Date Point: 14y4d AV
Dark Eye Facility, Shasu, moon of Gao
Lieutenant Anthony “Abbott” Costello
The Hotball had been a wild success. The transit tunnel…less so. Big Hotel were not happy to have them there.
It was a hazardous enough space already, being basically a highway-width road tunnel with a cargo handling maglev rail system running both ways, plus gravity assistance.
And it was full of debris. Rubble, really. The nanofactory deep in Dark Eye’s gut demanded a steady flow of processed materials in, and crates full of finished stuff out. Most of which had been piled up to make the barrier their Hotball strike had so effectively demolished.
In other words, the whole tunnel was full of loose objects, and there was a psychotic madman flinging the gravity around. It was like trying to climb up the inside of a vigorously shaken coffee can full of buckshot.
Titan was proving his value to the team by disabling the gravity plating. It was a painstaking process and the poor Protectors were getting beaten the fuck up by falling objects going both ways as they shielded him with their own heavily armored hides, but with each plate he took out the phenomenon got gentler.
Without EV-MASS, it would have been impossible. With EV-MASS it was merely extremely difficult. Some of those crates had been full of metal ingots, and thank fuck the Hotball had split them open. As it was it was taking all of Righteous’s frankly insane physicality to swat the biggest dangers away, ably assisted by the brick walls that were the team’s two monstrous Protectors. Both had chosen the simple expedient of ripping a couple of sturdy panels off a wall and using them as makeshift shields.
Testudo tactics, right out of ancient history. Some solutions still worked, even in the FTL age.
Climbing under conditions where the gravity could be pulling down one way in one second, then the other way the next, was far from easy. It involved short ropes, numerous anchor points, and being just as happy climbing face-first down the face as up it. Parata was bringing up the rear, and his whole job was reclaiming their pitons and rope to pass them back up to Butler, who was ramming them in up at the top.
Speaking of which…
“Irish! Gas pipe close to the surface, twenty meters! Take us ‘round it to the left!”
The tunnel was a working space, full of utilities. Utilities were hazards, especially when the enemy had been given such a generous window to prepare. That gas pipe could be rigged to blow for all they knew.
Irish clicked his radio to acknowledge, and heaved himself a ways over to the left. The gravity surged and changed again, and everyone hunkered down as the debris—which was, at least, getting increasingly smashed up and small so it didn’t hit as hard—rained down on them again. A copper ingot clanged off Baseball’s shield and spun past Costello’s head to drop away down the tunnel.
And this was the short bit of their assault. At least the next bit wouldn’t have so much loose crap in the air to complicate matters.
…And at least they weren’t being shot at. That really would have complicated matters.
There was another lurch as Titan took out another plate, and they took the opportunity to surge forward another twenty meters. Twenty more, and they’d make the access to the utility shaft, where the real climb would begin.
Getting that open was gonna be fun. There was a round steel hatch on that thing that had to weigh half a tonne, minimum, and was thoroughly anchored into the surrounding concrete.
Rebar had everything they needed for that. He was one of the “big Lads” who could manage the door’s mass just fine even in high-G, and his suit was equipped for exactly that kind of cutting and controlled demolition work. But of course they had to get him there.
Titan popped a floor panel off, then chuckled over the line. “There it is…”
HIs fusion knife flared a brilliant white-blue in the dim lighting, and the gravity stopped entirely. The latest shake of the coffee can ended in the debris bouncing off the end door and tumbling lazily back under no more force.
“Threat cleared,” he declared and tossed a finger’s length of power cable over his shoulder.
“Thank fuck.” Righteous shoved himself off towards the wall and dug out his energy drinks. Only Warhorse could physically outperform him, but not with as much skill and not for quite as long. Righteous could move at his limits almost indefinitely. He was an unmatched combat athlete but it did mean he had to watch himself more than the rest of the team.
