Chapter 1: Gallium Wars

Sabu Zura Kesh stopped where the scrub forest met the open field and raised a fist. He slowly dropped to one knee. He pointed his LIR-3, Laser Individual Rifle, towards it, scanning the far side through the mounted scope. He knew the rest of the platoon would have stopped and fanned out, alternating left and right, into a defensive position. His squad leader’s voice cracked over the speakers embedded in his helmet, “What is it Z?”

He pushed the collar of his protective vest closer to his neck, the throat mic inside picking up his voice, “Forest ends, opens up into a field. And I got a body here.”

Sweat dripped into his eyes. His unit was on a long-range patrol to determine the edges of the enemy forces. They had been rucking through scrub forest, short trees, prickly bushes, and small run-off gullies for four hours. It was really shit patrol terrain, his legs ached, and he was pretty sure he was dehydrated.

Enlil, this system’s star, was baking the planet’s surface. It had to be over 100 degrees out. He was soaked in sweat. It ran in rivulets down his neck, his thighs, and he could even feel it pooling in the tips of his gloves.

Kesh took a sip from the rubber tube protruding from the other side of his collar and ran back through the vest to a water bladder tucked near his lower back. The water was piss warm, but it soothed his parched throat.

“I’m coming up,” said his squad leader. He did not reply but kept looking out at the field. He gazed down at the dead man. He could tell by the slightly different shade of green in the fatigues that it was an enemy soldier. Missing a head. Probably killed by a drone.

Sabu Khan Drak Dinkcush, who everyone called Dink, came up on Zura’s left side and took a knee, “Where’s the KIA?”

The Sabu nodded to his right, “There, under the bush.”

Dink peered around Kesh to get a look. “No head?”

“None that I can see.”

The wind shifted, and the Sabu Khan scrunched his nose. The body stank, but there was also a mix of vomit floating in the air. He looked at a small pile on the ground in front of the newbie.

“You?” asked Dink as Zura caught his gaze.

The kid nodded, his face turning red.

“It’s alright, fuck if you didn’t puke, that’d be more of a problem,” said Dink, “Pull back some though.”

Zura nodded and crawled back ten feet into the scrub brush.

Dink scanned the field, then chicken-walked over to the corpse. He waved the flies away and noted the unit patch on the man’s right arm. The Shamash, the symbol of Enlil, over crossed swords. He’d seen the patch before. An air assault unit. This one had thick blue piping circling the edge of the patch. The man had been a ZM, a zone maker. Troops that dropped in before everyone else, setting up drop zones, maybe do some sabotage, a little scouting.

The dead man had no body armor. ZMs travelled light. The drone operator who took him out was good. Laid in a clean hit. Scalpel-like precision, the collar of his uniform was still intact. His left arm was flung outwards, as if reaching for something. Around the wrist was a leather band with tiny seashells embedded in it. An ancient religious symbol of devotion.

He hopped back to where Zura had repositioned himself and said, “Zone Maker, they’re probably looking to prep this field for a cylinder. He was Sudu-en.”

Zura sighed, “A Sudu? The religious nut jobs?”

Dink nodded, tapped his throat mic, “Ringo Actual, this is Ringo One over.”

A voice with a northern Etrian accent replied, “Ringo One, this is Ringo Actual, over.”

“Ringo Actual, this is Ringo One, we have contact. One Zag Micah, KIA, over.”

“Roger Ringo One, I am coming up. Out.”

The sound of movement could be heard behind them. Neither man turned but kept scanning the field. They were also first in soldiers, not ZMs, but Lurps. Officially Long Range Recon Patrols, but everyone just called them Lurps.

The two opposing forces had an overabundance of drones, satellites, radar, infrared, long-range audio sensors, and other surveillance measures. But they also had a slew of sophisticated countermeasures, such as EMP weapons, cloaking nets, radio and other comms disruptors, and various air defenses for drones and other surveillance devices. This meant one of the best intelligence-gathering assets was still boots on the ground.

Sarri-Tul Padan Mur, Paddy to his team, Bull to his close friends, put a hand on Dink’s shoulder and took a knee. Turner, who everyone called Tuner, the platoon comms operator, hunched down a few feet behind him. Both men wiped the sweat from their eyes.

“What’ya see?” asked Paddy

“That’s the problem,” said Dink, chewing on a stem of long grass he had plucked and nodding out to the field, “There’s nothing out there.”

Paddy looked across the field. It was fairly flat, a perfect drop zone. He looked skyward, then swatted a fly that had landed on his neck. He looked at the dead ZM lying nearby. “Anyone check him for intel?”

“Not yet,” said Dink, “he’s got a Shamash patch, that’s their 32nd Air Assault, right?”

Paddy nodded, “They’re fucking tough. So, if they got ZMs on the ground, they’re looking to put a cylinder here.”

