Round for Round, tooth for tooth

  Philip was watg through his NVGs up ohird level of a three-level rack mezzanine unit on the north side of the DC. From his position on the northwest er, he could look down ourn pallets, a se of office cubicles, and the windows and doors to the back offices in the northeast er. He had cealed his position with boxes and packages taken from the surrounding pallets and had his on aimed at the office door through gap in the cardboard.

  EP had stuck a single low light on the wall disguised as part of aher port, and it raised the light level just enough for his night vision to see what the fuck was going on. Which up until about three seds ago, was absolutely nothing.

  It had been maddening listening to Luke open up just meters away, while he sat there watg dust settle on a bunch of fug cubicles. But he rofessional. A Hardworlder with over two decades under his belt, even if many of those memories were now under lod key. Which meant he knew how to wait. Waiting, often, was most of the job.

  So as the attag squad stepped into the far offid EP talked him through their movements, he stayed just as calm as if he was watg water flow, and reached out for those memories, trying to slide into that middle zone of sciousness, halfway between watg himself and being in the driver’s seat, the vergence of what could be and what he wao happen, the unification of his selves, the fusion of Spirit and flesh.

  A man in full fatigues, NODs, and face mask pulled open the office door and stepped through swiftly, c the right as another one moved in behind him watg the left, and so on until all five were through the door, rifles moving like the batons of a high school cuard. Philip let them e i itted to the room, and sweep a few areas, the to work killing.

  He had his grenades inside a Kevr helmet with the pins tied by wire to the mezzanine frame. He took one in his hand, wound his arm back, and pulled the trigger just as point man’s IR beam swept across the mezzahe low recoil AMG was a dream, even in 7.62. He felt the gunfire in his chest, and the fsh lit up the desks and high wall in sharp shadows.

  He gunned down point-man while overhanding the grenade and dropped another before he had finished bringing his empty hand down to the frip in a single fluid motion.

  He kept up the fire as EP’s drone fshed them with fake muzzle fsh and IR beams. It was like watg them die on stage. Their only cover was a few fabric cubicles and plywood desks. He ted to four in his head and ducked back behind the barrier. Only in the pause of his own gunfire did he realize one of them had been ying into an M27 with what looked like a 60 round magazine. Luckily, most of its fire had goer EP’s fake gunner.

  The grenade went off and the roof sounded like it had caved in, and then there was just the screaming. He popped back up and finished off the st gunman with a short burst from the colrboo the forehead, and it was quiet again. All five men had died within five seds and Philip had expended almost fifty rounds.

  “Stat,” Luke whispered.

  “Got 'em. But I’m sure I was supposed to. They just wao know where we are.”

  Before he had gotten the words out, an explosion blew in a bay door.

  Lindsey was ohird level of the four-level veyor mezzah her mae gun aimed at the south wall. She had line of sight all the way down the massive staging area in front of the bay doors, 200 yards of bare crete and sparse pallets. Another hundred yards of bay doors stretched from the tral truck office to the right, to the north side of the DC behind her, where Gradie dug through boxes and Philip was set up on the mezzanine adjat to hers.

  Her position was reinforced with barrier pallets and duffle bags of sand and ptes, raised up by Sam’s forklift, and disguised and sed by carefully pced boxes and other warehouse debris. She had two 250-rous liogether draping from her PKP-SP (an upgraded, lighter PKM with a fluted, and in this case shorter, barrel, and an attached suppressor) to an ammo box strategically pot to cause her any issues if she had to ge positions.

  Which, almost immediately, she did.

  A bay door exploded below, eighty yards away, right o the north wall. It was the recyg bay door where they had pced the barrier pallet. It was also the one closest to Gradie.

  Metal fragments sparked on the roof and racks around her and the pressed dusty air roared and shook again, like a direct reply to the truck office explosion and Philip’s grenade.

  “An stat!” Michael said on the line.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Make sure!”

  “Vehicle moving on that door!” EP said.

  A SUV revved up the ramp outside, crashed through the hanging strands of shredded bay door, and smmed right into the anti-vehicle barrier pallet. The crash echoed across the warehouse.

  “Huh,” EP said with a smile in her voice. Lindsey bit back her own ugh as she swung the PKP around. They must have thought it was just a normal shipment of retail junk. The big pallet slid about a yard, but the SUV ched to a halt with its bad stuck outside. The crash must have surely tripped the airbags, but the doors flew open and IR beams shot out anyway, though not as gracefully as they might have otherwise.

  Lindsey, however, was the picture of grace. She brought the gun into the keyhole like a decorator pg a ter pied fahe belt like it was an all-brass accessory to her evening wear. In uwo seds, she had transitioned from her previous position to the arget, and was still chug when the gun roared.

  It felt like a sed date. Bullets screamed off the hood and ripped through fragments of bay door. The side windows on the SUV turned white, and one crumbled like disturbed snow. Two meing out of the passenger side died instantly. The others ducked down out of her sight on the driver’s side, but she kept up the fire, trying to skip rounds uhe undercarriage.