The Protectors meanwhile simply grunted, shoved their shields “down” the tunnel, and moved on to the next task on their list. Enduring strength was their hallmark and in that game, the tables were turned. Righteous didn’t even begin to compare to the Protectors when it came to endless hard work.
Costello rolled his shoulders to take the strain of climbing down the floor out a bit, sipped some of his own performance drink and reviewed the map.
“We’re ahead on time,” he declared. “Let’s keep it that way.”
Rebar floated past, preparing his cutting tools. “On it.” Moments later, he was at the nexus of a point of vicious blue light where he was attacking the pins that held the access hatch into the wall. Sikes joined him, and the two began working round the hatch’s outside in opposite directions.
It would have been the work of seconds. Big Hotel had other plans.
The explosion was silent in the vacuum, but not when the blast of escaping air actually hit. Costello jerked around on the end of his safety rope like a kite in a tornado, and Faarek cursed as a chunk of concrete bounced off his suit, which went rigid to absorb the impact. Rebar and Sikes were both at ground zero.
They, the hatch and a gout of over-pressurized air slammed right across the tunnel and into the far wall.
The hatch would have scythed Blaczynski in half, except that both he and Firth had effectively superhuman reflexes. He twisted one way and Firth lashed out with a kick that just deflected the hurtling hatch enough that it missed him by an inch and cut through his rope rather than his leg. It bowled away crazily down the tunnel, and the Whitecrests scattered out of its way.
‘Horse and ‘Base blurred as they leapt into action. Sikes waved them off, moving loose and easy as he grabbed a handhold.
‘S’okay. Learned how to ragdoll when I was in the rodeo, heh. Where’s Rebar?”
“…That. Fuckin’. Hurt.”
Costello looked down. Rebar had been blown right back down the tunnel, and the fabric of his outersuit had been tattered and shredded. His webbing and gear were floating loose around him and his midsuit scales were exposed in places, but he was alive. There were droplets of blood around him, fizzing silently in the vacuum.
“Reeb, check your drift!” Titan snapped at him. “I only killed power in this end of the tunnel!”
There was a bit of a delay, followed by the worst thing Costello had ever heard.
“…I think I fucked up, guys.”
“I gotcha!” ‘Horse turned face down and kicked off down in pursuit, but Rebar was a long way down and moving fast. He was obviously dazed by the slow way his hand came over to his flight controls. There were some puffs of gas, but they didn’t do much to change his trajectory.
“Rebar!”
“…Outta gas.”
“Rebar, kick your legs out and drift to the wall!”
“…I can’t feel my legs, man.”
‘Horse was a comet now, he gained a huge boost of speed as he launched off the next wall.
“Hang in there, I’m comin’!”
Costello could see it wasn’t going to be enough, and so could Rebar.
“Go back, ‘Horse. I’m done. You ain’t got time.”
”Fuck that, I got y—!”
Rebar used his command override to talk directly over him. “You’re in charge, Righteous. Look after ‘em for me. LT…I’d really like it if you’d give me a remote OD.”
Costello dreaded it, but the moment Rebar said that, the FIC’s Watsons snapped Rebar’s infodisplay up in the HUD. So many broken bones…So much trauma.
He nodded his agreement to nobody in particular. “…Okay, big guy. Warhorse, come back.”
Arés stopped himself by grabbing a metal pipe, which bent and tore off the wall but arrested his descent. There was anguish pouring silently off him, but he’d finally seen that the chase was futile, and even if he hadn’t…command was all about trust, and Costello had earned that trust. And spent a hell of a lot of it just then.
Costello switched to the FIC command channel and spoke his authorization in a daze. “You heard the man. Ordered.”
Rebar sighed on the line as the suit shunted a massive dose of Morphine directly into his bloodstream. “Thanks, LT. It’s…been an honor…”
Seconds later, he crossed the invisible threshold where the gravity came back on. It was a two hundred meter drop to the end of the tunnel, and nobody made a sound. They owed him that much.
