by Dante King
I didn't know what kind of Enforcer tech had Skrew so scared, but whatever it was, I could overcome it. But maybe his suggestion to set a trap wasn’t such a bad idea.
“Show me where,” I replied.
He bolted upright and ran into the forest. I kept up with him but wondered if we’d make it in time. So, I hoisted him under one arm and poured on the speed. He held onto me with three arms and pointed where he wanted me to run with the fourth.
We were there in seconds.
“This is the same path?” I set him on his shaky feet.
“Yes. Same path.”
I looked around for trap-making material, something I could put together fast. I thought about what I had on me. What could I make by using my new sword? Nothing immediately presented itself, and I came up empty-handed. Then I remembered I was stronger than I’d ever been. The most abundant material I had around me was wood—trees.
“Stay quiet,” I said to Skrew. “I have a plan.”
“Jacob has plan!” he yelled.
I winced and slapped my hand over his mouth to keep him quiet.
He was absolutely giddy with anticipation. I thought I might need to gag him, tie him up, and stash him somewhere until it was all over.
“Enforcers so going to have a headache,” Skrew whispered after I released him.
I poked him in the ribs and put a finger to my lips. He flinched, nodded, and clamped two hands over his mouth. I could still hear him giggling but just barely. Unless Enforcers had enhanced hearing, he wasn’t making enough noise to alert them.
The woman with the bright scales on her neck came around the corner first. Her heavy breathing was loud, a hollow sound that indicated a larger set of lungs, but she appeared mostly human otherwise. She dragged her feet like she was almost ready to collapse with exhaustion.
The armored Enforcers came into view as soon as she passed. Unlike the woman, they weren’t winded at all. They must have been equipped with some kind of endurance tech. Either it was tech, or their bodies had evolved to sprint at top speed for countless hours.
Skrew made a little sound of joy, but I let it go. I didn’t have time to scold him, and I didn’t want to give away our position in the bush behind the biggest tree on the trail.
As soon as the first armored brute neared, I pushed hard against the tree, and it snapped at the trunk with a deafening crack. The Enforcer didn’t even see it coming before the tree flattened him like a pancake.
The other Enforcers immediately halted, but I didn’t give them time to get their bearings. I rammed my shoulder against another tree, and the second alien looked up just in time to see what his own insides looked like as the falling tree crushed his helmeted head deep into his torso. The final Enforcer tried to stop but stumbled over the splintered trunk and scrambled to get back up.
“Jacob missed one,” Skrew noted.
“Yeah,” I said as I drew my sword.
The Enforcer saw me, rolled backward to put some distance between us, and tapped a red gem on his armor near his throat. I heard a powerful forcefield materialize around him. Unlike regular forcefields, which sometimes sparkled when struck, the Enforcer’s sparkled all the time. And it was a sickly shade of red, darker than blood, but crawling with electricity-like spiderwebs of an intense yellow.
It felt like a furnace door had just been opened, exposing the entire front of my body to dry, scorching heat. Although I felt the sensation of heat, I didn’t get burned. The red-hot field continued to suck the moisture out of the air and set nearby leaves ablaze. The tech seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it.
I needed some time to think, so I leaped five yards to my right and placed the big tree between us. From there, I started backing up slowly.
The girl was gone. I hoped Skrew had also made himself scarce because when the Enforcer came for me, it would be around the side of the tree where he was hiding. The other way was about 40 yards further, and Enforcers didn’t seem to be the kind of creatures who—
A crackling hiss sounded from the other side of the tree. Acrid smoke began to fill the windless path, then I remembered what I’d heard of such forcefields.
It was in training I’d attended years ago. They were called “plasma fields.” They could burn everything that got within range. But our scientists couldn’t make them work. Someone, it seemed, had.
I glanced at the void-black blade of my sword. I had no idea what material it was made of, but it was tough. Plasma, however, didn’t care how “tough” things were. It melted, burned, or otherwise destroyed everything it touched. It was the ultimate small-scale weapon. All the Enforcer had to do, once the field had burned its way through the log, was walk close enough to me.
