“Where should we enter?”
“It doesn’t make any difference. The whole territory is rigged with sensors. Whether Valcua considered someone an ally or a foe determined whether or not they could enter. And we’ve probably long since come under his scrutiny. I believe he’s telling us we can come at him from any direction, whenever we like.”
“I’m surprised you made it in five thousand years ago,” the left hand said.
The answer to that was simple.
“The Sacred Ancestor gave us a device to negate the sensors. Also, merchants and travelers were able to pass through them."
It was because of this that Sue’s ancestor had met up with the three Nobles who were traveling to confront Valcua.
“In that case—a frontal assault it is, eh?” the left hand said, summarizing their plight nicely. “But before we do that, we might wanna ask that group hanging around up there what their situation is. If I’m not mistaken, that’d be a survey party from the Capital.”
By the border between dirt and steel were assembled wagons, cars, and other transports. Beside them stood sleeping quarters that resembled bisected cylinders. In the center a group of people had gathered, and they were staring in the direction of the count’s car. The first ones to come out weren’t really armed, but the ones who now bounded from the sleeping quarters carried automatic rifles, flamethrowers, and laser pistols. After all, an unknown vehicle was approaching.
A man stepped forward, his laser pistol leveled. A crimson beam of light angled down from his weapon, sinking into the dirt in front of the car. A section of ground a foot in diameter melted, sending vapor into the air.
“The impudence,” the count chuckled.
Sue turned to look at him and said, “Please, don’t.” For she’d sensed his urge to retaliate.
“Stop the car,” D said as he headed for the door.
Looking at the Hunter out of the corner of his eye, the count remarked sullenly, “Am I supposed to answer to your every command now?”
“Lives depend on it—yours, in particular,” D replied, at which the Nobleman’s displeasure became even more apparent.
“Halt,” Braujou ordered.
The instant they saw the young man in black appear, a kind of unvoiced shock rolled through the group of men like a wave. His good looks left them amazed, while his unearthly air numbed them to the bone.
“Is this a survey party?” D asked.
The men were exchanging glances when a tall and imposing figure appeared from one of the sleeping quarters, advancing to the front of the group with quick strides.
“We’re the second survey party sent out here by the Capital. I’m the leader—Otto’s the name.”
“I’m D.”
This time, it was an intense shock wave that passed through the men.
“You . . . you’re D?” Otto asked, his fearless visage tinged with wonder and excitement. “Even back in the Capital we’ve heard there’s a Hunter so good, mere money hardly seems payment enough. Who ever thought we’d run into you out here . . .”
Eyeing the car behind D, he asked, “That your ride?”
The young man before him and the car didn’t seem to jibe.
“Yes, for convenience’s sake,” D replied. Apparently he’d taken a liking to Otto.
Perhaps understanding as much, the survey-party leader grinned, saying, “Well, if there are Nobles to be slain, this job certainly calls for a Vampire Hunter. A bunch of folks have already set out and not made it back, but the man called D, now that’s—”
“You said you were the second survey party, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. The first one left a month back, but that was the last anyone heard of ’em. We got here two days ago and have been establishing our base camp, but tomorrow, we’ll finally set off.” “Hey, if it’s all right with you, why don’t you go with us?” a heavily bearded character called out to D. “You Vampire Hunters know all about how the Nobles live. Having you along would sure be a lot of help—wouldn’t it?”
The men to whom he directed that appeal nodded in unison. “Knock it off. You’re an embarrassment,” Otto yelled at the man. “He’s got his own job to do. And we’d just be in his way. Of course, he’d also be in ours.”
The leader was grinning at D again when a voice called out, “The scout’s back!”
A number of them ran to see. Otto looked in their direction, then turned back to D and said, “This’ll have to wait until later. The least we can do is swap in tel.”
Having said this, he turned and left.
“Now there’s a man among men,” the left hand remarked, sounding both impressed and mocking.
Of course, there was no reply.
II
After seeing the condition of the scout, Otto had to catch his breath. One of the man’s arms had been torn off at the shoulder, but due to the sterile blood-stanching bandages that he’d applied to it— most likely while fleeing—he’d somehow managed to keep himself alive. Otto estimated that he wouldn’t last another five minutes. His wounds were so grave, it was a miracle he’d even made it back.
“Are you the only one left?” one of the men asked. The reconnaissance party had set out with five men.
The man nodded. He and the men surrounding him had ghastly looks on their faces.
A doctor raced over to examine his wounds, and then walked away from the scout, shaking his head.
“What happened?”
The scout understood Otto’s question, but no voice came out. His ashen lips trembled. The light was swiftly fading from his bulging eyes.
“It’s no use, I guess,” Otto said, about to close the man’s eyes—as was often done to send off the dead—but just then a black figure cut across his field of view.
Seeing the gorgeous youth place his left hand against the dying man’s brow, the men looked at each other. Some of them even intoned spells. D’s great beauty and unearthly air made everything he did seem wondrous.
The light returned to the scout’s eyes. Cries of astonishment rang out, and the men focused on their compatriot, who’d seemingly returned from the dead.
“Can you hear me, Bolan? It’s me—Otto. How about the others? What happened?”
