[Setup: Mayor Greg Davis of Triton has clashed with our female lead, the Sao expatriate Iris 13, over how to best fight against Sao when the rebelling titan finds them. Adolescents too young to fight have been integrated into the Triton Youth Auxiliary, performing non-combat services to help the war effort during battle. Iris has insider knowledge that some kind of fire-based attacks should be prepared for. On October 12, Iris is just returning from time abroad on Proteus, another colossus allied with Triton.]
“Cargo
line!” Iris shouted through cupped hands.
“Cargo line!”
She didn’t know if the harbormaster
heard her until, several seconds later, a second rope arrow shot down from
Triton and struck the rooftop of 432 Park Avenue with great force. Wasting no time, Iris walked two of the three
heavy duffle bags to the edge of the rooftop. She set the bags on the ledge outside the
balustrade and threaded the cold metal arrow through their tightened shoulder
straps. She tied the rope in a tight and
sturdy double knot and yanked the rope twice, as hard as she could, before
shoving the bundle over the edge of the building. Her heart skipped a beat as she doubted
whether the dock workers had locked the reel in place, but as she watched the
cargo swing away from her, she saw that it lost no altitude. Iris sighed in relief, threw the third duffel
bag over her shoulder and locked onto the other line.
With the added weight, she struggled to
reach the top. Come on, girl, she thought. We can make it. Don’t stop.
Don’t slow down. Ignore the
pain. Keep climbing. Iris felt her biceps tightening, her palms
burning. When she was halfway up, she
heard a sound that made her heart sink.
Far off in the distance, out on the horizon, she heard music.
“Oh shit,” she said.
Iris heard the drums and the bass
first. Then the lyrics, muffled as they
were from such a distance. She redoubled
her climbing efforts and cursed incessantly to herself. Not
yet, she thought. Still…so much to prepare.
There was only one kaiju on Earth with
the capability – or the desire – to blast music so loudly against the fog. As Iris neared the top, she did her best to
use Triton’s flank to walk upwards with her feet while she continued to climb
the rope hand over hand. A crowd had
begun to gather and stare off into the distance, looking for the source of the
sound.
“Go!” she screamed. “Get indoors!”
Nobody listened to her.
“Sound the alarm!”
The words of the song came into
focus.
“In your face like a
can of mace, baby
Is it burning? Well fuck it, now you’re learning
How I don’t even like
your motherfuckin’ profile
Gimme my fuckin’
shit: cha-chick BLAOW!
Last seen and heard,
no one knows
You forget: niggaz be
quiet as kept
Now you know nothing,
before you knew a whole fuckin’ lot
Your ass don’t wanna
get shot
A lot of emcees came
to my showdown
And watched me put ya fuckin’ ass low
down.”
“I said sound the…” Iris saw people
begin to huddle together and look fearfully at the approaching titan. Most of them had never seen Sao before but
the sight of the two-legged creature adorned with bodies, skulls and dried
blood was beginning to set them off. It
was exactly what Jeremai wanted – to draw them out, then to intimidate them.
Fuck
it, Iris thought. She reached the pier and grabbed the balustrade
with both hands, pulling with her last ounce of strength and throwing her arms
over the top of the railing. She shoved
off with her feet and her body flopped over the balustrade, scraping her
stomach to bleeding. She landed on her
back, on the duffel, which was as bulky and painful as bricks. She ignored the searing pain across her
midsection and the crippling aches along her back and she stood. First she ran to the other ballista, where
the cargo line was just about up. She
shouted at the dock worker urgently. “Hide that – and for Christ’s sake don’t give
it up until they’re gone!”
Too alarmed to argue, the dock worker
nodded dumbly. She had to trust that he’d
follow through. She ran to the crank-operated
siren in the center of the theriopolis and revved it as hard and fast as she
could. Within seconds, the sirens at all
four corners of town sounded as well. Thank God for that, she thought. She kept sounding the alarm, stopping only
for a moment to drop her duffel bag on the floor with a clank.
From houses and businesses on every
block, familiar faces emerged from doorways and rushed to the center of town,
just as they’d practiced throughout the year.
The speed and collectiveness with which it happened brought tears to
Iris’s eyes. Yes, she thought. That’s right. Come together. We can do this. There was some slow
foot traffic since the alarms had shocked the onlookers back into coherence and
caused them to realize the gravity of the situation. Women and small children flocked back to their
homes for water rations against the flow of the soldiers, the volunteers, the
Triton Youth Auxiliary, but all in all, the town remained cool-headed and
shaved precious seconds off their preparations.
