by Richard Fox
Clay put a small spoonful of green powder into a cup of hot water and gave it a stir.
“Ooo, what would happen if you had to receive a blood transfusion from a Tyr? No, what’s the insolation strength of your home star? You mentioned pigmentation rates and we’ve observed that in some species of migratory birds—”
“Would you just answer her?” Fastal asked. “She will not shut up until you do.”
Clay prepared a second cup and brought them both over to the general, who accepted the one Clay held slightly higher than the other.
“That’s how junior Blooded pass on tassa.” Fastal took a sip and sniffed at the brew. “How do you know this?”
“Linkers, Royals.” Clay gripped the edge of his ear and ran his touch down. His ketafik changed to a Toiler’s wide stripe, then to an Islander’s spots. With a flick of his fingers, his marks returned to a Linker’s. “We had to be able to go everywhere, learn what we could from everyone.”
“Why are you answering him and not me?” Sazon rapped her pencil against the clipboard. “I’ve been waiting years—years—to speak to one of you in person and now we’re—”
There was a rumble through the bunker. Fastal jumped to his feet, one hand on his holster.
Shouts carried through the door and one of the Close Guard whacked the base of a walkie-talkie against his palm.
“It’s them,” Clay said. “Zike.”
“I thought the ultimatum gave us until tomorrow morning,” Fastal said. “We’re nowhere near the Azure Islands.”
“Have you—I’m a fool for not realizing this—have you made any radio transmission about the King being here?” Clay asked.
“No. Radio silent since we left the Obsidian Dolmen,” said one of the Close Guard.
“Then they’re here for me.” Clay looked over at the Myrmidon’s body. “I can fight them, but you need to get the weapons you took from me and you need to let me get into that suit.”
The sound of machine-gun fire sounded down the hallway.
“To the King, go!” Fastal shouted at the Close Guard, who ran out of the bunker.
“Why you? Why now?” the general asked Clay.
“I know them too well, and their commander—a bastard named Hulegu—it’s a bit personal between him and me.” Clay’s hands opened and closed as he looked at the Myrmidon.
Sazon’s pencil scratched against her pad. “So there is an interpersonal dynamic between the humans that’s on par with—”
“Shut. Up.” Fastal drew his revolver but kept the muzzle oriented toward the floor. “You can get into that suit?”
“Probably. So long as the old override hacks still work,” Clay said.
“You’ll be unstoppable in it. You’re asking me to let a thresher loose in the grish pen.” Fastal cocked the hammer back. “And if the King’s still here…”
“My head will be exposed. It’ll take a single bullet to put me down,” Clay said. “And if the King is still here, your men can’t stop whoever Hulegu sent for me.”
The rumble of another explosion shook the room.
“Sazon, bring us the case with his weapons,” Fastal said.
“But, sir, won’t the Close Guard object?” she asked.
“You want to see his weapon in action or not?” Fastal opened the door and Sazon raced out, leaving her clipboard to clatter against the floor.
“Help me.” Clay went to the Myrmidon and pushed the body up onto one side. “Hold him up.” He let Fastal take the weight, and the Tyr grunted with the effort.
“By the gods, you dung lovers are strong,” Fastal said. “Why didn’t you mention you could possibly get into this suit earlier?”
“Because you would’ve shot me for suggesting it.” Clay shot the general a look, and Fastal gave him a grudging nod. “And it’s an iffy proposition as it is.” He thrust a finger between the bloody stump of Zorig’s neck and the collar on his suit. Dark blood oozed out over the back of his hand and Clay had to stifle a gag.
“You’ve done this before,” Fastal said.
“It’s been awhile, but…yeah.” Clay found the switch on the frame bolstering the Myrmidon’s spine and the suit opened down the back. “Emergency release for badly wounded. Medics can’t always treat through the armor weave. Hold his feet.”
Clay peeled the suit off the corpse’s shoulders and then gripped it beneath the arms. He walked back, pulling the body free of the suit and then tossing it onto the floor. Zorig was in a tight body glove bearing the Bahadur-Getty Incorporated logo down the sleeves and legs.
