by Mel Odom
Leghef scooped the knife from Tholak’s hand and her mind formed a plan of action just ahead of her body’s response. For a moment she feared that she was too old, had lived too soft, had forgotten too many things.
But the knife’s hilt, even through the blood coating her hand, felt right, strong and true. She slashed Tholak’s throat and crimson bubbles frothed at the wound.
A shocked look filled his face and he took an instinctive step back to avoid further injury. It was too late, though. His mind just hadn’t accepted that.
Leghef placed her hand in the center of Tholak’s chest and pushed. He stumbled back and fell, and Osler’s attention was diverted by his employer’s blood for too long.
Osler tried to bring his pistol up, but Leghef blocked the attempt with her free hand, stepped inside the man’s reach, and drove her stolen knife home in her opponent’s left eye. Osler stood there for a moment, like he was thinking about what he was supposed to do next, but he died before he made up his mind.
Unable to retrieve the knife because it had gotten stuck in bone, Leghef released the hilt and plucked the pistol from the dead man’s hand. As Osler fell, the Phrenorians turned to her, saw what had happened, and reached for their weapons.
Leghef pulled Telilu’s hands from around her waist and shoved her toward the small passageway at the back of the cavern.
“Run, Telilu!”
Leghef followed, expecting to feel a bullet tear through her or a beam burn a hole through her or a particle blast shatter her organs and knock her from her feet. Hoarse shouts of surprise and agony rang out behind her as she slipped into the passageway after her granddaughter.
There was another way out. If they could get there in time, it was possible they could disappear into the jungle.
320776 Akej (Phrenorian Prime)
Zhoh ran into the cavern and raked his gaze over the glassy figures at the back and the two Phrenorian lieutenant colonels who stood before him. The glassy figures failed to hold his interest when his enemies were so readily available.
“Traitors!” Zhoh raged. He slung his assault rifle over his shoulder and held his patimong ready. He raised his primaries before him to use as clubs or to tear into the warriors.
Nalit raised a beam pistol and took a half-step back, something no warrior would do in the face of an opponent. Zhoh shot his left primary forward and caught the wrist of Nalit’s secondary just behind his hand. Then he squeezed and snipped off the lieutenant colonel’s hand. The severed fist and the pistol dropped to the worn stone floor as Nalit screamed in agony.
Mercilessly, Zhoh swung the patimong at Nalit’s cephalothorax. When the shock of the blade meeting chitin and cleaving it ran along his arm, satisfaction flooded Zhoh. His pheromones drenched the air around him as savage joy filled him.
It was good to kill his enemies. That was what he’d been born for. To break them and take their lives, no matter who they were.
Zhoh struck again and again and spattered Nalit’s blood against the cave wall. He wanted to beat out of himself the weakness that had sent him chasing after Sxia and the promise of advancement she had offered in the Empire. Choosing to pursue that was his downfall.
It hadn’t been her weak bloodline. It was his own covetous nature. He knew that now. He struck again, knowing that if he hadn’t sought the prestige a union with her would bring that it would have been years before he garnered enough attention and support to get where he wanted to be.
He had stepped away from the order the Empire existed on.
Yet, his crimes were less than Rangha’s black market dealings. They were less than Blaold Oldawe’s hiring of an assassin to kill his son-in-law.
And they were less than the subterfuge the War Board wanted to do to throw Zhoh like waste before a krayari beetle.
He didn’t deserve that and he refused to let that be all he was given. He would take what he wanted, and he would start taking it here, on this planet. He would create his own Empire.
Zhoh struck again, only then realizing that he was hacking into a corpse. Gore and broken pieces of chitin covered him, Nalit, and the wall and floor.
Releasing Nalit, Zhoh stepped back. His warriors stared at him in awe as they guarded the doorway into the cavern.
Warar stood only a short distance away. He held two pistols in his secondaries but didn’t raise them. Zhoh’s warriors had him covered with their weapons, so if he moved, he would die. His pheromones stank of fear and indecision, and Zhoh gloried in seeing the warrior stripped down and left wanting.
