King Killer

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “They are dead,” I gasped as the injury in my stomach began to heal.

  “You are fucking crazy,” Kasta said through our transponders.

  “Yeah,” I growled, then my stomach lurched, and I had to fight back the desire to puke.

  “Two more coming!” Paula warned.

  “Lux, protect Zea. Adam and I will assault the approaching hovercraft.”

  “Yes, Prime Valkyrie,” Lux answered, and I felt my wife approach me through the air.

  A moment later, Madalena landed on the hovercraft next to me and grabbed the controls.

  “That was risky,” she hissed as I climbed into the seat next to her.

  “I didn’t want Zea to get hurt,” I replied.

  “I know,” Madalena whispered, and then the hovercraft lurched forward, swung sideways for a second, and then straightened out.

  “Get back so you have more cover from the barrier,” Madalena said as we sped across the sea of grass.

  “I’m fine up he--” I started to say, but then a stream of pulse rifle bullets slammed into the front of our craft. Our nose lifted up, and I tumbled out of the seat beside her and rolled back next to the barrier.

  “I am going to ram them,” Madalena informed me as she steered the hovercraft with her left boot and poured blue bullets out of her rifle.

  I looked ahead and saw the two enemy craft attempt to avoid hitting us. I couldn’t see the facial expressions on the distant armored warriors, but I suspected they had just realized that Madalena was driving the hovercraft and were coming to terms with their mortality.

  Bullets tore the air past my head, and I ducked down as the front of our vehicle burst into flame.

  “Hold on!” Madalena shouted, but instead of following her advice, I jumped as soon as our hovercraft T-boned the enemy vehicle. The combined energy of our impact with my jump carried me a few meters over the armored Vaish, and I tapped on my shotgun’s trigger as if I was playing a snare drum.

  My head was still all fucked up from the screeching in my ears, so I couldn’t aim as well as I usually did. My slugs continued to rain down on them like meteors, and dozens of holes appeared across their armor while they screamed with pained surprise. I couldn’t really tell how many of the men I had killed, but I figured that it was probably three.

  Then I face planted into the grass.

  I tried to roll with the impact, but I was still all kinds of discombobulated and flying through the air hadn’t helped. I tasted blood, vomit, and the sky spun above me when I rolled on my back. I heard more pulse rifle fire, but my limbs felt numb, and I wondered if the impact broke my neck.

  Then Madalena was standing above me. My vision steadied as I looked at her screaming banshee helmet. I saw her reach down with her armored fist, and I took it so she could help me to my feet. Being able to stand convinced me that my neck wasn’t broken, but my body still didn’t seem to want to obey my orders.

  “Wow,” Paula said. “We saw that.”

  “That was one hell of a catapult.” Kasta snickered.

  “Kasta…” Paula groaned.

  “Cat-a-pult! Get it? Because Adam is a tiger, and he flew--”

  “We get it,” Paula sighed.

  “Oh come on, it was funny!” the android laughed.

  “I am laughing,” Lux said through the transponder, but her words were emotionless.

  “Did you get the other group?” I asked Madalena as I tried to look across the grass.

  “Yes,” Madalena said as my eyes focused on the second hovercraft. It was still drifting slowly across the grass, but the armored warriors on it were all slumped over in their chairs, and smoke drifted from their dead bodies.

  “Your pain is distracting me,” Madalena said. “Or I would have killed them quicker.”

  “I can shift back into my human form, but I won’t be able to fight your father then.”

  “I will share your agony, Husband.” Madalena turned to me and a ghost of a smile came to her lips. “Let us finish this.”

  “Hey,” Zea’s voice came through the transponder. “Speaking of finishing this, I’m in. Pushing the override sequence up to Persephone. Paula and Kasta, do you see it?”

  “Just got it,” Paula said. “How do we use it?”

  “Trigger it as soon as Persephone gets within range of the missiles. Then anyone watching will think the defenses are activating normally.”

  “Then we’ll swoop in and bomb that hangar as soon as the missiles destroy themselves,” Kasta finished.