I’d be turned to ash in a second, maybe less.
If I could poke the button, the one at his throat, with the tip of my sword—no, that was ridiculous. Sure, the Enforcer would have to drop his guard and reactivate the shield, giving me a few seconds to show him what his brains looked like, but such a precision shot at such a small target… it was a low-percentage move. But against tech like this, I had to improvise.
Worst case, I’d go for the quick kill. If my blade could survive 30 seconds, maybe it would be enough time.
I had to change my plans again about five seconds later when the Enforcer emerged from the burning hole he had created by walking through the trunk, flicking his wrist, and producing a three-foot-long plasma blade. It was the same red and yellow as the rest of the forcefield.
Impressive.
I must have made a face because something caused the Enforcer to growl. I couldn’t help it. For as intimidating as he looked, his growl was so high-pitched, it made me think of some kind of Saturday morning cartoon for little girls.
“Do it again,” I jeered. “That was cute.”
I couldn’t see his eyes due to the blue helmet visor, but I saw his mouth swing open, revealing dirty teeth and a pink tongue.
Good, I thought. Flesh. That means he bleeds.
The Enforcer marched forward, and I kept my sword pointed at the ground until I was certain he was within range. I snapped the blade up and across the creature’s face. He flinched as sparks crackled off his forcefield.
When I lifted my weapon to see if there was anything left of it, I was a little surprised that it was unharmed. Any normal metal would at least be glowing from the heat. The weapon I’d pulled from the dragon wasn’t just another blade. It was something special.
The Enforcer looked just as surprised, both by the unharmed blade and the blood dripping from the cut between his bottom lip and chin. He licked the blood away and smacked his lips like I’d done him a tasty favor. The Enforcer produced a little howl, almost like a disgruntled puppy, and swung his plasma blade.
The swing was sloppy, telegraphed, and easy to intercept. At least, it would have been easy to intercept if my sword had done anything except harmlessly pass through the Enforcer’s plasma-blade as if it wasn’t even there.
I saw it happen and managed to throw myself backward, tucking into a ball at the last moment. I landed on my feet and instinctively brought a hand to my forehead. I wasn’t injured, but he’d taken a slice out of an eyebrow.
This is going to be an interesting fight.
We circled each other a few times, each of us unwilling to make the first move. The only defense we had was distance. My only offense was my speed, so I decided to use it.
I attacked, sending several jabs at the Enforcer’s feet. He danced away and swung his sword down in a wide arc to burn me in half. But I rolled to the side and kept rolling. A wave of heat washed over me as it trailed from the Enforcer’s blade.
I jumped to my feet and answered with two quick jabs to the alien’s thigh. My sword, it seemed, didn’t care for armor. I barely felt the impact as the blade sliced through metal plates, and the creature screeched in pain.
I took a big step back as he thrust his plasma blade. Normally, I would have knocked the offending sword
aside and punished the attacker by slicing his forearm or his neck if I was close enough. But I had to stay out of reach. I could lose my head if I didn’t stay alert.
The Enforcer reversed his swing, faster than most because his sword literally weighed nothing. The plasma was nothing more than superheated air, concentrated at the edge of the forcefield. Besides a little bit of wind-resistance, there was nothing to slow it down.
Wind resistance. A germ of an idea began to form, but I couldn’t quite tell what shape it was yet.
I stepped slightly to my right, then jumped to avoid the Enforcer’s blade. He had shown me his speed already, so I knew he was toying with me, trying to draw me into a false sense of confidence while he attacked with wide slashes and obvious thrusts. Eventually, he would try for a sneak attack, a quick move while my guard was down. A move he would not expect me to be ready for.
I faked a slow hop, saw a slight shift in his shoulders, and knew what was coming next, but I held my leap until the last possible moment. The Enforcer planted his feet and brought his blade up in a diagonal slash meant to take my left leg and half my torso with it. I scuttled backward as my opponent shifted into a quick horizontal slash that would have cut me in half, armpit-to-armpit.
