Takedown

February 2nd, 2386 ESY

Lunar Security Authority Surface Protection Force Annex

Mare Serenitatis, Luna

“Eleven. Twelve. Come on, Lex, bust ‘em out! Sloppy, that last one didn't count. Twelve…” Lucas Stefanson stood spotting for his teammate, Lexine Benitez, as she ground through the last set of bench presses. Her face was shiny with sweat and tense with exertion. The Protection Force team room on Sublevel Two was a cave, a rat's nest, converted from an old storage room for the express use of the Lunar Security Authority’s HE-V pilots. Workout equipment, tattered furniture, an impromptu bar surrounded by trinkets and talismans, and other paraphernalia packed the space. It was shabby, a little grimy, and smelled faintly of hydraulic fluid and lunar dust.

“Eighteen. Nineteen. Aaand, you got it, you got it, you got it, twenty! That's the way, Lexi!” He took the weight of the bar and helped her rack it. She sat up with a gasp and reached for her water bottle.

“Man. I swear the gravity decking still isn't enough. You lose your muscle tone so fast up here.”

“Nah, you just got to spend more time moving the weights. That's all there is to it, lady.”

“I'm telling you, there's a difference.” She had a long pull off of the water bottle. “Hey, you hear Third Section got into it down at Tranquility yesterday?”

“Something about a raid on a storage site?”

“Yeah. Some piece-of-shit belters moving weapons through. Had a couple glowflies with them. One of the guys from Three told Ma one of them spilled his guts, swore Echelon hired them to do it. Big money.”

Stefanson wiped his hands off on a towel. “Right! And the moon's actually hollow. Gun runners’ll say anything.”

“Yeah. Whatever, we just don't need a repeat of Ellison's Rise. Terrorists are going to get what's coming to them, no trial if I have my way. And if any corp death squad types want to try their luck, I'll burn them down too.” She held out her hand, and Stefanson delivered a stinging high five.

“Damn right. We’ll show those arrogant dicks how it’s done. Suits playing at being soldiers, psh. Try me.”

Across the team room, an older pilot sat on a tattered vinyl couch reading an old, dog-eared copy of Firepower! He lowered it and glared over the top at his younger associates.

“I never pinned either of you as suicidal types.”

“What the hell do you mean, Berg?” Benitez asked derisively.

“I mean I don’t even want to hear you joke about that. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He glared now, serious.

Youthful arrogance covered much, including obvious warning signs. Buzzing with the high of his own hard workout, Stefanson fired off a retort, smirking. “Yeah? If you’re scared of the salaried slobs you should maybe hang up your guns then, eh, Berg?”

Benitez’s lip curled for a moment in second-hand regret. Erik Berg’s eyes grew cold and distant in the way a man’s do when he’s ready to fight for keeps. The space between the two pilots vibrated with animosity for a moment, then stilled. The veteran closed the magazine, set it aside, rose and walked to the table, never taking his eyes off of Stefanson. He flipped a chair around and straddled it. Hoping to defuse the tension, Benitez also sat and Stefanson followed.

The older pilot spoke again, solemnly. “No joke, kiddies. The best rigs. Best equipment. Best training. They’re no amateurs, none of them. All the corps pay the best and so they get the best, or raise their own. Killers. Real killers. VisalCorp, hell, even Selegin will give you a hell of a fight. You don’t have the stomach for it. Echelon sends in one of their stabilization teams? Your story ends there.”

Neither of the young pilots said a word. Recycled air rattled loudly through the vent. “But you fought them.” Benitez said.

Berg nodded slowly. “I did. When I served on Earth. Australia.”

—

Colonel Mosby’s entourage was two teams, eight machines total. Two Corsos and a Daiko escorting the Colonel’s Shepherd, his personal guard, his praetorians. The other team brought the big guns to pound the corporation’s mercs into the mud. Two more Corsos and a pair of old, gnarly, tracked Volstreckers, all set up for direct fire support. Berg was the Colonel’s second in the field for this op, and rode one of the Corsos in an escort slot. 

Their opposition was a mercenary outfit called the Redbacks. Well-equipped, fairly competent, aspirations of going big league. VisalCorp was displeased with Victorialand’s refusal to sell or lease their restored germanium refineries near Adelaide. The government and the Victorian Army’s leadership found it self-evident that they’d hired the mercs to cause trouble in retaliation. Visal had denied everything, of course, and the mercs had coincidentally taken over one newly opened facility the day prior, one of several in the region. The Ministry of Defense had decided enough was enough, and Colonel Mosby elected to lead the liberation sortie himself. 

Berg had reflected privately during the march that such an operation did not, in fact, require the Colonel's personal presence. Direct action missions never benefited from the presence of senior officers. Mosby was like that, though. A mustang who had come up through the ranks running an HE-V and leading fellow pilots, and the grunts adored him. Some twenty years of service, and he still liked to be out front. 

Cynically, Berg judged the propaganda value of such stunts immense for the Colonel, politically speaking. A staunch and very vocal anti-corporatist, and patriot, it wouldn’t be long until he retired and made an immediate bid in politics with the full support of the Australian Shipbuilders Guild. The Colonel’s peers and immediate subordinates, though, feared it was only a matter of time until he went down in flames, something sure to throw the ranks of the Army and the nation into turmoil. 

"Passing nav point lambda, coming up on the refinery access road. Check grid reference, maintain formation,” Mosby said over the net. "Recon confirms Redback pickets approx twenty-four klicks out. Immediate engagement expected on approach, but keep weapons tight. Do not fire unless fired upon."

‘Copy’ and ‘yessir’ all around. Despite the Colonel taking personal command, the mission was standard. Routine. Berg and the teams had done this sort of thing many times. The HE-Vs maintained a formation like a squashed diamond with the Colonel in the middle. Better to allow overlapping missile defence while permitting most of the formation to bring their firepower to bear in any direction, on demand. The two Volstrekers, loaded for bear with heavy autocannons and HE-V-cracking missiles, rolled along, side by side, at the front.  

Berg assessed his sensor board; passive pickups showed nothing in the skeletonized, old facilities ahead, on either side access road. He spoke into the helmet mic. “Tighten up, don’t hug the shoulders. Watch the flanks.” He watched the blue icons representing his fellows compress on either side of the Colonel’s HE-V. Sparse, broken ruins surrounded them; slag heaps, rubble, and forests of old, rusty pipes. Leftovers from a bygone time. Not many places to hide, and the Redbacks were far ahead yet. 

But he had long ago learned to recognize the feel, the scent, of imminent peril. An instinct most combat HE-V pilots developed early, or else perished. Right then, his flesh crawled. 

"Break! I've got near signature, eight thirty," said one of the other escort team members, Carrow, a woman he'd served alongside for two years. "Faint, though. May be-"

Then they were on them.

—

“Who did you fight? Which corp?” Stefanson asked, no longer cocky.

“Visal once, technically. They had a few of their own advising the Redbacks. The other time, the last time, I, I don’t actually know who they were. Echelon? I think they had to be. But…”

“Don’t know like ‘deniable’?” Benitez asked, slightly confused.

“Not exactly. They, uh, just came out in some shit you wouldn’t believe.”

—

A sleek, rounded, bipedal HE-V rose on roaring plumes of superheated air, over the ruins on the formation’s left and directly into their midst. This was no Redback machine. Berg knew in the first second. Pale, porcelain white bodywork, blood red trim. Bold. Had to be corporate. No other belligerents wanted you to know exactly who and where they were. At first glance, he thought the ambusher was a Buckler, and feared that VisalCorp had taken off the gloves and sent their best. The rig’s silhouette, too, was unknown to him: Smooth and sculpted, a flat, pan-like head. And no articulated missile pods, no long-barreled laser. Just a single, thin combat blade gripped in the machine’s hands, nearly as long as the HE-V was tall. Some six meters of molecularly-reinforced carbide alloy, its cutting edge reflecting the orange light of the Australian sun in cold silver. 

Orders were shouted over the net, and the formation reacted, but too slow by half. The unknown attacker landed, struck Carrow’s Corso twice from behind and it collapsed, legs cut from under her. It then launched into a sprint, fast and utterly without hesitation toward the Colonel, into the teeth of machines far outmassing it and their killer guns.

Situated between the attacker and Colonel Mosby, Berg had just pivoted to lay his own weapons on the rushing HE-V when other hostiles appeared. One plowed through the roll-up door of an old service bay ahead, emerging the moment the leading Volstreckers had stopped and swiveled to address its comrade. That one also carried a long blade. Then two different, larger, machines leapt from the opposite side and laid into the formation, the cutting edges of their larger swords wreathed in barely-contained plasma. 

He and his compatriots were embroiled in a wild, point-blank brawl, one they were ill-equipped to win. The smaller hostiles converged on the Colonel’s Shepherd from opposite angles. The other two quickly dismantled the hulking Volstreckers, their heavily-armed linebackers, with fluid, flashing strikes, carving through tracks and weapons and hulls. Explosions bloomed from sundered metal as screams of rage and fear sounded over the net. The phantoms dashed between the Victorian Army HE-Vs, never allowing more than a moment of exposure as they hacked and dodged.

Far too close for rockets, Berg aimed and fired both rotary cannons at the cyclical rate, struggling to track and inflict some damage on his far nimbler foes, to catalyze the assault. It was then he understood in that desperate instant, with shivering clarity: they were there for the Colonel.

Berg shouted over the radio for his commander to fall back, to get clear. Unheard or simply too embroiled to respond, the Colonel’s shot cannon boomed and scoured one of the charging lightweights, staggering it and turning its blade aside as the other lunged, thrusting like a fencer. The Colonel’s Shepherd rotated, clawed fist rising to meet it. The surviving escort team members rushed to intervene.

—

Neither of the young pilots felt even the embers of their earlier bravado. It was sobering to see an accomplished, brave pilot’s face etched with such fear as he recounted the tale. Berg’s eyes, bright and wet with moisture, went from Benitez to Stefanson and back as he spoke, boring into both in turn. He seemed to falter at one point and coughed, looking down at the pitted surface of the table.

“Holy shit, Erik.” Stefanson whispered.

“Indeed,” He swiped a thumb across his nose. “And it was two to one odds.” 

—

What started as a melee turned into a massacre within sixty seconds. Berg drove forward hard toward the two smaller machines, firing bursts, careful to avoid hitting the Colonel in the back. As he just about had a bead and settled to drill out one of the lights, he was hammered sideways in the cockpit, a wall of noise ringing through the interior of his Corso. Red damage indicators lit across his panels; something had detonated the rockets in the right-side launcher. His Corso stumbled sideways off the roadway, nearly falling, and it took some fancy footwork to go with it, pivot and regain his balance. 

As his viewscreen revolved and settled one of the larger assassins was already bearing down on him again. Half his firepower was now gone, but Berg gritted his teeth, ignored the rising alarms and slewed hard right to bring his remaining rotary cannon on target. A second before his enemy’s deadly plasma blade came down, Harris, in the Daiko, barged forward, trying to come to grips, chest-mounted particle cannon spitting lightning at perilously close range. Harris’s shot struck home, blasting an ugly, glowing crater in the white armor. The mysterious pilot reoriented and reacted with inhuman speed, cleaving off one of the Daiko’s arms at the elbow assembly before a follow-up backhand slice neatly split the machine’s protruding head. Harris was gone. Deprived of human input, the Daiko’s computers carried it forward, past his killer, for a few sluggish steps, a sleepwalker, one arm and a glowing stump still outstretched before it tottered and pitched forward.

Berg’s courage broke in a blink, and craven fear replaced it. These pilots were better than him, better than all of them. Not better in the way of ratings on a spreadsheet, or qualifications, or numbers in a file. Better at the savage dancing steps of close-quarters mechanized combat. Better at wetwork, at the bursting of the most delicate and important components in these warmachines that weighed dozens of tons. Far from the clumsy brawling that HE-Vs sometimes engaged in, this was a way of combat that he knew not.

His brain was screaming at him to turn and run, or else bail out and pray. Training alone kept Berg in the fight. A quick glance: everyone else was gone, save the Colonel and he. Mosby was holding his own, but his rig was coming apart. A vicious uppercut from the Shepherd’s claw crunched the chest of a smaller HE-V, lifting and dropping it in a heap. He swiveled to engage the other behind him, shot cannon belching smoke as fast as it could load its enormous shells. The other, larger attacker was sweeping in from his right side, plasma blade lit and ready to strike. Berg’s own assailant was still on him, and he got his first good look at its weapon: the wavering, arc-bright light surrounding the cutting edge cast a sickly glare across the surrounding devastation. 

The machine closed quickly, its pilot confident, the blade arm pulling back. Ready to kill at will. Berg aimed and opened up with his remaining rotary cannon at fifty meters, rounds sparking and spanging off his target’s layered armor that looked so much like the sode worn by samurai of old. His executioner fired directional thrusters, surging forward in a heartbeat. Erik Berg’s life stretched to fill the fraction of time between the swing and impact. The Corso’s temperature readout spiked an instant before every screen and every monitor glitched and died. A violent, whiplashing impact sent his arms flying off the sticks, and then he knew no more.

—

“Response unit pulled me from the wreck. I was half dead from inhaling burning hydraulic fluid. And Carrow, Carrow lived, too. Her Corso was just disabled, but the fall had knocked her out cold. Bad concussion. That saved her, I think. Her HE-V being dead in the water. They got the Colonel, though, cut him down. He fought like a man possessed. I think he took out one of them. I remember that. I think I do. But there was no sign of the attackers, after. Not a wreck, not a part. Nothing.”

“Who were they? Echelon, you said. Stepping out in that kinda high-tech, it had to be them.” Benitez asked, half as haunted as Mac looked. He gave her a strange smile in response, eyebrows raised, turned his head up and back as if to say ‘who knows’.

“The way they fought,” He trailed off, clicked his teeth. “It wasn’t their way. I believe they were corp, though. Yup, had to be. Some special strike unit, field testing… Something. Message was received, though, wasn’t it? Cross us, and nothing will protect you.”

“What happened after? What did the Army say?” Stefanson asked.

“Oh, that part.” Berg grew stoic again, painful emotions gathering and disappearing behind his typically gruff exterior. “They said my conspicuous incompetence allowed the Redbacks to ambush us. And, naturally, negligence resulted in the death of my commanding officer. Had to be someone to hold accountable. Our injuries made it easy for them to drum me and poor Carrow out. She took such a whack the docs didn’t think she could ever run a rig again, at least nothing with a neural control element. I mustered out, came up here. Safer chasing smugglers.”

