The Black Garden: Chapter 19

Ironically, it was their Gaussian Silencer Field that gave them away. Five lean, deadly figures, sliding through the thick under-canopy like a pack of wolves in a bubble of unnaturally perfect silence. I was a thousand feet away with my helmet on zoom, crouched in one of the trees with thermo-optic camo enabled. I sucked on a piece of candy while I watched them encircle the bike guns-first. My heat signature, respiration, numonic resonance, my connection to the Noosphere, all of it was shut down. My armor and helmet had turned to mirror, flawlessly merging me into the huge, spade-shaped leaves that drooped around me like a cloak of dark hands.

[TO-Cam and Internal Life Support enabled. 20 minutes until recharge.] My HUD, running on local only, gave me a silent warning.

GSFs were built for stealth in tight quarters—spaceships, aircraft, any environment where sound carried too well. They relied on high-frequency ultrasound to cancel out other soundwaves, which caused some localized turbulence on the outside of the ‘bubble’, so to speak. These guys had been expecting the dense canopy to act like a room and contain the field at ground level. But that wasn’t how trees worked. The main giveaway was vibration. With my Lifesight tuned in, I saw the upper surfaces of hundreds leaves rapidly shiver and jitter as they passed, while countless small mammals sensitive to ultrasound scattered away from the barrier in waves.

I blinked slowly, watching the fireteam spread out to secure the clearing. They didn’t look or move like Nu-suht, but their featureless black armor had the sleek authoritarian look of Nu-suht corporate military gear. Two of the men—I was pretty sure they were men—carried duffel kit bags, while two others held what looked to me like pop-up camp lanterns. As I watched, one of them twisted one of these lanterns open and pulled it out, almost like an accordion—and a wave of death pulsed out through the forest, killing off every biosignature within a hundred feet.

“Fuck me,” I thought. “That’s a fucking portable Breach.”

Tsariel hissed in the back of my mind.

The man carried the fully-extended lantern around the clearing in a circle, killing off every bit of underbrush to remove concealment. While he did that, the others got busy. They dropped their bags to the ground and unzipped them, pulling out mags, grenades and drones. My eyes narrowed as they threw them up into the air. The shuriken-shaped drones formed a lazy circle around the group, scouting the edges of the dead zone. Another of the soldiers joined the one with the lantern and helped him put the two halves of it back together, containing the seething black-red core before it could break through their armor and consume them the same way it had consumed the vegetation.

“Shit. If they pull that thing out while they’re walking, Plan A isn’t going to work.” I rolled the candy in my mouth, frowning. “But they don’t seem to be able to use it at full capacity for long.”

“How could they? It creates wounds in reality. It consumes them as surely as it consumes all else.” Tsariel sawed each word with loathing.

Once they were certain the area was secure, four of them formed up ahead of the fifth, who began to sign with his hands. My ATLAS’s decryptor immediately began working on a translation. A few seconds later, I got a positive: 'Nu-Suht (Tactical Communications Sign Language)’.

“So these assholes really are Nu-suht special forces,” I thought to Tsariel. “Must be vacuum ops guys.”

I didn’t dare scan them directly—I had no idea if their gear had numonic energy detection capability. But I could watch what they were saying.

“... likely nearby. Upper canopy sweep. Heat, motion, reflections—identify and eliminate,” the decryptor picked the squad lead’s orders mid-sentence. “Maintain overlapping sightlines. Shoot anything that moves. Keep the greedlights stable, minimum 92%. Prepare for redeployment but avoid unnecessary exposure.”

“Yes, sir.” The others signed back in perfect synchronization.

“Focus. The field is ours. Maintain dominance.” The commander jerked his fist up in the sharp Nu-suht military salute. “We are the Blind Mice, and our sponsors are watching.”

“We won’t let our sponsors down,” the others signed back in ritual cadence.

Definitely corpos. It was the custom for Nu-Suht units to livestream their missions to special pay-per-view channels, mostly watched by voyeuristic wealthy Nu-suht. I eyed the drones warily. I’d been expecting perimeter drones of some kind, because no squad worth their shit went into the field without them. The guns could be ReMa-enhanced, or the soldiers ReMa users themselves. Talented Kineticists like Blackie could bind magic to weapons or ammo—fire rounds around corners, fold them into someone’s brain to detonate from the inside. That was what he’d done to the husked dogs back in the subway tunnel.

The field is yours, is it? We’ll see about that, Mister Mouse. I backed up along the branch and slithered down the trunk to the ground.

