by Alex White
“Oh, I kept wolf mode. Going to bust it out when I want to put the fear of god into someone.”
“Ladies, you are killing me,” Captain Cordell Lamarr’s rich voice cut into their comms chatter. “Do you have the target or don’t you?”
“Hunter One, negative,” said Orna.
“Hunter Two, negative,” said Nilah.
“Then can you both please find her?” asked Cordell.
Nilah wound past a set of cordons designating the upper levels as “diamond suites,” and the security computer beeped an acknowledgment, automatically billing their ship’s account. That, in turn, would be funneled through a set of staged, unsigned accounts, and finally come out of the GATO Compass Special Operations budget.
They’d been a part of the elite secret unit for almost six months, and Nilah quite enjoyed the perks: exotic flier rentals, fine dining, and an all-you-can-shoot buffet of weapons for Orna.
“Boss,” Nilah began, “if I paid you a thousand argents, would you order Hunter One to wear a dress at the wedding?”
“You are approaching thin ice, Hunter Two,” he grumbled. “And to answer your question, you didn’t factor in my danger pay.”
Climbing higher through the caverns, Nilah passed by a server bot with a tray of sparkling wine. She snatched one, taking a sip as she stepped onto one of the many lifts.
“Need I remind you,” came Kinnard’s voice on her comm, “that you’re on duty?”
She was already regretting giving the AI access to her mask telemetry for imaging analytics, but in the absence of Armin Vandevere’s datamancy, Kinnard was the next best thing. They’d gotten Boots’s old Arcan military AI back from the Taitutians when they’d joined Compass. His return after a year stuck in a dark corner of the Special Branch Archives had been a balm on everyone’s souls after the tragic loss of their first mate.
He died a hero, but he died all the same.
“It’s part of the disguise, Kin,” she whispered. “Not all of us look like interchangeable data cubes.”
“I assure you that I am unique and beautiful on the inside,” said Kin. “Also, you just passed your target. On your ninety.”
Nilah turned right to find the green-haired Rebecca Grimsby sauntering past in a swimsuit, an array of strapping lads in tow. Grimsby was an attractive woman, but the number of men with her was simply ridiculous—there had to be at least five, all intent on her. This part of Thousand Falls twisted serpentine through the rock, hot mist billowing through the caverns to obscure Nilah’s vision. Splashes echoed from the walls as Rebecca and her party dipped into the hot springs of the chambered mountain.
“Hunter Two,” Nilah breathed. “Target acquired. I’m, uh …”
Kin cut in, “I’ve relayed Hunter Two’s coordinates to your heads-up displays. Hunter One can reach her in the next minute and a half.”
“Yes, what he said,” Nilah agreed, sliding off the path into the pools. “I’m in pursuit.”
“‘What he said.’ A strange turn of phrase,” Kin repeated and laughed, and Nilah shook her head in annoyance. Ever since coming back, he kept laughing at even her blandest jokes, and it came off as clingy.
“Hunter One here. Can you please hang back this time?” asked Orna. “Grimsby threw a dude out of an eighty-story window on Taitu.”
Nilah’s eyes sifted through the mist, but she couldn’t make out anyone else in the cloud. “So? She probably caught him off guard.”
“This place is literally a bunch of waterfalls and infinity pools,” Orna grunted, her breath coming in quick bursts. She must’ve been sprinting. “It’s just stuff to throw people off of.”
“Or bathe in,” corrected Nilah, feeling her way along one of the slick walls. “Why can’t you get your mind off murder for two seconds?”
A gentle horn sounded out from the depths, hearkening back to an ancient time when lighthouses protected the mariners of Origin. Though in the case of Thousand Falls, it meant the mountain was about to bellow out a cloud of magical gases to delight and pacify the bathers.
“Here comes the euphoria,” said Kinnard. “Clip in, Hunters.”
Nilah fetched a rebreather from under her illusory swimwear and fitted it to her nose and mouth, snapping it to her face with a little clip on her septum. A thin film of metabolizing gel coated the inside of her mouth and the back of her throat so she could speak. The Spectrum Ops rebreathers were so much more comfortable than the old sweaty ones from the Capricious. It was regrettable that she couldn’t relax in the baths and enjoy herself. She probably hadn’t had a decent soak since the Prokarthic pools in the late Duke Vayle Thiollier’s palace.