With that Mac rose, flipped the chair back around and slowly pushed it forward, pausing and collecting himself. He addressed his younger teammates once more, with sincerity. “If you even have a dream where you want to lock horns with the corpos, you’d better snap out of it and then pray against it. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Yup, got it.”

Berg strolled from the team room without another word. Left behind, the two young pilots stared at each other as if they had witnessed something great and terrible.

Illustration by Eldon Cowgar

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TRANSCRIPT ATTACHED

Title: Machinery Matters - The Industrial Equipment Operator’s Show

Topic(s): Demolition Cutters

Hosts: Jaimes "Jim" Vilt Jr.; Ty Huang

Segment Air Date: <REDACTED> - Syndicated DeepCast Format

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT BEGINS

[INTRO MUSIC FADES]

VILT: Annnnd welcome back, friends! This is Machinery Matters. I'm Jaimes Vilt Jr.

HUANG: And I'm Ty Huang. How’re you doing, Jim?

VILT: Real good, Ty. You doing good, pally?

HUANG: Better than I deserve. What’s on the docket, now?

VILT: Only one of the best heavy tools in an HE-V operator's toolbelt: demo cutters!

HUANG: Ahhh. Yes. Some might say it is the subtlest tool…

VILT: [laughter] Subtle? Ty, did you hit your head? 

HUANG: You got me, you got me. I should rephrase: how about underappreciated? They aren’t only for heavy demolition work like-

VILT: Well, it’s in the name after all. 

HUANG: True, but they can be used for so much more than that. Different models make a big difference in your workflow.

VILT: Well, that's what we're here for today. To give these magnificent machines their due. Ty, for the greenhorn and casual viewers, we should probably explain what a demolition cutter is. Do you want to tell them?

HUANG: Sure. Demolition cutter is really just a category for any powered, or motorized, HE-V scaled cutting tool. Usually it looks like a big chainsaw, or a wheel cutter, sometimes a drum cutter. They can be designed as handhelds for a HE-V’s manipulators or for direct-mounting as a limb or sometimes on a chassis accessory mount.

VILT: Yessir, and in case you all are wondering what the real perk of a demo cutter is compared to similarly equipped heavy construction vehicles it’s that you get all the capability of a dedicated attachment, but you still get the true all-terrain, all-conditions uptime of a walking rig. 

HUANG: Precisely, Jim. It isn’t just a cool factor to attract new workers. Proponents of traditional equipment overlook the flexibility of HE-Vs. The efficiency benefits and time savings alone are, my goodness, substantial. They will more than pay for the higher upfront costs. You can tell who’s never had to budget for tires on a haul truck!

VILT: Ooh, I can’t even laugh at that. So tell us what sorts of jobs you’d pick up a cutter for, Ty.

HUANG: More than just demolition work, for starters. It depends on the make, and size, too, but I’ve found them invaluable for forestry, disaster response, salvage, jobsite prep... the list goes on. 

VILT: Right on. Now, let’s talk specifics. You've been in the industry longer than most guys, and I know you’ve spent a long time on “heavy duty” running all kinds of cutters. Ty, what's your pick for a GP model? What’s a real gem a procurement manager or owner-operator should know about?

HUANG: For general purpose, oh, there’s a bunch of good ones. I'd say, hmm. I’d have to go with the Culgan Exo 850A. It’s hard to beat for pure value. Inexpensive, not cheap. It's a wheel-style cutter, carbide teeth, runs off a standard HE-V auxiliary power tether. 

VILT: So it’s corded!? 

HUANG: [laughter] Well, yeah! [laughter] It hooks up to an external power socket on rigs, or you can even run it off a standalone power source. I know it sounds like a lot of trouble but the Exo is reliable and affordable. Easy to service on site if you have to. The blade is just a disc of hardened tool steel, and the teeth are swappable. 

VILT: I have to stop you here, Ty. Reliability? The thing is primitive, Ty. This thing-

HUANG: No, come on! [laughter]

VILT: -primitive. The viewers, Ty, the viewers need to know this. Single-speed operation, short reach, and those teeth dull so fast if you're cutting anything harder than structural steel and they have to be welded on!

HUANG: [laughter] Jim, you're giving folks the wrong impression. Grab two guys and you can weld on fresh teeth in under an hour with a good setup, and if you are smart you’ll have a second wheel ready to swap-in instead. See? It can take two days to swap a chain on some more exotic models-

VILT: Such as the Komatpillar KP-1200!

HUANG: I knew it! I was getting there. Yes, the KP-1200, the Megacutter. “The king of the cutters,” isn’t that what you keep saying, Jim? 

VILT: Now that right there is a real fine piece of industrial engineering. Unbreakable nanocomposite bar, dynamic chain tensioning, hyperalloy teeth that can chew through damn near anything. 

HUANG: But that tool costs as much as some lightweight workrigs! More than most, anyway! Whew. 

VILT: Now, Ty, a professional worker would appreciate the 1200’s onboard microfusion engine. That means no draw from your rig’s reactor. That has to be a huge, huge boon for sustained work. 

HUANG: It’s got some issues, though, real ones- 

VILT: You can’t just let me have this? This one moment?

HUANG: The people need to know, Jim! They need to know! [laughter] If you do manage to break that "unbreakable" arm, er, bar, which can happen, trust me, you're not field-repairing it. You're sending it back to a Komatpillar depot and waiting and waiting and… 

VILT:  I'd still argue the KP-1200 justifies its price for the right job. Old growth timber, remote salvage jobs, anywhere else you need that power with minimal logistical snags. That microfusion cell is a game-changer. Just heft and cut.

HUANG: Agreed, really. And I'll tell you, having seen one in action firsthand, the performance is, wow. I watched a Klondike operator with a KP-1200 drop and section one of the last big redwoods in North America. Staggering! Breathtaking.

VILT: It was something, huh?

HUANG: I'm underselling it. Speaking of breathtaking sights, we should maybe talk about the other uses for demo cutters.

VILT: Ah. You mean the weaponization thing.

HUANG: That's it. Everyone has seen or heard of these incidents by now, I say. We'd be remiss not to acknowledge that cutters are sometimes pressed into service for combat.

VILT: Unfortunately true, sir. Unfortunately. The Australian Shipbuilder's Guild rebellion is probably the most known instance. 

HUANG: Yes, in late <REDACTED>. The Guild operators stole a shipment of cutters, and kitted out dozens of industrial HE-Vs with them. Did a lot of damage. Echelon’s corporate security forces were caught off guard by that stunt. 

VILT: “Off guard” is putting it gentle. Those cutters tore through them like anything else. Limbs, operator cabins…It was terrifying.

HUANG: Not a surprise, Jim. Ask anyone who’s seen a bad accident on the jobsite. 

VILT: No sir, no sir. No doubt. And on that slightly sobering note, we're going to take a short break so we can hear from our sponsors. We’ll be right back, and then Ty will tell you about best practices for maintaining your demo cutter. Thank you, as always, for listening to Machinery Matters.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT ENDS

Illustration by Florian Mellies

No Exit

July 8th, 2386 

Vicinity of Great Falls, Montana

The bar setup in the old garage had no name. No quirky adjective, no novel animal. It was too cheerless for all that. The bar’s roof gave shade from the blistering sun, and it didn’t leak, and that was enough to make a sanctuary for those who entered with coin in hand. 

Inside, men and women in dirty clothes slouched, bent from cruel labor, on chairs arranged around scattered crates, cable spools, and one immense steel cog, provenance unknown. They whispered to one another or sat in silence, and resembled the newly resurrected or else those given a short refrain from purgatory. A bartender stood behind a U-shaped wood and metal hightop, doling out local brew and bathtub spirits. 

A man named Cook had ended up here after three days riding south in quest of men that could help him, and help his rural village. Great Falls was the closest and best place to look. The town itself was little more than a remnant or a fragment of the once-populous city’s carcass. Just across the river to the east, was a sprawling, desolate expanse of shattered rubble and scavenged ruins; some old military base flattened in a war long ago. The town served as a waystation, a hub of sorts, for haphazard commerce in the region. A natural confluence of humanity situated at a bend in the river. It was one of many such pitiful echoes of civilization scattered across North America and the northern hemisphere.

When Cook had arrived with his companion, Jewel, the town was flush with a typical assortment of travelers and transients. That was a good thing considering his predicament. He’d received no warm welcome, asking around as he was for men-at-arms: banditry and predation were near-constants on the continent. But in time, and with a good word from two locals that knew him, he was told that he might inquire of two traveling guns-for-hire. Pilots. They were at the bar right then. Their HE-Vs squatted, shutdown, in an overgrown lot not far from the bar. One of the machines was wide, low and heavy; the other somewhat taller, thin and spindly. Though not unseen in these parts, a clot of townsfolk had nonetheless gathered to gawk at them; two men with rifles kept the onlookers at a respectful distance.

The men Cook sought were seated at a corner table with the remains of drinks and meals between them. Cook approached and introduced himself, and the men did likewise: Ballard and Snyder. Jewel was not inclined to palaver with characters such as they, and she waited alone at a nearby table, watching. 

Ballard was a middle-aged man that looked older than his years. His deeply tanned and lined face was preternaturally still, save his eyes and brows that betrayed his inner sentiments as he spoke and thought. Snyder was a decade younger, or a little less, lean, and outwardly friendly. He made no attempt to hide the bellicose tattoos proclaiming loyalty to Empyrean Reach on the back of his left forearm. 

Cook inquired of the men’s profession directly, and Ballard answered. Snyder clarified: they were both freelance purveyors of violence, the third oldest and most-honorable profession. Cook told them that he, and his neighbors, had need of their services, specifically the kind armed HE-Vs could provide.

Ballard had nodded almost sleepily at that. "What can you pay?"

Cook listed off commodities: Grain; meat, preserved or on the hoof; fuel alcohol; various sundries. He died a little inside as he spoke but maintained his outward composure. His village was the furthest thing from materially wealthy. He watched Ballard closely for his reaction but the man’s stony expression revealed nothing.

Snyder had no such reserve. He leaned back in his chair until it was on two legs, creaking, and his expression mildly insulted. "Dear friend. HE-Vs are expensive to operate. And we cannot haul your cows for exchange elsewhere. We aren’t in the business of livestock," He said.

"It's everything we can offer. We farm to live, and try to trade for what else we need. But we’re in danger. The whole town is," Cook said with earnest dignity.

“Sir, do you lack guns or balls? Cannot the men of, eh, nowhere drive off a few rustlers and thieves?” Snyder settled in his chair and reached for his glass, tone needling.

"If only. We have guns and men but we aren’t facing flesh and blood. They have machines. HE-Vs, I reckon, and armed. Like yours, but smaller.”

That changed the temperature of the conversation. Ballard’s eyebrows went up. "Is that so? Yet here you stand, alive. Could be you are trying to lure us someplace.”

“It is, sir. I couldn’t guess as to why, but so far they haven’t turned their guns on us. And I tell you true. I have plenty of witnesses.” He gestured to Jewel.

“How many? How many, we’ll say, attackers?” Snyder inquired.

“Many. I counted almost two dozen, once. At least that many.”

Snyder whistled long and sharp, drawing looks from the dour patrons of the bar. “Well! I am sorry! You do indeed have cause to bone up the old homestead’s security. But cause alone, Mr. Cook, does not pay-”

Ballard waved two callused fingers toward his companion, cutting him off. “We may be able to help you. You and your friend, there, should tell us what all has happened.”

Cook looked back at Jewel and gave her a nod toward the table where the men were seated. She rose and walked over to join them.

“Sirs, we could perhaps discuss this somewhere with fewer eavesdroppers?” Cook asked, unsure of what and how much to reveal in mixed company.

"We should discuss it now." Ballard said flatly, and that was that.

Snyder picked up his drink. “Go on, go on. Tell us everything." He smiled at Jewel over the rim of his glass like a Cheshire cat.

—

Cook’s tale followed the beats of a bad dream. The first sign of trouble was downed fences around the western pastures. New post-and-rail they'd spent the better part of six months setting, smashed flat or knocked loose. This was not unprecedented: agitated animals and the blistering storm winds that pushed through year-round had caused plenty of headaches before.

Their herds of long-haired cattle had seized the opportunity to flee from whatever did the damage, scattering across a vast range. The folks sent out to round them up the next day reported odd, large depressions in the soil by the broken sections and within the pasture: Four-toed, smooth, and very regular footprints measuring several feet long, and wide. Deep, too; made by something heavy. Some of the men figured whatever it was had four legs, but was obviously not any animal anyone had ever heard of.

Then the sounds started. Echoing through the night. A low, bassy pulse, like a truck horn blasting through a busted speaker. Another that was a high, rhythmic, electronic ticking. Jewel described it almost like Morse code, but with no discernible pattern. Both sounds carried for miles in the darkness of the moonless prairie night. Most of the villagers woken by them had a hard time getting back to sleep after, and none felt bold enough to investigate the noise despite the distant lowing of the cattle. 

The following day, two men were sent out on horseback to the wooded hills west of the village. They failed to return. The brother of one went out after them days later, but returned early the very next day. No trace, he said. The look of fear on his face made Cook doubt how thoroughly he had searched.

The first actual sighting was one night at the end of June. Cook himself had been on watch, up on the walkway crowning the settlement's grain silo. A cloudless night, and the moon waxed nearly full. The eerie light of the aurora, too, painted the swaying grass like an alien sea. Almost as good as daylight. He saw them out the prairie, a mile out. Black, darting shapes, stopping, starting, moving gradually closer as if unsure or very cautious. Arrayed in a rough line. Cook had rubbed his eyes furiously, fearing they were playing tricks, as adrenaline jolted him to full alertness. 

Quadruped, compact, ultralight HE-Vs. No arms, but paired weapon mounts at the shoulders. A group of glowing red sensor lenses in the middle of each hull. Cook had been frozen with fear and fascination. One had come within a stone’s throw of the outermost buildings before it sounded that awful chittering. Cook had snapped out of it, then, and rang the simple bell he had carried up with him. 

Lights came on in homes across the village, including the cottage nearest the machine. Shouted questions, screams; the germ of panic spreading fast. A man named Jeremiah had burst through the back door of the cottage in nightclothes, flashlight in hand. The thing saw him and aimed, pivoting with feline agility. It sounded its awful horn and advanced on the poor man, a tarantula from the pit. Jeremiah fell back with a yelp of terror, scrabbled, and regained his feet, sprinting away. Jewel had taken him in and later told others that the man was unhinged from fright.

Curiously to Cook, the operator of the machine seemed to lose interest, stopping and watching him go. After a moment, the bastard turned and marched through his erstwhile victim’s home, splintering wood and pre-fab panels like crackers. Something inside sparked and caught, and the wreckage quickly went up in a bonfire, a total loss. Clear of the blaze, the machine stood motionless and waited for some twenty minutes before turning and heading back the way it came. 

