Mage Hunters Box Set

by Andrew C Piazza

  He and Shifty stepped a few paces away from her so they could speak without being overheard. Dread’s eyes couldn’t help but wander back over to the bodies of his two friends, lying torn and bloody amongst the others.

  He shook himself out of it and said, quietly, “Shifty, what kind of Healing array do you have?"

  Shifty shook his head. "Nothing for this. I have a Blood Expander Trick; it'll buy her some time, keep her from going into hypovolemic shock..."

  "But only temporarily," Dread said. "And she still won't be able to walk."

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Do what you can. Dress the wounds. And give her some morphine for the pain.”

  “We’re not doing her any favors if we get overrun, having her all doped up like that,” Shifty said. “She won’t be able to fight back. And these bastards don’t take prisoners.”

  “She can’t fight,” Dread said. “Not all shot up like that. She’ll want to, her heart will be in it, but she can’t even sit up on her own. We need to move her and we can’t have her screaming in pain and giving away our position.”

  Shifty broke open a medical kit. "What are you going to do?"

  "Salvage whatever weapons I can," the big man replied.

  “We’ve got to get out of this hallway,” Shifty said. “Sitting ducks out here.”

  “That’s a fact. Stabilize Tara first, then we move,” Dread said. "What do you think Stephen wants with Cass?”

  “Nothing good,” Shifty said.

  “We’ve got to find her,” Dread said, putting a finger to his earpiece.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Shifty said. “What are you doing?”

  “Making radio contact with Cass.”

  “No, no, don’t do that.”

  Dread frowned. “Why not?”

  “Stephen’s got a radio, too, remember?”

  Dread ground his teeth in frustration. “Fuck. You’re right. He’ll hear everything.”

  He looked up and down the hallway. Communication with Cass wasn’t merely a priority, it was a necessity. There was no way to find her otherwise; they’d have to search the entire building room by room, and with only the two of them and with Tara shot to pieces, there was no way they were going to pull that off.

  “What if… what if we change channels?” Dread said. “To one Stephen isn’t on?”

  “Yeah, sure, that’ll work for the two of us,” Shifty said, “but you’d have to tell Cass over the radio which channel to switch to, and then Stephen…”

  “Stephen will hear it,” Dread said. “Or take her radio away. If he hasn’t already.”

  He was pacing now, looking like he wanted to tear something in half.

  “There’s got to be some way,” he said. “Don’t you have a Trick or something, that you can send her a message? Like in her head?”

  “Naw, man,” Shifty said. “I never learned anything on the Mentalist Array. Besides, even if I could do something like that, Polonius might be able to sense it or intercept it. You know. Super Maestro and all that.”

  Dread slammed his hand against the wall. “God damn it! We have no idea where she is or what they’re doing to her. We have to get through to her somehow, but without the radio…”

  He stopped his furious pacing, appearing for a moment as if he were listening for a quiet sound. Then, he snapped his fingers and pointed at Shifty.

  Shifty raised an eyebrow. “Dread?”

  “Cell phone,” Dread said.

  “What?”

  “Cell phone,” Dread repeated. “We all wear these…” he said, pulling his earpiece out and holding it up, “… in-ear headsets with the microphones built in.”

  “Right.”

  “And they’re connected by Bluetooth to the radio handsets on our vests.”

  “Still with you.”

  “And they also work with our cell phones.”

  “Well, well, well,” Shifty said with a grin, punching Dread on the arm. “Looks like protein shakes can raise your IQ! Hang on. Won’t Stephen hear her cell phone ring?”

  “No, it only rings in her earpiece, not the phone itself. All she has to do is tap her earpiece, and we’re good to go.”

  “Well, damn, Big Dog, quit explaining it to me and let’s do this,” Shifty said. “Start dialing.”

  Dread’s fingers were already moving, activating his earpiece and placing a call to Cass’s phone.

  “Come on, Cass,” he said, holding a finger to his earpiece, as if that would somehow make her respond more quickly. “Pick up. Pick up.”

