by Natalie Grey
A Shrillexian, captain of one of the ships, gave a contemptuous laugh. “The former Empress does not own Devon. No one owns Devon. If they come after every single mercenary group that—” He broke off, looking at someone off-screen. Shinigami co-opted the security feeds and saw that he was looking at a young technician. “Well, where is it coming from, then? What do you mean there’s a ship?”
Shinigami waited, mentally rolling her eyes.
The technician stammered out a question.
“Take care of it,” the captain snapped in response. “It’s one ship. It—”
“You know I can hear you, right?”
Everyone jumped and looked at the screens, and a few people swore. Apparently they had thought this was a pre-recorded message.
On the bridge of one of the other ships, another Shrillexian who had been having a different conversation—Shinigami guessed with Jutkelon—looked around at last. He barked questions, and his crew answered.
“Well, shoot it down!” he told them, annoyed.
Does that count?
Are they readying weapons?
Yes.
Then it counts.
Shinigami’s engines flared and she blazed forward in an arc toward the first of High Tortuga’s moons, and in her wake sped a spread of five missiles. The first three locked onto the ships and the other two accelerated, although no targets had yet been chosen.
The mercenary ships fired and Shinigami smiled. They were shooting not just at her trajectory now, but also guiding missiles to intercept her around the edge of the moon.
It was smart, and it meant this wouldn’t be just a one-and-done.
She accelerated and altered her trajectory halfway around so that she would arc over the moon instead of slingshotting around it. The missiles altered their course to follow her and she waited until the very last minute before banking almost straight up, leaving several of the missiles to collide in her wake.
Those that had not collided swung around to follow and she corkscrewed as she headed back for the two mercenary ships that were still in shape to fire.
Wheeeeeeeeeeee!
She felt rather than saw Barnabas rub his forehead.
She shot a spread of missiles and waited for the two ships to launch interceptions, then launched another spread just behind. As she had expected, their second volley was delayed a few seconds. They were firing as quickly as they could, which wasn’t as quickly as she could.
She launched three more volleys in close succession and laughed wolfishly to herself. She loved this. Why anyone would want to have a human body was beyond her. With no need for oxygen or warmth and none of the limits of a fragile and breakable body she could accelerate and flip and turn and—
Dammit, one of the ships was launching puny little fighters, tiny one-man crafts that were heading straight for the missiles. Didn’t they see that they couldn’t absorb shots like that?
And then she realized—those crafts had been deployed, some manned, to try to take out the missiles to clear the way for the two crippled ships, both venting debris and air into space, to reach ramming speed and take her down.
They were sacrificing their crews.
Shinigami felt a white-hot rage descend on her. Those bastards! Intelligent life might be a tangle of contradictions. Might be? Definitely was…but the pact between a captain and their crew should be sacrosanct. The captains could have stood down. They could have begged for mercy.
Instead, to make a point, they were going to destroy themselves to take her out.
“This is the QBS Shinigami,” she broadcast. “Stand down, and give your crew a chance to make their own choices.”
She could feel Barnabas’s surprise. She also felt it as he looked up at the sky, and she tried to send him a tiny piece of how it felt to be a ship right now, to be streaming the data about gravity, trajectories, missiles, and known enemies. How it felt to be accelerating and weaving around the missiles they had sent. How satisfaction and fury felt to an AI.
“Stand down,” one of the mercenary captains ordered, “or both crews will die.”
“I have no crew! I am alone. If I stood down, would you leave this planet and never return?”
“As soon as our mission is complete.”
“Then, while I would spare their lives if I could, by refusing to stand down you have made that impossible.” Pucks shot out in formation, spread, and sped toward both ships.
By the time she completed her turn they were debris.
I gave them a chance, she told Barnabas.
Two. You gave them two chances. Not your fault they didn’t take them. He considered. Lan and Jutkelon?
No movement yet, but it’s coming.
Lan stared at the diagnostic reports. Jutkelon was scanning the frequencies with increasing panic, sure that the systems were down.
On some level, Lan thought, the Brakalon must already know what had happened.
“You didn’t check for ships in orbit, did you?” he asked.
“He had a ship in orbit, but it was so tiny it barely read as a shuttle!”
Lan could feel his pulse beating in his throat and the start of a truly terrible headache. “Didn’t you think for one moment that that was perhaps a false reading?”
“He’s a vigilante—”
“He’s a Ranger!” Lan clenched his long fingers. To his surprise, the mercenaries were not immediately jumping on him. This anger, this authority, was something they respected. Lan strode across the platform to stare Jutkelon down. “You knew what it meant to be human, but did you pay attention to none of the other stories? Did you do no research at all? Have you not heard of Tabitha and Achronyx?”
“Myths,” Jutkelon scoffed.
“Truth,” Lan snapped, his voice cold as winter. “And that is Ranger Two. This right here? This is Ranger One and his ship.”
Jutkelon stared at Lan. He was filled with rage at the loss of his ships, but he was also frozen.
