by Jason Luthor
His frown doesn’t fade as he stares at me, and eventually he grabs a rifle, pushes it into my hands, and waves me to the doors. “These guys can handle things for a minute while I take you out there.”
“Take me out there?”
“I don’t need you exhausting yourself running all over the place,” he says as he slams the doors open and leads me to one of the lift bikes parked outside, the repulsor pads underneath glowing and ready to run. He slips into the seat and motions behind him. “Hop on. Yasmine’s all the way up at 84th street, that’s a mile north of here. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
“Alright,” I tell him as I get on behind him and wrap my arms around his waist. A second later, the bike’s lifting up off of the ground as the repulsors ignite, the back engines erupting and sending us rocketing out of the Arsenal. A second later, we’re flying through all the backstreets and pathways that crisscross the Zone. It’s almost surreal, flying underneath trees while a calm night sky is projected on the roof of the glass enclosure. The whole time, the sound of explosions is ringing out from beyond the walls outside. People are screaming as they’re running by, making their way to the center of the Zone and the gates that lead below ground. All I can do is hope we get there fast and hold on. Martin’s leaning forward in his chair as the wind cuts by around us, our bike flying across 79th street and past a massive building that once served as an art museum. The city fathers who planned this part of town nestled the museum into the east side of the park that was once the Green Zone. Originally, it must have been for the beautiful views of the park.
Today, I don’t care about the views. What I know’s that if the eastern walls fall, that old museum’s going to be one of the points we hold at all costs. It’s massive, with huge exterior stone walls and multiple floors. The rooftop’s a perfect position for us to mount a counterattack on invaders from, and it’s a great place to house wounded. The walls of the Zone connect right into the north and southern sides of the museum, and the glass enclosure is constructed so that it doesn’t cover the entire rooftop. That means, with Dravic’s forces starting to spill onto the streets around the east perimeter, the museum’s the perfect place for us to return fire. As we’re zipping by in its shadow, I can see men rushing through the doors of the museum, moving inside so that, I assume, they can man the rooftop defenses.
That’s not our destination though. We hit 85th street, just outside the museum, and Yousef takes the bike into a sharp turn. We’re roaring down the street, and ahead of us, I can already feel what a nightmare everything must be like. The glass enclosure, which comes down behind the tall exterior walls facing the street, is already cracking. Martin takes us into a sliding stop, the bike coming to a halt just outside the enclosure and into a completely different world from what’s happening inside. 5th Avenue, which runs north and south along the Green Zone, is littered with Dravic’s forces probing our defenses. Gun fire is erupting back and forth, one block after another. The street’s been ripped apart, something we planned to do to set up concrete barriers in the road. The idea was that it would be good for cover and to slow incoming vehicles down. I’m not sure how well it’s worked out, because coming from the east is what looks like an endless crowd of soldiers and walkers to back them up. There are the bodies of militia men piled up along the pavement, and I don’t want to think about how many people have died trying to hold this side of the Zone.
Martin waves me forward, motioning toward one of the barriers. I can’t help but feel a sense of relief when I see them, especially Yasmine, all hunkered down behind protection. “Good luck, lieutenant!” he shouts as I flip off of the bike and rush toward the barrier. I toss myself in behind the group, everyone’s eyes go to me. Yazzie, especially, almost loses her cool. “Lieutenant, you’re—”
“No time,” I shout back, motioning ahead to the walkers starting to rush into the street. “The minute those walkers are in the crossroads, you blow those traps, then tear those metal suits apart. I’m going to move south and try to get things organized on the ground while Martin’s coordinating from the Arsenal. I’ll be back this way soon, and then we’ll start pushing back against Dravic’s men.”
Yasmine just smiles as she nods at me. “Yes, sir. Good to have you back, lieutenant.”
I nod at her. “Good to be back.”
Personal Recording of Devleena Kumar 14
Erin bursts in over my ear, and even though I just saw what happened, I can’t believe what I’m being told. “Angel’s down. Christ. They must have hammered her with about a dozen artillery shells.”
“What do you mean, Angel’s down?” I bark as I spin to my side, my rifle pumping out rounds and driving back one of the enemy walkers. “What’re you telling me?”
“No signals. Her armor’s gone completely dead.”
