Ben Chaney - Son of Sedonia

Cheers picked up all around him. Oki grabbed him by the shoulders and shook. He tried to smile at them, but his mind struggled with the new data. I got one. I killed an EXO. A hail of bullets sprayed into the balcony and everyone got down. Matteo dropped with a limp thud. The sudden rush made him dizzy. He pressed himself as low as he could as dust and debris rained down from the balcony wall. It stopped. The others got up.

“One down, two to kill!” Suomo said from somewhere close-by, “Rasalla!”

“RASALLA!” the T99s shouted as they opened fire.

Between three-round bursts through his iron sights, Vaughn saw a broad, heavy shape slump and fall out of his peripheral vision. A red distress icon appeared in his Neural beside the name. ‘ Mason . ’ He ducked into cover and turned to see the old vet clutching his left shoulder joint, struggling through wet gasps for air. The man seemed more pissed off than anything.

“Sergeant!” Vaughn screamed, lunging toward the wounded vet.

“Get the fuck back on that window!” Shima shouted as he continued to pump controlled bursts from his side of the shelter. Before Vaughn could protest, Mason planted a boot in his flak jacket and shoved him backward. Vaughn heard the sounds outside getting louder. Closer. He peeked back over his cover to see T99s crawling up the side of the building. Reflex spun his rifle up to drill the closest of the group. They tumbled backwards, knocking a few of the others off. Wild shots cracked in the air as they whizzed past close enough to graze Vaughn’s helmet and visor.

“Theta Squad, this is Odin Six Four. Request sit-rep, over,” said a calm voice in his inner ear. Shima stabbed two fingers into his throat mic and shouted.

“I’m wounded, we’ve got a man down, and about ten-thousand fucking angry locals closing! We need every goddamn thing you can give us NOW!” The pause that followed made all the screaming hell of the fight seem quiet. Vaughn dropped five more climbing bodies in the time it took for the reply to come.

“Roger Theta, Odin Six Four en route to your RFID signals for Purge and evac. ETA: 1:30 minutes.” The relief washed through Vaughn to the point of feeling faint. He tensed and shoved the rifle butt deeper into his shoulder. Pick your target. Fire. Pick the next target. Fire. The Red Gate combat mantra returned to him as intended, but the other word the pilot had used tugged at the back of his mind.

Purge . Hope and dread came in equal parts where one of those was concerned. The new gunships were outfitted with BASE platforms. Broad Area Stun Emitters. The half-sphere shaped delivery mechanism would extend from the underbelly of the gunship, charge in a matter of seconds, then send a one hundred-foot diameter sonic blast. They’d done it to him in basic. After the initial full-body slap, it had felt like his spine turned to cotton. Every muscle fiber simultaneously lost tension and then it was lights out. A two-hour coma followed. Then the sum total of every hangover he’d ever had.

The Aug gear would dampen the shock of this one, but the thought of anything like that sensation shivered down his backbone…and there was still a chance of being knocked out. Long enough for T99 reinforcements to arrive. Naked in the hornets’ nest. He glanced at the ETA displayed in the upper middle part of his vision. 1:14 . He had shot or killed six men since the pilot’s broadcast. Eight took their place.

The noise in their shelter suddenly dropped down a layer. Enough to make them both pause and glance. Mason lay toppled on his side, weapon resting in an expanding pool of flickering blood.

“Mason! Not now, goddammit, it’s time to work! MASON!” Shima screamed. The old vet didn’t move.

“Reloading! Last mag! ” Vaughn threw the spent one aside and somehow stilled the shaking enough to click the new one in place. He squeezed off two bursts before he heard it. A hundred or more voices chanting at once. Each word a hate-filled bark.

“ Ra-sa-lla, Ra-sa-lla, we-fight-for-our-home! From-scrap-and-from-ashes-and-dirt-we-are-grown! T-ninety-nine-soldiers, our-blood-for-our-own! DIE-EXO-DIE-EXO-in-pain-all-alone! ”

Matteo felt the words flow like molten metal in his veins. The fear receded, replaced with something else. All around him, the T99s shouted in one voice. Oki spat the chant, firing bursts in time with the lyrics. Suomo stopped firing to howl it in all directions. The voices lifted high above the gunfire. One full repetition later, ’Matteo had memorized the words.

“ Ra-sa-lla, Ra-sa-lla, we-fight-for-our-home! From-scrap-and-from-ashes-and-dirt-we-are-grown! T-nine-ty-nine-soldiers, our-blood-for-our-own! DIE-EXO-DIE-EXO-in-pain-all-alone! ”

This was new. Hate, fear, grief, and joy all focused into one feeling that came roaring out of his gut. He yanked himself to his feet and fired five rounds before the slide cocked back. Empty. A slap hit him in the chest. Oki’s hand pinned a fresh pistol mag to it. Matteo could hardly believe this was the same guy.

“ T-nine-ty-nine-soldiers, our-blood-for-our-own! ” Oki pushed his face close to Matteo’s as he yelled. Matteo took the mag. Wide eyed and smiling, he rejoined the chant as he fumbled with the weapon.

“ DIE-EXO-DIE-EXO— !” The roar of hover-engines drowned them out and panic ripped through the crowd. Some, mostly T99s, leaned out and fired at the gunship. Others turned and ran for low ground, scrambling down ramps and stairwells, or climbing down wall ledges. A few jumped. Matteo tried. He pulled himself up onto the side railing and looked for a place to land in the alley below. The ship was on top of them, the air thick with a deafening hum and the smell of ozone. That pile of tin. I’ll get cut, but it’ll break the fall . As he lunged, Oki grabbed his hood and yanked him back into the balcony. Dazed, Matteo watched Oki’s pinched face contort as he soundlessly screamed something. Matteo couldn’t tell what. From his place on the balcony floor, he saw a shiny dome of metal come out of a belly panel on the gunship. Bullets plinked off of it as it started to glow…and shake. It shook so hard and fast that it blurred into a shape twice as big.

The hum gathered into a high pitched squeal over crushing vibration. Oki released Matteo as both of them pressed palms over their ears. Matteo felt like he was screaming. Couldn’t be sure. It all suddenly paused in a moment of charged silence. Time enough to look up and then—

BOOOOOOOOOooooooommmm . A pale blue wave of light burst from under the gunship, spreading instantly over the entire block. The shock of it threw Matteo back into the wall, buckling the flimsy metal. His vision flashed stark white. Then black.

“SHIT SHIT SHIT shit SHIT!” Liani pressed the yellowed elevator button half-a-hundred times, watching helplessly as the lit numbers crept toward her floor. Normally, she added some ‘elevator wait time’ to her morning routine, but nerves and caffeine had caused some difficulty in the outfit selection process. First the black top with the white blazer. Then the purple sport coat and white dress shirt. Then the maroon blouse with black slacks… the blouse had looked cute in the store, but in normal light it made her look like she had love handles. She had torn it off and barely fought the urge to stuff it into the incinerator chute before returning to the black top and blazer. The meltdown had taken at least a half hour.

The memory chip in her purse stayed fixed in her mind’s eye. It had taken the better part of a week to work up the nerve to contact GSBC Channel 17 with the story. The ‘past due’ notices from her landlord spilling out of her inbox gave her the final nudge. This whole ‘doing-the-right-thing’ shit had better pay off. GSBC was already skeptical of her, and being late wouldn’t help her cause.