by O. J. Lowe
She’d seen his weapon before, he brought it out from behind his back, activated the blade with a push of the switch. A brilliant crimson-blue blade, almost purple where the colours met, erupted into existence and she could have sworn she saw the mask twist into a smile. The hilt of his weapon was unusual in that he’d designed it with a twist in it, like he’d started with a cylinder of metal and then bent it with the power of the Kjarn until it looked mangled and misshapen. Didn’t diminish the power, just added a quirk that hinted towards too much of the man’s ego. He wanted to be unique, he wanted to stand out from the shadow of the others.
He wasn’t considered the lowest of the lords for nothing. His ego had held him back, her old master had once confided in her. The other lords didn’t trust him. The princes certainly didn’t. A man who wouldn’t be missed should he be overthrown…
She couldn’t think about that right now. Her concentration was needed to be at its purest, she couldn’t afford to think about the risks or the rewards or the potential retribution. She didn’t even want to think about Wade and how she was going to explain this to him.
He was a big boy. He knew how the world worked. He’d understand. He’d trust her, she hoped.
Pree brought the cylinder she’d found in the crate out in front of her, held it up with both hands. If it didn’t work after all this, she probably wouldn’t live long enough to be able to regret it. Big grin to make it look like she had no fear. It had to work. Her thumb met the switch, she pushed it up, breathed the sigh of relief as the green-white blade emerged. Green wasn’t her colour, but it would do. She twisted her wrists, flexed her arms, spun the blade in a little salute that her master had taught her back in the day. She might be rusty, she knew that much. They didn’t duel much anymore. That might change with the return of the Vedo, but it was irrelevant now.
Wade’s eyes widened as the blade flickered into existence out of Pree’s hand, saw her do the contactless flurry. What the actual hells? He wondered if he’d taken a bang on the head, his eyes had to be deceiving him. It wasn’t possible? Was it?
The thoughts were starting to slide together, half-stories heard second-hand from Baxter, throwaway comments Pree had made while they’d been on the road together.
Oh my…
She studied him. He watched her with cool detachment, his weapon hung down at his side. He let it fall, rest the blade in the ground. She could see the molten furrow left behind by its touch, sword cutting through stone without difficulty, leaving a glowing tear behind its kiss. Neither of them wanted to make the first move, instead choosing to stare the other out. She knew what would happen if she charged in, he’d move the blade and hurl the discarded chunks of stone towards her in hopes of doing her some damage. That was his plan, she was certain of it.
Disrupt then. Her lips played into a smile, she made to look like she was about to move and saw his muscles twitch as kjarnblade ripped through stone. Her foot hit the ground and she moved, enhancing her speed. She was no Enhancile, but she could move when she needed to. It wasn’t a long-term solution, it might give her the edge she needed here. She found herself almost on him when shattered stones finally met air, she kicked herself to the side to evade, spat out a yell as rock met her leg, tore hard into the skin. She stumbled, fell to her knees and his blade would have taken her head off had she not used her momentum to keep going, hurled herself under the slash, felt it sweep above her head. She was back on her feet in an instant, caught his blade on hers as he tried to slash her open from behind. He was strong, the effort drove her back, she could see the teeth ground together beneath the mouth slit in his mask.
Pree grunted with the effort, both hands clasped firmly on her sword as she attempted to break the lock between the weapons, tried to stand her ground and force him back, fight for every second of life left to her. Only the final option was the one that gave her any success, she pushed back hard, kept it from going near her face. A wound like that on her skin, it might not have been fatal, but it would hurt like a bitch, as well as leaving a mark nobody would be able to ignore.
She’d kept her face clean of major scarring. That wasn’t about to change here.
Outpowered, she did what Unisco had taught her, forgetting the training that had come before. If you can’t win with the rules as they are, cheat and take the spoils your own way. She threw a kick out, caught him across the back of the knee and he let out a snarl of pain, his strength wavering for a crucial moment and she broke the lock, thrust out a fist towards his centre mass and watched the invisible force of the Kjarn blast him back from her. Not the most powerful hit but the job would do. She raised her kjarnblade, went on the offensive, hacking and slashing at him. Most landed on the weapon, one strike burning through Tarene’s sleeve, shearing it away. He hissed, continued to block her. He wasn’t struggling but neither was he having it all his own way. Her confidence might be rising but she couldn’t forget there was a gap in knowledge between him and her, the sort not easily surrendered. To know was to have power and to have power was to bear dominion.
He scooted back, danced out the way of her blade, spry for an older man. Not that it surprised her. Appearances could be deceptive and the Kjarn sustained a vitality that might otherwise be betrayed by an ageing frame. She went for him again, determined not to let him have that respite. He flung out a hand, she twisted to the side before the scalding water could hit her, felt it sear the air near her. A finger twitched, she sensed movement to her left and spun her blade up to cut through the crate. It wasn’t empty, she realised that as her weapon sheared through the wood and showered her in the contents. She hoped it was sand, a thousand little flecks of something covering her. Given this was Tarene’s vault, she didn’t like to think about the sort of stuff he might have locked up here.