“Got mine,” she whispered.
“Clip thecured,” lisped Orna, who hadn’t yet figured out the trick to the masks, and insisted they weren’t well-fitted for her.
Nilah watched in awe as prismatic energies filtered through the mist, spilling random hues through the caverns. Clouds coalesced into iridescent raindrops, settling on the surfaces of the pools like oil slick, and then, with a great bellowing, the mountain exhaled.
It was like being pelted by a warm typhoon, as channels of healing wind replaced the mists around Nilah. Even with her rebreather on, her muscles began to relax and her mind yearned for her to sink into the springs for a long soak. Those who breathed in the arcane air would be out of their minds with pleasure for a few minutes, which worked well for Nilah’s plan. This was an extradition mission, after all.
Except when she turned to survey the caverns without their heady fog, she found Rebecca Grimsby’s entourage of pretty boys with their own rebreathers. With a sad sigh, Nilah realized that these sculpted men weren’t a retinue of admirers, but a complement of guards. Rebecca, for her part, sank into the water with a stupid laugh and swam away, high as a kite.
They were staring at her mouth. They had to be looking at the rebreather.
“Oh, my god,” said the nearest one. “I think she’s choking!”
Nilah caught her reflection in the stilled water and saw that her illusory mouth had wrapped over the rebreather, and the computer—not knowing what to project—was smearing it every which way, like she’d swallowed a whole apple. She turned away from them as one man stepped forward with genuine concern in his eyes.
“Miss! Are you all right?” he asked, advancing on her.
If she spoke, her muffled voice might give away the mask, so she attempted to wave him away while trying to unclip her rebreather. If she could just get it off without them seeing, she might salvage this.
“She is choking!” he cried. “She’s swatting at her mouth! Give me a hand!”
To her genuine surprise, they rushed her, hoisting her from behind and giving her abdominal compressions—which caused her to lose her grip on the rebreather and rupture the metabolizing film.
Which caused her to start choking.
“Hunter Two is in trouble,” said Kin. “Hunter One, you’ll reach her in—”
“I’ve got it, Kin!” barked Orna.
On the racetrack, when Nilah played chicken through a hairpin, she had a cold iron backbone. When she faced down an enemy mech in the Pinnacle with nothing but her bare hands, she kept it together. But when that bag of metabolizing film ruptured, sending shards of gel down her airway, she couldn’t help but panic. This was further exacerbated by being surrounded by a bevy of shouting, ultra-fit male specimens, one of whom currently had her wrapped up from behind. He could definitely feel the rough shell of her advanced combat suit, which tensed in time with his blows to stop her from dislodging the obstruction.
“Something is off!” he called to his compatriots.
“She’s got something caught in her mouth! Sweep the airway!” replied another, and the hunk in front of Nilah hooked a finger behind the mask and pulled.
To everyone’s horror, the palm-sized rebreather unit emerged from her mouth, trailing a glistening, wet glob of destroyed film. To them, it must’ve appeared as though her mouth split wide, disgorging the
large device. The man behind her released his hold in shock, staggering back. With a violent cough, Nilah hacked up the broken piece of film and spit it into the pool in a slimy glob. The guards were already backing away, some of them falling into fighting stances.
Sucking in a chestful of sweet, glorious air, Nilah gasped, “Thanks, mate.” Then she delivered a heavy side kick directly into her rescuer’s solar plexus.
She took in her arena: a winding shallow path along a wide hot-spring pool. A curtain of water roared over the far wall—the cliff face on the outside of the mountain. Beyond the waterfall would be a sheer drop. The quintet of model-quality bodyguards spread out between Nilah and Rebecca, forming a sloshing line through the shallow pool. Her target lounged beside the roaring falls, pointing and giggling.
The closest man withdrew something shiny from a pocket in his swimsuit and tossed it onto the walkway not far from them. Nilah braced, expecting an attack, but light spilled from the device, coalescing into the projected form of a man, square jawed and presentable for mass media.
