Hawk_Hand of the Machine

by Van Allen Plexico

  Raven squeezed her eyes closed and opened them again; spots slowly faded and she could see Condor lowering his arms and turning back to face Shrike. He was smiling broadly. The holographic image now displayed only the last glowing, drifting wisps of incandescent gas that had moments earlier been two clusters of alien warships.

  “There we go,” Condor exulted, raising his arms in triumph. “Bring on what you’ve got, Adversary. You can’t stand up to my big gun!”

  “Very good,” Shrike commented. She had watched the entire performance carefully, paying at least as much attention to what Condor did to activate and control the solar weapon as she did to the outcome of its firing. “I think that will probably do it, then.”

  Condor turned and gave her a puzzled look. “What?”

  The alarm shrieked again. The temperature plunged.

  Condor whirled about, gawking at what now filled the holographic display: Starships. Wave upon wave of starships. Small and large and everything in between, and all converging on the Ring.

  “Oh no,” he breathed, frost forming in the air as he spoke. “Oh my heavens…”

  Quickly he moved to the defense station again and raised his arms to activate the solar weapon.

  Shrike shook her head and started toward him. “That won’t be necessary, Condor.”

  “What?”

  She signaled to someone outside the command center, then addressed Condor again. “Step away from the firing controls.”

  His face was a mask of confusion. “Have you lost your mind, woman?”

  “The Master has seen the full capabilities of this installation now,” the woman in green stated. “And I’ve seen how to control it. He doesn’t need to sacrifice any more of his ships for demonstration purposes.”

  Condor gawked at his erstwhile partner, not quite sure he should believe what he was hearing.

  The doors to the command center burst open and a cadre of green-clad troopers hustled in, weapons drawn and mostly directed at Condor.

  “What is this?” he demanded. “A mutiny?”

  Shrike smiled coldly at him.

  “Nothing so petty, I assure you,” she replied. “You were quite right. The Master—or the great Adversary, as you misguidedly call him—has returned. And he will be taking possession of this Ring now.” She laughed. “Now that he has seen just how powerful it is, and how to make it work.”

  From where she lay mostly forgotten on the floor nearby, Raven whispered, “I’ve heard enough.” She redoubled her efforts with the tiny blade that she clutched between her fingers.

  “This is not smart, Shrike,” Condor was saying. “I have but to signal my own troops, and—”

  Shrike’s soldiers had taken up various positions around the command center. At her nod, they activated the controls that she had previously indicated to them. A clanging sound echoed throughout the chamber.

  “This command center is now secure,” she told Condor. “We are cut off from the rest of the Ring, and will remain so until the Master himself—or such other lieutenant as he chooses to send in his place—has arrived here.”

  Outside the transparent wall of the command center, several of Condor’s brown-uniformed troops arrived and attempted to get inside. They could see the green-clad soldiers training their weapons on Condor and hesitated, unsure of what to do next. Condor, meanwhile, simply stood there, visibly deflating.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked Shrike after a few seconds. “We’ve worked together for so many years—enjoyed so much success…”

  “We have been pirates,” she snapped back at him. “Little more than that. But now…” She beamed at him, her eyes sparkling. “Very soon the Adversary will rule this galaxy, Condor—and I have been promised a prominent role in his new order to come. I will be one of the chief commanders at his side, not just a petty crook operating in one tiny corner of it.” She gazed across at her erstwhile compatriot with a disapproving frown. “If you cannot understand the appeal of that, then your vision is even more limited than I always suspected.”

  Frowning, Condor’s eyes moved from Shrike to the soldiers under her command who were keeping their weapons trained on him, looking for some way out of this mess.

  “Oh, yes,” Shrike noted casually then. “There is one other loose end to take care of.”

  She walked quickly around to the other side of a row of consoles and stared down at the spot where she had left Raven, unmoving, bound head to toe. Looking down, she gasped, her eyes widening. Slowly she began to back away.

