“Coming up to the next junction. We’re five hundred paces from the supply drop. Expect there to be trouble,” Dakota whispered over their team comm channel. She’d taken the lead and was acting as their scout. Mai and the other rebels she’d selected for the raid were roughly one hundred paces behind her.

“Confirmed. Any combat?” Mai scanned the concourse ahead of her, making sure that her friend hadn’t missed a trap.

“Big fat no. Either everyone’s dead, or they’re doing what we’re doing and sneaking.”

Mai called up the scoreboard. In the days they’d been down in Nether City, the culler numbers had been reduced to just below two hundred thousand. She was no longer one of the high scorers, with some cullers having killed in the high three figures.

How does someone live with killing that number of people? She was still getting nightmares from her kills. Smith, Sharktooth, the little girl and many of the others she’d killed all took turns to wake her up drenched in sweat. Even when she was awake they haunted her. Little noises made her jump, sudden movement made her flinch. Some days she felt as though she was in funk, unable to do anything but coast through the day.

“… Mai?” she shook herself as Dakota’s voice brought her back to the present. Annoyed, she punched her thigh, she was slipping far too often.

“Sorry, you broke up. What?”

“I was saying, I can hear the fighting. Area’s clear. No-one’s on this level. Sounds like a full-on battle, and my minimap is filling up with cull markers,” Mai could tell by her tone that Dakota hadn’t bought her lie.

“Okay, pushing up. We’ll be with you soon.”

Mai took one last look around before standing and waving her people on. All of them were wearing stealth clothing. It was one thing that the Nether City rebels had been able to offer them. Everything that they did have was far superior to what she’d been able to access before.

The suit she wore was a combination of light ballistic armour and stealth. It gave them an extra ten per cent to their base rank skill. And Mai’s heart had skipped a beat when she saw that it would allow her to exceed the maximum of twenty five per cent for critical successes. It also gave an additional ten per cent SOAK to its base SOAK of two hundred against ballistic weapons, although it gave a similar debuff against energy, and heat-based weapons. Flowing through the shadows on the concourse, they moved as silently as ghosts. From the happy sounds the others were making over the comms channel, they’d also seen the benefits of their suits.

Dakota stepped out from behind a pillar, beckoning them on. Through the thick plasticrete floor they could hear the muffled sounds of combat. It was as if there was a thunderstorm many miles distant. Dust drifted down when there was a particularly large explosion.

“Told you, they’re really going at it hammer and tongs,” laughed Dakota. “I’ve scouted fifty paces in all directions. We’re clear.”

Mai projected her minimap so that the rest of her team could see what she planned. Ten in total, she’d decided that it was a good balance of manpower and fire power. As soon as they had their hands on the bio-boost they were going to upgrade their suits so that they were servo-assisted, which would allow them to carry far more than a normal person.

“The supplies are directly above us. We’re going to place the nano-charge in this shape,” she traced the placement as she spoke, shining a small laser onto the ceiling above them. “We detonate, allow the supplies to fall down to us, and then nab what we can whilst everyone’s trying to work out what the hell happened.”

They’d all heard it more than a dozen times, but none interrupted her, every eye upon her with intense concentration.

“We get this, we’ll be living like gods in Nether City. Let’s get to it.”

There was a flurry of activity as her people raced to place the nanite-charge. Time was of the essence as the battle above seemed to be reaching a crescendo, more and more cull markers filling the minimap.

“All set!” called out Biyu, a serious look on her usually friendly face. She was Mai’s explosives expert, making sure that the rebels had set their charges properly. Mai joined the others as they cleared the area, training their weapons on the roof, just in case.

“Fire in the hole!” cried Biyu. There was a bright flash of light, and then the ceiling crashed down, the nanites having eaten through the plasticrete in a split second. Bright orange creates spilled from the pile and shots rang out as the rebels shot a couple of stunned-looking cullers who had dropped through the ceiling with the supplies.

