As they stood, dripping with viscera and breathing heavily, they regarded each other in the silence and stillness that followed a nearly hour-long fight. That’s when a loud crack echoed off the abandoned buildings. Kay, with the grace and power of a Sabercat, swung her Kit’Ra in a wide arcing motion and batted a bullet away that was destined for her head.
The specs reacted instantly and told Brix, via radar, the approximate direction from which the shot came. He quickly loaded more magazines into his gun and opened fire, riddling the area with pockmarks. After a long moment of firing, he paused to zoom in around the area. Though he saw no bodies, he knew that someone was up there. Another crack echoed and this time, Kay wasn’t fast enough and Puar was struck in the shoulder hard enough to knock him back several feet.
“I’ll hoist you up,” Khai said to Brawl as they ran across the top of the pedestrian walkway between the two hospital buildings.
Khai stood, knees bent and fingers interlaced together. Brawl took a ten-step running start, planted one foot in Khai’s palms and jumped. Khai did the rest. Using the strength honed from training on a planet with a higher gravitational pull, he tossed Brawl over ten feet up to the ledge where Brawl landed in a crouch. Then Brawl reached down with his prosthetic arm while Khai got a running start at the wall. He planted the step on the wall and followed up with two more before kicking up and reaching for Brawl’s outstretched hand. Brawl easily caught his hand and hauled him up over the ledge.
From there, it was a simple task of leaping from building top to building top to reach their destination. Only once did they have to climb when the jump to the neighboring building was several yards taller than any of the others. They then relentlessly climbed the fire escape to the top and leapt across to the next.
Eventually, they made it to their destination and what they found caused the two war-hardened soldiers to pause. It seemed that this was an outpost of some kind. There were crates of food—all empty—and crates of weapons—all empty—lying about. All that didn’t bother them. What did bother then was the carnage that met their eyes. Men, women and children were strewn about, not killed by any Reaper or Roamer, but with automatic weapons. One of the bodies they came across was a man in an officer’s uniform lying over a woman and child. They rolled the body over and immediately spotted a name tag on the shirt. Captain Wortharr died protecting his family from a crazed killer, a crazed killer that was now missing.
“Dack,” Khai called out. “How you doing?”
“I’m fine,” Dah called back. “Just relaxing and soaking up the sun.”
“Good,” Khai said, “We have to track down a killer.”
“Everything okay?”
“No,” Khai said. “Someone slaughtered a lot of people up here and he’s gonna pay for it.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“He only had two options: north or south and we came from the north.”
“South it is,” Dah said. “Don’t worry about me. Just go get that asshole.”
“We will,” Brawl said. “And I reckon I know where he’s headed.”
Khai and Brawl started running. After clearing the next building, Khai called out to his party.
“Kay, Brix, Puar, you all with me?”
“I’m not rolling with you anymore, Khai!” Puar’s angry and strained voice came of the radio. “Every time I do, I’m either riddled with shrapnel, nearly blown up or shot!”
“It’s true,” Kay said. “In fact the only person who hasn’t been shot is you, Khai.”
“Oh, I’ve been shot,” Khai assured them, “multiple times. In fact, Kay, you’re wrong. I have been shot since running with this crew. Brix shot me square in the chest. Fortunately, I was wearing a vest.”
There was a long pause, then Brix chimed in with a soft grumble. “I kinda hoped you forgot about that.”
“Plus,” Khai added, not skipping a beat, “since running with this crew, I’ve been stabbed repeatedly, exposed to the vacuum of space, dropped out of an orbital station into a canyon with no food or water, interrogated, tortured… and shot... twice. I could keep going if you like.”
“Twice?” Brix asked.
“Did you guys forget about the Alarrs?”
“Oh, right,” Brix said, then added, “Well, try to remember I was shot in the head.”
“Is this how your team operates?” Brawl asked.
“Yeah,” Khai said. “Why?”
“It’s a miracle that y'all were able to pull off any operation much less infiltrate the most secure, the most un-infiltrate-able fortress in the Seryys System and mount a rescue against an army of SPEARs.”
