Vidar rose above her, raising his hand. He lowered it and raised it again expecting some result that wouldn't come..
The infantry mechs, as tall as the noble combat armor, stepped to flank the Baroness. “Is something the matter, Raven? Did your pet mites not assume control of me as they should?”
Even behind the helmet, the infantry mechs could detect his snarls. Their rush forward prompted Vidar to push outward with both hands. The Crucible blasted both bots from the roof. He snatched the Baroness, holding her by her neck out beyond the edge of the skyscraper. “Interesting abilities for a robot. Where is the real Baroness?”
“You're speaking to me through this machine. One of the Dreadmarr's toy soldiers. You're trapped here. They found your MRD and disabled it. The shield is intact. Surrender and I'll see that you're punished under our laws rather than theirs,” the Baroness threatened.
Flood lights shone across the two figures from an A-LAT circling them. It hovered over the roof a few meters, dropping a single person. Dipping its nose, it sped away toward deeper into the city.
“Sorry, lady. That's not going to happen,” Orin said.
Anaxis released his grip, dropping the Card Arkana from the roof. “Let's finish this. Once I kill you, I'll do the same to Her Highness and take my place at the head of the host.”
Lasher's response was to activate his weapons. Moving in a blur, the mongrel untethered his Gavoc blade into its whip. Moving to strike at the noble armor, several pieces of the roof broke free, the Exile floating them in his attacker's path. Lasher bounded across them as easily as he would flat ground, finishing the charge by grappling Anaxis' leg with his whip. A violent yank tipped the armor over onto its back.
The noble flared its jump jets. The armor didn't move forward, only swayed from side to side, anchored to the mongrel. Reversing direction, he rocketed back toward his assailant, aiming to ram him. Lasher blurred in the combat interface on Anaxis' HUD. Impact warnings blared side by side with gyroscopic alarms as the mech crashed through the roof.
The mongrel recovered his whip back to the handle. Jumping into the hole, he dropped two floors beside the crashed armor. A-LAT's hovered outside, sending their searchlights into the dismal room. He watched Anaxis’ arm twitch. Stepping offline with his adversary, a mini missile flared from a launcher on the Exile's wrist. The Crucible took hold of the weapon in flight, redirecting it straight up after it burst through the window. The A-LAT banked out of the way, bathing the empty room in darkness. Lasher dodged a second too late when a piece of duct work blasted into him.
“Your powers in the Crucible are impressive, but so are mine,” Anaxis declared. “I learn much faster than your primitive little brain is capable of. I have your abilities and then some.”
Lasher pulled himself free of the carbodex sheet rock he'd been punched through. Taking a combat stance a few meters from the giant, he readied himself for the impeding attack.
The Exo Noble primed himself for the assault he was sure to come. “Ah. I can feel your pull in the Crucible. You're trying to deactivate your handy little nanites. I have them shielded. If you want them, you'll have to dig them out.”
Rapid fire strikes from energized weapons slammed against the frame of the armor. Anaxis struggled to regain his composure during the flurry of blows. A shoulder-mounted pulse cannon flared to life, looking to end the troublesome mongrel. Lasher's sword lengthened to a coil, pulling the front of the pulse gun. The blast detonated against the noble's helmet, knocking both combatants onto the floor. Lasher pulled himself through the debris of a ruined column to get back to his feet. Anaxis lay on his back, watching his adversary stagger. A quick tug of unseen force pulled a section of ceiling on top of the mongrel.
Anaxis drew a phase pistol, putting multiple rounds into the rubble along with rapid fire pulses from the shoulder-mounted cannon. He finished the attack with his last mini missile, blowing out that section of wall. “Well fought, mongrel. May you sleep beside your mother in hell.”
A blur of speed passed by his HUD, too fast for the system to track. It registered a severe impact to the front with a catastrophic loss of environment inside the suit. Three hundred sixty degree tracking caught site of Lasher with his sword's covered handle held like a boxer. He moved, energizing the handle into a blast projected punch to the back of the armor. Anaxis came free from the restraints in a furious roll across the floor.
