by Scott Baron
Sarah’s head whipped around suddenly.
“Did you hear that?”
George instantly dropped back into ass-kicking cybernetic soldier mode and cranked up his hearing.
“Yeah, it’s fighting. I can’t hear anything that’d give me any details, though.”
“Well, if they’re fighting the Ra’az, they’re on our side. Let’s go!” Finn said as he took off running.
Sarah and George were only steps behind him when they crested the berm of the small hill that had blocked their line of sight.
In the distance, across the marshy shallows of the small river George’s drone had seen, a lone human and a pair of rebel Chithiid were engaged in a pitched battle against a much larger group of loyalists.
“It’s Omar,” George said. “And he’s in trouble.”
Without hesitation, George took off at a run. He was fast, even in the mid-thigh-deep water, as he bolted in a beeline for their friend in need. Sarah and Finn knew they couldn’t get there nearly as quickly via that route, so they shifted course to circumvent the deep water, instead slogging through the shallower area along the shoreline, weaving around the large boulders and trees blocking their path as they tried to make it to their friend.
Sarah was the faster of the two, making quick work of the unsteady ground. She smiled to herself as she left Finn in her wake, suddenly glad for the long hours she had spent training with Fatima.
As she hopped a fallen log with a splash and rounded the next boulder in her path, a large Ra’az stepped directly in front of her from its hiding spot, swatting her like she was no more than a toddler and sending her flying into the water.
The Graizenhund at its side snarled and snapped viciously as the Ra’az released its grip on the beast’s restraints.
In a flash, the Graizenhund charged at Finn, closing the distance in a heartbeat before leaping in the air. Finn desperately swung his pulse rifle and fired without time to aim, hoping for Lady Luck to smile upon him.
She was in attendance, and apparently on his side on this occasion, as the pulse blast flew true, striking the beast dead in mid-air. Finn was just gathering his wits and beginning to swing the weapon toward the Ra’az when pulse fire peppered the boulders and trees around him.
Three more loyalists had been hunting rebels with their master, it seemed, and they engaged Finn with a desperate ferocity.
He lunged to his feet and ran, firing behind his back in hopes it would buy him time to reach cover.
Lady Luck had apparently extended her visit, as he miraculously made it behind the nearby boulders unscathed.
Sarah, on the other hand, was trapped in the shallow water, completely exposed. The Ra’az turned toward her and laughed, then began circling her in the knee-deep water.
He wasn’t wearing a gauntlet, she noted, nor was he carrying a pulse weapon. It seemed the Ra’az was letting his loyalist lackeys and recently deceased Graizenhund handle the dirty work, while he took his pleasure in a more visceral, hands-on way.
Sarah looked for her pulse rifle.
“Shit,” she grumbled when her eyes found it lying a good dozen meters away where it had flown when she’d been so rudely struck.
“All right, you giant fucker. You wanna fight? Fine. Bring it!”
She wiped the water from her eyes and began sizing the enormous alien, hate burning in her eyes.
The Ra’az was amused by the fighting spirit of his tiny prey. And that’s what he saw her as. Prey. She didn’t warrant a second thought, until one suddenly crept into his head. One that had him asking why there was a human on this world when they’d wiped them out hundreds of years earlier and many light years away.
The hulking Ra’az glanced around. These creatures were armed, apparently.
One human was pinned down and exchanging fire with his trio of loyalist hunters. Then there were two more humans fighting side by side across the water, firing their weapons until they ran dry.
He didn’t know that George wasn’t a human at all, and so long as his men took care of him, he didn’t much care. More cautious now, he turned his attention back to the soaking wet, feral-looking woman with the unusual appendage.
Sarah happened to be talking to that appendage at that very moment.
“Come on, arm. Don’t fail me now,” she muttered, trying to connect with the nanite swarm. For a second, it felt like there was contact, but it was broken when she was forced to dive out of the way of the Ra’az's surprisingly fast attack.