“What?” My eyes sweep around me. We’re bogged down, swarmed in every direction by walkers converging on us while soldiers from the fort are swarming on our flanks. The end of my rifle swings right and butts into the chest of someone fighting next to me, and I squeeze off rounds without even thinking. Then, I turn left, and I have to bring my gauntlets up as one of the walkers comes down on me with his own sword. I kick him in the gut, sending him keeling over before I bash him over the back of the head. “Erin. Where is the Angel?”
“Gone. She’s gone. No signals.”
My eyes go through the crowd one more time. I see the courtyard walls and see the guns turning toward the Panzer. With no Angel, they’re free to hit it hard. “Erin. You’re in charge now. What’s the order?” He doesn’t answer for a second, a second when I’m forced to dodge out of the way as a rifle gets leveled at me. I bring my fist up and knock the rifle upward before driving my blade into the soldier holding it, the blade punching right through its torso. “Erin, we can’t just sit here, or we’ll get crushed!”
“I know. I know. Hold position.”
“Until when?”
There’s one more long delay before he says, “I’m coming.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m going to fire on the walls. Take out the guns.”
I twist to my side as I bash another soldier across the face, sending him staggering backward before I fire into his chest. “The second you take your guns off the Dynamis it’s going to bring down more firepower on you than even the Panzer can handle.”
“Taking out those guns will give you the best chance to get inside the fort before the Dynamis can start firing on you. There’s no time to argue. It’s kill Yousef or we lose the war. You’ve got the numbers advantage. Isn’t that what we’ve been saying?”
There’s a second when space opens up around me, and I get one good look at the Panzer standing far off in the city, like a tower itself. Half of it’s covered in erupting guns and another half’s burning from missile fire. “Erin. Good luck.”
“Get ready to push once I take out those walls.”
“Yes, sir.” I look to my sides, watching the world getting swept up in a wave of new walkers pouring out of the nearby hangars. I can’t get a clear view of anything more than that, though. Not from ground level. I’m no general and I’ve never had to lead an army. Just my DEC. I can only imagine what Erin’s thinking as he sees all of his happening at once.
And that’s when the world lights up with more explosives than I believed existed. I can see the guns on the Panzer firing off in spots of light, and seconds later, the outer walls of the grounds are going sky high. One explosion after another eats into the walls as missiles slam into them, tearing them open in columns of fire that go roaring into the air. Rounds as big as a child chew the ground up, eating through tanks closing in on both sides of our forces. The whole time, gun emplacements are flying into thousands of burning pieces, the night air burning under the attack. Through the fire, I see people go flying from the walls as the ground opens up underneath them. It’s almost awe inspiring, seeing that kind of payload getting dropped.
But then I see the sho
ulder of the Panzer explode as a wave of missiles from the Dynamis slam into it, eating into the metal and ripping it open. A huge ball of fire erupts into the sky, followed by more that dig into its collar. I can tell the Dynamis is targeting the Panzer’s guns. “Erin? Erin!” I scream into my helmet but don’t get any response. If Erin’s not giving orders, I don’t even know who’s in charge. That’s when I realize I’m not the only one. Everyone in my DEC’s confused. They’re falling back, collapsing onto my position from every side. Across the command channel, I’m hearing voices shouting out for orders. Should they fall back? Should they hold? In my ear, I can hear Neddy shouting, “The southern wall is down. I’m taking the lead of our troops there. Hold onto the center until we’ve reached you.”
The problem is, I don’t know if we can. Above me, flak guns tear Suiciders out of the sky by the dozens, balls of fire raining down onto the ground. Standing a few feet over the crowd, I see where, in the distance, tanks from both sides explode under the exchange of canon fire. It’s pure chaos. That’s when it occurs to me that maybe rushing to bring together thousands of Sha’b without any formal military discipline, who typically lack a formal chain of command, might have its drawbacks. Ned might be the only person taking real lead on the ground. It makes me realize I need to do the same thing.
