Sharpe End

by James David Victor

  “It looks new,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  Tilting her head, she considered the implications of that. It meant that this place was not nearly as abandoned as it had looked, and that someone was coming here often enough to check this and to watch someone do something. She very much wanted to turn it on and try to find answers to both of those things, but she knew that it was just as likely set up with alarms and fail-safes. If she did the wrong thing, she could bring all sorts of trouble down on their heads, and she was pretty sure that they had enough troubles without adding more to it.

  But this big mystery was just sitting here and staring at their faces! They had to do something about it, didn’t they?

  There was a sound from the stairs.

  “Get down!” Blake shouted suddenly.

  Raven felt herself collide with the ground before everything went dark, just after she heard the sound of a weapon firing.

  17

  The “probably most likely” place for a tunnel system to exit to the surface was in the foothills just outside of the city. Unfortunately for Kyra, they had been chasing their quarry well inside the city areas so getting out of it was taking far longer than the big cat was comfortable with.

  The planet didn’t scream “state of the art” or “high-class,” but Kyra could tell, once she reached the outskirts, that it was even more rundown and poverty-stricken. Like something out of a bad film, there seemed to be more people just standing around outside, and the way they looked at her was deeply unsettling.

  Putting her head down, she poured on what speed she could to just get through the neighborhood and out the other side as quickly as possible.

  That was not to be, however.

  Before she was able to break free of the last side street, which felt more like an alley the way it was bracketed by tall buildings, a group emerged in front of her and she skidded to a halt before she ran straight into them. The one in front had an old-looking gun, and others had various blades and bludgeons.

  This really was just like out of a film, and not even a good one. It was like one of those really old, really cheesy ones that Raven liked to have Silvanus pull up from the archives to watch now and then. This probably meant that Kyra would need to stop making fun of Raven when she watched them.

  Well, no, probably not.

  Determining that these walking clichés were nothing more than a delay from getting to her person, she started to turn and go back the way she came…but, of course, there were people coming from that direction too.

  With an annoyed sighing-huff, she turned to face the one with the gun. He was the only one with a projectile weapon that she could see, and he seemed to present himself as the leader. The weapon he had suggested that too, his being at the top of the hierarchy getting him the better weapon.

  “Can’t say we’ve ever seen one like you around here before,” the aforementioned supposed leader said. He wasn’t holding the weapon trained on her, but she could see the taut lines of the muscles in his arms, given that his shirt had very short sleeves. He was ready to raise it and use it at any time, although how good he was with it was open to debate.

  It was not something she wanted to test out, however.

  “I wonder what sort of price you’d fetch,” he went on.

  Kyra huffed out another breath, annoyed even more that she was being delayed from potentially finding Raven. She took a quick look around, swinging her big head from side to side to survey as much of the space around her as possible. They had the benefit of knowing the lay of the land far better than she did, but she was a mountain lion with big claws and sharp teeth.

  She knew how to use them.

  The street was narrow, just barely bigger than an actual alleyway, and it was lined with buildings. She didn’t see any sort of vehicles lining the way, so it was a clear shot from one side to the other. However, there was a group of people spread out across the road on both sides of her. She had nothing she could jump on to get around them.

  So, it was straight ahead. Either to fight, or to bolt free and run.

  “The letter said quite a bit,” another one of the group said.

  The letter? That caught her attention, but she obviously couldn’t ask them. What was this letter they were talking about?

  “Grab her,” the leader said, gesturing with his gun-hand for the others to go ahead.

  Kyra hunkered down and started to growl. She was sure some of the riff-raff from behind were coming up on her too, so she couldn’t let herself be still for too long. She shrieked then, which sent a couple of them stumbling back a step. If they expected her to roar, they were in for a surprise.

  Pushing off of her back feet, she leaped for the nearest idiot. She hit him full force with her front feet and let her momentum and weight drive him to the ground, collecting her back feet on his stomach and then using him like a springboard. He coughed a gurgling sound as her long back claws drove into his abdomen.

  From him, she leapt at the next closest and grabbed his throat with her powerful jaws, crushing his jugular in an instant. He flailed while she ran off him.

  The leader was already lifting his gun to aim it at her, so she sprinted for cover behind a third lackey. That one appeared to be a woman, although under that much dirt, it was hard to be sure. She couldn’t even tell by scent. Unless ‘dirt’ was a gender. She tried to get away from Kyra by jumping back, but the cat was practically glued to her.

  However, she collapsed a moment later as her own leader shot her. This revealed Kyra to him, but she was already on the move. She dodged one way and then the other, avoiding anything in her way but not staying on a straight line as she raced for the one with the gun. She needed to get to him to take him out, but she also needed to avoid getting shot.

  He certainly was trying, though.

  As she ran at him, dodging from side to side to keep herself as much of a moving target as possible, he kept pulling the trigger to send bolts of energy lancing across the space between them, but they always lodged in the floor. He didn’t seem to have the ability to just observe and react accordingly. He just fired off shots and spent most of his energy on the places that she had been, rather than where she was or where she would be.

