Ben Chaney - Son of Sedonia

One of their dropships sat below on a wide, flat rooftop with its rear hatch open. Some kinda new IG model… Two EXOs kept watch while the others worked, picking up limp bodies and handing them down the line to the hatch. Some bodies were T99s. Others’ shoulders were bare. Matteo ground his teeth and squeezed the gun grip. Remembered Jogun. Raia crawled up next to him and put a soft hand on the gun. Wide-eyed, she shook her head ‘ no. ’ He bit hard into his lower lip. Inched back down the steps.

They took a side route back toward the Stack. Along the way, they saw one of the IG ships take-off in the distance. It rose, turned, and started its ascent when the sharp hiss of an RPG round sliced the sky. Matteo and Raia ducked as they watched the missile arc and hit the ship. It sparked, burst into flame, then listed off to the West. Crashed with a loud boom…right where it shouldn’t.

“Daddy!” Raia yelled, breaking into a dead sprint. Matteo ran after her as fast as he could. Every alley and turn toward the Stack brightened with a fiery glow. No…please, God…come on, man!

The EXO ship had flipped sideways, plowing directly into the top three container apartments. The Stack burned as the ship’s chemical blood spurted onto the flames. Two figures sat wedged in the cockpit behind a fractured glass canopy, taking pistol pot-shots at the angry dwellers who had already started to gather.

“NO!!!” Matteo sprinted through the crowd toward his toppled apartment, ignoring the gunfire. He stopped as the heat seared his front. It was already gone. His house. The seeds… He dropped to his knees and bowed into a tight ball. Screamed. The sound joined the chorus of screams behind him.

POP! Another shot from the cockpit…followed by wail to silence all the others. It felt like death. He turned to see Raia on the ground holding her father in her lap. A red hole gushed in the man’s chest as he died by inches. The prosthetic leg jerked in the dirt, then he was gone. Raia’s dad had put her through hell growing up. The fights, the binges, the bruises. Raia was hardly ever home these past years. That what it means to have a Dad? The question stung. Jogun had been the closest thing to one he’d ever known. As tears ached in his eyes, he turned to look at the ship. Hate washed over him like an acid bath.

Matteo strangled the pistol grip. Shaking, he lifted the weight. Aimed at the struggling pilots.

BANG! B-B-B-BANG! B-B-BANG! The pilots’ bodies burst in a flurry of glass, sparks, and blood. An instant of horror passed before Matteo realized he hadn’t fired. Cheers and shouts picked up as a pack of T99s flooded into the street, armed with rifles, SMGs, knives, and sheet metal machetes. Suomo ran to the center of the block, and hopped up on a smoking rubble pile.

“Brothers and sisters! This here is the day we been waitin’ on!” Suomo shouted. The other T99s let out a whoop and raised their weapons.

“That’s right, the War of the Righteous has started, y’all, and they, ” Suomo pointed to the dropship, “hit us first! Now, I got word from my boy Oki that he’s got three more of these motherfuckers caged up on Daigi’s roof!” He turned and looked at Matteo. Kept his voice loud for the crowd.

“You wanna go back to ya homes and hide, good luck! Ain’t nobody stoppin’ you. But if you wanna fight , don’t matter if you got the Mark on your arm or not, you come with ME! ” Suomo turned and trotted down the pile. Quick as cats, the other T99s locked and loaded their guns, and loped after Suomo. A handful of the survivors hobbled off quickly down alleyways and side-streets. Mostly the elderly and their caretakers. Some of the husbands and wives who had children. The others looked at one another and the ruins around them. A middle-aged bald man with a rock-solid paunch knelt down and picked up a long piece of re-bar. A young woman, whose’ child lay bloody and lifeless beside her, tore a strip out of her shawl and wrapped it around the end of a long metal sliver. Clutched it.

Matteo stared down at the gun. He’d never seen bodies come apart like that. As the others left to follow Suomo, he stayed still. The street grew quiet except for the roaring fire and groans of hot metal. He looked up and noticed she was staring at him. Raia still sat with her father on the ground, clutching the man’s ratty, blood-soaked t-shirt. Her eyes shimmered as her face contorted in pain. It cut through him.

“Don’t worry,” Matteo said, tucking the gun tight in his waistband. Easier to run that way, and he had catching up to do. “I got this.”

“JESUS CHRIST, KID, could you try to jerk my fucking shrap-torn leg any more? I don’t think it’s cut deep enough, so why don’t you just go ahead and punch the wound while you’re at it!” Shima clutched the collar of Vaughn’s flak jacket. The rookie worked to remove the mangled Augmentor shin-plate. Charred chunks of sheet metal peppered both of Shima’s armored legs, some making it through to flesh. Someone had tossed a popper-bomb into their shelter. Not enough to kill, but just enough to maim. It had been quiet since then.

“He ain’t ever field dressed a wound before, Shims, let me take a look,” said Mason.

“No! Stay on those windows! I want your eyes on the roofline, not some Red Gate —AAH! ” The shin-plate popped free. Several blistered cuts and punctures covered the skin underneath. Vaughn set the shin-plate aside and grabbed the forceps from the med kit. One by one, he removed the remaining bits of shrapnel…some deeper than others. One was in at least four centimeters. Shima unsheathed his field knife, making Vaughn jump, but flipped it around and stuck the rubber grip in his teeth. Bit down as the forceps went in and grabbed the hot razor-sharp metal. Vaughn slid it out with little extra cutting.

“That’s the last one,” Vaughn said, reaching for the antiseptic spray, bandage and gauze. He sprayed the length of Shima’s calf and shin, pressed on the bandage seals, and wrapped it.

“Not bad for a first try, kid,” Mason said.

“Yeah, it’s fantastic, now get your weapon and take a window,” Shima barked as he pushed up on his good leg. Vaughn looked out his side. The long range thermal data had cut out shortly after the explosion, so they were down to personal optics. IR mode in their Neurals turned night into a cloudy day, but shadows moved everywhere. The blank, black windows seemed to watch them in their sad excuse for a shelter.

It was a half-finished addition to the rooftop of a shop building. Four brick walls rose in varying heights to form a small room. The windows were open gaps with barely enough wall to stand covered on either side. Vaughn crouched beside one. Slice the pie . Be a smaller target. He stilled himself as he backed away from the window and pointed his SMG’s iron sights along the edge. Slowly swept right. Nothing appeared in the crosshairs. Only the patchy, gray faces of chaotic buildings, silent in their stacks. Flashes and the distant report of gunshots advertised the battle raging all over the Slums. Jesus, what the hell did we start? He lowered his weapon an inch.

A white-hot shape bobbed into view then disappeared.

“Movement! I’ve got movement!” Vaughn rasped, choking the foregrip on his submachine gun.

“Great! Where? Call out the fucking location!” Shima hissed. Again, he pushed himself up on his good leg and peeked over the window ledge.

“Yeah—!—uh—it was Eas—er—North at my two o’clock…I think, sir.”

“You think?”

“I’m pretty sure, sir. It was there, then it was gone again, sir.”