“Curiouser and curiouser.” he said, mimicking an old nursery rhyme. “I am tempted to say that you are an Exile but the masking protocols and your command of my interface is too sublime. A lesser tier would be inclined, possibly even forced to answer you. While this is deliciously fun, I have matters to attend to. Keep the book. I look forward to speaking to you again.”
The world faded to black, to the empty loading environment that Kat had first entered. There was the sound of wind rushing past, as though she were moving at a high rate of speed. Then she was back staring at Tolin with the boys anxiously checking on her from the comm in her ear.
“No. I'm alright,” she said, leaning on the rock.
“Do we have a problem?” Kel asked
“I just made contact with Kenner.”
“You did what?” Everyone seemed to ask at once.
“Some form of secure VR communication. Looks like it's accessible only by those with access to Exodus tech. He said I should keep the book.”
“Can we use it to track him?” Kel asked.
“Not yet but I think I can once I have it all figured out. What's strange was the command I had over it without knowing I had it. I think this body is more than it seems. It's possible that Sister Leeuwen might have been one of the old Sentinels.”
“What is that?” Tolin asked.
Kat was tapping her bottom lip. “In the Exodus Fleet, if you had a cyborg or noble that was acting up, a Sentinel is what you would send to take them into custody.”
Lasher broke the silence. “We're coming to pick you up. Is there any way they can use the book to track us?”
“No. The book itself had no way to broadcast anything it was doing. My touch allowed a connection through nano-tech in the cover. It used me to broadcast. I didn't know I could do that so I'll have to run some scans to make sure that I can't be turned on by just anyone.”
“I should hope not!” Kel said through the comms.
“You're not funny,” Kat giggled.
“You're the only one who won't admit you like my jokes.”
“Anyplace described in the book we would've hit is now going to have increased security. This just got more complicated.” Lasher ignored the other comments. “We're coming.”
Kat closed the cover, slipping it into a cargo pocket. “We're going to have to be careful now that we know Kenner can use this tech.”
“Kel wondered how such a little punk had risen fast enough to steal his seat at the table. This could explain how,” Tolin said.
“I don't need to know the how. I just need him in my sights to plant one between the eyes. Exo-tech or not, that usually solves most problems,” Kel hissed over the comm
Kat sounded pensive. “Don't be so sure when Exos are involved.”
The crew sat around the holo-table in the center of the makeshift control room. Several members of Tolin's family worked at different stations making the humans and near-human crew seem very out of place. An aged, rotund simigon climbed down from a workstation set into the roots of a tree that had penetrated the fortress.
“Kel hanna. Mi kofu, isheedi silhiri kah.” His speech was a mixture of vocal pops over grunts which served to highlight certain words.
Kel flashed his trademark half smile in return. “You're welcome. Don't get me wrong, I'm a criminal through and through. It's just the whole slavery thing isn't the way I want to play the game. Sure, we can smuggle people over the Boundary, charging them huge bags of credits for the job. But I'm not going to put anyone in chains.”
The simigon tech stroked his beard while Kel spoke. He patted him on the back when he was done, nearly knocking him to the ground.
“Seriously,” Kel said, coughing under the impact. “You working here to help us out is payment enough. It's us that should owe you!”
The elder raised a hand to Kel's head, patting it like one would a grandchild. Kel fixed his hair, trying to regain a measure of his posture from the hit. He adjusted his gun belt and jacket, hunting for the right stance to put his spine straight again. “It's a good thing they like me.”
“What's not to like? You helped them escape. You gave them someplace to hide out. And then you captured the guy responsible to let them administer their own version of justice,” Lasher answered.
“Yeah, locking him in a room until he was near crazy and then letting him loose so they could hunt him. That's cold.”
“We're up,” Kat said.
The others shifted their attention back to the table. It projected a series of grainy screens for everyone to see. Several video thumbnails played in loops in the air surrounded by images and scrolling lines of text.
“Where's the girl?” Tolin looked about.
