They murmured their assent.
“No fear,” she said.
“No fear,” they answered, though Mer’cer Twelve’s came out as a series of strange hisses.
The mercs crept as far forward as they could while staying out of sight, dodging between different outcroppings of rock or spiny plants. At last, Rani gave the signal, and the icarians leapt into the air, the downdraft of their gigantic wings bathing them all in a cloud of dust. Distant shouts as the suraryans noticed the avians zooming toward them, and gunfire began.
Rani watched as one of the suraryans lifted the launcher to his shoulder and fired. The ground shook with the explosion, but Azia wheeled away easily and returned fire. The suraryans dug into their position, spraying the air with nano bullets that left greenish trails in the air.
“Go!” Rani cried.
They ran single file down the ravine and into the creekbed, Mer’cer Twelve’s column-like legs thundering over the cracked dirt. Overhead, the icarians wheeled and fired, screeching their high-pitched war cries. The rest of the party rounded the rock feature and quickly found the path leading up to the sentry position.
“Mer’cer Twelve!” Rani called, cupping one of her hands around her mouth. “Give them a nice surprise.”
With a triumphant hiss, the grundel stormed up the path with surprising quickness, the rest of the team in tow. When the suraryans realized they were being attacked from behind, it was already too late. Mer’cer Twelve slammed headfirst into one of them, impaling him on his horns, and shook his thick head violently, tossing the lifeless body off the cliff.
Azia swooped down and snatched the corpse before impact—the sentry might have intel on him, or useful tech that could be destroyed in the fall—and Rani felled the other suraryan with a hail of mag rifle fire, his shields deteriorating before he could even get a shot off.
Valeri gave a triumphant whoop, his skin flooding with gold and yellow. Then, a storm of emerald nano-fire rained down on them from somewhere across the way, originating from an opposing cliff face.
“Down!” Rani screamed. Mer’cer Twelve managed to squat down behind the rocks that had been protecting the sentries, and everyone else stretched out on their bellies.
“They have a turret set up over there!” Sam shouted as rocks splintered overhead, raining grit down on them. “They must have activated it just as we came up on them!”
“Hack it, damn you!” Rani shouted. “Valeri!”
“I’m trying!” Valeri called from where he was balled up behind a boulder.
Maria risked a peek from behind another rock. “No shot from here!” she cried. “We have to get higher!”
“That thing will shred you!” Regan warned, but Maria would not be deterred.
“Mer’cer Twelve!” she bellowed over the blasts. “Can you get me up to that next rock shelf?”
The grundel hissed wildly, but Rani couldn’t tell if that was a yes or a no. Maria went anyway, racing along the path as glowing nano-fire splattered the rock wall behind her, exploding deep craters in the stone and showering debris every which way. When she reached Mer’cer Twelve, two mechanical arms shot out of his armored back and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her up to the desired position. She rolled free of them just in time; a blast caught one of the mechanical arms dead-on, and it exploded in a shower of fragments. The grundel snorted and hissed in a clear statement of rage, drawing the good arm back down and using it to disengage the broken one.
Maria flattened herself on the cliff face and swung her mag rifle up, putting her eye to the sight. She fired six concussive blasts across the ravine, banging huge holes into the mechanized turret. The laser fire stopped, followed by a muted explosion.
“Hell, yeah!” Regan shouted, standing up as Sam scanned cautiously for more enemies.
“Coast clear,” he said, tucking the corderbot away in his belt.
“Nice shooting, Maria!” Valeri called up at her.
“How do I get down now?” she laughed, and then braced herself against the wind thrown up by Azia’s wings.
“I am honored to bear you back to the ground, Maria of No-Clan-But-Still-Honored.”
“The pleasure’s all mine, Azia.” Maria wrapped her arms around the icarian and they rose up into the sky.
“We need to hurry,” Rani warned as they fell back into line, moving toward the abandoned colony. “It won’t be long before they figure out their sentries are dead.”
“Structures ahead,” Sam said, his dark eyes fixed on the corderbot’s screen.
