The Vigilante Chronicles Boxed Set 1

by Natalie Grey

  She could respect that, she supposed. She just had to make sure she didn’t blow up first. She wove through the missiles, looped back, ducked, and skimmed through their fleet so that their ships had to dodge their own missiles.

  She was more maneuverable than any of them here, and she reveled in it. They were relying on the slow reflexes of organic life forms.

  Their problem, not hers.

  She gave one last loop over a few ships to lose the last missile spread, then she slipped into the landing bay of the asteroid.

  We’re here.

  You sound…pleased? Barnabas was still learning her moods, but he hadn’t quite assessed this one yet.

  Oh, I am, Shinigami said. I don’t know if it’s going to be on the way out of here or sometime in the future, but we’re going to face that fleet—and I’m looking forward to showing them my true capabilities.

  In the shuttle bay, Barnabas turned to Gar and Jeltor with a smile.

  “Ready to get rid of these bastards?”

  “Ready.” Gar gave the nod.

  “Ready.” Jeltor’s mechanical body stuck up both guns in an approximation of a thumbs up gesture.

  “Ready,” Shinigami added over the speakers. “Flamethrower primed.”

  The doors opened, and Barnabas’ eyes began to glow. “Then let’s bring these bastards to Justice.”

  26

  “You’ll find them down any of the three tunnels,” Shinigami reported. “From the scans I was able to get as I came in, the far-left hallway leads into a long corridor that runs to the heart of the asteroid. Meanwhile, I believe the people trying to steal the ship are hovering above me.”

  “What’s your plan if they never get in range of the flamethrower?” Barnabas headed for the hallway farthest to the left.

  “Turn on the engines, flip them off my top, and then hit them with the flamethrower.”

  “Well, it seems like you have this planned out. Good hunting.”

  “Good hunting,” Shinigami echoed.

  At the entrance to the tunnel, Barnabas turned to look at Gar and Jeltor. He put one finger to his lips and held up the other hand to tell them to stay where they were.

  Then he started to run. He kept to the outside of the first bend in the tunnel and activated the grav technology in his boots just as he came around the corner. The soldiers, all of whom had been listening to the steps approach, were still aiming their weapons at chest height as he soared into the air and pushed off the wall a few feet above their heads.

  He flipped as he came down toward the back of the group, drawing his Jean Dukes Specials. Two shots with his favorite ammo blew whole groups of the soldiers back.

  There was a shocked pause, then the soldiers screamed their fury and charged.

  Barnabas slid into action with a feral grin. His first task was to clear the small group of soldiers still in the back. He pumped three more shots into one edge of the line and holstered the pistols, drawing his knives instead.

  He cut through the group with the sounds of their screams in his ears. His thoughts were drenched in their hatred, radiating from them so strongly that he could hardly close his mind to it.

  Sometimes he felt fear or shock, but not now. No, these were well-trained and hired to kill. They’d planned an ambush with no mercy, and they would not give him any chance to escape this if they could help it.

  The second detachment of soldiers approaches, Gar reported. If we hit them from the back, we’ll be crushed between two forces.

  Barnabas swore. He ripped off one soldier’s arm and threw what remained of the soldier into the main group.

  Then he charged, driving his way through the very center of the crowd.

  These soldiers had not drilled on infantry formations, and they were not trained in anything more than meeting one enemy head on and defeating them in single combat. Still, there were a lot of them. Barnabas felt strikes and blades glance off him, and once or twice, he heard the report of weapons. These soldiers had decided that it didn’t matter if they hit their own comrades, as long as the enemy was defeated.

  Gar and Jeltor met him in the middle of the group. Jeltor spat bolts of flaming ammunition from his hands, and Gar laid waste to his opponents with unrestrained brutality.

  Gar wasn’t efficient, not yet. He didn’t have enough training. But God help his enemies when he learned to be efficient. Barnabas even spared a moment to watch, open-mouthed, as Gar grabbed one of the Hieto and used the heavily-armored body as a mace to beat several other soldiers.

