CHAPTER ONE

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'I can assure you we are here with only the best of intentions.'

Crysis didn't think that this would be the statement that got them out of the few dozen XF-38 Betas that were pointed at the three of them, but stranger things had happened. He felt Heratrix at his shoulder, coldly calculating their odds of making it out alive. He could almost hear the cogs ticking in her head. He wasn't sure he would like what they came up with.

'People have a habit of saying that,' said the leader of the hooded men surrounding them, standing back from the main ring and unsighted to the trio caught in the ring. 'Normally we just shoot them dead. However, given the circumstances, a little more questioning is in order.'

They stood on the mountainous terrain of a desolate planet, where the wind howled through blackened rocks and geysers shot great clouds of gas into an air that smelled strongly of sulphur. No plant life grew here, or not that Crysis knew of; 'a god-forsaken rock' was the best description he could come up with. Not far off he saw the flickering lights of the ships their captors had arrived in.

Crysis' leather coat got a tug at the elbow.

'Sorry 'bout that alarm,' Skreem said. The little Aldesarian girl with murderous tendencies had not a single note of apology in her voice. Her living pigtails smiled sheepishly at Crysis and flopped back down again on her shoulders.

'Don't mention it,' Crysis said, sighing as he tuned the wailing of the Mothership's siren back into his ears. 'We'll get out of this somehow.'

'You sure about that?' Heratrix asked without a hint of emotion. Crysis knew she had emotions, but very often he wondered if she borrowed them off people when they needed to be shown.

'Please,' the hooded leader said. 'Don't let me interrupt. Take all the time you need.'

'All the time we need?' Skreem asked. 'We couldn't make a deal that that's about the time it takes for us to make a run for the other side of the galaxy, could we?'

'That's not helping, Skreem,' Heratrix said. Her cold blue eyes surveyed the gun barrels, looking to see which one's owner looked the easiest to overpower. With all of them hooded under dark cloaks, however, that was hard to tell. Each figure was shrouded head to toe in black with not even a nose in the dying light of the second moon.

The three in the centre of the circle slowly rotated to the right, shuffling almost imperceptibly. Crysis could feel Skreem shuddering against him; for all her jokes it seemed she could still be scared. A new experience for her perhaps. From Heratrix he felt nothing save for the rustle of cloth on cloth and the vibrations from her boot treading the soft, muddy ground of Gvora.

'Anyone would think,' the leader said in his deep voice, echoing from somewhere at the back of the circle, 'that you were here to spy on us.'

'Nothing wrong with coming to a deserted planet for a little R and R, is there?' Crysis asked. He could feel his palms sweating, growing cold in the night air, raised in surrender.

'When two of you are human,' the leader replied, 'it would make anyone think you come from The Empire.'

'Which empire would that be? It's a lot of space up there, so you're going to have to be more specific.'

'Funny, this one.'

'Trust me,' Skreem said, 'he isn't. His jokes are absolute crap. You haven't put up with them for the last few years.'

'Hey,' Crysis said, 'they aren't that bad.'

'Even Heratrix doesn't like them, Crysis, and she's got no emotions.'

'Before this charade continues for too long,' the voice interrupted, 'I'd like to get the information out of you and then kill you. You'll forgive me for being forward and perhaps a little hasty, but there's a nice bubble bath on my ship waiting for me, and as amusing as you are, Empire spies are a favourite of mine to execute.'

'Who said we were spies?' Heratrix asked.

'She's got a point, you know,' Crysis said. 'All we've done is walked around a bit and now we've got an awful lot of gunage pointed at us ready to fire. Not very welcoming to guests are you?'

'I like guests,' the leader said. 'You, however, I don't.'

In the distance, over the tops of the cloaks, Crysis saw the lip of a gorge. An idea formed. Continuing their circling, Crysis pushed the rotating crowd slowly towards the great crack in the ground, inch by inch, step by step.

Crysis felt Heratrix's arm buzz. He held his breath, hoping it was inaudible.

'So if you aren't spies, then who are you?'

'Ummm, yeah,' Crysis said. 'We're, uhhh...'

'Builders,' Skreem said.

'Builders? Builders, Skreem? That's the best you could come up with?'

'Well you weren't coming up with anything, so I had to.'

'Yeah,' Crysis said. 'We're builders. But, ah, we're probably also spies on the sidelines. But not for the bad guys.'

'If you're not with The Empire Of Humanity, then who are you with?'

'The BIU?' Skreem suggested.

One of the hooded figures scoffed.

'Silence!'

The figure stopped instantly, the gun returning to its regular, unmoving threat.

'Now. I think that's enough questions. Time to make sure that you don't make it back to Celestria and inform the rest of your Z agents...'

'Z agents? Are you kidding?' Crysis said before burst into laughter. He was almost doubled over, and had to be pulled back upright by Heratrix, whose long blonde hair got in his mouth before he was fully on his feet again. He removed a few hairs and slowly regained his composure. 'Aha, no. Z agents would have twice the funding as we do.'

