Angels and the Bad Man

by M. K. Gibson

  “I will.”

  I nodded and leaped from cover into the open and began shooting at anything that even looked like Legion.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Help Has Arrived

  I dodged and fired. Rolled and killed. I reached a point in the center of the courtyard near the fountain where everyone, friend or foe, could see me. Well, I came here for a reason.

  Legion was a professional assassin. I, on the other hand, was a killer.

  I liked to pretend I was a lightrunner. A smuggler, soldier. A joker and a drinker. A recluse, a shut-in, a movie buff and an introspective long-lost warrior-disciple of Johnny Cash.

  But unlike the Holy JC, I really was a man in black. I had killed a man to watch him die. Several of them. Sure, they were evil pricks who tried to kill me first, but I still enjoyed it. Perhaps another reason I couldn’t take The Tears. I tried to live a better life, but after two hundred years, of all the things I’d done and been, a killer was what I was best at. While an assassin does it for the money and for the reputation, a killer just does it.

  So, send an assassin after a killer, and watch the killer win.

  I shot so many of the Legion I lost count. I twisted and turned, using the overclock to see incoming fire, dodge and kill. Amid it all, I lost myself once again. The blood, the guns, the fire and the hell of it all. I felt like I was back in the wars.

  Like home.

  A lot of soldiers who come home from war can’t adjust. Home is too quiet. Too calm. Soldiers lie awake at night waiting—expecting—to be shot at. And as they lie there, in the aching quiet, they secretly long to be back “in the shit.” Back with the bombs and the screams. It makes sense to them.

  I was no different.

  I stood there in the open, overclocking then powering down, over and over. Legion moved in unison, trying to bring me down. And I just stood there and took it. I let him waste his ammo as I took his many lives. The problem was, more of the fuckers seemed to come out of the woodwork. Time to get it done. Man, I always hated these parts of the movie.

  “Angels!” I screamed. “You must fight! You cannot lose what makes you divine—your faith! Your grace! Your hope! Fight back back against Legion. He brings you death! Give him the retribution of the Host! Fight, you angelic motherfuckers! FIGHT!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Oh, come on now!” I yelled. “Hey ANGELS, I’m doing the heroic thing here! I’m taking the brunt of this psychopath’s attack. I gave the damn speech. You’re supposed to be all inspired and shit! Now get off your feathered asses and fight!”

  Angels. Don’t they watch movies?

  “Looks like no one is going to help you, asshat—” a Legion said.

  And that was all he was able to say because I shot him in the face.

  “Kill one of us and another will succeed him,” another said as he got close. I shot him in the gut instead of the face. I wanted that one to suffer for ripping that bullshit line off Marvel comics and Hydra. I then kicked him in the jaw, breaking it, and knocked him out.

  In hindsight, this really might have been a bad idea. Standing out in the open, trying to inspire angels to fight. A very bad idea.

  Like, top five, easy.

  The more I thought about it, the dumber it seemed. What would happen after TJ got The Tears? It wasn’t like Legion was gonna say “Aww shucks, you win” and then go home. Man, I need to really rethink my plans.

  A quartet of Legion came running at me, two hauling a portable energy-shield generator and two more laying down suppressing fire. I dodged and fired back, but not before they were able to active the generator. More Legion then came up on my six, doing the same thing. Then another to my right and another on my left.

  Crap!

  Well, this was it. I did all I could to keep the attacks on me and away from TJ. If I stayed here, I was going to die. The killer inside me wanted to continue. But the human inside knew that retreat wasn’t always a bad thing. I could fight on, but not here. Not out in the open.

  Just as I turned to run, a new voice beside me spoke. “Heya, kid. Help has arrived,” Riggs said, standing in his head-to-toe gray-black ram armor.

  “Where’ve you been? I thought you were dead there for a while,” I said as I snapped off more blasts.

  “Oh, just recovering. Keeping a choir of angels at bay is taxing, even for me,” Riggs said as he pointed at several of the Legion and I saw actual lightning shoot from his fingertips, forking and striking the clone assassins dead.

