James Osiris Baldwin's Blog, page 5

Chapter Sixteen

Twofer was hooked up to IVs, a bag and a canister of spent drugs. Both had run dry. The IV site was inflamed, the flesh around it brackish and stiff with rigor. Mike’s lips trembled, top and bottom. He reached out, fingers hovering over the site of penetration, then up over his cheekbones without touching the skin. The stench of decay intensified. It was choking him.

Shaking, Mike looked reached behind his brother’s ear with clammy fingers, groping and searching through his hair for his corona. It should have solidified to its base state, a metal bar. Twofer’s hair was slick with moisture; it felt like maggots against Mike’s fingertips. His teeth chattered as he made himself push further in. He couldn’t tip Twofer’s head forward, but as he pushed his hand in behind his neck, he didn’t feel a corona. He felt a plug, and a socket, and something wet. He snatched his hand back in alarm: it was covered in blood.

“What… what the hell is this?” Mike wiped his hand, skin crawling, and turned back to the console. “What the fuck?”

He reached out, searching for the ignition, and found the startup panel under the command dash. It read his fingerprints as surely as it had his brother’s. The console chimed, and then sprung to life: a triple row of holographic, high-res panels that superimposed over the blank walls to form a three-sixty degree view of the outside.

Sort of. The land outside was nothing like what it really was. The terrain was alien, rendered hostile and unforgiving. The corpses of the AEGIS were not there. In their place were the slain carcasses of All-Pac soldiers. Mike’s eyes wandered over the console, and then down. Without the BCI linkup, he couldn’t interact with the menus, only observe the visuals. There was… a health bar. A skills menu. A chat window, minimized. ‘PAUSE’ hung, suspended, in the middle of the largest window. It was Homeland, the game. The game was paused.

Mike couldn’t breathe.

He needed to tell everyone about what he had found. He needed to get into the facility, and find the women. He had to say something. As the interior features of the cabin came into focus, he saw the clearly experimental nature of this vehicle. Its insane, wildly superior camouflage and armor. The tubes and monitors. The failure of the program to wipe him, the statistical fluke, from the map. Not for a moment did Mike entertain the fantasy that this was the work of the Alliance, that it was the act of the enemy. No… this had all the hallmarks of his own people.

Mike eventually found Twofer’s dead corona, mounted in a tube on the side of the chair, and pulled his own free of its jack. He didn’t have anything to clean the port with, so he wiped as much of the dirt off it as he could before he slot it in, and closed his eyes. To his relief, the bar dissolved and spun, gathering into blades behind his head. He input the passwords, and licking the sweat from his lip, but they were no good. Twofer’s entire desktop had been destroyed. Their squad codes didn’t work. The system had cleansed itself of them.

But the computer didn’t stop working when he tried to turn it off, and back away. He couldn’t see the network, but the Net could see him. The paused game screen ahead of him minimized, and he watched it with a fixed stare as a visual feed came up. It was a Controller. The Cross burned from his glossy forehead to his pointed chin. The corona that whirled behind his head was gold, glowing. Mike could not see a face past the light that shone through his visor—the Host had no face. The Templars helmets were white; the humans of Purity Control wore black.

“Identify yourself.” The Controller’s cool, masculine voice said aloud.

A thrill passed through Mike’s chest, a shiver like the wind through trembling leaves. He was truly a mistake, unaccounted for, unseen. They had not predicted or ordered this. Now they had laid eyes on him. Did they have eyes? In any case, the game was up. They’d flip his switch, whatever it was that caused his kind to die, screaming, from a glance.

“Identify yourself, soldier.”

Mike said nothing. Instead, he drew his knife, and with a steady hand, set it in against the side of his throat. The Controller’s featureless visor showed nothing. No anger, no approval, no fear.

I’m willing, God. I’ll do what you want me to do. I’ll say what you want me to say. Please, oh Lords of the Host, and take our prayers straight to God in Your name…

The Controller lifted a hand, and a wave of heat passed through Mike’s skin. He felt something begin to squeeze inside of his face, harder and harder, until his eyes flashed with light and his sinuses popped. A trickle of blood ran down his lip… and he smiled.

He did not belong to them any more. Whatever claim they’d had was gone, and knowing that, he could do it. Shaking, Mike pressed the knife in against his neck. “Sorry I’m late, Sir.”

He didn’t know where Nephilim went when they died, but Alpha was waiting for him somewhere. Whether it was up above or down below, Mike was certain of one thing as he punched through his skin, and drew the blade across with a firm, confident stroke.

It was time to find out.

Chapter Fifteen

Water.

Mike stared up at the sky, his mouth running sweet, his eyes wet, his face frozen. He knew without scanning that his healswarm was struggling, but his body was driven to fight, an engine of hate. He had been here for six days. He would not see the seventh, because he had finally figured it out. It was easy. So easy. It was the logic he had always hoped was not true. In his heart of hearts, he had always been soft. The God he knew and who hated him was not gentle. The Lord had destroyed Egypt, retaken Israel, nuked Japan, nuked China, and then the old United States with impunity. They were not kind.

Mike remembered the Chaplain, leaning forwards from his station as he surveyed the crowd of awestruck, smooth-skinned faces of the freshly risen Nephilim below him. “You aren’t good when you do good things for bad people, he said. You are an instrument, and a good instrument is made to cut. You are the sword in God’s hand, and you will cut away the darkness or you will join it, and we will cut you away with the rest.”

No, the Host was not merciful. It was angry, and Mike finally felt that madness, their rage, seep into his own blood. He swallowed the dirty water, and with water came fresh clarity. His body began to sluggishly feed off itself to heal. A Nephilim could heal like no human could.

“We’re… punished…? We’re the enemy,” he muttered. “Traitors. Don’t make me say it… let me die before I say it…”

The ultimate blaspheme welled up in him like bile. The Host had lied to them. God was cruel, capricious. Evil. He had become the enemy of the Lord. God hated him… and he finally hated them back.

Mike shuddered as he picked himself up to a crawl, inch by filthy inch. He clutched his gun with manic strength, fingers dug into the mantra engraved along the side. Hate is good, the Chaplain had said. Hate will give you strength. He who hates his enemy and the enemy of his Master… “-who shall destroy his enemy with the strength of his belief, is blessed in the sight of the Lord.”

His eyes narrowed as he lurched forwards and up, one halting, swaying step at a time. He was shouting obscenities by the time he stumbled out into the clearing, dragging boots too heavy for his stone feet, and his scream of hate and rage built long and high and loud as he opened on the Sentry. The bullets ricocheted, sound drowned by the roar of the carbine and the crescendo of Mike’s voice. he emptied his pain into the machine that had killed them all. Burning, roaring, firing, dying…

He ran out of ammunition, heaving for breath.

The Sentry hung silently in its nest. It was wet, rain pouring from its cold, dull carapace. The HEO turbines were not spinning, not even idling. Water ran from the long barrel in streams, pattering to the steaming ground in the eerie, deathly silence. Niner didn’t move, and now that Mike could see him up close, he realized that he had been dead for some time. His bared head was punctured, weirdly deflated, and spattered with gore. Mike’s numb professional self filled in the blanks. Headshot. Days old. He hadn’t been screaming at all. Mike stared at him, finger loose on the trigger as the gun became heavier and heavier. The point dropped. It slowly slid from his hands, and then fell to the mud with a heavy slosh.

The Sentry did not move, as dark and cold and breathless as an empty room.

Mike’s shriek rang through the clearing and sent the birds scattering, rending the air like a bandsaw. He pulled it up from his belly, a raw, cracking scream that tore up his throat and came up with blood. His mouth and nose were full of heavy air, backed up with the smell of cooked iron and dead men. He staggered forwards, throwing his arms towards the motionless tank. “You motherfucker! You cock-sucking, mother-fucking piece of shit! Fuck you! Kill me! Why won’t you fucking kill me!! Why!? Why..!”

Every halting step increased the pressure until his voice broke and he fell, skidding to his knees in the mud with his head in his hands. And still, the Sentry did not move. It was as dead as the squad.

Deliriously, Mike looked up and past it, down the gully, towards the faceless facade of the bunker. It was so close, so… impossible. The airlock was flush with the wall. If he took his laser cutter to it, it wasn’t even going to scratch the self-healing surface. He ran through options, discarding them before they even had time to set. Maybe… maybe if he had an AEGIS, he could blow a hole in the side and see if they were in there, the secret they had all died for. He needed a bigger gun, a better gun, to crack the shell. Like a plasma cannon.

Mike lifted his head, looking up into the flat lens-coated eyes of the Sentry.

Slowly, Mike dragged himself to his feet. Now that he was out in the clearing, he didn’t have to fight the conditioning. It had broken, burst, leaving him free and light-headed on the other side of the glass. He took a step forward, and for the first time since the slaughter, he looked around with real curiosity, a kind of worn, wary alertness. The sentry had no heat signature. Mike moved towards it slowly, empty-handed, and reached up too quickly to grasp one of the drooping muzzles when he got up close. It was chilled, and dripped water down his sleeve. Nothing. But from where he stood, it smelled bad. Real bad.

The Sentry’s body extended back, a low-slung thorax cabin suspended between motor-driven legs. The HEO cannon formed the ‘tail’—its turbines gave the sentry its fearsome broad-shouldered profile. It was the size of a large tank, the kind that crewed five or six men. If it was possible to turn it, he could probably do it himself… and if he couldn’t, then the HEO could probably rotate and fire on the bunker.