“Shit. DEC team, hold position here,” I scream, grabbing one of the troopers by the shoulder and steadying him from taking any more steps back. I fall back, listening as guns start opening fire again and watching my visor. Two taps on my gauntlet’s controls and I’ve got a rough grid layout of what the situation in the courtyard looks like, thanks to inputs from the Baby Boys that are swarming the place. I can feel the sweat pouring down my temples when I switch on the command channel. “This is Sergeant Kalie to Bonsu. The fort’s perimeter defenses are almost all down but we’re getting pinned inside. I need our right and left columns to hold position while Vanguard opens up a way into the fort. I repeat, hold position. General Lancaster is securing the right column, but we can’t lose the left.”
There’s just the quickest confirmation, and I switch back over onto the Vanguard’s frequency and slap closed the control panel on my gauntlet. After that, I strap my rifle to its magnetic lock on my back and free the remaining blade on my right gauntlet. “Vanguard, everyone on my back. Clear the sides while we cut our way to the doors. Let’s make it happen.”
Again, I get a bunch of confirmations shouted back, this time from the team I’ve been fighting with my whole life. The people I grew up with. I’m already bursting back to the front of the line when the last confirmation is in my ear, the massive blade strapped to my wrists ripping into the powered armor in front of me. All I can think of at that second’s the numbers. We have the numbers. We don’t have the firepower, but if we can just get inside the fort and take it to Yousef, we can end this all. If freeing the Deadlands from him means dying for it . . . Well, nobody wants to live forever.
I make sure my blade digs deep into the person in front of me before pulling back, metal plates and electronics ripping away on my arm before I cut through the next enemy. I never give them a chance to raise a gun. It’d take a rifle at point blank range to even put a dent in Zero-One armor, and at this distance, the best they can get up are sidearms. I can see the flare of the shots firing off, and I can hear the rounds in my ear. They don’t make a difference before I tear into the next suit of power armor, my blade cutting off the arm before I head bash the suit’s helmet, collapsing its skull and shutting down its visual sensors. The rest of the DEC is right there with me, cutting into the enemy like pigs eating through bone. Maybe we don’t hold up well against the Creep. Nobody in the world can, not for long. Humans though?
Humans bleed and feel pain. They get scared. And as far as they’re concerned, as far as I’m concerned, I’m Kali, the goddess of destruction. These people have seen me fight and know the reputation. They see me towering over them, two or three feet taller than ever their largest suits of powered armor. That’s why I can see the signs of them hesitating as I tower over them, two tons of metal and fury, soaking up any weak shots the enemy tries to fire off while slicing through their poor excuses for armor. Apotheosis armor. It’s worthless in hand to hand combat, and it means nothing when the visage of death comes knocking at the door. I see a punch getting thrown in my direction and catch it in midflight, my hand clamping down on his fist until it explodes in a burst of fire. Then I raise my blade and cut the arm off at the wrist. My attacker reels back, but I put my blade right through his chest before kicking him to the ground.
The air around us is going crazy. The night sky’s crisscrossed with smoke trails and fire as what’s left of the Suiciders sweep the grounds, moving by the dozens and launching off those spiraling rockets of theirs. A few of the leftover wall emplacements are firing at them, but those guns weren’t made to track flying targets moving at that speed, and neither are the soldiers one the ground. Still, there’s so much gun fire lighting up the night that I still see plenty of good people getting shot right out of the sky. Then a second later, my eyes are forward again, and I see just how far away the doors to the administration building still are. From the time Yousef went back inside to that moment, the crowds collapsed on us.
There’s still so much ground to cover, and I can feel my chest tightening up when I think of Torres somewhere over there, cut off from everyone else. Just thinking about it makes me grit my teeth, my tongue licking at my blood covered lips and my hair glued by sweat to my cheeks. I scream as I try to fight my way through, to get to Torres as much as the fortress doors. I’m in such a rage that I nearly rip the arm off the next soldier who leaps in front of me. Instead, I twist him around and kick him with enough power to drop him into the pavement. Then there’s another to replace him, and another and another. And every one of them that gets in my way gets cut down, crushed in my hands or torn apart by my blade while I wade through a sea of bodies that collapse around me.
I suck in a breath as I get ready to push even harder, when my ears suddenly fill up with a roaring noise as the ground around me opens apart with explosive force, pressure and fire tossing the earth into the air. The enemies in front of me vanish in a wall of fire, their Apotheosis armor disintegrating. Mine survives, but I can suddenly feel something’s wrong. I go pitching forward as the earth opens up, my arm suddenly on fire. I reach out to brace myself from falling, and the armor’s servos help me brace myself, but my arm is screaming. I look down and see where the metal has collapsed, clamping down on my muscle and bone. My eyes race around, and I see the rest of the team in similar condition, all of us struggling to get back up in a world that’s suddenly on fire. “What the hell?”
