The Long War - Chapter 16 (Patreon)

Firebase Vanguard, Shanxi, Iota Persei System,   

September 12th, 2149CE - Systems Alliance Calendar   

Zaeed Massani 

The birdfaces had learned, and that was the worst part. 

Yesterday, they had come across the open ground clean, proud, and stupid - trusting formation discipline to carry them through gunfire that had already proved it could tear their armor apart. They died under the mesa's guns, blue blood soaking into the dirt wherever human rounds found their body. By afternoon, the survivors had changed their approach. Smoke went first, drones followed to draw heavy fire and expose firing positions, then portable shield frames advanced with infantry tucked behind them while supporting weapons kept the human parapets under pressure. 

Today they started there. 

Turian squads advanced in short bursts, crossing a few meters before fresh smoke covered the next movement. Snipers hunted gun crews whenever someone stayed above the trench too long. Mortars hammered the trench line to keep heads down while infantry crawled closer through drainage folds and shell holes. Their fighters stayed high until counter-battery damaged enough of Vanguard's anti-air positions to create a temporary opening, then dropped low for fast attack runs before the surviving batteries could concentrate on them. 

Goddamn, they had numbers, and now they were wasting fewer of them. 

Zaeed Massani crouched behind Big Ruth’s armored shield in the third trench, both hands locked around the autocannon’s grips. The combat stim was hot in his blood, keeping his hands steady while his pulse hammered behind his teeth and his jaw ached from clenching. Every squeeze of the bolter’s trigger rattled through his shoulders. 

Ruth had a rhythm if you stopped trying to bully her. 

Thump-thump-thump. 

A burst of micro-explosive penetrators crossed the smoke toward a shield team moving beneath a collapsed structural frame. The portable projector carried the barrier ahead of two crouched birdfaces, its blue field wide enough to cover the narrow approach. Zaeed's first burst made the barrier flare. 

Thump-thump-thump. 

The second drove it close to collapse. 

Thump-thump-thump. 

The third punched into the projector housing and tore the machine apart. 

"Left lane! Shield team under the broken frame!" 

Sergeant Mira Patel's voice came through the squad net, high and strained. Two days of shouting through dust, stimulant use, and too little sleep had worked most of the lower register out of her. When she needed volume now, the sound jumped upward whether she wanted it to or not. 

"Massani, turn the bolter! Drainage cut, now!" 

Zaeed was already moving Ruth when another portable shield emerged through the smoke farther left. Three silhouettes packed tightly behind the glowing field and a fourth birdface crawling along the drainage wall with his rifle held low. 

Thump-thump-thump. 

The shield flashed violently. Zaeed walked the next burst lower, chewing through the projector housing until the field collapsed and the two birdfaces directly behind it went down in a spray of armor fragments and blue blood. A birdface trying to crawl beneath the fallen frame lost everything below the waist. Another alien grabbed the wounded bird's harness and started dragging him backward while return fire snapped over his head. 

Zaeed squeezed once more. The rescuer stopped moving. 

“Should've picked a better war, birdface.” he muttered. 

The stim was doing its job too well. His hands remained steady while his heartbeat punched at his teeth, and every muzzle flash seemed to hang in the smoke a fraction too long. The battlefield reached him in pieces: human voices on the net, alien shouts beyond the wire, mortar warnings and Ruth's action coughing through another cycle. The exhaustion had not gone anywhere, the chemicals had merely postponed the argument. 

Big Ruth was new, less than a day in his hands and uglier than Maggie. She was another M-88 Thunderbolt pulled into service when the second trench had been abandoned, and Patel had assigned Zaeed to the weapon because he already knew exactly how much abuse one could tolerate. 

Maggie had been his first heavy bolter on Shanxi. She became unwieldy when he got greedy; the barrel climbed after the fourth round, and the regulator gave a little click before the whole weapon decided it had tolerated enough abuse. She had taught him how these guns breathed: short bursts for easy targets, longer ones when somebody badly needed killing, then a conversation with the heat gauge afterward. He had left her behind when the first trench collapsed, thermal feed block spiked and ammunition block burning while the withdrawal moved past her position. 

Fine bloody weapon. 

The second trench had fallen during the night. By the end, drones were crawling through the wire and birdface engineers were cutting new firing angles through captured sections of the wall. Zaeed had beaten one of them to death with a broken thermal block after his rifle jammed. Blue blood still sat dried in the seams of his left glove. 

Now there was the third trench, the last position outside the mesa. 

Firebase Vanguard rose behind it with most of the installation buried inside rock. Gun ports opened through reinforced faces, pressure gates led into tunnels, and ammunition lifts disappeared somewhere Zaeed had never cared to visit. The trench curved around the base of the mesa, battered by two days of artillery and patched with whatever engineers could drag forward between attacks. 

The birdfaces wanted it badly enough to keep coming. 

"Ellis! Fresh ammo block on Ruth!" Mira shouted. "Keep that drum moving before Massani turns her into a club!" 

"On it!" 

Private Ellis slid into the gun pit on both knees. He was still thin enough that his armor looked borrowed, although two days of fighting had cured him of moving like somebody else would point out the safe places. Shrapnel had chewed the left thigh plate, and tape held the stock of his M-8 together around a warning light that had been blinking since yesterday. 

He pulled the nearly empty ammunition block from the side of Ruth, locked a fresh one into place, checked the pressure once, and rotated a cool thermal block into the receiver loop. 

"Loaded!" 

"Good, kid." 

A round struck the trench lip and kicked a chunk of syncrete into Ellis's shoulder. His barrier flashed. He ducked, swore, then came back up just far enough to shove his rifle over the trench and fire a short burst, forcing a birdface barrier to flare before he corrected lower and caught the alien across the neck with the next burst. 

The birdface dropped behind a broken crawler drone. Ellis stared for less than a second before dropping back below the trench. That was an improvement. Two days ago, he would have stared longer. 

