Awakening

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  Bentley looked down to her hand to see what she had been given. It was that same strange, blue-sheened blade she’d practiced with in front of Jelly Bean. She smiled while she slung her stolen blaster rifle over her shoulder by its strap and readied the sword in both hands and said, “Thanks, Jelly.”

  Shango’s speed at drawing out his weapon was almost unreal: a flash of metal and a sudden jolt that closed the distance with his chosen foe. Amroth didn’t so much as blink. The sound of metal on metal rang through the open chamber, and Bentley saw that Amroth had parried Shango’s blindingly quick strike with a simple motion of his arm, using the one weapon he immediately had on hand: the sword.

  Her sword.

  Watching the two of them fight was almost hypnotic. Shango’s attacks were relentless and fluid, each movement of his single-edged blade whirling him directly into another that renewed his assault with a dynamic grace that sent him coming at Amroth from a radically different angle each time.

  Amroth himself was the opposite: minimalist, with quick, simple, efficient movements. It was like he’d calculated exactly where each blow was going to land and determined the shortest distance between point a and point b. While it wasn’t showy, it was astoundingly effective, warding off Shango’s fierce assault with an impenetrable defense, all while maintaining that same nondescript, bored, though slightly irritated expression that Amroth seemed to invariably keep on his face.

  But Bentley didn’t have a great deal of time to watch. With the Panopticon blown apart, they were totally exposed to the team of security forces on this floor, who came rushing in to surround them, firing off their rifles while others came forward with metal batons that crackled with live electricity. Alarms loudly blared and lights above them flashed red.

  Olofi and Shango were already doing their part to push back this fray. Loco held Betsy in both hands, firing wildly. The gun seemed to have multiple functions: this time it was letting off a cascade of rapid-fired blaster bolts with a wide spread that forced the riflemen who had been closing in to seek cover. More than a few of these struck the glassy, transparent surfaces of the remaining Panopticons in the room, and the shots were absorbed harmlessly, leading Bentley to wonder what exactly had been used the shatter the one they were in.

  “Damn, girl!” Loco shouted back at Bentley while he slowly moved back to improve the spread of his gun. “Didn’t think you had that in you!”

  Olofi ducked between the hiding spots that the soldiers had taken up, his sword flashing. They fell before they could notice him, so preoccupied with Loco’s salvo from Betsy that they didn’t see the danger coming up behind them. It was highly effective teamwork: Loco drew their fire, while Olofi made sure that none of it was actually able to damage him.

  But the room was large and filled with cover, and two of the LaPlacian security force officers had circled around to come at Loco with their shock batons. Both of his hands were well focused on his weapon, and its barrel looked white-hot from the prolonged fire.

  Bentley rushed in beside Loco and engaged one of them with the sword Shango had given her. As before, it felt light and natural in her grasp. She saw her foes’ movements with total clarity. When he tried to close in and jab her with the sparking front prong of his baton, Bentley realized she’d considered a practical defense for a short-range attack like this before. Her leg shot out in a front kick that glanced off the approaching guard, making him stumble back slightly. Then, while he was off-balance, she shifted her weight forward and drove the edge of the weapon into his stomach. The blue blade gleamed and pierced through the solid combat armor like paper. As soon as the tip had sunk in, Bentley withdrew the blade and whirled it around to engage the second foe who was coming up at Loco’s right.

  “Guess you’ve got some half decent moves in you after all!” Loco said, grinning like a maniac while his gun still peppered half the area with blaster shots.

  “That one was-” Bentley swung her sword out and sliced across the other attacker’s body, cleaving his chest plate apart and making him fall over bleeding. “Was meant for you, actually.”

  Loco laughed at this and said: “Are you kidding me? You wouldn’t even get close enough to try.”

  “I didn’t mean while you’re using that!” Bentley yelled back while scanning the room for more foes from the side.

  Shango and Amroth’s duel once more caught her eye. It appeared to be a standstill, and neither one of them seemed to have sustained any sort of real injury, though the greater ferocity of Shango’s attacks made it seem like he was more likely to tire if this were to go on for hours.

  But the complexity of their fight wasn’t the reason Bentley was fixated on it this time. Now, all she could look at was Amroth’s hand on that sword. The sight of it again made her blood boil. Without thinking, she ran from Loco’s side and furiously charged towards the two of them.

  While parrying another one of Shango’s attacks, Amroth barely gave a side-eye to Bentley, but seemed to notice her entering his reach. He pivoted away from her to present only one side to both her and Shango. With the large sword that he wielded in one extended hand he was ready to engage them. Shango didn’t relent or even acknowledge Bentley; he only continued his assault. Bentley recognized what Amroth’s intent was with his movement, and tried to circle around him before lunging again. He calmly knocked away one of Shango’s sword strikes and then brought it around to deflect hers.

  But he miscalculated.

