Necropolis19

Rocks rained down all around her, larger stones giving way to pebbles and finally, dust. All she could hear in her head was a high-pitched whine. It wasn’t anything like a ringing. The explosion had picked her up and thrown her across the room and into—something; she wasn’t sure what. It had been hard enough to knock the wind out of her and she thought she might have blacked out briefly. She sucked in a desperate gulp of air, and her body was suddenly on fire. For a few seconds she feared the worst, but after several more deep breaths, the pain subsided. She’d been lucky.

As the dust settled, she looked around, desperate to find the rest of her squad. There was little enough left of the old chapel they’d been holed up in, just a few broken columns and some crumbling walls. She had been on the left flank with Flynn when the shell had hit, but the rest of her squad…

Oh my God!

Viren gasped as she staggered backward. No one was moving. Were they all dead? She scrambled to her feet, her injuries forgotten. She raced to the first squad member she could see but drew up short. There wasn’t enough of the body left to even identify who it had been. She whirled in a circle and saw the rest of her squad strewn amongst the rubble—in pieces. 

Oh God, Oh God, Oh God...

Her heart pounded so hard against her chest she thought her sternum would crack. Her entire squad, twelve men and women, her friends—now gone. Debris shifted above her and masonry rained down as she ducked beneath an arch in what was left of the chapel’s ceiling. They had just set up that morning and gotten the necroshield up and running. Their mission was critical to the defense of the eastern flank. 

The necroshield.

Viren climbed over the debris and found the gleaming silver and black column of the necroshield. It was four feet tall with a dizzying array of tubes and switches marked with runes and sigils she’d never learned to read. It produced the broad-range EMD (electromagnetic dissonance) field which held the incorporeal dead at bay. Miraculously, it seemed unharmed—but it was also offline. 

Shit.

The dials and runes were just gibberish to her. She was no technician. Turning, she crept to the edge of what was left of the outer wall and looked out across the blasted ruins of Necropolis19. They had liberated the enemy base six weeks ago, and the battle had turned into a quagmire trying to keep it. In the distance, she saw the telltale green wisps of light that betrayed the approaching spectral infantry. Enslaved spirits driven to kill the people they had once called friends and family. Viren shivered, she’d take zombie-corp any day—at least bullets worked on those things. If she couldn’t get the necroshield up, the specters would roll right into the flank of the 13th Battalion. 

There was another shift in the debris, and she heard a wracking cough. Viren squinted into the dust and saw someone moving close to where she had come to. She leapt over a fallen column and raced up the small pile of debris. At the top, she saw Hannigan crawling out of the rubble. Thank the Architect, she thought as she saw him shake his head, blood still trickling from his ears. It was the Tech!

He was coughing and trying to catch his breath. Viren pounded him on the back, but it did not seem to do much good. He spat out a mouthful of blood and shook his head.

“Hannigan,” she screamed, both over the ringing in her own head and what she presumed was ringing in his. “We have to get the shield up, now!”

She gesticulated madly toward the black and silver column as Hannigan continued to shake his head. Finally, he seemed to catch his breath and squint through the dust. He saw what she had seen, the necroshield had been knocked off line. Hannigan began to drag himself down the pile of the debris and toward the column. She reached down to help him to his feet when she froze. From the street, she heard the familiar sound of dragging footsteps. Zombie-corp.

Viren whirled in a circle, looking around for a weapon. She saw her own clockwork crossbow shattered against one wall. Next to it, she saw a flash rifle lying half buried in the debris. When she dragged it out, it still had the severed hand of its owner gripping it. She recognized Flynn’s class ring. She wasted no time pulling it free and checked the vacuum tubes plugged into the top. Four of the six tubes had been shattered, leaving her only two shots.

She gripped the rifle and crawled to one of the remaining outer walls for cover. Viren risked a glance over the wall, but could see nothing in the swirling smoke. More footsteps disturbed the gravel outside. They were close. She squinted to see if Hannigan had made it to the shield, but the smoke and dust were still too thick. Viren held her breath.

She heard a scrape along the wall, then more dragging footsteps. They were passing right by her. She gripped the flash rifle and said another prayer to the Architect. There was a clank of metal from somewhere in the chapel, presumably Hannigan trying to get the necroshield up. She heard the footsteps pause.

Damn. 

Viren switched the safety off on the rifle. Several seconds went by, where she refused to breathe. More dragging footsteps moving away. She risked one more glance over the wall and saw them. Three zombie-corp and a Revifier disappearing into the smoke. She let out a long breath of air. Carefully, she crawled away from the wall and back down into the crater of the chapel. Through the haze, she could just make out the vague silhouette of Hannigan working on the shield. 