Less than a minute after Iris had climbed back onto Triton’s pier, the
streets were virtually empty of civilians and the park was full of armed men
and women sporting sky blue Alliance military armbands – or handkerchiefs where
supplies ran low – standing in formation.
All were armed. Iris stopped
cranking her siren; the others followed.
More continued to trickle in, having been further away from their
assigned firearms at the sound of the sirens.
The last of the civilians evacuated from the port side of their hometown
– from which Sao approached – to the starboard side.
“Snipers, to me!” 20 men and women rushed to Iris. She opened the oversized duffel at her
feet. Inside were 20 Dragunov sniper
rifles. “Merry Christmas! Two clips each – two clips – then you go back to your standard loadout. Get to your rooftops!” They retrieved their new supplies and
deployed as Iris continued. Sao’s music
grew ever louder. Iris barked orders
over the din. The remaining troops
deployed as she ordered them.
“All infantry to combat positions –
enemy approaching from the port bow! I
want Youth Auxiliary to lead the non-combat volunteers and retrieve buckets of
water from every house that’s set them out!
You start halfway across at the starboard side and work your way back
here until you hear otherwise. No
knocking on doors today kids; we don’t have the time! Medics – stock up on burn treatment supplies
if you don’t have ‘em! Then hold
positions three blocks behind the front and await further instructions! Grenadiers – where’s Williams?”
A middle-aged man stood out from
formation. “Here ma’am!”
“Got the key?”
“Ma’am!”
“Grenadiers – follow Williams to Armory
Delta and retrieve your explosives and slings.
Stay low and out of sight until these bastards are well within 1,000
feet! Your targets are the heavies on Sao
– not Sao itself, goddammit! The first
kid who comes back with water, I’ll send him with a fire piston to help light
up what you need. Let him know when
you’re at 20% ammo and he’ll bring me Williams’s key. Then I’ll send the kids to bring up more ammo
from the other armories. Move out!”
She scanned the remaining few people in
the crowd, including Mayor Davis and the defense contractors. She was so frazzled she knew she’d left
someone out.
“Who else is still hiding back here –
besides the politicians?” A laugh came
from those still present. Then it
occurred to Iris.
“Oh right – scouts!” she said. “You’re on recon. Alpha Unit, I want regular updates on holes
in their defenses, dug-in troublemakers and any surprises they’re packing that
we haven’t planned for! Beta Unit,
you’re on ammo runs for infantry.
Scatter!”
One scout hesitated. “Um, ma’am?” he asked.
“What is it?”
He nodded towards her stomach. “Your, um…”
Iris looked down and saw droplets of
blood seeping through her shirt. Stupid girl, she thought to
herself. “Alright, thanks. On your way now.” He headed to the front. Iris rolled her torn shirt up her belly – the
series of gashes from the balustrade were large and numerous, and a couple were
bleeding openly.
“Shit,” she said, turning and heading to
the frontlines. “Not much use this way,
am I? Medic!”
* *
*
Jason Axtell, an Alliance sniper, fired
the first round in the engagement. While
he’d spent several long seconds glassing the Sao warriors parading around their
titan of hedonism, dancing to their music and hoisting their rifles into the
air, he rid his mind of them before allowing fear to set in. He set his sights on an enemy rifleman who
stood profile to him. Jason had prepared
for this moment for months. He inhaled,
held his breath and squeezed the trigger.
The report from the Dragunov was deafening, but the shell of the
7.62x54mmR cartridge ejected and its bullet passed through the Sao-born’s
chest, entering under the armpit. It found
its way close enough to its intended target – the heart – that it dropped him,
motionless, to the ground. It exited the
man’s far side, shattering a rib on its way out.
He’s
dead, Jason thought. I took
a life. My finger moved a quarter-inch
and I killed a man. My God.
Along their line, other snipers began to
fire. Jason took cover and his hands
shook. My God. How much did it
hurt? Does he still hurt? Is he still…in there? No.
Not now. Think later. Defend our home now. Protect Samantha and Alice now. Stop shaking.
Can’t save anyone shaking.
As if giving himself a command, he
pulled the small 50ml bottle of scotch from his pocket and opened it. It was over 100 years old and had been fished
by a prisoner before the war broke out – it was part of a case of similar bottles
– and distributed to the soldiers to help with nerves. He took a tug from the little bottle and
breathed several times, then finished it.
“You alright man?”
Jason snapped his attention to the voice
next to him. It was a scout. Jason nodded quickly and got back into the
fight, taking position to find another target.
Infantry on both sides began to fire.
The scout, Allen Franklin, had been studying
the Sao frontline as well, but for different purposes. Recruited for his near-photographic memory,
Allen made mental notes of everything he saw, including things he didn’t
recognize or that looked strange to him.
