by M. R. Forbes
Hayley. She thought of Hayley. She put her attention on her daughter and kept it there, remembering her last birthday. She had bought her daughter a pair of practice sticks for her Takega lessons. She was ten years old, and already in the most advanced classes with students twice her age. She wanted to be like her mother, and she would be damned if anything was going to get in the way of that.
Abbey smiled at the memory. The sticks were antiques. Expensive. Denser and heavier than their modern counterpart. Dangerous in the wrong hands, or the right ones. Most girls Hayley’s age wanted clothes or jewelry. Not her girl.
She took a breath and got to her feet. She could feel Trinity behind her, waiting.
“Thraven did this to you,” she said. “He wanted Ursan to die. He wanted you to die. He wanted to make me stronger.”
“Did he succeed?”
“Not in the way he was hoping. You said it yourself, Trinity. He abandoned you here. He left you for dead.”
She turned around. Trinity was facing her, a set of claws extended from the wrists of each arm, having slid out from a small gap in the armor.
“You followed his orders, and look where it got you,” Abbey said. “Look where it got Ursan. He uses people to fulfill his goals, and only his goals. He was trying to use me, too. He made me into this, just like he ultimately made you into that.”
Trinity was silent. Motionless. For a moment, Abbey wondered if she had gone offline.
“Then I will kill him next,” she said at last. “I want my revenge. I deserve it.”
Abbey could feel the Gift flowing beneath her skin. She could feel her anger growing. This woman was stupid.
“You want to die a second time? Fine.” She held out her hand, motioning Trinity to her with a finger. “Come and get it.”
37
One moment, Trinity was standing two meters away.
The next, she was on top of Abbey, her claws slashing down and in.
Abbey reached up, catching Trin’s arms, pushing against them and slowing the momentum, turning and pulling the cyborg past. Trinity succumbed to the motion, leaving her feet and launching forward, rolling on the ground and getting back to her feet. The claws on her left wrist were replaced by the barrel of a gun, which fired a quick burst of rounds that Abbey barely blocked with the Gift.
Then Trinity was coming at her again. She threw her hands out, not overly surprised by the other woman’s apparent immunity when the effort barely slowed her. She grabbed a nearby log instead, pulling it in and hitting Trin in the side with it, sending her hurtling away.
It only bought her a couple of seconds. Trinity was up again, firing with both wrists now, sending smaller rounds whipping toward her at supersonic speeds. The darts skipped off the field she put up in front of herself, but they were intended to be a distraction. Trinity followed behind them, a silver blur leaping toward her.
Abbey bounced sideways, getting clear of the attack, turning to face Trinity again. She spotted one of her Uin nearby, and she rushed to it, rolling over the top of it and picking it up as Trinity closed the gap. She turned it sideways, blocking a hard swipe, flipped it downward to get it in front of a second attack, and then turned it up and slashed across Trin’s arm. The edge couldn’t puncture the rhodrinium shell, and Abbey felt her ribs crack as Trin slammed a fist into them, sending her into the air, flailing onto her back five meters distant.
The wound healed in an instant, and Abbey was up, squatting in a defensive posture with the Uin up in front of her eyes. Her free hand elongated into claws of her own as the cyborg closed in once more.
They traded attacks, both moving so quickly no outsider could have tracked the motions of their hands and feet as they each sought to protect themselves from the other while dealing the killing blow. They danced through the woods, the sound of metal against metal echoing in the trees, along with Abbey’s grunts whenever a claw would find her and tear through, only to heal an instant later.
Even with the power she had gained from Elivee, she knew she was losing.
And she was holding back. Keeping the full extent of the Gift at bay. She didn’t want to lose herself. She didn’t want to change. It was a feeling that stretched into her reactions to Trinity’s attacks. She could hold her own like this. There was no reason to take that risk. She didn’t want to blaze like she had before, and she damned well didn’t want to burn out.
