DEATH TO ROACHES

[SLAYER LOG - DAY 3, NEURO-5]

"This him?" a voice asked.

"That's him," a gruff voice answered back.

I blinked my eyes to see a blurry outline of a large frame standing above me as I lay on my cot. As my eyes focused, I saw Brogan standing next to a lanky guy with bright green eyes and a wet mop of shaggy dark hair. He was tossing a bruised apple in the air, grinning like he hadn't a care in the world.

"Man, they really are scraping the bottom of the barrel with the fresh meat these days, huh?" the younger guy said.

I groaned, kicking off the thin and scratchy blanket and pushing myself up from the rock-hard mattress. "What time is it?"

"0430. On your feet, we're rolling out," Brogan barked.

The younger guy tossed the apple at my chest. "Name's Buckley. I already scavenged some kit together for you. Let's move. Also, what dumb job did they stick you in?"

"He's a damn cook, Buckley," Brogan grunted, aggressively rubbing his temples. "He works in the damn kitchen."

"Well, how was I supposed to know that?"

"You'd know if you didn't sleep through lunch every single day."

"I make do, alright?" Buckley shot back.

"Because you're a damn dumpster diver," Brogan said.

"Waste not, want not, geezer."

A dull ache flared in my lower back as I swung my legs over the edge of the cot. Down the narrow barracks corridor, the rest of the cots were still lined with sleeping bodies, completely dead to the world. Only the three of us were awake. My forearms felt cramped, a tightness from peeling potatoes and shucking corn nonstop since Kyles handed me off to Jensen.

"I thought we weren't leaving this early," I said.

"Ares wants an early jump so we hit the communication relay site before sundown," Buckley said, casually tossing my pack onto the flimsy mattress. "Gives us more daylight on route. Trust me, it's better this way."

"Last thing anyone needs is getting caught bare-assed in a hot zone when the Spawn can ambush you," Brogan said. "If you're running with us, fresh meat, you move on our schedule."

"Akers said rollout was at 0600, though."

Brogan scoffed. "Akers only gives a damn that the job gets done. That lady doesn't care how many minutes early we leave. This ain't the Marines, fresh meat."

"Rules are a little more flexible out here," Buckley added with a wink. "Now grab that pack and let's move."

I let out a loud yawn. This marked the second night in a row I had barely slept. "Do we at least have coffee?" I asked, bracing for the inevitable no.

"Actually, hell yes, we do," Buckley said.

Brogan tapped his boot with blatant impatience. "Yeah, now hurry your ass up and let's move."

I quickly yanked on my pants and hoisted the pack. It was considerably heavier than I had hoped.

Brogan turned and headed for the barracks hatchway. "You got Peeps already, right?"

Buckley pulled a crumpled cigarette from his pocket, sparking it with a cheap lighter and exhaling a plume of dense gray smoke. "Yep. Woke good ol' Four Eyes up twenty minutes ago."

When we stepped out into the already humid morning air, the staging tarmac was quiet. Ares was already there alongside the woman who'd been sitting across from him in the mess hall yesterday. Hovering nervously beside them was who I assumed had to be Peeps: a bone-thin kid in thick-rimmed glasses, clutching a standard-issue Tark pistol like it was the only valuable thing he had. He was dressed in the exact same drab, ill-fitting pants and shirt as me. He looked down and quickly bent to tie his boots.

Brogan offered what I was quickly learning was his signature grunt. Ares didn't look up; he was hunched over his rifle, working a small screwdriver into the optic housing. He lined up the crosshairs against a battered shipping crate in the distance.

"That's better," Ares said, finally lowering the weapon.

"Fresh meat asked for coffee," Buckley offered in defense.

Ares glanced over at me, his face unreadable. "My thermos is on the crate by the wall, fresh meat."

I spotted an insulated metal canister next to a pair of dented tin cups. "Thanks."

"Make it snappy," Ares said, slinging the rifle over his shoulder. "I want to head out before Akers wakes up. The last thing I want to hear is her barking orders again."

