“What the fuck is that?” she asked.
For a moment after I turned to follow her arm, I thought maybe she’d been hit on the head—even I knew what a fission explosion looked like, had seen them in vids—but she wasn’t pointing at the nuclear fire; she was pointing at something just past it, instead.
Something emerging from it.
At first, I thought it was a ship—after everything else we’d seen today, the sudden appearance of a spacecraft, being flown through a ball of nuclear flame, wouldn’t have been any more insane than anything else—but it wasn’t a ship, it was too small for that. Only a speck, but growing larger, gaining. Gaining on us. The farther we pulled away from the mushroom cloud spreading over the industrial landscape, the clearer it became that whatever it was, it was chasing us, chasing our train. And as it got closer, the impossibility of the thing just kept growing.
It was a person. A person in a suit of armor—an exosuit, one equipped with wings and jet thrusters. The wingspan was massive, mechanical—the only species that had natural wings were the Klite, and their six wings were iridescent, more insectoid than bird-like, not like this at all. This was something else, something I couldn’t even comprehend, and the image of the dark form, wings spread wide, silhouetted against the rising cloud of flame: it was almost angelic, apocalyptic, somehow terrifying in a way that went deeper than bone, deeper than reason, created an atavistic, whimpering fear at the very heart of me.
Whatever the fuck it was—whoever it was—I did not want them catching up with us.
Apparently Jane agreed; I was still staring at our pursuer, slack-jawed and holding Sho close, when she unshipped her rifle and opened fire. From a train car in motion toward a target in flight: not the easiest shot in the galaxy, to say the least. Still, she managed to land several hits—the approaching thing was close enough now that we could see the sparks where the bullets struck its armor—but her target didn’t even slow down.
Was it Barious? A Barious’s metallic exoskeleton could shrug off rifle rounds like that. I’d never heard of a Barious installing mechanical wings and a flight system before, but it wasn’t impossible, I supposed. I wished the Preacher were here. She’d know.
“Esa,” Jane commanded, reloading her weapon. “Slow it down. Put it down, for good.”
I nodded, jerking my mind out of its stupor; whatever this was, it was combat, and shock in combat will only get you killed. Still holding Sho tight, I reached out with one hand—didn’t bother trying to “grab” at the pursuing figure, just put up a wall between us and it. As fast as it was moving, suddenly hitting an immobile “object” like that should have spread it all across the landscape.
Instead it just smashed through, like my teke wall had been made of glass rather than the force of my own will, a force harder than steel. It didn’t even bother to change course, didn’t even shake as it pierced my barrier like it wasn’t even there. The backlash of having my teke field destroyed before I had released it actually snapped my head backward, like I’d been slapped in the face. I spat blood on the train car floor—that happens sometimes, my system gets overwhelmed, I start bleeding from my sinuses—then went back to glaring at our pursuer, raising up Bitey with my free hand.
Jane had gotten there before me; instead of firing her rifle again, though, she’d managed to fish a grenade launcher out of the handful of weapons the snipers had left behind. She loaded it, raised it up, and fired, all in one fluid motion—if the shots she’d been trying to land from her rifle had been difficult, this one was damn near impossible, calculating the arcing trajectory of a much heavier round, fired with much less velocity, against the motion of both her target and the rail car, also taking into consideration the interference from the roaring winds created by both the train’s passage and the blast still spreading from the nuclear inferno. Taking a shot like that should have been pure folly, but I’d learned a long time ago never to discount Jane’s ability to hit her mark. When Jane wanted something dead, it got dead.
I could actually see the grenade as it flew across the blistered sky—it looked at first as if she’d fired it way too far to the right, but that was just her taking the winds into account, and the howling maelstrom yanked the round back on track, an elliptical passage carrying it directly at our pursuer. She was going to hit it dead-on.
Until the figure in the mechanical exosuit raised up one hand, and with a gesture almost casual in its disdain swept its clawed gauntlet in the direction of the grenade. The round exploded in midair, a tiny pinprick in the face of the apocalyptic blaze behind it.
