His missing foot hurt. He could feel it curling in, the toes and heel reaching for each other until the bones and tendons ached. It wasn’t true. It was just a phantom produced by nerves that were still confused by being severed. If he stood, put his weight on his missing leg, it would work just fine, even if internally he felt like he’d be walking with one foot on point like a ballerina. Just because you could feel something, that didn’t mean it was there. He thought about going to the medical bay, tracking down which nerves were misfiring, if he could. The suit could probably intervene, but something about the pain felt right. Felt genuine. He let himself hurt because it was better than numb.

  The time would come, he knew, that he’d be reassigned and Piotr and Gleaner would part ways with him too. His old connections from before the service were probably dead by now. Mina was. His parents were. In a fundamental way, he’d already won, giving the people he cared about the dignity of a death by natural causes rather than aliens raining fire from the sky. It felt like a betrayal of those people that the victory felt hollow just because his friends were leaving.

  He wondered what it would be like, getting a beer with Ross in some bar on Cinnibas or New Cannat, open air against their faces. He imagined Ross reaching across the table and touching his hand, and the idea sent a tingle through his body that far more pornographic thoughts wouldn’t have. He imagined it would be like rising from the dead, sucking in first breaths like a newborn. A future washed over him. Victory. Peace. Or if not those, at least a passing of the baton. Some other soldier in their suit, aging slowly while Kirin took his turn to gray and wither and die.

  Three hours later, the suit made a low, purring chime in his ear. Gleaner and Noor and Ross vanished from the list. Michah, Santos, and Smith appeared. The new ones began muted, as was custom. For all that the livesuits made them a single organism, there were some traditions that survived. Meeting someone in person was an ancient artifact, as anachronistic as Latin on a diploma. Kirin pulled up a map. The new three were in a corridor on the docks, moving through the station from the dropship that had been their home to the one that was. He imagined Noor and Ross and Corval passing them somewhere along the way. He could have requested location data on his old teammates and seen it happen, but he didn’t.

  Twenty minutes later, three people walked into the common room. Kirin and Gleaner and Piotr were there to meet them. Two of the new soldiers were tall and broad shouldered, almost indistinguishable except that one of their suits had an odd olive cast to it that Kirin hadn’t seen before. The third was smaller, slighter. Kirin stepped forward, introduced Gleaner and Piotr. The smallest of the three new ones returned the salute. When she spoke, she had a lilting accent. Chella Smith, Eric Santos, Dawid Michah.

  “Come on,” Gleaner said. “I’ll show you your pods.”

  The four left, leaving Kirin and Piotr behind. Kirin switched to a private channel. “Those two look like halves of a wall. Santos and Michah? March those two across a field, we can take cover behind them.”

  THEY SEEM LIKE GOOD PEOPLE SO FAR. I THINK THEY’RE GOING TO FIT RIGHT IN.

  “Yeah,” Kirin said. “I hope so.”

  Later that night, a news drop arrived from some ship that hadn’t been too long in the brane space. It was some of the newest information Kirin had seen, with almost no echoes of old battles being reported as if they’d just happened. The enemy had appeared between Jepha and its sun, the first time enemy ships had attacked from sunward. The planet was a loss. A plague on New Cannat was being studied to determine whether it was natural or a bioweapon snuck into the human population. A researcher from a Control black site had been arrested, accused of sabotage, and jailed. Something he’d seen in the government labs had troubled his conscience more than the prospect of death at the enemy’s hands. If he’d said what it was, the military censor had redacted it.

  Kirin tried to divine from the news whether they were winning the war or losing it. He might just as well have swirled tea leaves and looked for patterns there.

  The olive-tinted one of the large pair was in the gym staring at the resistance equipment like he wished he still needed it. Santos, Kirin’s suit told him.

  Santos turned as Kirin entered and nodded to him. The voice in Kirin’s ear was oddly soft. “I thought I’d miss sex the most. Turns out I can barely remember what fucking was like, but I remember exactly what a post-workout ache felt like. Pretty fucked up, right?”

  “I miss cigars, so who knows?” Kirin said. “Santos, right? I think we have someone in common.”

