Changeling

Nestra tuned him out and returned to her office. She managed to finish all the paperwork in record time thanks to the fact no one was accusing her of anything. Bard showed up half an hour later looking frazzled.

“Chief says we should talk to Gorge then we get the rest of the day off.”

Nestra checked the time. It was barely past eleven. Half a day off in exchange for talking to Gorge was a fair deal. She gestured to Bard to open the way and he did.

Beta squad’s offices were across the aisle, separated from alpha by a tiny corridor and the staircase, yet it might just have been a canyon. Camus and Gorge hated each other. Nestra braced for the inevitable shitstorm as they found beta sitting around an open space with coffee that suspiciously smelled like cheap vodka. Gorge made an exaggerated turn at their coming as if he’d not heard the door open. He was a heavyset man with small, deep black eyes. He was entirely shaved and his face was covered in scars, the nose broken to an amorphous plum.

“And look who I got instead, the clown and the ice bitch. Fantastic.”

“Nice to see you too,” Nestra replied.

Gorge’s teeth clenched so hard she could see every muscle tense under his skin.

“Look, we’re sorry about—”

“Shut the fuck up. You say his name, I’ll kick your teeth in.”

”Guess that’s it. We’re leaving then.”

“That’s it, you fucking psycho. If you were a dyke, if you got pissed, if you screamed, I’d get it. I would. But you’re just this cold dead frigid fish with nothing inside like you’re an iceling wearing people's skin… What are you doing?”

Nestra finished putting on her eye piece.

“That’s me giving you a nice warning that I’m recording each and every last one of our little talks. And I got HR on speed dial.”

“See, this is exactly what I mean. You’re worse than the fucking rat squad. At least they were scummy from the start.”

“Nice to see the good old boy spirit alive and kicking. I’ll be candid with you, as a thanks. I don’t give a shit about fitting in or your squad or you or my career here because not only are you a rotten bastard, we’re all on the fast track to unemployment. So we’re going to be polite while we’re working together or I’ll make sure you’re out on your ass with no severance package before you can say ‘ethics committee’. We clear?”

Gorge bit back what he was trying to say. His dark glare bore into Nestra’s. She’d had worse.

“See that’s why no one likes you, clit hernia. You think you’re trying to be us but you’ll always look down on us because in the end, you’re not a cop. You were never a cop. You’re just a failed gleam cosplaying law enforcement. Keep toting that sword of yours because that’s the closest you’ll get to being a raider.”

“Riel, Gorge, I am undone. Been taking profiler classes?”

Gorge sighed, deflating. That was weird. The man was like a bulldog. He never let go once he had his teeth in something.

“Why am I getting mad at you? You’re a lost cause. Guess that’s how it ends. Six cunts on a bench giving each other shit.”

Nestra frowned. Besides Gorge, there was Nuts who was the close quarter specialist, Pudding, their gunner, and Preach, the last remaining medic. Nuts was insane thanks to his augments, Pudding out of shape though he was a quirkie, and Preach was too old. She suspected Preach had a death wish. They all lounged, listless. Beaten.

“Where’s Philipps?” Nestra asked.

“He quit this morning. Stib will be doing drone work for us now. Regis… his loss was too much.”

One squad left. There were four of them when Nestra had started four years before. Things had gone downhill fast.

“I don’t like it. We shouldn’t be doing this but we got no choice. We have to run a couple of drills,” Gorge muttered.

“No can do, I’m on the bench. Doctor’s orders.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“Nope! And with this, I’m off.”

“Training ground at 8AM sharp. I don’t want to die because you two drag us down.”

Nestra nodded. That was fine with her.

She and Bard left the place behind.

“Riel, Nes, you know how to make a friend.”

“Gorge only respects those who obey and those who don’t.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Doesn’t matter. Tomorrow. Don’t be late because Kim chewed you out but Gorge will break a finger and claim it was an ‘accident’.”

“Yeah yeah.”

