For the minute it took to cover the open ground in front of the smoking storage unit, Bishop was transfixed. Individual armor plates clattered and scraped against each other as it padded heavily, pausing every few steps and swinging its head until the handler, the first man in a double line of troops using its rump for cover, spoke instructions over the helmet-mounted comms and urged it on.
It stood on its hind legs and beat the door until loose steel strips clanged off the concrete. Then the bear and the squad joined the battle inside and a renewed flurry of explosions and gunfire lit up the smoldering darkness.
As MedAssist crews dared to run forwards and start dragging the wounded out, Bishop took a fresh look at his deployment. A block away, PD were holding up the Tramtrax and turning road traffic around at a hastily-installed perimeter. He peeked over the utivan’s hood at the fifteen or so M4 vehicles parked across the forecourt and backed up along the road. Most of them were clustered at the entrance end of the service courtyard, bunched round the MedAssist pod on a twelve-wheel flatbed and the tractor trailer unit that had brought the bear. Bishop whistled and waved at the nearest RESC uniform until she ran over to crouch next to him.
“The right flank of this line is unmanned,” he shouted over the hammering gunfire. “I want you to position a squad under that far utivan and lay down a base of fire straight into the target building. What weaponry do you have?”
“I’m just a driver but that utivan there is counter-sniper equipped,” she shouted back. “There’s a Barrett fifty calibre, two scoped rifles and a belt-fed SAW but the personnel I drove here with it just went in behind the bear.”
Bishop knocked on her helmet as he stood. “Then me and you notch up some trigger time. Come on…”
They ran to the next vehicle where Bishop kicked two more troops up off the ground and told them to follow. All four of them tripped and dived as stray rounds shrieked past them but then they slid the utivan’s side door open and there they were – heavy weapons inside battered foam-lined aluminum travel cases. The two men jumped inside, one pushing the cases out, the other shifting boxes of ammunition.
Bishop first saw the armored personnel carrier as he turned to put the first case on the ground. He thought nothing of it… Martha’s calls had got out everywhere so reinforcements were arriving all the time. But when he turned around again with a box of link ammo for the SAW, he caught the APC hitting the PD’s roadblock, splintering wooden sawhorse barriers and spitting them high into the air as they shot out from under its tracks.
“Incoming armor!” Bishop shouted over and over, pointing to the rear. A few RESC stopped to look but with their weapons shouldered while they helped walking wounded, that was all they did. No one put out fire, no one snapped to it and then the APC was off the road and onto the concrete hard standing of the industrial estate and was right among the M4 vehicles. Up close, Bishop could see the stenciled logo of a leaping frog on a lily pad that was all too confusingly familiar.
Bishop pushed the female RESC aside and dived as the APC came on, arrow straight. One of the men inside the utivan screamed briefly before thirteen ton of turbine and tracks and armor crashed straight over and through the utivan without even losing momentum. Two human occupants and three livedrive pods flattened and compressed. Tissue blew out of every seal and rivet hole and opening and Bishop hit the ground with offal spraying over him.
The goo blinded him. He rolled in foodfuel slime and stomach contents and windshield glass fragments as the thundering vibration of the APC diminished. He gasped and choked and blew bubbles through the mucus over his face until he was finally free to gasp and heave and retch, bringing up yet more fluid to cloud the mess that puddled around him.
By the time he’d cleared his eyes, the APC’s occupants were running into the burning storage unit and there was no mistaking them. A Squad Automatic Weapon to his left opened up, spitting a steady stream of rounds into the lumbering, oversized figures who just tripped and fell under the impacts or turned and roared out return fire from ugly, oversized weapons. He saw their muzzle flashes and heard brutal impacts near him – fist-sized holes in the bodywork of a utivan spraying blood as a livedrive shuddered its guts out. He knew who they were and what they were. But what the fuck were Crash The Pad doing messing with his op?
He slid on his belly through the liquified surroundings, heading to where the RESC lay puking next to the cases they’d offloaded. “Which one’s the Barrett?” he screamed and she stared back, eyes white against the crimson wetness of her face. He slapped her hard. “Only the fifty cal can penetrate mercwar armor. Which case holds the Barrett rifle?”
