Acid rain hammered the Adamantine hull of the Red Vulture like a million tiny fists. Inside the cockpit, the dashboard bled crimson warnings:

  [Coolant TEMP: 142°C]

  [Engine output: 118%]

  [Engine Integrity: CRITICAL]

  Alina Ludwig’s knuckles were white on the control yoke as she wrestled the bucking vehicle through a narrow path between twisted, phosphorescent trees. The an anti-grav engine whined like a dying animal.

  Then the world lurched violently sideways.

  A vine—thick as a man’s forearm, pulsing with sickly violet veins—snaked from the canopy and coiled around the left road wheel with a sound like tearing tendons. Metal shrieked in protest as the IFV slammed to a halt, skidding sideways into a churning pit of radioactive mud.

  “Verdammt!” Alina cursed, slamming the emergency brake. She popped the hatch and dragged Flora Rosenkrantz from the commander’s seat by her armored collar. In one fluid motion, she shoved the adamantine axe into Flora’s trembling hands. “Get out there and cut! Move, Warrant Officer!”

  Flora’s visor was fogged with panicked breath, her face ashen beneath the faceplate. “I… I’m not going out there…” she whispered, her voice synthetic and flat despite the tremor in her limbs.

  Alina jammed the barrel of her Gepulster laser carbine against Flora’s visor, the muzzle denting the reinforced transparisteel. Her voice was a blade scraping iron. “Do you want us all to die here? Because that’s what happens if we stay. Now move.”

  Flora jumped down with a splash that sent acidic mud spraying up her legs. Rain hissed against her anti-corrosion suit like molten needles, eating through the outer layer with visible steam. She hacked at the vine with mechanical precision, each swing of the axe sending purple-black sap spraying through the downpour.

  Behind the massive root, partially shielded from the rain’s bite, Alina crouched beside her. The sound was deafening—a million bullets on their helmets, the groan of the dying engine, the drip of toxic water from fractured branches.

  “You sold us out, Flora,” Alina said, her voice low and dangerous. “You broke radio silence. You told command about Chen, and the enemies had traced our location with that signal spike; you put a bloody beacon on our heads!”

  Flora’s axe faltered mid-swing. She stared at the vines as her arms swinging the axe downward, tears mixing with the sweat and condensated vapor on her face. “What did I do wrong? I just wanted them to judge him! I wanted him dead! He killed children!” Her synthesized voice cracked, the sterile tone dissolving into raw, ragged emotion.

  Alina’s laugh was pure exhaustion and murder. “Ha. Now we’re all going to die. Happy?”

  Flora suddenly looked up, her ice-blue eyes wide with terror behind the visor. “I can’t take it anymore… every time I close my eyes I see them pinning me to the table, their hands on me, their words about what they’d do…” Her breath came in shallow gasps. “And the killings… the blood—” Her breath hitched.

  Three seconds of silence stretched between them, filled only by the drumming rain. Alina lowered the rifle from Flora’s forehead, her expression unreadable behind her own helmet. “Then stay alive first,” she said simply. “We’ll talk about ‘can’t take it’ later.”

  In the distance, engines roared to life—low, guttural sounds that cut through the rain. Wolves that had scented blood.

  Flora swung the axe again, severing the first vine. As she moved to the second, a red dot appeared dead center on her chest plate. Alina saw it first.

  “DOWN!” she screamed.

  .

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The sound was sharp, final. A 12.7mm tungsten-core armor-piercing round slammed into Flora’s G-12 “Toga’s” chest plate with the force of a sledgehammer. The impact hurled her backward into the mud with a wet thud. Alina dove, dragging her behind the massive root as two more rounds chewed into the vine, spraying purple sap like arterial blood.

  Flora lay gasping in the muck, her polymer bullet-resistance chest plate caved inward, at least two ribs undoubtedly snapped. Yet she clutched Alina’s wrist with desperate strength. “I… I’m not dead…” she gasped, her synthesized voice distorted by pain.

  “Of course not,” Alina snarled, checking the ruined chest plate. “The G-12 can eat three before it cracks. You stay alive for me!” She slapped a stim-patch on Flora’s neck, the chemicals hissing as they entered her bloodstream. “Now cut the damn vine while I cover you!”

