Critical Strike (The Critical Series Book 3)

by Wearmouth

  It held, and he came to the other side.

  His heart sank when he climbed the bank to see that before him was just a barren scrubland of short, spiky grass. There wasn’t even any sign of war here, just an absolute nothingness.

  Unable to face the prospect of trekking across kilometers of empty land, he turned east and decided to walk back the way he came, but on the other side in case he had missed something along the way. He travelled, in a daze, for about half an hour until his vision became too blurry to trust.

  Exhaustion took its toll and he gave in, finding a small outcrop to hide under. He curled into the shadows and let his body rest, all the while mumbling into his mic until he could no longer do even that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Layla had to resist the temptation to push Vingo into the water and let the creatures in there devour him. Constant moaning about the sun and the need to camp… all the while Denver remained missing. That little tredeyan fucker clearly didn’t understand humans as much as he thought.

  For three long hours they had made their way back to the tributary after filtering off into a different route than the one she had seen Denver get carried away on. Vingo told them they needed to camp, rest, but how could they without Denver?

  She had told Vingo it was time he did what they said for a change, and he would just have to deal with the sunlight for a while. The alien had a visor, after all; it wasn’t as if he were outside, exposed and baking beneath the strong star.

  They slogged on down the shoreline, Vingo stopping every few meters to gather some kind of fruit into a storage sack he had within one of his suit’s pockets. At least the treacherous shit had shown them how to refill their suit’s water supply manually.

  And she had to admit that the water did taste great. Fresh and with a slight hint of mint that made her throat and belly tingle. It was oddly comforting. She at first thought it had some essence of the croatoan root within it, but Vingo had dismissed that, saying the water on Tredeya, unlike Earth, did not have any salt content and that the plants that grew within it enriched it with minerals and vitamins.

  She laughed to herself, thinking that if humans colonized Tredeya, one of the big corporations would ‘own’ the water and sell it back to the people at a ridiculous cost as they extolled its numerous virtues.

  But her meandering thoughts didn’t last long when she saw Charlie break into a jog. He moved quickly down the shoreline, jumping over rock formations.

  “What is it?” Layla asked.

  “Denver,” Charlie replied, stopping and bending down.

  Layla joined him and looked at what he held in his hand. “His combat knife.”

  “This isn’t good,” Charlie said. “Denver wouldn’t just drop his only weapon like this. He can’t be in good shape.”

  Vingo wasn’t responding. He just kept foraging at the water’s edge and moving along slowly, inspecting the various shrubs and flora that grew on the bank. The sight of him so relaxed while Denver was missing brought murderous thoughts to her mind. She could just go to him now, overpower him…

  “Wait,” she said, spinning back round to join Charlie. “There, on the ground.”

  Charlie brushed the grass aside. “Tracks,” he said.

  The two of them set off, tracing the footprints on the muddy bank. The steps weren’t clearly imprinted and slid into one another. She pictured Denver tired or wounded, dragging his feet as he continued on.

  She knew he was probably looking for them. When they had crashed out of the catamaran, she saw him hit a rapid and speed off until they lost sight of him. She figured that the crash had broken the intercom system.

  Engaging her external speakers, she called out, “Den! Are you around?”

  As she expected, there was no response.

  Keeping up with Charlie was no mean feat, but she pushed herself onwards.

  “Here,” Charlie said.

  He stopped and bent down. “Vingo, what the hell is this?”

  To Layla it looked like a cross between a shark and an eel. Must have been about four meters long and with a thick, wide body with a sleek torpedo shape. Its tail had a wide fin on the back. Its head was larger than a human’s and twice as long with a wide jaw, in which was set a triple row of back-curving teeth.

  The side of its right flank was crudely cut open and the flesh jagged and torn. Inky black-red blood had pooled around it, staining the yellow and pale-green grass.

