Glory Boy

by Rick Partlow

  This is too damn easy, Deke commented from a few meters away, the first words he'd communicated in two hours.

  It's our first time out since Demeter, I reminded him. I think the Colonel wanted to ease us back into things.

  That’s what I kept telling myself anyway. If I was being honest, maybe part of the reason I didn’t feel good about this was that being back out scared the shit out of me. I’d been so sure I wasn’t afraid of death anymore after the Thatcher, but that was a damned lie. I wasn’t afraid of my death, but I was terrified of the deaths of my friends. I was afraid for Deke, afraid for Holly, afraid for Mat, even afraid for Brian and Kel and Cowboy. Maybe even for Reggie. They were all the family I had left.

  I’m glad the suits keep the creepy-crawlies off of us, Deke commented. Gonna’ be a long wait.

  And it was. But finally, the primary set and the moon rose and it was time to do our job. We scuttled down off the plateau like bugs skittering out of the shadows once the lights had been turned off. The flats were uncomfortably well-lit under the full circle of the moon, its surface jagged and scarred from eons of asteroid impacts and mottled with what seemed like a face staring down at us. If the man in the moon saw us, he didn't bother telling the Tahni about it. We crossed the three kilometers at a cautious run, counting on our suits' camouflage to disguise our passage, coming to a halt in a stand of desert brush only fifty meters from the low outer wall of the temple's perimeter courtyard.

  We waited there for interminably long minutes, making sure that nothing had spotted us. I was fairly certain by then that there was no electronic surveillance of the place. Everything we'd been taught about the Tahni religion said that it was taboo to record any of their holy ceremonies, and this place was considered very holy.

  I cringed again at that thought.

  Steady, I told myself. You aren't blowing up a children's Sunday School class, these are military officers and Imperial cabinet members.

  Two of the soldiers in the squad that guarded the temple wandered over to our side, their KE rifles held carelessly, in a stance universal to any humanoid assigned to guard something they didn't think needed guarding. Their armor seemed less camouflaged and more ornate than other Tahni soldiers I'd encountered, their helmets open-faced and decorated with some sort of animal scales, which I assumed had to do with their nature as an Honor Guard of sorts. Of course, a Commonwealth military honor guard would have been recruited from troops with high esprit de corps and attention to detail, whereas these guys seemed to be older and chubbier than normal.

  Maybe this is the detail they give to old soldiers before they retire, Deke speculated, as if he'd been following my thoughts.

  You ready? I asked him, trying not to dwell on what we were going to have to do. Might as well get it over with and get out of here.

  No use putting it off, he replied, then he was in motion.

  He broke from cover and sprinted across the fifty meters of open ground, counting on speed and darkness to conceal him. I covered the guards with my pulse carbine, while he left his strapped across his back, unsheathing his talons instead. I saw very clearly the moment they noticed him. Their relaxed, unconcerned slouching stance shifted and the barrels of the KE rifles began to lift, but it was all much too late. I looked away, telling myself I was watching for threats, but I could still hear the wet ripping and shredding sounds, then the splatter of blood and the rattling thud of armored bodies hitting the tiled floor of the courtyard.

  Clear, Deke announced, but I was already halfway across the distance by the time he said it. In three seconds, I was crouching on the tile beside him, watching outward while he peeked around the courtyard wall into the circuitous maze of passages inside the temple. Moving.

  I followed him, feeling the tackiness of the blood under the soles of my boots. No electric lights illuminated the interior of the temple, only the reflected glow of the moon and small oil flames that burned in ceremonial bowls on shelves carved out of the sandstone walls. The elaborate system was carefully designed to throw a play of shadows across the strange architecture, making shapes on the walls and floor that might have been culturally significant to the average Tahni but just seemed spooky to me, teasing my peripheral vision with furtive movements from flickering flame.

  Despite the legions of shadowy Tahni ghosts, there were no actual, living enemy in the next chamber. As we left it, though, we began to hear the chanting, a deep and raspy sound that no human vocal cords could reproduce, punctuated by a shrill ululation that went beyond what a human ear could register. The ceremony had begun; we had to move quickly.