Her blade span back, came to meet his inches from her throat. Her muscles screamed with the effort, she pushed back hard enough to force him away and slammed her weapon towards his face. Kjarnblade to the brain was fatal, she knew that. He’d know it too. He moved to block, she feinted, halted her swing and reversed down towards his sword arm. Cutting bits of him would do just as well for her. It was hard to be defensively solid when someone had just hacked one of your limbs off.
Whatever else she might think of him, he wasn’t stupid, jumped back out of range and suddenly she’d overreached herself, struggling for balance and a hammer blow struck her on the back. She hit the ground, chin crashing into the stone, her head going fuzzy. Her kjarnblade hissed out, died and then he was on her, snatched her up by the throat in one hand. She struggled, kicked out, didn’t come close to bothering him. Beneath the mask, his eyes didn’t change, locked onto her in detached disgust. Rather than acknowledge her efforts with words, he chose to squeeze.
“I hope this little outburst was worth the price,” he said. “You’ve failed, Ms Khan. Utterly. I fear Unisco is going to lose another agent today. Two, perhaps when I get your fellow thief and gut him.”
She couldn’t breathe, little gasps slipping out of her, the corners of her vision starting to darken. Harder and harder she tried to kick out at him, heard the laughter in his voice. Rage swept through her, powerful but impotent. She’d be unconscious in a moment, Wade didn’t stand a chance against him. Tarene was powerful, stronger than she’d given him credit for. She’d underestimated him, just as she’d hoped he’d underestimate her.
One does not rise to the rank of Lord without having something about them. Those words felt hollow consolation. In a fair fight, he’d demolish her.
A fair fight. The lights went on, the mention of Unisco had started to stir something and she knew she was going to win after all. Rather than claw at his fingers, she dropped her hand to her waist, snapped the holster open and she saw the look of surprise on his face as she jammed the muzzle of the X9S against his centre mass. Largest target imaginable. So many vital organs.
Just a little squeeze, she felt the vibration through her wrist and into her arm, but it was in Tarene
that she saw the biggest reaction. The blast tore through one side of him and out the other, his eyes widened in pain and a scream ripped from his lungs. He dropped her, she hit the ground and was already drawing her kjarnblade back towards her, her lungs gratefully sucking in every bit of air she could take. Everything spun around her, nothing would keep still for her, the world a whirlwind of motion. Regardless, she still had a fight for her survival and her will to live hadn’t faded simply because her head felt like someone had taken a hammer to it.
He hadn’t fallen, just doubled over in agony. When he rose, she could see straight through the hole in his stomach, ragged and oozing. It would leave one hells of a scar if it was left untended. His mask had fallen away, she could see the enraged face of Robert Allison now.
“You bitch!” he growled. “You’re going to die!”
“We’re all going to die,” she said. Her voice sounded like she’d been gargling saltwater and glass. Her kjarnblade hissed into life. Incredibly, he stood up straight, despite his injuries and stared at her, hatred hard on his face. She tried to keep the dismay off her own, she hoped that blast would have put him down. Her best guess, the Kjarn had to be keeping him on his feet, fuelled by his own pure rage.
Not the worst news she’d ever heard. Ignoring the pain or not, if she could keep him on the move, he’d really fuck himself up. Those injuries were fatal unless he got medical help or the respite to heal.
“Some of us sooner than others,” he said. She saw him coming at her a split-second before he did, had to move to stop him from bisecting her. Their blades sang as they met, crackles of energy bursting from their kiss. He’d abandoned finesse now in favour of force, his movements speeding up as he hammered at her, both hands on the hilt of his blade. With ever motion, fresh blood burst from his wound, she chose to retreat and defend for her life. Stand her ground. Forget about winning, focus on surviving. Even with the Kjarn holding him up, he had to be blocking out the pain, he wouldn’t last forever. His breathing was laboured, his face losing colour. Each blow he flung at her, she could sense a little less strength in it, each weaker and slower than the last.
Pree smiled, made sure he saw it. Beneath their feet, the floor was slick with his blood. His body was betraying him, they both knew it. As quickly as he’d engaged it, she made the switch, went from defence to attack. He got his blade up to block hers, just barely. She could feel him pushing back, his breath coming out in gasps. She forced him back, took a wild swipe out at his midriff with her foot. He tried to dodge back, couldn’t move fast enough, his legs unresponsive and he slipped, landed on his ass almost comically. His sword went flying, she threw out a hand and summoned it to her grip. The twisted hilt felt alien beneath her grasp, unusual but no less effective. He managed to scramble up, tried to reach for it and failed.
“You’re right,” she said. “Some of us do die sooner than others.”
She took his head off without thinking, saw it fly away through the air as it left his shoulders, bounce off somewhere in the shadows. His body fell, no longer a concern.
Wade couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. He’d hidden through the entire thing, gotten a good sight of it but decided not to interfere. No way he was getting caught in the middle of those two. There was something going on there he wasn’t going to be party to. If he’d interfered, he’d have died. That much he knew.
He looked at the headless body. Someone had died. A suspect. Someone they probably should have talked to. That was gone now. His partner looked a mess, coated in dirt and iron and blood, almost like she’d gone feral. It felt like he was seeing her for the first time, looking at her and realising what she was truly capable of. He’d never known. He’d never even suspected.
