“Will we be able to fight through them?” Kier asked.
“Tunnel’s too narrow. Too dangerous.”
Thargen’s Rage purred at that. Since when is anything too dangerous for you?
There are people depending on me. Yuri’s depending on me.
Another skeks charged out, and Thargen tackled him, crashing atop one of the fallen enemies. The skeks thrashed and struggled, striking Thargen with claws and fists, gnashing his teeth. Thargen hammered a forearm across the skeks’ throat, reared back, and buried an axe in the bastard’s face. He twisted to see Kier behind him, firing his blasters into the tunnel.
“Kayl, we may need to exit the same way we entered,” Kier said.
“I have difficulty imagining the situation is worse in there than out here,” Kayl replied, his voice distorted by static. “I have downed twenty, at least, and yet there seem to be only more.”
Thargen climbed to his feet. “How big a fucking tribe they have living out here?”
Yuri’s words were even more garbled by static than Kayl’s when she said, “Guys? Um, there are…on Kayl’s drone feeds, and…like they have, uh…”
“Zor atkoshai,” Kayl spat. “Rocket launchers.”
Gunfire boomed in the tunnel, and Kier grunted, staggering back. Flattened skeks shells dropped to the floor at his feet, and as he swung aside to take cover against the wall, Thargen saw the chipped outer coating on his armor where the rounds had hit.
“Call in the Fang, Kayl,” Kier said.
Thargen’s eyes dipped to Kier’s belt, locking on an armored container clipped to it. Even if the specs were different between various military forces, those things seemed fairly universal—he knew almost instinctively that it was an explosives case.
The commlink crackled and broke Kayl’s response. “The automated weapons…at great risk… whole cave down.”
Kier turned his face away from the passage as a ricocheting bullet sprayed chipped bits of stone at him. His helmet emerged from the back of his neck, sealing around his head again, and his voice sounded both out loud and in the commlink when he said, “So could the skeks, Kayl, if they start firing rockets!”
The exchange had just enough context for Thargen to glean meaning from. “Yuri will shoot.”
“What?”
Thargen was fairly certain that all three of his companions had asked that simultaneously. Dropping one axe, he reached across the mouth of the passage, opened Kier’s explosives case, and grabbed everything inside before leaning back into cover.
A howling skeks lunged out of the darkness. Thargen lashed out reflexively, hitting the skeks on the thigh with his remaining axe. The skeks fell forward—and was hit by at least four shots from Kier before crashing to the ground.
“Those are powerful,” Kier said.
Thargen looked down at the small, disc-shaped explosives on his palm. “Good.”
He pressed the activation buttons on the discs quickly. Kier fired several more shots into the passage before darting aside. Thargen followed the daevah’s path, tossing the handful of explosions into the tunnel as he passed it.
The cave shook with an explosion, and rocks, debris, and dust sprayed from the passage to clatter everywhere. Thargen slapped a hand against the wall to steady himself, grinning despite the ringing in his ears.
“Thar…ou okay?”
“Fuck yeah,” he growled. “Be even better when you swoop in to save my sexy green ass.”
Another explosion shook the cave, this one from outside; fresh dust and debris rained from the ceiling.
“Guess they want their food well done,” Thargen muttered. He pressed himself against the wall and moved back to the passage, waving away the dust. There was just enough light for him to make out the stones blocking the tunnel—and a mangled skeks arm jutting out of the rubble, its fingers unmoving.
One less problem, at least.
More static crackled across the commlink; if there were any words in there, Thargen couldn’t decipher them.
Clenching and relaxing his jaw, Thargen scooped up his fallen axe and blaster, stowing the weapons as he returned to the others. He dropped to the lower level of the cave beside Kier, turning to lift the trembling kaital down from the ledge as soon as his feet were on the floor.
Kier was tapping the controls on his wrist armor again, shaking his head.
“How’s that air support coming along?” Thargen asked as he ejected the melted power cell from his auto-blaster.
“I cannot establish a connection with the Fang,” Kier replied.
