by M. R. Forbes
The miners kept up the charge behind him, fortified by having Tibor in the lead. He leaped into the air, overcoming Quark and landing behind the enemy, tearing into them from the back.
“Time to go,” Hayley said.
She sprinted across the concourse and away from the main fighting, heading for the metal stairs that clung to the side of the Pit next to the massive lift. She kept her Uin in hand, folded and ready to use at a moment’s notice.
Violent ran behind her, easily keeping pace with the added strength from the naniates.
They made it halfway before the soldiers above started shooting down at them, bullets cracking into the stone floor and throwing up small chunks of rock. Their aim wasn’t great from that height, and the fast forward motion made them hard to hit.
Hayley turned her head to the left, finding Quark, Tibor, and the miners nearly done with their first assault. The Nephilim soldiers were almost all out of commission, and only three of the Pit’s residents had fallen.
The soldiers on the rim of the Pit changed their targets, firing down on them. Quark’s head jerked slightly as a round hit his armor near the shoulder, bouncing off and cutting his ear. He spun quickly, dropping one of the rifles and aiming with two hands. A single round angled upward, hitting the shooter and collapsing him from the rim, sending him tumbling to the floor.
“We have to get up there,” Hayley said, motioning to the shooters.
Violent looked up, and then at her. Then she sprang forward, grabbing Hayley’s waist.
“Hold on,” she said.
“What?” Hayley replied. It was all she had time to get out before they were airborne, Violent leaping toward the top of the rim in one impossible bounce.
It was nearly a hundred meters to the rim, but the naniates had no trouble carrying them that far. They reached the top of the Pit, climbing over the heads of the soldiers shooting down at Quark and the others.
Violent let Hayley go, dropping her into the middle of the Nephilim squads. Hayley tucked her shoulder and rolled as she hit the ground, coming up in the center of the enemy squads. She snapped her Uin open, using it to block four rounds from a pistol before stepping out from behind it and planting her foot in the soldier’s face.
She spun on her other foot, pushing off with the strength of the lightsuit and bouncing three quick steps to the next soldier, slashing through his neck.
Then Violent was with her, grabbing the Nephilim soldiers and throwing them from the rim and into the pit. The shooters turned to fire at her, and Hayley swept into them, Uin flashing and dancing through their ranks.
The Shrikes screamed out of the Pit, rising in front of them and shooting away, preparing to turn to make another run.
“What are we supposed to do about those?” Violent asked.
Hayley didn’t answer. She froze in place as a blood-curdling howl echoed out from the Pit, rising along the quarry walls and belching from its mouth like the entire planet was crying out.
“What the…” Violent said.
Hayley didn’t need to see to know what it was.
White had arrived.
28
Her fear almost got her killed.
Not by White, but by a regular Nephilim soldier, one of the few still standing. He shot at her from twenty meters, his round hitting her bare shoulder and digging deep into her flesh.
The force of the impact knocked her sideways, and she cried out in sudden pain, falling to the dirt. Follow-up rounds chewed the ground around her, and she scrambled to escape, her vision blurry in response to the fire in her arm.
She could see the soldier’s trigger finger, and she brought the Uin up just in time to block a slug that would have hit her head. She felt another bullet smack her lightsuit near the calf, and a third near her gut.
Then the shooting stopped. She looked out from behind the Uin. Violent was there, the soldier on the ground beside her.
The Shrikes were streaking back their way, lining up for a strafing run. She looked back to the Pit, searching for an escape.
There was none.
She turned back toward the Shrikes, reaching out for Violent’s naniates. They were the only ones close enough to use.
Violent stumbled to the ground as the nano-machines abandoned her, rushing to Hayley and swirling around her in a cyclone of blue and gold. The Shrikes were approaching in a hurry, lined up next to one another and ready to open fire.
She threw the Meijo out at the machines, commanding the naniates to sever the connection between the pilots’ fire controls and the cannons that were about to tear both her and Violent to shreds.
Muzzle flashes signaled the first of the rounds firing, and a moment later they chewed the earth a dozen meters ahead and closing. Eleven. Ten. Nine. The projectiles worked their way toward her, coming even closer than that to Violent.
“Come on,” Hayley said, clenching her teeth and forcing the command out through the visor.
Seven meters. Six. Five.
“Come on!” she shouted.
The muzzle flashes stopped. The guns fell dead. The Shrikes streaked overhead, ducking back into the Pit, their weapons silenced.
Hayley collapsed. Her head was spinning. Her shoulder was burning.
White.
She remembered the Goreshin. She forced herself onto her stomach, crawling back to the edge of the Pit, a fresh round of fear causing her entire body to shake.
Quark was down there with White, and she was too spent to do anything to help him.
She dragged herself to the edge, cursing at herself to focus, to get the maelstrom of color under control so she could see what the hell was happening. The soldiers on the rim of the Pit were cleared, but that wouldn’t mean anything if they didn’t escape.
All of them.
She pulled herself forward, crawling one-armed on the ground like a snake, straining to stay awake with each movement. Her other arm was loose at her side, spilling blood on the ground beside her. She was lightheaded.