Pree deactivated the weapon, gave him an uneasy glance. Just for a moment, the fearsome woman he’d seen before was gone and the one he’d called a friend was back. It wasn’t even like there was anything physical about the difference. Just the impressions. One woman you couldn’t help but notice and one that just faded into the background. “Guess I’ve got some explaining to do, huh?”
“You… You’re a Vedo?” The words fell out of him. That was impossible, wasn’t it? He hadn’t heard anything about it. Clara had never mentioned it. Ruud had never mentioned it. As far as he knew, before all this, there hadn’t been any Vedo in Unisco ranks.
“No,” she said. “Not a Vedo.”
Chapter Seventeen. A Prelude to a Hunt.
“I’m personally not a big fan of that final examination. I know it has its merits, I know we all did it, but I think that it’s had its day. The way we’re going with technology developing the way it is, I think it’s getting harder to keep quiet that we’re doing it. If our enemies know that we do it, then it’s easier to pick off a field of unqualified cadets than a group of seasoned Unisco agents. I can’t dispute it as a test, but the logistics of performing it are becoming unreasonable. We’re already looking into alternative processes to deal with it. Something perhaps a little more balanced than cadet versus cadet.”
Tod Brumley on the final examination all Unisco academy trainees must complete before being permitted to graduate.
Present Day.
That damn simulation!
Theo wasn’t impressed, not an unusual state of mind for him, but his feedback had been less than satisfactory. They’d dropped it off for him the night, he’d found it in the morning, woken up to it on the footlocker at the base of his bed. Of course, he’d had to read it through. He thought he’d done rather well with the whole damn thing, to find out that they disagreed…
Too focused on revenge. That comment stung. The whole thing had been a simulation of being invaded, his focus had been on removing the threats. Who the hells did Konda think that he was?
An inquisitor, that was who. They’d been told all about them, how they had the belief that they were always right and everyone else was wrong, even when the evidence proved otherwise.
Liability to himself and those around him. Even harsher. They were being trained to be killers at the end of the day. They might talk about law and order, upholding justice but that was bullshit. When they taught them unarmed combat, when they’d given them blasters and told them how to shoot, they didn’t say shoot to wound. They made you hit the head and the heart. Not arms and legs. Everyone here got the same training. The sort you walked away from.
“How’d you do?”
He looked up at Roberts, scowled. He didn’t need the pity which would no doubt come his way. That might just lead to him throwing punches and then he’d be in further trouble. Jacobs had aced the damn thing by all accounts, of course he had, golden boy. Roberts, Tamale, Hill, they’d all run through it and had similar accounts. Only his way had been criticised.
He couldn’t appreciate the irony of it. He’d taken out every single enemy in the simulation, beaten them, killed them, crushed them. They’d had to generate more just to bring him down, had thrown fifty of them at him. He’d been pinned down in the end, ran out of shots in his blaster.
He rubbed his stomach. They might not be real, but those things stung when they hit you. He’d long worked out that the academy operated under the principle that stupidity should be painful. If it hurt, you remembered it. He’d never subscribed to that theory. Memories of pain faded. It didn’t linger, as the body healed, so did the mind.
Not everything was a criticism of his methods, he’d been relieved to say. They’d praised his tenacity, if not his judgement. They’d admired his skill, not in so many words but enough that he got the message, though they questioned his applications of it.
More than that, they’d wondered if he’d realised the point of it at the end. The whole ‘you-can’t-always-win’ thing. He’d not held much stock by that. What was the point if you couldn’t win? And he didn’t buy that it was so that you learned to accept defeat gracefully, that sounded like a crock of shit to him.
Paddington, Konda, even Stenner as she’d examined his burns from the blasts,
he’d said the same thing to all of them. If you couldn’t always win, what was the point?
He didn’t want to talk to anyone, just pulled on his trousers and shoved the results in a pocket. Dom Hill glanced at him, smirked to himself. If he said anything, Theo thought, he might just go for him. Smug bearded bastard. He’d always wanted to punch him, despite him being easily a head and shoulders taller than Theo. He got the feeling the instructors knew it as well, probably the reason they’d never been paired up in training.
Some of them were eerie like that. He supposed they’d seen it all before, they knew what to look for. Once you’d seen one sign, you’d seen them all. And he doubted he was the first cadet who wanted to hit another.
Dom Hill wasn’t actually a bad guy, as far as he could tell. No better or worse than any of them here. There was just something about him that couldn’t reconciliate with. Might be the beard. He didn’t trust beards.
He tried to sit alone as much as possible in the mess hall, he didn’t like company. He worked best as a solitary man, did what he could alone and only asked for help when he recognised that he needed it. Of course, realising when you needed it was a subjective thing. Stubbornness ran in the family, as much as he hated it, there wasn’t a lot he could do about that. He might get it from his father, he wasn’t willing to change it. People who spoke of wanting to change were deluded idiots. For better or for worse, people were who they were. They might talk a good game, they often didn’t play one. To change something about yourself was to deny your true nature.
