Babylon Black Chapter 15

The Hour of Our Deaths

Yuri was alone.

Sitting at the captured workstation, he beheld his temporary empire. The scent of spent powder and fresh soap tickled his throat and invaded his lungs. Blood pooled and thickened on the floor. On the cameras, he watched the assaulters at work.

C8 was now secure. The night shift workers had been rounded up, hog-tied, and dumped in a corner. There were five of them in the building. The last two had been hiding in the toilets on the third floor. A thorough pat-down uncovered more data port keys.

Operators roamed the data halls on the upper floors, searching for the mainframes, unlocking and compromising every server they found. Zen had anchored himself on the sixth floor. Right before leaving the security office, he had unlocked the main computer, allowing Yuri to work the systems. Now he had hooked up his laptop to the mainframe and was monitoring something on the screen, punctuating his vigil with bouts of furious typing.

As the malware spread through the servers, the other teams carried out their tasks. The Angels had moved indoors, where they would find superior cover and concealment from above. Under the Angels’ watchful gaze, Will and his Red Raven counterpart prepared the battlespace. Hustling from corner to corner, point to point, they dropped off prepared packages. Though the clock was ticking, they spent a few extra moments to conceal each package from casual view.

Upstairs, George and James oversaw operations. They detailed an Angel to guard the prisoners. They identified and prepared defensive positions. They monitored the teams’ progress. Terse chatter filled the inter-team frequency as the men delivered updates.

Yuri saw all, heard all, and remained silent.

The New Gods were coming. It was only a matter of time. The Void Collective, with their space-warping powers, would arrive first. Once they had gathered their manpower and firepower, they would arrive in force and make the first probe. The Singularity Network would join them shortly with a contingent of heavily armed and armored TBCs.

It was the logical strategy. The Void Collective had a single, overarching weakness: they relied far too heavily on their teleportation abilities. Strip that from them, and they weren’t much more dangerous than a common human. It was how Yuri had prevailed in that crazed firefight earlier. A TBC in full kit was a walking tank. The TBCs would go in first to soak in the bullets and identify strongpoints, then send in the VC commandos to flank and destroy them.

For every problem, there was a solution. See the problem clearly and the solution comes naturally. This was no different. The only question was whether they had anticipated the problem correctly, and whether the solution they had prepared was sufficient.

Of course not, Yuri knew. The enemy always had a vote. Whatever they threw at them, they had to improvise, adapt and overcome. It was why bots like the Angels would never dominate warfare. They had neither intelligence nor creativity. They were tools.

The operators were men.

“Capo to all elements, Spider reports a demi-platoon of armed subjects warping in two blocks away from the AO,” Gregory radioed. “They’re patrolling towards your location from all directions.”

Here we go, Yuri thought.

“Roger that, Capo. Break. Boomer, Panther, pack it in. Fall back now.”

“Acknowledged,” Will called.

The security cameras picked up two men running for the main gate, coilguns cradled to their chest. Ten steps from the gate, rifle fire cracked out down the street.

“Contact,” Panther said languidly.

The operators burst through the gate. Inside the lobby, they dropped off a massive package. Yuri sat by the workstation, navigated the menus, and clicked away.

The gates slid shut. Security bollards popped up from the ground. Bolts slammed home. Lights clicked off. The elevators shut down.

Will and Panther got up, rushed down empty hallways and headed up the emergency stairs.

“Samurai, Mason. Angels have eyes on bad guys,” Gregory said. “Every gun is on target.”

“Green light,” Yuri replied.

Six coilguns screamed as one. A ragged fusillade responded. The coilguns continued screeching, sending single precision-aimed flechettes downrange.

“Samurai, Capo. You took down about half of the first wave. There’s eight of them left, four buddy teams. They’re forming a cordon one block around the AO.”

That was a better outcome than he’d hoped.

“Any response from BPD?” Yuri asked.

“Stand by… BPD Dispatch just received a Code 0 for your AO. Other law enforcement units will likely receive that message shortly.”

Code 0 was not written in any policy manual, but everybody knew what it meant: the New Gods had ordered the cops to stay away.

“They still have the juice for that?” Mason wondered.

“It’s unclear whether federal LE will engage the New Gods, even at this point. I don’t think anybody wants to know the answer to that.”

Yuri shook his head. For two years, the Temple Commission had offered a glimmer of hope. Special Counsel Temple was one of the last incorruptible men in the government, and he had launched a crusade against the pawns of the New Gods. But he’d been too successful. Now the Commission had officially wrapped up and Temple had vanished from the limelight. Yuri could only pray that it meant Temple was in hiding. The rest of the Federal government had reverted to its old ways—including its policy of maintaining the balance of power between the New Gods.

“ZT, Samurai. SITREP?”

“Progress is smooth. About thirty percent of the servers have been infected. I’m downloading what data I can salvage before the lights go out. But… it looks like the IPS is kicking in.”

An intrusion protection system didn’t just detect threats. It also had the ability to respond to them.

