The Ghosts of Helghan
"Can you believe this? Third security alert this week; they issued the magenta level warning this morning and closed all air traffic…."
""Sorry sir but the flight lanes are reserved for security craft only in accordance with Magenta Level Security Regulations" You believe that bullshit? I'm gonna lose my job because some no-neck pencil pusher gets scared by some thirty year old recording and decides he's going to lock down the whole freaking city!"
"Excuse me officer? Sir? Hi, I need to update my ID tags and I was told to come up to the foyer – Sarah will you stop fussing this instant! Sorry, you know how kids can be a real handful sometimes!"
The inane chatter of the crowds swept over him as he walked among them. Clean shaven men in smart business suits, already looking to blame the authorities for their delayed meetings. Well-fed women with the latest PDAs, muttering and clucking about the interruption to their busy schedules. Bored children fidgeting and fumbling with themselves, unable and unwilling to understand what was going on. Had he been anyone else, he might have envied their normality. But he was not like them: he had purpose.
"Please remove all PDAs and electronic communication devices before stepping into the scanner. This is to ensure that nothing interferes with the bio-metric scan and allows us to process you faster. Vektan Security Alliance takes no responsibility for any electronic goods that may be damaged during processing."
"Latest thing chica: full Wi-Fi coverage with enough range to pick up channels beyond the wall!"
"Jesus…if this line were going any slower it'd be moving backwards, eh?"
He had reached the scanner checkpoint now. The polymer and flexi-glass cage beckoned to him, it's cyan uniformed wardens assembled on either side, ushering in person after person and pecking at control panels. He stepped up to the entry line. He was now close enough to see every detail on the VSA soldiers, close enough to read name-tags beneath that symbol, close enough to reach out and strike them: strike them down as they had done to his people, without mercy, without pity, without –
"Sir, please remove any PDAs or electronic communication devices you may be carrying and step into the scanner."
He collected himself and entered the scanner. His purpose was far too important to be compromised by personal revenge. There would be time for that later.
"Thank you sir, you're cleared to enter."
He passed through the scanner. He was now within the inner perimeter of the VSA headquarters building. It towered up above him, a reflective glass dagger thrust upwards into the sky; the mirror opposite of the cruisers that floated above the city with weapons trained down. Down on the heads of his people. He looked to his right and saw the rest of Vekta City: the smooth obsidian skyscrapers covered in neon advertising, the jagged blocks of office buildings trimmed with meaningless corporate jargon and the forested commemorative parks that contrasted sharply with the rest of the urban sprawl. His gaze lingered on those parks; so calm and so peaceful that no-one would have ever guessed they honored murderers and war criminals. The true legacy of the "Second Extra-solar War" as the Vektans called it lay beyond the parks: it was the vast wall that split the city in two, a hideous barrier of steel and hate that dominated the skyline and kept his people penned into their ghettos like animals where honest upstanding Vektans would not have to think about them.
"That thing is an eyesore; you'd have thought the council would have tried harder to accommodate the Helghans. Mayor Vaughton is supposed to be running on a reconciliation platform and I doubt building a giant wall through the city is going to bring us and them closer together."
"I can't believe I'm about to say this but in Vaughton's defense, the Helghans have been ridiculously stubborn and downright hostile. Okay we get it; you're pissed over losing the war thirty years ago: let it go! A war that they started when they invaded Vekta I might add. And over what? Some ancestor's colonial rights feud hundreds of years before that! If they're going to rant and rave over things that the past has buried then the city needs the wall quite frankly."
"Adam, are you even listening to yourself? You might as well get it over with and join the ISA Veterans League."
He looked to his left and saw the bickering Vektans, standing there with the sheer audacity to speak of his people as if they had any idea what suffering they had endured. The way they so casually dismissed history as nothing more than past semantics stoked the burning fury inside him, threatening to overwhelm his restraint and ruin the mission. He pressed on, past them and towards the entrance of the headquarters building.
"Hey you!"
He froze.
No, not me.
"Yeah you, wait up a second!"
He changed direction and walked towards the edge of the plaza, trying not to seem too brisk.
You're mistaken, I'm not who you think I am, just keep moving.
"Hold on I need to talk to you!"
