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  The enemy’s base of fire slowed and shifted onto the massive tree she was using for cover; they could no longer see her position, but obviously intended to keep her pinned down.

  Now back on her knee and staying as low as possible, she held her rifle with the barrel pointing up and away from what she was doing; she reached out for Bauer. With her eyes fixed on the thermal smoke, she watched as passing projectiles momentarily extruded cone-like shapes from the glowing body of the cloud.

  As she touched the all-too-familiar texture of Allied armor, she turned to look; her hand rested on Bauer’s shoulder plate, just near his load-carrying harness. Wrapping her fingers around the strap, she tightened her grip and pushed back with her legs. As she worked, weapons fire tore into the side of the tree showering her with fast-moving splinters of bark and bits of hardwood; deflected rounds whooshed overhead.

  “Damnu!” she mumbled through numb lips as she hunkered down into her armor, trying to make herself as small as possible; she was more angry than scared. Still kneeling, she released Bauer and grabbed for her weapon’s foregrip; twisting herself, she brought the rifle up. The targeting reticle bobbed aimlessly before her, as she tried looking through smoke that for all intents was a visibly impenetrable barrier . . . or was it?

  There! Movement! she thought. It was definitely someone trying to approach her using the smoke screen for cover; but it looked all wrong. It was like a miscolored thermal image: the soldier’s face and head were the brightest parts, while everything else faded away through shades of deep red. The background was black with no detail at all, not even reflection from the glow of the target.

  Shifting her weapon, she placed the reticle’s aiming pip on the target; it failed to lock and just continued bobbing about. “Why can’t you see him?” she demanded. “No target designated; range indeterminate.” replied the pacscomp. “Disregard,” she thought. “Gun, fixed target,” Morgan ordered. The reticle jumped across her display as it switched settings; like iron sights, it was now fixed to a point some three-hundred yards down range along the weapon’s line of fire. She swung back on to the target, and with a gentle movement shifted to keep it under her sights.

  With a squeeze of her left hand, she depressed the leading edge of the rifle’s handgrip; Click. The safety was off and power made available. A pull of the two-fin-gered trigger would now launch a salvo of electromagnetically accelerated, armorpiercing steel darts.

  Time slowed as she waited for the moment to fire; then, in the span of a heart-beat, she looked beyond the aiming pip, and like a rising wind before a storm she felt a growing emotional presence. The bastard Legion soldier, her target. “Noooo! Not this time!” she screamed past her swollen jaw as echoes of the earlier encounter threatened to slow her down. She fought her way past it and tightened her grip.

  The world around her erupted in motion as a wave of brilliant white sparks danced across the Legionnaire’s chest, dropping him on the spot. Subconsciously, Morgan released the tension on her index and middle fingers; she was up and at a full run before she realized what she had done. The sound of someone screaming pierced the crackle of static in her ears as she ran toward the smoke.

  Her scopes went dark as she entered the cloud, but there in the distance—seemingly floating in a void—was another blob of red, another target. Morgan had him under her sights as she cleared the smoke. Through her imaging scopes the soldier was no more than a dark, bush-shaped mass; but to her eyes, the man within the camouflage was clearly visible.

  At the last moment the Legionnaire turned toward the sound of her foot falls, but Morgan had him cold. A spray of hot particles was visible through her scopes, overlaid by flashes of white sparks at the points of impact. Beyond the screaming, she heard the crack of the gauss rifle’s darts breaking the sound barrier, followed by the concluding thumps of the projectiles punching through mesh body armor, rending flesh and smashing bone.

  She continued to run; with her weapon held high and at the ready, she scanned the path with short movements of her head.

  In the still air of the deep forest, her second smoke canister created a massive visual void. Its core was almost black through her scopes, only broken by protruding, leaf-covered branches, and partially obscured objects near its growing edges. No one was in sight.

  The screaming stopped abruptly, only to be replaced by the woosh of her suit’s air filters opening and closing against her deep breathing. Her throat was raw with the absence of the sound. The front of her comhood just below her lip was wet; not warm like blood, but cool. She was caught in an isolated moment of silence, oddly still amid the rush of combat.