  He’s got real style, Shinigami remarked.

  Barnabas tried not to laugh as he took up position. The three of them maintained a circle, their backs to one another.

  That he does. I’ll have to work hard to come up with a style of my own.

  I look forward to watching your career. Also, it’s too bad we can’t keep Jeltor. Maybe we can teach you to throw fireballs…?

  Mmm. Barnabas pulled out the Jean Dukes Specials again and began firing. Three soldiers skidded away in one direction, and four into another. They picked themselves up as others launched themselves wildly in Barnabas’ direction, only to meet more shots that sent them stumbling back.

  Increasingly, he saw them look over their shoulders as if waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

  Barnabas guessed that those reinforcements had seen what was happening and wanted no part of it.

  “Shinigami, tell me if any other groups mobilize.”

  “Will do, but they’re staying put.” She sounded like she was laughing. “Smart or cowardly? I can’t decide.”

  “A little bit of both.” Barnabas grinned and whirled, the butts of his pistols turned briefly into maces to take out several soldiers. “We’re about halfway through this set. I wonder if they’ll show up when these are gone.”

  “Maybe.” Gar cut into the conversation. He wore a look of intense focus as he fired his weapons, flipped them back into their holsters, and launched into hand to hand combat once more. “How about this? We’ll call you if they do, and in the meantime, you head into the asteroid and find Uleq?”

  Barnabas wavered, but he knew it was the smart thing to do. Both Jeltor and Gar were heavily armored and were maintaining their composure—while the soldiers were getting both more tired, and more wary of this fight.

  It was difficult to find the will to attack someone who had just taken down several dozen of your fellow soldiers, after all.

  He had to let them stand on their own at some point. Barnabas nodded to the two of them and leaped lightly to push off the wall and land behind the group of soldiers. They hardly seemed to notice as he ran off into the darkness, except for one thing: he could feel their relief that he was going for someone else.

  This was how places like the Yennai Corporation fell, he thought to himself. Their soldiers didn’t fight for them. They didn’t believe in their leaders.

  When it came to a battle of life or death, that lack of faith was fatal.

  He wasn’t too far from the landing bays when he came to a door manned by several guards. He didn’t give them a single moment to respond to his presence. He flipped through the air, one knife sneaking under the furthest guard’s neckpiece to slit his throat. The body fell heavily as Barnabas landed on the other side of the group.

  The other guards were still looking at the place where he’d been, and he charged them before they could adjust.

  They fell within seconds. He used the dead guard’s rifle to knock one of them back into the wall and smashed it into the side of his skull. The rifle wasn’t as good a weapon as he was accustomed to using, but it worked well enough for him to direct two bursts apiece into each of the remaining guards.

  They dropped like stones and Barnabas unlatched the heavy door and pulled it open, striding inside. Such a heavy door was very interesting.

  He recognized Crallus and Uleq at once. The Shrillexian stood, his eyes widening at the sight of Barnabas. To Barnabas’ surprise, he didn’t appear eager to fight.<
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  Perhaps it was the fact that Barnabas was coated in blood. Perhaps it was the fact that he’d seen hundreds of his fellow soldiers killed already. Still, it was remarkable.

  It was also noteworthy that Uleq was smiling at him. It was a somewhat disturbing smile, Barnabas thought.

  “You’re here,” Uleq said. “I’ve been waiting for you. Finally, I get to destroy all of my enemies at once.”

  Barnabas locked eyes with him and forced his way into Uleq’s thoughts. He saw some faces he recognized—Ilia and the Torcellan who must be Uleq’s father—and many he did not. They were rivals and enemies from over the years, he suspected, each of them cut down in Uleq’s quest for power.

  There was no question of what justice meant for Uleq.

  But Uleq, backing toward the strange glow at the back of the room, pulled a device from one sleeve. It was counting down, and Uleq laughed maniacally.

