“Sorry, amigo,” I said. “She’s right. We can do this, just the two of us without anyone else having to die. Well, not anyone in Cecile. The Skull Bearers and the Krull are about to make the worst mistake of their lives.”
Chapter Seventeen
The sun was just cresting the horizon. Sam and I knew what direction the attack would be coming from. The road east of the city was as pristine as all the others. I was still getting over how strange it looked. A well-paved road going out from the tiny city to be lost in the seemingly endless desert terrain.
We had taken up spots opposite the road from one another. Sam was across the street in a two-story building with a balcony. She hunched low, staying out of sight. Her bow rested on her knee, her helmet beside her.
I had chosen the ground floor on a single-story building across the street. A porch gave me a moderate amount of protection. I found a rocking chair there and sat talking to Sam over the earpiece I had been given. We talked about who we were, who I had been.
“I’m still surprised you haven’t asked me about those tattoos of yours,” Sam said around a mouthful of the hot breakfast provided for us. “You’d think you’d want to know about those.”
“Oh, I do,” I said, lowering the lukewarm tin cup of caf from my lips. The stuff was so strong, it gave me goosebumps. I loved it. “Tattoos were next on the unanswered agenda. There’s a lot for me to get through these days.”
“You got a tattoo every time we completed a mission,” Sam explained. “I thought you were crazy. I mean, we completed every single mission. There was no room for failure and we didn’t take defeat for an answer. I guess looking back, it was smart. Now you at least have a painted history of what you’ve been through.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t do me a whole lot of good these days since I can’t remember any of the missions we went on,” I answered. “The only tattoo I have any kind of meaning to now is the wolf on my left shoulder, and that’s it.”
“We weren’t on all the missions together, but I’ll write down what I remember and see if we can place the corresponding tattoo to that outing,” Sam answered. “There was this one time on the moon we were sent to take out a new kingpin who had popped up pushing some state-of-the-art drug. Not sure why Immortal Corp wanted him out, but you and I were sent in to take care of it. I remember when it was over you got an ancient helmet on the back of your right arm with the words ‘Do not go gentle’.”
I looked down at the back of my right arm. Instinct more than anything else made me perform the action. It wasn’t like I could see anything. I was dressed and I wore the same Phoenix light armor I arrived with.
“Do not go gentle,” I repeated the words. “Sounds like me.”
“That’s you in a nutshell.” Sam laughed out loud. She paused after a long sigh. “Thank you, Daniel.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For helping me protect my family, for not asking me to go with you when this is all done,” Sam whispered.
“Your family’s going to be safe,” I said, shifting uncomfortably. I didn’t do well with praise apparently. “Those bunkers you had prepared under the city was a smart move.”
“There weren’t enough of them, though,” Sam said with a sigh. “We had to send half the city out into the hills north of here. The militia will protect them.”
“You did what you could and this city is better for having you,” I answered, trying to pull Sam’s mind to something else before she had time to dwell on her past sins. “Tell me the plan again. There are mines on the road out there?”
“I figured when we paved the streets, it would be important to build in mines. I mean, why not? It was only a matter of time before someone tried to take back Cecile,” Sam said. “They’ll attack us head on, relying on their numbers and vehicles. Plus, they’re not the sharpest tools in the shed, if you know what I mean. We’ll wait until they’re close, right in the middle of the minefield a hundred meters from our location. When I detonate the mines, we’ll have to take out whatever’s left standing in front of us. It’ll take time for the vehicle behind the mines to maneuver around the wreckage. Once we do, we can deal with them.”
“Simple enough,” I said, rocking slowly back and forth in my chair. Something caught my eye. An image in the distance, maybe a mirage.
“You see them?” Sam asked. “They’re here.”
I looked across the street up into the building’s balcony. Sam was in the process of placing her helmet over her head and stringing her bow. She looked as intimidating as the grim reaper herself. I guessed that was the point. Blood-red hair fell back from her helmet. She nocked an arrow.
“You remember our mantra?” Sam asked. “Our pack code?”
“Echo reminded me of it,” I said.
“They can kill our bodies,” Sam said almost reverently.
“But they can’t kill our spirit,” I finished.
The comm line we used to speak went quiet.
I lifted the Valkyrie V9 to my shoulder. It was a heavy son of a gun with a cross at the end of the barrel meant for crosshairs. The seconds ticked by and the images of vehicles became clearer.
They were what I had expected. After my run-in with Papa and the Reapers, I knew what kinds of vehicles these gangs used. Beat-up rusted cars and trucks, basically anything that would move on wheels. Along with them came a dozen or more dirt bikes and sand buggies.
I didn’t think Peso was lying, but I did think he had a problem counting. He had said there were just under a hundred. The group quickly approaching looked well over that. Maybe even double that number.
The lead vehicle was a truck with an open bed. Two flags flew from it. One I could make an intelligent guess stood for the Skull Bearers. It was a white human skull with a brown background.
The other flag slapping in the wind was some kind of insect, maybe the prongs of a beetle. The pincers were black on a green background.
“I know you don’t want the odds,” X said in my head. “But that’s way more than a hundred. You want a head count?”
