by Dante King
Reaver was in her element, and her smile was so big, she looked like it was her birthday, and someone had just bought her a pony. She rolled out from behind one box, dropped two opponents with precision shots to their throats, and rolled behind another. Skrew and Yaltu were busy collecting energy magazines from her victims. They tossed her a fresh one every time her weapon went dry.
Beatrix had obviously decided to take the more direct approach. I didn’t see a lot of her, but when I caught a glimpse, she was leaping over, under, or through something. It was almost like a dance, except her partners always died.
She crouched behind a storage container with the glowing warhammer in her hands and waited, like the patient cat who’d spotted the mouse. A second later, two vrak guards crept up to the edge. When she sensed they were close enough, she spun out from behind her cover. The first guard’s head evaporated in a cloud of pink mist. The second dropped his gun in surprise a moment before a glowing hammer sent his brains through his guts and into his pants.
A second later, she caught me watching her and smiled. It was the devilish grin of a woman who knows what a man was thinking… and liked it. Her gaze flicked up to somewhere above my head. I raised Ebon and split the skull of a guard who thought he had the drop on me.
The gunfire from both sides slowed as the shooters checked their ammo levels.
“Check in!” I ordered.
“Here!” Reaver said.
“Alive,” Beatrix said.
“Bored!” Skrew whined.
“I’m here,” Yaltu confirmed.
Reaver poked her head from around a storage container and stared at me. She was waiting for orders, I knew. I gave her the hand signal to be watchful and wait for further orders. She nodded her understanding and waited, head and eyes keeping watch while I figured out our next move.
We’d come for vehicles, and we’d found them. Though I was hoping for something larger, the hoverbikes would be enough to get us out and away from danger.
They weren’t much larger than the street bikes back home. About eight feet long, each looked like they were designed for no more than two passengers. Reaver and I could each pilot one, but I wasn’t sure about the rest, and there wasn’t a lot of time to ask. If worse came to worst, I’d take an extra passenger on mine. We’d figure it out.
I waited for Reaver to look my direction again and sent her another signal. I held both my fists toward her and rotated the right one back a few times, attempting to tell her that I wanted her to see if one of the hoverbikes was operational. She nodded and disappeared from sight.
I poked my head over the edge of the box I was taking cover behind and ducked just before a red bolt of energy sizzled into a box behind me.
A moment later, Reaver returned and had several things to tell me using hand and arm signals. First, the hoverbike she tried would not start. It looked good, but it was missing something. A key, probably.
Second, there were still four guards. They’d taken cover about five yards ahead.
Beatrix peeked out from behind a box further back near Yaltu. I pointed in the direction I wanted her to move, and she nodded.
Reaver had seen the message, so I gave the order to move out. I poked my head out from cover, further to the right this time, and was greeted by another shot from an energy weapon. I noted where it came from and signaled Reaver so that she could take care of the shooter if he came into view. She nodded, gripped her pistol tighter, and snuck around the far side of her cover.
I poked my head around to the right to give the leftovers a new target, then immediately threw myself to the left, rolled across a three-foot-wide gap, and stopped behind the next box. The guy with the laser rifle had been ready for it and peppered the floor between the boxes with charged protons that melted and cracked the stone.
I thought about the box I was taking cover behind. It was strong enough to take quite a few blasts from energy weapons and lasers, but I hadn’t bothered to wonder what was inside. There weren’t any labels or descriptions anywhere. There wasn’t even a logo of the manufacturing or shipping company who’d delivered the goods. Then, it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen boxes like that anywhere else. I wasn’t sure where they came from, but I guessed it wasn’t even the planet I was on. There were more planets, and they were probably close. The one I had landed on might be nothing more than a holding place for slaves.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!
Reaver was standing on top of her crate, which was now open. She had a huge rifle down near her hip, with a strap running across her body to her opposite shoulder. From the muzzle, bright flashes of light erupted, turning tools and boxes near the end of the room into fountains of sparks.
