The Gen-Three Achilles powered armorsuit came equipped with many features designed to keep its user alive. Aside from protection against violent external threats, it also warded off dehydration and starvation with its built-in refreshment system. It consisted of a hyper-fast water filter attached to a pre-loaded tank of ten liters of water, a urine separator, and a helmet-rigged condensation catcher. For energy, soldiers were given thirty-kilogram field packs filled with a nutrient-rich gel. The stuff was reddish-brown, chewy, and always lukewarm; it tasted like someone blended fruit preserves and fatty meat with glue. In reality, the formula was cooked up by WorldGov scientists to be the most macronutrient-and-energy-dense non-dehydrated substance in the galaxy.
The Achilles suit could theoretically keep a soldier alive for months, assuming the water filtration kept functioning that whole time. Nic and Everett only needed it for a short while. “Not far now,” said Nic. “Make sure to stay hydrated.”
A quiet beat. “I drank some,” said Everett sheepishly.
“Good.” Their channel was silent save for their breathing and the slight whirring of their suits, which got quieter with each new generation of the Achilles line of armor. “I still can’t get through to Reeve or Welch. No feedback, just silence.”
“Same here. You don’t think something bad happened, do you?”
Think, no, Nic thought. Worry... Fear... Wonder... Imagine... I can’t help it. “No. One Seed and a few Eggs is not enough to cripple an operation of our size. But there’s no telling how much damage we sustained until we get back.”
“Hm.” The wind seemed permanently removed from Everett’s sails. Nic knew that losing a squadmate could do that to a soldier, and he didn’t envy his subordinate for the path he was on now. “Wish he was here. He’s not such a bad traveling companion, you know? When he’s not thinking about the mission, I mean.”
Still using the present tense. Poor kid. “I know.”
Hours of hearing the same sounds at a low volume blended them all into an auditory mush of background noise. It created a sense of long, uninterrupted quiet, to the point that if one of them spoke up at a conversational level, it was as startlingly loud as a yell. Nic had long run out of small talk to spin into drawn-out conversations. He was exhausted. Sore. A fresh trauma haunted his mind—and it did nothing to help his mounting dread when he thought of the fates of his friends. Of Perri.
I can’t do this again. Please... Please don’t make me do this again.
***
When they finally returned to the shallow valley that contained the Proxima Manufacturing weapons facility and adjoining Red Base, it was not the uneventful scene Nic had hoped to find.
Turrets and rocket launchers lay strewn around the perimeter, some of them heavily damaged, others merely abandoned. Among the sea of Hexadian dead—Fodders, Commanders, and Sharpshooters mostly—there were a few slain Red Battalion soldiers. Nic’s heart leaped into his throat.
Nic snapped his eyes shut. “RTIFIS,” he said in a private voice input channel so that Everett couldn’t hear. “Blur friendly casualties for Scarlet One and Brick Two.”
And those people still needed help.
Crimson Three. Barn Five. Garnet Five. Carmine One. Carmine Two. Their squad designations were still displayed as tracking overlays—there was no setting to turn off this function, for safety and mission security. Nic felt deeply, selfishly grateful not to see the squad name Scarlet among the dead.
“God,” Everett sighed. “How many did they get?”
“Can’t know for sure until it’s over,” Nic replied. Their calm conversation belied the speed at which their armorsuits hurtled across the battlefield. The Scarlet squad leader was about to give a battle plan when their general comms channel reopened.
“All... -talion squads, procee-… -ed Base immediately,” said the voice of Lieutenant Welch. It was garbled, sans the feedback this time. Their interference must be wearing off, Nic guessed. “Engage on sight! I repeat. All Red Battalion s-… -ceed to Red Base immediately. Engage on si-…”
“A recording,” said Nic.
“Damn, you’re right,” Everett said reverently, apparently in awe of Nic’s sage deduction. “Does that mean he’s—?”
“Fighting.” Nic swallowed. If he’s dead, it doesn’t bode well for anyone else. He has to be alive still. “It means he’s fighting and doesn’t have time to keep repeating the same message.”
“That makes sense.”
Even if he is still alive, it’s got to be ugly in there if the perimeter guards and choke-pointers are dead or nowhere to be found. We have to pray we’re not walking right into an acid bomb trap. He was afraid to ask—afraid to throw that possibility out there into the universe, lest he receive the answer he feared most... none at all. I have to try. “This is Scarlet One and Brick Two,” he said into the open comms channel. “Closing in on Proxima Manufacturing. The rest of my strike team is MIA—”
“Nereus formations on the main floor!” a voice barked back at him. “Scarlet One, this is Welch speaking. Nereus formations on the main floor—whole swarm of ‘em. Locked in a firefight... as we speak! Flank ‘em! It’s just the advantage we need!”
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“Sir—”
“If that bomb goes off, this mission is FUBAR!” It felt like Welch had read his mind, seen and heard all of Nic’s misgivings already. “We’re holdin’ out as long as we can. Get here, soldier! Now!”
Just as the lieutenant shouted his order, Nic and Everett crossed the threshold of the weapons factory. Their armorsuits trotted to a jarring stop that made Nic’s head spin. He held his Submachine Gun at the ready and stalked manually into the factory’s front atrium and toward the sounds of war.
“This way,” Nic whispered. He led Everett down the darkened, narrow hallway to the factory proper, a section they’d all seen a few times in FTX but not for very long. They never counted on the battle reaching such a dire stage. “Hostiles ahead! Scarlet One and Brick Two engaging now!”