“You still think like a soldier with a gun,” Lan told him bitterly. “You said you were going to teach the Ranger a lesson, and all that meant was that you were bringing in more people to take him on face-to-face. You talked a big game about being smarter than him, and you didn’t even do your research. So now what, Jutkelon? What are you planning?”
Jutkelon froze, but he knew he had to address Lan’s concerns. If he did not, the questions would linger even if he shot Lan in the head or crushed him with a blow.
“We go now,” he snapped. “Force Barnabas to choose between taking us out and saving those workers he cares so much about. The plan was sound, and it is still sound. Everyone to the shuttles.”
“Oh, I think not.” The voice was female and dangerously cold. The lights in the bunker flickered and a face out of a nightmare appeared on-screen. “Your time is up. Launch a ship—any ship—and I will shoot it down. Stay in your bunker, and I will turn your systems off one by one. I can sever the fuel lines. I can disable your air filtration.”
“What, then?” Jutkelon yelled the words at her.
She bared her teeth in a smile. “Come out and play.”
Back in Aebura’s bar, Barnabas lifted an eyebrow and smiled despite himself. “Come out and play.” He liked that.
But it meant things might go rather differently than he had imagined. He looked around the bar and met the eyes of several people in turn—Leihaba, Aebura, Carter.
“It’s beginning. Their ships have been destroyed, so they might do something unpredictable.”
“Like what?” Carter asked.
“I don’t know. I doubt even they know. They’re panicking, and when people panic…” Barnabas sighed and shook his head. “And they have missiles and guns. Carter, I need you and Leihaba to organize the evacuation of any civilians around Jutkelon’s compound. Say, four blocks. Go. The rest of you, get to your positions.”
“Where are you going?” Aebura asked.
She knew, of course. She had not seen Barnabas in action, but she ha
d heard the story. Still, it was hard to believe that anyone would be so stupid as to take Jutkelon’s army on alone.
To her surprise he flashed her a smile, and as if he’d read her mind he said, “I’m not fighting alone, remember? I’ve got Shinigami, and I’ve got all of you.” He looked at the Ubuara streaming out the door on their way to their positions throughout the city, and his smile showed satisfaction. “Working with other people,” he murmured to no one in particular bemusedly. “This is nice.”
And he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Come out and play.”
With that the lights in the bunker went off, and they heard the air filtration systems grind to a halt. One of the soldiers ran for the door into the storerooms—just one soldier, as they were too well-trained to panic and stampede—and there was the audible click of the electronic locks engaging. All around the room, the lights above the doors to the sleeping areas, armory, and storage units glowed red.
They were cut off from anything that might have helped them survive.
“Switch it to manual!” Jutkelon barked at him.
The soldier nodded and placed his hand on the control panel—
Only to sink to his knees, his body jerking as an incredibly strong electrical current ran through him. It released him a moment later, and everyone turned as one to stare at the screens. Lan expected the nightmare face to appear and tell them this had been a warning.
But she didn’t bother. She was in their systems, watching them try to find a way out like insects swarming over one another and punishing them when they went the wrong way, and still she did not speak to them.
It was more unnerving than any words could have been.
And then, as they went silent before what Lan knew was going to be a full-on panic, the door leading up into the courtyard clicked open.
“We go now,” Jutkelon snapped. “Everybody to the carrier!”
“Are you mad?” Lan gaped at him. “That ship took down three warships in orbit.”
“And it’s still in orbit! This is our best chance to move on the mining town—while it’s either up there or still landing. We don’t want to take it on one-to-one, do we?”
Lan’s head was whirling and he pressed his fingers against it as he thought. If they got in the troop carrier the ship might shoot them down, but if they stayed here it would definitely kill them. It had already shown its abilities.
It was a trap. It was all a trap, but they had no other options.
The face appeared now when they least expected it, and it was smiling to show very long, very sharp teeth. “I’m going to count down,” she told them. “Anyone still in this bunker when I reach zero can stay in here for the rest of time. Five. Four…”
No one doubted her. The soldiers ran for the doors, shouting orders to one another, and Lan thought he heard laughter echoing eerily from the speakers. He sprinted after them, for once not bothering to be cautious about his fragile Luvendi bones.
Panic was choking him. He had to get out of here. He had to, or he was going to die trapped in a cage.
They piled out into the daylight, Jutkelon still bellowing for them to get to the carrier, all of them, now—only to have tiny projectiles rain down on the stretch of ground between them and the ship. The lead soldiers went down with screams and the rest pushed back with all their might, fighting the momentum of the group behind them.
Lan hardly cared. All he could think about was the ship—getting to it, booting it without any communications, and getting the hell out of here before that AI could hack them and take them down. If they got out of here and scattered they’d have a chance.
When they all went eerily silent, Lan knew something worse had happened. He looked up and gave a little moan of fear.
Barnabas stood alone in the courtyard, so still that Lan would have guessed he was a statue. But statues didn’t smile quite like that.
Behind them, the doors to the bunker slammed shut and locked.
