CHAPTER 36
Hell’s Cross, Outpost Fisher Four
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 0. 00:00
The container slams into the ground. Its floor, already blasted apart by the explosive shells, shatters completely when it strikes my back, trapping us inside. Its weight slams me onto Vienne, who is balled up beneath me.
My armor handles the impact. My ears, however, can’t deal with the sound, and for a few seconds I’m stunned. Until Mimi decides to zap me again.
“Move it, Regulator!” she barks into my brain, sounding like my old chief.
“Vienne?” I shrug off the wreckage. Roll her onto her back. Check to make sure she’s okay, but it’s pitch-black inside, and the air is saturated with dust.
“Her vitals are good,” Mimi says. “She’s just unconscious.”
Just unconscious, I think. Then Vienne moans, and I know it’s true. The queen. Where is she? Does she know we survived? Is she coming in for the kill?
I peer outside between the twisted doors of the container. Eceni is as beautiful as the day I met her Offworld, and I might have been smitten by her again, if she weren’t a homicidal maniac who just dropped a shipping container on my head. While I’m checking Vienne’s pulse, the queen bounds across the courtyard to the statue. She leaps onto the dais, throws an arm around the bishop’s crumbling waist, and does a series of high cancan kicks while humming the tune “ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay.”
“Come out, come out, wherever you are, Jacob,” she says, singsong. “I know you’re not dead, Jake. Ja-ak-ey.”
“Vienne,” I whisper, and shake her gently. She lets out a quiet moan. Okay, I think, Vienne needs time to recover, so I need a diversion.
As quietly as possible I extricate myself and crawl over to the damaged door. Eceni is still dancing around the statue, oblivious to my movement. I slip through the narrow gap, my muscles screaming, my head full of static, looking for something to use to draw the queen away from Vienne.
The power sled! It’s parked a few meters away. Covered in debris, but the engine’s still idling. Lucky me.
“Only you could say lucky me,” Mimi says, “after a structure the size of a small house lands on you.”
“The eternal optimist.” I slide onto the seat and grab the handlebars. I goose the sled and roar toward the queen. She turns at the sound of the revving engine and brings the launcher to bear.
Before she can fire, I whip the sled into a fishtail, which slams the rear end into her legs. The force blows her back six meters, and I jump off, sending the sled crashing into a column nearby. The fuel tank ruptures, and I can smell petrol in the air, even as I kick the launcher out of her hand. She blocks my next three punches with counter blows to my wrists.
“You’re quick,” I say.
“You say the nicest things.” She lands a darting front kick to my chest, then follows with a succession of blows that I struggle to block. The last kick brings her in for a punch to my throat. I dodge it and pull her shoulder down, ready to use a hip throw. But she’s ahead of me, and her foot comes up behind her back and smacks me in the face, knocking my helmet off.
For a half second I’m dazed. She makes me pay with a roundhouse to the gut that knocks me on my butt, and I do a backward roll to recover.
She fires the helmet at my head. I catch it easy like a ball and shove it back on.
“Bring it,” I motion her forward, goading.
“Darling, you have no idea of how much it I have.”
We each throw three punches—right, left, right—simultaneously, blocking so that the flurry ends with our arms intertwined, the hard bones of our knuckles centimeters from each other’s noses. Then she leans forward and kisses me on the lips, pushing her tongue into my mouth.
I bite down. Hard.
“Ow!” She yanks back, wincing. “You bad, bad boy!”
Though our arms are still tangled, she throws a hook kick to my temple. The force of it snaps my head to the side, and I hear bones pop in my neck. She lands punches to my right clavicle as I fall against the side of the shipping container.
Eceni moves in for the kill. “Oh Jakey. I can’t wait to get my hands on you.”
“Stop!” Vienne bursts out of the container, kicking the door open as Eceni steps in front of it.
Boom! The force slams Eceni on her back several meters away. Her butt leaves a trail in the dust like a snowplow, and I grin.
“Forgot about me, bitch?” Vienne steps out into the light. “Keep your hands off him.”
“Thanks for the save,” I say as I rise to my feet.
