Stormblood, стр. 32

rock. Ratchet blew a sniper’s hand off at the wrist before following up with a headshot as Myra and I each throttled the trigger of our marksman rifles. I don’t remember how long I fired or how many I hosed down. Only that we fought until the echo of gunfire stuttered to a halt and the Harvesters stopped moving. That silence descended again. The rage leaking away as we glanced at each other across the smoking camp of dead Harvesters. Realising what we’d done, what we’d carry with us for ever. Alcatraz placed a hand on my shoulder, breathing hard.

There was a scampering noise from the schoolyard. We snapped around as one, weapons readied. A young girl, caked in ash and dirt, streaked from her hiding place, running away from us. Cable reached her just as she tripped and sprawled in the mud. We watched as he knelt down and gently scooped her up in his powerful arms while she spluttered and sobbed into his chest. Cable whispered to her in her own tongue as he hugged her, her cries dying down to moaning whispers. Although I didn’t understand a word, I didn’t need to. He clutched her to his chest, not letting her see the devastation as he carried her past the massacre, past the burned pyre, past the burned bodies, all twelve kilometres to our fallback point. Each of us automatically watching his flank as we walked.

You can’t explain to people who weren’t there the bond from being stuck in that hell, your fireteam the only anchors to sanity in a hell gone mad. A reminder that life and goodness still exist somewhere in the galaxy. How that sense of friendship and unity draws you closer together.

My radar chimed, dragging me out of the memory. Someone was trotting down the blackened steps. A skinnie, wrapped in stained clothes and pushing some kind of shopping cart, his body streaming with violent blue bursts of lightning. He scratched at bulbous growths protruding from his arms and legs. Probably couldn’t even feel the stimuli, his skin was so scabbed and scarred. His bloodshot eyes darted back and forth, like the shadows couldn’t hold all the ghosts he was seeing. He was picking through mounds of trash when a trio of skinnies peeled from the darkness towards him. He jerked upwards, running away with his cart as they chased him with makeshift weapons, screaming. Their feet slapping on the pavement as they disappeared into the network of alleyways with the rattling of metal.

Half a dozen more skinnies shuffled past before Artyom came along. I sat up as he keyed the code on a datapad set into a secure lockup. Blackened shutters rolled back to reveal an armoured door that groaned open as alloy bolts shuttered back. The Hippo was lifted out of a subterranean storage compartment, bogies whirling as it rolled out to meet Artyom.

‘Got him,’ Grim whispered.

‘Stay sharp,’ I told Grim. I raced down the crumbling stairs, hugging the scissoring shadows of the piazza, stormtech roiling down my hamstrings. My thermal vision had turned Artyom into a humanoid coal through the plasma-punctured walls. His gait was slow and casual as he led the Hippo across this forlorn, forgotten chunk of Compass. My jaw clenched as I closed the distance over debris and the skeletal spines of rebars. However he was involved, I’d find a way to get him out.

He zigzagged down a staircase into the courtyard of a ruined mansion. A thin, cadaverous figure was leaning casually against a retaining wall, hands tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket. Middle-aged with a blonde beard streaked with grey. No visible weapons. I tensed, actively combating my body’s urge to go for my shardpistol and end this now. I snapped off my thermals to get a better look and cranked up my audio amplifiers. Voices materialised as stuttering cyan soundwaves in my HUD.

‘Hey, Mueller,’ said Artyom, ‘you’re early.’

‘You have it?’ Crystals were embedded in the man’s stained teeth, catching the light as he spoke.

‘As always.’ Artyom spoke casually, his posture showing the ease of someone who’d done this many, many times.

‘Have to check. You know the drill.’ Mueller scanned his palmerlog and the belly of the Hippo spilled open. Even if I hadn’t expected the contents, the jackhammering of stormtech against my chest would have told me what it was. Stormtech canisters. The Harmony symbol etched on the metalwork.

‘Four?’ He gave a low whistle, checking each canister.

‘You ask. I deliver.’

A grin split Mueller’s face. ‘Great job as always, Artyom.’

‘Had them stolen ages ago. Couldn’t risk moving the supplies, the heat’s been on me. Better to wait until we’re in the clear, you know?’ Artyom leaned against a scorched column. ‘You know how it is.’

‘Remember, the long game is what counts. You stay out of owned territory and meet your quota, you’re good.’

‘I’m hitting it, no problems there. I might even have a little extra this month.’

‘Good man, good man.’

It felt like my guts were being sucked out of me by hard vacuum.

‘Do you have to head straight off?’ Mueller asked as they turned towards a door, the Hippo lumbering behind them, its wheelset whirling.

‘I’ve always got time for a drink.’

Mueller clapped a friendly hand on Artyom’s shoulder. ‘We got a special of offworld vodka shipment today. Thought you’d like to try it.’ Their voices died down as the sliding door clanged shut behind them.

‘Vak,’ Grim whispered on the other end. ‘I’m so sorry, man.’

I barely heard him. My brother was dealing the most illicit drug of the last century. He was part of an organisation that was poisoning stormtech and killing Reapers. And not because he had to. He was a major, long-standing cog in their machine. And he clearly had no plans to stop.

There’s something that every stormtech user experiences at least once. The Non-Reversal Crisis, the xenobiologists call it. It’s the moment you realise that this biotechnology from a long-extinct alien species is now locked inside your body for ever,