“I would,” replied Dink.

Paddy spoke into his mic, “Biscuit, what’ya see?”

He was speaking to his ACB. Artificial Combat Buddy. An advanced AI system carried by each soldier. An ACB provided various information based on your rank and role: comms, battlefield data, weather. It even monitored your vital statistics. Defense ministry scientists had created these powerful AI models, compressed into a clip-on device no larger than a standard playing card but about three times as thick. They connected to an energy drive that could be clipped onto a belt.

The drive worked by converting electromagnetic waves into power. Their unit technician simplified it to a generator pulling energy from ocean waves or a river current. There was more to it than that—something about an energy expander, dual-wattage amplifiers, and field density—but Paddy stopped listening once he learned how to clip it to the AI card and that it only worked in high-flux environments.

Soldiers could name their ACB. Army psychologists felt this helped ease battlefield tension. Paddy had named his Biscuit after the platoon dog he had to shoot when it stepped on a landmine. So anecdotally, he fucked that comfort theory all up.

ACBs at the platoon level were connected, enabling the unit to communicate and share data. Paddy had hacked Biscuit’s comms so he could listen to everything from his company command on up to the general staff. He had also overridden the language guardrails, so Biscuit sometimes swore like a drunken space marine.

A woman’s voice, in the same northern accent as his, chimed in on both men’s speakers. “If there are Silencers up in low orbit, they are not dropping a cylinder here. There’s no EMP lattice covering this field. It’s open from clouds to dirt, but there is something out there on the spectrum.”

“Bis, stay off my network,” sighed Dink. He turned to Tuner. “Tuner, you reading any EMP out there?”

Tuner pulled what looked like a gun from a case attached to his web belt. The weapon had a small radar dish at the end and a panel readout on the back. He pointed it at the field and pulled the trigger.

Looking at the readout, he scrunched his brow. “No EMP. But the return’s off-phase. I’ve never seen that before.”

“Which means?” asked Dink.

Tuner frowned at the readout. “Means something’s out there, but it’s not electromagnetic. Or it’s bending the signal so it looks like it isn’t. Either way, the instruments don’t know how to read it.”

“I told you,” said Biscuit, annoyed.

Paddy looked up and frowned. He didn’t need Biscuit or Tuner’s readout to let him know there was no EMP. The lack of hum in the air, like standing too close to a power line, was evidence enough. A strong net pushed outward, a pressure you could feel in your teeth and taste on your tongue. At this range, if there was one in the field, he’d feel that. Here, though, nothing but the warm breeze flowing from the Iram desert wafted over him.

He turned his gaze skyward again. If they were prepping this field for a cylinder, along with the EMP hum, he should be seeing inter-orbital fighters providing high-altitude air cover, or their contrails as they flitted in and out of the atmosphere. There should be the buzz of drone swarms and small fighters nicknamed Mosquitos as they zipped around in the air outside the cylinder’s perimeter. The space was empty. Every fiber of his being was telling him something was wrong. His command training said leave, bootleg someplace safe. Something else gnawed inside him to stay. He chose to stay.

Paddy sighed. “It’s good terrain, long and flat. You could bring in nearly a division in Tulips here.”

“Tulips?” asked Zurra.

Paddy looked skyward again. “Drop ships, kid. They look like upside-down tulips. They’ll float down from orbit, two hundred kilos up, with six hundred troops each. Chock full of fuel and troops or gear, they are as aerodynamic as a dropped egg. You could easily land twenty-five in this field.”

“But not without a cylinder,” explained Dink. “No anti-aircraft or missile, no EMP lattice, no air cover. Those things just become target practice. They have no defenses. All that fuel—they light up like a volcano.”

Zura looked skyward, not sure what he was supposed to be looking for.

“Why give it up?” asked Dink, nodding to the corpse. “They were obviously here. We couldn’t contest it, and they knew that. It’d be hell for us to get them out.”

Paddy shook a droplet of sweat from his forehead. “I don’t know, but they bootlegged out of here for some reason.”

“How do you know?” asked Zura.

“Shamash don’t leave their dead,” explained the platoon leader.

“He was probably on point,” said Dink, then pointing out towards the field. “Laser took him out from about my ten o’clock. Skilled operator too. Ranged it to hit him dead on. No through shot, didn’t singe bark or leaf, just a bit of his collar.”

“That Ute wasn’t good at his job, was he?” joked Zura.

Dink looked at him and squinted. “How many firefights have you been in, Iginu?”

The Sabu turned red at being called the newbie slur, glanced at Paddy, and said softly, “One.”

Dink smiled. “Up near the plateau. Bud, that wasn’t even a firefight, it was a skirmish. Slugfest too, no incoming lasers. Wait till you’re in one of those before commenting. The Sarri-Tul and me…” He nodded at Paddy. “We’ve been in a couple. Would’ve bought it last time if not for we had cover on a river bank and a berm of wet clay. These ZMs…” He pointed to the dead Utian. “Are their best of the best, and you show them respect or you’ll find yourself on the business end of a Ute laser. Especially if your dumbass is going to walk up on an open field and expose yourself and the rest of the squad.”