Focus, damn it.
The colors came back under control, but not without a lot of effort. She looked down into the Pit. White was a massive beast in the center of it, his qi blood red as he picked up another miner and tore him in half.
“Gant, where’s Quark?” she asked.
“One hundred meters down. Four meters to your right. Eight meters ahead.”
She looked where the AI recorded the Colonel’s beacon. There was Quark, hiding behind the remains of a metal shed with Tibor.
White was between the stairs and their location.
Shit.
“Witchy,” Violent said, coming up behind her. “You’re hit.”
“I’ll live,” she said quietly. “Get down.”
Violent dropped to the ground, sliding forward. “What did you do to me before?” she asked.
Hayley turned her head. The remaining naniates had returned to Violent when she released them.
“I borrowed your Meijo,” she said. “To disable the Shrikes. I don’t have any of my own.”
“Why not?”
“Long story. Quark and Tibor are stuck. We need to get them out.”
“How?”
“I have an idea. We lead White up here. The others will make a break for the stairs. When they start climbing, you grab White and throw him back into the Pit.”
“What if he grabs me first?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a risky plan.”
“Tibor,” White said, turning in a circle at the center of the concourse. “I know you’re here, little puppy. I can smell you. Come out and play with me, traitor.”
Hayley’s vision started to darken. She was too weak to do much of anything. Could Violent handle White the way she had Hoshus?
They were going to find out.
“Come on, Tibor,” White said. “I’ll tell you what. If you manage to pin me, I’ll let you and the Colonel go. What do you say?”
Tibor didn’t reply.
“What about you, Colon
el? The infamous Colonel Quark of the mother-fragging Riders. You’ve got a reputation, Colonel. I was looking forward to seeing if you could kill your way up to me. At least now we can skip the intermediaries.”
“Help me up,” Hayley said to Violent.
“What? You really want to go through with this?”
“Damn right. Help me up.”
Violent stood up. Hayley rolled over and reached up so the other woman could take her hands. She got to her feet, shaky but somehow managing to stay upright.
“Come on, Colonel,” White said. “What are you, afraid of me?”
Hayley winced. He wouldn’t be able to ignore that question.
“I’m not afraid of a damned thing,” Quark said, rising from his hiding place. He reached into a pocket on his armor, removing a cigar and using the smoldering wreck of the metal shed to light it.
“There you are,” White said, turning toward him. “I knew I smelled cheap aftershave.”
“You want to fight me, then?” Quark said, moving further out into the open.
“No. I want to rip your fragging head off. Where’s the data chip?”
“Don’t have it.”
“Bullshit.”
“If you say so. That won’t make it appear, and good luck pulling it out of my ass. The chip is long gone by now.”
Hayley was carrying the chip. She picked it out of a tightpack. Perfect.
“Hey, asshole!” she shouted. She took a step forward, her legs so weak that she nearly stumbled and fell into the Pit.
White turned his head, glaring up at her.
“Looking for this?”
Quark was glaring up at her, too. He was clearly unhappy with her for not making her escape. She could almost hear his voice in her head. “Hal. Damn it.”
“Yes,” White replied. “I am.”
He flexed his legs and leaped, only making it halfway up the side of the Pit with his first attempt. His claws caught in the rock, and he continued pulling himself upward as Hayley backed away from the edge.
Below, both Quark and Tibor ran for the stairs.
White pulled himself up and over the rim, rising to his feet in front of Hayley. She was still surprised by how large he was.
“Give it to me, and I won’t kill you,” he said.
“Try to take it from me, asshole.”
White hadn’t noticed Violent. He was too intent on getting the chip back. Hayley circled behind him, trying to get into position.
The Goreshin lowered himself, faking forward. Hayley moved to get out of the way, her lethargy slowing her to the point of uselessness. If he had intended to grab her, he could have.
White laughed. “You could at least offer a small challenge.”
Violent didn’t say anything as she took two quick steps toward him and then kicked him in the thigh. It didn’t look like she put much effort into it, but White was taken completely off-guard by the force of the blow. He slid sideways, claws scraping against the earth until the earth disappeared beneath him, appearing to hang in the air for a moment before vanishing over the rim.
Hayley scrambled to edge after him, looking over to watch him fall.
Only he didn’t fall. Somehow, he managed to get one of his claws back into the rock, scraping against it, sliding down, digging in and dangling from the side of the quarry.
“Damn it,’ Hayley cursed.
The Goreshin was swinging by one hand, and they only had seconds before he would plant his other hand and propel himself back up.
She doubted he would let Violent shove him off again.
His head shifted, looking up at her. The furious red of his qi had gone even brighter, showing a level of anger she had never experienced before.
He brought up his free hand, digging it into the rock. Again, and again, climbing up toward her.
“Witchy, run!”
She heard Quark’s voice to her left and down. She found him halfway up the stairs. He started shooting White in the side, slamming him with round after round.
The Goreshin cursed. “I’ll be right back,” he hissed. Then he bunched himself and sprang toward the stairs.
Toward Quark.
“No!” Hayley shouted. “This way, damn it.”
