Stormblood, стр. 137

‘We’re going to be forming a co-ordinated assault on the Suns’ home base,’ I explained. ‘Jae’s going to be expecting us, forming defence systems against our forces. I need you wired into your technest, ten steps ahead of the Suns, overriding their traps and defences, whatever they throw at us. Any darkmarket tech you shouldn’t have, any remote access you shouldn’t be using, now’s the time to use it.’

‘I’m sure I can manage that,’ Grim said.

‘Don’t disconnect for a moment. I don’t care if Mugalesh tries to drag you out, you stay in contact.’

‘Got it.’ He flashed his hacksaw teeth at me, filled with bits of egg and bacon. ‘Thank goodness for her, eh? Said you looked like death when she found you in the alley.’

‘Felt like it, too,’ I said. The stormtech wasn’t trying to rearrange my anatomy for the hell of it anymore, but I still felt its raw power itching through my body like a second musculoskeletal system. My limbs felt like they’d been reinforced with nanofilament carbon fibre, a latticework of protective armour woven into my flesh. My sense of smell and hearing was so blisteringly strong it hurt. I was probably half alien by now. Maybe more. Blue, rocky scabs were starting to erupt from my skin. Overnight, my body hairs had thickened and grown denser. I smelled more pungent. I could only imagine what other gross side effects my body was gleefully racking up for me down the line.

The bite of the restraining harness clamped around me was a raw memory. The altered stormtech pumping like molten lava into my veins. The trauma had, quite literally, been permanently fused into my body. But if you’ve got scars, it’s better to learn to live with them than pretend they don’t exist.

‘There’s no way to stop you doing this, is there?’ Grim asked.

‘Nope. If I don’t make it—’ I held up a hand as my friend objected, ‘If I don’t make it, Harmony will take care of you. Kowalski will see to it. Will you let her?’

Grim gave it some thought. Then finally: ‘If you trust ’em, so do I.’

‘I trust Jae and her gang far less, let’s put it that way.’

Grim dangled his legs from the bed next to me. Simulated wind tousled his hair. ‘I’m scared, man,’ he said, serious for once. It wasn’t until I saw his hands were shaking that I realised how scared. ‘I’m so scared I want to puke.’

I raised a small smile. ‘So am I.’

‘It’s the unknown, you know? Not knowing where things are going to land.’ He glanced up at me. ‘I just don’t want this to be the end.’

‘It won’t be,’ I told my friend. ‘This is just the start for you and me. We’re going to explore every floor of this asteroid together, every crazy bar, every little world, and drink until you’re sick and puking again.’

A faint smile traced across Grim’s lips. ‘How do you know all that?’

‘I don’t. But I’ve got to remind myself who I’m fighting for, who I’m returning home to. Otherwise, what’s the point to any of it?’ I bumped my shoulder into his. ‘We’re going to make it out of this.’

‘That’s a promise?’

‘It’s a promise.’

Walking into Harmony’s Tactical Command Centre was a hell of a nostalgia trip.

The sprawling room was lit up in turquoise greens, ultramarine blues and vermillion reds. The reinforced walls were a smear of machinery and glowing flexiscreens. Substrates whined between mirror-smooth panelling that glistened like quicksilver. Tactical command tables beamed with holographic orbital data and incoming updates in electric blues and sun-bright golds. On raised walkways, men and women were plugged into circular tactical command pods, pearlescent light from consoles glowing across their faces. The smell of heated machinery, metallic dust and sweat was heavy in the air. Out through a floor-to-ceiling viewport were the tiered levels of the primary hangar bay, the polished decking clustered with ships and frantic with activity.

All bearing a striking resemblance to the Command Centre I’d walked into when I first became a Reaper.

Only difference? Since then, everything had changed.

I stood next to Kowalski as Saren addressed the scattering of Harmony SSC personnel in front of him. Strikers, Shocktroopers, Primers, Reapers and several Sub Zeros stood listening. Their armour was a sea of colours and models, plastered with engravings, rankings, indications of campaigns completed or involvement in certain operations across the Common. Tilted flexiscreens spiderwebbed into multicoloured strands of data: long-range scanners and orbital probes had confirmed the House of Suns’ activity in the Void Zones. Harmony research analysists had dredged up ancient schematics of the areas long thought uninhabitable after the war. A three-dee topographical outline of a floor plan was blinked onto the screens in a riot of greens and blacks, spiralling walkways and tunnels carving their way through ancient asteroid rock.

‘The Suns must have rigged up a rudimentary life-support system and repressurised the zones,’ Saren explained. ‘They’ve fixed the grav-plates and have been siphoning oxygen and power from solar farms for almost a year now. They’ve been hijacking cargo-haulers, killing the crews and stealing their supplies to sustain the areas.’

A round of murmurs and the slow grind of armour plates against each other. They’d all heard the House of Suns’ plans for us non-cultists, and what they’d done to me. Jae had kidnapped and tortured a Reaper, and, by extension, touched them too. Pack loyalty is a hell of a good thing to have at your back.

Saren and his SubPrimers began the tactical formation, allocating his Division into squads, Companies, Battalions. Allocating their attack formations and discussing tactical approaches and battleplans. Those already assigned with a unit departed with their comrades. Battle strategists, weapon suppliers, scientists and mass kineticists whirled around us. Equations and metrics zapping through the air in bright neon reds and blues. Made my head spin just to be in the middle of all this seemingly co-ordinated madness again.

My name was called. I was to be allocated into the Cobalt Squad, Fourth