Sigils of an electric mind - Nesrin Khan

[Enkidu]

“Rookeye three to Billman, you read Billman? We have go order, painting north wall.”

“Cop’. Breaching in fifteen seconds, get flat or get flattened!”

Twenty tonnes of concrete resonated to a roll of timpanis, shotgunning the simulated soldier behind into a thin, gelatinous nothingness as his cover rolled over him, pixels fizzling into gore.


“Rookeye in the structure! Tang.”

Bilman dropped the detonator switches and sprinted down the hillside, tracer zipping at her feet. She sprawled, sucking the dirt between her teeth, an eyeful of alien loam.

“They’re spraying the ridgeside - can’t move out of here till you nix out that firebase.” Billman choked into her radio, spitting fake earth. It was convincingly craptastic to the taste.

Rookeye. When you typed it into the roster even the grammar VI knew you actually meant Rookie. The truth of the callsign was so institutionalised you’d get away with in on your debriefing forms.

“FNG, Rookeye four, you’re meant to be an expectant. Lie flat, scream and stop standing prone!”

“But the ground’s burning hot, sir!?”

Billman winced and tucked herself into the smallest profile ball she could as the simulated bolder disintegrated around her, plasma bolts nicking at the helmet. Either the autogun would cease or the simulation would fail and she’d be hunched in a freezing cold simulation chamber with a cracked rib with a load of bawling Rookeyes. Anything but the first.

“Target down sir!” Came the jubilant cry of Rookeye three as the laser spat its final hiss. He didn’t sound like he believed it either. Billman spat a cuss.

---

THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)

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