When he saw Jason retake his position, he did the same, once more
raising his binoculars to his eyes. He
was sure the other scouts along the edge of Triton saw what he saw, but just in
case, he catalogued everything he could remember. The difficulty, he found, was the lack of
organization and clear difference between Sao-born fighters. They seemed to have constructed makeshift
cover out of things brought up from the surface and fastened together,
including ballistic shields and sandbags, but people with all manner of weapons
crouched behind any one of them to avoid Alliance bullets. Then he noticed the shielded mounted gun
standing at the top of a high construct on Sao.
Allen saw sparks glinting off its shield as it drew a high concentration
of Allied fire, and he saw the blinding light of the muzzle flashes regularly
firing from the end of the gun’s barrel.
But something about it looked strange.
He readjusted the focus on his binoculars and took a closer look at the
gun and its operator. Then, without
thinking, instinct took over and he sprinted from his spot, leaving Jason
behind, urging him to ignore the mounted gun on his way out.
Allen ran down the rear stairs of the
building they had sat atop, taking them two at a time and jumping down the last
half-dozen. He rounded the corner around
the back entrance to the house too sharply and banged his shoulder on the
doorframe as he sprinted to find Iris.
He ran safely, two blocks of buildings separating him from the edge of
the city, but when he passed a cross street he still stayed low and his heart
raced. Block by block he narrowed the
gap between himself and the command center, telling soldiers not to bother with
the mounted gun as he raced down the streets.
He didn’t know if anyone was listening to him but he had to try.
Allen found Iris front and center along
Triton’s port side in a reinforced storefront serving as Triton’s command
center. A nurse was just finishing
wrapping Iris’s midsection in gauze.
Iris clenched her teeth and hissed through them in pain. “Okay, okay; I’m fine,” Iris said. “Someone else needs you more; move along.”
The nurse left without a word; Allen
caught Iris’s attention.
“Scout Franklin, urgent report ma’am,”
he said in gasps.
“What have you got, Franklin?” she
asked.
“It’s fake,” he said. “The mounted gun at the top of their
battlement – it’s a decoy.”
“What?!”
“The muzzle flashes are fireworks or
something,” he said. He was still
catching his breath.
“What about the guy operating it?”
“Corpse,” Allen said. “Strung up and tied to the gun.”
“God dammit,” Iris said. “How the Hell do we tell the entire regiment
to stop wasting their ammo on that thing?”
A member of the Youth Auxiliary who
Allen hadn’t noticed shot up out of her seat and stared hard at Iris. Iris turned to her and spoke fast. “Claire, get to Williams. Tell him I’m approving use of the M79 to take
that mounted artillery out. If he asks
for an authorization code, tell him I forgot it and to go fuck himself.” Claire was halfway out the door by the time
Iris shouted after her “He has two shots;
we need to save the rest!”
Iris turned back to Allen. “Good work.
Did you see anything else out there?”
“N-no ma’am,” Allen said. He sounded deflated.
“Hey, it’s alright,” she said. “That mounted artillery intel is a huge
help. Get back to your post and keep an
eye out.”
“Ma’am.”
On her way out of the building to find
Williams, Claire collided with a scout coming from the opposite direction that
Allen had. He was rushing to Iris to
give her a report of his own and once he and Claire recovered from their
impact, she asked if he knew where Williams was.
“Negative, kid, but he’s up there
somewhere,” the scout said. Claire
picked up her pace to continue towards the bow of the creature and the scout
shouted to her “I was just in the smoke shop on First and he ain’t there! Don’t waste your time!” Claire waved her thanks and continued towards
the creature’s head.
Claire remembered the training. Pause at the corner, check for clearance,
sprint low, jog along the buildings for cover, repeat. And as she ran, she saw things no child
should see. She looked down one cross
street towards the fight to find a medic, hands covered in blood, applying
pressure to a stomach wound. At the next
intersection, she looked out to the enemy colossus and saw a Sao-born,
half-naked and half-feral, stacking bodies of his own countrymen to use as
cover. Then he saw her. In shock or from fear, she gasped and spun
back around and pressed her back up against the building on the corner she had
been ready to cross. Her back to the
fight, she looked ahead of her for just a moment. She saw some of the other kids in the Triton
Youth Auxiliary, carrying water in buckets or carrying the wounded away from
the frenzy on cots. Water in a vessel, blood in a vessel, she thought. Water
in a vessel, blood in a vessel. Carry
the vessel, carry the fluid inside. Stop
thinking.
