Crysis: Escalation

Chance — Part 2

Prophet leapt out into the cold Siberian air, high over the frozen street. Searchlights from the VTOLs tracked him in the air. There were so many lines of light on the suit’s Heads-Up Display from the threat tracer, showing possible bullet trajectories, that his vision was almost washed out. He shut down the suit’s proximity alarm in mid-air due to information overload. With a thought he wrapped the lensing field of the suit’s stealth system around himself. To the CELL gunmen in the street it looked like he’d disappeared. Then they opened fire.

That’s it, you draw their fire my son, Psycho thought as he dropped out of the attic window stealthed. Above him he could hear the spec ops team they’d sent into the attic find the line of claymores he’d set at head height. He landed on the street hard and noisy. He needed a moment while the suit’s systems stabilised him. The noise of his impact hadn’t mattered so much. Everyone in the street was looking up and firing at Prophet’s aerial show. Above him he saw one of the VTOLs drift over the brothel. Dealing with the pain, he squeezed the detonator for the remote explosive charges they had set in the roof.

Prophet had a moment to register just how much he was getting shot when the roof of the brothel exploded. The fireball and debris shot into the air, engulfing one of the CELL VTOLs. The overpressure wave from the force of the explosion hit him in the back with the force of a steam-hammer, as the burning wreckage of the CELL VTOL dropped through the brothel. The explosion’s concussion wave drove Prophet through the wall of the building opposite. The suit’s ionic electroactive polymer liquid armour, incorporating colloidal-doped ceramics and a copper nanolattice in an ethylene-glycol bucky-ball matrix not withstanding, and his dead flesh not withstanding, being hammered through a wall had really hurt.

He was in a large dormitory room filled with beds. The room was illuminated by the searchlight shining through the windows from one of the remaining VTOLs as it hovered outside. As Prophet staggered to his feet, the suit starting to mend the damage he’d just received, the furniture and much of the floor disintegrated in front of his eyes as it was torn apart by the VTOL’s cannon fire. Visible now, Prophet started to run. The VTOL was keeping pace with him, firing as fast as it could. It looked like the walls themselves were being eaten away by the cannon fire.

Psycho was keeping an eye on his energy as he continued moving stealthed. He reached under the APC and attached a REX. All eyes were on the VTOL firing round after round into the building opposite the collapsing brothel. He moved rapidly to the next APC and then did the same. At the third APC he was kneeling down next to it attaching the REX when the lensing field failed and he became visible. He stood up to find a terrified-looking CELL gunman staring at him.

‘Yeah, there’s two of us, sunshine,’ Psycho said as he crossed the distance between them, quickly drawing his combat knife.

Getting hit by the VTOL’s cannon felt like death. It felt like it should have burst his body and scattered it around the building disintegrating around him. It spun him around. Red warning signs from the HUD told Prophet he couldn’t take another series of hits like that. Prophet reached the hole in the wall where a window used to be and jumped out over the street. He had a moment to register the look of panic on the VTOL pilot’s face. The floor of the building he’d just jumped out of collapsed from the cannon fire, and clouds of dust and powdered debris shot out into the night air.

Prophet landed on the armoured glass of the VTOL’s cockpit and immediately started slipping off. He pulled his fist back and hammered it into the glass with all the power the suit could muster. He punched through the windshield and opened his fist. The now slightly-misshapen grenade fell out of his hand and into the cockpit. Prophet slid off the front of the VTOL.

The kid had died quickly at Psycho’s hands, knowing the terror of inevitability in his last few moments as he had desperately tried to bring his Feline SMG to bear. The kid’s death had left the nearby CELL soldiers in no doubt as to Psycho’s presence.

A number of them were turning towards Psycho. There was a Bulldog light transport vehicle in the middle of the street. Its heavy machine gun was being turned towards him. Then one of the VTOL’s exploded in mid air. For a moment the CELL soldiers were distracted. Psycho leapt high into the air, squeezing the detonator for the REX charges.