  It passed as the enemy renewed their base of fire. To her left an intermittent line of bullets emerged from the void of the cloud as if somehow spontaneously created within; each appearing as a blob of light trailed by its afterglow. The gunner was firing in groups of about five with a short pause in between. The weapon’s report was in sync with its passing projectiles; he was very close.

  Morgan swung her targeting reticle up and back along the line of fire, looking for the weapon’s muzzle flash—or the red of it gunner—but nothing was visible beyond the smoke.

  At a burst of enemy fire, Morgan answered in kind; in a sweeping motion she played out a stream of darts toward what she hoped was the gunner’s position. Abruptly the fire stopped and the now-familiar red blur of a soldier came into view. Just as quickly the red again shifted into bright white, before fading away.

  Morgan was just about to pass into the second cloud when another silhouette appeared. It was the outline of a soldier. He seemed to be sitting, one knee up with his elbow braced against it to support his weapon.

  Once again lost in the void, Morgan saw her weapon’s pip land on the center mass of the target; with a short burst of fire, a single flash of white exploded on the target, knocking it over.

  “Ammunition expended,” stated the pacscomp, as the targeting reticle’s ordnance counter read triple zero.

  “Cac!” exclaimed Morgan as she reached for her ammunition pouch. From the handgrip she thumbed the weapon’s magazine release; a confirmation icon ap-peared indicating that the spent magazine had popped free. As she lifted the pouch flap to withdraw a fresh magazine, she approached the edge of the smoke cloud.

  Boom! Morgan’s reality flinched against the concussive force of the sound combined with the punch of a hypervelocity bullet passing thought the air just inches from her head.

  The last Legionnaire she had shot now sat up against a tree just five yards away. Her scopes showed a hot spot on the left side of his chest just below his shoulder. I was slowly expanding. She watched his dark red outline grow brighter as white sparks danced and crackled along his shoulder and over his chest.

  His weapon lay in his lap; he pulled back its operating lever, and with a soft ting, the weapon ejected the spent cartridge, which leaped into the air. Morgan rushed him, not willing to take the chance that she could reload and bring her weapon to bear before he could; the fresh magazine fell from her hand as she grabbed for her weapon’s foregrip.

  The bloodthirsty screams returned as she fell upon the target, jaw clenched and her thoughts enraged. With the strength of both arms, driven by the mass of her body, she smashed the butt of her rifle into the now-upturned face of the Legionnaire. And again. And again. And . . .

  “Morgan!” said the voice in her head.

  She stopped; she was on her knees gripping the weapon’s frame around the bar-rel of her rifle. Beneath her, the body of the Legion sniper lay on its back; its limp arms had obviously tried to protect itself against her mashing blows. The aura was no longer the deep-reds and sparks of white that Morgan had come to expect; shades of dark blue and black instead flooded her vision. Time seemed lost to her.

  “Morgan, respond!” ordered the voice.

  “Sir?” she mechanically replied via the SIcom; then she recognized his voice, “Brennen! I mean . . . Squad Leader.” it was hard to focus; it was almost as if
being awakened from a deep sleep.

  Pushing back, using her rifle for support, she stood up; her mind started to clear. “Morgan, we’re five minutes out . . .” stated Brennen. With a growing sense of relief Morgan turned to look. There on her display were six green triangular icons. Her relief was short-lived as a red, time-stamped icon appeared. Sergeant Bauer . . .

  “Fall back to Bauer’s position and standby. Acknowledge?” instructed Brennen. “Set.” SIcommed Morgan. With the somber realization that the person she had been was no more, she turned and walked back through the gently dissipating smoke. Not just returning to the body of her fallen comrade, but walking toward an uncertain future.

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  NOT ONE WORD

  From the Chronicles of the Radiation Angels

  James Daniel Ross

  MY NAME IS TODD ROOK.

  I was a Corporal in The Radiation Angels.

  I was running for my life.