“Just returning the favor, chief.”
I hear the telltale click of Vienne’s armalite. Then see a RPG streak across the Cross. Eceni hears it, too, and as the grenade reaches her, she spins to her feet with inhuman speed and brings up her launcher. It smacks the warhead mid-flight and diverts its course upward. The shell flies straight up into the pitch dark.
An instant later I hear a muffled boom. The queen waltzes a few yards away as rubble from the blast plasters the stone floor. A smile breaks across Eceni’s painted ruby lips. “Soldier girl, you shot my pet Regulator.”
“Your pet deserved a worse death than I gave her.”
“Not that she didn’t deserve it, I suppose,” the queen says. A smile curls the corners of her mouth. She shakes the dirt from her dress. “Look what you have done. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get real silk on Mars? No, I suppose you wouldn’t, not a girl who sleeps in symbiarmor.”
Vienne tries to launch another RPG. Click. The chamber is empty.
“Oops,” the queen says. “You are out of grenades. Didn’t you keep count?”
“I don’t need grenades to take care of you.”
In that same instant the queen sprints to a column. Leaps high into the air. Bounds from the column to a second one, then to the arcade. Before Vienne can move, the queen attacks, striking with a series of cobra-quick kicks that knock the armalite from her grasp. Vienne stumbles, her wounded heel throwing her off balance.
I catch her. Pull her out of harm’s way. The queen misses, and she curses as she lands on the balls of her feet. Vienne tries to charge, but I won’t let go. Instead, I lock arms with her.
Vienne looks down at our hands, then into my eyes, and something passes between us. Or rather falls, like a curtain cut loose from its hanging rod. Her knees buckle—it’s the wound, I think.
“You’re injured. You can’t beat her alone,” I say. “Together?”
“Together.”
Eceni screams. She launches a flying kick, her mouth bent down like twisted metal. We duck, hands still locked, and she flies above us. With a clang, she hits the container, then executes a perfect two-step walkover and flips off the side, turning in midair so that her kick is aimed at the base of Vienne’s skull.
“No!” I shout, and swing Vienne out of the way. My forearm blocks her kick and gives us time to recover.
Vienne looks at me. I know what she wants.
Planting my feet, I swing her around like a ball on the end of a tether, and she throws a kick at Eceni’s head. As easily as nodding, the queen ducks, then throws a roundhouse kick. We block it with our locked arms, and I let go long enough to lift Vienne into a grand jeté, our combined mass swinging her around so fast, the queen can’t dodge.
The heel of Vienne’s boot catches Eceni in the jaw, and I hear bone crunch. But the queen doesn’t go down. Instead, she comes up spitting blood, eyes wild and full of rage.
I swing Vienne around my back and into my arms, and we both slam into Eceni, knocking her against the shipping container. She shakes her head, dazed, and we go in for the kill. Using me for balance, Vienne runs along the side of the container and hits Eceni with a succession of front kicks to the face, the side of the head, and the base of the skull.
Eceni falls backward and stumbles away. “Blood! All over my dre—”
Vienne launches herself, a human missile. She goes vertical, her body laid out li
ke a board. Strikes the queen in the midsection. Her head driving into the solar plexus. Her arms wrapping around Eceni like a vise. Momentum carries them to a mound of debris, and Vienne twists so that her weight hammers the queen’s gut.
“Oof!” The queen’s tailbone cracks, and she sags as all the air leaves her body, a piece of broken rebar impaling her gut. Her eyes gloss over.
Vienne looks at the queen’s fallen body. I stare at Vienne, the flames from the fires burning around us reflected in her eyes. Finally she looks at me.
“You’re okay?” I ask.
“Yes, chief.”
“It’s chief now? You called me Durango before.”
“Before when?”
“When you blew holes in the bottom of the shipping container.”
“That was different.”
“Different how?”
For a second I think I see a mist in her eyes. “You’re not going to do something stupid, are you?” she says.
“Like what?”
“Like this.” Vienne pulls me close and kisses me. Her lips are warm, and I feel that heat spread to my cheeks.
