by Simon Archer
He stumbled as his heels ran into the tree trunk, his face gaunt with a morbid combination of surprise and resignation to the fact that it was over.
“Nice try,” I grinned, my voice coming out dull and raspy from all the smoke. I pressed my face up close to his and drove my holo knife into his abdomen, wanting to watch the life flow out of him after such a heated battle. And it was satisfying, indeed. He stared at me with fear and something akin to awe as he died, and then the light left his eyes, and he slumped to the ground, his back still against the tree trunk.
I pulled my holo knife out of him and powered it down, clipping it back on my belt. Then I leaned over with my hands on my knees in order to catch my breath, and my chest rattled as I did so, indicating that I needed to get the hell out of this smoke.
But this was only the first battle. Laser fire and screams coming from God knew who still emanated from our right. We still had far more work to do. We couldn’t cave yet.
I turned, almost afraid of what I would find, to survey the rest of my team. I shut my eyes tight and shook my head when I saw that both of the young men had died. That was it. They were gone, their bodies both strewn across the ground, their limbs sticking out at awkward angles, their eyes just as lifeless as that last binder I’d just killed.
“Sorry, sir, there was nothing we could do,” the older man, probably a few years older than me, said, turning away from the grisly sight. “It just all happened so fast, and there were so many of them.
“Yeah, I know, it did, and there were,” I said, walking over and clapping him on the shoulder a couple of times. “It wasn’t your fault, chief. You did what you could. They chose to be here with us. They knew what they were getting into.”
The other two men looked away from me and clenched their fists, and the older man stole another look at the fallen kids.
“Is everyone else okay?” I asked them. “Are you ready to move on? We need to keep going.”
“You don’t sound too hot yourself, Sir,” one of the men remarked.
“I know,” I said, suddenly very aware of how my voice sounded. “But we have to move on. We really do. They need our help.” I jerked my chin in the direction of the rest of the battle.
“Yeah, I know,” the man said. “We all do. Let’s go, boys.”
To their credit, all three of them jumped into motion, not a hint of fatigue or lethargy between them. I jogged out in front, and we made a beeline for the sound of the laser fire.
We ran into a few more binders on the way, but never as big a group as the first time around. We made quick work of each of them, slicing their chests and throats with our holo knives. For however long we’d been out there in all that smoke and battle, the conglomerate’s binders had been there longer.
“Do you think they were just sitting out here waiting for us?” one of my guys asked me after I killed the third binder that jumped out in front of us.
“Yeah, it seems weird that so many of them were up on the north side fucking with our headquarters, and then they just turned up down here before we even got here,” another one added.
“I don’t really know how many binders were actually out there at headquarters,” I said, voicing something I had been thinking about as we looked around for more enemies. “There were some at the beginning, sure, the ones who messed with our power and started the whole thing. But at the end when Clem and I went out there, we only found about four of them and saw a few more. The rest were brawlers and who knows who else, just there to stir up trouble.”
“So what was the point of the whole thing in the first place?” the first man, the older one, asked. “Why go up there? Did they have an alliance with the brawlers?”
“Maybe, but I’m not sure that would be necessary,” I said, thinking aloud. “There were a lot of guys out there, honestly, from a lot of different places. After the riots yesterday and last night after everything was announced, I’m not surprised that things got out of hand so quickly. And maybe that was the conglomerate’s plan all along.”
“What do you mean?” the same guy asked. “Why would they start a riot just to start a riot?”
I gave him a pointed look, urging him to work it out for himself.
“Think about it,” I told him. “Why would they want our attention on the north side this afternoon?”
“You think it was all just a big distraction?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “That’s a pretty expensive distraction, both in the form of lives and capital.”
“It is,” I agreed, “but the conglomerate has a lot of resources. Not as many as we do, mind you, but still a lot. They can afford to take the hit if they think the payoff will be good enough.”
“And they still forced us out of headquarters for the foreseeable future,” another one of the guys reasoned.
“Exactly,” I said. “Win-win. They chase us out of our home turf, all while making a play for where they knew we’d try to set up camp in the long term. Plus, they could stand to nab quite a few foxgirls and please their clients with this whole thing. It’s a pretty good plan, I have to give it to them. I didn’t quite see it at first.”
“We seem to be doing okay, though, right?” the third guy asked, looking around the battlefield uncertainly as we continued to make our way toward the laser fire. “I mean, we killed all those binders, right?”
“Yeah, we’re doing okay,” I agreed. “But we lost some men ourselves, and we have no idea how the other groups are faring. Not to mention the drones. We don’t know how big a force the conglomerate has. Which is why we need to get down there.”
“Should we run?” the older guy asked.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know about you guys, but my lungs hurt like hell. It stings when I breathe. And my chest hurts, too. We’ll have more stamina for the battle if we walk. Plus, we’re less conspicuous, less likely to draw attention to ourselves.”
“Good call,” he said, nodding. Another guy rubbed his chest, as if on cue.