  In my small rucksack was an avalanche drive, a one kilo mini-computer contain-ing seven hundred terabytes of ‘liberated’ data. It contained enough evidence to finally put an end to court battles across this world. Worth thousands of years in prison for some, and trillions of credits in legal awards for others, it felt as heavy as a corpse in my pack. I shouldn’t complain, I suppose, it was about all I was carrying anymore. I had been running forever, buildings slipping into shadow on every side, my lungs burning like a coal fire deep inside a mountain. I didn’t know exactly what was on the avalanche drive, but it was obvious that the previous owners of the data were willing to kill a lot of people to get it back; including me. Especially me.

  Bricks disintegrated over my head as steel-jacketed lead ripped through the air. I dove to the ground, thankful for the helmet that kept the refuse from the alley from piling up in my mouth as I slid into the detritus. Broken bottles shredded the cosmetic outer layers of my armored jumpsuit like a witch’s claws. One shard of glass sliced through the strap on my rifle and it slipped away into the debris. I reached for it and veered into a trashcan. I rolled over just as engines shrieked overhead and vented su-perheated exhaust down upon me. From the mouth of the alley a massive mirrored cockpit stared at me like the accusing eye of a god. The man behind the windshield must have smiled as he squeezed his trigger unleashing a lead-hearted rain from his wing mounted guns. In the tight confines of the alley, the sound was deafening. The buildings on either side of the alley erupted into clouds of dust. I screamed.

  I scrambled blindly for my rifle, unable to look away from the two-ton air vehicle that was trying to kill me. My gloved hands closed around the stock and brought the weapon up to my shoulder as the clouds billowed out and all but obliterated the flier from view. I sighted along the rifle and jammed down the trigger. Bullets snapped from the barrel, recoil punching the stock into my shoulder as I yanked down the front end to keep the weapon on target. I barely heard the high frequency cracks of shattering glass over the sound of Armageddon all around me. The sound seemed to go on forever, echoing in the alley and inside my soul. At the same instant my rifle clicked empty, the pilot stopped firing, and the jetwash of the four vertical engines cleared the clouds of brick dust.

  There he was, hovering ten meters away, seven meters up. His windshield was scarred and cracked from my salvo, with a few small holes that had missed the pilot completely. I lay in the center of the filthy alley, terrified but untouched. We both re-alized his mistake at the same moment: While most of the buildings on either side of me had been badly masticated by steel teeth, his weapons were mounted on stubby wings on either side of the cockpit, too widely spaced to shoot straight down the alley.

  The pilot yanked his control yoke back and forth, trying to give his guns a clear field of fire when I touched off the under-barrel grenade launcher on my weapon. The thick, slow projectile spun from the barrel with the sound of a base drum, arced up and punched a perfect hole through the weakened glass. I suffered a moment of horror and prayed that the grenade had traveled far enough from the barrel to arm before the world went white. A giant, uncaring hand swatted me further into the alley, bouncing me from wall to dumpster to doorframe. Pain erupted from every direction as the buildings around me wobbled back and forth. I came to rest deep in the dark-ness and just lay still.

  The Angels were hired by the government of Goozner 3 to assault the KelRon datacenter and retrieve proof about a host of illegal activities; from corporate espionage and price gouging to financial information about rampant bribery and missing persons across the planet. We had counted on getting in, downloading the data, and getting out before the backup security teams or police showed up. We got in, but resistance was stiffer than expected. The avalanche drive had quickly copied the entire mainframe of data into tightly spooled bundles within seconds, but as we exfiltrated additional security forces had swept in from every direction.

  These were not the normal retired-police-officer kind of security guard. In fact, the difference between KelRon ‘security’ and ‘mercenary’ was only semantic; they were carrying heavy weaponry, wore better armor, and were better trained than intelligence said they would be. We lost two fliers in the first exchange and I was separated from the rest of the team in the intense crossfire on the ground. Bullets and coherent light impacted on every side of me as I took cover behind some parked vehicles. I had to retreat under focused fire from all sides. I looked for a way to rejoin the fight when the order to Escape and Evade came down. I managed to find a hole in the combat and dive down a side street, but the respite never lasted long. It was as if they knew where the emergency hard drive was because every time I stopped security teams were there, snapping at my heels.

