“Increase the contrast some more,” she said. Lancaster did, and a dot slowly faded into view over the object the god was holding. “You are always with me,” Mika mused, a light smile growing on her lips.
“Actually, I think that was actually to you,” Lancaster muttered just loud enough for her to hear.
Mika didn’t discuss it. That hardly mattered now. She just told him, “Capture all this in an image and we’ll triangulate it in Little Jack’s ship.”
Lancaster saved the scan and put the device away. Then he called up to Little Jack, whispering to make sure the sound didn’t project out of the earpieces. “Got what we wanted. We’re coming up and then it’s time for us to check out and regress to the ship.” There was no response, which was expected. But there was also a loud hissing that sounded wrong. He mentioned it to Mika.
She shrugged, saying, “We are underground.”
“Yeah, but it sounds more deliberate…”
“That’ll be me,” came the voice of a woman who dropped out of the bottleneck hole in the ceiling. She landed with her feet perfectly planted on the slanted ground, her body already poised with a pistol pointed at the pair. She looked completely out of place, like a lost tourist. She wore a blouse with a formal skirt and a cape that hung from her back down behind her legs; like something one would wear to a nightclub… or a casino. Slits in the skirt allowed for ease of movement, and she wore light boots that could pass as formalwear. All were bleached whites and dark blacks, so nondescript that she could have passed them at any time and they wouldn’t have noticed.
The one defining feature that would have stood out was the cat-eye sunglasses that were one size too big for the woman, and covered a large chunk of the upper half of her face. Though the lenses were dark, there was a haze to them that resembled Little Jack’s oversized glasses. “Pardon the interruption, folks, but if you move, I’ll blast your heads off. I have the two in the caves.”
Mika and Lancaster looked confused at the last statement. “You have what?” Mika asked.
“You two! Not you. Okay, you two in front of me. You stay still. You in my earpiece, the room is secured.”
Understanding now, Mika and Lancaster looked at one another worried, and still a little baffled. “Put your hands up while we’re at it,” the woman said. Mika and Lancaster complied. The woman rolled her eyes and said, “I’m not talking to you!” Mika and Lancaster started to lower their hands. The woman’s face contorted angrily. “You two in front of me, hands up! Ilona, when I’m giving orders, I’m talking to the two in front of me. They can’t hear you because you’re speaking into my ear piece. Bring the other one down here.” After a momentary pause, the woman continued, “You got too close. We wouldn’t have bothered with you if you had just left. But you kept…”
“Oh, you’re talking to us now,” Lancaster said.
“Claro I’m talking to you!”
“I credited you might still be talking to Ilona…”
“Just keep your hands up. Bring the third asset down.” Everyone was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Ilona, bring the third asset down… Obviously I’m talking to you. I wouldn’t be telling them… Just bring him!”
They heard some scuffling of dirt up the hole, then a scraping sound, like a wire being tugged. Soon, Little Jack appeared out of the bottleneck, wrapped in a metallic cord that stretched upward, out of sight. His glasses were not on his face, revealing beady little button eyes. He wore the same, annoyed expression he always did, but he would not look at his partners.
Little Jack reached out with his foot so he could land standing, but he slipped and fell behind the woman’s feet. He tried to kick the back of her knee, but she effortlessly parried it with one of her legs, then used the foot to twist his leg around. The hand that was not holding the gun revealed that it was holding a one foot long staff as she pointed it at Little Jack and fired. An electric current surged out of it and shot into the metal wire wrapped around him. He screamed in pain and writhed in agony.
Lancaster started toward her, and the woman fired. The shot impacted his shoulder harder than expected, and he stumbled back, landing on his butt and sliding further down. Mika ran to him and knelt beside him.
“You better stand up or your head is… Ilona, obviously that’s not meant for you. Just get hidden and wait for the fourth asset.”
Little Jack wasn’t getting up, so the woman grabbed the end of the cord where there was a handle and walked toward Mika and Lancaster, dragging Little Jack along. When she got close, she swung him around to them.