Mike shied away as he circled around it, limping, and wiped the mud from his cheeks as he looked up. His gut quivered like taut elastic. One twitch, one shiver, one creak of a leg or hum of a turbine would snap him. It was hard to breathe as he searched for a hatch or an entry, something to indicate it was manned. He found it at the back. It was locked with a print-pad. Mike narrowed his eyes, and went to drag some scrap over to stand on it.

Minute by minute, his training was coming back. He was dizzy, dry-mouthed, wired so tight he thought his guts might tear themselves to pieces, but he could think again. He rigged his harness and wired himself up to get a good look at the hatch. It was protected by cutters that would make short work of intruding hands, if they were powered. He took his last weapon, his combat knife, and waved it in front of the sensor.

The cutters didn’t respond. Nauseous, Mike switched out the mono-filament edge for his own laser cutter, much smaller than the Sentry’s, and got to work. His hands shook so bad that he nearly took off his own thumb as the laser wheedled a thin plume of black smoke from the edge of the lock. The first time he pulled, it didn’t budge. After another ten minutes of cutting, the plug shifted and fell out when he pulled it, ejected in a puff of hot, fetid air.

Mike pushed away, coughing and waving in front of his nose, fumbling for his torch. His stomach turned, but there was euphoria, as well as fresh nausea. There was a pilot after all, and he was dead! The enemy was dead. Dead! There was no mistaking that smell, the sugary-sick reek of decay and the sour smell of old piss. They must have gotten him somehow—shot out the life support, chipped through the Sentry’s armor.

Mike fumbled for his torch, wide-eyed, and hauled himself inside with fresh energy. He’d forgotten about the enemy, about his training, about everything… but there was a mission now, something to work on.

The inside of the Sentry was spartan, efficient. The interface receptor screen took up the inside of the Sentry’s ‘face’, a curved wall of dull, shifting green. The gunner’s seat sat before it like a blocky throne. It encapsulated the dead gunner, covering hands, head and feet. It wasn’t like anything Mike had ever seen before—in person, at least. It reminded him of a Terminal Suite, one of the seats the Watchers used to control multiple computers, but it was far more utilitarian. There was no padding. Terminal chairs didn’t have tubes leading to the wrists or elbows, either. As he circled, he spotted bands—welded bands—clamping the legs to the chair. And then he noticed the screws through the top of the boots, bolting the pilot’s feet to the floor. Through his feet. Lip curled, nose wrinkled, Mike reached out and pushed up the helmet.

It came off with a soft sigh, and fluid, as the motion jostled the pilot’s eyes and ruptured them, sending a spill of brackish liquid down his cheeks. His face was the mirror of Mike’s own, gaping and tear-streaked, the lips chapped and cracked from dehydration. His brand was still visible, punched into the flesh of his forehead. The Mark of the Nephilim, and the soldier’s initials. S-2.

Twofer.

Chapter Fourteen

Time slowed, but there was no stopping. A searing violet light roared through the clearing, ripped through Bravo’s AEGIS, and blew off the entire top of the chassis in a cloud of slag. It crashed and skidded, and Niner shouted. The ground rolled, bucked, and then Mike was flying. He hadn’t seen the rocket that threw him. It wasn’t the first time: he orientated in mid-air and opened fire at the huge insectoid tank stalking forwards along the gully. The bullets spanged off its shell. It was sucking in air for the next HEO blast.

The world was a wild blurry whine as Mike hit the ground and rolled, struck something, bounced and scrambled up to one knee… just in time to see the others rushing in. Alpha was up in close, grappling a huge machine on one of the tank’s arms. ATAs were firing; another shell hit the dirt, and Mike was thrown a second time. He hit the cliff with a body-blow that shook through his bones and knocked the air from his lungs, tumbled to the ground, and looked up to see an AEGIS falling towards him. Where the pilot had been, there was only a smoking ring of space.

Mike scrambled up, churning mud, and leaped as it crashed into the mud behind him, burning, and limp as a corpse. “Alpha!” He screamed aloud, but he couldn’t see who was who as he ran for the front. “Alpha! Symon, come in! What the fuck is this thing!?”

“Retreat! Don’t come at it! Get the fuck away!” Alpha’s voice was a static blur on the radio.

The Sentry moved like a dancer; it knew exactly where they were going to be, every time. Cries rent the air. Niner’s raw-throated shouts were a dim buzz in Mike’s ears, every heartbeat thudding sloppy and slow.

“AUGGGHHHH!” Niner’s voice pierced from the front of the smoking wrecks ahead of Mike. “FUCK! FUCK!!”

“Hold on!” No, there was no retreating: not while Alpha and Niner were stuck down on the ground. Mike ran and dove for cover as something flew over his head and crashed into the forest floor, showering him with rocks, some larger than his head. “Symon! Order in some backup! We’re getting slaughtered!”

Mike landed behind one of the fallen AEGIS, counted to three, then broke out from cover again, strafing, closing the distance between him and Niner. He saw him pinned under Bravo’s collapsed metal coffin, his helmet shattered, fighting to pull his legs out from underneath the Padfoot hulk. The Sentry’s HEO barrel was glowing white, too hot to fire. It was a glimpse of hope as the tank whirled on him and opened up with twin railguns. Something glanced off his shoulder as he dove and rolled behind another one of his brothers, the cockpit belching fire and black smoke towards the sky. “Hold up, Niner! I’m coming!”

But he focus on Niner, even as he called his name. In the crazy haze of black smoke, he couldn’t see where Alpha was. His BCI was no help. Mike reloaded without looking, grit his teeth, and surged up from his crouch.

His legs gave out. No, not his legs. The armor. He had barely pushed up when the whole suit powered down and collapsed around him, dragging him back to the ground. It was suddenly very close, very tight: Mike could smell his own breath as the filter cut and the helmet went dark. He snarled in frustration and hit the emergency release. The plates loosened and slid apart, but he had to fight to lift his arms up and tear his helmet off. Smoke rushed in. The air was thick, so thick, dense with cooked metal and burned flesh. He got the gauntlets off, but his feet got stuck in the boots, which wouldn’t expand. Mike kicked at them from inside, hauling himself out into the open.

He looked up to see the Sentry whirl on him from above, railguns spinning. They aimed down at him, black mouths dripping water, just as an AEGIS staggered across from his left and threw itself in front, guns blazing. The Sentry’s larger railguns opened with a roar, and the Padfoot’s fire cut. It slumped to its knees and then toppled over, crashing barely a meter from where Mike lay in the sudden, eerie silence.

Mike stared at nothing in complete disbelief. “Alpha.”

He didn’t know if it was his lover. The number on the side had been obliterated. It didn’t matter; he could hear the lack of movement in the clearing. No churning feet, no shouts, save for Niner’s agonized swearing… and the radio. It was utterly, accusingly silent.

Behind him, there was a soft whirring. Startled, he looked back and forth, expecting to find the black mouth of a barrel pointed down at his face. Instead, his hair ruffled as his corona spun, then generated a holo-display without his prompting. His Bible. It began to flick from page to page with crazy speed, cycling with letters and numbers and highlights flickering gold. He thought it was broken, too, until he saw the same page numbers repeated and stopped, drawn into the pattern of motion.

“I’m sorry,” the highlights read, cycling with synaptic speed. “They know. This is so much bigger than us.”

“Symon?” Mike’s eyes widened. “Symon! You cock-sucking son of a-!”

The Watcher shunted something through the Coronal feed like a fist forced into Mike’s brain: an absolute paralyzing pressure that floored him, still struggling out of the frozen shell of his powerless armor. Mike couldn’t even cry out. He dropped face-down on the dirt, senseless, his ears ringing with Niner’s screams of grief and pain.

God Has Heard Re-Covered

If you’re a fan of my Facebook page, you may have noticed that God Has Heard has had a facelift. The black cover has been replaced by an illustrated cover featuring Sam-Mike and Alpha.

Other than that, I’m still toiling away on Our Lady of Sorrows, and an older project, Hollow Bones.

I generally have very limited energy for excessive self promotion, but I’ll be working on videos where I talk about writing, editing and the craft, as well as discussions on LILIUM and my other projects. You can check out the first video on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcJWb...

Chapter Thirteen

Bravo and One-Four set up the terrain generator in the morning, their last full night of rest before they pushed on into the mountains proper. Mike went from man to man, taking a drop of blood from each to run the nanite count. He had to check for signs of disease and swarm strain: leukocytes, inflammation, dead nanites. Even Patriots could have swarm problems in this part of the world.

They gathered around the hovering map sphere when he was done. It synchronized their coronas into a real-time network and synthesized a detailed corneal projection which was identical for each man. The forest in Mike’s field of vision bloomed with diagnostics while they settled in for the debrief.

“Alright. The plan is nice and loose, because we can’t be entirely sure what we’re up against.” Alpha zoomed out the display to reveal the jungle ahead. They were around fifty klicks from Victoria, but the distance was deceptive. This was the highlands, and fifty kilometers had to account for all of the peaks and valleys on their route. This part of Papua was jagged, like a row of broken teeth from above. “Here’s Charlie Company and the village lookout. The terrain gets nastier the further north-west we go. The Dragon holds the highlands out this way, and the rest of Echo Company is only half a day behind us. They’re cutting around, going down the slopes to find the trails and circle the Pacs out here. We’re delivering the Praxis generator, and then we’re pushing out ahead, undercover, to the south west.”