She ran across the street. As she reached the far side, the Sao-born who
had spotted her took aim and pulled the trigger. She heard a shattering sound and suddenly her
face was on fire. Instinctively, her
hand rose to the area, but her hand didn’t burn. It wasn’t fire, she realized, but her cheek
felt strange and misshapen. She pulled
her hand back away and stopped for just another second and looked down at
it. It was streaked with blood. Her blood.
Before she could think, more drops of blood fell to her hand and to the
floor. She gave her jaw a wiggle and
though in extraordinary pain, it moved properly.
Don’t
think about it, she thought. She kept running. Don’t
think about it – building debris – don’t think at all find Williams – face
shredded – tell him Iris said go fuck himself, M79 two rounds then find a medic
– tissue damage? – get treated and get back to running supplies just like
training – bullet in the building or somewhere in my face – just like training.
A block before Armory Delta, where all
the grenadiers had gone, Claire turned down an alley and started asking for
Williams. She kept her teeth clenched
and grunted to talk. The first two
infantrymen she asked didn’t even look up from the scopes on their rifles. “Not now, kid!” “Who the fuck is Williams?!” The third made a kill and marked it on a
tally he’d drawn on his wrist. He had to
reload and told her to ask a grenadier one block back the way she came. Then he looked up while loading a new
magazine and did a double-take at her.
“Holy shit,” he said.
“Is it bad?”
He ignored her. “Here, take this – my own private reserve.” He grabbed a flask-sized scotch bottle from
his pocket and opened the cap with his teeth and shoved it in her hand.
“I’m too young to –“
He shook his head and ripped a piece of
his shirtsleeve off, handing it to her.
“Douse this and put it on your face – gently, you hear? Hang in there, kid; find a medic. And hey!”
“Yeah?”
He nodded at the scotch bottle. “Save half that and slug it when you find the
medic – you’re gonna need it.”
Claire thanked him and went on her way
to find Williams.
The rifleman with the torn sleeve turned
to the young man next to him.
“Hey, Banks!”
“What?” Christopher Banks replied
without taking his eye from his spyglass.
“Did you see that girl’s face?”
“I’m sure she was a real looker,
Thomson.”
“No, she –“
“Oh shit,” Banks said. He collapsed his spyglass and got up. “I’ve gotta run!”
“What do you see?”
“Armored heavies! Miniguns, suiting up outside the
penitentiary! I need a sling team on
this pronto!”
With that, Banks was gone. Thomson turned to the soldier next to him,
who he believed had been carefully lining up a shot. “Hey buddy, did you see that girl’s face? Buddy?”
He patted the soldier’s shoulder. The soldier idly rolled over, revealing a
bullet hole where his left eye used to be.
“God dammit,” Thomson said. He licked his thumb and erased one tally mark
from his wrist.
Banks weaved through storefronts along
Triton’s port side, staying low to avoid incoming fire. He found a sling team crouched behind a low
wall near the entrance to a clothing store, looking out at Sao. The double-wide store window had been blown
in from enemy fire and glass littered the floor. The sling team was part of a makeshift
platoon that had assembled in response to the action outside. Two infantrymen, both of whom would die from
enemy fire before the day was over, clung nervously to their AK-47s. One woman was stationed to each of the side
handles on the sling, holding them slack; a third crouched on the floor between
them with one hand resting on a strap at the back of the pouch. A wide-eyed young man from the Youth
Auxiliary shook in fear behind them, kneeling next to a milk crate of homemade
explosives. As Iris had promised the
grenadiers, the kid was one of many carrying fire in a carved-out animal
horn. Without looking back, the three
women at the sling had a quick discussion.
“What about that mounted gun up top?”
“I don’t know if we’ve got the
range. Plus, it’s a small target. We overshoot that and we’re just flushing
munitions.”
“Ballistic shield wall?”
“Aren’t those fireproof?”
“Shit, maybe.”
Banks glanced over at the display stand
next to him. It was adorned with baby
clothes, most of which were filthy and unusable, covered with dust and
debris. A handwritten sign above them
read “Gently loved onesies – 12 to 24 months.”
One had a small engraving on the arm.
J. Burke Designs.
“Ok, sandbags?” he heard one of the
women say.
“Reduce their cover, right?”
“Hell yeah.”
“Light ‘em up.”
The two grenadiers on the side handles
stepped back from each other, the thick rubber piping of the sling stretching
taut between them.
“Hey kid!” shouted the woman at the
pouch. “Gimme a drink! Make it a double!”
A
drink? Barnes thought.
The kid jumped at being called, but he
regained his composure and picked up a rag-stuffed bottle from the milk crate,
inspected its contents, then replaced it.
