Engines of Oblivion Read online

  Kate looked up, the white light of the monitor underlining her bones. “Because defusing is not the same thing as destroying.”

  “But you—”

  “Don’t tell me what I already know.”

  “You can’t be—” The words halted in her throat. “Are you all right?”

  Her former captain looked back at the monitor. Motion reflected in her eyes. Letters, numbers. “You don’t want that answer. Go.”

  Go. The word reverberated somewhere in the center of her bones, in the place where the Company had injected the messages that made her rush out onto battlefields to stare down the Vai mechs and their terrible promises. At the door, the rifles already heavy in her left arm, she stopped to take one last look at Kate. The other woman was already staring at the interface, bathed in white light, and Natalie watched the enemy swirling in whites and blues against Kate’s face, closer and closer. There was something about it that made her want to say everything she hadn’t, that made her think this was the last time she would see her, that all this was going to end badly.

  “Kate,” she managed, the name still so strange on her lips. “I just wanted to tell you that—”

  “Don’t be that person,” Kate said. “You’ll jinx it.”

  “Okay,” Natalie whispered.

  “I’ll see you afterward and you can tell me then.” The interface traced ghostly white lines on her face.

  Natalie nodded, letting her muscles tense with unanswered energy before she moved again. Her fingers flickered against the wall as she counted off footsteps—one, two, three—to find her way in the pitch black to the building’s staircase. She took two at a time, hauling all the way to the roof of the building, pushing open the hatch, and crawling through. Here, at the northeast corner, she could see an easy entrance to the plaza and most of the forest beyond.

  There wasn’t much of an overhang here—the dorm was built for basic use, to be slept in for a year and recycled when the individual group homesteads were delivered. The wind had kicked up slightly, and Natalie was pelted by small buds carried through the air, little piles of dust and pollen swirling up from where they had collected below her on the roof. She dragged on the night vision goggles, then felt a tickle in her nose and clamped her thumb and index finger over it, tight, swallowing even the hint of a sneeze. Her lungs ached.

  The goggles weren’t military grade—these were meant for cit-sec rookies who were earning their way into command, so far under the quality she was used to. She adjusted the headset to fit her vision, then peeked over the lip of the building.

  The headset’s HUD chimed. Kate, sending her texts from below.

  23R 14D 8G

  That was Twenty-Five code, how Kate used to tell her about salvage items floating in the void, the Vai kinetics and moleculars she’d hauled in from the graveyard. She’d spent months opening and shifting her fingers into the slimy, bright innards, defusing and storing them for transport. The nostalgia hit hard as a bag of bricks swung at speed, much more vicious than she thought it could.

  Not once during that time had she wondered why the Vai had chosen metal as the primary kinetic trigger instead of skin and bone, the soft curve of a cheek or a belly or a palm or a finger. Now it was obvious: they’d thought ships were human bodies and adjusted accordingly. The Vai had made all the same assumptions as the corporations. That the aliens were just like them.

  Natalie nearly missed a bare hint of movement to her left, near the coordinates that Kate gave. She saw soldiers, at least eight, in black coldsuits that wouldn’t have been visible to heat vision if it weren’t for the way the rising moon caught the curve of their helmets. Not InGen, she thought, narrowing her eyes, and not Baywell, so not the source of the artillery she heard. Someone new.

  She crawled on her belly to the northwest corner, to where the moon touched the treetops over the straight, shining line of the forgotten maglev. There, she caught the slightest flash of yellow behind the sharp-edged ruins of the train. The InGen team was using the old station as cover. Both teams were moderately within sight of one another, but it was hard to tell if they would be able to engage through the thick tree line. She’d need to lure them out.

  And where was Baywell? There were too many questions, too many options—

  “Come on, Kate,” she whispered to herself.

  48R 10G 12D, said her HUD.

  Southwest, windward, past the maglev, a couple hundred feet back. I’m getting some rattling. Artillery? Kate texted.