Nobody else in the village had been hurt, mercifully. Not yet. But all were certain it was only a matter of time until things escalated, and no one had any illusions about their chances of stopping one, much less multiple, of the damned things.

—

When Cook finished, Snyder looked pointedly at Ballard, who sat quietly for a minute, thinking. 

"Centaurs. Has to be. Only kind fits the description," Snyder said after an interval of silence, somehow aware of Ballard mentally surfacing for discussion. Snyder referred to the relatively rare VisalCorp-manufactured quad ultralight design. They were well-regarded for swiftness and stability, but disliked by many operators for their unintuitive gait. 

“Mm hm. Sounds like it. But where did anyone down here come by them?”

"And what would they be doing out there? Has to be one corporatipon or another," Snyder finished the dregs of his drink and glared mirthfully at Cook and Jewel. “I hear they sometimes send probbies down here to Earth for live-fire final exercises. You know. Blood them in, if you will.” He seemed to enjoy the look of disgust and horror on Jewel’s face. Cook glanced at the tattoo on Snyder’s arm and started to reconsider his plea for help.

"Table that for now," Ballard set down his own glass. He studied Cook for a moment. “Mister Cook. Miss Jewel. We can offer our assistance with the condition that we have full rights and consideration to salvage anything brought down or left behind in the defense of your homes. Do you object?”

“No, of course. We don’t need it,” Cook said. Jewel shook her head in agreement.

“I’d beg to differ, but thanks all the same for your understanding,” Snyder quipped.

"Y’all have done this sort of thing before. Just who are these people? Why would they attack us? Surely you’ve got some idea?" Jewel blurted.

Ballard rose. "That, miss, is a good question. We'll take on the job,” He looked at Snyder, and back at the villagers. “Excuse us for a time. We have to discuss particulars and make preparations. Meet me back here in three hours, and I will accompany you."

—

The two freelance pilots speculated and talked through contingencies, timetables, betrayal, ambush, backup plans and other possibilities privately. Even if the number of attackers was exaggerated by a factor of two, Ballard and Snyder agreed there was no way they alone could handle the onslaught: Snyder’s Buckler had been repaired, refitted and modified so often it was no longer top-of-the-line, and Ballard’s mighty Shepherd wasn’t invincible. With the promise of substantial, tantalizing, high-tech salvage as payment, it was decided to recruit allies to the job. Ballard had remarked that it was pigs that got fat, while hogs got slaughtered.

Snyder, well-travelled and connected, left at once heading south. He spent two days pitching the job to reliable men in the region that he knew from prior experience or reputation. In that time, he signed on two other pilots, their HE-Vs armed and ready to walk, plus secured a handshake deal with a man of dubious reputation named Haywood, he of Haywood’s Boys, an alleged private security provider for hire. The trio operated shabby Kobold ultralights, rusty little gremlins packing handheld canister rifles and an assortment of other weapons. Snyder had seen rigs like them in worse shape, he was sure, but he could not remember when. Haywood could not depart with Snyder’s ad-hoc team, but promised timely arrival hot on their heels; he owned a heavy transporter truck that could carry their Kobolds cross country.

Ballard left Great Falls heading north with Cook and Jewel. The village was about sixty miles north, a little more than two hard days' ride along the remains of a highway buckled and overgrown from decades of neglect. Ballard kept way back from his companions’ horses, and occasionally called Snyder over the radio, hoping for a break in the disruptive solar weather. Twice he caught garbled and broken snatches of his business partner’s voice between the endless, squealing static. At night, Cook and Jewel camped in the open beneath the dome of the iridescent sky overhead. Ballard camped in the cockpit, dozing, while the Shepherd’s sensors remained alert to any approaching threat.

On the morning of the third day, the village was visible on the horizon. It sat in a gentle depression in the prairie, some thirty miles east of where the hills started their slow ascent to the Rocky Mountains. Solar arrays glinted on shingled and earthen roofs, and two windmills turned slowly between threads of chimney smoke. The burnt wreckage of the ruined cottage lay on the western edge, surrounded by blackened grass.

The appearance of Ballard’s Shepherd on the southern road drew a crowd first in alarm, and then in greeting once Cook and Jewel were spotted in attendance. Nothing on his sensors suggested a threat, and Ballard judged the risk of disembarking minimal. He set the Shepherd’s minifusion reactor to idle, locked its joints and dismounted, heaving himself up and through the roof hatch in the rear of the cockpit before descending a cord-and-peg ladder over the back to the ground.  

He was introduced to and shook hands with the village eldermen, and he said the same polite things to each of them. The crowd marveled at the Shepherd, its long autocannons and railguns, and already murmurs of certain salvation ran through the multitude. 

Ballard endured a cursory tour of the village, finding little of note that would aid its defense, and then walked the perimeter while Cook talked. Ballard mentally catalogued background fields of fire should the attackers get in among them. All around, clear to the horizon save a few stands of trees, it was wide open, and flat. The unobstructed expanse would work in favor of the larger HE-Vs and their titanic firepower. 

The structures in the village were split between aboveground and partially belowground; he was told the latter could hold most of the population in a pinch, around a hundred and twenty people, if they had to seek shelter. Ballard told Cook to start planning exactly that, and rehearsing, at once.

Ballard was shown the tracks. He crouched by one clean impression and lowered his hand in it to judge the depth. A few moments figuring over ground pressure and weight distribution cemented his opinion. Ultralights, very likely Centaurs, indeed, or something similar.

Snyder arrived at a jog with the other hires late afternoon of the same day, his many-times refurbished Buckler in the lead. Behind him came Stokes, in a camouflaged Daiko bearing scars and dents on nearly every surface of its hull. Its left arm ended in the oversized fist the prolific design was known for. An autocannon occupied the right shoulder mount, while an anti-air cannon and howitzer were fitted to the torso bays. 

Beside Stokes was Lahtinen in a tan Scarab. Stripped of most of its armor packages it resembled an overgrown bird, and moved with the same jerky quickness. The light HE-V carried a rotary cannon, shot cannon and a searchlight, nothing else. Another round of introductions followed, and later with Ballard on watch the night passed without incident, though the Shepherd’s sensors picked up ten small, distant signatures. 

The next morning, the growl of a heavy diesel engine was heard long before the huge truck carrying three Kobolds in its bed appeared. Slathered in mud it pulled in, and two of the Kobolds, manned, stepped heavily off the bed, rocking it. Haywood hopped out of the cab to greet Snyder, the villagers and the rest of his new companions. One of the Kobolds - Agli or Ringer - kept its canister rifle muzzle-high and waved with the free hand.

Ballard stood back and watched the colorful assortment of characters Snyder had assembled. He had misgivings about Haywood and company, but trusted Snyder’s judgment on such things, as ever; the man had superb instincts.

They ran constant watches in pairs from then on. The day after Haywood and his boys arrived Ballard sent Snyder and Lahtinen west to scout, into the foothills and along the forest’s edge. Tracks from the mystery attackers were everywhere, but seemed to be roughly converging somewhere beyond the forest. Snyder noted several distant sensor contacts, and was certain that he and Lahtinen were undetected. Curiously, those contacts made no moves to close with or withdraw from their encroaching HE-Vs. Both pilots’ hails went unanswered.

The people of the village gave the band of gunslingers a house to share and stayed mostly clear of them. For two nights, the sentries posted in their HE-Vs reported distant contacts, closer each time, moving along irregular routes to the west. Ballard could not make sense of the situation: the raiders had ample opportunity to flatten the village and plunder it in the time Cook and Jewel were away. Now with the appearance of substantial defenses, they still followed some logic known only to themselves. That made him uneasy. A discussion with the others offered no insights.

It was the bellicose Stokes that suggested what ultimately became plan of action: move to contact with the unknowns on the prairie when they neared, force the interaction, and deal with them accordingly. The following evening Stokes, Haywood, Agli and Ringer were on watch, about a kilometer from the hills, and six contacts were on scopes, closing, in a wandering way, toward them. The call went out.

Ballard was already waiting in the cockpit of his Shepherd. 

"They're coming. Count five, make that six, right now," Stokes said.

"Copy that." Ballard keyed the common channel. "All gunhands, it’s time to earn it. Snyder, Lahtinen, mount up. Cook, and anyone else that can hear me, get everybody else underground, right now."

Ballard buckled his harness, armed his weapons, set the radar to active and LIDAR imager overlay to constant. He unlocked the Shepherd’s joints and directed his ugly machine gracelessly west across the open prairie to join his fellows. Snyder and Lahtinen passed him in short order. Ballard’s sensors picked up the approaching hostiles, and he reviewed the previously discussed order of battle one last time.

“Stokes, Snyder, on-line with me. Wait until I give the okay to open up.”

“I’ve got your back, brother,” Snyder replied with earnestness.

“Party time. Let’s get to it,” Stokes, eager for action.

“Lahtinen, I want you far left, pick up any flankers. Be ready to push out and turn theirs. Don’t overextend.” Ballard had rehearsed some finer points with Lahtinen earlier. He was green yet, jumpy and anxious.

“Will do, Ballard.” 

“Haywood, you and yours on a second line behind us. Take out any that get between us or go for the village. Don’t let them get past, but let us draw most of the fire.”

“We can handle these fellas, don’t you worry, boss man! We’ve been in worse scrapes than this, ain’t that right, boys?” Haywood sounded positively nonchalant. Brave or foolish, Ballard could not tell.

The defenders were set, and on came the quads, descending out of the wooded hills. Ballard could see them, now, with his display’s magnification. What the machines carried was most troubling: small autocannons, rocket racks, and the tuning fork shape of an arc gun on each. Very heavily armed. Six contacts, and six visually tallied. Ballard hailed them one last time.

“Unknown force, unknown force, you are trespassing. State your intentions, or be fired on.” No response, only the hiss and warble of interference. He waited thirty seconds. They kept coming. No answer, no challenge, no hesitation, and no change of course. Ballard switched to the team circuit. 

“Pick your targets, push them to the network and deconflict. One last try.”

“Unknown force, this is your final warning. Halt and respond or we will fire on you.” Still nothing.

“Take ‘em. Weapons free.” Ballard said over the radio, and the night flashed with heavy ordnance as the HE-Vs opened up. A barrage of rockets, howitzer shells, lines of tracers and more all plowed into the oncoming hostiles. Ballard had his reticles on one as he spoke the order, and he waited but a moment longer for the combat AI to finalize a lethal firing solution. Ballard fired one railgun, its boom splitting the air, and the hypersonic dart turned one ultralight inside out, a glowing fountain of slag trailing it as soil erupted from the earth where it impacted. 

Two contacts winked out on Ballard’s display. The remaining hostiles reacted with impressive speed and coordination. Immediately their posture changed, increasing speed and juking, all while returning focused autocannon and rocket fire into each of the HE-Vs in turn. They bobbed and weaved, or hunkered to shield themselves. The accuracy of the defenders outgoing fire dipped as they took evasive maneuvers of their own. Lahtinen took a serious hit when he dared a bit too close, but his Scarab was still mobile and he darted away.

Two more hostile contacts dimmed on Ballard’s tac map, but his sensors now relayed many more, approaching fast. The remaining two turned to six, then nine. Eleven, then fifteen. Finally twenty.

“Wrap this up and regroup, we’ve got a lot more coming!” Snyder, urgent.

Too late. There was nothing artful about the melee that followed. The attackers moved in precise formations, spread just enough to avoid being an easy target. Rushing in, they concentrated their continuous fire to deadly effect. Ballard fired both of his autocannons at one group, mangling two of the small machines before another group raked him with their own guns. The small bore shells sparked off the Shepherd's glacis plates, biting hunks from its armor where they hit square, doing little damage overall. 

Ballard had to lift fire and step sideways to clear Stokes as he kicked one Centaur aside. To his right, the Kobolds were working from the edge of the fight, shoulder to shoulder. They weren't built for this kind of slugfest, but Haywood and his men fought efficiently, picking off damaged attackers with coordinated salvoes of explosives from their handhelds and prioritizing any Centaur that got into an HE-V’s rear arc. Snyder’s laser pulsed in a killing rhythm, each discharge turning the night to day for a quarter of a second. Speed was life for Lahtinen, and he circled the fray, strafing any he passed when he had opportunity. 

But there were just too many. Cohesion vanished as the fight turned into a wild scrum, every man for himself. The defenders’ HE-Vs started taking fire from all sides. The Kobolds ended up fighting one-to-one while badly outgunned. Haywood was knocked flat from a rocket strike, and the quad moved to finish him with its gun before Agli, his canister rifle missing, leapt for it with both arms raised to smash it. The two ultralights collided and went down in a heap, limbs thrashing. 

Ringer ran up to aid Agli, but his rig was blown apart by autocannon fire. Stokes was beset on all sides. His Daiko, aflame, turning and blazing away with both cannons as his attackers dodged and riddled him with fire at point blank. A bolt of lightning cracked from one, and the Daiko slowed and staggered like a palsy victim, systems overloaded. 

Stokes bellowed curses over the radio, damning the Centaurs’ builders and the very ship that first carried their kin from Earth. Helpless as he was, the swarming machines laid into him and the Daiko’s armored magazine was finally breached. Ballard saw it happen. There was a momentary flash of blinding blue-white as the damaged reactor vented and the Daiko came apart in a colossal, fiery blast. One arm whirled away and fatally crunched one Centaur, and only the Daiko’s toppled legs remained as debris rained from the sky.

The surviving defenders fought on, destroying more of the quads with every shot and every blow. When only a handful remained, they turned and retreated in unison. Lahtinen moved to pursue and Ballard called him back. Many acres of the prairie had been churned into smoldering, blasted ruin. Wreckage was scattered everywhere. In the aftermath, Agli did not check in. His Kobold was found prone, one leg sheared away below the hip. No response on the radio. 

Haywood rolled his squadmate’s rig over and discovered it had been hit by a burst through the right side. Agli had died messily. 

Haywood was distraught. “Damn. He went fast, at least. Just me now, isn’t it? Adios, boys...” 

“I’m real sorry about your friends, Haywood.” Lahtinen said.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“They fought bravely, Haywood. We owe them a debt.” Ballard offered solemnly.

“They knew the risks. Mourn them later, this isn’t over.” Snyder said. 

Haywood offered no reply to that. In an unforgiving mood, he began picking over several of the wrecked Centaurs looking for enemy operators to vent his wrath upon. Ballard thought for a moment he’d have to stop the man personally before Haywood revealed there were no pilots, and no remains. A more thorough investigation proved it true: each of the Centaurs was a drone, operated remotely or else it functioned completely autonomously. 