“What do you want with us?” Mika asked.
The woman scooped up their Talki and strolled away while she said, “I don’t want anything with you. I just want the Electros they’re paying to make sure you don’t get any further.”
“Not that I’m trying to provide any suggestions,” Lancaster said, “but that reads like you’re posing to kill us.”
The woman turned and shrugged in an exaggerated fashion. “But I need you alive in case you’re useful while I capture your other friend,” she said. “Maybe you can convince me to spare your lives while she tracks down the beacon in your Talki.” She pressed the button several times rapidly to make static sound like they were having troubles.
Jude’s voice emerged, “You all having problems with your Talki?”
The woman smiled at Lancaster and held the Talki aloft.
Ilona set herself up behind one of the buildings around the town square. She need only peek her head out to have a perfect view of the hole to the lower level. She’d easily have the drop on Jude when she went to it.
Ilona made sure her thermal imaging was on in her glasses, along with her targeting, which was linked to her pistol. She flexed her knees to make sure the bionics in her legs were ready in case she didn’t take out the asset in one shot, and it turned into a fight. Ilona had heard about Jude, how she had adjusted her body with cybernetics and was one of the most dangerous independent contractors in the business. This was exhilarating, but Ilona needed to make sure all of her cybernetics were ready as well. Hopefully, though, this would be done in one shot to the head.
She heard Arania say something about not wanting “anything from you.” Ilona figured she wasn’t talking to her, so she ignored it and waited for the fourth asset to arrive.
A short glitch appeared momentarily on her glasses, but it lasted only a split second. When she turned her head, she noticed that her vision turned slower than her head, as though there was a delay. She wanted to check it out, but there was no time. She heard movement in the room, and she needed the thermal vision.
The sound was brief, and sporadic. After a few moments, there was another faint sound of grinding stone, like a foot walking over sand. She peeked around the corner toward the crack in the wall where the asset would be entering. No one was there, but she was clearly coming up. Ilona was tempted to sneak up to it and fire. The asset would be trapped in a narrow corridor, and most likely an easy target. But Ilona would be in her front, and Jude was rumored to be fast. So she waited so she could get on her rear.
She continued to wait. What was taking so long? She whispered her current status to Arania. Then she said, “Byway, I’ve had a couple glitches in my glasses.”
“What are you talking about?” Arania asked.
“I saw a little static. Now it blurs when I move my head like there’s a delay.”
“Take them off!” Arania shouted. “She hacked into them! Take them off now!”
Confused, Ilona removed her glasses to look at them. It was pitch black. She’d have to pull out her backup Spectro-beam. But then something punched her in the face. When the back of her head hit the wall, she fell immediately unconscious.
Arania called out to Ilona several times, but she got no response. Coming to her senses, she hurried to Lancaster and threw off her glasses. She grabbed his Illuminator and turned it on. These devices were usually only held by the most serious of explorers, but this one in pa
rticular seemed to be more modified than most. There was no time to go over all the features; she set it to a white light wavelength that would best spread around the room, dissolving around obstacles and casting as few shadows as possible.
She then stepped past Mika and Little Jack. They were near a T intersection that slanted upward to the right, and down toward the left. Here, Arania made her stand. The light was pointed toward the hole Jude would be coming through, and her pistol was pointed at the hostages. If Jude was like Ilona had described, most shots against her would be useless, so the best strategy was to threaten her friends.
They waited in the silence for a short time, the stillness interrupted only by Lancaster’s groans of pain, Mika’s reassurance as she placed pressure on the wound, and Little Jack’s grunts of discomfort and insults. Arania shushed them all, growing uncomfortable herself.