“What’s it doing?”

“The Sinners and the Victor Charlie have disconnected the Concord servers from their networks. They must have done it the moment they knew we’d taken the site. Now the local IPS is attempting to quarantine infected servers. I’m trying to shut down the security suite.”

“Will this affect operations?”

“Nope. We have physical access to the servers. We can still upload the payload to the remaining servers, or just wreck them.”

“Is there anything else we can do?”

“I… Wait. Yes. I need the Swordfish.”

George cut in.

“ZT, Mason. I’m on it.”

The assaulters had repositioned the gravtrucks around the back of C8, using the building as cover. Red Raven’s gravtruck shot into the air. On the cameras, Yuri watched George sprint down hallways and up the stairs, moving to rendezvous with the vehicle.

“Capo, Samurai. Two SkyBears incoming from the south. They’re running silent, no transponder codes. ETA one minute.”

Here we go, Yuri thought, and switched to the general channel.

“All Victor elements, stand to, stand to. Two SkyBears coming from the south. Possible TBCs inbound. One minute out. All available shooters, reorient towards Side One.”

The operators dropped everything and ran. Some headed for defensive positions. Others raced for the nearest window. All of them oriented towards the main gate. The Angels stayed put, covering their assigned sectors.

Red Raven’s gravtruck halted at the edge of the roof. Between the air conditioning units and the solar panels, there was no room to land the vehicle. George stepped out into the roof, popped into the back of the truck, grabbed the Swordfish, and ran back down. The gravtruck descended as well, faster than the human could run, heading back to the parking lots.

Back inside the sixth floor data hall, George dumped the Swordfish next to Zen, then rejoined his men. Zen was the only man not moving. He had more important things to do.

As for Yuri, he typed away on the computer, trying to reorient the external cameras. No go. They only looked down. They couldn’t see the incoming SkyBears.

“Samurai, Mason. We have eyes on the SkyBears. They’re coming in hard and fast.”

SkyBears were heavily-armored gravtrucks designed for military and law enforcement. They were proof against almost all man-portable small arm out there.

Almost.

“Engage with PBWs.”

Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The passage of the high-energy beams and their attendant radiation temporarily washed out some of the cameras.

“Threats eliminated,” Mason reported.

“Copy. Capo, visual assessment of the SkyBears?”

“They’re slagged. No survivors.”

The Sinners had a huge amount of resources, sure, but they were not infinite. How many more lives and assets could they afford to spend to retake C8?

More than the team had the capacity to take, Yuri knew.

“ZT, update?”

“Sixty-five percent. The IPS is becoming more aggressive. It’s trying to pre-emptively quarantine entire servers to save the rest.”

“What’s with the Swordfish?”

“Insurance.”

ZT had hooked up the laptop and the Swordfish. He divided his attention between them, staring at the screen for one moment, fiddling with the Swordfish the next. Yuri had no idea what he was planning to do with the Swordfish, but he seemed to have an idea.

“Capo, Samurai. The neighborhood cameras have been blacked out. We don’t have eyes on the area anymore.”

Yuri exhaled sharply. Closing his eyes, he saw a silver crucifix above a sea of glass. Now, more than ever, he needed to maintain his sanctified state, to extend that protection to the entire area of operations.

“Can Spider fix the cameras?” Yuri asked.

“He’s busy discussing that with ZT and the cadre. I’m also diverting a PSB drone to the area. ETA five minutes.”

“We don’t have that long.”

“We’ll—”

Explosions cut him off. The building shook. Cameras shorted out. Monitors displayed error messages.

“Victor elements, what happened?” Yuri demanded.

“Kamikaze drones,” George reported. “The Angels caught sight of them right before detonation. I think the drones hit the PBW positions.”

Yuri released the urge to utter a blasphemy.

“Boomer, Panther, report!”

Will coughed into the mic.

“I’m… I’m good.”

“Panther is okay.”

Yuri exhaled again, this time in relief. Once it fired, the PBW would tell the whole world where the shooter was. During planning, the team had accounted for that, drilling the gunners to run as soon as their targets were down.

“All shooters, pull back from the windows. Assume more kamikazes are incoming,” Yuri said.

“The Angels can engage drones with direct fire from long range. We should keep them on station,” George said.

“Good call. Give them the green light to fire on drones at will.”

Though the Angels had high-end sensors and targeting software, they would not fire without authorization from a human. It was a final ethical safeguard. But kamikaze drones were small and light and fast. There wouldn’t be time for a human to give the green light every time.

The kamikazes weren’t modified commercial-grade devices. The Swordfish would have jammed them if they were. They were military-grade, with jamming-resistant communications. Knowing the Sinners and the Void, they would be autonomous hunter-killers, without needing a man in the loop to make the kill decision, or even to direct them. Once they were deployed, the only way to stop them would be to destroy them.

This was going to suck.

