Redeemer: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 2)

by N. D. Redding

  “That’s something from a previous life,” I replied calmly, not letting him bait me.

  “I see. That’s quite a shame,” he said, and sounded honestly disappointed, but his actions said something else.

  He kept throwing random pieces of canteen equipment my way. I knew he was just testing me before the real attack, checking my reflexes and skills, but I wasn’t giving him anything. I would either sidestep or duck, just barely avoiding the chairs and tables that would smash behind me.

  “There’s nothing I can tell you that would change your mind,” I said. “Not even if I had proof that I was sold like a damn slave. People like you don’t care about others, no, they care about prestige. They care about their position. Am I right?”

  He nodded and then gave me a half-assed shrug.

  “No, there isn’t. But you can tell me why you did it if you want to get it off your chest. You know? For old times’ sake.”

  I snorted and almost made my move, but I held back a second longer.

  “Why are you on this ship, Price? Why are you used like a doll by the Takkari and Imminy? You’re more powerful than them. You could carve your own way through this galaxy. Choose your battles, be free of the Ka and their constant wars.”

  “Free? What about duty? What about defending your own? Does that mean nothing to you? Do you stand for absolutely nothing now, Richard Stavos? I’ll act as if I never heard what you just said!”

  “Oh, stop it with the holier than thou attitude!” I snapped and finally threw a chair at him. “I stand against the Federation and the subjugation of our race, Price! Don’t tell me you’re so blind! Or is it easier to be blind than to fight for what you believe in?”

  “With the Aloi? Are you mad?”

  “I’m not going to explain myself anymore,” I replied and paused. Still, I had to try one last time before it came to real blows. “I have a mission I need to finish, and I would love it if we didn’t have to fight. I respect you, Price. You’re a great Technomancer and I see you’ve reached the Master rank. That’s no small feat and it would be a shame if you died after coming so far.”

  “I don’t need your respect. I need you to drop on your knees and beg for mercy. And I won’t give it to you. You’re right, whatever you say won’t change a single thing, traitor. Winters was right to do what he did.”

  “Fine, Price. Keep being a dog for the Imminy who enslaved our race. Be blinded by the security the Federation brings, but it won’t last for long. You’re part of a slave race now, Price. Whatever happens to me here, know that worse things are happening across the thirty colonies every day.”

  “You sound like an Aloi,” he said with a disgusted face.

  I channeled nanites into my hands, creating two spears with swirling tips that would drill into anything they hit. He noticed I was keeping my hands out of sight, but he still didn’t move. At least until I hurled the projectiles at him. Price was quick to reflect my attack by increasing the density in his shield. One spear ricocheted off the Blade Shield while the other dug into his shield and started shredding it, infecting his own nanites and forcing them to explode.

  I held my hands up and pulled them back from where they’d ended up. They flew back at me as if pulled in by a giant magnet, settling into my hands. Price was trying to hide the surprise on his face. It was a move few Technomancers could do, recall the already formed pieces of nanites back into ones’ hands. I just wanted to show him a hint of what was to come if he attacked me for real.

  “You continued your training.”

  “You have no idea what I had to do to survive, Price.”

  “Let’s see then.”

  He barely finished the sentence when he sent out a swarm of smaller nanite spikes toward me. The move was so quick that I barely had time to react. I rolled to the side, avoiding the brunt of the attack, but several spikes ripped into my Blade Shield, breaking a part off. The impact was incredibly loud as millions of nanites clashed against it each other and screeched for dominance.

  “They say there’s more to the nanites than pure Ka technology,” Price said.

  He kept throwing spike after spike at me as he talked, but I was way too quick. I didn’t even need to use any special abilities to avoid him. The years in Xan, the bloodmancing, my nanite-reinforced body; they all colluded to make me faster and stronger than the best brawler in the Federation.

  “They say the nanites have a mind of their own. That somewhere in the composition of the microscopic bots the conscious minds of dead Ka dwell embedded on a quantum level.”

