“Come down, Kurrang. Let us talk about your fate.” The TriRusk leader turned her head slightly and locked eyes with Jessica for a long moment. “And you, Peacemaker. Your fate rests in the balance as well.”
Jessica bit her lip and followed Kurrang down from the roof. Half a dozen responses came to mind. Ones that were professional and expected of a Peacemaker in the performance of their duties would have been easy to say, but not easy to mean. Likewise, a snarky comment like those uttered by reluctant heroes wouldn’t have been the right thing to say to try to salvage any type of relationship. Yet, the TriRusk leader’s threat was clear, and as such, it would be honored. Reaching the bottom, Jessica undid the restraining straps on her sidearm. Kurrang was ahead of her, walking up the slope, bathed in ethereal blue light.
“What do you think you’re doing, Kurrang?”
His broad shoulders slumped forward. “Leaving.”
“You know I cannot allow that,” Nurr said.
“And you know, Nurr, that my daughter is held in that compound by human mercenaries and MinSha scientists. They know what she, and the other children like her, produce. I have lost my mate, but I will not lose my child.”
“You’ll expose our secrets. The Union will come for us.”
Kurrang rose up but kept his front knuckles on the ground. He seemed to swell demonstrably in the chest and shoulders. “I don’t care about that, Nurr. I don’t care about your fears or your desire to run anymore. I want my child, and I will go through you, your bodyguards, and the human mercenaries to get her.”
Nurr looked at Jessica. “And you, Peacemaker. I believe you are not what your title implies. I believe you cause trouble and sort things out through violence instead of reason.”
“I’ve done nothing but react appropriately to the situation I’ve been dealt, Honored Nurr,” Jessica replied. “Had I not been evacuated by Kurrang, I might be dead outside that very compound at the hands of the mercenaries.”
“They would not have killed you. Mercenaries killing Peacemakers is unheard of.”
Kurrang shook his head. “They would have killed her, Nurr. There was a Zuul assassin overwatching the MinSha compound. Jessica was his target.”
Nurr’s wide nostrils flared. “You’ve brought death to our door, Peacemaker. If I should strike you down now, I would be justified in my actions to preserve our colony.”
“But you won’t. My guild is likely already on the way, Nurr. Your secret will be out whether you want it to be or not. As far as I’m concerned, you can stay here and hide until the inevitable moment when your existence is revealed to the Union. I will be with Kurrang. We will rescue his daughter and bring her back to your colony.”
“But your humans will know about us. They will do everything in their power to find us. To exploit us.” Nurr raised a hand and pointed at Jessica. “You can do nothing to stop this, Peacemaker. You’ve brought an end to our race.”
Jessica shook her head. “You can choose to see this as an end or as a beginning. While you decide what that’s going to be, Kurrang and I are walking up that slope, through that tunnel, and back to the MinSha compound for Maarg, whether you like it or not.”
“You cannot give me orders, Peacemaker. We no longer recognize your Union or your guild. You have no jurisdiction here. As such, I can hold you indefinitely or kill you where you stand without repercussion.”
“Try me, Nurr.” Jessica stepped forward, her shoulders back and her hands ready. “Just so we’re clear on something—I’m not giving you an order, Nurr. I’m telling you what’s about to happen. You need to get the fuck out of the way and save Kurrang and I the trouble of dispatching your bodyguards, wasting time and ammunition, when we could be rescuing his daughter.”
Nurr looked from her back to Kurrang. “You leave, Kurrang, and you go without the approval of the council. You will be banished for life.”
Kurrang stepped forward, brushing past Nurr, working his way toward the tunnel entrance. He looked back over his shoulder. “I would rather never return to this prison, Nurr.”
Jessica followed Kurrang up the slope, into the tunnel entrance. They did not look back. In the light trap, Kurrang paused and rooted along the base of one wall until Jessica heard a click, and a soft red light glowed from a rectangular cut in the rock. “What are you doing?”
Kurrang turned to her, his face almost demonic in the red light, and grinned. “You wanted weapons, Peacemaker. Now, we have them. Disturbing them is a serious crime in the city. Good thing I’ve been banished for life.” Kurrang removed a plasma pole much like Nurr’s guards carried. He pointed into the recessed bin. Inside were a dozen round objects the size of oranges. Next to them rested a satchel woven from leaves. Kurrang took six of the spheres and placed them in the bag. “Explosives.”
“Like grenades?”
Kurrang paused as if considering his words. “I believe you would say ‘more or less.’”
Jessica half-snorted and half-smiled. “Enough to get us to the cache?”
