by Isaac Hooke
That drone was just starting to enter a wider passageway, potentially a cavern, when it winked out.
Well, there goes the drone, Will transmitted over a mental channel.
The next drone in line followed, and it, too, vanished as it began to enter the wider passage.
Okay, halt the drones, Rhea mentally transmitted.
She increased her pace, and quickly reached Jairlin and the lead team. Before anyone could stop her, she shoved past them and took the lead.
Warden! Jairlin transmitted.
She ignored him and increased her pace. She glanced over her shoulder. They were running toward her. She thought they were going to tackle her, so she switched to a sprint.
Stay back! she sent. For your own safety!
But they would not obey.
Rhea raced past the remaining drones, which were strung out in a line before her. She was well aware of the sound of her echoing footfalls, and those of the Wardenites behind her.
She reached the widening portion of the passageway and slowed down. She drew the pistol and switched to a crouch.
She released a single LIDAR burst and dropped immediately to the stone floor. She activated her Ban’Shar, holding them above her as a shield.
The cavern around her filled out. It was huge, the arched ceiling reaching well over her head, and extending far into the distance.
The LIDAR burst would have revealed her position, and the Ban’Shar, with its blue glow, definitely did. She expected a plasma bolt or laser attack to come her way, but nothing transpired.
Jairlin and the others arrived and crowded around her.
Are you all right? Jairlin sent.
Get behind me, idiots! she transmitted. She switched to a crouch and repositioned the translucent plasma disks to protect the Wardenites.
They all dropped.
Will, Horatio, and the other two Wardenites arrived, and similarly dropped to the cave floor. Rhea kept the Ban’Shar placed squarely between them and the rest of the cavern.
What’s the deal? Will asked. Are we under attack?
Not yet, Rhea sent.
The drones had remained in the passageway behind. She glanced at her overhead map and was just about to tell Will to send them forward when their dots winked out.
Did anyone else just notice that we lost all the drones? Will asked.
We’ve got someone behind us, Rhea replied. With me!
Feeling exposed, she backed away toward the closest wall. The others followed, staying behind her.
When she reached the wall, they crowded against it, and Rhea stood in front of them. The glow from her Ban’Shar created a pool of blue light on the cave floor around her.
Will, Horatio, watch the entrance.
She switched to full LIDAR, since her position was known to the enemy anyway, and she didn’t want someone sneaking into the cavern unnoticed. She surveyed her surroundings, as generated by that LIDAR, and noted the random passageways that branched off on the left and right. She was in some kind of central hub in the tunnel system.
She heard muted footfalls coming from somewhere ahead. It was hard to determine the position, since the footsteps echoed from the walls. She ran her gaze across the different passageways, searching for the source.
“You’ve come, Warden,” a woman’s voice said. “I must admit, I didn’t believe you would. I thought you’d send your followers to do your dirty work.”
“Surprising, isn’t it?” Rhea said. “Not everyone is cast from the same cowardly die as yourself. If I’m going to kill someone, I do it myself, rather than hiring someone else.”
“I suppose so, given your profession,” the woman said over the continuing footsteps. “Your memories are coming back, then?”
Rhea ignored the question and asked one of her own. “You’re Veil?”
Bright lamps turned on in the ceiling, negating the need for any further LIDAR transmissions. She kept the system active anyway: those lights might be designed to lull her into complacency, shutting off when she least expected it. She wouldn’t let them blind her, not even for a second.
The footfalls increased in volume and humanoid figures began arriving from every last one of the branching passageways, including the tunnel Rhea and the others had arrived from. They crowded into the room, spreading out along the walls. They wore dark gray fatigues, with thick cloaks draping their shoulders, and large, round AR goggles shielding their eyes. Long, unkept hair reached past their disheveled beards. They all carried plasma rifles, which were pointed in the general direction of the group.
“Black Hands,” Will hissed.