“We’re gifted,” Khai said with a shrug.
“Special was the term that came to mind,” Brawl shot back.
“Brawl’s right, cut the banter,” Khai ordered. “Can I assume you’ve met our gun man?”
“Uh, yeah!” Puar snapped.
“He’s got us more or less pinned down,” Kay reported, all business. “But we can’t get a lock on him.”
“We’re on the rooftops headed your way now,” Khai announced. “We’ll be coming right up behind him.”
“Roger that,” Kay responded.
Brawl and Khai picked up the pace. With Dah and Puar both injured, time was definitely a factor. The last thing he wanted was to lose a friend to something as stupid as bleed out. Though he applauded Dah for his bravado, he knew how bad his injury really was and he knew all too well that any gunshot wound was serious and time-sensitive, regardless of where Puar had been shot. They kept running, building by building, getting closer. With the buildings that were too tall, they’d jump across and climb. When they were too short, they’d just jump and hope they made it. Khai was surprised to see Brawl so dedicated to the safety of people he didn’t even know and was definitely not going to complain about it. Another ten minutes of running and they started to hear the staccato tat-tat-tat of a gunfight echoing off the buildings. Another five minutes and Khai could see the gunman using the zoom feature on his specs.
The man was bald, built and short. He was wearing camouflage pants and a sweat-soaked tank top. He had his back to Brawl and Khai as they approached. Knowing that he had an opportunity to end it quickly, Khai ran at full speed. He leapt a gap between two buildings leaving Brawl in his dust. He sprinted across a building top and leapt at its edge. The edge gave and he faltered. Shit! Khai thought as he reached the window sill ahead of him three stories down. He caught it with his left hand’s fingertips and lost his grip falling one more story before coming to a halt, dangling above a horde of hungry Roamers.
Khai pulled himself up to stand on the window sill and leapt up to the next, pulled himself up and leapt again until he made it almost to the top where Brawl was standing, his back to the ledge. The next thing he knew, Brawl was falling toward him. Khai grabbed the ledge in an iron grip and reached the other hand out to Brawl. Brawl instinctively reached out and grabbed Khai’s hand with his bionic replacement. The pressure of the mechanical grip caused Khai’s hand to pop a few times in a few places, and he growled in pain as he swung Brawl around to the fire escape.
Brawl gripped the railing tight enough to bend the metal and pulled himself up. As Khai let go of Brawl, he looked at the hulking form above. That was the first time he saw the gunman’s face. It reminded him of his former Foreman’s face, pig-like with an upturned nose and high cheekbones. There was a wild craze in his eyes and one of them was twitching. The veins in his neck were sticking out and it appeared to Khai that the guy was in the middle of a drug overdose—knowing exactly what that looked like, as it had been an over-dosed druggie that killed his dad all those years ago.
“That was a pretty neat trick back there,” he said with a shaky voice to match the trembling of his hands and arms, “dodging a bullet and all.”
“Let me up and I’ll show you what else I can do,” Khai growled.
“Not a chance!” he said, drawing up his foot. “Dodge this!”
&
nbsp; He stomped down on Khai’s face. Khai’s head snapped back and he lost his grip. One window sill down, he caught himself again and when he looked up, the guy the gone… and so was Brawl. Khai tasted blood and realized that it was coming from his nose. With the sleeve of his shirt, he wiped the blood away and quickly scaled the wall. When he got to the top, he found Brawl and the guy exchanging blows. To Khai’s surprise, the guy was holding his own quite well, but whatever he was hopped up on was definitely giving him an edge. It was clear that whatever drug he was using was dulling—or outright blocking—the pain receptors in his brain because Brawl’s knife was buried to the hilt through the guy’s forearm and the guy was still fighting like nothing had happened.
Khai instinctively reached for his gun, then immediately dropped it as he realized that Brawl had indeed broken his hand in a few spots and pain shot all the way up to his shoulder. With a growl of frustration, he ripped the grip fabric off one of his chest pockets and retrieved a small plastic tube with an even smaller needle at the end of it. He jabbed the needle into his hand and squeezed the tube injecting himself with its contents.