  Riggs saw my eyes widen at the attack. “Mage, kid. Remember? One of the best who ever lived.”

  “Mage or not, if we stay here, we’re gonna die.”

  “Come on, kid, where’s your edge? This is the most fun I’ve had in a while.” Riggs fired off another hissing blast of lightning.

  I fired off a round into a Legion who was wearing a bandolier of plasma grenades, hitting them. They went up all at once, taking out a host of his allies in an explosive chain reaction.

  “Nice!”

  “Thanks!” I yelled.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” I asked, firing. The rage was coming back. Something about being here, now, made me want to keep going. A last stand. The kind where if you survive, you’re a hero. If you die, then you’re an idiot.

  “Me what?”

  “You’re inspiring this feeling inside me. With your magic. This killing rage.”

  “Not magic, son. Just me. We’re related, remember. My descendants tend to get like this when I’m around.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t the body you were in when you were Ken McMillan.”

  More lighting and a slight chuckle. “Kid, you’re smart. But you really don’t know anything yet, do you? Flesh and blood is one thing. But you’re a descendant of my spirit, my soul. That is way more powerful than some haphazard mixing of love goo into paired chromosomes. You have the spirit of The Killer in you.”

  “Why do they keep calling you that?”

  “You’ll figure it out one day. But right now, we have that to deal with that!” Riggs pointed.

  Legion had formed a skirmish line of ten men by one of the portable shields. Each one of them was armed with a triple-barreled BEDLAM-7. And each one of them was preparing to fire plasma rockets.

  “DOWN!” Riggs ordered as he grabbed my neck with tremendous strength and slammed me to the ground. He threw up his hands then and created a dome of energy, as Grimm would have.

  The rockets hit with ferocious power and impact. The shield flickered and winked out as Riggs’s armored form dropped to the ground, exhausted. He shook his head and held his hands back up, bringing the shield back into being.

  Whoa, this was too familiar. I saw the skirmish line of Legion switching out magazines of ammo. The BEDLAMs held tons of ammo; there was no reason to switch out mags. Unless . . . crap.

  “Down!” I yelled, and it was my turn to slam Riggs to the deck as the skirmish line fired at once.

  Each of the rounds went through the shield. A scream forced its way from my throat. Fire blossomed in my back. One of the rounds had pierced my side, straight through my right lat, under my shoulder. The second one, just above that, had fracturing my right collarbone. The third had left a hole in my coat and a nasty gash, but little else.

  Collective, what the hell?! What happened to the shield?

  //UNKNOWN HOST - AMMUNITION UTILIZED UNKNOWN TECHNOLOGY AND BYPASSED SHIELD ENTIRELY - EMERGENCY HEALING UNDERWAY//

  I felt The Collective activate pinpoint barrier shields and apply pressure to prevent excessive bleeding and hold my collar bone in place.

  Thanks.

  //YOU ARE WELCOME HOST - SURVIVAL PROBABILITY DROPPING - RECOMMEND EXPEDIENT RETREAT//

  No kidding.

  “What the hell was that?” Riggs asked, retracting his mask.

  “Hex bullets,” I grunted. “I thought they just bypassed magic. Looks like they bypass everything.” I took my fingers away and they were covered with blood.

&nbs
p; “Damn. I’ve heard of them before. Never seen them though.”

  “They were made by Father Grimm and Rasputin.”

  “Really? Now that’s just freaking poetic justice is what that is.”

  “What?” I asked, not understanding.

  “This.” Riggs said. He rolled to his side and right in the middle of his chest was a hole, just to the side of his heart. The bullet that had grazed my side had hit him.

  “Oh shit! Are you OK?” I asked. Already I knew it was a stupid question.

  “No. I’m not. I have a hole in my chest.”

  “I—I—” I stammered.

  “Just shut up,” Riggs said.

  “If we lie here, we die,” I said, trying to pull up Riggs, who just pushed me away.

  “So you need some time,” Riggs said.

  “Time for what?”

  “Time for you to figure something out to save us before I bleed out. Here, this should give you the time you need.” Riggs coughed as he retracted the gauntlet on his right hand, revealing his ring. The Seal of Solomon. “Angels. Fight,” he said, as he poured his will into the command.

