part0031

Blood pooled on the packed dirt of the alleyway and in the shattered doorway that led into the apartment building where McNutt’s team was deployed. The alley was quiet other than his own breathing and the faint scrape of his boots. He was alone for the moment, except for the dead. The room beyond the doorway was dark. Meyers tried to find somewhere to leap over the corpses of Reyes’s men and into the room, but there was nowhere to land, not with the pieces of the young woman…

He looked away and sucked in a breath of his armor’s stale, recycled air. That probably saved his life.

More of Reyes’s men stood at the end of the alley, one already aiming.

Meyers dropped onto the corpses and lay flat as automatic fire—still loud despite his helmet muting the sounds—filled the alleyway. Bullets tore into the dirt, the walls, and the dead flesh around him. His left foot bounced off the ground, and a burning sensation shot through his heel. One of the bullets must have caught him in the heel, he realized, penetrated the armor. That wasn’t so bad.

He popped up and fired a short burst into the shooter, dropping him, then twisted and sighted on another, this one running. The runner fired his assault weapon with one arm, and bullets bounced off the alley walls around Meyers. He fired a second burst, and the wounded man went to the ground, his gun arm hanging limp, muscle and flesh blooming from his biceps.

The rest of the men were gone, back west, out of sight.

Meyers checked himself. He was covered with blood, but only what was escaping the heel section was his. He got to his good foot and hopped through the corpses, into the young woman’s ruins.

Outside, the wounded gunman screamed. Meyers leaned against the doorframe, saw the man getting awkwardly to his feet. Meyers sent a single round into the man’s head.

Glass shattered, and Meyers realized there were small windows on the room’s south wall. Reyes’s men were there, firing, cursing. Bullets crashed into the ceiling and off to his right, high along the north wall.

Meyers swapped in a fresh magazine and hopped through the room, getting comfortable with what the ultraviolet imagery revealed. The room was longer than it was deep, with big sinks mounted to the west wall and tables built into the east wall. Cables ran the length of the ceiling, and three drains ran the length of the center of the floor. There was a door across the room, near the north corner; that was his access to the rest of the building.

He was in a common washing area, now with a burst pipe. Water swirled around the northernmost drain. He crouched and ran across the room, splashing through the water, turning his bloody bootprints runny rather than tacky.

The gunfire continued from the south wall, but it wasn’t a threat. Outside the room, a hallway that ran west. Doors, some open, revealing apartments.

Meyers hobbled down the hallway, pausing at an intersection. An open doorway led into a room. He could make out the base of a set of stairs. He hopped up the stairs, leaning hard on the rail for support. His faceplate opened with a hiss, and he squinted against the lived-in smell of the building. It was dark, the stairwell unlit, the walls not yet punched through.

At the second floor doorway, he leaned into the hallway and called for McNutt.

On to the third floor, the wounded heel aching, he gasped.

Meyers hopped to the third-floor doorway. Gunfire, shouting. “McNutt!”

“Who the hell?” Someone came running, stopping at the corner, barely visible.

“It’s Meyers!”

McNutt’s head poked around the corner. “I thought you were dead.”

“Feels like we’re all on the way. Ramawat cut me out of my own network.”

“He can do that?”

“Someone at the UN gave him the command codes.”

McNutt snorted. “This guy, he’s crazy.” He tapped his helmet. “Took a round off the helmet, or I’d still be telling him to fuck off.”

Meyers couldn’t see any indication of damage to McNutt’s helmet. “Starling said she made you a satchel charge?”

“I think that could take out the proxy.”

Heavy, automatic gunfire roared from the north end of the building, and McNutt dropped into a low crouch. He looked back toward the north. “Keep your chameleon mode going unless I say otherwise. And stay in cover.” He turned back to Meyers. “What’s wrong with your foot?”

“Yeah? Nearly fell when you tried to squat. Scratch do that to ya?” McNutt crawled closer. “Nice. Took off the back of the heel. Wipe away that crud, bet you could see bone.”

“Make a deal with you. Watch over my squad, I’ll get the proxy.”

Meyers shook his head. “The proxy’s mine.”

McNutt banged his head with the heel of his hand. “Christ. That round to the head. Really shook me up. Can’t recall a thing. You said something about a satchel, Colonel?”

“Fine. Last I saw the proxy, it was right next to Waverley’s armored hauler. You get them both, we wrap this mess up and head home for our court martial.”