Prophet landed on the frozen mud street in trouble. The suit was still trying to fix him. Fortunately the CELL troopers, like him, were more concerned with scrambling out of the way of the VTOL that he’d just dropped a grenade into. He ran and threw himself forwards as the wrecked VTOL hit the ground. Secondary explosions blew CELL personnel into the air. Flying debris tore more apart.

The force of the explosions sent Prophet tumbling across the street into the side of a Bulldog LTV. There were more red warning signs from the suit. He was taking fire again. His speeded-up perception, provided by the suit’s systems, made the HMG tracer fire coming at him look like a slow and graceful arcing light show.

Then further down the street, next to the burning brothel, three of the CELL APCs exploded.

Psycho was in the air as the three APCs exploded. He’d placed the three charges on one side of the vehicles. The force of the explosion flipped them. Sent them tumbling into the street, crushing more CELL personnel and damaging other vehicles.

I live for this Psycho thought as he landed in the back of the Bulldog LTV. Air-stomping it. Hammering his power-assisted foot down so hard it broke the back of the vehicle’s chassis. Two of the six CELL troopers in the back of the Bulldog were catapulted out of the vehicle and into the street. Psycho grabbed one of the remaining CELL troopers and threw her across the street into a wall, hard enough to break her back. He kicked another one. The force of the power-assisted blow powdered the trooper’s rib cage and sent him flying over the side of the Bulldog, his body tumbling like a rag doll. One of them scrambled over the front of the Bulldog to get away from the nanosuited killer. The fourth one was too slow. Psycho punched him in the base of the back as he was trying to escape. He couldn’t hear the spine snapping over the gunfire and screams.

I need time Prophet thought as he scrambled to his feet and ran towards a mining supply store that fronted onto the frozen street. There was a Bulldog parked in front of it. Prophet could see the gunner had recovered from the explosion and was trying to bring the vehicle’s HMG to bear. All around him the ground was being torn up and CELL troopers were literally exploding, victims of friendly fire, as one of the two remaining VTOLs tried to target Prophet with its cannon.

Prophet increased his speed and power-kicked the Bulldog. The force of the kick slid the vehicle round more than ninety degrees and through the window of the mining supply store. Prophet grabbed a motorbike that had been lying on the ground and spun around, throwing it at the VTOL. The motorbike circled lazily through the air. The pilot added thrust, moving the VTOL sharply out of the way of the spinning machine. Prophet used the momentary distraction to disappear into the store.

Armour mode. The CryFibril nanomuscle tightened the suit’s outer weave, increasing the armour’s density. Psycho grabbed the HMG and tore it off its pintle mount. He could see the driver and the gunwoman in the Bulldog’s passenger seat turning around, trying to bring weapons to bear. Psycho lowered the HMG’s barrel and pulled the trigger. The HMG’s .50 calibre rounds hit them at such close range it looked like the two CELL soldiers had just vaporised.

Psycho was vaguely aware of taking fire on his back. He turned around and saw that the two CELL gunmen who’d been catapulted off the Bulldog were firing at him. He fired the HMG back at them. The large rounds churned up the gunmen’s flesh, sent them tumbling across the frozen mud.

Psycho leapt over the side of the Bulldog in a hail of fire, bullets and fragments of brick sparking off his reinforced armour. He started killing with the HMG.

‘Get some, you slags!’ He wanted the CELL forces to know that gods of war walked amongst them.

Everyone was shooting at the mining supply store as Prophet scrambled through it. The threat tracer showed bullet trajectories all around him. It looked like a bullet was travelling through every square inch of air in the store. He could see tracer fire from HMGs and Mk 60s, then chunks of the ceiling exploded as another VTOL started firing down through the building. A grenade landed behind him and exploded. The force threw him into the air and through a wooden partition wall at the back of the shop.