Nestra took the stairs down. She was too annoyed for the lift and the small trip allowed her to cool down. Normally, she’d be going for lunch and then it would be training time, first the range, then today was muscle training. She knew better than to ignore Mazingwe though.

Stib was in the lower hangar, piecing together a light drone of unknown design.

“Hey Stib. New stuff?”

“Scout drone for out-of-wall operations. They got better thermals. It’s a gift from Sector twelve.”

“Nice.”

“You, uh, about to head back? I won’t have lunch. Don’t feel like it.”

“I understand.”

“You’re coming to the service?”

“Yes. Right, you’re in the zone. I won’t bother you anymore.”

“Haha, thanks Nestra. See ya!”

There was only one last thing to do, something important. Nestra sneaked into Camus’ office to take his box of favorite tea. It wasn’t hard. The offices were deserted. She drove to the hospital and dropped it with him.

“Thanks, Nes. The swill they have here. Did you take my cup as well?”

Nestra winced.

Camus picked up a paper cup and sighed. It looked like a toy in his long fingers.

“Park got an offer for severance. He took it. Can’t say I blame him.”

“I didn’t know. I was going to see him next.”

“Double fracture of the tibia. The bone was shattered. Insurance will cover it but… he’ll be out a very long time. It took two hours for the robot to pick every shard.”

Nestra knew what was coming so she chose to forestall it.

“You’re going to tell me to get out.”

“This is serious, Nestra.”

“What about you?”

Camus leaned back in his bed, crossing his arms over the medical corset healing his ribs.

“Not renewing my contract. Still coming back later to lead the unified squad though so hang in there.”

After that, Nestra went to say hello to Park then she drove home. The only way to let the regen capsules work fast was to relax and stretch. She was in the middle of some very slow yoga when her eye piece beeped.

“Yeah?”

“Miss Palladian, this is chief Ruben. I am bypassing Doctor’s Mazingwe’s orders to summon you here. There’s an infestation on the way at the edge of district 15. You are requested to join in with the extermination detail. Sending you the brief now.”

So much for resting.

***

Nestra was forced to dress and leave in record time. It pissed her off. She was not supposed to be on call. Hell, she was not supposed to be working at all but unfortunately, Ruben had the authority to get her there. She set her car on autopilot and pulled the brief up on her visor. A grainy picture of a creature in a warehouse appeared on her feed, pulling behind it a sack of grains of some sort. It had four legs set around a lozenge body from which hung a bulbous sack of flesh. Nestra knew a lamprey mouth would open underneath to latch on whatever the creature could jump on. She knew it well. Manarenae Salticidae Purgamentum.

Trash spiders.

Dokkaebi class. That meant the lowest monsters in the list, below D-class. Bullets would be enough to take them down. There were problems, of course.

One, trash spiders reproduced extremely fast with enough biomass and this one was inside a fucking food warehouse.

Two, as a corollary of one, there was never one trash spider. They were a swarm species.

Three, she would be facing them under a man she’d never worked with before.

Nestra leaned into her seat and sighed. Their armor would stop a bite. Maybe two. The problem was, it was very hard to aim with a flailing, ten-kilogram creature trying to eat your face off. She just hoped that if she were to die, they would rip her throat out so at least it would be quick.

Nestra caught the tail of rush hour but she was at the office in record time. She put on her armor in the empty changing room, then picked up her gun from the armory.

“Cleaned it. Oiled it. Here is your ammo. Class one explosive rounds but I got you a magazine of class two,” the chief told her with a pitying look. “Just in case.”

“Thanks.”

“Come back safe.”

“I promise I’ll try.”

Beta squad was waiting for her by their van. Bard was already there, to her surprise. Gorge greeted her with a ghastly smile under his visor.

“And the princess arrives. If you had stayed to train we wouldn’t be going in like fucking virgins.”

“And I would have been wounded and tired. You’re welcome.”’

He breathed in, breathed out like he was ready to explode.

“I hope that keeps you happy while a spider gnaws your leg off,” he growled.

“Feel free to complain to Mazingwe. If you got the balls.”

