The company trod softly through the abandoned alleyways and side-streets that ghosts had once wandered down. The pilot ordered them to keep conversation to a minimum; this was now a survival mission. Each in turn looked up to the empty windows of neglected prosper and wondered if a spirit or biomech was watching them, and each trained their weapons up to the skies before pulling them down and swinging around the next corner.
11218 was particularly itchy behind his trigger, his finger less caressing the lever and more tapping a prog-metal drum beat upon it. "I've already got six kills since coming down here last week," he said. "I know a friend back at Necrogate that says he's killed twenty three."
"So you're gaming it?" 6690 asked.
"Aren't you?"
"Not everyone is here of their own choice," 6690 told him. 11218 went silent, and 6651 was sure that if they could have seen his face, they would've seen him pouting.
The suns had almost sunk below the black Greivstor skyline, elongating their shadows to strange phantoms that walked before them. The pilot was anxious. A party of biomechs would see their shadows before either party saw each other, and Celestria would have four more names to put upon its screens.
"Stop here," he said.
"What's up?" Stellada asked.
"You see something?" 11218 readied his gun. The pilot spotted a building whose door had long since been dragged into the mists of time. He issued a hand signal and they slipped inside.
"11218, get us a map." The projection confirmed the pilot's suspicions.
"Ok, we're here,' he said, pointing to a blip on the map. "Biomech heaven is only a few streets away."
"Which should be empty, according to you," Stellada said.
"I know what I said, which is why I'm reconsidering it."
'What's this?" 11218 asked. "You want us to backtrack? We lost?"
"11218, Shut the hell up,' the pilot snapped. 11218 paused for a moment, then went to the entrance to stand guard.
"You don't think it's as empty as you thought, do you?' 6690 said.
The pilot flipped up his visor and rubbed his eyes, the synthetic fabric of the gloves stinging his eyelashes. "I don't want to take the chance. Can we get out to the main street up there?"
"Should be able to," said Stellada, "let me just flip on the life-signs." Symbols were drawn in the air and more coloured blips appeared on the map. The pilot cursed.
"We can't blast our way through all that," he said, still swearing under his breath.
"Unless we use the walkways," 6690 commented.
"The walkways?"
"The ones that link all the buildings? We've been walking under them for the last hour or so." The pilot brought up a menu and added in the walkways. They sprawled across the vision like a hallucinating spider web.
"If we... no, we don't know if they're safe or not," the pilot said.
"Don't have much of a choice. And we'd better hurry up, there's some biomechs heading our way," said Stellada, pointing.
"Let's take 'em out," 11218 called.
"If you want to go suicide mission on them then have fun, but we aren't. We're heading up and out of the city to find that disappeared party," the pilot said.
"Alright, just being a soldier, that's all."
"You're being an idiot" 6690 commented.
"Not cool man, not cool," was 11218's response, and the firm assurance that he was pouting came to 6651 once again.
"Right. Let's head up through this building here. As far as I can see there's nobody on the upper levels, so we can make it through them to two buildings away from where we need. Then it's down, out, and in again to make it out of the city."
"Sounds good to me." Stellada waved her hand over the map which dissolved like glitter. Stellada handed back the Halo-Core to its owner. 11218 pocketed it, finger still over his trigger, as if he believed that if the gun were not fired soon, it would jam on him when the moment came.
"Look," she said to him. "I know you haven't fucked anyone in over a week, and your Merkiosen boyfriend might be sleeping with that nice little Julliscor down the street from The Fading Sun in Region 61, but please can you try and stop your gun from ejaculating a little prematurely? I don't want to end up dead because you're taking the shots in your underwear into your gun. Got that?" 11218 quivered a little under Stellada's shadow.
"Absolutely."
أنت تقرأ
Ruins of Greivstor
الخيال العلميA battle rages above Greivstor, ships in constant combat. One pilot crashes to the planet's surface, and ends up joining the ground crew. He soon makes a discovery, one which changes his views of why the ruins of an ancient civilisation are the tar...
