Veteran

11

It seemed to take a long time for the information I was receiving to make any kind of sense. Though it was probably no time at all. The world glowed a flickering red. There was a keening noise, but that was cut off suddenly. I eventually recognised the sound as some kind of old klaxon. Then came the seemingly constant soundtrack of my life, gunfire and the screams that always seemed to accompany gunfire. My guns were in my hands. I was not aware of having drawn them.

Pagan was still sitting on his tatty couch, still in his jacked-in trance, his face a mask of effort and concentration. More worrying was the newly skinhead Morag lying on the couch next to where I’d been sitting, jerking and twitching but on her face a strange look of contentment.

I wanted to help but there was nothing I could do. Morag was jacked over a wireless link, she wasn’t plugged in, and I couldn’t disconnect her. I could feel a strange sense of panic building in me. Later I would think that I didn’t cope well with being responsible for non-combatants. I had to put that aside and focus. Begin processing the information I was receiving.

I could hear a mixture of weapons being fired, everything from pistols and shotguns to old-sounding automatic weapons. These were being answered by the unmistakeable sound of the Vickers advanced combat rifle. A weapon I had intimate knowledge of, as it was standard issue in the British army. I could also hear the sound of 30-millimetre grenades being fired from underslung launchers and then exploding.

Thermographics were almost a waste of time. I saw lots of humans moving quickly, lots of momentary blossoms of gunfire. Then I saw the dragon. There was a streaming arc of flame from a machine in the middle of Westbourne Avenue moving towards us. The arc touched a building and there was a roof top garden on fire. I saw the multi-hued heat signature of a burning human jumping from the roof.

The flames burning colder but still burning as the Humber’s murky waters engulfed him.

I switched to low-light optics and edged over to the window and peeked out. Further up the Avenue I could see a flat-bottomed riverine patrol boat. The green optics flared as the deck-mounted zippo sent another stream of napalm into the terraced houses on the same side of the street as me. I magnified my optics. On the deck I could see soldiers in British uniform. I tried to make out their insignia; failing that I managed to decipher the boat’s serial number. They were a guards unit of course, the Coldstream Guards. Fortunate Sons.

I backed away from the window, glancing over at Morag and Pagan. They were still jacked in but Morag’s seizure seemed to have stopped.

Every single vet hated the Fortunate Sons. Every nation in the world and the colonies had them. In Britain it was all the guards units. The worst thing about it was when you joined the army you got all the death and glory histories beaten into you during indoctrination. Most of the regiments that had become the Fortunate Sons had a proud history. The men and women who had died serving in those regiments would probably be sickened to see what had been done to their legacy.

The Fortunate Sons were the children of the wealthy and influential. Sons and daughters of corporate executives, the independently wealthy, civil servants and other government functionaries as well as their own officers. A convenient self-perpetuating tradition. Obviously the draft had to be seen to be fair, but the good people of the world didn’t want little Timothy or Samantha to be sent to die in a meat grinder under some alien sky, so they bravely took up the task of keeping Earth safe. I’d also heard them described as latter-day praetorians, as most of their duties tended to involve ‘counter-insurgency’ work, like this. In other words shooting civilians that the government considered inconvenient.

Vets had a lot more respect for draft dodgers. Needless to say. Fortunate Sons and proper soldiers didn’t tend to share messes, as that would’ve led to considerable bloodshed. The problem was that the Fortunate Sons still knew what they were doing.

What I couldn’t figure out was how they’d found us so quickly. It was too soon unless the sub captain had sold us out, or McShit had or someone here had. Clearly they were here for us. There are however, worse ways for a veteran to die than fighting Fortunate Sons, and I had every intention of killing a lot of them.

My pistols were levelled before the door to the flat had finished bursting open. Elspeth may as well have been shuffling, he moved so slowly. My laser pistol had drawn a bead on him before he could bring his ancient hunting carbine to bear. Jess on the other hand was wired as high if not higher than me. She had her surplus Kalashnikov in my face, my Mastodon in hers. Recognition reached my brain before I fired.