  On the floor where her prisoner had lain, now there sat a pile of neatly-cut restraint bands.

  Of Raven herself, there was no sign whatsoever.

  “No!” Shrike cried out, whirling around, her eyes searching the control room. She directed her anger at her troops. “Where did she go? Find her!”

  Condor spared a glance at the console where the Hand’s katana had lain. He noted that it, too, was now missing. He allowed himself a tiny smile.

  The soldiers were moving about slowly, cautiously, as if searching for a loose cobra in the room. Nobody was watching Condor anymore. He took the opportunity to edge closer to the controls that would unlock the room.

  A cry, cut off very suddenly, on the far side of the command center. A silver blade flashed. Shrike shouted frantic orders even as her soldiers moved into action.

  Another shout, another flash of the blade. Two soldiers down, and still no signs of Raven. Then a third. The room dissolved in confusion and chaos. Shrike screamed orders madly but to little avail. Raven was moving ultra-quickly, staying low, striking in a random pattern.

  Condor had been forgotten. He slapped the controls unlocking the room. The main entrance slid open.

  Another gurgled cry. Shrike was already down four men. Soldiers began to shoot, their blasts hitting blank walls and control consoles.

  Condor dashed through the now-open door and sprinted away.

  6: Hawk

  Hawk stood just inside the door to Falcon’s quarters, gun in hand. He looked down at the dead man on the floor, then up at his cyborg companion, who had managed to regain his feet but appeared disoriented and unsteady. The big man was now leaning back against the wall, breathing somewhat heavily. Blood was running down his arm, but not a lot of it.

  “What in the name of the Above is going on in here?” Hawk demanded. “I heard you through the wall, but the door was locked and it took me this long to pick it.”

  Falcon was prodding the erstwhile assassin with the tip of his boot. He looked at Hawk wearily, then glanced up at the missing panel in the ceiling—the route through which the man in black had entered.

  Hawk followed his eyes, saw the open passageway above Falcon’s bed, and figured out the basics. He nodded.

  “Good thing this fellow was a ‘hands-on’ type—didn’t want to kill you from a distance,” Hawk observed.

  Falcon snorted at that. He pointed to the bed, riddled with blades protruding up from where they’d lodged after being hurled or fired from the passageway. “He didn’t?”

  Hawk’s eyes widened at the frightening display. “Oh. I stand corrected.” He knelt down, examining the man’s black suit, seeing an ultra-thin layer of circuitry running along the inside surface.

  “Some kind of stealth tech?”

  Falcon nodded. “Something pre-Shattering, I’d guess. Guy was invisible.” He tapped the side of his face next to his mechanical eye. “Even to me.”

  “Interesting.” Hawk reached for the mask covering the man’s face. “And how did you beat him, then?”

  “There’s something to be said for the old-fashioned methods,” Falcon replied, cracking his massive knuckles.

  Hawk gave him a half-grin, then pulled the assassin’s mask away. The face revealed was not particularly noteworthy; ruddy skin, very short brown hair. Frowning, Hawk looked back at Falcon. “So, who is he?”

  “How should I know?”

  Hawk shrugged. “You killed him.”

&nbs
p; “Didn’t give me much of a choice.”

  “Guess not…”

  Falcon shook his head to clear it and stretched his muscles.

  “Feeling better?” asked Hawk.

  “Suit’s finally figured out how to counteract the poison,” Falcon said, adding, “About time.”

  “Poison?”

  Hawk started to ask for more details, but then came a cry of alarm from the corridor outside, immediately followed by the sound of running feet heading their way.

  “Better late than never, guys,” Falcon said as the first couple of green-clad troopers appeared in the doorway. “But I already got him.”

  The troopers didn’t spare the dead assassin a second look. Instead they raised their weapons and aimed them directly at the two Hands.

  Hawk and Falcon reacted instantly, diving to the side as a barrage of blaster fire peppered the small room.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hawk exclaimed as he drew his pistol.

