Fire and Brimstone (Chaos of the Covenant Book 2)

by M. R. Forbes

  “That’s right,” Emily said. “Nobody can resist. Not once the Git is inside of them. Not forever.”

  Abbey stared at the blood. She wanted it. She looked into the Venerant’s eyes. “Then I guess I should thank you,” she said.

  Then she pressed down with the knife, more than hard enough to end the fight.

  She sat on top of the dead woman’s body as the blood oozed from the arteries, so much thicker and darker than normal. She blinked, trying to fight the urge. She turned her head, finding the Rejects behind her, guns still raised and ready for round three. She looked back at the blood, lowering her hand to it. She collected a small sample onto her index finger and raised it to her face, smelling it. It was metallic and heavy. She rubbed it between her fingers. It had a subtle roughness to it. Was there something alive in there? Was that the coarseness she felt? What was it?

  She brought it toward her lips.

  “Queenie?” Bastion said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “We need to grab Mann and get our asses out of here.”

  Abbey shivered, her concentration broken, her mind returning to its rightful place. She looked up at Bastion and then held out her other hand. He grabbed it and pulled her to her feet.

  “Thanks for the save,” she said.

  “You won’t be thanking me when we get outside. The entire jungle is filling up with Planetary Defense militia, and the Republic’s got three squadrons in the air. I have no fragging clue how we’re going to survive this.”

  “We’ll do whatever it takes,” Abbey said.

  “Queenie,” Airi shouted from the corridor adjacent to the room. “I found him.”

  Abbey let Bastion go in front of her, hanging back. When nobody was looking, she brought her fingers to her mouth, letting them enter and sucking Venerant Alloran’s blood away.

  She shuddered as she swallowed, a sudden fear working its way through her.

  What were they turning her into?

  What was she allowing herself to become?

  10

  Gant waited for a while after Ursan left the room, remaining hidden in the shadows of the desk, pressed tight against the corner. It wasn’t an uncomfortable position to be in. On Ganemant, his kind had long lived in hollowed out stone and slept in chambers that weren’t much larger than where he was now, preferring the cozy warmth of small, dark spaces to the noise and openness of Terran living. Of course, since the Terrans had arrived on their planet, more and more of their construction had been sized to accommodate larger beings, and that part of their history was quickly getting lost.

  It was the price of progress. A price he had never minded paying. As one of only a few thousand Gants who had ever left Ganemant, he was proud of his adventurous nature, even if it had cost him everything in the end.

  Almost everything. He had a second chance. A new alpha. And now he knew for sure that Abbey was still alive. It had taken all of his will to keep from chittering with excitement at the news, to remain silent while his body vibrated with warmth over the fact. Not that it had calmed his anger against this man, Ursan Gall, or his soldiers much. They had still tried to kill her, and nothing else had changed. He was going to kill them all, one way or another.

  The timing was everything.

  He slipped out from beneath the table, jumping onto it and kneeling in front of the terminal. He wasn’t as good with computers as he was with mechanical parts. The shape of his hands didn't lend itself to working projections, and most software didn’t recognize the twin thumb configuration. Even so, he had enough experience that he should at a minimum be able to trace the route back to the main comm link array, and then make his way there to physically frag with it.

  He activated the terminal. It wasn’t locked. What would be the point? This ship was under Ursan’s control and composed of Ursan’s soldiers. He had no reason to expect a stowaway. It took some work to navigate through the menus, as he was forced to hold his hands together to mimic the shape of a human hand and then work the whole thing with just that. It was awkward and slow, and he kept looking over his shoulder every ten seconds and pausing to listen for approaching footsteps. He was thankful his hearing was better than a Terran’s.

  The terminal had no idea where the comm link was located on the ship. Fortunately, he knew enough about Republic Navy Internetworking services to backtrace the physical location based on pings to the specific modules. Any Republic Navy craft in the fleet would have both long and short range comms, as well as quantum filtering for signal processing during FTL. While ping times were in the .00001 millisecond range, the precise reporting had a lot of meaning, especially to an engineer. By also accessing one of the unsecured reactor services, he was able to correlate times to guesstimate distance.

  In this case, the comm link was likely a few hundred meters closer to his position than the “engine” room he had come from. He used that term loosely considering what he had seen there. The thought of it still made him nauseous.

  Of course, that wasn’t much of a definitive position, and it wasn’t good enough to know it was closer. Was it up, down, port or starboard? He had another way of determining that, thanks to the organization of Republic Navy networks. Every node on the ship was designated and numbered nearly identically across the board, with codes that stood for relative position in the ship starting from the ass. By pinging each node and checking the time, he could eventually triangulate the location down to a few dozen meters.

  Of course, it would take hours to manually ping the nodes. Fortunately, some clever Ensign somewhere had already added a command to do just that, and that command was standard issue on all Republic Navy ships. Gant executed it, watching the numbers output across the projection in a list that seemed almost endless. He eyeballed it quickly, matching the last few digits in the response times against what he had gotten back from the link. It took a few minutes, but he wound up with a general idea of where the frag he was going.