  There was a pause. The big man’s helmet shifted as he tilted his head. The faceplate was opaque—blue and silver. Kirin wondered what expression was behind it. Mistrust or curiosity or sorrow. “Do we? Who’s that?”

  “Estebán Corval. He had the bunk Smith took before you three got here. He said you went through induction together.”

  Santos nodded. “Corval. Yeah. I remember him. I… I liked him.” He paused, then nodded again like he was agreeing with himself. “Wow, that was a long time ago.”

  “How much action have you seen?” Kirin asked.

  Santos shrugged. “Two dozen drops. Something like that. A couple of them were… hard. You?”

  “Coming up on thirty.”

  “Damn.”

  They stood for a moment, then Santos turned back to the weights and resistance bands hanging from the bulkhead. Kirin crossed his arms. He’s funny as hell, but he will talk nonstop. “Hey, brother. Don’t take this wrong, but are you sure Corval had that right? Maybe he was thinking of some other Eric Santos.”

  Santos paused. “No. Corval. Had red hair and… freckles, right?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw his face.”

  “Right, right. You wouldn’t have, would you? No, I remember him. I liked him. He laughed at my jokes.” Santos picked up a dumbbell like he intended to do some irrelevant curls with it. Kirin watched him for a moment, then left. Smith and Gleaner were in the common area, gesturing with their hands as they talked on a private channel. Piotr and Michah were in the galley, playing a game of backgammon. A stab of frustration came, apparently from nowhere. Or maybe it was grief. He couldn’t think why, but he wanted to take his helmet off. It felt smothering. He wanted to drink a cup of coffee with his actual mouth. He wanted to shower and feel water against his skin. A hundred memories of eating with his family, of breathing fresh air, of touching another human being and being touched flooded into him, and he felt like he’d been buried alive. He was suffocating.

  The suit noticed his distress. A moment later, euphorics slid into his bloodstream. A warmth bloomed in his gut like he’d just drunk a glass of wine. The past retreated into the past, and he was back again. Everything was fine, except he maybe needed a little nap. It was just the gears grinding a little bit. It happened whenever there was a change to the team. Nothing to worry about.

  His missing foot bent in against itself. It ached.

  “They’re dead,” Noor shouted.

  “We’re not,” Kirin snapped. “So move, and we’ll cover your advance.”

  For a moment, they were silent and still. Corval and Gleaner acknowledged, and then Noor half a heartbeat later.

  Moving carefully, they advanced toward the target. On the horizon, something bright happened. Half a minute later, a rumble deep as thunder shook the ground. The suits didn’t throw out a warning, so Kirin decided it was a victory for their side, whatever it had been. High above them, the sky began to glitter. The battle had spread to orbit and beyond. Hundreds or thousands of people were dying in among the sparks and flashes. He could only hope it was more of the enemy than of them. The prison tower rose before them.

  “Group two, move east. Let’s get some crossfire set up.”

  On a private text channel, Corval said I’M ALL RIGHT. I FREAKED OUT A LITTLE. I’M BACK.

  Kirin typed YOU’RE IN COMMAND. But Corval and Gleaner slid east the way Kirin had ordered without comment. The prison wall was a mesh of wire anchored on steel beams that rose from the ground like fingers. The tower—the objective—was poured concrete, harsh and gray. The suit marked three entrances and a gun turret at the top that was hidden behind a screen. The sensor arrays were picking up motion on the other side of the walls, but not clearly enough to locate specific targets. Kirin checked his ammunition for the sixth time. His jaw ached. His impulse was to rush in, storm the place, and take control of the prison before any more of the inmates could be executed. If they’d been at full strength, maybe they would have. As it was, the right thing was to draw the turret’s fire, then drop an incendiary on it once the screen was down. When the fire started, they could mark the exits and pick off anything that tried to escape. Anything they didn’t shoot could burn.

  He waited to see what Corval chose.

  “Eyes on the turret,” Corval said. His voice was calmer now, focused. The horror and the trauma were still there, but he’d swallowed them like they all had. “We need to take it out.”

