Ben Chaney - Son of Sedonia

‘ Andreas: Kabbard has abandoned his post, leaving me in charge. We have secured the package. En route to deliver.’

AS SOON AS the lights went dark, shrieking hot rounds cut the stillness that had descended on Officer Vaughn’s outpost. Two of them gouged long, deep channels in his helmet as he dropped behind cover and ducked under a shower of department store window glass. Looking to his left and right, some of his other squad-mates had gotten down in time. Others hadn’t. Sergeant Keyes lay flat on his back, convulsing in an expanding pool of dark blood. Not the way Vaughn had imagined being promoted to squad leader.

Flip the switch . The thought pushed through his screaming nerves, begging him to take control. Same as it had done for each assault since the invasion started.

“We’re cut off!” shouted Officer Reeve, veins popping out of his bulging, footballer neck, “Got no comms, no sat-nav, nothin’!”

Vaughn rifled through his Neural, verifying. His satellite uplink: Disconnected. Real-time battlefield intel: Gone. Soldier to soldier comms: Unavailable. Net Connection interrupted. Tower Signal lost. Whatever triggered the blackout also managed to screw every piece of modern communication equipment he had been trained to rely on since day one at Red Gate. Flying blind along with every EXO holed up in the pitted, cratered ruin of Dynex Valley Mall.

He raked his hand across the Neural display to close it and gripped his assault rifle. It took a few seconds to work up the courage.

“Ok-Okay!” Vaughn shouted to his squad, “On my count, pop up and let em have it! Keep small! One! Two! THREE!”

The six of them pushed themselves up to just above their cover, and opened fire. To Vaughn, it felt like they might as well be shooting paintballs at a tidal wave. Hundreds of T99s roared in the flashing darkness, sprinting through the parking lot toward the mall’s first tier. The food court… From Vaughn’s elevated position on the second tier, he knew instantly that the squads below were screwed. He shouted down to them anyway.

“FALL BACK! FALL! BACK!” He screamed at the peak of his vocal chords. Miraculously, a few soldiers seemed to obey, turning and hauling ass for the left and right escalators to the second tier.

“Reeve! Williams! Get in position and blow the escalators on my signal!” The two of them nodded and sprinted off with the thump-whine-thump-whine of their Augmentors. The food court EXOs scrambled up the steps, but few made it more than halfway before they were ripped apart by focused T99 fire. Desperate, scalding anger boiled in Vaughn’s chest as he watched the last soldier burst into a cloud of red. He toggled to the flare attachment on his rifle and popped a round into the air. It shot up, then drifted down like a smoking emerald star. In the hollow seconds before the explosion, he allowed a small hope to creep in. Maybe the good guys’ll see it. He plugged his ears and curled into a ball.

BOOM! BOOM! The detonations were small in comparison to some of their heavier ordinance, but they still shook all four tiers of the cheaply constructed strip mall. As the tremors settled, Vaughn peeked out from the shadows. The blasts had done their job, both destroying the only access routes up and spraying shrapnel and debris into the enemy. A chorus of blood-curdling agony filled the aftermath.

Sergeant Keyes had really known his stuff. In the lull before the blackout he’d had them destroy all the stairwells and elevators within the complex stores, turning each set of plaza escalators into choke-points. Some of the guys had taken to calling the place “Fort Macy’s.” The few ad-hoc squads they’d managed to assemble here might hold the position for some time, shooting any T99 dumb enough to climb the storefronts. It could even give reinforcements the time they needed to assemble and dispatch from HQ.

If HQ’s still there.

Men from the upper tiers double-timed it down to the second, and assembled in firing teams along the perimeter wall. It was the order Vaughn would have given over the comms. Seeing them do it by themselves made him proud. As the T99s shook off the shock and charged, they ran head-long into a solid field of EXO bullets.

Even with his Neural marking targets and set to infrared, Vaughn could hardly see what he was shooting at between the muzzle flashes. A body would go down here. Another there. Entire rows of them crumpled and folded up to die. Gradually, the tsunami receded. Insane laughter and cheers picked up from the haggard band of EXOs.

“Yeah, motherfuckers! We got more where that came from!” Reeve bellowed.

“Crawl back to your mud huts, SlumFucks!”

“Alright, lock that shit up!” Vaughn shouted above them, surprised at his own voice, “Keep it tight, they’re not done yet!” He almost regretted saying it when he heard the approaching hum of engines. Mid-range Scouts judging by the wasp-like undertone.

“Ours?” Reeve asked.

“COVER!” Vaughn barely had time to say. The Scout ships came in low and fast, spraying parallel lines of fifty-cal ammunition into the second tier plaza. Ten EXOs burst apart. The rest scrambled to the department store, shot out the windows, and dove through the broken glass. Bloody, beaten, and exhausted, they crouched together amongst bullet-riddled mannequins and display cases. The latest fall fashions ripped to colorful shreds.

Vaughn watched his men sink as the rhythmic pulse of chanting wafted through the store windows. Without suppressing fire, the T99s would climb the rubble in no time. He did a quick head count. Only fourteen of us. Fourteen against thousands. They needed a plan and they needed it now.

“On your feet and Legs On! ” Vaughn said, “We’ve got about twenty seconds to get to the third tier and blow the escalators, now MOVE!” He leaped through the door first. Hesitated when he saw the Scouts accelerate out of their turns, straightening for another run. Reeve grabbed him by the collar of his flak jacket.

“Come on!” Reeve shouted. Vaughn stumbled, then matched pace to Reeve’s five meter strides. The squads bounded up the escalators just as a wave of T99s climbed onto the second tier. Through blurry vision, Vaughn thought he saw the last of the EXOs make it to the third. He popped another flare.

“BLOW IT! BLOW IT!”

BOOM! The left escalator exploded, knocking Vaughn and most of the others off their feet. The right one stayed quiet. Ignored tears streamed down Vaughn’s cheeks as he pushed his aching body up. Over the ringing in his ears, the screech of the incoming Scouts bore down on them. Their gatling guns spooled up. Started blasting. Ragged ditches shot through the concrete toward Vaughn. He crouched, then pushed his Augs harder than he ever had. Harder than it was safe to do. He hurtled through the window a millisecond before the ground exploded.

Waking from blackness, he found himself on a broken bed. The force of his impact must have snapped it in half. He looked around.

“HAH! You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!” Vaughn said.

“Way to kamikaze into a Mattress Hut, you lucky bastard!” Reeve called back to him, firing from the windows with eight others. Vaughn rolled off the fractured bed. Dove into cover by the window. Peeking outside, he saw the Scouts fly off toward the horizon.

“Okay,” he croaked, “Their guns are dry! Everybody up to the fourth tier!”

“Are you fucking crazy?!” one of the officers said, “There’s no air cover up there, another strafing run and we’ll be torn apart!”

“Won’t even last that long if we stay here!” Vaughn pointed to right-hand escalator. T99s shoved single-file through the bodies choking the space. Others climbed the face of the third tier. Several EXOs fired into them, clogging the path with bodies. “Besides, we’ll blast ’em one last time after we make it up!”