  Vingo joined the others and placed his sack of berries and strange-looking fruit on the ground. Kneeling, he inspected the creature. “In your language, the closest pronunciation would be a ‘skertch.’ It’s a predator fish. We saw them earlier, remember? The shadows in the water. Their skin is… how would you say it? Changing in the light?”

  “Photochromic?” Layla prompted.

  Vingo gave his version of a shrug and nodded.

  “Probably like our chameleons,” Layla mused. “I’m assuming it’s not natural to find one out of the water like this and in this condition? Although given what Denver and I saw last night, I wouldn’t put it past this planet to have some other fucked-up predator lurking about.”

  “Not in sun,” Vingo said. “Not here.”

  “Then what?” Charlie said.

  “Only one species I’ve known to take on a skertch,” Vingo said with what Layla thought was a smirk on his face. It was hard to tell given the smoothness and subtle curves of his nose and mouth. His beady black eyes rarely gave anything away either, but perhaps it was just the tone of his voice. She couldn’t tell if it was mockery or a faux admiration.

  “Well?” she asked. “What would have done this?” Not that she needed Vingo to say, she had a pretty damn good guess herself.

  “It’s the foolhardy work of a human,” Vingo said, pointing one of his digits at the wound in the side of the beast. “Rough job, barbaric you would say.”

  Charlie launched at Vingo then and smashed an arcing haymaker into the alien’s helmet. It didn’t crack under the impact, but Charlie’s strike did knock the alien to the ground with a heavy thud. Charlie quickly mounted him, pinning Vingo’s arms with one hand while he brought the knifepoint to a gasket joint between the helmet and the chest piece of the alien’s suit.

  “You say that again, you little fucker, and I’ll show you barbaric. We saved your worthless life! You dare insult my people and me again and you’ll be the one we find with its guts ripped. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Vingo’s body went limp, his pale face seemed to grow even paler behind the slightly shadowed visor. Layla thought about stopping Charlie, but frankly she found the whole novelty of being on an alien planet had worn off and she cared not if Vingo lived or died. It wasn’t as if he’d helped them much anyway.

  Charlie struck Vingo again, his gauntlet clanging against the suit uselessly. He stood up, throwing the knife into a tree with an explosion of fury. It struck the branch with a twanging noise.

  “Who are you throwing knives at, old man?” A voice spoke from the shadow of the tree, amplified by external speakers.

  “Denver!” Layla said.

  ***

  Not for the first time, Layla regretted the necessity of wearing the bulky suit. She wanted nothing more than to shed her metal exoskeleton and grab Denver, sink herself into him and relish in his breathing, live body.

  She shook her head as they all sat around a fire deep within an outcrop beneath a tree. The roots snaked down the sides of the dirt cave, holding the walls together, providing a small space for the four of them to huddle in around the fire.

  She smiled, staring at him from across the fire. “How do you do it, Den?” she asked. “When I think you’re gone, here you are, living like bloody Tarzan as though it were the most natural thing in the world? And,” she added, nodding to the skertch corpse on the bank outside of the cave, “how the hell did you catch that thing without being dragged away?”

  Denver blushed behind his visor and looked down at his hands bef
ore meeting her eyes again and shrugging. “I wanted to stay alive to find you guys,” he said, still talking over the external speakers due to his broken comm. Vingo was busy in the back of the cave, trying to fix the small module.

  It was good for him to be out of the way. With the way Charlie acted, she didn’t doubt that things could boil over again and Vingo would soon join the dead skertch on the Jackson’s list of tredeyan kills.

  “I’m proud of you, son,” Charlie said. “For coming for me, for surviving. I couldn’t have done this trip without you.”

  “I don’t want to give up so easily,” Denver said. “There must be a way off this damned rock.”

  Layla heard Vingo mutter something under his breath, the words muffled and incoherent over the comms. She assumed he was still bitter about Charlie’s attack and let him get on with his task. He had, to his credit, showed them how to prepare the fruit he had picked.

