Raine VS The End of the World (53 page)

“Forget all the reasons it won’t work and believe the one reason that it will.” - Unknown

“Left flank, stay tight. They’re trying to draw us in,” Commodore Leandra ordered, eyes never leaving the real-time miniature holo-battlefield. True to the simulations, the Western mountain pass proved a most useful cover for two hundred of her forward warships; despite an isolated thunderstorm striking the EDC front lines behind the hills, the Commodore held her airspace.

The battle for
Neo Eden
might have been a few miles off, but its outcome would be decided here, at the Western border of the Apennine Mountains.

Boulder-sized electromagnetic spheres whistled through the clouds. Many found their targets as the
Eden
Armada
charged forth, with Brigadier General Troi Macleod leading the spearhead formation in the sleek Titan-Class Warship
Charon
.

Typical
Eden
blunt tactics
, she thought.
A direct strike when they should be biding their time.

She had her forces pull back into a concave pattern, inviting the attackers in. As soon as the first wave crossed the peaks, the Commodore gave the signal. Cloaked interceptors flying high above the battlefield let fall baubles of corroding acid. Waterfalls of the destructive spheres paralyzed the
Eden
advance.

The
Charon
halted before climbing to meet the interceptors. Leandra pulled her forces away, splitting the rear guard to provide cover fire, but Macleod was too fast. He let loose volleys of missiles; the
Freyja
eliminated each one.

A second torrent burst forth before Leandra had time to breathe. There was no way the
Freyja’s
escorts
could down them all.

“Full shields!” she cried.

The glowing plasma fields sapped the
Freyja’s
photon-bending cloak, giving away its position while their electromagnetic barrier deflected any missiles that made it past the line of plasma turrets.

Plowing quickly through blast radii, the Brigadier General focused his big guns on the vulnerable flagship.

Nothing doing. I’ve studied the data from each one of your battles. This is the same feint you pulled in Lebanon, and it only worked then because our plasma turrets were caught in a sandstorm. You’re already two seconds too late, Macleod.

Leandra’s flanking destroyers answered with focused laser blasts, carving through the
Charon’s
hull-mounted turrets.

Eden’s
finest tactician was no fool; he switched to a defensive formation, positioning shield-generating craft around the perimeter to keep the EDC from advancing beyond the range.

And now, he’ll protect his ass and buy some time to think.

Her intuition proved correct: Macleod sent forth multiple waves of underpowered high-speed drones to meet their escorts.

“Bingo,” Leandra smiled, switching to auxiliary power, maxing shields, and instructing her fleet to follow. Her opponent was finally playing it safe; a drawn-out conflict would buy Lily more time. “Hostiles closing. Fry ‘em up with artillery, but not too fast. We’ve gotta wait ‘em out.”

₪

Somewhere around the fiftieth wave, Gerrit lost count. The horde was endless. He could barely hold a weapon against the four-armed golems slamming him into the ground like a toy, let alone defend against their swift, powerful attacks. To top it off, none of his exploits were of any use. The virtual arena was completely hack-proof.

More than anything, he wished for death. But it would not come. His avatar should have been finished long ago, its limbs twisted as a pretzel after this latest thorough lashing. The AI opponents watched and waited for his body to regenerate.

What Gerrit thought of as his skeletal structure had been broken probably a dozen times in any given place, and the pain of constantly re-growing bones and snapping muscles robbed him of the resolve to fight any longer. He just wanted it to be over.

As soon as the boy was back to full health, the golems began their charge. Just as he parried the first strike, however, a sudden quake belted the combatants onto their backs.

The sands spiraled into a searing twister, and Gerrit shielded his face. From the midst of the storm, a blinding light pierced the back of his eyes, forcing them open.

Gerrit woke with a start, still forcibly seated in Queen Lorelei’s chambers. His heart was racing, and the
M-Gear
hung heavily.

A sudden electromagnetic pulse had scrambled every device in the room. He felt strong surges of electricity coursing through his veins, as if molten metals from within his body were being boiled in a blacksmith’s furnace.

Anger and hatred filled his thoughts. If one thing in this world was certain, he was going to destroy every one of Lorelei’s sick virtual programs entirely and prevent anyone else from suffering the same fate. The sounds of bullets ricocheting in the next room over only intensified Gerrit’s frustration.

He winced as the double doors shook with a deafening thunder. Smoke flooded in from every crack between the metal slabs. Someone was trying to break in with some sort of bomb, but industrial-strength panels over limestone muffled the next explosion.

As the ringing in his ears subsided, Gerrit made out two voices yelling at each other over the din. Their words were jumbled, as if through an encryption device. They were soon interrupted by sudden bursts of gunfire that turned further screams into yelps of pain, and at last, silence.

“Sir! Captain Gerrit, you in there?” a barely audible voice piped up.

“Yes, I’m here!” he called despite a parched throat, summoning all his strength. The voice sounded faint.

“Didn’t get that, but I’ll take that as a yes! Now stand back,” the stranger commanded.

Please be gentle.

But fate had other plans. The next explosion came through the marble wall to his left. Gerrit shut his eyes. His wheelchair reeled backwards into a large bookshelf at high speed. The headgear slammed against a marble bookend, knocking the breath from his weak chest. Dust shot up his nose, and he coughed up a storm.

When he opened his eyes, two men were helping him out of the paralyzing
Gear
and chair straps. Water drenched his lips; one stranger tried to mime something to him. Maybe they knew he couldn’t hear anything. His ragged face reflected back from their visors. The duo turned their blast shields down, but their faces were still a blur, as was everything else.