I poured the steaming, tar-like black brew and took a hesitant sip. It was bitter, burnt, and tasted vaguely of thick, dirty oil, but the scalding caffeine hit was a godsend. "Didn't expect real coffee out here, honestly."

"It's strictly meant for the Marines," Ares said. "We happen to have a lucrative trade agreement."

Buckley slammed a magazine into his AVT-19. I recognized it: a cheap, mass-produced semi-automatic workhorse built to survive mud, grit, and neglected maintenance. Ares, on the other hand, was checking the optic on a sleek, heavy-caliber custom piece that looked like it cost more than my life.

"Lex, blade sharp?" Ares asked, adjusting his chest plate.

Lexie didn't answer. She drew her matte-black Fractal-Blade from its scabbard. She squeezed the molded hilt, and an ultrasonic energy pulse shrieked along the high-carbon edge, blurring the metal. It was designed to effortlessly shear through Spawn armor. I'd seen a recruit nearly sever another guy's arm off with one during basic training. I took a half-step back.

My ZS-33 chimed softly. I looked down at the display glowing against my forearm:

[NOTIFICATION: NEW NAV-WAYPOINT LOADED]

[OBJECTIVE: COMM RELAY TOWER]

[DISTANCE: 8.5 KM]

"Gonna be quite the hike for you green guys," Buckley remarked, adjusting the shoulder straps on his webbing.

"If they can't hump it that far, we might as well put a bullet in their legs and leave them here," Lexie replied. She was field-stripping an SRV-33 submachine gun, a compact, close-quarters firearm with a fluted barrel capped by a suppressor.

"I can do it, Lexie," Peeps spoke eagerly, nervously holstering his standard Tark 9mm sidearm. "I swear, I won't slow anyone down."

"You damn well better not!" Brogan yelled. He was donning heavy armor with bulky shoulder pads, the right one fitted with a large, black carbon sphere. I stood there trying to figure out what it did, but was at a loss.

As I opened my pack, I could see the various things that Buckley had packed for me, but what really mattered was my Tark pistol, cleaned and reloaded, and the holster I pulled out. My ZS-33 beeped again as I started to attach my holster to my loose belt. Before I knew it, the holster had pulled itself into place.

[NOTIFICATION: INVENTORY ITEM]

[ITEM: TARK 9MM]

[AMMO TYPE: STANDARD FMJ]

[COUNT: 30/30]

I studied the pistol, trying to recall everything I'd learned on the firing range. Gripping it with both hands, I lined up the iron sights on the same crate Ares had used to test his rifle. I lowered it, loaded one into the chamber, and slid it neatly into the holster.

"Let's get moving," Ares commanded, turning on his heel toward the reinforced blast doors at the fort's main threshold.

As the veterans fell into a loose file behind Ares, Peeps stepped alongside me and held out a hand. "Peeps, by the way."

I reached out and shook it. His palm was damp and cold.

"It's good having another new face around," Peeps rambled under his breath. "The last recruit didn't even last two rotations. Brogan swore that if another rookie ate it and I got paired with them again, he was gonna start calling me 'Fresh Meat' all over again."

I pulled my hand back from his clammy grip. "Basham. Everyone calls me Bash."

"Bash. I like it. If you manage to stay breathing out there, maybe the veterans will start using it."

"Can I ask you something?" I murmured.

Ahead of us, Lexie snapped her head around, leveling a glare so sharp it felt like a warning shot over our heads. We both instinctively shut our mouths and quickened our pace toward the gate.

"How long have you been stuck here?" I whispered once Lexie turned back.

"Six months. And I'm still the newest surviving Slayer on the camp roster."

"The others died?"

"All four recruits shipped in after me died within weeks," Peeps said, his voice dropping into a flat, grim cadence. "The last one plummeted off a sheer canyon shelf running for his life from the Spawn."

"He fell off a cliff?"