  The small apple-like fruits were surprisingly good when roasted, having a kind of cinnamon taste. Layla could already feel some energy coming back to her exhausted body as she fed another piece through the feeding hatch—a small airlock system built into the helmets that allowed solid food to pass through.

  The other option, Vingo had suggested, was to pulp them and put them into the suit’s liquidized food delivery system, but after a few days of that she wanted to experience solid food again.

  “I’ve learned one thing while you guys were away,” Denver said. “Skertch tastes like utter crap.” He laughed, lifting the mood.

  “It’s also venomous to humans,” Vingo said casually, still sitting with his back to them in the darkened shadows of the cave. “You’re lucky you didn’t start cutting into its venom sacs further into its body.”

  “Good to know,” Denver said. “Though that might have been something to have told us before you took us for that little joyride over the water.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vingo said.

  For the first time, Layla sensed he did actually mean it, and not just in reference to the skertch info. The alien shuffled around to face them. Charlie tensed and reached his hand down to his hip where his knife was held.

  Vingo saw the movement and stopped, but held out his hand toward Denver, who sat with his back to the side of the cave. “Your comm module,” Vingo said. “Fixed. Just had some loose connections… from the impact.”

  Denver took it and plugged it back into the socket on the rear of his helmet. He switched over to internal comms, turning off the speakers.

  “Can you all here me?” he asked.

  A chorus of ‘yes’ replied.

  “Good,” Charlie said. “At least we can talk without attracting god knows what other freakish animal is lurking out there.”

  “There’s nothing else here,” Vingo said. “Not until the sun sets. We’re safe for now. Though the bleens might visit soon.”

  “And what are they,” Charlie said. “Fifty-limbed, hook-mouthed bat dragons?”

  Vingo blinked his dark eyes, only visible in the darkness due to their glossy surface reflecting the flames of the campfire. “They eat dead things. Will come for the skertch. Harmless to us.”

  “Easy now, Vingo, that’s two pieces of good news you’ve given us,” Charlie said. “Whether it’s the truth is a different matter, right? Is honesty a concept with your species?”

  “Yes,” Vingo said. “But it’s not linear, not binary like you humans perceive it. Truth to us holds many different aspects, some of which are more useful than others for a given moment.”

  “Sounds like a whole lot of bullshit to me,” Denver said. “Hagellan was right what he said about your kind; you’re all politicians. We used to have people like you in our society too before your croatoan pals came and killed them all.”

  “That’s the best thing the croatoans ever did,” Charlie said. “First the corrupt spineless politicians, then the lawyers, and after that celebrities, then everyone else. As much as I hate the croatoans, it was difficult to argue against their logic.”

  Layla winced. Her parents had been involved in politics and she knew they weren’t all bad, but now wasn’t exactly the time to start a philosophical argument.

  “So what now?” she said. “Now we’re all in one piece, have food and water, what’s next? My suit says that if I breathe normally, I’ve got about a single Tredeyan day before I suffocate to death.”

  “Same here,” Charlie said, “though a little shorter.”

  “Three-quarters of a day here until my filter’s done,” Denver added.

  All three looked to Vingo.

  “Well, traitor? What now, eh?” Charlie prompted. “Your people are dead, your ride off this fucking awful rock is destroyed, and the scion are taking over if the cessation of fire is what I think it is. We’re going to suffocate to death shortly, so you’ll no longer have bodyguards and meat shields to protect you. Tell me, what’s your plan B. I’m sure your kind can work something else out, right?”

  “It is,” Vingo said. “We’re prized throughout the varied galactic factions for our problem-solving skills and ability to plan.”

  “That sounds just peachy,” Layla said. “Perhaps you could enlighten us on your next course of action—one that preferably includes us, as you do kind of owe us.”

  “I know,” Vingo said, slumping further into the shadows. He sounded tired, dejected. For the tiniest moment Layla felt sorry for him. It must have been hard to find his people killed and his ship destroyed. But like the croatoans, it was difficult to have full sympathy for a race that used humans as nothing more than disposable tools and resources—even if humans had been doing that to themselves for centuries.

