by L. Fergus
Razor’s Pass
Ascension, Book 2
L. Fergus
Razor’s Pass
Copyright © 2019 by L. Fergus
Cover art by Mrinmoy Kar
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These are works of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the purchaser.
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@FallenAngelKita
http://FallenAngelKita.com
For my #1 fan.
Here’s your bedtime story.
Contents
Also by L. Fergus
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Thanks to the following Patrons!
About the Author
Call to Action
Sneak Peek
Fall & Rise
Warmache
Angel of Yorq
(Available in paperback version of Birthright)
Birthright
Razor’s Pass
Project Omega
(Available in paperback version of Razor’s Pass)
Fall and Rise
(Coming 2020)
Rebirth
Clouds
Sarin’s War
Li’ve
Twelve Bravo
(Available in paperback version of Li’ve)
BykeChic
The powdery snow glistened in the light of dawn. Kita and Sarge played on the rocks and cliff face while waiting for the men to pack up the camp. Having not slept, she had nothing to pack away.
“It’s not nice to tease those of us who aren’t augmented!” Cowboy yelled at her.
“He’s not,” Kita said, pointing at Sarge.
“This is his native terrain. He’s built for it.”
“You’re just jealous.”
Cowboy grunted. “We have several thousand feet left to climb before we reach the pass. We should start moving.”
Kita sighed as she watched pinks and yellows paint the sky. She bounced down the side of a cliff to her pack. As she strapped it on, growling and chuffing came from all around their campsite.
Kita dropped her pack as six war cats came down from the cliffs. Where there’s one, there are at least three more you don’t see. The humans fell back into a tight circle.
“No sudden moves,” said Kita, “and don’t draw your weapons.”
A large war cat growled and hissed. Sarge answered him and charged up the side of the cliff. The rest of the war cats disappeared into the rock and snow.
“Sarge, come back!” Kita yelled. She took a few steps after him.
“Wait,” Cowboy ordered. “You don’t have time to go looking for your cat. We need to get to the king's camp.”
“I’m not going anywhere without my cat,” Kita called back from where the war cats had gone. “You go ahead. I will catch up when I find him.”
“You are the commander, and you must put your forces above yourself.”
“He is one of my forces, and I will not abandon him. Go!” Kita bound farther up the mountain, and the wind whipped her cloak as she followed a trail of broken snow. The war cats wouldn't normally leave a trail.
I’m gaining on them. I can hear them. The sound of compacting snow stopped, but Kita could still hear the war cats breathing with her augmented ears. Have they reached their destination?
Kita found them high on a crag overlooking a cave. Something guarded the entrance. Using the newly augmented lenses in her eyes, she zoomed in to see what was agitating the cats. The creature had the head of a slender dog and the body of a man. Its skin was glossy black, and when it yawned, it showed a mouth full of needle-like teeth. It wore no cold-weather gear, just a simple loincloth, and it held a spear and a small shield. She had never seen anything like it before, nor heard tales of such a creature.
Sarge licked her hand.
“Why’d you run off? You worried me half to death,” said Kita as she scratched his ears.
Sarge growled and hissed. He motioned toward the cave with his head.
“Let me guess. Something in that cave has your friends upset. And I bet it has to do with the village.”
Sarge rubbed against her leg.
“Guess that’s the right answer. Ok, you guys wait here, and I’ll go see what’s going on.”
Kita traversed cliff faces covered with treacherous ice sheets, around to the cave while keeping to the shadows to stay out of sight of the guard. Nice that Omega’s dowry is so useful so soon.
She climbed to a ledge above the cave and ignored the guard as she dropped behind him without a sound. Ducking into the shadows, she entered the cave. The path made an S curve and then came to an intersection. The smooth walls of the hallway were odd. This wasn’t a natural cave. In Kita’s mind, information on subterranean construction appeared. Judging by how smooth the walls were, this installation had been here a long time. Nothing today could melt walls like this.
Kita slipped silently by a table where several dog-men, like the door guard, busily played a strange game with blocks of wood. Kita continued down the hallway to the right.
The hallway had one door, and she nudged it open. It contained a large barracks with room for around fifty people. Some of the inhabitants, mostly giant pig-like men, were asleep, and the rest sat at a table in the corner next to a massive metal door. Wonder what’s behind door number one. A second regular door was halfway down the right wall.
Too many people to get to the big door unseen. Kita returned to the intersection and went down the left hallway. Doors led to a mess hall that appeared to be combined with a day room. The kitchen was next door. At the end of the hallway, a set of large metal doors stood slightly ajar with a soft wooden clacking coming from within. Kita slipped inside.