“Staring into the jungle from the hangar. Been there since you went out to decode the book.” Kel said.
Lasher keyed his comm.“Fluff? You on?”
“I'm here in spirit,” his gravelly voice said over the speakers in the room.
Kat took over the table, nodding her thanks to the aged simigon. “Thank you, Haevo. So we have a lot on both the paper and the ICOM inside the book. This could be enough to wipe the Chen Cartel off the map, but it’s a lot of ground for us to cover by ourselves. Even with the Numassa tribe helping us, cutting off one head during an operation is sure to grow two more.”
“So we do nothing?” Kel asked.
“There is a way we can hit this all at once so that it counts.” Everyone turned to Lasher. He was two meters up from the floor, resting on one of the many Yisheer tree roots that crossed the outer portion of the room. He'd taken a simigon child from his mother so she could climb down to assist at a station. The two were trying to BOOP each other's nose in a game of tag. Lasher was smiling, exposing the wicked canines common to the Vosi side of his heritage. It was a rare treat for the crew to see the one who brought them together enjoying a happy and innocent moment. “We pick the best target for ourselves and hyper-link the rest of it to the lancers.”
The room froze. Kat spoke first. “They're still hunting all of us. They even petitioned TRACO in the Core Worlds not to issue any bonds for us. They want us for themselves after what we did to them on the Kesthi Steppe.”
Lasher's game with the child morphed into the age old game of “Got-Your-Nose.” The child's giggling seemed an odd backdrop for Orin's next statement. “Which is why we send this to them, including the target we take. We hit the target we're after and then fade into the black, letting the chaos of a strike team cover our escape.”
“Or catch us in their net.” Kat said. “Don't forget, even though Marshal Brand is laid up from his injuries, your buddy Marshal Truveau is leading the Devil Hunters. Brand acts like a hammer. He's easy to predict. The damned lioness almost had us on Kodanna Station.”
“That's why we also share the information with the monks,” Lasher offered.
“Are you out of your mind?” Kel asked.
Fluff chuckled through the speakers. “Target rich environment. I like it.”
Lasher slipped from his perch, landing casually on the floor next to Kel. “Do you know what happens when two organizations that claim they have jurisdiction get into a dust up where neither knew the other was coming? First there's uncertainty to make sure they don't shoot each other. Then there's a mad scramble to coordinate so they can still take the target. The best part of that is when they try to figure out whose operation it is. That's when they start the measuring contest, each side trying to figure out who’s in charge.”
“Fluff and I don't always make the same tactical choices but in this case, a target rich environment is also a confusing one for everyone except us. Makes sense,” Kat said.
Kel threw up his hands, “No risk, no reward. What are we going to hit?”
“There,” Lasher said, pointing at a holo of a gassy looking planet. “The only thing we need to know is whether or not Tolin and the tribe will be going home.”
Kel tossed a credit slip to the timid slicer. “Alright, kid. Here'
s a chit with some credits on it. Enough for you and mamma to disappear anywhere in the universe. On our way out, we can drop you to any colony you want. You can make your way from there.”
Jia deposited the chit into a shirt pocket, saying nothing. Her head was down, standing like one who wasn't sure what their next move would be. Kel couldn't tell whether this was relief at being out from under the Cartel's thumb or shame at not keeping their confidence.
“Look, this could have gone a bunch of ways. But now you can be done with the Chen. Your mom is going to be fine. There isn't...”
Jia took him gently by the shoulders. Kel was taken off guard by the sudden change in her demeanor. She moved close, pressing against him in a way no woman had in a long time. She glanced up to stare into his eyes only to have him pull back in terror. He tried to free himself from her grip which was like a power loader.
Her black eyes told Kel everything he needed to know. He was in a lot of trouble. “A little help here!”
Jia launched him into the air, a petulant child angry at her doll. He flew end over end, coming to rest in a tangle of vines a meter from the ground. She took a few halting steps, like a newborn coming to terms with balance for the first time. The uncertainty lasted for a moment, her pace increasing to descend on her prey.