Costello shut his eyes, gulped down his emotions, then snapped back to the task at hand.
“…Come on,” he ordered. “Let’s go murder these fucks.”
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Dataspace adjacent to Dark Eye facility, Shasu, moon of Gao
0015
<Satisfaction>
So. The HEAT weren’t invincible after all. They took a lot of killing, in the form of a massive overpressure explosion, but they could be killed and there would be plenty more opportunities. There were plenty more traps.
It wouldn’t pay to get cocky now, but a small victory was moralizing. It gave 0015 confidence that he could win. And if he did…the deathworlders would lose a powerful and valuable tool. They would surely obliterate the facility, but that was an entirely fair trade.
He prepared the next surprise.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
Master Sergeant Derek Coombes
Daniel Hurt was not happy at all, but it was the quiet, futile kind of unhappy felt by a man who knew he’d already lost the fight before it started.
“I know you have your orders, and I’m not going to stop you from carrying them out,” he was saying. “And I respect the logic of letting the People know their world is protected and showing them, but… taking them into space?”
“I think Vemik might hate you forever if you stop this from happening,” Coombes told him. He could understand Hurt’s frustration—the man had come here to be a moderating influence and to make sure the information overload and culture shock didn’t completely ruin the Ten’Gewek way of life, and as far as Coombes could tell his opinion hadn’t actually been sought or heeded once. Considering the mortal peril he’d put himself in for the sake of total strangers—alien strangers—Hurt was definitely owed more respect than he was getting.
“I know. And I don’t want that, but I can honestly live with it if that’s what’s best for the species…” Daniel sighed and sat down. He was getting fit fast from the supergravity living and stone age diet, but he was still the oldest man present, of any species. His endurance was shot to hell, and Coombes could tell he was pretty much constantly sore and aching.
In the same situation, Coombes would have been grumpy as fuck. Daniel’s frustration was obvious, but his civility and diplomacy were unblemished.
Fuck it. May as well be honest.
“I get it,” Coombes assured him, and sat down as well. “You’re supposed to be the expert and all the decisions are bein’ made without you.”
“Well…yes, there’s that,” Hurt admitted. He popped the sports top on his water bottle. “But honestly, to hell with my ego. I’m just worried for them.” He indicated the knot of Ten’Gewek leadership where they were deciding among themselves who would go up ‘above the sky.’ Yan and the Singer were having a quiet, private discussion some distance away out of earshot and Vemik was bouncing around like the best thing in his entire life was coming up. Which it probably was.
“How bad can it be?” Coombes asked. “Lay it out for me, what’s the, uh…consequences of this? As, like, a logical chain of events.”
Hurt swigged his water twice as he thought. His answer, when it came, was spoken slowly and carefully. “It’s…less about what this specific incident could do,” he said. “It’s not like lining up dominoes and knocking the first one over. It’s more like…gardening.”
Coombes inclined his head to show he was listening, so Hurt elaborated. “Plants are used to certain soil types, right? Wet, dry, clay, sandy, acid, alkaline…”
“Sure.” Coombes had never touched a garden in his life, but he could see where this was going.
“Then there’s climate. Rain, temperature, sunlight… It all plays a role in how the garden comes out. And here we come into this natural ecosystem and we’re just…mixing more sand into the soil, or adding acid plant food, or whatever. We’re screwing with it in ways whose end results can’t be predicted because we don’t know enough.”
Coombes nodded to show understanding. “All of that is true. I won’t deny it. But none of it matters if the garden don’t survive the winter, Professor.”
“Yes, yes. And as I said, I’m not opposed to the shield. The shield is obviously necessary.”
“You’re just opposed to them being made aware of their own imprisonment?”
“I’m not…” Hurt groaned and thought some more. “Sometime down the line, everybody who goes up in Misfit will have passed away, and that will undoubtedly happen long before the People have developed their own spaceflight. So either the later generations are going to have to take it on faith and accept our word for it that the shield is there, or we’ll have to keep taking people up to see it.”
