Marcus had never seen a mutilated body before.
He had been in a few gunfights, watched people take a bullet and seen the dribbling holes the lead made in flesh. He’d watched one man die; that was a curious thing that had stayed with him for a long time. He’d found the experience uncomfortable, but only after the event did the sadness creep inside to weigh him down. As life had bled away from his comrade, like heat from a warm meal, Marcus’s humiliating inability to help the man had coloured those last moments.
However, staring at the body in front of him, Marcus recognised that this was something he would hold within him forever, as raw as it was at this moment. There was no awkwardness or sense of inadequacy staring at the pharmacist’s body, just revulsion and horror; those feelings would stay attached to the image in his mind with rusty nails.
The arms had been cut off and placed beside the corpse, and these were now oversized ships grounded in their own dark red ponds. The neck was only half the width it should have been; Marcus guessed that the rest of the flesh had been used to create the bloody mosaic on the rear wall of the small room. The man’s face had been left untouched, but it was what was on the man’s head, which was Marcus’s horrified stare fixated on. A crude crown had been twisted out of dull steel wire and wrapped around the man’s forehead.
It didn’t end there.
An energy weapon had been used to burn a set of wings into the man's exposed chest in deep, blackened trenches. The associated smell was boiling up into Marcus’s nostrils in slow waves.
Marcus realised this wasn’t just an attack on the Angels, an act of barbarity targeted at the delicate fingers of their organisation, this was a message to someone much higher in the chain of command, and it was likely that this image was surging up Gates Tower faster than the building’s elevators. Marcus looked up and found a small pinhead camera in the corner of the room. He stared at it for a while, imagining his face on every holo screen in Gates Tower as the horrifying image was relayed to hundreds of important people throughout the organisation.
Marcus was confident this would be setting numerous events in motion. This kind of shit just didn’t happen in Chalice.
For one, Fred industriously removed the psychopaths from Chalice, often before they could indulge in their sinister desires. Secondly, even if those psychopaths managed to avoid detection, they were never organised into a combat-capable team that could raid an Angels’ pharmacy, kill the two well-trained guards and have time to create this gruesome sculpture out of the pharmacist. The speed of the attack, the weapons they had used and the proficiency of those using them implied training and intent. Psychopaths abducted vulnerable people and tortured them in private, and then they were disposed of by Fred. They didn’t go out of their way to attack an institution and leave a cryptic message for its management.
So, a rival gang then?
But again, torture and mutilation were against the rules. Doing this kind of crap was what attracted the baleful gaze of Fred, the stuff that made the higher-ups disappear. Shootings, ambushes, raids, abductions, they were all tolerated. But terror crimes pushed the boundaries; none of the Angel's serious rivals would order this. Therefore, it had to be someone new to Chalice and, importantly, someone with reason to provoke Chalice’s most powerful gang.
Duke was pinging his vox, asking for confirmation of the casualty. Marcus backed out of the room as he pinged his response. He moved into the corridor with the image of the corpse sticking to his mind’s eye like a mosaic made of sticky grains of sand; every time he blinked, it was there, scratching the surface of his brain.
When he found Duke standing next to the counter, the man immediately noticed the damage to his psyche.
“Bad, huh?”
Marcus stared blankly back at his commander and blinked in the bright light of the pharmacy. “Yeah”.
Duke nodded slowly, staring back at his comrade, probably thinking it should have been him who found the corpse. Marcus shook his head slowly and checked his Xenack, desperate to break eye contact with the other man. When he looked up again, Duke was staring off into the distance with a blank expression, then his brow furrowed, and he looked back at Marcus.
“Apparently Fred has located the assailants for us; another unit has engaged them in the twenty-third-floor atrium”.
___
It took them five minutes to reach the firefight. On the way, they passed fleeing shoppers who dodged their group with wide eyes and the frantic scramble of animals in flight. They hadn’t seen any civilian casualties so far, which made Marcus even more confident that these were pros, not crazies.
Bright-lit shops and escalators blurred past as the four suited men homed in on the fight; they crossed spacious food courts and slid on the marble floors as they sprinted down long corridors.
Soon, gunfire echoed around the emptying superstore like thunder in a temple. The staccato bangs of automatic weapons reverberated around the stone interior, sending the slower civilians into fits of screaming hysterics or horrified whimpering. The team surged through the thinning crowds in a diamond shape, quickly cutting through the flow of people. Black-suited men with assault rifles were easy to avoid.
