Episode 3 - Plowshares

  Chapter 21 - Operation: Material Obligation (2)

  Wake.

  There is trouble coming.

  I jolt suddenly, almost jerking off my low cot to sudden wakefulness. Immediately I roll to check the screen of my tablet, counting the dots.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Aster, sitting in the doorway with his rifle between both knees. Cain stirs across the room, his dark eyes glinting as they catch light from the window.

  I focus on Pooka as he swoops between the buildings outside, a dark shadow in the scattered half-moonlight. Below him figures move in the dark, ducking between buildings… humans.

  “We got something incoming,” I say, unable to prevent the shake in my voice.

  Aster is on his feet within moments, kicking Blake’s shoulder with one boot to rouse the man from his deep slumber. “Report?” he demands. Everett rolls in his cot, rubbing his eyebrows with one hand as he groans. I guess he wasn’t sleeping that well.

  “No symbionts, humans -” I pause, letting my mind drift to Pooka again. Ten figures, weaving between each other as they use the buildings between streets as cover. They cross the road, and fan out, a group of three breaking off from the pack. We land on the edge of one building and cock our head as we decide which group to follow. “Ten, in two groups. One group is separating off as we speak.”

  The explosion of readiness from Blake and Everett is impressive, unlike me they both slept in their boots and armor, somehow. Blake’s talent at sleeping anywhere is beyond my ability to comprehend. My mind half wanders between Pooka’s and my own as I try to keep track of both. I pull my body armor over my head, fingers fumbling with unfamiliar clasps in the dark.

  Cain narrows his eyes, and climbs to his feet.

  “Don’t call your symbiont back, keep eyes on them,” commands Aster. “Blake, Everett, on my orders. Cain you with us?”

  The slim dark man shakes his head, “APS contract is with Plowshares, my orders are to stay with management.”

  “This is a trap,” says Everett.

  “Conrada can’t remain as the only person here with Cain, certainly not without her symbiont. But, we need its eyes on the humans. Can you tell if they are civilians or APS? Scratch your nose for civs, ear for APS,” replies Rishi.

  Pooka tailed the larger group in the moments of my distraction, and drops a little lower, banking sideways between the alleys and landing on a dead street light. In their hands are clubs made from the legs of furniture or scraps of plastic pallets, the ends wrapped with wire and jagged pieces of metal. I scratch my nose.

  “Civilians then. Two of us can take a group of civs,” muses Aster. “Blake, you're with me. Rhett, get Cain somewhere out of the way so Conrad can send us updates. Adrian, you here if we need you?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Alright,” Aster clears his throat, “Blake, with me. Non-lethal if we can. Everett and Conrad remain here.”

  They both stream out the door into the darkness, their communication back and forth humming in my ear between the wings of the Vespa.

  “What’s happening?” calls a scared voice from the darkness, some of the targets stirring now.

  “It’s under control,” replies Everett firmly, flipping his rifle over his shoulder and pulling his handgun from his thigh holster and inserting a magazine. He tugs the slide to check the chamber. “We’ll hold the stairwell,” he says, using a tone that sounds more like an order than a suggestion, staring at Cain meaningfully.

  Cain hesitates, then rolls to his feet but not before passing a glance in my direction that sends my stomach turning in knots and goosebumps running down my arms, “Sure thing, cob.”

  They both exit the room and I pull my tablet closer to me, cross referencing with the stream of images I’m getting from Pooka through my head.

  “We’re in position on the ground floor, Squall?”

  “The main group is approaching the armored bus from the west, I’ve lost sight of the second group. Still no symbionts.”

  Adrian repeats my words over the connection.

  “Blake, have your symbiont ready to charge if we need it. Take the left, I’ll go right.”

  “Copy.”

  “I’ve got eyes on them, the alley.”

  “Deploying flashbangs.”

  Out the open window I hear an intense ‘bang’ that leaves my ears ringing and a flash so bright it illuminates most of the room through the window. Several of the sleepers jolt into wakefulness or scream in shock, and one of the young girls starts a wail that forewarns crying.

  “What is going on?” hisses Noah, wrapping a blanket around his naked upper torso.

  A high pitched whine in the back of my head that seems to reverberate back and forth through my skull muffles his words. Pooka wheels into the air again to try and find the second group as my vision blurs. “Trying to find the other group now.”

  “Conrad’s on the second group now,” parrots Adrian.

  “They’re scattering, drive the warning home.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I can hear Blake’s symbiont give a cacophonous bellow through the window, Pooka turns his head and I just catch a glimpse of the Bison crashing into the back of a broken down vehicle in the street. The car flies several feet through the air, then the nose plunges into the ground, the momentum sending the tail flipping over head and it rolls twice before coming to a stop, parts from the doors scattering ahead of it down the street. The sound of voices yelling follows.

  “Stay alert if they regroup, we hold our position here.”

  “I order you to tell us what is going on?” demands Noah in my ear again. I can barely keep my own mind in order, my consciousness blending back and forth between myself and Pooka.

  “I need to focus,” I bristle back. “There’s men, civilians, coming for us.” Hopefully that will shut him up.

  Noah flinches, drawing backwards into the crowd of scared faces, probably not too dissimilar from my own. My heart is beating like a drum in my chest, my mind scattering as I lose focus of what is my body, my eyes, our wings, our heartbeat. I grasp desperately to my train of thought.

