by Richard Fox
A human fighter slashed through the air and shot up the street leading to the bridge. Explosions knocked Michael against his captors and they went down in a heap.
Screams rose into a constant high pitch as Tyr panicked and abandoned all pretext of orderly behavior and the mass rushed across the bridge.
Someone kicked Michael in the arms and the side of his head as he tried to get up. There was a tumult of black and silver as Tyr of all castes bumped against him, lifting him up and into a rush of flesh that reeked of fear and carried him onto the bridge.
He lost all his bearings in the struggle to stay on his feet. He tripped over people that had fallen, but the press of bodies was so close that he remained upright. Cries for help—mothers and fathers shouting names of their children—surrounded him, but he could do nothing but move along with the flow.
Even though he was pressed shoulder to shoulder, front to back with Tyr, he’d never felt more alone and afraid.
Chapter 50
The combined smell of body odor and machine oil was the first hint that she was alive; a growing pain across her nose and the top of an eye socket was the next.
Beneath her was a wet grate through which she saw shirtless Tyr rushing through narrow confines, shouting orders in the Islander dialect to each other. With a clang of metal, a pair of booted feet landed next to her. She pushed herself up and saw a ladder and a closed hatch.
She was in a submarine.
A Tyr with pure white hair and silver ketafik—pure silver without a spot of black—knelt next to her.
“I’m Illion, lord of this vessel. You are Sa-rah Clay of the human caste. The All Mother bid me to bring you to her. The Doc-oh-tour of yours has made many promises. He says you can deliver on them, so the All Mother desires you. It will be so.” He smiled at her.
“My son…you idiots didn’t bring my son!”
“Ah!” A knife flashed in Illion’s hand. “The All Mother wants your son safe. He will be safe. The true caste always obey the All Mother. The doc-oh-tour tells you this, yes?”
“What happens to my son in the middle of all this madness isn’t up to the Hidden. What about my husband?” She pressed the side of her hand against her pounding nose.
“Not my mission, maybe another family’s on him.” Illion stood up. “Jargah!”
“Sire?” The Blooded—no, the Hidden—that punched her with the duster came up the ladder to the small platform, joining her and the sub’s captain. His Blooded markings were half-gone, reduced to a smear over the top of his face. He rubbed a cloth that reeked of ambary oil over one eye to reveal more of a ketafik just as plain as Illion’s.
“Get her to quarters and seen to,” Illion said.
“Wait, how can your sub work at all? The Corp hit the city with an EMP and even in the water—”
“The doc-oh-tour made adjustments.” Illion looked up and sneered. “Did something to the engines. We can stay submerged for days, but I don’t like the sound when we’re underway. Side.”
Jargah swung to one side of the ladder and Illion slid down.
The former Blooded touched his own face where he’d hit her. “Apologies to you. Difficult times, yes?”
“Fuck you,” she said in English.
“Fuck?” He looked down at the crew. “What is fuck?”
Someone shouted back a word.
“Ah ha…no. Come on,” he said and motioned her to the ladder.
Sarah looked at the hatch. Even if she could beat him to the top, there was no way she could escape if the sub was underwater…or that far from the coast.
Now she was torn from both her husband and her son, and held hostage by the Hidden. If they could—or would—care for Michael and her husband remained to be seen.
But at least she was en route to someone that had been preparing the Tyr for this attack for many years…and a chance at winning this fight.
Because if the Tyr lost, so would her family.
Chapter 51
Yenin woke up and hacked out a thick glob of phlegm onto the floor. Her vision swam for a few seconds and she rolled off the cell slab and hit the floor.
“Ow.” She looked up at the barred window. Late afternoon by her guess. The guard that was normally posted outside her cell was gone. “Room service…room service,” she called out as she stood, muscles aching. Her throat hurt and she desperately wanted a drink of water.
The water fountain at the top of the toilet didn’t work and what was in the bowl had a yellow tinge. And it still refused to flush.