“Forgot how quick you fuckers are,” she said, dodging another attack and landing a trio of rapid blows to the Ra’az's face as she slid past his attack.
The human hand barely stung when it made contact, but the unusual synthetic one actually hurt. The Ra’az showed a flash of surprise in its eyes, rapidly followed by a bellow of rage as he lunged at her again.
Across the shallows, George and Omar, whose pulse rifles had run out of charge, were fighting hand-to-hand against opponents who had a four-to-two advantage in that department.
It was only George’s cybernetic strength and the practice Omar had picked up sparring with Chithiid in Los Angeles' underground fight club that evened the playing field. Even so, the odds were very close to even.
Finn had wisely scavenged an extra pulse pack from one of the downed pods, which allowed him to maintain the exchange with the trio of loyalists, one of whom had run out of ammo. As it was going, it looked like the other two would run dry soon as well. He only hoped they did so before he did.
The Ra’az took in the surrounding fights and was unimpressed. He would deal with that later. For now, he had a pesky little human to eliminate. She had dared strike him, and for that he would make her suffer a much slower and more painful death than he’d originally planned.
Sarah, however, had other thoughts on that matter, and as she became more comfortable fighting in the shallow water––avoiding the deeper parts, where the taller Ra’az would have the advantage––she was starting to think she might just win this one.
The Ra’az reached out to grab her, but she dove between its legs, coming up behind it and quickly pivoting in a squat, punching the back of its knee with her nanite-composite arm.
The Ra’az howled in pain and struck out with the injured leg, which caught Sarah by surprise. She went flying, and into waist-deep water at that.
Finn saw her take the blow and tried to line up a shot on the Ra’az as it advanced on her just as a series of pulse blasts hit the rocks in front of him, forcing him to duck back down.
Sarah was at a disadvantage now and she knew it. There weren’t many tricks left up her sleeve, except what was literally up her sleeve itself.
“Come on,” she urged her arm, then startled the Ra’az by lunging right at him.
She felt something shift, and looked at her arm, partially shifted into a spear-point, her fingers embedded a few inches into the Ra’az's thigh.
The alien grabbed her by the arm and wrenched her free, holding her dangerous appendage safely away from its body.
Finn looked over just in time to see him drive Sarah under the surface of the water, holding her down, her arms and legs thrashing wildly as her lungs burned from the lack of oxygen. She desperately tried to break the surface to get even a quick gasp of air, but the Ra’az was too strong.
The world started to go black, and spots floated across her field of vision, which she thought was funny since she was underwater and couldn’t really see anything, anyway. The burning pain, however, was nearly too much to endure.
“No!” Finn shouted, jumping from cover and firing a quick shot at the nearby loyalists while running toward Sarah with desperate urgency.
Pulse blasts erupted around him and forced him to his knees behind a tree, but now he at least had a clear shot. His adrenaline was through the roof, but Finn took a deep breath and carefully aimed his weapon, knowing he had one chance, and he had to make it count.
The thrashing in the water was slowing. There was s
imply no more time.
Calling on Lady Luck one last time, he pulled the trigger.
Lady Luck had abandoned him.
He looked at the silent weapon in shock. It had run empty, and he had no more reloads.
“Sarah!” he shouted across the water, helpless to do anything.
Sarah thought she heard something besides the thundering of her pulse in her ears, but she was distracted. The burning in her lungs was just too much, and her body’s automatic survival reflex finally took over in a desperate search for air, making her gasp in a cold lungful of water.
She thrashed violently one more time before water filled her lungs completely.
The Ra’az turned to look at the shouting man, then laughed cruelly as the thrashing human in his grasp slowed her movements, then went completely still.
The huge alien rose to his full height and left his dead prey behind, her body floating facedown in the water as he trudged ashore to take care of the troublesome little human that was staring at him so angrily.
Finn’s eyes flashed from the Ra’az to the water. To Sarah’s inert body, slowly drifting ashore.