Loud buzzing filled the skies, like a swarm of angry robotic hornets. Yuri couldn’t see them, only hear on the external audio pickups. They were invisible, but they were incoming, and there was no stopping them. Cold fear dripped into his heart.

The divine connection wavered.

The room darkened. The scent of death flooded his nostrils. His entire being quivered. His perception shrank. At the edges of his awareness, malice stalked the shadows.

He breathed in. Out. In. Focused.

“God, protect us now in this moment of crisis.”

The flame strengthened. The light returned.

The coilguns fired.

Metal screamed. Warheads detonated. Operators chattered, urging each other to find cover, to stay away from windows, to close the doors. The noise of war drowned out the softening metallic din.

A blast reverberated in the building. A second, a third, and then a general barrage. Dark insectile shapes fitted with quadrotors flashed past the interior cameras, then disappeared in flashes of white. Entire camera banks blacked out.

Yuri turned to the door, coilgun ready, prepared to face the inevitable.

But there was only silence.

“Victor elements, SITREP,” Yuri said.

Long seconds ticked past.

“Black Watch, all up,” James said.

“Red Raven is good to go. But we’ve lost most of the Angels. The only one left is the one guarding the detainees.”

“I think that’s the last of the kamikazes, but stay on guard. Return to the windows.”

“Victor elements, Capo. We have a PSB drone overhead. Be advised, you have a company of infantry swarming in on your location. Four SkyBears coming in from all sides. Looks like a coordinated assault.”

This was it. The big one.

The first wave uncovered the defenders’ strongpoints and reveal their heavy weapons and capabilities, albeit as great cost. The Void cared not a whit about its slave army, and would gladly throw as many bodies into the meatgrinder as it took to get the job done. The Singularity Network weren’t as callous. The two Skybears the enemy sent earlier might have been remotely-piloted decoys, either empty or packed with expendable drones. They’d sent a large enough force to threaten the teams and provoke a response, while keeping the rest of their troops in reserve.

The drone swarm had shattered the strongpoints and softened up the defenses. Now the shooters were closing in for the kill.

But Yuri still had one last card left to play.

“Red Raven, Black Watch, strongpoint the sixth floor. Move the gravtrucks up to the roof. Do not engage until I say so. Break. ZT, progress?”

“Ninety percent complete. The security suite is offline and Project Concord has been re-connected to the VC and Sinner main nets.”

“Roger. Pack up the instant it’s done.”

On the surviving cameras, Yuri watched them come. The hostile SkyBears landed by every corner of the colossal building. Heavily armored troopers poured out, forming an impenetrable inner cordon. Outside, lightly-equipped VC troopers closed in, forming the outer perimeter, ready to back up their newfound allies.

The teams’ gravtrucks beat the New Gods by mere seconds. The second he had given the order, the gravtrucks lifted off the parking lot. Now they were hovering above the roof, clustered tightly together, keeping away from the edges. Away from gunfire from below. But they were still vulnerable to indirect fire or a second wave of kamikaze drones.

Yuri dug into a pouch and pulled out a remote. He extended the antenna, pressed the power button, then hit a bright red button. The screen displayed a single word.

HOT

The TBCs at the front of the building moved out. Two squads of thirteen, all of them armed with carbines and PDWs, scanning the windows above them. The VC troopers went static, securing the perimeter.

Yuri’s heart pounded in his chest. His mouth went dry. His thumb hovered over a second button.

He breathed. Centered. Watched.

The TBCs merged into a single stack, an unstoppable train of living metal and iron will, the raw expression of the might of a growing machine superintelligence. Everyone was networked to everyone else, smoothly sweeping sectors without needing signals or spoken orders, swiftly transitioning the danger zone between the armored trucks and the lobby. Together, they rushed into the lobby.

He mashed the button.

Fire and smoke consumed the lobby. The blast wave thundered through the hallways and open doorways. Outside the compound, at the corners of the perimeter wall, more concealed bombs detonated. Hidden under cars and inside trash cans, the explosives transformed metal to shrapnel, shredding the VC positions with a storm of steel.

“Attack State Red!” Yuri ordered.

On the sixth floor, the operators opened fire. Particle beams swept the exposed TBCs from above. Electromagnetic grenade launchers rained 40mm shells on the soldiers of the New Gods. Coilguns chattered, hosing down cyborgs and commandos alike with ultra-high-velocity flechettes.

Yuri ran.

He burst out the security office, lowered his fusion goggles, and charged down the hallway. The emergency stairs were dead ahead. He skidded to a halt by an opening to his left and peeked out.

He had a clean line of sight into the lobby. Through the hot, billowing smoke, he made out movement. Infrared lasers stabbed through the darkness, seeking him out.

He thumbed the coilgun down to continuous fire and sprayed down the open doorway. He fired a burst to the right of the door, saw the flechettes punch through glass and steel, then loosed a second burst to the left. The lasers fell away.

Yuri wished he still had his electromagnetic grenade launcher. He had handed it off to James instead. Rising to his feet, he sent another stream of flechettes through the door, bracing himself to—

Bullets punched through the shutters and the glass, seeking his flesh.