She tried to take a deep breath and felt pain in her diaphragm. Going to the bars, she saw the guard lying on his side, his back to her, a thin puddle of foamy liquid beneath his head and shoulders.
“Hey, you OK?” She rattled the bars. “Anyone out there? That guy needs help.” She shook the bars harder and concrete dust fell down from where the cell was set into the ceiling. “He does not look OK…”
She stopped and listened, but heard only the rattle of a distant air conditioner.
“They were going to get introduced to this eventually…” She went to the pillow on her bunk and got the small laser pistol from underneath. She checked the power levels and put her finger on the trigger.
“I come in peace?” she said and triggered the beam, shooting a solid laser that belted easily through the lock on the bars. The cell stank of iron and smoke. She transferred the weapon to her other hand, shaking heat off the other.
A line of fire fizzled on the hallway wall.
No shouts of alarm. No panicking.
“Weird.” She wrapped the still-hot weapon in the pillowcase and stuffed it into a thigh pocket. She pushed the cell door open with her foot then took a hesitant look down the hallway—more cells and the prostrate guard.
She nudged the guard’s shoulder. Stiff and cold to the touch. Yenin removed the keys from his belt, not wanting to waste any more of what little power remained in her pistol to cut her way through the next door.
Her efforts were unnecessary; the heavy door out of the cell block was ajar.
“I’m thirsty,” she said, holding up one hand then grimacing at the growing pain in her throat, “and that guy was like that when I found him…”
She pushed the cell-block door open to find an office of wooden tables and spinning ceiling fans on the other side. No sound or movement anywhere. A brass tank was on a far wall, its sides dripping with condensation, a stack of paper cups nearby.
“There we go…” She crept forward, hands up. “What is this, a holiday or—oh my god!”
Tyr were strewn across the office floor. Their mouths and noses stained with dried foam, many curled into the fetal position.
“Oh…oh no…” Yenin had a dry cough and she felt a tightness in her lungs. “Corporate…they were serious about xeno-infections. I thought they were just being too cheap to rescue me.”
Yenin sidestepped across the office toward the water tank, her gaze darting from dead Tyr to dead Tyr.
She fumbled with the nozzles before getting a stream of ice-cold water into a cup. She drank over and over again, until her belly felt like it would burst, but the pain in her throat remained.
“I’m so stupid.” She leaned against the worn wooden table holding the tank. “This is…this is all my fault. All I could think about was saving my own ass. Never even occurred to me that…Christ Almighty.”
Snot ran down from her nose and she picked up a box of napkins. Dabbing at her nose, she walked out of the office to the main foyer of the police station. A few Tyr were handcuffed to a pipe on one wall, and all had died there—one hand suspended, their upper bodies dangling just above the floor like meat in the window of a butcher shop.
“Ah…” Pain shot through her abdomen and she lurched against a tall desk. An alien in an inverted cone headdress and sky-blue robes lay dead on the stairs leading up to the seat. “Ah… whatever I gave you guys…y’all got me too.”
Outside the police station was dead silence. No cars we
re driving around, though streetlights with blue and orange options switched on and off. A small flock of birds flapped overhead.
A dog-sized lizard with fur running down the top of its head and spine trotted out from behind a car that had jumped the curb and crashed into the side of a brick building. It looked at her and bared its teeth, an undulating hiss rising from the animal.
“Good…thing. Nice thing.” She threw the jail keys over its head, but the animal wasn’t interested in fetch. “Let’s be cool now, OK? Just be cool and—”
She screamed as the animal charged at her, its legs splaying out and shuffling forward like a charging alligator. Yenin turned and ran, but her lungs seized up within a few steps and she started hacking.
The animal bit her ankle and she pitched forward. Sharp teeth pierced the fabric of her vac suit as it shook her leg violently from side to side. Yenin’s vision blurred as she tried to kick the damn thing off her, but her inability to breathe was proving an issue.
