VERNEN WELLS

2185.05.15

The Automaton Hulk had no opinion about any of this, which was most of its strength.

Its processors read the battlefield as they always had: terrain, threats, targets, firing solutions. The fortress had fallen eleven minutes ago, embarrassingly, to four drop pods landing directly in its central courtyard without bothering to land outside the walls first. The surviving Hulks of the garrison did what Hulks do after a fortress falls, which is stalk through the smoke with tremendous purpose and pretend nothing has happened.

Its optics found a silhouette.

A single biological unit, standing in the open in the middle of a kill zone, perfectly still. Something large and round was strapped to its back, a pack so oversized it looked almost comical. In its right hand it held a launcher small enough to be a toy. No squad. No cover. No concern worth showing.

Threat assessment returned a value that was the machine equivalent of contempt.

It charged. It was very good at charging. The ground shook, historically an effective move, and its twin cannons spun up, and the distance closed, and the biological unit still did not move. The Hulk's last intact processor gave itself over to the pleasant task of calculating exactly where-

The silhouette raised the toy launcher.

The last thing the Automaton Hulk ever processed was a very small muzzle flash, and a sun.

The purpose of a Helldiver's sidearm has never been really clear. The theory is that the sidearm exists so a Helldiver can spread just a little more democracy when his primary runs dry.

Joe had taken that theory seriously. Too seriously, some would say. His sidearm of choice was the Ultimatum, a miniature tactical nuclear warhead on a small launcher, small enough to hang from one hand and large enough to end arguments. In his opinion the classic doctrine had exactly one flaw, and it was the word little.

"Joe! Are you listening to anything I just said?"

"Hm?" Joe turned away from the mushroom cloud still blooming over the fortress's eastern wing. "Sorry, Rask. Was that the important part?"

"It was all orders."

"Then it was all important. Start me from the top."

Sergeant Rask of the 181st Jaeger Korps did not sigh, because sighing was against regulations, but his silence did a good impression of one.

"The orders," he said, "are to clear the foundry district. Your HUD counter has been making noises for the last half hour, and I don't know what you're trying to run it up to, but command wants the district cleared first."

"Clear the district, then look at my counter. Got it." Joe shouldered his autocannon. "I can do both at the same time. It's called efficiency."

"Joe."

"Rask."

The 181st Jaeger Korps did not believe in preparation. Briefings were for other regiments, softer regiments, regiments with names that sat comfortably in a mouth. The Korps's answer to every fortified Automaton position had been the same since its founding: drop straight into the middle of it. No dropping in a quiet area and calling down support, no prior planning, just treating their own Hellpods as extra ammunition, blowing up some fabricators as their announcement of arrival, then sort everything else out on the way.

Joe fit right in.

The pods had hit the fortress at 0640 that morning. It was now 0731, and the foundry district had stopped being a district and become a vague hint of what it used to be. Joe moved through it fast, with a sort of distracted delight that his squad had stopped trying to diagnose.

A pack of troopers broke cover from a side street. The autocannon came up before the first of them finished raising its rifle, and the bursts were short and vicious, rounds punching through two or three chassis in a line. Automaton armor was good. The autocannon did not care. Joe had decided long ago that the correct response to Automaton engineering was a generous helping of ammunition.

"Counter," he muttered, glancing at his HUD. "Four sixty. Hey Rask, did you know this fortress had a basement?"

"Please focus."

"I am focused. I'm focused on the fact that this fortress has a basement, and the basement is on fire now. That's focus."

The foundry ahead vomited a tide of machines. Troopers, devastators, three of the screaming rocket ones, pouring out of the breach in the factory wall. Joe watched them come. Then he reached over his shoulder and checked the straps on the big round pack on his back, with the care other men reserve for parachutes.

"Joe," said Rask, in the voice of a man watching a prediction come true. "That is a Hellbomb."

"It is."

"That is a horde of bots."

"It is."

"And you are running at it."

"That's the plan, yes."

He went. Hellbomb on his back, autocannon slung, ammo backpack left carelessly on the ground, sprinting full tilt at a tide of machinery. Every survival instinct his squad possessed screamed at him over comms, mostly in Rask's voice. Joe simply drowned it out with a preliminary stim in his neck. Caffeinated, his own concoction, and very much against protocol.

Joe reached the middle of the horde, lightly pressed a button on his backpack, shrugged it off, and left.

The shockwave rolled over him like an angry god. Gravel and shrapnel and burning automaton parts rained on his back. He briefly took interest at the noises different parts made on impact with his armor.

When the smoke cleared, the horde was a crater, and Joe stood at its edge, a little dazed, looking for his autocannon’s ammo backpack with the dexterity of a grandma reaching for a pair of reading glasses.

"Counter," he said, finally finding it and slinging it on his back. "Four eighty-seven. Good haul."

"One of these days," Rask said, "you are not walking out of that."

"Then I won't have to hear about it."

At 0744 the district went quiet. Districts do, eventually, when they run out of bots to throw out. Five minutes later a dropship came, a big one, low over the smoke layer, gunners scanning for stragglers. Joe's autocannon found it before its gunners found anything. The shells walked up its hull and punched into the engine nacelles, and the dropship came down tumbling, crashing right on top of a very unfortunate bot trooper who had almost survived the encounter.

