Speaker for the Zone
Chapter 1
[This story follows the events of several earlier stories; the simplest way to read from the absolute, original beginning (if you haven't already) is at the blog – pseudozone at blogspot dot com – but most of the arcs (Freedom, Dirge Danorum, etc) are on FF net as well. Hope you like it. This arc follows 'Dirge Danorum' directly, and comes right after 'Memories']
An especially loud raindrop struck the metal side of Freedom HQ at Yantar. That didn't bother me; I wasn't going anywhere today. The rain would just make it easier to go back to sleep, not that it would have been difficult. Russet was warm and soft in my arms, and her quiet, regular breathing was better than any lullaby.
Another raindrop hit the side, except this one left a hole that let in a beam of pale light, and a tendril of fog. I dragged Russet off the cot and covered her with my body as another half-dozen shots perforated my wall, and the real shooting started, all at once on both sides. It was deafening.
"Stay down," I said into Russet's ear, and I don't think there was any danger of her getting up. She sensibly covered her head with both hands. I got up and stumbled into the corridor, snatching up Lunch Box as I did so.
The passage was abruptly packed with people, rushing in both directions. There was nothing to hear in the chaos. Bullets slammed through the metal walls, sending showers of sparks off the walls, and shrapnel flying.
I swung onto the main ladder and climbed to the roof. It was just a dull roar until I opened the hatch, letting in the real noise.
Velvet was there, and so were the others. I wore only loose fatigue trousers, but I didn't even feel the pre-dawn cold.
Duty was here. It had taken them more months than anyone had predicted, but they had finally come.
A round snapped past my head, and I dropped down behind the sandbags with Velvet, who was shouting into a radio. There were snipers on the ridge, pinning down the entire compound as Duty crossed the bogs, an impossible – truly impossible number of them – all laying down suppressing fire as they advanced. They were only hazily visible, but their numbers were unmistakable.
Velvet risked a glance over the sandbags. "Now," she said.
The ridge exploded as over a hundred pounds of C4 charges detonated in sequence, sending out a shower of earth and dust and enveloped the Duty force, even as it threw them to the ground. There would be nothing left of the snipers, but the landslide would only slow the main force down, not stop them.
"Go," she said into the radio, and Freedom emerged. This was supposed to be the decisive counterattack, but I'd seen the size of the force out there.
"Who are they?" I shouted to Velvet, whose eyes were wide. Not fearful, but she had seen as well. She didn't know. And there was no time for talking.
I vaulted over the sandbags, dropped the five meters to the ground, and ran for the nearest gate. There was Exile, waving the men forward. People were deploying smoke grenades now; redundant in the morning mist – but now we wouldn't even have the dark outlines to go by. It would be close combat to the last man; we had to play to our strengths. Exile threw down his Weatherby and drew his Beretta.
I passed him as though he wasn't moving at all, plunging into the tall grass.
An exoskeleton loomed out of nowhere, wielding a Browning M2. I jumped on the barrel, forcing it down, and pressed Lunch Box to his face mask before he could react. I pulled the trigger, and the booming shot was like a firecracker in the midst of the battle. More men came streaming out of the fog.
The blast of a grenade knocked me off my feet, and the shadows of men on either side surged past in both directions. A strong hand closed on my arm and pulled me up; the Biker, one arm extended, firing his Pernach on full auto into a cluster of Duty Men.
I was seeing double. I awkwardly pushed Lunch Box into his free hand, and pulled the knife off his vest before staggering off into the fray.
Jester's back was exposed, but I managed to throw the knife into the wrist of the man about to shoot him. The scot turned and shot him three times before disappearing into the haze.
A Duty man blundered into me, and I snapped his neck before he could do anything, hooking his rifle and pulling it up to fire from the hip. The exoskeleton advancing on me soaked it up like paintballs. I dropped the empty rifle as the exoskeleton raised a weapon, but an indistinct figure leapt onto its back, and brown tendrils tore through the light armor over his throat. No surprise; of course they would be drawn to this bloodshed. I scooped up a fallen pistol and staggered forward.
Another one went down to a second drinker, but I had to shoot the third, which was making for a small figure that could only be Venge. My pistol went empty. There was the Merc, the RPK in his arms looking like a toy as he emotionlessly gunned down Duty foot soldiers by the dozen. At his side was the Biker, who fired my Desert Eagle and his own Pernach with such precision that it wasn't clear which of the two men was the more devastating.
They weren't just Duty men. I had seen that much from the roof. There were mercenaries mixed in, and not the local kind. They had to be PMCs brought in from the outside.
There was a familiar thin stalker wandering the battle, trailed by the same phantom I'd seen so many times. Here and gone in the blink of an eye, maybe not there at all. A contractor's neck broke audibly under my arm, and I dropped the body. There was no end to them.
Velvet appeared with her rookie fire team, shouting, of course, and laying waste to anything that crossed the path of her formation. I'd barely picked up a Kalashnikov when it was blown apart by a shotgun blast from a contractor, who was in turn gunned down by Grigor, who met my gaze for only a moment as he reloaded his Tokarev before disappearing.
Velvet flung her empty rifle into the face of a Duty officer that surprised her, and drew her pistol to shoot him in the chest. The Biker relieved a merc of his combat hatchet and flung it into the spine of another enemy before breaking the first man's back over his knee. Exile was hit, but doggedly fired his Beretta as Jester tried to drag him back toward the walls. I saw the Merc appear again, bleeding from a dozen wounds, looking no more bothered than if they were mosquito bites.
The sky overhead darkened substantially; as it became increasingly overcast, visibility worsened. The fog showed no signs of clearing off. As the body count rose, so did the number of drinkers that came to enjoy it. Two mercs got the drop on me, only to be taken by two shapes they couldn't even see.
Venge slammed a fresh magazine into his MP7, only to be knocked aside by a passing exoskeleton that hadn't even noticed him.
A bullet whizzed past me to kill a man who had been about to shoot me down. Sagaris materialized from the fog, bloody, but mobile.
"They're pushing!" he shouted, throwing me one of his pistols. I scrambled out of the tall grass to join him, slipping into the mud. I fired from the ground, bringing down another merc. Sagaris pulled me up.
"We can't win this!"
"I know," I said.
"Where do we go?"
"Where can we go?"
We stood back to back, knee deep in the center of it all. The fog swirled around us, and the battle came and went. Duty bodies were all around us, like a dark green carpet on the floor of the valley.
But it couldn't go on. Duty's force was swelled by the PMCs, and no matter how bravely Freeom fought, our numbers couldn't win. Velvet's battle plan had been brilliant, but she could never have planned for an onslaught of this magnitude. She had been ready, but not ready enough. There was only one way for this to end; it was only a question of how long it would take. Three minutes had already passed since the first round punched through my wall.
I was down to one bullet. I could still feel Sagaris as my back.
"Go back to the gate," I told him.
"What?" He fired four shots into a dark form in the fog, then turned back to me.
"Don't make it easy." Protect Russett. He understood.
"What about you?"
I looked down at my pistol. One bullet. "I'll break through," I said. "I'll find their leader."
Sagaris stared at me for a moment, then nodded. He turned and took off without looking. A Duty man with a shotgun was there. I flung out my arm and fired; my bullet took Slayer through the throat. He reeled back, clutching at the wound, which gushed like a fountain. His eyes met mine for a moment before he went down.
Then the shooting stopped.