Tibor was near Quark, but he was climbing faster, already two platforms ahead. His qi was green and red and white. Fear. Anger. Shame.
What was he doing?
Quark kept firing as White approached, rounds peppering the Goreshin’s flesh, bursts of purple blossoming and shrinking. How could he heal so quickly?
Then he hit the stairwell, lashing out and slapping the rifle from Quark’s grip. He swung at the Colonel with his other hand, and Quark ducked beneath it, producing a long knife from his thigh and slashing it across White’s arm.
The wound turned purple. It didn’t heal as fast as the bullet wounds. The knife was coated in poison, a radioactive isotope that slowed the naniate healing process.
But there was no sign of naniates in the Goreshin’s bloodstream. No tell-tale mix of gold or silver or shimmering blue or white. So why was the poison helping?
Hayley didn’t know. What she did know was that it wasn’t helping enough.
White let Quark hit him with the knife again, trying to get around the Colonel’s furious attack to deliver a killing blow. Quark had been around a long time. He was no pushover. But there was no way he was going to win the fight.
And he knew it, she realized, her eyes flicking to Tibor, who had reached the top of the stairs and was running her way. He knew he would lose, but he could stall White long enough for them to escape.
Her heart stopped, the colors in her head fading slightly at the thought. She looked back to Quark, in time to see him leap up, slipping past White’s grab and throwing his body weight into the bastard’s head. It wasn’t enough to hurt him, but it was enough to push him back to the edge of the platform.
And off.
White and Quark tumbled back to the floor of the Pit, the Goreshin landing on top of the Colonel.
“No!” Hayley cried, her voice as weak as she was.
Then Tibor was there, sweeping her up and over her shoulder. She pounded his back with her fists.
“No, Tibor. He’s not dead. We don’t leave anyone behind.”
“I’m sorry,” Tibor replied. “He gave me an order.”
She stopped struggling immediately. Of course, he did.
Damn him for being the fragging hero.
Violent shouted, directing them to her car. As far as she could hear, the two Shrikes were gone, retreating to the city to have their weapons systems repaired. The soldiers on the rim were dead.
She shuddered as Tibor dropped her into the back of Violent’s racer, not ready to accept the truth.
Quark was dead.
29
The racer vibrated as it peeled across the Flats, engine whining at a tight pitch that made Hayley’s ears hurt. Or would have, if she had been alert enough to notice.
How had everything gone so wrong?
Her entire body shook, her head swimming in the colors produced by Tibor and Violent’s qi and the heat of the car. She couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t focus. She had pulled off the visor and was sobbing into her hands. Damn Quark for sacrificing himself for her. Damn him for saving her life.
Even through the storm of color, she could tell Violent and Tibor were worried about her. Tibor watched her while Violent drove, his eyes never wavering from her, even as the car shook and shuddered when it hit rougher patches of air bouncing up from the ground.
The Flats appeared endless from where they were, stretching out in all directions, a vast landscape of light brown and gray nothingness. Kelvar was a shit planet in the middle of the Fringe, which meant it was pretty much nowhere. They got water from underground glaciers that had formed a long time ago, pulling the moisture out and supplementing it with deliveries from large tankers. It was enough to last ten thousand years or so. A long time for humans. When it ran out? They wou
ld worry about it when it happened.
Hayley kept trying to shift her thoughts to the planet’s history. It was dull, and she was hoping that would help numb her to the pain in her shoulder and the loss of her second father. That’s what Quark was to her. That’s what he had been since he and Nibia had brought her to Koosa.
And now he was gone.
No. She wasn’t ready to accept that. She hadn’t seen his dead body. She didn’t think he could take on White. She didn’t think anyone could alone. But what if he had been captured? The Nephilim wanted the data chip she was still holding. Would they hold him prisoner to ensure she didn’t leave the planet?
She had a feeling they might.
Of course, that was assuming White had been able to control his rage, and she was less convinced of that. She had never seen anything’s qi burn as brightly as his. That alone was terrifying. She knew from Quark that emotions played a strong role in the way the naniates responded to individuals, depending on the origin of the naniates. For the Nephilim’s Gift, anger against them could reduce their effectiveness. Using them in anger would increase their power. For the Meijo, it depended on what you wanted to do. Healing took calm and compassion. For the naniates that had spread from Hell’s Gate? They were a mixture of every kind, and they were evolving, but it seemed anger still made them stronger.
Or did it? She hadn’t seen any sign of the naniate energy within White or any of the other enhanced Goreshin, Tibor included.
“Tibor,” she said softly, starting to settle a little.
Quark wouldn’t want her to cry. He would want her to figure out what she could do to either save him or avenge him, depending on whether or not he was dead. Since she didn’t know for sure one way or the other, she would assume save. Again. Captured twice in the same week? If he were alive, he would never live it down.
The thought brought a smile to her face. She needed that smile.
“Are you okay, Witchy?” Tibor said in response to the expression.
“Getting closer,” she replied. “Well, I can’t move my arm, and it fragging hurts. I’m hoping the Quasar’s med-bot is still functional, or things are going to be a lot more complicated.”
