The Gunmen were down, their black-clad bodies heaped in the awkward low gravity of Luna, not yet fallen all the way over. Their magnetic shoes kept their feet tied to the floor, but their tops were not, so they drifted like they were underwater. Or if they were underwater after being hit by a hammer.
My leg was fucked, but I was luckily able to put what little weight I had on it, I just couldn’t walk on it right, or move it right, or stop it from bleeding because it was crusty and cauterized but still bleeding enough to soak in.
“Lilly…” I asked her, catching my breath, “Can you-”
“I’m already fixing it, but it will take far longer than you’re hoping for… Heat is hard to fix; it just cooks everything, including the stuff I need to fix the wound, so I need to get your body to-”
“The first part is all I need, but thank you for being willing to give me an explanation. I’ll handle problems and keep weight off of them as well as I can while doing it.” I told her, cutting her off to keep on track, “Anything I need to think about to keep it kosher?”
It wasn’t like I felt good about it, but Lilly had a habit of explaining things to the point they became obtuse. I needed information, and I needed it now so I could get to ground.
Whether I could get to the ground was beyond my ability to question at this point; I had too much invested into gogogo, not think think think.
I had no Visa. I had no shelter. I was in the middle of an attack; I needed to survive and not get slapped around by the local authority. Not only would sitting in a cell suck, but it could alert the Collector if someone with my description got nabbed by whatever they called their constabulary.
I seriously didn’t want to get tortured while the Collector scampered off like a comic character.
I stepped on my leg, testing how weak it was, and found it lacking. Not only was it weak, but it was very weak from the stress of the fight, it was just solid enough to walk with a heavy limp. I walked over, and considered if I should take one of the dead men’s guns.
They looked at a glance sleek, but they were painted to look that way. They were carbine length and black, with some kind of lock mechanism on the side, but I couldn’t tell what they did. They mirrored a flintlock but were simplified, with no markings or numbers to show what they were. Linked from the solid stock was a tube where a battery pack would be that led to the backpack on each of their backs.
I leaned down and rolled doctor pissbaby over and found an obvious dial. It read thirty, but had no indication on what that meant. It could have been thirty percent, thirty volts, thirty shots fired, or thirty bagels inside of it, and I had no clue.
If I took the gun, I would have a piece of criminal evidence, which was bad, and could get me associated with the terrorists, which was even worse. It could also give me another method of protecting myself that wouldn’t put pressure on it from stance or recoil on my leg and give me the options a laser-based weapon would.
There came a cracking from my breastplate, and I looked down to see the plate crumbling around where I had been hit.
The metal shouldn’t have stopped a beam that could burn me down to the bone, but what I saw was beyond unexpected.
The metal was cracked, and five circular points of superheated steel alloy looked oxidized and delaminated into off-white ashy flakes.
I had only noticed one shot, but somehow, five had hit in such rapid succession that I hadn’t been able to spot the difference with my eyes.
“Did I get shot five times?” I asked her, unsure.
“No,” she said with the calm of someone paying attention to something else, “You got shot twenty-five times; that’s why it's so bad.”
I almost fucking choked.
The five overlapping circles on my armour were five quicker bursts.
“Fuck me, that’s fast… Twenty-five? When did they start firing that many that fast?” I asked, thinking hard about packing a laser that was that deadly on my person.
“Lasers are continuous? They normally are just one beam, all the carbines doing is interrupting or starting and stopping it really fast.”
How the fuck did she… No, wait, that made some sense; Lilly knew a lot more than I did about this stuff than I did, even with my talent for the mechanical.
I looked at it again and felt my talent whisper, telling me to pick it apart, screw and bolt and spring and learn its secrets, but I ignored it like the intrusive thought it was. I needed to make the decision quickly and coldly, and I did.
I pulled the laser off of the dead man and pulled it on, holstering my guns and quickly checking his pockets. I found a few gizmos in what looked like an Ammo pouch and grabbed them but I found no suspicious documents, identification papers, or a smoking gun, so I left the rest of him alone and started moving.
I hobbled down the corridor, finding a four-way and followed Lilly's directions.