The four men rushed down the final escalator as the shooting reached a peak, ear-piecing volume and rounded a corner at the base of the landing.
Two men in civilian clothes were firing over the balcony onto the atrium below with bursts of automatic gunfire; Marcus and Duke acknowledged the pair as targets and sighted down their Xenacks.
Marcus held the red dot on the left man’s back for half a second, then squeezed the trigger. The Xenack’s compact barrel erupted with a triple report as Marcus loosed a three-round burst, stitching a line of three shots between the man’s shoulders. His target arched his back as he slammed into the railing in front of himself before trying to turn around to return fire. The sight hovered just above the man’s collarbone before the weapon barked again with another burst.
With no armour covering his neck and face, blood splattered across the railing as the rounds found their target. To Marcus’s left, Duke was pummelling the crumbling form of the second shooter, who was pinned up against the railing by his constant fire. Even with light body armour, fifteen rounds were enough to start breaking bones and pulping organs. One final burst then split the assailant’s head like a rotten fruit, sending blood cascading onto the white marble.
As they approached the balcony, shouting echoed into the expanding space as the terrorists realised they were being attacked from the rear. Marcus moved to the right wall of the corridor to check the corner while Duke did the same on the opposite side. Behind the pair, Gareth was covering the rear, and Armin moved to support Duke.
Marcus pointed his Xenack to the floor and peeked out from behind the marble wall, risking a glance towards the atrium stairway. He started yelling while pulling his head back, but the approaching ordinance quickly drowned out the sound. White flashes assaulted Marcus’s vision, and the associated crashes subdued his hearing. The wall just in front of Duke and Armin shattered in explosions of disintegrating marble and glowing red slag. After the first impact, the pair hit the ground and scrambled away from the barrage, covering their faces as superheated stone chips sprayed the area.
Marcus backed away from his corner as plasma-bonded rounds chewed into the marble before him. Even three meters away, the heat from the plasma was intense on his face. Mercifully, the magazine ran dry, and silence revealed echoes racing away down the hall behind the group, bouncing out into the empty shopping centre and fading in distant crashes.
-Duke, are you all good?
-Yeah, but our boys below are fucked. Fred says their all wasted.
The grizzled commander got to his feet, checking himself for holes before doing the same to Armin. The new guy looked a bit shaky, but Marcus could see determination setting on his face like it was drying concrete.
“The fuckers are going for a flyer in the landing area.” Duke snarled
“You bringing the Harrington round?”
“Yeah,” Duke reloaded his Xenack.
“What about that plasma fixture?” Marcus asked
“Fuck it, we’re nailing these guys. Gareth, you’re up front with us. Armin, you have our six”.
Duke pointed towards Marcus’s corner and raised his rifle; Marcus got his gun up and rounded the corner, trusting his commander that the enemy had moved on.
They found the stairs and the atrium empty. The bodies of their four Angels comrades were distributed around a small cafe on the left-hand side. Some had limbs missing and were charred by plasma. Others were full of ragged holes and now lying in glistening pools of their own blood.
A colossal archway led from the atrium out to a small park and executive flyer landing area; as they stepped out into the midday sunshine, shots were barking in the distance, coming from the left-hand side where Marcus could see a group of flyers hastily rising into the air like startled birds. They crossed the small open-air park, slipping on the freshly watered grass as they passed under small trees and dodged the waist-high shrubs.
As they approached the steps up to the landing platform, automatic fire began hammering away somewhere ahead. In response, more flyers rose quickly, one shuddering as tracers embedded themselves in the lightweight steel of its emerald hull. Marcus bounded up the steps, with Gareth and Duke close behind, and found the platform in disarray; screaming passengers struggled into their flyers, some dragging bloodied companions with them. Marcus spotted a group of armed men on the far side of the platform. One was reloading a light machine gun as he lagged behind the rest of the group.
Marcus drilled the light machine gunner in the back, sending him crashing to the ground in a motionless heap.
-They have two flyers. We’re going for the orange one. Fred’s tracking them both.
Two more flyers rose quickly on antigrav-assisted retros; one had a boxy orange design, and the other was sleek and fluoro green. The vehicles split and headed in opposite directions.