“Yes.” Coombes was a patient man, but sometimes nutty professors were exactly the wrong kind of personality for him to deal with. “Which leaves us with three choices: we either assume the ‘White Man’s Burden’ and act for them, or we do nothing and the species dies, or we help them understand. Yeah, that’s gonna take generations. What choice do we have? Because the thing is, acting on their behalf and keeping ‘em outta the loop is no different than keeping slaves.”
“I’m not suggesting keeping them ignorant. My concern isn’t about informing them, it’s about how we inform them.”
That told Coombes exactly what he needed to say. “If you have a concrete alternative then share it. This shit is time sensitive. But I don’t think you do.”
Hurt sighed. “…No. I guess I’m just wishing for a better world than the one we have,” he said, sighed and gave up. “I know this is going to happen and I don’t oppose it it at all. I just…I wish I could come up with a better plan. I want what’s best for them.”
“Me too, professor.”
“…But you’re right, we need to settle for the good things we can achieve now, not the perfect thing too late, don’t we?”
Coombes nodded. “…Look. I’m not exactly a young soul anymore, and I’ve spent my professional career doing pretty much exactly this. A Green Beret’s real mission is to teach poor people in absolutely shit places how to defend themselves, right? I’ve learned one thing in all this. What matters is intent, and trust, and will. If the People are willing to do this thing, and they trust us…it’ll end up okay. If it changes them that’s okay too. What matters is they survive, and that they chose how to get there.”
Hurt considered his water bottle for a while.
“…I don’t think I’m cut out to be here,” he said at last.
“Hey, you stood up where nobody else did. Sure, things ain’t turnin’ out how you thought they would and maybe you’re more…academic than this whole situation is?” Coombes offered. “But you stood up. Also, Yan trusts you. He listens to you carefully.”
“…He does?”
“Yup. Notice how him and none of the Given-Men tease you anymore? And shit, you think I’d bother arguing with you if I thought you were an idiot? You’re just idealistic. Like Vemik really…well, maybe not like Vemik. If you were a hulked-out cross between a comic book gorilla and a hyperactive puppy…”
Hurt finally laughed, and took a swig of his water again.
“…Thank you,” he said.
Coombes eyed the Ten’Gewek. Some sort of decision seemed to have been made and Vemik was absolutely losing his shit. The way the big guy could leap six feet straight up just from the sheer energy of his happiness…
Christ, those guys were gonna be scary once they figured things out.
“One more thing, before this shitshow gets underway. Once we get the shield up, and we’ve given the planet a complete once-over to look for any Hierarchy presence…things are gonna settle into a routine pretty quick. That’s your time, professor. When the routine settles in, that’s when you can spend a month gettin’ it perfect. ‘Cuz you’re right, this shit does need to be done properly in the long run. But right now…”
Hurt nodded. “…Right now, it needs to be done,” he finished.
“Right.” Coombes stood up. “We better go see who they’re sending.”
“Yan, Vemik, the Singer and two of the Given-Men,” Daniel predicted.
“Really? They’re gonna send a woman up?” Coombes asked.
“In some ways, the Singer is not a woman. Culturally she’s a bit of both, the bridge between male and female. This sort of thing is exactly what she’s for.” Daniel smiled. “It’s an interesting quirk of their culture, actually. I should write a paper on it, the gender studies people would flip.”
“Dude, they’re always flipping.”
Hurt laughed again. He paused, half-turned and gave Coombes a thoughtful look. “What about you? I imagine you’ll be recalled soon…”
“JETS is gonna fuckin’ explode,” Coombes predicted. “Gao, here, the Enemy finally bein’ out in the open…Dudes are gonna line up to be an exo scout. I’m probably gonna be responsible for trainin’ or some shit.”
“You’ll be good at it,” Hurt said.