Paddy put a hand to his helmet. “Say again, Bis. You broke up.”

“Comms are down. Well, we have platoon level, but anything above that is dead,” said the ACB.

Paddy turned and looked at Turner.

The comms operator shrugged. “I got nothing, boss. I can’t hit HQ, no satboxes, no pilot chatter. Everything is down.”

He nodded, then tapped his throat mic and said softly, “Hey TC, come up here.”

Temen Cush, TC, was his other squad leader. He had transferred in from the HQ company at the start of the campaign and fit right in with the platoon. He was a seasoned veteran, had been wounded, had been commended for bravery, and the men looked up to him. The big man, assessing that there was no danger, casually walked up. Paddy gave him a look, and he reluctantly took a knee, grimacing as he knelt.

Dink grinned at him. “The hip old man?”

TC gave him a look. He was only four years older than Dink, was waiting for an opening to get his own platoon, and the hip pain was from a bullet wound. He let it slide. Dink was always teasing him. He turned to Paddy. “What’s up, boss?”

“I don’t know. Dink’s right, this is a perfect cylinder location. This place should be a beehive.”

TC looked out into the open field, knee-high brown grass bent in the slight breeze, patches of low scrub brush poked out like green islands in a sea of tans and ochres. He gazed upward, then back to Paddy. “Intel did say the Utes were having supply trouble. Maybe they don’t have enough firepower to take this.”

“Why drop in Zoners then?” asked Dink.

TC rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and shrugged. “It’s too weird. Bull, maybe we pull back a few clicks?”

Paddy nodded. “Maybe, but I dunno. It’d be good to bring some answers back with us. Let’s do a threat assessment. Scan the field, see what you can see. Send me your feeds, and I’ll overlay all assessments.”

Paddy stood and pulled the collar of his protective vest closer to his neck. He spoke calmly into the throat mic. “Biscuit, drop the monocle and give me a threat assessment of the field and far side woods, full range. Troops, weapons, mines, drones. See if anything pops up.”

Biscuit said, “Calculating,” as a single lens flipped down from Paddy’s helmet just over his left eye.

The Tactical Augmented Recon Lens, simply called the monocle by the soldiers, was a shatter- and scratch-proof device that provided a range of data, from an infrared camera to a 240-degree-angle lens.

Biscuit buzzed back in. “I have all the feeds and have overlayed them. Slinging to the monocle screen. Paddy, you all are right. Something is off.”

“We’ve already established that,” said Paddy.

“I’m not talking about out in the field. But where the fuck is everybody?” asked Biscuit.

“I don’t know. I guess the Utes don’t want the field,” he replied.

“No, I mean our people,” she explained.

“Comms are down,” said Paddy.

“Are they? I can hit everyone in the platoon five-by. I’m sending pings out to HQ, satboxes, that multichannel relay station at the base near the desert. I know the pings are getting through, but nothing is bouncing back. If comms were down, I’d get an error message indicating that the terminal end doesn’t exist. But this—this is like a black hole pulling my pings into it. Not just us either. You saw the intel, the Utes have a ton of shit planet-side and in orbit. I should, without even trying, pick up some enemy chatter. A pilot forgets to flip his crypto on, or a signal leaks out. But nothing. It is as silent as space out there.”

“You think that is the same for everyone else?” asked Paddy.

“I don’t know. I can’t talk to anyone else.”

Paddy leaned back and said, “Tuner, can you send a ping?”

The comms man nodded. “Yeah, but they don’t bounce back, and I don’t get a bad sig message, which is weird.”

“Told you,” said Biscuit with a hint of sarcasm. “And I am glitching.”

“You have a virus?”

“No. Already ran a malware scan. Plus, I am too good for some Ute hacker to break in. Just something interfering with my processes, like CPU overload or something. I’ll figure it out,” she answered.

“OK,” he sighed. Then he said, “What’s the threat assessment?”

The ACB replied cautiously. “There was a firefight. I detected spent ammo on the far side. Based on the casings, those were our troops. Also evidenced by our fucking headless friend here. My guess is another lurp patrol made contact. Company D just got a laser drone and an operator assigned, must have been them. Had to be last night or early morning cause he’s just starting to emit his gases. Bet he stinks or is starting to. I’d check the battalion logs—they’d have had to call it in—but we’re in a communication gap.”

“Whatever action was here last night, there’s nothing here today. Based on the overlays, the threat matrix is zero. Which is impossible. All probabilities say we should be in a ton of shit. This location is prime real estate. It’s a good DZ. Up on high ground. The gallium deposit is ten clicks north-northeast. Eighteenth Recon and some quartermaster unit are the only ones in the area, so they could set up a good defensive perimeter before we could do anything. We should be getting a serious amount of incoming.”