She looked desperate. “It was still in the utivan,” she wailed, pointing to the flattened shell of the vehicle. “All we’ve got is the SAW and a scoped rifle.”
Bishop heard the booming retorts of mercwar rifles inside the building and knew that unless the bear stopped them, Crash The Pad would be overwhelming his troops. The Barrett had been his best bet for killing at least one but the high-velocity round of the counter-sniper rifle was next best. “Then that’s what we go with,” he told her. “Pick up the SAW.”
They slipped and skidded from vehicle to vehicle, their progress mapped in red footsteps and drag marks. As animal roars merged with gunfire inside the building, they reached the last parked vehicle and lay down side by side to peer around it. He’d been right – from the extreme right of the vehicle line, he could see past the APC and into the building. He could get a clear shot on anyone coming out.
Bishop unclipped his helmet and tossed it aside. He opened the case, unfolded a bipod and propped the rifle on the ground while he wiped his hands on the dusty concrete.
“Hold your fire until you see an unarmored woman come out,” he said, lying down to squint into the scope sight. “Target her, she’s the one you want to kill. If you don’t get a shot, pour fire into those mercwar bastards and keep them stumbling around in the open for as long as you can. Okay?”
The girl sniffed and nodded as she closed the SAW’s top cover over the belted ammo, worked the bolt both ways and brought the weapon’s metal stock to her cheek. She blinked back blood and looked determined. “Keep them busy… got it.”
“All I need is clear shots at where the chest slab meets the face shields and I can drop these bastards. Because if those fucks get that girl clear of here, we’ve got problems you wouldn’t believe…”
Friday 14 March
12:18 am
“WE GET IN, we get the girl, we get out. Nothing else matters!” yelled Masahuru O’Toole over the whine of the APC’s turbine. This was his assault, Hemblen assigned Point Two behind Calderon’s Point One, the driver counting down as they sat in the APC’s hold listening to parked vehicles pop under tons of steel and ceramic laminate.
In and out, no Union opposition expected. Use their superior armor to keep moving, use their superior firepower to keep the soft-skinned enemy face down on the concrete. In and out, five minutes tops.
The APC skidded in a tight circle and Jaime Calderon was hitting the door release even before it stopped. Hemblen jumped off the rear ramp and strode past a bullet-riddled utivan sitting in a pool of leaking blood and coolant. He ducked under the building’s shattered steel shutter and plunged into the gloom.
Inside, dark and smoky, visibility under two meters, gunfire everywhere. Hemblen smelled perforated bowel and stepped over a pile of bodies, their white M4 logos smeared with blood. He groped forwards cautiously, feeling two opponents before he saw them. Hemblen and Calderon, rifles strapped tightly across their chests, beat them down with fists and kept stomping them until they stopped moving.
He felt a jagged hole in a steel container and groped through the smoke to a stairway partially blocked by blood-sticky roofing panels and a crumpled pile of bodies. To his right, gun flashes lit the gloom as assault rifle rounds slapped loudly but pointlessly into mercwar armor.
“Get up there, go!” shouted Maz O’Toole, pointing and pushing
Hemblen and Calderon up the stairs before he knelt to return fire. As Hemblen clambered over the corpses, O’Toole’s live fire was joined by the rest of the Chalk.
At the top of the stairs, this final container was just sounds lost in the smoke and gray shades of movement. It stank of burned propellant and blood. Hemblen stepped through the doorway and tried to get his bearings. A wrenched and beaten door under his feet. A casualty to one side, whimpering for his mom and holding his arms out imploringly. And straight ahead, an armored giant tearing holes into a man.
Hemblen stepped up and killed it without even knowing what it was other than it wasn’t on his side. He pushed the muzzle of his M-81 into the armor’s obvious weak point, the flexible scuffgel seal around the shoulder. The 12mm SLAP burst through and he heard air blow from a punctured lung. Even so, it turned to face him and was squaring up to tear him apart when he put another shot right through its face and into its brain.