“And here I thought I wasn't going to have a chance to try another Chen so soon. Of course, meat needs to be tenderized before you grill it.” Doom-Snuggle prowled from behind Kel. Its paint job was shifting along its surface, mimicking the terrain around him. Hints of the morning sun were glistening off morning dew sliding down its jaw, into a set of fangs made of duradium and resicarbon. Muffled buzzing noises signaled the mech's vibro-enhanced frame was powering up for maximum grip of the terrain, ready to slam the twin hells out of anything in its path. “Your move, meat!”
Lasher appeared at the cave entrance. “You playing without me, again?”
“Only that one time on Cardas where you fell off the ramp.” Fluff quipped.
“Took me a minute to get back up there. At least you saved me some.”
Kel yelled from his tangled net. “Would you two love birds stop strolling down memory lane and blast this thing?”
Lasher pointed to the slicer “Alive, Fluff.”
“Oooh! A challenge!”
Lasher's view changed as he slipped into the power of the Crucible. Once an apprentice to the marshals, he had been trained to use his gifts to harness the Way, the religion that let them perform well beyond human norms. The Crucible's fire sped up his perceptions, allowing him to view the world in slow motion while moving at much faster speeds. It powered his muscles to clear the space in a heartbeat and hit with the power of a rhinosaur.
Jia jumped straight up, landing on a branch ten meters into the nearest tree. Lasher sped past, his Gavoc sword flaring to life. Fluff's dorsal plates shifted, exposing two auto-blaster cannons. They belched a pulse of concentrated destruction directly into the branch she was standing on. The limb shattered, sending it tumbling away from the enhanced slicer as she jumped to a neighboring tree.
Kel pulled a vibro-enhanced switchblade from his boot, slashing the vines so he could drop ground. He crouched to a knee, bringing up his blaster pistol in a tight shooter's posture supported on his knee. “Got a shot!”
“Anything but the head!” Lasher yelled back.
The trio bounded in unison, placing energized strikes into Jia as she moved through the canopy. Ripping a branch from the side of a tree, she shattered it against Doom-Snuggle's armor, knocking him from his perch. The mech was batted into the expanse until gravity reasserted its dominance, sending him plummeting to the ground. Lasher's use of the Crucible denied gravity its way. The energy field captured the Death Cat, launching him like a stone from a catapult back the way he came.
There was a flurry of movement as rods and plates shifted, the panther's versa-technology activating to change his shape. Limbs elongated, changing to feet and hands. The torso straightened, pulling into itself to change Fluff from feline to man-shaped. He caught onto a branch, clinging above where he started. He snapped a heavily clawed foot around Jia's head like a carnival grapnel plucking a toy out of the pile. He swung her over empty air, jackhammering his other foot into her chest.
She flew away from him in a tumble. Onboard combat algorithms analyzed her predicament in less time than it took to blink. Reaching for a vine along her descent, she swung toward Kel. He placed shot after shot into her rapidly healing torso, very much aware that her hands were growing into claws. The shots neither altered her course or her will to rip him open.
However, the blaster bolts altered her trajectory just enough to give him room to roll away. She landed where he'd been, stomping down hard in the vacated space. Swinging back, she slashed his jacket arm hard enough to send him spinning him away. He resumed a low shooting stance, putting four more shots into her torso. Jia flared her claws, ready to strike Kel down in a flurry of slashing blows. Each shot healed slower than the one before, evidence that whatever was powering her was fading fast.
Jia lunged across the space, only to be tackled by Fluff, who dove into a roll. Regaining his feet, he used his momentum to toss her to one of the trees they had just left. She landed high against the trunk, clinging upside down.
“Too bad, that's not natural” came a deep voice beside her in the tree.
Jia slashed back, but her arm was arrested in mid flight by a powerful hand. Its grip eclipsed her wrist, easily mitigating the strength she was displaying. Long talons bit into her flesh, severing sinew along cracking bone. Then Tolin tossed her across the way.