  Deke broke into a reckless sprint and I followed two meters behind, curving through the unintuitive turns of the commemorative shrine and eventually running headlong into the next pair of guards patrolling there. As if we’d rehearsed it---because we had, hundreds of times---Deke went for the one on the right and I got the one on the left. They were old and tired and unsuspecting and it was, as Deke had said before, too damn easy. They didn’t make a sound as they fell with their throats torn out and their necks broken.

  We left them without a glance backward, pushing on towards the sound of the worship service. We passed through two more levels of the concentric maze and then we were in the middle of them. There were eleven of them in all: five pilgrims, dressed in the striped robe-like garments their government officials wore; the last three soldiers from the squad assigned to patrol the area in their ceremonial armor; two priests dressed in long, fluid collections of cloth strips of solid, startling blue gathered together with a belt; and the big, dangerous-looking bodyguard who’d come in with whoever the highest-ranking pilgrim was.

  They seemed frozen there to me in the flickering oil light, the priests with their arms raised at their sides while the worshippers held theirs crossed respectfully over their chests and the soldiers stood ready. We hit the soldiers first, since their rifles were the biggest threat. They didn’t realize we were there until the first two fell in fountains of blood that looked jet black in the low light. The third actually fired his weapon, probably by reflex since it certainly didn’t come anywhere near us. Then I swept my right-hand blades across his left wrist, catching the flexible junction where his armored gloves met his armored forearm braces and slicing his hand off. It fell along with his rifle and my follow up ripped through his face where the ceremonial helmet left it open.

  Then something hit me hard and I flew across the tile floor, landing in a crouch, my upper back numb where the headcomp had shut off the pain. I thought maybe I’d been shot, but then I saw the big bodyguard coming at me fast, faster than anyone I’d ever seen except one of us. I slid to the side, in motion to aim a kick at his leg, but he pivoted smoothly and lunged for me with a glint of metal as long, slender blades extended from external housings strapped to braces on his forearms. I blocked the blades with my talons and they tangled together with a ringing vibration that I could feel up into my shoulders.

  Holy shit!

  I felt as if I was trying to wrestle with a Marine battlesuit; the Tahni’s arms barely moved and I couldn’t force him back even with my boots driving into the rough tile surface. What the hell was this thing? I had a sudden intuition---from my headcomp’s analysis of the data from my implant thermal imaging filters---that there was a fairly large and powerful isotope reactor glowing like a star somewhere in the Tahni’s gut. I knew that didn’t make any sense: the Tahni were forbidden by their religion from any cybernetic implants or even genetic engineering. But I didn’t have the time or the luxury of debating it now.

  I gave up on brute force and let his hands move forward, guiding them outward and opening up his midsection for a knee strike. It felt as if I’d slammed my knee into a BiPhase Carbide spaceship hull, but he stumbled backwards and I was able to disengage from his blades.

  I was vaguely aware, in the fashion that I was aware that I was breathing, that the two priests were lying in pools of their own blood and that Deke was moving past them to kill t
he Imperial ministers. But all my conscious thought, all the analysis of my headcomp’s combat programming, was focused on the Tahni bodyguard. I knew, as if I’d always known, that I didn’t have time to go for my carbine or my Gauss pistol. I feinted a slash at his head, then sank into a low crouch and pivoted on my plant foot, sweeping my right leg across his ankles as he advanced on me.

  Again, it felt like I’d struck metal posts set in concrete, but the Tahni went down, back crashing into the tile with mass beyond his size. I slashed downward at him before he could recover and felt my talons sink into his chest…and then deflect off something hard and unyielding. I didn’t have time to get out of the way of the return strike. The Reflex armor kept the blades from penetrating my chest, but the sheer force of the blow felt like it had caved in my ribs and everything spun around me in a blur of motion as I went spinning across the tile.

