Hell's Rejects (Chaos of the Covenant Book 1)

by M. R. Forbes

  Her skin burned as the Gift responded, extending to meet her needs, bringing the weapon to her. She caught the hilt, ready for round two.

  “Come on,” she said, waving Trin toward her. “You wanted a challenge, didn’t you?”

  Trin lashed out with a hand, sending another burst of energy forward. Abbey moved forward to meet it, bringing the sword up as she did, attacking the energy with the weapon as though it was a living thing she could kill. It burned around her, not even hitting the sword but moving to evade.

  “Die, damn you,” Trin shouted, bringing her hands together and then casting them out.

  Abbey felt the force of Trin’s power coming at her again, so much stronger this time. She thought of Hayley, and the idea that she might never see her daughter again. The anger spread across her flesh, the Gift threatening to tear her apart from the inside.

  Trin’s power hit her, but it didn’t harm her. The Gift became a wall, completely deflecting the attack.

  “How?” Trin said softly.

  Then Abbey Jumped again, bursting forward, speeding ahead faster than even she could believe. The assassin put her hands up to block, but Abbey dropped early, spinning low, hopping in and coming up, bringing the blade behind her in a powerful uppercut. She could feel the sharp edge slicing into the flesh, cutting in deep as she wrenched it with her, bouncing straight up, pulling Trin with it until it finally tore out through the neck.

  She landed, watching as Trin looked down at the wound. Her eyes were wide with shock, and she struggled to recover from the blow.

  Abbey raised the sword again. Trin’s flesh was already healing, knitting itself together, the blood along it thick and sticky and unlike any blood Abbey had ever seen before.

  She was vaguely aware of something behind her, and the sound of a hatch opening on a shuttle she couldn’t see.

  “Ursan,” Trin said softly.

  Abbey wasn’t taking any more chances. She cried out as she swung the blade, feeling the power of the Gift added to that of her hellsuit. The edge cut easily through Trin’s neck, decapitating her in one smooth blow.

  “Nooooo,” someone shouted behind her. Abbey barely had time to turn around when she was thrown forward by an unseen hand, knocked away from Trin’s body and sent tumbling once more. “Kill her.”

  She pushed herself to her feet, turning to face her attacker. A man, the only one in a lightsuit while the rest of his soldiers wore battlesuits. Their guns raised, all of them training on her at once.

  She felt the bullets begin to hit her, tearing into her, digging in deep or going clean through, even as she watched the man rush over to the fallen assassin, kneeling in front of her head. He was crying out in agony, his pained howls nearly drowning out the reports from his soldier’s rifles while he reached down and touched the face, stroking a lock of blue hair away from it.

  More and more slugs poured into her, the force of them knocking her back and then finally off her feet, bringing her to the ground. Her eyes filled with blood, her face wet and throbbing, every part of her on fire.

  She heard another howl then, unlike any other she had heard before. It was sharp and biting, the pitch high enough to cause pain if she hadn’t already been drowning in it. She struggled to lift her head, to see what was causing it.

  Then Gant was coming toward her, his laser pistol lighting up over and over again, a warning of the invisible flashes of dense energy he was firing, flashes that cut right through the visors of the enemy soldiers’ battlesuits with unerring accuracy. One, two, three, they fell in rapid succession, one after another as the Gant charged, screaming the entire time. The man at the head of the group looked up, raising his hand as if to throw Gant aside, gaining a surprised expression as he kept coming. The man reached down and picked up Trin’s head, cradling it as he ran back toward the shuttle, his soldiers following behind.

  “Queenie,” Gant said, reaching her. “Queenie!”

  She tried to smile. She couldn’t. Everything was dark. Everything hurt. There was only one gift she wanted right now.

  Rest.

  57

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” Bastion shouted, standing at the ramp onto the Faust with Ruby beside him. It took him a few seconds before he realized that Pik was carrying someone, and a few more seconds to figure out who it was. “Oh, shit. Queenie?”

  “What are you doing here?” Airi said, arriving ahead of the others. “We need to go, now.”

  She paused and pointed back to the soldiers in the field. They were burned and broken but still standing, their motions jerky but constant. Further away, a small mech was reaching the edge of the dust, turning to face their direction.

  “Queenie,” he said softly.

  “I don’t know,” Airi replied. “She’s in bad shape. Get us out of here.”

  Bastion recovered from his shock, racing back to the ladder and climbing it, hurrying to the cockpit. He found the incoming mech in the rear viewscreen, turning the wing mounted turrets toward it and firing. It sidestepped the first effort, returning fire that pinged against the craft’s armor before a second volley hit a leg and knocked it to the ground.

  “Everybody’s in,” Ruby said. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Benhil said. “Where’s Gant?”

  “Damn,” Airi said. “I’ll find him.”

  “There’s no time,” Benhil said. “We have to go.”

  “We don’t leave anyone behind.”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  Bastion scanned the rear viewscreen, and then put his eyes out of the forward transparency. The Gant was nowhere to be seen. Frag it. He hit the control to close the hatch, ending the argument in a hurry.

