Hybrid (Tales of the Acheron Book 2)

by Rick Partlow

  Fontenot could move pretty fast; beyond just the added power of the bionics, she’d had a century to get used to them. She’d grabbed Weaver around the shoulders, slammed the storage locker shut and was across the room behind the cover of an industrial boring laser before the shooter could adjust their aim and put a burst through the space she’d just been standing in.

  Weaver crashed into her chest with a grunt of pained breath, and grimaced at her plaintively, with a look of incomprehension in his eyes, like he hadn’t realized what was going on. He figured it out when another blast of coherent light and ionized air passed just over their heads, some of it splashing into the other side of the machinery and sending up a shower of flashing sparks. He’d dropped the flashlight and it was still spinning slowly on its metal casing, sending a parade of shadows over the walls.

  Fontenot cursed, realizing she didn’t have a gun; the Marines had confiscated her weapons at the escape pod and things had been so hurried before that they’d never got around to giving it back. Weaver had a sidearm, though, and she saw him yanking it out of its hip holster, holding it in a confident, two-handed grip that told her that he’d at least taken it to the range a few times.

  “Where are the others?” the Chief yelled in her ear, though he needn’t have bothered; her cybernetic audio pickup was very sensitive.

  “Dead,” she told him, gesturing back toward the door before she realized he probably couldn’t even see her. The flashlight beam was shining against the far wall and most of the room was bathed in shadowy gloom.

  “Who the fuck is shooting at us?” Weaver bellowed, pitching his voice to carry across to the entrance. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “There’s no need for anyone else to die here, Chief Weaver.”

  Fontenot didn’t recognize the voice, but it was female and sounded confident and in charge.

  “Sanchez?” Disbelief was strong in Weaver’s squawked reply. “You fucking bitch! What the hell? Are you fucking insane?”

  He leaned around the edge of the machinery and blasted a shot in the woman’s general direction despite not being able to see much of anything. Fontenot grabbed his arm and yanked him back behind cover as the answering volley flashed around them in flares of vaporized plastic and metal.

  “It’s ‘Dr. Sanchez,’ if you please,” the woman insisted tautly. “Throw away your gun and come out with your hands up if you want to leave this room alive. I don’t want to kill you, I just want those explosives.”

  “Dr. Sanchez?” Fontenot demanded. “She’s that hard-ass that works with Nagle?”

  She hadn’t met the woman, but she recalled her name from Commander Busick’s earlier conversation with Ash, and while the way they’d talked about her made her sound like a real ass-kicker, Dr. Sanchez was probably the last person she’d expected to find behind a pulse carbine.

  “I’m not giving you any fucking explosives!” Weaver yelled back, enraged; Fontenot had to grab his shoulder to keep him from jumping up again. “You just murdered two of my people! I’m going to rip off your fucking head and shit down your throat!”

  “I’ve been stuck in this Goddamned hole for the last twenty fucking years!” the researcher screamed at them. She fired another burst over their heads. “I’m not going to let you Goddamned Fleet morons destroy everything I’ve worked for!”

  Fontenot put a hand on Weaver’s arm to keep him down, then jumped out from the other side of the laser borer and took a look back toward the door. The researcher, Sanchez, was standing in the door, in front of God and radar as her old Marine Drill Instructor had liked to say, looking incongruous with her baggy civilian clothes and a wicked-looking pulse carbine pouring heat out of its cooling vanes, her face screwed up with rage and determination behind a set of thin, civilian enhanced-optics glasses that would give her night vision and thermal imaging. She had a shoulder bag that Fontenot was fairly sure had spare magazines.

  Sanchez turned quickly towards Fontenot and shot off another short burst, but the cyborg was already back behind cover before the researcher’s finger had touched the trigger pad, and the white-hot pencils of ionized air dug harmless craters in the far wall. Fontenot steadied herself back behind the borer, then turned to Weaver. The man was blinking, squinting, trying to see anything in the worthless gleam of the fallen flashlight.