  Piotr dropped I’LL DRAW ITS FIRE ON YOUR ORDER into the text channel. Kirin almost objected. Piotr had just taken a massive blow to the head and neck. There was a good chance it had affected his inner ear. Sending the soldier with bad balance into the line of fire seemed like a terrible choice. He didn’t speak up. Piotr had volunteered. This wasn’t his call.

  Corval took a deep breath, the hiss of air audible in all of their ears. “Go.”

  Piotr sprang up, sprinting. His gait was strange and loping, but he didn’t fall. The turret caught sight of him, opened its screen wide enough to let the rounds pass through. The target was no more than six centimeters across, but the micromissiles that Corval launched were smart. They burned across the gap to the tower, sticking close to the ground, shaking the weeds and grasses as they passed like rabbits startled by the sound of violence. When they reached the tower they shifted to full burn, the fire of their propellant drawing a line as bright and sudden as lightning. The turret bloomed in fire. By the book.

  Kirin lined up on the entrances, ready, waiting, surprised by the bloodthirst and anger rising in his chest but pleased by them.

  “Permission to fuck these fuckers all the way up,” he said.

  “Granted,” Corval said. “Spread out, target the exits, and kill whatever comes out.”

  Kirin lay on the ground. He imagined the cool of the dirt conducting heat away from his body, but he didn’t really feel it, not through the livesuit. He shifted his aim between two of the exits, sweeping back and forth in a gentle rhythm, waiting. When an alien burst out of the eastern door, his rifle purred against him. The thing was one of the snakelike things—pale and shivering on bone-knife legs. The explosive rounds opened its back, tumbling it onto the ground as two more boiled out. The smoke rising from the tower was thick, black, and greasy. He wondered what it smelled like. Tiny sparks rose up from the fire, flaring and fading to gray. The suit tagged them as enemies, but low to no threat. The movement on the far side of the walls increased, frantic, panicked.

  “Get ready for it,” Noor said. Not an order, just anticipation. Kirin was ready.

  When they came, they came in a rush. The snake-things, but also long-limbed, squat-bodied things covered in a thin gray fur that exploded in white pus-like mucus when they died. A wide, lumbering thing with a dozen eyes set in what Kirin would have called its chest. An eight-legged thing that looked like a lizard with its scales scrubbed away. Monsters, demons, aliens. The term didn’t matter. They all meant enemy.

  Kirin watched them fall. Noor fired more micromissiles into the tower, and the detonation felt like the planet tapping Kirin’s chest. The movement inside the tower had stopped. Kirin’s livesuit updated, letting Control know that their target had been eliminated. You asked for it to die, and we killed it. Kirin waited to hear Simeon’s next order, then remembered why he wouldn’t. He rested his head on the ground.

  “Report,” Corval said. He sounded exhausted.

  “Something poked a hole in my ribs,” Noor said. “Suit’s patching me up. Just give me a second.”

  “Is it bad?” Gleaner asked.

  “I’ll live,” Noor answered through what sounded like clenched teeth.

  “I took some shrapnel through the thigh,” Kirin said. “Still good to go, though.”

  THAT WAS ROUGH, BUT AT LEAST WE WON, Piotr texted. Kirin closed his eyes and tried to feel the victory. He even did, a little bit.

  His suit chimed, and Corval said “Acknowledge change of target.”

  Kirin’s eyes clicked open. The new mission was in red. Prisoner holding pens. Extremely urgent. The map showed it as a glowing rectangle, only a few hundred meters past the prison fence. “Acknowledged,” he said, a moment after Gleaner and Noor did and a moment before Piotr dropped his reply into the text channel.

  “Ammunition?” Corval asked as they stood. He had access to the information, but operating procedure was that each soldier double-check.

  Piotr texted that he had 128 rounds left. Gleaner had 78. Noor was dry and had switched to her sidearm.

  “Kirin?”

  “One hundred twenty-four,” Kirin said. Out of a thousand.

  It was as low as they’d ever been on a mission. He knew what Corval was thinking. He felt the same impulse to go back for Simeon and Hamze and Jones. Three fully-loaded rifles on one hand. Extremely urgent on the other. Prisoners were dying right now.