Then a tiny canister fell into the pit, and the chamber began to fill with smoke. “My finger’s on the trigger!” Arania shouted. “You make a move, and I’ll kill them!” The smoke continued to fill, but there was nothing more. “No matter how fast you are, I’ll take at least one of them down!” The smoke stopped filling; it was a small canister. Within a half a minute the smoke dissipated, revealing no one. “You want to play a game? How about elimination? I’ll kill one. The little guy. He’s the one you’re closest to, right? Or how about the guy you slept with? Was he just a fun evening, or did he mean something to you…”
Arania heard something from one of the tunnels, the one that slanted upward. It was to her left now that she had turned around. She leaned backward, turning the Illuminator in that direction. The moment she did, the rock wall next to her exploded from a laser blast! She fell backward, into the tunnel. As she did, one of her cybernetic fingers opened up and shot out a pellet. It bounced once against the ground, then exploded into a gaseous form, obscuring her from view.
Jude took a few shots anyway still charging ahead, and Arania took cover. Jude entered the gas, and suddenly twitched. All of her cybernetic joints suddenly began to ache, and they had trouble responding. She knew exactly what she had just run into, and she steered herself into the wall, hitting it hard and bouncing out of sight.
Arania got up, drawing her rod. It could be extended as a stun staff, or a binder lasso. She was ready with either as she stepped around the corner. She was met with the other woman holding Jude’s pistol with both hands and firing at her, barely missing. Arania had to jump for cover.
This wasn’t much of a problem. The one with the gun was an intellectual, not a shooter. Arania knelt down and began to turn the corner.
What Arania didn’t notice was that Lancaster had reached out to the handle of the binder lasso holding Little Jack and set him free. So when she came around again he had taken Jude’s pistol, and he was able to fire much more rapidly than Mika had. Though without his glasses, and especially without his own guns, he didn’t hit.
Arania jumped for cover again. She could hear Jude beginning to move. The ionic gas wouldn’t last long, and Arania would have a lot of trouble when that happened. The little guy could barely hit anything in his condition, so she had one more chance to pull this off. Her objective was to detain the group, and if it seemed they might escape, to kill them. She would be paid the same either way, so she might as well finish the job.
Arania leaped out from the corner, gun over Illuminator. Predictably, the short man’s shots flew behind her. She already knew where Lancaster was, so Arania fired at him while looking for Jude. Mika jumped in front of the shot to block it from hitting Lancaster, taking the energy blast in the upper portion of the chest and falling on him. As Lancaster shouted in horror, Arania turned the gun on Jude.
The shots from Little Jack followed Arania, blasting rapidly, and one of them scraped her shoulder just as she was firing. Her arm twitched just enough that the shot flew right above Jude. Arania was horrified to see Little Jack steadying the pistol on her, so she leaped out of the way. He fired right into the middle of where she had just been standing.
Around the corner, Arania caught her breath and prepared to go at them again. This time she’d take out the little one first. But she heard Jude’s voice. She was getting back up, and it sounded like the weapon was even being passed to her. Arania could fire another ionization grenade, but Jude would not fall for it again. This time it could only be a barrier.
Her time was running out, so she slid around the corner, her knees bent in a crouched position, and she pointed toward Little Jack. One shot came at her and flew above her head, right at the level she had been at before. A good choice on her part, but the shot didn’t come from Little Jack, it came from Jude. Arania turned toward her, and Jude adjusted.
Arania fired several times, and each shot was blasted out of the air by Jude; one of the few people with the cybernetics and training to do that. Still, she kept Jude busy with continuous shots while she pointed her other hand at Little Jack. An arrow emerged from Arania’s wrist and fired at the small man.
Jude continued to hold off the shots with her left hand while her right hand stretched in the direction of the arrow. Just as it left Arania’s body, a holdout pistol appeared out of Jude’s wrist and into her right hand. She fired and blew the arrow out of the air mere inches from Little Jack’s neck.
She turned the tiny pistol on Arania, who realized it was time to leave. Her finger opened and she dropped another ionization grenade as she backed away.
Jude began to rise up and chase after Arania. Her adrenaline was up, and the cybernetics were beginning to interfere with her ability to reason. But Little Jack shouted out to her, “We need to get these two back to my ship or they’ll die!”
