Magnus selected High Frequency and stepped into the room, still engulfed in smoke. He was a meter away from the Selskrit when they smelled him. But it was too late. A single round at medium discharge went straight through both bodies and smacked into the wall behind them. They swiped madly at the air, but Magnus easily dodged the attempts.
Before long, his room was clear.
“Could use some help here!” Dutch said.
With his bioteknia vision, Magnus saw the rest of his platoon still stacked up in the far wing, save Nolan, who hadn’t advanced through the smoke yet to join Magnus. Withering fire continued to bear down on them from the doorway. Magnus looked into the adjacent room and saw all six Selskrit crowding the door like eager pups ready to go for a walk with their master.
“I’ve got you, Dutch.” Magnus stepped away from the side wall, pushed his MAR30 to full power, and sighted the remaining combatants in the next room. He squeezed.
A blistering stream of blaster fire leaped from the muzzle, drilling into the sandstone. A moment later, the energy burst through the other side of the wall and struck Jujari flesh. Magnus watched as bits and pieces of bodies sprayed into the air, captured with pristine clarity in his new vision. The Selskrit flailed as if an angry swarm of horde-bees attacked them. They swiped at their backs and necks and stomachs as Magnus’s blaster fire continued to eat through the wall and tear into their bodies. Within moments, the six combatants lay squirming on the ground in death throes.
Magnus released the trigger and heard his MAR30 cycle down. The muzzle glowed red. He glanced down and saw that the energy magazine was nearly depleted.
“Clear!” he yelled over comms. The words had no sooner left his mouth than his vision went wavy and the hexagonal lines vanished. Ident tags, outlines, wall-penetrating vision—it was all gone. He had normal human sight again. Unbelievable.
The house was quiet. The only remaining sounds came from outside the compound as Abimbola’s skiffs and Simone’s snipers continued to dispatch Selskrit. Smoke still filled the room, but it was thinning. Magnus turned toward the two bodies on the floor. He knelt beside the first—an older man.
“Can you hear me?” Magnus asked, touching what he thought was the man’s shoulder. The bones felt frail. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” the man said in an elderly voice. “I can hear you.” Magnus’s heart sank a little when he realized this was no Marine. Maybe a Luma or a senator.
“I’ve got one alive,” Magnus said over comms.
“We’ve got three—alive!” Dutch said. Clearly, the lack of smoke had given them an advantage.
Magnus’s heart rate quickened. “Who is it? Who’ve you got?” He suddenly heard a stream of profanity pouring from someone’s mouth. That’s a Marine, he thought, a smile creeping across his face. Recon for the win.
“What’s your name, Marine?” Dutch asked.
In the background, Magnus heard the man say, “Sergeant Michael Damn Deeks! And who the hell are you?”
Magnus let out a hoot. “Listen, tell that son of a bitch that his first lieutenant orders him to watch his language. I’ll be right over.”
“Copy that,” Dutch said. Magnus could hear her smile over the transmission.
He returned his attention to the elderly man. “Sir, what’s your name?”
“I’m a squirrel,” he said weakly.
“Huh?”
“I’m a squirrel, and a squirrelly old man. That’s what I’m told.”
Magnus was about to reply until he had a memory of Awen hanging in Abimbola’s jail cell, drugged. This was a Luma. They’d drugged him to suppress his powers in the Unifornication, or whatever it was called.
“Have you come to rescue squirrels?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Magnus replied, laughing a little. “We’ve come to rescue squirrels.”
“That makes me very happy.” The man let out a wet cough.
Dutch spoke up again. “It also looks like we have one Corporal Chico and a captain.”
“Wainright?” Magnus asked.
“Unclear. Name’s scratched off, and he’s unconscious.”
In the background, Flow said, “Yeah, it’s Wainright. He needs a medic.”
“As does the corporal,” Dutch added. “But I think Deeks can walk.”
“Damn straight, I can walk!”
This was unbelievable. Flow, Cheeks, and Captain Wainright were alive. Sure, Magnus wished more had survived. But he’d walked into this expecting the worst, so that little group of survivors was a welcome sight.
