He wouldn’t be the way he was had it not been for that one day. The day the president waged war on the Beltian Colonies. Why? Steve had no clue and frankly, he never cared. What he did care about was his mother. He could’ve still been with her. He could’ve grown up like every other kid, playing in the sandpit or throwing a frisbee in the green parks. He was the first to be taken. He saw others get taken and put through the same grueling, abusive training he’d gone through. That was enough of a reason for Steve to hate the war. At first, he wanted to find a way to escape and run away but experience taught him otherwise.
He had no choice other than to obey them. One too many actions out of line and they’d send him to The Chamber. Nobody knew what they did in it. All they knew was that soldiers went in as people and came out as lifeless as robots. A factory reset as they called it.
Kill SEKT. Go home.
Steve’s eyes snapped open, his body drenched in sweat and his gaze fixated on the dead soldier in front of him. The sounds of gunshots and explosive shells ricocheted through his eardrums. His suit’s heads-up-display flickered, a red pulse flashing in the left corner of his vision. It was either the suit was bleeding nuclear sludge or he was bleeding. Neither sounded good.
The metal on his armor slithered to his chest like chains binding him. It reinforced the front of his body preparing to absorb the impact. In the darkest of nights, a medley of greens, yellows, and reds shot like rays toward Steve heating up his suit. The shrapnel hit his mechanical exo-suit like a shotgun shell. The impact tossed him across the snow and into the stump of a tree.
Most of his body lay exposed but unharmed. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead. His vision blurred for a few seconds and a sharp, stinging stream of pain rushed down from his temple to the base of his neck. He shut his eyes tight and shook his head, but the pain only worsened. It was as if a hammer was knocking a nail into his skull periodically, its aftershocks running down his spine.
The guns of the opposing forces shifted to him from their bunkers as another round of high-energy laser bolts hummed. This was it.
No, no, no, he reprimanded himself. Not now. Not when I’m this close. He glanced briefly at the mound of collapsed tree barks not more than five meters to his right. That’ll have to do, he thought. Deep breaths, Steve. Deep breaths.
One…Two…Three!
He dashed forward carrying the remnants of his exo-suit. It was a miracle that no bullet wounded him. Only one scratched the skin off his arm. Steve let out a sigh of relief at the brief respite he was granted.
Before he could catch his breath, the barrel of a gun peered around the corner of the wall. Steve grabbed the assailant’s hand. Two wild shots fired into the air as they struggled over control of the gun. He twisted the attacker’s wrist. The assailant screamed in pain dropping his gun. Steve kicked his assailant in the stomach to create some distance between the two. He picked up the gun and shot the man in the head.
I’ll need this later, he thought as he holstered the gun.
Forcing himself out of his shattered suit, he touched his left temple and a mechanical eye, glowing jade-green with a serrated iris began to spin. He examined it. Its torso had crumbled away after absorbing the brunt of the impact and the face plate had cracked open, but remnants of the circuitry hidden in its feet remained intact.
“Turret!” Steve shouted over the deafening noise of bullets.
>Running…
>Error-667_U.
Steve tried a different command. “Escort.”
>Running…
>Error-669_U.
“Fuck…” he whispered.
Ordinarily, the suit would respond directly to his thoughts but after receiving damage, it had to be manually operated. There was only one operation left.
“Decoy.”
>Running…
>Successful.
>Path select: Linear, Elliptic, Sawtoo—
Splinters of wood flew through the air. The enemy had located him.
“For fuck’s sake! Anything!”
He’d never used the decoy mode on his suit before but now was the ideal time to use it. There was about two hundred meters between him and the entrance to the bunker. He had a much greater chance at surviving if he was inside the bunker with them than outside the bunker.
He took a deep breath, checking the energy level on the gun. He had three shots, four at most and there were at least ten soldiers in that bunker. He unsheathed a knife from the utility pouch on his suit as well as two smoke grenades, examining it. The knife was sharp enough to cut through flesh even if it was chipped from the explosion. The lone soldier slipped the knife in between his belt and his trousers.
>Command accepted. Initiating drivers in three…two…one…
>Initiated.
Simultaneously, the suit and the soldier darted in opposite directions. Steve used the trees and the remaining smoke bombs he had available to him. He closed his right eye, leaving only his mechanical eye open. The colour from his vision drained out, replaced by an infrared spectrum. The deafening sound of gunshots slowly intensified as he drew nearer to the bunker.
The shooting ceased and Steve’s exo-suit collapsed to the ground. He kept running. Now that they had neutralized the suit, they would certainly spot the curtain of smoke trailing towards the side entrance of the bunker and open fire. He was nearly at its doorstep.
BANG!
A bullet caught Steve’s side. It only grazed him. Had the impact been direct, he’d have a hole in his stomach so wide, he could fit a tennis ball in it. Steve winced. He fell to the ground, guarding himself with nothing but his forearms. The smokescreen was clearing up. Soon, his position would be clear to the enemy. He crawled through the thick snow, the cold numbing his fingers. He felt as if the blood flowing from his wound would freeze up as he dragged his body one inch at a time toward the bunker entrance.