Ballard was floored. “Snyder, did Empyrean ever-”

“No sir, never. Never even heard the idea seriously floated, in my time. Couldn’t speak for the other corps, though.”

A piece of the bigger picture started to resolve in Ballard’s mind. “That explains their reactions, and their seemingly nonsensical behavior. They’re following programming.” 

“Are they old? Breaking down and glitchy, maybe?” Lahtinen asked.

“Not that old, kid. But, I dunno. Maybe. Rift emissions are real hard on sensitive electronics. It’s possible,” Snyder concluded.

Ballard reviewed his ammunition count and damage reports. He’d made it through the fight with only a few minor, penetrating hits, and more than half his warload remaining. Rotating one stick, he noticed the left arm pod lagged behind the right, now, but was otherwise functional. He turned and looked west, to the hills.

"Form on me, we’re following them." Ballard said.

He informed the village of their intentions, and the defenders pursued the fleeing Centaurs.

—

They found the origin of the Centaurs at the edge of a wide, bowl-shaped clearing some miles into the forested hills. A complex of low structures with evidence of subterranean construction, all consumed by many years of vegetative growth. A double chainlink fence around the perimeter was toppled, flattened in sections, and so overgrown in others it resembled a hedge. Snyder said the construction was post-Rift, and the whole arrangement smacked of a corporate black site. Whatever company had built it, in the middle of nowhere, had intended to remain far beyond ethics and accountability boards. It was not meant to be found. 

The thing was on the far side of the site.

Ballard saw it on sensors as they approached, a much larger contact that the AI could not classify, and held the team back in the forest. Moving in, they saw it on optics. It was another quadruped design, like the smaller Centaur bots they had fought, but where they were still recognizable and obviously mechanical, this was something else entirely. Something unknown.

It was as big as the largest ultraheavy HE-Vs. Bigger, even. But the proportions were odd: a lumpy torso hanging between limbs like those of a crab, or a cellar spider. The mottled black and gray hull had an organic texture like melted plastic that looked like nothing any of the men had ever seen on a fighting machine. Obvious weapons protruded from the top of the hull, and from a pair of shorter, articulated arms on either side. It prowled around the facility slowly, curiously, stopping occasionally to scan items of interest with sensors clustered at the front of the hull. Four Centaurs orbited it at a cautious distance, weapons aimed at the thing they were seemingly guarding.

No exterior running lights. No transponder signal. No answer on any channel that Ballard and Snyder tried.

Watching the thing from within the metal confines of their own machines, all of the men were shocked and speechless.

“Snyder-” Ballard started to ask.

"No idea. I’ve got no idea." Snyder replied, tense and careful.

“It’s always you corpo dogs messing with stuff, unleashing unspeakable shit on the rest of humanity. I never woulda signed up with you had I known-” Haywood was furious, itching for violence.

“Haywood.” Ballard warned, and the confrontation was averted. Nobody else said anything.

“Here’s our payday. The real one. We bring it down, check the facility. Job’s done.” Ballard said, matter of fact.

“Yeah, yeah and maybe we can gain control over the rest of the Centaurs, the bots. Oh, I bet there is a boatload of good stuff in there. Try to be positive, Haywood. You’ve got a much bigger share, now.”

“Snyder, enough,” Ballard was sure mutiny and probable fratricide was right around the corner. “Okay, let’s get them. On my mark…”

Ballard maneuvered to get a clean shot through the trees and the thing sensed them, flinching like a startled animal. It happened fast. 

The thing broke into a sprint that no HE-V of its apparent mass should have been capable of, firing at Ballard as it came with guns and lasers. The guard bots trailed in an attack pattern and opened up, suddenly defensive of it. Ballard got two railgun shots off; one slug missed the sinuous mass, and the other blew through a front leg, doing surprisingly little damage. Such a hit should have buckled anything smaller than an ultraheavy. The thing kept coming, firing with deadly accuracy. An explosion shook the Shepherd, and the status display lit with many warnings, tones of amber, yellow and red. 

Snyder moved in from its right, snapshooting one Centaur with his laser before opening up with the Buckler's rockets, scoring hits across the thing’s flank and legs. It reacted on instinct, shooting back, before turning again to the ailing Shepherd, the greatest threat.

Haywood was trading fire with the remaining bots from behind an ancient tree, keeping them engaged and away from the main fight. He launched his last missile, blowing one Centaur apart before charging the last and finishing it with a contact shot from his canister rifle that destroyed the gun. Lahtinen circled and came in from behind the thing as it bore down on Ballard, the lean Scarab moving fast. 

Ballard tried to backpedal and keep the rushing monster in his sights. He pulled the trigger for both autocannons. One malfunctioned, indicator light lost in the red sea on the instrument panel. The other banged away, blowing off one of the weapon mounts as the thing reared up and struck. The Shepherd, massive though it was, was knocked backward and off its feet. Ballard’s vision swam and he felt a molar crack as he crashed down against a stand of trees, not quite flat on his back. 

The thing loomed over the fallen HE-V and fired a final fusilade of shells and lasers into the Shepherd, cutting through already damaged armor. Lahtinen and Snyder poured everything they had into it, desperate to break the attack. The black shape jerked away from the incoming damage, and its movements became erratic as it retreated quickly, galloping. It smashed through smaller trees, headed north.

Dangerously low on ammo, they let it go. Snyder confirmed Haywood and Lahtinen were okay and raced to Ballard’s fallen HE-V. The Shepherd was half sitting, one leg dislocated at the hip and the left pod gone. The same side was ripped open, hydraulics gushing fluid. Sparking, jumping cables hung dangerously. The barrels jutting from the other pod were badly bent, both guns now useless. 

Snyder repeatedly tried to raise Ballard with no response. He moved to disembark. It was a risk, but he had to get to his friend and mentor if he was still alive. He called for Haywood, telling him to pry open the Shepherd’s hatch. Snyder knelt, settling the Buckler into a three-point stance, and unbuckled as he keyed open the top panel above the pilot’s nest. It slid back and he scrambled out of the cockpit, jumping to the top deck of the Buckler’s torso, then to its arm and then down to the ground. He sprinted through the dark and past sizzling hot shards of armor belonging to the wrecked Shepherd. 

Haywood’s Kobold gained purchase and pried the Shepherd’s hatch open. Heedless of the danger, Snyder climbed on the wreck, burning his hands, and dropped into the pilot’s compartment. Red warning lamps blinked, slow on, slow off. With the HE-V’s torso sitting at an angle, the deck sloped upward toward the pilot’s seat. Ballard’s helmet had rolled to the back, beneath the ladder and for one awful moment Snyder thought he had been decapitated. 

Much of the cockpit enclosure was shattered, perforated by spalling and shrapnel. Jagged edges were everywhere. Snyder found his friend still strapped in his seat, one arm hanging limp over the armrest. His stomach dropped.

"Bal? You there, pal?"

"I hear you." His voice was weak, sleepy. Thin.

"Oh, man. How bad?" He half-climbed, half-crawled up the deck toward the front.

A long silence. "Bad. It’s all up with me."

"Nah, no way, you quitter. Let me get a look at you,” Snyder saw Ballard was bleeding heavily from multiple hits across his chest and thighs. Arterial blood seeped. Too much lost already. “We can cut all this away and get you out the front-"

"No. Forget it, Snyder. Get the salvage. Make sure the job’s a good one. Those folks have been through it." Ballard’s last command. 

Snyder was quiet for a moment. He laid his hand on the crown of Ballard’s head, clammy with perspiration. "Ballard. Man, I’m sorry."

"It's fine," Ballard said. “I had a good run. We had a good run."

"You never did have a plan for getting out of the business."

"No, guess I didn’t," Ballard made a single sound like a hiccup, all that passed for a laugh. His gaze was wandering and far away. He winced, gulped for air.

Snyder gently set Ballard’s hands in his lap, in repose.

"It was worth it. All of it," A long pause. “It hurts…” Ballard went slack, let out a rattling sigh and was gone.

Snyder stayed for a little longer, the whispering of the leaves in the dark forest outside and the creak of the cooling hull the only sounds reaching him in the Shepherd. 

—

The three survivors walked back into the village just as the sun rose. 

The people came out again and were aghast at the state of the defenders’ machines. Cook was at the fore, face ashen.

Snyder dismounted and spoke with Cook. "They shouldn’t be back. They were robots, automated. In any case, we destroyed a lot of them."

Cook nodded slowly. He didn't ask about Ballard or the others. Snyder’s face said it all. 

Everyone ate in the settlement that night, a proper meal. The whole community was present, with Snyder, Lahtinen and Haywood as the guests of honor. While warm and well-intentioned, only Snyder was able to lock away the horror and the loss to interact civilly. Lahtinen was too amped, repeating anecdotes from the battle over and over. Haywood vacillated between numbness and irritation. 

The next day, the three of them took Haywood’s heavy transporter west and collected as much salvage as they could load, caching the rest. The facility itself was an enigma: it had obviously been built to contain whatever the terrible thing was, and held little else of value or import aside from automated deployment and repair bays for the Centaurs, and their spare parts. Snyder had been able to figure out that when the facility power failed the thing was released, and the Centaurs had deployed as a kind of containment system: keeping outsiders away while attempting to usher the “project” back to the site as it wandered. That was all.

On the way out, Snyder stopped by Ballard’s HE-V, now his tomb, one last time and paid his respects before shutting the hatch over him for good. They all returned to the village before nightfall.

The following morning, Cook, Jewel and many others came out to see them off. Cook had prepared what modest goods the settlement could provide. They sat in wooden crates. "If any of you want, please stay," Cook said. "We've got room, and we’d love to have you."

"I’m sure. Thank you, but no." Snyder said. He extended his hand and the men shook. Snyder looked at Jewel for a moment and some flicker passed between them. In another life, maybe. “That’s it, then.”

Haywood had already climbed his Kobold onto the truck’s bed. Lahtinen was busily checking over his Scarab's feet methodically, obviously uncomfortable with the goodbyes and the gratitude. 

As Snyder turned to walk away Cook spoke up again. "I know he died for us."

"That he did, but he fought for the salvage.” Snyder gave in to the sudden, nasty urge to gig the man, and just as quickly regretted it. All the defenders had chosen their lives, had signed on the dotted line. His tone and expression softened before he spoke next. “He's buried out there, in his rig. Can’t miss it. Follow the tracks into the woods."

Cook nodded.

The transporter started up, diesel sputtering. Lahtinen had mounted up, and Snyder did likewise. The truck pulled away, laden with salvaged parts and one particularly interesting gun, and the two HE-V’s followed it away from the village, down a long and broken highway. Haywood, driving the truck, looked once in the mirror and saw the settlement's people standing in the road behind them, watching them, as the windmills turned slowly and the sun climbed higher into the sky.

Truly alone, at last, with his thoughts in his Buckler’s cockpit, Snyder wondered about the thing they’d faced. Despite its appearance, the recovered gun was entirely mechanical, but the connective material surrounding it was like nothing he’d seen or heard of. Metallic, and utterly tough, but flexible like fabric. And whatever the thing was, it was still out there somewhere. Still moving north, perhaps, its diminished bot contingent pacing behind it.

Lahtinen, on the radio, interrupted his train of thought and seemingly read Snyder’s mind. His voice was distorted by the atmospherics. "What do you think that thing was?"

Snyder watched the truck negotiate a bad patch of road ahead of him. "Something that someone built," he said prosaically. 

"What for?"

"Nothing good. Why else build a black site in the sticks?"

Lahtinen was quiet for a while. "Did I do okay?"

"Mostly," Snyder replied.

The convoy rumbled south. The morning was clear, and their destination was a long way off. Far behind them, in a forested clearing to the west of a village with no name, a gunslinger and his Shepherd sat in the shade, still and cold.

Illustration by Florian Mellies

75 MeV Particle Cannon

The taste of hot metal and ozone hung heavy in the warm, cloying air. A particle cannon sat on the oily workshop floor, suspended between two industrial dollies. It didn’t belong; the chrome smoothness of the polished, drum-shaped accelerator housing and the crisp, dove gray finish of the bump cage surrounding it stood out from the worn, grimy machinery of the facility. It wasn’t right. Kasper, arms akimbo, stared at the high-tech, foreign weapon. His HE-V, a weathered Corso, stood forlorn in its maintenance bay just beyond. 

Robotic cranes were easing the gunmetal bulk of his trusty autocannon out of the righthand hardpoint just below the Corso’s cockpit, nearby techs closely supervising. It wasn’t right and he didn’t trust it. Shells, gunpowder; a merc could trust those in a fight. But not protons, or whatever the hell. 

"No way. Naw. You tell ‘em to put that gun back or I will.” Kasper said and glared at the two men, convicted and sure of himself.

Blair, the Yellow Jackets’ quartermaster, stood with one arm folded and his other hand holding his chin. He looked tiredly back at Kasper. "Kass. Want doesn’t get. The job comes first and the job dictates-"

"Man, Blair, I’ve been running that gun for four years. Four years. Thick and thin, it just works. I trust it, damn it."

"How much do you trust it if it can’t shoot?" Blair mirrored Kasper’s posture and stared him down. "You want to talk about a drought, those old stockpiles don’t last forever and WegMa's charging insane rates. Delivery not included, either. We can’t exactly roll our own, can we?"

"We’ll find some, or trade for it. We always manage. We’ve got enough for now, anyway."

"Oh, well, please. Lead on, then and let’s bring it home. Kass, we are desperately low as it is and yours isn’t the only gun to feed," Blair dropped his chin and looked over his glasses at Kasper, eyes serious. “This is how it’s going to be. This isn’t a discussion, and I’ve indulged your tantrums enough, I think. Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it.” Kasper grumbled under his breath.

“Got it - what?”

“Yes, sir, I read you.”

“Attaboy. Now will you please hitch up your diaper and listen to the man? Dr. Lawyer, please, continue.” Blair motioned invitingly to the reedy scientist standing placidly to his left.

The third man wore a grubby windshell jacket and cargo pants. One shoulder bore patches affixed to a smart-cling field. One of them read Fargo Scientific Collective in block letters. Below that, the logo of The Selegin Cooperative. The man took a breath and resumed speaking. "Ah, so, this model is a compact particle accelerator, one that pushes electrons to upwards of 75 megaelectronvolts. Unlike predecessor designs, the beam itself provides for its own focusing via atmospheric plasma. The Bennett pinch effect; it’s a well-understood phenomenon, and we’ve refurbished and tested the unit extensively for reliable function. Our own security team members use them." 