  “Strap in,” he said, pushing the thrust to max and increasing the anti-gravity. The Faust slid along the ground on its landers for a few hundred meters, kicking up a huge plume of dust before rising into the air and blasting away.

  Bastion kept his eyes forward, trying not to think about Abbey. For as much as he had feared her when she had first arrived in Hell, for as much as he had disliked her when she challenged him for leadership of the Rejects, he couldn’t argue that she was the solder that was holding them together, and the only reason they had managed to come together so quickly as a team. She had proven herself to each of them in individual ways. To him, as a decisive, strong leader who didn’t hesitate to take point. It didn’t matter if she was special. It didn’t matter that she was somehow bulletproof. She hadn’t known that when she took the lead on Orunel, and she certainly hadn’t been able to count on it now. Not with the amount of blood he had seen on her body, and on Pik’s battlesuit.

  It was a strange thought for him to have. It was a thought he would never have expected to have the day he pushed her away from the food dispenser to help Pok get his hands on her. He didn’t want her to die. If they were going to have any chance of survival, if they were going to have any chance at retrieving the Fire and Brimstone and being released, they needed her.

  The Faust broke through the dust, continuing to climb. The atmosphere gave way to the vacuum of space, and he set FTL coordinates for anywhere but here.

  The dark battleship was still in orbit, floating far enough away that Bastion didn’t need to be concerned. He checked his sensors for signs of the Brimstone. It was already gone.

  To where?

  It didn’t matter. The computer finished running its calculations, giving him the green light to make the acceleration. He hit the launch control, sending them blinking away.

  Except they didn’t blink away. They didn’t go to FTL at all. A soft tone sounded, a light flashing in the cockpit.

  “Oh, frag me,” Bastion said. “Ruby. We’ve got a problem.” He glanced to his left, watching Thraven’s battleship. It wasn’t paying them any mind.

  “What’s wrong?” Ruby asked, appearing in the cockpit.

  “I’m not sure. According to the diagnostics, we’re out of disterium.”

  “Now?”


  He held his hands out. “I didn’t do it. We’ve got four canisters in the hold. Ask Pik to help you replace it, and we’ll be on our way. I’ll keep an eye on the big ugly over there. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to give a shit about us.”

  “Roger,” Ruby replied, vanishing from the cockpit again.

  Bastion leaned back in the chair. “Fury, how’s Queenie?” he asked.

  “She’s.” Airi paused. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “We brought her to medical and strapped her down. She wasn’t breathing.”

  “You mean she’s dead?” Bastion leaned forward resting his head in his hands. They were screwed.

  “I don’t know,” Airi replied. “She wasn’t breathing. But you saw those soldiers planetside. You hit them dead-on with heavy plasma, and they got back up. Maybe she’ll get back up.”

  Bastion felt a chill. Would she? Could she? He doubted it.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said softly.

  “Lucifer, we’ve got the canister,” Ruby said. “We’re bringing it back to the engine room now.”

  “Thanks. When you’re done, see if you can get Captain Mann on the line.” He had no idea what he was going to tell him, but he had to tell him something.

  “Affirmative,” Ruby replied.

  He looked out the viewport again, finding the battleship in the distance. He could see the light of a thruster headed toward it, trailing behind one of the dropships. The battle had to be over then. But who the hell were the units already on the ground, the ones who had tried to defend the colony?

  He didn’t have a chance to think about it. One second, the space ahead of them was empty. The next, a ship shimmered into existence, the cloak that was hiding it falling away.

  The Brimstone.

  Why the frag hadn’t the sensors picked it up?

  He leaned forward, his hands at the controls, punching the Faust to max thrust as the starship opened fire, advanced railguns spewing heavy, piercing flechettes at almost point two cees, barely missing as they went up and over.

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” Bastion said, repeating the mantra as he worked to escape the warship. Entire fleets had fallen to the Brimstone, and he was flying a starship that should have been broken down for salvage years ago, with no immediate hope of escape.

  “Lucifer, what the hell is going on?” Ruby said.

  “Brimstone,” he replied. “She’s still here, damn it. Strap in.”

  “We can’t load the canister if we strap in.”

  “If we fly straight, we’re sure to die. If we don’t, maybe we can get away.”

  “How?”

  “Back to the planet?” Bastion suggested. “I don’t know. You’re the synth. Give me something I can use.”

  “Queenie ordered me not to respond to those kinds of requests.”

  “Damn it, I’m serious. You’ve got to have something in your databanks.”

  “I can tell you the odds of survival.”

  “I can figure that out for myself. Hold on.”

  He threw the Faust into a tight vector, feeling the force despite the inertial dampeners. The Brimstone was larger and turned more slowly, shifting to get an angle to fire. The maneuver brought him in line with Thraven’s battleship.

  His mouth opened, his heart racing. “Oh, hot fragging damn. I’ve got an idea. Ruby, do your best to get the canister as close to the engine room as possible. Don’t give me any shit about the rocking; you’ve got better balance than any Terran.”

  “Roger,” Ruby said. “What are you going to do?”

  “Hopefully put something between us that those assholes don’t want to hit.”

