by M. R. Forbes
“Aye, sir,” Champ replied.
“You coming with, Vee?”
“Yes, damn it.”
“Good. What about your other boyfriend?”
“Koy? He took a platoon to the Fire. That’s where it looked like she was headed.”
“I’ll bag her before she makes it there.”
“You watched her crumple a mech like it was paper, and get shot three times point-blank like she was getting tickled, and you aren’t concerned?”
“Nope.”
“Not even a little?”
“Nope. What the frag good would that do me? Fear lets the evil in. You keep being so worried about her; she’s going to kill you. I guarantee it.”
“How do you know so much about Nephilim, anyway?”
“I don’t know shit about whatever you just said. I’m a hunter, Vee. Bounties or whatnot. I’ve been around a long time. How old do I look to you?”
“Sixty or so.”
He laughed. “Try three hundred and sixty.”
“You can’t afford what that costs.”
“Bullshit. I’m the best there is, woman. The fragging best.”
“I’d never heard of you before you showed up here.”
“I like it better that way. Now move aside. We’ve got work to do.”
Elivee shifted out of his way. He headed to the rear of the dropship where his squads were waiting. He did a quick comm check with all of them, smiling as they snapped to attention and responded to his calls with precision.
“That’s a fragging team,” he shouted.
“Riiiddeeerrrss,” they replied.
He moved to the rear of the dropship and opened the back end. “Remember,” he said over the wide link. “Keep clear of her until I give the word. I want to drop her and take her head myself.”
“Yes, sir!” they replied.
“Black Squad, form up!”
Four of his best joined him at the back of the dropship. He switched the link to his squad. “We ready boys and girls of diverse genetic origins and persuasions?”
“Yes, sir!” they replied.
“Let’s go hunt some demon.”
He took three running steps forward and bounced out of the back of the ship, dropping toward the canopy below. He wasn’t worried he would kill himself on the trees. He had spent ten years hiding from an invading militia when he was a boy. He had killed nearly four hundred of them with nothing but what nature provided to use as a weapon.
Damn, he loved this shit.
33
Abbey rested against the trunk of a massive tree. Her eyes were lightly closed, her body calm. She had been in the forest for nearly four hours, having continued her travel towards the Fire by cutting in a jagged pattern in the proper general direction.
She knew she was being tracked. Then again, it would have taken an idiot not to know it. She had heard the dropship pass overhead, circle back, pass again. She knew there were units dumping into the woods with her, spreading out to box her in. She would have done the same if the tables had been turned.
What she couldn’t understand was why they hadn’t put more pressure on outside the trees. It was clear that they had tracked her from the moment she came out of hiding. An unseen drone? The sensors in the demonsuit wouldn’t recognize anything too small, or it would be showing her targets every time a fly buzzed past or a mouse scurried by. Stuff that small and that capable was expensive and unheard of in the Outworlds. If Thraven’s units had that kind of tech, they had picked it up in the Republic, likely from military special-ops. If the mercenaries provided it? They were well-heeled, which meant they were more experienced than she had even guessed.
She had experience, too. And the Gift, for whatever that was worth. She had run her hand along her scalp. Her hair had grown in the last week, nearly reaching her shoulders. Her skull was changing as well. She could feel the beginnings of the bony extrusions beneath it, the alterations that would give her a true demonic appearance. She wasn’t vain, but that didn’t mean she wanted to look anything but human.
Her hair was different, too. It was silver in color, almost metallic, and it felt both smooth and sharp to the touch. She had wrapped her hand around it and squeezed, and had been both frightened and surprised to find it had drawn blood. Was every part of her becoming a weapon?
Either way, it was making her more apprehensive about using the naniates. Gant had reminded her that she was a weapon without it, a message she had forgotten more and more easily as the Gift became more integrated with her, and more readily available. It felt like it had been so long since she had seen the little freak-monkey. Since she had seen anyone friendly. She missed them all.
She turned her head slightly when she caught the soft snap of a branch a few dozen meters away. Just enough to get her peripheral vision to the spot. There was nothing there, but she didn’t expect there would be.
She wasn’t sitting against the tree because she was tired.
She was sitting there because she wasn’t about to be hunted without hunting back.
Her eyes snapped open, her body tingling on the other side. The Gift had seen what both her eyes and the demonsuit couldn’t. She rolled forward, barely evading the arrow as it speared the tree where her head had been.
She bounced to her feet, turning in the direction of the arrow. She didn’t see anyone, but she still didn’t expect to. She knew that merc was out there, the one with the mechanical eyes, likely covered in leaves and brush and ducking down beneath it to hide. That was fine. She wanted to kill him last anyway.
She bounced, but not toward the arrow. Away from it. She went backward, throwing herself with the Gift. Gant was right that she was a weapon without it, but she was more like a dagger, and right now she needed a fragging bazooka. The Gift could give her that.
She spun and landed, coming down in the middle of a tight group of trees. She stayed low, listening. She could almost feel the soldiers around her, even if she couldn’t see them. They were all hidden, surely using their network to reposition based on her movement.
“Come on,” she whispered.