Still, they had a job to do. No celebrating until they were out of Oosafar. “Copy that,” Magnus said.
The smoke thinned enough for Magnus to see a second hostage lying facedown in the corner. The body was bloated and wrapped with several blood-soaked bandages. The person had either been tortured or these were leftover wounds from the attack. Maybe both. Either way, whoever it was needed serious medical attention. The stench was putrid.
“Hey.” Magnus placed a hand on a fat bicep and shook gently. “You awake?”
“He’s not a squirrel,” the Luma elder said.
“Good to know.” Magnus shook the man’s arm a little harder then heard a groan. He wanted to try to turn him over but knew he’d need help.
“I said, he’s not a squirrel.”
“I heard you the first time,” Magnus said. The old man was really out of it.
“He’s something else.”
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
“He’s royalty. He’s an ambassador.”
Magnus froze then looked between the old man and the massive body in the corner.
24
“How in the hell did you survive?” Magnus asked. But he knew the man couldn’t answer. He couldn’t even move. The fat, impetuous Republic ambassador, Gerald Bosworth III—the one who’d threatened Awen and probably helped sabotage the mwadim’s meeting—was alive.
“Who’ve you got?” Dutch asked over comms.
Unbelievable. Magnus shook his head. “I’ve got the Republic ambassador.”
The old man nodded excitedly then coughed again. “He doesn’t like squirrels. Or dogs. But he sure does like to eat.”
“Come again?” Dutch asked.
“Ambassador Bosworth,” Magnus said, holding a finger up for the old man to stay quiet. “Guy’s hurt bad. Don’t know if he’s going to survive evac.” And truthfully, that wouldn’t hurt my feelings one bit. “We’re gonna need a hover lift or some sort of stretcher.”
“Copy that, LT.”
Magnus reached an arm under the Luma. “Come on, old squirrel. Time to get you outta here.” The man winced as Magnus helped him stand. He weighed next to nothing, and Magnus thought he’d snap him in two if he wasn’t careful. “Can you walk?”
The old man nodded but struggled to straighten his knees, clinging to Magnus’s arm for dear life.
“Splick. We’re gonna need two stretchers.” He switched over to general comms. “Bimby, I need some hover sleds or stretchers or whatever you’ve got. We have survivors.”
“Roger that, buckethead. How many?”
“Five.” Though one of these counts for three more. Damn son of a bitch.
“Coming your way now.”
“Copy.”
* * *
This was the part of the job they never advertised in holo-verts or school presentations. Then again, moving a fat-ass body down three stories through a urine-stained, flea-infested sauna wasn’t exactly the kind of thing people lined up to do. So he couldn’t blame them. Still, it would have been nice if someone had said, “Hey, kid. Listen, splick’s gonna get bad. I mean, real bad. You’re gonna get covered in alien juice that will stain your skin for weeks, and you’ll never look at a steak the same way. Hell, you’re going to see more entrails than a gastroenterologist doing colonoscopies. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
There was no way Bosworth was fitting down the circular stairwells, so Gilder had used rope to lo
wer the stretcher over a railing and through the central square. A hover sled would have made it a lot easier, but Abimbola only had one, and the ambassador exceeded the weight limit. Instead, Wainright got it. And Magnus wasn’t complaining there.
“You know, there is a way to make this go a lot faster.” Silk braced herself on the marble floor, holding one of the ropes Gilder had set up. “I mean, all I’ve gotta do is sneeze and—”
“Steady,” Magnus yelled down. “Don’t need anyone else dying today.”
Though, truth be told, the Marauder was right. You’re a bad man, Magnus.
Abimbola’s voice crackled over comms. “I am going to need you to hurry it up there, buckethead. It seems the Selskrit are regrouping, and I think we have overstayed our welcome.”
“We’re on our way out.” Magnus looked over the railing to help Haney guide the ambassador’s stretcher to the floor. Haney had just returned from delivering Rix to the medivac unit. “All right, people, you heard the warlord. Let’s get back to the skiffs.”