Rhea kept her Ban’Shar ignited and at the ready.
Behind her, the Wardenites shifted, no doubt aiming their own rifles past her Ban’Shar toward the newcomers.
A figure appeared on a balcony she hadn’t noticed overhead—this balcony blended in quite well with the cavern wall. The figure was garbed in a black robe whose plate-like protrusions hinted at a robotically augmented form underneath. That garment left only the face visible, and the lamp light glinted off the chiseled features of a human female, features that were far too beautiful to be natural. Likely a cyborg.
“Veil?” Rhea asked.
The robed woman smiled. “That is one of my names. Damascus. Resolutus. Scourge of the North. These are all mine. And soon I will add another set of titles to that list: Warden Killer. Defeater of the Dagger.”
“I was expecting a man,” Rhea commented offhandedly. The nonchalance was an act, of course: she was thinking furiously, trying to come up with a way to reach her foe. This body’s most powerful jump would only bring her halfway to the balcony. What she wouldn’t give for the lighter gravity of Ganymede right now.
Even if she managed to climb the wall and reach Veil before the crime lord could flee, she’d be abandoning her friends to the Black Hands. Something she could never do.
The only other option was to order her men to open fire at the woman. Unfortunately, Veil would probably retreat deeper into the balcony before any of them could let off a shot. Meanwhile, the Black Hands would unleash everything they had at Rhea and her companions.
With some reluctance, Rhea admitted to herself that there was nothing she could do for the time being. She would simply have to wait for a better moment to strike.
“Most expect a man when they come to find me,” Veil agreed. “Imagine their surprise when they meet their deaths at the hands of a woman.”
A scraping noise drew Rhea’s attention upward. A large, multi-barreled plasma turret deployed from the rock ceiling.
“Get down!” Rhea flung her left plasma disk upward and crouched.
Will, Horatio and the Wardenites ducked.
She kept the rightmost disk angled in front of her, so that when the Black Hands opened fire a moment later, she was ready.
The latter enemy was yet arrayed in a half circle against the walls around her, so she was forced to swing the lower disk back and forth to cover all angles of attack. She moved her arm so fast that she essentially created an impenetrable shield in front of herself and the Wardenites, forming a glowing plasma arc that deflected all energy bolts unleashed by the enemy. Those bolts bounced away randomly, sometimes downing a Black Hand, but for the most part slamming harmlessly into the cave wall.
“Hold your fire!” Will shouted.
Good advice: because of the speed with which she swiveled that lower shield, the Wardenites risked killing themselves with a fatal deflection if they attempted to shoot past it. They could potentially stand up to shoot over it, but that meant putting themselves directly into the line of fire of the Black Hands.
The overhead turret activated. Rhea deflected the attacks with her upper Ban’Shar, protecting her men. Though the turret’s bolts came in fast and furious, she didn’t have to swing the disk through as wide a range of motion as the lower shield, allowing her to take the time she needed to alter its angle until she found the right tilt to deflect the bolts back into the turr
et. In moments she had disabled it.
With that weapon gone, she lowered the leftmost disk and used it to augment the other Ban’Shar.
“Interesting,” Veil shouted above the fighting. “You’re living up to your new name, Warden. But do you really think I’ve never dealt with a Ganymedean before?”
She removed her black robe, revealing a body that looked like it was made of several smaller humanoid robots. Two of those robots broke away and leaped off the balcony. They crashed into the floor, and rolled into large, separate balls that headed straight for her.
Rhea was forced to bring one of her Ban’Shar forward and braced for the robot spheres to smash into it. Meanwhile, the Wardenites opened fire on the now exposed side, forcing the Black Hands to retreat into the passageways to take cover.
Before striking, the robots transformed into humanoids again and leaped upward, arcing over her disk. The robots reached down, and their fingers elongated, becoming sharp spikes.
