Revenant

by Michael Anderle

  “A couple less now.”

  Genos drifted slowly along the ravine floor. The creature continued to stare at him and he couldn’t tell if it was merely curious to see something other than itself down there, or whether it observed potential prey.

  As he floated, his gaze still fixed on what might be his enemy, something struck the bottom of his foot. Distracted, he looked down to see some sort of hitch or knob. It was embedded into the ground with a circular attachment on top. When he looked up once more, he was shocked to see the creature now only a couple yards away from him. It made no aggressive movement and still merely stared at him, but Genos was caught off-guard by how fast and silent it was in the water. He hadn’t run into many large aquatic creatures in his time on Earth, but he hadn’t met or seen anything like this.

  The Tsuna planted his feet on the ravine’s sandy bottom and preparing to push off to put some distance between himself and his odd companion. He was worried that he had trailed too far from the console. He couldn’t risk that they no longer an option to turn back now was. Still, he had no weapons to fight if this thing became hostile. He shifted his foot for better purchase and encountered another one of the hitches beside him. Quickly, he looked at his gauntlet, then at the creature, and a plan formed in his head.

  The light was still low, but he did see the creature open what amounted to its jaw to form an ovular hole and reveal sharpened teeth all around the inside. The creature waved its freakish arms side to side before it grew still again. Genos wondered if this was defensive behavior, having read that some creatures tried to make themselves look bigger to appear more intimidating to what they perceive might be predators.

  He was hopeful but the generous thought wasn’t reciprocated.

  The creature dove straight at him. He kicked off the ground and rocketed up to the surface. The beast kept pace, flapped one arm quickly to change direction, and lost little speed. Genos broke through the water and upward. He activated his gauntlet and drills formed on the fingertips that he jammed into the ceiling to hold him in place. As he swung there and heaved a sigh of relief, he twisted at a splashing sound. The creature leapt out of the water after him. Its white skin was dull and dirty from the water and gray pads with rough and jagged indentions along them lined its arms.

  Genos wrenched himself from his perch and kicked off the ceiling toward to the water as the creature soared past him. He thought he’d escaped but it slapped his side with one of its flippers. Something ripped and pain sliced through him as he crashed back into the water. The left side of his underlay under his ribcage had been torn and blood seeped out into the water. Whatever lined the pads of the beast’s arms had sliced into him. He ran an exploratory a hand over the wound and winced but realized it had created grooves in his skin, almost like it had shaved the flesh off him.

  As he swam deeper, the Tsuna fumbled for Chiyo’s device. “Kaitō, is there a drain function for the ravine?”

  “There is, Mister Genos. One minute and forty-three seconds until it can be activated,” the EI responded.

  “When it is ready, activate it immediately and allow it to drain as rapidly as it can,” he ordered.

  “If you are still in the water when that happens, you will be swept away.”

  “I know, but I have no plans to be. Just follow my command, please.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  The creature crashed into the water above him. Its mouth opened and closed rapidly. He had no doubt that it was hungry.

  Certainly, he would feed it.

  He surged along the ravine floor and the creature giving chase. By now, he’d guessed that its arms were its primary weapon. The small hooks along the pads were meant to injure and tire the prey so it could feast on them. But their length was a disadvantage because it provided obvious warning for when it would attack. He would exploit this until he could get into position.

  The monster came up behind him and immediately thrust one of its arms forward to try to grab him. Genos rolled out of the way and stopped swimming to allow it to move past him. It turned swiftly and dove for him again while it raised one of its flippers. He kicked to the left as the arm came down. It missed him and dug into the ground and for a moment, the creature struggled to free itself before it turned to pursue the Tsuna again.

  Genos searched the bottom of the ravine for his target and when he located another of the notches, he dove toward it.

  “Thirty seconds until activation, Mister Genos,” Kaitō stated.

  “Acknowledged,” he replied. He switched his gauntlet into the grip-claw and turned to face his attacker. It torpedoed toward him and raised a flipper to attack again, its mouth agape. He got as close to the bottom as he could as the creature approached, then pushed back with his hands as it moved to attack.

  The creature struck his foot but slipped off it and smacked the rocky ground once again. Genos ignored the pain and launched directly toward to its face. The monster looked at him, its mouth open as it made a whale-like moan. He seized the opportunity and clamped one side of his claw into its mouth before he used all his strength to force the head down. It struggled against him, but he managed to thrust the claw into the hitch. The grip ripped through the creature’s face to connect and latch it to the hitch and it wailed in pain and fury.

  He unlatched his gauntlet from his arm and swam away as the beast thrashed in place in an effort to escape. The Tsuna held his side and forced himself to increase his speed when he heard Kaitō announce that the drainage would commence.

  Far behind him, something opened with a massive grinding sound and the water began to move. He thrust himself above the surface and up to the side of the ravine, managed to take hold of the railing, and hauled himself up as the once still water slowly transformed into a raging river. Genos looked back as he lay on the hard floor and gasped ragged breaths as the water level dropped.

