by M. R. Forbes
“Can I help you?” one of the employees asked. He was a kid, no more than eighteen, wearing special gear that would allow him to peek into the different Construct nodes.
“Room Forty-six?” Pahaliah said.
“Over there,” he replied, pointing to a door that nearly vanished against the dark walls.
“Thanks,” Olus said.
They approached the room. The door slid open as they neared it. A small Rudin was waiting inside, standing beside a portable terminal. He was wearing a heavy drape over his body with so many pockets Olus couldn’t imagine what they were all for, though they seemed to all have something in them.
“Pahaliah?” the Rudin said, the name coming out oddly in clicks and snaps.
“Goillisi?”
“In the flesh,” the Rudin replied. “You must be Captain Mann. I’m honored to meet you.” He held out a tentacle. Olus took it, shaking it lightly. “Of course, you didn’t come to make small words. We’re looking for Nephilim.”
He used four of his tentacles to access the terminal, using the other four to hold himself up. They made quick, sharp movements in front of it, turning it on and cycling through data faster than Olus could manage to read it.
“I hope you are not offended, but I started without you. The less time we are together, the better it is for me. I barely inked my way out of my setup during the tri-towers job.”
“Did you just say inked?” Olus asked.
“Yes,” Goillisi replied. “Why?”
Olus shook his head. Every once in awhile someone with a sense of humor would do something like that with the translators. He was sure the Rudin didn’t mean the word as it had been presented.
“Nevermind. What have you found so far?”
“I’ve traced three hundred possible locations within a fifty-mile range of the city back to Nephilim holdings. Shell corporations, off world investors, and the like.”
“Three hundred?” Pahaliah said. “We have two hours to find the right location.”
“Less than that,” Olus said. “Once we have the right place, we need to work out how to approach it. You’re charging us an arm and a leg. Or at least two tentacles. You have thirty minutes.”
“Captain Mann, I’m an accomplished network infiltrator and data scientist, but I can’t work miracles. You should be impressed that I’ve managed to narrow the field as much as I have this quickly.”
“I know how much Pali is paying you. You can do better than that.”
“I swear, I can’t.”
“We’ll double the double,” Pahaliah said.
The Rudin’s tentacles quivered, betraying his excitement. “I’ll find a way. There’s always a way, isn’t there?”
Olus glanced at Pahaliah. It was her money. Or rather, her family’s. Still, he knew he could have convinced Goillisi to hurry it up without resorting to more bribery.
The Rudin’s tentacles slithered and snapped ahead of the projection, the different views moving rapidly in and out. The logical nature of the Rudin mind made them well-suited for this kind of work, and whenever one was able to break away from the species’ overall law-abiding nature, it made them doubly efficient.
Even so, it took nearly forty minutes for Goillisi to settle, his tentacles finally coming to rest beside the terminal. Olus had grown impatient well before then, and while he was experienced enough to keep it to himself, he had been just about ready to panic.
“I have it,” Goillisi said. “An abandoned power plant in the Catskills.” He lazily waved a tentacle, and the projection changed.
Olus leaned forward. The Rudin had tapped into a feed from the facility. It was the same camera view of Hayley that Ruche had provided hours earlier. It didn’t look like they had moved her at all. No food. No water. No bathroom. Her father was dead. Her mother was gone. He would have expected any child to be in tears. To look exhausted.
She didn’t. She was asleep, bound in the chair.
“Poor thing,” Pahaliah said.
“They don’t know you’re in there, right?” Olus said.
“Of course not. The tri-towers was different, and they only caught up to me because you tripped the datastore security. The plant’s systems are nowhere near as advanced or secure.”
“Give me your new identifier so we can communicate over the Galnet,” Olus said.
Goillisi transferred the data.
“The price was to find her,” he said. “Not to accompany you on the job.”
Olus glared at the Rudin. Goillisi was non-plussed.
“How much?” Pahaliah asked.
