“That’s why you wanted me to …” Huh, it looked like maybe we had both been using each other after all. How typical and strangely … human?
“Have relations with me, yes,” she laughed. “I understand that because of anatomical issues, your gender must be at least partially interested sexually for this to take place. Because of that, I have gone through the trouble of giving you scenery that you have admitted is to your liking.” She settled in front of me, her fully naked body right in my face. “Now that we have completed intercourse and I have ridden you to completion, I am receiving the knowledge and skills you have acquired throughout your life along with your seed.”
She turned back to me, the room shimmering and returning to a cold, dank cell. “For eons, I have wondered about the true nature of your people. I have watched you, trying to figure out what makes you tick, what moves your souls. Now, because of you and your sacrifice, I will finally have the answers to those questions, and with those answers, I can take your people apart, piece by piece.”
I had just given Anya access to all my memories, that was true. She got it along with my seed and, in addition to that little present, she got all the information about the Alliance. Our weaponry, our battle techniques; everything we had in our fight against the bugs. At least, everything I knew about anyway. I had given it all away … but it didn’t matter. Not with Annabelle three seconds from powering up and painting the walls with her blood.
“So, Mark Ryder, legend of the human race, what do you have to say to that?” Anya smirked.
I let out what I hoped she would take as a defeated sigh. “Honey, I’ve only got one thing I could possibly say.” I let my grin of triumph out. “Annabelle, full power!”
“Of course, Lieutenant Ryder,” she replied, a sound I had missed worse than I could have imagined, as energy coursed out of the pendant, nanomachines reforging my Second Battalion power suit in a split-second.
I wasn’t mere flesh and blood. I was a goddamn ironclad beast, and I was ready for revenge.
The look of surprise in Anya’s thousands of eyes was priceless, but she wasn’t so surprised that she wasn’t already moving with blinding speed. Not towards me, no, which gave me a brand-new hard-on from the fear that she had to have right then, but out the door, no doubt mentally calling for every guard and bug soldier in her mental range.
Still, I had to give my signal. “Annabelle, let’s make some noise. Give me some ancient Earth rock and a full volley of particle blasts up that bitch’s backside.”
“Given her current speed, it is unlikely we will score any direct hits,” Annabelle reported.
“That’s fine, baby,” I growled. “I just want to start by fucking some shit up.”
My ‘signal,’ a mixture of pounding AC/DC music and the staccato roar of weapons ports opening to unleash a hail of particle bolts, should let the girls know it’s time to start stomping bugs. It also annihilated the entire wall in front of me, the two Acburians who had been standing guard along with it. Thank God that I’d bought the Shell Hammer armor piercing upgrades before I came back. I wasn’t going to let elites put me in a corner again, not after the last time.
That barrage of energy was also so loud that I barely heard the voice in my ears as an emergency transmission from Alliance Hall came through. For a fraction of a second, I was about to worry that all the security and independent functionality I had sunk every last coin into had been for vain, but when I heard who was calling, it all became clear.
“Mark!” It was Della. Her voice sounded haggard, worn, but it was her. She was alive!
My eyes went wide, and my heart jumped. ”You’re alive!”
“I am. Though not without bruises. Reynolds, Mark. Reynolds is under the thumb of the bug queen on that moon. He sent you there to die, you, the doctor, and all the rest. She’s promised to give him a continent or something when she takes over the world. You have to be careful. You have to – “
“I already know all this,” I growled, cutting her off. A series of distant explosions let me know that Artemis Squad was starting their end of the party. “Reynolds spilled the beans in true bad guy fashion. That’s not all our worries, though. The bitch queen here has some new telepathic mojo, and she sucked all the intel from my brain.” Of course, that wasn’t all she sucked, but Della didn’t need to know that, not right then.
