by Sara King
“Better than Nephyrs,” Milar said.
“Um,” Tatiana said, “no, that is not better than Nephyrs, Milar.” Already, her skin was prickling. “Nephyrs at least wait to skin you and kill you until they get you back to base.”
“Chicken?” Milar asked, grinning down at her.
“Hell yes!” Tatiana cried. “I am not going into the Tear in the dark with inviso shredding monsters on the rampage. Huh-uh. Not gonna happen.”
“I’m actually hoping it’s not ganshi,” Milar said, turning back to their path. “Some people swear it’s ganshi killing people out there. Friend of mine got chewed on by one.”
Tatiana stumbled at the thought of cloaked Triton war-beasts stalking them in the darkness. “I didn’t know ganshi were invisible.”
“It wasn’t. It was about five feet tall at the shoulder and black.” Milar glanced back at her. “That’s what he says, anyway.”
“The Tritons never made it this far into the Bounds,” Tatiana snapped, already prickling at the thought of enormous black cats watching her from the forest. “You’re just trying to scare me.”
He shrugged again. “Might not be ganshi.”
Tatiana glanced at the jungle as they walked, suddenly hearing every single sap droplet, every single stick snap.
“It’ll be fine,” Milar said. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Tatiana squinted up at him as she trudged beside him. “You can’t be serious. This sounds like the storyline of a B horror holovid. You know, a meat-headed jock leading a pretty girl he just boned on an ill-advised romp through the woods where an invisible monster with a blood fetish lies in wait, and you just had to go and say, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?!’”
“Don’t worry,” Milar said. “You don’t fit the profile.”
“Why not?” she demanded, stomping beside him. “I’m petite. I’m beautiful. Gorgeous bod. Big mouth. Sometimes even ditzy…”
“Your tits aren’t big enough.”
“This really isn’t funny,” Tatiana babbled. “You can stop joking, now.” Already, she was feeling the pressure of inviso-aliens’ gazes on her back, needling her spine.
“I’m a badass, remember?” He held up one huge assault rifle with a beefy arm, to illustrate.
“Milar, stop joking around for a second,” Tatiana cried, her anxiety ratcheting up a notch. “Seriously. Are we really about to wander into a massive canyon filled with evil Triton inviso shredder things in the dark?”
“Ow,” Milar said, wincing. “Calm down. We don’t know for sure the evil Triton inviso shredder things are still down there. That footage was from forty years ago. We kinda swore off the place after the first six search teams—and a bunch of military units—went missing trying to figure it out. Besides, it’s dark, so it doesn’t matter if they’re invisible.”
Tatiana stumbled to a halt. Milar walked a few more paces, then turned to look at her. “Come on,” he said, grinning. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“Fine?!” she shrieked. “You’re about to lead us into mass-murdering invisible Triton super-soldier death in the dark and you think everything will be fine?!”
Milar winced again, this time slapping a palm to his temple. “Oh crap, seriously, you need to stop doing that.”
“Everything will not be ‘fine’, Milar!” she cried.
“Calm down,” Milar said. “You’ll have six and a half feet of special-ops Death watching your back. You’ll be totally safe.”
“You’re six-foot-three,” Tatiana corrected him. “And you said you’re struggling from blood-loss.”
“Six-five with the boots,” Milar said. “Let’s go, and shut up before someone hears you.”
Tatiana opened her mouth to complain some more, and Milar’s brow went up. Do we need a repeat lesson? he asked.
Tatiana shut her mouth quickly. “Knucker,” she muttered.
“Good,” Milar said. “I would have hated having to leave some guns behind.” Meaning he was perfectly willing to punch her again. Ugh. That was so uncool. Tatiana fell into a morose silence as they walked, thinking about Triton inviso-death and interrupted coitus. Walking beside six feet of sweaty beefcake, she wasn’t sure which was worse, at this point.
“Are they really gonna send Nephyrs after us?” Tatiana finally muttered.
“Did you really kill a whole section of a station with your brain?”
“They collapsed,” Tatiana said. “I don’t know if they’re dead.”