The team scrambled up the steps as the black Harrington swept around the side of the building and flared its retros in a braking descent; the autopilot was bringing it in as quickly as it could manage. The sturdy machine touched down just as Marcus reached the rear door. He wrenched it open and piled in. Armin was close behind. Duke jumped into the driver’s position, with his hands still on his Xenack, using his cortical web to direct the flyer’s computer.
As soon as they were airborne, the Harrington shot off from the Boulevard, following the orange flyer already streaking between the Superscrapers at dangerous speeds, weaving between traffic streams, and dodging parking vehicles. Marcus struggled to stay in his seat as the Harrington gunned it, also travelling outside the traffic lanes.
-Marcus, the centre compartment.
Duke pointed to the equipment hold, which had risen from the floor. One of the racks silently rotated and presented Marcus with a sizeable black weapon.
-Are you fucking mad? Fred will have me killed.
-The big man suggested it; now fucking grab that Sharde Rifle.
Marcus lurched in his seat as the Harrington pulled g’s, weaving past parking vehicles. The screen in front of his seat showed they were gaining on the orange flyer, likely being piloted manually.
Marcus reached towards the weapons rack and grasped the heavy black Sharde rifle with both hands, lifting it from its storage slot. The weapon was probably fifteen kilos, and Marcus almost dropped it as the flyer continued its celeritous pursuit. Its long plastseel frame was difficult to manoeuvre within the confines of the passenger compartment; the barrel itself was almost half a meter long and ribbed with compact heat sinks and god knows what else. Marcus found the safety and switched it off. That activated the small panel just below the holographic sights. He peered at the screen - It wasn't loaded.
-You ready Marcus?
-No! Fuck! I need ammo.
Marcus tilted back towards the equipment rack, grabbing a blocky magazine that felt about as heavy as a plasteel brick. Meanwhile, the huge rifle was smacking into his collarbone as the Harrington swerved every three seconds. Marcus jammed the magazine into the receiver, and the small panel lit up, indicating he had four shots. The weapon began vibrating ever so slightly in his grip as the servos whined softly, and the first sharde round was loaded and activated.
-Marcus you better be ready
The inside of the Harrington shuddered, and rhythmic hammering on the hull plating signalled they were under fire. Marcus ducked away from his window as the barrage began crashing against the door beside him.
-How the fuck am I going to fire this thing?
The crystal polymer window cracked under another broadside from the flyer beside them,
Marcus had little doubt the reinforced glass would hold as long as they didn't have any more plasma fixtures.
-Marcus, you going to have to retract the window to fire-
-Your fucking kidding me, right?
-I'm going to put some distance between us first.
The Harrington swerved to the side and the sharde rifle almost went flying. On the other side of the rear compartment, Armin was held onto the armrests of his seat with clenched fists and his face taut with anxiety. In the front, Gareth was speaking into the Harrington’s coms unit, no doubt liaising with the Tower. On the other side, Duke’s face was blank with concentration as he watched the movement of the other vehicle, which was still doing its best to get them all killed as it survived near misses with parking flyers and the local architecture.
-I'm retracting the window, Marcus.
-Fuck, alright.
Despite being worse for the wear, the window slid away quickly and silently, letting the warm Chalice air billow into the cabin, along with the menacing bark of an automatic weapon. Marcus leant away from the window and wrestled the heavy Sharde rifle up to the rim of the portal, resting the barrel on the blocky frame of the door.
He pressed his cheek against the Sharde rifle’s cool steel body and peered down the holographic sight. With the two times magnification he quickly found the orange flyer dancing through the busy airspace. The weapon gave him range and all sorts of other data, but he ignored that and focused on holding tiny red targeting cross on the constantly moving vehicle.
-Try to disable the vehicle; Fred wants at least one of them alive.
-Fucks sake. Ok.
Marcus shifted his aim from the driver’s compartment to the front hull section of the flyer and began to slowly squeeze the trigger.
The weapon thumped and bucked in his grip, sending a large projectile with a purple tracer across the void between the two vehicles in the blink of an eye. The shot clipped the rear of the flyer and there was a modest flash of superheated plasteel, yet the flyer quickly corrected its flight and sped on. God knows where the stray Sharde round landed; Marcus hoped he hadn’t killed anyone.