Soon enough, they reached the edge of the old colony. Many of the small wooden structures had been reduced to rubble, by age, perhaps, or something more sinister, but a few were still standing.
“Weird. They kind of remind me of log cabins,” Regan remarked. “It’s a kind of earth dwelling,” he explained for the non-humans’ benefit.
“Holy shit,” Maria said, forgetting to be stealthy as more structures came into view. “This looks like … those old movies they used to play on the ship. Films from Earth!”
“Westerns,” Regan mused. “It looks like an old western town. I can’t believe it.” He motioned to the flat-front buildings built with wooden boardwalks connecting them. “There’s even a saloon!”
“Does your culture consider your excrement holy?” Valeri questioned politely. “I’d never heard that before.”
“It’s just an expression,” Maria explained, her eyes fixed on the dry, sandblasted buildings.
“Stay sharp,” Rani ordered, hefting her weapon.
“No life forms in the immediate vicinity,” Valeri said.
Regan poked his rifle into the darkened doorway of the place he’d identified as a “saloon” and then stepped inside.
“What are you doing?” Rani said, sliding in after him. “I didn’t give you an order to search this building. No life forms here.”
“Sorry, boss, it’s just …” he trailed off, winding his way between the ruined tables and behind the bar, examining the dusty glasses. “My God,” he said suddenly as Maria and Sam entered as well, their shadows blocking the sun streaming through the doorway. “Guys, take a look at this.” He pulled a weathered object from beneath the bar, laying it out carefully and opening it. It appeared to be a bundle of papers bound together with some kind of cardboard covers, filled with faint handwriting.
“This was a human colony!” Maria exclaimed, peering over Regan’s shoulder to look at the writing.
“This is just … a bar tab, I guess,” Regan said. “Look, names and numbers. How much they owed …” He flipped to the end of the book and began to read hungrily. “Sam, take a look at this.” He turned the book around so Sam could read it from the other side of the bar.
“Zion,” Sam whispered. “This was Zion!”
“What’s Zion? Rani, what’s the holdup? We don’t have long before—”
“The humans …” Rani threw up all four hands. “Apparently this was once a human colony.”
“Zion was a colony founded by some of the first people to leave Earth,” Maria explained, gently touching the page in front of her. “They were part of the Original Fleet. Our ancestors. They branched off, trying to find a home. A place where everyone could be accepted no matter their heritage or religion … they wanted to create a second Earth. Get it right this time.”
“Everyone deserves a second chance,” Valeri said, his colors rippling with sympathy.
“They were attacked, I think.” Regan’s face was drawn and grave as he traced his finger over the faded writing. “The bartender, whoever he was, scratched something in here like he was in a hurry.” He read the message aloud, “‘God help us. Zion under fire. Forlak slavers. No time. No weapons.’”
Maria put her arm around Regan’s waist. “So that’s what happened to Zion,” she murmured. “We never knew. They were never heard from again.” She sighed. “I liked to think, you know, when I was a kid, that they were out there and for some reason they just couldn’t
contact us. That a new Earth was out there just waiting for us to find it.”
“I’m sorry,” Rani found herself saying, dark blue waves crawling over her purple flesh. She shook her head, her tentacles suddenly bristling. “Look, we need to get moving, or the little Arturian’s done for, all right?”
Maria zipped the book up into Regan’s pack, and nodded. “Okay. Let’s get back to work.”
Sam took off his helmet to dab his eyes for a moment, then jammed it back on. “I’ve got life forms registering,” he said, examining the corderbot screen. “Eight bipeds in the structure at the end of the street.” He called up the 3D holo, making the life forms glow bright green.
“Is that a church?” Maria asked, her eyes reflecting the screen’s faint glow.
“Looks like it,” Sam nodded. “That’s where they’ve got her held.” He zoomed in on a small two-legged life form huddled in the center of the raised area at the back of the sanctuary near the altar.
“Eight suraryans,” Rani mused, her tentacles stroking her cheeks. “That doesn’t seem like enough for a whole team. I mean, they kidnapped a synod’s daughter, you’d think they’d want more firepower.”
