The Harmony Paradox

by Matthew S. Cox

“Don’t give up,” said Nina. “My friends are on the way.”

  José grunted in pain and straightened. “How long?”

  “Eight to thirteen minutes.” Nina waved at people to get them moving west.

  “How long will it take the problem to get here?” José held on to Roberto for support as he speed-walked.

  “About eight minutes,” said Nina, her voice grim.

  “Easy then.” José forced a smile. “We’re good at hiding.”

  The resistance hurried across the dirt lot and scattered among the remains of several buildings. Nina got down behind a section of concrete wall with bent steel rebar rods protruding from the top.

  She waited.

  Soon, the labored whine of e-motors and the squeaking of axles overtook the rasp of anxious breathing nearby.

  Drive right on by. Don’t see anything. Everyone, please stay the fuck down. No one be a hero.

  A whoosh lasted less than a second before a concussive boom knocked powder and most of the stucco off the mission’s outer wall. Nina cringed against her cover. Another distant whoosh preceded a second explosion that sent bits of molten armor spraying in an orange fountain from the middle of the courtyard.

  “Mother of God,” muttered one of the men from the house.

  She looked at him and whispered, “Stay down.”

  He patted his chest. “Manuel Zambrano. I respect what you have tried to do for us.”

  Another set of e-motors whirred closer and stopped. A hiss and a clank rang out, followed by the repetitive clatter of boots on metal.

  Dammit. Nina drew her pistol. “They know we’re here.”

  “Shit!” yelled Patricia, somewhere off to the right and ahead.

  A rifle shot rang out, triggering a sustained barrage from both sides. Projectiles pinged off concrete and zipped overhead. Manuel popped up only far enough to get his rifle over the wall, and let off a few shots.

  Nina triggered her speedware and sat up, raising her MCP50.

  One of the six-wheeled transports had stopped at the southernmost edge of the rubble, less than three feet away from the wall where Josefina and another man from the house―Fernando she thought―hunkered down.

  Men in ACC desert armor spread out along the other side of the same wall, oblivious to the two of them so close. Blue bursts of muzzle fire popped and faded in slow motion all around her. It seemed everyone on both sides decided to be over cautious, and so far, the only thing to bleed had been concrete. Nina’s ears filtered the gunshots to a point where she knew them for firearms going off, but could still hear the resistance people shouting to each other.

  “On the left,” yelled a man.

  “Watch that gap,” said Patricia. “They’re trying for it.”

  Josefina stared up at the barrel of a rotary gun atop the smaller BTR. It seemed to have trouble aiming down far enough to shoot at any of the resistance, and emitted strained noises while twitching in jerky motions.

  Telekinesis?

  Nina put her virtual crosshair over the one-inch gold square next to the barrel. Her 15mm pistol wouldn’t penetrate the BTR’s armor, but she could blind the gunner. She fired two slugs at the mounted gun’s ‘eye,’ before shifting her aim to the right and firing at the sudden appearance of a helmet. Two rifles on the left side of the transport swiveled toward her; she ducked as soon as her third bullet left the barrel.

  Dust sprayed off the wall above her head three relative seconds after she’d crouched.

  José screamed.

  “Dammit man,” yelled Nina, “Stay down! You’re injured.”

  “Little more so now.” José coughed.

  His voice came from a position directly in front of her at the next wall.

  She sucked in a breath, preparing to pop up again when a little girl behind her yelled.

  “Stop!”

  Nina whirled to her left.

  Gabriella, the eight-year-old, stared up at a DMS soldier who’d snuck around to the rear. He hovered inches from María Isabel’s back, with a huge Nano knife poised to jam into the side of her throat. The child balled her fists and stomped her bare foot as she leaned aggressively toward him.

  “Kill the missile truck man.” The girl’s eyes glowed with faint amber light.

  The soldier with the knife repeated, “Kill the missile truck man,” in Spanish burdened with a thick German accent. He spun on his heel and fast-stalked back around the wall.

  Nina’s artificial eyes spotted a colorless laser dot―infrared―race by on the ground, and climb onto Gabriella’s chest. She kicked on her speedware and sprinted. The heavy thunder of the BTR’s machinegun hammered the air. Nina dove into a tackle, grabbing Gabriella as she flew by, and rolling to land on her back to avoid drilling the girl into the dirt.

