“LR-24, the drones have taken us as far as they can,” Archer said. “We need more intel, and the only way to get it is with boots on the ground. Your section has point. Move out in five mikes.”

  “I smell a trap, sir,” I said. “I feel we should go in force or take our time on this one—”

  “Negative, LR-24. Move out at the best possible speed.”

  The captain’s grim voice brooked no argument. I hadn’t heard him use this tone before, but there was no doubt about it: his decision was final.

  We were moving out.

  09

  “No time for stealth,” I told my section. “Captain Archer wants us in and reporting back at fastest possible speed. We’ll double-time it into Kusiba for a sneak and peek.”

  I observed the city in front of me as we started jogging in. Kusiba was the first alien metropolis I’d ever visited, and it certainly looked alien. It’d been built intentionally and lacked the urban sprawl I expected from major population centers. The city’s footprint was neat; the lines demarcating the city from the wilderness were crisp.

  “This city has no soul,” said PFC Padagas over the L-comm.

  “Stow it,” growled Sergeant Dwyer, Chaos Squad’s grizzled NCO. “Or you’ll wish you’d have let that judge send you to jail.”

  Padagas had chosen service in the New Caledonian Reserve Corps over prison for slicing into the Royal Bank of Pictavia. He’d taken his share of abuse from the chain of command since joining Rage Company, getting picked for every crap detail and working party. Sergeant Dwyer took it as a personal offense that someone he viewed as inherently dishonorable had joined the Legion he loved—even if it was just a reserve.

  But I had to agree with the code slicer. The city lacked a soul. Critically eying the empty streets, I couldn’t help but notice that the downside of the city’s layout was the inability to expand as the town grew. Maybe architectural engineers could find a solution, but it was beyond me. The buildings were large, slate-gray affairs, and taller than I could see from this close. The briefings said each building was over three hundred stories tall, but I suspected that was a propaganda-driven overestimation.

  After a few minutes of running, we made it to the outer edge of the city. I kept expecting to see signs of life springing out to surprise us, but we found nothing. There was no civilian traffic, no movement save for the occasional listless charka. The beasts were behaving much differently from the wild ones we’d encountered near our landing site.

  “Keep an eye on your blasters,” I told my section. “I want a double-tap headshot on any charka that gets close.”

  My enthusiasm was met by laughter from Virgil. I chose to ignore it as my section moved through the roads leading into the city. I was watchful and wary. It was quiet, all too quiet, for a city of two million people. No vehicles moved. Every shop was shut up and dark. The city looked like it’d been abandoned during the night while everyone slept.

  “Find me a terminal—I’ll find out where the hyenas went,” Padagas volunteered through a private L-comm message.

  “Chain of command, use it,” I growled back, projecting an anger I didn’t feel at the moment. We were all on edge, still expecting a trap.

  I halted our column when we hit the outskirts of the city. The silence weighed down on us, stoking our fears.

  I rounded a corner and unexpectedly came face-to-face with a scrawny charka.

  “Oba!” I shrieked and yanked up my blaster.

  Before I could put it down, a hand dragged me back around the corner and Santos fired several shots into the throat of the equally startled beast. Its dying cries echoed down the street.

  I was just glad that our buckets allowed us to scream without the world hearing us. We could scream our rage or fear, and do so in the privacy of our fully enclosed helmets. It helped create the illusion of the legionnaire as an unstoppable killing machine, emotionless and ruthless. It also allowed me to pretend I hadn’t just screamed like a girl. Again.

  “Thanks, Santos.”

  “Any time, LT,” he replied, sounding almost cheerful that we were on our own in enemy territory.

  I called a halt, letting my section rest while I studied the map on my HUD overlay. The empty city felt spooky. Almost haunted. We strained our ears as we rested but heard nothing. Eventually the stillness was broken by the growl of another roaming charka, cautiously venturing closer to my formation.

