Niceg Vamberfled was shaking; his mind was shaking. He was a damned clerk, and he wasn't cut out for this. He wasn't cut out for any of this. He curled up and closed his eyes. If he couldn't see, they couldn't hurt him.
If he just closed his eyes tightly, then they would go away. He felt someone shaking him. Oh yeah, that boy, Subaru, he thought it was a funny name for a funny person. It was sad for an Outlander like this to die in the rust of Vervunhive, but no one chose where they died.
He just hoped it was quick. He could hear ringing in his ears, and the boy's voice rose louder, shaking him hard. He thought he was telling him to get up. To move, but that would let him see them, and if he could them, they could get him.
There was shifting; the boy probably decided to leave him here. To survive, he was just a waste of space: Deadweight, a clerk who could barely write.
There was a sound of air rushing, then he opened his eyes. His head snapped back. Pain exploded across his cheek. He looked at Subaru and shook his hand, rising to his cheek. He had slapped the boy fifteen years his junior had slapped him.
His breath caught their way; he hadn't noticed before, but the boy's eyes threw the boy's eyes. They were; something was wrong with them. He could see death in them.
He was leaning against the big wall. The one with the fewest holes in it. The light in his eyes.
"Get up!" He snapped this boy, who looked so silly, so dead he saw his body when he laid eyes on him. He saw his death. The images of all those dead bodies he passed flashed before him when he looked at them when he looked at anyone.
His hands were calloused but warm and strong. They were shaking Niceg over and over. He blinked at him; he wanted to close his eyes again. God-emperor, he could see them out of the corner of his eye; they were so close—strange symbols on them, their chests, their skin.
He couldn't look at the boy anymore, so he turned his head to the lookout. The boy was too alive to see. He hoped he didn't see him die. He couldn't see anyone else die. The boy was screaming at him again.
He looked at him just for a second, and his mind reeled, overlapping with the bodies he had passed on the way here. Hive rats were eating their blown-up bits as he scrambled through the outer runes. He just wanted to go somewhere safe. He didn't want to be a soldier. He didn't want to see them all die.
He remembered his office before this. Tucked away files of Guilder Naslquey, nothing but a commercial clerk. Checking and recording all transactions for the day, then heading home to Esma. He was nothing; he was no soldier.
Now he saw the boy, but he didn't see just the boy. He was the body of so many bodies torn to shreds, children and parents and old little ladies. His office blew apart, but he initially shielded, and he only got out because he was at lunch with Esma.
He was a soldier now; she would have hated that. So practical, his Esma always said soldiers were good for dying, and that was about it. Now she was past in some seamstress shop somewhere, her guts probably decorating the walls.
That's what he saw when he looked at the boy. He saw little children and their dead eyes on rusted walkways. He saw older men who had been crushed by collapsing rubble. He saw someone alive.
He hated that because he wasn't sure he was anymore.
Subaru cursed, pushing him back. "Chikushō" It was a curse he didn't know. He wondered what it meant. The boy turned and raised his gun, but he didn't know how to fire it. It started shooting. They weren't like the other lookouts; they didn't have a stub-gunner. They weren't trained for it.
He moved only a step or two from him, the space only five feet across, proudly most of it taken up by the hatch. Metal plating for a roof. It used to be someone's home. Only a metal frame for a bed was left. They had stripped it of everything else to make the hab unit a better lookout.
They were just meant to scream a warning before they died. But from the waves of oncoming Zohican forces, he doubted that would be necessary.
He didn't seem to care, though. The boy was shooting. Missing every shot, going wide, but he was shooting. His eyes were two blazing things of fury in his head. He was scared. Nice could see that he was as frightened as he was. But he kept shooting.
He looked down at his shaking hands and the little lookout again at the endless waves approaching the metal and human mass. He stumbled up, his hands still shaking. He wanted to close his eyes again.
He wanted... It didn't matter. He picked up his gun, and it had fallen next to him when the boy had crashed into him. The little holes that the original volley had opened up in their nest, letting light in. He clutched the cold metal in his hands.
Something flew a laser bolt, and it just missed the boy. He threw himself to the side, and it was almost unnatural. Too fast, Niceg thought. As if he knew it was coming. It didn't matter; they would both be dead soon anyway.
