Hell's Razer
Page 5
Even against the wind, Gavit spotted Bichard’s antenna twitch in the way they always did when he was analyzing imagery; the turret was transmitting straight to his micomm.
Though he attempted to block it out, the unmistakable image of a winged Chret crawling across the ground appeared in Gavit’s periphery. Grimacing, he broke away from the transport and towards the nearby crater rim. The avian’s wings were shredded and torn, and it had one leg missing.
Marda broke into the line.
* * *
Marda gritted her teeth at that news. The delays intel had foisted upon them might just have cost the entire crew their lives. She looked to the others as Arion twisted the AT-APT around towards the injured Chret. Blazer was already on his feet, holding onto the overhead rack as he reached for his weapon.
“Hold on. Coming to our party,” Arion called out before the AT-APT lurched to a halt.
The side door slid away revealing grey sky beyond. Blazer and his team were out an instant later. Zithe jumped right, while Gokhead leapt left to cover the door despite the small automated turrets flanking the vehicle. Blazer followed and bounded towards the breach in the side of the transport. Marda followed them out with Chris and Rudjick, and raced straight towards the injured Chret while her teammates checked out the other bodies.
Marda skidded to a halt beside the injured Chret. His cracked helmet remained intently focused on the ship ahead. His limp wings dragged the ground as he pulled himself along. Marda released her rifle and grabbed hold of the Chret, the sling retracting her weapon onto her back. He lurched away and looked back.
The whole side of his head was blackened, the beak blistered and feathers scorched to cinders. He tried to back away, not recognizing who Marda was through the closed face of her Armored Combat Hostile Environment Suit (ACHES). She ordered it open via her micomm. It responded in turn. The atmospheric processor blew air into her face to keep the noxious atmosphere away. The Chret’s twin-pupiled eyes tried to focus on her face as she extended a hypo from her right hand, a solution of Chret painkillers and nanomachine coagulants ready to go. “Easy now,” she said and buried the needle into the base of the damaged wings.
“Anulian?” he asked in a cracked voice.
Marda nodded and examined his leg. There was nothing left below the knee…Blood seeped from the seared flesh. A nozzle extended from her wrist and she sprayed the stump with a layer of artificial flesh and nano-assemblers. The mix would seal the wound and build temporary blood vessels to restore circulation. “What happened?”
“We stayed behind with the ship. The others, the captain, he took them someplace to hide.” He coughed into his helmet. Yellow blood splattered against the inside of the clear faceplate. “I should have gone with them.”
Marda continued her examination of the leg as Chris and Rudjick approached. They shook their heads. Marda looked past them. They confirmed what she’d seen on her dash towards her patient. They were all dead, their auras gone. She returned her attention to her patient. She could at least save him. “What happened here?” she asked again.
“Troops. I’d never seen armor like it before. We went out to meet them and they shot without warning.” He paused for a moment and reached back to try and grab his wings. “Something exploded.” His eyes went wide as he pulled out a clump of feathers. “My wings, how are my wings?”
“Your wings will be fine. This leg has me more concerned.”
“Sheol my leg. I can wear long pants,” he yelled trying to twist about, the painkiller taking effect.
She glanced at the wings. While bloodied and broken, the nanos were doing their job. The breaks had begun to straighten and patches of thin skin appeared to close off new avenues of infection. “Your wings will be fine. No major blood vessels were punctured.”
Rudjick jerked around and stepped up to look at the Chret.
The name rang a bell. She’d caught up on movies quite a bit during her maternity leave, but she still couldn’t place a name to the face.
Rudjick looked over the fractured wings and looked back to the actor’s face.
Eberian craned his neck around to try and look; fought to get off the ground. “Will they be deformed?”
Marda couldn’t be sure. Chret bones were notoriously thin and brittle, especially the ones in their wings. Keeping a perfect set of wings was near impossible as a result. If her scans were correct, the innermost bone, the thickest one in the left wing, had shattered. It would require extensive nanosurgery to rebuild. Even then there was no guarantee they’d return to their original shape. “We’ll do all we can, but we need to get you and any other survivors back to base first.”
Marda signalled Rudjick over, and with his help, she helped Eberian to sit up. “Do you know where the others went?”