“Please,” I asked quietly so the comms channel wouldn’t pick up my words and relay it to Sam. “How many?”
“I count a hundred and fifty-nine,” X said. “Intel on the small weapons was correct. I’m not getting any eviscerating mortars or super cannons. You might have a few flamethrowers or grenades in there, though.”
“We can deal with that,” I said, taking in a long, deep breath through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. I spoke in a regular voice so Sam could hear me now. “You ready for this?”
“I’m going to let them come as close as I can before we hit them,” Sam said. “You take out the first wave of their vehicles with that Valkyrie V9 of yours. I have explosive arrows ready to get any of the stragglers.”
“You got it,” I said as the front truck bearing the flags roared down at us.
I crouched behind the waist-high rail of the porch I was on. It wasn’t much cover, but maybe with the way the shadow covered me, I’d be able to stay hidden just as long as I needed.
The truck was so close now, I could make out people inside the cab and on the back. If “people” was the right word at all. I remembered the conversation about the Krull being mutated humans. I just didn’t think they’d look this bad. Some of these guys could do with a major makeover.
Eyes too big for their head and missing patches of hair were the first signs there was something very seriously wrong. Arms too long for their bodies and violent curvatures of their spines confirmed this.
They were fifty meters from us and closing. They started to holler and whoop, pointing at Sam’s location.
I looked up to see her. She was a sight. Sam stood upright with no fear in the world. She had her right foot on the railing in front of her. Her bow was drawn back taut. The breeze caught her crimson hair, splaying it out behind her like a cape.
“Hey, you going to detonate the mines?” I asked, sighting down the barrel of my weapon. “They’re s
o close, I can see the raw meat hanging from the driver’s teeth.”
“No mercy,” Sam said so cold, so quiet, I said a silent prayer of thanks she was on my side. “Kill them all.”
The explosion that erupted in the center of their convoy line was closer and more violent than I anticipated. I’m not sure how many mines Sam stacked under her road, but it was enough to leave a crater and rip through a good third if not more of their number.
Flaming vehicles catapulted through the sky in slow motion. My ears rang from the sound of the detonation. A wave of heat hit my face.
Then it was all action and reaction.
I recovered, placing the Valkyrie on my shoulder and sighting down the barrel.
“Keep the trigger pulled. It’ll take a second for the laser to fire,” X said, coaching me on how to use the weapon. “Be prepared for a push on your shoulder.”
I obeyed, keeping my right pointer finger on the trigger. I took aim on the lead vehicles that made it past the explosion. The truck was one of them, along with a handful of smaller vehicles and dirt bikes.
They were twenty meters and closing. If they spotted me hunched down behind the porch railing, they hadn’t opened fire.
A golden laser shot out from the end of the Valkyrie V9 with a heavy hum. I felt pressure in my shoulder like the weapon was trying to push me back. I gritted my teeth and held my ground.
Trying to maneuver the beam was like holding a two-hundred-pound mutie on a leash and directing him where to go.
The beam ripped through anything it touched, both metal and flesh alike. I drew a slanted line right through the front truck, directly through the next car and decapitated a pair of dirt bikes with one sweep of the weapon.
Sam rained down fire on the vehicles closest to us with her arrows. Each time an arrow struck its target, it ended with an explosion consuming the enemy in a ball of flames.
I swept the Valkyrie V9 back and forth across the enemy lines. Anyone who got too close was dealt with by Sam.
We took them by surprise as we whittled down their numbers. The middle section of their convoy had fallen prey to the mines. The front had been taken so utterly off guard, we killed more than half of them before they were able to comprehend what was going on and run for cover.
The return fire was now coming from the rear third of the enemy force. This force had finally managed to maneuver around the wreckage the mines brought on.
The enemy fire wasn’t accurate, but with this many soldiers, you didn’t really have to be. The sheer volume of fire power had us pinned down. A second later, I got energy beams peppering my location and old school rounds took chunks off the wood building and railing around me.
I ripped through two more trucks loaded with the enemy before I had to pull back. A round clipped me in the chest and another slammed into my face.
The round that hit me in the cheek snapped my head back to the right. I stumbled for a second. Pain came hot and fierce as blood dripped down my armor.
I lost hold of the Valkyrie V9. I stumbled back over the porch and took cover round the side of the building.
“You good?” Sam asked over the sounds of weapons fire. “Daniel, are you okay?”
Chapter Eighteen
The pain in my jaw was excruciating. Despite this, I tried to respond. I knew what I wanted to say, but my jaw just wouldn’t obey.
“Daniel,” X said, her voice full of worry. “Your jaw’s broken. I can respond to Sam for you if you’re good with that.”
I nodded, hearing motion from the far side of the building. Instinct dropped my hands to my belt. They came to rest on the axe and knife.
“Samantha,” X said, connecting to the comm unit in my ear. “My name is X. I’m an AI in Daniel’s head. No time to explain more now. He’s okay. His jaw is broken, so he can’t talk at the moment.”
“Why wouldn’t you just tell—never mind,” Sam said with a grunt as an explosion went off somewhere on her end. “I’m going ground level. They’re swarming the center of the street on foot. They’re converging on your location.”
