Prologue

2598 – SOMEWHERE IN THE OUTER COLONIES

The truck rocked on its suspension as it navigated a dirt track, even its oversized honeycomb tires unable to make the ride any smoother in a backwater like this one. The cargo container strapped to its bed jostled along with it, making for a bumpy ride, the ten men inside glancing around in the windowless darkness. They were clad in body armor so black that it blended into the shadows, their segmented, ceramic plates buried beneath chest carriers laden with equipment and spare magazines. They were armed to the teeth, strapped into crude chairs that had been hastily welded to the inside of the container, each one of them cradling a caseless rifle.

No two were outfitted in the same way, each operative bringing something unique to the mission. One had a large, armored collar that rose to protect his neck, while another had a smaller PDW weapon with a large suppressor adorning its barrel. The man sitting beside him had a bandoleer filled with stun grenades strapped across his chest. They were afforded a lot of autonomy. The common threads were their UNN Marine helmets, their features obscured behind full-faced visors made from opaque glass, small cameras and sensors reflecting in the dim light.

Another was their lack of limbs. Their organization recruited only amputees – usually soldiers maimed in battle. In place of flesh was tough polymer and stainless steel, some encased in armor plates or sleek carbon fiber, colored to match their dark camouflage. The prosthetics were state-of-the-art, interfacing directly with the wearer’s nerves to translate signals and sensations, allowing for dexterous and natural movements. They were incredibly strong, too – limited only by the supportive strength of the bones they were anchored to. Some of the men were wearing long pants and boots that obscured their mechanical legs, while others had simple skids for feet at the ends of their pole-like shins, their limbs engineered for maximum strength and minimal mass.

Amputation for the purpose of augmentation was illegal within the UN’s sphere of influence, but it was unlikely that everyone present had lost their extremities without the help of an unscrupulous surgeon or two. Anything to be stronger, faster, and more resilient. Anything to get an edge on the competition.

“Stop broadcasting that shit over ad-hoc, Barbosa,” one of the men complained.

“What, you don’t like synth thrash?” he scoffed as he reached up to his helmet. He brushed a rubber fingertip against a touch panel beside his visor, tuning out the pulsing electronic music, shining rods of metal shifting beneath his skeletal hand like tendons.

“Sounds like someone chewing broken glass in my ear,” another of the men added, eliciting muted laughter from the rest.

“Enough pissing about,” the commander added, the rest sitting up a little straighter. “The driver says we’ll be arriving in a few minutes. You’ve trained for this – you all know the plan. Lord knows I drilled it into your heads enough. Remember – we do this quick and quiet. Success is predicated on these separatist dickheads being dead before they can warn their buddies. Take out the guards inside the compound, move down to the basement, and secure the weapons cache. Let’s get this done.”

“Someone has to remind these Nations that the United part isn’t optional,” one of the operatives joked.

“Blowing up maglev stations isn’t a very constructive way of expressing criticism,” another added.

“The Ninnies have been trailing these guys for months, so don’t fuck this up,” the commander continued. “We won’t get a second shot at a target this juicy. All of these fuckers are in one place for one night and one night only.”

Barbosa felt the truck turn, his mind flashing back to the grainy satellite map of the compound that he’d memorized during their briefings. The forest track turned onto a short road that led to a security gate, where the cargo would be inspected. This was the first step of the plan that could go South. An overly curious guard might demand to see the contents of the container, and if that happened, the team would be faced with a sprint across open ground – likely into machinegun fire from the inner walls. These separatists had been receiving shipments of weapons from sympathetic factions and Corps in the outer Sphere, and they’d fortified their compound to the nines, hardening it against attacks from the local security forces.

The container went quiet as everyone checked their gear, loading weapons and affixing suppressors, tuning sensors, and running diagnostics on their equipment. Barbosa watched as one of his comrades unholstered a handgun and racked the slide, another tightening a strap that secured a combat knife to his thigh.