Yuri ran.

Bullets smashed into the walls, the floor, the ceiling. A round sang past his ear. He poured every ounce of strength he had into his legs, propelling him forward, forward, always forward.

And he was past.

He burst through the door to the emergency exit. Soft red lighting greeted him. Sucking down lungfuls of air, he reached into his thigh pocket. Out came a tactical wedge, resembling the love child of a door stop and a crampon. He jammed it firmly under the door, then stomped the foot pedal. Hardened steel spikes shot out from the underside of the wedge and bit into the concrete.

Once emplaced, the only way to remove the wedge was to destroy it. Or the door.

As Yuri rushed up the stairs, fresh chatter filled the airwaves. The operators had bought a brief reprieve, but now the surviving invaders were rallying and regrouping. Humans might have broken in the face of such a ferocious counter-ambush, but they weren’t fighting humans. They were fighting pawns. Instruments in the grasp of cold, calculating alien minds, for whom blood was mere currency.

“Samurai, ZT. We have a problem.”

On the exhale, Yuri released all expectations. With an inhale, he gathered the strength to speak.

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve been kicked from the network. Can’t log back in. The malware might have bricked the mainframe. I can’t tell if the package is continuing to propagate throughout the wider network.”

“What do you recommend?”

“I think the job is already complete. We just need to make sure of it. That’s what the Swordfish is for, but we don’t need to be physically present for that. I only need a wireless connection.”

“Then let’s get out of here. All Victor elements: Eagle, Eagle, Eagle.”

It was the codeword for airborne extraction. Just in time to escape the coming storm.

Heavy booms echoed from below. The Sinners were trying to force the door open. Yuri accelerated, sprinting up the steps two and three at a time.

When he hit the fourth floor, he heard a door swing open. Bootsteps reverberated in the tiny shaft. Armed operators leaned over the guardrail, training weapons at him.

“Blue blue blue!” Yuri yelled. “It’s Samurai!”

“Roger that. Come on up!” James called.

The assaulters formed a long train, winding up the final flights of steps to the roof. As Yuri approached, a couple of operators stepped aside to make room. Pointing his coilgun straight down, Yuri squirmed into the stack.

A high-caliber gunshot flowed into the shaft.

“Man down! Man down! Mason is hit!” an operator yelled.

Yuri bit off a curse.

“Sniper!” a second operator called. “Fall back!”

An explosion shook the stairwell. The walls reflected and amplified the blast over and over again, hammering Yuri from every direction. A sudden dizziness overcame him. Stumbling, he held out a hand to catch himself. The operators around him staggered too, latching on to everything they could find.

The echoes of heavy boots carried up the stairwell.

“Tangos on Level One!” Kayla shouted.

Leaning over the rail, she sprayed down the shaft. Metal shrieked and shattered. Concrete blew apart. The sheer violence of the sonic assault overwhelmed Yuri’s ear protection, battering his body and brain.

“Frag out!” an assaulter yelled.

The Red Raven shooter lobbed a grenade straight down the shaft. Instinctively Yuri dropped low, curling into a ball and covering his head.

A world-ending blast filled the stairwell. Behind the roar, Yuri swore he heard shrapnel ricocheting multiple times.

“Come on!” someone yelled.

A powerful hand gripped the drag handle on the back of his plate carrier, hauling him up to his feet. Head spinning, heart thumping, Yuri followed the rest of the stack. It took him a second to realize that they were going back the way they came from, back into the sixth floor.

A humongous data hall dominated the center of the floor. It was a fully walled-off room with access controls that housed the servers proper. Surrounding the data hall were smaller rooms holding the chillers, the backup batteries, a small office for administrative work, a toilet, and other such ancillary infrastructure.

“What’s the call?” James asked.

Yuri was still woozy. Shaking his head, he blinked hard, trying to reboot his brain. Then he noticed that the windows had been blasted open.

And heard a soft buzzing sound.

“Strongpoint the data hall,” Yuri said. “We make our last stand here.”

Kayla unlocked the door with a keycard. Yuri guessed it had belonged to one of the civilians downstairs. As the assaulters poured into the data hall, Yuri and a small team of operators manned the rearguard. A couple of man popped off desultory shots from the windows at distant targets, attracting a ragged fusillade of poorly-aimed fire. A third Red Raven operator wedged the stairwell door. Yuri glanced at the elevator.

It was still locked down. Good.

Then he clicked his tongue. He should have destroyed the computers in the security office before he left. He should have kept the enemy from easily reassuming control of the building.

Too late for regrets now.

Yuri was the last man through the door. As the operators fanned out to take positions, he took stock of the situation.

Row after row of servers marched down the length of the enormous hall. Strange blue lights glowed behind glass doors. Storage drives whirred away. In the middle of the hall, Zen waved him over.

“I’ve got a way out of this,” Zen said.

“What is it?” Yuri asked.