The others listened thoughtfully, some still eating, others smoking. Mike took out his vaporizer and had a drag, offering it across blindly to his right. Sixie took it, puffed, and handed it back.

“And our target… ” Alpha zoomed in, carrying them down from their eagle-eye superimposition and deep into a mountain valley some ten kilometers from the All-Pac line. A pixelated composite formed, but stayed a little blurry. It was a windowless, lifeless white dome, half buried in the dark earth. It wasn’t especially large, not compared to Lord’s Cradle. Mike thought that they could fit maybe two battalions in it. It probably descended into the ground. “Is this.”

“The hell’s that thing?” Niner pointed his cigarette towards his own projection.

“That thing is an old-ass arcology. Pre-Collapse. It’s our true objective. And it’s got a surprise for us.” Alpha drew a deep breath. “The All-Pac is creating female Nephilim there.”

That woke them up. Mouths opened, closed, or hung open. Niner paused mid-draw. Ten, who leaned against one of the AEGIS legs to keep watch while they debriefed, turned to stare at Alpha in disbelief.

“That’s classified news.” Alpha cleared his throat. “Anyway. We don’t have much information on this place. There’s electric fences and swarm disruptors—that’s why we couldn’t get the scouter in close last night. I’ll bet my balls there’s at least one ATA we can’t see. The scouter didn’t pick up any enemy troops on the side we’re coming from.”

Almost like the All-Pac was giving it a wide berth. Mike exhaled heavily, his brow furrowed.

“Makes sense if they don’t want to call attention it. For a building to stay intact that long, it’d have to have a self-healing surface.” Bravo tipped his face towards the image. “There’s probably all kinds of passive security.”

“Yeah. We have to take out the fences and come in from the side while we rain down on it. Once its defense is cut, we can blow a hole and get inside.”

“But Sir, women?” Niner sputtered.

“Orders are to destroy the place as quietly and quickly as possible.” Alpha’s eyes flicked across to him, but he didn’t turn his head. “Command didn’t say one way or the other. I know what I want to do, but I’ll hear what you boys have to say on the matter.”

Sev shook his head. The rest of them looked around. Sixie held out his hand for Mike’s smoke, and he took a very long drag.

“I want what you want, Sir.” It was Fiver who spoke up. “Whatever you want.”

Sev glanced around the circle, his voice low and slow. “Even talking about women is against the Law. In case you guys forgot.”

“It’s forbidden to discuss the women of the Host,” Mike said. The others glanced down on reflex. Just a mention of the second Law was enough to spook them. “But these aren’t human women. They’re our kind.”

“And they’re probably godless whores,” Sev said. “Only something evil could do this. It’s against nature. You know as well as I do that they’re not supposed to exist.”

“Like you even know what a whore is,” Niner jeered.

“And you do?” Sev shot him a dark look.

“No, but they were good enough for the Lamb. We’re not exactly paragons of nature ourselves.” Niner waved his hand. He glanced to Fiver. “I’m with Fiver on this one. I want what you want, chief. There’s been too many questions and not enough answers in the last couple of weeks. I wasn’t made to think this much.”

None of them were certain, but they were all tired of not knowing. A chorus of assent went up, and Sev sat back, grimacing. Mike couldn’t really blame him. He’d lost his partner. Mike wished that Alpha’s words about Twofer’s fate hadn’t sunk in as deep as they had, but if they got to this bunker and found women there, he didn’t know what he was going to do. Apologize to Symon, probably, and eat a big, steaming pile of crow.

“A-Team, you guys are going to advance around to the west and hit the fences here, while B-Team comes in from the valley and clears out anything on the ground. C-Team, stay loose in this depressed area around here-” Alpha highlighted a zone near the fence breaking launch point, “-and get ready to rush in behind. D-Team, you’re covering me, Bravo and Mike in the funnel. Bravo, Mike, you two are on advance scout. You have to sweep for explosives. We’ll blitz the outside and meet up here to blow a big hole in the roof. Any questions?”

“No, Sir!” They said as one over their BCIs.

“Loud and clear,” Symon echoed. Mike jumped at his voice—he hadn’t said a word before or during the brief, but of course he was listening.

Mike wondered if the Host had heard their ribald conversation. Alpha’s theory seemed a little more likely with each passing minute. “Latest stats show All-Pac units moving east towards your target, fifty kilometers and gaining.”

“Shit. Let’s hope they haven’t figured we’re onto them.” Alpha rose. “And speaking of that. Mike, it’s your turn. Lead on.”

Mike smiled, and stepped forwards. “Given what we’re going after, I thought we’d go from the beginning to the end. The readings today are Genesis 1 and Successions 32:2, so if you’d be so kind as to crack open your books, we’ll get into it.”

* * *

It was twenty klicks to Karo, the village ruins where the Corinthians and the rest of Charlie Company held the line. They found and butchered an advance patrol of enemy soldiers—not Raptorines, but the narrow-eyed, long-limbed Asiatic Nephilim who looked a bit like them. Mike didn’t know what their unit model name was, but he and the other ground crew kicked the dead soldier’s helmets off and scrutinized their faces on the off-chance they would be able to identify one as female. No luck there… but then again, they weren’t actually certain what they were looking for.

The distant patter of gunfire bounced off the gullies and through the trees. Worse, much worse, was the rhythmic boom-boom-boom of artillery. Mike knew the sounds of over two hundred different weapons, and the one that was firing somewhere off into the forest wasn’t any of their guns. None of them slept, keeping watch in a tight cluster, and blinded by the pouring rain.

The forward position was built on the ruins of an old missionary village, long fallen into decay. Karo was like every other hold-out on the Victoria trail: a mucky, bare-bones outpost, saturated in an aura of manic desperation. The one and only Praxis was on half-power, showing up its lines and crackling.

Mike realized quickly that his squad and the Corinthians were the only Rangers here. The rest of the survivors clinging to this wreck of an outpost were either PatriotRifles, dumb as bricks and twice as hard, and old Vanguards. You knew a place was going badly when only the Vans were left. Some of them had been in service fifteen years or more: gray-skinned, lean, wolfish Nephilim. They weren’t kept on base any more. Vans went nuts when they were cooped up, and the Host was thrifty and not inclined to waste their experience. The Vans not on duty hung around while they repaired the generator, watching on with hungry, dull expressions.

“Did the Dragon frag the other squads?” Mike heard Niner ask one of the Corinths. Mike was belly-up under the Praxis, helping One-Four and Ten hold up the generator cage while the Alpha of Corinth squad welded in new pieces. The jungle air was harder on machinery than it was on men.

“Down to a man,” the other soldier replied. “Last big push. It’s been quiet. We’re expecting the next any minute now, God willing.”

“God willing,” Niner echoed. It had a hollow ring to it. “Echo’s on the way. Half a day, maybe more if it rains.”

“We might last half a day if they hit us again,” the Corinthian said. His armored boot, shuffling near Mike’s head, was clotted with old mud.

“Maybe.”

The Sams left in the dead of night. Mike changed his flamethrower out for a reliable machine gun with rounds big enough to take down a charging Raptorine. They marched through rain that came down in sheets. PNG was beautiful, when you had time to look, but it was hard to believe Alpha when he said it was possible to turn it into Paradise. They arrived on the morning of the fourth day of marching, ten klicks ahead of the enemy, who were still approaching from the east. The rain had stopped, and the air was hazy with smoke, but they were in the lead. They were going to get to the facility first.

“A, B and C teams in position.” Alpha addressed Symon as well as the squad. They were on the ridge above the gully. Mike’s breathing was harsh inside his helmet as he warily surveyed the land below. He had his job—look for mines and other explosives. His fingers rippled, tapping the trigger, as he crouched by Alpha’s AEGIS leg. He didn’t like it. There was something too well organized about the scene below. The arcology was sunk into the ground, just like they’d seen in the scan. Mike’s healswarm was struggling along in the nanite disruption field. They couldn’t hear or spot a generator from their perch.

“Chief, there’s a distinct lack of lizard around these parts.” Bravo grunted over the radio. “Creeps me out.”

“There’s heavy fighting to the north that’s sucking up manpower, but you’re right.” Alpha had his launcher vents open, sucking air through the exhaust to cool them down before they jumped in. “C-Team, you see any ATAs from your position?”

“Two, Sir.” Fora replied. “Ten’s got a lock on one, Lev on the other. Waiting on your word.”

“A-team copy,” Fiver said.

“Mike?” Alpha was scanning, too, but Mike had his sensors on. He couldn’t pick out anything in the landing zone.

“Nothing that I can spot from up here.” There was nothing in the trees, either. “Nothing up or down.”

“A and B, act as planned. C, I want those ATAs out before A team reaches the fence. D-team, prepare for backup fire for anything we can’t see, all directions. Now let’s get out there.”

They broke out in near-silence, fast and fearless. Mike’s adrenaline was up despite the lack of an enemy, a giddy rush that sharpened his senses and propelled him forwards as the AEGIS leaped from the treeline and fanned out. He loved that feeling, the cold water shock of rushing out into combat. He landed just behind Alpha and Bravo, Niner dropping down beside him: at the end of the gully, he could see the white dome of their target, glittering wet. Mike saw the air swim in front of it, and thought they must have actually come in from behind, and the heat was venting out from the back somewhere…

And then the Sentry materialized out of thin air, its legs braced on the sides of the gully, and opened fire in three directions at once.