Paddy turned his gaze back to the field, agreeing with Biscuit and wondering why they all weren’t in ziplock body bags by this point.

He stood up. Raised his rifle towards the field. Holding the weapon up with one hand, he adjusted the graphene supercapacitor bandolier, crossing from shoulder to hip. Satisfied that the bandolier was set right, he grabbed the rifle with both hands and looked through the scope. He scanned the far side of the field again. He let out a slow breath. What the fuck was going on.

He tapped his mic. “Weapons check, everyone. Make sure the feeds are clear, a can is popped in, safeties on.”

He could hear their movement as they ran their hands along the bandoliers, checking their graphene cans. The air was filled with the soft whir as ACBs connected to the weapons and spun up the field check analysis. “You’re good,” said Biscuit in his ear.

Dink leaned in to Zurra and checked his bandolier. He tugged the bottom some. “Always loosen the bottom. The slack helps feed the cans in. Look, if things get hot, do what I do. Each shot, I mark it as a finger—thumb, index, middle, ring. When I hit pinky, I know I am out of rounds for that can. It should eject. You’ll feel the next can load.”

“What about the heat brick?” asked Zurra.

“I know in training they told you they’d auto-eject after twenty rounds, but honestly, you’ll feel it. Fucking heat absorbers get hot fast. The problem is that they expand and jam up in the exit port. Then you’re fucked in the middle of a firefight. So when you feel that heat, just manually eject it. Better safe than sorry, right, and we hump enough of those with us. If you run short, someone has extras.”

Zurra nodded, absentmindedly ran his hand along the bandolier and absorption brick port in his rifle, and swallowed hard.

Suddenly, from the skies above, came a rumble that vibrated through their stomachs.

Paddy looked up, heard an “Oh fuck” from one of the troops, and raised a hand for silence. A ship was dropping from orbit. There was thick cloud cover so they could not see it at first, but he knew what it was.

Dink and TC looked up.

“Can’t be ours,” said Dink.

Paddy shook his head no. He returned to one knee and stared up at the clouds through his monocle.

“This is fucking suicide. There’s no cylinder. No EMP cover. Both sides are jamming comms. No anti-missile around the field. What the fuck are they doing?” asked TC.

Paddy rolled a tongue in his cheek, spit out his plug of chew. He shook his head, then said softly in his northern accent, “I dunno. Someone’s fucked up though.”

He looked up as the bulbous-shaped drop ship passed below the clouds and became clearly visible. Painted a battleship grey, with white ten-foot-tall lettering, RAS-OMLP-6-21 on its side. Orbital Material Landing Platforms.

“Just one, the hell, this is suicide,” said TC.

“Paddy, wake up!” shouted Biscuit in his earpiece, but it resonated as if she was calling him from far off.

“What?” roared Paddy, over the thunder of the drop-ship rockets.

“Suicide mission,” repeated TC, unaware that Paddy was talking to Biscuit.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here. TC is wrong, it’s not a suicide mission; hitting that target would simply be murder,” she said.

“Murder? We’re in a war, Bis. If that ship lands, it is a suicide mission. For us. No way we can hold off six hundred or so Utian troops before relief arrives,” yelled Paddy.

“Then call it in, let the air force take it out, get your guys out of here,” pleaded Biscuit.

“How? You just told me comms are jammed. Other than local talk, we have zero contact. And that ship has probably already tagged us on infrared. What’s with you?”

“Then just bootleg out of here,” she begged, using their slang for moving out of an area quickly.

“If we bootleg it becomes someone else’s problem. I can’t do that. Taking it out is the right call…” He looked over his shoulder. “Gimme the Slayer.”

Dink leaned over his shoulder, his face covered with an odd grin. “You just going to murder those people?”

Paddy blinked. Turned. Dink was back near the dead body, still on one knee. His squad leader looked up at him. “What?”

Paddy shook his head.

“Check your vitals, boss. You’re looking pale,” said Dink. He spoke into his mic. “Whoever is humping the Slayer, up here, double time.”

A young troop ran up at a crouch with the Slayer slung to his back. His name was Pashbin. They called him Binny. He was the youngest platoon member but had seen more combat than anyone else except for the three leaders.

The Slayer was a long, tube-like weapon. It was a simple design: a trigger housing on the bottom and an acoustic sensor on the left side. It searched for atmospheric anomalies, harmonics outside of nature. If those anomalies matched an enemy ship’s distortions, it gave the operator a confirming beep—anomaly found. The firer had to flip a switch and lock the weapon. To commit to firing it.

He unslung the Slayer and handed it to Paddy, who grabbed it without ever taking his eyes off the Tulip.