I counterattacked as he finished his maneuver. Despite his intentions, there were no human body parts falling to the ground. There was no human cry of pain. Instead, he made a stupid expression with his mouth and brought the stump of his right arm up to his visor. Dark red blood pumped from his wound in wet gouts.
I waited, but the creature only stared. He must have been dumbfounded, stunned that he’d been injured. With cool tech like a personal plasma field, I didn’t blame him. He had probably never lost a fight in his life.
Likely, most of his victims had surrendered. Some, like Skrew—wherever he’d run off to—considered the tech to be magic. Hell, had I not been raised in the Federation, I might have too. But Mars was trying to create the exact same thing to use in shuttles, medium-size war machines, and, eventually, starships. The problem was that the tech was still new, so the amount of power it took to create a plasma field was astronomical.
For that reason, I didn’t want to destroy the Enforcer’s armor. If I crushed or otherwise ruined it, like I had the creatures under the trees, I would have nothing to examine and no clue as to how it worked.
“Ahem,” I said to the alien as he glared at me, blood still pouring from his stump.
I needed the thing to surrender. Otherwise, there would likely be some armor damage. I could easily have chopped off his head, but the tech was too important. If I could bring back working plasma tech, the Xeno wouldn’t stand a chance.
The Enforcer raised his stump and touched the cleanly sliced end to his own plasma field, screeching in pain as he did. With his wound cauterized, he slowly turned to face me.
“Surrender,” I ordered, holding my sword at the low guard position, blade edge down and tip nearly touching the dirt.
I thought maybe he’d had enough, with a bleeding thigh and a stump for an arm, but then I saw him smile from behind his helmet’s visor. He flexed, twisted his head back and forth, and cracked more vertebrae than a human had in their whole spine.
The Enforcer lowered his head like a rampaging bull and charged. I sprang into the air, felt the heat of the alien’s plasma shield passing beneath me, and landed lightly on my feet.
“I take it you’re not going to surrender?” I said, followed by a disapproving tsk-tsk.
He roared and stopped mid-tantrum when a flash of light and sparkle of disintegrating stone splashed into the shield near its head.
“Die, tree-face lizard-breath!” Skrew bellowed from far enough inside the treeline to ensure he had a chance to escape.
The Enforcer turned to regard the gray, four-armed interloper. He lifted his left arm, the only one he had with a hand attached to the end, and pointed a finger at my companion.
“You’re next,” he said in his high-pitched voice. “But I’m going to kill you slowly.”
I wasn’t sure how I could understand the alien, but I’d been able to understand the vrak and the Ish-Nul, too. I figured either everyone on this planet spoke the same language, or it was another gift of the Lakunae, but I didn’t bother trying to answer the question now.
The Enforcer squeaked when I decided I’d heard enough and separated his other arm at the shoulder and his legs at the knees. He screamed for only a second before a backhanded slash ended him. His body parts lay scattered on the ground, but his forcefield was still active.
I carefully poked the button at the corpse’s throat with the sharp tip of my sword. The plasma field vanished with a woosh and a crackle.
I glanced around me, ensuring there weren’t any other enemies who needed killing before I approached the Enforcer’s body. The air was still warm from the plasma shield, though the slight breeze blowing through the trees was cooling it rapidly. I poked the alien in the face a couple of times, waiting for a reaction, but it really was dead.
I heard shuffling behind me and spun around, my sword ready to cleave another enemy in two.
Instead of an enemy, I saw the scaled woman. She was watching from behind a nearby tree, poking her head out to stare at me.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I sheathed my sword.
“That sword,” she whispered, eyes wide, tongue flicking out of her mouth like a snake.
“Yeah, it’s pretty nice, right?” I asked, patting the weapon’s grip with one hand.
“I know where you got it,” she hissed. “I know what you are.”