“You do understand that if that girl dies the entire galaxy could go up in flames?” Olus said.
“Mamma always said that it’s a big universe,” Goillisi replied. “There’s never nowhere to hide. Two million.”
“Million?” Olus said. “Mamma Oissi is dead because she thought she could escape this. Do you want to end up like her, too?”
“I won’t. I’m low profile. Invisible. A ghost.”
Olus stepped toward the Rudin, grabbing the pistol from under his coat. “You will be a ghost.”
“Olus,” Pahaliah said, getting between them. “I can pay it. But not right now. After.”
“Sorry, Pali,” Goillisi said. “You know the rules. Up front.”
“Half now, half later,” Pahaliah argued.
“No exceptions.”
Olus gently shoved Pahaliah aside, reaching out and grabbing the Rudin by the top of his head and shoving him back. Goillisi’s tentacles flailed, trying to grab him, but a hard squeeze caused enough pain that he lost the will to resist.
“You won’t get anything from me if you kill me,” Goillisi said.
“I’m not getting anything from you now, so what difference does it make?” Olus asked. “You can’t use any of the money you’ve earned if you’re dead.”
“Murder is a felony offense.”
“Are you joking? I’m already one of the most wanted Terrans on the planet.”
Goillisi’s eyes shifted to Pahaliah, pleading with her for intervention.
“You’ll get paid after,” she said.
“If I agree, how do you know I’ll stick around once you let me go?”
“If you’re invisible and I can’t find you, I’m sure I’ll be able to find someone that you care about,” Olus replied. “And this is too important for me to make idle threats about.”
“Okay,” Goillisi clacked. “Two million, post-paid. A one-time exception for you, Captain.”
Olus let him go. He sank on his tentacles, raising two of them to rub at his tender head.
“Now, give me everything you have on the plant,” Olus said. “Blueprints, schematics, camera feeds. I want to know who is there, how many of them there are, how they are armed, everything. We have one hour.”
“Yes, Captain,” Goillisi said.
Olus glanced back at the projection before it vanished. His eyes narrowed as he noticed the smallest bit of movement from Hayley’s wrists.
She wasn’t sleeping. She was trying to loosen the bonds.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Cage,” he said. “I’ll get you out, if for no other reason than I don’t want to be stuck within one hundred galaxies of your mother if anything happens to you.”
6
Olus checked the time again. Twelve thirty-nine. The vote was scheduled to happen in twenty-one minutes. That was how long they had to get Hayley out and inform Lorenti that she was safe.
He raised the Zip-10 to his shoulder and put his eye against the sight. The weapon was a throwback to another time, a time when personal skill was the ultimate difference between life and death. When there was no computer augmentation to aim. A time when only one round could be loaded per shot.
It was the weapon of a true craftsman. A master’s tool. A paintbrush instead of a camera. It was nearly three centuries old, one of a few hundred left in existence. Killshot had once been infamous for his use of the rifle to take out targets from up to four kilom
eters away. He was closer than that now, only half a klick, but the power of the weapon combined with the large caliber of its ammunition would be enough to reduce a head to a pulp as long as it hit the right spot.
And he always hit the right spot.
“Pali, I’m in position,” he said into his comm. “What’s your status?”
“Almost there,” she replied. “Standby.”
One of their minutes burned away.
“I’ve reached the rear access gate. Waiting for your mark.”
“Roger. Goillisi, give me a feed on the gate.”
“Transmitting, Captain,” the Rudin replied.
One of the items in the transport bot had been a pair of tactical goggles that connected to his seraphsuit’s SoC. While he couldn’t use it to aim his shots, he was able to bring up the feed Goillisi was sending in his submissive eye, getting a secondary look at the gate where Pahaliah was waiting. Two guards were stationed near it. Another two a little further back. Olus didn’t know if they were Converts or Children, and he didn’t care. He wasn’t taking chances either way.
“Be ready to switch feeds in order as we discussed,” Olus said.