I knew that sort of motion, the one the figure in flight had made with its hand; I’d made that sort of motion. It was exactly how I manipulated my teke. Except whatever the thing behind us had done, it wasn’t telekinesis—I would have thrown the grenade off course, or knocked it down to the bridge below, not simply set the charge off early.
What in the blue fuck was going on?
The pursuing thing slashed its wings together, diving under the midair blast the grenade had left behind, then snapped them open again, still gaining, the blue glare of its thrusters a pinprick of light against the dust-darkened sky. “Schaz,” Jane said warningly into her comm. “Tell me you didn’t get caught in that blast.”
“I’m on my way to you now,” Scheherazade replied. “From the other direction, thankfully. You’ve only got a few minutes before you hit the break in the bridge—”
“We’ve only got a few seconds before whatever the fuck is chasing us catches up,” Jane answered. “Get here, Schaz; now. Fuck stealth, come in hot. We’ll be on the roof.” While they were speaking I’d fired Bitey empty at the figure, with little success—unlike Jane, I don’t think I even managed to hit it, and even if I had, my rounds were fired at less velocity than those from Jane’s rifle: they wouldn’t have done any more good than hers did. I just didn’t know what else to do. “Esa—it’s no good,” Jane said. “Get Sho strapped in. I don’t care who the fuck that is—they’re not going to be able to stand up to Scheherazade. It’s time to get off this weird-ass planet.”
I could not have agreed more.
CHAPTER 12
The train bucked and rolled underneath our feet as I got Sho tied onto Jane’s back again; we were powering through the debris on the tracks, and all it would take was one loose piece of rebar rolling into just the right position underneath the wheels to send us jolting free and smashing over the side of the bridge, but that was the least of our problems.
It took everything I had to concentrate on the buckles and the straps of Sho’s harness, to not look behind me to see if the . . . thing was gaining. Of course it was gaining; it had been gaining before, when we were shooting at it, and nothing had changed. Still, my hands were slick and sweaty as I pulled the last of the knots tight, then squeezed Sho’s shoulder once and rapped my knuckles on Jane’s body armor, to let her know I was done.
I turned around then, and the thing was still gaining. Because . . . yeah.
I reloaded Bitey and started shooting at it. Again. That seemed the thing to do. Again, it didn’t actually have any effect. The thing was close enough that I could actually make out details in the armor now—not just a chunky outer chassis, but one whose lines hugged tight to a body instead, completely unlike any of the other exosuits I’d seen. Those pieces of tech, favored by the security forces on Sanctum, were huge, heavy, unwieldy things, massive slabs of armor that could only be lifted into place with the help of pistons and hydraulics, all powered by a fusion battery. This was almost like a second musculature, tracing the outline of a form that didn’t match any alien species I’d ever seen, but that had to be purely ornamental—if it was actually as tight as it looked, there was no way it could have shrugged off the rounds we’d already fired at it. Either that, or the being inside was impossibly thin.
Also, the flying. I’d never seen that before, either.
“Hold on tight, Sho!” Jane shouted over the roar of the wind around us. “Esa!�
� She pointed her gun at the access hatch in the roof of the train car, long since welded shut back when no one had ever thought this thing would ever get moving again. I gritted my teeth and put a burst of telekinesis through it; it ripped clear, the whole thing, the speed of our passage tearing it free of the car completely. That was a little more than I’d meant to do, but I was under a great deal of pressure, and modulating the fine motor control of my teke actually took more work than the big stuff.
With a grace that would have been impressive even if she hadn’t been carrying an entire adolescent on her back, Jane hung first from the metal plates welded onto the windows, then reached up to grab the edges of the busted hatch, hauling herself up and through, onto the roof above. I did the same—using a burst of teke in lieu of the same level of natural athleticism—and then I was on top of a moving train car, and I had a single moment to wonder what the fuck I was doing: I had to anchor myself to the metal of the roof with my teke before the wind blew me right the hell off the speeding vehicle.
