by Dante King
I fired at the closer of the two guards, who ducked and rolled out of the way. As I turned to the second, the first sprang to his feet, then fell over dead when a smoking hole as wide as my thumb appeared in the side of his head. Reaver had scored a nice shot.
The second guard screamed when I shot him in the foot. He stumbled and fell to the ground. I watched him unfurl his nasty mouth and expose rows of inward-hooked fangs as he tried to bite me when we passed. It wasn’t until he hit the ground and his head rolled away that the thing seemed to realize there was a serious problem. He didn’t do much thinking after that.
I caught a shot on Ebon from my left. Four more guards had joined the fray and were kneeling and taking shots at my team as the huge doors to the place slid closed with a resounding gong.
Of the two original guards, one was sparring with Beatrix, who seemed to be toying with the poor creature. Sparks were pouring out of his rifle, which he had begun using as a club. The other, the captain, was barking orders at the four who’d joined the others outside the gate. He was pointing at me, and I knew it was time to move.
Two guards ran toward me as the other three, including the captain, fired their weapons. The shots were wild and poorly aimed. They were panicking. Good.
I noticed Timo-Ran and Tila charging toward me just as Beatrix finished playing with her toy, charged her hammer, and vaporized the guard’s gun. She reversed the swing and hit him with an uppercut hard enough to flip the creature backward twice before he hit the ground.
One guard peeled away from me to take on the scary, bearded human. The guard probably thought he was going to have an easy time of it. After all, what could one fuzzy human with an ax do? Timo-Ran showed him exactly what he could do when he threw the ax and it stuck in the creature’s leg.
I’d never heard a rushada scream before. It was a hollow, wet sound, like the scream of a rabbit through a megaphone filled with pudding. It was horrible, and I almost felt bad for the thing.
The creature stopped, and so did Timo-Ran, who took a knee and placed both palms on the hard ground. I wasn't sure what he was doing at first, until I saw Tila use him as a springboard. She curled into a ball and flipped head over heels. When she was close to the kneeling guard, she drew her small axes and cut deeply into both of his upper arms. He wailed again. The Ish-Nul weren’t as strong or as armored as their opponent, but what they lacked they made up for in athleticism and brutality.
When he tried to stand, Timo-Ran kicked the still-embedded ax and dropped the creature back to his knees. A moment later, he fell forward, one of Tila’s axes protruding from the back of its skull.
“I don’t have a clean shot!” Reaver said over the comm.
“Help Skrew!” I ordered as I dove to the side, then blocked an energy bolt with Ebon.
A moment later, angry, red energy bolts began peppering Skrew’s opponent. Reaver was methodically striking the mech, looking for weak points. Failing that, she’d try to focus on one important-looking part. By repeatedly blasting it with energy, she’d either overheat it or burn through. If nothing else, the mech pilot would be distracted, which would help Skrew, who was rolling to one side and firing, trying to keep his dead opponent in front of him as a shield.
Skrew reached around his makeshift shield and spun his minigun up. I saw where he was pointing and knew that if he missed, he’d likely vaporize an ally, either Beatrix or one of the Ish-Nul. I inhaled, ready to warn everyone to get out of the way, but he lowered his gun and powered it down. He’d seen it too.
“Ugly, poopy-headed butt-licker!” Skrew roared. He lowered himself like a bull, raised his dead mech-shield, and rushed in, knocking his opponent to the ground.
The enemy mech windmilled its arms. When it hit the ground, it accidently fired its minigun, turning two of the remaining guards into pink mist. Skrew began beating his downed opponent with the dead one he’d been using as a shield, a string of curses accompanying every blow.
Beatrix rushed in, a snarl on her lips. “Save the captain for me!” I ordered, hot on her heels. Both guards opened up on her. She blocked every blast of their energy weapons with her hammer until it was a beacon of death, bright as a welding spark.
Her opponents stopped firing. They were probably blinded by the light, just like me. A moment later, I heard a small snap followed by a sizzling scream. Then, there was silence. When I looked again, the captain was alone, except for Beatrix, who was holding him in place with the threat of her dimly glowing hammer.