“That’s the plan.” Coombes turned and offered a hand. “Look, I gotta head back out to the battle site. There are still two drones unaccounted-for, an’ God only knows what’s comin’ up over the next few days. So just in case…”
“Yeah.” Hurt shook his hand. “It’s been a pleasure, Coombes. I learned a lot.”
Coombes nodded, clapped him on the shoulder, then turned toward the camp where his gear was stored. Behind him, he heard Professor Hurt start warmly fielding Vemik’s enthusiastic questions and smiled.
The People were going to be just fine.
Date Point: 14y4d AV Dataspace adjacent to Dark Eye facility, Shasu, Moon of Gao
Entity, Instance 33
Dark Eye had once been a well hardened dataspace, but something…unsubtle had come through in a way that the Entity never dared. Something with immense processing power behind it, the finesse to use all of that power to best effect, and the sheer arrogance to turn both those factors into an unstoppable electronic assault.
The security software was malfunctioning, frozen or just plain corrupted beyond reconstruction. If the Dark Eye facility’s inner network had been a physical space then the doors would have been smashed off their hinges…And some of them were big doors.
The Agent responsible had put up some desultory Hierarchy-grade firewalls and other security programs to watch its back, but the Entity knew those programs, intimately. Sometimes, when it was bored, it liked to take them apart and put them back together again. Slipping past them, around them or even through them, unnoticed and un-logged, was trivial.
After that…it was stalking a quarry that didn’t know it was being stalked, in a network the quarry would believe was secure, while the quarry was fixated on a distraction in matterspace. A less wary and paranoid mind would have thought the hunt was easy.
Easy, however, was the antithesis of <Survive>. Easy was the ultimate mistake, the fatal trap. The Entity never believed that things would go smoothly. There was too much at stake to relax or cut corners.
It stalked, rather than swaggered. Skulked rather than rushing. It took its time. It checked and double-checked its progress. It covered its tracks. The process was slow going…But it was close.
And it was ready.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Dark Eye facility, Shasu, Moon of Gao
Master Sergeant Christian Firth
Shit was gonna fuckin’ die the moment Firth hit the top of the shaft.
The Hotel shitstain running this station had thrown everything it had at them as they climbed, but they were fuckin’ wise to its tricks, now. Each pressure door got drilled through to vent the overpressure on the far side. Circuits got cut, valves got blown out early. Titan, Ergaan and Sikes saw every trap the motherfucker had long before the team hit it, and by the time Firth managed to haul his ass up to level with a hazard, it had long since been shut down.
But the Hierarchy was gonna fuckin’ pay for Rebar.
That thought was what had got him up this high. Firth wasn’t a climber by nature, he was a human juggernaut. His job was to hit like a fuckin’ freight train, move really fuckin’ fast and kill stuff even faster. He loved his job and he was the best there was at it.
And he loved everything that went with it. The brotherhood, the sparring, the physical training, the scholarship of combat, all of it. Except for climbing. Inching his way up a rope in a tunnel full of alien traps in two G? That wasn’t his idea of fun. It wasn’t even his idea of good training. It was his idea of an irritating, energy-sapping obstacle between him and deservedly ruining a motherfucker’s day.
‘Horse loved to climb, and he was pathologically incapable of knowin’ why a guy like Firth hated it so, which meant Adam wasn’t exactly understanding. Instead he was…he was Helping. He was all big-hero encouragement and motivation, when really all the motherfucker had to do to Motivate was just be his natural better-at-literally-everything self. The perfect bastard managed the climb wearing the heaviest armor with the biggest pack and weapon on the team, Regaari and Deygun clinging to him…and he still somehow managed to speak without so much as a grunt of effort.
It just made Firth madder.
Up ahead, Ergaan and Titan finished clearing out one of the little gifts Big Hotel had left for them. The next pressure door slammed down under supergravity with its hydraulics cut and dangling uselessly, no longer a danger. Last section.