  “I knew that Condor guy was no good,” Falcon growled. His own pistol was still missing, so he simply leapt over the smashed furniture and tackled the two nearest soldiers, dragging them both down. His rugged fists smashed into them repeatedly.

  Two more troopers rushed into the doorway, and more were crowding in behind them.

  Hawk was annoyed: having a big figure like Falcon in his line-of-sight only made shooting the enemy that much harder. Nevertheless, he opened fire with his blast pistol and found his marksmanship was everything he could have hoped for. Bolt after bolt of searing crimson energy sliced into the attackers, even as Hawk continued to evade their shots.

  Very quickly, however, the situation grew untenable. Hawk and Falcon were trapped in a small room and faced what looked to be an overwhelming wave of opponents. They both understood that they had to get out—out into the corridor, at least, so they would no longer be quite such sitting ducks—or fish in a barrel.

  Falcon was roaring his anger now, even as a couple of shots impacted his metal implants along one arm with a ringing sound. He grasped one dead trooper by the belt and flung the guy into the next wave just as they appeared in the doorway. Then, using the corpse like a battering ram, he shoved both living and dead soldiers back. They all tumbled together to the floor, with Falcon smashing their faces in before they could bring their guns up to shoot him. A couple got past him but Hawk shot them down quickly.

  The two Hands advanced into the corridor and considered that a major victory in their little war.

  Now came a two-second-long break, during which Falcon breathed heavily and Hawk checked the power remaining to his pistol. Falcon reached down and grabbed a fallen gun from one of the dead men, found he could not make it work for him, and tossed it aside with a grunt.

  The two seconds ended. More shouts, more running feet in the distance.

  Settling into a crouch, Falcon looked up to see another wave of green-uniformed men rounding the far corner, guns in hand. Hawk moved up next to him, firing rapidly, his shots taking down a half-dozen foes in as many seconds.

  Falcon surged forward, low to the ground, hands ready to grapple. He tackled the front line of attackers and took them down. Hawk continued to fire over him, picking off the next three with three crisp, sizzling shots.

  Together they battled their way down the corridor to the corner. They were now wading over a sea of casualties, two- or three-deep in places. The two Hands had become almost a force of nature—living automatons in a dance of death—dealing out destruction to their foes without a second’s pause for reflection or second-guessing. There was only the enemy, and survival. Everything else was tuned out.

  Reaching the end of the corridor at last, both of them having reached an unspoken decision to take the fight to their foes in the direction they were coming from, Hawk and Falcon rounded the corner and burst through the last wave of opponents—

  —and found the way clear now. Both Hands stood there, leaning forward, hands on hips, breathing heavily, not quite believing it was over, waiting for the inevitable next attack.

  And then another figure did appear at the far end of this corridor, perhaps twenty yards in front of them.

  Hawk raised his pistol, prepared to fire.

  “Wait!” shouted the man in brown. “Wait!”

  He raced forward, a look of extreme incomprehension etched across his aristocratic face.

  “Condor,” Hawk started to say, but then Falcon had sprung forward, tackling the blond man, driving him down hard into the floor. Rough, massive fists rose and fell, and Condor cried out, unable to concentrate enough to invoke his quantum powers.

  Hawk rushed forward, coming up behind the two of them. He could see that Condor was trying to say something.

  “Falcon, wait—wait!” He grasped the cyborg’s more human shoulder, pulling hard. Falcon stumbled backwards and caught himself, then glared up at Hawk.

  “What are you doing? I’m gonna kill this guy!”

  “Wait!”

  Condor managed to sit up. Blood was running down his face and his nose appeared to be somewhat misaligned. He held up both hands in as non-threatening a gesture as he could manage, but his expression darkened toward anger as the initial shock passed.

  “What did you… do that for?” he managed to gasp out, in between coughs.

  “Are you kidding?” the big man asked, incredulous. “After you just sent your entire hit squad to kill us?”