“They’re firing on their own people!” Someone yells at me. “The general’s going to do whatever it takes to end this!”
My eyes go to what’s left of the walls. I can’t see where the next shot’s going to come from, but I know it’s the same artillery cannons that wiped out Jackie. And my trooper’s right. Even if means killing his own people . . . the Golden Jackal’s coming for his prey.
Erin’s Recording 06
“Sod it,” I scream as I am literally slamming commands into the console in front of me. The screen at the front of the faceplate’s showing me a world on fire, a whole city burning and fields of tanks and transports exploding as they fire on each other. The walls of Fort Silence are crumbling, but they’ve still got enough guns working that it’s tearing our people apart.
For a second, I take a look down, my fingers thumbing the cross underneath my shirt. My skin’s soaked, sweat pouring out of my every pore. The Panzer’s internal cooling’s down. No surprise there, with the fires burning at the control panels around me and warning signs blaring into my ear. As if I don’t know the situation’s not exactly desirable.
In the skies overhead, the Dynamis is still firing away, the sky lighting up with missiles screaming in my direction and guns pounding nonstop into the Panzer’s armor
. Every display to my right’s telling me that the Panzer’s getting ready to shut down. It’s like I said when I talked to Jackie, when the time came to evacuate, there would only be a moment. The chance of escaping was always unlikely.
It’s about that moment when I think about Ishara and Tara. Maybe it’s one of those things you do when you’re staring death square in the face. You just think back on what’s important to you. Well, all I know in that moment’s that the two of them would never have abandoned their people. Not at a moment like that. So, I’m left with a decision. What to do next.
My eyes go to the walls of the fort and watch the artillery fire turning inward, firing on our people on the ground. That’s all I need to know to decide what has to happen next. Consequences be damned, I start ordering the Panzer forward, feeling the deck plates rumbling underneath me as the giant monstrosity walks on, breaking out of the city and onto Victory Field. What’s left of the guns start to turn away as they start to target the Panzer from what’s basically point blank range.
“Maybe we don’t live then,” I mumble under my breath as the guns are firing, the screen in front of me lighting up as return fire breaks through the Panzer’s armor. “But maybe we do what it takes so that others live through this. Like mother always told me, ‘under the shelter of each other, people survive.’” That’s the last words I say before I order everything left in the guns to fire, the walls far beneath me evaporating as the pressure from the Panzer’s cannons break them apart. Then there’s the last thing to watch, the missiles streaking at me from the Dynamis. All I can do is close my eyes and let the chips fall where they will.
Personal Recording of Devleena Kumar 15
My armor’s shutting down. Every signal my helmet’s giving me’s saying it’s about to all just come to a stop. Armor integrity on my gauntlets, breastplate, even my shins is all near zero. Around me and the rest of the Vanguard, we’re getting fired on from every direction. The warning siren ringing through my ears says the suit’s on the verge of blowing apart. I fire whatever rounds are left in my rifle then toss it to the side before charging at the nearest walker. I swing my blade at him, not realizing that the last blade I had is missing, probably blown off during the artillery bombing. The walker in front of me dodges before bringing his rifle up and firing straight into my suit. Whatever’s left of my armor absorbs the shot, but I still feel like somebody’s just hit me hard in the gut. It sends me tumbling backward and almost to the ground, my body on the verge of collapsing, when somebody steadies me. When I look up, I can’t help but feel . . . happy. Happy to see her. It’s Torres, back in whatever’s left of her suit. Her helmet is gone, her breastplate still clean ripped off, and she’s still only got one arm attached to her power armor. Through the hellfire and smoke, I can see her face plastered with blood and dirt. But she gives me a smile as she locks her hand in mine, nodding even as the back of her armor is exploding apart with gun fire. “It’s been an honor, Kali. Devleena,” she tells me. It feels like another punch to the gut, but . . . I just nod back at her, clutching her hand back as I brace myself on the ground.