“Then yes,” Milar said. “They’re going to send Nephyrs after you.”
“Why me?” she whined. “You’re the wanted rebel and mass murderer.”
“Calm down,” Milar said. “You’re giving me a headache.”
Remembering the halls full of men and women from Rath who quite-possibly-might-be-dead, Tatiana quickly relented. “All right,” she said, taking a deep, calming breath. “So is there any way I can convince you not to lead us into—”
Help. The mental call was faint and desperate.
Tatiana froze, listening. It came again, a minute or two later, seemingly from somewhere ahead of them. Help. Please help.
Wow, she actually shut up. “You actually shut up,” Milar said. “For like three whole minutes. What is that, a record?” He grabbed her by the wrist and started tugging her through the jungle again.
“Shhh!” Tatiana cried, straining to ‘hear’.
Please help us. Again, faint. Terrified.
“Somebody’s calling for help,” Tatiana said, squinting as she concentrated, trying to pinpoint the source.
Milar frowned, lifting his head and listening. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Bow to the node,” Tatiana replied. “Now shhh. Come on. It’s this way.”
“What happened to ‘Triton inviso-death’?” Milar called from behind her.
“Shhh!” Tatiana knew, instinctively, that she wasn’t getting the whole message. Just the ‘gist’ of it. She was too far away. “Could be one of our guys who went down. Come on.”
Milar frowned, but caught up. “‘Our’ guys? You mean colonist, right?”
Tatiana winced, because she had meant Coalition Bouncers or something, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Coalition Bouncers, huh?” Milar asked. Then, Well, whatever means I don’t have to carry her metal ass. That sucked.
“My ass is not metal,” Tatiana said. “Shhh! There it is again!”
Another dim ‘Help!,’ like someone calling from the bottom of a well.
“Let’s go!” Tatiana cried. “Sounds like the guy’s dying.”
They walked for a couple more hours, Tatiana squinting and leading the way through the darkness, following a signal that didn’t seem to get stronger despite how far they walked. Was their target walking ahead of them? Tatiana was thinking they had somehow taken a wrong turn when all of a sudden, within the space of a single broadcast, the simple ‘Help’ morphed into something much more complex.
Help. 256399ZZZZ523ZZZZ is down. Phage onboard. Sealed all compartments. Need immediate assistance.
Tatiana froze at the strange alien boom that suddenly bombarded her skull. That, she thought nervously, was not one of ours. “Uh…Milar?” The numbers had given her a mental picture, but the hiss-buzzing of the ZZZZs had formed a mental ‘sound’ unlike anything she had ever heard before, and she knew, beyond a doubt, that it wasn’t human.
“No,” Milar sighed, “I will not carry you.”
Help. Ring malfunction. Last known trajectory heading due negative Y-axis from the ZZZZrekkit portalspace, fleeing outbreak in central hive.
“Uh, shit,” Tatiana whispered, looking around them. “Are we in the Tear already?”
Milar rolled his eyes. “And if we are?” He snorted. “Let me guess. Your ‘spidey senses’ are telling you there’s a tadfly nearby, desperate to crawl into one of your nodes and lay eggs to infect your central nervous system.”
Help. Colony ship 256399ZZZZ523ZZZZ is down. Pha
ge was onboard. Crew lost to the spread. Navigation system sabotaged by infected. ZZZZrekkit portal ring destroyed. Rest of passengers quarantined awaiting rescue.
“Oooohhh shit,” Tatiana whispered, taking a step backwards. “You don’t hear that?” In her mental ‘ears,’ it was like someone was using a megaphone against her eardrum.
She is such a pain in the ass, Milar thought. He sighed, deeply, and turned to her. “Let me guess. You heard a twig snap. No, wait! A cricket. You heard a cricket. Horror movies love crickets.”
“Stop being a jerk!” Tatiana cried. “I’m hearing some weird-ass alien distress signal, knucker! I think something went down in the Tear.”
Milar blinked. “Some Tritons survived the war?”
“No way,” Tatiana whispered, concentrating. “Tritons started out human. This is…something else.”