  Deck 13, Node 67, about three-quarters of the way down from the central crossbeam. Meaning the link array was in the belly of the ship, and since the Brimstone had sixteen decks, that meant it wasn’t positioned at the bottom of the hull, either.

  Gant motioned with his false hand to clear the list, pausing before he completed the gesture, his ears picking up the sound of feet on the metal floor beyond the room’s hatch. He froze momentarily, waiting while the feet stopped in front of the door. Then he jumped off the table, his hand hitting the projector control as he dropped, turning it off. He scurried back to his hiding place, watching as Ursan Gall’s boots made their way across the room to the adjacent bedroom. He could only hope the man didn’t come to use the terminal. If he had, he would realize immediately that someone had been doing something interesting with it, and that the someone was probably not supposed to be on board.

  “I can’t do this without you,” he heard Ursan say. “I don’t want to. We’ll figure something out. Dak says he knows an expert on Anvil who may be able to help. Says he does all kinds of augmentation; shit that doesn’t seem like it should even be possible. I know Thraven wants the Brimstone, but he’ll thank me if I can get you back. I’m sure he will.”

  Gant peered out from the corner of the desk. He could see Ursan now, standing over the bed with a satchel in his hands. He put the satchel on the bed and then lifted the head up, wrapping it in a towel before placing it reverently inside.

  “I’ve seen too many amazing things, done too many things I thought impossible. I don’t believe you can’t be saved. I won’t believe it. Once you’re awake, we’ll find this Abigail Cage, and we’ll do unto her as she did unto you. An eye for an eye. Then we can kill Thraven, and we can take over the war. We’ll bring the damn Republic to its knees in the name of the Outworlds, in remembrance of Caliban.”

  Then Ursan fled the room, carrying his wife’s head without sparing a glance toward the terminal. The whole episode left Gant feeling sick once more. Even if Gall could find someone capable of reviving a Terran head, the brain ha
d been deprived of oxygen for hours, and the flesh was already in the process of decomposition.

  What the hell would he be bringing back?

  He waited until he couldn’t hear the hard soles on the floor, and then he scrambled away from the terminal, away from the room as quickly as he could, opening the hatch, checking the corridor, and running opposite Ursan’s back.

  He needed to get the beacon up and running, and a message out to Abbey. He knew where the Brimstone was going, and he expected her to be there soon after it arrived.

  11

  Ursan made his way back to the bridge, holding the satchel containing Trinity’s head delicately, as though he could damage her with any hint of carelessness.

  All eyes were on him as he entered, but he ignored them, returning directly to the command chair and sitting and placing the satchel in his lap.

  “Dak, set a course for Anvil,” he said, with no hint of hesitation in his voice. The Trover's eyes darted back for a moment, but he followed the order as it was given.

  “Aye, Captain. Setting a course for Anvil.”

  Ursan leaned back, his eyes straight ahead, focused on the viewport as the Brimstone adjusted its vector slightly and then made the smooth transition to faster-than-light travel. Anvil was near the far end of the Fringe, home to a major Outworld military hub whose sole job was to prevent the Republic from trying to sneak around to the planets at the outer segment of the unsettled universe. An entire support economy had grown on the planet as a result, providing anything a soldier might want. Augmentations, pleasure bots, Construct gaming, drugs, alcohol, and black market military gear. It was big business, and it attracted traders from all over the Outworlds despite its relatively distant relation to the rest of the non-Republic galaxy. He hadn’t been too surprised to hear the name of the planet when Dak had cautiously mentioned knowing someone there who was a master bot-maker. A Plixian named Gorix. He was rumored to have done impressive augmentation work, merging biological with mechanical.

  It was only a rumor, but it was also the only chance Ursan had. His heart was broken, his body so filled with anger and hate that he couldn’t dismiss the incessant motion of the Gift as it demanded retribution for her slaughter. Cage wouldn’t be enough, not nearly enough, but he knew he couldn’t get to Thraven without Trin, and he knew Trin would choose him over the General.

  “I’m not crazy,” he said out loud to the members of his bridge crew. He knew they thought he was. From the moment he had gone forward to take her head, they had been whispering that he had lost himself.

  “Nobody said anything, Boss,” Dak said.

  “You don’t need to say it. I know you’re all thinking it. Even you. I’m not, though. I’m going to get her back. What’s so wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, Boss,” Dak replied. He was silent for a few seconds before turning to look back at Ursan. “Can I be honest with you, Captain?”

  “What is it, my friend?” Ursan said.

  “We’re all for trying to bring back Trinity. All of us like her a lot. But, we were wondering if maybe we should bring the Brimstone back to Thraven first, and take the Triune to Anvil. He’s already pretty unhappy with us, and we’re not in a position to counter him right now, especially after we destroyed his battleship.”

  “What do you think Thraven is going to do when we bring back the Brimstone?” Ursan asked. “Do you think he’s going to let us leave again? Do you think he’s going to let any of us out alive?”

  “He’ll have the ship. Maybe he’ll forget about us.”

  “General Thraven doesn’t forget about anything. If he doesn’t kill us outright, he’ll send us off on some other mission somewhere that’s nowhere near where I want to go. I’d rather get there in an unstoppable warship. Wouldn’t you?”

