A haze hung over the street leading to the Dance Tower. This part of the city was by no means unique; every micrometre of Atsa seemed to be obscured with the smoke left behind by a night of desperate fighting. An unwelcome desert wind reached Sandsa, its wispy voice assuring him that it could make short work of the haze. He shook his head, ignoring it, and focused on his current situation. He and a large group of GLEA agents were about to approach the tower and storm their way into it. The Chippers had already raised their hands and erected a chain of forcefields that coalesced into a long, uninterrupted wall which fell to their feet and rose higher than the tallest agent’s head. It was invisible to the naked eye, but Sandsa could sense it, almost even taste it.
‘Stark, they’ve got a shield generator covering the lower floors,’ a Chipper beside Sandsa sighed. ‘If that wasn’t there, we coulda shot through those levels and toppled the whole starking tower without even getting near it.’
‘That must be a new feature; they did not have it when last I attacked them here,’ Sandsa said, a hand gripping the inferior lasgun that the Chippers had given him. ‘No matter. I’ll find the generator and destroy it for you.’
His companion laughed. ‘Make sure you leave some of the action for me, clansman! But, if you don’t mind,’ he said, suddenly serious, ‘don’t do it until they raise the alarm. There’s a fair few innocent folk who live and work in that building and I’m kind of paid to make sure they don’t get hurt.’
‘It might also help if the people of this city see the Maria trying to save lives instead of viewing us as the head merely replacing the one we lop from the shoulders of the Alcazaar,’ Sandsa noted.
The Chippers began to march their shield wall forward. Their tanks coasted after them, their weapons silent, waiting for a command from Major Injii, the woman in charge. Sandsa stayed in the space between these two lines, watching his purple-clad companions. He missed his clan’s symbol and their favoured black — and he missed one person in particular, missed her so much all he wanted to do was lie beside her, savouring every micrometre of her quivering, creamy skin…
He shook his head and exhaled. Callista had done her duty, so now he must do his.
‘Incoming!’ Major Injii bellowed. She was standing up through the hatch of her chosen tank.
Lasbolts hit the shield wall like a torrential downpour on a small puddle and ozone filled the air, an acrid taste underpinned with a deadly sweetness. This was apparently enough provocation for the Chippers to respond in kind.
The tanks’ lascannons, perched over the top of the shield wall, swung around and took aim. Their low setting caused a slim, non-fatal blast to erupt from the weapons, forcing Alcazaar clanspeople to duck from the upper windows of the tower, where the building’s shield did not extend. Major Injii swore when a returning shot, much wider and thicker and sourer on the tongue, gouged through the air beside her. The Alcazaar weren’t trying to minimise casualties; rather the opposite.
‘They’re using full power in their weapons so watch it!’ Injii warned.
Their march had now brought them barely a block from the tower. Sandsa felt it moments before his companions did — the swarm of Alcazaar-paid Chippers squatting nearby. They were a cold void and a magnet all in one, threatening to pull him down into their depths. He stilled and stared at the flat chrome building that housed them, waiting for the Chippers around him to react.
‘Oh shit,’ an agent in front of Sandsa said.
‘Major Injii!’ Sandsa called up to the woman. ‘Split your forces. If you keep your renegades busy here then some of us can make it to the Dance Tower.’
‘Sounds good to me!’ was Injii’s answer.
Half the line of agents peeled away, taking their forcefields with them; the invisible wall snapped into two directions, like a rubber band stretched to breaking point. A hot, heavy blast left the tower and screamed towards the gap forming between the two groups, heading for an exposed tank. At the last moment, it obeyed Sandsa’s mental command and veered off, shredding the road and causing a hovercar parked nearby to explode.
One Chipper whistled loudly. ‘You make it look so easy, clansman!’
‘His name is Bolt, is it any wonder?’ another shouted, laughter chasing his words.
‘Eyes ahead, mouths shut — lives are at stake!’ Injii snapped at them and they silenced, hunkering down behind the dramatically reduced shield.
Some of them were gnawing into their lips as they concentrated, funnelling energy through their hands and into the linked forcefields. More and more lasbolts thundered in their direction, threatening the integrity of the shield, so Sandsa diverted what he could. These blasts warped away from them, as though pulled by gravity towards the sides of the street. Sandsa shot a look back at the people they had left behind, watching bodies fly through the air to meet stone and steel. But he could not watch the Chippers suffer, not when there was so much to be done.