Nestra watched her ‘leader’ bite back a comment about her hiding behind the gleams. He knew she didn’t give a shit.

“You got a spine, Palladian. Hope you can aim as well.”

They climbed in. Stib was driving again. She gave Nestra a nod in passing then they were off immediately. Gorge went into serious mode, which Nestra could tell because he was no longer sneering all the damn time. She checked her weapon, just in case. It was an old spitter, the same model that had been mass produced after the incursion for massive civilian distribution. Stubby, compact, easy to maintain, easy to print, it fired twenty 12.7 mm rounds before reload. It had never been improved since base firearms were mostly obsolete. No point in them when army augs and gleams carried most of the fight. A pair of D-class with enough training to coat their weapons could complete their mission right now, and they’d be cheaper too.

“Alright lads,” Gorge said, then his eyes found Nestra and narrowed ever so slightly.

“Alright, folks. Fuck me that will take some getting used to. Have you read the briefing, Nes?”

“Yep.”

“Well we got new info. Here is the sitch. Two warehouses connected by a passage. Sealed exits. No runners so far though we got people on coms checking cameras, just in case.”

“Why would they leave?” Pudding said grimly. “They got everything they want.”

Nestra frowned.

“Those are food warehouses, from enclave farms. High mana. The good stuff.”

“Both of them?” Nestra asked with disbelief.

“Yes.”

“Fuck. Then… that one they caught on cams was an expansion scout. That means…”

“They have a queen,” Gorge said, his eyes keen. “My thoughts exactly. Which leads me to…”

Gorge turned in his seat to open a crate by his feet. Nestra watched him assemble a weapon with morbid curiosity. It had a tank and a mana crystal. Once it was completed, it looked like a top of the art flamer, the kind of stuff reserved for augs, maybe even combat walkers. Definitely not the kind of shit civilians should have access to. Gorge waited once he was done.

“Got it from me cousin.”

“Right. Flames in a food warehouse?”

“I’m not a complete moron, Nes. This is a cryospitter. Surplus. That’s not the fucking question. The fucking question is, what are you gonna do about it?”

Nestra blinked. The fuck was that ab— oooooh.

“You know we’ll all be recorded, right?”

“Yeah yeah. And when Stib sends her report to the boss, she’ll say everything was copacetic. And when the boss sends her report to the brass, after watching our little performance, she’ll also say everything was copacetic. But if there is a, shall we say, discordant voice…”

“Stib?” Nestra asked with some curiosity.

The drone operator was a stickler for protocol. She always double checked everything, dammit.

“I just want you all alive,” she replied.

Stib was in the driver’s seat but Nestra still felt the edge in the woman’s voice.

“I got no problem with personal guns,” Nestra finally replied. “Just don’t spray that shit on me and we’re good.”

“Don’t you worry girl, I’m not wasting valuable fuel on your ass. Here is what we’re gonna do. Breach the first warehouse, then move in all careful like. Standard CQC dokkaebi formation. I take point with my little friend. Pudding and Nuts will support me on the side. Preach takes the center. You two alpha grafts watch the side and back. Stib will provide oversight. Between her and Pudding, we should be able to see the bastards coming at us.”

Gorge waited to see if Nestra would whine. She was a CQC specialist. She also didn’t want to put her sword between a trash spider and a mana-cooled spray. She also understood wanting to have familiar people on one’s side.

“Ok,” Gorge continued. “Soon as we get aggroed, walk back immediately. Spread out if we reach the wall. Rinse and repeat till we get them all.”

“Any cameras inside?” Nestra asked.

“See for yourself.”

She got four feeds on her visor. Two showed locked doors. One showed gutted containers, the steel peeled back like wrappers. The last showed a fat lot of nothing.

“Gunked.”

“At least we know where the nest is,” Nestra said.

The next ten minutes were spent discussing options but the mission was straightforward. Trash spiders were dumb. All dokkaebi class threats were. They just had to make sure they wouldn’t be overwhelmed.

“How the fuck did those trash spiders get in anyway?” Nuts complained.

