Veteran (40 page)

One after the other the Wraiths moved into the airlock. The second to last was moving as I interfaced with the propulsion system and, still firing, manoeuvred myself into the dark interior, the doors already closing. I fired my last few bursts, watching them arc through the water just before the doors shut. Then I heard rather than saw the water begin to pump out of the chamber, as without a word we prepared ourselves to face whatever was coming when the internal door opened.

23

Atlantis

The water was down to our knees now. Balor collapsed his trident down into a metal tube and clipped it to his belt. I noticed he had blood on his clawed hands that reached all the way up to his elbows. His maw was also covered in blood. I found myself slightly envious. I was jittery. I wanted the violence to start again. Pressure seemed to be building between my ears and the rushing/howling sound was back.

‘We got feed?’ Pagan’s voice asked over our comms net.

‘Nothing, completely isolated. I need a wire link,’ Morag answered. I could hear her trying to mask the fear in her voice.

‘This is going to be a shooting gallery,’ Balor said, grinning, giving words to what I wanted. I was twelve feet tall, covered in metal and the weapon I held was effectively an unstoppable force.

The Wraith’s lenses tinted as the water finished draining out and a bright line of light appeared in my vision as the doors started to open.

‘We provide covering fire and advance until we find Morag a link,’ I heard my voice say.

‘We’re going to take some punishment,’ Pagan said. So? I thought.

Mudge extended a thin camera boom from the head of his Wraith as we all shuffled away from the opening doorway. The camera boom peeked around the opening door to see what waited for us. The images from the camera appeared on our internal visual displays. There was a hastily assembled barrier that ran the breadth of the large loading dock. I could see the helmets of a lot of soldiers. I counted two tripod-mounted railguns and what I assumed was a rocket launcher. Also behind the barricade, hull down, was a small six-wheeled vehicle of some kind, a plasma gun mounted on its flatbed. Running down either side of the dock were catwalks. Mudge couldn’t get the angle on them but we assumed that they would be used as elevated firing positions. There were rails running along the condensation-covered concrete roof that reached back into the darkness, presumably to run a crane along. They may have been using the crane as another gun emplacement but it was so far back the little camera couldn’t make it out. The most worrying thing was the Walker standing behind the barricade.

As soon as the door was open a crack we started taking fire. They wanted to start doing damage with ricochets. I felt impacts against the Wraith’s armour, staggering me slightly.

‘Ready?’ I asked impatiently, wanting to be in this. There were four affirmatives. Balor didn’t say anything. We marked targets and Rannu fired a multi-spectrum ECM smoke grenade forward. As they saw the smoke their firing intensified. We stepped into the firestorm. I began firing the Retributor. As I disappeared into the smoke I saw Balor clambering up onto the left-hand catwalk.

I fired blind, my sensors giving me nothing, my target-acquisition software telling me where the six-wheeled vehicle with the plasma gun had been. My audio dampeners cut out the near-constant supersonic bang from our Retributors and the sound of their plasma gun firing, allowing me to hear the music of tearing metal and screams.

We emerged from the smoke in a line, Morag’s Wraith behind us. We must have looked like angry gods. The vehicle with the plasma gun mounted on it was in mid-air being torn apart by fire from my Retributor. I switched fire from that to the Walker, staggering back as rounds from its twin rapid-firing railguns impacted into me. Their targets destroyed, Rannu and Mudge were also concentrating their fire on the Walker while Pagan sprayed the barricade. The troops behind the barricade were picked up and thrown into the air by the force of the railgun rounds. Others just seemed to come apart. I felt only contempt for them.

Behind us, advancing down the left-hand catwalk, Balor was splitting his fire between troops on his walkway and on the opposite side. I wondered if the security detail had time to form an opinion on the blood-dripping demon approaching them. Grenades exploded in midair just above the catwalks, fired from Balor’s over-barrel grenade launcher and detonated by proximity fuses. I saw smoking bodies fall from the catwalks.