"Some of the others claim he gave up and jumped," Peeps replied, looking down at his dusty boots. "From what I heard, though, he just panicked and tripped backward over the edge trying to dodge three broodies."

"Jesus."

Ares raised a gloved hand and halted twenty yards short of the inner perimeter gates. "Doorstop! We're clearing out for the communication relay!"

"Doorstop swapped shifts tonight," someone yelled out.

"Oh god, Mickey, is that you?" Brogan called back, now frowning in annoyance.

A scruffy gate guard in rumpled fatigue pants stepped out from a reinforced sentry box, rubbing his eyes and yawning loudly. "Damn it, guys. Why can't you ever roll out on Akers' posted schedule? Every time you four draw outside duty, my sleep rotation gets completely trashed."

Brogan took two heavy, menacing strides toward the sentry booth, his hand resting on the grip of his rifle. "Mickey, I swear to God, if you don't press the button to cycle those hydraulics right now, I'm gonna paint this booth with your brains."

"Fine, no need to be an asshole about it," Mickey grumbled, stepping back defensively. "All I am saying, a little courtesy wouldn't kill you."

"Literally your only job in this whole damn place is opening and closing this gate!" Lexie snapped. "Open the damn door!"

Muttering under his breath, Mickey ducked behind the security pedestal and swept the sensor face of his ZS-33 over the authentication pad. A high-pitched confirmation chime rang out. He threw the mechanical breaker, and with a deafening screech of grinding industrial gears, the reinforced steel slabs began to slide apart.

As we walked out of the gate, I could see the asphalt road, similar to the one I had slept on, but this one had been cleared out completely of any trees for at least half a mile.

❖

We halted at the edge of a dense treeline. The forest looked eerily familiar, similar to the brush and thickets I had stumbled through before crashing into the Slayer guard post, the kind of woods where I had first met a Spawn. Deep shadows pooled underneath the canopy, a relief I desperately welcomed after trudging for miles along the cracked, heat-baked asphalt road. Neuro-5's sun was merciless, soaking my shirt in sweat and sending stinging droplets from my forehead into my eyes.

Peeps and I hung back almost a dozen feet while the four veterans fanned out, staring intently into the dark underbrush.

"Don't like it," Brogan said.

"We knew cutting through here was the fastest route to the relay, old man," Ares replied smoothly. "Buckley, what's your drone cooldown sitting at after that rank-up?"

"Down to about forty-five minutes."

"Better than the fifty-five it used to take," Brogan replied. "Still, you sure we want to pop his drones out this early, Ares?"

"With how muggy and warm it is today, I guarantee these woods are crawling with roachies."

Brogan sneered, spitting into the dust. "Hate those damn things."

"You'd think a big, strapping, slightly past-his-prime fella like yourself wouldn't be terrified of a few overgrown bugs," Buckley teased. He dropped to one knee and unclipped a pair of small, matte-silver drones from his armor. Each unit had twin enclosed rotors and a cluster of multi-spectrum optical lenses mounted on a gimbal beneath the chassis.

"If we hustle through the canopy now, the cooldown will reset by the time we hit the relay tower, and you can send them out again before nightfall," Ares reasoned.

Buckley tapped a command into the holographic interface of his ZS-33. A second later, a high-pitched electric whine cut through the humid air as the rotors spun up, lifting the drones neatly off the dirt and sending them humming into the shadowed canopy ahead.

The three other veteran Slayers gathered around Buckley as his holographic display expanded into a 3D map. A chorus of rapid pings and beeps echoed from the projector as clusters of dark red blips lit up the feed.

"A whole lot of heat signatures in there," Lexie said, crossing her arms.

"Ideal conditions for roachies: damp, humid, and plenty of canopy shade," Ares said calmly.

"An absolute assload of them, too," Buckley sighed.

I leaned over their shoulders and watched the holomap turn into an angry swarm of pulsing red dots. Scores of Spawn had turned this stretch of forest into a massive colony.