Eberian twisted about and motioned towards the west with his long beak. “The captain spotted some caves off that way, said he’d take them there. But Tris,” he said lifting his scorched and blistered arm towards the east. “Tris stayed here with us and ran off that way when the troops showed up. Tort - wait, where’s Tort?” he asked looked about frantically.
Marda shook her head and pulled him back to look at her. “He’s gone. I’m sorry but stay focussed.”
Blazer and his team stepped out of the ruined hulk of the transport and waved towards Arion in the AT-APT.
“Go ahead Rescue Lead,” the pilot replied.
“Requesting that you rendezvous on our next position. Pick up our sniper team en-route.”
“Confirmed, Rescue Lead, will make crater-side pickup.”
;
Marda shook her head as the AT-APT pulled up alongside. She motioned Priest over to help her with the injured Chret.
Marda could almost feel how angry that made Blazer. That timeline meant that the Geffers had reached the downed ship around the time their dropship had entered the system.
* * *
Gavit accelerated his jet-sled ballistic in response to his orders. Not only did he need to chase down the runner, Tris, but he had to do it fast enough to help the rest of his team. Breaking through the top of the descending dust clouds he spun the sled, imaged the whole area. Thermal signatures lit up the west, and a smaller set to the east, just as Eberian had indicated.
The g-forces crushed Gavit against the sled as he pulled out of the climb. He presented his tail to the western heat source, and keyed the rear launcher. A rocket propelled container shot free and moments later dozens of buzzer like mini-drones emerged from their hive. The cloud of sensor-laden robotic insects fed real-time telemetry across the EM spectrum back to the team.
Receipt confirms rang in from Bichard and Que Dee over the micomm as Gavit raced after his quarry. The name Tris pinged his memory but he just couldn’t place it. His micomm unconsciously began a search of the hyperweave. Prior to Gokhead taking on Que Dee, such a thing would have been impossible, even in Confed space. Que Dee however had maintained a low bandwidth quantum entanglement link with the Synthetic Sentient master mainframe. It maintained access to the Confed hyperweave: the nature of how they wouldn’t reveal.
While this proved useful to Marda, Priest, Hallet, and even Gokhead, to an extent, it remained a bother for the rest of the team. Before, without the hyperweave link, such thoughts had led nowhere. Now they had to actively shut out the link. It would take almost no effort for Que Dee to accomplish. The synthetic however had developed some new personality quirks since integrating with Gokhead.
Before Gavit could press the search out of his mind a list, with images, of a dozen actresses named Tris jumped into view. He rolled his eyes. The list shrank to a single woman - Tris Falain. The search algorithm noted her current status as shooting a movie with Eberian Cotrai. Gavit lost his concentration for a moment at her image, his sled still on course towards the thermal contact. “Shreg me,” he whispered.
He’d met the beauty once before, at a race. She’d handed out the awards. She’d been a fresh-faced up-and-comer back then, and gorgeous. The annura had been more than kind according to the images. She was just the type that the media always said he’d bed. He hadn’t even run the routine with her. He’d run straight to his eventual betrayer that cycle.
Ground-based plaser fire pulled him back into the moment. Cursing his foolishness, he severed the link to the hyperweave and rolled the sled about to gaze at the ground. He read six contacts in total. The thermal signatures showed five reptilian Krad in light armor surrounding a single Anulian contact: a female in light clothing.
Gavit orbited the group again. An annoyance icon from Chris appeared on his periphery. He focussed that away and looked at the troops. The sled wasn’t weapon heavy. It was a recon craft, but it featured an anti-personnel plaser in the optical turret. Gavit hadn’t practiced with the turret outside of simulators since the academy. Even then he’d slave it over to Matt most times. Those troops were ‘danger close’ to the prisoner. That made precision key, lest he risk injuring, if not, killing her. He took a calming breath and looked back at the troops. The optics in his helmet tracked his eyes and he locked onto the five troops. He slaved the turret to their positions, breathed a sigh of relief for that update, and dove.
Unsure of the accuracy of the weapon, he descended as close as he dared, and pulled the trigger on the nearest pair. The first two rounds pierced the chest of one, shattering his armor. The Krad dropped to the ground in a font of blood. The second set of rounds weren’t as precise. The first went wide, while the second impacted the other Krad’s arm. The armor shattered in a spray of metallic composites, but the reptiloid remained standing.
