Prologue

Leo was sitting in the break room, engrossed in a video on his augreal display when the call came out.

“Eyes up, chugs!” His supervisor yelled, banging on a helmet with a baton. “We got a contract! Riot in progress, special expediency!”

Leo (along with everyone else in the break room) pricked up their ears at the last two words. A special expediency contract meant that time was, quite literally, money. The quicker they dispersed the riot, the bigger the bonus. They jumped to their feet, sending chairs skittering across the polished tile and downing drinks or cramming the remnants of sandwiches into their mouths before rushing for the door.

They arrived at the arming room, many already stripping out of their garrison jumpsuits as the lights came on to reveal rows of Overlord armors suspended in their arming racks. Like any good Overlord jock, Leo wore his skinny at all times, so all he had to do was stuff his jumpsuit into his locker, pull on his arming coverall and boot up his Overlord. Standing more than 8 feet tall and weighing in at over a ton, the Mk.VIa6 Heavy Combat Exoskeleton was an intimidating beast capable of turning an ordinary Human into the enormous metal gorilla that haunted alien nightmares. Part of a class of ultra-heavy armor colloquially referred to as “Overlord suits”, the Mk.VIa6 model was optimized for urban combat and particularly popular with Private Security Companies specializing in riot control and strikebreaking.

As Leo powered it on and logged in, the armor whirred and clicked, plates blossoming open like a flower of ceramic and titanium. Leo clambered in, hoisting himself up and lowering his legs into the legs of the armor, then pushing his arms into the sleeves. Leg and arm plates tightened with clicks and hisses, securing him into the armor, before the chest assembly swung down over his head and sealed with a final clunk. Now looking almost comical with his normal-sized head inside the huge armor, Leo grabbed his helmet off the rack and carefully lowered it over his head, allowing it to lock into the collar and seal. The helmet was open, visor resting on the forehead and faceplate hinged down to allow him to see out.

He tested his range of motion, going through the checklist of shadow boxing and flexing arm and leg joints to make sure the armor was functioning properly and responding promptly to neural input. By now a couple of armorers had arrived and were going over him, making sure every plate and component was in place and battle ready. They wheeled the backpack over and hooked it up, replacing the heavy main power lead from the building with the microfusion reactor in the pack, snaking belts of 20mm slugs into the ammo compartment and connecting the 40mm munitions pods behind his shoulders.

His main weapon, the 20mm Mk.XIX Light Assault Cannon, was attached to his waist by techs via a robotic arm. The arm helped support the weapon, aim it via the computer-guided targeting system, and could automatically retract it to his hip if he released the grips for whatever reason. Almost all heavy exoskeletons used a weapon of this type, always automatic, usually 15 or 20mm. Armorers snapped the feed chute from the backpack to the side of the weapon as Leo himself slapped the release, allowing rounds to rattle down the chute.

Suited up and ready, he marched with his colleagues over to the far wall, where steel shutters were clattering open to reveal racks of shields and heavy weapons. Thrusting out his left arm so that the shield in front of him could latch onto his gauntlet, Leo pulled it off the rack and brought it to bear, testing the mechanism that controlled its angle on his forearm. Next to him, one of his colleges slammed the base of his shield to the ground, practicing crouching behind the massive slab of ceramic painted with the slogan

STUPID DUMB ALIEN SCUM

Policy on such “morale customization” varied from company to company but Leo’s employers allowed it; the logic being that since people were used to seeing customized armor on their fictional heroes in webshows, if the company allowed it people would think they were more elite than they actually were. Leo’s own armor was plastered in stickers representing various outdoor equipment and military manufacturers (some of which he could afford to buy from, most of them well out of his financial reach), as well as the occasional cheeky slogan of his own. “Smile and Wait For Flash” scrawled onto the forward rim of his munitions pods, for example.

Locked, loaded, and ready to go the team marched out of the arming room and into the motor pool. VTOLs descended on cranes from their racks high in the rafters, ramps slamming into the polycrete to allow Overlords to march onboard. Leo stepped back into the right wall of his assigned VTOL’s troop bay, allowing the locking clamps to secure him to the inside of the craft. The VTOLs were old PMC surplus, their armor too stressed (or missing) to be trusted in proper combat, but perfectly fine for dropping Overlords onto the heads of unsuspecting alien rioters.

The VTOLs roared to life, rising out of the roof bay doors and picking up speed towards the west side of the enormous city stretched out before them. There were no windows, naturally, but Leo’s augreal system could tap into the craft’s external cameras, making the solid walls appear transparent. They were closing in on a long strip-like commercial district that jutted off from the Human Quarter in the center of the city, terminating in the slums where the Xeno population lived. The district had three central thoroughfares all running parallel to eachother, lined with storefronts. Leo was pretty sure he could make out a fairly large crowd across all three rows, with isolated columns of smoke rising from within it.

“Seal up your jars, air quality’s not going to get any better down there!” The section super in Leo’s VTOL ordered, rapping the side of his own helmet to engage the mask and visor.

Leo nodded and complied, his faceplate pivoting up and sliding back to lock in place over his mouth and nose before the visor descended over his eyes and everything went black. But only for a brief second. The visor’s exterior cameras patched into his retinal implants directly, allowing him to see through the suit’s glass eyes as though they were his own. With the helmet closed he was barely recognizable as Human, you could easily be forgiven for mistaking him for an android or Xeno under all that armor.

“What’s the sitrep down there?” Someone else asked.

“Another one of those stupid Xeno marches down the West Corridor Shopping District, expressing statements not condoned by Conglomerate policy, causing property damage and discouraging shoppers. Objective is to clear them out as quickly and cleanly as possible so that business can resume. RoE is attempt less-lethal confrontation first, secure permission from supervisor before deploying lethal force. Company that owns the district doesn’t want to clean up bodies if they doesn’t have to. We’ll go in with tear gas and pacifiers, if that’s not enough to discourage them, we’ll escalate from there. Company’s not paying for detention, so if we zip anyone it’s catch and release. Try not to cripple anyone employed by one of our partners. They’ll be tagged on your IFF. Understood?” The super explained as the vehicles began to descend.

Their VTOLs had come within about 100 meters of the slowly approaching crowd, hovering a couple meters above the asphalt and opening their bay doors. The clamps disengaged from Leo’s suit and he followed his colleagues out the door, landing on the ground with an earthshaking thump and straightening up to bring his shield to bear.

They formed into ranks and began to advance behind their shields, assault guns still retracted at their hips. The roar of the crowd had risen to a fever pitch with their arrival, and it was seething with nervous energy. Already the rear ranks were beginning to dissolve as less-serious participants hightailed it away from the possibility of catching a 30kg shield in the jaw. This was routine for Leo, even though the crowd today was rather larger than usual he was confident it would end the same. Once the P-Secs busted enough heads and made it clear they weren’t going to stop advancing, the mob would collapse and break apart.