“Swordfish. The Sinners use encrypted cell networks. I can jury-rig it to disrupt their comms and maybe even their neural implants. Should give us the edge we need to break out.”

“Do it. But prioritize finishing the mission.”

“Roger. But, uh, there’s a catch.”

“Yeah?”

“The data hall is a Faraday cage. It won’t let wireless signals leak out. We need to chock the doors open.”

“How did you talk to me earlier on the radio?”

“I opened the door.”

“Oh.”

Yuri directed the team to open two doors. Just in case. At each opening he positioned the particle beam gunners. Their greatest now was a swarm of kamikaze drones. The PBWs should—should—knock out multiple drones in one shot. But he didn’t think anyone had tested the weapons under these circumstances. He placed the grenade launchers next to the PBWs to back them up, loaded with buckshot shells. Should a particle beam fail, a cloud of buck wouldn’t.

Yuri found George propped against a server, gasping for breath.

“How are you doing?” Yuri asked.

“Had the wind knocked out of me. No penetration.”

George tapped his upper chest. The plate had bulged inwards, leaving a huge dent visible even through the fabric of the plate carrier.

Two inches higher and the round would have blown through his throat and spine.

“This armor is good stuff,” George wheezed. “Think that was a Magnum round, maybe even AP.”

“Are you good to go?”

George nodded. “Just need a minute to catch my breath.”

Yuri patted George’s shoulder and got back to work.

The team continued to fortify their position. James strung a concussion grenade across an open doorway. Panther did the same at the other. Other operators wedged the closed doors. The assaulters repositioned themselves to cover the doors.

“Capo, Samurai. We’ve got snipers surrounding the AO. Can you see them?”

Gregory’s voice sounded like it came from far away, muffled and staticky.

“Rooftops are clear. Snipers must be positioned indoors in the surrounding high-rises.”

Yuri almost, almost swore.

It was one of the possibilities they had war-gamed. One of the deadliest, too. The VC could teleport snipers into the nearby buildings and take the roof under fire. The team could pop smoke and rush for the gravtrucks on the roof. Or bring the gravtrucks down to the lobby.

Risk running a gauntlet of snipers, or fight through TBCs and VC commandos—and then risk the snipers. It didn’t sound like much of a choice. Especially since their gravtrucks weren’t armored. If the snipers were running AP rounds, a single well-placed bullet could shoot them out of the sky.

But why hadn’t the snipers disabled the gravtrucks?

To give the team a way out.

If the operators felt trapped, they might decide to break through the forces converging on their location. No matter how it turned out, it would inflict a terrible cost on the assaulting force. The VC wouldn’t have cared. The Sinners would.

A lingering trace of human sentiment.

One that the team could use against them.

“A second wave of assaulters have arrived,” Gregory continued. “The Sinner security element is rushing the building. A platoon of VC commandos just teleported into the outer perimeter. They’re setting up and deploying kamikaze drones.”

“Capo, any way to cancel the Code 0?”

“What are you planning?”

“The New Gods don’t want a war with the Feds. If they show up, they’ll probably retreat.”

“Then the Feds will take everyone into custody.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“They take you, I can’t guarantee I can pull you out again. They could just throw you into the Box and leave you to rot forever.”

Yuri shuddered. The Box was an ultramax prison designed for holding Elect. Or, in his case, rogue operators. His stay there was the most singularly unpleasant experience of his life, exceeding even SERE School.

“We just need to buy enough time to complete the mission. Everything else is secondary.”

“Even extraction?”

“Even that.”

A moment’s pause.

A sigh.

“Good luck,” Gregory said.

A soft sizzling sound filled the hall. Electricity crackled. Some overhead lights went dark.

“What was that?” George asked.

Liquid burst from an unseen pipe. Metal shrieked. Wet spots appeared in the ceiling.

“Contact high! They’re coming through the roof!” Yuri yelled.

And there was a spot right above his head.

Yuri sprinted for the nearest server. The sizzling sound grew louder, clearer, closer. All at once the sound vanished. Then came a heavy whooshing sound, and a wet, sickening THUMP.

Yuri spun around.

A towering, quivering, jelly-like mass loomed over him. Dark as pitch, its surface shone with an oily sheen. Cold motes of strange light danced and pulsed from deep within its gelatinous bulk. Polyps bubbled and blossomed across its mass, sprouting into boneless limbs, melting into nothingness, reforming into new appendages. Glowing red slits opened and closed between the ever-shifting masses, flowing as they flowed, blinking like eyes, or breathing like nostrils. A riot of tendrils burst from its head to form a lunatic crown. The arms passed into and through each other, squirming through realms and dimensions impossible for the eye to see, a fractal tree growing branches that grew more branches that grew even more branches, so many of them enmeshed so tightly together it was impossible to count them all. The very sight of that thing scrambled his guts and churned his brain.

It was a Voidspawn.

And there was a dozen of them, and more, melting through the roof to fall amidst the operators.

