It’d taken three hours to strip the Corium out of the mech. Helo-7 and Helo-11—Blue’s transport—had stayed on station, landing and cycling down to save power, rather than leave when they realized the threat was gone and the possible bonuses to capturing an intact assault mech.
I’d refused the comm requests from Tyrannus, noting the ever more frantic tone of them. I leap-frogged him entirely, feeding the entire affair to Major Marcial, recordings and all.
Admittedly, they’d been subtly edited on the fly by Richie, removing the women and kids and making it sound like we’d been bluffing and had never seen them, just guessing they were there somewhere.
The major had taken one look, had seen the AROC and apparently decided that the request from M-Corp hadn’t come through the correct channels, and had denied it, locking the entire thing down to his office and him alone as classified.
That made this a military op again, even if the corpos were going apeshit about losing their tech. It probably meant they’d originally cut the major out of the deal, and he would no doubt change his mind once he was getting his beak wet instead of Tyrannus. But hey, that’s the way the world worked.
I’d lost good soldiers today, good friends, all because of the almighty credit, and I still had nine more months left in my contract. Tyrannus would fuck me as hard as he could, but getting the major happy with me and my team limited that in turn.
There were recovery teams inbound, specialists to examine the site, talk of recovering possible old world tech, and so Sync had been given the job of liaison with the women and children.
Not because she was a woman—hell, she was the most vicious of all of us. No, it was because Richie had already jacked her suit and wiped her recordings, making it look as if she’d been hit with an advanced hack. As such, she was off the record and could give them the heads-up, as well as checking to make sure there were no wanted targets among them.
They’d buried themselves in some safe room they had prepared but hadn’t had the time to reach before now, and we piled scrap against the door—they had a secret exit, apparently—to hide it. We did that rather than break the deal and kill them all, as the site was going to get checked over more thoroughly.
I knelt on the floor next to the remains of Scott and Fergie, jacked into my friend’s suit, downloading all the recordings and personal details before he was sealed to be shipped.
I’d already wiped Fergie. No way some fucker in Reclamation was getting access to his memories and selling them, we’d all vowed, and that was the deal in the APS division.
Just like we hid the dodgy porn from those with families, we stripped away anything that made them look like anything less than the gods of war they had been. Then our tech heads and the fallen’s friends would scrub the footage, providing a sanitized, and yet awesome reel of their loved one’s final fight.
Even if they’d been struck down with the shits, or their knob dropped off from cock-rot, what their families saw was a final footage of them saving us all, a warrior-titan they could be proud of.
That was the deal we all made.
Right now, though, I was staring at the AROC that Scott had seen, and the recording of the readouts that were playing over his suit as he decided to blow the fuck outta himself, taking millions of creds of explosives and gear with him.
The AROC device that was locked onto him had been dragged into position. That much was clear by the marks behind it.
They’d not been ready for us, and that was the only saving grace. These were insanely top-shelf kit, like I’d only ever seen one out of the container, and that’d been on a recording.
As soon as I’d told Major Marcial what it was, and that a bunch random scavs had one? That was when he’d decided to “review” the corpo request. I’d been ordered to provide all recordings of the kit to him and only him, and to erase the originals.
That’d made hiding our shit easier, as we had official codes to let us erase shit, but that they’d had one of these machines at all was terrifying me now.
An AROC was a last-chance device, one that was deployed to fry and remotely take over an APS if the soldier went on a rampage. It was designed to be used only after everything else had been tried, as the sheer pulse of power that was needed?
It’d kill the soldier every time.
Then, the suit rebooted into remote mode. They’d be able to control the APS and send him after us, to force us to fight our own people and their mech, and while we were dealing with that, they’d have been locking on and frying more of us, if they had the power.
If they’d had the chance to get ready for our arrival, or if there’d only been one team sent rather than two? It could have worked.
They could have captured a full APS team of suits, and our bodies would have been locked inside to do the dance for them all.
These were stupidly hard to get hold of. Like, insanely so. We had one back at the armory—one. It was under lock and key and required two senior techs to unlock the housing to retrieve it.
There were literally millions of creds of gear laid around in the APS and its armaments all day, every day, but the AROC needed DNA fucking verification to release it.
The big four corpos were permitted one each. One. I was betting the fact that seeing one out in the field would result in some fucker’s balls being nailed to the wall. After all, if it’d been a raider team, here to capture our suits?
They’d have them now.
All the cities knew the basics of the armored suits. They were scaled-down mechs, heavily armed, that’s all, and each design had its own strengths and weaknesses.
Each of the twelve cities had their own versions of our APS. Some stronger, some higher tech, some weaker and breaking all the time.
That was why our suits were always retrieved. They couldn’t be used by another, not without insane investment in terms of new nanites—too much integration with the nanites and the individual operator. Instead, the suits needed to be simply smelted down. If we died in action, we were included with the suit. Our impurities were rendered into the next generation of the suits that would replace us.
It was morbid, but also, it was kind of cool, knowing that we were walking out to the fight with our brothers and sisters literally around us in our armor.