It even smelled like those streets. Dark, even with the little point lights of the holes coming in, Small and seething with the smell of his fear. He was proud he hadn't lost his bowels. He was proud of that, at least.
He had to force himself over to one of the little lookouts. Well, what was once a lookout is now just holes in a thin wall? He picked up his gun. The boy was still shooting. He looked at the endless waves of bodies and tanks rolling past them. Then he was shooting, too.
Subaru fired; it was the only thing he could do. He was so used to having a plan. Having a way to fight back. He had been spoiled by Emilia, Beatrice, Garfiel, Rem, and even Otto. He missed them so much. He tried not to think about Al.
He would return to them. He would find Beatrice.
Right now, though, he had one choice and one choice only. He kept firing because if he stopped, he didn't know if he would be able to start again. He could feel Vamberfled stumble to his side. Smell the sweat on him. Subaru didn't mind; he probably smelled the same.
He wasn't very good with the gun, he thought. He never tried it, always preferring swords. Then, after he went to Lugunica, it didn't matter much. He was learning, though, that it wasn't just pulling a trigger.
It was aiming at moving things that wouldn't stay the damn still. As they moved in lines, volleys of fire hit their nest with a platter of light on steel. It was pretty cool, Subaru had to admit, using a gun like this. It's like one from the movies that didn't jolt in his hands—shooting beams of light down, almost as if he were a stormtrooper from Star Wars. Now the only thing he needed was not to damn miss.
There was smoke and the sounds of screaming. He hated that sound; he wanted to make it stop; he wanted to be able to do something beyond just sitting in his little metal nest shooting at the bad guys.
If they even were that. He tried not to think about the fact that he had no idea why they were attacking. What was going on, and if the people down there were truly any different than him and Vamberfled up here?
He tried to ignore the relief in his chest every time he missed. Still, he wasn't used to war, not like this, not on this scale. Even his battalion wasn't like this. Tanks in the distance are getting closer—the sound of volleys of guns firing at once. The swirl of a tank blast was as bright as a small star in his eyes.
The smell of smoke, blood, and ash in the air. It felt almost clogged. He had seen a lot of death in his time, but it had never been like this. It's never so futile. He nearly felt powerless; all he knew how to do was keep firing his gun. To keep missing.
Vamberfled was panting beside him, his breath small puffs in the cold air. Subaru had almost forgotten how cold it was. With all the fire, noise, and death, it felt like a furnace. He was beside him, the older man, his thin frame shaking as he fired.
The tanks were using the open roadways around the rubble to rumble in slowly moving beasts of steel and motor oil as their turrets exploded like the hammering of some minor god. It was almost as if they were sharks in an endless sea of rubble spilling from the waves. Parasites of men are staggering after them. The Zoicans in threadbare clothes, not even uniforms. It would have been easier if they were in uniforms, climbing over them and around them.
They were high up, five floors above, in the metal box, a rusted ladder the only way to get in; it was the main reason they had been blown to bits. The tanks didn't know which box to shoot at or the people; they weren't soldiers to Subaru; they couldn't be. They looked too sad to be a soldier.
They weren't like Julius, Reinhard, or even those soldiers he used to see in movies. They didn't look brave.
Other hab units surrounded their position, as Vamberfled had called them, with numerous tiny holes that made them hidden among the metal boxes. Like cargo crates stacked on top of each other, the advancing force was probably a few hundred meters away, five if Subaru had to guess.
It didn't matter, though, as Subaru stared in horror, his gun firing and firing and firing as if one were a child, a little boy in oil-stained overalls. He could see from here. Disgust filled his chest at seeing a gun in his hands, a tired, sleepy look in his eyes.
As if he were off to school. A symbol that hurt the eyes was painted across his cheek. He was firing as if he didn't understand what was happening, just like Subaru.
The adults were in ochre-colored armor; they got something to shield them, but the boy didn't.
He didn't think he had ever been so horrified; these weren't soldiers; they were people with guns. The boy stumbled in front of a tank tread.
Subaru wanted to launch himself over the nest. He tried to stop that boy when Vamberfled grabbed him hard from the lookout, too small to fit him anyway, and wrenched him back. Their guns clattering to them, but he heard nothing over the blood pounding in his ears.
