Satuur pocketed the flash-bangs and one of the anti-personnel ones. Carrying more wasn’t possible with the knives, but what he had would be enough. He stepped around the pallet to the remaining side and saw the shattered chest piece of the Enforcer’s armor.
No wonder he didn’t go down. Satuur nodded, impressed.
BAMF armor. When you have to have the very best.
The Ballistic Assault, Modular Function armor’s reputation was beyond reproach. BAMF armor was a singular platform of combat armor with a modular design that allowed components and levels of armor to be added and removed on base and in the field. The Hi’Tomi Corporation initially made basic models for Standard Infantry (SI), Fast Attack (FA), Heavy Weapons (HW), and Battlefield Communications (BC). Over the years, Hi’Tomi-created and after-market mods for the platform had become available, including everything from a Tank model with heavy plating and explosive-reactive surfaces to a lightweight stealth mod that could be set to contend with various detection suppression scenarios and enhanced battlefield movement tactics. For their typically austere lifestyles and choices of weapons, the Peacemakers had settled on the very best.
Satuur didn’t find a case that appeared to have held a replacement set. The Enforcer was more exposed without the plating, and while he might still have one of the undergarments that was capable of deterring bladed weapons, without the heavy armor, the Enforcer was vulnerable. On the other hand, he would be even faster, unencumbered by the weight and rigidity of full combat armor. Satuur decided he would almost rather have the Enforcer in the combat gear. In a straight fight, he wasn’t sure he could take the Oogar. He needed a way to remove his opponent’s physical advantages. And then he smiled, glancing around the forest floor.
As with every mission he’d ever taken on, he’d studied everything about the facilities, the people, and the world where he would be working. He was in the middle of a rain forest and there were countless plants and animals that, if he could find them, he could use to his advantage.
Guile and surprise just became my best friends, he thought.
Satuur glanced at the trail Dolamiir and the Enforcer had left in the clearing and smiled to himself. Vulnerable at range and easy to track. I’ll take those odds.
He set off into the forest, a hunter seeking his prey.
* * *
Godannii 2
Emergency Relief Facility
The door to their makeshift cell slammed shut, and heavy boots moved off to the left toward the exit of the building. Tyrn staggered across the middle of the floor and collapsed against the far wall. He slid down and leaned his head back against the concrete.
“Well, that was fairly awful,” he groaned. He was as hoarse as the rest of them after all the screaming. He tipped his head sideways and rapped the heel of his paw against it a few times in an obvious attempt to get water out of his ear. “I think my swimming days are about over.” He turned toward Rsach. “Those bastards are a lot more enthusiastic than the upperclassmen at the Academy.”
Rsach inspected Tyrn’s face from where he sat beside the blankets along a side wall.
“There’s more at stake here,” Rsach said. “At least they didn’t beat you,” he added as he rubbed a pincer along his mandibles where one of the GenSha had punched him. Apparently, they didn’t like one of the answers he’d given. Overall, their questions seemed to focus on Peacemaker protocols regarding the situation they found themselves in. When Rsach had said the guild usually sent in an Enforcer to kill everyone, especially interrogators, things got a little heated. The suggestion seemed to upset one of his interrogators, and a hard punch had come out of nowhere, snapping Rsach’s head around like it was on a spring.
The rest of the interrogation was equally painful and terrifying, although none of it left any marks. He’d endured a couple of hours’ worth of waterboarding—a most disagreeable experience—and then the GenSha fired up the generator. Electric probes were jammed in those extremities where his species had higher densities of pain receptors. The tips of a Jeha’s pincers were loaded with them and had been the logical starting point. That wasn’t, however, where they’d stopped.
Rsach cringed at the memory of where those probes had ended up. His three hours of screams during the ordeal had blended with the screams of the others into a chorus of pain that he suspected would be nightmare fuel in the years to come.