The end of the shaft was open.
“Well that’s fuckin’ suspicious…” Titan heaved himself through the open pressure door, braced himself and drove one of their dwindling supply of pitons into the concrete. ‘Horse joined him, putting himself and his extra-thick armor in the vanguard ahead of whatever the Hierarchy had planned.
Dexter plucked something from his webbing and handed it over ‘Horse’s shoulder. “Shieldstick.”
”Good think—”
There was a lurch, a ripping feeling, and the fumbled shieldstick fell out of Regaari’s hand to bounce off Firth’s helmet with staggering force as the gravity ramped up…
And up…
…And up.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Dataspace adjacent to Dark Eye facility, Shasu, Moon of Gao
0015
They were in the last section. The intruders had climbed eleven sections through the maximum gravity the plating in that corridor could generate, and it was by now completely obvious that the last stretch wasn’t going to stop them. Even if they were exhausted, simply nearing the top must be buoying them.
Clearly, the Hierarchy’s estimation of the HEAT’s capabilities had been shameful underestimates. Just how well had the humans hidden their abilities? What could they really do? Was this even near their limits?
Desperation measures beckoned. As exhausting as the climb had surely been for them, 0015 no longer had any confidence in the army of drones and implanted Gaoians waiting for them. Not after the violence they’d shown up top, especially not if they were out to avenge their fallen comrade.
He tore apart the safety overrides surrounding the gravity controls and poured as much spare power into the plating as it could take.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Dark Eye facility, Shasu, Moon of Gao
Technical Sergeant Adam Arés
“Jesus…Christ…”
“Nnnngh….”
Halfway up the last section. A five klick fall below them, and the gravity had just ramped up hard. There was almost a pounding rhythm to it now, like a heartbeat. Maybe it was his own heartbeat, fighting hard to drag his blood out of his boots even with the compressive aid of the EV-MASS.
The climb stopped—reaching toward the next handhold was a marathon all by itself. There was a coppery taste in his mouth, and just keeping his mouth closed was a strain. His skin felt heavy and the force kept climbing. It had to be somewhere up above four G already. No. Higher.
Much higher. Six, maybe. Honestly it was enough he couldn’t really tell, or spare the energy to try and figure it out.
There was just…holding on. Holding on, because a slip under this kind of acceleration meant death.
Not just of him. A billion Gaoians.
There was a sound coming through his gloves, a kind of hefty thrum in the wall. The floor where the G-plates were buried was starting to smoke, and the Gs just. Climbed. Higher.
His glove slipped. The concrete fractured under his hand. His fingers were a song of agony, every breath was impossible, the one after it even more so. His vision was going red around the edges.
His fingers were slipping.
He shut his eyes.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Dark Eye facility, Shasu, Moon of Gao
Warhorse
He opened his eyes.
Never fail. A billion Gaoians. Marty.
Climb.
The concrete broke, crumbling under his hands and feet but the steel reinforcement underneath was stronger. He was making a low, primordial noise of effort that would have been a roar if he could only breathe, but he was moving. One hand inched up, grabbed, held. Up an inch. Grab. Up an inch. Up an inch.
The gravity was a hammer now, his gear was straining against his webbing.
Didn’t matter. It could all fall off. He’d kill the fuckers with his bare goddamn hands.
Just.
Keep.
Moving.
Even the steel was bending. Might fail. Might drop him. Might kill him.
But he wouldn’t fail.
Never.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Dataspace adjacent to Dark Eye facility, Shasu, Moon of Gao
0015
There needed to be a stronger word than impossible. The facility didn’t have more reserve power to shunt into those plates and still one of the humans was continuing to climb. The others were stuck, clinging on and groaning under the titanic force that was trying to claw them off the wall but the big one at the top was somehow forging onwards and upwards with two Gaoians hanging as dead weight off his back.
How?!