  Natalie had been planning on going back downstairs, moving behind the dorm, firing from InGen’s corner position at the soldiers in the black coldsuits, but the artillery complicated everything, as did the knowledge that InGen had backpacks full of God knew what.

  Natalie swung her gun around, pushing herself up on her elbow with the grace built from years hiding from Vai mechs and angry bosses. She slid the boltgun’s power level to the top, hugged the trigger, and fired. It was a gamble—a wager that the InGens wouldn’t just drop one of their kinetics, slaughter everyone here, and have their execs scoop up Ash, Kate, and Sharma from the dusty leftovers.

  She watched through the scope as the InGen leader’s suit crackled and fried; she’d made a near-perfect hit. The leader capsized, her suited hands trying to grab onto a handhold that wasn’t there. The InGens retreated back behind the wooden houses, ducking away from what they assumed was the line of fire. That was enough to make Natalie feel comfortable with bobbing back behind the overhang, crawling back over to the northeast corner. She waited for the retaliation, for InGen to recover and exact revenge on the unknown company that had slaughtered their leader—but nothing happened.

  Cowards, she thought. If InGen isn’t going to start the crossfire, I’m going to have to do it for them.

  Up came the gun. Natalie leveled her gaze, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger again. This time, her bolt hit one of the enemy’s coldsuit helmets, and—shit! Seriously?—the suit slurped up the excess energy, cracking red and hot and blindingly cold for a moment. The target stumbled but did not fall. She’d never seen a coldsuit siphon and swallow, just protect and occasionally fry. She was making a mental note to toss Ascanio the idea of a siphoning suit when the black line responded by pulling back into the forest. The idiots were all being overly cautious for once.

  Natalie chewed on the inside of her cheek. If she wanted immediate violence, she’d have to work harder.

  She dragged herself to the hatch and clattered down the stairs, twirling around the cafeteria doorjamb to see Kate limned in the half-gray light from the monitor, She held a pair of headphones to her left ear. “Is broadcasting up? Can I talk on an open line?”

  “Yeah,” Kate said. “Why?”

  Natalie jumped a chair on her way and scooped up the transmitter. “Hey, you coldsuit fuckers,” she said, the words coming out angry and fast. “This is Citizen Sharma with the InGen vessel—” Shit. What was it? What was their naming pattern? She winced. Guessed. “Martius. We know why you’re here. And if you think shooting our commander is going to stop us from getting what we were promised, if you think wearing those stupid magic suits of yours will keep us from killing you, well. We’ll be down here and out with the package faster than you can say goodbye, motherfuckers.”

  A few seconds passed, and then a voice returned. “If you had half a dick, InGen, we wouldn’t still be here to continue this delightful conversation. You’re not going to use your fun little toys, are you? Because you can’t.”

  She exhaled. She met Kate’s eyes, filled with warning in the bare, quiet darkness, then licked her lips before continuing. “If you’re not gonna make the first move, let me propose an alliance. By the maglev, there’s a third faction. I think they have artillery, and if we don’t take ’em out—”

  “We can hear you assholes, you know.” A third voice: male, darker.

  Jackpot. Kate looked slightly worried, but she kept her head focused toward the interface, monitoring the scraggly-fast, shive
ring atmospheric readouts from the fields. Natalie’s breath came faster as she tried to figure out what to do next; she grinned, channeling the swagger from the adrenaline surge.

  “Good,” she said. “So we’re all talking. We’re all here for the same thing. Let’s negotiate. Nobody has to die.”

  Silence.

  Kate set the comm on mute, then took a breath. “It’s not gonna work.”

  “It’s gonna work,” Natalie hissed. “Here, keep them talking.”

  “Keep them—what?”

  Natalie’s mind raced. “They’re all within a half mile, aren’t they?” she said.

  “Why does that matter?”

  “I still have the evaporator.”

  Kate’s eyes widened. “No. No, Natalie.”

  The broadcaster hissed in answer, relieving Natalie of the responsibility of explaining her nascent plan to her former captain before she knit it together. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not InGen.” The voice was familiar, and Natalie placed it almost immediately as belonging to the team leader they’d encountered in the forest. “Whoever you are and whatever mess you’re trying to spark here, you’re not going to succeed.”