Sandsa touched the minds of the agents walking in front of him. They were all linked in a honeycomb effect that strengthened the shield, making it stronger than any individual forcefield alone. They trusted each other implicitly, because they were united by their purpose: to bring peace and safety to Atsa City. Sandsa tested the wall’s strength, momentarily unnerved by the buzzing sensation that came off the Chippers, then tensed when he realised they were feeling him out in return. Almost immediately they accepted him as part of the link and he was overwhelmed with an incredible sense of belonging. Cheeks damp, lips pulled into a smile, he lengthened his stride to match theirs. Within a minute, they were at the base of the Dance Tower. Their shield was a quiet transparent shroud compared to the noisy crimson one that rose six storeys above them, protecting the lower levels of the building.
Arrayed around the entrance were Alcazaar using bodies and debris to conceal themselves while they fired lasbolts at the Chippers. One of the clan’s large mounted lascannons had already fallen over, its electronic innards spewed all over the road, but there was no celebrating, not yet. Some of the Chippers disengaged from the shield and raised their clenched fists, redirecting lasbolts back to each turret, turning them to slag. But the clanspeople on the road weren’t the only threats; marksmen higher up on the building, able to aim over the wall of linked forcefields, shot at the tanks, obliterating one and the Chippers inside it.
Anger seared Sandsa’s heart just as fire had seared his skin the night before. Power burst free from him, knocking every last remaining Alcazaar to the ground. He ran at the shield wall, passed through it with little effort, and snatched an abandoned lasgun from the ground. It was heavier than he’d have liked and needed two hands to carry it, but the lasbolts it loosed made quick and brutal work of the clanspeople before him. Their lifesigns faded and disintegrated, but Sandsa kept firing, wanting to utterly destroy the bodies of his enemies. The Chippers recoiled at first, then two of them grabbed his arms and a third confiscated the lasgun.
‘It’s done, they’re dead!’ Major Injii told him, disgust bleeding into her words.
Sandsa’s lip twisted. ‘You think they deserve any less? For what they took from me?’
She shouldered past him. ‘We don’t have time for overkill; it’ll only slow us down!’
After a shouted order from her, the shield wall fractured and the Chippers filed through the narrow entranceway, lasguns and hands extended. Some of them even dropped their shields entirely and sliced their hands through the air, diverting bolts with small forcefields before they even came close. Sandsa flanked them, darting to the sides to deal with any Alcazaar who were using holes in the walls to fire from adjacent rooms. He barrelled through one such hole and found himself in a chamber full of enemy combatants. First he felt the heat of their gazes — then came the heat of their weapons.
The deadly lasbolts turned back on those who had delivered them. Not just one bolt per clansperson — no, he returned every single blast. The Alcazaar’s heads exploded, their chests grew gaping holes and some lost their legs entirely below the knees. Sandsa snatched a lasgun from a limp hand — the weapon’s enlarged barrel promised sufficient destruction — and strafed the room until not a single exhale belonged to anyone but himself. He stood, chest heaving, until a Chipper ran in and shouted muted words at him while pointing up a stairwell. Supposing it was safer than the hoverlifts which could be shut off at any moment, Sandsa chased after his companion.
The next two levels passed in the same way, with Alcazaar pouring down the stairs or out of a maze of rooms and tunnels. By the time Sandsa and the Chippers hit the third level, the floor shook beneath them as an alarm chimed from somewhere within the building. They stepped aside to let people flee, clutching their possessions — some wore Alcazaar colours but carried no weapons so they let them pass. Sandsa didn’t protest this decision. He knew he needed to save his powers for those more willing to offer a fight.
On level five, the Chippers attempted to learn the location of the shield generator protecting the building by asking the Alcazaar they came across, but most of these clanspeople had neither the knowledge nor the rank to know anything useful. One of them, however, did know something — Sandsa read this from the man’s mind and mentioned it to Major Injii. On her order the Chippers brought their lasguns to bear on the clansman, but he stared back in silent defiance, his back arched by the tight bindings that kept his hands pinned behind him. He didn’t believe the Chippers would carry out their threat. And Sandsa had seen and heard enough to know that this belief was not unfounded.
‘This is wasting time!’ Sandsa snapped, moving forward to crush his newly acquired lasgun against the man’s throat. The reproach of the Chippers behind him was palpable but Sandsa didn’t care what they thought. ‘Where is the generator?’