I’d already created a false trail and a counter-ambush site: a swampy gully full of dead leaves and debris. Most of Ideni’s forests had never seen the sole of a boot or the edge of a chainsaw, and beneath the spongy outer skin of decaying biomass grew a vast neural network of fungi. Fungi were reliably one of the most common trans-planetary species in existence, along with viruses, bacteria, and molds, present in some form on every world that had well-developed life. Mushrooms were only the visible, reproductive part of fungi. Their true body was the mycorrhizae that wove through the soil. Much like a brain, the fine white threads carried weak electrical impulses through the entire forest. In some places, the network formed nodes of activity, places where mushrooms would bloom. Once mature, they dispersed their spores in thick, oily clouds that stuck to leaves, skin, and fur. And nanosuits.

I crouched down and slid my fingers into the humus, closing my eyes as I commanded the gloves of the z-suit to retract back to my second knuckle. As bare skin met the mycorrhizae, I concentrated and made my own connection to it—and as I did, I could sense the forest around me for hundreds and hundreds of miles in every direction. It was so rich, so ancient and intelligent that it pulled a soft gasp from my throat. Not a human intelligence. The network of hyphae was a different kind of intellect entirely, in the same way that a non-sentient A.I was intelligent but not self-aware. It was, however, completely conscious of the movement of the Blind Mice, cringing away from the devices they carried. By the direction they were headed, the squad had found my tracks along the riverbank and were headed my way.

They would have one flight of drones and a two-man fireteam leading. The second fireteam, in the middle, would have the lanterns, while their commander watched their six. He was probably also their combat controller, and-or a medic. 

I coaxed the mushrooms to grow with a cocktail of hormones similar to the ones I'd used to seduce Mert. At first, nothing seemed to happen… but then there was a soft rustling, a stirring in the leaves. Around my fingers, several mushrooms wriggled up out of the dirt, gyrating as they assembled at unnatural speed. More followed here and there, poking up through the leaves… and then suddenly, thousands of them. They spread from the epicenter of my hand in a slow wave of glowing yellow-white, blooming with delicate, heart-shaped caps. The mushrooms nodded as they rapidly matured and curled at the edges, revealing their gills and the glowing spores they contained.

“Didn’t expect you to be bioluminescent. That’ll be helpful.” And would be helpful to my opponents, too, if I wasn’t careful. With even with the lightest step, the caps shivered and released their payloads: glowing swirls of spores swirling around my ankles as I pattered to another of the tall, white, smooth-barked trees that proliferated here and swarmed up it like a monkey to the first sturdy branch, assisted by a collection of skittering blade-like legs. There, I hit my camouflage again. I called the Long Hunt to hand, and waited.

[TO-Cam and Internal Life Support enabled. 15 minutes until recharge.]

Below me, the drones hummed into the clearing like deadly wasps. They had no visible lights, only a little ultraviolet blinker that many species were unable to see with the naked eye. The suit masked any traces of respiration while I was in cam mode, but I still had the urge to hold my breath.

The trio of drones paused in a rotating triangle, swiveling as they scanned the clearing. As the ultraviolet passed over the mushrooms, some of them began to bleed glowing streams into the foggy air. The lead fireteam followed, boots crushing the delicate caps underfoot. And the moment the first patch collapsed, the clearing erupted. A radiant cloud roiled into the air, catching the beams of their rifle sights and fracturing them, clinging to armor and sensors.

I watched on with a predator’s stare, readjusting my grip on the sword hilt. "Flashbang ‘em."

Tsariel’s Presence exploded into the clearing: a five-dimensional fractal burst of visual-sensory chaff that ricocheted through the chaotic spores. The drones spun wildly, their sensors screaming as every threat detection feature went off at once. Gunfire spattered the trees as they spun and fired in random directions, bark and branches splintering. The two lead soldiers convulsed as their armor’s artificial muscles malfunctioned, a St. Vitus’s dance that wrenched their limbs in unnatural directions with unnatural force. Involuntary cries of pain rang through the fog. 

I sprung from the bough into the open air. About fifteen feet from the ground, a cat’s cradle of metal burst into existence around me. Feather-like blades slashed the drones apart. The manifolds furled down into a mantle of spider-thin legs that caught my fall and launched me forward at the first Mouse, now truly blind. I passed him in a blur of speed and an arc of blood, arterial jets from the stump of his neck falling away as I closed the gap to the second figure dancing wildly in the glowing fog. He managed to raise his gun. First he lost his arm, then his head.

I broke for the trees as the second fireteam burst into the clearing, guns blazing in near-silence. Bullets punched through bark and branches as I weaved between the trees and their buttress roots.

"The guns are firing from the past." Tsariel said matter-of-factly. The alloy feathers of her wings danced in a cloud, stopping flechette after flechette.