"Looks like multiple nests," Buckley added, zooming the telemetry feed in closer.

Peeps leaned in toward my ear, his voice barely above a nervous whisper. "Did they cover roachies during your basic?"

"No. Never saw one."

"Nasty little bastards," Peeps said, shifting his grip on his holstered Tark. "Look almost identical to the super-roaches that infest the sewer conduits on the waste recycling moons, only about twice the size and armed with jaw pincers that can shred right through synthetic plating."

"Well, let's not just stand here, we need to get a move on," Ares directed before jogging inside the treeline.

"Really hate it here," Buckley grumbled before he ran inside himself. Lexie charged in right behind him, as Brogan looked back to the two of us.

"Try to keep up."

Peeps gave a shrug before unclipping his sidearm and jogging into the shadows after the veteran squad. "See you on the other side!"

My ZS-33 beeped, projecting a compact HUD just above my forearm. Translucent status gauges appeared for every member of the squad, tracking vitals, ammunition, and stamina in real time. Another feature nobody had mentioned. I vaulted over an exposed root system, ducked under curled branches, and prayed my clothes wouldn't snag on the thorn thickets.

"Pick up the pace, fresh meat!" Buckley yelled back over his shoulder.

Ahead of me, the seasoned Slayers moved through the dense brush with fluid, synchronized efficiency. Peeps was running a few yards in front of me, struggling with his pack, when a wet thud echoed from the canopy above.

Something grotesque dropped straight out of the foliage and landed heavily on his right shoulder.

It was nearly two feet long, covered in mottled, olive-green chitin that glistened with sickly slime. It resembled an overgrown, armored cockroach, except its mouthparts were flanked by jagged, serrated pincers that flexed hungrily with a sharp, ear-splitting hiss.

"Peeps! On your shoulder!" I yelled.

Peeps whipped his head around, his eyes going wide with pure terror behind his thick lenses.

"Get it off me!" he shrieked, flailing wildly and jerking his torso to dislodge the creature.

The roachie dug its hooked claws deeper into the strap of his pack, anchoring itself. It reared back, mandibles snapping wide, aiming directly for his exposed ear and throat.

I lunged forward, running on pure adrenaline with zero plan other than trying to rip the thing off him with my bare hands. "Hold still!"

Before my fingers even grazed it, an ultrasonic shriek sliced the air.

Lexie's matte-black blade flashed between us in a lethal blur. The tip of her Fractal-Blade punched clean through the creature's armored thorax like it was wet paper, searing its innards with a burst of blue resonance.

The Spawn gave a choked, bubbling gurgle as Lexie, completely expressionless, used the flat of her blade to lever the thrashing carcass off Peeps' shoulder. With a sharp flick of her wrist, she hurled the dead roachie into the dirt.

It hit the ground limp, oozing foul-smelling green ichor into a bed of dead leaves.

Lexie stood directly in front of Peeps, eyes cold as ice. "This is what happens when you lag behind!" she snarled, wiping the blade clean on a tree trunk.

Ares kept his rifle trained on the swaying canopy overhead. "Tighten up! On me, now! Looks like it's about to rain!"

I scrambled toward him with the others. Brogan clamped a heavy, calloused hand onto the collar of my shirt, violently hauling me into the center of the pocket until our shoulders knocked together.

"I hate these damn things," Brogan said, setting his stance wide.

"Not exactly my favorite weather either," Buckley chimed in, leaning into the huddle with his rifle raised.

High above, the dense foliage trembled. Dozens of glistening, chitinous carapaces slithered along the twisting boughs, clacking their serrated mandibles in an escalating, deafening chorus. I hauled the Tark sidearm from my holster with slick, trembling fingers and pointed the barrel toward the shadows. The sheer mass of them made my chest tighten.

"Steady, old man," Ares murmured, his finger hovering over the trigger.

"I know what I'm doing, Ares!" Brogan barked back.