  They slid about fifteen feet from the force of Nina’s lunge. She sprang to the left and set the girl in the remains of a sunken stairwell that would’ve gone to a basement if it hadn’t become a debris-filled pit. The hiding spot put her below ground level, and out of reach of bullets.

  “Stay there,” said Nina.

  Gabriella nodded.

  Gunfire continued in a series of lazy single pops and faster three-taps. Rifle slugs sprayed over her. Three hit her back at too shallow an angle to penetrate the ballistic stealth armor. She pushed herself off the ground with enough force to fling her body six feet into the air. On the way up, she aimed toward the incoming fire, spotting two men continuing to shoot at the ground below her. At the apex, she lined up the crosshair with one man’s forehead, and fired. Two feet into the fall, she sent a bullet at the second man.

  She brought her legs up to land on her feet, transitioning into a sprint as the men she’d shot slumped over dead. Two soldiers leapt the wall by Josefina and Roberto, startled by finding them so close. Roberto fired a burst into the one on his side; the other soldier pointed his rifle at Josefina, who had no weapon, but the gun leapt out of his hands before he could fire. The instant she caught it, Nina’s bullet punched into his right eye.

  Josefina scrambled to get the rifle oriented toward the man, firing as soon as she got a proper grip, even as the exploded remains of his head rained over her.

  Nina ran to a thick section of concrete and dove to the ground, taking cover. She cut her speedware and stared back at the stairwell where she’d stashed Gabriella. Predictably, the girl started climbing out. “Gaby! Stay down.”

  María Isabel sprang up, aiming and firing at different targets so fast she almost appeared to have speedware―albeit slower than Nina’s. An errant round caused a spray of blood from her left thigh, and she crumpled, screaming.

  Footsteps approached the wall Nina hid behind. She looked up, waiting.

  As soon as an armored glove grabbed the top of the wall, she extended the Nano blades in her left arm. When the soldier went to jump over her, she reared up and drove them into his chest. The claws pierced his armor like papier mâché; her fist crushed the chestplate to splinters and launched him off the blades, his body flying back at least twenty feet. He struck a slab of wall, flipped over the top, and fell out of sight.

  Nina stood with the momentum of the punch and aimed again at the BTR’s machine gun. Sparks sputtered from a square hole where the gold targeting sensor used to be, and the barrel pointed off to the side, abandoned.

  Shit. There’s another one.

  Five soldiers decided to leap a wall together, while spraying bullets wildly in front of them. Their attack focused on a group of resistance hiding in the row behind Nina’s, giving her five easy shots. To the non-speedware world, Nina’s hand cannon would’ve seemed like it had fired an automatic burst. Five slugs pierced five helmets within the span of a second and change.

  Leticia, near the back on the left side, popped up and opened fire on two ACC soldiers attempting to climb rubble on the eastern side.

  “Castillion, get down,” shouted one of the men from the house. “You’ll get hit.”

  “Get up and help me, Jesús!�
� Leticia fired a few more rounds, ducking only after the ACC troops gave up trying to cross that wall.

  The two of them got into a whispered argument, when Jesús said she was ‘too young and pretty’ to get shot, she went off on him, rage-screaming while continuing to snap shots off at the spot the enemy tried to climb.

  Nina ducked out of sight again, listening for movement. She glanced at the stairwell, and didn’t see Gabriella. Please be staying down. Don’t have run off.

  An explosion a good way to the right knocked a ghost image of a wall into the air, rendered in dust. Less than a second later, Silvia tumbled away from the collapsing slab, half somersaulting on purpose, half sliding from the blast. Smoke and dust whorled into a plume where the ancient concrete collapsed. Blood trailed in streams out of her arm, leg, and back from shrapnel wounds. The second BTR sat some distance back from the southernmost wall; its gun turret swiveled toward Silvia, since she’d skidded out into the open.

  Nina aimed at it, but the crosshair went red with ‹240m› below it. At that range, she didn’t trust her pistol to reach. She hauled ass toward Silvia, stuffing her pistol in its holster. Bullets from both sides passed back and forth in front and behind her.