He repeated this twice before settling on a larger, heavier bottle. He held the horn to the rag and it
ignited. Fearfully he handed the bottle
to the woman at the pouch – “M-Ma’am?” he said – who placed the bottle in the
pouch and began walking it backwards on her knees.
“One of these days, kid, I’m gonna
convince you to say ‘Order up,’” she said.
She turned to the woman on the left.
“What do you call that? 270?”
“Mm, 280,” her friend said. The woman behind the pouch pulled back a
little harder.
“Set!”
The infantrymen sprung to life. “Suppressing fire!”
They rolled out of their cover and began
aggressively emptying their magazines at the enemy colossus. At the same time, the women on either sling
handle stood in unison, arcing the trajectory of the shot.
“Stick your peanut-dick in this, rapists,” the woman holding the
pouch said. She released the bottle an
eyeblink before releasing the strap behind the pouch and the Molotov was
away. Everyone resumed their cover. An eternity of silence followed. The grenadier on the right handle poked her
head up and whipped her head around to her sisters-in-arms with a grin. “Direct hit!”
They cheered. Suddenly Banks remembered his purpose.
“Um, excuse me…”
The grenadiers looked at him and their
faces dropped.
“Jesus Christ; didn’t I just get rid of
one of you?” the woman behind the pouch said.
Her friends laughed. Banks didn’t
understand.
“Ma’am?”
“Never mind; what can I do for you?”
Banks retrieved and unfurled the map of
Sao he had in his pocket. “We’ve got two
armored heavies coming out from here and here,” he said, pointing to where he’d
seen the monstrous suits of iron emerging just minutes ago.
“What are they packing?”
“Miniguns, ma’am.”
“Shit,” she said. “Ladies, tag ‘em and frag ‘em! You – thanks for the heads-up; now get out of
here so I can do my goddamn job!” As
Banks left to return to his post with Thomson, he took one last look back and
saw the women on the sling handles using binoculars to spot the armored
gunners. The woman behind the pouch,
still sitting, spun around on her backside and brushed the glass from the area
in front of her. She laid on her belly, pulled
a cigarette from a case in her pocket and held her face near the flaming horn
to light it.
“At least this one was in better shape
than the last kid,” she said to the Youth Auxiliary member. “I wonder if she made it to Captain
Williams?”
Claire’s arm looked normal aside from
the thin line of blood that ran down it from the rag in her hand to her elbow,
dripping onto the pavement and leaving a Hansel and Gretel trail wherever she
went. She hadn’t taken the rag off her
face since she doused it and she hadn’t let go of the half-empty scotch bottle
since it had been given to her. Her face
still felt afire and she had lost some of the spring in her step but she had a
definite location on Williams from the women in the clothing store and she was
closing in fast. She began to feel
funny. Not quite light-headed, but
slightly disconnected from her own body, as though there were an infinitesimal
delay between her brain giving her body its orders and her body taking
them. After what felt like forever, she
saw a middle-aged man she recognized from the formation earlier. He was on the rooftop of a church, giving
orders.
“Captain Williams?” she called, still
through gritted teeth.
He spun around. “What is it, trooper?”
“The mounted gun, sir – it’s a decoy. The gunner behind its shields…it’s just a
body – I mean, it’s a corpse.”
“Yeah, no shit, kid,” he said, turning
away from her.
Claire’s heart sank. He
knows? she thought. Why did
I…Was this all for nothing? For the
first time, doubt filled her brain. Her
hand fell away from her face. The rag
came with it and she let it fall to the floor.
She had no further orders beyond this moment. She knew she should report back to Iris or
regroup with other members of the Youth Auxiliary but she couldn’t make her
feet move. Her wound stung anew, tickled
by a gentle breeze that blew through the air.
“The trouble is,” he said, “My boys use
any of my best explosives without orders from the top brass and they’re liable
to court martial our asses. Whole
bureaucracy’s a giant cluster-“
Claire’s brain kickstarted back into
gear. Hope flooded back into her
veins. “That’s it!” she shouted at him.
He turned back to her and saw her face
and started. “Jesus Christ, girl! Medic! I need a medic here on the double!” He approached her and grabbed her
wrists. “Kid, you need to sit.”
“No!” Claire screamed, throwing his
hands away. The extra effort and
adrenaline was taking a lot out of her. “Iris
told me to tell you she’s authorizing you two rounds from the M79 to take out
that gun.”
Williams grabbed her again but eased up
when he realized what she’d said. “Did
she give you an authorization code?”
“She said she forgot it.”
Williams eyed her skeptically.
“And to go fuck yourself.”
Captain Williams laughed with
relief. “That sounds about right.” He thought for a moment. “Okay.