“Probably a hatchling got mixed in a crate or something,” Nestra explained. “Industrial mana scanners wouldn't pick it up among all that rich grain. They should have all been checked one by one but…”

She shrugged.

“Enclave people think they have better things to do, I suppose.”

“What’s more important than basic public safety?”

“Nuts you fucking donkey,” Gorge replied.

He didn’t even spare a glance at his subordinate. All his attention was devoted to the cryospitter, making sure everything was in place.

“All those enclave folks are uneducated gleams. The perfect combination of overinflated ego and dumbfuckery. You think they want to waste their mana sight on making sure us poor schmucks don’t get our faces eaten off?”

“Why trade with us anyway? I thought them outwall gleams were all tough and stuff. The next evolution of mankind?”

“Because,” Nestra enunciated, “they think they’re the next Riel and spend months waddling through monster guts. Or they think Threshold taking 20% of portal stuff is state-sponsored robbery. Then they come back to their huts and eat unseasoned meat off fucking turtle shells while the mosquitoes turn their asses into braille books. They realize there are no baselines to clean their toilets, cook for them, roast their arabica, do their accounting, shoot their dramas and maybe suck them off. Then, being Riel’s not so glamorous anymore. So they trade for all of that and pretend they’re better than city softies.”

Gorge whistled, seemingly impressed.

“Holy shit Nes, you’re like a documentarian or something. You blew my fucking mind. You should work for the news or something.”

“Thanks for the career advice.”

“We’re almost there,” Stib said, voice tense. “Got a crowd too,”

“Of fucking course,” Gorge grumbled. “Right. Last gear check. Helmets on, visors on, and you all shut the fuck up.”

Nestra climbed out of the van in full gear. The armor and helmet felt comforting, like a second skin that made her safe. She was no longer Nestra under that. Or rather, no one knew she was Nestra, with her mana cravings and the weight of envy on her shoulders. Stib was right. There was a crowd. Beat cops in the blue uniform of Threshold police held back a group of civilians behind holo barriers. A small-time freelancer was already talking excitedly in front of a small drone. Maybe hoping to sell the footage to a news channel. Cries to disperse went unheard. Behind that, a sniveling twat in a designer suit waited next to a tall, powerfully built thug in a cheap suit that screamed muscle. Eye augs were visible behind a pair of sunglasses, showing an ominous red glow.

Most people made way to let Gorge in. An idiot stayed, his complaints turning to a yelp when the old fucker bodied him out of the way. The suit made for Gorge the moment the squad split the cretin sea.

“Good evening. My name is Artemya—”

“I don’t give a shit. What do you want?”

“My employer, User Tornas, would like you to keep warehouse damage to a minimum.”

“Too late, mate.”

“Listen. You don’t seem to understand who you—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Gorge interrupted.

The muscle took a step forward. Gorge flexed his gauntlet and an ominous whistle filled the air.

“Try me chrome boy.”

The squad arranged themselves around Gorge like pissed off gargoyles without prompt. The muscle fell back.

“I thought so. We’re going to clear the spiders then the city will send you the bill and you’ll say yes, sir thank you sir, and file your insurance claim. We’re here because you fucked up and you’re here yapping like a chihuahua because your gleam boss ain’t here, and he ain’t here because he’d have to stay to the side while baselines enter a monster den. And that don’t look too good now, does it? So shut up, fuck off, and don’t get in my way cause I could punch you balls in and the worst thing I’ll get is three days unpaid leave. We clear?”

“I will remember this.”

“You do that, fuckface. You do that.”

Gorge tapped the man’s shoulder in a way that might have looked friendly to an outsider but left him wincing in severe pain. A minute later, they were at the door. It was sealed.

Stib’s drone came to a rest over their head.

“Right. Breach.”

The squad formed a line. Preach slowly slid the warehouse gate open, revealing a dimly lit interior. Containers waited on the left and right in tight ranks, piled to the ceiling in places. Many of them had been savaged and the contents spilled on the ground along with weird, white excretion. Trash spider gunk. An open path led to an open space on the right, and a covered passage to the second warehouse farther forward. Nestra could see more white gunk from where she was.