Jude’s breath was heaving. Something in her was saying she could get through the gas cloud before it affected her. This wasn’t true, but it’s the sort of aggression that her cybernetics caused when they began to overheat.
It was hearing Mika’s gasps for breath and Lancaster’s crying for her to keep breathing that pulled Jude out of it. She looked over and saw Lancaster’s own shoulder bleeding; but he was desperately putting pressure on Mika’s wound, ignoring his own pain. “We need to get them to a hospital,” she said.
“Can’t,” Little Jack answered. “The assassins killed the front desk staff. They’ll blame us and let them die.” Little Jack helped Lancaster lift Mika. “I have a miniature med bay they can share.” Little Jack was struggling himself after being electrocuted, but the two wounded men were able to carry Mika as far as the pit while Jude covered their rear.
Once there, Lancaster shot his grappling hook to the top, which he used to lift himself up with Mika. Jude grabbed Little Jack and, with her cybernetic legs, leaped up the corridor, kicking the walls along the way to make it to the other side.
Arania was not following them. She instead hurried away, down into the dark, hiding from Jude in case she followed. She then called the frequency of the syndicate mercenaries and corporate guards and told them exactly what Little Jack feared she would. The small band that had arrived earlier that day had murdered the front desk staff. They were also the ones who had hacked their drones.
Little Jack stopped briefly to collect his pistols and glasses from the unconscious Ilona. He was moving slower; his joints feeling like they were 20 years older. But he was bit by bit shaking it out.
Jude was now helping both Mika and Lancaster walk. It was dangerous to move them in this state, but they had no choice. They needed to get out of there. Then she had a thought. “Little Jack, you help Lancaster get to the ship. I’m skipping ahead.”
“What are you…” Lancaster started to ask.
“No time to explain,” Jude said, securing her grip on a now barely conscious Mika. She sprang her bionic legs, and she leaped forward through the narrow cavity in the rocks. Landing her foot on one wall, she sprang forward until she planted her foot on the other and sprang forward again. In this way, she reached the end in no time. She then sprang out of the hole, into the
empty lobby.
She could see what Little Jack had said. Though she could not see the bodies of the staff, their blood stains were on the wall behind the desk. She looked away toward the glass front doors. Holding Mika with one hand, she shot the doors with the other and sprang outside.
She could feel the cybernetics overheating. They were once again messing with her ability to reason, but they were also wearing themselves out. She could break them if she wasn’t careful. But she had to move. Bitterpub Corporate and Laui Syndicate vehicles were heading full speed toward the hotel and landing bays. Little Jack and Lancaster would be cut off, but Jude might just make it.
She crouched down with her legs curled like a pair of snakes ready to pounce, then she launched herself forward farther and faster than she’d ever gone before. She had made it onto the landing bay. A few ships were close by, so this time she sprung into the air, past the first layer of vessels, landing next to Little Jack’s ship Odin’s Revenge.
All the motion had dangerously jostled Mika, and her breathing had become more erratic. Her body was even beginning to convulse. Jude sighed. A syringe emerged from one of her fingers, and she pressed it into Mika near the wound. Mika’s body relaxed slightly, but her breathing was just as uncertain. “That’s all the adrenaline I’ve got,” Jude said, leaning Mika against the landing gear. “You hold on until they get here.”
Jude now stood and looked around her. She could see the vehicles pulling onto the tarmac of the landing bay, and the feet of soldiers setting up a perimeter around the hotel.
Jude put every bit of energy she still had into her overheating legs and she sprinted toward her ship. She noticed that they were still converging on Odin’s Revenge, so she slammed a fist against one of the ships and made the tallest leap she could still make to catch their attention. It worked, and laser bolts began to fly toward her.
Coming near the Desert Rose, Jude had the door opening while two ships away. She took a moment to turn toward the soldiers and strafe them with shots. Nothing hit, but it got any of them that were still heading in a different direction to focus on her.
Relic Worlds - Lancaster James & the Salient Seed of the Galaxy, Part 2 Page 6