A coughing fit took Ven, who leaned over onto his side, hacking up more water that had struggled to stay in his larger, quad-chambered lungs. His species was particularly uneasy with water, so the waterboarding had hit him the hardest. He also had a black eye he said he’d received when he reflexively slashed at one of the GenSha at the start of the waterboarding.
“What happened to you?” Tyrn asked, looking at the discolored lump at the base of one of Vresh’s antennae. A faint trickle of blood seeped from an abrasion.
Vresh jerked her head around to face him.
“One of them shoved me, so I shoved back,” she croaked. “It felt good, too…right up until he cracked me in the head with a rifle butt.”
“Ouch,” Tyrn said.
“And then some.” She smiled weakly. “It was still worth it.”
“Look,” Rsach said, interrupting them, “I know we’re not 100 percent right now, but I don’t think any of us wants another interrogation session.” His voice was a raspy whisper.
“You got that right,” Vresh said.
Ven nodded his whole-hearted agreement.
“Did anyone tell them anything that we have to worry about?”
“There was nothing to tell, Rsach.” There was a healthy bit of venom in her voice. “We don’t know nearly enough about what’s been going on here; I still think there’s a lot more to all of this than we ever suspected.”
Rsach gave her a sidelong glance and added a barely perceptible nod.
“Then it’s time for us to try and get out of here, even if it means we die in the attempt. If I heard correctly, all of the interrogators went the way they brought us in. There’s a single guard outside, so there can’t be more than one or two down the other hallway.”
“Are you sure you want to risk it? Even with those odds?” Tyrn asked, worry filling his voice. “They made it pretty clear they weren’t ready to kill us yet, and none of us even got a taste of what they did to Korvan.”
Ven glared at Tyrn, as if he was completely out of his mind.
“You want to stick around to see when and if they change their minds?” he asked. “I’d rather die trying to get our asses out of here than wait for Bith or that fucker, Gorn, to lose his patience.”
“Yeah, Tyrn,” Ven added. “We’ve been living on borrowed time since the mercs got here.”
“All right, all right,” Tyrn said, holding up his paws defensively. “I’m just saying that it’s gonna be difficult to get out of here in one piece.”
“You’re not wrong, Tyrn.” It was Rsach’s turn to sound irritated. “But we’re Peacemakers, and we have a duty to try and escape.” He blew out an angry breath. “I’m not willing to wait for them to decide it’s time to start executing us.”
Tyrn locked eyes with Rsach. “Rsach, I understand, and I don’t disagree. But if we’re going, we can’t leave without our gear. I heard them talking—I know where everything is.”
“Are you sure?”
“Definitely,” Tyrn assured him. “Down that interrogation hallway, last door on the right. According to one of the guards, it’s all in there—weapons, armor, everything.”
“I’m not sure I like the idea of going further into this place,” Ven said. “We should make for the exit immediately.”
“Without our equipment, it’ll be a short-lived escape,” Rsach said. “We know a bunch of them are already engaged with the mercenaries somewhere, but this place can’t be empty.”
Ven nodded reluctantly. “I see your point.”
“So, we go with the same plan?” Vresh asked, looking uncomfortable.
“It’s the one shot we have,” Rsach replied, rising slowly to his feet. He turned and started pulling the blankets off the pile. He crumpled up most of them into balls and laid them out in a pattern that was about the same size as his body. He then laid the last blanket on top of the others, making a few adjustments so that, at a glance, it would look like he was underneath it. “There,” he said, standing up straight as he examined his work. “Hopefully, it will be enough.” He turned to Vresh.
“You ready?” he asked, once again sounding apologetic.
“As ready as I’m going to be…although all the water I sucked in should make this even easier.” She did not look enthusiastic.
“That gives me an idea,” he said and turned to Ven. “When she goes down, you need to holler that both of us are dying from the waterboarding…that something went wrong with our insides.”
“Okay,” Ven said a bit dubiously. “What, exactly, are you going to do?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Vresh snapped at him. “And I swear, you better not tell anyone about this.”