Barbosa raised a hand in front of his visor, listening to his own breathing – trying to keep it slow and steady. He flexed his fingers, watching the little pistons and gears move beneath their housings with an electric whir of motors, the individual plates of angled polymer that made up his palm shifting. There was that phantom itch again, and he rubbed the textured pads on his thumb and forefinger together, scratching it. The techs couldn’t iron it out – it didn’t seem to be software or hardware-related. It was something about his brain, like an organic glitch.

He touched a digit to his helmet as he felt the truck lurch to a stop at the gate, his HUD flaring to life and painting itself across his visor. The system interfaced wirelessly with his weapon to show his ammo count and fire mode, his vitals displayed in the top left corner, a compass turning along with his head. Each of his companions was outlined in friendly blue, their names hovering above their heads.

Everyone waited with bated breath as the muffled sound of voices emanated from the cab, Barbosa’s mechanical hand tightening around his weapon, his heart rate spiking. The commander slowly lifted a prosthetic finger to his visor, gesturing for them to be silent.

A moment later, the truck set off again, jostling its passengers.

“We’re through,” Stevens said, his relief palpable.

“Wait until the truck comes to a stop before you get out of your seats,” the commander added. “Once those doors are open, we go weapons-free. No prisoners.”

The sound of the truck’s engine changed, its quality more like an echo, suggesting that they were inside the warehouse. More voices from outside – the truck lurching to a stop. They rose from their seats in silence, only the gentle shuffling of rigs and the subtle whirring of machinery betraying them, those nearest the doors training their weapons on the sliver of light that bled between them.

Then came the sound of wrenching metal, and the sliver began to widen, the twin doors at the back of the container swinging open. Barbosa caught a brief glimpse of two men wearing civilian clothing. They were chatting as they opened the doors, their eyes turning inward and widening too late, their brains scarcely having time to process what was happening before two muffled shots put them on the floor.

The team piled out, Barbosa hearing more muted gunshots as they fanned out into the room beyond. He was one of the last out, emerging into a warehouse filled with identical containers, a few of them partially unloaded to leave pallets of boxes strewn about. Three more separatists lay dead on the cold carbcrete floor, dark blood pooling around their limp bodies as the operatives marched past them.

He shouldered his rifle, his eyes scanning the scenery just as his sensors did, searching for threats.

“Clear,” someone whispered over the ad-hoc network.

“Move in,” the commander added, waving his hand at a service door that led deeper into the building. They stacked up – five to either side of the door – just as they had trained. UNNI had built a mockup of the compound from plywood, and Barbosa knew its layout like the back of his own hand. He could probably have navigated its maze of rooms blindfolded.

“Gas, gas,” someone warned, tearing a grenade from his bandoleer and tossing it through the gap as his counterpart cracked the door open. Noxious fumes filled the corridor beyond with a billowing, white haze, the rebreathers and FLIR on their helmets negating its effects as they moved in.

Barbosa spied a figure through his sensors, the stranger bent over and retching, then someone dropped him with a short burst. Moving with practiced speed, the team spread out into the adjoining rooms, more and more of his teammates vanishing from view. They remained illuminated through the walls, the shared network tracking their positions. There were more gunshots – the sound of suppressed subsonic ammo joined by the loud report of weapons that was deadened by his helmet’s hearing protection.

Barbosa moved beside Stevens, the two pairing off as they breached another room, a flashbang grenade rolling along the floor ahead of them. It went off with a muted pop, and as they advanced, Barbosa saw the briefing room. This was where the separatists planned their attacks, the walls covered with printed maps of the colony and its infrastructure, a few of them fluttering to the floor after the blast. The solitary naked bulb that lit the room was swinging from the ceiling, flickering on and off, dust from the grenade and CS gas from the corridor filling the air.

There was movement in the shadows – a figure lunging towards them from the corner of the room, a pistol clutched in his hands. His eyes were streaming with tears, and it seemed that he could barely see what he was doing, letting off a few rounds at random. Barbosa heard one whizz past his head, but he was already moving.