There was a sharp crack and the beast sprang into the air, its muzzle nipping back at its rear. It spun around, whimpering, as blood spurted from a sudden wound. It tried to crawl away on its front two legs but managed only a few feet before collapsing, its whip-thin tail flapping.
A few yards away were three male Tyr. Each carried a rifle and wore a gas mask and thick-looking rubber gloves.
Yenin groaned and rolled onto her side, the position making breathing just a bit easier.
“I wouldn’t…wouldn’t come any closer.” She coughed and her vision blurred in and out as the Tyr did indeed come closer. They spoke to each other, shouting to enunciate through the gas masks.
One knelt next to her and patted her down, removing her wrapped pistol and handing it off to one of the others.
“You see all the other dead ones? I did that…but it was an acci…dent,” she slurred.
She’d begun hallucinating when the Tyr spoke to her.
“If you’re still alive right now,” one said in perfect English through his mask, “then you’re probably going to be OK.”
She squinted at him then tried to look around for whoever had just spoken to her. Her hallucination intensified when the gas mask came off, revealing an elderly man—human—with pale blue eyes.
“You’re going to feel a little pinch.” He took a small case from where it was strapped to his thigh and assembled a glass and brass syringe. He stuck the needle into a vial of tea-colored liquid in which flecks of gold floated, and drew the trigger back.
“Corp…Corp came for me?” she asked.
“Oh, my dear, I’m no corpo. Now hold very still, I haven’t done this for one of my own in a while. Veins should still be in the same spot, yes? Chata ig nathma.”
The other two pulled her onto her back and held her head to one side and her shoulders down.
Sunlight flashed off the needle as the old man pierced the side of her neck and fire flowed into her jugular and through her heart. Yenin tried to scream, but her lungs were not cooperating.
“There.” The man removed the needle from her neck and took it apart. “Assuming the system shock doesn’t kill you, the antibodies should get back to normal in a few days.”
“Who?” Yenin took a ragged gasp. “What the hell?”
“I am Doctor Philip Turley and you—you corporate lapdog—may have just murdered an entire continent simply by breathing around the inhabitants. I hope you’re proud. Did Corporate ever mention me? I have been dead—as far as they’re concerned—for quite some time.”
Yenin coughed up green phlegm and spat it out.
“No…you’re just some low-level cog, aren’t you? Not one of the butchers they sent to Mount Bagad. I can see a question burning behind your sick eyes. Why did I save your life instead of burning you to save millions? Because the Tyr are a stubborn, stubborn people. And sometimes they have to learn lessons the hard way. The All Mother always had her doubts about me, but you’re going to be a big help.” He gave her a pat on the shoulder then reached into his collar and drew out a sheaf of what looked like limp plastic.
He stretched the synth layer over his face, and a few moments later, he bore the face and markings of the Linker caste.
The other Tyr put together a stretcher from packs they carried and strapped Yenin to it.
“Come on,” Turley said. “I’m taking you someplace even most Tyr don’t know about. Not an honor. They’ll probably still want to burn you at the stake out of principle. I wasn’t kidding when I said they’re stubborn.”
Yenin wheezed as they raised her on the stretcher. She stared at the sun for a moment, then passed out.
Chapter 52
“Come on! Give it to me, give it to me, give it—”
“Enough already, Darla!” Camacho yelled. He keyed the mute function on her transmission, but the system was malfunctioning. Again. His forward screen was of a serene blue sky meant to keep him calm, but the glare was starting to get to him.
Camacho felt his sweat building against the contact points in his Marauder suit, the smell of body odor and grime growing thicker the longer he had to stay buttoned up during the drop. He spat on his visor and droplets floated in front of him. They were still in zero-g.
Just what their transport was doing right now, or even where it was after it left the Matsui didn’t concern him; he only cared that it got him to their assault location in one piece and before the withdrawals got to him too.
“They can’t just leave us in here forever,” Darla said, her words coming fast and slurred. “Scratch my itch, boss, just a little.”
