He looks hard at his reflection. His android eye’s reflected glow causes something to occur to him. He feels the left section of his head, running his fingers along the edge of the installed segment of his cranium that Caufmann implanted the night Isfeohrad cracked his skull. Caufmann has done something to his brain.
Whatever this euphoria is, it began when he saved the stranded soldier. Thinking further back, when he saved Carla from the Beta HolinMech hit squad he had felt abnormally good then, too. He’d been shot and still managed to kill three fully trained soldiers. Not all of that could be accredited to his Thermosteel bones or andronic limbs.
His frown increases as a thought enters his mind. Is Caufmann trying to make me do good things? The thought, at first, seems ludicrous. But there is a definite possibility because when he abandoned Sabre and his troops he’d never felt so miserable. Perhaps it is some kind of microchip reinforcing morally right decisions with elation and enthusiasm, but inducing severe depression when he does something terrible. He wants to panic, but he just feels too damn good.
The soldier Rennin pulled out of danger has seated himself, checking his sidearm to make sure its ready and working. Rennin puts the euphoric paranoia from his mind. He stops fighting and lets it inundate him so he can at least focus on other things. As soon as he feels the full force of it by letting his mind relax he does feel better, an impulse to hug the soldier flitting through his mind. Rennin shakes his head vigorously locking that thought in a mental coffin.
He glances at the monitor in front of him that is rigged to the camera overlooking the passenger bay. No way that kid’s potato gun will take out a contaminant. The soldier must still be a teenager. He’s medium build, rather long hair for a soldier and a kind of soft looking face. Rennin slaps his own face for taking too much notice of his looks but notes he looks quite similar to Saifer Veidan.
“Hey, kid, what’s your name?”
“Private Dorian Carmine, sir.”
“Rennin Farrow.”
“Rank, sir?”
He almost spits. “Sergeant. I’m taking us to Horizon Stadium, we’re reinforcing the defence of the only people left that are immune. Are you up for this?”
“I think so. I don’t have my rifle anymore. Don’t know if I’d have made it in with the extra weight.”
“Put that water pistol away and get an assault rifle from the weapons locker near the rear exit. Get the L10-Sleeper.”
“That’s a heavy gun, sir, isn’t that anti-vehicle?”
“These things need a lot of punishment to go down. The Sleeper is strong, accurate and if you hit them in the soft spot it’ll be more effective.”
“I didn’t notice any weak spots, sir, they just kept coming.”
“Their bones are obviously very thick, you have to hit their guts, their neck, or their eye socket. Your choice.”
“Guts it is.”
“How many of you didn’t make it?”
“Squad of six. There were a lot of screams for help. We couldn’t ignore them.”
Rennin’s expression darkens. “I know how you feel.”
“I was told to hang back where we were stationed in case command asked for status at our position. Next thing I hear is three seconds of shooting then nothing. Then they just came from everywhere at once. I just ran in the nearest building and…” the soldier’s head is shaking. “It was so fast, sir, my head’s still spinning. There was nothing, and then…”
“Alright I’m staying airborne, you can get in the mounted gun and stick here with me, okay?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” he says sounding genuinely grateful.
Rennin feels Drej’s knife pulse again. He shivers and opens a channel to Lieutenant Sabre. “LT?”
“Where the hell have you been?” comes the instant, loud, reply.
Here we go. “Picked up a distress call from a stranded soldier, so I went to get him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Coms are a bit screwy, sir.”
“You’re not even a pilot!”
“Well I can put him back where I found him but he’s not going to like it.”
“Just get back here!”
“Situation?”
“Half the immune are away but the contaminant attack is becoming ferocious, we need cover fire. Gunship Genome is on its own up there.”
“I’ll hit them in the street before they get to you, when I run out of rockets we’ll reinforce you on the ground and if all the immune are away I’ll pull you out.”
“Make sure you’re quick about it. Once we’re out of here, Desolator is going to fry the area.”
“Right, sir,” says Rennin adjusting his seating trying to ignore Drej’s knife. Its sporadic vibration could definitely be considered unsettling. The blade that stimulates and penetrates.
A dust cloud is still rising upwards from the Desolator satellite’s earlier blast outside the stadium. A rectangular evacuation transport is leaving the stadium through the roof access so Rennin banks left towards the undamaged street section, bringing the gunship low enough to see the contaminants dashing through the streets towards the stadium. Rennin suddenly isn’t sure whether they’re ‘going where the meat is’ or are being coordinated.
They’re coming from Centre-city in great swarming masses. Gunship Genome is laying down heavy fire but the streets are just filled with them. There doesn’t seem to be any noticeably thicker or thinner concentrations of them, so Rennin decides to evenly distribute his ordnance across the crowd.
Kind of like communism.
A plan starts to form in his mind. He fires a few rockets into the street surrounding Horizon Stadium. It crumples and distorts into jagged shards of asphalt, concrete and other urban detritus, creating lumps of debris to slow the infected. Hopefully this will clump them together some more.
The impacts are severe, tearing road and enemy to pieces, throwing the remains into the air. Rennin relays his plan to Gunship Genome that is now flying parallel. It follows suit. Rennin orders the pilot to stay on his wing for the duration of the stadium defence and the pair of them, flying side by side, begin firing rockets up the surrounding streets hitting scores of hostiles but there’s thousands of them still coming.
Carmine is manning the side-mounted cannon, shooting at what he can on the ground. He’s making some good hits too, smiles Rennin who hopes Carmine hammers them hard and gets his confidence back. Rennin figures that if Carmine sees them fly to pieces they’ll hold less damaging power in his memory. Real therapy.
One street is badly blown apart and should be hard to navigate through, hopefully slowing the contaminants’ progress. Dead Star and Genome bank sideways in near perfect unison to the next street and commence bombardment. The road again shatters under the impact but the hostiles keep ploughing through, albeit slower. Rennin’s sights turn to the stone grandiose buildings lining the streets. He opens a channel with his wingman. “Genome?”
“Copy, Dead Star.”
“See that building with the dragon gargoyles?”
“Yes.”
“I hate to say it but let’s bring it down to block that street off.”
“I don’t think we’re authorised to use that kind of force.”
“The Brass, emphasis on arse, shot a city block back to the 20th century with a Desolator satellite, don’t give me that shit,” says Rennin angrily. “Listen, we bring down as many buildings as we can to block off this central corridor of access streets, it’ll force them to divide up either side of the rubble bunching them together. Basically we make our own kill zone for them. Others will have to move around the outside of the debris and with the military being stationed on the perimeter, they’ll be easy pickings. It may not seem like it but there is not an endless supply of these things,” says Rennin. Yet.