He pressed the throat mic to make sure he was clear. “Give me platoon-wide comms.”

Biscuit sighed. “You’re connected.”

“Alright, everyone, drop back one hundred meters, back to where the trail splits. Set up a perimeter. This is gonna be danger close. Binny,” he said to the young troop, “you stay with me.”

The two squad leaders replied, “Roger that,” and began leading their men back through the scrub brush forest.

The Tulip was about five hundred meters up and twelve hundred away. He watched it float down for a few seconds. Biscuit’s words rang in his head, but this was not murder. It was war, and troops died. That was their lot if they were unlucky.

He took a knee and engaged the Slayer’s activators. Binny lowered himself as far as possible in a runoff ditch. Paddy readjusted the weapon on his shoulder, almost cradling it in his neck. The range finder whirred to life. When the target-found indicator beeped, he flipped the small switch beneath the acoustic box, locking the Slayer on target. It dinged in acknowledgment. He held his breath for a beat, then committed, squeezing the trigger. A boot right out of training could have hit the ship.

The missile launched from the tube with a whoosh and a cloud of smoke, cordite, and rocket fuel. It traveled in a spiral, its onboard sensor determining maximum impact damage. Finding the right track, it drove up through one of the landing pods, splitting the top carbonate extension rail that connected it to the ship’s body, then passed through the hull. The nose sensors triggered the explosive gel in the head, and a small explosion punched a hole in the carbonate shielding. A half second later, an enormous explosion ripped through the Tulip’s lower half. The missile had struck the fuel container, igniting the thousands of gallons of propellant inside. The landing pod disintegrated, and the bottom of the ship ripped open. Pieces of metal and ceramic arced out in a rain of deadly shrapnel.

“Fuck,” yelled Paddy as he dove into the runoff ditch on top of Binny. Even before he hit the ground, the heat wave from the explosion rippled over him. The roar was deafening. Pieces of hot metal, ceramic heat tiles, and other debris rained around them and dropped back well beyond where the platoon had taken cover.

The Tulip groaned as it fell at an awkward angle, whatever minimal aerodynamics it once had ruined by the weight loss of the landing pad. Thick black smoke belched from the gash in its lower side as the fire consumed the interior of the ship. Flames licked out of ports and air vents.

The drop ship crashed into the ground, sliding in their direction, maybe eight hundred meters away. It drove a wave of earth upwards and, after what seemed like an eternity, came to a rest at an awkward angle, the remaining two landing pods in the air. The pushed earth formed a half crescent berm around the ship, as if it had created a defensive perimeter. Small fires had broken out in the field as hot metal ignited green grass, the white smoke now mixing with the black from the ship and both intermingling with the grey clouds above.

Pieces were still falling as Paddy rose up on one knee. His ears were ringing. He stared at the destruction, mesmerized by the scene before him. A cacophony of shouts broke through to him. Two voices competed on his speakers: Dink, repeatedly calling “Ringo Actual, check in, over,” and Biscuit saying softly, “Paddy, are you alright,” and a third, a voice screaming, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He spun around. Binny was writhing in pain, head thrown backwards, eyes clenched shut, a high-pitched groan coming from his open mouth. Both hands covered his right thigh, wrapping around a piece of metal protruding midway between knee and hip. Paddy thought it might be part of the landing pod assembly.

Biscuit was still speaking to him.

“Biscuit, shut the fuck up, assess,” he ordered, looking at Binny’s leg.

“I told you not to shoot that ship, dumbass. I asked you to wake up and leave. Now fuck. I’m connected to Binny’s AI, which reports the wound is deep but not fatal. Based on his heart rate and blood loss, he will go into shock soon.”

Paddy tapped his mic, hook me into Dink, he instructed. “Dink, Binny’s hit. Send up doc.”

“Roger. Want me to send up the squad?”

“Negative. Debris is still falling. Plus, I just hung a giant ‘WE ARE HERE’ sign, no need to get someone else hit.”

“Affirmative, doc is on his way.”

Paddy kneeled next to Binny and wrapped an auto tourniquet above the shrapnel in his leg, then said, “Hang tight, Binny. Doc is on his way. That’s a golden ticket wound—six months at least of rehab.” Binny smiled through the pain.

He stood up, turned, and looked at the remains of the drop ship. He scratched his stubble, looked skyward, expecting drones, fighter ships, incoming missile load from the fleet hovering up in low orbit. Nothing. Just this slight buzz between his ears. He must have been concussed from the explosion.

“What the fuck,” he said to himself, looking up at the sky. The buzz—it was more like a vibration—grew slightly louder. He cupped an ear to silence it, but it kept going. Then, not sure why, he began to walk out into the field. He pointed the LIR at the ship, but he knew there was no need for it. Nothing would have survived that explosion and fire.

“What are you doing?” asked Biscuit.

