Ratcatcher looked at a small screen to see how the small ship took her all the way to a huge steel and stone megacomplex on a remote island between the capital and one of the orbital elevators. Two rivers flowed into the massive lake that surrounded the island. The lake’s waters were truly pristine, a small detachment of nanomachines removed every trace of dirt or possible pollution from its almost transparent waters, which allowed any weary traveler to see shoals of fish lazily swimming within.
The complex itself stretched from one side of the island to another. Years of hard work turned this remote patch of land into a square-shaped foundation that held numerous tasteless pillars of steel proudly rising up. Like a flower’s petals, they hid a gravity catapult, the fastest means of getting from the planet to orbit, from prying eyes. There were no windows, for Artificer had no need for them. If one of his guests would have liked to see outside, the Elite always turned on a hologram that showed the surrounding area with perfect accuracy, all the way down to the smells.
No bridge connected the island to the mainland. All visitors arrived here either via air or across the energy shield. The lake’s waters weren’t exactly deep, and occasionally some curious kids or even fame-hungry adults tried to swim and reach the island. Some even brought with themselves hooks and ropes needed to climb perfectly smooth stone walls, only to be picked up by the drones. At first, Artificer simply sent off all intruders straight to the police, but soon enough he came up with a far more devious plan. Ratcatcher saw this very plan in action back when she and the rest of her group arrived here for power armor training. The Elite took his unexpected ‘guests’ for a tour across what he called a ‘public area,’ explaining every single detail in the most boring and pedantic manner possible, leading to the ‘intruders’ pleading to be let out of this hell.
Passing by the twin gigantic rails stretching to the sky, Ratcatcher felt a tingle of excitement. The gravity catapult! She saw how green lighting passed from one titanic rail to another, followed by a trembling as a ball of steel charged upward, disappearing in the skies far faster than the Ratcatcher’s pod cameras could trace it. The explosion of the broken sound barrier came later, stopping dead against the building’s walls. Someone just went to the moon! Or maybe this pod carried just supplies…
The gravity catapult worked by speeding up a ball-shaped pod with crew and materials inside, propelling it all the way upward at such a speed that should someone appear on the pod’s outer shell, he or she would be immediately atomized. From here, a select few explorators went to the moon in three waves, intending to reclaim it.
In the past, people colonized the moon and built many cities all over the dead, pale planet. Underground and surface cities, greenhouses, meat production facilities, cloning facilities, solar generators, ion generators, research laboratories, prestigious hotels, towering skyscrapers… Humanity hollowed out the moon, building a capital in the planet’s belly. Most of the planet’s elite went to live in luxurious cities on the Moon, slowly making plans to move up to the red planet. At the time of the Extinction, five billion souls perished almost in an instant, wiped out by the fire from the planet, by their own automated security forces, or by viruses that flushed out all oxygen into space. Now ruins covered the moon’s surface, the defensive installation no longer shot down meteors, the orbital stations fell, and for a while, death reigned supreme on the planet. A gigantic necropolis to commemorate the monumental efforts of countless millions.
No more. Humans came back, and the moment the first leg stepped on the half-ruined streets of a former capital city, something changed. Ancient factories came back online. Displays flashed anew, powered up by self-sustained energy generators hidden deep below. Assembly lines started pumping out long-forgotten designs and fixing their damaged legions. The defensive system, corrupted by viruses, has found new targets for its soulless wrath.
The first wave of eight hundred explorators was met with a fierce resistance of maddened VI robots. In the ensuing battle, the majority of the explorators died, but they were a stubborn bunch. The people retreated to the landing position, making one last stand and warning Iterna. At first, Eugenia opened a massive portal, allowing some people to escape. Soon after the machines caught up on this, they activated their own device that rendered the Moon inaccessible via any spatial manipulation. To escape this deadly rock, people had to take a lift off to the moon’s orbit and either get picked up by Iterna’s spaceship or by Eugenia’s portals. Considering that ancient ground-to-space defensive installations came back online, only the bravest or most desperate dared to try this method. For all intents and purposes, the moon was a one-way trip.