Rhea twisted her body, narrowly avoiding a strike to the head; one of the spikes tore into her left shoulder and embedded deep. She cut it away with her Ban’Shar before the robot passed, allowing a plasma bolt from the Black Hands to slip through—it grazed her right side, melting the armor there.
Will and Horatio fired their rifles at point blank range into the vaulting robots, so that by the time the machines crashed into the wall, they were already partially melted into slag. When they bounced to the ground, they didn’t get up.
Rhea hadn’t taken hits to any vital circuitry, and she was able to lower her Ban’Shar to protect herself, and the men, once more.
“You all right?” Will asked.
“Fine!” she replied. “Target Veil! Don’t let her launch any more of those robots!”
Will and Horatio directed plasma fire toward the balcony, forcing Veil to retreat into the upper tunnel from whence she’d come. Meanwhile some of the other Wardenites behind her had apparently decided to risk standing up now and again, judging from the occasional bolt that shot over her shifting Ban’Shar to strike one of the Black Hands.
Since Rhea didn’t have to move her disk-like shields as fast anymore, now that she could devote both of them to protecting herself and her companions, she began to experiment with the tilt of the Ban’Shar, and deflected bolts into the Black Hands who were firing them. This, in combination with the shots the Wardenites occasionally released over her shields, caused the enemy units all around her to begin retreating into the passageways for cover.
As that happened, the barrage she faced lessened, and she could further concentrate on deflecting those bolts, and she redirected them mercilessly into her enemies. Soon they stopped firing entirely and vanished into the side passageways.
Veil had yet to return to the upper balcony, and Rhea wanted to climb that wall in pursuit, but first she had to cross the tunnel without getting anyone killed.
“Let’s go!” Rhea said. She started forward cautiously, keeping an eye on the side passageways, looking for any stragglers among the Black Hands. Behind her, Will and the others scanned the openings as well.
“They’re all empty,” Miles said. “The Black Hands have run off!”
“Cowards,” Will agreed.
And then the rock walls began to come alive.
“Uh,” Brinks said. “The walls.”
“I see them,” Rhea said.
Slithering figures of rock broke away from the stone walls all around them. They were vaguely reminiscent of certain extinct reptiles she had seen on the streaming sites—hooded cobras. They even had leathery tongues that flicked from their open mouths. The difference with these creatures was that they had forelimbs tipped by long, wicked-looking sickles.
They slowly slithered forward, their upper bodies held aloft, their forelimbs slicing eagerly at the air.
Rhea flicked her index fingers forward, transforming the Ban’Shar into glowing short swords of plasma.
“Custom bioweapons of some kind,” Will said. “They’re coming from the passageways, too. The Black Hands are long gone.”
“Fight through them!” Rhea said. “To the balcony!”
She raced forward. The Wardenites followed and opened fire, drilling blast craters into the bodies of the creatures ahead of her. The impacts caused some of the rock creatures to go down, while others were merely injured and kept coming.
As she neared one of those in the forefront, it lunged at her. She twisted to the side and struck down with her Ban’Shar sword, beheading it.
Another creature thrust for her. She ducked, and met the creature head-on, plunging the Ban’Shar blade through its core, and ripping the weapon sideways to extract a good chunk of tissue and the rock flesh coating it. The rock cobra fell.
Three more creatures tried to waylay her. One was struck down by a plasma bolt from behind, while she mowed down the remainder with quick strikes from her Ban’Shar.
One of the rock cobras came at her from the side. There was no time to swing her sword that way to attack it, so instead she lifted the blade and closed her index finger to form a complete fist. The plasma blade transformed into a disk once more, and the creature’s head slammed harmlessly into the surface. The impetus caused the disk to descend dangerously close to her body, and she was forced to apply countering pressure.
The creature bounced away, its face shaven clean off, leaving behind a molten, dripping mass.
A crescent-moon talon sliced at her from the opposite side. She swiveled away, leaping behind the injured body of the rock cobra whose face she’d just cut off; the claw struck its hard carapace and deflected harmlessly aside.