“Ske…ference…blocking si…” Kayl’s voice cut out completely after a few seconds of broken speech.
“They’re blocking local signals,” Thargen growled. He tugged a fresh power cell from his belt—if any of the pieces of shit cells he’d taken from the smugglers could be considered fresh—and loaded it into the open chamber.
“Are vorgals psychic, too?” Kier asked, brows drawing close together.
“No. We just fight skeks a lot.”
“Kayl cannot connect to the ship either, and he has also lost contact with Yuri. He must relocate to try again.”
“They’ve got a portable signal jammer somewhere close by. Do it to cut off their quarry’s communication, prevent them from sending out warnings or calling for help.” Thargen ran his gaze over the survivors. The kaital had fallen to her knees beside the injured volturian, and the ilthurii had moved to put her arms around the shaking female. The adolescent borian was squatted down, head bowed, chest relaxing and expanding with erratic breaths. Only the azhera and the sedhi were on their feet, the first holding the dead smuggler’s auto-blaster. The sedhi was unarmed, but she stood tall, naked, and unbroken with fire in her violet eyes.
“How long, Kier?” Thargen asked.
“He is moving as swiftly as he can, but there are a great many skeks,” the daevah replied. He turned toward the prisoners on the floor. “I swear to you, we will see you all out of this. Your ordeal is nearly over.”
The shooting, howling, and shouting from outside only seemed louder and more frantic than before; the battle lines had drawn closer. It was a matter of minutes now, at best.
I’m getting back to you, Yuri. There aren’t enough skeks in this whole fucking galaxy to stop that.
Thargen strode to the sedhi and offered her the auto-blaster. “Ready for a fight?”
She accepted the weapon without hesitation, settling the stock against her shoulder. Her long, thick tail was as steady as her unwavering gaze. “I am a crimson raider, vorgal. I’m always ready for a fight.”
Thargen grinned, baring his tusks, and tugged his axes free. “Friend of mine back in Arthos used to be a Crimson Raider.”
“There is no used to be. Once a raider, always a raider. It is the same with you vanguards, isn’t it?”
“Fucking right it is. Remind me to buy you a drink when we get to Arthos. We can swap war stories—not that I actually remember many.”
“No point in making plans. All that awaits us here is death,” the azhera snarled. “We can only hope to make it honorable.”
“Are all you furballs so pessimistic?” Thargen activated the hardlight blades. “We aren’t dying, and there’s no honor to be had. Just a fuckton of skeks to kill.”
Thargen strode forward. The cave was narrowest where the entryway curved into the main chamber; that was the best point from which to defend.
Kier moved up alongside him, flanked by the azhera and sedhi. “What is a fuckton?”
Thargen laughed, probably harder than he should have—but it was as much the result of Rage as it was of amusement. “Terran saying. Means a fuck of a lot.”
Another explosion went off outside, vibrating the ground beneath his feet.
“The rockets are missing the smugglers,” Kier said. “The smugglers are retreating.”
“Missing on purpose. Just want to drive them into this cave, knowing they’ll be cornered.”
The skeks war cri
Shouts from the approaching smugglers echoed into the cave.
“Kraasz ka’val,” the azhera rumbled.
Crimson flooded Thargen’s vision; he didn’t fight the spread of his Rage now, didn’t hold it back.
“With me,” he shouted.
“With you,” replied Kier, the azhera, the sedhi—and Thargen’s Rage.
The first of the smugglers rounded that bend, his gaze snapping to Thargen immediately, but the hardlight axes had already hacked him down before he could swing his blaster toward Thargen, too.
A tall, silver-haired borian was the next to come around the bend. Taeraal. Thargen kept his weapons in constant motion, turning them toward his new target.
Taeraal frantically staggered back from the swinging axes. His auto-blaster fired wildly, spraying plasma bolts into the floor and walls as he struggled to aim at Thargen. Bits of molten stone sprayed Thargen’s skin, but the pain was too distant to slow him down. In the corner of his vision, he saw two more smugglers falling back, firing at a mass of writhing skeks beyond them.