At the same time, his anger blazed. These were the warriors the Empire had put their trust in. He wondered what they would think if they saw Warar now.
“You’re no warrior,” Zhoh accused. “You’re no Phrenorian who lives only to advance the Empire. You’re the reason so many are weakening. Your bloodline fouls our future. You could have stood with me and helped me take this planet.”
“The War Board didn’t want you as their hero,” Warar said in a false show of bravado.
“You could have shared the glory I am going to receive,” Zhoh taunted.
Warar stood straighter, but the fear stink on him grew worse. “Don’t talk to me about being weak. And don’t talk to me about any glory you think you’re going to get. You’re kalque. You have no future. Even if you take this planet, the War Board will strip—”
Zhoh stepped up to the warrior then, seized Warar’s face with his chelicerae, and injected him with venom. With a quick flick of his primaries, he snipped off Warar’s secondaries, which were holding the beam pistols. Ignoring the thunder of gunfire and explosions coming from outside the cave, he fended off his opponent’s attempts to break free until Warar went limp.
“Triarr,” Mato called over the comm, “you must capture the woman. Already, it appears the Alliance may be ready to reverse its decision to pull out of Makaum. Public sentiment throughout those systems is becoming volatile. Several planets in the Alliance are demanding that action be taken. You must take control of that situation now.”
Zhoh dropped the corpse and turned his attention to the passageway at the back of the cave. Since Leghef was not in the room it was likely she had fled in that direction.
“I will,” Zhoh said. He ordered some of his warriors to remain behind and guard the cave entrance. Then he ran toward the passageway. “Have the transport ship ready to relay a comm link.”
He peered ahead, knowing that the old female could not have gotten far. He would catch her.
And when he did, there would be a reckoning.
SIXTY-ONE
The Caves of the Glass Dead
Rilormang
The Sulusku Highlands
28 Kilometers North of Makaum Sprawl
0858 Hours Zulu Time
Sage reached the cave mouth, posted up beside it, and whipped his head around to peer inside. A round smacked into his head and rocked it back on his shoulders. He pulled his head back as his faceshield flickered uncontrollably. Disjointed images rolled through his vision so fast and sharp he had to close his eyes against them.
“Are you all right?” Jahup stood slightly behind Sage.
“Yeah,” Sage said. “Yeah, I’m good. Rookie mistake. Should have known someone would have been watching.”
He took a breath to clear his head and opened his eyes. The transparencies shifted and blended. Some came to the top and others cycled down. The layers shuffled like cards in a deck till it all became confusion.
Warning, the near-AI said. Helmet has experienced critical damage and is malfunctioning. Some services may be off-line or unreliable. Defensive properties being estimated. Replacement necessary.
His reflection on Jahup’s faceshield showed the tear that ran the length of the side of his helmet. Sage swore, then felt fortunate that the round hadn’t cored through his head. Either the ammunition the Phrenorians were using was some kind of armor-piercing bullet he hadn’t heard of, or his armor integrity truly was breaking down faster than he’d
realized.
The Phrenorian who stepped out of the entrance after Sage showed in the reflection too.
Jahup fired immediately, but his rounds flattened against the Phrenorian’s abbreviated armor and only succeeded in driving their opponent back. Off balance, the Sting-Tail fired into the air.
Sage spun and dropped his Roley to hang by its sling. He grabbed the Phrenorian’s weapon barrel in both hands and shoved hard backward. Driven by the armor’s extra muscle and speed, the Phrenorian bounced off the other side of the cave entrance hard enough to stagger him.
Inside the cave, caught from the corner of Sage’s own vision because the HUD wasn’t providing the 360-degree view he was used to, four other Phrenorians held their fire, unwilling to kill one of their own too hastily. But they tracked Sage with their weapons, lighting him up with their red targeting lasers.