Chapter Twelve

A couple hours sleep was all that any PatriotRanger needed to fuel the long trek to Mount Victoria. Chow was quiet and tense: MREs eaten around a small campfire in the damp, foggy clearing outside of the bunker where most of the squad had slept. They shared their jelly and chocolate, and prayed for victory in a linked ring of arms around waists and shoulders.

Their AEGIS were being swarmed by Loaders when they went to hop in and load up. Alpha had done good: they were Padfoot Mark-IVs, made for the swampy conditions of the jungle. As AEGIS went, Padfoots were light, slim, fast machines that were hard to sink, easy to extract from bogs, and flexible enough to play among the trees. Just as well—there were an awful lot of bogs, and an awful lot of trees.

Alpha jogged up to the side of his own AEGIS and jumped up, catching a rail. He hung from the side of it, and his voice reverberated over the tooth-deep hum of the Praxis overhead. “Alright—Five, Twelve. You’re on the ground, Fiver with the flamethrower, Twelve keeping an eye on the Runner carrying the generator. Niner, I want you as gunner on the big guy over there. Mike, you’re taking Padfoot E610. You pack your gear inside and load up for rearguard. Fall out!”

Mike stiffened in the rank as the cries of ‘Sir-yes-Sir!’ rang out around him and the others split, efficiently finding their suits and positions. He wasn’t any good in an AEGIS, and Alpha knew it. Scowling, he ran over and drew to attention. “Sir, requesting change of position, Sir!”

“If you think I’m letting you take ground, you’re nuts.” Alpha looked down at him from his greater height. He yanked out a Coronal extrusion cord and plugged it in. The Padfoot whirred and clunked, the cockpit entry folding out. “Ten’s riding gunner with you: you just need to steer.”

Mike put his hands on his hips. Not exactly to form, but it would help get his point across. “I can’t effectively treat injuries without hands, Sir!”

Alpha’s mouth sloped to the side, eyebrows arched. The ‘dammit, Mike’ face, a signal of impending victory. Mike stared at him. Finally, Alpha rolled his eyes and pulled his visor down. He slid into the cockpit. “Fine. Swap with Fiver, and move your ass before I kick it across the clearing.”

Fiver was running through his firearms check, inspecting the flamethrower one of the Loaders had delivered. He stopped and looked over when Alpha called his name. “E610, Sir?”

“That’s the one. One-Four’s driving E612—I want the two of you to stay close together at the front in case we come under fire.” The cockpit closed up with heavy clunks and the high-pitched whir of screwing bolts. Alpha’s voice transitioned seamlessly from vocals to BCI.

“Hell yeah. It’s your fuckin’ funeral, Mike.” Fiver grinned, and threw him the flamethrower barrel.

“I’ll be fine. You never blast them long enough, anyway. I like my dinosaurs well-cooked,” Mike caught the gun and slung it around.

Fiver barked a laugh. He shed his armor down to the bodysuit underneath, and cut for the Padfoot Mike had given up. Mike sniffed, and collected the fuel tank for the flamethrower. He was arranging it around with his pack when Alpha bounded over, extending a metal and composite hand as large as Mike’s torso. “Give me everything you don’t need, psycho.”

“Yessir.” Mike wasn’t complaining. His hip was sore from lying on the hard ground, healswarm or no healswarm. He trimmed his kit down and loaded the stuff he wouldn’t need straight away into the gear bay. Another thirty pounds was nothing for the machine, but it made all the difference to him.

“Good man,” Alpha said, and strode away to the front.

The cheer that had suffused the squad around the campfire turned down to a simmer as they pushed out into the world of green and brown that loomed around the relative safety of the base. The jungle swallowed them whole. Soon, the only sounds were the stamping of the AEGIS and the BCI radio chatter between Sixie and Symon as they pitched the field reports back and forth. With God on the line, Mike focused his attention on preparing the cocktail of stims, supplements, and other drugs that would keep them at their peak while they were on the road. The guys in powered armor had a delivery system; the rest, he’d do manually when they made camp. He was afraid to even think about the conversation with Alpha. Not for the first time, he wished he could split and run separate terminals, divide his attention and think without Command listening in. Avoiding the memories was a futile effort. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop thinking about the women.

There were three Laws, along with the Commandments, that had been drilled into them from the moment they were hauled out of the recovery center. They were the things which elicited instant death by scourging: the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, lying with or discussing relations with human women, and questioning the absolute authority and reality of the Host, the Lamb, or the Guardians. Blasphemy had always seemed strange to Mike: it was impossible to deny the power of the Host and Guardians after seeing them burn men to death with a glance. The second law had never crossed his mind until now. He had come to terms with his fallen nature early on, and had never considered fucking anyone outside of his own squad. The first… well. It was vague, vague enough that it was impossible to know whether or not one was transgressing until it was too late.

He could only hope that Symon was as sympathetic as Alpha seemed to think he was. The whole mess gnawed at him, worried him, because he had no firm way to refute what Alpha had said. The fact also remained that Alpha and Symon were still alive after having committed what Mike was certain ought to have been mortal sins. If they had gotten away with it, Mike supposed that they hadn’t done anything worthy of punishment. And if so, what did that mean? It was unlikely Twofer was dead, punished for something Alpha and Symon were not, and far more likely that he had done something right, figured something out more quickly than they had. Alpha’s AEGIS, striding at the front of the line, held no answers for him.

They broke off the march when the sun began to fall, shielded in dense vegetation. The AEGIS had all taken on the muted, faded colors of the jungle around them. The squad formed a circle facing out, hidden amongst the mossy trees, and took turns to keep watch. Mike camped under the chassis of Sev’s AEGIS, warm in his powered down armor shell. He slept standing up until Alpha came to wake him for their turn.

“You know, none of this feels right.” He only spoke when they were up on top of Alpha’s Padfoot. Mike was in the gunner’s turret; Alpha sat beside him on the sloping hull, watching the jungle through binoculars.

“What?” Mike turned to look where Alpha was staring, wondering if he’d spotted a reptilian muzzle peering out from between the ferns.

“All of it. The disappearance, what the K.C. said, this mission.” Alpha swept the binoculars down. “I don’t like it.”

Symon hadn’t said a word to Mike since their conversation back in Lord’s Cradle. “No offense, Sir, but I’ve been saying that the whole way through.”

“Yeah.” Alpha leaned back, his pupils huge as he looked out over the dark forest. They caught the light from Yetzirah like cat’s eyes, reflective and unreadable. “I don’t like holding everything back from the others.”

“Have you told Bravo, at least?” Mike had privately admitted to the same thing on the long walk west, though he had decided not to mention it to spare Alpha the same. That the was the problem with lovers. You were sometimes just too damn alike.

“No. I don’t know what I’d say to Old Sam-B. He’s on edge. The others have been asking him about the squad history and Twofer’s missing score.”

Mike exhaled heavily, frowning. He thought for a moment, and then pressed his lips together, gathering his resolve. “I think you should put it to the squad. Come clean.”

For several minutes, Alpha did not reply. The wind rustled the palms and acacia, the ferns, and carried the fetid smell of old blood and stagnant water to their position. Now and then, they got a clean, cool blast from the south, coming from the distant sea.

“Yeah,” he said, at last. “Alright. You’re right. But it’s… You remember when the Knight Lieutenant came in? They took Sev’s keepsakes. Sev went in and found everything of Twofer’s gone. I don’t have any pretty answers for them, Mike.”

“Mmm.” Mike knew what he meant. “I believe in them, in the Host, and Twofer. I’d like to think he worked out something we’re still struggling to find.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking. The Bible says women are made to be wives, right? It’s all through the book. Wives and handmaidens. What if we’re meant to fish out these women from the arcology? I think maybe the Host would see it as lawful if it was… I dunno. Legit? There’s no rules about it.”

The Host had never laid down any laws on female Nephilim. The only thing they knew was that there were no females of their kind, by the Host’s design. It gave Mike pause. “You’ve got a point.”

“I mean, God hates us because we’re made from enemy genestock, right? Bad dust, no souls, Sodomites to a man. We can’t deny that shit. But I wonder if is this is actually some kind of test. Maybe we’re meant to take wives and become something better.” Alpha leaned forward, his elbow resting on his knee. “I mean, look at this place. It’s beautiful. Imagine what we could do with it if we could make our own squads without needing decanting labs and all the tech.”

Mike laughed, his fingers twitching on the trigger. It was a nice idea, and a Biblical one at that. Taking wives from the enemy was something the Host themselves did, though Mike had no idea what they did with them. From his medical training, he’d learned that women played a role in perpetuating the Host. He had never learned how… he assumed that they played some part in the decanting labs. Maybe it was their prayers and evocations which bought humans and Nephilim to life. “You know, it does actually make a kind of fucked up sense.”

“It does. I wonder if maybe we’ve been seeing it all wrong.” Alpha frowned in thought, reaching up to rub his mouth and jaw. “Let’s say that Twofer found this out, and he began to doubt the Host. He disappears—not because of what he learned, but because he lost his fear and awe. We’ve learned about this, but we’re still fighting for the Lord, fearing them. We haven’t been killed or lifted or even looked at funny, and they have to know that we know, Mike.”

