The rain hacks down out of what claimed to be a sky like spears thrown by angry angels. The corpse next to me has its dead eyes fixed on my face, the blank stare somehow accusing. ‘Don’t blame me,’ I tell it, ‘you were the dumb fuck who came in here.’ So what does that make the rest of us? I wonder.
Szy’m’czyk hunkers down next to me, her sodden honour scarf clinging to her armour like skin. ‘Time for you to sleep.’
‘Right.’ I stifle a yawn. ‘What’s the sitrep?’ I’d detailed her to get a headcount of our gear earlier, mostly because Crucify wouldn’t have done it until I’d beaten his head in some, Knight would have just glossed over the shortages, and I’m not sure Fred knows how to count that well. Fred, for fuck’s sake. Thirty stone of killing machine, and those pricks at Karma called him Fred.
‘I have one clip for the Gag and two for the 603,’ Szy’m’czyk says meticulously. ‘Crucify claimed “oodles” of Flux energy left, but suspecting that he lied I persuaded him to admit that he is running very low, and that his deathsuit is depleted of stored Flux. He has six rounds left in his chopper, and two clips for the Gunhead. Knight has one clip of standard and one of HEAP for the AR, but his pistol is empty.’ Somehow that, more than anything, brings home how screwed we are; Knight’s a glory hound, a showboater who goes hand to hand so he can play to any cameras around (normally including the one in his helmet). I suppose if my daddy worked for PP and could get me Silverback armour, I might - no, who am I kidding? I’ve always followed the advice The Earl gave me back at Meny – ‘fuck the cameras, son,’ he told me. ‘They’re a trap. Shoot the bastards and live to tell the tale.’
‘How’s Fred holding up?’
Szy’m’czyk smiles, a particularly unpleasant expression on a Shaktar’s face. ‘He has finally stopped complaining about the holes, so I imagine that his regeneration has completed healing him.’ I snort a laugh at that. Fred bitches about holes in his exoskeleton the way most people bemoan holes in their armour.
‘For the record,’ I tell her, ‘I’ve got eight rounds of Blitzer left, a full clip in the Panther, and three rounds for the Tri I took off that dead op.’ I pat the corpse familiarly on the shoulder. If you’re going to die in the cannibal sectors, I have to say that leaving your stuff behind for me to find mitigates my opinion of you.
‘I was… curious to discover that you are a marksman,’ Szy’m’czyk says, Her way of saying she was bloody surprised I didn’t turn the Tri over to her.
‘Scouts don’t have the monopoly on long guns,’ I reply, picking the big sniper rifle up as I get to my feet. ‘Listen, don’t get me wrong – the Ebb is my life, same as it is for all Ebons. But when it comes to the long shot, there’s nothing beats a rifle.’
Szy’m’czyk nods slowly – this is a creed she understands well, scouts major in sniping and sneaking as lifestyle choices. ‘I am simply unused, Gabriel, to encountering an Ebb-user who favours weaponry as much as you do.’
I shrug, exhaustion washing over me like the rain. ‘Some of us like to use the brains God gave us.’
‘God?’ Szy’m’czyk asks, amused. ‘An outdated concept, surely.’
‘I don’t think He’s outdated. I just think He doesn’t care any more.’
She doesn’t answer that one, and I move back to the concealed camp where the others are already asleep. Or mostly; Crucify says something obscene and mostly indecipherable at me as I go to my sleeping bag. I don’t bother to challenge him on it; he’d just claim he was dreaming or some bullshit like that. I roll myself up in the bag and try to forget how we got here in the first place…
The Bunker is another in the interminable list of BPN halls that litter Mort like junctions in a spider’s web. Not as big – or even as well-organised – as Slayer’s Crib, it’s basically a big hall with a row of transparisteel windows at one end where acidic spinsters hand out BPN’s to the long queues of Ops that wind back down the hall to the door. I’ve been waiting here for an hour and half to get to the front of the queue, while a Brain Waster two places back makes smart-arse comments about Ebons. Once we get outside, I think I may just bounce him around the street by his ears a little.
The bloke three in front of me gets his BPN, and the other two go with him. Must be a squad. I move up to the grille, and the sour-faced old woman in there eyes me with distaste before ripping a BPN off the top. Her eye travels back down the line; I already know what’s there, a female Shaktar, a Brain Waster, a Stormer, and some highly-polished target in a brand-new set of Silverback. What’s someone who can afford armour like that doing in a place like this?
‘You together?’ the old woman snaps? I open my mouth to say no, but she cuts in ‘You are now. Next.’