They crossed into the clearing the Gift had made, where cut trees lay flattened on the ground. The woods beyond were still smoldering; the fire Elivee created earlier beginning to spread unchecked. They continued to trade attacks, breaking apart, closing in, punching, kicking, slashing, and cutting. A minute passed. Another. It bled into ten minutes. Twenty. It fed into an hour.
Still they fought, the strikes becoming more ragged, the speed and amplitude decreasing. The forest burned around them, ash filling the air and blotting out the sky. Abbey needed to breathe, and she began to choke on the smoke.
She stumbled back, trying to get away from Trin. Her lungs were starting to burn, filling with the oxygen-poor air. She could let the Gift breathe for her, but it would weaken her past the point of being able to defend herself. Without being able to use the Gift directly against her opponent, they were too evenly matched.
Trinity followed after her, not letting up in the least. Her mechanical form looked heavy, but it was sleek and powerful and fast. Too fast for it to be operating purely on standard tech. Abbey was certain Villanueve had managed to decipher and harness some of the technology of the Nephilim’s Covenant in the making of the shell.
She was growing less certain she could defeat it.
She bounced backward, landing fifty meters away, coughing the entire time. Her eyes were tearing and getting blurry, an affliction the cyborg Trinity wouldn’t share. She barely had time to bounce again when Trin was on her, knocking her arm aside and stabbing her with her claws.
Abbey pushed them away, the wound healing almost instantly. She punched Trinity in the head, the enhanced force of the blow knocking her back a step. She went on the offensive one more time, making one last ditch effort to come out ahead in the fight before she asphyxiated. Her hands and feet were quick. She threw a punch. Blocked. She ducked an uppercut. Blocked. She kicked at Trin’s ankle. Trin’s foot moved. She side-kicked with her other leg. Trin slapped her leg down. She threw another punch, then another, then another, in a rapid-fire cadence that Trinity spread her hands wide to absorb on her armored chest. Then she reached out almost casually, grabbing Abbey by the throat.
Abbey was coughing as Trin lifted her off the ground. The armor had no expression, but she could picture the woman smiling beneath it.
Trinity held Abbey up, choking her as she brought her in closer, placing the claws on her free hand against Abbey’s neck. One last cut was all it would take.
“Go ahead,” Abbey said, coughing again. “Do it.”
Trinity was hesitating. Why? She had won the fight. It was fair. Maybe more than fair. The mixed properties of the armor and the integration had made her the perfect killing machine. Now that she had the chance to kill, she wasn’t ending it.
“Trinity?” Abbey said, barely able to speak.
Trin was still hesitating. Holding her up. Choking her. But not taking her head. Why?
Trinity threw Abbey to the ground, hard on her back, leaving her looking up at the other woman. What was she doing?
Trinity lifted her hand, the one that had been gripping her neck. She turned it over, looking down into the palm. Abbey noticed there was smoke rising from it.
“Trinity?” Abbey repeated.
Trin’s head lifted. She raised the palm toward Abbey. The outline of the Hell brand was clear against it, etched into the metal. That was impossible.
“What is this?” she said, confused.
“What do you mean?” Abbey asked.
“I saw a light. A blinding white light. I felt.” Her voice trailed off.
“Felt what?”
“What is it?” Trinity asked again.
“The Light of the Shard,” Abbey replied. “A mote of the dead Shard. I think it’s been with me since Feru, but I’m not sure. I can’t explain it. Not completely.”
“Tell me what you know about Thraven. About his past and where he came from. Tell me about the Nephilim. Tell me about the Seraphim.”
“The corrupted aren’t without hope of redemption,” Abbey said, remembering what the other Shard had told her. Was that what it had meant? Individuals like Trinity, who had been pulled into the chaos?
“I need the truth, Cage,” Trinity said.
“Why do you think I’ll give it to you?” Abbey said. “You were about to kill me.”
“I felt,” she said again, pausing after the words. “Tell me.”