“No,” Lan whispered helplessly. Some of the soldiers around him threw him contemptuous looks, but they didn’t know. They hadn’t seen.
“It looks like you weren’t able to arm yourselves,” Barnabas began conversationally. He shrugged out of his coat and unbuckled his gun harness, throwing both into the air—where, bizarrely enough, they stayed. The whole mess just hovered twenty feet above the ground. “I much prefer fair fights,” Barnabas told them.
Then he smiled and his teeth lengthened, and his eyes glowed red as fire.
“Or...mostly fair.” He rotated his head to take in the whole group of them, then fixed his eyes on Jutkelon. “You could end all this, you know. You could surrender. You don’t have to protect Lan. You never had to. How many more soldiers do you really want to sacrifice here?”
“As many as it takes to kill you.” Jutkelon’s voice sounded like rocks tumbling over one another and his pale skin was flushing with anger. “Isn’t that right, boys? We’ll make sure this human pays.”
The soldiers roared their approval.
“Oh, good.” Barnabas’s voice almost hissed as it rolled through the courtyard, louder than any mortal voice should be. “I was hoping you would say that.”
At Jutkelon’s shouted order, four teams charged forward while the rest broke for the troop carrier. Lan, in a stroke of inspiration, ran for the stairs to one of the guard towers. There was a machine gun there, and as far as he was concerned that was the best chance any of them had of taking this human down.
The screaming started when he had only gone a few steps and didn’t stop the whole time he ran. Lan tried not to look, terrified of what he would see. He was scared to even turn the gun and look closely enough to aim. What had remained of the team at the mining town had barely resembled bodies at all.
When he finally reached the gun and looked out of necessity, he nearly passed out from terror. He had to lean against the gun mount to steady himself.
He wasn’t sure what the soldiers had expected to happen. Many of them were Brakalon and a few were Shrillexian, all well-trained fighters—but they should have put more stock in what had happened to their first units.
Maybe they were still thinking of humans as clawless and soft-skinned. Maybe they thought they would overpower him with their overwhelming numeric advantage. Perhaps they were so maddened in their quest for revenge that they hadn’t paused to think at all. It didn’t matter much why they ran at him like they did. The fact was, not one of them stood a chance in hell of getting past Barnabas, and they should have known that.
The massacre attested to it.
The ground before them was strewn with bodies, but still they ran at Barnabas shouting battle cries. No one came close to hurting him. He had clearly taken bullets, but they had not slowed him down at all, even though he didn’t seem to be wearing any armor.
Was his armor just so good that they couldn’t see it, or were humans able to take bullets in this form without getting injured? Lan couldn’t make a solid bet either way on that one.
As Barnabas cut down the last of the mercenaries, hardly even looking at the body as it crumpled to the ground, someone shouted a guttural challenge. Jutkelon slammed his fists on the ground and charged into battle. He swung one huge arm as Barnabas stepped to the side and slid under it, only a hair’s breadth from impact.
Undaunted, Jutkelon skidded to a stop and turned with a bellow, and again he charged.
Barnabas feinted and rolled away.
He’s playing with you! Lan wanted to scream. Run, you stupid bastard!
But Jutkelon was far beyond reason now. He was in some fantasy realm where he had a fighting chance against this monster.
Lan didn’t even think; he just ran. The others could be stupid if they wanted to. They could get all caught up in their pride, relying on their training and their strength. He had never been that kind of stupid. Over the years he had met dozens of strong fighters who had looked down their noses at him, and he had wanted to rage at the
m for how little they thought of him.
But now, when it came down to it, who was going to survive? Lan said a tiny prayer and dropped over the compound’s wall, wincing when he hit the ground. His bones could not take many falls like that.
He just had to push through the pain. He had to find a place to hide. Lan took off through the streets, so focused on the next turn and the next—on outrunning the screams—that he didn’t notice the many pairs of brown eyes staring down at him from the roofs of the buildings.
Lan’s getting away, Shinigami observed. She directed another spray of fire at the ground in front of the carrier.
I saw. By the way, I’m assuming you have some sort of plan for that carrier.
Oh, yes. She sounded very smug. You see, if they stopped to think about it, they’d never get on board. I had to make them want to.
By shooting at them every time they tried to go near it?
Exactly. I couldn’t really get at them in the bunker, I can’t lay down too much fire with you there, and the vehicle carries a lot of fuel—I need to shoot it down somewhere outside the city. So I needed them to get on it, and one of the surest ways to make someone pigheadedly determined to do something is to stand in their way every time they try to do it.
You’re an evil genius.
Thank you. Coming from you that means a lot. I’ll handle this lot, you kill that oaf and go after Lan.
Teamwork. I like this. Barnabas shot a grin upward as he rolled out of the way of yet another ground-shaking punch.
“You’re slow, old one,” he taunted the Brakalon. “First you told yourself you deserved to run things because you were the best fighter, and when you got weak and slow you told yourself you deserved to run it all because you were the smartest. But that’s not even true, is it? You’re old and washed-up, with no strength and no speed, and now you can’t even think your way through a fight.”