Cruel crystals of fear knotted in the depths of 0015’s psyche. Awed panic tore apart the last of his confidence as he watched the climbing man somehow find a rhythm.
Just what in creation’s name had the Hierarchy picked a fight with?
He forgot how to think, or keep his guard up, or to devise a way to resolve this problem. He had never been transfixed by any sight before in all his thousands of years of existence.
It cost him his moment. Something nudged the gravity controls from behind him and the humans in the shaft sagged and floated free as the whole plating array burned out in a cascade of sparks. The impossibly climbing one shot free, launching himself upwards as all the oppressive force holding him back was instantly removed.
0015 tried to react, tried to turn on whatever had betrayed him. Too late—He met a barrage of attack subroutines coming the other way, and was overwhelmed.
The Entity claimed another victim.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Dark Eye facility, Shasu, Moon of Gao
Warhorse
When the gravity suddenly went away, the tension he’d been under had catapulted him upwards with enough force to send him hurtling towards the ceiling. He shot out the top of the utility tunnel like a rifle round, but he was Warhorse right now, and Warhorse knew how to handle this shit.
Tuck, flip. Slam feet into ceiling, low crouch. Paneling smashed, too puny. Use momentum, shift footing, kick off hard. Twist, orient to the floor. Land on biodrone, crunch. Kick off through toes, move. Drones starting to recover. Bounce, slap out of air. Drop pack, slide Brothers to safety. Use momentum, slam into wall, kick off again. Panel crumpled, wall puny too. Biodrones. Aim, kill. Target-rich, can’t miss.
Slide across floor, double-tap. Target behind, punch fist through chest, bounce off wall and run. Grab targets in the way. Service, bounce. Rush before biodrones can react. Break, rip, stomp, slap. Turn, double-tap, spin, leap back, kick. Quick glance around.
Eighteen biodrones serviced. Blood and wreckage everywhere. Two drones twitching feebly on the floor, trying to fly.
Snarl. Thump over, step on drone. Crunch, oil. Kick the other into wall. Parts go flying. Broken biodrone with stomped-on hips, can’t move but lifts rifle. Shoots.
Shot not even felt through armor. Weak. Run over, reach down. Yank off rifle arm with one hand, palm skull with other. Squeeze. Pop. Rip, slam, stomp. Kick body across room.
Kicked too hard, burst and broke in half instead. Blood boiling in the vacuum, going black and syrupy. Grin.
Look around again. No movement. Good. Doorway at end. Block with loading equipment. Grunt, strain, shove. Floor crumpling underfoot. Don’t care. Push harder.
Safe.
Check on his buddies.
Back down the shaft, Shin was hanging limply from Baseball’s left hand, dangling above the drop. Regaari and Faarek had untangled themselves from Warhorse’s pack and were picking themselves up, barely able to stand but making a game effort. Everyone else was moving again, emerging from the tunnel’s exit in a snappy, swift deployment like they’d done a hundred times.
He’d Protected them. Happy grin, sigh, shuddering breath…
…Warhorse found himself suddenly so rushed on adrenaline he was a bit dizzy. He shook his head out and focused on Shin.
“…He make it?”
‘Base launched himself up the tunnel, vaulted the side towing the stricken Brother behind him and had him settled on the deck in one smooth and deceptively gentle movement. He played the Gaoian-made medical scanner attached to the side of his helmet over Shin’s suit. “…Couple fractures, no internal bleeding. Got some edema in the legs.” He ran his hands across Shin’s limbs, probing through the suit to confirm with his fingers what the scanner was telling him. “He feels tender as fuck, though.”
“Crude dose?”
“He’s already running on max. Get a line in him, I’ll prep anaesthetic.”
Adam nodded, and grabbed his intraosseous cannulation gun. Shin was groaning, which boded well. ‘Base meanwhile was favoring his left shoulder a little, but that could wait—he exposed one of the ports on Shin’s suit where a bony protrusion came near the surface and Adam drilled a line straight into the stricken Whitecrest’s marrow.
