Chapter 26: The Company of Savages

The air inside Hollow Mountain had that fetid stench of stillness. Not as revolting as a casteless level, but Reynold had breathed better. A Pithite poked its head out from around the corner and pulled back. If they put down another bot, they would get their pass. The bot had to die.

“O’Boyle, you and Giants go down there. Take a peek around the corner.” Reynold pointed his rifle down the hall. “You see any bots, take them out.”

“Gotcha.” O’Boyle left.

Pumpkin Head’s actual name turned out to be Lance O’Boyle. After the sniper took him out on the parade deck, that evening he returned to the barracks, alive, with his glorious cranium intact, no scar, nothing. His memory was a different story. The peon Reynold questioned his sanity when O’Boyle chose him out of all the recruits and said, “Hey, big guy. Do you know which bunk is mine?”

Gianis hadn’t moved a muscle.

Reynold made eye contact. “Get going.”

“No.” Gianis refused to look away. The hairy freak was the one who flipped out that first day. He stared daggers from underneath the brim of his helmet.

His brother, taller but just as furry, stood beside him. The wound the DI gave him hardened his scalp into a brown and pink scar.

“I didn’t ask.” Reynold stared back. Someone had to lead. All four of them had that lock over their command try. He figured he had to get them to do what he said, to show the game they took his orders.

“We stay together,” Spyros snarled, “and if you don’t like it, take your divorcee ass down the hallway.”

Though the brothers looked like they were in their twenties, they must have been younger. They both had the same polyname and didn’t marry into other caste families. Reynold wanted the guy who could give the DI a run for his money. However, his idiot brother became the price of admission.

O’Boyle stopped to watch the scene and took a few steps toward his fireteam.

“Stay there.” Reynold held up his palm. O’Boyle halted and surveyed the hall. He looked like he had no idea what to do.

Reynold stuck his finger in Gianis’s face. “And you, get out there!”

Gianis squeezed his eyes shut. “I won’t eat my vegetables!”

His scream echoed through the hallway. The bots must be on their way.

Leadership always has a plan.

Reynold had thought about what to do if the freak started one of his uncontrollable fits. He smashed the butt of his rifle into Gianis’s jaw with enough force to hurt but too little to break anything. With any luck, Gianis wouldn’t be able to scream his OCD catchphrase if his jaw was in agony.

The little freak cupped his face and winced. A tear gathered in the corner of his eye and rolled down.

Something cold and hard, a rifle barrel, pressed against Reynold’s skull below his helmet. A sickening click came from Spyros’s rifle, but only a click. Reynold shuddered and stumbled away from the barrel.

“What the shit?” Spyros checked the firing mechanism as if he knew what to look for. He aimed again.

Reynold scarcely had time to raise his hands before Spyros pulled the trigger again.

The little freak, perhaps emboldened by his brother, aimed and fired, too. His rifle clicked.

The taste of battery acid flooded Reynold’s mouth. His abdominal muscles squeezed the roiling juices inside his stomach.

The brothers glanced at each other and pulled their triggers over and over. Nothing but the clicks came out.

Gianis twisted his face. “What the fucking shit?”

Bile splashed the inside of Reynolds’s throat and burned. He choked down the sour fluid. They tried to kill him, and yet, he stood. Something in the game stopped the guns from going off. No time to process this new info. With the caustic juices on their way back down, Reynold took control of himself. Reynold willed the shudder in along his spine to still.

He stood straight to make himself more of a target, a display of fearlessness, a false one. “You assholes done?”

They both dragged their gaze to opposite side like students caught in the hallway during class.

Reynold calmed his breathing. “Both of you get down there and cover O’Boyle.”

The little freak checked his taller brother’s face. Spyros pressed his lips together and wrinkled his nose before he nodded. The pair hung their heads and moved down the hall. Neither of them made eye contact with Reynold. They raised their rifles and headed toward O’Boyle.

Pumpkin Head had his back to the wall and checked down the hall. He followed orders. At least someone did.

Speaking of orders…

With one eye closed, Reynold went into the WarFace, flipped through the carousel, and found the command try. His focus triggered the open-lock animation. It invited him to use it. The game recognized it; he had command.

The tension between his shoulder blades relaxed. He took in the air a shade easier. It seemed to freshen a touch. He had made that first step up the tall ladder of domination.

Once the brothers got out of arm’s reach, Reynold followed. He didn’t trust them but trusted those mechanized abominations even less.

If I was them, I’d try to get up behind us.

He turned on his heel. Almost on cue, a bot stepped out. Reynold’s intuition told him true. His rifle fired almost as if someone else shot. Recoil bit into his shoulder. The bullet made a twang and ricocheted off of the Pithite’s chest armor and into the ceiling above Reynold. The bot dropped its weapon.

Reynold fired again. The Pithite’s eye folded into itself, and the back of its head spat out the bits and bolts of its former brain. Its limbs quivered in a fit until its legs collapsed underneath.

“Yes!” Reynold restrained his cheer. No doubt the rest of the bot’s fireteam skulked behind the walls. But they got their pass. The whole fireteam would get Level 1. The adrenaline rush flushed the tiredness from his flesh.

He approached the fallen Pithite, eager to examine his handiwork. O’Boyle had put down the first bot. He even got a hidden mission called First Blood since he—out of all of X-Ray Company—made the first kill. Reynold’s cheeks burned when O’Boyle told the rest of the fireteam he got it. By all rights, Pumpkin Head should have gotten Last Blood if the game even bothered to make missions for its losers.

A crack of a gunshot came from behind. The dead Pithite shook with the impact of the bullet. Reynold jumped. The brothers had their rifles trained on the robotic corpse. They fired again and again, as fast as their triggers would move. The bot body flailed.

One of the bullet made a twang and ricocheted off the Pithites’s shoulder armor. A slack—one that shouldn’t have been—appeared in Reynold’s calf before a detonation of agony burst from his leg. He fell to one knee. Reynold rolled onto his side and lifted his leg. What remained of the muscle dangled from his shin. Gore streamed from the gaping hole in his trousers. It didn’t occur to him to scream.

“That was my shot!” Gianis held his rifle over his head in triumph. “I got him!”

“But…” O’Boyle’s mouth hung open.

“Bullshit! That was me. Not that it matters,” Spyros stood over Reynold, “because he’s all yours now.”

Gianis grinned. If a cat toying with a bird with a broken wing could smile, it would look just like that. He lifted his rifle and pulverized Reynold’s cheek with the butt.