Revenant

by Raymond Bayly

  simple and to the point:

  “Meet at Section 12, Module 8”.

  This referred to the shipping docks on the planet where cargo came in and out on a constant basis. Since it was always bustling with giant machines and people moving product to and from areas of the dock,

  she figured it was safe to assume the meeting would go unnoticed.

  Xera finished her drink as she quietly observed a group at a table not far from her.

  They looked around like tourists.

  One of them even spent most of his time consulting the local maps hovering over his table’s display. They were apparently not locals,

  and from what she could tell,

  they were jumpy about something.

  Every few minutes, they would pick up their data-pads, possibly looking at data stream updates.

  She hoped this wasn’t anything to do with the Nismel.

  If she just happened to be sitting in a bar with mercenaries, then it was a safe bet the planet was crawling with them.

  Xera shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  She had not been able to contact her teacher for days.

  Her entire home planet seemed to have gone dark, so something had to be happening there.

  Not being able to get any orders from the temple, or even any messages,

  she knew something was coming.

  She wasn’t sure what it was, but it couldn’t be good, and she hated not knowing.

  Xera took a few deep breaths to calm herself.

  She had to move forward.

  She knew the ship would end up here;

  she wasn’t sure how,

  but she just knew.

  Xera got up and walked out of the bar,

  heading for the shipping docks.

  She kept a keen eye out, and every once in a while, noticed more mercenaries.

  There were all types of them milling about and waiting.

  Some were glory boys;

  she could see them coming from a mile away,

  but it was those that hung in the shadows that bothered her.

  They were the ones to watch out for.

  This was definitely a concern.

  When the Nismel got here, things were going to get interesting.

  She picked up her pace even more.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTYTHREE

  Fireworks

  Blake saw Shira moving across the floor towards him at full tilt.

  Their eyes connected, and he could see the fear in hers.

  Just before the explosion blossomed above him,

  he flung himself off to the side and turned to land on his back.

  A hole opened up in the ceiling above where he had just been,

  not hesitating he began to fire explosive rounds, tearing apart heads and torsos of the marines as they tried to jump in and secure the area to finish springing their trap.

  More shots came and punched into the marines from his left,

  and Blake knew that Shira was also firing.

  Most of the coffin-like boxes he had been hiding behind had been disintegrated.

  Some had broken open, and bodies and fluids were strewn across the floor.

  It took Blake seconds to realize to his absolute horror those large boxes weren’t boxes,

  but stasis pods containing living beings.

  He searched his mind, and somewhere in the information he’d gained from Morgan,

  he had it…slavers.

  They were transporting slaves on this ship,

  but that couldn’t be what the Marines were protecting, could it?

  He didn’t have time to dwell on that now.

  More marines came pouring through the hole,

  and suddenly,

  he was in among them Blake dropped his rifle and pulled combat knives from their sheaths on his lower back.

  In an instant, every nerve in his body exploded with sensation as the nanite network in his body activated, increased speed, strength and senses washed through his body.

  He watched in shock as a Marine darted his hand to grip him and it slowed to almost a crawl, he had time to marvel at the new sensations his body was experiencing and still stepped out of the way almost with a casual gesture, Blake slashed upwards across the arm,

  cleanly slicing through the marine’s armor and taking the arm off near the elbow.

  At the same time, Blake’s second knife came up and punched through the underside of the marine’s helmet into the soft flesh beneath his chin.

  He spun around and noticed that everyone still seemed to move at almost a third of what their normal speed should have been.

  He watched as the Marines reacted to his presence far too slowly.

  He caught the arm of one marine,

  bent it back,

  and shoved one of the blades into his ribcage. Letting go of the arm,

  Blake pulled the blade,

  and half spun to slice it along the side of another marine’s neck.

  He finished his spin while driving his other knife into a third marine’s forehead.

  All the while, his mind was trying to come to terms what he was seeing,

  the strength it must take to drive a blade through armor,

  and the speed at which they were moving. Fundamentally he knew he had been enhanced,

  but Morgan had them train without using those enhancements to allow them the ability to use and gain their skills at normal speeds.

  This was incredible!

  He felt superhuman.

  He pulled his blade in time to parry a blow from another marine who had dropped down and drawn a sword.

  Shit on me! What are they, ninjas?

  Blake thought as he looked at the slender, straight blade coming at him.

  He parried it easily and brought his second knife up at a diagonal slash to lop the man’s hand off. Both the hand and sword dropped to the ground. After Shira was knocked backwards by the explosion, she had just recovered in time to watch Blake wad into the marine mass,

  leaving a trail of carnage in his wake.

  His arms blurred as they moved,

  his two blades glinting and flicking green blood from their edges as they moved in and out of bodies.