  “Such a small bomb, isn’t it? They didn’t find it on the scanners when we came in. It would barely have killed one person on its own. But once it touches the reactor...” He gave Barnabas a crazed smile, launched the bomb over the edge of the floor, and let out a triumphant peal of laughter. “You’re going to die with me. Ilia’s going to die with me. Your ship is going to be destroyed. And my father’s legacy is going to be utterly destroyed, too.”

  Barnabas froze. There was no way to get to the reactor—

  But Crallus gave a primal roar as he burst into motion.

  “Like hell, you get out of this so easily!” He locked eyes with Barnabas for a moment, then shoved Uleq out of the way. “Kill Koel Yennai!”

  And then he was gone, tumbling over the edge. Barnabas raced to look over the edge.

  Crallus was strong, but the reactor was made to power entire cities. Crallus crawled his way to the bomb and smashed it to pieces, scattering the inert fragments of it across the floor before he collapsed.

  With the last of his strength, he pushed himself onto his back to look at Barnabas. His lips moved, and his last thought made it into Barnabas’ head:

  You have to kill Koel.

  And he was gone.

  Barnabas turned to Uleq, who stared at the edge of the floor in horror. He hadn’t planned to live this long. With his bomb gone, he had no idea what to do. He looked at Barnabas, almost pleadingly.

  “There is no need for a trial here,” Barnabas told him. He moved quickly, grabbing Uleq by the throat and held him above the floor. “You know what you have done. You will face the consequences. Tell me just one thing: where is your sister? Where is your father?”

  In regard to Koel Yennai, he found nothing. Beyond a terrifying sense of duty, Koel had never shared his business with his children; Barnabas cast those memories aside for now. The map to Ilia’s office, however, formed itself in Uleq’s head, and Barnabas took it without any gentleness.

  He crushed Uleq’s throat, dropped the body, and set off at a run for Ilia’s office.

  Like hell, she was going to escape.

  27

  Ilia watched in horror as the human and his companions cut through the mercenaries like they were nothing. Mercenaries rushed them, trying to sink knives into their skin, or shooting wildly, past caring if they hit their own, but nothing they did made a difference. The three figures whirled and shot, deflected hits with reflexes beyond anything she had seen, and it seemed they barely had to look in the direction of an opponent before their target was dead.

  She grabbed the communications unit. “Send reinforcements!”

  Why was the second wave not converging on them?

  The silence was her only answer. She had granted them access to the security feeds, thinking foolishly that this would let them know when they should put the second part of the plan in motion, and where they should go.

  All it had done in the end was display the absolute carnage being wreaked by the human and his fellow fighters.

  And one of them was… Ilia squinted at the screen. Was that a Luvendi? It couldn’t be. That was impossible.

  But all of this was impossible.

  She moaned as she pushed herself back from the desk with her hands over her eyes. She had to find a way to rectify this, or her father would have her executed. There was no possibility that he would be lenient—or even that she could get any of the employees of the Yennai Corporation to follow her, instead.

  No one stood up to her father.

  She had been the first, the one who planned to shock the rest of them—but she would never get a chance to do that if this all went wrong.

  Think, think!

  She looked back at the battle, hugging herself. Their attackers cut down mercenaries with brutal efficiency. As she watched, the Luvendi seized a Brakalon and lifted the alien bodily over his head.

  Her eyes went wide, and she forgot to breathe as she watched the Brakalon dashed down on the ground, picked up again, and dropped for the second time. The Luvendi hauled his opponent up and hurled him into the group, sending mercenaries staggering and, to judge from the way some of them twitched and went still, crushing the life out of more than one.

  Then, one of the strangest things she had ever seen, he made a fist with one hand, cupped it in the other, and bowed to the mercenaries he had just killed.

  It was only a momentary diversion, of course. He launched into action only a few moments later. Ilia watched him, watched the Jotun…

  They had misused the Jotun, some distant part of her thought. She had never known what those suits were capable of. Whenever they met with the Yennai Corporation officials, the Jotun politicians came in awkward tanks that could barely make it upstairs.

