Armature Noir: White Echo

Armature Noir: White Echo

This the sky was a vault of stars. Light pollution was one of the casualties of war. Those settlements that still had power now under careful black out to keep them off the radar of the aircraft and orbital strike assets prowling overhead. The tower was quiet visible though, a heavy, ancient structure, a tower of treated rock dating back to the colonization, one hundred stories tall and many hundreds across. It stood out against the starlight like a wall.

From one of the stars, fire fell, three illuminated trails, one for each of the heavy weapons towers on the tower’s roof. Fire blossomed out, a rip tide of wood and splinters edging each fireball, raining down towards the plains far below. Men ran across the stone, some burning, then tracers ripped out of the night and took them down.

After a moment, nothing moved on the vast roof top.

There was a shimmer in the air as aircraft, forms hidden in veils of countermeasures came in for landing. A suggestion of weapon and engine pods, the flicker of heat under the jets the motion of gun turrets. Open doors gave the clearest sight, showing red lit bays full of assault troops, humans and drones. They poured out before their carriers had even properly touched ground. After a few steps, their own countermeasures came on, and they vanished from normal sight as thoroughly as the aircraft.

Unseen by normal eyes, the force split in two. One group moved for the spider web of stairs and vehicle ramps on one side of the building, the other ran for the edge, cables in hand. The aircraft rose up behind them, the wind of their jets blowing debris off the roof in a scattering cloud.

Afsheen was with the second, sprinting full out, member of a wave a battalion strong. In full armour, and loaded down with rappelling gear, manoeuvring unit and her French made gauss cannon, it was a crazy pace. Her body could take it, augmented as it was and with the cocktail of uppers the medics had shot them full of before the drop, but she’d feel it later. God she would feel it.

She paused at the edge, of the roof, carefully not looking at the shadowed false colour countryside so far below, and pushed the winch down. There was a crash of bolts as it attached itself firmly and started to load line. A moment later, a green tell-tale lit above it in Afsheen’s AR display, and the assault force began to load. The drones went first, movements far quicker and more precise than even the most augmented human could manage, dropping down one after another, movement regular, spacing perfect. The captain gave the thumbs up and the commandos followed the drones down.

Afsheen felt her stomach lurch as she fell at speed, and winced as her gun hit the rope and bounced off, the attachment point jarring her arm painfully. She cursed under her breath, but most of her attention was on the descent timer. She always pressed the manual break, worried in case the automatics failed. It was foolish, but if they did fail, she’d crash into those below before she had a chance to know about it. The timer hit Zero and Afsheen pulled the trigger, decelerating sharply. The second stage of the automatics worked and she separated from the line, manoeuvring unit firing to take her along the wall to gecko grip at her position. The blurred shape of a drone was next to her on one side, a commando on the other.

Afsheen lowered a fiber optic down to look into the floor below. As expected it was filled with stacked prefabricated huts, with several of the ubiquitous ‘pike’ automatic beam systems rotated back and forth on the edges. Human guards and a few old drones, bell shaped minitanks left over from the Union wars sixty years ago, were in cover, weapons pointed out. The humans weapons were even older than the drones. Rifles and RPGs. Afsheen felt a flare of anger in her heart that this operation was necessary. How could they have lost to these people? Even if they hadn’t really lost.

“Wait for Bravo element to get into position.” The operation up to now had been conducted in such silence that the order was almost shocking. Afsheen ran a system check on her cannon, checking that bumping it against the line hadn’t fucked it up any. It looked good. She loaded the silhouettes and positions of her targets into the gun and the nearby drones, the basic set was already loaded, but with the close recon you could refine it. Human being with this equipment and within distance of this position was a target. Automatic gun system was a target.

“Drones in on my go.” The Captain said, voice slightly breathy with excitement. Afsheen released the hand she had on the wall, gripping it only with her legs and keeping a two handed grip on the assault cannon. “Go now!”

The drones dropped in. There was a blur of motion and gunfire that even Afsheen’s augmented senses could barely follow. “Everyone in now!” She let go, dropped and fired her maneuevering unit, dropping into the prison camp level through its open side. She landed on something that slide under her, maybe a bottle, and turned it into a roll. The wall behind her exploded as one of the drones fired a burst her way and her cannon swung slightly and fired back, shattering the old machine with a burst of fire. A human stuck a rifle out around the edge of one of the pillars and the cannon fired again, blowing the main backwards. Afsheen ran for the cover of a support pillar. More fire was coming from deeper within, a small force of larger drones and troops in full powered armour, hopelessly outmoded like the west of their equipment, but they had what they had. Afsheen looked through the cover on the composite vision of the drone array and saw fire coming in from the flanks on the new enemy group, Bravo team shooting them up from the sides.