“I don’t detect any mechanized weapons connected to the wireless field,” Valeri said. “Maybe we just got lucky. You said yourself, suraryans are rarely organized.”
“True,” she replied. “Very well. Mer’cer Twelve will lead the charge. We’ll go in hot, race down the center here and grab the child. Each of you choose a quadrant, and spray and pray. Meanwhile, I want the icarians to come in through these windows here on the side and cover us from up top. We break through this window here and take cover behind this thing.”
“I think that used to be a ship mechanic’s shop,” Maria said.
“Whatever it is; it looks sturdy. We can hold them off until the icarians clean up the rest.”
“END THEM. SAVE THE CHILD.” The strangely mechanical voice boomed free from Mer’cer Twelve’s translator.
“What he said,” Valeri grinned, popping a fresh clip into his rifle.
There were two sentries posted on the roof, but the icarians made short work of them, flying in fast and snapping their furry necks before they could get a shot off with their nano-enhanced weapons or activate their coms. Half a minute later, the mighty grundel crashed through the rotted wooden doors of the old human church, scattering fragments everywhere, and the mercs charged in after him.
The little Arturian, trapped in a cylindrical cage, cried out in terror as the gunfire started, the two suraryans guarding her fell instantly to Rani’s practiced shots.
Everything was going according to plan … until it wasn’t.
There weren’t eight suraryans in the church. There were more like twenty, and the hail of nano-fire from the choir loft and balcony seating above them drove the mercs to leap for cover beneath the flimsy wooden pews that lined either side of the sanctuary.
“They hacked our intel!” Valeri shrieked into his helmet’s coms as bullets splintered the pew above him. “We have over twenty hostiles—”
It was too late. The cloudy colored glass of the long arched windows exploded overhead, and in swooped the icarians, firing nonstop from their rifles, wheeling and tearing at the furry, growling suraryans with their talons. But there were too many, and both avians shrieked as the nano-fire tore through their feathers, the slugs expanding upon impact and smashing their bones, instantly shredding muscle. They plummeted down to the floor and did not rise.
“No!” Rani shouted, sliding out from the pew and firing into the choir loft. Whipping herself to her feet, she kept cover fire going with her bottom pair of arms and lobbed concussion grenades with her others. The old building shook on its foundations.
Nano bullets thudded into Mer’cer Twelve’s armor and dimpled his thick hide. He deployed his weapons systems, a mechanized turret of his own rising from his back, but it was no use—with his size, he was a major target, and it wouldn’t be long before he could no longer stand the enhanced gunfire. Firing madly with his mag gun, he thundered past the little Arturian, caged and screaming, and busted through the rose window behind the altar in a shower of glass. At least their escape route was open.
“Go go go!” Rani bellowed. The mercs scrambled for the altar, a massive marble thing, and hunched behind it as green-tinged bullets flew overhead.
“Are they crazy?” Maria screamed. “They’ll hit the little one!”
“We have to get her!” Regan popped a fresh clip into his rifle. “You go! We’ll cover you!”
“You can’t lift the cage alone!” Rani argued.
“I can hack it, hold on! Wait for my signal!” Sam whipped open his corderbot and brought up the code, slicing and rewriting. “Got it!”
“Cover fire!” Regan stood up behind the altar with Valeri, Rani, and Sam spraying the balcony, dividing up the quadrants automatically.
Maria darted forward and unclasped the cage. Rani couldn’t hear what was being said over the clash of war, but the little Arturian huddled away from her savior and refused to move until Maria lay a soft hand on her hairless head and whispered something into her stalk-like ears. The child wrapped her long arms and legs around Maria’s midsection like a chest plate, burying her face in the human’s neck.
“You got her!” Regan cried. Then his chest exploded as a concentrated burst of nano-fire pierced his armor and then his flesh . His blue eyes never left Maria as he sagged and fell.
“Regan!” she shrilled as Valeri pulled the two of them behind the altar. She crawled to his side, the Arturian still clinging to her. “Regan, get up! Regan!”
