“You sure about this?”

“No…but what else would I do?”

“Step away from it?”

Iris shook her head.

“Not for me. It doesn’t work like that.”

She stared absentmindedly at a wooden sign nailed to a stake in the damp earth. “Danger: Mines,” it read, the two words sandwiching an anything-but-subtle skull and crossbones. They could talk freely, her and Alis. The brush was thick, and the 42nd weren’t patrolling the area underneath them for obvious reasons.

“But I’m sure you’ve got the chance to pick and choose, right? Like Mrs. Hardridge does.”

“But I have to do what she does. I do or I don’t. But she can’t give the government excuses forever.”

“It won’t always be like that,” Alis suggested. “One day you can make your own decisions.”

“…But what if that means we end up on opposite sides?” Iris muttered, testing the waters with the chilling theory, if only to check she wasn’t crazy. “Mum said that family can fight without being enemies. But I don’t get it,” she admitted.

If they fought, it would be on opposite sides. Whatever that ended up meaning.

“So it’s between a rock and a hard place, then,” Alis concluded, swinging backwards and catching their perch by the inside of his knees. The branch swayed under the movement of his weight. He waited for it to settle, then began to bring his torso up, then down, then up, then down.

“I can’t be much help I guess. Last time I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, I uh…you know the story.”

Busted through a fence, stole military equipment, and sought political asylum.

“But working with ULEF insurgents, I ended up repeating three questions, almost on a daily basis. Say, I saw someone I knew was a soldier in a different branch about to be shot, but I had a package in my suitcase full of intelligence, I’d ask myself, ‘Do I like what’s happening?’ then ‘do I want to stop it?’ and then ‘can I stop it?’”

He hauled himself back onto the tree, using the inside of his brass knuckles to hook himself against the bark.

“What’re the answers?” Iris asked him, her sentence punctuated by the low rumble of Higher Order footsteps spooking birds into a cawing whirlwind—the gurgling anticipation of an incoming skirmish, like a stomach before a feast.

Alis smiled, a small curl at the end of his lips, something mischievous flashing between his eyes. Or perhaps not; it was hard to tell when even he didn’t understand his own expressions. “Why don’t you try to answer them, as if you were in that situation?”

“As if I was…mmh. Fine,” she said combing over each question before circling back to the first. Better to take it one by one.

“I don’t like that it’s happening—”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like Vesmos.”

Alis frowned, bobbing his head side to side. The action gave her pause, but Alis offered her no feedback, so she continued.

“I want to do something about it.”

“Even with the evidence in your briefcase? It’s very valuable,” he explained matter-of-factly, as though the situation was real.

“Yes,” she said, only halfway determined. Iris wasn’t sure if it was his intention, but she felt she was being tested, and had picked two out of three wrong answers.

“And I can do something about it.”

“That one is a given for someone like you, isn’t it? Especially for a situation so small. But even for you, scale that up to, I don’t know, saving a lot more people or destroying a whole city for one reason or another, you’d be more unsure than you already are.”

The little respite from darkness the weak moonlight offered drew a line down Alis’s side profile, glinting gently off his black hair. “There’s variables to all three questions that you have no answer to. Maybe the soldier deserves to be arrested, maybe you don’t want to risk your own skin, maybe you just…can’t do anything about it.”

He glanced at his brass knuckles for a moment, turning them over in the silver light. “All I would’ve known for certain in that situation is that I had something valuable on me that needed to get somewhere, and that lashing out would only put me at risk.”

Hundreds and thousands of times, those three questions must’ve played on a loop.

“And I think, Iris, even though it’s pessimistic of me, that you’ll never know the full picture. Every variable, every person it’ll affect. You only know what’s for certain, and you…have to feel certain that what you’re doing will help you in…one way or another.”

He threw his head back.

“Only you. That’s all I can be certain about, at least. Especially when we're doing something like this.”

Iris watched the boy who couldn’t tell lies as he laid the anxieties of the past three years to bear. The object of her confidence that had once led her against the brunt of Wesper’s fervent passion was now doubting that same confidence. She had acted almost three years ago on the basis that she could do something she wanted to do, save someone she wanted to save, just as he had strived to do for a whole people.

Now, they both sat in a tree, above a field of landmines, waiting for a signal while they convinced themselves that they had the answers to those three questions like a religious zealot had answers to the meaning of life or the world's creation. Absolute faith, unwavering belief, maddening, animalistic drive towards something that they and only they could drive towards.

But they were people. People were supposed to be kinder than that.

“You there Iris?” Her mother’s voice asked through six hundred metres of Aether line, voice distorted to the edge of recognition. Iris picked up the radio receiver with both hands and pressed the transmission button.

“Yeah,” Iris replied, before taking her finger off the button.