  “Well, hold up,” Zea said. “You’ve only got control of this array, so you want to use this a bit before the other ones see you.”

  Suddenly the missile array sounded a siren. I turned to look at it, and my vision twisted as I saw it launch the entire cluster of massive warheads one after the other.

  “What the fuck?” Zea shouted.

  “I got bored,” Kasta sighed as the missiles arched through the air.

  “Uhhhhh… I guess you could have just triggered them now. Whatever.” Zea huffed, and I saw her wiggle out of the service tunnel.

  “We will take the undamaged hovercraft back to you,” Madalena said as she bounded toward the drifting vehicle. “Nikki, begin your descent and destroy the hanger where Valravn is.”

  “Yes, Prime Valkyrie,” the pilot replied.

  “Eve, Mikhael, Josefinna, Milda, and Calisto, join us on the ground once this asshole’s escape is thwarted,” I growled as I followed Madalena toward the hovercraft.

  “Yes, Captain!” they replied over the transponders.

  “What about us?” Paula asked.

  “Now’s your chance to use all those drones,” I said. “It’s going to take us two minutes to reach the fortress. I’m sure you can do plenty of damage between now and then.”

  “Oh, yes we can,” Paula chuckled.

  Chapter 16

  Madalena had pulled most of the corpses off the hovercraft by the time I reached it, and I jumped into the seat next to her a moment after it started to move toward the missile launcher. Lux was already flying toward us with Zea in her arms, and we met them halfway to the launcher.

  “When are the missiles going to hit?” I asked Zea as soon as Lux slammed down into the rear seats of the craft.

  “Any second!” she shouted as Madalena cranked on the steering wheel and banked the hovercraft into a steep turn.

  “Yep! Missiles just hit!” Kasta’s shout was full of joy.

  “Persephone is entering the atmosphere,” Nikki informed us. “We will be at the compound in thirty seconds.”

  I looked up to the sky, but my vision was too blurry to see anything besides spinning blue and white clouds. The kaleidoscope made the nausea return, and I had to close my eyes so that I wouldn’t vomit again.

  “Do you think he’ll be able to get into his ship and blast off before Persephone gets there?” Zea screamed over the sound of the wind tearing past us.

  “No,” Madalena replied as she shook her head. “Unless he was already inside of Valravn when his fleet left, but I know my father. He would have decided to wait behind his defenses.”

  “And now that option is gone,” I growled as I thought about the man who tried to kill me in his throne room. Then he tried to have me killed by sending me on Odin’s rite. Then he ordered his minions to try to kill me before I jumped in the pod. Lastly, he had ordered an entire planet to hunt me down.

  Yeah. I was going to enjoy killing this fucker.

  Of course, it might not be that easy with my head and body screaming.

  “Zea, do you think you can figure out how to turn off this sonic limiter?” I asked.

  “If it is controlled through a terminal in this estate, and I can get inside of a one, yeah.”

  “You need to try,” I growled. “It feels like someone is driving a screwdriver into each of my ears while they run an electrical current through my asshole.”

  “Uhhh, that sounds terrible. I’ll do what I can. I just need a terminal and
whoever is guarding this place to not shoot at me.”

  “I will assist you,” Lux said.

  “There is the wall!” Madalena shouted over the sound of the wind.

  “And there is Persephone!” Zea shouted, and I heard the familiar sound of my ship’s thrusters boom across the horizon.

  I looked up again and tried to see her tear through the air, but it looked like I was staring through clam chowder, and I couldn’t keep down the vomit anymore.

  “Shit! Are you okay?” Zea asked as I bent over the side of the hovercraft and vomited.

  I couldn’t answer her immediately because my stomach was cramping, but the sensation only lasted for fifteen or so seconds, and I was able to relax in time to see Persephone launch her first salvo into the fortress.

  The fortress was styled to look like a medieval castle, with high stone walls, steep spiral towers, and grand ramparts where guards might patrol. Red plasma slammed into the walls like flaming bowling balls. The pieces of stone that didn’t instantly crumble melted back from each shot like they were made of paper. There were smaller cannons on the rampart towers, but Persephone’s crew knew their location, and the beams from the ship’s smaller secondary plasma guns eliminated them before they could fire.