  Now the world refused to focus clearly and my hands fluttered as I checked my-self for broken bones or bleeding cuts. As each limb was inventoried, despair reached up like some dire thing from the bottom of a sea, and grasped me in cold coils. Tears welled up and stung my eyes. If something had been broken, maybe I could have rationalized just laying there for a few more . . . hours. I grunted and tested out my helmet-radio. Static crashed into my ears, a sure sign that some heavy-duty jamming was going on. There I was; alone, with no help coming and every muscle aching. Again I considered just staying put and going to sleep, a thought effectively shattered by another security flier crossing overhead at high speed.

  I looked around and tried to get my bearings. My rifle was already a long forgotten memory broken and twisted somewhere in the trash of this slum. I also discovered that sometime in the last hour I had lost my pistol, the holster broken, hungry, and forlorn. I went further into the tight passage and turned into a spur as I heard the heavy metallic whine of another flier coming close. I managed to make it to the end and cross the street before the warble of a police flier’s siren started up behind me. There was a flurry of cannon fire, the siren had its throat slit, and a resounding crash told the chilling story from two streets away. The police were not going to be able to come to the rescue and KelRon would brook no interference. I popped the virtual compass onto my HUD and shook my head as the world tried to go all black and squishy again.

  . . . I don’t remember kneeling, but I must have. I took deep breaths and fum-bled for the thigh pouch with my medical pack. I took out two disposable syringes and plunged them between the armor plates on my thigh. The world snapped into focus and I tried to get my bearings again. I took a metallicized nylon map and crypto-voltage box from my shoulder pouch. I set the coded keys to the correct power level, and touched it to the map, revealing the correct map and rendezvous site in glowing blue lines. If I was anywhere near where I thought I was, the emer-gency pickup RV was to the west, near the river. I reset the box to all 0’s and stored the bundle away. Ammunition entombed in the burning wreckage at the end of the alley began to cook off like popcorn, bringing me back to the here and now. I had to move. I had to do it now.

  On legs progressively more steady, I stuck close to the fronts of the ancient row-houses. I kept near the wall
s, eyes sweeping for the telltale cloud of an RPG launch. I crossed streets quickly, keeping to shadows and hiding every time a flier screeched by. Across the city, the sounds of warfare were spreading. I limped along in silence, without the benefit of audience or sound track. War is discordant. It has no theme music. Truthfully it has no theme, no overriding feel and it is filled with weird holes saturated with nothing but the sound of your own heartbeat. I stopped in a doorway and ducked into a puddle of gloom as a pair of shadows walked by. I waited silently, unmoving, until they had turned the corner out of sight. The moment they disap-peared, I continued onward, leg feeling better for the brief rest. Urban warfare is the worst for this kind of thing. It is infused with the randomness of people trying to help, harm, or simply go about their lives as you search for death around every corner . . . and sometimes, death searches for you.

  I crept down one brick and concrete corridor after another, discipline forcing me to keep track of every turn, every door, every dumpster that could act as an element in escape, cover, or attack. It was a habit drilled into me, but it was new enough to still be distracting, and slow the passage of time to a crawl. The fog of fatigue, and probably a concussion, started closing in on me again and I began to question if the mental effort was worth it.

  Light flooded down the alley, spearing me in place like the pin of a giant bug collector for just an instant. I leapt two steps back and flung myself at a door. My hundred kilos of nineteen-year-old muscle collided with the metal door and snapped the lock free of the weakened frame. I was dumped on the floor of a nondescript hallway and managed to pull my legs out of the alley as metal wasps scraped at the ground where they had just been. Arms protesting, legs crying, I vaulted to my feet and slapped on the low-light sensor on my helmet. The black hallways became a murky, trashy green, lined with peeling wallpaper and cracked vinyl flooring. It was a straight shot to the front door, its starred glass glowing like a misshapen maw. I dove through it at a sprint, trusting the twenty kilos of ceramic and laminate metal armor to break the window’s teeth. Glass erupted around me in a volcanic spray and I tum-bled through the air into something only barely softer than concrete. Something that whuffed, cursed, and wiggled. I opened my eyes. What I saw did not make me happy.