Mira moved behind the line, hauling Corporal Nadi away from a firing slit by the harness while firing over the parapet with her other hand. A sniper impact had cracked the top corner of her visor earlier without finishing the job. 

"Head down unless you're donating it! Kwan, right bunker! Jansen, the right bunker, not wherever your panic points! Ellis, if Massani runs dry, I'll use you as a thermal block!" 

"Yes, Sergeant!" 

An artillery warning cut through the net. 

“INCOMING!” 

Zaeed dropped behind Ruth's shield. 

The first shell burst beyond the trench. The second struck the rear slope. The third dropped into the trench dozens of meters to the right and threw Zaeed against Ruth's shield plate. 

Helmet dampers caught most of the concussion and left him with a deep ringing underneath everything else. Static tore across the command net. Somebody screamed for a medic; another voice called for his mother and disappeared into interference. 

Zaeed hauled himself up through smoke and thrown mud. A human arm had landed across the ammunition crate beside Ellis, the fingers still twitching. 

Ellis looked at it. 

"Don't." Zaeed caught the front of his armor and dragged his attention back. "Feed, smoke, muzzle flashes. Look at anything still capable of killin' you." 

Ellis swallowed and put both hands on the drum housing again. 

"Z junction, report!" Mira yelled. 

The net answered all at once. 

"—third squad hit—" 

"—medic down at red marker—" 

"—eastern approach requesting fire mission—" 

"—north breach negative, drones only—" 

"—Vanguard Command to western elements, hold the third trench until Iron Gate—" 

"—say again, hold or execute—" 

Mira hammered her transmit control hard enough that Zaeed heard glove on armor. 

"Western Third holds until Iron Gate is confirmed! Hold means hold!" 

The whole firebase was being hit. The net kept trying to make all of it their problem at once: north cut, east slope, western drainage, gate timing, medical routes changing every thirty seconds. 

Officers deeper in the mountain had maps. Zaeed had Ruth, mud up to his boots, and smoke moving wrong on the left. 

"Contact!" Ellis shouted. "Drainage, left!" 

Six, maybe eight birdfaces moved low beneath the mortar smoke with a portable shield in front and infantry packed behind it. They had found the shallow drainage fold that brought them close enough to grenade the trench without crossing the center. 

"Son of a bitch." Zaeed grunted, swinging Ruth around before opening fire. 

Thump-thump-thump-thump. 

The first burst collapsed the portable barrier. The next round blew through the birdface behind it and sprayed the squad with armor fragments. 

They split at once. 

"There you go," Zaeed growled. "Learnin'. Bloody inconvenient habit." 

Ruth's heat gauge climbed into amber. 

"Drum hot!" Ellis shouted. 

"I can fuckin' see it!" 

"Then stop firing!" 

"Tell them!" 

A grenade came out of the smoke. 

Mira shot it in midair. 

The blast went high, raining fragments into the trench. Something scraped Zaeed's helmet. Another piece buried itself in Ellis's forearm plate and sat there smoking. He yelped once, stared at it, then returned his free hand to the feed. 

Mira dropped behind cover to slam a fresh sink into her rifle. 

"One grenade means more behind it! Watch the smoke!" 

Her voice cracked high on the last word. 

Silhouettes moved through the smoke. Zaeed fired into it. A barrier flashed, a body folded, and another birdface rolled through the gap before coming up shooting. 

Kwan jerked backward from the firing slit with most of his visor gone. 

Mira caught the harness before he pitched over the parapet and dragged him down. Jansen reached toward him. 

“He’s gone. Fire!” Mira ordered, and Jansen fired. 

The mesa's guns opened above them in a ripping mechanical roar. Explosions tore through the birdface line beyond the trench, and the pressure on the western sector eased for a few precious seconds. 

Mira used every one of them. 

"Status. The M88?" 

"Ammo block thirty percent," Ellis said, without shouting this time. 

"Rifles?" 

"Low!" 

"Med route?" 

"Still pinned down!" 

"Move wounded between impacts! Third squad, Gate Two! Massani owns drainage! Ellis stays with the M88!" 

Fresh birdfaces appeared through the haze before the last acknowledgment finished. These birds had not spent two days sleeping in five-minute pieces or felt stimulant burning in their vein. 

Shanxi had the same tired bastards and cooked rifles they had started with. Medics worked with blood to their elbows while ammunition teams dragged half-empty crates through tunnels that shook whenever the artillery landed. 

"Here they come," Ellis said. 

The kid sounded scared, but he kept his hands on the feed anyway. 

Zaeed opened fire. 

A birdface burst apart when a penetrator went through the abdomen. A shield frame collapsed and the infantry behind it went down for cover. One alien soldier crawled with both hands pressed against armor that no longer contained much of him. 

Then Ruth locked. 

"Heat!" 

"I noticed!" 

The saturated block ejected into bloody mud with a hiss. Ellis rotated the drum and slapped the locking lever early. 

The feed coughed. 

Zaeed looked at him. 

"I thought it was seated," Ellis said. 

"It wasn't." 

Zaeed punched the side housing.  

"Come on, Ruth. Don't get shy now."  

The feed pawl settled into place, and Ruth fired again.  

"Good woman."  

A birdface vaulting the wire spun sideways, half his body landing in the trench. He was still moving when he hit. Zaeed drew his sidearm and fired through the visor slit.  

Another birdface came over the parapet almost on top of him. 

Ellis rose and hammered a burst into the alien’s barrier, ducked ahead of the return fire, then came back up and shot low. The next burst caught the birdface through the knee and folded the leg under him. When he pitched forward across the parapet, Ellis put two rounds through the helmet. 

Mira’s shouting cut across them.  

“Massani! Right!”  

Zaeed saw the movement above the trench lip a fraction too late. A birdface rose behind a portable shield and lightly tossed a grenade over the trench lip before dropping back into cover.  

The grenade struck the rear wall, bounced once, and rolled between two marines.  