There was more carnage as I came into an open area, skylit by an artificial sky. It was an obvious lobby-like area that had been turned into a charnel pit by explosives and a firefight. I was above it; I had come out on a second story and could look down over railings to see the carnage of shattered stone, the fake wood panels reduced to so many splinters, the busted walls and still smoking ruin sending steam up from what appeared to be automatic sprinklers.
I could make out in the light shapes on the ground, though it was hard.
Half a dozen black-clad bodies lay unceremoniously on the floor next to a handful of other forms, the blood that didn’t bead up and away held to the floor the same as any other ferromagnet. Opposed to their bodies, three times as many in a uniform I took as guards were scattered around the concourse, each with a ruined chartreuse outer layer, a shade that looked like puke and some form of glave, some still buried desperately into fallen foes.
They hadn’t stood a chance. Their unarmored bodies were just as much charcoal as meat.
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The stench was so bad it made me almost hurl, but I caught it and pulled it back down, forcing the sober feeling it brought with it to spin up my awareness a few ticks. I tucked my head down and made my way around to get a better angle. If I was alone, it would be all well; I could try to slip out and into the city, but I had no idea what was inside me.
It could be nothing, could be a whole lot of something, could be a million corner hounds ready to devour people whole.
I circled the upper floor, looking down but finding no one on the ground, I carefully made my way down a set of stairs closest to what looked like the front doors to head out. Avoiding rubble on the stairs and making my way to the door, I tried to open them, only to be met with a tiny orange light panel as I approached that shone out in the gloom next to the door.
It read that the door was locked due to air contamination. For primary emergency air filtration failure, please seek a service representative or engage emergency air filtration manually.
I swore, but before I could even ask Lilly gave me a ping and said, “I striped the schematics ages ago, but you might want to find the board first, there’s something you should see on it.”
I was already moving towards the ping, but I slowed and asked, “What board?” only to be given another ping and another quick shuffle around to the back of the concourse next to a few bombed-out restaurants, thankfully empty.
My approach to the black mirror-like surface triggered it to light up and illuminate me, but despite my wince at revealing my position, I read it.
‘War declared by the empire of Raphael over political dispute…’ scrolled across the screen.
“Wow… This changes everything; thanks, Lilly, I needed to know this,” I told her flatly.
“It scrolls. Wait a moment, you overzealous goon. Wait for the bounties.”
It took ten or so seconds for it to cycle to the next, more news this time reading about Luna appropriating funds for some undisclosed project, but the third was luckily the bounty board.
I scanned through them quickly before my eye was drawn to a picture of my face from what looked like the bar back on the Tsarta.
“Bandit, former mercenary of the Phillian Gull’s, wanted for the destruction of property, theft, desertion, attempted murder and threats of armed violence. Presumed dead, but armed and extremely dangerous. Wanted dead: ¢2000000.”
“Oh…” I said, a little off my guard, “That… Is important.”
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but I have a recommendation, though I hesitate to call it that.”
“A recommendation for what? I’m fucking toast the second I get outside. Fuck the gun getting me confused for a terrorist, I’m fucking toast. Two million… I’m going to die by exhaustion while every bounty hunter, mercenary, guard, and all of their mothers hunt me to the ends of the moon.”
I couldn’t run, there was no way ground control would release my ship, and even if I could, I would limp away and get gunned down somewhere between the air defenses of the planet and the blockade line with its black ships.
What would I get from waiting and planning? The Collector had probably placed that bounty.
The only thing that kept me from crushing despair was presumed dead. It meant that there might be something beyond the immediate thoughts running through my head.
“Keep you’re shit together, Jaclyn,” Lilly said, not harshly, but sharply enough to cut into the whirling haze of my thoughts. “I have a plan. A plan. This isn’t nearly as bad as you think it is.”
“Pray to tell, oh oracle, what is your plan? Because I am flat out of ideas. If there is a way that I get out of this with even a chance of not fucking dying to everyone and their cat, then tell me.”
“Well, I think you forget something very important about being a legionnaire. You have, at the drop of a hat, the ability to transform into another you that looks totally different and is designed to manipulate people, all you need to do, is put up with the transformation, while you’re out and about.”