They wouldn’t trail around her forever. They would get tired, even if she didn’t. They were going to make another move.
They popped up from the ground, springing out from under their cloaking blankets within a dozen meters. Bullets screamed at her, but she was ready. A bubble of energy surrounded her, the rounds hitting it and stopping. She threw her hands out, and the slugs reversed course, forcing the soldiers to drop out of the way.
She lowered the field, bouncing toward the nearest target, a Trover in a customized battlesuit. He was just getting back to his feet, and she grabbed him by the arm, pulling him up and over and into a tree. He hit hard, grunting, but she didn’t give him a respite. She grabbed his oversized rifle, balancing it against her shoulder, ready to fire.
An arrow hit her in the arm, sinking deep into the flesh. She cursed, bouncing laterally and then running forward, through the trees. The missile was deep in her, and she could feel it burning unnaturally.
Fragging poison?
She grabbed it and yanked it out. The bastard had been waiting for her to get distracted with his team while he had kept pace with her. She paused against a tree, looking at her arm. The wound closed over, the demonsuit over that. She could still feel the burn of the poison. The naniates were trying to stop it. Could they?
She felt a sudden sense of panic. She wasn’t supposed to be this easy to kill. But would it kill her? Or would it -
Bullets tore into the tree around her. More rounds found her flesh, digging into her legs as she moved again. She hadn’t sensed the attack. She had no idea it was coming. The poison? She stumbled through the brush while her body healed.
A soldier fell from the tree in front of her. An Atmo. He was holding nerve sticks. She brought her rifle up. Too slow. He was on top of her, and he batted the weapon away.
It had to be the poison. The Gift was trying to rid her body of it, bu
t it was going to take time. Time she didn’t have.
She got her arm up to block his first attack, catching his follow up and kicking out, hitting him hard in the leg. He stumbled back, surprised at her speed, before returning, striking out in a quick cadence that she could barely keep up with. She backed away, using all of her focus to keep on the nerve sticks. If they hit her while she was already compromised, she wouldn’t last long.
She defended herself, catching each strike on a forearm, protected from the shock of the sticks by the demonsuit. She lashed out with her feet again, but he was well-trained, and he met her strikes with blocks of his own. She could tell the corruption was cleaning out of her system. Each second she got a little stronger, a little faster.
“You’re good,” the Atmo said. “So good.”
She didn’t respond until he stopped pressing the attack, taking a step back. She let her legs fall out from under her as another arrow crossed her path.
The Atmo saw this and charged at her. She grabbed his arms, holding them wide and pulling him toward her. Damn her for what she was about to do. She didn’t have a choice.
She kept pulling, dragging him in and flipping him over, winding up on top of him. He strained against her, the muscles of his suit fighting her returning strength. She couldn’t hold him forever. She opened her mouth, feeling it change as she did, the Gift pouring into it and giving her the weapon she needed. Then she leaned down, finding the small, vulnerable spot between the helmet and the neck and sinking her teeth into it.
The Atmo screamed. She bit as deep as she could, pressing until her teeth came together. Then she tore the flesh away, spitting it out on the ground beside them.
Blood gushed from the wound. The Atmo’s strength failed as he went into shock. She was in a state of shock of her own, suddenly weak and nauseous from what she had just done. She didn’t have time to feel wrong about the violence of the act. She needed to survive, for more reasons than she could consider at once.
She rolled to her feet, gasping as another arrow hit her, this time in the stomach. What the frag was it made of that it was piercing her suit? She looked down, grabbing it and yanking it out immediately before the poison had much time to spread.
She turned and bounced away, catching a glimpse of the mercenary in the distance as she did. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and he was smiling. Enjoying himself. Bastard.
One way or another, she would wipe that smile off his ugly face.
34
“Come on, sunshine,” Gant said, lightly smacking Captain Davlyn’s face again. “Wakey wakey.”
“Wakey wakey?” Bastion said. “He’s not four.”
“Not like you,” Gant replied. He hit Davlyn a little harder. “Wake up, asshole.” He looked at Bastion. “Better?”
“A little.”
It had been two hours since they had commandeered the High Noon, the hatch to the bridge opened by one Lieutenant Plissian, a small Rudin who appeared to have Vallis disease, which caused a discoloration of the tentacles and a softer than normal beak which affected her speech similarly to a lisp. The result was that the translator needed an extra second or two every time she spoke, which Gant tried not to but still found excessively annoying, which was at least half the reason he wanted the Captain to wake the frag up.
They had found Davlyn unconscious, having succumbed to hyperoxia sooner than many of the other crew members, probably because he was too high strung in the first place. They had moved him to medical with a couple of the other crew while herding the rest into the hangar for a delayed briefing on exactly what they were planning to do with them.
That was the downside of stealing an already occupied starship. All of the fragging individuals that didn’t want you on it. Then again, Gant figured he was getting pretty damned good at this. Maybe too good.
The good news was that having Pik and Dak handling the prisoners was as good a deterrent as any. They had the size, the armor, the guns. Nobody was going to start shit with them. Dak was as big a Trover as Gant had ever seen, and Pik had that hand with the claw fingers. He was glad they were on his side.