  And then every angel in the courtyard obeyed the command of the temple’s master, King Solomon. And indeed they fought.

  Chapter Fifty

  Kneel Before Zod

  Every angel in the courtyard stopped running and responded to Riggs’s command. The angels attacked Legion, turning the tide. The Choir began to sing a song of battle and brought war to the assassins.

  It was one hundred percent complete and utter horseshit.

  I mean, come on. I gave the impassioned speech. I stood there and took the brunt of the attack. I got shot. A lot! And then this prick comes along, flashes his magic ring and just says “Angels. Fight.” and succeeds?

  Complete horseshit.

  A small battle line of angels formed around us, giving us protection and time. I propped myself up on one knee and with my good arm fired as fast as possible, picking off the skirmish line as they contended with now-combative angels.

  I needed to think of something. Something other than the burning pain of the bullet holes in my body, my near-useless right arm and the burning scar across my face. I needed a plan to save us.

  Why did it always come down to me?

  “Riggs, do you have any ideas?” I asked.

  “Piss off. Busy here. Concentrating. Bleeding. Possibly dying.”

  Right. The ring took his concentration. Almost all of it. Every angel, while obeying him, was also fighting his command. And while they were powerful, Legion was better armed and there were more and more of them flooding into the courtyard. How the hell were they getting here?

  Damn, of course, Remiel. Or Wakinyan or whatever she was. She had be bringing them in. I guess she couldn’t bring herself to slaughter her own kin herself.

  So there I was, back to square one. It was up to me and I had no idea what I could do on a big enough scale to take them all down that wouldn’t kill us in the process. My current tactic was to shoot everything and hope someone smarter figured something out.

  I remember when I used to use my mind as a weapon as well as my guns. When I would see a situation and think my way through. But right now, it was hard to concentrate on anything but Riggs’s moaning. Besides being annoying, it was making it even harder to think.

  “Do me a favor and concentrate in silence please or I’ll rub salt in your chest wound.”

  “It’s . . . not me,” Riggs grunted.

  I looked down and realized it wasn’t. It was the Legion whom I’d shot in the gut for the Hydra comment and kicked in the face. He was waking up and moaning. He rolled to his side and then I noticed something. Something I was pretty sure was the answer we needed.

  I knelt down next to him and pushed his head to the side. He looked just liked the one I’d first met in the junkyard, complete with the implant above his right eye. The cyberlink was also the piece that detonated his head.

  I pulled it free and he screamed. “Shut up, asshole,” I said as I stood up and inspected the tech.

  “You should have killed me.”

  “I’ve been trying.”

  The Legion laughed and coughed. “When that being found the one of us you left in the waste, it offered all of us power if we killed you. I told it we’d do it for free.”

  “You made a bad deal, hoss,” I said as I shot him in the gut again while continuing to inspect the tech.

  Collective

  //ONLINE//

  Open short-range data port. Scan this tech and image through the bracer.

  //WORKING//

  I tapped my left bracer and opened a holo-terminal. A holographic image of the tech piece floated in midair as The Collective routed all the pertinent data though the image. The hologram of the tech came apart, exposing all the various pieces. It was a data link transponder with a biomedical telemetry transponder. But this piece was made by ARCTech. The logo was on the circuit board. The stylized three triangles forming a larger triangle wasn’t hard to miss.

  And there in the center of the board, next to the processor, was a small piece of solid state explosive. It was rigged to explode when the wearer activated it. It was DNA-link locked. Smart. That way no one else could activate it.

  Damn. But wait . . . what if whoever on the other end of the data link wanted to detonate it? That meant there had to be a signal trigger as well. I moved the holo image, looking for some kind of signal receiver.

  Nothing.

  Hmm. What if the receiver wasn’t in the tech, but in the host? I had a transmitter/receiver in my head. What if Legion did as well? I widened my search to include the moaning Legion.