The first wave crept out to the thinnest branches directly overhead. Their limbs gathered, coiling like springs.

"What do we do?" I shouted over the hissing, panic rising in my throat.

"Bring an umbrella, I suppose," Buckley quipped.

The first roachie dropped. It descended belly-first right toward my face, its slime-covered pincers snapping wide, half a dozen more detaching from the limbs behind it in a coordinated dive.

Brogan slammed his palm against the carbon sphere mounted to his shoulder rig.

A radiant sapphire light flared instantly, expanding into a humming, hexagonal kinetic grid spanning ten feet across. The descending swarm of Spawn slammed violently into the hard light. Heavy, chitinous bodies rattled across the blue honeycomb with dull, sickening thuds before tumbling helplessly off the curvature into the mud.

"Cut those bugs down the second they hit the dirt!" Ares roared.

Ares opened up on semi-auto, his rifle barking with rhythmic, devastating precision. Lexie brought her suppressed SRV-33 to bear, chewing through the writhing pile with muffled, stuttering bursts of high-caliber rounds. Buckley's AVT-19 cracked beside my ear, spraying dirt, severed legs, and foul green fluid across the ground.

I stood completely frozen, hypnotized by the deafening roar of automatic fire, until a sharp elbow slammed into my ribs and knocked the wind out of me.

"Shoot them, you idiot!" Lexie screamed over the gunfire, her eyes blazing.

The paralysis shattered. I hauled my Tark up, locked onto a roachie scrambling directly toward my boot, and squeezed the trigger. The 9mm slug tore through the back of the Spawn's body. It let me know with a piercing shriek as green blood erupted into the mud, its hooked legs twitching violently before collapsing.

"Keep firing until nothing moves!" Ares shouted over the gunfire.

The kinetic shield flickered and died with a high-pitched whine. Brogan leveled his mammoth custom rifle from the hip and pulled the trigger. The thunderous boom slammed against my eardrums like an artillery shell. A 25mm slug struck the center of the largest cluster yards away, ripping a small crater in the forest floor and detonating three roachies into a spray of scorched shrapnel and flying limbs.

A few yards to my left, Peeps emptied the rest of his magazine into a twitching carapace, his hands shaking so violently that brass casings went scattering into the brush.

Gradually, the deafening roar of gunfire tapered off into silence, punctuated only by the sizzle of scorched chitin and the sharp crack of Brogan putting a final round through a mangled head. The air reeked of cordite, ozone, and the sour, ammonia tang of insect blood. Dozens of crushed, smoking carcasses littered the forest floor around our perimeter, their hooked legs giving faint, dying shivers in the mud.

A chime trilled at my wrist. The holographic HUD flickered to life over my forearm:

[NOTIFICATION: KILLS CONFIRMED]

[SPAWN TYPE: ROACH]

[+95 SLAYER CREDITS ADDED TO BALANCE]

[+110 EXPERIENCE GAINED]

A slender progress bar flared bright amber beneath my vitals readout, sitting a little past the halfway mark to Rank 2.

Buckley strolled over, nudging a shattered shell with the toe of his combat boot before giving me a broad grin. "Look at that! Fresh meat's already halfway to Rank Two."

"Let's pray the fresh meat cooks better than he shoots," Brogan grunted, lifting his barrel and blowing on the white smoke pluming from it. "Took him five seconds of looking around with his thumb in his ass before he figured out where the trigger was."

Lexie didn't say a word. She merely crushed a roachie under her boot's heel, smashing its body with a sickening crunch. "Now what, Ares?"

"We need to get out of these woods before more roachies come," Ares ordered, scanning the canopy one last time before slinging his rifle back into a low ready. "The relay tower should be past the clearing ahead. We can set up camp there."

Buckley pulled out his crumpled pack of cigarettes, tapped one loose, and lit it. "Let's get the hell out of here."

I already knew a Slayer's life was horrible. I just wondered how long mine would have lasted without Ares and his squad.