  “Give me your gun,” Fontenot said to him in a flat tone that brooked no argument.

  “What can you do with it that I can’t?” Weaver demanded, a bit petulantly.

  “See,” she answered simply, snatching the pistol out of his hand.

  His mouth worked as if he was going to object, but she was already in motion. She crouched with her feet underneath her and jumped out into a clear corridor of cement floor between the borer and the locker with the explosives. She skidded across the floor on her right shoulder, the pulse pistol held outstretched in her left hand. The good thing about both arms being cybernetic was that she was just as proficient with either one, and the bionic eye was on her left.

  The view from the ocular wasn’t ideal for shooting; there was no depth perception and everything was a hazy shade of green. But she’d done it before, so very many times, too many times. It was just too damned easy now.

  She touched the trigger for just a fraction of a second, feeling the tactile feedback through the sensors in the hand, feeling the HyperExplosive charges igniting inside the combustion chamber of the handgun, their heat energy pulsing through the lasing rod and out the focusing crystal. It was a three-round burst, and the ionized air traced a line through the room, connecting the focus crystal to Sanchez’ chest just long enough to form an afterimage across her natural eye.

  The researcher jerked backwards, trying to scream; it came out as a choked, wet gasp. She stumbled out of the doorway, putting one hand out to steady herself and letting the pulse carbine fall clattering to the floor. Fontenot pushed herself up on her right hand, getting her legs under her and rising quickly, keeping the gun trained on the other woman.

  Sanchez came up against the wall opposite the doorway, leaning into it with her right shoulder. She shuddered with a hacking cough and blood sprayed out onto the bare concrete. Fontenot walked up to her with long, slow steps, kicking the carbine away as she passed it.

  She wanted to say something sarcastic, wanted to tell Sanchez that for someone so smart, she was so incredibly stupid. But the researcher’s eyes were unfocused and she was slowly choking to death on her own blood, so Fontenot just backhanded her across the temple and crushed her skull. Sanchez slid down the wall, leaving a dark smear across it.

  Behind her, she sensed more than saw Weaver clambering out from cover to retrieve his flashlight.

  “You get that bitch?” he asked her.

  “The bitch is gotten.”

  She pulled the shoulder bag off Sanchez’ corpse and slung it around her neck, then stepped back to where she’d left the carbine. Weaver was checking the two docking bay technicians, and seeing what she already knew, that they were both dead.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, spitting on the floor next to them. “They weren’t much as far as crew goes, but they didn’t deserve to go like this.” He shook his head. “I gotta’ get the charges. We have to get back and get them in place while Kamara is still holding out.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Fontenot said, “given that the next part of it depended on the cooperation of Nagle and the researchers, well…” She gestured at Sanchez’ body. “Somehow, I don’t think things are going to go according to plan.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jagmeet Singh knew that something had gone wrong. He’d heard the commotion of the Marines moving through the corridor outside the medical clinic, then more footsteps heading off a different direction; that had been the first clue. Then the lights had gone out.

  “Oh, well, that’s just great,” the corpsman muttered from the table where he’d been sitting. He’d been reading from a hand-held tablet and the glow lit up his face in the
sudden darkness. “What now?”

  “I take it this isn’t something that happens on a regular basis?” Singh asked. He nearly chuckled at his own sudden curiosity. What did he care?

  The Fleet medic looked at him sidelong, like he was wondering whether he should talk to a prisoner.

  “Naw, man,” he finally answered. “This place has a fusion reactor and all the wiring is inside the fucking walls. How the hell is that gonna’ shut down?”

  “If someone shuts it down on purpose, I imagine,” Singh suggested easily, and the corpsman’s eyes went wide at the idea.

  A flashlight beam floated in through the open door, followed by Ashton Carpenter. He was wearing a gunbelt, a pulse pistol in one hand and the light in the other. He stopped by Singh’s bed, staring down at the bounty hunter with judgement weighing in the balance on his face.