Then everything started to go black as an overwhelming rage took hold of him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Finn, the man known for all of his joking denials about his past military history and odd love of cutlery, a man whose good nature seemed to be inexhaustible, finally snapped.
The knife work they’d all joked about back in the comfort of their galley kitchen whenever he’d show them a little trick had all been good-natured fun and games.
Finn’s mood was now distinctly bloodier than that, and the skills he had casually shown off in the company of friends in no way even scratched the surface of just how deadly he truly was.
The first pair of blades that whistled through the air landed in the throat and eye of the nearest loyalist before the other two even realized the seemingly unarmed human was moving in on them, and at a fast run, at that.
And though he had no pulse rifle, he was definitely armed.
They had just begun to react, attempting to swing their weapons to track the quick-moving target, when they each received a knife to the body, launched with deadly accuracy and powered by pure rage.
Finn hadn’t landed a killing shot on either of them, but that was not by accident. No, he wanted to make them suffer for what they had done.
Blades flashed from his sheaths, dancing in his hands in a dizzying whirlwind of finely honed vengeance.
“Shoot him!” the bleeding loyalist shouted to his comrade.
“My weapon arm is injured. I cannot aim!” he called back, retreating on his heels as Finn leapt into the air, bringing both blades in his hands to bear on the exposed vulnerable points on the seemingly tough Chithiid.
The time spent teaching his recently deceased Chithiid friend to cook had led to many conversations. Discussions that included weaknesses in their rugged alien physiques. It had merely been casual chatting at the time.
Now, it was anything but casual.
Finn sliced tendons and nerve clusters with near reckless abandon, hot alien blood coating his arms as he reduced his quarry to a blubbering wreck of agony. He quickly sheathed one of his knives and picked up the disabled loyalist’s pulse rifle with his newly free hand. Checking to make sure it had a charge, he then blasted the downed alien in the knee.
“You’re next, motherfucker,” he growled at the other loyalist.
He began to move on him when a pulse blast from across the water grazed his hip, nearly knocking him to the ground. The singed flesh should have been excruciating, but in his berserker rage, he didn’t slow for an instant, but rather increased his pace, fueled by the fresh surge of adrenaline.
George and Omar took advantage of the distraction Finn had caused to disable a pair of their opponents and make it to cover, where the charred remains of their Chithiid rebel allies lay motionless in the dirt. The Chithiid rebels were dead, but their weapons, though a bit banged up, were still functional.
“Kill these fuckers,” George said, tossing the rifle to Omar, then skirting to the inland flank of the remaining loyalists.
“Get some!” Omar growled through clenched teeth as he opened fire on the loyalists.
They turned their attention back to the human opponent and redoubled their efforts to end him, and they might have succeeded if not for the momentary lapse in battlefield operational practice that allowed Sergeant Franklin to flank them.
Despite the eyes near the back of their heads, the loyalists were slow to react to the unbelievably fast soldier barreling toward them from the treeline.
“There! Defend your––”
George dove headfirst into the muscular alien, the sheer mass of his cybernetic endoskeleton turning him into a man-shaped battering ram. The Chithiid crumpled to the ground in a heap. While a flesh-and-blood man would have needed a moment to regain his senses after such an impact, George was instantly on the move, fists and feet flying as he pummeled the remaining pair until they were forced to fall back from his flurry of blows.
What they forgot in that moment of self-preservation was Omar.
A quick succession of pulse blasts took their lives in a flash, leaving only the human and the human-shaped machine standing on the battlefield.
“Finn needs help,” George called out.
“Go. I’ll be okay,” Omar said, sinking to the ground.
George assessed the man’s injuries and came to the conclusion that he would indeed be okay, though he was definitely worse for wear. He then took off running toward his friend in need.
Finn, in the meantime, had brutally finished off the remaining Chithiid, opening him up from neck to groin before emptying his pulse rifle into the twitching corpse.