“Get some!” she roared.
It was time to finish the job. I leaped on top of a box and caught sight of a guard, likely the guy with the laser rifle, rolling between a couple of boxes only 20 feet ahead of me.
I leaped, heard the box I’d been standing on crash to the ground, and landed on top of the container the sniper had rolled behind. I cut him in half with a single swing of Ebon, and his torso went spinning onto a nearby shelf while his legs toppled over in a fountain of blood.
Reaver was using her new rifle to destroy a mostly disassembled fighter vehicle in a far corner, surrounded by various parts and tools. Whoever was back there was wise not to move, but it wouldn’t take long for her to chew through the wreckage and start burning holes into their body. They were doomed.
The last guard who offered any kind of resistance held an energy pistol in each of his four hands. He reached around the box he was hiding behind and fired blindly. He didn’t present any targets, other than the pistols themselves. So, I shot one of the pistols that was aimed in my general direction. It exploded like a firecracker, and gray-skinned fingers flew outward as the bullets connected.
The vrak staggered back a half-step and offered me a clean shot at his skull as he gasped at his ruined stump. But I held my fire. Beatrix had hopped onto the top of the box and already had her glowing warhammer raised. I didn’t want to deny her the kill. She brought her weapon down hard enough to pulverize the vrak’s head in an explosion of bone and brain matter. The impact made my ears ring, brought a savage sparkle to her eye, and made her tentacles dance.
“Clear!” Reaver called as she examined the hoverbikes.
I checked my immediate area and confirmed.
“They are all dead,” Beatrix said from the top of her box.
“They is all dead?” Skrew said from around a box behind me. “They is killed dead?”
“Yes, they’re dead,” I said. “Come on and bring Yaltu. We need to find the keys for these hoverbikes. Any chance you know how to fly one?”
“No,” Skrew said. “No fly hoverbikes. Never did.” He sounded mournful.
Reaver approached the octagonal control booth, her new rifle swinging from her shoulders. Along with her gun, it appeared she’d found an extra power-pack and had it slung across her shoulder in the opposite direction. I was amazed at the tech now that I’d seen it in use. I’d never seen a hand-held, rapid-fire particle cannon before.
“Like what you see?” she asked, giving me a knowing smirk.
“Yeah, I—” I started to say, then recognized the double-meaning. She was naughty, and I loved it. “I sure do,” I continued.
“Good. Later,” she said as she examined the control booth. “There’s a bunch of cube-like things in here. The hoverbikes have cube-shaped spots between the handlebars. I’m thinking those are the keys—or maybe the power sources. Either way, I think we need them. I signaled caution because sometimes, power sources are also explosive.”
Skrew slowly stood up behind the counter in the control booth. His face was illuminated by multi-colored blinking lights, and his eyes were twice their normal size. Whatever he was looking at had him fascinated, which worried me. Sometimes, fascinating things were explosive, too.
“Don’t touch anything,” I said to him as I walked aroun
d the room to the rear entrance.
“But this is...” Skrew trailed off.
When I entered the back doorway, I found myself a bit fascinated, too. There were more buttons, diagrams, lights, and monitors than I’d ever seen in one place except the bridge of a Martian starship.
A shelf held rows of matrices, small glowing cubes about three inches on all sides. I grabbed five, shoved two in my pocket, and turned to Skrew, who was doing exactly as I’d told him not to.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“King is dumb,” he replied, not stopping or looking back. “He dumb, guards dumb, dung-heads. No security. Default code. Too easy.”
I stepped closer, looked over his shoulder, and felt my jaw unhinge. The vrak’s fingers flew over the big screen in front of him. He tapped icons, moved others into glowing representations of boxes, and combined still more. I wasn’t at all familiar with the tech.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Is that us?” Beatrix asked, pointing to another monitor.
“Yes,” Skrew said, a proud look on his face. “Skrew owns all. Skrew is security god. Master of the securities—all the securities. Skrew did to hack them up and now sees all the things.”