I wondered how she’d known I’d taken it from the cyborg-dragon. Had she had some part in its creation? Maybe her people lived near the Ish-Nul and their sea-side village, so she knew of the dragon and the sword that had lived within its stomach until only a little while ago.
Most lizard-like creatures I’d seen didn’t care for cold weather, so I doubted her people lived near the Ish-Nul’s village. Reptilian creatures were cold-blooded and tended to hibernate when the temperature got frigid. I wasn’t sure if the alien I was speaking with had the same kind of biology.
I came a little closer to her. “How do you know about the—”
“Stay away from me!” she cried.
A pair of flaps I hadn’t noticed before extended from her neck. They stuck out like the ruffled things clowns wore. It would have been funny, but I could tell she was trying to threaten me and keep me away. She was genuinely scared. I thought it must have been the trauma from being chased by the Enforcers, or maybe the fight afterward.
“Don’t come any closer. You are a bad man! Bad man!” Then she hissed, spat on the ground, and sprinted away.
I shook my head. I decided I’d never completely understand women. Especially scaly, yet somehow beautiful, women. But she wasn’t my priority. There was unknown alien tech lying on the ground behind me.
I took a deep breath, turned to my dead opponent, and carefully inspected his uniform.
It appeared to be made of separate panels, but I wasn’t sure how each was attached to the other. The parts that were integrated into the creature’s body were surrounded by scar tissue, and it was clear the tech wasn’t installed by a skilled surgeon. Instead, it looked like the thing had been held down while someone had hammered each of the pieces into place.
A thin, golden bar resembling a wire ran from the Enforcer’s chin to a set of hinges at his jaw. From there, the bar split in two. One extended and disappeared into his flesh near his ear-pad, like birds and frogs had. The other went up his cheek and continued under the visor. Without breaking the helmet that seemed to be part of his skull, I wouldn't know for sure. I was certain it was a communications device that fed both auditory and visual signals as well as received the Enforcer’s spoken words. It made me wonder who might be listening.
Further down, I could make out wires under the skin on the Enforcer’s neck. They were thin and flexible, but they definitely weren’t part of his origin
al anatomy. Both sides had the same configuration. Not a bad place to run the wires, I guessed. If he lost power to his helmet, it would be because someone—like me—cut his head off. In that case, he wouldn't care if he couldn’t communicate anymore.
I inspected the Enforcer’s arms and found evidence that there were implants under the skin at both his elbows and shoulders. Strength-enhancing motors, probably. The amount of scar tissue suggested the procedure either had to be done more than once, or he had not been unconscious when he’d received the enhancements. Savages.
All the wires lead back to the crystal at the Enforcer’s throat, but for all I knew, the power source could be inside his body. The Sitar, the overlord species Enra had said ruled the planet, didn’t seem to have any problem doing other terrible things to their citizens. Shoving a power supply, even a micro-plant, into the abdominal cavity of the alien wasn’t out of the question. The wires all found their way to the crystal, though, not the abdomen.
I inspected the device, being careful not to touch it. The last thing I needed to do was reactivate it and fry myself to ash when the plasma field came back online.
“Ooo,” Skrew whispered, “pretty.” He scooted closer to the dead Enforcer’s head and stared at the crystal with a lusty expression.
“If you even look like you’re about to touch it,” I warned, “I’ll pull one of your arms off and beat you to death with it. Understand?”
“Oh, Skrew wasn’t going to—”
“Back away or pick which of your arms is your least favorite.” I punctuated my words with a look meant to convince him that I wasn’t kidding. I wouldn't tear his arm off, but I’d definitely punch him if he got too close. I needed him far enough away that I could remove the crystal without getting bumped by a curious vrak.
He backed away another 10 feet. Good enough.
I leaned close to the crystal, and my stomach dropped when I noticed a mark on it. My sword was sharp. So sharp, I’d accidentally pierced the crystal with the tip of the blade. At first, I wondered if I’d ruined the power source. Then I remembered that crystals didn’t get pierced. They cracked, crumbled, broke, chipped. They didn’t get pierced.