He reached his hand out to feel the cold metal of the bunker door. The lock was electronic, so he could easily bypass it.
BANG!
Another shot ricocheted off the lock and a live energy bolt hit the ground inches from Steve’s feet. He quickly bypassed the lock and pushed the rusted door open. The shooting stopped. Steve pulled himself to his feet and walked down the narrow corridor toward the outpost where all the enemy soldiers were stationed.
One last smoke bomb, he thought to himself.
The soldier rolled the smoke grenade into the narrow hallway lined with armed men. A barrage of bullets ricocheted randomly through the hallway as Steve waited for all his assailants to drain their power cells. He gathered that there were three of them all armed and lined up along the hallway.
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The shooting stopped. Steve heard the clicking of their guns as they frantically attempted to reload their depleted power cells. He slipped out his knife, twirling it in his left hand while cocking the gun in his right. He emerged from the smoke staring down the battalion of soldiers.
Steve dropped the bloodied knife and the smoking gun to the floor as he stepped over the line of dead bodies. He limped to the communications room at the end of the hallway, his limbs slowly giving up on him.
“Wright to Alliance HQ, do you copy?” Steve said, bringing his mouth closer to the microphone. “Infiltrator-001 to HQ. Do you copy?” There was a long silence. Almost long enough to think that no one was coming for him this time. He wouldn’t be surprised.
“Copy that, Infil-1. Mission report.”
Steve’s heart relaxed. “Mission successful, Commander. Outpost-767 neutralized.”
“Casualties?” asked the authoritative voice on the other end of the channel.
Steve sighed. “I’m the only one left, sir. Requesting extraction from the current location.”
“Request granted. Standby for extraction. ETA two hours.”
“Roger that, Commander,” Steve replied as he collapsed to the ground.
His eyes shifted to the corridor in front of him. Some bled from their slit throats, others had marks around their necks, and a few had a hole through their head from the laser bolts of their own guns. A lake of blood meandered through their bodies running down to Steve’s feet.
The first person he killed was on his first mission when he was only sixteen. After that, killing was a lot easier for him. It felt more natural the more he did it. But it was never his fault. They always shot first. They always killed first.
He looked at the man sitting limp in a similar position to him. His head hung low, loosely attached by a piece of skin left uncut. “Is that what you thought too?” Steve asked.
He lifted his head to the three corpses in front of him. His eyes began to close as exhaustion overpowered him. He lost all feeling in his body and his head drooped down, the river of blood from the corridor ceasing its flow.
It’s over now. It’s finally fucking over.
“He’s over here!” shouted a voice from somewhere in the bunker.
The thuds of several footsteps intensified as time passed. It was too heavy to be a battalion of average soldiers. This sounded like a squad of giants running rampant through the bunker. He forced his eyes open despite the burning sensation worsened by the dust.
“Package located, Commander!” one of the soldiers shouted. She walked towards Steve and knelt to meet his eyes. “Wright?”
Steve groaned loud enough to let her know he was conscious. “Amber?”
“Yeah. Just here to drag you from the brink of death once more,” Amber muttered as she helped Steve to his feet. “Amber to Base. The package is secure. Extracting in five. Copy. John! I need help here,” Amber asked as she tried to support Steve’s body weight on her shoulder.
Steve rubbed his eyes. “I was perfectly fine before the two of you came, you know?”
She looked him up and down. “You and I need to discuss what ‘fine’ means when we get back. Come on. They’re waiting for you back at home.”
“Home?” Steve asked.
Amber’s brows furrowed. “Home. Like… home base?”
Steve shook his head. “Right, right… Let’s go.”
Another exo-suit stood behind Amber. The neon green highlights weaved between the joints in the armour like glue. The steel, hydraulic pistons hissed on release as the suit came to a halt and floodlights on its side that shone directly into Steve’s eyes, dimmed slightly.
“Well, well, well… What happened to you?” John mocked.
“Save it, John. Just get me out of this fucking bunker,” Steve snapped.
John slithered his arm underneath Steve’s and together with Amber, helped him walk out of the control room. Outside the control room, soldiers paced the long corridor lined with railguns peering through narrow peepholes in the concrete wall just wide enough for the gun’s barrel and a soldier’s eye. It formed the perimeter of the bunker. Its interior was divided into three chambers—the control room, the east and the west wing—which were separated by a reinforced concrete wall.
“Commander Jones,” John called.
A short, stocky man with an authoritative gaze walked towards them. He examined Steve’s condition. “The intel?” he asked.
Steve tapped his temple. “Corrupted. Whatever was left is up here.”
After a prolonged gaze, he cracked half a smile. “Better than nothing. Thought we lost you for a second. Amber. John. Take him to the chopper.” Jones placed two fingers on his earpiece. “Bolts. Spectre. Do a final sweep of the bunker and then we’re moving out.”
“Copy that, commander,” they affirmed. “How’s the Boss looking?”
Jones looked at Steve and grinned. “Belties fucked him up so bad Bolts could probably beat him in a fight.”
Although most of his energy had returned thanks to the adrenaline shot Amber gave him as well as the two hours of rest he dearly needed, he wasn’t about to waste it to contest such a blasphemous claim.