Sage slammed his head into the Phrenorian’s mouth, crushed the warrior’s chelicerae into bloody smears, and stunned him. He yanked the Phrenorian’s rifle away and ducked back across the entrance. He swung the rifle and broke it while more explosions went off out in the clearing.
Before the Sting-Tail returned to his senses, Sage ducked back across the entrance. A couple of rounds tore more gouges across his armor and the heat of a laser felt like it was going to cook his right forearm.
Then he gripped the Phrenorian’s chest armor in one hand and yanked him around to present as a shield to the other Sting-Tails. Some rounds and laser blasts smacked into the Phrenorian and he shuddered with the impacts. At least one of the rounds slashed a furrow across Sage’s right calf.
He yanked a high-explosive grenade from his ammo rack, popped the pin, and pushed the weapon behind the Phrenorian’s chest armor while his opponent was too dazed to know what was going on.
Setting himself as a fulcrum, Sage whirled and threw the Phrenorian into the four warriors within. He spun back behind the corner of the cave entrance, yanked two more grenades—a tangler and a fragmentation explosive—pulled the pins, and flipped both into the cave.
He grabbed his Roley and readied the assault rifle.
“Ready?” he asked Jahup.
“Ready, Master Sergeant.”
The comm sounded scratchy inside Sage’s helmet, but he could hear.
All three grenades went off in quick succession, one followed by two more almost a heartbeat later.
Sage ducked around the cave entrance behind the Roley and stayed low. Water sluiced into the cave from outside and collected into a pool that splashed around his boots. Smoke and debris from the explosion created a small cloud within the immediate area.
Ahead of him, the Phrenorian he’d booby-trapped lay leaking his guts out onto the floor. Chitin and tissue clung to the walls and ceiling. Two Phrenorians writhed in a tangled heap on the stone floor. Sage thought only one of them was alive, but to make sure, he put rounds through the cephalothoraxes of both and stepped over their bodies as they went still.
“Sage,” Kiwanuka called. “Noojin and I are on your six.”
The fourth Phrenorian bled profusely and shiny bits of metal gleamed in his flesh. He pointed his rifle and fired at the same time Sage did. The Roley’s depleted uranium round ripped into the Phrenorian, knocked off chunks of chitin, and exposed vulnerable organs beneath that glistened.
The Phrenorian’s round pierced Sage’s right thigh and came out the other side.
Sage fired again as he ignored the rush of pain and continued forward till the Roley’s barrel was almost touching the Phrenorian. As he stepped around his opponent, Sage threw a shoulder into him and knocked him backward. The Sting-Tail was dead when he reached the ground.
You are critically wounded, the near-AI said.
The fiery pain in Sage’s leg almost crippled him. He forced himself to walk and followed the Roley across the room and into a passageway on the other side of where Tholak lay dead beside another man who was equally dead. Throzath huddled nearby and held his empty hands up.
“Don’t shoot!” the young man begged. “Don’t shoot.”
“Take him into custody,” Sage ordered.
Jahup threw Throzath on the ground, pulled his hands behind him, and bound his wrists and ankles. Sage stood guard until the task was completed.
Your femur is broken, the near-AI went on. You cannot go on. You must seek immediate medical attention.
“Negative,” Sage growled. “Not till we wrap this mission. Fix it.”
“Master Sergeant,” Jahup said, not privy to the conversation with the suit, “you’re bleeding.”
“It’ll be okay,” Sage replied. Perspiration covered his brow and his vision blurred a little. It’s the pain, he told himself. Push through it. You’ve been here before. People are counting on you.
“Fix it,” Sage growled at the near-AI. “Fix it now.”
Complying. Administering pain management suite. Applying coagulant. Applying synthetic blood.
A warm glow filled Sage and made his tongue thick. He tried to call up the suit’s enhanced nightvision to cut through the dark that filled the passageway, but the vision enhancement suite was off-line. He called for the suit’s external lights and was relieved when the beams strobed from his chest plate and illuminated his surroundings. Only three of the four lights were working and he assumed he’d lost one of them along the way.