He felt it. He felt every last impact, every explosion. He still felt the pain. Prophet got to his feet. He had found the stairs. He scrambled up them as they started to disintegrate around him. He activated the stealth mode. The lensing field wrapped around him. He took a moment. Just a moment. He wasn’t fighting for breath. He had no need of that anymore. He just needed a bit of time for the partially-alien technology of his suit and his melded flesh to fix the damage.

The floor above the storefront was an apartment. He could see the remains of an old couple, torn apart by stray rounds.

I’m sorry, his remaining humanity thought and then it was business.

They were still concentrating their fire on the ground floor. The rounds were eating away at the mostly wooden building. He could feel it shift beneath him as he walked to the window. Prophet removed the L-Tag grenade launcher from its clip on the back of his armour. He could see one of the VTOLs outside. They couldn’t see him. He was as invisible as Ceph-derived human technology could make him.

He raised the L-Tag to his shoulder and fired. Worked the pump. Fired again. Two sixty millimetre smart grenades flew at the VTOL. The grenades exploded in an airburst next to the aircraft, battering it around. It wasn’t nearly enough to destroy the armoured VTOL, Prophet knew, but it panicked the pilot. He banked hard, clipping a building as he frantically tried to gain height.

Down in the street Prophet could see Psycho using an HMG like a scythe. Good soldier, he thought. Then he started firing the L-Tag again. He used two grenades to clear the streets out in front of the mining store. Then the remaining three he dropped in above the most concentrated areas of fire shooting at Psycho. The smart grenades exploded in the air. Force battered the CELL troops to the ground as fragments tore into their battered and concussive-force ruptured bodies.

Now it was time to go and make a stand with Psycho out in the street. They might die, but they wouldn’t be alone.

All around the room board members watched the images in horror. None of them had problems making decisions that would kill thousands of people, sometimes tens of thousands, but somehow the immediacy of the carnage unfolding in front of them appalled in a way they weren’t used to. Or perhaps, as people who considered themselves powerful, it was the rawness of the physical power being displayed by the two nanosuit operators that was affecting them.

They watched the screens as grenades exploded over the heads of their troops and more were cut down by machine gunfire. The cost in vehicles, and medical and death benefits alone, would be astronomical.

‘It’s like New York all over again.’

‘We have a counter measure in place.’

‘Which would significantly damage the infrastructure of the…’

‘What infrastructure? It’s fucking Siberia.’

‘Chairman, you have the deciding vote. Should we initiate the Cold Protocol?’

‘Do it. Bring the cold.’

Walker kept his head down, hunkered behind a Bulldog that had been riddled with fire. He had seen the thing coming towards him. It was an armoured figure, impervious to their fire like something out of a comic book or a myth. There was nothing they could do but wait for it to kill them. Not even the drugs could control his fear. He thought of Carlotta and Elsa. He could hear it coming closer. It was going to kill him anyway.

The CELL soldier popped up from behind the wrecked Bulldog. He started firing his Scarab at Psycho. The rounds sparking off his armour like all the others. Psycho turned to face him. There was a moment. A spark of recognition. It was gone as HMG rounds sent the CELL soldier dancing backwards.

An auto-cannon round staggered Psycho, put him on one knee. He had no idea where it had come from. The next one almost knocked him over. Only the fact that he was in armour mode saved him. He staggered sideways towards the wreckage of one of the APCs he’d blown up. Its armoured body would provide him with a modicum of cover.

He continued firing the HMG. Mowing people down. He let it be known, through action, that anyone shooting at him would be killed. Anyone who wanted to run, could.

More cannon fire sparked off the carcass of the APC as the VTOL that had been firing at him hove into view above him. Psycho angled the HMG up and sent tracers arcing up at the aircraft. He could hear the rumble of an APC heading towards him. Another cannon round from the VTOL hit him.