“Not here,” Abbey said. “I can’t survive in this.”
Something collapsed nearby, sending a wave of ash in the air, drifting toward them. Abbey put her hand over her mouth to keep from breathing it in.
Trinity held out her hand. Abbey reached up and took it, letting the other woman pull her to her feet.
“You really did try to save Ursan, didn’t you?” Trin asked.
“Yes,” Abbey replied. “There’s only one asshole out there that I want to die. Everyone else? I want them to join up or get the frag out of my way.”
“Follow me,” Trinity said.
“Where are we going?”
“Back to the Fire. Tell me what I need to know, and then we’ll get off this planet. Together.”
38
Quark’s eyes passed over the remains of his squad, counting heads as they swept the field. Nine souls. Out of the twenty he had brought along for this ride.
Nine.
He threw his fist into the side of the dropship, ignoring the pain of the impact against the hard metal.
“Damn it!” he shouted.
The others didn’t react. They certainly didn’t disagree. They were hurting as much as he was. Those individuals were their friends and comrades, too.
“What the frag was that, Colonel?” one of them, a Terran named Jones, asked.
“I don’t know,” Quark replied, shaking his head. He had seen a lot of shit. Shit that Elivee had been surprised to learn he knew anything about.
He had never seen anything like that.
“Bitch went nuclear on us, Colonel,” another soldier, an Atmo named Friafo, said.
“That she did.” He paused. “We aren’t letting her get the best of us. We owe her for Griff and the others.”
“Yes, sir,” his Riders replied.
“Hang tight and regroup,” he said to them, heading forward to the dropship’s cockpit. “Shithead, open a channel to the mothership and get us en route to that downed starship and that asshole, Koy. I want fragging answers. Vee told us we were hunting a demon, but she didn’t say the damn bitch was Satan himself.” He caught himself, turning to look back. Where had Elivee gotten off to? Left behind? He laughed out loud. “Serves her right.”
“Roger,” his pilot replied. “Channel open.”
“Captain Drung,” Quark said. “Tell Second and Third Platoons to get their dicks out of their hands and their hands out of their asses and rendezvous with First Platoon at the coordinates that Shithead is sending up to you right now.”
He tapped the pilot on the shoulder. The Fizzig responded by transferring the location of the Fire.
“Aye, sir,” Drung replied. “I didn’t think you would need backup, sir.”
“You and me both. Our target is a tempest in a teacup; I’ll tell you that. Hot as hell, but way too hot to touch.”
“Roger.”
“I want them down here in thirty minutes. Quark out.”
He tapped his pilot again, who dropped the link and then turned to face him.
“Colonel, I fired six hundred high caliber rounds at her, and none of them hit. I don’t see what an extra two platoons are going to be able to do?”
“I don’t give a hot, flying shit what you think, Shithead. But to answer your question because I’m a magnanimous leader, our little tangle wasn’t all for naught. We know she’s vulnerable to the isotope. We just need to get a bit more of it into that fine body of hers. Thankfully, I brought enough to go around. The more hands we have, the more likely we can overwhelm her with the juice. Knock her out or kill her straight away, I don’t give a shit which.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Koy,” Quark said, activating his personal communicator.
“Quark?” Koy replied. “What news do you have?”
“Vee is missing and presumed dead,” Quark said. “Along with half my fragging platoon. And you owe me a damned explanation.”
“What do you mean? How did she die?”
“Cage,” Quark replied. “She went supernova. Her whole body covered in white flame, and she blasted us all with it. If I weren't in a constant state of pissed-off, I would be dead, too.”
“Did you say white flame?”
“Yeah, why?”
Koy was silent for a moment. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I told you Cage was dangerous. We both did. You underestimated her because you compared her to what you knew. She isn’t like anything you’ve seen before.”
“I get that now,” Quark replied, feeling more angry at being chided. “But you can’t tell me you were expecting that.”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“I’m sending for the rest of my troops. We’re going to regroup at the Fire, and then we’re going to hunt down Cage again and finish this thing. I expect you to be with us. We need your power to help neutralize hers.”