She flew to the next tree until another hulking form raced out from the tangle. The simigon tribe was out in force, jumping, brachiating, and climbing across the canopy. The tree-borne gargoyles attacked from all angles, coordinating their strikes into an orchestra of violence.
Haevo, the aged elder of the tribe, was the last to get his claws into Jia, slamming her into the ground below them. He hovered over her as she crawled, like any predator, waiting for her to expose her neck. He rolled her over gently, his expression suggesting that he wanted to say something. She headbutted him with enough force to knock him off balance. Members of the tribe barked their dismay as Haevo pinned both of her arms, sending his ram-styled horns directly at her skull, dropping her to the ground, unconscious. He huffed as he walked away from her, a clear indication that enhanced or not, no soft-skull was going to out-ram him.
“Is this like what happened to Corporal Savoya?” Kel asked, referring to the fight Lasher and Fluff had with a former soldier of the Elysian Army. She had been assigned to the fort to support the lancers on Tythian, only to betray them for Kenner. The former coporal had been amplified by an infusion of nanites that allowed her to move at equal speed to any bot and heal almost any wound she received.
Kel examined his torn jacket. There was a metallic sheen underneath, suggesting that it was armored. The tell tale smile showed that he wasn't happy that his sleeve was ripped but was content he still had an arm to put into one.
“More of this advanced Swam-tech.” Kat said. “But this lacked any of the sophistication Lasher and Fluff talked about.”
“She was very underwhelming. You know I like to play with my food. Can we charge her back up with a battery or something so we can have round two?” Fluff asked.
“We have a mission to get to. Round two should take a back seat to that.,” Kat said, trying to settle the matter with the ever ready-to-fight, robot. “Besides, we want you at your tippity toppiest so that you can go full on murder mech when we need you.”
“I love you, Kat. You complete me,” the Doom Cat cooed through its razor blade smile.
Good-natured laughter made the rounds of the tribe. Members moved about, assessing the minor injuries they received in the scuffle. The simigon were a hearty lot, coming from a planet of predators. The red species were known for their intelligence, sometimes being taken on as crew in return for bei
ng mentored in servicing modern technology. Their typical gentle behavior belied their size or ferocity when protecting the family.
“Box her up,” said Lasher. “Get her to the Numassa to hold for our friends.”
Six
Baby Doll stormed from orbit leaving the Tythian jungle behind. On the horizon was a bevy of ships floating around several satellites.
“Elysian Navy?” Yuzheff asked.
Kel turned a dial, increasing the gain to a system's hologram floating just outside of his vision. “Yeah. They've been up here putting things back together since the whole Kesthi Steppe thing happened. Corporal Savoya really did a number on the lancer company. She ruined a lot of equipment.”
“What ever happened to her?”
Kel shrugged. “Lancers swooped in with that weird monk guy and scooped her up. Nobody's seen her since.”
Yu nodded, working systems of his own along physical and holographic system controls. “Alright boss, we're high and dry. You get those coordinates all plugged in?”
Kel flicked a sensor on his HUD. “You're locked. Cast off.”
The stars hazed over for a millisecond, becoming misshapen and blurry. The ship lurched into a slalom of lights swirling like moonlight on a fast moving river. They knuckled each other's fist, Kel popping the restraints on his harness to slip from the pilot's chair. He took one last glance at the displays. “Stick is yours, buddy. Going to go see a guy about a thing.”
Kel crawled from the pilot's deck to the lower part of the ship. Tolin and Lasher were wrapped up in a rafter, doing some maintenance on a part of the wall. Baby Doll always looked amazing when those two were around, which suited him just fine because it meant he didn't have to pay someone to do it. “Fixing that spot where the blaster bolt from that punk you shot got into the hold?”
“Figured it was time since we have a few moments to kill,” Lasher said.
The Revenant: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Hunter's Moon Book 2) Page 8