She climbed a stack of crates, peeked around the side of the top crate, and gasped. Black pig-men were running a meatpacking plant. Large pulleys driven by a steam engine drove grinders and conveyor belts, and a hanging hook system carried carcasses to different stations. The pig-men were short, stocky, and heavily muscled with long snouts and large tusks. One stopped to briefly talk to another, revealing dozens of tiny needle-like teeth.
Is this where they force the cats to bring their kills? At the beginning of the work line, they forced forward a live war cat. No, this is much worse. A pig-man with a hammer smashed the cat’s skull, and another pair removed the head, feet, and tail and threw them onto a conveyer belt going out of the room. More pig-men gutted and cleaned the body cavity. Afterward, they hung the body on a hook and skinned it. The pelt was sewn into a sack and taken to the grinder, filled with ground meat, and then sealed. The cleaned carcass traveled on the hook to the cutting area.
Kita retched quietly. I’ve cut up my share of bodies, but how can they do this to cats? Unable to take anymore, Kita withdrew behind the crate. The assembly line is moving at a fast pace. It would take a huge number of cats to meet the demand. They aren’t taking them from the wild—otherwise, t
hey’d be extinct—so, where are they coming from?
Climbing down, she snuck through the carnage to the doors where the live cats entered. Inside, her jaw dropped as beads of cold sweat ran down her back. Thousands of cages with chained cats sat in neat rows. Tubes from pipes above and below the cages ran to various orifices of each cat. Some had litters of cubs, and others looked like they were somewhere in the process of gestation.
Clipboards with clear, easy-to-read script hung next to each cage. Kita picked one up. The cat’s gestation period had somehow been accelerated to four days, and the kits grew to maturity in a week. That can't be healthy—for any of them. These cats lacked the spark of life.
In the next row, groups of pig-men grabbed cubs from mothers and shoved them into carriers or pulled grown cats out of cages and placed them into carts. This place made Kita want to cry. After taking a deep breath to get control of her emotions, she made her way to a door across the room.
In this room, she did cry. Hundreds of war cats in cages were stacked ten high with no room to stand. These were not the vegetables from the previous room, but war cats taken from the wild. Their grunting and squealing attracted her attention. Bile climbed up the back of Kita’s throat as a pig-man grabbed a handful of meat from a pelt sack and shoved it into a cage. Oh, this has to stop.
Kita returned to the slaughterhouse door that led to the rest of the facility. She shut them silently and placed a thermite charge, standard gear for an assassin, on the doors’ seam, and ignited it, sealing the door with melted metal.
Pulling the hood of her cloak over her face, she made her skin invisible and threw a flash bomb into the center of the room. A blinding light and loud explosion stunned the workers.
Kita grabbed a pig-man and forced his head between the giant gears driving the hook system. Charging up the stairs to the grinders, she immobilized two pig-men with precision strikes and then fed them into the grinders. The rest she hunted down and dispatched with vengeful ruthlessness.
When the room was silent and the smoke floated in a haze, the sound of whimpering came from behind a piece of machinery. Kita kicked several crates out of the way to reveal a cowering fat, greasy man wearing a bloody apron. Kita lifted him over her head so his feet dangled.
The man trembled, and tears ran down his face. “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. I’m here to supervise, that’s it. This wasn’t my idea; they just pay me. I knew this would make the spirits angry.”
Am I a spirit now? “Pay you to do what?” Kita said in a low growl.
“They paid me to design the system and oversee the workers. If it breaks, I fix it. That’s it, I swear.”
“Who pays you?”
“I don’t know. An agent hired me. He gave me a letter with no name, just a seal with an R and L. The money arrives once a month. The sack is as big as my head. It’s a hundred times what I made in Leedings.” The man looked around nervously.
“Who are you looking for?” Kita hissed.
“No one. Please, let me go.”
Kita dropped him and grabbed his ankle as he fell. She dragged him the long way through the blood and bile of the slaughterhouse and up the stairs to the grinder. Kita held him over the large funnel by his neck.
“Please, no!” the man screamed.
“Who are you worried about?” said Kita.
“I don’t know. They said if I spoke of this place, they’d kill me.”
“What makes you think I won’t?”
Kita raised her hood to reveal the nothingness underneath.
The man’s eyes filled with terror. “What spirit are you?”
Kita pulled him close, whispered, “A fallen angel,” and let go. The man’s scream ended when the grinder smashed through his chest.