‘You,’ Jess hissed out, her features seething. ‘You’ve brought them here.’

‘Way too quickly; one of your people must’ve sold us out. They brought this down on you,’ I said, my tone more calm and even than I felt.

‘Both of you, cut it out!’ Pagan shouted from the couch. I didn’t take my eyes off Jess, nor she me. ‘We’ve got more to worry about. Help me!’ With one final look at Jess I raised both my pistols; she hesitated and then did the same with her Kalashnikov.

I turned to look at Pagan. He was inserting a jack connected to one of his own plugs into one of Morag’s, in a manner I found inexplicably obscene. I moved over to them, kneeling down beside her. I could hear the whooshing noise as the zippo was fired again. It sounded closer.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ I asked.

‘The Ambassador information form burst free. As far as I can tell, it seemed to effortlessly penetrate a number of different databases. I think it tried to pass some or all the info on to Morag. Her systems were overloaded and there must have been some kind of information bleed.’ He talked as he worked.

‘Is she going to be okay?’ I asked.

‘Come on!’ Jess hissed at us.

‘I think so. She’s going to be disoriented for a while. She’ll have to come to terms with a way to sort and process it.’

‘They’re getting closer,’ Jess said urgently. Then it hit me.

‘Pagan,’ I said. He ignored me, presumably receiving information via the connection to Morag’s plugs. ‘Pagan!’ I said more forcefully.

‘What!’ he snapped irritably.

‘Is this it? Is this what They planned? Have we unleashed some kind of viral weapon on our net?’ I asked. Pagan turned to look at me, I could tell the same thing had already occurred to him.

‘I don’t know. Ambassador’s back in his box,’ he said. I was impressed despite myself.

‘How did you manage that?’ I asked. Pagan was no longer looking at me, concentrating instead on the job at hand.

‘Well,’ he said, obviously irritated at my questions. ‘After I tried every offensive, coercive and entrapment program and sub-routine I could think of, I asked it nicely.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘For fuck’s sake, leave the bitch!’ Jess shouted. I turned round to glare at her. She ignored me. I turned back to Pagan.

‘Was it traced?’ I asked. Pagan unplugged the jacks.

‘She’s going to be out for a while. We have to move her.’ He reached under Morag to pick her up. I grabbed his arm.

‘This is important,’ I said to him evenly. ‘Obviously we’ve been compromised but I need to know if you were traced.’

‘Where we going to go?’ came a terrified voice I belatedly recognised as Elspeth’s.

‘We’ll take her to Fosterton,’ Pagan snapped, and then turned to me. ‘I can’t be sure. That thing went through every conceivable countermeasure we have and penetrated some heavy databases. All of them will try and trace an invasion like that and it wasn’t subtle.’

‘So they’ll have traced us.’

‘They had Dinas Emrys but it’s gone now. I destroyed it and they’ll squabble over the ruins for a bit. I don’t think they traced it back to me or Morag, but I can’t be sure.’

‘C’mon, c’mon!’ Jess said through gritted teeth, and then fired through the wall as she dived to the filthy carpet. I barely had time to register the huge shadow outside the window when the ruby-red light cut through the building at what would’ve been waist height. I was already down low, as were Pagan and Morag, but I saw Elspeth’s torso begin to smoke. I don’t think he had time to realise what was happening to him. He just sank to his knees and then the top part of his body collapsed and he hit the carpet face first.

Pagan scooped up Morag and ran for the door. The wall above the window looked like it was being systematically chewed away. My aural filters reduced the constant supersonic roar of the multi-barrelled, rapid-firing railgun to a manageable level. The window shattered and the wall disintegrated. Outside I could see the twenty-foot-tall mechanical form of a Walker combat mech.

