Into the Light by Jane Wallace

It was a beautiful night on Gridon. The rain had stopped and a stirring breeze carried the scents of fresh grass and washed soil. From the drop-off point, Sevin and the Special Ops units set off in intervals, easily covering the ground in twenty minutes although the light from Riddan, raised in the sky above like a divine lantern, forced them to keep low. Soon the outline of Valentine and its attendant buildings emerged, partly obscured by the twin smoke-stacks of the disused factory at the complex’s northernmost point. Lights shone in the windows of its top three floors, which Sevin interpreted as a sign of normal activity. When they were five hundred metres from the perimeter, Sevin called a halt. Using relayed hand signals, the agents peeled off into their respective groups and moved into position.

Alpha group stayed put, hiding behind a low concrete bunker which must have been a feed or water trough decades ago. Sevin and Cantor hunkered down with their backs to it and their rifles across their laps. The rest of Alpha, two young corporals named Fenne and Yrim, kept guard either side. Sevin peeled open the cover of the control console for his eyeshields which was incorporated into his jacket sleeve. In the screen under his right eye, he could skip between the views of cameras embedded in each group leader’s helmet. He followed the action from Bravo who were skirting the western buildings and rapidly moving south. They stopped in bushes some two hundred metres from the guardhouse and signalled they were ready. Sevin authorised them to attack.

As they closed in, Sevin switched onto their thermal imaging view which would show up laser fire, normally invisible to the human eye, as a red beam. It also revealed the guardhouse was empty, of warm bodies anyway. Securimorphs were manufactured from a rock fibre which did not register on the infrared spectrum and the batteries which powered them, kept on recharge by photosimilating paint on the morph’s exterior, were easily confused with fridges or other large electrical devices.

The camera angle suggested the Bravo leader was outside the main entrance and Sevin held his breath as the second-in-command opposite him nodded the okay. On a count of three, the Bravo leader kicked in the door and his second burst into the house. The view shuddered as the leader followed him in and then focused over his shoulder. A black Nightwatch morph with the Gharst valknot stamped on its chest, three interlocking white triangles on a red background, rose threateningly from a desk covered in papers. Streaks of red light obliterated its head. Then the camera showed the barrel of the Bravo leader’s rifle wheeling around to the other end of the room where two other morphs stood braced for attack, their weapon arms raised. Suddenly the picture was all floor as the Bravo leader dived out of range and then the frame was filled by a spray of crimson light as the morphs began firing at him. The return was quelled by a volley from behind the camera which sliced into the shiny black bodies. Both morphs seized up, the one on the right issued smoke from its belly. There was a whoop from the men.

‘Bravo One to Alpha Leader, come in,’ sounded in Sevin’s invox.

‘Go ahead,’ replied Sevin.

‘Objective is secured, over.’

‘Copy that, out.’ Sevin surveyed the site for himself over the trough. Nothing moved. ‘All units from Alpha Leader, move in!’ he ordered.

Imperceptible figures began to scurry across the landscape. Sevin switched to the feed from Quebec group which was the camera on top of Lauden’s head. Quebec was approaching the back of the shed-store to the north-east of Valentine, a two-storey wooden construction with boarded-up windows. A low, long building with a polypro roof like a greenhouse lay in front of it at a right angle. Both the main entrances of the two structures faced onto the back of Valentine across a small courtyard.

Quebec split into pairs to go around the shed-store, one pair for each flank. Sevin saw Lauden’s partner creeping closely along the wall then peeking around the corner. ‘Go,’ he heard Lauden order. They inched along the front of the shed, dropping under the windows, and were metres from the entrance when there was a sharp report. The front door fell outwards to the ground, letting past screeching lashes of red. A Nightwatch jumped out of the doorway, shooting its blaster arm indiscriminately, its single camera eye scanning for targets. A bolt from the Special Ops agent on its right took out its knees so it dropped to the ground where it thrashed about, unable to get up, until a beam from inside the cottage stilled it permanently. Two more Nightwatch exited, firing at will, followed by several others.