“Roger, Captain.”
“Pali,” Olus said. “Mark.”
He squeezed the trigger as he said the word. Half a second later, the head of the guard on the left vanished. A second after that, the guard on the right fell, too.
Pahaliah used her seraphsuit to leap over the gate, drawing the attention of the secondary guards as they moved toward it, trying to figure out how and from where their companion’s deaths had come.
They didn’t have much time to think about it. Olus aimed and fired, grabbed the next round from beside him, loaded it into the Zip-10, and fired again.
Both targets lost their heads.
Pahaliah landed cleanly inside the facility.
“Next,” Olus said, loading another round.
The feed from Goillisi shifted, showing the camera near the south side of the gate. The guards there had already changed, revealing themselves as Goreshin. They were rushing toward Pahaliah on powerful limbs, nearing the corner of the main plant.
Trigger. Kill. Trigger. Kill.
Both Goreshin died before they could reach the corner. Olus reloaded. “Next.”
The camera on the other side. The Goreshin were getting close to Pahaliah, and she was bouncing back toward the ones he had just killed.
“Captain, Ruche is moving,” Goillisi announced.
He shifted his aim, the reticle falling on Pahaliah’s head. One of the Children was right behind her. He shifted three millimeters left and squeezed the trigger. The bullet came close enough to cut through some of her hair as it slammed into the Goreshin’s mouth and detonated.
“Frag,” Pahaliah said, the blood splattering onto her back. “Too close.”
He adjusted his aim and fired again, killing the other one.
“Where’s Ruche?” Olus asked.
“Tracking. Captain, the feeds are going dead. He’s manually killing the cameras.”
Olus had figured he would. He shifted his fingers to drop the feed, using both eyes to scan the plant below. He found three more targets, quickly dispatching them before getting to his feet. He was reluctant to leave the Zip behind, but it had done its job. Now he had to reach Hayley before the Evolent did.
“Killshot, I’m inside,” Pahaliah reported.
“Roger. Goillisi, give me something.”
“The cameras are dead, Captain.”
“It’s a fusion plant; there are other sensors inside.”
The Rudin clattered. “Of course. Standby.”
Olus took three steps toward the edge of the nearby bluff he was positioned on and jumped.
It wasn’t an ordinary jump, even with the assistive musculature of the suit. It was augmented by the Seraphim Gift, the Blood of the Shard, and it carried him hundreds of meters through the air. It made him more like a bird than a human, a massive leap that brought him over the wall and into the compound. He reached for the weapons on his hips as he neared the ground, bringing a gun to one hand and a Uin to the other. He still wasn’t overly confident with the Seraphim blade, but if he could disable his opponents with bullets first removing their heads wouldn’t be that difficult.
He hoped.
“Goillisi, what do you have?” he barked, straightening and dashing toward the building.
The Rudin had already figured out where the space they were keeping Hayley was, based on the positioning of the cameras and some other network hackery that he didn’t completely understand. It was enough that he had an idea where he was headed.
“There are heat sensors spread along the plant for the fire control systems. They’re sensitive, and I am using them to determine target locations. I can’t tell you which one is Ruche, though.”
“Something is better than nothing.”
Olus grunted, throwing himself to the side as a Goreshin pounced down at him from the rooftop. He came up, raising a forearm and blocking the creature with the strength of the Gift, bringing his arm around and firing right into its head. It shuddered and fell back, and he jumped at it, slicing its head off cleanly with the Uin.
He looked up at the concrete side of the structure. Hayley was on the other side of the stone. That was where he needed to be.
“Pali?” he said, asking for her status.
“I’ve got four Converts closing on me,” she replied. “I can handle them, but no sign of Ruche.”
“Roger,” Olus said. Ruche had gone to grab Hayley. It was the only thing that made sense.
He reached into a tightpack, producing a wad of putty. He rolled it into a ball in his hand and then threw it at the wall above. His aim was slightly off, but he reached out with the Gift, guiding the explosive to a more proper position.