Jess didn’t bother wasting any more ammo, she just ran low out of the flat. I followed her, clambering over the remains of Elspeth. The supersonic roar came again and chunks of masonry began to fall on me, as did more than a little earth. It occurred to me that the Walker was aiming high, suppressing us. If it had wanted us dead we would not have presented much of a problem. That meant they were after us specifically. I was also worried that enthusiastic suppressing fire could bring the earth-filled roof garden down on us. Suddenly I was less impressed with the Avenues community’s farming accomplishments.

Out on the first-floor landing things were no better. Pagan was gone, I didn’t know where, and he’d taken Morag with him. I didn’t have time to think about that as the house shook from an explosion beneath us. I assumed it was the front door being blown in. I could hear the splashes of Fortunate Sons wading through water. I looked over the banisters and fired both my pistols down into the waterlogged ground floor, my independently targeted shoulder laser quickly joining in. The smartgun links showed me where bullet and beam were going to hit the body-armoured soldiers. The murky steam of the Humber mixed with the red steam of blood where my lasers penetrated through armour and flesh and into the water below, superheating it.

I was peripherally aware of Jess laying fire down the stairs as well. To their credit the Fortunate Sons didn’t panic, despite leaving some of their mates face down in the murky water. Instead they knelt or took cover. Parts of the walls and stairs around me exploded as I was forced back by accurate, presumably smartlink-guided, fire.

I moved away from the edge of the landing. Holes were appearing in the floor from the gunfire below me. I reloaded the Mastodon and fired back through the floor, moving back towards the top of the stairs. The carpet began to smoulder from the heat of my lasers. The Mastodon was empty again. I ducked down, emptying the spent cartridges and reloading from a speed loader, and then I holstered both my pistols. From outside I could hear the mixed gunfire of the Avenues’ dwellers become more intense. They had managed to mount a counter-attack.

Jess changed the clip in her Kalashnikov and fired down through the floor. I took advantage of this and sprinted towards the top of the stairs and threw myself down the stairwell. My shoulder laser targeted and fired independently as I extended the four knuckle-claws from each arm.

I hit the lead Fortunate Son, and the pair of us went sliding into the dirty brown waters of the Humber on the partially submerged ground floor. I repeatedly ran him through with the nine-inch long ceramic blades before he could grapple me. I barely registered his blood changing the colour of the water.

The next Fortunate Son was moving rapidly, trying to get a clear shot to help his mate. I burst out of the water, sweeping my left-hand blades up with sufficient power to destroy the Vickers ACR he was trying to bring to bear on me. The blades penetrated his armour and slid into his stomach and I forced them up into his chest cavity, lifting him off his feet.

The next soldier’s fear overcame concern for his dead squad mate and the first of the 9-millimetre long rounds caught me in the side, knocking me back. One penetrated the armour of my coat and was only just stopped by my dermal plating. I spun away from him into one of the ground-floor rooms, moving as quickly as I could in the foot and a half of murky water.

I swung my claws through the door frame of the room, sending plaster and rotting wood flying as the ends of my claws caught the Fortunate Son hiding behind it in the face. It was a superficial wound but enough to cover her face with blood, hurting and shocking her. I continued swinging, catching another one, hiding on the opposite side of the door opening, in the shoulder. He screamed and dropped his Vickers, but tried to draw his sidearm. I repeatedly punched him in his unarmoured face with the claws on my free right hand.

My shoulder-laser stabbed out twice, the split-screen targeting system showing me a third Fortunate Son on the other side of the high-ceilinged room. The walls all around me were being chewed away by automatic weapons fire, more and more rounds were finding me. I staggered back, bleeding into the water as a couple penetrated my dermal plating.

The Fortunate Son I’d blinded with her own blood staggered to her feet, her back to me. I stepped behind her, using her as cover, as her squad mates fired into her. As she fell back into me I grabbed 30-millimetre grenades from her webbing. The grenades could either be fired from the underslung grenade launcher on the Vickers or activated manually. Holding her now dead body up with one hand I armed the grenades. I threw one behind me against the external wall, the rest through the door and the holes in the wall towards the front of the house. I could hear swearing, commands and panic as the Fortunate Sons tried to get away from the grenades.