“What’s… what’s going on?” Gerrit mouthed loudly, unable to hear himself. Feeling a foreign sensation in his arms, he tried to sit up. “R-Raine…”

Big mistake.
An agonizing pain shot through Gerrit’s spine as his muscles cramped up, one by one. He cried out as the man closest to him pulled a syringe from his arm.

“Don’t move, kid! You’re wasting time!” The other guy yelled, shakily grasping a firearm at the impromptu entranceway.

He recognized the man’s voice… he sounded like a famous figure, someone he’d maybe encountered at the Queen’s party...
But no
, he reasoned.
It couldn’t be.

“Mister Senior! You’re… old! W-where is she? What are you doing?”

After yelling, Gerrit immediately regretted it, as his brain seemed to be convulsing.

“Raine’s safe as a lamb at pasture. This fellow’s helping me save your arse, sir,” the other man replied with a wink. “Name’s Henry Holdfast,” he said, giving Gerrit Lily’s secret handshake and fist-bump. It took the kid a few seconds to process all this new information, and the fact that he could perform a complex handshake he had no recollection of.

“Senior’s one of his many identities. Out here, he’s just Jon.”

Wrathman’s voice rose to the pitch of an attention-starved Chihuahua. “
Just
Jon? I am the Chief Operations Officer of
Endless Metaverse
, lads, and don’t you forget it---”

Henry waved him away. “There was supposed to be a much bigger strike team here with us, but plan’s changed. Beech and his cronies froze two-thirds of the
Nexus
on suspicion. That’s why we need you to open the--”

“Can we get the hell out of here now?” Jon barked.

“We’re not leaving ‘til the Captain’s ready!” Henry said sternly. “And our orders are taking us to Chamber 50B.”

“I seem to recall that you promised me amnesty in return for getting your point man out,” Jon grumbled. “Not for taking you into the depths of the
Spire
. Now how much longer is this--”

“Gah!”

The outburst was followed by a numbing electric shock. Gerrit found himself unable to speak. The pain continued to course through his body in spasms. But Henry was fast at work, filling up two more syringes.

“What-what’s that?”

“A second dose of muscle relaxant,” Henry said, injecting the boy without hesitation. “You were running an isolated program, so you’re not fighting signal strain, but your body’s over-sympathetic to the synaptic respon--”

“English, please.”

“Just aftershocks from our EM grenade, sir, no biggie. Your nanites will be fully disintegrated in a few minutes. Could I trouble you to count to forty? I’ve got to reload and check our bearings. Take deep breaths, try to relax.”

Though he still didn’t understand, Gerrit nodded and breathed slowly, methodically. Although he had no recollection of knowing the first thing about meditation, the motions came naturally. At the count of forty, he tapped Henry on the ankle.

“Atta boy. Now this here’s adrenaline,” Henry huffed, lifting up the second syringe. “Hang onto it, there’s a good chance you’ll need it in a few--”

“For chrissakes, Holdfast, they’ll be here any second!” barked Jon.

“Okay. We don’t exactly have the luxury of time for a proper recovery. Think you can stand, mate?”

He forced himself to his feet, though his body was screaming out in pain. Both rescuers winced. Gerrit’s frail body struggled, but he was determined to carry his own weight. Henry handed him an offline HDP infantry
M-Gear
identical to his and Jon’s models, and a sidearm with a couple of clips. The boy immediately recalled the safety toggle and reloading procedures.

“To the docking bay, then,” Henry said quietly as the trio emerged from the hole in the wall and stepped into the massive hallway of the Central Citadel, navigating around the remains of scrap-metal soldiers. Holdfast remotely disabled any recording devices.

A rather posh service elevator subjecting them to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” took the trio two hundred floors down into the pyramidal military complex; Gerrit’s stomach churned at the platform’s dizzying speed.

The following labyrinth of hallways and staircases passed in a blur. It took a good few near-falls before he was able to walk on his own two feet, and with anything approaching a rhythm.

Henry took the lead, scouting around corners, remotely disabling cameras, descending four floors at a time, and hacking into locked doors by hot-wiring nearby terminals.

Gerrit pushed his body slightly under his limits, mindful not to overextend his muscles and cramp up again. Soon he was off Jon’s shoulder, keeping pace with his rescuers. He couldn’t let himself be useless, couldn’t fail Raine and Lily. Not again.

Before long they’d reached the end of the tunnel.

Henry popped open a loose service hatch. Upon peeking through, Gerrit beheld an enormous indoor docking bay for the
Eden
Armada. Cavernous walls carved deep into the pyramid and even through the mountain beyond, and at the mouth of the structure, multiple runways ran from blast doors far past the raised platforms.

“Do you recall the layout, sir?” Henry asked Gerrit. “Some memories should be coming back by now. We may need to split if the going gets too hot.”

The boy bit his lip.

“It… it is kind of familiar.”

Wrathman, who was tapping into the security footage with his Holo-Lens, held up a palm to silence both of them.

“Something’s going on across the way.”

They shimmied through the hatch one by one. Raised voices reverberated below. It was impossible to tell what was going on, since shipping crates obscured most of the view and their eardrums blared with the din of welding bots trying to repair an extravagant gunship.

Henry and Gerrit silenced two guards with tranquilizer darts before discreetly venturing a glance down at the lower deck. They didn’t have much time to study the opposition: Lt. General Beech, the Royal Guard, and about a dozen droids gathered around the turret of a war-torn gunship. The General was intimidating the foreman of the welding ‘bots. Henry pointed a long-range shotgun mic at them and the trio listened in.

“Macleod’s already mopping them up!” he boomed. “Make haste! It’s important for public solidarity that I take my private cruiser over the city as soon as we fly our victory flag. Of course, you oil-brains have no idea what solidarity means.”