“Cowboy,” Mimi says. “I hate to interrupt, but—”
“How sweet,” the queen says as she stands. “Two lovers snuggling over the woman they almost killed. Tsk. And you call the Draeu animals.”
Her dress is a matted mess of blood and guanite, and her neck is bent at an odd angle. Blood seeps from a wound where the rebar impaled her. But she places a hand on the pipe and pulls hard.
“Missed me, missed me,” the queen sings. “Now you have to kiss me.” She screams, and my stomach lurches.
“How?” Vienne says.
“Nanosyms,” I say. “She must still have some in her bloodstream.”
“Millions of them, actually. Doing their best to keep me alive.” The queen waves the pipe at us. “Lucky for me the Draeu aren’t here to see this. They get so hard to control when there’s blood in the air.”
I open up with my own armalite. Bullets spray the courtyard, and the queen drops to the floor beneath the line of fire.
“The head!” Vienne yells. “Aim for the back of the head. It’s your only chance!”
I chase the queen with a line of bullets, but Eceni ducks behind the rubble, the bullets missing her by centimeters. I pop the empty clip, then jam another into place and step out into the open to make the kill shot.
The queen is gone.
Shimatta! I say under my breath. Stupid move.
“Where is the target?” Vienne says. “I’ve no visual.”
“Wait,” I tell Vienne. “Mimi?” I scan the perimeter for the queen. “She can’t just disappear into thin air, right?”
The queen cackles. Her laughter echoes across the hall. I twist my head back and forth, trying to locate the sound. Then my eye catches a flash of movement, the queen tossing something small and shimmering.
“Grenade!” I scream.
It lands with a quiet squeak.
Next to us.
The light-mass grenade expands impossibly fast, and balls of light shoot through the air as Vienne and I are blown back and slammed into the wall. Vienne slides down, her head lolling to the side, eyes closed. I slide down, too, my body twitching and jerking like it’s been shocked, the symbiarmor like lead skin.
I try to call to Vienne, but it comes out garbled. “Mimi? Mimi!” No answer.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Eceni says, skipping toward me. “I’m going to collect the treasure and be on my merry way.”
“There’s no treasure,” I growl, lifting my head. “You vitun iso psychopath.”
Eceni leans down, her face inches away from mine. “You’ve failed, Jake, and according to your precious Tenets, you’re supposed to kill yourself.” She pulls a shiv out of a boot. “Feel free to use my knife to do the Rites on yourself. And because you mean so much to me, if I come back and find you dead, I’ll make sure the Draeu don’t eat your corpse.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
She blows a kiss. “Farewell, Great Chief Stringfellow. I wish it had ended differently for us.”
“You jumalauta liar!”
She grins. “That’s true. I am lying. I’ve been waiting to see you dead since the day you dumped me.” Then she dances away toward the tunnels, pausing as she passes to plant a kick in Vienne’s side. “Oh, too bad. Looks like you’re alone again, lover boy.”
“Cào n z z ng shíb dài!” I roar.
“Thank you,” she calls back as she jogs away. “But I have no ancestors.” Then disappears.
“Mimi?” I say, moving slowly, my body feeling as empty and lifeless as a drained battery.
“Happy Birthday!” she shouts in my head.
Do what? “Mimi!”
“Happy New Year! Auld lang syne!”
Oh kuso! Her functions are fubared. The light-mass grenade must have scrambled her functions. Not now. Not when we need her. “Mimi! Perform reboot sequence on my mark. Three, two, one.”
My synthetic eye goes black, and I hear a quiet ping. I crawl over to Vienne. I don’t need Mimi to tell me she’s alive. Her chest is rising and falling as she breathes. Lightly patting her cheeks, I try to wake her. I keep trying for a few minutes, without success, until Mimi comes online again.
“Oh, my aching head,” Mimi says. “What was in that stuff anyway?”
“Pay attention, Mimi. Can you reboot Vienne’s suit?”
“Make contact, and I’ll see what I can come up with.”
Cradling Vienne’s head in my lap, I place a gloved hand at the base of her skull. For a few seconds nothing happens. Then a spark leaps from my suit and spreads over her symbiarmor. She tenses, the armor going rigid, and her eyes flutter open.