  “Well fuck,” Corval said. “Only take kill shots if you can. Let’s make ’em count. Group one, cut a hole in that fence to the east of the tower. Group two covers. Go.”

  They got through the fence and covered the distance to their target in under two minutes. It should have been faster.

  The holding pens were in an open-air field, the perimeter secured by the same wire fencing that had marked the prison camp’s edge. Hundreds of tents were set in neat rows, their gray canvas shuddering in a wind, and each one had a bronze-colored metal loop set into the ground before it. Each metal loop had four or five people—the citizens of Lirebas system—kneeling before it, their hands secured behind their backs, their necks tethered to the rings with some kind of pale plastic too short to let them stand. They were screaming, all of them, like a chorus from hell, as four aliens moved methodically down the rows and cut their throats. A hundred at least were already still, their blood running together into a single spreading pool.

  “At will,” Corval said grimly. He didn’t need to. Noor found a gate and snapped off the locking mechanism with her hands. Piotr, Gleaner, Corval, and Kirin spilled through, guns at the ready but not firing. Not yet. Two of the aliens were the snake-things, one a smaller figure that looked like a land-born cuttlefish, and the last a two-meter-tall cylinder of metal with complications on its sides. An automaton or some kind of alien livesuit for a thing that couldn’t breathe human air.

  The metal cylinder drew a monofilament knife through a child’s neck as the other three turned toward the attack. Piotr, silent, threw himself forward as the cuttlefish thing spat out a spray of projectiles. Kirin saw one of them exit Piotr’s back, but the man didn’t pause. He reached the nearest of the snake-things as it reared up, its knifelike legs whirring. Kirin drew a bead on the cuttlefish. As Noor slammed into the same snake-thing Piotr had engaged and Corval and Gleaner tried to flank the metal alien, he forced himself to be still. He breathed in slowly, then out again. At the bottom of this breath, he fired. His rounds unzipped the alien, starting at its middle and tracking up to the top of what Kirin assumed was its head. His rifle announced that it was spent. He dropped it, balled his fists, and charged.

  Noor screamed as she wrestled sections off one of the snake-things’ body, ripping the pale alien flesh with her fingers. Gleaner had his arms around the body of the last snake, its legs flailing against him, cutting through the livesuit and into Gleaner’s back. Every slash resealed as soon as the bone-knife was gone.

  Kirin and Corval barreled into the metal thing, knocking it to its side. Kirin’s helmet informed him that it had absorbed a massive electrical discharge—more than enough to kill someone—but Kirin hadn’t felt it. Corval found a niche he could press the barrel of his sidearm into, and he emptied his clip. The metal thing stopped moving.

  “I’m dry,” he said.

  I HAVE 37 LEFT. CATCH THIS, Piotr sent, but he threw wide, and Kirin didn’t have the strength to scramble after the clip. He ached and was numb at the same time. The world swam. On his helmet’s display, alerts were flowing, telling him how many drugs the suit had pumped into him and how little remained before it would need to be serviced. He’d been cut open along his torso on the left side. The monofilament blade had gone almost to the bone of his hip. He hadn’t felt it happen, and he didn’t feel it now. He took the knowledge of his injury on faith, and forgot it. The wind shook the canvas tents. Some kind of vapor or steam rose from the metal figure, but the suit didn’t identify it as a threat. High above them—in orbit or beyond it—something flared bright as a second sun, faded to red, and vanished.

  Something popped up in his display, and it took a few seconds to focus on it. Corval had informed Control that the mission objective had been secured, but that they were low on supplies. A moment later, Control replied with the order to hold position until reinforcements came. The ETA was ten minutes, and there was, Control said, no sign of local resistance. It was over. Their part was over. He hoped their part was over.

  He didn’t recognize the sound when it came. He thought it was more screaming. Someone had freed some of the prisoners from their loops, and the freed had rushed to unlock the ones still captive. A hundred people stood. Some came and kicked the corpses of their oppressors. Some were weeping, but most were dry-eyed.

  They were cheering.

  A third of the camp was dead clay and thickening blood, and they were cheering.

 

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