Kasper winced as if tasting something sour and turned, watching the crane overhead carry his beloved gun away, deeper into the bay. "Aww, give me a damn break! I don't care how it works, doc," he interrupted. "All I want is that when I pull the trigger, something real and real heavy is going to smash into my target, real hard.” He flicked a hand at the gleaming particle cannon and stared at the FSC man. “This, this ain’t it, nerd."

Blair’s fleshy cheeks reddened and he ripped off his glasses, eyes fiery. "Kasper! God as my witness, you shut your mouth! That’s an order!" 

Dr. Lawyer smiled patiently and did not break the pilot’s gaze. "Mr. Kasper, all weapons, any weapon, is just a practical application of physics. And by understanding physics, it informs us that the most inconsequential, tiny projectile can strike with shattering force if pushed fast enough. This one, though you can’t see or hold it, is more destructive than any explosive shell."

Lawyer stepped past the two men to the dormant energy weapon, and switched smoothly into his practiced sales pitch for cavemen. Blair was sold already, but a surly end-user could bust a deal. It had happened before. Best to win Kasper over.

"I understand your concerns, Mr. Kasper. I do. But I don’t think you do yourself.” Kasper’s brow hooded his eyes as he obviously contemplated violence. “Hear me out. The weapon you see here surpasses autocannons entirely, as the firearm once surpassed the bow and arrow. You know that agile targets can sometimes dodge your shells, duck your aim, at long range. Yes? The particle cannon’s electron beam travels at near light speed.” Kasper raised one eyebrow at that, but was otherwise unmoved. 

Lawyer went on. “No flight time, no leading, and when it hits it punches a hole like you wouldn’t believe. A few particles, traveling at relativistic speed, imparts more destructive force than the biggest kinetic weapon any HE-V can carry. It dumps that energy throughout the entire structure of the target. The impact will cause internal explosions, fry circuitry, and disrupt what survives with a burst of hard radiation. It is a total weapon, Mr. Kasper, and it provides the kind of certainty experienced men like you want in a firefight.”

Blair seized the opening and laid his hand on Kasper’s shoulder. "And no counting shells. We can operate for months on end without resupply. You can shoot all day, Kass. All day and all night."

"Uh huh, until some kanootsen valve or wire or something goes out of joint," Kasper jerked his chin at the particle cannon. "When it does, I could die, or my guys could die. Even if we don’t, how in the hell are we supposed to fix something like this, Blair? Huh? What then?"

Dr. Lawyer was ready for that objection. "It’s easy enough, actually. The component groups are mostly modular, easily switched and serviced. The magnetic lenses, here, are sealed units, you can swap out the whole thing. An hour job after cooldown and degauss with the facilities you have here. The accelerator housing is armored, too. The entire system is ruggedized. It will take more licks than your gun, there." He smiled again, tight lipped. 

“Firing delay?” Kasper asked sullenly.

“Instant. The ion storage rings act like a, er, a battery of sorts. Four seconds to recharge and collimate for the next shot off the Corso’s reactor. Only three seconds if you’re willing to fire before full charge is attained."

Kasper walked up to and then slowly around the particle cannon, studying it. His old autocannon had scars he could read like a book. A tale of many contracts, countless shifts, and a few close calls. Eight filed notches on the edge of the trunnion. This weapon, though, he did not know. 

Blair walked up to stand beside Lawyer and chimed in again. "We've got a real corporate contract lined up, Kass. A good one. But we don’t have but three-hundred odd rounds of fifty mil left. That’s it, total, bubba. We’ll burn that up in two hot engagements. It’ll be a bad look if we have to ask the client for essentials."

Kasper’s reflection stared back at him, indistinct and hazy, from the polished flank of the particle cannon’s fat barrel. "Yeah. And it’ll look bad if this thing has a meltdown three weeks into the contract."

Blair was stoic, his expression set. "It’s the same position we’d be in if your old cannon took a hit, or if the ammo runs dry. It’s all calculated risk, Kass."

Kasper was quiet for a time, staring at the strange weapon, glinting, under the yellow lights of the workshop. Time would tell if the bleeding-edge tech was worth as much as proven, ordnance steel. He knew he wouldn’t be waiting long to find out. 

"Alright, then," he sighed and turned, heading for the squad bay as Blair and Lawyer shook hands, the deal done.

Illustration by Florian Mellies

Quarterly Review

A solid, crescent-shaped mahogany table gleamed under lights, fantastically ostentatious. Wood, real wood, was among the rarest and costliest materials in the solar system. Lanning took no comfort from the notion that his career’s funeral would be conducted in a room with fittings that cost more than an average person made in a lifetime.

The table’s polished surface reflected the murky faces of the seven executives across from Lanning, holding court, judging, weighing. Lanning's future a trifling thing in their soft, manicured hands.

"Mr. Lanning," Dubner's voice resonated with the even tone of a seasoned C-suite exec, betraying nothing save competent control. "Let this hearing begin with your understanding of the Prosperity operation's objectives." Benjamin Dubner, VisalCorp’s chief of operations, led the inquest. A plump, stately older man, Lanning respected his leadership and prayed he would be the sympathetic ear on the committee.

Lanning straightened in his chair, smoothed his jacket. The overhead light was too bright, and a recording drone hovered just outside his peripheral vision, a bit too close for comfort. Calculated, subtle moves to be sure. He softly cleared his throat. "Our objective was two-part. Securing the mining facility assets in their entirety and safeguarding any commodities on site. Also regaining total compliance from Dairo Mining Group personnel. Failing the latter, decommissioning of any hostile parties."

Prasac, chief of efficiency, and Lanning’s most hated foe in the corporate jungle, leaned forward. "A vague assessment, one that surely influenced your practical approach to the problem. Troubling considering the botched mission cost the company more than two dozen employees and one very expensive lander. That is just the tangible assets-"

"That is a summary, only, Mr. Prasac. Our planning went-"

"Don’t interrupt me, Lanning." Prasac smiled in delight at Lanning’s predicament. “You led the security operation, and the employees under your care and supervision, into disaster with wholly inadequate planning, preparation and due diligence.”

---

Almost two months earlier, the doomed VisalCorp mission to Prosperity indeed began with exacting care. Lanning listened intently as the tactical team leader, Endou, rotated holographic displays on the planning table, long blocks of text scrolling steadily alongside a detailed topographic model.

"In the end, just ticked-off miners with heavy industrial equipment." Endou had said, closing the 3D terrain model. "Maybe – maybe – a few mercs if they can pay.” He shook his head and looked coolly at Lanning. “Either way, we’ll cut them down if they resist. Standard pacification protocols first, but if they go loud we can handle it. Minimal collateral."

Lanning had nodded. Few real fighters, obsolete mining HE-Vs, likely low morale. WegMaCo’s provided intel painted DMG as a rabble of disgruntled workers, barely held together by a firebrand’s promises. Besides, he had seen Visal’s new crop of sleek, cutting edge HE-Vs on the test range: multi-legged, like predatory insects. Swift and deadly. War machines.

“How long to secure the facility and apprehend or neutralize?" Lanning asked.

"Once we make planetfall, less than 24 hours, sir. Likely less if they surrender."

---

"Our tactical team lead’s assessment and the supplementary intelligence package showed all indications of minimal resistance." Lanning said carefully. "DMG was assessed as a would-be independent operation, merely striking workers with grievances against the company."

"Assessed by whom?" Asked another committee member whose name Lanning could not recall. A hawkish woman from internal security. She didn't look up from her tablet.

"WegMaCo furnished much of the intelligence. That formed the core of our data."

Prasac's eyebrows rose, still staring at Lanning. "It never occurred to you, Mr. Lanning, that you should independently verify this information before committing the company’s resources?"

"WegMaCo is our most trusted corporate ally-"

Prasac leaned back in the expensive high-back chair, synthleather sighing. "Was a trusted ally, Lanning. Was." Prasac replied smugly, as slick as oil on plate glass. "Your adventurism has completely compromised that relationship,” He looked to Dubner. “Permanently, I fear."

Heat rose in Lanning’s cheeks, the collar of his shirt constricting him. He felt parched, vaguely disoriented. VisalCorp had guaranteed WegMaCo that they would end the strike at Prosperity swiftly and get the ore flowing again. On schedule and no exceptions. Immense profit rested on the fulfillment of their existing delivery contracts, profits that VisalCorp would get a slice of. All of it, blown, and with him to blame. 

Lanning struggled to keep his voice even, plowing ahead with his paltry defense. "The workup was completely comprehensive, according to the manual, and was supplemented by our own satellite imagery, communications logs, and internal operational analyses."

"Tell us about the initial contact after arrival." Dubner said.

---

DMG responded to their hails with curses and demands, in no uncertain terms, that they tuck tail. They’d stay free. Endou had chuckled grimly at that.

"We can all talk tough." He'd remarked, then ordered the kill-sat deployed.

Demonstrating the multi-gigawatt orbital laser on a derelict ore hopper drove most of the spotted Dairo HE-Vs underground. The landing of Visal’s own forces went flawlessly. Too flawlessly, in hindsight. Despite some retrofitted, illegal ordnance, DMG's few remaining surface defenders were swept away easily. Loader and excavator HE-Vs were no match for the sleek company combat rigs that ruthlessly flanked and dismantled them. Afterward, dozens of the miners had come out to greet them, cheering. White flags and all.

Endou sounded almost proud, then, transmitting from the cockpit of his own HE-V. "Some locals, at least, are happy to see proper corporate management again, sir."

Lanning had felt joy, a kind of relief. This would work. He could do this. Success in sight. A glowing quarterly review formed in his mind. Executive potential.

---

"Initial resistance was light after we demonstrated the potential negative outcomes." Lanning replied. "Some of the DMG personnel actually welcomed our arrival."

"Welcomed? Really?" Asked another heavyset man, skeptical, from the personnel branch.

"Yes, sir. It was apparent they preferred ongoing employment with VisalCorp."

Prasac again. "How very fortunate for you, then. You did not think to consolidate these gains and reassess the situation after encountering only a few bad actors?"

A question with no right answer. Lanning could only go on. "With the surface facilities swept and secured, we set a topside security team and moved underground, into the dig sites, where the rest of the DMG personnel were hiding."

"You mean lurking in ambush. For you." Prasac said. It wasn't a question.

---

The killing properly started in the mines. DMG’s machines used heavy mining attachments as close-combat weapons of terrible potency. Power claws, jackhammers, cutter wheels, all designed to tear through the toughest rock. All had inflicted horrible losses on the VisalCorp tactical team. Their multi-legged designs, so ideal for ranged combat, were awkward and almost defenseless at point blank. Lanning watched from the command deck of his ship in orbit as an impact hammer crushed the torso of one of his light HE-Vs like an eggshell, wreckage sparking.

But Endou rallied his men and lured several DMG groups into following his false retreats, into interlocking lanes of deadly accurate laser and autocannon fire. VisalCorp’s security operatives gave as good as they got, dropping a score of the rebels. It wasn’t enough. In a titanic excavated cavern, they assumed the last DMG holdouts were cornered. Lanning, helpless, stared in mute horror as charges detonated among the vast columns in orderly lines. Uncountable tons of stone plummeted from the ceiling far overhead.

The last words he heard from any of his subordinates were from Endou, shouting vainly for his men to get out. Then most of the force’s status monitors showed ‘signal lost’ against a sky blue background. Lanning had stood there, tinnitus in his ears, pulse hammering, tasting copper, the other voices around him on the command deck indecipherable.

Then hidden entrances on the surface sprang open, and fresh DMG machines with unaccountably advanced weapons had poured out like hornets.

---

"The ambush resulted in the total loss of the tactical team below ground," Lanning said, his voice steady despite the haunting memory.  “The few security personnel remaining above ground, and the lander, were overwhelmed by the counterattack and also lost.”

"Twenty-eight employees. Good ones. Men and women with families, futures," Prasac said, his solemnity counterfeit. He read off a list of names, smiling profiles with photos appearing on a wall screen in time with each. Each a dagger aimed at Lanning. "All of them, dead, because you – incompetent as you are – led them into an obvious trap!"

Lanning’s true thoughts raged against the walls of his skull. An obvious trap. What did Prasac know about any of it? Between the company-mandated procedures, tight timetable and absolute necessity of securing all company property against loss or theft, he had been caught between Scylla and Charybdis. The only move open to him and his team was to go in at once to dispatch the rebels. 

"Again, the intelli-" Lanning repeated, dumbly.

"Damn the intelligence, Lanning!" Prasac shouted, venom dripping. "This is gross negligence. Manslaughter..."

Dubner lifted his hand from the table, forestalling any further exchange. He waited a few beats. "In light of events, what is your assessment of DMG's capabilities now, Mr. Lanning?"

Lanning spared only a moment and asserted control over his words. "DMG demonstrated sophisticated tactical planning and used their knowledge of the local terrain to great effect against us. However, most noteworthy is that the modifications to their HE-Vs suggest external support."

"External support? You’re insinuating DMG had help?"

Lanning was in dangerous territory and playing a very dangerous game. He saw the additional reports in his mind, the ones reviewed during the long flight home: WegMaCo's timely maneuvering to acquire DMG assets prior to their compiling of the intelligence briefing. A too-perfect setup for a power play.

He had also put together a package with other details. Details like VisalCorp's own human intelligence-gathering methods. Methods that would make for mighty uncomfortable reading by those who valued human rights.

His reverie ended. "I'm suggesting, sir," Lanning said, "that DMG was better prepared than anyone could have anticipated."

Prasac waved a hand in contempt. "That doesn't account for the failure at the tactical level. You went in undergunned and completely overconfident, and got our people killed”.

The audacity had Lanning near the end of his tether. "The force allocation was prescribed by the resources department, and based entirely on-"

"Faulty intelligence, yes, yes. You’ve said that, Lanning." Prasac's tone drilled into Lanning’s brain like a slug of molten metal.

---

The DMG personnel that surrendered were indeed loyal to VisalCorp, but had been “quarantined” topside apart from their confederates to boost the company’s confidence. The easy victory was just shy of choreographed. Both were part of a sophisticated deception tactic. Someone had trained DMG’s fighters, helped them, armed them.

Lanning had uncovered, deliberately buried in a VisalCorp database, evidence that their own external security department had suspected as much. Info that would have changed everything. Evidence that would clear Lanning's name. Something that would implicate someone in the corporation of espionage.

---

For two hours the committee conferred behind their sonic privacy screen, voices masked behind electronic white noise. Lanning watched their faces, looking for any sign of reprieve. When the screen lifted, Dubner's expression was stern, cold. Lanning’s stomach soured, hopes dissolving. 