“Commander, we have a problem,” Bolts said worriedly. “The console here says there were two distress signals sent out two hours ago. One would have been Steve’s but who was the other one?”
“Shit,” hissed Steve. He’d forgotten to check the signal log for any distress calls. One of the soldiers must have activated it while Steve was attacking the bunker.
“Did it get a rebound message?” Jones asked over his communications channel.
“Hard to tell, sir. The data was corrupted shortly after. They probably tried to clear the drives and the deletion didn’t finish. With the state this console is in, it’s a miracle I found the com-log.”
Steve’s eyes drifted to the peepholes of the bunker. He shrugged off Amber and John and limped to a small window with a mounted dysfunctional railgun. He saw a trail of smoke just beyond the forest. He hadn’t noticed that before.
“Why’s there a fire being lit?” he asked pointing to the smoke.
Jones pulled out his binoculars and peered through the same hole. His eyes widened and his pupils dilated.
“That’s no fire,” he whispered. “Jones to chopper, do you copy?” The static echoed through the bunker as everyone fell silent. “Jones to chopper, do you copy?” Jones reiterated in a louder tone.
He looked back through his binoculars, switching to infrared.
“Fuck. They brought in the big guns,” he muttered. “We don’t have long before they open fire and breach this bunker.”
“Well, we did too,” John said confidently.
“Just one big problem,” Jones said with a sigh. “Theirs are bigger than ours.”
Withdrawing from the small window, he ran to the control centre at the heart of the bunker. Placing his mouth near the microphone and punching in the frequency range of their base, he called for reinforcements.
“Jones to base 602-5, do you copy! Requesting immediate air support!”
Nothing. The enemy had completely cut off their communications beyond the local network they were on. No help was coming; not until they’d dealt with the reinforcements marching towards them.
“Guess we’re on our own for this one,” he muttered. “Battle positions, soldiers! Bunker formation-6219! Incoming forces on the horizon!”
The soldiers rushed to the various outposts situated around the bunker. Steve heard the clicking of guns as his surroundings fell into chaos. John and Amber accompanied Steve to speak with Jones in the control room.
“I can get those railguns up and running in five,” Bolts, who was discussing the strategy with Jones, said. “That should slow ‘em down significantly.”
“Do it in three, Bolts,” Jones ordered, dismissing him from the room. “Steve,” Jones said. “You’ve studied the terrain before you embarked on this mission. What are we up against?”
Steve’s eye glowed a crimson red. It displayed a hologram of the terrain leading up to the bunker, where their enemy was most likely stationed.
“Most of these trees up front have been levelled after my raid so there isn’t much cover left. A few lone brick walls on the east and west wings that remain from the explosions can cause a bit of trouble.” He pointed to the edges of the map. “The forest is thick here. If they want to breach the bunker, they’ll sneak around through the east or west wing and infiltrate through the side doors. We need to fortify that area somehow.”
Jones nodded. “What’s our numbers like, Ambers?”
She pointed to the various points the enemies were stationed at. “Plus-minus sixty of ‘em. They’re heavily armed.”
“EMP’s?”
“None that I picked up. They don’t know we’re Infiltrators. Our cyber-limbs can function.”
“Good. We’ll need those if things get hairy. Spectre’s already suiting up to move out. She said she’s got twelve minutes on her Invis Camo. That should be enough for her to get behind enemy lines and disable their jammer. Once we can reach the base, we can call for reinforcements.”
“What about me?” Steve asked.
“You’re going to stay put with John as your guard. You’re injured and you have all the intel in that console before it was corrupted. You’re too precious to put in the field. So, sit tight and watch the show. Got it?”
Steve nodded. “Roger that, commander.”
“Good. Let’s get into position and pray to God we survive.”
Steve turned to John who had already loaded his energy bow and charged his blade. His suit’s pistons hissed as they clicked into place and the metal nano-bots wrapped themselves around his chest like chains, reinforcing the exoskeleton underneath.
Suddenly, a fire sparked, and the line of collapsed trees that Steve thought would be their greatest advantage caught fire and formed a line across the entire battlefield. The heat scrambled Steve and his team’s infrared vision, the only way to see their enemy in the darkness of the night. All they could do now was fire wildly and hope to hit something.
A veil of silence dropped between the two parties as neither of the two fired a bullet. There was a reason they were waiting. Waiting for what? Were they even there? All anyone could see through their infrared lenses was a wave of red.
“Commander?” John asked. “What are we waiting for?”
The soldiers stepped forward through the fire, the flashlights mounted to their rifles giving away their position. Behind them, a curtain of fire raged as the remaining trees burned and a cloud of smoke drifted above their heads. The railguns rattled as the ground shook. A massive charcoal-grey barrel peered over the hill. The hum of its engine could be heard from within the bunker. A tank loaded with a high-explosive round the size of a soldier stared through the peepholes, through the corridor, and into the control room.
John tightened his grip on his bow, his eyes fixed on the barrel pointed at him. “Commander…”
“All troops! Disperse to the East and We-”
Boom!