“I dunno,” he replied. “Give me a full field scan.”

The lighter material was floating down now: insulation, paper, other stuff.

“Everything is dead,” chirped Biscuit angrily in his ear.

“Biscuit, not now,” he chirped back.

“Paddy, don’t go out there.”

“Threat assessment, now.”

“I already gave it to you. There is none. Skies are five-by. There’s nothing hostile or unaccounted in a thousand-meter radius.”

He sighed and continued on.

As he walked through the knee-high grass, he stopped. Ahead, lying in a broken doll kind of way, was a crisped body. Something was off. A burned-out troop, no matter how crisped, still would have some shape or form of a troop—cover, body armor, boots, something. This body did not. He spoke softly, the throat mic picking his voice up loud and clear. “Biscuit, what is that?”

“A dead body,” said Biscuit angrily.

“Not now, bud, c’mon,” pleaded Paddy.

Biscuit responded, “That looks to be a body, human, death by immolation. 99.99% probability of being from the drop ship.”

“No shit, but it doesn’t look military. Analyze.”

“It has no military registration chip signal, as all Ute forces have embedded. But the chip could be burned so badly that it is not sending a signal. Based on the clothing remnants, it was a civilian. Based on the viewable bone structure, femoral length, and bowel width, it was a female aged 30 to 40.”

“What?”

Paddy had reached the body. His breath came fast as he stared down at it.

“What the fuck,” said Paddy, almost to himself, then louder. “Bis, analyze. What is a civilian doing on a drop ship? Go into scan mode, search for other casualties.”

“I have counted seventy-two visible casualties or grass disturbances that would indicate a body landed on that spot in the field. This is all in a 112-degree arc from the blast opening. There is most likely more outside of that range. Statistically speaking, an additional thirty-six to fifty-eight are strewn about the field. I would assume twice that number of dead or more on the wreck. None of the casualties in the field appear to be military.”

Paddy silently stared at the smoking hulk of the drop ship, then at the body crumpled at his feet.

“If I were to guess, this ship was carrying support personnel for the Utian forces. It is well known that they conscript non-violent prisoners to perform manual services like cooking and laundry. Despite providing services to the Utian army, Etri recognizes that these are non-combatants and are protected under various regulations. Also, comms seem to be coming back up.”

Paddy’s legs wobbled. “Fuck…” He hunched over and vomited. When he was done, he wiped his mouth and said, “Get me battalion HQ.”

As he listened to the transmitter crackling to make a connection, Biscuit said, “There is a lot of traffic. Everyone was down. Now everyone is talking. My comms packet is in a queue. It could be a few minutes before we can connect.”

Paddy nodded, then gazed down at the woman. She lay in a sitting position but bent at the waist as if her hips didn’t exist. He gazed around the field, saw now where other bodies lay amongst the debris.

With a short sigh, he walked behind the woman and looked down. Her clothing had burned off. He looked away. Her skin had split, either from the heat or the explosion. Her spine protruded through the gash, a mix of blackened bone with raw flesh and muscle clinging to it.

“Bull, you ok?”

He forced himself to look at the broken woman’s body and said, “Yeah, I’m good.”

A tear streaked down his cheek. Biscuit sensed it through his biometric readout. She didn’t say anything. He bit his lip as he stared at the disfigured remains. He had just killed two to three hundred civilians. He pinched the bridge of his nose and blew out a huff of air. The fire from the drop ship glinted off something at the top of her spine. Something metal. He scrunched his forehead and bent down to get a better look.

“Biscuit, there’s something attached to her spine. Not an ID chip—too big. Can you determine what it is?” he asked.

“It appears to be a piece of titanium with an underside of ceramic. Hold. OK, got it. Based on size and location, this is a ParaWalker, third generation.”

“The tech that helps paralyzed troops walk again?” he asked.

“Yes, they simulate neural pathways to connect severed or damaged nerves to the brain,” explained Biscuit.

“I know what they do. Why would she have one?”

“She was paralyzed?”

“Obviously, but I thought these were restricted for combat wounded only,” answered Paddy.

“They were, at one time,” said Biscuit. “Too many spinal injuries. The water bladder under the armor. It exposes the lower spine. You guys bitch about it all the time, but still wear them. I don’t get it.”

“You also don’t get thirsty. So doesn’t explain why she has one,” he replied.

“She could be ex-military. She is also most likely Utian. They may have different regulations that I am not aware of. But PWs are common now. At least since last year for Etrians. The government authorized their use in the civilian sector. During the peace negotiations last year, as a goodwill gesture, we shipped a bunch of these to Utu.”

Paddy flinched as an explosion popped the drop ship’s cone off its housing, and it tumbled over, landing upside down on the berm.

“That was probably the air compressor,” commented Biscuit.

Paddy looked back at the wreck. “OK, so she was paralyzed and got her injury fixed. What the fuck was she doing on this thing?”