  “Things are in the shitter,” he said. He had one of those nondescript voices, unremarkable, like a sales manager at a fabricator plant. He was trying to sound serious, but it came out like he was reporting a bad quarter to his employees. “The creature from the Metaurus is here, inside the base.”

  “What?” the corpsman blurted, fear strong in his voice. They both ignored him.

  “One of two things can happen now,” Ash went on. “The medic and I can leave you strapped in here and you’ll die, or you can help us try to get out of this and live to kill me another day.” He shrugged. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Singh knew what he should do. It shouldn’t have been a question. He would lie to the man who killed his wife, tell him that, of course, he was ready to help. Then he would wait for the first chance to kill him, and make his way out to kill the other, Sandi Hollande.

  “All right,” Singh said. “Let me out of this shit and I’ll do what I can.”

  Was he lying? He could see Ash trying to decide it, but he found himself wondering the same thing, and he still hadn’t made up his mind when Ash reached down and shut off the neural restraints. Feeling returned to his body, as did control of his bionics. Just a jab of that hand, a chop to Ash Carpenter’s neck, and he would have avenged Freya.

  Instead, he pushed himself up and stood before Ash. The pilot reached into the waistband of his borrowed fatigue pants and pulled out a second pulse pistol, handing it butt-first to Singh. The bounty hunter extended his natural hand and took the gun, checking its load instinctively, then nodding.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  Ash’s mouth quirked as if he found some sort of humor in all this.

  “Where we both belong,” the pilot said. “The Pit.”

  ***

  “What the hell is he doing here?” Fontenot demanded, levelling her pulse carbine at Singh’s chest one-handed, the other grasping the carry handle of a blasting charge.

  “We’re really not in any position to turn down help,” Ash told her, moving quickly to step between them.

  Busick had dug up some emergency lanterns from a storage closet and the subdued glow gave the operations room a conspiratorial atmosphere, full of flickering shadows. Fontenot and Weaver had arrived while he had been busy retrieving Singh and the corpsman, and all five of them were gathered near the doorway. Weaver seemed pretty doubtful about Singh’s inclusion as well, but he and Busick were occupied with running a check on the electronic timers for the other two charge containers. They’d been down in that storage locker for a long time, and only God knew how old they’d been before the DSI contractors had stowed them away.

  Fontenot lowered her weapon, scowling.

  “You don’t think he’s going to backshoot you the first chance he gets?”

  Ash started to deny it reflexively, but paused with the words unformed. Yeah, he was fairly sure that was exactly what was going to happen.

  “I’m hoping,” he replied, trying to be a bit more honest with his friend, “that he waits for a more convenient time for all of us.”

  “The detonators are functional,” Busick announced, looking over at them as if she hadn’t heard any of the interplay. “Let’s get down there and get them planted.”

  “The elevators aren’t working,” Weaver reminded her. “We’re going to have to pass right through Kamara’s defensive position.”

  Ash could tell that the Chief was holding himself back from finishing the thought: What if Kamara and all his Marines were already dead and the hybrid was in the Pit?

  “Ms. Fontenot,” Busick said, ignoring the comment, “if you wouldn’t mind handing off that blasting charge to Commander Carpenter, I’d like you walking point. The three of us carrying the explosives will be next, then you,” to the corpsman, “then Mr. Singh.” She eyed the bounty hunter, just the azure gleam of her eyes visible above the shadow the lanterns threw across her face. “If you’re going to abandon us,” she said to him, “this is the perfect chance to do it, but if you attempt to take a shot at Commander Carpenter, bear in mind he’s carrying enough explosives to bring down a hundred meters of tunnel.”

  She pulled a pulse pistol from her holster and held it at her right side, the case for the blasting charge hanging from her left hand.

  “Let’s go.”