Magnus descended both stairwells and helped carry the survivors back through the compound and out the front doors. When he emerged, struggling with one end of Bosworth’s stretcher—Dozer on the other—Jujari bodies lay scattered throughout the courtyard.
Flow looked around and then eyed Magnus. “You sure know how to throw a party, LT.”
Did Flow really just call me LT again? It warmed his heart. “I can think of easier ways to get you wasted, Flow. But hey, if this is what it takes…”
“This is what it takes, yes. This is most certainly what it takes.”
“LT!” Dutch yelled from behind Magnus. He turned around. “Almost forgot this!” She was carrying the algorithmic shield generator from the guard tower.
“Better give that to Silk,” Magnus said, laboring for breath.
“Silk?”
“Abimbola offered a raise as reward for the device. So unless you want to start working for Abimbola, it’s better to give the spoils to one of the Marauders.”
“Eh, I’m good,” Dutch said.
“Thought so.”
“Thanks, Marine,” Silk said, carrying one end of Wainright’s stretcher. “I owe you one.”
“Careful what you commit to,” Magnus said. “I’ll have you make good on it.”
“I expect nothing less.” She winked.
A stream of rapid MUT50 fire stole Magnus’s attention as it stitched up the side of a building and removed several Selskrit from windows and two on the roof. He looked at the surrounding buildings and noticed more shadows moving within them. He hoped Simone’s fire team was back in a skiff now; those rooftops had to be crawling with the enemy.
“How are we doing, slowpokes?” Abimbola asked. His M109 had opened up on a pack of Selskrit trying to make entry into the compound through the front gate.
“We’re coming up on the hole you just cleared for us. Thanks.”
“Hurry it up, would you?”
Magnus felt his arms and legs burning. The ambassador was even heavier than he looked—and he already looked heavy enough not to carry! “Come on, people! Let’s move, let’s move!” He heard the M109 fire down the cross street on the other side of the wall.
His platoon picked their way over the rubble and bodies in the doorway and headed for three different skiffs, each backed up to the gate with their cargo ramps extended. Marauders motioned the stretchers inside, covering the retreat with blaster fire to encroaching enemy targets. The moment Magnus passed the handles off to another Marauder at the top of a ramp, he stretched his cramping arms and pulled his MAR30 off the maglock on his back.
“Find a ride,” Magnus ordered. “We’re leaving here hot, it looks like.”
“Hot does not even begin to describe it,” Abimbola yelled. “Where you at, buckethead?”
“On my way.” Magnus jumped off the ramp and ran ahead two skiffs, finding Abimbola’s vehicle engaged with a small horde of advancing Selskrit. They moved along the sides of the streets, ducking in and out of cover. The M109 took out one or two at a time, but the beasts were getting smarter. That, and they were growing in number.
Magnus banged on the passenger side of the skiff’s forward compartment. Abimbola leaned over, unlatched the security lock, and swung the door out.
“Good to see you, Bimby.” Magnus climbed in and slammed the door behind him.
“I really hate that name. Have I mentioned that?”
“Come to think of it… no. But I have some advice.”
“What is that?”
“Get used to it, ’cause I love using it.”
Abimbola stomped the pedal to the floor, and the skiff lurched forward.
* * *
With everyone accounted for, the convoy barreled down the streets of the Western Heights. It was here that Magnus really got to see Hell’s Basket Case in full effect. It charged forward, impaling unlucky Jujari on the spikes of its deadly battering ram.
Abimbola pushed it faster and faster. Since they were headed west—away from the city’s center—there was little threat of mines. Instead, there were a whole lot more Selskrit. The skiff only slowed when two or more bodies temporarily impeded its progress. But two embedded counter rotating blade saws made quick work of any meat buildup on the spikes.
“You sure about this?” Magnus asked over the scream of the drive core. He sat with his torso sticking out of the sunroof, the hatch flipped forward for cover.
“What?”
“Are you sure about this?”
“No!” Abimbola yelled.