“That doesn’t matter, Mark. We can deal with it later. All that matters right now is getting you guys out of there. Now I’ve opened the lines of communications to tell you that I can help. I’ve managed to rally all the Alliance command still loyal to the Earth, and we have Reynolds on the run, but things are still unstable here.”
She sighed deeply. “I’m at a secure location, and I have enough of a power source to turn your suit back on. But that’s all I have, Mark. I can’t turn the rest of them on; we only have enough spare resources to full power your single suit. It’s the best bet to get you free from whatever mess you’re in, but I can’t help anyone but you, I’m afraid. You’re going to have to finish this yourself. If need be, you must consider saving yourself and Dr. Garmin, leave Artemis Squad there. I know it’s against your nature but …”
“No,” I shot back. “No one’s getting left behind.”
“I know it’s not what you want to hear,” Della pushed on. “But there’s not a lot of choices here. Even with your new and improved suit, you can only carry one person. That person must be Rayne, Mark. She still has the virus on her, right? It must be injected. It must be given time to set up. It’s our only hope, especially now that the Alliance chain of command is compromised.”
“It isn’t,” I said, remembering what happened back with the Centi-walkers. “Just get me power to my suit. I’ll take care of the rest.”
The voice in Della’s mind voice was palatable. “I’m trusting you, Mark. I’m trusting you with all we have to spare.”
“I won’t let you down,” I said in my head. Then, standing, I felt the familiar rush of power. I wouldn’t have to rely on what reserves we had saved on our way here. I had the full backing of the Alliance flowing through me. While I hadn’t expected this happy turn of events, I could use this to our advantage.
See, there was a flaw in my own plan. I had forgotten that while my Second Battalion suit had massive storage batteries, much greater than any suit in the Alliance arsenal, I was the only one with one. Claire, Jill, even Mina, they only had what battery space they could afford, which meant they couldn’t fight for long. Now, though …
“Power cells at maximum, Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle’s sweet voice chimed through my head.
“Good to hear,” I answered, this time out loud. “Annabelle, take me to the sky.”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant Ryder,” she said and, in a second, power moved to my lower thrusters. I took to the air, bursting through the top of the cell and launching out into the air.
Looking down, I saw the concentration camp spread out under me. This was a place of horrors, a nightmare even by bug standards, and it had come from one source; Anya, the bug queen. I would find her, and I would kill her. I swore it on everything I believed in. But first, I would make sure everyone I brought here was not only safe but instrumental in ending this.
“Annabelle, do a search of Marine operating systems in the area. You should find three.”
“Mina, Claire, and Jill,” Annabelle shot back in response. “Their operating systems go by the names –”
“I don’t give a fuck what they call their systems,” I said. “I want to take them over.”
“Take them over?” Annabelle asked. “All of three of them?”
“That’s right, Annabelle,” I said. “I want every one of us to act as one. I want us all together, and I don’t give a damn how much energy it takes.”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle answered.
Wheels turned, engines roared to life, and I felt the rush of connecting with the three women I now knew as well as I knew myself.
Using my suit as an anchor, I could control all of them. I could bring their suits back to maximum power and keep feeding them energy from my own batteries. Sure, even topped off, it wouldn’t last forever, but we had a full course of bugs to kill, to keep feeding energy into the system until we found another answer. We could use that power to win freedom for all those trapped in this concentration camp and get off this shit heap of a moon.
Turning, I saw fliers in the distance. Anya must have finished rifling through my memories and heard from Reynolds that he was on the run. I was the threat, and she knew it.
I turned, readying myself to attack the trio. Of course, with how much power was being diverted to recharging Artemis Squad, I wasn’t sure if I had enough available charge to fight back immediately. “Annabelle,” I said, swallowing hard, “fire at will.”
“Affirmative,” she answered, but nothing came out of my blasters.