McNutt chuckled. “Now that’s a deal I can’t pass up.” He jogged out of sight, then returned a few seconds later, the satchel hanging from a shoulder.

“Reyes’s men are crawling all over the place down there.”

“Good. I’m getting tired of killing Waverley’s men.”

“Watch your back.”

McNutt bounded down the steps recklessly, filling the stairwell with echoes. When those echoes were gone, Meyers headed to the north end of the building. The hallways were thick with dust, the floors covered with chunks of the prefab material, the walls punched through with holes. There were fewer corpses, but any corpse was terrible. McNutt had three casualties, but only one of them was out of action. Meyers stopped to check on the man, got a delayed thumbs-up. Meyers recognized the bloody face: Mahali Jasuli. A tough soldier, even as McNutt’s squad went. The wounds were bad, but they didn’t look lethal.

Meyers headed toward the window of an empty apartment. It looked typical for a prefab: one bedroom, probably a bath and kitchenette. He got through the door, saw a mother hugging a baby and infant to her in the southeast corner. There was nothing heavy enough to stop the worst of the munitions being used by the flyers, so he flipped her bed up in front of her, and in front of that he pushed whatever he could—crude furniture, bushels of food, a big pail of water.

His earpiece gave off a strange chime.

“Lonny?” Barlowe sounded even more stressed than the last time they spoke.

Meyers pushed an old entertainment console in front of the rest of the pile. His heel burned from the exertion. “Tell me you can get me back into my own network.”

“Ramawat’s got the command code.”

“Are you saying there’s no back door?” Meyers hopped to the windows on the north wall. Somehow, they were still intact.

“I’m really stretched right now.”

“We’re losing people, Ladell.” He scanned the building fronts and alleyways. There were MARCOS corpses, ERF corpses. Civilian corpses. “Good people.”

Meyers’s system buzzed. There was an anonymous link waiting for him. He selected it, and it took him to one of Turning Point’s relays, where a message was waiting for him. He opened the message.

Meyers copied it. “Ramawat’s code?”

“I don’t know. It was sitting out there, unencrypted. Well, weak-encrypted. It could be a trap.”

“It’s not.” Meyers brought up the interface to the BAS network.

“He’ll know if you get back on the network.”

Ramawat would, Meyers realized. He needed something, but he didn’t want to get into a confrontation. Not yet, not with so much else at stake.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“Okay. Hey, you’ve got a squad on the west side?”

“Sergeant Banh’s.” Meyers wanted to say it wasn’t really his squad anymore.

“They’re getting chewed up. One of their guys is…there’s not much left.”

“They were going to lay down an ambush for the haulers. I heard Ramawat ordered Banh to spread his squad to another building.” As good as Banh was, he wasn’t known for standing up to bad orders. He respected rank too much.

“I’ve warned everyone about Reyes’s men sneaking into the buildings. I’ve got to go.”

Meyers barely noticed Barlowe disconnecting. Already, the puzzle of the BAS hack occupied every thought. Flipping through the interface took several seconds. It was dense if the user needed to get deep into the settings.

Sunlight flashed in the window, and one of the flyers sped past, trailing curls of white smoke, firing its gun at something east of the building. Meyers thought about McNutt, moving through the alleyways and streets. No shared combat data, no one to provide cover fire or watch his flank.

McNutt could handle himself.

Meyers went back to the interface. He was about to abandon the networking configuration when he spotted an option that was ghosted out: Secondary Network. It was how he could have brought the MARCOS team onto the ERF network, if Ramawat had listened, a channel that could adjust to different bandwidths and protocols. It could be used to see into the ERF’s BAS network without actually being seen on it, and since Meyers had the right software and the command code, he could activate the secondary network without giving away his presence.

He brought up the system administration menu, which prompted for his identification, then asked for the command mode to get onto the network. Instead, Meyers selected the manual network selection option and activated the secondary network.

His command interface lit up.

His old BAS network was a layer visible through a window. He closed his faceplate and filled its viewing area with the window, then he drilled down into the network he’d been running earlier.

McNutt’s team showed up in the nearest part of the display, still locked in to the network, feeding their data up to Barlowe and integrating his feed into theirs. Gerhardt’s team was doing the same thing, presenting an image of the north side of Cáceres Road. Only Banh had pulled off the network.