I was trying to stand on top of a moving train car while being chased by some sort of flying robotic thing as we fled the site of a nuclear explosion, heading toward a midair extraction with our approaching starship. My life was . . . strange sometimes, even to me.
Jane had managed to get to her knees, one hand holding tight to a low bar that ran along the side of the roof, the other gripping her pistol even tighter. Based on what we’d seen so far, the bullets from her revolver weren’t going to do shit to the thing coming after us, but it wasn’t like I was letting go of Bitey, either.
We both turned to face back toward the explosion, toward our pursuer. Just in time to see the thing tuck its wings behind it one last time, and dive for the train car.
It smashed into the back of the roof like a missile, hard enough and heavy enough to send a jolt through the entire frame, one I could feel even through the vibrations of the train’s motion and the howling wind around us. Those clawed gauntlets lashed out and tore into the metal of the roof with a terrible screeching sound, the weight of the armor dragging the figure backward until it anchored, and the thing managed to get to its knees, finally giving us a good glimpse of it.
I hadn’t liked the look of it before, at distance, and I sure as shit didn’t like it now, up close. The strangely designed armor, more like metal flesh than a hydraulic exosuit; the razor-sharp alloy wings, folded so tightly to the creature’s back that you likely couldn’t even see them if you were facing it head on; twisting designs, etched or carved into the metal skin like gleaming tattoos, words or ideograms or mathematical expressions in a language I most definitely did not speak, or even recognize.
And the mask that covered whatever face was underneath it. Stylized fangs; a sharp slit of a mouth that wasn’t actually an opening, just a raised relief on the metal; the same was true for the wide, glaring eyes, ovoid and strange. Most disturbing of all were the tracks of tears that flowed underneath those reliefs, except I couldn’t tell if they were actually supposed to be tears at all, or if they were meant to be flames instead.
The overall effect of the features was purposefully species-neutral; it could have been meant to give the impression of a human face, or Tyll, or a dozen other alien races. There was even the slightest hint of a muzzle that might have made it Reint or Wulf instead. It was as if it were meant to conjure up a demon from every culture that it could have resembled.
With another shriek of tearing metal, it ripped one claw free, then sank it into the roof again, closer to us. Did the same with the other. Even in all that heavy armor—and skintight or not, strange alloy or not, it must have weighed a hundred pounds, not even including the wings and the jetpack—the thing was still advancing across the roof, inch by inch, pulling itself toward us. It had no expression, made no sign of its intentions—there was just the grinning snarl, and the scene of utter devastation behind it. It still hadn’t said a word.
Jane shot it in the face.
The round glanced off the mask without even making a dent, though it did at least snap the thing’s head back, making it pause in its relentless forward motion, for just a bit. That gave me enough time to pull my gaze away from the creature and look over the side of the train instead. If bullets weren’t going to work, I needed something else to hit it with, something heavier. I frantically scanned the passing roadway beside the tracks, trying to find something that would work—no, no, no, no, no, no, there.
I reached out with my teke and an open hand, ripping the snapped and abandoned piece of rebar toward me even as we left it behind, making sure the arc of its passage toward my grip led through the relentless armored figure crawling along the train roof.
The metal pierced through its back like a six-foot-long arrow, bursting free of its chest until half of the jagged makeshift projectile was sticking out the front of it. Take that, you fucking . . . you fucking . . . you whatever the fuck you are, you.
There wasn’t any blood—not on the piece of rebar, not oozing sluggishly from around the wound, either. Whatever the hell this thing was, it didn’t bleed.
I hadn’t even managed to try and figure out what the hell that meant before it raised up one of its gauntlets, wrapped it around the metal shaft driven through its chest, and started pulling.