  And, like fools, the Yennai executives had believed that this was the limit of their skill.

  It was now clear that that was not even close to the truth. The suit vaulted into the air, clearly warping gravity and using even more forms of propulsion than Ilia knew existed. Auto-targeting of the arms swiveled to discharge bullets faster than any sentient life form could find and shoot targets on its own. Occasionally, jets of fire shot unsuspecting mercenaries, coating their armor in flames and making them stumble into their own ranks, where the flames only spread.

  No, there was no chance the rest of the mercenaries would intervene.

  The Luvendi and the Jotun finally stood, panting, in a circle of their fallen enemies and Ilia stared at them, face twisted in desperation and rage. How? She wanted to scream at them. How have you done any of this?

  And where was the human?

  Sheer terror buckled her knees. Ilia swiped at the controls to bring up the video feeds. He wasn’t back in the hangar bay with the ship. He wasn’t cutting his way through the crowds of other mercenaries. She couldn’t see him in the Beta or Gamma corridors, and the Alpha corridors…

  Those led to her.

  She peered along each of the feeds, in turn, whimpering her fear, and stopped at the feed from the Overlook.

  That was Uleq’s body. She reached out, her fingers trembling as they dragged across the screen. Uleq lay twisted as he had fallen. Remarkably, his face showed a manic grin. What had happened to him? How had his throat been crushed, and where… Where was the Shrillexian?

  The feed outside the door showed only dead guards. Both the Shrillexian and the human seemed to be gone.

  There was a noise from behind her and Ilia screamed. She scrambled backward as the human advanced on her, eyes glowing red. How he had gotten into the room, she did not even wonder.

  It didn’t matter. He was here. He had found the vents, the back doors, the escape routes…

  He had found their base when he never should have. Her father would kill her for this failure.

  No, wait…he wouldn't. The human would kill her first. A hysterical laugh welled up in Ilia’s chest. She could no longer think. The only thought in her head was that she was going to die. All she could see were the red eyes.

  “Ilia Yennai.” The human’s voice was at once mild, and the most terrifying thing she had ever
heard. “Do you know who I am?”

  “A member of the Empire.” She had read Uleq’s notes about this man, and they were a jumbled mess of guesses. “Barnabas?”

  “That is my name,” he agreed. “You may call me Vigilante One. The Empire is no more. I am no longer a Ranger.”

  Like she even cared about that. A measure of her old anger resurfaced, and she saw his eyes flash.

  “You should care who your enemies are,” he told her.

  Could he read her thoughts?

  “Of course, I can read your thoughts.” He looked halfway between bored and annoyed. “That should be clear from context.”

  She opened her mouth to scream for her guards—

  “They’re dead.”

  Ilia pressed her eyes shut and felt a whimper escape her. This was how she was going to die.

  “Yes.” Barnabas crouched to look at her. “This is how you’re going to die: alone, all your money and power useless as a shield, no one loyal enough to try to save you. The mercenaries you bought are thinking better of their bargain. The fleet has dispersed outside, and all communications with them are blocked—you can’t call them back. You built up your power in the shadows, and you hid here while you bribed and killed and tortured your way to power.

  “And now you’ve found that in the end, there was no running from Justice.”

  Ilia’s eyes flew open at that. Justice? He could not be serious.

  “You aren’t even close to understanding,” she spat. “You didn’t grow up like I did, knowing that thousands hated your family and would see you killed for spite.”

  “Somehow,” he said drily, “I find myself more concerned with the people you tortured and killed. You say you were afraid of that. If it was so terrible, why do it to anyone? Think back on them, Ilia. Think of their names. Think of their faces.”

  She did not want to, but the command was inexorable. She closed her eyes and saw all of them. Her uncle, not killed by her, and yet, she had not spoken up. Her brother, who she would have killed if she’d had the chance. Her father. Wirav. The generals who had failed her, and their families. The members of colonies and planets who had opposed her. The loved ones of politicians amongst all species…