The cyborg vaulted to his feet, bouncing off of struts, girders, and torn wiring. He used the latter to swing from his perch above the floor to the roof above. Lasher followed him through the hole. Landing on the platform, he saw no sign of his enemy. He spun to face an incoming rifled grenade. The Crucible warped reality around him, venting the blast away.
Vidar Anaxis, clad in the Baroness' armor, ejected a phase sword from his gauntlet. Plates on the other arm formed into a shield. “Your friends brought me the engine of your destruction.”
A phase rifle above his shoulder barked repeated barrages. The hail of bullets warped around the Crucible. Lasher spun, whirling his whip to shunt any shots that made it through. At the end of the spin, the kite tail snapped into the blade a second before Anaxis slashed at him. Strikes and parries followed frantic chases as the two adversaries became a blur of combat. A shield punch cracked Lasher's armor, knocking him to the edge of the roof. He reached for his weapons through blurred vision, blood dripping from under his combat mask.
“You have no option other than to fail.” Vidar said, striding toward the downed mongrel like a conquering general.
“Only a plug and play soldier would think that, there, Sparky the wonder target!” Fluffang Doom-Snuggle crawled onto the roof, each impact of his feet hitting the carcrete hard enough to send tremors through the pulverized structure. He hovered over the kneeling body of his friend, a loyal guardian for that which he most held dear. “I know you wanted to rip this guy a new one over tumbleweeds at dawn, but isn't wonder thumping your enemies better with friends?”
“Sure is, brother.” Lasher croaked.
Snapping plates shifted, elongating the panther to twice that of his current mode. Rods realigned its body, spreading it over Lasher like a blanket.
“Fluff, something you want to tell me?” Lasher called out in surprise.
“Oh buddy, you are not going to believe what happened to me on the way to work today!”
Lasher vanished from the roof, engulfed by his friend's changing form. The man panther stood as tall as their royal armored enemy. Glistening teeth and talons hummed with powerful vibro tech generators. While not as advanced as the phase fields, the vibro claws were dangerous enough to tear through enemy armor. Lasher's HUD interfaced with Fluff's onboard systems, showing the most devastating attacks capable of ending the fight decisively.
Then he could see it. The thrumming energy of Tythian was coursing through his friend. It was energizing him, allowing him to push the versa-tech in new, incredible directions. It was in the middle of this power that Lasher connected with his friend for the first time in the Crucible, forging a thunderous combat platform unlike anything the Koda Corp. could have envisioned.
“The swarm-tech.” Lasher whispered.
“Yeah, your friend the destructo worm sent a batch of those nanites to me when I was battling a couple of cyborgs. It was like drinking liquid fire… if I knew what drinking or liquid fire tasted like. In any case, what say we doom lash this fool?”
The Doom Lasher roared. Anaxis flared the armor's wings, jumping into the sky. Thrusters vaulted Lasher into a boost assisted leap, catching the armor's foot. He climbed hand over hand as Anaxis tried varied maneuvers to free himself from this new monster. Each grip ruined a limb. Each pull upward matched with a blast from Fluff's shoulder blasters. Lasher crawled onto the noble's back, his borrowed mechanized tendrils slithering around the wing struts, crushing them to scrap.
“Fools! You'll kill us both!” Vidar cried.
The tangled combatants plummeted toward a roof sever
al blocks from the shield tower, landing in a penthouse pool set against a plush estate. The Doom Lasher armor burst from the water first. It shook itself nearly dry, venting thrust to push off the rest. Vidar climbed out next, dropping out of the armor covered in claw marks, blaster scoring, and crushed struts.
Fluff opened his chest plate, allowing Lasher to slide out. The defiant Anaxis produced a phase blade from his kit, adopting a fighting stance. “I still have more than enough to deal with the likes of...”
Lasher pulled him forward in the Crucible, catching him by the neck as the Noble had done to the Baroness bot, earlier. Hoisting him like a broken doll, he slammed him into the carcrete, sending his adversary’s weapons skittering away. He walked to the roof edge, holding the much smaller Anaxis high off the ground. Pulling off his combat mask, Lasher forced the Crucible between them. Vidar Anaxis’ artificial pupils dilated as he was struck with a torrent of cosmic energy pouring into him from the mongrel.