As Otto peered down at him, the man grabbed his shoulder with an emaciated hand. Otto grimaced. The man had ferocious strength.
“They all got killed ... Run for it... They’re ... coming... after me!”
Some of the men shot startled glances out over the black plain, but a deep blue darkness already covered the land, and they could see nothing.
“What do you mean by they?” asked another man.
“Glowing cylinders . . . with dozens of arms . . . They hoisted up the others . . . then injected ’em with something . . . and they dropped like flies. . .”
That was when it happened. Someone close to the plain shouted, “Something’s coming, and it’s glowing!”
For a second, the men stared at the scout’s face, and then they got to their feet.
“They’re coming . . . Run for it . . . There’s no use . . . fighting them.”
Bolan drew a deep breath, his body shuddered badly, and then he gave up the ghost.
Ignoring the noisy group around him, D stood up.
Bowing his head to the deceased, Otto said, “Thanks to you, D, we know what’s headed this way ain’t friendly. You have our thanks. Now I’m asking you to stand back.”
“Captain, why don’t we have him help us?” asked a man with belt upon belt of machine-gun ammo hanging around his neck, tossing his chin in D’s direction.
“He’s a private citizen. We take care of ourselves. Don’t go looking to others to do your work for you.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Enough yapping. Reinforce that barricade. Don’t let anything get within a hundred yards of us.”
Giving D a slap on the shoulder and bidding him farewell, Otto dashed off.
The doctor grabbed the corpse by the arm and dragged
it away. “You plan on just sitting back?” the left hand inquired.
“Those were his instructions.”
“That’s right. But that Otto guy, he’s not too bad, for a human. It’d be a shame for him to die for nothing, that’s—gaaah!” Clenching his fist tightly, D began walking back to the car that sat blackly in the darkness.
Fortunately, the glowing points’ approach was slow and meandering. Five minutes after spotting them, the survey party had finished setting up triple barricades of reinforced plastic and lightweight alloy shields across the front of the camp, and they were positioned for defensive action.
“Two hundred yards to contact,” a survey member peering through an infrared scope called out.
“At one hundred yards, open fire. And take real good aim.”
Not even waiting for Otto’s instructions, the men had already put the enemy in their rifle sights, and pale blue flames licked from nozzles of flamethrowers already filthy from oily smoke.
The glowing points had given way to their true shape. They were steadily approaching. Advancing smoothly, as if caution had been thrown to the wind, they sent unsettling ripples through the hearts of the defenders.
“One hundred yards!” the man with the scope called out, and simultaneously fiery streaks stained the twilight with red. Sparks flew where the men’s rounds hit the cylindrical bodies. The enemy’s advance was unaffected—each and every bullet slid right off its target.
“Fifty yards! Forty!”
The instant the lookout informed them the enemy had reached the thirty-yard mark, two plumes of fire assailed their foes. The flamethrowers had been biding their time. Right on target, the flames spread around the points they struck, but then quickly slid off. The outer skin of these cylindrical foes had been specially treated to shed oil just as easily as water.
The men heard the announcement for twenty yards. A massive explosion staggered the cylinders. Blasts in rapid succession enveloped their foes in smoke and flames. It was their final weapon— grenade launchers.
From the depths of that black smoke, silvery bodies came into view. They quickly peeled through the barricades, using their tentacles to tear them to pieces. At first appearing only a dozen feet long, they’d stretched to over sixty feet in length.
“Fall back. Make a run for it!”
Without even waiting for Otto to give his command, the men began to flee. One of the cylinders that had dismantled the barricade sent tentacles wriggling after them like serpents. Two men were captured. Their cries were like the gasps of dying men. Swiftly raising the men thirty feet off the ground, the cylinder used another tentacle to drive a needle into the base of each man’s neck.
“Son of a bitch!” Otto shouted when the pair of corpses had been discarded at his feet, and he drew the saber from his hip. Standing still, he landed a blow on the body of the approaching cylinder. All
the force he’d put behind it was reflected right back at him, numbing him from the wrist to the shoulder.
A tentacle coiled around the leader’s torso. In agony and suffocating, like he was caught in a steel ring, Otto started to black out. His face instantly turned deep purple, and tremors raced through every inch of him. As he struggled, another tentacle approached the nape of his neck. The needle at the end of it glowed mysteriously in the fire of the flamethrowers.
The cylinder that held Otto began to slide off at an angle. Severed electrical systems gave off pale-blue waves of electromagnetism.
Grabbed by the collar and pulled free, Otto revived. A young man of unearthly beauty was looking down at him. Forgetting his fear, forgetting even the pain in his waist, all he could do was stare in amazement.
“Can you move?” D asked him.
Returning to his senses, he replied, “Yeah, I’ll manage.” He still hadn’t worked free of that feeling of intoxication.
“Go.”
Thrown back with tremendous force, Otto hit the back of his head against the ground. Madly scrambling to his feet, he turned and looked.
Apparently the cylinders recognized D as their new opponent. Aside from a few that continued to pursue the men, the rest charged in unison at the black-garbed vision of beauty.