“The H.O.A. units are moving into position, they’re starting in five minutes. We should get a head start. Meet me where I told you to.”

“Okay,” Iris replied, slinging the bulky contraption behind her back. She stood up, balancing the branch under the bridge of her feet as she stretched hours of static out of her spine.

“Ready?” Alis asked.

“No,” Iris admitted, and she felt the pause that came after. There’d been better pre-battle pep talks. She could be sure about that.

“If all things go well, we won’t have to lay a finger on anyone.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“And if not?”

“…then leave it to me,” was his final proposal as the crystals along his hand glowed a poisonous purple. “Let’s not keep Mrs. Hardridge waiting.”

“Delta one to Delta line, thirty seconds out. Fix bayonets.”

“Fixing bayonet,” Delta Three confirmed, flicking one of many dull silver switches along their right control board. The pistons and steel cables running along the machine’s arms worked automatically, operating by premeasured distances to fix the torso-length blade to the end of the rifle.

The metal box was already getting stuffy. Delta Three leaned closer to the fan perched on the dashboard, unbuttoning their top buttons as they peered through the rectangular peephole. Inside the sealed cabin of their H.O.A. unit, watching the silent forest lit only by slivers of moonlight reminded them of a silent film.

Only the low whir of the fan as their team lead counted down each second. Delta Three regretted asking for seconds. The steel frame and cables around their waist almost felt tight.

They squinted, trying to decipher the collection of silhouettes beyond the metal fence.

Delta three brought the wooden stand-in rifle to their eye as the movement tugged on the cables running down their arm. The pistons stirred, the gears creaked against the weight of each other, and the real thing, orders of magnitude larger, copied their movement.

The silhouettes stirred through the sights of Delta Three’s rifle.

“Floodlights.”

The entire unit’s floodlights—mounted to the top of their chassis—struck the scene before them. Trees, trees, underbrush, a metal fence drawing a straight line through a fluid forest, and beyond that a wall of equally monstrous inventions that belonged nowhere near such pristine ground.

“Police! Drop your weapons!” the team lead demanded over their speakers, and a silent moment, no longer than half a second, was enough for Delta Three to choke on their own spit.

The enemy turned their guns towards them.

“Open fire! Open fire!”

Delta Three depressed the trigger, watching the colossal rifle outside their peephole slam its trigger and eject shell casings the size of buckets. The rounds thundered, seven semi-automatic rifles joining into a single racket, tearing through the trees, underbrush, and fence with no bias or prejudice.

Two or three enemy units fell immediately, the surprise attack worked as Delta’s rounds made target. The several remaining returned fire, the more accurate movement arrays and faster rifles making equally as short work of the tree line. One Delta unit took a round, although Delta three couldn’t see where, nor how damaging the hit had been, only that there’d been a metal crunch somewhere to their left.

“Disperse,” the team lead ordered, and Delta three shut off their floodlights, redirecting power to smaller headlights under the chassis, illuminating the ground. Delta three pressed their feet against the pedals, keeping their chassis as low to the ground as a H.O.A. could possibly manage while hostile rounds whizzed through the forest, clearing it at random of life and cover.

“Delta One to TOC, Delta One to TOC, subjects are non-compliant at this time. Several suspects K.I.A., one officer downed, over.”

“This is TOC to Delta line, copy. Secure the area; don’t count on surrenders.”

Delta Three moved their set paces to their second mark, knocking down trees with their bayonet like a jungle machete. Pausing, they kept an eye on their illuminated compass and turned back towards the outpost’s fence line.

“Delta Three, in position.” Similar reports filtered in from every unit until the radio fell silent once again. Sirens wailed as distant cannon fire peppered the night’s soundscape.

“Delta One to all units. Hold positions.”

Silence again. No splitting tree trunks or flattening underbrush; their enemy wouldn’t follow them into the forest and forfeit their defensive advantage. But with no guarantee of overwhelming firepower, the opposite in fact, Delta had to play asymmetrically.

“Delta two, nine-banger. On my mark.”

Soft whirring. A brief rustle.

“Throw it.”

Delta Three heard the unmistakable metallic ping of a pin being pulled. They brought down the shutter over their peephole as a loud crack rang through the air and bounced across the walls of their metal cabin. They opened their shutters again and watched the embers of the flashbang slowly die.

“Delta four, flare.”

The crackling, red spark bloomed midair and landed at the foot of the war-torn fence, casting red silhouettes against the stunned enemy forces.

“Open fire.”

Delta Three squeezed the trigger, aiming squarely at a stumbling silhouette and hitting their chassis off-centre mass. Not enough to take out the pilot, as the unit collapsed onto its left side, still firing from its right wildly into the night. Another stray round caught it squarely in the pilot’s seat.