  I stopped my spin by dragging my talons across the floor, the high-pitched skritching of the duralloy over the rough tiles setting my teeth on edge, and I jumped to my feet and set for his next attack. That was when he made his first mistake. Deke had killed two of the Tahni Imperial officials while I’d been fighting the bodyguard; the second was falling as I watched, his colorful robes decorated with an arterial spray. He was heading for the last one, the highest ranked, who had turned and was trying to run. The bodyguard took his eyes off of me and changed his stance, trying to head off Deke.

  It wasn’t a lot of time, but it was all I needed. I drew my Gauss pistol from its belt holster and pumped five rounds into him. He’d been ducking into a charge with his head down and the arm facing me up and poised to strike, so all the heavy, tungsten slugs struck him in the torso. He stumbled, and in the heartbeat it took him to steady himself, Deke slashed through the throat of the Imperial minister with a wide arc of his right hand, cutting the Tahni male down before he could take two steps.

  The bodyguard saw it, too, and he ran. He was ungodly fast and I barely had time to fire two more rounds off before he was around the next curve in the twisting maze of sandstone walls. I knew I hit him, I saw the slugs punch into his back, but he barely missed a step and then he was gone.

  Deke had brought his pulse carbine around and taken a step to go after the bodyguard but I stopped him with a neurolinked warning.

  No! I exclaimed. He’ll have the rest of the garrison after us in a minute, and maybe air cover, too. We have to get the hell out of here.

  He seemed as if he was about to argue with me, but then he slung his carbine back over his shoulder and nodded.

  We did our job, he said, and followed me as I broke into a sprint back the way we’d come. Wish I knew what the hell that guy was made of, though.

  I get the feeling we’ll find out sooner than we’d like, I replied. Especially if we keep this shit up.

  The walls of the temple rushed by us in a blur and it was only seconds before we were running past the bodies of the two soldiers we’d left lying in the perimeter courtyard. Then we were down the steps and sprinting across the desert again, not heading for the plateau where we’d waited and hid out, but instead for the gulch kilometers farther where we’d landed the Raven.

  Keep what shit up? Deke wanted to know.

  I know we’re supposed to be breaking their morale, I answered, giving voice to the doubts I’d been feeling, but desecrating their holy places… I shook my head fractionally, to myself. They’re not human, so maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about; but in my opinion, what we did here is just going to piss them off.

  Chapter Twenty

  I’d given up on trying to sleep. Instead, I sat up in bed and stared into the darkness in my room and ruminated. I could have made myself go under with the headcomp, but I didn’t need it that badly: I’d caught up on rest during the flight back to Hermes, 140 hours of eating and sleeping to let the nanites in my blood repair the physical damage of the last mission. It couldn’t do a damn thing about the spiritual damage though. We’d spent most of the last six months since Demeter hitting what the Bulldog called “soft targets.”

  “Soft targets” meant civilians, for the most part. Oh, sure, they were all Imperial functionaries of one stripe or another, so technically they were all legitimate targets; but it wasn’t too hard to see that we were being steered away from military installations. Maybe it was the Bulldog---we’d all started calling him that among ourselves since Jenna had told me about the nickname---or maybe it was guidance from Admiral Sato or even the President. But someone had gotten nervous because of what had happened on Demeter.

  Jenna mumbled in her sleep and stirred next to me, kicking the covers off. She was sleeping in just a T-shirt, and I trailed a fingertip across the soft skin of her thigh, wondering if she’d mind too much if I woke her up again. I shook my head; she probably wouldn’t mind, but she had to get up for work in three hours and unlike me, she didn’t have any little extras that could keep her from getting tired. I should let her sleep.

  There was always tomorrow.

  The alarm klaxon sounded exactly one and a half seconds before the door to our quarters smashed inward with a shriek of tearing polymer and metal. Time slowed down at that moment as I went into combat mode through no conscious decision of my own and my implants dosed me with a cocktail of natural and synthetic stimulants. I could see bits of the door flying inward, could see the long shadow thrown into the room by the light from the corridor. I was in motion without thought, up into a crouch and then throwing myself across the room, talons already extended.