‘Get back,’ yelled Lauden as the robots continued to march out in pairs, hosing each unprotected side with lethal vermillion. ‘Holy scrit!’ he swore as the agent in front of him caught some of the beam and keeled over. Stumbling backwards, Lauden returned fire until he could duck behind the side of the shed. There was a huge explosion. Sevin heard Lauden shout in surprise and for a while saw only his arm which had been thrown up to protect his face. When he lowered it again, Sevin could see that the windows of Valentine’s ground floor had blown out. Sections of wall had fallen in, creating wide gaps in the brickwork from which clouds of dust and black humanoid shapes began to materialise: morphs, hundreds of them.

‘Oh my gods!’ said Cantor.

Sevin was flicking between streams. Lauden was alone, cannonading a wall of oncoming morphs. The Papa view showed Nightwatch flooding out of the garages and the feed from Foxtrot jumped between the back exit of Valentine and positions held by stiff figures from which sporadic salvos issued. There was nothing from the Echo camera. Sevin fiddled with the control console until the bitter realisation hit him that Echo group had been next to the entrance when it imploded.

‘Alpha Leader from Foxtrot One, come in!’ Zendra’s voice was somehow audible over the banshee shrieking in the background.

‘This is Alpha Leader, go ahead.’

‘Foxtrot is intact but outnumbered and under heavy fire.’

‘Copy that. Maintain position if you can.’

‘Wilco. Foxtrot out.’

Sevin swore as Zendra clicked off. It was all going hopelessly wrong. Under his right eye, the stream from the Papa camera showed a Special Ops agent on the ground, motionless. He smacked a button on the side of his helmet to retract his visors. He rubbed his eyes, making them sting with the dried sweat he smudged into them by mistake.

‘What now, sir?’ Cantor was visibly distressed.

Sevin didn’t want to take their one real option but he had no choice. ‘We can’t do it on our own, we need to get help,’ he said eventually. ‘The Volunteers are within ten kilometres and their skydrives could get here in less than five minutes. If we contact the eye in the sky,’ he stared at his boots, furious that he would have to ask Reverre, of all people, for a hand, ‘they can send reinforcements’.

He took his digi from its pouch on his belt and dialled the code for the secure channel. The signal would fly down a safe path set up on the local grid and straight into the bridge on Vehement from where he knew Brodie and Reverre were co-ordinating strategy. He heard a distant ringing, then the tone went dead. He tried again, the same happened. He shook the digi in frustration. He couldn’t have got it wrong, he never got it wrong. He tried a final time. Nothing.

Cantor saw his face. ‘Can’t get them?’ he asked unbelievingly.

’No,’ said Sevin, looking away. Damn the gods, this whole operation was starting to look like a death trap – the waiting morphs, now no back-up. Absent-mindedly his fingers searched under his collar for the pendant he kept there. Locating the cruciform lump, he pressed his fingertips hard into its ridges. No way out, no way out, the mantra went round and round into his head until it was in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Images of dead bodies on the floor of a refectory and the screams of a young boy and girl echoed through his mind.

Not this time! He crushed the thoughts into oblivion. What the hell was he doing? His one aim in life was to enact a bloody revenge on the Gharst for killing his family. He was not going to achieve that by getting shot down by a bunch of tinnies. The situation needed to be sorted and he was the man for the job.

‘Fall back, sir?’ Cantor suggested.

‘No,’ said Sevin, seizing his rifle. ‘We’re going to take Valentine because that’s what we’re here to do. Pass out the orders, then follow me.’

Sevin stood up, letting the hatred course through him. He had got his team into this hellhole, he would get them out. If they skirted around the eastern side of the factory, the back exit of Valentine was a short hop across open ground where Foxtrot could cover them from inside the low-rise.

‘Valentine!’ he yelled. ‘Follow me!’

He broke into a run towards the compound. A low beeping started in his left ear. ENEMY IN RANGE flashed up white on the inside of his left eyeshield. Through the overlay he could see heads and shoulders silhouetted against the orange glow of fires which had taken hold in the workshop and shed-store: morphs were advancing from the very direction they needed to go.

‘Morphs at 11 o’clock!’ he panted into the outvox. ‘Veer west, veer west!’ They would have to go the long way round, past the other side of the factory. He gritted his teeth, focusing his energies on getting over the uneven ground and ignoring the possibility he was leading them all to their deaths. He prayed that Marik would be sensible enough to make the first RV on time. He figured they could get inside Valentine easily enough. Whether they could hold it against two hundred morphs for the thirty minutes until Marik arrived was another matter entirely.