“Move!” Mai sprinted forward. Pulling out a bio-boost bottle she took a quick chug, raising her bio-mass levels to one hundred and twenty-five per cent. As soon as it flashed green she altered her suit, adding the servo-assist to it, grunting at the pain of doing so.

Snatching up a create in each hand she turned and sprinted for the hand rail twenty or so paces away. It overlooked a drop miles deep. A glyph hung above it, proclaiming that it offered one of the best views of the depths in the city. It had the underwhelming title of “Deep View”.

“Quick now people!” ordered Dakota as she reached the handrail. Their plan was simple, add a parachute and location marker to the crates and then lob them over the handrail. As quickly as possible they formed the parachutes, attaching them to the crates.

Shouts of anger and confusion replaced the gunfire as the cullers above them finally started getting over the shock of seeing more than three tonnes of supplies dropping out of sight.

Attaching a parachute to one of her crates at a cost of seven per cent bio-mass, Mai lifted it over the handrail. Leaning as far out as she safely could, she let go, watching the crate tumble out of sight. The ‘chutes were programmed to open after thirty seconds of free fall.

Crate after crate was dropped. Shots started to crack past them, two of Mai’s people crying out as they were hit. Creating their own chutes, Mai and her people launched themselves over the handrails.

“Keep your minimaps up, make sure you can track the crates. Remember we leave any that don’t fall more than a mile,” Mai ordered as the wind of her fall caused her face to ripple. It was more than a bit disconcerting, as was the sight of the hab-well they were dropping into. Deep View was an apt name. The well they were dropping into was one of the deepest in the city. They’d jumped at five miles. The well was supposed to end at one mile.

I pray to the gods that the crates make it that far, thought Mai. Her fears weren’t helped as a draft from a vent on the side buffeted her.

“Coming up to the first pods, they’re hooked!” cried one of the rebels as they flashed past two supply crates, their parachutes hooked on walkways.

“Deploy your parachutes!” ordered Mai as they approached a cluster of crates. Gasping as the chute slowed her descent, she used her suit’s system to control her flight.

“My chute!” a rebel shot past her, limbs flailing, chute wrapped around them.

“Cut loose! Cut loose and create another chute!” Dakota screamed, cutting loose herself and chasing after the plummeting rebel. She was too late. Blinded by the material of their chute, the falling rebel slammed into a pedway, the impact bursting them apart in a shower of gore.

Dakota shrieked as she only just missed the pedway herself, falling out of Mai’s sight.

“Dakota!”

“I’m fine, fine. Chute deployed. But I’m far too far down now. I’ll meet you at the bottom. Make sure it’s clear.”

Mai cursed. If they found a large enough cluster of crates hooked up on a pedway, they’d be stopping and carrying them further. It was highly unlikely that enough of the crates would make it all the way to the bottom of the well.

“Cluster coming up. Looks like eight crates,” commed Bio.

Tearing her eyes away from where she’d been searching for Dakota’s chute, Mai looked at the approaching cluster.

“Confirmed. Go for it. One crate each.” Eight crates was far more than she’d thought they’d get. With each one holding two hundred bio-mass boosts they had more than enough to get the Nether City rebels back on track. Hab-wells were often filled with pedways, plazas and pipes criss-crossing them. Checking her altimeter she saw they’d fallen over two miles.

Good enough she thought, flaring her chute, and looping into a tight turn so that she came down on the pedway a few paces from the crates.

“Pedway clear. Crates are a mess. Three on the pedway, the others are hooked over the sides,” she warned her team as she ran forward to snatch the nearest crate. It hung a few paces below her, and with her suit it was easy enough to hoist it up and attach it to her back.

Tracer zipped past her, stitching a path across the pedway. Looking up, she saw an enemy culler dropping towards her, a mixture of chutes, jet, or rocket packs, and anti-grav packs slowing their fall.

