Cities in Chains

by Tao Wong

  Around the gunships, shields flares to life, taking the damage I dish out as the lightning jumps from ship to ship. Those shields are more than enough to deal with my initial blast, but I have the connection now and I refuse to let them hold the high ground. A part of me rails against my stupidity at forgetting that there is no dragon to rule the skies. That out here, airpower is actually possible. People are dying, people have died, because I made a mistake and all I can do is pay them back in kind.

  Beams of fire targeted at my unmoving form, my refreshed Soul Shield glowing as it sheds damage. Seconds before my shield falls, so does the lead gunship’s. More power, channeled through Ali, shorts out electronics and melts armor while my flesh cooks. A corner of my mind spots a beam of destruction stab upward from the ground, Sam’s truck taking out the second airship. Pain wraps around me like clingfilm, my nerves frying, my body burning. Suddenly, blessed relief from the mounting pain as the beam cuts off, the remainding airship peeling away.

  “Enough, boy-o,” Ali shouts, and I realize he’s been doing so for a couple of seconds.

  I kill the lightning, collapsing to my knees as my body struggles to heal. Flesh reknits, my hair slowly regrowing, burnt skin flaking off. A hand scrambles to the side and injects a health potion into my body to speed up the healing process. I know the System reduced some of the damage for me, reducing the actual effect of the damage to simulate my resistances and my health points. Hell, it even reduced how much it hurt. System-weirdness.

  “Time to move,” Ali says, expanding the map so that I can see the converging red dots.

  I made a target of myself, and if it weren’t for the hunter teams from Vernon and Whitehorse and my friends slowing them down and distracting them, I’d be dealing with the landed Sect members.

  John Lee

  HP: 487/1700

  MP: 729/1310

  Conditions: Crispy

  I stagger upward, eyeing my condition, and cast a quick Greater Healing and Greater Regeneration in short order. Should have done a second earlier, but I was so damn angry. Still am, but the armor I’m wearing is mostly gone and my health is nearly shot. Sabre first, then combat.

  “Status,” I say over the party communications, wondering how things are going as I drop to the ground. Sabre’s on autopilot as it winds through the broken roads to me.

  “Forty-three Sect members are in the city. They’re working in groups of five when they can, but we’re working on breaking them up. Levels range from around 30 plus to Advanced Classes, I’d guess,” Sam says, his voice gruff and hurried, as if he’s got something better to do. “Mikito and Lana and her pets are leading the combat teams in direct fights, but that Blood Warrior and Rock Thrower you were talking about are tearing through any group they find. We’re avoiding them for now but…”

  “Forty-two,” Ingrid says, breaking into the conversation. “But we need you out there, John.”

  “On it. Just getting Sabre.” I hurry toward the intersection I know Sabre is rushing into. Instinct and the map make me jerk to a stop before I enter the intersection and expose myself. A large twisting cone of energy and vines rips through the air in front of me. “Might be a bit delayed.”

  I conjure my sword and a few trailing blades, gather myself, then jump upward and sideways slightly. I land against the building’s wall, legs bunching beneath me as they take the impact and release, throwing me at an angle upward and forward. Spinning through the air, I lash out with Blade Strike as I clear the building, sending blade energy streaking toward my attackers.

  Small fry, I note quickly, even as I conjure a fireball. I send it toward the group scrambling from my earlier attack. The fireball flies toward the group, a Sect member already raising his hand to conjure a shield of ice. That’s when I surprise them by Blink Stepping into their midst, ignoring my own fireball. It’s an insane move, stepping right into your own explosion, and that’s why none of them expect it.

  Cutting right, I slice apart the fast-acting Mage, breaking his incipient spell and ducking behind his bleeding form, using his half-severed body as cover for when the fireball arrives. Everything is moving in slow motion it seems, but it snaps back into place when the fireball erupts, throwing red and gold destruction around like a child given a bag of confetti. Compared to being cooked alive by the gunship’s beam weapon, this just hurts.