  Ash took the case from Fontenot a bit gingerly, feeling an irrational fear that he might drop it, even though he knew it was way too stable to go off from just an impact. It was solid and massive with ten kilos of explosives and another five or so of the case material, but with only half Earth-normal gravity, it wasn’t too cumbersome. Fontenot seemed happy to hand it off to him, and she also didn’t seem at all upset about walking point. He could only guess she felt better having her fate in her own hands and having both those hands free to fight.

  “Don’t I get a gun?” the corpsman asked plaintively, shuffling into line just ahead of Singh, and staring with obvious discomfort at the bounty hunter’s weapon.

  Ash fell in behind Busick, and caught the look of disdain that Weaver gave the medic.

  “We’re fresh out, son,” he told the young enlisted man. “If that thing comes after the rest of us, just run like hell.” He pointed upward. “That way.”

  Ash had walked the path to the lift banks only hours ago, but it could have been a totally different planet in the dark. Fontenot’s carbine had an integrated weapon’s light, and the pulse pistols accepted military-issue flashlights on their accessory rails, but having the lights attached to their weapons meant they couldn’t point them at each other. Circles of illumination danced around as they all tried to cover a section of the corridor, but each of them was encased in their own personal sheath of darkness and Ash felt a thin sheen of unreality over everything.

  Maybe he’d wake up any second and find out this was all a nightmare, he thought, or maybe he’d never actually made it to the escape pod on the Metaurus and this was actually Hell. It had all the signs of it: trapped underground with other lost souls, separated from Sandi, hunted by something that could very easily be the devil himself…except that Nagle had called the hybrid a her.

  On second thought, maybe it was a good thing Sandi wasn’t here; at least she was outside, relatively safe compared to the rest of them. Except he knew her, and once she repaired the ship, she’d burn right over to the installation and then she and Kan-Ten would head right in after them. Sandi wouldn’t abandon him. If she could have, she would have done it back in the war. And if he could have abandoned her, he would have done it when she’d shown up and yanked him out of his boring, comfortable life and pulled her into a world of cartels and bounty hunters.

  They fell into a kind of pattern as they walked, a constantly-shifting back-and-forth scan that let each of the armed members of the party monitor every part of the hallway at least once as they passed it. Ash thought it was probably Fontenot who initiated it; she had more combat experience than probably anyone alive, he estimated. There were other people as old, of course---the gossip streams back in Trans-Angeles were constantly ooh-ing and ahh-ing about how many execs in the Corporate Council were over two hundred no
w---but most of them were rich enough that if they’d ever seen a day of service in the military, it was over a hundred years ago.

  He could live that long, he realized. He’d had the treatments because he was a military officer; it was one of the reasons he’d gone to the Academy, after seeing all the truly old people back in the projects. All he had to do was avoid getting killed in the next few minutes, and then somehow avoid dying in one of the crazy jobs they kept taking, or while running some errand for Fleet Intelligence like this…

  Concentrate, he chided himself. He kept letting his thoughts drift away, losing focus. It was too easy down here, too easy to do without a ship’s interface bringing all the data to him in a single, coherent picture. Here he had to piece it all together himself.

  “Gunny,” he heard Busick say, presumably into her ‘link pickup. “Do you read?”

  We must be getting close, he realized. Close enough that Busick thought the ‘links might work without the signal repeaters. But is there anyone left to hear us?

  “Roger that,” she said, responding to a transmission he couldn’t hear. “We’re coming in. Don’t shoot us.”

  One final curve, and he started to see the bodies. There were way too many of them, Kamara’s Marines, their armor torn apart, some of them with their heads ripped completely off. Bits of bone were scattered around the corpses, still sticky with blood that looked black in the low light. Other things, things Ash tried not to look at too closely, were splattered across the walls. Something roiled in his stomach and he forced himself not to close his eyes.

  Looking back, he saw Singh stooping to relieve one of the bodies of its Gauss rifle, swapping out a full mag spilling from a torn-open chest pouch for the empty one it had contained. He stood and held the rifle in his cybernetic left hand as if it weighed nothing, still using the pistol in his right for its flashlight.