  Deep, staccato explosions erupted in the distance, a long plume of blue flickered in her periphery from the end of a single-barreled cannon.

  She leapt into a dive, reaching for Silvia. Her hand met cloth; she torqued around in midair and threw the woman toward the wall. Static marred her vision. The world flashed to black for an instant. Incessant beeping filled her head. She lay on the ground, moving… no―being dragged. Nina stared up at sky. Her crosshair zipped around like a drunken moth, graphics scrambled. Thin lines of static hovered before her eyes, creeping down in a repetitive banding effect. She looked up at Silvia, who dragged her by the right arm. She tried to reach up and grab her, but her left arm ended at the elbow in a loose tatter of grey Myofiber muscles and wires. Dark green nanofluid and red blood leaked out onto her shirt.

  23mm explosive rounds. Shock caused Nina to stare at the stump far longer than her psyche could bear the reminder of her artificiality. Seeing the plastisteel bone and polymer muscles filled her with the urge to scream, but her jaw wouldn’t move.

  “Nina?” Silvia dragged her up against the wall. “Are you alive?”

  The rush of battle overwhelmed her senses, as the momentary fugue of non-space faded. She lost the will to move, staring up at the clouds. Alive? I haven’t been alive for a long time. “I’m awake.”

  Silvia squeezed her hand. “You saved my ass…”

  I should’ve been dead eighteen months ago. I’m a monster.

  Elizaveta’s face appeared in her mind, filthy, trapped in a primate cage and staring up at her with adoration. Apathy became guilt. She growled at herself for almost giving up, and forced her body to sit up. A status window opened, helpfully indicating that her left arm had been damaged.

  Thanks. I didn’t notice.

  A power surge in her control lines had knocked her targeting, optics, and other headware systems offline, but aside from the arm, everything seemed to stabilize in six seconds. Already, her automatic repair system nanobots had plugged the leaking tubes.

  “You’re hurt.” Nina looked Silvia over. She’d been peppered with shrapnel from a hand grenade, probably had minutes left before bleeding out.

  “Just bleeding… nothing broke.” Silvia forced a smile. “You’ll take Nicolás … make sure he’s safe.”

  Nina grasped the woman’s shoulder. “I’m a hypocrite, but don’t give up. Hold on just a little longer.”

  Silvia sucked in air between her teeth.

  A male voice screaming a war cry made her snap her head up and left.

  An ACC soldier vaulted the wall above them. Red error text scrolled by the bottom of her vision, but her speedware came on. Nina surged to her feet and caught the man’s rifle as his boots touched dirt, pushing it aside and high. The bullets meant for Silvia’s face went off to kill clouds. She tore the weapon out of his grip, twisting into a spin.

  His face faded ashen; his gaze locked on her smashed arm.

  At the same instant his mouth opened to release a cry of terror at finding himself squaring off against a doll, Nina roared in fury and drove her leg into his chest. Cracks raced around his hard-shelled chestplate while the front crumpled inward. The body flew back, breaking off the top two feet of a debris wall before punching a hole through another larger wall behind it. The corpse struck a third wall a few meters later, but lacked the energy to penetrate it, instead winding up draped over it, facing up, back bent at an angle possible only with a liquefied spine.

  Nina came out of the spin kick, tossed the rifle up, and caught it by the grip. One-handing it, she sprayed bullets in haste at a trio of soldiers on the right trying to climb into the Resistance position. They abandoned their effort to flank the wounded José, who hadn’t done much but hold his gun up and shoot blind for the past minute. Nina fired at the spot to keep them down.

  Silvia gawked at the path the solder broke in the walls. She attempted to sit up, but grimaced and went limp. “I’m not going to make it, but thanks for trying.”

  “There’s too many,” shouted Francisco.

  “Stay put, Rios,” roared Pedro. “If you stand, you’ll die.”

  Josefina let off a war cry before a burst of automatic fire went off. “Got one!” she yelled.

  “We’re absolutely fucked,” shouted Francisco. “There’s like dozens more coming.”

  “No surrender!” screamed Josefina.

  Nina leaned left until she could make out the second BTR, the one that had tagged her with its cannon.