  He stopped his attacks for a brief moment and spread his hands out toward the walls of the canteen. I could barely see, but I could absolutely feel a massive swarm of nanites flow toward the walls. I wasn’t sure where this was going but I sure as hell knew it would be deadly.

  “That is why some individuals are more prone to nanite control because their minds are more similar to the consciousness hidden within the nanite connections.”

  I could hear the walls wallowing under the pressure of his nanites. I had no idea where this was going, and I knew I should stop him, but my curiosity was just too great. I hadn’t seen a fellow Technomancer for so long I was ready to put up with the one who wanted me dead.

  “If the theory is true, then the Ka within you is begging the Ka within me to kill you.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” I said. “The Ka within me is dead. There’s something much more sinister within my bloodstream.”

  Price wasn’t expecting that answer and I guess he ascribed it to my general insanity.

  “So long… Brother,” he said, snapping out of my words and focusing his gaze on me.

  The walls on both sides of the canteen were literally ripped out of their frames and came flying at me, threatening to squash me in the middle like a bloody pancake. I spread my arms out and created two massive columns on both sides of my body that erupted from the ground like tree trunks. The walls that came flying at me bent around the columns but stopped a few inches from my body. It was a split-second save that I had never used in this form before.

  Rice’s face was angry. He couldn’t badmouth me anymore because he had just realized how serious an enemy I was.

  “I see you improved beyond our teachings.”

  I sighed. I had no more time for his lectures. I did have respect for Price for the same reason I had respect for any Technomancer of his level: because it was fucking hard to be one. But this wasn’t a quarrel between Technomancers, it was a fight between a man who had lost everything and a man who had lost nothing and now accuses the other of betrayal. His blind allegiance to the Federation was infuriating not only because it was blind, but because it reminded me of myself.

  “My teachings have grown beyond anything you could dream of,” I sneered. After showing me how eager the man was to kill me, I was done holding back. “But let me tell you something. You will never reach this level, Price. You’re too stuck up with what you know, and you don’t dare to go further. I’m as far away from you as you were from me when we stood on that ramp a decade ago.”

  Rice launched himself at me with spikes and chains erupting from every part of his Fyre Armor. They bore into the floor and through walls like a hot knife through butter, sending sparks, construction material, and debris flying in all directions. I blocked his attacks using nothing but the Ro Sword I summoned and the occasional chain when it became too hot for me. Price was strong, probably stronger than 99% of Technomancers out there, but it was only then that I realized how much I had surpassed all of them.

  When he realized his brute force attacks were nothing but shots in the dark, he propped himself back onto a nanite disc, flew up into the air, and began tearing the ceiling of the canteen down on me. He held both his hands up as the last of his functional nanites ripped into the pekta-reinforced material and threatened to bury me in an avalanche of metal.

  I let him and just stood there waiting for this last ditch-effort attack to be over alrea
dy. The ceiling finally gave in and the construction came down. Tons of steel beams and chunks of ceiling, walls, and floor panels came flying at me, and just as they were about to reach me, my nanites spun up with such velocity that each chunk was just burned to ashes before it could even reach their target.

  When the crashing stopped, Price lowered himself on one of the chunks of debris, scanning the area for life signs, and I knew very well that he could still see mine. I exploded out of the rubble with my Blade Shield intact and without so much as a scratch. I had stopped a Filadron with my bare hands, a few chunks of metal were no threat to me anymore.

  “You survived that,” Rice said in a stupor. “What the hell did you do? What the hell are you?”

  “You’re spent, aren’t you? You just used most of your nanites for this move, huh? Flashy but useless,” I laughed. “And you barely have enough to float on that disc of yours.”

  “You’re more spent than I am! Admit it! You must have used all your nanites to survive that last attack!”

  “Let me show you something, Rice.”