“I can hit you with enough to make your heart pop or enough to send you into a coma. And I can’t adjust for your weight or tolerances. Want to risk it or just shut your damn mouth until we’re loose?”
“Sh-sh-sh-sh—come on!”
“Mute yourself and I’ll let you get ahead of me for first quota and a nice bump.” Camacho raised an eyebrow and Darla’s icon went amber with a single diagonal slash through it.
“Finally. Shijir?” He looked at the icon for one of the others in his squad. “Who are you?”
“Wo chongle ge zao, dan haishi hen yang.”
“Standard?”
“Wo fangpile tai zaole!”
“Fine, whatever. The suit will keep you on target. Who else is that…Agnello?”
“Sir?” a man’s strained voice answered. “I’m…I’m so lost right now. And my muscles ache and it’s so hard to concentrate in this damn thing.”
“First drop,” Camacho said flatly. “Who’d you piss off to get sold to the Corp?”
A small red light turned on above his HUD, warning him that his conversation was monitored.
“I had a business on Praxis. It went under when my market got flooded by knockoffs of my own product…the bankruptcy court gave me the option to work off my debt in the asteroid mines out of system or indenture.”
“And you chose this?” Camacho tried not to laugh and failed.
“Mining would’ve taken ten years and the accident rate is so bad that most don’t last past five. This…math was better. But not by much. Are my teeth—are my teeth supposed to hum like this?”
“That’s the stims your drip’s feeding you. Oh, how I miss those first few days on the uppers. Enjoy it while it lasts.” Camacho toggled a squad leader menu and dosed himself with the only available choice from the recreational drugs in his suit, making his mouth taste strongly of limes and tinting his vision green.
“What did you do?” Agnello asked.
“Gang war on Segovia. Civilians got in the middle of it and the hive lords noticed. I wasn’t in the fight in question, but I had the tats and the colors. Los tamarindos picked me up and then sold me to the Corp to pay for ‘damages.’ Soon as I earn out, they’ll send me home.” Camacho chuckled at that last part, his eyes on the red light. It was a lie, but the Corp needed him to say he believed it.
No one ever earned out. Ever.
He looked at the last icon for the fif
th member of his squad.
“Tak, you hear me?”
An unintelligible mess of vowels came back. Tak had chewed off his own tongue after his drip malfunctioned a few drops ago. That was about the best answer he was going to give.
“You’re good. All y’all need to—” The border of his visor screen went red then the blue sky vanished, replaced by the locked ramp of their shuttle. “Go time!”
A rectangle of dots appeared on the upper left of his screen. One switched back and forth between a skull and the dot.
“Quota’s pretty high,” Darla said. “We even have that much ammo?”
“Flames. Boots.” Camacho’s heart pounded and his hands tightened against his control handles. “Computer don’t care how we kill ’em.”
“I only got three days of training before they iced me,” Agnello said. “Are there rules or—”
Darla laughed hysterically. Camacho tried to mute her again, but the system was still bugged.
“Don’t damage Corp property,” he said as Darla took a moment to breathe. “Follow your HUD’s prompts or they’ll dock your pay. You go too far into the red and they’ll just write you off.”
“What does that mean?” Agnello asked.
“They yank you from your suit and throw you in a cage to die of withdrawal. Takes four days.” Camacho pushed forward with his left control stick and his left arm extended. Rounds from internal feed lines loaded into the chamber of the machine gun built into his left fist. His right knuckles sparked with a pilot light as he activated the flamethrower.
“Prepare for employment,” a pleasant voice said. Darla jostled him from behind, already out of the mag locks that had secured her boots to the deck. “Thank you for your service to Bahadur-Getty Incorporated. Compliance brings rewards. Have a nice day!”
A smiley face pulsed on his screen, then the ramp fell open.
His jaw clenched shut as the suit flooded his bloodstream with adrenaline and a proprietary cocktail of drugs the rest of the indentured called the Rage. Camacho charged out of the shuttle and into a forty-foot drop that would’ve terrified him if he was back in his normal life.