Roger that. But I need you to sit
down right now.” She complied this time,
all her energy gone. He set her down,
supporting her head with his hand, and he lifted his head up and looked for
someone, who he found. “Peterson!”
A young man, another member of the Youth
Auxiliary, answered his call and rushed to his side. “Sir?”
“Go downstairs. Get the box next to the podium on the dais
and bring it up here now.”
“Yes sir.”
“And bring me a field medic!”
The boy ran downstairs. Williams looked at Claire. A dozen shards of glass stuck out from one
side of her face. The largest one was
lodged in her cheek, near the jaw. Silently,
tears began streaming down to her chin.
“Do you see the bullet?” she said.
“Bullet?!” He searched her face. “No, kid; there’s no bullet. Must’ve missed you.”
“Then what’s –“
“Glass,” he said. “Pretty good amount, too.”
Her face contorted in despair.
“Don’t talk,” he said. “You’re gonna be alright. The medic will be here any second.”
She remembered the scotch. She loosed the twist-off cap with her free
hand and it made a small clinking sound on the floor. Williams looked down and saw the bottle
nearing her lips. He opened his mouth to
speak but he stopped and chuckled in surprise instead.
“Don’t tell my parents,” Claire said
with a wink, upending the bottle and drinking from it.
“Psh; don’t tell the medic,” he replied.
She laughed with her mouth full,
sputtered a bit on the scotch and moaned from the pain it brought her. She recovered and cleared her throat. Then they both heard two pairs of footsteps
rushing up the fire escape. They knew it
was Peterson with the medic.
Claire thought about what was coming
next. This is really going to hurt.
She took one last swig from the bottle and tossed it aside. It slid along the rooftop and stopped with a
bump at the far corner. Peterson and the
medic appeared from the side of the building.
The medic knelt down next to Claire and opened her field bag.
“What’s happened to her?”
Williams shook his head in
ignorance. “She came here from halfway
across town…I think this is debris from a window – maybe 10, 15 minutes ago?”
Claire nodded. As soon as the medic cushioned Claire’s head,
Williams gently removed his hand from under it.
He thanked her and took the box from Peterson and left her sight.
“Hullo dear,” the medic said. “Looks as though we’ve gotten into some
trouble then, have we?”
Claire snorted a bit and popped her
eyebrows up and down once. The medic smiled
and injected something into the crook of Claire’s elbow. Claire flinched.
“Sorry love. That’ll help with the pain.”
Claire nodded. The medic retrieved a clean metal tray from
her bag then searched for tweezers, gauze, a needle and thread.
“Let me patch you up proper then we’ll
get you to hospital.”
Claire shook her head. “Gotta get –“
“Don’t speak, please, darling,” the
medic said.
“Report to Iris,” Claire said.
The medic laughed sweetly. “Darling, you’re lucky to be alive, let alone
conscious. Look at the state of you!”
Claire shook her head again and tried to
sit up. The medic easily and gently
pushed her back. “You’ve done a brave
thing today,” she said, nodding towards Williams and out beyond the
rooftop. “A quite brave thing. Now hold still.”
The medic leaned over Claire with the
tweezers. Nervous, Claire breathed
quickly through her nose.
“Grenade out!”
Claire heard a strange “thunk” sound and
saw a piece of glass the size of half a playing card enter her field of
view. For a moment she wondered if the
glass had made the sound on its way out – which, despite the scotch, agonized
her. Then she heard an explosion in the
distance and realized the source of the sound.
The M79, she thought. Did it… The sound of cheers and back-slapping brought
a smile to her face. Claire shut her
eyes and let the medic work on her. The
painkiller slowly took effect and she relaxed.
Iris saw the mounted gun explode and she
smiled. Nice work, kid, she thought.
Now where the Hell are you? As she looked out at Sao, it was hard for
Iris to resist the temptation of finding her way over to the rogue titan and
sneaking into the prisons to find Jeremai and kill him right here and now. He’s so
close, she thought. He’s hearing the same sounds I am, smelling
the same gunpowder and fire and blood.
He’d earned his place on his throne by stacking bone and flesh and
slaves in a pile and she knew she had to see him dead. However, Iris knew that as insane as he was,
he had an instinct for self-preservation.
He was a scurrying rat on a sinking ship who would step on the faces of
every person on Sao to keep himself above the rising tide. Worse, he was an apex predator – a strong,
vicious, remorseless ape of a man whose hulking frame ingested violence and sex
and raw human meat the way families gorged themselves at holidays. His heart pumped disease and insanity and
psychopathy from four generations of inbreeding and cannibalism; Iris often
wondered if he’d even spill normal human blood when injured.