Sage entered the passageway, limped unsteadily, and crashed a shoulder into the rock wall. He righted himself with effort and continued.
“Sage,” Jahup said, “you’re wounded. You need to stop.”
“We’ll stop when your grandmother is safe,” Sage replied. “Keep moving.”
Stabilizing broken femur.
Sharp pain bit into Sage’s leg despite the drug cocktail jackhammering away in his bloodstream. His brain was as light and insubstantial as a cloud and it bounced around inside his skull. His eyelids weighed five hundred kilos. It was everything he could do to keep them open.
From previous experience, he knew the suit had drilled screws into his leg to pull the bone together for support. His thigh suddenly felt tighter as the upper leg armor clamped down around his flesh and bone to give it added strength and structural reliability. His footing became more certain, but he grew aware that he was listing to one side due to the drugs muddying his reflexes.
Broken femur stabilized, the near-AI reported. Chances of procedure being successful are at twenty-seven percent. Significant damage to the soft tissue around the femur remains ongoing. Unable to resolve an accurate assessment of internal damage.
“Cut the narco-suite and clear my head,” Sage ordered. He picked up the pace now that the leg felt more certain. It wasn’t the leg, though. It was the armor holding him together.
Warning! Washing the painkillers from your system will result in potentially debilitating pain.
“The pain isn’t going to kill me,” Sage barked, “but not being able to see something, or react to something, when I need to will. Override protocol. Clear my head!”
A cool wave of meds entered Sage’s bloodstream and swiftly cleared away the effects of the narcotics.
The downside was the onslaught of agony that came on so fast it caught him off guard and took his breath away. Every move was excruciating, but the armor moved his leg like there was nothing wrong with it. He kept the pain at bay through sheer willpower.
His stride evened out and he lurched into a run and forced himself to close the distance between himself and Zhoh and Leghef. The woman was up ahead, totally at the Phrenorian’s mercy.
The passageway twisted back and forth and up and down. Several times Sage had to duck under low-hanging ceiling sections. The ripped side of his helmet caught on stone twice. He remained aware that the external lights he was using would mark him for the Phrenorians as he approached them.
“Master Sergeant,” Murad called.
“Go, Lieutenant,” Sage responded.
“Be advised that we have spotted a Phrenorian transport ship on the other si
de of this hill. Judging from your GPS location, it’s almost on top of you.”
Sage bounced off an acute turn, recovered from the pain, and spotted daylight ahead of him. “That must be the ship that brought Zhoh here, sir. We’ll be sharp.”
“Sergeant Kiwanuka is on her way to your twenty,” Murad said. Weapons fire cracked and screamed in the background. “She is bringing a small group with her.”
“Copy that,” Sage said.
He stepped from the passageway and out into the jungle that washed up against the hill, once more in the Green Hell with death all around him.
321212 Akej (Phrenorian Prime)
Zhoh searched for the female as he ran through the forest. Anxiety chafed at him when he couldn’t immediately see his prey. In the passageway and the caverns, he’d been more confident that he would locate them. There were fewer places to hide. The constant background of noise, of combat, and the storm crashing and falling rain all around hadn’t been there.
Now, with the rain cascading down from the canopy high overhead, it was almost as if the planet itself was hissing spitefully at him. He steeled his resolve. Makaum had been just as much of an opponent as the Terran military.
And his commanding officers.
Zhoh caught a trace of the female’s spoor then and he followed it. She was afraid. He could taste that in her scent. So was the child. He knew having the child was good. She would provide leverage over the female.
He would not underestimate the female because of her age or size, though. Tholak had made that mistake and had paid for it.
He put a primary out to turn more sharply around a thick tree and once more tasted the female’s spoor. She was closer now. She had been injured. He smelled the blood on her and that odor made Zhoh’s senses come even more to life.
He lengthened his stride, cut through a copse of trees and broke several saplings doing so, and spotted the two figures ahead of him. His warriors pounded after him, their large peds slapping against the wet ground and gathered puddles.