  For a moment, he saw the creature. It now seemed disoriented and unsure if it actually wanted to be removed from the hitch, but had no choice against the force of the water. With one final cry, it was ripped from the gauntlet and carried away down the stream. Its arms flailed wildly as it tried to right itself against the current as it vanished down the canal.

  “Chiyo, my shield won’t last much longer,” Kaiden stated calmly as he fired uncharged shots at the pirate group that attacked them.

  “Hopefully, we don’t have to hold out much longer. I think I can hear water rushing from the tunnel.”

  He listened intently. In the raging battle, he hadn’t paid much attention, but now, he too could hear the water drain with all the force of a waterfall. Genos had done it.

  “Toss me Genos’ cannon,” he demanded.

  Chiyo ran over, snatched up the weapon, and tossed it to Kaiden, who closed the vent hatch and began to power it up. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Improvising,” he responded as he dropped the cannon and charging a shot with Sire. “Gather what you can of his armor and get in there. I’ll be right behind.”

  She nodded, hastily recovered as much of Genos’ equipment as she could, and opened the hatch. Kaiden’s shield burst as she slipped down the tunnel. Kaiden fired one last blast from his rifle to scatter the attackers before he placed it on his back and drew out his blade, dashed for the hatch, and closed it behind him.

  “After them!” one of the pirates barked and the remaining grunts rushed forward.

  “Eh, mmm…bastard locked it!” another yelled.

  “Then unlock it!” The leader drew his heavy pistol and shot the seals on either side of the hatch. “Open it!”

  The grunt turned the valve and forced the hatch open and instinctively stepped back, his mouth open in silent horror. A cannon greeted them, held in place by a knife through the trigger guard, and whose core was on the verge of overheating.

  “Oh, shi---” The weapon blew and the explosion, funneled by the tunnel, enveloped all the pirates around the hatch.

  ---

  “Geno
s!” Chiyo ran up to the Tsuna who leaned against the wall and clutched his side. Kaiden set down the equipment she had given him and kneeled down beside them. “How are your wounds?”

  Both were caught off guard by the clicks and sounds coming from the Tsuna and had to wait for the translations from their EIs. “Painful, but not too deep,” Genos explained. He rolling his head to face them and pointed behind them. “Infuser please.”

  “Oh, right!” Chiyo gestured to Kaiden, who handed her the Tsuna’s breather. She checked the lining to ensure his infuser wasn’t broken and put it on him. The effect was almost immediate and the Tsuna’s chest swelled as his breathing normalized. “Thank you. It’s much easier to breathe.”

  “And to understand you. Hearing that joyless monotone from you was actually kind of depressing,” Kaiden joked and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get you some serum, eh?”

  “I will certainly take some if you have it,” Genos said. Chiyo nodded, retrieved a small vial of green liquid, and applying it to the his wounds. He leaned his head back. “Much better, thank you.”

  “You know, depending on how the oscillation is for you, you might feel rough when we get out of this. You might get a chance at Dr. Soni’s blue stuff.”

  “Kin Jaxon told me about that. He said it doesn’t work for Tsuna and that we have to use something devised by the Mortis for heavy wounds.”

  Kaiden thought back to the blue blob and grimaced. “Ah, right. That’s a damn shame.”

  “You did a good job, Genos, but what happened?” Chiyo asked.

  The Tsuna stood and stretched. “The creature attacked me. I don’t know what it was—probably a mutant of some kind. I’ll have to research it with Viola once we return.” He walked past his teammates to his equipment. “But do not worry. I took care of it.”

  “Damn straight you did,” Kaiden said and thumped his friend’s chest cheerfully.

  “You brought almost everything. Very kind of you considering you were under fire,” Genos said appreciatively as he began putting on his stolen DSC gear. “Although may I ask what happened to my cannon?”

  “I used it as a bomb to finish our pursuers off,” the ace stated and rubbed the back of his head a little sheepishly. “I don’t have any more explosives on me so I needed to improvise.”

  “A trick of mine?” Genos asked.

  Kaiden gave him a thumbs-up, “I learned from the best.”

  “I have a map. Kaitō was able to get one from the console,” Chiyo informed them.

  “So we’re in a good place.” The ace looked around the canal. “How much time do we have left?”

  “Probably only a few minutes— Wait, there’s no more timer. That’s odd.”

  He folded his arms and shrugged. “Maybe there’s no more influx. We did have a late start, so maybe most other students have turned in for the night.”

  “And you also mentioned that it doesn’t log us out in the middle of a fight,” Genos reminded her.

  “True, but we aren’t in a fight at the moment. We should be considered out-of-combat.” She gave it some thought, shook her head, and looked at her teammates. “Should we continue?”

  Kaiden and Genos exchanges quick glances and nodded. “We’ve come this far. How close are we to the core?”

  The infiltrator looked at the map on her HUD. “It’s actually quite close—two klicks that way.” She pointed down the canal. “But you have to know that even if they don’t know what we’re here to do specifically, someone will put two and two together eventually.”

  “We might still be able to reach the core quite easily but fighting back to the ship will probably be an issue.”