Help. 8,843,999,241 survivors needing immediate evacuation. These are the only survivors of central hive. Phage confirmed eradicated. Please help.
Tatiana swallowed, mentally comparing the size of humanity’s biggest ships—which could carry at most a couple million people—and the number of purported ‘survivors’ from a crashed spaceship. Things started to add up. Metals-rich canyon. Alien life-forms. Inviso-death. “Uh. How big did you say the Tear was?”
Milar squinted at her. “Twelve hundred miles. Why?”
“Shit, Milar,” Tatiana whispered. “It was a gigantic spaceship.”
“Huh?” Milar demanded.
“That broke the Void Ring and made the Tear.”
Milar laughed. “No way. The Snake made the Tear. Everybody knows that.”
“Not according to the voice in my head,” Tatiana shrieked. “Oh shit, Milar. There’re aliens down there. Smart ones.”
Milar was finally starting to take her seriously. “What, like ‘aliens that built the Void Rings’ smart ones?”
Help. We are the last known survivors of the Aashaanti race. Our converters were destroyed in the crash. We have no means of returning to space. We were locked into containment chambers by our heartship to spare us from the Phage. If anyone is out there, please help us.
This distress call, unlike the previous four, stank of mental fear so strong it made Tatiana shiver and reach for Milar.
“Hey Princess,” Milar said, quickly setting the duffels aside and pulling her close. “What’s going on?”
“Shit, I don’t know,” Tatiana whispered. She squeezed her eyes shut, shivering at the residual fear that had been carried with the message. “They crashed and they’re calling for help.”
“Uh,” Milar said softly, “sweetie, whatever made that canyon made it eons ago.”
Tatiana swallowed, her body still shaking in reaction to the terror in the ‘voice’. “They must have survived.” Then she blinked, realizing that if the Aashaanti survived, then their tech survived. “Wait. That means they’re down there, Milar! Remember the inviso death?! It’s them!” She was so excited she could barely keep the squeal out of her voice. The idea of applying that to an eighty ton machine…
Instead of sharing her enthusiasm, Milar looked uncertain. He glanced at the path ahead, then at the jungle behind them. She watched him compare in his mind whether he wanted to risk Nephyrs or Aashaanti, then he quickly turned back and said, “Look, the Aashaanti disappeared sixteen thousand years ago.”
“Disappeared,” Tatiana agreed. “Not necessarily died out.”
It was almost cute to watch the confident badass swallow hard and peer into the forest ahead of them, like fighting inviso death Tritons were just fine, but running into the ultra-high-tech society that pulled the disappearing act sixteen thousand years ago wasn’t.
“Yeah, okay,” Milar said reluctantly. “We should head back. I can probably kill a couple Nephyrs.”
“Are you kidding?” Tatiana cried. “This is amazing. It’s science! Do you realize what this means? Their whole genetic ecosystem was communicating on a totally different frequency than ours.” She grabbed him by the assault rifle and started heading in the direction of the Tear, determined to find the source.
CHAPTER 4: To Sacrifice a Queen…
Independence Day, 17th of May, 3006
Silver City
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
Jersey stood in the empty bar, staring down at the convulsing bodies of four of his former brothers-in-arms. One had been hit by EMP, which accounted for the skinless, shuddering corpse. The other three had all been shot in the eye or mouth, which was difficult, but not impossible. But one of those three…
He swallowed hard, looking at the way the face had been crushed inward, through the Nephyr’s energy skin. The barrier was still in place, but wrinkled, now, pushed inward to seal across the surface of the woman’s pulverized cranium, where it had caved under the force of Magali’s boot.
Her…boot.
There isn’t a Nephyr on the planet that could’ve made a kick like that, he thought, unable to process anything but that single fact.
He heard yelling in the street, where Magali had gone out, presumably after the other Nephyrs, but Jersey couldn’t bring himself to follow her. His brain just wasn’t able to process what he was seeing. All he could see was the Nephyr’s caved-in skull, buckled under the energy barrier.
It wasn’t possible. Simply. Wasn’t. Possible. Not by what he knew, not by what he had seen and experienced in the Academy, not by his own experience in combat. The Nephyr energy barrier was like wet sand—the harder you hit it, the stiffer it became. The corpses at his feet were the equivalent of four cats being killed by the same mouse.