“I have no idea. We need to bootleg from here, though. We’re too exposed,” the ACB cautioned.

“Alright, but let’s get the serial number off her PW. We might be able to track it and at least ID who she was.”

Paddy looked at the woman’s body. He wasn’t squeamish. The war had worked that out of him, but all the same, he hesitated. Using a trick he learned from his father, he counted backwards from five and, when he reached one, bent over and rubbed his thumb on the PW. The soot cleared off enough to expose the serial number.

“Scanning,” said Biscuit. She paused, then said, “Hmmm.”

“What?” asked Paddy.

“This is a fake PW. These numbers are highly regulated, traceable sequences. Designed to protect the manufacturer’s proprietary tech and also for recall if there are any technical issues with a series. Since each PW is registered to a single user, it can also be used for identification. A lot of vets end up homeless and addicted, trying to deal with the war. The PW tracking helps locate or identify them,” she explained.

“Yeah, I know,” answered Paddy. “So how do you know this is a fake?”

“The serial numbers are used in an algorithmic equation. Each equation ends in zero. These numbers end in one,” she explained.

Paddy scanned the field, checking for movement. He looked upward. But he knew there was nothing in the skies. He’d been in an open field for more than two minutes. Any drone, or even a ship in low orbit, would have popped him already. He looked back at the corpse.

“So, she got an off-market device. Utes probably reverse-engineered it and made a knockoff,” said Paddy, now squatting to look at the PW. He looked back to the treeline and could just see Doc working on Binny. The medic had a smile, which meant either Binny was five-by or in deep shit.

“You can’t get these off-market. There’s only one company that manufactures them, Sozan Med. Even if you got your hands on one, you couldn’t reverse engineer it. They’ve held public hackathon challenges daring anyone to do it, and no one has. Look, I am the smartest thing in this field, including all the other ACBs, and I have no idea how it works.”

“So what is it then?”

“It’s not a PW.”

Paddy stood up. “Why the fuck would someone put a chunk of metal in their body?”

Biscuit didn’t answer. After a pause, Paddy tapped his helmet. “Hey, Bis, respond.”

“Sorry, I glitched again. Something spiked my CPU usage, maybe a comms function running on a background thread. There’s a lot of chatter being logged right now. I need a full diagnostic when we return to base, maybe a firmware update… holy shit…”

“What?”

“PWs are essentially next-level tech in a small space. But still just a computer at heart. It has a kernel, it has firmware. That firmware needs to be updated.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Paddy in confusion.

Biscuit sighed. “The shit you complain about having to constantly load in the printer back on base.”

“Oh, so this has that as well.”

“Yeah, but different. More complicated,” she explained.

Paddy bent over and pulled on the titanium square.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking it.”

Biscuit paused, then said in a concerned voice, “Paddy, desecrating a corpse is illegal. Leave it. Let’s just get out of here.”

“It could be intel,” he said, but he had already convinced himself it was something else.

He tugged on it, but the square did not move. Muscle, flesh, bone—something had melted and fused to it. He pulled a second time, and it still refused to yield.

“Bull, leave it!” implored Biscuit.

Paddy yanked again, grunted into his mic. “What’s gotten into you?” He gave one final, hard pull, and the metal square dislodged from the spine, and the body twisted and fell flat into the grass.

A muffled explosion came from the drop ship. Paddy instinctively dropped to a knee and raised an arm to protect his head. Debris hissed into the field around them. The buzzing in his head had increased somewhat in volume. He pinched his nose to try to block it.

“What?” asked Biscuit.

“Nothing, just a ringing. Probably tinnitus from the explosion.”

He slowly rose and looked at the drop ship, as if he was pondering if there would be any additional explosions. He looked down at the device in his hand. Wiped more of the soot off with his thumb.

“Can we leave now?” asked Biscuit.

“What were you saying about the firmware?” he asked.

“Nothing. Let’s just go, we’re too exposed in this field.”

“Tell me what you were thinking,” he ordered.

Biscuit sighed. “OK, this is not a PW but a storage device, a way to cleverly hide it in plain sight—well, kind of plain sight.”

“Clever is debatable,” said Paddy. “But what good is a storage device embedded in your body? How would you get the data?”

“On regular PW devices, when a firmware update is needed, nanobots are injected into the bloodstream. Bot connects to the device, updates it, disconnects, and is flushed by the body,” explained Bis.

“You’re shitting me,” said Paddy, rubbing the device in his hand.

“Are you making a joke?” she asked.

“No, but really, that’s how it works?”

The wind had shifted, and the smoke from the drop ship was drifting around them. Paddy coughed.

“We need to move. That smoke is full of carcinogens. You shouldn’t be breathing that in.”

Paddy wiped his eyes and waved her off as he pulled his bandana over his mouth.

“That’s not gonna help,” she groaned.