-Fire again, Marcus.
He quickly sighted again, but the orange flyer swept towards them as a weapon was shoved out the window facing towards them. The automatic machine gun began hammering away when the two flyers were about twenty meters apart, and Marcus ducked as rounds began lodging themselves into the side of the Harrington. Duke was swearing over the vox as he tried to create distance between the two vehicles.
Gareth came over the vox for the first time with his distinctive coarseness of tone.
-Marcus, put that cunt down.
Marcus was busy flattening himself against his seat as the orange flyer swept towards them again, dodging another smaller vehicle as it banked closer. The gunner opened up at the closer range, and suddenly, tracers were flying through the open window of the Harrington and embedding themselves in the interior upholstery.
-Fucking move Duke!
The Harrington swept left, narrowly avoiding another flyer, and the shots drifted over the external hull, ringing the reinforced hull plating with staccato metallic tattoo.
Marcus glanced to the left and found Armin slumped in his seat with what remained of his head spilling a gruesome concoction of vital fluids over his suited legs. Blood and brain matter had turned the whole left-hand side of the interior into a grotesque mural whose ghastly paint had begun to slide slowly downward as Marcus watched.
-Armin’s gone, Duke.
The commander glanced into the rear compartment and swore.
-Fuck this Duke, tell Fred to deal with these kooks.
Gareth wasn't too happy about the prospect.
-Shutthefuckup and shoot them. Or give me the Sharde Rifle and get the fuck out of this flyer.
-Take them out, Marcus, who gives a fuck if you waste the whole lot of them. There is always the other flyer.
Marcus grunted in approval and tentatively sighted down the Sharde rifle again, angling himself into harm’s way. The orange flyer’s rear end was still smouldering from the first shot, and suddenly, Marcus had a burning desire to see what would happen if he scored a direct hit on the passenger compartment. He sighted the mid-section of the flyer, just below the portal where the gunner had been firing from.
-Eat this, you fucking scum.
Marcus bent the trigger, and the weapon’s kick hit his shoulder as another projectile erupted from the rifle with a violent crack and purple spray of super-heated ions. The shot crossed the gap almost instantaneously and hit the flyer exactly where Marcus had aimed. An incandescent flash was accompanied by a deafening metallic boom as the flyer was struck. At the same moment, pieces of plasteel and burning debris erupted from the other side of the flyer, spat out from the interior with tremendous velocity, carrying them some distance before they rained downwards in a smouldering cascade. The flash disappeared and revealed a glowing hole within the side of the hull, and black smoke began bleeding from the opposite side. Just to top it off, a truncated blackened corpse toppled out of the perforated hull and began tumbling through the air like a ragdoll.
The flyer wobbled as the flight computer struggled in vain to handle the abrupt change to its aerodynamic profile. Yet, the pilot kept it in the air with shuddering and graceless manoeuvres.
-Hit the engine, Marcus.
-Yeah, ok.
Marcus fired again, this time targeting the front of the vehicle. A similar flash left a huge rent in the significantly denser engine block. This time, smoke and flames began spewing from the black wound, and the flyer began losing altitude as the antigrav plates lost power.
-Good shooting, Marcus.
Marcus began to feel numb as he watched the faltering vehicle drift downward; his mind couldn't help but conjure up images of what he imagined the inside of the vehicle looked like after the Sharde round had perforated the hull and tore through the passengers. His mind’s eye saw an interior black with carbonised materials and torn open on either side, with fragments of the Sharde munitions embedded in the shredded upholstery and the remains of at least two humans plastered or burnt onto the walls. He glanced over at Armin and held his stomach down as it lurched with revulsion. Marcus could clearly see the shattered border of the man’s skull, with the skin and hair clinging to the bloodied edges.
-The Tower has a recovery team en route. We are going for the other flyer.
Marcus tore his eyes away from the corpse.
-Fuck. Might reload then.
-Hope you can get more range out of that thing. If they hit us with the plasma fixture, we might end up like those poor fuckers.
-Ill do my best.
Marcus leant over, leaving the heavy Sharde Rifle resting on the window frame so he could grab another magazine from the rack. Meanwhile, the armoured Harrington banked and began weaving through a pair of superscrapers in search of the next target, leaving its dying prey to drift to the ground like a wounded bird, shedding feathers with every meter of altitude.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.