Someone shot him.
He clenched his teeth in pain, diving away as the bullets kept coming, turning toward the source. Soldiers had reached his position. He took three more hits as he returned fire, squeezing off one round after another, each of them well-aimed, striking his targets in the forehead one by one. The soldiers froze momentarily, stumbling but not falling before something else took over. With jerky motions, they renewed their attack.
Olus put up his hands, still amazed when the slugs found purchase in the empty air, freezing and falling to the ground. He held the shield ahead of him while he turned back to the explosive. He moved his fingers, triggering its detonation.
The wall exploded outward, the debris falling around him and obscuring him in a cloud of dust. He dropped the shield, using the seraphsuit to leap the distance to the hole he had made, the hole that should have penetrated directly through to Hayley.
He landed inside. The charge had been shaped to blow outward, leaving the interior undamaged but still grainy with dust. His eyes landed on the chair where Hayley had been bound. The tie that had held her hands was unbroken on the floor. The straps that were holding her feet to the chair were open.
Hayley was gone.
For a moment, he thought he was too late. Then the door slid open.
Evolent Ruche was standing behind it.
7
They reacted to one another at the same time. Ruche raised his hand, sending his Gift outward toward Olus, intending to knock him back and out of the building. Olus put the Uin up as though it were a shield, his Gift countering, absorbing some of the blow.
Some, but not all. He was still pushed back, left only centimeters from the edge. He fired three times; his bullets stopped by the Evolent, who shifted his attention to deflect them. That split-second break allowed Olus to regain his footing and bounce forward, nearly slamming into Ruche before he was thrown aside by an invisible hand, crashing through the chair and into the wall.
“Olus,” Ruche said. “Where is she?”
He didn’t know? Olus could have laughed if the blow hadn’t broken his ribs.
“Gone,” Olus replied. He could feel his body bei
ng put back together. “But I’m here. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“You should know by now; we want everything.”
The force of the Nephilim Gift slammed him again, shoving him against the wall. He fought against it, the weaker Seraphim Gift giving him enough resistance that he was still able to move. He got the gun in line with Ruche again, forcing the Evolent to release him in order to block or avoid the projectiles.
“You aren’t going to get it,” Olus said. “Without Hayley, you’ve got nothing to bargain with. No leverage.”
He used Ruche’s distraction to bounce in again swinging the Uin, slashing down toward the Evolent’s chest. Ruche spun away, catching his wrist, dragging him into his other hand and punching him hard in the face. Olus took the hit, returning a hard kick of his own that slammed into Ruche’s leg, breaking the bones.
“We got Lorenti back,” he said, trying to back away. Olus didn’t let him, knowing that he had the best chance close up. He moved with the Evolent, pressing the attack. “That’s all we really needed.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Olus replied. “You’re assuming she’s going to vote in Thraven’s favor.” He slashed down with the Uin. When Ruche knocked it aside, he followed it up with a pair of bullets in the same place. They dug into Ruche’s gut, knocking him back. “Plus, I’ll finally get to kill you, which is a bonus.”
He slashed with the Uin again while the Evolent was off-guard. He felt the Nephilim Gift pressing the attack, but he met it with his own, refusing to let it knock him away. Ruche turned, getting his arm ahead of the Uin and taking the hit there, letting the blade sink deep into his arm and cut into the bone. He turned again, quickly enough that he yanked the weapon from Olus’ hand, leaving it embedded in his flesh.
Olus stumbled, surprised by the maneuver. That surprise caused his focus to waver, and then he was choking, the Gift wrapping around his throat and squeezing tight.
He tried to fight against it, putting his free hand to his neck, the palm warming from the flow of the Gift. Ruche was regaining his composure, his power increasing as he did. The Gift slammed against Olus again, knocking him back against the wall. He fell to the ground there, still trying to cast off the invisible noose, suddenly pinned.