‘Jess, get out now!’ I shouted, but there was no reply.

Someone tried to jump in through the window, silhouetted by the flickering red light behind him. There was a momentary ruby-red connection between him and my shoulder laser and he fell into the water. I hunkered down next to the wall and pulled the two nearby dead Fortunate Sons over me as the first of the grenades I’d thrown went off. It blew a hole through the wall from this house to the next. The explosion soaked me and covered me in debris. The compression wave created a small tidal wave that rammed me against the interior wall, which bulged from the force but didn’t quite give way.

Fragmentation from the grenades tore into the corpses I was using for cover, some of it embedding in my armoured coat.

I pushed the two corpses off me and ran towards the newly made hole between this building and the next as gunfire rained all around me, blowing holes through the walls and making contrails in the water. Another bullet caught me square in the shoulder but I continued to stagger through the water as quickly as I could manage. I dived through the hole as the other grenades began going off behind me in quick succession.

I waded as rapidly as I could away from the explosions. I went through the room I found myself in as I heard the structure of Pagan’s house begin to creak. The grenades as well as the rest of the considerable damage done to the old house were beginning to take effect on the building, and with the roof garden it was top heavy.

I made my way towards the window and glanced out. It seemed like the entire Avenues were on fire. The patrol craft was just about level with me but receiving fire from multiple positions as people from the Avenues fought back hard. As I watched, a Fortunate Son standing waist deep in the water was snatched under. Moments later a huge steel-toothed reptilian maw erupted out of the water and tore a chunk out of the side of the patrol craft and a Fortunate Son standing on the deck.

In front of the house I’d just left I could see the Walker still firing its rotating-barrelled, rapid-fire railgun, raking it up and down the terraces. It had long, thin, powerful legs that made the armoured barrel-like torso, containing the jacked-in operator, look like it was perched on stilts. Around the torso the various weapons systems moved. Its head was the mech’s sophisticated sensor array.

The crash would’ve been deafening for those who didn’t have audio filters, as the front of the house collapsed. The weight of the soil from the roof garden caused it to tip forward, engulfing the Walker. I watched the servos and gyroscopes on its legs try to compensate but failed, and it collapsed under the earth. That wouldn’t hold it but it would slow it down.

There was a huge explosion, and I was thrown across the room, slamming hard into the back wall, cracking it and some of my armour. I fought for air, my head ringing and my ears popping as the room turned orange. I got another mouthful of the Humber and realised I was looking up through water at a room filled with flame.

I screamed and inhaled more water as something heavy landed on me. I fought my way to the surface, stabbing whatever was on top of me repeatedly with my blades, though I was having problems penetrating the thing’s hide.

Spitting polluted water out and sitting up in about two feet of water, I saw that the room had been burnt from the fiery explosion that had thrown me under, but it was only actually on fire in a few parts. The thing that had landed on me was floating nearby. It took me a moment or two to work out that it was the badly charred headless corpse of one of the cyber alligators.

I staggered to my feet. Outside the water was covered in a sheet of fire. It was strangely beautiful. The patrol craft had gone. Presumably one of the alligators had penetrated the zippo’s fuel supply.

Another explosion shook the house and sent me to my knees. It sounded like a man-portable, light anti-armour missile detonating, Laa-Laas as we used to call them. I hoped that was the mech being taken out. I lurched out of the room, eager to get away from the heavy munitions.

The shot took me full in the chest, knocking me off my feet and sending me back beneath the Humber. I didn’t think it’d pierced my coat. It felt like a shotgun. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I shouldn’t have been caught like that. No excuses, just a long time since I was in combat this intensive.