"What do you mean they’re firing from the-?" And then I felt a tearing sensation through my ass and thigh that nearly sent me staggering to hands and knees. I cut the nerves before the pain could overwhelm me. My ATLAS suddenly blared multiple alerts. Hits to my right forearm, the back of my leg and right buttock.

"They began firing as you neutralized the second target.” Tsariel beamed the information into my mind with a touch of sheepishness. “The rounds are time-delayed. The error will not occur again."

"Those fuckers just shot me in the ass!" I caught the stumble and kept running.

"Yes. From the past."

The Z-suit had first-aid functions. As I slid to a stop in heavy brush, it sealed over the numb patches where enchanted spikes of tungsten had pierced it and me in half a dozen places, filling them with quick-stop polymer to stop the bleeding. Even so, my teeth chattered with shock as I reactivated camo and hid down low, waiting and watching for the remaining three men to follow me in. We didn't have to wait long. All three of them jogged easily down the trail, and as they did, a wash of complete silence fell over me and the clearing. No bird sounds, no croaking. The gaussian field caused the nightvision interface to blur, but I felt a savage satisfaction when I saw they were covered in rotten fungal matter. It was right where I wanted them.

I focused on the two in front, the ones with the lanterns. They had just barely cracked them, revealing seething red cores that sucked at them and the life of the forest as they passed by. Tsariel was expecting them this time, pulling her Presence back from me so they didn't pick up on her. As I burned a steady stream of energy, the biomass on their armor began to thicken and multiply. Bacteria, fungi’s ever-present companion, began to spread. Bacteria had one goal: to grow into any space it could find—like the microscopic gaps between nanites.

"Hold up. This shit is causing an error in my rig." The man in the lead signed to his buddy, halting. "Organic contamination. Bring the lantern up. It'll kill it."

It would, but not fast enough. Bacteria had a moderate natural resistance to entropic and Abyssal energy, which was why demons secreted ungodly amounts of antiseptics. That slime was infiltrating their suits and levering the nanites apart. The silencer field was their enemy now, masking any sound I made as I slowly pulled a quantum field disruptor from my belt, thumbed the pin out, and rolled it gently toward their feet. 

I didn’t hear the explosion, but the brilliant flash lit up the forest and sound rushed back in a deafening roar. Thin, wailing shrieks erupted as the bacterial slime surged into the cracks the QFD had blown in their armor. The confused wraithsuits made no distinction between slime and flesh. The soldiers fell to the ground, writhing as their assembler swarms tried to purge the ‘contamination’, and ate them alive.

I resisted the urge to whoop with triumph as I scrambled up from the dirt and into a run. Tsariel’s manifolds flared around me as I leapt from the brush, just before the last stalker fired his time-delayed rounds. This time, she caught them.

The final Mouse was hot on my heels, staccato bursts of gunfire ripping through the forest. But we now had a bigger problem: the controlled breaches within the lanterns were no longer controlled. I could feel the forest dying behind me, a sucking sensation at my back. Trees groaned, toppling as the ground beneath the half-open lanterns began to rot. I dove behind a thick trunk, intending to double back, only to see rounds rip through the white bark seconds ahead of the rifle that fired them. I pulled the second QFD, waiting for the right moment—and was suddenly pulled in against the tree as the last Mouse lunged through a foot and a half of living wood and grabbed me around the throat, crushing it even through the reinforced neck of my suit. I gargled with alarm and hurled the grenade at his feet, bracing as the soldier’s fingers erupted with sharp, mono-edge claws that sliced through armor and flesh like cream.

The grenade went off right beside us, and suddenly all the input from my ATLAS and my Z-suit cut. The suit lost coherence and dragged me to the ground, bleeding from the neck, but the other guy had it worse. His nanites froze mid-phase.

The soldier didn’t make a sound as his hands fell limply from my throat, arms and upper torso tumbling bloodlessly to the ground. I heard his legs do the same from behind.

“FUCK,” I spat, sinking to my knees. The decoherence field had to dissipate before I could move again. Meanwhile, eerie howls rose from the forest, low and guttural. Demons.

"-BRRRZZ-Zealot! Report!" Digger's voice cut in as the grenade finally wound down.

“I’m fine. My systems went down, not my vitals. Five dead.” I trusted Tsariel to keep me covered while my gear began to recover, quivering and then reforming back around my body. My neural wetware came back online first, then the computing functions. “Where are the rest of the Roaches and the Taga? Those assholes were carrying portable Breaches.”

"They were carrying fuckin' WHAT?" Digger's radio discipline lapsed for a moment.

“Breaches. I’m going back. If we get there fast, we can stop it.”

“Z! Don’t be a dumb—"

I cut him off before I could lose my nerve.