Where the fuck had this ability come from? Then I remembered. He’d been sent to the vrak village and sentenced to death for “scribbling code.” I hadn’t understood at the time because I hadn’t seen any computers on the planet at that point, but it all made sense now.
Skrew the six-armed, three-fingered code breaker.
“Hmm…” Beatrix added before she pointed past me. “What’s that?”
I looked to where she was indicating. Three blinking, multi-colored icons were converging in a straight line with an octagonal-shaped green icon. I pointed to the green icon and asked, “Is that us?”
Skrew laughed. “No, that is control room. We are not control room.”
“He means, is that our current location?” Beatrix leaned down, got in the vrak’s face, and shook a couple of tentacles she’d balled into fists.
“Oh, yes.” He nodded vigorously. “Is us. Green is here.”
“What are those?” I asked, pointing to the icons that were even closer.
Skrew waited for Beatrix to back away before looking. His expression changed to one of concern. “Skrew does not know, but the colors say friend, so nothing is to worry.”
“Who’s friend?” Reaver asked. She’d stopped patrolling and was trying to see what everyone was looking at through the bars on the nearby wall of the control booth.
Skrew smiled. “Friend of… oh…”
“Take cover!” I ordered. “Skrew, can you do anything from here?”
He stammered for a moment before answering. “Like fight with the things?”
“Yes, like that?”
“No.”
“Then take cover,” I growled.
As soon as I spoke the words, a deep rumble seemed to come from the belly of the planet itself.
“Not great,” Skrew whispered. “See?” He pointed to the monitor. The multi-colored icons had almost reached the green icon. We were out of time.
“Move!” I barked.
Skrew did, like his ass was on fire. He scrambled one direction, then the other, and back the first way again. I extended one arm and pointed up toward the exit in the ceiling, and he darted through it a moment before a new light appeared on the far side of the garage.
Huge shadows darkened the garage as new enemies crawled through the opening and stood, almost touching the ceiling.
A pair of mechs, each piloted by a vrak.
I ducked behind the counter and left the control room. No use getting myself cornered. One mech was bad enough, but two would be a huge challenge.
Then a third mech entered the garage, the concrete cratering beneath its massive bulk.
The mechs spread out across the room as far as they could without tripping over the big metal boxes or the hoverbikes. My stomach tightened at the thought of the macs destroying our only mode of transportation..
Each of the nearly 30-foot-tall machines was equipped with a plasma cannon on their left arm. Such devices could hurl a ball of plasma—superheated gas—and vaporize anything it touched. I wasn’t sure they were stupid enough to use the weapon underground where destroying enough of the walls could bury them alive. Also, in such a confined area, the explosion could vaporize everything, including them. But vrak weren’t the most intelligent species I’d encountered.
My team appeared to be completely hidden. I could only see Skrew and Beatrix, but since the mechs weren’t shooting, I hoped it meant they hadn’t found any targets yet.
A second later, I ducked as a pair of red beams bracketed the room. The mechs were using some kind of ladar technology—like radar, but with lasers. The good thing was that ladar couldn't see through the boxes. The bad thing was that ladar could see everything in microscopic detail. There was no way to hide from it, other than keeping something between you and the lasers.
Reaver signaled her desire to attack. I didn’t know where the others were, so I waved her off. She frowned.
Each had a center section with a small, clear window for the pilot. The inside of the machine was illuminated a soft blue, and the pilots wore a helmet with wires sticking out of it. My first thought was that they were wearing haptic suits, the kind that provided tactile, audio, and visual feedback for the user. But they wouldn't need a window if that were the case. I needed a closer look.
I waited for another ladar scan to pass, and just when I was ready to take another look, Skrew crawled across the gap between our boxes. I’d never seen a vrak crawl before. Instead of using their knees like humans did, they just used their lower sets of hands. It was a lot more efficient and probably less painful.