  She reached him without getting shot, although there were a couple that came very close, and she wasn’t entirely sure that there weren’t singe marks on part of her tail. Even if there were, however, it was not the most important part.

  There was real fear in his eyes as he realized that his use of the gun wasn’t going to give him the advantage that he thought it did. Within a moment, she was off the ground and landing on him like she had on the other.

  She made sure that he wouldn’t be chasing her anymore, and then took off.

  18

  ‘This planet sucks! ’

  ‘Are you alright? ’ Silvanus asked, not adding any of her own opinion to Kyra’s succinct but forceful review of their current location. ‘Your vital signs are all elevated, indicating a high-stress situation. ’

  Kyra growled as she ran, seeing where the buildings began to lessen and some elements of nature began to take over up ahead. ‘Some local goons thought I’d fetch a good price as a novelty. I convinced them otherwise. ’

  ‘How many are dead? ’

  Cats couldn’t really shrug, but her tone implied the gesture. ‘Don’t know. Don’t care. Am I off-course? ’

  There was a long moment as Silvanus calculated, at least Kyra assumed that was the case, checking the location of Kyra’s implant on her map. ‘No. You’re still on track to reach the location I’ve noted shortly. Once you reach where the trees begin at the base of the hills, start looking around for a potential cave mouth. ’

  Kyra tried to keep her doubts at bay. ‘This is our lowest-tech plan yet, ’ she commented dryly.

  The AI didn’t dignify that with a response.

  The cat felt a huge wash of relief once she had passed the last of the city-like buildings, moving into an
area with a sparser scattering of smaller, more rural looking buildings. None of them had anyone standing outside. Although she still somewhat felt like someone was watching her, it wasn’t nearly as blatant as it had been while she was running through the city.

  When the trees came into view, she felt a second wash of relief.

  The relief, however, was quickly followed by apprehension. That wasn’t something Kyra was used to feeling, and she didn’t like it. She wanted the feeling to stop. She had faced off with a half-dozen armed humans without this feeling, so why now?

  The questions rolled through her mind. What if this location didn’t have what she wanted? What if she didn’t find Raven? What if Raven was dead?

  Shaking herself, Kyra chastised herself for thinking like a human.

  At the tree line, she stopped and began to look around. She knew that this time, she was going to have to rely on her eyesight more than her sense of smell. Unless there was a cave mouth and Raven had already walked through it, there would be no smell useful for her to follow. So instead, she started walking a rough pattern along the trees and partially up the first hill.

  There wasn’t much to find near the base of the hill, but moving upward, she found that there were a lot more large rocks, and she realized that some of these rocks might be clues, or could be hiding what she was looking for. This made her narrow her searching to the areas with the big rocks for the time being.

  After a while of that, Silvanus spoke. ‘Well, that’s interesting. ’

  Kyra paused and waited a moment for the AI to explain. When she didn’t, the cat impatiently pressed. ‘What is interesting? ’

  There was a delay before the response. ‘Someone is attempting to broach the ship’s computer. ’

  That brought the cat up short. ‘What?! ’

  ‘There is virtually no risk of this attempt succeeding, ’ Silvanus assured her. ‘The attempt is either uneducated or not particularly serious. The latter could pose future concerns if this is just a recon attempt. ’

  ‘Like someone testing what your defenses are? ’

  ‘Precisely. ’

  Kyra huffed. ‘That does not make me feel better in the least, Silvanus. Do you have any idea who is attempting to break into you? ’

  Another long delay. ‘I am afraid not. I’m managing a passive watch scan over the program attempting the broach, but I’m hesitant to push forward with a more active back-trace, lest I trip some sort of fail-safe or alarm. Doing so could trigger a more sophisticated program that could use my efforts to turn back on me. ’

  This just sounded worse and worse. Kyra sat down right where she was. It suddenly felt like there was more going on than just some sort of accidental road collapse.

  But she had no idea as to what .

  ‘All attempts to circumvent my internal defenses have been blocked using the least powerful means available to me, ’ Silvanus went on to explain. ‘It is my hope that they will assume my defenses are less sophisticated than they are. In the meantime, you should continue searching. ’

  Kyra almost asked how the AI knew she wasn’t, but then realized she had stopped moving. She got up and started her search again, knowing that the key to not just solving every mystery but also to getting away from this place was to find Raven.

  Even so, she found that it was hard to focus on the task at hand when she kept wondering who was trying to break into their ship’s computer. It made a mind wonder if Raven’s disappearance was indeed more than it appeared, but until she actually found the woman, there was little that she could do about finding that out.

  She wove around a few more trees, heading for the next rocky outcropping. This one seemed even more pronounced, made up of several oddly blue-tinted stones that were quite a bit taller than she.