“Now the fun part.” Clay stripped off his tunic and tossed it aside.
“Wait, why don’t I get in that suit and—”
“It’s not like putting on a new set of fatigues.” Clay dropped his trousers. “Without the helmet link, the haptics will be fouled up, and if you don’t move right, the frames won’t adjust properly and you’ll be waddling around like a damn toddler. On top of that, you don’t have a corporate gene ID, which the suit’s emergency systems can read to deactivate the lethal defenses.”
Sazon burst into the room with one of Clay’s cases in hand, just in time to see him in the full glory of nothing but his synth layer.
“Oh, the whole thing,” she said, staring at his crotch. “I guess that makes sense.”
Fastal swiped the case out of her hand and laid it on the drafting table.
“Wait, ‘lethal defenses’? Didn’t your guild fire you or something?” the general asked.
“Deep core systems are always the last to be updated and…” Clay thrust a leg into the suit then paused. “Here goes nothing.”
He jammed his foot against the boot and lengthened the frame.
“Bastard was short.” Clay repeated the move with his other leg, then slipped his arms into the jacket.
The cart fell over and Clay shot his arms out to break his fall, slamming his fists into the concrete. Spider webs cracked out from the impact. He stood up slowly, dragging his feet beneath him and flexing his fingers with a creak of stiff leather.
“Not ideal…but better than nothing.” He shifted his shoulders, then turned around to expose the open seam down his spine. “The Corp still hasn’t figured out a way to scratch back there. Hurry so I can get into the fight.”
“You sound like a Blooded,” Fastal said as he pressed the back of Clay’s suit together then fixed the clasp on the collar, still dirty with the dead man’s blood.
Heavy footfalls sounded through the door and Clay grabbed Fastal by the arm and whipped him around into a bear hug.
Bullets tore through the door—splintering it—and smacked into Clay’s back. Clay shoved Fastal away and turned as a Myrmidon stepped through what remained of the door. The face shield on its full helmet was of a weeping angel.
The Myrmidon stuttered to a halt inside the room, smoke rising from the carbine in its hands. Clay didn’t know if the soldier hesitated because he saw a Tyr inside the armor or if he was calling up that he’d found Clay for Hulegu—or whoever else had come for him.
Clay charged forward and swung an overhead strike at the Myrmidon, well short of hitting him in the head. The weeping angel brought his weapon up to fire at Clay’s exposed face and right into Clay’s fist.
The suit-augmented strike smashed the electromagnetic acceleration coils in the barrel and the weapon shorted out with a crack of static that ran up the Myrmidon’s arms. Clay followed with a cross punch that took too long in the windup. The Myrmidon ducked the follow-on blow and shoved Clay in the chest, sending him into an un-elegant backpedal.
The Myrmidon snapped the laser-edged blade from one forearm housing and slashed up. Clay took the edge on his right forearm and a gout of black smoke reeking of charcoal sizzled off Clay’s arm.
“Here!” Sazon tossed the suitcase at Clay, who clamped one hand on a corner of it then bashed it into the Myrmidon’s face. The suitcase broke into fragments and his carbines and pistols fell around them…along with clothes and paperwork.
Clay threw an uppercut into the Myrmidon’s chin, snapping the weeping face up and stunning his foe. The Myrmidon struck out with the knife, managing a glancing blow against the back of Clay’s hip.
Clay scooped up a laser pistol and thrust it into the Myrmidon’s stomach, driving the muzzle into the creases just below the rib cage. He swung an arm over the Myrmidon’s shoulders and pulled him close as he pulled the trigger and fired on full auto.
The laser bolts sent a spike of searing heat through the armor and a red glow appeared on the Myrmidon’s back as his torso was flash-baked.
Clay stepped back and tossed the fried pistol aside. The Myrmidon looked down at his smoking torso, then fell face-first into the floor.
“You OK?” Clay turned and asked Fastal, who was sitting where he’d struck the wall, his legs locked out, his revolver clenched in his hands.
“Been worse,” the general said, getting slowly to his feet with a grimace of pain.