I was back up on my feet. It seemed like it took for ever but I was moving faster than anyone. The Mastodon was in my hand. I saw the two feet of muzzle flash from the revolver’s barrel before I recognised that the guy with the shotgun wasn’t a Fortunate Son.

As our mutual friendly fire incident escalated, time slowed down and with my boosted reflexes I could almost see the bullet. It took him in the chest, piercing his second-rate armour. It seemed like an age as he fell back into the water. Still I didn’t know him.

‘I’m on your side, you stupid fucking cunt!’ I screamed at his corpse, angrier with myself for being caught out despite just having experienced multiple concussion waves.

As I staggered away from the corpse I could see into another room across the hall. Again it was large, with a high ceiling and about a foot and a half of water in it. Inside were three people surrounding a fourth. The three were obviously locals. The fourth was a small man with his back turned to me. He had dark hair and wore a black combat jacket and trousers. Not the kind you would wear on active duty but the kind you’d buy in a shop and wear on the street, or some people would.

The small man had his hands clasped together above his head, a shotgun pointed at his face; a lever-action hunting rifle on one side and an SMG older than I was on the other. My blue-on-blue incident had distracted the two men and a woman covering the small man. My boosted reflexes allowed me to assimilate this data very quickly. I could see what was coming as the small man began to move.

‘No!’ I shouted as I tried running through the water towards the group. The small man pulled his hands about ten inches apart and brought them down in front of him so quickly I could barely follow -he was at least as fast as I was. The barrel of the shotgun held by the woman in front of him fell into the water, as did her forearm, and then the front of her face slid off. It took me a moment to realise he had some kind of monofilament weapon.

He swung his arms out as my boosted leg muscles carried me into the air, and I made yet another serious mistake in this league. The top of the man with the SMG’s skull came off, bisected by the weighted monofilament. That meant the weapon was in his right hand now. Committed to the kick I moved myself into position in mid-air, the sole of my boot aiming for the base of his spine. Hopefully with enough power to damage even a reinforced skeletal structure.

From the left-hand sleeve of his combat jacket a compact 10-millimetre Glock appeared. He triggered a quick burst from it and the man with the lever-action rifle’s face disappeared.

The small man’s three victims were falling away from him and I was about to catch him square in the base of his spine when he appeared to flip backwards without even bending his legs. Suddenly he was inverted in the air, his boot travelling at my face with some velocity.

He kicked me so hard my internal visual display jumped. My nose disappeared into my face and I felt my facial dermal plating and reinforced skull give slightly. I had no idea how he’d powered the kick. He stopped the momentum of my flying kick and the pair of us plummeted into the water, and I went under. Again.

I raked up with my blades but he was gone. I sat up in the water, my blades withdrawn back into their forearm sheaths, my pistols suddenly in my hands. The small man was running away from me towards a window in the back of the room. He had a compact Glock in each hand and he was firing alternate bursts from them. I think it was supposed to be suppressing fire but it was disturbingly accurate as I felt bullets penetrate my coat, lodge in my dermal plate and then explode, knocking me back into the water. I was not going to be able to take much more of this. All over my internal visual display were red warnings from internal diagnostics.

I rolled, tried not to think about getting the Humber into my wounds and then sat up. The little man was gone but I’d seen his face. He was Nepalese, an ex-Ghurkha and either a member of 22 SAS or an ex-member reactivated like I’d been. His name was Rannu something or other. The other thing I remembered was that he’d been the regimental kick-boxing champion. I groaned and lay back in the water. I’d never met him but I’d heard stories about him taking money off people in illegal fights in the cargo hold of troop ships bound for Proxima Centauri.

Rolleston must’ve sent him but I couldn’t work out why they hadn’t come with more operators. Why just him and the Fortunate Sons? If they’d wanted the job done properly then three or four like Rannu would’ve done it. What got me about this was everything I’d heard about Rannu suggested he was sound, and we’d been pitted against each other by a bunch of wankers. A guy I’d probably rather buy a drink had just beaten the shit out of me.