  “Hit squad?” He coughed violently again and struggled up to his feet. He started to advance on the two Hands. “What are you—?” Reaching the corner, he saw the mass of bodies stretching away beyond them. He halted and stared.

  “Hit squad,” Falcon repeated, angling his head toward the bodies and glaring, flexing his massive fists.

  Condor looked from the carnage in the corridor to the two men before him, one of whom had a clearly murderous look in his single human eye. He frowned, looking down for a second, then back up. He pointed to the bodies. “Those aren’t my men! They’re wearing green, not brown.”

  Hawk and Falcon both reacted with surprise to this, but then Falcon jabbed a beefy finger at Condor. “That doesn’t mean anything,” he growled.

  But Condor had turned his back on them and was stalking back the way he had come.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Falcon shouted, starting after him. “Hey!”

  “Those are Shrike’s men,” Condor said. “That’s what I was coming to tell you. She’s gone rogue—claims to be working for the Adversary now. She tried to kill me, too.”

  “The Adversary?” Hawk glanced at Falcon, puzzled.

  “Turns out you may have been right all along, Hawk,” Condor said. “There’s a big fleet headed this way now, in fact.”

  Even as he walked, Condor’s self-assuredness returned, while at the same time a glowing halo of quantum energy flared about him. He glanced back at the two dumbfounded men.

  “Are you two coming?”

  Without another word, they hurried after him.

  7: FALCON

  As the three men rounded the last turn and approached the transparent wall of the command center, the number of dead bodies now littering its floor became gruesomely apparent.

  “Nice work,” Falcon said to Condor as they reached the door.

  “Actually, I didn’t kill any of them,” the blond man replied.

  “Then who—?”

  The answer instantly presented itself. A slender, lithe figure in red and blue spun through the air, just beneath the high ceiling, sword in her hand slashing as she flew over the heads of two of Shrike’s soldiers. Their severed heads dropped to the floor even as she landed behind them and advanced on Shrike, who had backed into the far corner.

  “Raven?” Falcon said aloud, wonder filling his voice. He looked over at Hawk, his good eye wide, and muttered, “Well, well. Yet another person I never expected to see again.”

  “Open the door,” Hawk said to Condor, impatient to get inside.

 
; “I’m trying,” the blond man replied as he tapped away at a small control panel set into the glasslike wall. “It’s been sealed again, from the inside.”

  Falcon managed to tear his eyes away from the startling sight of Raven dealing out death and destruction just long enough to study the tactical display holo near the room’s center. It revealed a massive wave of starships—ships of every configuration imaginable—rapidly closing in on the Ring.

  “We need to do something quick,” Falcon noted. “Though what, exactly, I’m not sure,” he added.

  “The controls for a weapon—an extremely powerful weapon—are inside that room,” Condor stated. “Though it may be too late for even a weapon such as it to be able to deal with a force so vast.”

  “Great,” Falcon commented. “So—a huge enemy force is advancing on us, we can’t get to our big gun to shoot them down, and a Raven is currently killing half the troops on the Ring anyway.”

  “They were loyal to Shrike,” Condor pointed out. “They needed killing.”

  Falcon smirked at that. “Good point.”

  “Is there any way off this Ring?” Hawk asked. “Any escape craft, shuttle, or the like? Assuming,” he added, “the three of us can’t defeat an entire Adversary attack force by ourselves.”

  “Nothing nearby—not that I know of,” Condor replied. “All of my and Shrike’s forces used the trans-dimensional gateway to travel here,” he said, nodding toward the rectangle of machinery inside the command center, “and now the terminal on the other end has been destroyed, even if we could get through this door to it.”

  “Looks like the first wave of enemy ships is landing on the Ring already,” Falcon said, pointing a stubby finger at one of the 2D displays. “We need to figure something out quickly.” He turned to Condor. “You’re the tactical genius of the family—or, rather, you’re supposed to be. What do you suggest?”