“We promise,” Ven and Tyrn said together.
“Then let’s get this over with,” she added as her body started undulating slightly.
“Make it a good show,” Rsach said as he moved over to the wall beside the door.
She nodded briskly and increased her gyrations.
Rsach took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then moved up, placing his many legs up against the concrete. His pincers tapped against the rough wall, getting a feel for where the cracks and crannies were. He took one last look at Vresh. She had lain down on the floor about three meters from the door, and her body was undulating violently now. She made a gut-wrenching sound, and Rsach had to fight to keep his own gorge down. What was about to happen was not something many non-Jeha had ever seen, and when it did happen, it could cause a chain reaction among other Jeha. It was instinctual to them as a species.
Turning back toward the wall, he angled his pincers and began climbing. With each meter he climbed above the floor, a number of his legs would slip or loose purchase, but he maintained enough traction to climb all the way to the ceiling, where he made a 90-degree turn. He crawled along the angle between the wall and the ceiling, taking up a position directly above the door.
A sickening, wet heave erupted from Vresh, drawing Rsach’s attention. From his vantage point, he could see that Tyrn and Ven had moved into position on either side of her. They stared in horror as Vresh quivered on the floor, her body now undulating slowly. Another wet heave came from her, and a shot of milky-white liquid erupted from her mouth like a jet and splashed onto the floor.
“Oh gods!” Tyrn shouted; it wasn’t an act.
Ven made a heaving sound of his own and covered his mouth.
In the pool of vomit, they could all see some of the rations she’d ingested earlier, as well as a few bits Rsach didn’t recognize. His body heaved slightly, almost breaking him free of his purchase on the wall. He sucked in a deep breath and focused all of his will on not emptying his stomach.
That’s when Vresh’s digestive tract spilled out onto the floor, turned inside out. The flesh was a marble pattern of pink, yellow, and green, and they could see her heartbeat in the purple veins that lined her stomach.
“Now, Ven!” Rsach hissed urgently.
“Guard!” Ven shouted at the top of his lungs. “Guard, there’s something wrong with the Jeha in here.”
“Shut up in there,” a GenSha shouted back. “None of your guff, you hear?”
“I swear on all that’s sacred,” Ven yelled back. “One of them is already dead, and the other has coughed up her insides. Her guts are all over the floor! In the name of all that’s holy, get in here!”
Several seconds passed, then the guard pounded on the door.
“Step back,” he shouted. “If you try anything, I have orders to shoot to kill. Understand?”
“I understand,” Ven said. “Just get in here.”
The lock clanked, and the door opened slowly. On the other side was a lone GenSha with his ISMC needler out and aimed.
“Bloody ancestors!” he cried when he saw the Jeha quivering on the floor with her insides hanging out of her mandibles. He clearly panicked, his eyes going wide. “Back up,” he growled. The pistol in his hand shifted left and right quickly, aimed at Tyrn and Ven. “I said back up!”
Both Peacemakers raised their arms and took a half-step back.
The GenSha peered into the room and spotted the lump under the blankets.
“Get on out of there!” he screamed. “You, under the blankets.”
“I’m telling you,” Ven said, pleading with the guard, “he’s dead.” His eyes shifted to Vresh. “Do something for her, would you?”
“If you don’t come out of there, I’m going to shoot!” he warned. He waited several seconds, and when nothing happened, he stepped into the room, took aim, and fired two quick shots into the blankets.
In a flash, Rsach dropped down from the ceiling and slammed into the guard, staggering the big GenSha with 50 kilos of dead weight. The guard roared in surprise as Rsach’s body wrapped around his head and shoulders, covering his face completely. Rsach lanced his pincers into the GenSha’s neck and chest as Ven leapt forward to grab the pistol.
Blood poured down the GenSha’s chest. In a panic, he dropped the pistol and raised his forehands to latch onto the Jeha that was ravaging his body.