Slowly, Mike nodded. He wasn’t so certain of the reasoning, but he couldn’t deny the facts. “We should have been ashed in our boots sometime during the last week.”

“I’m surprised we’re still here. It’s a cardinal sin to doubt or disobey.” Alpha was warming up to it as he spoke. “I think that’s the test. Lying is the sin; taking women of your own kind as wives is there in the Bible.”

“I think they’re supposed to be virgins,” Mike said. “But otherwise, yeah.”

“We should check that before we do anything. You can probably tell with a biofeed hookup.” Alpha shrugged. “But you see my point, though, right?”

Mike had no concept of what a wife actually entailed. He could even picture what a female Nephilim would look like. He knew she’d have one less rib. Functionally, though… what was the difference?

“You know,” he said. “You might actually be onto something there. But we have specific orders to destroy this place. That’s the mission.”

“Absolutely. But the orders didn’t say anything about killing any Nephilim women. Hell, they didn’t even mention there were women.”

“So… you’re thinking we blow up this Evehall, take the women, and then what?” Mike didn’t even know what a wife did. He assumed she’d be a killer, like every Nephilim he’d known. She’d probably be a soldier who could sling a gun and haul packs and fix armor like they did. For all he knew, though, ‘wife’ was actually some kind of cake.

Alpha grinned, flashing double rows of sharp, dog-like teeth. He reached up towards the gleaming white arc of Heaven overhead, and mimed gripping it, pulling it down. “We retake the world for the Lord. We teach them what they need to know, we do what we have to… and then we turn this place back into Paradise.”

Chapter Eleven

“Dead.” Mike regarded him flatly. This, again. “Alpha… ”

“No, you need to listen to me.” Alpha pulled away from him, and began to cycle restlessly around the room. He started to detach his armor while he walked, loosening the gauntlets and boots so that he could open up the whole suit and step out. “I’ve learned a lot of things, Mike, and I know they’re real. They tie into our orders.”

“How?” Mike didn’t move. His mouth was dry. Even the sight of Alpha in his bodysuit, the gunmetal mail swimming to cling to his long back, couldn’t help him shake the fear. “I’m not even sure you tried listening to me.”

“I swear that I listened. I judged everything I found against your advice.” Alpha shook his head. “But this has changed shit.”

“And I still really think Symon is doing his best to set us up. The men are beginning to feel it. They’re riled up. They know something’s wrong.” Mike started on getting his own armor off. It was harder without his corona on: he normally gave a BCI command, and the suit opened and let him step out. Manually, he had to trigger each section of armor to slide back into the chassis.

“You don’t even know why Symon’s helping us,” Alpha said.

That was true, and Mike was loathe to be caught out without evidence. He pulled his gauntlets off. “Fine. Why?”

“He woke up in his decanting tank.” Alpha sat down on the floor with a heavy sigh. “He was awake before he was meant to be properly alive, before they took him out to Recovery. He saw his brothers get dragged out by Controllers, and they did stuff to them, stuff with equipment in the lab. He saw them kill a few, right there. Just popped them right between the eyes before they even had a chance to wake up properly. They got shredded in the labs, and… he didn’t really tell me the rest. You can imagine.”

Mike didn’t remember much about the labs himself. Like most Nephilim, he’d first woken up in a warm hyperbaric pod in the Recovery Center, his corona jack already in place. He’d been naked, starving hungry and sore, innocent of everything else. He knew about the decanting tanks in the labs—every Nephilim saw them at least once during their early training—but had no memory of being in one.

“It starts from the minute you’re out. The Controllers pick off the ones they don’t want, and most of his brothers disappeared in the first three months. It was just four of them left out of fifteen Watchers. They told him that the ones who go missing go to Yetzirah, but after seeing them kill a whole bunch during first sorting, he doesn’t believe it. He was able to keep a lid on it better than Twofer ever could.”

“Right.” Mike scruffed his hair uncomfortably. Confirmation of Symon’s ability to be duplicitous was hardly reassuring. “So did Twofer wake up early as well?”

Alpha grimaced. “I don’t know for sure, but I bet he did. Makes sense, if you think back on it. What he was like.”

Twofer had never said anything about it. Mike was a little numb, head ringing at the image of men with his own face being decanted into the hands of Controllers, waiting like hungry gulls at the seashore to snatch and swallow them, the baby turtles crawling from the nest. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the idea of how close they’d come to death straight out of the tube, or that Twofer might have been awake early enough to see it. In retrospect, it made a kind of awful sense. Twofer had been everyone’s friend, but even Sev, his lover, had told Mike that even he sometimes felt he didn’t know him. He’d been a good soldier, funny, but always slightly irreverent. Sometimes his humor was on the edge, and sometimes, the laughter he’d induced was nervous, uneasy.

“It’s possible. But why didn’t he ever tell us?” Mike asked, quietly.

“Probably because of shit like this.” Alpha waved a hand around. “You said it yourself. It’s taken the wind out of the whole squad.”

“So… what did you work out? What was he looking at?” Mike asked. “You said it has something to do with our orders?”

For several long seconds, Alpha didn’t say a word. “There’s an old arco out near Mount Victoria, on the All-Pac side of the line. Twofer found out that the All-Pac is decanting women there. Women. Nephilim women.”

Women. The word bounced around the inside of Mike’s head. He could almost hear it rattle. Women. His mouth opened, and then closed.

“But they… they… they can’t do that. That’s… everyone knows…”

“Well the Dragon’s fucking figured it out.” Alpha laid a broad hand on Mike’s back. “And Twofer knew. He found out about it the night before he disappeared. I followed his footsteps and found the same info. The shield delivery is just a cover. They’re sending us in to wipe the place, Mike, and they didn’t tell me what was inside.”

“Well… how would they know? How does anyone know about that?” Mike couldn’t believe it. He was fairly certain he was incapable of believing it. The litany against falsehood was cycling in his brain, around and around, like Alpha’s pacing. Six things doth the LORD hate.

“How would Twofer have learned that? And if you say it was via Symon, I’m going to punch you in the face and you’re going to have to let me.”

“It wasn’t Symon. He showed me the back door, but I found my own way. Give me some credit.” Alpha looked over at him. “I think… I’m not sure, but we have spies who live to learn this stuff. And… from what I read, I think that there might even be Nephilim who live on Earth outside the army.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever met one,” Mike said. He watched Alpha, tense. He was sliding back from himself without meaning to, as his hindbrain rattled off verses and commandments and imperatives, one after the other. None of them were stronger than his morbid fascination. “The whole idea… I mean, what would you eat? What if your swarm gave out?”

“Look, I know. I get it. I just had to tell you. There’s women, and… we have to take out the place, or one of the places, where the All-Pac is decanting them.”

Mike leaned in, elbows on his knees. Intensity well up from deep inside, hammering behind his eyes. “Are we going to follow through? Or is that what this is about?”

Alpha looked down at him. The lanterns threw his face into craggy relief. “Are you joking? Of course we’re following through. I wouldn’t disobey the Lord. Asking questions, looking shit up… that’s one thing. Disobeying orders? Fuck, Mike. Never. We were put on this bitch of a planet to do a job. I just wanted to know the truth.”

“But… you thought about it?” Mike said.

“Yeah.” Alpha said. His eyes hooded, lids half-closing. “I thought about it.”

Mike had ever only seen one woman in the flesh, an enemy soldier, a human. The Dragon still fielded their lesser humans in their larger machines. When he’d cracked her cockpit during mop-up, he’d been shocked to kick back the hatch and see a vacant, bloodied, delicately boned face staring through him. He hadn’t known what she was, at first, until he’d gone on the Net and figured it out. As a Medic, he knew OF women… but they were never seen on base. They were confined to Evehalls at birth, as far from the Nephilim as the Host could get them. “The hell they think they’re doing?”

“I don’t know.” Alpha returned to him, and crouched down. “So, look, I’m sorry I backed you into a corner, Mike. I don’t regret digging, but I don’t know if I even trust half this stuff myself. All I know is that I can’t just believe anything I’m told any more.”

He never apologized like that to anyone else, and it broke Mike’s heart, just a little bit. He was at once hungrily, clumsily, shamefully and agonizingly in love with this man. His contrite tone, his sudden submission washed away the rage like a bad memory. “It’s alright. But we can’t tell the squad. They’ll fall to pieces, starting with Sixie and Sev.”

Alpha nodded, and reached for him. He rasped his thumbs over his cheeks. “I know. Trust me. Maybe one day… if I can ever prove it. Maybe we’ll talk about it then.”

He hoped he wouldn’t be able to. They’d have a better idea tomorrow, if they picked female corpses out of the rubble. Mike smiled, but it was strained. “And I won’t tell the Knight Captain. We can sort this out ourselves.”

Alpha lifted Mike’s hand, and pressed his mouth to his knuckles. He lingered there, eyes closed, and then sighed. “You know, there’s been two hundred twenty-five Samuel units before us. Two hundred and twenty-five Alphas with our name. I wonder what they’d say to me about this.”

“They’d say you’re a good man, and a damn fine soldier, and that no one deserves to break out of this joint more than you do.” Mike smiled and shifted back along the bed. It was nothing except a thin foam roll, side by side with Alpha’s. He held out his other hand towards him.

“And probably that you should worry less about shit you can’t control, and more about what you can.”