The force of a plasma blast sank me to one knee and I saw Mudge’s Wraith flung back. He landed on his arse, causing sparks to fly as he ground against the concrete floor. We were taking heavy fire. This wasn’t right. I couldn’t work out where it was coming from. Further down the loading bay I could make out the flickering flame of a muzzle flash. It was approaching us fast, illuminating the tunnel. I registered the plasma round glowing as it approached me in what seemed to be a lazy arc. I tried to get my Wraith out of the way but realised I couldn’t move quickly enough. The blast lit up my shoulder, the plasma flames burning through the titanium armour. I imagined I could feel the heat. I tried to return fire but was staggered by railgun fire from the badly damaged but still standing Walker.

There were two heavily armoured gun cupolas on the roof rails. Each one had a chain-fed 30-millimetre rotary cannon. The left also had a plasma cannon and the right a 20-millimetre railgun. My internal visual display was lit up with red warning icons regarding the integrity of my Wraith armour.

‘Port!’ Pagan shouted across our internal comms net. Morag’s Wraith moved towards a wall panel. Behind me I could see Balor jump off the catwalk as where he’d been standing ceased to exist in a hail of 30-millimetre rounds.

The net-feed window lit up again. I couldn’t make out what was going on but it seemed to be some kind of corridor made of black glass. Annis moved down the glass corridor so quickly it was like she was standing still and the virtual construct moved around her. I was switching between laying down largely pointless suppressing fire on the Walker and creating sparks off the heavily armed cupola.

Suddenly both the cupolas stopped firing. I watched as all four of their weapons turned on the Walker and then opened fire again. It was awesome and relentless and they took the Walker apart. I stopped firing and just watched this happening, oblivious to the small-arms fire bouncing off the pitted and scarred armour of my Wraith. It took a 30-millimetre, high-explosive, armour-piercing grenade to bring me back. I looked around for the source and saw one of the security detail sprinting away from the barricade, making for a door that presumably lead into the facility. The railgun rounds threw him to the ground and sent him scraping across it.

I saw Mudge’s Wraith reach up to the right-hand catwalk, small-arms fire sparking off its armour as he pulled part of it down, sending soldiers tumbling to the concrete floor. One of them in blind panic ran close enough for me to stamp on him.

We advanced, stepping over or kicking the barricade of crates and other junk out of the way. To the right there was a line of thick plastic windows that looked into some kind of storage area. Intermittent fire was coming from it. The windows shattered into thick plastic chunks as we subdued the area, pouring fire into it, destroying everything from food supplies to expensive scientific equipment. Part of the storage area exploded as we set fuel off, and ammunition began cooking off in another area. Whatever resistance there had been was either neutralised or had retreated further into the facility. At the back of my mind I hoped we were in the right place but I pushed that down. I didn’t care.

I sent Mudge and Rannu down the tunnel to check what was down there. Pagan and I did a final scan of our immediate area. I realised the ammo counter was blinking on my internal visual display. I wondered when I’d run out of rounds for the Retributor. Mudge and Rannu’s Wraiths came running back.

‘Nothing,’ Rannu said over the comms net. I nodded; the Wraith’s head mimicked my movement.

‘Dismount,’ I said as Balor trotted over to us and went down on one knee, his weapon aimed into the burning storage area. The heads on the battle-scarred Wraiths flipped back and their chest armour split and swung open. I slid both my feet out of the slippers, pulled my hands from the gloves and pushed myself up and out as the plugs snapped out of my neck ports. I almost fell as I rapidly adjusted to being only six feet tall again. It didn’t feel right. Like everyone else I was covered in sweat and panting for breath, but other than me only Balor was grinning.

I stepped into a puddle of blood. I looked at it momentarily, perhaps too long, and then sent the coded order to my Wraith to open both its storage compartments. Panels in either thigh slid open. I was struck by the lack of noise from the wounded. We’d been too thorough for wounded.

I removed the Benelli assault shotgun from the Wraith’s storage compartment and rapidly reassembled it. Then from the other storage compartment I took the carryall and bandoliers with spare ammo. The others were doing the same thing except for Balor, who was covering us, and Morag. She was looking around at the carnage, her face blank. She couldn’t make sense of it or her part in creating it. I’d seen this before. I’d felt this way before but no part of me could empathise with that right now. Who wouldn’t want this? This felt like the ultimate expression of immediate power.