I didn’t scold him because I didn’t want him to turn around and go back. There’d be no way he would make it in time.
Once he got to me and took cover behind the box, he whispered, “Jacob not worry. Skrew has plan. They are vrak. Big plan. Mean plan.”
I had no idea what that meant, but his toothy grin told me he was confident. So, I nodded and waited to see what he would do.
Skrew waited until another ladar scan passed and crawled away from the box before disappearing around the side of the control booth. After another pass, he popped his head up, saw me through the bars, and waved happily. I shrugged. Either his plan would work, or I’d fight a few mech.
“Ninny-headed losers!” The voice echoed through the whole garage. The pounding of the mech feet stopped. It was replaced by the whirring of motors and opening of hatches.
“Dumb poo-eaters! Yours mothers eat poo, too!”
One of the mech pilots activated an external speaker with an electrical snap and responded. “Dum-dum speaks bad of mother! Come out! Surrender, dum-dum!”
“Ooooh,” Skrew hissed, “guard’s mother so ugly, look like human butt!”
The mech pilot gasped into his microphone. A moment later, I heard the sound of another, smaller motor and a hatch opening. It was followed by the hiss of a rocket being launched and an explosion powerful enough to make my ears ring and my balance lurch.
I chanced a peek around the corner and discovered a cloud of dust and vaporized rock filling the room. From what I could see, one pilot was screaming at the other pilot—probably the one who’d almost brought the entire building and thousands of tons of dirt down on top of all of us. The third, instead of watching their backs, stood there stupidly, as though he was waiting for something.
I caught Reaver’s eye and motioned for her to move forward. She nodded, found a better position, and moved, silent as a mouse.
Beatrix had been watching our exchange. I gave her the same hand and arm signal, hoping she would understand. She did and found a better position closer to the mechs.
I made my way back to the central console, hoping there was enough of the right kind of tech to shut down at least one of the mechs before we had t
o fight the other two. If there was, I hoped Skrew knew how to operate it.
The mechs, meanwhile, had settled their differences and were actively scanning the room.
“Guards not change password,” Skrew whispered. “Dum-dums not know Skrew. Great fun! Skrew find defense system, payment system—oh, Skrew rich now—radio system, monitor—”
“Defense system?” I whispered.
Skrew nodded and gently clapped two of his hands together.
“Can we use it against them?”
He frowned. “No, is for walls. Skrew turned off defense for walls. Now can escape. No escape before. But can now.”
That was good news. I was glad I hadn’t strangled, drowned, shot, or pulled the head off the looney vrak.
“Skrew loves to button push.” He tapped a thumb against his chest. “Know lots of the things. Smart with the stuff.”
He wasn’t wrong, but if we didn’t make it out of the garage, it wouldn’t make a difference if the wall defenses were down or not. If we died here, we’d never see the wall. It was time to fight.
I held a finger up to my lips and whispered for him to be quiet before sneaking out of the control room.
After a ladar scan passed, I moved forward to a box closer to the mechs, who were almost halfway across the room. Their thundering footsteps caused a block to fall somewhere near the far end. All three spun at their waist to address the sound. It was my time to move, but as I started to rise, there was a new sound.
I ducked as a hoverbike flew over my head and crashed into something nearby. I couldn’t see what it had plowed into, but I could hear it and smell the smoke. I caught a glimpse of Beatrix as she rolled to safety behind a storage box. She was smiling, and when I looked around the corner of my own cover, a mech was lying on its back with the remains of a hoverbike sticking out of its cockpit. There was no way the pilot had survived. If anyone cared enough to recover his body, they’d have to use a turkey baster and a sponge.
The other two mechs deployed hand-held miniguns from compartments near their shoulders.
I charged the closest one, staying low and moving fast. The mech must have had proximity sensors, because just before I got within slashing distance, it raised an energy shield that deflected my strike. Ebon sapped some of the power from it, but the shield recovered quickly.