  Coming around the first one, she realized there was a sort of shape to them. Not something that looked to be manmade, but one that spoke of it having a purpose. A purpose like…concealing the mouth of a cave. Feeling anticipation slowly build in her, she moved around the first rock and saw the giant canyon-like passage between it and the next two.

  Before she got very far in her exploring, Silvanus was chiming in again. ‘The attempts have stopped, at least for now. They were entirely blocked, even the backdoor attempt they tried while I was fighting off the main ones. ’

  ‘So they were trying a distraction technique. ’

  ‘Yes, but it was unsuccessful. I continue to run program scrubbers now to make sure that nothing broke through. Have you found anything? ’

  Kyra began walking, cautiously, into the shadows. ‘I think I have. I’ll let you know. ’

  19

  “What the heck?!”

  Blake’s surprised shout floated through Raven’s very brief flirtation with unconsciousness. She opened her eyes to find them facing the floor, and her body splayed out flat against it. It took her a moment to recollect exactly how all of this had happened, but the energy weapon discharge flying over her head did a lot to help that along.

  Beside her, Blake was on one knee and returning fire at a form retreating back up the stairs.

  “I think it was Greyson,” he said, helping her get back to her painful feet.

  “How did that happen?” she groaned, clenching her back teeth.

  “I have no idea, but we’re trapped down here. We’ve got to figure a way out. I don’t want to bet on his having left the building entirely,” he was saying.

  Panting slightly, Raven tried to think. “At least he can’t burn us out?”

  He laughed faintly. “There’s that, I suppose,” he agreed. “We still need to get out of here. Do you want to hold the gun on the door while I look for a possible second exit from this level?”

  Raven eyed him for a moment with a small smile, thinking that this was something of a new side to him. Now wasn’t the time to say anything of course, so she just nodded, pulled her own weapon, and watched the stairs while he moved off into the rest of the room, which they hadn’t yet had a chance to explore.

  Her body tensed as she kept vigil, and the tension made her hurt worse. She felt sweat pop up all over her body, and she began to wonder just how long she would be able to keep this up before just collapsing for good.

  It seemed to take forever—when it was probably just a few minutes—before he came back, sighing and shaking his head. “I couldn’t find any other doors. I think the only way to get out of here is the way we came in.”

  “Which could be precisely where Greyson is, armed and on the high ground,” Raven said darkly.

  “Very likely,” Blake agreed, “but not for sure. He might not be up there anymore.”

  It was possible. Without going up there to take a look, they couldn’t be sure. That being said, of course… “If it was him, it means he spotted us and followed us here, with the precise intent of shooting at us. If that’s the case, it’s really unlikely he would have just given up. He’ll sit up there and wait us out, then shoot us as we come up the stairs.”

  He couldn’t really argue with that.

  “We could crawl up the stairs,” Blake began. “Keep ourselves low. If he’s expecting us to come up normal, he shoots too high.”

  “Unless he expects us to think that way and is ready for it.”

  “Pessimist.”

  “Realist.”

  He grunted. “End of story, we can’t stay down here for long. We have no water and no food.”

  Raven sighed. “We don’t have any of those things up above, either,” she pointed out.

  “But we have a chance to find them up there. Down here, we’re sitting ducks—or fish in a barrel, pick your metaphor—until he comes back. We fall asleep for a minute too long and we’re done for.”

  She couldn’t argue with that.

  So, they both just stood and stared for a while. There were no sounds from upstairs, and they didn’t hear anyone coming down toward them again. The lights never changed and there were no shadows.

  “Alright. I’m goi
ng up,” Blake finally said. “I’m going to stay low, and just hope that he hasn’t anticipated that.”

  “I’ll go with you,” she said. “I’ll just be slower.”

  For a moment, he looked like he might want to argue, but then decided against it. She appreciated that, since she didn’t need to have another fight with him right then, nor did she need someone telling her what to do or how to do it.

  Blake looked at her for a long moment, but he didn’t say anything. She wondered what he was thinking, and she almost asked, but he started moving before she had the chance to. He still had his gun in hand, holding it carefully as he kept low, body close to the stairs, as he ascended in a very awkward manner.

  In her experience, stealth and skill weren’t always pretty, but they didn’t have to be pretty, they just had to be effective.

  She waited a moment before following, not because she wanted him to take the brunt, but because it took a few moments to steel herself for the task. Holstering her gun, which she knew could turn out to be a mistake but she could not climb with it like Blake, she limped to the stairs.

  From there, she moved on her hands and knees. She tried to keep her ankle from hitting the stairs, to avoid both the pain and the sound of the splint hitting them, but that proved to be really hard to do while being quiet. In the end, it just made everything hurt worse, although she stayed quiet.

  Blake was moving cautiously, but still faster than she could. He was already around the corner and moving up the next part before she was even halfway up the first flight.

  She counted in her head, determining how long it would take him to get to the top while she made her way up behind him. The tedium of counting helped to distract her from the laborious act of this climb.