Almost immediately, the pain waned and he was able to flex his hand, though he could still feel the pressure from the broken bones rubbing against each other. He picked up his gun and lined up the shot. An instant later, the fight was over and the man was lying dead in a pool of his own blood with a thumbnail-sized hole in his forehead.
Brawl removed his knife from the guy’s forearm, wiped it off on his pant leg and sheathed it.
“Thanks for the assist,” Brawl said. “I reckon I owe you one. That guy was clearly tweaking on something.”
“Don’t mention it,” Khai said, holstering his gun.
“Who is he?” Brawl asked.
“Probably the hunter that brought the Reaper in here,” Khai said, examining the dead man’s belongings. “He was clearly a pretty good shot. Had the reflex package I had put in my head not kicked in, I’d a splattered mess all over the floor of that bank.”
“When’d you get that?” Brawl asked.
“A few years ago,” Khai said causally. “After fighting Kay and seeing what she could do, I decided I wanted one.”
“The great Khai’Xander Khail using performance enhancers,” Brawl chuckled. “Not exactly fair, I reckon.”
“Not getting any younger,” Khai admitted, shaking his hand. “I need all the help I can get.”
“You get him? We heard your hand canon go off,” Brix asked.
“Yeah, he’s down,” Khai responded. “How’s Puar?”
“I’ve administered first aid, cauterized the wound and bandaged him up. Fortunately, the bullet went straight through, so no extraction will be necessary,” Kay added.
“Dack, you still with me?”
“I told you,” his pained voice chimed in. “I’m fine. Just get me the hell out of here. How’s my ship?”
“We haven’t affected repairs yet,” Kay answered, “but we have the hover panels. Though Puar getting shot is going to slow things down.”
“We’re on our way,” Khai said, then turned to Brawl and asked, “How good are you at repair?”
“Better than most, I reckon,” he said.
“Head back to the Bucket, we’ll meet you there.”
“Roger that,” Kay said.
Khai found the fire exit and climbed down one handed, favoring his broken hand. With Brawl following.
As they walked, Brawl broke the silence. “Sorry about the hand,” he offered. “Sometimes, in high-stress situations, I tend to forget my own strength.”
“Don’t mention it,” Khai said, looking at his hand.
“That’s twice you’ve saved me.”
“I know. Though, technically it was three times.”
“Bah!” Brawl scoffed with a wave of his hand. “I reckon I would’ve killed that guy eventually. You just got him there quicker.”
“If you say so.” Khai knew Brawl was right, but he was trying to drive home that there didn’t have to be any hard feelings anymore.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is ‘thank you,’” Brawl said, stopping to look at Khai intently.
“Like I said, don’t mention it,” Khai said, staring straight into Brawl’s hazel eyes. “So long as you are in my crew, you will not be left behind unless the rest of the crew’s lives will be put in immediate jeopardy by not doing so... Even then, this crew would most likely vote to put their lives in danger to save you. That’s how we do things. Come on, let’s get back the ship and get out of here.”
Chapter Nine
They walked the rest of the way to the ship in silence. When they got there, Kay was working diligently under the ship. Brawl wordlessly went to her side to help. Khai took himself to the small medical bay—though “med bay” was a very relative term, it was a small cubby etched into the corridor between the cockpit and main hold—on the Bucket where Puar was already laying on the bed getting a scan.
“Scan complete,” Amber said. “No vital organs hit. Administering pain relief.”
A small, spindly appendage dropped from the bulkhead above the bed with a syringe on the end of it. The arm injected him with the painkiller.
“Procedure complete. Exit now, please.”
Puar rolled out of the bed. “Thanks, Amber.” He spotted Khai and noticed his swollen, black-and-blued hand. “Next victim.”
Khai stepped past his friend and lay down on the bed. A scanner extended out of the wall above the bed and ran its length, scanning Khai for injuries.