Lasher tossed the warlord into the expanse, locking eyes with his adversary. The Raven tried to reach out to anything in the Crucible that could stave off his death. As gravity took its hold, the street below him erupted. Buildings along the avenue toppled under the girth of the creature that had granted them access to the city. Its giant maw opened, giving Anaxis ample room to fall in. When the broken warlord was nearly halfway past the stadium-sized mouth, it snapped shut, cutting off his frantic screams. Windows in the surrounding buildings shattered from the impact of the jaws claiming their prize. It slithered the way it came, leaving a gaping crater.
“You didn't do the epic stare down before running him through,” Fluff observed. “You didn't hit him with, 'you keel my muddah, prepare to die-ee.'”
Lasher watched as flecks of window glass and torn bits of building fell into the crater as aftershocks rattled the city. “The Crucible is all. He knew. C'mon, Fluff. Let's go grab the fam.”
Epilogue
PLANET DOSEIDOS
The Baroness stepped away from the command console, descending the dais to the group assembled below. “I can't begin to tell you how uncomfortable it makes me to have marshals on my ship.”
Mara bowed, slightly. “Think of how we feel surrounded by our greatest enemy.”
“Yet, it was your greatest enemy who sowed the seeds for our cooperation,” Hera added.
“It is difficult to believe. Members of the Exodus fleet, giving up their identity for a tribal existence of armor and violence.” The Exile noble mused, holding a bit of Hera’s cape in her hand.
“Is that so different from what you have now?”
Taking a holo chit from her crown, the Baroness worked over it for a moment, then returned it to its place. “Perhaps not. Hera, what did you give up to become queen of owls?”
The assembled Dreadmarr Gauntlet parted, giving the Exo leader full view of their Mother Owl, the elder among them. There was a laugh from under her helmet. She peeled it off, showing a woman possibly in her middle age, with silver bands of metal running from under her hairline. Her eyes were iridescent, making them hard to look at. “I gave up a war that was ruining us. The more important question is, what did I gain? I gained a place for my people where we choose the battles we fought. We gained a philosophy where there is no hate or prejudice. There is the Dreadmarr and there is everyone else. Under the armor we are human, alien, cyborgs, and more. We leave all that we were behind, when we take the mask. We are one people, one tribe, one face. We become Dreadmarr.”
“It seems too good to be true. Much like this offer,” The Baroness noted.
Mara pointed toward the surrounding holograms. The bridge of the Hunter's Moon was expansive, fully enclosed by reinforced structures that could withstand mass reaction weaponry. The holo made it seem like they were on the surface of the planet instead of being in high orbit. “Doseidos was in the process of being abandoned. Too many hostile species and an environment only some could breathe without acclimatization of weeks or sometimes months. It's just beyond the Outer Boundary of the Core Worlds Alliance so you don't fall under their laws, but traders could do business with you over the border. Or you could just tell everyone to bounce. Either way, it'd be a good place to set up shop. I heard mention of something called a Grim Jaw.”
Exo’s in the room flinched at the term being used by a marshal, prompting the Baroness to answer. “Our best hope for humanity's future, which is why we were exiled from Old Sol.”
“What is it?” Mara asked.
“Genetically modified humans. Bigger, stronger, and smarter than the original. Their creation and subsequent use won the war for Sol. With the fighting over, the powers that be wanted no part of them in their new peace. There was no place for death dealers in the quiet after the war. How could you forget your war crimes when the ones who carried out your orders were right beside you? They secured them in ark ships, like the Hunter’s Moon, and sent them into the black. No hyperdrive, no destination, just a flock of cyborgs to care for them as we all drifted in the dark.” the Broness said.
Kel whistled in disbelief. “Because you weren’t totally human either, they kicked you out too?”
The Exile leader held up a finger. “But that wasn’t the end of us. We created new technologies, forged new sciences, and eventually caught signals from the colonies of man that had long since shrugged off the old world’s hold on them. You know how our first meeting went after all that time.”
