by M. R. Forbes
“What?” Gibli replied. “His beacon’s active and moving. If he’s dead, they’re taking his corpse.”
“I’ll find out. Get down here anyway; we’re going to need you.”
“Roger.”
The soldiers had almost reached her. The Goreshin were turning red, indicating they were about to charge.
She flexed her legs, spinning up her anti-gravity plate.
The Goreshin charged.
She charged back.
She sprinted toward them, somehow managing to keep her balance as she ran through the snow. They weren’t expecting the maneuver, and they tried to stop, not having the same luck decelerating as she had accelerating. Off-balance and off-guard, they stumbled in the snow. She fired her last two remaining rounds into the leader, knocking it down ahead of her. Then she jumped, hitting its back and vaulting upward, triggering the anti-grav for an extra boost.
She rose twenty meters, tucking her shoulder and smashing into a window and through as the soldiers starting shooting up at her back. She heard the rounds thunk into the side of the building, and then into the roof of the apartment she entered.
She tucked her arm, hitting the floor and rolling to her feet. The room was empty. She froze, struggling to get a read on it. Damn. She had to calm down. She had to focus.
“Gibli, where are you?” she asked.
“On my way, Witchy. I’ve got your beacon on the grid.”
“Do you see Quark?” she asked.
“Aye. It’s… shit. It just went offline.”
He sounded frightened. The thought of it scared her too. Quark was resistant to the Gift. He had so much experience against the Nephilim; he knew how best to challenge it. Fearless fury. It was easy to describe the method. It was much harder to follow it.
As far as she knew, the only person who had ever been able to take him with the Gift was her mother. If he had been captured or killed? She couldn’t begin to imagine what that meant, both for her and Black Squad in the immediate and for the rest of the galaxy in the future.
It didn’t matter. If any of the Riders were alive, she wasn’t about to abandon them.
She took a breath, focusing. The Meijo were all around her, but not as thick as they were on some worlds. She reached out to them, pushing them into a funnel ahead of her, using them like lidar to give her a map of the space.
She folded the Uin, holding it in her teeth while she grabbed a fresh magazine out of a tightpack and made the exchange. Then she returned the weapon to her right hand, holding her gun in her left.
She started running again, through a doorway to her right, turning left, vaulting furniture and reached the outer door. She pulled it open. There was a civilian on her left who froze at the sight of her. A soldier appeared to her right, hands positioned like he was holding a gun.
She threw herself to the ground as he fired, the rounds passing over her and hitting the civilian at her back. She bounced up, aiming and firing. Her first two rounds missed, hitting the back wall, detonating and creating twenty-centimeter holes in the synthcrete.
The third round didn’t miss. It was intended for Goreshin. When it hit the soldier and detonated, it nearly tore him in half.
She turned back to the civilian. He had no qi.
“Gant, how far to the target?”
“Two hundred meters forward. Fifty meters right.”
She heard footsteps on a nearby stairwell. More soldiers, if she had to guess. She wasn’t getting out that way.
There was nothing but a blank wall in front of her, just like the wall behind her. She paused for a moment. She had two more ten-round magazines for her pistol in her tightpacks. Twenty-seven total. How many would it take?
She decided to find out. She aimed and fired into the wall, grouping the rounds close together. They hit the synthcrete and detonated, blowing a hole through the wall to the outside and filling the air with a cloud of dust and debris.
She dropped the magazine out of the pistol, replacing it as she hurried to the hole. It wasn’t big enough. Was everything about this mission going to go wrong?
The stairwell at the opposite side of the hallway opened, a group of soldiers pouring out. She turned and crouched as they raised rifles her direction. They didn’t shoot. She didn’t know why at first until she realized they probably couldn’t see her through the haze.
But she could see them. Maybe she was getting out that way.
She fired, six quickly aimed rounds that hit the soldiers unaware, the explosive tips leaving them all dead on the floor. She charged back toward the soldiers, making it to the stairwell.
More Nephilim were coming up. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear them. She put away the Uin and placed her hand on the wall.
“The risers are eighteen centimeters by twenty-eight centimeters,” Gant informed her. “Don’t trip.”
“I won’t,” she said, lifting her feet to the appropriate height. It had become second-nature over the last seven years.
She ascended quickly, using the wall to guide her. She went up faster than the soldiers did, continuing for ten floors to the sixteenth.
“Witchy, I’m at ten-k and holding,” Gibli said. “I’ll drop on your beacon at your mark.”
“Roger,” Hayley replied. “Skies are clear?”
“So far, so good.”
“Door in two meters,” Gant announced.
She reached it, pushing.
“Locked door,” Gant said, the AI chittering the way the real thing did.
It had an odd sense of humor.
She leaned back and kicked, the synthetic muscles of the lightsuit adding enough power to dislodge the deadbolt and throw the door open. She charged out, back into the cold and snow. She was on a rooftop twenty stories up.
“Target?” she asked.
“Two hundred meters ahead, forty meters right.”
