Between one blink and the next, my friend is gone.
I’m sitting on a munitions crate in the hangar bay when Alcatraz plants himself next to me. I watch the bruised storm clouds churning over the sweeping landscape. We’re both still in armour. There’s blood caked on my chestplate, in my gloves. Underneath it, I can feel the blue, alien essence twitching through my flesh like seaweed in a never-ending current. Curling around my ribcage. Squeezing my heart.
It saved my life today.
I reach for that feeling, gripping the stormtech hard. Letting it wash over me. Lapping up its sensations, the quiet fury bubbling inside my chest. Feeling the untapped potential inside me for the first time.
Alcatraz sighs. The crackle of gunfire from training VRs echo from the barracks. It seems like an age before he speaks. ‘Not going to lie to you, Fukasawa. This is just the start. Tomorrow is going to be hard, and the day after even harder. You’re going to feel so angry and exhausted you could die; you’ll feel you’d rather eat your own gun than return to duty. You’re going to be dropped in some of the worst places in the universe to be shot at, stabbed, ambushed and slammed into the mud. You’re going to see more friends die in ways no one was ever meant to see.’ A hiss of air as his helmet unseals, he removes it and glances at me with blue strands lashing up his cheeks. ‘But the rest of your fireteam will always be there for you. Doesn’t matter what those Harvest pigs throw at us, we’re going to fight them to the bitter, bloody end. Together. Maybe you’ll die on the battlefield tomorrow. Maybe I will. But you’ll die in the arms of a friend, of a brother. Come hell or high water, we stick together.’ He drops his dog tags into my palm, the Reaper salute engraved in gunmetal. It’s a declaration of loyalty, of shared brotherhood. Thunder grumbles in the distance as I turn them over. ‘That’s a promise, Fukasawa. You’re a Reaper now. We’re blood brothers. Forever and always, until we’re nothing but dirt and dust. We’ll do right by you. Will you do right by us?’
I remove my helmet, pull off my own dog tags and drop them in his hand. Alcatraz nods, slings an arm around my neck and pulls me over in a half-hug, half-headlock. ‘Until we’re dirt and dust,’ I say, my throat suddenly tight.
Alcatraz releases me, claps me hard on the shoulder. ‘Come on. We’re going to bury Drummer. Can’t do it without everyone present.’
My armour groans as I stand to go to the funeral of a man I barely knew. A man who died for me, for people he loved, and for people he would never meet. Everyone has congregated outside, around his armoured body. His arms were placed in the Reaper gesture for the last time, his tags given to his closest friends. Reapers nod to me as I pass. My fireteam clapping me on the shoulder for the first time.
They’d die for me.
As I would for them.
For the briefest of moments, I feel at peace.
15
Return of the Storm
Our slipship rumbled as it soared to the top of the pixelsheeting roof, the Hovergardens sprawling beneath us. Towering fruit trees, crop fields, vertical orchards, botanical enterprises and vineyards were smears of red, yellow and orange against the deep, verdant green of the rainforest. Climate-controlled biospheres glistened like giant ovoid eggs laid by some alien creature. Lines of guided tours twisted through Compass’ central greenhouse, forking off to the sectors housing alien flora, grown from seedbanks donated by various species. Octodrones swooped through the thick foliage, scooping up bulbous fruits. From this angle, our little ship was the axis and the rest of Compass was the wheel, rotating around us like a planet in orbit.
The microinsulation didn’t quite muffle the outside roar and Kowalski had to raise her voice to be heard. ‘You’ve ridden in these before?’
I nodded, readjusting my grip on the webbing straps. I elected not to mention the conditions weren’t quite the same. The hard spacedecking floor wasn’t spattered with blood and severed limbs. Or littered with twitching bodies, ear-shattering explosions rippling under us as we tore into the churning sky with Anti-Hull Targeting Missiles streaking past and nanogun rounds hammering our armoured hull. No dread icing through our guts as we waited for the one lucky round that’d blast us out of the sky.
So, yeah. Very, very different conditions.
I’ll say this about Kindosh: she wasted no time in making a decision. No red tape, no bureaucracy, no argument when I insisted on tagging along. I wasn’t exactly in prime condition for the field, but someone needed to guide them through the compound. And if my brother might be in there, I would be, too.
As a First Class Primer, Kowalski was able to work solo in the field, and to commandeer any enlisted servicemen under Harmony’s Special Service Command. Today, she led a six-strong squad of Shocktroopers, under the name Team Twilight. Trained for flexibility on the battlefield, Shocktroopers were the backbone of Harmony’s infantry, working closely in their tightknit fireteams and outfitted with supersoldier augmentations for various assignments. Like Reapers, their long-term operations in the field had evolved into their own gestures and lingo. They were distinguished by their angular, sturdy armour built to resist heavy damage. I was introduced to two of Kowalski’s most trusted men: a short man called Kuen who said too much, and a lanky weapons expert called Vanto who said too little.
Backup was a smattering of gunrunners in light tactical gear with standard-issue service weapons. I saw Kowalski deep in conversation with her SubPrimers – her second-in-command on the field. Armed with handcannons and heavy assault autorifles with high-calibre rounds, they wore armour with a triple slash on their chests and shoulders. They generally led the charge on high-priority assignments and tactical operations. You knew something was going