It was logical, perfectly reasonable, and even quite smart. I wasn’t used to the idea of it, and I believed it would work. The tension in me and the memory of feeling the way I had in that body put me off, but I did my best to center myself and pulled out a cigarette because fuck it, no one was going to stop me in this nightmare.
I started moving towards the ping she had told me was the emergency fan while I lit up and carefully listened, walking as carefully as I could on my lame leg. Letting the smoke break calm my nerves, I picked it apart as I moved slowly towards my goal.
A sprinkler went off about two minutes into my smoke break, and I put it out partway through, and I shot the fucking sprinkler for the smart-ass system's sense of karma.
For my hostility, the laser blew through the nozzle, and the pressure of the water jetted out and soaked me, and I gave up on smoking, now more pissed than anxious. The gun made a metallic ping, and the top snapped open and ejected an orange-red cartridge at me just to rub it in.
I walked out from under it, bottling as much anger away for later as I could for later as not to come off as a total bitch before I asked, “I don’t suppose the transformation can dry me off?”
“It would actually, the light would vaporize it.”
I groaned and said, “Just do it already and let my misery end.”
She did, and not without some smugness. We didn’t talk while I made my way towards the control room for the ventilation.
It was a fairly obvious room once I found it.
There were ten body’s outside the room, six of them guards, four of them black-clad mooks. I kicked one while I passed and bowed to the guard; the fact the door had not opened meant that they had died holding this place and taken the wannabe death squad with them despite their disadvantage.
None of them had so much as a simple gun, just the halberds.
So I gave them the respect they deserved; the young men had forfeited their lives without even being properly equipped.
The room had one more man in it, and he was alive, for what good it would do him. He was breathing, barely. Mumbling nonsense about a girl he would never live to see again.
I leaned down shakely and took his hand in mine, firmly holding it. It was all of a minute before he settled down, admitting he had feelings for me and talking about our future as he mistook me for her.
Then he fell asleep, and he stopped breathing. I took a few moments to make him presentable, closing his eyes, laying his hands on his lap, his glave next to him.
He looked like he had simply fallen asleep if you discounted the horrible burns across his torso and the smell of cooked pork.
I paid my respects and then pulled a lever and made to leave when a chirping noise drew my eye to a box, about hand-sized, propped up under him.
It was a tiny portable radio, sleeker than the one I had, but notable nonetheless.
I picked it up and clicked the receiving on.
A familiar mans voice came over the radio, the man that had given me landing permission.
“Sugihara? Sugihara, what is your status and the status of your team? Your squad leader has not reported in yet.”
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but they're all dead. Invaders included, they took them out. All of them, I think. They locked themselves in using the ventilation. Sugihara, or I think it's probably Sugihara, and his squad, died with their weapons in hand,” I told the man.
I had not yet gauged his reaction, but it was what I felt like saying, and I didn’t particularly care what he wanted at the moment.
“And if everyone is dead, who am I speaking to? A ghost, perhaps?”
I huffed grimly at his flippant tone, “A mercenary. Though I’m going to make off like a ghost,” I told him before slipping the radio into a pocket and beginning the trek back to the door.
I was not going to deal with an uncaring lunatic amid the staggering amount of destruction and carnage. I did not reply to his shouting accusations and other nonsense, no matter how much his entitled sense of entitlement, position, or name was shouted.
I arrived back at the now-clearing lobby, the sound of ventilation notable in the otherwise silent room.
I walked up and opened the door, and the front of the building opened up in utter fucking chaos, the likes of which I had never seen before.
Hundreds of people were screaming, fighting and dying while the pounding percussion of buildings exploding in the distance greeted me.
Guards charging a line of gunmen, there was a nest firing rapid beams of light down a street, only for a giant lance of laser light to shine back and punch a hole as round as my head straight through the man behind the gun.
And above it all, a woman was firing fucking pink lasers from her hands while fucking floating on a sword, her two-tone hair flying around in the nightmare blast wind of explosions.
The nuns had been right; I had fucking died and had now gone to hell; this utter fucking lunacy was my just deserts for a life of sin and wanton freedom.