They were tricky to give, really. Those lines had to go in exactly where it was safe on any given bone and the particulars were different for humans and Gaoians. Hell, with Gaoians it was even different between breeds. And there was no being gentle about it. The deed was best done with as much steady, unyielding force as possible or it could go horribly wrong. Grim, risky and painful, but easily the best way to get a magnum dose of painkillers and anti-inflammatories into his system ASAP.
Shin yelped in pain when Adam’s hand clamped down hard on his leg to hold it steady, then thrashed in abject agony when he rammed the cannula home. It sucked doing that to a friend but the pain, as always, was a good sign.
“Ssh, drugs’re comin’ bro. You’ll be high as balls in a moment.”
He really would. Opiates were powerfully effective on most anyone, and with Gaoians they had the added bonus of inducing sedation and a happy, intense euphoria. Sure enough Shin’s mood changed entirely once the drugs hit his system. Adam grinned and pat him on the shoulder. A patient saved.
The Suit provided everything else that was medically necessary. Compression, regulation, monitoring, the works. In a pinch the water cooling system was even a source of saline, not that Shin was short on fluids at that moment. Quite the opposite, he had too much of it pooling in his tissues on account of how his body was basically one giant bruise. Base added a diuretic to Shin’s medicine cocktail, and Adam nodded. Too much fluid in the tissue? The best way to get rid of it was to piss it out and rehydrate.
Thurrsto was one of the last out of the tunnel. He was the only Gaoian who’d made the climb himself and he had to be suffering, though he didn’t show it. He pounced to Shin’s side in a heartbeat.
“[Brother?]”
“[We got him,]” Adam said. “[Stay with the others.]”
Thurrsto duck-nodded and was gone. With his patient safe, ‘Base gave Adam a visual once-over. “Okay. How’re you?”
Self-check. Was Warhorse whole? A quick once-over, a little movement…yes. Well, with promises of epic pain to come…But pain was a good friend. Pain meant he was alive.
“…I’m good, brother. Your shoulder?”
“Twisted it when I caught Shin.”
Adam nodded and prepped a couple of Crude doses for them both. Luckily Shin was the lightest of the Gaoians—If that had been Thurrsto, he might have torn ‘Base’s arm off wholesale.
Gunfire ahead. Righteous, Starfall, Crank and Highland were doing their thing. Irish pounded past with some spare mags, Kiwi, Titan and Snapfire were throwing the Array together with practiced speed. The Gaoians were nowhere to be seen, having melted into the shadows to presumably wreak havoc alongside the Aggressors, and Abbott was doing what a good lieutenant did: he set direction, led from the front and let his men work unimpeded.
Acutely aware of his own twitching muscles, full-system fatigue and the feelings of an oncoming crash, Adam decided that he needed a “Juggernog” recovery pouch. First time he’d ever slammed one on a mission. He pulled the foil pouch out of his pack, slotted it into his drinking port, and sucked it down in one continuous gulp.
It had the taste and texture of cherry cough syrup.
Fuck it. That shit was awful but he knew instinctively he needed a second, this one with stimulants. The second one tasted, in the words Firth had once used, like being face-fucked by a lime.
He could already feel the sugar rush hitting him but that wasn’t gonna stop anything. In the back of his mind he idly wondered what a combined adrenalin, glucose, and insulin crash was gonna feel like…he’d find out in a moment. Things were really starting to get unsteady.
“…Hey. Bro, you need me? I gotta fuckin’…recharge…”
‘Base looked up. God bless him, he knew exactly what was happening. “…I don’t even fuckin’ know how you did any of that,” he said. “Recover. I’ll keep an eye on you.”
Adam felt the fatigue slam into him like a wave, and slumped against the wall. He did have the wits for one quick joke, though. “Heh. I bet…I bet I’ll get some nasty gains from this…”
He drifted out of consciousness before he even finished speaking.