“Yes.” Kurrang’s head snapped up in alert. For five seconds, Jessica heard nothing, then like distant thunder rolling across the mountains of her youth, she heard the thumping of CASPers on the attack.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty
Weqq
In the Jungle
Tara frowned and slapped the control panel in her CASPer. “Lucille? Upload latest imagery and enhance the multi-spectral, please.” The last indications of spectral changes ended at a river. Black water swirled and rushed through rapids in white streams. Below the rapids, eddies curled and pooled the white water back to the calm, black surface before it raced downstream over the next set of falls. Each drop increased in size until the river fell into a wide cavern mouth that ran underground.
<
“Re-enhance the imagery.”
<
“Godsdamnit!” Tara pounded her left fist on the multi-function display. The faint blotches of color, the changes in the jungle between passes of the overhead intelligence platforms, faded to nothing. Whatever it was, the trail was cold. Nearly sixteen hours in the CASPer, barely touching food or water, caught up to her. Hot, angry tears raced down her cheeks as her rage boiled up and over like a frothing mass.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! What do I do? What the fuck do I do?
Unfamiliar and unrelenting panic shot up her spine. Two months of CASPer pilot training, three months of hunting and shuffling from open position to open position, and all of it crashed down around her because she’d lost a fucking species that no one could even positively identify. The whole pursuit was a wild goose chase of epic proportions. She glanced at Mike 77. Oso stood still. For all she knew, he was in communication with Raleigh, sealing Tara’s fate.
No! She shook her head violently from left to right and back again. There has to be something. She stabbed the radio button. “Mike 77? Look around.”
“What am I looking for?” Oso’s voice was amused yet condescending. “A clue?”
“Yes!” Tara replied.
Fuck!
“Look, Oso,” she tried to take a calming breath and failed. She tried again and pressed the transmit button. “The multi-spectral trail is cold. It ends here. Right fucking here at the water. So, yes, look around. There’s something here covering the trail or something else—I don’t know what. Just look around.”
His CASPer’s arms came up slowly and Tara watched him, holding her breath. Slowly, the Mk 6 turned away, its external lights blazing. On the frequency, she heard a simple response of two microphone clicks. She watched Oso move around for a moment.
“Lucille? Any weapon signatures?”
<
“Copy,” Tara said. She stepped the CASPer into the water.
A few meters from the shore, the water reached the mech’s knees. “Lucille, do we know where this river comes out?”
<
That figures.
“Deathangel 25, I found something.”
Tara turned and saw Mike 77 fifty meters away by a large tree trunk. His external lights pointed at the ground. As she clamored out of the river and up the bank, she watched Oso reach down. He came up holding two poles roughly lashed together.
“What do you make of this?”
Tara bounded to Oso’s side. As soon as she got a clearer view, she recalled the word she’d learned in elementary school. “It’s a travois.”
“A what?”
“Travois. Or something like it. A way to drag something heavy without wheels.”
Oso snickered. “What good is that?”
Tara licked her lips. “This changes things, Oso. We’re looking for a species that no one recognizes, and they have the capability to use basic tools. This is a first contact scenario. We can’t go after them—it’s a violation of law. The MinSha have to know this. I’m surprised they didn’t call the Peacemaker Guild for support. Their presence invalidates our contract.”
Oso didn’t say a thing. Tara’s eyes snapped down to the sensor display. Mike 77 showed no evidence of any outgoing transmission on any known frequency. Maybe he was thinking about things. No sooner did the thought cross her mind than his proximity radars snapped to life and scanned across the river. “There are caves in that promontory, 25.”
Tara brought up her radars for confirmation. “Lucille?”
<
“We’ll have to dismount to check them out,” Oso called. “There’s no way in hell I’m going out there tonight. Recommend we go home, get some chow, and return at first light.” Mike 77’s external lights snapped off, and he walked five meters behind Tara toward the MinSha compound.
He was right. Standing in the jungle at night served no purpose. She could get out of the CASPer, stretch her legs and get some decent chow—maybe even sleep. “Lucille, set INS position as Waypoint 1.”
<
Tara nodded and closed her eyes in sudden exhaustion. A persistent throb appeared in her temples. She leaned over to the hydration straw and drank several deep swallows of lukewarm water. Oso stood still, his sensors still running, waiting for her. “Lucille, display our previous path to this point.”
<
I don’t like this one bit. It’s like an ambush.
“Oso? Let’s go back a different way. Let’s cross the river and swing back to the north. Put some distance between us and the critters above. You with me?”
Click-click.