A plasma bolt darted past Thargen’s side and hit Taeraal’s weapon. The auto-blaster hissed, and Taeraal, eyes rounded, flung it toward the mouth of the cave.
The auto-blaster exploded in a blinding white flash, vaporizing the other two smugglers and turning a three-meter-diameter section of the entrance into a glowing orange pocket of melting stone and ash. Rocks loosened by the explosion tumbled down from overhead, but none of them were nearly big enough to block the entrance.
The skeks beyond the blast opened fire. Thargen backed around the bend, out of their line of sight, but Taeraal was not so fast this time. Several projectiles pierced his chest, the wounds oozing blood.
“Thargen fucking Skullreaver,” Thargen roared.
Taeraal spat a curse, dropping a trembling hand to his waist to draw a blaster pistol.
Thargen lopped off his head with a quick swing of his axe.
So much for taking this fucker alive.
The howling tide of skeks crashed into the cave an instant later. Thargen laughed and threw himself into the writhing mass of flesh—hacking through it would be his only way back to his zoani.
Twenty-Three
Sol’Kayl pressed his back against the tree and sank into a crouch. Skeks darted by to either side of him. The sounds of branches snapping and undergrowth being crushed beneath their feet were almost entirely swallowed by the cacophonous shouting, shooting, and howling. The forest was chaos—and the roiling thoughts just beneath the surface of Kayl’s mind were straining to mirror that chaos. But he would not allow himself to succumb to that inner turmoil.
He stomped down his concerns as harshly as the skeks trod the surrounding dirt, thrusting the infinite possibilities of what might’ve been and what could yet be into the tristeel vault at the back of his mind, and clamped his fangs down on his emotions. This was a simple situation despite all the chaos.
Kier was trapped in the cave. Only the Fang possessed the firepower necessary to effectively combat this flood of bloodthirsty enemies. But Kayl could not connect to the ship because somewhere amidst this mass of grinning skeks was a device jamming communications.
He needed to either get out of the signal blocker’s range—which could’ve meant making the two-kilometer trip through these skeks-infested woods to return physically to the ship, for all he knew—or destroy the responsible device, which could itself entail repositioning several times to scour the tumultuous battlefield.
Thus far, Kayl had only managed to cross thirty-two-point-seven meters since descending from his original position. Either of his options would take hours at that rate. Kier had minutes, at best.
Kayl could feel Kier’s heart pounding, driving his own to quicken in turn, could feel the anger and passion burning in his brother’s chest, could feel the desperation of that life and death struggle just as readily as he could feel the crushing weight of his own looming failure.
He swung his gaze from side to side, scanning the information relayed through his helmet’s HUD—distances and measurements, primarily—seeking a higher vantage point from which to survey the battlefield. One tree in a nearby thicket stood out amongst the jumble of information; it was farther downslope, but still towered eight meters higher than the first perch he had chosen. He would have reduced visibility of the cave from the new position, but that was a necessary price.
He hoped the extra elevation would make a difference—but he couldn’t know until he was up there.
That just left the simple matter of crossing another forty meters of ground where the vegetation was too thinly spread to conceal his movements.
Kier would not have hesitated; Kayl did not allow himself to, either. Springing upright, he darted toward his destination, running parallel to the cliff.
The skeks collective gunfire came together like a perpetual peal of thunder, an ominous backdrop for their battle cries. They had been whipped into a frenzy when the smuggler’s defensive line collapsed. And what cause had they for caution now? Their prey was trapped.
Even with his armor, he felt the skeks’ projectiles whizzing through the air around him. He pointed his railgun downslope, keeping his face forward, and targeted the attacking skeks through the scope’s feed within his helmet’s display.
He snapped the railgun in a tight arc, squeezing the trigger three times. He felt the weapon’s faint thrum and silent click thrice as it fired its magnetically propelled projectiles, and the trio of skeks he had targeted fell almost instantly.