“Annabelle!” I shouted, the fliers rearing back their vicious claws to tear me apart. My shields weren’t back online either, not yet. “Fire at – “
A barrage of energy bolts shot out from the right flank of the fliers. Totally unprepared, the three bugs were blown away, holes punched through carapaces and a volley of psionic arrows piercing their brains. As their corpses fell out of the sky, their energy reserves funneling into my armor, I turned to find Mina, Claire, and Jill flying toward me, powered up and responding to the commands I had given Annabelle.
“Rayne?” I asked as they fell into formation around me.
“I put her in another barrier shield,” Mina explained. “I had four preloaded into my suit, and now we’re down to two. She should be safe until we get back. Pays to be prepared, right?”
“Always,” I nodded with a grim smile. Turning on a dime, I rushed through the air toward the ground. “Now I have a queen to visit.”
34
I flew toward the ground, toward this horrible place of despair. Mina, Claire, and Jill were in formation above me. I could feel them. I could feel everything about them through the direct neural connection Annabelle had established. Expect this time, I was in control of what happened. Annabelle no longer existed within the confines of the Alliance’s rigid rule system.
That meant, with them opened up to me, I could also open up to them. I might have been on the inside when it came to their memories, to the way they felt, and to their greatest desires, but with one thought, I brought them in on mine. We were all together, living inside the same mind, sharing the same system. We were closer than we had ever been, then I had ever been with anyone.
We were one mind, one heart, and one unified unit. I knew now that we couldn’t be beaten.
I didn’t take their free will away. No way in Hell I would do that now that I had a choice in the matter. No, I let them make their own decisions and do their own things. Still, I sent them mental suggestions. Through that beautiful mental connection, I suggested that we should tear this place apart, just like Anya said she was going to do with our home, piece by piece.
To be fair, the girls were raring to do it, eager and chomping at the bit to take this place down. As for me, my attention was focused on hunting down the bug queen herself.
Normally, I would let her live. I would have torn the fuck out of the empire she’d built and been as happy as a clam knowing she had to make a home in the wreckage, bemoaning all she had been and all she had lost. I didn’t have that luxury this time though. She knew all our secrets. She knew what it meant to be human, and she was intent on using that information against the Earth as a whole.
I was going to have to kill Anya and, more than that, I was going to enjoy it.
“Annabelle, give me the coordinates of that fucking bitch!” I yelled.
“I’d ask you to be more specific, but I know there’s only one person you could be referring to,” Annabelle chirped.
My vision switched gears. The world was a graph now and, inside that graph, was a moving cursor indicating where the queen was. She was moving quickly, so quickly that she had to have been running.
Of course, she was. Typical tyrant. This whore was more than willing to torture her enemies with near glee, but the instant the tables started to turn, she was going to get the hell out of here.
Not if I could help it.
“Grey Goo shells, Annabelle. Right at the target,” I growled. “And infuse them with Jelly Wall.”
Normally, I would never use Grey Goo or, as Annabelle would describe it, nano-disassembly agent on a living creature, even a bug. You see, Grey Goo was filled with nanites that ate anything, organic or not, that it came into contact with. There was only the baseline programming that prevented it from eating things that produced Alliance signals, but otherwise, it was vicious, horrible, and probably a war crime. For Anya, though, I’d commit a couple of those.
The Jelly Wall infusion was just in case I didn’t hit.
“Affirmative, Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle said, not even giving me the typical Alliance warning about my imminent breaking of interstellar law.
In the back of my mind, I felt the girls. They were kicking ass and not even bothering with taking names. I could see all they saw. I could feel all they felt. We were one, and we were a wave of destruction. With every bug they cut down, Artemis Squad absorbed more and more energy, distributing it over our entire network. Who needed the Alliance now?
There was only one concern. From Claire’s mind, I knew that Rayne had not been able to start the virus cooking. Apparently, Anya hadn’t trusted me enough to not have guards keep a close eye on the ladies while I was pleasuring her. Still, I wasn’t too worried. Razing this place to the down and getting Rayne and the rest to safety would suffice. We could always come back better prepared and without the head of the Alliance betraying us to finish the job.