“Roger, I’ve got the lead, weapons are yellow and tight. Keep your sensors elevated, I’ll maintain SA from ground level up.” Situational awareness equated to maintaining as much of a “big picture” approach to the situation as possible. In the near darkness, reliance on thermal, velocity, and spectral sensors was a necessary evil. By spreading out their capabilities over the terrain and sky, they would shorten their response time in the event of a hostile attack.
<
Tara walked the CASPer back to the river’s edge and into the water. “How deep is this, Lucille?”
<
“Gods, Lucille. Can’t we catch a break?”
There wasn’t a response, which was just as well. Maintaining the delicate balance of walking a CASPer through a flowing river took more concentration than walking on ground, even through a thick jungle. Halfway across the river, the right leg slid. Her footplate skidded along the bottom for a panicked microsecond before it caught purchase, and she steadied herself. Water sloshed against the forward, lower camera near where her navel rested. Expecting a response from Lucille, Tara slowed her pace, and the CASPer responded beautifully. In less than a minute, she was across the main flow and working her way up the far bank. Mike 77 stepped into the river and spun out of control. She saw the CASPer disappear completely below the surface for a split second, then he fired his jump jets. The water dulled the sound to a solid thump. Mid-flight, the suit’s external lights snapped on and painted the bank near Tara with harsh, white light. With a resounding thud, Mike 77 landed on the bank next to her.
Tara pressed the transmit button and laughed. “You’ve woken up the neighbors.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Oso replied. “At least I—”
<
Tara’s arms came up in one smooth motion, deploying a machine pistol from her left thigh bay and a laser pistol from her right. Targeting reticles appeared on her heads-up display for each weapon and the rocket pod mounted to her suit’s right shoulder. “Targeting sensors and proximity radars, Lucille.”
<
She looked up into the dark canopy and hundreds of red diamond threat icons appeared. The black and red tinged bird-things descended en masse. “Light ‘em up, 77.”
The first bursts from each CASPer cut a swath through the flocking birds. They howled and screeched as one before splitting their attack into three prongs. One targeted each CASPer, the third circled to their rear.
Not so fast, you little fuckers.
Tara sprayed the machine pistol directly into the swarm and dropped a score of the things. “Back to back, Oso. Move.”
“Copy.”
Tara fired again with both pistols, dispatching another cloud. She glanced at the rocket load. “Lucille, do we have a beehive round?”
<
More cannon and laser fire beat back the attacking birds, but each swarm gained replacements faster than the two CASPers could kill them. “Load it, Lucille.”
<
“Oso, count of three I want you to take a knee—combat pause. I’m going to cook off a rocket at close range.” Tara paused. The circling swarm appeared thicker, more crowded, at their nine o’clock position. “Firing at my nine, your three o’clock. Five seconds.”
<
Tara pressed the transmit button. “Three…” She fired two quick bursts from her pistols, then turned the CASPer to the left and the mass of birds. “Two, one. Now!”
The rocket fired and there was an immediate flash and explosion on her left side. Alarm klaxons sounded as Tara realized her mecha was off its feet and falling to the right. Ears ringing and the afterimage from the explosion flashing behind her eyelids, she had a crazy memory of nearly being struck by lightning at summer camp before the mech crashed to the ground.
<
Tara rolled the CASPer to its back, initiated her exterior lights, and saw the black cloud
descending on her. Oso’s weapons tore into the swarm to almost no effect. “Fire it again, Lucille!”
<
“Stand by, 77.” Tara called. Her weapons up, Tara aimed at the swarm and mashed her eyelids closed a millisecond before the next rocket fired. The back-blast thumped Tara hard into the padded cockpit of the CASPer. She opened her eyes and saw the cloud hovering above her in the distance. Her guns still trained on them, she hesitated long enough to see the things scattered to the four winds, leaving the jungle dark and quiet around them in milliseconds. Movement to her left caught Tara’s attention, and she saw Mike 77 stomp toward her.
Her wingman’s CASPer stepped up to her prone form with the heavy machine gun in its right fist trained on the center of Tara’s cockpit.
Perfect excuse to get rid of me. They’ve got everything they need and—
With a quick move, the CASPer slung out the left arm and fired a quick laser burst at targets she couldn’t see. The weapon in Mike 77’s right hand disappeared into its holding bay and returned empty, extended to her palm up.
“Let’s get you up before those things come back, 25.”
Tara holstered her own weapons and took the offered hand. The instrument panel showed a dozen minor caution warnings, but nothing that would impede a quick move back to the compound. The CASPer’s legs firmly under her, she safed her weapons system. “Damage report?”
Honor the Threat (The Revelations Cycle Book 12) Page 22