Kayl’s forward momentum carried him behind a thick tree trunk. The tree shook, and its wood splintered as skeks gunfire hit it from the opposite side.
Hold on, Kier, he pulsed.
We are holding, came Kier’s reply, as clear as one of Kayl’s own thoughts.
A pang of guilt hit Kayl—we. Kier was not alone; Thargen and the surviving captives were in there, too. But there was no time for guilt—and he would not let himself feel it, regardless, for prioritizing Kier over the others. They had already lost Taeraal, their only current lead on Vrykhan’s whereabouts. He would not also lose Kier, who was so much more to Kayl than what other species considered a brother—Kier was Kayl’s na’dival, linked forever in heart and mind. One corner of incomplete triad to which they belonged.
The instant he was close enough to the thicket, he dove in, somersaulting through the undergrowth and stopping on one knee. He twisted his torso to angle his railgun toward the skeks who were shooting at him, picking out their glowing, highlighted forms through the dark vegetation and tree trunks in the scope’s digital feed. He fired answering shots of his own—one for each skeks he could see.
The skeks’ rounds zipped around him, cracking against wood and rustling the foliage. The thicket shielded him from most of the gunfire, and his armor stopped the few bullets that hit their marks, leaving him only to feel the thumps of their impact. The projectiles from Kayl’s railgun were not quite so forgiving to his enemies; they punched through wood and armor unhindered to destroy the flesh beneath.
He could not count the number of skeks charging him. All he could do was keep his weapon moving, keep his finger on the trigger, keep his breathing firmly under control despite his racing heart. The ammunition counter in the scope feed was quickly running down, but he did not need to see it to know he was about to go empty—he had accounted for every shot.
Tell me you’ve found a connection, Kier pulsed.
I am somewhat preoccupied at present, Kier.
The final projectile left his railgun just as a pair of roaring skeks charged into the thicket. Kayl flicked on the energy blade attached to the underside of the railgun’s barrel and leapt backward to avoid the wide arc of a swinging club.
Kayl thrust the railgun forward, plunging the energy blade into the ribs of the skeks who had just missed with the club. The skeks hissed in pain.
Please, forgive the delay. Kayl twisted the blade and wrenched it aside, tearing a huge wedge of flesh out of the skeks’ side. It was certainly selfish of me to have stopped to defend myself from these ravenous savages.
Gritting his teeth, Kayl turned to face the other enemy, who lunged at him with a wicked looking axe, sunken eyes gleaming and sharp teeth glistening in that unwavering grin. Kayl danced backward to avoid the weapon until his back struck a tree trunk. Halted abruptly, he batted aside the skeks’ next attack. The impact of haft against barrel jolted up his arms. A few more such blows, and his railgun would be ruined.
I am sorry, he thought.
Were you apologizing to me or your weapon, Kayl? Kier’s pulse came with a psychic smirk.
Kayl ducked under the skeks’ follow-up swing. The axe lodged into the trunk over his head, striking hard enough for Kayl to feel the tree vibrate through his armor. He stabbed his energy blade into the center of the skeks’ chest and pulled his weapon up as hard as he could, tearing the skeks open up to its clavicle.
To my weapon. Do you not have more pressing matters with which to concern yourself, Kier?
Releasing its axe, the skeks staggered backward. Its companion was struggling to its feet nearby, sucking in short, wheezing breaths.
Kayl drew his blaster from his hip and fired three plasma bolts into each skeks in quick succession. Shouts from outside the thicket—and a fresh volley of rifle fire around him—suggested that this skirmish had not gone unnoticed.
Kayl’s hands moved of their own accord, returning the blaster pistol to its holster, grabbing a fresh magazine, and reloading the railgun. He hurried to the tree he’d targeted, slinging the railgun over his shoulder as he ran, and activated the climbing pads on the hands and feet of his combat suit. He scrambled up the tree just as the undergrowth at the edge of the thicket shook violently and a skeks shouted from nearby.
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