yeah, we figured as much,” says the boy. “Leander Bishop – hell of a name for a fucking thorn in our sides. Did you catch that crazy fucking accent? He’s British, don’t you know.”

  “No one’s foreign here,” says Kirsty. “Not any more.”

  “Well, he is. They still call it Great Britain over there. I think that’s their dry foreign humor. So I think Bishop’s told you that if you file a case that makes Meat4 Power look bad, you’ll be fucked. But if you don’t file a case, the Feds will eventually pounce on you for not doing your job so you’ll be fucked in a different way.”