Alpha chuckled, and caught the offered hand. He moved over him, slowly, and caught the other. Mike couldn’t breathe properly, but not for lack of air, as Alpha pinned both his wrists to the ground and leaned in close. “I’ll take that as a hint.”

Mike laughed, and on impulse, offered the side of his neck. Alpha made a sound of approval as he closed in and bit, gently at first, and then harder. He knew they shouldn’t be doing this, fucking without their coronae on, but some latent part of Mike had always wanted to do it without someone watching over their shoulder, or listening to them from another the room. No inspection, no boot-washing, no Grace. Out here, where there was nothing but the sky above and the shuddering hot earth below, the sweet pain of Alpha’s teeth and the pressing dark, giving in to his lover’s greed for him was the easiest sin in the world.

Chapter Ten

They ran and walked through the darkening jungle, a scattered, nearly invisible river of soldiers pushing into the dense undergrowth. There was little sign of the enemy—in the breaks between trees, Mike saw the fleeting dark specks of drones in the distant sky. They could smell burning wood, seared earth, and the vague putrid scent of the jungle itself, the porous upper surface of Hell weeping around them.

The path they took to avoid the bridge was still smoking. Air support had been clearing the way ahead for the advancing battalion in their mad dash towards Sol Base. Bombs had churned up massive muddy pits and shattered trees, which burned luridly as they thundered through the forest. There were dead Raptorines scattered over the ground, flushed out of the forest. Even in death, they were horrific, bestial, their lips pulled back in seared snarls from inch-long fangs. Mike hoped they burned all the way down on their way to join their Master. If Mike didn’t have a soul, Raptorines sure as fuck didn’t.

Solomon Base was a shithole, but it was as safe as you got in this part of the Pacific. It surveyed the front lines from a hilltop, bristling with electrified wire and thick bolted ferrocrete walls. The Host hadn’t spared any defense. Praxis shields hummed overhead like enormous, eerie blue flowers, their nodding heads screening the half-buried buildings in weird light. The hairs on Mike’s arms stood up as he scrambled through the perimeter, the living fabric of his bodysuit crawling across his skin as the energy caused the machines that made up its weave to swirl and recalibrate. It felt creepy as hell, but it meant relative safety, and Mike relaxed as they passed under its translucent umbrella.

Echo company split for different sides of the base, and the Sams and Toms assembled in the steaming muddy hill that passed for parade while their Alphas jogged off to find the Master Sergeant. Even as they stood, there was a distant rumbling and popping, and then shouts and the dull report of the BBGs as they swung on their pillars, tracking the drones trying to pierce their territory from above. Communication by corona was impossible while they were being shelled: Praxis resonance fucked with everything when they were at full power. Explosions rumbled overhead, and waves of energy beat against Mike’s eardrums, tickling like moths wings as he waited with the rest of his unit in unified, uncomplaining silence.

The pair of Alphas returned after half an hour of negotiations. Both of them were spattered black from shin guards to thighs. Alpha stood to attention in front of his own squad as Tom-A split for his.

“Good news! We get two bunkers to ourselves. More good news—we’ve got ten Mark-IV’s being polished up for us in the morning. Bad news—it always has been and always will be fucking Sol Base. All of you are piling into Unit One. Mess at zero-three. Fall out!”

“Sir yes Sir!” The squad saluted and cut for their bunker. Mike started off, but Alpha whistled shrilly, and he paused, looking back.

“Wait up.” Alpha strode across to him and jerked his head in the opposite direction. “Look, I uh… we got the old Zone-2 deep bunker to ourselves. Might be a bit squashy in there, but it’s empty for now, so I thought we should get it while the getting’s good. You know.”

It was almost an apology. Briefly, Mike forgot that he was supposed to be angry. Private quarters didn’t get much more private than the deep bunkers. “How in Hell did you manage that, Sir?”

“Magic, grace, I dunno.” Alpha grunted. “Get down there and clean the rats out for us. I have to go and see if I can wrangle a few Runners for the morning. We’re going to need them to carry that damn generator to Vic. No way is anyone fucking carrying it themselves.”

“Yes, Sir.” A twinge of resentment tightened Mike’s chest, a passing irritation. He still felt stiff and cold inside, and he cursed Symon in the privacy of his mind. “Should I get a handmaiden’s outfit too, Sir?”

“Cute, but I prefer you like this.” He couldn’t see Alpha’s face, but he could hear the rue in his voice.

“Covered in dirt and devil’s blood?” Mike arched a brow.

“Real as the sky over our heads. Go on, git. I need to get everything I can for the trip tomorrow.” Alpha clapped his arm awkwardly on the way past, setting off at an easy lope into the thick of the camp. Mike tried to stay angry, or even just annoyed, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

* * *

The deep bunker had two small rooms, and it was dark and dank. No matter how long Mike spent in the field, darkness—that strange state of corruption they could not completely ward back with fires or lights—unnerved him in a way that being shot at never had. Mike was able to arrange patchy lighting with lanterns, which he had set mostly around the altar at one end of the larger room. Mike knelt in front of it when he was done, and looked up at the alcove and its image of a faceless angel holding up the cross, one boot astride the globe. He laid his helmet on the ground beside him, and closed his eyes. Mike prayed for himself and his squad, for Symon, who was so bitter that he would try to sabotage them, and for Alpha, for God to beat some common sense through his thick skull. A rare peace stole over him in the relative silence of the room. He could hear and feel the shields, the rifle shots and the crack of exploding shells, but they could not touch him here.

A part of Mike had always wondered if there was another face of divinity, something other than furious anger. In between calling for swords and slaughter, the Lamb had done some good things for his fellow humans, and forgiven some serious sins. When he’d had a body, he’d been a squad leader of sorts, protective of his men. And then he realized. Alpha wasn’t really going crazy, no more than he was. He was just trying to do what he’d been told to do, to account for all his men. He broke off his meditation when he heard Alpha’s shuffling boot step behind him, and turned to look over. The man’s hulking shadow wobbled along the wall before he emerged through the low doorway.

“Home sweet home,” Alpha said with a sigh. “All it needs is couple of cushions and a tea pot.”

“I’ll never know why the Lord decided our Alpha should be such a dumbass.” Mike rose, standing straight. The deep bunkers had been made for humans, and his sweat-stiff hair brushed the ceiling overhead.

“Probably for the same reason he made my Medic a catty bitch.” Alpha tucked his helmet under his arm as he drew up to him, chest to chest. His lips twitched, almost a smile, before he glanced down. “I missed you.”

Mike looked down, his mouth pulling across in a faint smile of his own, and then lifted his eyes to look up past his brow. “Is that an apology?”

“Maybe.” Up close, Alpha’s sharp-boned face was cast into stark relief by the wavering light. The lines around his mouth were very deep, his eyes sunken and bruised-looking. He grimaced slightly. “I figured we should sort this out sometime. You know, before one of us gets shot.”

“Idiot.” Mike pressed in to gently bump Alpha’s forehead with his own. “You better tell me how you’re not doing stupid shit any more, because -”

“Did you report me?” Alpha asked. He cut him off. The question was so abrupt, out of place, that Mike froze. He stiffened, and moved his head back.

“No. Of course not,” he said. “But I still wonder if I should.”

Alpha lifted a hand, and rested it over Mike’s heart. “It means a lot. I’ve been struggling with the need to do it myself. I listened to you, about the Deep Net, I swear on the Lamb. But… I have to confess what I learned, Mike. In confidence.”

The chill dread that had haunted him on and off for the last week settled, balling up in his chest. Mike drew a deep breath, and straightened. He had to listen to declared confessions, no matter how difficult. “Alright. Tell me.”

Alpha licked his lip, and glanced down. A lump tangled in Mike’s throat. He had never seen him like this. “Alright, but you need to trust me on something. I want you to turn your corona off.”

Mike wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly. “T-Turn it off?”

“Yeah, off. Off-off. Pull the plug. Report in the morning that the Praxis resonance shifted in and our Coronae needed a reboot. If mine goes off at the same time, we won’t get pulled in for it. Anyway, Symon will back us up.”

Symon, again. Mike grimaced, but the way Alpha said it made it clear that this was an order, not just a request. He was right: the Praxis could knock them out, and you could never predict when. He reached back. “One, two… three.”

His inner-eye desktop cut as they pulled out their jacks. The nanite swarm vibrated with a buzzing sound before the blades dissolved and congealed into a brassy rod formed around the plug. Alpha tucked his behind his ear with a shaking hand, and Mike did the same. He felt naked without it, empty and nervous. There was no Net; there was no one in his own mind but himself.

“Now they can’t hear shit.” Alpha blew out a tense breath. “But we can’t leave them off for long. Look… to cut the long story short, the foxhole we’re heading to tomorrow, with the Praxis and everything? That’s just a cover. We’re not going to Victoria to back up the Corinthians.”

Mike was still reeling from having turned off his corona. He couldn’t believe he’d actually done it. He nodded. He didn’t know what else to do. “Wait, hold up. Start from the beginning.”

“Last time I did that, you nearly chewed my face off. Twofer’s dead, Mike, I’m sure of it. And now, I think I know why.”

Chapter Nine

The preparations for deployment began later that morning and continued for the next two days. There wasn’t time to to talk, because this was a big one: the entire regiment was headed out to stop the Dragon’s push to Port Moresby.