He was still standing there, trying to make sense of that, when he heard motion in the doorway behind him. He tensed, dread mingling with fear as Magali Landborn stepped into the now-silent bar, somehow still alive. He did a quick calculation. Knowing there were twenty Nephyrs to a ‘volunteer’ collections unit, for her to be still walking around, Magali had to have killed or disabled them all. In less than a minute.
Cold chills hit him in a wave.
As if Jersey were just part of the furniture, Magali walked around him and knelt in front of the corpses, proceeding to dig through their pockets with grim purpose. He watched her find a set of keys in the captain’s utility vest, then get back to her feet as if she had just dug through old laundry for her missing change.
Out of reflex, Jersey caught her arm. Magali went totally stiff under his grip, the warrior focus gone, her body trembling in its wake.
“What you just did,” Jersey whispered, “is impossible.” He wanted her to refute it somehow, to rationalize it, to give him an explanation that actually made sense. Instead, she just stood there in silence.
When no excuses came, no way to rationalize why he was seeing the impossible, Jersey tore his attention from the corpses to look at her.
“You’re the one they call Killer, aren’t you?” It was a myth on Fortune—some girl in Deaddrunk who could hit any target, who could shoot any weapon with total accuracy, a deadeye that not even a Gryphon could match.
Magali’s face twisted and she quickly looked away.
Jersey gently grabbed her chin and forced her face back to look at him. He scanned her hazel eyes, searching for the truth. He expected to see a monster staring back at him, a robot, a killing machine
But all he saw was terror.
Terror, from someone who had just executed twenty Nephyrs in twice as many seconds. The paradox made him want to tighten his grip, to force her to tell him what was really going on, to assure him that he wasn’t locked into another of Steele’s mind-games. The ultimate mind-game. The one that would finally break him. Somehow, he kept his fingers from sinking into her flesh.
Magali’s lip trembled. “I have to go free those people.” She looked on the verge of crying.
“Not even a robot could’ve made those shots,” Jersey insisted, desperate for an explanation. “Nobody could have.”
“I know,” Magali whispered up at him. “Anna to
ld me enough times. Made fun of me. Teased me that I really was a robot that they’d dressed up and made to think it was human. Please let go of my arm.”
He still couldn’t bring himself to let go. There was something else going on here, something that someone wasn’t telling him, and that bothered him a lot. “You shouldn’t have enough strength in your whole body to kick a Nephyr like that…” He wanted to demand more, to insist she tell him what the hell he had just witnessed, but the anguish in her eyes stopped him cold.
It wasn’t the face of a killer. It was the face of an innocent.
“Please let go of me,” Magali whimpered. She was shaking all over and her hands were fisted, her knuckles white.
Jersey released her suddenly, remembering the horrors she had seen in the last four days—killing the child, Steele, the cliff, the Nephyrs…Nephyrs like him. “Sorry,” he managed. “God . . . sorry.” He quickly held up his hands to show her he meant no harm.
Magali backed hastily away from him, then, when it was obvious he wasn’t going to try to grab her again, she turned to leave. She made it to the doorway before she stopped, her back to him. “I’m not a robot,” she said softly. She gave him an unhappy smile over her shoulder. “Believe me. I already checked.” Then she ducked out into the silent street beyond.
Jersey looked back down at the Nephyr’s crushed skull, its energy barrier still intact. He would have said it was some sort of fluke, something that had happened from the brain superheating from the shot afterwards, had it not been for the fact he had watched the woman’s skull collapse through the barrier.
Because he wanted no one else to see the results of what he’d just witnessed—because his instincts told him that Magali’s life depended on it—Jersey stripped the dead Nephyrs of their guns, then put explosive rounds in the dead woman’s head until the whole energy barrier fizzled out from the skull’s lack of consistency. He was strapping the weaponry to his own body when he heard Magali call him from outside, in the middle of what sounded like a mob.
Hastily securing the last grenade to his waist, he ducked into the street to find her.