  She gaped in awe then remembered where she was and scrambled to her feet.

  She raised her carbine and gasped as she realized the augments were activating,

  allowing her time to line up her shots and take them.

  Anyone who did not fall to Blake’s blade was dropped by her gun.

  Within minutes, forty-seven Marines had come through the hole,

  and all lay dead at their feet.

  Blake and Shira had managed to decimate a force of one of the most feared creations of the Empire. “Jesus, what have we become?”

  Shira breathed as she looked towards Blake.

  “Are we even human anymore?”

  Blake just stared at the carnage around his feet.

  This would be more deaths that would burden his soul.

  No matter if they were friend or foe,

  they were just doing their job,

  and Blake knew he would remember them deep in the night with the rest of his demons that haunted him in his nightmares.

  “You want to know what we are?

  We are better.

  We are more.

  We are what we need to be,”

  he said coldly as he looked at her.

  “Now, let’s see what the hell they were so fired up to protect.”

  Blake was about to step out of the pile of bodies when he heard groaning.

  Pushing carcasses aside,

  he pulled out a feline-looking creature whose helmet had come off.

  Its right arm was bleeding profusely, apparently having caught one of Shira’s bullets.

  “Well, that’s a good kitty,” Blake said as he pushed it up against the wall.

  “Now, why don’t you tell me why the hell you’r
e here, and I won’t have to introduce you to my bad side.”

  He said grabbing the creature’s injured arm and squeezing.

  “I will never tell you!” the creature hissed.

  “You will die under the heel of the Empire,

  you insolent creature.

  How dare you stand against the will of the Emperor?” the marine spat at him, green blood spraying his face.

  “Where’s a rolled-up newspaper when you need one,” Blake said with a small, cold smile on his face. “Shira, would you be a dear and check the boxes? My friend and I are going to have a chat,

  and I would prefer if you didn’t see this.”

  Shira looked between the creature and Blake.

  The look in her captain's eyes was cold and feral,

  more so than that of the creature’s,

  and Shira was suddenly positive she didn’t want to see what he was about to do.

  She walked over to the other end of the bay and began opening boxes.

  A low whistle passed her lips…ammunition, enough to start a war.

  “It looks like we found what we came for.”

  She touched her earpiece,

  “Davi, how are we looking?”

  In a second a voice came back through.

  “Jesus, you’re alive! Thank God! You have no idea…I was out of my mind with worry.

  We saw the explosion on the data coming through, and then we couldn’t get you on coms. I was…” Shira cut him off.

  “Davi, shut up. I need a status update.” She barked trying to talk over the gush of emotion.

  Davi seemed to gain some semblance of control.

  “Yes, of course. We have control of all the freighters.

  As soon as they came online,

  Morgan took over their systems.

  The crews are now unconscious;

  the cargo is ours.

  If you engage the force shield and open the cargo door, we can start pulling cargo over with the grav-beam.” Davi replied,

  sending a picture and basic instructions on how to activate the shield.

  Shira reviewed it quickly,

  found the panel displayed in the picture

  and went to it easily engaging the shield around the door.

  It snapped to life with a pop,

  and a blue glow showed in the air in front of the door,

  she opened the large cargo door and looked out. The sight caught her breath in her chest.

  There was their ship,

  about 30 meters away.

  That close, it seemed huge.

  It was also somewhat comforting because if the ship weren’t blocking her view,

  she would see the entire expanse of space,

  and she wasn’t sure how her mind would process that.

  There is nothing that can be compared to standing on the edge of an abyss,

  looking at the infinite universe of stars.

  Shira backed away from the door and engaged the cargo bots.

  Having received their orders,

  they began pulling cargo boxes and pushing them out of the airlock.

  Blake walked up, covered up to his elbows in green viscous fluid Shira could assume was the creature's blood,

  she shuddered at the thought of what he would have to have done to cause that much blood to cover most of his arms

  but quickly dismissed it for now.

  They had a task to complete,

  and she was a soldier and knew how to compartmentalize such thoughts.

  “Our friend was reluctant, but finally came out with it. Unfortunately,

  he did not make it long after telling me.”

  Blake looked around, found a cloth, and began to clean his arms.

  “Apparently, there is a person of importance in stasis,

  some leader of a rebel faction who was being transported to prison.

  I want to talk to him.”

  He walked over to a wall and entered a code.

  There was a low hiss as a panel opened and a large box slid out.

  Blake looked into the box’s glass cover and stared into the eyes of something out of a nightmare.

  The creature was bright red with eyes,

  golden like the sun,

  which were stuck wide open while in stasis.

  Its face was practically bull-like,

  with long horns that curled down the sides of its head like a mane of hair.