It was pulling the rebar through itself the way I might thread a needle through a piece of cloth. It made no sound as it did it—no cries of pain, no shrieks of rage. The blank eyes of that horrible mask just kept staring at us, never turning away even as the metal was torn entirely clear of its body, then thrown unceremoniously from the roof of the train.
There should have been mangled flesh left behind in the wake of the shaft’s passage through the creature’s form. There should have been just a ruin of internal organs and ruptured bone, visible through the large hole the rebar had carved through its armor. Even if it had been Barious, there would have been sparking wires and damaged components. There wasn’t anything like that at all. There was just light. A weird, terrifying cerulean glow, like what was contained within wasn’t a person at all, but just liquid luminescence instead, luminescence that wasn’t spilling or flowing out of the wound, that just glowed in the center of the thing’s broken chest.
I think I actually said “What the fuck,” or at least mouthed the words, but I couldn’t hear myself over the wind. I’d seen some weird shit in the last three years. This still took the cake. It took the cake, and the dish the cake had come on, and the whole goddamned bakery. Maybe even the whole bakery’s block.
And that was before the thing lifted up its hand—the same one it had used to pull the metal shaft free from its body, the other still anchoring it to the train car roof—and raised it, palm up, toward me. And the metal skin retracted, and the palm within started to glow with that same light.
Whatever happened next, I doubted I was going to enjoy it much.
Thankfully, it didn’t happen at all, because at that moment the cobalt glow from the creature’s . . . whatever was suddenly matched by a piercing line of azure brightness from behind us, a laser that slashed through the back half of the train car, cutting free the section of roof that the creature was clinging to. The thing went sailing free, back down toward the bridge below—then the train was lit by floodlights, and a welcome voice came through the comm in my ear:
“What the hell was that thing, and why was he glowing at you?” Schaz asked. “Rude.”
I turned—it took some effort to rip my eyes away from the section of track where the roof had smashed down; I doubted that little fall was going to end the whatever-it-was—and saw Scheherazade on approach, her forward lasers still glowing slightly as they cooled. She pulled into a smooth loop, matching the train car’s direction and speed, her cargo ramp lowering so that it was almost touching the roof. Jane clambered on, Sho still clinging tightly to her back, then both of them reached out to help me do the same.
“Circle back around!” Jane commanded Schaz, one hand clinging to an anchor strap fo
r stability, the other raised to the comm in her ear. “Whatever the hell that thing is, I want to make sure it’s dead!”
“Your ship is awesome!” Sho cried over the wind.
“Yeah, she is!” I shouted back, grinning. I remembered the first time I’d laid eyes on Schaz too—it had been in similar straits.
The train vanished from beneath us as Schaz cut her forward momentum, then slowly began to arc around; she couldn’t match the loop she’d made earlier with us still hanging out of the combination airlock and armory that was Schaz’s ramp access. Or rather, she could have, but then we would all fall out, and she’d have to pick us up again, if we weren’t all dead and splattered far, far below.
“Do you see it?” Jane shouted at me as Schaz’s spotlights searched the bridge. I didn’t see it, but I found the crumpled metal that was the piece of the train Scheherazade had cut free, and I pointed at it; Jane thumped on the last door of the armory lockers with her fist, and the whole thing sprung outward, releasing a massive mounted cannon, a .50 caliber machine gun built onto a swivel rack anchored inside its little hidey-hole.
I had not known that we had that.
Jane got herself behind the gun, pulling the bolt back and priming it to fire, the ammunition snaking up into the chamber from a belt line that led back inside Scheherazade. “Do you see it?” she asked again, swiveling the big gun around, looking for her target.
I shook my head, still scanning. “No, I—”
“There!” Sho pointed; he was half-twisted around on Jane’s back so he could still look. Jane followed the line of his extended arm, as did I: the creature was standing on the bridge, its wings still folded, that single iridescent hole still bored through the center of its armor, where its heart would have been if it had been human. It didn’t seem the worse for wear for having been thrown from a moving vehicle, then having half a train roof dropped on top of it.
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