Alternatively, once we retired, if we’d taken the option to buy out our suit—at a cost of half our wages, bonuses, and bounties for the entirety of enlistment—we were fitted with trackers and a hardpoint on the backplate was taken up with a permanent, shaped explosive charge.
If we flatlined, or the suit stopped broadcasting verified telemetry, it fired, turning us and the interior of our suit into a puddle of glowing metal and impurities, which would be collected by the army.
Of course, we could not pay the fee, and leave our suit to be melted when we retired. Most didn’t, after all, as the massive cost over the years of service was insane. But for those of us who dreamed of climbing the ladder as a merc?
It was no choice at all.
All the cities had a version of the APS, and the various spies and shitbirds spent half their time trying to get hold of their models, and making sure they didn’t get ours. And the very best method to get our suits? It was undoubtably an AROC.
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All that meant that some fucker was in for a world of hurt when the investigation was done. But for now, the fallout meant that Tyrannus was suddenly being investigated while the major took a direct hand.
That meant he got no bonuses, which was the only consolation in an otherwise shitty day.
The salvage from a working assault mech alone was going to be well over a million credits, and although we’d not get that, the few tens of thousands extra each we’d get was damn good money for just doing our job. Plus whatever the deal the major struck with the corpos, and our successful mission before this?
Overall, it meant that when I left the corps, I had a nice cushion to start replacing and upgrading my mods to seriously high spec.
Fergie and I had joined together, only a few months apart; Scott a year later, and Richie two after that. Sync had been with the team nearly as long as Richie, and we’d all planned to go merc together.
Our papers were in, Fergie and mine. Scott’s were due to go in soon—it was a year’s notice to retire at the end of the ten years and they’d not accept it early—and we’d expected to be cleaning up on contracts, getting ready to hit the major leagues as a merc squad once Scott, Rich, and Sync were finally free and the team was back together.
As a full team—we’d have replaced or done without Barnes; he was a dipshit and had only recently joined us anyway, despite his bravery, nine and a half years he had left on his service—we’d have been able to take on seriously high-end contracts.
Corpo bodyguard jobs as a team? We’d have been living in the skyscrapers in the middle of the city, earning insane creds and living the dream.
Now I was kneeling next to my friends, their armor torn apart, loaded on recovery sleds, ready to be sealed away and rendered down.
I forced the tears away, blowing out a long, shuddering breath as the connections released. The [WIPE CONFIRMED] message printed across my HUD.
I hesitated, images of the pair running through my mind. The laughter, the jokes, the team. They were my brothers in chrome and titanium, and I lost a part of me when I lost them.
I was empty inside, now, and I felt the flickering flames of the rage I was carefully not acknowledging.
I couldn’t afford to do anything, not yet. I carefully blocked that line of thought as well, as a new connection request from Tyrannus flashed up.
We were still in an active combat zone, until I or Jon marked it as clear, and so we got comm requests, even from higher, rather than direct connections. It was simply because an idiot in an office demanding an ammo expenditure report in the middle of a firefight tended to result in expensive replacements being needed, be those team members, additional fire, or the dipshit themselves.
That cost creds, and so common sense remarkably prevailed.
Sooner or later, though, I’d have to accept it.
I sighed, reached out, and laid a hand each on Fergie and Scott’s shoulders, and squeezed once, feeling the reassuring solidity of their armor, and the terrible ache that came from knowing that they might be inside still, but they had gone where I couldn’t follow.
I triggered both sleds, closing my eyes as the straps and sheeting rose, concealing the bodies from my view, as a call request blinked frantically again.
“Captain Tyrannus,” I greeted through gritted teeth, accepting the connection finally as I turned away, and the harried and furious face of the arrogant little fuck bloomed before me. “Apologies for going to Major Marcial, rather than to you direct, sir. But I couldn’t get a connection to you for some reason, and the use of an AROC in the field required immediate response and reporting by Section 16:27 of the regs.”
He stared at me, mouth flapping as he tried to counter—Richie had provided the regs detail, and I knew the fucker before me would have never even read them—as I forced a smile.
Gods, it sickened me, having to pretend respect for this scumbag, but I damn well knew this was being recorded and would be used against me at some point. Better to get it all out now and force him to respond.
I knew, and he knew, the slimy fucker, that he’d deliberately been away from his desk at the worst point, so that if anything went wrong—and it had—the worst that could be pinned on him was that he was in the toilet or something.
“I…was ill,” he forced out through blatantly gritted teeth. “Unavoidable.”
“Of course, sir. As a result, I had to go to Major Marcial, and he’s waiting for an update from me.”
“Give him the update, by all means. Then you’ll repeat it, word for word, to me. In fact, I want your combat logs. Send them direct to—”
“I’m sorry, Captain,” I lied. “The major directed all combat logs are to be sent direct to him and only him. I’ll make him aware of your demand, however.” I smiled again. “Sorry, sir. I have to go.”
I cut the connection. The forced smile poured off my face, as I huffed out a breath, controlling and burying my emotions, and requested a connection to the major.