  My scans showed that Legion was actually a tech-based endoskeleton with organic composite and synthetic tissue. That’s how he did it. He—they—weren’t born humans turned cyborg. Nor were they cultured clones. They were robotic first with all the required tech pre-installed and synth-tissue grown around it. Androids. Androids with a mapped human mind linked back to a central host. Time-saving and elegant. And there, within the interior tech, was the transmitter.

  It was encrypted, naturally. But I hadn’t come up against a code that The Collective couldn’t break. In a few moments, I had the self-destruct signal.

  Booya.

  This place was about get an R-rating in a very messy, Scanners sort of way.

  I deactivated the explosive tech I was holding. I didn’t need that going up in my hand. I prepared a signal pulse, one that would transmit the self-destruct code. I didn’t know the range of it just yet, but I figured this would be fun regardless.

  “If you’re squeamish, I’d turn away. We could be in a splash zone,” I said to Riggs.

  “What?”

  “Heh. Boom,” I said as I pressed the ENGAGE button.

  In a disgusting wave of brains and blood, the head of every Legion within a hundred yards of me exploded with a wet, popping crack. One moment they were engaged in a battle; the next they were coating angelic wings in fine pink mist and skull fragments. I think I just found my new favorite toy.

  The headless bodies dropped and hit the ground. The red, viscous synth blood stood in stark relief to the white stone. It was horribly beautiful.

  And suddenly, it was quiet. It happened so suddenly that I hadn’t realized how loud it had been. The noise of war was nothing compared to the deafening complete stillness.

  And in that quiet moment, when the battle simply stopped, everyone still standing, friend or foe, turned and looked at me. I had to fight the urge to look down and make sure I still had pants on and this wasn’t a naked-in-high-school dream.

  “I think . . . they’re waiting . . . for you to say something,” Riggs grunted.

  “Kneel before Zod!”

  Riggs chuckled and spit blood. “Don’t make me laugh, kid.”

  “You going to live?” I whispered.

  “Probably. Already feeling better. Exo suit is keeping me together and regulating my vitals. Nice tric
k there, by the way. Made your granddaddy proud.”

  “Shut it, Pappy,” I whispered harshly. “OK, Legion, or what’s left of you,” I yelled as loud as I could and prayed my voice didn’t crack. “If you want to keep breathing, drop your weapons! Now!”

  “Assertive.”

  I looked down at the wounded Riggs and narrowed my eyes. “Shut it. I make the quips, old man.”

  “Then get better at them.”

  “What’s it going to be?!” I yelled, ignoring Riggs.

  I was taking a big gamble here with both our lives, wounded as we were. The Legion who were still alive were out of range of the detonation signal. So I made sure that everyone could clearly see I had my hand was over the holographic glowing red, blow-your-head-off button. Legion knew how fast I could move. So I was fairly confident Legion would surrender.

  Instead, the remaining assassins looked at one another, then reached up and tore off their transmitter/receiver tech from above their eyes and threw them to the ground and backed away.

  Shit. I hadn’t thought of that.

  All at once the battle resumed. The Legion took up their weapons again and began firing at everything.

  “Shit!”

  “Yeah, shoulda seen that one coming,” Riggs chided.

  “Stop backseat saving,” I yelled. I dropped down next to Riggs, flat on my chest, holding up my arm, projecting an energy shield as best I could.

  I assumed that the hex bullets were rare; otherwise they would’ve used them by now. But if any of them had any more, we were done. At least the angels could possibly distract them long enough for me to think of another useless plan. “You have an idea, old man?”

  “Still controlling the angels. You’re on your own.”

  The wounded Legion who had been lying next to us, the one with two gutshot wounds, had quietly and crawled up next to the semi-aware Riggs. In a swift motion the android unsheathed his combat knife, grabbed Riggs’s right hand and brought the mini-machete down hard. Two swift chops and Riggs’s hand came free from his body.

  Riggs screamed and clutched his stump to his chest. I lunged at the Legion. The android must have had some sort of internal first aid, or at least a pain shutdown sub-routine and an adrenaline pump, because that little bastard scrambled away faster than I thought possible considering he had two energy rounds in his gut. As I lunged for him, he lashed out with a booted foot and caught me in my wounded shoulder and fractured clavicle.