"Mr. Lanning. This committee has found gross negligence in both operational planning and execution of the Prosperity expedition. As the manager in charge, accountability begins with you. You are hereby relieved of your responsibilities. You will be reassigned to other duties pending additional review."

The now familiar ringing sounded again in his ears, the very same that had plagued him during the long flight home from Prosperity. A corporate death sentence, handed down in the blasé tongue of all corpo dogs. People like him, his people, Lanning understood with the clarity of the condemned.

"However," Dubner continued, his tone fractionally lighter. "We acknowledge the intelligence failures involved and the complex nature of the challenges you and other employees encountered. It is hereby found that these matters warrant additional investigation."

Prasac's head twitched toward Dubner, surprise shifting his features for an instant. "Sir, it’s apparent the failures lie with Manager Lanning and him alone.” Lanning noticed this, and his suspicions unfurled. Prasac hated Lanning, he seemingly always had, but the man never wasted even a passing opportunity to extract a toll from any who transgressed against VisalCorp interests. That he would pass on the opportunity against a competitor, much less WegMaCo, was jarring. Even telling, perhaps.

"Thank you, Mr.Prasac. Your comments are noted." Dubner's tone a subtle warning. "We owe it to our shareholders, and our departed employees, to examine all aspects of this failure thoroughly. This meeting has concluded."

Lanning’s career with VisalCorp was dead, finished, even now cooling to room temperature. His life-that-was hacked apart, root and branch. The recording drone’s light winked off and it hovered away with a soft whir. He was soon alone in the dim room. But for the first time since his career began, Lanning had a goal besides climbing the corporate tower toward its lofty pinnacle.

He wanted justice, of a kind.  Maybe it was just good, old fashioned revenge. On WegMaCo, for torpedoing his life and killing his peers. On Prasac, too, the prick. He thought of the reports he uncovered, the copies sitting safely in a secured device. Those reports would be very valuable to the right person. VisalCorp had taught Lanning everything he knew about problem solving, and he intended to put that teaching to good use.

Illustration by Eldon Cowgar

The Hand of Ra

Brother Tal struggled with the HE-Vs controls as he neared the crest of the steep ridge. The machine's wide feet, caked with mud, settled at last onto the ancient stone, stable. He locked the Klondike’s joints, a pneumatic hiss reaching him in the cockpit. Tal glanced at the cockpit displays, amber tones shifted yellow by the high afternoon sun. Ra, ever above, ever kind. There was no grand view through the canopy; all he could see from where he sat was scrubby grasses, gravel, and a few sparse saplings. 

The eastern edge of the Buried Basin, Ra's earthly domain set aside for his blessed people, was just past the ridge. Tal would see it with his own eyes in a moment. Despite the approaching threat, now was the time for patience. He knew the sentries were picking their way over the same rough ridge to meet him. Tal leaned back and savored a moment’s respite. His machine, an old, repurposed ore-mover, like himself bore signs of devotion: coarse copper and brass filigree wound along the arms, a brass sun welded to the wide chest, and everywhere else a wash of dark burgundy paint covered the rusting hull. That paint symbolized Ra's continual protection of his people, and his wrath toward those who would harm them. One and the same. 

The dashboard chirped, a blindspot alarm. Beyond the scuffed canopy’s edge, two men approached. Three remote, weak clangs reverberated up through the HE-V; the signal. Tal checked the joint locks one more time, then unbuckled, rose from the seat, and turned to the back of the cockpit. He touched the devotional sun there, inscribed with its wide, unblinking eye, and then climbed the short ladder to the Klondike’s top hatch. He threw the locking lever, and pushed the heavy hatch up and open with the aid of its struts. Pine, hot metal, soil, wet stone and a twinge of sweat reached his nose.

Brother Ostlund had already scaled the tall machine via its handholds and was waiting for him. He helped heave back the heavy hatch and lent a hand to Tal, grunting with the effort of pulling his stocky friend up and out. 

“Brother Ostlund, be seen. Punctual as ever. Thank you.”

“Ra sees you also, Brother Tal. You’re welcome. I wish I could greet you on a happier day.” The taller man unslung a pair of electro-optical binoculars and handed them to Tal. He pointed east. From their vantage on top of the Klondike they could see over the ridge and clear to the distant horizon.

Tal raised the binoculars, fiddled with the magnification, and waited for them to focus. Some 15 miles off, dust plumes on the horizon, a dun snake winding through the hazy countryside. Tal punched up the magnification to max and his view wobbled precipitously, too much for the bino’s stabilizers to overcome. He knelt, settling one elbow on a knee, and looked again. He caught glimpses of blue paint through the dust. 

"Ah," Tal said quietly. "It's them." He lowered the heavy binos and made a tsk sound, between regret and disappointment.

“Who?” 

“The ones from the south. Two months ago, near abouts.”

“The blasphemers! Closed eyes, stony hearts. They have chosen war, then.”

“Looks like, dear brother.”

Tal stood and turned back, looking inward and toward home. From where he stood he could just make out the hallowed ground of the Three Rebukes. He did not need the binoculars to visualize every detail of that holy place, the one Watcher Lynch always recounted so beautifully in his services. Three overlapping craters, each a perfect circle of tortured, shattered earth some two hundred meters across. The edge of each fused to glass by the pure fury of Ra's judgment. Tal had walked them as a boy, walked them still, and could feel the crunch and unnatural smoothness underfoot even now. The Founder of the Hand of Ra, the First Seen, had beseeched Ra in his time of uttermost need. Ra had answered, and saved his people. Three brilliant lances of sunlight made solid streaked down from the sky. Three roars of anger shook the Earth. Three craters where the wicked had dared the Sun God. 

Three Rebukes.

—

Brother Tal had watched their faces during the negotiations. They were desperate, tired people. Their leader, a man named Verlan, had been respectful enough regarding the acquisition of nickel and copper. His people needed both for repair of water reclamation systems. Left broken, it was sure to doom their struggling settlement. Clean water was of paramount importance for trade with neighbors and travellers. Verlan had offered much for the metals; weapons, labor, expertise. Then his wicked tongue uncoiled.

Verlan had argued too strongly during a time of scarcity. Elder William tried to placate him with assurances that Ra would provide enough for both peoples, enough for Verlan and his folk, in time. Verlan had scoffed, then blasphemed, laughing.

Negotiations ended at once and they were sent away under threat, and twice more since then their envoys were turned back. With such people there could be no trade, no fraternity.

—

"They were warned," Tal said as he turned east again. His voice was neutral. "They chose their words."

Ostlund did not reply, turning to spit as if his mouth were suddenly filled with rust.

"Remain here, on watch. I will send others to relieve you. Ra sees our plight, brother.” Tal said

Ostlund climbed down off the towering Klondike with the agility of a spider. Tal reentered the cockpit and strapped in. He called home, alerting the Elders, and carefully turned his hulking machine around. He steered the massive HE-V down the ridge, its gait jarring and ponderous. By the time he reached the bottom, Watcher Lynch was ringing the great chimes to gather the faithful. On level ground, Tal set a fast pace. The nearest rim of the Three Rebukes caught the afternoon sun, glinting like the eye of Ra himself.

—

The Temple of the Seeing Sun was part of a vast smelting works and refinery before the Rift. While the many vats were still functional and indeed used by the Hand for their original purpose, the sanctuary, originally an immense furnace of some kind, had forever been cold. Now the cavernous, echoing space served the Hand of Ra as a place of worship. On the high ceiling was a brilliant sun of gold, the Eye of Ra, and surrounding it were small points of copper, stars symbolizing his lesser light. The air here always smelled of herbs, charcoal, smoke and beeswax, a wonderfully comforting aroma to Tal and his kin.

Watcher Lynch stood before the granite altar, the cold stone draped in an embroidered crimson cloth. His copper circlet glinted in the firelight as he raised his hands and the seated congregation hushed. Lynch’s face was deeply tanned and creased, weathered by sixty-odd years of ascetic devotion and survival. Around him, dozens of Ra’s faithful had assembled: Tal’s fellow Brothers and Sisters, the warriors who protected Ra’s domain on Earth, along with miners, artisans, whole families. Tal took his place at the front, shivering in his sweat-dampened haptic suit.

"Ra sees all, be seen you who would." Lynch intoned solemnly, voice strong and sonorous despite his years. 

“See us, see us.” A chorus of voices, hands raised and fingers touching, circles, overhead in unison. 

Watcher Lynch continued. "From his high place, Ra watches over his faithful. He watched over our ancestors when he first set his ire against the world. He watches us now. My own father was only eight years old when the First Seen saved him," Lynch said softly. "Him and sixteen other children, hiding as the heathens railed against Ra’s correction. The First Seen, our Founder, was once only a simple soldier. So moved was he by pure pity for the defenseless that Ra saw him, and revealed his benevolence to him.”

"The Founder, blessed be his memory, was led to an old school bus, as yellow as Ra’s light. A sign of favor and protection. He gathered the children and brought them here, to this basin, to safety. There, in time, Ra further revealed his goodness and his ways. Ra had called upon his First Seen to save us all, to build something good on the Earth he cursed. Every night, the Founder told my father and the others stories about the Sun God, happy, kind, watching them from above. They learned of Ra’s great Eye that never blinked. About the certain wrath that would fall on any who dared threaten his faithful."

Tal had heard this very sermon countless hundreds of times, and still he listened intently. 

“Then, one day, Ra tested his chosen. Evil men came," he leaned on the altar, eyes downcast, hands tense. "The Founder begged them to leave. They laughed at him, they said they would take what they wanted and burn the rest."

Lynch looked up, his voice trembling with indignation. "The Founder walked out alone in another machine Ra provided for him. Ever peaceful, he begged again that the evil men should leave so that Ra might spare them. They would not go. Then, he prayed to Ra, and Ra heard his prayers! Ra then sent down his Three Rebukes..." Only the crackle of burning firewood was audible in the Temple. 

"That was when the children truly understood," Lynch went on, voice softer, full of reverence. "The Founder’s word was true. Ra watched over them. Ra protects, as he always has! He watches over and protects us still! Be seen!"

Watcher Lynch stood tall behind the altar and raised his arms, voluminous sleeves shimmering like oil in the torchlight. "Two months past, evil men came again, seeking trade. We faithful welcomed these strangers. We offered fair terms for our minerals, minerals bequeathed to us by Ra for our provision. But they were greedy. They mocked Ra’s wisdom. Their leader called us fools clinging to insanity!"

Murmurs rippled through the crowd, hissing with anger, disturbed.

"They blasphemed," Lynch said coldly. " And now they return with weapons, showing themselves as the thieves they are. They would steal what Ra has blessed his chosen with. And so they too will face judgment, as all who threaten Ra and his chosen must." He half turned and gestured to Tal.

“The Brothers and Sisters go forth bravely to confront these pillagers, and Ra’s ever-open eye burns hot against our foes! Be seen, you faithful!”

“SEE US!” The crowd erupted in jubilation as Tal and his fellow warriors stood.

—

Brother Tal monitored the approach of the raiders all night in the command center, a room little more than a converted office space fitted with a map board and radios. The approaching band had camped some distance off, resuming their journey the following morning as Ra’s eye rose behind them. A good omen. 

Tal departed with his fellows in their own HE-Vs to meet them. Four in all, along with mining trucks carrying heavy weapons and brethren who would fight on foot. They would meet two other Hand pilots already afield and watching. The weight of what was to come settled over Tal like mist, and his heart was troubled.

He had long ago memorized the prayers of salvation, every variation of the holy numbers, and repeated them, under duress, during drill and practice until he could not speak them wrong. But he had never done so with his heart ablaze, in battle, had never sent up his prayer with the real fervor that would bring Ra's burning judgment upon living souls. 

The Hand’s meager force stopped south of the Three Rebukes and awaited their foes. In time, their foes arrived, rolling and walking over the ridge in the distance, stopping at the bottom across a broad plain, roughly a kilometer away. Brother Tal stoically observed it all from his Klondike, a lengthy flanged club gripped in his rig’s right hand. He was positioned with the five other Hand HE-Vs, all variously ornamented, in a simple defensive gunline blocking the most direct route to the village. 

The calculus of the battle to come was brutal: six against fourteen, and among the raider ranks were actual warmachines and many more vehicles, besides. Without Ra's intervention, this would be a slaughter.

Tal opened a general channel. "You there. You were warned. Again you stand in Ra's domain, in opposition to his Hand. Withdraw now, I beg, or you will face judgment."

A response came right after, a man’s familiar voice. Verlan, their leader. 

"Sir, we came in peace. We came in friendship. We offered fair trade. You refused over- over jest, a joke.” His voice was even wearier, not truly angry. "Our children may die because of your-.” He cut himself off. “We need the metals we talked about, and that’s all. We're not here to destroy you. That is the last thing we want. Can we not… Can we figure this out peacefully?"

"Your blasphemies are counted," Tal replied harshly. "You called Ra a false god. You called his faithful lunatics."

Across the plain, Tal could not hear the many whirring motors and servos that aimed guns, nor the silent cogitation of fire control systems fuzing shells and charging capacitors. None of the Hand’s HE-Vs, simple as they were, sounded alarms at the questing attention of hostile targeting lasers and radars.

"I only questioned- I sought to understand. I meant no offense, no harm. Please! Please…” 

"Leave," Tal repeated. "I will not say it again." He struggled against a rising hatred for these people. He sought to channel the Founder’s mercy and compassion.

Silence stretched for too long. Then Verlan’s voice returned, harder. "We can't. I'm sorry, but we can't.” 

Their formation advanced as one across the plain. No shots were fired.

Tal watched them come. His hand moved again to the transmission key. "Sister Casie, we must beseech Ra for deliverance." He rattled off a lengthy, sacred numeric prayer, and another after that, owing to the great peril he and his kin faced. The numbers’ purpose was knowable only to Ra.

They chose this, they blasphemed. Tal reminded himself. They were warned. They blasphemed and now they come as thieves. Against Ra.

—

Deep in the innermost sanctum of the Temple of the Seeing Sun, beyond even the sacred reliquary shrine of the Founder's bus, Sister Casie, robed, sat in the Founder's own HE-V. It was merely half an HE-V, at this point. One leg was gone, the other was stripped to the skeleton. Neglect, rust and wear had locked every joint. The paint was so old and brittle it flaked like cicada husks, crackling at the slightest touch. 

In the dim cockpit, cramped and cluttered, she waited, anointed for a most holy and important duty: serving as the bridge between the protectors’ lips and Ra’s ears. She heard her brother’s prayers, committing the numbers of both to memory in an instant. Her hands trembled slightly as she punched the numbers in, and watched them populate a display. Two prayers, two sequences each: a string of numbers that would call Ra's judgment. She pressed a single, larger key and waited 

"Sister Casie?" Brother Tal's voice crackled, insistent, over the radio. "Have you heard? Does Ra see us? Has he heard us?"