It was only as it dropped like an boulder and voided its bowels that he realized what it had been. A bioweapon. All this time they’d spent worrying about being killed by one of Bostov’s and they’d ended up taking out one of Meat4 Power’s instead.
O’Toole stepped into the shattered room followed by others. Hemblen stood over the girls he’d come to save, a glassy, shellshocked look in her eyes, blood streaming out of her ears and nose. She was pointing a pistol at him, pathetically clicking the trigger despite the slide being locked back awaiting a fresh clip. “We’re on your side,” he told her, gently taking her pistol and dropping it into an ammo pouch. “Do you understand? We’re here to get you out.” She stared back, her mouth gaping open and he stretched over an old wooden table and pulled her to her feet.
She hung uncomplainingly as he draped her over his shoulders and waited for Giroux to pick her way up the cluttered stairway. “Got any live ones up here?” she asked.
“The two in the back were fighting for this one,” he said. “If you can stabilize them, I reckon they might pull through.”
“What about the others?” asked Giroux.
“Not our problem,” said Hemblen.
Calderon covered Hemblen as he carefully made his way down the steps and out to where Genevieve Leclerc knelt behind the shattered utivan. “Any incoming?” asked Hemblen.
Leclerc shook her head. “We took a little small arms fire from up by those cages but that stopped when we fired back.” She glanced at the girl on his shoulder. “Is that her?” He nodded. “Doesn’t look anything special, does she?”
“She’s important to someone,” he said, switching Kirsty’s limp, dead weight from one shoulder to the other. “You ready to get out of here?”
Leclerc nodded and Hemblen said “So let’s go no while it’s still quiet” and they all ducked through the twisted mess of the steel shutter and stepped into the few meters of daylight between them and their tracked vehicle.
He was sweating under the weight of Kirsty and his armor and thinking how strange it was to be saving this girl for the second time in two days and that’s when Genevieve Leclerc walked into a storm of fire that shattered her helmet and faceshield into a snowcloud of delaminated dust in front of him and dropped Calderon without so much as a yell at his side and when the teflon-tipped high-velocity rifle round came whining in and hit him straight in the face.
Arclights nightclub
Toronto Hub, District 54
Tuesday 11 March
02:17 am
IT’S SUPPOSED TO be the best night of his young life. DJ Mandy’s in her booth over the dancefloor, the speaker panels are blasting out euphoric emotion as seamless as the circular acrylic dancefloor beneath everyone’s feet. The place is packed, the place is loud, the place is banging. The honeys are dressed tight and it should be the best night of his life, but it’s still not right. Because Simon’s life-long friend… the man he doesn’t hesitate to call brother… the greatest hero he’s ever known… isn’t happy. Not at all.
In fact, Kenny Sossamon is flat-out pissed.
“The cooks are saying what?” Kenny stands next to Simon at the coat check-in by the lobby and glares.
“That they’re not giving up six grand to the dish washer,” shouts Simon over the music. “But you know they’re just messing with us… Right?”
“They better be,” growls Kenny, his face red, his lips tight and white. “Otherwise, how ’bout I fuckin’ throw them off a seventy story building next time?”
First thing this morning, Kenny busted out of District 45 and traveled across twenty Districts – further than anyone Simon knows has ever gone. A few hours ago, he hurled himself off a last-century skyscraper called the Scotia Plaza Building, falling into legend as the only person ever to win their first BASErace. A few minutes ago, he limped in to claim winnings from the kitchen crew who’d staked their cash on him being chicken.
“A bet’s a bet, dude. They’ll pay up just as soon as they get over being total losers.” It pains Simon to see Kenny wound this tight. He used to be so mellow. This should have been a night of celebration.
“It’s our six grand, Simon. It’s mine and it’s yours and it’s Taki’s”
“Ah-ah… no way,” shouts Simon. “We talked about this. You made the jump, bro. The cash is all for you.”
Kenny looks like he’s furious with Simon now. “But you fronted the stake,” he yells. “You kept me motivated even when I took sick. I couldn’t have done none of it without you.”