  Within several seconds, I replicated the same floating disc that he was standing on. His eyes went wide when it even flew, and I used that distraction to close our distance. I had my hand on his shoulder before he could even make a move to defend himself.

  “What the fuck?” he cursed and tried to pull himself free, but he was too weak.

  I accessed his Fyre Armor and sent a wave of my nanites into it. The small swarm attacked his nanites and burned them with such incredible speed that he lost his Blade Shield almost immediately along with the disc he was floating on. I grabbed him with my other arm so he wouldn’t drop to the ground and continued burning his nanites. Within seconds, I had destroyed his Fyre Armor and the remaining cells within. Rice could do nothing but watch in horror as I eradicated every single nanite in his body.

  I finally lowered the both of us to the ground where he collapsed, shivering. I had so utterly destroyed Captain Rice that the man wasn’t even able to talk anymore. A terrible feeling of guilt washed over me as I watched another of my victims. I told myself that I wasn’t to blame, that I did what I had to do but watching another Technomancer so utterly devastated took a toll on me. This was my doing, only mine. Nobody in this galaxy could have done something like it to another Technomancer.

  “Rice, get to an escape pod. This isn’t your battle.”

  He looked up at me but said nothing. An expression of horror was plastered to his face and it wasn’t going away. I had broken the man by showing the difference between us.

  I slapped him across the face and repeatedly told him to get to an escape pod, but he just stared at me with a blank face. What a damn shame. It pained me that I had to do that to the man, but I had a mission and not enough time to fool around anymore.

  “I have to leave you here, Rice. I have to go. Get your shit together and escape. Then come for me one day when you’re much stronger. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  He looked up at that and stared at me with rage flickering in his eyes.

  “What have you done—”

  I cut him off, not wanting to listen to a tirade.

  “You gave me no choice. Now run or die here.”

  I had Fars and Arthur on my INAS screaming for assistance. This wasn’t the time to comfort a broken Technomancer, so I left the man in the devastated canteen and ran out through the rubble toward the seventh deck. It was technically part of the eighth deck since Rice decided to redecorate the place.

  “We need something to breach the gauntlet!” Fars yelled over the INAS. His voice was erratic and I could guess they were in a shitstorm of their own.

  By the time I got to the seventh deck, I saw Fars and Arthur ducked behind cover in a wide corridor connecting decks seven and six. On the other side of the corridor, a small army of Commandos, Gearlords, and a handful of Farseers blocked the way. Commandos set up turrets, peppering the corridor while Gearlords kept Fars and Arthur at bay with artillery shells.

  “They finally mustered their forces against us,” Fars laughed. “There’s plenty to kill, Stavos! I feel so alive! More alive than I have in the last decade!”

  “Oh, just stop it, you warmonger. We’re pinned down like rats,” Arthur shot back as he looked over his cover and ducked again, barely keeping his head on his shoulders.

  I took cover behind a wall together with Arthur and checked the situation. The only way to go through that corridor was if we could turn into thin air.

  “We need a fucking tank to get through that,” Arthur said, scraping pieces of flesh from his bloodied armor.

  “Mitto, can you steer the Tanaree to our position, we need a precision shot.”

  “No can do, boss. I got a lot on my plate. The frigates and fighters are all after me and if I get too close to the Idolian Wallbreaker, the destroyers will tear my baby apart.”

  “All right, new plan. Cover me for a bit.”

  I was amped to try out what I had practiced for, and though it may prove not to be the best solution for our little blockade, it was certainly a solution. I concentrated my nanites on my feet and legs, slowly building up Beast around me as I had tried back on the Tanaree.

  “What the hell is that?” Arthur asked as he watched me build an assault-bot-based power armor around myself.

  I took a big chunk out of my remaining nanite cells to build up the armor around me. By the time I perfected my shoulders and helmet, I realized I would be able to use the armor to its full potential. In a way, I had built the entire pattern all at once. I had spent days trying to perfect the chest piece, or the leg joints, or the helmet, but by the time I was done making one part, the other parts came loose.