He reached the edge and glanced around for somewhere to disappear: his right hand side was no good, that only led back to the viewing gallery and checkpoint but on his other side a metal staircase branched off towards a maintenance doorway nestled away in an alcove below the plaza. It was shrouded in shadows but held no cover from a security patrol or wandering civilian-
"Jesus, will you hold still one moment! I've been trying to contact you for the past two hours!"
He turned around, masking his tension. His hands were secreted away in the pockets of his hooded jacket, gripping his pneumatic knife more tightly then he'd ever held anything in his entire life. He saw a portly middle-aged man, ruddy cheeked from running across the courtyard and wearing the grey-blue overalls of a VSA technician. Despite being overburdened with toolkits the man was still somehow able to point accusingly at him.
Close enough for a single slash but nowhere to hide the body.
"You think you can just waltz right in here without anyone noticing?"
Over the edge? No choice, I have to risk it.
The knife stealthily crept outwards.
"Well I got news for you asshole…."
Suddenly the man's face burst into a wide grin.
"It's your day off man! What the hell are you even doing here? Forget your PDA again?"
He must recognise my disguise.
The knife returned to its position.
"Hey could you give me a hand? Thanks, I don't even need half of the tools in that but that's the life of a technician for you. Anyway I need to get through to maintenance, the powers that be have been bitching all day about some of the security scanners acting up and flashing civies as hostiles so of course I have to drop everything and sort it all out as per freaking normal."
They had entered the maintenance walkway together, transitioning from the bright summer day outside to the soft glow of artificial lighting and moving into the bowels of the VSA headquarters. He was carrying the technician's spare toolkit, allowing the man to take the lead as he observed his new surroundings. Despite the ease of access, there were no surveillance cameras or guards; just storage cupboards, ventilation grates and hatches to the "Water Control Station". He realised that he could hear the muted roar of the waterfall that poured out of the left side of this complex: he couldn't even begin to imagine how much had been spent on something so frivolous while his people struggled to produce enough to eat. Oh yes, the ever charitable Vektans had of course offered food aid but his people had long ago learnt the bitter way not to trust their neighbours.
"I guess this is where we part ways huh? I have to head on down to the power plant; you have a good one now alright!"
The technician turned at a stairwell and disappeared leaving him all alone. He looked around to confirm this and then let out the breath he'd been holding in since the fat Vektan had spotted him, audibly sighing in relief that this diversion from his purpose had not gone catastrophically worse. Still, tension bubbled inside him now that he was inside the VSA HQ: the endgame was in sight. He ascended the staircase, passing through unwatched secondary corridors and hallways with the confidence of one fully acquainted with their layout until he reached his objective. There, right there: an office marked "B-22". Indistinguishable from its brethren save for its occupant. That was, if they were in there.
He opened the door and looked into the visored face of a VSA soldier.
"I'm looking for the Velasquez Wing," he said, knife ready to leap forwards in case this went wrong.
"Of course, follow me past Sevchenko Block," the soldier replied with the correct code-words and their face melted away as the cloaking field that had presented them as one of the enemy dissipated and revealed the hooded form of an ally.
Standing before the now de-cloaked infiltrator was a Helghast comrade, wearing compact webbing over a simple and practical civilian-esque uniform consisting of a hooded jacket and close-fitting slacks. Without the distinctive gasmask they would have passed perfectly for any insignificant civilian but to go without with the face of a true Helghast was to surrender their identity to the Vektan scum. That same face glared at him right now, dull orange lenses flaring as though they channeled the same righteous hatred of this world that he felt.
"What the hell took you so long?" The voice was female and harsh, distorted by the mask's filter.
"Idiot technician cut me off from the entrance foyer and I had to improvise." He replied, pushing past her and putting his backpack down in the center of the room. Time was of the essence now; they could not afford to be interrupted at this delicate stage.
"You didn't kill him?" His comrade's voice was mocking and he suddenly had a vision of a VSA soldier cutting throats and snapping necks as "he" made his way to B-22. She had emptied the contents of her own backpack now and was busy reassembling the sleek black assault rifles that now lay in parts on a coffee stained table.
"Nowhere to dispose of the body. I wasn't about to compromise the mission for one bastard." His hands were a blur of practiced movements as he assembled his own device; despite the speed he was careful to check everything three times. This was far too important for any error.
"I counted at least four locker blocks on my way here, each perfectly adequate for hiding a fresh Vektan corpse. Maybe you just didn't have the will to kill a civilian." The assault rifles were locked and loaded and she had even produced several hand grenades, liberated from a VSA depot two months ago.
