Except doing the right thing rarely ever feels that way. Not when family’s involved.
‘If Kindosh gives the go-ahead to storm the Warren there’ll be no time to waste.’ Kowalski scooped up her scarf and began knotting it around her neck with one foot already out the door. ‘If you decide you’re up for it, be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I’ll be in touch.’
Then she was gone.
‘She’s right, you know,’ Grim said.
‘About what?’ I asked.
‘Going in there alone. Not your finest hour, man.’
‘We’re all wiser in hindsight, aren’t we?’
‘Not talking about that.’ He pointed towards the blue streaking like comets in slow motion around my belly. ‘If it messed with your judgement once, it’ll do it again.’ His shoulders sagged, hands twisting together. ‘I don’t want you to go down that path, Vak. I really don’t.’
‘I won’t,’ I promised.
‘You mean it?’
‘I mean it.’
And I did. Because the risk of Bluing Out was the least of my problems. That brief thrill of combat, being in danger, pulling the trigger on Lyndon, all of it stirred up sensations I didn’t like. Even now, my body was tense on the bed, cycling through the memories like the departing shreds of a dream, looking for a leftover scrap of adrenaline.
I’d departed the Reaper battlefields a long time ago. But I’d never stopped being a Reaper. The training and trauma done to my body were written in bloody scars, my mind sharpened to an edge that couldn’t be blunted. I’d just learned to ignore it, live with it. I didn’t hate the stormtech, because it’d become part of me. Like my pounding heartbeat, the throbbing pulse in my fingertips, the drumbeat of my breathing. It was all a part of my biorhythms, the organic clockwork of my body. We don’t notice our own bodily status quo after a while, just like smokeheads don’t notice that their breathing is constricted or their chest is abnormally tight.
So I had no way of measuring what the stormtech was getting me to do, what microinfluences it was having as it went sniffing under my skin, slithering along my arteries, squirming between my organs, up my spinal column and crawling into my brain. How much of me had deliberately walked into that building? How much had been at the stormtech’s urging? Had I wanted to kill, or had the stormtech simply given me that little extra nudge?
After all this time, was there still any difference between me and the stormtech?
14
Dirt and Dust
My body knows something is wrong.
I don’t know when I started to read the signs. The tightness in my gut. The prickle of sweat across the nape of my neck. My slowly elevating blood pressure. I shouldn’t be feeling this yet. I haven’t had the stormtech long enough. But now, standing here on the valley slope, with the blue alien biotech squirming along the length of my arm, I understand what it means. It’s excited. Agitated. Pumping me up for danger. A warm glow stirring my body to life. It feels so good I almost forget what the sensations mean.
Warning me.
I’m about to tell the others, but if I’m feeling it, they must be, too. Got to remember that.
Alert, I follow the rest of my squad – Fireteam Ghost, of Tusk Battalion – down into the sloping valley. My bulky, olive-green armour chafes against my shoulders, heavy in the low gravity. I’ve been wearing it for about six weeks now. There’s padding where padding needs to be, and the flexible, interior material fits well enough. Still haven’t got used to the smell. Don’t think I ever will. There’re nozzles and pipes plugged in all the right places, with tubes taking the necessary waste out and bringing the right amount of liquid-nutrition cubes in.
I carry a standard-issue designated marksman rifle. My rifle specs, ammo count, and the names and vitals of my squad beam in my HUD. The others are all similarly armed and armoured. Wind whips through a bleak wilderness that’s scattered with forlorn, twisted trees and dark grass. Stormclouds the colour of bruises churn over the mountain range. Tributaries wind through the sprawling fields and wet landscape. No Harvesters in sight. No enemy infantry. But the anticipation swirls in my guts all the same. We’re on the outskirts of a remote town in the highlands of Renchio, the latest in a long line of besieged planets. Intel’s scarce, but we’ve heard reports of SSC squads and Reapers going missing here, along with sightings of rogue Harvester squads, screwing up our comms facilities. We’re scouting the area to sort it out, restart the comms systems if need be.
‘Don’t like this,’ Cable grumbles, armour plates grinding as he rolls his massive shoulders. I’m a tall guy, but Cable’s got at least a head on me. Sheathed in his bulky armour the colour of a thundercloud, he looks like he was carved out of solid rock. He carries a heavy autocannon, supported by a sling around his shoulder with the power battery strapped to his back. A distant lightning flash reflects in his mirrored visor.
Ratchet, a weaselly runt with a wicked sense of humour and a fetish for collecting Harvest knives, sniffs the air, as if picking up a scent. ‘Smells sour, boys. Harvesters about, most likely.’
Drummer, our expert technician, shakes his head as he tweaks the scope of his autorifle. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that. Creeps me right out.’
‘I’ve got a gift,’ Ratchet says, thumping the chestplate of his scarred armour. It’s dark red, not that you can tell with all the mud and grime caked to it. We hop over a small chasm, the rock rumbling under our boots as we land. ‘Not my fault it ain’t to your liking.’
‘Gift?’ Drummer snorts. ‘You mean freak.’
‘That’s not very nice,’ Cable says.
Ratchet sniggers. ‘Hear that, love?’ At first, I think he’s talking to us, but he’s whispering to the Harvest combat knife