"What are you doing!" Vamberfled shouted, his voice small next to the ringing in his ears, as Subaru stared in horror, the boy seeming to wake up, a spark of life returning to his eyes. He was in blue overalls, grubby with oil stains, and had soft brown skin like molasses as it fell.
He opened his mouth to scream as the tank tread crushed him under its wheels. The tank barely slowed.
Despite being hundreds of meters away and up in the hab metal nest. Subaru could hear his bones crunch. It reminded him of the sound of crackers when they snapped. He could hear his head popping like a smashed watermelon, the crunch of his skull under the metal tread.
He turned and shoved Vamberfled away. They had fallen next to the metal frame that looked like it was for a bed.
He threw his guts up, the taste of bitter acid on his tongue as it landed on a pile next to the metal leg of the bed. Splattering over the old dark metal coated with what looked like tar.
As he heaved, it reminded him of an article he once read about these old churches coated in tar to keep the rain out. To stop the wood from rooting. The coat frame was rusted. He heaved again.
Vamberfled moved behind him, pulling on his shoulder as he lost his lunch and dinner.
"Get up! Get up!" The irony of Vamberfled repeating his words back to him was not lost on Subaru.
He stopped heaving the pounding still in his ears. No, that wasn't his blood. He realized that was the sound of gun turrets going off. The tanks. He scrambled back through the window, Vamberfled half crouched beside him. He felt something wet on his knee and realized he had gone through his vomit.
He didn't care; he picked up his gun by the little lookout. They had dropped them both near it when Vamberfled had tackled him, who picked up his rifle a moment later. He tried not to look at the figures below as he moved through the streets. Close enough, he could see them.
He just kept shooting.
It made Subaru feel a little better; he was missing as much as Subaru was. There was something in it that helped soothe his ego. How silly, he thought, to worry about something like that right now. To worry about not being the worst person firing here. He could see in the distance, in the corner of his eye, out of the small lookout, one of the tanks turning. The turret powered up; it was the one with the girl and the man inside.
He wanted to do something; he wanted to jump up, leave this tiny metal box, and run over there; he tried to pull them from the wreckage that was about to happen. Yet, he knew they had agreed to this; it wasn't his choice to make.
He turned back, looking down and blinking; he felt almost deaf from the sound. His fingers were white, cold as that time Puck froze him solid, or at least they felt that way. He had stopped firing.
He glanced up, locking eyes with someone on the ground below. They were close enough that he could see the symbols on their skin. Carved in with something that didn't look gentle, ragged pieces of skin around the passing sore wound. There was something mad about their eyes.
Mad like the witch's cult.
He opened his mouth to speak, to warn Vamerfled, to yell for him to duck right as a last bolt went through his skull.
Subaru didn't even manage to get a word out before he collapsed without a sound.
Vamberfled followed a second later, chest punched through by a beam of light. For just a moment, he wanted to smile as he lay next to the dead boy. He finally didn't look so alive.
Niceg Vamberfled and Subaru Natsuki died without a sound.
Thane Vespine dodged back; he and Clovis had moved down to street level after the top half of their sniper's nest had been blown to bits. Whatever throne-damned protection the thin tin gave them was gone.
And Clovis had agreed with him it was better to die in the streets, where they could smell something that wasn't their sweat, than in that tiny box. If he survived this, he was going to get the one who suggested Habits made good lookout points.
By the god emperor's balls, did he wish they had been given a stub gunner? He should have stolen one. But by the time he realized he and Clovis got all of some stubby lasguns, they were already crowded into the shake. Those Zocian mold hives are already on them.
Like those that had eaten the wrong mold down in the underside when Thane had been a kid. All glassy-eyed and out of it. He knew better than to feel bad for them; whatever emperor's bones think had happened in Zoican, he knew this wasn't some damned trade war.
Clovis signaled for them to move; he was ahead of them in the alley. They had chosen the route they had mined. It already claimed two of those metal monsters. Sure, they could lose a leg or more if they forget where they placed the charges, but Thane had been weaving through the mine zone since he was a kid.
Clovis, with him, they knew how to spot their own. Clovis ducked first behind the wall. He had signaled it was safe, but that meant the throne cursed nothing if there was a sniper nearby. They had both lost more idiots to snipers than either of them would admit.