Treble tone chirps in Simon’s molded earpiece. The music’s too high to hear the words, but he looks over three hundred bobbing heads and sees his supervisor eyeballing him from the bar. “I’m watching you” he over-annunciates, stabbing twin fingers to his own face and then daggering them at Simon. Shoulders hunched, palms outstretched, Simon gives the universal sign language for “What?”
“Got to get back to work, dude,” he tells Kenny. “Man, I hate he can shout at me but I can’t talk back. That’s income taxation without representation. Downright unconstitutional if you ask me.” Simon thinks that’s funny but Kenny just glares over to the bar, clenching and unclenching his fists, looking like he’s mad at the supervisor now.
“Look,” says Simon, putting an arm around his friend and feeling wet heat come off him like a sauna. “Just work your shift and let them rag on you. By dawn, they’ll realize they’ve no way out and they’ll pay up. They’re just being tight wads because you’re the greatest fucking human being who ever lived!” He hugs his friend tight but Kenny’s tense and trembling and the shaking heat that’s coming off him is just unreal. He breaks the hug and looks straight at his friend. “Seriously, guy. Let this slide, okay?”
“I’m getting our cash, Simon,” he says. “No way they’re dicking us.”
“C’mon, Kenny,” he tries punching him playfully. “No one’s going to dick you. You’re a living legend. Those guys in the kitchen? Who’s going to remember they even existed?”
“I’m getting our cash,” he says and limps a few steps before Simon grabs his arm.
“You okay? You look beat.”
“I thought I broke my ankle when I landed,” says Kenny. “Truth be told, I’m pretty sure I heard it crack. But the swelling’s going down already so I guess it wasn’t anything serious. Now I’m getting our money…” and he shakes free and pushes through the crowds towards the kitchen sublevel.
Simon’s mood lightens as the crowd swallows up Kenny. Of course he’s tense, he figures, the dude just threw himself off a skyscraper. And sure he’s wired, Simon’s seen the tension wind his friend up over the last couple of weeks. But give the music time to work and he’s bound to unwind. No one can stay angry in Arclights for long.
Simon picks up his wire tray and gets on collecting empty glasses. He gazes up and grins as laser light sprays off the jagged steel embedded into the poured concrete walls. Fourteen stories of gently tapering cone, Arclights is a cathedral to sound studded with rusting metal bomb fragments that are supposed to be from the B-52 bombin
g raids the place is named after. Toronto had gotten pretty hot when the old USA came gunning for Canada’s unpolluted wide-open spaces and even though no one here’s old enough to remember it, everyone loves the idea of dancing until dawn under tons of fucked-up metal from some fucked-up war.
He pushes his way between the booths clustering the outer wall and the dancefloor in the middle. He loves the dancefloor, a seamless expanse of clear acrylic trapping millions of spent bullet casings under everyone’s feet like bugs in amber. Simon knows its secrets, why dancers are compelled to bunch in a sweaty mass in the middle. “It dips, stupid!” he yells at them, his voice swallowed by the bass line. “It’s two feet lower in the middle!”
He eyeballs the booths as he saunters past. Corporate suits, cold-lounging in three-pieces while their Urban Pacification Force scowl professionally at everyone. A girl Simon recognizes as a newsfeed anchor, partying with her girlfriends and some buzz-cut Marines fresh from Atlantic Wall duty. Jamal J and his crew, celebrating his cable access music show going prime-time.
In his own time, he makes it back to the bar with a full basket of glasses and his supervisor’s straight there, face-to-face and yelling about the time he took and how he took a break with Kenny without asking for the time off. Simon nods and doesn’t even try to listen, pointing to the seas of heads to demonstrate that it’s a capacity crowd out there and moving around isn’t that easy. When he looks back, the super’s lost interest and is shouting at some other fool already.
Simon lifts the side of the bar, backhands the call button on the service elevator and waits. And waits. And waits some more. A waitress calls Sheryl taps her foot next to him, waiting for her order of nutriceutical-laced burritos that’ll keep Jamal J’s crew bouncing ’til dawn. She says something he doesn’t catch. She cups both hands round his ear as he leans in.
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