Yuri had failed. He hadn’t realized it, but he’d let the divine connection slip through his grasp once again. Raising his coilgun, he drew in a deep breath.

“AUM!”

The Word brought light to all it touched. Reality reorganized itself, reasserting its solidity in the face of the Void.

Great mouths opened in the bodies of the Voidspawn, giving tongue to blood-curdling cries. The voices were distorted, but they were unmistakably human, the voices of men and women and children, blended together in a chorus of damnation.

Yuri fired.

Flechettes stitched across the body of the nearest Voidspawn, bursting into great sprays of high-velocity fragments. Great gouts of oily matter and pale fluid exploded from the exit wounds. The abomination screamed again, lurching towards Yuri. He walked fire up and across its body, ripping it nearly in half.

It flopped over and dissolved, sinking into a pool of rapidly-evaporating goo.

Another Voidspawn oozed towards him. But right behind it was another shooter, gunning down an incoming bulk. Yuri shuffled to his right, clearing his backstop. It whipped an enormous arm at his face. Yuri ducked under it, then pointed at its center mass and held down the trigger.

The coilgun went rock and roll, stitching up and to the right. Still screaming, the thing jiggled and jerked under the impact of so many rounds, and split apart. Both halves swiftly deliquesced and went silent.

A third Voidspawn appeared to Yuri’s left. He raised the weapon to his shoulder and—

Arms lashed out at Yuri. Instinctively he jerked back and away. The tendrils wrapped around the forend of the coilgun and melted through.

Suddenly Yuri found himself holding two pieces of a coilgun. A third part clattered uselessly on the floor.

He tossed the broken parts at the creature, one after the other. The thing caught them in its horrific arms and squeezed, erasing them from existence. Then it rolled towards him, arms reaching out for him. Yuri’s hands dropped to his left hip, to his o-tanto.

“YAHWEH!”

The creature shivered, frozen for a single, fatal, moment.

Yuri blurred.

One hand seized the handle of his o-tanto, the other grabbed the sheath. With a twist of his hips, he freed the short sword, carrying it through a clean arc. Eldritch matter parted under the razor edge. A flurry of arms flopped to the ground.

He stepped in and swung again.

The blade melted through the soft, slippery bulk. As it cut, it seemed to glow a blazing white, a white purer than any dye ever conceived by human hands. It passed clean through the other side of the monster.

And the Voidspawn fell apart.

Behind it, he saw a Voidspawn englobe the lone surviving Angel. The robot just stared dumbly at it, at a thing so far removed from its scripts, so far removed from its ideas of reality, that it had no idea what to do. Not until the creature melted it down to slag. Yuri braced to engage it, then a string of shots lanced through the thing, ripping it apart.

“HELP!” Zen yelled.

Yuri spun around.

A Voidspawn menaced Zen. Next to it were two more ripped-up monsters, slowly dissolving. Zen released his coilgun, letting it swing from his arms, then snatched the Swordfish to his chest.

Yuri’s mind emptied.

His hands went to his waist. The o-tanto rolled into his left hand. His right went to the butt of his gun. Pivoting on his left foot, he swiveled towards the Voidspawn, presenting his handgun.

“YAHWEH!” he shouted.

And fired.

His finger worked the trigger with the liquid ease of long practice. The weapon barked and bounced, locked in place by a powerful, extended arm. A hail of bullets ripped into the Voidspawn. The thing screamed under the barrage. Zen backed up, drew his own pistol, and unloaded into it. Suddenly Yuri was aware that the Voidspawn was disintegrating, and lowered his weapon.

Zen pointed.

“Behind you!”

Spinning around, Yuri ducked.

His feet lifted off the floor for a fraction of a moment. As his body yielded to gravity, his left leg extended, his right knee folded, his torso bent at his waist, his entire body becoming the three points of a triangle, even as his short sword whirled in his left hand.

He landed on the meat and long bone of his right calf, and the sole of his left boot. His blade sheared clean through a Voidspawn in a perfectly horizontal cut. The thing howled, its arms splaying in every direction, lashing far above Yuri’s head.

Pivoting counterclockwise with liquid ease, he drew himself up to a kneeling position, o-tanto covering his upper body. He torqued around again, slashing through the Voidspawn’s body. Then he retracted the pistol to his rib cage and pumped rounds into the beast, firing and firing and firing, stopping only when it fell apart.

Gunfire thundered all around him. Yuri planted himself by the nearest server and looked out. The operators were gunning down the last of the Voidspawn. Zen was back at work, desperately flipping switches and punching keys. Looking up, Yuri saw perfectly round holes opening into dark skies.

“Papa Bravo!” Will called.

The PBW screamed. Blue-white light flashed through the hole. A chain of smaller explosions ignited, one after the other. The other PBW fired also, and again another storm of blasts followed.

“ZT!” Yuri shouted.

“Almost!” Zen replied.