“Bugger.”  

Mira saw the same thing.  

“DOWN!”  

The grenade detonated.  

Two marines disappeared inside the blast. Shrapnel and pulverized syncrete filled the trench, while another was thrown into the opposite wall hard enough to leave him crumpled beneath it. Smoke and dust filled along the low trench line, and before anyone could recover, three birdfaces dropped over the edge exploited the confusion.  

Mira met the first with the butt of her rifle. The strike caught the birdface in the throat and rocked him backward. She snapped her rifle up and held the trigger down. The automatic burst tore the barrier apart before the rest of the rounds hammered through the alien's armor and drove him backward into the trench wall.  

Zaeed abandoned Ruth, raised his M-8, and fired from the hip at the second alien. His first burst stripped the barrier and chewed across the Turian’s chest plate without dropping him. Ellis joined from the side. His first rounds climbed too high, but the next burst found the exposed chest and shoulder. The birdface jerked under the impacts and collapsed into the mud.  

The third birdface drove Jansen into the mud and punched a hard-light blade through his shoulder. Mira hit them from the side, knocking the alien off balance. Zaeed fired three times through the back until the armor opened and sprayed her visor blue. 

She wiped at it with one glove before half-turned toward the parapet with her rifle raised. 

"That one was mine." 

"He was on your back." 

"Invoice me later." 

"Bossy woman." 

The sniper round found her before either of them had time to say more.  

A hard snap cut through the smoke hit her left flank, just beneath the arm. Her barrier flared and vanished. The impact spun her into the trench wall. 

Red blood was already running from beneath the armor along her side. 

“SARGE!” Zaeed shouted. 

"Eyes front." 

Her voice had dropped low again, rough and controlled. 

"You're hit." 

"I know... eyes front, Massani." 

A marine beside her slapped what little medigel remained into the wound before the dispenser ran dry. It was not enough to close everything, only enough to slow the bleeding. A dose of painkiller was injected through her medical port before she shoved the marine away and raised her rifle again.  

Zaeed obeyed because the birds kept coming. 

An armored vehicle pushed forward behind the next infantry push, its compact turret already tracking the trench. Zaeed had no idea whether the thing was supposed to be a troop carrier, fire-support platform, or something in between, and he did not particularly care. 

The turret fired before Ruth could turn. 

The round struck just short of the gun nest and blew the parapet apart. Syncrete and dirt slammed across the position, knocking Zaeed off his feet as his visor flashed white and alarms shrieked inside the helmet. A fist-sized chunk of broken syncrete landed across his legs, and he kicked it away while dragging himself up. 

Mira's voice cut through the ringing, high and ragged again. 

"Anti-armor! Where's my goddamn anti-armor!?" 

"Team's dead!" someone answered. 

"Then find the launcher!" 

Ellis moved before she finished, crouching toward a dead marine near the collapsed parapet as rounds snapped over him. The alien vehicle fired again and tore apart another section of the trench lip.  

The harness had twisted underneath the corpse.  

"Cut it!" Zaeed shouted.  

Ellis reached for his knife, missed the grip, and tried again.  

Too fucking slow.  

Zaeed hauled Big Ruth around until the traverse mechanism hit its stop. The vehicle sat almost outside the weapon's firing arc.  

He opened fire.  

Thump-thump-thump.  

The barrier blossomed blue. Zaeed kept the trigger held down.  

Thump-thump-thump-thump.  

Ruth hammered against the mount, penetrators chewing at the same section of shield until the field began to flicker around the turret.  

"Come on, you son of a bitch..."  

The heat indicator climbed through amber. Zaeed ignored it. 

Thump-thump-thump.  

The vehicle’s barrier collapsed under the impacts. Micro-explosive rounds punched through the exposed side armor and detonated inside, peeling plating outward. The vehicle rocked, but its gun remained alive.  

Ruth's heat warning went red.  

"Massani!" Mira yelled.  

"I fuckin' see it!"  

The weapon gave him two rounds before the thermal governor choked the cycle.  

Thump-Thump.  

Then nothing.  

Ruth locked herself down rather than melt the barrel assembly into scrap.  

"Goddamn useless, safety-conscious bitch!"  

The vehicle kept coming through the broken wire.  

Mira saw its turret beginning to traverse toward Ruth and threw smoke before the barrel had finished turning. The grenade burst between the gun pit and the vehicle, spilling a thick gray curtain across its sights.  

The turret disappeared behind it.  

“Down!”  

Zaeed dropped flat into the bottom of the trench. 

The vehicle fired blind. Its shot passed over the gun pit and smashed into the rear trench wall, turning syncrete into powder and throwing dust across Zaeed’s back.  

Ellis finally cut the launcher free. He rolled onto his back, unfolded the sight and aimed. His hands shook badly enough for Zaeed to see it from the pit.  

"Hold," Mira said.  

Her voice was low again, strained and breathless.  

"I can't—" Ellis started.  

"You can. Let it come closer."  

The vehicle pushed through the smoke, its barrier already gone after Ruth’s sustained fire. Scars and fresh impact marks covered its side armor as it crushed broken wire and debris beneath its suspension.  

The launcher wandered in Ellis's hands.  

"Wait..." Mira said. The vehicle emerged farther from the smoke. 

“Now!”  

Ellis fired.  

The missile crossed a short distance and struck beneath the turret. The shaped charge punched through the exposed armor and detonated inside. The vehicle lurched to one side before fire blew through the turret ring and top hatches, leaving the wreck burning in front of the trench.  

A burning alien dragged himself halfway out.  

Zaeed drew his M-8 and fired a short burst into the poor bastard’s upper body, jerking him once before he collapsed across the side of the vehicle.  

Ellis lay flat on his back, breathing as if he had run all the way from orbit. Mira caught his shoulder with one hand and hauled him up.  

"Good shot!" Zaeed shouted from behind Ruth. 

Ellis blinked. "Thanks."  