"If you would kindly keep quiet, I can make sure that this will kill as many civilians as you want." At last it was complete and armed: the device that had taken months of planning and a daring raid to secure looked up at him, as though infused with the spirits of those murdered thirty years ago. He knew their ancestors were watching him and his brethren this day and he knew he would give them the justice they sought.
"Finished? About time, we're running late as it is." She offered him one of the rifles and he felt the weight of tradition as he took its cold form into his hands. The successor to the Stahl Arms 52s of their forebears, this short bullpup fusion of metal and composite plastic was more than a gun: it was a symbol of defiance and freedom, of refusing to bow down to the tyranny of others. He checked the magazine, earning a scoff from his comrade, then thumbed the safety off. The time for stealth had passed.
"We have one minute so I hope you memorized the way to the foyer." She looked at him with head cocked as if to insult him for questioning her knowledge of the HQ then gently pushed the door open, watching every angle for any inconveniently placed VSA personnel. With her leading and him covering, the two Helghast rapidly made their way upwards.
Precisely sixty seconds later, the VSA military grade explosive located in office room B-22 detonated, following the explosions of two identical charges on the other side of the building by four point one seconds. By then, the Helghast infiltrators had converged on what remained of the foyer.
The neat and orderly appearance of VSA HQ had been shattered: thick choking clouds of black smoke billowed through the plaza, doing nothing to hide the devastation wrought on the building. Its modern sloping glass fixtures had burst apart on the first shockwaves and the storm of jagged glass had reduced scores of people, soldier and civilian alike, to piles of bloody ribbon. Worse, the sides of the HQ had been blown out, causing the razor sharp fragments to rain down on the congested streets below, causing maximum casualties. Not only that, but the barriers and pumps that maintained the serene waterfall had been destroyed when the charge in B-22 went off, causing the water to simply plummet uncontrolled into the business district, smashing aside vehicles and preventing any sort of orderly ground based response. Above the waterfalls, the plaza lay in ruins: the viewing galleries had been cracked and cratered by the force of the explosions and by the impact of heavy shrapnel, here and there warped beams and girders that had formed the support structure of the HQ jutted from the tiles like primitive tank traps. Fires had sprung up everywhere: burning rags of clothing and paperwork gently wafted through the air, their calm movements contrasting the chaos of their environment while large piles of flaming rubble dotted the plaza like heathen shrines to some dark god. More numerous though were the corpses. Bodies and bits of bodies were scattered across the entire courtyard, some mangled and burnt beyond all recognition, others seemingly unscathed yet inhumanely still. Other human forms moved all too much: spasming in death throws or limping through the smoke in a daze, moaning and crying and lending their voices to the building cacophony of screams and pleas for help.
It was a vision of urban hell, yet he knew it was the tiniest fraction of what had been done to Helghan.
"Time to teach the Vektan filth a lesson they'll never forget!" His comrade gleefully yelled as she clambered over the collapsed walls of the foyer and darted past the pulverized remains of receptionists and visitors. He made to follow her when he spotted something crawling towards him from behind an information desk that looked like a porcupine with the amount of glass shards sticking out of it. Incredibly, he recognised the badly injured man, despite half of his face and his left arm having been shredded: it was the Vektan who had dismissed his people's history and suffering.
"Puh….please..help…." The man whimpered like a wounded animal, his good arm reaching towards the Helghast. The masked man looked down at the crippled civilian, then spoke slowly and deliberately.
"It's Helghast Adams, not Helghans."
Adam's pain-wracked eyes betrayed his ignorance and they remained ignorant looking as the Helghast placed his boot down on his throat and slowly and deliberately choked the last of his life out of him. There was no time to relish the death: the crack of gunfire had started and he rushed towards his fellow conspirators to assist in the punishment of the Vektans.