  He couldn’t increase the thrust, but by keeping it steady he continued to add velocity, moving away from the stolen starship. At least, he thought he was moving away. He cursed as the ship seemed to hop from one place in space to another, behind them one second, and ahead of them the next. He adjusted vectors as lasers lashed out, spearing the space around them so close he could almost feel the heat. It seemed impossible, but somehow they missed, tracing below them.

  Bastion angled the Faust in close, dropping low and under the Brimstone, constantly changing paths in order to throw off any targeting efforts while keeping an eye out for more incoming fire. They were closing on the other ship in a hurry, and as they streaked ahead of the Brimstone he aligned them with the other ship’s hull, hopeful the Brimstone’s commander wasn’t too eager to down a friendly.

  That hope was short-lived. The Brimstone continued to fire, lasers lancing out behind them, one of them finally making contact. The Faust shook, the computer blaring out warnings, the shields overloaded by the assault. Bastion cursed, adjusting vectors, rising and falling, rolling left and right, doing everything he could think of to keep the enemy warship from getting a lock.

  Then the laser fire stopped, the Faust drawing close to the battleship. Batteries from the other side took over, trying to get in one final volley before they were over and past, trying to score that one hit that would turn them into corpses and wreckage.

  Bastion didn’t know how they survived. He didn’t know how the battleship continued to miss, often by the skin of their teeth. The Faust drew within one hundred kilometers of the ship, a journey that would take only seconds to cross.

  The computer beeped again, indicating an enemy lock and the release of a torpedo.

  Bastion watched the HUD, the projectile moving at an impossible speed, jumping from the front of the Brimstone to their tails in the span of milliseconds. He clenched his eyes, waiting for the sudden fury of death.

  He opened them a second later when he realized he was still alive. Ahead of him, an explosion rocked the battleship, the torpedo slamming into it and detonating, the force sending debris out from the impact and causing secondary explosions along the hull.

  “Lucifer, the canister is in place and connected,” Ruby said, shaking him from his paralyzed amazement before it could get them killed.

  He adjusted vectors instead, turning away from the crumbling battleship and hitting the launch control once more.

  This time, the Faust disappeared.

  58

  Olus stood outside the Eagan estate, behind one of the large trees that composed the jungle canopy beyond the walls. It was late in the evening, the planet’s sun having barely settled behind the water, a darkness beginning to fall over the property.

  He had arrived on Feru two hours earlier, taking a shuttle from the Driver to the city before reaching out to Director Eagan to set up another meeting for the following day. He hadn’t spoken to Mars, being first received by an assistant and then passed on to Emily instead, but it was just as well. He didn’t need to speak to her. He only needed an excuse to be on the planet.

  He also didn’t know what was going to happen in the morning, when General Omsala asked after his report and he refused to respond to the request. Would the General go so far as to have him removed from his position as head of the OSI? Or would they prefer to keep him close, but not too close? The missing report could be forgiven depending on how the Committee, and by extension, the infiltrators who had gained control of the Committee, wanted to play their hand.

  Whatever. He had another job to do first.

  He pulled a small device from his softsuit, sticking it to the tree. The screen in the corner of his visor presented him with a detailed layout of the grounds, highlighting electronics the sensors in the device picked up, labeling each. Cameras, motion sensors, heat sensors, audio sensors. The estate was a fortress.

  He had been in plenty of those before.

  He memorized the pattern of the equipment, glancing at the buildings to get an idea of the positions. Then he removed the device from the tree and took out a second. He tossed it into the air, and it hung there a moment before moving ahead, taking a position a meter in front of him and sending data back to his TCU. The average grunt didn’t have access to this kind of tech
, but he wasn’t the average grunt.

  He moved to the wall, bouncing in his softsuit, rising ten meters and catching the lip of the wall. The bot stayed ahead of him as he moved, hugging the stone and sending out jamming signals within a thirty-meter radius. As long as he didn’t get in line with the cameras, he would be safe.

  He rolled to the other side and dropped onto the grounds, staying low and waiting to see if any alarms were tripped. He caught a bit of motion further off to his left and zoomed in to see a guard standing at a post near the corner of the mansion. He wouldn’t be a problem.

  Two quick hops across the grounds, carefully planned to avoid the cameras and motion sensors, and then he was at the wall of the mansion. The jamming bot hovered beside him, silent and dark, while he plotted his next course. He decided to head toward the guard, assuming there had to be an entrance there. He stayed low along the wall until he was close, and then he removed a small tube from a tightpack. He blew into it as the guard turned the corner, hitting him clean in the neck with a needle packing a concentrated sedative, jumping up and catching the man when he fell.

  “Easy,” he whispered, lowering the guard to the ground.

  Then he approached the side door, pulling out an extender and placing it on the control pad. System code ran along his visor, and he quickly tapped commands along his thigh, seeking a bypass for the security. He had it within a minute, unlocking the door and slipping inside.

  The visor switched itself to night vision, a clear view of the inside of the mansion coming into focus. The jamming bot still hovered beside him, disrupting signals to nearby equipment, including a camera pointed right at the door. The bot would be more effective inside where the ranges were shorter, as long as he moved quickly enough to prevent suspicion if the feeds were live-monitored.