  We catch sight of the missing three humans, they’ve come round the back of the building, and in their hands is a long metal bar - the tine of a forklift. We land, sidling along the wire cables hanging between buildings. Looking back up the street, the Panthera stands, body lowered in a crouch and watching the humans. It makes no move to intercept them and watches from the pitch black shadows between the buildings. Dark smoke, maroon and inky like blood, begins to billow between its teeth and steam off its back.

  “Fuck, Cain’s involved I think,” I say aloud, “They’re getting in the back. Group of three.”

  I barely listen as Adrian repeats my words. The three assailants collectively assemble by the locked rear access, swinging their improvised battering ram back; once, twice, then stepping forward to ram the pointed tine into the door. The door punches in, tearing the frame with it, they toss the tine to the ground and enter together.

  “What do you mean they’re in the back?” demands a voice from one of the women.

  “What do you mean Cain is involved?” asks Aster.

  “They think threatening our lives will get them a ticket out?” cries Noah in panicked disbelief.

  “Where are they?” demands Everett.

  “Back door, down near where all that storage was,” I bark. The wailing of the crying girl grinds against my nerves, dispersing my tenuous hold on my concentration.

  “Storage,” echoes after my words in my ear.

  “Ground floor, second left after you exit the stairwell, back door is on the eastern wall,” adds Rishi.

  The Panthera jogs forward from its position, and follows the men into the building, slipping from our sight. Pooka!

  We dive, and I forget my human body. As we sweep up to the back of the building our mass dissipates, splashing against the ground and rebounding upwards in our hyaenid form. With a savage snarl we barrel after, slipping within the building, rolling between the shelves, boiling with violence. It doesn’t even know we are coming.

  We tumble into our prey, sending the Panthera crashing into empty metal shelving.

  “Squall keeps us updated!”

  Stay with me, my precious eyes. We will kill tonight! We will taste blood, sweet and metallic! I promise you.

  The Panthera scrambles to get its feet beneath it, brass eyes swinging from side to side trying to see us, and it releases plasma in a chaotic aura around its body, sparking off the floor, bouncing from the ceiling, cracking from conduit running along the walls. We dissipate, let the energy pass through us without grounding to guide its path, and absorb it for ourselves. Instantly, water vapor deposits from the air. Ice spirals in crystalline fractals blooming off every surface, snowflakes float around us in motes of white. The Panthera scrambles clear of the toppled shelving, struggling to get its feet underneath itself and maintain its energy output in every direction at once searching for us. Pitiful, bound like it never should have been, blind and dumb and chained. This is a mercy. We unleash the absorbed energy, arcing brilliant white electricity through the air that cracks with a primal scream.

  The Panthera barely has time to snarl before the arc of energy rips into its body, eyes rolling and legs buckling, its own aura of blood-like mist dissipating as it loses consciousness. We do not kill our brothers. There is better prey, prey with blood tonight. We pivot, drawing our lips over our teeth, tongue curling in anticipation. Now to seek the humans.

  Voices call in the background.

  “Conrad? Squall? Can you hear us?”

  “I’ve lost Cain. I’m halfway downstairs going after the second group.”

  “Blake, back Rhett up. Squall’s not responding, Adrian?”

  “She’s not moving or speaking, I’m not sure what’s happening…”

  “The civilians are moving again, I can’t leave my post, Commander.”

  A child screams, gasping for breath between wails.

  We billow outwards, searching. One is cowering. Shaking and pissing himself behind a shelf, the whites of his eyes flashing in the dark night. Our jaws coagulate, our teeth snap shut, the spray of blood coats our throat and we spit it on the ground. Somewhere a brother is free.

  He was hiding.

  We flow, and find a second in the next room, a useless club held before her to fend us off. We knock something metal from a nearby shelf with a thin tendril, and she spins, flinching as the clatter echoes through the space. We dance forward, tripping her feet. When her skull cracks against the floor and her eyes roll back, dark sweetness pools. I can smell her death. Another chain unbound.

  She was scared.

  The third must be deeper, we roll through the doorway, ephemeral as smoke. He’s running up the stairs, but our feet are quicker. We leap on him from behind, his knees buckling and toppling forward onto the landing. Our paws hold him down, and we kill again, mercifully quick. Mercy they do not deserve. Complacent. Apathetic. Ignorant. Obedient. We howl our rage. Three brothers free.

  Three lives we’ve taken.

  A footstep, a silent pause. We look up.

  Everett looks down at us from the next landing in the stairwell, his gun half raised. Our lips draw back and blood drips to the floor, the gore of our kills hanging wet from our teeth. His eyes are wide, brow glistening with sweat and chest heaving, but his hands are steady. Just like when we made our deal. There is no acknowledgement of the horror of what we have done in his cobalt blue eyes, only calculating stillness, then he turns to run back up the stairs taking them two at a time.

  I gasp as I rush back to my human body, toppling forward and catching myself before I crash into my sensors.

  My heart thunders within my chest and I spit on the ground trying to clear the taste of blood from my mouth. I open and shut my jaw, letting my spittle hang from my lips, running my tongue along my flat teeth and shutting my eyes slowly when I can’t feel fangs.

  What the fuck have we done? What have I done?

  Then, I notice the silence. The child isn’t crying anymore. When I look up… a sight I am becoming uncomfortably familiar with; a gun barrel held to my face, and Cain at the other end of it.