It was the north side of the road that mattered. Banh’s people who were still in the building where they’d started were under heavy fire. The proxy and the flyer patrolling the east side were laying down persistent fire, tearing away large sections of that building’s south wall. An ERF helmet would show up in a window, then it would disappear, and the wall around the window would shatter. The building sagged now, a good third of its lower floor damaged beyond repair.

Meyers thought about Ramawat’s order, to spread out to other buildings. There was some value to it, but the cost was that they wouldn’t have the firepower to deal with the flyers. They should have been moving MARCOS units into the buildings with them, keeping enough firepower to make the maneuver meaningful.

Not only wasn’t Ramawat seeing the ERF and MARCOS forces as combined, he wasn’t seeing them as part of the same operation.

Meyers tried to find McNutt on the display. He showed up as a green wireframe at the back of Gerhardt’s building.

The only way they could take down the proxy was with the satchel charge.

Meyers backed out toward the doorway, stopping long enough to pop open his faceplate and wave to the young mother. “Stay low. Stay behind that cover until this is over.”

She nodded, eyes wide with fear. Meyers wondered how terrible he appeared, blood-covered, heavy armor, gun at the ready. He was probably more of a threat in her eyes than Waverley’s forces.

He hopped into the hallway and down to where he could hear the loudest cursing and gunfire.

“Corporal Chavez!” He shouted over gunfire and hoped Chavez’s audio receptors would pick up the shout.

The gunfire stopped. “Colonel? McNutt said to watch over you, but—”

“I think he’s wounded or pinned down.”

“Hold one.” Chavez was quiet for a few seconds, then he fired his gun again. “Yeah, pinned down. A bunch of Reyes’s men.”

“Tell him I’m on my way.”

“Watch your ass. Sir.”

Meyers chuckled and moved as quickly as he could to the stairs. He got there just as a couple of Reyes’s men exited the stairwell entry. They had their backs to him, looking down the opposite hallway. Meyers put a bullet into the back of the head of the closest one, then switched to short burst and fired through the red mist. All three rounds caught the other man in the chest as he spun around; he fell hard but was still breathing. Meyers paused to finish the second man off, then headed down the stairs.

He found more of Reyes’s men in the common laundry room, apparently killed by McNutt. Meyers swapped out his last full magazine and hopped over to the young woman’s body, looking into the alleyway and listening.

The gunfire was clear now. Rapid, fully automatic bursts from nearby. Wasteful. Sloppy. Barely noticeable beneath that noise: controlled, short bursts from farther away.

Meyers crossed to the southern corner of Gerhardt’s building and braced against it. There were two of Reyes’s men across the packed earth street, hidden in the alleyway, fiddling with their assault rifles. The crashed flyer was between them and their target. They were oblivious. Chattering, laughing.

He waited for another burst of automatic fire, then put a single round into both men.

After confirming it was clear to the west, he popped his head around the corner. Three more of Reyes’s men, standing close to the wrecked flyer, assault rifles raised, posing as if they could kill someone with attitude, firing so that their weapons jumped in their arms.

Meyers dropped to a knee, sighted on the closest, and sent a round into his head. Meyers aimed a little lower on the second, who was turning and trying to rapidly slap a magazine into place. The bullet caught him in the chest, and he fell. Meyers put a round center mass on the final one, who managed to load a fresh magazine before pitching face first into the dirt.

That apparently got the attention of the rest of Reyes’s men. Automatic gunfire roared, and chunks of prefab fell. Meyers pushed back into the alley and waited.

Someone shouted in Spanish, and Meyers thought it might be a flanking order.

Then a CAWS-5 fired, and the shouting stopped. Meyers peeked around the corner, saw one of Reyes’s men staggering around on the packed-earth road, struggling to lift his gun. There were no other gunmen in sight.

Meyers alternately hopped and jogged east until he reached the opposite alleyway. McNutt was pulling himself into a seated position. His armor was dented along the chest and he was bleeding from a couple joints. His faceplate popped up.

“Nice little surprise party,” McNutt said. He jerked a thumb down the alley. “Three of ‘em waiting in that laundry room, a bunch more across the street.”

Meyers glanced down the alleyway. The hum of the proxy’s railgun was clear, so it had to be close. An entire section—rooms—on the second floor of the apartment building across the street gave way, spilling dismembered bodies into the street. Civilians.

“Give me the satchel.”

Instead of arguing, McNutt pulled the strap over his head. Meyers took it.

Meyers tried to open a channel to Barlowe on the secondary network. He accepted.