  “Die,” I snarl, lunging forward and skewering another Sect member.

  A third, struggling up from being thrown aside by the fireball, gets run over by Sabre. I throw myself toward the bike, triggering the change and stomping on the struggling form with one newly metal-covered leg. The others are easy to mop up after that, the added firepower of the mecha adding to the carnage.

  Exhaling, I take a couple of seconds to get my breath back. Then it’s time to get moving. Minutes of running and dodging, hunting down the glowing red, green, and blue dots of enemies on my minimap ensue.

  There’s no planning on my part, instead giving control to Sam, who has a better view of the fight with his drones and isn’t directly in combat, stuck as he is in his truck. I bounce from group to group, adding an onslaught of sudden death to existing and burgeoning fights, never stopping as I attempt to close with the Blood Warrior. Problem is, he’s split himself a couple of times and his blood clones are running around, clogging up my minimap. The two I manage to catch are easy enough to dispatch—one easier than the other—but even watered down, they’re too tough for anyone except the core team to deal with. And if any of the team actually runs into the main body, it’ll go real bad real fast. Thankfully, Sam reports that Lana and her pets have run into the Rock Thrower, the group and her hunting team ganging up to take him down.

  I round the next corner and spot a glowing threesome ready for the picking. Except I’m not the only one with sensors and information and these three hit me with a combined spell. Wind, electricity, and kinetic force cut, fry, and smash into Sabre’s shield, their combined spell throwing me through a nearby building and the next one too.

  Sabre’s shield had taken a beating even before this and doesn’t last under the onslaught, meaning that the mecha’s armor has to take the brunt of it. Damage bleeds through—it always bleeds through—cracking a rib and searing newly healed skin, the smell of slightly cooked flesh re-assaulting my nose. I keep rolling, getting out of the line of sight, which does little when they fire a series of grenades inside and blow me out the other side of the wall.

  This time around, I Blink Step mid-explosion, throwing myself onto the top of a nearby building using Ali’s line of sight. Head spinning from the attack, I struggle to orient myself as I stagger to my feet. A glimpse of figures below is all I need to act on instinct and return fire, launching my entire rack of missiles at the group. It’s overkill for a trio of Mages, but they pissed me off.

  “Sorry about the trap, boy-o. They layered some invisibility spells to hide what they were up to and I didn’t manage to pierce them in time,” Ali says.

  It’s a horrible trade, three Sect members for two-thirds of Sabre’s armor and even more of my Mana. I snarl, running again as I search for more, the smoking remnants of the town surrounding me. Vernon was never a big city—mostly three-, four-story office buildings in short blocks—which means I end up on the road again in short order. The city is ruined, smoldering hulks of buildings and spreading fires all around me. The Sect cares not a whit about collateral damage as they attack our people.

  “Two blocks down, keep going this way,” Sam says, his voice urgent. I speed up, refreshing my spells and the shield’s, watching my Mana drop again. “The Blood Warrior—or one of his clones—is about to intersect with you.”

  I grin wolfishly, happy that something is going my way. I raise the automatic rifle strapped to my arm, making sure that the armor piercing and high explosive rounds are cycled and ready. Comparatively low amount of damage, but the Inlin spits out enough projectiles that it makes up for some of it. In my other hand, I have my sword, ready to release
a Blade Strike. On top of that, I prep the sonic pulser, pulling out all the stops when the Blood Warrior arrives.

  The ear-piercing shriek, set at decibels high enough that it can shatter glass and screw with an individual’s inner ear, explodes outward the moment the Blood Warrior crosses the road. The red, fluid figure informs me that I’m not fighting the original, just one of his clones. Still, the sonic pulse is enough to make it shudder to a stop, disturbing ripples flowing along its “flesh” as the pulser assaults it. Time enough for me to drop all of my rounds into it, the projectiles alternately exploding or piercing its form.

  “You!” the clone snarls. “You killed my friends.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have tried killing us!” I snarl and keep running at it, releasing a wave of energy from my sword and its trailing counterparts.