"Don't get cocky yet, kid."  

Then the command net changed.  

"All outer defense elements execute Iron Gate. Repeat, execute Iron Gate. Fall back by marked routes. Destroy any fixed weapons. Leave nothing usable."  

For half a second nobody moved.  

The third trench was the last trench. Everyone knew what Iron Gate meant.  

Mira looked toward the access tunnels while blood continued to work its way beneath the left side plate, the thin layer of medigel doing little more than slowing it.  

"Massani, spike Ruth."  

Zaeed looked at the weapon. Big Ruth sat in the pit steaming through the barrel sleeve, warning lights angry and grips slick with mud and blood.  

Less than a day together.  

"Goddamn it."  

"Now!"  

He pulled a denial charge from the crate and slapped it against the ammo block. Beside him, Ellis broke the safety seals on the remaining thermal clips and armed denial fuse without waiting to be told.  

He rested one hand against Ruth's housing.  

"You did good, girl. No one else gets to get you."  

The charge was armed. Seven seconds later, white thermite ate through the gun assembly and barrel mount in a shower of sparks and melting metal.  

Mira was already shouting over it.  

"Move! Third squad, Gate Two! Fourth, Gate Three! Walking wounded first, carry them if they can't move! Mines on the flank! Don't bunch up! Do not stop for the dead!"  

Enough exhausted people still remembered the withdrawal plan to keep the retreat from becoming a rout. Smoke canisters went off along the line while engineers collapsed firing slits and buried ammunition stores. Riflemen walked backward and fired. Medics dragged wounded by harness straps. One man kept trying to pick up his rifle until someone took it away and shoved him toward the tunnel.  

Zaeed caught Mira by the arm.  

"You're done pretendin' that hole is decorative. Move."  

"I can walk."  

"Sure. You're leaking fine."  

She looked past him instead.  

"Ellis! Stay with Massani!"  

"I'm here, Sergeant."  

The birdfaces pressed through their own smoke. Drones climbed over the parapet, died to rifle fire or detonated against mines. A blast peppered Zaeed's shin armor with fragments as he dragged Mira toward Gate Two.  

"Still with us, Sarge?"  

"Enough... to know you're... slow."  

"Good. Blood loss hasn't fixed your manners yet."  

"Move... faster."  

Ellis came up on her other side and took the other arm.  

"I have her. She's bleeding through the sealant."  

Zaeed looked once and saw a thin trickle of red working its way down the side of Mira’s armor.  

"Yeah, yeah. Help anyway."  

They reached the first bend when a shell landed behind them.  

The blast threw all three forward. Zaeed hit shoulder-first. Mira came down partly across him, and Ellis struck the wall hard enough to slide to the floor.  

Dust filled the trench.  

The adrenaline kicked in before he could process the pain. He was alive, rifle within reach, and Mira was not moving.  

"Patel!" 

He rolled her off of him. The cracked visor remained intact. Her chest moved... maybe. 

"Don't you bloody die after makin' us carry you this far!" 

Ellis coughed through the dust. "Is she—" 

"Pick her up." 

"Zaeed—" 

"Pick her up!" 

Ellis obeyed. 

Zaeed took Mira beneath the shoulders while Ellis got her legs. She weighed more than she looked, harness straps biting into his gloves as they started toward the gate. 

The third trench burned behind them. Denial charges went off in sequence, destroying weapons and collapsing sections while human fire withdrew by layers. Turian gunfire followed steadily enough that Zaeed could hear alien voices through his helmet between impacts.  

Gate Two waited ahead, a rectangular opening cut into the mesa under red emergency lights. Automated turrets hammered into the smoke while medics waved wounded through and officers shouted conflicting gate numbers over one another.  

Zaeed didn’t need the map. He needed the opening ahead and Mira's harness to stay in his hands.  

A round hit Ellis in the side.  

His shield flashed out causing him to yelp and almost lose his grip, but he tightened both hands before Mira could slip. Together they reached the ramp, where a medic immediately reached for her.  

"Inside first!" Zaeed barked.  

The medic shifted with them.  

Behind the last wounded, the blast door began closing. The birdfaces advanced behind cover instead of rushing the narrowing gap. Two of them firing controlled bursts toward the entrance while another leaned out just far enough to throw a grenade through the opening. A marine kicked it back outside before the armored slabs met. The explosion struck the far side of the door.  

Inside, the noise changed rather than stopped. Medics shouted over wounded soldiers. Ammunition carts rattled along rails. Elevators groaned deeper in the mesa, and every heavy battery firing above moved dust from the ceiling. Blood, medigel, and burned armor fouled the air.  

Zaeed and Ellis carried Mira another few meters before a medical team took her.  

"Left side," Zaeed said. "Under the arm. Sealant failed. Blast after."  

The medic checked the wound, then the scanner. He ran it again.  

Zaeed knew before the man looked up.  

"She's gone."  

Ellis made a small sound beside him.  

Zaeed stared at the medic. "Check again. She was breathing outside."  

"I did."  

"Check the goddamn thing again!"  

The medic's face was too tired for an argument. "I’m sorry. She's gone."  

Mira Patel lay on the stretcher with her visor cracked and her armor blackened, blood soaking the left side of her suit while another medic took the rifle from her hands. Zaeed waited for her to complain, to tell him to stop standing around or tell Ellis to quit making that face. 

Nothing came.  

Ellis backed into the wall and slid down until his helmet touched concrete.  

“I…I thought she was breathing."   

Zaeed said nothing.   

"I thought ... I thought when we picked her up, I thought she..."   

"Yeah."   

"We got her inside."   

"Yeah."   

Ellis stared at the stretcher. "But… she's gone."   

Red blood had dried into the joints of Zaeed's gloves beside alien blue. Mira had weighed the same while they carried her. Same harness cutting into his hands, same boots dragging now and then through the mud. He had kept thinking the medics were ahead and that was enough.   