Otto stared, shocked. The things had been cut apart! Every time the blade in D’s right hand flashed out, the cylinders that were impervious to bullets and flames were bisected with laughable ease, sending up fountains of blue sparks from where they fell on the ground. Each and every tentacle that stretched out to capture D was left severed.
“Behind you!” someone shouted.
The cylinders pursuing the men had circled around behind D. Before the figure in black could leap with lightning speed, the tip of an enormous spear skewered two of the enemy, which were sent flying into the air. The cylinders disappeared into the sky, and a pair of blue flashes a good hundred yards off to the right vanished.
No cheers rang out. The men had seen something they were never meant to see: a Nobleman more than twelve feet tall.
“I suppose I needn’t have done that,” Count Braujou said. He’d seen D execute a backflip that took him clear of the cylinders even before the Nobleman’s long spear had pierced them.
The spear in the count’s right hand whistled through the wind as he swung it. The men around him cried out and cowered. The Noble hadn’t just been flexing his muscles. His actions had clearly been a threat.
“It . . . it’s a Noble!” someone stammered, and that was like a signal to open the floodgates.
“He’s fucking huge!”
“He’s a freak . . .”
The voices of all were faint, weak, tremulous.
A basic fear of the Nobility had been branded into the human subconscious. Some said this was a result of an “education” the Nobility had given the human race at a genetic level more than ten thousand years earlier, but all records from that time had been destroyed, leaving no way to confirm this. Despite the scientific edge the Nobility possessed, the fact that in ten long millennia the human race had showed no hint of rebellion could conceivably be linked to that fear. And since the Nobility also knew this, it stood to reason they would become rather arrogant. As he peered down at the humans from a height of twelve feet, Count Braujou’s eyes held a distinct gleam of scorn. But since the survey party would’ve been annihilated if he and D hadn’t been there, that was understandable.
“Have you heard all they have to say, D?” Braujou said, his voice making the people cringe again as it rained down from on high. It was like the angry peals of a thunder god.
“I’m done,” D replied, sheathing his sword.
“Do we have any reason to remain here?”
“No.”
“Then let’s go. Valcua has already taken the boy hostage and laid plans to annihilate us. It makes no difference when we set off, but we don’t have time to dawdle here.”
The count broke off there, and he wore an expression of mild surprise as he surveyed his surroundings.
A thirst for blood hung in the air. Every member of the survey party had a weapon trained on the count. The men were quaking audibly, and the barrels of their weapons seemed to release a dense lust for killing that would turn into an inferno. The humans had suddenly exhibited the other reaction Nobles inspired in them—the urge to destroy them.
D stepped between them. “He saved your crew,” the Hunter said to Otto.
Otto had a four-barreled firearm pointed at the count. “Yeah. And we thank him for that,” he replied, giving D a sideward glance. Hatred burned in his eyes. And even when those same eyes were emblazoned with the youth’s beauty, this abhorrence never waned. “We’re grateful to you, too. But there ain’t a man among us who hasn’t lost kin on account of the Nobility. The battle to clean out the Capital went on for twenty damned years.”
“So, hating others is one of life’s little pleasures?” a hoarse voice commented.
For a moment, Otto’s eyes were riveted to D’s left hip. Returning his gaze to the Hunter, he said, “Y
ou—you’re a dhampir, right? That being the case, do you understand how the feelings run on both sides? Or maybe you don’t know how either side feels? Well, if you intend to intervene here, I’m afraid we can’t let you do whatever suits you at the moment. Back off. Otherwise, you’ll have to call on your skill with that sword to kill us.”
“You can’t slay him. Do you intend to die before you can even do your job?”
“That don’t bother us none.”
The men to either side of Otto turned the barrels of their firearms and rivet guns on D.
“My kid died after my wife ripped his head off. She’d been bitten by a Noble the night before.”
“My family was used as game when the Nobles had a human hunt. My dad, my wife, and both my daughters were run down by a Noble’s carriage and squashed flat. I had to go claim the bodies. Each of ’em had been run over twice.”
“You’re a dhampir, right? Then get that sword of yours out. And put it to use against one side or the other. If possible, we’d like it to be against us. Because we’d just love to blow away a bastard with Noble blood in him.”
As madness eddied in their gazes, they reflected a pair of dark eyes that were cold and deep.
“D, don’t move,” the count said. “You don’t have to do a thing here. But I don’t want you to hold this against me later. The human in you, that is.”
Stillness descended. Every sight and sound had been absorbed by the madness of these two species. And it was all a million miles from D—both the human loathing and the Noble ire. He belonged to neither group. Would his sword be drawn, or would it remain in its scabbard? And if it did flash out . . . whom would it be used against?
In the early evening, the lust for blood congealed, seeking death.
III
“Please, wait!” an unexpected voice called out, pushing back the darkness and the will to kill.
The eyes of the men and the count—and even D—turned in unison toward the Nobleman’s car to behold the lithe figure that stood by its door. Sue ran forward, coming close enough that the men could make out her features. Unable to stand this volatile situation, the courageous girl had left the car. But how had she managed that? The vehicle’s main computer had been ordered not to let her leave under any circumstances.
Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four Page 11
