Some footage of Suvaco movement has been captured and filtered through to Raston Squad, who watch it avidly on the Horizon Stadium big screen. They do indeed operate as a hive unit, communicating telepathically to effectively coordinate their offensive but due to Caufmann’s sabotage while in stasis, they are clearly having some problems synchronising. As if to demonstrate, one of them simply lost balance and fell over. However, size and the weaponry taken from Del’s cell makes fighting them very difficult. Del is upset at having his weapons ‘stolen’, as he terms it. This affront has him increasingly seething.
Rennin is lying on his back in the centre of the field, while the remaining troops load armaments and themselves into Gunship Dead Star. The night sky is overcast but quite pleasant, aside from the looming claws of a Desolator satellite poking through the cloud line like a great taloned hand reaching down for him.
He holds his left hand up and looks at the wedding band glowing in the dark. Rennin is soon knocked out of his thoughts by a sharp kick to the leg. He looks across to see Drake and Mia standing to his left. Upon a quick inspection over them he notices their dishevelled clothes, messy hair and clasped hands.
Rennin smirks and looks at Mia. “Wipe your face, some of Drake’s lipstick rubbed off.”
“Get up, we’re leaving,” she says.
Rennin lifts his head off the ground. “You’re glowing.”
“Are you going to get up?” asks Drake quickly.
Rennin rolls his head to face Drake and shakes it. “Next time take her some place decent.”
“I’m scared to ask what you’d suggest.”
Rennin looks at Mia and shrugs, “Bus shelter?” receiving a harder kick to his leg as a reward.
“Alright, alright! I’m up,” as he clambers to his feet.
Mia dusts the grass off his shoulder. “You’re a Sergeant, try to look like one. At least, until you get killed.”
“If anyone has the balls to fill my pants, it’s you,” he says, a mock sneer spreading across his face.
“Just get yourself ready, sir, so we can make your pickup. Where are we going, again?” she says, trying to hide a smirk, despite being fairly unsettled at the proximity of the man who nearly slit her throat.
“We’re going to 83 League Street, Currajong District.”
“That’s a residential address.”
“I know it.”
“Why?” she asks.
“We’re picking someone up.”
“Who? Are they essential to the mission?”
“No. He’s my co-worker at the lab,” says Rennin.
“You’re making a friendly pickup in a military gunship?”
“If you need everything spelt out you don’t need to be converted into an android.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Mia says.
Rennin glances up at the sky again. “I gave him my word. It was just a verbal offer but, if he’s alive, I’m getting him out.”
“Must be a close friend.”
Rennin laughs, “No. Not exactly. Decent enough, but would never call me a friend.”
“Do you even know if he’s alive?”
“No.”
“You didn’t call him?”
“We’re on a citywide blackout and the little emergency power we have is reserved for the military. My skull isn’t of such a colossal density that picking up the phone escaped me.”
Mia’s expression is of disbelief, “You’re not seriously referring to a hand held? Do they still make those?”
Rennin closes his eyes, “Oh, Christ, don’t start.”
“A fucking hand held?”
“If you think I’m going to let someone install a goddamn phone into my skull you’re off your nut. Nothing’s getting put in my head.”
Mia laughs loudly, pointing to his artificial eye, “Clearly!”
“Like I had a choice for that one! You don’t know what the war was like, everything digital or electric was compromised. Everything recorded was doctored, we couldn’t rely on anything. We were back to handwritten fucking orders, running across trenches, half the time were targeting our own forces.”
“Did you send a carrier pigeon to your mate?”
Rennin is about to keep going when he manages to rein in his rapidly faltering temper. “One good thing about this fake eye is I see what you’re doing. Well played.”
“You really need to talk to a therapist.”
Rennin’s eyes widen, “Wait a second, if you’ve got a phone implant you can call him.”
Mia shakes her head, “All civvie communication is jammed. The servers are corrupted.”
“But military isn’t affected?”
“Not connected to the city grid, Rennin.”
“Then this entire conversation has been pointless. We need to get moving.”
“You’re fucked up,” Drake states, breaking his silence. His face folds as if to think through a difficult puzzle. Deciding, he winces. “You killed three soldiers, shot anyone Caufmann told you to, nearly cut Mia’s throat for recognising the gun you took…” he shakes his head. “Then you save her by tying off her leg when she nearly bled out, saved a stranded trooper who was moments from death, and now you’re going to rescue someone, who is probably dead already, just because you ‘told him you would?’”
Rennin’s mouth smiles but the rest of his face remains passive. “I never killed any children. Those people I shot at the lab? That was my job. I saved that soldier because I can’t sit by and listen to someone fighting for their life when I was within reach. I’m going to try and save my co-worker, because people should keep their word.
“Lastly, out of all the people I’ve killed, the only one I would have regretted is Saker here. She at least can keep her shit together. If I’d killed her, I doubt your tiny mind would be able to handle it and you’d spend the rest of your life playing with crayons and eating Lego in a padded cell.” He pinches Drake’s cheek lightly, following it with a fond pat. “And I wouldn’t care.”
Drake’s face betrays his inner conflict. “I didn’t want to do it!”
“But you did. So don’t get on some moral high horse. Mia was on those kill squads, you don’t hear her whining.”
Drake shakes his head. “I…”
Mia takes a step forward, with a decidedly threatening demeanour for someone of such meagre frame compared to the former watchman. “Rennin, lay off.”
Rennin ignores her and locks his blazing eyes on the broken Beta HolinMech. “Listen, Drake, we’ve all done terrible things. That kid you killed may have been to put her out of her misery but you’ll never know if she was curable or not. Thinking about it will only drive you insane. The best you can do is pray that you shot straight and she didn’t feel anything.
“As for those three pieces of shit I took out, they were going to kill my Carla. If you have the right to kill people in their own home, then you have to be prepared to suffer the consequences of one of those people trying to defend their home by cutting the throat of the cunt trying to take away the person they love.
“You do what you feel you need to. If you can’t handle it, kill yourself, but this barely passable female still seems to like you,” he says breaking into a grin and slapping Drake on the shoulder.
Mia’s disapproval is palpable. “You need a serious lesson in cheering people up,”
“I don’t have a marine marshland of my own to envelop the firmness of his affection, I’m afraid, so I’ll have to make do,” Rennin quips, eliciting at least a huff out of Drake. “Hang on to those tattered remnants of self respect, tightly. All that has really happened to you is that the coddling you received as a child, that created your naïve concept of reality, has been stripped away. Whatever is left is yours, because you earned it.”