  “The hangar is destroyed,” Nikki said. “I believe that Valravn is undamaged, but she will not be able to fly until dug out from under the rubble.”

  “Good work,” Madalena said. “Everyone else, out of the ship as per Adam’s orders. Find my father and kill any who stand in your way.”

  “Yes, Prime Valkyrie,” the crew replied as Persephone banked from the fortress. A few guns were still left on the ramparts, but their shots trailed behind the manta ray ship.

  We were still about a kilometer from the wall, but each second we grew closer made my head, ears, and body scream with more agony. My breath was coming out in ragged gasps, and the edges of my vision were fading to black.

  I wasn’t going to be able to fight my way out of a wet paper bag if Zea didn’t figure out how to turn off the limiter.

  “Almost there,” Zea said as she laid her hand on my head and scratched behind my ears. “You gonna be okay?”

  “Yeah,” I hissed as another rake of agony coursed through my brain. Her touch felt wonderful, but the pain in my body was almost unbearable.

  “You do not want to enter the complex through the holes Persephone made,” Kasta said through our transponder. “Bunch of bad guys are covering that spot. Aim for the other corner you are approaching and use your thrusters to get inside.”

  “Understood,” Madalena said, and the hovercraft turned a bit so that we were aiming at the left corner closest to us.

  A moment later we were at the bottom of the stone wall. I moved to jump onto the ground, but my boot caught on the lip of the hovercraft, and I tumbled out like a sack of potatoes.

  “Shit!” Zea shouted, and I felt her try to lift me up. Moments later Madalena was grabbing me, and the two women helped me to my feet.

  “Uhhh, is he supposed to fight your dad like this?” Zea asked with obvious concern.

  “I’m fine,” I growled.

  “No, you aren’t. The side of a hovercraft just kicked your ass. Maybe you should wait here.”

  “No, I’m fine,” I repeated.

  “We must stop the sonic limiter before you engage my father,” Madalena said.

  “That will probably help.” I gasped as my stomach threatened me with another round of dry heaving.

  “Over the wall,” Madalena said as she wrapped her arms around me from behind. Lux took the same position with Zea, and we began to float up.

  Inside the castle walls it was pure chaos, or maybe I was just having problems making sense of it because my brain felt as if it was boiling. Plasma fire from a floating Persephone hammered into the guns stationed on top of the ramparts, and pulse rifle fire from soldiers on the ground arched up toward on the towers where armored figures returned fire. Fighter drones danced in the air in an elaborate dogfight.

  And in the middle of the fortress’ open courtyard, our drones Kay and Arthur stood back to back. A stream of bullets gushed from their massive machine guns, and pulse rifle shots bounced off their thick shields.

  “Fucking shit! It’s like a war!” Zea pointed down at the knight drones, but a spray of pulse rifle fire cut through the air a meter from us, and she screamed. Lux and Madalena dove, and we landed in the paved courtyard inside the wall a few seconds later.

  I turned to my left and aimed my shotgun at the fucker who tried to shoot us. Madalena and Lux shot at the same time as me, which was fortunate, because my slug missed the man by a good four meters, and their burst of blue bullets turned his armor into something that looked like a cheese grater.

  “This way,” Madalena said as she gestured to the set of towers closest to us.

  “Is this the way to the security terminals?” Zea asked as we ran.

  “It is a direction,” Madalena answered, and then we all dove to the ground when a trio of guards turned around the corner and shot at us.

  I aimed at the armored figures with my shotgun and then hissed when their image turned blurry. My finger still squeezed the trigger, but I couldn’t even see where my slugs went. Madalena and Lux’s shots were much more accurate, and their bullets took the guards out before they could fire at us a second time.

  “Up,” I growled at myself when my legs didn’t want to move. They were numb, and my body felt as if it was encased in ice.

  The beast in my soul was begging me for relief.

  “Get up, Adam,” I growled under my breath, and my legs finally moved. I didn’t have to push off the ground though, Madalena’s hands grabbed my left arm, and she helped me stand.