The kid covered his visor with one shaking hand.  

Zaeed looked at him properly then and felt something ugly twist under his ribs. Seventeen. Goddamn. Only a few years younger than Zaeed himself, which somehow made it worse. Ellis still had the narrow face of a kid who should have been worrying about getting laid or whatever seventeen-year-olds wasted time on. Two days of fighting had made Ellis look harder from a distance. Up close, with the shooting stopped for half a minute, Zaeed could still see the kid underneath all of it.  

He searched for something useful to say and came up short.  

"We got her out of the trench," he finally said after a long silence. His voice had gone rough. "She didn't die out there alone. Sometime... sometime that's all you got, kid."  

Ellis started crying quietly, and Zaeed let him.  

Across the casualty hall, an officer called every able body to the inner defenses. The mountain shook again.  

Zaeed stood and checked his rifle. His shoulder hurt, his ears rang, and the stimulant had started turning sour in his bloodstream.  

Ellis looked up. "Where are you going?"  

"Where they need me."  

Ellis looked back at Mira's body.  

Zaeed gave him a few more seconds, then caught the front of his shoulder strap.  

"Come on."  

"I can't."  

"Yeah, you can."  

"I can't, Zaeed."  

Zaeed leaned close enough that the kid had to look at him.  

"You fall apart later. You hear me? Later. Right now you stand, reload, and keep breathin' just to spite the sons of bitches!"  

The kid shook for another moment, then got his feet under him without asking for help.  

They left the stretcher behind and moved deeper into Firebase Vanguard while a medic pulled a sheet over Mira Patel's face.  

The birdfaces had the trenches now.  

Fine.  

If they wanted the mountain, they could come and pay for every goddamn meter.  

 New Taiyuan Civil Defense Shelter Fourteen, Shanxi, Iota Persei System 

September 12th, 2149CE — Systems Alliance Calendar 

Major Le Huang 

Le Huang woke with the distinct impression that someone had dropped a ship on him and left it there.  

His abdomen objected first.  

He opened his eyes to see a low concrete ceiling, emergency lighting, and felt something folded beneath his head that had never been intended as a pillow. For several seconds he stayed still and listened. Ventilation moved air through the shelter with a steady hum. People spoke quietly beyond the medical partition. Somewhere out of sight, a child coughed and a wheeled cart rattled over concrete.  

There was no nearby gunfire.  

Huang found that more worrying than comforting.  

He tried to move.  

Pain drove through the lower right side of his abdomen and narrowed his vision until the ceiling became a gray strip. He stopped and breathed through his nose, waiting for the room to widen again.  

Shelter Fourteen came back into focus with the pain.  

The barricade at the eastern service approach had been two municipal maintenance vehicles, prefabricated security barriers, and whatever street furniture that Public Security could drag into place before the Turians reached the district. It had looked ridiculous when they finished. Yet, it had hold for almost twenty minutes.   

Huang remembered muzzle flashes through dust, officers firing from behind the maintenance trucks, militia on the upper service stairs trying to hold angles that worsened by the minute. The Turian pace had stayed with him most. They never seemed hurried. A squad pushed until human fire became too heavy, fell back, and another came forward. Smoke advanced with them, grenades arrived afterward. Every pause Huang thought they had bought turned out to be preparation for the next attempt.  

Officer Lam went down beside the second barricade. A militia gunner lost his shield and kept firing until a round tore through his helmet.  

Fredrik—  

Huang remembered Fredrik falling in the corridor.  

He had gone forward to pull a wounded security officer out of an exposed section. His barrier flashed twice and disappeared. He dropped hard. Huang went after him and got one hand into Fredrik's harness, but it snagged on something under the debris.  

He hadn't noticed his shield was dropped before a compact blow struck Huang low in the abdomen.  

Heat spread under his armor. His legs stopped cooperating a few seconds later. Somebody shouted his name, the floor came up against his cheek, and his fingers refused to close properly.  

So this is it.  

That had been the whole thought.  

Mostly, he had been angry that he never found out whether anyone got Fredrik behind the barricade.  

"Don't try that again."  

The voice cut across the memory sharply enough that Huang lost the barricade, the smoke, and Fredrik all at once. For a moment he only knew that he was lying somewhere too bright and that somebody nearby had just given him an order. Then recognition caught up with him.   

Naomi Campbell   

Huang turned his head and saw she sat beside the cot with a medigel applicator in one hand. Four days earlier she had been across a conference table arguing with him about Rhea, industrial dependence, and the cost of waiting. Now her hair was tied back badly, one sleeve was rolled above the elbow, and the other carried dried blood at the cuff. Exhaustion sat plainly under both eyes.  

The beginning of an old argument surfaced in Huang's mind and died there.  

"How bad?"  

Campbell put the applicator down on the small tray beside his cot. "You're awake enough to ask that first, so... better than yesterday."  

"That isn't an answer."  

"I was working up to it." She checked the monitor. "Round entered low on your right. Your armor took enough of the energy that you didn't bleed out before they got you here. There was internal bleeding. The emergency team sealed what they could and packed the wound."  

"What did they repair?"  

"I don't know."  

Huang turned his head farther toward her.  

"I mean that literally," Campbell said. "We don't have a surgical unit. We have emergency imaging, medigel, three doctors, and too many patients. Your wound is stable. That's about as much I know for certain."  

"How long have I been out?"  

"About a day and a half."  

Huang planted one hand beside himself and tried to push upright, but Campbell caught his shoulder and the pain drove him flat again before she needed to use any strength.  

"Don't."  

"My people—"  

"If you reopen that wound, we may be able to seal it again."  

He stopped. "May?"  

Campbell looked toward the nearly empty medical cabinet.  

"I've got enough training to change the dressing, apply gel, read the monitor when it complains, and find a doctor when it starts complaining about something I don't understand," she said. "Moving you around is a good way to make your wound worse. Then, you won't be able to get up at all."  