Ven went down into a slide, grabbed the pistol before it hit the floor, and aimed just as the GenSha wrapped his massive hands around Rsach’s body. With an enraged heave, the guard latched onto Rsach and flung him across the room.
Ven aimed and fired off two quick shots, hitting the GenSha center mass.
The GenSha grunted, a surprised look on his face, and toppled forward into the room, narrowly missing Vresh.
Pounding boot steps echoed in the hallway.
“Dronath!” a deep voice shouted.
Ven dove forward. As he slid into the hallway, he aimed and fired the pistol once.
There was a grunt and then a heavy body slammed into the floor, followed by a clatter and something sliding across concrete. Ven rose to his feet and tossed the pistol to Tyrn.
“Cover me,” he hissed. Without another word, he rushed out into the hallway as Tyrn moved up to the door. When Tyrn looked out, he led with the pistol and glanced to the left and right and saw Ven picking up an ISMC laser rifle. Beyond him, about three meters away, was the body of a downed GenSha who lay sprawled in the middle of the floor.
He listened closely for several seconds and let out a relieved breath. He didn’t hear any more boots approaching. He took a quick glance back into the room. Vresh’s body was undulating once again, and with each gyration, her insides were being drawn back into her body a few inches at a time with wet sucking sounds. He turned his eyes to Rsach, disgusted by what was happening. Rsach had already risen to his feet, albeit a bit unsteadily, and one of his antennae had broken off. A trickle of blood seeped from the wound, but it didn’t look severe.
“Are you all right?” Tyrn asked. He did his best not to look at Vresh, still lying on the floor, sucking in her stomach.
Rsach turned to him, dazedly shook his head, then moved forward. He still seemed a bit wobbly.
“I’ll be fine. My equilibrium is off a bit, but it’ll reset in a few hours.”
“And that?” Tyrn asked, glancing at the broken antenna lying on the floor.
“It’ll grow back…eventually.” He walked over to Vresh, who had gotten up on her legs and was swallowing the last few inches of her stomach. He lowered his body and whispered something to her.
She nodded and convulsed one last time, and he helped her stand upright.
For a moment, Tyrn met her eyes, but he turned away quickly to look back out into the hallway. Ven was at the end of the hall, covering both directions. He gave an all clear sign, then faced down the interrogation hallway.
Rsach approached the dead Ge
nSha. He plucked a pair of magazines for the needler from his belt and grabbed a rather large combat knife.
“Come on,” Rsach said, stepping up behind Tyrn. “Let’s get moving.” He held out the dagger with a pair of pincers and two empty pincers for the laser pistol. “Trade me,” he said. “You move behind Ven and show him where to go. Vresh will follow you, and I’ll cover the rear. Move as quickly as you can.”
At first, Tyrn hesitated, as if he didn’t want to give up the pistol, but he finally placed it in Vresh’s pincers and slipped the knife into the back of his belt.
“What about Vresh?” he asked, still not looking at her.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Vresh snapped. “I can still kick your ass on any obstacle course or running track.”
“Just get moving,” Rsach said a bit impatiently. “Quick-time it, and we’ll be right behind you.”
Tyrn shrugged and jogged ahead to join Ven. Vresh and Rsach stepped out into the hallway as the other two Peacekeepers exchanged a few whispers and moved around the corner. Vresh dashed to the dead GenSha, pulled out a combat knife from the sheath at his belt, and followed the others. With one last look over his shoulder, Rsach moved down the hall in their wake.
They quickly made their way down the hall where all of the interrogation rooms stood open and empty. There were three closed doors at the end, and beyond those was another turn in the hall, opening to the left. Ven checked each door as they moved forward, finding the rooms empty. When he got to the last door, he turned to Tyrn.
“This one?”
“That’s what I heard the guard say,” Tyrn assured him as the two Jeha came up behind them.
Enforcer Page 31