  We ran the rest of the way toward the first tower. There was a long wide stairway leading up to the two meter wide double doors. The doors were made of aged wood wrapped in metal bands twisted into stylized knots.

  Madalena didn’t even slow her run. Her armored body plowed through the doors like a wrecking ball, and the wood shattered as if it was made of glass. Lux ran right behind her, and screams sounded a moment after I heard their rifles spew more bullets.

  Running up the steps was agonizing, and Zea actually had to tuck her right shoulder under my left arm in an effort to help me ascend. I was heavy enough to crush the hacker if I fell on her, so her assistance did little more than just make me nervous.

  We finally made it to the shattered doorway. Beyond was a grand foyer with twin spiral staircases, a trio of hovercraft sized chandeliers, statues of half-naked warrior women, and tapestry-covered walls. The styling was similar to what I had seen inside of the mirrored castle in the fortress, but my vision started to spin again, and I fell to my knees.

  “Do you see any sort of terminal?” Zea asked.

  “No,” Madalena replied over the sound of her gun firing. “But this is my father’s dwelling. The art on the walls depict his favorite scenes.”

  “So he’s here?” Zea asked.

  “I believe so, either low in the bunker or high in his penthouse,” Madalena answered as their rifles stopped firing. “We have cleared this level. Calisto, what is the status outside?”

  “Most of their drones have been destroyed, Prime Valkyrie,” the woman replied. “I count eighty left in their resistance, but we are making progress. They are moving away from the tower you are in so they can attack us.”

  I tried to lift my head up, but every movement caused me agony. Zea, Madalena, and Lux were speaking to each other, or maybe to me, but I couldn’t hear anything besides the ringing in my ears. It was like my whole world was a scream of constant pain.

  I needed to shift back into a human. I didn’t care about killing Madalena’s father. Fuck it. Let the asshole go. I just didn’t want to feel this agony anymore.

  Hands pulled me upright again, and I heard more voices speak to me. Then I sat down again and felt someone scratch behind my ears.

  “We are goin
g to find that security terminal! Wait here!” Zea was shouting in my face, and I opened my eyes to see I was sitting on a couch in some sort of waiting room. “Do you understand?”

  I nodded at the hacker, and she turned to walk out the door with Madalena and Lux. My muscles ached, my head spun, and I smelled blood in my nose. I heard the trickling of water and turned my head a bit to see a meter high sculpture of an armored warrior fighting a dragon. Water dribbled down from the dragon’s open maw, and I started to think about the oceans on Earth.

  “Fuck!” I screamed at myself as I slammed my fist against my chest. I needed to hold on. Zea would find a security terminal soon and turn off the sonic limiter. Then I’d join the three women, hunt down Madalena’s father, and put him in the ground.

  Then I would join the clans together and defeat the Draugr.

  I couldn’t do any of that if I shifted back to my human form. I’d just fall asleep and lose the opportunity. Well, maybe they would capture the man so I could kill him later, but his auxiliary fleets could show up at any moment, and they would attack us because their admirals would be submitted to the old king.

  As soon as Zea took care of the bullshit emitter blending my mind, I’d find him.

  I looked around the room and tried not to think about shifting back. More stone walls, dark wood beams, and Viking shields. Nothing would hold my attention, and my thoughts turned back to my agony.

  I heard voices through my transponder, but it was incredibly hard to focus on them. The sonic limiter must have been positioned inside the castle somewhere since my agony had only increased the closer we got to the walls.

  Now I couldn’t even think.

  My eyes were closed, and I forced myself to open my heavy eyelids so I could watch the door.

  I was just in time to see Madalena’s father slam his fist into my nose.

  My skull cracked as my head snapped back against the chair. My shotgun was in my hands, and I tried to swing it up so I could shoot him, but the man was quicker than me, and his second punch sent me, and the chair, tumbling backward.

  “Idiot,” I heard him growl through his armored helmet. The top of my head was pressed up against the far wall of the room, and I pushed my left hand against it to help me stand.