  “An unstoppable warship won’t do shit for us once we’re boots on the ground,” Dak said.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Thraven would still need to get a ship in system. He’d still need to drop units to the planet.”

  “You’re suggesting we should intercept them?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  Ursan caught the nervous murmurs from the rest of the bridge crew. His bridge crew. Or were they?

  “He brought this on,” Ursan shouted. “He sent Trin to Drune to die. He let us go so we could see it. We’ve all been through a lot of shit together. Ten years running merc jobs before Trin, two years after, and three years with General Thraven. We’ve got fifteen years together, most of us. Since when did you all become so afraid?”

  “He isn’t like other people we’ve worked for, Ursan,” Ligit, the systems officer, said. “We all saw what he did to you and Trin. The stuff that you can do. Anything you can do, he can do it a hundred times better. That’s not a man we want to cross, and I don’t think you should cross him, either. Not for this.”

  “To save my wife? You don’t think it’s worth that?”

  Ligit turned away from him without speaking. Nobody was willing to say what he knew they were thinking. What had prompted his outburst in the first place?

  “You think she’s dead, and she’s going to stay dead, don’t you?” he asked. “Ligit, damn you. Answer me.”

  Ligit looked back at him. “Aye, Captain.”

  Ursan acted before he thought, raising a hand and gesturing toward the man. Instantly, his head jerked downward, slamming into the terminal in front of him. His body rolled off his chair and didn’t move.

  “Is he?” one of the other crew members said.

  Ursan lowered his hand, his whole body shaking. What the hell had he just done?

  Dak rushed over to Ligit, putting a hand to his neck. “He’s still alive. By how much, I don’t know.”

  “Bring him to medical,” Ursan said, his voice uneven. He hadn’t meant to react that way. Losing Trin was making him unstable. Unsteady. “I’ll apologize to him once he’s patched up.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Dak said, lifting the man easily and carrying him from the bridge.

  The rest of the crew turned back to their stations. Ursan could sense the sudden fear and tension surrounding them.

  Everything would be better once they reached Anvil.

  Once Trinity was back in his life.

  Once Abigail Cage was dead.

  12

  Olus looked up when Airi’s face appeared in the cutout of the door.

  “Queenie,” she shouted. “I found him.”

  He cringed at the words. Damn Thraven. He was pushing the pieces precisely, and getting them into a bad place.

  “Captain Mann?” Abbey said. “Move away from the door.”

  Olus pushed himself against the side of the room. There was no sense resisting. It was already too late.

  The door exploded inward, flying back and slamming against the wall where he had just been resting, breaking apart and settling across the room.

  “Captain,” Abbey said, entering the small cell.

  “Cage,” Olus replied, looking her over. Her hellsuit had a couple of gashes in it, and her head had some dried blood running down the side. “You look like hell.”

  “You should have seen me on Drune,” she said. “This is the second time I’ve had to rescue you.”

  “Sorry to burst your bubble, Lieutenant, but it isn’t much of a rescue.”

  “What do you mean?” Bastion asked, moving in behind her.

  “Thraven wanted me here,” Abbey said. “I know that much. He thought his Venerant would get me under his control.”

  “You mean Emily Eagan?” Olus asked. “Where is she?”

  “Out there. She got a little overconfident, and wound up losing her head.”

  “You killed her? How?”

  “With the help of the Rejects and the power of the Gift.”

  “Is that what they call it? Whatever it is that let her hold me in place without lifting a finger?”

  “Yeah. Or the Blood of Life. Dumb, right?”

  Abbey smiled. Olus couldn’
t help but smile, too.

  “Thraven’s smarter than I gave him credit for,” he said. “He angled this into a win-win for him. If Emily took you, then he would have you back under his control, and I would still be locked up here. Or maybe he would have just let me walk out. Since you killed her, he got to punish her for her mistake, and he gets to push me out of the picture.”

  “What do you mean, push you out of the picture?” Abbey asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Did you kill any Republic forces on the way in? Not the guards in here, I’m pretty sure they’re all on Thraven’s team. Planetary Defense? Republic Navy?”

  Abbey’s face flattened, and she glanced over at Bastion.

  “You told me I could,” he said.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  Olus nodded. “You were already fugitives, but by killing Republic assets to rescue me? I’m going to be one, too. Thraven pulled me into this game because he wanted to keep me close. He knows I can’t be bought. You don’t become Director of the OSI without getting offers to look the other way that would make your head spin. He had to either allow me to operate, which he did by feeding me Mars while Emily was the real problem, or he had to discredit me.”

  “Which we’re in the process of doing,” Abbey said.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t give us much of a fragging choice,” Benhil said. “According to Ruby, if you die, we die.”

  “I know. Ruby didn’t know I set the timer to automatically reset before I came here. I couldn’t risk losing you if something happened to me.”

  “What?” Bastion said. “We could have left your ass to rot, and we would have been in the clear after all?”

  “Shut it,” Abbey said, turning on Bastion. “We made our decision regardless.”

  “You made the decision,” Benhil said.

  “And I’m in charge, so it was all of us. Do you want to question it again?”