  Cass

  I'd never seen a renegade Maestro up close and personal without a gun in my hand. It took me about half a second to decide I preferred to experience them while armed.

  Physically, Polonius was a disappointment. I suppose I was expecting a colossus, or perhaps a hideous mutation.

  He was just an old guy, medium height, pot belly, gray thinning hair, wearing those ridiculous robes that mages and professors wear during their respective graduation ceremonies… the kind with the funny hats and the braided cord knotted around their shoulder.

  Frankly, he looked soft. He looked like I could walk up and kick his ass with my left thumb.

  No, not just soft. He looked… mushy. Like he was rotting from the inside out.

  You ever see somebody who physically didn’t look quite right? The instant that you see them, you think, that guy there is seriously sick. They’re pale and almost gray and their flesh looks like a worn out sponge. There’s none of the firmness that comes with health and youth.

  That’s how Polonius looked. Like a sick, rotting, walking corpse.

  Which, he was.

  Then, the air around him shifted, shimmered, just a bit, as if there were a powerful heat source at his feet. It was a distortion I knew well. A Defensive Shield, like Shifty used, the kind that keeps out everything except harsh language. Rotting or not, as jacked up as his abilities were, Polonius was just shy of invincible behind that barrier.

  Kerry's Striker mage… or ex-Striker mage, I suppose… was standing next to him, his face and neck covered in the pinkish swirls which seemed to be all the rage today. He had a smug look on his face when he saw me.

  They all did; they looked as if the game was already won, and frankly, they were right. I was screwed. I tried to stay strong, tried to be the classic all-American hero, laughing at death, but the truth was, my knees were starting to feel weak and my hands were starting to tremble.

  Then, salvation.

  A sudden noise in my ear, jolting me a little from the abrupt intrusion on the silence. It took me a second to realize what it was.

  A phone call.

  A phone call! Our earpieces are synced with our cell phones, and all I needed to do was tap my earpiece to answer it and scream and shout and plead for somebody to get their asses up here and pull my neck out of the noose.

  I had to force myself to stay cool, though, and not show my hand. I was surrounded by hostiles; no way they’d let me hold up a finger and say, hang on a second, bad guys, let me take this phone call real quick and then we’ll get back to your evil plans.

  The ache in my jaw from where Kerry had cracked me gave me an idea. Rubbing at my face idly with one hand, I let my fingers slip up underneath my hair and tap the earpiece.

  “Jeez, Kerry,” I said, to cover the movement. “My jaw’s killing me. Didn’t your wife ever tell you not to hit a lady?”

  For a second, I thought my clumsy subterfuge hadn’t worked, that Kerry and Stephen would pin my arms and dig the earpiece out of my ear before I could get a word in to whomever was on the other end. Then, when all he did was glare at me and say, “Fuck you, Cass,” I knew I was all right.

  I had to resist the urge to fire off another snappy line at Kerry. Right now, I needed to find out who my new best friend was on the other end of this phone call more than I needed to hurt a Vive Job’s feelings.

  "Cass, it’s Dread. Do not respond, repeat, do not respond. Break squelc
h if you read me."

  I can't ever express the surge of emotions I felt at that moment. A half-second before, I was alone, thinking that my entire team was dead, not to mention surrounded by insane Vive Jobs and looking down the barrel of a gruesome fate. Now...

  Now everything had changed. Now I had a fighting chance. Dread was alive, alive, God bless the gigantic bastard, and if I knew him at all, I knew he was on his way with the mindset of a wrecking ball.

  I broke squelch in my comm unit by tripping it with a pair of short coughs. Since Dread had contacted me over a cell phone line, Stephen or the other two Vive Jobs with radios wouldn’t hear any of what Dread was saying.

  Clever slab of beef. I knew I kept him around for a reason.

  "Okay, Cass, here it is," Dread reported into my ear. "We know Stephen's gone rogue; that’s why I called with my cell phone.”

  And I’m going to kiss you for that later, big fella, I thought. But for now… where the hell are you?