Mike couldn’t remember many times he’d slept in bed without Alpha beside him, let alone for two days straight. Unable to sleep, he lay on his side, listening for his return each evening until he drowsed off. When he checked Homeland after training, Mike found that Alpha was logging long hours on the game. He was at the top of their server kill ranks, sitting higher than Twofer’s old score. Using it as cover while he fed his mind on whatever evil lies Symon was spooning him, no doubt. Mike had to wonder if Twofer had done the same thing.

They left for New Guinea on Friday morning, one small unit amongst the total mass of the 7th Patriot Legionnaires. They were being sent out with squadrons of drones, Templars and Thrones, the low slung, eight-legged tree climbers that carried snipers to the heights of the jungle canopy or down into the valleys. They had a service just before they loaded on the carrier. The formal prayers of the Chaplain were ashen in Mike’s mouth. He nearly went to the Chaplain afterward to break down and confess, but Symon’s warning loomed large in his mind. Self-loathing, guilty, he remained silent and hoped that battle would clear their heads. It often did. They were better out there, in the middle of the fight. He’d find a way to talk to Alpha and sort this out.

Their orders were refreshed on the way across the Pacific, uploaded while they hunched on the pew-like benches in the carrier. Some stared fixedly at the wall ahead; some men chewed gum, warmed up their aim on the simulator, read their Bibles. Mike couldn’t think about anything other than his squad and the aching loneliness of the last three days. He stared at the floor between his feet, at the steel sheeting pressed with little stars, the raised areas scuffed from the passage of hundreds of stamping boots. Maybe the Old Toms had sat here, too, cheeks red and breath snorting with adrenaline. They’d gotten a faulty Praxis generator and their foxhole had been shelled. The bombs had gone straight through, and they’d been blown to bloody chunks not forty metres from where Mike had gone to ground, all twenty of them. The new Thomas squad, sitting across from the Sams on the other side of the carrier, didn’t look anything like the old ones. They all had an Asiatic cast; the previous ones had been dark-skinned, like them.

When they were at full altitude, the debrief came in. Symon’s cool voice echoed around the inside of Mike’s skull. It felt invasive, loathsome.

“Samuel, Baladam, Thomas and Eglaim squads will be deployed at Popondetta with a six hours rendezvous to Solomon Base. Temperature is currently a sunny thirty three degrees Celsius, with eighty-three percent humidity.”

The Legion was being dispersed in staggered formation behind the front lines, but Sol Base was a fair ways from Popon. They’d be swimming in their kit by the time they reached the end of the march. Mike grimaced.

“Viral payload: extreme.” Symon’s readover was still professional, maybe just a little sullen. He split the orders from that point, addressing the Sams alone. Mike knew it was an illusion. He was debriefing all four squads simultaneously. “S-unit, there’s been an adjustment to your itinerary. You will be taking cargo, heading west to Mt. Victoria.”

Victoria! Mike’s head jerked up, and he looked across at his squad to see if they’d shot up the way he had. Some of them had, spines straightening in alarm and even pleased surprise. Niner pumped his fist; Sixie groaned. Fora rolled his eyes, and flopped back. The highlands around Victoria were the front of the front lines, the worst of the worst. Alpha would get his Dragon’s blood—that was for sure.

Symon continued on, nonplussed. “Samuel-Alpha will have all details. You will accompany T, B, and E squads and rendezvous at Solomon Base by fourteen hundred with your platoon as planned, stay overnight, and then move on to Karo.”

“Cargo run? Screw that,” Fiver said. He shook his head in disgust.

“Quiet down the line.” Alpha leaned out enough to spot who’d spoken, and Fiver cringed back.

Mike pressed his lips together and looked back down at the floor, rubbing the tips of his thumbs together. They could expect heavy casualties getting in and out of Mount Victoria. He’d be treating more than his own squad out there, working together with the other Mikes. How the hell was he going to find time to catch Alpha alone?

He couldn’t think of him without glancing up and across. Alpha was calmly chewing his gum with great attention, eyes closed. He looked relaxed, unbothered, but he’d be thinking and planning while his own unique orders downloaded. Maybe he missed him too, but it was hard to say. Alphas were colder, harder. They had to be, to lead their troops towards death over and over again.

The rest was uncomfortably vague. They’d billet in Sol Base and move out in the early morning while it was dark. The job at Mount Victoria was to join and support C-company at Karo and take over from the Corinthians, the PatriotRanger heavy armored squad defending the checkpoint at their ATA installation. Their shields were being targeted by the Dragon and the outpost was getting the shit bombed out of it.

The Sams had to take in a new Praxis generator and kill as many of the Pacs as they could, relieve the Corinthians and help the keep the site from being overrun. That was fairly standard, except that the Corinthians hadn’t been out that long. Had they? Mike thought back, wracking his memory, then checked the computer, bringing up the rotation logs. No, he was wrong. They’d been out there nearly three months.

It was a good eight hours before the cabin began to vibrate and pitch down. The decrease in air pressure and Mike’s corona pinged him out of his doze. He fumbled for his harness and clicked it in before he was properly awake, hands moving automatically. Niner reached over and put something into Mike’s mouth—he crunched down without waiting to find out what it was, and a wave of menthol bloomed up behind his eyes and filled his nose. Caffeinated gum. There was a storm of feet rattling the floor, even laughter, as the men worked themselves up and got ready for the landing. Mike’s corona shrank and clung to the back of his skull as he pulled his helmet down. It sealed with his armor at the neck, and his ears were full of the grinding, crunching sound of his own chewing, and then hissing as oxygen pumped in and began to cycle around.

The carrier continued its descent: vents opened in the walls, and a roaring filled the bay as gas spewed forth, a heavy, invisible cloud that caused their armor to cling and stiffen. It grew louder, and louder, until it was all that Mike could hear was the howling air that pressed in around him like a cold, crushing hand. The cabin pitched and swayed, then angled forwards. He felt giddy, worn out, slightly high. For the moment, his woes took a backseat. His breathing rasped inside his helmet as his stomach fluttered and dropped, dropped again: he focused on his hands, clenching and unclenching his fingers. This part always unnerved him. If something happened to his helmet… if the seal was faulty or there was a puncture or a leak around his visor…

The seat underneath Mike vibrated with a deep, grinding rumble he could feel, but not hear. The carrier bay split like a snake’s jaws, the floor pitching towards the back of the aircraft as they continued their strafing descent. Mike threw off his harness, one unheard click among many as the Alphas bellowed through their helmet radios over the noise. “Move out! Move move move!”

They streamed out and jumped with whoops and shouts—a hundred meter dead-drop through a thick white cloud of gas, dizzying seconds of falling without being able to see where they were going or where they would land. Mike clutched his rifle to his chest and bent forwards, teeth clenched to stop them clacking when he hit. His exo-skeleton armor took the brunt of the impact: a heavy ‘whommph’, a shudder from feet to jaws, and he was back on solid ground. Mike carried the impact forwards into a run, surrounded by his brothers and the other squads. Tom-Mike, the medic of T-Squad, saluted him as his team fell back, behind the Sams, who mustered together to cut their way into the sweltering jungle.

“You heard Symon, boys. Extreme V.C. in this part of the woods. Oxy off, filters on. I don’t want anyone carrying it back to base.” Alpha’s deep voice was harsh in their helmets, banging off the inside. “Copy, T, B, E, Switch?”

“Copy. Loud and clear,” Symon’s dry voice was crisp, clearer on the ground than in the air. Mike’s corona was still working, but powered down. The only ones with fully active coronae were the Alphas and the tech. “You have all three bugs in your area. Sunny level-Echo, TS-2 level-Harry, HEX level-Echo.”

Two extremes and a high. Nasty. Mike made inventory as he strode forwards, last in line. His pack was the bulkiest of the lot of them: he shouldered their primary medical supplies and their emergency decon gear. After Twofer’s run in with the NVD rounds, he had started carrying a healswarm booster pack, heavy as it was. Infection from injury or disease after swarm loss was their worst enemy here.

Sixie lagged behind with him, half a step at a time, until Mike found himself shoulder to shoulder with him. He looked up when Sixie bumped his arm and nodded his head, once. “Hey, is something wrong with you and the Sarge?”

Was it that obvious? Mike slung his harness around, and straightened his belt as they walked. “Actually, I meant to speak to you. I checked the history and talked to Symon, like you suggested.”

“That… doesn’t answer my question, but okay,” Sixie said. “So you saw the same thing we all saw, right?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t mean shit, but it’s infectious. Symon’s trying to lead us on. You and anyone else working themselves up into some conspiracy fit should put it out of mind.”

“Like Alpha? So you two are having trouble, huh?” To Mike’s surprise, Sixie sounded nervous. Something occurred to him then, something he’d never thought of. Since their courting during their basic training, they had always run together as a pair. Bravo was a stand-in in case Alpha ever fell in combat; the pair of them, Alpha and Mike, had always been who everyone looked up to. “Do you… like… think you and him’ll be okay?”

“Of course. We chew each other out all the time when you guys aren’t looking.” Mike really hoped it wasn’t a lie, and not for the first time, he was glad Sixie couldn’t see his face. He had been struggling with his imperative to report for days, and tonight, he would learn whether or not he could continue with a clear conscience, without confessing. “Don’t worry about it, Sixie. We’ll sort it out. We always do.”

Chapter Eight

Mike broke away from the table and stormed back into his and Alpha’s quarters. He picked up a spare boot, and flung it at the snoring lump under the sheets. “You! Get up! What the FUCK do you think you’re doing?”