Still, when he heard the all-clear from Clovis, he moved. He was on the ground, a strange chemical stuck to it that he hoped was just loom waste. If it was any of whatever the Zoicans had been smoking, he knew he was doomed.
But desperate times called for a hive rat's fury. He used to like to watch those buggers in a fight. Up to your waist in size and sharp teeth with grown barbs in them that were hell to remove. They would be placed in a small ring about the size of an upperhivers hover car, and their own territorial needs would do the rest.
I won a few downhiver fortunes and lost a few of them. He tried to illuminate them now as he took a breath, heart pumping with fear as he dove into the open street. Moving as fast as he could through the mines and ignoring the strange symbols on the still-burning tanks only meters away.
That was a mistake he learned in his hiver days. Most ran away from the fighting, but that was liable to get you killed from stray shots. Close up, you have to get a man to kill, and it was much easier to survive that than a las-bolt through the head.
He heard a shooting scream far away and glanced over as another of those miners was struck in the chest by an angry Zoican. Maybe they had gone too close. He looked at the man's eyes, his teeth yellow and rotten. It must have been a mid-hiver, at least, to still have them.
Thane moved faster, half-stumbling to avoid the hidden mines; he wasn't too worried about the screaming man behind him. He had no gun and wouldn't have had to gut someone with a broken bottle.
He was probably a good twenty meters away when Thane heard the booming of one of their hidden mines. He ducked when he saw his leg flying at him out of the corner of his eye. It narrowly missed his skull, white bone peaking out of pink flesh.
It made a splat as it hit the wall. He locked eyes with Clovis, who had laid himself against an alleyway, that fanatic spark he hated in his brother's eyes. It was scary, too scared.
Clovis was an emperor's teeth, a confident bastard, and when he was scared, Thane knew real Groxshit was about to happen. He heard a groan behind him and paused, looking back as he almost made it to the alley mouth.
"Thane?" Clovis asked in that husky voice of his; he was a real lady killer. Thane always hated him for that. Clovis always hated him for his damn soft heart.
The man the crazy Zocian had stabbed was still alive, clutching onto his stomach. The Zocian must have been crazier than he thought because he had just nicked the man's side. He was splayed in the middle of two mines, and he will probably be blown to bits any second now.
It wasn't Thane's damned job to help the man.
"Thane!" Clovis was loud now behind him. He didn't curse himself but didn't look back as he started to slowly and carefully now. If jumping through his one minefield, he was careful as he made his way toward the man.
"Don't Move!" He shouted, and the man had the presence of mind not to move. He was an older fellow with good-looking and healthy skin. Thane tried to tell himself he was doing this for the payout from the man if they lived, but he knew he was lying to himself.
He finally made it to the man's still presence of mind to move an inch. Thane appreciated that he could always enjoy a man who knew how to listen. They tended to live longer.
Clovis was shouting at him now, but Thane ignored him. He had lost the bet to be the lookout anyway. He didn't get to talk. He knelt.
He reached for a hand to shake. "Thane Vespine, a pleasure to meet ya."
The man turned to him; he had piercing blue eyes, sharp as a whip. Thane knew he was an upperhiver now; no one with eyes like that in even the mid hive had stayed anything but a doll for long. The fact he didn't look like one of those bar fellows Thane saw around made him almost sure he was a guilder, at least if not up hive blood.
Octus Hatherford. Now get me the throne out."
Definitely up the hive; no well-respecting mid or low hiver would use the throne in this situation—far too tame a word.
"Right, you are." Thane nodded and shifted down. "Now, there are two mines on either side of you, so you shouldn't shift a wink, or we'll both be rat food."
The man froze solid like Thane had threatened to cut his manhood off. "How the emperor's teeth do you know the emperor's teeth?" He snapped. His voice was smooth, like what he imagined fine whisky might taste like. It had to be fake, Thane thought.
"Cause I placed them there, of course."
The man looked at August, which seemed a little dramatic to Thane; it was just some mines. He heaved the man up carefully and let him lean on him. Taking the brunt of his weight as they shifted forward. His side was bleeding mighty bad, but Thane knew a surface wound when he saw it. The man was lucky if he didn't die to some green flesh-eater, he would be practically blessed.