I approached at a brisk pace. I could’ve run, but I needed him to see me—to understand that death was approaching. When I neared, he turned his head toward me.
“Open the gate,” I ordered him.
If the creature understood me, he didn’t act like it, so I pointed emphatically.
“Open the gate!” I repeated.
Still no response. Fine, I thought. I’ll do it the hard way.
“End him,” I ordered. Beatrix was more than happy to oblige.
Meanwhile, one of Skrew’s smaller arms was buried deep inside his opponent. He mumbled as he fished around inside. Then, he hesitated a second before pulling half the pilot out through the hole he’d made.
“Eww,” Skrew said as he dropped the guard’s bleeding upper half on the ground, then proceeded to wipe his mech’s hand on the downed mech’s frame.
“Status!” I said over the comm.
“Well—” Skrew started.
“We’re whole,” Reaver said as she jumped from her perch and landed next to me. “Bruises and minor cuts and scrapes, but no casualties. Lots of dead baddies. Want me to count them?”
On a normal mission, I would want a body count. But here, it didn’t matter.
“Negative,” I replied. “Set a guard. Cover us while we figure this out.”
I turned to the doors and jammed Ebon into the seams. I pulled hard to one side, but nothing happened. I pushed, ang again nothing happened. I drew the blade free and took a slash, and though I cut several inches into the thing, it hadn’t felt like I’d done any real damage.
“May I?” Beatrix asked. I nodded and took a step back.
Beatrix’s hammer began to glow brighter and arc small lightning bolts across its surface. When it reached a charge that seemed satisfactory to her, she swung hard. The resounding gong stunned all of us for a second.
“It is only a dent,” she said after she inspected the place her hammer struck.
The problem with doors, I mused, was similar across all species and places. Governments and private citizens made the same mistake. They used expensive locks and materials. They reinforced the hinges. They even used locking bolts, like banks once used to protect money. But most people didn’t think about the wall next to the door.
“Try here,” I said, pointing with Ebon to a spot on the concrete about three feet to the door’s left.
Beatrix looked at the spot, then back to me, and smiled. “Do you think they got cheap on the construction?”
I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
Beatrix motioned for everyone to step back, charged her hammer, and swung hard. I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen. Maybe an explosion of rock and rubble. Maybe a huge shower of sparks. Instead, there was a grunt from the gladiator, the thud and sparks of the impact, then nothing.
“Now what?” Timo-Ran asked.
His answer was a laugh from Beatrix. She kicked the spot she’d struck, and the concrete fell away like a neatly piled column of sugar. The wall was thick, but it was only a wall. There was no reinforcement, and Beatrix had just made a new entrance.
“After you?” she invited.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said with a smile.
Reaver took a position behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder so that I’d know she was there. It was part of our training, called “stacking up.” Normally, there’d be four of us, and we wouldn't have announced our presence so long before entering, but we did what we had to do. I waited for the signal that
the team was ready and focused on the breach.
The hole was almost as tall as me, but it was narrow. I’d have to go in sideways, and I had no doubt I’d instantly be subjected to enemy fire, so with Ebon held vertically, I waited.
The signal came a few seconds later when Reaver squeezed my shoulder. I moved, entered the breach, and shot the first enemy who presented himself—a vrak who was climbing into a mech. There were two others, but their canopies were open, and I could see they were unoccupied.
The room was dark except for the top and bottom edges of the polished concrete walls. Hidden blue lights cast an even, deep glow over everything from high and low angles, which created a cool effect on the frames of the mechs. They were mounted to the floor by some kind of mechanical locking system. The presence of tools, small workstations attached to the walls, and diagnostic equipment made it clear that it was a garage or staging area. Probably both.
The floor was only polished in the center of the room. The rest had a sheen that reflected the hidden lights, but it was uneven, and I suspected it was caused by years of oil buildup.