“Perfect.”
“Just keep shooting!”
“Copy that.” Magnus was about to fire on more Selskrit when he noticed something flash in the sky. He looked up to see the Republic blockade… engaged in ship-to-ship orbital combat. Streaks of light dotted the blue sky while small explosions appeared and vanished like small firecrackers—bursting into existence one moment and vanishing without a trace the next.
Without warning, Magnus’s bioteknia eyes waved again, the hexagonal grid appearing in his mind. They zoomed in and placed designator tags beside each ship. There were hundreds of ships, far more than he could see with his naked eye, and at least half were Jujari allied. This wasn’t good. The war had begun.
“Keep shooting!” Magnus snapped his attention back to the field of battle. He aimed his MAR30 at a group of four Selskrit who stood a good two hundred meters down the road. Old buildings covered either side of the street, creating a tunnel effect, which made target acquisition all the easier. Magnus saw that one of the combatants held an LRGR over his shoulder. “Splick!”
Magnus’s vision suddenly zoomed in on the sniper with the shoulder-mounted weapon. It happened fast. Magnus squeezed the trigger. A cluster of blue blaster bolts streaked down the street and slapped into the sniper—but not before the Selskrit got a shot off. The projectile missed Abimbola’s skiff by less than a meter. Instead, it sailed past and detonated into the side of a building. Magnus heard the loud clang of sandstone rocks denting armored plating.
“Good shot, buckethead!”
“Good driving!” Magnus could get used to these new eyes. They freaked him out, of course. But they were… awesome.
Despite the skiff covering a lot of ground, the convoy was definitely getting deeper into enemy territory. Magnus was having serious doubts about this course of action. He knew it was the only way to avoid the booby-trapped streets. But he didn’t think they’d have better luck with twice as many Jujari.
Make that three times as many. Negative, make that ten times as many. Mystics! They are everywhere.
Jujari were in every window, on rooftops, and even starting to crowd the streets, growing bolder with every hundred meters. Where were they coming from? There must have been hundreds. Maybe thousands. His vision was full of red forms listed as Target: hostile.
“Getting a little cramped in here, don’t you think, Bimby?” Magnus fired at target after target, his MAR30 growing hot in the la
te-afternoon sun. His eyes were now placing percentages beside each target. Magnus couldn’t tell if the numbers designated the likelihood of them attacking him, their threat level, or his chances of missing—it was all happening so fast. Either way, his bioteknia had some sort of AI that interfaced with his brain. Freaky.
A new indicator flashed. MAR30: Energy low.
How did my eyes know the status of my weapon’s energy mag? He fished for a mag, Abimbola handing him a fresh one from the glove box and another from under the seat. He went through mag after mag, sure that he was running low.
In such a target-rich environment, it was hard to know if he was having any measurable impact even with the elevated kill count. With the number of targets his eyes kept identifying, making an assessment was a losing battle.
“Does this end anytime soon?”
“It does,” Abimbola said, looking unfazed. “Soon enough.”
Magnus dropped three more Jujari. “Can you define soon?”
He had hardly gotten the question out of his mouth when a Jujari landed on top of him. One paw gripped the hatch while the other grabbed Magnus around the back. He looked up in time to see the beast’s maw, filled with razor-sharp teeth, open wide over his head. His MAR30 was pointed up and half-swallowed in the combatant’s mouth when he pulled the trigger. Blaster fire blew open the soft back of the creature’s head, blossoming in a gout of spine, bones, and blood. The carcass slumped on him.
“Mystics, these things stink!”
“Very much, yes,” Abimbola replied.
Magnus shoved the body off him and resumed fire, taking aim at ones that he guessed might try to leap onto their skiffs like the last one had. Sure enough, what looked to be a skinny young male stood leaning over the street, one paw wrapped around a pipe. Magnus aimed and snapped his arm at the elbow. The creature flailed and fell, landing a few meters ahead. The Jujari couldn’t move in time, and Abimbola’s battering ram devoured another victim.
Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6 Page 55