The second wave came, with two thousand people sent into space by Artificer, along with a barrage of rail guns across Iterna, shredding the advancing steel army and saving few survivors. These men and women fought for almost a year, hastily repairing half-working life-support systems, clawing out a secure settlement for themselves, venturing out only to grab supply packages sent from the planet. And finally, the third wave came. Launched from almost all spaceports in Iterna, the third wave was composed of more than just the explorators. Military personnel, scientists, Vis, engineers, and even some adrenaline-hungry mercenaries came along. Twenty-five thousand people arrived at once and finally turned the tide of battle, claiming an unspoiled observatory for themselves. Even now they were there, fighting, struggling, and refusing to back down in the face of inhumanly hard odds.
Ratcatcher hoped to join them someday. The ones who were present at the moon right now were mostly adrenaline junkies, people who never cared about escaping back to the planet to begin with. Ratcatcher’s kind of people. She wanted to be with them, to face hordes of unambiguously evil creatures, to face lifeless steel, and to never have a single worry about harming a living being.
All her requests were denied. The government mandated that only certain people could venture there. You either had to be the best of the best in your field or over eighty years old to volunteer. Too many young explorators from the first and second waves had failed to endure the strain of danger, taking their lives. The elderly generation, on average, handled themselves way better. The government even refused to allow the Elites to go to the moon anymore after the Lightbringer and Redeemer nearly died in an ambush on the moon’s surface.
The display blinked and turned black, indicating that Ratcatcher has arrived at her destination. The door of her flying pod opened, and the woman jumped out, looking around to see if anyone had changed since her internship. Nope, everything was the same bland, featureless kingdom of metal. She stood on the roof of the building located near the island’s edge, safely protected from any shockwaves and wings by an energy shield that covered the place. Out of curiosity, she walked around.
Yep, it felt really nostalgic. Here, on this very roof, she first tried on her power armor, finding it to be a bit tight on her left side, earning herself a bit of flack from her classmates, who were worried about looking stupid before the Elite. Artificer told the students to shut up and use this as a training opportunity. All together, they had adjusted the armor and rather easily passed the trials against the training bots… In hindsight, knowing how to adjust a complicated piece of equipment to your size helped a lot. And then she got a bit too excited and fell off the building. But hey, they passed, and that’s all that mattered.
“If you are finished partaking in nostalgia, use the lift already,” Artificer’s voice sounded all around her.
“Yes, sir!” She walked toward the entrance, taking a ride deep inside the building.
The elevator took her to the recreation area, a greenhouse that instructor Lada had built so that she could bring plants from the Old World back to life and help them adjust to the new world. A net of walkways spread across a vast hall, with dozens of various glass domes beneath, each representing its own biome and its own temperature. Back in the day, Lada tested new terraforming techniques here, introducing glow and radiation to the plants before bringing in some upgrades of her own. Now, these domes served purely for relaxation purposes.
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Out of curiosity, Ratcatcher looked down, finding a dome in which she and the others worked in their spare time. Trees planted by them have grown up into quite nice-looking birches, slightly swaying in the artificial wind. A white-painted drone flew up, examining the woman through a single blue lens.
“Greetings, instructor.” She saluted the machine.
“Elisa, it’s been too long,” Like the calming murmur of a river, the words flowed from the drone, chastising the woman. “You haven’t called, only come when a job calls…”
“Well, this is a fat lie!” The explorator laughed, grabbing the mancatcher with her tail, and hugging the drone. “I’ve congratulated you on your birthdays, haven’t I? And certain someone didn’t even send me a message when mine happened.”
“Oh, dear, I totally forgot!” The drone’s dynamic perfectly mimicked a gasp. “My mistake. We have a lot on our hands right now, I have to babysit a few people, Yagore is on fire…”
“It’s always on fire.” Yagore, the sole reclaimed city on the moon, had been under a constant siege for twenty-four hours a day. Ratcatcher found it weird hearing about it right now, “Or is it worse this time?”