“Lonny? We’re in a mess up here.”

“I understand. There are two flyers left, and we don’t have the numbers to get clean shots on them. Can one of you fire up some basic bots and hit their systems? Those were junkers. They can’t have sophisticated systems defenses.”

“We really need to focus on Colonel Ramawat’s orders.”

“Ramawat’s going down. When this is over, I’m going to relieve him of command.”

“Shit. Lonny—”

“He’s gotten people killed. Our people. Civilians.”

“Even if you manage to get him relieved, your career—”

“Fuck my career. I need those bots. I’m going after the proxy in a second, and it has a flyer watching over it.”

“I-I’ll see what I can do. I think Becky still has her bots from earlier.”

“Thanks. Signal me when it’s clear to go.”

Barlowe disconnected.

“You sure you want to throw away your career, Colonel?” McNutt looked concerned. “You seem like a career sort of guy.”

Meyers snorted. “I used to be just like you, ready to fight the system, even when I knew it was right. I can’t believe I made it this far.” He owed Rimes for that.

“Well, whoever survives from the ERF side, we’ll testify.”

“Thanks. I’m sure his men will do the same. The UN really screwed this one up.”

Meyers pulled up the BAS command interface and sucked in a deep breath. “Well, here it goes.”

He tapped the network options and switched from the secondary network to the one he’d set up originally, then he changed the command code and degraded Ramawat’s level of access to a basic user level before opening a communication channel to everyone.

“ERF forces, this is Colonel Meyers. I am taking command again. You are to disregard all orders from Colonel Ramawat from this point forward.”

Ramawat sputtered. “Meyers? I demand you cease this foolishness! I will have you up on charges! Your career—”

Meyers muted Ramawat’s connection. “Sergeant Banh, pull your squad back. If you have to, hook up with the MARCOS squad one building east.”

“We are pinned down, Colonel! That quad-railgun—the Leopard hauler—it is tearing out the back of the building. I have two dead, two wounded. Many civilians. The MARCOS are worse.”

“Give ground. We’ll deal with it.”

The signal came from Barlowe. The flyers were being hit with bot attacks.

“Perkins, Gerhardt, I want that east side flyer down. It should be vulnerable.”

“Got it,” Gerhardt said.

“Runnin’ low on ammo, but I can take a shot, Colonel.” Perkins was cool, not like someone conflicted over his job, not anymore.

Meyers got to his feet and moved as quickly as he could toward the end of the alley. The flyer on the east side of the street wobbled down toward the ground and past the alley front, the white smoke coming from its belly thick. High-powered shots rang out, and the clear canopy armor cracked. The pilot twitched, and the copilot slumped. The proxy lurched into view, railgun raised and firing. Meyers pulled the cord on the satchel, counted to three, and lobbed it up high, toward the proxy’s chest, then he dropped to the ground and covered his head.

The world was swallowed by a boom that slid Meyers forward and pressed him down into the dirt of the alley. His armor’s systems squealed and blinked and chirped, and he thought they might fail. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, then tried to focus on the display, which was returning to normal. His audio system was a wreck, but the BAS was adjusting.

Paxton’s voice came from somewhere far away. “Colonel Meyers?”

Meyers looked back at the street, where the proxy was staggering, just like Reyes’s man after McNutt had shot him—dead, but not quite accepting it yet. The proxy’s legs were warped, and each step produced a clicking and whirring sound that coincided with bits of armor and mechanical guts falling off. The gun arm and half the torso were gone, exposing servos and circuitry.

Meyers laughed. “What is it, Master Sergeant?”

“If Banh abandons that building, he’ll take away the only support for a squad of MARCOS that’s really banged up. They won’t make it, not without support.”

The laughter died in Meyers’s throat. He couldn’t leave soldiers to die. “Sergeant Banh, can you get over to that MARCOS squad?”

“We can. The quad-railgun, it has stopped firing. They have all stopped firing.”

Meyers wondered if word of the proxy’s destruction had already reached Reyes’s men. “Be careful, but go. Sergeant Paxton, any idea what Reyes’s haulers are doing? Are they trying to flank—”

A shadow passed over the alley, and Meyers looked up in disbelief. The Dart was close enough overhead that he could make out details along its frame.

“Lonny!” Barlowe sounded panicked. “He’s sending his pilot in for a close sweep! He’s sending us in low! I think it’s to get back at you. I think—”