“Attention,” said the projection. “You are interfering with a Willingham McCabe client. If you surrender to the authorities now, your only worries are lawsuits. If you attempt to attack us or flee, we will have no further recourse but to end your life and the lives of your conspirators. Our firm has kept this promise for over fifty years, and you will not be the first exception.”
This was what passed for intimidation? Nilah was embarrassed for them.
“Surrender!” shouted the nearest one, making a face like a toddler in mid-complaint. “You’re unarmed, and you have no chance against—”
Nilah deactivated her mask, revealing the black mesh of her combat suit, along with holsters bristling with trip sticks, sleepers, and a slinger pistol. Dermaluxes pulsed to an unheard beat, magnified through glassy inlays in her suit sleeves. Her favorite piece of kit was the set of shock knuckles she’d borrowed from Orna, which rounded out the affair with fashionable malice. She flexed her fingers, lightning arcing over the contacts.
“No,” she replied, “you surrender.”
The guards began to cast glyphs in unison, and Nilah struggled to identify the marks. Without a clear picture of who to target first, she launched herself off the nearby wall and onto the wide, antislip pathway. Then she dipped her shock knuckles into the pool and discharged the battery.
The shock wasn’t enough to fry everyone in the water; they weren’t trying to kill Rebecca Grimsby, after all. Nilah did, however, experience the distinct pleasure of seeing five spells pop in their owners’ faces in perfect unison. She sized the men up: all too jittery to cast a glyph, but not remotely out of commission.
Then Orna came sprinting past, diving into the pack of guards like a wrestling ring.
The brawl that followed was as vicious as any barroom scrap, Nilah and Orna taking their opponents to task with brutal efficiency. They were supposed to use the trip sticks, then hit the downed enemies with sleepers, but in the battle-fueled rage of the quartermaster, all plans evaporated like the cavern mist.
“What’s your girl’s ETA?” Orna grunted, shoving one of the guards against another before delivering a savage backhand to his jaw.
Nilah concentrated, feeling the connection through her mask to a robot trapped at the base of the falls. It desperately recalculated its climbing path over and over again, its processors working overtime. She came back to her senses just in time to dodge a meaty fist.
“She’s stuck,” Nilah replied, spinning her flashing arms to blind her assailant. She deployed the Taitutian art of Flicker—the near-unbeatable fighting style of those with dermalux tattoos.
Orna drew out her sleeper stick, and instead of using the pointy end to deliver a spell, she bashed a fellow’s nose with the blunt side. “I told you to copy Charger’s pathing code!”
A goon caught hold of her hair, shoving Nilah under the water. She twisted free with a rising rocket, possibly snapping one or two of his ribs, breaking through the surface like a dolphin mid-leap. “And I said I wanted to figure it out on my own!”
“That’s all fine and good until we’re stuck mopping up these clowns while your bot walks into walls. You’re a good tuner, but”—Orna popped a guy across the jaw with a right cross and he went down—“you suck at AI. I’m calling Charger.”
An alert sounded inside Nilah’s head, followed by the image of leaping up the embankments of waterfalls. It scrabbled over rocks, launching from boulders to sink its claws into any purchase it could find.
Nilah caught a glancing blow across her temple, dazing her. “It’s fine!” she slurred before regaining her balance. “She’s coming. Stop nagging me.”
Hefting her sleeper, Orna clicked the discharge button and pegged her poor foe in the forehead. Purple smoke poured from his nose and mouth as he went flying backward into the water—
Water which suddenly sunk a lot lower than it should’ve.
Nilah spun to find Rebecca, completely awake, standing atop a swell of clear liquid. A fresh mariner’s glyph faded from her fingertips, drawing the water into any shape Rebecca could desire. Nilah and Orna already knew about the target’s control of fluids, so they’d prepared emergency oxygen in their combat suits. Most mariners tried to drown their adversaries.
But Rebecca’s animated wave carried her out over the terrace, through the curtain of water and off a cliff.
Nilah ducked past her opponent and laid into his kidneys, buckling his knees. “How is she awake enough to flee?”
“I don’t know,” Orna growled, putting down the last guard with an elbow to the chin. “Maybe someone delivered her a mild electric shock?”