Kita went to the breeding room, killed the pig-men there, and found the control room. The control panel had a keyboard under it, and geometric figures filled the screen. Why do I want to say screensaver? Kita tapped the panel, and the figures vanished. A login screen appeared. Next to the control panel was a biometric scanner. She placed her finger inside, and a command screen appeared. Instructions to run a program called breaker.msi appeared in her mind as another program activated in the top corner of the panel. A circular ring appeared in the center of the panel, and when the ring disappeared, the panel unlocked. None of what she saw made any sense. I shouldn’t mess with it, but Cowboy will know what to do. I might kill the cats by mistake. Though, that might be a blessing for them.
In the room filled with cages, she ran down the aisles cutting the doors open. She dispatched groups of pig-men without breaking stride. When she finished, she found the cats refused to leave their cages. Kita examined one. He looked healthy and accepted a head scratch. Something else must be holding them here. I wonder if it has to do with what’s behind door number one?
Kita returned to the doors of the slaughterhouse and cut open the welds with her sword, Dawn. She made her way to the kitchen and dayroom, slipping past the guards playing their game. Kita jammed the lock to the dayroom door and went to the kitchen and discovered a handful of dog-men and pig-men working. Through the serving window, she could see more in the dayroom.
Kita dispatched the kitchen staff without a sound and threw a smoke bomb through the serving window. The dayroom filled with smoke as Kita jumped through the window. With brutal savagery, she slashed and stabbed the dog-men and pig-men, hitting points she knew caused a lot of pain, wanting them to suffer like the war cats before they died. When she finished, the room looked worse than the slaughterhouse.
Satisfied, Kita walked along the hallway, dragging Dusk against the wall to make a loud scratching sound. The guards looked up from their game and jumped to their feet, launching their spears at Kita. She jumped and twisted her way through the barrage. The guards charged, and Kita took up a defensive stance as two guards leaped at her. Kita tossed her swords in the air and caught the pair by their throats. The barbs in her hand injected a nerve agent, killing them as she threw them at the other guards. The guards dodged the bodies as Kita caught her swords. A dog-man snapped at Kita with its mouth, and Kita spun and brought Dawn down on its neck. The last guard tried to flee, but Kita threw Dusk into its back.
She retrieved Dusk and went to the entrance. After tossing the unsuspecting guard off the mountain, she called to Sarge, and a larger group of cats appeared.
“I need your help. I freed a bunch of war cats, but they refuse to leave.”
Sarge and the rest of the war cats sat. There’s still something. But what? It must be what’s in the barracks.
“Oh. I’ll be back.”
Kita returned to the barracks and slipped inside. She ignored the sleeping occupants, concentrating on those in the corner. Leaping, Kita landed in the center of the table, with two quick strokes, four heads hit the ground. Flipping off the table, she slit the throats of those sleeping in their bunks.
With the main room pacified, she went to an innocuous-looking door. I hope this contains something useful and isn’t a closet. She found it locked. She kicked the door in and found several bunks—judging by the clothes lying around this was where the humans stayed. A large man with an angry expression stood behind a desk. Kita turned visible.
“Who the blazes are you? What are you doing in my factory?” he demanded.
“I want information on your operation, and I want what’s behind the door.”
“I’ll die first.”
“Let’s start with the easy part. Who pays for this, and who hired you?”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” Kita drew Dusk.
“A girl with a sword doesn’t scare me.”
“Oh, but it should.”
“Guards!” the man yelled.
“Go ahead, yell all you want. There’s no one to save you.” Kita leaped onto the desk and sliced the man’s ear off. She caught the body part on the flat of her blade as the man grabbed at his head.
“Yo
u little bitch, that was my ear!” he roared.
Kita grinned. “I know, and you have another.” She picked up his ear and licked the blood from it. A tingling sensation ran through her limbs, causing her hair to stand up.
The man took a step backward, tripped over his chair, and fell on his back. “What are you?”
“A fallen angel. Now, tell me what I want to know, or you have a lot more body parts to lose.”
The man glanced under the desk, then back at Kita. “Ok. I was hired by an agent to run the place. The payment arrives once a month. The gold pieces are stamped with an R and L. My guess is this is the king’s dirty little secret.”
“Where’s the food go?”
“There’s an army of these dogs and hogs somewhere. It goes there.”
“Interesting. Now, about that door…”
“Never. You’ll never get back there. Dying by your hand will be better than dying by theirs.”
“Oh, don’t be so sure. I know a lot of ways to make someone talk.”
Kita giggled, jumped from the desk, grabbed him by the throat, and injected him with a paralyzing drug. She slung him over her shoulder. On the way out, she heard sniffling from under the desk. Kita shut the door and moved a bunk in front of it. She whistled a happy tune as she carried her prize to the slaughterhouse.
“Take a look around. I redecorated. What do you think?” Kita laughed as the man shook his head. “You’re paralyzed from the neck down, but you can feel everything.”
“Do your worst, you will never get back there,” he snarled.
