He ran.
Alone.
As the city died around him, Santiago pressed himself down into the street. The suit adjusted, shifting its tones. With slow, measured, movements, he lowered his monocular and crawled down the middle of the road. It flew in the face of infantry doctrine, but the Hivers had read the textbook too.
A squad of Hiver infantry rounded the corner ahead of him. Infrared aiming lasers and spotlights slashed through the night.
He froze.
The enemy soldiers pressed themselves to the walls, pausing for the moment it took their suits to blend in, and stalked down the pavement. At such close quarters, they looked more like insects than men. Swallowing, Santiago stayed still, breathing as shallowly as possible. Even if they saw him, maybe they’d mistake him for a corpse and move on.
They moved on.
Santiago remained motionless. Breathing. Laying. Waiting. The tail-end Charlie would be watching their backs, and if Santiago moved, he was dead.
Gunshots echoed behind him. He couldn’t tell who was firing on whom; the gravity guns both sides employed produced the same screeching-tearing noise at hypervelocity speeds, the same silence at subsonic. Cautiously, Santiago inched forward, moving one limb at a time.
Down the road, a car flung off the ground. Whirling around a gravity singularity, it shredded apart, recomposing itself into four wheeled legs. Streetlamps twisted, bent, and broke off from the pavement, drawn to the singularity. The golem in birthing rolled down the street. Towards Santiago.
Cursing, he picked up the pace, crawling up onto the pavement. Under the golem, pipes burst free from the ground, gushing wastewater. Santiago slithered for the bend as fast as he dared. If he stood and ran now the golem would notice him. Slowly, inexorably, the golem came. The whirlwind of metal formed gears and wheels, arms and claws.
Santiago turned the corner. An irresistible force gripped him. Gnashing his teeth, he pressed himself into the road. He stretched his arm out, trying to pull himself forward. The golem’s gravity wash damn near ripped his arm off. A gale whipped around him. Santiago’s body tensed, every fiber of his being contracting, squeezing every last joule he could spare. The fence around the park creaked and groaned. The posts bent sharply, and exploded from the concrete. One smacked the road next to Santiago’s head. He kept crawling, forcing himself forward, dragging himself away from the singularity. But it was no use, he was being pulled back, back, into the maw of the—
The golem moved on. The singularity passed.
Santiago relaxed, panting. His muscles burned. He glanced around; saw no Hivers and no signs of movement. He ran for the parking lot, leaping over the gap in the fence.
A Hiver landing ship lay to his one o’clock, three hundred meters away. It looked like a pyramid with the top sliced off, disgorging troops and Hunters from three sides. The heat of the landing had flash-incinerated the grass, leaving ashes dancing in the heated air. Pressing himself against a stump, Santiago brought down his monocular and called up his combat map. Green dots filled the screen, intermixed with an array of red dots. It was a fracas, small teams fighting little wars of their own, linking up with others to coalesce into a more powerful one or breaking off to engage a threat from another axis. Swarm versus swarm, Rangers against Hivers.
With his suit computer, he tagged the flow of Hiver reinforcements and the landing ship. The q-com would update the Rangers’ net, feeding them fresh data. Taking a deep breath, he transmitted on the whole tactical net, reaching every Ranger around him.
“This is Sergeant Major Abel Santiago. I have eyes on the objective. It’s crawling with Hivers. I need a distraction so I can penetrate the target.”
The Hivers spread out, forming a defensive perimeter. Hunters formed up into packs, infantry gathered into squads. On the combat map, green dots swirled around red dots, converging on Santiago. He looked and looked but could not find a dot with Meyers’ name. The Hivers assembled into a swarm, sending their hunters forward to engage the new threat, infantry close behind. A squad of infantry rushed his way.
Santiago balled up and rolled aside.
The troops stormed past him, oblivious.
He stayed where he was. Waited. When he was sure the road was clear he looked up. Checked his map. The Hivers were forming a defensive circle around the park, responding to Ranger probes from every direction. Too busy to look inwards.
Santiago got to his feet and sprinted for the ship.
The interior was a dark, empty cavern. No Hivers emerged from the darkness to tear his head off.
At the far end of the hold was a door. Past the door, a staircase. He ascended the steps slowly, carefully, weapon ready.
A small antechamber waited at the top of the stairs. Soft light flooded his monocular, and he lifted it. Taking quiet, measured steps, he entered the room beyond.
It was the control room. Three Hivers were plugged into a console across him. In the center of the room was a spire that seemed to grow from the floor. Two more Hivers sat by it, thick cables connecting their temples to the machine.
None of them had seen him.
Santiago raised his carbine and fired.
The first one at the spire died without knowing why. Its partner turned around, and Santiago splattered his brains across the floor. The other Hivers whirled around to face the threat, their cables disconnecting. Santiago blasted them with rapid fire. One rolled away, producing a hand weapon, but Santiago got off-line and shot it before it could react.
Santiago blinked. And giggled. These weren’t Hiver combatants. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had a chance.
He inspected the spire. It had to be control node. He’d seen pictures of one once, in the early days of the war when there was still a functional air defense net. A Ranger team had sneaked into a downed Hiver landing craft, live-streaming video feeds of the interior. The craft had self-destructed before the Rangers could hack the node, but this one probably wasn’t in danger of blowing up anytime soon. Using an adaptor, he plugged his suit into the node.
A cold female voice entered his earpieces. “This is Central. We are inside the Hive Mind. Stand by.”
Santiago called up his map. The red dots were regrouping. Small detachments formed up, racing back to the dropships. The green dots formed into smaller groups, attacking weak points in the enemy line and fading out. Some Hiver constructs, their logic trees disrupted, got caught in an endless loop between running for the ships and running for the front. Red dots disappeared, but more green dots vanished.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK
Santiago primed a grenade, tossed it into the antechamber. He found cover behind the spire as the grenade exploded. The concussion jarred his brain, left him dizzy. When he looked up he saw a pair of blood-soaked Hunters flow into the room, moving around to flank him on both sides.
He fired at the nearest one, blasting it apart. Ducking, he stepped around as he heard a laser CRACK.
The cable tightened, arresting his motion. The other hunter leapt at him, claws slashing. He tried to block the slash with his carbine. The creature latched on to it and broke it in half. As the hunter tossed the broken carbine aside, Santiago drew his dagger.
The Hiver closed in, slashing both hands forward, tail zapping from above. Santiago stepped aside, checking an arm with his left hand and slashing out with his dagger. The cable popped free from his suit. The blade slid harmlessly off the hunter’s arm. Santiago kept moving, chasing the recoiling stinger. Grabbing the base of the tail, he stabbed the blade in. He sprayed the wound with nano and jumped back, mind-keying a command.