  Natalie unmuted the comm, her hand shaking. “My CEO sent me here for the exact same reason yours dropped you on this godforsaken planet. Let’s be efficient. If you’re not going to negotiate, why don’t we just get started killing each other?”

  Natalie fumbled with her jacket for a moment and brought out the evaporator, offering it to Kate, who stared daggers at her in return. Natalie heaved in a breath, told herself that she was doing the right thing, that the dread adrenaline crawling around her veins wasn’t the last thing she was going to feel.

  “Keep them talking. Once you hear gunfire, set it off,” Natalie said.

  “Set off—” Kate’s face went from worried to angry in a heartbeat. She shoved herself to her feet, ignoring the interface. “No.”

  “I know you can set it off from a distance. You did before.”

  Kate’s right hand made a fist. “… Goddamn it.”

  Natalie didn’t tell Kate that her throat was closing. “I know what it’s like to—”—red dust in her mouth, and it felt like the evaporator was warming, death-hot against her heart—“to be forced into this. But I’m fast enough to outrun a screamer. I did it once. Stands to reason I can do it again with this.”

  “I’m not making that wager.”

  “Yes. You are.” Natalie leaned in. “This is what I do, Kate.”

  Kate’s fist tightened, and her knuckles went ghost-pale. “If I do this—”

  There were things Natalie could say: I’m going anyway, and I understand, and we’ll find a different way. But she didn’t. The words that came to her lips were like the knives she’d trained with, like a bolt slipping under someone’s ribs. She could be a weapon too. That was one thing Ash had taught her, that Aurora had taught her. Her hands, her feet, her heart, her tongue. All of it was loaded ordnance.

  And she knew how to use it.

  “Do it for her,” Natalie said.

  Kate deflated. Her shoulders fell forward, and she took a ragged, soft breath, and in that terrible moment, Natalie knew she had won, and she shoved the evaporator back in her jacket.

  “You’re just as bad as Mr. Solano,” Kate whispered.

  “Got an extra comm?” Natalie said, ignoring the guilt shoving its way into her mind. She didn’t have time for guilt. She wouldn’t even have time for contrition.

  Kate sighed and tossed her one. “Natalie, I need to say something—”

  Natalie smiled. “Don’t be that person,” she whispered. And before her former captain could say anything else, could smile or throw a punch or react, Natalie grabbed the boltgun and turned so she wouldn’t have to see Kate’s face in angry rictus, engaged the nightviewer, and pushed out into the darkness outside.

  The evening yawned in her throat like every chasm she’d ever faced. She tasted the faint metal of spun air and the crackling of promised crossfire, feeling terribly alive, like she had fire in her fingers and death in her heart, like she was where she belonged, her crackling-blood, strung-tight body the only investment she had left. She held the evaporator in her hand, still dull and gray, and looked out onto the plaza.

  It was going to be a story to tell, if anyone was left to tell it. A death right out of an Alien Attack Squad season finale.

  Alien Attack Squad. Adrenaline flooded her body, causing cold pins and needles on her hands and feet.

  She’d thought the memoria had reconnected most of the days from Twenty-Five that remained, but here was a new one: an episode of the holo she’d seen five times (alone—it always bothered her, why she’d watch something that ridiculous alone), where the holographic sniper saved the day. It wasn’t even her favorite. She didn’t know why she was thinking about it right now. She’d forgotten it—

  She felt a strange familiarity tickle at the back of her brain, a quiet brokenness standing behind her, but nobody was there, and the evaporator in her jacket was still quite cold. Instead, she stared down at the night vision goggles in her hand. The night vision goggles that received instructions from Kate’s position as overwatch. With a little ingenuity, she could still have her little war.

  She activated the comm.

  “Kate. New plan,” she said. “We’re all getting out of here alive.”

