My HUD lights up with warning icons as it tracks the bullets, noting the weapon make and model, velocities, trajectories. Our vitals have gone ballistic. The stormtech shudders like an engine inside my chest, every muscle tense, my breathing furious. Two seconds later and I’d have been blown into a shredded mess of twitching meat.
This alien tissue fused to my body saved my life. All our lives.
The fusillade ends. Curses. The click of weapons being reloaded. Alcatraz screams something down the comms and bursts into the fray. I sprint after him, staring down the barrel of my rifle. The world screams with clashing colours and furious lights, but my HUD picks out the Harvesters through the swirling smoke. Highlighting their wartech, displaying weapon specs in gold, analysing the threat. There’s two fireteam’s worth of them, positioned around the raised walkways. Their painted armour and angular helmets are smeared with Harvest slogans, the notches on their shoulders indicating rank.
I roar into action alongside my fireteam. Throttling the trigger of my marksman rifle, my armour’s motion stabilisers neutralise the kickback as I exchange fire with a Harvester in red armour. My shielding shudders with blue ripples as the Harvester’s rounds hit home, denting my armour in a dozen places. I throw all my focus into putting him down as I squeeze off a salvo of superheated, high-calibre rounds, punching through his armour and through his chest.
My pulse pounds in my fingers. I’m hyperaware of every detail. Bullets crackling and sparking around me, pinging off armour, shreds of screams, choked curses, the roar of dirt showering in the air. I’m the eye of this hurricane.
No. I am the hurricane. And the stormtech lets me control it.
I twist around, hackles raised, desperate for a new target, when a Harvester blasts his scattershot inches from my head. I smash my elbow into his helmet, then headbutt him, cracking his visor open. His face is splashed with sweat and twisted with fury. I’m slammed sideward into the dirt, my helmet cracking on a stone. My left side aches and I’m vaguely aware a second Harvester blasted me with a scattershot. He’s standing above me, the muzzle parked on my visor. I’m sure I’m dead, but the flat crack of Myra’s sniper rifle saves me, snapping through the shipyard and pitching the Harvester sideways, his skull smoking. The second Harvester dives for cover, but Myra’s faster, the round sparking off a guardrail and slamming into his chest. I snatch up his fallen scattershot, the world thudding like it’s got its own heartbeat, multicoloured gunfire grazing past my head.
Ratchet’s slammed up against the ground by a Harvester in gunmetal armour, a boot in his face. The Harvester snaps his head around towards me as I dash towards them, my reflection distorted in his visor. Ratchet reaches upwards to shove his blade into the Harvester’s gut. It sinks through the shielding and armour, hilt-deep, deeper still as Ratchet smashes the hilt with his fist, stabbing through his spine. I haul Ratchet to his feet, his depleted shields spluttering, our armour scraping together. A grenade rips out five metres away, polarizing my visor and showering clods of dirt over me. A Harvester in bulky blue-black armour feints around us, unleashing three-round bursts. We turn on him together. He ducks around me as I aim down the scattershot, the weapon shuddering in my hands as the convex slug-rounds tear into him. He’s slammed back, his hand blasted to a bloody stump, his crumpled chestplate smoking. He tries to go for his handgun, but I level the scattershot upwards and punch a slug through his face, splitting his head apart, his body spinning down the walkways. Another tries to hack me apart, but Ratchet’s already skidding around him, shoving the blade into his neck, black blood flowing.
And that’s when I see Drummer.
He’s sprinting up towards the Harvesters on the raised walkways. More enemies. More monsters who’d string Reapers for us to find. The stormtech roars with anger as I run after Drummer. There’s a red-hot flash overhead, and I open my mouth to yell a warning, but Drummer’s slammed to the floor, armour clanging, clutching at his abdomen. Thick, red liquid pumping out.
White-hot rage tears through me as I hear the Harvesters above cheering about taking one of us down. I gather myself and leap, ignoring the covered staircase and powering up the ruined walls towards them, mind nothing but fury and rage. A volley of bullets explodes inches from my face, pinging off my armour, carving up the support walls. The world has tunnel-visioned as I throttle the trigger of my marksman rifle. Crack! The bullet explodes out, punching into the first Harvester’s chest. I’m leaping across the support beams, lining up the second. Crack! The second Harvester is kicked backwards into the sheer drop below, clanging off the cross-linked pylons. I hear the high-pitched whine of a smelter-grenade being primed. The Harvester’s face twisted with fear as she bends back to throw it. Crack! I blast her in the arm, the grenade dropping to the floor and igniting, bright as a sun going supernova, wrapping her and the remaining Harvesters in a roaring explosion. Adrenaline rolls through me, muscles tight against my armour, already sweeping for the next target.
At the edge of my hearing, a wet, choking sound.
Drummer.
I rush back to him, the battle-adrenaline ebbing out of me. He’s spluttering on the grating. His eyes twitching and confused when I rip his helmet off. His hands leaving smears of blood as he paws at my chestplate.
‘Hold on, man, hold on,’ I pant, trying to put pressure on the wound. But there’s so much blood. So much damage. Too much for the stormtech to repair. His shaking hands find mine, and we lock fists against his wound.
Wind whistles over the mountain ridgeline. Lightning strikes the distant horizons.