  The clone twists and dodges by jumping over and between the flying crescents of energy, a display of agility that has me slightly envious. Even with my own enhanced stats, I’m not entirely sure I’d be willing to try that, especially not with the amount of time he has to react.

  “You attacked us first,” the creature says as it lands and thrusts its palm at me. A spike of blood juts outward, slamming directly into my shield.

  Momentum shatters the spike and the Soul Shield at the same time, letting me tackle the monster to the ground. I reach upward and slam my sword down to the side of him, trusting the arc of my attack to send the blades that trail alongside to cut into the ground beside the clone, trapping it. Doesn’t matter where it goes, it’s going to get cut.

  “This isn’t over!” the clone snarls, stabbed through its chest by one of the trailing blades as it squirms aside.

  I channel Freezing Blade, tired of listening to it, when the blood clone ripples then explodes, the explosion throwing me backward.

  “Asshole,” I say with a groan. Flashing lights in Sabre telling me that the explosion has done even more damage to the poor mecha.

  “That’s another group gone,” Ali says, coming over to where I struggle to my feet.

  That makes four. Even if I’m locating and killing the damn Sect members as fast as I can, they’ve got the initiative here. We have the numbers, but they’ve got the Levels and the initiative, with our people too spread out across the city as we attempt to save everybody. They’re hitting our people piecemeal, taking out teams while we scramble.

  “We’re losing,” I say after a glance at the map. “That’s it. Everyone, this is John Lee. Pull back on Sam. Grab whatever civilians you can, but everyone pulls back. Sam, coordinate them to fall back on you.” A part of me hopes I’m using the terms right, that everyone understands what I mean. It’s what I know from reading a few books and seeing a lot movies, terminology that probably means what I think it does. “Ali…?”

  “Head down this street and take a left. There’s a group of hunters pinned down with civilians about four blocks down,” Ali says.

  Better to rely on my Spirit now; Sam’s got his hands full.

  I curse inwardly, knowing we’re abandoning people, leaving them to be taken or possibly killed. A part of me figures that the Sect won’t actually go after the civilians, not when it’s clear we won’t be coming for them anymore. But another part of me wrenches at the thought of abandoning them, of leaving them to the mercies of the Sect. Still, I have an obligation to the fighters, the warriors, to my men. Sending them out to die is one thing, but doing so for a meaningless gesture? That’s the greatest betrayal I can think of.

  We pull out what feels like hours later, the surviving combat Classers and the civilians we managed to gather in an assorted train of transportation vehicles. We have everything from gravity sleds to a 1940s Ford in the retreating convoy, bloody and shell-shocked civilians in all of them. No open wounds—or not many anyway, since the System is busy healing everyone. No more chance these days of someone dying from lingering injuries. Cold comfort, that thought.

  But the Sect is letting us pull back. The fighting since I called for our retreat was brutal, the last fight a brief clash with the Blood Warrior’s main body right next to Sam’s truck. Dancing with him, containing his attacks while his friends fired at our grouped civilians, was stressful. The Blood Warrior pulled back fast once Mikito arrived, leaving the field of battle to us. Even the ranged attackers ran away after they realized they were steadily losing people to an unseen attacker. We managed to kill nearly two-thirds of their combatants in all the fighting. We bloodied them enough to force them back, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory at best.

  “They still holding?” I say to Ali, even though I can see the information on the map as clearly as he can.

  “Yes,” Ali says, fingers dancing. “I don’t think they’ll be dropping more people, but we should keep moving.”

  “Sam?” I say, speaking to the Technomancer in the center of the convoy. “Can you talk to whoever is in front to speed up?”

  “On it,” Sam says. “We need some hunters out ahead though. The civilians aren’t willing to walk into a monster attack.”

  “I’ll send Roland and Shadow,” Lana chimes in from beside me, cradling a beam rifle. “Mikito…?”

  “I’ll ask around and find some hunters,” Mikito says, something in her voice that I’m unable to read.