He closed the distance between him and his attacker in a single stride, reaching for the pistol and crushing it in his prosthetic hand like a discarded soda can – along with his screaming assailant’s fingers. Letting his rifle fall to hang from its sling, he brought his other hand to the man’s throat, a long blade unsheathing from a housing beneath his wrist. Its edge glinting in the flickering light, he pushed it into the separatist’s throat, the man’s cry petering out into a wet gurgle as he sank to the floor.

“Clear,” Stevens declared, moving along without breaking stride. Wiping his blade on his pants before stowing it, Barbosa followed, raising his rifle again. They proceeded into the next room, the sound of gunfire and shouting melting away into the periphery, the operative focusing on his own breathing instead.

As they rounded a corner, another hail of bullets greeted them, Barbosa yanking Stevens into cover by his rig as one of the rounds sparked off his helmet. The rest of the salvo hit the wall to their right, throwing out little puffs of dust. He stepped in as Stevens righted himself, toggling an attachment on his barrel, a blinding strobe light bathing the hallway beyond. His visor darkening to protect his eyes, he fired two bursts, cutting through a wooden table that had been upended to serve as a barrier at the end of the passage. The two men taking cover behind it dropped, splinters and fragments of drywall filling the air as the rounds tore through them.

With Stevens’ hand on his shoulder, Barbosa advanced. He stepped over the perforated table and dumped two more rounds into a squirming survivor, painting the sterile floor with fragments of brain matter, his boots kicking aside spent shell casings that were still smoking. He stacked up at the door behind them with Stevens, another stun grenade prepping the room beyond.

They breached, both men firing on a trio of separatists who were stumbling around cradling their heads, the grenade leaving them deafened and disorientated. The bodies slumped over desks, sending tablet computers and cups of still-steaming coffee sliding to the floor, the dark liquid joining the splatters of crimson.

“Top floor is clear,” the commander’s voice announced. “Teams Alpha, Beta, and Gamma – head outside and take care of the guards in the compound. Delta and Epsilon – head to the basement. Watch for crossfire.”

Barbosa and Stevens shared a nod, then moved to another door. This one led down a set of steps, taking them below ground to where the weapons and explosives were stored. It was also where the big shots were supposed to take cover in situations like these. They burst through and headed down the steps, their footsteps echoing. Barbosa’s cameras switched to night vision mode, illuminating the dark basement in shades of eerie green. They must have shut off the lights – as if that would slow down a SWAR kill team.

The room slowly faded into view, revealing another densely packed storage area, the walls stacked high with pallets of crates and racks of munitions. There was enough gear to outfit a small army here, and that was just what was on display. There were stone pillars holding up the floor above them, joined by long tables strewn with loading and cleaning stations.

The darkness was illuminated by a muzzle flash, Barbosa feeling something hit his chest plate like a fist. He reeled under the blow, but not so much that he couldn’t return fire, wheeling around to take out a separatist who was leaning out from behind one of the pillars. Stevens joined him, their hail of bullets chewing chunks out of the rock, tossing the shooter onto one of the tables and collapsing it beneath him. As they moved closer, keeping their rifles trained on him, Barbosa saw that he was wearing NODs.

There was more gunfire – more flashes briefly illuminating the basement as the second team engaged from the right side of the room. The pair pushed deeper, cutting down two more separatists, the blue outlines of their comrades announcing their presence. The two groups met up, sweeping a pile of crates before lowering their weapons.

“Clear,” one of them announced.

The commander knelt beside one of the bodies, examining a portly man with a bushy beard who was still clutching a small machine pistol in his lifeless hand, his fancy suit now soaked with blood from a tight grouping of wounds in his chest.

“This is one of our guys,” he mused, gripping the dead man’s face with a skeletal hand and turning it to the side. “Looks like we bagged Ozola – he was responsible for building their bombs.” He switched to the squad channel with a tap of his helmet, speaking to the rest of the team. “Secure the perimeter and await further instructions. We need to start sifting through this shit and figure out who we killed and what they’re hiding down here.”

Only a few minutes had passed since they had left the container, Barbosa finally allowing himself a moment to relax. He watched his vitals spike on his HUD, controlling his breathing and willing them to stabilize, rubbing his thumb and finger together to satiate that itch.