A shadow fell across her, one of the gunships spinning down to look in through the open face, visible only by its shadow against the star light. Beams hazed out, one after another, each a perfect strike on a target. Its work done, the gunships lifted away.

Drones began to fan out forward, flesh and blood troops moving more cautiously behind. Building interiors sprang into relief as microbots and sensors found their way inside, reducing them to wire frames on the team’s vision. They advanced towards the prison camp proper in the middle of the level. It was a vast mesh cage, a gate on one side and rows of smaller cages between.

Empty cages.

They were too late.

1

Hikikomori. Was it even possible to be as rich as he was and still be a NEET? Daisuke sat in an armchair and looked out at the sea off the veranda. The armchair was his favourite to sit on outside, because the fibre didn’t stick to him in the heat. The house was as big and fancy as you could possibly want, founded in splendid isolation at the edge of this world’s Southern continent, of which he was the sole owner.

It was bizarre to think that at 19 years old his life was already basically over. Then again hadn’t he always known it’d be like this? Just him and his harem of 2d women stuck in a flat in Tokyo, never wanting to go outside.

This wasn’t a flat in Tokyo. He smiled and took an icy glass of coffee from the woman in the abbreviated maid outfit next to him. Another of his maids was fanning him on the other side. It could certainly be a lot worse.

He pulled on his sunglasses and checked his messages. Most of them were completely irrelevant, thank you notes from the anime studios he funded and various merch he’d bought. He stopped, stomach suddenly trying to crawl up his throat as he saw the last message. He straightened, looking at it to open it and tried to put his glass down.

It fell from his hand and struck the paving stones. Daisuke felt cold liquid spray across his legs, and heard the maid’s surprised yelp.

Neither of them seemed too important now.

2

“You’re asking me to leave our people to die!”

“I’m asking you not to betray our principles!”

“Principles? You know what they’ll do to our prisoners if we don’t pay the ransom?”

“What will it do to the whole company if we do this?”

“The company will survive. As long as we’re paid, as long as we have one another we’ll survive.”

“Our soul, our reputation.”

“This kid isn’t going to take our soul. Look at this. Look at who’s hiring us.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it. I had it checked and double checked. Your soul’s safe. Think on this when you have qualms.”

3

I stepped out of the spaceport building and winced. It was goddamn hot. I took a long drink from my water bottle then shook my head and dumped the rest of it over myself, pulling my sunglasses away with my other hand so I don't get water on them. Two local guys in board shorts and sandals checked me out as the liquid stuck down my tank top, but I gave them no more than a smile. I was in a hurry, and not in the mood.

Too goddamn hot.

I’d heard Argo-3 had the galaxies’ best beaches, but I hadn’t expected it to be basically all beach. The city was laid out across a series of free standing buildings on sand bars and built up coral reefs of a tropical island chain. Houses just above the tide line, with the gleaming lines of popup flood barriers around them, the metal covers uncomfortable to look at in the sun. Bridges extended across the channels but there was sand everywhere, gleaming white that matched the light wood of the bridges and boardwalks, and the white marble effect building, offset only by green palms, imported, and various garish native flowers. Most of the streets were covered, long lines of white sandstone supporting wooden rooves to keep the rain out when monsoon season came.

The space port was a lagoon on one side of the city, lift craft bobbing in the water in long rows between floating peers. Light craft were tied up all around them, probably to ferry supplies to the ships, but few of them moved now. Apart from the two guys now disappearing around a corner, there was no one around, just a few automated delivery vehicles. Not even a taxi, the heat seemed to have flat out shut the city down. I couldn’t really blame it.

I took off my cap and fanned myself. Dropping on the absolute cheapest passenger flight, Armature shipped in on a cargo line, I’d thought I was so damn smart. Little had I know why a midday landing was half the price of any other slot. I looked at the job sheet again. What the heck kind of a name was Domoto Daisuke? Almost certainly a fake one to be honest. Rich, claiming to be young, and semi-famous. I wondered why he suddenly felt the need for a pile of mercenary bodyguards. Maybe there was trouble with the locals. There had been a couple of guntrucks and an armoured deployed at the airport, so old that I'd assumed they were decoration, but maybe not.