  Dread’s voice always had a calming, centering effect on me, and it continued to do so now, even though he wasn’t physically present.

  “This is our sitrep,” he said. “Peter and Mike are gone. Tara's shot up, and her clock is ticking. Shifty and I are intact."

  Then get your ass down here! I wanted to shout. I kept my cool, though, and started looking around the room. I needed to figure out a way to tell Dread my location and what we were up against. All that, without tipping my hand to these dead pieces of shit who were gloating at me from every angle.

  Maestro Polonius picked that moment to speak.

  "Welcome, Cassandra."

  It took everything I had to keep from rolling my eyes. I mean, a Hollywood hack couldn't have come up with a more predictable line. Vive Jobs are always suckers for a cliché.

  "Well, well, well, Polonius," I said loudly, picking my words with care. "Here we all are. You, me, Kerry, Stephen, and I think Kerry's Striker is named..."

  "Wentworth," the dead man in question finished for me.

  "...Wentworth," I said. "Nice cozy spot, too… the twenty-first floor boardroom, I take it?"

  "It seemed appropriate," Polonius said, but I was listening to Dread.

  "Copy that, Cass, you and four hostiles in the twenty-first floor boardroom."

  "Rather impressive shield you've got around you," I said.

  The Maestro smiled. "A necessary precaution. Your friends outside might decide to rocket the building."

  "We can't do that, Maestro, and I think you know it. Posse Comitatus law keeps the military from stepping in, and SWAT doesn't have that sort of firepower."

  "If you say so," he said.

  Dread's voice came again. "Damn, he's got a shield up? Okay, we're working on it... hang on."

  "Very well..." Polonius said, and my mind whirled, desperate for any stalling tactic.

  "So why here? Why Revival Tech?" I asked quickly. Vive Jobs love to hear themselves talk, and I needed to buy as much time as possible. Polonius was rumored to have had a huge ego in life; my bet was, his ego had swelled up right along with his magical abilities once he’d been Revived.

  Where are you, Dread? my lips begged to ask, but I had to keep quiet.

  "Why this place?" he began. "Why, it was the place of my resurrection. The place of my imprisonment. It only seemed right…”

  I tuned him out. I didn’t give a shit about his psychotic reasons; I was waiting for Dread's next report, straining whatever vestigial muscles I might have in my auditory canal to detect the tiniest peep out of Dread.

  When it came, his voice nearly burst my eardrum. "Shifty! Get a shield up!"

  Oh, no, Dread, I thought. Come on, don't get caught up in a fight, you've got to get down here and save my ass, these guys are planning to do some seriously bad hoo-joo to me...

  I could hear gunfire coming from the floor above, the deep rumble of Dread's F-Shok followed by the sharper staccato of a submachinegun.

  Dread's voice. "Keep them off on that side!"

  Shifty' voice. "Three more your side! Three more your side!"

  More gunfire. I was finding it difficult to pretend that I was calmly listening to the Maestro's pedantic rambling, instead of wishing I was on the twenty-second floor with a flamethrower.

  Shifty' voice. "Are we clear?"

  Dread's voice. "Keep that shield up on your side. I'm going to carry Tara."

  A grunt, presumably from Dread, and then his voice. "Come on!"

  Shifty. "They're going to break through soon!"

  Dread. "Then come on! Cass, we're being over-run by more of those seven-foot hyena-men... no, damn it, Shifty, this way... they're all over the damn place... Contact! There!"

  More gunfire, and now I was really starting to worry.

  Dread

  Those damn hyena-men. They charged us out of nowhere, and we barely got out of that hallway intersection alive.

  Two were almost on top of me before I could react, and it was only a sustained burst of full-auto buckshot that kept them from reaching me with their claws and fangs. Shifty pushed another one back with pressor waves, and I almost fired on it before an old instinct born from long years of combat experience tickled at the back of my mind.

  Instead of shooting that hyena-man, I turned and checked Shifty’s six. Sure enough, another pair of the ugly bastards was moving on us from behind, almost close enough to touch.

