Ben Chaney - Son of Sedonia

“Sounds good to me!” said Reeve, tossing aside a smoking, empty magazine then loading a fresh one.

The third tier flooded with T99s as Vaughn and his men made it to the top.

“FIRE AT WILL!” Vaughn called out as he raced for the detonators beneath a garden oak tree. The EXOs backpedaled into the top tier plaza as they fired into the escalator openings. One by one, their ammo ran out. Vaughn slid through a patch of gardenias and scooped up the detonators.

“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” He shouted as he clicked the trigger. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Then the sound of engines rose from the distance. Jesus… His weapon felt suddenly heavy in his hands as he aimed it at the T99s. He maintained discipline, firing one shot at a time, aiming for the center mass. As though it mattered now.

But as the sound approached, he knew it wasn’t a Scout. Too throaty and sharp. A Fury? No…a Zeus… It was. There was no mistaking the knife-edged silhouette as it barreled down on the top tier. The T99s seemed to recognize it too, high-tailing it on top of each other back down the escalators. The Zeus opened fire into the enemy, cutting a red swath through their ranks. Vaughn and the EXOs lifted their guns in the air and howled.

“Okay, pick your targets, guys! Push ’em all the way back!” The group went to semi-auto, cleaning up what the Zeus missed on its first pass. But as they reached the edge of the top tier and looked down, they saw the rest of the horde. T99 soldiers supported by Outer Ring workers in weaponized loader rigs. Steel plate armored trucks with mounted machine-guns. And a mobile, deep-core laser drill platform.

The Zeus’ sensors didn’t register it as a weapon right away, reading only the gathering heat source at the front lines. It cost Kabbard valuable microseconds in reaction time. He sucked in a breath, held it, and rolled left to avoid the initial path of the beam as it bore a blinding hole through the night. The Zeus was fast, but not faster than light. The beam swung to follow Kabbard as he struggled to stay ahead and come about for another run.

“Arm salvo!” he shouted to the Zeus console. Four red lights appeared on the Zeus diagram in the canopy glass, followed by the ‘Armed’ message. As the heat of the laser drill distorted the canopy glass, Kabbard screamed.

“FIRE!”

The payload fell away just as the laser clipped the Zeus’ right wing, sending Kabbard into a slow spin. He felt the shock of the explosions beneath him. Through the whirling chaos, he caught blurred glimpses of the top tier of Dynex Valley Mall, and pulled against the spin with all the strength his ill-fitting Augs could muster. Pops rippled through the cockpit moments before impact.

FwwooooOOOOOP! BANG! The Zeus’ impact foam dulled the crash, but it still felt like absolute shit. The undercarriage ground to a stop in the concrete beneath him as he struggled to dig out. Finally, the canopy blasted off the frame, deflating the foam around him. Aching from head to toe in his old, tight-fitting Augs, Kabbard climbed out to the sound of cheering.

A group of what looked like kids in EXO kit rushed over to him, jumping up and down. Kabbard noticed the glow below to his right. The salvo had found its mark, decimating the T99 ranks. He allowed a half-smile to cross his face before straightening.

“Who’s in command?!” he barked.

“I-I am, sir!” said one of the rookies. No… not rookies anymore. These guys had really been through the ringer. Augs torn to hell, blood and dirt all over. A few had holes through them, leaving arms dangling limp. Kabbard squinted at the commanding officer. Recognized him.

“You’re the ‘sir,’ Officer Vaughn, I’m a civilian,” said Kabbard, saluting. He turned and trotted to the wreck of the Zeus. Yanked open the rear hatch.

“Weapons! Ammo! Grenades! Take what you can, sir, it’s gonna be a long night!” Kabbard hefted two crates out and slid them across the ground where the EXOs tore them open. For himself, he took his favorite out of the hatch. A belt-fed fifty cal SAW. Even with his Augs on, the thing weighed more than he remembered.

“Sir—uhh… Mr. Kabbard,” said Officer Vaughn, limping over, “Is HQ gone?”

Kabbard chambered the first round of the ammo belt and paused. Nodded.

“Saw it go up right after I left the armory.”

“So that’s it? There’s no one else coming?”

“Governor Sato will call in the Feds, but who knows when they’ll mobilize.” Kabbard saw the young officer sink. Sato probably can’t even get that much done. He cleared his throat. Spoke to Vaughn loud enough for the other men to hear. “What are your orders, sir?”

Vaughn looked back at the men. All waited, weapons at the ready.

“Okay… I want claymores set up in stages at each escalator! You six, set up along the front line! You three—” Vaughn stopped as he saw something over Kabbard’s shoulder. Kabbard turned in time to see the RPG smoke trail streak toward the fourth tier.

“INCOMI—”

BOOOOM! Kabbard woke up in mid-air, just in time to feel himself crunch down into a flower bed. The Zeus had gone up in flames, and EXOs lay scattered across the tier. Only four were moving. The rest lay still in smoking heaps.

“VAUGHN!” Kabbard yelled. It sounded like he’d shouted the kid’s name into a pillow. He winced at the pounding in his skull as he rolled on the gutted flower bed. Against the firey backdrop at the tier’s edge, shadows climbed up. Kabbard scanned the ground around him. Found the SAW. In an agonizing lunge, he dove for the weapon, scooped it up, and opened fire.

The shadows screamed as they fell back, but more shadows replaced them. An endless wave of devils cascading over the edge. Kabbard’s Neural readout beeped at seventy-five percent ammo. Then fifty. Then twenty-five. It ran dry as they closed on him.

“COME ON!” Kabbard screamed, losing his voice. He tossed the SAW aside, and reached behind his back. Detached the two-and-a-half foot carbon steel short sword from his back panel.

“YOU WANT THIS CITY?!” Kabbard sprinted toward the gathering crowd with Augs at full tilt. “COME BLEED FOR IT!”

The honed, vibrating edge of the blade sailed through bodies as the horde converged on him. He cut one from neck to armpit. Lopped another open at the waist. Kabbard’s Augs screeched with every desperate, swing, kick, elbow, and punch. Until finally a shot shattered his knee. Kabbard howled and doubled over onto his side. Hands reached in for him. He writhed, hacking a few off until he caught another round in the forearm, and a final one through the other knee. The blade dropped to the ground as the rabid throng reached underneath the former Sergeant. Heaved him up over their heads.

Kabbard screamed a curse, silencing the crowd for the briefest instant. It roared from his throat in no language and yet all languages. As the blood loss took him, it stopped.

WHAT LITTLE LIGHT there had been in the cavernous service tunnels suddenly vanished, leaving Corey and Liani surrounded by darkness. The tiny flood lights from their rail car kept Liani from totally freaking out, but the echoing void ahead swallowed all light after a few feet. Corey assured her they were going the right way. Their rail car was a Department of Energy personnel shuttle, designed to move freely on independent power to damaged points on the Grid. Input the Grid location you needed to access, and the uncomfortable bucket whisks you off along the edge rails. Liani shifted in the oversized harness of her hardened plastic seat.

They didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Straight for a while, then a gentle curve right, then straight again, intersected at regular intervals by crossing tunnels of the same gargantuan size. The ‘walls’ were a jumble of wires, jutting machinery, and massive pipes. The guts of Sedonia City. Power goes in. Shit goes out. They passed one of the giant garbage scows, frozen in the process of being loaded for a run to the Pits. The rotting stench of it stung her sinuses.