Relaxing for moment, she reached up as a matter of habit to finger the heart-shaped locket around her neck and froze. It was gone. 

No, no, no...

Her hands patted down her neck and then her body, feeling around for the locket. It was the only thing she had left of home. It held the portraits of her two younger sisters, Ulla and Wyn. They had been why she’d enlisted, why she’d lied about her age and spent what was left of her college money on a false Osteospec to fool the recruiters. It seemed a sad joke. They would take anyone who could hold a resonance-pistol now. They’d died in the Night of Chains when the Necromancer-Prime had detonated the first of his Reaper Bombs. The explosion had torn their spirits from their bodies to be harvested by his Scything Ships, made into slaves for the Necromancer-Prime and his war. She shivered when she thought of their tortured spirits out there somewhere, stopping the heart of anyone they touched with their grave-cold. They’d been such sweet girls.

Fuck!

She slung the flash rifle over her shoulder and made her way back to where she’d first come to. She saw Hannigan had torn open one panel on the necroshield and was busy throwing switches and re-threading wires.

“Any luck?” Viren called, but Hannigan did not respond as he continued his frenzied adjustments. 

Viren turned her attention to the surrounding ground, looking for the silver glint of the locket. How could she lose the damn thing now? She was on her third tour, more than five years into the War of Souls. A name the newspapers had given it, back when there were still newspapers. In the trenches, it was just The War. She began kicking the debris around with her boot. Hannigan looked up for a moment at the sound, scanning the ruins of the chapel for a moment before returning to his work. Viren fought down a sense of panic building inside of her. She would find it, she had to find it. 

Viren had been away at university when the Night of Chains had taken her sisters. She’d watched in horror on the Com-Screen as the Scything Ships roared over the smoking ruins of her hometown. She had prayed to the Architect that somehow they had been spared, but in her heart—she knew they were gone. Not just gone, but taken. Her parents had died too, of course, but they had been old and somehow the tragedy made less. Her sisters, they were only six and nine, hardly a life at all. She could see their faces when she closed her eyes, but it was always the faces from the locket. Secretly, in her heart, she feared that without the locket—she would not remember what they looked like.

The war seemed all but over now. It had been a one sided war of attrition. Our numbers continued to dwindle away while theirs only grew with each man or woman that fell. The numbers were always against us. Viren felt tears in her eyes. Weren’t the horrors of war enough without it costing your very soul?

They were only fighting for a memory now. Like her locket. A memory of a world as it had once been, a frozen tableau of a race now facing extinction. And what were we, if not the sum of our experiences? Our memories. And the Lost? No one called them the undead; because they had been our teachers, our friends and our neighbors. The horror of the Lost is that they had no memories, only an unrelenting and ceaseless now—devoid of past or any hope for the future. Maybe we had that last part in common.

A flash of silver caught her eye. Viren threw herself toward it, scrambling up a low pile of debris and digging with her hands. She lost sight of it for a moment and forced herself to slow down, to be methodical. A sound behind her caused her to turn, and she saw Hannigan closing the panel on the necroshield. Thank the Architect, she thought. If he could get that damn thing working, they could still shield the 13th from any disembodied spirits. 

Another flash of silver. Viren clawed through the rubble, throwing rock and masonry over her shoulder. There! She let out a relieved sigh and grasped it in her fingers, tugging at it but finding the chain stuck. She removed more of the debris, clawing at the dust and detritus with desperate hands. A bloodied face appeared in the rubble, unrecognizable in its ruin. Viren tugged at the necklace again. She realized, with a start, that it was fastened around the corpse’s neck.

But, how?

Viren looked at the face again. Blood and matted hair were smeared across it. She reached down to take the chin with her fingertips so that she could turn the face toward her. Viren gasped in horror as wracking sobs shook her body. It couldn’t be. She couldn't breathe. With a rough tug, she snapped the chain and held the locket up in the dim light. With shaking fingers, she opened it. Ulla and Wyn smiled back at her.

There was a mechanical noise behind her and she turned her head to see Hannigan standing next to the necroshield, his hand on the power-lever. With a heave, he slammed it down with an electrical crack. Arcs of electricity danced over the rubble, dimly illuminating the ruined chapel. The shield burst into life.

Abruptly, the heart shape locket fell, tumbling down the small pile of debris with a delicate chime. Catching the light, Hannigan watched it roll across the floor and come to rest at the base of the black and silver column.