  12

  Natalie’s shredded lungs nearly failed her on her four-story trip back to the dorm roof carrying the two boltguns and a crate of equipment. While she didn’t fumble the initial setup of the larger boltgun on the courtyard side, the code that allowed the boltgun to interface with the comms was three years old, and wanted a number of impossible updates. By the time Natalie and Kate managed to wrangle a patch to get remote shooting up and running, Baywell had taken the maglev station.

  Natalie crawled over to the other side of the building and did the same with the smaller gun. She made sure the courtyard side was ready for Kate’s call, then programmed the first gun to work on a timer. She dithered for a few seconds, then entered a number ten minutes in the future and hoped for the best. The evaporator warmed in her jacket as she worked; Natalie knew Kate would never activate it without her permission, so she fished it out to make sure it was still cold and dead.

  Must be my body heat, she said to herself, and stashed it in an inside pocket.

  She fired up the gun on silent mode, then called Kate on her personal comm. “It’s done. The big one’ll go off nine minutes from now. The second needs your code when the enemy’s in range. When you signal the positioning system on the goggles, you’ll activate the firing solution. That should be it. Once both sides are engaged, get somewhere safe. Not downstairs.”

  Kate’s voice was ice. “I told you I wouldn’t leave her.”

  “They have no idea you exist. That’s the kind of intel that wins wars, Kate. If you go to Ash, you’ll put both existing human triggers directly in danger. You were talking about the sacrifices you were willing to make. Now’s the time, Captain.”

  She imagined Kate’s face darkening in familiar angry disbelief. “Fine. Fuck you.”

  Natalie grinned. “That’s the kind of thing I want to hear.”

  “Just shut up.”

  Natalie pushed the door open and checked for enemies in the courtyard. “Let’s go.”

  She tumbled out the door, her back slithering against the dorm wall, keeping to the shadows as she moved. She waited at the corner until she heard the sweet sound of boltfire from the fourth floor, and pained shouting as it hit the line of black coldsuits—proof that Kate was a better shot than she said she was. From her location, she could finally see the insignia on the unknown coldsuits: Ballard Solutions, one of Aurora’s direct competitors. They started moving toward the plaza.

  Ballard to the side, Baywell at the maglev station, and InGen still beyond the dorm, she thought, feeling like a fly at the center of some claustrophobic spiderweb.

  It
didn’t feel like nine minutes when the second gun started up, startling her with quick, programmed bolts that weren’t going to keep their targets fooled for very long. Natalie thumbed the charger on her personal weapon, peered around the side, aimed at the Ballard position, and fired, picking off some poor sod without a coldsuit who had popped up just long enough to die. The sound he made gave Natalie a stomachache, but offered her a better understanding of how far the enemy position extended, especially after someone started shouting to take down the sniper, you nits, we’re not losing this to a company of fucking toymakers.

  Hidden in the long shadows of the dorm, she looked to the other side of the battlefield, spying movement from the InGen camp. They’d taken the “sniper” as an opening as well, just as she’d hoped. They pushed forward in teams of four, moving quietly into the darkness of the plaza. Natalie ducked into the shadow of a doorframe, counting passing yellow-clad bodies, letting the adrenaline drive her exhausted limbs. She padded to the corner, toes before heels, casting her scope around the third corner of the building. She felt a tense thrill at the rattle of gunfire from Kate’s gun above and the shouts that followed—the shadows of the coldsuits in the brush told her that they were having trouble mounting a grenade offensive.

  Good, she thought, we’re pulling this off, just a few more seconds, and pressed her eye to the scope and her finger to the trigger and waited.

  She hated waiting, and the lack of decent intel burned at the back of her throat. It was a problem, this slippery adrenaline poking at her legs, the energy that kept her thinking in what-ifs, in what if Kate doesn’t leave like I told her to, in what if Ash doesn’t survive, in what if Aurora hasn’t checked in with Beijing yet and what if they throw that grenade and it hits the cafeteria—

  And then it was finally too late to wonder. InGen passed into the plaza, and Kate’s gun stopped its rabid chatter.