Nilah felt out her connection to her robot. It wasn’t half as strong as Orna’s link to Charger, but she was still new to bot construction. To her delight, she found it halfway up the falls, less than a hundred meters from her. She grinned at Orna.
Nilah paced the distance to the pool’s edge, now only ankle-deep. “I know the fastest way after her.”
“You’re not.” Orna’s hands fell to her hips.
“Oh, but I am, darling.”
She jogged back and dashed for the edge, pumping her legs for all their might. Then she planted her foot on the lip and leapt out through the falls into the clear, tropical skies of Mizuhara.
Boots had parked their cargo cart just down the street from the valet stand, and she watched in utter boredom as staff rushed to and fro, charging a hundred argents to park a lousy sports car one block away. At least the Thousand Falls facade was pretty, a summit of mossy waterfalls extending up into the heavens with a perpetual column of mist.
“We should’ve brought the Midnight Runner for this,” she sighed, taking another bite of her bean paste bun. She would’ve done just about anything to be back in her ship—there hadn’t been a decent sortie in months.
“Seems a bit exorbitant, though, doesn’t it?” asked Malik. “Using a starfighter when a glorified van would do?”
“Heads up,” said Cordell over their comms. “Hunter team is encountering some static on the top level. Be ready for anything.”
Boots and Malik exchanged glances.
“According to my analytics,” Kin began, “it’s well under the Hunters’ control and … spoke too soon. Look up!”
A long slug of water poured from the topmost waterfall, like the mountain had popped a cyst. It slithered down the side at breakneck speed, and Boots squinted to identify the nucleus of it: Rebecca Grimsby floating, green hair splayed at all angles. It changed its trajectory, splashing into the valet parking, enveloping the sports cars and sweeping their owners and resort staff out onto the sidewalk.
Quick as a wink, Rebecca hurled one of the drivers from an idling car with a tentacle of water, then leapt into the controller’s seat. She peeled out of the lot in a spray of droplets.
Boots slammed the cargo cart into drive, chucked her bun out the window, and floored it. The truck roared mightily for such pathetic accelerat
ion, but came up to speed. Malik leaned out the passenger-side door, traced his glyph, and hurled a bolt of purple energy at the sports car, missing by a sad margin.
“I’m regretting not bringing your wife along!” Boots barked.
“Someone has to fly the Capricious,” Malik replied, hurling another spell at the swerving vehicle. The bolt slammed into a nearby condo, knocking a cat off the fence with sudden sleep paralysis.
“She’s not flying it right this second!” Boots said, taking a turn so hard the chassis bucked up on two wheels before firing emergency stabilizers. “You’re casting too much, old man. Save your juice and use this.”
She passed him a slinger and he checked the mag.
“Discus rounds?” he scoffed. “We’re in a resort colony, not a war zone. You’re going to hit someone’s kid!”
Boots dodged down a side street to avoid a delivery bot trundling through the middle of the road. “If you’ve got time to gripe, you’ve got time to reload. Spare rounds in the console.”
“Where did everyone go?” Nilah demanded over the comms. “Anyone have eyes on Grimsby?”
“Boots and Sleepy here,” called Boots. “In pursuit. It’s an archrome car. Fancy spoiler on the back with pulsing lines running the sides. Goofy roof spike-fin-thing.”
“Sounds like a Preston Exa,” Nilah mused. “You’ll never stop her in your truck.”
Rebecca’s car slalomed through a set of road barriers like a fish through a reef. Boots simply bashed through with her six tons of mass. A rare swear word burst from Malik’s lips as he dropped a box of spell cartridges into the floorwell.
“That depends,” said Boots. “If I don’t have to dodge stuff or turn, we’ll make up ground!”
“Hunter Two,” said Cordell, “find a way to catch up.”
Flashes filled the cart’s rear imagers, and Boots’s heart sank. If she had to pull over and explain to the local authorities what she was doing, the mission would be over. Her Compass clearance would get her off the hook, but Rebecca Grimsby would escape.
“Oh, I have, sir,” Nilah cooed, and the high-pitched whine of a performance engine filled Boots’s ears.