‘Did you send out the biohazard warning?’ I asked her. She ignored me. If they thought there had been some sort of biohazard leak or accident the Spoke authorities would not immediately send forces in. Morag said nothing.

‘Morag?’ I said.

‘No,’ Pagan answered for her. ‘As soon as we breached they shut down all the internal exits and issued their own biohazard warning. I’m guessing that whatever they’ve got in here they don’t want anyone else knowing about.’

‘So all we have to worry about is a rapid reaction force from Rolleston or his masters,’ Mudge said. I nodded. Morag was still looking around at the carnage. She jumped as I reached over and touched her shoulder. Then she turned to look at me questioningly.

‘Get ready,’ I whispered. She nodded numbly and then threw up. I tried to ignore the contempt building in me.

We made our way out of the loading bay and into the facility proper, our weapons shouldered, our gun barrels leading the way, searching for targets, the crosshairs on our smartlink moving across our internal visual displays. We searched for even more people to kill.

Behind us out in the loading bay charges went off destroying the abandoned Wraiths. Their internal systems had already been junked by one of Pagan’s viruses. It was a shame to let them go but even if they were fit to go in the sea again they would never get past the blockade that was building outside. They were destroyed to provide a minimum of evidence.

We clear the facility. We kill everyone we find. We clear offices, sleeping quarters, shower and toilet facilities, kitchens and recreational areas. Balor decides to stop using guns. I see him drag one of the security detail off his feet and run him through with his trident in mid-air.

Suddenly there was nobody else left to kill. I was breathing heavily, standing among the debris of what must have been some very expensive machinery. I was sort of aware of walking past Balor in the corridor outside this lab. He was tearing into somebody with his teeth.

Nobody was shooting at me. I had time to take in my surroundings beyond identifying and neutralising threats. It was an open-plan work area. Against the walls were freezers, fridges and glass-fronted cupboards, many of them broken and smashed. There was what looked like an operating theatre set into a depression on the floor. The table was oversized and had some very sturdy-looking restraints. Looking around I realised that this had been a sealed clean room. One side of the wall was thick plastic glass to allow observation. Past the operating theatre I could see another strong plastic window.

The roaring in my head was beginning to subside now. I had been wrong about there being nobody left to kill. People were emerging from under tables and behind overturned workbenches and from the sunken operating area. Many of them wore lab coats, a few maintenance overalls, several of them just normal casual clothes and two of them wore the uniform of the security detail, which had no insignia.

Somebody wearing a lab coat was approaching me. He was the oldest person there: he looked in his early sixties to me but could have been older. He was speaking to me slowly and carefully until his face turned red and disappeared. I think there was screaming as he dropped to the ground. I heard someone shout ‘No’ from the doorway. As the smoke drifted lazily from the barrel of my shotgun, I turned towards the doorway to see Morag standing there, hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes. I stepped over the corpse I’d made and headed towards the observation window on the other side of the operating area. The staff gave me a wide berth.

It was actually some time later that I remembered the look of horror and fear on their faces. That was the thing: I considered myself largely an all-right guy. I did the same bad things that everyone else did to survive. Maybe I was a bit better at doing the bad things than other people but I was a relatively easy-going person. Someone you could go and enjoy a pint with. That was how I saw myself, but how could I do all this and think I was normal? How could I hurt and kill so many other people and still expect to form a relationship with someone? How could I objectify one person and empathise with another? I could hear Morag crying now, her body racked by sobs. Surely that was the only normal response to this? How had I got to this? When had this become normal? The young man, little more than a boy, who’d shit himself in his first serious firefight with the Paras was a distant memory, another person.

I ejected the empty magazine from my shotgun and put another one in before slinging the weapon. I suddenly felt very tired. I sat down on the operating table, dimly aware that Mudge and Rannu were securing the prisoners behind me. I lit up a cigarette and looked through the observation window into the secure room and considered how much Gregor had changed as he stared back out at me.