Clay picked up a carbine that had been in the now-shattered suitcase and flicked the trigger guard off to accommodate his gloved fingers.
“Stay behind me,” Clay said and stepped through the broken door.
“Stay here.” Fastal pointed a knife hand at Sazon’s face.
She nodded quickly. “Surely; let me just gather up my notes and—” She poked the remains of the Myrmidon’s gauss weapon and then leaned over to examine it more. “Now that is fascinating…”
****
Hulegu fought the recoil of his gauss repeater as the circle of paired acceleration vanes spat death into a hangar full of Tyr. A utility aircraft exploded as the bullets ignited internal fuel tanks. The fireball washed over Tyr soldiers that had taken cover behind supply crates and he chuckled as they ran about in a panic, engulfed from head to toe in flames.
Rounds sprang off his helmet, bothering him as much as a toddler’s poke. He kept his back foot braced in the small divot he’d gouged out firing and turned to a mass of a dozen more Tyr charging at him from behind another hangar.
“Is it me,” he asked, letting off a quick burst that tore aliens apart, “or are these indigs fighting just a bit too hard?”
He strode forward and shot down the centerline of a limousine, shattering the front windshield, slicing it unevenly in half. Fire rose from the back of the vehicle and Hulegu laughed again.
“We’ve got their comms jammed, but they’re still transmitting,” Solanus sent him from their insertion craft parked behind him. “They’ve got a pretty significant force on the way. Suggest we extract and just scrag the place from orbit.”
“Director wants Clay’s head on a plate. Besides, this is almost too much fun.” Hulegu triggered a sensor pulse and the wire diagram of a group of Tyr cowering in the back of a hangar near the limousine he’d just wrecked came up on his visor.
“Why hasn’t anyone found him?” Hulegu walked through the fire spreading from the vehicle and into the hangar.
“I’m pinging everyone we’ve got on the ground now…Jackson isn’t reporting back.”
“Maybe he’s ripping faces off to make sure Clay isn’t hiding behind that fake one of his. Send two to remind him how to report in.” Hulegu kicked a crate and it careened into where the Tyr were hiding.
“Clay!” Hulegu said through his speakers. “Come out so I can kill you. These indigs die too easily. I know you can fight.”
A Tyr in fatigues and with elaborate markings on his collar jumped onto the top of a supply crate and launched himself at Hulegu. The Myrmidon caught him by the neck and held him at arm’s length, feet dangling a few feet off the floor.
“That you, Clay?” He snapped Marshal Hawn’ru’s neck with a quick twist then hurled the body to one side. “We know you’re here—your savage little friends wouldn’t stop talking about you.”
He came around the crates where the rest of the Tyr were hiding and paused.
One in white robes lay on his side, his chest wet with blood, his eyes locked on nothing. This one had markings of the priest caste. More of the ruling subspecies were clustered around another lying on his back. A crown lay in a small puddle of oil against the wall.
Hulegu recognized the King where he lay as his bodyguards performed chest compressions and gave him mouth-to-mouth.
A Royal female threw a glass vial that struck his face. It broke apart and stained his visor with ink. His armor heated and the ink burned away into dark steam.
“Shit,” Hulegu said. “Shit, shit, fuck.”
“What now? And that asshole Jackson is still off the net.”
The Compliance Force commander switched off his speakers and backed away slowly.
“We’ve got a problem. That pussy Hower forgot to tell us the goddamn indig King might be down here. Just got eyes on him. If he isn’t dead, he will be soon.”
“The director is going to shit a brick. Recall?”
“Yeah, recall.” Hulegu walked out of the hangar and into the hell-scape of the flight line. Fighter jets burned in their arming bays, and wreckage from aircraft they’d destroyed during the assault added to the pall of smoke hanging over the base. He broke into a long-stride jog as he made for the strike craft hovering just over the end of the runway.
“The King must have got caught in the cross fire,” Hulegu said. “We’ll get our story straight on the way back to the Matsui, pin the blame on Zike’s order for us to come down here and—”
A laser bolt struck him in the forehead and his visor shorted out. Hulegu put a hand to his face, feeling the heat from the hit through his palm. More bolts smacked into his chest and shoulders, sending little pinpricks of pain that his mind barely registered.
