by M. R. Forbes
She kept her eyes moving from him back to the shelter, watching. A few more seconds had passed before someone else emerged from it. A woman. The Venerant. She was wearing the same long coat as before, but the way she was holding the front of it told Abbey she had nothing on beneath it. Thraven had sent the woman to catch her, and she was having sex with the mercenaries instead? She smiled and shook her head in disbelief. What would Thraven do if he knew how his minions were acting in his absence?
The Gloritant’s loss was her gain. If the Venerant were distracted, it would be much, much easier for her to get to one of the shuttles.
No. Not the shuttles. The dropship. There was sure to be at least one warship in orbit, and it had the best chance of protecting her through the encounter. That was her target.
She put her eyes back on the mercenary. He had reached his team, and they all pointed and laughed and made comments as he crossed through them and entered his shelter. She redirected her attention to the soldiers around the perimeter. She would need to observe them for a while, track their movements, and determine the best time to make her move.
Her HUD flashed a warning, a new object detected above her. It registered suddenly, and only a few meters above her head.
She looked up, not sure if there was going to be something to look at or not.
There wasn’t.
“Damn thing,” she whispered. “I’m getting kind of tired of this.”
She looked back down just in time to see a flash of light from below. Her eyes landed on the spot, where the mercenary commander was framed by the fading light of the missile as it streaked away from his launcher.
The projectile was headed her way.
“Shit,” she said, the Gift burning as she used it to augment her jump.
She went straight up, barely getting clear as the missile hit the rock below her and exploded, so close she could feel the heat of it against her feet. She ascended fifty meters, back into the clouds, turning and barely getting a grip on the face of the cliff before she tumbled back down. She found purchase for her feet and jumped again, climbing quickly.
How the hell had he seen her from that distance? He wasn’t even wearing a fragging suit.
It took two more jumps to reach the top of the crater. She could hear shouting below between strokes of thunder from the clouds, and she knew she needed a different plan. They were ready for her to come to them, so ready that they had time for other, more personal recreational activities.
Of course, if she wanted off the planet she needed a ship. Of course, the enemy knew that. But how had they known as soon as she was there? Why hadn’t she been able to hide and observe? Had the Venerant somehow set a tripwire of some kind with the Gift? If so, it was a trick she wanted to learn.
At least she had been able to interrupt the Venerant and the mercenary in the middle of their fun. It was a small victory, but it was better than nothing.
She turned to run. A half dozen drones dropped out of the clouds around her; weapons trained and ready. Maybe the HUD hadn’t been sending false positives. Maybe they had been watching and waiting. Maybe they had known where she was almost the entire time.
Stupid. She was stupid. She should have considered that. She should have realized. What the hell good was her training if she was going to ignore it and rush headlong into the unknown? She was too desperate to escape. Too eager.
And now it was going to cost her everything.
She put up her hands, the Gift alive inside of her. The drones began firing, their bullets hitting the defensive shield and falling harmlessly to the ground. So what? They were stalling her. Giving the Venerant and her forces time to reach her location.
She couldn’t fight their entire army. She had to get away.
She swept her hands to the side. The leftmost drone was caught by the Gift and dragged sideways into the one beside it, the force enough to bring both of them down. She threw herself at the drone in the middle, taking a pair of hits on her thigh before grabbing it and throwing it into the next one, the impact destroying them as well.
There were two left, and they rotated to get a bead on her. She ignored them, breaking forward into the clouds before tripping on one of the vines. She tumbled over, landing on her stomach with her face only centimeters from a second vine. Frag, that was close. She leaped up on the strength of the Gift, vectoring forward in the air, coming down beside a large rock. She remained there for a moment, turning and looking back. Between the darkness and the clouds, she could barely see anything, and when the lightning flashed it blinded her with its brightness.
She stood and started running again. A whine joined the menagerie of sound; one of the shuttles climbing to the top of the crater. It hummed overhead while soldiers in suits made the bounce to the surface. She didn’t dare slow to try to find them. She kept moving forward, taking a soldier by surprise a moment later as they appeared to one another through the clouds. She was faster, shooting him three times in the visor before he could react, the first bullets breaking through the armor and the third delivering the killing blow.
She bounced over him, careful to avoid the vines, landing on a stone and letting herself glide along the slick moss until she reached the other side. She dropped back to the ground and bounced, taking a low arc across the landscape.
She heard gunfire, and bullets began piercing the air around her. She was hit in the back of the arm, and she turned around, finding a pair of blacksuits at her back, delivered by the shuttle. She shot back, her aim almost perfect as she placed six more rounds through their helmets before resuming her escape.
Her feet tapped lightly on the mud, moving so quickly they didn’t have time to sink. She watched the ground ahead of them, dancing over the vines and doing her best to put some distance between herself and the enemy. Where were the mercenaries? Where was the Venerant? Up here somewhere.
The noise around her grew louder. She knew the sound of a dropship when she heard it. It was positioned to her left, a few hundred meters away at least. With all of the other warm bodies up here, they had lost her exact position.