She’d been distracted by her own troubled thoughts and blinked back to the present, focusing on the screen, still dark save for three green, winking dots. Soon, a cheery tone sounded as an image of a dish, on Earth, pointed at a satellite in the void, above, appeared. A checkmark glowed between them, then all vanished. 

"Yes, Brother Tal. Ra has heard us, has seen us. Even now his light gathers." Her voice sounded steadier, surer, than she felt and she was glad of it. 

—

Far above the Sudbury Basin, a forgotten satellite waited among the ever-multiplying constellation of junk in orbit over Earth. Decaying and decrepit though it was, it had been built to last. Unusual for commercial satellites, this one carried a tremendously heavy load of cargo meant for delivery to the surface: sleek, pointed kinetic mass rods, made of cheap and abundant tungsten, each a little shorter than a power pole and about as wide. 

In its day a product of graft and blackmail, the satellite was once used to break up deep formations of ore throughout the Basin, doing so easily, quickly and cheaply. When the Rift struck, it was forgotten about soon enough. It waited, geosynchronous, patient and potent, until a kindly, desperate man happened upon a still-functioning, credentialed controller in a tucked-away HE-V.

Once again, coordinates were received. Twice the hopper revolved silently. Though it operated with feline smoothness once upon a time, it now hitched and scraped through the deployment procedure. Twice, two gray spikes puffed away from the launch bay, one after the other. They seemed to fall slowly, at first.

—

Brother Tal tried to count the seconds, seemingly stretched into minutes, stretched into hours. His mouth was dry. Onward their foes marched. Was something wrong? Tal strangled the doubt at once. Ra was watching. Ra protected.

The oncoming raiders were halfway across the plain, still holding fire. Hesitant, perhaps, or hoping against hope that the faithful would break or surrender. Tal knew that Ra’s gaze, ever heavy on the hearts of the wicked, stayed their lust for bloodshed. Proof!

It was then that he looked up again, and this time saw. Two tiny, thin, bright streaks in the sky. The signs! Drops of the sun’s unquenchable fire, Ra’s might made manifest! Stretching, angling down from on high, their speed impossible and gathering. Tal had heard the stories, had touched the very soil of the Strikes, but knowing was not the same as seeing. They grew and grew, lengthening, ever brighter. Ra, reaching out to smite the evildoers! Time compressed now. Years squeezed to a fraction of a second.

The faithful would be preserved!

The first tungsten rod struck. Its impact was apocalyptic. One blue-and-white checkered HE-V was beneath it at the impact point. It ceased to exist, smashed to its constituent atoms by incalculable force. Unseen, the rod burrowed into the earth instantly, a shockfront of displaced, superheated stone and soil screaming outward. A perfect circle, a scouring hurricane. The ground leapt, heaved and rolled, as waves on the sea. Another HE-V near ground zero was thrown skyward, arms outstretched, upward, in a facsimile of supplication, before disappearing in the rising cloud.

The second rod fell. More HE-Vs tumbled like bowling pins. Trucks flipped or sank in the now-treacherous earth. In another moment, all was concealed by dust. The shockwave reached Tal and his brethren. Even some five hundred meters distant the mighty Klondike was rocked by the pressure wave, and he had to work to keep the top-heavy machine from tilting over backwards. Over the radio, awestruck prayers of thanks, of glory, of praise from his brothers and sisters filled the channels. Singing, too.

Tal ordered them to stand, to hold position. They all waited some time. Still no shots came. As the dust and smoke slowly cleared, the faithful saw: where a moment ago stood their enemies, now was only ruin. One HE-V, battered and prone, struggled to flip onto its back. It managed, and was still for a moment. Then one giant steel hand reached up and tore away its canopy, dropping it to the smoldering soil before going slack. A man slowly crawled out from the cockpit, as if from a tomb. Two men and a woman, all injured, tried vainly to force open another shredded machine before flames engulfed it.

Tal and the others stood and watched. They watched the few survivors go, as ghosts, back the way they came. Those spared among the defeated who had dared challenge Ra. Later, one survivor, a young man pinned in the wreckage of a transport truck, leg crushed beyond saving, was found weeping. Weeping not from the agony that was certainly terrible, but from revelation. 

—

The victory convocation lasted hours, the Hand of Ra gathered in their entirety inside the Temple. Watcher Lynch led the ceremonies. Hymns were sung and thanks offered. Sister Casie slipped away, walking through the twisting innards of the complex to the old bus in its shrine. Its wheels sat on carved stone blocks, tires long ago rotted to nothing. Surrounding it, the faithful had placed their simple votive offerings: bowls of soil from the Three Rebukes and the new Strikes, written prayers on paper, sketches of loved and lost, simple candles.

Casie knelt and studied some of them. A child's drawing of the sun, a hand-beaten copper prayer wheel. A long letter, written in unsteady script, thanking Ra for another year of life.

These people, her people, believed. Truly, deeply believed. Faith, the kind that gives purpose, structure, and hope. That made sense of a deeply confusing world. She had been anointed to fortify that faith, to serve as the sacred link between earthly followers and Ra above. She rose and considered the driver's seat inside the bus, barely visible through the cloudy, grimy windows, where the Founder had sat. 

She glanced at the small shrine box installed beside the seat containing a picture of the Founder from life, faded and tattered. A man in camouflage, with hard bark but kind eyes. His smile was thin, tired. Had he truly prophesied this faith, their faith? Or was it half-remembered myth meant only to comfort frightened children? Did he believe his own tales? Did it matter?

Casie closed her eyes to pray. The whispered words fizzled out and she was silent; doubt had fully risen to cover her heart, and no words escaped those murky, black waters. The Founder was a kind man. But merely a man who’d had enough of war and decided to protect orphans instead. A man who then told those orphans stories to comfort them. Had he known of the mining satellite beforehand? Had he discovered it by accident, sheltering in this abandoned mine? 

Casie walked closer to the bus and pressed a hand to the cool, rough bodywork. There was too much at stake, too many lives. She would keep the faith, for their sake. But she understood it could not, would not, last. The satellite, unreachable, was slowly failing. And its payload depleted with each called strike. 

How many rods remained? A dozen? Five? Two? None? Casie wondered if Ra’s judgment would even fall at all next time.

She pulled her hand back and touched the sun medallion at her throat, the copper surface warm from her skin. She felt suddenly trapped, panting, walls closing in, shadows whispering of the destructive enlightenment sure to befall one and all in the Buried Basin. She gathered herself after a time and walked back into the Temple to join the festivities. Her tears would be mistaken for those of joy.

Illustration by Florian Mellies

WegMaCo Shareholder Address

Title: “WegMaCo”

Transcript of Shareholder Address

Speaker: Arthur Martinet-Farris (Vice President)

April 9th, 2385 ESY

Gavin Martinet Memorial Corporate Summit Center
Ophir Planum, Mars

(Podium Microphone: On)

(Portable Microphone: On)

Good morning, everyone. Shareholders, board members. Dear friends, thank you for being here. Some of you made a long journey. So if you’ll allow it, I will skip the preamble. I am ecstatic to share that your investment in WegMaCo, your continued trust in our vision and expertise, has been rewarded: Every single revenue stream, from consumer goods to interstellar transit, has seen significant gains over the last fiscal year. 

Overall profit has increased 26%. (Long Applause). Our direct-to-consumer products are ubiquitous, now found in 95% of all human habitations and businesses, and 90% of those contain six or more of our product lines. We, of course, continue to do far more than just deliver our own products to the far corners of space. Our transport fleet services every human inhabited planet, moon, station and asteroid in the solar system - and more than a few automated installations!

That fleet numbers an astounding <REDACTED> space-going vessels, including bulk freighters and tiny, fast courier ships. Each ship, every crew member, has a singular goal: on-time and intact delivery of critical shipments, be that drinking water, a complete orbital platform module or a single data drive. Last year, our efforts moved more than 471 billion tons of cargo, and accounted for 78% of all freight. (Light Applause) 

Amazing, isn’t it? Our customers know that whatever they are ordering or shipping, wherever it is going, we will make it happen. Not some other corporation, cooperative or government entity. It's hardly a boast. I say that with all humility. Our partners and clients don’t merely hire us; we don’t just do a job for them. When you contract with WegMaCo, you join the WegMaCo family. This company was founded, built and run on family ethics, and that is how it is still managed today. If you call someone family, you’d better mean it. That’s because you have a responsibility to them. We have a responsibility. A responsibility to humanity. No, not just to you, our shareholders! (Laughter).

Despite these uncertain times, business must go on, and business owners from Earth to the Belt know that seamless supply chains are prerequisites for profit. Logistics are, in fact, destiny. You can’t leave destiny up to chance. Our friends understand that if they want their own endeavors to flourish, they must partner with WegMaCo. Only we work so closely with our partners that we can anticipate their needs before they do. It’s no wonder they stick with us for the long haul: they can count on us to be there for them, right behind them, every step of the way. 

Take the Echelon Group, for instance, one of our longest and most prosperous partnerships. At first, they turned to us because they were forced to. In desperation. They were out of options for delivering their sensitive, valuable products to the most demanding clients and the wolves were at their door. Early on in discussions, they frankly told us it couldn’t be done. In time, WegMaCo showed them that, when everyone works together, it could. We, in turn, learned so, so much from them.

We learned that we don’t just make and sell goods. We don’t just ship cargo. We don’t just provide logistics. (silence for 3.1 seconds) We deliver outcomes. WegMaCo sells something, one thing, that money has never been able to buy, not since time immemorial: WegMaCo sells certainty. And in today’s competitive marketplace, certainty is the only commodity that matters.

(Wild applause)

My friends, on behalf of the executive staff and every WegMaCo employee, from our assembly line workers to our brave spaceship crews, thank you for your trust and investment. I can promise this year, and every year hence, the rewards will be even better than the last. Together, we’ll keep civilization moving through the stars. (Applause) Thank you, thank you. Please, enjoy yourselves and your stay. I will speak with some of you shortly. Thank you!

<Podium Microphone: Off>

(Footsteps, indistinct speech) Uh huh. If they like those numbers, the fourth quarter is sure going to blow their hair back. Just watch. You, fetch me a water, won’t you? Mineral water this time, please! Are we ready for our ten-thirty? Good. To real business, the Prosperity situation. The fix is in. Ah, what was the name of that dirtgrubber collective moving the ore, Daimyo something? (indistinct speech) Dairo, that’s it, thank you, Thomas. 
VisalCorp and Echelon both look like fools thanks to the efforts of the valiant miners, a real PR disaster and as intended. The last screw we had to turn. Their shares are already floundering and we’ll soon have majority ownership. Patience. (indistinct speech) What about the ore? Eye on the ball, Thomas, a hundred-million is a rounding error. In any case, we can shift a few bulkers from the Triangle to move all they can dig up. They’ve got no one else, make sure the rate is outrageous.
My what? Damn it…

<Portable Microphone: Off>

Illustration by Eldon Cowgar

Reunion Day

The third floor briefing room smelled of old upholstery, plastic and stale coffee. First Lieutenant Jared Lewis lingered for a time after his peers had filed out and the ancient holographic projector had flickered off, hum fading. It was made to keep on serving. Just like everything else in the 67th North Horizon Corps. Just like him.

Outside the hazy reinforced windows, Lewis watched a returning patrol of Fennec and Corso HE-Vs trundle through the monolithic gate and across the marshalling yard. Across the complex, the nearby hangars stood open to receive them, maintenance drones and robotic gantries prepped to service the giant fighting machines. The boxy HE-Vs had been refurbished dozens of times over the decades. All of them had outlived their original pilots. Each was treated with reverence.

The 67th had been completely isolated since the Rift, that great catastrophe that had utterly broken mankind’s mastery of Earth and the solar system at large. Cut off, alone, and plunged into a new world of lack and paranoia, they'd maintained discipline through thick and thin. Upheld their traditions and their faith.

This was all Lewis had ever known. Born 2359 in the hospital complex on the same base, the son of a logistics officer and a combat medic. He was a professional soldier, but the 67th wasn't merely his unit: it was his culture, his people, his world. To Lewis, the 67th was civilization in micro, all of it situated on one mostly self-sufficient military installation in southern Michigan.

Throughout the region where they projected force, the 67th stabilized an otherwise wild and lawless northern hemisphere. Their martial prowess, technology and professionalism had proved one hell of a ‘thou shalt not’ for many a raider and two-bit warlord. Lately, though, the natives were growing bolder. Word had reached the 67th that the long-enforced Solar Republic blockade of Earth’s skies was crumbling. And no one really knew why; seemingly the last remnants of their forces just gave up their posts.

Lewis briefly wondered over this before the iron discipline instilled in him since childhood reasserted itself, shaking him out of his reverie. His thoughts returned to duty and he left the briefing room. Descending three flights of stairs, Lewis was just beyond the stairwell door when raised voices drifted down the corridor leading to the command center. Was that a tinge of anxiety he heard? Probably another insurgent attack on a nearby hamlet, most likely. He changed course and headed toward the command center.

Then two officers sprinted out of an adjacent corridor and piled into the C3; the command, control, and communications center. Lewis knew then something was definitely amiss. Disregarding protocol, he jogged to the still-open door and let himself in. It was packed. Lieutenant General Perez stood at the main bank of consoles, an earpiece pressed to his head with one hand. Other personnel frantically worked keyboards amid a dozen hushed, huddled conversations in the room.

"Quiet! Lock it up!" Perez barked, and the C3 fell quiet. Another officer flipped a switch on one of the control boards and a speaker came to life, static pouring out. 

Through the static, a voice: "—say again, this is the Peregrine to Dusk Base. Authentication follows. Dancer July Silver, seven-seven-niner-one-five-five-one. Repeat, Dancer July Silver, seven-seven-niner-one-five-five-one. Requesting immediate approach clearance for planetfall and landing at your coordinates. How copy?"

Save for the hissing static, the room really was silent then. Lewis recognized the sequence, and his pulse quickened. The string of words and numbers were an authenticator, a code from before the Rift. A code, one of many, that identified friendly forces. Not many members of the 67th held out hope those codes would ever be needed after so long.

Perez's hands trembled slightly as he briskly thumbed through a book. A book, ancient and precious, that usually resided in a locked safe. Finally his finger traced a line, then again, slower. Around him, his senior officers barely breathed.

Perez looked up, expression stoic as ever, and cleared his throat softly. "The code is legitimate," he announced. "It's the 42nd. Our sister corps."