The room was about ten yards wide and a little longer, and on the far end was another door almost as wide as one of the doors we’d just avoided. It didn’t look like it was as heavily armored, though, and the ornate designs, most of which seemed to be exotic flowers, wouldn't help with the door’s durability either.
“Reaver,” I ordered, “find out how they open the doors. Bring Skrew inside, then close them again. After that, get him to drag one of these mechs over to our breach and make him stuff as much of it inside as he can. It should keep reinforcements out and prevent the doors from opening until we remove the obstruction.
Reaver grabbed Neb-Ka, and together they started looking for a control panel, lever, or other type of control that would open the doors. A few seconds later, the doors began to rattle and move.
I sent Beatrix and Timo-Ran to the door on the far side of the room to guard against anyone coming in from behind. Then, I took cover behind the mech on the right side of the room, the one the vrak had tried to get into, and aimed my pistol at the opening. If whatever came inside wasn’t a huge, metal war machine, I’d shoot it.
Skrew’s mech was standing right in the middle of the opening. He was bouncing excitedly from foot to foot, shaking the ground as he did so. He looked as eager as I’d ever seen him, and for once, I found myself looking forward to the stories he’d tell after the battle. He’d have something to talk about for months.
My first warning that there was a new threat was automatic fire from an energy weapon peppering the ceiling. I turned and saw her opponent flailing from her first strike as Beatrix’s hammer came around for another. Guards began pouring into the room. The first guard who tried to enter had a smoking stump of a neck where his head used to be. His body lay in a crumpled mess on the floor. The other guards stomped him as they rushed in.
I’d expected more rushada guards like the ones we’d seen outside, but though the creatures pouring out of the open doorway were four-armed, there was no mistake what species they were. These were vrak. All of them.
I began firing into the horde, as did Reaver, who, I knew, would have to split her attention between the immediate threat of the guards and the breach she was trying to cover. It wouldn’t do us any good to fight off one enemy only to be ambushed by another.
The vrak kept pouring in, unintimidated by the bodies piling up in front of them. Some fired energy pistols. Others were armed with short, deeply curving blades. They all acted like death was something they looked forward to, and they didn’t care if it was theirs or someone else’s.
“Die, bad vrak!” Skrew bellowed into the room as he opened up with his minigun. The reverberation, accompanied by the slam of Beatrix’s power hammer and the weapons fire from both sides turned the room into a white-hot symphony of death and destruction.
When Skrew’s gun went silent a few seconds later, he charged toward the expanding cloud of enemy guards and began stomping, smashing, and throwing them. He staggered when one near the rear fired a small rocket that struck the vrak’s mech in the shoulder of one of the smaller arms.
The Ish-Nul were fighting hard, but there were too many enemy vrak. The humans were being forced back into a corner.
Nyna was taking shots with a weapon she’d taken from a guard. Although her aim was inaccurate, firing into the center of a crowd of guards earned her plenty of hits. Yet, they continued to pour in. They continued to fight. It was then that I realized the worst.
None of the guards made any noise. My team’s words were a cloud of profanities, curses, and challenges. They grunted with effort, and when a guard managed to slash Beatrix on her leg, she cried out. But the guards made no sound at all.
I watched as Reaver shot one in the leg and took the creature’s limb completely off. He fell to the ground, tried to get back up, and instead crawled forward, sword in hand. There was only one way that was possible. The vrak were slaves with tech that kept them from feeling fear, pain, or anything except battle lust. They didn’t deserve that, no matter what many of their kind had done. Their deaths would be merciful.
“Press in!” I ordered, urging everyone to stand their ground and, when they could, advance. Though my pistol was effective, sword slashes at bad-breath range would win the day. I told Nyna to stay put and charged toward the horde.
I turned off my planning, thinking, strategizing mind. I felt the blade’s grip in my hand and envisioned the Lakunae, who I was sure had a hand in its construction. I knew the blade as I knew myself. I knew its reach, its edge, and its weight. I calmed my breath and allowed it to become an extension of my arm. I allowed my hand and my eyes to guide my strikes and felt myself fall into a trance, and a line from the Terran Hindu Scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, fell upon my tongue.