Alpha flew out of bed, blankets tangled around his legs, his knife in hand. He was still asleep for the seconds it took to focus on what was happening, eyes widening when he saw Mike’s face. “What? Mike? What in -”

“Tell me. Is he telling the truth?” Mike’s fists were clenched so tight that his knuckles ached. “Have you been screwing around in the Deep Net?”

Alpha’s chest heaved. His pupils were drawn to pinpoint slits. “Mike, hold up for-”

“Don’t you fucking ‘Mike’ me.” Mike advanced on him, nearly bowling him back onto the mattress. “You did, didn’t you? You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me why you did this, and why I shouldn’t turn you and Symon in to the Knight Captain.”

The confusion bled from Alpha’s face. He stiffened; he had gone pale, his expression clamped up and closed off. “Shut up. No one else needs to hear this.”

Mike was nearly nose to nose with him now. “Want to guess how many fucks I give? Let’em hear. Was Symon telling the truth? Did you break the Law?”

Alpha’s nostrils flared. His face had warped into a mask of expressionless anger. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

The quaking anger that had started in the common room while he was talking to Symon grew fangs. Mike nearly choked on his next words. “So one guy gets to leave this fucking shithole of a planet, and you endanger yourself and the rest of us? How the fuck does that make any sense, Alpha?”

“I need to know what happened to my soldier,” Alpha said. His tone was eerie, too calm.

“You were told what happened. The K.C. TOLD you and you’ve… you’ve gone and broken the Law, Alpha, the LAW of God.” Mike jabbed at his shoulder, and Alpha flinched back. “You have put us ALL in a very, very bad place, and for what? Pride? Fear?”

“I need to know what happened to my soldier.” Alpha frowned, and swatted Mike’s hand back. “And I want to know what was up there, in Yetzirah. I mean, haven’t you ever wondered? How does anyone live up there? How’d it get there? And why do we go? The guys that go never come back, they never send back word. Nothing.”

“I think about all sorts of shit, but I have the common fucking sense to keep it to myself.” Every night when they were deployed, Mike watched the moon pass behind the white glowing ring that halved the night sky and wondered. “This isn’t the way to find out. The Deep Net is forbidden. How did you even find a way in?”

“There’s back doors. Maybe even the one the Lamb uses, to stock the archives. Most of it’s unreadable, though. The data is old, corrupted. I worked that out fast.” Alpha grimaced. “It’s not that bad.”

But it WAS that bad. It was blasphemous. It was a step away from Alpha being scourged while Mike watched him writhe and melt and burn, helpless to do anything except to hope it passed quickly. He wanted to deck Alpha for being so stupid, land one right across his jaw. But Alpha still had his knife. Lover or not, Alpha was what he was. If Mike started violence, he wouldn’t be the one to finish it. “Don’t make light of this. This is evil. Symon is trying to stop the rest of us from being redeemed. You can’t trust anything he says.”

“Symon has his reasons for showing me this stuff.” Alpha’s pupils pinned, contracting to slits before expanding. “And I’m beginning to think we’ve been fed a lot of stuff that isn’t true. There was another Nation before the Reckoning that was never talked about in the Bible. The ESU. There’s stuff on the Deep Net that says that it was them that built Yetzirah.”

“You and I both know that Yetzirah was built by the Lamb during the Reckoning. Pre-Reckoning humans couldn’t build something like that. They couldn’t get into space.” The desire to comply with the Law was crushing him from the inside, needling him. Only his love for Alpha stopped him from opening the coronal link to their Chaplain on the spot. Mike fought down, choked on it, desperate to keep fanning the ember of hope that Alpha would snap back to sense. “Only the risen of the UNAC-”

“What I’m saying is that it was there before the Lamb returned. It might just be like one of the Shards. And you’re right, humans can’t get into space. So how the fuck do they get us up there?”

Yetzirah was God’s holy city. It was promised. Mike kept shaking his head, and took a step back. “No, Alpha, listen to me. You can’t say these things.”

Alpha was pressing him back, now. “I know you’re not stupid, Mike. You’re a doctor. You’re a smart guy. Haven’t you ever looked at the world and wondered why all those cities are just lying around? Did the Lamb do it? Kill them all? They say the contagion of Hell swept in and wiped the planet by order of the Lord… so why can’t the Host go down there?”

Mike said nothing, too shocked to hear anything but his own internal litany. Alpha was still armed, and his face was alight with curiosity, child-like. He had seen the same dark nimbus around Twofer at times, that openness. It was dangerous. “This is evil talk, Sir. Look at yourself. And stop waving your damned knife in my face.”

Alpha paused at that. He looked at the weapon in his hand, and then back to Mike.

“God has no reason to hide truth. He is open with his truth. It’s us who chooses to ignore it.” Mike let his tongue loose, let it be guided as he spoke. No quotes from the Book, even though they bubbled up in his mind, primed and ready to be recited. “The past is no good, Alpha. The future’s what counts. We still have to save the damned world.”

“But Twofer-”

“Did you find anything on Twofer?”

Alpha said nothing, but he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and reached back, fumbling for the knife sheath. He slid the blade home with a small click, and then sighed. “No.”

“I can see what’s happened here. Envy, Sir. Symon’s envious.” Mike crossed his arms. “He’s never been out there. He’s never picked up a real gun in his miserable little life. He’s two years older than us and hasn’t been saved.”

Alpha’s brows drew in, nearly touching. He rubbed his face. “Yeah… I mean, that’s possible. It’s hard, Mike. I tried to give it to the Lord, to let it go.”

“Of course it’s hard. We just lost a guy, no matter how we look at it. Of course it’s going to be hardest for us right now. The Devil’s going to be workin’ his tail off trying to drag us down and stop us from joining him.” Mike sat down beside him, and laid a hand on his thigh. “We’ve been at this nearly nine years. It’s about time one of us got a break.”

“Nine? Yeah. It’s almost been that long, huh?” Alpha snorted, but it was humorless. “You ever wonder why the guys who die out there never get to go?”

Mike shrugged. The effort of suppressing his obedience to the Host had left him with a ringing headache and a detached, eerie numbness. He felt emotionless, cool, as if he were watching himself and Alpha from a distance. “You can’t just let everyone in to Heaven.”

“It must suck, knowing everyone else is still stuck here. I can’t imagine. Watching from up there, knowing that the War’s still going on.” Alpha reached out, and lay a hand awkwardly on Mike’s thigh. “You know… I dream about Christchurch every night. The drone shadows, the noise. The Old Toms.”

The buzzing in his ears grew louder, and Mike found himself suddenly very tired, very heavy. He covered Alpha’s hand, and nodded his silent assent. His dreams also often went back to that place. Sometimes, he got on the game and deliberately went to the simulated Christchurch maps, forced himself into the virtual world that had been so real the year before. The front lines hadn’t shifted in the real war, but on the game, he could join a server and they could fight, and win. They had to win. Losing at games was almost as bad as the real thing. You were either the best all the time, or you were never the best.

“I just… wonder. The Toms were good men, real good.” Alpha dropped his head. “It’s not like they were bad soldiers. It’s never made sense that they’re gone forever while we’re still up here.”

“They were given the chance. It was just a chance.” Mike pressed his lips together. He linked his fingers through Alpha’s. The skin of his palms was leathery, callused from years spent slinging guns, gripping controls, exercising and scrabbling over rocks and mud and wood. “A chance to make it out of here. Have a bit of faith. We’re chosen when we’re chosen, if we’re chosen.”

“Heh. I just… something just won’t settle right in me. Twofer wasn’t like you,” Alpha said. He reached up and caught Mike’s chin, turning his face to look at him. He could wield his eyes like a weapon. Alpha had a gaze that held you at knifepoint, that sucked you in. The look on his face left Mike breathless. “I don’t want to doubt, Mike, but it doesn’t add up for me yet, and until it does, I’m not going to stop asking. You’re right—God doesn’t have anything to hide. So why shouldn’t I ask?”

“Sir. No.” Mike jerked his chin out of his grip. Alpha let it go, but barely. “We have a duty and a covenant to-”

“You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do.” Alpha threw off Mike’s hand from his own and stood. “No one fucks with my squad, Mike. Not God, not the Devil, not the All-Pac. No one. I want to know where he is. I want to see it with my own two eyes.”

“This isn’t just about you.” Mike jerked his shoulders back, ready for a fight. “This is about the whole unit. Everything you do comes back on us.”

“Well, sorry if I don’t fear the truth. Isn’t that what you and the Chaplain and even the Controllers all want? You saying you don’t even want to search for it now?” Alpha tossed his head, snorting. He reached for his trousers and pulled them on with taut, angry jerks. “Well, you can fucking eat what you’re spooned. If you’re gonna report me, at least wait until we’re in PNG. I want to go out with Dragon blood on my hands.”

“I don’t want to report you. I don’t WANT to.” Mike got to his feet, squaring off with his fists by his thighs. “How do you even know it’s the truth? There’s nothing to support it. We live under the eye of the Lord, and they are listening to this, right now. You think they won’t notice? That we won’t be punished? Killed?”

Alpha looked over at him with blank predator’s eyes, his face wooden and still. “Mike, if Yetzirah is a load of balls and Twofer’s not up there, everything we’ve done doesn’t mean shit, and we’re already worse than dead.”