Nic was pinned down by a cluster of hostile aliens intent on killing him. He only had two comrades with him; one of them was blubbering like a baby, on the verge of adopting a literal fetal position, and the other one’s bravado had earned him a frighteningly stigmatic wound straight through the wrist. Neither of them could help him now.

He had to be their help first.

“Approaching your position!” Nic called out. He drew his Pistol, popping off a few aim-assisted shots guided by the watchful eye of RTIFIS. His rounds took out a quill-backed Sharpshooter and a simian, jaundiced Fodder. Gray-skinned, hulking Commanders returned fire with volleys of ivory spikes that pinged off and skimmed past his armor plating. The vulnerable gaps of the Gen-3 Achilles armorsuits were smaller than ever, but they were called Achilles for a reason—there was no eliminating every weak point.

Nic ducked behind the rock formation where Everett and Danny had taken cover. Without asking, Nic yanked Danny fully behind cover so that his leg was no longer poking out and tempting a Hexadian shot. Danny fell flat on the ground and whimpered meekly.

Nic’s sympathy was rapidly souring into disgust. The longer he fought in this war, the harder it felt for him to drum up compassion for even his brothers at arms, let alone their enemies. Wonder what that’s about, he thought dryly. Some other time...

“Help me,” Everett groaned. He clutched the bloody hole in his right wrist, his affected hand dangling limply. Without the fast-acting sealants in his suit, a hole like that could have meant catastrophic blood loss, or worse—depressurization. “Please... help me! It hurts so goddamn—”

“Breathe,” Nic ordered him. “Your body’s natural endorphins are already hard at work. If that wasn’t enough, your suit’s pumping painkillers to the wound right now. Next up is a shot of stem-paste for faster healing. Your armor is also sending fast-bonding feedback suit resin to patch the hole. Tell me your vitals.”

“I... I-I can’t do this, man! God, it hurts! Have you ever been sh-shot with one of these? Not like I thought... it was gonna be...”

“Vitals, Everett. Tell me! O2. BP. Read ‘em off!” In reality, Nic had full access to the information in question, but he was giving Brick 2 a much-needed distraction. It was the only one Nic could think of on the fly.

BRICK 2/EVERETT: [URGENT!(✓)] 121BPM(▲), 95O2(▼), 37C(=), 130/85(▲)

“Uh...” The concentration was palpable in Everett’s voice. Nic could almost hear Everett allocating mental resources to focus on the task at hand, pulling his mind away from the pain and panic. “Um... O2 is... 96. 121 BPM.”

“Good, but I wanted your blood pressure,” said Nic. “Tell me that.”

“One th-th-… No, 129... over 83... I think... The arrow’s pointing down now. That’s good, right? Am I gonna die?”

Nic smiled. That arrow down is good, he thought. “No, you’re not going to die with me here. But I need you to breathe. In, hold it, then out. In, hold it, out.”

“Nic, man, I don’t think I can—”

“Don’t think,” Nic interrupted him. “Just do.” A good lesson to learn early on, if you ask me.

Everett hesitated. “Okay.” A sharp breath in, followed by a little wheeze. Then a ragged exhale. Once more in, shuddering breath out... It was working. Nic watched Everett’s improvements in real time, a combination of the placebo effect, managing anxiety, and the best drugs and repair tech WorldGov could finance.

A minute later, the hole was gone. Nic saw only black feedback suit between the armor’s hand and ulnar plates. Perfect.

“It’s starting to feel better,” said Everett, able to speak in full sentences again. His breathing had slowed slightly; Nic saw that his status had been downgraded from Urgent to Safe. “It still hurts, though. I can’t really move it so good.”

“That’s okay,” Nic assured him. “That’ll come back with time. Now...” His awareness shifted to the encroaching threat of alien attackers. “Fodders are going to be on top of us in a few seconds. I need you both to help with suppressive fire. Everett, use your Pistol if you need. And Danny...” He bent down to confiscate Danny’s grenades from his ammo belt. “I’ll be taking these, since you didn’t throw them when I told you.” He pulled a pin and threw one—it ripped through a small crowd of galloping Fodders, buying them more time.

“I’m sorry, okay?” Danny cried. Nic’s sympathy returned, a pang that hit him like a gut punch. “I’m not cut out for this! Just leave me! Leave me to die here like...”

Suddenly, Nic’s sympathy boiled over into rage. He restrained himself. “Like Shanti. That’s what you were going to say. I won’t hit you this time. Say it. To die like—”

“No! Like you want. Leave me here to die like you want!” Danny sniffled. “I’m not a fighter like you two. I can’t do this! I miss our old job. Working crowd control on terraformed colonies—can you believe I used to complain about that? We were together, all five of us, and we were happy enough. Alison. Joyce. Kincaid...” Those names brought a fresh round of tears.