Ten minutes later and it was all done. Combat logs were sent, along with Richie’s reports on the assault mech, and the viability of the site. My non-too-subtle hints about Tyrannus meant we were ordered—the major knew the game better than we did; I’d barely needed to explain—to report to the major directly and exclusively should we have any concerns about the AROC or any suspicions about it.
Included in that was that we were forbidden to discuss the AROC or any details of the fight with anyone beyond the official line.
We were given permission to make the death reel for Fergie and Scott’s family and friends, but it was to be vetted by the major and his team.
Once the line was cut, I reached out to Tyrannus, and took great pleasure in “apologizing” to him and informing him that because of the major’s direct orders, we were now forbidden from discussing the mission with him at all, repeating that all records had been locked to the major and his team, and we’d see him when we got back.
I even included a hint that I was to remain in direct contact with the major, just to make sure he backed the fuck up. But I saw in his eyes that he’d already gotten the message.
Whatever happened between us, it’d not be anywhere that anyone could find and officially trace.
That was fine by me.
He was due to get out a few months after I was. Chatter on who was getting free was always rife, but as a non-combat, back-office shit-stain, he’d be leaving with a pension, not an APS.
Out in the real world, he’d end up busily slurping on a corpo dick, while I was stomping on throats.
We’d found our natural level after all, it seemed.
“All done?” Jon, Blue One, stepped up. His own sleds were loaded, and he linked to my suit, enabling me to confirm that his logs were wiped.
Now I held the only “full” copy of the fight that hadn’t been sent to higher.
“All done,” I agreed. “Higher have been updated. Orders stand—no discussing the AROC or anything else, the mission is sealed, death reels to be done, but handed to the major’s team for confirmation before release.”
“Let’s hope they don’t fuck them up then.” He sighed. “Damn, what a clusterfuck.”
“You’re telling me,” I growled, shaking my head at the recovery pile.
The scavs weren’t hard to take down. They were only scavengers, after all—most of them, anyway—wearing atmo gear, layers of cloth and armor that was more leather and composites than titanium and steel.
They looked impressive, and probably badass to people they found out in the wilds, but a round from one of our rifles could take down an old world tank. A direct hit on a scav? They were toast. The sheer force made sure of that every time.
They had no chance, which made that they’d had an AROC even crazier.
Someone had been bankrolling them. Someone had to have been giving them information and the AROC at least, and that meant that that someone was expecting to have to fight APS operators.
Maybe it even meant that some stupid fuck out there had planned to get their hands on us, and that the mech—although powerful and valuable—wasn’t the real prize.
Hell, had we known it was here? With the right loadout, it’d have been taken down easily enough by Fergie alone.
We stripped the scene, and when the recovery teams arrived, we handed it over with a palpable sense of relief. The trip back to base, with our friends in cold storage and the surviving members of the team back in our deployment pods—there was nowhere else in the helo for us, after all—was going to be a shitty flight.
A few hours ago, we’d been on our way back to base, knowing that we were getting a decent bonus, one that’d be spent on leave in the bars and whorehouses next to the barracks most likely, partying as a team.
Now the heart of the team was gone.
We’d get replacements assigned, but they’d never take Fergie and Scott’s place, not really. And with only a matter of months left? I didn’t give a shit about integrating some new assholes beyond enough to keep the rest of us alive.
All in all, I was in a foul mood sitting in my suit, swaying gently aboard the helo, staring unseeing at the blinking cursor on the report I’d zoned out while writing, when the commlink activated.
“Boss?”
“Yeah, Richie?” I coughed, blinking away tears again.
“You know that drone I tagged the site with?”
“The one by the entrance?” I struggled to remember. “When we needed the relay link?”
“Yeah…turns out I forgot to de-activate it.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed, both of us knowing damn well he’d not “forgotten” anything.
“Well…they just cleared the caved-in section. The one that Scott did, I mean, not the scaffolding.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And…”
“Richie, do I need to pull the fucking words out with a plier?” I growled. “What the hell did they find?”
“No clue,” he admitted. “They’ve been bringing out heavy weapons for the last ten minutes, though, like current mil-spec shit, and nobody seemed bothered.”
“What?”
“Then they found something else.”
“And?”
“And the recovery team went apeshit. Full black-site lockdown protocols. Cut the connection to the relay drone.”
“Well, fuck. Any ideas?”
“Nope, but they, uh, they might have found the drone, boss. Sorry.”
“Great,” I growled. “Leave it with me. You weren’t doing anything wrong,” I assured him, the pair of us knowing damn well he was.
“Thanks, boss.”
I cut the connection, pausing before I called the major to bullshit an excuse, and thought about it. Really thought.
This didn’t make sense.
That there was an AROC was insane, and the corps would be going apeshit over that, but the site was open and working, getting cleared through, and no corpo asshole was going to get away with hiding anything that was found there now, but…
“Incoming!” the pilot screamed into the local net, twisting the helo sharply, as the world filled with fire, light, and noise.