“Why weren’t the Grim Jaw used during the Exodus Wars?” Kel asked.
Another of the Dreadmarr stepped past their pack, treading to the steps where the Baroness was. He removed his helmet. Kratos, commander of Rook Tychon, had a face of sculpted marble, with golden eyes. “It was a promise made to the First Fleet. No Grim Jaw would see combat again until they found a home.”
The Baroness bowed. At her gesture, the bridge crew followed suit. Kratos waved them off. “I don’t need your subservience, Baroness. Most of my Rook are Grim Jaw from the Solace of Midnight. Hera was our Baroness. She made the deal with Sorrin, our Father Lion. Some settled the Frontier in peace. Others took the mask. The marshal’s deal is solid and the Dreadmarr can help you legitimize your control of the planet.”
“What do you get out of such an offer?” the leader asked.
Kratos huffed. “Another friendly port. A place for our people to trade and take work. A home as savage as we are.”
Looking over the changing holos, the Baroness surveyed her new kingdom with an approving eye. “And we are the only Old Sol presence on the planet?”
Kat stepped forward. “Highness, there was a Veriton Host presence here some decades ago but they've since left.”
“Veriton. They were part of the First Fleet,” the Baroness said.
“Yes ma'am. I've been given access to an archive, left behind should other Origin Fleet forces find their way here. It seems they left to pursue leads concerning an underlying threat to humanity.”
“Did they say what?”
“No, ma'am,” Kat answered. “But I think it ties into research being done by Koda and Triton Expeditionary.”
“Which means Anaxis knew about it.” Mara speculated.
“Bringing us to the matter of cypher technology out in the general population.” The Baroness' statement dripped with malice.
Katarina presented a hologram of the former CEO of Koda Corporation. “Kamden Haas has agreed to your terms to work beside the Engineer. Madame Chen, the former leader of a cartel encased in an Exile body, will be sent to you as well, once the marshals are done with her. The monks of San Verone are working to route out any remaining cypher-tech outside of your colony. I also think Jassinia Nox serving as your new Guardian is an excellent choice.”
The Baroness turned to regard the sentinel cyborg. “I would rather you take the position, Katarina. We could even promote your consort to the position of Raven if you would stay.”
“Consort?” Kel exclaimed.
“Your offer is very kind, Highness. Kel and I h
ave other opportunities to pursue.”
“Very well. And what of your friend the Lasher?”
Kat exchanged a knowling glance with Kel. “Busy. Although he said he’d free up his schedule to set fire to this place if you ever tried to start up your ghoul program again.”
PLANET SADOSIA – FRONTIER SPACE
Nayoree looked through the binos at the man sitting near the recess on the back side of the mountain.
“Mama, that's my spot to patrol. Let me handle it.”
“No, Nikko. Let the rangers handle it.”
“But, there are lions stalking him.”
Nayoree’s tone brooked no argument. “Then let them handle it.”
The radio squelched. “Randal to Nayoree. The lions. They're cuddling him.”
“Did you say cuddling?” Nayoree threw the radio to her son, strapping the helmet for her skel-frame into place. “Stay on the radio, okay?”
“Yes, Mama.”
She climbed into the remaining rover, barely kicking over the engine before she slammed on the accelerator. Grasslands flashed along as the knobby tires tore up the landscape. Several minutes felt like hours in the vehicle climbing the incline to the waterfall.
Exiting the vehicle, the rangers approached her. “He hasn't moved. We don't know how he slipped past us but he is just sitting there with the lions around him. Nahvo looked as though he would attack him, but then lay beside him. It is very strange, ma'am.”
Nayoree approached. “You there. You do not belong here.”
“That's not what Ranger Wilson told me.”
“Ranger Wilson? He's been dead for years. How do you know him?” Nayoree asked.
The stranger got up from his knees, straightening himself to the tallest man the rangers had seen. Nayoree's breath caught in her throat as tears welled up. “You’re his grandson. Is he...”
The Sentinel: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Hunter's Moon Book 3) Page 42