More rounds took out more enemy units, until the stun grenade’s effects began to wane, and return fire grew in intensity. Delta Three kept low to the ground, catching glancing rounds, some ricocheting off the forward-facing armour, others taking healthy chunks from the steel.

The firefight continued, Delta line dealing with most of the stunned line before the stragglers fully recovered. Even then, the concentrated fire was hard to beat.

“Delta line to TOC, area secure, moving through fence line to secure next front, over.”

“This is TOC to Delta line, copy. Beware heavy resistance, over.”

“Copy. Over and out. Let’s move.”

Delta line advanced, trampling logs into mulch under their underslung headlights. Delta three flicked another switch on their control panel three stops down, and the preprogrammed wiring took over, steel tendons pulling the offhand around the unit’s chassis to the ammo dispensary bolted to its back. A fresh magazine circled around and into the rifle cannon before the other hand drove the bolt home in time for Delta Three to raise their bayonet and slice through the wasted metal mesh.

They climbed over the fence onto yet more grass, although they were saved from traversing through thick forestry. The battle raged fiercer a hundred metres northwest, but opening fire now wouldn’t do them much good. The immediate area before them was choked with floodlights, vehicles, tents and supplies, and the larger Alpha and Bravo lines were doing well to keep enemy attention squarely away from Charlie and Delta. If not by outright concealing them, then by posing enough of a threat that the enemy couldn’t afford to look away.

Delta line followed the shadows single file and rifles raised, their footsteps concealed by the cacophony along the Alpha and Bravo lines. Heavy losses, at least on the enemy’s side. Crumpled machines lay face down against the forest floor next to piles of smouldering metal, the genesis of a black column of gunpowder smoke all going up at once. These were veteran companies, however, and in a full-frontal battle, Delta Three could only imagine the Alpha and Beta lines to be fairing much worse.

No 42nd. Likely still in the bunkers, waiting for the infantry assault.

“Delta line, hold.”

To their west, a battlefield, to their north, the tops of artillery turrets dug into the same hill that housed the facility itself. Delta was made up of police units, but one didn’t need to be a military strategist to know that taking the high ground was never a bad idea.

Delta three watched as Charlie line all but sprinted towards the bunker opening, firing upon the units, by the bunker entrance. Rounds flew, some glancing, others hitting their mark.

“Move.”

Delta line advanced for the hilltop, Delta three somehow tearing their line of sight away from the raging battle and for the dark shape silhouetted against a blank night sky.

Left and right, the dirt got firmer under the sheer tonnage with each step.

Then the view before Delta three flashed, and steel being shorn apart by sheer force stung their ears.

“Shit. Delta two to TOC, Delta one’s hit a mine! Officer downed, over.”

“TOC to Delta two. Copy. Delta Two assume line command. Hold position and assist Charlie line.”

“Copy TOC. You heard him.”

Loud and clear.

Delta three raised their rifle and squeezed, the bolt slamming against the retriever like chalk against a blackboard tallying up casualties. The enemy squad was down, but they’d taken most of Charlie line down with them, more than half of which were in varying states of immobility. Delta three turned their attention to the remnants of Alpha and Beta, the main enemy force having pushed them back past the tree line.

“Keep it coming boys,” Delta Two commanded as Delta Three inserted a new magazine. Delta Three kept his rifle level even as they drew the attention of the main enemy force. Return fire peppered the air around them, and sounds of grinding, tearing, and snapping metal became a commonality.

“Delta Two to TOC, we cannot hold our position much longer, over!”

Delta three watched the remaining units of Charlie line cover their demolitionist as they rigged up the blast doors with explosives.

A round tore through Delta three’s chassis, taking with it the top-left corner, the floodlights, and the top hatch.

“This is TOC to Delta two, guided Bowbeak overhead. Flare your location over.”

“Delta two to TOC, fifty metres south of our position on the bunker hill! Danger close! Just blow them up I don’t care what you do it with!”

Delta Two ripped a flare from its ammo cache, hurling it towards the advancing line of enemy armour.

“Copy Delta two. On your mark.”

“Send it!”

The seaplane so thick its hull might as well have been torn straight off the Citadel’s bow had mounted cannons Delta three could only dream of. The real thing was nothing if not the stuff of nightmares.

A ghastly whizz as a cloud of dust and shrapnel exploded as though the air itself had combusted like dynamite, the force alone toppling several units while the shards of metal made mince meat of whatever stood close enough, armour and vehicles alike.

Another explosion—much closer—rocked the ground underneath Delta Three’s mechanical feet. They stole a glance from their target to watch Charlie line retreat under heavy fire.

Thunk. The sound, too loud for their ears to register without bleeding, was followed by a rush of cold air and the sensation of their leather harness digging into their chest as they were thrown backwards.

Close air support thundered against the ground next to Delta three’s ear, thundering war drums announcing the next stage of the battle to come.