  A Tahni came through the door, dressed in a black-striped camouflage pattern that I recognized immediately as the same that bodyguard had worn at the temple, months ago. He was huge, easily two meters tall and half that wide at the chest, and the pale light from the hallway glinted off the blades extending from housings on his forearms. There was a glow on thermal from his midsection where an isotope power plant was nestled in defiance of all logic and every intelligence analysis.

  And he was in our room.

  All that rushed through my mind in the microsecond before I hit him. My aim was simple: I had to drive him out of the doorway and away from Jenna, get him out where base security could come and take him out with heavy weapons. That plan died a quick death, and I almost did, too. He moved faster than anything I’d ever fought before except one of the Glory Boys, and those wicked-looking blades carved a pair of deep gashes right into my chest as the impact tossed me across the room and smashed me into the far wall.

  I felt the cold polymer of the wall bend as my left shoulder hit it, felt the whoosh of air leaving my lungs as it was forced out by physics, but I didn’t yet feel the pain. The headcomp was holding off on that, trying to keep me focused. I didn’t need the help. I bounced off the wall and back at the…the thing, whatever it was. I ignored the self-analysis that catalogued my injuries, ignored the ripped flesh and welling blood on my chest and the faint haze of concussion, and concentrated on the attack.

  It was big, and at least as strong as me, and nearly as fast. I had to out-think it. I jumped, pushing off the floor with every ounce of force my natural and artificial musculature could muster, and flipped in mid-air to let my bare feet slap against the corner of the entrance wall and the ceiling, then pushed off again from there, outrunning gravity. I slammed into the Tahni’s upper body shoulder-first, then ripped my talons straight through his face as I followed him down to the floor.

  He threw me off and I flew across the room and rolled to a stop under the small dining table, scrambling to get my feet back under me as he stood. The flesh on the left side of his face was sliced away into strips that dangled in bloody ruin, and I expected to see the stark white of bone beneath it. What I saw instead was a dull gunmetal grey.

  I actually froze for a moment then, even my headcomp taken aback. The thing had a metal endoskeleton, powered by that isotope reactor. But it couldn’t be a robot…the Tahni didn’t build autonomous robots, and they sure as hell didn’t arm them. What the hel
l was it?

  That was when I saw that Jenna was awake and she was lunging for the nightstand on my side of the bed, where I kept my Gauss pistol when I was in garrison. The Tahni thing saw her too, and we moved at the same time. I didn’t waste time or breath trying to tell her not to do it; she would have ignored me anyway. Even as I took the two steps across the room, though, I knew as sure as I knew anything that I wouldn’t be in time. My headcomp told me and I ignored it because maybe she would kill it…

  She got a round off. I heard the chest-deep snap of the electromagnetic coil discharging, heard the crack of the 10mm tungsten slug breaking the sound barrier. She’d even aimed for the head. I saw it all between one step and the next, saw the slug tear away the thing’s lower jaw in a spray of blood, flesh and sparking metal. That didn’t stop him.

  It was just a careless swipe of his hand, like you’d swat at a bug. There was a crack of breaking bone and she flew across the bed and hit the opposite wall with a thud of dead weight, sliding to the floor. I was on him a fraction of a second later, a fraction of a second too late.

  I think I was screaming. I’ve never really been sure. I know I took him to the ground, and I know he hit me; he hit me and I felt my face shift as bones cracked, but I could see up through the roof of his mouth with his jaw torn away. There was organic material there, oozing blood, and I jammed my fist into it as far as it would go, then extended my talons with a thought. The thing’s body jerked and spasmed and hit me again but I ripped my talons back and forth, feeling soft brain tissue tear deep inside that metal skull.

  Then it went still, shoulders slumping backwards and the breath going out of it in a hiss that smelled of blood and death. I retracted my talons and pulled my hand out of the thing’s skull. It was coated in blood and spinal tissue up past my wrist and all I remember thinking was that I wished I could kill it again.