She made her way to the edge of the roof, crouching low to survey the warehouse. Not that she could see the building itself all that clearly, but she could see the individuals around it in shades of blue and red and green. There were more than the dozen guards the intel had suggested. Not all of them were alive.
At least not in the normal sense.
The Nephilim called them Servants. They were humans like her, who had been injected with or fed the Nephilim Gift. The difference was that for the Servants, their bodies didn’t survive the process. They became puppets to the Gift, slaves to the Venerant who held sway over it. They were shells for the machines, unable to die, unstoppable until their heads were removed from their bodies.
That they were here, that this Venerant was strong enough to control them, meant there was no fragging way this place was as simple as a waypoint for stolen children being bought and sold.
But if that were true, then what the hell was it?
6
It didn’t matter what this place was or wasn’t. The Venerant may have taken Quark, and that was more than reason enough to keep moving forward despite the odds.
First mission or not, she had been training for this her entire life.
And those assholes had her dad.
She heard the footsteps behind her, the Nephilim soldiers nearing the rooftop where she was crouching. She didn’t want to try to fight them. There were too many, and she was too open.
There were four guards monitoring things from the top of the building. Four Servants. They were spread out, and if she could hit them one at a time, she should be okay.
“Gant, distance to the warehouse rooftop?”
“Two hundred meters. Calculations suggest you can’t make the jump.”
“How did you come up with that? No, don’t answer.”
She needed her ears. The soldiers would be on the rooftop in seconds.
She moved a few meters back from the edge. The AI likely did the math with her standing still, not getting a running start. She took a single strong breath and then sprinted ahead, doing her best to gain momentum in the snow without slipping
and falling.
She was two steps from the edge when the first soldiers started clearing the stairwell, joining her on the rooftop. She planted her foot and bounced off, her foot sliding a few centimeters on the snow.
It was almost enough to kill her. She lifted into the air, anti-gravity plate reducing her mass and giving her a longer, higher leap. She spun herself around, watching the red of the soldier’s fingers and the flare of heat energy from the ends of their rifles. She couldn’t maneuver that well in the air, but she could tell their aim was off. The rounds were going to go short or wide.
She spun back again, reaching the apex of her leap and rotating back toward the warehouse. She could still hear the guns firing behind her, but there was nothing she could do about them now but hope they continued to miss.
Most of them did. One of them didn’t. A round hit her lightsuit at the back right below the anti-gravity plate. It didn’t make it through the protection to hurt her, but it did manage to hit something important. A shrill tone in her head signaled the equipment’s imminent failure.
Was she close enough to make it across?
She was arcing downward, carried further by her lessened mass. She rolled herself forward, spreading her body out to get more air resistance. The closest Servant on the warehouse roof had been alerted to her and was taking aim.
She called out to the Meijo. She couldn’t use it directly on herself. Immunity was immunity. She wouldn’t use it to harm any living thing either. She had taken a vow, and she would keep it with her dying breath.
But the Servants weren’t living things. Not really.
It was a minor but important loophole.
She shouted as she ordered the Meijo forward, a blue streak that stretched out from her arms and slammed into the Servant. It fell back without a sound, toppling onto the roof and sinking into the snow, the naniates swirling around it.
Hayley landed a moment later, diving into the snow, rolling over and sliding to a stop. She lifted her arms, and the naniates returned to the tattoos, leaving the Servant motionless. A silvery fluid drained from its nose, mouth, and ears.
She stumbled a step, putting her hand down to catch herself. There was a cost to using the Gift, in whatever form it took. For those with natural ability, using the naniates weakened the machines. The machines then took energy from the body to restore themselves, which in turn weakened the user.
It was a little different for her. They answered when she called them, but calling them took mental focus. She had learned to do it almost subconsciously over the years, but that didn’t mean the cost disappeared. While her body didn’t tire like the Gifted, her mind did. Too many commands and she would become dizzy, lethargic, confused, and ultimately unconscious.
“Witchy,” Gibli said, his voice grabbing her attention. “What’s the situation down there?”
“I’m on the warehouse,” she replied. “Standby.”
“Roger.”
She stood up, tracking the Servants. All three of them were converging on her location, though they hadn’t gained a line of sight yet. She started running again, toward the faint outline of what she assumed was a door. She tested the anti-grav as she ran, unhappy to discover it was offline.
She was near the door when a new sound caught her attention. She didn’t stop moving, but she did turn her head, to watch as a squadron of drones whined overhead. Where the frag had they come from?
“Gibli, you’ve got incoming,” she said.
“Are you sure?” he said. “Sensors are clear.”
What? She followed the drones. The heat of the machines was clear to her in shades of orange and red. “Positive,” she replied. “Evasive maneuvers.”
“Shit. How am I supposed to evade something I can’t see? I’m not you.”
“Fall back,” she suggested. “I’ll call you when I-”
A new heat signature sprouted from the drones. From all the drones. Rockets freed themselves from the machines, almost two-dozen in all.
“Gibli, incoming!” she said again, desperately trying to warn him.