Huang let his head fall back against the cot, jaw tightening as frustration burned through the exhaustion. Lying still while other people handled his command felt almost worse than the wound but the pain had already made the argument for Campbell. He turned his head instead and took in as much as he could from the cot.  

Across the ward, a girl sat on a folded blanket drawing with two other children between crowded cots. Campbell looked toward her before Huang did.  

"Your daughter?"  

"Yes."  

The girl glanced up and raised her hand. Campbell returned the gesture.  

Huang looked back at Campbell. "Your husband?"  

A moment passed before she answered.  

"Vanguard. We lost contact before the city was fully occupied. The firebase is still fighting. That's all I know."  

A faint vibration moved through the shelter floor as if the mountain itself had answered from several kilometers away.  

Huang let his gaze travel farther across the ward.   

The medical section had been built for perhaps fifty patients. More than twice that number filled the cots and mattresses now. Most were civilians, with public security uniforms and militia armor scattered among them. Sergeant Imani's left arm was immobilized. Officer Chen wore a dressing around his throat. A militia corporal slept upright against the wall because there was nowhere else to put him.  

"Campbell. How many?"  

She took a moment before answering.  

"We don't have a complete count. Less than half the people who fought around the shelter approaches are here. Some wounded made it to other shelters before the district closed. Some groups got separated. The Turians took public security and militia personnel for questioning. Some of them came back."  

"And the rest?"  

"We don't know."  

Huang scanned the room again. Security Response Two should have been somewhere here.  

"Confirmed dead?"  

Campbell shook her head. Huang disliked that answer almost as much as he disliked lying helpless on a cot.  

Then another name surfaced.  

"Fredrik Olsen. Security Response Two."  

Her expression furrowed in thought before she shook her head again. "I haven't heard his name."  

Across the ward, one of Huang's officers noticed he was awake and straightened. Another looked over. The attention spread without anyone saying anything.  

He had no weapon, no comm unit, no tactical display, and enough damage in his abdomen that Campbell could keep him on a cot with one hand.  

Huang tried to sit up anyway.  

Campbell put both hands over his wrist.  

"Stop it."  

"I need to talk to them."  

"You can talk from there."  

"Campbell."  

"I have no authority over you, Major. Very convenient, because you don't currently have enough abdominal muscle left to win this argument."  

"Move."  

"No."  

A sudden hammer of armored boots sounded from the shelter entrance. Huang’s head snapped toward it.  

Conversation across the ward thinned almost at once. A mother pulled her son closer. Two militia fighters against the wall straightened despite their injuries.  

Three Turians entered the medical section, all armed.  

Huang's right hand went toward his hip on reflex and closed on air. For one sharp instant he had forgotten that his sidearm, rifle, and every other useful piece of equipment had been taken from him.  

Two aliens remained at the entrance while the third moved into the ward carrying a datapad in one hand and a rifle held low in the other.  

For the first time Huang had enough time to study a Turian without a gun sight between them. Tall, narrow at the waist beneath angular armor, with legs bending differently enough that every step looked wrong until the eye adjusted. Hard facial plates framed a swept crest, and articulated mandibles moved around the mouth whenever the alien breathed.  

Birdface.  

Huang had reprimanded officers for using the word.  

It was still stupid.  

But looking at one from ten meters away, he finally understood where it had come from.  

The Turian with the datapad stopped. Its translator produced careful English.  

"Corporal Mateo Alvarez."  

Nobody answered.  

The Turian checked the display again. "Corporal Mateo Alvarez. Public Security."  

Three cots away, a man pushed himself to his feet.  

Huang recognized him at once: Alvarez, eastern district, twenty-six or twenty-seven, recently married. He had been at the second barricade.  

Alvarez glanced toward Huang, and Huang pushed himself onto one elbow despite the pain pulling through his abdomen.  

"What do you want with him?"  

All three Turians turned.  

The one with the datapad focused on him. "Major Le Huang."  

Huang disliked how quickly it recognized him.  

"He's under my command."  

"Corporal Alvarez is required for questioning. He will be returned."  

"Questioning about what?"  

The Turian did not answer. Huang tried to push himself farther upright, but a hand planted firmly against his chest and forced him back onto the cot.  

Pain flashed white across his vision and stole the next breath from him.  

"Easy, Major. Fuckin' hell, you want to spill yourself all over the floor again?"  

Huang turned sharply toward the voice and found Sergeant Jerald standing beside the cot. He recognized the man beneath the pressure dressing wrapped around one side of his scalp, the sling holding his left arm, and the dark bruising beneath one eye.   

"Get your hand off me."  

"When you stop tryin' to open your stomach."  

"They're taking Alvarez."  

"Yeah, boss. I got eyes."  

"Then do something."  

Jerald looked at the three armed Turians, then at his own sling. "Sure. You tell me where we hid the secret rifles after they took all the fuckin' rifles. I'll get right on it."  

Huang had no answer worth giving.  

Alvarez went with them. Nobody struck him or dragged him; the escorts simply took position on either side and walked him out. The shelter door closed.  

"How long has that been happening?" Huang asked.  

Jerald hooked a stool closer with his boot and sat. "Since yesterday."  

"And you let them?"  

"Boss, I'm gonna ask you to retire the word 'let.' Makes it sound like we had options and picked the stupid one."  

Huang said nothing.  

"They searched the shelter after they secured the corridor," Jerald continued. "Weapons, ammo, radios, comm, civilian tablets with transmitters. Anything that might talk outside, gone. They checked the med gear and left it. Couple of patrols stay outside. Mostly they leave us alone unless they want somebody."  

"You?"  

"Yesterday. An hour and a half, maybe two."  

Campbell resumed checking Huang's dressing. Her hands slowed.  

"What did they do?" Huang asked.  

"Asked questions." Jerald adjusted his sling and grimaced. "No beating. No electrodes. No alien truth juice I noticed. Water, chair, and a birdface asking about the same shit in six different ways."  