Back in reality, my volley of Grey Goo shells blasted down through the roof of Anya’s palace, my aim guided by Annabelle’s sensor suite. They struck very near the target but just missed. This was okay, and it was the reason I added the Jelly Wall. Having missed Anya, the blasts would thicken the air around the blast sites, turning the atmosphere into a thick, gooey, and surprisingly durable wall. Now, with that wall ahead, that bitch had nowhere to run when I landed in front of her, which I was scheduled to do in about a half a second.
I slammed through the roof and landed in front of Anya. She had turned to me already, apparently having anticipated what was going on. In her hand was a weapon that struck me right in the feels.
“Is that a Warhammer?” I asked, glancing at her right hand.
“Would you expect anything else?” Anya cooed at me, smiling her disgusting, hateful smile. “I told you, I have all your memories. I encompass everything that you are. I know all your moves, all your surprises.” She stepped forward. “And that is only the tip of the iceberg. I have all the skills of every conquest I have made in the past months inside of me as well. You are one person, Mark Ryder. I am many. You cannot beat me.”
My grin was a vicious, dangerous thing. “Is that right? We’ll see about that. Annabelle, get me my Warhammer, sweet thing. This bug and I are going to dance.”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant Ryder,” she said, and in an instant, the hammer was in my hand, home again.
“I’ll let you leave,” she said as we started circling each other. “You were a good fuck. I think that deserves a favor. Run away, little Marine. I promise I won’t follow you.”
“You’re scared, or else you wouldn’t be bargaining. You have good reason to be.” Anya swung at me, and I threw my hammer up to block it. The weapons slammed hard into each other, a huge clang rippling through the air. “My people are destroying your whole world, Anya. We’re taking it all down. I want you to die knowing that. I want you to go to your bug grave knowing you shouldn’t have ever fucked with me.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” she growled. Lifting a leg in the blink of an eye, she plowed a foot into my gut, knocking me backward.
I landed on the gro
und, looking up at her.
Anya laughed. “This is a familiar position for the two of us. Too bad it has to be the last time we assume it.”
“Thor me, Annabelle,” I cried, tossing my hammer at Anya. Lightning drove down into the hammer, but the queen knocked it off course, deflecting it with her own hammer. My Warhammer slammed into a nearby wall, still sparking as it buried itself up to the handle in stone.
“You think you can win this with a Thor move?” she asked, her laughter growing with every moment. “That’s one your ‘go to’s, Mark Ryder, and like I told you, I have all your moves.”
There was only a split second of panic as I rolled back out of Anya’s reach, my botched offense giving me at least that much time even if I was still on the floor. Calm returned when I realized what I had to do. The answer was obvious, so obvious. I had a cocky grin on my face as I growled, “But you don’t have hers. Mina, can you hear me?”
“I can.” Mina’s mental reply was immediate, and I could hear and feel her fatigue and, more importantly, the pain that was wracking her nerves.
“Are you hurt?” It was a stupid thing to ask, not with how intimately we were connected, and I was amazed at how fast this mental linked worked. Our entire conversation was taking place between blinks of an eye, with the queen rushing at me in slow motion.
“I’ll make it.” It sounded exactly like what I would have said in the exact way I would have said it. “Will you?”
“With your help. This bitch knows my moves, but …”
“She hasn’t seen anything yet,” Mina assured me. “You want me to take you over?”
“It only seems fair,” I nodded as I tossed the controls over to her.
I was on my feet instantly, moving like a fucking ninja. No, not a ninja, a goddamn ballerina. I was graceful. I was quick. She didn’t even bother to go for my Warhammer. Of course not, it wasn’t her style. Instead, she conjured up three combat knives, things of real beauty that must have been stored in her own suit, showing off another advantage of this symbiotic link: shared inventories. One was in each of my hands and the last strapped to my thigh.
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