They’d brought too many people with them. They had provided too much of a target rich environment. Some sneaky tricks and the capabilities of their armour had allowed them to wreak havoc on troops not trained to a high enough standard to play in this game. Prophet could hear their panic over their comms. The problem was that CELL didn’t seem to be running out of personnel.

He had his suppressed Hammer II in his hand, killing opportunistically. He was using the stealth mode to move unseen through the carnage.

Psycho watched the suit energy in his Heads-Up Display. Every cannon round was agony, staggering him, sending him to the ground, breaking and rupturing things inside him. The energy bar was the countdown to his death. When lack of energy forced him out of armour mode, the cannon fire would tear him apart.

The APC trundled into view. Well that’s that, then, Psycho thought, still firing the HMG at anyone dumb enough to shoot at him. To his surprise the APC turned its back to him. They’re going to debus! he thought, exultantly, that’s madness!

The turret on the APC turned to face him and the auto-cannon round took him in the chest. It lifted him off his feet and threw him back. He was astonished when he realised that he was still alive. Though living in pain.

He somehow managed to get up. The rear of the APC opened. He fired the HMG. The first two rounds killed the first CELL spec op soldier out of the armoured vehicle, then the weapon ran dry. Psycho threw it at the next soldier clambering out, with sufficient force to take him off his feet. The Londoner unslung his gauss rifle, put a quick burst into the one on the ground and then raised the weapon and started firing into the spec op team that was desperately, and foolishly, trying to debus from the APC.

Psycho noticed that one of them was holding a bizarre looking oversized weapon and trying to bring it to bear on him. Prophet appeared next to Psycho, and the Londoner started to turn to shoot the other nanosuited soldier before he realised what was happening.

A cannon round from the VTOL overhead just grazed Psycho’s helmet. The force almost tore his head off. He hit the ground again. Prophet raised his gauss rifle and fired the weapon’s underslung grenade launcher and then fired the entire magazine from the weapon at the VTOL’s pilot. Hypersonic rounds outpaced the grenade and sparked off the VTOL’s armoured windscreen. The armour-piercing solid shot made spider web cracks in the armoured glass. Then the grenade went off. The pilot was more startled than the VTOL was damaged, but he veered out of the way.

From the ground Psycho raised his gauss rifle and reached for the underslung grenade launcher’s trigger.

‘No!’ Prophet screamed. Psycho fired the grenade launcher as the APC fired its main cannon. The APC round hit Prophet’s gauss rifle and the weapon came apart in his hands while the huge round continued and hit him in the chest, just as he had re-activated armour mode. He was yanked off his feet and hit the ground, hard, and barely alive, despite the suit’s systems. Psycho’s grenade exploded in the back of the damaged APC. The spec ops team inside were now just so much red paint in the vehicle’s interior.

‘That was how we were going to escape,’ Prophet muttered over the suit’s comms as he tried to get up.

‘Oh,’ Psycho said, looking at the smoking interior of the APC. ‘Yeah, that would have been a good idea.’

‘Get in the APC,’ Prophet said as he climbed to his feet. They were taking small arms fire again, from everywhere. The two remaining VTOLs were now overhead firing down around them.

Just a little closer, Amanda thought. The rest of her squad were dead. Shot down, taken out by grenades, caught under exploding VTOLs, had APCs roll over them. There was only her left. The shaven-headed African-American woman moved carefully and quietly through the rubble of the brothel. Her Jackal combat shotgun against her shoulder, ready to fire. She was moving as stealthily as she could, though the bulky special weapon slung over her back hampered her. She could make out movement from between the destroyed APCs that had been blown up when the fight started.

The missile was launched from a Sukhoi T-50 stealth fighter loaned to CELL by the Russian government. The T-50 then banked hard and kicked in its afterburners, trying to put as much distance between itself and the missile as possible.

The Circuit Breaker warhead in the guided missile detonated at one thousand feet above the township of Rovesky. Designed to recreate the electromagnetic pulse of a thirty-kiloton thermonuclear explosion, the burst of radiation fused every last piece of unshielded electronics in a thirty-mile radius. Even shielded electronics such as those in the CELL APCs were overloaded momentarily.