“You get that?” X asked.
I nodded, trying to work my jaw, but all that came out was, “Yu.”
That animal inside me came to the surface once more. I looked to my right as the first mutated soldier turned to point his blaster into the alley behind the house.
Speed, I reminded myself in my own mind. You’re faster than any of them. Speed, Daniel, be smart.
The first mutie took my knife from the bottom of his chin through his mouth and into his skull. I swung around, doing a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, planting my axe in the chest of the next mutie who rounded the corner.
A roll took me into the street and right into the center of their force.
As I did at the bar, I used their own numbers against them. I wheeled around with my axe and knife, striking out to the point I didn’t even plan my next move. I only had time to react.
Somewhere in the background as the blood flew through the air like fine mist, I heard X coordinating with Sam.
“Samantha,” X said. “He’s in the center of the city street. We have a few dozen here, but there are more coming around the perimeter of the buildings as well.”
“Understood,” Sam said. “I’ll take the group scouting the exterior of the buildings on my side of the street. Then circle back and give you a hand, two seconds.”
I took a club to the side of my head then a round to my left calf that forced me to a knee. Some mutie thought he actually beat me. He roared with his twisted teeth and lifted his weapon over my head for what he thought would be a killing blow. The club was larger than my torso.
I rolled out of the way to create distance then hurled my knife at his throat. It landed with a wet thud. He looked stunned, grasping at the weapon, like that was going to help.
“Keep moving,” X encouraged me. “You can do it. There’re ten left in the center of the street. Keep moving!”
I was tired, beat up, but not broken, never broken. I lunged forward into a run, ripping the blade from the throat of the dying mutie as he fell to his knees.
Sam fell down somewhere beside me and landed with a blur of motion. Her bow was gone, but a knife in her right hand sliced the belly of one of her targets. Her helmet was scratched. She wasn’t moving her left leg very well, but that wasn’t going to stop her.
We fought back to back. I tossed her my blade over my shoulder like we practiced the move before. Sam caught it and impaled a mutie Krull through the forehead.
I reached for my MK II and went to work. At such a short range, each shot was a kill. I decided to go with the tungsten steel bolts. The pieces of hardened metal were powerful enough to puncture bone and muscle, sometimes even ripping through one target completely and burying itself into another.
Against all odds, we were doing it. The dead were forming a circle around us.
“Axe,” Sam yelled.
I didn’t miss a beat. With my right hand still doling out death via the MK II, I flipped the weapon in my left hand so I caught the blade. I handed the weapon hilt first to Sam, who was still at my back.
A brute exited the alley in front of me at a run. He carried some kind of hose and tank behind him.
I was moving too fast to stop myself. I fired at him at close range before he could open up on us. As luck would have it, the mutie was caring a flamethrower. My tungsten steel bolt went through his body and punctured the tank.
The explosive force lifted me off my feet. A wave of heat washed over my face and body as I crashed down to the hard ground somewhere against a wooden railing.
Disoriented, I tried to get my bearings. The MK II was lost somewhere in the fall. I struggled to my feet, looking for Sam. She was a house away, not moving. A pool of blood came out from her helmet.
I don’t know how many Skull Bearers and Krull we killed, but we hadn’t killed enough. Survivors from the fight were struggling to their feet. There were a handful of them that wen
t for Sam and another three who pointed their weapons at me.
Heavy weapon fire from some kind of laser repeater raked through the enemy. Whoever was behind the trigger wasn’t going to win any awards for marksmanship. With the element of surprise and a weapon like that, they didn’t have to be in line for marksman of the year.
I looked up to see Gavin with the repeater strapped to his shoulder. His face was a mask of fear and hate as he tore through both Badland factions. He walked forward, cutting them down with impunity. He made his way to my side without looking at me.
I could see everything in his eyes. I could see the memories and nightmares being made right now. Memories and nightmares that he would carry with him for the rest of his life.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw a second mutie with a dented flamethrower strapped to his back. I was on the ground posing no real threat at the moment. The mutated human ignored me and focused on Gavin.
I knew what was about to happen. Gavin was about to get cooked alive. Sam was only just stirring. I lost my MK II in the last explosion. My knife and axe were gone. I couldn’t even yell to warn Gavin. My jaw was still out of commission while my body healed over.
X saw the same thing. She tried to yell at him, to warn him. No use. He was too lost in the fog of war.
Past the pain, past all the discomfort and the brutality of the moment, I thought of Amber. Not my Amber; of Sam and Gavin’s Amber. I thought of that little bundle of honest energy going through life without a father.
I was still getting to know what kind of man I was before. Honestly, I didn’t know if I liked him or not. The man I was today, I knew well. And he wasn’t going to let that little girl grow up without her dad no matter the cost.
I found my legs and lunged for Gavin. He still didn’t see the flame-throwing mutie coming at him from his left.
I grabbed Gavin, breaking him from his frozen state holding down the trigger of his repeater. I slammed him to the ground.
“Hey, what are you doing!?” Gavin yelled at me as I took him down.
Absolution: A Near Future Thriller (Forsaken Mercenary Book 2) Page 11