“Nothing you should concern yourself with.” The drone broke away from her hands. “Hurry on, don’t keep Arty waiting for too long. And good luck with your mission and congratulations on your birthday!”
It took her a good five minutes to reach the meeting chambers. Artificer’s base was a maze of interconnecting corridors, meant to stall whatever invader was bold enough to sneak in. The walls were bland and devoid of any features, the AI that ran this place valued efficiency far more than beauty. This same approach left a mark on the VIs, who guarded this place. Where their brothers and sisters who worked in Iterna had their frames sculptured after majestic angels, the Vis here used frames that looked like multi-legged insects, lithe and elongated, capable of an impressive speed in every combat.
When one of them greeted a new person with a perfectly normal voice while waving horrifying sickles the size of their torsos as arms, it was shocking for everyone, including Ratcatcher. And she knew most of them! This facility had one thousand twenty-eight sentient guards, and she managed to get to know the name of everyone she met, learning their quirks along the way. Some Vis preferred to paint their frames into a tapestry of toxic-looking paintings, some prefer to keep a cold and machine-like attitude, some liked to gamble with humans, and some even liked to cook. Lada’s children took a lot after her, each forming their own unique personalities.
Two of the guards escorted her through a newly built corridor to her destination before gracefully bowing out. A semi-oval room, decorated with pots of flowers around the room’s edges and paintings of various ships that once sailed across the waters. Three doors led to the room. A large table stood in the middle, with several people sitting around it and enjoying tasty-smelling food.
Augustus sat at the head of the table, as he always did, and carefully read something on his square-shaped portable terminal. A brown carapace armor covered the man from neck to toe. His gauntlets and helmet lay on the table, while his sabers rested in the sheaths behind his back. Next to him sat an ashen-haired, pretty-looking woman, dressed in the standard uniform of a field medic, a gray camouflage cowl coat with a green crest on both arms. Lastly, there was a smiling youth, looking around twenty years old at best. Both of his green eyes gleamed like new-born stars, making Ratcatcher think the youth clearly paid doctors to have them tinker with his eyes.
Oh, don’t be a bigot, maybe he is also abnormal! She chastised herself, looking him over briefly. The young man had two laser pistols at his belt, an interesting choice to use in an overheated region. Like her, he too had a blue-colored power armor composed of nanomachines that left only his head and neck free.
“Greetings, everyone!” Ratcatcher jumped to the nearest seat, still holding her mancatcher with her tail. Reaching across the table, she shook hands with the woman and youth, nodding to Augustus. “Name’s Ratcatcher…”
“Her name is Elisa Vong,” Augustus corrected her in a bored tone.
“Dearest Augustus already knows me. What are your names, friends?” Undaunted, Ratcatcher flashed a smile to both people, feeling glad that the youth shook her paw without hesitation.
“Call me Smar,” the woman returned the smile, “Nice to meet you, Ratcatcher.” The woman quickly looked aside, gulping down strawberries as if her life depended on it.
“And I am Elirob.” The young man stood up, making a courtly bow. “It is a pleasure to meet with someone of your rank.”
“Oh, please, I am just a regular explorator!” The explorator laughed back, gaining a serious look in a moment. “Are these custom-made laser pistols or something?
“No, just regular army models.” The man took one out to show Ratcatcher.
“Then I suggest you change them for something else, Elirob.”
“But why?” The young man scratched his blonde hair, looking at the weapon.
“The regular models are not meant for prolonged use in areas like the Desolation or Ravaged Lands. They simply overheat and go broken in a matter of minutes of continued use. Now I am not sure if we will have to get engaged in combat…”
“We will,” Augustus cut her off again. “Not to mention their complicated design makes it harder to get them repaired. I planned to point it out when the entire team assembles. Worry not, mister Elirob, we all made our mistakes in preparation for our first missions.” His eyes found Ratcatcher.