“Urgh.” I drained the remains of the water in my bottle and pulled the second one from my bag. As I did so I saw something. A Shadow, growing rapidly, and a moving glitter, the sun reflecting off something and falling in front of me.

Knife.

I whirled around and stepped to one side, out of the way of the blade. It went past on one side of my chest, then came back and almost got me in the face. I ducked to one side, pivoted, and kicked at my attacker’s stomach. She blocked the kick with a raised knee, tried to knee me in return with her other foot, only for me to side kick it away. I tried to kick back but crashed into a light pillar instead. I could see the fury in her eyes as she came in at me with the knife, and grabbed her wrist, managing to get it off to one side so she didn’t stab me.

The clinch, both our hands on the knife, fighting for it gave me a chance to see who my opponent was. It wasn’t difficult to tell. There are not many people I know who are that white. I don’t mean she was Caucasian, I mean she was flat out white skin and white hair albino. Under her sunglasses, those eyes are colourless blue. The tight bikini she wore was white too. The only colour on her body was the blue sunhat. I knew her very well. She looked at me from under a wide brim. “Your senses aren’t worth shit Melek.” She tried to knee me again, our legs working together in a rapid series of short thrusts and parries. Her face was furious.

“Everything around here’s pretty white Hitoe, you’re camouflaged.” I smirked at her, hoping fury would make her make a mistake. She tried to head butt me, knocking her sunhat aside. The sandstone cracked slightly where she hit, but it dazed her a little. I threw her backwards and circled left, getting some room.

“Tch.” She came in at me again, leading with a kick, then going in for the knife again. I got my hand up just in time and grabbed her wrist again, reeling her in for a punch in the stomach she didn’t seem to feel. Instead we ended up trying to control the knife again, both hands on it. I felt the tip scrape across my midriff under my tank top, deflecting off my skin, and was eye to eye with her. “I was hoping to settle this in our machines, but if you’re here then we might as well…”

“So mad about that boy of yours. And he’s not even dead.”

She grinned, forcing me back slightly. “You’re a romantic Melek, still using that fat body of yours. I’ll show you the future of humanity.” In a second I was going to have to change the game, twist to one side and push the knife past, then elbow strike her in the. . .

“Ahem.” We both stopped to look up at the throat clearing noise. The woman watching us was a splash of colour in the general whiteness. Dark skin and Chinese features, hair dyed bright red, her skin covered in a maze of intricate multi-coloured snake tattoos. Wearing a bandeau well. I knew her as well. “I’d rather you didn’t, given I took so much trouble to hire two of the best Landsknecht in the business.”

Hitoe glared at me, and then stepped back stepped back, frowning at me before the knife coiled back into her wrist band. “Fine. I don’t want your filthy blood on me anyway.” She leaned down to retrieve her sunhat.

“It’s too hot anyway.” I shrugged, resettling my camp on my short, messy hair.

“You guys can settle whatever it is between you after the job is done.” She fell in with me. “You have your machines here?”

“I don’t know about her, but mine should be being unloaded. How many more do we have?”

“Another Armatures and a Sikari team.” We walked down the hill towards the town proper.

“Anyone I should know?”

“You know Xue Blue? Her, and the Twins.”

“The Twins? Them I know They’re good.” If I was one who held grudges, I’d have a grudge against them nearly as severe as the one Hitoe had against me. “I don’t much about Blue though”

The whole Armature part of the Landsknecht community is fucking incestuous. Everyone knows one another and is constantly comparing. Of course there were exceptions. I didn’t know anything much about Xue Blue. An was our condottieri but the mails said the employer had reached out to us personally. “She’s an ex-Chinese military AI. I worked with her before on Alpha-C. She’s pretty ridiculous.”

“We’re all pretty ridiculous.” And we were. Children of the disasterous wars of epistemology. Augmented soldiers without a country, the ghosts of armies.

We continued to walk down towards the port. I began to feel envious of the other two women’s swimwear. The town began to get busier as we walked into the centre of it, passing hawkers and merchants, most sitting under awnings of predictable white and looking pretty sleepy and half hearted. They had stalls full of all manner of crap to sell to spacers, local food and ornaments, various novels and media, and most importantly, drink. I bought another bottle of what I thought was soft drink but turned out to be a particularly fizzy larger, and tried to drink it slowly. The crowd shifted around us, a distorted heat hazed mirror in the brightness of shop windows.

"So what's up with this dude who hired us?"