  One of the survivors was yelling at the driver to back up when Philip stepped out from somewhere tht and put a burst through the top of his head. The windshield frosted over as both guns joiogether, and the driver was just able to throw it in reverse before the gss gave out into sudden darkness. The SUV rolled slowly back down the ramp at an angle and bumped softly into the railing, pletely devoid of life.

  Lindsey breathed, and another bay door exploded to her left.

  Sam had cover pallets and warehouse debris arranged around her in a triangle, less than fifty feet from Luke, in roughly the ter of the warehouse, positioo cover Lindsey’s blind spot, the bay doors closest to the truck office, which sed them from the PKP, or overp fire with Luke or Lindsey as needed.

  Waiting had been awful. Her own rag thoughts were always a thousand times worse than anything that actually happened, and her body shuddered with relief wheion finally found her, and she slipped into that almost automatic, thoughtless groove that made every other sed in the Hardworlds worth it.

  The explosion fshed briefly in her NODs and everything around her made awful sounds as strips of bay door hit metal. A pickup backed up to the jagged glowing hole where the bay door had been and five men in full kit shining IR illuminators stepped onto the dock floor, hugging the wall of the truck office to avoid Lindsey’s line of sight. Sam had the Ultimax resting on a sand filled duffle bag, and point man fshed her position with his IR as she opened fire.

  It was a zy rhythm pared to the high fire rate of Luke’s MG3, but it was effective, and after the initial kick of the first round, the recoil was ent, like using a lethal water hose. Point man fell in a fsh of fire that glittered like fairy lights in her goggles and sprayed gs like slot winnings. The rest of the attag squad dashed to cover under a stream of extra hot 5.56. Bullets sparked off the wall, tore boxes to pieces, and struck the pickup through the open door. Before she could savor the feeling of trol, the survivors were behind pallets and pylourning fire.

  She never let her finger off the trigger. Another one fell, but it felt like years sihe st one had died. Their bullets got closer to the mark, striking her cover and zipping past her ears like swearing bees. Sed after sed dragged on without another one dying, and a subtle fear rose up behind her jaw. It was like a bad dream where her gun fired only bnks.

  The truck office wall o the gunmen exploded in bursts of drywall and crete as Lindsey’s PKP tore it to pieces. In a sed the st two were dead. Sam only realized she had killed a third after everything was still and her earbuds adjusted to the quiet. She waited for another explosion, atack.

  Nothing, so she let her attention move to her breath, and her ammo.

  “Reloading!” she whispered, and got another drum mag out of the bag. Her voice carried across the crete floor like a ghost taunting the dead.

  “Kate, fall back to the mezzanine,” Michael said, dead calmly, like he was advising of an uping turn. She got her ammo bag on her shoulder and made for the more heavily fortified position uhe t levels of metal. It seemed so soon, but as she got her things together, she noticed wide jagged bullet holes in the wood and p sand just inches from her, and was gd to be going.

  “Update,” Lindsey said softly.

  “They’re moving their vehicles,” EP said. “Getting ready for the move.”

  “They know where we are,” said Philip, softer than Sam had ever heard him. “Now es the real fight.” He finished loading his AMG and racked the charging handle.

  Gradie had found nothing. The boxes piled around him like gore. Fitrackers, headphones, pod coffee makers, shoes, phone chargers, all-in-one printers, nameless things in tape covered boxes. The banal and everyday pooled at his feet uselessly while out in the warehouse, astral warriors waged war, their temporary vessels of flesh falling in instants. The gunfire and explosions cpped harshly in his ears while the kitschy boxes remained unmoved, as if the two existed in alternate dimensions, uo i.

  EP’s illuminator drone flicked off the moment he heard Luke’s MG scream and he had been digging with only the low-level illuminator attached to his NODs. The team had set up extra pallets between him and the rest of the DC to s him, but he still felt suffogly exposed, and ill prepared.

  Is this my dream? My fantasy? A dead end dreamworld? Searg through retail pallets while things from my nightmares live and move just outside my reach?

  His rifle he pistol at his hip and snagged on pstic strips. He had tried a million times to see the envelope peeking out from the boxes, told himself the cut would expose it, that this pallet would be the st. Now, dusty aey handed, he was sure it was all bullshit.

  The Hardworlds, whatever they were, didn’t give a shit what you visualized, what you wished. Wish in one hand and shit iher, as Philip might say, and his wishes piled at his feet unanswered. No. If they were so God damn magical, why was he here breaking down pallets? Why hadn’t Michael wished the into his hands when they had the son of a bit the car with them?

  The world had felt far more malleable st night. He remembered how the building had seemed to morph to his will, allowing him to slip through the ceiling and out to Sam. He tried to recapture the feeling, but suspected he had imagi. After all, had it ever really felt like he had done anything?

  “Did you find it?” EP said in his ears.

  “No,”

  “Then why are you fug stopped? This is all on you!”

  Maybe if he acted like this was life or death, he would believe it. Maybe this kind of muask could feel like a gunfight if he tried hard enough. He tore into the pallet like a madman a his k pstic. A rage inside him fred out and he forced it through. A woman smiled over a coffee cup, her mouth bent grotesquely by a crease in the cardboard.

  No anywhere.

  Some anizations spare bodies like shell gs. ime, 7.62 speaks louder than words. episode, Talking Guns.