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” I whispered to the room.
I faced two opponents. One had an energy rifle, the other a sword. When I raised Ebon high, I wasn’t surprised to see neither did.
The first vrak raised his weapon. I saw the muscles in his arm flex as he began squeezing the trigger, so I used the flat of Ebon’s blade to brush the barrel aside toward his comrade with the sword.
I lifted my right foot to avoid the sword slash from the second vrak just as the first fired through his neck. His head lolled to one side, only hanging on by a few inches of flesh. I rotated my wrist, stabbed the first vrak through his guts, and lifted my arm hard, already searching for my next target.
As the first parted down the middle, starting from the top of his head, I caught the flash of another weapon from my left. There was no time to block the strike, so I didn’t. Reaching out with my left hand, I caught the blade, allowing my arm to go partly limp to take some of the shock and striking power out of the attack.
The vrak’s weapon cut into my palm and sent a lightning bolt of pain though my elbow up into my armpit, but I’d saved myself from a deadlier wound. I squeezed the blade with my fingertips as I pressed the flat side into my palm and yanked hard.
The guard had a good grip on his weapon and stumbled forward before he lost his grip. I rotated my wrist and drove the fifteen inches of exposed blade hard into his face, just below his little nose. He dropped like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. I couldn't help but notice how likely true the analogy was. They were puppets, and their puppet master had to die.
“Ready!” Reaver said behind me.
Without thinking, I fell back to my training. I hacked and stabbed with one hand, and yanked a vrak behind me with the other. We were back in the training room at the training center. I was the grabber, the one who was fighting on the front line. Reaver was my chopper, the one who’d finish off the enemies I pulled through the line. I didn’t have to kill them all.
I pulled vrak guards and tossed them behind me as quickly as I could. With my other hand, I lopped heads, caught energy bolts, and deflected sword strikes. We were a machine, and
the number of vrak were slowly diminishing.
“Skrew wants to help!” an amplified, whiny voice said behind me.
I was happy to oblige and began pulling vrak faster, only slicing the ones who were an immediate threat. Several seconds later, the room was quiet, except for the sound of a mech crushing dead guards just to make sure they weren’t faking it.
I glanced back at the team. The Ish-Nul were winded, as was Nyna. All were dripping with blood I hoped wasn’t theirs. Someone had managed to close the doors on the far side. Everyone was smiling, though the Ish-Nul looked more tired than happy.
My hand ached. I had a gash at least half an inch deep running across the middle of my palm. But I could tell it was already healing. It was one of the benefits of being Void-touched.
“Beatrix, Reaver,” I ordered, “guard here.” I pointed to the door the guards had come through. “Skrew, drag one of those mechs over to the breach. Jam as much of it as you can into that hole. I don’t want anyone sneaking in behind us.”
Skrew clapped his huge hands together and rumbled away to accomplish his task.
“Looks clear,” Reaver said. “But it’s too clear. All those guards, and no secondary defenses?”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Beatrix whispered, peeking around the doorway from the opposite side. “There is more to this than we can see.”
I agreed, but before we advanced forward, I wanted two things to happen. First, the Ish-Nul needed a short breather. They’d fought hard, but they weren’t Void-touched like me. I’d barely broken a sweat.
Second, I needed to confirm my suspicion, and Skrew had helped with that. I hadn’t noticed any tech attached to the bodies of the vrak guards who’d attacked us, so I suspected their implants were internal. Skrew had stomped enough of them that finding the tech would be easier.
The devices were small enough to not quite cover my thumbnail. The circuitry was intricate and smooth. It wasn’t the standard slave-tech I’d seen before. It was high-quality stuff. We’d just killed nearly 100 vrak slaves, very few of whom I suspected would have fought us of their own accord. They had no choice. They weren’t courageous; they were mind-controlled slaves. I crushed the tech and scattered the pieces on the floor.