  My power armor resembled a small mech more than a power armor, as it only loosely resembled a human form. I had used most of my nanites to create heavy plates at the front so I could absorb as much damage as possible, but I still left enough for Beast’s miniguns to sit on my shoulders.

  My movements were clunky at best, the joints were squeaking, and the general look of the thing was an absolute eyesore, but aesthetics aside, it was a tank. One that barely fit through the corridor.

  “Ready? Get behind me and mimic my movements, try to anticipate them. When we’re close enough—”

  “We kill!” Fars laughed. “I can’t wait!”

  I stepped out into the corridor with my miniguns blazing. A storm of bullets rampaged through the ranks of Federation spec-ops forces. Blood sprayed from their positions as my miniguns tore into their ranks. Whole sheets of metal were ripped to pieces, screams echoed through the corridor as chunks of armor and flesh splattered into the walls behind them.

  Within seconds, the spec-op forces regrouped and sent out waves of fire at me. Missiles, artillery, and gunshots slammed into me, tearing away great wads of nanites with each hit. This wouldn’t last long I realized. No armor could protect you against a fully armed Federation spec-ops battalion.

  “Now!” I screamed, and Fars and Arthur jumped out from behind me.

  I laid down suppressive fire as they made their way up to the barricades. They hurled themselves at the defenders and slammed into the midst of the spec-ops team. A well-placed artillery shell hit my armor in the knee and I could feel my balance shifting. I ejected from the armor, pushing it forward into enemy fire, or at least what remained of it as my two angels of death had already managed to kill several of the specialists. I joined them after absorbing whatever nanites I could into my Fyre armor.

  Several Takkari Brawlers came at me with their Nas-hammers crackling with force. I pulled out my Ro Sword, wanting to test my strength against the Federation’s strongest. I blocked an overhead swing that I felt in my very heels as the blow almost pushed me into the sheets of steel below my feet. They were still a force to be reckoned with, I realized. An experienced Brawler was a terrifying enemy that could reach untold levels of strength. Layla had been a perfect example.

  The thought of her enraged me even more
. These Brawlers would follow her fate, for they had sinned. And their sin was to take up a fight for an idea that meant nothing in reality. They would live and die a horrible death and then be forgotten forever by those who sent them to their deaths.

  No mercy, I told myself as I stuck my Ro Sword into the Brawler's neck and pushed him away with my leg. No mercy, I told myself as I immediately jumped away from an incoming shot to my back. No mercy, when I sent out a chain toward the Commando and ripped his head from his throat and sent it flying into his friend’s hands. No mercy, I told myself as I shattered the armor of a Warwalker with my nanite-reinforced fists and probably broke every bone in his torso.

  By the time we were done with the seventh deck, it looked like a scene from a horror movie. A good hundred men and women of all races, even human, lay strewn across a devastated corridor. There was blood on the walls, floors and our armors, gore, puss, and burnt flesh attacked all my senses. I wanted to puke from the mere sight of it all, but I was their leader. They couldn’t see me in that state, not yet at least.

  Arthur wiped the blood from his whip and rolled it up. Fars cut off the head of the sergeant who led this spec-ops team and attached it to his belt. It was an old Eres intimidation tactic, not entirely absent from human history, that had survived together with many other very gruesome traditions until this very day.

  “Richard? Are you making headway?” Leo asked over our INAS comms.

  “Cleared the seventh deck just now. We’re three decks away from the bridge. How are you holding up?”

  “Not good, Richard. We have breaches in sixteen decks, our hull is at 39% integrity, and we have lost more than half of our cannons. I’m talking half an hour max, probably less. You’re A.I. and that McGill captain, however, are doing rather fine. They’ve taken down two frigates already and seem to be unharmed in doing so.”

  “There’s that at least,” I muttered. “Half an hour, huh? Isn’t this fun? Makes me think back on the time where we had to take care of the Pavlov guns. Do you remember?”