"Calculated!” Joe exclaimed. It was not, in fact, calculated.

“Anything left?”

"Scanner's got one contact," Rask said. "Big one. Coming out of the eastern foundry."

The Hulk came out of the smoke with the confidence of something that had missed the last eleven minutes. It saw a lone biological unit standing in the open, something large and round strapped to its back, a very small launcher in its right hand. It had just made the decision to charge, which was the worst possible decision it could make.

"Rask," said Joe, raising the Ultimatum. "Watch this."

"I hate that I know what's about to happen."

The counter ticked over as a third sun rose that morning.

AUTOMATON KILLS: 500.

Joe stood in the falling ash and read it again, because it was worth reading twice. Somewhere behind him Rask was saying something about regulations and show-offs. Joe wasn't hearing it. He was reading the second message, the one that had arrived underneath the counter as if it had been waiting for it.

SPECIAL WARFARE GROUP - ACCEPTANCE CONFIRMED. 
REPORT TO CLAORELL, 1800, PROMOTION CEREMONY.

"Well," Joe said, to the ruins that used to be a district. "That's convenient."

CLAORELL ORBITAL GARRISON

In geosynchronous orbit above CLAORELL

2185.05.16

Joe had survived fourteen hot drops into Automaton fortresses, but he had never been in a room with this many medals in it, and he was starting to suspect it was the more dangerous environment.

The promotion ceremony was short. The Special Warfare Group did not believe in long ceremonies, just as the 181st did not believe in briefings. But it had guests, and it had speeches, and Joe had been standing at attention for six minutes now. His fingers had started quietly fidgeting with the edge of his dress belt, and he was slightly upset that his new fleet-wide record of 99,302 points in Stratagem Hero wasn’t mentioned even once.

"-and so it is with considerable regret," Kommandant Bear was saying, "that the Korps loses its most effective Jaeger to the Special Warfare Group. A loss made worse by the fact that he is standing right there, smirking."

"I'm not smirking, sir," Joe said.

"You are smirking. I have seen you smirk at fortresses."

Kommandant Bear of the 181st Jaeger Korps was built like his name suggested, and he wore his parade uniform like a mountain wears weather: without noticing it. He had commanded the Korps for nine years and personally approved every hot drop in it, which meant he had personally approved every one of Joe's. He regarded Joe as a favorite weapon that had started having opinions.

"Five hundred kills in one mission," Bear said, coming down the steps to hand Joe his insignia. "On paper, that's a pass with flying colors. In person, it's a complaint. I was saving those Automatons for my men."

"Consider it preemptive defense of your men, sir."

"I'm considering it. It isn't going well." Bear pinned the insignia on, and his voice dropped below its ceremonial register. "The SWG will put you where the war is worst. That's the job. Don't mistake it for a promotion, Jaeger. It's an assignment with better tailoring."

"Yes, sir."

"And Joe." Bear paused. "Try not to die. The paperwork alone would be the end of me."

"Yes, sir. Wouldn't want to be a paperwork event."

Bear almost smiled. Almost. The garrison hall was starting to break up around them, officers drifting toward exits. Joe was already halfway to the shuttle in his head when the sirens started.

The sirens blared out a tone it had never blared before. The one Claorell had installed for a situation it had never once believed it would need to announce.

Every viewport in the hall had the same view. The sky above Claorell tore open like a wound, and the Democracy Space Station fell through it.

“Fell” was the only way to describe it. Trailing atmosphere it had no business carrying, trailing debris and bursts of venting fire, her dorsal axis one long ragged black scar, her guns dark. She hung in orbit like an injured, trembling animal.

Nobody in the hall said anything. Every soldier in that room knew what the DSS was. Every soldier in that room knew what it meant when the most powerful weapon in the Federation's arsenal came home like this.

Joe's wrist-comm chimed. Then the dispatches started arriving, and they did not stop.

Widow's Harbor had fallen. Pilen V had fallen. New Haven was falling. An Illuminate fleet of unprecedented scale was advancing on Super Earth along a corridor three planets wide. A State of Extratyrannical Emergency was in effect. All units were-

Joe stopped reading.

Super Earth itself was at risk. The Federation’s heart. He was fortunate enough to be one of the very few Helldivers actually born there. In a city by the sea. He had not gone back to see his home for a very, very long time.

"-Joe." Bear's voice came from somewhere far away, and then from not far away at all. The Kommandant had read the dispatches too. He did not ask. The 181st never ask. "Go."

"Sir, the ceremony-"

"Is done. It was done the moment that station came through." Bear took his hand, and then, against all regulation, pulled him into a handshake that involved the shoulder. "You were always going to end up wherever the war was loudest. I just hoped you'd get there at the head of it."

Joe looked up at the wounded station, hanging in the sky above them.

"It's heading for Super Earth, sir."

"Then get there first." Bear let go of his hand and stepped back, and for a moment he stood at attention, which was the most the 181st ever gave anyone. "Go drop somewhere that needs it, Jaeger."

Joe saluted, and ran.

The transfer request to the Galactic War Room was filed before his shuttle left the pad. The war was coming for his home city, and Joe had exactly one opinion about that. It was the same opinion the 181st had about everything.

He was going straight into the middle of it.