  Inside the Red Vulture’s smoldering cockpit, Chen Feng’s pupils suddenly focused.

  The tinnitus—the endless ringing that had swallowed him since the warehouse collapse—abruptly ceased. For the first time in hours, he heard something else: the distant crack of gunfire, the hiss of acid rain on metal, Alina’s voice shouting through the downpour.

  His first words were barely a whisper, in Mandarin: “Mom… I’m not dead yet…”

  He jerked upright as if electrocuted, staggering to his feet. His boots slipped on the mud-slick deck as he crashed into the turret compartment. With hands that no longer trembled, he plugged himself into the weapons station. The system was unpowered, dead from the overheating engine. He didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the manual crank for the 3cm autocannon, muscles straining against the hydraulic resistance as he swung the massive weapon to 11 o’clock.

  Four rapid pulls of the firing mechanism. Four high-explosive rounds tore through the canopy with mechanical precision. The treetops erupted in fire and splinters—three Hellwraith snipers and half the jungle canopy disappeared in a storm of shrapnel and flame.

  Alina saw the main gun fired, the muzzle flash through the rain. Her eyes wide with shock. “Old China? You’re alive!”

  Chen’s face was streaked with sweat and soot. The corner of his mouth twitched—maybe a smile, maybe a sob—before his eyes rolled back and he collapsed into the gunner’s seat again. The tinnitus returned, louder than before. In the hallucination, the child’s hand reached from the concrete rubble and grabbed his ankle, pulling him down into the darkness.

  Outside, chaos erupted.

  A dozen-plus Hellwraith infantry used the distraction to flank them, their electromagnetic rifles raised. Alina shoved Flora face-down into the mud, her Lp-95k carbine in one hand, high-explosive grenade in the other. Two controlled bursts dropped the front runners. The grenade arced perfectly, obliterating the next three in a fireball of shrapnel and gore. She dashed, relocated, stood, and emptied a full fusion cell. The entire engagement lasted under eight seconds. Ten corpses lay strewn like broken dolls in the radioactive mud. The forest smoldering and burning around their demises.

  Flora, flat in the muck with acid rain eating through her uniform, finally understood in her bones: she and Alina were not the same species of soldier.

  Alina slapped an empty magazine off, slot it back to her recovery pouch, then hauled Flora up by the drag handle on her back plate. “Vines cut yet? Get in the damn vehicle!”

  As they scrambled back inside, the Hellwraith comms channel crackled to life. The raucous laughter and heavy metal music suddenly cut off. A deep voice, laced with metallic reverb and cruel authority, filled the static.

  Both remaining skimmers instantly throttled up, engines roaring like beasts finally slipped from the leash. Alina heard the broadcast over the hacked channel. The blood drained from her face, leaving her skin the color of ash.

  “Goddamn it all to hell,” she whispered, slamming the Red Vulture into drive. The IFV lurched forward, trailing severed vines and belching white smoke as it charged out of the tree line like a wounded bull.

  Two kilometers ahead, a rust-red corporate-era mega-dome loomed through the rain-fog. It was a relic from the beginning of the dark age of corporate-capitalism, a two-and-a-half-century-old titan of steel and arrogance. Hundreds of automated turrets slowly traversed its surface, their red targeting beams sweeping the jungle like the eyes of a sleeping god.

  Alina floored the accelerator, her voice hoarse with exhaustion and desperation. “One gamble… either a way out or a tomb.”

  Behind them, the raiders’ engines closed in like the footsteps of death. Their laughter echoed over the comms channel, punctuated by the clink of bottles and bones and the heavy thrum of bass.

  The Red Vulture belched white smoke as it barreled straight into the maw of that silent, steel titan. The turrets swiveled in unison, their targeting beams locking onto the approaching vehicle with mechanical precision. Alina gripped the yoke, her knuckles bleeding through the gloves.

  Inside the turret compartment, Chen Feng lay unconscious, his hand still clenched around the manual crank. Flora Rosenkrantz pressed against the bulkhead, her ruined chest plate creaking with each breath.