“Incoming! Grab a crate and move! Biyu, you and I will provide covering fire!” Mai opened up her menu. She still had one hundred and five per cent bio-mass. More than enough for what she had in mind.

Scrolling through the menu, she accessed the rocket launcher menu. At thirty per cent bio-mass they weren’t cheap, Nor were the rockets at five per cent each. Eighty per cent bio-mass was a price she wouldn’t normally pay, but with the amount of bio-mass they had, it wouldn’t matter.

Worth every damned penny, she thought as she forged the weapon, eyes watering at the pain, gasping. The larger the weapon, the bigger the hit. But it swung both ways. Raising her arm, she activated her URBAN COMBAT skill, wishing that she’d got a USE ROCKET LAUNCHER skill. She was only given fifteen per cent of a critical hit for the URBAN COMBAT, but it was far better than having to rely on pure luck for a critical hit.

She’d chosen a fire and forget launcher, the missiles locking onto a target and chasing it down without needing constant guidance from her. A solid tone indicated that the launcher had locked onto the maximum number of targets and with nothing more than a thought she launched them, firing one per second.

“That’s fucking awesome,” Biyu whispered as she filled the air with streams of tracer from her own weapon, chasing after a culler using a jet pack. For a second it seemed as though the culler was going to escape her attack, but the near solid stream finally clipped them, a shower of sparks erupting from the pack before it exploded, the bisected body of the culler falling away.

Mai’s missiles were equally devastating. Racing through the air, they reached the speed of sound in under a second, the sonic boom filing the habwell, blowing out windows hundreds of paces away.

I bet the viewers are loving this, Mai thought sourly. She couldn’t blame them for watching, it was a key part of life in the city and there was no way they could resist the siren call of the Celestial Court and what it deemed to be entertainment, but she didn’t have to like it. Especially now that she understood the suffering that such “entertainment” caused.

Still, the Emperor’s people would pay for any damage, cure any injuries, and make good any loss caused by the culling. And people would forget. They always seemed to. No matter how bad the culling got, people always looked forward to the next one as if the memories of the last had been wiped. The bad ones at least.

KILL!

CULLER 889384 ELIMINATED

KILL!

CULLER 798203 ELIMINATED!

KILL!

CULLER 398572 ELIMINATED

KILL!

CULLER 226634 ELIMINATED!

KILL!

CULLER 029475 ELIMINATED!

KILL!

CULLER 448296 ELIMINATED!

KILL!

CULLER 333894 ELIMINATED!

KILL!

CULLER 034968 ELIMINATED

KILL!

CULLER 079439 ELIMINATED!

KILL!

CULLER 003857 ELIMINATED!

LEVEL UP! CULLER LEVEL 10

Mai gasped. She’d forgotten she was still part of this culling. The kills she’d made defending the rebel base in the sewers hadn’t counted as the imperial soldiers weren’t part of the culling. Nor had the organ-harvesting drones because they weren’t counted as true kills. She’d got so used to being apart from the culling that she’d subconsciously started thinking she wasn’t in it.Started to think that maybe there was another way she could get back to her sister.

But now she was back fighting and killing cullers and they counted. As bodies and bits of bodies tumbled, flaming past the pedway, or slammed into the floor, Mai scanned the sky for any further enemies. There were none that she could see.

Now that she was a level ten culler, all of her skills would stay activated for one hundred and ten seconds, recharging over one hundred and forty seconds, conferring her a ten second activation bonus, and a minus thirteen second recharging bonus.

I’ll take that, she thought smugly as Biyu jogged past her. Standing, she scanned the sky one more time. Satisfied there was no further threat, she followed her people.

“We’re on our way Dakota. Heads up, killing cullers counts again.”

“Well hot damn, better kill me some cullers then. Don’t suppose you’ve sent any my way?”

“No, but don’t fret, I’m sure they’ll be hot on our heels.”

A bullet zipped past her head, looking back up, she cursed as she saw yet more cullers falling after her.