There is a short silence, broken by the Brain Waster saying ‘I gotta work with that fuck? Like bleeding hell!’
The clerk just gives him a frosty smile. ‘Use it or lose it, Waste-of-space. Next.’
‘How about I lose your fragging face, you dried up old bitch!’ the Waster yells. I make a snap decision, nod to the Shaktar and the Stormer and then point at the Waster.
‘Him. Outside. Now.’
Smooth as though they’d been practising the move, they take an arm each and life him off the floor, carrying him kicking and screaming out of the door. The human in the Silverback follows us outside, chuckling under his breath.
‘Lemme go! I’ll cut yer frigging hearts out!’ the Waster is yelling.
‘Let him go,’ I say neutrally. They drop him unceremoniously to the ground. ‘Now pay attention…’
That’s as far as I get. He launches himself from the ground like a rocket and hurls himself at me, ebb-claws sprouting from his fingers. Like so many ebb-users, he relies on brute strength and ebb powers for his hand to hand attacks. Idiot. I sway ever so slightly to the side, taking his wrist as he goes past and using his momentum to flip him onto his back. Then I drop a combat boot onto his throat and press lightly until he gets the message. ‘Let’s try that again.’ I hold up the BPN slip. ‘Examine this closely. Note that it is a Yellow.’ The others shift, interested – fresh meat like us normally gets lots of Blues until our SCL pops up a point. ‘Pop quiz: do you continue to act like a wanker and get dumped back inside to wait another hour and a half for a BPN, or do you behave like a sentient being and get in on this one? Clock’s ticking, and I don’t care.’
He mutters something harsh under his breath then snaps ‘Yeah, okay, whatever. Just get off my frigging neck before I suffocate.’
I pause for a long moment, making sure the lesson has sunk in, then move back. He gets up slowly, rubbing his neck. ‘All right,’ I say, ‘before we get into this I guess we’d all like to know who we’re working with.’
‘Szy’m’czyk,’ the Shaktar says, her voice no less gravely for her gender. ‘Scout.’ Hnh. Look up “laconic” in a dictionary, there’s a picture of a Shaktar.
‘My name is Fred,’ says the Stormer proudly, ‘and I am a Stormer 313.’ He concentrates, brow furrowing. ‘The original and still the best.’ Sounds like someone spent some time teaching him that slogan.
‘Pleased to meet you, Fred,’ I say courteously. What a name for a Stormer… ‘What elective did you take at Meny?’
‘Elect – what?’
‘Your training package,’ I clarify patiently. Never assume Stormers are as dumb as they sound; it’s because people do that their education tends to suffer. A lot of Stormers are easily as bright as most other ops, but they get assigned sub-standard educational packages because people assume they’re thick.
‘I am a Death Squad,’ he says, comprehending. Truer words were never spoken, I decide, noting his muscles.
‘Crucify,’ says the Waster. It takes me a moment to realise it’s his name, not his plan of action. ‘Strike squad. If it moves, I can drive it. If it shoots, I can fire it. Basically, I rule.’
Great. A megalomaniac Brain Waster. Why couldn’t I just have Halloween Jack in the squad and have done with it?
‘And I,’ the human says, ‘I am The Knight!’ The rest of us look at each other for a moment, then back at him.
‘He not wearing a kilt,’ Fred says slowly, ‘but he sound like Frother.’
‘I am not a Frother!’ Knight yells, reddening, while the rest of us hide smiles. ‘I’m a frigging human, okay?’
‘Where’d you get the armour?’ I ask curiously. He gives me a smug and knowing smile.
‘Friends in high places.’
Knight, knight, that sounds familiar. Wait a minute… ‘Knight? As in David Knight, middle manager for Power Projects? Your father got you the suit?’
He glares at me furiously for a moment, then slaps the helmet into place and says huffily ‘And who are you?’
‘Gabriel. Kick Murder.’
That occasions a thoughtful silence. ‘Kick Murder?’ Szy’m’czyk says eventually. ‘An… unusual choice for an Ebon.’
‘I’m an unusual Ebon.’ And then some. ‘Stick to what you know, I always say.’
‘I heard of you,’ Crucify says suddenly. ‘You won the inter-university unarmed combat championships last year.’
‘Ah, fame, that fleeting thing,’ I say with a slight smile. ‘All right, enough mutual backslapping.’ I hold the BPN up to the light. ‘Let’s see what this thing has to say…’
I rouse from a disturbed sleep to find Szy’m’czyk pressing my neck just behind the left ear – an old hunter’s trick she picked up in Meny from a scout, to wake someone without noise or fuss. Even before she speaks, I know what she is going to say.
‘They’ve found us.’