  The alien went still, his head slightly cocked.

  A low keening voice came over the intercom.

  “What is it?” Denver asked.

  After a long, quiet pause, Vingo said, “The final warning signal… they’re dead… they’re all dead. The scion have taken the command center. We’re defeated. It’s… all over.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mike rushed through the workshop to join Mai. He dumped the burned-out parts of the weapon onto the workbench. Aimee and Ryan were on his heels and entered the room before he even had time to settle.

  “I need a progress report,” she said. “Augustus’ troops are coming onto our flank; they’ve already broken through the woods.”

  “Don’t you think we’re working as fast as we can? And I don’t know if you noticed, or cared, but I lost a friend today!”

  Mai dropped her head and whispered something before lifting her head to look at Mike. She had tears in hers. “It’s our fault Gib’s dead,” Mai said with a soft voice.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Mike said, rounding on Aimee and jabbing a finger at her with his good arm. “It’s yours. You push and push and push, not caring about how difficult this task is, how little time we had. If you just got off our backs and let us work, we could have figured it out.”

  Ryan stepped forward between Mike and Aimee. But Mike just leaned back against the workbench. It was just his anger at his own failure and of losing Gib that came out with his accusations.

  Aimee’s face was glistening with sweat. He knew she didn’t have it easy either, being the one at the top. The people of Unity looked to her for direction and right now things were going as wrong as they possibly could.

  “I’m sorry,” Mike finally said, bringing the volume of his voice down. He rubbed his face with his hand. “I tried, I really did. I wanted the weapon to work as much as you did, but we just didn’t have enough time to test—”

  “And you still don’t,” Aimee said, raising her eyebrows and giving an expression of beseeching hope. “But we do need you, we need your device to work… and as soon as possible. I’m not sure how long we can hold them off.”

  A scared young woman, one of the Maria clones, entered the chamber. “Aimee, they’re at the woods; what do we do? The troops are waiting for your orders. The long rangers are preparing to
keep the bikes at bay and our own riders are heading out to pick them off at the edges, but they’ll swarm us.”

  Aimee’s eye twitched as she clutched her fist and shook her head. “I should have killed that bastard when I had the chance,” she muttered, then to the clone, “Tell the defense team to prepare to engage. We need to bog them down, buy some time.”

  The clone’s face paled as she understood the implication.

  Mike felt the pressure increase on his shoulders and Mai gasped at Aimee’s orders. It would mean that human and croatoans alike would die to buy them time. The longer they took, the more would perish.

  “This isn’t fair,” Mike said. “You can’t put their deaths on us!”

  “He’s right,” Mai added. “You can’t send those poor people out there to get slaughtered. What if we can’t fix the weapon? Then what?”

  Aimee composed herself, her face growing hard and cold. “Then we all die. We need that weapon and as fast as possible. And yes, people will die all the time you’re figuring it out, but that’s the way it’s got to be. If you want Unity to stand, then you need to get it working. You know we don’t have the numbers or the weapons to hold on. Now let’s not waste any time. Get to work.”

  Before Mike had a chance to say anything else, Aimee, along with Ryan and the clone, left the chamber, Aimee’s words still echoing around the space.

  Mai leaned forward on the workbench and grabbed the burned-out device. She picked up a pair of pliers with her hand that visibly shook. Mike sat next to her and sorted through the pile of spares and parts strewn about the place.

  “We can do it,” Mike said, reaching out to grip his soul mate by the shoulder.

  “I… don’t think I…”

  “There must be a way,” he said. “Let’s replace the transformer and see where I went wrong.”

  “We,” Mai said. “It’s always we. Help me with this,” Mai said, prizing the burned fragments of the transformer from the chassis. “Ignore everything else, my love. It’s just you and me in our workshop, working together. We can do this.”