Good.
She kept running, back to the north. She needed to find somewhere to hide, and fast. But where? The landscape was nearly barren, the only foliage was barely twenty centimeters off the ground, and the rocks wouldn’t hide her from every side.
Unless…
She reached one of the large stones, pausing beside it. The naniates inside her didn’t want to die. They pushed her to feed when she was hungry. Would they breathe for her if she was suffocating?
It was a risky guess, but she didn’t have a choice. She pushed against the stone with the Gift, rocking it to the side. It started to lift from the ground, and she pulled in a few strong, deep breaths, trying to capture the air. Then she dropped onto her stomach, quickly crawling beneath the rock, stretching face-down in the mud.
Then she let the rock go.
It tumbled back on top of her, the soft earth giving way below and allowing her to be pressed beneath it, rather than crushed. Her mouth filled with the mud. She couldn’t breathe like this, and for the first minute her mind rushed into a panic, convinced that she was going to die. She had to resist every urge to move the rock aside and flee the situation. She had to force herself to stay calm and remain buried alive. The brand on her shoulder began to burn with icy heat.
She stopped trying to breathe. It went against every natural inclination, but somehow she did it. She remained there, still and steady, counting the passing seconds in her head.
Her heartbeat started to slow. She reached three minutes, then four, then five. She could feel the vibrations of the feet nearby. She could hear muffled shouts and orders. Another minute passed. Another. She was still alive, the Gift warm within her, keeping her that way.
The initial panic passed over into complete calm. The enemy would never find her down here. The rain and mud washed away evidence the moment after it was created. All she had to do was wait them out, and then sh
e could be on her way again.
On her way where?
Now that she was calm the answer was obvious. The crater wasn’t the only place to find a ship that could take her off this rock.
The Fire was out there somewhere, brought down to the planet’s surface through the power of the Focus.
She just had to get there before the enemy did.
28
“That’s her,” Olus said, pointing through the heavily tinted glass of the car. “Councilwoman Lorenti.”
She was getting out of her own car, trailing half a dozen guards as she made her way toward Nez’pa, one of the most popular eateries in New York City. A lean, older woman with silver hair that she wore short and tight against her face, she moved with measured purpose, going to meet her husband for a bite before the big day tomorrow.
A day that could change the fate of the Republic forever.
An emergency session had been called, and the Council was preparing to vote on what they were calling the Crisis Consolidation Bill, new legislation that would give the Council greater control over the Republic Armed Services without interference by the Republic Prime Minister. It was a major coup that had the potential to quickly turn into a disaster, an overreach of power made possible by Thraven’s manipulations.
Somehow, they needed to stop it.
Getting out of Seattle had been easy. A quick ride down the tube in the apartment building, a few minutes spent moving through a law enforcement checkpoint with identimasks active, and then they were free and clear. They had returned to the airport immediately, taking the shuttle back to New York to reach Lorenti before it was too late.
The plan to deal with the Councilwoman was straightforward: tell her what they knew about her personal life and give her a chance to either buckle under the no-longer-existent blackmail or come to her senses about Thraven. If Olus could convince her of what siding with the Gloritant meant for the whole of the galaxy beyond her reputation, maybe they could get somewhere.
And she would care about the entire galaxy, wouldn’t she?
Olus wasn’t so sure. He knew more about Lorenti than he had told Pahaliah on the way back, including the source of some of the funds she had used on her path up the political food chain. Not that it was strange for a politician to take bribes, in a sense it was expected, but taking money from known crime bosses was a bad idea. It only proved she had no conscience when it came to advancing her power and career.
Whatever. Olus would try to talk some sense into her. He would try to cajole her. He would try to blackmail her.
If none of that worked?
He was going to have to kill her.
He didn’t have a moral problem with that approach. In some ways, he almost preferred it. The issue was that he didn’t know which way her backup leaned. If Junior Councilman Bard was one of Thraven’s too, then Olus would be taking her down for nothing. Then again, if Bard was loyal they could stop this thing before it got any further out of control.
Not stop it. Delay it. Olus was sure Thraven had another plan in place if the vote failed. But every day he could gain for Abbey and the others was vital. The Nephilim were already moving forward much more aggressively than he had expected. Because of the Demon Queen’s success? He couldn’t rule it out.
“How are we going to get in there?” Pahaliah asked. “The place is drowning with guards.”
Lorenti wasn’t the only VIP at the restaurant. They had seen a few other high profile individuals make their way in during the hour they had spent watching and waiting. It was no shock the hottest place to be seen in the city was drawing the people who most wanted to be seen.
“I have a plan,” Olus replied. “It requires that you wait here and keep an eye on things. If Lorenti leaves, I need to know immediately.”
“You sound like you’re leaving.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?”
“I told you, I have a plan. It’s better if you don’t know what it is in case things go to shit.”
“You mean in case I get captured?”
“Yes. Don’t worry; it isn’t likely. Go ahead.”