  Bentley hadn’t even been trying to hit Amroth. For the moment, she barely cared who he was. All she could see was the hand gripping that sword she knew to be hers. And it met its mark, slicing across the back of his palm and then coming down along his forearm.

  “Tch!” was the only sound Amroth made to express his anguish. His face remained the same, but his hand could not. The cut made him release it, bringing the sword clattering to the ground. Bentley released Shango’s sword and dove down to possessively snatch her weapon from its place on the ground.

  As before, it began to glow brightly: the light illuminated the room against the flashing red of the blaring alarms. She couldn’t move, though not from pain this time. She was in awe. And even amidst this carnage, Shango and Amroth both also found themselves staring at this pale blue light.

  “By all that is holy…” Shango whispered, staying his attack for the first time since it had begun.

  “The Crossroads…” Amroth uttered. But he was the least swayed by this sudden majesty, and in the split second before Bentley became aware of this, he was already upon her, dealing her a powerful punch to the jaw with his still-bleeding right hand. Even having seen it, his speed took Bentley by surprise, and the power was enough to send her sprawling. By the time she’d regained her faculties, Amroth had the sword in his hand again and Shango was once more ready to take pursuit. But Amroth did not stand his ground this time, and began to run away.

  “This is too valuable a device to be wasted in this silly little game,” Amroth said. “Goodbye, fallen angel. Mortality suits you.”

  “Like hell!” Bentley yelled back as she retrieved Shango’s blue blade and began to join him in running after Amroth. A hail of blaster fire rained down on them, stopping them in their tracks, and covering Amroth’s retreat. When they looked to its source, they could see why: Loco’s effective suppression fire had completely ceased.

  “Guys?!” Loco yelled. “Betsy’s overheated as fuck! I think I might have fused her barrel shut.” He placed the large weapon into the holster on his back again and drew a considerably smaller blaster pistol holstered at his hip to return what fire he could. “Come and get it, fucknuts!” he yelled out.

  “I think it’s time we get the hell out of here!” Olofi called from behind a smaller intact Panopticon, his sword felling a soldier clutching a long-range particle rifle.

  “But the sword…!” Bentley protested.

  “No,” Shango gave Bentley a serious look. “It’s time to go. While it is still possible.”

&nb
sp; Bentley opened her mouth to argue, but it only took one sober consideration of her surroundings to know they were right.

  “Right,” she agreed. “But how do we get out of here?”

  “Just as we came in,” Shango said. He looked over at the platform they’d arrived on.

  “There?” Bentley said incredulously, even as she joined him in running towards it. “The spot literally all the soldiers are coming from?”

  “The same,” Shango deadpanned. With his sword in one hand, he reached under his cloak to produce another set of ball bearings. “Olofi, Loco!” he called out in a rallying cry. “Close in tight.”

  “Oh fuck, really?” Loco looked equal parts panicked and excited at the same time at Shango’s command. He moved in close with the two of them.

  “Can you just hold on?” Olofi yelled, firing off his blaster and trying to rejoin the group. He tumbled away and crouched next to them just as Shango began to fling the metal balls clutched between his fingers around the room.

  A series of loud noises came from every direction around them that he’d thrown the balls. There were no apparent explosions to accompany the sound.

  “What just happened?” Bentley asked as they continued their pace, now in formation.

  “Hush,” Shango said. Another series of loud bangs erupted across the deck, like thunderclaps.

  “Wait for it…” Loco said, sounding and looking thrilled even as he drew more knives from his arm braces and wildly threw them at points ahead.

  Then Bentley was stopped in her tracks by a soldier leaping from the sidelines and striking her in the stomach with the butt of his gun. Before he could follow up, he was felled by a blaster bolt coming from the side, and she saw Olofi pointing his weapon. But he looked nervous. A second later, Bentley found out why.

  This last cascade of noises was accompanied by explosions. Thousands of them, in different colors and intensities, crackling with electricity and searing with plasma. The cacophony it created was painful to hear, but the sight of it was actually rather beautiful, almost like fireworks.

  “Hurry now,” Shango said. He took Bentley by the arm to help her get steady and then led her closer to the platform.

  “Fuck. Yeah!” Loco screamed out through the explosions. “How do you like that mystery meat, bitches!?”

  Shango’s explosives hadn’t actually done a great deal of structural damage, but they had completely scattered their pursuers. Many of them lay stunned or without weapons, and others tried firing their rifles unsuccessfully, as though they’d jammed or somehow lost power. There were still others capable of coming after them effectively, but when they tried to get between the group and the platform, Shango and Olofi made short work of them with their swords. The four of them stood on the Geburah’s platform every one of them looking exhausted now.

  “Now, Bean!” Shango yelled out.

  “Give me five seconds!” Jelly Bean’s voice rang out from the platform, much to Bentley’s surprise.

  “Jelly?” she said. “But how-”

  “Down low!” Loco yelled out. Bentley looked ahead and saw what she was referring to. That pale, scar-faced lieutenant that she’d smashed the balls of at the start of all of this was standing there, holding a long-barreled black pistol trained right on her. There was nothing she could do to avoid it.