Snarling, Gavit raced over their heads. Plaser bolts thumped against the minimally-armored wings. Wincing, he spun about into a half-loop. The troops spread out in response. One dragged Tris along, another, the downed soldier. Gavit smiled at their mistake.
It left him less of a clustered target and placed the prisoner clear of the crossfire. He targeted the trooper holding Tris. She made a poor shield as he dragged her along by the arm. Gavit squeezed off a five-round burst. The blasts carved a path up the Krad’s body from foot to head. The last sailed over what remained of the Krad’s shattered, smoldering skull.
Gavit turned his attention towards the other three and cut loose on full auto. Plaser rounds splattered the ground around them. The burst shredded the trooper dragging his injured comrade and the next one down the line. Gavit twisted the sled around again to engage the last Krad standing.
A plaser round splattered against Gavit’s windscreen, blackening and splintering the silicasteel shell. Another grazed his leg armor. He pulled his trigger. He didn’t even care to count how many rounds he poured into the Krad before he pulled out. He doubted anything but DNA analysis could be used to confirm that one’s identity.
Status alerts sprang up from the rest of the team. They’d closed on the remainder of the escaped crew and their chasers. If he wanted to help them at all, he would need to snatch up his runner first. He whipped the sled about to find her running away from the grisly scene. Hands bound before her, her sheer tunic fluttering behind. The sight was mesmerizing, her curves revealed through the gown. It left little for him to imagine what she looked like beneath it. He shook the image out of his mind and shifted in his saddle to bear down on her.
She heard him coming. She looked back, terror etched across her face, kept running. Plaser fire ripped the air around them. Someone was still alive amongst the Krad soldiers. Holes appeared in her dress and Gavit poured on the speed. In a blink, he was on her. Arm extended, he slid to the side and, leaning over, grabbed Tris around the waist. She yelped in panic as he pulled her close and levelled out before climbing skyward. Sporadic fire traced their course.
Tris fought against Gavit’s grip. He wrestled with the controls one-handed and tried not to lose his grip on her. “Knock it off! I’m Confed. I’m here to rescue you!” he hollered through the external speakers in his faceless mask.
It took her a moment to process what he’d said before she grabbed hold of him tight, tears flowing freely. “Thank god you came!” she sobbed above the whipping wind.
Gavit set the autopilot to hold them straight and level and helped her into the reserve saddle behind him. She clung to his back as he turned back around. The automatic straps sprang from the saddle to hold her in place. “You can thank me later. Let’s go help your friends, and mine.” Before she could protest, he whipped the flyer about and raced towards his friends. In the distance, the dropship appeared above a fresh cloud of smoke and plaser fire.
* * *
The situation the drones relayed wasn’t good. Easily two dozen Geffers awaited them. Most guarded an improvised holding pen where the crew were seated, their hands clasped. Others were searching the nearby caves for holdouts. Arrayed around the prisoners as they were, it would be hard to get clean shots off. Any round that drifte
d too low could hit a prisoner. The safety of the civilians was paramount.
Multiple thumps echoed through the armored skin of the AT-APT as the disruptor-screen cannons fired. Multiple canisters shot ahead of the transport as vents in the skin opened to expel a screen of ionized dust and gas to blind unfiltered sensors all along the EM spectrum. Only those tuned to specific wavelengths would be of use now. The sensors and optics in the team’s suits automatically attuned themselves. If they were quick, the enemy wouldn’t have the time to adjust to the swirling clouds of dust before the team had eliminated them.
Blazer snapped his helmet closed and the rear hatch opened. His suit’s telemetry computer linked with those of the AT-APT, dropship and Bichard’s equipment to present him a virtually unobstructed view of the battlescape. The variations in data across the sources created sensor ghosts behind and around that gave the whole scene a near ethereal quality. Is this what Marda sees when she looks at auras? He forced the thought aside, as the AT-APT entered its first turn, and leapt out the hatch. He skidded across the ground. Shock gel in the armor cushioned the impact before he rolled to his feet and lined up his first target.
The Krad, according to the thermals, went down before Blazer could get off a shot. Zithe had shot him dead as he’d leapt from the transport. Blazer shifted his focus to his next target as Marda’s team deployed. As the mission commander, his suit received all the vital statistics from his team. Most of these he filtered out, but unusual ones always caught his attention. Unidentified, high protein bodily fluid registered across the inside of Marda’s torso.