FORT LIBERTY: VOLUME ONE (18 page)

Another sound.

Thunk. Thunk
.

Bullets through metal… the ship above them is taking sniper fire. It’s accurate fire too, blowing out the flight shield, punching holes.

The sniper keeps shooting.

The ship issues a loud hiss, gas, thermal alarms, engines vectoring back.

It tries to disengage, but gets hit by a blast from behind. A crackling snap from a plasma cannon, like lightning, flashing so bright it suspends the moment, buzzes in her ears, raises the hair on the back of her neck.

The sky is a glare.

She catches a blur of movement, one ship colliding with the other, plasma dancing between them. Fire arcs overhead. The two ships hurtle apart, flinging debris down the slope.

A NRM Skimmer banks left to avoid the wreckage and gets hits with a rocket from the ground. It blooms with a clap of flame, shattering over the summit, fragments of its wings and fuselage spinning raining across the far slope.

“Blackheart One, Blackheart Two, you just lost air support.”

“No shit,” Voss says. “Where are my mortars?”

“Mortars imminent, over.

Petra lunges for her rifle, grabbing it from the stone and pushing back to crouch beside Voss. He nods, his attention focused down the slope.

A different voice comes on the comm. “Blackheart One Actual, this is Blackheart Hunter, you have about a dozen enemy fighters approaching on your front and right flank. I am approaching on your left flank, over.”

“Roger.” Voss looks at her and points left. “Do not fire in that direction.”

“Yeah.”

He rises, lifting his head and shoulders over the stone ridge and firing down the slope, his weapon braced against his right shoulder and kicking with recoil, muzzle flashing with bursts of hot gunfire.

The force shudders through him, cold, violent, intent.

She slides the buttstock of rifle high on her chest, breathes. One, two…

Then she’s up, gripping the forestock, glaring through her visor.

The world appears crystalline in shades of green, heat from the surrounding wreckage glowing white, guns chattering in manic rhythms, so loud it rattles through her skull. Shards of rock, sharp enough to rip through a suit, are flying in the air, clacking with the zing of bullet ricochets.

And fear, the kind of fear that paralyzes, is thick in her chest.

Shapes move among the rocks below, still too far out for her to hit with accuracy, weaving in and out of cover. Muzzle flashes sparkle in clusters. Shadows, demons, people who want her dead… people who were an obscure concept a few minutes ago but are now moving up quickly, murder on their minds.

Petra clenches her teeth, focusing through a primitive aperture sight, aiming between the flashes and squeezing the trigger. The rifle kicks back and she works the bolt, loading another round. Another shot, then another. Some patches go dark, people shifting positions, suddenly made aware of her presence.

“C’mon,” she hisses under her breath.

Mortars impact along the slope, their force pounding the stone below, stealing her breath. Giant plumes of dust shoot skyward, billowing murk and falling rock, flung pieces of human beings.

“Blackheart Hunter coming up,” a voice issues over the com.

From their left, an outline materializes from the dust, visible only because it’s moving. It takes human shape as it nears, another Assaulter, though the armor of the man’s suit is draped in thermal optic camouflage, a disjointed reflection of the terrain he’s running through.

The sniper.

He slips in behind them, slapping Voss’s shoulder. “Hey, brother.”

“Right flank,” Voss says between shots.

“On it.”

The comm line crackles. “Blackheart One, Sentinel Three is loose. We just lost control of Sentinel Three.”

Voss curses. “Where is it?”

“On your seven. Blackheart Two is en route, four mics—”

Reinforcements are coming, but it doesn’t matter, because Petra can hear it. Sentinel Three is cracking across the rocks toward them, weapons rotating on internal servos, actuators whining through darkness and silt. It is death, a drone the size of a small track with a machine gun and rocket launcher.

“Contact right,” the sniper says as enemy guns clatter from the right slope.

Petra can’t say anything, chaos raging in a fog, battle ripping along the slope, the sniper thick in it, his back turned away from her.