Both creatures were struck by plasma bolts a moment later and collapsed.
Rhea continued forward, cutting a path through the rock cobras with her Wardenites until she reached the wall beneath the balcony.
The Wardenites formed a half-circle behind her and continued firing into the incoming bioweapons. She surveyed the smooth surface, and realized it wasn’t something a human could climb easily.
“Horatio, carry someone,” she said. “Will, on my back!”
Will leaped onto her back, and she deactivated the Ban’Shar. She began climbing. She thrust her fingers into the rock, pressing hard to form handholds. She didn’t bother to make holds with her feet—she simply used the handholds as footholds when she climbed high enough.
Horatio joined her, following in her wake.
The others continued to keep the rock cobras at bay below.
She glanced down, and saw Brinks try to climb up, but he lost his grip after climbing only a pace and dropped down.
“Wait for me!” she shouted.
Brinks nodded and turned back to keep firing into the creatures.
Rhea reached the two stories to the balcony, and slowly peered over the lower edge to confirm Veil wasn’t lying in wait to ambush her. There were no bioweapons in the passage beyond. For now.
“Get up there,” she told Will. “And watch your back.”
He nodded and climbed over her to take up a defensive position. Occasionally glancing over his shoulder, he fired down into the rock cobras to help the others.
“Look out!” she told the others.
They cleared the wall below, and she shoved off from the rock ledge, passing over Horatio. She landed hard on the stone surface, and when she stood up her knee servomotors whined in complaint.
Horatio deposited Miles onto the balcony, and then released the wall to land beside Rhea. Miles meanwhile joined Will, and together they offered support from above.
Rhea and Horatio carried the men up one by one like that. When they arrived, they either joined Will and Miles in firing down into the fray, or they guarded the rear.
Finally, Rhea and Horatio unloaded the last of them. She pulled herself onto the balcony and glanced down one last time. The bodies of the rock cobras were piled in a tall semicircle around the base of the wall. Without anyone to defend that base, the remaining bioweapons shoved past the bodies a
nd attempted to climb, but their talons scraped uselessly against the stone.
She smiled and turned away.
Miles, still standing guard beside her, released a few more wasteful shots before following.
“Damn rock snakes,” the albino said. “Veil could have custom designed any animal. And she had to choose rock snakes.”
“I take it you’re not a big fan of snakes…” Rhea said.
“Are you?” he asked.
“No,” she admitted.
Brinks and Horatio led the way. Soon the tunnel became so cramped that they had to continue in single file. Rhea imagined her enemy having a hard time passing through with her large, augmented body—Veil would have had to crouch, and perhaps crawl on hands and knees. Then again, maybe Veil merely had to release the smaller humanoids who composed her body, sending them through individually before reassembling on the other side.
They traveled at least two kilometers through that tunnel, according to her internal accelerometer.
“Got an opening,” Horatio announced.
The robot carefully checked both sides of the entrance, and then emerged.
“It’s clear,” Horatio said.
The others followed, stepping onto the rocky plains just outside the foothills. The terrain formed an arch over the exit, which made it difficult to see from above. That would explain why the drones had missed it—that and the fact it was well away from the closest hill.
A camouflage tarp lay abandoned on the ground. It had likely hidden a vehicle—and a big one at that, judging from the size of the tarp.
“The drones missed the opening,” Will commented. “And the vehicle, too.”
“Hey, you had one of your drones among them,” Miles said. “And it didn’t detect this exit, or any vehicles, either.”
“Speaking of which, I have Giz in comm range,” Will told Rhea.
“Have Gizmo summon the SUVs, and the technicals,” Rhea said.
She was gazing toward the far horizon, toward an out-of-place smudge. She zoomed in; speeding away from the highlands, a semi hauled a wide trailer.
“You’re not going to get away, Warden Killer,” she said softly.