“You want to try again? How much is Pallimo paying you?”
“It’s not a money thing; it’s a pride thing. She hurt mine. Anyway, we’ve got a poison that seems to slow her down, and she blew up when she was weak and cornered. A self-defense mechanism is my guess. If we’re ready for it next time, we can get ahead of the curve.”
“Okay,” Koy said. “That’s encouraging. Tell me what you need. Our units are your units.”
“That’s awfully kind of you,” Quark said. “You’re a tad more reasonable than Vee was. Even sleeping with her didn’t calm her down any.”
“Tell me about it,” Koy replied. “The fact is Colonel, either Cage dies, or I do. Gloritant Thraven doesn’t tolerate failure.”
“Neither do I, Koy. Neither do I.”
39
“That’s everything I know,” Abbey said.
She still hated how she couldn’t see any expression in Trinity’s armor. No eyes. No mouth. No wrinkles. It was like talking to a wall. An armed and deadly wall.
Trin was standing in front of her, less than a meter away. They had paused at the edge of the wooded area, in an outcropping of rock that overlooked the crash site of the Fire. The derelict starship was still somewhat small in the distance, but not too small for them to see the activity around it. The dropships. The mechs. The starfighters. It was as though every soul on the planet that was looking for her had gathered there.
And they probably had.
It almost made her wish she had brought Trin back to the crater to try their luck at the other potential escape route. Except she had learned on the way that she didn’t want to leave just yet. She wanted to get onto the Fire and find the remaining doses of the Serum that Thraven had brought on board.
Trinity had confirmed that there were more doses of the Serum when she had gone into detail about how her new form functioned. Like Abbey had suspected, Thraven had shared parts of the Nephilim Covenant with Villeneuve. He had given over ancient technology to the Lrug in order to bring his favorite Evolent back to life, and now Trin was powered by the Blood of the Nephilim. It didn’t only feed oxygen to her brain; it fed energy to her synthetic muscles, pumped through her system by a mechanical heart, not unlike the generator she had seen in the Brimstone’s engine room. It wasn’t a perfect system. Trinity had a small hole in the back of her neck to connect
a tube to pump fresh blood and nutrients in to refuel the spent naniates. She could go for a week easily if she didn’t exert herself, a few days otherwise. But it was a weakness, a major weakness.
Abbey couldn’t say she wasn’t glad it existed. She didn’t completely trust the woman. She would have been an idiot not to be hesitant, especially considering Trinity’s story that Thraven had abandoned her. Why would he go through that much trouble to bring her back to life, and then forget about her? According to Trin, the Gloritant had never even gone to Villeneuve's lab to see if the scientist was still alive after the crash. Trinity was online by the time Thraven left the planet with the Font, but Villeneuve hid her from him. He had no intention of sharing his greatest creation with the one who had enslaved him and then ignored him.
That decision hadn’t gone over well. Abbey had been surprised when Trinity told her that Villeneuve was dead, and she had been the one to kill him in reprisal.
The whole thing was fragged up. Which made Trinity’s sudden interest in the Shard all the more fragged up. She had given her everything she knew, repeating most of Jequn’s original story and sprinkling it with her experiences. She had fuzzed some of the details about the Seraphim complex and the alternate universe where she had spoken to the other Shard, but she had told her of the recording she had seen, an example of how the naniates had been twisted from what they were originally supposed to be.
Trinity had accepted it all in silence, standing completely still throughout. Even now, she didn’t move at all, appearing more like a statue than either a living or mechanical thing. And even Trinity didn’t know exactly what she was. She accepted the term cyborg, though she didn’t like it. She accepted she was a human consciousness in the shell of a robot, though she didn’t like that either. Abbey hadn’t sensed any regret from her about being brought back to life, and Trinity hadn’t expressed any.