"About what?"  

"Name, rank, unit. Public Security structure, militia strength, shelter command, where the army responsibility starts and ours stops. Vanguard too. Reserve types got longer sessions."  

"Anyone not come back?"  

Jerald looked across the ward. "Some. Could still be in questioning. Could've been moved. We don't know."  

Huang rubbed his thumb against the blanket. "What else?"  

Jerald was quiet long enough that Huang looked at him.  

"Aria," he said. "They keep circling back to her. What she controls, whether she's military, whether she can move between networks, make decisions without a human signing off. Asked how many like her we've got."  

Campbell looked up. "One of the civilians said they kept asking whether she could act without human approval."  

"What did you tell them?"  

"That Aria makes decisions whether anybody approves or not."  

Campbell's mouth lifted slightly.  

Jerald scratched at the edge of his scalp dressing. "Didn't go down well."  

"Threats?"  

"Nah. That's what bothered me." He looked toward the shelter door. "I can't read jack off a birdface. Could be smiling, could be thinking about taxes. But I know when a cop thinks a witness is feeding him bullshit. Same little pause before the next question. They either thought we were lying about a friendly AGI or the whole idea sounded insane to them. Maybe both."  

Huang remembered Aria in the conference room, smiling too brightly while general Williams complained about traffic control.  

"What else?"  

"West side. Canyon country. Geological offices, old survey stations, restricted access."  

Huang looked at him. "Which areas?"  

"Not a clue. Told them Public Security has closure notices for mines, unstable ground, private industrial sites, environmental zones. Half the west is empty rock with paperwork stuck to it."  

Campbell said, "They asked one of the militia officers about old geological surveys too."  

The firebase sat west of New Taiyuan. Nobody needed a geological survey to find a mesa visible from orbit.  

Huang filed that away.  

Jerald leaned back carefully. "There's one more thing, boss. They're going to come for you. Major, Public Security, face already in whatever database they're building. When they do... don't make it a principles contest just because you're pissed off."  

"Meaning?"  

"Meaning don't rile them for sport. They're not torturing people. Great. Very civilized. Then somebody gets cute and decides a prisoner is wasting time." Jerald tipped his chin toward a young militia fighter on a mattress along the far wall. Two fresh claw marks crossed one cheek under strips of sealant. "Fuckin' hell. Turns out those claws aren't decorative. Jian called one of them a fascist chicken to his face."  

Huang stared at the wounds. "He came back."  

"Yeah. That's why this is advice instead of an eulogy."  

Campbell pressed the edge of Huang's dressing back into place. "Listen to him."  

Huang looked toward the shelter entrance.  

Alvarez was gone. Fredrik might be dead. Half his people were missing or scattered through shelters he could not contact, and enemy soldiers could walk into the ward and remove one of his officers while Huang lay there and watched.  

The exhaustion came back as the anger ran out of places to go.  

"Jerald."  

"Boss?"  

"When I wake up... names. Here, missing, taken for questioning. Food and medical stocks too."  

Jerald took a second before answering.  

"...sure thing, boss."  

Huang closed his eyes.  

Firebase Vanguard, Shanxi, Iota Persei System, 

September 12th, 2149CE - Systems Alliance Calendar 

Adam Williams 

The mountain shook around him.  

Dust sifted from the command-center ceiling as one of Vanguard's heavy batteries fired somewhere above. The lights dipped, recovered and held. Nobody looked up anymore. If the rock was still moving, the guns were still working.  

Lieutenant Oleg Petrovsky stood beside Adam with his helmet under one arm. Two days without proper sleep had pulled the color from his face, though his posture remained exact. A scorch mark ran along his collar and dried blood darkened one sleeve.  

He waited until Adam finished reading the western gate status.  

"Western Third is inside," Petrovsky said. "Gate Two sealed cleanly. Gate Three is completing final closure. Gate Four suffered a twenty-two-second actuator jam. Cleared before enemy contact reached the threshold."  

Adam kept his attention on the casualty layer. "Give me the part you saved for last."  

“Returns are still consolidating. Forty-one percent of the outer-belt force is currently combat ineffective. Eighteen percent of those may be able to return to duty once their wounds are treated. Twenty-three percent are confirmed dead. Both figures are expected to rise.”  

The numbers sat on the display because numbers moved supplies, stretchers and reserves. Sergeant Mira Patel occupied a different line farther down the report. 

Petrovsky continued. “Sergeant Patel is confirmed dead. Western sector.” 

Adam looked up. “Wasn’t that Richard’s platoon?” 

“Originally. Lieutenant Richard was killed during the initial push on the second day. Patel assumed command afterward and held her section eleven minutes beyond the planned withdrawal threshold. That kept Gate Two open for two adjacent squads and part of the western aid station.  

Adam looked up. "Whose threshold?"  

"Operations staff's. Pre-assault pressure model."  

He heard his own tone after the answer landed.  

"That wasn't for you. I used you because the report couldn't object."  

"Understood, sir."  

Petrovsky shifted an overlay aside. "Colonel Mensah requests a limited counterattack through Gate Three. Objective is recovery of surviving weapon components before Turian technical teams reach them."  

"No. We blew the guns because the metal was worth less than the people using it. I'm not changing that arithmetic now."  

"Understood."  

"Stay at Gates Two and Three until the withdrawal flow settles. Triage first. Keep litter lanes clear. Anyone fit to fight goes through medical before reassignment, even if they complain about it. Nobody goes back for bodies."  

Petrovsky considered the gate map. "Gate Three's wounded queue is already slowing rearm. I can move fit personnel through medical before they enter the reissue lane."  

"Do it."  

Petrovsky reached for his helmet.  

Adam stopped him. "Oleg. Hackett is confirmed inbound with Kilimanjaro. Current estimate is about thirty hours."  

Petrovsky checked the relief timer. "I'll give the gates the estimate."  