Tears in his eyes, he spun to face the enormous Ra’az. Without hesitation, he launched himself right at the beast of a creature, oblivious to the incredible size difference.
The Ra’az dodged the first several blows, but Finn was quick, managing to open up a group of cuts on the alien’s lower flank. The Ra’az pushed him back and reassessed his small but troublesome opponent. The injury the human had inflicted was superficial––it would take far more than that to wound his meaty physique. Nevertheless, he was tiring of this game.
For Finn, it was far more than a game, and he would exact his vengeance, one way or another.
Once more the smaller man charged, his arms spinning in a flurry of slicing attacks. The Ra’az, however, had resolved himself to receiving a few little cuts from the annoying human, and that allowed him to unexpectedly draw close, blocking the knives with his forearm while his opposite hand grabbed the tiny man and hoisted him up in the air.
Finn tried to stab the alien’s arm, but his blocking limb shifted, and the Ra’az's meaty limb knocked the knife from Finn’s hand before grabbing him tightly.
Held aloft like a child in his hands, the Ra’az smiled a sadistic and victorious grin.
Finn, surprisingly, did the same, and the Ra’az felt his certainty of victory falter. This was not right. The tiny man should be scared, but his look was one of anything but fear. But his arms were pinned, and his hands could not reach any of his sheathed weapons, so how––
The Ra’az abruptly realized what he had overlooked when Finn drove his boot viciously into his throat, a spray of hot blood gushing forth as he dropped the man to the ground and staggered back. It was a trap, and he’d fallen right into it.
Finn held his eye contact as he reached down, pulling the knife he had wedged into the straps of his boot free, then pulling another from the sheath in the small of his back.
For the first time in his life, the Ra’az knew what his prey had felt like all those years. He finally knew fear.
Finn raced at the injured creature, his knives doing their work in his skilled hands, slicing through what were quite obviously blood-supplying vessels and vital organs in a flurry of vicious blows.
The Ra’az desperate
ly turned to flee, but Finn was having none of that, quickly dropping low, slicing the tendons on the backs of both of the alien’s ankles before pounding the knives hilt-deep into a half-dozen vital areas on the creature’s exposed back.
Not finished yet, Finn kicked the dying Ra’az hard across the face, sending him rolling onto his back.
It was what he wanted. He wanted the Ra’az to see his death approaching, to look him in the eye. He had his wish, the astonished creature’s eyes wide with fear as Finn drove his blades into the alien’s chest, piercing his heart and killing him, stone dead.
The Ra’az lay there, blood oozing from dozens of wounds, twitching slightly as the last nerve impulses fled his body.
George Franklin stood nearby. He had arrived some time ago, actually, but had stayed out of the fray, letting Finn work out what he needed to in his own way.
“Daaaaaamn,” he finally said, eyeing the carnage.
Finn looked over at his cybernetic friend, also covered in blood, though the majority of it was not his own.
“You going to be okay?” George asked, walking closer.
Something in Finn’s eyes told him he might not be.
“I––” Finn went silent, sobbing quietly, rivulets of alien blood trickling from his hands and forearms.
“Finn?” a voice said. A voice that couldn’t be speaking to him.
“Finn? Are you okay?” Sarah asked quietly, stunned by the display of anguish-driven rage he had let loose at her supposed demise.
Finn spun toward the shoreline, his tear-filled eyes focusing on the soaked woman standing at the water’s edge. The raw emotion laid bare in his eyes made her stomach twist in knots. Sarah quietly walked over to him and gently wiped the blood from his brow.
“But I saw you...” he said between sobs. “I thought you were––”
Sarah silenced him with a deep but gentle kiss, pulling him close, ignoring the alien gore now covering them both.
George rocked on his feet quietly for a few moments, waiting for them to finish. By the look of things, it might take a while.
“Uh, guys?” he said, finally interrupting them. “Hey, I’m sorry to spoil the moment, but we’re kinda standing in the middle of a battlefield, and by the sound of things, I think we may be having company soon.”