“Wake up, Regulator,” I say. “It’s up to us to finish this job.”
CHAPTER 37
Hell’s Cross, Outpost Fisher Four
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 0. 00:00
We follow the path that Maeve showed me. We reach the cliff, and I find myself staring into the blank air that held me hostage. It should be easier, facing the same fear that you had conquered. But fears are like thirst. No matter how many times you quench them, they always return. This time, though, I can’t afford to crawl like a worm to the rappelling rope. I have to grab it and slide fast. So that’s what I do, anger and adrenaline fueling my engine.
Before Vienne can beat me to it, I grab a handful of cord and swing out over the ledge—all false bravado, but I have to do it for her. My feet hit the wall, and I push out again, belaying the rope between my hands, then swing out, and the arc carries me into the mouth of the small tunnel again.
“Get up, get up, get up,” I cajole myself. When I’m on my feet, I hear the sound of Vienne’s descent and make sure I’m there to catch her.
“Good work, cowboy,” Mimi says.
Once we’re free of the landing area, I pick up the queen’s trail. It leads to the holding pens.
“Mimi,” I ask, “locate Eceni.”
“Located. Fifty meters ahead on your current bearing.”
“Before we go any farther.” I grab hold of Vienne. “There’s some intel you need.” So I debrief her about the chigoe.
Vienne takes it all in, then answers the best way she knows how. “I don’t give a fig about Big Daddies or diamonds. All I want is that woman’s head on a pike.”
“Well,” I say. “Okay then.”
Vienne takes the point. We crouch low and move at a deliberate pace, keeping our weapons trained ahead. When we reach the pens, Vienne stops and points at the vault door. It hangs ajar, the hinges scored and melted. Black, sooty streaks stain the metal, caused by C-42 explosives.
Vienne covers me while I move in a zigzag pattern to the opening, then flatten myself against the wall, weapon ready. I look inside the anteroom on the other side of the vault door. All clear.
Crouching low, we creep around the corner. It’s pitch dark, but we don’t dare strike a light. That leaves nothing t
o do but wait until she shows her face.
Breathe. Calm. Calm.
“Mimi? Can you get a lock on her location?”
“Ten meters. Bearing indeterminate. The chigoes are creating interference.”
Think. Where is she? There has to be a light source somewhere.
I remember the low ebb of fluorescence from the tanks that hold the chigoes. I blink. There, in the next chamber, I see a flicker of something. There’s a rattle and hum, and the overhead lights in the chamber ahead come on, followed by the crash of breaking glass. I wave Vienne forward, and we move together to the edge of the antechamber, our backs pressed against the smooth stone wall.
Eceni is trashing the chamber. One tank lies shattered on the ground, a dozen chigoes scrambling toward the shadows to escape. She stomps around, trying to pound them with her boots, chasing them deeper beneath the equipment shelf, one chigoe tucked under her arm. The chigoe’s shell is thick and ridged, the shape of an oval. Its back is covered with patches of black eggs.
It’s a female chigoe. She’s found the queen.
“Where are they?” Eceni takes the chigoe queen in both hands and shakes her like a petulant child. “Where are the Big Daddies? Why are there only babies?”
I stand up. “Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?”
Eceni sighs and turns slowly toward me. “Jakey. You found me. How unlucky for you. I was just about to take my treasure and go home.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Vienne follows me into the chamber and circles back until she’s standing in front of the largest tank of chigoes.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I say. “These aren’t babies. They’re as full grown as they’re ever going to get.”
Eceni lifts the queen so that it shields her. “Don’t lie to me!” she screams. “Where are the Big Daddies? Tell me, and I’ll let you live.”
“Too bad we’re not feeling so generous.” Vienne opens fire.
“No!” I shout, too late to stop her.
The bullets rip through Eceni. The force of impact drives her back, and she crumples to one knee. She shakes her shoulders, and the healing begins. The open wounds start to close, the bleeding stops, and within a few seconds, it’s as if she was never shot.
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