Storms of gunfire passed through the halls. Will cursed loudly. Servers fell apart. Karim grabbed Will and dragged him to safety. Panther loosed another shot, then retreated behind a wall of high-velocity fire. More rounds tore through the closed doors, driving the operators down to the ground.

A furious metallic whine filled the hallways outside.

Yuri wiped his sword on the crook of his elbow, sheathed the blade, and brought his crucifix to his lips. As he reloaded his pistol, he whispered a rapid-fire prayer.

“Theotokos Virgin, rejoice, Mary full of grace, Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, for thou hast given birth to the Savior of our souls. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our deaths.”

The third line was an appendum from an ancient, reportedly almost-extinct branch of Christianity. It wasn’t part of his regular practice, but it seemed appropriate right about now.

With a bloodcurdling cry, the last of the Voidspawn disintegrated. Then the buzzing of rotors filled the data hall. Octocopter drones sailed through the doorways, each carrying a small explosive charge.

The PBWs fired again. The beams swatted a handful out of the air. Buckshot shells erupted in rapid succession, blowing down a score more. Here and there, some charges detonated. Shock waves buffeted the operators, but not shrapnel. The drones must have been armed with concussion warheads. They were too far away to harm the humans, but close enough to fellow drones to knock them down.

The surviving drones continued to close in—and more rushed through the doors.

This was it. The Sinners weren’t going to make a final assault. They weren’t going to commit more manpower. They’d just keep sending kamikazes until everyone was dead.

It didn’t matter. So long as they completed the mission, it was worth it.

The operators opened fire, a last-ditch attempt to stave off the inevitable. Coilguns barked. Particle beams flashed. Small munitions exploded. Machines shattered under the weight of fire, but for every dead drone, two more came to take its place. Swift and agile, they danced back and forth, trading time to target for increased survivability.

The STS were the finest shooters in the world. But that was a lifetime ago, when they had the means to expend thousands of rounds in live fire training every week. Red Raven might have had the funds and facilities to at least begin to approach this level of intense training, but the Black Watch couldn’t come close.

It showed.

For every round that hit, five or six missed. From the front, each drone presented a target surface about as wide as the short bar on a T-zone, the narrow strip that spanned the eyes and temples and ears. The STS routinely trained to make head shots in the chaos of close quarters battle, but it was a perishable skill, and it had been too long since the shooters had trained at that level of intensity.

Buzzing like demonic locusts, the drones formed into black, ever-shifting swarms, braving the gauntlet of fire with the suicidal indifference of never-living machines. The assaulters fell back, back, away from the killer bots, firing as they went, forming a circle in the middle of the hall.

Yuri stepped out of cover and oriented himself to the nearest swarm. It was a living, breathing, flowing thing, dancing side to side, up and down, trying to evade the storm of steel, to survive attrition long enough to carry out its duty. Next to him, he felt a soft, warm, presence.

“Hey,” Kayla said.

“Hey,” he replied.

There was so much he could have told her. Should have told her. It didn’t matter now.

Her pistol barked in sharp, tight strings, joining the rest of the firing lines. Drones dropped from the air, but there were so many, too many of them. A low-powered particle beam fired, boring a hole through the mass, but the survivors reformed to fill the gap. More buckshot charges went off, and more drones spilled in to fill the gaps in the formation. Warheads exploded, and now the drones updated their algorithm, widening the gap between them to prevent friendly fire. They came closer, closer, now making their final run.

Yuri raised his pistol against the coming swarm.

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” he whispered.

“No need for that,” Zen said.

And punched a final button.

The drones halted.

A few shots rang out, then the guns too fell silent.

Then, as one, the drones dropped.

Their rotors cut out. Their engines stopped. With nothing to hold up them, they fell out of the air. Most landed reasonably upright. Others dropped at awkward angles, breaking off a rotor or two on impact.

In the space of an eyeblink, the mechanical swarm had become a pile of scrap.

Yuri exhaled.

“Good work, ZT.”

“Spider, too. He did most of the heavy lifting,” Zen replied.

The operators slowly separated, instinctively moving for the nearest pieces of cover. As he reloaded, Yuri kept a wary eye on the silent drones. He wasn’t sure what had happened to them. Even if Zen had somehow switched them off, they were still carrying live ordnance on a remote trigger.

“Is it over?” George asked.

“Well…” Zen began.

The screaming began.

Dozens of voices screamed in agony, in rage, in horror. Long and drawn out, they screamed longer and louder than any human possibly could. Single shots echoed in the hallways. Metal slammed into metal. Sharp pops resounded. And still the screaming continued.

“What the shit was that?” Will muttered.

“Boomer, on me. We’re going to check it out,” Yuri said.

“Panther, with me,” George called.

Handgun held close, Yuri walked around the silent drones. Will followed close behind, PBW in hand. The numbers of screamers steadily dropped off, but the survivors compensated by redoubling their voices.

At the doorway, Will shuffled around to take point and crouched low. Yuri placed himself at Will’s shoulder. Together, they leaned out.

Madness.