Stib’s drone flew up and they got a feed. Nothing moved. Stib cycled to heat signature and revealed the unmoving forms of a few spiders hiding in wait near the ceiling. Nestra switched to night vision. The path became clear.

“Right,” Gorge said. “Move in. Nestra. Lock it behind us.”

“Copy that.”

She did as ordered. The gate slid shut with a ging like a death knell. Gorge raised his fist and they formed up behind him. Nestra was left on the left of the formation.

The squad advanced in tight formation, weapons aimed out. No movement, still. Nestra checked Stib’s feed and saw the red spots above them, hidden from them by layers of steel and half-eaten grain. Gorge must have signaled to stop because Nuts touched her elbow. The squad came to a halt.

Gorge shot his sidearm. A shriek of pain answered and a spider fell on the ground, half-pulverized. The three remaining legs contracted one last time. The light reflected strangely on the serrated ends of the limb.

Still no movement. The spiders might be stupid but they were still cunning. That meant ambush.

The squad went deeper. They were halfway down the building when Stib’s voice finally broke the silence.

“Movement. Lots of it.”

“Back up,” Gorge said.

Pudding was the first to shoot. His quirk was eye-based, Nestra remembered. He could see mana through walls. His rifle easily penetrated the thick steel and the first shrieks joined detonations in the familiar song of battle.

The spiders threw themselves at the humans. Screeches, gunshots. The smell of monster blood, musky and thick filled the air in an overload of senses. Nuts’ heavy gun spat death by her side. Nestra’s world narrowed to a slice of warehouse and part of the roof. Line the sights. Pull the trigger. It barked and jumped in her hands. A spider fell with a geyser of yellow ichor. Another. She shot a third as it was making ready to jump on Priest. The corpse fell on someone who faltered but there was a blue woosh and more of the things died. Outside it was hell but inside of Nestra’s head, the world reached a perfection of clarity. Her earplugs blocked most of the sound to protect her eardrums. She licked the air, tasting victory and death fencing on the edge of violence. The deaths of monsters vomited mana into the world. It tried to latch to her and failed but for a single, beautiful instant, she was so very alive.

“Back up, spread out,” Gorge said.

Nestra turned with the rest. They were now a wing retreating calmly towards the door. She covered the sides and forward as well, so her eyes could feast on the destruction. Nuts had mowed down anything that came before them and the path forward was so littered with corpses, one could walk on dead flesh from one end to the other without ever touching the ground. Swaths of frozen ice covered swarms of smaller spiders, newly hatched, pale limbs still soft and tender. Weak. The warehouse was a scene of devastation while more spiders poured in from the passage to their nest, dying in droves. There were dozens of them.

Most of the spiders in the first warehouse had died so all Nestra had to do was to pick off what Nuts missed. Sometimes, Pudding aimed at a container and killed another hidden predator. Things were going well.

Nuts’ gun fell silent.

“Reloading!”

Nestra shot her last four rounds in quick succession, then it was her turn to reload. Something long and sticky hit Nuts’ gun. It jumped from his hands, clattering on the ground. A creature screeched loudly.

“Fuck. Queen. Queen!”

Gorge aimed his cryospitter, only to have the spray redirected by a highly pressurized string of goo. Nestra shot as fast as possible as the last of the swarm burst out of the passage as a single wave, led by a monster the size of a bear.

Nestra saw eight flexible legs over a bulbous body. Dark eyes on dark chitin. Spikes.

Everything happened at once.

Nestra switched to full auto. Nuts grabbed a sidearm. The humans shot everything they had at the incoming tide. A last blue wave froze part of the swarm rather than the queen, then they were overwhelmed.

Nestra dropped her empty gun and unsheathed her sword in the same movement. The baton’s edge turned sharp at a press of a button, slicing a spider in half. She turned and put her hips into a swing that cut another. Priest was fighting off one biting into his arm guard. A thrust killed it.