The Sentinel drone appears as a giant shadow behind them.

Son of a bitch!

Petra responds through the fear, draws her pistol, raising it in hopeless rage. The machine’s lenses dilate, shining between armor plates, the muzzle of its machine gun tilting toward her.

Voss yanks her back, moving between her and the drone.

He becomes something else, as much death, as much machine, as the Sentinel bearing down on them. He charges it.

Leaping forward, he sails, Earthbound strength versus Mars G.

The drone retreats a step, trying to aim on the target, but it’s slow. Voss grabs onto its ammunition cage and heaves himself up, a massive cat lunging over movement, over the bucking chassis of an unwilling robot. He kicks the gun barrel, busting motors, and thrashes two of the armored plates with his boot.

The drone skates back, tossing in wild jerks.

Voss tumbles off it, rolling along the rock.

Petra fires her pistol at the machine’s exposed control deck.

Voss joins her with his assault weapon, the two guns crackling, her adrenaline spiked to the pulse of a jumping pistol grip. Sparks spill from under the armor. The Sentinel collapses on its arms, going lifeless.

Voss keeps shooting it, ejecting one magazine and snapping in another one to blast its lenses, shatter control boards.

“Enemy coming over the wall!” the sniper warns.

An armed fighter, clad in a black suit, leaps over the ridge, followed by another. The sniper’s engaged, taking out rockets teams, too many charging at him.

Petra takes aim, standing her ground, pistol firing.

One fighter drops.

Her gun clicks empty.

And Voss moves in, larger, faster than the men struggling to jump in front of him and raise their weapons. He grabs the closest one and slams his helmet against the rock, shattering the visor. Then he starts shooting.

It happens fast.

Quick. Controlled. Ruthless.

The threat is over.

Voss and the sniper continue to fight, but the return fire ebbs, no longer a stream, no longer a clatter, but a trickle of one or two weapons.

“Blackheart Two, approaching on your six.”

And there it is, a group of NRM guards behind them, running through dust, through wreckage, taking positions along the ridge. More guns, more strength, eager, excited faces, ready to finish what little has been left for them.

Return fire falls silent.

It takes a moment to breathe again. The voices on the comm are distant. The sound of the wind is so much closer… that cold hiss of apathy through speakers, Mars spreading her cloak of dust, swallowing whatever destruction humans have shed across her desolation.

The slope glows with hot wreckage, motionless fighters.

Petra stands rigid, jaw clenched… alive… more than alive.

She can hear it in the Assaulters, in the guards. She can feel it in herself, in the flood of irrational triumph, that fleeting kiss of invincibility, the fulfillment of revenge that she’s felt before, climactic and pure.

You didn’t kill me. Not because you couldn’t, but because we stopped you.

She looks at Voss. His attention is focused on the slope, his expression hidden by a mirrored visor. He’s cold, surgical in his assessments… listening, clarifying, giving orders.

After a moment, he looks at her. “I need you to give up those weapons now and open the station for us. Do you understand?”

Yes.

And no…

And it doesn’t matter.

Two guards approach, and she relinquishes her empty pistol, her empty rifle, knowing that there’s nothing else to be done. Open the doors. Give up Niri and somehow watch them take her away… somehow start over. Take the losses she’s brought upon herself, pieces of her life tossed out in the open with no hope of ever fitting back the way they were.

“Take her into the station below,” Voss tells two of his men. “She’s not to address the others. Find a secure compartment and hold her there.”

“Hold?” Petra murmurs.

“Until a ship arrives for your transport,” he says, regarding her from behind that faceless visor. “You’re under arrest, Petra.”

ARSIA MONS REGION

MARS DATE: DAY 10, MONTH 10/24, YEAR 2,225

Voss stands amid the wreckage, taking a moment to show respect, listen to the voices of the dead. No one reads a battlefield the way an old soldier does, drawing the face of his enemy from charred metal and strewn corpses, shrapnel blown through suits, armor ripped off, open wounds frozen instantly.