A squad of TBCs, dressed in full kit, stumbled and staggered across the hallway, screaming at the tops of their lungs, arms flailing about. Two of them were locked in a death match, rolling to and fro across the floor, throttling each other with artificial hands. Another Sinner stood above a downed cyborg, mechanically smashing his face in with his boot, still yelling. At the end of the hall, a group of cyborgs engaged in a free-for-all, slugging each other with their fists and feet, tearing at faces and joints. Others lay sprawled across the floor, surrounded in metallic fragments and pools of clear fluid.

“What. The. Shit?” Will exclaimed.

A cyborg tripped over a fallen body. He slammed face-first into the floor. Rolling over, his hands found his carbine. He sat upright, instantly stiff and rigid, and screamed. He opened his mouth as wide as he could, still screaming, and jammed the muzzle into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Blood burst from his orifices. His artificial eyes bulged in their sockets. He fell over.

He was still screaming.

“Samurai, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” George asked. “They’ve gone mad!”

“I see it. I don’t believe it,” Yuri said.

“Uh-oh,” Zen said softly.

“ZT, you wanna tell us what’s going on?”

“Uh… I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“Um…”

“Boss, we better pull back before they realize they can shoot us,” Will whispered. “Or before they trip the grenade.”

Yuri looked down. The concussion grenade was still there, taped to the wall. A piece of string was tied to the safety pin and pulled taut across the open doorway. Soon, one of the cyborgs would trip it.

“Let’s go,” Yuri said.

They retreated to the middle of the hall. Zen handed the Swordfish back to George.

“ZT, talk to me. What did you do?” Yuri demanded.

Zen took a deep breath.

“I used the Stingray to inject malware into vulnerable Singularity Network computers in the vicinity. All the malware I had, including the payload developed for this op.”

“Bloody hell…” George whispered.

“And… Spider did the same for the Void Collective,” Zen added.

Yuri’s eyes widened.

“Samurai, Capo. Are you still alive?”

“Capo, Samurai. Affirmative. What’s going on?”

“Samurai, I… the VC… they’ve gone insane. They’re killing each other. Tearing each other apart limb from limb with their bare hands. Spraying each other down on full-auto. A few have gone completely catatonic.”

Yuri’s breath caught in his throat. His heart stopped. His mind blanked. The world froze on its axis, all of Creation ground to a halt, as he tried to process the implications of what Gregory had just say.

“Oh my God…” Yuri whispered.

“We can worry about that later,” Gregory urged. “Extract now, while you still can.”

“What about the civilians?” Yuri asked.

“Emergency services are on their way. Let them take care of it.”

George pointed at the ceiling. “That hole looks big enough to fit a gravtruck.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Yuri said.

One by one, flying by remote control, a pair of gravtrucks descended through the holes. Slowly, carefully, they slotted themselves into the middle aisle of the hall, the only aisle wide enough to fit them. Outside, the Sinners continued screeching and howling, sentenced to a living Hell. Yuri observed it all in a daze, his brain blanked out, moving as though he were in a dream.

He could not deny reality. It was right in front of him. And yet…

“Last man!” Zen called.

Time to go.

Yuri boarded the Black Watch gravtruck. The second he slipped on the safety harness, Karim lifted off into the sky. Team Red Raven followed. Yuri braced himself for a barrage of sniper fire, but there was only silence.

All three gravtrucks—two occupied, one empty—formed up in a convoy and sped west. Yuri called up the external cameras on the HUD and looked down at the world below.

Insanity swept across what was left of the VC contingent. He caught glimpses of movement, flashes of color, but it was more than enough to suggest the big picture. A war of all against all raged across the streets. Commandos battered at each other with fists, knives, clubs, all fine motor skill forgotten. Others bit into necks and were bitten in turn. Joints shattered, nerves severed, blood spurted, and still they continued to fight. In the midst of the melee, full auto firearms chattered away.

“We are Oscar Mike!” Karim reported.

They were on the way to the safe house. But insanity followed like a toxic wake.

Gunfire echoed down every street. Madmen bayed at empty skies. Signs and logos and windows blacked out. Sirens howled and lights flashed, too little and way too late. A fireball blossomed in the distance. Behind them, more explosions rocked the city.

“My God…” Karim whispered.

With every passing minute, the chaos spread. Muzzles flashed and grew red. Tracers sprayed across the air in brilliant, unpredictable arcs. Railguns roared and particle beams flared. Conventional firearms answered. Gravcars wobbled and fell from the air. Groundbound vehicles swerved and screeched and braked, slamming into lampposts, buildings, each other. An epidemic of explosions raced across the world. Cars, charging stations, windows, apartments, even people exploded, without warning, without visible reason, as though induced to detonate by the whims of some mad god.

Yuri had prayed fervently, even incessantly, every spare moment he had. Had God answered his prayers by pouring out the grapes of wrath?

Or had the Devil listened instead, and flung open the gates of Hell?

Or, maybe, something else had answered?

“What have we done?” Yuri said.

There was no answer.