She shook herself out of her thoughts and
back into the present. She saw a fire on
Sao. It was a row of sandbags they’d
been using for cover. Several Sao-born
ran away from behind it, some of whom were on fire. One ran off the edge of the creature in a
frantic, aimless sprint, flaming all the way down and being reclaimed by the
fog. Unconsciously, Iris spat downwards
at the floor immediately in front of her in disgust. A regular succession of rapid fire sounded
from either side of Sao’s surface.
Iris’s eyes searched for the source of the sound and her eyes widened at
the sight of two large men in full-body armor holding miniguns and slowly
fanning them across Triton.
Instinctively, she took cover as bullets ripped through the command
center just above her head. She was
about to leave the building to direct the army’s firepower to the heavies when
she saw one of them stop firing, look down at the ground in front of him, drop
his gun and turn to run away. Suddenly
an explosion threw him into the air just far enough to cast him over Sao’s edge
and to the earth below. Iris turned to
the other armored gunner but something further out, near the harbor, caught her
eye. Lines had been fired from both the
portside ballistae and over a dozen soldiers were ziplining down them to board
Sao.
Davis,
she thought.
Allen Franklin had returned to his post
and watched as the small platoon fired the ballistae. He turned to the sniper. “Jason, did you hear anything about them
sending a unit in to flank Sao?”
“Nobody tells me anything, bud,” Jason
said.
The miniguns roared. Allen and Jason took cover. Then one of the miniguns stopped. Allen took three rapid breaths and broke
cover to investigate through his binoculars.
One of the armed heavies was gone but the other was still spraying his
payload across the front.
“Jesus,” he said.
“What?”
“This guy looks like a goddamn trash
can. He’s in an enormous suit of armor.”
“Like a knight?”
“No, no; like a robot.”
“What?!”
“It looks like he strapped a couple of
those old coal stoves to himself. Take a
look!”
“I’m fine right here. Shouldn’t you go tell someone?”
“I doubt they’re missing this, Jason.”
The second heavy stopped firing.
“Is he exposed anywhere?”
“Oh shit,” Allen said.
“What?”
The armored gunman stared – or appeared
to stare, through his helmet – at the ropes connecting the two colossi and the
men traversing them. Allen couldn’t hear
him, but he could see that he called to several other Sao-born and ordered them
towards the arrows hooked onto Sao. For
just an instant, Allen tried to tell himself that the Alliance force may be
able to cross the line in time, that they could fight the Sao warriors back.
But then the armored heavy picked his
minigun back up. The chambers began to
spin. Allen turned his gaze to the Allies. Holes ripped through the soldiers’ bodies one
by one. Some had just enough time to put
on the brakes and try in vain to climb back before ultimately being perforated
by the rounds shot at them. Blood rained
down to the streets of New York City as the soldiers went limp, their ziplines
idly obeying gravity and sliding down the ropes towards a battlefield they
would never reach. Every fighter who
mounted the ropes died, stopping with a bump at the end of the line, adding to
the increasing bottleneck of corpses at Sao’s flank just as the previous
soldier had.
Everyone saw it – literal dead weight,
sickeningly and slowly passing along the ropeway and gathering in a mass. Allen would be haunted by the helplessness
and indignity of the scene for the rest of his natural life. He lowered his binoculars and sat back behind
his cover on the rooftop for several moments, shaking his head and staring at
the ground. He thought he might throw
up, but nothing came. While he was
turned away, one of the Sao-born who had been sent to check the ropeway took a
machete to each rope and severed the arrows from the lines. The bodies fell down along Sao’s body like
rag dolls, climbing gear and all, and vanished into the fog. The ropes fell limply to Triton’s side. Then a Molotov from a sling team that had
been filled with something like napalm took the second heavy out of
commission. He swiped at himself
frantically for several seconds and tried desperately to escape his armor, but
it appeared someone had helped him strap into it from behind and he found no
escape. He fell to the floor and
continued to struggle, writhing and clawing at himself until he finally ceased
to move. The cheers from Allen’s
immediate area brought him back around.
He looked to the armored gunner and saw the smoldering metal, the flames
rising from it, the heat lines dancing and distorting everything behind the
body. He’d barely reconciled the events
of the last five minutes as part of reality when, at the sound of an airhorn
from the other colossus, every living warrior on Sao took cover. Triton ceased fire, and for one full second,
everything was silent as the grave.
One single object rose into the air from
behind one of Sao’s ballistic shield walls.