  Shifty saw me move, saw me shift my weapon towards his rear flank, and he did exactly the right thing. He didn’t split himself up by trying to turn around and fight what was behind him. He trusted me to handle it, and instead of turning around, he moved forward, past me, to give me room to fire my weapon, and he emptied half a mag from his weapon into the enemy he’d knocked back with the pressor wave.

  I shredded the two that had tried to outflank us and checked all my sectors to see if any more were coming. Not yet. But they would be. I knew it like I knew my own name.

  They were smart, those hyena-men, like the Slashers. Hit and run attacks, working as a group. Sure, if one of them thought it had an advantage, it might charge in hard, but mostly, it was push on one side, get your attention, then another one attacks from the flank.

  They were in constant communication with each other, using those yipping high pitched laughs, telling each other where we were, where they were, where to go… everything they needed to know to maneuver around us. Keep us surrounded. Keep us off balance. Wait until we were weakest and it was the right moment to attack.

  They wanted you to panic. They wanted you to get frustrated. They wanted you to lose your cool and either freeze up or charge into them blindly, so they could fade back and let their buddies tear into you from the rear.

  It’s tough to fight on two fronts. Not only because you have to split up your resources, but also because you have to split your attention, as well. Your communication skills with your team need to be top notch so that everyone’s on the same page.

  When you can all see the same threat, everyone’s instantly informed as to the size and nature of said threat. When the threat is coming from multiple angles, you don’t have the information you need to know as to what’s going on behind you. And a squad that isn’t coordinated, is a dead squad.

  Well. Those bastards weren’t the only ones who knew how to fight as a team.

  There may have been only two of us, but Shifty and I have been fighting side by side for years. Training together just as long. I know him better than a lot of my own family members. His habits, his quirks, his mannerisms. I know when he jokes a certain way, he’s just venting, but a little shift in his voice or body language, and I know something’s really getting to him. I know how far he can be pushed before his cool starts to crack. I know how many Tricks he can perform before he starts to wear out, and what he looks like when he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel and you can’t ask any more of him.

  But we couldn’t stay static in that position in the hallway. That was suicide. We had to move.

&nbs
p; “I’ll take Tara and push!” I said, slinging Tara over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. It isn’t exactly easy to do that and fire a large weapon like the F-shok, but nobody said this job was a walk in the park.

  “Go!” Shifty said, slapping me once on the back to tell me it was okay to move. Normally, if he was behind me and we were moving, he’d keep one hand on my shoulder to let me know where he was, but he needed both his hands free to hold back the enemy on his end.

  Tara’s not a heavy lady, but her weight over my shoulder reminded me for a second about how goddamn tired I was getting. Fighting really takes it out of you. Ask any boxer or wrestler how quickly you can get winded once you’re in the ring.

  I shrugged that off by shaking my head and grunting a few times out loud, firing myself up. I know, it sounds like a very meathead and bro thing of me to do, but sometimes you need to spike up your adrenaline so that you can force your way through a physical slump.

  I let the rage and anger build up in me. Screw these hairy bastards who were toying with us. This time, they fucked with the wrong Marine. Let them come. I’d stack their bodies like firewood.

  Those are the kinds of thoughts that will take you from telling yourself that it’s okay to quit, that the problem in front of you is too much to handle, and pushes you instead into a state of mind that’s ready to take on all comers. There’s a reason why war cries and battle rituals have persisted throughout history. They work.

  “Come on, you bastards!” I shouted at them, and then I was ready. My heart was pounding; I was trying to move and fight with a ridiculous amount of weight slowing me down, but my rage and adrenaline washed it all away as I stomped forward down the hallway like a slow moving freight train.

  “Intersection!” I called out. “I’m left!”

  “I’m right!” Shifty shouted back, more to verify that he understood my intentions than out of necessity to point out that he would cover the other hallway.

  We moved into the next hallway intersection and I swung my weapon to cover the hallway on the left. Nothing. All clear.