Sam passed the corderbot over his friend’s blank face. “Maria,” he said, his voice shattering piece by piece. “Maria, he’s gone. He’s gone.”
“No!” she howled. Her heartbreaking cry reverberated through Rani’s helmet and her tentacles recoiled in grief.
“If God still lives in this house,” Sam prayed, “we could sure use a miracle.”
Whether it was God or the Kurkani Creator that heard, or the Infinite Silence of the Icarians, it was Mer’cer Twelve who answered.
The grundel smashed through the side of the church, barreling into one of the dusty wooden beams that supported the rickety balcony where their enemies fired down on them. One side of the upper ledge which circled the sanctuary collapsed in a pile of shattered boards and broken, cursing bodies.
Mer’cer Twelve thundered toward the altar, using his mouthpieces to deploy the small concussion grenade launcher that rose up from his back plate, targeting the opposite side and raining destruction down on the rest of the suraryans. He slowed before the altar and let loose a strange trumpeting cry that made Valeri and Rani’s tentacles stand on end.
“Go!” Rani cried, taking a position at the grundel’s right haunch and sent out a burst of cover fire. Everyone else bunched themselves along Mer’cer Twelve’s armored side, using him as a shield, and escaping back out the broken stained glass window at the back of the church.
Valeri tore the small square pack from the back of his belt and hurled it back through the hole. It came to rest near the altar. As the last few suraryans scrambled over the rubble to rush them, he pressed a button on his corderbot. “DOWN!”
Rani threw herself over Maria and the Arturian child, and Mer’cer Twelve flung his hulking body between the bipeds and the blast.
When they slowly raised their heads, the church was nothing but a pile of flaming rubble.
The little Arturian, her slender pink arm in a sling, raced down the ramp moments after Valeri touched the ship down at the space station. She leapt into her parents’ arms, yelling and laughing and weeping in her native language. The child’s father disengaged one of his long fingered hands from his daughter’s hair, and pressed the activation button on his translator. “Thank you. Thank you all so much. You have no idea … she is our life!”
“Goodbye, sweetheart!” Maria called as the security detail hustled the happy famil
y away to their waiting transport. The child waved before disappearing.
Sib came forward next, and slipped a packet of chips into Rani’s top right hand. “I split the dead human’s earnings between the two others instead of distributing it evenly like I did with the Icarians’ cash,” he told her.
She nodded.
“I’ll contact you as soon as I have another job,” he said.
Rani fixed his little eyes in her wide violet gaze. “Don’t bother, Sib. I’m taking a much needed vacation. I’ll get in touch with you when I want to work again.”
Stunned, all he could do was shrug. “Suit yourself, I guess.” He waddled away, muttering to himself, and went down into the tube station across the hangar.
Rani approached Mer’cer Twelve, wincing at the sight of the bandage over part of his wide head. “Too bad about your eye,” she said by way of apology.
He hissed several low exhalations before clicking the controller in his mouth. A mechanical hand extended, and she placed two of the credit chips in its metal fingers. With a crackle, the translator kicked in. “CHILD IS SAFE.”
“Yes. Well.… Perhaps there’ll be a next time, Mer’cer Twelve.”
He blinked his two remaining eyes and trundled away.
Rani turned to Sam and Maria. Valeri joined her. “I’m … what happened to Regan …”
Sam sighed. “Part of the job.” He sniffed. “I knew it couldn’t last forever. Our luck.”
Rani reached out with one of her hands and dropped all of the remaining chips into Maria’s fingers. Her eyes widened.
“The atmosphere on that planet was habitable,” Rani said. “Not pleasant, but habitable. It’s not too late to try again. To build Zion.”
“Everyone deserves a second chance,” Valeri smiled.
“I … I don’t …”
“Just get going, please,” Rani urged, “before I change my mind.”
“Come visit,” Sam invited, wiping a tear away, “once we rebuild it.”
Valeri and Rani watched the humans as they walked toward the tube station arm in arm, their guns slung over their backs.
Humans Wanted Page 18