It was small and flat in shape and black as pitch. Allen squinted to determine what it was. Then he saw it had a friend rising to meet
it. Then another. As they reached an altitude of 50 feet, they
began to fly towards Triton. More and
more of them flew into the air from behind walls on Sao, but still the Sao-born
fighters stayed behind cover. Within
seconds, dozens of the airborne black things came for Triton. Instinctively, the Allied forces began firing
on the swarm of flying objects and the things they carried. A couple fell, but their size and the speed
at which they flew made them hard targets.
Then someone managed to hit the tube-like object one of the flying
things carried and it exploded.
Bomb…? Allen
thought. He frantically retrieved his
binoculars and glassed the tiny mechanical invaders. They were unmanned drones – quadrotor
remote-controlled flying helicopters just larger than a book – and they were
swarming towards Triton with cargo.
Allen saw one with a lit Molotov, a second with a pipe bomb, another
with a grenade dangling by its pin.
“Jason
get inside!” Allen screamed. He
clambered down from the rooftop to the top floor of the building on which
they’d been stationed and threw himself into a rear corner of a room and
covered his head with his arms without thinking. Allen heard glass bottles breaking and the
whoosh of fires suddenly burning.
Explosions blew walls out from houses.
The infantry and grenadiers fell back two city blocks and sheltered
themselves from the flames, all the while trying to shoot down more of the
drones. He was certain he heard everyone
screaming “War! War!” and he didn’t understand
why. When he finally looked up, he
peered out the window and down the street.
Every member of the Triton Youth Auxiliary had come to the frontlines
and was putting out the fires. They
moved as one, faster and more covertly than the adults, sprinting to an open
flame and dousing it with water, turning on a dime and running back for another
bucket. Every young man or woman he saw
running empty-handed was out of sight for just a fraction of a second before
heading back the way they came, just as fast, with another bucket of water or a
plastic water cooler with a hose tied to the mouth, extinguishing Sao’s fires
as far as the eye could see.
“Water,”
Allen thought. They
weren’t saying “war.” They were calling
for water. This is the water brigade the
kids have been talking about. They’re
putting out the fires.
Smoke and steam rose in plumes and curls
from the front. Drones continued to
come, but fewer and farther between than they had at the outset. Some of the drones had been piloted back to
Sao, where they were being laden with more explosives to deliver. It finally occurred to Allen that he hadn’t
seen Jason since he fled from the rooftop.
Fearing the worst, he returned topside to find his comrade.
Jason never heard Allen tell him to run
inside. The moment he saw the first
drones rise and begin to move, he knew what they meant. He loaded a fresh clip into his sniper rifle,
blinked several times, put his eye to the scope, aimed and squeezed the
trigger.
And then he did it again. The guilt he felt from killing his first
enemy combatant had faded over the last 40 or so minutes and was now, in the
face of the drones, utterly absent.
Whereas he’d been able to fire on the Sao-born despite his reluctance towards taking lives, he felt infinitely more
capable against the machines because of
that reluctance. Not only was he still
fighting to protect his home – now literally – but there were no lives to take
from the little helicopters.
Protect
Samantha and Alice, he
thought. Send these things all the way down to the ground and let them take
their bombs with them. Once he was
even able to detonate the pipe bomb a drone carried while it was far above and
between the colossi, which in turn destroyed several others in its
proximity. Jason had better luck with
the drones nearest him and Allen than at the opposite end of the battlefield,
near Triton’s head. No fire ever came near
their rooftop. He stopped counting after
his first dozen hits.
Jason heard footsteps scramble back up
to the roof behind him. Assuming it was
one of the Triton Youth Auxiliary, he shouted back “Ammo! Now!
Sniper rifle!” and kept firing.
Once the drones started to thin, he was afforded the time to take pot
shots at their pilots, who still mostly hid behind cover. Another magazine of rifle shells crashed at
the ground to his right and he reloaded, looking up at the kid who brought them. It was Allen.
Jason chuckled and thanked him and crouched back down. He took one final shot and caught a Sao-born
in the hip. The shot rang out and before
he could steady his aim again, a lurch threw him off his mark. Triton was moving. His hour in New York had ended and he began
his hours-long trek to Philadelphia. At
the same moment, Sao turned and began to leave.
Everyone stopped. Nobody could
hit a moving target from a moving platform.
Having fired the final shot of the battle, Jason quickly gave in to
exhaustion. His arms shook. When he stood, his knees buckled. Jason gathered his gear and he and Allen
headed back into town, arm in arm, the children stepping over the bodies in the streets and continuing to put out their
parents’ fires.
All words by jonny Lupsha (c) A Carrier of Fire except song lyrics from "Brooklyn Zoo" from Ol' Dirty Bastard's Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version.