“Injury detected.” On a screen above the bed, it displayed an x-ray image of his hand. “Fractures of the metacarpal bones on digits two and three and fracture of proximal phalanx of digit four. Administering pain relief.”
The same appendage dropped down from the bulkhead and injected him with the same painkiller. “Temporary prosthetic installation commencing.”
Several multi-fingered arms extended from multiple places in the surrounding bulkhead and converged on Khai’s broken hand. A black, skin-tight glove was administered and sealed airtight to the hand. Within the glove were small metal splints that formed to the contours of the hand at the time of sealing to keep the bones from wandering. Also within the glove were small actuators that would make the glove move and act as a hand. In essence, the glove was a type of exoskeleton that kept the hand safe but at the same time afforded the wearer full, albeit temporary, use of the hand. Once the glove was formed perfectly to his hand, another appendage ran microfilament fibers from the edge of the glove under the skin to the nerves where the hand met the wrist. These fibers were weaved into nerves to accept the signals from the brain and activate the glove.
“Procedure complete. Microfilament fibers will dissolve in two days. Seek medical attention within specified timeframe.”
Khai tested the glove by flexing his hand several times. He no longer felt the bones gnashing against each other and the painkiller did its job well. It wasn’t pretty, but it would work until they could bag their Reaper and head home. From the weapons locker in the main hold Khai grabbed a few things: a semi-automatic sniper rifle for himself and a sight attachment with enhanced zoom for Brix’s gun, all the ammo available for both guns and a few frag grenades and extra rounds for Puar’s grenade launcher.
As he exited, Dah’s voice came over the channel. “Khai, you there?”
“What’s up, buddy?”
“You’ve got incoming, lots of incoming. Two herds converged at the corner here at the bank. They must’ve heard your firefight.” Dah synced his specs to the open channel and shared the image of what looked like thousands of Roamers shuffling down the avenue toward what they most likely hoped was a fresh meal.
“I was afraid of that,” Khai said as he climbed up to the top of the Bucket to join Brix.
“Afraid of what?” Brix asked.
“We’ve got more Roamers headed our direction,” Khai said, slapping the bag of ammunition down and sitting. He handed Brix the sight. �
��Here, attach this to your gun. Remember, headshots, switch to single fire and conserve ammo. We don’t have enough to kill them all but we do have enough to slow them down.” Khai sat down and started loading rounds into extra magazines for both him and Brix. “Kay, how long?”
“I’d say an hour at best, maybe an hour and half,” she responded grimly.
“That’s not good enough. We have Roamers converging on our location and will be in firing range in half an hour, in our faces a little after that.”
“Why not take the fight to them?” Puar asked from inside the ship.
“Don’t want to split us up and have to make multiple stops,” Khai answered. “Plus the street narrows as it enters the Port District and that gives us the perfect bottleneck.”
“We’ll double our efforts,” Kay assured him.
“I’m on my way up right now,” Puar reported.
A moment later, Puar was on top of the ship with them, his machine gun slung over his shoulder and his grenade launcher at the ready.
For the next twenty minutes, Khai worked diligently loading as many magazines as he had for him and Brix as Kay and Brawl worked diligently to get the ship operational again. Khai linked his sniper rifle to his specs and it blinked “sync complete” and a small fifteen appeared in his HUD. He then programmed the specs to play a clicking sound every second in his earpiece. When the clicking began, Khai started tapping his foot along with. It was a quiet twenty minutes, the quiet before the storm. Soon, though, the sounds of thousands of hungry Roamers began to echo down the long stretch of street from the entrance to the Port District. At the maximum zoom the scope on Khai’s rifle would allow, he began to see the grotesque, bobbing heads of people who, by all rights, should have been dead. Khai waited until he knew that Brix would be able to spot them as well. Right on time Brix began opening fire on them. Through his scope, Khai could see the hits as heads exploded in dark red vapor, the near misses and the wide shots.
The Seryys Chronicles: Steel Alliance Page 13