  “If they get close, kill them,” I reminded my team. “Unleash Oba’s righteous fury upon them!” Those infernal beasts had killed enough leejes for one day.

  But the growls stayed distant. We moved farther down the cavernous streets of Kusiba City. Had the city been abandoned en masse? It wasn’t unheard of for such a thing to happen, everyone just picking up and moving. But often the reason was clear—religious wars, political coups, and terroristic attacks were hard to hide. All we had to go on was the sound of silence broken by the occasional growl of wildlife.

  “Virgil, something isn’t right.” I gripped my blaster as the men fanned out in tactical formation down the street. “We haven’t received any real-time intel since we walked into this city. Nothing from either of the two companies we left back at the rally point.”

  “Things always go to pot in a real engagement, sir. Nothing we can’t handle.”

  His answer was everything I would expect from a seasoned veteran, but it didn’t soothe my concerns. As a corporal I’d given similar pep talks to new point lieutenants while putting down the food riots. I knew the score, but in the end something wasn’t right. I just didn’t know what to do about it.

  I guess it didn’t really matter, because we had our orders.

  I kept my suspicions to myself after that, but the whole situation had me concerned. We hadn’t received any real-time intelligence for what was happening in Kusiba City. Even worse, this was an ad hoc mission. Impromptu assaults were the most dangerous, but such is the life of the legionnaire. Do the mission. And our intelligence officers had insisted that the loyalists would be here.

  Silence was all we found. It was chilling—it felt wrong.

  And all that pro-Repub propaganda? That seemed like it was laid out pretty thickly, even for the House of Reason. Again, why?

  Sergeant Dwyer snapped me out of my thoughts. “What’s it gonna be, sir?”

  Evidently Virgil hadn’t forgotten the mission, either, so I gave the order to resume the patrol.

  “Time to get back to it, Leejes. Push into the government sector, keep up the sneak and peek.”

  “’Cept they know we’re here,” quipped Padagas.

  We moved without much more talking and still didn’t see anyone. Finally, all that silence got to me. I felt like we were making a mistake pressing on like this and wanted to evaluate what our sensors had picked up so far.

  “Listen up, 1st Section.” I pulled up the map overlay on the inside of my bucket, marking a waypoint in the alleyway ahead of us. “Rally point marked on your HUD. We’re going firm while I review the data we’ve collected.”

  “You heard the LT,” Sergeant Dwyer echoed. “Security halt at the designated spot.” Then, turning to me, “Good call, sir. The alley’s natural chokepoints mean we only gotta defend two directions if we’re attacked. It’ll cost the enemy greatly. KTF.”

  I wanted to ask “what enemy?” but I’d come to the same conclusion. It was nice to hear the gray beard affirm my decision.

  When I got into the alley, I saw about what I’d expected: Heaps of trash piled up against the wall. But none of it was fresh. A light dusting of snow coated the refuse, adding to the ghost town vibe. And I could see it affecting my section. Their buckets hid their faces, but they clutched their blasters and nervously fidgeted as they stood watch.

  Looking around the alley, I saw something out of place. A door had been left ajar. We now had access into one of the buildings without needing to break in; I knew we needed to investigate.

  “We’re going to have to search a few of these buildings,” I sent to the squad leaders. “Might as well start with this one since they were so kind as to leave it open for us.”

  “How hard are we looking, sir?” asked Sergeant Conn.

  I always liked Michael. The sergeant had a bit of a wee man syndrome, but he was always fun at the yearly company parties. He was a blunt man, one who could’ve advanced further than squad leader if he was ever sober long enough.

  “Obviously, it’s gonna be a cursory look,” I replied. “There just aren’t enough of us for more than that. We’d be here for days if we tried to clear the city properly. I’m updating the section L-comm, then you’ll have your orders. We move out in ten mikes. Get your men to check their gear and hydrate.”