The Alcazaar wheezed breathlessly for a moment, then managed to work a glob of saliva down his chin. Even if he had not managed to launch it at Sandsa, the insult was evident. Sandsa plunged into the man’s mind, stabbing through milky layers of arrogance and fear until he found the information he wanted. He threw the man against the wall with a careless thought then turned and marched around a corner to the door he knew to look for. The locking mechanism flashed red when he slapped the button beside it so he used his powers to rip the metal panel filling the doorway aside. The room he exposed was filled with soft blinking lights and the cool air that rushed across his face alerted Sandsa to the importance of the electronic circuits within.
Standing back, he lifted his lasgun and blasted the entire system. This must have killed the building’s shield because moments later his companions started shouting for a retreat. Sandsa left the ruined generator, ignored the Alcazaar clansman slumped against the wall, and descended the steps. He did not care if the man escaped or found his grave in the building, though he suspected the Chippers would evacuate him.
Once Sandsa emerged from the Dance Tower he joined the agents sprinting towards the fight they had lost half their forces to earlier. Flying debris encased in forcefields was being launched from both factions of the Chippers, some finding their marks, others swinging wide and hitting nearby buildings. Major Injii unhooked a large, outdated communicator from her belt, yelled an order into it, and then two tanks broke away from the assault on the Alcazaar’s Chippers. The vehicles shot down the road, their lascannons screaming with each large blast that escaped them.
The tower fell with a fearsome crash. The shockwave hit Sandsa only a second later — he was flung forward, but cushioned himself with his powers. The agents around him were doing the same thing with their forcefields. He expanded his control and caught an unconscious Chipper before she snapped her neck on the ground. Around Sandsa agents began scrambling to their feet and legging it over to the tanks which were taking heavy fire from the other Chippers. He jogged after them, but slowed when they disappeared into the vehicles, unsure if he should follow.
Major Injii didn’t bother telling him it was fine to join them. She just grabbed hold of Sandsa’s shirt and pulled him into a tank. He stood through the open hatch, torso and head exposed as he watched the plume of dust and smoke rise from the tower’s remains. Spitting grit from his mouth, he sent a blast of power outwards, causing a large portion of a nearby building to collapse onto the remaining Chippers and Alcazaar who’d started to run down the street towards the retreating tanks. When Sandsa dropped back inside, he smiled around at his companions, waiting for the cheers of victory. They didn’t come.
‘I confess I do not understand your people’s aversion to killing your enemies,’ Sandsa said aside to the major.
Injii glared at him. ‘You chipless people’ll keep me up for nights to come. At least those of ours who go bad can have the tech ripped from their skin, cutting them off from the Creator God. People like you…how are we supposed to catch you, let alone contain you?’
‘And what does sparing your enemies have to do with that?’ Sandsa asked, wincing when he felt an unchecked wave of fury emanate from the major.
‘Revenge is not justice,’ Injii said, her orange eyes like twin drops of vivid poison. ‘If a criminal can be convicted of it, then we should not do it ourselves. It’s hypocritical. When my superiors ask me to kill, then I must follow those orders, but it is always a last resort.’
Sandsa snorted. ‘So you would prefer to risk your life to incarcerate someone instead of just killing them.’
‘Yes!’ Injii growled.
‘You think I’m dangerous,’ Sandsa noted. ‘But the Alcazaar needed to be punished for killing my mother. Destroying them saves innocent lives.’
Injii shook her head. ‘There’s no reasoning with you.’
‘You wouldn’t go after those who hurt the ones you love?’ Sandsa asked, peering around at the Chippers. None of them flinched away from his gaze. He turned back to Injii. ‘Not even for the wife you keep in your thoughts? Would she want you to sit by and do nothing to avenge her?’
‘She’s an agent of GLEA just as I am; she understands this,’ Injii said, scowling. ‘Those who do not abide by our rules are struck out of the Agency and I have put too much time and effort into my career to risk losing it.’
‘You are going to have difficulty ensuring everyone follows those rules, I imagine, if more people like myself and Dancer appear,’ Sandsa commented. ‘What will you do then? Hope they are benign and don’t come after you?’
Injii swallowed. ‘You are just two people.’
‘So far,’ muttered one of the other Chippers.
Sandsa asked to be dropped off on the side of the road, nowhere near the Maria headquarters. He did not specify the reason.