He held up the fake PW and said stubbornly, “Tell me about how this updates.”

“Something that size can hold a lot of data,” explained Biscuit. “I’m thinking you could swallow a nanobot to upload or download data from it.”

“What, then, dig through a pile of shit looking for it?” he asked.

“Maybe. Could be another way to get the data. Actually, has to be. You’d never find a nanobot in a pile of shit.”

Paddy wiped sweat off his brow. The buzzing in his head grew louder. He looked at the device again. Turned it over in his fingers. There were symbols engraved on the back side.

“What do you think this is?”

Biscuit did not reply.

“Biscuit, analyze the writing,” he ordered.

“Shit, here we go again. It’s cuneiform, Paddy. Ancient writing. But you know that,” replied Biscuit.

Paddy pressed a hand to his helmet, where one of the speakers sat, where Biscuit’s voice always came through. “I gotta do this, B.”

Biscuit sighed. “It says Ki Geological Society, and then a series of numbers.”

The corpse suddenly shot up into a full sitting position. A shock of golden hair that had not burned off, contrasting with her blackened skull and melted face. She pointed an accusing finger at Paddy and hissed, “You killed all of us, asshole.”

Paddy flung himself up in the bed, flailing his arms out as he did and knocking a whiskey bottle off the nightstand. Sweat streamed down his chest and forehead, and his hands trembled.

He pushed a palm into his forehead, trying to fight the hangover making its way into his skull, and glared with one eye skyward. Then glanced at the bedside table, looking at the power cradle where the ACB recharged and connected to his systems. The green power light was solid, as was the blue connected light. He let out a small sigh of relief.

Combat vets were allowed to retain their ACBs. The Veterans Ministry felt it would help them reacclimate to society. Most relinquished theirs within five years; those who kept them usually turned them off at night. For Paddy, Biscuit was never off.

Biscuit’s voice came over a speaker in the wall. “The dream again?”

“Yeah, twelve fucking years. It’s the same dream, Bis.”

He looked at the far side of the bed. The prostitute had left. He knew she would once he blacked out. He looked towards the small breakfast bar. He couldn’t see, but he knew she had taken his credit chip card. It didn’t matter. He only put enough on it for her services and a tip for his inevitable bullshit. He’d have her back next week, and they’d do it all over again.

“You need help, man,” said Biscuit.

“I’m getting it,” he replied, patting the empty bed.

“Banging the same hooker once a week is not getting help.”

“What? Mave and I got a thing.”

Biscuit sighed. “Transactional sex is not a thing. It’s pathetic.”

Paddy sank back into the pillow and covered his eyes with his forearm. “There’s no shame in sex work.”

“Didn’t say there was. What is pathetic is you thinking it’s a thing, like she’s your girlfriend.”

The room was silent. Bis could hear him breathing.

“Damn it, Bis, every night you do this to me. I fired that shot. The last fucking shot of the second fucking Gallium War was fired by me, and it killed over three hundred civilians. Let me deal with it as best I can.”

“That’s the thing, Bull. You’re not dealing with it.”

Paddy let out a soft groan. “Alright, can we do this in the morning? I need two extra strong pain relievers and a kalu right now.”

“Paddy, your insides are already floating in alcohol. A muscle relaxer is not going to be safe to take,” cautioned Bis.

“Well, I’m not sleeping if I don’t control this anxiety. We’ve got a client meeting tomorrow, so just pop one out, ok,” he asked softly.

“Fine. I’ll monitor your vitals while you’re in a drunken, drugged, comatose state,” she said angrily.

He scowled. “Whatever. Just get me what I asked for.”

The bedside cabinet clicked and whirred. There were some more clicks, a few hisses, and then a tray slid out from the side. There were three pills in it, two white ones and one bright yellow one.

“Thanks,” said Paddy, as he leaned over and fumbled about for the whiskey bottle. He found it, shook it to confirm it still had some liquid left for a chaser. He swallowed all three pills, then took a swig from the bottle. He dropped the bottle on the floor and placed a finger inside the tray opening, reached up, and slid his finger along the metal interior.

The device was there, attached to the top with some adhesive. He traced over the engraved cuneiform letters. Paddy dropped back and let his head sink into the pillow. A wave of relief washed over him, both from the kalu starting to take effect and touching the device from Uruk. Somehow it had become his talisman, a relic from the war that he needed by his side. He didn’t know what the statute of limitations was on corpse desecration, so he kept it hidden.

The room was silent for a long minute, then Biscuit said quietly, “The Veteran Ministry should have never given you guys the pharmacological side tables. Half of you veterans are all addicted to some drug—pain killers, muscle relaxers, whatever. Paddy… Bull, we need to do something about this. You’re killing yourself.”

There was no response. Biscuit turned her audio capture higher and heard him snoring gently. He was already back to sleep.