“Come on Davlyn,” Bastion said. “I’m getting tired of waiting on you.”
“I told you ten minutes ago that I can give him something that will wake him,” Phlenel said.
“I didn’t think it would take this long,” Gant replied. “Go ahead, I guess.”
Phlenel drifted over to one of the cabinets, slipping past the resident sickbot as she did. It was standing motionless with its head down, disabled by the Hurshin when she arrived in the bay, exclaiming that the machines were next to useless for all but the most minor injuries, like broken bones, hemorrhages, and other concerns that didn’t seem all that minor to Gant. Then again, he wasn’t a Hurshin who didn’t have to worry about any of those things in the first place. She had been a sort-of doctor on Machina Four, so he figured there was no point in arguing.
She withdrew a small vial, placing it into the delivery gun and placing it against Davlyn’s neck. A soft hiss and his eyes shot open, his hand reaching up to the injection site.
“Ow,” he said as Phlenel pulled the gun away.
“Baby,” Gant said.
Davlyn looked at him, his expression comical as he remembered where he was and what had been happening before he passed out.
“Shit,” he said. “I’m not giving you anything.”
“We already have what we need, Captain,” Jequn said.
“Yeah, your ship,” Bastion added.
Davlyn’s eyes landed on Phlenel, and he flinched. She was still in Abbey’s form, but she had dropped the textures and allowed herself to go back to her translucent, gelatinous appearance.
“What are you?” he said.
“Hurshin,” Phlenel replied through her bot, which was standing in the corner of the room. “I take it you’ve never seen a Hurshin before?”
“No,” Davlyn said, his face softening. ““What am I doing in medical?”
“You didn’t handle the increased oxygen on the bridge very well,” Gant said. “You’ve been out for almost two hours.”
“We’re prisoners, then?”
“That depends,” Gant said. “I don’t really want the complications of keeping you or your crew locked up.”
“I’m not going to join Sylvan Kett as a traitor to the Republic if that’s what you’re suggesting. Neither is my crew.”
“What about Gloritant Thraven?” Jequn asked.
“Who?”
“Good answer,” Bastion said.
“It’s a long story,” Gant said. “The short version is that Kett isn’t a traitor, and the Republic is compromised.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Of course, you don’t. Why would you? Consider the source. You probably don’t remember what I said to you before you blacked out. General Kett didn’t harm any of your soldiers or your ships. But he needs to build his own army because the one the Republic has is split in two. One side that’s loyal, and one that isn’t. Well, it is, but not to the same master.”
“You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?”
“That’s beside the point,” Bastion said.
“Look, Captain,” Gant said. “I know this is difficult to understand. Your Commanding Officer, he sent you out to our location and told you to stay and fight regardless of the outcome, didn’t he?”
“They didn’t send us out. We found you there. We traced your disterium plume. And it wasn’t my CO,” Davlyn said. “It was Admiral Kaili.”
“Armed Services Committee Admiral Kaili?” Bastion said.
“Yes.”
“The plot sickens.”
“Kaili is in Thraven’s pocket,” Jequn said. “They sent you in to die, Captain.”
“No. They sent me to engage General Kett. We didn’t know the Brimstone was there.”
“Kaili did,” Gant said. “She was hoping you would weaken Kett up a little bit, but trust me; they didn’t expect you to come back out.�
��
“I don’t believe that.”
“Don’t you think it odd that a Committee member would contact you directly, bypassing the entire chain of command?”
“Well, yes. I did think it was strange, but it isn’t my job to question.”
“Didn’t you think it odd that she would be so callous with your life, and the lives of the members of your patrol group? Even if you discount the organic element, Kaili was committing billions of dollars of equipment to move in on an unknown force without any attempt to reconnoiter. Not to mention, she doesn’t actually have the authority to make a unilateral decision like that.”
“She doesn’t?” Davlyn said.
“No,” Gant said, shaking his head. Did any of the officers in the Republic read the documentation? “Proper protocol would have been to order a close-range sensor sweep at a minimum. Not hey, go jump into the middle of an unknown force and start shooting.”
“I was following orders.”
“Blindly. And deafly. Congratulations, Captain, you should be dead right now. The Brimstone could have torn all of your ships to scrap, and so could the Seedships in the armada with her.”
“Seedships?”
“The point is, if you look at the facts maybe you can begin to understand that the Republic you know and want isn’t calling all of the shots right now. General Kett knows it, and he’s trying to stop it. So are we.”
“We could use your help,” Jequn said.
“My help?”
“Let’s play a game where we pretend we’re the Republic,” Bastion said. “Mainly because we’re more loyal to it than the assholes running it. Your orders are to go to the Bain System in search of a valuable asset that disappeared there. What do you do?”
“Go to the Bain System?” Davlyn said, sounding confused.
“Good call,” Bastion said. “Coincidentally, that’s where we’re going.”
“And we’d prefer to keep the High Noon running with a full crew instead of a skeleton,” Gant said. “We’re not asking you to do anything against the Republic. We’re looking for a ride, that’s it.”