The VSA had finally begun to respond and sporadic fire met the Helghast on the foyer as the Vektans struggled to find some sort of cohesion. He could hear one of them yelling for reinforcements and medivacs on a radio but the soldier was hidden behind the eagle and hologlobe monument in the center of the courtyard, somehow still intact despite the bombs. Unable to eliminate the radioman, he instead opted to fire on a handful attempting to flank the foyer from the right, near the maintenance doorway he had used to get inside the HQ. The practice runs of the mission were not in vain: he felled one outright with his tight burst, clipped another and forced the last two to scatter and abandon any flanking designs they had. A less controlled burst sounded next to him and a female voice whooped as a man carrying an elderly friend dropped soundlessly, inches away from the cover of the monument. He turned round, firing off a quick three round burst that punched into the face of an overly inquisitive VSA soldier behind the monument, and saw his female comrade firing as quickly as she could in wide sweeping arcs. He was unimpressed by her lack of discipline but had always suspected she was no true believer in the cause, just a sociopath orphaned in the slums across the wall who killed for killing's sake.
Well, just something else the Vektans have only themselves to blame for.
He ducked down behind blasted masonry to reload, hearing the concussive crump of a grenade going off and a fresh wave of pained howls, and watched as a Helghast comrade in loosely plated armour advanced into open sight of the VSA and levelled a LMG in their direction. An instant later the shrill buzzsaw-like shriek of the weapon split the air and he risked a quick look at the Vektans, seeing the golden tracers chew through their cover and rip the unlucky apart. Return fire merely ricocheted off the heavy gunner's personal energy shield, a shimmering blue wall of smooth light that made the warrior impervious to attack. Like the cloaking fields that had disguised the Helghast agents as civilians and VSA personnel, the shield had been developed in secret behind the confines of the city-wall; drawing on the technological sophistication of their ancestors and aided by clandestine "deals" with sympathisers and turncoats in Vekta City. Bribery and blackmail had done their work well and, without leaving any evidence, more than a few prototypes and devices forbidden by the Treaty of Rayhoven had mysteriously disappeared from VSA laboratories. That many of the Vektans were so willing to turn on their own kind simply proved their degeneracy in his eyes: no Helghast would betray his kin.
Suddenly, gunfire lanced into the Helghast flank and he was hurled to the ground as a bullet smacked into his stomach. The gunner fell with a muffled gurgle as a thrown knife buried itself in his neck and the thrower sprinted into view: a Vektan in more advanced armour then the VSA regulars and wielding a cutting-edge looking SMG with deadly proficiency. The Vektan was a fluid blur, moving from cover to cover with incredible speed and targeting the Helghast with an aim and eye for tactical awareness that suggested he was some sort of elite operative. The infiltrators at the foyer were quickly cut in two, half falling back to the innards of the HQ and the other half trapped between the elite VSA and the regulars who had followed him into the breach once the heavy gunner had been dispatched. The Vektans were hungry for revenge after witnessing the death of so many comrades and innocents and their firepower overwhelmed the remaining Helghast in short order.
Wounded and propped up against a pillar sporting a badly torn banner, he tried to get a bead on the elite enemy but the man moved too quickly and vanished into the HQ in pursuit of his retreating brethren. Probably wearing some kind of powered armor he thought, turning his rifle on the VSA now swarming the foyer in light of its minimal resistance. His awkward position and injury conspired against him and the weapon clicked empty without killing as many as he wanted to. The gun slipped from his grasp as the last few Helghast in the area were eliminated and the enemy moved in to secure the remains of their HQ.
"Sir I have one over here: wounded and unarmed!"
He saw a group of Vektans approaching him tentatively, the hatred and disgust of him clear in their faces. He raised his trigger hand weakly to show he was unarmed and to draw attention from his other hand, which sank into his pockets for the last time.
"Fucking animals murdered God knows how many civies, kill him!"
"That's enough Anderson! Secure the prisoner and alert the medics, Intel will need a live one."
That's it, cling to your self-righteousness, you murderers and come closer.
"Goddamn Higs don't know the war's over."
"Fan out and check the corners for any of his buddies waiting to jump us, I've had enough surprises for one day."
For Helghan and the Helghast people.
"Wai-shit! He's got a gren-"
Scolar Venick died a martyr for Helghan on the 22nd of May, 2381: the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the Second Extrasolar War and the inquiries into the actions of Interplanetary Strategic Alliance Sergeants (ISA) Tomas Sevchenko and Rico Velasquez. The United Colonial Nations Military Tribunal Board found that, while the events that occurred on Helghan were a preventable tragedy, the ISA personnel did not bear fault for the incident. However, in light of political fallout, both Sergeants received honorable discharges and the ISA was disbanded and restructured as the Vektan Security Alliance, charged with the responsibility of protecting both the Vektan citizens and Helghast refugees of its world.