  He was twice the size of a large human and twice as wide.

  Covered in muscle,

  it had hooves for feet and claws for hands.

  This creature looked incredibly fierce.

  Now, Blake knew why there were so many guards. Morgan’s voice was in his head before Blake could finish taking in the sight of the enormous creature. “Blake, I highly discourage you from opening that container. What you are looking at is a Doxvern, another of the Empire’s warrior races. It gets worse. According to the database kept by the Empire, this is the clan leader of the Davinos, the fiercest clan known to that race.

  In order to attain that status,

  this one would have had to kill every other contender in a bloody competition until he was the lone survivor.

  This was the greatest opponent of the Empire’s expansion until he was caught,

  and both his clan and race were decimated.

  The Empire was so afraid of these creatures that they blasted their planet into oblivion.

  This one was supposed to be a prize for the Emperor himself,

  cast from stasis into carbon,

  and then set to adorn the throne room.

  His name is Romulax,

  and I don’t know what will happen if you open that case”. Morgan finished

  Blake who was impressed with the speed at which she could access restricted files.

  Thought about it for a moment and realized this might go really south,

  and he wasn’t sure his augments could save him from such a beast.

  “Shira, you might want to stand back because I am probably about to do the dumbest thing I have ever tried.

  If you knew me longer,

  you’d know that alone is an epic statement,”

  he said. He began looking over the container for latches or levers to open the box.

  Shira looked from the box to Blake.

  “Boss, are you sure you really want to do this?

  I mean, no offense,

  but that guy looks like he could eat you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  I bet he could even do it all in one sitting,

  without breaking a sweat!”

  Shira said the concern in her voice evident

  “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence there, Sparky.

  Really, your pep talks are what gets me out of bed in the morning.”

  Blake said sarcastically and then smiled as he found a small panel on the side,

  flipping the cover open,

  the translation nanites quickly deciphered the text for him.

  He hit a big button,

  and the box began to vent,

  allowing the pressure and temperature to regulate to that of the room.

  Once the venting began to dissapate,

  the lid slowly lifted.

  Shira took two giant steps back and trained her carbine on the box as cold air met the warm atmosphere of the bay and turned into a white mist which began to crawl out over the edge of the case and slowly slide across the floor,

  like octopus’s tentacles snaking out for a meal.

  She had an irrational fear that it might reach out and grab her,

  so, she took another tentative step back.

  Blake peered into the box and tried to observe the creature.

  He started to realize this was probably a horrible idea just before a large claw shot up and closed around his throat,

  cutting off his windpipe.

  He grasped at the claw to pry it off,

  but he would have had better luck mo
ving Mount Rushmore.

  “Shiiiit!” Blake gasped as the creature sat up and stared directly at him.

  Romulax growled and canted his head to the side to get a good look at Blake.

  “Guys, this thing is holding the Captain like a damn rag doll, so quick question…”

  Shira yelled on the team channel.

  “If I hit it with a full clip of explosive rounds, it’s only going to get pissed off, right?”

  Davi’s voice came back on the channel.

  “You would have a good chance of killing it,

  but not before it ripped you in two or killed the Captain.

  Did you find my blue thing?”

  Davi asked hopefully.

  Blake looked over at Shira and gave her a what the fuck glance as his eyes teared up from lack of oxygen.

  She returned his gaze with a shrug and held up her hands as if to say,

  “not my problem.”

  Blake reared back and kicked the creature in the stomach as hard as his augmented leg would allow,

  It pushed him back into the pod from the force, which he easily shook off.

  Instead, it smiled and shook its head.

  Oh fuck, I’m dead, Blake thought as blackness began to creep into his peripheral vision.

  Shira quickly switched out to a full mag as she took a few more steps back,

  then aimed her carbine at the creature’s head.

  Shira would have to tell Davi that some incendiary rounds might be useful if they got out of this alive. “Put him down, you overgrown bull!”

  Shira said with as much force as she could muster. Blake, close to passing out, couldn’t quite make out what she was saying.

  All he could see were those angry eyes and the silvery, sparkly blackness of looming death.

  With his last breath,

  he tried to speak loud enough for Shira to hear him. “Shoot the fucker,” he said,

  but it came out as “Shit Fucker.”

  Stupid poor impulse control, he thought.

  Well, there was nothing for him now but to see how this played out.

  There was no fear in the creature’s eyes as it tracked the room.

  It looked at the bodies,

  Tracked the two combatants,

  then assessed the room and the damage.

  It just held Blake there,

  though its hand seemed to relax a little on his throat.

  Its eyes shifted between Shira and Blake.

  After a long moment of silence,

  his low, gruff voice said,