The queen slammed into Nuts. Two legs found an auged arm, failing to pierce. Another found his flank. It pulled back to strike harder.

Nestra cut and the queen blocked with a limb. The blade bit into muscle like steel ropes.

Nestra pressed a button.

A hundred and fifty thousand volts coursed through the creature’s flesh. It spasmed. Nestra cut a deep furrow on its body and got an eye. Another screech. The queen hurled itself back. Around Nestra, what was left of the swarm died on bullets, knives, and knuckles, their teeth stopped for long enough by steel plates to avoid death. The queen screeched and jumped up. Pudding missed her. Priest did not. A leg flew off. Dark yellow ichor followed the elusive shape in great globules.

The queen half-fell, half threw herself at Nestra. She lifted the blade above her and waited.

The queen could move with blinding speed, just not midair. The two struck at the same time. A limb hit Nestra’s shoulder but her blade fell true, up to down, a perfect strike. Nestra’s motion finished with the tip hitting concrete.

The queen wailed and contracted. Its limbs danced a pathetic jig while organs spilled from the grievous wound like quivering worms. Eyes moved around frantically. They zeroed on Nestra pulling the sword back. She struck down. The blade pierced through the creature’s cephalothorax with a satisfying crunch, pulping the brain stem.

A wave of mana surged through Nestra’s body, a wave of bliss, of relief. Triumph had never tasted so sweet.

And then it failed to find a host, to latch on a core.

Nestra’s mood deflated almost as fast.

Silence returned to the warehouse. The battle was over. Nestra looked around as she picked her gun back up.

In death, the queen was a pathetic sight. The actual body was barely as large as a car tire. The flexible limbs now lie in discarded coils around the ground. It had felt larger than life and now it was just a corpse, not even a big one.

“Nes,” Gorge said.

“Hm?”

“We’re not done.”

Nestra reloaded her gun, wiped gunk off the barrel then aimed. Sloppy. There could be more spiders. With enough time and food, any of them could eventually become a queen.

“Form up.”

The warehouse was a scene of utter devastation. There were holes on the ceiling, in the walls, corpses everywhere. Spent casings littered the ground. Spider blood and goop layered every available surface. Limbs and guts hung off savaged containers vomiting their entrails of grain and greens, crates smashed and stained beyond salvation. It was nasty, stinky, and completely demolished. Nestra couldn’t have fucked it up more if she had tried.

“You’ll be fine,” Priest said while spraying synth skin on Nuts’ flank. The man winced a little. No one else seemed to be hurt.

“You good Nuts?”

“Yessir.”

“Stib, anything still kicking?”

“Nope.”

“Then move out.”

The squad moved around the warehouse. Pudding found two stragglers playing dead, both wounded. After that, they had to clear some of the corpses to go through the passage.

The second warehouse was now a nest. A white substance covered shelves and crates in a massive cradle protecting blocks of eggs held together by sticky goo. A pile of refuse occupied the far end. No corpses in there, at least. Stib and Pudding did one last round but found nothing.

“Well, looks like we hit the jackpot,” Gorge said. “I’ll cryo this one. The others should fetch a nice bounty.”

“Who’ll buy that?” Bard asked.

“Schools for training, mostly,” Nestra said.

“Some labs as well,” Gorge added. “They don’t research trash spiders anymore but they research beasts that eat them. Good money.”

Nestra nodded. It was a decent haul. Tonight, they’d make almost as much as a raider and no one had died for it. All in all, good stuff.

“I notified the recovery division. They’re bitching that their holidays are over.”

“Our gleams are busy with gangs. Can’t sell human parts. At least, not yet,” Gorge chuckled. “Alright you fuckers, let’s pack up.”

The squad left the ravaged warehouse behind. They snickered when the manager walked past them, stopping with a dumbfounded look at the scene of pure mayhem they’d left behind. Gorge pointedly pushed the reporters aside on their way to the van. They climbed up and drove away.

“Nice job, Palladian. You’re solid,” Gorge admitted.

“Riel. Thanks.”

“You’re still a cunt though.”