There was nothing she could do but watch. Intel had said the Nephilim operation was as basic as they came. A weak-ass Venerant was trying to make a profit trading in children. It was twisted and disgusting, but standard for their kind. They held slaves in the Extant. They thought of anyone who wasn’t of their bloodline as objects, not living things. They weren’t supposed to have Children, Servants, or fragging drones.
Someone had sold them out. That much was obvious. Quark had no shortage of enemies, but enemies able to pull off something like this?
She was only halfway through the thought when the rockets hit their target. She heard the impact above and the immediate detonation of the dropship. She could see the flare of heat against the dark backdrop of the sky. Her body clenched, her eyes began to tear. Black Squad was getting torn apart, one piece at a time.
She fell to the ground as a bolt of plasma sizzled over her head. She rolled to her feet, firing back at the Servant. Her shot hit it in the side, leaving a gaping hole in the flesh. That was nowhere near enough to stop it.
The other two were behind her, closing in from both sides. She had let the drones distract her. It was another rookie mistake, the kind she couldn’t afford to keep making.
She grabbed her Uin, unfurling it as the Servant fired its plasma rifle again. She turned the weapon in front of her, using it to deflect the shot. Her rhodrinium Uin was worth more coin than she would ever see in her lifetime. It had been a gift from Don Pallimo. An apology of sorts.
She charged the Servant, firing a few rounds past the Uin. She hit the Servant in the leg, knocking it down before she reached it, jumping on it and slashing the Uin through its neck. Then she spun and raced back toward the door at the same time the remaining two Servants rounded the obstruction.
She slid on the ground, firing her gun at the door, hoping that the second time would work better than the first. Explosive rounds slammed into the metal, near the handle and the hinges. Superheated gas poured over her head, plasma bolts scraping past and steaming in the snow around her.
She neared the door, popping to her feet, using the force of her momentum to shove her shoulder against it. If it didn’t give, she was going to be in trouble.
It gave with a wrenching squeal, the weakened hinges failing along with the lock. She rode it until it bounced against the wall, throwing herself off and toward the dark pit in her vision. She tumbled down the first flight of steps, her lightsuit thankfully absorbing a large portion of the impact. It still hurt, but hurt was better than dead.
She got up, facing back toward the stairwell. The Servants were like machines, hard to kill but not very intelligent. They followed her through the door, entering one at a time. She shot each one, using the explosive rounds to take their legs out from under them, and then using her Uin to sever their heads.
“Clear,” she said to herself, taking a moment to catch her breath. Her shoulder hurt from hitting the door, and for the millionth time, she wished she could heal herself as well as she could heal others.
Then she was back in motion, using her hands on the wall to get her bearings and then starting down the steps. They were the same height and depth as the ones in the apartment building and she counted them off, reaching the next platform, turning, and continuing the descent.
She called her Meijo forward, lighting the way. There was no energy nearby. Nothing else she could use to guide her steps.
“Gant, tell me if Quark’s beacon comes back into range,” she said. If he were alive and in here, it would have to become active again at some point.
“Aye, Queenie,” it replied, chittering like an oversized squirrel.
“That’s not funny,” she said.
It didn’t respond.
She came to the first door out, opening it slowly and leaning past it. An empty corridor greeted her. Were all of the Venerant’s defenses positioned outside the building? She moved into the hallway. The
depth of darkness and the mingling of color on her right suggested a wall of glass, looking down into the warehouse below. There were life forms at the bottom. Dozens of individuals, human and otherwise. She wasn’t sure what they were doing there. They were just standing around. Waiting.
For what?
7
She kept walking to the opposite end of the corridor. Still confused, she kept her attention on the warehouse floor below. They were protecting an empty building? That didn’t make any sense. Or had the whole thing been a setup from the start? Maybe the warehouse had never been anything of importance to the Nephilim?
It seemed like things were getting worse with every discovery she made.
She crouched behind the glass, watching the energy of the individuals below. She could tell by the position of their hands they were holding weapons. But they weren’t moving much, and by the color of their qi, they seemed as confused as she was.
She didn’t have time to stand there and try to figure it out. She had to find Quark. She had to know whether or he was still alive, along with Currl and Neo. Then they had to get out of here. The Quasar was still out in space, waiting nearby. They just needed a way to contact it.
She was about to move on when she heard a noise below, tracking it to the corner of the warehouse. A door. Something was moving behind it. From the sound, it was probably a heavy lift, rising from below ground.
That answered one question, at least partially. The warehouse was a front. All the action was taking place below ground.
If that were true, then that’s where she would find Quark and the others.
She had to get down there.
She decided to go back the way she had come, running across the corridor to the stairwell. When she reached the other side, she glanced back at the lift.
The large doors obscuring it were sliding open. A woman had already walked out of the lift. Average height. Physically fit. The colors didn’t let her identify if a person was visually attractive or not. She had no idea if she was or wasn’t herself, not that it mattered. What did matter was the woman’s colors. They swirled with blue and gold and red. Not the red of violence, but a different color. A powerful color. She was filled with naniates. Her blood was thick with them.