  That seemed to appease my squad leaders. It gave me a warm feeling, seeing my fellow NCOs approving of my plans. Those butter bars still felt surreal, like I was a pretender to the throne. To be fair, I wanted to hand off the responsibilities. Maybe those points could do better than I was. While the orders were sent up and down the chain of command, I tried to envision what we might encounter. I knew our close quarters battle training, or CQB, was top-notch. After countless hours training, we moved like a well-oiled machine.

  A couple of minutes went by and it was clear that the men were ready.

  “No use dragging this out,” I said over the section’s L-comm. “Move out.”

  Our maps showed that this section of the city was all government buildings. They were obviously wrong again. Or were we more lost than we knew? I took a quick glance through the cracked door and saw a narrow corridor full of doors, with the occasional welcome mat in front of it.

  How are we gonna get this all done? I wondered.

  We didn’t have the manpower to secure even one floor of an apartment complex.

  “LR-01, we’re preparing to enter an apartment building in the government sector to investigate. Negative signs of life, I repeat, negative signs of life in Kusiba. Do we continue investigating or pull back?”

  “Continue the original mission. LR-01, out,” replied Captain Archer.

  Orders were orders.

  With no reason left to delay, we prepared to enter the structure. My leejes stacked, and on my command, began our assault of the building. The moment we walked inside, we stopped in surprise. My initial peek into the hallway hadn’t shown me this.

  How could I miss all the blood? It was everywhere. Not the red blood you expect from humans, but you could tell someone had been injured here. The blood had a vibrant orange hue, almost mesmerizing. As if the dead were calling out for vengeance—justice. Despite the insulating effect of my LARKs and the synthprene layer under it, I was struck with a chill, a cold that sank into my bones. Ghosts upon ghosts.

  “Doesn’t look good, sir,” Santos told me over a private L-comm.

  “I know, nothing has since we entered Rhyssis Wan.”

  “Affirmative, sir… I meant Kusiba. Something is off. Stay frosty, I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  Grunting a reply, I cut the comms channel and studied the blood spatter patterns. Something awful had happened, but how and why? We continued deeper in the hallway and found more tacky orange goo, a lot more, smeared all over the walls.

  “Does anyone know what could’ve made these marks?”

  “Looks like someone used their hand,” Dwyer grunted. “Like finger-painting.”

  Santos nodded his head in agreement. “And you don’t need your helmet to translate it, either.”

  That was true enough. The words were written in Standard.

  “Death to the Republic.”

  “House of Reason—House of Lies.”

  MCR stuff.

  “Looks like whoever wrote it has four fingers,” I said, shuddering. “More Arthava, then. But who would do this to their own kind?”

  “Dunno,” said Dwyer, “but it looks like they were mainly writing their message out over these pro-Republic posters… and by the looks of what they’ve got to say, probably MCR.”

  I recorded snippets of the gruesome painting and marked it for the spooks to worry over later.

  Looking around, past the macabre paintings on the walls, I tried to figure out what else was off. It tingled at the back of my head, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  Then it hit.

  Rhyssis Wan’s only value to the galaxy came from its raw materials, and their politicians had traded those goods for their own benefit. Predictably, the rank and file Arthava citizens suffered. Yet the dwellings in Kusiba were smart buildings. They were fully integrated homes, which meant we could slice into them and access all the security features.

  “Sergeant Dwyer, let’s get plugged into the building and see what we can find out through its systems.”

  “Rog, LT,” Dwyer said with a nod. “Someone find Padagas a terminal, might as well make him earn his pay.”

  The building’s interfaces were interconnected holo-networks managed by a non-sentient AI. Those models were expensive, too expensive for such a poor planet. The stuff I was seeing in this building would cost a leej two months’ pay, so the occupants must’ve been important. Which, being in the government sector, made some sense.

  “He can start with the doors,” Olvera volunteered.

  His attempt at humor only earned him the ire of his team leader. “You can start with shutting the hell up, Olvera.”