They almost made it to the alley mouth and safety. When he saw Clovis's eyes widen, and he didn't care much for mine, he hurled them into the alley mouth. He knew one second longer on the open street meant death.
He crashed into Clovis with a thud, both their breaths wheezing out of them as sharp pain lanced through his foot. He glanced down at the hole in his boot. Hatherford groaned sharply on top of his older brother. Who promptly shoved him off. That just made him groan harder.
Thane smiled, "You know Clovis?"
"What, you idiot?" Clovis snapped.
Thane showed him the fact that only the edge of his foot had been clipped by what must have been a forward scout.
"I think we found ourselves a lucky charm."
Clovis glanced down for just a moment, blinking slowly before sighing. Rather dramatically, in Thane's opinion.
Octus groaned. Loudly.
Subaru blinked awake, or more like alive. Breathing heavily, Vamberfled was in his ball again like before, like… Vomit came rushing up, and Subaru had to swallow it down. He looked at the laser gun in his hands and the smoke in the distance. Figures barely outline in the rubble, the first volley having already happened. He served to the right, feeling the last bolt next to his head zip by.
He wasn't shooting like before. He knew he couldn't. If he pulled that trigger right now, he would throw up. He turned, swinging the gun over his shoulder, the strap biting into his skin. He knelt from the lookout.
He was pretty sure they were too far away to seem, but he didn't want to take the chance. He was still panting, his skin pale and calm. The feeling of nothing and her voice still in his head. Making his thoughts feel slow.
He grabbed Vamberfled, shaking him hard again. He was pretty sure he had already slapped him, but he felt like doing it again. They didn't have time.
"What?" Vamberfled asked, his eyes still on the little lookout window.
"We need to move," Subaru said, his voice taking on the stern tone he had learned from Julius. It always helped him calm down.
Vamberfeld's eyes snapped to him. "We would be deserting," he said as if shocked by the very thought.
Subaru shook him again. "We can't pew the bad guys from here; we're going to miss every shot. We need to get down to the ground; at least, then we can take one of them down."
Vamberfled lips twitched, a kind of life returning to his eyes. "One for the two of us?"
"Seems like a fair trade." Subaru reached out his hand, letting it hang in the air. Vamberfled took, and Subaru pulled the older man to his feet.
"Don't forget your gun." He called back as he crouched down, keeping his head low like in those old war movies, and shuffled over to the hatch.
"Throne damned teenager. Always thinking they need to tell adults what to do." Vamberfled's voice was weak behind him, but there. Not so lost as before. Subaru smiled a little; the older man had reminded him of his dad for just a second.
A terrible ache in his chest as he heaved the hatch up. He pushed it aside and now wasn't the right time to be thinking about his stupid old man. Vamberfled to the other side as they both heaved, breathing hard. It was heavier than it looked, and he wished they hadn't shut it when Subaru came up.
With one last huff of breath, it flung open. Clanging down in the small space as both of them jumped back. Barely avoiding crushing their toes.
"Stupid teenagers, to open a metal hatch toward them." Subaru tried. Vamerbfeld huffed that it wasn't funny, but it was something as they climbed down the ladder below. Each rung clanged as its weight was applied to it.
Subaru knew this was dangerous, and he could hear the shooting around him. The other habs might shield them from view, but it wouldn't stop one of those light bullets.
It was probably a minor miracle they managed to make it down as they did. Their feet thudded against the ground, and then both crouched again.
"Where to?" Vamberfled whispered. It almost made Subaru laugh; it was so loud that even if the older man had shouted, they wouldn't have been overheard.
Subaru opened his mouth when they both heard a piercing cry, like that of one of the old warriors of mythology. A battle cry roared up from what sounded like dozens of lungs.
"Away from that." Subaru tried.
Vamberfled lips twitched again, a small achievement, but it made Subaru feel strangely proud to make the older man return to himself. Still, he looked at the lasgun on his shoulder. For a long moment, they didn't move as he stared at it.
"We agreed to fight." He gulped; he didn't look particularly enthused over the notion, but his grip firmed on his gun. "We said one, didn't we? Got to get at least that between the two of us."
"Are you sure about this?" Subaru studied him; he knew he wasn't going to turn back, but the older man didn't look like he was ready to die. He looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over.