Pahaliah made a nervous face and then got out of the car. Their work in Seattle had given her a little more confidence in what she was doing, but she wasn’t completely comfortable with his plans for Lorenti. Maybe once he might have understood, but those days were long past.
He turned on the car, bringing it up into the bottom row of traffic headed south. “Pali, do you copy?” he said, testing his new comm.
“Roger,” she replied. “I’m heading to the cafe across the street to keep an eye on things.”
“Roger. Mann out.”
He followed the line of cars as they wound above the streets and around the buildings, reaching his destination within a few minutes. He landed the car and got out, abandoning it to be ticketed and towed, making his way into the underground and beyond, back into Little Plixar.
It didn’t take him long to reach Dilixix, though she was definitely surprised to see him.
“Captain?” she said, mandibles clicking as she scuttled out from the back of her shop. “What are you doing here?”
“I need some help,” he said.
“Information? Guns? Drugs? Safe passage?”
He laughed. “Passage, yes. Safe? That depends.”
“How do you mean?”
“You have contacts in the Transit Authority, right?”
“Of course.”
“Servants?”
“A few.”
“Good. I need to get below Nez’pa. Have you heard of it?”
“Disgusting,” she replied.
“Definitely not to Plixian tastes,” he agreed. “Though I’ve heard they do have a dish that uses Xixi worms imported directly from your homeworld.”
“If they do more than put a little sauce on them, it’s heresy,” she replied. “Why do you want to go under it?”
“I have a plan to hurt the Nephilim, but it requires a specific asset.”
“And that asset is inside Nez’pa?” Her clicks became strained in an effort to pronounce the name.
“Very.”
“Do you expect trouble?”
“Yes. A lot. Though my goal is to minimize it.”
“Wait here a moment.”
She vanished into the rear of the store, leaving him waiting up front. He turned and looked out into the cavern beyond, watching the other Plixians moving past, going about their lives as though nothing was out of the ordinary. If they only knew.
Dilixix returned a minute later, holding a projector. She placed it on the counter and activated it, displaying a map of the tunnels beneath the city.
“The food place is here,” she said, not wanting to try to pronounce the name again. A blue dot appeared on the map when she touched it. “There’s an electrical access line that runs close to it here. I’ve sent an emergency call out to my contact. His name is Lorix. He’ll meet you there with a few others. They can dig a line from here to here.” A green dot appeared beneath the blue one. “And then excavate up into the kitchen.”
“That’ll do,” Olus said. “Pali, any movement?”
“Negative, Killshot,” Pahaliah replied. “I did see Azman Girani go in there, though, so be careful.”
“Who?”
“The actor? His Dark Empire? Tell me you haven’t seen it?”
“I’ve been a little busy. I’ll try not to kill him.”
“Thanks.”
Olus had switched back to his original suit, preferring an operable system on a chip to the added strength and protection of the seraphsuit. Pahaliah thought he was crazy for abandoning the superior tech, but there was something to be said for familiarity, and data was more valuable to him than armor. He extended a thin wire from it, connecting it to the projector. “Transfer the map, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course,” Dilixix replied, tapping on the projector. Everything uploaded to his SoC, and a moment later the map
appeared in a small overlay behind his glasses.
“Got it. How soon will Lorix arrive? I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“Not long. He should be there soon after you. If not, I can give you my identifier.”
“No. I don’t want to put you at any more risk. You’re too valuable. I trust you.”
“A kind thing for you to say, Captain. Very well. Good hunting.”
“Thank you.”
29
Lorix was large for a Plixian, towering over Olus even while at rest, his thorax spreading out behind him. The size made him an efficient tunneler, and both he and his crew of three others tore into the side wall of the electrical access tunnel with a speed and fervor he could barely believe.
He had been in plenty of Plixian tunnels before, but this was the first time he had been present during a dig. The Plixians cut into the dirt with their four front forelimbs, shoveling away the dirt and debris and bringing it near their mouths, which secreted a saliva that both bonded and condensed the earth. The resulting compound was then used to shore up the surrounding sides of the excavation as it took shape, covering it in a hard material that he recognized immediately.
It was work that was second nature to the insectoid aliens, an inborn ability and trait that all of them possessed, though many didn’t need to practice it in modern society. It had helped form the underlying structure of the New York underground and many other places in the galaxy, and had provided a means for the race to expand their population well beyond what their homeworld could manage on its own.
It took nearly two hours for them to eat away a two-meter diameter tunnel that stretched ten meters from the access tunnel to the blue spot on the map. Under normal circumstance, it would have seemed like quick, miraculous work. For Olus, it felt like forever. He knew a lot about Lorenti, but he didn’t know if she was a fast or slow eater, or if she liked her husband enough to spend hours at the table with him. He was worried about her abandoning the restaurant before the crew completed their work, leaving him trapped below Nez’pa while Lorenti made her way home to her penthouse apartment on Central Park West that would leave him with a much, much tougher nut to crack.