The hallway light was out, but the lights over the main factory floor were still operational. Nic and his comrade emerged from the shadows with their guns blazing. Bullets tore through startled Commanders and rabid Fodders alike. A Sharpshooter launched a spike that hit Nic’s helmet so hard he turned his head for a split second, but it never broke the armor.
“Nic,” Everett grunted. He paused firing, letting his wounded hand hang limply at the wrist. “I... I need cover! The pain—”
“Fight through it!” Nic yelled. He reloaded his final clip into Submachine Gun. “Goddammit, Everett, we are making it out of this alive! Fight through the pain! This is your life! This is all our lives!” Nic’s last clip was already spent taking out the last Sharpshooter in his line of sight; all that remained were Fodders.
Everett let out a loud, agonized, jagged battle cry as he, too, emptied his last rounds into the Fodders that were now barreling down the hallway. He neutralized their attackers... but there were more waiting for them on the factory floor. Watching with their bulging black eyes. Waiting.
“We’re both out,” Everett breathed. “We’re out! What now?”
Nic panted, drawing the Combat Knife from his ammo belt. In all his missions so far in the Contact War, he hadn’t had an opportunity to use it... until now. It was all he had left. “We’re still breathing. That’s good enough for me. Let’s go!”
Nic broke out into a sprint at High Speed, his elbow banging violently against the hallway wall, astrosteel-on-astrosteel tearing a line of orange sparks as he went. The Fodders charged at him and he refused to flinch. His own battle cry was unending; every time he took a breath, he was back to screaming, visions of old Earth warriors with war paint and spears dancing in his mind.
He didn’t know if the Hexadians could even hear his audio output. He didn’t care. His knife plunged into their cranial lobes, cut through the membranes still sealed protectively over their mouths. Dead aliens fell in his wake and he went to make more of them.
Encouragement—a flash of red in a sea of yellow, gray, and blue. Red Battalion! Nic thought hopefully. A second later, the ugly, grimacing face of a Commander roared mere centimeters from his face. His heart jumped again.
Nic drove his knife into the tall alien’s head, dropping his victim instantly, but there were more where that came from. His blade was slick with blue Hex blood and already losing some of its edge. He kept on swinging.
Got another one, he thought as one of the muscled gray monsters went down, but he lost his grip on the weapon when one of its counterparts kicked him in the chest. Nic stumbled backward. Only the powered responsiveness of his suit prevented him from falling onto his back. Still, he was now completely unarmed against the Hexadian uber-alien, the unmatched intersection of brawn and brain.
The Commander swung at his head—missed. A punch to Nic’s gut met its mark, but the reactive impact foam absorbed the blow. No damage. Nic kicked the creature and missed, and with this move, he was too slow to take back the opening he’d given his opponent. The Commander latched on to his right leg and threw him onto his back for good this time, stomping on his breastplate to hold him down.
Dammit, Nic thought. Fistfight with a Commander... and I’m on my back. This is not good!
The battle raged all around him. He heard Everett’s yell through the comms channel. There were others, though, too—too loud and scattered for him to pick out anyone by voice. Fodders snarled like rabid animals as they pounced on their prey and were slaughtered in droves.
I will not go down like this. He took one last deep breath. He thought of Perri. Team Scarlet. Shanti. He thought of Magister Dana. Principal Ferenc. His mother. He wondered what his father would think of him in this moment, if he ever knew the fate of his son. But if I do... it won’t be quietly.
The Commander took a swipe across his visor—hard enough to turn his head, but no damage was dealt. It reached for his neck joint next. He grabbed the alien’s wrists, squeezing with all his might, until he felt something break. His attacker recoiled, gnashing its teeth.
“Come on,” he taunted the alien. It bared its fangs, chuffing, still holding him down with one powerful leg. “I said come on! Do something!” The alien unhinged its jaw and roared with terrifying lung capacity. “DO IT! DO IT, YOU BASTARD! LET’S—”
The Commander lunged down at him, breaking its footing, and Nic kicked it back in response. The alien’s strength matched against that of his suit—a stalemate for now. Nic tried to shake it off and the monster, meanwhile, held onto his leg with all its might, as if to rip it off. In the next instant, it flashed its claws and dug into the thin slit of feedback suit behind his right knee, severing the ligament in one fierce swipe.
“GAAAHHHH!” Nic shrieked in pain. In the struggle, he bit down on his lower lip until he tasted iron. He spat his own blood against the inside of his visor. The alien stood. Nic saw his opportunity to stand, if he could manage it with one leg. “You’re gonna... have to do better—”
The next instant, the Commander’s eyes and jaw gaped even wider. It stopped moving. Then it slumped over beside him, dead... a knife stuck in its left cranial lobe. Another member of Red Battalion had come to the rescue. He did a double-take to confirm the holographic ID tag he saw floating above the soldier’s head.
>SCARLET 3<
Perri reclaimed her blade—and handed Nic’s back to him.
Endorphins and painkillers had started to dull the injury to his ligament. It was still agony to stand. He did it anyway. In one motion, he embraced Perri, pulling her aside as if to shield her from the battle.
“Jarek and Max—”
“They’re alive,” she cut him off gently. “They’re safe. Bomb’s already been neutralized.”
“Red Battalion! The factory—”
“Nic. It’s over.” She returned his embrace. “It’s over.”
The quiet around him was deafening, like the sudden hush that descended when transitioning from atmosphere to vacuum. He had an excess of survival endorphins and nothing to do with them. “It’s over,” he echoed.
“Kincaid? Joyce? Allison?” Everett asked. “What about them?”
Perri was saying something that faded into the roaring noiselessness in Nic’s ears. The silence was vast, all-consuming. It started to sound like the ocean.
And then the pain found him again.