“I don’t know how long I can stay out here, Sir, it’s gettin’ rough here,” he said, his lungs rattling as he spoke.
“I know,” I said, “but we can’t turn back yet. We have to keep going.”
Right then, a few more binders jumped out in front of us. I had to stop myself from groaning. Every single muscle in my body wanted me to stop, screamed out in pain and fatigue. But the sounds of the battle and people who might be my friends or employees I was responsible for yelling kept me going, and the binders in front of us didn’t look so hot, either.
An almost lethargic battle ensued between us, but we came out on top. It was almost as if the other binders moved in slow motion as they lunged at us and swung at us with their fists and their holo knives. I wondered if they thought we looked like we were moving in slow motion, too. Maybe.
But either way, we still moved faster than them. The older guy on my team took one of them out pretty quick, taking a missed swing on the other binder’s part to knee him in the groin and stab him in the back with his holo knife.
I took out the other two, but the rest of my guys helped, backing me up and blocking their swings as I moved in for the killing blows. With the last guy, one of my binders had to hold him down while I slit his throat.
I leaned down over my knees again to catch my breath, which came out even raspier and more rattled than before.
“You’re really not soundin’ too hot, Mr. Joch,” the older man said, walking over to me and putting a firm hand on my shoulder. He wheezed himself as he spoke.
“I hate to break it to you, but you do not sound too awesome either,” I said, chuckling a bit under my breath until the sound just devolved into a cough. “Wait, so what are you guys’ names again? Sorry, I don’t keep up with personnel as well as I should, I guess.” I figured since we were stopped, it was as good a time as any to put names to their faces.
“Vic Greer,” the older man said, holding out a hand for mine, and though he tried to keep it ste
ady, it trembled from pain and fatigue.
“Nic Joch,” I said, taking his hand and shaking it the best I could. “But then again, you probably knew that already.”
“Sure did,” he chuckled. “And these are Bog Lage and Dane Wolf.” He pointed to the other two men, in turn, the first bearded with dark hair, the second blonde and clean-shaven.
“And what were their names?” I asked, jerking my thumb over my shoulder to indicate our fallen teammates.
“Shawn and Hunter Bissette,” Vic said, his face falling as he said their names. My eyes widened.
“They were related?” I asked, my stomach practically sinking all the way to the ground. “Don’t tell me they were related…”
“Brothers,” the blonde-haired man, Dane, grunted. “Their mother’s gonna freak, I’d reckon.” I groaned.
“I’ll call her myself or go to her apartment. Yeah, that would be better. To her apartment,” I said, straightening up and running a hand through my sweaty hair, shaking my head. “Goddamn, they didn’t even look alike.” I remembered how one had dark hair and eyes, and olive-tinted skin, while the other was blonde and blue-eyed, with fair skin.
“I think they had different fathers,” Bog said. “Doesn’t make it any better, though.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “Dare I ask how old they were?”
“Early twenties, I think,” Vic said.
“They looked it,” I sighed, shaking my head again.
“Should we get going, Sir?” Dane asked, looking in the direction of the sounds of the battle still ahead of us.
“Yeah, there’ll be more dead kids the longer we wait, I guess,” I said, taking one last deep breath to prepare myself for moving on. “And call me Nic. We’ve been through enough together already to be on a first-name basis. Plus, I like to be friendly with my employees.”
“The ones whose names you know, you mean?” Vic asked, cracking a smile. I laughed out loud at that.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I chuckled, clapping him on the shoulder and walking out ahead of the group. “Let’s go finish this thing.”
We didn’t run into any more binders from the conglomerate on the way to the edge of the property. It looked like we’d cleared those out pretty good at least, from this area anyway.
Eventually, shapes began to form on the edge of my vision, more than just smoke and grass and the occasional tree. The outlines of drones appeared in the air ahead of us, thin red lines of laser beams shining through the surrounding smoke. They looked to be at war with one another, and I wasn’t sure which ones were ours and which ones belonged to the conglomerate.
That made it tricky to figure out who was winning.
“Which ones are ours?” Bog called out from behind me over the roar of the laser fire, giving voice to my own thoughts and concerns.
“I don’t know,” I called back, shaking my head and squinting to see if there was any difference between the two that were a few yards in front of my face.
“Do you see any other people?” Vic asked, raising his voice above the battle just as Bog had.
“No,” I heard Dane cry back. “Do you?”
“No,” Vic, Bog, and I all said at once.
I squinted even harder, trying to see if Clem or Semra or any of the others were anywhere around here. But if they were, I couldn’t see them through all the smoke or hear them above the drone fire.
I pulled up my watch to call Malthe to see if I could figure out what, if anything, distinguished our drones from the conglomerate’s, but the signal was all messed up, and I couldn’t reach him.
Just as I did this, the drone battle in front of us came to a head. The laser fire caught between them and both combusted at once, falling to the ground in two piles of ash.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Vic said flatly. “That’s what it was, right, anticlimactic? Or maybe it was really cool, I can’t decide.” He gave a nervous laugh, and Bog and Dane joined him.
“Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about that either,” I said warily. “I really don’t.”
I squinted off into the distance to see if I could make out anything else. There were more drone battles going on, and more of them started to fall to the ground, reduced to ash like the other two. Sometimes both drones were destroyed like in the first instance. But more often, one prevailed over the other, leaving to go find another opponent or join a pre-existing battle.
When multiple drones joined together again others, I tried to see if I could find any difference between them and the one they were fighting, but I couldn’t make anything out. I was sure there was some kind of subtle difference that Malthe could explain, something that set apart a TelCorp drone from the others, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it myself. That wasn’t my area of expertise.
“It’s weird, watching the drones fight, isn’t it?” Vic remarked. “I mean… it’s kind of like… what’s the point, ya know?”
“Yeah,” I said, watching the nearest drone crumple to the ground in a heap of dust as its destroyer moved on to the next battle. “Weird.”
Just then, we heard a yell emanating from our right, and then there were several more. Vic and I exchanged a look, and then all four of us ran off in a sprint in the direction of the sounds. We were near enough that we knew the general direction of where they were and that we needed to get there as quickly as we could.
We came upon a clearing in front of the drone battles where nearly every binder that had come with us was congregated in a giant battle with a bunch of the conglomerate’s binders in green coats. Bodies, decked both in conglomerate green and TelCorp black and gray, littered the surrounding ground.
“Shit,” Dane cursed, and as one, we rushed forward to join the battle.
I whipped out my holo knife and slashed at the nearest green-coated binder before he had a chance to see me coming, barreling my blade into his back and dropping him straight to the ground.
A shock of blonde hair in a ponytail passed in front of my face as Semra downed two binders in one swoop. She was carrying two holo knives, one TelCorp red and one conglomerate green.
“Semra,” I hissed, and she whirled around to face me.
“Joch,” she grinned. “About time that you showed your sorry face.” But I could tell she was happy to see me. Hell, for once, I was happy to see her.
“Is this all of ‘em? All the rest of their binders, I mean?” I asked, taking my position beside her and helping fend off the nearby conglomerate binders.
“Yeah, we think so,” she said, winded as she downed another one of our enemies. “Except from the area you were in, none of us have been down there.”
“Right, yeah, I’m pretty sure we got all of ‘em,” I said, grabbing an opposing binder who swung at me and putting him in a headlock, snapping his neck.
Someone cried out, and I whipped my head around to see one of our binders, a guy named Mika, who was a holdover from the Elias Berg days at TelCorp, crumple to the ground, the life gone from his eyes.
“Dammit,” I cursed, taking my frustration out on yet another conglomerate binder who was coming at me, barreling my holo knife into his chest and twisting it, just to make him hurt. He screamed and died all in the same second.
“We’re getting tired,” Dane wheezed behind me. “Our men are dropping like flies. We need to figure something else out.” I surveyed the area, briefly reprieved from having enemies hurling themselves at me, and saw that he was right. Their men were tired, but so were ours. Just like with the drones, it was looking like the battle was becoming a wash in which our men and theirs were just killing each other around the same time, which sure, would get rid of our opponents, but we weren’t much help to anyone dead after that.
“Okay, does anyone have a grenade left?” I asked everyone. Binders didn’t always carry them. Clem and I had grabbed them specifically for our journey into the tunnels the night before.
“Uh… no,” Dane said, pawing around his abdomen to find one. Vic and Bog followed s
uit but came up empty-handed. But to my relief, Semra came to the rescue.
“Here,” she said, placing a small, cylindrical object in my hand. I closed my fingers around it and flashed her a grin.
“You’re the best, Semra,” I told her.
“I know,” she said, winking at me, and I pulled the clasp and threw the thing into the center of the crowd.
“TelCorp, run!” I screamed, trying to warn my employees as best I could, though I knew I would be warning the enemy as well.
Semra, Vic, Dane, Bog, and I darted away, and since we were already on the periphery of the crowd, we came out alright. The same couldn’t be said for everyone, though. We lost some of our own in the explosion which I’d anticipated, but I figured it was better than continuing on as we were and losing everyone.
Conversely, some of the conglomerate binders escaped along with our guys, but since they were all dispersed by that point, it was easy enough to take them out as they fled.
Semra, Vic, Dane, Bog and I got away from the blast first, since we were on the edge, and spread out in a line between the house and the drones, stopping the conglomerate binders as they came running and killing them one by one.
When they were all dead, and it was just TelCorp binders in gray and black coats left standing, I stopped once more to catch my breath. Everyone stared at me, looking to me for direction.
I looked up at the drone war that was still raging. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, a giant object that I could only describe as a tank donning the TelCorp logo on its underbelly descended on the drones and sent long bronze beams down on about half of them, disintegrating them on sight, leaving the rest of the drones to scatter back out along the perimeter of the property to protect us and the foxgirls inside.
I grinned around at my employees. Good old Malthe had come through. I could only hope the same could be said for the other foxgirl properties.