“Half our squad could be dead right now,” said Everett, “all because of those bastards in that crater out there.” With his left hand, he shakily picked up his SMG from the ground, strapping it to his back. He drew his Pistol clumsily. “Should they just be able to get away with that? Don’t you wanna kill some back?”

“No,” said Danny. “I just want it to be over! But it can’t be. Even if I survived this, even if I went AWOL, I’d just be turned into slave labor somewhere. Those are my only choices! How’s a person supposed to live life like that? That’s no life.”

“Like it or not,” said Nic, “you’re in it, Danny. It sucks. It’s life. No matter what you choose, you are in the thick of it right here, right now. You can go to prison when this is done if you want. Right now, though, there are several thousand aliens on this planet that want to kill you. You can either let them or you can kill them first.”

Danny shook his head. “This killing, this... It isn’t natural!”

“Oh, it’s very natural, Danny. Just because it’s ugly doesn’t mean it’s not natural. We humans have been doing it for thousands and thousands of years. Maybe longer. We’re good at it. Take it from me.” He put a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “It’s tough at first, but you start to get used to it. You just have to think about what they did to Kincaid.”

Danny started sobbing again. “She’s gone. She’s... she’s really gone. She was my friend. She used to be really nice to me, before Telum...”

“And they killed her.” Nic stood and threw Danny’s last grenade—it detonated in midair, deleting several more Hexadians from existence. Now the Commanders were roused from their proud battle stances and came charging with the other survivors, ready to flank the Red Battalion cover. “It’s now or never, Danny. They’re coming.”

“I’m sure as shit not gonna lay down and die here,” said Everett. “This is for Kincaid! For Joyce! For Shanti!” Nic got chills. “For every one of us you bastards killed in cold blood! I’d kill a thousand of you if I could! A million!” Everett peeked up from behind the rock and opened fire with his sidearm. The kill confirmations tumbled down Nic’s HUD like snowflakes.

Danny jumped to his feet. “Okay. I don’t want to do this. But I don’t wanna die here, either. I don’t want to kill them, but... I have to. Right? It’s what Kincaid would tell me to do. I’m gonna do it. For her!”

Nic was pleased to hear Danny’s change of heart as the Squad Leader reloaded a bonus clip into his SMG. He dragged his line of fire at eye-level across the swarming Hexadian horde. Danny even joined them toward the end, his aim a bit sloppier than Nic would have liked, but it got the job done.

The cranial lobes of marching Commanders popped and sent their bodies tumbling like discarded puppets. It helped Nic not to think of them so much as flesh and blood, but more like enemies he’d face in a sim. His mind categorized them in such a way that they were all one big adversarial unit—a Hexadian whole. Not since the first tentative encounters on Nereus had he considered them as individuals.

There was no way to make it through the average mission if he thought of them that way. It was unproductive.

But in his year of experience, Nic had become nothing if not efficient.

The three Red Battalion soldiers lowered their weapons one after another, surveying their handiwork. Dozens of fallen aliens and partial viscera littered the crater. Per updated and constantly refined programming, RTIFIS scanned the battlefield through Nic’s HUD to identify any hostiles that were only grievously wounded rather than dead, since those ones had a tendency to fire lucky shots unexpectedly.

said RTIFIS.

NIC [8COM, 10SHA, 29FOD] (+1,840 Credits) EVERETT [4COM, 2SHA, 15FOD] (+700 Credits) DANNY [4FOD] (+40 Credits)

“Good work,” said Nic. “Both of you. Danny, excellent job facing your fear today. We made it out alive thanks in part to your effort.”

The skittish Brick 4 nodded in response. “Wow. I... I really killed them, huh? That was me.”

Everett started to cut in, but he was interrupted by a crackling message breaking through their comms.

“...-all... -iately!”

“Say again,” said Nic. “This is Scarlet 1. We didn’t catch that. Say again.”

Silence.

“What was that?” Danny asked, and the nervousness he’d shed in battle was already creeping back into his voice.

“Sounded like... immediately, do something immediately,” said Everett. “Battle plans, maybe?”

“-peat, confirmed sigh-… -east a dozen Bruisers and... -ximately 60 Rip-...”

Nic swallowed hard. It was the voice of Lieutenant Reeve. “Say again! You’re breaking up!”

“Fall back! Fall back to the perimeter immediately!”

“It sounded like something about Rippers,” said Everett. “60 Rippers? That can’t be right. What the hell’s a Bruiser, though?”

Nic scanned the horizon with his HUD. RTIFIS-enhanced visuals let him glimpse their pixelated silhouettes bounding across Telum’s silvery powder. There were two kinds—gaunt, clawed silhouettes the color of night galloping on all fours, and giant, pinkish-red brutes sprinting faster than their bulk should have allowed. The big ones were even taller than Commanders and twice as muscular.

“We’re not going to stick around long enough to find out,” Nic said warily. “You heard Lieutenant Reeve. We need to fall back to the perimeter. Now! Engage High Speed!”