  I hoped that Padagas could open the doors, but I wasn’t sure. A slicer kit was a special order unless you were Dark Ops and the intel guys had sworn that we’d be able to use the standard gear to gain digital entry. So everything was riding on Padagas’s ability to figure out how to use the terminals in front of each apartment door.

  With a slicer, we’d be breezing through, though. It felt like more proof of how the House’s micromanaging directly interfered with what they claimed they wanted accomplished.

  While Padagas worked his digital magic, I ordered the section to perform overwatch and waited. The quiet was still unnerving. Just the gentle tap of PFC Padagas’s fingers on a nearby data screen.

  I was almost afraid to break it.

  I checked on my squads in whispers, though I could see that everyone was okay. The entire section knew we weren’t in the most defensible position, and it had us all uneasy. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were missing something important. Maybe I’d become paranoid since the botched landing, expecting boogey men around every corner. Unsure what else to do, I decided to err on the side of pushing the issue up the chain of command. I was preparing an update for Captain Archer when I heard cursing coming from the terminal.

  “Sir, I mean LR-24, sir. The residents. They’re all dead, sir,” Padagas said, the panic thick in his voice.

  “Say again, LR-133. All residents are dead?” I asked.

  “Roger. All of them.” Padagas sounded as if he might throw up. “The closed loop air filtration system was injected with lethal aerosol toxins. I don’t recognize it. Neither does the diagnostic system. It’s a designer cocktail; the building’s air scrubbers couldn’t decipher it. Snuck past their safety measures, the AI couldn’t clean it quick enough. We might wanna keep our buckets on, sir. When I patched the information through my HUD, it detected trace amounts of the stuff in the air.”

  Cursing, I switched to the company L-comm. “LR-01, I’m sending your HUD a data packet. In a nutshell, the entire city was executed.”

  “Say again, Ocampo. Did you say all dead?”

  “Yes, sir. Someone gassed the whole city overnight. I can’t fathom the logistics of this. There must be survivors. If we’re going to cordon and search, we’ll need both companies to go house to house. How should we proceed?”

  “We’re coming in. Clear the building you’re in but stay put.”

  After the captain cut the signal, I ordered 1st Section to begin clearing the first floor. We went room by room, searching every apartment for signs of life. It was futile but informative. We found many of the furry, dark-skinned hyena-like Arthava in various states of rigor mortis. Hands grasped at throats, an obvious indication of their desperate struggle to breathe. Some Arthava stopped forever in the middle of a task, others collapsed with their kin in a final embrace.

  When we finished searching the first floor, I ordered Berserker Squad to remain behind. They were my original squad, and I trusted them. The rest of the section continued the investigation, moving up to the second floor. It was a repeat of the first floor. More dead. The search progressed, representing much of what we would find across the city in every skyscraper. Kusiba was a ghost town full of the hollow bodies of Repub loyalists.

  When we got to the twelfth floor, the squad leader from Berserker Squad announced that our company had rejoined us. I quickly switched back over to the command channel.

  “LR-24, the Skipper sends his regards,” Walden said, the disdain thick in his voice. “He’s updating Fleet, they’ll relay the message to the BC across the mountains. LR-05, out.”

  I joined Chaos Squad in clearing the top floor. There things took an even darker turn.

  “LR-24, you’re gonna wanna see this,” Corporal Singh called over the L-comm.

  “En route,” I replied. “Dwyer, on me.”

  Pulling up the HUD, I scrolled through the floorplan Padagas had sent us until I saw where Corporal Singh was waiting. The top floor housed the access to the air scrubbers. I stopped dead in my tracks as I walked in. Blood was everywhere. Someone had created a gruesome inkblot test, something the House would approve of. The vibrantly hued orange blood painting every surface twinkled under the low light HUD setting.

  “Gets worse in here, sir,” Singh called out.

  Rounding the corner from the main room of the apartment, I followed the voice from the Dagger Squad team leader. The room was filled with strange egg-shaped pods centered around a crystal.