All the lights went out. The cobalt mine ceased work. All comms went down. That part of Siberia practically returned to a Stone Age level of technology in a moment.

Psycho didn’t even have time to register the Aurora Borealis-style light show in the magnetosphere. He just hit the ground as all the suit’s systems went down.

So reliant on the suit’s fusion with his dead flesh, Prophet was dead before he hit the ground next to the Londoner.

To Amanda, standing amongst the rubble of the brothel, it seemed to happen very slowly. The two VTOLs almost looked graceful as their lights went off, the sky above them a shining fireworks display of electromagnetic radiation bouncing off the magnetosphere.

Psycho was still conscious. Locked in his dead suit. He saw the VTOLs fall out of his view. He couldn’t even turn his head. He felt their impact through the ground. The fury at his helplessness overwhelmed him. He started screaming.

It had felt like sleep. It had felt welcoming, and cold. The ten thousand volts coursing through dead flesh, forcing sluggish systems in the suit’s living technology back to life, felt less welcoming. It felt like fire surging through him. He was screaming.

He rolled onto his front and forced himself onto all fours. Let me die! he screamed silently at the suit. Just one moment of weakness, then he was taking fire again.

Short burst, correct aim, short burst, correct aim, repeat. Walk in on the target. The twelve-gauge solid shot slugs were impacting into the side of the moving armoured figure, knocking him over, battering him across the ground. She emptied the extended magazine of the automatic shotgun into him, ignoring the other armoured figure paralysed on the ground. She dropped the shotgun. She was appalled when he, it, the thing she’d seen far below St. Petersburg, stood up. She grabbed the weapon on her back and pulled it round in front of her. The armoured thing staggered towards her. She brought the weapon to her shoulder. It raised its hand as if reaching for her. She fired the netgun. The weighted high-tensile net, coated in industrial adhesive, spread open in midair, propelled by the four shotgun cartridges in each of the netgun’s barrels.

The weapon’s recoil staggered Amanda and she fell backwards over some of the rubble. She found herself staring numbly at the hand of a young woman sticking out of the rubble. She looked over at the armoured warrior that had killed so many of her friends. The net had entangled him. He was trying to move, trying to get the purchase to break it but he couldn’t. As solutions went it had been around since the Stone Age. He fell over.

Amanda got up and drew the Hammer II from the holster at her hip. It was loaded with explosive rounds. She walked over to the armoured warrior’s prone form. He stopped struggling when he felt the gun against his head.

‘This is what it feels like to be human, motherfucker.’ Amanda pulled the hammer back on the massive automatic. That was when the Spec Ops team turned up. Weapons levelled at her. Screaming at her. She couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let her pull the trigger. Empty the entire magazine at point blank range into his head. She relented. She spat on the armour.

‘That’s for Mikey,’ she said and walked away.

It shouldn’t have happened this way, the mission, too much was riding on the mission.

‘What do you want done with them, boss?’ the spec ops soldier asked the officer. Prophet was still wrapped in the adhesive-coated high-tensile wire. He could see Psycho. Power had obviously returned to Psycho’s suit but they had him locked into heavy-duty restraints designed specifically for the nanosuits. Psycho was staring at Prophet, both of them being held on their knees, surrounded by a spec ops team with weapons at the ready. They were going to be transported in the APCs, the only vehicles with shielded electronics and therefore the only vehicles still working. More heavy-lift aircraft were being called in, as the ones at the mine’s airfield were inoperative junk thanks to their fused avionics.

‘That one is going to New York,’ the officer said, pointing at Psycho. ‘That one is going to the Deepwinter Facility,’ she finished, pointing at Prophet.

Psycho was still staring at Prophet.

‘We had a chance, Prophet. We had a chance.’