  I frown slightly, turning to stare at where Mikito stands on the bed of a truck, but I can’t read anything behind her mecha’s armor.

  “Thank you,” I mutter, wondering if this is it. Hoping it is.

  I don’t have the numbers, not yet, but I know we lost quite a few of the hunter groups. We lost—badly, this time—and a part of me rebels at the idea. At the loss of life for no damn reason, of the pain and suffering. I find myself gritting my teeth, staring at Vernon while the column draws away from me.

  I want to get back in, to make them hurt. But if I do that and they attack the column, I’d just be compounding one mistake with another. Better to stay here. And anyway, Ingrid’s doing her thing, hunting the stragglers, making them hurt inside that city. No. As much as I want to fight, right now, right here is my place.

  But I swear, I’ll make them hurt.

  Chapter 12

  A day later, we’re gathered at the city center’s central office lounge. We being the entire team, excluding Ingrid, and my “council,” including Mel as a representative of the combat Classers. We’re scattered in a rough circle on whatever random chairs and other surfaces we can find. A part of me notes we need a real meeting room at some point, but right now, I want to be near the City Core.

  “We lost four full teams and another fourteen combatants from those who came from Kamloops. The Vernon fighters lost the most. We barely have eighty of them here, and that’s including the ones who came in the earlier convoys,” Mikito says, pain in her eyes. “I don’t know how many actually died in the city. I wasn’t able to get a real count.”

  “Definitely the same for the civilians. No losses from the earlier groups of course,” Benjamin says, shaking his head. “We’ve got over a thousand new people, some of them still shell-shocked. I doubt many of them will be of use to us in the next few weeks, though anyone who has survived thus far…”

  “Are survivors,” Mel says, grunting. “They’ll get over it.”

  I grimace but nod, understanding the harsh truth in that statement.

  When I look at Torg, he answers the next question easily. “We have enough food for them. Food is tighter, but we’ve shifted a few of the farms to producing consumables and those should help the overall situation. Our stores are more than sufficient for now.”

  “For now,” I say, repeating the qualified statement. I almost ask how long “for now” means, but I figure if it was a major issue, he’d bring it up. Better to let the experts do what they do best without me jogging their elbow.

  “Space isn’t an issue. There are still a significant number of abandoned buildings, even System-registered ones,” Ben says softly. “I’ve been upgrading them as I can, but at least they’re warm
with running water.”

  Again, I’m struck by the absurdity of me leading anyone. I don’t know, don’t understand any of this. Even the downloaded knowledge from the System doesn’t cover the fact that I just don’t have the experience or temperament to do this. As leading a bunch of hunters to their death showed.

  “ATTACKERS HAVE BEEN DETECTED AT THE PERIPHERY OF THE SENSING ZONES. SHOULD WE DEPLOY DRONES FOR ADDITIONAL COVERAGE?” Kim says, flashing the notification in front of me and everyone else.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “No,” Mel says at the same time then glares at me. He draws a breath before explaining himself to me. “A drone will likely be picked up by them, letting our enemies know the limits of your sensor net.”

  I nod slightly while Mel queries Kim for further information. I take a more direct route, pulling up the map and scanning the information. Two groups—four and six people respectively. That’s literally all the information there is, the biosensor network not particularly good at providing anything else. Well, outside of the fact that they’re on foot.

  “We’ll deal with this,” Mel says, standing. I frown at him. “My people need the experience gained from fighting them.”

  “But—” I protest.

  “Lana is lending her pets to us, so we’ll have enough muscle power. And we’ve got trained groups who are stealthier than you and yours,” Mel says, cutting me off. “We have plans for this. Let us do our job.”

  I grimace but nod and let him leave. I hate that he’s right and I hate that his people, the combat Classers, are going to do the fighting while I’m seated here, safe and useless. My glowering form keeps the silence until Mel leaves, at which point Ali clears his throat.

  “Well, then. I got some good news,” Ali says, waving.