Stillness for one heartbeat, then the room erupted. Shoulders were slapped, some laughed, others gawked in disbelief. Lewis was numbed, overcome by the same sensation of unreality felt in the aftermath of a bomb explosion. A century of isolation, of wondering if they were the last, left totally alone. Wondering if their commitment counted for anything.

“Attention!” Perez's mild reprimand snapped all assembled back to order. Military bearing or no, Lewis saw no dimming of the excitement in his fellows’ eyes. 

Perez addressed his staff. "To work. Major Koenig, respond to that transmission. Clear them for approach and direct as needed. I want verification protocols running continuously. Everyone else, on alert. I want the quick-reaction force ready to roll with 30 seconds notice, as of right now."

"Sir?" Major Koenig looked concerned. "Could this be a deception ploy?"

"I don’t think so," Perez said carefully, "But we will be ready for that eventuality.” He turned to address the rest of the C3. “Let’s go, people!"

His soldiers leapt to obey. Alert notifications sounded across the entire complex. His brothers and sisters filed out and more came in. Lewis was swept along with those heading out. He led a Viper power suit squad, and his squad plus another were part of the quick-reaction force. The mission clock was already ticking. Following a winding series of corridors to the power suit bays, he sensed the posture of the base transform as troops double-timed to their posts, the shrill whine of fusion reactors cycled hot, and LAS wing engines spun up, baking tarmac.

He made it to the bay in three minutes, finding his squad — Heller, Roberts and Svensson — already assembled and quickly suiting up, each attended by two technicians. Heller, keen to any change in the status quo, looked at him with a questioning, cocked eyebrow.

"It’s go-time," Lewis told them. "We might have friendlies inbound. Or we might have hostiles jerking our chain. Either way, we're heading out."

“Friendlies!? Like who?” Roberts, his tone incredulous, was in half-dress. He had stepped into the leg assemblies of his Viper suit, and techs were hastily joining and securing the first pieces of the upper half around his undersuit-clad torso. 

Lewis had already hopped up on the metal stepladder and dropped into the waiting legs of his own suit with the ease of an acrobat. The techs set to work with tools buzzing, and the familiar second skin of the power suit clamped shut around him: chestplate, backplate, bracers, and gauntlets. Two full tons of radiation-hardened composite armor, sensors and target designators. He'd been training in these suits since he was sixteen. 

“The 42nd.” Lewis replied, and Roberts’ eyes went bright and wide against his olive skin. Then a grim-visored helmet and cowl was lowered over Lewis’ head and he was in darkness. Connections were made and after a moment the visor depolarized, the HUD flickered on, and speakers came to life.

“Ain’t no way, el tee!” Roberts continued, his voice now tinny over the suit radio.

“Looks like.” Lewis said, tasting the dry, coppery air now circulating over his face. 

Svensson was listening in and let out a low whistle and the squad chattered speculatively as Lewis ran through his standup checklist, completed pre-op diagnostics, and then confirmed pending data links using a combination of the suit’s jaw switch and facial gestures. His own suit and the others, all in the green. Clearing the HUD’s subdisplays he regarded his squad. The men stood fully eight feet tall in the bulky suits, and had lined up to retrieve their heavy 25mm rifles from a nearby rack. 

"All personnel, be advised." A voice crackled over the command net. "Incoming ship has completed atmospheric entry. ETA is twenty-one mikes."

Twenty-one minutes. Lewis felt strangely nervous. He’d seen combat, had fought the scum that prowled Michigan’s badlands and elsewhere. But in little more than a quarter of an hour the 67th would have its answer to a century-old question. Collecting his rifle and spare drum magazines, he marched out with his brothers to the pair of Orca LAS wing transporters, waiting to carry them to where they were needed.

—

Back in the C3, fresh drama unfolded. "Sir, new contacts! Multiple launches detected from Old Detroit metrozone." A sensor officer said urgently. "Signatures are supersonic now, resolving… SLASSMs! We’ve got six snakes in the air! Vector coincides with the 42nd ship!"

Perez’s blood chilled. SLASSMs, anti-starship missiles. Was it the Solar Republic firing on blockade runners? No, they had no ground forces present in Detroit, or elsewhere in Michigan. The Sable Cadre, then? That council heading up the coalition of local bandits, brigands, and renegade military units plaguing Michigan. They had been stealing, salvaging and trading war toys for years. But the 67th’s own intelligence had never once suggested they’d obtained any weapon that could threaten large, spacegoing craft.

"Broadcast on all frequencies!" Perez shouted. He leaned over the comms officer’s shoulder and spoke directly into the mic. "Peregrine, Dusk Base, you have missiles inbound, mark six snakes inbound! Deploy countermeasures."

The sensor display revealed the brutal calculus of the situation as acidic yellow icons. The 42nd's gargantuan transport ship, ponderous and ungainly in atmo. The missiles, relentless and accelerating. Seconds to intercept, two missile contacts winked out, shot down by the ship’s point-defense arrays. Two more veered off course, decoyed. But two struck the Peregrine. Perez watched its icon fragment.

Another sensor technician spoke up. "Peregrine is hit! Breaking up, no, wait, she's holding together but going down. Trajectory puts her in the Ann Arbor metrozone."

Catastrophe. The remains of Ann Arbor were a Sable Cadre stronghold. Lieutenant General Perez knew from bitter experience that its bowels were studded with cleverly hidden armories and HE-V workshops. A worst-case scenario. He straightened, expression grim, and turned to the warboard. "QRF, immediate deployment!" Voice booming with implicit command. "Direct all combat elements currently in the field toward the crash site.” 

—

The Orca shuddered as it climbed hard over hills, Lewis and Heller locked into the cargo compartment’s deployment rails. Svensson and Roberts would be just off the starboard wing in the second transporter. Streaming an exterior camera feed to his HUD, Lewis watched the Michigan landscape below blur past. Forests had swallowed most of the highways, and up ahead the sprawling corpse of Ann Arbor spread beneath a towering column of oily smoke.

Lewis’ workday had just gone from ‘interesting’ to ‘terrifying’. The old metrozone was a literal concrete jungle: trees burst through rooflines, vines and creepers swallowed whole blocks, and skyscrapers stood draped in tattered cloaks of vegetation. Another carcass of civilization-that-was on Earth.

"Two minutes to insertion," the pilot announced. "Advise LZ is likely hot. Can't get you closer to the crash site than three klicks. Other elements are getting lit up with surface fire."

Through the feed, tracers arced up from the ruins, lasers strobed, and missile contrails lit like angry fireflies. The Orca banked steeply, settled and dropped with a hard bang that jolted Lewis through the suit’s padding. The rear ramp unfolded on an overgrown parking lot. 

“We’re down. Out, out!” The pilot barked. The clamps released both suits and Lewis charged his heavy rifle before stepping down and off the ramp, metal-shod feet crushing the already crumbling pavement. The midday sun was obscured by smoke and ash, casting everything in shadowy relief. Mercifully, the gloom was no impediment whatsoever to the Viper suit’s sensors, and Lewis saw the rest of his squad, outlined in green, deploying a scant hundred yards away through a wall of dust. 

The Orcas departed. Close by, the crash and roar of combat. Overhead, the 67th’s attack LAS wings buzzed and banked, strafing targets, while larger transports settled to deploy more troops. "Form up," Lewis ordered. "Objective is two-point-eight klicks northeast, bearing zero-three-one. Watch your sectors, the enemy knows this place better than we do." Heller took point and the squad moved at a pace no unaugmented human could match, their power suits eating up the intervening distance in long strides. 

The remains of outer downtown were oppressive, every doorway, window and alleyway promising danger. Around them, the background thunder of HE-Vs and their heavy ordnance sounded nearer. Lewis flicked a glance at his tactical display to suss out if they were friendlies or not.

"Contact front!" Heller shouted into the comm.

Concealed Cadre infantry sprang from their hiding places in an old storefront, opening up with rifles, machine guns and portable rocket launchers. Lewis immediately relayed the contact to command as he felt dozens of dull impacts thud harmlessly across his body; a Viper suit’s plating would stop nearly all small arms rounds cold, but not anti-armor warheads or large caliber threats. Simultaneously, the 67th troopers fanned out and poured on immediate counterfire, targeting systems outlining threats in red as they fired from the hip. Heavy 25mm slugs punched through much of the cover the now-shocked Cadre troops sheltered behind. 

The initial ambush proved ill-timed. Several Cadre fighters burst open like rotting fruit under the withering fire from the power suits. Roberts caught three flankers in the open as they left cover, hewing them limb from limb. Svensson worked over a handful still sheltering in the storefront, killing them and suppressing a machine gun team in the same building.

When the incoming fire slackened to almost nothing, Lewis seized the advantage, ordering his squad forward to finish it, capitalizing on the shocking carnage already wrought. Lewis neared a burned-out passenger car by the storefront when a lone Cadre soldier, face inscrutable behind the visor of his haz armor, rose just beyond it, a disposable anti-armor launcher perched on his shoulder and pointing right at him. Lewis reacted on raw instinct. Lunging, he delivered a power-assisted kick to the car’s midsection, sending it rolling over onto his hapless attacker, crushing him. The launcher the man carried pitched upward and discharged, the rocket streaking away into open sky.

Crushed though the infantry were, the fight wasn’t over. Before Lewis could rally his men, a torrent of heavy weapons fire scythed down on his now-exposed squad from an adjacent parking structure. Emplaced autocannons raked the street, dealing Svensson a bad direct hit. He shrieked into the comm as his left arm assembly and the limb inside it shattered. Heedless of the danger, Roberts sprinted to his comrade to drag him out of the kill zone as Lewis and Heller sprayed the concrete face of the structure on full auto in a desperate bid to throw off the aim of the Cadre crews. All around, the street erupted with the impact of explosive shells, and Lewis mentally braced for the one that would cut him down. He prayed silently that he would die like a man.

Deliverance arrived not on wings, but on two legs. Over the radio Lewis heard a calm, almost bored, voice. "Viper team, this is Hotshot 3. I’ve got your back, grab some cover.” Emerging from the gloom behind Lewis’ stricken squad, a heavy Shepherd crunched up the street, pavement heaving and splintering under its feet. The brick-like warmachine was clad in slabs of reactive armor, hardpoints bristling with long-barreled howitzers and rotary cannons. The ugliest angel imaginable.

Lewis and Heller scrabbled out of the Shepherd’s path as it strode forward imperiously to lay its guns on the parking garage. The Cadre weapons teams showed fight and peppered the monster, but to no avail. Two apocalyptic reports from the howitzers and from the ground floor up the structure vanished in a volcanic geyser of debris. Lewis’ suit rang like a bell, and he watched half-stunned as the Shepherd’s pilot combed the rubble with both rotary cannons, firing wide open. Then, almost as an afterthought, he rotated and walked fire through the length of the nearby buildings, carving through and collapsing them.

Looking back, Lewis saw a pair of speedy Fennecs, the other members of Hotshot, arrive and take up supporting positions, followed closely by a convoy of support vehicles. If any Cadre forces remained alive and near, none risked the wrath of the 67th combat team. The crash site was close, but Svensson was in a bad, bad way. Lewis requested medivac and ordered Roberts to stay with his wounded comrade and administer what aid he could in the meantime. He and Heller would carry on to the objective. Collecting Svensson’s ammo, the pair moved out.

A broad, scoured trail of destruction led to the 42nd's ship, jutting from a sprawling commercial office complex. Smoke poured from rents in the hull and flames licked at the surrounding debris. Lewis watched with dismay as an enemy HE-V closed in from an opposite thoroughfare, toward their own position in a spillway. He cursed to himself and reported its presence. 

The Sable Cadre machine was smaller than the 67th's own Shepherd and seemingly cobbled together from salvage, but that was no consolation; they were spotted, and a Viper suit could not stand against such firepower, not for a moment. Lewis and Heller hunkered as heavy autocannon impacts walked up the street and over their heads, while searing particle bolts darkened their suit visors.

Staying as flat as possible on the incline, Lewis inched upward, just enough for his shoulders to clear the curb. "All 67th elements, this is Viper team leader. Enemy armor at objective, need priority fire mission! Flashing target data now." Lewis lit the enemy machine with his designator, making it known to every friendly smart weapon in range.

Across the surrounding metrozone, howitzer shells, rocket barrages and missiles streaked skyward, converging on the same destination. Lewis received the fire confirmations, counted seven hammering heartbeats, and the world came undone. Guided munitions pulverized the enemy rig into smoldering scrap and cinders. Nothing but a smoking crater remained.

Heller rose and quipped, "Overkill is underrated!"

“Right on, brother. Let’s get a move on.” Lewis checked his heavy rifle before he clambered up to street level. The pair crossed quickly to the ruined office complex and crashed through the maze of rubble and twisted metal. Small arms fire echoed from somewhere deeper inside. 

After barging through a jammed door, they found themselves face to face with a squad of Cadre troopers near the ship’s flank, apparently trying to find or make a way in. After a moment of surprise, a point-blank slaughter immediately ensued. Despite outnumbering the suits five to one, the infantrymen died fast, blown apart by massive slugs or else hideously mangled by suit-augmented blows. 

Lewis and Heller picked their way further into the increasingly jumbled building. They soon encountered a makeshift defensive position manned by different soldiers. Several of them were injured and all rightly terrified of the hulking, blood-soaked titans staring them down. 

One shouted for the others to hold their fire.

These soldiers’ uniforms and armor were familiar to Lewis, but different. Their patches, though: It was their sister unit. The 42nd NHC. Real. Alive. Here. One of them, hair singed and face blistered from fire, lowered the muzzle of his rifle slightly and peered over it at Lewis’ suit. A sergeant judging from his rank insignia, the man’s expression flickered in surprise and he looked into Lewis’ darkened visor, seemingly right through it into Lewis’ eyes.

"67th?" His voice was rough. "You with the 67th?” After a moment, he added “Sir?"

Lewis keyed his external speakers. "Roger that, Sergeant." He said, gauntleted hand wiping blood from the 67th North Horizon Corps logo painted on his chestplate. "I’m Lieutenant Lewis, we're here to get you out."

There was no time for celebration. That would come days later, only after thirty-eight names, Svensson among them, were added to the 67th’s memorial wall. The ruins of Ann Arbor had brewed up into a proper warzone: the Sable Cadre forces were still swarming, regrouping, and fighting, even then closing on the crash site. 

The cost of Reunion Day, as it would become known in the annals of the unit’s history, and to the wider solar system as Earthfall, was terrible. But that day marked the end of the 67th North Horizon Corps’ long and lonely patrol.

Illustration by Eldon Cowgur