"Give them the next hour first. Thirty is a bastard of a number when you're carrying somebody."  

There was a small uptick at the corner of Petrovsky’s mouth before he sealed his helmet and left. The blast door shut behind him, and around the command center the staff returned to their consoles.  

Thirty hours remained ugly however Adam divided it.  

The command center kept moving around him. Casualty updates. Ammunition states. Gate timings. Shelter power. Medical requests. Names disappearing from one list and appearing on another. 

Ashley surfaced in his mind, four years old with stubborn curls and solemn brown eyes. The last time Adam had visited Earth, she had sat in his lap, declared the medals on his dress uniform pirate treasure and tried to steal one. 

He had promised to be back for her birthday. 

For a few seconds he let himself remember what it felt like to be somewhere that did not shake under artillery. Then another update crossed the display. Adam rubbed one hand over his face and went back to work. 

"General."  

Aria appeared beside the tactical table.  

She still wore the white summer dress she preferred, although ash-gray static crawled along the hem now. Her avatar flickered at the edges into shelter feeds, casualty routes and power diagrams before resolving again.  

Adam rubbed one hand across his face. "Gates, shelters, and whatever is most likely to kill us in the next ten minutes."  

"Gate Two stable under Lieutenant Petrovsky. Gate Three wounded throughput is at sixty-two percent and falling. Inner Gate Alpha is sealed. Hammerhead is armed and holding on your trigger condition."  

"Second pressure segment. I want their first engineer team committed before we drop it."  

"I have it. Shelter Six remains concealed. A Turian patrol passed eighty-one meters from the structure and accepted the false thermal bloom in the abandoned bakery. No route correction."  

Adam looked at her. "The bakery?"  

"Intermittent power, human-equivalent heat, oven fault. Fastest available lie."  

Williams watched her for a moment. “You weren’t built for this.” 
 
“No.” Aria’s answer came without hesitation. “I was built to administer this colony. Housing permits. Maintenance drones. Water reclamation. Founding Day fireworks, preferably outdoors. Now, I’m maintaining a battlespace network, concealing sixteen occupied shelters and keeping the people inside them alive without allowing the Turians to determine where they are.”  

Adam left it there.  

"If the firebase falls, can you move through the surviving network?"  

Again, Aria's answer came immediately. "Fragments only. Selected memory partitions. My active architecture is too large and too distributed."  

"If we restart those fragments somewhere else?"  

A short pause.  

"They would be useful. But they would not be me."  

If the Turians captured Aria's core, they would probably call what followed deactivation. They would use the word artificial intelligence as though it made the difference between murder and maintenance.  

"Then your core stays ours."  

"I prefer that plan."  

The mountain shook again. A ceiling light burst near the rear of the room. Two technicians ducked, swore and returned to their consoles.  

Adam brought up the power grid. "Next cut."  

Aria answered before the display finished opening. "Eastern residential. Battery Seven gains four hours and pressure-door reliability holds in Sectors C through F. Three hundred and twelve civilians remain tied to the local loop. Six hours without medical concern, risk increases after twelve. Minimum circulation can stay on in shelter medical spaces."  

"Do it."  

"Confirmed. Cutting now. Stay with me... transfer complete. Battery Seven has the load. Shelter temperatures are falling inside projection."  

The eastern grid dimmed as Battery Seven brightened. Williams checked the relief timer: twenty-nine hours and change. 

"General," Aria said. "Back-channel authentication from Sierra."  

"Ryder?"  

"Alive. Northwest of New Taiyuan. Their signal is buried under false evacuation traffic, dead weather stations, smoke scatter, and a second artificial intelligence."  

Adam looked at her. "Glitch."  

"Confirmed."  

The anger came cold.  

Sierra had brought an AGI into his colony and kept him off every city network until first contact. Whatever the justification for the compartment, hiding an unlisted combat intelligence from the commander responsible for the battlespace went beyond the kind of secrecy Adam was prepared to excuse casually.  

But this wasn't the time to reopen the argument. He had other fires in front of him.  

"What are they doing?"  

Aria expanded a short chain of movement ghosts. "Sabotage, ambush, withdrawal. They are leaving enough of a trail for a very specific Turian command elements to follow. Seventy-eight percent probability Sierra is drawing the ground commander northwest."  

The route bent west toward Firebase Vanguard and the canyon country beyond, then curved away to the north. 

The restricted site and associated records remained under wraps, just as Ryder had already told him.  

"Same canyon."  

"Yes. Sierra is pulling pursuit away from it."  

"Good. Keep it simple."  

"Working."  

The Turians were at the gates, Hackett was still nearly thirty hours away, and Sierra was running its own fight outside the mesa with an AGI Adam had learned about only after everything went bad. Outrage could wait for a room that was not shaking.  

"Send Ryder this exactly," Adam said. "If he's drawing their commander out, finish it and keep him away from that canyon and the civilian shelters. And when this is over, He and I are going to discuss what he thinks counts as notifying the local commander."  

"No diplomatic editing?"  

"None."  

"Transmitting."  

Adam returned to the defense map. "Seal Inner Gate Alpha permanently. Keep Hammerhead armed. Sector D collapses if they clear the second pressure door. Survivors go through medical before reassignment, even the ones who claim they're fine. No counterattack into the outer belt."  

"I have it. Gate orders distributed. Medical rotation updated. Hammerhead holding. Sector D charges green on redundant circuits."  

Adam watched the gray outer positions disappear from the board one by one.  

"Keep my people alive until Hackett gets here."  

Aria's avatar steadied.  

"Working, Adam. Gate Three first. Shelter Six next. I have oxygen alarms in Twelve...."  

Her attention split across the colony again.  

Adam looked at the timer and went back to work.  

A/N: A shout out for Snypehuntee007 for proofreading this chapter. I grateful for your support.

Anyway, Chapter 17 will be posted on September 10th. Thank you all for your supported for this story and myself. Hope you all wonderful people the best.