He will never allow me to forget that damn swamp! She shook her shoulders: “You picked up the pistols because of the lack of recoil?”
“No, because it is easy to reload them. I can match the recoil just fine.”
“Then the answer is simple! Pick up an armor-piercing SMG from Artificer’s armory. I recommend Piercer-Q8. The thing has both laser sight and ordinary scope, one hundred and eighty bullets per magazine, and an optimal range from zero meters to two kilometers,” Ratcatcher started explaining, noticing that August kept his silence. For now, their leader has agreed with her. “Each bullet flies at over 800 meters per second, meaning that those pesky speedy types of abnormals will have a hard time weaving around it. Plus, our armors can endure the shots. Just don’t shoot at Smar, her coat…”
“Is custom made,” The woman smiled shyly. “Artificer assured me it can endure a tank’s shell, but the impact will probably break me in two.”
“Duly noted, but still avoid hitting her, no need for bruises. The beauty also has a bayonet to help you in close pitch. In short, you can’t really go wrong with something that works just fine at most distances.”
“This is a valuable insight, thank you, miss Elisa.” The man put the weapon back and walked away from the table.
“Name’s Ratcatcher, if you forgot! Where are you going? If I offended you or something…”
“Oh no, nothing of sorts,” He assured her. “I already met the full team, and it is high time for me to check on our transport. I may as well pick up the right weapon.”
Ratcatcher followed him with a look, noticing the ease with which he moved in his power armor. He didn’t give the impression of a rookie, and surely Artificer would never pick a novice for this mission, so why would he choose such an obviously wrong weapon? Leaving the question for later, she turned to Smar.
“Is it my face or something?”
“What?” The woman blinked.
“You. You look shy. Nervous even.” Ratcatcher sniffed the air, trying to guess the woman’s mood. She looked genuinely shocked at the accusation. “Just say the word if my fangs are scaring you.”
“It’s not like this. I…” The woman threw a strand of hair off her face and took a breath. “I am not a military person like you. My involvement is necessary, but I am a bit freaked out right now. I’ve never left Iterna in my life, you see.”
“Have no fear, the explorators are here!” Ratcatcher moved her chair, grabbing the woman in a hug. “Augustus and I will keep you safe from any harm. Right, Augustus?”
“Piss off, Elisa, I am working.” He took a sip of coffee.
“See, he also thinks so. Who else is on our team?”
“Two more will join us in the Desolation.” Augustus put aside the terminal, looking at her for the first time. “Local guides. And the last one should be here at any moment.”
A hiss of opening doors caught Ratcatcher’s attention. A very strange, abnormal stepped inside. The being wore black pants and a towel around her neck. A thick, black fur with brown stripes covered the being’s slightly hunched-forward body. The right paw’s fingers ended with a thick layer of flesh that hid the retracted claws within. Comparing to Ratcatcher’s, the muzzle looked longer and sturdier. The being’s left arm and leg below the knee were replaced with metal, artistically made prosthetics, fully mimicking their organic counterparts aside from fur and claws, which rested above steel fingers. From under the left armpit and all the way down the waist, the metal covered the abnormal’s left side, hiding whatever implant she had for a lung. The left eyelid was utterly devoid of any fur. Hungrily looking around with gleaming amber eyes, the being smiled with a mouth full of fangs.
“Finally. A feasting,” Came an undeniably female voice, and the abnormal shook her body, splashing water all over the room. “Kayleen of the Reclamation Army is asking the pack for permission to join the party.”
“Always welcome.” Ratcatcher responded worryingly, putting the weapon down.
A Wolfkin. And not the one from a more enlightened group, like the Ice Fangs. No. This woman clearly came from the Wolf Tribe, a group of people who served as shock troopers to the Reclamation Army, the rival nation to Iterna.
Why is she here?