  Guess ballistic stealth isn’t quite up to stopping 23 mm heat rounds.

  The cannon sprayed intermittently at the walls, but Josefina seemed to be attempting to foul its aim with telekinesis, though due to the distance, she had far less luck. Strain showed clear in the rivers of sweat rolling off her face. Nina leaned out from cover and tried to draw a bead on the gold square; the rifle didn’t have a targeting uplink, so no floating crosshair. Time dragged down to a near-standstill as she tried to make out the sensor with iron sights.

  As soon as she pointed the rifle at the BTR, the side door opened and a man started to leap out. She felt impressive for about a second until a flash of white caught her eye. A fat, white missile streaked overhead, trailed by another at a higher trajectory. The missile plunged into the roof of the BTR, less than three feet from the cannon, and the vehicle swelled up like an overinflated balloon before breaking apart into an uncountable number of glittering fragments riding the surface of an expanding orange bloom of energy.

  Seconds later, the tremor of an explosion rocked the earth under her feet.

  She shifted her attention to the other streak of white, which fell upon the missile carrier that had stopped perhaps a quarter mile away. The detonation interrupted an ACC soldier stabbing one of his comrades that he’d pulled halfway out the driver’s side door. Watching a man kill soldiers from his own unit at the command of a psionic child made her shiver.

  Streaks of brilliant orange traced across the sky, rapid lightning strikes of pin straight energy. Nina smiled. Two DS2 dropships in olive drab raced by 200 feet off the ground, ion engines roaring like demons. A third came in slow and low, opening its belly ramp as the pilot brought it to a hover at the north edge of the destroyed buildings, behind the Resistance position.

  Nina raised her right arm, waving her rifle around and yelling, “Our ride’s here.”

  Twenty UCF Marines, about half women, rushed forward with rifles poised.

  “Resistance, hit the deck and stay down!” screamed Nina, as she too dove for cover next to Silvia.

  Particle cannons screeched in the distance with a flurry of electric whirr-brzaaatz sounds. The Marines advanced rapidly, firing every few seconds.

  Nina looked up as green camouflage armor went by. “We need a medic here!”

  “
Umm,” the woman looked at her arm with confusion before noticing Silvia. “Burnett! Get over here!” She pulled three stimpaks from a compartment on her belt and tossed them to Nina, before raising her rifle again and leaping the wall to keep moving forward.

  Nina grabbed a stimpak and bit the safety cap off. Silvia injected herself with the other two while Nina gave her one in the thigh.

  “That’ll buy the medic time.” Nina smiled. “You’re not dying yet.”

  Gunfire petered out. The Marines shouted ‘clear’ at each other.

  “Hey,” said a youngish voice.

  Nina whirled around to find Josefina walking up behind her, holding a sparking left hand and forearm.

  “I saw this flying off and caught it.” Josefina opened her fingers and Nina’s hand/forearm levitated up and glided over to her. “Figured you might want it back. I, uhh, think that’s a little beyond Patricia to fix.”

  Nina tossed her borrowed rifle aside, and refused to look as she took hold of her severed arm. She doubted the techs would use it instead of replacing the entire limb from the shoulder down, but a strange attachment made her not want to leave it here in the dirt. “Thanks.”

  A man in his early twenties wearing UCF armor hurried over with a large white case in his hand. He skidded to a stop on his knees and opened the medkit. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

  “I bet you use that line on all the girls.” Nina smiled. “Grenade shrapnel.”

  “Got it.” Sergeant Burnett glanced at her. “Ouch. What happened to you?”

  “23 millimeter. Probably heat.” She continued looking up.

  “Duchenne?” yelled a dark-skinned man in UCF armor, walking while looking around in circles as if calling for a lost dog. “Duchenne?”

  She got to her feet. “Here.”

  The man swiveled toward her and strode over. He seemed a bit older than the rest, perhaps later thirties. His nametag read: Parrish, M, and his armor had captain insignia in battlefield black.

  Nina saluted him using the disembodied hand. “Captain Parrish. Thanks for the timely assist.”

  “Damn dolls.” He grinned. “Think you can take on A BTR-44, huh?”