“Hulegu!” Clay charged out from a stairwell, carbine firing.
“There you are.” Shaking the fog from his mind with a dose from the narcotic dispenser plugged into a port on his neck, Hulegu charged up his gauss repeater and let loose. Bullets tore a line in the pavement a dozen yards short of Clay and through where he’d stood a split second earlier.
He’d glimpsed the traitor in Myrmidon armor, but even that wouldn’t hold up to what Hulegu was armed with.
A car door spun through the air, arcing for Hulegu’s throat. Hulegu knocked it away with a backhand, his mind sharp and body humming from the drugs coursing through his system.
Fires roared around him, throwing off the infrared and acoustic scanners as his visor system came back online. He keyed his speakers.
“Not bad,” Hulegu said, annihilating a half-wrecked fighter with a quick burst from his weapon. “Not bad, Clay. You remember what it’s like to suit up and bang. Just you out here? Or wifey and your plus one hiding out too? I’m only here for you, Clay. You either let me take your head back to Zike now or we’ll go looking for them. Least one’s worth taking alive for some fun, right?”
Clay popped up from behind a cart loaded with air-to-air missiles and shot Hulegu with his laser carbine, punching the Myrmidon in the stomach and forearms.
“Pathetic.” Hulegu braced himself against the ground and fired. The gauss weapon thrummed in his hands, then an error message popped up on his visor: the battery coils had overheated. No doubt from Clay hitting them with his bolts.
Clay wrenched a missile out of the cart and threw it at Hulegu like a javelin. The Tyr-made warhead wasn’t up to human safety standards, and the shock of the tip impacting Hulegu’s chest was enough to trigger a sympathetic detonation in the warhead.
Hulegu stumbled back, dropping his weapon as he beat at flames on his chest.
Clay appeared out of the smoke. Holding his carbine by the muzzle, he used it as a club to attack Hulegu. The Myrmidon blocked the strike with his forearm, then lowered his chin and lunged forward to head-butt Clay. The blow grazed Clay’s exposed nose and mouth and Clay ducked back.
Hulegu kicked out and caught Clay in the stomach. The armor stiffened at the blow, dissipating much of the force, but it was still enough to lift Clay’s pelvis and push him back. Clay’s face scraped
against the runway and he lay prone, barely moving.
“See? That wasn’t so hard.” Hulegu punched his left hand at the ground and his laser blade snapped out. “I’ll take your head with that dirty indig skin still on it. Zike will appreciate the gesture.”
He bent his arm across his chest for the strike.
And heard the rumble.
Hulegu looked up as a Tyr tank ran into him at full throttle, the impact bending him over the front armor plate between the treads as the tank passed right over Clay. The tank slammed on the brakes and Hulegu flew off. He landed hard and skidded down the runway to the strike craft where the rest of his Myrmidons had gathered.
Solanus jumped off the ramp, grabbed Hulegu by the carry handle across the top of his shoulders, and hauled him into the cargo bay. The shuttle rose up…and the tank’s turret rose to track it.
The tank fired, a new boom that punctuated the destruction all around the base. The shell hit the side of the strike craft, making it wobble. It fell and hit the runway, sending a shower of sparks as the fuselage scraped against the asphalt.
The turret lowered with a whine and slewed to line up the next shot.
The shuttle sprang up as the crew overrode the safety protocols on the anti-grav engines and it soared upwards. The tank’s second shot missed and impacted a hillside.
Clay forced himself up to his hands and knees, his breathing labored. Drops of blood fell onto the pavement from a cut on his face.
Fastal opened the commander’s cupola on the tank and scrambled off the side. He ran to Clay and tried to help him up, but he was too heavy. Clay groaned and rolled onto his side, revealing lacerations around his right eye. The synth layer malfunctioned, throwing random patterns across the damage.
“You…you hurt?” Fastal asked.
“A little.” Clay tried to touch his face, but the armor seized up on him. “Bad news…this suit’s deadlined.”
“Your face…”