It’s his science, its horror greyed to technical normalcy, the clawed tracks of the beast he hunts. Its breath slips through the cold murmur of wind, and the moment is intimate, his feel of it, the shape and dimension of his enemy, its last movements here, its loss and confusion.

You’re a novice at war, but you’re dedicated. You don’t know how to fight Assaulters, but you’ll learn quickly. I’ve depleted your resources, but you have more. You came in through the atmosphere, undetected until the last minute. Your operations are off the grid, maybe off the planet, which is expensive and requires complex logistics. You’re able to conceal all of this from the NRM, which means you have powerful support hiding in plain sight, somewhere in Red Filter.

“You ready, Col?” Wyatt asks, accustomed to Voss’s battlefield eccentricities and prepared to wait if need be, though the night is cold and no one’s getting any younger.

“Talk to me,” Voss says.

“Cockpits in the ships are blasted to hell. Some of the damage was done by internal self-destruct units, maybe triggered remotely after the fight was obviously lost… looks like everything identifiable got wiped out. I mean, there’s a lot of evidence here, but these guys are obviously worried about getting caught, so I doubt they left any smoking guns. The soldiers are young, multiple races, though the number is slightly in favor of Oriental descent, no ID implants… so they’re either not citizens, or not identifiable as such. No fingerprints either.”

“Did any of the suits self-destruct?”

“I don’t know yet… maybe. You’re thinking we’ve got fanatics on our hands? Last few might have pulled the switch rather than be captured?”

Voss doesn’t answer, but Wyatt reads his silence easily enough.

“Shit,” he says.

“Skimmer One?” Voss asks.

“Yeah, we got lucky… fortified cockpit, designed to separate and ditch with jets firing upon ship disintegration. Skimmer One pissed all over himself, but he’ll live to fuck up another day. All the skinnies are good. Everyone in the station’s good. The psycho’s good, hearing good voices in her head and wants to come back with us. Logan’s good. So… we have zero casualties.”

Voss nods, knowing it won’t be the case next time.

“Then again… not like we got ‘em all,” Wyatt says, always in-sync.

“No.”

“Tangling with these guys is going to get real complicated, real quick, when they actually get some more time training on those shiny weapons. I think I actually saw a few knocked down by recoil. All and all, though, they put up a good fight.”

“Yes.”

“Makes you wonder how long your girl would have lasted with that bolt-action rifle,” Wyatt laughs under his breath. “Like… thirty seconds.”

“
My
girl?”

“Well, yes, sir,” Wyatt says, playing innocent. “In your custody, right? Going back to Fort Liberty to answer for all this… face her crimes… ”

Voss narrows his gaze on the horizon, the thin glow of dawn seeping through the dust. “How long until a transport arrives?”

“A few hours.”

Voss nods, trudging up the slope. “I’m going to talk to her.”

“Yes, sir,” Wyatt replies under his breath, following slowly behind. “I imagine that’s going to go spectacularly.”

Silence. Things done. Things not done. It all comes to the surface when no one’s watching. Lying flat on a bunk, in the semi darkness, one fluorescent light glowing from under a nest of metal cabinets… it’s got the look and feel of the future, of holding cells, and prisons, and no freedom beyond what the mind provides.

Only hers doesn’t.

There’s no gentle dreaming. There’s no serene meditation. She’s restless and neurotic in close spaces without hope of movement. No windows. No horizons, no glitter of stars. Quiet places are the loudest, the most damning.

What for? For a girl you know nothing about? For guilt? For pain?

Better to have been murdered up on the rock than to suffer a lifetime locked in Wexler’s chains, beaten down by three meals a day, every day, the same day, brought low by those with vapid appetites and power to wield. She’s survived too much for sitting still, and far too much for bowing at anyone’s feet.

“Fuck,” she mutters, pressing her palms against her eyes. “Fuck.”