'More than that,' Skreem said.

'Much more,' Heratrix added.

'Twenty times as much?'

'Infinitely more,' Heratrix stated, 'since we don't get any funding to begin with.'

'Good point well made. I stand corrected.'

'Anyway, what was that you were saying?' Crysis asked.

'Gunners. Take aim!'

The hands behind every barrel tensed, each muscle primed and ready. Crysis could feel death loading itself into each canister, the whine of the metal and the glint off the muzzles were the glints of a thousand scythes ready and waiting in the hands of the great reaper of souls.

'Wait, wait, wait.' Crysis said. 'You don't want to kill us just yet. You really don't.'

'We've so much more we can offer,' Skreem said. 'You could use us for, whatever it is you could use us for. You know, in general labour, or war efforts, or evil villain plans.'

'Also I've got a bomb.'

Heratrix turned to him, incredulous. 'A bomb? You've got a bomb? Since when did you bring that and not tell us?'

Crysis shrugged. 'I figured it might be useful at some point.'

Skreem pointed to the sky at the ship coming towards them. 'I assume you didn't tell them, either.'

Every barrel swivelled towards the underbelly of one of the small ships that had previously been parked along with all the others on a nearby cliff top. It sped towards them with rescue attempts emblazoned in its reckless haste.

Crysis lunged.

He broke through the ring around them, pushing cloaked figures wide, sending red blasts wide. Heratrix followed after him, Skreem quickly wrestling a gun off one of the figures in the confusion and firing back with expert precision and technique. The three of them ran for the gorge, the ship overhead taking blast after blast.

'You're not,' Heratrix yelled as she saw Crysis' plan, hair flying behind her like a cape.

'Live a little,' Crysis called back, a determined grimace mixed with a wild grin on his face. 'Skreem, run for it!'

'Oh fuck off. I like shooting people,' she said, dropping the gun and turning. Shots rained after them, kicking up showers of dirt and mud, fragments of rock raining down on them and nicking at their skin. Behind them, the leader of the hooded figures was calling out orders, and the blasts fired at the fleeing trio began to get closer to the mark.

At the lip of the gorge Crysis spun and took a small device out of his bag. It was cuboid in shape, silver, and had several switches and dials on its surface. He held it aloft and the three of them stood with their backs to the canyon drop, heels sending gravel skittering over the edge.

'I'll set it off!' Crysis yelled. The shots came to a halt, and for several seconds as the crowd closed in it was as if the world had boiled down to a single round of poker, winner takes all. 'Don't come any closer!'

The ship over head sailed past them and dropped into the gorge.

'Well,' Crysis said. 'Not really.'

He leant back and plummeted off the edge of the cliff like a leering martyr.

'Ah shit,' Skreem said, turning and jumping over, hand in hand with Heratrix.

The three of them fell and landed on the front screen on the ship, Heratrix and Skreem letting go of one another on impact. Crysis and Heratrix grabbed onto the lip of the front of the craft, but Skreem found nothing to purchase on and as the craft began to move off again, she began to slide off the side.

'Grab it!' Crysis yelled, holding his bag by the strap. As they began to race along the river at the bottom of the gorge, shots raining down from above, she managed to get two fingers entwined in the fabric of the bag and gripped with strength fuelled mainly by fear and adrenaline. The waters underneath them parted as the ship threaded its needle before, a minute later, out of range of the firing guns, slowing down to a stop.

The three on the front of the ship slid off and the doorway hatch opened up.

'You're off the fucking chain, Crysis,' said the Merkiosen pilot, peeking out from the craft. All five eyes laughed at him.

'I'm just confident in your abilities,' Crysis said, clambering into the ship. Skreem, still shaking from her near-death experience followed him in, with Heratrix pushing past them all and managing to squeeze into the holding bay at the back with no small effort of contortionism.

In the co-pilot's chair the Kakr, in all her great, brutish, bull-like leering, turned to Crysis with her hand outstretched.

'What's up, Rokoara?' Crysis asked, before understanding her. 'Oh, sorry.' He handed the guitar foot-pedal he had pretended was a bomb back to its owner.

'You're not borrowing it again,' Rokoara said. 'Doone, get us out of here.'

'I'm on it,' the Merkiosen said. The doorway closed with a hiss, the sound of an older craft. Pulling back on the controls the little, bug-like ship lifted up from the ground. A few moments later it was firing into the sky, a stream of blue behind it like a shooting star.

'You might want to shift it a little faster, Doone,' Skreem said, looking behind her. 'Those guys will be on us before long.'

'This thing was parked over a mile away from you, with nobody on board. It'll take 'em a good five-ten minutes to get at us, by which time we'll be long gone.'

'You'd better be right,' Crysis said. 'You ok back there, Hera?'

'Tucked in just nicely, thank you,' Heratrix replied.

'Hey,' Skreem said, elbowing Crysis. 'You hear that? I think she just made a joke.'

'The sociopath makes an attempt at humour,' Rokoara said from the front of the craft. 'Whatever next?'

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