Subaru heard Vamberfled grit his teeth. "For the emperor." He said, and though Subaru didn't know what the hell that meant, he knew the sound of conviction, stupid conviction but convection nonetheless.
"The emperor protects," Vamberfled said and then turned and moved, Subaru after him as they headed toward the sound of screams.
"Never learned to do that velvet flower note." Kol Golea kneeled next to Victra. It was a brief lull in the fighting after they had finished bashing in the heads of those Vocian hive scum.
He held her hand. She had a stomach wound, and he could see her intestines. She won't make it because he already knew that they didn't have a field medic anyway. But she had fought hard with an axe in hand borrowed from dead Ruth. A minor he had known since his apprenticeship.
She had picked it up when Zocian had slashed his chest open and based the man in battle dress head on. Then, four more before one of them got a knife in her. Her hands could barely move now. Her lips were trying to form words that her ears, deaf from the shelling, couldn't hear.
He signed back to her, his hands big and complex, strangely gentle now. "You learned with their skulls, girl."
She smiled at that. "Do you think the emperor protects?" Her voice was waning.
She had fear in her eyes now, fear as he saw in his miners when their tunnels collapsed. The fear he felt in himself when he realized his wife and kids were probably dead now.
He didn't know what to say to her. He could lie to her and tell her he did, but he wasn't feeling like the emperor cared much for them now. Never thought he cared much for them, ever to tell the truth.
"Rest now, girl; no more loom work for you."
She smiled, then her lips lost color, her eyes brown, pale things in her head.
"Kill a few more of them for me? Will you?" She signed her hands, barely moving, but he saw what she meant in her eyes.
This time, he didn't hesitate; he knew he wouldn't be lying to her now. "There be your dowry to the grave."
She smiled as life left her eyes. "War Bounty," she signed barely. Her fingers are almost not moving. "I never wanted to get married."
He closed her dead eyes and got up. Swinging his coal axe over his shoulder. Any second now, and more would probably be theirs. He could see the next wave coming.
"Golea." Quar, a thin kid from the mines stu, humbled next to him. They were in the trench works that Fencer had constructed. The PDF Major died now, for all it was worth; he appreciated the tunnels. They made it easier to hear the bastards.
It still made it hard to spot people around the corners, and Kol almost swung at the kid before stopping himself mid-stroke.
Quar flinched back the axe next to his cheek, eyes wide.
"Sorry." Golea breathed out, dropping the axe to his side. His las-gun had been busted up a while back when the shooting first started. He would have to grab a new one of the bodies around. But it didn't feel right taking them well; they were still warm.
The kid glanced at the axe, a little apprehensive, but steeled himself. "Two more joined the trenches." His voice cracked a little; he was at that age where it stopped being so high, and pimples littered his face.
If Kol didn't feel so dead inside, he knew even for him he would be horrified.
"Who?" Kol glanced down then, the meat around him once people he knew the warmest thing in the cold air. Kneeling by one of them. An old miner named Jasptic was a bastard well alive.
Probably a bastard in death, too. Kol felt the least amount of guilt taking the cold metal gun, barely used, off his shoulder.
"A kid named Subaru and that older man Vamberfled," Kol grunted that the strap was stuck under his body. He pushed the dead meat over, working the strap out, but it had gotten all twisted up under him and was proving more challenging than he thought.
With one final heave, he worked it off the body and stood up, slinging it across his shoulder.
"Get them with Thane and the other two with him."
Quar frowned. "But are they all worse shots than me? And that's right, where they hit us last time?"
Kol shifted, looking over the ridge of the trench they were in, one of the minor diversions they had dug. A zig-zagging pattern of trenches made it hard to rush.
"Their bodies can slow the buggers down." Kol shurged. "Or maybe they hit us somewhere else, and they get lucky. It's up to the emperor now."
Quar opened his mouth to speak, then, glancing at Kol's face, closed it. "Right," he said, saluting despite Kol just being a minor and then civilians with guns. Still, it made Kol snort. It was a sloppy thing, unpracticed.
Dumb kid, he thought.
He glanced over the ridge, seeing shapes moving closer from the smoke. He thought of his wife and his kids and pulled the gun over his shoulder. He thought of the loom girls who couldn't even hear themselves as they died.
He would get a few more, that he was certain, as he started firing.