  “I actually think it may be the opposite,” Genos suggested as he checked his heavy pistol and holstered it quickly. “Once I send the core into meltdown, that will cause various malfunctions throughout the station, along with overloading numerous systems and devices before they implode altogether. I’m also sure that the central system that controls any defenses will be located in the same area, Chiyo should be able to access those to assist us the rest of the way. But now that we’ve let them know they have enemies aboard, I’m sure they will mount a defense all along this part of the station.”

  “That about sums it up,” Kaiden murmured as he considered all the ramifications. He snapped his fingers and looked at his teammates. “Well then, since we’ve already kicked the hornet’s nest, why not stomp on it a few times for good measure?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “What do you mean, they are all dead?” Swarn roared and threw a bottle that Walker evaded with a tilt of his head. The captain completed his tantrum with a brutal kick at the corpse of the supervisor who had let the spies on board.

  “There isn’t much to offer beyond that,” Walker replied dryly. “They no longer breathe air, their hearts have ceased to function, and they cannot obey to your orders due to not being able to listen to anything at all. Do you need more specifics?”

  Swarn looked at Walker for a moment and his good eye flared with angry menace. He turned and went to a cabinet in the back and slammed a fist against it so that it opened to reveal his armaments.

  “What are you doing?” Walker asked.

  “Sound the alarm and start the entire station on a search for them. I’m going hunting.”

  “Do you think you have the ability to find them now? They escaped into the ravine. It has paths all over the station. You should rally the others and lead the—”

  The other man turned and fired a shot from his pistol that skimmed Walker’s cheek. He didn’t flinch but slowly raised a hand to wipe blood off a wound that had already been cauterized by the laser shot.

  “I cut my teeth as a bounty hunter, Walker, exactly as my father did. It’s in my blood and is my primary talent.”

  “Clearly, patience is not,” Walker muttered and rubbed his fingers together. “Even so, why should I send everyone into a panic when you seem so confident you can find them? One man against three is not good odds. Three against more than three hundred is even worse. It would simply be in your favor.”

  “I’ll find one, at least, but they won’t remain huddled together now that they are aware that we know they are out there. My guess is that at least one of them will run a distraction while whoever is left will continue to pursue their objective.”

  “That’s suicide, no matter what decision they make. Running around this station alone is foolish. To run around and draw attention to yourself by causing havoc is asking for reta—”

  An alarm blared shrilly over the speakers. Walker spun and looked at the remaining technician, who looking feverishly from one screen to another and scanned reports. “Section-B! There was an explosion in section-B! I also have a call of hostile activity from section-A.”

  Walker looked back at Swarn, who placed a blade in his belt and took a shotgun from the cabinet as he put his pistol in its holster. “I told you,” he grunted with the first hint of satisfaction on his voice since he had barged into the office.

  The other leader looked at the technician. “Send a signal to all troops. Give them the stolen IDs of the BAT-3 members and tell them to eliminate them on sight. After that, try to figure out what their plan is so we can cut them off.”

  The technician nodded and immediately hunched over the console. The captain made his way to the doors. “Swarn!” Walker called and the man stopped and looked back.

  “I’ll give you the honors for you strategic guess, but let me tell you something in return that you might find interesting.”

  “Hey! What’s going on? I just received a report that—gurk.” The pirate was knocked cold by the butt of Kaiden’s rifle a second before the ace spun, fired a charged shot at two unprepared guards who entered from the hall, and blasted them apart. Kaiden searched the unconscious guard and found some fragmentation grenades on his belt—rudimentary, but they would help, regardless.

  “According to the info Kaitō is sending me, they’re still running aro
und in a panic. But my guess is that it won’t take long for them to get their shit together. You have maybe five or six more minutes before they come for you like a bullet train,” Chief informed him.

  “I won’t try to take them all on. I don’t know how many it will take to kill me, but I know how many they have.” He took the pirate’s curved blade to replace his own and shoved it into the compartment on his wrist. “I don’t think I can handle that many. All I have do is keep them all from heading toward Chiyo and Genos.”

  “They gotta owe you a couple of beers by now, right?” Chief asked.

  “Eh, most of these plans are mine, so it kind of negates that.” Kaiden opened the vent of his rifle and hurried on to the next section. A pirate ran up to him from his left, and as he was about to pass, he drew Debonair and fired a shot into the side of the man’s head before he replaced it and closed the vent of his rifle.

  Genos pulled the lever and opened the hatch above them. An alarm wailed as he poked his head out. “It would appear Kaiden has already begun.”

  “He is punctual in that regard,” Chiyo reminded him. “Do you see anything?”

  “No, but the doors above have all shut. I think any guards in here went to look for Kaiden.” He opened the hatch fully, climbed out, and helping the infiltrator up. They were in a small crevasse on the side of the room. Cautiously, they snuck along either wall and looked out to confirm that they were alone before they made their way quickly across the room.

  “Take a right. There should be a pair of doors that leads to the central station,” she directed.

  Genos sprinted forward and stopped at the doors and a terminal nearby. Large windows on either side allowed him to look inside while Chiyo unlocked the door. “There seem to be interior defenses here,” he advised her as he noted at least four turrets on the ceiling. “A few droids as well.”