  “I said down. Fucking. Low!” Loco’s voice rang out again, and Bentley felt a hand on her shoulder pushing her aside with reckless strength that knocked her supine. When she looked up, she saw Loco standing where she was, the blaster bolt meant for her firing dead-on into him.

  “There!” Jelly Bean’s voice came up again and the glass partition shot out to surround the shuttle.

  Loco was on one knee now, clutching a wound on his shoulder, bereft of the defense of one of those large pauldrons she’d seen the armor sporting before. He was bleeding profusely.

  “Holy shit…” Bentley said. “Are you okay?”

  “Three seconds,” Loco answered.

  “What?” Bentley asked.

  “These shuttles,” he said. “They move quick.”

  There was a loud crashing sound, and the glass that enveloped the shuttle melted off of it, leaving them in what looked like an exit corridor with an airlock at the end. LaPlacian soldiers were everywhere, and it only took them a second to realize the source of the alarm had made its way to them. They wasted no time running ahead to their destination.

  There was a soldier futilely trying to close the airlock from the side console. For a moment, Bentley was sure she could see Jelly Bean’s face on the console, sticking her digitally simulated tongue out at the operator.

  The next room was unguarded, with an open airlock that connected to something Bentley finally recognized: the Chesed’s cargo bay.

  One by one, they each made their way onto their ship. When the doors shut, the hull rang out from a salvo of blaster bolts against it. But they were inside.

  “Bean,” Shango commanded her. “Get us as far away from here as you possibly can.”

  “Roger that,” Jelly Bean’s voice came through the cargo bay console. From inside, they could feel the ship beginning to move.

  “We did it,” Bentley said, trying to take deep breaths. “We actually made it.”

  But she turned over to Loco, remembering his wound, to check his condition.

  He was lying there, blood pooling around him from the wound on his arm. And he was grinning from ear to ear, laughing.

  “Well guys, gotta hand it to you,” he looked up at Shango and Olofi, propping himself up with his one good arm. “When you’re right, you’re right!”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Medical Bay, Aboard the Chesed, Klaunox Sector

  Bentley stood nervously outside of the Chesed’s medical bay, just a few paces away from where she recalled the sensors for the doors to automatically open would be.

  She had seen Loco angry or annoyed at her presence on the ship since the first day they’d met and, barring the times he was downright terrifying, she had mostly found his constant disapproval easy to ignore.

  This time was different, though. He’d spared her a blaster bolt that would have been on course straight for her head. If it weren’t for their considerable difference in height, it’s more than likely it would have hit through his head. And now, while she knew she should feel gratitude she only felt guilt.

  She hesitated at the door’s virtual threshold, right up until it opened on its own, unprompted by movement.

  For a moment she thought it might have been Jelly Bean remotely operating the door but, upon finding her inside, saw she was rather preoccupied. Her mechanical arms were manipulating a pair of small needlepoint devices, each one spraying a separate stream of particles into Loco’s shoulder wound to patch it up. Loco himself was seated upright on an examination counter with a glass of something resembling beer in the hand of his undamaged side. He was actively looking away from his wound treatment while Olofi stood on the opposite side drinking with him. But, when the doors opened, he turned his head and raised a glass.

  “Hey, look who finally showed up!” he shouted, sounding slightly buzzed by whatever he’d been drinking. “We go through all that trouble to get you back and you just go hiding out? No fuckin’ manners, you kids these days.”

  “Please hold still,” Jelly Bean requested, not looking away from Loco’s blaster wound. “I’m trying to repair discrete nerve endings at this moment. If you cause me to make an error it will be beyond my ability to restore proper feeling into that skin sector.”

  “Honestly, Jelly? At this point I’d be ecstatic if this arm was a bit numb to the world,” Loco said, “Seems to always be where the pain goes.”

  “It would not make you impervious to pain,” Jelly Bean corrected him. “Nociception would always be present, but it might instead be triggered by, say, the soft touch of an attractive woman.”

  “You’d better be bullshitting me there,” Loco said, turning his head towards her for a
moment before looking away. When Bentley could see his wound up close, she could see why: the surrounding flesh had been horribly burnt and malformed. Bentley winced at the sight of it and looked away just as Loco did.

  “I should, uh… Probably get going,” Olofi said awkwardly while turning away from Loco. “I’ve definitely got some calls to make. Catch you at the mess hall after?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Loco answered with a shrug that caused Jelly Bean to move away from him and set down her instruments.

  “And now I have lost my spot,” Jelly Bean said with what Bentley thought sounded like her own android version of frustration. “I will allow this dressing to set and we can resume in a few hours.”

  “Oh, come on, Jelly!” Loco pleaded, though half-heartedly enough that he didn’t really seem to care. “You’re just gonna leave me with an open war wound?”